https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/321097232516542464
#WikiLeaks put an extraordinary amount of work into #PlusD. wikileaks.org/plusd/about/ Keep them strong! shop.wikileaks.org/donate—
M Cetera 「エム」 (@m_cetera) April 08, 2013
Soon, as media and bloggers sift through the new leaks, there will be revelations to help clarify history and better understand how the United States ended up where it is today.
There’s some crow to eat this morning, for anti-Assange, anti-Wikileaks people.
Last year we got confirmation in the form of a WikiLeaks-Strafor leak of all things, that Assange had been secretly indicted in the US, for his journalism.
On January 26, 2011, Fred Burton, the vice president of Stratfor, a leading private intelligence firm which bills itself as a kind of shadow CIA, sent an excited email to his colleagues. “Text Not for Pub,” he wrote. “We” – meaning the U.S. government – “have a sealed indictment on Assange. Pls protect.”
Well, it’s true. It’s not unexpected if you follow people who actually care about journalism and the truth. And it’s led to Assange being trapped in various prisons in and near London, while the UK, Swedish, American, and Australian legal and political systems toy with his freedom.
The American admission that they are still seeking to charge Assange with crimes, despite his activity falling under First Amendment protection for journalists, demonstrates the reason he’s opted to stay out of a Swedish jail.
The Swedish prosecutor who refused to travel to London to interview Assange in order to proceed with the case they want to build against him, has LEFT the case.
AA’s lawyer has been fired, and a new one has been chosen and approved by the court. AA is one of Assange’s accusers in Sweden.
And more shocking, a Swedish judge is set to speak publicly about what he’d do if he was directly handling Assange’s case! Just this week, Toronto’s Mayor Ford ended up in hot water for making radio comments about an active case in the Canadian justice system.
Speaking to Fairfax Media, Mr Assange condemned Judge Lindskog’s planned discussion of his case.
“If an Australian High Court judge came out and spoke on a case the court expected or was likely to judge, it would be regarded as absolutely outrageous,” he said.
“This development is part of a pattern in which senior Swedish figures, including the Swedish Foreign Minister, the Prime Minister and Minister for Justice, have all publicly attacked me or WikiLeaks.”
Justice Lindskog is chairman of the Supreme Court of Sweden, the country’s highest court of appeal. In announcing his forthcoming lecture, Adelaide University observed that “as one of Sweden’s most eminent jurists, he is uniquely able to provide an authoritative view of the Assange affair”.
… which is precisely why it’s not supposed to happen in public, until at least the accused has been acquitted if charged. Assange has still not even been charged with a crime in Sweden, so he can’t even formally defend his innocence in the matter. If he submits to the politically motivated extradition to Sweden, he’s justified in knowing that Sweden will eventually send him on to face political charges in the United States. Continue reading
The problem with how Sweden, the UK, and the United States have been treating Julian Assange of Wikileaks, has dragged on for years. It’s left the foremost journalist in the world stuck in a London apartment building that houses the Ecuadorian Embassy where Assange is trapped as a political prisoner. He sought asylum from the Swedish extradition order, and Ecuador granted him that request. Assange’s home country of Australia has sided with the United States in wanting him imprisoned and taken offline, because they’ve failed to negotiate his safe return to Australia or Ecuador where he could be free.
In February there was a great response to a New Statesman article by a former Assange supporter who has now betrayed him by working for Hollywood/CIA who is set to smear him in a widely distributed film.
Khan complains that Assange refused to appear in the film about WikiLeaks by the American director Alex Gibney, which she “executive produced”. Assange knew the film would be neither “nuanced” nor “fair” and “represent the truth”, as Khan wrote, and that its very title, We Steal Secrets: The Story of Wikileaks, was a gift to the fabricators of a bogus criminal indictment that could doom him to one of America’s hellholes. Having interviewed axe-grinders and turncoats, Gibney abuses Assange as paranoid. DreamWorks is also making a film about the “paranoid” Assange. Oscars all round.
