I'm sorry, before I can take your post seriously, I require full disclosure, in the form of all of your personal information, Anonymous Coward.
Please submit it for open discussion, and then we can continue talking about how the only way to discuss anything is with all information being freely available to the public.
Show of hands: how many people here have bothered to read all of the "original documents" released before reaching their conclusions about what the US government & military are doing over in Afghanistan and Iraq?
Show of hands: how many people have read a few bits and pieces of the leaks, or just read a couple stories about the wikileaks "scandal," searching for evidence that supports their own preconceived notions?
I actually asked a few friends - altogether representing the army, marines, and air force - who have seen duty in Afghanistan and Iraq about this: was it some sort of violation of policy to put the person's name into the report in this system, instead of some sort of other identifier, and the response has been unanimous. They have, to a person, responded along the lines of: No, you're entering the name into a CLASSIFIED system. There is no expectation that this data will be seen by anybody who does NOT have access to the system, and so what would be the point?
Maybe that policy will change after this, but this argument is sort of like complaining that you can't hide the data in an encrypted file from people who you've given the key to decrypt it.
Maximum sentence under the UCMJ for the charges he's facing is 52 years. It's possible that some will be dropped, or he won't be found guilty on some - or all - charges, and receive less.
He's awaiting an Article 32 hearing right now - similar to a Grand Jury, in which the determination is made whether or not enough evidence is available to proceed with a court martial. Charges could be changed, or dropped as a result of that, as well.
My expectation based on what I've heard of the case so far is that there will be a court martial, and that he'll get a pretty stiff sentence as a result - maybe less than 52 years, though, since that would require evidence that he's guilty on all charges.
He needs a legal contributions fund, but I doubt money can buy your way out of Leavenworth, or whatever hellhole he is in.
You mean the detention facility on the Marine Corps base in Quantico, VA where he's awaiting trial? Yeah, real hellhole. He's probably getting 3 bland meals a day, without any crushed red pepper for his potatoes.
I've challenged people repeatedly to show what, exactly, Wikileaks has shown us in these data dumps that constitutes coverups of war crimes - Assange claims war crimes, but can't point to any entries that support that claim? Suspicious, it's almost as if he has an agenda that he's pursuing that is only tangentially concerned with whether or not the facts support it.
The prevailing/. worldview seems to say that wikileaks is the only group that has the balls to tell us about the war crimes happening in Afghanistan at the hands of NATO soldiers; the MSM is complicit with our opaque government and military in hiding details of anything that might disturb people. And yet, despite all these claims, we see plenty of instances of stories like this one, in the mainstream media, which certainly depict atrocities, and active efforts by the military to investigate and prosecute those responsible.
Yet the/. memes suggest that stories like these don't exist.
If there is evidence in the data wikileaks is releasing, it should absolutely point it out when they release it. If there is no evidence to support the claim that the data "shows evidence of war crimes," then they should refrain from editorializing about the content, and simply publish the data and let qualified people analyze the data. I'm sick of hearing about how "Wikileaks can't possibly vet all the data, they're just volunteers!" coupled with "Wikileaks is showing evidence of war crimes." You can't make assertions about the content of the data, then fail to provide any evidence IN the data to back up your assertions because "you just don't have the time to review it all - but I know it's in there." That's called jumping to conclusions. Whether or not the data they've released constitutes the evidence they imply is still very much in question, and in the meantime, real reporters & investigative journalists are breaking stories like I just linked above, with people actually being charged & prosecuted for the crimes they commit.
The leaks of data have value. Crying wolf before people who can actually understand & interpret the data have had the opportunity to actually review the data and analyze it is stupid, and will only undermine the credibility of Wikileaks.
Please reconcile this with Mr. Assange's reiteration that he "never said the CIA was behind it," and that he has explicitly disavowed any intent to say that it's a government conspiracy?
"If no documents exist, that's just proof that there is a conspiracy. If documents exist, then we have proof!"
