If they wanted a shocking terrorist attack on American soil with minimal risk of exposure and maximum impact they could just have exploded a dirty bomb in Manhattan or poisoned the drinking water in a major city or even do several of those type of things. No complicated plot that could have gone wrong in an almost infinite number of ways, no masses of people involved who could potentially blow the whistle. If someone in the US had come up with a plan to have a terrorist attack it would have been a simple plan with a minimum amount of people involved and a minimal amount of actions taken that could be linked to anyone. If you seriously think that in a plan that involves at the very minimum several HUNDREDS of people and a hyper complicated series of steps and actions there would not be any leaks or physical traces you desperately need some additional historical and psychological education.
It is incoherent to accuse a group of alleged plotters of coming up with a hyper complicated plan with such a huge amount of potential security leaks, slips and fatal errors in planning and execution that it would amount to gross incompetence of astronomical proportions and then believe that the hundreds of people needed to carry it out were so incredibly secretive and efficient in implementing that plan that there is not one shred of evidence for the plot. And no there is not a shred of evidence. For all the things that the tin foil hat crowd have mentioned as reasons to be suspicious there are alternative and perfectly reasonable explanations. If you had read some of the serious books and articles on it you would know that but I guess it's easier to watch an incoherent home made movie full of unfounded accusations and misinformed opinions on Youtube.
If anyone is lazy here it's you. Having unfounded suspicions and avoiding confronting yourself with reasonable explanations for which there actually is a slew of evidence is not only irrational, it shows an enormous lack of historical awareness, psychological insight and a serious problem in the ability to distinguish fact from fiction.
Don't look now but I think someone glued a tin foil hat to your head while you were distracted looking for ludicrous conspiracies and overlooking the obvious. If 9/11 was a conspiracy it would have had to be devised by a bunch of morons and carried out by an even bigger bunch of highly efficient, brilliant and incredibly secretive geniuses. I kind of sense some disparity there but I guess you don't.
I don't know if anyone noticed what type of photographs of Assange the different media organizations chose to accompany this story. I am a photographer and it was the first thing I noticed. In a majority of cases they are ones in which he is not looking into the camera (that is, not looking at the reader) which makes him look shifty, ones in which he is shot from strange angles (above or below, signifying either looming over the reader in a threatening fashion or being on a lower level than the reader) and photos in which he has non symmetrical (long associated with unattractiveness in psychological research) or negative expressions on his face. That's media spin for you. Most people don't realize how they are influenced by such visual clues and don't even register them consciously.
On a side note much of the reporting on wikileaks contains similar subtle cues. You will read: Controversial whisleblower website wikileaks releases Afghan war documents.... but not Whisleblower website wikileaks releases documents about controversial war in Afghanistan.
I don't think that particularly matters. I think you are seriously underestimating the results of the mere accusation of rape. Especially if there is no convincing evidence to the contrary (which there isn't and probably never will be in this case) this will at the very least lead to a subconscious bias in most people.
And remember, most of the fallout of this story still has to come and it will come in the form of sideways mentions of rape allegations that don't present any of the facts currently available. People will read those and hardly any of them will investigate further.
There is a fatal flaw in your assumption. I'm not saying this based on any actions by the USA. I'm saying this on the basis of the way these things tend to get handled in the country where I live, The Netherlands and my knowledge of dubious behavior from the Swedish public prosecutor in a previous case against The Pirate Bay (which happens to be a close ally of wikileaks).
Let me make a prediction of the way this is going to be handled. The Swedish prosecutors office will say: There were no official accusations made against Assange but two women reported to the police "seeking guidance" on how to handle two undisclosed issues of a sexual nature regarding Assange. A regretful mistake was made in assessing this information and its implications and because of that an arrest in absentia was mistakenly made. As soon as the mistake was realized it was corrected. No, regrettably the identities of the women can not be revealed since they did not make any formal complaint. We regret the whole situation. The officials who were involved will receive feedback on their actions to inform them of the mistakes they made and we will internally reassess our guidelines to make sure similar mistakes will not occur again.
This also has the advantage that the undisclosed issues the women reported will never be discredited and so for many people the accusations will stick on the principle that where there is smoke there is fire.
