Julian Assange arrested (merged)

[krashkart]

Originally Posted by privateer

I'm actually surprised he has not died in a "Car" accident or some such thing yet.

^^ If 'legal' means do not succeed we will see that happen. Or not. Depends on how desperate our government is on looking like the "good guy". From a political standpoint, he should have disappeared long before Collateral Murder hit the net. US doesn't have the stranglehold that perhaps the Soviets had.

[Dowly]

Getting rid of Assange accomplishes nothing, someone else is going to continue but this time by keeping out of public. There's very little one can do about Wikileaks.

Judgeing by the crack downs at key places in the U.S.?

I predict a mass of charges against many in Gov positions before long.
Long Live Home Land Security!

Sad part is, that sounds pretty much like pre/post WWII stuff.
Here We go again!
New players, same Game.

[Kazuaki Shimazaki II]

Originally Posted by darius359au

Might want to read what the charges against him are first before calling BS - at the start it was consential between him and the women ,but when the condoms broke and they said stop he Kept going ,that's when it went over the line to sexual molestation at the least, rape at the worst, because No means No! ,it the same in all the western countries and thats what the warrants about ,not any conspiracy to destroy the guy ,just a guy with a huge ego that cant take being told no!

To be fair, we hadn't heard from the other guy yet.

On a tangent, I must say that the current standard is really too biased. Woman agrees to f*cking sex and then as soon as Woman say (or claims she said) stop and it doesn't it becomes rape? The moronic theorist who came up with this one, if not a feminist intent on tilting the deck towards females, must be a person who never so much as masturbated.

Remember, that you can get someone convicted on mere accusation is already a travesty of the theory of modern law and protection of the innocent, but is the way all too many sex-related crimes are handled AFAIK.

To be fair, we hadn't heard from the other guy yet.

To be even fairer they ain't even charges yet, so far they are just allegations which he is wanted for questioning over.

Getting rid of Assange accomplishes nothing

It does, currently with the events the US looks like it sometimes flys well outside the law and has a habit of picking very unsuitable "allies"...but that is really nothing new.
If however Assange has an "accident" to get rid of him then the US accomplishes the feat of looking rather like a crazy murdering regime that would normally be the realm of loony dictators and banana republics

[Skybird]

The Amazon server most likely bowed to poltiical pressure and shut down wikileaks on its servers. While it had to be expected that steps like this would be tried by the US government, I nevertheless see it as an strike against free press.

Assange is said to be in Southern England, Scotland Yard says they do not arrest him becasue of formal errors in the Swedish formula requesting his arrest. If I were Assange I would not trust in that status - the british government can be put un der prerssure by bthe US, too.

The Swedish imo have already illustrated that they will to serve as a US deputy, and that the charges against him are constructed, because it has been reported that after his arrest he should be put into isolation arrest and kept strictly away from lawyers or anyone else, being kept in a secret place that should not be disclosed to the press, the public, or lawyers. The interrogation request is just constructed - and the Swedes know it. Once he is in Swedish hands, it is just a question of time before he will be handed over to the Americans.

The world is getting smaller for Assange. But wikileaks imo is just a symptom of things to come. The ginie is out of the bottle. Whiöle I see the damage it can do, and the unneeded parts os sensationalsim as well, there is also a whole lot of stuff being released over the past 2 years that I welcome to have been publicated, because it helped to destroy quite some lies and would be a good argument for politicians to reconsider according policies. That they don't, just speaks against them - not against ripping off their masks.

The world becomes mroe and more digital and interconnected. Privacy and Data protection will be redefined in meaning. Has anyone really expected that sooner or later this would not happen? Does anyone seriously expect these things to stop now?

I just wish Wikileaks would become more discriminatory in filtering out unneeded, sensational yellow press stuff. The political attacks that the release of many of it's leaked data represent, I do welcome.

From a security standpoint, the problem is not wikileaks, but the sources that get their hands on the data they then hand over to wikileaks. I see little or no legal possibilities to prohibit wikileak'S activities (not to mention that prohibiting something is one thing, enfrocing that prohibition is something different). And Assange - well, I do not like him by his aura and way he presents himself, and I think he is not that important at all. He has founded wikileaks, but if he had not done it, sooner or later soembody else would have been successful in doing that. And soon there will be others, too - no matter what happens with wikileaks.

