It was an unupgraded SA-3 GOA, a SAM that went into service in 1961.
That one F-117 alone cost an order of magnitude more than all of the tanks, artilleries and APCs destroyed by all of NATO combined during the entire campaign. Ignoring the morale and loss of technology consequences.
The Serbs had hardware from the 1960s and a tiny military budget. The US airforce was designed to fight a modern military. As much as you'd like to downplay it, this was *not* supposed to happen once, let alone twice (the second F-117 limped home but never flew again).
The US didn't blame anything on hardware failures.
Sorry, "refused to confirm claims that it was shot down" for several days - is that better?
The claims about 'baiting NATO to waste their missiles on decoys' are funny - why? Because for this to happen, the SAM radars had to be shut down, thus rendering SEAD efforts successful. It doesn't matter if the missile didn't hit the SAM. What matters is that for that time, the SAM was useless. Result? Serbians dancing on the wreckage of two planes out of hundreds of sorties that demolished their infrastructure. That's right. Those 'so smart tactics' got them two planes and failed to defend their country whatsoever.
First off: Three planes down (one ditched into the Adriatic, two over land) and a number of hits that crippled other craft but did not lead to crashes (the other stealth that they hit reportedly never flew again), plus several cruise missiles. Dani's unit saw no casualties or loss of hardware. Of course other less trained units sufferedlosses, but that's not the point I was making (I am *not* claiming that weak powers will always outsmart/defeat strong powers, or even that it's likely - just that they shouldn't be underestimated and can sometimes pull off impressive feats). They shot down a stealth and nearly a second one using 1960s hardware and with total loss of air superiority.
Serbia had no hope of preventing the destruction of fixed infrastructure. Their military budget was something like a tenth of a percent of the military budgets of the nations they were facing. Their only option was to preserve their military capability for as long as possible while costing NATO as much money as possible and buy as much time as possible in hopes that Russia would step in to their defense. HARMs are a heck of a lot more expensive than junkyard radars, and well, F-117s? They don't grow on trees. Serbian losses were quite small at the end of the war and their military pretty much intact, despite earlier NATO claims to the contrary, and the US actually had documents showing that they clearly didn't believe their own numbers they were giving out. Despite the use of obsolete hardware, just over a dozen tanks were destroyed, under 20 artillery pieces, etc. NATO hit orders of magnitude more decoys as actual military targets. There were only 492 Serbian casualties. Of non-fixed military hardware, only the airforce was effectively destroyed, which was pretty much expected (an obsolete airforce is pretty helpless). The problem Serbia had was that NATO was prepping for ground war and Russia, as mad as they were, made it clear that they weren't going to get militarily involved.
And contrary to your claims, the fact that NATO couldn't destroy anti-aircraft batteries like Dani's made their life a lot harder. It meant they had to fly a lot higher (less precision) and limited the types of aircraft which could get involved. Furthermore, not only were the downed aircraft rallying points (the last thing you want to do is re-moralize your enemies - I'll never forget the "Sorry about your plane, we didn't know it was invisible" sign), parts from the downed stealth are believed to have been sold to China and used for their stealth aircraft program. There are serious material consequences to the US from what happened.
Anyone else remember the story of the Iranian concrete from a while back? Read about how much it blew away the competition at a concrete strength contest and brought the issue to light. 50-60k PSI concrete failure strength is just insane.
Quick summary: Security on the drones has a history of bad decisions, such as unencrypted video feeds and malware. Breaking GPS encryption would be almost impossible, but it's quite possible that the drones were programmed to use unencrypted GPS as a fallback if encrypted GPS was lost, so if Iran jammed only the encrypted GPS signal, the plane would rely on spoofed unencrypted GPS. The short answer: it would have been tough, and we don't know whether they really did it or not, but it's not as impossible as people are making it out to be.
The full Iranian claim was that they jammed all of the communications to the drone and then spoofed GPS. Aka, there were multiple navigation sources, and it lost them. When the drone loses communication for a length of time it is programmed to return to base and land unless it reestablishes communications and receives alternate orders. But it uses GPS to find out where the base is.
