From Dec 2010:
“I'm kind of tired of that same old trick,” the lady raged, “to bringing (sic) the woman's character and background into question in a matter such as this.”
The matter at hand was the sexual “molestation” accusation against Julian Assange of WikiLeaks, which happens to be the reason due to which the man had to spend time in jail and is only now out on bail. The lady I’ve quoted above, a self-styled left-winger from Calcutta now working in Bombay, had protested vigorously on her Fakebook page, not against Assange’s persecution, but against anyone saying his accusers were less than innocent victims.
“Not relevant in the least,” she huffed. “Simply because she might have CIA links doesn't "automatically" mean that he didn't play dirty with her. It's the argument which morons take to say that prostitutes cannot be raped because sex is their business. That's fucking stupid."
Her tirade was against my saying that the so-called victims were so clearly perpetrators of a set-up that I couldn’t understand how any thinking person could believe otherwise. Having unburdened herself, she then deleted and blocked me from her page, so that I couldn’t reply.
Kind of childish and immature of her, methinks.
But let us leave Ms Sucheta Chatterjee to her puerile echo chamber and move on to the broader question of the accusations against Assange. I believe that people on both sides of the line, whether pro- or anti-Assange, who know anything of the matter, have more or less concluded that these accusations aren’t worth the web space they occupy.
Let’s just go over the situation again, briefly:
We have a man who certain sections in the US establishment have designated as Public Enemy No 1 for putting online leaked US diplomatic cables. For the purpose of this article it isn’t significant just why he’s doing it, or the actual import of the cables. The only significant fact is that he isn’t exactly the favourite of the American establishment, and certain individuals in the US government have been calling for him to be assassinated, no less.
Right.
Now, this man was invited to Sweden by a faction of the Social Democratic Party, the press secretary of which was one Anna Ardin, who proposed that since she’d be away with her family, he could stay at her flat for the duration. For some unannounced reason, she returned early from her “trip”, and according to her own account she had consensual sex with the man in question. They used a condom, but it tore. Neither of them denies that the man used a condom, or that it tore. However, Ardin claims that the man ripped the condom deliberately, and also lay on top of her, immobilising her with the weight of his body. Um, guys, I suggest you rethink the missionary position, next time.
Well, now, let’s give Ms Ardin the benefit of the doubt and say she’d found the experience humiliating and distressing. If we do, though, we find that she seemed remarkably non-humiliated and undistressed the next day; far from evicting the man, or going to the cops, she threw a party for him at her home. During this party, she tweeted her friends, she was “...Sitting outside … nearly freezing, with the world’s coolest people. It’s pretty amazing!”
Distressed and humiliated? Somehow, I think not.
Things get even murkier when we note that this woman, Anna Ardin, was also the author of an article called “Seven Steps To Legal Revenge,” basically a tutorial on how to make a former partner’s life miserable; and that she was also expelled from Cuba due to ties with groups funded by the CIA. You know, the same CIA which was gunning for the man in question?
“Not relevant in the least?” Really?
That day, too, the man I’m discussing had spoken at a symposium hosted by the same Social Democratic Party, during which one of the attendants was a woman who was self-confessedly obsessed with him. Her name was Sophia Wilen, and she invited herself to his inner circle after the talk. They arranged to meet in Stockholm, where she invited him to her home in Enkoping; in fact she paid for his ticket. Once there, they had sex, twice; the first time with and the next morning without a condom. Ms Wilen didn’t seem to find the experience distressful either; they went to breakfast together cordially, and afterwards he returned to Stockholm.
Now this is the point where things get a bit odder than they were. For no apparent reason, Wilen called Ardin, and they got to talking of having bedded this man. OK, coincidences happen, but it seems kind of strange as random happenstance. And suddenly, Wilen discovered that she was terrified by the idea that the unprotected sex would have given her AIDS.
What happened next? As Justin Raimondo of antiwar.com says,
It was the weekend, and the regular prosecutor was off duty: a substitute prosecutor listened to their story and decided, on her own authority, to go after Assange...This indictment was later rescinded, however, by the regular prosecutor, due to the fact that, as the office put it, there was “no evidence” a crime had been committed.
And then, with the set-up beginning to fall apart, Ardin leaked the story to a major Swedish tabloid.
Here's the timeline of the accusations, with thanks to this site:
August 13: Assange has sex with Ardin, who hosts him in Stockholm during his Sweden tour.
August 14: Wilen attends a meeting addressed by Assange, makes contact with him, gets herself invited to a party that evening.
