SteelAttack said:

My 1970 Challenger R/T.

Isn't that the car from Blade and Burn Notice?

Dvader said:

Pachter has entered super villain status. Did you see the article where he says the publishers are betraying their shareholders for not listing to him about pay to play online. He has declared war on us, the consumer, and we need to fight back! How? By saying angry things on message boards, fuck you Pachter!

  so much understated awesome in this post.  +1 is not enough

Iga_Bobovic said:

So Assange just got arrested.

Thoughts?

Oh wow. Shit just got real.

robio said:

I think Pachter has gotten to the point where he's gotten so much wrong, that he's now given up and just purposely trying to make ludicrous statements just to give message boards fodder.

I think he's trying to pivot from his current job to working as an executive in the industry.  He's just waiting for some board to say, "Pachter gets it!"

The words he used, "betraying their stockholders" carries special meaning in the stock analysis business -- it is a very serious claim to make.  I thin kin this case he has stepped over the line, and depending on how he couched it could open him up for litigation.

aspro said:

Iga_Bobovic said:

So Assange just got arrested.

Thoughts?

          He's innocent until proven guilty. Sex crimes are a serious matter.

So serious that any man can be arrested if a woman claims she was raped, without any proof. In Assange case, it is very suspect. From Gaf:

Quote: Using a number of sources including leaked police interviews, we can begin to piece together the sequence of events which led to Assange’s liberty being threatened by Stockholm police rather than Washington, where already one U.S. politician has called on him to executed for ‘spying’.The story began on August 11 this year, when Assange arrived in Stockholm. He had been invited to be the key speaker at a seminar on ‘war and the role of the media’, organised by the centre-Left Brotherhood Movement. His point of contact was a female party official, whom we shall refer to as Sarah (her identity must be protected because of the ongoing legal proceedings).


An attractive blonde, Sarah was already a well-known ‘radical feminist’. In her 30s, she had travelled the world following various fashionable causes. While a research assistant at a local university she had not only been the protegee of a militant feminist academic, but held the post of ‘campus sexual equity officer’. Fighting male discrimination in all forms, including sexual harassment, was her forte. Sarah and Assange had never met. But in a series of internet and telephone conversations, they agreed that during his visit he could stay at her small apartment in central Stockholm. She said she would be away from the city until the day of the seminar itself.




Quote: What happened over the next few days — while casting an extraordinary light on the values of the two women involved — suggests that even if the WikiLeaks founder is innocent of any charges, he is certainly a man of strong sexual appetites who is not averse to exploiting his fame. Certainly his stay was always going to be a very social affair, mingling with like-minded and undoubtedly admiring people. That Thursday, he held court at the Beirut Cafe in Stockholm, dining with fellow ‘open government’ campaigners and an American journalist. The following afternoon, Sarah returned to Stockholm, 24 hours earlier than planned. In an interview she later gave to police, she is reported to have said: ‘He (Assange) was there when I came home. We talked a little and decided that he could stay.’ The pair went out for dinner together at a nearby restaurant. Afterwards they returned to her flat and had sex.


What is not disputed by either of them is that a condom broke — an event which, as we shall see, would later take on great significance. At the time, however, the pair ­continued to be friendly enough the next day, a Saturday, with Sarah even throwing a party for him at her home in the evening. That same day, Assange attended his seminar at the Swedish trade union HQ. In the front row of the audience, dressed in an eye-catching pink jumper — you can see her on a YouTube internet clip recorded at the time — was a pretty twentysomething whom we shall call Jessica. She was the woman — who two sources this week told me is a council employee — from Enkoping.



Quote: Jessica would later tell police that she had first seen Assange on television a few weeks before. She had found him ‘interesting, brave and admirable’. As a result, she began to follow the WikiLeaks saga, and when she discovered that he was due to visit Stockholm she contacted the Brotherhood Movement to volunteer to help out at the seminar. Although her offer was not taken up, she decided to attend the seminar anyway and took a large number of photos of Assange during his 90-minute talk. It is believed that by happenstance Jessica also met Sarah — the woman with whom Assange had spent the night — during the meeting.Afterwards, she hung around and was still there when Assange — who has a child from a failed relationship around 20 years ago — left with a group of male friends for lunch. Sources conflict here. One says that she asked to tag along; another that Assange invited her to join them.Subsequently, one of Assange’s friends recalled that Jessica had been ‘very keen’ to get Assange’s attention.She was later to tell police that, at the restaurant, Assange put his arm around her shoulder. ‘I was flattered. It was obvious that he was flirting,’ she reportedly said.The attraction was mutual. After lunch, the pair went to the cinema to see a film called Deep Sea. Jessica’s account suggests that were ‘intimate’ and then went to a park where Assange told her she was ‘attractive’.But he had to leave to go to a ‘crayfish party’, a traditional, and usually boozy, Swedish summer event.


