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Assange Rape Case Reopened
eldavojohn writes "Wikileaks' Julian Assange had a warrant issued for his arrest in Sweden on the charges of rape. But it was withdrawn shortly thereafter. Now the case has been reopened to investigate 'molestation charges.' On top of that, a new site (parody?) called wikileakileaks.org has been launched by the chief editor of Gawker to give Wikileaks a taste of its own medicine. You can find links to details on the molestation charges there."
Oh wow
The only time you hear about molestation in the US is when it involves a minor.
Governments either are or should be open, something which, unfortunately for any of their citizens, is routinely opposed and undermined by the very same people who swore to represent their fellow citizens, uphold the law and respect democratic values. Sites such as wikileaks are here to enforce the rules of government that those who managed to find themselves in positions of power and influence actively push to quench or undermine.
The main point is that governments must and should follow the law, which forcefully means that their actions must be free from illegalities and unethical behaviour, and their constituents must be informed of their actions and of the consequences that they bring. In short, every government, due to their nature, must be opened and failing to be so constitutes a violation of their own founding principles.
On the other hand, private citizens do not have that responsibility. Private citizens have the right to privacy and do not have absolutely any responsibility or obligation to disclose every single piece of information regarding their lives, their business or even their relations. They are entitled to live free from tyranny and free from any oppressive influence imposed by their government and, even moreso, by fellow citizens.
Therefore, trying to impose to private citizens the very same full disclosure principles that is expected from governments is either a perfect sign of ignorance or a poorly thought out harassment campaign based on an unexplainable demand for revenge. I don't know why that the idiot from Gawker believes the idea to persecute Assange is any reasonable or even if he decided to do that to be able to profit from the controversy. What I know is that this sort of campaign, which is nothing more than persecuting someone for his attempts to defend healthy and lawful government behaviour is not in anyone's best interests.
Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.
That's great. Someone comes forward with evidence of war crimes, and all anyone wants to talk about is his sexual habits.
I was just in Denmark, a friend and I met 2 Swedish women in a bar. Contrary to the rumors, they did not have blonde hair. They were out celebrating a recent birthday, and appeared to have all the same motivations going for them as anyone from anywhere else in the world.
Let me be the last person on Earth to attack a victim, if this 'molestation' actually happened that is just awful. But let me be the first to say, war crimes are more important. Evidence of armies going around wiping out villages is not something to ignore because there is some juicy innuendo (which may or may not be true) going on.
The real charge is "Pissing off the CIA."
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
according to the daily mail there is some confusion over whether the condom used with woman A broke intentionally or accidentally, but they claim that the police report clearly shows that the condom was worn but it failed. Then the following report about woman B from an anonymous source:
So let's see, at night she said wear a condom, in the morning he boned her without one, but she went out and bought him breakfast and left him in her apartment even though she "didn't know him very well", so obviously she wasn't too concerned.
It seems to me from where I am sitting that one or both of these women were coerced or at least cajoled into testifying against him on the basis of their anger for both being seduced by the same guy who wasn't as into them as they were into him. It's called jealousy, and it's sad, and at least one of these women has already realized that.
Of course, there could be additional facts to which I am not privy...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Wow, you really don't know much about Sweden.
A lot of the weirdness when it comes to our current sex-crime laws come from a short period during which radical feminism was very popular, then several leading figures in the swedish radical feminist movement accidentally revealed themselves to be completely batshit crazy which brought things sort of back to normal, but just like in most other countries the laws stayed.
As for the left and the right, if anything our right-wing "Alliance" is a mix of "baton liberals" (international definition of liberal, not the US one. They basically believe in free trade and freedom for the rich and powerful while everyone else should be kept in check by the threat of violence, drug testing and any other crypto-fascist control measure they can come up with), loud-mouthed christians (who have very little actual political clout as very few people actually vote for them) and conservatives while our "left" is basically the social democrats who are no longer particularly social democrats as they have traveled toward the center, the left (former communist) party which isn't nearly as radical as it once was and the greens.
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
I just changed my mind about letting my friend borrow that $80 from me a few years ago that he already paid back. I'll be contacting the police shortly about this theft and subsequent donation.
