This is odd:
Sweden has cancelled an arrest warrant for Wikileaks founder Julian Assange on accusations of rape and molestation.
The Swedish Prosecution Authority website said the chief prosecutor had come to the decision that Mr Assange was not suspected of rape but did not give any further explanation.
The warrant was issued late on Friday.
Wikileaks, which has been criticised for leaking Afghan war documents, had quoted Mr Assange as saying the charges were “without basis”.
That message, which appeared on Twitter and was attributed directly to Mr Assange, said the appearance of the allegations “at this moment is deeply disturbing”.
There is something deeply troubling about rape charges being tossed around like this, and there better be an investigation into how this transpired.
verberne
Since the U.S. Government is the only entity with a hard on for nailing Julian, I can guess who is behind this.
Mark S.
Send in the clowns . . .
RareSanity
I bet if I hold my breath, an investigation will be announced before I die…right?
Violet
Wonder who accused him. Why would they do such a thing? Since it’s all trumped up, who do they have connections to? How were they convinced to make the accusation?
Or could it possibly be just totally random, like someone wanting to cause trouble for a guy who is in the news a lot?
Very strange. I also hope there’s an investigation. Not very sure we’ll hear the results of it, though.
KCinDC
New rule: With so much bullshit in the “news” nowadays, wait at least 24 hours after hearing a story before commenting on it.
bkny
Wonder who accused him. Why would they do such a thing? Since it’s all trumped up, who do they have connections to? How were they convinced to make the accusation?
perhaps someone else in their clutches and easily ‘convinced’ to do good for uncle scam.
trollhattan
Has anybody seen Donald Segretti lately?
Michael
@verberne:
Only chunks of it, those pieces which are infested with Cheney stay behinds.
My guess is that this is their asshole pals in the Mossad doing their bidding. Shit like this makes me want to donate money to Hezbollah.
roshan
Well matched, indeed.
Omnes Omnibus
@Violet:
Never underestimate the possibility of someone just trying to become famous.
@KCinDC: I like the new rule.
Violet
@roshan:
Kind of makes him sound like a rogue James Bond type. I wonder if he’s got his Q making cool toys for him to defeat the bad guys?
Shalimar
Blah Blah. More information will come out, no point speculating now. Just because this is the type of shit our intelligence agencies have been doing for 60+ years doesn’t mean they were involved this time.
Corner Stone
Given that the prosecutor had to know what was coming, IMO there are two likely cases: a) investigators verified the accusation and decided there was enough there there that more questions should be asked, or b) it was BS the whole time.
Since in case a) it seems obvious Assange hasn’t appeared to answer these charges then either the investigators found out something that troubled them and they told the prosecutor, or the alleged witness recanted.
In case b) ? Outcome achieved.
Violet
More info:
Also:
The Bearded Blogger
@KCinDC: So, you gonna put Ritalin in all major media’s water supplies?
@Shalimar: It would be really cool if blogs had some easy way of allowing commenters to make bets online
Corner Stone
@Michael:
I disagree. The WikiLeaks dump discussed incidents from the Cheney Era, but the damage to credibility was completely done against Obama’s decisions in Afghanistan since taking office.
aimai
They issued an arrest warrant for him in absentia on Friday, and then canceled it on Saturday? And its for two separate incidents? And they never contacted him directly with charges first or, say, asked him for an alibi or exculpatory information (the guy is an international figure who isn’t in Sweden all the time, the first thing you wonder about is the timing of the alleged incidents and the actual places and witnesses involved). This is beyond weird.
aimai
Corner Stone
@Violet: Thanks for posting that link.
roshan
Just a thought, seems to make sense.
tbogg
It might have been better if they hadn’t followed a blueprint from the most popular novel in the world at this time.
Seriously, the CIA & DOD should do more work than just check out plotlines at airport paperback shelves…
Amanda in the South Bay
Well, at least real life isn’t like Law and Order SVU.
cat48
They are still investigating…..
lawnorder
Sweden does have a nazi party and some right wingers.
I think Assange will have to be on guard against people trying to make criminal charges against him. Like a woman that has sex with him and later pulls the “rape” charge.
What a shame.
Amanda in the South Bay
@cat48:
That doesn’t mean it is continuing.
Alien-Radio
The CIA wurlitzer was specifically created to get around the prohibition of the CIA propagandizing within the United States, Stories the CIA wated to reach prominence in the US were planted over seas, reported by local news agencies and then fed to the US media.
It’s basically the same way the wingnut wurlitzer mainstreams extreme rightwing memes.
Always always have your critical thinking cap on even if the information is coming from overseas.
t jasper parnell
@Amanda in the South Bay: Let’s don’t let the facts get in the way of jumping to conclusions especially when the conclusions are unfavorable to guy who has killed exactly 0 real Afghanis but several millions of rhetorical ones while providing documents that expose corruption, needless violence, and possible war crimes in Afghanistan.
roshan
I guess the most appropriate person to run Wikileaks would be a Panda.
burnspbesq
If the question you are asking is “which US Government agency caused these obviously trumped-up charges to be brought,” rather than “who got to the victim and persuaded her to recant,” your politics are showing. Both theories are equally plausible … And both theiris lack any basis in fact.
Omnes Omnibus
At this point, it’s all random wanking and speculation, not that there is anything wrong with that.
burnspbesq
@lawnorder:
Just curious: do you similarly give the benefit of the doubt to US pro athletes? Because if you don’t, you’re a hypocrite.
J sub D
Some women lie about being raped? Who knew?
FTR, the “lady” who claimed the Duke lacrosse team raped her was never charged with a crime over the incident.
Rape charges are the defamation nuke option.
burnspbesq
@J sub D:
I’m the biggest Dookie in this commentariat, and I’m calling bullshit on this. What crime do you allege that Ms. Mangum committed?
Violet
@burnspbesq:
I don’t know how the law works. Is there no penalty for bringing false charges? If not, then it seems like anyone could accuse anyone of anything and not have any kind of consequences for it. Meanwhile the accused has to spend a lot of money and time to defend themselves for something they never did. Not to mention the hit their reputation and possibly career takes.
eemom
@burnspbesq:
OMG Burnsie — I don’t what the deal is with her technically having committed a crime, but that woman is a depraved, drug addicted, sociopathic liar. She was arrested again recently for attempted murder of her boyfriend in the presence of her children.
Nifong was of course the worst villain in that whole sad saga, but there were plenty of others as well.
OTOH, maybe they were all just tools of the Mossad. Wouldn’t surprise me a bit.
soonergrunt
Wow.
You know, for all the supposition that the US Gov’t had something to do with this, the government is pretty lame here now.
They assassinate persons all over the world, overthrow governments, and all sorts of heinous shit according to you guys, and they just had to be involved with this, but they’re so incompetent that they couldn’t make the charges stick for more than two days?!
Really?
Wow, the paranoia is just astounding. You gotta work hard to be this fucking idiotic and it’s Saturday. You guys are really dedicated, working overtime like this..
You know, John, you didn’t say ANYTHING like this when Ben Rothlisberger was investigated and never charged. I suppose if he had spoke out against the war or for health care reform you’d have treated the case differently?
soonergrunt
@Violet:
Welcome to my world.
The Bearded Blogger
@soonergrunt: Look, the rape charge can be used even if it doesn’t stick. It hurts him anyway.
Shalimar
@burnspbesq: Wasn’t the one charge Blagojevich was convicted of lying to the FBI? When you make false accusations and lie to police, DA and possibly others, there should be a multitude of possible charges.
Gina
@roshan:
No, a panda should run the CIA. One that looks like this.
roshan
Sooner, you ignorant slut!
Corner Stone
@soonergrunt:
Let’s hear you define these events. In your very rational determination.
What happened?
Shalimar
@soonergrunt:
Rape charges against athletes are usually problematic because they have so many women trying to figure a way to make money off of them. OTOH, with Roethlisberger’s most recent incident, I didn’t follow it closely but wasn’t it generally agreed by all parties that he had his bodyguards isolate an extremely drunk woman from her friends so they couldn’t stop him from having sex with her in a bar? Regardless of whether he did enough for it to legally be rape, he still sounds like a complete asshole who isn’t worth defending.
matoko_chan
dude.
the US gov was just trying to triangulate on Assange to snatch him.
they just needed a press conference or [better] an arraignment.
outwitted by the intertrons.
he has INSURANCE and the Swedes aren’t going to give him up.
sadly, our government is mired in the pre-Information Age.
they are totally fucked on Assange.
hes like six hops ahead of them.
matoko_chan
@The Bearded Blogger: doesn’t hurt him. its pretty obvious to sapients what went down.
Corner Stone
@matoko_chan: They are not going to grab Assange outside of a framework.
They don’t need to.
morzer
@matoko_chan:
Six hops? Is this the spatial version of the Friedman unit?
Mark S.
@soonergrunt:
Huh? In the Rothlisburger case, there was an investigation and the DA decided not to charge him. Here, they charged him and put out an arrest warrant (having never interviewing him) and then decided presumably to drop it. You shouldn’t charge someone with a serious crime unless you think you have pretty good case. Maybe that’s how they roll in Sweden, but it looks very amateurish.
soonergrunt
@The Bearded Blogger: Oh, really? Look around. It doesn’t seem to be hurting him at all.
So THIS is how a white male accused of rape can prevent being prejudged as guilty.
soonergrunt
@roshan: lol
Corner Stone
@soonergrunt:
I don’t know what this means.
Midnight Marauder
I…am going to just keep drinking.
+4
J sub D
@burnspbesq: Filing a false police report to start. Golly, that wasn’t fucking hard at all.
soonergrunt
@Corner Stone:
All we know at this point is that two Swedish women have made accusations against Mr. Assange. The prosecutor or somebody with the authority to do so originally let an arrest warrant that has since been revoked.
That’s ALL we know. Nothing more.
There is no connection of which I am aware between the women who have made the complaints and the US Government.
The US government has nothing to gain by trying to fuck with the justice system of a third country to get this guy. Killing him would be easier. Perhaps you have some window into the CIA or the Department of Agriculture of which we are all unaware and therefore have access to the top secret plan, and more importantly, something more substantial than paranoid ravings?
Oh, sorry. I forgot for a moment who I was addressing there.
soonergrunt
@Corner Stone: Then you really are as dumb as your posts make you sound.
Mnemosyne
@Violet:
The reason they were able to prove the lacrosse players innocent so quickly was that there had, in fact, been some kind of incident that left semen, and they were able to test that to show that their guys hadn’t done it.
The cops who did the rape kit were pretty convinced that something had happened to her, but she was too drugged out to figure out who or what it was. Nifong took advantage of that.
Are you now saying that women who are raped but can’t identify their attackers should be charged with filing false charges? How about women who innocently misidentify their attacker? Should Jennifer Thompson go to jail because she was wrong about which stranger raped her?
soonergrunt
@J sub D:
@Violet:
You know, once you get past the right-wing framing a couple of the posters at this site occasionally engage in, and read about two or three weeks worth of posting, you’ll see that women who make false accusations rarely are charged with any crime, and when they are, it is even more rare for them to be fined or incarcerated upon a guilty plea or conviction.
