Peachtree Pam wrote:OK, I think things are beginning to be a bit clearer now. Some punishment is in order for trying to expose American crimes.
There is more. Consider these items, not yet touched in the thread. Why was Assange in Sweden in the first place? This happened a few days before the charges first came to light.
Swedish Pirate Party to Host New WikiLeaks Servers
August 17, 2010 – 19:29
The Pirate Party will host several new WikiLeaks servers. This was agreed during Julian Assange’s visit to Stockholm last weekend, and the Pirate Party is happy to announce that everything has been finalized.
– The contribution of WikiLeaks is tremendously important to the entire world, says Rick Falkvinge, leader of the Pirate Party. We desire to contribute to any effort that increases transparency and accountability of power in the world.
Last week, the Pirate Party challenged the other Swedish parties to assist WikiLeaks in its democratic effort. The Pirate Party has been the first to step up uo the plate, and keeps calling on others to defend freedom of the press in Sweden. As a result, WikiLeaks have commissioned a number of new servers that will be hosted and taken care of by the Pirate Party.
The Pirate Party will provide bandwidth and hosting to WikiLeaks free of charge as part of its political mission.
– This is one of our signatures, says Falkvinge. We don’t just talk. We act. Using our own resources and time, we help change the world rather than pass the buck, commission reports, and avoid responsibility like other politicians.
Wikileaks have been under constant threat of being sabotaged by corrupt or abusive organisations trying to conceal the truth from the public. The Pirate Party’s offer was welcomed by Wikileaks’ spokesman Julian Assange.
– We welcome the help provided by the Pirate Party, says Julian Assange, spokesperson for WikiLeaks. Our organisations share many values and I am looking forward to future ways we can help each other improve the world.
– We hope that the new Parliament will give serious consideration to further strengthening Sweden’s press protection legislation, says Assange. Western democracies are not always as free as one might think, and freedom of the press needs constant vigilance. In particular, we would welcome Sweden copying Iceland’s Modern Media Initiative, something that the Pirate Party also desires.
– We see more opportunities down the road in cooperating with the Pirate Party, says Assange, and look forward to exploring those options.
For more information, contact:
Rick Falkvinge, party leader for the Swedish Pirate Party, +46-10-3333-401
Anna Troberg, deputy party leader for the Swedish Pirate Party, +46-10-3333-402
http://press.piratpartiet.se/2010/08/17/swedish-pirate-party-to-host-new-wikileaks-servers/
Did CIA ‘Dirty Tricks’ Emerge in Sweden to Defame Julian Assange/ disable WikiLeaks?
Sun, 2010-08-29 13:34 — editor
* News Analysis
Daya Gamage – US National Correspondent Asian Tribune
Washington, D.C. 29 (Asiantribune.com):
The whistle-blower WikiLeaks founder and operator the Australian Julian Assange was warned that he may face ‘dirty tricks’ as a result of his disclosure of classified US Afghan Files early this month and carrying the US military video which showed the indiscriminate killings of unarmed Iraqis’ including a Reuter correspondent.
He was also under threat, it has been widely known, after the announcement of the release of the remaining 15,000 classified US documents/ communication which would depict the style of military operation of the United States which is highly unpopular here among the American public.
Israel Shamir and Paul Bennett of widely-read internet daily CounterPunch has now disclosed how the ‘dirty tricks’ have entered Sweden where Mr. Assange is visiting now to defame him and destabilize/destroy his whistle blower web site WikiLeaks.
Ever since Julian’s WikiLeaks website had published the Afghan War Diary (a huge pile of secret intelligence reports that reveal the dirty war the US is running against Afghanistan), Uncle Sam has been hunting for ways to have him carted off to Guantanamo. The Right Wing News site has, just below an icon of Sarah Palin, recommended a summary death sentence for him: “Can we have a CIA agent with a sniper rifle rattle a bullet around his skull the next time he appears in public as a warning? You bet we can -- and we should. If that's too garish for people, then the CIA can kill him and make it look like an accident. Either way, Julian Assange deserves to die.” Other right-wing American sites bristle with similar murderous commentary about this beleaguered computer programmer.
His adventurous style and quick wit have earned him many Swedish fans, and so when Fate led him into the sun-drenched late summer of Sweden, Julian Assange found himself dazzled by reddening apples, cooling lakes, and boisterous crayfish-parties. It was only a few days later that this computer geek awoke to discover his own face plastered across a tabloid’s front page, and the headlines screaming Arrest of Double Rapist Imminent! Imagine yourself on vacation, visiting friends, and finding yourself suddenly the object of a nationwide manhunt.
The newspaper was still there on the table, and it told him – and all of Sweden – that two women had accused him of rape, and that the police were closing in.
Quite aware of the threats against him Assange publicly placed a huge, encrypted file onto the WikiLeaks site. This file contains all the most sensitive secret information he has in his possession. He called it Insurance, and thousands of activists all over the world await the password that will release this Pandora’s Box onto the heads of the US administration.
Now Mr. Assange found that those who wanted to destroy him and his WikiLeaks lets loose a sex bomb upon him. When you can’t contest the message, you smear the messenger. Sweden is tailor-made for sending a young man into a honey trap. Sweden has particularly thorny anti-rape legislation, where a conviction might be secured from something as thin as an anonymous accuser’s allegation.
