WikiLeaks is coming under
attack from all sides. The U.S. government and embassies around the
world are criticizing the whistleblowing group for releasing a massive
trove of secret State Department cables. The WikiLeaks website is
struggling to stay online just days after Amazon pulled the site from
its servers following political pressure. The U.S. State Department has
blocked all its employees from accessing the site and is warning all
government employees not to read the cables, even at home. "These
attacks will not stop our mission, but should be setting off alarm bells
about the rule of law in the United States," said WikiLeaks founder
Julian Assange. We host a debate between Steven Aftergood, a
transparency advocate who has become a leading critic of WikiLeaks, and
Glenn Greenwald, a constitutional law attorney and legal blogger for
Salon.com.
Guests:
JUAN GONZALEZ: WikiLeaks is under attack. The
whistelblowing group’s website has effectively been killed just days
after Amazon pulled the site from its servers following political
pressure. Wikileaks.org went offline this morning for the third time
this week in what the Guardian newspaper is calling "the biggest threat
to its online presence yet."
A California-based internet hosting provider called EveryDNS dropped
WikiLeaks last night, late last night. The company says it did so to
prevent its other 500,000 customers from being affected by the intense
cyber attacks targeted at WikiLeaks.
This morning, WikiLeaks—and the massive trove of secret diplomatic
cables it has been publishing since Sunday—was only accessible online
through a string of digits known as a DNS address.
Earlier this
week, Joe Lieberman, the chair of the Senate committee on Homeland
Security, called for any organization helping to sustain WikiLeaks to
immediately terminate its relationship with them.
Meanwhile, the State Department has blocked all its employees from
accessing the site and is warning all government workers not to read the
cables, even at home.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange told The
Guardian the developments are an example of the, quote, "privatization
of state censorship." Assange said, quote, "These attacks will not stop
our mission, but should be setting off alarm bells about the rule of law
in the United States."
AMY GOODMAN: Just what is WikiLeaks’ mission? On its website, the
group says, quote, "WikiLeaks is a non-profit media organization
dedicated to bringing important news and information to the public." The
website goes on, "We publish material of ethical, political and
historical significance while keeping the identity of our sources
anonymous, thus providing a universal way for the revealing of
suppressed and censored injustices," unquote.
But not all transparency advocates support what WikiLeaks is doing.
Today we’ll host a debate. Steven Aftergood is one of the most prominent
critics of WikiLeaks and one of the most prominent transparency
advocates. He’s the director of the government secrecy project at the
Federation of American Scientists. He runs the Secrecy News project,
which routinely posts non-public documents. He is joining us from
Washington, D.C. We’re also joined by Glenn Greenwald. He’s a
constitutional law attorney and political and legal blogger for
Salon.com who’s supportive of WikiLeaks. He’s joining us from Rio de
Janeiro in Brazil.
We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Why don’t we begin with Steven
Aftergood? You have been a fierce proponent of transparency, yet you
are a critic of WikiLeaks. Why?
STEVEN AFTERGOOD: I’m all for the
exposure of corruption, including classified corruption. And to the
extent that WikiLeaks has done that, I support its actions. The problem
is, it has done a lot more than that, much of which is problematic. It
has invaded personal privacy. It has published libelous material. It has
violated intellectual property rights. And above all, it has launched a
sweeping attack not simply on corruption, but on secrecy itself. And I
think that’s both a strategic and a tactical error. It’s a strategic
error because some secrecy is perfectly legitimate and desirable. It’s a
tactical error because it has unleashed a furious response from the
U.S. government and other governments that I fear is likely to harm the
interests of a lot of other people besides WikiLeaks who are concerned
with open government.
JUAN GONZALEZ: And when you say—when you list some of the main
errors that the organization has made, could you give some examples of
what to you are most troubling, when you talk about the invasion of
privacy rights and other—and the others that you’ve listed?
STEVEN AFTERGOOD: Last year, WikiLeaks published a thousand-page raw
police investigative file from Belgium, investigating a case of child
abuse and murder. And as one would expect, the police file included lots
of unsubstantiated allegations that later turned out to be false. But
by publishing the raw allegations in their original state, WikiLeaks
brought embarrassment and disgrace to people who were in fact innocent.
It got to the point where the Belgium government was looking into the
possibility of blocking access to WikiLeaks, not as an act of
censorship, but as an act of protection against libel.
