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Sweden Defends Wiki Sex Case About-Face
crimeandpunishment writes "Mistake? We didn't make a mistake. That's what Swedish prosecutors said Sunday as they defended their handling of a rape allegation against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. The Swedish Prosecution Authority said the prosecutor who issued the arrest warrant Friday did not make a mistake, even though a higher-ranked prosecutor withdrew the warrant the next day. A spokesperson for the Authority said: 'The prosecutor who took over the case yesterday had more information, and that is why she made a different assessment than the on-call prosecutor.' Assange, who was in Sweden seeking legal protection for the site as it prepares to leak more Afghan war documents, told a Swedish tabloid newspaper, 'I don't know who's behind this but we have been warned that for example the Pentagon plans to use dirty tricks to spoil things for us.'" We covered the warrant being issued and withdrawn yesterday.
They will get him. Eventually. I hope not, but I believe they will. Through defamation, assassination (character or otherwise), I just want to forecast now, that as a pessimist / realists / tinfoil hat wearer, they will get him.
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
I wish I had his skill and his balls. He, at least, is going some way to watching the watchers.
And if there are any times that attention whoring is absolutely warranted, it is now.
I just hope he's not David Kelly'd.
Before I go, let me just accuse every /. commenter below me in this article of rape. I hope you judge Assange for the accusations against him as you'd hope people treat mine against you.
If a man can be publicly accused of rape, a warrant issued for his arrest, and his name splashed all over the international media PRIOR to you being 100% sure you want to bring him in on those charges, then I would say something is seriously wrong with your system of justice.
He is an accused rapist after all.
Where did this allegation come from, really? Sweden's justice system ought to come clean and let us know what source precipated these charges. The timing is so incredibly suspicious, if government authorities really are using such incredibly dirty tricks to silence a whistleblower, then they need to be exposed. That's what Wikileaks is all about.
I'm not sure I'd want to stake my future on a country where justice is so swift they have to maintain 24 hour prosecutorial coverage...
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
At the end of the day, I'm driving home and hear on the radio that Assange is no longer a suspect and that the case has been dropped. I find this even more incredible than the initial news. To be exhonerated in less than 24 hours is incredibly dramatic. I couldn't believe what I was hearing once again.
There's pretty much only one way to read into these events. There must have been a conspiracy to destroy Wikileaks through the character assassination of Assange. There can be only one suspect for who was behind it: the U.S. government.
If there were anyone left in the world who could reasonably doubt that the U.S. government wasn't corrupt, didn't play dirty, didn't abuse its power, didn't lie as it suited them, and wasn't what Orwell warned us about in 1984 and Animal Farm, if they were within the reach of the mainstream media yesterday, that should have been their wake-up call.
Amazingly, they fucked up so badly that they couldn't get things to stick for even a day. How did that happen?
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
And this is why you should never even talk to females. Too much damn trouble.
... interfering with EU affairs, as if the EU was a protectorate of the US.
If this is a black op Obama probably doesn't even know. It's not like they'd tell Obama because Obama wouldn't need to know. It's likely that Obama just signs his name giving them permission to "stop Julian Assange" and then they figure out how to do it and begin the campaign.
like during that whole Cold War thing, after that whole WWII thing? Europe could revoke status of forces agreements and make us pack up our shit and come home, couldn't they? If we're so terrible, why don't they kick us out? Once we don't have to staff all those outposts, maybe we could cut back on defense spending by an equal proportion. Although that'd just dump a lot of unemployed soldiers onto a shitty job market. But the point is, if they don't need us to be there with our tanks and bombers to be a bullwork against the Soviet Union anymore, then telling us to leave strengthens their position when they want to tell us to fuck off on out of their politics, too.
I'm sure that the USA will do anything to silence the enemies of the state, and law enforcement in Sweden is all too happy to help. I suggest that a criminal investigation be formed to get to the bottom the source of these allegations and to see if there was any improper behavior on the part of the "on-call" prosecutor. If the law enforcement establishment behaved improperly, someone should lose their job over it. Or perhaps Sweden will enjoy the prospect of being the USA's hand puppet. Kinda like Tony Blair had W's hand up his ass all those years. If you watch the videos, every time you see him talk, W can't even keep his lips from moving. You wanna be like THAT, Sweden? I bet the Big O's a much better ventriloquist.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Interestingly, I think that Wikileaks/Assange has more credibility than the US government. If he published documents detailing a plot against him by the US government (which they would, of course deny) which would you believe?
