[THS] Assange Beseiged - Sweden takes the cake!

[The Harder Stuff in news and commentary]

Assange Beseiged

By ISRAEL SHAMIR and PAUL BENNETT

http://www.counterpunch.org/shamir09142010.html

The plot thickens as our favorite hero of the Matrix; our own "Captain Neo" Julian
Assange, faces danger yet again. When we last parted company with the legendary
founder of WikiLeaks, he was breathing a sigh of relief after dodging spurious
double-rape charges. The complaints were dropped, and our hero was free to roam
the globe once again. But soap opera plots are repetitive; the story was quickly
recycled and now our brave captain is again under threat of being castrated on
Stockholm's Stora Torget, or whatever the latest craven penalty is for molesting
sacred Nordic virgins in a land where Vikings once ruled.

In other words, the farcical rape charges have once again been leveled against the
Pentagon's Public Enemy Number One. Julian Assange now stands accused of: (1)
not calling a young woman the day after he had enjoyed a night with her, (2) asking
her to pay for his bus ticket, (3) having unsafe sex, and (4) participating in two brief
affairs in the course of one week. These four minor charges, worthy of Leopold
Bloom's mock trial in the Nightown chapter in Ulysses, have been shaken and
fermented until they were able to cook up a half-baked rape case! Step down Iran;
Sweden takes the cake! While Iran is notorious for unyielding conservative sentences
against adulterers, Sweden shows us what the liberal side of the coin looks like as she
invents criminal charges for failing to telephone and for careless use of preservatives
in consensual acts of affection. Worse, they are purposely conflating consensual sex
with rape for political purposes. In this, Sweden makes a mockery of the very real
crime of violent rape.

The Swedes have a practical reason behind their deceptively slapstick police-work.
The WikiLeaks founder, pursued by malevolent forces around the world, sought
momentary relief beneath Sweden's reputation as a bastion of free speech. But the
moment Julian sought the protection of Swedish media law, the CIA immediately
threatened to discontinue intelligence sharing with SEPO, the Swedish Secret Service.
That got the present right-wing government out of its chair, as it does everything it
can to bury the Prime Minister Olof Palme's legacy of careful neutrality. The suspicion
of whether the rape farce is an orchestrated campaign, might be illuminated by
these facts: (1) Sweden sent troops to Afghanistan, (2) Assange's WikiLeaks
published the Afghan War Diary which exposed this cruel and needless neo-colonial
campaign. Furthermore, the expected release of new secret materials by WikiLeaks
might just influence the general elections on September 19. Perhaps that explains
the sudden police raid on a WikiLeaks server.

An American Tea Party website the RightwingNews.com suggested that "a CIA agent
with a sniper rifle rattle a bullet around [Assange's] skull the next time he appears in
public as a warning". Rest assured that the CIA is wiser than the Tea Party. They at
least have learned the lesson of Che Guevara. Nowadays they ruin a rebel's
reputation instead of wasting a bullet. They won't raise Assange up to become a
martyr, they simply use his own erstwhile allies to reduce him to a laughing stock.
They stain him with opprobrium. It is much more certain and final than the
marksman's shot. History is witness to their growing efficiency in using this tactic. In
the 70's, they could only bring themselves to say that Philip Agee was a womanizer
and a drunkard. Nowadays they do not stint at charges of pedophilia, for example to
humiliate Scott Ritter for failing to go along with George W Bush's charade of Iraqi
WMD. As you might expect, the rape campaign against Assange might be just an
initial volley. Perhaps they will decide he is a pedophile too. The unspoken threat is
enough to send some faint-hearted supporters of WikiLeaks scurrying for cover.

The bullet can always come later, once the victim has been successfully isolated by
the smear campaign. The Gospels tell us that hardly anyone followed Jesus to
Golgotha, though just a week earlier the people of Jerusalem hailed Him with
hosannas. A Jewish anti-Gospel explains that this was the result of a successful smear
campaign managed by Judas, a surprisingly modernist reading for an early medieval
story.

For a smear that really sticks, you need to get it from an ex-apostle. An accusation by
a Caiaphas does not impress. If you are targeting a leftist, hire leftists. For example,
Trotskyites were willing and useful tools against the Communists. Pseudo Anti-Zionists
are currently being used to hamstring a genuine Pro-Palestinian movement. Who are
the Judases of this campaign against our Julian?

