This has to be one of the best interviews I have seen with Julian Assange.
Assange was interviewed today by MSNBC’s Cenk Uygur.
Here is a rush transcript. Watch the interview below.
2 thoughts on “Great Interview with Julian Assange (MSNBC)”
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The Guardian published details on the "sex crimes" accusations against Assange based on leaked police reports. Neither woman ever accused Assange of rape or sexual assault and never asked him to be charged with any type of crime. They went to the police to ask how they could compel him to take an HIV test. (After repeated requests, he eventually agreed to take a test.)
If Assange had not been a selfish jerk, he would have readily agreed to take an HIV test and no potential sex crimes charges would be hanging over him. However, the idea of charging him with a crime is the invention of an ideological prosecutor who wants to grossly expand the definition of rape that would only apply to men when there is unprotected, consensual sex.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/dec/17/julia…
Here is a relevant passage from the Guardian article:
"The following day, [19 August–six days after the sexual encounter that formed the basis of Ardin's allegation] Harold told police, Miss A called him and for the first time gave him a full account of her complaints about Assange. Harold told police he regarded her as "very, very credible" and he confronted Assange, who said he was completely shocked by the claims and denied all of them. By Friday 20 August, Miss W had texted Miss A looking for help in finding Assange. The two women met and compared stories.
Harold has independently told the Guardian Miss A made a series of calls to him asking him to persuade Assange to take an STD test to reassure Miss W, and that Assange refused. Miss A then warned if Assange did not take a test, Miss W would go to the police. Assange had rejected this as blackmail, Harold told police."
So, all Ardin's demands for Assange to take an STD test PLUS her recourse to the police took place on 20 August, a week after the sex with Ardin and five days after the sex with the other woman.
And then, also from the Guardian:
"By Saturday morning, 21 August, journalists were asking Assange for a reaction. At 9.15am, he tweeted: 'We were warned to expect 'dirty tricks'. Now we have the first one.' The following day, he tweeted: 'Reminder: US intelligence planned to destroy WikiLeaks as far back as 2008.'"
So, all of a sudden, on a Friday, Assange simply MUST take an STD test, days after the sexual relations in question. And by early the next morning, the press has been informed and want a reaction from Assange. No, that's not suspicious at all!!
Come on, Heathcliff, come back to Earth from whatever planet you're on and look at the facts.
Assange was reportedly unhappy that the Guardian printed this information. I don't know why–I think it reinforces the extreme suspiciousness of the entire "case" against him.
I've never left Earth and I am looking at the facts. I have not adopted the view that Assange is a saint. I am a defender of WikiLeaks, but I can still call a jerk a jerk.
I am far less suspicious of the women's motives than I was before I read that article (because I am willing to consider new facts). They have been victimized by the Swedish government that is using them as pawns to trap Assange. Ardin apparently has no interest in cooperating with a criminal investigation and has already left Sweden and gone to the West Bank with a Christian humanitarian group.
Please reread the article. Assange was asked multiple times on different days to take an HIV test.
Aside from the notorious unreliability of HIV tests and the life changing consequences of false positives, aside from the issue of using police coercion to compel one to go to a physican, aside from the fact that the sex was consensual and the reputed "risk" took two-to-tango, beside all of that…. "After repeated requests, he eventually agreed to take a test." So whats with back handed character slap?
Does everything have to be black and white? Does support for Assange's work mean he has to be flawless and saintly?
Assange is a selfish jerk: for being so indifferent to the second woman's desire to protect herself with a condom and so indifferent to the concern of both about their health. These women hosted him, bought him meals and train tickets and had sex with him. He could show a bit of gratitude and concern for their well being. The alleged unreliability of HIV tests and the possibility of a false positive are not excuses. You simply take more testing to verify the results of the first. Hey, if you suspect you might have AIDS, cancer or any other potentially fatal disease, then don't risk a false positive, right?
