This case in Australia seems similar to me, but they got a conviction.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/29/wikileaks-embassy-cables-key-points

Puerility begone!

PS Are we really going to bomb Iran to protect women’s rights?

The law here is analogous to ‘widthdrawn consent,’ however easy it is to make it look stupid when translated into English. (Another translation has been “sex by surprise,” also absurd in English but at least indicative of the fact that there is, from the law’s standpoint, a real issue of consent.)

The political pressures clearly involved in the prosecution are a better target, IMO, than word games over the naming of foreign sex offenses.

Which is what I suspected, because I’d encountered the English phrase “surprise sex”, also a dismissive slang term for rape, years ago. Urban Dictionary has a cite as early as 2003.

I wouldn’t be surprised (sexually or otherwise) to find that “sex by surprise” is actually the English “surprise sex” translated into Swedish and then back into English. I’m also not surprised to learn that a lawyer speaking for one party in a legal case is not a neutral, objective source.

What a bitch.

I was very stupid for making that comment and I apologize.

That’s why we need journalist capacities like Wikileaks. The corporate owned media won’t/can’t do their jobs.

So do I donate to maintain a free press on this planet? Goddamn right I do. I pay a hell of a lot more to the other three branches of government, and I’m not very impressed the fact that they’re spending my money killing people, silencing people, and torturing people.

1. Figureheads are important. If they take him down, they scare other people who might think of doing the same thing. Also, once they are done with him, how long do you think the rest of the Wikileaks core team will last? They will all go down.

2. Despite, the FUD, Wikileaks has been very responsible about its information releases. They have worked with international media to redact documents, and to make sure that information is appropriately discussed. If Wikileaks has to just start throwing every leak they get straight on Bittorrent, then the information flow really might be dangerous for anyone named. Wholesale release is likely to be a mess, although it may be the only way to keep the net wide enough to allow free dissemination.

3. Wikileaks – due to the public face of Assange – is getting more leaks the more they leak. Leakers are scared (with reason). They want to go to a proven organization. They don’t want to just throw stuff at a sketchy group of anonymous hackers. Bringing down Wikileaks and Assange means that there will be fewer leaks. The USG knows this – that’s why they’re going after him.

4. Finally, just from a human standpoint: we should not let someone who stands up be taken down without a fight. It is up to all of us to do what we can to prevent it. If you speak up, or if you want to run a freenet node, wouldn’t you want people to stand up for you if the USG started attacking you?

I agree with your overall point – the internet is just starting to spool up in terms of what it can do. I disagree, though, with the characterization of Assange as an unimportant actor.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwGFalTRHDA

And why would they make up the number of cables? Who cares if they have 25,000 or 250,000, really? It’s the content that counts, and everyone but you and the Iranians seems to realize that the content is real – and the Iranians think Wikileaks is part of a plot by the US government, which makes no sense at all.

So please stop telling us to think critically when your critical thinking skills are taking you in the wrong direction.

Who should play Assange?

Jonathan: +1
Jack: +1

http://www.chris-floyd.com/articles/1-latest-news/2059-indecent-exposure-wikileaks-hounded-for-showing-power-its-true-face.html

..and the continuing Saga of Assange’s Swedish Affairs shall serve to keep that interest alive.

Gee the nets sure give a guy stuff to thinks about.

I don’t know what happened. Maybe it was rape, maybe it wasn’t. I’ll quote you again:

I’d rewrite that as “something everyone in one given culture understands (or should understand), but which is a frequent occasion for blunders for people outside that culture”.

Confident enough to rephrase Rob’s sentence indicates to me that you think you know what happened. Your claim was “cultural misapprehensions leading to bad sex encounters, notably when one party is confused about the signals the other party is sending.”

I don’t know how much you think Australian culture diverges from Swedish culture, but I would say not enough for a “no” to be interpreted as “yes”. I assume that a nod is “yes” and a shake of the head is “no” in both cultures, and as both spoke English, I am sure a “no” means “no” in both English with a Swedish and an Australian accent. “Cultural misapprehension” might have been plausible (but still far fetched) if the girls were from Bulgaria (where a nod is a “no” and a shake is a “yes”). Unless one believes that all blonde Swedish “vackra flickor” are “sluts” who actually mean “yes” when they say “no”, the signals can impossible be misunderstood. So if there can be no misunderstanding, a “bad sex encounter” creates a rapist and a victim.

