Why I Don’t Read The New Statesman.

I have already admitted that the New Statesman disappoints me, but as it reflects much of the Metropolitan Elite I can’t say it surprises me.

Dave Rich at the CST takes the trouble to read it carefully, and he doesn’t like what he finds:

“Hasan clearly understands the pitfalls of writing on this subject, and he has genuinely tried to avoid producing an antisemitic article. The problem is that his article is basically just another conspiracy theory. It offers a simplistic argument that completely ignores the hopes, fears, needs and goals of Israelis and Palestinians themselves, or of any other actors in the region, and imagines that the whole problem could be solved by a wave of America’s magic wand (or a shake of its big stick).”

Whilst we are at it we shouldn’t forget this one from 2010, The New Statesman Praises Iran’s President For Not Denying the Holocaust.

The Lobbies, Rounding Up Before The Weekend.

I shall be away for a good few days and thought that rounding up news worthy bits and my random thoughts might be easier.

I admit I can’t stand the NewStatesman, but if you have to read it then Kevin Maguire’s column is good and sharp on domestic British politics.

A pessimistic Yaacov Lozowick says Peace Impossible; Progress Needed:

“Compared to long periods of Jewish history, deligitimization is a reasonable problem to have. For that matter, deligitimization compounded with a low level of violence isn’t an existential threat, either. Yet Jews haven’t become one of history’s oldest living nations by passively suffering circumstances. They have always tried to improve their lot, often with surprising success; Zionism is merely one of the more spectacular improvements. The Zionist tradition of activism requires we confront the present threat, rather than wait. The way forward is to disable the weapons of our enemies. Since the single most potent weapon in their arsenal is our occupation of the Palestinians, we must do as much as we reasonably can to end it.

Ending the occupation as a maneuver in an ongoing conflict is not the same as making peace. Making peace requires that all side to the conflict accept mutually agreed terms. There’s a reason this hasn’t yet happened, namely that the two sides cannot agree; even if they could, however, no Palestinian government could reconcile all Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims to Jewish sovereignty, nor convince the western supporters of ongoing violence to desist from aiding and abetting it. The aim of ending the occupation is to severely weaken the enemies of Jewish sovereignty by reducing the wind which currently blows in their sails.”

I don’t agree with him on much but he too is worth a read.

Meanwhile in Bahrain:

“Bahraini opposition groups and rights organizations say hundreds of public employees were dismissed on the grounds that they took part in protests. Bahrain says it had taken steps only against those who committed crimes during the protests.”

The yearly Orwell Prize is upon us, and bloggers haven’t been forgotten. I do find the self-promotional nature of this event somewhat disappointing, you have to submit your own work, rather than someone proposing you. It seems that the Orwell Prize has become another major happening, where the middle classes slap each other on the back and say what jolly good chaps/chappettes they are. Is this what Eric Blair really wanted? The Metropolitan elites congratulating each other? Probably not.

Interested in the Middle East? Use Google’s Chrome and check out the BBC’s Arabic page, which Chrome will automatically translate into any appropriate language. It’s a good read and has a slightly different perspective than the English language one.

Donald Trump and the Birther idiocy has compelled President Obama to release his birth certificate, view as a PDF. Gary Younge was good on the issue about 2 years ago, not much has changed since then. This is the White House blog on it, and I didn’t know it existed!

Gulf leaders are worried about Egypt.

Searchlight on the BNP’s Young, angry and on the rise.

Howard Jacobson on Ofcom and The Promise, sharp as ever:

“In a morally intelligent world – that’s to say one in which, for starters, Jews are not judged more harshly than their fellows for having been despatched to concentration camps – The Promise would be seen for the ludicrous piece of brainwashed prejudice it is. Ofcom’s rejection of complaints about the drama’s partiality and inaccuracy was to be expected. You can’t expect a body as intellectually unsophisticated as Ofcom to adjudicate between claims of dramatic truth and truth of any other sort. And for that reason it should never have been appealed to. That said, its finding that The Promise was “serious television drama, not presented as a historical and faithful re-creation”, is a poor shot at making sense of anything. You can’t brush aside historical re-creation in a work of historical re-creation, nor can you assert a thing is “serious television” when its seriousness is what’s in question. A work isn’t serious by virtue of its thinking it is. Wherein lies the seriousness, one is entitled to ask, when the drama creaks with the bad faith of a made-up mind.

I’m an art man, myself. Aesthetics trump the lot. And “seriousness” is an aesthetic quality or it’s nothing. But you will usually find that bad intentions makes bad art, and bad art, while it might be solemn and self-righteous, forfeits the right to be called serious. From start to finish, The Promise was art with its trousers round its ankles. Yes, it looked expensive, took its time, was beautifully shot and well acted. But these are merely the superficies of art, and the more dangerously seductive for that. “Gosh, I never knew such and such had happened,” I heard people say after one or other simplifying episode, as though high production values guarantee veracity.”