Assange created this distraction and it didn't have to be that way. However, it is helping to reveal even more about the desperation and ruthlessness of the US government, the servility of the establishment media, and even the clouded thinking of those who think that Assange must be defended against any and every criticism because the world (or maybe just they) have no capacity for complexity. If that's the case, then Assange is wasting his time with WikiLeaks because people cannot be entrusted to make fair judgments on complex subjects.
One other thing, HIV testing these days is NOT notoriously unreliable. I looked it up. For every 1,000 positive results, only 15 are false positives. For every 1,000 negative results, only 3 are false negatives.
And would it be better to have HIV and not know it so that you can continue to spread it with unprotected sex?
"If Assange had not been a selfish jerk, he would have readily agreed to take an HIV test…"
Did the two women take STD tests before they started demanding that Assange do the same?
Wouldn't it make more sense for the person who is the common link to take the test instead of two other people? It does, especially since it can take 2 weeks to 6 months from the time of exposure till the virus can be detected. So it would make sense for Assange to be tested first and for the women to follow up three and six months later with their own tests.
Good interview, but Assange blows it on the origins of the Espionage Act.
Thank you for binging this interview to our attention. Excellent Post.
http://politicalreviewonline.com/
Excellent indeed! But really – where would youtube be today without pre-schooler commentaries?
So Assange is a bad date, a bad house guest, and a bad lover. I'm shocked! And so very disappointed. Here I was enjoying this James Bond action novel in real life, with an heroic, tall, handsome, intelligent, tech savvy, good guy, and cheesy but formidable — the entire US political establishment, the CIA, interpol, and the British judiciary — bad guys, and lots of hot sex with Swedish blondes (in the plural, yes, thank you), and then you have to go and spoil it all. So Assange is a ham-handed, wham bam thank you ma'am, self-indulgent sexual klutz who shoots his wad and then turns over and goes to sleep — or worse yet gets up, gets on the computer, and tweets the world (about getting lucky yet again?), while Miss What Was Your Name Again lies there disappointed, not even half way to the finish line, no warm glow, no completion, just another cheap tart wondering where the hell she went wrong.
And so we learn what every man and woman eventually learns: real life just ain't like in the movies.
Well piss on you all.
Good post, though calling a woman a cheap tart just because she had premarital sex is a stretch.
At least you are willing to consider that the action novel version of the story is fiction.
The object of WikiLeaks is expose US & NATO War Crimes, the same way Daniel Ellsberg's Pentagon Papers was to highlight the War Crimes of dropping more bombs than the combined ordnance of Allied & Axis powers in WWII upon Vietnam/Cambodia/Laos. Instead, both have been distracted as 1st Amendment issues and sexuality. We already learned about 'Manufactured Consent' of Vietnam, so why is the west falling for the same script all over again?
From my review of the claims of the Swedish police and the "victims," it seems readily apparent that the women were both adults and engaged in consensual sexual conduct with Assange. There is something VERY wrong here, and, at a minimum, this prosecution, whether or not political, have sidetracked Assange from his mission of obtaining the release of factual information relating to the operation of a supposedly open democratic government. I NEED to know what my PUBLIC SERVANTS are doing and and I have a right to know. However that information is released, it must be considered a matter of free speech, however critical of government. If only favorable speech or speech approved by government is protected by the First amendment, there would be no purpose served by this Amendment. Thank you, Mr. Assange. I will accept that your motive is anti secret and authoritarian government. Do we really want another Nazi regime?
This is a great, great man, with intellect and political sympathies similar to those of our most revered founders in the US.
LOL….what a bunch of trash …Assange's "love-life " is most likely as disingenuous as his public life . He's nothing more than a cyber-punk , supported by fellow cyber-punks , as his "non-organizational " minions are mounting Ddos attacks on websites that criticize him . Like mentalities tend to slither down the hill at the same rate of speed . Manning will rot in jail , as Assange could care less , weat the hell the kid was a fool , Assange will get his moment of fame [and some good interview and book money] , and for all his self-righteous pontificating , not a single thing will change . It never does , by intimidation . But Assange has got a large ego to massage .
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