John Pilger: Swedes Are Smearing Him And Encouraging The US

[Turborama]

Sunday, December 19 2010

I don't regard http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/dec/17/julian-assange-sweden">the Guardian article as revelatory but as more of what we know, plus scuttlebut. There are serious omissions. The impression is given that Julian Assange refused to attend a meeting with the Swedish director of prosecutions on 14 October. This is false. Assange offered to attend on the 15th and 16th. When these days weren't suitable, he offered a complete week instead.

What happened in Sweden was a public smear, and trial by Swedish tabloid media. The chief prosecutor, Eva Fine, understood this. After making her own inquiries, she cancelled the arrest warrant. "Julian Assange is not suspected of rape," she said. It was only the intervention of a leading political figure, Claes Borgstrom, that reactivated the case.

After the "crime", one of the women wrote on Twitter that she was with "the world's coolest smartest people". And when asked whether Assange should leave her flat, she replied, "No, it's not a problem. He's very welcome to stay here." Referring to their night together, she said that she "felt dumped" when he left her bed to work on his computer. This may help to explain why Assange is not charged with any crime, and why the director of prosecutions has appeared so reluctant to provide the defence with documents. The first official document arrived on 18 November, three months after the alleged offences.

Whether or not the smear is a "CIA conspiracy", it is clear that Assange's name has been blackened. Also, the women's details have been hauled across the internet. And his very serious enemies in Washington have been hugely encouraged to pursue their vicious campaign against him. Meanwhile, we have the spectacle of the US Attorney General trying to concoct a specious law to prosecute Assange for revealing the lies and obsessions of rapacious great power, which, under the First Amendment in the land of Thomas Jefferson, is not a crime. He deserves all our support.

From: http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/john-pilger-swedes-are-smearing-him-and-encouraging-the-us-2164320.html

For anyone who's new to Pilger's work, or just want to check out his site...

His biography: http://www.johnpilger.com/biography

Videos: http://www.johnpilger.com/videos

[Blue_Tires]

1. kick

[sabrina 1]

2. Pilger, probably one of the world's greatest investigative journalists

and war correspondenets. Highly respected everywhere, and if he says something, you know you can trust his work.

The fact that he has come to Julian Assange's defense is a huge problem for the U.S. as he is so highly regarded around the world.

As for that smear of an article that came from the Swedish politician/lawyer yesterday, I have followed this case since the beginning. I followed all the stories in the Swedish press, the tabloids there, saw some of the comments that Ann Ardin tried to erase and read a very different version, from witnesses, of how these two women met.

I will have to go back and find the statements by Claes Borgstrom about how the two women met, something that bothered a lot of people. Initially, airc, he had difficulty explaining that, but his earlier explanation, which I hope I can find again, was different to the one he is now claiming. NOW, he claims that the second woman called Ann Ardin directly to ask if she could help with the event. In his most recent version, he claims that Ann Ardin did agree to let her help with the event and introduced her to Assange.

But this does not correspond with earlier reports which state that she was turned down when she asked if she could help. That she went to the event anyhow, and then hung around waiting for a chance to talk to him. That he noticed her and invited her to join them. There was no introduction by Ann Ardin in the earlier reports. For months it has been assumed that these two women did not know each other before they went to the police. This was hard for the lawyer to explain. How they got together.

Seems like he's come up with a story to explain it. Except that there were witnesses and I do hope those links have survived. Some links have disappeared.

I am so glad he has John Pilger working on this as well as so many others.

I am glad he straightened out the fact that Assange did talk to the police. And has always been available to do so since then. The lie that he never had talked to them, or that he had to hunted down, is pure lies as his attorneys were saying all along.

Sweden's reputation has taken a real hit over the way they have handled this. They should be ashamed.

So, someone is lying.

[Turborama]

3. Hi Sabrina, this last paragraph from The Guardian's article is key...

Assange's defence team had so far been provided by prosecutors with only incomplete evidence, he said. "There are many more text and SMS messages from and to the complainants which have been shown by the assistant prosecutor to the Swedish defence lawyer, Bjorn Hurtig, which suggest motivations of malice and money in going to the police and to Espressen and raise the issue of political motivation behind the presentation of these complaints. He (Hurtig) has been precluded from making notes or copying them.

"We understand that both complainants admit to having initiated consensual sexual relations with Mr Assange. They do not complain of any physical injury. The first complainant did not make a complaint for six days (in which she hosted the respondent in her flat (actually her bed) and spoke in the warmest terms about him to her friends) until she discovered he had spent the night with the other complainant.

"The second complainant, too, failed to complain for several days until she found out about the first complainant: she claimed that after several acts of consensual sexual intercourse, she fell half asleep and thinks that he ejaculated without using a condom – a possibility about which she says they joked afterwards.

"Both complainants say they did not report him to the police for prosecution but only to require him to have an STD test. However, his Swedish lawyer has been shown evidence of their text messages which indicate that they were concerned to obtain money by going to a tabloid newspaper and were motivated by other matters including a desire for revenge."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/dec/17/julian-assange-sweden

Re: Pilger, I hope one of the benefits of this case is that the American public finally find out more about the legendary investigatory work he has been doing for literally decades.