You've left no room for there to be any other alternative - namely that there *is* no conspiracy, and that this is just a misunderstanding between Assange & his lady-friends, or a result of Assange being a legitimate creep.
That Martin can steal a look at Kate, and you can do your best to write about it, but it will never be the same as seeing it, or being part of the live scene.
Numerous studies of the benefits of visualization exercises would differ with this conclusion, and have shown that visualization exercises can absolutely improve "real world" performance, both alone, and as part of a "real world" training regimen. And the visualization is exactly the imagining that can go on when reading a book - imagining yourself, projecting yourself, into a scenario. Thinking about how you would handle certain things, how you would respond, what you would do, or say, or think, if you were in the place of someone else in the story, or scenario. Of course it's easier to to imagine yourself in a role you have lived, but that doesn't mean there is no value in stretching the visualization and thinking beyond the specific things you've lived.
But sometimes that "not skipping" transforms into "force-feeding", and that is bad,
I would agree with that - but I think people also tend to say "anything I didn't really like was force feeding," and engage in a bit of revisionist history when they look back at their schooling. Developing competence in any skill requires practice - again, numerous studies have shown that with many (and perhaps even most) skills, number of hours spent practicing that skill have a quite strong relationship with development of expertise in that skill. Sure, there will always be the outliers who just "get" how to sit down and fix a car, program a computer, play an instrument, speak a language... but for the vast majority of people, the more you practice and drill, the better you perform. Pairing this with the studies that have shown that people who tend to agree with the notion that "practice makes perfect" learn better than people who believe "some people are just naturally talented at things," and you get a pretty compelling picture that suggests that that the "boring repetition" and some level of 'force-feeding' is a necessary part of the learning process.
If we can agree that education has, as its ultimate goal, the development of a core set of skills (above and beyond the "Jimmy's gonna be a mechanic" skills) required to 'succeed' in life (for some negotiable definition of 'succeed'), you have to sort of force the issue, and drill, repeat, and practice. This means that yes, some kids are going to absolutely hate every moment of their math class. But they should still be expected to develop a certain basic level of competency. In much the same way, the kid who's a math whiz should be expected to develop a certain basic level of proficiency in written and verbal communication. I went to school with a lot of engineers who - frankly - sucked at written communication. Surprise surprise, they generally felt that their English classes were a complete drag, hated them, and wished they could have skipped 'all that stupid reading and writing bullshit, since it doesn't matter anyway - I'm a programmer."
Now, if by force-feeding, you mean "kids should have the life crushed out of them until they understand high level calculus, can write world-class poetry, and deliver a speech to put Martin Luther King to shame," sure, I agree - force feeding is bad. But drill & repetition has a place in education, even though it sometimes feels (to the kids) like a "boring waste of time" that's just "force-feeding them a bunch of shit they'll never use."
They certainly do that; however nobody judges them on accuracy of their act. Literature studies do.
And this is why I indicated that the teacher should be there to guide them in these things - help them learn to project & empathize & imagine within realistic constraints.
Traditionally it was one of teacher's responsibilities to discover what the child has leaning toward.
So you were saying something about communication? There is precious little of that in those books. Implied inferences rule.
You realize that "implied inferences" and "understanding body language" and "nonverbal communication" are a major part of how we communicate, as human beings, right? So tell me again why learning empathy, understanding how to infer things, picking up on and interpreting nonverbal cues, and so on aren't skills that can be taught in books where "Implied inferences rule"?
The post I was responding to wasn't saying "Don't read Shakespeare, read Andre Norton." The post I was responding to was saying, "Don't read Shakespeare, learn how to be a better mechanic" -- in other words, we should skip things that are "non-essential" to the trade we've decided a kid has the most aptitude for, and simply focus on making them the best cog we possibly can.