An anonymous group claiming to be "Wikileaks insiders" uploaded a new site full of
"revelations" about Assange's past and present, claiming he lives in luxury in South
Africa on donated funds – though he appears almost daily in Swedish media and
police reports.
Another ex-apostle is the Icelander politician Birgitta Jonsdottir, who is
misrepresented as a "Wikileaks spokesperson". She called on Assange "to step down"
and leave Wikileaks to drift without his guidance – as if WikiLeaks is somehow
separate from Assange.
The pseudo-progressive organization Reporters Sans Frontières attacked Assange for
endangering the lives of innocent American secret agents in Afghanistan. Despite its
`leftist' terminology, RSF is a private organization drawing funds from US government
sources aiming to destabilize Cuba. It is connected to Cuban émigrés in Miami.
Anna Ardin (the official complainant) is often described by the media as a "leftist".
She has ties to the US-financed anti-Castro and anti-communist groups. She
published her anti-Castro diatribes (see here and here) in the Swedish-language
publication Revista de Asignaturas Cubanas put out by Misceláneas de Cuba. From
Oslo, Professor Michael Seltzer points out that this periodical is the product of a well-
financed anti-Castro organization in Sweden. He further notes that the group is
connected with Union Liberal Cubana led by Carlos Alberto Montaner whose CIA ties
were exposed here. Note that Ardin was deported from Cuba for subversive activities.
In Cuba she interacted with the feminist anti-Castro group Las damas de blanco (the
Ladies in White). This group receives US government funds and the convicted anti-
communist terrorist Luis Posada Carriles is a friend and supporter.  Wikipedia quotes
Hebe de Bonafini, president of the Argentine Madres de Plaza de Mayo as saying that
"the so-called Ladies in White defend the terrorism of the United States."


However we do not have to accept the single-bullet theory. Life is more complicated
than that. In addition to her anti-Castro, pro-CIA streak, Anna Ardin apparently
indulges in her favorite sport of male-bashing. A Swedish forum reports that she is an
expert on sexual harassment and the male "master suppression techniques". Once,
as she was lecturing, a male student in the audience looked at his notes instead of
staring at her. Anna Ardin reported him for sexual harassment because he
discriminated against her for being a woman and because she claimed he made use
of the male "master suppression technique" in trying to make her feel invisible. As
soon as the student learned about her complaint, he contacted her to apologize and
explain himself. Anna Ardin's response was to once again report him for sexual
harassment, again because he was using the "master suppression technique", this
time to belittle her feelings.

Ardin is apparently involved with a "Christian" Social-Democrat group. The Swedish
church has a precious few male priests: what was once the struggle for female
equality has ended up with men being effectively removed from service. Nowadays
very few Swedish male-female couples marry in the church, or get married at all;
most Swedish gay couples, however, are proud to become "man and wife" in the
church. This is all good news for wealthy Swedes: deserted churches sell their
properties (once enjoyed by the community) to be fenced off by the nouveau riche
created by the latest privatization wave. So much for Swedish social democracy!

The second accuser, Sofia Wilen, 26, is Anna' friend. Here is a video of an Assange
press conference where one can see the girls together. Those present at the
conference marveled at her groupie-like behavior.  Though rock stars are used to
girls dying to have sex with them, it is much less common in the harsh field of
political journalism. Sofia worked hard to bed Assange, according to her own
confession; she was also the first to complain to police. She is little known and her
motives are vague. Why might a young woman (who shares her life with American
artist Seth Benson) pursue such a sordid political adventure?

The brilliant Israeli writer Gilad Atzmon describes, in his funny novel My One and Only
Love, how the secret services employ young ladies for honey-traps. Is this the case
here? Perhaps it is nothing more than a case of gold digging. New legislation, in
Sweden and all over Europe, has made men extremely vulnerable to extortion scams
of this sort. A young Swedish woman, 26 (her name withheld) succeeded in winning
over a million dollars during the course of one vacation in Greece, as reported by the
Daily Telegraph. She complained of being raped. Four men were arrested, their
names disclosed, and their jobs jeopardized. She went back home a millionaire, her
sacred identity safely preserved. Her success begs imitation: according to an EU
report, Sweden has twenty times more rape complaints than were generated by the
hot-blooded Italians. Most are dismissed right away, and justly so.

Rape is a horrible crime, and it should not be stretched to encompass minor
misdemeanors and moral failings (like the failure to give an encouraging phone call
the next day). Tellingly, when the complainant's advocate was asked why the young
women were unsure whether they were raped, he replied: "They are not lawyers".
Rape (like murder) is a crime that one needs no lawyers to understand. Rape is a
capital crime: if the rape charges are proved false, then certainly the complainant
should be charged with criminal defamation.

As for Julian Assange, we need him. We need our captain Neo, whether chaste or
womanizer, in order to uncover the secret doings of our governments behind the
Matrix. For our own sakes, we must all do our part to protect him from castrating
feminists and secret services alike.

Israel Shamir can be reached at adam at israelshamir.net