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Aldous Huxley Would Be Proud

by Kelley B. Vlahos, December 14, 2010
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Today, Julian Assange sits in a British jail while the United States government reportedly readies to indict him on charges of espionage. His story has taken a dramatic turn not unlike the rebels and revolutionaries of our literary canon, and in fact, he is imprisoned today in the native land of one of the greatest – Aldous Huxley.

British novelist Aldous Huxley was a social critic and futurist, who is best known for penning Brave New World, which, aside from being a nearly 80-year-old science fiction masterpiece, is both an allegory and prophecy for 21st Century western society.

Huxley’s finger was on the pulse of human freedom, and he warned us over 50 years ago that it was fading fast. In 1958, he predicted that when concentrated in the hands of the “Power Elite,” rapidly evolving “mass communication” like television would be a critical tool of social and political conformity. Technology is only the medium, and it is “neither good nor bad,” Huxley wrote, but when in the wrong hands it can be “among the most powerful weapons in the dictator’s armory.” Propaganda, the suppression of the truth, particularly in democratic societies, Huxley argued, would bring upon an age of human enslavement, where instead of yokes and chains, people in celebrated “free” societies like America would be bound by the soft restraints of ignorance, incuriousness, distraction and irrationality.

Oh, if Huxley were alive today! What might he think of Mr. Julian Assange, and of WikiLeaks, as it degrades and humiliates the totalitarian power paradigm Huxley prophesied in Brave New World, and in the last decades of his own life? Huxley died in 1963, thirty years before the advent of the Internet as we know it, and he had no idea that the very key to reversing course would be an entirely new medium, elusive and immune to the controlling tentacles of a frustrated and a suddenly antiquated Power Elite. Indeed, when he wrote Brave New World Revisited in 1958, he had little confidence that the ascending generation was even willing to confront the forces of control in America:

“Does a majority of the people think it worthwhile to take a good deal of trouble in order to halt and, if possible reverse the current drift toward totalitarian control of everything? … That so many of the well fed young television-watchers of the world’s most powerful democracy should be so completely indifferent to the idea of self-government, so blankly uninterested in freedom of thought and the right to dissent is distressing, but not too surprising.”

But he wasn’t without hope. The teenage cry of “’Give me television and hamburgers, but don’t bother me with the responsibilities of liberty,’” Huxley wrote, could give way, “under altered circumstances, to the cry of ‘Give me liberty or give me death.’”

If such a revolution takes place, Huxley added, “it will be due in part to the operation of forces over which even the most powerful rulers have very little control, in part to the incompetence of those rulers, their inability to make effective use of the mind-manipulating instruments with which science and technology have supplied.”

How right he was! What we have seen in the last month is a tsunami of reactionary activity from the halls of power on a global scale, with the U.S government at its head, paralyzed, seemingly without creative course, due to the release of heretofore suppressed information. Calls for the shut down of WikiLeaks and for the arrest andimprisonment and assassination of Assange and his “cronies,” have been swift and ubiquitous among the elite.

Julian Assange and Aldous Huxley

But these are all primitive reactions to a societal transformation over which, at present time, the establishment has no iron-fisted control. They’ve tried to shut WikiLeaks down, and briefly succeeded for a few hours on Dec. 3, but in turn, the organizationresponded by popping up on more than 1,800 mirror sites and growing, practically guaranteeing it won’t be interrupted again. The U.S government pressured Visa and MasterCard and Amazon to drop WikiLeaks and when they dutifully complied, WikiLeaks’ supporters responded with boycotts and attacks on the Visa and MasterCard websites, briefly shutting their websites down. Protests are everywhere, online and in the streets.

Huxley wrote it and for three generations since, non-conformists and civil libertarians have warned that Brave New World was upon us. Could it be that WikiLeaks has finally shoved western civilization beyond Huxley’s dystopian clarion call and into a New Brave New World? It would seem we are at a promising crossroads, where Julian Assange might just escape the fate of “John the Savage” who in Huxley’s vision, appeared first as a chance for salvation against the ruthless hegemony, but was then forced into a self-loathing exile, ultimate submission, then death. Assange seems poised to avoid this fate, as he is willing to fight rather than run – and he has help, from lawyers and wealthy backers and like-minded supporters throughout the world. But are they yet a match for today’s Power Elite, with its mindless worker bees, ideological goons, demagogues and parasites, all trying to “kill” Julian Assange?