My basic response to that is: By studying Shakespeare (or, for sake of the overly literal-minded, WHICHEVER author you feel is appropriate literature for a high schooler), one becomes a better person, and by as an incidental benefit, a better mechanic. Though for what it's worth, I think you vastly underestimate the mental capacity of high schoolers by claiming that they need "easy to see" depictions of good and evil, and heroes they can easily identify with, and that they can't handle the challenge of stepping outside their own experiences to imagine what someone else's life might be like. Sure, they may still need guidance, but a 15, 16, 17, 18 year old high schooler is capable of handling "difficult" topics, even if they have no direct experience of those topics.
But a school student can't relive a life of a 40-year old man who was a filthy rich, married aristocrat, with friends and enemies in high places.
It's called imagination, or empathy. You may not get it right, but you'd be surprised at how much a student *can* get right. Shit, 5 year olds play cops and robbers all the time, and invent all kinds of imaginary games and scenarios. It's what they do. Should we stifle that because they might not "get it right"? It's part of the learning process to project, and if you go off-course, the teacher should be there to help guide you back on track, and discuss with you where you went off course, and how. As I said, I think you're underestimating the imaginative ability of young people.
As an example of well-constructed communication & written thought? Every part.
You see, we can learn from examples, even if we don't speak now like people did in Shakespearean times.
But if it makes you feel better, let's eliminate Shakespeare from the curriculum, but agree that reading well-written poetry, prose, and drama from modern writers has an educational benefit far beyond how quickly you can rebuild a V6 Toyota engine?
And good luck learning anything from a technical manual in the brave new world where mechanics don't have to learn to express their thoughts in written or verbal form. After all, if fundamental literacy is irrelevant to mechanics, who's going to be able to write down how to fix the engine, and who's going to be able to read it even if someone did?
By which you mean, zero internal moving parts, and 4 external, right? The four external being: On/Off, Volume up/down rocker, home button, and orientation lock switch?
Will iPads obsolete over time? *Of course* they will. New models will come out with new features and capabilities. That doesn't mean the other ones will automatically break. I still have a perfectly serviceable original-model iPhone. I have a Macbook Pro that was purchased in early 2006 that works just fine still. I have an iPod (40GB monochrome display) that was purchased in late 2004, and which travels with me everywhere I go - still going strong.
You know, I generally consider myself "libertarian-leaning," but I think you're oversimplifying this to a frightening extent in your pursuit of an ideal.
Why should mechanics read Shakespeare? Because communication is important - probably even more so than the mechanical knowledge, the basic skills of every day interactions - talking, reading, writing - are critical skills for living. Reading other people's writing, especially those who are good communicators, educates you in how to communicate more effectively. Writing your own thoughts down, and practicing expressing your thoughts & opinions has value, no matter how much you, personally, hated English class back in high school
You see, nobody exists in a completely insular little vacuum. Mechanics don't wake up, pork their wife (also a mechanic), and send their kids off to mechanic school (mechanics-to-be!), then go to the garage, where they do mechanic stuff all day without talking to a single other soul. Then come home, eat some Mechanic Cuisine tv dinners, and go to bed, and maybe if they're lucky, pork their mechanic wife again.
A purely utilitarian view of people like you've expressed - where we're all specialized widgets who have "no need" for any learning outside their narrow specialized niche is engaging in overly reductionist thinking, and it's probably not a society that any of us would care to be a part of for long.
The program is part of a study funded by Houghton-Mifflin. It is entirely likely that they are footing the bill for the hardware on this study because if it proves to be more effective than traditional books, they will be able to make a lot of money providing ipads & digital content to school systems.
Apple may also be donating a significant portion of the hardware - I don't see anything in the article to indicate that, but getting a study supporting your device as a "more effective textbook" for young, impressionable students? That'd be worth a short-term investment of a few hundred units of the hardware if it means you can start pimping your device to the thousands of educational institutions across the country afterwards.
I doubt that the school districts participating just went out and decided to buy 400 ipads for shits and grins with the kids' milk money.
What's interesting is a lot of other folks who are supporters got this implication as well.
Yep, and many of those same supporters are here arguing that it STILL is a CIA plot, and that the US Government is the "most likely" source of the allegations.
