August 28, 2012

Ron Paul, Julian Assange, Glenn Greenwald and the Libertarians’ Electoral Strategy

Ron Paul gave his speech in Florida Sunday night, at some distance from the convention that had offered him a time slot only if he would cleanly endorse the GOP nominee -- and only if party censors could preview his text

The Libertarians are the third largest political party in the US: in every election, they collect a few tenths of a percent of the vote. If each and every Libertarian voter rustled up several hundred new Libertarian recruits, they’d become a major force. But they haven’t done that yet. The Libertarians did win an electoral vote, once, back back in 1972, but it wasn’t because they cooked up a big mess of organized dialing and door-knocking: an elector, pledged to vote for “Tricky Dick” Nixon, simply pulled his own dicky trick and voted the Libertarian ticket. The GOP does not quickly forgive or forget, and though Paul might call himself a Republican, everybody knows he’s really a libertarian. Suspicion clearly remains, that Paul (like the faithless elector of 1972) is ready to betray the GOP for his Libertarian friends

So Paul spoke Sunday at the Sun Dome, not at the Times Forum. Some of what he said there is actually interesting -- but only because it is very very unoriginal. Paul called Bradley Manning “the equivalent of Daniel Ellsberg” and said “Manning hasn’t caused the death of anybody”. He complained that Sweden, under US pressure, was pursuing false charges against Julian Assange and would extradite Assange to the US for prosecution

The Libertarians, of course, have wandered forlornly for decades, hoping to pick up whatever support they could wherever they could. Back during the Vietnam War, for example, Libertarians often tried to recruit with the hook that they would legalize marijuana. And there were reports last year that Libertarians flocked to Occupy! events in hopes to win converts there. So one might wonder: has Paul just stumbled as an opportunist into Assangist territory?

But there really might be more to the story. The cypherpunk culture, that spawned Assange, had laissez-faire libertarian sympathies. And Assange calls himself a libertarian. He called himself a libertarian in a 2010 interview with Forbes; he called himself a libertarian on 60 Minutes in 2011; and he called himself a libertarian while pretending to consider a run for the Australian Senate in 2012. More precisely, Assange self-identifies as a free-market libertarian who dislikes regulation. His personal libertarian ideology would explain why Assange was eager to take credit for Climategate: when he later gushed "We released over ten years of emails from the CRU and those climate scientists!" maybe he was just thrilled (as a friend of free markets and foe of regulation) to have played a role in scuttling the Copenhagen Summit

Various Libertarians manage to repeat the very very unoriginal tale Ron Paul was telling in Florida in support of Assange
Raimondo, for example, firmly believes “the contest between Julian Assange and most of the world’s governments” is “a clear cut case of good versus evil” -- then trots out the now-familiar theory in which female Swedish CIA assets honey-trapped Assange to force him to face a kangaroo court in Sweden before being extradited to the US for detention at Guantanamo

Another well-known Libertarian, who plows these fields regularly and diligently, is Glenn Greenwald, associated with the Cato Institute. The day after the November 2010 election, Glenn Greenwald addressed Paulites in Wisconsin to discuss the possibility of splitting progressive voters away from the Democrats. Greenwald’s strategy then included Libertarian support for Citizens United, Bradley Manning, and the Tea Party, as well as attacks on Obama, in the hopes that the Democrats would lose still more seats in 2012

... Paul went on to defend, as he often does, the WikiLeaks leaker Bradley Manning, comparing him to "Daniel Ellsberg, who told us the truth about Vietnam." He suggested, again, that Julian Assange is being railroaded on false charges ...

The End of Ron Paul and His Selective Patriots
By John H. Richardson at 1:02AM
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/ron-paul-tampa-speech-12091867


Ron Paul Stands for Manning and Assange
By Michael Tracey • August 27, 2012, 7:50 PM
http://news.xydo.com/toolbar/69719254?subject_id=1151


The Cypherpunk Revolutionary: Julian Assange
Robert Manne
The Monthly | The Monthly Essays | March 2011
http://www.themonthly.com.au/julian-assange-cypherpunk-revolutionary-robert-manne-3081

... I’m not a big fan of regulation ... WikiLeaks means it’s easier to run a good business and harder to run a bad business, and all CEOs should be encouraged by this ... A perfect market requires perfect information ... So as far as markets are concerned I’m a libertarian ...

An Interview With WikiLeaks' Julian Assange
Andy Greenberg, Forbes Staff
11/29/2010 @ 5:02PM |911,599 views
http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2010/11/29/an-interview-with-wikileaks-julian-assange/

... Assange prefers to be called a libertarian ...

