While I find Dotcom to be a epitome of a shill, I doubt Greenwald or Snowden would back this particular claim if they truly believed it was false.
Both Snowden and Greenwald have choosen to honour the truth above their own safety and security. Both of them are also acutely aware of the fact that standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Dotcom reflects poorly on their own integrity.
Maybe the USG leaked this email as a 'false flag' in order to make Greenwald look a fool when it gets proved as false, or it is true, and Greenwald and Snowden are right to back Dotcom in this particular argument, whether or not he is a crook or not.
A US movie company doing back-room deals (on behalf of the USG) with NZ politicians, in order to get someone extradited for alleged copyright infringement is just downright dirty and a waste of public money. It is corrupt corporatism at it's finest.
If it is true, I hope the shit hits the fan. However, as many others have pointed out. The fact that a politician is dirty is not an automatic guarantee that the voting public won't vote for him.
"shill"? That implies he's working for anyone but himself. "Colourful racing identity" is the usual Australian euphemism, I'm sure there's a New Zealand equivalent.
Really, the amazing thing the US did with MegaUpload was to make Kim Dotcom look like a hero by comparison ...
A main question for me is how dotcom got hold of his email. There is no mention that it came from Snowden's leaks or similar, though it appears that this is what Dotcom is wanted everyone to believe: host an event highlighting mass surveilliance of NZ citizens, publicise an email hours beforehand, hope everyone conflates the issues and thinks that the legitimacy that Greenwald and Snowden lend to the surveillance event is passed onto the email.
Personally, I doubt the CEO of a major company like WB would send an email outlining this kind of agreement, especially when he says that Key told him 'in private' that such and such would happen. I'm not saying it didn't happen but would the CEO of a major movie studio be careless enough to put this in the clear in an email? Half the employees of a place like WB are lawyers...
The first rule of email: if you do something incriminating, don't use email. Oliver North and many many others after him have shown that people are simply stupid.
From small time crooks to big time politicians and a whole spectrum of stupid people in between the 'incriminating email' seems to be a staple element in the arsenal of prosecutions the world over. I don't see why CEO's of major corporations should be exempt. See recent revelations regarding collusion by big companies to depress engineers salaries.
Time will tell, the problem with email is that you can't really shred it and that it likely has passed through some points in between where at least the headers got archived.
What I'm curious about:
- if the email is not fake, how did GG ascertain that it isn't
- if it isn't fake how did KDC get hold of it
- if it isn't fake does Key really believe that he'll get away with doubling down?
- if it is fake how did GG miss that? (it will damage his rep badly)
- could it be a case of misinformation?
- if it is a misinformation attempt, who is the target?
This is going to end badly for at least one party.
The email text seems just too juicy to me, but stranger things have happened and turned out to be true. Not releasing the email+headers is a strange move. That would make it harder to deny it if it is real, at the same time it might allow for removal of remaining traces of evidence.
While that is true, do you imagine that Greewald and Snowden are stupid enough not to validate their sources? They own integrity is on the line here, and Greenwald in particular is trading on that integrity, and the entire Firstlook.org integrity is riding with him.
Either the USD has sold him a complete dummy and Firstlook is dead in the water, or the claim is true.
Greenwald didn't mention this supposed email once. He talked about the mass surveillance of NZ citizens only, evidence for which is pretty substantial. That is something he would have validated. No one, as far as I can tell, has said that Dotcom's email came from Snowden or Greenwald or anyone connected to them.
The problem is one of juxtaposition. Imagine standing next to Al Capone when he's showing a letter from a congressman implicating a whole industry. You might not have anything to do with the subsequent fall-out, especially if the thing turns out to be a falsification. But it will still tarnish your reputation. The only way it will not is if it turns out that it is all true. And all that would not even require you to open your mouth.
- The Kim Dotcom "big reveal" is out - and has almost immediately been dismissed as a fake.
