Be Excellent To Each Other

Assange refused bail on the grounds that he hadn't turned himself in previously (although the police had continually been made aware of his location, according to his lawyer) and "for his own protection".

Fucking hell.

That's some Kafkaesque shit. To coin a phrase.

Would that be a shit that you can only do when you don't need to do one?

Losing your Swiss bank account - £30,000
Daily legal fees for two high-priced media lawyers - £10,000
Losing access to PayPal for donations - £500,000
Picking up Jemima Khan on your way to court - PRICELESS

There are some things money can't buy. Including bail, in your case. For everything else there's ... oh, hang on, we pulled your Mastercard access. Hell, there's nothing you can buy now. MWA HA HA HA HA HA

Yours, the CIA, the Illuminati, the Board of the Military-Industrial Complex and the Swedish Feminist League.

I think there is something quite sinister about this whole Wikileaks organisation. The lot of them should be imprisoned and their assets frozen. The guy who runs them looks like a 1980's Bond villain as well.

Because....?

They are terrorists who wish to undermine our society and are being funded by the giant lizard people. Possibly.

Never trust a man who looks like a Bond villain. It'll all end with a fight on an airship over the Golden Gate Bridge, trust me.

[EDIT]
Cut, so as not to get my wife in trouble.

Quick, leak that story!

I'm sure The Guardian would be interested in that

Jesus!
Get that out there, 'fur!

REDACTED.

CLEARANCE DENIED.

Wow.

So am I right in thinking the yanks will get him now?

Because once he is in Sweden, they will extradite him. I think I saw someone say that on twitter, but can't find it now.

YOU ARE NOT PERMITTED TO READ THIS POST

Yeah. I did think that was brave

What was cut!?!?! I demand transparency!

Or a PM

Well, it was all factually correct. But it's not my neck on the line, so there we are.

Was it his story about Al Fayed and the open crotch cardigan?

Yeah, sorry. I need to stop banging on about that.

Oh the stuff I miss by not monging on here all day.

[pages Grim.. for Twitter feed of all posts]

Oh, THAT.

Just in case anyone is interested, one of my colleagues is taking part in a webcast on the whole wikileaks thing for therealnews.com

http://www.therealnews.com/freeinternet/

Paul Jay, senior editor of The Real News Network, will moderate a virtual panel discussion promoting a dialogue for the technology community about the technological and legal ramifications of the WikiLeaks shutdown.

Topics to be discussed include:

What does the cut off of service to WikiLeaks mean for the future of the Internet?
Will digital journalism be less protected?
Was WikiLeaks afforded procedural protections before its website and DNS entries were shut down? What process should be required?
The Internet is vulnerable to internal threats. What technical innovations are needed?
Can leaks ever be stopped? Is it worth the price?

Please stop linking to that cunt's blog, man.

If Alastair Campbell's decrying something as a conspiracy theory, dollars to doughnuts there's something to it.

Also, what kissyfur said.

Well, Anonymous are now stomping their big internet boots about in that delightfully subtle way they have.

Stolen:

Where did you steal that from? I want to tweet it.

Edit -- never mind, found it. http://twitter.com/#!/LunaSlave/status/ ... 7488515072

A similar thread on RLLMUK.

http://www.rllmukforum.com/index.php?sh ... &p=7568786

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B004EEOLIU

Buy the Wikileaks cables from Amazon; Mastercard and Visa accepted.

Heard a good one today.... Sarah Palin has called for Julian Assange to be killed because he made public something she didn't like, so what exactly is the difference between her and the Islamic extremists who wanted the Danish cartoonists dead?

Yeah, I saw this sentiment floating around too. Or Salmon Rushdie, for that matter.

Sarah palin is fit, as as far as I am concerned can say what she wants because all I hear is "I love you MaliA" when she speaks.

Huckabee is being even more crazy. Hang the people who leaked it to him!

Has Assange broken any laws outside of the USA? I can't work it all out.

