Assange Asks For New Lawyer, Denies Blaming CIA 274
Tootech writes "Julian Assange has requested a new lawyer to represent him during a rape investigation in Sweden because his previous brief, Leif Silbersky, was not engaged enough with the case. Assange wants Bjorn Hurtig to represent him as authorities continue to investigate the allegations, according to AP.
Assange told Sweden's TV4 that he had never blamed the CIA for the 'smears.'"
Distractions distractions (Score:2)
Re:Distractions distractions (Score:4, Informative)
Is this [twitter.com] the link you wanted?
I wish Slashdot would fix clipboard paste not working in Chrome, this is getting really annoying...
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Dude, relax. ALL militaries EVERYWHERE constantly have readiness plans constantly updated. You know, preparing for "what if" scenarios.
When the military leadership lists "states of interest" which it needs to form plan for military intervention/assistance, you don't start shouting "oh no, facism!" you go "thank goodness someone is doing their job."
What good is a military that isn't prepared for when it's needed?
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What good is an invasion force that isn't prepared for when it's needed?
I'd prefer to operate a government that isn't conducting non-defensive operations. Even if it weren't morally reprehensible to kill a million people in the name of oil, it is still way too expensive for our broken economy to support.
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You should study history a bit more. Isolationism is not new in concept or practice.
Re:Distractions distractions (Score:4, Insightful)
In the 1920s, we created a serious and well designed strategy to invade Canada as part of an assault on Great Britain [wikipedia.org]. It seems pretty wild that we'd do that, but it's important to be prepared. It increases our level of understanding of other nations, and allows people pursuing studies at the Naval War College a means of flexing strategic muscles without killing people en masse.
I can say with absolute certainty that today we have very similar strategies for every country on the planet. Very few have probably made it nearly as far as War Plan Red, but that's one of my favorite examples, and it's fairly well known.
Planning to attack one of our closest allies might seem dishonest to people outside of the military sector, but not planning to is simply irresponsible. Don't expect any of that to pan out, though. Especially if the Marines are talking about it. I remember hearing serious talk about an atmosphere skimming system to deploy Marines from space anywhere on Earth within 30 minutes. Where's that?
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A neighbor is a bit more understandable. Are we bordered by twenty countries now?
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It turned out that no matter how tough they claimed they were, Marines can't really breathe vacuum.
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You might find it interesting that in the same time period, Canada had a similar plan to make a surprise attack on the US, destroying important infrastructure before the US could react.
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Yep.
I provide, as evidence, the number of nations with the capacity to threaten the interior of the United States. Hint, it is fewer than twenty.
The Register???? (Score:5, Informative)
From TFA: "Assange wants Bjorn Hurtig to represent him as authorities continue to investigate the allegations, according to AP"
Why not link the AP's FA? [google.com]
Re:The Register???? (Score:5, Funny)
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From TFA: "Assange wants Bjorn Hurtig to represent him as authorities continue to investigate the allegations, according to AP"
Why not link the AP's FA? [google.com]
I assert that either you're new here, or 'Tootech' is a sockpuppet in a gigantic karma whoring scam.
This is Slashdot, for crying out loud. Every single post goes to some irrelevant blog with a three line synopsis of the actual article.
Further, your UID demonstrates that you are NOT new here. Thusly, cue Admiral Ackbar.
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I always bitch about /. sending me to some blog instead of a meaty article (and it's usually even worse.) Half the time they send me somewhere that's firewalled off at work, or TFA isn't any more informative then TFS.
What's exasperating is sometimes there's a really good FA, like this one [physorg.com] (still not yet posted, it's showing up for subscribers).
As to tootech, I just looked him up. If he's a karma whore, he isn't very good at it; no +5s at all. If you mean you think he's MY sock puppet, I have no need for one
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Might as well get used to it (Score:2)
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At least he's too high profile to assassinate.
The only people who get assassinated are high profile people.
