assange beseiged

Counterpunch | 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.