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====================================================================== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. ====================================================================== Joaquín Bustelo wrote I don't particularly LIKE Assange. He seems like a smarmy, self-satisfied, quite comfortable in his privileges gavacho...I'll say that I have close to zero doubt that the charges against Assange could very well be true. _____________________________________________________ The question is, how do you know that? Granted it's perfectly possible that he is all the things you say he is, but unless you know him personally, you'll notice that those traits you've ascribed to him are exactly the sorts of traits the media ascribes to anyone who chooses to critique the United States from a perspective outside the tightly delimited consensus that reigns in mainstream organisations (this is the second option, of course, and is only deployed if the first option - completely ignoring the critic - is unavailable). So Assange refuses to answers questions about his personal life on CNN or wherever, and this is played as another example of his smug, self-satisfaction, rather than, say, a principled refusal to talk about anything other than the extremely important documents he has released and the work he obviously believes in. As for the rapes, of course it's possible that they are true, but then there's something like this: Increasingly, attention has been focused on the role of Anna Ardin, the > more visible of the two complainants. Her apparent mix of establishment > cred, together with her varied activist/political career radical feminist, > Christian social democrat, ambitious political intern seems to flummox > non-Swedish commentators, who don’t understand that that is an establishment > career in Sweden. > Ardin has not only worked as an intern in the Swedish foreign affairs > department, including a tour of DC and Cuba (from which she was allegedly > deported), but has also interned on the op-ed page of the Gothenburg > afternoon paper GT, part of the Expressen stable, owned by the right-wing > Bonnier family (yep, Sweden has right-wingers). > It was to the relentlessly anti-left Expressen that the story of the > initial charges of rape against Assange were released (a breach of Swedish > law), in the small window of time before they were rescinded by a higher > prosecutor. > Were there accusations of violent rape involved in this case, I’d be a lot > more circumspect about reporting some of this, but it seems no one is > asserting physical coercion. So here goes: two separate sources from the > Swedish left have told me that they regard Ardin as more than a little > over-the-top, and subject to some compelling obsessions. Another source said > he was pretty sure of the identity of SW, the other complainant, and that > some people had held suspicions about her bona fides as a member of the > left. > So, all to be taken on advisement. But in assessing the possibility that > more is going on than lerv gone wrong, one has to bear in mind that Sweden > is a conflicted establishment; the Social Democrat party that has run it for > decades has actively opposed US foreign policy in Vietnam, Chile and a > hundred other places, and stayed out of NATO. > But in the Cold War, Sweden ran its own substantial army, and security > service with intensive back-channel US-Swedish co-operation and > co-ordination. The pro-US forces within the Swedish establishment extend > across the right (the Moderate(!) Party) and the right of the Social > Democrats, who have far more animus to the assorted Swedish left (especially > the libertarian-left) than to their rightward opponents. > The involvement of Claes Borgstrom, a Social Democratic party heavy and the > party’s current spokesperson on gender equality, is very interesting in that > respect, not least because his sister Annette Kullenberg is a leading > journalist (and, inevitably, novelist and TV thriller writer), who works for > … Expressen. I’m not suggesting anything other than a suffocatingly tight > establishment, but it’s a picture in miniature of how Sweden works. > So deep breath … if you were to set out to destabilise a Sweden-based > global whistleblower organisation, one easy way would be to have someone set > off a chain of sexual chaos that gets a high-profile uber-activist and one > who’s previously written a guide to sexual revenge spinning like a top, and > drawing in Sweden’s expansive sex-crime and harassment laws, marshalling the > very scenario that would make it difficult for the left to throw in > accusations of obvious manipulation and entrapment. > You’d then leak stories of internal dissent to a journalist with US > intelligence connections, and widen any cracks of trust in the organisation, > however small. Further internal dissent would be created by misapprehension > created by the story of initial internal dissent, and recriminations about > such. And round you go. It’s a well-worn tactic used by US agencies on > “enemy” groups domestic and foreign. > Indeed it’s already been written down by the US Army Counterintelligence > Centre, in its report on what to do about WikiLeaks: > Wikileaks.org uses trust as a centre of gravity by assuring insiders, > leakers, and whistleblowers who pass information to Wikileaks.org personnel > or who post information to the Web site that they will remain anonymous … > “The identification, exposure, or termination of employment of or legal > actions against current or former insiders, leakers, or whistleblowers could > damage or destroy this center of gravity …” > Hmmmm. http://www.crikey.com.au/2010/09/09/rundle-wikileaks-i-havent-seen-accusations-says-assange-as-plot-thickens/ ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: [email protected] Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