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When a low-profile person gets assassinated, it's not called assassination. It's called a "random act of violence".
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Low profile people are murdered instead of being assassinated.
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Yea or this guy could just be a shuck with an ego the size of Sweden.
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I think you mean "schmuck." Also, it could just be that my sense of proportion was dramatically altered when i was 14 and drove to Alaska and back from Virginia with my dad, but is Sweden really that big?
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You do have a point about the Ego.
I picked Sweden since that is where this is happening.
How about Russia then, keeping it in the Eurasia area.
Re:Might as well get used to it (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Might as well get used to it (Score:4, Insightful)
I agree that there's a significant chance that this whole thing is a CIA smear campaign. But there's also a significant chance that he's actually guilty. Or that it's a smear campaign unrelated to the CIA. You know what they say about assumptions.
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You know what they say about assumptions.
That they make you a famous, filthy rich political pundit overnight? I'm not sure how that applies to this situation...
Re:Might as well get used to it (Score:5, Insightful)
A guy goes 39 years without a criminal record with anything more significant than a hacking charge on it. And then he suddenly decides to become a rapist 2 weeks after releasing a cache of documents that embarrasses the world's most powerful government and threatening to release more? Are you kidding me?
Do you REALLY think that's just a coincidence? Come on. Even I knew [slashdot.org] this was coming. Or maybe you think I'm just psychic.
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Re:Might as well get used to it (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure, it could be a CIA plot, but he's specifically disavowing making that allegation, so clearly he has no evidence that it is.
Lacking evidence that it's a CIA plot, it's just as likely the story plays out like this:
A guy goes 39 years without amounting to much more than a hacking charge. And then suddenly he gets his 15 minutes of fame by embarrassing the world's most powerful government, and has his face plastered all over newspapers around the world. Suddenly he starts feeling pretty powerful - people say he's a hero, people want to hear him talk, people care about what he has to say - hell, some girls are even throwing themselves at him! So maybe he gets a little overzealous, or starts feeling overly entitled, because after all, he's *important* - and behaves like a jerk and pressures a girl into doing something she didn't really want to do. Or maybe he just pisses off the wrong girl by not calling her, and she decides to start a little smear campaign of her own.
I mean, since we're speculating without evidence, that story reads as far more likely to me than it being a CIA smear campaign, since the smear campaign would require:
-- the 2 girls to be in the service of the CIA;
-- Most of the world media to be dupes of the CIA;
-- The entire criminal justice system of Sweden to be easily manipulated by the US;
-- an Icelandic MP (and ardent supporter of Wikileaks) to suddenly be in the employ of the CIA;
AND, the kicker:
-- That the bumbling organization that can't keep PFC Manning from stealing all its data is simultaneously capable of pulling off a black op of this scope just to discredit the guy, rather than simply making him have an accident, and eliminating the problem.
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Re:Might as well get used to it (Score:4, Insightful)
-- That the bumbling organization that can't keep PFC Manning from stealing all its data is simultaneously capable of pulling off a black op of this scope just to discredit the guy, rather than simply making him have an accident, and eliminating the problem.
Because clearly PFC Manning was the subect of the entire agency's scutiny, and "preventing" him would not have meant spreading resources to prevent all of the other PFCs that were doing similar work. A regular Joe off the street can pay a woman to sleep with a guy and cry rape. It doesn't require a conspiracy, but that doesn't mean that a conspiracy couldn't have ordered the regular Joe to pay her.
Occam's Razor (Score:2)
Given that level of concern and wariness, I doubt he'd be "full of himself".
Also, the CIA and other TLAs are very very good at doing much more nasty things [huppi.com].
I'd say, the combined probability of each logical linkage and Occam's Razor imply that the most obvious and clear answer is probably the most correct, and yours is a bit more complex than the GP comment.
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So you're saying Assange posted this *because* he felt he had nothing to fear from the CIA? Who did he know he was marked by then? What exactly DID he have to fear, if not the CIA?
