Graphic from Huffington Post. But seriously, read Rundle's article on Crikey.com.au (click).
I’ve always said the allegations (not actually criminal charges) against Julian Assange seemed like a jack-up and a smear campaign. What do you think?:
2) The process by which Assange was accused, cleared, and then re-accused of these incidents beggars belief. Two women went to a Stockholm police station one Friday afternoon in August 2010, to either (and here accounts vary) report Assange for s-xual misconduct, or inquire as to how he could be forced to take an STI test. Only one woman, Sofia Wilen, gave a statement, saying that the morning after a s-xual encounter with Assange, he had initiated s-x while she was asleep, and without a condom; by her own testimony, she said that she then gave consent to continue the act.
3) While her statement was being given, police had already contacted a prosecutor to issue an investigation warrant for arrest. When Wilen was informed of this, she refused to sign her own evidence statement, saying that she had been pushed into making a complaint by people around her. The next day, the senior prosecutor for Stockholm rescinded the warrant, saying that there was nothing in the statement suggesting a crime had occurred.
4) By Monday, that decision had been appealed, with the two women now represented by Claes Borgstrom, a big wig in the Social Democratic party, and drafter of the 2005 s-x crimes laws under which Assange was being accused — laws that many had said were unworkable. The second complainant in the affair, Anna Ardin, now changed her story. She had been interviewed the day after Wilen had told of a rough but consensual s-xual encounter with Assange, but suggested he had torn a condom off during s-x.
5) In the weeks between the Stockholm prosecutor rejecting Wilen’s statement as evidence of a potential crime, and the appeal, Ardin’s story changed, and her account of rough consensual foreplay became an accusation that Assange had pinned her down with his body during s-x to prevent her applying a condom. This became the basis for a new accusation — s-xual coercion — which would have been sufficient as a felony, should the appeal prosecutor not reinstate Wilen’s r-pe accusation. In that week, tweets were deleted and blog posts changed to remove any suggestion that Ardin had thought Assange’s behaviour to her consensual.
6) The prosecutor to whom the appeal was made — Marianne Ny — was a former head of the “Crime Development Unit”, whose specific brief was to develop new applications of s-x crimes laws, in areas where they had not previously been applied. She had previously spoken of remand as a form of de facto justice for men accused of s-x crimes, whom the courts would otherwise let free.
7) The European arrest warrant, and the Interpol red notice under which Assange is being extradited, was issued with a speed and seriousness usually reserved for major violent criminals, rather than someone simply wanted for further questioning, without a charge being present.
From Guy Rundle: Assange makes his escape into a diplomatic storm Crikey.com.au
This is most certainly a witch hunt. Authorities are coming down hard on him for anything and everything. He made the mistake of making the wrong look foolish. Dangerous territory.
Whether he should of done what they did and whether it was the correct way to go about it, Well debatable. But that’s beside the point.
Also the Bradley Manning accusations seem toothless we have heard nor seen any factual evidence. and hes just disappeared.
This is very similar, to The News of the World Scandal, the wrong people were involved so the big guns have been pulled out, and certain people have been targeted. for example Pierce Morgan. or as I call him Pierce Moron, is as guilty as anyone at News of World but hes gone to US and is hiding behind the US system. And hes now a US household name so hes safe.
Another example is Kim Dotcom sure he may be guilty of some smaller indiscretions but I think hes being made an example of. He kicked the wrong Bees nest somewhere.
And of course the Media go into overdrive in blinding the Public with loose facts sold as evidence. Or on the flip side don’t report the facts which might give the public the idea a scam is in progress.
Yes, agreed. The ‘bring all guns to bear’ approach is striking.
One law for all seems a thin membrane when one considers the leeway other ‘law breakers’ have been meted out.
On the media treatment of the case, I’ve been sobered by the eager lap dogs keen to smear Assange as some sort of kook or nut-job (we’ve noted that in discussion here before). Here’s today’s example from The Independent via the NZ Herald:
Assange’s psychodrama seems about to tip into farce
By Joan Smith
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10814604
… which does an industrial-grade smear job linking Assange’s name to ‘Narcissism’ calling him ‘increasingly eccentric’ and saying his calls for political asylum were ‘greeted with equal measures of disbelief and hilarity.’ (The nasty writer probably no idea what it’s like to have your life threatened – hilarious.) She then glosses over the solitary confinement he was kept in prior to his hearings before minimizing his bail conditions with nonsense like:
Oh sure. Free as a bird.
You’re right. He kicked the wrong beehive, but it’s been distasteful to me to see Establishment cronies in the media castigate and demean someone with more courage than they possess.
– P
Agreed, its because the Lame stream Media is Compromised. and has preconceived Agendas. And the sooner the public are aware of this the better.
[…] 7) The European arrest warrant, and the Interpol red notice under which Assange is being extradited, was issued with a speed and seriousness usually reserved for major violent criminals, rather than someone simply wanted for further questioning, without a charge being present.Source […]
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