The Obama administration and Syria, conflicting policies?

When people start shouting about Mosques, remember what company you’re in, BNP man arrested at mosque protest.

In Bahrain Tweeters get a warning from the State:

““Think twice before posting, forwarding, or reTweeting messages. Are they mere propaganda or could they be libelous? Think Twice before posting, forwarding or reTweeting images. Are they appropriate in their content? Are they likely to cause offense? Could they cause harm?” “

British Foreign secretaries are normally not that naive, but William Hague seems to think Bashar al-Assad is a reformer, even after 400+ Syrians were killed by the state security apparatus, police and army. Chronically stupid doesn’t even sum up Hague in this matter.

Remember 9/11? Imagine that you were one of the first people on the scene, that you risked your life to help people. How would you be treated by Congress? Pretty damn poorly, Medialite has more:

“Jon Stewart tonight tackled the absurdity of a provision in the recently passed 9/11 first responders bill that requires any potential beneficiaries to first have their name run through the FBI’s terrorism watch list before they could collect any money. Some commentators described it as “adding insult to injury,” but Stewart more bluntly called it Congress’ “final kick to the nuts” of the first responders.

This issue is somewhat personal to Stewart given that many credited him with helping to get public support for the bill’s passage. Yet Stewart went to town, lampooning anyone who could possibly think a terrorist’s grand scheme after all of these years was to trick the U.S. government into handing over money to now pay for their cancer treatment.”

HRW seems to think that Hamas will investigate itself concerning the death of Adel Razeq. Great idea, but it ain’t going to happen:

“(Jerusalem) – Hamas authorities in Gaza should order a criminal investigation into the death of a man whose body was returned to his family five days after Hamas security officials arrested him, Human Rights Watch said today.

Relatives of ‘Adel Razeq, a 52-year-old father of nine, told Human Rights Watch that when security officials arrested him on April 14, 2011, they did not present a warrant and took him away under false pretenses. Security officials would not tell his family where he was being held. When his brother examined the body, it was badly bruised and appeared to have broken bones, he told Human Rights Watch. That, if true, would cast doubt on a Hamas Interior Ministry statement that Razeq died of an unspecified illness. “

Finally to a Lobby, but not one that you’d expect, the Syrian Lobby, extracted from the WSJ:

“How does a small, energy-poor and serially misbehaving Middle Eastern regime always seem to get a Beltway pass? Conspiracy nuts and other tenured faculty would have us believe that country is Israel, though the Jewish state shares America’s enemies and our democratic values. But the question really applies to Syria, where the Assad regime is now showing its true nature.

Washington’s Syria Lobby is a bipartisan mindset. “The road to Damascus is a road to peace,” said Nancy Pelosi on a 2007 visit to Syria as House Speaker. Former Secretary of State James Baker is a longtime advocate of engagement with the House of Assad. So is Republican Chuck Hagel, who in 2008 co-wrote an op-ed with fellow Senator John Kerry in these pages titled “It’s Time to Talk to Syria.” The Massachusetts Democrat has visited Damascus five times in the past two years alone.
…
The argument made by the Syria Lobby runs briefly as follows: The Assad family is occasionally ruthless, especially when its survival is at stake, but it’s also secular and pragmatic. Though the regime is Iran’s closest ally in the Middle East, hosts terrorists in Damascus, champions Hezbollah in Lebanon and has funneled al Qaeda terrorists into Iraq, it will forgo those connections for the right price. Above all, it yearns for better treatment from Washington and the return of the Golan Heights, the strategic plateau held by Israel since 1967.

The Syria Lobby also claims that whoever succeeds Assad would probably be worse. The country is divided by sect and ethnicity, and the fall of the House of Assad could lead to bloodletting previously seen in Lebanon or Iraq. Some members of the Lobby go so far as to say that the regime remains broadly popular. “I think that President Assad is going to count on . . . majoritarian support within the country to support him in doing what he needs to do to restore order,” Flynt Leverett of the New America Foundation said recently on PBS’s NewsHour.

Now we are seeing what Mr. Leverett puts down merely to the business of “doing what he needs to do”: Video clips on YouTube of tanks rolling into Syrian cities and unarmed demonstrators being gunned down in the streets; reports of hundreds killed and widespread “disappearances.” Even the Obama Administration has belatedly criticized Assad, though so far President Obama has done no more than condemn his “outrageous human rights abuses.” ”

It is something to see, how tanks, snipers and the slaughter of civilians doesn’t to rile policy makers in DC, or political activists in Britain as witnessed by the non-existence demonstrations outside the Syrian embassy by the usual suspects! And that something that has struck me over the pass few weeks coverage of events in the Middle East, how little real indignation they invoked in the West.