>>>Obama just signs his name giving them permission
Interesting argument for why Obama is innocent. Does the same reasoning apply to Bush to forgive his actions from 2002 through 2009? I suspect not..... then neither does it apply to Obama.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Very similar to this http://www.stopthechamber.com/ where the amount of money in rewards which lead to the arrest and conviction of Julian Assange will reach into the millions, or tens of millions, and once that happens it's only a matter of time before somebody accuses him of something. Or maybe they don't have to accuse him of anything, there are enough laws and enough ways to entrap people that anybody can be taken out if enough informants agree to take them out.
Confidential informants working in teams can entrap or find evidence on anybody. If the money is big enough and the government agrees to look the other way on the quality of the information, they could get him for some esoteric unknown law that he probably doesnt even know hes breaking and never heard of. And once hes arrested it's all over.
>>>why don't they kick us out?
I hear rumors that the EU Parliament will soon be doing exactly that, and replacing the US Military with its own EU defence force. Of course, these are just rumors for now, but I suspect it will happen eventually.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Even if Swedens law enforcement doesn't want to, if the bribes are big enough and offered often enough, corruption will take over and Julian Assange will be arrested for being Julian Assange. This stuff happens in the USA, it probably happens everywhere.
It doesn't apply to Obama. The leader is ultimately responsible for the work done in their name. If Obama gave the CIA carte blanche to take care of the situation, then he is the one ultimately responsible.
Note: I voted for Obama, and I think he gets blamed for a lot of things that are outside of his, or anyones for that matter, control. If this is a CIA operation he IS responsible.
You are entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts.
I have no doubts whatsoeven this was an attempt at character assassination by the US. That charges gets dropped within 24 hours after a warrant has been made is unusual and very strange, especially since they havent even questioned Assange or talked to him by phone.
Wikileaks has some very damning material on the US that hasnt been released yet. Imagine communicaitons between various sources in the US and their operatives. Imagine these conversations being highly inflammatory, especially for US allies. Imagine key to a file with those communications that will be released if something big happens to wikileaks.
The US dont dare to kill Assange but they will do whatever they can to make his life living hell.
HTTP/1.1 400
Nobody can completely control an agency like the CIA or FBI.
The agency is so compartmentalized that other people who work at the agency don't know what their co-workers are doing. How do you expect the President to know?
If it's black ops probably only the people involved with it know whats going on. That would mean nobody would have the details of exactly how Julian Assange is to be stopped except the people assigned to the task of stopping him. So I don't think we can ever blame the President or the Director of the CIA for what goes on.
It doesn't apply to Obama. The leader is ultimately responsible for the work done in their name. If Obama gave the CIA carte blanche to take care of the situation, then he is the one ultimately responsible.
Note: I voted for Obama, and I think he gets blamed for a lot of things that are outside of his, or anyones for that matter, control. If this is a CIA operation he IS responsible.
It's the CIA's mission to stop individuals like Julian Assange. The CIA is supposed to be focused on foreign nationals and foreign spies. Julian Assanges organization "Wikileaks" has committed the initial crime which triggered the CIA/NSA/FBI response. It's a bit late now to blame Obama as if Obama could have stopped whatever the response is. If it's true that Assange's documents influence or reveal CIA sources this would equate to Assange attacking the CIA itself because if the sources get killed it hurts the mission and the effort.
This is not good for Julian Assange. What do you expect Obama to do? Tell the CIA to leave Julian Assange alone? On what basis? Julian Assange isn't an American citizen.
I suspect most Europeans see those bases more as tourist attractions then defense installations at this point.
There are competing factions and often the left hand doesnt know what the right hand is doing.
The president doesn't know everything every agent does.
The swedish government on the other hand has nothing to gain by indicting this guy and plenty to lose
if they are wrong.
But... Not only would that dump a lot of soldiers into a bad economy, it would also put a lot of large businesses out of business. Military spending is about the only thing keeping GM, Boeing, and a whole bunch of other large companies afloat.
They want to keep our troops over there, because then they get to sell Humvees, tanks, planes, weapons, uniforms, etc. If we cut that back, we'd see layoff in Detroit like you wouldn't believe, and the execs would find it harder to justify their $100M year-end bonuses.
He was not exhonerated, the prosecutor deemed the ititial warrant baseless, and revoked it. It says nothing about Assange guilt or not, but about the base as to prosecute him.
- Henrik
- when the Shadows descend -
there goes the warning shot, next time it will be a bit closer, care to reconsider Mr assange?
Julian Assange isn't an American citizen.
Yeah, because that should ever factor into the equation.
Emotions! In your brain!
It is doing an awfully bad job of it. In the US you can turn on the radio and hear people calling the president a muslim, a fascist or homosexual.
You can turn on the tv and watch people almost completely fabricate new charges against obama or his underlings. Castro has been in power for 50 years, North
Korea has been in power for 60 years. The US does a better job when it doesn't try to silence enemies.
