WikiLeaks release to feature corruption among world leaders, governments

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: WikiLeaks release to feature corruption among world leaders, governments

Here is the Brzezinski intrview

What I hear in this interview is that Brezezinski doesn't like Israel, whereas Stephen Hadley (the former NSA chief under W., replacing Condi when she became Sec. of State) was defending Israel, suggesting Brzezinski's remarks were unwarranted and that it was just incompetence not a conspiracy.

The word "conspiracy" is (I am confident) in this context a code word. It is the label by which pro-Zionists often denigrate the theories of opponents (whom they might label as anti-Semites if they explicitly named "Israel", which Brzezinski did not, though Hadley did in one of his defensive replies, as if "Israel" were already explicit in their conversation) that would blame Israel ruling government and intelligence agencies for something.

Hadley was and in this interview remains a staunch defender of Israel, a pro-Zionist, ... aka a neocon.

Brzezinski's remarks were clearly pointedly aimed at some one when he says it is a question of whether "wikileaks are [sic] being manipulated by interested parties, that want to either complicate our relationship with other governments or want to undermine some governments."

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: WikiLeaks release to feature corruption among world leaders, governments

From Gordon Duff of the Sabbah Report comes this more explicit expression of what I heard Brzezinski saying:

There are two opinions of Wikileaks. The worlds intelligence services all, every single one, believes Wikileaks is simply an intelligence agency playing games. They say this to each other, Vladimir Putin and Zbigniew Brzezinski have announced it to the world and others are following suit.

Nobody, at least nobody typically "answerable" will say the word "Israel" but it is what they mean when they say "intelligence agency." They mean Israel. Every Wikileak does something to help Israel in a different way at a different time. If Israel has a problem, a Wikileak is there., part of the solution. This time, Secretary Clinton was in the way and Wikileaks showed up to gut the State Department and give Israel the usual "buff and polish" job they usually do.

Aside regarding Secretary Hillary Clinton: I suspect it is not coincidental that Hillary is in the main stream media today stating "I think I will serve as secretary of state as my last public position,".

Any predictions I might have made in the past that Hillary would once again be a Presidential candidate are hereby retracted. Israel has spoken, via the Wikileaks disclosure that it was Hillary who ordered U.S. diplomats to spy on United Nations leadership

[don]

Re: WikiLeaks release to feature corruption among world leaders, governments

Years ago Rebecca West wrote in her novel The Thinking Reed of a British diplomat who, "even when he was peering down a woman's dress at her breasts managed to look as though he was thinking about India."

In the updated version, given Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's orders, the US envoy, pretending to admire the figure of the charming French cultural attaché, would actually be thinking of how to steal her credit card information, obtain her retinal scan, her email passwords and her frequent flier number.

(Alex Cockburn)

[don]

Re: WikiLeaks release to feature corruption among world leaders, governments

Julian Assange: Wanted by the Empire, Dead or Alive

By ALEXANDER COCKBURN

The American airwaves quiver with the screams of parlor assassins howling for Julian Assange's head. Jonah Goldberg, contributor to the National Review, asks in his syndicated column, "Why wasn't Assange garroted in his hotel room years ago?"

Sarah Palin wants him hunted down and brought to justice, saying: "He is an anti-American operative with blood on his hands."

Assange can survive these theatrical blusters. A tougher question is how he will fare at the hands of the US government, which is hopping mad. The US attorney general, Eric Holder, has announced that the Justice Department and Pentagon are conducting "an active, ongoing criminal investigation" into the latest Assange-facilitated leak under Washington's Espionage Act.

Asked how the US could prosecute Assange, a non-US citizen, Holder said, "Let me be clear. This is not saber-rattling," and vowed "to swiftly close the gaps in current US legislation…"

In other words the espionage statute is being rewritten to target Assange, and in short order, if not already, President Obama – who as a candidate pledged "transparency" in government - will sign an order okaying the seizing of Assange and his transport into the US jurisdiction. Render first, fight the habeas corpus lawsuits later.

Interpol, the investigative arm of the International Criminal Court at The Hague, has issued a fugitive notice for Assange. He's wanted in Sweden for questioning in two alleged sexual assaults, one of which seems to boil down to a charge of unsafe sex and failure to phone his date the following day.