A woman who falsely accuses a man of rape in a western country is probably more likely to be struck by lightning than to actually be punished for her crime.
roshan
Understatement of the day:
On second thoughts, make it the most profoundly retarded statement of the day.
Mnemosyne
@J sub D:
Except that she was, in fact, raped. That’s why there was a rape kit available that had the DNA evidence to prove the lacrosse players innocent.
So should every sexual assault victim who misidentifies her attacker now be charged with filing false charges? How about someone who gets mugged and blames the wrong guy?
matoko_chan
@soonergrunt:
they can’t.
he has INSURANCE.
if something happens to Assange then that file gets decrypted and emailed to every major outlet in the world except FOX and the WaPo.
:)
Corner Stone
@soonergrunt: And your posts all stink of Sunk Cost Fallacy and a personal, emotional involvement that disallows any rational thought.
Corner Stone
@soonergrunt: I’m still waiting to hear what you meant by this?
If you dump Secret level docs the US Govt doesn’t want exposed then you can rape someone and expect to be pre-judged innocent?
Corner Stone
Do you think the prosecutor looked at this case and decided there was enough to proceed then less than 24 hours somehow reversed that decision? With no further comments or evidence offered as to why?
Corner Stone
Clearly it’s a Fitzmas Miracle!
Alien-Radio
@Corner Stone:
I actually agree with you. heh. It doesn’t happen often.
@matoko_chan:
This although the file is already out, they just have to publish the decrypt key.
The goal here is not to silence Assange but to gain something much more valuable. Leverage. Killing is messy, leaves too many questions, co-opting and discrediting? much better.
Mnemosyne
@soonergrunt:
So on the very second post at that site, I have the same question that the girl’s mother had: if her daughter wasn’t raped, why did the police take her from the jail to the hospital?
Sorry, but that site is fucking creepy as hell.
Corner Stone
@Midnight Marauder: C’mon dog. I for one would like to hear what you think.
matoko_chan
@Alien-Radio:
but then FOX and the WaPo would get it.
Assange hates them.
Corner Stone
@roshan:
Yeah. Because we’ve never done that before. Evah.
The Bearded Blogger
@matoko_chan: Sapients not the target audience
matoko_chan
@Alien-Radio: i think that if the US could snatch him they would use burnpbesq’s laws to shut him up with a threat of prison time. i think they are sweating bullets over what else Assange has got.
Corner Stone
Hmmm…a little tit for tat?
Officials: US drones kill 6 in northwest Pakistan
Corner Stone
@matoko_chan:
Although undoubtedly burnspbesq and Sooner et al probably get a nice erection at the thought of shutting WL down, the system is beyond one person or figurehead.
It’s redundant and hardened against infiltration.
It’s all going to come out, one way or the other.
Corner Stone
@The Bearded Blogger:
Exactly right.
Gen. Jrod and his Howling Army
I’d be more concerned about this if Assange wasn’t the single greatest murdering monster of the entire Afghan war, but since it is Assange leading the death count for Afghans these days (or so I hear), he clearly deserves what he gets and more.
I mean, if you had the chance to falsely accuse Hitler of rape, wouldn’t you do it? And we know for a rock-solid fact that Assange has caused more deaths than Hitler by now. Because shut up, that’s why.
Alien-Radio
@matoko_chan:
The whole point of a deadman’s switch is to make as big a mess as possible. there’s thousands of copies of that torrent out there, Fox and the WaPo won’t have any real advantage beacuse the media will be flooded.
If he gets snatched, the goal won’t be to put him in jail, kill him or torture him; since wikileaks can operate without him and probably has kill codes on everything he had access to, and that leaves the options of what to do with him rather thin. Make him a martyr or ruin his reputation. The value is in the Simpson-esque media circus
Origuy
@verberne:
If this is a setup, the US isn’t the only suspect. Wikileaks has sections on nearly every country in the world. Granted, not all are as controversial as the Afghanistan papers, but they’re all important to someone.
roshan
@Alien-Radio: Who are you, wise human?
Corner Stone
@Alien-Radio:
Maybe it’s a deadman’s switch used as insurance? If he doesn’t perform some action by a given deadline then the info is released in the clear. Assange has to take affirmative action by a deadline to keep it encrypted.
That’s just speculation and IMO. I’m playing along with the idea that the US is concerned about the so called “insurance” file. Which I do not believe they are.
J sub D
@Mnemosyne:
Yeah, she had sperm from two men in her vagina which still doesn’t prove she was raped at all. No tearing, no bruising, no evidence at all of being gang raped. She did not just “misidentify” her attacker, she misidentified where, and when the attack allegedly occurred. There is no doubt that she filed a false police report and the DA knew the charges were bogus early into the investigation.. She wasn’t mistaken, she fucked up a bunch of innocent young men’s lives on purpose.
soonergrunt
@Corner Stone:
shorter Cornerstone:
Door slam.
matoko_chan
@Alien-Radio: yeah, but i dont think they know what all Assange has. the INSURANCE file is huge. he might have padded it to bluff them, but the only way they can figger it out is to decrypt it.
Corner Stone
@soonergrunt: You can retreat if you like.
Since you obviously got nothing else.
Mnemosyne
@J sub D:
Let’s see, we have the reports from the cops who actually interviewed her and did the rape kit, and then we have some random guy on the internet who totally knows she couldn’t have been raped by anyone and lied about the whole thing because shut up, that’s why.
Gosh, I guess I should believe the random guy on the internet over the cops who did the investigation since you clearly have much more knowledge than the actual people who did the investigation could possibly have.
burnspbesq
@Violet:
I am far from an expert on North Carolina criminal law, but since it makes sense let’s assume that knowingly filing a false police report is a crime. Based on what is publicly known, I am willing to assume that there is a toxicology report out there somewhere that shows that Ms. Mangum was too fucked up on drugs to know that what she was telling the police was false.
She’s not the victim here – Dave Evans, Reade Seligmann, Collin Finnerty, and Mike Pressler are the victims. But she’s not the villain either – Mike Nifong is the villain. She’s a tragic figure more than anything else.
AZERTY
color me skeptical.
assange is, what?, 35 years old? and one would think there would be a pattern of such sexual predation. if so, where is it? one would think that various factions would do everything to get assange’s skeletons out of the closet and into the light of day.
i have a difficult time, lacking any sort of pattern, believing that any sort of sexually predatory behavior would reveal itself at this point in time. possible but not likely
assange appears to be a pretty clever fellow and i would think that he KNOWS how visible he is, how big the cross-hairs are on him and that any sort questionable behaviors on his part would definitely be exploited by those opposed to wikileaks. after all, what’s the old adage that, i believe, had its birth in the south?
‘never get caught with a dead girl or a live boy’
lastly, it just sounds like an old-fashioned political smear meant to tarnish his reputation and force him to defend any charges–especially morals charges (fainting couch anyone…). whether assange likes it or not, he is political; he just happens to be unaffiliated and therefore unprotected.
the effect is the same:
obama=muslim
assange=rapist
burnspbesq
@Mark S.:
The prosecutor’s office said that they asked for his arrest because they were concerned that he would obstruct the investigation. I assume that’s permissible under Swedish law.
Mnemosyne
@burnspbesq:
Considering that she had been involuntarily committed to the mental ward prior to making her claims, the prosecutor should have been way, way more skeptical about her ability to identify who had assaulted her. But he saw a way to advance his career, so off he went with an unstable and unreliable victim.
Alien-Radio
@Corner Stone:
if I’d set up an organisation as redundant as wikileaks, I’d make sure that my insurance was on a dead man’s switch. The man knows what a Daemon is.
If they don’t care about the Insurance then just take him out take the media hit for doing so and smear him and wikileaks once he’s gone, no need for silly games.
So they either don’t take him seriously and are incompetent, or they’re unwilling to call his bluff.
I’m fairly sure they haven’t got any idea what’s in Insurance, I reckon even if it’s a bluff it’ll drive them batshit insane. It’s fucking clever from a psyops point of view.
eemom
The Duke accuser was NOT raped. The real investigation that was finally done after the whole debacle had dragged on for almost a year revealed no evidence of any sexual assault on the night of the lacrosse party, and the DNA on her body was from four other men, none of whom were players or were at the party. The accuser did tell about 95 different contradictory versions of what supposedly happened — but none of them involved assault by anyone outside the context of the party.
And to say the LAX players were proved innocent “so quickly” is nothing less than a grotesque distortion of what actually happened. Three of them were indicted and the matter dragged on, as noted above, for more than nine months before the charges were dropped. The DNA evidence that would have exonerated the players was concealed for most of that time.
These facts are all a matter of public record and it would be nice if people researched them before hurtling around bullshit assertions.
Oh wait — I forgot what blog I’m on.
General Stuck
@eemom: Butter watch it eemom, facts will bring out the hounds of inanity.
soonergrunt
@Corner Stone: You really do work at being a dumbass. I mean, you must sit up late at night thinking of how to play dumb.
Fuck it, I’ll bite.
There could be video of Assange beating and raping a 10-year-old out there right now, and you in particular, as well as quite a few others, would assume it was faked. In this hypothetical situation, Assange could look right into the camera, say “I’m Julian Assange” and you’d be posting “I don’t know. I think he might be getting set up.”
You’d be the first one to speculate that the child was part of the setup, most likely.
On the other hand, a random white male, any white male really but especially if it’s a rich one, the vast majority of people would be screaming for his head on the accusation, proof or no. I do note that during the whole Rothlisberger thing a few months back that you were one of the very few who said anything along the lines of “I’ll wait and see.”
burnspbesq
@eemom:
Why, e, your rhetoric is positively Greenwaldian. ;-)
Corner Stone
@Alien-Radio: It’s much better to smear a live target in this case.
And brazenly calling a file “insurance” is about as big a ploy as possible.
matoko_chan
@Alien-Radio:
yes, Assange was a hacker….prolly still is. i think this is splendid.
it isn’t a bluff. he hasn’t released the Garani massacre video yet, and that is in there for sure. Assange said he had it in June. The guvvies said in June that Assange also has 260000 ‘sensitive’ diplomatic cables. but he could have a lot more stuff. Manning fed him for months before the collateral murder video hit the web.
i lurv this stuff!
NWBCW!
NWBAW!
Mnemosyne
@eemom:
So the fact that the prosecutor decided to aggressively pursue a case based on the word of someone who was involuntarily committed to a mental hospital is the mental patient’s fault, so therefore she should be prosecuted for filing a false police report?
Because that’s what the assertion is — because her accusation was false, she should go to jail.
Oddly, the justice system took the right tack — they prosecuted (and convicted) Nifong since he was the one who pursued the case knowing he didn’t have the evidence to back it up.
eemom
@burnspbesq:
That’s not right either. Yes, she was fucked up on drugs, but the rape story was something she deliberately made up to avoid having her children taken into protective custody.