Let's assess the damage from this: 1. Assange and Wikileaks have been successfully associated with rape in the minds of a large part of the population. That group can be divided in a few sub-groups:
a. The group who read about the arrest warrant but didn't catch the update that the warrant has been dropped: Mission accomplished.
b. The group of people who read the update but since there was no full disclosure and no court case to clear Assange of the original charges they will still retain sufficient doubt to significantly reduce confidence in future Wikileaks disclosures: Mission accomplished.
c. Those who have missed the story but will get an incomplete account of it in future press releases regarding Assange and Wikileaks which suffices to undermine confidence in their work: Mission accomplished.
d. Those who regard this whole situation as suspicious but may retain a subconscious bias towards Assange and Wikileaks because there has been no full disclosure and no refutation on the original charges: Mission accomplished.
e. People who have not heard of this case and don't keep up with press releases regarding wikileaks sufficiently to be confronted with this information: Mission incomplete but since a large part of these people probably have not much interest in the whole wikileaks situation largely irrelevant.
f. The group of people who have sufficient information to find the whole case suspicious or are convinced it was a setup AND manage for it not to create sufficient subconscious bias to affect their opinion of Wikileaks. Mission failed.
2. From the Pirate Bay internal communication about its relationship to wikileaks mentioned earlier in this thread and the fact that the last statement regarding this situation by wikileaks was not issued by Assange himself but in the name of the wikileaks organization you can gather that at least some internal tension must have been created within wikileaks and between wikileaks and some of its partners. This will make them less effective at least for a little while.
3. This whole situation may discourage people from wanting to leak to wikileaks for fear of their leaks being (partially) discredited through guilt by association. It may also deter news organizations from wanting to work closely with wikileaks again for the same reasons. It may deter those considering helping to fund wikileaks and those considering contributing their time and knowledge to assist wikileaks in the future.
So if this was a character assassination, (and if it was I doubt we'll ever see evidence of it if it was unless ironically someone leaks that information) it could hardly have been more successful or accomplished with less actual information being made public: We don't know who made the original accusations, we don't know what they were, we don't know why the warrant was issued and we don't know why it was revoked.
I was expecting something like this might happen. If this was targeted character assassination that's mission accomplished. Assange's name dragged through the dirt and his as well as Wikileaks' name associated successfully with rape. Now everyone can start using the following in any new press releases on a next wikileaks release: "Julian Assange, who was recently accused of rape in Sweden, has released...."
I am really curious if anyone is going to try to get to the bottom of this and find out what the hell just happened. Where did the accusations come from, why was it decided an arrest warrant should be issued and why has that same arrest warrant been withdrawn not even 24 hours later. This just stinks to high heaven. My guess? Some vague statements will be issued by the Swedish prosecutors office and that's all we'll ever find out.
The point is that it's not a reasonable idea of privacy. In most countries the law states that you can take photographs of anything visible from public property. Usually the only exception to that is military installations. If the way your house looks from the street was private information you'd have to insist on people averting their eyes when they pass your house.
I don't think this is neccesarily the most effective or smart way but any initiatives that get some attention for the freedom of photography are good in my book. I'm a photographer who lives in the Netherlands where the aforementioned laws apply but since I got seriously involved with photography three years ago I have been harassed and intimidated without any legal basis whatsoever by security guards and police officers on several occasions with unlawfull demands to stop making photos, demands to move away and even demands to delete photos I had made.
In Great Brittain the situation is even worse. They have some anti-terror law there that keeps on getting misinterpreted into the a basic right of the police to terrorize any and all photgraphers. If you're in London taking photographs as a tourist or professional photographer don't be surprised if you get into trouble with the police. The list of incidents there is huge and still growing by the day despite repeated reminders to officers on the ground of what the applicable law is and what they are and are not to do. It is in fact so bad that many professional photographers have stopped doing street shoots in London if they can avoid it because the likelyhood of your shoot getting interupted by nosy cops is so high that it becomes a problem.
