Michael Moore’s Dismissal of the Julian Assange Rape Claims

Now The Guardian say Sweden has nothing to do with opposing bail. It’s the British. Which suggests this is political.
I would never dismiss a sex crime allegation but it does seem that Mr Assange is being set up.
They’ve even frozen his defence fund.

Please read this: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/naomi-wolf/jaccuse-sweden-britain-an_b_795899.html

I think this noble quest for justice in the name of rape victims is getting just ludicrous. Like Naomi Wolf writes, “men are pretty much never treated the way Assange is being treated in the face of sex crime charges.”

“Keep Assange in prison without bail until he is questioned, by all means, if we are suddenly in a real feminist worldwide epiphany about the seriousness of the issue of sex crime: but Interpol, Britain and Sweden must, if they are not to be guilty of hateful manipulation of a serious women’s issue for cynical political purposes, imprison as well — at once — the hundreds of thousands of men in Britain, Sweden and around the world world who are accused in far less ambiguous terms of far graver forms of assault.”

Well, I’m no fan of Moore. And if what you say he said on the link regarding a “vicious attack” is true, he’s apparently since removed the statement from the page, as the word “vicious” is nowhere to be found.

That said, I would also say that Sady Doyle’s Tiger Beatdown to be misrepresentative of the facts and thereby inflammatory, when she accuses Assange of “running away,” or “fleeing the country.” It’s my understanding that the prosecutor initially dropped the case and Assange was free to go at that point. So just how long would one have to hang around after that, “in case” someone changed their mind? Would it matter if one believes they are innocent or not? Once travelling to another country, if the event has blossomed into a political football, should one NOT exercise their legal rights and resist extradition attempts? Should not one expect the evidence for the alleged crime be presented along with the extradition request? Would it matter if it was some other type of crime, or is the fact that it may boil down to a “he said, she said” thing mean that one side or another should get special consideration in the matter? If so, why?

That aside, concerns about Assange going to Sweden being an extra risk of US extradition I think are unfounded. It’s clear to me that all the US wants right now, is that someone has close tabs on him, they don’t much care who– while they try and figure out what they might charge him with. It actually may be preferrable for him to be in the UK when it boils down to it. In any case though, the US won’t be able to gain extradition without the promise not to apply the death penalty, and no matter what they were to do with Assange, it likely would backfire.

Also, no matter what they do with Assange, it won’t stop leaks getting distributed, and in fact, won’t even stop Wikileaks. I’m not terribly concerned with Assange, it’s Bradley Manning that I’m concerned about, since he’s the one who took the real risks. Fortunately, it’s a big enough story that if they were to execute him for treason it would no doubt be an even bigger PR nightmare. But that doesn’t mean they won’t do it anyhow.

It would seem, that many of these anti-Wikileaks individuals seem to think that they can completely trust their government and their military to do the “right thing,” that they don’t need additional oversight, and apparently, by extension, that leaks of the past of events such as Mai Lai, the Pentagon Papers, Abu Ghraib, etc., all should have remained uncovered. That attitude is far more scary than any of these events, as such events are to be expected when power is involved, it’s the independent US government apologists, the conservative voters, who enable these sorts of behaviors by claiming they don’t need to know about them…