Julian Assange and the Streisand Effect.

Written By: - Date published: 6:45 pm, January 7th, 2019 - 161 comments
Categories: Abuse of power, capitalism, class war, crime, Deep stuff, Ethics, International, law, Media, suppression orders, you couldn't make this shit up - Tags: , , ,

One of the weirdest episodes in the history of Wikileaks is playing out right now.

The anti-democracy organisation, who are too chicken to challenge capital but are paid to lower trust in state institutions, have sent a group of media outlets a list of 140 things they are ‘not allowed to say’ about accused rapist and bail dodger Julian Assange.

The full list has not yet been published (and the so called transparency organisation ironically refuses to release it). However, it won’t be long before the Assange 140 is public knowledge.

It’s the Streisand Effect.

Whenever a public figure threatens to sue for defamation, the ‘net instantly wants to know what the supposedly false claims are.

Whether they’re true or not ceases to be the point. We all just want to laugh at the person stupid enough to publicise the things they wanted hidden.

For Assange, this could be devastating. On a human level, I can emphasise with a person who has locked themselves away from normal human contact for years. It’s bound to be depressing holing up in a couple of small rooms in a vain attempt to avoid justice.

No wonder he couldn’t even look after his cat properly or, as is alleged, get around to washing himself.

This threat to journalists’ free speech will fail, as it should. Any media outlet put on notice by Wikipedia’s lawyers should simply use the celebrated response in Arkell v. Pressdram.

Fuck off.

In the meantime, the world is sniggering at Wikileaks’ naivety.

And waiting for the list of 140 things to be released.

 

UPDATE: The list of 140 Things We Must Not Say about Julian Assange has been promptly leaked. It’s a wild ride; it flits effortlessly from the fair enough to pompous flights of fantasy. And thanks so much Wikileaks for leaving me with the image of Jules wandering into meetings in his underwear. And to be clear, his mum was never a hippy. Got that? 

(Tip of the TS hat to spotter Andre)

 

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161 comments on “Julian Assange and the Streisand Effect. ”

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  1. Ed 1
    7 January 2019 at 7:47 pm

    Assange and Wikileaks were heroes for telling us the truth about Iraq war. Are you trying to provoke a reaction from some of us with this inflammatory post?

    • Andre 1.1
      7 January 2019 at 7:59 pm

      They got lucky when Manning dumped in their laps the info she obtained at great personal risk and subsequent cost. This stroke of luck gave Assange and Wikileaks a reputation that far exceeded their reality. Manning’s a hero, Wikileaks and Assange were just the middlemen ticket-clippers.

      They have then abused the privileges accorded them by that undeserved reputation, both in personal relations, and their attempts to undermine the society, ideals and institutions that allowed Wikileaks to even exist, let alone thrive.

      Apparently they have done this in service of a hostile foreign power that, if Wikileaks tried their shit against that hostile foreign power in that power’s territory, would be extraordinarily lenient in just throwing everyone involved in Wikileaks into particularly nasty prisons for the rest of their lives, in solitary. Deaths would be the far more likely outcome.

  2. Morrissey 2
    7 January 2019 at 8:02 pm

    The anti-democracy organisation…

    ?????

    MEMO: L. PRENT

    The credibility of your site is at stake if you allow this trash to remain up.

    [lprent: It is an opinion. If you don’t like it, then explain why it is wrong or ask the author to explain further why he thinks that to be the case. Just don’t whine about it. Incidentally I’d suggest you read the About.

    We’re a cooperative who saw a gap in the New Zealand political blogosphere and decided that we should have a go at filling it here at The Standard blog site. We write here in our personal capacities and the opinions that are expressed on the blog are individual unless expressly stated otherwise (see the policy). We do not write on behalf of any organization.

    😈 ]

    • McFlock 2.1
      7 January 2019 at 8:05 pm

      [gets popcorn]

      • Morrissey 2.1.1
        7 January 2019 at 8:21 pm

        Ye-e-e-es. Mr Putake has been ominously quiet. I’m expecting a terrifying entrance some time later this evening…

        • te reo putake 2.1.1.1
          7 January 2019 at 8:31 pm

          Nah, it’s all good, Moz. Though I’d appreciate it people would focus on the post, rather than the author. For example, is it cool that Wikileaks are trying gag reporters?

          • Morrissey 2.1.1.1.1
            7 January 2019 at 8:36 pm

            “Reporters”? You mean like Luke Harding? That kind of “reporter”?

            • Ed 2.1.1.1.1.1
              7 January 2019 at 8:38 pm

              The leaks about the Integrity Institute show that many in the media are little more than typists for MI5.

        • McFlock 2.1.1.2
          7 January 2019 at 8:31 pm

          Pfft. You wish TRP sees it first, what with invoking the name of the almighty like that…

          • Morrissey 2.1.1.2.1
            7 January 2019 at 9:05 pm

            To be honest, I thought he’d swoop in like Bishop Brennan does on the hapless denizens of the Craggy Island presbytery.

            He’s in an unusually mellow mood, however.

    • Ed 2.2
      7 January 2019 at 8:16 pm

      There are other examples of highly emotive language in this article.
      I believe it was written to get a reaction.

      John Pilger has an entirely different view of Assange and Wikileaks..
      https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wmLNfn6HZ2w

      As does George Galloway.
      https://www.rt.com/news/445069-assange-manafort-guardian-russiagate/

      As does John Wight.
      https://medium.com/@JohnWight1/the-ongoing-persecution-of-julian-assange-8d26935eb66a

      As does Chris Hedges.
      https://www.truthdig.com/articles/crucifying-julian-assange/

      I respect all of their informed and well researched opinions.

      • Morrissey 2.2.1
        7 January 2019 at 8:19 pm

        As do Noam Chomsky, Glenn Greenwald, Nicky Hager…. in fact anyone who looks at this case with a fair and unbiased mind.

        • Ed 2.2.1.1
          7 January 2019 at 8:23 pm

          This is an unbelievable post……

          • Stunned mullet 2.2.1.1.1
            7 January 2019 at 8:28 pm

            No this is an unbelievable post.

            “The pallid shitstirring Australian phony has shafted his friends, stolen data and is still evading justice in plain sight. It’s not as if his release of gigabytes of mildly sensitive classified material has actually changed anything other than get him the odd headline, though perhaps it did contribute a little to Trump’s election victory by adding a small turd to Hillary’s bouquet of shite. For all the publicity, and for all the adoration of the flaccid-left snowflake tendency, he’s been pretty fucking useless at doing what he says he’s trying to do.

            And there he is, still squatting in the Ecuadoran Embassy – the only place that would have him after jumping bail (not his money, but his friends’) and running for cover. The Swedish rape case has been dropped, but the fact remains he broke UK bail conditions while it was current, and while he was being detained with a view to extraditing him. So the police have a legitimate interest in feeling his collar.

            To cut to the chase…or in this case, the stay-put. After having been treated very honourably by the Ecuadoran staff, given apparently rent-free accommodation, Internet connection to pursue his self-aggrandising schemes, and even a cat, the Embassy decided that it really couldn’t permit a political propagandist to operate from diplomatic territory, cut off the internet and later made some rules for Assange to follow as a condition of its restoration. These included not behaving like a 14-year-old in a tantrum (admittedly Assache always behaves like this), keeping his room clean and looking after the fucking cat, por el amor de Dios.”

            http://is-a-cunt.com/category/julian-assange/

            • Ed 2.2.1.1.1.1
              7 January 2019 at 8:29 pm

              Who wrote that? The title is repulsive.

              Is it written by intellectual giants like Chomsky and Hedges or experienced and well researched journalists like Greenwald, Pilger and Hager?

          • mauī 2.2.1.1.2
            7 January 2019 at 8:39 pm

            Ed, I fear this post is a trap. Some revel in the punishment of Assange and will no doubt enjoy dishing it out to Gallowytes too. We don’t want to lose you again.

            • Morrissey 2.2.1.1.2.1
              7 January 2019 at 8:42 pm

              This is the sort of garbage that was dished out in Red China in the 1960s. “Kerry” and Bazza64″ would have made ideal Red Guards.