Julian Assange gushes to “60 Minutes”
Monday, Jan 31, 2011 06:18 AM EST
By Adam Clark Estes
http://www.salon.com/2011/01/31/assange_60_minutes_video/

... In his first interview since declaring his intention to run for the Senate in the next federal election, Mr Assange said he ''could be described as a libertarian'' ...

Assange: what I'll do in the Senate
March 27, 2012
Philip Dorlin
http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/political-news/assange-what-ill-do-in-the-senate-20120326-1vupq.html#ixzz1qJWQhL6S

... “There is clearly a significant level of support for Julian Assange which crosses party lines and is more concentrated amongst Greens voters” ... Assange announced plans to run for Australia’s 76-seat Senate in March, vowing to be a libertarian and “fierce defender of free media” were he elected to the upper house ...

WikiLeaks chief has ‘real chance’ of election: poll
Sun, May 20, 2012
AFP, SYDNEY
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2012/05/20/2003533290

Wikileaks Greatest Hits: Climategate
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10021162614

If there was ever a clear cut case of good versus evil, then surely it is the contest between Julian Assange and most of the world’s governments ...

Raimondo Article: Assange's Last Stand
Submitted by reedr3v on Fri, 07/06/2012 - 12:19
http://www.dailypaul.com/243445/raimondo-article-assanges-last-stand

Glenn Greenwald
http://www.cato-unbound.org/contributors/glenn-greenwald/

... Ron Paul is the only political figure with any sort of a national platform — certainly the only major presidential candidate in either party — who advocates policy views on issues that liberals and progressives have long flamboyantly claimed are both compelling and crucial....

Progressives and the Ron Paul fallacies
The benefits of his candidacy are widely ignored, as are the Democrats' own evils
Saturday, Dec 31, 2011 11:15 AM EST
By Glenn Greenwald
http://www.salon.com/2011/12/31/progressives_and_the_ron_paul_fallacies/

At a talk given the day after the 2010 election — one that was a disaster for Democrats — “progressive” writer and civil liberties lawyer Glenn Greenwald gave a talk at the University of Wisconsin, and expressed the hope that Democrats might suffer the same fate in 2012.  Greenwald’s ... approach to politics that got members of the Young Americans for Liberty — a Paulite Libertarian group that co-sponsored the event — excited ...

Re-rise of the Naderites: Glenn Greenwald’s third party dreamin’ **UPDATE: on Libertarianism
http://blog.reidreport.com/2011/04/re-rise-of-the-naderites-glenn-greenwalds-third-party-dreamin/

August 26, 2012

Wikileaks Greatest Hits: Steve Jobs' HIV test report

As countless fans worldwide thrill to the breath-taking adventures of the brilliant journalist and dare-devil Julian Assange (who is currently planning a long vacation in Ecuador to avoid the Saudi feminist movement in Stockholm), it is worthwhile to pause and remember Wikileaks many selfless efforts to improve life on our planet

And so, today, we bring you yet another delightful historical vignette: Steve Jobs' HIV test report

When Steve Jobs died last October, Wikileaks promptly launched a small media campaign to call everyone's attention to a 2004 medical report showing that Jobs had tested positive for HIV. But the medical report was quickly exposed as a fake

... The document is a fake and one which the site has previously linked to in 2008. The most obvious clue that the document is a fraud is the fact that the results, supposedly from 2004, are from a company titled SxCheck – which was not founded until 2006. Julian Assange’s Wikileaks linked to the image of the document minutes after Jobs’s death was announced ...
Friends and relatives gather at Steve Jobs’s California mansion as shrines pop up across the globe
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2046297/Steve-Jobs-dead-Friends-relatives-gather-mansion-shrines-pop-globe.html

... Just minutes after news broke that Steve Jobs had died, Wikileaks tweeted a link to "purported Steve Jobs medical records." The link goes to a torrent file for a couple images of test results from a company called SxCheck which supposedly show Steve Jobs tested positive for HIV in 2004. They're obvious fakes — most obviously because SxCheck wasn't even founded until 2006 — and even Wikileaks concludes "the images should not be taken at face value" ...
Wikileaks Honors Steve Jobs with Fake HIV Report
http://gawker.com/5847341/wikileaks-honors-steve-jobs-with-fake-hiv-report

Maybe Assange was hoping to snag a columnist position at Weekly World News?

August 25, 2012

Who is Julian Assange? By the people who know him best

The son, the saviour, the fugitive, the friend, the man. He also has an odd craving for Vegemite
guardian.co.uk, Friday 24 August 2012 18.00 EDT

... The first time I met Assange, he was convinced a sniper was targeting him through the windows of a conference centre. A few hours later, he was happily typing in front of the same windows. I asked why he believed he was a target. "I can't tell you," he said. Then, five minutes later, he did. He told me I should come to Washington DC for a press conference. Why? I can't tell you. Again, five minutes later, he told me about the Collateral Murder video.

