There are many thousands of people imprisoned in Uzbekistan alone who should not be imprisoned and who suffer much worse conditions than even the genuine horrors of Wandsworth being visited on Julian Assange. But the Assange case has implications for ever deteriorating Western freedoms which should not be overlooked.
Then there are many war criminals who ought to be in jail and who are not. Most prominent of these are Bush, Blair, Cheney, Straw and their crew. A minor figurewho ought to be in jail is Anna Ardin. Here are two tweets she published after being “raped” by Julian Assange:
‘Julian wants to go to a crayfish party, anyone have a couple of available seats tonight or tomorrow? #fb’
‘Sitting outdoors at 02:00 and hardly freezing with the world’s coolest smartest people, it’s amazing! #fb’
She subsequently deleted and tried to expunge those. I doff my hat to Rixstep:
http://rixstep.com/1/20101001,01.shtml
For another avowed feminist trying to bring Assange down, analyse the use of language in this article by the Guardian’s useless Helen Piddle. For a worm like her to use words like bizarre and raggle-taggle in relation to John Pilger really defies rationality.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/dec/08/julian-assange-celebrity-supporters
“The entire world of every political persuasion is now pissing themselves laughing at the sheer lunacy of the rape accusations. Who will dare shag a Swedish girl ever again?”
Tony, good question. I had no idea before now that they had such crazy laws! If I was a man living there I’d emigrate.
Sorry forgot – the scam page:
http://pastehtml.com/view/1c8i33u.html
CheebaCow – I second that.
Tony_opmoc – excellent post.
Mark – I think there are probably multiple sources for the DDOS attacks. For instance, the botnet attacking your system seems to have a host in China. Well, it could be that some Chinese person downloaded the US “voluntary botnet tool”, but that seems unlikely; more likely an old-fashioned botnet of criminal origin.
dreoilin said: “So far no entity has been taken offline permanently, and Wikileaks has something like 700 mirrors.”
While it’s true that it is virtually impossible to stop information being spread, the US is trying to create a situation where no ‘popular’ site can spread such information. Already when attempting to view WL it is necessary to try numerous addresses until you can find a working one. If the US is successful in forcing such information to be spread entirely by the ‘underground’ internet they will have achieved their goals. The internet will be no use when it comes to forming widespread movements capable of being a political force.
Mark: is your firewall up to muster? Comodo do an excellent free one.
“Who will dare shag a Swedish girl ever again?”
Not me. I gave up half an hour ago.
CheebaCow, I think that in an important sense, the US has already lost. People know that the information has been leaked, and can be found with effort. People know that those newspapers already have the entire Cablegate dump. If the US “wins”, and succeeds in suppressing the information, it proves that they want to control access to information. Well, that isn’t democracy.
Rattling nice layout and excellent content material , practically nothing else we need : D.
“Already when attempting to view WL it is necessary to try numerous addresses until you can find a working one.”
But Wikileaks is up here
http://wikileaks.ch/
I’m looking right at it. And I’ve just gone to the mirror list and tried a random five addresses, and they all came up fine.
“Already when attempting to view WL it is necessary to try numerous addresses until you can find a working one.”
But Wikileaks is up here
http://wikileaks.ch/
I’m looking right at it. And I’ve just gone to the mirror list and tried a random five addresses, and they all came up fine.
Thanks Clark for the research – That particular botnet is used by Operation Payback:
http://www.thejournal.ie/supporters-launch-web-attacks-as-corporate-world-puts-squeeze-on-wikileaks-2010-12/
I am trying to emphasise it is a scam – which is what I vehemently believe along with the manipulation of Assange – I do hope I am proved right in the long run – but yes Tony I take on board your comments.
You can still shag Swedish girls, just not in Sweden. Probably good for Swedish travel agents; could be a conspiracy!
Whoa, Craig’s site is having trouble today. I reckon that the whole ‘net is going wobbly with all the DDOSing.
Thanks Clark for the research – That particular botnet is used by Operation Payback:
http://www.thejournal.ie/supporters-launch-web-attacks-as-corporate-world-puts-squeeze-on-wikileaks-2010-12/
I am trying to emphasise it is a scam – which is what I vehemently believe along with the manipulation of Assange – I do hope I am proved right in the long run – but yes Tony I take on board your comments.
“WikiLeaks ‘struck a deal with Israel’ over diplomatic cables leaks”.
