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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 But it was withdrawn shortly thereafter.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."
Gawker is just mad they didn't get the scoop. Maybe next time they should offer Assange cash. Apparently that's how they get their scoops.
Now the case has been reopened to investigate 'molestation charges.'
The case will then be dropped.
It will then be reopened to investigate 'looking at boobs, whilst pulling out his shirt collar and making a phwooar face', which will also be dropped.
Don't worry, they'll get him even if they have to resort to the testimony of a girl who was pushed over by him in the playground when they were both 4 years old.
Summation 2
Freud would be so proud.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
Note that "molestation" is a broad category of sexual offenses in Sweden. Two women came forward to the police to report sexual misconduct, but denied that rape had occurred. Thus the dropping of the rape charge. In reality, the offense is that Assange alleged seduced the women, got them to buy stuff or him, and then he refused to call them back. In America, this behavior is par for the course. Apparently, in other cultures, this is a sexual offense.
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.
i hear assange also picks up stray puppies and stews them up. into puppy stew. with puppies in it.
The real charge is "Pissing off the CIA."
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Unlike mice, building a huge maze doesn't work. Women tend to just glare at you as if you're supposed to bring the cheese to them.
Blank until
I've been following the case and the speculation around it on Swedish forums and blogs. A story in English that seems to have what is known / believed to have happened without any obvious errors can be found here.
In addition, it's known the police officer interrogating the younger woman has filed a complaint about not being allowed to give her view on what offenses if any were described to the first prosecutor and that her colleague who contacted the prosecutor refused to communicate. The colleague says she has contacted superiors and others and everyone agreed the charge would be rape. The initial prosecutor is under investigation for possibly issuing an arrest warrant without enough cause to do so and, in addition, for confirming Assange's name to a journalist.
The lawyer of the women says the published story is missing crucial details. He also says he's gone through material used in the preparation of the current law on rape in Sweden. To the question of why the older woman filed harassment charges instead of reporting a rape, he replied "She's not a lawyer".
Given that the chief prosecutor dismissed the charge of rape saying there's no reason to disbelieve the younger woman's story, but no crime has been committed, but the organization supervising the work of prosecutors think otherwise, it would seem to me there's disagreement on whether there was consent or not. If it was an issue of whether a sex act is rape vs molestation vs harassment etc, they wouldn't be flipping between rape and no crime like this.
What's absolutely clear is that much of the speculation on what Assange could have done is completely and utterly wrong since the chief prosecutor would never have simply dropped a case where he's accused of strangleholds, forcing himself on a sleeping woman, etcetc.
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.'"
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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
Just to let you know: The Daily Mail is never to be cited for anything, ever. Ever. It's simply not factual on a regular enough basis to be used in such a way.
To prevent this day from getting worse, I'll just read ERROR as GOOD TH
1) Molestation ("ofredande") is NOT a sexual offense, but "sexual molestation" ("sexuell ofredande") is. These are two separate things and there is a big difference in punishment: sexual molestation often puts you in jail, molestation will usually only result in a small fine (but theoretically up to a year in prison, but that never happens). The legal distinction between the two is that in sexual molestation, the person committing the crime has to be sexually motivated, which is of course often very difficult to judge. Also note that in Sweden, neither sexual molestation or molestation has anything to do with the age of the victim.
2) The charges on molestation was never completely dropped. The attorney was still arguing for the charge to be rape of two persons, while the case was still classified as "molestation" (note: not sexual molestation). The judge was to decide whether to re-open the rape charges, as requested by the attorney. This was to be decided yesterday, but since new information came up, it was delayed until today. And obviously it was decided that the rape charges should be reopened. The submitter claims that "case has been reopened to investigate 'molestation charges'", this is therefore only partially true, since the charge now is:
rape ("våldtäkt"), sexual forcing ("sexuellt tvång") and sexual molestation ("sexuellt ofredande"). This is A LOT worse for mr Assange than only "molestation".
It is probable that Assange will be taken into custody (to prevent him from attacking more swedes)... (Google translate with more on this.)
3) Yes, Sweden has less macho culture than most other countries. Yes, women in Sweden more often dare to report rapes/sexual offences to the police. Yes, the police usually actually listens to them. And no, this is not a bad thing.
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.
So women are like cats then?
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?
She was probably angry after breakfast when he went out in the sunlight and didn't sparkle, dispelling her idea that he was a vampire.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Cats don't expect you to send them half your paycheck every month when they decide to leave.
I keep hearing that Remy Stern raped and murdered a girl in 2001. Why isn't he commenting on this? Does his silence mean confirmation?
Blar.
Of course he didn't wear a condom -- they prevent leaks!
The Daily Mail is perfectly trustworthy. You're just upset because they're telling the truth about the black gay Muslims who are ruining good, honest, hard-working, British society with their evil immigrant ways that killed Princess Diana (peace be upon her).
Amusingly, you will see their figure for the number of street cameras in Britain, which was created by counting the number of, mainly private, CCTV cameras in a mile busy shopping street in London and multiplying it by the number of miles of roadway in Britain, quoted here quite often. In spite of having been debunked, this is still used by a lot of Slashdot posters as evidence that Britain is an Orwellian surveillance state.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Orwellian, no. Endemic surveillance society, as a recent human rights report called it, no doubt. Alas we seem to be all headed in the same direction in Europe as well as the US.
The surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us.
Which Freud do you mean? Psycho therapist?
In this case I think its Psycho The Rapist.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Not so sure about this. It depends on the laws of the jurisdiction in question, but there are jurisdictions where using certain types of deception or fraud to obtain consent to sex is rape. The classic examples are deceiving a woman as to your identity (e.g., if her boyfriend's twin brother were to impersonate him), or making her believe it's a necessary part of a medical procedure (yes, this has happened). The most infamous recent case: a Palestinian man convicted of rape because he told the woman that he was Jewish.
It's not a stretch to say that it's rape if a man obtains consent for sex by falsely telling her he will wear a condom.
Well, you know, having sex with somebody against their consent is rape. Unlike what your comment implies, there is no magic moment where, once you've fucked her long enough, you no longer need her consent or to respect her conditions for that consent. If you've got a problem with her insistence on the condom you're not entitled to disregard them and have things your own way by either force or deception.
Are you adequate?
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.
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.