This prime accuser, Anna Ardin has, according to Israel Shamir, writing on this CounterPunch site, "ties to the US-financed anti-Castro and anti-communist groups. She published her anti-Castro diatribes in the Swedish-language publication Revista de Asignaturas Cubanas put out by Misceláneas de Cuba…Note that Ardin was deported from Cuba for subversive activities."

It's certainly not conspiracism to suspect that the CIA has been at work in fomenting these Swedish accusations. As Shamir reports, "The moment Julian sought the protection of Swedish media law, the CIA immediately threatened to discontinue intelligence sharing with SEPO, the Swedish Secret Service."

The CIA has no doubt also pondered the possibility of pushing Assange off a bridge or through a high window (a mode of assassination favored by the Agency from the earliest days) and has sadly concluded that it's too late for this sort of executive solution.

The irony is that the thousands of diplomatic communications released by WikiLeaks contain no earth-shaking disclosures that undermine the security of the American empire. The bulk of them merely illustrate the well-known fact that in every capital city round the world there is a building known as the U.S. Embassy inhabited by people whose prime function is to vanquish informed assessment of local conditions with swaddling cloths of ignorance and prejudice instilled in them by what passes for higher education in the United States, whose governing elites are now more ignorant of what is really happening in the outside world that at any time in the nation’s history.

The reports in the official press invite us to be stunned at the news that the King of Saudi Arabia wishes Iran was wiped off the map, that the US uses diplomats as spies, that Afghanistan is corrupt, also that corruption is not unknown in Russia! These press reports foster the illusion that U.S. embassies are inhabited by intelligent observers zealously remitting useful information to their superiors in Washington DC . To the contrary, diplomats – assuming they have the slightest capacity for intelligent observation and analysis -- soon learn to advance their careers by sending reports to Foggy Bottom carefully tuned to the prejudices of the top State Department and White House brass, powerful members of Congress and major players throughout the bureaucracies. Remember that as the Soviet Union slid towards extinction, the US Embassy in Moscow was doggedly supplying quavering reports of a puissant Empire of Evil still meditating whether to invade Western Europe!

This is not to downplay the great importance of this latest batch of WikiLeaks. Millions in America and around the world have been given a quick introductory course in international relations and the true arts of diplomacy – not least the third-rate, gossipy prose with which the diplomats rehearse the arch romans à clef they will write when they head into retirement.

Years ago Rebecca West wrote in her novel The Thinking Reed of a British diplomat who, "even when he was peering down a woman's dress at her breasts managed to look as though he was thinking about India." In the updated version, given Hillary Clinton's orders to the State Department, the US envoy, pretending to admire the figure of the charming French cultural attaché, would actually be thinking how to steal her credit card information, obtain a retinal scan, her email passwords and frequent flier number.

There are also genuine disclosures of great interest, some of them far from creditable to the establishment US press. On our CounterPunch site last week Gareth Porter identified a diplomatic cable from last February released by WikiLeaks which provides a detailed account of how Russian specialists on the Iranian ballistic missile program refuted the US suggestion that Iran has missiles that could target European capitals or that Iran intends to develop such a capability. Porter points out that:

"Readers of the two leading US newspapers never learned those key facts about the document. The New York Times and Washington Post reported only that the United States believed Iran had acquired such missiles - supposedly called the BM-25 - from North Korea. Neither newspaper reported the detailed Russian refutation of the US view on the issue or the lack of hard evidence for the BM-25 from the US side.

"The Times, which had obtained the diplomatic cables not from WikiLeaks but from the Guardian, according to a Washington Post story Monday, did not publish the text of the cable. The Times story said the newspaper had made the decision not to publish 'at the request of the Obama administration'. That meant that its readers could not compare the highly distorted account of the document in the Times story against the original document without searching the Wikileaks website."

Distaste among the "official" US press for WikiLeaks has been abundantly apparent from the first of the two big releases of documents pertaining to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The New York Times managed the ungainly feat of publishing some of the leaks while simultaneously affecting to hold its nose, and while publishing a mean-spirited hatchet job on Assange by its reporter John F Burns, a man with a well burnished record in touting the various agendas of the US government.