[defendandprotect]

7. k/r "...motivations of malice and money in going to the police/Espressen ...."

[sabrina 1]

13. Yes, there are messages and exchanges between the two

women which witnesses have seen and reported on, that show an intention to smear Assange, some discussing even how to make money from it, according to reports from those who have seen them.

If anyone can dig up the facts, it is Pilger.

The other thing that strikes me about the allegations in the article, is how these two women met.

I will try to find the interview with their lawyer from about two weeks ago where he was asked tht question as it was a very important point in this whole story. I am certain that he tried to difuse the claims that since they did not know each other before, or supposedly did not, it was very odd that they went to the police together. Airc, he gave a very different version in that interview, which was not long ago, than is given in these latest papers.

I should have saved all those links, but I should be able to find it. If there is a discrepency in his claims NOW and his claims just weeks ago, it would show that they are, as many have claimed 'making it up as they go along'.

[defendandprotect]

4. Thank you -- will be interested to see more of his work --

[Turborama]

5. You're most welcome. It just so happens that his new documentary has just been released & I've...

... recently posted it in the videos forum: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x536632

:hi:

[defendandprotect]

6. OK -- will try to watch later today --

:)

[Delphinus]

8. Oh,

thank you for this! I admire John Pilger for the truth he shares and would have missed this totally.

[xchrom]

9. recommend

[malaise]

10. K & R

They are scared shitless because the mask has been removed.

[The Backlash Cometh]

11. Doesn't this sound like what Ken Starr did to Clinton?

[EFerrari]

16. Yes. The difference is, with Clinton the job couldn't be farmed out. n/t

[Mimosa]

24. I've been thinking the same, Backlash.

There are some differences but the public gets fixated on salacious soap opera details and issues of national and international importance get lost in the drama.

[Richard Steele]

12. K&R

[Turborama]

14. A more in depth article on this recently posted by Pilger: Protect Assange, don’t abuse him

Forty years ago, a book entitled The Greening of America caused a sensation. On the cover were these words: "There is a revolution coming. It will not be like revolutions of the past. It will originate with the individual." I was a correspondent in the United States at the time and recall the overnight elevation to guru status of the author, a young Yale academic, Charles Reich. His message was that political action had failed and only "culture" and introspection could change the world. This merged with an insidious corporate public relations campaign aimed at reclaiming western capitalism from the sense of freedom inspired by the civil rights and anti-war movements. The new propaganda's euphemisms were postmodernism, consumerism and "me-ism".

The self was now the zeitgeist. Driven by the forces of profit and the media, the search for individual consciousness all but overwhelmed the spirit of social justice and internationalism. A new deity was proclaimed; the personal was the political.

In 1995, Reich published Opposing the System, in which he recanted almost everything in The Greening of America. "There will be no relief from either economic insecurity or human breakdown," he now wrote, "until we recognise that uncontrolled economic forces create conflict, not well-being . . ." There were no queues in the bookstores this time. In the age of economic neoliberalism, Reich was out of step with the rampant individualism of the west's new political and cultural elite.

The revival of militarism in the west and the search for a new "threat" following the end of the cold war depended on the political disorientation of those who, 20 years earlier, would have formed a vehement opposition. On 11 September 2001, they were silenced finally, and many were co-opted into the "war on terror". The invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001 was supported by leading feminists, especially in the US, where Hillary Clinton and other false tribunes of feminism made the Taliban's treatment of Afghan women the rationale for attacking a stricken country and causing the deaths of at least 20,000 people while giving the Taliban new life. That the warlords backed by America were as medievalist as the Taliban was not allowed to interrupt such a right-on cause. The zeitgeist, the years of "personal" depoliticising and distracting true radicalism, had worked. Nine years later, the disaster that is Afghanistan is the consequence.

It seems the lesson must be learned all over again as a group of media feminists joins the assault on Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, or the "Wikiblokesphere", as Libby Brooks abuses it in the Guardian. From the Times to the New Statesman, apparent feminist credence is given to the chaotic, incompetent and contradictory accusations against Assange in Sweden.

Full article: http://www.johnpilger.com/articles/protect-assange-don-t-abuse-him

[bengalherder]

15. Thank you Turborama

Your coverage of this story has been much appreciated, <3.

[Turborama]

17. Welcome to DU, bengalherder!

:hi:

And thank-you very much for the feedback. It's rewarding to know it's appreciated. :-)

[Canuckistanian]

18. K&R

[Kurovski]

19. K&R. (nt)

[Lucinda]

20. TY!

[treestar]

21. It's just "him" now?

[Turborama]

22. Yes, obviously John Pilger thinks he didn't need to use his name

So what? :shrug:

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

23. Exactly. n/t

[katty]

25. Pilger is a fantastic journalist-been around a long while

and still at it.