It is not in the Scandinavian justice tradition to name accusers, victims or indeed criminals. Warrants are usually not public unless they have no other means of locating the suspect. Assange has no address.
We don't believe in scapegoating.
Sweden: a nation of men who have had their balls removed by the feminist movement.
President Whitmore: "Why the hell wasn't I told about this place?"
Albert Nimzicki: "Two words, Mr. President: plausible deniability.'"
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
They were 100% sure they wanted to question him, he has no official address and a warrant was thus issued. Then later, when more information was available, they decided this was no longer needed.
The rape charges have been dropped, but not the lesser charges.
The Swedish system of justice is far superior to any other system in the world, the US system is laughable and pathetic by comparison.
Your right...
Julian Assange isn't an American citizen.
So exactly what American law did he break, and why should he be tried for an American crime if he didn't break the law here in the US?
Perhaps if the government did one of two things...
A) Hid their secrets better
B) Didn't do something that needed to be kept secret.
We wouldn't be in this situation.
The US trying to hold him accountable for breaking our laws, when he didnt commit the crimes here, or break into any computers here is akin to a Muslim country holding your mother responsible for not wearing a burqa.
If we take outside of the realm of laws into state secrets and back room international politics, Mr. Assange did ask for trouble by toying with our intelligence agencies and military. If we were to give him that trouble, it would make us look even worse in the eyes of the world.
The cat is out of the bag, we should open discussions with Wikileaks to see if they will allow us to redact names from the documents they havn't released. Its either that or have the documents in their entirety released. Framing people for crimes they havnt committed is wrong.
You are entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts.
Oh, and they are not "criminals" [the accusers] never claimed rape, they actually asked police for clarification if the alleged "actions" were criminal!
Under Swedish law false accusations of rape would most likely have lead to one year in prison, these accusations were less clear and the prosecutor would be looking for more information from Assange.
You see that's the beauty of the charges, they're not likely to lead to punishment for the accusers, the only damage would be to Assange's good name and standing. He could try for damages, but what would that help his name? It's perfect [for the people looking to smear him]!
They don't need to arrest him to bring him down, or anything so dramatic, all they have to do is destroy his credibility. That's why they used rape charges, nothing solid, very hard to prove by either side. There are also other crimes that have the same aspect, a lot of public damage, but without real consequence. The US government already has a strategy in place just for this kind of thing, they simply divert the viewers attention to something else, look at slashdot now, everyone talks about the guy and rape charges, not the secret documents, the next step will take this further, until only a minority will remember how everything started, after that, they'll drop it all.
OK, you can stop any time now with your repeated use of the word "persecutor". While you're at it, stop implying that he had sex with young girls.
Aljazeera interview with Assange: http://english.aljazeera.net/news/europe/2010/08/2010822135529927326.html Apparently, he was forewarned by Australian intelligence?
Emotions! In your brain!
when the conspiracy theorists come out - folks this has nothing to do with the US conspiring to take down this jerk - its just another famous asshole getting targeted because he is famous (or infamous) I'd chalk it up to another Tiger Woods getting busted for cheating, Bill Clinton getting a blow job in the oval office from an intern, John Edwards banging his photographer, etc... The guy probably did do something wrong but the Swiss authorities could never get a case through now anyway because everyone is going to claim conspiracy. Someday in the future if he is a rapist he'll attempt it again, especially after getting away with it - you guy's can come back here then and read all the silly comments about conspiracy and wonder how the government could have let this happen to some poor innocent woman
At least the public will have learnt from this. The next time something similar happens everybody will be extremely cynical (even more so).
It makes me wonder if Julian should be recording him self via video 24/7, in order to prove his were abouts etc.
That's not entirely correct, there is one level of secrecy above the President's clearance level specifically so that he can say that he doesn't know and be completely clean. Which is why even if there were contacts with Aliens, the President would be a lousy person to ask, because quite frankly, he probably wouldn't have clearance to see the files.
Scary yes, but I don't think it's necessarily the case that the President calls all the shots with intelligence.
Well, then, it's time to start donating lots of money to wikileaks. Fight money with money. There is a lot of big talk talk about ideals here so it's time to back that up with action.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
I expect that they'll stay rumors indefinitely. The main reason being that the EU tends not to have the balls or the resources to send in combat forces where we do, at least not as the lead. And yes, we've done some really stupid things over the years, Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, but by and large, if we weren't willing to send forces into various places, it wouldn't get done, and over all it's been more good than bad having us go around invading people. As much as I dislike the practice personally.
All it's going to take is a "raid" on his home where they find child pornography on one of his computers. He will go to jail for the rest of his life and, from that point forward, everything that comes from wikileaks will be something that came from "that organization that distributes kiddie porn".
