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Dirty Tricks? Arrest Warrant for WikiLeaks' Assange Dropped
WikiLeaks Julian Assange warns of "dirty tricks" campaign against him
UPDATED as of 11:49 AM/ET 8/21: Swedish prosecutors have cancelled an arrest warrant issued for Julian Assange, the founder of controversial whistleblower website Wikileaks.
Julian Assange, the founder of the whistleblowing WikiLeaks The warrant was issued following a sexual assault complaint against him.
But on Saturday night, as international media outlets were beginning to pick up the story, Eva Finne, Sweden's chief prosecutor, announced that Assange was no longer wanted.
"I don't think there is reason to suspect that he has committed rape," the chief prosecutor said, but declined to go into any more details.
Assange had denied the allegations, saying via Twitter that the charges were "without basis and their issue at this moment is deeply disturbing".
The prosecutor's office in Stockholm said an arrest warrant was issued for the 39-year-old Australian national late on Friday for suspicion of rape and molestation.
'Dirty tricks'
After Swedish tabloid Expressen, first published reports that the arrest warrant had been issued for Assange, Wikileaks responded on Twitter saying: "We were warned to expect 'dirty tricks.' Now we have the first one."
"No one here has been contacted by Swedish police. Needless to say this will prove hugely distracting."
Assange's organisation has caused much controversy recently with the release of 75,000 classified US military documents containing information surrounding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The US government rejected the release of the documents, saying the website had "blood on its hands" for naming people who had helped its military in opposition to groups such as the Taliban and al-Qaeda, and ordered Wikileaks to return the files.
Wikileaks, meanwhile, has said that it is plans to reveal more of the remaining 15,000 classified documents it holds, possibly this month or next month.
Al Jazeera's Paul Brennan, in London, said: "The two alleged victims in this are in their twenties.
"One is supposed to have happened last weekend in Stockholm and another last Tuesday in Sweden but in a separate town."
Assange was in Sweden last week partly to apply for a publishing certificate to maintain the advantages it receives from the country's whistle-blowing protection laws. Wikileaks also has many of its servers in Sweden.
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Show AllDear Sweden:
I would like to report molestation, rape, abuse and psychologiocal damage. Of course, I realize that I am not alone, but someone has to start the ball rolling.
The perp is well known to you, and IT goes by the name of the United States of America. I believe a class action suit is in order.
We the citizens of the United States, not to mention citizens of the world have been MOLESTED financially: RAPED environmentally; ABUSED by 2 politiical parties and the Military Industrial Complex: and our PSYCHOLOGICAL DAMAGE is beyond repair and will NOT be covered by any health care as it is presumed to be a PRE-EXISTING CONDITION. ( by virtue of being Born in the U.S.A)
By the way, please check the next wikileaks downloads as I'm sure that MANY service members will be more than happy to supply and release sexual information tibits on some of our highest and well paid members of the military and their corporate sponsors. This will of course come as a shock to the sacrosanct military, but I believe that the poorly treated enlisted people will have an opportunity to begin a new form of INTERNET "fragging."
Just as the U.S. gave birth to the bomb, dirty tricks, as a way of life, do have a way of morphing RIGHT BACK AT YOU! Once you start it, then EVERBODY wants to do it too.
Is TURN ABOUT Fair Play? We the PEOPLE will be more than happy to mail a googol of WHISTLES to you as a visual means of protest!
So, PLEASE SWEDEN, get on this right away. Oh, and yes, Sweden, what are your thoughts on the next NOBEL winner? I do think that as a public service, for peace, justice, and what USED to be the American way,that wikileaks should be considered as important as MLK.
Thank you for any consideration that you will give to this most pressing matter.
Sincerely yours,
Stardust.
STARDUST: With a bit of editing (call it the English teacher in me) this letter would be a fine item to run as a full page ad in a mainstream newspaper... I wonder what the rates are in Europe? And I wonder if such an item would pass snuff, or if the effort would be thwarted by some censoring agent?
Good work! Clever approach.
A minor correction to your post:
While Sweden awards the various Nobel prizes in sciences and literature, it is Norway that awards the Peace prize.
Dear SaboCat and Souixrose:
Thanks for your input, and OMG, I did mix up Norway and Sweden! I was just so angry that I fell into a knee- jerk reaction (OMG.. I Rush limbaughed myself!) (and started typing in earnest while breathing in a few monocules that apparently Jonathan Swift had breathed before! Although, as I've said before, I do come from a long line of short tempered wise asses!
I am so happy that Sweden dropped this...the timing was soooo bad oh, evil empire. i could not believe a word of it! Oh and more exciting news! Thailand had been censoring wikileaks, and a new group WIKICONG is clearing the airwaves there!
