Judefa

The Australian government has been trying to put an internet filter in place to stop certain sites being seen here.
The purpose of it ostensibly is to protect children from porn and sexual predators, but the government wouldn’t spell out what exactly was on it, and it was WikiLeaks which revealed that info early last year.
WikiLeaks itself was on the list of banned sites, although it has been removed this week.
Also banned were some poker sites, YouTube links, Wikipedia entries, euthanasia sites, websites of fringe religions such as satanic sites, fetish sites, Christian sites, the website of a tour operator and even a Queensland dentist.

I personally would never trust authorities to censor the internet, and the revelations since last Sunday have reinforced in my mind the need to fight government secrecy as much as we do surveillance.

Some of my workmates still strongly support the idea of a filter.
They regard themselves as Labor and progressive, and feel it would be an advance.
Although I work on a newspaper and we’re running a lot of stories about WikiLeaks, which was founded by an Australian, I think they mostly have nothing more than a vague admiration for WikiLeaks and no sense of connection with Julian Assange.
That, on the whole, is what working in the system does to people.
We’re broadly in the same field as him but those of us who are paid by corporations are in a permanent state of anaesthesia.

Text below the pic is lifted from the ABC (Australia) Unleashed site this week …

There is precious little evidence available in the public domain, though the few details circulating make me extremely sceptical of both the rape (which seems 100 per cent false) and molestation charges against Assange. More on that in a minute. But for the wild-eyed, spittle-flecked conspiracists bloggers - and Assange himself - the charges reeked of a U.S. government plot. And sure, one only need to read the Church Commission report to realize that such dirty tricks have a long pedigree in American intelligence circles. But even a cursory look at the case would suggest that while it appears that Assange’s name is being dragged through the mud, it isn’t by the CIA.

But the speed with which the conspiracy theories spread throughout the moronosphere was enough for The New York Times London correspondent, the terrific John Burns, to produce an article headlined, “Plotting doubted in Wikileaks case”. That would be the Pentagon/CIA plotting to destroy Assange, obviously. Assuming that Assange knew the identity of his accusers when contacted by prosecutors, he nevertheless told any reporter within earshot that “we have been warned that the Pentagon, for example, is thinking of deploying dirty tricks to ruin us. And I have also been warned about sex traps.” After expressing scepticism that it was an American intelligence job, Harpers magazine nevertheless warned that “as this incident makes clear, the war on WikiLeaks will be fought with unconventional tools and those following the story are advised to accept nothing at face value.”

Amazingly, the bumbling fools in American intelligence managed to flip Anna Ardin, the left-wing feminist (often described in the Swedish blogosphere as a “radical feminist”) spokeswoman for Broderskapsrörelsen, the liberation theology-like Christian organization affiliated with Sweden’s Social Democratic Party (she is not, as I have seen written, a “Christian Democrat”). If any of these sub literate bloggers knew anything about the kristen vänster (but why should you know anything at all, when a simple, ideology-validating conspiracy is so much more satisfying?), they would probably have guessed that Assange’s accuser was, as is common in Sweden, operating off of a very broad definition of rape and “sexual molestation.”

If any of these bozos did twenty minutes of research, they might have found Ardin’s blog - “my feminist reflections and comments on animal rights, Swedish politics and Cuba from a political scientist, Christian left and long distance runner” - and read her post, with the help of a Scandinavian comrade or Google Translate, “Våldtäkt en del av mäns makt” - rape [is] a part of men’s power. Or they would have seen this article from Ardin’s days at Uppsala University, where she, in her role as some sort of equality watchdog, denounced the tradition of singing ribald student songs, which included “references to genitalia and serious sexual content,” as “offensive and stereotypical.” She is, in other words, rather sensitive on gender issues. Or this blog post on how one can exact “legal revenge” on men who have been “unfaithful.” According to The Guardian, sources close to the investigation claim that she filed a complaint because Assange didn’t wear a condom during sex. So the boring truth is that Assange didn’t come up against a CIA conspiracy, but the rather broad Swedish conception of what constitutes a sexual crime.

If you, like many of the conspiracists, are confused as to how the Swedish authorities could issue and then, in less than 24 hours, withdraw a warrant for Assange’s arrest, then you don’t know the Swedish authorities. Just ask the families of Anna Lindh and Olaf Palme for details. Indeed, when one prosecutor overruled the conclusions of another, more junior, prosecutor, she explained to Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter that “My decision doesn’t mean that her decision was wrong.” And to Aftonbladet, she dug in her heels: “That I changed the decision doesn’t mean that her decision was wrong.” Translation? Amateur hour at the prosecutor’s office.

Michael C. Moynihan is senior editor at Reason magazine and Reason.com, where this first appeared.

 

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