Jessica asked if they would meet again. ‘Of course,’ said the WikiLeaks supremo. They parted and she took a train back to Enkoping while he took a cab back to his temporary base at Sarah’s flat, where the crayfish party was to be held. You might think it strange that Sarah would want to throw a party in honour of the man about whom she would later make a complaint to police concerning their liaison the night before.




Quote: This is only one of several puzzling flaws in the prosecution case. A few hours after that party, Sarah apparently Tweeted: ‘Sitting outside ... nearly freezing, with the world’s coolest people. It’s pretty amazing!’ She was later to try to erase this message. During the party, Assange apparently phoned Jessica and a few hours later she was boasting to friends about her flirtation with him. At that point, according to police reports, her friends advised her ‘the ball is in your court’. So it was that on the Monday, Jessica called Assange and they arranged to get together in Stockholm. When they did meet they agreed to go to her home in Enkoping, but he had no money for a train ticket and said he didn’t want to use a credit card because he would be ‘tracked’ (presumably, as he saw it, by the CIA or other agencies). So Jessica bought both their tickets. She had snagged perhaps the world’s most famous activist, and after they arrived at her apartment they had sex. According to her testimony to police, Assange wore a condom.


The following morning they made love again. This time he used no protection.Jessica reportedly said later that she was upset that he had refused when she asked him to wear a condom. Again there is scant evidence — in the public domain at least — of rape, sexual molestation or unlawful coercion. What’s more, the following morning, on the Tuesday, the pair amicably went out to have breakfast together and, at her prompting, Assange promised to stay in touch. He then returned to Stockholm, with Jessica again paying for his ticket.




Quote: What happened next is difficult to explain. The most likely interpretation of events is that as a result of a one-night stand, one participant came to regret what had happened.

Jessica was worried she could have caught a sexual disease, or even be pregnant: and this is where the story takes an intriguing turn. She then decided to phone Sarah — whom she had met at the seminar, and with whom Assange had been staying — and apparently confided to her that she’d had unprotected sex with him. At that point, Sarah said that she, too, had slept with him. As a result of this conversation, Sarah reportedly phoned an acquaintance of Assange and said that she wanted him to leave her apartment. (He refused to do so, and maintains that she only asked him to leave three days later, on the Friday of that week.) How must Sarah have felt to discover that the man she’d taken to her bed three days before had already taken up with another woman? Furious? Jealous? Out for revenge? Perhaps she merely felt aggrieved for a fellow woman in distress. Having taken stock of their options for a day or so, on Friday, August 20, Sarah and Jessica took drastic action.


They went together to a Stockholm police station where they said they were seeking advice on how to proceed with a complaint by Jessica against Assange. According to one source, Jessica wanted to know if it was possible to force Assange to undergo an HIV test. Sarah, the seasoned feminist warrior, said she was there merely to support Jessica. But she also gave police an account of what had happened between herself and Assange a week before. The female interviewing officer, presumably because of allegations of a sabotaged condom in one case and a refusal to wear one in the second, concluded that both women were victims: that Jessica had been raped, and Sarah subject to sexual molestation.



Quote: It was Friday evening. A duty prosecuting attorney, Maria Kjellstrand, was called.

She agreed that Assange should be sought on suspicion of rape. The following day, Sarah was questioned again, cementing the allegation of sexual misconduct against Assange. That evening, detectives tried to find him and searched Stockholm’s entertainment district — but to no avail. By Sunday morning, the news had leaked to the Press.


Indeed, it has been suggested that the two women had discussed approaching a tabloid newspaper to maximise Assange’s discomfort. By now, the authorities realised they had a high-profile case on their hands and legal papers were rushed to the weekend home of the chief prosecutor, who dismissed the rape charge. She felt that what had occurred were no more than minor offences.


But the case was now starting to spin out of control. Sarah next spoke to a newspaper, saying: ‘In both cases, the sex had been consensual from the start but had eventually turned into abuse. Rejecting accusations of an international plot to trap Assange, she added: ‘The accusations were not set up by the Pentagon or anybody else. The responsibility for what happened to me and the other girl lies with a man with a twisted view of women, who has a problem accepting the word “no”.’ The two women then instructed Claes Borgstrom, a so-called ‘gender lawyer’ who is a leading supporter of a campaign to extend the legal definition of rape to help bring more rapists to justice. As a result, in September the case was reopened by the authorities, and last month Interpol said Assange was wanted for ‘sex crimes’.


Yesterday, his lawyer Mark Stephens said the Swedish warrant was a ‘political stunt’ and that he would fight it on the grounds that it could lead to the WikiLeaks founder being handed over to the American authorities (Sweden has an extradition treaty with the U.S.)




Quote: Assange continues to insist that he has done nothing wrong, and that his sexual encounters with both women were consensual.


But last week, the Swedish High Court refused to hear his final appeal against arrest, and extradition papers were presented to police in England, where Assange is currently in hiding. He is able to stay in this country thanks to a six-month visa which expires in the spring. So what to make of a story in which it’s hard to argue that any of the parties emerges with much credit? How reliable are the two female witnesses?


