Florida Man Sues WikiLeaks For Scaring Him 340
Stoobalou writes "WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been accused of 'treason' by a Florida man seeking damages for distress caused by the site's revelations about the US government. From the article: 'David Pitchford, a Florida trailer park resident, names Assange and WikiLeaks as defendants in a personal injury suit filed with the Florida Southern District Court in Miami. In the complaint filed on 6th January, Pitchford alleges that Assange's negligence has caused "hypertension," "depression" and "living in fear of being stricken by another heart attack and/or stroke" as a result of living "in fear of being on the brink of another nuclear [sic] WAR."' Just for good measure, it also alleges that Assange and WikiLeaks are guilty of 'terorism [sic], espionage and treason.'"
What's next? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:What's next? (Score:4, Funny)
The kicker is when they describe the plaintiff: "a Florida trailer park resident"
Who didn't see that one coming?
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Sadly, some trailer homes cost more than the average house (property value not included in either).
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Those are called RV's not trailer homes.
RV's are a whole different ball of wax.
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These [sandhhomes.com] are not RVs, they're mobile homes. Only they call them manufactured homes now as mobile homes have the negative stigma mentioned above.
Re:What's next? (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:What's next? (Score:4, Interesting)
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As someone who lived in Florida, in a mobile home park ... right across the street from a plant that made 'manufactured homes' ... when a hurricane or in our case a tornado comes through, they both look exactly the same afterwords, randomly thrown around insulation and aluminum.
They are the same thing, the difference is one they take the wheels off of and set it on the ground, the other they leave them there and set it on blocks. They both can go from trash to mansions, but they are still built like mobile
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Just out of curiosity: if these homes are mobile so they can move away, say, in case of hurricane, why didn't they? Not enough time since the warning, traffic jams because everyone was leaving, the hope that it won't strike hard this time or a combination of the above?
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_libel [wikipedia.org]
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Wouldn't be the first time someone's used a phrase thinking it was appropriate without first making sure they knew what it meant. FWIW, I think it makes perfect sense to describe what people were saying about Palin, and if I hadn't seen all the furore about the proper meaning of the phrase, I would probably have thought it quite a good description.
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According to several Jewish Rabis on TV last night, she not only used the phrase correctly, but its use was not offensive unless you're idiot. They said it more PC than I did but the point remains.
I believe she has no place in politics. She doesn't seem to be well informed, just the same, far too many people seem to be on a irrational witch hunt which seems to highlight their own prejudices and ignorance more-so than hers.
Re:What's next? (Score:4, Interesting)
"Blood libel" makes perfect sense? I never heard the phrase before yesterday, and I couldn't make any sense of what it could mean when I read it.
I had to look it up, and the most generic definition I found was from http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Blood_libel [wordiq.com]
Blood libel - Definition
Blood libels are allegations that a particular group kills people as a form of human sacrifice, and uses their blood in various rituals. The alleged victims are often children.
I really can't fathom how she came up with that phrase.
It is a fact that Palin put out a map with crosshairs over Gifford's district. It is a fact that Giffords spoke publicly about where that could lead.
Palin brought gunsights to the fight. Now she's facing criticism. If she can't take it, she shouldn't start it.
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You and everyone else already know this. Please quit.
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Re:What's next? (Score:5, Funny)
She's as dumb and arrogant as the day is long
And you say this in January, right after the winter solstice when in Alaska the days are short as hell...
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Man, your calendar must be fucking *hell* to sync up with when you're travelling. Leave, stay somewhere for a week, come back to find a month's passed in Alaska?
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how many hours [wikipedia.org] between Days? [wikipedia.org]
Re:What's next? (Score:4, Insightful)
Funny how Alan Dershowitz, no less, said Palin's use of the phrase was perfectly acceptable.
It wasn't the best use of the phrase, but everybody is missing the point here. Some lunatic murders several people, and everyone points the finger at Sarah Palin. It's shameful political opportunism. I'd never vote for Palin for president, but the left must really be afraid of her if they are going to blame her for this.
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It wasn't the best use of the phrase, but everybody is missing the point here. Some lunatic murders several people, and everyone points the finger at Sarah Palin. It's shameful political opportunism.
Maybe it is, but Palin should definitely be more careful about what she says and what imagery she uses. The might be some loon that takes her seriously.
Ditto (Score:2)
It will be hard for anything else to beat this for the dumbest thing I've seen on the internet today.
This one will be hard to beat. I am no Assange fan, but this is just stupid.
Re:What's next? (Score:5, Insightful)
yeah. but not surprising. Yey trailer parks, the bring out the best of this wonderful country...