We know for sure who wants to. Shortly after the last document “dump” (notice how the corporate mainstream media has taken to speaking of it all in terms of a bowel movement), writer David Brooks, the ultimate establishment courtesan, had this to say Dec. 1 (emphasis mine):

“The [New York] Times has thus erected a series of filters between the 250,000 raw documents that WikiLeaks obtained and complete public exposure. The paper has released only a tiny percentage of the cables. Information that might endanger informants has been redacted. Specific cables have been put into context with broader reporting.

“Yet it might be useful to consider one more filter. Consider it the World Order filter. The fact that we live our lives amid order and not chaos is the great achievement of civilization. This order should not be taken for granted.

“This order is tenuously maintained by brave soldiers but also by talkative leaders and diplomats. Every second of every day, leaders and diplomats are engaged in a never-ending conversation. The leaked cables reveal this conversation…

“This fragile international conversation is under threat. It’s under threat from anarchistic vandals like WikiLeaks…

“It should be possible to erect a filter that protects not only lives and operations but also international relationships. … We depend on those human conversations for the limited order we enjoy every day.”

Thank you, Big Brother. Brooks looks and sounds as if he sprang right out of central casting for the role of “President of the Group” in the upcoming Brave New Worldmovie. Sadly, he is not the only one.

In what Huxley wryly called “Utopia,” the Brave New World planet is governed by a series of ten “World Controllers.” There is no violence, rather the society is a well-oiled machine that depends on feverish consumption and the ignorance of the masses, which are happily and vacuously distracted from anything that could remotely inspire passion or dissent. Sound familiar?

On page 47, one Controller, Mustapha Mond, explains the key to modern civilization: “Stability. No civilization without social stability. No Social stability without individual stability. The primal and the ultimate need.” Liberty, he said, was found years before to be “inefficient and miserable … a round peg in a square hole.”

In his 1958 interview with Mike Wallace, Huxley explained his concept of velvet totalitarianism:

“’If you want to preserve your power indefinitely, you must get the consent of the ruled,’ he said. Those in power will do this primarily through ‘techniques of propaganda,’ by ‘bypassing the rational side of man and appealing to his subconscious and deeper emotions’ and ‘making him love his slavery.’”

I would submit that Mr. David Brooks loves his slavery, and furthermore, is the perfect “alpha caste” prototype from Brave New World – he uses the good brains God (Ford) gave him to reflexively sustain the status quo, barking and nipping like a loyal lapdog when something or someone threatens it. The same goes for the rest of the so-called journalistic elite who have taken to the Net and on the television to discredit Assange in recent days, either through bald ad hominem or discrediting his work as “not journalism,” or “criminal.” Proto-elite scrambling among the herd of pundits across the mediascape are the worst, feeling they have to be more red-faced and extravagant in their commentary in order to stand out.

Here’s “Democratic strategist” Bob Beckel on Fox Business last week: “We got special forces … Illegally shoot the son of a Bi$%# … this man is an enemy of the United States.” Video here.

One doesn’t know which is more disconcerting – what Beckel said, or how he said it, his prosperous girth leaning over the shiny pundits’ table, talking about the execution of a man as though he were discussing how to get the garbage pails out to the curb before the trucks come in the morning, suggesting simply that he’s obediently playing his part as angry antibody against the viral invader.

“Who gets hurt from this?” he demanded. “The American people.”

Beckel is a party mouthpiece and a courtier, but on some level, working reporters should know better, and more often than not they don’t even attempt to dissect the rhetorical charges against Assange in the expanding court of public opinion. Are all of the documents released by WikiLeaks and published by major newspapers “dangerous” to national security and to the sanctity of U.S relationships to other countries? Most certainly not.

