The BBC repeatedly named Nafissatou Diallo, the alleged rape victim of Dominique Strauss Kahn, while the criminal investigation into the alleged rape was still in progress. Yet they have a policy that Anna Ardin, the accuser of Julian Assange, must not be named – or investigated.
Why the contradiction?
Nafissatou Diallo and Anna Ardin had both gone public and given statements to the media in support of their allegations.
From the New York Times, 25 August 2010:
Anna Ardin, 31, has told the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet that the complaints were “not orchestrated by the Pentagon” but prompted by “a man who has a twisted attitude toward women and a problem taking no for an answer.”
There was no legal barrier to my mentioniong Anna Ardin last night; the case is no longer sub judice in the UK and there is no expectation of any legal proceedings here. Those are precisely the grounds on which the BBC mentioned Diallo very often. I did not see Oliver Kamm, Charles Crawford, Harry Cole, Charles Murray or any of the other far right commenters trolling about my “disgrace” last night, make a single protest at the naming of Diallo on scores of occasions by the BBC. Why their sudden new-found concern in the case of Assange?
Why the difference? Why is Ardin protected from scrutiny in the entire British mainstream media when Diallo was not, in precisely the same legal circumstances? Has Ardin been D-noticed in the UK when she is reported widely everywhere else in the world?
Anybody who still believes that the Assange allegations are a genuine criminal proceeding following due process, should think very hard indeed.
Ce a sobsucker? out to feed on the limelight of others publicity, moth-like? never! that’ll be a case for the mental health service.
A paid stooge? maybe, for that he has not shown very much though, more of a swat, an irritation like.
Or, a sad but interested individual who can’t be bothered to get his facts right, superficial, all day on here, as he says himself? all day on the go, determination yeah…..
most definitely!
might be a good time to rest Ce, or to keep up.
No time for St. Michael tonight sorry, he seems troubled with the facts as he perceives them, maybe he can see how the injustices in this case are not all down to one side, that the lack of trust in Sweden and the UK/US vassals are based on their past practises, and that the damage done by the Swedish prosecutor to the international standing of the Swedish justice system, more akin to limbo dancing, is far greater than the benefits gained, by being seen as incompetent and inactive you are making out that Sweden does not care much about its citizens.
Those two women are more harmed by the failure of the Swedish police and prosecutor, than they ever have been by anybody else.
I understand their initial concerns about hygiene and STD’s, but you don’t go to the police for that, you see a doctor or a pharmacist.
good night.
used there own Zionist website as the host for that
ROFL thanks for the laugh.
Ben Franklin
Well that is because the Zionists have a tendency to call everyone Anti Semite. Look at the vast amount of Jews who they use that label on? Norman Frankenstein, Israel Shamir. They even use that label on Zionists when they break with the Zionist Story line like Goldstone.
Well I have even heard the Butcher of Shebra and Shatela Ariel Sharon being called a Antisemite by the more right wing supporters of Benyamin Netanyahu. And there are a lot of Zionist who call Netanyahu a Antisemite too.
That word is just something the Zionists use to state their disapproval. I bet someone them call their own Jewish Wives Anti Semites when diner is cold?
Arsalan – you suggesting I work for Israel?
If so I think you are perhaps a little over suspicious.
Arsalan, I can see a mainstream media “arena”, a constrained area out of which the debate is nor permitted to go. So people are not generally exposed to ideas such as that the US has everything prepared for extraditing Assange, and they’re prepared to incite the UK into breaking the Vienna Convention and endangering UK diplomats the world over, just to get Assange into custody.
I’m always try to discuss matters because we need to change people’s minds. If I assume that anyone who disagrees with Craig’s opinions is a trolling propagandist, I’ve effectively ruled out any mechanism for change.
Anon, oh sorry bro, didn’t know your name was Michael.
Thatcrab,
You mean “eat your snickers because you turn into a right diva…”
Better? Better.
Arsalan, one stolen nibble of sea bass is not enough. On the other hand, I think Assange would have been much better off with less crayfish.
The people who work for Israel are the people that defend Israel and attack everyone they assume are bad for Israel.
The people who are against Israel are the people that attack Racism, Zionism, Nazism and all things Evil.
Cryptonym
Lewinsky was taped by one of the satffers whom then sprang the trap on Clinton, a complicated and orchestrated attempt to shift the US mainstream politics even farther to right.
Fact is, here we the people have lost the control of our governments. Craig did not lightly use the term “neocon Junta in charge of our former democracies”. This guy knows the extent of the corruption of power structures that have evolved without any kind of accountability and or means of oversight.
The “media” are again owned by the very plutocrats whom coincidentally own our politicos too. Therefore to expect any mind of transparency in this kind of arrangement is only a fools errand and wishful thinking at its best.
The best we can achieve is to start distrusting the very “media” that has so far had such an easy job fooling us all. Further, to investigate and search for the true actualities ourselves, and understand no one can be responsible for own futures than our own-selves.
“Polarisation.” Seems more like a centrifuge, Clark, or as a more neutral metaphor, Merry-Go-Round.
