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| Woman shouts rape after assange breaks condom. Funny. |
With the site supposedly downed by an anti-extremist hacker, people will perhaps have to wait for some time more before they find out what the embassy in Manila has been saying secretly.
That is, IF the interpol doesn't get him arrested on sex crime charges.
Here's an account from www.wired.com
The international police organization Interpol has issued a Red Notice for the arrest of WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange, in connection with a sex crime investigation in Sweden.
A Red Notice is kind of international wanted poster seeking the provisional arrest of a fugitive, with an eye towards extradition to the nation that issued the underlying arrest warrant. Interpol transmits the notices to its 188 member countries, though it has no authority to compel a subject’s arrest. Interpol issued 5,020 such notices last year for a variety of crimes.
A terse extract of Assange’s notice appeared on Interpol’s website on Tuesday, without a photograph, reporting that the 39-year-old Australian is wanted for “sex crimes” by the International Public Prosecution Office in Gothenburg, Sweden.
On November 18 a Swedish judge ordered Assange “detained in absentia” to answer questions in a rape, coercion and molestation investigation in Stockholm. A court approved an international arrest warrant for the ex-hacker two days later, and Sweden reportedly applied to Interpol for the Red Notice. Assange’s lawyer appealed the detention order to the Svea Court of Appeal, but lost. On Tuesday, Assange filed a new appeal to the Swedish Supreme Court.
The investigation stems from separate encounters Assange had with two women during his visit to Sweden last August, where he was applying for Swedish residency and attempting to secure the protection of Swedish free-press laws for his secret-spilling website. According to local news reports, the women told investigators the sexual encounters began as consensual, but turned non-consensual. One woman said Assange ignored her appeals to stop when the condom broke.
Assange has denied any wrongdoing, and hinted that the complaints are the result of a U.S. “smear campaign” targeting WikiLeaks — leading some supporters of the group to publicly investigate the two women and their families.
Here is the Interpol wanted page.
Anyway, a conversation with a friend yielded an interesting question and that is, "Won't cablegate just confirm what we already know about what the US really thinks of the Philippines?"
And then she went on to point out that even when she was a kid, it was already apparent that America didn't regard the Philippines with as much importance as it did Japan or South Korea. Just by looking at the amount of money the US pays for its bases in Japan and Korea, she said, you can probably figure that the Philippines isn't worth that much.
The point she was driving at was that even if the US Embassy Officials called each and every Filipino government official shit-heads, nothing much would come of it.
The Philippines is still dependent on the US (whether it admits it or not) for defense, economic aid, trade, and now, even giving dole-outs to its poor.
Like the subservient neo-colony that it was during the early 1900s, Pilipinas kay ganda must and still kow-tows to Uncle Sam like the less favored kabit that she is.
In any case, I am just curious about what those cables from the US Embassy in Manila contain. It's always better to know, than not know.
But, it seems the Aquino government has publicly taken the position that it would rather not know. Here's a snippet from an article in abs-cbnnews.com
MANILA, Philippines - Malacanang said it is not in a position to comment on the Wikileaks controversy as the contents of alleged cables have not been verified and that those coming from the US Embassy in Manila have not been published.
But Presidential Spokesperson Edwin Lacierda said it is bothersome if contents of sensitive communication will be disclosed to the public.
“Certainly it affects the privacy of communications and it bothers us if information of such a highly sensitive in nature will be disclosed to the public,” he said.
Lacierda acknowledged that it is the role of embassies anywhere to generate intelligence information.
“That is the role of embassies anywhere. Even our own. Number 2, again, we have not seen the documents and number 3, it was in the US embassy who leaked those cables so embassies are require to perform certain functions and one of them is really to observe the temperature of the place of your stations. So that is common,” he said.
Both US President Barak Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton have already warned against people and organizations who might get involved with cablegate.
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