On the other hand, if you were going to distribute CP in a big way, what better cover for all that infrastructure than a white-knight expose-the-evil site? They come after you for the CP, and conspiracy theorists the world over kick up a stink about cover-ups. Who's to say this "Insurance" file isn't actually a huge stack of CP that's being decrypted by paedophiles the world over as we speak?
Personally, I think that's all a bit tinfoil-hat, but it's always possible.
Perhaps if someone were to create a few worms that would setup a few hundred thousand Tor Nodes, spread illegal files via p2p, etc. it would counter some of the moves by the pigs in the US government.
Essentially it is a protectorate. We don't use that term because it is derogatory, but it is the situation.
Europe can get the US out of their lands if they have the will to do so. And honestly, it's good that it's a little uncomfortable for Europe so they don't get too used to it. The sooner they kick the US out and start taking care of their own defense, the better. Maybe next time genocide happens in their own backyard (Kosovo) they can take care of the problem themselves.
Qxe4
>>>Military spending is about the only thing keeping GM, Boeing..... afloat.
Building an economy based upon military expenditures is as illogical as building cars and then (1) blowing them up or (2) letting them sit in storage and rust. It is a non-productive activity and should be ended as soon as possible.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
In other news, Julian Assange gets parking ticket, blames vast Pentagon conspiracy to sully his name!
Although that'd just dump a lot of unemployed soldiers onto a shitty job market
The soldiers don't cost NEARLY as much as the hardware. We could keep them employed and re-direct the costs from wear and tear on the hardware to something more useful. First world level healthcare comes to mind. Fixing crumbling infrastructure might be good (and would create jobs).
Each of those smart bombs costs more than a lifetime of employment for a soldier.
Helped organise the Bay of Pigs and tried several times to assassinate Castro?
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
It's now absolutely clear that no rape occurred here, but imagine a real rape case. If two women credibly claim to have been raped in the span of last week by the same named person, then most definitely the suspect must be apprehended immediately in the event that those two rapes really did occur, that the suspect is the guilty party, and that he is going to do it again. That cannot be postponed pending further investigation since there is clearly a risk that another rape is imminent. If then a few hours later it turns out for some reason that clearly the suspect could not have been doing what the women claim, then the arrest order can be canceled. None of this is then a mistake by the police or the prosecutor.
Of course with just an accusation to go on, the name of the suspect should not be circulating in the press with an accusation of rape, at the very most it should be known that the police want to talk to him immediately for some unspecified-but-serious reason. In this case the police claim that the press found out about the arrest order on their own somehow, but that the police confirmed the information when asked. It was a mistake to confirm the information, and if the press somehow found out about it from the police, that was a mistake as well. Both are serious mistakes.
We do not have the information to know whether or not the arrest order was a mistake. We do have the information to say that the Swedish state fucked up royally by confirming the arrest order to the press. It is unknown to me if the fuck-up is due to people in the police not knowing how to say "no comment", or if it is due to Swedish laws. Lots of countries' laws do not protect the identity of people who have done nothing but been accused.
I agree with you... But the reality is that millions of US jobs depend on military spending. You don't wave a magic wand and make that reality go away.
If we spent a fraction of what we spend on the military on education, we'd have a great education system, etc etc.
But reality is what it is, and there's more money in blowing shit up than teaching people how to read and write.
Story is problem match simple then what CIA is in on it.
Wikilieks is trying to get public righties in Sweden what gives the Constitution right what the scourges will be protected.
What make it illigel to hunt there scourges.
What is something nobody want not USA or Sweden governments.
What would damages the Swedish diplamitchs relasenship.
Maria Häljebo Kjellstrand as the on-call Prosecutor what make the call for arrest warrant for Julian Assange.
She is marriages to Per Kjellstrand and he is working for Ministry of Justice.
And his boss is Beatrice Ask Ministers for Justice.
You can call it conspiracy but what do you think?
I think you're giving the CIA far too much credit here. They're a government organization after all.
If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
This could easily go the other way. What if the accuser was a plant for Wikileaks. Everyone sympathizes with Assuage, conspiracy theories run a muck and suddenly leaking classified material is heralded by more of the mainstream. You know, as opposed to the usual crowd.
That's just the broken window fallacy writ large. Redirect all that spending to something more constructive and the winners and losers may change, but everyone can benefit form the actual productive use of the money.
yeah, no. The Chamber of Commerce is actually committing crimes. Nice try with the astroturf though. Are you getting paid for it, or are you just interning in the hopes of maybe getting hired some day?
They can keep using the same line they always have: they need to pay out those salaries and bonuses to attract the most capable people for the positions. It doesn't matter how badly the company does.