Arsalan
You’re either one of the most naive people I’ve ever encountered… or something else.
You surely can’t believe things are as simplistic as you posit in the real world?
I’m going to go with the assumption you are genuine. I’d like you to help me with that.
Clark,
Crayfish fake sex to prevent war:
http://www.livescience.com/1137-crayfish-fake-sex-war.html
🙂
Michael- your post @9.36 was reasonable and well argued, and didn’t warrant the barbs it got from the likes of arsalan & Jimmy Giro.
This bit however seemed callow & naive-
‘Now, think about this for a moment: how many ‘left-wing feminists’ you know are ardent CIA fans?’
Well, how about Gloria Steinem for starters-
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a1M9EAly2hog&refer=home
Mark Golding – Children of Iraq Association
“eat your snickers because you turn into a right diva…”
Better? Better.
et tu Mark?
OK I had a bit of laugh too
night all
Have a look at the DT article:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/9490463/Julian-Assange-Swedish-prosecutors-censure-sex-case-naming-diplomat.html
“Swedish prosecutors have warned people against naming the women at the centre of the Julian Assange sexual assault case, after a WikiLeaks supporter identified one live on television.”
Just who the hell do the Swedish prosecutors think they are to tell us who we can and can’t name? Do they believe that they call the shots in the UK? Which country does such extra-territorial behaviour remind you of?
‘Just who the hell do the Swedish prosecutors think they are to tell us who we can and can’t name?’
More circumstantial evidence they are working hand in glove with the septics, I think !
Say, speaking of rape, and who’s a misogynist and who’s not, and who broke the rubber, and which gnat’s-ass legal niceties of extradition apply, how did it turn out when the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court went through the Wikileaks Afghanistan files for evidence of war crimes by the various parties? What with all this va-va-va-voom kinky sexytime stuff, I almost forgot about the stuff Assange published, the overwhelming probative evidence that the US committed crimes of concern to the international community that are subject to UNSC referral of charges in the ICC.
From you Mark I expect “Get Some Nuts!” That would resonate around my carapace :]
On the face of it I like the sound of a fake sex war, but the details could be messy.
VivaEcuador – outrageous indeed. Another reason to mistrust this set of ‘prosecutors’ who reopened the original farcical allegations.
@Michael,
The media didn’t cover the reasons for that well at all, and as a result the explanation for the release of all the cables is not very well known. Both Wikileaks and the media could have explained it much better.
What happened was that Wikileaks was working with a Guardian journalist, David Leigh, who was working on a book about Assange/Wikileaks. From what I recall, he fell out with Assange (or vice versa) – think it was something to do with editorial control. Anyway, the book was published after they fell out, which meant that Assange did not see a final copy before it went to press.
In the book, Leigh describes the cloak and dagger approach they would use to meet, how they would handle the secret cables, whilst being aware of the dangers of what they were doing. Assange showed him how to decrypt the cables, using a lengthy, memorised, secret phrase – but Leigh, not understanding much of it, often had to get Assange to drive to his location and decrypt documents for him.
Meanwhile, the encrypted tarball (similar to a zipfile) had been circulating the internet as an “insurance policy” – if anything happened to a Wikileaks agent, the password could be leaked and the tarball could be decrypted. As it turned out, the tarball contained the complete cable archive.
Unfortunately for the whole enterprise, Leigh provided the passphrase as a story detail in the book, despite the fact that at that stage, various newspapers were trickling them out only at the rate of ten a day. Of course, as Murphy’s law would have it, Leigh was using the same encrypted file as the very public one on the internet, so sadly he’d just given the game away – the cables could now be decrypted by anyone with a copy of the book, the public tarball and a home computer.
The monumental stupidity of Leigh in publishing the password – even if he thought it only unlocked his copy – is difficult to overstate. That said, he was a technonumpty of the highest order, and Assange should perhaps have seen it coming. Furthermore, it was extremely remiss of Assange not to provide Leigh with the same files encrypted with a different passphrase – so if that passphrase was leaked, it would not have unlocked the public copy. (Security people call this “defence in depth” – you should have a chain of processes that all need to fail before an attacker compromises your asset).
Once the book was published, all the world’s security agencies would have been peeking at the cables, and the CIA/NSA would have been amongst the first to know. At this juncture they would have pulled out all of their compromised personnel (although the level of secrecy didn’t go particularly high in the cables) and made arrangements to ensure their staff were safe.
At that point, Wikileaks had to make a decision – either pretend the cables were still secret, or release them all. They did the latter, which was the correct decision – for the safety of low-level staff attached to the US security complex, it is better for the cable decryption to be well known, rather than to be a badly-kept secret (the latter is called “security through obscurity” and is regarded as poor protection).
Once the commercial value of the cables was lost – millions of pounds worth of newspaper publishing – the media dropped the story like a hot potato. There was much less value in their continuing to run the story, and of course the recriminations of whose fault it was caused further irreparable damage to various working relationships. Other media partners around the world must have been furious.
