There's a "surprise buttsex" joke in here somewhere.
"Swedish Surprise" o-face?
"Swedish Surprise" o-face?
I just googled that
There`s really a name for everything out there.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-1192...
Now they've frozen his Swiss bank accounts which was apparently his defense fund and personal assets, around €31k. Wikileaks claims between him and the organisation they've lost about €100k within a week owing to Paypal locking them out.
It is nothing less than shameful the way the corporate world is bending over backwards to wall up an organisation that has been charged with no crime in order to avoid pissing off the US administration. The supposed freedom the US thinks it's protecting by fighting overseas has taken a major blow from this.
Malor wrote:Both women making the accusations have known, public CIA connections. Don't think they're credible.
Any links, Malor? Not that it matters much but if it`s true, it`d mean that CIA had started digging under him long before Wikileaks had gained such prominence in media.
According to the Raw Story Ardin worked for a feminist, anti-Castro group that was run by Carlos Alberto Montaner, who is rumored to be a long-time CIA operative. The same group is funded by Luis Posada Carriles, a known former CIA operative, who participated in the Bay of Pigs invasion, bombed a Cuba plane killing 73 people, and was a player in the Iran-Contra scandal among other things.
I'm kinda surprised there's such a big Cuba/Sweden connection of people, publications, and groups. I'd of thought those countries have as much in common as chocolate and mayonnaise.
I do find it pretty astounding that the Swiss, who protected Nazi money gained from the Jewish genocide, are rolling over so quickly regarding one guy with a penchant for uncomfortable truth.
*edit*
Ardin's guide to get revenge is pretty weird. Which is not to say she's some kind of spider woman, but ' fix so that his new partner is cheating' is a pretty cold form of revenge.
And now, Anonymous get involved: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/12...
In addition to the usual larks:
Operation Avenge Assange will incorporate a combination of political lobbying (writing to MPs etc), a consumer boycott of PayPal as well as practical support (mirroring) and advocacy for Wikileaks.
Braver man than I.
I am wondering what all those blowards who said stuff amounting to "Assange you coward, you should get out of hiding and get yourself shot dead by CIA like a REAL MAN!!" are going to change their tunes to now.
Braver man than I.
I am wondering what all those blowards who said stuff amounting to "Assange you coward, you should get out of hiding and get yourself shot dead by CIA like a REAL MAN!!" are going to change their tunes to now.
Given what Anonymous and others have been doing in his name, if anything happens to him now, the government won't be removing a powerful terrorist and decapitating his organization. They'll be creating a martyr.
We have this very American ideal of recognition and reputation. We have a gut reaction that WikiLeaks (and by extension Assange) should remain WikiLeaks (and Assange). If they just go away, they don't get their deserved reputation - good or bad - and we don't get our nice neat narrative.
Lieberman (as usual) wasn't thinking when he told his peeps to go get the site taken down. Ironically, it's the same mistake we made when we invaded Iraq. We went in and took out what we thought the big threat was, trying to "help" people (many of whom really don't like us), only to find ourselves stuck in a quagmire with our enemies in every direction waiting to strike from the shadows. The "enemies", in this case, being copies of WikiLeaks in places all over the globe.
In the future even if WikiLeaks and Assange are gone, there will be other WikiLeaks and Assanges. Maybe WikiLeak will be a new generic term for classified information that's posted online, so that it doesn't offend our sense of closure.
Given what Anonymous and others have been doing in his name, if anything happens to him now, the government won't be removing a powerful terrorist and decapitating his organization. They'll be creating a martyr.
Very possibly. It still takes stones to potentially volunteer for one's own martyrdom.
Maybe WikiLeak will be a new generic term for classified information that's posted online, so that it doesn't offend our sense of closure.
It wouldn't surprise me. It's a pretty colourless term, I can totally see it becoming generic.
How long until his 1984 style confessional?
"I have always loved Big Brother"
I think it was Nick Negroponte who posited that information, by nature, wants to be free. Especially in this day and age where distribution of information is easy and effectively free, keeping things secret will be increasingly difficult.
Assange or no Assange, I don't see the secret keepers winning in the long run unless they are willing (and capable) of destroying the mechanisms of a free society along with it. The Chinese, who have a great deal more experience and expertise at this sort of thing, aren't even able to manage it despite considerable effort and cost.
To be honest, I'm actually rather surprised it took this long for something like Wikileaks to happen. It was not particularly innovative in its implementation. It just required the chutzpah to go where other folks hadn't.
