Like Crispin, I am a bit befuddled by the specific nature of the "charges" against Julian Assange.
According to accounts the two Swedish women gave to the police and friends, each had consensual sexual encounters with Mr. Assange that became nonconsensual.Hmm, okay, um, what? Now obviously it is possible to withdraw consent during sex, to say no after saying yes, to mutter the safety word, whatever. But the very nonspecific nature of these allegations, their timing, and the confused, contradictory, and uncoordinated actions of all officials involved suggests something a little more sinister.
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As does the scope. Does Interpol regularly hunt alleged date rapists?
Re Lieberman's statement that publishing classified information is illegitimate. I thought the legal exposure with classified information was with the government employees who had signed nondisclosure forms. The premise seems to be that all information sources are organs of the state. Molto fascisto!
So if I get hold of an oil contract between Dagestan and Sunoco and put it on the interwebs can I be prosecuted for rape?
I'm not particularly comfortable with dismissing rape charges because they're vague. I am, however, comfortable with dismissing the use and importance, as relates to Wikileaks, of these rape charges regardless of their validity.
Like, the timing and the way they're being used, it doesn't seem likely to me that they're actually real, no. But even if they are, it doesn't matter to anyone except to Assange and his hypothetical victims. As far as Wikileaks as an endeavor is concerned, they are utterly irrelevant. Assange could force baby deer and baby seals to fight to the death in Saw style circumstances, and it wouldn't change the fact that the leaks have been made, more will come, and there exists a solid infrastructure for more and more to be made. The environment that these assholes fuck the world in is way less hospitable now, either way. And hallelujah for that, like, seriously.
And that's why we should be dismissing the charges. They don't matter.
interpol doesn't hunt anyone, seeing as how there is no such thing as an interpol agent...
They should have let this guy in on the secret.
Obviously I was speaking figuratively, you tit.
How does a person that doesn't exist do anything, literal or figurative? Interpol is a fucking database. You might as well accuse Excel of character assassination.
@Nutella: you mean The International wasn't a true story? Next you're gonna be telling me Carmen Sandiego didn't steal the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
As the man says, "Crikey..."
http://www.interpol.int/Public/icpo/ipsg/default.asp
If you find yourself in a matriarchy like Sweden, run don't walk to the border. A word to the wise guy.
Really? Find me in here, cause I see they have employees but no mention of any actual police force.
Interpol is designed to merely aid cooperation and collaboration between various police forces. They don't make any arrests, issue any sentences or what have you, as far as my understanding goes.
From the fucking wiki: "I nterpol differs from most law-enforcement agencies—agents do not make arrests themselves, and there is no single Interpol jail where criminals are taken. "
blech. just pretend that last post was coherent English.
Like . . . an Irish monk?
IF Assange weren't on the shitlist of nearly every government in the world, I would conclude that he just likes it a little too rough for the ladies' taste.
Anyway, back to the task at hand, which is to question rape allegations against a man based on nothing simply because he sat at the back of the class, too!
Maybe he raped a TSA agent?
Parsing your various statements,
Nutella1) interpol agents "don't exist"
Nutella2) "quoting from the fucking wiki 'Interpol... agents do not make arrests themselves.'
Nutella1) Interpol can't "do anything, literal or figurative."
Nutella2) Interpol agents "aid cooperation and collaboration between various police forces" [with operational support]
Nutella1) "Interpol is a fucking database."
Nutella2) Interpol "can't issue any sentences."
I think you're basically just busted.
Yes better get back to the issue at hand. The rape business is pretty ugly. The only possible silver lining is if Wikileaks got hold of the diplomatic cables in which the U.S. ambassador demanded of Sweden that they prosecute Assange for not pulling out quick enough after a busted condom.
Assange cornered that poor woman and threw a chair at her! Oh wait, nevermind. That was Charlie Sheen.
Parse this: Talking about interpol "hunting" someone is retarded because Interpol makes no decision about whom to pursue or prosecute and cannot actively pursue or prosecute. So, yeah, I guess they're "agents." Like, travel agents or something
jeez. they can't even catch Polanski, now they think they're going to get Assange?