There have been cheers for Assange and WikiLeaks from such famed leakers as Daniel Ellsberg, but to turn on one's television is to eavesdrop on the sort of fury that Lord Haw-Haw – aka the Irishman William Joyce, doing propaganda broadcasts from Berlin -- used to provoke in Britain in World War II. As Glenn Greenwald wrote in his column on the Salon site:

"On CNN, Wolf Blitzer was beside himself with rage over the fact that the US government had failed to keep all these things secret from him... Then - like the Good Journalist he is - Blitzer demanded assurances that the Government has taken the necessary steps to prevent him, the media generally and the citizenry from finding out any more secrets: 'Do we know yet if they've [done] that fix? In other words, somebody right now who has top secret or secret security clearance can no longer download information onto a CD or a thumb drive? Has that been fixed already?' The central concern of Blitzer - one of our nation's most honored 'journalists' - is making sure that nobody learns what the US Government is up to."

These latest WikiLeaks files contains some 261,000,000 words - about 3,000 books. They display the entrails of the American Empire. As Israel Shamir wrote here last week, "The files show US political infiltration of nearly every country, even supposedly neutral states such as Sweden and Switzerland. US embassies keep a close watch on their hosts. They have penetrated the media, the arms business, oil, intelligence, and they lobby to put US companies at the head of the line."

Will this vivid record of imperial outreach in the early 21st century soon be forgotten? Not if some competent writer offers a readable and politically vivacious redaction. But a warning: in November 1979 Iranian students seized an entire archive of the State Department, the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) at the American embassy in Tehran. Many papers that were shredded were laboriously reassembled.

These secrets concerned far more than Iran. The Tehran embassy, which served as a regional base for the CIA, held records involving secret operations in many countries, notably Israel, the Soviet Union, Turkey, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Beginning in 1982, the Iranians published some 60 volumes of these CIA reports and other US government documents from the Tehran archive, collectively entitled Documents From the US Espionage Den. As Edward Jay Epstein, a historian of US intelligence agencies, wrote years ago, "Without a doubt, these captured records represent the most extensive loss of secret data that any superpower has suffered since the end of the Second World War."

In fact the Tehran archive truly was a devastating blow to US national security. It contained vivid portraits of intelligence operations and techniques, the complicity of US journalists with US government agencies, the intricacies of oil diplomacy. The volumes are in some university libraries here. Are they read? By a handful of specialists. The inconvenient truths were swiftly buried – and perhaps the WikiLeaks files will soon be fade from memory too, joining the inspiring historical archive of intelligence coups of the left.

I should honor here “Spies for Peace” – the group of direct-action British anarchists and kindred radicals associated with the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and Bertrand Russell’s Committee of 100 who, in 1963, broke into a secret government bunker, Regional Seat of Government Number 6 (RSG-6) at Warren Row, near Reading, where they photographed and copied documents, showing secret government preparations for rule after a nuclear war. They distributed a pamphlet along with copies of relevant documents to the press, stigmatizing the “small group of people who have accepted thermonuclear war as a probability, and are consciously and carefully planning for it. ... They are quietly waiting for the day the bomb drops, for that will be the day they take over.” There was a big uproar, and then the Conservative government of the day issued a D-notice forbidding any further coverage in the press. The cops and intelligence services hunted long and hard for the spies for peace, and caught nary a one.

And Assange? Hopefully he will have a long reprieve from premature burial. Ecuador offered him sanctuary until the US Embassy in Quito gave the president a swift command and the invitation was rescinded. Switzerland? Istanbul? Hmmm. As noted above, he should, at the least, view with caution women eagerly inviting his embraces and certainly stay away from overpasses, bridges, and open windows.

In 1953 the CIA distributed to its agents and operatives a killer's training manual (made public in 1997) full of hands-on advice:

"The most efficient accident, in simple assassination, is a fall of 75 feet or more onto a hard surface. Elevator shafts, stair wells, unscreened windows and bridges will serve... The act may be executed by sudden, vigorous [excised] of the ankles, tipping the subject over the edge. If the assassin immediately sets up an outcry, playing the 'horrified witness', no alibi or surreptitious withdrawal is necessary."


http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn12032010.html

[D-Mack]

Re: WikiLeaks release to feature corruption among world leaders, governments

Wikileaks chief Julian Assange free as holiday halts arrest for 'rape'

• 
• 

By Justin Penrose 5/12/2010
Wikileaks mastermind Julian Assange was still free last night... because an official who should have signed his arrest warrant is on holiday.
The founder of the whistleblowing website faces arrest for allegedly raping two women in Sweden but bungling officials have failed to send British authorities the correct paperwork at least three times.
The latest European Arrest Warrant was missing the signature of Sweden's chief prosecutor, who is abroad.