WikiLeaks has also published what I think is probably the only
actual blueprint of a nuclear fission device that has been made
available online. It’s not an artist’s concept, but it’s an actual
blueprint of a real nuclear weapon that they posted online. I think from
a proliferation point of view, that was a terrible mistake.
AMY GOODMAN: Glenn Greenwald, we want to bring you in before the break with a response.
GLENN
GREENWALD: Right. Well, it’s interesting because we led off the segment
with you, Amy, detailing a whole variety of repressive actions that are
being taken against WikiLeaks. And one of the reasons for that is
because people like Steven Aftergood have volunteered themselves and
thrust themselves into the spotlight to stand up and say, "I’m a
transparency advocate, but I think that what WikiLeaks is doing in so
many instances is terrible."
If you look at the overall record of WikiLeaks—and let me just
stipulate right upfront that WikiLeaks is a four-year-old organization,
four years old. They’re operating completely unchartered territory. Have
they made some mistakes and taken some missteps? Absolutely. They’re an
imperfect organization. But on the whole, the amount of corruption and
injustice in the world that WikiLeaks is exposing, not only in the
United States, but around the world, in Peru, in Australia, in Kenya and
in West Africa and in Iceland, much—incidents that are not very well
known in the United States, but where WikiLeaks single-handedly
uncovered very pervasive and systematic improprieties that would not
have otherwise been uncovered, on top of all of the grave crimes
committed by the United States. There is nobody close to that
organization in terms of shining light of what the world’s most powerful
factions are doing and in subverting the secrecy regime that is used to
spawn all sorts of evils.
And I think the big difference between myself and Steven Aftergood
is it is true that WikiLeaks is somewhat of a severe response, but
that’s because the problem that we’re confronting is quite severe, as
well, this pervasive secrecy regime that the world’s powerful factions
use to perpetrate all kinds of wrongdoing. And the types of solutions
that Mr. Aftergood has been pursuing in his career, while commendable
and nice and achieving very isolated successes here and there, is
basically the equivalent of putting little nicks and scratches on an
enormous monster. And WikiLeaks is really one of the very few, if not
the only group, effectively putting fear into the hearts of the world’s
most powerful and corrupt people, and that’s why they deserve, I think,
enthusiastic support from anyone who truly believes in transparency,
notwithstanding what might be valid, though relatively trivial,
criticisms that Mr. Aftergood and a couple of others have been voicing.
AMY GOODMAN: [inaudible] to break, and then we’re going to come back
to this discussion. We’ve just gotten word from a tweet that the
WikiLeaks website is now being hosted in Switzerland, again taken down
over the last hours. We are seeing here the WikiLeaks tweet says,
"WikiLeaks moves to Switzerland, "
http://wikileaks.ch">
http://wikileaks.ch."
We’ll bring you the latest as we go through this broadcast. We’re
speaking with Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com and Steven Aftergood of the
Federation of American Scientists. Back with them in a minute.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: Our guests are Glenn Greenwald of
Salon.com—he’s joining us from Rio de Janeiro in Brazil—and Steven
Aftergood, the Federation of American Scientists, joining us from
Washington, D.C., debating WikiLeaks and the trove of cables they’ve
released. It ultimately will be the largest trove of U.S. diplomatic
cables ever leaked in U.S. history, following the largest trove of
government documents ever released in the Iraq war cables, close to
400,000 of those documents. Juan?
JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, Steven Aftergood, I’d like to get your response
to Glenn Greenwald just before our break and this issue of the
fundamental challenge that he believes they are providing to elites all
around the world.
STEVEN AFTERGOOD: You know, maybe he’s right, but I don’t think so. I
think their theory of political action is extremely primitive. It’s
basically throw a lot of stuff out there, and then good things will
happen to good people and bad things will happen to bad people. They
made a tremendous splash with their Apache helicopter video, showing the
killing of people in Baghdad in 2007. But did it lead to a change in
the rules of engagement that would prevent a similar event from
happening in the future? No. Did it lead to compensation for or
reparations for the people who were wounded there? No. It made a big
splash, and then we went on to the next big splash. And, you know,
again, I could easily be wrong; I often am. Maybe WikiLeaks is going to
lead to an avalanche of openness and good government. My concern,
though, is the opposite, that it’s going to lead to a new clampdown, new
restrictions, more secrecy.
AMY GOODMAN: Glenn Greenwald, your response?
