Tiger Beatdown
#MooreandMe, Five Days and Running: Run It All The Way Down (A Timeline of Relevant Quotes)
.
1. CRIME
Assange has been charged with something called “sex by surprise,” which reportedly carries a $715 fine. According to Assange’s London attorney, Mark Stephens, prosecutors have yet to explain the charges or meet with the WikiLeaks chief to discuss them, which he’s agreed to do. “Whatever ‘sex by surprise’ is, it’s only an offense in Sweden—not in the U.K. or the U.S. or even Ibiza,” Stephens fumed.
– Mark Stephens, via Slate, 12/3/2010. None of the above statements are true. They have all been proven wrong. A retraction of these false statements has not been publicly made by Mark Stephens.
KeithOlbermann RT @BiancaJagger ‘#Assange “rape” accuser has #CIA ties’ [LINK REDACTED FOR NAMING AND THEREBY ENDANGERING ACCUSERS.]
– Michael Moore, on his Twitter, 2:22 p.m., 12/5/2010. The above statement is not true. It cannot be proven. It was taken from the website of MarkCrispinMiller.com, using information “broken” by a Holocaust denier who is associated with WikiLeaks. It leaks the names of both Assange accusers, thus endangering them immensely. A retraction has yet to be made by Michael Moore or Keith Olbermann.
And the issue here is that if he were any other just normal Brit, with this so-called ‘crime’ that he’s been accused of — which I understand isn’t, wouldn’t actually be a crime if it was committed in Britain, a condom broke I believe is the ‘evidence.’
– Michael Moore, while literally laughing out loud, BBC, 12/14/2010. None of the above statements are true. They have been proven wrong. They had been proven wrong before Michael Moore went on the air and made them. A retraction of these false statements has not been publicly made by Michael Moore.
2. AND PUNISHMENT
“Mr. Borgstrom said Mr. Assange’s statement that he has “heard no evidence whatsoever” to support the allegations was false, since the contents of the police report were made available to his Swedish lawyers weeks ago. By presenting the case as a vendetta, he said, Mr. Assange and his legal team were misrepresenting a justice system that required approval from Sweden’s highest appeal court before the extradition warrant was approved. “Those who say that the judges in our court of appeal were influenced by pressure from the United States don’t know what they’re talking about,” he said. “It’s absurd”.
He said by presenting the allegations against him as part of a political conspiracy, Mr. Assange had made “victims” of the two women, who now faced vilification on the Internet and regular death threats.
– The New York Times, 12/18/2010. This article also provides full and accurate information of the allegations against Assange, including that he (a) pulled one woman’s clothes off & snapped her necklace, then tore them off again when she tried to put them back on, (b) pinned that woman and held her down to prevent her from getting the condoms, then put one on to penetrate her — as per this account, penetration happening after he’d demonstrated force toward her twice and she had every reason to reasonably believe resisting him might get her physically hurt; that is to say, after physical force had been used to coerce the victim and remove her ability to consent, thus constituting rape — and apparently “did something to it” to make it break, (c) penetrated an unconscious woman, and (d) went back to the first woman, naked from the waist down, and rubbed himself against her without her consent. In the wake of one of the world’s most prestigious newspapers publishing proof that their earlier statements were false and had demonstrably endangered the lives of the two women in the case, neither Mark Stephens nor Michael Moore nor Keith Olbermann have issued a public retraction of their false statements.
I do not know who has given these documents to the media, but the purpose can only be one thing – trying to make Julian look bad.
– Bjorn Hurtig, lawyer of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, now apparently opposing leaks of accurate information that had previously been misrepresented to or hidden from the press if those leaks also happen to make someone “look bad,” 12/18/2010.
