As much as the mainstream media has willingly promoted the narrative of Julian Assange as a bad-boy rock-star type figure who has innocent groupies throwing themselves at his feet, the fact is, a rebellious enterprise such as WikiLeaks naturally attracts individuals who themselves have a rebellious independent spirit. It would seem likely that this would apply as much the women who accused Assange of sexual impropriety as it would to anyone else involved in WikiLeaks.
Given the way events have unfolded in recent days, one might doubt that these women — however justifiable might be their personal grievances — would now want to serve the interests of WikiLeaks’ enemies. Perhaps that’s one of the reasons why one of them — Anna Ardin — has taken up residence here, in the tiny village of Yanoun in the West Bank, where only one of the 1990 Palestinian inhabitants speaks English.
Australia’s Crikey.com reports (h/t Raw Story):
Anna Ardin, one of the two complainants in the rape and sexual assault case against WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange, has left Sweden, and may have ceased actively co-operating with the Swedish prosecution service and her own lawyer, sources in Sweden told Crikey today.
The move comes amid a growing campaign by leading Western feminists to question the investigation, and renewed confusion as to whether Sweden has actually issued charges against Assange. Naomi Klein, Naomi Wolf, and the European group Women Against Rape, have all made statements questioning the nature and purpose of the prosecution.
Ardin, who also goes by the name Bernardin, has moved to the West Bank in the Palestinian Territories, as part of a Christian outreach group, aimed at bringing reconciliation between Palestinians and Israelis. She has moved to the small town of Yanoun, which sits close to Israel’s security/sequestration wall. Yanoun is constantly besieged by fundamentalist Jewish settlers, and international groups have frequently stationed themselves there.
Ardin recently mocked her detractors and the press by tweeting: “CIA agent, rabid feminist / Muslim lover, a Christian fundamentalist, frigid & fatally in love with a man, can you be all that at the same time …”
It has come to this: feminism in bed when mom&dad soldiers are dying in Afghanistan, thus making for ever more widows and orphans at home?
What kind of Romanesque freaks have we become distracted from the dangerous genetic selection of imbecility in government (hiring a moron under you so he’ll never go for your job) while the masses focus on Assange’s penis, was it shielded or not?
I thought the Internet would bring us an era that we only dreamed of back in the 60s: endless MEANINGFUL DIALOGUE so the public could educate itself on the subtleties that decide whether we leave our children a Western World as good as we got from our parents. We are a mass of HD circus watchers ever looking for something more titillating to arouse us TV couch potatoes from our cognitive subtundedness of ignorance. We have been reduced to only voting AGAINST, like the great unwashed masses before the stage of revolutions making omelets only by breaking eggheads as if they were eggs, eg. VIOLENCE!
Assange gave us a window into– NOT the secret facts– but the stupid minds of the people who provide the minutia upon which policies are made. Dan Elsberg, whom I often debated, tries to compare the Pentagon Papers to Wikileaks but deemed Assange “irresponsible” for dumping the whole lot “un-filtered.” Really!!! The Pentagon Papers were SecDef McNamara’s self-serving apologia after turning against the war he so viciously escalated for brownie points with LBJ. Wkileaks are routine cable traffic congealed upward from desk to desk in the bureaucracy until it abbreviated into a one page set of policy options for the President. YOU CAN’T MAKE A DELICIOUS MEAL FROM ROTTEN INGREDIENTS.
WE now know that, despite all the “official leaks” of Clinton–>Bush–>Obama to make themselves look good (and these were really big secrets so selectively de-classified that they amounted to lies) we are losing our wars against little people, not because of bad strategy and policy, but because the basic minutia (the Pointillist dots making up the tableau) is gossip garbage picked up by DoS/DoD hicks from Middle America (who bought themselves ambassadorships or with pull got to be FSOs or field officers) suffering from tunnel vision because they only know the Middle America way. So, INTEL BLIND…LANGUAGE DEAF…CULTURE DUMB, our kill all grunts of the Empire went into the field providing our leaders with GARBAGE justifying their misbegotten actions, often as high price because this was contracted to “Security Corporations.” (sic!) On this hung the lives of our mom&dad soldiers and hundreds of thousands of natives.
Wikileaks does not settle the issue of condom or no condom. But it tells us that our tactical high/tech info people didn’t just wear blinders but condoms over their heads as well for, Pentagon reports confirm they really never mastered well their technology.
Yet the NYTIMES and others– desperate for circulation having become tabloids sensationalizing the Empire’s Wars– are presenting as fact the gossip passed off as “intelligence” without asking: if all these tactical details were correct, how come we’ve been bleeding and losing for a decade non stop starting with a 9/11 event that we easily could have prevented? Has America amnesia, or doesn’t it care?
We’ve been given an opportunity, just as the Founding Fathers were given a Constitution, which we can make use to recreate a revolutionary OPEN society of informed citizens who share both authority and responsibility with the leaders they elect, or a Soap Opera over Assange’s penis. You must decide which by engaging in the same MEANINHFUL DIALOGUE and RESPONSIBLE DEBATE which you demanded be allowed in the repressive 1960s and now the Internet makes totally possible.
WE, citizens and gov. officials must talk TO each other NOT AT each other. Even if we have to hang all the PR people who shape all communications into manure instead of information, we have to take control of all critical and complex decisions because without us our leaders are swayed by corporate vampires whose sole goal is to suck the blood out of the US Treasury and the American people. ALL the EMBARASSING documents are out there. Let’s all digest them once and for all do, whatever it takes so our kids won’t have to be as embarrassed about being Americans as we have been since Clinton–>Bush–>Obama–>and (God forbid) another Clinton again. Let’s look at current policy and the garbage on which it is based. Manning and Assange gave us that mirror in which to see that US Gov which is “We the people…” Our task is clear yet few are as devoted to this mission as WAR IN CONTEXT. We must all focus our fellow citizens in the Western Empire lest 1984 becomes a 2084 reality because of our irresponsible circus mentality.
We are still waitng for the charges to me made… we don’t know yet what is it that the prossecuters want to hear and what evidence they have, which makes the Swedish legal system an international joke.
Mr. Holder discourse about looking for a law to prossecute Assange while igonring evidence of War Crimes from both Obama’s and Bush’s administrations helps to deteriorate even further the US’s international credibility, which is good news.
The more Mr. Holder speaks of prossecuting Assange the less credibility the US government will have.
Current they have none…
DE TEDOORU, You said a mouthful. Yes, you are right, that’s exactly what we need in this country. Perhaps, just perhaps, the disturbances in Great Britain, will like the Beatles, cross the pond, take hold here in the U.S., and like the 60’s, blossom into a righteous indignation that leads to mass demonstrations. And, as with any demonstration, there will be a few of those that have their collective heads up their asses and innocents will be hurt/killed. They will call it collateral damage, but will open up the eyes of the few who will see the folly and retreat to another day. Of course, as is the policy today, throw the peasants a bone or two, then they will go home & sit on the couch & we will continue screwing them. Ah, the dangerous thinking of the last century, still prevalent today. These people live in a bubble, one that is about to pop, then where will they go? The deterioration of the infrastructure in the U.S. is such, that there won’t be much left after the demonstrations, for the so called elite, to prosper on. They further delude themselves thinking their lives will return to what used to be, but though the masses seem to be like sheep today, the aftermath will see not sheep, but Wolfs, and without the manufacturing from food to ammunition, they will soon be out in the cold themselves. There comers a time that action will have to be taken, the sooner the batter, then the rebuilding can get on with earnest effort, as it should have been all along.