And yes, she was totally exploited by Nifong, but she’s still a lying sociopath in her own right. For example, she “co-wrote” a “book” long after the matter was finally resolved that continued to advance her false accusations.
burnspbesq
@Mnemosyne:
I think you’re aiming at the wrong person. It was JsubD, I think who first threw out this little bit of misdirection as a way of suggesting that the alleged victim of Assange’s alleged assault shouldn’t be believed. Typically despicable stunt by that asshole.
roshan
Always start with a good assumption:
The possibilities are endless!
Mnemosyne
@eemom:
So therefore she should go to jail for filing a false police report?
Again, no one is claiming that the case wasn’t fucked up or that the accused were anything but innocent. The sole claim being made here is that she should have gone to jail for making a false accusation.
maus
@soonergrunt:
It most certainly makes it easier to not prejudge when he is the target of an entire intelligence community, and whatever other countries it uses as proxy agents.
matoko_chan
wallah…that is why Assange hasn’t released the Garani video yet….its part of his insurance.
something they KNOW he has got.
@soonergrunt: ummm…sooner, what do you think a web video of american forces slaughtering over a hundred afghans including 97 children and 22 adults would do to public perception of the war in afghanistan?
it would endanger the troops too, and be a great recruiting tool for the hirgabi.
the islamist web sites would play it 24/7.
burnspbesq
@eemom:
Even if that’s true, you’ve been practicing long enough to know that the drug thing is enough, in the hands of even a marginally competent public defender, to create reasonable doubt. No way a false-report case makes it to trial. It gets bargained down to the one thing she was absolutely guilty of – public intoxication.
eemom
@Mnemosyne:
Yes, but, again, “justice” didn’t get into the game At. All. until nine months after the three indicted players and the rest of the team had been victims of Salem-witch type hysteria at their college campus and in the emmessemm.
I assume you don’t contend that the occurrence of a grotesque INjustice is excused by the fact that the truth eventually comes out, AFTER the damage has been done.
Corner Stone
@soonergrunt: So, am I a conspiracy theorist, or someone who waits for evidence to be presented before making a determination?
I think in the case of Assange, someone under a huge microscope, for him to assault two separate women in the last few weeks seems pretty god darned odd. Which isn’t to say it’s impossible. Some people are compulsive and compulsively destructive.
But good God man, you were popping popcorn in the previous thread waiting for people to question these charges. And already pre-labeling them as fucking wackjobs for doing so. You went way round the bend to pre-indentify reactions.
I’m not some fucking cultist. I make up my own mind based on facts and evidence and my own personal bias.
Whoever is charged should be given the rights we all expect, and I hope I always stick to that.
soonergrunt
@maus: But you have absolutely no problem prejudging any other accused rapist as guilty. Especially if the accused was white. Most especially if the accused was rich.
Well, here’s a white male with the resources to travel all over the world pretty much at will, and you don’t want to prejudge him, and the only thing different about this one than the usual case is what he’s done to merit your admiration.
Thanks for proving my point.
roshan
As usual, eemom is on her tangential topic thread retardation crusade. She is like the Nancy Grace of BJ.
Alien-Radio
@Corner Stone:
He’s a walking headline factory, every time he opens his mouth he embarasses them just by existing. And these people don’t like having their fee fees hurt. If they aren’t afraid of him it’s much eaier to smear him after the fact, gin up some shark attacks and make the whole thing forgotten.
@matoko_chan:
I suspect Insurance is something else. even the collateral murder video didn’t change the conversation apart from put him on the MSM media radar, the afghan documents didn’t either. I doubt what’s in insurance is war realted. the public don’t pay attention to shit like that. My guess is VERY specific, scandalous and aimed at individuals.
Corner Stone
@roshan:
Sooner can’t help himself. He hates Assange, WL and everything they stand for. He’s a product of the system and can’t grasp inherent system disruption.
eemom
@burnspbesq:
whatever. I don’t personally care that she never got charged. I’m just pointing out that she wasn’t an innocent victim.
Also, her lies and accusations continued long, LONG after the drugs were out of her system.
There’s a pretty well researched book out there called “Presumed Guilty” about the whole mess, which I recommend to anyone who’s interested. Although believe it or not, I actually found it to kind of overdo the portrayal of the lacrosse guys and their families as sweet, wonderful angels — the fact is, they were wrongly accused.
JGabriel
soonergrunt:
As there is already a history of people smearing and falsely accusing Assange, why would such an assumption be the wrong starting point? Video can be faked or manipulated (Hello, ACORN!), and Assange has already pissed off people with the resources to finance it.
I don’t know that I’d assume such a video was fake, but I’d certainly be sceptical absent further evidence.
.
Corner Stone
@Alien-Radio:IMO, it’s much better to drag a disheveled Assange into court on really heinous charges and let him sputter than it is to have a dead body raised to martyr level who can’t be hurt or damaged anymore.
Having an Andy Warhol-esque wacked out nutjob with a funny accent is preferable to the eternal question of “What really happened to JA?”
Besides, they can still bargain with a live JA, as these charges are proof of.
Tim I
Just a little brush-back pitch.
Nothing to see here…please move along.
soonergrunt
@Corner Stone: Nice way to mis-read my previous posts in a manner convenient to yourself.
9.2; 9.4; 9.3;9.3;9.3; but only 8.8 from the Russian judge. You were a little shaky on the dismount.
I said that I was popping popcorn waiting for the wackjob conspiracy theorists to come out and blame the US Government for the charges against Assange. I didn’t have long to wait, did I? It started in that very thread before I even completed the post and hit ‘submit’ and it continues in this thread, started by our very own host, with that “there is something deeply troubling about rape charges being tossed around like this” solicitous treatment he never gave Rothlisberger, for one.
My point that if Assange were any other wealthy white male, we wouldn’t be having this conversation about whether or not the US government trumped up charges but instead there’d be bunches of posts on here decrying the rapist with only a few saying anything about protecting his rights, and the presumption of innocence, stands.
burnspbesq
@roshan:
Glass house, meet stone.
You might also want to consider paying attention when the people arguing about legal issues are lawyers. Ignorant is no way to go through life.
eemom
@burnspbesq:
yaaaah!!!
ok, ok…….I’ll shut up now, I PROMISE.
[flees whimpering into cyberspace]
matoko_chan
@Alien-Radio: i think the Garani video is horrific enough that Assange might be using it for insurance AND extortion….something like …..he wont release it while we still have troops there if the war starts drawing down?
and yah, the cm video just featured a few non-combatant deaths. 97 Afghan children is several orders of magnitude worse.
Corner Stone
@Alien-Radio:
Or it may be an encrypted zip file of “Full House” re-runs.
In any event it’s pretty good craft.
Alien-Radio
@Corner Stone:
i think we’re talking at cross purposes here, I think they are afraid, and their primary interest is in smearing and their highest priority is to co-opt. He needs to be alive for those. They’d only kill him if they weren’t afraid.
soonergrunt
@Mnemosyne: The site is creepy. There’s a definite misogynistic tone to the whole place, and the one who calls himself ‘the archivist’ is a real treasure, to be sure.
It’s also a pretty good resource because they do link directly to the stories on the news sites online, which allows the reader to judge for him/herself. I skip the editorializing and go straight to the news story, myself.
morzer
@matoko_chan:
If he really thinks that, he’s crazier than you are. There’s no way that deal would be viable, and there’s no way the military is going to make a strategic decision of such magnitude because of one video, even if it shows Obama and Petraeus personally slaughtering the unborn while reciting the shahaadah together with Jeremiah Wright and Bill Clinton and Bo the First Canine.
Mark S.
This thread’s gone off the rails, and it isn’t even matako’s fault.
Let’s start arguing about the Kobe Bryant trial!
Alien-Radio
@Corner Stone:
Forcing someone to watch 1.7 GB of full house Re-Runs, MY GOD THE HUMANITY!
Corner Stone
@soonergrunt:
Well then it’s a stupid point. How many other white males posted 80K documents from Secret level sources in 3 worldwide publications? And promises to post 15K more sensitive ones?
And only 8.8 from the Russian? Damn, I’d hoped my tovarich would reward a fellow pinko commie scum anarchist like myself.
matoko_chan
@morzer: then why hasn’t Assange released the Garani video yet? He publicly acknowledged having it in June.
Corner Stone
@morzer:
{whispering} you’ve seen it too?
roshan
@burnspbesq: You got my attention, Judge Judy, go on…
Coming up next, Lindsay Lohan rehab woes.
matoko_chan
@soonergrunt: in your military opinion ….just how damaging would the Garani massacre video be if it hit the web?
General Stuck
This story has everything, sex, international intrigue, military secrets, dubious arrest warrants, a touch of feminist outrage, and the brilliant deduction of world reknowned Sherlock Corner Stone, and his crack staff of deducing Watsons. And all of it fact free. I have lots a popcorn.
Don’t stop, keep moving, keep moving, act like your fighting.
soonergrunt
@Corner Stone: No. The vast majority of commenters here would assume the guilt and move on. You probably wouldn’t. You didn’t during the Rothlisberger mess.
That has been my point as far as this particular part of the conversation goes all along.
I don’t know if he raped anybody or not. I suspect that barring a confession by him that he did or by his accusers that he didn’t, we’ll never know for certain.
morzer
@matoko_chan:
Why haven’t the GOP released the Whitey Tape? Why hasn’t Elvis signed on for the Farewell Tour with John Lennon?
Maybe because it isn’t that important? Maybe because all talk of the tape has been hyped beyond belief? Maybe because he knows it isn’t the smoking gun? Or maybe because it isn’t going to change the way the public views the war and the US military’s belief that the war must continue.
60% of the public already want the war over. You aren’t going to win over much of the 40% red staters/neocons/Blue Dog hawks and so on by showing that the US army committed a “massacre” in the back of beyond. So what if the figure goes to 62%? It won’t matter.
morzer
@General Stuck:
Sounds more like The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo Does Afghanistan than anything else.
aimai
The whole digression here about the Duke case is just weird, to me. The Duke case was one, very high profile case, in which a (possibly) disturbed woman made a false charge. In this case the prosecutor, who should have known better, was charged and faced a very high penalty for pursuing the case. eemom and soonergrunt and others are very, very, very upset because one woman made a false rape charge and didn’t get charged herself for that particular crime. With zero evidence to back it up Soonergrunt insists that women who make false crime reports are *never* charged for it. So rape accusations are, what? some kind of freeby feminist “reparations”? And this has to do with this case, Assanges, how?
Do you people have the slightest grasp of how uncommon it is that a) women file rape charges *at all?*, b) how unusual it is for the police and the prosecutors to go forward with the charges when the woman is even slightly likely to have trouble on the stand, or falls into a category like prostitute, stripper, or strawberry? Hell, the cultural notion that some women “deserve” to get raped, and that the rapist is therefore not “really guilty” is so common and widespread that Bill O’Reilly went on national TV and argued that a young girl who went out at night and got raped was responsible for it. Do you seriously think the police and the prosecutors are any more enlightened and don’t factor such issues into the decision to charge? (I have a criminologist friend who worked on this very issue in the LA court system. Both the Police and the Prosecutors routinely refused to bring cases even when they believed a rape had taken place because they believed that the juries, holding such views of the defendant, wouldn’t convict.) The notion that women file false rape charges deliberately, rather than through mistaken identity–that the police routinely believe them, that prosecutors file cases and that lots of innocent men are suffering for these false charges while the women go scott free is absurd.
aimai
General Stuck
We are now at Defcon 4, or is it 2, for imminent gender war. Action.