Yeah, a "GPS position is changing too fast" check could be useful to try to thwart something like that, but it's also the sort of thing that can be overlooked, and also something that could be slowly faked (aka, from a blind plane's perspective, there's no difference between a "drifting GPS" and flying through a strong wind.). So yeah, you could get into a whole range of attacks and countermeasures, but sometimes the attackers will win, sometimes the defenders.
The people who insisted that a country like Iran could never pull it off always struck me as way overconfident, egotistical. It reminds me of when the Serbians shot down a stealth (which the US tried to blame on hardware failures) and damaged another (among many other aircraft). I read an article on the elite Serbian unit who pulled that off with basically junk hardware and with no air superiority to back them up. They had their tactics down to a tee, and the US got totally overconfident. First they baited NATO into wasting their anti-radiation missiles by jury-rigging together as many fake "radars" as they could muster from junked military equipment. Then they hacked the hardware on the actual radars they were using, boosting the frequency many times over. This made the signal get hugely attenuated by the atmosphere, dramatically decreasing the range, but was A) out of the range of frequencies generally looked for, and B) wasn't nearly as affected by the stealth capabilities of the aircraft. The range was so low that the target aircraft had to fly pretty much over them, but they started mapping out the typical sortie patterns being used and got the hang of reckoning where they'd be and moving to intercept. They also got the hang of how much time it took from when the radar got hot to when a plane could take them out if they were detected, and timed their operations so that the hardware or at least the people had to be Not There Anymore(TM) by the deadline. The troops were drilled over and over in how to set up, get a lock, fire, and then get the heck out of there in the allotted time.
It's easy to assume that because a country is poorer and can't afford fancy hardware, its people are idiots. But that's a bad assumption to make.
Don't have an article on hand, but that was addressed elsewhere - the messages were sent *after* the girls were *contacted by* the tabloid, and *after* they filed charges. The charges were described as "joking".
Of course that will come up in his trial. Which is of course why we have trials.
I let my rapist walk me back to my car and even took his phone number (which I immediately destroyed as soon as I was out of his sight). I know a woman who ended up dating her rapist, just to make it feel less like rape. Which sounds weird, but I actually had something related, which is still kind of going... a fear of saying no when around people who are hitting on me. Because if you don't tell them no, then you can't be raped... I know it sounds wrong, but that just.. that.
When you're beaten, you're beaten. What's the point of fighting *afterward*? That's like if someone mugs you at knifepoint and takes your wallet, when they're running away with it, screaming at them, "Yeah, you better run, you #$)/"#!!!!"
And anyway, in case you're curious, multiple people at the party that night, according to the accusations listed by the prosecutor, indicated that she told them about "violent" sex with Assange and that she was afraid of him. Records then confirm that she later moved out of her *own apartment* when he wouldn't leave (he says he wasn't asked to, but I find that very hard to believe that he just figured she was moving out for the heck of it).
Amazing how much the Assange Echo-Box distorts the actual claims. Educate yourself. Basically, nothing you wrote about the charges remotely resembles reality. And as for the tabloid claim, the texts in question were sent *after* they were contacted by the tabloid (not the other way around), *after* they went to the police, and were described as joking about the tabloid's offer. She did not write the revenge article and simply reposted it after her ex-fiance left her. And it was not about "with a fake rape claim"; the first bullet points were advising the person to reconsider taking revenge, and the only specific examples given are on ways to try to break up an ex and their lover, such as encouraging the lover to cheat on them in kind. And lastly, can any of you imagine what sort of stuff would come up if someone dug through *everything you've ever written on the internet regardless of context?*
Then you should really double-check where you're turning for information (like most people here talking about Assange), because it's in tons of news articles from respectable sources as well as in the Fair Trials primer on the Assange case.
Another thing you should be asking yourself: "Why did I automatically believe hearsay that extradition laws were being openly flouted to wrongly convict this guy, and what other things am I wrongly assuming about this case?"