You are arguing that it was CIA involvement, after Assange himself has said "I've never said it was the CIA after me." He didn't need to, the brainless Assange supporte
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-- the 2 girls to be in the service of the CIA;
Trivial. They don't even have to be employed in the traditional sense. They could just be paid really well.
-- Most of the world media to be dupes of the CIA;
You don't need the majority, you only need the biggest and the loudest. In the US, for example, you only need one station to spout idiotic nonsense loud enough and long enough to convince a non-insignificant percentage that their own president is a Kenyan Muslim.
-- The entire criminal justice system of Sweden to be easily manipulated by the US;
Again, you don't need all of it. You just need the most powerful and influential. It's also quite impressive what a little green grease will d
Re:Might as well get used to it (Score:4, Funny)
I always find it hilarious that people assume the government (CIA, military, etc.) is capable of this type of sophisticated organization. Have you never gone to the DMV? Have you never worked with a government employee?
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I didn't say they were impossible, I said the existence of all of these elements, in concert with one another, is a lot less likely to be the case than "guy acts like jerk, girl gets pissed and goes to police."
The person citing Occam's razor as support for the conspiracy theory below is amazing to me, when a simple "guy pisses off girl" scenario is much more likely (and doesn't require the presence, cooperation, an
Re:Might as well get used to it (Score:4, Insightful)
Slashdot is no longer a US centric news site, but hijacked by anti-american individuals in communistic states (or states of mind).
What you call anti-american, I call pro-american. We need our great nation to be what it is supposed to be. This requires action on our part.
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LOL!!!!
You mean we are supposed to be shocked that a criminal, with an ego the size of a country might have committed yet another crime? A crime, I might add, which requires an ego the size of a country? Who could possibly imagine such a thing...
Let the police do their job. They are investigating. Or do you believe the world police have all be bought off too? The evidence, as reported thus far, does suggest there may be credibility to the police investigation.
Take a wait and see position to see what happens
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A guy goes 39 years without a criminal record with anything more significant than a hacking charge on it.
How many times did he go to Sweden in those 39 years?
Also, given his looks, how often do you think he managed to get laid, prior to his newfound fame?
Do you REALLY think that's just a coincidence? Come on. Even I knew [slashdot.org] this was coming. Or maybe you think I'm just psychic.
No, I just think that, like all conspiracy theorists, you're confusing coincidence for conspiracy. The 9/11 twits base pretty much their entire argument on the same logical fallacy.
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Actually, 24 hacking charges.
And then he suddenly decides to become a rapist 2 weeks after releasing a cache of documents that embarrasses the world's most powerful government and threatening to release more?
Occam's razor. You're arguing that it's almost a certainty that instead he is the subject of an international conspiracy? That wouldn't prevent the release of further documents by wikileaks
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What better time to go on a crime spree then when you've got an international conspiracy as a defense and you're already blackmailing some very powerful players with a very public deadman's switch?
Get in over your head and odds are the CIA will (covertly) bail you out if you get in any danger of physical harm.
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That's a totally bogus argument. Nobody decides to become a rapist, or murderer, etc. Not in the sense of having made some rational, well-thought out decision. If that were the case, there would hardly be any murders or rapes to begin with. But if you want to play that game, you can equally well make the opposite argument: Since he was in the media recently over the leaks, he saw his chance to rape someone and get away with it, because people like you would
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Obviously you missed his statements that he has a number of even more confidential documents to release. And the point isn't just to threaten, it's also to discredit. And a sex crime charge is a great way to discredit (everybody hates rapists and molesters, right?). The Scientologists have been known to do this [wikipedia.org] when they want to get really nasty.
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And then he suddenly decides to become a rapist
You might want to check what he's accused of. Unless the allegations have changed in the last few days, it's two incidents of having unprotected sex with women in the morning after they agreed to sex with a condom the previous night. This doesn't count as rape even in Sweden, which is why the original charges were withdrawn and replaced with 'molestation', which is a very broad crime.
