Jeff Does Astrology

Capricorn as performed and photographed by Jeff Ellsworth

Over on the blog Jeff Ellsworth Witnessing A Second Life you can see my co-blogger Jeff Ellsworth posing as your astrological sign of the Zodiac. Bareassed, cute and funny! 

Bock, Whats Your Beef With Assange?

As I have written more than a few posts on Julian Assange and the extradition circus, that is now in its final stages, I have sometimes been asked by friends - and others - what I have against Assange or for that matter WikiLeaks.

Conversations in IM chats have their difficulties and many facts get lost, overlooked or forgotten, so I thought I should try to summarize my points of view on some of the issues debated.

Before starting I would like to emphatically stress the fact that everything as yet is based on what has been reported in the media coverage of the matters which are not always the most reliable sources. At the present time Julian Assange is only wanted for questioning by the Swedish prosecutor Marianne Ny on charges made against him. Assange has not been indicted and is far from condemned by a court of law.

1. WikiLeaks
I firmly and wholeheartedly admire and support the work that WikiLeaks has done, is doing and hopefully will continue to do. I also admire Assange for his co-founding of this organisation.

In my mind every healthy society - and the world community as a whole - needs to be informed about the wheeling and dealing and misdoings of the powers that be, especially in foreign policy and military matters.

Whistle-blowing, i.e. people passing on secret information to the press, is a fundamental and inherent part of a democratic society and are essential for a free press. However, sometimes information alone is not enough as this can be swept aside as hearsay or speculation. In these cases the press has to be supplied with corroborating documentation to prove the case. Passing on classified documents is however a crime in most countries, even when - as in Sweden - the passing of information itself is allowed and supported by the constitution.

My only objections to WikiLeaks is that the organization should try even harder to protect their sources so  they do not risk criminal charges and - perhaps - also should try evaluating if, when and in what form the publishing of certain information and documents could put human lives or liberty at risk.

2. Rape or not?
I was raised to believe that women and men are equal, with full and equal human rights. As a part of this I also fundamentally believe that no one is allowed to force sex on anyone else without prior consent. It is also my belief that any consent to sexual activity can be given with whatever limitations a woman or man sees fit, even if the limitation should be that the one penetrating them should use a condom.

If anyone then with disregard of the limitation stated  proceeds to have sexual activity with someone else the ensuing act is done without consent.

Sex without consent is correctly named rape. Rape is a crime in most countries.

Assange´s supporters, among these most notably John Pilger (Australian journalist and documentary filmmaker) and Michael Moore (American documentary filmmaker) have both embarked on a crusade to vilify the two Swedish women and the Swedish system of justice. Their main arguments seemingly being that this is not the usual violent street-rape and that Sweden is acting in cahoots with the United States military complex in getting at the, in their mind, lily white Assange.

3. Is Assange a rapist?
Hell, I don´t know and neither does anyone else, except for Assange himself and the two Swedish women that have made the charges. It is precisely for that reason Sweden wants Assange to come to Sweden to answer the questions of the Swedish prosecutors. Admittedly there seems to be conflicting evidence but this is a matter for the prosecutor to evaluate and weigh before she decides if Assange should be indicted or not.

If the prosecutor should find that she does not have a strong enough case to get a verdict she will close the inquiry and Assange will be deemed innocent of all charges. Should the prosecutor however decide that there is enough proof to indict Assange the cases will go to trial and all the proofs in the cases will be laid before the Swedish courts, by both the prosecution and the defense.

Before the final judgement of the courts has been made in these cases none of us can know a damn thing about whether or not Assange is guilty of any crimes or not.

The Tribute - The Opening

DJ Wesley Spengler opened a new club in SecondLife. It is called The Tribute.The club was filled with old-timers and some new too. When I saw some of the rez-dates I realized that I could still consider myself to be a  strapping young man in SecondLife. Some of these hot men were actually almost three years older than I am.

If I understood correctly Wesley will be doing both Euro and American sets in the future, which would be really awesome!

The best thing about being around old-timers in a club is that these guys have learned the importance of keeping the local chat going and to entertain each other with what they have to offer, both nostalgia and crazy memories and just plain funny stuff.

I had a really great time and thoroughly enjoyed myself!