The reality is that famous people, even ones who do a lot of good (like I feel Wikileaks has in general done), sometimes do some really awful stuff. Not everything that happens to a person you like and who some others don't like is part of a smear to set them up. Sometimes they actually did stuff to deserve it.
And perhaps I'm a super-intelligent puffin, the result of an Icelandic mind-control experiment gone horribly wrong, posting on Slashdot by typing with my beak. But all issues of "perhaps" aside, how likely are we to believe that that is actually the case, that the British lower court and the high court both came to the same conclusion but either don't know or are deliberately bypassing British law for nefarious purposes, while at the same time a random Slashdotter is a true UK law expert?
If you had to put your money on one of those options - that either I'm really a super-intelligent puffin or that two separate British courts (one of which is the supreme court) are either ignorant of British law or part of some shadowy conspiracy to bypass it and that the random Slashdotter is a Queen's Council Barrister - I'd recommend on betting on the puffin option.
I'm a rape victim, and the only people I find offensive in this conversation are the people making arguments like yours.
I wrote about it here and here (the latter got a lovely comment in reply... I posted AC at the time, but doesn't matter anymore since I forgot to post AC another time...)
First, let's correct the record here. The accusations aren't that he "did stuff during consensual sex". They're that he pinned down the first woman in a sexual manner trying to have sex without a condom, she consented conditionally on him using one to try to avoid unprotected sex, that he broke the condom anyway, and later continued trying to have sex with her on other occasions (she described the event that night to friends as "violent" sex, and that she didn't feel safe around him; she eventually moved out of her own apartment until he left). According to the accusations, with the other woman began in a fully consensual manner. He declined sex the first because she insisted on using a condom (according to her and other witnesses such as her ex-boyfriend of several years, she had never had sex in her life without a condom). Later he reluctantly agreed to sex with a condom. However, she went to sleep and woke up finding him having unprotected sex with her (not only in violation of the previous terms of consent, but also, a sleeping person simply cannot consent).
Not only are the accusations illegal in Sweden, but the British courts found them as credible charges in the UK as well.
Secondly, however - and the main reason for my reply - is this:
The ladies only pressed charges after they'd met each other.
As someone who's actually been raped, you have no idea how offensive this notion that's circulating around is. Do you have any idea how hard it is to tell someone you've been raped? To even be willing to use that word to yourself? It took me about three months before I stopped using euphomisms like "unwanted sexual activity" or even "I've had friends tell me I should call it rape" (to avoid having to use the label myself). You don't want to see yourself as a victim and you don't want to empower the perpetrator, and there's almost always blurry lines (in my case, for example, I at one point consented to other sexual activity conditional on him stopping trying to get inside of me... he went back on his word, though).
At first it seems like something that you can just brush off and keep going. A bad night. Over with, in the past. It's only when it starts to affect your life that you have to accept that it's not that simple (in my case, freaking out on a phone call with a person whose voice I couldn't be sure who it was, for example). Most rape victims (myself included) *never* file charges. Because we know what a nightmare it can be, to go through that. I can't even imagine having to go through what these woman are going through with millions of people smearing them so viciously (without even knowing the actual accusations) simply because they like Assange. It must be a living hell.
Perhaps the charges won't be upheld. Rape prosecutions have a pathetic conviction rate anyway, due to the nature of the crime. But that's what trials are for.
And as for the rest:
Assange offered help to the authorities and was allowed to leave the country.
He was only questioned in regards to one of the women, some sources say he promised to return, and regardless, charges can only be filed directly after questioning on Swedish soil.
The investigation was dropped by the Swedish prosecutor. Then another prosecutor replaced the former prosecutor and reinstated the investigation
Which isn't at all unusual. There's nothing in the world unusual about A) different prosecutors having different views on a case,or B) views changing as time goes on and new evidence / statements / etc come to light. In any country. But yes, Assange's attorneys are doing their best to try to spin it into a conspiracy.
and even issued a red Interpol warrant to get him for questioning, even though such warrants are reserved for criminals of serious crimes.
