A tangential thought on the Wikileaks thing
The Anonymous group of hackers has never really been my favorite. I mean, they're known for attacking musicians and other organizations who defend the right for musicians to be paid for their work. This doesn't endear them to me
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Behind this whole argument lies the explosive notion of the Truth. The Truth - as opposed to the small-T truth - is the grand principle of free flow of accurate information, no matter how embarrassing to whom. A noble idea, and certainly critical to democracy and empowerment of the common person.
Wikileaks predicates their entire existence on this core idea: serving the truth.
Two things gnaw at me about this related to the article you cite: a casual treatment of the truth in defense of Assange et al. In particular I wrote above that nobody questions whether the sexual assault charges are credible; but if you read the Guardian article you'd certainly think that they are. Are they? Hard to tell.
The article uses the kind of rhetorical cleverness that, when I find it lurking in right wing blogs or Fox news, is cause for furious despair. "Barack Hussein Obama has mingled with Muslims all his life, and Muslims have carried out the most heinous attacks on America." Note that nobody says Obama is Muslim, or that he has supported Muslims or attacks on America, but the argument is obviously that Obama is a terrorist.
The Guardian writesThere is a long tradition of the use of rape and sexual assault for political agendas that have nothing to do with women's safety. In the south of the US, the lynching of black men was often justified on grounds that they had raped or even looked at a white woman. Women don't take kindly to our demand for safety being misused, while rape continues to be neglected at best or protected at worst.
They don't actually say that these women have fabricated their story, or that the charges aren't credible, or that this has nothing to do with sexual assault and only politics. It's just juxtaposition at best, disingenuous innuendo at worst.
This is what I mean about casual treatment of the truth. If you want open access to facts, no matter who gets embarrassed - then you'd better not be publishing unsubstantiated guilt-by-association arguments designed to suppress a rape prosecution, even if it's your guy on the hot seat.
The Guardian kind of breaks my heart. They're kind of the Fox News of the left. They will selectively quote, change words around, use rhetorical and logical tricks to shape stories to fit their ideological ends. The fact that they're ideology is also mostly my ideology doesn't actually make it better: they're still faffing about with the Truth. (I had a big long thing substantiating the Guardian's loose editorial standards with facts and truth, but I'll spare you that for now.)
I want to get behind Wikileaks and their supporters, but they're making it really, really hard to do so.
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that quote was from a letter to the editor, not an employee of the guardian
i didn't take that quote to indicate that there was any relevance to whether the charges were fabricated or not, only that it was awfully convenient to aggressively pursue an alleged attacker in one situation when 98% of the time they get ignored
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