Suspected Criminal Turns Politician

Photo by Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP

The guardian.co.uk website reports;

"The WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange plans to run for a seat in Australia's senate next year despite being under virtual house arrest in the UK and facing sex crime allegations (actually two counts of suspected rape, my comment) in Sweden.

The 40-year-old Australian citizen has taken his legal battle against extradition all the way to Britain's supreme court, which is expected to rule on his case soon."

Read the full article here: guardian.co.uk; Julian Assange  to run for Australian senate.

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Well, I am sure this will not be the first time in history that a suspected criminal enters politics. It should come as no surprise to anyone that I am not wishing him any luck in this endeavor.

Avacar, Get Your Thumbs Out...

My buddy Butch Diavolo has now - despite dental surgery, tooth extractions and terrible pains - fulfilled the requirements for an invitation to the Rhino Bloggers Group by posting three times in a week on his newly started blog Butch´s Ramblings.

Please send the courageous and heroic man an invitation to the Rhino Bloggers group a.s.a.p., Avacar!

Welcome to the group, Butch!

P.S. Never mind, Avacar buddy, I discovered that I could do it myself so I sent him the invitation! ;)

Damn You, Google!

This weekend Google has decided to screw with bloggers outside the United States again it seems. They have now decided to chang the addresses to all the Blogger (a part of Google) blogs in your blogrolls.

I didn't understand that something was wrong or what was going on until I read this post on J.M.G. Joe Jervis´s readers are usually an extremely chatty crowd and the fact that I couldn't see a single comment in his last ten posts made me suspicious.

What you have to do to get your browser directing to
http://[blogname].blogspot.com/ instead of the http://[blogname].blogspot.[your country code].is to change to the correct address in your browser by changing the address to http://[blogname].blogspot.com/ncr. Then click enter and the ncr will disappear while the .com will remain.

Once you have done this the original versions of the blog will remain in your browser. You do not need to change your blogroll (my wrong sorry). The change survives a restart, but I guess you have to do this every time you visit a new Blogger blog or change browsers or computers or anything else...

Please note:
1. Thankfully Google is only messing with its own Blogger blogs, the other blogging services remain unchanged.
2. Bloggers in the United States are not effected.

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This is plain stupid, whatever lofty and high sounding reasons they may give for the change!

UPDATE Sunday March 18: If my own personal experience is true for everyone it seems we must perform the change to .com/ncr everyday.

Visiting Ziggy

I logged into my SecondLife yesterday without any real plans, just to do whatever came to mind or depending on what a events would be announced in my groups.

As I was feeling cold in my first life I dug out an old sweater from my inventory, after having made a quick check around the home sim I was ready to go. At that instant I got an IM from my friend the always studelicious Ziggy Starsmith.

Ziggy sometimes tries to portray himself as one of the baddest boys in SecondLife. It may well be that he is towards those who deserve it, but to me he has always been friendly, sweet and kind. I have a knack of consistently befriending the biggest bitches and bastards in the basket, perhaps because I am one myself or perhaps because I firmly believe we all need the rebels and those who tell us what´s what without fear. In my experience those claiming to always be ever so friendly most likely turn out to be vicious, there are however exceptions to this rule.

When Ziggy called me I remembered he and his hubby Holter had recently moved to a new home and halfway forced myself upon him to show me their new place. He had to interrupt the hiking trip he was on to go home, but he was very sweet about it.

The guys new home is named Bron Yr Aur (which is Welch for "almost gold"). It is a beautiful, luscious and green wooded parcel with loads of birds and animals - not to mention chimes - everywhere. The guys had been busy making it into a warm and friendly haven.

After taking a look around the parcel Ziggy led me to a spot in the wooded garden and we sat down there for a long talk covering everything from serial killers over dreams (lucid dreaming in particular) and ending with brief insights into our first life dating histories. I had a splendid time and big chunks of the weight from the previous work week were erased from my mind. Even if the Friday coma eventually hit me with full force, I was feeling in a much better mood after our long talk than I had been in when I logged in. That´s what good friends are for!

Thanks for soothing my mind, Ziggy, hope to see you again soon!

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For more pictures of our meeting please visit "Ziggy On The Edge Of Second Life; A Visit With A Friend"