GLENN GREENWALD:
I mean, I find that standard that he just articulated to be
unbelievable and absurd. The idea that WikiLeaks hasn’t single-handedly
reformed the United States military’s rule of engagement, and that’s
supposed to be some sort of criticism of what it does? I mean, Mr.
Aftergood created a big splash back in June after Wikileaks released the
Afghanistan war documents, and he made that same argument in response
to something I had written when I praised Wikileaks, and he said, "Well,
how many wars have WikiLeaks stopped?" How many wars has Mr. Aftergood
stopped? How many rules of engagement has he caused to be changed? I
mean, it’s not WikiLeaks’s fault or its responsibility that when they
show grave injustices to the American people that the citizenry is
either indifferent towards those injustices or apathetic towards them.
WikiLeaks is devoted to shedding light on what these injustices are, and
it’s then our responsibility to go about and do something about them.
Again, they’re a four-year-old organization. And they have led to
all sorts of important reforms. I mean, in Iceland, WikiLeaks was
basically the single-handed cause of a new law that is designed to
protect whistleblowing and whistleblowing sites like WikiLeaks beyond
anything else that exists in the world. Their exposure of corruption on
the part of a Iceland’s biggest banks, that led to the financial
meltdown, led to investigations and prosecutions. The same thing
happened to exposure of injustices and corruption on the part of oil
magnates in Peru. They exposed the Australian government’s efforts to
target websites to be shut down under a program designed to target child
pornography, when in reality the sites that were targeted were
political sites. And in Spain this week, the headlines are dominated by
documents that WikiLeaks released that you, Amy, covered two days ago
with Harper’s Scott Horton about the fact of the Spanish government’s
succumb to pressure by the American State Department not to investigate
the torture of its own citizens and the death of a Spanish
photojournalist in Iraq, because WikiLeaks exposed that. And so you see
all over the world, in just a short history of four years, immense
amounts of reforms and greater awareness of what political and financial
elites are doing around the world. I think he’s imposing on them an
absurd and unreasonable standard that he, himself, and essentially
nobody else is able to meet, either.
AMY GOODMAN: Steven Aftergood, how would you—what would you say the
difference is between WikiLeaks and your own newsletter, Secrecy News?
STEVEN
AFTERGOOD: I mean, there are several obvious differences in scope and
scale and distribution. From my point of view, WikiLeaks is poorly
focused in order to achieve its objective. And let me say, of course, I
supported the release of the Apache helicopter video. I started out by
saying that I favor the unauthorized disclosure of classified
information that reveals corruption. It’s very hard, evidently, to say
both good and bad things about WikiLeaks. People want you to say only
one or the other.
But yesterday, Der Spiegel reported that a member, an official from
the Free Democratic Party, had been relieved of his duties after he was
identified as one of the persons who provided documents to the U.S.
government in one of the WikiLeaks cables. Does that advance the public
interest? WikiLeaks might call that a victory for open government, but I
think it’s regrettable. I think if it’s multiplied dozens or hundreds
of thousands of times over, it does real damage to the conduct of
American diplomacy and to the national interest. So, just on principle, I
oppose that kind of cavalier approach to disclosure.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Glenn Greenwald, your response?
GLENN
GREENWALD: Right. Well, actually, WikiLeaks does not have a cavalier or
indiscriminate approach to disclosure, contrary to accusations often
made against it. They’ve certainly made mistakes in the past. I
criticize them, for instance, for exercising insufficient care in
redacting the names of various Afghan citizens who cooperated with the
United States military. They accepted responsibility for that, and in
subsequent releases, including in the Iraq document disclosures, they
were very careful about redacting those names. And in the current
diplomatic cable disclosure, thus far on their website, the only
documents that have been posted were cables that were already published
by their newspaper partners such as The Guardian and the New York Times
and Der Spiegel, which included the redactions that those newspapers
applied to those documents to protect the names of various people who
are innocent and otherwise might be harmed in an inadvertent way. So
they are constantly increasing their safeguards and their scrutiny.
They’re perfecting their procedures. They acknowledge the responsibility
that they have.
