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Assange: Google Is Not What It Seems
oxide7 (1013325) writes "In June 2011, Julian Assange received an unusual visitor: the chairman of Google, Eric Schmidt. They outlined radically opposing perspectives: for Assange, the liberating power of the Internet is based on its freedom and statelessness. For Schmidt, emancipation is at one with U.S. foreign policy objectives and is driven by connecting non-Western countries to Western companies and markets. These differences embodied a tug-of-war over the Internet's future that has only gathered force subsequently. Assange describes his encounter with Schmidt and how he came to conclude that it was far from an innocent exchange of views."
True nirvana! When will the rest of the world learn?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Mr. Assange, what you've just written is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having read it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.
>> the liberating power of the Internet is based on its freedom and statelessness
"In 1995!" says Triumph the Insult Comic Dog.
(Seriously, where do you begin. Server logs, cookies, magic URLs, IP lookups, etc.)
... compiling dossiers on everyone. Since in order to use the internet you need to use a search engine, a good idea is to look at you chrome browser history and note the title, time, where you visited, is there, then combine this with analytics and cookies (machine identification) remember this is the kind of shit and more they got behind closed doors. This will be used to pro-actively deny employment to people and 'screen' people for their political views/sites/news they visit/any health problems/etc. i.e. it allows corporations unprecedented insight into the flaws of our evolved nervous system and minds. We are not "free" in any way or form our minds were shaped by evolution and they have a lot of problems reasoning or perceiving reality, if in doubt see here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
They are trying to map political dissident to pre-emptively strike against political change using science and big data they are fervently trying to figure out how to regain their control, since they know media's days are numbered with newer generations. So they are learning techniques in controlling populations and manipulating public opinion on social media, to socially engineer how people think, etc. The reality is america has been the greatest success in propaganda in human history, most americans were hyper capitalist, virulently anti-communist for the last few decades and the upper class would like the working classes to keep voting against their own interests to keep their ill gotten wealth. So if you vote for D&R you are one of the illusioned and the elites aren't worried about you at all because you are politically illiterate just like they want. They want you all to vote democrats and republicans so as not to rock the boat. They don't want political change to manifest outside the political system (aka threat to corporate power).
This (mass surveillance) is just more part and parcel of state suppression of dissent against corporate interests. They're worried that the more people are going to wake up and corporate centers like the US and canada may be among those who also awaken. See this vid with Zbigniew Brzezinski, former United States National Security Advisor.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Look at the following graphs:
http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesa...
http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesa...
http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesa...
And then...
WIKILEAKS: U.S. Fought To Lower Minimum Wage In Haiti So Hanes And Levis Would Stay Cheap
http://www.businessinsider.com...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Free markets?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
http://www.amazon.com/Empire-I...
"We now live in two Americas. One—now the minority—functions in a print-based, literate world that can cope with complexity and can separate illusion from truth. The other—the majority—is retreating from a reality-based world into one of false certainty and magic. To this majority—which crosses social class lines, though the poor are overwhelmingly affected—presidential debate and political rhetoric is pitched at a sixth-grade reading level. In this “other America,” serious film and theater, as well as newspapers and books, are being pushed to the margins of society.
In the tradition of Chr
Well if you'd been holed-up in a small room for years under the threat of extradition (ulitmately) to some US holiday camp where waterboarding is considered a social activity, wouldn't your outlooks and perceptions have been somewhat altered by the experience?
Let's not forget that Assange, through his Wikileaks disclosures, has done a hell of a lot to wake the people of the world up to the nastiness of those who forget they are in the public service and instead believe they are rulers and demigods by right.
While Assange is open to criticism on many fronts, never forget that he *has* done a lot to help preserve what few freedoms we still have.
I more strongly criticise those who see the wrongs that have been done and do nothing to right them. That's the *vast* majority of the great unwashed out there.
Well if it isn't Slashdot's most favourite statist, Ben J. Fowler.
Maybe someone needs to explain to Assange that Google is a large, for-profit US corporation with access to huge amounts of data. Most people can figure out the rest of it from there.
Seriously, I tried reading the article (but I couldn't finish it) and I don't know what Assange thinks Google is, unless he's been deceived by the way the US government and the private sector pretend to be adversaries.