You wanted the digitally interconnected world - now live with it.

[Dowly]

Originally Posted by Tribesman

It does, currently with the events the US looks like it sometimes flys well outside the law and has a habit of picking very unsuitable "allies"...but that is really nothing new.
If however Assange has an "accident" to get rid of him then the US accomplishes the feat of looking rather like a crazy murdering regime that would normally be the realm of loony dictators and banana republics

Well, there's that.

[Jimbuna]

Does anyone know where he is atm....last I heard he was in Jordan?

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by jimbuna

Does anyone know where he is atm....last I heard he was in Jordan?

quote=Skybird
Assange is said to be in Southern England, Scotland Yard says they do not arrest him becasue of formal errors in the Swedish formula requesting his arrest.
/quote

--> posting #21

last I heard he was in Jordan?

Is Peter Andre jealous?

[Skybird]

This is a Google-Bot-Translation of the Swiss essay I linked yesterday, I worked over the bot- translation only roughly, so it is not perfect, but it should be good enough.

Originally Posted by Die Weltwoche

Do States have a privacy? Do powers have an intimate zone that must be protected, as we take for granted for individuals? These are the questions that arise after the cringe-inducing release of confidential diplomatic dispatches of the United States through the portal site Wikileaks. The documents, about a hundred thousand in number, already led to significant turbulence. Many journalists criticized the revelations. They believe that there is a space worthy of protection of state secrets, as the German daily Die Welt wrote pointedly in several comments. "Too much truth," called it the Süddeutsche in genuine concern for the United States.

Really? The Americans are terrified. They do not find it funny that the whole world suddenly knows what their top diplomats and ambassadors think about other statesmen. They want the Wikileaks founders Julian Assange, a somewhat obscure figure, held responsible with police state methods. If the Australian, who made his mark as a name hacker, falls into the hands of the superpower, his quick rise to the status of a national hero would be certain. The founder of the German news magazine Der Spiegel, Rudolf Augstein, owed his arrest by the German government in the early sixties journalistic immortal fame. The German Bundesbank Thilo Sarrazin scored with a naughty book about migration a tremendous sales success, after he had been declared by the federal government last September to be persona non grata. Nothing is better for the market value than persecution by the state.

The Wikileaks critics wrong. States are no humans. You have no privacy and therefore no undeserving protection thereof. States are highly problematic entities. They represent institutional, unrivaled power. States impose monopolies of violence, forced fees, citizens locked up, and they cause wars. They rule unchallenged in their territory, which makes them dangerous and threatening. Democracies and republics are more harmless bodies than as dictatorships. But it's enough already to look at Switzerland. Even in the sedate Alpine country, which occurs without "Machtallüre", there are cases of arbitrariness, of misguided justice, the consequences for citizens and bad are not irreparable.

It is bizarre, pleading to journalists for secrecy and obfuscation in the name of political expediency. People, citizens, private sector entrepreneurs and employees are active against the power of the state and the media, to protect [freedom] in case of doubt, but surely not the monopoly of power itself - keeping [the state] in check and to illuminate it, is the noblest task of the journalists.

Basically: More transparency in the state is good. The more we know what's going on behind the scenes, the better. That American diplomats of Wikileaks are stripped off their cloathes right down to their panties, allows a clear view on all too human facets and depths in the gears of a superpower. But above all, more transparency means: more control. The U.S. will have to behave cautiously in the future. Caution is good. Carelessness is the precursor of hubris and megalomania. The superpower breaks, at least a bit on the counter-power of the public.

Does it really matter what motives drive the Wikileaks founder Assange? Needs to find his publications reprehensible just because their sender a presumably anti-capitalist, anti-American left with an allegedly dubious biography? No. The journalistic singers of state secrecy make it too easy for themselves. The principle of public policy is a matter of value in itself. Why? Because it is mainly against charlatans, frauds and people exercising their power unfairly or in a questionable manner. Because it is a deeply democratic right of the citizen to know the state he gave himself up to, and that knows him and controls him. The able and strong must not fear transparency. Substance prevails even when it is illuminated by bright daylight. If it is Assange who is - as his envious critics and enemies say - a mistaken ideologues, then his methods will eventually turn against himself, and uncover new revelations why the revelations of the Australian are not to be trusted.