In any case, Julian Assange was only able to enjoy his fugitive-from-justice status for a few hours. By noon, the charges were already dropped, and he was free to be defamed from one end of Sweden to the other, not to mention the countless websites. It’s a simple system: the websites show the headlines, and the headlines report the web gossip. It’s Character Assassination 101, but why in Sweden of all places couldn’t the dirty tricks department make the accusations stick?
However, the Swedish bloggers uncovered the full story in a few hours.
The complaint was lodged by a radical feminist Anna Ardin, 30, a one-time intern in the Swedish Foreign Service. She’s spokeswoman for Broderskapsrörelsen, the liberation theology-like Christian organization affiliated with Sweden's Social Democratic Party. She had invited Julian Assange to a crayfish party, and they had enjoyed some quality time together. When Ardin discovered that Julian shared a similar experience with a 20-year-old woman a day or two later, she obtained the younger woman’s cooperation in declaring before the police that changing partners in so rapid a manner constituted a sort of deceit. And deceit is a sort of rape. The prosecutor immediately issued an arrest warrant, and the press was duly notified.
Once the facts were examined in the cold light of day, the charge of rape seemed ludicrous and was immediately dropped. In the meantime the younger woman, perhaps realizing how she had been used, withdrew her report, leaving the vengeful Anna Ardin standing alone.
Swedish law strictly forbids police and prosecutors to release to the media the details of any rape-connected complaint. The Expressen had all the details of the case, including the names of the accused and the complainant, within a matter of minutes. It should be reiterated here that the right-wing tabloid Expressen belongs to the Bonnier family, the biggest media owners in Sweden, who are not only pro-American but very much pro-Israel, too. It is a fact that the pro-Israeli lobby in Sweden is warmly supportive of America’s Middle Eastern wars, while Assange and his WikiLeaks have the potential to undermine America’s weakening support for the war.
The question that arise next is - were the criminal reporters of the Expressen that good, or is it possible that Ms. Ardin willingly collaborated with the Expressen in targeting Mr. Assange who has become a menace to the U.S. administration. She interned for the editorial page of GT , the Gothenberg edition of Expressen.
Ms. Ardin has written and published on her blog a “revenge instruction”, describing how to commit a complete character assassination to legally destroy a person who “should be punished for what he did”. If the offence was of a sexual nature, the revenge also must also be sex-related, she wrote. Ardin was involved in Gender Studies in Uppsala University, in charge of gender equality in the Students’ Union, a junior inquisitor of sorts.
In other words, she was perfect for the job. In order to frame Julian in Singapore, they would have to fit him up with drugs. To frame Julian in England, they might have to report he had skinned and roasted cats or at least dumped a kitten in a trash bin. To hang a frame on Julian in Sweden only required reporting sex between consenting adults.
If the setup was so perfect, why did it fail? Overreach, as always. When Anna Ardin maneuvered the younger girl into assisting her in her revenge, she overreached herself. When the girl withdrew her report, Anna’s “deceit equals rape” accusation failed. However, this is just conjecture, and the true facts of the case lie deep in the vaults of the right-wing Expressen.
So folks who read Asian Tribune in the Asian region and beyond that Continent remember the ‘dirty tricks’ that can happen to poor, least developed and developing nations who offend Uncle Sam or do not tow his line or refuse to be client states or become an impediment to the US national interests.
The foot note to this is – America has great values that can be emulated by the rest of the world. The First Amendment to the US Constitution is a remarkable example to the rest of the world. The inalienable right to free speech, right to dissent, the right to peaceful assembly without cracking one’s head by a police baton, even to go to the highest court of the land to force the White House or any other branch of the government to disclose documents that are kept secret for no reason under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), the right to be administered the rights (Miranda Law) when law enforcement agents arrest you, the total freedom of the judiciary without any governmental interferences, the strict adherence to Habeas Corpus, rule of law, equality under law irrespective of race, nationality, gender. Age, disability etc are seriously practiced and are example to the rest of the world especially to nations that do not offer most of these rights to their populous.
But – when it comes to U.S. national interests worldwide the ‘dirty tricks department’ is put in to operation. And, Mr. Julian Assange has more than once offended the US authorities and is considered an obstacle to US national interests.
- Asian Tribune -
http://www.asiantribune.com/news/2010/08/29/did-cia-%E2%80%98dirty-tricks%E2%80%99-emerge-sweden-defame-julian-assange-disable-wikileaks
So, already two leads pointing towards the Swedish Social Democrat (or "old establishment") smear machine. Working with the traditional print media like the Expressen. Considering the Swedish SDP apparatchiks have longstanding ties with US intelligence, no surprise there.
But why do this now? Four ingredients: the huge media attention Wikileaks got after releasing the US files, the longstanding and newly reaffirmed cooperation between Assange and the Swedish Pirate Party, similar, official Swedish-American efforts to stamp out activist fighting for the freedom of information and the Swedish parliamentary elections coming up on September 19th. The Pirate Party takes part in the electoral race for the first time, and so smearing Assange is for certain Swedish circles also a way to strike against a domestic enemy at a very opportune time.
It is all very convenient.