Julian Assange To Write For Swedish Tabloid

An anonymous reader writes "Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has signed on as a columnist for Swedish tabloid Aftonbladet. Why such a move? Maybe there's something more to be found in Swedish law when you are employed by a newspaper." Here's an account in English, including a translation of the interview that forms part of the linked Aftenbladet article.

Tabloid?

[bsDaemon]

Does the term 'tabloid' have the connotation of 'Weekly World News' in the rest of the world as it does in the United States, or does the term still have to do with the tabloid format as opposed to broadsheet when doing pre-press layout? Just curious as to what sort of reputation this paper has.

Re:Swedish Law

[Anonymous Coward]

They were definitely taken in, but there's no need to oversell it. American voters believed that a tribal society being funded by a billionaire might be able to launch a nuclear weapon. That's not quite the same thing.

Tor Worm

[Anonymous Coward]

To support the Iranian people in 2008, I ran a Toir relay. I eventually ran one to help with WikiLeaks. I used my neighbors Internet connection over WiFi (which I helped pay for). - he didn't care. But, ICE ended up raiding his house looking for kiddy porn. Of course, they didn't find any and I have since learned that this is a hazard with running these relays. Though, the warrant mysteriously disappeared and there is no record of the raid, so this makes me think that the FBI/ICE is raiding Tor Relay operators under the guise of anti-child porn, imaging their drives and then dropping the case.

So, how do you fight back against something like this? I have created an autoinstalling version of Tor that is automatically set to operate in Relay mode (/w uPNP enabled). I just place this autoinstaller in a dozen locations on the web and change the payload url of an existing worm out with this. Imagine how overwhelmed the thugs in ICE would be if 10,000 Tor Relays popped up overnight.

Re:Swedish Law

[cappp]

I have no idea about the standard for danger under Swedish law but that section is written really broadly. All you have to show is "detriment to the defence of the Realm or the national supply of goods...or otherwise to the security of the Realm." Hopefully a Swedish legal expert can jump in there but depending on how high a bar the courts set, it would appear that it wouldn't be all that difficult really.

So why won't google translate translate the websit

[Snaller]

I think that's a more interesting question.

Re:Relevance???

[qbzzt]

A more interesting question is whether any documents on wikiLeaks are already fakes donated by agents of one government or another.

Junk newspaper

[turbotroll]

Aftonbladet, often nicknamed "Aftonhoran" ("The Evening Whore") is a miserable tabloid of nearly non-existent intellectual value. A typical issue looks more like a prop from the movie "Idiocracy" [imdb.com] than a real newspaper from a civilized country.

Even a quick glance at its website [aftonbladet.se] clearly reveals its true values (or lack thereof), even to those who aren't native Swedish speakers.

Re:Man at least someone is paying attention

[Somewhat Delirious]

I agree completely. One of the most worrying things about the US government and a lot of the American citizens supporting it is that they don't seem to be able to learn from history. Just look how many of the wars they have been involved in have been succesful with regard to their objectives, look how many of the internal conflicts and power struggles they have gotten involved in have come back to bite them in the ass. Yet they keep doing the exact same thing time and time again.

What I also found interesting was Assange's remark: "Journalists have to be more on their guard about what's said about us." There may be even more that I have missed but at least to of the articles that have been going around in the media last week (mostly uncritically reproduced from the news wires without any comments or attempt to verify them) are obvious us spin.

1. The letter from Human Rights organisations criticizing Wikileaks for allegedly realeasing the names of hundreds of Afghan informants. This story was spun to have had Amnesty International as one of it's signees. A later statement from an AI spokeswoman made clear that this was not the case. She said that AI had not taken an official position on the Wikileaks Afghan war release and that all that had happened was that one low ranking member had been involved in private Email communication with Wikileaks about that matter. The true signees of the letter are not independent NGO's they are all either funded by the US government, the Afghan government or have very close ties to the US government.

2. The letter from "Reporters sans frontières" giving the same criticism (and in a very contradictory and muddled way at that: arguing that you shouldn't release secret military information because it might lead to a crack down on the freedom of the press is nonsensical at best if you are an organisation that's supposed to have freedom of the press as it's primary goal. What are you going to release then? Anything that the involved powers that be have no objections to?) is completely untrustworthy.

First of all this organisation has been linked to the CIA and even been accused of being a CIA front. One of it's directors has admitted that a large part of the organisations funding comes either from the US government or from organisations with very close ties to that government. Lucie Morillon, RWB's Washington representative, confirmed in an interview on 29 April 2005 that the organization has a contract with US State Department's Special Envoy to the Western Hemisphere Otto Reich who was involved in Whitehouse propaganda under Reagan and a former board member of Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, which was formerly known as the School for the Americas, and described in 2004 by the LA Weekly as a “torture-teaching institution”. According to Amnesty International, the School in the past has produced training manuals which advocated torture, blackmail, beatings and executions. One of Their founders has openly condoned torture in the French press. Of course a name like "Reporters sans frontières" sounds very idealistic and independent (who would imagine that an originally French press freedom organisation would be in bed with some of the more shady parts of the US government. Unless you checked of course, and most of this info can be found on Wikipedia) but that's just a superficial appearance and designed to be.

Re:How has he made his living

[clarkkent09]

And what exactly did he tell us about "all the greasy things our government does" and what "massive fuck up" and "war crimes" are you talking about? Care to cite any examples? I am genuinely curious because there is no way I can read all the published documents, most of which is completely routine stuff, but I figured out someone would pick the juiciest bits for us. And yet, I haven't seen anything that justifies such a drastic step as publishing classified information and quite clearly putting lives of our Afghan allies and our own soldiers a risk.

Re:This Guy

[siddesu]

"Actually I'm glad this material got out"

I think you should be. Wikileaks has done your country a service by showing your military's IT security is quite bad, and the understanding of the issues by senior brass is on the level of every other PHB out there.

Given this leak, it seems quite likely that other intelligence services are able to access information from similar security failures on all levels of your command, and it is certain that they would not be so kind as to inform you of the fact that you're leaking.

So you should thank Assange for getting a free indication that so much is available from the lowest ranks, and ask the top brass WTF are they doing with your money.