<a href="http://www.thefword.org.uk/blog/2012/08/we_are_not_julian">http://www.thefword.org.uk/blog/2012/08/we_are_not_julian</a><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Aug 27, 2012 at 12:16 PM, David Johnson <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:dlj725@hughes.net" target="_blank">dlj725@hughes.net</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><u></u>
<div bgcolor="#ffffff">
<div><font face="Arial"><font size="4"><strong>Good article critical of two
of the so called </strong></font></font></div>
<div><font face="Arial"><font size="4"><strong>" Socialist " parties in Britian, who
are in fact </strong></font></font></div>
<div><font face="Arial"><font size="4"><strong>" Neo-Liberal ", from a REAL
Socialist list-serve in Britian.</strong></font></font></div>
<div><font face="Arial"><font size="4"><strong></strong></font></font> </div>
<div><font face="Arial"><font size="4"><strong>Britain’s Socialist Workers Party and
Socialist Party back extradition of Assange</strong></font></font></div>
<h5><font size="4">By Chris Marsden <br>27 August 2012</font></h5>
<p><font size="4"><strong>Britain’s largest pseudo-left groups have lined up
behind the demand that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange be extradited to
Sweden.</strong></font></p>
<p><font size="4"><strong>Both the Socialist Workers Party and the Socialist Party
echo the propaganda of the liberal media that Assange must face rape charges and
that the allegations of sexual assault have nothing to do with the efforts of
the United States, Britain, Sweden and other governments to silence him and
destroy WikiLeaks.</strong></font></p>
<p><font size="4"><strong>The SWP’s Tom Walker writes, “Julian Assange must face
rape charges, not US revenge.” He notes the fate of Bradley Manning, “the US
soldier accused of leaking state secrets who has so far spent more than 800 days
behind bars without trial in military prison.” He points out that Manning has
been chained hand and foot and mostly held “in solitary confinement for 23 to 24
hours a day and denied clothes and blankets at night.”</strong></font></p>
<p><font size="4"><strong>But he does so only to then claim that the “case of
Assange…is far more problematic” because his extradition to Sweden, thwarted by
his being granted asylum by Ecuador, is “for arrest and questioning over
accusations by two women of rape and sexual assault.”</strong></font></p>
<p><font size="4"><strong>“Assange and some of his supporters have refused to take
the rape allegations seriously,” he complains, before admitting, “We know that
Assange faces a secret ‘sealed indictment’ in the US, and a grand jury has been
convened against Wikileaks.”</strong></font></p>
<p><font size="4"><strong>To square the circle, he urges the Swedish authorities
to guarantee that Assange will not be extradited to the US, which would “clear
the way for him to face his accusers.”</strong></font></p>
<p><font size="4"><strong>Walker is, of course, well aware that Sweden has refused
to give such an undertaking and that it would be meaningless even if it did
so.</strong></font></p>
<p><font size="4"><strong>The Socialist Party reproduces an edited article by one
of its Australian co-thinkers bearing the telling headline, “No Extradition to
the USA.” The article tacitly supports Assange’s extradition to Sweden, arguing
that “in a society where crimes against women are often ignored and trivialised,
such allegations cannot be dismissed and should be properly
investigated...”</strong></font></p>
<p><font size="4"><strong>“It is important for socialists to reject any idea that
some rape does not need to be taken seriously,” the SP insists, going so far as
to compare Assange’s supporters with the US Republican senatorial candidate Todd
Akin, who created a stir last week with his reactionary and ignorant remark
about “legitimate rape.”</strong></font></p>
<p><font size="4"><strong>The SWP and SP had maintained a deafening silence on the
attempt to railroad Assange. The SWP last published a five-sentence item on
Assange on March 5, 2011, and the SP last wrote on the issue on December 15,
2010!</strong></font></p>
<p><font size="4"><strong>The reason for their reticence is now clear. Both have
long been in agreement with the extraordinary campaign by the right-wing as well
as the nominally liberal press to tar Assange as a sexual criminal, but were
reluctant to say so publicly. Now the time to procrastinate is over. To do so
would risk alienating the upper layers of the petty-bourgeoisie to which they
are oriented—those who have long promoted the politics of gender and race in
opposition to class-based socialism—and who are now being whipped up against
Assange.</strong></font></p>
<p><font size="4"><strong>The media’s howls of outrage over Assange’s alleged
conduct in bed, the high-sounding posturing as defenders of women and the
invocations of natural justice are so much hot air. The sole aim of the press
pack is to muddy the political waters, conceal the real issues at stake, and
intimidate those opposed to extradition by casting them as misogynists or even
“defenders of rape.”</strong></font></p>
<p><font size="4"><strong>There is nothing to distinguish the SWP and SP’s stand