Rape *is* a serious crime. And Interpol *does* pursue accused rapists. Yes,
These are not trivial charges. He's accused of pinning someone down sexually until she consented to sex with a condom to avoid sex without the condom, then deliberately breaking the condom, then continually making sexual advances on the person later, and with another woman, having sex with her while she slept, in violation of the terms of consent she had had when awake (usage of a condom) (not that a sleeping person can consent in *any* circumstances). Two British courts have found the charges against him credible.
Yes, the use of Interpol is of course selective. But that's what Interpol is used for, going after high-profile cases and especially cases deemed to be high risk of international flight. Assange fits the typical Interpol target to a tee.
Except for the minor hitch that due to European extradition law, as confirmed by the Swedish prime minister, the UK would have to approve any re-transfer to the US. So it gains the US nothing.
"Some reason" is that a suspect has to be in Swedish custody to have charges filed against them, by Swedish law. There are limited exceptions, but they don't apply in this case.
Assange's attorneys are doing their darndest to try to make this into some giant international conspiracy, but this is the way the extradition process works. He'll go to Sweden (and yes, he will eventually; even if Ecuador approves his asylum bid, he has no means to get from the Ecuadorian embassy to the country, so he'd be facing life inside an embassy building in the UK as his alternative, which probably isn't all that much better than a Swedish prison - can't even get proper healthcare or other basic needs there). He'll be taken in for questioning. He'll remain in jail (Sweden isn't as big on bail, and Assange has clearly shown that he's a flight risk) until the trial. He'll go to trial. Odds are, given the evidence against him and that the two courts reviewing it have already found it credible, he'll be convicted. His sentence will be up to four years. He'll then walk.
Right. Because you know more about British law than UK judges.
Lets correct some errors here that are running amok on Slashdot every time this comes up.
1) The Swedish legal system cannot file charges in absentia. They *have* to bring him to Sweden, question him again in person (whether or not they think any more information will come of it), and only *then* can they legally file charges against him.
2) The Prime Minister of Sweden has stated explicitly that in accordinace with European extradition law the UK would have to approve any further extradition request, so yes, it's an extremely strained argument to suggest that the UK, who extradites people to the US at the drop of a hat, is a safer place to be than Sweden.
3) The lower British court found (and higher court upheld) that not only is there probable reason to suspect that Assange broke Swedish law, but that the same acts would be criminal in the UK as well. It's not "rape" (with sarcastic quotation marks), as in the Slashdot summary. It's rape, no quotation marks.
4) Assange is not being charged with "sex without a condom", and anyone who repeats that lie is deliberately trying to distort the situation. Here's the actual accusations:
The allegations centre on a 10-day period after Assange flew into Stockholm on Wednesday 11 August. One of the women, named in court as Miss A, told police that she had arranged Assange's trip to Sweden, and let him stay in her flat because she was due to be away. She returned early, on Friday 13 August, after which the pair went for a meal and then returned to her flat.
Her account to police, which Assange disputes, stated that he began stroking her leg as they drank tea, before he pulled off her clothes and snapped a necklace that she was wearing. According to her statement she "tried to put on some articles of clothing as it was going too quickly and uncomfortably but Assange ripped them off again". Miss A told police that she didn't want to go any further "but that it was too late to stop Assange as she had gone along with it so far", and so she allowed him to undress her.
According to the statement, Miss A then realised he was trying to have unprotected sex with her. She told police that she had tried a number of times to reach for a condom but Assange had stopped her by holding her arms and pinning her legs. The statement records Miss A describing how Assange then released her arms and agreed to use a condom, but she told the police that at some stage Assange had "done something" with the condom that resulted in it becoming ripped, and ejaculated without withdrawing.
When he was later interviewed by police in Stockholm, Assange agreed that he had had sex with Miss A but said he did not tear the condom, and that he was not aware that it had been torn. He told police that he had continued to sleep in Miss A's bed for the following week and she had never mentioned a torn condom.
