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this is pretty cool. Julian Assange is what the world needs right now.
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I'm a fan of the idea of Wikileaks as a tactical, curated exposure of information to create pressure for government transparency, probity, accountability, etc., but my impression is that, as opposed to many of the Wikileaks people, this Assange person is more a fan of enormous indiscriminate offloadings of information that don't seem logical or sound.
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Thanks for posting that, it was a really interesting read. The whole issue of how the Australian government reacted to the Assange/wikileaks issue just goes to show how subservient the Australian government (along with many others, obviously) is to the usa. It is a government which cares more about appeasing usa than its own citizens.
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Always a good move to blackmail America to avoid a Swedish rape charge.
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Apparently he's going to be questioned by British police over the non-rape rape charge, and the US attorney general is taking steps to prosecute him and stem the flow of the leaks. After the questioning, he has to appear in court within 24 hours, and the bail will be around £100-£200,000. I wondered why he chose to come to England of all places.
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Do you come from some strange country where this is not rape?
The New York Times today quoted accounts given by the women to police and friends as saying Assange "did not comply with her appeals to stop when (the condom) was no longer in use."
BTW he is being charged with full on rape, not sex by surprise. That appears to be a misunderstanding. The minimum sentence for his charge is 2 years. Plus molestation and unlawful coercion if that holds up in court.
Edited: 2010-12-06, 5:55 pm
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Then maybe wikileaks will release the transcripts of his full rape charge.
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Well, Assange's rape charges have something to do with whether or not he should be put in jail, but it really doesn't have anything to do with Wikileaks. (Which reminds me, why was there almost no media coverage about what Roman Polanski did when he was in danger of being extradited? There was a lot of talk about what he was charged with, which was a plea bargain, but almost nothing I read actually said what he did. Read that testimony if you want to hear something depressing and awful) Of course, if he did those things he should be put in jail.
I'm a bit confused about what Wikileaks is trying to do at this point, frankly.
I don't mind if Wikileaks posts things that make people or governments who have done bad things look bad. If people have done something bad, then it should be made public and they should have to deal with it. I'm an American, and this includes bad stuff my country has done--including stuff like the hellicopter video posted on Wikileaks. Maybe it will aid terrorists in finding new recruits or something like that, but that's kind of deserved. If you kill civilians for no reason, you should have to suffer the consequences, and if your enemy gets more recruits over it then that's also your fault. It's certainly not Wikileak's fault.
In other words, I'm good on the whole whistle-blowing thing, as well as any sort of anticorruption efforts. It doesn't matter if the documents are classified, or it's illegal, or anything like that. It's classified because people are trying to cover their ass, but they should be held responsible for what they do.
However, Wikileaks seems to post unnecessary stuff that is not whistle-blowing nor does it have to do with anticorruption. For example, posting a list of things important to American national security is silly. Mostly because now you have a lot of organizations, with little security, who don't even necessarily have direct ties with America, that now are at high risk of being harmed. It's not journalism. Nobody was doing anything wrong, and the public is not gonna benefit from the information. Basically Wikileaks just put people in danger for no reason.
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@Tzadeck - That's what I was implying above, and that's what I think is an Assange thing rather than a Wikileaks thing, hence 'up with Wikileaks, down with Assange'; the connection of the rape charges with Wikileaks, then, is Assange himself as this extraneous and literally mis-leading persona that is generating criticism (see my above links, lifted in part from the Wikipedia section on criticism of Wikileaks, combined with NY profile of Assange). I think Assange is a CIA plant being used to disrupt the metanarrative and hamstring Wikileaks! ;p
Edited: 2010-12-06, 10:34 pm
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I agree that Assange is irresponsible.
Saying he's committed "full on rape" is rather crude. I have read much more nuanced and balanced opinion from a woman blogger. Couldn't find the link again. What she said more or less is that rape is often between people who already know each other, and it is not always a violent act as as is often portrayed by the media. The issue is consent. She didn't jump to conclusions. We just don't know what happened.
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They just arrested him. I assume we'll know a bit more after he's added his view of the story.
Edited: 2010-12-07, 5:48 am