They aren’t even necessarily things we shouldn’t be reading or have some level of access to. Officials and journalists of every ilk spent the better part of this decade bemoaning the “over classification” of government information before, and especially after, 9/11. When pouring over the reams of information for the 9/11 Commission, former New Jersey Gov. Thomas Kean, who was chairing the commission said,“Three-quarters of what I read that was classified shouldn’t have been.”

In a House Government Reform hearing in 2004 (.pdf), Leonard J. William, director of the information security oversight office at the National Archives, said, “it is no secret that the government classifies too much information. In my own 30 years of experience in security and counterintelligence matters, I have observed that many senior officials will candidly acknowledge the problem of excessive classification, although oftentimes the observation is made with respect to the activities of agencies other than their own.”

But still reporters and “analysts” mindlessly parrot the government’s line that all of the data “dumped,” by WikiLeaks is a “danger” to the American people. They no longer question whether it is a “danger” to overclassify in the first place.

On page 180 of Brave New World, Mustapha Mond is given a research paper written by a man of the higher “alpha caste.” The paper is deemed heretical and nearly subversive in that it ambitiously attempts to explore the mathematical treatment of “the conception of purpose … the sort of idea that might easily decondition the more unsettled minds among the higher castes.”

“’The author will be kept under supervision,’ the controller scrawls on the top of the page. ‘His transfer to the Marine Biological Station in St. Helena may become necessary.’ A pity, he thought, as he signed his name. It was a masterly piece of work. But once you began admitting explanations in terms of purpose – well you didn’t know what the result might be. It was the sort of idea that might easily decondition the more unsettled minds among the higher castes – make them lose their faith in happiness as the Sovereign Good and take to believing, instead, that the goal was somewhere beyond, somewhere outside the present human sphere; that the purpose of life was not maintenance of well-being but some intensification and refining of consciousness, some enlargement of knowledge. Which was, the Controller reflected, quite possibly true, but not in the present circumstance, admissible.”

Are we so conditioned that we cannot see that American citizens have been effectively rendered inadmissible, if not inconvenient, to their own government? That many of us, the so-called “free” press included, will systematically work – unwittingly or otherwise – to maintain this status quo, which insists the government keep the masses ignorant for a higher purpose, for “security” and the “public good?” It must be working – a recent Pew Poll indicates that no less than 60 percent of Americans think WikiLeaks “harms the public interest.”

Huxley knew “public interest” or the “sovereign good” was no more than code for “stability,” which is threatened when information is shared freely with the people. In reaction to World War II-era politics in Britain, Huxley said:

“Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth. By simply not mentioning certain subjects, by lowering what Mr. Churchill calls an ‘iron curtain’ between the masses and such facts or arguments as the local political bosses regard as undesirable, totalitarian propagandists have influenced opinion much more effectively than they could have done by the most eloquent denunciation, the most compelling of logical rebuttals.”

To the power structure, the alternative is loss of control. The alternative, or so they say, is anarchy.

That is why the elite is so comfortable calling Julian Assange an “anarchist,” whether they know what it means or not. The New York Times on Sunday referred to Assange’s “core anarchism.” A New York Daily News editorial calls Assange the personification of “cyber-anarchy” and “internet intifada” in the same breath. But Huxley was right – the establishment is throwing a Grade A tantrum because it’s finally been stumped by technology it cannot manipulate for its own means. Assange may yet be punished in the most draconian of ways, but WikiLeaks and its offshoots will likely go on unabated into uncharted territories. Reports indicate that more than 90 percent of the WikiLeaks documents have yet to be published. David Brooks had better watch out – his “world order” is about to get rocked.

As for Aldous Huxley, he bore even physical similarities to Mr. Assange. He was tall and lanky, perhaps too bookish and erudite for some. But I am sure he did not draw the same attacks as his 21st century compatriot, who one tormented writer once said“looks every inch the amoral, uber-nerd villain, icily detached from the real world of moral choices in which the rest of us saps live.” Another wrote Assange is only called “brave” and “heroic” in “the fetid swamps of the blogosphere.”