Perhaps, to paraphrase Homer, is wikileaks the SPACE that launched a thousand ships of protest against ALL the evil empires of the world? I hope so!
Didn't think the Swedes would stoop so low. Maybe we can get charges going against Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, all the neocons, and AIPAC--that ought to clean up a lot of garbage.
I didn't think this would require being a Devil's Advocate, but apparently it does.
One thing that I would like to think progressives do believe in is respect for the rule of law and a desire not to see it used for partisan gains. So we have to entertain the possibility that Assange might be guilty as charged.
I don't even have to search, I can say with very little fear of being contradicted that when Larry Craig was charged, pretty much no one here claimed he was "set up".
But the main thing is exactly what DoubleDee writes... the innocence or guilt of Assange should have NO bearing on the Wikileaks material itself.
It looks like Assange and his merry band of hackers have their work cut out for them for the next 48 hours. If they are successful, we should expect either a major expose of the Swedish criminal justice system and his accusers through wikileaks, or a retraction of "the confusion surrounding a rumor" by some Swedish official by Monday morning.
My understand is that wikileaks doesn't hack anything.
They are simply providing a secure depository where people like you and me or Pvt. Manning can drop leaked documents in anonymity and security. Recall that Manning was only discovered because he couldn't keep his mouth shut.
Wikileaks is itself a sort of hack of the current journalistic system, and is organized and conducted under a hacker ethic.* It is run by former and current hackers, and gets a certain amount of respect due to the hacker cred of its members. For example, Daniel Schmitt is a member of Chaos Computer Club (https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Chaos_Computer_Club ); Assange one of the original cypherpunks. ( https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Cypherpunk ) One expects that many of the thousand or so volunteers have some affinity to hacking. After all, they were able to decrypt the "collateral murder" video.
*most people misunderstand what "hacker" means. https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Hacker_%28programmer_subculture%29 explains it.
No matter. I'm in love with Lisbeth Salander, and love tops everything.
What????
The BBC reports that the Swedish authorities have dropped the warrant, saying the allegations are unfounded:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11049316
Oh, Stieg Larsson, thou shouldst be living at this hour!
That was fast. I thought they were going to let it simmer over the weekend.
SECRETARY: Thanks for the update. I don't think it will stop the right wing US smear machine since truth has seldom yet had much to do with its coverage of so-called "news." And its audience will eat this up. It'll give Sarah Palin more chum to toss into her hate-filled currents.
The international investigations that are needed are of the US GOVERNMENT
and its sexual perversion -- including torture, rape, murder -- even of
children --
That's far more the subject we should keep our minds atuned to --!!
Plus, how we citizens can move to gaining control over this Military
Industrial/Intelligence Complex which has threatened world peace with
its terrorism -- and threatened and betrayed many of our presidents!
THAT'S THE SUBJECT, FOLKS!!
.
.
"According to all myth, the female - not the male -- gives life"
I'm glad the charges have been dropped, but I'm still dismayed at people's tendency to jump to conclusions because it's one of "our guys."
You have to face the possibility that it could have proven true. The point being that criminal justice and the WIkileaks material should be two different things.
There is no "typical profile" of a sex offender.
But even if Assange *was* a sex offender, it would have no bearing on what he has done.
What I should have said is that sex offenders rarely show the outward appearance of being a sex offender. Many are upstanding members of society who are never caught.
(Which, I believe, was one of the points of Larssen's books.)
Scott Ritter comes to mind, which might have been why they thought they could pin this on Assange.
I guess my main point is that I don't think *we* should make sexual assault a political issue simply because the other side does it.
My point was that even if he was guilty, it would have no bearing on the content of the WikiLeaks material, any more than Scott Ritter's knowledge of Iraq had any bearing on his sexual activities. And insisting on dwelling on the falsity of the accusations makes it harder for real victims to come forward.
PAX: I can't be certain of your motive, but you sure remind me of a right wing messenger in this thread. By repeating endlessly the POSSIBILITY of Julian's sexual "guilt," you are reinforcing it with subtlety.
And wasn't it just rumor about Scott Ritter, too? He, who coincidentally (wink, wink) happens to be another inconvenient whistle-blower?
Scott Ritter has been arrested more than once for soliciting sex with an underage woman. I find it hard to believe that every single time was part of some vast conspiracy.
And my point was REGARDLESS OF WHAT RITTER DID it did not change that he was right about Iraq. This situation is no different.
Ritter's case is once again put off to some undetermined date in September (if ever). He has only had one court case resulting in a "not guilty" verdict. Stop joining the right in prejudging their prime whistleblower targets.
SR,
Thank you.
