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Photo Reveals UK Plan: "Assange To Be Arrested Under All Circumstances"
politkal writes with the lead from a CNN story: "A policeman in London appears to have accidentally revealed an arrest plan for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, in what UK media have branded an embarrassing slip-up by London's Metropolitan Police. Clearly legible in a zoomed-in view of the clipboard, on a sheet of paper headed 'Restricted,' are the words: 'EQ Embassy brief — Summary of current position re. Assange. Action required — Assange to be arrested under all circumstances.' It goes on to suggest possible ways in which he could exit the building, such as in a diplomatic bag or vehicle."
Then watch the machinations.
Nope, not at all unusual for routine rape cases to involve threats of violating sovereignty. Nothing to see here folks.
How is the fact the the London police wish to arrest law breakers news?
Then let him go to Ecuador. In that area, I'm sure some "accident" could be arranged with enough financial lubrication.
You really are too stupid to be on internet:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/13/wikileaks-bradley-manning-defence-fund
WikiLeaks delivers contribution to Bradley Manning defence fund
Website honours pledge made last July to help pay legal fees of soldier accused of leaking US embassy cables
And given the current financial blockade against wikileaks they were lucky to get that out to the BM fund.
I read an interview with Adrian Lamo once where he said that when he turned in Manning, he didn't think Assange would actually go through and release the State Department cables. He thought Assage would put Manning's safety above releasing the cables.
Bull. Everything is a state secret these days... what he has done is uncover the CRIMINAL ACTIVITY that the U.S. and its tight allies have been undertaking in other countries. 5% of the world does not control the other 95% - it likes to pretend, however.
...Steve
Nobody "accidentally" carries a restricted document outside on the front of a clipboard. Good for those coppers. They can't publically declare their support for Wikileaks and Assange's movement to Ecuador, but it's awesome of them to be helping out where they can.
Any sources for that claim? That would be worse than storming an embassy. Diplomatic bags often contain very sensitive communication. One time pads, encryption devices are all send using diplomatic bags. It would be unimaginable to claim that the host nation can violate diplomatic bags (unless they are certain that the bag violates the conventions governing diplomatic bags, and by opening it they can prove it).
Doesn't seem to include "assassination" in the list of options.
Sure, if you just wanted to be rid of Assange, that would be easy. Snipers. Bombs. Even just a guy with a pistol.
Problem is, you have him killed in any way that looks deliberate, and he becomes a martyr. I would hope that anyone in power is smart enough to know that, but I've also learned that you can never underestimate just how stupid people can be.
Now, you could try other ways. If he was just in hiding, not causing an international incident in an embassy, you could stage a "mugging gone wrong" or even just a car accident. "Problem" eliminated, but it doesn't look like you did it. If you were really good, try to make it look like it *was* deliberate, but a plan by Ecuador from the beginning to kill him for... some reason. Has to be a good reason, obviously, but it's plausible.
But even then, he dies "fighting". It's obvious that they want to first assassinate his *character*, not the person himself. Assange the man is a nobody, a mildly egotistic anti-authoritarian who started a website almost anyone could make. The problem is Assange the concept, Assange the idea. The lone rebel trying to show the evil empires for what they really are.
That's who they need to eliminate. They started with the rape allegations. Perhaps they simply embellished what actually happened. Perhaps they twisted what was said, what was done. Perhaps they made the whole thing up. They've blurred the charges so much that I can't even tell what he's actually charged with anymore. But they did a good job of it - Assange the Idea, at least to some, is gone, replaced with Assange the Man, a man who (at worst) is a hypocritical rapist scumbag, or (at best) a regular guy who made a few mistakes on par with public intoxication.
Their next step, obviously, is to milk the "common criminal" idea for all it's worth. I don't think they'll even extradite him to the US to face some vague treason charge - that brings back discussion of the leaks, the rebel and the big bad empire. No, they'll try to avoid even mentioning that. They'll hit him with rape charges to make him scum (rape is often considered the worst crime, worse even than murder). They'll probably bring in charges like shoplifting to make him seem petty, small. Then when they've finished their show trial, they'll lock him away and try to shut him up. Only once he's in prison will they think of trying to kill him, again while avoiding martyrizing him (if it were an American prison, just staging a prison fight and shanking would be enough).
Not to mention, if you want to see real treason, you need look no further than the Obama administration, which leaked information about the Osama bin Laden raid to try and shore up support for his reelection.
Leaks which, unlike Wikileaks, DID get people killed. Leaks which compromised those who provided the intelligence that led to Bin Laden, getting them caught by foreign forces.
But do you think anyone is going to get in trouble for those leaks? Of course not, it allowed Obama to announce that he had killed Bin Laden!