I think if Huxley were alive today he would introduce himself as one of the Fetid Swamp’s proudest denizens. In fact, I think we can draw confidence from the shared, cross-generational struggle, and from Huxley’s own clarity of purpose, given to us in the echo of his own words, a seeming lifetime ago:

“Some of us still believe that, without freedom human beings cannot become fully human and that freedom is therefore supremely valuable. Perhaps the forces that now menace freedom are too strong to be resisted for very long….

“It is still our duty to do whatever we can to resist them.”
Brilliant. Like describing every stitch and seam in a comfortably-fitting Orwellian straight jacket.


America has shown its true face. When real democracy emerges they attack it.


Isn't calling for the killing of free speech practicers the same offense we put people in jail for in Rawanda?


America has succeeded in the ultimate diverting of democratic power into the voyeuristic viewing of the process as shown through media rather than any direct effective form. I guess a sort of analogy would be like feeling the warmth of a campfire that is stoked by the burning of democracy. And attacking those who might suggest the fuel being used isn't the best type as being those who threaten to bring dangerous health-threatening cold to the public - for lack of a better analogy.
Quote:In what Huxley wryly called “Utopia,” the Brave New World planet is governed by a series of ten “World Controllers.” There is no violence, rather the society is a well-oiled machine that depends on feverish consumption and the ignorance of the masses, which are happily and vacuously distracted from anything that could remotely inspire passion or dissent. Sound familiar?

On page 47, one Controller, Mustapha Mond, explains the key to modern civilization: “Stability. No civilization without social stability. No Social stability without individual stability. The primal and the ultimate need.” Liberty, he said, was found years before to be “inefficient and miserable … a round peg in a square hole.”

In his 1958 interview with Mike Wallace, Huxley explained his concept of velvet totalitarianism:

“’If you want to preserve your power indefinitely, you must get the consent of the ruled,’ he said. Those in power will do this primarily through ‘techniques of propaganda,’ by ‘bypassing the rational side of man and appealing to his subconscious and deeper emotions’ and ‘making him love his slavery.’”

Indeed.

Meanwhile back in Amerika:

Quote:Air Force Blocks Sites That Posted Secret Cables

By ERIC SCHMITT
Published: December 14, 2010

WASHINGTON — The Air Force is barring its personnel from using work computers to view the Web sites of The New York Times and more than 25 other news organizations and blogs that have posted secret cables obtained by WikiLeaks, Air Force officials said Tuesday.

When Air Force personnel on the service’s computer network try to view the Web sites of The Times, the British newspaper The Guardian, the German magazine Der Spiegel, the Spanish newspaper El País and the French newspaper Le Monde, as well as other sites that posted full confidential cables, the screen says “Access Denied: Internet usage is logged and monitored,” according to an Air Force official whose access was blocked and who shared the screen warning with The Times. Violators are warned that they face punishment if they try to view classified material from unauthorized Web sites.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/15/us/15w...ml?_r=2&hp
Julian Assange bail decision made by UK authorities, not Sweden

Swedish prosecutor's office says it has 'not got a view at all on bail' and that Britain made decision to oppose it

Vikram Dodd, crime correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 15 December 2010 20.55 GMT
Article history

Supporters of Julian Assange outside Westminster magistrates court. Lawyers for the WikiLeaks founder reacted with shock to the news that it was Britain that had made the decision to oppose bail, and not Sweden. Photograph: Andrew Winning/Reuters

The decision to have Julian Assange sent to a London jail and kept there was taken by the British authorities and not by prosecutors in Sweden, as previously thought, the Guardian has learned.

The Crown Prosecution Service will go to the high court tomorrow to seek the reversal of a decision to free the WikiLeaks founder on bail, made yesterday by a judge at City of Westminster magistrates court.

It had been widely thought Sweden had made the decision to oppose bail, with the CPS acting merely as its representative. But today the Swedish prosecutor's office told the Guardian it had "not got a view at all on bail" and that Britain had made the decision to oppose bail.

Lawyers for Assange reacted to the news with shock and said CPS officials had told them this week it was Sweden which had asked them to ensure he was kept in prison.