Why don't they just arrest him for driving slow in the fast lane? That appears to be what he is up to.
Fuckin, there I was, cruising down the internationalstate when fucking interpol rolls up behind me with their flashing lights.
It's strange that if they were going to catch him in a honey trap they wouldn't have a trollop accuse him of old-fashioned rape, rather than this bizarre rape-by-deception-ex-post-facto bit. I doubt these charges are going far, but it's a pretense to hold him until the O-Bomb's Imperial Kangaroo Kourt can extradite him, and then of course he'll never get out.
Seems Ecuador may be offering him asylum. But international travel is going to be difficult now.
The growing consensus among the ruling class for Mr. Assange is this. Two choices.
1) A very permanent and as uncomfortable as possible stay in a European version of the Hanoi Hilton.
2) A hellfire missle up the ass.
I think it was in the Guardian shortly after the arrest that they essentially said in Sweden sex involving deception is considered rape, which is insane enough if, say, you told a girl you were Mick Jagger's third cousin to arouse her, but in this case the deception is only implied, if I understand:
Assange copulated with two girls within a few days. Copulation with the first implied some amount of future fidelity, thus when he copulated with the next the first was retroactively raped. But copulating of course also implies some arbitrary amount of chastity beforehand. So when he copulated with the second girl ("consensual" by our neanderthal standards) he was raping her as well.
Which brings to mind something like the Kobe Bryant rape case. It was found that the girl already had several recent deposits of sperm in her when Kobe raped (or fucked) her. Thus by Swedish logic she was actually the rapist, a serially spree rapist, especially if each new load of sperm exponentially re-rapes all recently previous victims.
Of course I'm sure Kobe would be considered a rapist under such standards, so it was actually mutual rape.
Gawd, I don't wanna hear what the courts have to say about threesomes, then.
Kind of like how that Israeli woman accused that guy of rape after she found out he was Palestinian
*I may regret this but*
The issue with Kobe was, he went for the backdoor, the girl said "no", and he just kept going.
Then he went on to tattle on Shaq for "paying his girls off" to be quiet about such things.
I think the rape charges are intended to smear but also to get him into the hands of a friendly government that will hold him while Holder trumps up charges on which he can be extradited to the United States. These rape charges also impede the likelihood of his getting asylum elsewhere, assuming there is any country not so completely bullied by the US that they'd offer it. While this is all playing out, I think there is some possibility that he will be murdered.
I don't agree with Ethan at all that they are irrelevant. Assange's fate is entwined with these charges and his fate will definitely have an impact on the movement he embodies. A lot of people seem to be taking a lot of things for granted: indefinitely unfettered networks, for instance. Legions of courageous, incorruptible leakers and hackers; and that others with whom Assange has shared these files aren't also on Uncle's hit list.
In my last comment, by 'these files' I meant the backlog of leaks yet to be dropped, not Cablegate.
Well if we can abstract from the geopolitical issue for a moment, I think it's clear that in sexual matters our Mr Assange is, in the technical parlance, an asshole. Maybe not quite up to the standards of the Pittsburgh Steelers, but nevertheless. And given his acute consciousness/paranoia of skating on thin ice, it probably would have been a better idea to curb his assholishness at that particular juncture. I mean Gandhi and MLK had affairs I think but they had a lot more going for them karmically if you know what I mean.
I always figured Interpol were the dudes who helped Superman and His Pal Jimmy Olsen fight the fearsome threat of Intergang.
I think it's clear that in sexual matters our Mr Assange is, in the technical parlance, an asshole
I think it's clear that we should automatically assume whatever any government says about Julian Assange is automatically true, especially those governments which may be looking for any excuse to defame, imprison, extradite, and/or murder him.
Lieberman thinks Julian Assange is a non-kosher Seder.
...suggests something more sinister. Yes! They're called dollars and surely provided by Uncle Sam.
ya think?
I think it's clear that in sexual matters our Mr Assange is, in the technical parlance, an asshole
Well, of course he is. He's a human being, isn't he? Fucking people. They're just no damn good.
The concrete details of his supposed crimes are still pretty vague, but from what one has heard so far, it seems to turn on behavior that many of us have both experienced and exhibited, de tour en tour, without anybody calling in the cops.