Having said that, I still don’t know if rape occurred or not. The court will have to decide on that.

http://rixstep.com/1/20101001,01.shtml

For Swedish readers, here is the accuser’s ‘revenge’ post:

http://www.samtycke.nu/2010/09/hamnerskn-fran-gotland/

Arrested genovese Assange
As the Australian Italian Assange also want him in jail. The spy who stole confidential documents and electronic cable financiers, lawyers, professors, Iranians, social centers will end up in prison.
The trap of the secret services for quite a while will no longer bother. Unless you leave the computer (as Assange). Could intercede for him his friend Putin (including former secret agents, there is always a bit of solidarity).
From Il Secolo XIX newspaper of Genoa today:
Pesto’s Wikileaks, the Genoese Assange ends with arrests
Altana Peter, 45 years old, a former secret service employee, for newspapers and many blogs has become a sort of genoese Julian Assange. And the constant and widespread dissemination of confidential files on the business full-bodied of Genoa (maxi mergers of public companies, studies on the revolutions of the traffic, background information on the work of luminaries of science and especially malfeasance within the bank) keeps close to the figure of at least the suggestion Australian journalist, who made her blush with cable chancelleries over the world.
Doing the right proportions of fame and weight of the mutual scoop, there is another detail in common with a few hours, and is purely judicial. As the creator of Wikileaks, a few days ago, was jailed in London for a crime “disconnected” to the pandemonium of these days (the accusation of rape is to have two Swedish girls forced to have unprotected sex) as well the 007 that targets the Genoese came to a standstill, in this case “home”. Proved fatal to the conviction ‘final’ documents for stolen many years ago. At the same time, Altana, is one of the main suspects for the files that between October and November were circulated through the Indymedia site antagonist, confidential documents against the Carige bank, secret messages inside your local authorities or the scientific director of the Gaslini Hospital, Lorenzo Moretta.

http://www.ilsecoloxix.it/p/genova/2010/12/11/AMQLEDPE-wikileaks_assange_genovese.shtml

I have the tingly feeling that WW2.5 has just been declared.

You know, say what you will about Assange, but the guy’s got fucking balls. He’s not stupid. He knew what he was doing when he said he was going to release information on the banks, and on Russia. He knew what he was getting into with Cablegate.

Is he a narcissist? I have no idea. I do know that he’s putting his life on the line to bring out the truth. People who are able to do that are not always “normal”. If he were normal, he’d be sitting on his ass in front of the TV, working for The Man. How many revolutionaries were normal, nice gents? You think the guys who started the revolutionary war were a bunch of nice little cream puffs?

For chrissakes people. Of course the guy is not “normal” (not that I know anyone who is). “Normal” people don’t take on an entire US empire, the international banking cartel, and Russia in one week.

But the ACTIONS I have seen him take fit precisely with what he said he was going to do, and what he says he wants to do. And when I read what he says, it makes a lot of sense:

http://blogs.theaustralian.news.com.au/mediadiary/index.php

In fact, what Assange says makes way more sense to me than what Feinstein is saying, or the US Attorney General. *Those* people are narcissistic. Those people are attacking us. Put the credit where it is due.

The thing to remember is this: the powers that be will bring up ANYTHING possible to make Assange look bad. The fact that there’s not more ammunition suggests to me that he’s not that bad a person.

Gemma Lindfield, for the Swedish authorities, told the court Assange was wanted in connection with four allegations.

She said the first complainant, Miss A, said she was victim of “unlawful coercion” on the night of 14 August in Stockholm.

The court heard Assange is accused of using his body weight to hold her down in a sexual manner.

The second charge alleged Assange “sexually molested” Miss A by having sex with her without a condom when it was her “express wish” one should be used.

The third charge claimed Assange “deliberately molested” Miss A on 18 August “in a way designed to violate her sexual integrity”.

The fourth charge accused Assange of having sex with a second woman, Miss W, on 17 August without a condom while she was asleep at her Stockholm home.

Given these specifics, the earlier ‘sex by surprise’ and ‘broken condom’ stuff really is irrelevant now except as (rather convincing) evidence that the prosecutors are acting under political influence/crap at issuing arrest warrants/etc.