No one is saying that he became a rapist. At least one of the women got up and made him breakfast afterwards and wasn'
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I 73 years old man goes through his whole life, not raising suspicion at all. Indeed his neighbors reported nothing during the last 25 years of his stay in a quite house in Austria. However, this man, Joseph Fritzl, hid a dark secret in his basement namely his 42 year old daughter and three of her (and his) children, aged 19, 18 and 5. Three other kids lived with Joseph and his wife upstairs. One child even died in the basement without no one ever knowing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritzl_case
Hmm.. A spot
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I'm almost Psychic -- I was predicting that they'd find Kiddy Pr-0n on his computer -- that was all the rage when the Bush crime family was in office.
Now they are content to just make someone look like he's "one of those conspiracy theorists." It doesn't matter that it's about REAL documentation, about things that affect your life, NOT "accusations" about a man's personal behavior that REALLY, doesn't have that much to do with is professional credibility -- the public is too ADD to read beyond the headline.
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"a lot of people have pissed off the CIA and had tragic airplane accidents shortly thereafter" Have you got references?
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Of course he doesn't. Then again, its hard to see past his tin foil hat.
I'm not saying the CIA has never assassinated anyone. In fact, its well documented they have. But one, CIA assassination is currently illegal. Two, CIA operations inside the US' borders are also illegal. Three, the preferred method of operation is to encourage and even empower (finance) others who might wish to perform such actions. Basically this all means the CIA doesn't generally assassinate anyone any more. And when they do, its lik
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Taking into account that USA was actively supporting Iraq in the Iran-Iraq war, that fact would be a major blow to the relatio
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I call BS on that one. The guy who made that claim also makes a number of other absurd claims. For example: he claims to know who really planned the Portuguese revolution, Che Guevara's last words, who assassinated Kennedy, the truth about Lockerbie (whatever that is) and how Timothy McVeigh was merely a pawn. Oh yeah, and the truth behind Princess Diana's death.
But, sharing the same country of origin as yourself, I know full well that Europeans love conspiracy theories even more than Americans do. I'm amus
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I call BS on that one. The guy who made that claim also makes a number of other absurd claims
First, the "guy" that made those claims is a Portuguese lawyer, and the first person in a high position in local administration in here that made a public denounce of corruption that was proved (yes, it happens that seldom in here), so just for that, the guy deserves some credit. Also, I never saw him making any comments about princess Diana or Kennedy. You are clearly mistaken the person.
But, sharing the same country of origin as yourself, I know full well that Europeans love conspiracy theories even more than Americans.
Second, I didn't claim any proof to the theory. The grandparent was trying to imply that someone that previously pissed
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Re:Might as well get used to it (Score:4, Informative)
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Everything about this guy is creepy. I also find him a hypocrite in that he insists on Wikileaks privacy and lack of transparency while granting none to others.
And if his leaks (which were hardly bombshell material) cause the death of ONE American soldier, I hope he rots in hell and is forced to be satan's bitch.
There is a big difference between exposing government corruption (which would be admirable) and in pursuing an anti war agenda in an attempt to sabotage our war effort and put soldiers lives in dan
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He's already caused the death of many Afghan informants who were working with American troops (at least, according to 4 different NGOs, including Amnesty International).
Sources??? I can't find any references to support your claim. Amnesty International criticized wikileaks ~ 10th/11th August but there don't appear to have been any statements since then. This smells like bullshit.
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
Here's a story from an AP writer (if you trust anything on HuffPo). [huffingtonpost.com]
The Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, Amnesty International and three other groups have sent a series of e-mails to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange calling for the names of Afghan civilians to be removed from the 77,000 classified military documents published by the online whistle-blower last month.
Nader Nadery, of the commission, said the groups want the names removed from files already released, and from any documents disclosed in the future.
