Julian Assange
WTF?! Doesn’t this seem awfully convenient for the powers that be? I’m going to take a wait-and-see attitude for now.
The warrant was issued late on Friday, said Karin Rosander, communications head at Sweden’s prosecutors’ office.
Swedish police have been trying to contact Mr Assange, but have not yet been able to, she told the BBC.
Wikileaks, criticised for leaking Afghan war documents, quoted him saying the charges were “without basis”.
The message, which appeared on Twitter and was attributed directly to Mr Assange, said the appearance of the allegations “at this moment is deeply disturbing”.
The BBC story offers no details about the charges or who brought them. What do you think?
UPDATE: The arrest warrant has been cancelled, the charges dropped. But the it’s out there now, the damage has been done.
Curiouser and curiouser. From the Obama house organ:
LONDON — Julian Assange, founder of the whistle-blower Web site WikiLeaks who has been embroiled in a fight with the Pentagon over the recent release of classified documents, briefly became the focus of new attention on Saturday when Swedish prosecutors sought him for questioning on rape allegations — then quickly said the accusations were unfounded.
Mr. Assange, a 39-year-old Australian, had quickly posted a denial of the Swedish allegations on Twitter, saying that the charges were “without basis.” After the accusations had been initially reported in a Swedish newspaper, he wrote: “We were warned to expect ‘dirty tricks.’ Now we have the first one.”
This is an open thread.
Filed under: crime, Politics Tagged: | Julian Assange, suspicious accusations, tinfoil hat, WikiLeaks
Something doesn’t feel right about this, IMHO.
Julian Assange slams sexual abuse charges
Prosecutors in Sweden have said that they did not make a mistake when they issued an arrest warrant, which was later quickly withdrawn, for Julian Assange, the Wikileaks founder.
The country’s prosecution authority has dropped raped charges against him, but a separate molestation accusation is still under investigation.
August 22, 2010
Well, in fairness since this just came in via the International StockHoms News, I am posting it here. The whole thing is giving me a head ache now and there is an on-going investigation.
Orange CheetoVile is giving the women’s story full coverage on a
new post.
I guess the good news, is that there never were any children in the ‘official’ investigation, only in the media frenzy reports, which the prosecutor now claims were LEAKED by their office.
One of the women has gone on record with her full name, and she is from Sweden.
Oh, and CheetoVile has printed her fully name. ???
Yes, I wasn’t impressed by the argument that Assange doesn’t “look” like he suffers from toxic testosterone. I wouldn’t want any such person on a jury at a rape trial.
May I just say that he does not appear to suffer from toxic testosterone.
I think it’s really strange that no details have been released about who the supposed victim is–not ever whether the victim is male, female, adult, or underage. If it weren’t the BBC, I wouldn’t buy into it at all.
I wouldn’t let the BBC connection fool you. The BBC stopped being independent and turned into a government mouthpiece with the Hutton Report.
How did it fool me? I’d expect this to be leaked to government mouthpieces.
good morning all, the BS charge was withdrawn.
TT….. WTF?
We’ve added some new words to the moderation file, so if your comment disappears, please be patient. Comments that imply that Obama is a muslim or that the people who had planned to build a mosque in Manhattan are terrorists will be deleted.
This seems to be a very emotional topic for some people. I don’t think I’ve seen anything like this since the I/P threads. People should be able to express their opinions, but we don’t condone bigotry at TC.
I’m not referring to what I’ve read here at TC but to the Dem-sympathetic media in general: I do wish the response to the implication that Obama is Muslim would be more along the lines of “so what if he were” rather than the cross-implication that there’d be something wrong with our President being Muslim.
I agree, and if it were stated in that way, a comment would probably go through. But at this point, I fail to see the need to keep discussing the issue at all. Obama’s father may have been a muslim, but he was raised by his mother and grandparents in Hawaii. The entire discussion is an effort to smear Obama in an offensive way.
