The Common Ills: Julian Assange's attorneys appeal

Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Julian Assange's attorneys appeal

Today a ruling's come down from England's Supreme Court. On the issue of whether or not Julian Assange can be extradited to Sweden to face charges of rape and assault, the Court has found that he should be extradited. That was the ruling. However, this does not mean he's being deported despite the 'reports' of some outlets (such as here). What happens next is most likely a series of appeals. His attorneys have two weeks to appeal the current judgment. (And, in fact, just have. Joshua Rozenberg reports on it for the Guardian. It's a shame some outlet's headline news didn't wait for the facts before proclaiming Assange was being extradited.)

Julian Assange made himself the face of WikiLeaks and remained so even after his current legal issues emerged and others with the organization asked him to step aside so that his legal issues would not distract from the work WikiLeaks did and was doing.

Assange -- lampooned on The Simpsons this year -- refused to do so and WikiLeaks has, as many feared, become a footnote. Assange had lousy legal representation originally. As we pointed out, the defense filings were not just sloppy, they weren't legally sound. In addition, his attorneys encouraged trash like Naomi Wolf to attack two women who may have been raped. Wolf's 'reporting' is notorious for its errors that, as many have pointed out, she has refused to correct all this time later. She shocked many be the brute force of her attack on two women who may have been raped by Assange.

People shouldn't have been shocked. This is the woman who slept over at the frat the night of a gang-rape and not uttered a peep to object to 'jokes' about the rape victim. And she never did anything to help the woman who was gang-raped. For those who are late to the party, dropping back to January 2009's "Naomi Wolf: The Feminist Myth (Ava and C.I.):"

'Feminist' Naomi was oh so very happy to garner attention and sympathy at the start of this decade as she accused the historian of having made a pass. The horror. How ever did Big Hair survive?

Strangely -- or maybe not so -- while painting herself as the ultimate victim, she never felt the need to talk about her days of gang rape.

Here's how Naomi writes it in her tawdry book Promiscuities (page 178):

When the woman came to, she fled. The joke, as I recall (and my memory of this episode fades in and out of focus), was that she had escaped so fast that her shoes remained. Someone had put her red high-heeled pumps on the wood mantel of the fireplace, next to the collection of beer cans from around the world.
The guys and I were friends. Over breakfast, they did not hide the story from me or from the other girlfriends who stayed the night.

You can read on in vain for the moment where Naomi Wolf turns her prince charmings into the police, where she alerts the authorities or, for that matter, where she shows a damn bit of sympathy for the victim.

The incident took place in 1979 and, no surprise with Big Hair, the incident's all about Naomi. To have spoken out (then) would have been to be called a, as she so scholarly puts it, "lesbo."

Naomi Wolf was only one of many -- usually men -- attacking the women. A change of attorneys meant that the 'lovelies' were encouraged to shut the hell up before they did more damage to Assange's case in the court of public opinion. It's rather telling of the state of the left that it took massive fall out for the 'leaders' to grasp that attacking two women who may have been raped wasn't good public relations. It's rather telling and it goes to the hatred and hostility of women still at the core of too many groupings -- including on the left.

We remember that today because the knee-jerk response for some will be to yet again attack those two women. If people go to that well again, they're harming themselves and Assange. Attacking the women backfired last time, made people look insane, and will backfire again.

We've covered WikiLeaks and never said, "Assange raped those women!" We've stated that its a matter for the court to decide.

And if others had done the same, we wouldn't be reviewing this again today. When Julian Assange's (bad) book came out, we ignored it and didn't comment. My thinking was that the book was written under the influence of the lousy attorneys he had started out with and so his attacks in the book were ignored by us. But that's the only pass I intend to offer. So, Ray McGovern, no one needs your conspiracy theories and slander. No one needs to hear your lies that the woman are CIA or "honey pots" or whores or any of the other crap you and others threw at them.

Behind your hatred of those women (of women period) is your fear. You need to work that out on your own. The public doesn't need to suffer from your toxic hatreds.

The reality is that rape takes place all over the world. The reality is that many a rapist has turned out to be the last person some would have suspected. The reality is that the only people who know what took place between Assange and the women are Assange and the woman.

I've stated before that I hope Assange is innocent of those charges. I still have that hope.

I also hope that The Young Turks, Michael Moore, Naomi Wolf, Ray McGovern, John Pilger and all the rest will not again trash two women, ridicule rape and those who've survived rape in an attempt to make their boy-genius look innocent. He's innocent or he's guilty. Your attacks on two women will not change that.

The following community sites -- plus Susan's On The Edge -- updated last night and this morning: