poliphilo

Yes, but there's no law against that.

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Anything that comes to hand.

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Apparently it's a criminal offence in Sweden.

I think it's odd he wasn't allowed bail- especially when he had so many famous people willing to vouch for him.

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ingenious76.livejournal.com

Its all very odd, and hopefully will get resolved soon. But still, the Wikileaks - so the US Government allegedly despises most other countries. Tell us something we don't know...

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She's saying he had sex with her without a condom after she expressly consented to have sex with him ONLY if he used a condom.

Johann Hari's article on the Assange business today is the most sensible thing I've read on the topic, precisely because he doesn't discount the rape allegations out of hand.

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It's one thing to know these things- and another to have the written evidence.

And some of this stuff is new- for example this morning's revelation that Gadaffi was threatening the British government with reprisals if it failed to release Megrahi.

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Yeah, I thought the same. We will never know what happened with these women. Assange's own team have said one of the cases brought by the women involves a "dispute about condom use", so that one at least appears to have some legs (on the basis that the team hasn't said "he never met that woman! Who is she?").

But rape or no rape, Wikileaks remains an enormous tool for good in the world, and is a separate issue. I don't know if you saw the article in Legalweek (dot com) about the case, asking whether the US has any legal basis in their Constitution with which to prosecute Assange. The article was brief because the answer is "no". Not only that, but the US Constitution expressly forbids making anything illegal so you can prosecute someone for it retrospectively. So at this point the US doesn't appear to have any legitimate way to get Assange out of the way.

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Thank you for the link.

That is an excellent article.

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I'm open to the possibility that Assange is a misogynistic arsehole, but- as you say- this has no bearing on the good work he has done through WikiLeaks.

Yes, I saw that article- or a report of it. WikiLeaks, it would seem, is in exactly the same position as the newspapers that have carried the material- and whose right to do so remains unchallenged.

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veronica-milvus.livejournal.com

I would not be at all surprised if Mr Assange turns up dead in a car crash in a Stockholm underpass, surrounded by bewildered paparazzi.

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jackiejj.livejournal.com

I'm always surprised by the arrest of robbers who have (insanely) run a red light or used an incorrect turn signal, and inside their cars are lots of merchandise from various robberies!

Assange SAYS he has, in case he is killed (as in a thriller movie), friends who are standing by to mail off some REALLY good stuff.

We shall see. So far, it was just an embarrassment, I hope.

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I understand WikiLeaks has only released a fraction of the material it holds.

First thing I do every morning is turn to the front page of the Guardian to see the latest revelation.

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Assange hops between jurisdictions to avoid charges. Sometimes he's traveled under guard. No bail would ever be granted to a person who had the resources, ability and proven history of avoiding prosecution. Not since Roman Polanski fled the US.

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It's a difficult thing to do. Assange probably thought he had become enough of a public figure to get away with anything.

The other helpful thing is to make some friends, too. If there'd been something in the cables which was more than just embarrassing, he'd have allies. There isn't, so he doesn't.

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I think he's chosen to be friendless. So far, so monkish; it's just a pity he couldn't keep his pants on.

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My bet is that he's not good with making allies. He has fanboys and he's probably got a core of friends, but overall he's probably not close to people.

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One of his former colleagues is bringing out a book called Inside WikiLeaks- or something like that. I gather it's not going to be a hagiography.

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It's a decent article, except Hari claims that Assange is accused of rape -- he isn't -- fails to note that the same charges were previously dismissed by a magistrate -- and only revived when he threatened to leak information about Bank of America -- and completely ignores Assange's own published rationale for what he is doing.

Seems strange to find a journalist failing to discount non-existent charges, at least ouside of the yellow press.

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I doubt it matters in the slightest. Were it not minor sex charges it would be something else. Assange seems to like the attention and in the game he is playing I doubt there is any such thing as bad publicity.

The thing to bear in mind is that the project WikiLeaks has set in motion is working as intended. The arrest of Assange was anticipated and does not alter the fact that the project continues to work as intended. Whether the project will achieve its immediate goal remains to be seen. In the long run, if WikiLeaks 1.0 fails in its mission, doubtless WikiLeaks 2.0 will benefit greatly from the lessons learned and will present a much more formidable challenge.

Whether Assange or his colleagues are still at liberty to author WikiLeaks 2.0 themselves is probably irrelevant.

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Determining precisely what Assange has been accused of is difficult, because Swedish law keeps the details of the charges quiet to preserve the privacy of the accuser, but as far as I have been able to determine thus far, the charges levelled against Assange are, roughly:
1) that he had sex with "woman A" without a condom, with a woman who had expressly stated that she would have sex with him if he wore one;
2) That he used his body weight to hold down "woman A" in order to achieve this;
3) That he had sex with "woman B" without a condom and commenced while she was asleep, thereby giving her no opportunity to consent.

This is being reported in a number of different ways, depending on the leanings of the publication in question. The Daily Mail, for instance, has it that "woman B" (with whom Assange was staying), merely accompanied "woman A" to the police to help her file her report, and was subsequently almost accidentally recorded as a victim herself after chatting with an officer. Although they then muddy the waters further by pointing out that "woman B" is a radical feminist (the implication is that she was rubbing her hands together with delight at being able to press a sex charge against a man).