Transparency is the need of the hour. You can whine about it, but it is useless to resist that. The last years have brought wars and crises, but they also brought healing disillusionment and disenchantment. The Americans were cured in Iraq and Afghanistan from their military omnipotence fantasies. The images from the torture camp of Abu Ghraib brutally dismantled the carefully cultivated image of ever morally rightousness the superpower claims for itself. In Europe, the Euro almost collapsed. Whether the politically desired single currency will still be there in ten years, is still an open question. Here, too, a political megalomania-project threatens to fail in reality. Nobody believes the paroles from Brussels anymore.

More citizens now demand transparency from the governments of the U.S. and the EU, now that the debts of so many billions is no longer in control. This requires more transparency - also regarding the shareholders of large publicly listed companies and banks, because it has been found during in the financial crisis how carelessly the hyped media managers worked with their money. [...]

Democracy is the political form of institutionalized distrust. The transparency principle is the weapon of the citizen against the state. Wikileaks done well. What's missing: a Swiss arm, which at last makes the Federal Council [of Switzerland] transparent as well.

I couldn't have said it any better.

[frau kaleun]

Originally Posted by Kazuaki Shimazaki II

On a tangent, I must say that the current standard is really too biased. Woman agrees to f*cking sex and then as soon as Woman say (or claims she said) stop and it doesn't it becomes rape? The moronic theorist who came up with this one, if not a feminist intent on tilting the deck towards females, must be a person who never so much as masturbated.

So, if you agree to give me fifty bucks, then change your mind and tell me no, and I just help myself to your money anyway despite your protests, that would be just fine with you? Somehow I don't think so.

[Kazuaki Shimazaki II]

Originally Posted by frau kaleun

So, if you agree to give me fifty bucks, then change your mind and tell me no, and I just help myself to your money anyway despite your protests, that would be just fine with you? Somehow I don't think so.

I cannot believe your sex / masturbation life is so poor that you seriously analogize the experience to handing over some money.

I see the entire process of consensual sex (even a "one night stand" type) as closer to a contract. In which case, a sudden withdrawal by one of the parties during execution is THEIR fault, and often requires the paying of some compensation. Certainly not making the party who was suddenly deprived of the benefits the bad guy.

[frau kaleun]

Originally Posted by Kazuaki Shimazaki II

I cannot believe your sex / masturbation life is so poor that you seriously analogize the experience to handing over some money.

You misunderstand the analogy entirely.

The point is, your money is your money and no one else has a right to take it without your consent.

Your body is also yours - and what's more, one could say that it IS you, or at least an integral part of what constitutes "you." No one has a right to do anything to it or with it - to you, or with you - without your consent. In fact if your consent is not given or is withdrawn, then what is being done is not being done with you, but only to you and is an assault on your person.

If you consent to give someone your money, then withdraw your consent, and they ignore that and take your money anyway , they have committed a crime.

If you consent to engage in sexual activity with someone, then withdraw your consent, and they ignore that and continue with the activity anyway in spite of your stated unwillingness to do so, they have committed a crime.

It's not about sex being somehow analogous to money. The only common factor is that in both situations your right to have the final "say so" about what happens to something that is undeniably yours - your money, your property, your person, your self - has been violated by someone else who does not have that right but behaves as if s/he does.

I see the entire process of consensual sex (even a "one night stand" type) as closer to a contract. In which case, a sudden withdrawal by one of the parties during execution is THEIR fault, and often requires the paying of some compensation. Certainly not making the party who was suddenly deprived of the benefits the bad guy.

You know, if you're going to make snarky comments about my sex life based on a complete misunderstanding of my analogy, maybe talking about how sex to you is no different than any other business transaction is not the way to go.

[DarkFish]

Originally Posted by frau kaleun

You know, if you're going to make snarky comments about my sex life based on a complete misunderstanding of my analogy, maybe talking about how sex to you is no different than any other business transaction is not the way to go.