Read more: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-sto...#ixzz17F4FiF3T

The story keeps getting better

[don]

Re: WikiLeaks release to feature corruption among world leaders, governments

In my opinion, the most important of all the cables leaked is the secret directive sent by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to 33 US embassies and consulates ordering US diplomats to provide credit card numbers, email addresses, phone, fax and pager numbers, frequent-flyer account numbers and biographic and biometric information including DNA information on UN officials from the Secretary General down, including “heads of peace operations and political field missions.”

The directive has been characterized as the spy directive, but this is an unusual kind of spying. Usually, spying focuses on what other governments think, how they are likely to vote on US initiatives, who can be bribed, and on sexual affairs that could be used to blackmail acquiescence to US agendas.

In contrast, the information requested in the secret directive is the kind of information that would be used to steal a person’s identity.

Why does the US government want information that would enable it to steal the identities of UN officials and impersonate them?

The US government loves to pretend that its acts of naked aggression are acts of liberation mandated by “the world community.” The world community has been less supportive of US aggression since it learned that the Bush regime lied about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Consequently, the UN has not given Washington the green light Washington wants for a military assault on Iran. Neither has the UN given Washington the extreme sanctions that it wants the world community to impose on Iran.

As the UN refused Washington’s menu of sanctions, Washington unilaterally added its own sanction package to the UN sanctions, to the dismay of the Russians and other governments who believed that they had arrived at a compromise with Washington over the Iran sanctions issue.

Could it be that Washington wants to be able to impersonate UN officials and country delegates so that it can compromise them by involving them in fake terrorist plots, communications with terrorists real or contrived, money laundering, sex scandals and other such means of suborning their cooperation with Washington’s agendas? All the CIA has to do is to call a Taliban or Hamas chief on a UN official’s telephone number or send a compromising fax with a UN official’s fax number or have operatives pay for visits to prostitutes with a UN official’s credit card number.

The report in the Guardian on December 2 that the CIA drew up the UN spy directive signed off by Hillary Clinton is a good indication that the United States government intended to compromise the United Nations and turn the organization, as it has done with so many governments, into a compliant instrument of American policy, to an extent even greater than is already the case.

Perhaps there is another plausible explanation of why the US government desired information that would enable it to impersonate UN officials, but as a person who had a 25-year career in Washington I cannot think of what it might be.

Paul Craig Roberts was an editor of the Wall Street Journal and an Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury.

http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts12062010.html

(In related news, 200,000 Iraqis have been cataloged based on their biometrics. The system is being implemented on a daily and widespread basis and reports are it's a success. Wars of minimal risk have always proven useful as proving grounds for cutting edge weaponry ....)

[Slimprofits]

Re: WikiLeaks release to feature corruption among world leaders, governments

http://www.zdnet.co.uk/blogs/securit...rant-10021244/

UK law enforcement has received an arrest warrant for WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange, according to the whistleblower site.

"UK has only received warrant, but may issue it shortly," said the site in a Twitter post on Monday.

The Press Association said that Scotland Yard had received the paperwork for Assange's arrest under a European Arrest Warrant (EAW) from Sweden. Assange is believed to be in the south-east of England.

The arrest warrant was first issued in November, but was rejected by the Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca), which processes EAWs on legal grounds. A second was sent on Friday, according to the BBC. Assange is wanted under charges of 'sex by surprise' with two Swedish women, a charge which only seems to exist in Sweden.

A Soca spokesman declined to say whether the agency had passed an arrest warrant to the Metropolitan Police.

"We cannot confirm or deny whether an arrest warrant has been received, or sent on to Scotland Yard," said the spokesman.

A Metropolitan Police spokeswoman said that the police were unable to comment.

Assange on Monday had €31,000 funds frozen in Switzerland, according to a WikiLeaks press release.

The funds were seized due to Assange using his lawyers address for banking correspondence, said the press release.

WikeLeaks funding is also experiencing pressure in other areas. PayPal refused to continue to accept donations to WikiLeaks on Friday, freezing an additional €60,000, according to the site. PayPal then came under attack by the Anonymous group, which has been conducting protest denial of service attacks.