On the following morning, Saturday 14 August, Assange spoke at a seminar organised by Miss A. A second woman, Miss W, had contacted Miss A to ask if she could attend. Both women joined Assange, the co-ordinator of the Swedish WikiLeaks group, whom we will call "Harold", and a few others for lunch.
Assange left the lunch with Miss W. She told the police she and Assange had visited the place where she worked and had then gone to a cinema where they had moved to the back row. He had kissed her and put his hands inside her clothing, she said.
That evening, Miss A held a party at her flat. One of her friends, "Monica", later told police that during the party Miss A had told her about the ripped condom and unprotected sex. Another friend told police that during the evening Miss A told her she had had "the worst sex ever" with Assange: "Not only had it been the world's worst screw, it had also been violent."
What part of and two, humans cannot produce artificial lightning with the intensity of normal lightning. was confusing? For that matter, what part of Top Gear "should not be relied on for facts" was tricky - they're famous for making stuff up for humor/entertainment value, so long as it's something that won't get them sued.
Slashdot Mirror
They can't do it from Sweden either without charges *and* without getting the stamp of approval from the UK, due to the EU extradition treaty.
I was expecting an exciting ending to the search, but it just ended up being a big deus ex machina.
It was an unupgraded SA-3 GOA, a SAM that went into service in 1961.
That one F-117 alone cost an order of magnitude more than all of the tanks, artilleries and APCs destroyed by all of NATO combined during the entire campaign. Ignoring the morale and loss of technology consequences.
The Serbs had hardware from the 1960s and a tiny military budget. The US airforce was designed to fight a modern military. As much as you'd like to downplay it, this was *not* supposed to happen once, let alone twice (the second F-117 limped home but never flew again).
Sorry, "refused to confirm claims that it was shot down" for several days - is that better?
First off: Three planes down (one ditched into the Adriatic, two over land) and a number of hits that crippled other craft but did not lead to crashes (the other stealth that they hit reportedly never flew again), plus several cruise missiles. Dani's unit saw no casualties or loss of hardware. Of course other less trained units sufferedlosses, but that's not the point I was making (I am *not* claiming that weak powers will always outsmart/defeat strong powers, or even that it's likely - just that they shouldn't be underestimated and can sometimes pull off impressive feats). They shot down a stealth and nearly a second one using 1960s hardware and with total loss of air superiority.
Serbia had no hope of preventing the destruction of fixed infrastructure. Their military budget was something like a tenth of a percent of the military budgets of the nations they were facing. Their only option was to preserve their military capability for as long as possible while costing NATO as much money as possible and buy as much time as possible in hopes that Russia would step in to their defense. HARMs are a heck of a lot more expensive than junkyard radars, and well, F-117s? They don't grow on trees. Serbian losses were quite small at the end of the war and their military pretty much intact, despite earlier NATO claims to the contrary, and the US actually had documents showing that they clearly didn't believe their own numbers they were giving out. Despite the use of obsolete hardware, just over a dozen tanks were destroyed, under 20 artillery pieces, etc. NATO hit orders of magnitude more decoys as actual military targets. There were only 492 Serbian casualties. Of non-fixed military hardware, only the airforce was effectively destroyed, which was pretty much expected (an obsolete airforce is pretty helpless). The problem Serbia had was that NATO was prepping for ground war and Russia, as mad as they were, made it clear that they weren't going to get militarily involved.
And contrary to your claims, the fact that NATO couldn't destroy anti-aircraft batteries like Dani's made their life a lot harder. It meant they had to fly a lot higher (less precision) and limited the types of aircraft which could get involved. Furthermore, not only were the downed aircraft rallying points (the last thing you want to do is re-moralize your enemies - I'll never forget the "Sorry about your plane, we didn't know it was invisible" sign), parts from the downed stealth are believed to have been sold to China and used for their stealth aircraft program. There are serious material consequences to the US from what happened.
