this story is unfolding in a painful manner. Assange is arrested for failing to wear a condom in one instance and for continuing sex despite a broken condom in another instance. this is horrific.
No, not all of the facts surrounding the case have been made public, and I think it would be quite hypocritical to presume innocence before the legal proceedings are finished. I strongly suspect that there is much more to this case, because I find it difficult to fathom that a prosecutor in Sweden---of all countries---would allow herself to become a US pawn, and create a potentially career destroying case of prosecuting a man for merely refusing to wear a condom---which is not an illegal act in Sweden. At the very least, Assange is a misogynist with deep seeded issues with the opposite sex, and admitting as much wouldn't be the same as yielding to criticisms of Wikileaks as an organization. The man and the organization must be separated in this case, and if he is guilty of the charges, he must be punished without regard to his other actions. Of all the countries in the European Union, Sweden is one of the least likely to be a US pawn, so the attempts of Assange and his contemptible lawyer to suggest otherwise must be treated with great suspicion. Additionally, to suggest the actions of Marriane Ny, and the government of Sweden are analogous to fascism demonstrates a very infantile understanding of political philosophy and history, and diminishes the wisdom of your past posts. So let's at least stop carelessly throwing the word around, and in general, dispense with the flimsy analogies.
You need to relax. I never equated the actions of the Swedish government to fascism. I take it as fact, that any government would wish to protect its citizens from any assault or harm. The Swiss bank, Paypal, Amazon, the general reaction of the media, and the censorship issues of wikileaks in these liberal democracies is where the brunt of my critique falls. When someone's account is frozen and his money becomes inaccessible to him, when information is being censored with might, when a person is demonized for absolutely no legal crime as of now, or holding someone in captivity with no case or crime, the only thing missing is shipping him to a gulag and getting it over with.
Maybe you do need a break from this forum. I remember catching your JFK and other posts following, and being quite impressed by it (and I was not the only one), but it seems like your ego has gotten so big as of recently, you now find no need for debate, and instead you grace us with verbal attacks, tasteless insults and plain vulgarity, cloaked in fancy language. For the sake of preserving our online kinship, I will ignore you in this thread and pretend you are not throwing petty comments at the fellows here (including myself), I will pretend that you are not being pompous and rude, and I will refrain from any verbal retaliation which might exacerbate what seems like an ill temperament on your part. Good night.
I need to relax, and quit this messageboard? Wow, how quickly your sentiments change when I have the temerity to describe your thinking to be "infantile" in just this case...
Anyway, although I'm once again tempted by the logic of leaving, I feel compelled at the very least to point out that you're being absurdly hysterical with the analogies to fascism and Stalinism, and with your strained misrepresentation of my posts. Indeed, from your isolated isle of fuzzy idealism, you're completely missing the nuances to the criticisms that have been made, and have decided to bizarrely transform the controversy into a Manichean debate of fascism versus liberty. However, only if there was an absolute right to free speech in liberal democracies, if businesses didn't have the discretion to choose their clients, and if it was unprecedented for a nation state to request an Interpol warrant for an alleged sex crime, you might have a point. But that's certainly not the case, and instead, you're recklessly providing support to an organization that evidently believes that the notion of absolute transparency should come at the great expense of other important considerations of governments, such as: human security, inter-state peace, national security, bureaucratic performance, and the effectiveness of diplomacy. So I have to ask, when exactly does this zealous crusade for transparency stop? The loss of lives? An economic depression? The outbreak of war? The collapse of civil governance? A breakdown in international relations?
In my opinion, if there was something analogous to a My Lai Massacre in the cables, then it would have been undoubtedly leaked by this point, because as our government has painfully learned, no terrible secrets can be kept in an age where over 800,000 people have access to classified information. Otherwise, the cables would have been made public in accordance with the Freedom of Information Act, and by an administration that has distinguished itself as being exceptionally more committed to transparency than any of its predecessors. Instead, we have regressed to the Cold War-like position of the Bush administration, and consequentially, the effort to improve transparency has been brought to a screeching halt. Indeed, this Jacobin like perversion of philosophy is nothing more than anarchist madness, because to no avail, I've labored to find anything groundbreakingly important to come out of this morally dubious and indiscriminately destructive enterprise. I mean really, can anyone provide any evidence that the world, in balance, is a better place because of the latest releases from Wikileaks?
Furthermore, from what we already know, Assange is accused of doing the following: using his weight to pin down the victims, insisting on not wearing a condom, refusing to take an STD test, initiating sexual intercourse whilst one of the subjects was sleeping, and continuing to have sex in spite of the objections of the victims. But legal proceedings have not begun in earnest, so it's possible that more sordid details will be unearthed. Yet because some have an affinity with the ideas being espoused by Assange, his innocence is being assumed without regard to the possible suffering of the accused, and many are lamentably accepting the schizophrenic conspiracy theories being propagated by legions of paranoids and himself. But as nation states and the private sector have responded to the crisis, no national laws have been broken, there is no evidence that the United States has subjected other states or entities to substantial pressure, and beyond examining the legal possibility of prosecuting Assange under the provisions of the Espionage Act of 1918, there is no evidence that retaliations have occurred largely at the behest of the United States---unless phone calls expressing concern to companies and other states constitutes serious pressure. Rather, the indiscriminate nature of Wikileaks has galvanized nation states and the private sector to frustrate their efforts, because they all realize that they could very well be the next targets.
This whole controversy is emblematic of the pervasively stagnating and corrosive refusal to make any compromises with cherished values, in spite of obstacles, impracticality, and the costs of remaining inflexibly married to a controversial and polarizing position. And with extensive checks and balances, the demise of Wikileaks would not expose liberal democracies to any great peril, just remove one of many obstacles to optimal efficiency. The relative gains of absolutism have been exposed extensively by game theory, so it would behoove us to adopt a more realistic and pragmatic approach to all matters, before intransigence becomes suicidal.
Edited by Rol82, 13 December 2010 - 02:48 AM.