Karin Rosander, director of communications for Sweden's prosecutor's office, told the Guardian: "The decision was made by the British prosecutor. I got it confirmed by the CPS this morning that the decision to appeal the granting of bail was entirely a matter for the CPS. The Swedish prosecutors are not entitled to make decisions within Britain. It is entirely up to the British authorities to handle it."

As a result, she said, Sweden will not be submitting any new evidence or arguments to the high court hearing tomorrow morning. "The Swedish authorities are not involved in these proceedings. We have not got a view at all on bail."

After the Swedish statement was put to the CPS, it confirmed that all decisions concerning the opposing of bail being granted to Assange had been taken by its lawyers. It said: "In all extradition cases, decisions on bail issues are always taken by the domestic prosecuting authority. It would not be practical for prosecutors in a foreign jurisdiction … to make such decisions."

Last week Sweden issued a warrant for Assange's arrest and extradition over sexual assault allegations. On 7 December the British prosecutor, Gemma Lindfield, convinced the senior district court judge Howard Riddle that Assange must be kept in custody because he was a flight risk.

Yesterday the judge accepted that Assange could be released on bail, but he was kept in Wandsworth prison after the CPS said it wanted to appeal against the decision to grant bail to a higher court.

The CPS's formal grounds of appeal for the hearing tomorrow morning, seen by the Guardian, will say that Assange must be kept in prison until a decision is made whether to extradite him, which could take months.

-------------------------------------
This is obviously being done by the Dark Forces in UK aligned and owned by the US!....and has nothing to do with sexual charges, but the leaks! Anyone in the UK should urge huge demonstrations today...this is really an amazing trick on the part of the UK!!!!! It is now clear that if you oppose the political order of the deep state in the UK or USA you will get imprisonment and likely an early death. Neither country now is a democracy nor under rule of law, IMO.
Peter Lemkin Wrote:Julian Assange bail decision made by UK authorities, not Sweden
Julian made a serious bummer of a decision in expecting anything different from the UK - it's not called 'perfidious Albion' for nothing you know. If he really does go all the way in his extradition fight, it will give the US ample time to dot the i's and cross the t's on legislation (or a Grand Jury indictment) that will seal the deal on his extradition to the US.

His best bet is to say OK I'll go back to Sweden and face whatever charges they bring right now - since they haven't brought any yet anyway. Then bugger off to Iceland or one of the South American countries that are a little less cosied up to Uncle Sam. My understanding is that Sweden takes a rather more realistic view of what constitutes Cruel and degrading treatment -( ie keeping people like Bradley in solitary for 7 months and counting) which would probably provide better grounds for appeal against a US extradition request too - though what that's worth in these days of US Mafia-like hegemony is anyone's guess.

Solid legal advice is what he needs and I'm far from certain that his present Zionist dominated firm is his best bet. It looks to me like he is at serious risk of becoming an arch-Patsie, right up there with all those other lone nuts.
Peter Presland Wrote:
Peter Lemkin Wrote:Julian Assange bail decision made by UK authorities, not Sweden
Julian made a serious bummer of a decision in expecting anything different from the UK - it's not called 'perfidious Albion' for nothing you know. If he really does go all the way in his extradition fight, it will give the US ample time to dot the i's and cross the t's on legislation (or a Grand Jury indictment) that will seal the deal on his extradition to the US.

His best bet is to say OK I'll go back to Sweden and face whatever charges they bring right now - since they haven't brought any yet anyway. Then bugger off to Iceland or one of the South American countries that are a little less cosied up to Uncle Sam. My understanding is that Sweden takes a rather more realistic view of what constitutes Cruel and degrading treatment -( ie keeping people like Bradley in solitary for 7 months and counting) which would probably provide better grounds for appeal against a US extradition request too - though what that's worth in these days of US Mafia-like hegemony is anyone's guess.

Solid legal advice is what he needs and I'm far from certain that his present Zionist dominated firm is his best bet. It looks to me like he is at serious risk of becoming an arch-Patsie, right up there with all those other lone nuts.

