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Wikileaks Founder Arrested In London
CuteSteveJobs writes "The founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, has been arrested by London police on behalf of Swedish authorities on allegation of rape. Assange has admitted that he is exhausted by the ongoing battle against authorities. The Swiss Government has confiscated $37K in his Swiss Bank account. PayPal and Mastercard have frozen Wikileak's accounts, hampering Wikileaks from raising any more funds."
...just two starstruck women sympathetic to WikiLeaks' cause — one of whom was a longtime activist and even a part of an organization that arranged one of his talks, and thus obviously not a CIA "sparrow".
All the sordid details here. It's a must-read for people who think US intelligence agencies are somehow behind this.
Would this have been able to happen without Sweden's strange "rape" laws? No, probably not. Would the case have received as much attention from authorities if it was an ordinary person? Again, perhaps not, but that's the price of fame and notoriety: famous and well-known people often get different treatment — and what treatment they do get garners massive news coverage.
Here's a just published Register article that discusses the strong criticism of Wikileaks by John Young of Cryptome:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/12/07/cryptome_on_wikileaks/
Will Assange's people put the money where his mouth is and release the key to the insurance file?
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
He isn't accused of rape, reminder available here.
He also voluntarily turned himself in at a police station.
If you're in London and can make it out NOW, please consider protesting.
Had submitter even bothered to read articles he has linked to? Government has not 'confiscated' Assange's money. Bank closed his account, but Julian is free to pick up his money and make deposit in another bank.
Actually, he is of Australian nationality.
- "Every demand is a prison, and wisdom is only free when it asks nothing." Sir Betrand Russell
Time to decode that insurance file.
And, with what I assure you is no humor, I hope on behalf of all honest human beings, lovers of justice, haters of sniveling cowards, and believers in justice and truth whatever brand it carries, that what is in that file hurts the fuck out of the liars and thieves that stand in places of power.
Don't let Julian Assange be the last real man on earth.
Since when do Swiss banks or government care about where the money comes from?
Hypocrite assholes.
Lets not forget (in the future) that searching for "Wikileaks" on Google takes you to 213.251.145.96 Google is US company, just like eBay/PayPal or Amazon. So, no excuse any more for those "low-abiding" dickheads.
839*929
Assange is an Aussie, and probably turned himself in (yes, that's right, he turned himself in) to British authorities so he could expect acceptable treatment while extradition to Sweden for trial was being arranged. Assange faces real charges in Sweden, and has the expectation of a trial and judges and testimony and everything, charges that will take time to resolve and during which time he will receive humane treatment under a country that still respects the spirit of the Geneva Convention and other humane-treatment conventions.
The longer he can make it take to deal with those charges, the longer he can avoid a quiet US extraction to Gitmo where he can look forward to fun activities like being stacked naked with other men and waterboarding while the US delays his trial until after he's disclosed his sources under torture, then the US can make a big show of pardoning him in the name of freedom once Blackwater has taken out the sources of the leak, because Assange himself is not a threat.
It's also possible that he's hoping that his extradition from Britain to Sweden somehow makes it difficult or politically inexpedient to extradite him to the US once his trial (and possible incarceration) in Sweden are resolved. The extradition terms from Sweden to the US may not include some of the new terrorism "soft charges" that only require the US get their hands on someone, not that there be an actual crime committed or charges made or a trial or expectation of humane treatment or any of that inconvenient nonsense. The addition of an extradition from Britain to Sweden may add complexity to the subsequent negotiations for extradition from Sweden to the United States.
At worst, he's buying time until the US gets their hands on him. At best, he's avoiding the possibility altogether.
"Today's actions against our editor-in-chief Julian Assange won't affect our operations: we will release more cables tonight as normal"
http://www.justiceforassange.com/
PROTEST Today Westminster Magistarte’s Court meet 13:30[GMT]
Can someone correct me if I am wrong, but didn't he mention that he will release all the documents if he gets arrested?!
The lunatic is in my head
No, not Osama Bin Laden. Don't be silly.
They moved heaven and earth to get this guy. I think that shows us all, where their priorities lie.
...I hope it was worth it and he had a threesome with those two women.
Mistaking incompetence for evil is a common mistake. Politicians are often incompetent (true they are also often evil, but that is not the point). The CIA doesn't have to be involved for some politician to have reasons to take the guy down. It might be as simple as a craving public attention. Or it might even be a someone that thinks that, according to the intent of their laws, that not stopping when the condom breaks is rape.
a MORONIC interpretation of the law was made, saying that 'not stopping after a condom broke is rape'.