C
"PAX: I can't be certain of your motive, but you sure remind me of a right wing messenger in this thread. By repeating endlessly the POSSIBILITY of Julian's sexual "guilt," you are reinforcing it with subtlety."
Julian? do you know him personally?
I'm not a right winger. I'm merely aware of hypocrisy. If it were Bush, nobody would be saying "oh, well, he's innocent until proven guilty."
"And wasn't it just rumor about Scott Ritter, too?"
Not so much...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Ritter#Arrests
I just followed the sources at the end of the wikipedia entry shown above here. The only substantial document shown is the police sting witness whose statement is pages 8 and 9 of a nine page document. The newspapers (The pocono recorder and the extremely right wing New York Post) don't show the other seven pages.
The case is supposed to have been delayed from 2009 because of time it took police to get their evidence together. So guess what - the court case has been moved on again to an undecided date sometime around September. No reason was given.
Up to now there has never been any conviction recorded and who knows if this case would convict him if it ever actually goes to court.
I think it is premature to judge Scott Ritter based on all this so far. But I do know prime targets of the establishment and Ritter is definitely one.
Katrine,
Well stated.
Chelsea
You've made about a dozen attempts here to change the subject.
Mainly, it has been our government in these wars who are the "sex" offenders!
..
"According to all myth, the female - not the male -- gives life"
Change the subject? Give me a break. The reason I've had to write the same thing again and again is because people seem not to get the point, which is it doesn't matter what happened, we should be most concerned about the release of the documents, not attempts to discredit him.
"Mainly, it has been our government in these wars who are the "sex" offenders!"
Here's the thing: "good" people do bad things all the time. I've heard people spout nonsense like Assange "doesn't seem like" a sex offender and other twaddle that if the right put out about an accused person we would not buy for a minute. If this were, say, Glenn Beck, and the charges were dropped almost immediately after being filed, most people here would say the witnesses were coerced or intimidated. When CLinton was accused, there was a concerted effort to discredit every woman who claimed he had harrassed them.
I'm sick of people turning everything into political football, especially when progressives claim to take issues like violence agaisnt women seriously.
I did ponder this question, given that (as I posted earlier) Israeli nuclear whistleblower Morechai Vanunu was ensnared by a female Mossad agent. But from what is known for certain about Assange, he knows he's a marked man, and is very very careful about protecting himself, highly unlikely to compromise himself so foolishly for a quick bonk. He's no Bill Clinton!
Fair enough. I just find it troubling when progressives fall for the same traps that they hate in their opponents.
You're quite naive if you believed the charges even for a second. The character assassinations against enemies of the Empire are made for the benefit of headline-skimming, channel-surfing beer-drinking mouth-breathers.
Of course it's "possible" any rumor might be true - those accusations of George W. Bush being a gay drug user always sounded plausible to me:
http://gayswithoutborders.wordpress.com/2007/09/30/george-w-bush-chad-savage/
http://gaygeorgewbush.tripod.com/
http://ratbangdiary.blogspot.com/2005/05/i-want-to-know-is-george-w-bush-gay-or.html
http://www.rense.com/general57/newbook.htm
Sigh. Look, here's the point. Law enforcement has to take these things seriously. Until they dropped the charges, we had to accept the possibility that he may have been guilty. Otherwise we're no better than the right-wingers.
Whether *I* personally believe the charges is immaterial, in case I'm on jury duty (Someone on Democratic Underground is suggesting boycotting jury duty. Seriously?)
It wasn't just a "rumour" it was serious enough to be investigated by Swedish police. Maybe it is all a frame up. But I find people jumping to conclusions based on the fact that he's someone who did something we like. That's not much better than what the "other side" does.
We understand your point pax, your having made it some dozen times already.
Assange was a suspect. Some prosecutors wanted to talk to him. Perhaps they weren't even sure a crime had been committed. We don't know the details.
Don't act surprised when people here demand more evidence that their hero did something and refuse to believe it until there is some. It would be same if MLK was accused of this.
"we had to accept the possibility that he may have been guilty"
no - that is the business of the courts.
we have to accept - and believe - that he is innocent until proven otherwise.
condemning someone based on suspicion - is that the American Way?
Sigh. Look, here's the point.
Sure, there are crazy people that kill other people.
But when JFK, RFK, MLK and Malcolm-X all get killed by crazy, lone gunmen within a few years of each other, during the upheavals of the Vietnam War protests and fears of actual Revolution by the Rulers of Empire, you move beyond what the Media is telling you about criminal investigations and magic bullets and reach the proper conclusions about the Gangster nature of the shadowy Security State.