August 16: Assange is invited by Wilen to her home in Enkoping, and has sex with her twice; once with a condom, the second time without.
August 18: Wilen gets in touch with Ardin and they share notes, after which they decide they've been raped.
August 20: They file charges, which are immediately leaked to the press.
August 21: Eva Finne, chief prosecutor for Stockholm, rejects the rape charges. The same day Ardin says in a newspaper interview that Assange was not violent and she didn't feel threatened by him.
August 23: Claes Borgstrom, a lawyer - politician, inserts himself into the case.
August 30: Borgstrom approaches a prosecuter in Gothenburg, Marianne Ny, who agrees to resurrect the charges against Assange.
August 31: Assange gives a deposition before the prosecutor, and applies for a Swedish work and residency permit.
After Assange leaves the country, the prosecutor decides his deposition wasn't enough; so an Interpol notice, an international manhunt, and an incarceration in London follow.
“Innocent victims?” Surely the lady doth protest too much.
Actually, I don’t want to talk only of this particular frame-up, whose hollowness is self-evident. What I’d like to discuss is the wider phenomenon of self-styled feminists jumping to the defence of every woman who claims sexual molestation at the hands of a man, simply because he’s a man and she’s a woman.
First: I am a man, and I admit that rapes happen, every day, and that it’s a crime. I also acknowledge that millions of women are seriously hurt and/or traumatised by rape all over the world, every year.
Second: I do not agree that all men are the same, or that we are all potential enemies of women, or that we are all potential rapists, any more than all women are potential hookers.
Then, these ladies who defend even the most absurd accusations made by the most transparently fraudulent accusers are
1. Risking ending up with egg on their faces when the charges fall apart, unless, of course, they blame the failure of the charges on the male establishment.
2. Betraying all the women who have been genuinely raped and traumatised. Their tormentors can now pass them off as another set of sensation-seeking bloodsuckers and scam artists, and find a receptive audience.
These two poisonous little vipers framed Assange. I don’t know if they did it at the behest of the CIA, or because of some twisted reasoning of their own sick minds. But a frame-up it clearly was.
And is it wrong of me to think that their defenders either have ulterior motives or aren’t exactly firing on all mental cylinders?
I don’t think so.
“I'm kind of tired of that same old trick,” the lady raged, “to bringing (sic) the woman's character and background into question in a matter such as this.”
The matter at hand was the sexual “molestation” accusation against Julian Assange of WikiLeaks, which happens to be the reason due to which the man had to spend time in jail and is only now out on bail. The lady I’ve quoted above, a self-styled left-winger from Calcutta now working in Bombay, had protested vigorously on her Fakebook page, not against Assange’s persecution, but against anyone saying his accusers were less than innocent victims.
“Not relevant in the least,” she huffed. “Simply because she might have CIA links doesn't "automatically" mean that he didn't play dirty with her. It's the argument which morons take to say that prostitutes cannot be raped because sex is their business. That's fucking stupid."
Her tirade was against my saying that the so-called victims were so clearly perpetrators of a set-up that I couldn’t understand how any thinking person could believe otherwise. Having unburdened herself, she then deleted and blocked me from her page, so that I couldn’t reply.
Kind of childish and immature of her, methinks.
But let us leave Ms Sucheta Chatterjee to her puerile echo chamber and move on to the broader question of the accusations against Assange. I believe that people on both sides of the line, whether pro- or anti-Assange, who know anything of the matter, have more or less concluded that these accusations aren’t worth the web space they occupy.
Let’s just go over the situation again, briefly:
We have a man who certain sections in the US establishment have designated as Public Enemy No 1 for putting online leaked US diplomatic cables. For the purpose of this article it isn’t significant just why he’s doing it, or the actual import of the cables. The only significant fact is that he isn’t exactly the favourite of the American establishment, and certain individuals in the US government have been calling for him to be assassinated, no less.
Right.
Now, this man was invited to Sweden by a faction of the Social Democratic Party, the press secretary of which was one Anna Ardin, who proposed that since she’d be away with her family, he could stay at her flat for the duration. For some unannounced reason, she returned early from her “trip”, and according to her own account she had consensual sex with the man in question. They used a condom, but it tore. Neither of them denies that the man used a condom, or that it tore. However, Ardin claims that the man ripped the condom deliberately, and also lay on top of her, immobilising her with the weight of his body. Um, guys, I suggest you rethink the missionary position, next time.
