WikiLeaks Calls For Assange To Step Down

Stoobalou writes "A member of Iceland's parliament and prominent organizer for whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks has turned on the site's spokesman, Julian Assange, urging him to step down over rape allegations made against him in Sweden. Birgitta Jonsdottir told news site The Daily Beast that she did not believe Assange's repeated assertion that the allegations of rape and molestation made against him were part of a US-backed smear campaign to distract attention from documents posted on the site laying bare US involvement in the war in Afghanistan and further promised revelations."

Comments

Re:Price

[Doc Ruby]

He is a celebrity. A 50-something normal (non-geek) woman neighbor of mine asked me about him (before the "rape" complaints). Anyone "famous for 15 minutes" or more, which is anyone whose face gets on any nation's TV (especially in the US) is a "celebrity".

If he were a professional athlete, the women complaining would have come along with expensive and effective lawyers to squeeze $millions from him in blackmail, with the same baseless stories against him.

The only real difference here is that Assange doesn't have the money to be a target of a properly orchestrated celebrity blackmail scheme.

But the discredit in the schoolyard media works in the Pentagon's infowar against him, so it stays. Not necessarily because the women complaining were anything more than useful idiots. But the celebrity smear is a sticky medium, once launched into action.