What no Wikileaks thread?

[Davey Boy 2.0]

Assange: Hero or traitor?

Personally I've loved all the embarrassing details coming out but the story this morning about "a secret U.S. State Department list of key infrastructure sites" gave me pause.

Is there a limit to the kinds of info that should be published? You could argue that these infrastructure sites aren't really revelatory, that that info is available to anyone with relatively basic research abilities but do you trust that organisation (Wikileaks) to be completely objective in assessing whether or not a document should be published in terms of national security?

There's a line that I suspect is fairly fine and I don't know if anyone really knows the motives, objectives and ambitions that drive these people.

[Davey Boy 2.0]

The one thing that I hope comes of this is a rethink governments' over-cautious redacting of information when requests for information are made.

It could be argued that this is a victory for trnasparency

[Booche]

I could also be argued that this is disasterous for freeporn.

[hamilton]

All I know is that I live in the most heavily-armed region in the world, and I'm sure that the Wikileaks information isn't making the North Korean government any less paranoid (which, of course, is paranoid like a wookie buying molly from a short-haired, military-like guy who totally promises he's not a narc in the parking lot in Hampton... times about a billion).

[Davey Boy 2.0]

I'd recommend placing a life-sized cutout of Assange in your bunker for when push comes to shove, Brian. You're going to need some release.

[Davey Boy 2.0]

Johann Hari in the Independent

"Every one of us owes a debt to Julian Assange. Thanks to him, we now know that our governments are pursuing policies that place you and your family in considerably greater danger. Wikileaks has informed us they have secretly launched war on yet another Muslim country, sanctioned torture, kidnapped innocent people from the streets of free countries and intimidated the police into hushing it up, and covered up the killing of 15,000 civilians – five times the number killed on 9/11. Each one of these acts has increased the number of jihadis. We can only change these policies if we know about them – and Assange has given us the black-and-white proof."

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-this-case-must-not-obscure-what-wikileaks-has-told-us-2154109.html

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

Chomsky on Wikileaks

[phishtaper]

i had a wicked leak when i got to work this morning. two cups of coffee in the car. man, did my bladder thank me.

i think he's a dark hero. but of course, i will deny that if asked.

[Davey Boy 2.0]

fack I love the Choms

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

He's still got it .

And it's nice to see that he still uses that favourite tagline of his - "Well, this isn't at all surprising...".

[timouse]

He's still got it .

And it's nice to see that he still uses that favourite tagline of his - "Well, this isn't at all surprising...".

[Davey Boy 2.0]

LAS VEGAS, Dec. 15, 2010 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Rael, founder and leader of the International Raelian Movement, has awarded the title of Honorary Guide to Julian Assange, founder and leader of Wikileaks.

"Julian Assange needs our energy and support so he can continue to destroy the myth of honest political leaders," Rael declared in a recent speech given in Japan, where Raelians had gathered to celebrate the 37th anniversary of Rael's encounter with the extraterrestrial scientists who created life on earth.

(See excerpts of Rael's speech at

)

Rael also praised the avalanche of support Assange received from both the anonymous public and prominent critics of government deception, including Michael Moore.

"Revolution has reached the Internet," Rael said. "People are revolted by the superpowers' dictatorial attempt to silence those who love the truth and reveal lies of the governments, so those people are now taking charge in accordance with the words 'We the People'."

He added, "This is a very good sign that the younger generation isn't ready to be silent sheep but instead is ready to fight for freedom of the Internet, the last and only free media not controlled by the superpowers and multinational companies trying to make the whole world population a mass of consumers and taxpayers who never question them."

Like Assange, who says he will remain true to his ideals, Rael reaffirmed on this 37th anniversary his mission to change the world, asking Raelians to keep the 'laughter revolution'.

"I hope that thousands of Raelians will attend political meetings and the public speeches of their prime minister, and that when the politicians start to say things like 'we will build a strong nation', that everybody will laugh. Laughing is the best answer for stupidity," Rael said.

"Assange is in prison like Nelson Mandela was, but I am sure he is laughing as he knows he cannot stay there a long time," Rael concluded. "Let's send him our energy so he can keep championing freedom of speech and keep embarrassing those who pretend to take care of the interests of their people."

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

Just who he needs in his corner - bug-eyed sex addicts .

On another note: from Naomi Wolf.

Sweden's Serial Negligence

As I have been making the case on media outlets in the past few days that the British and Swedish sex crime charges related actions against Julian Assange are so extraordinarily and unprecedentedly severe -- compared to how prosecutors always treat far more cut-and-dry allegations than those in question in this case worldwide, including in the Scandinavian countries, and that thus the pretext of using these charges against Assange is a pimping of feminism by the State and an insult to rape victims -- I have found myself up against a bizarre fantasy in the minds of my (mostly male) debating opponents.

The fantasy is that somehow this treatment -- a global manhunt, solitary confinement in the Victorian cell that drove Oscar Wilde to suicidal despair within a matter of days, and now a bracelet tracking his movements -- is not atypical, because somehow Sweden must be a progressively hot-blooded but still progressively post-feminist paradise for sexual norms in which any woman in any context can bring the full force of the law against any man who oversteps any sexual boundary.

Well, I was in Denmark in March of this year at a global gathering for women leaders on International Women's Day, and heard extensively from specialists in sex crime and victims' rights in Sweden. So I knew this position taken by the male-dominated US, British and Swedish media was, basically, horsesh-t. But none of the media outlets hyperventilating now about how this global-manhunt/Bourne-identity-chase-scene-level treatment of a sex crime allegation originating in Sweden must be 'normative' has bothered to do any actual reporting of how rape -- let alone the far more ambiguous charges of Assange's accusers, which are not charges of rape but of a category called 'sex by surprise,' which has no analog elsewhere -- is actually prosecuted in Sweden.