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"But the very nonspecific nature of these allegations, their timing, and the confused, contradictory, and uncoordinated actions of all officials involved"
and the fact that these are the same charges a (female) swedish prosecutor could not make antyhing out of the last time, by her own admission.its a scam. but WHAT isnt a fucking scam in the American Babylon
Apparently Assange is being charged for the crime of "sex by surprise", which is something that only exists in Swedish law thanks to feminist ideology and gender politics that has gone to insane extremes in favor of women and against men.
Assange apparently wasn't completely honest about his relationships with other women or something with the woman he ended up having sex with... who then decided to get revenge on him, as females are wont to do, by running to the state and trying to pin the charge of "sex crime" or rape against Assange.
One more thing:
It has become a bit of a right-wing cliche to trot out the term "nanny state" but I think in this case, conservatives/libertarians are correct when they point out social democracy has a tendency to increase government and state powers and hinder personal liberty and freedom. The existence of this completely unjustified and bizarre "sex by surprise" law in Sweden is proof enough of that. It could could only exist in a social democratic, nanny state like Sweden where people have lost all sense of perspective and don't seem to understand you can't allow the state and government to intrude into personal matters, especially those involving love and sex, which are always messy, ambiguous, and rarely one-sided.
See this post for more details on this bizarre "sex by surprise" charge against Assange :
http://slatest.slate.com/id/2276690/
Hey, look, out come the whiny men in full force. Oh noes, we might not be able to force the bitches to keep having sex when they don't want to! And we might not get away with it by saying, gee, well, it's so HARD to pull out when they tell us to! You can't blame us for "not pulling out fast enough," because it takes so fucking long to slip a dick out of a vagina, you see.
The allegation is that Assange forced women to keep going after they said "stop"--not that he didn't pull out "fast enough" or "sex by surprise" or whatever some bullshit Slate blogger says. For more details on the allegations, see here (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/19/world/europe/19assange.html?scp=6&sq=assange%20rape&st=cse), several paragraphs down.
Is it trumped up? Maybe, who knows? It's weird that the prosecutors have made such inconsistent statements. The timing is definitely suspicious. But Ethan's right that the value of Wikileaks has nothing to do with whether this man is a rapist. The chorus of male puling in response to these charges is as irrelevant as it is pathetic. Twisty's right: we can all blame the patriarchy for the unmitigated crap in this comments section.
the U.S. ambassador demanded of Sweden that they prosecute Assange for not pulling out quick enough after a busted condom.
You mean not pulling out quick enough after the woman repeatedly told him to stop, dipshit. Like the Times article linked above says: both women allege that he ignored their repeated appeals, plural, for him to stop.
The charges could still be made up, of course. But all this hand-wringing about "matriarchy" and "sex by surprise" and other shit that has nothing to do with anything is truly ludicrous.
If the women were so traumatized, how come they made breakfast for him and joked about pregnancy the next morning, Anonymous?
Best take your feminoid moralizing elsewhere.
"Feminoid"? That's pretty pitiful, guy. Just go whole hog next time and call t'other anonymous a man-hating, hairy-pitted, feminazi cow, yeah? The one disheartening but necessary conclusion to come out of this interweb Assange apologia business on the part of nominally left-wing dudedom is that there is no substantive difference between the far right and the far left when it comes to misogyny. Lying, Angry, Catty, Spiteful, Slutty and, in this case, Stooges of the CIA, Bitches are somehow always to blame.
No, Bitches aren't someone "always to blame" but neither are they the poor, blameless victims who aren't also motivated by jealousy and revenge.
As I said already, when it comes to love and sex, these things are very difficult to prove, are ambiguous, messy and rarely one-sided. Crying "rape" or "sex crime" when the female made him breakfast the next morning and tweeted about her experience doesn't quite ring true.
Let me try that again:
No, "Bitches aren't somehow always to blame" but neither are they always the poor, blameless victims who aren't also motivated by jealousy and revenge.
As I said already, when it comes to love and sex, these things are very difficult to prove, are ambiguous, messy and rarely one-sided. Crying "rape" or "sex crime" when the female made him breakfast the next morning and tweeted about her experience doesn't quite ring true.
