Wednesday, 8 December 2010
How the rape claims against Julian Assange sparked an information war
Julian Assange in Stockholm in August 2010, before he was accused of rape. Photograph: Scanpix Sweden/Reuters
Since Julian Assange was first accused of sex crimes against two Swedish women in August, his defenders have asserted his innocence and dismissed the allegations as malicious, or trumped up, or part of a politically driven conspiracy.
To his powerful critics, however, the rape charges have become elided with what they consider his other crimes, including accusations of espionage, for which a number of US political figures have already called for his execution.
But if the WikiLeaks controversy has seemed ferocious in its intensity to date, the fact that Assange is tonight in custody as an accused rapist means that the political, technological and moral culture wars that have been skirmishing for months around the website have reached a new pitch of vitriol, in which conspiracy theories, slander and misogyny have become every bit as central to the debate as high-minded principles of justice or freedom of information.
Certainly there are some, not only in the Australian's legal team, who argue that a rape accusation based on the details of the allegations in the public domain – some of them placed there by the women themselves – would be highly unlikely to come to court in this country. Others counter, however, that even those who support Assange or the principle of free speech must let the law decide on serious criminal accusations.
Two women who say they are victims of serious sex crimes find themselves key players in a very ugly reputational slanging match. Named in court only as Miss A and Miss W, their identities have nonetheless been circulating widely online since very soon after the attacks. And with Assange's arrest, parts of the internet have declared open season on the two women, vowing to enlist an army of tech-savvy research assistants skilled in squirrelling out information that others might wish to keep hidden — described with ill-disguised glee today by one blogger as "the First World Infowar"...
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Esther Addley @'The Guardian'
Anon_Operation http://www.mastercard.com/ is DOWN! #ddos #wikileaks Operation:Payback (is a bitch!) #PAYBACK
Briton dies in Australian immigration centre
A 29-year-old Briton died in an Australian immigration centre Wednesday, officials said, with refugee advocates claiming it was a suicide -- the third within as many months.
Immigration officials said the man, detained for a visa breach, was found not breathing in his high-security accommodation block in the western Sydney Villawood centre at 3:20 am and attempts to resuscitate him failed.
"Investigations into the circumstances of this incident are ongoing," an immigration spokesman told AFP.
Refugee activists said they had been told by fellow inmates that the man had taken his own life.
"This is the third death in three months at Villawood. The immigration department cannot explain this away," said Ian Rintoul from the Refugee Action Coalition.
"Something must be done to break the vicious downward spiral that has developed at Villawood."
The immigration official refused to speculate on whether the death was a suicide, saying it was now a police and coroner's investigation and "it would be inappropriate to discuss the matter further."
"The department expresses its sympathy to the family of the deceased man and will fully cooperate with the coroner," he said, adding that counselling would be provided to detainees and staff.
Two other men have died in Villawood since September, with a Fijian national jumping from a roof to his death and an Iraqi reportedly hanging himself in a bathroom.
Tensions are running high in Australia's crowded immigration centres, with rooftop demonstrations, breakouts, hunger strikes and one group even sewing their lips together in protest after the Iraqi's death last month.
Rintoul said the latest death illustrated the problems with Australia's mandatory detention policy for boatpeople and other illegal immigrants.
After experiencing an influx of such arrivals in 2010, mostly from Sri Lanka and Afghanistan, detention centres have been stretched to capacity for months.
"The government's addiction to such an authoritarian and punitive detention regime is literally costing people's lives," Rintoul said.
"How many more lives will it take before the government puts a stop to it?"
NaomiAKlein Few societies have defended their own ignorance as aggressively or as enthusiastically as ours. #Wikileaks #Assange
And...?
Crowd gathers at Assange's son's house
somnideaJournalists showing off their utter incompetence again. http://bit.ly/eP3lfy I graduated and moved out years ago, guys. -.-
So dishonest he scams THE Nigerians!!!
JPBarlow Nigeria, which has an extradition treaty with the U.S., has charged Dick Cheney with bribery. http://bit.ly/ExtraditeDick
The rush to smear Assange's rape accuser
You don't have to be a conspiracy theorist to find the timing of Interpol's warrant for the arrest of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who turned himself in to British authorities today, curious. The charges -- "one count of unlawful coercion, two counts of sexual molestation and one count of rape," according to a statement from Scotland Yard -- were brought against him in Sweden last August, yet he suddenly graduated to "most wanted" status just after releasing over a thousand leaked diplomatic cables in late November? It would be irresponsible of journalists, bloggers and average citizens of countries most eager to plug the gushing WikiLeaks not to wonder if those dots connect.
Still, as the New York Times put it, "there is no public evidence to suggest a connection," which some members of the public seem to find unbearably frustrating. With no specific target for their suspicions and no easy way to find one, folks all over the blogosphere have been settling for the next best thing: making light of the sexual assault charges and smearing one of the alleged victims.
By Sunday, when Keith Olbermann retweeted Bianca Jagger's link to a post about the accuser's supposed CIA ties -- complete with scare quotes around the word "rape" -- a narrative had clearly taken hold: Whatever Assange did, it sure wasn't rape-rape. All he did was fail to wear a rubber! And one woman who claims he assaulted her has serious credibility issues anyway. She threw a party in his honor after the fact and tried to pull down the incriminating tweets. Isn't that proof enough? The only reason the charges got traction is that, in the radical feminist utopia of Sweden under Queen Lisbeth Salander, if a woman doesn't have multiple orgasms during hetero sex, the man can be charged with rape. You didn't know?
As of today, even Naomi Wolf -- Naomi Effin' Wolf! -- has taken a public swipe at Assange's accusers, using her status as a "longtime feminist" to underscore the absurdity of "the alleged victims ... using feminist-inspired rhetoric and law to assuage what appears to be personal injured feelings."
Wow. Admittedly, I don't have as much experience being a feminist as Wolf has, but when I see a swarm of people with exactly zero direct access to the facts of a rape case loudly insisting that the accusation has no merit, I usually start to wonder about their credibility. And their sources.
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Kate Harding @'War Room'
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