Seriously, how the hell can it be treason if he isn't a US citizen (or otherwise legal resident)?
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Fascism? That's a bit of a strech. Ignorance less, so, but then again, every country is full of ignorance. Need proof for yours? Look in a mirror.
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I think the sad thing is that when you look at American polls this seems to be a pretty accurate description of a major percentage of public opinion regarding Wikileaks in the US.
Re:What's next? (Score:5, Funny)
It will be hard for anything else to beat this for the dumbest thing I've seen on the internet today.
A CHALLENGER APPEARS!
Canada bans Dire Straits' "Money for Nothing" [thespec.com]
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Sorry, that's just "run-of-the-mill Canada" crazy. It's not even close to "over-the-top crazy old man Florida" crazy.
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There are radio version that leaves out or change those lines.
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"What some fail to understand is that the CBSC sets voluntary guidelines. They can ban the song if they want but radio stations are under no obligation to abide by the ruling. There are no penalties involved. The guidelines and organization have no powers other than those given to it by it's members the station owners."
I don't know if that's actually true but it does make sense.
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It will be hard for anything else to beat this for the dumbest thing I've seen on the internet today.
A CHALLENGER APPEARS!
Canada bans Dire Straits' "Money for Nothing" [thespec.com]
Your title suggesting "Canada bans..." is misleading. The first sentence says, "The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council has ruled that Dire Straits’ 1980s [unedited] hit Money for Nothing is too offensive for Canadian radio." Now try and tell me that this is is very far from the kind of crap we get here in the US with the FCC.
Which is just downright stupid, anyhow... radio stations I've listened to here in the US always play a radio-edit version which completely removes the "faggot"-lyric verse. I
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If he wins, I'll sue Stephen King's ass off.
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Suing the wrong person (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Suing the wrong person (Score:5, Insightful)
no. "shoot the messenger" is a time honored tradition in society. why stop now?
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No, because before h was operating on the "what I don't know can't hurt me" principle, which, as we all know, really works...
Re:Suing the wrong person (Score:4, Insightful)
He should be suing Fox. I'm sure it was Fox News that inspired this fear of Wikileaks within him. Plus, they did all this after they convince him that if he steps outside of his trailer animals are going to attack him from all directions.
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He should be suing his parents for coddling him and not raising him as a flesh eating abomination who kills and devours without any fear or remorse.
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It's all very well saying he's suing the middle man, and should be going after the government as wikileaks only revealed what they had done.
but you're STILL going after the middle man then,
sue the doctors who gave names to "hypertension," "depression", "heart attack" and stroke" so that you may be in fear of them, they're clearly the real monsters here.
Predictable (Score:5, Funny)
I knew this would happen when I heard that Walmart was putting in self-serve legal departments.
@Walmart putting in self-serve legal departments (Score:3)
Nuclear war (Score:5, Funny)
Luckily, nuclear war is a cure for depression, hypertension, heart attack and stroke.
Re:Nuclear war (Score:4, Interesting)
It's one of the perks of living in a high-density area with a lot of strategic stuff nearby. Should the shit hit the fan, I'll go from "sipping a nice gin and tonic" to "gas and/or plasma phase" with such rapidity that my neural net will be destroyed faster than impulses can travel along the nerves. I will, quite literally, be dead before I know it.
Out in the sticks, people will have to contend with violently expelling their gastrointestinal systems from both ends and fighting off the roving bands of supermutants.
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Citizen (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Citizen (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, living in a trailer park in bumfuck FL he probably doesn't realize who Assange actually is, or where he is, or what he actually does.
It sounds to me like someone put Pitchford up to this. And has the court thrown this complaint out with gales of derisive laughter yet? If not, may I volunteer to provide the laughter?
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It's a free country. You certainly may.
In fact, I think a flash mob would be most appropriate in this situation. Have a bunch of people show up at the courthouse entrance. No anger, no signs, no threats, no speeches, no derision. At a pre-determined time, everyone simultaneously points at Pitchford, puts on a big red clown nose, and spends 20 seconds having a good belly laugh. At the end of 20 seconds, everyone walks off nonchalantly. Then go home and try desperately to forget that idiots like this ex
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Don't you have to be a citizen in order to be charged with treason?
No, not in a Florida trailer park.
Summary fail... (Score:5, Informative)
From the summary: "in fear of being on the brink of another nuclear [sic] WAR."'
From the article: "in fear of being on the brink of another nucliar [sic] WAR".
It would help if posters didn't correct spelling for words which are followed by [sic].
