Sunday, December 12, 2010

Julian Assange: Update

I haven't written on Julian Assange in a few days, because other people have got that covered better than me. So here's a roundup.

As of the time of writing, Julian has been arrested, purportedly for extradition to Sweden to face those 'rape' charges. He has not been granted bail.

What is really interesting, from an MRA's point of view, is that the issue transcends left and right. For those who think of the left wing as feminist lapdogs, think again - the very least we can say is that the left values freedom of information over female caprice.

From the left comes an article named Assange Beseiged, the subtitle to which - Making a Mockery of the Real Crime of Rape - would fit perfectly into virtually any False Rape Society post, but crucially, not any feminist article dealing with false rape accusations, (which tend towards shameless apologia). Given that the guys who run and write FRS are fairly conservative, I think it's fair to say that there are significant elements on both the left and the right who strongly and staunchly believe in the liberty of individuals to not be interfered with, particularly by the state.

... the farcical rape charges have once again been leveled against the Pentagon’s Public Enemy Number One. Julian Assange now stands accused of: (1) not calling a young woman the day after he had enjoyed a night with her, (2) asking her to pay for his bus ticket, (3) having unsafe sex, and (4) participating in two brief affairs in the course of one week. These four minor charges, worthy of Leopold Bloom’s mock trial in the Nightown chapter in Ulysses, have been shaken and fermented until they were able to cook up a half-baked rape case! Step down Iran; Sweden takes the cake! While Iran is notorious for unyielding conservative sentences against adulterers, Sweden shows us what the liberal side of the coin looks like as she invents criminal charges for failing to telephone and for careless use of preservatives in consensual acts of affection.

... For a smear that really sticks, you need to get it from an ex-apostle. An accusation by a Caiaphas does not impress. If you are targeting a leftist, hire leftists. For example, Trotskyites were willing and useful tools against the Communists. Pseudo Anti-Zionists are currently being used to hamstring a genuine Pro-Palestinian movement. Who are the Judases of this campaign against our Julian?

Anna Ardin (the official complainant) is often described by the media as a “leftist”. She has ties to the US-financed anti-Castro and anti-communist groups. She published her anti-Castro diatribes (see here and here) in the Swedish-language publication Revista de Asignaturas Cubanas put out by Misceláneas de Cuba. From Oslo, Professor Michael Seltzer points out that this periodical is the product of a well-financed anti-Castro organization in Sweden. He further notes that the group is connected with Union Liberal Cubana led by Carlos Alberto Montaner whose CIA ties were exposed here. Note that Ardin was deported from Cuba for subversive activities. In Cuba she interacted with the feminist anti-Castro group Las damas de blanco (the Ladies in White). This group receives US government funds and the convicted anti-communist terrorist Luis Posada Carriles is a friend and supporter.  Wikipedia quotes Hebe de Bonafini, president of the Argentine Madres de Plaza de Mayo as saying that “the so-called Ladies in White defend the terrorism of the United States.”

However we do not have to accept the single-bullet theory. Life is more complicated than that. In addition to her anti-Castro, pro-CIA streak, Anna Ardin apparently indulges in her favorite sport of male-bashing. A Swedish forum reports that she is an expert on sexual harassment and the male “master suppression techniques”. Once, as she was lecturing, a male student in the audience looked at his notes instead of staring at her. Anna Ardin reported him for sexual harassment because he discriminated against her for being a woman and because she claimed he made use of the male “master suppression technique” in trying to make her feel invisible. As soon as the student learned about her complaint, he contacted her to apologize and explain himself. Anna Ardin’s response was to once again report him for sexual harassment, again because he was using the “master suppression technique”, this time to belittle her feelings.

Ardin is apparently involved with a “Christian” Social-Democrat group. The Swedish church has a precious few male priests: what was once the struggle for female equality has ended up with men being effectively removed from service. Nowadays very few Swedish male-female couples marry in the church, or get married at all; most Swedish gay couples, however, are proud to become “man and wife” in the church. This is all good news for wealthy Swedes: deserted churches sell their properties (once enjoyed by the community) to be fenced off by the nouveau riche created by the latest privatization wave. So much for Swedish social democracy!

The second accuser, Sofia Wilen, 26, is Anna’ friend. Here is a video of an Assange press conference where one can see the girls together. Those present at the conference marveled at her groupie-like behavior. Though rock stars are used to girls dying to have sex with them, it is much less common in the harsh field of political journalism. Sofia worked hard to bed Assange, according to her own confession; she was also the first to complain to police. She is little known and her motives are vague. Why might a young woman (who shares her life with American artist Seth Benson) pursue such a sordid political adventure?

Rape is a horrible crime, and it should not be stretched to encompass minor misdemeanors and moral failings (like the failure to give an encouraging phone call the next day). Tellingly, when the complainant’s advocate was asked why the young women were unsure whether they were raped, he replied: “They are not lawyers”. Rape (like murder) is a crime that one needs no lawyers to understand. Rape is a capital crime: if the rape charges are proved false, then certainly the complainant should be charged with criminal defamation.