              • Bazza64 …
                7 January 2019 at 8:48 pm

                I can’t disagree with that comment. Mao is my main man !

                • Morrissey …
                  7 January 2019 at 8:53 pm

                  Sorry, Bazza, I’ve just had another look at your 8:28 pm post and I see your comment was nothing like I thought it was at first glance.

                  Please accept my profound apologies. It’s too late now for me to edit it, unfortunately.

            • Ed 2.2.1.1.2.2
              7 January 2019 at 8:43 pm

              Thank you, Maui. I did wonder the same.
              OK – I’ve said my piece.
              Radio silence from now on on this post.

              • Morrissey …
                7 January 2019 at 8:54 pm

                Good idea. I’d better butt out too. I’ve already accidentally shot poor old Bazza.

            • te reo putake 2.2.1.1.2.3
              7 January 2019 at 9:16 pm

              If it was trap, Ed already fell into it, Maui. I appreciate that any criticism of the rapey one sets some folk off, however, if the comments are about the subject, there’s no problem. You, Moz and Ed have all had a bleat about the author, now howabout you discuss the issue. Which, in short, is a supposed transparency organisation trying to lawyer journalists into silence. Any opinions on that?

              • Morrissey …
                7 January 2019 at 9:20 pm

                Criticism is fine. Calling him “the rapey one” is nothing but a lie. A filthy Government-sponsored lie, which makes it as despicable as any lie has ever been.

                • te reo putake …
                  7 January 2019 at 9:58 pm

                  I’m going with his victim’s accounts, at least until the allegations are tested in court and disproved. Just kidding, Assange doesn’t ever want to the truth to come out.

                  • Ross …
                    8 January 2019 at 7:12 am

                    I’m going with his victim’s accounts

                    Please don’t ever serve on a jury, you don’t seem to know the difference between allegations and facts. If someone has been wrongly accused of a vile crime, that would make the accused the victim.

                    BTW, Assange has never been charged with rape, and Sweden are not interested in investigating that matter. It seems like Swedish prosecutors have doubts about the “victims'” accounts.

                    • te reo putake …
                      8 January 2019 at 8:13 am

                      I’ve served on juries. Did my civic duty to the best of my abilities. My position on Assange, Spacey, Weinstein et al is the alleged victims get my support at least until the cases are heard and the decisions made. That doesn’t stop accused people defending themselves and denying the accusations. The difference between Assange and Spacey and Weinstein is that the latter two at least had the guts to front court. Assange doesn’t.

                      Given what we know about the chronic under-reporting of sexual assault cases, changing the default setting to believing victims until proven otherwise, rather than believing the accused until proven otherwise is a necessary step. Victims of sexual assault need to have trust that they will be taken seriously. That starts with men not automatically leaping to the defence of other men.

                  • Morrissey …
                    8 January 2019 at 8:55 am

                    Other than the political dissenter who is the target of destruction, there were, and are, no victims in this fantastic case, which could have come out of 1930s Soviet Russia or 1950s China.

                    I note, by the way, that there is another case, a little closer to this country, of someone under siege by another rogue state—an ally of the states trying to destroy Assange. Has Greg Presland expressed his amusement at the plight of Rahaf Mohammed al-Qunun yet?

                    And if not, why not?

                  • Dennis Frank …
                    8 January 2019 at 9:12 am

                    I’ve tended to the same stance. Partly classic sympathy for the underdog, partly opposition to patriarchal beliefs & behaviour, but also from what I heard from my ex-partner. She did sexual-abuse counselling for many years, and was also coordinator of a team of such counsellors (more than a dozen).

                    Details of the accounts are confidential, and she was reluctant to discuss cases. Truth must out, however, when the public interest requires it. It can be extracted via privacy protection, in a generalised account of what happened. Case details are sometimes so horrific that they cannot be reported in the media.

                    Since I was making news & current affairs stories for TVNZ for about ten of the nineteen years we were together, I was well-aware of the professional constraints around reporting sexual abuse. Privacy law operates to cover up damage done. Ostensibly it is designed to protect victims. Consequently everyone is in denial of the cover-up. As a result, everyone has a sanitised view of the problem.

  3. Kerry 3
    7 January 2019 at 8:18 pm

    Finally….some sense about Assange…..rather then the brown nosing sycophants who think the aussie weasel is a good guy………he needs to stop hiding and be a man.

    • Morrissey 3.1
      7 January 2019 at 8:39 pm

      A lot of unimaginative abuse there, mon ami—but nothing to indicate you have the slightest clue about this matter.

      Could you explain why he’s a “weasel” for showing this to the world?

    • aom 3.2
      7 January 2019 at 11:11 pm

      Somehow one might suspect that if a male Kerry, it’s odds on you may also been guilty of the rape charges of the nature of those that are no longer being faced by Assange. The alleged offences were pretty technical since there was consent to intimacy and the issue centered around the use of a condom. In reality, it is obvious the cases were re-instituted under duress to appease a US government, inconvenienced by the evidence of war crimes being exposed by Wikileaks. If however, you think that he should hand himself over to the US for exposing their duplicity, hypocrisy and contravention of the rules of warfare knowing that he would face a kangaroo court – would you? Clearly, the issues go beyond your trite description of ‘brown nosing sycophants’ which, as an arsehole, you would probably secretly enjoy.

      • McFlock 3.2.1
        7 January 2019 at 11:25 pm

        it’s odds on you may also been guilty of the rape charges of the nature of those that are no longer being faced by Assange.

        Bit of a glass-house:stone-throwing situation for someone who calls consent a technicality.

        • aom 3.2.1.1
          8 January 2019 at 6:51 am

          Seems you haven’t checked back on the facts of the incident and how the charges arose.

          • McFlock 3.2.1.1.1
            8 January 2019 at 1:12 pm

            If someone wanted you to wear a rubber, but you shag them without them knowing you’re not wearing one, that’s non-consensual. Consent was given only with the use of a condom.

            It’s not a difficult concept. It’s certainly not a technicality.

            • Sabine 3.2.1.1.1.1
              8 January 2019 at 6:00 pm

              thank you for again explaining the principle of consent. It seems that some have a hard time bending their head around that issue.

              OK with condom. Consent given.

              Not ok without it. No consent given, and thus considered ‘rape’ in Sweden. Maybe the guy should have come to NZ for a cheap fuck without condoms and consent, no one would have said or done anything. After all pregnancy and that shit is womens lot, she should have known better.

              • te reo putake …
                8 January 2019 at 6:15 pm

                It’s considered sexual assault here in NZ too. As it should be.

              • McFlock …
                8 January 2019 at 6:18 pm

                Between Trump and Assange, there are lots of men on the internet who claim difficulty in understanding the concept.

                I don’t know if it would be worse for them to be telling the truth, or just lying to try to excuse their guy on a basic level.

      • Morrissey 3.2.2
        8 January 2019 at 9:01 am

        Those charges were not “technical”, they were fantastical. If you want to experience something of the fearful hysteria, irrational craziness and licensed viciousness of a witch hunt in, say, sixteenth century Spain, this thread provides a pretty good approximatiion.

        • McFlock 3.2.2.1
          8 January 2019 at 1:14 pm

          Yes. A sexual assault investigation is totally like a medieval witch hunt. Moz, you have made another perfectly reasonable comparison to add to your portfolio. /sarc

          • Morrissey 3.2.2.1.1
            8 January 2019 at 1:25 pm

            It’s not a sexual assault investigation. There was no sexual assault. The two young women inveigled—no doubt threatened and blackmailed—into this nightmarish plot almost immediately announced it was all nonsense.

            It’s worse than a witch hunt. Even though there was never any actual evidence of witchcraft presented in the middle ages, that didn’t really matter. The accusers and their megaphones—the likes of you—did not have to present any evidence. The accusation, spurious as it was, was merely the first step in the process.

            • Psycho Milt 3.2.2.1.1.1
              8 January 2019 at 1:44 pm

              They must be so reassured to learn that Morrissey doesn’t hold them personally responsible for making allegedly false claims of sexual assault.