Assange attributed his drive to his first experience with power as a young man (hacking into the email of a Pentagon general). I said maybe I liked investigating politicians' expenses because that had been my first big investigation as a student. "No, it's different when you're a young man." Can't women be driven the same way? "No, they're not." It was a definitive statement, no supporting evidence needed ...

I later heard from two other women who said Assange pulled the same "poor little lost boy" trick on them in an attempt to finagle his way into their homes. I said that was not how I conducted interviews. He complained that I didn't have a maternal instinct, adding in drama-queen fashion: "I have two wars to stop."

I replied: "Yeah, it's a tough life being a messiah." His response left me speechless: "Will you be my Mary Magdalene, Heather? And bathe my feet at the cross" ...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/aug/24/who-is-julian-assange?newsfeed=true

August 22, 2012

Two years ago, Assange agreed to be a columnist for the Swedish paper I linked

So they must really be pretty pissed at him to be calling him a coward in print now

http://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/article12427473.ab

August 22, 2012

The Man Who Spilled the Secrets (Vanity Fair | February 2011)

By Sarah Ellison

On the afternoon of November 1, 2010, Julian Assange, the Australian-born founder of WikiLeaks.org, marched with his lawyer into the London office of Alan Rusbridger, the editor of The Guardian ... He was .. angry, and his message was simple: he would sue the newspaper if it went ahead and published stories based on the quarter of a million documents that he had handed over to The Guardian just three months earlier ...

An unwavering advocate of full, unfettered disclosure of primary-source material, Assange was now seeking to keep highly sensitive information from reaching a broader audience. He had become the victim of his own methods: someone at WikiLeaks, where there was no shortage of disgruntled volunteers, had leaked the last big segment of the documents, and they ended up at The Guardian in such a way that the paper was released from its previous agreement with Assange—that The Guardian would publish its stories only when Assange gave his permission. Enraged that he had lost control, Assange unleashed his threat, arguing that he owned the information and had a financial interest in how and when it was released ...

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2011/02/the-guardian-201102

I assume that a February 2011 Vanity Fair is an acceptable source to you, since Jemima Khan, who put up a large chunk of Assange's bail money in December 2010, is European editor-at-large of Vanity Fair -- and this article was written well before Assange jumped bail in June 2012

Now, there are several striking peculiarities here

First, Assange trades in stolen documents, over which he sometimes claims ownership, and he is arguing that it is for him, as owner of the stolen documents, to decide when and where and whether he releases them in order to claim yet again his self-awarded mantle as The Great Protector of Transparency

Second, Assange believes that other people ought to be subject to the rule of law and the decisions of the courts, but he doesn't not believe he himself ought to be subject to the rule of law and the decisions of the courts

August 22, 2012

... Passions were stirred by a debate on the BBC’s Newsnight programme on Monday,

when former British ambassador Craig Murray named one of the women making allegations against Assange and encouraged viewers to research her background on the Internet.

Murray labelled the allegations “dubious” and said they were part of a “political agenda”.

The programme’s anchor rebuked him for naming the alleged rape victim on live television. Fellow guest Joan Smith, a columnist at the Independent newspaper, said some left-leaning men were “queuing up to cast aspersions on these women” because they were sympathetic to Assange’s political stance.

Rape or politics? Assange sex case divides Britain
Poll finds men more sympathetic to Assange than women
By Estelle Shirbon, Reuters August 21, 2012
http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Rape+politics+Assange+case+divides+Britain/7123856/story.html

August 21, 2012

Wikileaks Greatest Hits: The Venezuelan ambassador's emails

As millions of fans worldwide cheer the amazing accomplishments of Julian Assange, who recently set a world record sprinting from house arrest in London, it is worthwhile to pause briefly to remember Wikileaks selfless efforts for a better world

And so, today, we bring you yet another delightful historical vignette: the Venezuelan ambassador's emails

But first -- a bit of background!

And now -- still more background!

And here’s even more background!

Which finally brings us to the decisive light that Wikileaks shed on this fascinating subject!