But what they—what I think is the crucial point is, is that, again, I
mean, you know, what I hear from him speaking, it’s sort of like if you
had a surgeon who had a cancer patient riddled with tumors and was
removing huge tumors, this complaint, "Well, there was an ingrown
toenail that he left and didn’t extract that very well." And just the
more—no matter what you say, they just keep focusing on those relatively
trivial flaws. I think that, you know, in order to criticize
WikiLeaks—and it’s legitimate to do so—if you don’t think that their
approach to bringing transparency and subverting the secrecy regime is
an effective one or a commendable or noble one, you’re obligated to say
what the alternative is, not in some fantasy world, but in the real
world. And I don’t see one.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, Glenn, I’d like to ask you, because the focus
of so much of this is in killing the messenger and not dealing with the
messages that are being released here. First of all, the comment on just
the fact that as the internet and computerization of information has
grown, it has made it easier for folks to download troves of information
about an institution or a government, so that our societies have not
dealt with this other side of the internet and computerization. And
also, if this information was so secret, why did the government do such
an amateurish job of protecting supposedly vital information that
a—supposedly a PFC, as they suspect, downloaded so much of this critical
information about Afghanistan, Iraq and even diplomatic cables?
GLENN GREENWALD: Well, I think that’s really—that last point is one
of the critical issues, which is, the reality is that of all the
hundreds of thousands upon hundreds of thousands of pages that WikiLeaks
has released just in the last six months alone, a tiny portion of it is
even interesting, let alone legitimately secret. And that underscores
one of the real problems, is that the secrecy regime that we’re talking
about is just—is not just a little bit excessive on the margins. What it
means is that the government, the United States government, and all of
its permanent national security state institutions reflexively do
virtually everything behind a shield of secrecy. Essentially, the
presumption is that whatever the government does in our name is secret,
when the presumption is supposed to be the opposite. And you see that as
clearly as you possibly can in these leaks, how much innocuous
information is simply marked and stamped "secret."
And the reason that there’s not many safeguards placed on it is
because what WikiLeaks is releasing—and I think this is so important—is
that, you know, despite how much corruption and wrongdoing and
impropriety and criminality it has revealed, this is really the lowest
level of secrecy that the United States government has. The truly awful
things exist on a far higher level of secrecy, at the top-secret level
or even above. And it is true that if the United States government’s
claim is correct, that what WikiLeaks has done has jeopardized so much
that’s good and important in the world, a lot of the blame lies with the
United States and the government and the military for not having
safeguarded it more securely.
And the first question that you asked is, I think, critical, too,
which is, we can debate WikiLeaks all we want, but at the end of the
day, it doesn’t really matter, because the technology that exists is
inevitably going to subvert these institutions’ secrecy regimes. It’s
too easy to take massive amounts of secret and dump it on the internet.
You know longer need the New York Times or the network news to agree.
And I think that what we’re talking about is inevitable, whether people
like Steven Aftergood or Joe Lieberman or others like it or not.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to get Steven Aftergood’s response, but first,
here on Democracy Now!, we’ve conducted three extensive interviews with
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. The archives of the interview are on
our website. But I wanted to play for you part of what he told us in
July on government transparency.
JULIAN ASSANGE: We have clearly stated motives, but they are not
antiwar motives. We are not pacifists. We are transparency activists who
understand that transparent government tends to produce just
government. And that is our sort of modus operandi behind our whole
organization, is to get out suppressed information into the public,
where the press and the public and our nation’s politics can work on it
to produce better outcomes.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s Julian Assange on Democracy Now! Yesterday, NBC
News highlighted Democracy Now!’s interview yesterday with his attorney.
And we are linking to all of this on our website. She says that Julian
Assange is not in hiding from the authorities—they are contacting him
through his lawyers—but in hiding from harm, that this character
assassination, the possibility that could lead to an actual real one.
Steven Aftergood, your response to what Assange said and Glenn Greenwald
before that?
STEVEN AFTERGOOD: Well, I actually agree with everything that
Assange said in that statement. What I don’t agree with is that it’s an
accurate characterization of what WikiLeaks has done.
Glenn
Greenwald had a lot to say. Let me just mention a couple of things. I
don’t believe that it’s a choice between the WikiLeaks approach and
giving up. This year, for the first time, the United States declassified
and disclosed the size of its nuclear weapons arsenal. This year, for
the first time, the U.S. government issued its first unclassified
Nuclear Posture Review Report, the basic statement of nuclear weapons
employment policy. This year, for the first time, the U.S. government
disclosed the total intelligence budget, including both its civilian and
military components. There is an alternative mechanism for progress. In
today’s paper, there’s a story about ACLU having uncovered reports of
violations of the Freedom—the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act
amendments. So it’s really not a question of WikiLeaks or nothing. It’s a
question of a smart, well-targeted approach or a—you know, a reckless
shotgun approach.