Anyone else remember the story of the Iranian concrete from a while back? Read about how much it blew away the competition at a concrete strength contest and brought the issue to light. 50-60k PSI concrete failure strength is just insane.
Link
Quick summary: Security on the drones has a history of bad decisions, such as unencrypted video feeds and malware. Breaking GPS encryption would be almost impossible, but it's quite possible that the drones were programmed to use unencrypted GPS as a fallback if encrypted GPS was lost, so if Iran jammed only the encrypted GPS signal, the plane would rely on spoofed unencrypted GPS. The short answer: it would have been tough, and we don't know whether they really did it or not, but it's not as impossible as people are making it out to be.
The full Iranian claim was that they jammed all of the communications to the drone and then spoofed GPS. Aka, there were multiple navigation sources, and it lost them. When the drone loses communication for a length of time it is programmed to return to base and land unless it reestablishes communications and receives alternate orders. But it uses GPS to find out where the base is.
Yeah, a "GPS position is changing too fast" check could be useful to try to thwart something like that, but it's also the sort of thing that can be overlooked, and also something that could be slowly faked (aka, from a blind plane's perspective, there's no difference between a "drifting GPS" and flying through a strong wind.). So yeah, you could get into a whole range of attacks and countermeasures, but sometimes the attackers will win, sometimes the defenders.
The people who insisted that a country like Iran could never pull it off always struck me as way overconfident, egotistical. It reminds me of when the Serbians shot down a stealth (which the US tried to blame on hardware failures) and damaged another (among many other aircraft). I read an article on the elite Serbian unit who pulled that off with basically junk hardware and with no air superiority to back them up. They had their tactics down to a tee, and the US got totally overconfident. First they baited NATO into wasting their anti-radiation missiles by jury-rigging together as many fake "radars" as they could muster from junked military equipment. Then they hacked the hardware on the actual radars they were using, boosting the frequency many times over. This made the signal get hugely attenuated by the atmosphere, dramatically decreasing the range, but was A) out of the range of frequencies generally looked for, and B) wasn't nearly as affected by the stealth capabilities of the aircraft. The range was so low that the target aircraft had to fly pretty much over them, but they started mapping out the typical sortie patterns being used and got the hang of reckoning where they'd be and moving to intercept. They also got the hang of how much time it took from when the radar got hot to when a plane could take them out if they were detected, and timed their operations so that the hardware or at least the people had to be Not There Anymore(TM) by the deadline. The troops were drilled over and over in how to set up, get a lock, fire, and then get the heck out of there in the allotted time.
It's easy to assume that because a country is poorer and can't afford fancy hardware, its people are idiots. But that's a bad assumption to make.
The funny thing is, I had criticized someone else who had been raped, many years back, for not going to the police either.
It's a lot easier to say when you're not the one who will have to go through it.
Don't have an article on hand, but that was addressed elsewhere - the messages were sent *after* the girls were *contacted by* the tabloid, and *after* they filed charges. The charges were described as "joking".
Of course that will come up in his trial. Which is of course why we have trials.
I let my rapist walk me back to my car and even took his phone number (which I immediately destroyed as soon as I was out of his sight). I know a woman who ended up dating her rapist, just to make it feel less like rape. Which sounds weird, but I actually had something related, which is still kind of going... a fear of saying no when around people who are hitting on me. Because if you don't tell them no, then you can't be raped... I know it sounds wrong, but that just.. that.
When you're beaten, you're beaten. What's the point of fighting *afterward*? That's like if someone mugs you at knifepoint and takes your wallet, when they're running away with it, screaming at them, "Yeah, you better run, you #$)/"#!!!!"
And anyway, in case you're curious, multiple people at the party that night, according to the accusations listed by the prosecutor, indicated that she told them about "violent" sex with Assange and that she was afraid of him. Records then confirm that she later moved out of her *own apartment* when he wouldn't leave (he says he wasn't asked to, but I find that very hard to believe that he just figured she was moving out for the heck of it).