Timing is a bit strange…but I will wait till more info comes out…I never discount a charge of rape, I want to be supportive of the woman making the accusation, if it does come out that the charge is legitimate.
On another topic, since this is an open thread:
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/aug/20/opinion/la-oe-miller-presidents-20100820/3
“Republicans are rejoicing in his travail, and movements like the “tea party” are gaining ground — all of which makes the case for Obama as polarizer in chief. Only 13% of Americans believe they have benefited from his economic policies, the most depressing statistic of all.
But the president probably isn’t all that worried. There’s plenty of time and space for improvement, particularly if unemployment numbers drop. And as the second-term victories of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush suggest, we are hardly reelecting great presidents these days; average ones will do quite nicely, as long as the economy stays strong.”
Exsqueeze me? Did this man lump my Bill Clinton in with W.? WTF?
How do you know the accuser is a woman?
good point
I just woke up a bit ago and have been reading various newspapers and some are saying a rape and 2 molestations. It says there have been no charges, that the arrest warrant is to prevent any destruction of evidence. I am presuming they want his little laptop and the access code to the laptop. What the laptop would have to do with the charges beats me.
UPDATE: Indications of a possible false claim against Julian Assange
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/abraham/detail?entry_id=70617#ixzz0xFp6U5As
Is the “rape card” kinda like the “race card”. To be used to distract ? Similar to what happened to Al Gore at the time oil spill?
Jeez, it sounds like a plot twist from some Stieg Larsson Millenium novel. Would Lisbeth Salander be working for or against Assange? Moral dilemma, hacker vigilantiism, secret government files, image destroying propaganda…
It doesn’t get much better than that.
I hope it isn’t true. But as we’ve seen with accusations of r@cysm, it’s very hard sometimes to defend yourself, unless there’s concrete proof.
Actually, anyone who has read Larsson’s books is going to be deeply skeptical of these charges.
I hope it isn’t true too. The timing seems extremely suspicious though. Wikileaks is about to release more files.
My thoughts EXACTLY
I started the second book this morning. Thanks for the recommendation.
From CNN:
So now it’s crimes, plural, and victims, plural.
i’m getting a whiff of Arkansas Project, and I’m glad to see I’m not the only one.
I don’t know how to embed this…but damn it is funny…
http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/350667/august-19-2010/the-word—what-if-you-threw-a-peace-and-nobody-came-
That is funny, in a sad way….
100,000 troops left and another 50,000 troops…oooprs Advisors/trainers remain…Yup, sounds like ALL the troops are out.
I can’t read Swedish, but the person who tweeted this story said that “consensual sex devoved into abuse in two separate instances.”
http://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/article7652935.ab
The bold is by me, which leads me to believe they want the little laptop ASAP.
It just occurred to me that this accusation could be part of a trap. (It’s those damn Larsson books)
What if a government entity is trying to smoke Assange out? I mean, isn’t he like an international man of mystery? No one is quite sure where he is, he tends to float over international borders with ease. So, maybe they get the idea of pinning him down with a rape charge. Will he succumb to the temptation of trying to find out who planted this accusation in the media? Will he try to hack into someone’s computer in Sweden? Will the owners of that computer be anticipating the probe and be ready to trace him back to his present location?
Or does Assange really operate outside the law? Is he an international outlaw? If so, is he morally capable of this rape?
My gut instincts say no. I don’t quite believe it.
See the above quote with link. They want his laptop. His laptop will have the logon to the main operation, unless they have it arranged in sections, which would lead me to think so given WikiLeaks rearranging of some part via a notice they posted. Also, they have placed a gate of some sort to prevent anyone looking without the second logon to be caught in the gate.