Continuing Coverage: Wikileaks And Assange.

Some new material has been released into the public domain concerning the allegations against Julian Assange.

I can’t make my mind up on it. I think it tends to detract from the issues which have come out during these Wikileaks, Techworld reports:

“Text messages sent by the two women who accuse WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange of rape and assault mention “revenge” and “economic gain,” according to testimony during the second day of his extradition hearing.

Defense witness Björn Hurtig said he was allowed under police supervision to examine hundreds of messages, which “suggest things that go against what the claimants have said regarding the rape.”

Hurtig, who is Assange’s attorney in Sweden, said he saw text messages “speaking of revenge” and taking “economic advantage” of Assange, who is wanted for questioning related to alleged incidents with two women in mid-August 2010.

He faces possible charges of unlawful coercion, sexual molestation and rape, but his legal team presents those accusations as a veiled attack related to WikiLeaks’ release of secret U.S. diplomatic cables.”

His solicitors, Finers Stephens Innocent, have other material on their site here.

I haven’t looked through it if anyone finds anything good then please let me know.

And some of my other posts on the matter:

Sorry To My Female Readers.

Julian Assange: Fool? Historically illiterate ? Or Worse?

Julian Assange And The English Middle Class.

Shamir, Stupidity And Julian Assange.

Wikileaks Bits.

Wikileaks, Cyber-attacks And Wandsworth Prison.

Conspiracies, The CIA And The Racist, Israel Shamir.

Sorry To My Female Readers.

I have had time to reflect and I wish to say sorry to my female readers, who I may have inadvertently offended in the discussions around Julian Assange’s Arrest And The Broken Condom.

I feel I was often too caustic, and not sufficiently attuned to the issues, as seen from a different perspective.

Regrettably, I tend to focus on political matters, sometimes to the exclusion of more intricate points.

So my apologies, particularly to any of my female readers who were rightly offended by my unnecessary and direct comments.

Sorry.

Julian Assange: Fool? Historically illiterate ? Or Worse?

Access to the Internet doesn’t confer intelligence, but you would like to think that those with high-speed connections to the web could at least educate themselves on the basics.

The web is a positive encyclopaedia and with a few clicks you can find out most things.

So it is all the more annoying to see a constant, almost obsessive, Internet user demonstrate major historical illiteracy, that person is Julian Assange.

Readers will remember how I am somewhat enamoured of Wikileaks, as I think that it is good for information to come out into the public domain and stimulate debate. How I find the timing of the charges against Assange too coincidental.

Nevertheless, as the story unfolds in the media you get the impression that Julian Assange is a bit of a fool, or at the very least rather naive and unworldly.

His failure to do an elementary Google search on Israel Shamir/Jöran Jermas/Adam Ermash was rather worrying.

Assange’s profile on the free dating site, OkCupid.com, is indicative of someone not fully in touch with reality.

His latest comments, comparing his treatment to that of the Jews, is unbelievable, the JC has more:

“The founder of WikiLeaks has compared his treatment by the Swedish authorities seeking his extradition over sexual assault allegations to the persecution of the Jewish people in the last century.

Julian Assange, the 39-year-old Australian behind the extraordinary leaks of US diplomatic cables and documents, told The Times that he believed the allegations and the publicity surrounding them were unfounded and motivated by “a mixture of revenge, money, and police pressure.”

He said: “All sorts of abusive statements were made against the Jewish people in the 1950s and before.

“I’m not the Jewish people, but the people who believe in freedom of speech and accountability [are in the same position].”

Julian, it was considerably more than just “abusive statements”. Try searching Google with pogrom, Soviet antisemitism and mass murder.

I am lost for words.

Shamir, Stupidity And Julian Assange.

The debate on Wikileaks has shifted somewhat, and I think that is not useful, as from my cursory reading there is plenty of excellent material.

Michael C. Moynihan has a story on Israel Shamir, the well-known Far Rightist and hardcore antisemite, and his association with Wikileaks in Russia.

I can well imagine that the photo with Julian Assange is staged, but that does not excuse his association with this well-known racist.

I would assume that Shamir wanted to engineer himself into a position of power, disseminating Wikileaks material as he chose and probably pulled the wool over a slightly naive Assange. However, that is no excuse.

Wikileaks should release a statement disassociating themselves from Israel Shamir and his associates.

