struggle4progress
struggle4progress's JournalWikiLeaks discover ties between Nigerian scammers and Straftor. Sort of. (Murphy | CSM)
By Dan Murphy, Staff writer / February 20, 2013
... Today WikiLeaks released some new Stratfor emails (it's labeling the Stratfor dump, rather self-importantly, the "Global Intelligence Files."
That caught the eye of a supporter who tweeted "New #Stratfor docs: US soldier stealing $22M from Iraq?" This was duly retweeted by the main WikiLeaks account ...
Anyone who has used email since the mid-1990s will immediately recognize this for what it is: a variant of the Nigerian scam, a con-artist come-on that always revolves around some prince/lucky treasure hunter/disgraced politician/international banker who promises you an enormous financial windfall if you'll just come to his assistance with some money up front (to facilitate the eventual transfer of the loot to his "dear friend."
This isn't intelligence, it isn't even analysis. It's spam. And that's obvious to any media literate person who reads the first two sentences.
While I'm of the opinion that the odds of anything potentially dangerous being found in the Stratfor emails is very, very low, this release is a sign that there's next to no vetting going on ...
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Backchannels/2013/0220/WikiLeaks-discover-ties-between-Nigerian-scammers-and-Straftor
No exception for Assange: Rape apologetics and the left
Matt Fodor
Michael Laxer
February 13, 2013
... It is difficult, to put it mildly, to take the claims that Assange would simply be handed over to the U.S. seriously. Espionage is considered a political crime in Sweden and Swedish law as well as its extradition treaty with the U.S. prohibits extradition for political crimes.
Consider the case of Edward Lee Howard, a CIA agent who sold secrets to the Soviet Union, devastating U.S. operations in Moscow, and who was arrested for overstaying his visa in Sweden. The U.S. government requested Howard’s extradition, which Sweden refused. The prime minister of Sweden at the time was Carl Bildt, the current Foreign Affairs Minister who Assange supporters claim is a U.S. ‘lapdog’ who would immediately extradite Assange after “a single phone call” from the White House.
One final question that is never answered by Assange supporters: wouldn’t it have been far easier to extradite Assange to the U.S. from the U.K., which is much more of a ‘lapdog’ than Sweden? The U.K., unlike Sweden, does have an extradition treaty with the U.S. for espionage. Indeed, it would be much more difficult to extradite Assange from Sweden, as it would require the support of the governments of both Sweden and the U.K. Both are signatories to the European Convention on Human Rights which forbids the extradition to countries where the accused could face the death penalty. He cannot just simply be handed over to the US ...
http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/michael-laxer/2013/02/no-exception-assange-rape-apologetics-and-left
Jemima Khan: The inside story of how Julian Assange alienated his allies
WikiLeaks – whose mission statement was “to produce a more just society based upon truth” – has been guilty of the same obfuscation and misinformation as those it sought to expose, while its supporters are expected to follow, unquestioningly, in blinkered, cultish devotion.
By Jemima Khan
Published 06 February 2013 12:15
... I supported Assange before I ever met him. I knew of his work when he was arrested on allegations of sexual assault in late 2010 and held in solitary confinement and I decided to stand bail for him because I believed that through WikiLeaks he was speaking truth to power and had made many enemies. Although I had concerns about what was rumoured to be a nonchalant attitude towards redactions in the documents he leaked, as well as some doubts about the release of certain cables – for example, the list of infrastructure sites vital to US national security – I felt more passionately that democracy needs strong, free media ...
The list of alienated and disaffected allies is long: some say they fell out over redactions, some over broken deals, some over money, some over ownership and control. The roll-call includes Assange’s earliest WikiLeaks collaborators, Daniel Domscheit-Berg and “The Architect”, the anonymous technical whizz behind much of the WikiLeaks platform. It also features the journalists with whom he worked on the leaked cables: Nick Davies, David Leigh and Luke Harding of the Guardian; the New York Times team; James Ball; and the Freedom of Information campaigner Heather Brooke. Then there are his former lawyer Mark Stephens; Jamie Byng of Canongate Books, who paid him a reported £500,000 advance for a ghostwritten autobiography for which Assange withdrew his co-operation before publication; the Channel 4 team that made a documentary about him which resulted in his unsuccessful complaint to Ofcom that it was unfair and had invaded his privacy; and his former WikiLeaks team in Iceland ...
It may well be that the serious allegations of sexual assault and rape are not substantiated in court, but I have come to the conclusion that these are all matters for Swedish due process and that Assange is undermining both himself and his own transparency agenda – as well as doing the US department of justice a favour – by making his refusal to answer questions in Sweden into a human rights issue. There have been three rounds in the UK courts and the UK courts have upheld the European Arrest Warrant in his name three times. The women in question have human rights, too, and need resolution. Assange’s noble cause and his wish to avoid a US court does not trump their right to be heard in a Swedish court ...
We all want a hero. After WikiLeaks released the infamous Collateral Murder video in 2010, showing US troops gunning down a dozen civilians in Iraq, I jokingly asked if Assange was the new Jason Bourne, on the run and persecuted by the state. It would be a tragedy if a man who has done so much good were to end up tolerating only disciples and unwavering devotion, more like an Australian L Ron Hubbard.
http://www.newstatesman.com/2013/02/jemima-khan-inside-story-how-julian-assange-alienated-his-allies
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