If anyone ever does a film it will be a 5 hour event for sure, and in the end will we ever know who runs the operations? Also, I think they are looking to take him in, because he knew (how I don’t know) they were coming for his WikiLeakers as someone posted this:
Wikileaks – Guidelines for Whistleblower 1/2
Wikileaks – Guidelines for Whistleblower 2/2
I never knew anything about this about cell phones. It is like a little how the Mi5 people do their work when undercover. I tell you if there ever is a film it will be very long. He also mentioned, although I don’t know if he knew he was being filmed (in the bunker), that he frequently ‘snail’ mails his cells phones to trick the ‘spooks’, while he goes off in some other direction and it slows things down, by then he pops up some where else.
Oh, yeah, you’d know this if you had read The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest. Larsson lays out the whole mobile phone secrecy scheme. But he wrote the books several years ago before he died. Who knows how things have changed since then? Is any mobile communication device safe?
At the end it made go hemm, as I recall in DC when we met, at
talk with the power point, just about everyone, had a laptop, and
about two phones.
To be a Leaker you would have to be paranoid or at least half way
there already… ‘Did I turn off the phone, and leave it bind the bus stop in the next city?’ Sound like hard work.
It doesn’t matter if you turn off the phone, the microphone can be activated remotely via auto power-on. I wouldn’t bet against GPS being the same.
Gee, it seems like a hard job to be a WikiLeaker… but I sure never thought of my phone as being a tool for people to ease drop, but I
guess with Bush II’s unlimited powers and Obama extending it,
it is 1984…but they told us it was to protect us.
No, no commercial mobile phone is safe secrecy/security – wise. Nor are most modern cars equipped with similar things. That’s not to say your particular phone is of interest.
For most all phones, when you turn them off however, they are really off. That auto activation idea for most phones is a myth. To much complexity and liability given the volatility of storage technology still today.
Phones can be made secure though. First you can have anonymous phones (pay as you go sim cards, etc.). You can have simple phones with no gps. And of course if you really need to, you can make physical modifications to control and filter what comes out and what goes into your phone. That is, you can military harden your phone.
I should also add that while commercial cell phones are not secure for you, they’re also not secure for the carrier or the police as use as evidence. The phones, the carrier backbone, and various elements involved in communication can be very easily hacked.
It’s possible to monitor someone’s phone and capture their Id information, hack into related encryption, and mimiic that phone. It’s also possible to hack into carrier networks and modify their data including traces of cell activities.
So as possible as it might be to monitor what appears to be your phone and your activity, it’s just as possible to falsify that information.
Phone makers and carriers could pretty easily make this next to impossible. But they don’t. I think partly because it’s more expensive. But also partly because it also could possibly give you more security and privacy.
auto activation, to a large degree, depends on which chips are in the phone. most manufacturers have hooks in the hardware. intel and amd chips have our code in the firmware for over a decade now.
but, just turning it on serves no purpose unless you can also tap it. worrying about that part doesn’t make sense.
Auto activation is problematic with radio based devices. While I agree that some chips have that functionality (e.g., your desktop can be set to do that based in wired ethernet activity), it doesn’t work very well for say cell phones. The power required to listen for a signal is just to high. And noise issues and the possibility of a false activation signal are a bit high.
You can do an experiment with your phone. Turn it off and leave it for a couple of days. When you turn it back on, if your rechargeable batter is relatively new, you should only see a small reduction in the charge level (normal degradation for batteries). If your phone really was listening over the cell radio, you would see about the same reduction in charge level as you would see if you left it on.
I agree. They want the laptop because it will be “evidence.”
Sweden withdraws warrant for WikiLeaks founderhttp://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/eu_sweden_wikileaks
The last I heard, one country offered to take him in. Was it Iceland? I’ll try too find it.
Yup, he is based in Ice Land, as he says sources told him the Australian
government made an agreement with the US for a request to arrest him and or charge him. So, he is the TM|symbol of WikiLeaks…without a country. He went to Sweden to secure legitimate status as a news source and his own status as a registered journalist.
I think it’s weird coming from Sweden frankly.