Right. In the meantime, you go through a huge amount of upheaval as large corporations go bankrupt, hundreds of thousands of workers cannot find jobs, homes get foreclosed on, banks go tits-up...
No, wait, didn't we just do that?
You can't handle people like a commodity. I friend of mine was a sharpshooter for the US Marine Corps. Do you know how many civilian jobs are open to someone like him?
While a lot of military jobs translate, many are specialized and do not. Even if they translate, how many do you think the economy can absorb?
You can't take a tank driver and put him in a classroom and expect him to handle a grade school class. Doesn't work that way. It's a generational change.
I long for the days when your humanity hung on the fact of what area you were in and if you were a native of that area or not.
Never tell somebody you are ABOUT to leak documents that could make someone look bad. Just do it! Then tell them you did it. Are you really THAT stupid?!
That's why the US has the GI Bill.
I keep hearing people questioning the credibility of his accusers, the FBI, the CIA, etc and so on. But how does Assuage have any credibility either way? How do we know that everything he posts on Wikileaks is legit and he didn't make the shit up? And contrary to what someone is probably going to mark me with moderation, I'm not trying to be a troll here, I'm totally serious. How do we know this guy isn't fabricating any of this just so he can try to be a fame magnet?
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
... interfering with EU affairs, as if the EU was a protectorate of the US.
So in defense of a guy you believe was smeared with groundless, unsupported allegations - you're on Slashdot making groundless, unsupported allegations.
I wasn't aware Sweden was so closely aligned with the United States - Assange certainly didn't think it was, since he was reportedly in Sweden to protect himself from retribution from the United States.
#DeleteChrome
While there is the problem of media irresponsibility, the solution to that is just for people to stop listening. Slashdot could have helped by not reporting on it. If people stop listening and caring when the media screams about someone having done something before there's any hard evidence it wouldn't be a big deal (and the media would probably stop).
However you don't want secret warrants. Imagine if someone just disappeared one day. There's no information, they are just gone. You call the police and all you get is stonewalling. Finally weeks later you find out that indeed they are in jail, accused of a crime. You only find out because you've been called as a witness, and you are forbidden from speaking of it until the trial is over. Only once everything is done, is it revealed what happened.
It would be good in terms of protecting someone from a media blitz, but bad in terms of everything else. It would also be extremely rife for abuse. If everything is secret it could very easily be used to simply grab people the police don't like. Nothing would ever need to be publicly presented since everything is secret anyhow.
Much better that it be kept public over all.
This happens, see the Duke Lacrosse case. People make up allegations. It is worse against people who are well known, the face it MORE often. So it very well could be something that isn't a conspiracy on his part, the government part or anyone. Just someone making shit up.
Who knows what really happened and frankly, who care? This shouldn't be an issue except for the fact that media, especially places like Slashdot (I didn't see this on CNN or Yahoo or the like) started screaming about it. We don't know what actually happened, and probably never will since there's a real lack of any evidence. That however won't stop conspiracy nuts for taking this as absolute proof that the US government is behind it since the standards for absolute proof in conspiracy land are pretty low.
Blaming the President for every little thing that happens is being unreasonably optimistic about their ability to be aware of the government's actions. I mean, think for a minute about how many things your boss is clueless about (but is responsible for), then scale that to a million employees. Even if this originated in the US government, it's unlikely Obama will ever know or be able to influence it.
"The ability to delude yourself may be an important survival tool" - Jane Wagner -
The woman that accused Julian Assange has been identified on flashbackforum as Anna Ardin press secretary for the christians in the socialist party in Sweden. She has previously been an active radical feminist and author of articles on how to use the legal system to get revenge on people. She has also identified The Swedish Pirate party as a "problem we have to deal with" She waited several days to report this until the "on call" prosecutor Maria Häljebo Kjellstrand was on duty.
Just a warning:
Look at how powerful we are. What we can do with the tip of our fingers. We don't want to but if you continue to mess with us we will feel obligated to...
Politics as usual
... interfering with EU affairs, as if the EU was a protectorate of the US.
Hold it, are you saying that it isn't?
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
I fully agree that people shouldn't be treated like commodities. That doesn't mean we should just keep the status quo forever, it just means there should be a reasonable transition.
Start by letting people who want to leave do so honorably. Offer early retirement to those who are close. Put an end to stop-loss. I never said I would be against a job placement program or a job training program (I believe that should be available for all citizens).
Other options include providing for transitions from active to reserve (with job placement help). Expand the corps of engineers for some of that infrastructure work that so desperately needs doing.
Some of those bombs cost so much that the guys loading and dropping it could retire on what it cost. That's the thing, pay for the personnel is only about 1/5th of the total budget.