- The "reveal" is an email which purports to show Prime Minister John Key involved in a plan to get the internet entrepreneur into New Zealand so he could be extradited to the United States.
As far as I can see at the moment it's just been dismissed as a fake by the people who allegedly sent/received it, and they would deny it, regardless. That does put Dotcom on the back foot and with a burden of proof, but it's not yet game over.
As a New Zealander, I have not felt more disgusted by a Prime Minister since Muldoon. This isn't news to those of us in the tech sector with experience in NZ - but it's amazing for international hero's such as Glenn Greenwald, Edward Snowden and Assange speak out so publicly about the grease-bag that is John Key and his party. Apologies for the loaded wording, I feel very passionately about the freedom of New Zealand.
It would also be good to have more engagement of non-citizen New Zealanders this election also!
For non-Kiwis... New Zealand is one of the very few countries in the world where non-citizens are allowed to vote in national elections. Permanent residents who have lived in NZ for only 1 year can register to vote, though they don't have to. They're not allowed to become citizens until they've lived in NZ for 5 years however. This is in stark contrast to nearby Australia where only citizens vote, just like in most other countries, but their unusual electoral situation is that its citizens must vote (or be fined).
Actually Australians don't have to vote, they are required by law however to attend a polling station on polling day or have registered for a postal vote and returned the postal vote envelope. The actual vote papers can be blank, or indeed you can write in if you want; even for people who aren't on the official ticket (i.e. you can legally vote for Mickey Mouse). If a write in gets enough votes they are free to accept the position. In Australia you are also required by law to be on the electoral roll if you are eligible. In short in Australia suffrage is universal (for citizens who are of majority age; currently 18) and mandatory.
Australia is behind the times in this respect. Voting is a right, not an obligation and non-participation is a form of protest against the system as a whole rather than a forced choice between multiple options none of which you may agree with.
I disagree. Voting is a responsibility, hard won through history and still not a privilege available in all countries. As pointed out by the parent post you absolutely do not have to agree with any of the options. 50% of the population spoiling their ballot paper would be a massive statement and precipitate political upheaval. 50% of the population not bothering to show up just says they don't care.
50% of the population not showing up shows there is a huge problem.
There are only 22 countries left in the world where voting is compulsory and only a few of those are countries that have good reasons for that rule.
As soon as your country appears in lists that also contain 'North Korea', 'Congo', 'Lebanon' and 'Thailand' when it comes to political matters you really have to wonder if you're on the right path.
The only countries imo which have a legitimate reason to make voting compulsory are those that are so small that the statistical basis underlying the decisions taken based by the people voted for would be removed.
A vote is a 'poll' just like every other and you don't need a 100% sample in order to reach statistical significance.
I'd be very suspicious of any elections that did have 100% turnout.
Having lived in a non-compulsory voting country for my entire life (US), the 50% turnout rate (more or less) is deplorable.
In my mind, there are two points about compulsory voting that are nice:
1) The government must make voting available (various Republican-lead areas in the US are trying to reduce voting hours to limit voting for poor and minority voters)
2) Employers must make it possible for employees to take the time to vote (no consistent protections currently)
I'd take compulsory voting in the US just to say "fuck you" to the various groups that have been disenfranchising female, poor, and/or minority voters for generations.
> I'd take compulsory voting in the US just to say "fuck you" to the various groups that have been disenfranchising female, poor, and/or minority voters for generations.
Those organizations probably would embrace compulsory voting without making it easier for the targetted groups to vote in practice, because they'd probably see being able to punish them for not voting an extra bonus on top of disenfranchising them in the first place.
I mean, do you think campaigns would stop blanketing neighborhoods expected to vote for the opposing candidate with false information about voting times and locations if the payoff went from "they don't vote, improving our chance of winning" to "they don't vote, improving our chance of winning, plus they are compelled to pay fines for not voting"?