And now for a piece from the right, entitled Julian Assange’s Honey Trap: That’s Rape in Sweden:

Julian Assange of Wikileaks infamy was arrested in England today. But it isn’t for espionage—his Interpol “red notice” made no mention of the hundreds of thousands of classified government documents he has released illegally over the past year.
Neither does it mention the word “rape,” but you wouldn’t know that from the news reports. Searching Assange’s surname alongside the word “rape” on Google yields nearly 10 million results. Ever since Swedish authorities initially filed—then dropped—then reinstated—sex-crime charges against him late last summer, the words “Assange” and “rape” have been irrevocably wed online.
In a society hypersensitive about gender issues to the point of psychosis, a rape accusation is perhaps the worst claim you could lodge against someone short of adding that their victim was underage. But although certain gender-crazed pompom girls insist that false rape accusations are a vicious patriarchal fiction, by one estimate about half of all official rape complaints are entirely fabricated. Merely searching the word “false” alongside “rape” on Google News will yield a fresh crop of verifiably bogus allegations nationwide with each new sunrise. Try it if you don’t believe me.

... For both girls it was consensual, but suddenly it wasn’t consensual, but he wasn’t violent, but then again he wouldn’t take ‘no’ for an answer, but neither of them are afraid of him, anyway, even though he’s twisted.
Prosecutors bucked Swedish legal tradition and leaked Mr. Wikileaks’ name to the Swedish press even before contacting Assange. They issued a warrant for his arrest late on August 20th—around the same time the story hit the Swedish tabloids and exploded online.
Then, 24 hours later, they dropped the charges.
On September 1st, Sweden’s director of public prosecutions Marianne Ny issued new sexual-assault charges against Assange for his trysts with Ardin and Wilen. Assange now faces charges in Sweden for what is legally known there as “sex by surprise.”
Ardin and Wilen have hired Swedish celebrity lawyer Claes Borgström, who has uttered such gems about the case as “He had sex against their will one way or the other” and explained that even though the girls insisted Assange didn’t use force, they don’t understand they’ve been raped because “They’re not lawyers.”

... I don’t live in Sweden. But after reading literally thousands of online forum comments about the case, many of them appearing to be from bona fide Swedes, I realize those blond bastards define rape as broadly as our fair galaxy. Everything is rape to them. Apparently there’s a running joke—“That’s rape in Sweden.” Did you spill your coffee? “That’s rape in Sweden.” Did you cough too loud during the board meeting? “That’s rape in Sweden.” What, you don’t understand the joke? “That’s rape in Sweden.”
Not much has been made public about where Sofia Wilen stands regarding the Gender War, but for now let’s say there’s not nearly the shit-ton of excruciatingly damning evidence against her that exists against Anna Ardin.
While a student at Uppsala University, Ardin led a campaign to ban student songs with bawdy, woman-hating lyrics such as “in every hole/do we stop our eels.” Ardin also worked on “women’s issues” and “sexual harassment cases” at Uppsala. It’s hard to conceive that she never rubbed elbows with Professor Eva Lundgren at the school’s Department of Gender Science. Lundgren claims that half of all Swedish men are violent toward women. She also insists there’s a Swedish epidemic of male Satanists committing hundreds of ritual baby murders. When former Uppsala professor Max Scharnberg published a book critical of Lundgren, the university banned and then literally burned it.
Following in such unimpeachable footsteps, Ardin once reportedly filed a sexual-harassment complaint against another student for looking at his notes and not paying attention to her—while she was apparently giving a lecture on sexual harassment!—and thus using “male suppression techniques” to make her feel inferior and unwanted. When the male student learned of the complaint, he apologized to Ardin, who filed a NEW harassment complaint arising from his apology.
In various post-college blog posts, many of which have since been purged, Ardin was found saying things such as “It is time to end the male ideal” and “Rape is a part of male power.” She apparently believes in a literal patriarchy that conspires to keep her down. Another entry details a fictional nonconsensual sexual encounter between a man and a woman that is so graphic, you start thinking Anna Ardin imagines such scenarios all the time.
But Ardin’s self-delivered knockout punch came on January 19th of this year in a blog post (here’s the original and a rough translation) titled “7 Steps to Legal Revenge.” Although the steps themselves were lifted from a non-Swedish source, Ardin begins her post with, “I’ve been thinking about some revenge over the last few days.” Step 3 counsels: “For example if you want revenge on someone who cheated or who dumped you, so should the punishment with the dating/sex/fidelity to do. [sic]” In Step 4, we are encouraged to “Use your imagination!” The seventh and final step reeks of All Things Stalker: “And remember what your goal is, while you are operating, ensure that your victim may suffer the same way he made you suffer.”
It’s said that Ardin was once tossed out of Cuba for subversive political activities and that she has ties to some sort of CIA operative. And when rape charges were first lodged against Julian Assange, he insisted the CIA or Pentagon set him up in some sort of “honey trap” with Ardin and Wilen, but he later backpedaled on that charge.

In other news, Ferdinand Bardamu at In Mala Fide actually posted the home addresses and contact details of the two women who have accused Julian.

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