“Assange met with Israeli officials in Geneva earlier this year and struck the secret deal. The Israel government, it seems, had somehow found out or expected that the documents to be leaked contained a large number of documents about the Israeli attacks on Lebanon and Gaza in 2006 and 2008-9 respectively. These documents, which are said to have originated mainly from the Israeli embassies in Tel Aviv and Beirut, where removed and possibly destroyed by Assange, who is the only person who knows the password that can open these documents, the sources added.”
Or so it says here: http://www.veteranstoday.com/2010/12/08/wikileaks-struck-a-deal-with-israel-over-cable-leaks/
can’t post
Further to MJ’s post at 1:15 PM. Before the predictable cries of “See, it’s all a Zionist conspiracy!”, look at the last paragraph of the Veterans Today article:
“…Assange might have done what he is alleged to have done in order protect himself and ensure that the leaked documents are published…”
WL seems to be trouble free for now, but over the last 2 weeks there have been numerous times that wikileaks.ch wasn’t working and even the mirror list has been down. I don’t mean to say that WL is going to lose, I just mean it is important they don’t. We shouldn’t take the free nature of the net for granted. I would argue that the internet is far less free now than it was 10-15 years ago.
One of those Wimmin you boys all hate:
Tell me what a rapist looks like
Posted by Laurie Penny – 09 December 2010 09:33
Too many on the left have assumed that Julian Assange’s innocence is beyond question.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange looks on during a press conference at the Geneva Press Club on November 4, 2010. Photograph: Getty Images.
If global justice movements had to rely solely on people of impeccable character to further their cause, we would probably still be trying to end slavery. And yet, now that the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been arrested over rape allegations – just as his organisation happens to be spearheading the biggest revelation of military secrets in history – this has led many on the left to assume his innocence is beyond question.
The substance of the allegations is for the courts to decide. So why does the left-wing logic run that Assange is one of the good guys – and everyone knows that good guys don’t rape, particularly not good guys who are the public face of crusading international whistle-blowing organisations?
I have no idea whether Assange, who firmly denies the accusations, did or did not commit sex attacks in Sweden last August. But just as we would condemn anyone who pronounced him guilty at this early stage, should we also not be concerned that many liberals, some of whom would count themselves feminists, have leapt to the conclusion that Assange must be the innocent victim of a smear campaign? Some have gone further, actively attacking the women in question and accusing them of colluding in a conspiracy to destroy Assange. This plays easily into the narrative that most women who accuse men of rape are liars, and most men who attract such accusations are just saucy scamps with, as the commentator John Band put it, “poor bedroom etiquette”.
Ordinary outrage
Whatever the merits of the Assange case, the uncomfortable truth is that sometimes good guys rape. Rape, after all, is hardly a freak occurrence. Across the world, in every city and town, tens of thousands of times a day, 170 times a day in Britain alone, in war zones and bedrooms and boardrooms, people – usually women and children – are raped.
Rape is an ordinary outrage, and most of the people who rape are ordinary men who happen to believe, especially when drunk or angry, that their right to sex trumps any given woman’s right to bodily autonomy.
These men are brothers, fathers and husbands. They have jobs, friends and roles to play in their communities; they are doctors, plumbers, politicians, judges and journalists.
When we feminists talk about “rape culture”, we don’t actually believe that there are strange men lurking around every corner waiting to assault us in the name of patriarchy. On the contrary: it is the very banality of the fact that women are largely raped by their friends, husbands and boyfriends that makes rape culture so damaging.
Evidently, one of the few things that makes powerful men more uncomfortable than forcing them to acknowledge rape culture is forcing them to acknowledge the subterfuge and dirty dealing that sustains western military imperialism.
It would be wonderful to believe that the decision to take Assange to court was motivated by a new-found, miraculous interest in seeking justice for rape victims. But the reason this case is being investigated so vigorously is surely that, on this occasion, and on this occasion alone, it serves the interests of certain governments to pursue a man who, entirely incidentally, happens to have embarrassed several imperialist powers hugely.
That Julian Assange stands accused of rape should not make any difference to the important work that WikiLeaks, of which he is by no means the only member, is doing – but the important work that WikiLeaks is doing should not stop us from acknowledging that Assange stands accused of rape. We should welcome the news that the allegations will most likely be tested in court; if we truly believe that the age of secrecy and shame is over, we should be honest enough to question rape culture as well as military imperialism.
Thanks MJ – Yes I follow veteranstoday who also believe the deception. All sits nicely with the ‘Internet kill-switch’ bill in debate.
I will ask Todd Han why http://www.anonops.net is a dead link.