I would assume that canvassing with false information would then become a federal crime, as it would be a conspiracy to prevent a legally compulsory act. Add in bounties for whistle-blowers who can show conspiracies like this, and internal greed will prevent these types of shenanigans.
Voting is a fundamental right to self-expression and self-determination. And I think that any attempt to prevent a citizen from voting or preventing a legitimate vote from counting (barring votes that are unable to be interpreted) should be considered treason.
> I would assume that canvassing with false information would then become a federal crime, as it would be a conspiracy to prevent a legally compulsory act.
Lots of the suppression tactics that are like this (as opposed to the suppression-disguised-as-anti-fraud efforts) are already federal crimes. Doesn't stop them from happening.
Making voting compulsory wouldn't change this (nor would it stop people from proposing anti-fraud efforts that make voting more difficult in practice. Just because voting is compulsory for people who are qualified doesn't mean that there aren't non-citizens and criminals who are forbidden to vote, and that you can't sell bureaucratic "safeguards" that make it more difficult for qualified people to prove that they are qualified in order to vote as mechanism to prevent the unqualified from voting.)
A sample has to be random to be valid, turnout isn't just like any statistical sample as it isn't random. Statisticians use turnout models to predict what polls (which do try to be random samples though have bias from other areas) say about election outcomes.
Having to show up means there is a compulsion in effect, whether or not you have to make a choice is between you and the piece of paper (otherwise you are violating another principle of a good voting system: that it is secret what you voted).
The situation (quoted from the WP page) is precisely this:
"Compulsory for federal and state elections for citizens 18 years of age and above. The requirement is for the person to enroll, attend a polling station and have their name marked off the electoral roll as attending, receive a ballot paper and take it to an individual voting booth, mark it, fold the ballot paper and place it in the ballot box."
So your participation in the election process is mandatory.
I'd wager the vast majority of the people so compelled to show up at the polling stations will actually vote. This should be easily testable. The proof would be that in Australia the total number of votes as a percentage of the population is high compared to other countries that do not have mandatory participation and that the number of blank or defaced ballots slightly higher than it would be in a country without compulsory voting (those would be the people actually using their vote as a protest vote).
You forget that mandatory voting also mean that minorities and other "difficult" groups also don't have to make excuses as to why they are voting and also that everything is done to make them votes (since it's mandatory). An employer can't refuse a employee to go voting for example.
Minorities or 'difficult groups' (whatever they are) have a right to vote, so they can exercise it if they want to. No excuse needed! This is about being compelled to participate, not about wanting to go and needing an excuse. You never need an excuse, there is an election in progress and you exercise your rights.
Do you have examples of places where employers can interfere so easily with the right to vote?
Are polling stations in those places only open during business hours?
Are the rights of citizens in those places subject to the whims of employers?
That would make for an interesting situation.
I'm not aware of any place where a company could stop its employees from voting if it wanted to do so, but that's an interesting perspective. I don't really understand what voting being mandatory or optional has to do with that though.
>Do you have examples of places where employers can interfere so easily with the right to vote?
In the US.
It has not been too many years since minorities were harassed if/when seen going to the polls. On the other end of that stick there is the fact that minorities were paid/coerced into voting a certain way.
It is definitely not the case that an employer can prevent employees from voting specifically, but they can arrange the workday in such a way as to make it inconvenient for certain employees. Example: Salaried staff can be given time off to vote while hourly staff are told to work overtime; not to mention the fact that salaried workers tend to already have accumulated paid time-off, where hourly workers have none, or less.
You need to pay a lawyer to sue, and you need to pay a lot for a lawyer that will win. The US legal system is "pay for play", despite claims and general belief to the contrary.
@jacquesm: I suspect what the parent was saying is in the face of Jim Crow laws or even implicit or subliminal discouragement of minority voting (whatever the cause or reason).
So if there are such laws then they would contradict each other, in that case you have a completely different problem, putting your constituents in the position of having to comply with one law (for instance compulsory voting) or the other (for instance a law to take away the right to vote) but never able to be compliant with both laws at the same time.