He's just the face and the bullseye on the target.
What you hear in the ear, preach from the rooftop Matthew 10.27b
>> He is not talking about "stateless" in the sense of functional programming languages that don't support variables and other forms of mutable state.
Neither was I. http://stackoverflow.com/quest...
TFA is for me to poop on.
...from the right, Eric Schmidt. and From the Left, Julian Assange and in the Crossfire, the Slashdot users....
I'm still lost on why Sweden, of all places, is more likely to deport Assange to the US than England is.
I mean fuck, The Pirate Bay, which is by far the worst enemy of the Hollywood owned US Government, has safe harbor there in many respects. Meanwhile England goes out of its way to block access to that site because, among other things, it offends the US Government.
Julian Assange is the internet equivalent of Kevin Trudeau. Both of them have their followers convinced that they are just innocent victims of the US Government, meanwhile both of them are big lying fucks not only to themselves, but all of their followers as well, and both of them would happily lie to and/or steal from anybody who supports them just for the sake of feeding their own ego.
Kevin Trudeau is currently serving a 10 year sentence, and I hope he disappears into oblivion there. Same with Assange, likewise, I don't know why anybody bothers writing articles about him.
At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought.
Seriously? I'm not sure you read the same thing I did. I especially found his attempts to understand his interviewers (in the opening paragraphs) to be unusually analytical and.....rational.
Certainly Assange holds different viewpoints than I do, but his points seemed more logic based than your post, for example.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
...WTF did I just read? I understood none of it. Or if I did understand it, then I understood this waaay before reading this long article. Google works with the US government? Nnnooo, you don't say! What next, Apple too!?? Come on, this is shit that we don't even have to find out by any other methods than just thinking logically these days.
Are you into having a life of freedom? Then start giving credit to all of those thoughts that you have about quitting that shitty job that you hate, and/or making that change in your own life as you see fit, and stop giving credit to all of the hype about governmental powers. People like Assange need the government to be wicked, it gives him a way to have fame.
There is no political solution, only a realistic one.
Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
His main points, as I understand them:
1) Eric Schmidt is getting involved in politics, and is becoming influential.
2) Google doesn't always follow "do no evil" but fanboys love Google anyway
3) Google is getting involved in government more than is healthy.
He has some other rambles about the Bilderbergs, and how the governments are secretly controlling world events, but his main points seam reasonable enough.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Powerful people associate with powerful people, including the government. Don't trust them.
*yawn*
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
I wish I could find out, but I don't have hours to read that. What was his point anyway?
I am from China. Assange is from Australia. Those of us who are not from the United States of America tend to have an advantage over those who were born and raised inside America because we were not indoctrinated with the Pledge of Allegiance throughout our childhood (into the teen years) but the Americans do
That is why when Assange said
For a man of systematic intelligence, Schmidtâ(TM)s politicsâ"such as I could hear from our discussionâ"were surprisingly conventional, even banal
I have to agree
Schmidt, no matter how smart he is, chooses to remain inside the box, and as one who stays inside the box can't see how bad the system that governs America has turned into
America used to be the one who fight for liberty. That was why I left China and went to America decades ago. Now? America is as bad as China in term of the suppression of liberty
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
I suspect Assange hasn't really done much these past year or so is because of Snowden's leaks. The leaks on NSA's illicit activities, and the U.S.'s response to them, have completely dwarfed every other whistleblowing discussion. At this point, more leaks would just be lost in the crowd.
It's also why Snowden's been fairly quiet too with only one or two revelations every so often. He's already got the ball rolling on discussions on government invasionof personal privacy, security audits, etc. People today are more aware of just how badly they've been violated by their government than ever. So long as that ball keeps rolling and doesn't stall, there's no need for him to give it a push.
Things are a shitshow anyway. Between Western Europe's fear or Putin despite their governments' reluctance to do anything about his land grabs, ISIS threatening to destabilize the Middle East, the ebola outbreak that will certainly affect everyone if it's not brought under control very soon, the riots in Hong Kong, and all the other usual stuff (drug cartels, extreme weather, etc.) there's strife in almost every part of the world. People really aren't going to be interested in what happens abroad if their own country is losing stability.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
As much as we love YouTube, its major mistake was not having a filter for copyrighted and non-meant-for-YouTube content, and as a result, the media empires get control of censoring of Google Search, and here's the challenge, can anybody make a pure-play Search Engine that doesn't get corrupted by other projects.
