Why didn’t @YourAnonNews credit @Stavvers?

At 23:49 15th August, Stavvers tweeted:

Police are subject to the same dark magicks as vampires, and therefore cannot enter an embassy uninvited #policefacts

— Another Angry Woman (@stavvers) August 15, 2012

At 23:56 15th August, Anonymous tweeted:

Police are subject to the same dark magicks as vampires, and therefore cannot enter an embassy uninvited #policefacts

— Anonymous (@YourAnonNews) August 15, 2012

Character count shows it would have been perfectly possible for Anonymous to RT it giving Stavvers credit, rather than steal it outright.

Why then the violation of the law of Twitter – repeat, retweet, but credit?

Ah, yet another argument about international law. Just get on that fucking plane, Julian.

— Another Angry Woman (@stavvers) August 15, 2012

Perhaps because Stavvers has consistently made clear that Julian Assange has no moral high ground to stand on when he evades going back to Sweden?

Stavvers, 13th July 2011: I think Julian Assange is a rapist. I still like Wikileaks.

What Assange did was wrong. Thoroughly wrong. I had hoped we had reached a stage where penetrating a woman who is unable to consent or using force to penetrate a woman is known by all to be something that is thoroughly reprehensible and worthy of punishment. I am disappointed and furious that this is not the case.

It is perfectly possible to decry Assange while supporting Wikileaks. As a project, I think Wikileaks is a good thing. Some information needs to be made available in the public domain, and Wikileaks is brilliant for facilitating this. I also believe in free speech, something championed by Wikileaks. Free speech allows me to express my opinion that Julian Assange is a rapist.

Assange is not Wikileaks. For starters, Wikileaks is a large project which is staffed by many people other than Assange. Another difference is that Julian Assange is most likely a rapist, and Wikileaks is not. It is therefore perfectly simple to support Wikileaks while acknowledging what Assange did is completely and utterly wrong.

Stavvers, 20th June 2012: I still think Julian Assange is a rapist.

So why won’t Assange go back to Sweden, where he is still phenomenally unlikely to find his arse extradited? All that is left, once the smoke and mirrors of the inflated threat of extradition from Sweden clears, is the fact that Assange raped two of Sweden’s citizens. And of course, Assange’s fans are still banging the rape apologism drum.

They fundamentally (probably wilfully) misunderstand consent, one site thinking that a sleeping woman should have probably expressed non-consent if she didn’t want to be raped while asleep. Another, an incoherent mess suggesting that the site was put together by run-of-the-mill rape apologists rather than the hackers, laments Sweden’s “gender politics”, considering the whole thing to be some sort of big feminist conspiracy to get men to wear condoms. And of course, the survivors are dragged through the mud again and again, and my heart goes out to them. Not only do they suffer the utterly vile abuse of the fans, but they are instrumentalised in a both real and perceived international power struggle by a reboant chorus of cunts who can’t tell the difference between a rapist and a website.

The rape apologism shows the last resort of people with no other form of argument. The US extradition threat from Sweden is flimsy, but Assange wants to evade any form of accountability for his actions.

Keep seeing people I follow arguing with rape apologists I blocked a long time ago. Convinces me I did the right thing.

— Another Angry Woman (@stavvers) August 16, 2012

The case against Julian Assange is simple and summed up in three tweets, based not on what the two women in Sweden said he did but what Assange himself admits he did:

“Provided your not passed out due to drug or alcohol and there is an expectation that it would be welcomed, it is not rape” fuck off

— Nicholas Kiddle (@ksej) August 16, 2012

performing sexual acts on a person who is unable to consent because of an “expectation that it would be welcomed” is R.A.P.E.

— Nicholas Kiddle (@ksej) August 16, 2012

expectation, fuck that noise. Every single rapist in ever says “But they wanted it really, I could tell”

— Nicholas Kiddle (@ksej) August 16, 2012

So why are so many people defending Assange? It’s perfectly possible to believe Wikileaks was a force for good in the world without thinking that means Julian Assange gets any woman he wants regardless of what she wants and you mustn’t call it rape.

Ian Dunt, 20th June 2012:

Assange’s dismissal of these charges, and that of his overly-eager supporters, is simply abysmal. It is part of a depressing tapestry, where violence against women – alleged or proven – is treated as a sub-plot to politics, music or sport. Chris Brown, who violently assaulted his then-girlfriend Rihanna, is now invited to perform at award events as if nothing had happened. Mike Tyson, who was convicted of raping an 18-year-old girl, announced yesterday he was bringing a show to Broadway with the help of celebrated film director Spike Lee. Assange’s supporters, who include some of the most respectable and impressive figures on the British left, seem to have the same blindspot.

Part of it is that Julian Assange has used every resource he has available to him to make himself look like the victim – and anyone who points out that with regard to the two women he raped he is not the victim, is a threat to that picture of the saintly and persecuted Julian.

Who was it who coined the term AssAngels to describe St Julian’s devotees? I forget, but all I know is I love that person.

— Another Angry Woman (@stavvers) August 16, 2012

Rape jokes are something rape culture generally uses to keep rapists comfortable and women silent. For Anonymous to credit Stavvers with the #policefacts joke would have meant not only linking followers to a sensible and articulate case against Assange and his AssAngels, but also crediting an opponent with being funnier than Anonymous.

And that they were evidently unwilling to do.

HEY EVERYONE REMEMBER THAT BIT IN 24 WHEN JACK BAUER STORMED AN EMBASSY AND THEN THE CHINESE GOT CROSS AND SOME INCOHERENT SHIT HAPPENED?

— Another Angry Woman (@stavvers) August 15, 2012

@stillicides I get the feeling, given this latest development, he’s already bored shitless in there and has been watching season 4 of 24.

— Another Angry Woman (@stavvers) August 15, 2012

2:31 A.M.
Wearing a mask, Jack enters the Consulate building as Tony guides him to the guards’ locations. Jack climbs up to an inside balcony and shoots a tranquilizer gun into the neck of a Chinese guard, who drops to the floor.

2:33 A.M.
Jack silently takes down guards who man the room where Lee is. Jack knocks out Lee and carries him. Tony alerts Jack to approaching guards, and Jack runs as they fire at him. Koo comes out and is accidentally shot by his own guards. Curtis and the agents run to the entrance to help Jack, and a Chinese guard briefly unmasks an agent named Bern. Bern recovers and puts his mask back on. Day 4: 2:00 A.M.-3:00 A.M

@opinionatedpavs @stillicides It’ll suck when he gets on to season 5 and starts freaking out about Russians with nerve gas or whatever.

— Another Angry Woman (@stavvers) August 15, 2012

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange remains locked up in a building as he continues his bids to avoid being locked up in a building.

Mr Assange, who is currently holed up in Ecuador’s London Embassy after requesting political asylum, faces the prospect of immediate arrest and being locked up in another building if he leaves the building that he is currently locked up in.

Newsthump.

It’s a trivial point – a Julian Assange supporter/rape apologist refusing to credit that one of the opposition made a funnier joke than they did – but it illustrates something important about their character, too.