Implicit or subliminal discouragement of minority voting would not stop with a compulsory voting law, it would just make those influenced now subject to breaking the law and subject to fines beyond merely (I use that word lightly) being dis-enfranchised.
Such discouragement should be dealt with through the criminal justice system, rather than by forcing everybody to vote.
As you probably realize (or maybe not) I am categorically against nation states forcing their subjects to perform certain acts, be it military service, compulsory voting and many others beside because I think in the aggregate nothing good can come of it.
In the case of compulsory voting, fortunately most countries have seen the light for this lowest-of-all-barriers protest against the way a particular slice of society is run, and 'voter turnout' is a good bell-weather for how well a country is actually representing the interests of its constituents.
Well, we have it in Brazil. In the last 12 years the government effectively implemented a scheme to trade votes for money using social programs. The only thing preventing this country to go the Venezuelan way is the press being a bit stronger here.
I suspect the illiterate crowd would travel to the nearest beach and spend their social programs money on beer if voting was not mandatory. That is why I want voting to be optional.
Actually the fine isn't trivial; the last time I saw a news article about someone being fined was ~2002, from memory the fine was AUD$500 (approximately USD350 then, more now). Having said that it isn't actively enforced, so much so that when someone is fined it quite often makes the news (even if local).
As will I - I'm not for or against any party other than knowing that National has always failed NZ due to corruption and dirty politics, here's the link for international voting information: http://www.elections.org.nz/events/2014-general-election/vot...
As far as I know, this is the first time Snowden is directly penning an article. He even has a staff page [1] now on The Intercept. This is interesting because to me because "At the NSA I routinely came across the communications of New Zealanders in my work" is much more impactful than "Snowden stated that he routinely came across the communications of New Zealanders in his work as an NSA Analyst".
> That said, I think that ideologically, all of these men are absolutely on the same page...
I don't think even they would agree to that.
KDC is a serial criminal/fraudster with a ton of convictions to his name that will pursue a buck no matter what he has to do for it.
Glenn Greenwald is a journalist who will not be pushed or pressured into behaving as governments believe he should, who has taught a superb lesson in ethics to a large swath of the journalistic profession. He's this generations Woodward or Bernstein, take your pick.
Julian Assange is a person that I respect on a professional level for what he's done with WikiLeaks but who quite probably has some flaws and possibly something to answer for in his private life.
I think that's a little unfair to KDC; at the very least, it is no more a complete picture of the man than "John Doe is a felon" is of anyone else. There are a lot of other people who see Assange as nothing more than "rapist on the run".
Dotcom hasn't stopped fighting his imprisonment and the seizure and loss of his equipment, business, and customers' data, even though he's already won far more than maybe anyone else in his position could have hoped to win in this age. He easily could have gone back home, moved to another country, and faded into obscurity; instead, he relaunched the service that got him into so much trouble in the first place, and has seemingly made it his mission to embarrass the governments involved as much as possible.
Whether his motives are entirely selfish, for his own aggrandizement -- as I suspect they probably are -- or more altruistic, I'm still glad he's pouring so much of his resources into this.
Apologies for being unclear, I was mostly responding to the bit that states that I'm being 'a bit unfair' to KDC. I think it is very fair and that he's simply a bad puppy. If he accidentally does something useful while he's pursuing his selfish goals then great, but that's not his first and foremost interest, most probably merely a convenient vehicle for his ambitions.
I'm having trouble understanding how you're able to give Assange and Dotcom different treatments.
I'm not trying to pick a fight here, I'm genuinely puzzled. You're having a similar argument with idlewords, but in defense of Assange; your comment upthread acknowledges that Assange has "flaws" and "something to answer for in his personal life", but when it comes to Dotcom, it sounds like you've got a much stronger negative impression of him.
This isn't really that important I guess. I should probably just drop it. It just seems weird.