Under a claimed threat of extradition to the US.
There's no actual evidence of it and in fact extradition from Sweden is harder than from the UK.
Let's not forget that Assange is where he is by choice. He says he fears extradition to the US, but there's a lot of other possibilities too. He may just simply fear conviction.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
He's not in England. He's in Ecuador. The embassy is their sovereign soil, by international treaty. If the English police set foot in there to deport him to Sweden (as they would do if he left), that's an invastion of their territory.
The only threat has been the implied threat he created. They are happy to let him imprison himself in the Ecuadoran embassy and know with absolute certainty at some point in the future the president of Ecuador will change and the new one will probably throw him out. Then he will get taken to Sweden and whatever charges will eventually be resolved and he'll proclaim widely that the reason the US didn't put him in Guantanamo bay is because he scared them out of it.
He's never going to be prosecuted or even arrested by the US. They are happy to let him think he is though, because of the extreme measures he's taken to avoid it including breaking English law which might end up putting him in an English jail.
And lets not forget the naive English supporter he fucked over that lost their house because they put it up as collateral to bail him our of jail and then he violated his bail. I don't know why anyone would be stupid enough to support him considering how he likes to fuck people over, literally and figuratively.
"Whatever makes Google a âoekey member of the Defense Industrial Base,â it is not recruitment campaigns pushed out through Google AdWords or soldiers checking their Gmail."
That was a quote from an Adam Sandler movie....
While I do think the article is too long, I think some of the actions of Google are to be expected. Microsoft is also lobbying massively in Washington, and Google has to put some counterweight on that - one could think.
But what Assange lists about Google Ideas is disturbing.
And when I look at the Google Ideas website, it seems to be a very valid point. And even more disturbing.
Yet I do believe he thinks the CEO of Google has more power than he has in reality. And I might be naive. But, seriously, they should look better into what Jared Cohen is doing with the money of Google, there certainly is something fishy about this guy, his connection and interpretation of 'do no evil', thanks to Assange for pointing that out!
You people in other countries are just as indoctrinated (on average; some are less and some more so, I imagine) as we are here in the States. You acting superior because you're from somewhere else is equivalent to an American acting superior because he's an American.
He's not in England. He's in Ecuador.
No he isn't. He is in the Ecuadorian embassy, in London, England.
The embassy is their sovereign soil, by international treaty.
No it isn't.
Contrary to popular belief, diplomatic missions do not enjoy full extraterritorial status and are not sovereign territory of the represented state.
If the English police set foot in there to deport him to Sweden (as they would do if he left), that's an invastion of their territory.
No it isn't.
It would break a very important international treaty though, and likely
lead to lots of diplomatic problems.
Don't forget the internet was invented by DARPA. Just like missiles and nukes and subs and carriers, the internet is a weapon. It is slow, but very sure to penetrate and destroy dictatorships and repressive governments worldwide. It's slow enough to say that we just deployed it recently. Even so, a number of governments have already fallen or been pressured by it; we see repressive regimes like China throwing all kinds of defenses up against it. I don't see how even China can stand against it for very long.
Assange gets this, at least on some level. That would mean America wins, and he sees America as the enemy. Oh well, suck it Assange. The business of America is business. The only real way to do business, is when people are free, and can spend their money on stuff they want. That's us winning. (Not to excuse our recent spate on NSA abuses; they are going to always try to do that, and it's up to us voters to keep them in check.)
I'm still lost on why Sweden, of all places, is more likely to deport Assange to the US than England is.
Everyone is surprised by it, but
I mean fuck, The Pirate Bay, which is by far the worst enemy of the Hollywood owned US Government, has safe harbor there in many respects.
And the people behind it are serving their time in prison although the prosecutor claimed that they didn't break any Swedish laws just a month before they were arrested. The justice department got a mail from the US government that told them to deal with TPB and suddenly the violent inmates of a high security prison wonders what the fuck a little non-violent nerd is doing there.
There is also other incidents that shows that Sweden is handing over people to the US and bending over both ways when asked to.