              • McFlock …
                8 January 2019 at 1:48 pm

                The quality of mercy is not strain’d, it droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven upon the ground beneath.

                • Morrissey …
                  8 January 2019 at 1:53 pm

                  I doubt you’ve got that off pat—hat tip to Google, huh.

                  • McFlock …
                    8 January 2019 at 2:02 pm

                    As the great philosopher Hans Gruber said: “the benefit of a classical education”.

                    Shakespeare isn’t classical, but then Google does tell me I should have remembered it as “place beneath”. Besides, Gruber made the comment about education after repeating a misreported anecdote about Alexander.

                    I have alluded to my thespianic tendencies before, I’m sure. My Pistol was very well received, my dear.

                    • Morrissey …
                      8 January 2019 at 2:05 pm

                      Sorry to leave you out of my little playlet this morning, my friend. I thought I had enough villains.

                      Maybe next time.

                    • McFlock …
                      8 January 2019 at 3:03 pm

                      I’m very selective about the roles I take. You don’t cut it.

              • Morrissey …
                8 January 2019 at 1:52 pm

                They didn’t make them. They were bamboozled and hurried into it by the fearful Swedish “authorities”—if that’s the right word to use for such cowards and slaves.

            • McFlock 3.2.2.1.1.2
              8 January 2019 at 1:46 pm

              Inveigled, threatened, and blackmailed into making false complaints. Wow, that’s a lot of criminal activity you claim occurred.

              Where’s your evidence?

              Because the evidence of a sexual assault investigation is well documented both by the swedish authorities and the court transcripts from the UK legal system – the one he jumped bail on.

            • Sabine 3.2.2.1.1.3
              8 January 2019 at 6:03 pm

              You don’t get to decide the laws of Sweden.

              It is fairly simple, any sexual conduct / intercourse without consent is considered rape/sexual violence etc.

              She consented to sex with him so as long as he wears a condom. He decided to mount her early morning without a condom, he is in the fault.

              for what its worth, your guy is a useless fuck, putting his partner at risk of sexual transmitted diseases, pregnancy. And that useless fuck put himself at risk of sexual transmitted diseases and potentially 20+ odd years of child support. Dumb as fuck he is this Assange dude and a coward.

  4. Bazza64 4
    7 January 2019 at 8:28 pm

    For Julian Assange trying to avoid jail time, he has effectively ended up in jail in the Ecuador Embassy in UK. Possibly only safe place for him might be Russia, but he would then be their puppet & wouldn’t dare expose their secrets or he would be off to Siberia for some harsh employment. Notice Greenpeace haven’t been back to protest Russian oil exploration, they know they would not be so lenient a second time.

  5. mickysavage 5
    7 January 2019 at 9:07 pm

    OK this is one of those subjects that gets people going …

    Reuters has reported on some of the list. They include:

    1. Assange had ever been an “agent or officer of any intelligence service”.
    2. Assange had previously been employed by the Russian government
    3. Assange is, or has ever been, close to the Russian state, the Kremlin or Putin.
    4. Assange bleaches his hair
    5. Assange is a hacker,
    6. Assange has ever neglected an animal
    7. Assange has poor personal hygiene.

    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-ecuador-assange/wikileaks-tells-reporters-140-things-not-to-say-about-julian-assange-idUSKCN1P00NN

    So any of these demonstrably proveable as being false?

    And why should Wikileaks of all organisations seek to suppress information?

    • Bazza64 5.1
      7 January 2019 at 9:15 pm

      Well put MS, I don’t know enough about the 7 points to comment, but when the organisation that doesn’t like secrets seeks to impose its own, you know it starts to smell. Even supporters of JA must concede on this point if not the others?

    • Stunned mullet 5.2
      7 January 2019 at 9:21 pm

      “Cleaning out the cat box is a crime against humanity!” – Assange

      • Morrissey 5.2.1
        7 January 2019 at 9:29 pm

        That was witty. Have you thought of writing comedy scripts for …..ooohhh, Mike Hosking?

      • lprent 5.2.2
        7 January 2019 at 10:08 pm

        I don’t clean out the cat box myself. While it was a joint decision to get Mort. I figure the person who wanted the kitten should also learn the downside of having a kitten. 😈

        Opps – off topic..

    • Morrissey 5.3
      7 January 2019 at 9:22 pm

      You think it’s amusing do you, Mr Presland?

      No wonder you took the name of that bloke notorious for standing behind Britain: “where she goes, we go.”

      Don’t think he would have been so depraved as to laugh at the persecution of a journalist, however.

      • mickysavage 5.3.1
        7 January 2019 at 9:26 pm

        No I don’t. I have always had doubts about Assange and his hero status.

        But as I said let’s analyse this story. Is it true that Wikileaks is trying to stop the media from printing stories about Assange and if so how does it square up with Wikileaks’ role?

        • Morrissey 5.3.1.1
          7 January 2019 at 9:27 pm

          What doubts were those? And what does it matter if he’s a hero or not?

          What evidence are you aware of that supports those ludicrous fantasy charges concocted by the U.S. and its U.K. vassal?

        • CapnInsan0 5.3.1.2
          7 January 2019 at 9:47 pm

          I’ve read through the comments thus far, I don’t seem to see an answer to that question here. It strikes me as pretty rank hypocrisy but then I’m not surprised by that turgid little worm Assange.

      • Richard 5.3.2
        7 January 2019 at 9:43 pm

        Dunno about about Presland, but I think some of the reactions to TRP’s article are hilarious.

        Shouldn’t Wikileaks be demanding the release of all Ecuadorian records regarding Assange’s pet care and personal grooming rather than demanding silence?

    • joe90 5.4
      7 January 2019 at 9:51 pm

      TFW when you’ve pleaded guilty to twenty-five charges of hacking and related crimes and then you send a not for publication email to half the world’s media telling them not to call you a hacker.

  6. Morrissey 6
    7 January 2019 at 9:26 pm

    We’ve encountered this orchestrated display of glee at the suffering of Julian Assange before tonight, of course….

    https://morrisseybreen.blogspot.com/2018/01/an-unusually-inane-and-depraved-edition.html

  7. Tricledrown 7
    7 January 2019 at 10:31 pm

    An Egotist but engaging in open debate freedom of speech even if he got it wrong by becoming a Putin/Trump Troll.

    • McFlock 7.1
      7 January 2019 at 11:08 pm

      Sort of sums up the contradictions – used freedom of speech to expose massive abuses by states, threatens people who might spread mean claims about him. Threatens to sue those people who spread those claims, suing using the same legal system that he skipped bail on. In some ways a hero, but possibly an abuser of his own power over others. Exposed abuses by some states, strangely silent on the abuses of other states and possibly even a pawn of those even more abusive states.

      People can be complicated.

  8. francesca 8
    7 January 2019 at 10:55 pm

    This is pretty much clickbait.
    And disappointingly ugly tabloid stuff at that
    The kitty litter and personal hygiene bullshit, is clearly designed to humiliate.and taunt someone the UN has decreed is being illegally detained.
    The UN working committee found that in 2016

    https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=17013

    and more recently , this past December said that Britain should allow Assange to leave the Embassy without fear of arrest or extradition

    https://www.voanews.com/a/un-tells-britain-to-let-assange-leave-ecuador-embassy/4711939.html
    Oh but the UN ,huh guys ,those pansies?And Assange bleaches his hair? must be a pansy too.
    And what? his organisation is warning reporters to stop rechurning old lies? the hypocrite!We’re dining out on the lies,don’t stop the fun

    You guys make me sick
    Forget the cruelty displayed here and take the opportunity to sign Varoufakis’ DIEM25 petition

    https://internal.diem25.org/petitions/1?fbclid=IwAR3lkO2eMm1vwCcBncY79An2RldOkMQ_KeZtjqi1rXXZPaUee3sBY6Kj4ro

    • Drowsy M. Kram 8.1
      7 January 2019 at 11:49 pm

      Thanks francesca; signed. And thanks to TRP whose post provided a platform for information sharing – a good example of what The Standard is all about.