Using the blunt instrument of the state and government to intrude into these kind of personal matters is just asking for abuse of government and state power. It's a bad idea. Of course, there are some clear cut cases of rape where the state and government have to step in.. but I don't think this is one of them.
Oh no!!1! Not that tired old quasi-libertarian "state is intruding upon personal matters" / "state trying to regulate morality" canard!!!! Dude, you're reading an anarchist's weblog; the state "intruding" upon shit, creating crimes out of shit, is what the state is there for, period. The state is abusive, is coercive. You like it, you lump it, it's got nothing to do with whether Assange raped somebody by holding her down and fucking her when she said "stop stop," "no no."
"Love and sex" meanwhile (what a fucking larf) are equally irrelevant. Nobody's in love. Who claimed anyone loved anyone in this scenario? The only people for whom "love and sex" are complicated, gray-matter kind of issues are dudes who, when they're not furiously pumping themselves over torture porn, treat sexual assault and rape as though they are the stuff of speculative philosophy or evolutionary psychology, rather than actual experiences. Same guys who like to bitch and moan about black guyz n' crime, or whatever pet theory they've got to neatly explain away their white supremacy.
"Females" not "making breakfast" for Assange is equally a non-sequitur, some disingenuous fantasy Naomi Wolf dreamed up.
Or was it another Naomi? IOZ is an expert on these matters, I hear tell...
Riddle me this, lib'ral-minded dudez who totally acknowledge that rape, theoretically, can take place, but argue vehemently against it ever actually having occurred, each and every time any dude happens to be involved, world without end:
when are accusations of rape NOT vague and when DON'T they involve disparate accounts from accuser and accused?
I know feminism is icky, patriarchy is made-up academic nonsense, and the words "rape culture" make your wee-wees shrivel, but stop repeating the same fucking socially conservative, right-wing myths about regretted sex and loose women. You sound like bible-thumpers. Sex isn't an issue of morality and women who like to fuck aren't hussies who've been so corrupted they're incapable of being raped.
We can all walk and chew gum, etc. People can appreciate Wikileaks for what it is without making Assange, or anyone else involved, into a saint, without automatically and unthinkingly defending him and calling his accusers, lacking even the faintest evidence except your own knee-jerk misogynistic instincts, Harpies with a Grudge.
Trust dudes who throw around words like “matriarchy” to claim to know what a “real” rape looks like, and, for that matter, how a “real” rape victim ought to act. Sorry she wasn’t bruised and bleeding enough for y’all. Bearing in mind if she’d appeared on television, weeping and pale-faced, you’d just complain about her “obvious” histrionics, and if she appeared angry about her assault, she’d be a castrating bitch, et al. Clearly, the only correct procedure when you’re raped is to do nothing, you can’t fucking win. I shudder to think what kinds of neanderthal garbage the left would be spewing if a man (shock, horror, cue the fag-hating chorus) claimed Assange had raped him.
What’s frustrating with you woman-haters on the left is not that you’re reserving judgment on Assange’s guilt or on the honesty of his accusers, but is that you automatically resort to the same rape mythology, the same victim-blaming bullshit, had Assange been a philosophical enemy, you’d only be to happy to smear as the worst and most obvious kind of sexism – they’re “mad” ‘cos he “played” them both? Really? That’s the best you guys got? This third-rate schoolyard conception of the Enigmatic Female Mind? Women’s rights, for you folks, will always be a fringe issue, and you’re always willing to sell women out if it suits your political agenda or temporarily embrace women when it helps you. Sickening dirtbag fucks, you’re far worse than any moral majority, any Christian fundamentalist fuckwad, because at least he’s honest about hating women and thinking he’s better than them by virtue of possessing a dick. The only women’s rights you folks care about is the right to show your boobs, suck dick, do porn, and jump on the pole if you’re that broke, honey.
Hey, y'all. What if it were against the law to have sex without a condom when the woman asks for a condom? What a breathtakingly brilliant bit of legislation. Never would such a law get passed in the US despite the fact that the woman deals with the result of unprotected sex with consequences as dire as her own life or creating an unwanted life.
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