It’s also worth reading this summary by WikiLea’s J. Farrell, of Assange’s present legal and political problems:
Over a lunch you [, Khan,] questioned this fear of extradition to the US, and when I asked you what you would do in his position you refused to answer the question. I asked you more than six times what you would do in his shoes. Having offered to cooperate with the Swedish investigation non-stop for the past two years and been refused with no proper explanation, and believing that you would end up in an American prison for decades, in solitary confinement and under SAMs, what would you do? You never gave me a concrete answer. Instead, you skirted the question with another question and discounted the numerous legal opinions out there, favouring instead an article by David Allen Green. I reiterated that Julian had never said that it would be likely in practice that he would face the death penalty, although the Espionage Act permits this. But more to the point, and one that everyone always ignores, there was (and still is) the fear of being extradited to face life imprisonment and almost certainly torture or other inhumane and degrading treatment for his publishing activities.
I told you that the Swedish authorities could, if they wanted to, charge Julian in absentia. Even if they were to do that, they should, according to their own procedures, conduct an interview with him before requesting his extradition. I repeated that he remains available even in the embassy for questioning by the Swedish authorities should they wish to employ the standard procedures they use regularly in other cases.
I think it was David Allen Green who I was arguing with once on Twitter about WikiLeaks. He’s clearly not very objective, and is out to present the situation in a way that will result in Assange ending up imprisoned.
In response to the sexual assault allegations, here are people who recognize what is going on:
Khan is rightly concerned about a “resolution” of the allegations of sexual misconduct in Sweden. Putting aside the tissue of falsehoods demonstrated in the evidence in this case, both women had consensual sex with Assange and neither claimed otherwise; and the Stockholm prosecutor Eva Finne all but dismissed the case.
As Katrin Axelsson and Lisa Longstaff of Women Against Rape wrote in the Guardian in August 2012, “. . . the allegations against [Assange] are a smokescreen behind which a number of governments are trying to clamp down on WikiLeaks for having audaciously revealed to the public their secret planning of wars and occupations with their attendant rape, murder and destruction . . .
“The authorities care so little about violence against women that they manipulate rape allegations at will . . . [Assange] has made it clear he is available for questioning by the Swedish authorities, in Britain or via Skype. Why are they refusing this essential step to their investigation? What are they afraid of?”
They are afraid of Skype, or a plane flight to London. Here’s a fricken map for them to find Julian Assange for that interview they claim to want on behalf of Assanges’ accusers.
People may not know exactly why Wikileaks’ founder Julian Assange has been detained in the UK, then trapped in Ecuador’s embassy. The short answer is, because he embarrassed the US military intelligence community, they’ve waged a character assassination war upon him using his casual sex with women against him.
The US wouldn’t extradite him directly from the UK, because they win more discretely by pulling on Sweden’s strings. The US can continue to deny they’ve secretly indicted Assange for something like espionage, for Wikileaks having obtained the Cablegate secret files. If Assange did go to Sweden for questioning, they’d lock him up, without outside communication, charge him, jail him, then deport him to the US who at that time would reveal their sealed indictment. Australia, Assange’s home nation, would stand idly by, continuing to fail to protect him, so Gillard can protect Australia’s submissive intelligence relationship with the US.
“Assange conveniently left [Sweden] before [an interview with the prosecutor] could happen.” Not quite; his lawyer asked if he was wanted for questioning, and the prosecutor declined at that time. He left, after weeks, then was inconveniently called back. He’s been detained by the UK, or under the protection of asylum of Ecuador since 2010, and so the Swedish prosecutor should have gone to where her suspect was since she knows Assange can’t/won’t leave without ending up in a Swedish hole. The prosecutor has travelled abroad in such unusual cases before. She won’t this time because their game is won if Assange is detained and credulous people accept their bogus story.