There is NO other conclusion that a reasonable person can infer from his statements in the context of this issue. I'm sorry, but when even the majority of your supporters is parroting the "TEH CIA DUN IT, MY HEROZ R INNOCENTZ!" line, you have to be willfully ignorant (or intensely, mind-numbingly stupid) to now claim that his statements have been suggesting this is anything but a US-orchestrated plot to discredit him.
But I do understand why he'd want to distance himself from those insinuations: they make him look like a raving tin-foil-hat-wearing nut.
I already quoted specific statements that have been attributed to Assange himself above.
Stop trying to pretend you don't understand exactly what he meant, and didn't, in fact, agree with it.
Why else would you be so vociferously arguing that Reporters Without Border is a "front" for right-wing and neo-con propaganda here, in response to an article talking about how RWB has joined in the criticism of Assange? Otherwise, why would it matter one jot if it's a "front" for US propaganda, of what relevance is that to its criticism of him, unless you believe that the US is... out to get him?
Oh, snap, did I just link your own comments back to you? Please do try to explain.
Assange knew he was marked; why else would Wikileaks post a digital dead-mans switch? Given that level of concern and wariness, I doubt he'd be "full of himself".
So you're saying Assange posted this *because* he felt he had nothing to fear from the CIA? Who did he know he was marked by then? What exactly DID he have to fear, if not the CIA?
You are arguing that it was CIA involvement, after Assange himself has said "I've never said it was the CIA after me." He didn't need to, the brainless Assange supporters will do it for him.
And frankly, I find your use of Occam's Razor to be incredibly humorous, given that you're using it to assert that a worldwide conspiracy to smear one man is "far more likely" than a simple "dude pissed off a girl who called the police."
My money's on the simpler explanation - that is, the one that doesn't involve a network of spies, payoffs, bribes, and international pressure & manipulation, and instead, involves a single guy and a single girl, where either: 1) the guy is a creep; or 2) there's a misunderstanding and the girl goes to the police in anger.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sorry, before I can take your post seriously, I require full disclosure, in the form of all of your personal information, Anonymous Coward.
Please submit it for open discussion, and then we can continue talking about how the only way to discuss anything is with all information being freely available to the public.
I mean, fair is fair, right?
Out of curiosity...
Show of hands: how many people here have bothered to read all of the "original documents" released before reaching their conclusions about what the US government & military are doing over in Afghanistan and Iraq?
Show of hands: how many people have read a few bits and pieces of the leaks, or just read a couple stories about the wikileaks "scandal," searching for evidence that supports their own preconceived notions?
I actually asked a few friends - altogether representing the army, marines, and air force - who have seen duty in Afghanistan and Iraq about this: was it some sort of violation of policy to put the person's name into the report in this system, instead of some sort of other identifier, and the response has been unanimous. They have, to a person, responded along the lines of: No, you're entering the name into a CLASSIFIED system. There is no expectation that this data will be seen by anybody who does NOT have access to the system, and so what would be the point?
Maybe that policy will change after this, but this argument is sort of like complaining that you can't hide the data in an encrypted file from people who you've given the key to decrypt it.
Maximum sentence under the UCMJ for the charges he's facing is 52 years. It's possible that some will be dropped, or he won't be found guilty on some - or all - charges, and receive less.
He's awaiting an Article 32 hearing right now - similar to a Grand Jury, in which the determination is made whether or not enough evidence is available to proceed with a court martial. Charges could be changed, or dropped as a result of that, as well.
My expectation based on what I've heard of the case so far is that there will be a court martial, and that he'll get a pretty stiff sentence as a result - maybe less than 52 years, though, since that would require evidence that he's guilty on all charges.
You mean the detention facility on the Marine Corps base in Quantico, VA where he's awaiting trial? Yeah, real hellhole. He's probably getting 3 bland meals a day, without any crushed red pepper for his potatoes.
