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Icelandic MP Claims US Vendetta Against WikiLeaks
Stirling Newberry writes "Icelandic MP Birgitta Jónsdóttir details more of the evidence for what she calls a 'judicial vendetta' against WikiLeaks and its volunteers, including attempts to gain access to her Twitter account. Her efforts to block the National Defense Authorization Act were discussed here previously. The story was taken up last year by Glenn Greenwald and Wired. As a result, the International Parliamentarian Union adopted a resolution on her case. What's new? She asserts that there is a grand jury investigation into WikiLeaks and related organizations, and is calling on Sweden to provide assurances that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange not be re-extradited to the U.S. She says, 'There is no doubt that the U.S. wants to get even with WikiLeaks.'"
The US is like the modern day Roman Empire. Eventually, the rest of the world will get tired of being bullied by the US and stand up.
How about:
-Evidence of US soldiers murdering civilians
-How the US was lying about keeping track of "collateral damage"
-Proof of how the US gave Saddam a green-light to invade Kuwait
I'm too lazy to find links for those examples, but google should get them quickly enough.
There are many more examples, but the point is that while previously people only had suspicions about the US's wrongdoing, now there's evidence. That's the first step in doing anything about it. The cables I'm sure have also had repercussions diplomatically, what with all the cases of US ambassadors lying through their teeth. The leaks have also taken away a lot of the US's credibility, which will probably impact them strongly in the future, especially with regards to situations like Iran, and whatnot.
News organizations do the exact same thing -- find sources and publish their stories -- and you don't see the US gov going after the Guardian or the NYTimes. (They're some of the news outlets that did the actual publishing. Wikileaks worked through them precisely because they were trying NOT to endanger people on the ground.) The US can't go after news outlets. There's this little thing called the First Amendment guaranteeing freedom of speech.
But by de facto torture of Manning and by making an example of Assange (they hope, if they can get their hands on him) they figure they can "discourage" repeat embarrassments.
Because that's all they are: embarrassed. I didn't see anything come out we didn't already know. All Wikileaks did was provide hard evidence of the obvious.
Judging from the US embassy here, you'd think the US already did ;) It's the most paranoid place in the country. Concrete barriers in the front, armed security guards (even *pepper spray* is illegal here, the police don't even carry it**), etc. You could take all the pictures you want with a telephoto lens of any Icelandic government building, coast guard ships, etc, but if you snap a cell phone camera picture on the same street of the embassy and don't hightail it out of there, you'll be approached by the guards and they won't be happy. The embassy got in trouble about six months back for spying on all the homes and businesses in a several block radius.
As for the concept of a Wikileaks person being in parliament, don't be shocked. Members of the Al(th)ing are mostly pretty walk-of-life people. Everyone here is connected anyway and it's all pretty casual. On 1st may, for example, I walked right into a Samfylkingin meeting from off the street and sat down a couple tables over from the prime minister (could have sat closer if I wanted to). And there were little kids running around in the room playing. People take "celebrity" and "status" in stride. The joke here is, what does an Icelander do if he sees someone famous on the street? He walks up to them and asks them if they wants *his* autograph. ;)
Oh, and Slashdot? It's not 1992; implement proper unicode support already so that I can type a proper thorn.
** - Not only is pepper spray illegal, but tear gas has been used just twice in the history of the country. And people here talk about it like using it was the greatest war crime imaginable ;)
Rock Us, Dukakis.
Nonsense. What he's pointing out is that various members of the US government are willing to sacrifice the farm for a cow, and should be taken out back and summarily executed.
The price of finding OBL, or rather, in conducting this vaccination ruse, is already being paid; the global attempt to annihilate Polio is now in jeopardy because of it. If the history of botched American relations is anything to go by, this will come back to... inconvenience us at an ill-fated moment. And on behalf of those Americans who will be paying the price for this act of stupidity, I wish to salute all those involved for their dedication to promoting idiocy.
I am John Hurt.
If you are killing unarmed civilians and claiming a camera is a weapon, you are committing an assassination. Any questions about that?
Because of the US Govt's abuse of the polio vaccination service, every NGO representative worldwide is going to be viewed as a spy for the US by anyone with half a brain. This is going to severely limit their ability to try to help people in the third world.
It doesn't make any difference that the Islamist groups out there were already suspicious of NGO reps - the US went and confirmed their suspicions completely. This will only serve to make some people think the Islamists are right in other things they say. We should not be doing things to make them look more credible :(
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
I've written about this before several times, so I don't want to have to write it all again; here's a link instead.
And, FYI, according to the charges, the first woman told friends at the party that same night about the "violent" sex with Assange and that she didn't feel safe, then subsequently moved out of her own apartment until he left. The second woman freaked out immediately after Assange started having unprotected sex with her while she was sleeping (something she hadn't even done with her boyfriend of 2 1/2 years). They only brought *charges* after talking.
It took me about three months before I was able to simply use the word "rape" for what happened to me. It moved from "an unwanted sexual experience" to "some of my friends tell me I should call it rape" to "rape or something like that" before I could accept just using the term. You don't want to see yourself as a victim and you don't want to empower the perpetrator. You just want to try to forget it and move on. It's only when it becomes obvious that you can't just do that that you have to face up to it. I'm still trying to deal with some of the effects, like a fear of saying no (because if you don't say no, you can't be raped... I know, that's messed up, but I'm trying to get past it, and I'm doing better).
People have often berated me for not reporting it (like most rape victims), on the grounds that he is free and could well do it again. But that's easy to say from your ivory tower (sadly, I in the past once did the same thing to a rape victim, something I now really regret). The last thing you want is to have to relive it and have people accuse you of being a liar, a slut, etc; you just want to get on with your life and not think about it. However, if I had talked to someone a couple days after it happened and found that the same guy had just done the same thing to another girl... I don't know how that would have my altered course of actions, but it definitely would have affected me.
Rock Us, Dukakis.