The irony in all of this is that, in an age where bold, big and outrageous lies repeated with maddening regularity (like Saddam's links to al Qaeda) have become commonplace and acceptable tools of statecraft, we Americans are far more outraged at someone who has gone too far in revealing the truth.
I don't know how I feel about Wikileaks, but the juxtaposition of those two issues makes me despair of our own moral bankruptcy.
Well said.
BTW, are you going to give me a call or not?
Well said.
BTW, are you going to give me a call or not?
Sorry. Will do. I've been wallowing in injury lately. Managed to do some serious nerve damage to my shoulder/back over Thanksgiving.
I think you are being overly generous. He handed himself into UK authorities basically as soon as they issued a warrant. It wasn't like there was a manhunt.
The charges list is really ridiculous.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. Now that he's in one place, I wouldn't be surprised if the US issues their own arrest warrant for espionage.
OG_slinger wrote:How long until his 1984 style confessional?
"I have always loved Big Brother"
I was thinking more along the lines of him changing his last name to Goldstein, mysteriously vanishing, and then a book with all of the actual damaging secrets he's supposedly found gets passed around.
It is nothing less than shameful the way the corporate world is bending over backwards to wall up an organisation that has been charged with no crime in order to avoid pissing off the US administration. The supposed freedom the US thinks it's protecting by fighting overseas has taken a major blow from this.
Add a couple more to the list
Assange's website, meanwhile, came under increasing financial pressure Tuesday – with both Visa and MasterCard saying they would block payments to the controversial website.In a statement e-mailed to The Associated Press, Visa Inc. said it was taking steps "to suspend Visa payment acceptance on WikiLeaks' website pending further investigation into the nature of its business and whether it contravenes Visa operating rules."
MasterCard sent a similar statement, saying it would suspend payments "until the situation is resolved."
From Huffingtonpost.
So now I can't use Visa or Mastercard to spend MY FREAKING MONEY how I want?
Parallax Abstraction wrote:It is nothing less than shameful the way the corporate world is bending over backwards to wall up an organisation that has been charged with no crime in order to avoid pissing off the US administration. The supposed freedom the US thinks it's protecting by fighting overseas has taken a major blow from this.
Add a couple more to the list
Assange's website, meanwhile, came under increasing financial pressure Tuesday – with both Visa and MasterCard saying they would block payments to the controversial website.In a statement e-mailed to The Associated Press, Visa Inc. said it was taking steps "to suspend Visa payment acceptance on WikiLeaks' website pending further investigation into the nature of its business and whether it contravenes Visa operating rules."
MasterCard sent a similar statement, saying it would suspend payments "until the situation is resolved."
From Huffingtonpost.
So now I can't use Visa or Mastercard to spend MY FREAKING MONEY how I want?
Not if it's to support t'rrists, ya can't!
This is just the tip of the iceberg. Now that he's in one place, I wouldn't be surprised if the US issues their own arrest warrant for espionage.
You're probably correct, although that doesn't seem to be legally valid. Further, EU states can't extradite someone to a country where they may face the death penalty. I wonder if they are going to dodge that somehow.
farley3k wrote:So now I can't use Visa or Mastercard to spend MY FREAKING MONEY how I want?
As transparent as credit cards have become, do remember what they are. When you swipe that card you aren't pulling money from your account, you're instantly getting a very small loan from your bank, to be repaid under penalty of interest. The bank has no obligation to even issue you a card to begin with, right? Your credit limit is at their discretion.
The real question is if you can use your debit card to make donations, since that IS your money.
Probably not, since they now essentially work the same as a credit card. Unless Paypal or any other means by which Wikileaks was taking donations had a method of allowing you to enter your debit pin number over the internet, you are essentially swiping your card as credit, which means Visa or MC are basically lending the amount for a short while until they pull the funds from your linked bank account. So even in that instance, Farley's kind of right-- they are at least preventing us from using that method to send money. I'm sure Wikileaks would still take envelopes full of cash or checks, however much a PITA that might be for them (and the sender).
Rat Boy wrote:This is just the tip of the iceberg. Now that he's in one place, I wouldn't be surprised if the US issues their own arrest warrant for espionage.
You're probably correct, although that doesn't seem to be legally valid. Further, EU states can't extradite someone to a country where they may face the death penalty. I wonder if they are going to dodge that somehow.
The US can (and has at times) take the death penalty off the table for a particular case to facilitate extradition. Besides, we haven't executed anyone for Espionage for a long time.
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