Um, I Think It's Time for a Thread on WikiLeaks

uhhh it's actually a meta-argument

i mean forgive me if i'm missing something here or am being unclear. if he is guilty (and i believe what he is accused of constitutes rape) certainly he should be punished. it's just that he also exposed both a higher level of corruption than general motors in a more powerful company than general motors (e.g. the shell oil planting operatives in the nigerian government) - my point was, why would they not come after him more strongly than say gm did after nader, unless companies literally stopped doing this decades ago?

― jeevves, Thursday, December 9, 2010 1:51 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

nader, if i read your wiki posting correctly, did nothing; GM tried to catch him in a honey trap

that's different from assange, who is accused of committing sexual assault, and whose notoriety and wanted status mean that the police will bother to pursue him

can you not see that these are different?

Most/all people will agree that the rape charges are of benefit to the anti-Wikileaks crew, but various actors being happy that he is accused of rape != various actors accusing him of rape.

My working assumption is that the Swedish judicial system is robust enough to give a fair trial and we'll find out more in due time, at the moment there's little we can say for sure. The other idea that seems implicit in some reports is that the US might find it easier to extradict him once he's in Swedish custody, but I have no idea why that would be the case.

People want the rape charges to be a frame-up because that would be more fun. It would allow Assange to remain cool, and it suggests a world where attractive young women in pink sweaters are employed by the CIA to have deceptive sex with left-wingers. And of course it would mean these women didn't actually get raped, which would be nice!

The idea that this is a conspiracy theory doesn't hold water with me for all the reasons Karen and Dorian have pointed out but also because it doesn't make the blindest bit of sense for anything other than character assasination. I'd be amazed if Wikileaks hadn't made contingency plans for Assange being imprisoned/assassinated/randomly hit by a bus. Not sure killing Wikileaks will stop others springing up in its place either. Wikileaks 2010 = Napster 2000 obv.

It's more likely that the allegations existed in the first place rightly or wrongly but that the Swedish authorities have pursued Assange, or been encouraged to pursue him, more strongly because of who he is. But that makes no difference to whether or not he's a rapist. The rush to denounce the accuser here is pretty disgusting.

oh ffs

(There were many xposts between me starting that post and finishing it, including your "we keep talking about it" one)

the idea that the accuser is actually a CIA pawn is so far removed from what usually falls under the concept of 'victim-blaming' that I don't really see the point of conflating the two

sry matt this is kind of a general "oh ffs"

I just get frustrated with some of the rhetoric being thrown around when, as far as I know, nobody is saying "oh c'mon, this is all just a misunderstanding!" or "these dumb skanks are just angry that he never called them back!" or w/e

um, we have a poster saying categorically assange is innocent, another saying he was framed (but also that he was guilty!)

xp I'm not sure whether I'm caught in a performative contradiction [via telling everyone to talk less about the thing I am talking about] or whether my statements performatively justify themselves [via asserting that there is a lot of pressure in and from the media to make this whole issue 'about' julian assange, including wild speculation about pending legal charges]

I'd be amazed if Wikileaks hadn't made contingency plans for Assange being imprisoned/assassinated/randomly hit by a bus

I read somewhere that this is indeed in place.

We have people writing "they asked for it" (as covert spies)

I don't think jeevves has ever outright said "he was framed", just pointed out that the observation "ppl have been framed in the past for less" is not incompatible with the factual state of affairs being "julian assange raped somebody"

bernard, kind of feel that trying to legislate what people talk about is a non-starter in general but particularly IRONIC in this case

first amendment, man, first amendment

you think the CIA had people close to assange who arranged a broken condom incident, and then (somehow) got him to have sex with them while asleep

ingenious

― ______ ___ ___________! (history mayne), Thursday, December 9, 2010 5:44 AM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark

did i suggest this?

― jeevves, Thursday, December 9, 2010 5:53 AM (0 seconds ago) Bookmark

i mean, my writing is sometimes unclear, but if he committed either of those acts, then absolutely, he is a guilty. i hope that it's clear that i'm talking about a hypothetical situation in which he is innocent of any crime. if he committed rape, he is a rapist and a criminal, end of story.

We have people writing "they asked for it" (as covert spies)

― Mordy, Thursday, December 9, 2010 2:11 PM (44 seconds ago) Bookmark

okay lol
(but then I felt bad about it afterwards)

bernard, kind of feel that trying to legislate what people talk about is a non-starter in general but particularly IRONIC in this case

first amendment, man, first amendment

― ______ ___ ___________! (history mayne), Thursday, December 9, 2010 2:12 PM (24 seconds ago) Bookmark

not trying to 'legislate' anything, just to criticize ppl who get sucked up into this whole game of chinese whispers and end up denouncing some guy with a blog who doesn't denounce forcefully enough the denouncers of the alleged rape-victims — at which point the entire discourse is poisoned because people are essentially climbing onto their soapboxes and shouting at themselves.

