Anatomy of a Smear: WikiLeaks' Assange Wanted for "Sex by Surprise," Not Rape WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is facing arrest for violating a Swedish law about sex without condoms, rather than a mainstream interpretation of "rape." Yet that's the charge reports often levy against him. Behold the smear campaign. The New York Times wrote about the case on Thursday, noting that Swedish authorities were hunting Assange on charges of "rape, sexual molestation, and unlawful coercion." The Swedish charges aren't exactly new, though. Assange has questioned the "veracity" of the two women's statements, as the Times report notes. Then came the Interpol warrant, and with it, a new life for the previous rape accusations. But few outlets are as concerned as the Times with nuance. A Google search for "Julian Assange rape" returns over 445,000 responses. We're absolutely not condoning non-consensual sex acts in any way, but arguably this story isn't about subtleties of semantics and centers on the labyrinthine--and seemingly nation-specific--laws Assange has violated.
Watch: Julian Assange's Fascinating Post-Bail Interviews Julian Assange is notoriously press-shy, but after being released on bail yesterday he lifted his personal embargo with a flurry of video interviews. In a fascinating exchange for the Today Show, where Lauer actually lobs a couple of hardballs, Lauer keeps his cool and very levelly addresses issues ranging from Bradley Manning to the Swedish rape charges -- which Assange characterizes as “very successful smear campaign.” In a presser outside the mansion where he's confined to until his trial, he expresses concern for the mental health of Bradley Manning and emphasizes that he's alleged to be Wikileaks' source, but that they do not and cannot know for sure. And for the BBC, dressed for the chilly weather and armed with a tea mug, Assange emphasizes that no evidence in English has been provided to him or his lawyers regarding his rape allegations.
WikiLeaks: Texas Company Helped Pimp Little Boys To Stoned Afghan Cops Another international conflict, another horrific taxpayer-funded sex scandal for DynCorp, the private security contractor tasked with training the Afghan police. While the company is officially based in the DC area, most of its business is managed on a satellite campus at Alliance Airport north of Fort Worth. And if one of the diplomatic cables from the WikiLeaks archive is to be believed, boy howdy, are their doings in Afghanistan shady. The Afghanistan cable (dated June 24, 2009) discusses a meeting between Afghan Interior Minister Hanif Atmar and US assistant ambassador Joseph Mussomeli. Prime among Atmar's concerns was a party partially thrown by DynCorp for Afghan police recruits in Kunduz Province. Many of DynCorp's employees are ex-Green Berets and veterans of other elite units, and the company was commissioned by the US government to provide training for the Afghani police. And in Kunduz province, according to the leaked cable, that money was flowing to drug dealers and pimps.
Yes, Julian Assange actually is a criminal - WikiLeaks In my previous column for Salon, I cited the infatuation of many on the left with Julian Assange of WikiLeaks as evidence of a disturbingly casual approach to the rule of law among Americans of all political persuasions, along with the U.S. policy of targeted assassinations, preventive war and widespread toleration for illegal immigration and the use of offshore jurisdictions for tax avoidance. Elsewhere in Salon, Glenn Greenwald took exception to my inclusion of the WikiLeaks founder in my list of scofflaws, claiming that Assange has committed no crime. Let me explain why I believe the campaign of Assange and his associates to obtain and publish vast amounts of classified material from the U.S. and other governments, as well as stolen private information from non-governmental organizations and individuals, is neither legal nor legitimate. This controversy has nothing to do with views of current U.S. foreign policy. So much for law. We are the clear logic used to unveil wrongdoing.
Moscow’s Bid to Blow Up WikiLeaks: Russians Play by Different Rules We were all born to tell the stories of our lives; the problem lies in scaring up an audience. Billy Crystal is one of an elite that can draw throngs just by talking, and he gets a chance to prove his story worth telling and worth hearing in 700 Sundays, the one-man show taped for HBO during its recent Broadway run. It premieres tomorrow night, and yes, Crystal’s life easily merits two hours of yours. This isn’t a “my greatest hits” revue in which Crystal reprises his best-known comic inspirations, although he does note in passing his immortal tribute to cockamamie castings of Hollywood: Edward G. So is much of the reminiscence in this multimedia autobiography, illustrated with slides and films and vintage family home movies, all of it projected on a set resembling the house on Long Island where Crystal grew up. Pauline Kael referred to That’s Entertainment, Part II as Gene Kelly’s memorial service for Gene Kelly, lavishly mounted in Kelly’s lifetime.
What's Next for WikiLeaks? More Infographics on Good The Bogus Julian Assange Rape Case Hurts Women White supremacist Frazier Glenn Miller, arrested in three killings Sunday, turned white opportunist when facing decades in prison, testifying against his fellow haters in two trials. A quarter-century before he was charged with Sunday’s three hate murders outside Kansas City, Frazier Glenn Miller figured prominently in a triple hate homicide in North Carolina. People intimately familiar with the earlier case say Miller, founder of a Ku Klux Klan chapter and a white political party, should have been a prime suspect in those killings, as well. Instead Miller became a star witness in both that murder trial and in a sedition case against 13 fellow white supremacists. Miller had proved himself to be not so much a white supremacist as a white opportunist when he found himself facing decades in prison on weapons charges in 1987. Miller made a deal for just five years. And he would only have to serve three. He added, “A five-year sentence sounded a little more palatable than 200, so I accepted.”
The War On Secrets | The Isis Julian Assange is sitting across the table from me, eyes fixed on his computer screen, searching for videos of himself. He is the one-man band that is WikiLeaks, the controversial organisation that publishes leaks that are anonymously sent to them. fdf Past leaks have included the BNP membership list; Sarah Palin’s Yahoo account; the report into Trafigura’s toxic dumping in the Ivory Coast that had been stopped by a ‘super-injunction’; and the video ‘Collateral Murder’ — classified US military footage showing 12 people being killed by US soldiers in a helicopter, including two Reuters journalists. It was this leak that propelled the organisation into the limelight, but the Afghan and Iraq War Logs of July and October respectively took the media glare into a whole new level, often making Assange the story, and not the leaks. fd After pursuing the members of WikiLeaks, I was asked to intern for them on the weekend of the unveiling of the Iraq War Logs in October. hj f d
Is there a revolution afoot? It will be most interesting to see how WikiLeaks defenders respond to the effort on the part of the establishment to put it out of business and punish them. So far measures have included efforts to deny WikiLeaks financial services and websites from which to work; the dubious arrest and imprisonment of WikiLeaks leader Julian Assange on behalf of the Swedish government; and efforts led by the U.S. government to ostracize WikiLeaks and Mr. Assange as irresponsible criminals. WikiLeaks supporters have responded by cyber-attacking the websites of PayPal, MasterCard, VISA, Amazon.com, the Swedish government and those that kicked off WikiLeaks. One particularly interesting target is the Swedish government. Most people -- or, at least, most Americans -- see or saw until recently the Swedish government as relatively benign, generous in its distribution of the country's wealth and liberal in its respect of civil rights. American politicians now busily fantasizing about prosecuting Mr.