(FWIW, I've defended Assange too in other conversations, but with full knowledge that he probably is guilty of a sex crime under his country's laws; likewise with Dotcom, after his release. It's good that the battle against mass surveillance doesn't require saints, since we don't get to pick allies for their winning personalities.)
KDC has shown a structural disregard for the law and his victims to line his own pockets, this is not a one-time affair or something that you could claim is a mistake, an accident or something done half drunk, and he's been convicted of those crimes. It is to me beyond any doubt that he's a common criminal, he's merely found a nice little gray area in which he can operate using the proceeds of previous criminal activities to launch a new operation. He's basically doing what every criminal that is whitewashing his money and reputation has done.
Julian Assange has done a whole pile of things that seemed to have been for the common good (no profit motive as far as I can discern, you can of course debate whether or not they really were for the common good but that's out-of-scope), he's been too hungry for the spotlight in my opinion and has made WikiLeaks eventually more about him than about the data, this was definitely a mistake. I don't think WikiLeaks ever needed a figurehead. By making himself a figurehead he's become an Achilles heel to WikiLeaks and that in turn coupled with his flaws has led to his public downfall and a ton of damage to Wikileaks.
Where I draw the line is that (1) his motives for running WikiLeaks for the most part seem pure and that (2) Everything KDC does is to enrich himself at the expense of others and that he's been convicted of crimes that are directly related to such activities.
This makes them very different kinds of characters in my opinion.
You serious? Leaves calamity in his wake. All about populist policies without a great deal of substance. Parallel IMO is along the lines of doing whatever suits him and maybe incidentally benefiting others along the way.
Yes, the Australian business guy. Do you follow a lot of Australian news and social media? He is a political wrecking ball seemingly with the priority of inserting himself into the debate over anything else.
In addition to your comments, the fact that Snowden and Greenwald are prepared to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Dotcom shows me, that they are prepared to put their own integrity (which is everything to both of them) on the line, because they believe these claims to be true.
That or the USD has false flag leaked the information in order to make Snowden and Greewald look stupid.
However, considering the lengths Greenwald went to in order to make sure he wasn't being stitched up by Snowden, the likelihood is that he has correctly validated his source.
Time will tell, but yeah, Kimble is a shill. He stitched up a load of people here in Germany back in the day to save his own ass.
I am surprised that Greenwald and Snowden are choosing to reveal all this at an event that seems to have been orchestrated by Dotcom and prefaced by his typical self-publicising exaggerated rhetoric.
KDC is pretty much the anti-hero in this whole saga. While I don't really respect him as a person, I also don't believe it was fair/correct for what happened to him and I'm glad he's helping the cause against dragnet/mass surveillance.
Regardless of my distate for KDC, I have to say: I disagree.
Given the allegations * regarding the illegal involvement of state security apparatus in his case, I can totally see that this event represented an ideal platform for everyone participating.
Though KDC did use the event to plug products & services, that wasn't the focus of the event. In his shoes, I think you'd have to concede that he'd have been an idiot not to do so.
EDIT: I assume your "No" is a reply to "Stop complaining". Unfortunately, your attitude reflects a "No" to the stepping up part as well. Which is fine, if your goal is to complain rather than to change things :)
In fact, the central problem here is how to step up and be part of the solution. It's a question I ask myself, and one that you should consider asking yourself if you care about the issues at hand.
No. If you couple a good thing with a bad thing, you make it hard. I won't share this with my friends because I would not want to advertise Dotcom's personal agenda as byproduct. This is similar to politicians of the wrong parties saying this one might agree with. One has to be careful what implications are part of a package.
It's interesting how many people have grown so desensitized to the content being presented that they're back to slinging mud about the credibility of the persons delivering the content. I'd say regardless of what you may think of Assange, Dot Com and Snowden personally, the presentation was excellent and raised an extremely valid critique of the state of Western surveillance. Perhaps we all need to stay on point.
Will any of this really make any difference? I feel that, in the long run, it won't.