He is definitely in a messy situation now. I'm not as confident as you about Sweden and US extradition, but it is fairly clear he'd most likely not be charged with the 'sex crimes'....but would he have the chance to go to another country, is unknown! The USA wants him trapped and in their prisons. I'm sure a rendition team is near him at all times now. The world has become a very sinister place!!!! Today's court session should be full of fireworks!.....:bandit: How would he get other legal advice. His only contact is with his current group of attorneys. I wonder if they'll even let him out today.....

The UK certainly has shown itself as equal in injustice to the USA.....in the downward spiral of these two and others toward neo-fascism and world war or wars. The future for humanity looks as bleak to me as for Assange.
AMY GOODMAN: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is still in jail in London. On Tuesday, a British court granted Assange bail but then forced him to remain in prison after Swedish authorities decided to challenge the decision. Assange has been detained since last week, when he was arrested in London on an international warrant to face sex crimes allegations in Sweden. His arrest came amidst an international uproar over WikiLeaks’ most recent publication of a massive trove of secret U.S. diplomatic cables.

In a dramatic day in court Tuesday, Assange’s supporters broke out in cheers when the London judge granted Assange bail. But when the counsel for the prosecution indicated it would appeal, the judge told Assange he would remain in jail until a hearing at a higher court within 48 hours. If he wins that appeal, Assange will still have to raise 200,000 pounds sterling—more than $300,000—in bail money. He would also be subject to a curfew, be forced to wear an electronic tag, and report to a nearby police station every evening until his next court appearance on January 11th.

Before Tuesday’s hearing, Assange remained defiant, telling his mother, Christine, from his cell he was committed to publishing more secret U.S. cables. In a written statement of his comments supplied to Australia’s Network Seven by his mother, Assange said, quote, "My convictions are unfaltering. I remain true to the ideals I have expressed. This circumstance shall not shake them."

Several of Julian Assange’s high-profile supporters have been attending the court proceedings in London and have offered to contribute funds for his bail. They include political commentator and writer Tariq Ali, campaigner Bianca Jagger, filmmaker Ken Loach and veteran Australian journalist John Pilger, who is joining us now from London. John Pilger is an award-winning investigative journalist and documentary filmmaker who has written close to a dozen books and made over 50 documentaries. His latest film premiered last night on television and in theaters throughout Britain. It’s called The War You [Don’t] See and includes interviews with Julian Assange.

John Pilger, we welcome you to Democracy Now!, as well as Julian Assange’s attorney, Mark Stephens. John, why don’t you start off by telling us what the scene—

MARK STEPHENS: Hi, Amy.

AMY GOODMAN:—was like outside the courtroom and the significance of what is happening right now.

JOHN PILGER: Well, the scene outside the courtroom represented how people feel about this. People are overwhelmingly angry and overwhelmingly supportive of Julian Assange and of WikiLeaks. They have no difficulty seeing the injustice, the injustice that has been perpetrated in this rather absurd case in Sweden, but also the importance of Julian Assange’s WikiLeaks organization in allowing us to get a glimpse of how the world is really run, how and why politicians lie to us. I think it’s—in all my career as a journalist, I’ve never known anything like it. I think we’re seeing a great awakening, and WikiLeaks has been the catalyst for that. And that was very much demonstrated outside the court yesterday.

AMY GOODMAN: Mark Stephens, maybe for people around the world who are watching and listening to this right now, you can explain what exactly happened in the courtroom, the fact that Julian Assange has been held for more than a week in prison and has not been charged with a crime. Explain how we have come to this point.

MARK STEPHENS: Well, it’s a slightly bizarre situation. He’s wanted for questioning in Sweden. He’s already had one interview with the Swedish prosecutor. He’s wanted for another interview. The Swedish prosecutor has refused to tell him what she wants to interview him about or to give him the nature of the allegations. So, really, what we’re talking about now is an extradition warrant, which they’ve now issued. And so, the question on the extradition warrant is, should he serve his time in prison while the decision about extradition is being made, or should—as the Swedes would have it, should he be sitting in jail, Scrooge-like, over Christmas? Now, the problem we’ve got is that the Swedes seem dead set to try and keep him in jail.