Corner Stone
@soonergrunt:
Outcome achieved.
t jasper parnell
@soonergrunt: We may never know, the chief prosecutor, however, thinks she knows that there was no rape but possibly “molestation,” the Swedish legal meaning of which I do not know, but it is “a less serious charge that would not lead to an arrest warrant.”
Corner Stone
@burnspbesq:
I’ve met and worked with 1000+ lawyers in my life. Sadly, you don’t fit into the bottom 5%.
eemom on the other hand…
JGabriel
soonergrunt:
The difference being that the US Gov’t, or a partisan of the military/government from any political party, has a motive to smear and harass someone leaking classified information (skipping for the moment the argument of whether it deserves to classified) and whom they can’t stop through the US judiciary system – Assange being a non-citizen not in the country.
The rich white male you describe is, presumably, both a citizen and in the country, being prosecuted within the US judicial system, and the US has no other apparent motive (you didn’t mention one in your hypothesis) to oppose or smear him.
So, the reason your point fails is that very different analyses apply to Assange’s situation, and the hypothetical situation you provide.
I’m not saying the charges against Hypothetical Rich White Male deserve the presumption of guilt, just that the Assange case merits more scepticism than the hypothetical HRWM.
.
Corner Stone
@Tim I:
A little Nolan Ryan 97mph chin music.
“See? This is the pitch I can make any time I feel like it.”
matoko_chan
@morzer: no Assange has it. Manning has admited giving it too. the mil were going to release it but decided it was too potentially damaging.
heh, at least the mil BELIEVE Assange has it.
the release would put out troops in harms way, and be a awesome recruitment tool for the jihaadis.
matoko_chan
@soonergrunt: HEY SOONERGRUNT! in your military opinion how damaging would the Garani massacre video be if it hits the web?
morzer
@matoko_chan:
No, Assange has it, knows it isn’t the smoking gun, and is just letting the over-heated imagination of the world rev up a notch. This isn’t My Lai. All there is to hear and see is another air-strike that went wrong, plus some unhappy reactions and maybe some failed ass-covering. We’ve gone through multiple drone strikes killing wedding parties, we’ve seen things as bad as this on the news on a regular basis. This isn’t going to end the war, nor will it dramatically change public opinion. Sure, the military didn’t release it – but the default reaction to anything even vaguely security related is to hide it. That doesn’t mean they think it will end the war or even come close. It just means they have the usual institutional paranoia, that’s all.
soonergrunt
@aimai:
bold in the original
Where have I ever said this? Here, let me help you with this. From my earlier post:
And when did I bring up Duke Lacrosse? Here, let me google that for you. Oh, look. The answer is “never.”
Nice try, dumb shit.
And by the way, the rate of false rape accusations is somewhere between 8% according to the FBI a few years ago, which makes it about 4 times more likely someone will lie about being raped than just about any other violent crime, with some studies placing the number somewhere around 40%.
Please stop with the ‘false accusations are very rare’ bullshit because A) they aren’t very rare, and B) one innocent guy convicted or spending any time in jail because of a false accusation is one guy too many.
I mean really. You just lied about something that was incredibly easy to prove you were lying. Why would anybody believe a word you say?
matoko_chan
@aimai: its radar chaff. some people here are in denial about Our Noble Military Overlords. eemom brought it up…she was one that insisted that Assange put all 91k docs out without reading them…which just isnt true…..and sooner….well….hes resistant.
soonergrunt
@JGabriel: And I’m saying that if Assange were any other famous white Australian, like say, Russel Crowe, for example, the vast majority of posters on here would be all for him getting hung up by his scrotum if it were reported that he was accused of rape in sweden.
So, no, my point really doesn’t fail.
matoko_chan
@morzer: My Lai didnt have the intertrons for force amplification and information dissemination.
i think it could end the war effort, which is already weakened.
morzer
@matoko_chan:
And as usual, you have no evidence. Please, stop wasting people’s time with your tedious blend of fantasy and ignorance.
matoko_chan
@aimai: i dunno why…..but it seems like eemom and sooner are invested in discrediting Assange by any means, fair or foul.
matoko_chan
@morzer: no one makes you read meh. pie meh.
roshan
Did anyone notice, that to get eemom to shut up, you have to compliment her in a horrendous way?
Check this out! Kudos to Burnsby.
eemom
for someone who gets a lot of credit for being a wizard child around here, aimai sure has a hard time getting her facts straight.
Soonergrunt said nothing at all about the Duke lacrosse fiasco.
I didn’t bring it up either. Someone else did, and I just wanted to set the record straight because I happen to know something about the case. Specifically, it troubled me that someone said a rape did occur, when a proper investigation (9 months later) established that it did NOT; that the lacrosse players were “quickly” exonerated, when they absolutely were NOT (until 9 months later); and that the accuser was an innocent victim of something, when in fact she was NOT. Mostly the first two.
I have a strange fixation with, you know, facts.
Now back to your regularly scheduled flaming.
That's Master of Accountancy to You, Pal
@soonergrunt: I think you’ve missed the position that a lot of us held on Roethlisberger. My position, and that of a lot of others around here, was that we have no idea if anything that qualifies as rape occurred, but that even the version of events given by Roethlisberger in his own statement depicted him making some morally appalling decisions, and then behaving like an utter cad.
He may or may not be a rapist, but he is definitely guilty of behavior so sleazy that, beyond the narrow scope of saying that we don’t know whether he is, legally, a rapist, I have no intention of defending him. At all. He may not deserve to be in jail, but he definitely deserves to be punched in the neck a few times.
This case is different, because we have absolutely nothing to go on. Unless Aftonbladt published a lot more than what was posted above, we don’t have a description of events from anyone’s point of view. We have zero way of trying to establish anyone’s credibility. And Assange himself claims that nothing of the sort transpired, though we don’t even know exactly what this means.
The situations are not at all comparable.
eemom
@roshan:
I knew someone would rise to that bait, and I suspected it would be you.
Sorry, it only works from people who I know are not ignorant jerk-offs.
roshan
Burnsby, do something, she is back.
The power of Christ compels you, The Power of Christ Compels You.
JGabriel
@soonergrunt:
Less of a fail, but still a fail. Crowe has a documented history of violence, though not against women (that I know of, I don’t follow celebrity gossip much). OTOH, as a celebrity, he might attract false accusations.
While there might be a few people here ready to hang Crowe “by his scrotum”, I suspect most, like me, would be pretty neutral until there was more evidence available.
So, yes, it’s still a fail, in that this time you’re assuming a reaction that isn’t particularly likely.
P.S. Doesn’t the fact that you have to keep relying on hypothetical situations instead of being able to point to an actual instance, at this blog, of the majority of commenters jumping on a rape accusation w/o evidence, kind of undermine your point?
.
morzer
@matoko_chan:
You want more pie? By now, you’ve got enough to start a mail-order company with the products of your trollery!
t jasper parnell
@That’s Master of Accountancy to You, Pal: We now know that rape is off the table and the charge that is still being investigated is “molestation,” which “covers a wide of range of offenses under Swedish law, including inappropriate physical contact with another adult, and can result in fines or up to one year in prison.” So there you have it, he may have done something but the Swedes are confident that if he did whatever he is accused of having done, it wasn’t rape.
matoko_chan
@morzer: i guess i just want your pie.
do it.
it will save your bloodpressure.
:)
morzer
@JGabriel:
There’s also a sizable constituency globally that would probably pay good money to see Russell Crowe hung by his scrotum, just on principle, for being really annoying and generally loathsome.
eemom
@soonergrunt:
Because she’s a Very Serious Commenter.
General Stuck
@eemom:
But this is blogging. There are no facts in blogging. harumph!
morzer
@matoko_chan:
On principle, I refuse this sort of request. It’s all just a little too creepy when teenage girls start looking for attention from older men by any and all means.
matoko_chan
@morzer: i am not a teenager.
>:(
but i was a teenage anarchist.
NWBCW!
NWBAW!
JGabriel
Me:
In other words, Soonergrunt, not only am I saying that your argument is full of strawmen, but that your point is a strawman. There’s no evidence at Balloon Juice of the majority of commenters ever agreeing, without evidence, that someone was guilty of rape.
If false rape accusations are so common, and our commentariats penchant for presuming guilt before innocence in the matter of rape so prevalent and obvious, one would think you’d be able to provide actual instances of it rather than mere hypotheticals.
You appear to be guilty of the same charge of which you accuse others: false accusations and/or believing and spreading them.
.
That's Master of Accountancy to You, Pal
@t jasper parnell:
Or that that’s all that they can prosecute for. We really have no idea what happened, why the charges were brought, why the charges were withdrawn, or anything else. All anyone can engage in is speculation at this point.
JGabriel
morzer:
Of course, but that’s a legitimate complaint, even if the desired punishment is outsized.
.
morzer
@matoko_chan:
Child, everyone “was” a teenage anarchist, even Newt Gingrich. There’s no reason to give yourself airs over that dubious distinction.
matoko_chan
@morzer: so, why did you get all ennui and cynical?
donnn’t you remember? when you were young and wanted to set the world on fire?
an’ im still an anarchist— just one that can drink legally.
NWBCW!
NWBAW!
t jasper parnell
@That’s Master of Accountancy to You Pal: Actually no.
You can, through idle speculation and related what not, turn “lacked substance” into something other than no rape occurred. However if you accept that lacked substance when combined with an apparently still on-going “molestation” investigation means that no rape occurred but the two women’s accusations indicate that something sleezy or worse may have occurred.
morzer
@matoko_chan:
I am just interested in facts and logic, not random free-association, that’s all. It’s a lot more cynical to post on stuff you don’t understand and about which you haven’t informed yourself.
morzer
@JGabriel:
Well, one might question the “outsized” part. For all we know, Crowe can barely scrape two peanuts and a tooth-pick together.
Omnes Omnibus
@That’s Master of Accountancy to You, Pal: That’s about where things stand.
matoko_chan
@morzer: ah. well im interested in thought experiments and SBH and where do tardigrades stop being quantum and EGT and the Superrational and maarifa and hiphop dance.
im speculative and you are observational….ima bird and you are a frog!
ha!
General Stuck
@Omnes Omnibus:
I don’t know. There was that report of the word RETARDS written in lipstick on the bathroom mirror in Assanges motel room. Fairly suspicious if you ask me.
t jasper parnell
From the same article:
“[C]hief prosecutor Eva Finne withdrew the warrant within 24 hours” and said ”I don’t think there is reason to suspect that he has committed rape.” I don’t know what the chief prosecutor saying that there is no reason to think a rape occurred means to the unspeculativ3 amongst us but it seems like a reasonable non speculative conclusion would be that there is no reason to suspect that he committed rape.
morzer
@matoko_chan:
ribbet ribbet
Omnes Omnibus
@General Stuck: Are you sure it was lipstick?