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Not to mention the title says he sues wikileaks, and the summary says he sues Assange. What a piece of shit.
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Everybody knows it's nucular, our last president said so. And he was white so he must have gone to school.
(this is a joke, don't take offense)
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I had assumed that the sic tag was used because of the word "another." I can't remember any of the previous nuclear wars, although I may not have been paying attention at the time.
You may have missed WWII or the Cold War... both were nuclear. One used a couple of atomic bombs, the other used the threat of them.
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why does where he lives matter? (Score:2)
"David Pitchford, a Florida trailer park resident..."
this really gets me mad. why does living in Florida matter? why does living in a trailer park matter? that's wrong with people, this sort of prejudice...
come to think of it, yeah, carry on. this is a good prejudice
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Re:why does where he lives matter? (Score:4, Funny)
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I'm not in the least surprised that this fine example of human rational superiority lives in Florida. I read Fark, after all, and have seen no shortage of this kind of mind-boggling idiocy. More to the point, I think the this guy's anxiety is more likely caused by the fact that trailer parks attract tornadoes.
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You might want to avoid Fark for the foreseeable future...
Sue the trailer park while you're at it... (Score:2)
Just in case he reads slashdot (Score:2)
**** BOOH ****
There's another court case for you.
While you're there... (Score:2)
An obvious kook... (Score:5, Interesting)
I can't figure out if this view is a cancerous outgrowth of the morally monstrous "My country right or wrong" brigade(who are certainly louder and more numerous than there more honorable "May my country always be right and, when wrong, be set right" counterparts) or if it is a symptom of an even deeper flavor of cognitive limitation and/or ethical infantalism.
Below a certain age, and in some lower animals, "object permanence" is not well established. If they see an object enter a bag, they still lose track of it once it leaves their vision, and do not conclude that it must be residing in the bag, and can be found there. Above a certain age, and in smarter animals, this conclusion sticks. One is inclined to wonder if there is some moral variant of this, where some people, for who knows what reason, cannot apply "ethical action permanence" and conclude that, if Wikileaks took it out of the bag, and the government is the one who puts stuff in the bag, even though Wikileaks is holding the unethical object, it is merely the entity that took the object out of the bag where it had earlier been placed, not the entity that created the object.
In a way, I actually find the straight-up belligerent "USA! USA! Nuke ALL RAGHEADS!!!!" crowd to be more respectable. They are atavistic, barbarous scum, but they are refreshingly honest and straightforward about their bloodlust. The mealy-mouthed "respectable" apologists, on the other hand, are ethically no better; but spend their time dripping honeyed words and "nuance" to cover for the policies that they don't have the guts to endorse public-ally. It's like Fred Phelps: He is an awful human being, and merely by existing makes one wish there were a hell for him to inhabit; but he is all honesty. No equivocation, no focusing only on soft targets(anybody can picket an abortion clinic without much in the way of controversy, hitting military funerals takes serious guts...), no "Oh, we just stand for commonsense family values" circumlocution.
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But this guy is merely a risibly hyperbolic instance of a much broader, more common, and (in alarmingly many circles) respected position: Namely, that the person who reveals wrongdoing is somehow guiltier of that wrongdoing than the person who commits it.
Yup. This is the bit that confuses me...
Granted, some of that stuff probably shouldn't have been leaked. And I'm sure various people broke various laws by leaking it. And there may very well be court cases and punishments and whatever else...
But the scary stuff that this guy is stressing about? Wikileaks didn't do that stuff. The US Government did that stuff. Wikileaks just let you know about the scary stuff.
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I think it's extreme tribalism. Some folks need to ascribe a purity to the tribe they identify with. It keeps their world stable and helps them sleep at night to know that their country stands for Truth and Justice. It's something good they can be sure of.
So when someone comes along and disrupts that feeling of security, the disruptor is blamed. People aren't so much pissed off that their country does questionable things (to put it lightly), as they are angry at being forced to confront and acknowledge
If this works... (Score:2)
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count me in! Can we say class action? Oh yeah!
The centers of Class Action suits are: Cleveland, OH, Beaumont,TX, and Orlando, FL.
When he gets there he should look for the law firm of Uriah Ketchum and Isaac Cheatham, who have been defending gatored communities for years.
I'm a bit confused about the treason part.... (Score:5, Interesting)
how exactly does one commit treason against a country you have no affiliation with? Given that Assange is Australian, it'd be a pretty bizarre contortion of the law to conclude that he's committed treason against the US government. Espionage perhaps, but by definition: only Australia can charge him with treason.