What they get out of it nobody knows.
This is one of those cases when theory and practice doesn't follow each other. In theory Sweden should be safer for Assange but practice has shown that that isn't the case.
No shit shirlock. But why do you think he's hiding there? Avoiding extradition to the US has nothing to do with it.
Avoiding extradition to the US has everything to do with Assange hiding in the Ecuador embassy. Swedish prisons aren't the hell holes in the US or Australia. Even if Assange had an irrational fear of being labelled a sex offender felon, it would not outweigh the price he is paying being holed up in the Ecuador embassy.
Its all about not going to a country that will extradite him to the US over a trumped up security issue. Assange does not have the legal rights an American citizen has. He can be put into Guantanamo, or any other black ops prison, because the US does not respect universal notions of due process. If the US did, Guantanamo couldn't exist.
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
1) Your assurances are meaningless.
2) Look at what happened to Kevin Mitnick. Because the American public had such a poor understanding of hacking and the level of threat posed by hacking, people though Mitnick had to be placed behind bars to keep America (corporations) safe. Because the American legal system is much more complex and byzantine than the simplified mythology propagated to its citizens, Kevin had to spend many years in a medium security jail before even going to trial, to optimize his chances of either beating the conviction, or reducing the maximum penalty. What actually happened was that the technology moved so fast, and the public's miniscule understanding of hacking was modified ("Why worry about some jerk that went on a computer joyride, when hackers are stealing American intellectual property and money from the safety of Russia or China"), it eventually became cost effective for the US DOJ to deescalate the witchhunt they were making over Mitnick.
The point being that as long as organizations exist to reveal information the US government prefers to conceal, the security apparatus of the US will treat those organizations as national security threats. This even sort of includes legitimate news organizations like the NY Times, UK Guardian, etc. They are captive to the US government. As long as they operate within the laws defined by the judicial branch, and "play ball", they aren't going to get the Assange treatment. No one like Assange or Snowden can assume they are beyond the reach or interest of the US government.
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
Avoiding extradition to the US has everything to do with Assange hiding in the Ecuador embassy.
Ok before you go any further, consider that both Swedish AND international law have both long established that in order for Sweden to extradite him to the US, the UK government at this point also has to approve of it.
Also consider this:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...
And furthermore, if this is all about freedom of the press, then why the fuck is he seeking assylum from a country that has a terrible track record of it?
http://en.rsf.org/ecuador.html
It's "Don't be Evil".
~15 years ago, Google was "Chaotic Neutral" (openly disruptive, with both lawful and lawless tendencies).
Today, they're more "Neutral Neutral" (they still enjoy being disruptive, but they've been reined in by self-preservation and forced to pay lip service to lawfulness).
Twenty years from now, they'll probably be "Lawful Neutral", with increasingly-frequent side trips into "Lawful Evil" territory (which they'll rationalize and publicly blame on government regulations, even when those regulations are more of a pretense than a legally-binding order backed up by overwhelming firepower and force).
The real danger isn't Eric Schmidt. It's his successor's successor, who (more likely than not) will be a bland, Wall Street-approved CEO with a completely conventional background who'll contentedly fill his role of making Google the government's favorite bitch... as long as he can invoice the feds for the effort, eliminate R&D, outsource everything to Nigeria, and prop up the stock price with annual layoffs and the sale of a division or two, just like every other major corporation in America that's owned primarily by risk-averse institutional investors run by CEOs who went to the same elite universities.
Well, destroying large corporations should be good for small and medium businesses. You just kind of sold me on "risk-averse institutional investors".
but his points seemed more logic based than your post, for example.
Not sure if you're aware, but the post you're referring to is actually a quote from an Adam Sandler movie.
Just to give you some idea of what you're trying to reason with.
He's not in another country. Read the entire post:
"That was why I left China and went to America decades ago."
His observation isn't based on domestic propaganda or nationalism and an inability to consider perspectives outside his only cultural upbringing.
You're condescendingly dismissing the perspective of an expat who came to America looking for Freedom and Liberty. When expats ask for a refund, that's a good sign your marketing is better than your product.
If your neighbor's dog spits out the slop you feed your pet, it raises the question: "is the neighbor's dog picky? Or is my dog just used to food that tastes like shit?"
