hifiguy
hifiguy's JournalContext and the Assange case.
I have been around DU for 10+ years and seldom have I seen more nonsense, twaddle and utter foolishness spouted about any topic than Julian Assange.
A few points here in an attempt to get this discussion back in the realm of sanity
First, the entire Assange case is about two interrelated issues, and two only: Whistleblowing and international espionage. Nothing else is of any relevance to a global understanding of this case. NOTHING. Not one thing about this case is about any person save Julian Assange.
The revelations by Assange and Wikileaks embarrassed, humiliated, and pissed off a lot of extremely powerful people in governments throughout the Western world. They brought to light things no government wants the masses to have any awareness of. Therefore Assange is highly dangerous to them. These powerful people tend to be egonamiacal, paranoid, and exceedingly vengeful; their world is not one of sunny openness, harmony and duckies and bunnies; it is about bare-knuckled power contests for the highest imaginabie stakes.. They do not tolerate having their carefully concealed power games being dragged into the light of day and people who complicate their plans are generally terminated with extreme prejudice. As such, it is beyond question that intelligence agencies across Europe have been pressured by the American CIA and the British MI6 to assist in taking down Assange, and if possible Wikileaks, using any and all available means be they fair or foul, and when intelligence agencies are involved in espionage cases of this sort, "foul" is Option Number One. This would logically include the Swedish intelligence agencies.
Many here seem to be woefully naive or willfully ignorant about what national and international intelligence do every day. There is no excuse for this. What the FBI and later the CIA have done to dissident Americans in America - including unionization movements in the 1930s, the anti-nuclear weapons movement of the 1950s, the Civil Rights movement, including MLK and all of its other top leaders, virtually all anti-Vietnam War organizations, the resistance to Raygun's covert war in Central America, those opposed to the Iraq War, and Occupy, to name but a few.
This is what intelligence agencies, foreign and domestic, DO - protect those who possess and wield institutional power by spying on, monkeywrenching, ratfucking, infiltration and installing agents provocateur and every other dirty trick against those who dissent and/or pose some presumed and often entirely imaginary, threat. It is the very reason for and justifiction of their existence. It is why they ARE.
And how do these organizations do their work? The first critical thing is to try and destroy the credibility of dissenters. For decades,beginning in the era of the Palmer Raids, this was done by smearing dissenters as Communists, left-wingers, fellow travelers, etc. The available history detailing this would fill a good-sized library. No sane person doubts that this happened. Circulating damaging, almost always false, information to try and discredit 'persons of interest' who present some sort of perceived threat to institutional or governmental power is a tactic as old as the first human state.
Likewise, if simple smears prove ineffective, setting traps for dissidents is another time honor. Attempting to catch someone in a compromising situation by way of a "sting" or "honeytrap" is, again as old as time. The information can be used to then blackmail or silence the individual who fell into the trap. It is monumentally clear to any thinking person that this is what was done to Assange.
And smearing people with false information or setting up traps are the most elementary bits of tradecraft for any spy organization. You do not get out of spooks' kindergarten, much less become a field operative, unless you know how to do these things in your sleep. This kind of standard operational ratfucking is child's play compared to the big, complicated operations inelligence agencies regularly engage in,and is the meat and potatatoes of their trade.
So how does this apply here? Very simply.
Swedish intelligence is leaned on by MI6 or the CIA to do something about Assange - preferably something that would result in his arrest, after which he would disappear or die after secretly being subjected to preliminaries that might even make Dick Cheney blanch. How to do, how to do? Find some bait for a trap. Bribe/pay or pressure/threaten (with blackmail or other negative consequences) a couple of women to pursue Assange and let nature take its course. Then have the woman or women file completely phony rape accusations against Assange, with all the administrative detail work tended to by the spooks. Elementary tradecraft, and anyone who believes that this is not possible or in fact likely is a useful idiot at best. Arrest Assange for rape, hold a rigged show trial, convict him, and leave him to the tender mercies of the torturers before disposing of him and announcing to the public that he died in prison of unknown or indeterminate causes. Again, this is what spies do for a living. Eecuting these kinds of actions like is why there ARE spies in the first place.
But Assange smelled the rat behind the curtain and flipped the tables on them. And the useful idiots swallow the official story of the intelligence agencies hook, line and sinker.
This isn't James Bond level spycraft. It's blunt, crude, simple and effective, particularly when all the liars and agencies are swearing to the same story. Its purpose is to eliminate high-profile dissenters by any means possible, and that means by any means. This kind of thing is the woof and warp of what spooks around the world do each and every day and have been doing since before the Pyramids were built and in every part of the world. It's as common as the air around us. It has been done to dissidents in our own country. Shit, just read Octafish's impeccably researched posts about intelligence agencies, the Permanent Government and the "men behind the curtain."
And if you cannot see the logic of this argument, the overwhelming probability that it is true, and how intelligence agencies work in the real world, there is, simply put, no hope for you. You are hopelessly and irredeemably blind and deaf to the nature of reality and your words are worthless.
I have a very good idea of what you consider to be true and false
from another thread.
I will stand with polly.
And I am done with you.
Take a break for a while. I avoided DU for a year
because I had reached The Popeye Point (I've had all I can stands and I can't stands NO MORE!!) with the miserable language police. Came back because there are way too many people here I like and respect to let the bad apples run me off.
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