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: WikiLeaks release to feature corruption among world leaders, governments

PayPal refused to continue to accept donations to WikiLeaks on Friday, freezing an additional €60,000, according to the site.

I've heard way too many stories of PayPal freezing assets. I minimize my use of them.

Clearing houses should be neutral. So long as each party to a transaction submits timely and good value as committed, the clearing house is responsible for clearing the transaction with timely payments to the other parties.

PayPal is far from neutral.

I suppose that is their "price for doing business." The financial powers that be would surely not allow PayPal to exist in any substantial way if PayPal did not dance to the beat of their powerful drums.

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: WikiLeaks release to feature corruption among world leaders, governments

Here's another article warning that Wikileaks will be used to crack down on the Internet, just as 9/11 has been used to crack down on a variety of other basic freedoms: Is the Internet 9/11 Under Way?

Warning Signs

1. Wikileaks---WAY too approved and publicized. Every TV and cable network, press worldwide, official recognition from every level of government. Heck, he even does a TED talk! Where's anyone else trying to expose the agenda? Only Julian. Hmmm.
2. Biggie: This supposed system fighter says the 9/11 truth issue is "a distraction". Mustn't step on your bosses' toes now, should we Julian.. Very suspicious if you ask me.
3. Wikileaks and Assange's sketchy background:
   The WikiLeaks website first appeared on the Internet in December 2006. The site claims to have been "founded by Chinese dissidents, journalists, mathematicians and start-up company technologists, from the US, Taiwan, Europe, Australia and South Africa". The creators of WikiLeaks have not been formally identified. It has been represented in public since January 2007 by Julian Assange and others. Assange describes himself as a member of WikiLeaks' advisory board. (Wikipedia)
   Also, Assange reportedly wrote for both the New York Times and the Economist which is fishy as well--not a real enlightened or 'alternative' mindset. His mysterious persona also plays well to the Wikileaks furtive image so people won't expect to know too much, which also is very 'convenient' for keeping anything hidden.
   
   [NOTE: There doesn't have to be deliberate, conscious involvement in some agenda on Wikileaks' part, but it helps. He, they, could be 'useful idiots' whose program has been conveniently co-opted by the controllers to serve their purpose. Either way, look for the pattern and the effects.]
   
4. Watch the hype: There's a growing crescendo of anger and hate that is now being whipped up--to the point that Assange is being called a new kind of terrorist--and more disturbingly, and as expected, the comparison is now being drawn between Assange and Bin Laden

Granted, the great majority of good people who figure that 911 Truthers are whacked out nut jobs can be expected to have difficulty accepting a key premise of this article on Assange and Wikileaks ... oh well. For the rest of us (I'm looking in a mirror, so there's at least two of us) this article is a serious warning.

[Thailandnotes]

Re: WikiLeaks release to feature corruption among world leaders, governments

Jeff Greenwald chimes in along the same line...

"Whatever you think of WikiLeaks, they have not been charged with a crime, let alone indicted or convicted. Yet look what has happened to them. They have been removed from Internet … their funds have been frozen … media figures and politicians have called for their assassination and to be labeled a terrorist organization. What is really going on here is a war over control of the Internet, and whether or not the Internet can actually serve its ultimate purpose—which is to allow citizens to band together and democratize the checks on the world’s most powerful factions."

video with Amy Goodman

http://www.alternet.org/world/149118...itarianism%22_

[Chris Coles]

Re: WikiLeaks release to feature corruption among world leaders, governments

Jeff Greenwald chimes in along the same line...

"Whatever you think of WikiLeaks, they have not been charged with a crime, let alone indicted or convicted. Yet look what has happened to them. They have been removed from Internet … their funds have been frozen … media figures and politicians have called for their assassination and to be labeled a terrorist organization. What is really going on here is a war over control of the Internet, and whether or not the Internet can actually serve its ultimate purpose—which is to allow citizens to band together and democratize the checks on the world’s most powerful factions."

video with Amy Goodman

http://www.alternet.org/world/149118...itarianism%22_

This is a very valid point. We have a system in place that, by using secrecy, prevents us ever knowing what is being said on our behalf.

