No thread about the new WIKILEAKS United States diplomatic cables leak?

[Wezil]

Wezil, you need some evidence to back up that statement. I could just as easily say that Canada and Canadadians would react even worse that the US if their diplomats' communications were made public, because we all know how high and mighty they are.

Back up what statement? I'm made no comparison between Canadians and Americans in this thread.

Quite frankly, the average Canadian is only marginally less retarded than the average American. I wouldn't trust my fellow citizens to understand the idea of free speech either.

[C0ckney]

dd, you said originally that he was a rapist, without anything to back it up. alleged rapist would have been appropriate, and then we can start to look at the actual case.

i've already provided a source which gives a much fuller account of the stories of the women, on page 3. here's some of it. i would encourage you (for the second time) to read the whole thing.

But The Mail on Sunday has managed to obtain copies of the women’s police statements, which are made available to the media in Sweden.

.....

Woman A, who works for the Christian branch of the party, was the main organiser but they had never met before.
The attractive twentysomething, described by friends as hardworking and fun-loving, offered to let him stay in her one-bedroom flat in Sodermalm, Stockholm.

She planned to visit her family on the other side of the country and would be away until the Saturday seminar.
But she returned on the Friday, anxious about the amount of work still to do for the seminar.

According to a police source: ‘They had a discussion and decided it would be OK to share the living space, then went out together for dinner.

'When they got back they had sexual relations, but there was a problem with the condom - it had split.
'She seemed to think that he had done this deliberately but he insisted that it was an accident.’

Whatever her views about the incident, she appeared relaxed and untroubled at the seminar the next day where Assange met Woman B, another pretty blonde, also in her 20s, but younger than Woman A.

......

In her police statement, Woman B described how, in the wake of the Afghanistan leaks, she saw Assange being interviewed on television and became instantly fascinated - some might even say obsessed.
She said she thought him ‘interesting, brave and admirable’.
Over the following two weeks she read everything she could find about him on the internet and followed news reports about his activities.
She discovered that he would be visiting Sweden to give a seminar, so she emailed the organisers to offer her help.
She registered to attend and booked the Saturday off work.
She appears to have dressed to catch his eye, in a shocking-pink cashmere jumper. But, she says, among the grey-suited journalists who filled the room, she felt uncomfortably out of place.

........

What unfolded could be described as akin to the meeting of a groupie and a rockstar. The woman loitered outside the building before approaching a member of his entourage, who invited her to join a lunch at a modest local eatery called Bistro Boheme.

........

One source close to the investigation said the woman had insisted he wear a condom, but the following morning he made love to her without one.

This was the basis for the rape charge. But after the event she seemed unruffled enough to go out to buy food for his breakfast.

They ate in an atmosphere that was tense, though she said in her statement that she tried to lighten the mood by joking about the possibility that she might be pregnant.

They parted on friendly terms and she bought his train ticket back to Stockholm. When she asked if he would call, he said: ‘Yes, I will.’

But he did not and neither did he answer her calls.

.........

The drama took a bizarre and ultimately sensational turn after she called the office of Woman A, whom she had briefly met at the seminar.

The two women talked and realised to their horror and anger that they had both been victims of his charm.

The issue of unprotected sex left a fear of disease. It is believed that they both asked him to take a test for STDs and he refused.
Woman B was especially anxious about the possibility of HIV and pregnancy. And it was in this febrile state that the women, who barely knew each other, walked into a police station and began to tell their stories.

Woman A said afterwards that she had not wanted to press charges but had gone to support the younger woman, who wanted police advice on how to get Assange to take a medical test.

In any event, the police woman at the reception and two male officers, one from the sex crimes unit, believed there was enough evidence to call the female duty prosecutor, who issued the warrants.

