I Am Just Sick. Julian Assange arrested, denied bail, confined to a UK jail cell deemed unsuitable for Bush, Blair or their murderous peers. Britain even assured Israel that its war criminals could visit England without fear of politically motivated arrest warrants. So much for the Assange-is-Mossad rumor. Arrested for what? Publishing evidence of governments conspiring against their peoples’ interests, in their own words? Really, what’s next for our pretense of Democracy?
No, it was accusations of sexual impropriety, technically. Rape and molestation being the corporate media’s chosen translation of how Swedes might describe a consensual sexual encounter gone off, according to post-coital television interviewees, turned insufficiently feminist-sensitive. Do I sound flippant? Two women in Sweden, described as groupies, of activist pedigree it’s alleged, one elder cementing the resolve of the younger, shall we call them Lewinsky and Tripp, accusing Assange of disrespecting their gender.
They play right into the stereotype I have of single-issue advocates who can’t get past affronts to their own personal agendas. Whatever Assange’s transgressions, is not the fate of the western world, the awakening of its public participants in the balance? Though Swedish authorities originally dismissed the accusations, the pair is determined to interrupt Wikileaks’ Cablegate to school Assange in his bedside manner?
Whether instigated by intelligence operatives or not, the charges made by the two women have been the only hooks which authorities have been able to get into Assange. Will extradition to Sweden to answer police inquiries lead to US rendition to a secret facility? Should we hope that at the very least the Brits resist US pressure to interrogate Assange, or affect the operation of Wikileaks by coercion and duress?
We must hope the Assange’s colleagues can secure Wikileaks before their sysadmin is tortured for his access codes.
Hearing the New York Times assail the character of Julian Assange as having delusions of grandeur, I’m reminded of how a centuries earlier ruling class rid themselves of the populist scourge Napoleon. Defeated once, Napoleon was able to escape banishment and had but to set foot on French soil and with only the force of his personality he was able to reconstitute his campaign to free the European citizenry of their despotic monarchs. Defeated again, Napoleon was too popular to execute and so was banished again. This time, it’s alleged, a heroic loyalist submitted to be contaminated with syphilis and thence to infect and ground the upstart Napoleon for good.
The remaining Wikileaks crew is at greater risk than Julian Assange, lacking his media visibility, they could be disappeared without fanfare. But that’s evidently a fading misconception of mine. Assange’s high profile hasn’t helped him.
One of Assange’s accusers, Anna Ardin, worked in Cuba with the Las damas de blanco (the Ladies in White), a feminist anti-Castro group, and a CIA-affiliated outfit. She’s also a “gender equity officer” at Uppsala University. Both she, and her co-accuser Sofia Wilén, tweeted happily post-conquest with no mention of Assange’s impropriety. This isn’t an unfolding evil feminist vagenda. These two groupies are working at the behest of the U.S. government.
Regarding this issue: http://www.rebeldelights.com/posts/its-not-rape-if-you-shout-surprise
Assange and wikileaks did not win the latest World Gunpowder Prize contest. Liu Xiaobo did….
Does Liu Xiaobo Really Deserve the Peace Prize?
By TARIQ ALI
Last year’s recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize escalated the war in Afghanistan a few weeks after receiving the prize. The award surprised even Obama. This year the Chinese government were foolish to make a martyr of the president of Chinese PEN and neo-con Liu Xiaobo. He should never have been arrested, but the Norwegian politicians who comprise the committee, led by Thorbjørn Jagland, a former Labour prime minister, wanted to teach China a lesson. And so they ignored their hero’s views.
Or perhaps they didn’t, given that their own views are not dissimilar. The committee thought about giving Bush and Blair a joint peace prize for invading Iraq but a public outcry forced a retreat.
For the record, Liu Xiaobo has stated publicly that in his view:
(a) China’s tragedy is that it wasn’t colonised for at least 300 years by a Western power or Japan. This would apparently have civilised it for ever;?
(b) The Korean and Vietnam wars fought by the US were wars against totalitarianism and enhanced Washington’s ‘moral credibility’;?
(c) Bush was right to go to war in Iraq and Senator Kerry’s criticisms were ‘slander-mongering’;?
(d) Afghanistan? No surprises here: Full support for Nato’s war.
He has a right to these opinions, but should they get a peace prize?
The Norwegian jurist Fredrik Heffermehl argues that the committee is in breach of the will and testament left behind by the inventor of dynamite whose bequests fund the prizes:
‘The Nobel committee has not received prize money for free use, but was entrusted with money to give to the pivotal element in creating peace, breaking the vicious circle of arms races and military power games. From this point of view the 2010 Nobel is again an illegitimate prize awarded by an illegitimate committee.’
Tariq Ali’s latest book “The Obama Syndrome: Surrender at Home, War Abroad’ is published by Verso.