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    Re: "This page is unavailable" Archived Message

    Posted by dovetailjoint on April 21, 2019, 7:13 am, in reply to ""This page is unavailable""

    Looking back over the years, I suppose I started thinking that the Guardian's coverage was just based on stupidity, ignorance and, as I saw it, lack of 'intelligence' on their part, linked to a refusal to examine, address, understand, or even acknowledge basic facts. It was a 'cock-up.'

    I suppose I got into real conflict with them because increasingly what I was writing pointed towards, not a 'cock-up' but something much worse, what looked like a plot or a conspiracy to get Assange for something and shut him and Wikileaks up for their 'crimes.' And the Guardian was not just going along with the conspiracy, they were an integral part of it. That alone, pointing towards a de facto, unstated, denied, but none-the-less, real conspiracy, was enough to put one beyond the pale in liberal-land.

    The 'unusual' aspects of the Assange Affair were plain to see, if one could read Swedish, from the very beginning, and very worrying.

    It's not well-known but the Swedish policewoman who took down the statements made by the two women involved, knew one of them personally, as they both used the same gay/lesbian club in Stockholm. The policewoman, who was the first person to use the term 'rape' during the interview, was also the Swedish police force's 'poster girl' for gay and lesbian rights and went on paid jaunts worldwide, where she represented Sweden a gay pride marches. So, at the very least it's obvious she had a gender political agenda of her own, a certain 'bias' I'd argue.

    That she also appears to have attempted to redact the statements she recorded in longhand, not on tape or camera, is also cause for concern. That she didn't immediately stop the interview and remove herself, because she risked 'tainting' the statements because of her personal involvement with one of the women present, is also... unusual.

    An American lawyer I talked to about this and a UK one, both agreed that in court just this 'tainted' episode alone, would probably lead to the accused aquital as the defence would tear this part to pieces under cross-examination as it was so obviously not 'kosher.' I haven't met a single lawyer who thought a jury would find Assange guilty of raping anyone, given the weakness of the evidence, but of course in Sweden they don't have jury trials, which nobody at the Guardian seemed aware of in the beginning.

    That's just the start. That's before one deals with the leaks to the press of very confidential interviews with Assange and the two women, by the police themselves, which led to the hysteria and almost guaranteed that Assange wouldn't get a fair trial. I talked to one female lawyer who defends men accused of sex crimes, and she shook her head in stunned disbelief, that the case ever got as far as it did in Sweden, but that was, of course, before it became so political.

    She also said another interesting thing. That was that the only way Assange would have been found guilty of rape, in the US was, if it was in Mississippi in the bad old days and he was black. Now, that made me think. But of course journalists on the Guardina don't want to think. It's too dangerous these days.

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