Im no expert but I think in many countries that would be considered rape. I read that article this morning and I think it had a slight bias in favor of assange.
There was a thread recently about consensual intercourse becoming rape if consent was obtained under false pretenses.
Anyway, thats shady as hell even if its ‘an obscure swedish law’[/quote]
Yeah, if the condom broke and she told him to stop and he kept going at it, he is an asshole and should be punished.
Big banana: Assange doesn’t actually know what the charges are. His lawyer tried to get the charges off the prosecution and was rebuffed. At least according to the BBC website.
Wikileaks is suffering from repeated DDoS attacks. I’ll bet my dinner western governments are behind it. Shameful and hypocritical
[quote]Bambi wrote:
Big banana: Assange doesn’t actually know what the charges are. His lawyer tried to get the charges off the prosecution and was rebuffed. At least according to the BBC website.
Wikileaks is suffering from repeated DDoS attacks. I’ll bet my dinner western governments are behind it. Shameful and hypocritical [/quote]
Why? Turnabout is fair play… He stole secrets from them and is threatening to publish MORE of it, why SHOULDN’T they cyber attack his website?
If someone did that to me and I had the means, I sure would…
[quote]ephrem wrote:
Ofcourse Assange did not steal anything. He only offers a conduit for releasing confidential material leaked by others.[/quote]
That’s like saying the pawn shop owner isn’t breaking the law by selling stolen goods. Information in this day and age is PROPERTY. PROPERTY was stolen and he is distributing it.
[quote]ephrem wrote:
Ofcourse Assange did not steal anything. He only offers a conduit for releasing confidential material leaked by others.[/quote]
That’s like saying the pawn shop owner isn’t breaking the law by selling stolen goods. Information in this day and age is PROPERTY. PROPERTY was stolen and he is distributing it.[/quote]
No charges of theft or fencing stolen goods were filed against him.
[quote]ephrem wrote:
Ofcourse Assange did not steal anything. He only offers a conduit for releasing confidential material leaked by others.[/quote]
That’s like saying the pawn shop owner isn’t breaking the law by selling stolen goods. Information in this day and age is PROPERTY. PROPERTY was stolen and he is distributing it.[/quote]
No charges of theft or fencing stolen goods were filed against him.
Your definitions don’t apply here.[/quote]
Of course not, then the stolen goods would be EVIDENCE and subject to public domain - that’s what they’re trying to avoid! But why is anyone surprised that his website is being attacked and other “back channel” methods of dealing with him are being deployed? You fuck with the bull and you get the horns. One way or another.
[quote]ephrem wrote:
Ofcourse Assange did not steal anything. He only offers a conduit for releasing confidential material leaked by others.[/quote]
That’s like saying the pawn shop owner isn’t breaking the law by selling stolen goods. Information in this day and age is PROPERTY. PROPERTY was stolen and he is distributing it.[/quote]
What does this mean for media such as every newspaper and news network? Didn’t they distribute it as well?
Angry Chicken: It’s hypocritical when you consider Western countries urging China to be more democratic (i.e. censoring Google)
I wouldn’t mind if the US just came out and said: “He fucked with the wrong government he’s going down”.
Also some of the files released were hardly top secret - a lot of the US state system could read them (I heard the number 2 million but that sounds exaggerated)
[quote]ephrem wrote:
Ofcourse Assange did not steal anything. He only offers a conduit for releasing confidential material leaked by others.[/quote]
That’s like saying the pawn shop owner isn’t breaking the law by selling stolen goods. Information in this day and age is PROPERTY. PROPERTY was stolen and he is distributing it.[/quote]
What does this mean for media such as every newspaper and news network? Didn’t they distribute it as well?[/quote]
exactly - assange has not done anything illegal (in the US atleast - not sure about the rest of the world). The US wants to try him under the espionage act, but given the free press history we have here, that would be pretty dangerous.
DDoS are total crap. As are the companies that are capitulating to the demands of government although i understand the difficult situation they are in. Kind of funny how obama did not care until it actually attacked his administration.
Ron Paul tweeted â??In a society where truth becomes treason, we are in big troubleâ??
There is an analogy that keeps coming to mind when I think about this. I think being open and honest with your spouse is important for a healthy relationship, but I do not need to see my wife shit. Some things just do not need to be talked about/seen/explored.
I think the WikiLeaks issue crossed the line in some cases on what the public really benefits from seeing and what is the mess that goes on in diplomacy that we do not really need to be party to in this detail.
Aren’t most of the significant ‘findings’ things people could gather from previous news reporting?