[flintlock]

Re: WikiLeaks release to feature corruption among world leaders, governments

I am having a hard time figuring out exactly where Wikileaks falls in the good guy or bad guy category. My gut tells me they will get the shaft for going up against Big Brother so we will never know the full truth. What I've seen already in regards to attempts to stifle them I find a bit scary. Are these stories they are breaking really undermining national security or merely embarrassing to TPTB? Probably a bit of both perhaps?

[DToM67]

Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists

I am having a hard time figuring out exactly where Wikileaks falls in the good guy or bad guy category. My gut tells me they will get the shaft for going up against Big Brother so we will never know the full truth. What I've seen already in regards to attempts to stifle them I find a bit scary. Are these stories they are breaking really undermining national security or merely embarrassing to TPTB? Probably a bit of both perhaps?

Assange & Wikileaks have been labeled Terrorists / organization. There can be no logic or discussion.

This quote describes what I fear we should expect for Wikileaks

"Our response involves far more than instant retaliation and isolated strikes. Americans should not expect one battle, but a lengthy campaign, unlike any other we have seen. It may include dramatic strikes, visible on television, and covert operations, secret even in success. We will starve terrorists of funding, turn them one against another, drive them from place to place, until there is no refuge or rest. And we will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism. Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime."

[don]

Re: Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists

Naked emperor hails sex by surprise
By Pepe Escobar

Information has never been so free. Even in authoritarian countries information networks are helping people discover new facts and making governments more accountable.

- US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, January 21, 2010

Julian Assange, unfortunately, got it wrong. He should have tried to make it to the Tora Bora - the rugged mountains in Afghanistan and the best place to escape the emperor's fury, as former al-Qaeda icons Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri can abundantly attest. OK, no broadband; but at least no danger of sex tricks, apart from a brush-off with a rock face.

World public opinion has not failed to notice the spectacular crossover between WikiLeaks founder Assange's bizarre Swedish sex saga charges and the emperor's (and his minion's) fury. This is stuff to blow Monty Python's Life of Brian out of the park. To the delight of those "democrats" who want to take him down - or out - Assange, now firmly established as a global underground icon, will spend his next days at London's Wandsworth prison, which The Guardian has quaintly depicted as "a beautiful example of Victorian prison architecture". Pentagon supremo Defense Secretary Robert Gates said this is "good news". What is good for the Pentagon simply can't be good for the rest of the world.

The plot thickens. The post-arrest Assange thriller will clarify everything one needs to know about the state of Western democracy as embodied by three of its supposed icons - Britain, Sweden and the United States. Imagine if the roller-coaster narrative so far - including a manhunt merging into a Burn the Witch! (pirate) hysterics among the establishment - was taking place in China, Russia or, ayatollahs forbid, Iran.

The emperor - and his minions - can hardly wait to return to business as usual, as in an ocean of hypocrisy never contaminated by the hardcore mud-wrestling match which WikiLeaks reveals to be the real "making of diplomacy". The moment the self-satisfied Democratic West - this happy-ever-after end of history - faces a totally new, and radical, transgression, its response is to try to turn the concept of freedom of information upside down. The emperor is disgusted: Who are these "criminals" - WikiLeaks - who dare to steal what we say we are?

Sex, lies and no videotape

As Mark Stephens, Assange's London attorney, had told AOL News this past weekend, Swedish prosecutors want Assange "not for allegations of rape, as previously reported", but for something called "sex by surprise", which Stephens said "involves a fine of 5,000 kronor or about $715". Stephens added, "We don't even know what 'sex by surprise' even means, and they haven't told us."

"Sex by surprise" is legally considered an offense only in Sweden. Anywhere else - including the US and the United Kingdom - quite a few women are rushing to clarify that if it really means what the definition implies, they more than welcome it.

Four charges are involved in the Assange thriller; one "Miss A", 31, a blonde, feminist, social democrat whom once wrote a treatise on how to take revenge against men, poses as victim of "unlawful coercion"; then sex with a malfunctioning condom; then "deliberate molestation"; and finally there's "sex by surprise" with one "Miss W", 27, an art photographer and avowed Assange groupie.

"Miss A" must have enjoyed the mess around, because even after the broken condom the first time, they were seen together the day after. And it was "Miss W" herself who invited Assange to her apartment - even paying for his train ticket. During the trip, Assange seems to have preferred his computer to her company - as the dejected groupie told police. Sex ensued, anyway - with no condom.