I'm not familiar with the polls for the coming election so you may be right. It would make for a very interesting situation if they did manage to get past 4% and try hosting the Pirate Bay and Wikileaks that way. That might shake up the political landscape quite a bit but maybe I'm hoping for too much.
The document I linked to describes BOTH European and Swedish parliamentary immunity. The Swedish immunity is applicable to: "Members' activities in the Chamber and other Riksdag bodies directly connected with the Riksdag."
Since the Pirate Party has elected members in the Swedish Parliament and they are allowed to use the servers of the Swedish parliament to make available to the public information that is related to their political ideals and election program they may be planning on hosting Wikileaks from the Swedish Parliament.
And now for the interesting bit: The information that they release to the public that way has FULL PARLIAMENTARY IMMUNITY. I don't know how exactly parliamentary immunity is defined in Swedish law and what the exact restrictions are but normally that means FULL immunity from the law for any and all information that is provided by members of the party involved. That would amount to complete protection from any attempts to get information taken down through any Swedish court as well as complete protection of their sources within the territory of Sweden...
I agree completely. One of the most worrying things about the US government and a lot of the American citizens supporting it is that they don't seem to be able to learn from history. Just look how many of the wars they have been involved in have been succesful with regard to their objectives, look how many of the internal conflicts and power struggles they have gotten involved in have come back to bite them in the ass. Yet they keep doing the exact same thing time and time again.
What I also found interesting was Assange's remark: "Journalists have to be more on their guard about what's said about us." There may be even more that I have missed but at least to of the articles that have been going around in the media last week (mostly uncritically reproduced from the news wires without any comments or attempt to verify them) are obvious us spin.
1. The letter from Human Rights organisations criticizing Wikileaks for allegedly realeasing the names of hundreds of Afghan informants. This story was spun to have had Amnesty International as one of it's signees. A later statement from an AI spokeswoman made clear that this was not the case. She said that AI had not taken an official position on the Wikileaks Afghan war release and that all that had happened was that one low ranking member had been involved in private Email communication with Wikileaks about that matter. The true signees of the letter are not independent NGO's they are all either funded by the US government, the Afghan government or have very close ties to the US government.
2. The letter from "Reporters sans frontières" giving the same criticism (and in a very contradictory and muddled way at that: arguing that you shouldn't release secret military information because it might lead to a crack down on the freedom of the press is nonsensical at best if you are an organisation that's supposed to have freedom of the press as it's primary goal. What are you going to release then? Anything that the involved powers that be have no objections to?) is completely untrustworthy.
First of all this organisation has been linked to the CIA and even been accused of being a CIA front. One of it's directors has admitted that a large part of the organisations funding comes either from the US government or from organisations with very close ties to that government. Lucie Morillon, RWB's Washington representative, confirmed in an interview on 29 April 2005 that the organization has a contract with US State Department's Special Envoy to the Western Hemisphere Otto Reich who was involved in Whitehouse propaganda under Reagan and a former board member of Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, which was formerly known as the School for the Americas, and described in 2004 by the LA Weekly as a “torture-teaching institution”. According to Amnesty International, the School in the past has produced training manuals which advocated torture, blackmail, beatings and executions. One of Their founders has openly condoned torture in the French press. Of course a name like "Reporters sans frontières" sounds very idealistic and independent (who would imagine that an originally French press freedom organisation would be in bed with some of the more shady parts of the US government. Unless you checked of course, and most of this info can be found on Wikipedia) but that's just a superficial appearance and designed to be.
This is all so sad. Amnesty International have issued an official statement that while they were aware of a letter sent to Wikileaks by some rights organizations they were not one of the signatories. More lies in the media war on Wikileaks.
Let's summarize:
Wikileaks: "We are going to release documents that are in our posession that show you have been killing civilians, deploying an illegal murder squad, and have been consistently lying about almost everything that's going on in Afghanistan to the people you are supposed to represent. We would like you to look at these documents and help us redact them so no unneccesary harm comes to your troops and the civilians that have been assisting them."'
US Government: "Fuck off!" Wikileaks: Releases part of the documents redacting them as best they can with limited resources and knowing that after McCrystal was forced to step down there was a push to relax the rules of engagement and the rules on reporting civilian casualties that were tightened under McChrystal so they knew they were running out of time.