General Stuck
@Omnes Omnibus: Okay, suspicious substance is more factoid.
soonergrunt
@JGabriel: Ummm, bullshit? Because one need only go back and read the Rothlisberger posts to see the bullshit in what you’re saying?
Whatever.
@That’s Master of Accountancy to You, Pal: And again, you just proved my point. Trying to lawyer your way out of it “it wasn’t legally rape but he’s still a sleazebag” doesn’t really cut it. We have as much to go on now with the accusation against Assange as we did at this point in both of the Rolisberger situations and the difference is that there most people were at best engaging in the lawyerly non-accusation accusation that you just kindly showed us, and here the general belief is that it must be a government hit job.
The Russell Crowe point was to point out that I don’t buy the idea that the difference in speculation about Assange and a generic person is primarily because Assange is Australian and the generic white guy would somehow be American because I am.
Emma
This might get me into trouble, but since we already had one of those existential internet questions yesterday, I’d like to pose another one to those people who come here just so they can complain about how “they forget where they are:” why do you do it? If this site is so inimical to you and you hate everyone’s politics or whatever, why do you waste your time here?
I am NOT being snarky. The whole blog environment is interesting to me and I’d like to understand what motivates you.
General Stuck
@Emma:
We are all just prisoners here, of our own device.
Douglas
I guess at this point we could get a signed confession by the women that their charge was a false and made on behalf of the US government to frame him, and certain people would maintain that he’s guilty – and that people who were skeptical about the charges to begin with are are sexist and hate america, also, too.
This is getting beyond retarded…
Douglas+4
morzer
@Emma:
It beats cleaning the bathroom?
Cacti
Oh noes, the conspiracy against Assange has been scuttled!
I’m sure the CIA and Mossad are twirling their mustaches as we speak and shouting, “Curses! Foiled again!”
Guess the U.S. Government will just have to stick with the Conspiracy and Espionage charges.
matoko_chan
@Cacti: heh. they gots to arrest him first.
does Iceland have extradition?
maus
@soonergrunt:
Yes totally, that’s exactly what I think. How did you know.
PS: My ability to agree with you on reasonable matters is lessened by your absurd “meninist” tone. I’ve known the victims of sexual assault and I’ve known at least one woman with a personality disorder who has falsely claimed sexual assault against people I know.
What I don’t need is you dragging every single situation into a bullshit framing of the issues that claims white male privilege is an anti-privilege. While the system and media institutions can be better, I don’t think this particular case is a particularly egregious example.
t jasper parnell
@soonergrunt: I have no idea about the Rburger accusation merry go round and am perfectly willing to believe you when you say everybody or most everybody or that significant number of bodies claimed rape most likely occurred. In this case, however, we know that about 24 hrs after the warrant was issued it was lifted and chief prosecutor ruled out rape as a possibility. So we now know that no rape occurred, although something may have. Sure you can make all kinds of lawerly comments about absence of evidence not being evidence of absence or invoking some postmodern notion of the ultimate unkowablility of the facts of the matter, but that would seem like the desparate thrashing of an individual more concerning with trashing Assange’s reputation than in dealing in a serious adult way with a complicated situation. Why it would seem practically teenage anarchist is clap trapery.
General Stuck
Man a man, this is getting confusing as left wing causes collide over “white male privilege” and sexual assault, and crusading government secret leaking. The irony of it all.
JGabriel
soonergrunt:
Roethlisberger? Who the fuck is that?
NBCSports via Balloon Juice:
Oh.
It seems that most of the people in that thread were undecided about the rape charges, but thought Roethlisberger was an asshole given his own admissions, for instance, this guy named Soonergrunt:
From the same thread (pulled from an in-thread word search on “rape”):
Betsy:
Yellow Journalism:
Soonergrunt:
Wait, what?
It looks like you got into the same argument in that thread that you got into here: accusing everyone of accepting the rape charge when, in fact, no one said Roethlisberger was definitely guilty of rape, and then generalizing the thesis. Lots of “ifs” and qualifications in that thread, but you took offense anyway.
It’s a good idea to verify that your examples make your point before using them.
.
That's Master of Accountancy to You, Pal
@t jasper parnell:
I take it, then, that you are convinced that the DoJ’s decision not to prosecute anyone in the Bush administration means that no one in the Bush administration broke any laws?
Or are you talking out of your ass, making up ad hoc positions that fit your preconceived notions in different cases? If you want to argue that, by itself, a decision to drop charges means that we should conclude that there was no crime, then you need to apply it consistently. And I’m betting that you don’t.
Gen. Jrod and his Howling Army
@That’s Master of Accountancy to You, Pal: We have evidence that many in the Bush admin. committed war crimes. It’s well documented. I’d provide links, but that would be kinda insulting to you. Try googling “news 2002-2008” if you’ve forgotten.
What evidence do you have that Assange raped anybody? Is there anything at all? Do we have any reason to believe that he raped somebody besides the charges that have been dropped? Oh, and his reputation as a mustache twirling villain, of course. Anything?
Why do people at this blog fail so hard at allusions? They don’t work when the situations are completely different, people.
t jasper parnell
@That’s Master of Accountancy to You, Pal: Hey there, I am making the point that the prosecutor said she has no reason to think rape occurred, which is different from refusing to investigate because we need to move on and stop looking backward, etc, etc [1], and yet is still looking into the potential “molestation”
malfeasance to conclude that no rape occurred but that something may have and am awaiting further developments. You?
[1] I am not convinced.
That's Master of Accountancy to You, Pal
@soonergrunt:
This is where your argument falls apart, because it is completely untrue. Here, all we have is a report that two women accused Assange of some form of sexual assault, that he has denied it, and that the prosecutor’s office decided to press charges and then dropped those charges. That’s it.
In the Roethlisberger case (the only one I remember discussing here) we had a lot more than that before we got going. We had a police report. We had the victim’s actual description of events, and not just a note that she made an accusation. We had statements from other people involved that, while not getting to the question of whether an actual rape occurred, depicted Roethlisberger as being a complete sleaze. They confirmed that he went out drinking with friends and went to some effort, intentional or not, to get younger women that they found very drunk. They confirmed that he went with one of these young women into the bathroom alone. They confirmed that one of his bodyguards acted to prevent the young woman’s friends from following them into the bathroom. They confirmed that, at some point while she was in the bathroom, the woman sustained a head injury. And we already had confirmation from Roethlisberger’s lawyer that some sort of sexual contact occurred, though he denied that there was intercourse.
When you argue that we had the same information in both cases, you are either experiencing severe memory loss, or you’re being dishonest. It’s a bullshit claim.
Yeah, well I’m sorry that I don’t apply legal standards in deciding whether or not I think someone is a despicable asshole. Oh, wait, I’m not sorry at all. It’s called life. Based upon the information we had at the time, we didn’t know whether Roethlisberger raped anyone, but we did have enough information to know that he is a despicable asshole.
In this case, we have nothing at all to go on that can help us make a decision. We don’t have anything like that kind of information about Assange, his accusers, or the events that happened, or even alleged to have happened. Personally, I think that the idea that this was some sort of government plot are silly, but that isn’t based upon anything more than informed speculation.
That's Master of Accountancy to You, Pal
@t jasper parnell:
Of course, this isn’t what the DoJ has said when it’s dropping charges. When that happens, they say that they have no reason to believe that a crime was committed. If you take the Swedish prosecutor’s statement that she has no reason to think that a rape was committed to be dispositive on the question, then you ought to take the DoJ’s statements the same way.
Well, aside from the fact that you wrote a sentence fragment, so I’m not sure exactly what you are saying, why don’t you look through my previous posts in this thread and see if you can figure what my position is here. I may have mentioned it, oh, five or six times.
That's Master of Accountancy to You, Pal
@Gen. Jrod and his Howling Army:
Maybe you should read what I wrote rather than imagining things. You are assuming that I don’t remember any of this based upon, well, nothing, really. You are assuming that I don’t think that the Bush administration committed war crimes, again based upon nothing but what you have dreamed up.
You missed my point. Yes, I think the Bush administration committed crimes. In part, that’s because I don’t think that a prosecutor stating that there weren’t crimes when they decline to prosecute actually carries much truth value, in and of itself, as to whether crimes were actually committed. That’s a standard I apply consistently, including in the Assange case.
In some cases, I agree that there were no crimes committed, but that has to depend upon other information. Usually, it’s other information as to what happened. Sometimes, I do base it upon a prosecutor’s reputation. I know nothing about the other facts of this case, and I know nothing about the prosecutor’s reputation. Hence, I really have no idea whether or not her statement means much.
You are assuming that someone making a criminal complaint to the police does not, in itself, provide any reason to think that a crime was committed. Again, I wonder if you apply this consistently, because you seem to be making soonergrunt’s case for him.
There was a complaint made. I certainly don’t take that as evidence that a crime was committed, but it is enough for me not to dismiss the idea wholesale without more than we have in this case. Hence, my whole position that I really don’t know whether Assange committed a rape or not. The prosecutor’s decision could mean exactly that. It could mean that she thinks there was, but that there isn’t enough evidence to prosecute; if that’s the case, she should still make exactly the statement she did, because the power of the state, as opposed to individual judgment, shouldn’t be used to cast suspicion upon someone if there isn’t enough evidence to indict.
So, there we are. I just don’t know, and neither do you.
t jasper parnell
@That’s Master of Accountancy to You, Pal: Grammar burn, man you are the master of accountancy, law, and snark. Fantastic, really whoo boy do I considered myself served. Mot Juste. I can barely respond to your grammatically, syntactically, and stylistic brilliance. Leaving, aside, of course that you are arguing with strawmen and the voices in your head; a claim, I believe to be, a direct quote from the BJ serious adult commentator style sheet.
Sorry I was unaware that the DoJ dropped any cases. Which ones? If so, then I, in fact, accept that there was either no case or insufficient evidence, which one depends on what they said. Go figure. The law’s a tough game and guilt difficult and some times impossible to prove beyond a reasonable doubt. Consider, if you will, Ted Stevens. I would have said guilty as sin and I would have been wrong, if I remember the case correctly and I might not.
Now on, as they say, to the point at hand: pull this out of your own ass: prosecutor said no rape but maybe a molestation, which — as I understand it — in Sweden runs from the unwanted grope to forttage; so I think no rape but maybe a molestation. Tough nut to crack, aina. You have on the record statements of the competent officials concerning the status of the rape, no reason, she said, to think a rape occurred. Yet you continue to act as if maybe yes maybe no is the only intellectually honest position to occupy.
Once again, I salute your keen grasp of grammar and point out that the subject of sentence continues after “and” when no comma intervenes.
All the best.
soonergrunt
@That’s Master of Accountancy to You, Pal:
I never claimed to know. What I claimed in the “Truth is Stranger Than Fiction” thread was
Now there has been a tremendous amount of frog hair splitting, smoke-filled coffee-house crap, and even an attempt to flat-out lie about something I said (thanks, Aimai), but I think a fair reading of that thread and this one pretty much proves my point.
