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The F word here seems to be Fatuous.<br>
<br>
The rape charge is bogus. Apparently each of the "ladies" involved <br>
were "raped" multiple times. It says something that this whole matter<br>
is not going down in derision, but indeed radical feminism seems to<br>
found something to spin on.<br>
<br>
I hadn't really considered anti-Castro feminists, and had no<br>
idea that they were organized. Seems more like Castrating Feminists to
me, but<br>
really I am no expert on the subject. <br>
<br>
Are anti-Castro feminists opposed to emasculation? or this just<br>
a matter of methodologic sectarianism among the Sisterhood similar<br>
to the amount of water to be used by good Baptists vs. those others?<br>
<br>
I could imagine "lets see 2 on the ground" castrating feminists vs
those favouring<br>
immunologic approaches v. a more theoretical symbolic approach...
assertion of<br>
power is ok... see that no one gets hurt.<br>
<br>
About this time a feebly aware Gilda Radner character says -- "Oh...
that's different".<br>
<br>
<br>
On 8/28/2012 7:10 AM, Alex Cline wrote:
<blockquote
cite="mid:CAH=o50ftqLPKHbGP-vMrsHydUKbafgZ1MUxG_e-Qp-car6wW5w@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">
<div><span
style="font-family: Palatino,Georgia,Baskerville,serif; font-size: 13px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">probably
should have put a tw on all this...</span></div>
<span
style="font-family: Palatino,Georgia,Baskerville,serif; font-size: 13px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
<div><span
style="font-family: Palatino,Georgia,Baskerville,serif; font-size: 13px;"><br>
</span></div>
If we’re talking about what’s probable, let’s apply a little Occam’s
razor. Two women have come forward to report that Assange
raped/assaulted them, and a bunch of statements from himself and his
lawyers make it clear to anybody who was listening that he doesn’t have
a very clear idea – legally or morally – of the definitions of “rape”
or “consent”. Either those women came forward because he did what they
say he did, or because he’s the victim of an international conspiracy
between the CIA and anti-Castro feminists to get him extradited to
America via Sweden in a ridiculously convoluted and unreliable way that
doesn’t actually have any basis in International or Swedish law. Which
do *you* think is more probable?</span>
<div><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"
face="Palatino, Georgia, Baskerville, serif"><br>
</font></div>
<div><font face="Palatino, Georgia, Baskerville, serif"><span
style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">None of this is to say
that the project he was instrumental in is not of great importance;
however, it is important to be able to view these issues seperately</span><br>
</font><br>
<div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Aug 27, 2012 at 6:01 PM, Alex Cline <span
dir="ltr"><<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:rev.a.r.cline@gmail.com" target="_blank">rev.a.r.cline@gmail.com</a>></span>
wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote"
style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"><a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.thefword.org.uk/blog/2012/08/we_are_not_julian"
target="_blank">http://www.thefword.org.uk/blog/2012/08/we_are_not_julian</a><br>
<br>
<div class="gmail_quote">
<div>
<div class="h5">On Mon, Aug 27, 2012 at 12:16 PM, David Johnson <span
dir="ltr"><<a moz-do-not-send="true" href="mailto:dlj725@hughes.net"
target="_blank">dlj725@hughes.net</a>></span> wrote:<br>
</div>
</div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote"
style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<div>
<div class="h5">
<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>
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