Update 1: Snoopy has done a far superior post on this topic:

“Whatever you can say about Assange, he certainly captured the attention of the world lately, dividing the audience into haters and admirers. No one remained indifferent, for a wide variety of reasons. It could be said – and I tend to accept the view expressed by Francis Sedgemore – that Assange and his team started something that is far beyond the related scandals and dirt and is of extreme importance to the journalism and politics of this century.

Assange methods and Assange personal habits, though, may undermine the possible good that could come out of the whole endeavor. Enough is said and written about the way Assange published hundreds of documents that endangered people. A lot is written about his persona, so there is no need to repeat all this stuff. WikiLeaks could certainly do with a more sensible leader.”

Update 2: The JC has more on Israel Shamir/Jöran Jermas/Adam Ermash.

Wikileaks Bits.

I am away from a PC for a few days so here are some useful links and discussions on Wikileaks.

How Has WikiLeaks Managed to Keep Its Web Site Up and Running?

Huff Post’s rolling commentary, which isn’t too bad.

Yaacov Lozowick has his own thoughts on things.

Pfizer in Nigeria.

The Guardian’s WikiLeaks US embassy cables site is well worth a read.

WikiLeaks Central too.

Wikileaks on Facebook.

If readers come across any other useful sites or links please leave a comment below.

Wikileaks, Cyber-attacks And Wandsworth Prison.

It is interesting to see how the news agenda has moved away from the contents of the Wikileaks material to discussing cyber-attacks.

Instead of pondering what Wikileaks’ releases tells us about misrule, political complacency and the stupidity of the political classes we are debating what happened with Julian Assange.

Whilst his arrest is important it is also a convenient distraction from the meat of the issue, Cablegate.

Along with the cyber-attacks it is a diversion from what we should be concentrating on, what the Cablegate material tells us, what political issues does it illuminate.

That’s what we should be directing our gaze towards.

But if you are interested in the cyber attacks and counter-attacks then Panda Labs has good coverage:

Conspiracies, The CIA And The Racist, Israel Shamir.

There are conflicting events, overlapping narratives and some downright strange articles being posted concerning Wikileaks and the charges against Julian Assange.

The Raw Story has an accusation, which I find pretty disgusting and slightly improbable, that one of the defendants in the case against Julian Assange is a CIA agent.

It is only when you look into the story that alarm bells start ringing, and if the name Israel Shamir doesn’t mean anything to you, then you are lucky.

Shamir is a Far Rightist and a mean antisemite, as Michael C. Moynihan demonstrates:

“So who is Israel Shamir, Counterpunch’s resident intelligence correspondent? Alternately known as Jöran Jermas and Adam Ermash, Shamir is a fringe writer who has devoted his professional life to exposing the supposed criminality of “Jewish power,” a paranoid anti-Semite who curates a website full of links to Holocaust denial and neo-Nazi sites, defenses of blood libel myths, and references to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Ali Abunimah, Hussein Ibish, and Nigel Parry have warned their fellow Palestinian activists to avoid contact with Shamir, citing his frequent forays into the sewers of Jew-hatred. The British anti-fascist magazine Searchlight (along with its Swedish sister magazine Expo) showed that Shamir is a “Swedish anti-Semite” who has repeatedly lied about his past, not a truth-telling Israeli dissident.

Spend a few minutes on Shamir’s website and here’s some of what you’ll learn: Imprisoned neo-Nazi Ernst Zundel is a “German political prisoner of Zion”; Maria Poumier, a French Holocaust denier whose work Shamir publishes, claims that the “Nazi-jewish H[olocaust] was just a civil war between European brothers”; Shamir himself believes that the Holocaust “narrative is Jewish, it belongs to Jews, and it has no meaning but as manifestation of Jewish supremacy.” Shamir also asserts that the pro-Nazi historian David Irving “was sentenced [to prison] for denial of Jewish superiority,” warning his readers of “Jewish mind-control on a world scale.” On the Auschwitz death camp, Shamir says that “The camp was an internment facility, attended by the Red Cross (as opposed to the US internment centre in Guantanamo).””

I think we know what he’s up to, best disregard this nonsense until there is solid evidence.

Judge Andrew Napolitano On Wikileaks.

I was astonished to see Judge Andrew Napolitano discuss the issues around Wikileaks and Assange, and actually defend him.

Amazing**, but I am not sure that will please his employers, Fox News, but as Napolitano argues there is little “due process” in the attacks on Wikileaks.

Watch the video here and listen to the arguments.

**I think it is fair to say that Judge Andrew Napolitano is to the right of the political spectrum and, unlike many other conservatives, seems genuinely troubled by how the American State has attacked Wikileaks financially, tried to intimate them and probably assisted in the launching of cyberattacks on the Wikileaks site.