You don't get to just change your mind once the action in question has been completed. Then all you can do is chalk it up as a mistake. I wouldn't let someone borrow my car for the day only to call the police an hour later and report it stolen because I decided I wanted to go buy some cheese doodles at the grocery store and needed my car for it.
I'm sorry, but fuck that. There's a huge difference between Al Qaeda and Wikileaks -- one is blowing people up, while the other is making sure the government is transparent.
And yes, the more people know what their governments are doing, the more likely it is they'll step up and say "stop it" when the government starts bombing hospitals. Shutting people up by keeping them ignorant is evil no matter what spin you put on it. It's plain stupid when you shrug and say "it's inevitable" -- like you did.
I hope you can see the difference, and I hope you'll understand why I don't think it's very funny.
Yes, Assange-Wikileaks releases confidential information getting good people killed in the process.
CITATION NEEDED
The murderers responsible for thousands of dead bodies are claiming that by exposing their acts he's the one getting people killed, and imbeciles are believing them. The pentagon said that it *could* lead to people getting killed (because they're careful word weasels) and you gladly swallowed that load, took it to the conclusion they were leading you to, and now you're making baseless claims that are getting modded up.
You can't take the sky from me...
And if you believe that, you've already bought into the Pentagon propaganda.
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.
Perhaps because before that point no one knew or cared who he was?
Fact of the matter is, you and the GP post know the exact same thing about the reality of the situation -- absolutely nothing. Pretending otherwise amounts to ego masturbation. You assume he's bought into the propoganda, and he assumes you're wearing a tinfoil hat.
And you want to know the real truth? Neither of you will ever have a provable position. That's the reality of the world you're on.
I love how she's the press officer for a group that invited Assange to speak at one of their events and then she hooked up with him and now crying rape/molestation.
Isn't that like going to a concert and sleeping with the lead singer and crying rape/molestation?
In other news, she's not too bad looking, not the most attractive woman but after a few drinks I could see something happening.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
You seem to be erroneously conflating "socialism" and "authoritarianism"
Yeah, that seems kind of odd to me. Failing to use a condom for the second time isn't rape unless she withheld consent from that time. By that logic, if a woman insist on using a condom each time then after several months of a committed relationship and several STI tests they have sex without he could be brought up on rape charges. I'm sorry, but there's something very wrong here. Given the claim she's making that he broke the condom on purpose, I have to assume that there's something going on here because that's a very strange assertion to make. And probably grounds for a slander suit as well.
Strikes me that the rape charge could be motivated by the CIA or another intelligence organization, or more likely she's using the claim as a way of protecting herself should she wind up pregnant as a result. I'm not sure about her religious beliefs, but there's a lot of Christians that believe that abortion is only OK in the case of rape or incest.
You have to be careful reading that much into a particular word when working between languages. (Translation issues are a bonanza for inciting war).
Someone actually quoted the text of the swedish law on molestation in a previous story and the wording was something along the lines of "if someone does something by word or deed that offends the sexual personality, integrity or something or other" I'd have to dig it up but I remember it being ridiculous, and a strict reading of it did mean that basically anything I woman found offensive could technically be a crime. Simply say "Hey nice ass" to a woman walking down the street, or even a friend, could theoretically be a criminal offense because the text included "by word"
I wondered few days ago why on earth Gawker has started such hate campaign against Julian Assange: they have several posts with titles like "Are Wikileaks Activists Finally Realizing Their Founder Is a Megalomaniac?". What is their motivation?
I'm willing to bet a large sum of money that the person who translated that report for general release to the English speaking press knew that well in advance.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
Wikileaks secrecy is bad. Sunlight is good for all parties in political discourse, not just some of them. If wikileaks was entirely unbiased and published everything that came across the wire then there might be an argument to be made. But they aren't unbiased, so being subject to scrutiny is appropriate so that we can understand where they are coming from to be informed adequately so that we can properly assess what they are telling us.
Wild guess here, but probably because someone with mod points thought it was funny.
No surprise you're posting as AC with such ludicrous leaps of logic . . .
