Assange™: Hey world, I'M STILL HERE, ignore that Snowden guy Head WikiLeaker Julian Assange™ has said he is planning to leave the Ecuadorian embassy "soon", but neglected to say exactly when. In a press conference arguably designed to satisfy Assange's need for global attention more than the world media's thirst for clues about his future plans, the WikiLeaks founder dodged questions on …
Two downvotes by 'tards who think 'Filth' means Assange, and one from a Police groupie? Or vise versa? Or....
In hindsight, 'the filth' may have been a bit esoteric for some of the 'tards on here.
I should have made it easier for the mentally challenged by using a different slang term for the police such as po-po, pigs, bacon, 5-0, narcs, bobbies, peelers, babylon, bizzies, etc.
Also some people are sociopaths and love downvoting posts for no reason at all... It doesn't bother me.
Ross wrote: "downvoting... doesn't bother me."
A whole post to explain yourself because you noticed some down votes? Do you have any self-reflection at all? Anyway, your posts were just bad on many levels: humour, comprehension and information wise. That's all that there's to it. But keep looking for that "other" reason if that makes you happy...
We no longer care, oh, hold on - we never really cared to begin with.
Speak for yourself. True, I don't particularly care about Assange per se, but I do care about the predicament in which he finds himself.
Given what passes for American justice, due process and punishment, I believe he has every reason to fear for his future. That he chose to break the law in jumping bail and effectively imprisoned himself rather than risk being extradited shows what a terrible state of affairs we have.
There, but for the grace of god...
"Possibly because it has a history of turning a blind eye to the actual rules?"
Poor argument - it would still be easier to get him out of the UK. The British legal system struggles to protect its own citizens, let alone an arrogant, hypocritical self-publicizing foreigner.
"What a stupid thing to say, I don't intend on declaring a war on another country or landing myself on the moon. But most people are interested in things that happen outside of their own little world."
What a stupid thing to say.
Clearly I was being at least slightly ironic given that I'd not only read an article about it, but cared enough to add to the comments section...
Heavens forbid that Julian Assange should forego any publicity at all. I rather suspect that the whole story is contrived simply to provide him with a vestige of publicity. Shame he couldn't have done that 2 years ago and saved his backers the bail money and the taxpayer the cost of (as I hear Chelsea police refer to it) Operation AssEgo.
It might be worth your pondering the fact that due to oversight, and regulations, the vast majority of the police (in this country at least) are almost guaranteed to be less corrupt than members of whatever profession you are engaged in.
Whilst police work might nominally attract a certain personality type that likes to beat up on hippies in bean fields, the vast majority of officers are over-worked, underpaid and far too busy buried under piles of paperwork to be kyboshing anyone with their batons, and if they did, they would have to explain the footage from their bodycam to their superiors, or face some very tricky questions about why it was turned off.
what?
like the pig wot killed that bloke in London that wasn't even part of the protest?
Took years to get him out of his cushy job (despite his previous) and he avoided bird, but he murdered someone on the six o'clock fucking news!
do me a favour.... guv.
"if they did, they would have to explain the footage from their bodycam to their superiors, or face some very tricky questions about why it was turned off."
Really?
Let's ask the family of Ian Tomlinson, murdered by a member of the Police for the crime of Walking Home. What did the Police do? They lied. Repeatedly. Until independent footage proved that what eyewitnesses said had happened. Whereupon they decided not to press charges agains the Policeman who had attacked Tomlinson.
Or what about Jean Charles de Menezes, executed (yes, EXECUTED) by the Police for "Lookin' a bit foreign".
What did our valiant Police force do? They lied. And lied. And lied. They closed ranks. They decided that nothing wrong had happened, and decided not to press charges against any of the multiple officers who had held him down before pumping SEVEN bullets into his head at close range (out of 11 bullets fired over 30 seconds).
They claimed he had leaped over the ticket barrier when they'd shouted for him to stop - even though it was proven he'd used his Oyster card and walked through the ticket barrier and the police hadn't shouted for him to stop. They claimed it looked as though his heavy overcoat was hiding a bomb, even though he wasn't wearing such an overcoat. They lied and lied and closed ranks and lied more.
Not exactly the Dixon of Dock Green culture you claim, Loyal Commenter...
Don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting that incidents of police brutality and corruption don't happen. The Menezes and Tomlinson cases are shocking and a sad reflection on the forces involved. It is worth noting that the officers involved in these were a) a special 'anti-terror' firearms unit, and b) riot police. both are far from the rank-and-file of the vast majority of police employees.