(H/T: Andrew Murphy).

Update 1: Is it news worthy or not? If so, he can’t be prosecuted, according to this clip:

The Ku Klux Klan, MasterCard, Visa And Wikileaks.

One of the imperatives to stopping an organisation is to limit its funding, that is a well-known concept in the security services and part of the reason that MasterCard, Visa and Paypal have ceased to forward donations to Wikileaks.

Now consider this absurdity, whatever you think of Wikileaks, both Visa and MasterCard will still process payments to the Ku Klux Klan.

Yes, you read it right. The Ku Klux Klan.

These companies won’t forward payments to Wikileaks, but they will happily forward money to people who dream about doing lynchings and racial mass murder.

Evidence for this can be seen at the KKK website (called the Knights Party) with these links to the appropriate Google cache [best not go there directly, it will only up their site hit counter and please them].

This clip from their site shows it:

Mastercard and Visa allow KKK funding.

It all tells you something about these companies priorities .

Update 1: Paypal now admit they were pressurised into that decision, the BBC reports:

“PayPal has said that its decision to stop users from using its service to make donations to Wikileaks was made after advice from the US government.

A senior official at the online payments firm said the State Department had told it that the activities of the website were illegal in the US.

PayPal suspended payments to Wikileaks last week, and has been followed by Visa Europe and Mastercard. “

Julian Assange and Prison.

I really mean to get down to covering the contents of the Wikileaks’ material or at least another topic, but events are moving fast and Julian Assange has been remanded to Wandsworth nick.

Perhaps some of my readers might want to send him a postcard or reading material?

I imagine he’ll be in there for some time, the address is:

HMP Wandsworth,
PO Box 757
Heathfield Road
Wandsworth
London
SW18 3HS

More details can be found here.

Update 1: Assange has released a statement of sorts in the Australian, and I can see why the Swedish Government might be very annoyed at him:

“But our publications have been far from unimportant. The US diplomatic cables reveal some startling facts:

The US asked its diplomats to steal personal human material and information from UN officials and human rights groups, including DNA, fingerprints, iris scans, credit card numbers, internet passwords and ID photos, in violation of international treaties. Presumably Australian UN diplomats may be targeted, too.

King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia asked the US Officials in Jordan and Bahrain want Iran ‘s nuclear program stopped by any means available.

Britain’s Iraq inquiry was fixed to protect “US interests”.

Sweden is a covert member of NATO and US intelligence sharing is kept from parliament.

The US is playing hardball to get other countries to take freed detainees from Guantanamo Bay . Barack Obama agreed to meet the Slovenian President only if Slovenia took a prisoner. Our Pacific neighbour Kiribati was offered millions of dollars to accept detainees. “

[My emphasis.]

Update 2: The Indy has more on how he might be shipped to the US:

“Informal discussions have already taken place between US and Swedish officials over the possibility of the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange being delivered into American custody, according to diplomatic sources.”

Governments, Retribution and Julian Assange.

A reader of mine has suggested that I am trivialising the rape charges against Julian Assange. So I wanted to deal with this issue head-on.

I am not trivialising those charges, rather I am aware of how governments and secret services act, and unless we see these unfolding events in a wider context then I am afraid we will get lost.

Firstly, we need to remember that governments have for many centuries used indirect means to get at their enemies.

Secondly, Assange has seriously annoyed some very powerful people and it is highly likely that they would want some form of revenge.

Thirdly, within living memory governments have done far worse, such as overthrowing elected democracies, causing panic and shortages, manipulating whole countries.

I would heartily recommend reading through Philip Agee’s CIA Diary for a small glimpse into what governments can do to others.

Fourthly, we shouldn’t forget that even the US Congress investigated how security agencies manipulated, controlled and tried to destroy perceived enemies by indirect means.

Fifthly, these allegations against Julian Assange only really came to light after Wikileaks had released some 75,000+ documents concerning US activities in and around Iraq last year.

So when considering this issue we need to bear those points in mind.

As commentators have remarked how Julian Assange was, until today, beyond the grasp of those he annoyed, primarily the current US administration:

“Besides, even if current law were sufficient, how would authorities bring Assange, an Australian native in hiding outside the U.S., into this country to stand trial?

Presented with this question, Holder told reporters that no one’s foreign citizenship or residence would prevent them from being targeted. But that brings us back to this question: on what charge could he be indicted?”

That again “… that no one’s foreign citizenship or residence would prevent them from being targeted.…”

Which suggest to me on the balance of probability that the US administration had for many months been looking at a way of “acquiring” Julian Assange.