The Swedish tabloid Expressen mentions two women, one in her 20s and the other in her 30s. The photo I saw alongside this text of Julian with long hair made me mistake him for a woman.
That’s OK, his current look is more like Pepe Le Pew…I kid you not.
Maybe the rape and molestation accusations have been around for awhile but not taken seriously until he committed an offense which could not be tolerated by the patriarchy, revealing the truth.
He was reported to be in Sweden last weekend, and that is when the events were supposed to have taken place.
They were after the data, and he keeps his log ins and so they wanted to get that to have access to his laptop. Most people know he is monkish and doesn’t pay attention to other things normal people do, it seems to be the personality feature in people like him.
I recall the Guardian Editor mentioned he was like an autistic person, just doing what ever it was that he did on the computers and looking for information. Many people noted that he even forgets to eat, because he is so into his programming and information work.
21 August 2010 Last updated at 11:40 ET
Swedish rape warrant for Wikileaks’ Assange cancelled
breaking news
Swedish authorities have cancelled an arrest warrant for Wikileaks founder Julian Assange on accusations of rape and molestation.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11049316
How high in the US gov’t does this go???
Weird.
Maybe it wasn’t intended to get out to the media until they had him under wraps. This makes me even more supicious. I’ll be waiting for the other shoe to drop.
From SHV link:
OK, so they told the BBC and CNN just hours ago that there was a warrant for his arrest. Two charges! Now suddenly it’s cancelled when it makes the news worldwide. Something is very very fishy.
From a March 27, 2010 article by Glenn Greenwald entitled “The war on WikiLeaks and why it matters” (http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/03/27/wikileaks):
This action against Assange has been predictable for some time now (not this exact charge, but certainly concocting an action deemed to be morally outrageous). There are far too many people invested in perpetual war–especially in the US–to allow WikiLeaks to continue. Shades of what was attempted against Daniel Ellsberg, IMO.
What? Is this true? Arrest warrant withdrawn?
All I could think initially was: the US wants to get their hands on him, that is, his physical person. Using any pretext available. He is seen as US Enemy Number 1.
Was Sweden part of that? Did Sweden come to its senses?
Yep, I just saw it too. Rape warrant canceled.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11049316
The “Sex Crimes” ploy, always meant to make someone toxic. How could you believe anything this crazed sex monster might say or do.
This was played against Scott Ritter when he was telling us that Iraq had no WMD. It was suddenly played against Al Gore when the BP disaster was exploding. It was played against Bill Clinton when he was making America prosperous.
Whenever the people who make their living raping America feel threatened they lash out at anyone exposing them and telling the truth.
yeah, except it looks like Ritter might actually have been guilty
From the above link article.
Hey, isn’t Sweeden that gave Jr.jr his Nobel for Peace? Maybe they were try to mask their embarrassment
Norway votes for the winner of the Peace Prize, not Sweden. It was set up that way to avoid the influence of politics in the decision. Heh.
Speaking of which,
Obama Wins No-Balls Prize
Nobel invented dynamite, not gunpowder.
Also, this is interesting.
Nobel laureates invite Obama to Hiroshima,/a>
Sorry, he’s too busy running his secret shadow war and killing innocent people. Well, that and golf.
Pretty clear indication of how “dangerous” the powers behind the curtain consider Assange and his information assault. The one subheader sent a chill up my spine:
Is It Free Speech or Illegal Speech?
We’ve entered Orwellian zones.
Here is the prediction of what just happened
http://www.newstatesman.com/international-politics/2010/08/pilger-wikileaks-afghanistan
If I were the Pentagon, I wouldn’t underestimate Assange. I don’t think he cares what they say about him. But he might be the kind that would rather get even than mad.
I would love to see that happen.
Almost right, but:
“…corporate pseudo-journalists…”
Fixed!