I've challenged people repeatedly to show what, exactly, Wikileaks has shown us in these data dumps that constitutes coverups of war crimes - Assange claims war crimes, but can't point to any entries that support that claim? Suspicious, it's almost as if he has an agenda that he's pursuing that is only tangentially concerned with whether or not the facts support it.
The prevailing /. worldview seems to say that wikileaks is the only group that has the balls to tell us about the war crimes happening in Afghanistan at the hands of NATO soldiers; the MSM is complicit with our opaque government and military in hiding details of anything that might disturb people. And yet, despite all these claims, we see plenty of instances of stories like this one, in the mainstream media, which certainly depict atrocities, and active efforts by the military to investigate and prosecute those responsible.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/09/08/eveningnews/main6847172.shtml
Yet the /. memes suggest that stories like these don't exist.
If there is evidence in the data wikileaks is releasing, it should absolutely point it out when they release it. If there is no evidence to support the claim that the data "shows evidence of war crimes," then they should refrain from editorializing about the content, and simply publish the data and let qualified people analyze the data. I'm sick of hearing about how "Wikileaks can't possibly vet all the data, they're just volunteers!" coupled with "Wikileaks is showing evidence of war crimes." You can't make assertions about the content of the data, then fail to provide any evidence IN the data to back up your assertions because "you just don't have the time to review it all - but I know it's in there." That's called jumping to conclusions. Whether or not the data they've released constitutes the evidence they imply is still very much in question, and in the meantime, real reporters & investigative journalists are breaking stories like I just linked above, with people actually being charged & prosecuted for the crimes they commit.
The leaks of data have value. Crying wolf before people who can actually understand & interpret the data have had the opportunity to actually review the data and analyze it is stupid, and will only undermine the credibility of Wikileaks.
But that requires you to leave the basement, shave, and go out in public. Around icky people. For some on slashdot, that might not be an option...
Never mind that - I want to know where the presidency of George Bush got a fucking time machine!
Is it an apple device? iTime? It must be!
I never denied they exist, I said it is unlikely to be the case in this instance.
Learn to read.
Wow, they incorporated?! When did that happen?
Please reconcile this with Mr. Assange's reiteration that he "never said the CIA was behind it," and that he has explicitly disavowed any intent to say that it's a government conspiracy?
What? You can't?
See what you just did there?
"If no documents exist, that's just proof that there is a conspiracy. If documents exist, then we have proof!"
You've left no room for there to be any other alternative - namely that there *is* no conspiracy, and that this is just a misunderstanding between Assange & his lady-friends, or a result of Assange being a legitimate creep.
Numerous studies of the benefits of visualization exercises would differ with this conclusion, and have shown that visualization exercises can absolutely improve "real world" performance, both alone, and as part of a "real world" training regimen. And the visualization is exactly the imagining that can go on when reading a book - imagining yourself, projecting yourself, into a scenario. Thinking about how you would handle certain things, how you would respond, what you would do, or say, or think, if you were in the place of someone else in the story, or scenario. Of course it's easier to to imagine yourself in a role you have lived, but that doesn't mean there is no value in stretching the visualization and thinking beyond the specific things you've lived.
I would agree with that - but I think people also tend to say "anything I didn't really like was force feeding," and engage in a bit of revisionist history when they look back at their schooling. Developing competence in any skill requires practice - again, numerous studies have shown that with many (and perhaps even most) skills, number of hours spent practicing that skill have a quite strong relationship with development of expertise in that skill. Sure, there will always be the outliers who just "get" how to sit down and fix a car, program a computer, play an instrument, speak a language... but for the vast majority of people, the more you practice and drill, the better you perform. Pairing this with the studies that have shown that people who tend to agree with the notion that "practice makes perfect" learn better than people who believe "some people are just naturally talented at things," and you get a pretty compelling picture that suggests that that the "boring repetition" and some level of 'force-feeding' is a necessary part of the learning process.