Supposing this is the real story, Assange too could have grounds for prosecuting; the resourceful groupie should have handed him both the train ticket and the condom. One thing at least is quite clear; gone are the days of free, independent and much-envied Swedish girls, now obviously replaced by guided-missile prudes.

It gets "girlish". The two women eventually get together to gossip - and realize they had something in common; sharing a bed with Assange. That's when "Miss W" suddenly became supremely troubled regarding her "unprotected sex" and decided to go to the police with "Miss A". The first prosecutor - a woman - issued an arrest warrant for "rape and molestation". She was overruled the day after by another female prosecutor. Then the current prosecutor - also a woman - reopened the investigation, claiming she had "new information".

Top journalist John Pilger, who along with legendary filmmaker Ken Loach and others offered to stand surety for Assange in the London court for over $280,000 (bail was denied), went straight to the point; "The charges against him in Sweden are absurd and were judged as absurd by the chief prosecutor there when she threw the whole thing out until a senior political figure intervened." Outside the Westminster court, Pilger summed it all up; "Sweden should be ashamed."

Whether this "senior political figure" has some shady Central Intelligence Agency-style designs is open to speculation. But the most absurd thing is that "Miss A" herself told a Swedish tabloid that she never wanted Assange to be charged with rape. Maybe she should tell that to the new prosecutor. Moreover, Assange's lawyer Stephens has said many times that his client remained in Sweden for 40 days offering to meet the accusing prosecutor to tell his version of the events.

European-wide laws list 32 violations - rape is one of them - that authorize extradition. Britain is just executing a request from Sweden. European lawyers stress Assange's best chance is now to accept extradition and face whatever justice rolls on in Sweden.

Freedom riders

The "sex by surprise" gambit could not be more convenient for a "Western democratic" system viciously attempting to shut down WikiLeaks at all costs.

Assange begins the op-ed he penned for The Australian this Tuesday with a bang: "In 1958, a young Rupert Murdoch, then owner and editor of Adelaide's the News, wrote: 'In the race between secrecy and truth, it seems inevitable that truth will always win'."

Now compare with what US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wrote in a Foreign Policy article in early 2010:

On their own, new technologies do not take sides in the struggle for freedom and progress. But the United States does. We stand for a single Internet where all of humanity has equal access to knowledge and ideas. And we recognize that the world's information infrastructure will become what we and others make of it. This challenge may be new, but our responsibility to help ensure the free exchange of ideas goes back to the birth of our republic. The words of the first amendment to the constitution [guaranteeing freedom of speech] are carved in 50 tons of Tennessee marble on the front of this building. And every generation of Americans has worked to protect the values etched in that stone.

What the record is actually showing is that Clinton - unlike Assange and the young Murdoch - is being buried by 50 tons of Tennessee marble. "Free exchange of ideas?" By now, the military dictatorship in Myanmar, the Uzbekistan's President Islam Karimov, the array of US-friendly autocrats/dictators in the Middle East, and the leadership in Beijing are all saying to themselves that it's cool to go after a website, their provider, their donation mechanism - and target foreigners without a warrant - simply because they don't like what the site is saying. The emperor has proclaimed: it's my way or the (non-information) highway.

WikiLeaks cables suggest - once again - that Saudi Arabians are the ATMs for everyone from al-Qaeda to Taliban factions. But from Amazon and eBay to PayPal, Visa and Mastercard, everyone bends over to the furious emperor who wants to shut down a website for good.

The US government doesn't even register that Spain may want to extradite George "Dubya" Bush for war crimes; but all stops will be pulled, and maybe even laws bent, to get an Assange extradition (for the record: that's impossible under current US espionage laws). And this from a government that in nine years was incapable of finding the "terrorists" who, according to the official narrative, actually killed over 3,000 people.

"Sex by surprise" and its derived dodgy charges may eventually keep Assange in jail. Yet this won't kill the messenger - not to mention the message. It's all over the net, via BitTorrent - and it's totally viral (mirrored in 748 sites already, and counting). Moreover, two, three, a million Assanges will spring up. And they will have learned their lesson: if you want to show the emperor is naked, you've got to be as careful with your sex partners as you are with your sources.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/LL09Aa01.html

[Chris Coles]

Re: Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists

Thank you Don.