Earlier this year, Sarah is reported to have posted a telling entry on her website, which she has since removed. But a copy has been retrieved and widely circulated on the internet.

Entitled ‘7 Steps to Legal Revenge’, it explains how women can use courts to get their own back on unfaithful lovers. Step 7 says: ‘Go to it and keep your goal in sight. Make sure your victim suffers just as you did.’ (The highlighting of text is Sarah’s own.)


As for Assange, he remains in hiding in Britain, and his website continues to release classified American documents that are daily embarrassing the U.S. government.

Clearly, he is responsible for an avalanche of political leaks. Whether he is also guilty of sexual offences remains to be seen. But the more one learns about the case, the more one feels that, unlike the bell in Enkoping, the allegations simply don’t ring true.

Link

This may be cynical to say, but whether or not he's guilty Assange was doomed. You don't leak out a world power's secrets and expect to be able to fly under the radar for the rest of your life. By doing so he didn't just make an enemy of the US, but of the entire International political community for what he could potentially do. I'm half surprised US, China or Isreal didn't go ahead and put a hit out on him immediately after it happened.

As far as these charges go, it's the nature of the beast. If you play in a dangerous world then you got to take precautions that clearly he was not taking, and that includes not picking up strange women. If he's innocent he might have a chance in hell of getting out of it, though I doubt it. If he's guilty well he's totally doomed.

Yodariquo said:

Note: Assanged turned himself in.  It's not as if he were captured on the lamb.




                              The funny part is seeing the world take the bait.  Assange is mostly irrelevant to the functioning of Wikileaks as far as I can tell.

Yeah, he'd prior agreed to go to the Swedish consulate to answer any questions etc... He's not been hiding from them at all.  But that's not s interesting as the news as a "wanted man" on the run from Interpol.

Free bonus content for this post: (provided by Evinrude, Spend more time on the water.)

aspro said:

Not in a country like the US or Australia.  I don't know what the laws are in Europe.  You'd probably know better.

I do know better

See here, it does not matter what the laws state, in practice it happens too often that rape allegations are assumed to be true, with no evidence backing it up.

aspro said:

Since they got that part of the story wrong, you may want to conder the validity of the rest of it and wait until he has his day in court.

Way to miss the point Sherlock. That was just a introductory sentence to set the mood. The point of the article was to point out all the shady stuff about his indictment. Just because that sentence was not 100% true does not mean the rest of the article is BS.

And here are some quotes from politicians

Thus, during a CBC news program, Tom Flanagan, an advisor to Canadian Prime Minister Harper Stepher, called the assassination of Julian Assange.



The controversial American conservative representative, Sarah Palin, said Julian Assange be hunted as a terrorist.



Former U.S. President Bill Clinton said that the founder of Wikileaks is a criminal who will not escape U.S. law. Also, Clinton told the Associated Press that many will lose their lives because of information published by this site, and “many more will lose their jobs.”



Mike Huckabee, the Republican chairman, said the person who is responsible for the leaks should receive the death penalty. “Everyone in our government that allowed the leaks is guilty of treason and I think any punishment is too soft, in addition to execution,” Huckabee said, quoted by the newspaper Politico.



KT McFarland, a former Pentagon official said the soldier, Bradley Manning (who said that Wikileaks source) should be executed, while the Wikileaks site should be declared a terrorist organization.

It is not like that sentence is 100% incorrect either. You are just being anal here ASSpro. and about the court, sorry if I remain skeptical about a court that has issued an international indictment because the man's condom broke.

Iga_Bobovic said:

aspro said:

Not in a country like the US or Australia.  I don't know what the laws are in Europe.  You'd probably know better.

I do know better

See here, it does not matter what the laws state, in practice it happens too often that rape allegations are assumed to be true, with no evidence backing it up.

aspro said:

Since they got that part of the story wrong, you may want to conder the validity of the rest of it and wait until he has his day in court.

...

Emotion appears to be clouding your perspective.

No elected US offical has called for his arrest or for his execution.  Your examples:

- A Canadian.

- FORMER President Clinton

- FORMER Governor of Arkansas Huckabee, now an employee of FOX News.

- FORMER Governor of Alaska Palin, now an employee of FOX News.

- FORMER Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, now an employee of FOX News.

- FORMER Pentagon Official (not an elected position even).

The only criminal in this matter is the government employee who leaked the documents.

Keep in mind that Assange has broken no US laws and, therefore, as a US citizen I don't have any legal quibble with him.

You seem to have more of a problem with Sweden's judicial system rather than the US.

On a side note of all of this, it really bothers me as a one-time Republican that none of the Republican leaders/mouth-pieces actually hold an office.  Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin... not one of them holds an office. No wonder the party is so damned screwed up. Everyone who has an agenda has nothing to lose and no one to report to.