"There was no consideration about civilian lives," Nadery said, noting a rise in assassinations of Afghan civilians seen as government collaborators.
"We said that in the future the names should be redacted and the ones that are already there need to be taken down. Even though it's late, it still worth doing," Nadery said. He said the group had not yet received any response to its requests.
The Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict, the Open Society Institute and the International Crisis Group have also been involved in exchanges about the released documents.
I'm sure this will be modded troll as well, but that makes Assange no less guilty. Even if you support his efforts against the US military, he has much civilian blood on his hands.
Re:Might as well get used to it (Score:4, Interesting)
Too high profile to assassinate? Oh come now. A man is an enemy of Agency X; a man is found dead or dying. Who is ever to connect the two facts with an assassination authoritatively? It's one thing to have suspicion, but it's completely another thing to have proof. The guilty party for the assassination of Georgi Markov in 1969 was never held to account. There is no antidote for ricin, and the stuff is damn near impossible to detect in the body because of the phenomenally small amount necessary to kill. The KGB was never proved to have been responsible.
See here [life.com] and here [wikipedia.org].
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So far, he hasn't released stuff that embarrasses governments. I like the idea of a good whistle-blowing site, but wikileaks isn't one. Has it uncovered a conspiracy? No. Has it found serious evidence of corruption? No. All wikileaks has done is tooted its own horn and shown what we already know: that war is a messy business.
Where is the evidence of price fixing or securities fraud? Voting machine tampering? You know that sort of thing is going on, but wikileaks as failed at drawing even a single leak about
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At least he's too high profile to assassinate. But I would be very careful about flying if I were him
Or driving. A couple of semitrailors and an "oops" and there's an accident... My brother in law's dad, who was rumored to have Mafia ties, died like that.
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Where are the Assanges who would be willing to take on Saudi Arabia with their set-in-law prejudice of anyone who does follow the book?
You're aware that Assange doesn't go in and steal these secret documents himself, are you not? Wikileaks generally relies on people "on the inside" to pass along the documents they release. If there's no one in a particular organization with access to incriminating documents willing to release those documents, there's really nothing Assange or Wikileaks can do about it.
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Assange is too pussy to ever take on someone like an Iranian mullah, because these guys would simply send someone to slit his throat and not worry about it.
And yet, Wikileaks has already leaked (supposed) secret recordings of Iranian security force discussions [wikileaks.org] and documents from the Iranian Ammunition Industries group [wikileaks.org]. Having said that, there may well be fewer leaks from Iran for several reasons: lower levels of PC ownership, no personal laptops or PCs in the military, increased monitoring of personal internet connections etc.
Leif Silbersky (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Leif Silbersky (Score:4, Funny)
Though the joke goes that if SIlbersky is assigned to a person, he must be guilty.
Re:Leif Silbersky (Score:4, Insightful)
Conspiracy nut (Score:2)
Re:Conspiracy nut (Score:4, Insightful)
Deeper Conspiracy (Score:3, Insightful)
How far does this conspiracy go?! They've even gotten to Assange! Surely at this point nobody can deny the plain evidence of duplicity.
How telling is that? I've heard this exact language before.
That's right. Rumsfeld. What more proof is required? Assange is now just another puppet on the long strings of the CIA; determined to undermine the fine work of Wikileaks and Assange himself.
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This should be modded funny rather than insightful.
Assange is being mature by saying don't jump to conclusions as to the source of this, but at the same time don't rule out that the CIA wouldn't try to capitalize on this incident for their advantage.
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If he was really mature he'd step aside and keep wikileaks out of this whole thing. What is more important to Julian Assange? Wikileaks or Julian Assange?
I hope he is convicted. (Score:4, Funny)
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He should do as we slashdotters do - stay away from women! No good comes out of those...
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A fair warning? (Score:2)
Assange and Wikileaks have sometimes problems to get their tall stories straight. And it's not always the fault of the media. [slashdot.org]
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If Assange has just been warned about these "dirty tricks" - why would he have sex with two different women he just had met in Sweden?