    • te reo putake 8.2
      8 January 2019 at 8:20 am

      “The kitty litter and personal hygiene bullshit, is clearly designed to humiliate.and taunt …”

      That’s kind of the point of the article, Fransesca. I never knew Assange was a smelly cat abuser until Wikileaks told me. What were they thinking? Was it run by Assange first? And, tin foil hat alert, is somebody in Wikileaks deliberately trying to make him look bad?

      • francesca 8.2.1
        8 January 2019 at 8:34 am

        You still dont know Assange is a smelly cat abuser!
        But you choose to believe it
        And it wasnt Wikileaks who told you that
        It was the Guardian who first published that,yonks ago, having been given the feed from the new more easily US intimidated Moreno led Ecuador govt. Surely you are not that far behind the eight ball?
        Everything Wikileaks asserts are defamatory and libellous lies has already been published .Theres nothing new
        What is truly astonishing is that reporters have managed to get away with all of the 140 allegations, stating them as truth, for as long as they have
        What is more astonishing is the way journalism has sunk to the point where a fellow journalist can be so attacked by other , I hesitate to give them the title “journalist” reporters. All journalism suffers when these attacks are normalised
        I refuse to believe you weren’t aware of that
        I’ve read that bullshit multiple times in multiple publications, from the same source repeated ad nauseam.
        And here’s you, repeating it as if it was brand new
        You never knew about those claims ?..give me a break, you are being totally disingenuous, either that or you really haven’t been paying attention

        • gsays 8.2.1.1
          8 January 2019 at 8:42 am

          thanks francesca for putting it bluntly and far more eloquently than i could.

          • francesca 8.2.1.1.1
            8 January 2019 at 9:04 am

            Well thanks gsays for saying that
            I’m gobsmacked and wonder if the author had even read the 140 allegations that Wikileaks say are defamatory and libellous at the time he wrote his hitpiece
            Wikileaks links to articles that demonstrate why the allegations are untrue.
            TRP comes up with nothing but snide taunts
            Most unbecoming

            • te reo putake 8.2.1.1.1.1
              8 January 2019 at 9:13 am

              Er, did you actually read the post? I made it clear that I hadn’t read the gagging list. It wasn’t publicly available when I wrote the post and I wrote that I thought it would soon be leaked anyway. Which it has been.

              • francesca …
                8 January 2019 at 9:28 am

                and yet you rushed to print regardless?!!

                • Morrissey …
                  8 January 2019 at 9:32 am

                  francesca, the facts are irrelevant. What matters is the smear. Defamation has its own ghastly dynamic; you can see that by counting the number of posters just on this thread who have not the slightest idea of anything about this case but are joining in with the denunciation. The same thing happened regularly in the Deep South after the Civil War until the 1930s, and it was a regular “feature” of life in Red China, and in Indonesia in the 1960s.

                  • francesca …
                    8 January 2019 at 10:06 am

                    Exactly, and there’s a very mobbish excitement in all of this I’ve witnessed before , it gives me a chill
                    We’ve got a punching bag here with his hands tied
                    Line up all you husky red blooded fellows!

                • te reo putake …
                  8 January 2019 at 9:36 am

                  Again I ask, have you read the post? It’s not about the list, it’s about the foolishness of exposing Assange to ridicule, which is why ‘the Streisand effect’ is in the title and talked about in the post. The second point is the hypocrisy of a self identified ‘transparency’ organisation trying to gag the media. I didn’t need to know what was on the list to write about that issue either. In short, Wikileaks have royally fucked this up.

                  • francesca …
                    8 January 2019 at 9:53 am

                    FFS
                    Gag the media my arse
                    Governments and monied up corporations do that
                    Whats here is a list of untrue statements that are repeatedly published as if true.
                    It is making quite clear that these statements are false, defamatory and libellous and why they are so
                    Many citations provided
                    Read the thing through and you might learn something
                    And spare me the faux concern for Assange “exposing him to ridicule”
                    Its people like you who do that very thing

                    • Morrissey …
                      8 January 2019 at 9:56 am

                      “Learning something” is irrelevant, francesca. All that matters is the defamation, the stream of accusation—whether fantastical or not, it doesn’t really matter after a while—and the constant belittlement and abuse.

        • te reo putake 8.2.1.2
          8 January 2019 at 9:02 am

          No, I’m being totally serious. I had no idea about his alleged personal hygiene issues until Wikileaks raised the matter. I do vaguely recall the cat legal case, but, again, until Wikileaks raised it, I didn’t know he’d been found to have the let the animal down.

          Again, this is the point of the post. If Wikileaks hadn’t have bought the Streisand effect down on Julian’s haloed head, little of this would be in the public domain. As a defensive strategy, this is the pits. It has simply exposed Assange to ridicule. And, to repeat another point made in the post, he’s isolated, alone, under pressure and now being laughed at. This cannot be good for him on a human level. What were they thinking?

          • Morrissey 8.2.1.2.1
            8 January 2019 at 9:08 am

            No, I’m being totally serious.

            Yes, you are. You deserve to be paid for this work, te reo. The likes of Luke Harding and James Ball and Mike Hosking get paid for their similar serious efforts on behalf of the intelligence services, but you’re doing it gratis.

            You could use this thread as evidence of your suitability for payment.

            • te reo putake 8.2.1.2.1.1
              8 January 2019 at 9:17 am

              Why do you assume I’m not being paid, Moz? The real question is whether the dosh is in US dollars, Russian roubles or the dead rodents that the alien lizard people use for currency.

            • Adrian Thornton 8.2.1.2.1.2
              8 January 2019 at 9:18 am

              @Morrissey, Interesting post and thread here, probably not a bad indication as to who would end up being the camp guards when push comes to shove…

              • Morrissey …
                8 January 2019 at 9:28 am

                I think of them more as the louts shouting and laughing at the government-designated target.

                Today it’s Julian Assange, but in the future it could be Nicky Hager, or Jon Stephenson.

                • Andre …
                  8 January 2019 at 9:36 am

                  Hager and Stephenson have the courage to front up to the authorities whose misdeeds they put in the hard yards to uncover. Assange doesn’t put in any hard yards to uncover anything nor has he the courage to front up.

                • Sacha …
                  8 January 2019 at 9:39 am

                  “Today it’s Julian Assange, but in the future it could be Nicky Hager, or Jon Stephenson.”

                  You’re telling us you see no difference in the character of those three men?

                  • Morrissey …
                    8 January 2019 at 9:43 am

                    They are all journalists who have incurred the wrath of governments for exposing the crimes of military forces.

                    That’s all that matters. You don’t believe those fantasies concocted against Assange, do you?

                    • Andre …
                      8 January 2019 at 9:48 am

                      Assange isn’t a journalist. He’s at best a middleman publisher. Apparently with some pretty twisted malicious partisan ethics.

                    • Morrissey …
                      8 January 2019 at 9:55 am

                      Assange isn’t a journalist.

                      Doesn’t matter what he is. You know what you have to do, and you’re doing it. Good man!

                      He’s at best a middleman publisher.

                      Whatever he is, he deserves to be destroyed. As we are told.

                      Apparently with some pretty twisted malicious partisan ethics.

                      ???? What are you talking about?

                    • Sacha …
                      8 January 2019 at 9:59 am

                      “That’s all that matters.”

                      In your world, so it seems.

                    • Morrissey …
                      8 January 2019 at 10:00 am

                      So now you’re accusing me of joining in the mob activity, are you?

                      And you forgot to answer my question: Do you believe those fantasies concocted against Julian Assange?