I was excited by the whole wikileaks thing as much because of the public enthusiasm it seemed to provoke as the actual contents of any of the cables; now it's degenerated into a conversation we've gone through a hundred times before and it's hard not to be a lil frustrated

i think it's odd how the rape charge went from 'too weak to prosecute' to making assange interpol's most wanted in a couple of months. i think the fact that the rape charge very well may be legitimate (and that assange might be guilty) doesn't exclude all other kinds of foul play from the governments involved

I'd be amazed if Wikileaks hadn't made contingency plans for Assange being imprisoned/assassinated/randomly hit by a bus

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/12/wikileaks-reels/

p.s. threat level is a tech blog, so it's week on the politics/ethics of this, but it's doing the best coverage of the tech issues and internal wikileaks stuff.

.. but its better on spelling, hem hem.

oh ho ho

but uh basically if I had to summarize my position in a nutshell:

- yeah there are some dudes engaged in victim-blaming, which is overdetermined by the combined effects of:
— 1. rape culture (duh), but also
— 2. kneejerk fear reaction to the idea that rape allegations against Assange will give ppl (primarily in the media) an excuse to discredit or ignore wikileaks [via a similar kneejerk reaction?];
— - lol of course the other irony is that spreading silly conspiracy theories around has the exact same effect of obscuring the real issues
- — - ... maybe some good will still come of all this tho???

i hope it's clear that my position is that, while not necessarily true of julian assange, people making claims similar to wikileaks's against large companies or governments have been discredited on a basis of sexual relationships.
that being said, i hope i did not come across as suggesting that assange's accusers should not be given full credibility as the case progresses and in a court of law.

that seems suspiciously reasonable.......... whose sock r u bro?

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/12/09/bradley_manning_wikileaks_no_help/

okay that's actually pretty funny

seems like a heckuva lot of trouble to go to 'just' to make money tho

also i definitely did not suggest that somehow even if assange committed the crimes via entrapment that he wouldn't be one hundred percent accountable if the accusations were in any way true.

To change the subject back to WikiLeaks itself for a moment: a good summary.

http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue28/search-engines/jeeves.jpg

god i hate this screen name, why why did i choose it.

i've had three 'this is why people don't ask jeeves' jokes since i started posting here

:-)

Hahaha I shouldn't but... this is such classic Greenwald:

Rubin's segment goes on for about 10 minutes, and while listening to it will give important context for what follows, it's not completely necessary.

I was finally brought in at the 32:15 mark and that's when things became quite contentious and illuminating.

Swedish prosecutors have cancelled an arrest warrant issued for Julian Assange, the founder of controversial whistleblower website Wikileaks.

The warrant was issued following a sexual assault complaint against him.

But on Saturday, as international media outlets were beginning to pick up the story, Eva Finne, Sweden's chief prosecutor, announced that Assange was no longer wanted.

"I don't think there is reason to suspect that he has committed rape," the chief prosecutor said, but declined to go into any more details.

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/europe/2010/08/2010821153010551757.html

That's from August. Does anyone know what has changed since August in this case?

well you guys have had a busy morning

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/sep/01/sweden-julian-assange-rape-investigation

adam, it looks like the investigation was reopened in september

by a more senior agent I MEAN PROSECUTOR, PROSECUTOR

Ny added that "it's not entirely uncommon" that such reversals take place in Sweden, in particular regarding allegations of sex crimes. She also decided that another complaint against Assange should be investigated on suspicion of "sexual coercion and sexual molestation". That overruled a previous decision to only investigate the case as "molestation," which is not a sex crime under Swedish law.

Ok.

I don't really care about this, I just wanna see those UFO leaks.

Obviously you can't tell a bunch of loudmouthed Blitzers what is really going on; they are too vain and too naturally locquacious to keep a goddamn secret; they will blab that shit all over town. (You can by the way ignore any protestations to the opposite; for example, about the propriety of the wikileaks leaks. That's just professional jealousy and backbiting. Geraldo revealed troop positions on Fox News. If some disgruntled state dept. employee leaked that shit to Margaret Carlson, she'd be on your teevee five minutes later to reveal the "dramatic revelations.")

http://whoisioz.blogspot.com/2010/12/apologia-pro-mainstream-media.html

ah yes interesting argument there...

Meanwhile, another piece of dangerous information that these shameless criminal terrorist anarchists have released:
US and China collaborated to undermine the Copenhagen climate summit. http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,733630,00.html

better article @ Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/dec/03/wikileaks-us-manipulated-climate-accord

headline is fairly misleading - basically US tried to get China to agree to SOMETHING rather than nothing, in light of the fact that no one (including the US) had any leverage to use against China to get them to comply with the European goals.

and to get that non-binding resolution the US didn't include Europe.

I think the non-binding resolution sucks, but the idea that China was ever going to sign onto anything stringent that would hinder their economic development is bonkers.

The latest WikiLeaks cables reveal former prime minister Kevin Rudd told US politicians the outlook in Afghanistan "scared the hell out of him".

Fairfax newspapers quoted part of one cable which describes how Mr Rudd told visiting members of the US Congress that the national security establishment in Australia was deeply pessimistic about the long-term prognosis for Afghanistan.

The cable says Mr Rudd believed the European nations involved in the Afghan war had no common strategy for winning the war.

He is quoted as saying the US, Canada, UK, Australia and the Dutch were doing the "hard stuff", while France and Germany were "organising folk-dancing festivals".

^ posting for the last three words

(off abc website)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0xLyoc9DxU

Dig the airplane Whitehouse flyby w Assange releasing leaks Joker-style.