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Interpol Issues Wanted Notice For Julian Assange
chrb writes "Interpol have issued a wanted notice for Julian Paul Assange for alleged sex crimes. The Guardian and Wired both have commentary."
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There's a difference between not treating women with respect and raping them.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
You can tell from the progress against human trafficking ... rare to never.
One thing I respect that dude for, is his ambition. Not even the 'strongest' nation on earth could derail him. Think about that for a second.
A quote I remember in one interview he had with the BBC...
"I get personal satisfaction when I expose what governments have denied the citizens they represent and will continue to do so till the very end."
This dude is one hell of a dude. I wonder what governments really fear if all they are doing is 'doing good' as they say.
One thing for sure: We now know what many governments were thinking despite the public rhetoric. I personally cannot wait for the financial documents to be exposed. My hunch...BoA.
Well for one thing, when one considers some recent judgments relating to copyright law in Sweden they can have the impression that it has become the lap dog of the United States.
Assange seems entirely willing to be interviewed, just not in person for fear of getting a bullet in the head on his way to the courthouse.
The funny thing is how the U.S. and other countries think smearing Assange like this is going to do anything other than make him out to be a martyr... he'll be replaced just as quickly as he disappears.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
Why is this story filled with assinine comments like this?
Did you miss the part where Assange offered, through his lawyer, several times, to be interviewed by these prosecutors before he had left Sweden? And they weren't interested?
There's no reason for them to go after him now, other than this:
Wikileaks is releasing lots of shit that makes governments around the world look bad, and they apparently feel the need to DISTRACT PEOPLE with these trumped-up "sex" crime accusations, and try to smear Assange any way they can.
If he really was innocent why wouldn't he talk to the authorities?
I'm not saying he is innocent - I don't think we have enough information to decide in either direction, although the manner in which the initial warrant was produced, then voided, then reproduced does seem a little sketchy - but he has perfectly good reason to be wary of hopping on a plane and putting himself in the hands of the police. It's by no means unreasonable for him to believe he'd find himself thrown in a cell somewhere in the custody of someone he's pissed off. The US, for instance, want him on espionage charges - apparently they're unlikely to stick, but for someone who's caused as much embarrassment as Assange I can quite easily see this resulting in two or three years in a cell while they come to a conclusion one way or another.
All that said, though, he's courted publicity and then gone into hiding, which I'd say is a bad move. Either rely on anonymity or on your high profile - you can't have it both ways. As the Guardian article mentions, there are many (myself included) who think that on balance he'd be better off facing his accusation in as public a forum as he can make.
The way I see it, governments kill all kinds of people directly and indirectly in secret--and the U.S. has a particularly rich history of this. As such, I want every government's secrets to be plastered everywhere. The number of people that may conceivably die as a result of these leaks is absolutely nothing compared to what has been done in secret for decades. Of course, I'm a pacifist and an anarchist, so I consider the idea of having to balance secrecy and disclosure so that the state can continue to exist in its preferred form (I believe it's called "national security") kind of moot. YMMV.
Yes. If anyone in the middle of sexual intercourse says stop, you have to stop. If you choose to disregard this direct request, it's rape or at the very least sexual assault - no matter what point during intercourse it happens.
Anyway, I have no clue whether these things happened or not, all I know is that Assange is in a world of trouble regardless. He has chosen one dangerous road.
Well, that answers the question of Sweden being the US stooge.
I was gonna write "our stooge", but I'm ambivalent on this one, as I am ambivalent about the disclosure of secret diplomatic cables.
Assange might be an asshole, but I want this guy protected.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
Of course it's rape; is that a serious question?
Le français vous intéresse?
If he wanted a long, heathy and happy life, he could've remained in obscurity like all of us. I doubt that's his goal.
There's a lot of ways to look at these leaks, and one of them is a wake up call to the people of the world of what goes on and how things are run (it's a lot more "high school" than I ever would have guessed).
Things need to change.
Naw, this is blown out of proportion. He might disappear though, to be on the safe side. It's rather ridiculous, like a book, like "1984" by George Orwell, or something like that, but there you have it.
In 20 years, we will hear he's died from natural causes and went mad in the last years, like Fischer.
In the meanwhile, he can serve as our society's Enemy. It's convenient for authorities to create such Enemies, like Obama Bin Laden. They don't really exist, because in reality they are not that powerful as our Overlords, but they're very convenient for them to divert our attention to something that is not really important.
Oh look, someone's alleged of sex-abuse. They've not charged him, since both the girls rather enjoyed it, but they still wanna question him, just not when he agrees to it.