Its all about not going to a country that will extradite him to the US over a trumped up security issue. Assange does not have the legal rights an American citizen has. He can be put into Guantanamo, or any other black ops prison, because the US does not respect universal notions of due process. If the US did, Guantanamo couldn't exist.
Wrong. Guantanamo exists because others insist on bringing their insanity here so they can "rule the world'. If the US actually didn't respect universal notions of due process there wouldn't be ANY prisons outside the US, we would simply execute our problems. Russian and Chinese rendition camps exist because they DON"T respect due process. They don't have those problems because they are known for killing their enemies of state. Why is Snowden in Russia? So he can't go to Guantanamo? NO. So he's can;t be killed by one of our NSA agents? Not entirely. He's there because Putin enjoys poking at Our administration. If the next works with him, Snowden's visa won't be renewed, If Snowden had done to them what he did to us, we would have never hard of him, he'd be dead. TL;DR We don't kill our problems like Russia and China, hense Guantanamo.
You're welcome.
If you want a libertarian Utopia, fuck off to Somalia. You'll be allowed to play with your guns there.
So a country half controlled by Muslim terrorists and the other familial warlords and real pirates is a libertarian Utopia? Hitting the pipe a bit too hard, eh?
I'm still lost on why Sweden, of all places, is more likely to deport Assange to the US than England is.
Why else are they going to such extraordinary lengths to obtain him? There are no charges, and Sweden refuses to question him in the UK.
The UK is spending millions of pounds on a case where even the allegations do not add up to anything that would be a crime in the UK.
If you think Assange has no cause for fear, read this:
In December 2001 Swedish police ... two Egyptians who had been seeking asylum in Sweden. The police took them to Bromma airport in Stockholm, and then stood aside as masked alleged CIA operatives cut their clothes from their bodies, inserted drugged suppositories in their anuses, and dressed them in diapers and overalls, handcuffed and chained them and put them on an executive jet with American registration N379P. They were flown to Egypt, where they were imprisoned, beaten, and tortured
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E...
Have gnu, will travel.
Eric Schmidt was born in Washington, D.C., where his father had worked as a professor and economist for the Nixon Treasury.
In 1979, Schmidt headed out West to Berkeley, where he received his Ph.D. before joining Stanford/ Berkeley spin-off Sun Microsystems in 1983.
Sun had significant contracts with the U.S. government, but it was not until he was in Utah as CEO of Novell that records show Schmidt strategically engaging Washington’s overt political class. Federal campaign finance records show that on January 6, 1999, Schmidt donated two lots of $1,000 to the Republican senator for Utah, Orrin Hatch. On the same day Schmidt’s wife, Wendy, is also listed giving two lots of $1,000 to Senator Hatch.
By the start of 2001, over a dozen other politicians and PACs, including Al Gore, George W. Bush, Dianne Feinstein, and Hillary Clinton, were on the Schmidts’ payroll, in one case for $100,000.
This shows a bit more than "getting involved in politics".
As for item 2 and 3, a large portion of the article is describing Google's "Think/Do Tank" which operates way beyond "do no evil". The groups has potential involvement in numerous nefarious activities, and numerous connections to the US State Department and other US Officials.
Your last statement is a complete farce, and I'd suggest reading the article and actually studying what the Bilderberg conference is about, as opposed to the blanket dismissal without evidence. There has been plenty of great journalism done on this conference, and no it's not just some cool hotel hangout.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
By 2013, Eric Schmidt—who had become publicly over-associated with the Obama White House—was more politic. Eight Republicans and eight Democrats were directly funded, as were two PACs. That April, $32,300 went to the National Republican Senatorial Committee. A month later the same amount, $32,300, headed off to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Why Schmidt was donating exactly the same amount of money to both parties is a $64,600 question.
Well, I don't believe this is a question at all. This demonstrates very well what people have been saying for years. The R and D candidates are merely props put up by the same "elites" so that people get the illusion that they are really voting for something. I'm guessing that Schmidt was more sloppy than the better players making it this easy to see, and that is usually related to ego.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Avoiding extradition to the US has nothing to do with it.