I have no doubt that soon after Assange’s time in Sweden that he will be deported to the United States.

Once more, if governments and security services are perfectly capable of overthrowing elected governments in Latin America and across the world then organising for some form of charges to be the pretext for getting Julian Assange into custody seems like child’s play to them.

Update 1: This is from the Guardian 2010, August:

“Swedish authorities have withdrawn an arrest warrant for Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, stating that the accusation of rape against him was unfounded.

The move came just a day after a warrant was issued by Sweden’s prosecutors’ office in Stockholm in response to accusations of rape and molestation in two separate cases.

“I don’t think there is reason to suspect that he has committed rape,” the chief prosecutor, Eva Finne, said.

She made no comment on the status of the molestation case, a less serious charge that would not lead to an arrest warrant.

Assange has denied both accusations, first reported by the Swedish tabloid Expressen, which were described as dirty tricks on the Wikileaks’ Twitter account.

He implied that they were linked to the release by the whistleblowers’ website of a huge cache of US military records on the Afghan war, which were published in collaboration with the Guardian and two other newspapers.

Assange wrote: “The charges are without basis and their issue at this moment is deeply disturbing.”

Earlier postings on the Twitter account implied the accusations were part of a dirty tricks campaign against the Wikileaks founder, who has been strongly criticised by the Pentagon.

“Expressen is a tabloid; No one here has been contacted by Swedish police. Needless to say, this will prove hugely distracting.

“We were warned to expect ‘dirty tricks’. Now we have the first one.”

Last month Wikileaks released around 77,000 secret US military documents on the war in Afghanistan.”

Update 2: Elsewhere there is a very concious effort to close down Wikileaks’ funding as Visa and Mastercard stop donations, Forbes reports:

“The mounting legal and political forces working against WikiLeaks just scored two major financial blows against the whistleblower site. On Tuesday morning, Visa suspended payments to WikiLeaks, according to the Associated Press. And late Monday, Mastercard told Cnet that it would also attempt to block payments to WikiLeaks, arguing that its “rules prohibit customers from directly or indirectly engaging in or facilitating any action that is illegal.”

Visa and Mastercards’ moves represent the latest and most serious tightening of the financial vice around WikiLeaks since it released the first portion of a quarter million diplomatic cables last week. On Friday, PayPal blocked payments to the site, and the Swiss bank PostFinance announced Monday that it was freezing Assange’s accounts.

Both PayPal and PostFinance have faced anger as a result of their decisions and even cyberattacks: A group that calls itself Operation: Payback has taken credit for floods of junk web traffic that have temporarily taken down both the Swiss bank’s website and PayPal’s blog. Expect those attacks to now target Visa and Mastercard, too.”

Update 3: There’s a report on AOL News that “sex by surprise” was the issue, I am not sure what to make of it:

“The international manhunt for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in a sex-crime investigation in Sweden apparently stems from a condom malfunction.

Assange’s London attorney, Mark Stephens, told AOL News today that Swedish prosecutors told him that Assange is wanted not for allegations of rape, as previously reported, but for something called “sex by surprise,” which he said involves a fine of 5,000 kronor or about $715.
…
“Whatever ‘sex by surprise’ is, it’s only a offense in Sweden — not in the U.K. or the U.S. or even Ibiza,” Stephens said. “I feel as if I’m in a surreal Swedish movie being threatened by bizarre trolls. The prosecutor has not asked to see Julian, never asked to interview him, and he hasn’t been charged with anything. He’s been told he’s wanted for questioning, but he doesn’t know the nature of the allegations against him.”

The strange tale of Assange’s brief flings with two Swedish women during a three-day period in mid-August — and decisions by three different prosecutors to first dismiss rape allegations made by the women and then re-open the case — has more twists, turns and conspiracy theories than any of Stieg Larsson’s best-sellers.

True, one of Assange’s accusers sounds tailor-made for those who think Assange is being set up in Sweden by dark CIA-backed operatives who want him smeared or silenced for his document dumping with WikiLeaks. She’s a 31-year-old blond academic and member of the Social Democratic Party who’s known for her radical feminist views, once wrote a treatise on how to take revenge against men and was once thrown out of Cuba for subversive activities.

But others say Assange, who denies any wrongdoing and says the sex was consensual, may have just run afoul of Sweden’s unusual rape laws, which are considered pro-feminist because of the consideration given issues of consent when it comes to sexual activity — including even the issue of whether a condom was used.

In fact, the current prosecutor, Marianne Ny, who re-opened the case against Assange, has been active in the proposed reforms of Swedish rape laws that would, if passed, involve an investigation of whether an imbalance in power between two people could void one person’s insistence that the sex was consensual.