So, I read ASsange’s wikipedia page, not necessarily complete or reliable, and a few things stand out for me. He moved a lot as a child. I mean a LOT. I thought I moved a lot having gone to 14 schools before graduation, but he nearly tripled that number. From personal experience I can say that moving that much makes you a perpetual outsider. At some point, around middle school, you lose the ability to identify with your peers in some way. It’s like one of those ethology experiements where you deprive a bird of hearing its own species’ song. They can only sing a rudimentary version. The song signature is gone. You can compensate as you get older but certain social interactions will always feel a bit foreign.
The other thing that stood out was that his family was involved in some weird Christian-Hindu mystic cult for awhile and his mother took her kids on the run to avoid it. So, he’s familiar with cult like behavior. There is an awareness of how cults work, how emotional manipulation works, how psychology can be used against individuals to change their perspectives of the world.
I’d like to meet Julian Assange. He sounds like a Conflucian. I suspect I’d understand his motivations all too well.
I moved a lot as a kid too. I know what you mean. I never, ever felt like I fit in.
Veddy interesting. I know there’s something about us that’s different. You’re the psychologist. What’s the connection and the underlying mechanism?
Assange is one of us.
Yes, I was an outsider for different reasons, but, indeed, Assange is one strange bird. So unafraid to stand alone.
Also, I cannot help but consider that Obama is behind all of this. The Chicago way (and, of course, the CIA way). But the fact that so many once “liberal” politicians fell at his feet means to me he has them all scared silly. He (well, his backers really, he’s just the front) destroys those who don’t toe the line. Look at Rangel, Waters, Blago!
You go, Assange!
Who benefits if Rangel is deposed? Remember that as far as power goes, Charlie Rangel is one of the most powerful people in the country. He leads the committee that determines who gets taxed and for what purposes.
Is it any wonder that he’s being pressured?
The question is, who is pressuring.
If only wikileaks could expose the players in Washington and lay it all out. I’d pay for that. In monthly installments of $25 for a couple of years.
If wikileaks gets interested in that story, I’d guess we’ll see lots and lots of rape and murder and other fun charges pop up out of nowhere.
I didn’t move a lot as a kid, nor did I belong to any unusual religion, but I always felt, and feel, like an outsider.
Moving around allows one to be open minded because the peer and culture programming is not deep. One does not believe in sacred cows as much because one can see traditions in a detached way.
The New Yorker ran a profile piece on Assange in June:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/06/07/100607fa_fact_khatchadourian
It’s an interesting read.
Notice that CNN is leaving us with the hemmm, Yahoo News said ALL the charges were dropped and that the prosecutors wouldn’t answer any questions.
Leaves on shaking their heads and leaving us with a distrust in the people that are making the allegations. And also, it was clear they wanted:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/abraham/detail?entry_id=70617#ixzz0xGAJS0ii
What’s just as interesting is how fast they dropped this thing. Why? Why not play it out for weeks or months? What was the point? Was it just to force some movement or communication so they could hone in on him or others around him? Are they about to snatch him? Or was it some sort of scare tactic? I don’t think the latter because it’s rather lame and actually makes it harder to do similar things in the future now. Because he can now always say, oh yea, like that rape charge.
Can we Update the title of the POST? To reflect that the charges have all been dropped.
Agree. But here’s the thing. The lie has been propagated. It will spread. As we all know, truth doesn’t matter.
The accusation is out there. The damage is done.
Other folks are at the very least placing and Update with a byline. Just my 2 cents.
That’s probably why I updated the post awhile ago. Just my 2 cents. And btw, the title is still accurate. There was an accusation of rape.
OK
Possible motive for the country and timing of the attack.
“STOCKHOLM — The whistleblower website WikiLeaks will place several new servers with the Swedish Pirate Party, the group which campaigns for more freedom on the Internet said Tuesday.
“The Pirate Party will provide bandwidth and hosting to WikiLeaks free of charge as part of its political mission,” the party said in a statement.