A tank driver might not make a good grade school teacher, but I'll bet he could be a heavy equipment operator.
It is entirely possible to handle this sort of thing in an entirely humane way. It's sad that we so rarely do so.
The executives pulling down the fat bonuses can all take care of themselves (and about 100 others) for life just on what they made last year.
...Justice is slow but until you are formally sentenced in court you are in the eyes of the justice system and the government assumed to be innocent, that the media completely blows things out of proportions and goes wherever the profit is ...
Yes, like justice is a front page banner headline accusing you of rape, and a back page 12 point retraction when the case is dropped or you are found innocent.
Real justice should prevent any mention in the press until one is declared guilty in the court.
Blame the Pentagon is a perfect excuse for the generation of "blame anybody but me".
So every time something comes up in this guys life now it's the Pentagon's fault right?
If anyone I know in Afghanistan gets hurt because of the classified material this person is posting, the Pentagon will be the least of his worries.
The US trying to hold him accountable for breaking our laws, when he didnt commit the crimes here, or break into any computers here is akin to a Muslim country holding your mother responsible for not wearing a burqa.
I'm not sure outing hundreds of Afghans as "the enemy" for cooperating with NATO forces and putting their lives, the lives of their families, the lives of anyone with a similar name and the lives of the families of anyone with a similar name is comparible to someone's mother not wearing a burqa.
Mr Assange and his organization has essentially handed the names of people aiding international forces over to the Taliban since they were apparently too lazy to comb through them and remove the names of Afghanis. There's probably people combing through the documents even now compiling the list so they can be found and murdered as an example to those who would cooperate with their enemy. Wikileaks through pure laziness has put bullseyes on the heads of hundreds of Afghanis and their families.
The arrest warrant also mentioned a molestation charge, but molestation -- which is not limited to child victims in Sweden -- is not a crime punishable by jail time. Rosander told TV4 Assange is still under investigation for molestation.
Remember Hans Reiser? As I recall, many here initially said there was no way he did it. But he did. The Wikileaks dude is ***STILL*** under investigation for "molestation", they just don't need to pick him up for it yet. Just because he has POLITICS that you agree with does not mean he isn't a sex creep.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
That basis should be enough.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Wikileaks committed no crime since to the best of my knowledge neither the servers or any of the involved officials of wikileaks was on US soil or a US citizen, yes that is only a technicality but an important one. If it's true that any CIA sources where harmed or any missions where affected the CIA would be very quiet about it because technically pretty much eveerything the CIA does would be an act of aggression if it ever came to light. So yes it might equate attacking the CIA but the CIA can never talk about it or act on it in public because doing so would mean admitting they're running intelligence ops in another country which is considered an act of aggression(aka an act of war) against that country.
Likewise if the CIA assassinated Assange in an european country and got caught(or if any other resonable explanation was sufficently farfetched) it would raise a stink and an outcry that would sour US relations with the entire EU for the next decade or more. Every nation knows that pretty much every other nations runs intel ops within their country and they do the same to other countries but as long as noone gets caught it can be waved away as not happening but whenever something goes bad enough that another country can be implicated it's a huge diplomatic incident.
If the CIA is doing stuff that harm citizens of other countries then there is reason enough to shut down CIA. Because if you anger other counties they will eventually do what is necessary to protect their citizens. If this is the case then CIA could very well be the biggest danger to Americans and probably the only reason to why Americans should not feel safe in their homes.
Yes it's called plausible deniability(because not even the president is allowed to lie under oath) but that only works as long as the situation is contained because whenever the shit really hits the fan it's not going to be enought to protect him. Claiming you didn't know is not an acceptable excuse because something that important is something you should have known about or atleast been able to control indirectly.
You can't actually commit a crime, as defined by the US laws if you're not an american citizen and you never set foot in the US or directly accessed resources over there in a criminal way. As far as I know, the CIA isn't supposed to be the KGB, since in a democracy something that embarrasses the government is not in itself a reason for intelligence agencies to be involved.
Let's assume however as a thought experiment that the person operating wikileaks would have been a member of the US military. Even in that case, the technical violation of the letter of some laws and regulations should be overridden by the right of the citizenry to know relevant information about the war the US military is conducting, the details it seeked to hide from the public and the war crimes it covered up. Indeed, as stated by one of the Supreme Court justices ruling in the Pentagon Papers case:
As for your argument that:
My hope is that the existence and discovery of streamlined whistleblowing (which is what Wikileaks really is) will make it impossible to wage a war without public disclosure of information about it. The information that wikileaks published (as a secondary source) should have been public and released gradually by the US military in the first place, to document and keep the war transparent and thus legal.