I’m not surprised in the least that I’m being attacked for this. Hell, I’m surprised that I’m not being attacked more.
Gen. Jrod and his Howling Army
@That’s Master of Accountancy to You, Pal: Right, we don’t know what’s going on with the charges against Assange. In Bush’s case, we know exactly what’s going on. There’s plenty of evidence to support war-crimes charges, but no political will to make them. It’s a vastly different situation from Assange’s.
Here’s what we know about the charges: Assange, a man who is probably near the top of half the world’s intelligence services’ hit lists, was charged with rape, but within a day those charges were dropped with no explanation. That’s fishy. It’s not exactly crazy to think that there’s more going on here than Assange suddenly deciding to go on a raping spree now that he’s world famous.
t jasper parnell
Unwanted frottage, I meant.
soonergrunt
@maus:
Well, firstly, I don’t particularly give a shit whether you agree with me or not. This is a matter of principle. Either people have rights before the bar or they don’t, and either people have rights to not have their reputations and good names destroyed or they do not. I fail to see how it is ‘meninist’ to demand justice, but you seem to feel differently. If your support on any issue is predicated on me giving up my principles and beliefs in constitutional rights for everybody, and the idea that people like me are innocent until proven guilty, well then I’ll find a way go on without your support, and I probably won’t miss it that much either.
And what I don’t need is your apparent blase` attitude about people’s rights. I don’t think that individual rights are a ‘framing issue’ and I have no use for someone who does think that way or who reserves their effort, if they’re going to expend any effort at all, for the ‘egregious’ examples. Having been there, I can tell you that it’s pretty fucking egregious to the person who is going through it, regardless of whether or not you care about them.
jlo
Al Gore is fat.
morzer
Can anyone tell me when this channel is going to be showing the “Julian Assange is/not a deviant who threatens western civilization” show? I seem to have ended up with “Ben Roethlisberger is a misspelled (non) rapist” instead.
soonergrunt
@jlo: You win the internets today.
Well played sir/ma’am.
soonergrunt
@morzer: I’m going out, so here’s the remote, dude. Have fun. The porno channel is locked, but, like every cable remote in the country, the access code is *0000*.
Charge it to John Cole’s account. Mine’s full.
JGabriel
soonergrunt:
I thought that might be the case, given what I’ve seen of your statements here and in the Roethlisberger thread, but didn’t ask because, well, it isn’t any of my business really.
But since you raised it, here’s what I think.
No one on this thread thinks that false accusations don’t happen, or that it isn’t a serious issue when it does. In whatever way you experienced it, whether it was personal, a friend, or a family member, I’m sorry you had to go through it.
With that out of the way, this is an issue that “pushes your button”. You turned the Roethlisberger thread, where everyone conceded that they didn’t know if he was guilty, into a thread about how everyone assumes a rape charge is true, despite the in-thread evidence that it wasn’t the case.
Then you take this thread, where most people are assuming Assange is innocent, and make it into how everyone would think Assange was guilty if he were just a different type of white man – say rich and Australian, or Russell Crowe, which amounts to the same thing. That’s a kind of silly thing to do, isn’t it?
Do you see the pattern here? Every time someone brings up an ambiguous rape charge that’s in the news, you turn it into an argument that it’s wrong for everyone to assume the charged man is guilty, even when no one in the thread is assuming that and there’s no evidence that they are.
Just think about it.
.
soonergrunt
@JGabriel: I’ll think on you’ve said. Really, I will.
Having said that, I stand by my original claim, which is that the default view of a large number of people on here is that Assange was set up by the US government in total absence of any evidence to support that. It is the beginning theme of this thread from our host.
My belief is that people here would react differently if Assange had done something else to get famous like if he was a musician or an actor, well, I still think that’s the case.
But I will honestly think about what you are saying here.
But as far as the following goes:
There are people, or at least one person on this very thread, who really works very hard to minimize and short circuit any discussion of this. Another one calls it a ‘framing issue.’ I think they take it seriously, just not the way you seem to think.
My experience is having been falsely accused and spent six weeks in confinement for a crime that nobody committed. That experience destroyed my life as I knew it, and I continued to be dogged by the accusation for years after.
I almost certainly do have a hair trigger where this subject is concerned. Being reminded of that is a good thing, so thanks.
But I will not cede ground on that. ever.
It was the most traumatic time in my life. I rarely have nightmares about combat, as much as I’ve seen in Iraq and Afghanistan, but I have nightmares frequently about being in the Mannheim Confinement facility.
Anyway, I’m done with this thread. Thanks for your input, and when I said I would think about it, I really will.
mclaren
I’m embarrassed for America. Truly, I am. Once upon a time, the CIA knew how to frame people. But today, in our decadent decaying police state, we can’t do anything right…not even a simple frame-up job on a whistleblower who threatens the American elites.
You can practically hear the conversation inside the Pentagon Joint Special Operations Command where they planned this black op:
[INTERIOR PENTAGON E-RING JSOC, CONCRETE-WALLED
FARADAY-SHIELDED BUNKER BEHIND A BANK VAULT STEEL
DOOR. 4 PEOPLE SIT AROUND A TABLE. ONE PERSON IS
A 4-STAR GENERAL, ONE OLDER MAN WEARS A SUIT, TWO YOUNGER MEN NERVOUSLY FLIP THROUGH A CIA
DATABASE ON THEIR SECURE ENCRYPTED NOTEBOOK COMPUTERS ENCRYPTED WITH PALLADIUM CHIPS AND EQUIPPED WITH GPS TRACKERS]
PENTAGON HEAD OF SPECIAL OPS: We need this guy Assange dealt with. It has to be permanent.
1st YOUNG GUY: We could take him out. Car accident.
STATE DEPARTMENT SUIT: Too obvious.
2nd YOUNG GUY: Maybe poison. Ricin, like the KGB used on that defector in the 70s…
PENTAGON HEAD OF SPECIAL OPS [BANGS TABLE WITH HIS
FIST]: No, goddammit! There can be NO questions. No incriminating blowback. Are you two new here? You sound like you don’t know what you’re doing.
1st YOUNG GUY: We’ve studied all the case files on Mossadegh and Letelier. We’re up to speed.
PENTAGON HEAD OF SPECIAL OPS: You don’t seem to get it. We need Assange discredited. He has to be ruined. Dead, he’s just a martyr. We have to destroy him. Not just the man — his reputation, his credibility. And it has to be done _fast_.
STATE DEPARTMENT SUIT: The orders on this come from the top. Right from the top. We need results.
1st YOUNG GUY: Sure, sure. But of course no one can guarantee–
PENTAGON HEAD OF SPECIAL OPS: We wouldn’t just fire you two. Not with what you know.
2nd YOUNG GUY [LOOK QUICKLY AT THE OTHER YOUNG GUY
IN TERROR]: Uh, we could, uh, arrange something, sexual, maybe.
STATE DEPARTMENT SUIT: That sounds good. Underage boy?
1st YOUNG GUY: No, we’d have to bribe him and he might break down. The kid could fold under cross examination at trial, or if the police went at him hard. Besides, gay isn’t the black mark it used to be. We need something non-consensual.
2nd YOUNG GUY: Rape! Yeah, we could blackmail a
girl into pressing rape charges. Two girls…even better.
STATE DEPARTMENT SUIT: Why not just pay them?
PENTAGON HEAD OF SPECIAL OPS: You need absolute control. The operators can’t walk back on their stories. That would be too damaging.
1st YOUNG GUY: We could find a pressure point. Parents, or a boyfriend who got into trouble with the law. Something we can control completely. If the girls try to walk back on the story, the entire family goes to prison for life without parole.
PENTAGON HEAD OF SPECIAL OPS: This could work.
STATE DEPARTMENT SUIT: Set it up.
1st YOUNG GUY: Uh, okay, when should I give you a detailed sitrep?
PENTAGON HEAD OF SPECIAL OPS: What are you talking about? There are no reports on this op. Nothing in the computers, no records, no logs. This meeting never happened. Haven’t you done _anything_ like this before?
STATE DEPARTMENT SUIT: The way these things work is verbal chain-of-command only. Do it fast. The top guy wants Assange taken out yesterday.
2nd YOUNG GUY: Uh, okay, sure, whatever. We’ll phone you when —
STATE DEPARTMENT SUIT: No! NEVER contact us directly. We’ll assign a cutout from Defense Intelligence. Everything liases through him. This is compartmentalized under need-to-know. And this has to work. It has to work perfectly. There can’t be any evidence. Do you understand me?
1st YOUNG GUY: Well, we’ll, uh, try our best, you know–
STATE DEPARTMENT GUY: I said DO YOU UNDERTAND ME? [long silence] Good. Get it done.
[2 YOUNG GUYS OPEN THE STEEL BANK VAULT DOOR AND LEAVE THE BUNKER WITH THEIR LAPTOPS]
STATE DEPARTMENT GUY: I don’t know about those two.
HEAD OF PENTAGON SPECIAL OPS: They’re the best we’ve got. It’s hard to get good black ops planners now. They’re all working for hedge funds or doing dirty tricks for political campaigns.
STATE DEPARTMENT GUY: Political campaigns?
HEAD OF PENTAGON SPECIAL OPS: Remember Karl Rove’s IT guru Mark Connell who died in that plane crash just before we scheduled to testify about vote-hacking?
STATE DEPARTMENT GUY: Oh. Of course.
HEAD OF PENTAGON SPECIAL OPS: Well, nowadays we go to war with the whistleblowers with the black ops people we have, not the black ops people we want. I guess we just have to hope nothing will go wrong…
Corner Stone
@mclaren: This was a lot of typing. I just wanted to let you know I enjoyed it.
chaseyourtail
Assange seems like a really weird dude to me. There’s a narcissistic quality about him and he’s also a life long transient. Of course, that doesn’t necessarily make him a perv, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he turns out to be one.
Corner Stone
@chaseyourtail: Yeah. People who don’t conform to 9 to 5 usually are degenerates.
Get ready for a society of people with nothing to do between 9 and 5. And don’t have fixed addresses.
chaseyourtail
Hey Corner, do you enjoy twisting people’s words around?
Corner Stone
@chaseyourtail: Yes. Why do you ask?
chaseyourtail
It’s something in the way you move, Corn.
Sigh.
Corner Stone
@chaseyourtail: Sorry if you automatically look down on someone who doesn’t wear a white button up to work 5 days a week. Yeah, he doesn’t have the proto USA dreamed existence. Not sure how that turns him into a potential perv threat.
Our white picket fence existence is done.
roshan
Massive manipulation of US media exposed!
Guess who is doing that? Hint: Country, first two letters – IS
chaseyourtail
Corn, yes, I automatically look down on those who willfully distort my statements…which you are doing.
Corner Stone
@chaseyourtail: Yeah, nobody cares. So, meh.
chaseyourtail
Hey Corn, are you always this delightful?
mclaren
So we know who two of the defense department paid operatives on this blog are, spreading disinformation and innuendos — chaseyourtail and soonergrunt. How many more are there?