“even the mirror list has been down”
but …
How could the mirror list be down when it’s a string of different sites in many different countries? I have my own domain and was half-thinking of giving them space. 2GB is the estimate to host all of their files.
http://wikileaks.ch/mass-mirror.html
@Alan, given your misogyny on this board – even if was intended as a joke – regarding the men and women here as women-haters seems a strange position to take indeed. But then you want Assange to be guilty, so as to attempt to discredit the Wikileaks project. Why not be honest about that?
I broadly agree that people should face their accusers in court, and if Assange is found guilty in a fair trial, fine. He would have to resign from Wikileaks, which would then carry on anonymously, or it would find a new editor in chief.
That said, there are several features of the extradition and the case that seem fishy. That the left are pointing that out is not the same thing as saying ‘good people’ accused of a crime need not answer for it.
In any case, from what I read, it will be hard to extradite him. If this is the case, it may because one of the accusers has stopped co-operating with the authorities, and it is certainly relevant that she appears to have a history of teaching ex-partners a lesson. However if the claims are genuine, and turn out not to be politically motivated, then he should be extradited, according to due legal process.
It should go without saying that “One of those Wimmin you boys all hate” is provably untrue, infantile and confrontational. If you’re genuinely interested in an exchange, may I ask that you make your points in a more civil way? Most people here manage it, even where they disagree with Craig and/or everyone else.
MJ,
Interesting and plausible, but it doesn’t really change anything, except it may turn even more elements within the US Government against being continually shafted by Israel. They will eventually work it out, and have the same balls as Gordon Duff and others to spell it out.
We really seem to be at some turning point now, and I am delighted to just read in the Telegraph that Buff and Co have been banned for 5 years. If they did that in the US, there would be virtually no one left. Maybe just Denis Kucinich and Ron Paul.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/8191301/MPs-for-hire-three-former-Labour-ministers-banned-from-Parliament.html
“Following a formal sleaze inquiry, the Commons Standards and Privileges Committee took the unprecedented step of ordering Geoff Hoon, defence secretary under Tony Blair, to surrender his Parliamentary pass for five years and apologise to the House.
Stephen Byers, the former transport secretary who told undercover reporters posing as lobbyists that he was a “cab for hire,” was barred for two years for a “particularly serious breach”.
The punishment would have been more severe but he was given credit for apologising.”
Tony
Thanks Alan – yes ‘Fuzzy’ was raped by her previous partner – but..
The main lady in question threw a party in his honour after the fact and tried to pull down the incriminating tweets.
Hardly proof for a rape charge? The only reason the charges got traction is that, in the radical feminist utopia of Sweden under Queen Lisbeth Salander, if a woman doesn’t have multiple orgasms during hetero sex, the man can be charged with rape. You didn’t know?
Jon, well said.
It’s obvious what has happened to Assange. He sexually partnered two women within days, and the two women subsequently communicated. What usually happens in such a situation? The fact that there were vultures watching led to international amplification, otherwise it would be old news by now.
It doesn’t matter what Laurie Penny and alan campbell say rape is. We know they have fantasies of it being whatever they want it to be in order to use it as a weapon against men. That’s a feminist agenda which seems to have succeeded in Sweden, one of these victims even writing up how to get back at two-timimg boyfriends by using rape law against them.
Both these women consented to intercourse at the time. Therefore it ain’t rape.
End of.
Hey folks, I just noticed; it’s not Craig’s site that’s slow, it’s justforeignpolicy.org, the Iraq death toll image in the left panel. If you have Firefox with Adblock, you can block that image and the page loads much faster. Why is justforeignpolicy.org so slow? I’m off to have a look…
Misogyny? Hey, I love women. Hence my contempt for loopy religious fundamentalists and their apologists on this blog. I suspect you’ve had an irony by-pass. Try Tom for your misogyny charge.
Mark,
To be perfectly honest I don’t think it is technically possible for the US Govt to control the Internet regardless of what laws they may or may not pass.
The internet tends to be self healing, because the vast majority of people who actually control it have a similar mindset which is about both freedom and integrity. Whatever block is put in the way, a way around that block will be quickly found.
Even if the US managed to control the Internet within the US, they would effectively be shooting themselves in the face. The internet is one of the few things that the US is actually earning a living from.
The rest of the World could get by perfectly O.K. if the US cut itself off completely.
The idea that the Rest of The World actually needs the US is a myth.
But many Americans on an individual basis are as determined as anyone else in the world to maintain an open and free democratic society both at the technical level in the virtual world and at the real level too. Most of them have lots of guns too and are very angry at their Fascist Government.
Tony
Alan Campbell, maybe you love women like I love walnuts. If so, be careful if you visit Sweden!