To all the conspiracy theorists out there on this - do you really think the CIA/NSA/Pentagon Special (because their mommy says so) Activities Group couldn't come up with something a little more watertight and less ... rubbish than this? Do you really think they would have any difficulty coming up with an *actual* rape victim if they were behind this? Someone who had a black eye, bruises on their wrists and arms, signs of forced entry, high emotional distress rather than a case that hinges on whether a condom was worn or not?
Cats don't expect you to send them half your paycheck every month when they decide to leave.
If the U.S. press spent a fraction of the energy investigating the government that they do investigating the celebrity scandals of the week, we wouldn't need sites like Wikileaks.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Your assumptions abound. Yes, it could be like "...going to a concert and sleeping with the lead singer and crying rape/molestation?"
It could also be like going to a concert to listen to music, getting invited back stage because you're hot, and having a lecherous musician paw and grope you when you just accepted the invite because you were excited to meet someone you previously held in high regard. You have no idea.
You are identifying with Assange and imagining all of the things that evil people might try to do to him, then treating those imaginings as fact. I think what Assange has done is important, and that he is making enemies. I don't think that he is infallible, and I don't think it wise to presume his guilt or innocence until you know both sides of the story and try awfully hard to recognize and mitigate your own biases.
As with most things in life, and especially most things in law, it isn't cut and dried.
Unfortunately you are talking to a very biased audience here. For many /. types, Julian Assange is a hero. He mad the US government look bad and they don't like the US government so that makes him a great man. Now something you also discover, certainly in US culture but I suspect in most of them, is that when people decide someone is a hero, they want to over look any potential wrong doing from that person. Faults are downplayed, or claimed to be creations of those who would seek to bring down the hero.
You see it big time in history books. Try and find a US history book that mentions any faults of any president. They were all model citizens according to that telling of their lives.
So same thing here. Read the comments and you'll see most people are convinced this HAS to be a CIA (or US government at any rate) plot. They aren't interested in the facts of the case, or that Sweden might be its own nations with its own laws and its own reasons for an investigation. Their hero is being attacked and thus it must be for nefarious reasons. They can't accept that he could possibly do both things they approve of and things they do not.
absolutely. i understand if Assange and his fellows want to stay off the grid as much as they can, try to keep their lives private. Fine. But the public organisation, Wikileaks, which seems predicated on the idea that ALL information should be public, that the public needs to know everything in order to keep everyone honest...their operations should be completely open. "We believe that transparency in government activities leads to reduced corruption, better government and stronger democracies. All governments can benefit from increased scrutiny by the world community, as well as their own people." They weaken their claim by resorting to secrecy in their own activities. If they feel that making public the operations of the organisation would impinge on their individual privacy, then I'd say that perhaps they are too personally involved and that, in the interests of better serving the public (their stated raison d'etre), they should maintain better separation between their private life and their job. The other tack, attempting to cloak their professional activities with personal privacy, is untenable. And I completely dismiss out of hand any suggestion that they're trying to protect wikileaks from hostile governments with privacy. If those hostile governments are omniscient enough to keep track of all their credit card expenditures as they travel on the rail networks, they are surely already well aware of where Wikileaks' financing comes from as well as any other details they want to know about the operations. I doubt they're truly keeping wikileaks secret from the government, only from the public.
Tell me exactly who should be treated as 'government' and who should be a private citizen. Give me a cast iron definition in a single sentence.
One of the general principles I teach my kids is that people who think that difficulty in drawing an infinitely precise line based on a trivially simple criterion constitutes an argument are intellectually bankrupt.
Here's my counter-challenge: give me a cast-iron definition in a single sentence that will tell me exactly, to within the width of an atom, where the ocean ends and the land begins. Can't do it, can you? You can't even get one that will be good to within a couple of meters! So I guess you have to accept that boats and cars are impossible, as they would require knowing excatly where the land ends and the water begins.
Difficulty in defining precise boundaries is completely unrelated to the the ability to clearly identify entities that are undoubtedly on one side of the (ill-defined) line or the other, and only people who've never been to the beach can possibly believe otherwise.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.