WikiLeaks Calls For Assange To Step Down 565
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by
Soulskill
from the clean-out-your-desk dept.
from the clean-out-your-desk dept.
Stoobalou writes "A member of Iceland's parliament and prominent organizer for whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks has turned on the site's spokesman, Julian Assange, urging him to step down over rape allegations made against him in Sweden. Birgitta Jonsdottir told news site The Daily Beast that she did not believe Assange's repeated assertion that the allegations of rape and molestation made against him were part of a US-backed smear campaign to distract attention from documents posted on the site laying bare US involvement in the war in Afghanistan and further promised revelations."
Price (Score:2, Informative)
I guess everyone has a price...
Jonsdottir != WikiLeaks (Score:3, Informative)
For the record, Jonsdottir is not part of WikiLeaks but of IMMI. So the title is wrong.
Does the US-backed smear campaign include /.? (Score:3, Informative)
They've already said they've withdrawn the charge of rape http://www.thelocal.se/28504/20100821 [thelocal.se], and are now only pursuing him for the molestation charge -- which in and of itself is a charged statement. The sex was said to be consensual and that the molestation charge hinges on weather or not knew the condom broke during intercourse and if it was intentional or not.
So, why does /. continue to perpetuate the assertion that he's being persued with a 'rape' charge?
Re:Does the US-backed smear campaign include /.? (Score:1, Informative)
The sex was said to be consensual and that the molestation charge hinges on weather or not knew the condom broke during intercourse and if it was intentional or not.
That's Assange's story, but the ladies lawyer has a slightly different story: Assange insisted on sex without a condom against the lady's wishes (the implication being that sex *without* a condom was not consensual). There are some other details.
But you've done a great job of minimizing the issues.
My speculation is that everyone was drunk, and there were some misinterpretations of intent.
Comment from Birgitta Facebook page... (Score:5, Informative)
So she's saying that Assange should temporarily step aside as spokesman for Wikileaks until the facts of the case have been sorted out. Not quite the earth-shattering denunciation the media has hyped, huh? Of course, I don't see how she couldn't anticipate this kind of reaction from all of Wikileaks detractors in the media. That was just naive.
Re:Price (Score:4, Informative)
"...we afford people the presumption of innocence until they are proven guilty in a court of law..."
That's a pretty widely misunderstood principle though. It defines an epistemic stance that the judge and jury are supposed to adopt. They are supposed to disregard, or screen off, any beliefs they had regarding the guilt or innocence of the accused prior to the trial and consider only the evidence given in the trial. Obviously this doesn't apply to the prosecution, witnesses, or complainant though because they are all expected to act according to their sincerely held beliefs either way.
As for the media and public at large, the legal principle of presumption of innocence just doesn't apply. You could argue that there should also be a general social norm requiring that people unconnected with the case presume innocence, but it's hard to see why that should be the case.
Re:Does the US-backed smear campaign include /.? (Score:5, Informative)
It sounds like you've missed the latest turn in the sequence of the prosecutor flip flopping. Here's a recap:
20. August 2010: Duty prosecutor Maria Häljebo Kjellstrand decides it looks like rape
21. August 2010: Higher ranking prosecutor Eva Finné decides it doesn't
1. September 2010: Chief prosecutor Marianne Ny decides actually it does look like rape
Source #1: http://www.thelocal.se/28704/20100901/ [thelocal.se]
Source #2: http://www.aklagare.se/In-English/ [aklagare.se]
Re:Not enough info (Score:5, Informative)
There is a bit of a problem with not enough information about this case, so I'll try to summary what I know so far.
1: Two women who had sex with Assange went to the police and were adviced to file charges of rape ...
2: A prosecutor releases the accusations publicly to the press (not a common thing here in Sweden afaik)
3: The case is withdrawn because they realize Assange cannot be nailed for rape. The remaining charge is something akin to sexual harassment.
4: The rape charges are revived
5:
6: Profit?
No seriously I'm starting to wonder what the fuck is up with the swedish legal system.
ftfa: "He acknowledges that the allegations might complicate his plans to obtain a residency permit to remain in Sweden, which has broad press freedom laws that could be used to shield WikiLeaks from American prosecutors. "
You want to have legal protection in Sweden? We'll give you legal TROUBLES in Sweden! Your move, skinny boy.
Is the headline accurate? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Price (Score:1, Informative)
So much for all the propaganda and bullshit, eh?
Well... Yeah.. pretty much [washingtonpost.com]. The war must go on. No good guys. Just bad guys and "worse" guys. So "bad" really is the new "good". That Shaft, he's a bad muth...
Re:*Everybody* is guilty of something ... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Price (Score:3, Informative)
Let me add that the Swedish laws on rape are also strongly discriminatory.
A male fingering a sleeping female in her sleep is rape.
A male masturbating a sleeping man is not rape.
Re:Price (Score:4, Informative)
I have no idea about Sweden, but in the US they can bring charges and drop them pretty much at whim. It's not gone forever until a judge dismisses them.
Re:Oh yeah? (Score:3, Informative)
Iceland has a legal age of consent at 15 years. So you can only accuse her of regular rape.
That's what's so great about setting arbitrary lines in the sand: even if she's not legally a child rapist in her own country, in the eyes of America and much of the developed world, she'd be a child rapist. (Not in England, mind. In England, a person must have a penis to be capable of rape. Ah, Lady Justice, you blind thing.)