The big picture is that the US is aiming to shut down Wikileaks through tying up Assange in a compromised justice system that detains people without trial for years (Manning), and hounds hackers to death with the threat of charges and financial ruin if they fight back (Swartz). That’s if their censorious proxy financial blockade doesn’t manage first. Without Wikileaks or similar journalistic organizations, it will be virtually impossible for the people to have intelligence required to subvert authoritarians in our governments and financial-fascist banking systems.
That’s why there are so many good professionals and resources going to defending Assange over these bogus, trumped up allegations of Swedish “rape”. One doesn’t need to know the intricacies of Swedish (or US, or UK) law to see the game afoot. Assange’s sexual habits are not what got him into this mess, they are a side show played up by dangerous parts of the American and related governments. If he’d have abstained from sex, they would have concocted a different plot along these same lines, the truth is not important to those in government seeking the ruin of Assange and Wikileaks. They are quite literally the enemies of truth, and open information.
I missed this Rap News from last May. You won’t want to miss it. If it’s confusing though, you’ve got fifty minutes of documentary catch-up, plus some news footnotes to follow up on. Plus, it helps if you’ve seen Star Wars. If this is all greek/geek to you, it’s a good thing you’re reading my blog, you’ll be up to speed in ‘know time’.
I love that Hrafnsson’s daughter commented on the video. [Strange she missed an 's' in the name though ;-)]
Wikileaks: “A little group of activists…” – Julian Assange
I wish my title was embellished, but it’s been a crazy 24 hours. The background to this story is that Wikileaks‘ editor Julian Assange is holed up in Ecuador’s embassy in London, waiting for the Ecuadorian President Correa to rule on his asylum bid. It’s expected that asylum will be granted on Thursday. One way or another, the UK has threatened to storm the Ecuadorian embassy and take Assange into their custody for rendition, err… extradition to Sweden for “questioning”. From there, it’s widely expected Assange will be extradited to the USA for torture and eventually death in retribution for unleashing Cablegate.
If #Assange is not the lead story on ALL "news' and 'current affairs' shows tonight, true journalism and truth does not exist here.—
Lisa Watson (@Lisa_Watto) August 16, 2012
The whole “Assange is a rapist, and people who support him and Wikileaks supports rape” comments found on Twitter and elsewhere, is propaganda of the worst kind. It’s convincing otherwise intelligent people to put prosecution of sexual misconduct at a higher priority than preserving free speech and democracy! Look at unfree countries and tell me women are treated equal to men or better there.
If political prisoners, like Assange, are not universally defended, then the state will simply accuse anyone it finds a threat as being a sexual deviant. Since propagandized individuals don’t see through that old ploy, they’ll cheer as our top journalists are imprisoned, and weaker journalists shut up to avoid going to jail. Bye bye democracy. Then bye bye feminism.
I’m getting seriously pissed off explaining to people privileged who live in free democratic countries like England, Canada, and New Zealand, that we PROTECT political prisoners, not cheer for their prosecution. We are becoming the bad guys, as western nations. Our moral high ground over China, South Africa, and elsewhere with poor reputations, is rapidly being ceded to pursue a bogus rape charge for the most innovative journalist to make waves in decades.
TonoFonseca 2012/08/15 at 5:51 PM ET:
I never, ever, thought, in a million years, I would be siding with Ecuador against Britain. It is sad how countries like Britain, Canada, and the USA are becoming just like the police states we fought against in WWII and the Cold War.
Have you committed a crime? No? You’re still in a police database somewhere. It’s not supposed to happen according to our laws, and according to American law, but it’s happening and it’s called TRAPWIRE. 9/11 is often the excuse used, but it’s actually simply the state using its latest tech toys in the most obvious way possible, which is why Orwell wrote fiction about it. It didn’t take a whole lot of imagination to dream up a world where our every move is government monitored. Yet you can expect that crime will not be eliminated in such a world.
When democracy is lost, and the power of the ballot box to bring change is gone, what’s left for oppressed people? Crime gets worse. People get desperate. It’s not an untested societal model, even if the technological pervasiveness of the state has not bee quite as acute. It’s not a country I want to see, let alone live in.