Say what? The UK will not extradite anyone to a country where they have a reasonable chance of receiving the death penalty, Sweden has no such qualms. When the UK decided to extradite him to Sweden he moved into the Ecuador embassy to prevent that happening.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Before posting next time, at least glimpse at an article to know who Mitnick was. Then try not to confuse him with Aaron Schwartz, who is a totally separate person and circumstance.
Your opinion of all 3 of those people is exclusively based on a non-existent fantasy land.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
If the US really wanted him they would have had him one way or another a long time ago. He was and still is nothing but a bag boy who tried to manage the release of information in a way that best supported his political agenda and self image. He attempted to replace the state press agencies with one more in line with his political agenda that had just as much right and wrong as the governments justifications. And water boarding is old school. I mean there is like 4 or 5 people that had to endure this procedure. And you only get 4 or 5 people if you exclude the 1000's that under went the same procedure for training purposes. It's much more effective to dress someone up in an orange jump suit, force them to read a prepared statement while on their knees, and then sawing their fucking heads off so people know something really serious was being revealed. And before you try to fix a "wrong" you should first make sure you have actually identified a "wrong": and not some personal hangup created using hearsay, rank speculations, and pseudo intellectual bullshit.
Why else are they going to such extraordinary lengths to obtain him? There are no charges, and Sweden refuses to question him in the UK.
The UK is spending millions of pounds on a case where even the allegations do not add up to anything that would be a crime in the UK.
Not this bullshit again - there doesn't have to be charges (the extradition judge explained why), Sweden doesn't have to question him in the UK (the extradition judge explained why) and the UK extradition judge already affirmed that all the extradition charges are indeed crimes in the UK. You people really need to read up on the situation you are trying to ridicule, because your standard lines make you look stupid.
He would be more comfortable if the permission of the Ecuador govt. is also required, like it is right now. I doubt he wants to rely on the UK not granting permission
Nope. That's a myth
He's protected by treaty agreements; not territory.
make money != be the Government
Seems they do have qualms. Sweden takes its international reputation on Human Rights seriously.
If Assange was in British custody and the USA made an extradition request, he would be extradited unless the crime that the USA wants to charge him with carries the death penalty. Even if there was a possibility of the death penalty, I expect we would extradite him if the Americans gave us an assurance that he won't be executed.
Note that the British did have Assange in custody for a bit and the USA made no attempt to extradite him. I don't think they have anything on him. Assange is currently holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy because he thinks he might get convicted of rape.
All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
Sweden doesn't have to question him in the UK
You miss the point: Of course it is all legal. But Sweden could also easily question him in the UK if that was what they really wanted. (Plenty of precedent.)
Their stated motives makes no sense. Of course the whole thing is purely political. You'd have to be incredibly naive to believe the extradition is about sexual allegations from ex-lovers.
http://www.baidu.com/
All rites reversed 2010
I'm not missing the point - Sweden does not have to question him in the UK, that's their prerogative. And the extradition judge agrees with Sweden on this because it was one of Assanges defence teams points that he specifically rejected in their appeal.
The whole "question him in the UK" thing is nothing but a load of bollocks pro-Assange followers use to cloud the issue.
And I don't have to be naive at all - if the US wanted him, they could have had him from the UK much easier than from Sweden. So why the hop to Sweden if the final destination is reachable just as easily from the UK? That's where pro-Assange followers fail to make sense.
Even Assanges *defence* witness in the extradition hearings said that follow on extradition to the US COULD NOT HAPPEN. And yet pro-Assange followers ignore what Assanges own witnesses say!
Read the ruling, its quite informative.
http://www.aklagare.se/PageFil...
No shit shirlock.
Hard to take seriously someone who has never heard of Sherlock Holmes. What are you, eight years old?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R...
No other environment was as absurd to facilitate creation of jokes as Soviet Russia.
--Coder
Legally I think you are wrong, in that the UK could not extradite for something policital like wikileaks. Sweden could "lend" him to the US to face charges as I understand it rather than extradite.
You are for sure wrong on a practical level though, as the UK has fundementally failed to extradite the guy to sweden let alone the US. In Sweden he would not have been out on on bail, but in jail so the claiming assilum in the embassy is not possible.
It's not a "trumped up security issue".