US Government: "You are putting the lives of our troops and allies at risk!" Wikileaks: "We have another 15000 documents that we would like you to help redact so no unneccesary harm comes to your troops and the civilians that have been assisting them."
US Government: "Fuck off!"
This leaves open two possibilities: Either the whole argument about the leaks being a threat to US troops and allies is a load of shit and the argument is just one more in a long series of bold faced lies, or the US government doesn't give a shit about the lives of their soldiers and allies and views them as cannon fodder to be readily sacrificed in the defence of the power interests of the US leadership. (Actually I would say both are probably true.) You see, the US actually have an interest in HAVING troops and allies put in danger. It helps them to put the spin on the story that they are currently pushing. They already know they cannot win this war. but they can still try to find a way out that creates the least possible damage to the careers of those in power. One thing that has now become essential in this strategy is discrediting Wikileaks. Don't be fooled and check your facts on all the negative stories about Wikileaks before you believe them.
1. So you would like to live in a country where you are being constantly observed to stop you from littering?
2. There are loads of reports that suggest cctv does not stop crime but at best merely forces it into different areas.
3. I don't think people should litter the street. But camera surveillance is not a proportional way of doing something about those kinds of things.
4. This is not a personal criticism against the British so don't take it as one. The fact remains that Britain is the worst in the world at the moment when it comes to invasion of privacy and surveillance. Obviously you and some other people don't care about the right to privacy. Stupid, but hey, that's your choice.
5. Saying that something bad happens elsewhere as well doesn't make it any better.
6. Don't make unfounded and wrong assumptions and then call me a hypocrite based on them, it makes you look like an idiot. I'm not an American, I'm dutch. Furthermore I have personally taken action in my workplace against camera surveillance being used in ways that were breaking privacy law. What have you done lately? I also read the political programs before an election and vote for parties that have respect for privacy and civil liberties high on their political agenda instead of making assumptions.
Oh never mind. You think cameras make the street safer even if they are used to stop people from littering (which is a horrible offence after all). Fine. You don't feel like thinking of the implications for civil liberties of living in, as a recent human rights report termed it: an endemic surveillance society. Fine, be my guest.
The family of a Brazilian man shot dead by police hunting the men behind London's attempted bomb attacks have told of their anger and disbelief.
Jean Charles de Menezes's grandmother said there "was no reason to think he was a terrorist".
Mr Menezes had come out of a house in Tulse Hill, south London, which had been under police surveillance because of a suspected link to Thursday's attempted bombings. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4711639.stm
May I suggest you reconsider the logic of your argument?
So cameras are good because they are not the only or neccesary means for a government to limit the freedom of it's citizens. Hmmm...pretty convincing.
Anyway the choice between being shot on the spot or lifted off your bed at night, taken to a secret location and being tortured doesn't seem that much of a choice to me. The major difference is that the government can use cameras to have deniability and maintain a semblance of freedom and non-violence which you cannot have if you start shooting people in the street. The effect of that is that you can isolate the people who oppose you because your violence is not directed at a large group (of protesters) with whom people might identify but specific individuals for specific individual actions, this makes for a much more flexible and powerful system of repression than direct, in-your-face violent action.
Sure...and as soon as you find out MS makes a small change and you start over again? May I suggest you get real? Why is it that some people just fail to be able grasp the concept of monopolism and that it is NOT I repeat NOT compatible with free market thinking.
Yes, and you would go out into the street to protest, watched by security cameras and the police would come to pick you up at home the next day for taking part in an "illegal" protest.
I shouldn't have to explain this to someone of reasonable intelligence but this is not about other companies being unable to build a competing OS but about MS using it's monopolist position to keep others from building software for windows that competes with MS products. So now please explain to me how you can compete with MS if you don't have the neccesary information to make your products run efficiently on their OS. By guessing? I'm sorry but you don't seem to understand the meaning of the word monopoly.