from that of various faux liberal commentators such as Owen Jones, who wrote in
the <em>Independent</em> that people such as Assange who “do otherwise
commendable work” if “presented with rape allegations” must “face them like
anybody else… Let’s be clear, rape is rape.”</strong></font></p>
<p><font size="4"><strong>What unites all of these media commentators, the ex-left
included, is an insistence that the <em>allegations</em> (no charges have been
laid) against Assange are grave and must be taken seriously. By “seriously” they
mean entirely uncritically and, above all, without reference to the context in
which they were made. To do otherwise, they insist, is to somehow question not
only his two accusers, but to endorse the exploitation of womankind by predatory
males everywhere.</strong></font></p>
<p><font size="4"><strong>This endlessly repeated injunction must be rejected. It
is only in the deeply disoriented circles to which the <em>Guardian</em>,
<em>Independent</em>, et al. cater, of which the SWP and SP are an essential
component, that the presumption of innocence can be replaced by an insistence
that all women tell the truth and all men are liars and sexual
predators.</strong></font></p>
<p><font size="4"><strong>The reason why there are still no charges placed against
Assange is that the claims made by his accusers are not credible. His relations
with the two women were consensual. Indeed, both of the women had repeated
sexual encounters with Assange over an extended period, including after the
alleged incidents that led to their complaints.</strong></font></p>
<p><font size="4"><strong>The European arrest warrant against Assange alleges
“unlawful coercion” when he purportedly held plaintiff one down with his body
weight and sexually molested her by allegedly failing to use a condom. The same
accusation of not using a condom is made for plaintiff two, along with a claim
that she was asleep when sex was initiated by Assange. The final claim is that
he “deliberately molested” plaintiff one by pressing his erect penis against her
body.</strong></font></p>
<p><font size="4"><strong>The police statements made by the women make no
reference to a stated lack of consent or threat of force and refer to a split
condom, rather than a failure to use one. The testimony regarding Miss W
(plaintiff two) being asleep is contradicted by her own tweets—referring as they
do to being only “half-asleep.” Plaintiff one had thrown a party for Assange
after the alleged incident of sexual assault against her and invited Assange to
stay in her room afterwards.</strong></font></p>
<p><font size="4"><strong>The women had initially gone to the police after
conferring with one another, but then only to insist that Assange take an HIV
test, which, in an extraordinary breach of standard procedure, the police did.
The women did not allege rape.</strong></font></p>
<p><font size="4"><strong>That is why the initial investigation of August 20, 2010
was dropped and an arrest warrant against Assange cancelled the next day by one
of Stockholm’s chief prosecutors, Eva Finne, who said in a statement to the
press: “I don’t think there is reason to suspect that he has committed
rape.”</strong></font></p>
<p><font size="4"><strong>The reissue of the warrant took place only after the
intervention of Swedish Chief Prosecutor Marianne Ny on September 1,
2010.</strong></font></p>
<p><font size="4"><strong>Under normal circumstances, such flimsy and
unsubstantiated allegations would not be considered the basis for criminal
charges, especially after the two women were allowed to confer and give evidence
together by the police. But these are not normal
circumstances.</strong></font></p>
<p><font size="4"><strong>Whatever weasel words are employed by his accusers, the
levelling of sex allegations against Assange was clearly politically motivated.
It was done only after consultation between the police, public prosecutors and
the Swedish government.</strong></font></p>
<p><font size="4"><strong>Equally, the determination of the Conservative-Liberal
Democrat government in the UK to deport Assange, even if this means breaking
diplomatic relations with Ecuador, can have nothing other than political
motives. This is, after all, a country that worked might and main to ensure that
the fascist mass murderer Augusto Pinochet was not extradited to
Spain.</strong></font></p>
<p><font size="4"><strong>Those journalistic hacks who deny the involvement of
Washington in these events know they are lying. They do so because of a shared
desire to see Assange silenced. Those such as the SWP and SP who insist that the
threat of his being shipped off to the US should not impede a supposed struggle
against gender-based violence are more shame-faced, but contribute to the same
outcome.</strong></font></p></div>
<br>_______________________________________________<br>
OccupyCU mailing list<br>
<a href="mailto:OccupyCU@lists.chambana.net">OccupyCU@lists.chambana.net</a><br>
<a href="http://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/occupycu" target="_blank">http://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/occupycu</a><br>
<br></blockquote></div><br>