Edit: And to further clarify my question (since I'm being down-voted for a very legitimate question)... I know a lot of smart people and none of them (as in 0 of them) seem to take any notice to these conversations. There is a lot of apathy towards mass surveillance.
Sure, the conversation comes up a lot on HN but HN is not a very good sample of the general public.
It's making a difference. Maybe not the difference we all want, but the Snowden Leaks have made the National Surveillance Agency a worldwide topic of conversation.
Surveillance was sold to the public under vague terms: "we only use it to catch terrorists", "it's for your safety", "nobody's reading your email", "if you're innocent, you have nothing to worry about" ... and now there's solid evidence that these are all lies, and have been lies for a long time.
The man-on-the-street might be OK with surveillance to catch terr'ists, but they're not OK with a more personal form of surveillance, where someone, somewhere, might be looking at them at some point.
So our job is to continue to have these conversations about what kind of surveillance is actually happening, and what the implications are. New Zealand has been politically apathetic about surveillance so far; tonight's event might begin to change that tide.
And even in my small town, working with a lot of people who know only a little bit about computers, we've gotten a lot of unprompted questions about surveillance, and who to trust, and what to avoid. We've seen a number of customers that are moving, bit by bit, away from Google products, because they now perceive "Google = surveillance". Again, unprompted -- we don't nudge people in one way or another on this stuff.
Talk to more folks. I guarantee you'll find other people that are talking about it.
I think a large amount of people don't understand the full extent more than intellectually. They are aware that it is happening but it doesn't have real context. They aren't aware that their position is tracked or logged, their porn habits monitored and that their is a subset of the population that has become wildly powerful and extremely clandestine. However, people are taking note. People like Ladar Levinson and others. They are combatting this with technology. This is also happening live in NZ right before an election, people will have more information to make that decision. So things are changing at their usual pace: slowly. Hopefully for the better.
I think base instincts and interests override any interest in acting. It's easier to pull up your favourite porn and hope no one cares or pays your actions any attention than it is to speak up and be seen as that guy walking against the crowd.
I also think "I've got nothing to hide" is overwhelmingly more popular than people understanding the slippery slopes involved.
I upvoted you because I believe this is a very valid question. In the really long term, none of it will make a difference. In the short term it will probably also not make a difference but I have some hope that there will be a major review of what we've done wrong historically at some point and then maybe this will carry some weight.
For sure there is plenty that - when looked at through the lens of history - will come back to haunt our future collective selves and that we will feel needs to be dealt with if we are to progress as humanity.
On that scale by the way (in my opinion) these are very minor issues.
An attitude? This stuff seems to happen again and again throughout history. Me asking this may bring root cause problems to the conversation too.
You would think the world view of a large number of people would have changed considering things like the cold war with the U.S.S.R, Iran-Contra, Bay-of-Tonkin, etc. If it had, mass surveillance would be a lot more prevalent in every day communication.
All of what you list is about a generation or more away. I'm 39. I have some sort of relationship to the cold war and Iran-Contra. But I suspect I'm an outlier even in that respect, in that I was 15 when the SSSR finally collapsed, and I know most of my friends at school at that time had only a vague understanding of what was going on and rarely paid attention to politics. Most of them would probably not be able to explain anything about Iran-Contra. And for me as well, Bay-of-Tonkin is something out of the history books, that would have been covered in minutes (maybe it is given more attention in US schools) and never mentioned again.
Don't underestimate just how short lived collective memory is.
I'm from Norway. In 1996 massive illegal political surveillance was rolled up in Norway. The agency that is now the Police Security Service was found to have carried out extensive illegal phone taps and other surveillance for decades, primarily targeting the Norwegian left. It was all over the news, and included its fair share of scandals, such as when one of the members of parliament investigating the surveillance uncovered that he was being subjected to illegal surveillance during his work on investigating the illegal surveillance.