AMY GOODMAN: Explain what the Interpol red—what red flag is, what exactly the Swedes are saying he has done and they want him for, and what it means for him to be extradited to Sweden, if that’s what’s going to happen.

MARK STEPHENS: OK. An Interpol red notice is a notice sent out, usually secretly, but very bizarrely in this case it’s been made public, which allows the authorities of each state to notify Sweden every time he crosses a port or enters or leaves a country. The matter that he’s wanted for is a sexual misdemeanor, a series of offenses in Sweden. He isn’t charged with that. And the Swedish lawyers tell me that even if he were convicted, he wouldn’t go to jail. So we’re in this rather bonkers position where the Swedish lawyers tell us he wouldn’t go to jail, yet on an extradition warrant, he’s being held in custody. And as you said at the top, Amy, they are some onerous conditions. He’s effectively under house arrest—or, as we said in court yesterday, mansion arrest—because he will be put up in a 600-acre estate, a 10-bedroom mansion near London.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you explain what is happening, that you understand is happening, here in the United States in Virginia? So he is being wanted for questioning about sex crimes in Sweden, but then the United States, the Attorney General Eric Holder, has said something else.

MARK STEPHENS: Excuse me, yes. A bit of a cough.

The position is that—the word swirling around the elites in Stockholm is that the Americans are effectively using this as a holding charge. A holding charge, as you’ll know, is a charge that people have no intention of prosecuting, because it’s meritless, or that it’s such a minor offense that actually the big sucker punch is coming, and we haven’t yet seen that. And the word in Stockholm is that there is a secret grand jury empaneled in Alexandria just near the Pentagon and that they are considering how they might get Julian Assange on criminal charges in the United States. Now, the United States authorities have flatly denied that. Now, if that’s true, then it would be difficult to see how he could be extradited. And, of course, as a lawyer, I can’t see that he’s committed any offense. And indeed a congressional report that came out on the 6th of December said very much the same thing. But I’m sure you’ll appreciate, as will viewers, that he has made some big and powerful enemies.

AMY GOODMAN: A friend of Julian Assange has told Sky News he believes that if he is extradited to Sweden, that he could be sent to the United States. Why would it be easier for him to be sent to the United States from Sweden than from Britain, Mark Stephens?

MARK STEPHENS: That’s a very good question, Amy. And the answer really is that we do have extradition arrangements between the U.K. and the U.S., but the British judges have a long history of looking at them pretty carefully. You’ll be familiar with the case of Gary McKinnon, the young child that hacked into the Pentagon computers, comprehensively embarrassed them, and he’s wanted on an extradition warrant to the United States. That’s been being fought for about three or four years now. And so, the possibility is that the British courts would look at this and scrutinize it in a thorough and independent way. That’s what British judges are; they’re not politically influenced. Whereas I think that it’s felt that the Swedes have perhaps a little more of a soft touch and perhaps, more fairly, are less experienced, the judiciary in Sweden, in dealing with these extradition warrants, and perhaps would—it would go more on the nod from Sweden.

AMY GOODMAN: How much money exactly does Julian Assange have to raise for bail?

MARK STEPHENS: He’s got to raise 200,000 pounds in cash. That’s about $300,000. And, of course, the problem with that is that we finished court after banking hours closed yesterday, so—and getting that kind of money out of a bank, you’ll realize that most banks don’t carry that kind of money. It’s very modest amounts that they carry these days, because we spend most of our money electronically. And, of course, he’s being electronically hobbled by Visa and MasterCard, who have stopped the accounts being—paying money to WikiLeaks. And so, actually gathering that money has meant that he’s had to call on—and we’ve had, on his behalf—to call upon the very generous friends that he has, very high-profile individuals. But even they can’t make money move after banking hours. And, of course, that’s why he was sent back to Wandsworth Prison, the very prison that indeed Oscar Wilde, the Anglo-Irish writer, was held in when he was up for crimes of a very different nature.

AMY GOODMAN: He’s been held in solitary in prison, Mark Stephens?