                    • francesca …
                      8 January 2019 at 10:41 am

                      Indeed, and here’s a list of Wikileaks journalism awards

                      https://medium.com/@AngelFox1/wikileaks-many-publishing-awards-fyi-2aa8c67ec631

                      Though I’m aware this has no weight against blind prejudice and hate

          • francesca 8.2.1.2.2
            8 January 2019 at 9:27 am

            TRP…Totally serious?
            I doubt your seriousness, taken up with personal hygiene and kitty litter as you are
            If by now you have read the 140 allegations you will have seen that the vast majority concern fictitious claims eg Manafort’s visit to Assange that never happened,
            Here’s another example
            “it is false and defamatory to deny that Julian Assange is an award-winning editor, journalist, publisher, author and producer who has won the highest journalism award in his country, the Walkley, among many others. [https://defend.wikileaks.org/about-julian/]
            It is false and defamatory to suggest that Julian Assange or WikiLeaks has ever, through intent or negligence, revealed a source [in fact, in the case of alleged source Chelsea Manning, the allegation by the State is that Manning spoke, in a knowing breach of WikiLeaks’ security rules, to a researcher for Wired magazine, Adrian Lamo, who promised him journalistic confidentiality, only to then inform on him to the FBI. Lamo subsequently died in March 2018, aged 37]. ”

            Way down the list are the petty personal assaults.These are the ones Reuters has chosen to highlight,crafted in to a hit piece, picked up verbatim by all other news sources, and pounced on by you
            Go to the source, read the allegations and the rebuttals, dont just lazily run with a Reuters piece without doing due diligence.

            Get serious TRP, if you’re going to publish a piece you know will be contentious, do the research.
            Its incredible to me that you were not aware that every single one of the 140 allegations has already been published, some of them many times.They have been out there in the public domain for some time.
            Pay attention
            Dont go for the easy sniggers

  9. Dennis Frank 9
    7 January 2019 at 11:37 pm

    Definitely an entertaining story! Is it appropriate here? Yeah, features left-wing stuff. I fully concur with TRP. Does JA deserve credit as a whistleblower still? Of course! Is he above criticism? Of course not!

    “LONDON (Reuters) – WikiLeaks on Sunday advised journalists not to report 140 different “false and defamatory” statements about its founder Julian Assange” in “an email sent to media organizations and marked “Confidential legal communication. Not for publication.””

    When a media organisation advises other media organisations not to report fake news, is that a political issue? Yes. Is it ethical? Ha! Depends if the news really is fake or not, eh? Truth lies in the eye of the beholder most of the time. Fake news can be proven so, but usually citations of it are mere assertions.

    As MS has demonstrated with his list of seven examples – if they really are taken from the invisible list of 140. From their advice: “journalists and publishers have a clear responsibility to carefully fact-check from primary sources and to consult the following list to ensure they are not spreading, and have not spread, defamatory falsehoods about WikiLeaks or Julian Assange.”

    Hard to argue with that. We expect media professionals to be accurate. However, media repetition of rumour is a thing, and always has been. Attempts to eliminate it from cultural practice therefore seem doomed to failure. Newsworthiness is an editorial judgment. Media owners and operators will assert their right to decide, and some will seek profit from providing consumers with interesting rumours regardless of their truth-content.

    JA, like Trump, is a walking illustration of the Shakespearean character-flaw theme on the global stage. Both are exemplars of narcissism, and generators of infotainment. Reuters notes that it was a 5,000-word email, so the issues at stake are considerable. Too deep for Twitter, by miles. We should probably thank them for keeping what Gordon Campbell calls `long-form journalism’ alive.

  10. ropata 10
    8 January 2019 at 1:41 am

    If Hillary Clinton wants Assange assassinated, then he must be doing something good in the world.

    Blaming Assange for Trump’s election is just puerile American MSM crap that nobody* takes seriously.

    Useful distraction from the real issues though

    (* with a functioning prefrontal cortex)

  11. WeTheBleeple 11
    8 January 2019 at 5:59 am

    The world is full of imperfect people – I’d wager 100% of them. But we like to cut down to size any who would stick their head above the norm, and especially if they should challenge the status quo.

    I remember when I kicked a bullies ass after the third assault on small guys (including stealing their boots) – he then convinced everyone he was a victim and I a bully as after I called him on his shit he came after me and subsequently wound up in Hospital. People are cowards and when you catch them out, they’re liars.

    This is, to me, the press complaining about Assange. It is Assange complaining about the press. It is a pathetic-go-round.

    How dare Assange have an opinion, being flawed as he is. How dare he be less than perfect. How dare he start to flake around the edges after all this pressure for all this time.

    Pick him apart. Join ranks and curse the stranger. Form long loud opinions over what his punishment should be. More detrimental labels, please.

    “Put him up against the Wall” – Roger Waters.

    • Morrissey 11.1
      8 January 2019 at 9:14 am

      The British and U.S. regimes and their de facto megaphones are not seeking to destroy Julian Assange because he has an opinion. They’re seeking to destroy him because of this…..

  12. Andre 12
    8 January 2019 at 7:07 am

    Here’s the list, allegedly.

    https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/01/140-things-wikileaks-says-reporters-cant-say-about-assange/

    Put your coffee down before reading it. If it’s a spoof, it’s a goody.

  13. Ross 13
    8 January 2019 at 7:30 am

    Naomi Wolf, a feminist author, is not known to casually defend rapists and yet she defends Assange. I can see why.

    Based on my 23 years of reporting on global rape law, and my five years of supporting women at rape crisis centers and battered women’s shelters, I can say with certainty that this case is not being treated as a normal rape or sexual assault case. New details from the Swedish police make this quite clear. Their transcript of the complaints against Assange is strikingly unlike the dozens of such transcripts that I have read throughout the years as an advocate for victims of sex crimes.

    https://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2011/02/11/something-rotten-in-the-state-of-sweden-8-big-problems-with-the-case-against-assange-by-naomi-wolf/

    • lprent 13.1
      8 January 2019 at 8:02 am

      Yep. Naomi Wolf describes my position on the Swedish allegations of “rape” against Assange. They are just dubious and stink to high heaven of other motivations than legal ones.

      Marianne Ny: Making an arse of Swedish law.

      The process used and the legal basis looked completely bogus right from the start. It looked like a way to attack Wikileaks and specifically to pull Assange into the hands of compliant legal domain so that he could be dragged to the US.

      Now that isn’t to say that I particularly like Assange or Wikileaks.

      Wikileaks has been useful in providing a way to throw light on to a variety of dubious practices by states and companies. But Wikileaks as an organisation have also been extremely careless and callous about the effects on various parties. They have a strong tendency to drop screeds of information and simple speculation out without bothering to read it themselves and to be responsible.

      It has impacted on people who really haven’t been doing anything worse than legally following their own paths and opinions.

      That lazy and arrogant philosophy that lies at the core of Wikileaks seems to come directly from Assange. He appears to be a anti-social narcissist and in my view I wouldn’t trust him.

      My view on Wikileaks isn’t helped by the deliberate campaigns by them (and presumably Assange) in the 2016 election campaign to smear Hillary Clinton. That was done with information of no particular transparency or political value that was quite clearly and carefully placed to cause the maximum political damage with its timing.

      Moreover the information was just as clearly sourced from the hackers of the security apparatus of the Russian government.

      In my opinion, that dropped Wikileaks from being a useful but flawed transparency outlet to just being another organisation of PR flacks spawning ‘facts’ that you can’t trust until you dig into their motivations for publishing it. You also have to start to wonder where they lying by omission.

      • Morrissey 13.1.1
        8 January 2019 at 9:11 am

        So you buy into those conspiracy theories propagated by the Clintons and their cronies. Do you have any evidence at all to justify your belief? Or is it a religious commitment to Saint Hillary?

        • lprent 13.1.1.1
          8 January 2019 at 10:45 am

          So you buy into those conspiracy theories propagated by the Clintons..

          Nope. I am also not some credulous dimwitted techno illiterate politico-religious fanatic in the way that you so often appear to present yourself (hey, if you want to try to frame a meme, then I am happy to present a mirror).

          Do you have any evidence at all to justify your belief?

          FFS: I’m a programmer who also runs websites, mail servers, and network systems both for work, for home, and for this site. I’ve done so at various level and with various systems since the mid-80s while the net has been growing. I am about as interested in political personalities as I am interested in reality shows or celebrity. My political ideas are almost entirely structural and tend to be being reluctantly socialist mainly because unconstrained market forces are completely useless at longer term planning.