Elsewhere the tenor varies from "what sex crimes? Clearly these have been made up", to Hari, who, I think, occupies a reasonable middle ground where both truths (Assange may be a rapist / Assange is definitely a journalistic force for change); may coexist, with neither set of facts undermining the other.

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I would like to think you're right.

Assange has provided WikiLeaks with its public face, but there seems no reason why the work shouldn't carry on with someone completely anonymous at the helm.

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That sounds about right. The great secret of important people is that about 50% are self-aggrandizing assholes you don't want to know for more than 15 minutes.

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These aren't minor sexual charges. In fact, a number of feminists are extremely pissed off at how dismissive people are of the charges. There's also the fact that people have been disparaging the women involved.

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You don't get to the top of the tree by being considerate and self-effacing

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Generally speaking, no.

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Quite minor, actually, at least according to Swedish law. Your pissed-off feminists are pissed-off because they want to be pissed-off and the powers that be need them to be pissed-off. It's called a "smear campaign".

Authoritarians and statists of every stripe are losing their minds over this. I actually find it heartening. Against my better judgement, there may be some hope for the future yet.

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I am old enough to hedge my bets, just as a matter of course, but having looked into what Assange is up to, and what he says about what he is up to, I am confident that I am right. It is always possible, of course, that we are all being played and nothing is even remotely as it appears. So far, at least, that does not seem to be the case.

The primary mission of WikiLeaks is not to leak information. Its mission is an attack on the security state itself, principally that of the US, but obviously of other nations as well. Security and secrecy radically increase operational costs, not only in budgetary terms, but also in terms of efficiency and effectiveness. The idea is that, by increasing the cost of every secure communication, and further inhibiting the free circulation of information within the state, it will degrade the state's ability to collect, analyse, and transmit information, generally. This will in turn degrade the state's ability to act and respond effectively, leading to yet more stupid and self-defeating responses, and yet more disillusion within the ranks, and thus the leak of yet more information demonstrating just how stupid and self-defeating the state's activities really are. Lather, rinse, repeat, until the system collapses, probably by way of an intermediate, and ultimately unsustainable, police state.

Conceptually, this is asymmetrical warfare in the cold expanse of cyberspace. The steady drumbeat of embarrassing details emerging from WikiLeaks is just the stimulous intended to elicit these self-defeating responses, to force the security apparatus to effectively blind itself, at least partially, while growing to assume greater importance, and to consume greater resources, than does the government that it allegedly serves. A secondary benefit is to force the state to act, while attempting to silence the leaks, in unhelpful, self-defeating, and ultimately embarrassing ways, thus further damaging its own credibility. A tertiary benefit is that it casts a harsh spotlight on how real state power operates, how the tentacles of irresistible influence extend from the banksters to the halls of government to seemingly innocuous actors like Amazon and PayPal, thus undermining the state's legitimacy as a democratic institution. A quaternary benefit is that it forces anyone with an opinion to expose his or her loyalties, whether they support governance in secret or oppose it. I could go on.

I have no idea whether Assange's meta-hack will work. Frankly, I shall be surprised if it does, but the theory seems sound enough and so far appears to be working as intended.

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Except of course that you still pretend it's okay to say Assange is accused of raping someone, when in fact no one is accusing him of raping anyone. You did it and Hari did it and by your own admission it's a lie, plain and simple.

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Under Swedish law, he is accused of rape.

You may not like it, but I'm afraid nobody cares about that.

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In which case Assange's "martyrdom" is very much part of the game plan- and something he's been courting (though I don't suppose he expected it to happen in quite this way).

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One charge is flat-out rape, not a minor charge. Anywhere.

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Strangely, the Swedes actually know what rape is, they have a legal definition for it and everything. What Assange is accused of is not rape.

Do make an effort to inform yourself properly before gassing off like this. It will save you no end of embarrassment.

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I don't know whether martyrdom is part of the game plan, but it is not necessarily a setback, at least not in the grand scheme of things. The arrest of Assange is having unintended consequences for the authorities, among other things spawning self-organized counter strikes against entities helping to shut down WikiLeaks. The extradition hearings will generate more publicity, tending to amplify the significance of what Assange has done, rather than diminish it.

And still the leaks continue. At the current rate, it will take twenty-eight years, or so, for all the cables to be released. Short of literally turning off the Internet, the chances of successfully stopping that steady drip are somewhat remote.

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Hmm, let's see: I am exactly as embarrassed as every news and media organ in the UK including the BBC, since they're all referring to the charges he faces as rape charges.

If widdums doesn't like women bandying about the word "rape" - it is after all, a very ugly and difficult word that men find painful - that's a real pity, but I'm afraid a man sticking his penis into a woman in a way she has not consented to is rape, both in law and in the understanding of every decent person of the word "rape", and you need to get over it.

Let me be crystal clear: I am not suggesting that Julian Assange commited rape. He has not yet been tried for it and I have no opinion one way or the other. I want to be very plain about that.

But what we do know is that the accusation he faces is one of rape, under Swedish law.

Edited Date: 2010-12-11 11:23 am (UTC)

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