US to host World Press Freedom Day after trying to shut down wikileaks?

From the 'you've got to be fucking joking' file

US TO HOST WORLD PRESS FREEDOM DAY 2011
Press Statement
Philip J. Crowley
Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Public Affairs
Washington, DC
December 7, 2010
The United States is pleased to announce that it will host UNESCO’s World Press Freedom Day event in 2011, from May 1 - May 3 in Washington, D.C. UNESCO is the only UN agency with the mandate to promote freedom of expression and its corollary, freedom of the press.

The theme for next year’s commemoration will be 21st Century Media: New Frontiers, New Barriers. The United States places technology and innovation at the forefront of its diplomatic and development efforts.

The audacity of America, trumped up charges about not wearing a condom (in seems wikileaked in more ways than one?) followed by a concentrated cyber attack gives them the right reasons to be celebrating World Press Freedom day? The nature of the sleazy charges against him seem more like bitchy high school rumour mongering than rape...

His first accuser, who cannot be named in Sweden for legal reasons, is a feminist academic in her late thirties who worked as an official with Sweden's Social Democratic Party.

She was in regular contact with Mr Assange before his move to Sweden, helping to organise his appearances at lectures as well as agreeing to let him use her flat while he was in Stockholm.

They first met in person on the afternoon of 14 August, when she returned to her flat after a few days away from the capital. According to her testimony, which was leaked to the Swedish media, the pair went out for dinner and returned to the flat, where they had sex.

At some point a condom broke, a fact that neither side denies, although the woman alleges that it was broken deliberately by Mr Assange.

Mr Assange's first accuser made no immediate attempt to contact the authorities. It was only when she was contacted by the second accuser four days later that the pair decided to go to the police.

Instead the first woman arranged a "crayfish party" - a traditional Swedish summer get-together - for the following evening in honour of the WikiLeaks founder in her flat.

In an entry on the woman's Twitter account, which she later tried to erase, Mr Assange's first accuser described her joy at hosting a party for the world's most famous cyber activist. "Sitting outside nearly freezing with the world's coolest people," she wrote. "It's pretty amazing."

What the first woman was unaware of was that Mr Assange had already begun flirting with another Swedish woman, whom he had met earlier that day at a talk he had given to a trade union.

Mr Assange's second accuser is in her early twenties and lives in the town of Enkping. She met Mr Assange and the first woman during a lunch after the talks. They flirted, watched a film together and "became intimate", but Mr Assange left that evening to attend the crayfish party.

The following Monday they met again and travelled to the woman's home in Enkping, where, according to the police testimony, they had consensual sex using a condom. The following morning, the woman alleges, Mr Assange had sex with her while she was asleep and didn't wear a condom.

At some point over the next three days Mr Assange's two lovers crossed paths and discovered that they had both slept with the same man. They both also claimed to have had their own experiences of a lover who was reluctant to use protection.

On 20 August the pair went to a police station in Stockholm to seek advice on how to make a complaint against Mr Assange, and investigate the possibility of forcing him to take an HIV test.

After listening to their testimonies, a prosecutor decided that Mr Assange should be sought on suspicion of sexual molestation for the first woman, and rape for the second.

Within 24 hours Sweden's chief prosecutor dismissed the rape charge against Mr Assange, but the following month a separate prosecutor, Marianne Ny, reopened the case, resulting in the European arrest warrant that brought Mr Assange to court yesterday.

...so these two women met, gossiped and out of this comes a rape complaint regarding condom practice? At least the witches from Salem had a punchline with their trials, this seems to be as stretched as thin as a wikileaks condom. The only thing more farcical than these trumped up charges that were dismissed in the first 24 hours is America hosting World Press Freedom Day.

Rape is an under reported vicious crime that robs those of whom it is perpetrated against and must be stamped out with all the force society can muster, but continuing sex when a condom breaks is so many light years from what rape as a word associates with it is difficult to see these charges as anything more than a trumped up witch hunt.