Slashdot Mirror
If they wanted a shocking terrorist attack on American soil with minimal risk of exposure and maximum impact they could just have exploded a dirty bomb in Manhattan or poisoned the drinking water in a major city or even do several of those type of things. No complicated plot that could have gone wrong in an almost infinite number of ways, no masses of people involved who could potentially blow the whistle.
If someone in the US had come up with a plan to have a terrorist attack it would have been a simple plan with a minimum amount of people involved and a minimal amount of actions taken that could be linked to anyone.
If you seriously think that in a plan that involves at the very minimum several HUNDREDS of people and a hyper complicated series of steps and actions there would not be any leaks or physical traces you desperately need some additional historical and psychological education.
It is incoherent to accuse a group of alleged plotters of coming up with a hyper complicated plan with such a huge amount of potential security leaks, slips and fatal errors in planning and execution that it would amount to gross incompetence of astronomical proportions and then believe that the hundreds of people needed to carry it out were so incredibly secretive and efficient in implementing that plan that there is not one shred of evidence for the plot.
And no there is not a shred of evidence. For all the things that the tin foil hat crowd have mentioned as reasons to be suspicious there are alternative and perfectly reasonable explanations. If you had read some of the serious books and articles on it you would know that but I guess it's easier to watch an incoherent home made movie full of unfounded accusations and misinformed opinions on Youtube.
If anyone is lazy here it's you. Having unfounded suspicions and avoiding confronting yourself with reasonable explanations for which there actually is a slew of evidence is not only irrational, it shows an enormous lack of historical awareness, psychological insight and a serious problem in the ability to distinguish fact from fiction.
Don't look now but I think someone glued a tin foil hat to your head while you were distracted looking for ludicrous conspiracies and overlooking the obvious.
If 9/11 was a conspiracy it would have had to be devised by a bunch of morons and carried out by an even bigger bunch of highly efficient, brilliant and incredibly secretive geniuses. I kind of sense some disparity there but I guess you don't.
I don't know if anyone noticed what type of photographs of Assange the different media organizations chose to accompany this story. I am a photographer and it was the first thing I noticed. In a majority of cases they are ones in which he is not looking into the camera (that is, not looking at the reader) which makes him look shifty, ones in which he is shot from strange angles (above or below, signifying either looming over the reader in a threatening fashion or being on a lower level than the reader) and photos in which he has non symmetrical (long associated with unattractiveness in psychological research) or negative expressions on his face. That's media spin for you. Most people don't realize how they are influenced by such visual clues and don't even register them consciously.
On a side note much of the reporting on wikileaks contains similar subtle cues. You will read: Controversial whisleblower website wikileaks releases Afghan war documents.... but not Whisleblower website wikileaks releases documents about controversial war in Afghanistan.
I don't think that particularly matters. I think you are seriously underestimating the results of the mere accusation of rape. Especially if there is no convincing evidence to the contrary (which there isn't and probably never will be in this case) this will at the very least lead to a subconscious bias in most people.
And remember, most of the fallout of this story still has to come and it will come in the form of sideways mentions of rape allegations that don't present any of the facts currently available. People will read those and hardly any of them will investigate further.
There is a fatal flaw in your assumption. I'm not saying this based on any actions by the USA. I'm saying this on the basis of the way these things tend to get handled in the country where I live, The Netherlands and my knowledge of dubious behavior from the Swedish public prosecutor in a previous case against The Pirate Bay (which happens to be a close ally of wikileaks).
Let me make a prediction of the way this is going to be handled.
The Swedish prosecutors office will say: There were no official accusations made against Assange but two women reported to the police "seeking guidance" on how to handle two undisclosed issues of a sexual nature regarding Assange. A regretful mistake was made in assessing this information and its implications and because of that an arrest in absentia was mistakenly made. As soon as the mistake was realized it was corrected. No, regrettably the identities of the women can not be revealed since they did not make any formal complaint. We regret the whole situation. The officials who were involved will receive feedback on their actions to inform them of the mistakes they made and we will internally reassess our guidelines to make sure similar mistakes will not occur again.
This also has the advantage that the undisclosed issues the women reported will never be discredited and so for many people the accusations will stick on the principle that where there is smoke there is fire.
