All I’m saying is that, as long as we are going to the effort of patting these bloggers on the back for being such fine, upstanding citizens, maybe we should reflect a bit on what good citizenship would really mean, in this case.

Knowing that the Swedish government, or elements of it, co-operated with the US’ extraordinary rendition flights, it seems unreasonable to assume that the US isn’t using those connections in order to influence them.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/8187575/Julian-Assange-WikiLeaks-chief-held-in-British-prison-on-rape-charge.html

You would have to ask: Why such a big deal over this when Roman Polansky had an interpol order for rape of a minor. Dick Cheney has one against him. Is that likely to be honored?

It seems clear that someone wants to get him back to Sweden.

I guess I feel misanthropic today. Probably a bad article to start the morning with.

Sure, there’s a chance this accusation is genuine… but it kinda pales in comparison to the likelihood that it’s a handy bit of character assassination and an excuse to lock the guy up.

Respect for women just doesn’t come into it, from my perspective… actors like governments can produce folks who’ll say whatever they like; male, female, whatever.

Hey, maybe an altruistic guy like Assange somehow lacks enough integrity to rape someone (well he does look kinda creepy, huh?)… or maybe it’s just another case of same sort of trumped-up crap that conveniently got guys like Anwar Ibrahim out of the way, and – crucially – discourages others to follow suit.

http://www.crikey.com.au/2010/12/02/when-it-comes-to-assange-r-pe-case-the-swedes-are-making-it-up-as-they-go-along/

Of course, their celebrity lawyer Claes Borgström was questioned as to how the women themselves could be essentially contradicting the legal characterisation of Swedish prosecutors; a crime of non-consent by consent. Borgström’s answer is emblematic of how divorced from reality this matter is. “They (the women) are not jurists”. You need a law degree to know whether you have been raped or not in Sweden. In the context of such double think, the question of how the Swedish authorities propose to deal with victims who neither saw themselves as such nor acted as such is easily answered: You’re not a Swedish lawyer so you wouldn’t understand anyway. The consent of both women to sex with Assange has been confirmed by prosecutors.

I am, however, surprised an Interpol “most wanted” warrant was issued over this matter.

This may paint Canada with a bad brush, but here we can barely get warrants for arrest over provincial lines.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columbia/story/2008/01/16/bc-warrants.html

Basically, there’s an “warrant radius”, so even if you’re accused of physical assault, if the warrant is issued with a radius, you just go outside that radius.

I guess I’m surprised that Sweden can do this instead of just waiting for him to cross their border again.

as an australian i’m disgusted at the readiness of my government to throw assange to the wolves (how high? how far?), and abandon ancient concepts such as the presumption of innocence and the right to trial (Gillard declared Assange ‘guilty of illegality’ wtf?).

he’s unfortunately screwed imho if he ever returns to oz (where the government has directe federal police to search high and low for *any* law Assange may have broken!), and will be unable to obtain a fair trial in neither the US nor Australia.

“No one ever loses the right to withdraw consent at any point and sex without consent, even if it was consensual an instant before, is full on rape.”

Thanks, Maggie, for having the courage to address the increasing sexist backlash towards rape victims. I sincerely appreciate your thoughtful post and the progressive comments (quoted above) here on Boing Boing. I also sincerely wish I did NOT relate to having been totally demonized as “a crazy bitch” when I briefly needed some rape therapy in the past over my ex’s date-rape of me. Too much info. Sorry. This post makes me sad on many levels. However, indeed, as one commentator noted: “People are complicated.”

I still whole-heartedly support WikiLeaks and their important mission to fight censorship of the press in general, and to bravely provide more accurate and detailed coverage of the U.S.’s fuKKKed up war(s) in the Middle East.

Best wishes,
a former rape victim a.k.a.: “the crazy psycho/bitch/cunt/whore/slut/retard/etc.”

Assange was originally released after questioning and allowed to leave Sweden under condition that he kept in contact with the Swedish legal system and would return to Sweden on notice. He broke those conditions. That is why there was an international arrest order. In Sweden we don’t have a bail system and we don’t put people behind bars in wait of a trial (unless it has been proven to be necessary). Usually suspects are even allowed to leave the country (unless they have proven that they are not to be trusted). What Sweden has is very good diplomatic connections and a reputation of being trustworthy and fair. (Partly because Sweden have harbored more refugees then any other country since the 1950′s (there are government members in all young nations, that have their only happy childhood memories from Sweden) and has spent 5-10% of its GPD annually since the 1960′s to help other parts of the world in need. It pays of being the “good guys” in the long run, the US government should try it.) When Sweden put out an international request for someone, the request is usually honoured, whatever part of the world the person is hiding in, even in countries that don’t normally cooperate Interpol.

The women/girls accusing Assange are Christian Social Democrats. Social Democrats is one of the largest and most influential political groups within EU. The British Labour Party is perhaps most well known Social Democratic party for people living in USA. They believe in reformist (that is, working within the democratic system) Socialism and is positioned in the centre of the political scale within EU (but would probably be considered as very left in USA).

The girls is striving to make a carrier out of their political and religious beliefs. They have just started climbing the party ladder. They have (or had) their future power-base within “broderskapsrörelsen” [the Christian brotherhood movement], a sub-group within the Swedish Social Democratic Party. They have nothing to gain by accusing Assange, on the contrary, they could lose their good reputation and base of support.

It is very unlikely that they are helping CIA. There is actually some old ties between the Social Democrats in Sweden and CIA, but it is probably hard to find any mature political group within Europe that have not have any ties with CIA during some part of its history (CIA is like a political STD in Europe). The main political opponents in Sweden to the Social Democrats during the McCarthyism period was political groups slightly to the left of the Social Democrats, small, but highly positioned, sub-groups within the Social Democrats helped CIA to spy on those “Communists threats”. The Social Democratic Prime Minsiter Olof Palme also helped CIA to arrest US deserters seeking refugee in Sweden during the Vietnam war (Swedish secret police, on his command, reported to CIA when any of those deserters leaved Sweden and could be arrested (any arrests on Swedish ground would have been a political disaster for Olof Palme)).

My point is that is a legitimate distinction between the first two things and the last. Debating the existence of the crime in a respectful way is not taking a stance against rape victims.

Oh, and there are plenty of male rape victims too; to imply that only women are raped, or that only women are discriminated against in rape cases, is sexist as well. No matter what, it’s difficult territory. Have compassion for people who are trying to be considerate.

These charges are extremely polarizing, bringing the media and the populace up against its morals. Which pits us against each other on moral grounds and muddles the issue. And all of a sudden we are not talking about what is really going on (something complicated and disturbing that is hard to wrap your mind around) and we start talking about something that the media and the populace are all too familiar with; sex scandals.

It is too bad that humans are all flawed and that we all have our problems because someone will always be able to pull something like this on us.

I know that this is a big moral issue, but this is not what we should be talking about! We should be talking about the damn leaks!

Hear hear. Setting aside the pro-feminist content (which I agree with), I am honestly delighted to see someone in the blogosphere saying “We don’t know enough yet; let’s hold off on forming an opinion until more facts emerge.” That’s so much rarer than forming a gut response based on incomplete information and drawing lines in the sand around it. A lot of bloggers could take some lessons in reportage from Kate Harding.