MORE ON WIKILEAKS

I have a few more thoughts on this Wikileaks matter, where founder Julian Assange had a warrant for rape issued against him, and then quickly withdrawn shortly thereafter, by Swedish prosecutors.

You can refresh your memory here.

I have been reading national-commentators and there is a clear sense that this may well have been a US government put-up job. This should not be surprising to the SO community: one of the quiet and under-the-radar bennies accruing to the government (or any government) in the SO Mania is that once you have created such a ‘monster’, then it’s not very hard to discredit – and lethally – any person whom the government wants to neutralize.

But there’s another odd element, which becomes clear if you read the Comments to ‘Salon’ online magazine’s ‘Broadsheet’ section, largely overseen by feminist-writer Tracy Clark Flory.

The two accusing women were both, it appears, of a feminist bent. And the manner of their ‘reporting’ of their claims was most shrewdly cagey: they simply went to the local Swedish police and ‘asked for advice’ about what they should do. It is a given in Swedish (and most) SO regime regulations and laws nowadays that the police MUST treat every mention as a ‘report’ and open a file.

However, since the two accusers did not actually ‘file a police report’ then they are not technically guilty of Filing A False Report and of making a false accusation. Neat.

There was some question of the lesser charge of ‘molestation’ even after the rape-warrant was withdrawn – but that too apparently has gone away. And in Sweden – again, the SO community will not be surprised – the regulations define ‘molestation’ verrrrry broadly: apparently you don’t even have to have physical contact.*

But what strikes me most strongly in the Comments to Flory’s lament that the women are being dissed by the withdrawal of the warrant is that a number of otherwise informed and thoughtful commenters are presuming that the only reason this whole matter could have gone so far so fast in the first place is that there had to be US government ‘pressure’ (the CIA and that sort of thing) on the Swedish government.

But there is – as the SO community well knows – every possibility that the ‘charges’ went so far so quickly simply because of the now-normal trip-wire dynamics on which sex-offense law deliberately operates: once the charge is made or simply comes to the attention of the police, then things must happen quickly and the police have little leeway left in the matter.

This reflects the founding impulses of both the SO regime and the Domestic Violence regime: that either through ‘patriarchal’ condescension or official disbelief in the accusations or claims police and prosecutors would exercise their boots-on-the-ground discretion and refuse to mire the accused in the toils of the law.

The shrewd solution to that problem was for advocates to ensure that legislators blocked off that possibility by removing all discretion from police and even from prosecutors.

Later, as time went on and more feminist-law trained females entered the ranks of police and prosecution, an extra thread of trip-wire was added to the bundle.

Which seems to have been what happened here: the two accusers went to the police on a weekend, the low-level ‘duty-prosecutor’ was a female, and she quickly applied for the warrant merely on the basis of the situation about which the two accusers were ‘merely asking advice’.

It was only when a senior-level prosecutor (also a female) reviewed the justification for the warrant that she quickly withdrew it.

Perhaps in Swedish law the fact that there was no actual ‘report’ would have fatal consequences to a prosecution; perhaps the Swedish government realized that it was going to look complicit in some international skullduggery that had nothing to do with sex-offending at all; or perhaps it didn’t want to look like a chump.

This is not a problem that arises in the U.S. where almost by script-convention the prosecutors and police in sex-offense matters are looked upon as the cavalry heroes riding to the rescue of some besieged settlers. If mistakes are made and ‘peaceful Injuns’ are killed in the process, well that’s what Injuns are in Western scripts for in the first place. No prahhhblum!

I don’t know if a lot of folks realize just how frakkulous the regime laws are when it comes to ‘investigations’ of allegations.

And I think that many of them – even in a case where a rape is alleged – simply can’t imagine that the SO Mania regime would have any bearing on an international incident that is primarily about matters far removed from ‘sex’ (i.e. Wikileaks publishing the government documents about actual lack of progress in the Afghan operations and the government trying to quash the publication).

But the SO Mania machinery has been in place for quite a while and it’s now a tool available for any type of Beltway activity where somebody thinks it might be useful.

In this case, I don’t think it worked as hoped. Perhaps the Swedish government, or public, or media, or even that senior-prosecutor, simply weren’t as stampede-able as their American counterparts. Or still retain sufficient sense of principle and professional integrity to realize a bad job when they saw one.

Mr. Assange has been spared the full-treatment shrewdly and craftily constructed by the Mania-architects. Although his personal life has been turned inside out and all the Web-cached ‘news stories’ will shadow him forever now. In that sense he joins a long and large line of SOs and those accused of ‘sex crimes’.

Most of them will be lucky simply to escape the toils of AWASORNA. At least until such time as this entire repugnant regime can be rolled-back.

As Ike put it: “So much remains to be done”.

NOTES

*Recall that in the new Internet SO initiative, one does not have to actually meet or request to meet anyone ‘offline’. Recall also that in the Domestic Violence regime, ‘battering’ has long been expanded to include being-silent in a conversation, including a long-distance phone conversation. This takes Thomas More’s reliance on the ancient legal maxim “Qui taceat consentire” (whoever remains silent, consents) to “Qui taceat percutere” (whoever remains silent, batters).