Hey, guys, does the Pentagon give you talking points? Do they send you a script? Do they pay you according to how closely you follow the script?
Do you go to your meetup with a guy in an unmarked Defense Intelligence Agency car and the guy pulls out a laptop and says, “Okay, in that Balloon-Juice thread today you said `Assange seems like a really weird dude to me. There’s a narcissistic quality about him and he’s also a life long transient,’ and that’s in the script we gave you. But you didn’t say `Of course, that doesn’t necessarily make him a psychotic drug-dealing child-molesting serial killer and rapist, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he turns out to be one.'”
And then do you argue with the DIA guy? Do you try to say, “Yeah, but your script was just too far over the top. I think I should get my regular payment this week.”
And then does the DIA guy say, “No, we’re withholding $500 from your payment this time. You have to follow the script. We have people with PhDs in psychology researching these keywords very carefully. It’s all in the script. Just follow it verbatim.”
And then do you object? Do you tell your DIA handler “But it makes me look like a complete asshole when I say that shit. Everyone knows it’s bullshit. I sound like a jerk.”
And then does the DIA get all hardcore on your ass? Do he say stuff like “You signed up for this disinformation campaign to make money, not to look like a fucking saint. Shut up and follow the script we send you, or we find some other anonymous commenter to spread our disinformation. Now here’s this week’s payment less five hundred. Jesus Christ, don’t take it out of the paper bag and count it here! People on the sidewalk can see. Get the fuck out. And don’t screw up again. We can find a hundred assholes to spread our disinformation on Balloon-Juice, there’s nothing special about you.”
I mean, I’m really curious. I’d like to know the nitty-gritty details. This stuff really interests me. Ever since I read billmon’s classic article “Spock With A Beard: The Sequel,” I’ve really become curious about this dark twilight world of disinformation and dirty tricks and what Watergate figure Donald Segretti used to call “ratfucking” back when Nixon and Kissinger did it to Vietnam war opponents.
roshan
Hey Sooner, could ya get medical help for that? You really have a huge bias (after excluding whatever is the normal) for one side, on the topic you were discussing. No two situations are alike and you seem to miss this point since something happened to you in the past. That is no way to go through life.
Read the book “The Drunkards Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives”. What seems probable doesn’t always happen and the human mind is very flawed to take that into consideration.
t jasper parnell
@Corner Stone: I care and I care deeply. All chaseyourtail wrote was that Assange’s nontraditional life troubled him and led him to more easily accept that Assange was a “perv” and you have to go and twist that into chaseyourtail saying that Assange’s nontraditional life troubled him and led him to more easily accept that Assange was a “perv.” You argument twister you.
t jasper parnell
@mclaren: When folks make the arguments their putative handlers would pay them for for free room 101 has won without it ever being deployed. If you see what I mean.
Corner Stone
@t jasper parnell: I think you misunderstand the situation, sir.
chaseyourtail expressed the concern that said individual didn’t have a pressed tie, smile at the camera, and place his thumb on the pad. And this bothered chaseyourtail to some degree or other. It bothered him to the degree that it became clear to chaseyourtail that Assange was not only most likely an anarchist, but more specifically a “perv”. Because if Assange was a productive member of society he would have a job and a fixed address. Clearly lacking those two status icons, Assange seems shifty and somewhat pervy. Definitely untrustworthy.
I merely asked chaseyourtail what he would consider the next coming generation of individuals who would not possess a job, nor a fixed address – almost definitely not by choice in most cases.
chaseyourtail didn’t seem to want to address the pervy level of the 15 million or so adults who are about to fit into this category.
I guess they’re all shifty to some degree or other.
chaseyourtail
Hi Jasper, I’m a her but whatever.
I’m mad cuz Corner accused me of looking down on non-nine to fivers which is stupid and ridiculous. I’m not saying Assange is a perv…I’m just saying he seems like a weird dude. Sorry, but that is my feeling about the guy…but Corner had to turn it into me looking down on all off-shifters, the unemployed and the homeless and homeless drifters. So not cool.
Poutrage over.
chaseyourtail
Mclaren, whatever you’re smoking, give me some now!
t jasper parnell
@Corner Stone: Wait a second, I thought that all you said was that chaseyourtail said was that nontraditional Assange was nontraditional and therefore pervy while chaseyourtail claimed that Assange was nontraditional and therefor pervy or trending pervy, which — as chaseyourtail pointed out — misrepresented his argument because he was claiming that he claimed that Assange’s nontraditional lifestyle made claims of his pervyness more compelling without claiming that his nontraditional lifestyle made claims of his pervyness or pervy trending more acceptable. In short, you twisted by not twisting and should have understood that nontraditional lifestyles easing acceptance of pervyhood in no way implied that nontraditional lifestyles eased acceptance of pervyhoodedness.
chaseyourtail
t, “trendy pervy” lmao. Oops, I misread.
t jasper parnell
@chaseyourtail: Sorry about the sex confusion. But, you know, no. You wrote that his seeming oddness re occupation and home address made it more it easier to accept that he was pervy. I have no idea if this extends to other nontraditionals but in Assange’s specific and concrete case, for you it is his weirdness re homeownership, etc that makes perviness a less difficult option. This is just a bad argument, I think, because it makes normalcy in one area a determinate of normalcy in another. What was that serial killer’s nickname BTK? Wasn’t he a homeowner and deacon, and otherwise traditional kinda guy?
mclaren
Yeah, chaseyourtail, way to go! Derail the topic.
You’re clearly and obviously a paid military-industrial establishment disinformation whore. So you desperately want us to get off that topic and onto some other bullshit discussion about 9-to-5ers.
See, what chaseyourtail actually said is all smoke and mirrors and vague innuendos that seem to impute some kind of criminality to Assange without actually making any specific accusations.
Notice how skilfully these innuendos have been crafted. We discern the hand of the master here. It all sounds just, ohhhh, so bad, this Assange is a bad bad guy. But what evidence do you actually have to back your vague claim that Assange is a bad guy?
Nothing.
When we strip away the bullshit and smoke and mirrors, there’s nothing left.
So how about this, chaseyourtail?
Howzabout we turn it around and give our little defense department paid disinformation whore a taste of his own medicine?
Chaseyourtail seems like a really weird dude. There’s a narcissistic quality to him and he seems to pop in and out of random discussions in a very bizarre way.
Of course, that doesn’t necessarily make chaseyourtail a perv, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he turns out to be one.
How’s that work for ya, asshole?
Liking those vague innuendos now?
Enjoying that vaporous substanceless character assassination that isn’t based on any actual verifiable facts now that it’s aimed at you?
Corner Stone
@t jasper parnell: I thought that was what I was saying. But now I see you’ve given me something to think about. Which is important. I think.
Is nontraditional Assange in fact trending pervy? Or is his inherent nontraditional status only pervy? Can he in fact be pervy, or said to be more easily adaptable to perviness, by a nontraditional status?
I’m concerned that chaseyourtail is at some length correct here. Clearly, Assange to some degree at least seems pervy. If not for his accent or his hairstyle then definitely because he doesn’t have a fixed address, nor a fixed place of employment. Perhaps if he does become employed at the Swedish newspaper he may escape his trending perviness.
But he just seems sort of weird to me I guess.
mclaren
Notice something, folks. Chaseyourtail accuses me of being on drugs when I suggest something strongly supported by the available evidence –namely, that Chaseyourtail is a paid disinformation whore being handed cash bribes by the military-industrial complex to character assassination and innuendos about Assange on forums like Balloon-Juice.
But when Chaseyourtail makes vague indefinable accurasations about Assange — namely, that the guy is “a weird dude” with “a narcissistic quality” — oh no, no, no, no, that doesn’t mean Chaseyourtail is lying or spreading disinformation, or that Chaseyourtail is on drugs.
No, no, no, no, those kind of vague baseless accusations must be taken seriously.
Hey! Chaseyourtail! Your handlers are pissed. You’ve been outed. Your username is probably the DEFENSE MILITARY INTELLIGENCE CODE NAME FOR YOUR DISINFORMATION OP.
You’re dead here, spook.
Nobody’s buying your bullshit anymore.
Time to tell your military intelligence handlers that you need to be extracted from this black op and put into another one, where your cover hasn’t yet been blown, Chaseyourtail.
chaseyourtail
Mclaren, why do you insist on ignoring my disclaimer? Assange is not necessarily a perv but he might be. How do you know there isn’t something to these charges? If you hadn’t already made him your god, you might be open to the idea that maybe there is something to these charges. I say, let them conduct their investigation and find out.
mclaren
You’ve been OUTED, spook.
Give it up.
We know you’re a black ops spook. Just quit. Leave. Your cover’s blown.
t jasper parnell
@Corner Stone: Oh shit now I have to open the next bottle of wine. But yes exactly, if Assange is nontraditional in terms of occupation and occupancy then surely he might be nontraditional in some other aspect of his existence, like being a raping and pillagering man from Oz. And if he might be then surely he ought to be; consequently, we should think of all mights caveats as being factuals and condemn him for the might caveats which now logically occurred, whether they did or not. In short because he doesn’t own a home and work for Google, he is a perv and because he released documents that might lead to innocents being killed, he has killed several thousand, if not hundreds of thousands, of innocents despite there being no evidence that any innocents have died.
Corner Stone
@chaseyourtail:
Wow.
t jasper parnell
@mclaren: If you are being serious you might consider that the DoD has fish much larger to fry the comments on BJ. Personally, I think that chaseyourtail was/is making a seriously flawed but not DoD approved/directed argument. But then again and despite impressive photo evidence, I think men landed on the moon.
Corner Stone
@t jasper parnell: Hmmm, it really is his occupancy we’re essentially talking about, isn’t it?
The occupation is secondary to his lack of occupancy, and the concerns engendered therein. Because if he doesn’t occupy a traditional space how can we catch up to him when he commits his pervy acts, or FSM forbid, murders thousands more Afghans?
I see now, and thank you for clarifying what I thought I was saying previously.
It’s Assange’s essential transience that bothers chaseyourtail and I. Or maybe it’s Assange’s intransigence? Bah, nevermind, clearly it’s his lack of conformity that has led to the perviness of his soul, and hence the end result of his murderousness.
Ask anyone here – they’ll tell you. Assange has killed more Afghans than the Soviet Army ever did…wait a second.
Oh shit, you’d better crack open that third bottle amigo. Assange isn’t some ordinary non-normal perv, he’s clearly a commie perv carrying out murderous orders from the Politburo High Command!
It’s all clear to me now. They’ve planned their revenge since the 80’s. And they’re using the West as cover. Assange is going to end up killing all the resistance the Mi-24 Hinds could not.
chaseyourtail
Corner, what’s so “wow” about it. As a woman, I also don’t take these accusations lightly. Just because he’s accused of molestation, doesn’t automatically mean the charges are trumped up. As of now, there is no evidence whatsoever to support the theory that the charges are trumped up. But somehow, many of you have jumped to the conclusion that they are. Unlike you, I’m waiting for more information to come out before I decide one way or the other.