Well, now, let’s give Ms Ardin the benefit of the doubt and say she’d found the experience humiliating and distressing. If we do, though, we find that she seemed remarkably non-humiliated and undistressed the next day; far from evicting the man, or going to the cops, she threw a party for him at her home. During this party, she tweeted her friends, she was “...Sitting outside … nearly freezing, with the world’s coolest people. It’s pretty amazing!”
Distressed and humiliated? Somehow, I think not.
Things get even murkier when we note that this woman, Anna Ardin, was also the author of an article called “Seven Steps To Legal Revenge,” basically a tutorial on how to make a former partner’s life miserable; and that she was also expelled from Cuba due to ties with groups funded by the CIA. You know, the same CIA which was gunning for the man in question?
“Not relevant in the least?” Really?
That day, too, the man I’m discussing had spoken at a symposium hosted by the same Social Democratic Party, during which one of the attendants was a woman who was self-confessedly obsessed with him. Her name was Sophia Wilen, and she invited herself to his inner circle after the talk. They arranged to meet in Stockholm, where she invited him to her home in Enkoping; in fact she paid for his ticket. Once there, they had sex, twice; the first time with and the next morning without a condom. Ms Wilen didn’t seem to find the experience distressful either; they went to breakfast together cordially, and afterwards he returned to Stockholm.
Now this is the point where things get a bit odder than they were. For no apparent reason, Wilen called Ardin, and they got to talking of having bedded this man. OK, coincidences happen, but it seems kind of strange as random happenstance. And suddenly, Wilen discovered that she was terrified by the idea that the unprotected sex would have given her AIDS.
What happened next? As Justin Raimondo of antiwar.com says,
It was the weekend, and the regular prosecutor was off duty: a substitute prosecutor listened to their story and decided, on her own authority, to go after Assange...This indictment was later rescinded, however, by the regular prosecutor, due to the fact that, as the office put it, there was “no evidence” a crime had been committed.
And then, with the set-up beginning to fall apart, Ardin leaked the story to a major Swedish tabloid.
Here's the timeline of the accusations, with thanks to this site:
August 13: Assange has sex with Ardin, who hosts him in Stockholm during his Sweden tour.
August 14: Wilen attends a meeting addressed by Assange, makes contact with him, gets herself invited to a party that evening.
August 16: Assange is invited by Wilen to her home in Enkoping, and has sex with her twice; once with a condom, the second time without.
August 18: Wilen gets in touch with Ardin and they share notes, after which they decide they've been raped.
August 20: They file charges, which are immediately leaked to the press.
August 21: Eva Finne, chief prosecutor for Stockholm, rejects the rape charges. The same day Ardin says in a newspaper interview that Assange was not violent and she didn't feel threatened by him.
August 23: Claes Borgstrom, a lawyer - politician, inserts himself into the case.
August 30: Borgstrom approaches a prosecuter in Gothenburg, Marianne Ny, who agrees to resurrect the charges against Assange.
August 31: Assange gives a deposition before the prosecutor, and applies for a Swedish work and residency permit.
After Assange leaves the country, the prosecutor decides his deposition wasn't enough; so an Interpol notice, an international manhunt, and an incarceration in London follow.
“Innocent victims?” Surely the lady doth protest too much.
Actually, I don’t want to talk only of this particular frame-up, whose hollowness is self-evident. What I’d like to discuss is the wider phenomenon of self-styled feminists jumping to the defence of every woman who claims sexual molestation at the hands of a man, simply because he’s a man and she’s a woman.
First: I am a man, and I admit that rapes happen, every day, and that it’s a crime. I also acknowledge that millions of women are seriously hurt and/or traumatised by rape all over the world, every year.
Second: I do not agree that all men are the same, or that we are all potential enemies of women, or that we are all potential rapists, any more than all women are potential hookers.
Then, these ladies who defend even the most absurd accusations made by the most transparently fraudulent accusers are
1. Risking ending up with egg on their faces when the charges fall apart, unless, of course, they blame the failure of the charges on the male establishment.
2. Betraying all the women who have been genuinely raped and traumatised. Their tormentors can now pass them off as another set of sensation-seeking bloodsuckers and scam artists, and find a receptive audience.
These two poisonous little vipers framed Assange. I don’t know if they did it at the behest of the CIA, or because of some twisted reasoning of their own sick minds. But a frame-up it clearly was.
And is it wrong of me to think that their defenders either have ulterior motives or aren’t exactly firing on all mental cylinders?
I don’t think so.
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