Let's assess the damage from this:
1. Assange and Wikileaks have been successfully associated with rape in the minds of a large part of the population. That group can be divided in a few sub-groups:
a. The group who read about the arrest warrant but didn't catch the update that the warrant has been dropped: Mission accomplished.
b. The group of people who read the update but since there was no full disclosure and no court case to clear Assange of the original charges they will still retain sufficient doubt to significantly reduce confidence in future Wikileaks disclosures: Mission accomplished.
c. Those who have missed the story but will get an incomplete account of it in future press releases regarding Assange and Wikileaks which suffices to undermine confidence in their work: Mission accomplished.
d. Those who regard this whole situation as suspicious but may retain a subconscious bias towards Assange and Wikileaks because there has been no full disclosure and no refutation on the original charges: Mission accomplished.
e. People who have not heard of this case and don't keep up with press releases regarding wikileaks sufficiently to be confronted with this information: Mission incomplete but since a large part of these people probably have not much interest in the whole wikileaks situation largely irrelevant.
f. The group of people who have sufficient information to find the whole case suspicious or are convinced it was a setup AND manage for it not to create sufficient subconscious bias to affect their opinion of Wikileaks. Mission failed.
2. From the Pirate Bay internal communication about its relationship to wikileaks mentioned earlier in this thread and the fact that the last statement regarding this situation by wikileaks was not issued by Assange himself but in the name of the wikileaks organization you can gather that at least some internal tension must have been created within wikileaks and between wikileaks and some of its partners. This will make them less effective at least for a little while.
3. This whole situation may discourage people from wanting to leak to wikileaks for fear of their leaks being (partially) discredited through guilt by association. It may also deter news organizations from wanting to work closely with wikileaks again for the same reasons. It may deter those considering helping to fund wikileaks and those considering contributing their time and knowledge to assist wikileaks in the future.
So if this was a character assassination, (and if it was I doubt we'll ever see evidence of it if it was unless ironically someone leaks that information) it could hardly have been more successful or accomplished with less actual information being made public: We don't know who made the original accusations, we don't know what they were, we don't know why the warrant was issued and we don't know why it was revoked.
I was expecting something like this might happen. If this was targeted character assassination that's mission accomplished. Assange's name dragged through the dirt and his as well as Wikileaks' name associated successfully with rape. Now everyone can start using the following in any new press releases on a next wikileaks release: "Julian Assange, who was recently accused of rape in Sweden, has released...."
I am really curious if anyone is going to try to get to the bottom of this and find out what the hell just happened. Where did the accusations come from, why was it decided an arrest warrant should be issued and why has that same arrest warrant been withdrawn not even 24 hours later. This just stinks to high heaven. My guess? Some vague statements will be issued by the Swedish prosecutors office and that's all we'll ever find out.
The point is that it's not a reasonable idea of privacy. In most countries the law states that you can take photographs of anything visible from public property. Usually the only exception to that is military installations. If the way your house looks from the street was private information you'd have to insist on people averting their eyes when they pass your house.
I don't think this is neccesarily the most effective or smart way but any initiatives that get some attention for the freedom of photography are good in my book. I'm a photographer who lives in the Netherlands where the aforementioned laws apply but since I got seriously involved with photography three years ago I have been harassed and intimidated without any legal basis whatsoever by security guards and police officers on several occasions with unlawfull demands to stop making photos, demands to move away and even demands to delete photos I had made.
In Great Brittain the situation is even worse. They have some anti-terror law there that keeps on getting misinterpreted into the a basic right of the police to terrorize any and all photgraphers. If you're in London taking photographs as a tourist or professional photographer don't be surprised if you get into trouble with the police. The list of incidents there is huge and still growing by the day despite repeated reminders to officers on the ground of what the applicable law is and what they are and are not to do. It is in fact so bad that many professional photographers have stopped doing street shoots in London if they can avoid it because the likelyhood of your shoot getting interupted by nosy cops is so high that it becomes a problem.
I'm not familiar with the polls for the coming election so you may be right. It would make for a very interesting situation if they did manage to get past 4% and try hosting the Pirate Bay and Wikileaks that way. That might shake up the political landscape quite a bit but maybe I'm hoping for too much.