Corner Stone
@chaseyourtail:
Actually, you fucking douchebag, I am following a time honored American tradition. It’s sometimes known as “innocent until proven guilty”.
Sorry if you are unfamiliar with the concept.
roshan
What else, might he be, Chase? enlighten us.
The possibilities are endless!
t jasper parnell
@chaseyourtail: Actually and as a matter of fact it was the accusations of rape that were trumped up. The accusations of molestation, which is a fairly elastic charge in Sweden, that are on-going.
t jasper parnell
@Corner Stone: Precisely. If he were a good Ozian living in Sydney like he should instead of galavanting all over the northern European socialist back of the beyond, someone or another could have visited him and put him back on the straight and narrow. Instead he flitters from flower to flower like a Yul Brenner approved bee and releases all manner of docs that show that war is hell or worse when, for all we know, he is worse than Hitler/Stalin/Satan or even Jimmy Carter, if such a thing is possible even. Worse because of something or another that I cannot right now recall but I am sure it’s badder that bad; maybe he dissed the Wolverines?
t jasper parnell
@roshan: He might be a chimpanzee or, perhaps, french or steve buschemi. But clearly he ain’t normal and therefore he ought be vilified, I think chase want’s to argue without understanding that most of her claims about normalcy and pervisosity are nonsense, meaningless and do not advance the discussion. But what the hell do I know. Also too why is one of my comments in moderation? It is really funny and will, no doubt, revolutionize the internaughts.
Gen. Jrod and his Howling Army
I’m still waiting to hear the connection between not having a home address and being a rapist. Are rapes being committed largely by the homeless now? Cuz the way I hear it most rapes are committed by someone the victim knows, rather than hobos.
I’m also wondering why you’re worried about Assange being a perv. I thought the issue was whether he sexually assaulted somebody, not whether he ventures outside the confines of missionary sex with his spouse for the purpose of procreation.
Corner Stone
@t jasper parnell: Not sure how you got Yul Brenner in there but I applaud you for it.
chaseyourtail
@Corner Stone: I’m not a fucking douchebag but you’re one rude son of a bitch. Go fuck yourself cretin.
chaseyourtail
@t jasper parnell: True, but the implication around here is that the whole thing is trumped up, including the molestation part of it. It’s all part of an evil plot to take down Jesus/Julian and his precious leaks. I’m curious to know the whole story, but I guess getting all the facts and finding out the whole story is a kin to a crucifixion of poor Julian.
mclaren
Hey, guy, remember the mathematicians Paul Erdos? He didn’t have a home. Peripatetic wanderer. Lived out of a suitcase.
Ooooohhh. Rapist!
Yeah, baby. That serial rapist and perv Paul Erdos. Something not right about that guy. Something narcissistic about him. I’m not saying he rapied women and then mulilated their corpses and skull-fvcked their dead bodies, but, you know, I wouldn’t be surprised if the mathematician Paul Erdos did those things.
After all, he lived a vagabond wandering lifestyle with no fixed address. Pervy guy.
Hey!
Wake up, folks!
Are you people beginning to realize that Chaseyourtail is an obvious military-industrial paid disinformation whore now?
Hey, Cole. What’s Chaseyourtail’s i.p. address? Does it come form, let’s say, mmmmmmmmmm, Langley Virginia?
Chaseyourtail is not necessarily and employee of the Central Intelligence Agency who sits in a cubicle in that giant building in Langley Virginia typing this shit ona computer with a big CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY seal on it, but he might be.
Does anyone else notice that Chaseyourtail is frantically doing everything he possibly can to throw shit at Assange in the vague hope that some of it might stick…while strenuously ignoring anyone’s remarks that there is not a single shred of evidence to support anything that Chaseyourtail says.
All those vague innuendos, all that character assassination…where’s the hard proof for any of it?
Chaseyourtail says Assange is “narcissistic.” Where’s the evidence to back that up?
If Assange were naracissistic, he’d have a goddamn twitter feed going 24/7 like Sarah Palin, Assange would be paying people to twitter about every news item that pops up. If Assange were narcissistic, he’d be on every TV show there is. 60 MINUTES, Frontline, he’d be on all three Sunday morning news shows, he’d be sticking his face in front of every camera on every major network. Assange would be on FOX AND FRIENDS and Larry King and the Tonight Show and David Letterman and he’d pop up on NPR’s THIS AMERICAN LIFE and ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. Assange would be doing a one-man show on Broadway and he’d be selling Assange t-shirts and Assange coffee mugs and Assange mousepads for your computer. He’d have written a book and he’d be hawking his book C-SPAN Booknotes. Assange would be doing deals with major motion picture studios and he’d already have a spoken-word CD out. Assange would be negotiating with tabloids to tell his side of the rape story. Assange would be selling Julian Assange brand salad dressing in supermarkets and he’d license his name to plumbing companies (“When the shit comes down on you, calling the Assangerators!”).
If Assange were narcissistic, that is.
But Assange isn’t doing any of these things.
He is keeping out of the limelight. As much as he can. Every once in a while the reporters clamor so loudly for an interview he gives ’em one, but to date, unlike media whores like, say, Sarah Palin or Newt Gingrich, this Julian Assange guy has had a remarkably low profile.
Until now, of course. I predict that with this shitstorm, Assange won’t be able to keep a low profile. So of course disinformation military-industrial whores like Chaseyourtail will now accuse Assange of being “narcisssistic” when Assange gets so battered by journalists demanding a sound bite that he finally gives in and says something about this phony rape frame job on national TV.
Chaseyourtail says he gets a “weird feeling” about Assange.
What the fuck does that mean?
Weird feeling?
What the hell?
Ladies and gents, boys ‘n girls…I get a very weird feeling about Chaseyourtail. I have directly accused him of being a paid disinformation spook for the military-industrial complex and Chaseyourtail has had nothing to say about that aside from a brief ineffectual “I’d like to know what you’re smoking” jibe.
Here’s what I’m smoking, bubba: Operation Mockingbird.
Ring a bell?
No.
Try this on for size:
Source: Operation Mockingbird
Also see: “Perception Management and Domest Propaganda,” 2 October 2001, Preston Peel:
Also see: “Propaganda and Disinformation: How the CIA Manufactures History”:
Now does everyone recognize what Chaseyourtail is trying to do?
Now does everyone realize who Chaseyourtail is really working for?
Operation Mockingbird is over on this forum, Chaseyourtail. Pack it up. Your disinformation campaign here is kaput. Stick a fork in it, bubba, it’s done.
roshan
Look, who’s talking!
Someone who said this:
Yeah, right! You would like to know the whole story.
chaseyourtail
@roshan: Hey genius, those two statements are not inconsistent.
And yes, he’s being investigated for molestation…so yes, HE MIGHT BE A PERV.
roshan
I believe ya, Chase, I believe ya. Keep fighting to know the “whole story” with consistency. One day, you might surprise us, but seriously, what’s so surprising about that?
chaseyourtail
@mclaren: Whatever.
mclaren
@chaseyourtail:
No, wrong.
That’s not the “implication” around here.
That’s the plainly obvious conclusion to anyone with a goddamn brain.
FACT: Julian Assange gets threatened by the President of the United States, who urges other countries to indict him for espionage in a public statement on 10 August 2010.
FACT: Julian Assange gets threatened by a Pentagon spokesman who warns of extremely dire consequences if Assange releases the other rumored 15,000 pages of material on the Afghanistan war. This happens on 12 August 2010.
FACT: Julian Assange has a warrant issued for his arrest on charges of rape on 20 August by a Swedish prosecutor after two women visit the police but claim they don’t want to press charges.
FACT: The warrant against Julian Assange gets withdrawn by the Swedish prosecutor less than 24 hours later when the prosecutor now says there is no evidence to support the rape charge.
What conclusion does any reasonable person draw from these facts?
That’s not an “implication,” that’s simple obvious logic.
If A, therefore B…if B therefore C. Ipso facto, If A, therefore C. It’s simple, straightforward and obvious.
Chaseyourtail’s lie that the obvious conclusion that Assange was set up by a black op by the U.S. government is a mere unwarranted “implication” is on the level as the defenders of the previous maladministration who claim that “the implication that the Bush administration manipulated or distorted intelligence on WMDs in Iraq is outrageous.”
It’s not an “implication,” liar.
It’s an obvious and inevitable conclusion any reasonable person comes to from an examination of the documented facts.
Chaseyourtail goes on to tell the further lie that “I guess getting all the facts and finding out the whole story is a kin to a crucifixion of poor Julian. ”
Double your pleasure, double your fun! Two! Two! Two lies in one!
The first lie? That those of us who are defending Julian Assange against this obvious and self-eviden flagrant U.S. military intelligence black op to smear his reputation somehow don’t want to “get all the fact and find out the whole story.”
That’s a total reversal of what we’re saying, so your’re lying, Chaseyourtail, and you know you’re lying.
Those of us who are defending Assange against these smears and character assassination are calling for precisely the whose story. We are demanding more information.
So that’s the first lie in that one sentence by Chaseyourtail.
His second lie?
That this process of defending Assange against all these innuendos and smears and character assassinations swarming like a cloud of flies around the pure shit of an obvious CIA black op mounted against Assange is “a kin to a crucifixion of poor Julian.”
No, I’ll tell you what a “crucifixion of poor Julian” is, bubba.
It’s when the President of the United States of America threatens Julian Assange. And then the Department of Defense of the U.S. military threatens Julian Assange. And then the government of Sweden issues a warrant for Julian Assange’s arrest on the charge of rape.
…And then less than 24 hours later the government of Sweden mysteriously withdraws that warrant and says, “Whoops, sorrrr-eeeee, just a leeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeetle mistake. Move along folks, nothing to see here.”
That’s crucifixion. And yes, poor Julian Assange. I do not give Assange much longer to live. He’s doing to be found in a hotel room having mysteriously hanged himself. There will be strange bruises on his arms and around his neck. Bones in his fingers will be broken. The hyoid bone in his neck, however, will not be broken, as it would if he had hung himself.
Of course, Chaseyourtail will come on to assure us that Assange was so despondent over being outed as a secret serial rapist that he hung himself even after the charges were withdrawn because, y’know, a whole bunch of other girls were just about to come forward.
Operation Mockingbird is not working, Chaseyourtail. You are not earning you pay here. Tell your handlers in the defense military intelligence community that this black op is over. Your cover is blown, it’s all gone sour, time to light out for Rio with your suitcase full of cash and enjoy fun n the sun till this thing blows over.
chaseyourtail
@mclaren: Fact: I don’t give a shit anymore. Goodnight.
chaseyourtail
@mclaren: Oh, and you totally got me, I am indeed a paid operative for the DoD. Sweet dreams.
roshan
Hey Mclaren, seems like you have read “The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence“. I have a mid 70’s copy of it.
mclaren
Breaking news! Startling new evidence implicates Julian Assange in the destruction of Alderan!
mclaren
Incidentally…anyone else notice that Chaseyourtail has never directly denied being employed by the United States government to spread disinformation on this forum?
JGabriel
Neither have you.
.
General Stuck
@mclaren:
Them Belfry Bats busy tonight.