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Assange Seeks To Sue Prime Minister Gillard For Defamation
First time accepted submitter menno_h writes "WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange says he has hired lawyers to investigate how to sue Prime Minister Julia Gillard for defamation."
Assange "says comments made by Ms Gillard in 2010 that WikiLeaks acted illegally in releasing US diplomatic cables have affected the viability of his organisation. 'Mastercard Australia, in justifying why it has made a blockade that prevents any Australian Mastercard holder donating to WikiLeaks, used that statement by Julia Gillard,' he said."
How do you play that one?
you may or may not support Assange or Wikileaks - but the lawsuit will be interesting: Mastercard used a semi-official statement by Julia Gillard to justify the blocking; is this a good-enough argument?
A really dumb idea. If he sues he'll have to appear in court.
While I'm not a fan of Mr. Assange (quite the opposite really), I find the way he has been treated by our government absolutely deplorable. Especially when you consider how people like David Hicks (trained with terrorists) and Shappele Corby (convicted drug smuggler) have had the government behind them trying to get them home.
Hiring lawyers with the intent of filing a suit isn't very interesting.
The Swedish legal term for defamation is actually is actually "reputational rape".
Set your phasers on "funky"!
how 'bout them niggers?
Julian Assange is famous for being a tireless champion of free speech. How does he respond to someone saying something nasty about him? Why, he calls for lawyers to shut them up! That's some dedication to free speech there.
Cue a thousand self-declared libertarians piling on me to try to explain why it's different when one of their people tries to abuse the courts to silence free speech.
Mod me down, "libertarians". In your hearts you know I speak the truth.
Demise of computer programmer.
The computer programmer program in North America should be abolished, as there is no way to survive doing programming as a career, and with a decent salary. I draw this conclusion by analogy.
Fifteen years ago, my brothers-in-laws each worked in the leather industry as cutters. They were able to cut around 30 coats per day, and made around $1000.00 per week, in the season.
Overnight, the company sent home all but two cutters. The coats were being cut and sewed in China, and shipped by plane overnight. Cutting had moved off-shore. The two cutters were kept, in case of a blemish, or a coat requiring a minor repair.
In the same vein, the computer programmer shop has moved offshore, and what we have left is the programmer who does maintenance. Apply patches, tweak the system a little. etc.
The number of programmers has gone from thousands to hundreds to tens. -- For Montreal, a city of 3 million, the total requirement is for one thousand skilled, if we follow the pattern of the clothing industry. Can you survive in North America with a salary of $15.00/hr?
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
Looks like someone will end up in Jail.
And a rapist.
Someone with better morals needs to run that thing. He's going to take it down the drain with him. Ugh!
Julian Assange is a terrible individual with a narcissistic, attention-seeking personality. Only a truly cynical person would take advantage of the Bolivarian twits from Ecuador to try and beat rape charges. His arguments that running from a rape charge is somehow applaudable, because the Swedes might send him to the US to face justice for his other crimes is laughable -- Sweden, apart from Russia, is probably the last place on Earth who would extradite anybody to the US.
An absolute disgrace, aided and abetted by the media looking for a good story.
Flame away, fanboys. I'm looking forward to reading the broken basement-dweller logic in the replies.
You can't sue prosecutors for accusing you of a crime, in general. This official wasn't a prosecutor, but does the principle apply?
I wonder if Assange has considered a business interference suit as well. Inducing Mastercard to go back on a contract might be a tort, depending on the outcome of some questions I'm not even qualified to enumerate.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
As an Australian I look forward to the day when a story about Australia is accompanied by something other than a picture of Crocodile Dundee's hat.
"Dissenters who tell their fellow citizens what is really going on are subject to smear campaigns that, like clockwork, are aimed at the political heretic. Truth is treason in the empire of lies."
"If we want to live in a free society, we need to break free from these artificial limitations on free debate and start asking serious questions once again."
-Dr. Ron Paul
The crimes were committed by people in our governments, not people like Assange who are uncovering them.
Not even the women involved think it was rape.
And if it were enough not to be present for charges to be impossible to make, please explain how you can get a case found against you in absentia?
If the court has enough information to bring charges, then if JA won't turn up to explain himself, then prosecute based on the evidence you have.
This is how EVERY OTHER CASE works.
Julian Assange just doesn't know when to quit. Everyone is out to get him and he couldn't possibly be the reason for any of it.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
stingray (n/t)
for a self professed libertarian
But let me guess, if he were suing these companies, you'd be saying something like "They don't have to work with him, they are free to refuse their services", right?
Oh, hang on, someone has
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3168869&cid=41578923
And you agreed with their statement.
Good to see that you're insistent on ensuring no fair trial.
Yeah, I bet this goes nowhere fast.
I wish the SAS would just take him out. What a tool.
The Secretary of State impresses me as someone who "takes no 'stuff' from no-body." Think of her stern response when someone in Nigeria, was it, confusing who was the current U.S. President (Mr. Obama, not Mr. Clinton), asked here regarding "President Clinton's opinion about the presence of people representing commercial and governmental interests from China in West Africa."
The manner in which Mr. Assange disrespected the Secretary is at a whole other level.
Yeah, torture and death pretty much sums up his fate.
Assange will do anything to gather publicity for himself.
It's never about Wikileaks. It's always about Julian Assange. Blah. Blah. Blah.
I don't care about the fugitive suspected sex offender. I care about Wikileaks.
Assange, surrender yourself and do us all a favor.
How can a fugitive, on the run from the law, sue someone?
I imagine that a lawyer might be able to set up a case, but would he not be expected to show up to court?
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Not rape, he started the sex on implied consent to sex, she said 'you don't have AIDS do you', he said 'no' so SHE decided to go ahead.
That's a contract, he fulfilled it, by not having AIDS. She might be upset that she wanted to add an extra AIDS test tacked onto the end, but that wasn't what she agreed to at the time. That would be a change of contract. The second girl, who seduced Assange then spent time getting the first to file a charge, just SCREAMS HONEYPOT.
Free press, free to report leaks of illegal activity is a cornerstone of a free country. We are not Russia. You seem so keen to see him prosecuted on a trumped up rape charge, yet one of the leaks was about US contractors in Afghanistan procuring underage boys for sex with warlords. Surely that's a bigger crime?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacha_bazi
"In December 2010 a cable made public by WikiLeaks revealed that foreign contractors from DynCorp had spent money on bacha bazi in northern Afghanistan. Afghan interior minister Mohammad Hanif Atmar requested that the US military assume control over DynCorp training centers in response, but the US embassy claimed that this was not "legally possible under the DynCorp contract".
No, he's a journalist reporting stuff governments don't like him reporting on a website they want shut down.
The rape claim is bogus. As is this 'wikileaks is illegal' statement from Ms Gillard.
Fake charges against journalists is nothing new.
...good luck with that.
Journalism is not treason, he did not rape, and being a 'self-aggrandizing douchebag' is not a crime, as you yourself can testify.
It's unpleasant but healthy to shine the light of truth on coverups. For example this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yo22QlP6NgQ
Also I don't understand the rest of your rant about pubes and basements. You would help yourself by making a cohesive argument.
Would prosecutors prosecute a woman who lies by saying that she is using pills and a man has sex with her on the condition that she is using pills? If not, this is a clear case of sexual discrimination of men, for which Sweden is notorious.
I suppose it was only a matter of time before he decided to blow his mouth off again.
It is actually Romney's proposal for healthcare reform (with some things thrown out because it was too communist for the Republicans to vote for if a Democrat was proposing it) that was installed.