You wouldn't? Damn...
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why would he have sex with two different women he just had met in Sweden?
do i need to point out what's wrong with that statement?
Executive Order? (Score:2)
"Brief"? (Score:3, Informative)
Julian Assange has requested a new lawyer to represent him during a rape investigation in Sweden because his previous brief, Leif Silbersky, was not engaged enough with the case
If you didn't want to repeat the word, you might have tried 'attorney'. The closest matching definition of "brief" is ...
An attorney's legal argument in written form for submission to a court;
Unless, of course, OP meant for it to be "briefs" and intended to say...
short snug pants or underpants
In which case it would have been more amusing, but still no more correct.
* disclaimer: this is in the context of American English, but I'm pretty sure that "brief" doesn't mean "lawyer" in any of the others...
Okay, back to your regularly scheduled commenting.
Damage to US and allies (Score:3, Insightful)
It's been claimed that the leaked documents will harm US and allied troops as well as the named informants (never mind that only a few were apparently left uncensored), which has some clamoring for the US soldier who leaked to be executed for treason.
I put it to you the ultra-right wing fundamentalist pastor who plans to burn the Koran on the anniversary of 9-11 will do a thousand times more actual harm, and destroy everything allied troops have fought and died for in the so-called War on Terror. Protesters have already pelted a US convoy with rocks, and this "church" hasn't even *done* anything yet except state their intentions.
Never mind it's a small, formerly-insignificant group of nobodies--they're white, they're "Christian", they're American. Never mind that every other religious group immediately denounced them on national TV--that won't get any airtime in Muslim countries because it gets in the way of an emotionally-charged issue.
If there's any traitor endangering US and allied troops now, it's this so-called church and its sociopathic leaders.
Red Herring (Score:4, Interesting)
This is kind of a red herring to me, because the US government knows that Assange would just be replaced in WikiLeaks if he were thrown in jail. What Bush and Rove used to do was instead play the discredit game; deny, deny, deny, then attack the patriotism of those reporting (NYTimes) and claim those parties leaking were helping the terrorists instead of America. "Poison the well"
Let's look at the other ways the CIA and Pentagon could (and likely will) try to stop WikiLeaks. When someone in the 1990s leaked that the NSA has submarines specifically for the purpose of tapping undersea phone cables, I heard the NSA calmly put out conflicting leaks that the government was using those subs to covertly dump nuclear waste, making activists fight over which version of the story made sense.
If I were the CIA, I'd do some false flag operations on Assange, and then poison the well. Feed him a delicious leak of embarrassing stuff, followed by a real big accusation of something bogus yet plausible, and then when WikiLeaks gives it to the media, the CIA can step forward and show that WikiLeaks is dead wrong and show the media video and photographic proof eg "No, we never executed that Taliban prisoner in front of children, look he's alive in Supermax prison!" One or two of those would "poison the well" and make sure that mainstream media would pay less and less attention as the track record of WikiLeaks went sour.
Re:Just because hes pro-freedom doesnt (Score:5, Funny)
Clearly, the CIA got to him and has convinced him it would be in his best interest to quit saying that they were trying to smear him with rape allegations. Isn't it obvious?
Re:Just because hes pro-freedom doesnt (Score:5, Insightful)
If Assange is no longer claiming "cia!" why are people still claiming diversion and conspiracy.
Even if he did nothing he may have just ticked off the wrong woman!
Because it made the news too fast.
Because Assange never "claimed CIA" but you say that he did (I claimed CIA, but he just said he was 'warned of dirty tricks').
Because if I google...
Wikileaks rape
About 2,730,000 results (0.41 seconds)
Search Results
1.
