[Peace-discuss] [OccupyCU] Assange article critical of the psuedo Left who favor extradition

[Alex Cline]

http://www.thefword.org.uk/blog/2012/08/we_are_not_julian

On Mon, Aug 27, 2012 at 12:16 PM, David Johnson <dlj725 at hughes.net> wrote:

> **
> *Good article critical of two of the so called *
> *" Socialist " parties in Britian, who are in fact *
> *" Neo-Liberal ", from a REAL Socialist list-serve in Britian.*
> **
> *Britain’s Socialist Workers Party and Socialist Party back extradition
> of Assange*
> By Chris Marsden
> 27 August 2012
>
> *Britain’s largest pseudo-left groups have lined up behind the demand
> that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange be extradited to Sweden.*
>
> *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.*
>
> *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.”*
>
> *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.”*
>
> *“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.”*
>
> *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.”*
>
> *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.*
>
> *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...”*
>
> *“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.”*
>
> *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!*
>
> *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.*
>
> *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.”*
>
> *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
> Independent 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.”*
>
> *What unites all of these media commentators, the ex-left included, is an
> insistence that the allegations (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.*
>
> *This endlessly repeated injunction must be rejected. It is only in the
> deeply disoriented circles to which the Guardian, Independent, 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.*
>
> *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.*
>
> *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.*
>
> *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.*
>
> *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.*
>
> *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.”*
>
> *The reissue of the warrant took place only after the intervention of
> Swedish Chief Prosecutor Marianne Ny on September 1, 2010.*
>
> *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.*
>
> *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.*
>
> *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.
> *
>
> *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.*
>
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