Something is very very rotten here..
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
If you can have sex with two women who will later regret it, can I kill a few hundred thousand Muslims and take a big hairy shit on the Constitution and International Law? Awesome!
Oh, wait, those two things are probably not on par, are they? Tell you what... I'll throw in the complete destruction of your civil liberties, and you can have some self righteous celebrity gossip egged on by the establishment.
It's a deal? Awesome!
he doesn't directly editorialise
Sure, "Collateral Murder" is a nice, neutral name.
We can't really hate them for bowing to pressure from the most powerful country in the world.
What a fascinating case this whole Wikileaks thing has become. While the leaks themselves have really been a lot more heat than light, the most interesting thing about this has been the repercussions around the world. The same way a bat squeaks and then gets a picture of the shape and size of his cave by the echoes, the perturbations created by the Wikileaks announcement (even moreso than the leaks themselves) is really giving us a picture of world, where the power lies, and who dances to whose tune.
It's going to be even more interesting when Wikileaks starts releasing corporate leaks. If it serves to enlighten people that corporations have become the de facto world government for at least the last twenty years, then the leaks will have been the most important journalistic product in my lifetime. If they help people understand that we are living in a post-government, post-sovereignty world where the corporation is the only meaningful power (and help people act accordingly) then 20 years from now, we will look back at Wikileaks as the most important development in the history of the Internet.
Or, we'll look back as Wikileaks being the end of the Internet.
By the way, does Wikileaks change anybody's mind on the importance of Net Neutrality? Does anyone think that Wikileaks would ever exist in AT&T's Internet? Or in Apple's Internet? Or in Comcast's Internet? The jury is still out on Google, but I don't see any of the big companies that are opposed to net neutrality really having room for Wikileaks in their universe. Anyway, interesting times...
You are welcome on my lawn.
Wait what? This happened TWICE while he was in Sweden? Was it 2 women in a single encounter? Or 2 women at separate times? How huge is this mans penis that he's breaking condoms left and right? And how on earth is this even remotely provable? "Hey, we were having consensual sex and half way through I changed my mind. Throw that guy in jail!" Finally, they charge him 2 DAYS AFTER HE RELEASES THE LARGEST GOVERNMENT LEAK IN HISTORY?!?!? Is that not even remotely fishy?
I HATE Conspiracy theories, but this is just a little to ridiculous for even me to fall for.
Are you kidding me? One of them is a right-wing feminist (yeah, weird) who has been outspoken about how woman should use rape accusations to destroy man.
This is the US trying to bring him down with its usual tactics. Next is a bullet in the head, like they used to do in the good old days before the media become their best weapon.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
Sure, "Collateral Murder" is a nice, neutral name.
Yeah, it should have just been "murder".
How would you feel if some other country was killing your relatives and neighbors, for any reason whatsoever?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
He was in Sweden and prosecution waited until he left Sweden to start making demands. Probably specifically to get Interpol involved and limit his movements. You knew this guy was going to get nailed for what he was doing. This is the beginning. Paint him as a child molester because nobody feels bad for one of those. A classic first step. Limit his movements, deny him places to be. Eventually he'll wind up somewhere with an extradition treaty and that will be that.
Also, if there are any Interpol people who happen to read this - I know of an actual child molester you could go pick up pretty easy if this is the sort of thing that actually interests you.
No? Not interested? Hypocrisy. Imagine that.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
That's quite incredible. I agree that, if a girl asks you to stop, even if you're five seconds from orgasm, you should stop, and you are an asshole if you continue anyway. However, equating this situation (you are already having consensual sex, and you just keep going a bit longer than she wants) to an actual rape (she really never wanted to have sex with you at all) is pushing politcal correctness a bit too far.
When a girl is actually raped (forced to have sex with someone she never wanted to have sex with in the first place), this can be an extremely traumatizing experience. Merely being forced to continue a sexual act you have already engaged in, is more on the level of "being forced to do something you do not want to do" without all the "oh my god he's touching my vagina" feelings associated with a real rape.
Both are bad, but I think it's quite obvious that a real rape is orders of magnitude more serious, and punishment should be adjusted accordingly.
Oh, I bet Julian Assange fully expects to be martyred "for the cause" at some point. He probably has some interesting "dead man's switch" set up to do something amusing after he goes... if it could make some point about how the world isn't ready for transparency then so much the better.
If these things don't go through WikiLeaks, they'd just go through something else. Hey, maybe his dead man's switch unleashes some sort of decentralized P2P leak site :P