If we can agree that education has, as its ultimate goal, the development of a core set of skills (above and beyond the "Jimmy's gonna be a mechanic" skills) required to 'succeed' in life (for some negotiable definition of 'succeed'), you have to sort of force the issue, and drill, repeat, and practice. This means that yes, some kids are going to absolutely hate every moment of their math class. But they should still be expected to develop a certain basic level of competency. In much the same way, the kid who's a math whiz should be expected to develop a certain basic level of proficiency in written and verbal communication. I went to school with a lot of engineers who - frankly - sucked at written communication. Surprise surprise, they generally felt that their English classes were a complete drag, hated them, and wished they could have skipped 'all that stupid reading and writing bullshit, since it doesn't matter anyway - I'm a programmer."
Now, if by force-feeding, you mean "kids should have the life crushed out of them until they understand high level calculus, can write world-class poetry, and deliver a speech to put Martin Luther King to shame," sure, I agree - force feeding is bad. But drill & repetition has a place in education, even though it sometimes feels (to the kids) like a "boring waste of time" that's just "force-feeding them a bunch of shit they'll never use."
And this is why I indicated that the teacher should be there to guide them in these things - help them learn to project & empathize & imagine within realistic constraints.
Certainly, ed
I'm guessing they don't like you very much, either, huh?
You realize that "implied inferences" and "understanding body language" and "nonverbal communication" are a major part of how we communicate, as human beings, right? So tell me again why learning empathy, understanding how to infer things, picking up on and interpreting nonverbal cues, and so on aren't skills that can be taught in books where "Implied inferences rule"?
The post I was responding to wasn't saying "Don't read Shakespeare, read Andre Norton." The post I was responding to was saying, "Don't read Shakespeare, learn how to be a better mechanic" -- in other words, we should skip things that are "non-essential" to the trade we've decided a kid has the most aptitude for, and simply focus on making them the best cog we possibly can.
My basic response to that is: By studying Shakespeare (or, for sake of the overly literal-minded, WHICHEVER author you feel is appropriate literature for a high schooler), one becomes a better person, and by as an incidental benefit, a better mechanic. Though for what it's worth, I think you vastly underestimate the mental capacity of high schoolers by claiming that they need "easy to see" depictions of good and evil, and heroes they can easily identify with, and that they can't handle the challenge of stepping outside their own experiences to imagine what someone else's life might be like. Sure, they may still need guidance, but a 15, 16, 17, 18 year old high schooler is capable of handling "difficult" topics, even if they have no direct experience of those topics.
It's called imagination, or empathy. You may not get it right, but you'd be surprised at how much a student *can* get right. Shit, 5 year olds play cops and robbers all the time, and invent all kinds of imaginary games and scenarios. It's what they do. Should we stifle that because they might not "get it right"? It's part of the learning process to project, and if you go off-course, the teacher should be there to help guide you back on track, and discuss with you where you went off course, and how. As I said, I think you're underestimating the imaginative ability of young people.
As an example of well-constructed communication & written thought? Every part.
You see, we can learn from examples, even if we don't speak now like people did in Shakespearean times.
But if it makes you feel better, let's eliminate Shakespeare from the curriculum, but agree that reading well-written poetry, prose, and drama from modern writers has an educational benefit far beyond how quickly you can rebuild a V6 Toyota engine?
And good luck learning anything from a technical manual in the brave new world where mechanics don't have to learn to express their thoughts in written or verbal form. After all, if fundamental literacy is irrelevant to mechanics, who's going to be able to write down how to fix the engine, and who's going to be able to read it even if someone did?
By which you mean, zero internal moving parts, and 4 external, right? The four external being: On/Off, Volume up/down rocker, home button, and orientation lock switch?
Will iPads obsolete over time? *Of course* they will. New models will come out with new features and capabilities. That doesn't mean the other ones will automatically break. I still have a perfectly serviceable original-model iPhone. I have a Macbook Pro that was purchased in early 2006 that works just fine still. I have an iPod (40GB monochrome display) that was purchased in late 2004, and which travels with me everywhere I go - still going strong.