Obama should have absolutely stopped any operations against Wikileaks and instead focused on the revelations contained in the released documents.
I think it is important to discuss the possible casualties of the war logs release. As far as I know there were no fatalities associated with it yet, however it remains a possibility that such a fatality or fatalities will occur. Without attributing blame as to who would be responsible for such deaths, whether it's wikileaks by placing the public need to know above some lives or the US military for failing to disclose enough information about the war or failing to redact sensitive bits when offered the chance, I'd like to state that if Iraq is any good as a baseline where about a million people died as a direct consequence of the war (not necessarily killed directly by US forces though), then hundreds of thousands of afghani are dead because of this war. Any deaths from the release of the documents would be entirely lost as statistical noise in the changes the US military and political leadership are being forced to make due to the public getting a clearer picture of what's going on in Afghanistan. The release of the war logs potentially saved a lot of lives and at least gave the public information it lacked.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
Obama is innocent because it's Bush' fault.
Right. In the meantime, you go through a huge amount of upheaval as large corporations go bankrupt, hundreds of thousands of workers cannot find jobs, homes get foreclosed on, banks go tits-up...
No, wait, didn't we just do that?
You can't handle people like a commodity. I friend of mine was a sharpshooter for the US Marine Corps. Do you know how many civilian jobs are open to someone like him?
Inmate in prison maybe? After all he is essentially a murderer with 'get out of jail card' in form of his uniform and orders.
Actually the next genocide is currently going on but in Afghanistan this time.
I'm not sure if this is just informative or bragging that slashdot got to a story while it was still relevant
I am still not entirely sure the CIA didn't organize the leak itself. Everything leaked was already known anyway. All it did was tell the public that Pakistan is helping the Taliban. At least that is all the public hung on too. There was almost NO wrong doing by american soldiers in there, only soldiers from other coalitions. It seems to have almost helped allied grand strategy, moreso than US. It put more pressure on Pakistan, etc.
I propose; that collateral murder was legit, and an allied intelligence community saw how effective it was. Then these documents come out. Not too mention how unbelievable it is that all these documents that are not stored together, and come from many different places, got together to get released.
And if Australian intelligence warned the guy, it makes me think that someone against the coalition is trying to sink him. The fact that Wikileaks is even still running makes me doubt that it is USA's interest to take it down.
I assume they withdrew their stories when the jig was up. Do they get in trouble for colluding to frame someone?
Let's face it, he's going up against the most powerful organizations on the planet. Odds are, he's not going to win forever. That's not a threat, that's a sad truth.
But why should removing one person stop WikiLeaks? It won't, really. The rebel alliance will keep fighting. Sure, a good man will be in jail, but that's just a cost of operating.
Hell, even if they shut down WikiLeaks, put everyone involved behind bars, and melt the servers, the movement will still go on. Now that someone's tried it, you can't stop "organized information leaking via internet". If WikiLeaks goes down, ten more will sprout up in it's place.
If your military-trained skill set has no application in the civilian economy then you should retrain. People do that all the time. My mom had to do that at the end of her 30s when the Berlin wall came done. She lost her engineering job when the East-German economy collapsed and retrained as a nurse. I'm unclear on the details, but she and many other received support from the German government during her training (most likely a direct stipend). I would assume that the US defense budget wastes enough money to do just that.
As far as I can tell, my mom very much liked her new job, so while the change was quite radical at the time, it was not for worse.
Free Manning, jail Obama.
Seriously, you sound like a government shill.
You think Wikileaks was "too lazy" to comb through tens of thousands of documents and remove all of the names of afghans in them? Do you have any idea how long it takes to do that? Wikileaks *tried* to do it, and they also asked the Pentagon for help because they didn't think they had enough resources to do the job properly.
But in their judgement, releasing the documents so people could see what the fuck was going on, was more important than the risk that a few individuals might get exposed if their names were not redacted from one of those tens of thousands of documents.
In my judgement, they were right. And if the Pentagon really wanted to prevent their sources from being endangered, they could have at least tried to help wikileaks to redact the documents.
Anyway, who the fuck are you to call them lazy? What have YOU done lately that's one tenth as useful or important for freedom and democracy? Hmm, just what I thought, absolutely fuck-all.
You either love him or hate him. Then you choose what you believe based on where you stand. This applies to the majority of people familiar with him and the circumstances.
are you saying that out of the many items 'published' on wikileaks that a) all b) some or c) one item was genuine or conversely fake? well some items have had their veracity confirmed so that covers the middle ground and if you're arguing a) or c) then you might be trolling
"Sweden" didn't do any of this. Individual prosecutors did.
The Swedish justice minister and other cabinet members are constitutionally prohibited from being involved in any way in individual cases. They occasionally do anyway of course, but if discovered they get in deep legal trouble.
