Wikileaks' Julian Assange victim of dirty tricks rape accusation

Utter bastards! We knew US officials were out to get Julian Assange of Wikileaks, a hero of our sad times, but this scrapes the bottom of the barrel and breaks through to a whole new bottom we never knew existed.

One worry was that the US would kidnap Assange through the blandly named "rendition" process for his public service in exposing the murders of civilians in the Afghanistan conflict. But now the Swedes have issued a warrant for the arrest of the Australian for rape! So if they can't shut him up by fair means or foul, the authorities will smear his reputation in a plot riffing on The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.

John Pilger documents Assange's brave work in a recent article:

In file after file, the brutalities echo the colonial past. From Malaya and Vietnam to Bloody Sunday and Basra, little has changed. The difference is that today there is an extraordinary way of knowing how faraway societies are routinely ravaged in our name. WikiLeaks has acquired records of six years of civilian killing in both Afghanistan and Iraq, of which those published in the Guardian are a fraction.

What Pilger makes clear is that Assange held back on papers that would endanger anyone, in the absence of any help from the US authorities who refused to even acknowledge his request to say which files jeopardised people's lives. Because of this, many files are still not in the public domain and yet the very forces who have killed innocent people accuse Assange of endangering lives. How perverse is that?

Read The New Yorker's profile of Julian Assange.

UPDATE: Johan from Sweden has just left a comment here where he says something very interesting:

The two women actually went to police in order to try to make sure Assange was NOT accused of rape!
Because the prosecutors had decided to go for a rape case without asking the supposed victims! This is not the first time prosecutors in Sweden have taken orders from Americans, a similar thing happened with the famous Pirate Bay case some year ago which is a small issue for the US compared to this. What they did that time was to say that the Pirate Bay was full of child porn, even though they couldn't actually find any. Also the standards for sentencing someone for rape have often been criticized in Sweden for not really being appropriate. In many cases the accused has to prove his innocence rather than the other way around. So it's a pretty obvious choice of crime if you want to throw dirt on someone in Sweden.

UPDATE: News is breaking on CNN, Sky and others (16:30 Saturday) that the arrest warrant has been revoked and the prosecutor says there is no reason to believe Assange committed rape.

Wikileaks' Julian Assange victim of dirty tricks rape accusation

Utter bastards! We knew US officials were out to get Julian Assange of Wikileaks, a hero of our sad times, but this scrapes the bottom of the barrel and breaks through to a whole new bottom we never knew existed.

One worry was that the US would kidnap Assange through the blandly named "rendition" process for his public service in exposing the murders of civilians in the Afghanistan conflict. But now the Swedes have issued a warrant for the arrest of the Australian for rape! So if they can't shut him up by fair means or foul, the authorities will smear his reputation in a plot riffing on The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.

John Pilger documents Assange's brave work in a recent article:

In file after file, the brutalities echo the colonial past. From Malaya and Vietnam to Bloody Sunday and Basra, little has changed. The difference is that today there is an extraordinary way of knowing how faraway societies are routinely ravaged in our name. WikiLeaks has acquired records of six years of civilian killing in both Afghanistan and Iraq, of which those published in the Guardian are a fraction.

What Pilger makes clear is that Assange held back on papers that would endanger anyone, in the absence of any help from the US authorities who refused to even acknowledge his request to say which files jeopardised people's lives. Because of this, many files are still not in the public domain and yet the very forces who have killed innocent people accuse Assange of endangering lives. How perverse is that?

Read The New Yorker's profile of Julian Assange.

UPDATE: Johan from Sweden has just left a comment here where he says something very interesting:

The two women actually went to police in order to try to make sure Assange was NOT accused of rape!
Because the prosecutors had decided to go for a rape case without asking the supposed victims! This is not the first time prosecutors in Sweden have taken orders from Americans, a similar thing happened with the famous Pirate Bay case some year ago which is a small issue for the US compared to this. What they did that time was to say that the Pirate Bay was full of child porn, even though they couldn't actually find any. Also the standards for sentencing someone for rape have often been criticized in Sweden for not really being appropriate. In many cases the accused has to prove his innocence rather than the other way around. So it's a pretty obvious choice of crime if you want to throw dirt on someone in Sweden.