My concern about where we—you know, going forward, I basically have
two agenda items. In the security review process, I want to try and
inject the idea, as Glenn Greenwald said, that overclassification is a
problem here and that as we fix the other security measures, we also
need to focus on fixing the classification system, reducing the scope of
classification sharply. The other agenda item, which WikiLeaks has made
more difficult, is to prevent a rewriting of the Espionage Act statutes
in order to make them more versatile and useful against both those who
disclose classified information and those who publish such information.
That is now building up steam, and I think we’re likely to see efforts
in that direction in the next Congress.
AMY GOODMAN: Glenn Greenwald?
GLENN GREENWALD: Yeah, I mean,
let me just say, I mean, you know, I have respect for the work that
Steven Aftergood and other transparency activists do in Washington,
working within the Congress and other American political institutions to
try and bring about incremental reform. I think he’s well intentioned. I
think we probably share the same values. The problem is that I just
don’t think that his perspective is, A, realistic or, B, sufficiently
urgent. I don’t think it’s realistic that the Congress of the United
States, now dominated by the Republican Party in the House of
Representatives and an extremely conservative Democratic Party in the
Senate and led by an administration, the Obama administration, that has
actually increased secrecy weapons, including the state secrecy
privilege and other forms of immunity designed to shield high-level
executive power wrongdoing and lawbreaking from all forms of
accountability or judicial review, I think it’s incredibly unrealistic
to take an optimistic view that that political system, dominated by
those factions, is somehow on the verge of starting to bring about
meaningful increases in transparency.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to—
GLENN GREENWALD: And I think it’s insufficiently—go ahead, I’m sorry.
AMY
GOODMAN: I’m going to interrupt, because I want to get to some memos
that we’ve been getting from around the country that are very important
and interesting. University students are being warned about WikiLeaks.
An email from Columbia University’s School of International and Public
Affairs, that we read in headlines, reads—I want to do it again—quote,
"Hi students,
"We received a call today from a SIPA alumnus who is working at the
State Department. He asked us to pass along the following information to
anyone who will be applying for jobs in the federal government, since
all would require a background investigation and in some instances a
security clearance.
"The documents released during the past few months through Wikileaks
are still considered classified documents. He recommends that you DO
NOT post links to these documents nor make comments on social media
sites such as Facebook or through Twitter. Engaging in these activities
would call into question your ability to deal with confidential
information, which is part of most positions with the federal
government.
"Regards, Office of Career Services."
That’s the email to Columbia University students at the School of International and Public Affairs.
Now,
I want to go on to another memo. Democracy Now! has obtained the text
of a memo that’s been sent to employees at USAID. This is to thousands
of employees, about reading the recently released WikiLeaks documents,
and it comes from the Department of State. They have also warned their
own employees. This memo reads, quote, "Any classified information that
may have been unlawfully disclosed and released on the Wikileaks web
site was not 'declassified' by an appopriate authority and therefore
requires continued classification and protection as such from government
personnel... Accessing the Wikileaks web site from any computer may be
viewed as a violation of the SF-312 agreement... Any discussions
concerning the legitimacy of any documents or whether or not they are
classified must be conducted within controlled access areas (overseas)
or within restricted areas (USAID/Washington)... The documents should
not be viewed, downloaded, or stored on your USAID unclassified network
computer or home computer; they should not be printed or retransmitted
in any fashion."
That was the memo that went out to thousands of employees at USAID.
The State Department has warned all their employees, you are not to
access WikiLeaks, not only at the State Department, which they’ve
blocked, by the way, WikiLeaks, but even on your home computers. Even if
you’ve written a cable yourself, one of these cables that are in the
trove of the documents, you cannot put your name in to see if that is
one of the cables that has been released. This warning is going out
throughout not only the government, as we see, but to prospective
employees all over the country, even on their home computers. Steven
Aftergood, your response?
STEVEN AFTERGOOD: It’s obviously insane. I mean, if they’re not
allowed to read the cables on WikiLeaks, they shouldn’t be allowed to
read the cables on the New York Times or other sites. It’s obviously
ridiculous. You know, this whole "cablegate" was intended as a
provocation. Bradley Manning said it would give thousands of diplomats
heart attacks. The system has been provoked. It is—you know, it is
outrageous. It’s kind of disgusting. The question is, is it good
politics? I don’t think so.
AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Glenn Greenwald, your final response?
GLENN
GREENWALD: I think that that response is not one caused by WikiLeaks. I
think that response is reflective of what our government is and the
egos that prevails. And it’s every bit as severe as it was before
WikiLeaks existed. And it’s WikiLeaks that is devoted to subverting it.
And I think those memos, those disgustingly repressive and authoritarian
memos, and the mindset in them, shows why WikiLeaks is so needed.
AMY GOODMAN: We want to leave it there, and we want to thank Glenn
Greenwald, speaking to us from Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, a legal blogger
at Salon.com, and Steven Aftergood of the Federation for American
Scientists, for engaging in this debate.
The response on our website has been just overwhelming. We’ve got
the highest number of viewers online right now than we’ve had since the
beginning of this. The interview we did with Daniel Ellsberg on October
22, Juan, the day that he was flying off to London to have the news
conference with Julian Assange announcing the latest trove of
documents—they’re releasing something like a quarter of a million
documents—has now been hit close to 2.8 million times, and it is just
soaring every day. The hunger for this information has been astounding.
You can go to our website to see all the different coverage, as well as
our
interview with Noam Chomsky responding to the specific cables that have been released. Our website is
democracynow.org.
And we also just got this information: economy adds 39,000 jobs in
November, far fewer than expected. Unemployment rate up to 9.8 percent.
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I got nothing but love for a person who risks their life to tell the truth.
Originally Posted by Deks
Dude, you’re way off base – women never lie about rape!
[...] reading this article, I decided to look around and try to find some pictures of Sofia [...]
Great find, Ferdinand. I shall add this to my site also.
There is a second picture of Sofia Wilén that I have found, but her face is unhelpfully blurred out. No idea how Unfrozen Caveman found it:
http://unfrozencaveman.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/woman-b1.jpg
Now, as far as I know, there are certain software programs that can actually re-pixellate manipulated images such as this.
I have no idea how to go about doing such a thing myself; just thought I’d put that out there.
One pre-event picture and video of the press conference where they met.
http://dissention.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/an-interesting-series-of-photos-dec-4-2010/
You’re number one on Google now for the searched name. Congrats!
The feminists have shot themselves in the foot. Exposing the libertarian/intellectual factions to MRA concerns is going to dig another huge hole in their graves.
Ferd, since you are now number one on google search the name sofia wilen you should edit your post to include the other pictures linked to among the comments.
You were talking about calling men to arms yesterday and now you have a chance to do just that.
To the rest of the people reading this, start a google bomb about this (and the previous) post. The more people who see these two vapid liers for what they are, the better.
ferd dude…
i’d be a bit careful about using such certainty in your language to describe your allegations about what these 2 specific women did. I’m not saying I disagree with you… not at all… and I think your insight and journalistic activism is spot-on and extremely helpful and important in this very important issue.
But you don’t have the experience that a newspaper editor does in libel and slander. These 2 women aren’t public figures. It’s possible you could have wrong info. I think it would be better to distance the certainty with “i think X because of the sources that have said Y.” rather than a call to “spread the word”. Just looking out for you dude. Keep up the good work otherwise.
Um, is she about three months pregnant in that pic, or what? Or it is the way her jacket is made?
And “Seth” looks pretty spazzed out in that pic, maybe a few seconds away from raping somebody himself. I can’t tell what “show” they’re intensely waiting for, but from the image in the mirror behind them it looks like a live-action “Emperor’s New Groove.” (??)
More on the CIA honey trap (alleged):
http://rixstep.com/1/20100917,01.shtml
From the Left Wing counterpunch website,
It looks like this is the Left vs the Right and Radical Feminists.
It also looks like Sweden is being made to look (even more) foolish in the eyes of the world for their Kafkaesque sex laws.
Typical CIA f**ked up operation. The KGB would have fed him into a wood chipper, and that would have been the end of it. I sometimes why we even try…
more info.
—-
Assange: Aftonbladet’s ‘Inside Story’
http://rixstep.com/1/20100914,00.shtml
FB,
I have put up one more picture of her. Apparently someone copied her profile picture (from some art site) before she could delete it.
Her name has been known since early September.
https://www.flashback.org/t1275257
Late August.
yeah, that’s how you hunt them down.
[...] welcome to re-publish any and all of my original posts on the debacle in their entirety (find them here, here, and here) provided they follow these [...]