So it is very unlikely that the Swedish government is involved in this.
You can't actually commit a crime, as defined by the US laws if you're not an american citizen and you never set foot in the US or directly accessed resources over there in a criminal way. As far as I know, the CIA isn't supposed to be the KGB, since in a democracy something that embarrasses the government is not in itself a reason for intelligence agencies to be involved.
Your knowledge is FALSE. CIA is the exact mirror organisation of KGB's foreign intelligence arm (First Chief Directorate of KGB). It's NOT a law enforcement agency, it's an INTELLIGENCE agency that operates ABOVE the law by intent.
In this case, we see it work exactly as intended - protecting interests of US military on foreign soil, through any means necessary, legal or illegal, ethical or unethical. It's not pretty, you may agree or disagree with both reasons for the actions as well as actions themselves, but they are doing what they are supposed to be doing.
Assange has not committed a crime, not under US law nor any other. The information was "declassified" the instant some anonymous person started sending it to people outside the military, Assange has nothing to do with that. He's simply a reporter protecting a source, nothing more or less.
So if Obama authorized the CIA to assassinate him, Obama is a murderer and I'd like my damn vote for change back.
OTOH, I'd like to think that the CIA is competent, so the fact that Assange has not been killed is proof that there's no such order from Obama.
Yeah, I keep hoping...
When and where has the US sent its combat troops in since the end of World War II and not done more harm than good in the end?
Switch out Julian Assange with Saddam Hussein, and Obama with Bush, then read your paragraph again.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
So who are they? Their names should be public as Assange's is.
In the Soviet Union the dissidents were claimed to be mentally ill.
Nowadays the tendency seems to be to involve sexual misdeeds. Probably because there is more tolerance of mental illnesses. And probably because it is easier to film secretly or eavesdrop.
I hope they get him and put him on the electric chair where he belongs. How can a man rape and kill and rape a poor little girl? What if someone did this to his kids? Perhaps someone will do it to him in jail! I hope so! What about all the other kids? I am sure he hides them in his basement... People like this have a special place in hell for them.
After reviewing the coverage of this and other similar stories, I am left believing that the media needs its own version of Newtons 3rd law of Motion. Something along the lines of : For every accusation there is an equal and opposite retraction.
That's what you think. I can't speak for the US, but I think it's pretty much the same everywhere.
The boss shows up and inspects all the dirty secrets, later he'll act all outraged at an inquiry.
And what if they didn't get caught?
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
Careful.. if you do that you could end up with "War Vets" in the Zimbabwe sense of the word, which can severely poison your society.
I didn't think we were losing that badly.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
I think the US would certainly consider Sweden to be an ally. It may not have been the best choice for Assange however. Sweden may be a legal refuge but legality is *not* the issue here. Assange needs to disappear for a while (6 months minimum) until the US loses some interest in him. I think he'd be much better off in a country with no diplomatic relations with the US and no extradition treaty. He's relying too much on that insurance file to keep himself alive. Antarctica might be a good choice. Or buying a sailboat and heading for some uninhabited island in the South Pacific wouldn't be a bad idea. A remote village in the Himalayas perhaps. If course if intelligence agents managed to find him in some remote location they could just kill him and dispose of the body.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
So your hate of Obama is strong enough that you feel the US government's secrets should be widely and freely disseminated? Obama is Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces, a field where secrecy of intelligence may be abused; but, where secrecy of intelligence has shown in the past to make the difference between winning and losing a war.
Those yammering hooligans are not enemies.
Enemies are people who use a bread truck to try to sneak a nuclear weapon across the border and into downtown New York. THAT is what the serious three-letter-agencies are working to prevent.
FATMOUSE + YOU = FATMOUSE
I wonder how you can read my comment and still write what you did.
The key words were "usually" and "no other means".
Assange has no public address, how are they going to locate him? He's a foreigner that will leave the country at some point.
So they used an option to publicly call for his arrest to get hold of him!
The accusers and victims names were not given.
Do you see the logic involved? There's no reason for any outrage, the police will answer to the press. There's no injustice or any wrong doing here that demands any government intervention.
That's a perfect example of how accusations stick even after they've emerged to be false. No evidence was ever found of genocide in Kosovo by the government forces - only by the KLA, the guys who the US was fighting alongside.
I am trolling
lol yeah, they said they didn't want to kill them all, they just wanted to kill enough of them to make them manageable. That is so much better.
Qxe4
So a guy without any previous criminal behaviour, that has been declared a CIA enemy, is suddenly charged with 2 rapes on the same week? I TOTALLY believe it...
Please google and research "peak oil" a bit. You will discover this crisis is a lot worse than they have told you