UPDATE: News is breaking on CNN, Sky and others (16:30 Saturday) that the arrest warrant has been revoked and the prosecutor says there is no reason to believe Assange committed rape.

The Usual Suspects: Stephen Baldwin IS Keyser Soze in Celebrity Big Brother

Stephen Baldwin's finest hour came when he starred in The Usual Suspects (1995). And it's been all downhill from there.

Watching the weirdest Celebrity Big Brother (every gurl needs a private vice) since George Galloway so famously did his cat thang and revealed his true charming self, I've been fascinated in a horrified sort of way with actor Stephen Baldwin. This right-wing shock jock and Christian fundamentalist (the Baldwin boy who looks like he had a difficult birth, according to some) has been spooking us with his bible-readings and proselytising, all of which, according to various housemates, has been a bit full-on.

It's yielded some darkly comic moments such as Stevie B converting a gullible Alex Reid who blubbed like the lost soul he is, and then proceeding to draw us into the horror fantasy of Alex having to shoot his own son, and snapping, "That's how God felt when he had to kill his only son." Then when Alex was at his lowest, whispering, "Hope I haven't bummed you out," and laughing manically.

Another crazed thing is him preachifying about compassion when the housemates finally put their foot down with the bratty Lady Sovereign (24) while he set out to smite sweet harmless Nicola T in a truly nasty two-faced vendetta.

This is American Psycho's Patrick Batemen but without the stylish clothes or the good haircut. He is gifted with a razored-on smile that slices all the way into his chubby cheeks and makes him a contender for the role of The Joker sans make-up now that Heath Ledger has mysteriously passed away. Hope you got an alibi, Brudder Steve.

So last night we dusted off The Usual Suspects and slung it on the player. I was pleasantly surprised with how good Stephen was. His natural unhinged qualities stood him well as the leather-jacketed Michael McManus, who may or may not have been in love with his partner in crime, Benicio Del Torres's Fenster. If you'd seen Stephen lovingly massaging the muscular Alex and fussing over him like a mother hen — "Fix your nose and you could play Bond" — you'd have your suspicions about exactly what is being repressed as well.

Or him staring — and I mean LASER BEAM wish-I-had-X-ray-vision-instead-of-these-little-piggies — in disapproval at the gorgeous Jonas clad only in his undies. In one hilarious and nutty moment, Stephen insisted that Jonas, who hails from Sweden where the human body has never been much of a hang-up, had pranced around in his "banana-hammock" only. It took the testimony of other housemates (and the video-tape, I keep tellin' ya, Stevie) and our collective memory to prove that Jonas was also wearing a vest as well. For, armed with the good lord on his side, Stephen only had eyes for one thing.

People want to shoot him with a reality gun. Revealing the Narnia in his head with each epic pronouncement, he swears things have happened that we know are not true because we have the video tape. Such as when he blamed Nicola for getting them into trouble with Big Brother by talking about nominations and attributing his own words spoken just that day to her. And because the woman challenged his version of reality, he now hates her, is poisoning everyone against her using the creepiest biblical language and declares forgiveness to be out the window. A cracked nut using the sledgehammer of his lordly wrath to crack a nut.

SPOILER ALERT: I was disappointed by The Usual Suspects because there's a great big hole in the plot. If Keyser Soze schemed so meticulously his genius plan to kill the one person who could identify him, then how about the entire police station that had seen him, spoken to him and fed him coffee? If he could disappear for them, then how about doing his vanishing trick for crims lacking the resources of America's finest?

Meanwhile, former CBB star, left shock-jock and Respect MP George Galloway continues to split himself between Jekyll and Hyde. This winter his Dr Jekyll did the most amazing and brave thing by leading the Viva Palestina aid convoy all the way to the blockaded people of Gaza through the enemy territory that Egypt has become. Following attacks and arrests, Galloway cried "Let my people go", was slung out of Egypt and found himself declared persona non grata — an honour under the circumstances. Go GG!