The story was leaked to a Swedish tabloid and Assange’s high profile led to the case being taken over by a senior female prosecutor who, after reading the statements, concluded there was no evidence of rape.

now the aftermath of the alleged 'rapes' doesn't exactly match up does it. one woman is 'raped' and then is 'relaxed and untroubled' enough to go to the seminar with assange the next day. the other woman is 'raped' but then makes assange breakfast the next day...

the original charges were dropped. then new charges were brought. the timing of new charges coincides with the release of new wikileaks material...

the reporting of this is just another example of what we have seen from certain media outlets. he's a pervert, maybe a rapist, on the run from sex crime allegations, a tyrant in his own organisation etc. etc. drip, drip, drip. the aim of course being to try to cast doubts on the wikileaks founder, to destroy his credibility.

[Wezil]

It sounds like "buyer's remorse" being elevated to the level of crime.

[C0ckney]

"man uses his fame to get laid shocker! women not happy when they discover they've been played. in other breaking news, the sun set in the west today...more at 11"

[DinoDoc]

the aim of course being to try to cast doubts on the wikileaks founder, to destroy his credibility.

C0ck, there's nothing to be gained from attacking the man's character as the US government isn't denying the veracity of the information being released. So where does the credibility of the man's character come into play in this situation for you? Hell think about this for a moment, why would Assange have a prearranged agreement with a media outlet to release the leaks in this case the NYT actively participating in what you describe as an active campaign of character assassination?

[DaShi]

Of course there would be attempts at character assassination. What kind of idiot would think otherwise?

[C0ckney]

there is an obvious advantage to discrediting someone who is doing things contrary your interests.

it's clear that the authorities (and i don't just mean the US authorities here), would like to see the back of julian assange, but for him to meet with an 'accident' or some such would be too obvious. instead the next best thing is to attack him by attacking his personal credibility. there's been a lot of reporting recently which appears designed to do just that. of course it's hard to tell what is some real effort to discredit him and what is just sloppy or incomplete reporting.

you yourself called him a rapist, which presumably is something you read somewhere, which goes to show the results of this sort of reporting. it implants an idea in the public mind about someone and what they're doing. "hey you hear that wikileaks has released some more documents" "well i don't know, i heard that that guy was a rapist or something..."

[DaShi]

Which is what DD suggested doing from the start.

[Chemical Ollie]

Here is Woman A, Anna Ardin.

During Asaange's visit to Stockholm in August, she acted as his press secretary, and for some unknown reason let him sleep in her provate appartment. Some nights in her own bed while she was in it. She's was a candidate for the Social Democrat party in Stockholm City for the recent elections, but I don't think she made it into the city council. She's a well-known ultra-feminist who has raised sex assault charges against men for minor offenses several times before. On her private blog, she has posted a 7 step "revenge instructon" on how to get even with former boy friends, but that post was erased a few days after she reported Assange to the police. She also erased tweets where she posted praise for Assange after the alleged crimes took place. Seems strange to me that a "crime victim" tries to remove the evidence. One of Anna Ardin's best friends is Veronica Palm, who's one of the major candidates to take over the Social Democrat party when current leader Mona Sahlin steps down the coming spring. If Palm takes that position, she will be the leftist alternative for the prime minister post in Sweden for the next election. Palm shares a political blog with Anna Ardin and about 10 other feminists called Rebella. Ardin also has a male cousin who has been a high ranking officer for the Swedish forces in Afghanistan.

This is woman B, Sofia Wilén, the alleged rape victim



She's claims to be an artist, photographer and whatever. Very little is known about her. She's reportedly a "groupie" who actively seeked Assange out during his visit to Sweden, seduced him and made him date her for a few days, then contacted Anna Ardin to complain about his behaviour, before the two women went to the police together. After that, most of the traces of her that ever existed has been erased from the Internet. There are reports about a current or former American boyfriend of hers who is still living and studying in Sweden, but not much is known for sure. Lots of folio hats says she's a CIA agent who seeked Assange out like a homing missile, with a honey trap to put smear on him and get him busted. One fact that speaks against that, is that she never claimed to be a rape victim until a police woman and a feminist lawyer told her she was.

Now I'm drunk and tired. More details to follow another day.