The document I linked to describes BOTH European and Swedish parliamentary immunity. The Swedish immunity is applicable to: "Members' activities in the
Chamber and other Riksdag bodies directly connected with the Riksdag."
Sorry, I was wrong about members of the Pirate Party being in Swedish parliament (yet). They might be after the coming elections though.
The fact that you have never heard of Parliamentary immunity doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Page 18: https://ecprd.secure.europarl.europa.eu/ecprd/getfile.do;jsessionid=B15228329B1345DA4640405400F8E548?id=5062
And here is the reason why I mentioned this scenario: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/07/pirate-bay-soon-to-be-hosted-within-swedish-parliament.ars
It's even more interesting than that!
Since the Pirate Party has elected members in the Swedish Parliament and they are allowed to use the servers of the Swedish parliament to make available to the public information that is related to their political ideals and election program they may be planning on hosting Wikileaks from the Swedish Parliament.
And now for the interesting bit: The information that they release to the public that way has FULL PARLIAMENTARY IMMUNITY. I don't know how exactly parliamentary immunity is defined in Swedish law and what the exact restrictions are but normally that means FULL immunity from the law for any and all information that is provided by members of the party involved. That would amount to complete protection from any attempts to get information taken down through any Swedish court as well as complete protection of their sources within the territory of Sweden...
I agree completely. One of the most worrying things about the US government and a lot of the American citizens supporting it is that they don't seem to be able to learn from history. Just look how many of the wars they have been involved in have been succesful with regard to their objectives, look how many of the internal conflicts and power struggles they have gotten involved in have come back to bite them in the ass. Yet they keep doing the exact same thing time and time again.
What I also found interesting was Assange's remark: "Journalists have to be more on their guard about what's said about us." There may be even more that I have missed but at least to of the articles that have been going around in the media last week (mostly uncritically reproduced from the news wires without any comments or attempt to verify them) are obvious us spin.
1. The letter from Human Rights organisations criticizing Wikileaks for allegedly realeasing the names of hundreds of Afghan informants. This story was spun to have had Amnesty International as one of it's signees. A later statement from an AI spokeswoman made clear that this was not the case. She said that AI had not taken an official position on the Wikileaks Afghan war release and that all that had happened was that one low ranking member had been involved in private Email communication with Wikileaks about that matter. The true signees of the letter are not independent NGO's they are all either funded by the US government, the Afghan government or have very close ties to the US government.
2. The letter from "Reporters sans frontières" giving the same criticism (and in a very contradictory and muddled way at that: arguing that you shouldn't release secret military information because it might lead to a crack down on the freedom of the press is nonsensical at best if you are an organisation that's supposed to have freedom of the press as it's primary goal. What are you going to release then? Anything that the involved powers that be have no objections to?) is completely untrustworthy.
First of all this organisation has been linked to the CIA and even been accused of being a CIA front. One of it's directors has admitted that a large part of the organisations funding comes either from the US government or from organisations with very close ties to that government. Lucie Morillon, RWB's Washington representative, confirmed in an interview on 29 April 2005 that the organization has a contract with US State Department's Special Envoy to the Western Hemisphere Otto Reich who was involved in Whitehouse propaganda under Reagan and a former board member of Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, which was formerly known as the School for the Americas, and described in 2004 by the LA Weekly as a “torture-teaching institution”. According to Amnesty International, the School in the past has produced training manuals which advocated torture, blackmail, beatings and executions. One of Their founders has openly condoned torture in the French press. Of course a name like "Reporters sans frontières" sounds very idealistic and independent (who would imagine that an originally French press freedom organisation would be in bed with some of the more shady parts of the US government. Unless you checked of course, and most of this info can be found on Wikipedia) but that's just a superficial appearance and designed to be.