If you are watching Celebrity Big Brother, check the #cbb and #cbb7 Tweets during broadcast and share the schadenfreude as wackiness ensues.

The Usual Suspects: Stephen Baldwin IS Keyser Soze in Celebrity Big Brother

Stephen Baldwin's finest hour came when he starred in The Usual Suspects (1995). And it's been all downhill from there.

Watching the weirdest Celebrity Big Brother (every gurl needs a private vice) since George Galloway so famously did his cat thang and revealed his true charming self, I've been fascinated in a horrified sort of way with actor Stephen Baldwin. This right-wing shock jock and Christian fundamentalist (the Baldwin boy who looks like he had a difficult birth, according to some) has been spooking us with his bible-readings and proselytising, all of which, according to various housemates, has been a bit full-on.

It's yielded some darkly comic moments such as Stevie B converting a gullible Alex Reid who blubbed like the lost soul he is, and then proceeding to draw us into the horror fantasy of Alex having to shoot his own son, and snapping, "That's how God felt when he had to kill his only son." Then when Alex was at his lowest, whispering, "Hope I haven't bummed you out," and laughing manically.

Another crazed thing is him preachifying about compassion when the housemates finally put their foot down with the bratty Lady Sovereign (24) while he set out to smite sweet harmless Nicola T in a truly nasty two-faced vendetta.

This is American Psycho's Patrick Batemen but without the stylish clothes or the good haircut. He is gifted with a razored-on smile that slices all the way into his chubby cheeks and makes him a contender for the role of The Joker sans make-up now that Heath Ledger has mysteriously passed away. Hope you got an alibi, Brudder Steve.

So last night we dusted off The Usual Suspects and slung it on the player. I was pleasantly surprised with how good Stephen was. His natural unhinged qualities stood him well as the leather-jacketed Michael McManus, who may or may not have been in love with his partner in crime, Benicio Del Torres's Fenster. If you'd seen Stephen lovingly massaging the muscular Alex and fussing over him like a mother hen — "Fix your nose and you could play Bond" — you'd have your suspicions about exactly what is being repressed as well.

Or him staring — and I mean LASER BEAM wish-I-had-X-ray-vision-instead-of-these-little-piggies — in disapproval at the gorgeous Jonas clad only in his undies. In one hilarious and nutty moment, Stephen insisted that Jonas, who hails from Sweden where the human body has never been much of a hang-up, had pranced around in his "banana-hammock" only. It took the testimony of other housemates (and the video-tape, I keep tellin' ya, Stevie) and our collective memory to prove that Jonas was also wearing a vest as well. For, armed with the good lord on his side, Stephen only had eyes for one thing.

People want to shoot him with a reality gun. Revealing the Narnia in his head with each epic pronouncement, he swears things have happened that we know are not true because we have the video tape. Such as when he blamed Nicola for getting them into trouble with Big Brother by talking about nominations and attributing his own words spoken just that day to her. And because the woman challenged his version of reality, he now hates her, is poisoning everyone against her using the creepiest biblical language and declares forgiveness to be out the window. A cracked nut using the sledgehammer of his lordly wrath to crack a nut.

SPOILER ALERT: I was disappointed by The Usual Suspects because there's a great big hole in the plot. If Keyser Soze schemed so meticulously his genius plan to kill the one person who could identify him, then how about the entire police station that had seen him, spoken to him and fed him coffee? If he could disappear for them, then how about doing his vanishing trick for crims lacking the resources of America's finest?

Meanwhile, former CBB star, left shock-jock and Respect MP George Galloway continues to split himself between Jekyll and Hyde. This winter his Dr Jekyll did the most amazing and brave thing by leading the Viva Palestina aid convoy all the way to the blockaded people of Gaza through the enemy territory that Egypt has become. Following attacks and arrests, Galloway cried "Let my people go", was slung out of Egypt and found himself declared persona non grata — an honour under the circumstances. Go GG!

If you are watching Celebrity Big Brother, check the #cbb and #cbb7 Tweets during broadcast and share the schadenfreude as wackiness ensues.