What's your agenda, exactly, that you're deliberately mis-representing what's been said/reported? It's not that not stopping after a condom breaks is rape in Sweden, it's that not stopping after the woman says "stop!" that matters. Nobody invented that on the fly just for fun.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
"How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. "A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. "Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities, but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome." Sir Winston Churchill (The River War, first edition, Vol. II, pages 248-50, London: Longmans, Green Co., 1899).
As a Muslim, I honestly think you should STFU.
Being such a nutjob on public forums just gives bad publicity to our religion.
Seriously, "righfully stoned" & "Sharia in the US"??? Get lost, and please stop using our religion as an excuse to be a prick.
Thank you.
Women from all the world celebrate that they can now compalin to the interpol if their lovers choose to use no condom with the security that they will chase him with full resources in all the brave new world.
He's Australian. He is in Britain. In general, we don't waterboard our prisoners or humiliate them while they are in prison without trial for YEARS after their initial arrest (how many people still in that "US prison" abroad?) so he was able to hand himself in in the knowledge that we would require certain things of the Swedish government (an EU member) in their handling of him. Also, because he *was* in Britain and because he has deliberately made himself known to the authorities ever since arriving, when an international arrest warrant comes through from a friendly EU country with good human rights record we are absolutely legally obliged to follow it to the letter - so much so that we sent the last one back that they sent the UK police the other week because it wasn't filled in properly.
It doesn't matter *his* nationality. He's afforded no special favours just because he's from Australia, we have no particular agreements with Australia except for the standard ones - an EU citizen would have twice as many rights, for instance. But equally we can't hide him either because another respected country that has signed many binding agreements with us as part of the EU has now correctly and legally asked for his extradition on charges entirely unrelated to UK law at all, for an alleged crime that's happened on Swedish soil that isn't subject to UK law and for which the correct and legal court and extradition processes have now been followed. It doesn't matter if he was done for stealing a penny sweet or murdering thousands - we can only do what the law says we can (unlike some countries that like to conveniently rewrite or ignore their own laws at will and apply them retroactively - that's aimed at BOTH the US and Sweden).
The UK? We really don't care. The US is a supposed ally, sure, but the EU is too and we have *much* more in the way of binding agreements to them (plus they live next door and give us most of our electricity). We've pretty much stayed out of this whole embarrassment because it's just hilarious that a private in an army can cause so much embarrassment (mainly through the US's own reaction to the event, which would have been out of the news within a couple of days in the UK if it wasn't for the US constantly blathering about it) for supposedly the world's most powerful country. So to us, it's a question of who ticks all the paperwork boxes first, and the Swedish did so (on their second attempt) so they get him - if he was an EU citizen, it would be pretty much the same but there'd probably be more paperwork (e.g. he could be tried in the UK under Swedish law). The US would have had a MUCH more difficult time justifying his extradition to the US for any reason whatsoever but the Swedish have (for all we know) valid reasons, complete paperwork, a working legal system, and only judicial intent at heart. They also have pretty much the same laws as us with regards to treating him well, or passing him on to other authorities who might not.
Some countries abide by their laws, even if that means having to draft a couple of dubious ones first. You can always challenge a law that's unfair, but ignoring it is as good as breaking it. The US would be well put to remember such things in the future.
The "crime" is not RAPE. It is something else. Call it what it is or you are perpetuating the problem.
The Swiss account was CLOSED but the money in it is NOT confiscated.
Assange TURNED HIMSELF IN. To say he was arrested is technically accurate but does not depict the reality of the situation.
The media is strangely against Assange. He stands for everything the media is supposed to stand for. So not only has the media forgotten itself, it seems to actually combat its own principles.
Some might say that these are merely inaccuracies. When repeated in this way, it becomes lies. This stuff has got to stop.
Sexual promiscuity is not immoral, it is in fact completely natural.
What is immoral is transgression: when you go against the wishes of your sexual partner.
In the West, you can live the most debauched sexual life you want, without judgment, as long as anyone partaking of that lifestyle with you does so as a freely consenting equal adult. The principle concepts here are freedom and equality between the sexes. But as soon as you do something with someone by force, you are a criminal. There is no hypocrisy or contradiction here, as long as you understand the most important principles in play.
Meanwhile, it seems to many of us in the West that in the Muslim world (as well as in the conservative Jewish or fundamentalist Christian worlds as well) women are forced into lives by conservative religious and cultural teachings that are very much about coercion and force about how to behave, including violent punishments for choosing their own path. Therefore, we in the West view these conservative religious and cultural teachings as far more immoral than the most debauched orgy. Because we don't view the expression of simple natural human sexuality as a crime. But we view force and transgression against the notion of equality and freedom as a crime.