Some people have enjoyed the two old Borev links on this

Cash-Stuffed Suitcase Splits Venezuela and Argentina
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/14/world/americas/14argentina.html?_r=1

'Suitcase Scandal' Goes On In Argentina
http://www.forbes.com/2008/01/17/argentina-chavez-kirchner-cx_0118oxford.html

She found her 15 minutes inside a suitcase scandal
http://articles.latimes.com/2008/feb/17/world/fg-suitcase17

Fotos de María Lujan Telpuk en Playboy – La chica de la valija
http://www.blogerin.com/fotos-de-maria-lujan-telpuk-en-playboy-la-chica-de-la-valija/

Chávez and the Cash-Filled Suitcase
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1838145,00.html

Suitcase full of cash adds to Chavez corruption claims
http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/2008/sep/21/usa.venezuela

Breaking News: The WikiLeaks People Are Funny Morons
... Of course, just about everybody on the "courtesy" list is a Spanish speaker, and nobody at WikiLeaks speaks Spanish, so they ran their stupid courtesy message through an online translation service, with predictable results ...
http://www.borev.net/2008/09/breaking_news_the_wikileaks_pe.html

Great Moments in Transparency
So a reader got one of those "courtesy" letters from Wikileaks explaining that his name and personal information were about to be made public because he had gotten a group Email once from this Freddy Balzan person. Only he'd never heard of any Freddy Balzan so he wrote them back an Email saying, "WTF?" and "Don't." And then Wikileaks Director Julian Assange wrote him back an ugly note calling him, quote, "insane" ...
http://www.borev.net/2008/09/great_moments_in_transparency_1.html

LA INFORMACION SECRETA NO PUBLICADA DE WIKILEAKS
... The existence of information like this, hosted on the servers of wikileaks but not published, should lead to the question: what does wikileaks do with this information? How did wikileaks acquire this information and why does it have it, if it does not publish it online? ...
http://cmpopulares.bligoo.com.co/content/view/1145059/LA-INFORMACION-SECRETA-NO-PUBLICADA-DE-WIKILEAKS.html#.UDMiPtD--ko

August 20, 2012

Why doesn't Sweden interview Assange in London? (Anya Palmer)

... In the Swedish system formal indictment takes place at a very late stage in proceedings, following a second and final interview with the suspect, and in the case of a person in pre-trial detention, trial must follow within two weeks ...

(3) Sweden recently interviewed a murder suspect in Serbia; why can't Assange be interviewed in London?
This argument has been doing the rounds on Twitter recently. Here's the newspaper report they commonly link to ...

This report dates to 22 March 2012 and says that Swedish investigators have travelled to Serbia to interview a 21 year old man suspected of the murder of a 26 year old man in Uppsala. However, there is nothing in the report to suggest that this is the second interview prior to charge which Assange is now required to undergo. The report says that Swedish police and investigators "have now interviewed the 21 year old man" which clearly suggests they had not interviewed him previously.

In Assange's case, he already had his initial interview on 30 August 2010 before he left Sweden. So to compare his case with that of the 21 year old interviewed in Serbia is simply not comparing like with like ...

http://storify.com/anyapalmer/why-doesn-t-sweden-interview-assange-in-london?utm_campaign=&utm_medium=sfy.co-twitter&awesm=sfy.co_e56c&utm_content=storify-pingback&utm_source=t.co

August 20, 2012

The Blog that Peter Wrote: Assange

... He is Wanted in Connection with a Rape Investigation ...

The Stockholm District Court made an arrest order against Mr Assange, which he then challenged in the Swedish Svea Court of Appeal. They examined the case in detail and determined there was probable cause and his arrest was justified ...

He has had a full hearing before the Senior District Judge and Chief Magistrate at the City of Westminster Magistrates Court on his extradition. It ordered his extradition to Sweden to face investigation (note, he is only the subject of an arrest warrant there and has not yet been charged). Mr Assange appealed this order to the High Court. It found against him. He appealed to the UK Supreme Court. It held against him ...

After the Supreme Court ruling went against him, he skipped bail and sought refuge in the Embassy of Ecuador before his deportation was scheduled to take place (commencing 28 June 2012). He has therefore committed a separate criminal offence in this country for which he is wanted ...

http://pme200.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/assange.html?m=1

August 20, 2012

Legal myths about the Assange extradition

A brief critical and source-based guide to some common misconceptions.
By David Allen Green Published 20 August 2012 13:49

Whenever the Julian Assange extradition comes up in the news, many of his supporters make various confident assertions about legal aspects of the case.

Some Assange supporters will maintain these contentions regardless of the law and the evidence – they are like “zombie facts” which stagger on even when shot down; but for anyone genuinely interested in getting at the truth, this quick post sets out five common misconceptions and some links to the relevant commentary and material ...

Assange has been afforded more opportunities to challenge the warrant for his arrest than almost any other defendant in English legal history. This is hardly "persecution" or a "witch-hunt".

The English side of the process is now almost over: there is a valid European Arrest Warrant which has to be enforced as a matter of international law ...

http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/david-allen-green/2012/08/legal-myths-about-assange-extradition