I have bad news for you, if you think that soldiers regularly fight battles without trying to dehumanize them. If they had been correct in their identification, their actions would probably have not been noteworthy at all; the issue is that they misidentified the targets.
The second girl even had a fingering session in the back of the cinema before the actual sex. The other said "may as well" on her account. You do not need a contract to have sex in Sweden, consent to sex is not required to be in the form of a verbal or written contract.
"The women appealed to have the charges reinstated."
After the second prosecutor convinced them to.
The extra evidence that came to light was the blog entry where girl 1 said she could use this law to get revenge on a cheating boyfriend. The second piece of evidence that came to light was the foreplay, and the third piece, the fact the girls had tried to sell their story to the papers before making a claim to police.
He did not 'flee' either, he asked if he was needed as he wanted to go to the UK and was told not, so he left. Only then did she issue an international arrest warrant citing his 'fleeing' as cause. This is a demonizing move, the 'fleeing' is to pretend he had something to hide. He was a man facing a nothing charge from tainted witnesses that in any other circumstances would face investigation themselves (for making false claims in order to profit from a news paper story).
Instead he became an criminal under the serious crimes, expedited extradition treaty that is only supposed to be used for major crimes like terrorism.
It stinks to high heaven.
Except that, right after you sign those rights away, they go about pounding the words "honor" "loyalty" and "integrity" into your skull.
Then they get pissed off when you apply those words where they were meant to be applied.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
The US want to legally jail him up for life and parade him around on TV as an example to everyone else. It's not about getting revenge it's about using him as an example to the rest of us.
I think you're vastly inflating his importance to anyone outside the wikileaks/Assange fan club. He could turned inside out on international TV and it wouldn't stop truly brave and non-attention seeking people from doing what's right.
I was raised on the command line, bitch
"Nemo me impune lacesset"
To be fair it did look strange that immediately after the release of the documents he was accused of rape. I don't know what he did or didn't do but my credibility alarmed pinged.
Not really surprising, no. He was full of himself at that moment. High on media. I don't find it particularly surprising that he would think more of himself and less of others at that time.
The whole thing reminds me of Beria after Stalin. Before Stalin died, Beria was head of the NKVD, the precursor of the KGusetaBe. He was the front runner to take over. Then he got hit with over 150 allegations of rape, molestation, child molestation, the at the time version of sexual harrassment, and mopery and dopery. Beria died in prison 'attempting to escape', the date unknown.
Point is, nail somebody with a sex crime charge, nobody listens to him anymore. True or not, Assauge's credibilty went down the shitter when the charges were announced. He'll never get past them.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
I've never heard of it being OK to shoot wounded soldiers or people who are trying to take them away to get medical attention, and certainly not when there's children in their car (since they don't have the resources for proper ambulances and such).
It's really pretty sick just how evil Americans are now, and what kinds of crimes they will defend. Americans make Nazis look not-so-bad.
You think Wikileaks is a big money-making venture?
It's funny how people believe anyone whose name is in the news must be rich. "Hey, did you see that guy who got a million hits on his YouTube video of his dog who skateboards? That guy must be like a millionaire or something!"
WikiLeaks Donations Topped $1.9 Million in 2010
Wikileaks has been criticized for their lack of transparency in handling of donations.
The controversial website WikiLeaks, which argues the cause of openness in leaking classified or confidential documents, has set up an elaborate global financial network to protect a big secret of its own—its funding. . . .
The linchpin of WikiLeaks's financial network is Germany's Wau Holland Foundation. WikiLeaks encourages donors to contribute to its account at the foundation, which under German law can't publicly disclose the names of donors. Because the foundation "is not an operational concern, it can't be sued for doing anything. So the donors' money is protected, in other words, from lawsuits," Mr. Assange said.
The German foundation is only one piece of the WikiLeaks network.
"We're registered as a library in Australia, we're registered as a foundation in France, we're registered as a newspaper in Sweden," Mr. Assange said. WikiLeaks has two tax-exempt charitable organizations in the U.S., known as 501C3s, that "act as a front" for the website, he said. He declined to give their names, saying they could "lose some of their grant money because of political sensitivities."
Mr. Assange said WikiLeaks gets about half its money from modest donations processed by its website, and the other half from "personal contacts," including "people with some millions who approach us and say 'I'll give you 60,000 or 10,000,' " he said, without specifying a currency. -- How WikiLeaks Keeps Its Funding Secret
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
I suspect with something like the 80+% turnout the USA had in the 1830s you would have a very different political landscape and the actual mechanism of collecting and tallying votes would be improved and run professionally on a state or federal level out of necessity.