[DaShi]

December 4, 2010
Government Workers Ordered Not to Read Cables
By ERIC LIPTON
WASHINGTON — In a classic case of shutting the barn door after the horse has left, the Obama administration and the Department of Defense have ordered the hundreds of thousands of federal employees and contractors not to read the secret cables and other classified documents published by Wikileaks and news organizations around the world unless the workers have the required security clearance or authorization.

“Classified information, whether or not already posted on public websites or disclosed to the media, remains classified, and must be treated as such by federal employees and contractors, until it is declassified by an appropriate U.S. Government authority,” said the notice sent on Friday afternoon by the Office of Management and Budget, which is part of the White House, to agency and department heads, urging them to distribute it to their staff

The directive applies to both government computers and private devices that employees or contractors might carry in their briefcases and pockets or have in their homes. It does not advise agencies to block WikiLeaks or other websites on government computer systems, a White House official said Saturday. And it does not prohibit federal employees from reading news stories about the topic. But if they have “accidentially” already downloaded any of these documents, they are being told to notify their “information security offices.”

The Department of Defense, in its own directive to military personnel and icontractors, says that simply reading these documents, without proper authorization, will violate long-standing rules even though they are accessible to the public at large on Internet sites.

"Viewing or downloading still classified documents from unclassified government computers creates a security violation," a spokeswoman said in a statement on Saturday.

The effort, while understandable, seems entirely futile, said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a Washington nonprofit group that has combated government efforts to keep certain government documents secret.

“It just may be a little too late for the government to push these documents down the memory hole,” Mr. Rotenberg said, adding that his center did not support the initial public release of the material. “This is Orwell thought police in the age of the Internet, as these are already so widely accessible on servers around the world.”The Library of Congress has joined in the push, blocked visitors to its reading rooms, or anyone else using its computer system, from accessing the WikiLeaks site, noting that “unauthorized disclosures of classified documents do not alter the documents’ classified status or automatically result in declassification of the documents.”

The moves have not apparently discouraged staff at WikiLeaks, as the organization continues to post Twitter feeds mocking the efforts to limit access to the documents, including one note on Saturday reading: “Digital McCarthyism: U.S. Military Tries to Intimidate Soldiers Into Not Reading Wikileaks”.

Yes, let's keep government workers less informed than everyone else. We have expectations to live up to.

[Asher]

How soon til the US has a Ministry of Information to control such things?

[Hauldren Collider]

I wouldn't call this a ministry of information. More like ministry of supreme intelligence.

[DaShi]

A nice summary of the whole wikileaks affair.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/06/us/06iht-letter.html?src=twrhp&pagewanted=print

December 5, 2010
Good Gossip, and No Harm Done to U.S.
By ALBERT R. HUNT | BLOOMBERG NEWS
WASHINGTON — WikiLeaks is one of those stories where the passions of the moment blind us to what may eventually be seen as the more important lessons.

Ever since The New York Times, The Guardian and three other European publications began to publish the secret U.S. State Department and Pentagon documents, obtained by the WikiLeaks Web site, the conversation has focused on how embarrassing this is for the U.S. government and others around the world; whether WikiLeaks’ erratic founder, Julian Assange, should be put on a terrorist list and prosecuted; and did the news media, especially The New York Times, act responsibly in publishing the material?

To be sure, there are embarrassing revelations in the thousands of cables, often raw files. Arab governments are urging the United States to strike Iran; the United States and South Korea are gaming China’s reaction to a collapse of North Korea; the portraits of heads of state aren’t flattering.

This no doubt will complicate some relations as well as American diplomacy for a while. Despots probably will go out of their way to distance themselves publicly.

Still, rather than exposing ineptitude, a reading of a fair portion of the documents suggests that they actually reflect well on U.S. policy and diplomacy. Pressure to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons isn’t effective if China, which gets much of its oil from that country, is opposed. U.S. efforts to cut a deal with the Saudis, who fear Iran, to possibly supply more oil to China come across as shrewd.

Most of the cables, along with the good gossip, reflect similar professionalism, probably to the consternation of the WikiLeaks crowd.