Guess what: Sweden has HIGHER rates of rape than other comparable countries -- including higher than the US and Britain, higher than Denmark and Finland -- and the same Swedish authorities going after Assange do a worse job prosecuting reported rapes than do police and the judiciary in any comparable country. And these are flat-out, unambiguous reported rape cases, not the 'sex by surprise' Assange charges involving situations that began consensually.

Indeed, the Swedish authorities -- who are now being depicted as global feminist sex-crime-avenger superheroes in blue capes -- were shamed by a 2008 Amnesty International report, "Case Closed", as being far more dismissive of rape, and far more insulting to rape victims who can be portrayed as 'asking for it' by drinking or any kind of sexual ambiguity -- than any other country in their comparison group. As Amnesty International put it in a blistering attack: "Swedish Rapists Get Impunity."

The same Swedish prosecutors who are now claiming custody of Julian Assange are, indeed, so shamefully negligent in prosecuting Swedish rapists who did not happen to embarrass the United States government that a woman who has been raped in Sweden is ten times more likely to be diagnosed with breast cancer than she is of getting any kind of legal proceeding on her behalf undertaken by Swedish prosecutors.

Of all Swedish reported rapes (and remember this is rape, not "molestation"), fewer result in legal proceedings of any kind than do comparable cases in the US, Finland and Norway.

"Sweden needs to do much more to clamp down on rapists, according to reports from Amnesty International and the United Nations," Jennifer Heape reports for the website thelocal.se, which translates Swedish news for an English-speaking audience. Sweden tops European rape league, data showed in 2009, but "Sweden's image as an international forerunner in the fight for gender equality has been damaged by recent reports comparing rape statistics across various countries....''

The same prosecutors going after Assange for an ambiguous situation are doing worse in getting convictions today than they were forty-five years ago: "despite the number of rapes reported to the police quadrupling over the past 20 years, the percentage of reported rapes ending in conviction is markedly lower today than it was in 1965."

Sweden's horrific record in prosecuting all the accused rapists and men accused of sex crime in Sweden who are not Julian Assange drew consternation from as high up as the UN. UN rapporteur Yakin Ertürk warned in February 2007, that there is a shocking discrepancy "between the apparent progress in achieving gender equality and the reports of continued violence against women in the country."

The actual number of rapes in Sweden in 2006 was estimated to be close to 30,000, according to Swedish data compilation. This number indicates that Swedish women have so little faith in their own legal system that 85-90 percent do not bother reporting the crime to the same police who are ankle-braceleting Assange, as a 2007 study showed that only '5-10 percent of all rapes are reported to the police' -- a reporting rate lower than the US and the UK, which have reporting rates of about 13-30 percent, a shameful enough set of numbers in itself.

The statistical survey by the Swedish organization BRÃ… showed that of that five or ten percent of rapes that resulted in reporting -- fewer than thirteen percent resulted in a police decision to start any legal proceedings at all. "The phenomenon of alleged offenses not formally being reported to the police or dropped before reaching court is termed 'attrition'," the report remarks sadly. "Amnesty slams the Swedish judicial system and the prevalence of attrition within it, concluding that, "in practice, many perpetrators enjoy impunity," Heape writes. In other words, 1.3 women in a thousand who is raped in Sweden will not receive any legal response whatsoever.

In the US and in Europe, male-dominated media discussions seem to portray the Assange charges as a victory of Swedish authorities over the old canard that "date rape" is not prosecuted because of a tendency to "blame the victim." But in fact, whenever they are not prosecuting Julian Assange, if you are raped on a date, Swedish police are unlikely to pursue your assailant. If the victim has been drinking, or behaving in a way that can be stigmatized as sexually provocative, no matter how clear-cut the rape charge, Swedish police typically leave such charges by the wayside. "In analyzing attrition and the failings of the police and judicial system, Case Closed draws attention to 'discriminatory attitudes about female and male sexuality...Young (drunk) women, in particular, have problems fulfilling the stereotypical role of the 'ideal victim', with the consequence that neither rapes within intimate relationships nor 'date rapes' involving teenage girls result in legal action," reports Heape.

"Helena Sutourius, an expert in legal proceedings in sexual offense cases, concludes that, in Sweden, 'the focus appears to be on the woman's behaviour, rather than on the act that is the object of the investigation.'" Swedish prosecutors and police don't even keep proper track of their own rape issue and how their own police handle or mishandle cases. Amnesty accused Sweden of little scrutiny of or research into the quality of its own rape crime investigations, "a serious shortcoming that needs to be addressed immediately."

Finally, remember that in the Assange case it is the State rather than the women themselves that is bringing the charges. The Swedish state -- which has proven, in politically neutral cases that merely involve actual assaults against women -- such a shameful custodian of raped victims' well-being.

And then, conclude: shame on Sweden; shame on Interpol; shame on Britain. And lasting shame, given this farcical hijacking of a sex crime law that is scarcely ever enforced in Sweden in far less ambiguous contexts, on the United States of America.

[Davey Boy 2.0]

wow.

[Kanada Kev]

Thanks for posting that. Never ceases to amaze me what the MSM journalists fail to cover or mention in their reporting.

[Booche]

Dont say I didnt warn you.

Either that or its a simple case of SNL being back to stealing my ideas.