Actually they claimed to have a DMCA takedown system.

Why do you think this is "most likely"? Are there any leads to support this assumption?

Since the plan was hatched, disgruntled volunteers mentioned in the PDF broke away from Wikileaks, financial institutions withdrew services, Apelbaum was harassed by the US Government and Amazon denied service to Wikileaks' website."

It's always nice to have a good conspiracy - but chronology is a bitch. Even before the plan was hatched, Paypal has canceled Wikileaks accounts twice, disgruntled volunteers were gruntling very publicly, Wikileaks had to change providers several times and Julian Assange reported harrassment from every government he had to deal with.

You googled for "rape", you will get search results with "rape". You can't draw any conclusions out of that.

But I agree, this story has an huge impact. But there are many factors involved, that make an intelligence involvement unplausible or unneccessary. One very important factor was: Assange made this political in an instant with his "dirty tricks" statement. And Wikileaks published their first official statement ever calling Assange the site's "founder" - until then they had maintained Assange was just a spokesperson.

Assange is right, he said never "CIA" - but what did he say? IIRC he mentioned "significant forces" that are allegedly behind the smear campaign. Who could that be? One question: If Assange has just been warned about these "dirty tricks" - why would he have sex with two different women he just had met in Sweden?

Assange and Wikileaks have sometimes problems to get their tall stories straight. And it's not always the fault of the media.

Wikileaks has no office in the United States. They won't tell who is a member of Wikileaks. And they say, even they can't tell who is a source and who is not. This leads me to the conclusion: Wikileaks can't possibly profit from any law the US might adopt. Or am I missing something?

On the other side: if you grant source protection without any restrictions, you can rephrase the law: "No one has to talk to the police or judges at any circumstances".

I did not find the exact quote I was looking for, but close enough. Here is a press release from 2009:

Wikileaks source documents are received in Sweden and published from Sweden so as to derive maximum benefit from this legal protection. Should the Senator or anyone else attempt to discover our source we will refer the matter to the Constitutional Police for prosecution, and, if necessary, ask that the Senator and anyone else involved be extradited to face justice for breaching fundamental rights."

Newspaper article from 2010:

“We're registered as a library in Australia, we're registered as a foundation in France, we're registered as a newspaper in Sweden,” Mr Assange said.

Wikileaks does not confine to government data. They published e.g. the membership list of an rightwing party in UK, they published court documents of people whou were found not guilty in the Dutroux case, they published an wrong HIV test of Steve Jobs. But like you I don't think, molestation charges are not Assanges "own medicine".

I ask you one simple question... If he was such a 'douchebag' all along, why did we not hear ANY of this until he dared to challenge the US military? Why are all these little details suddenly 'leaking' now? The obvious answer is that it's all BS. But no one even questions it. It's scary how blindly people follow media.

It's the concept of linear time. Since he has apparently slept with the two women after the publication of the "war diaries", no details about that could leak before.

If you wanted information about Assange being a douchebag, this is available for years for anyone who is interested. Since when you got interested in Assanges character?

The credibility of Wikileaks is at stake, but not because of Assanges bedtime stories.

For example: Assange claimed for years, Wikileaks contributors are protected by the Swedish law, he even threatened to sue anyone who tried to expose a Wikileaks source.

But if you read the Twitter-stream of Wikileaks carefully, you will see this: this:

Confirm our editor applied for Swedish residency on Aug 18 to obtain prior-restraint protections http://bit.ly/czWlGT

When you follow the link, you will read nothing about "prior-restraint" protections - in fact Wikileaks has until now no protection at all under the Swedish press laws. And they will not get it soon, because Wikileaks did not fill out the application correctly.

Another migration board spokesperson, Gunilla Wikstroem, told Swedish news agency TT the application was on hold since some information was missing,

This is only one of the countless contradictions Assange was caught on. For example Assange claimed in 2009 a 17 year old Wikileaks contributor by the police in Iceland to press him for information about Wikileaks. In fact the juvenile was caught breaking into a business premises and was subsequently interrogated in the presence of his parents, police did not even know about any Wikileaks connections. Even when he had to wait for less than 30 minutes at an airport in Australia Assange did spread conspiracy theories about foul play and intelligence agency involvement.