Thank you, anonymous.
Amazing how much the Assange Echo-Box distorts the actual claims. Educate yourself. Basically, nothing you wrote about the charges remotely resembles reality. And as for the tabloid claim, the texts in question were sent *after* they were contacted by the tabloid (not the other way around), *after* they went to the police, and were described as joking about the tabloid's offer. She did not write the revenge article and simply reposted it after her ex-fiance left her. And it was not about "with a fake rape claim"; the first bullet points were advising the person to reconsider taking revenge, and the only specific examples given are on ways to try to break up an ex and their lover, such as encouraging the lover to cheat on them in kind. And lastly, can any of you imagine what sort of stuff would come up if someone dug through *everything you've ever written on the internet regardless of context?*
No kidding. One of the most egregious examples of politically-motivated downmodding I've ever seen at this site.
Then you should really double-check where you're turning for information (like most people here talking about Assange), because it's in tons of news articles from respectable sources as well as in the Fair Trials primer on the Assange case.
Another thing you should be asking yourself: "Why did I automatically believe hearsay that extradition laws were being openly flouted to wrongly convict this guy, and what other things am I wrongly assuming about this case?"
The reality is that famous people, even ones who do a lot of good (like I feel Wikileaks has in general done), sometimes do some really awful stuff. Not everything that happens to a person you like and who some others don't like is part of a smear to set them up. Sometimes they actually did stuff to deserve it.
And perhaps I'm a super-intelligent puffin, the result of an Icelandic mind-control experiment gone horribly wrong, posting on Slashdot by typing with my beak. But all issues of "perhaps" aside, how likely are we to believe that that is actually the case, that the British lower court and the high court both came to the same conclusion but either don't know or are deliberately bypassing British law for nefarious purposes, while at the same time a random Slashdotter is a true UK law expert?
If you had to put your money on one of those options - that either I'm really a super-intelligent puffin or that two separate British courts (one of which is the supreme court) are either ignorant of British law or part of some shadowy conspiracy to bypass it and that the random Slashdotter is a Queen's Council Barrister - I'd recommend on betting on the puffin option.
I'm a rape victim, and the only people I find offensive in this conversation are the people making arguments like yours.
I wrote about it here and here (the latter got a lovely comment in reply... I posted AC at the time, but doesn't matter anymore since I forgot to post AC another time...)
Ha ha.. rape jokes... so hilarious...
First, let's correct the record here. The accusations aren't that he "did stuff during consensual sex". They're that he pinned down the first woman in a sexual manner trying to have sex without a condom, she consented conditionally on him using one to try to avoid unprotected sex, that he broke the condom anyway, and later continued trying to have sex with her on other occasions (she described the event that night to friends as "violent" sex, and that she didn't feel safe around him; she eventually moved out of her own apartment until he left). According to the accusations, with the other woman began in a fully consensual manner. He declined sex the first because she insisted on using a condom (according to her and other witnesses such as her ex-boyfriend of several years, she had never had sex in her life without a condom). Later he reluctantly agreed to sex with a condom. However, she went to sleep and woke up finding him having unprotected sex with her (not only in violation of the previous terms of consent, but also, a sleeping person simply cannot consent).
Not only are the accusations illegal in Sweden, but the British courts found them as credible charges in the UK as well.
Secondly, however - and the main reason for my reply - is this:
As someone who's actually been raped, you have no idea how offensive this notion that's circulating around is. Do you have any idea how hard it is to tell someone you've been raped? To even be willing to use that word to yourself? It took me about three months before I stopped using euphomisms like "unwanted sexual activity" or even "I've had friends tell me I should call it rape" (to avoid having to use the label myself). You don't want to see yourself as a victim and you don't want to empower the perpetrator, and there's almost always blurry lines (in my case, for example, I at one point consented to other sexual activity conditional on him stopping trying to get inside of me... he went back on his word, though).