I can’t stop the slide into fascism that Canada is facing, not by myself. It took the Greatest Generation to defeat it previously, and it will take another generation to overcome again. Yet our tools of truth are under attack by governments, by our representatives. Well, they claim to represent the people, anyway.
If you care about your civil liberties: write a complaint about #TrapWire to your elected representatives!—
Asher Wolf (@Asher_Wolf) August 13, 2012
It’s 2012. We don’t have flying cars, but we do all carry tracking devices (cell phones), and the state watches where we go in multiple ways. I think I’d rather have the flying cars, even given the naive pre-9/11 view that they’d not be used as missiles.
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It seems Google didn’t invent Street View The idea was 100 years old when it first started to become popular on the Internet!
Behold Vancouver, street view from 1907
Barcelona, Spain 1908
Look at all the bicycles!
Vancouver in 1971, albeit a little shaky camera work.
Moose Jaw, circa 2006, with excellent John Wing humour as background music. I actually know two of the vehicles that go by.
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Hat tip Alec
Barcelona 1908 youtu.be/kJdwzY1o7k8—
Alec Couros (@courosa) July 16, 2012
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And here’s a little unrelated WikiLeaks humour. Use the Fifth.
How to take the Fifth on just about every question asked in front of a grand jury couros.ca/x/106—
Alec Couros (@courosa) July 16, 2012
Here’s some stuff that will probably not interest you, but I make available anyway for some laughs and potential humility/humour.
I saw some very interesting search terms recently finding my blog. The most funny was
“biggest cock in america”
Which someone found because I wrote about the Biggest Cock-up Ever, I assume anyway. I’m not in America, for one thing, and my penis isn’t either.
Another more interesting search was someone musing if Stats Canada is going to be made redundant by a Big Brother database like the Conservative’s CIMS. You see, if a winning political party has already gathered and data mined everything about every voter in Canada, there’s not much more counting to do. Just have the government pay RMG a few more million, fire Stats Can. staff, and the government will know everything (while everyone without access to CIMS is kept in the dark).
I enjoyed all three of the videos that play in succession on this CTV page. Kady live blogging in the background is amusing. I supposed most people get funny facial expressions while they are writing, I can only imagine mine while I’m blogging. Her crack up at the revelation of the VikiLeaks password (StrongStableConservativeMajorityGovernment) was funny. (It seems every major paper ends up being involved in a scandal where a ‘leaks password is revealed.)
YES I laughed at the #vikileaks30 password. I'm not made of stone, you people. Also, I'm not the only one by a long shot.—
kady o'malley (@kady) April 24, 2012
I’m pleased that #vikileaks Adam Carroll was trending ahead of Dean Del Mastro. Carroll is a Canadian hero so far as I’m concerned. It takes courage to stand up (even anonymously when the threat of detection is real {and realized in Carroll’s case}) to a malicious Minister of a government that labels dissenting Canadians “child pornographers”, “adversaries”, and “enemies of the state”. Even with the truth as a defence, there’s still the risk of a cash flush political party using some of its lawyers to SLAPP those it doesn’t like.
- A little toe tapping music to go while you read. I was listening while writing.
CTV’s Mercedes [and CBC Kady] confirmed that Carroll had been called before the wrong committee by the Conservatives.
Carroll also said he was not obligated to appear before the committee, and was only there because of his respect for Parliament and his wish to put the matter to rest.
So he’s not so contemptuous of Parliament after all. He does have some valid contempt for the Conservatives, however.
NDP MP Charlie Angus called Mr. Del Mastro’s accusations “conspiracy theories” and asked Mr. Carroll if he had any idea why the committee would be investigating Mr. Toews’s messy divorce.
“I have also been wondering that same question for myself,” the former Liberal staffer replied. “This is a sideshow, this is a distraction. The circumstances and events came out right when their robo-call scandal was beginning to break and this seemed like a very convenient way to turn the channel.”
And with that point in mind, my next article pertains to RoboCon.
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Hat tip to Boris
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