3. AND CONSEQUENCES (RUN IT ALL THE WAY DOWN).
We require — not ask, not prefer, absolutely require – progressive media and public figures to stand against rape in every case. Again, this is not negotiable. This is mandatory. This is a requirement: If you don’t stand against rape, and make that stand a crucial and central part of your platform, we do not accept you either as a real “progressive” or as someone who is in any way qualified for authority or a leadership position. We will not buy your merchandise; we will not support you; we will speak out against you. Because a progressive movement that doesn’t stand against rape isn’t a progressive movement. It’s just The Man, it’s just the oppressor, it’s just oppression, in a baseball hat, holding a camcorder.
– Tiger Beatdown, 12/15/10
And that’s what I wanted to write about—the friends, brothers, lovers in the counterfeit male-dominated Left. The good guys who think they know what Women’s Lib, as they so chummily call it, is all about—who then proceed to degrade and destroy women by almost everything they say and do: The cover on the last issue of Rat (front and back). The token pussy power orclit militancy articles. The snide descriptions of women staffers on the masthead. The little jokes, the personal ads, the smile, the snarl. No more, brothers. No more well-meaning ignorance, no more cooptation, no more assuming that this thing we’re all fighting for is the same; one revolution under one man, with liberty and justice for all. No more... A genuine Left doesn’t consider anyone’s suffering irrelevant or titillating; nor does it function as a microcosm of capitalist economy, with men competing for power and status at the top, and women doing all the work at the bottom (and functioning as objectified prizes or coin as well). Goodbye to all that.
Run it all the way down.
– Robin Morgan, “Goodbye To All That,” Year of Our Lord Nineteen Hundred and fucking SEVENTY.
I’ll suspend this account until/if this frenzy is stopped.
– Keith Olbermann, on his Twitter, 2:01 P.M., 12/16/2010
Keep dreaming, Keith Olbermann. And, for that matter, the suspiciously silent-again Michael Moore. We have been opposing the rape culture and misogyny of our pretend “allies” on the “left” — which is not a genuine Left, if it doesn’t stand by women, and if it doesn’t stand against rape in all cases — since this movement began. We have been exposing, protesting, and resisting it. We are the Left: We do not stand for rape apologism and rape culture. We oppose it. By definition, opposing rape apologism and rape culture is what the Left must do. If we agree on nothing else — if I, personally, disagree with Robin Morgan all the damn time, if I sometimes feel like I agree with her about literally nothing else — we agree on this. And, given that we’ve been saying this stuff since at least 1970, we can keep saying it for a few more days. A few more weeks. A few more months, or a few more years: We can keep putting pressure on you to apologize for giving false information, failing to correct it, and endangering rape victims and/or women who report rape for as long as we have to, until you come down from that tower and tell us you know what you did was wrong.
Hashtag: #MooreandMe. User name: @MMFlint. Until it stops.
*OH SHIT DID YOU SEE THAT??? Did you see THAT RIGHT THERE???? That was A CORRECTION, SON. That’s right: I got something factually wrong, and someone pointed it out to me, and I was all “oh whoops” and issued a PUBLIC FUCKING CORRECTION, as soon as someone pointed it out to me. And I am, despite all odds, not leaving Twitter, not crying in the bathrooms, not writing multiple angry Tweets about how angry the person asking for correction makes me, not hiding under the couch, and not actually, physically DEAD. Which means (a) that making corrections is physically possible, (b) that responsible writers, bloggers, media figures, AND JOURNALISTS ALL DO IT, and (c) the person running this website — “Sady Doyle?” — is apparently less of a wimp than Michael Moore or Keith Olbermann. And so are you. We are all demonstrably stronger than they are. These notably loud, vocal, opinionated, impressive, intimidating, world-famous and/or Oscar-winning men are evidently so intimidated by us asking them to be accountable that they have responded with temper tantrums and silence rather than look us in the face. Like, they can’t even come up with something about how we’re wrong. Because we aren’t, and it scares the shit out of them. Take a minute to think about how fucking impressive you all are for doing this. And then keep going. Because you’re winning. We all are. And we can win more, and better, tomorrow.
