Julian assange

Ah, at last the scales have fallen from Jemima Khan’s lovely fluttery little doe eyes. Having forked out £20,000 towards Julian Assange’s bail, the pouting metro-lefty socialite has come to the conclusion that the bloke is a bit of a rum chap, all things considered. She has even compared him to the barking charlatan who founded Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard and described Assange as demanding from his followers ‘blinkered, cultish, devotion.’ Well, sure – we tried to tell you that at the time, poppet. But you’re still not getting your money back. I wonder if the Ecuadoreans are sick of Assange yet, sitting in the basement of their embassy, referring to himself in the third person and tapping away at his laptop with a messianic look in his eyes?

The remorseless smears of the alleged victims of serious sexual assault by George Galloway MP and Craig Murray, our former ambassador to Uzbekistan will have serious consequences for the victims of sexual assault on British shores. Both men are guilty of some of the most callous behaviour of modern political times in their intemperate outbursts, which are about much more than Julian Assange. The victims of these crimes in this country already suffer from a unique combination of trauma and stigma. It is no surprise that rape and associated crimes are perennially underreported. An authoritative study commissioned by the Home Office in 2007 found that 'between 75 and 95 per cent of rape crimes are never reported to the police'.

George Galloway got a spade out today and made a statement in which he attempted to clarify his comments about the allegations against Julian Assange. He dug himself a little deeper, saying that 'what occurred is not rape as most people understand it'. Assange is wanted in Sweden - but not yet charged - on allegations of rape, unlawful coercion and sexual molestation. Rod Liddle blogs that he thinks Galloway has a point. The law says he does not. There is a lesson to be learned from Galloway's comments, though, which is that rape is not well understood at all. When he says something is 'not rape as most people understand it', this is because society still largely imagines rape as an unexpected attack on a woman walking down a dark alley late at night.

I wonder how long it will be before Julian Assange’s highborn leftist supporters finally think, um, hang on, are we on the right side here? The self-obsessed albino mental is now cowering inside the Ecuadorian embassy as a last ditch attempt to get out of his extradition to Sweden. As you are aware, he faces charges of rape and sexual assault in Sweden. His objection to complying with British and international law is that he might be extradited to the USA and put in a gas chamber, if they still have them. There is not the remotest evidence to suggest this would happen. Can you imagine how the left would react if any other alleged rapist attempted to evade justice by hiding in the basement of a banana republic’s embassy?

Bill Keller, the executive editor of The New York Times, has written a highly readable piece chronicling his paper’s tempestuous relationship with Julian Assange. Keller does a good job defending how The New York Times handled the documents that Wikileaks passed it, the steps it took to minimise the risk posed to the lives of the people mentioned in the documents. But the part of the piece that sticks in the mind is how the man Keller sent to meet Assange described the source to his editor: “He’s tall — probably 6-foot-2 or 6-3 — and lanky, with pale skin, gray eyes and a shock of white hair that seizes your attention,” Schmitt wrote to me later.

Now the Wikileaks are beginning to become dangerous. Before, the leaks contained high-level tittle-tattle, confirmation of existing analyses and embarrassingly accurate portraits of world leaders. I still thought it wrong to regurgitate this data, as it will lead to more secrecy, bilateral problems and potentially even conflicts – the things that Julian Assange claims he is seeking to avoid. Yet I told NPR that the idea of prosecuting the Wikileaks founder for treason was far-fetched; he is not a US citizen and it was not clear to me what kind of charges could be brought against him in the US courts. Now, however, with the publication of data which will be useful background reading for any would-be terrorist, the situation has changed.