But, now I think about it, the boy actually said he was 14. Possibly 13. Sometimes it's hard to recall things precisely on the Internet so I'd better play it on the safe side and say he was around 13. I mean, it could have been an adult just like me who was actually raped, but I wouldn't want anyone to get away with child rape, so I'd better report on the safe side!
and the police to take it seriously enough to warrant an arrest in absence.
Is Iceland particularly well known for not taking accusations of child rape by a possible victim hysterically seriously? Does it have the unique distinction of properly considering an accused nonce innocent until proven guilty? All these questions I'm asking myself are making me confused, and I am beginning to imagine she may have raped me too. Or was she just unfaithful to me? Oh god! I wouldn't want to be holding on to a repressed memory.
Re:People like Birgitta Jonsdottir are easy to buy (Score:3, Informative)
For example, the blast and shockwave from the MOAB bomb can destroy about 8-10 blocks radius of a city, and we used these in Iraq...
Citation needed cause I'm pretty sure not a single MOAB has ever been detonated outside of military test ranges.
Re:*Everybody* is guilty of something ... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Oh yeah? (Score:4, Informative)
Anyone else here on /. heard of anyone else she may have raped, especially someone under 18?
It is well-known that Birgitta Jonsdottir has allegedly raped many children under the age of 18.
Re:And so it begins (Score:3, Informative)
It's quite simple: one of the cases involves the woman accusing him of sabotaging the condom he used, leading to it rupturing and thus exposing her to potential STDs (HIV was mentioned).
The other woman, he fucked without a condom even though she explicitly asked him not to. The woman herself don't even consider it rape, but the police did and ran with it. When her legal counsel was asked about why he was pursuing a case when the woman in question didn't consider it rape, his explanation was that she wasn't a lawyer. Obviously, "rape" is such a complicated legal concept in Sweden that mere humans aren't supposed to even understand it.
I truly wish I was joking....
Re:Price (Score:4, Informative)
Re:*Everybody* is guilty of something ... (Score:5, Informative)
Having read the article, I see a significant discrepancy between the headline and the text.
Jonsdottir is doing more than "commenting as an... activist". She presumes to speak in behalf of the WikiLeaks network, although her assertions are not corroborated on wikileaks.org.
Wikileaks.org is the mouthpiece of the organization. In the WikiLeaks spirit of full disclosure of primary documents, see the WikiLeaks blog post dated 21 August, 2010 [wikileaks.org] (which, at this writing, remains the most recent).
Also, Jonsdottir cites no empirical "reason to think" the accusation is plausible. When evaluating statements in the media, we must all think critically rather than prejudicially. Look beyond the claims to the evidence.
Re:Price (Score:4, Informative)
I assume that you're talking about interviews you've read, or snippets of talking head interviews on TV.
It's worth noting that the corporate media hates Assange and has reason to fear wikileaks, almost as much as the powerful elite. I'm not sure you can believe anything that you get from the corporate media when it comes to wikileaks. Just put together half a dozen articles about Assange on the desk in front of you and scan them to see what jumps out. I bet you'll be surprised at an eerie similarity that those articles have to one another. You would think that there'd be at least a little bit of variation in the questions asked and the overall structure and tenor of the arguments made in those articles. They really come across as the perfect inverse of a highly synchronized public relations campaign.
I would bet that if Assange disappeared tomorrow and someone else took over Wikileaks, after a very short time we'd see a very similar story-arc with the person who took his place. Not the same charges, of course, but similar focus on the person instead of the institution. On personality instead of substance.
Re:Price (Score:3, Informative)
That is the difference here and is why many are seeing this as "crying wolf" a second time.
Also the details released so far are not something that would be seen as a crime in a US courtroom which is where it differs from most that you would classify as anti-US terrorists. It's not as if he was even hanging around with a terrorist group and sold his gun to get a ride out of there at the first sign of a fight - somebody did time for that one.
Re:Price (Score:2, Informative)
Atleast he's got the most talked about Swedish lawyer http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leif_Silbersky [wikipedia.org]
Re:*Everybody* is guilty of something ... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:People like Birgitta Jonsdottir are easy to buy (Score:3, Informative)
True, but its predecessor, the BLU-82 was used in both Vietnam and Afghanistan (retired and replaced by the MOAB in 2008), in Afghanistan one of the reasons for using it was actually to demoralize enemy troops.
False rape allegation statistics: (Score:3, Informative)
An authoritative law review article debunked the canard that only two percent of all rape claims are false -- the author traced this number to its baseless source. See http://llr.lls.edu/volumes/v33-issue3/greer.pdf [lls.edu].
As reported by "False Rape Allegations" by Eugene Kanin, Archives of Sexual Behavior Feb 1994 v23 n1 p81 (12), Professor Kanin’s major study of a mid-size Midwestern U.S. city over the course of nine years found that 41 percent of all rape claims were false. Kanin also studied the police records of two unnamed large state universities, and found that in three years, 50 percent of the 64 rapes reported to campus police were determined to be false, without the use of polygraphs.
In addition, a landmark Air Force study in 1985 studied 556 rape allegations. It found that 27% of the accusers recanted, and an independent evaluation revealed a false accusation rate of 60%. McDowell, Charles P., Ph.D. “False Allegations.” Forensic Science Digest, (publication of the U.S. Air Force Office of Special Investigations), Vol. 11, No. 4 (December 1985), p. 64.
Re:Price (Score:3, Informative)
Or how often wacky chicks just accuse famous people for their own narcissistic reasons.
And in this case, it wasn't even the chick doing the accusation. The chick only wanted a way to compel Assange to take an STD test, after they had sex (consensual) without a condom (that bit was not consensual...).
Then, it was the police, not the "victim" who came up with the idea of rape charges.