[...] Ferdinand Bardamu has noted (check out links here, here, and here), Julian Assange, editor of Wikileaks, has been accused under very suspicious circumstances of [...]
[...] article was originally posted, in a slightly different form, at In Mala Fide on December 4, [...]
On a totally different note: Legion, I thought you were another Legion. There’s a dude who goes by that handle here on the left coast.
[...] Part three [...]
[...] good story on the bogus “sex crimes” accusations against Julian Assange appears here, on Ferdinand Bardamu’s In Mala Fide blog. Contrary to widespread speculation, Assange is not being charged with rape, but apparently just [...]
[...] the last time I write about Julian Assange for the time being. Promise. And if my previous posts on Assange offended you, this one will probably give you a coronary. Proceed at your own [...]
Thanks to kulak for this gem: Felt it had to be published as a separate post:
Wikileaks? There is an easy way to secure all government documents, and to prevent any further security leaks.
Keep all of America’s classified documents in the same filing cabinet as President Obama’s college transcripts, passport information, nationality documents and birth certificate(s).
Problem solved.
How come a man like Julian choose a way to rape two hookers?
In a country like Sweden, where sex is one of the most free in Universe?
Poohahh..
Tell it to my stinking shoes.
It’s a pure cia thing.
[...] [...]
[...] In Malafide 4 december 2010 – UPDATE II – The name of Julian Assange’s other false rape accuser is Sofia Wilén [...]
[...] rape accusers. My traffic has ballooned from Googlers seeking info and pictures of Anna Ardin and Sofia Wilén in the past 48 hours, and my posts are being linked all over the place from sites as diverse as [...]
[...] Best info: In mala fide [...]
It is very sad that important issues are being mixed up concerning the charges against Julian Assange. Yet I am convinced that all involved have a primary interest in seeing the impotant work of Wikileaks go forward. Please people, do whatever you can to prevent Mr. Assange from being extradicted to the USA. If that should occur I’m quite certain that he will never return to Europe alive. Noone has intended that.
The climate here is now totally “over the top.” He will be tortured and killed. Please, you must prevent extradition. Joe
Great investigative journalism! I have noticed that the mainstream media has not done any real digging on the accusers there names or profiles. Well done.
Assange is a smart dude, but not smart enough to avoid a Swedish girl in those black-topped rectangle glasses which stand everywhere for “I WILL ACCUSE YOU OF RAPE IF YOU EVEN LOOK AT ME”?
[...] This guy bears an uncanny resemblance to the “Seth” vegging out with Wilén in this picture: [...]
wow,..MEN watch out for these FALSE RAPE ACCUSERS,.. hey too greedy for money and fame !! Rather use ur hand than sleeping wth such FALSE-ACCUSERS AND GETTING LOCKED UP BEHIND BARS !!!
We have read how the City of Berkeley which wanted to award Private First Class Bradley Manning the Honour of being a Hero to America, but they have correctly and properly delayed a vote on the matter.
This is because the City of Berkeley should not have moved on this matter until it has been proven in a Proper Court of Law if Private First Class Bradley Manning is the one who leaked the American Undiplomatic Cables to Wikileaks.
The City of Berkeley in typical American fashioned has forgotten that anyone under suspicion is to be PRESUMED INNOCENT UNTIL FOUND OTHERWISE BY A PROPER COURT OF LAW.
This is of course the correct position, because a person has to be found guilty in a Court of Law, and not in what the Media might say, or even what hearsay says.
The City of Berkeley in California is a liberal City, and most people vote for the Democrats, and this may have been politically motived because of the recent Federal and State Elections.
There are many possibilities here, and I will only mention the more obvious ones to illustrate why the Presumption of Innocence must be respected.
What if a million Americans claimed that he was the one who leaked that Classified Information to Wikileaks, would that make all of them suspects?
We may be correct in assuming that the person or persons behind this leak to Wikileaks were sane, and therefore had their motives.
It could be that if a person heard about what someone else or others have leaked to Wikileaks, then they made have wanted to take the credit for it, or it could have been just booze talk.
If a person knew of the leak, and then pretended that it was him to someone who is not the Authority, then he would be confident to be found innocent at his trial.
The motivation is of course fame and fortune, or even infamy and fortune, but as long as there is the fortune along with the pronouncement of innocence.
That is one end of the spectrum, and the other possibility is that Presidents Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton were the masterminds of this, and that Manning will receive a Pardon from Barack Obama, just before he hands over office to President Hillary Clinton.