          I’m also, when it comes to computer systems, completely uninterested in ‘evidence’ that you could take to court a decade after the intrusions happen. Only a complete technically illiterate jerkoff like you would be concerned about that kind of crap. It allows for the kind of ‘plausible deniability’ that so clearly makes your panties go wet with excitement as you engage in meaningless and simple minded ‘debate’ about the number of pins and angel can dance on… In other words, a legally based argument

          I’m interested in viable and likely threats. It doesn’t matter if it happens to be teenage script bunnies or opportunistic privacy illiterate like Slater and co, spam artists, security agencies, troll gangs, or just simply minded fools like you.

          With technical threats I look at the commentary around the nets by people concerned with network and server intrusions, not to mention the continuous and ongoing attempts to intrude into my systems. There is a hell of lot of it from various players. But intrusions from Russia, China, and the US being towards the top of the pile along with some bit-players from other areas. Russia and the US are the major politically interested parties and this isn’t hard for even my systems to track those kinds of attempts on my systems.

          It is my opinion that the likely source of the documents from the DNC and other sources presented by Wikileaks just prior to the 2016 election was most likely sourced from the Russian security and given to Wikileaks specifically to try to get Donald Trump elected. That also happens to the general belief around the tech-head areas of the net as well as every moderately credible security agency and company, both public and internet, that has looked at it.

          It follows the standard Russian hacker patterns that we have all become so accustomed to over the last 20 years. Just like the same patterns we see for the Chinese, the USA, spammers, google, and whoever. It also, at a political level, was far better for the Russian government to have a idiot like Trump as US president than a hawk like Hillary Clinton. This is hardly news. That was all that you saw prior to the election from the Russian media and even from parts of the Russian government.

          Now I have no idea of how you think the net operates, but we don’t work off evidence when we secure against threats. We work off threat levels and tend to get somewhat draconian about protecting our systems based on probabilities. Which means that everyone has been been securing against each of these threats as they arise.

          Now I don’t expect that very dimwitted indoctrinated fool like yourself can understand this concept of people making up their own mind. Personally I think that you seem to require your opinions to be spoon feed for you from something the Intercept because you your brain appears to be quite short of exercise.

          However I suggest that on this site you respect the opinions of others while disagreeing with them. That alternative is that I may indulge myself in actions to express my opinions about people trying to shut down robust debate about their opinions. I really can’t afford the time to write highly simplified explanations for you every day.

          • Morrissey 13.1.1.1.1
            8 January 2019 at 11:20 am

            NAPOLEON: [shouting angrily] …credulous dimwitted techno illiterate politico-religious fanatic… [anger-induced coughing fit]…simply minded fools like you…. dimwitted indoctrinated fool…[splutter]…. Personally I think that you seem to require your opinions to be spoon feed for you from something the Intercept because you your brain appears to be quite short of exercise. … [continues]….

            BREEN: [sotto voce, wounded] Bit harsh, surely?

            • lprent 13.1.1.1.1.1
              8 January 2019 at 12:42 pm

              Bit harsh, surely?

              Nope. I have a standing personal policy that if I see someone acting like a dickhead to others to shut down debate, then I am perfectly prepared to escalate in a reverse mirror form.

              I take whatever they do, multiply the same debate tools that they were using by a major factor with my own personal thoughts about them, intersperse it with thoughts on the subject and blow it back on them.

              This is my deliberate policy to ensure that people I run across involved in a public debate and who I consider have been acting like an arsehole learns to respect the other participants.

              On the net there are always much more effective arseholes around – ones who have been using those same tools and techniques for way longer. Most of the time they choose not be one. But there are always fools to educate or re-educate.

              If you don’t like the mirror response to one of your ploys, then I’d suggest that you don’t use or limit your use of the technique.

              I’d also suggest that trying to shift into the whining victim technique as you are doing right now really isn’t a solution. With me it just becomes a prelude to more education.

              Personally my usual response to that kind of pitiful whining is usually to escalate even more by one of the many techniques. Essentially to make the whiner look ridiculous in whatever they say – usually by poking into their shaky edifice of assumptions or just a simple torment escalation of seeing how fast I can make them get into a seething frenzy.

              And I like to do this clinically.

              Or you could simply decide to enjoy a robust debate without going off and trying to drown other people expressing their opinions. Learn to disagree with them without the pointless and stupid histrionics..

              Incidentally, I’d note that you didn’t manage to deal with any of the substantive points in my comment before starting to whine. Is that because you can’t provide a rebuttal or because you are so self-adsorbed that you can only think of yourself?

          • Dennis Frank 13.1.1.1.2
            8 January 2019 at 11:25 am

            “It is my opinion that the likely source of the documents from the DNC and other sources presented by Wikileaks just prior to the 2016 election was most likely sourced from the Russian security and given to Wikileaks specifically to try to get Donald Trump elected. That also happens to the general belief around the tech-head areas of the net as well as every moderately credible security agency and company, both public and internet, that has looked at it.”

            I came to that opinion too. Independently. It’s all about motivations, really. Folks who value their time do stuff when it’s in their interests. Perhaps Mueller gets off on being a conspiracy theorist. I reckon Occam’s Razor tells us Putin didn’t need to collude with Trump: they just knew their interests overlapped in regard to the election. So my prediction is that Mueller’s investigation is a unicorn hunt, and it will fail to find one.

            Not to suggest that he’s wasting time. It’s in the public interest that geopolitical collusion intended to subvert democracy is exposed – if it happens.

            • lprent 13.1.1.1.2.1
              8 January 2019 at 2:17 pm

              Sure and someone dug that information out of the DNC and other sites. It is a bit like the Don Brash revelations in the middle of the last decade in terms of where it could have been sourced and how. In that case the material certainly wasn’t hacked because of what the type of info was and how it was presented. Nor was it collected from another source like a e-mail recipient. It obviously came from within .

              With the DNC and other data from the rest of the democrat side, it was the inverse. It is really hard to get that kind of widespread data from anything else apart from wide well resourced hacking.

              Sure the US has agencies who can do that, and they are effectively inside that whole network. However bearing in mind the way that the US services operate, it’d have been very hard for them to access and collect that kind of data without having half of the rest of the security apparatus coughing up on them, not to mention that many of their allies security would have done it in a heart beat. But they have some pretty extensive tracking of access and use these days as a result of repeated exposures in the last decade. It would have been really hard to conceal from audits and other agencies.

              It would have certainly been exposed since the election because there was a hell of a lot of review after the election even if you exclude the Mueller inquiry or the congressional and justice inquiries.

              And because of the breadth of the hacks it was scaled at an operational level that was pretty damn high in required skills and resources to penetrate such a range of sites from the outside. There simply aren’t that many organisations who groups of people with that level of skills.

              And if you look at the other known players at that level in the tech community. It gets even clearer. The Chinese knew that they’d have a problem with a Trump presidency as did all of the Europeans. The other bit players like North Korea simply had no real motivation.

              But Russia sure as hell had motivations. They didn’t like Hillary Clinton as a possible president after the way that she’d been constraining them as SecState. She was way more hawkish on Russia than Obama.

              That also have the units with the technical skills. The various intrusions of their cybernauts into the nets of their bordering states over the last two decades has certainly proved that. And the intrusions came in with the distinctive styles of their units (and in computing ‘style’ is damn near fingerprint levels of authentication).

              Plus of course their public responses to the accusations was in the their characteristic arsehole ‘plausible deniability’ style of “no of course we didn’t do it (but we did (but you can’t prove it))” that is so distinctive a part of their operations that they should try to patent it – they are the only ones who use it. Hell – they have been doing that particular technique all the way back to at least the 18th century that I am aware of. You only have to look at the partition of Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in the 1770s-1790s to find similar examples.

              Essentially I have to think that those like M who try to insinuate that the Russian government was not involved in the US hacks against the democrats in 2016 all the way up to their eyeballs must have some interesting motivations and some pretty high levels of self-delusion.