I personally know people who where subjected to it, one of whom security service staff would taunt in public about fights he'd had with his wife in his own home to make it clear to him they listened to everything they said.
Yet during debates about Snowden etc. in Norway now, this is rarely mentioned unless I bring it up, and most people seems shocked at the idea that something like this could happen in Norway - despite the extensive evidence that was uncovered of decades of surveillance like this that culminated in a system where people could even apply to get copies of their files, and a lot of people got a lot of files that showed a lot of completely ridiculous surveillance that served no real purpose.
I hope they take it a bit more seriously once they've watched a bit longer.
I've found that the New Zealander response to many things is one of apparent mocking, and this is sometimes a good thing. The NZ public don't treat much as sacred, and this sometimes looks like dismissal. I'd take comfort in the fact that the current political leaders in NZ are commonly treated to as much, or more, derision than is being shown here towards Dotcom, Assange, Snowden, Greenwald etc.
The NZ populous are generally pretty smart. Let's hope that they take these revelations and act intelligently on them.
This is uncomfortably close to the way I imagine a glitch from something like a FOXACID exploit might look, and youtube is a known exploitable service. Maybe I need to get someone more skilled than myself have a close look at this machine.
Knowledgeable people here, would you please comment if there's reason to rule out concerns about this.
No "knowledgeable people" can rule out anything. You must consider any machine that is connected to any network compromised, if you have anything "sensitive" on there. You have to define for yourself what "sensitive" means.
This is a fair point, but I find that in practice I usually need something more like a probability assessment to act on, or better information about mechanisms.
Disambiguating information such as 'the flash component reloading normally occurs under condition X and Y, you guys may have been compromised but you'll have to decide if that's more plausible than X or Y' or technical constraints like 'to pull off exploit delivery that way an attacker would have to P, Q and R. If they did it should leave traces in S which you could try to check by doing T' would be a real help.
I'm certainly not disagreeing in theory with taking a pessimistic view on the security of any networked machine, but unfortunately that's way too restrictive as basis for action in most situations.
I didn't realise I had so many right wing friends on facebook (Read: Not real friends). All they can come up with in response is "omg Kim Dotcom is fat lol"
I see no preference for white furry felines and plenty of journalistic awards. He's not planning to take over a military base in the pacific (or one in outer space), doesn't have a private submarine.
He probably does have some 'nation state' enemies but that's mostly their problem (that's something all three have in common).
Greenwald is as respectable as they come. Not that that stopped some from trying to use the fact that he is gay to smear him.
The real 'Bond Villains' are on the other side of the line and unlike the Bond movies they are not in camera but off to the side somewhere or behind a curtain.
Of course, the guy who sacrificed his life facing life in a shit hole if get caught, the guy who brought that news to you, the guy who let you learn about what your government is up to overseas.
Textbook bond villains, indeed.
It is astonishing how easy it is to throw mud at people and get up voted for it.
I'm well aware of that. So until he's been charged there is no process, until there has been a process he hasn't been convicted (or declared not guilty) and until he's convicted using terms like 'rapist' is - for now - inappropriate.
What you can accuse Assange rightly of at this point in time is being a douchebag and phenomenally stupid. But fame has done similar things to lots of other people and he doesn't have the monopoly on either in this particular case.
The Swedes had him on their soil, declared that there was no case, told him he was free to go, then changed their minds and then a whole circus ensued. In the UK he was at some point in custody.
There is enough fodder for a whole slew of in-depth investigations but so far there is no movement on that and the standing invitation of the Equadorians to interview Assange 'on site' has been steadfastly refused, which is curious indeed.
Other notable points in this case are that Sweden doesn't normally make such a hoopla over much more serious cases (including rape cases) and the too convenient timing.
An arrest warrant was issued and the guy fled to escape being charged. And then he ran again. So saying he hasn't been convicted or charged is a pretty high-chutzpah defense.
So I won't blame you, it's an extremely complex case that does not lend itself to the issuing of 5 word sound bites.