It said the agreement was reached at a meeting in Stockholm at the weekend with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
“We welcome the help provided by the Pirate Party,” Assange was quoted as saying in the statement. “Our organisations share many values and I am looking forward to future ways we can help each other improve the world.”
WikiLeaks has provoked a media tempest and the ire of the Pentagon for releasing 76,000 classified US documents about the war in Afghanistan. It is set to release in a couple of weeks another 15,000 documents that are likely to be even more sensitive.
(snip)
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5i6FrU92zArUG-oCoogmmdIrU9c4g
The affiliation of wikileaks with a Swedish political party also creates more problems for the US govt trying to shut them down.
““If the servers are placed at an ordinary web hotel the threshold is of course already high when it comes to making a raid and removing them,” says Anna Troberg (PP), deputy leader of the Pirate Party. “But the political price for touching the servers of a political party is even higher. So we can offer them some added protection, of which they are in great need.”
Interesting.
You can’t scare off pirates that easily.
Boo, Baooooo!
Maybe the US needs a Pirate Party.
We already have two parties of pirates. They’re called “Democrats” and “Republicans”.
Although I be grateful they don’t be namin’ themselves pirates, as the scurvy scalawags be a disgrace to th’name, ARRR!
we have one party of bandits, they just dress up in different color jerseys to confuse people into thinking there are two teams
FWIW
“Swedish Pirate Party to Host New WikiLeaks Servers”:
http://www.piratpartiet.se/feed-item/
swedish-pirate-party-host-new-wikileaks-servers
“Piratpartiet takes responsibility for Wikileaks”:
http://svt.se/2.22620/1.2109275/
piratpartiet_takes_responsibility_for_wikileaks
And about Wikileak’s connection to Iceland,
“Inspired by Wikileaks, Iceland Aims to Become Reporter Haven”:
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/opinions/view/opinion/
Inspired-by-Wikileaks-Iceland-Aims-to-Become
-Reporter-Haven-4024
(Apologize for the broken-up links. You’ll have to copy-paste.)
Also, neither Aftonbladet nor Expressen are … exactly trustworthy media. Just saying
this whole thing is creepy as hell… and stinks to high heaven.
Oh my God, this is fucking hilarious coming from Mr Bought&PaidFor himself.
Obama slams ‘corporate takeover of our democracy’
Don’t let the awful be the enemy of the horrifically bad.
Is that like Walmart slamming commercialization of Christmas.
Or Elmer Fudd saying, “You talk funny”?
When a government wants to go after a citizen, any crime will do. The accused, burdened with legal matters is too busy defending himself to do anything else. The final disposition of the crime is irrelevant. That’s why, our Founding Fathers wrote in stone our precious civil liberties in the 10 amendments of the constitution. But few Americans understand our constitution and most feel that good citizens don’t need the protections enshrined in the document.
Yea, but usually these sorts of things are handled with child porn charges. Rape is a new and exciting change for them.
That’s why I doubt it’s our government’s doing. With child porn, you don’t even require an accuser.
If the accused lived in the U.S., sure, child porn is the chosen crime, but if a government wants to go after a person who lives outside the U.S., child porn won’t work. My guess is that a government (I won’t say which government), informed the Swedish that Assange was being accused of a dangerous crime and needed the Swedish government to arrest.
Not to mention that too many “intelligent” USAmericans consider mere accusation to be proof of guilt–and not just with child porn or other sexual crimes, either.
Australia Heads for Hung Parliament. the first since 1940. Elections are tough all over and their economy is quite good.
Sure, people can fool you, but Assange doesn’t strike me as the sort of fellow who takes much interest in consensual sexual activity, never mind rape.
So yeah, this is all probably spy-agency dirty tricks.
Advice to any agents assigned to watch me:
Caffeine, and lots of it.
And Kleenex, Puffs, or other facial tissue, because you will be bored to tears.
i say we let this thing play out before we make a decsion one way or the other.
If he leaked Russian military documents, he’d be dead from radioactive tea by now.