It's not even clear that he's broken any in the US.

Between her and Stiles you're properly mentally ill, Mali.

Consider: what laws has be broken that haven't also been broken by the editors of the Guardian, the New York Times, etc? Is anyone calling for those editors to be executed? How would be public react if they did?

Publishing information, which Assange did, is specifically protected under that constitution thingy doofah wot Palin and Huckabee are so in love with.

The Guardian, NYTimes, and the other newspapers with early-access deals in place with Wikileaks have also published (edited) contents of the cables.

And Wikileaks is supposedly republishing the things the papers do, after the papers do - so redaction (or lack thereof) is actually the papers' doing.

There was a "good" comment by Aaronovitch about it, saying something along the lines of "Actually, I'd prefere it if our diplomats could say stuff confidentially to others" which is what I agree with.

The rest of it, I am considering my opinion. Part of me thinks "LOL", the other part thinks "Shit, this could seriously damage relations with other states". I suppose it is like bridesmaids whispering at a wedding.

As a final thought, any "Human Rights, Freedom of Expression" argument falls on dead ears to me.

To conclude, it's quite interesting, I can see why some are upset and some are reacting the way they do, but, frankly, we've got more shit to worry about than whores in the Middle East.

There was a "good" comment by Aaronovitch about it, saying something along the lines of "Actually, I'd prefere it if our diplomats could say stuff confidentially to others" which is what I agree with.

The rest of it, I am considering my opinion. Part of me thinks "LOL", the other part thinks "Shit, this could seriously damage relations with other states". I suppose it is like bridesmaids whispering at a wedding.

As a final thought, any "Human Rights, Freedom of Expression" argument falls on dead ears to me.

To conclude, it's quite interesting, I can see why some are upset and some are reacting the way they do, but, frankly, we've got more shit to worry about than whores in the Middle East.

It's kind of like that bit in Goldfinger, where Connery single-handedly ruins Bond by not liking The Beatles. You build these people up in your mind and they end up just letting you down.

"There's that cunt with the red shirt again."

When it's US companies turning local ten year old boys into whores in the Middle East, I'm not convinced we do have more to worry about. It demonstrates the world's greatest power is completely under the thumb of the major corporate entities it hosts, and shows a complete attitude of contempt towards the very idea of ever working with Middle Eastern nations as equals. It's fucking disgusting.

Personally, I go with 'hey, politician type dudes, if one Private can supply Wikileaks with all this information, imagine what the moles you have higher up are supplying to their handlers.'

As much as Anonymous are a bunch of pricks, sometimes you just have to applaud.

Wait, what?

Another example of the success of making Assange the story rather than the content of the leaks.

I agree that diplomats etc. need to be able to speak their minds, but, y'know, the people holding the data should have been more bloody careful, and secondly, the reaction of a lot of government figures to this is fucking pathetic. Both in terms of trying to deflect attention onto this one person (as though nobody will pop up to replace him now that it's clear that the US government hates it - just like with flag burning, their massively childish reaction has merely guaranteed that there will now be ten times as much interest in doing what people might otherwise have got bored of doing), and in terms of sheer childish whining. How about holding your hands up and admitting you were caught, guys? Every other politician in the world knows they have their embarassing secrets too,a nd you can't deny what's already out there. Might as well take the hit and learn a lesson instead of invoking TRRRRRSM laws and calling for executions.

This is all getting extremely weird. The primary accuser in the rape case has now apparently completely stopped co-operating with the Swedish authorities and gone off to help out relations in the Middle East, decamping to the Palestinian Territories. Recent tweets suggest she in fact is supporting Assange and Wikileaks in all this.



http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/12/assa ... ng-police/

So the Swedish have brought no charges, and if the above is true are unlikely to. The US are pursuing extradition on unspecified charges (I suspect they've not written them yet), against an Australian citizen who wasn't in the US when these activities occurred. And Assange is sitting in Wandsworth prison after being denied bail. What on earth is going on?