When Fred Hampton of the Black Panthers was killed in his sleep by Chicago police and the FBI, the newspapers are not going to tell you that the next day.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Panther_Party
When Paul Wellstone dies in a plane crash 11 days before his certain re-election in a crucial race to maintain Democratic control of the Senate, in 2002 just months before the illegal invasion of Iraq, sure, it *could* just be an accident.
http://www.thenation.com/article/paul-wellstone-fighter
May 9, 2002
Paul Wellstone is a hunted man. Minnesota's senior senator is not just another Democrat on White House political czar Karl Rove's target list, in an election year when the Senate balance of power could be decided by the voters of a single state. Rather, getting rid of Wellstone is a passion for Rove, Dick Cheney, George W. Bush and the special-interest lobbies that fund the most sophisticated political operation ever assembled by a presidential administration. "There are people in the White House who wake up in the morning thinking about how they will defeat Paul Wellstone," a senior Republican aide confides. "This one is political and personal for them."
Again, *you* are naive if you believe the cover stories on these hits on obvious targets. I'm not saying they are not professionally staged to have plausible "explanations" for the rubes. That's what the "other side" does, and has been for a long, long time.
If Julian Assange "kills himself" in the next month, feel free to "accept the possibility" that he was just worried about his finances, or depressed about his girlfriend, or upset that his cat died.
If you're an idiot.
The old adage, that a lie can travel halfway round the world before truth has put its boots on, seems to be less true these days. Even the online edition of the NYT has reported the withdrawal prominently. And the BBC's main radio news bulletin for 5pm Saturday has dropped the story altogether.
Bring America Back !!!!
**Sure sounds like one of the typical black-bag jobs our FBI is so proud of==like their dirt releases of MLK. They probably found a couple of Swede homo's who once used the same restrooms as Assange, or some such !
**USA intel is real good at coming up with Patsies who will complain of just about anything, and the Pentagon has been in a feeding frenzy about Assange tantamount to how they went after Daniel Ellsberg and his psychiatric files.
**If US Intel cannot contradict the message of fact, they are
then always willing to attack the messenger.. This really does smack of their Dirty Tricks campaign, and for certain they've got a corps of dirt bags in Sweden at their beck
and call ! Make no mistake about that.
I saw Julian Assange's appearance on the Colbert Report a few months ago. This is a man who is serious and absolutely single-minded. He is no more a rapist than I am.
"No more blood for oil"
"Serious and single-minded" people commit horrible crimes as well. My point being that I find it troubling that people are quick to see conspiracies when it's one of "our guys."
I have little doubt that it was some sort of set-up. But justice should be blind, and I think we shouldn't jump to conclusions about someone's innocence or guilt (which is a very different thing from saying someone is innocent until proven guilty).
You are the only one i've seen , other than myself who posted about the colbert interview. I had the same feeling as you. And colbert just didn't know how to handle it. I could tell he had mixed feelings about Assange, as colbert is ultra 'patriotic' in certain ways. I don't mean his persona, either.
I think colbert is brilliant and i appreciate him immensely. But he is really big on 'support our troops' they are the true heroes, etc. And Assage played it very real. I don't believe he is a 'spook'. They couldn't invent him. Not the man i have seen interviewed by various people. They just wouldn't 'get it'.
My observations.
I very much hope that you are right about Assange.
and wrong about Colbert....
I wonder if there are any US senators who want to look into this......no ???
with about 98% of them corrupt, what good would it do?
And the plot thickens more than any one could make up.
This developing saga with spies and blackmail a given, could replace the Long War as the new infotainment hit.
The Fascist Wing-Nut take on Religion is based on the theory that all Sin is in some way related to Sex - the great Taboo. (It plays on TV.)
If Julian Assange were somehow able to start a war against an undesirable, Terrorist, nation, and kill millions ('who are even more worthless to them than we are - we run of the mill little people'), these Criminals wouldn't have any idea how to frame him. (It wouldn't play on TV.)
But sexual assault is a crime. It should be taken seriously if the evidence suggests so. Obviously it didn't in this case. But to say this is nothing but "fear of sex" is insulting to real victims. (Arguably so are false accusations).
Probably another poorly planned plot by ___. The accusers and masterminds probably got cold feet once so much international attention was made and in the end, it was probably likely that the accusers could get in trouble for the fabrication. Interesting how Assange had no history of sexual misconduct then all of a sudden, out of the blue, 2 women accuse him of sexual misconduct during a recent span of a week or so.
Presto. Perhaps for once in a great while the machinations of the enemy of human brotherhood have simply proven to be more a hazard than a help to their slanderous, murderous cause.
Still, the fact remains concerning Swedish exports of arms et al contrary to their own laws, as well as their assistance in the criminal rendition of innocent Swedish citizens.
Further, who and where are those who put forward the accusations? Hmmm?