Berkeley is a liberal city that votes for the Democrats, and it is the Democrats who will lose a lot of votes if they do not manage to find whoever leaked the Cables to Wikileaks either innocent, or to say either truthfully or to lie and say that they cannot find who made the leak to Wikileaks.
I am not suggesting that liberals will vote for the Republicans, although a few might; but America has voluntary voting, and the liberals may not vote at the next election.
This is why President Hillary Clinton has not been Publicly calling for an Imperialistic version of a Fatwa on Manning, but the Democrats have left to the other side of the coin to do their dirty work, because the Democrats know that it will cost the Democrats votes.
The Republicans do not have any worries as regards loss of votes with a person who could be portrayed as a traitor, even though, depending on testimony that is not extracted from torture may show that he is probably a Patriot and maybe even a Hero.
The problem for both Political Parties in America is that regardless of who leaked the information, they are showing the world that they are not happy with being made to be honest, and that is why they are persecuting Private First Class Bradley Manning in a Middle East Jail, so that protests cannot be held at an American Jail.
We can all be certain that Private First Class Bradley Manning’s Legal Defence Team, and even common sense have instructed him to answer no questions.
We have learned from the Media that the American Government, is trying to make it look like there was coercion from the founder of Wikileaks on Private First Class Bradley Manning to make the leaks.
We have seen attempts at this by asking why Wikileaks has not paid money to Private First Class Bradley Manning, because as far as President Hillary Clinton is concerned, she needs Julian Assange convicted in America for her election at the next American Presidential election.
The reason for detaining a Presumed Innocent American Citizen in Contravention of the American Constitution is to bribe, pressure, or even torture him into doing the whims of President Hillary Clinton.
Whoever leaked the information to Wikileaks did the American Community a great Public Service, because what we learn is that the Dictatorship is coming to America, regardless of Democrats or Republicans.
The Democrats and the Republicans want to conceal the fact that the American Military must one day come home, and that they are now trained psychopaths who need an endless supply of victims.
That supply of victims will not be foreigners, but American Citizens who have been disarmed because of being manipulated by a Puppet Uncle Tom using their stupid white guilt trip.
The American citizens will be told criticism against the Unconstitutional policies of a Puppet Uncle Tom will because of their alleged racism, and not because of the evil policies.
The Democrats and the Republicans both know all these things to be true, but they will not confess for the obvious reasons.
They have their ready made excuses that were invented long ago, and all of this information is Classified Top Secret.
The reason they are against even the low level Classified Information being leaked, is because others will be able to deduce what the Top Secret Information concerning the disarming of the American people, and the return home of America’s psychopathic Nazi Army.
It should not surprise us if the Founder of Wikileaks has been bribed, pressured, or even intimidated into changing the original content of the UnDiplomatic American Cables.
The American Government has made so many documents Classified, because that way they can intimidate anyone with commenting on their definition of Classified Information.
I know that we are all wiser with hindsight, but a non-Nazi Hope and Change would have said what is done is done, and that persecuting those who may or may not have leaked this information, and those who are publishing it even in a changed form after they have been bribed and intimidated would not be in the Public Interest.
I truly wish that I did not have to be the one of many to inform America’s Politicians, but I guess that if they do not know by now, then they need to firstly be advised as to how Americans are thinking, and they need to be reminded of their obligations to the American Public.
The American People may soon rise up and kill all, and that means all American Politicians, Federal, State, and Local.
That is why if even people like Ron Paul need to decide to leave Politics or to confess that he has been as corrupt as the rest of them all along, because if there is a cleansing, the cleansing will be complete.
There will be no distinction between good Politicians or bad Politicians, because the only good American Politician will be a Dead American Politician.
As far as the Main Stream Media is concerned, I have not been able to see the mood of the American people, but they may go down along with the bankers.
This is why both Political Parties in America ware working together to find ways to unduly censor the Internet, so that the Corrupt and Bribed Puppet Media can free rein brainwash the Gullible.
There were many people who were hoping that the British Legal System was not subservient to the dictates of America.
[...] UPDATE II – The name of Julian Assange's other false rape accuser is Sofia Wilén [...]
Xtranormal cartoon of an ‘interview’ with Claes Borgstrom. He doesn’t like talking much about his business partner, Thomas Bodstroms CIA connections much..
http://www.chillingmesoftly.com/content/claes-borgstrom-julian-assange-kicks-kittens-0