I won't argue for a second that what the police did in either of these cases was right, and that the cover-ups that followed were not a disgusting indictment of the Met. One would hope that the lessons learned have been applied and that this sort of thing is less likely to happen in future. I'm not naive enough to think that a problem does not exist.
However, extrapolating this behaviour to all members of the police, across the entire country, is grossly unfair to the vast number of honest, hard working officers.
The introduction of body-cams is a good thing in that it records both the conduct of the officer, and the public towards them. If an officer decides to get over-zealous with his truncheon and he is wearing a body-cam, he'll have a hard time denying it. Conversely, if he has to deal with a violent drunk who attacks him with a broken bottle, and later claims he was assaulted by the police, the evidence is there to show what actually happened. I would hope that the correct oversight is taken in storing and retaining such evidence, as it goes a long way to restoring public trust in policing, which on the whole, in this country is very fair and even-handed. I would also hope that it manages to root out the bad apples in the barrel, and when tragedies such as Menezes do happen, provides evidence as to who was ultimately responsible.
I reserve judgement about those being of any use until after the first couple of cases where people claim injustice and the tape actually backs it up and leads to proper punishment (which, just to be clear, is not "we left the back door open, Jim, walk out and retire now with full benefits, and the matter needs not be mentioned again"). As opposed to, say, the public screaming for the tape while the cops go "What's that...? We can't hear you..."
To be fair, the definition of a press conference is a meeting to gain media attention.
Obviously in this particular case he is an attention-whore. It's interesting that Ecuador's foreign minister was just whining in the Guardian about how the UK had apparently violated his human rights by not letting him flee from justice, but forcing him to face his accusors in court like anybody else.
He even had the cheek to say to the Guardian that only his legal team and the government of Ecuador were behaving reasonably. I don't know how the UK could have been any more reasonable. He brought his troubles here of his own accord, was given bail, a transparent legal process and the right of appeal.
Admittedly I don't approve of the European Arrest Warrants, because they're open to abuse from legal systems that are worse than our own. But I wouldn't say that about the Swedish system. And Assange can't really claim that either, given that he applied for residency in Sweden not much before running away from the place - which makes his arguments about US extradition look rather rubbish.
Although I do believe that it is important for Assange to remain somewhat in the news (am I the only one who's thought after reading this was: "Whoah, 2 years already?") I also can't help wonder if this doesn't work against him as well?
Because I know in the beginning the British government had posted police agents outside of the building to make sure that he didn't come out. I can't help wonder if that was still the case after these two years (I simply don't know). Because if it wasn't the case then surely there should have been some option to get out of the country, optionally with the help of the embassy personnel?
As to wikileaks... I still think we need something like this. I've always wondered; the media's attention has always been pointed at Assange as the one who caused all the misery and drama, and of course also the person who is to blame for all of it.
But the thing is; if the people who's crimes (because that's what they were at times!) hadn't committed those in the first place they would have been in the clear and Assange would have had nothing on them to publish.
Even so; there still seems to be this tendency that Assange is the bad buy, and strangely enough: everyone seems to easily forget about the people who's crimes he has pointed out in public.
Because what ever happened to those criminals? And don't give me "for the greater good" please, because that was also more or less the argument when it came to the US invasions in Iraq and Afghanistan and well; its kinda hard to keep under lids I guess, but it's anything but good over there. The situation in Iraq has even gone worse and downhill really fast. I'd say Iraq has become more of a threat to world peace than it has ever been before.
My view on this is simply that there where (and still are) superior whistle blowing websites out there.
Non of their 'founders' found it necessary to change their mobile phone every couple of days and travel incognito and only stay in associates homes.
Additionally the other sites always seemed to release more relevant information than WikiLeaks used to reveal.
But then again the likes of Cryptome (for example) didn't have a narcissistic (oops sorry charismatic) leader, who tried to claim ownership of stolen material (sorry Julian it's not yours).
You also fucked over just about everybody that did support you, threw crap at the Guardian when you didn't get your own way and you are still bleating.
BTW you where a shit hacker and coder too
Let's keep the various issues separate - that Assange is trying to conflate them doesn't mean we have to follow that.
1 - Wikileaks. WL lost in my eyes all credibility the moment they threatened to release all material they had at once if any of them were harassed/arrested/whatever. If I were a government I would have called that threat immediately because from a media perspective I would have a few bad days and that would be that. I could live with the breaches of the law if they served the common good, but if disclosure is used as a lever we've entered the realms of blackmail. But OK, let's assume for a moment they fulfil a function somehow not covered by other sites such as Cryptome.