              Sort of like the same levels as the odd idiots I run across who seem to think that the USA is a banner of democratic principle rather than being the prime example of how you can fuck democratic principles up.

  14. Morrissey 14
    8 January 2019 at 9:25 am

    Watch the following tape. It features a regime which was, after this incident, supported by the U.S. and U.K. governments for the next eleven years.

    How do you think individual members of today’s discussion group would have acted had this been available for our amusement or horror/outrage forty years ago?

  15. Nik 15
    8 January 2019 at 11:58 am

    my difficulty with this and most other news is I have no reliable basis to know which parts if any are the slightest bit true. especially when people love to hate someone so passionately, that intensifies the perceived sense of biased agenda. the news is like a frankfurter, marketed as nutrition but in fact a pulverised and reconstituted mess of god knows what.

  16. One Two 16
    8 January 2019 at 1:00 pm

    TRP has a knack for writing articles which garner high numbers of responses…this is another example…not one of the more well thought out examples, IMO…

    Given TRP’s long standing, unambiguous articles and commentary over a number of years about JA, delineating these articles from the author, is somewhat moot…

    We all just want to laugh at the person stupid enough to publicise the things they wanted hidden

    No, not everyone…Some of ‘we’ would like to get a clear enough picture of [any given subject] to have a chance to get close to ‘truth’….given that ‘truth’ is impossible in the human condition….

    JA is likely suffering mental health issues, which is not something that should be made light of….such as this article can be interpreted as doing….

    • te reo putake 16.1
      8 January 2019 at 1:32 pm

      Cheers, one two. I did raise the mental health aspect in the post and in a later comment. It’s one of the reasons this move from Wikileaks is so foolish. However, Assange is the author of his own misfortunes. If he’d defended the rape allegations in Sweden as he should have done, it’d be all over now. Even if he was found guilty, he’d have done his time by now and been free to go about his business.

      That’s the problem with martydom; it’s often pointless, painful and counter-productive.

      • One Two 16.1.1
        8 January 2019 at 1:40 pm

        If he’d defended the rape allegations in Sweden as he should have done, it’d be all over now. Even if he was found guilty, he’d have done his time by now and been free to go about his business

        Maybe….

        Speculation is all ‘we’ have, eh…JA could also be ‘missing’, or dead….

        I prefer not to speculate on unknowns…things which did not happen…

      • lprent 16.1.2
        8 January 2019 at 2:24 pm

        If he’d defended the rape allegations in Sweden as he should have done, it’d be all over now.

        Only if you think that being locked up in the US legal system (for anything from a grand jury to prison for espionage) means it was all over. Basically the inditements that have been exposed (by accident) in recent months show pretty conclusively that Justice Department was actively trying to create extraditable accusations stand up in particular styles of court systems.

        I think that he made the right decision not to go back to Sweden. I haven’t seen a damn thing that indicates he couldn’t have been caught up in an extradition to the US from Sweden. In fact I think that a request properly formatted would have received some prompt attention.

        Whereas from the UK it would have been pretty damn difficult for the same reason that it is hard to extradite Kim DotCom from here.

        • McFlock 16.1.2.1
          8 January 2019 at 3:12 pm

          Except that the only reason he wasn’t successfully extradited to Sweden was because he jumped bail in the UK. So why couldn’t the US have used the same process?

          • francesca 16.1.2.1.1
            8 January 2019 at 4:16 pm

            one opinion

            “Seeking asylum for a legitimate reason is different than “absconding”. The British government knew exactly where Julian was and what he was doing at every moment. He was in London in one of their embassies. They could have gone to him, met with him, at any time if they wanted to check his bail status. Here are definitions and synonyms for absconding. Julian Assange did none of these: absconding –

            leave hurriedly and secretly, typically to avoid detection of or arrest for an unlawful action such as theft.

            “she absconded with the remaining thousand dollars”

            synonyms: run away, escape, bolt, flee, make off, take flight, take off, decamp;

            make a break for it,take to one’s heels, make a quick getaway, beat a hasty retreat, run for it, make a run for it;

            disappear, vanish, slip away, split, steal away, sneak away, clear out, duck out;”

            • Morrissey 16.1.2.1.1.1
              8 January 2019 at 4:23 pm

              Doesn’t matter what he did, francesca. “Absconding” implies he’s a criminal, so “absconding” is the word to use.

              For the same reason, you’ll often hear the autocue readers on New Zealand television thoughtlessly and automatically informing us that Assange is “holed up.”

            • McFlock 16.1.2.1.1.2
              8 January 2019 at 4:30 pm

              He was on bail. He failed to follow the conditions of his bail by leaving the jurisdiction of the UK. Therefore he jumped bail. That is his bail status.

              • francesca …
                8 January 2019 at 5:43 pm

                It could be argued that he was unable to comply with the surrender order because he had been lawfully granted asylum, under threat of extradition for political reasons.
                Assange was granted asylum before the British issued an arrest warrant.

                • McFlock …
                  8 January 2019 at 5:53 pm

                  They tried the “political” angle in the UK courts. It got chucked out.

                  He was on bail.

          • lprent 16.1.2.1.2
            8 January 2019 at 4:17 pm

            I don’t understand the question the way you have framed it.

            Guessing… Ummm….

            Sweden is in the EU and so is the UK for a limited number of weeks. That means that there are requirements for them to respond to requests within the legal bounds of other member states (I’d have to look up what that is – European Arrest Warrant ) which is in the UK legislation.

            This means that the UK courts have few options on sending him to Sweden regardless of the offense. So this isn’t really a extradition, it is a just the exercise of an arrest warrant. Therefore it doesn’t have the usual protections that surround most extraditions. In particular not being able to extradited to the third country. Or of a principle of speciality preventing prosecution for other offenses than those on the extradition request.

            However the US just has a extradition treaty with the UK. So the rule sets are quite different. The UK requires equivalent offenses / processes. There is nothing similar in UK law to grand juries. So Assange can’t be extradited for a grand jury. He can’t be extradited for about half of the offenses that the US could try for because there is no equivalent. Many of the other offenses carry potential death sentences and the UK will not extradite on those (eg espionage).

            However Sweden has quite a different legal structure and a different extradition structure. https://www.government.se/government-of-sweden/ministry-of-justice/international-judicial-co-operation/extradition-for-criminal-offences/

            Many of a prosecution structures are similar. So grand jury in particular would be permitted. So would any offense that wasn’t a death penalty offense. There are protections for political or military offenses. However in this case arguing them would have probably been moot – they are designed for refugees from home governments. Not for a aussie who is being sought for a offense on the US. Many of the possible criminal offenses share a common structure between the US and Sweden that doesn’t exist with UK laws. That was because the US system picked up quite a lot of law from the Napoleonic Code. There would be quite a lot of offenses that could be used by the US that would match with US laws and which wouldn’t have the limits of UK law.

            As far as I can see, the only protection could have been the kindness of the Swedish government in not allowing a extradition and maybe the Swedish Supreme court somehow decreeing it to be a political extradition – which is what it would be. As has been pointed out elsewhere the Swedish government has a spotty record in this respect, and the Supreme court has sometimes been consulted after the fact with some extraditions.

            Basically if Assange wanted to remain safe from extradition to the US for political crimes, he was a lot safer staying in the UK than going to Sweden.

            • McFlock 16.1.2.1.2.1
              8 January 2019 at 4:39 pm

              Except that the UK courts in Assange’s Swedish extradition hearings dealt with equivalence issues in the differences between UK & Swedish arrest policies.

              I also suspect that, like with KDC in NZ, the extradition that the yanks might attempt from wherever will be for internationally-regarded crimes relating tangetially to the primary reason the yanks want him. E.g. if wikileaks gets income in the US and transfers it between bank accounts, by saying wikileaks did espionage the operating funds become illegal income and transferring between accounts becomes “money laundering” (which is illegal in most Western/Northern nations). So the formal extradition is for money laundering. ISTR that’s the argument regarding KDC.

              The other thing is that the only “spotty” case for the Swedes was a rendition soon after 911, at about the same time the UK was watching the yanks torture UK citizens. Frankly I think the UK is the more risky option, given that the Swedes would need to run an extradition to the US by the UK first.