Your FUD is weak.
You know, I generally consider myself "libertarian-leaning," but I think you're oversimplifying this to a frightening extent in your pursuit of an ideal.
Why should mechanics read Shakespeare? Because communication is important - probably even more so than the mechanical knowledge, the basic skills of every day interactions - talking, reading, writing - are critical skills for living. Reading other people's writing, especially those who are good communicators, educates you in how to communicate more effectively. Writing your own thoughts down, and practicing expressing your thoughts & opinions has value, no matter how much you, personally, hated English class back in high school
You see, nobody exists in a completely insular little vacuum. Mechanics don't wake up, pork their wife (also a mechanic), and send their kids off to mechanic school (mechanics-to-be!), then go to the garage, where they do mechanic stuff all day without talking to a single other soul. Then come home, eat some Mechanic Cuisine tv dinners, and go to bed, and maybe if they're lucky, pork their mechanic wife again.
A purely utilitarian view of people like you've expressed - where we're all specialized widgets who have "no need" for any learning outside their narrow specialized niche is engaging in overly reductionist thinking, and it's probably not a society that any of us would care to be a part of for long.
The program is part of a study funded by Houghton-Mifflin. It is entirely likely that they are footing the bill for the hardware on this study because if it proves to be more effective than traditional books, they will be able to make a lot of money providing ipads & digital content to school systems.
Apple may also be donating a significant portion of the hardware - I don't see anything in the article to indicate that, but getting a study supporting your device as a "more effective textbook" for young, impressionable students? That'd be worth a short-term investment of a few hundred units of the hardware if it means you can start pimping your device to the thousands of educational institutions across the country afterwards.
I doubt that the school districts participating just went out and decided to buy 400 ipads for shits and grins with the kids' milk money.
Yep, and many of those same supporters are here arguing that it STILL is a CIA plot, and that the US Government is the "most likely" source of the allegations.
There is NO other conclusion that a reasonable person can infer from his statements in the context of this issue. I'm sorry, but when even the majority of your supporters is parroting the "TEH CIA DUN IT, MY HEROZ R INNOCENTZ!" line, you have to be willfully ignorant (or intensely, mind-numbingly stupid) to now claim that his statements have been suggesting this is anything but a US-orchestrated plot to discredit him.
But I do understand why he'd want to distance himself from those insinuations: they make him look like a raving tin-foil-hat-wearing nut.
I already quoted specific statements that have been attributed to Assange himself above.
Stop trying to pretend you don't understand exactly what he meant, and didn't, in fact, agree with it.
Why else would you be so vociferously arguing that Reporters Without Border is a "front" for right-wing and neo-con propaganda here, in response to an article talking about how RWB has joined in the criticism of Assange? Otherwise, why would it matter one jot if it's a "front" for US propaganda, of what relevance is that to its criticism of him, unless you believe that the US is... out to get him?
Oh, snap, did I just link your own comments back to you? Please do try to explain.
Hint: read the entire post, in which I argue against the likelihood of it being a CIA plot.
You mean, something she has repeatedly stated she has no interest in?
So you're saying Assange posted this *because* he felt he had nothing to fear from the CIA? Who did he know he was marked by then? What exactly DID he have to fear, if not the CIA?
You are arguing that it was CIA involvement, after Assange himself has said "I've never said it was the CIA after me." He didn't need to, the brainless Assange supporters will do it for him.
And frankly, I find your use of Occam's Razor to be incredibly humorous, given that you're using it to assert that a worldwide conspiracy to smear one man is "far more likely" than a simple "dude pissed off a girl who called the police."
My money's on the simpler explanation - that is, the one that doesn't involve a network of spies, payoffs, bribes, and international pressure & manipulation, and instead, involves a single guy and a single girl, where either: 1) the guy is a creep; or 2) there's a misunderstanding and the girl goes to the police in anger.
Dead men tell no tales.
Paid informants and mercenaries do.
I win.