2 - Assange™. Assange <> Wikileaks. It was self evident early one that for Assange, the goals of Wikileaks were secondary to his own image building. Unfortunately, Assange comes with a lot of baggage and (judging by events) a collection of bad habits, with a variable approach to personal hygiene apparently the most innocent. Assange is not even smart - the mess he is in now was entirely of his own making and was avoidable if he had not chosen to go into hiding instead. If Assange /has/ any talent, it is the talent to consistently pick the worst option out of any selection, and the ability to truly believe hos own BS.
The US won't touch him - not only are they not interested in making a martyr out of him, but Assange has also already demonstrated that his approach to being in a hole is to order mining equipment. Being smart for a change, the US leaves Assange well alone, and so starves him of the oxygen of attention he so desperately craves.
3 - The Bad Stuff Out There. Assange is a textbook example of how NOT to deal with that. We do need to press for more transparency in the use of powers granted to government, that is a political issue. We do need to make sure that people taking the decision to go public with Bad Stuff are protected, insofar that their disclosure could not have been done any other way, and insofar that the disclosure is limited to waking up the public and the authorities and nothing more. The "let's throw it all on the street" approach is IMHO dangerous, and for balance it must be possible to get the story from the other side too (here too, we must assume innocence before guilt).
I have in the past couple of weeks dealt with a case of entrapment where someone's account was hacked and offensive images were placed, after which the police was tipped off, so watching the Cliff Richard thing play out without an ability of the accused to defend themselves is exactly the kind of "crucifixion by press" that will be used by anyone who wants to smear someone's reputation or use such as a threat to compel collaboration (I have admittedly also ended up with a complete disrespect for the police's approach to "investigation" which is aimed at ignoring as much as possible any signs that the person under investigation is actually innocent, partly because out of ignorance of how things actually work - think someone barely able to use Windows making "official" assertions about Linux).
We must be careful with vigilantism because we may end up being used and become pawns ourselves. Let's not forget that the need for whistleblowing flags issues that should have been caught MUCH earlier, and we must work to improve the sort of transparency that will show up abuse, and the sort of ethics that avoids certain bad decisions. Personally, I think the latter will be the hardest work of all.
In this context, Snowden has acted with far more responsibility. I am glad that Assange was unsuccessful in trying to associate himself with this to get a slice of that publicity.
Those are, of course, my own views, but I believe that anyone who states that Assange's rights have been "violated" is casually overlooking the fact that if it had been anyone else he would have been already shipped back to Sweden instead of first pushing the case as high as it could go under UK law. I hope he comes out soon, I can full understand that he's getting ill. Heck, I already get that after ONE box of Ferrero Rocher, let alone 2 full years of it...
watching the Cliff Richard thing play out without an ability of the accused to defend themselves
I'm not sure how you think the CR thing is playing out, but as far as I am aware, his main complaint was that he was not forewarned that the police would be raiding his home. Forgive me for my naivete, but I was not under the impression that it was common practice for the police to forewarn suspects. Something to do with destroying evidence. The South Yorkshire police have also been very explicit in stating that the BBC contacted them, because they had been tipped off by a third party, rather than the other way round. It seems like the current attitude of the police is to NOT tip the press off in cases of investigations into celebrities, and everything the police have done in this case seems above board to me.
The identity of the third party that tipped the press off has not been revealed AFAIK, but it could be any one of a number of people, from an alleged victim, to their friends, or relatives, to someone bugging a police station - any guess is just that - pure speculation. We have been told that it was not the police, and we have no reason, other than suspicious minds, to question that.
CR has also been given the freedom to make public statements (which he has done). As a multi-millionaire, it's not as if he doesn't have the resources to defend himself. The cynical might suggest that the timing of the raid (when he is out of the country) is precisely because of the resources that CR may have at his disposal to make things turn out in his favour (rightly, or otherwise).
Lets let any evidence come to light, and the police investigation complete before we jump to any conclusions. Unless you are directly involved in the police investigation (are are the accused, or alleged victim), you are not in full possession of the pertinent facts to make any sort of judgement.
"The South Yorkshire police have also been very explicit in stating that the BBC contacted them, because they had been tipped off by a third party, rather than the other way round. It seems like the current attitude of the police is to NOT tip the press off in cases of investigations into celebrities, and everything the police have done in this case seems above board to me."
Perhaps - but then they're missing the point that if it wasn't the police that tipped off the Beeb, then who was it? If it were only the police aware in advance, then the only logical conclusion is that the police leaked it to someone else, who then leaked it to the Beeb. I'm not sure that keeps the SY police squeaky clean - it got out somehow..
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