              • lprent …
                8 January 2019 at 5:21 pm

                …given that the Swedes would need to run an extradition to the US by the UK first

                No they don’t – where in the hell did you get that idea from? That isn’t a restraint on the Swedish government or courts.

                It isn’t a extradition to Sweden. It is a simple EU arrest warrant. That means that the principle of specificity (which is what you talking about) simply doesn’t apply.

                BTW: Money laundering in the way that you’re looking at it is unlikely to be an extraditable offense in the UK. Or here for that matter. That is because in both jurisdiction of the relevant acts is related to the local jurisdiction. The prosecution for money laundering is usually where the money wound up. The latter is on a proceeds of crime type act – see something like https://www.lawteacher.net/free-law-essays/commercial-law/uk-law-on-money-laundering-commercial-law-essay.php for the UK. Ther eis a prosecution for the crime itself in the country where the crime occurred.

                • McFlock …
                  8 January 2019 at 5:32 pm

                  Yes, it was an extradition to Sweden. E.g., paragraph 1 one one of the UK court decisions (my italics)):

                  On 2 December 2010 the Swedish Prosecution Authority (“the Prosecutor”), who is the respondent to this appeal, issued a European Arrest Warrant (“EAW”) signed by Marianne Ny, a prosecutor, requesting the arrest and surrender of Mr Assange, the appellant. Mr Assange was, at the time, in England, as he still is. The offences of which he is accused and in respect of which his surrender is sought are alleged to have been committed in Stockholm against two women in August 2010. They include “sexual molestation” and, in one case, rape. At the extradition hearing before the Senior District Judge, and subsequently on appeal to the Divisional Court, he unsuccessfully challenged the validity of the EAW on a number of grounds.

                  So specificity applies.

                  On the money laundering, that was a from-memory re: KDC. I’m pretty sure they’re not trying to extradite him for the copyright stuff. Could be wrong, but one legal wrangle at a time 🙂

                  • lprent …
                    8 January 2019 at 5:37 pm

                    It might have been described as a extradition hearing. But it wasn’t done on what the usual international extradition laws provide. This is more like a transfer between states in a federal state.

                    The EU commission justice site is pretty clear on where they are trying to head on this. And the EAW has its own specific set of rules and the principle of specificity isn’t one of them. That is international law, not EU law.

                    • McFlock …
                      8 January 2019 at 5:49 pm

                      Ah. the term is “Speciality” and seems to apply to an EAW, as well.

                      Saves me linking to US and Aus references to inter-state domestic extradition.

                    • lprent …
                      8 January 2019 at 5:57 pm

                      Ah yeah. Looking at it I got spell checked badly the first time and then kept repeating.

                      Happens when I’m programming . English has piss-poor compilers.

                      Interesting about the EAW. I am damn sure that when I researched this a few years ago looking at the cases on the 2003 UK extradition Act (which changed to allow the EAW), this was one of the discussion points about how this diminished the principle of speciality.

                      I’m starting to make mistakes in the code as well. Time to stop trying to fix this c++/cli crap and head home.

                    • McFlock …
                      8 January 2019 at 6:07 pm

                      I couldn’t remember the term from the last instance of the Assange argument, either.

                      It does open up say an Algerian in Sweden being extradited to Italy on an EAW for fraud, orchestrated by the French because they reckon Italy will be a softer touch for an EAW to ship the guy to France on trumped-up terrorism charges (because Algeria), so it is a bit weaker – it’s just not a blank cheque for the US.

                    • lprent …
                      8 January 2019 at 9:28 pm

                      Sure. On the other hand that kind of gaming has been in there ever since extradition was first legalised (1833 in Belgium according to Britannica).

                  • lprent …
                    8 January 2019 at 5:51 pm

                    KDC: They were trying to get him on a racketeering and money laundering charges based on wire fraud originally . The racketeering has no equivalent in NZ law – the criminal conspiracy doesn’t transfer. The money laundering is irrelevant because of our local proceeds clauses. That would be a separate subsequent case in NZ for what is here.

                    The extradition case has pretty much devolved into relying on NZ criminal fraud laws.

                    The principle of specificity gets interesting at that point because I doubt that the US could try him on racketeering or money laundering now. Not to mention that the US justice department failed to attempt to actually follow process for a lot of their actions – which will hurt their case under US laws.

          • mauī 16.1.2.1.3
            8 January 2019 at 9:29 pm

            Except that the only reason he wasn’t successfully extradited to Sweden…

            I didn’t think you could be extradited for questioning? I thought you had to be charged and he hasn’t been charged to my knowledge.

            • te reo putake 16.1.2.1.3.1
              8 January 2019 at 10:02 pm

              Sweden issued an arrest warrant in late 2010, maui. He was ordered to be extradited on that basis by a British court in early 2011. He appealed and lost. He appealed again and lost again. It was after that final appeal in late 2011 that he broke his bail and did a runner.

              I imagine different countries have different thresholds for what triggers an extradition request. However, once issued, the arrest warrant was valid Europe wide, so the British courts would have needed some pretty good legal reason to overturn it. In three separate hearings, they found no reason why he shouldn’t return to Sweden.

            • McFlock 16.1.2.1.3.2
              9 January 2019 at 12:35 am

              Your “knowledge” is inadequate:

              But, even if the court was constrained to determine whether someone was an accused by solely considering the question of whether the prosecution had commenced, we would not find it difficult to hold that looking at what has taken place in Sweden that the prosecution had commenced. Although it is clear a decision has not been taken to charge him, that is because, under Swedish procedure, that decision is taken at a late stage with the trial following quickly thereafter. In England and Wales, a decision to charge is taken at a very early stage; there can be no doubt that if what Mr Assange had done had been done in England and Wales, he would have been charged and thus criminal proceedings would have been commenced. If the commencement of criminal proceedings were to be viewed as dependent on whether a person had been charged, it would be to look at Swedish procedure through the narrowest of common law eyes. Looking at it through cosmopolitan eyes on this basis, criminal proceedings have commenced against Mr Assange.

              154. In our view therefore, Mr Assange fails on the facts on this issue.

              TLDR: He was in the process of being prosecuted for sexual assault when he left Sweden.

      • Drowsy M. Kram 16.1.3
        8 January 2019 at 3:00 pm

        “Martydom” [sic] seems a pitiless pejorative – ADS?

        https://www.counterpunch.org/2016/10/21/roaming-charges-trumps-naked-and-hillarys-dead/

  17. Morrissey 17
    8 January 2019 at 1:38 pm

    “However, Khashoggi is the author of his own misfortunes. If he’d defended the disloyalty allegations in Riyadh as he should have done, it’d be all over now. Even if he was found guilty, he’d have done his time by now and been free to go about his business.

    That’s the problem with martydom; it’s often pointless, painful and counter-productive.”

  18. Kerry 18
    9 January 2019 at 10:05 am

    So u either support Assange or u support mike hosting!? Get a grip! Both are talentless arseholes who peddle there own brand of lies!

    Assange has proven time and time again his only concern is HIMSELF…..oh and his good friends trump and Putin!

    • Morrissey 18.1
      9 January 2019 at 10:22 am

      I’ve seen several posts on this thread that are quite remarkable for their ignorance and their malice. I’ve perused Kiwiblog and Whale Oil and Russell Brown’s sad site. So I thought that I was inured to the fatuous, the footling, and the frabjous.

      But equating Assange and Hosking? Take a bow, fool: you are officially the stupidest person on the Internet today.

      [Way too abusive, Morrissey. Apology, please. TRP]

  19. Roni Klinkhamer 19
    24 January 2019 at 1:50 pm

    How low can you go.
    You should be ashamed of yourself.
    Vichy-reporters.
    Your level is sickening.
    Disgusting you are.
    Shame on you!
    You are vicious with all your slanderous twisted fakenews.
    That’s the reality standard: you’re a fake and anybody with some sense knows that.
    We see right through you, Your abuse and intimidation.
    Now the world is watching you…!