The Espionage Act of 1917, found under US Code Title 18 Part I Chapter 37, has a section on Disclosure of Classified Information. http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/798
It seems to me that it is generally agreed upon that he had done this on his website. I did not witness it. But if so, then finding him guilty of Espionage will be a slam-dunk.
I would only point out that the poverty hole the People's Republic of China dragged all those individuals was created directly by poor PRC policies back in the 1960s and 1970s, so if you give them credit for that, you also have to give the United States tremendous credit for ending slavery and desegregation. That, or neither can claim an advantage in that regard.
I believe that, as far as a complacent company, or an agent in a company, is able to filter the information that people get from the other nodes in their network, the "powers that be" (make that wealth, US goverment, US agencies, whatever fits your bill) can even influence political changes in masses.
That is why the discussion about metadata was so stupid! Politically, metadata IS the ingredient that was missing. One does make political opinions widely available, but metadata allows someone with insight to the network to map influences, make profiles.
And as these two research papers explain, alter their impact in the political process of the mass. It's not the people who are controlled by social networks, but masses surely are:
Exploiting Network Structure in Enhancing Diusion of Complex Contagions: http://www.albany.edu/~ravi/pd...
Effects of Opposition on the Diffusion of Complex Contagions in Social Networks: An Empirical Study: http://link.springer.com/chapt...
Bear in mind that we do not know how edgerank selects information. It could well highlight favourable nodes and muffle problematic ones.
Interestingly, in recent years social movements favourable to western status quo have thrilled in social networks (think maidan, arab "spring", opposition to left leaning governments in South America, now Hong Kong revolts) yet the ones that oppose them have a much larger footprint in the real world than in the virtual world (Chile student revolts, Mexican "I am 132", spanish resistance to shock cuts, that gathered !4million people physically!, Occupy Wall Street). I really wonder if this asymmetry is random or coincidence
Today, they're more "Neutral Neutral"
So they're Druids? Actually, if we could confine Schmidt to Scimitars and Wooden shields that might be a good thing. But, they also get some nasty spells that I'm sure would work wonders on K Street...
Twenty years from now, they'll probably be "Lawful Neutral", with increasingly-frequent side trips into "Lawful Evil" territory
Agreed, Google as The Scarlet Brotherhood.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R... Classic problem with companies and industries being able to influence their regulators.
We do "kill our problems" without any due process. We use drones and other people to do our dirty work for us.
...and you, Sir,,, are an anonymous coward.
Dear Microlimp: I give you 2 valid product keys for win7 and you reject both of them. Piss off you wankers!!!
Exception to that rule: A joke from Russia goes as follows; Q: What do Russian women put behind their ears to attract men? A: Their knees.. Hey, I'm just passing it along..
It's that the tech/cybersecurity companies are actively trying to participate in the shaping of global policies under the belief that the free market is a valid force for doing so. THAT is the scary part, the belief that something so mercurial as the 'free market' should have a hand in shaping the actions of government and policy makers. Furthermore, not only is the concept wrong-headed but those perpetrating it, do so without understanding the wrongness of it all; they believe what they are doing is not evil, even though by other measures, it is.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
Wow, the crazy is strong with this one!
So tell me now, would you consider a woman being criminally charged for being raped a trumped up charge?
How could you? The law clearly states that the woman is at fault and to be punished!
Just because there is a law that says something is illegal does not make it legitimate to punish someone for breaking that law. Those who wrote and voted for the law are the ones who belong in Guantanamo.
Earlier this week, the NY Times reported that a group of city and leaders, with NYC public advocate Letitia James at the helm, are pushing for a commitment from Comcast to provide free broadband to the city’s public housing and to extend its low-cost Internet Essentials plan (which was created as a condition of the NBC deal). While New York City might be the center of finance and commerce in the U.S., about 1/3 of households don’t have an Internet connection, highlighting the huge “digital divide” between the city’s wealthy residents and those who can’t afford broadband service.In addition to the free service for public housing, the group wants gratis access at shelters for the city’s homeless and its victims of domestic violence.
Looks like, after our tax dollars have been providing little blue pills to the less fortunate, now they are closing the loop by providing free access to pr0n as well. Must be very good to have that "Mission Accomplished" feeling.
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The more I know people, the more I love animals