At first it seems like something that you can just brush off and keep going. A bad night. Over with, in the past. It's only when it starts to affect your life that you have to accept that it's not that simple (in my case, freaking out on a phone call with a person whose voice I couldn't be sure who it was, for example). Most rape victims (myself included) *never* file charges. Because we know what a nightmare it can be, to go through that. I can't even imagine having to go through what these woman are going through with millions of people smearing them so viciously (without even knowing the actual accusations) simply because they like Assange. It must be a living hell.
Perhaps the charges won't be upheld. Rape prosecutions have a pathetic conviction rate anyway, due to the nature of the crime. But that's what trials are for.
And as for the rest:
He was only questioned in regards to one of the women, some sources say he promised to return, and regardless, charges can only be filed directly after questioning on Swedish soil.
Which isn't at all unusual. There's nothing in the world unusual about A) different prosecutors having different views on a case,or B) views changing as time goes on and new evidence / statements / etc come to light. In any country. But yes, Assange's attorneys are doing their best to try to spin it into a conspiracy.
Rape *is* a serious crime. And Interpol *does* pursue accused rapists. Yes,
Because they did get the facts wrong. He's facing four years prison.
One of the many lies about the Assange case. He's facing up to four years in prison.
These are not trivial charges. He's accused of pinning someone down sexually until she consented to sex with a condom to avoid sex without the condom, then deliberately breaking the condom, then continually making sexual advances on the person later, and with another woman, having sex with her while she slept, in violation of the terms of consent she had had when awake (usage of a condom) (not that a sleeping person can consent in *any* circumstances). Two British courts have found the charges against him credible.
Yes, the use of Interpol is of course selective. But that's what Interpol is used for, going after high-profile cases and especially cases deemed to be high risk of international flight. Assange fits the typical Interpol target to a tee.
Except for the minor hitch that due to European extradition law, as confirmed by the Swedish prime minister, the UK would have to approve any re-transfer to the US. So it gains the US nothing.
"Some reason" is that a suspect has to be in Swedish custody to have charges filed against them, by Swedish law. There are limited exceptions, but they don't apply in this case.
Assange's attorneys are doing their darndest to try to make this into some giant international conspiracy, but this is the way the extradition process works. He'll go to Sweden (and yes, he will eventually; even if Ecuador approves his asylum bid, he has no means to get from the Ecuadorian embassy to the country, so he'd be facing life inside an embassy building in the UK as his alternative, which probably isn't all that much better than a Swedish prison - can't even get proper healthcare or other basic needs there). He'll be taken in for questioning. He'll remain in jail (Sweden isn't as big on bail, and Assange has clearly shown that he's a flight risk) until the trial. He'll go to trial. Odds are, given the evidence against him and that the two courts reviewing it have already found it credible, he'll be convicted. His sentence will be up to four years. He'll then walk.
Right. Because you know more about British law than UK judges.
Lets correct some errors here that are running amok on Slashdot every time this comes up.
1) The Swedish legal system cannot file charges in absentia. They *have* to bring him to Sweden, question him again in person (whether or not they think any more information will come of it), and only *then* can they legally file charges against him.
2) The Prime Minister of Sweden has stated explicitly that in accordinace with European extradition law the UK would have to approve any further extradition request, so yes, it's an extremely strained argument to suggest that the UK, who extradites people to the US at the drop of a hat, is a safer place to be than Sweden.
3) The lower British court found (and higher court upheld) that not only is there probable reason to suspect that Assange broke Swedish law, but that the same acts would be criminal in the UK as well. It's not "rape" (with sarcastic quotation marks), as in the Slashdot summary. It's rape, no quotation marks.
4) Assange is not being charged with "sex without a condom", and anyone who repeats that lie is deliberately trying to distort the situation. Here's the actual accusations:
What part of and two, humans cannot produce artificial lightning with the intensity of normal lightning. was confusing? For that matter, what part of Top Gear "should not be relied on for facts" was tricky - they're famous for making stuff up for humor/entertainment value, so long as it's something that won't get them sued.