It's complex because all parties appear to have behaved in weird and sometimes in-explicable ways and all parties seem to have made morally questionable moves (including the prosecutor).
You mention 'less rape' as if to you rape has been proven beyond any reasonable doubt. Normally such language is used for convicted criminals.
It's perfectly ok with me if you don't like Assange, I'm of the opinion if he did just the bits that he has admitted to and that seem to be indisputable that he's a complete douchebag but the behaviour of the women, the authorities and the process up to and including Assanges holing up in the Equadorian Embassy in London make me stop very much short of calling him a rapist. I may change that position in the future, but I'll wait for the trial (assuming there ever is one).
There is a ton of stuff there that's questionable at a minimum not the least of which is the series of actions by the Swedish prosecutor.
I'm not going to speculate on what Assange's real motivations are for hiding out in that embassy, he's said enough on the subject and whether you agree with him or not that those are his true motivations is between you and him.
So no, he hasn't been convicted and/or charged and as such calling him a rapist is getting ahead of the timeline.
What he does in the meantime doesn't change that one bit.
I think calling him a rapist is correct. AFAIK, no-one (including him and his lawyers) is contesting the accusations against him, including the one that he had sex with a sleeping woman, which IMO is definitely rape.
Of course, I still think that the whole charade around having him extradited to Sweden for questioning is just a tiny little bit too convenient for the powers-that-be to think it's only about the rape.
Just the picture byline I find interesting: "Julian Assange has made it clear that he is available for questioning by the Swedish authorities, in Britain or via Skype."
Since when do those under suspicion get to dictate to the authorities how they conduct their investigation?
They don't, but Assange being somewhat paranoid is something the Swedes should be able to accommodate, especially if they want to resolve the case. Their strategy makes more sense if they don't actually want to resolve that case.
I think the content of what Assange and Wikileaks has delivered since Assange's rise to fame/infamy is far more worthy than this conversation. How about you all get back to the point.
The people he "raped" were singing his praises on Twitter after the supposed incident took place. The woman only went to the police to see if she could compel him to take an STD test.
"definitely rape" is so far off base, it's ridiculous. You're either gravely misinformed, or shilling.
That's quite irrelevant. Rape is prosecuted by the state, not by the victim. If an action fits the definition of rape (e.g. having sex with a person who is unconscious and thus unable to consent), it's rape, no matter what the "victim" feels about it. The purpose of the courts is not only to seek retribution, but also to discourage similar behavior in the future.
I agree that Swedish definition of rape is a bit bonkers (e.g. I don't think that "sex without a condom" is rape, at most it's "fraud" or "lying"), but I think that sex with a sleeping person is always rape (unless you've been explicitly given consent that it's OK beforehand).
Snowden is a controlled pawn, though even he might not know it. This is all too....Hollywood.
Edit: Feel free to downvote as much as you like, the points don't mean anything. If it's determined later on I was right, I hope you remember this post and consider it for future events.
I understand what you think you mean (but disagree), but have you considered the larger implications of your statement?
If Snowden is a "controlled pawn", then isn't everyone in the entire debate a pawn? If so, where would you suggest we look to for updates on this situation?
Both Snowden and Greenwald have choosen to honour the truth above their own safety and security. Both of them are also acutely aware of the fact that standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Dotcom reflects poorly on their own integrity.
Maybe the USG leaked this email as a 'false flag' in order to make Greenwald look a fool when it gets proved as false, or it is true, and Greenwald and Snowden are right to back Dotcom in this particular argument, whether or not he is a crook or not.
A US movie company doing back-room deals (on behalf of the USG) with NZ politicians, in order to get someone extradited for alleged copyright infringement is just downright dirty and a waste of public money. It is corrupt corporatism at it's finest.
If it is true, I hope the shit hits the fan. However, as many others have pointed out. The fact that a politician is dirty is not an automatic guarantee that the voting public won't vote for him.