Swedish tabloids and the country’s blogosphere have been rife since August with stories and speculation about Assange’s accusers, the flip-flopping prosecutors and just what, if any, crime was committed by Assange during sex with the two women.

“He’s innocent, that I can tell you,” Bjorn Hurtig, Assange’s Stockholm-based lawyer, told AOL News today. Hurtig later issued a statement saying the international arrest warrant for Assange is based on “exaggerated grounds.”

Assange arrived in Sweden on Aug. 11 to speak at a weekend seminar sponsored by the Social Democratic Party and arranged to stay at a Stockholm apartment belonging to the event organizer, a member of the branch of the party who would become one of Assange’s two accusers.

According to a police report obtained by the Daily Mail in August, she and Assange had sex, and at some point the condom broke. While she was apparently not happy about the condom breaking, the two were seen the next day at the seminar, and nothing appeared amiss.

Another woman at the seminar, a 27-year-old art photographer, said in her police statement that she’d come to hear Assange’s lecture because of her fascination with him and his work. She can be seen in video footage on the Internet sitting in the front row during Assange’s lecture, wearing a pink sweater and snapping pictures of him.

According to the police report, the woman managed to get an invitation to go out for lunch with Assange and his entourage after the seminar. They spent time together before he went back to stay at the event organizer’s apartment.

Two days later, on Aug. 16, they reconnected by phone and the woman invited him to her apartment, more than 40 miles outside Stockholm. She paid for the ticket since Assange apparently had no cash and doesn’t like to use credit cards because they could be traced.

She complained in her police statement that during the train ride to her hometown, “he paid more attention to his computer rather than me.” She also said that by the time they arrived at her apartment, “the passion and excitement seemed to have disappeared.”

The woman and Assange also reportedly had sex. According to the Daily Mail account, Assange did not use a condom at least one time during their sexual activity. The New York Times today quoted accounts given by the women to police and friends as saying Assange “did not comply with her appeals to stop when (the condom) was no longer in use.”

According to the Swedish tabloid Aftonbladet, the photographer contacted the other woman two days after her assignation with Assange, and the two apparently had a conversation in which it became clear they had both had sex with Assange. The photographer was worried about having had unprotected sex and decided she wanted to go to the police.

The other woman accompanied her to the police station on Aug. 20 just to support her but then told the investigating officer on duty that she, too, had had sex with Assange, Aftonbladet reported.

Based on what was said to police, the on-call prosecutor, Marie Kjellstrand, decided to issue an arrest warrant on charges of rape and molestation, and the next day the story hit the Swedish paper Expressen and newspapers all over the world.

Kjellstrand’s decision was overruled the following day by a higher-level prosecutor, Eva Finne, who withdrew the arrest warrant and said she did not see any evidence for rape allegations.

Then, on Sept. 1, a third prosecutor, Ny, re-opened the rape investigation, implying that she had new information in the case. “

Update 4: This is a useful brief from some legal minds:

“According to Afua Hirsch at The Guardian, Assange will argue, amongst other things, that he would be unfairly deprived of his liberty in Sweden and therefore should be protected under human rights law.

Human rights law is often (some say increasingly) invoked, although rarely successfully, in extradition proceedings. If a person can show that there is a real risk of his rights – such as to a fair trial or against inhuman and degrading treatment – being breached in the receiving state, then a UK court will not extradite him as that would amount to a UK public authority – the court – causing the breach, which is unlawful under section 6 of the Human Rights Act 1998.

For example, the High Court recently questioned whether the Russian criminal justice system was too corrupt to ensure a fair trial for a man faced with extradition (see my post). The court was asked to decide whether the lack of accountability of prosecutors in Russia would lead to a “flagrant denial of justice” if a man were extradited. The extradition request ultimately failed for other reasons, but the judge expressed significant concerns in relation to the Russian justice system.

But Sweden is not Russia. Assange may argue that since the charges are politically motivated, he will not receive a fair trial. But without solid proof of such serious allegations, he will not succeed. European Arrest Warrants are designed to make extradition between states simple and quick, and it will be difficult even in such a high-profile case to prevent this happening.

He may also invoke the right to freedom of expression. Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights provides that everyone has a right to freedom of expression, but a state can restrict that right, amongst other reasons, in the interests of national security and the prevention of crime. If Assange was facing extradition to the United States, which may follow soon, this argument would be at front and centre.

But as things stand, unless he can show that the sexual assault allegations are politically motivated, which seems unlikely, it is hard to see how freedom of expression will play much of a part. The Wikileaks site is still running despite his arrest, and freedom of expression rights can legitimately be breached to prevent crime.”

Julian Assange’s Arrest And The Broken Condom.