This is all so sad. Amnesty International have issued an official statement that while they were aware of a letter sent to Wikileaks by some rights organizations they were not one of the signatories. More lies in the media war on Wikileaks. Let's summarize: Wikileaks: "We are going to release documents that are in our posession that show you have been killing civilians, deploying an illegal murder squad, and have been consistently lying about almost everything that's going on in Afghanistan to the people you are supposed to represent. We would like you to look at these documents and help us redact them so no unneccesary harm comes to your troops and the civilians that have been assisting them."' US Government: "Fuck off!" Wikileaks: Releases part of the documents redacting them as best they can with limited resources and knowing that after McCrystal was forced to step down there was a push to relax the rules of engagement and the rules on reporting civilian casualties that were tightened under McChrystal so they knew they were running out of time. US Government: "You are putting the lives of our troops and allies at risk!" Wikileaks: "We have another 15000 documents that we would like you to help redact so no unneccesary harm comes to your troops and the civilians that have been assisting them." US Government: "Fuck off!" This leaves open two possibilities: Either the whole argument about the leaks being a threat to US troops and allies is a load of shit and the argument is just one more in a long series of bold faced lies, or the US government doesn't give a shit about the lives of their soldiers and allies and views them as cannon fodder to be readily sacrificed in the defence of the power interests of the US leadership. (Actually I would say both are probably true.) You see, the US actually have an interest in HAVING troops and allies put in danger. It helps them to put the spin on the story that they are currently pushing. They already know they cannot win this war. but they can still try to find a way out that creates the least possible damage to the careers of those in power. One thing that has now become essential in this strategy is discrediting Wikileaks. Don't be fooled and check your facts on all the negative stories about Wikileaks before you believe them.
1. So you would like to live in a country where you are being constantly observed to stop you from littering? 2. There are loads of reports that suggest cctv does not stop crime but at best merely forces it into different areas. 3. I don't think people should litter the street. But camera surveillance is not a proportional way of doing something about those kinds of things. 4. This is not a personal criticism against the British so don't take it as one. The fact remains that Britain is the worst in the world at the moment when it comes to invasion of privacy and surveillance. Obviously you and some other people don't care about the right to privacy. Stupid, but hey, that's your choice. 5. Saying that something bad happens elsewhere as well doesn't make it any better. 6. Don't make unfounded and wrong assumptions and then call me a hypocrite based on them, it makes you look like an idiot. I'm not an American, I'm dutch. Furthermore I have personally taken action in my workplace against camera surveillance being used in ways that were breaking privacy law. What have you done lately? I also read the political programs before an election and vote for parties that have respect for privacy and civil liberties high on their political agenda instead of making assumptions.
Oh never mind. You think cameras make the street safer even if they are used to stop people from littering (which is a horrible offence after all). Fine. You don't feel like thinking of the implications for civil liberties of living in, as a recent human rights report termed it: an endemic surveillance society. Fine, be my guest.
May I suggest you reconsider the logic of your argument? So cameras are good because they are not the only or neccesary means for a government to limit the freedom of it's citizens. Hmmm...pretty convincing. Anyway the choice between being shot on the spot or lifted off your bed at night, taken to a secret location and being tortured doesn't seem that much of a choice to me. The major difference is that the government can use cameras to have deniability and maintain a semblance of freedom and non-violence which you cannot have if you start shooting people in the street. The effect of that is that you can isolate the people who oppose you because your violence is not directed at a large group (of protesters) with whom people might identify but specific individuals for specific individual actions, this makes for a much more flexible and powerful system of repression than direct, in-your-face violent action.
Sure...and as soon as you find out MS makes a small change and you start over again? May I suggest you get real? Why is it that some people just fail to be able grasp the concept of monopolism and that it is NOT I repeat NOT compatible with free market thinking.
Evolutionary adaptions to different environments combined with random mutations in isolated communities perhaps?
Yes, and you would go out into the street to protest, watched by security cameras and the police would come to pick you up at home the next day for taking part in an "illegal" protest.
I shouldn't have to explain this to someone of reasonable intelligence but this is not about other companies being unable to build a competing OS but about MS using it's monopolist position to keep others from building software for windows that competes with MS products. So now please explain to me how you can compete with MS if you don't have the neccesary information to make your products run efficiently on their OS. By guessing? I'm sorry but you don't seem to understand the meaning of the word monopoly.
Your brain has failed to boot due to an incorrect clock speed setting...