Neither Assange nor Leigh came out smelling of roses. Assange seemed too controlling of his image, and Leigh looked like he wanted to blame everyone else but himself. Bonus fact: Private Eye covered Leigh around that time, and apparently he was saying some pretty unpleasant things about Assange to students in journalism courses he was teaching. One cheeky student covertly recorded such a rant and published it on the web, only to have an angry Leigh threaten any further leakers with expulsion.
More details here, and analysis here.
Seamus Milne speaks:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/aug/21/why-us-is-out-to-get-assange
Where is Passerby?
I kinda miss his alert comments
• Anna Ardin worked on behalf of a number of Miami-based, U.S. government-paid intelligence agencies and was an associate of the anti-Cuban terrorist, Carlos Aberto Montaner. Source: Cuban news agencies, Granma and Prensa Latina.
• While in Cuba, Ardin worked with the Ladies in White, a feminist anti-Castro group that is partially funded by the US Government and counts among its supporters Luis Posada Carriles, a CIA agent convicted of terrorist attacks that killed hundreds of people. Source: Indymedia.
• After leaving Cuba, Ardin worked on websites financed by USAID and controlled by the CIA. One of these websites was ‘Miscelánea de Cuba’, run by the Cuban, Alexis Gainza. Source: Australia-Cuba Friendship Society.
• Through Gainza, Ms. Ardin became involved with several Swedish agencies, including Dagens Nyheter and SVT, and then entered the Swedish Social Democrat party. Gainza is connected with the German Internationale Gesellschaft für Menschenrechte (International Human Rights Society), a group linked to German and U.S. intelligence and includes former Nazis (such as Ludwig Martin) and ex-military figures (Dieter von Glahn) in its ranks. The current president of the IGFM, Martin Lessenthin, works closely with the Venezuelan opposition party Primero Justicia, led by anti-Chavez terrorist Alejandro Peña Esclusa. Primero Justicia, in turn, is the main partner of the International Republican Institute, an extreme right-wing group funded by the US Government’s National Endowment for Democracy. Both USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy are funded by the CIA. Sources: various.
‘The virulence of British media hostility towards the Wikileaks founder is now unrelenting.’
http://bit.ly/PbE5hW
The Center for Constitutional Rights in New York reminds us of what self-righteous Assangephobes in particular (and I include myself among those who consider him a sleazebag) have chosen to forget. It seems to concern them not at all.
.
Such has been the success of the hidden hands. Pushy sex without a condom now appears to take priority over mass murder:
.
‘It’s a tragic irony that Assange & Manning are persecuted, while the war criminals that were exposed by Wikileaks remain immune from prosecution.’
Dear Craig, I have only recently heard of you. I sent this official complaint to the BBC tonight using their complaint on line system – I suggest people on this blog should do the same.
“Re last night’s BBC 2 Newsnight programme item on Rape and Julian Assange . Having just watched it tonight 21 Aug, on iplayer, I want to make an OFFICIAL COMPLAINT of bias in how the interview was conducted by Gavin Esslar.
The dignified ex British Ambassador, Craig Murray, had great trouble trying to explain his rational reason for supporting Assange But the supposed supporter of women’s issues ( I am left wing and feminist too but I would not want to depend on her black and white, prejudiced view to look after my interests) was allowed to speak over him. Why was Craig Murray’s highly relevant point about the usual practice of accusing whistleblowers of sex and similar crimes not given the space to be aired properly, especially as he had a string of recent high profile examples, including his own to tell of? (I read he was accused of exchanging sex for visas).
The Independent Paper’s Joan Smith sounded unreasoned. One would have expected her to have had a more measured response and some sympathy for this ex Ambassador who lost his job and had to fight to clear his name for taking a brave stand against the the UK government over its secret part in rendition and torture. It is a wonder she didn’t end with an “all men are rapists so Assange must have done it” as this is the underlying message the BBC are peddling against JA and his plight, – on all London Radio 94.9 progs too. The real story for News Night (and The Guardian) is the Ambassador’s story so please cover the sex accusations that he raised as viewers might not be familiar with these highly relevant details as others are..His story gives important context to this whole affair.
Murray,
I am late on the thread – but I am beginning to ask myself whether George Galloway is not carrying baggage. Why he raised the issue of being a “ Misogynist” – and his own history does not support the position that he adopted.
Maybe the system has more power than we ever discerned – and – maybe Craig Murray is due more “respect” ( pun intended) than we all ever suspected – he was.
CB
Here is an excellent piece by Glenn Greenwald highlighting the hypocrisy of the Western establishment media:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article32249.htm
You just have to read Craig’s two books to know what a “deeply troubling attitude” he has towards women. Akin, Assange, Galloway. What a crew to be associated with. Let’s face it, Assange could admit to paedophilia and the usual suspects would still be defending him, including Gorgeous George and Craig Murray.
And as for those right wing tools of Zionism, Owen Jones and Penny Red…
CE,
Re-reading all the posts and arguments today?You’ve been handed your arse on a dinner plate,son,as we say here in Glasgow.
Quit while you’re behind fella.