I still cannot find the good that comes from this.
[quote]Bambi wrote:
Angry Chicken: It’s hypocritical when you consider Western countries urging China to be more democratic (i.e. censoring Google)[/quote]
LAWL.
Are you aware the kind of shit that China pulls compared to the US? The worst things that the USA has apparently done is profile and compile dossiers on world leaders and foreign diplomats.
Not only does China control every media outlet and suppress undesirable information to an enormous scale (I lived in China for a year, the entire China daily was like one big comics section), when people are prosecuted, they vanish and no one really cares. Corruption exists at every level. Pollution control policies are laughed at.
My thoughts - WikiLeaks is wrong in many of the things they post. I feel that Julian Assange thinks that he is doing the public some kind of service by revealing this information, but in actuality he is making relationships between countries much harder. He is driven by his ego. I agree in gov’t transparency but some things are best kept to the US government and their relationship with other countries. A good example of it was the Pakistan issue. Also, remember how the Afghan-Iraq war logs showed many current Iraqi informants’ names to the public, and they weren’t properly blacked out? That could equal to the informants and their families (though this hasn’t happened, thank Zeus).
But, I would be lying if I said finding out this information between country State departments wasn’t interesting.
And it is very possible that the U.S. can find in the courts that Assange did something illegal, in terms of national security.
[quote]Bambi wrote:
Angry Chicken: It’s hypocritical when you consider Western countries urging China to be more democratic (i.e. censoring Google)[/quote]
LAWL.
Are you aware the kind of shit that China pulls compared to the US? The worst things that the USA has apparently done is profile and compile dossiers on world leaders and foreign diplomats.
Not only does China control every media outlet and suppress undesirable information to an enormous scale (I lived in China for a year, the entire China daily was like one big comics section), when people are prosecuted, they vanish and no one really cares. Corruption exists at every level. Pollution control policies are laughed at.
Dude, don’t even try and compare the two.[/quote]
Yeah my bad that was a stupid comparison. Lack of food and thinking
I think there are really two fundamental questions at hand:
Should “the state” be allowed to keep secrets in a representative democracy?
Should politicians and/or servants of the state engage in subterfuge and strategy when necessary in order to do their job of furthering the ends OF THE UNITED STATES.
My answer to BOTH questions in an emphatic YES.
This is 2010 and the world is a big bad place. There are nuclear armed countries that DON’T LIKE US for whatever reason. Perhaps they are jealous of our relative prosperity (historically) or perhaps we bombed them during a peace keeping mission in the past. Whatever. It isn’t Mr. Rogers fucking neighborhood.
You people that advocate 100% transparency might be singing a different tune if the data stolen was the secrets and specs of a nuclear device! Or a weakness in our Naval forces of some kind that our enemies could exploit. These things put OUR MEN AND WOMEN IN DANGER. You’d change your tune REAL fucking quick.
Do you REALLY want to leave it up to the conscience of an Australian ego maniac with an agenda to discredit the United States to have the decency and forethought to make qualified decisions about what’s best for OUR country? It’s OUR decision what we release and he took that decision away from us. If you really feel strongly about transparency, run for office with that as your agenda, put a bill before congress, and have duly elected representatives decide. THAT is how a representative democracy works. Not by childish chickenshit games that could get OUR friends and family killed.
It’s OUR data and it was STOLEN. The fact that this dickless wonder published it an attack on the United States. He should be shot on sight. The person that Stole the information and GAVE it to him should be tried for treason and hung by his nutsack so the rest of our men and women serving and having access to sensitive information know what the consequences are for TREASON.
AC, I think you’re forgetting that it’s ‘insiders’ that are sending him the info. Afaiu, these ‘insiders’ see wrong doing and are acting as ‘whistleblowers’.
I don’t think any military personnel would be emailing Assange WMD specs.
I would also say that in recent history, the US gov’t hasn’t been acting in the best interests of it’s citizens, but in the best interests of the ‘political elite’.
If a candidate had ‘promise to keep secrets from you’ as their playform, they would have your vote?
This is actually very ironic when you look at the Patriot Act that they jammed down America’s throat.
I have some reservations about the leak, but let me pose the question to angry chicken:
How would you feel if a foreign power had a military installation in the United States, or in an immediately neighboring country, and said country was trying to dictate the policy of the United States via economic sanctions or straight out military coercion?
As a proud American and fierce libertarian I would have a huge problem with this. Why do we find it so absurd for other countries in that situation to be wary/upset with us?