News for wikileaks rape
2. Icelandic WikiLeaks associate says founder should step aside - 17 hours ago
Spurious relationship (Score:3, Interesting)
But I agree, this story has an huge impact. But there are many factors involved, that make an intelligence involvement unplausible or unneccessary. One very important factor was: Assange made this political in an instant with his "dirty tricks" statement. And Wikileaks published their first official statement ever calling Assange the site's "founder" - until then they had maintained Assange was jus
Re:Just because hes pro-freedom doesnt (Score:4, Insightful)
You CANNOT be serious.
He's never claimed it was the CIA in much the same way that Fox News "never claims" stuff - you say it in every way you can except the one you want to be able to deny, and then you try to shift the argument so it's about your "word choice" rather than the intent of your statements.
"We were warned on the 11th by Australian intelligence that we should expect this sort of thing. We were warned about dirty tricks and specifically that they would be of a type like this.”
"Assange, who is Australian by birth, told WikiLeaks' Twitter page the charges were 'without basis' and that their timing was 'deeply disturbing.'"
"We were warned to expect 'dirty tricks'. Now we have the first one."
What conclusion does he expect everybody to draw with these statements, issued in the context of the news coverage over wikileaks' publication of the Afghan War Diaries? Obviously, that these charges are part of a smear campaign against him, orchestrated by the US government, and that these allegations were the first "dirty trick" to be used as part of that campaign.
To now backpedal and shift the focus onto a question of word choice is disingenuous at best, and absolutely intellectually dishonest. He never specifically uttered the word "CIA," no. But every single statement he's issued since the charges came up has screamed "It's a smear campaign by the US government."
Re:Just because hes pro-freedom doesnt (Score:5, Informative)
Obviously, that these charges are part of a smear campaign against him, orchestrated by the US government,
intellectually dishonest, indeed. You just tacked on the "orchestrated by the US government" part yourself there, didn't you?! If your so convinced that he directly implied it was the CIA/US government and not just you following propaganda talking points - then [CITATION NEEDED]. I'll make it easy: Wikileaks twitter feed [twitter.com] links all Assange interviews for you to find a reference. From the interviews I have watched at no place did he imply directly or indirectly that it was the CIA/US Gov. He did say that the Aussie government warned him of dirty tricks - whether you believe that or not, or that they meant "The CIA is going to use dirty tricks" is upto your imagination, and little else.
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Here, I'll quote back the relevant part of my post you're ignoring:
Are we supposed to believe that the Australian intelligence service was warning him that Nigeria was plotting dirty tricks against him, for not helping them smuggle $10 million USD out of the country by providing a bank account number to the son of their former finance minister?
Or that they had reason to believe 2 girls in Sweden who he had not
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No, it's really not a stretch, given the context of the discussion - namely that Assange's organization leaked classified documents pertaining to operations of the US-led NATO forces in Afghanistan & Iraq.
There is NO other reasonable conclusion that people would draw from his statements, which strongly implied (but did not state outright) that the CIA and other US agencies were behind this "smear campaign".
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Not ignoring it - it is hard to stretch that into your claim that he directly implied what your claiming he implied.
What's interesting is a lot of other folks who are supporters got this implication as well. Look at all the Wikileaks / Assange posts of late. Look at how many are CONVINCED that this is a plot of the US Government, if not the CIA by name. And they often refer to Assange's claims and Wikileaks documents. It's one thing for critics to hear a message that could put you in a bad light. But your supporters?
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I'm not talking about media. I'm talking about people posting here on Slashdot.
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Since some people are too fucking dimwitted to read, I'll repost the relevant point here:
What, I never said YOU were too fucking dimwitted to read, AC. Just that some people are!
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Dishonest Jackass WIN!
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Yeah, totally makes sense that, after receiving a warning that "the government of Sweden is out to get you," you'd... go to Sweden. He would've been better off coming here to the US, I suppose, since he had no reason to fear that the US would try dirty tricks against him.
I'm well aware that many other countries have troops over there. But let's be ful
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Slashdot: letting IT people indulge in their lawyer fantasies since 1997.
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