Take a moment to think over the sensitive U.S. diplomatic and military documents that could have been revealed over the past half-century. There would have been reports of attempted assassinations, bribes and the procurement of prostitutes for foreign leaders, or the illegal use of torture.

This isn’t to characterize the motives of WikiLeaks and its publicity-seeking founder, Mr. Assange, who said his purpose was to humiliate the U.S. government. Beyond the predictable reactions both inside and outside the Obama administration, the actual effect may have been best captured by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who suggested that while the cables were “awkward” and “embarrassing,” the consequences for U.S. foreign policy are “fairly modest.”

In this light, the analogy to the 1971 Pentagon Papers, which exposed the internal deliberations of Vietnam War decision-making, appears strained. Those documents chronicled years of deliberate lies and misrepresentations that caused a debacle resulting in the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives. There’s nothing comparable in the WikiLeaks.

On the other hand, the “transparency is always good” defense is flawed, too.

The result, short-term at least, will be to discourage candor in cables, just as the immediate aftermath of kiss-and-tell books is to discourage dialogue.

It is worth considering this when measuring the cries to lynch Mr. Assange. Mike Huckabee, a Republican presidential hopeful, wants him executed; others want to lock him up at Guantánamo Bay. His actions may be offensive; it’s not clear they’re prosecutable under the almost century-old Espionage Act.

Facing potential legal obstacles, some politicians now say the law ought to be rewritten to make it easier to go after people like Mr. Assange.

Rather than doing anything that smacks of tinkering with the First Amendment, it may be better to leave Mr. Assange to the mercy of the Swedes, who have issued a warrant for his arrest for alleged sex crimes.

The swirl of controversy, of course, has gone far beyond Mr. Assange. The former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin blasted the Obama administration for its “incompetent” handling of the affair.

President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela joined Mr. Assange in calling for the resignation of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, and others charged that The New York Times acted irresponsibly, if not unpatriotically, in publishing these stories. (The paper got the information, not from WikiLeaks, but from The Guardian, which wanted to share the disclosures with America’s most prestigious newspaper.)

To step aside from the political disputes, there are other considerations. A reading of The New York Times’ handling of the leaks suggests that it published and redacted responsibly. Mrs. Clinton is widely judged to have reacted sensibly, in public and in private, as she traveled to Central Asia and the Middle East on a long-planned trip that brought her face to face with some of the leaders described in the leaked cables.

As for security, experts like Jim Lewis of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a cybersecurity expert and former State Department official, say the Obama administration actually has been more aggressive than its predecessor on these sorts of security issues.

There are lessons: The original source apparently was a U.S. Army private, one of about a million people with “top secret” security clearance in America. (The material in the latest WikiLeaks dump was rated at the lower “secret” level, and was accessible to about three million people.) That process plainly has to be reviewed. John Pike of GlobalSecurity.org, a public policy organization focused on national security, says, “If you can get a credit card, you can get a ‘secret’ clearance.”

Further, as Mr. Lewis says: “After 9/11, we realized that information sharing was important, that having pieces in different databases had drawbacks. We fixed that, but not the technologies and controls that manage the risk of greater access.”

One risk now is that the leaks will stifle information sharing between U.S. agencies and with other countries.

Even if digital security is improved — for instance by creating new controls and clearances — preserving an open society in the Internet age means that governments, corporations and individuals will periodically have to deal with these cyber intrusions. Some may be more damaging than the WikiLeaks incidents.

It seems that the only big losses in this whole affair are that there may be reduced candor and information sharing among diplomats and that those who were hoping to shame America ended up disappointed.

[Hauldren Collider]

A nice summary of the whole wikileaks affair.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/06/us/06iht-letter.html?src=twrhp&pagewanted=print

It seems that the only big losses in this whole affair are that there may be reduced candor and information sharing among diplomats and that those who were hoping to shame America ended up disappointed.

And many of our informants and diplomats either dead or useless...

[DaShi]

Who?