Delivering poorly designed machines to untrained volunteers on the day (and the million other utterly stupid stuffups) is not acceptable - something that important should be planned properly so that the volunteers know how to run the polling station before the day. Having a wide variety of voting methods within even the same state for no actual practical reason (Florida 2000 was a joke) is a barrier to getting a clear result and bit of an insult to the voting public that have to wait insane amounts of time in some cases. If there was some sort of independent national body that ran elections then they would go as smoothly as those that US experts run on behalf of the UN in some countries. You already have the people that could do the job, but I suspect there's too much pork, and possibly outright corruption, bound up in all that money that goes into local voting systems, to do it without a lot of resistance even if it was done at a state instead of federal level.
I'm from the UK and we've tried with a couple of pretty successful petitions to have 'none of the above' put on the list of choices. Trouble is, they're scared to death of it because it would win nearly every time. Then we could spend a pleasant five years, moron-free, building small alternative structures: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-voting
On y va, qui mal y pense!
That was pure speculation on Australian diplomats' part.
No. The Sydney Morning Herald states that: 'American responses to the embassy's representations have been withheld from release on the grounds that disclosure could "cause damage to the international relations of the Commonwealth".' So we know mainly Australia's side of the conversation, but that doesn't mean that they consist purely of speculation. And why does Fred Burton of Stratfor then claims that the U.S. has a sealed indictment against Julian Assange?
In Sweden, it is about setting an example. Sweden is the Saudi Arabia of feminism.
This is mainly calling people names.
Because it's Ecuador; who gives a shit? The UK has had this law for a while now, and all embassies in London should be quite aware of it. I sincerely doubt other nations will 'pull their business' if the UK storms the Ecuadorian embassy.
It's not about other nations pulling their business. It's about protecting UK embassies everywhere in the world. Who will for instance hinder the Russian police in the next Litvinenko-like case to storm the UK embassy in Moscow, citing the London precedent? That's the main reason why the UK retracted so fast from their bold statements - it would endanger the UK more than anyone else.
As much as you're maybe being a little overdramatic, what you say is very true. I say this as an Englishman about both our countries, people over here would rather allow themselves to be distracted by the Olympics for a few weeks.
I have grandparents who were in camps in Poland during WWII, a great-uncle priest who was "disappeared" in soviet Russia, a flatmate whos grandparents survived fascist Italy. Naomi Wolf is a reporter who in this 2007 talk gives a chilling argument on how she thinks the fascist playbook is being replayed in America. It's a list of steps that's predictive, and she says she'll start self-censoring when another reporter is declared an enemy combatant. She HAS spoken very recently on Assange. Lets hope he doesn't get imprisoned - the integrity of the media will start self-censoring otherwise (or at least the few corners still up and batting on this stuff).
And that the women had lunch with him the next day and didn't press charges until the two of them met, and apparently decided after swapping stories that what had actually happened was rape.
Actually... not immediately complaining is fairly common in rape cases. Myth 10 in the CPS's list of rape myths might be worth a mention here, and some of the others are worth reading.
From their testimony, it seems that one of them wanted to complain but wasn't sure how to, and trying to find out, managed to get in touch with the other, who accompanied her to the police station. I doubt whether either of them thought it was rape, but that doesn't really matter. What matters is what he is accused of, and whether that amounts to rape.
I'd say since he was a serving member of the military in a war zone he has more balls and most likely more integrity than you are putting on show.
Don't mean to put the guy down, but Manning never went outside the wire. He signed up to sit in a room full of computers and compile reports. (Yes, I did go outside the wire, and was combat arms.)
Manning was an adult, had taken the oath and is responsible for his actions, and yes, they're going to throw the book at him. They should: that intel has disrupted our peaceful diplomatic efforts, it included names and addresses of people in dangerous situations, etc. I don't care what terrible secrets of the government were uncovered, none of that was worth the life of even one poor son of a bitch in some hellhole who was feeding us intel so he could feed his family.
But, at the same time, he was a young dude who was going through a difficult time, and he was callously manipulated by Assange's people. That organization is designed to find a sucker they can manipulate to fall on his sword while they keep far enough back to be legally untouchable. And they don't care if the leaks harm innocent people.
And why don't they care? Because you, the fans, don't care, you'll never hold them to account. You're so fucking self-righteous that you worship this creep Assange and make excuses for his sexually assaulting those women. You don't care about the brown guy in Shitcanistan who gets tortured to death because of the leaks. You don't care if our peaceful efforts at diplomacy are derailed. You just want to be part of a big circle jerk around your stupid conspiracy theories. You really are worthless excuses for human beings.