Women don't seem to be treated as equals by conservative religious and cultural teachings emanating from the traditional religious conservative societies in the Muslim world (or traditional Christian or Jewish worlds). This is immoral. These cultural and religious teachings to us are a form of transgression, in which the woman is not seen as an equal. And therefore, according to a morality that values freedom and equality, conservative Muslim, Christian, and Jewish teachings are immoral, where they devalue the lives and freedom of women.
Human sexuality is not a crime. Forcing someone to do something and not treating them as an equal is a a crime. In this regard, the way the conservative religious world (Muslim, Christian, or Jewish) treats woman is the real crime, and a woman in the West enjoying her completely natural sexuality is not in any way whatsoever criminal. Nor is there any logic whereby a woman or a man enjoying their natural sexuality is a crime.
So I ask you to stop judging human sexuality, and start judging the use of force against women into roles they did not choose of their own free will. In order to be a more moral person.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
how long until an 'not evil but incompetent' politician, craving for attention or something else, reinterprets the first few amendments of american constitution ?
Are negative numbers allowed in my answer?
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Assange doesn't hate the USA, Assange hates all governments. He's more like the archetypal anarchist from the late 1800s than your common garden variety USA hater in the world today.
http://abcnews.go.com/US/official-wikileaks-greatest-danger-loss-trust/story?id=12263971
What does that mean? Assange hates Brazil? No, Assange hates all authority. Next he's going after corporations, big banks. I heartily applaud that.
Assange is not anti-American. He hates the American government as much as any other government. He's a bomb thrower in the traditional anarchist sense of a century ago. He hates all authority.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I arrived as a foreigner in Switzerland well before 9/11, and was not permitted to open any bank account, nor sign any lease agreement, without first providing proof of a legitimate work or residency permit. The Swiss have had these requirements for a long time. Of course, the "private" banks have all manner of tricks of concealing sources of funds and owners, but that's not your average joe, nor your average bank balance, and at the time Julian opened his account, he certainly was still an average joe.
The comments below about the UBS/US kerfuffle are another matter altogether, nothing to do with a Post Office bank account, which was, unless Julian was a resident, an illegal action on his part. The gummint haven't taken his money - the Post Office have merely closed the account from any and all transactions, and will reimburse him every centime any time he asks for it.
If you value democracy then you should understand that the backlash from the WL episode will be a push for laws and technology to control communications at the direct expense of democratic ideals which require free speech. Anonymity and secure peer-to-peer communications, already at risk, will be further threatened under the premise of terrorism. If you want to help ensure that democracy prevails in the face of reactionary politics, then run a TOR server ( http://www.torproject.org/ ) now, and consider any of these alternatives.
Fortunately, this will only lend more power to Assange's cause. Polls show that 70% of Americans approve of the leaks, and he is very widely considered to be a hero by many people. Imagine what would happen if that insurance file of his happens to be huge news, like evidence of 9/11 being an inside job or something. Just sayin'.
Character assassinating his accusers do nothing to help anyone. You post a lot in Assange threads, and I can tell you're a passionate supporter, but postings like this only undermine the public image of his support base.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
Look at the US congress...
You certainly can be Incompetent and Evil.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
He clearly has a personal problem with Assange, and while he might have a modicum of arguments to criticize that organization, they sound quite a bit like post facto rationalization of his personal feelings to me.
It's good to know when they put their minds to it, the US government can get results. I just wish they would do it for the good of the nation and its people and not just to save their own greedy asses.
no, its not totalitarian. it's wrong, but its not totalitarian
terrorism is killing civilians in peacetime in a civil environment en masse and by surprise. terrorism is not a government's foreign policy. totalitarianism is attempting to control every aspect of your citizen's lives. totalitarianism is not a government's foreign policy
you don't have to like the usa, you don't have to like the usa's policies. but throwing every bad word you can think of at the usa and seeing what will stick is hardly intelligent, and just shows you don't even know what you are talking about
if someone robs a bank, you don't call them a rapist. if someone shoots his wife, you don't call them a drunk driver. american foreign policy has done plenty of evil and criminal things. but it is not totalitarian. and it is not terrorism. really
if you continue to call it such things, you just make yourself sound ignorant. and you aren't helping to stop the usa. because the only way the usa will be stopped is by people who understand exactly what the usa is doing and are able to clearly identify the nature of the crime, the cause, and how to stop it. not by throwing as many bad words against the usa they can think of. if you are an actual principled person, and you honestly want to stop the usa, start thinking for once
you don't have to like the usa. but you better sound intelligent when you articulate exactly why you dislike the usa. or you're just another garden variety tribal chest thumping moron in the world, certainly no better than what you dislike
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
You don't know that. It's all conspiracy theory-grade guessing, made to fit your own preconceived notions. If it isn't the feminist conspiracy, it's the american conspiracy, or maybe both. Until we get to hear both sides directly, noone but Assange and the women know.