Julian Assange has been arrested on the grounds of rape.

But that might not be the full story, it makes a good headline and him a less sympathetic individual but that’s not the full story.

It seems that Mr. Assange whilst in Sweden months back had sex when a condom broke. It might be that later on he also had unprotected sex with another woman, all very consensual.

But apparently under Swedish law rape can be defined as “unprotected sex”.

This is despite the fact that the case was originally dropped by the prosecutor.

Back in Auguest 2010 according to Karin Rosander, communications head at Sweden’s prosecutors’ office:

“”The [chief prosecutor] will look into that later. She hasn’t been able to do that, but that’s not enough for being arrested. It’s not a serious enough crime.”

That was back in August 2010 before the release of the quarter million documents, which have embarrassed governments across the globe and made Mr. Assange some rather thin-skinned enemies.

In my view, it seems like a pretext to arrest him and eventually deport him to America, and if he lives then he’ll probably be fitted up under some spurious espionage charge.

We have already seen how American politicians openly called for his assassination, he won’t receive a fair trial in America and at the best is destined for years and years of incarceration, for his political crimes.

His crime? Humiliating politicians, potentates, dictators, mandarins and bureaucrats across the world.

His crime? Shining a light onto their incompetency and misrule.

He should be congratulated not punished.

Update 1: Naomi Wolf has her view on the matter too.

Update 2: I missed this before but it certainly has bearing on the case and I feel it should be shown:

“For three months Assange had been waiting in vain to hear whether media statements by and for the two female “victims” that there was no fear or violence were going to be embellished so the charges might be carried forward due to greater seriousness. Such statements would stop a rape charge in any Western country dead in its tracks. Rape is a crime of violence, duress or deception. You can rape someone by deluding them into thinking you are someone else or by drugging them or by reason of their young age but essentially it’s a crime of violence.

The women here are near to and over 30 and have international experience, some of it working in Swedish government embassies. There is no suggestion of drugs nor identity concealment. Far from it. Both women boasted of their celebrity connection to Assange after the events that they would now see him destroyed for.

That further evidence hasn’t been confected to make the charges less absurd does Sweden no credit because it has no choice in the matter. The phenomena of social networking through the internet and mobile phones constrains Swedish authorities from augmenting the evidence against Assange because it would look even less credible in the face of tweets by Anna Ardin and SMS texts by Sofia Wilén boasting of their respective conquests after the “crimes”.

In the case of Ardin it is clear that she has thrown a party in Assange’s honour at her flat after the “crime” and tweeted to her followers that she is with the “the world’s coolest smartest people, it’s amazing!”. Go on the internet and see for yourself. That Ardin has sought unsuccessfully to delete these exculpatory tweets from the public record should be a matter of grave concern. That she has published on the internet a guide on how to get revenge on cheating boyfriends ever graver. The exact content of Wilén’s mobile phone texts is not yet known but their bragging and exculpatory character has been confirmed by Swedish prosecutors. Niether Wilén’s nor Ardin’s texts complain of rape.

But then neither Arden nor Wilén complained to the police but rather “sought advice”, a technique in Sweden enabling citizens to avoid just punishment for making false complaints. They sought advice together, having collaborated and irrevocably tainted each other’s evidence beforehand. Their SMS texts to each other show a plan to contact the Swedish newspaper Expressen beforehand in order to maximise the damage to Assange. They belong to the same political group and attended a public lecture given by Assange and organised by them. You can see Wilén on the YouTube video of the event even now.”

Interpol’s Most Wanted.

If you take a look at Interpol’s website, amongst the most wanted you will find an entry for ASSANGE, Julian Paul.

That to me is strange.

Sexual assault, if that actually happened, is very serious, but to be put on Interpol’s most wanted list is another matter and it all strikes me as politically motivated.

Wikileaks made dozens, if not hundreds of politicians, look stupid.

It annoyed political rulers from America to Iran and most states in between. It confirmed our suspicions on how the world’s rulers act, capriciously, with stupidity, and much worse, and that is what is really behind Julian Assange’s arrest.

The worrying thing is, given the inflammatory statements from American politicians calling for his assassination, you could imagine that he might as the British police used to say “slip while walking into the cells”.

I wouldn’t put it past politicians to arrange his liquidation in the hopes of neutering Wikileaks.

On the other hand, apparently there is an encrypted file hanging around the web waiting to be released should that happen, a form of insurance policy. A smart move.

I imagine that once Julian Assange is in custody that the charges in Sweden will be dropped and other ones from the US instigated, with his deportation to America happening in short order.

I wonder if he’ll end up in a new Gitmo. Whatever happens it doesn’t bode well for him.