Re:I'm a bit confused about the treason part.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Apparently they can. How else would they extradite him? If Federal prosecutors can convince a grand jury to indict Assange (not hard to do...the grand jury system is rigged heavily in favor of prosecutors) they can ask whichever country he is in to arrest and extradite him. Even if Assange has never stepped foot on U.S. soil.
They just have to show he committed a crime against the U.S. over the internet...such as 'conspiracy to commit espionage'. After giving Manning 'protective solitary confinment' (aka coercive torture) for enough time, they'll get Manning to claim that Assange and him worked together to get those government documents. Manning will be offered a deal for a limited amount of prison time if he serves as a 'government witness' against Assange. Given the last 7 months have been hell on earth for Manning, turning such an offer down would be incredibly difficult. Even if there is no actual communication logs showing this, the mere testimony of Manning (under duress) is a "witness statement" that a grand jury can use.
Once they get Assange dragged into U.S. custody, they can lock him up in jail for years while federal prosecutors file motions for extensions and things. Then, finally, they can give him a show trial where the jury is stacked with people who hate sex criminals. (even though Assange would not be accused of such crime, the jurors would think of him as a rapist).
Even if he were acquitted (the case as I outlined it is very weak) he would be out hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal defense fees and years off his natural lifespan. The Federal government cannot be sued to reclaim either of these things unless Assange were able to show that the government KNEW he was innocent. (which if they have a coerced statement from Manning, above, the government doesn't have to pay)
So in a nutshell : they can punish Assange severely for his actions even if they are never able to convict him of a crime. And imagine the mental anguish : Assange won't know for months or years during this process if he is going to be convicted and made to rot in prison for decades.
This kind of thing happens day in and day out in the U.S. We make more people rot in confinement than the worst despotic regimes in history. And there are many effective ways to get around the protections offered by your 'rights', making them nearly meaningless in practice.
Class Action (Score:2)
Well I think he should start a Class Action lawsuit against his government because Assange only posted facts. It was his government that scared him.
Nuclear [sic] ? (Score:4)
As opposed to what? The correct spelling, which is nukular?
Re:Nuclear [sic] ? (Score:4, Informative)
The submitter doesn't know how to properly use [sic]. The article spells it "nucliar". Submitter corrected it for some reason and added [sic] anyway.
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By this logic I can sue Pitchford. (Score:2)
Who's the bigger idiot? (Score:2)
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What is even more scary was some dipsheit professional lawyer actually took the case on for this moron. Talk about who's the biggest idiot - the lawyer or the trailer park resident?
Not necessarily - he could have filed the papers all by himself. It makes for a funny headline on a slow news day, but won't see the light of day in court.
someone should lock up the florida guy in prison (Score:2)
Nuts with guns, nuts with lawyers (Score:2)
Nuts with lawyers are better. At least he's only hurting his own financial future and wasting the court's time.
One good turn... (Score:2)
This new information scares me.
Can I sue this guy for scaring me with his suing over being scared?
I R frum uh traialer pork.. (Score:2)
An U B scarin me, I wont muny fer mah hort utacks!
The right wing is more prone to fear. (Score:2)
Conservatives, scientifically, are more scared of loud noises and scary pictures [dailymail.co.uk], were described as being frightened and easily offended as three year olds [psychologytoday.com], and have a larger 'fear' center and smaller 'anticipation and decision-making' center [independent.co.uk]
This isn't spin, it's established science. So seeing fear, anti-government sentiment, and a parroting of the Glenn Beckesque rhetoric that's unfortunately a large part of the news here in the US right now doesn't surprise me one bit.
Perception and Reality (Score:2)
So let me get this straight.
The problem is not that bad shit is happening,
but that we now know it's happening.
May I suggest a set of horse's blinkers and noise-cancelling headphones,
to ensure blissful living.
Of course, then, you'd have to sue your own imagination.
yes yes !! (Score:2)
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Its possible that he's working for the US government to get Assange to the US where he (Assange) can be promptly arrested and per^H^H^Hprosecuted for some crime that hasn't been committed.
Not going to judge, but if this guy is the best the government can come up with, y'all are in a lot more trouble than I thought - I'm going to bet that the judge dismisses the whole thing at the first hearing (for lack of jurisdiction, if nothing else). Pretty positive that WikiLeaks will politely ignore the whole thing.
(Although come to think of it, the best "Republican female" apparently is Sarah Palin, so you never know...)
(Seriously - Sarah Palin is the best the Republicans can come up with as an answer
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A micus curiae brief would be fun.
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