Also, there are reports that when Assange had sex with the women and they asked him to stop, he didn't. That makes it non-consecual sex and a crime. No violence needed.
But thank you for revlealing yourself to be a total misogynist. Now we now.
The goal of the Swedish justice system is to unroll all the facts before deciding what to do
Really? Shouldn't they have fucking interviewed him after he offered after they leaked bogus rape accusations about him, then?
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
http://www.google.com/search?q=wikileaks+accuser+linked+to+cia&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a
7 Dec 2010 ... Wikileaks Assange 'Rape' Accuser Linked To Notorious CIA Operative Swedish prosecutors told AOL News last week that Assange was not wanted ....
Read radical news here
Assange has been "remanded in custody" (i.e. refused bail), pending a hearing on December 14th.
1) It weren't centralized. Tor can be taken down with coordinated action against its auth servers by a handful of governments.
2) It was faster. Tor was basically only intended for web pages, and simple ones at that. It chokes on large multimedia stuff.
3) It weren't anti-P2P... which should be a big no-no in any activists book.
4) It could offer some kind of automatic redundancy/mirroring.
Tor is starting to look antiquated / inadequate because it was designed based on assumptions from 1999.
I suggest you try I2P at the link below where you can get access to anything Wikileaks has published, anonymously and relatively quickly.
I guess "The founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, has been arrested by London police on behalf of Swedish authorities on allegation of rape." sounds more juicy than:
"After an arrest warrant was issued for Julian Assange in England, he (likely at the advice from his lawyer) turned himself in."
Sure technically he was arrested, just the little detail that he turned himself in and submitted himself. It wasn't as if the police just found him in a raid or something...
That certainly isn't in the referenced article - where do you find that she appealed to him to stop and he did not?
Sweden Issues Warrant for WikiLeaks Founder
By JOHN F. BURNS and RAVI SOMAIYA
Published: November 18, 2010
The money quote:
According to accounts the women gave to the police and friends, they each had consensual sexual encounters with Mr. Assange that became nonconsensual. One woman said that Mr. Assange had ignored her appeals to stop after a condom broke. The other woman said that she and Mr. Assange had begun a sexual encounter using a condom, but that Mr. Assange did not comply with her appeals to stop when it was no longer in use.
The big problem that I see is that there's some media right now whose "reporting" is basically repeating Assange's lawyers' statements at length.
Are you adequate?
It looks like you need a lot more than $37K in a Swiss bank account to stay a threat to the US Military/Industrial/Banking complex. Probably helps if your threats mean $TRILLIONS in war/intel budgets.
--
make install -not war
The actions of MasterCard, PayPal, Amazon etc. are examples of the privatization of the suppression of dissent. The US, British, and French governments have been unable to legally do anything about Wikileaks and are likely to be unable to anything legally, because they have not committed a crime. The publication of leaked documents is not a crime. Instead like incarceration, many military and police operations, and security, suppression of undesirable information has been privatized. These companies have taken it upon themselves to enforce the new corporate order. Right now this suits the governments program, maybe later it won't.
Just like the fair trial of the operators of the torrent search engine called pirate bay, eh?
Did you notice that to make sure no one saw the story, they even made sure the arrest took place on the SAME DAY as the launch of WoW Cataclysm? That's how bad they wanted this one to fly under the radar.
You do realise that we burn Guy Fawkes' effigy annually? By convention, he is a villain not a martyr.
Were it not for the British establishment encouraging bonfire night celebrations, he probably would have been "forgot".
If the Gunpowder Plot had succeeded, of course, it would have done as much good for Catholics in Britain as 9/11 did for Muslims in the US.
When exactly did either woman say "Stop"? Where did you get your information?
Sweden Issues Warrant for WikiLeaks Founder By JOHN F. BURNS and RAVI SOMAIYA Published: November 18, 2010 "According to accounts the women gave to the police and friends, they each had consensual sexual encounters with Mr. Assange that became nonconsensual. One woman said that Mr. Assange had ignored her appeals to stop after a condom broke. The other woman said that she and Mr. Assange had begun a sexual encounter using a condom, but that Mr. Assange did not comply with her appeals to stop when it was no longer in use."
I ask because your interpretation doesn't square with the factual record.
And the problem is that your "factual record" probably is sourced from Assange's lawyers, who are going around and bullshitting about this case.
For example, Assange wasn't wearing a condom when he fucked Jessica, so how could Jessica withdraw consent because of a broken condom?
That's not how the allegations go. It's more like this: (a) she sleeps with him first on the night, he uses a condom; (b) he is going to sleep with her again on the morning, doesn't put a condom on, she tells him not to do it without a condom, and he does it anyway.
Everyone is interpreting the claims of the prosecution that consent had been withdrawn to mean that the women actually said "No", "Stop", or "Don't". That is the interpretation the prosecution would like us to have. Indeed, that would be rape. But I've never seen the prosecution actually claimed the women ever said "No." The claims of the prosecution have been very vague, and its sounding more and more like BS.
Well, that's how prosecution claims tend to sound when your only source about them is what the defense says.
In any case it's clear that the women were initially pleased with Assange and only reported the events to the Police immediately after they discovered that Assange had been sleeping around with other women. That doesn't sound like rape, that sounds like promiscuity.
As I've said elsewhere, real-life rape victims often act very strangely, in a way that's superficially inconsistent with having been raped.
Are you adequate?
And we know that's true because Assange's lawyers said it!
I think it's reasonable to treat what Assange's lawyers state as fact, at least until the point where someone (not counting internet blowhards) contradicts them.
Legal professionals are generally rather cautious about explicit lies.
He's still not been charged with anything
That's an artifact of how Swedish law works. He's not "åtalad", but he's "häktad" in relation to the crimes of one count of rape, one count of sexual assault, and two counts of sexual misconduct.
I.e. he's arrested, but not in the US TV show sense where you have to be charged with a crime before you can get arrested.
"Investigative detainment for named crimes" would probably be the best translation.
Assange was denied bail, and it sounds like he will be held for 60 days before extradition.
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2010/1207/Why-Britain-is-likely-to-send-WikiLeaks-Assange-to-Sweden-on-rape-charges
"The ability to delude yourself may be an important survival tool" - Jane Wagner -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradley_Manning
Manning was arrested by agents of the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command in May 2010 and held in pre-trial confinement in a military jail at Camp Arifjan in Kuwait.[1][2][3] On July 5, 2010, two misconduct charges were brought against him for "transferring classified data onto his personal computer and adding unauthorized software to a classified computer system" and "communicating, transmitting and delivering national defense information to an unauthorized source".[2][7] The charges included unauthorized access to Secret Internet Protocol Routers network computers, download of more than 150,000 United States Department of State diplomatic cables, download of a classified PowerPoint presentation, and downloading a classified video of a military operation in Baghdad on July 12, 2007. Manning is also charged for forwarding the video and at least one of the cables to an unauthorized person.[15] The maximum jail sentence is 52 years.[1]
Manning faces a pretrial hearing under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, following which his lawyer expects a court-martial in the spring of 2011.[8][1]
The media is strangely against Assange. He stands for everything the media is supposed to stand for. So not only has the media forgotten itself, it seems to actually combat its own principles.
I'm guessing this is for the same reason why many people side with a bully or stand quiet instead of speaking up for the bullied: Fear of becoming the target themselves. By distancing themselves from Wikileaks and avoiding to call it a journalistic organisation, media hope to escape restrictions of the freedom of press potentially being applied to them, when politicians and others go after Wikileaks.
Of course, as in the case with bullying, the only reason it can continue is because people who don't agree with it don't stand up against it.
Regarding the worldwide reactions of mainstream media to a Swedish prosecutor's poor and possibly biased paperwork, see Naomi Wolf's brillant, and sarcastic, commentary on Assange's alleged (just that - alleged) wrongdoings, written in the form of an Open Letter:
"Dear Interpol:
As a longtime feminist activist, I have been overjoyed to discover your new commitment to engaging in global manhunts to arrest and prosecute men who behave like narcissistic jerks to women they are dating.
I see that Julian Assange is accused of having consensual sex with two women, in one case using a condom that broke. I understand, from the alleged victims' complaints to the media, that Assange is also accused of texting and tweeting in the taxi on the way to one of the women's apartments while on a date, and, disgustingly enough, 'reading stories about himself online'in the cab.
[...]
Thank you again, Interpol. I know you will now prioritize the global manhunt for 1.3 million guys I have heard similar complaints about personally in the US alone
[...]"
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/naomi-wolf/interpol-the-worlds-datin_b_793033.html