MARK STEPHENS: Yes, very unusually. Men who are accused of rape are usually released on bail, and they are given bail on condition they don’t contact the alleged victim. So, to find someone in prison is unusual enough. To find conditions as sort of onerous as these put on your bail is incredibly unusual. And to then find that you’re put in prison is even more unusual still. Yet further in the unusual stakes is the fact the he’s on a 23-and-a-half-hour lockdown, although he’s a model prisoner, deprived of access to television, to current affairs information, news, newspapers, magazines and such like. So, he really is on almost a punishment regime.

AMY GOODMAN: It’s very interesting. There’s a letter from Women Against Rape, a British organization, in The Guardian newspaper in London. It’s written by Katrin Axelsson in support of Julian Assange. And it says, "Many women in both Sweden and Britain will wonder at the unusual zeal with which Julian Assange is being pursued for rape allegations. [...] Women don’t take kindly to our demand for safety being misused, while rape continues to be neglected at best or protected at worst." This is a feminist organization in London. Mark Stephens?

MARK STEPHENS: I think that most of us are extremely troubled about this. And I think the reason that we’re troubled is that false allegations of sex crimes are incredibly rare. When they come along, they stink. This one utterly reeks. And, of course, the problem for that, more widely, is that it discourages genuine complaints about rape and sexual misbehaviors. And, of course, it demeans the complaints that are made by women who have genuinely been abused. And so, any of those kind of false allegations really do devalue this. And I’m not surprised that people like Naomi Wolf and—in the Huffington Post and also that letter in The Guardian are really concerned about this, because it is an unusual zeal, as she says. I would say it’s a vindictive campaign, and one has to understand why that vindictive campaign is going on.

AMY GOODMAN: What did the Swedish authorities ask him about in the first questioning of him? And how is it that he hasn’t been released on bail?

MARK STEPHENS: Well, he was granted bail yesterday by the judge, albeit on conditions, and we’re now waiting for the further appeal. The Swedes really clearly didn’t want to abide by the umpire’s decision. And, of course, we’re having every time to have people who have been incredibly generous with their time, people like John Pilger who have come along, other high-profile figures like Bianca Jagger and Jemima Khan, film director Ken Loach, Hanif Kureishi, the author. All sorts of people have come forward, stepped forward. Some of these people don’t even know him and have said, "I believe that there is something really wrong here." And they’ve come to right an injustice. They see an injustice taking place before their eyes, and they are stepping up to the plate to do something about it. And I have to say, I am in awe of those people who have behaved so honorably and so decently.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you, Mark Stephens, for being with us, attorney for Julian Assange. John Pilger, I’d like to ask you to stay with us. We’re going to play a clip from the film that premiered last night throughout Britain called The War You Don’t See, which has a section on Julian Assange, a man you have come to know, who you call a friend.
Peter Lemkin Wrote:Karin Rosander, director of communications for Sweden's prosecutor's office, told the Guardian: "The decision was made by the British prosecutor. I got it confirmed by the CPS this morning that the decision to appeal the granting of bail was entirely a matter for the CPS. The Swedish prosecutors are not entitled to make decisions within Britain. It is entirely up to the British authorities to handle it."

As a result, she said, Sweden will not be submitting any new evidence or arguments to the high court hearing tomorrow morning. "The Swedish authorities are not involved in these proceedings. We have not got a view at all on bail."

The CPS is completely politicized"

Quote:Director of Public Prosecutions

[Image: keir_starmer_110x138.jpg]
Keir Starmer QC

The CPS is headed by the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), Keir Starmer QC, who took up office on 1 November 2008.

As DPP, he is responsible for prosecutions, legal issues and criminal justice policy.

The Director is superintended by the Attorney General, who is accountable to Parliament for the Service.

Actually, the Attorney is completely answerable to, ahem, the Prime Minster who has the power to appoint him and fire him:

The current Attorney General is Dominic Grieve:

[Image: 225px-Dominic_Grieve%2C_October_2007.jpg]

He was educated at Magdalen College, Oxford - the same college Bullingdon Boy Georgy-Porgy Osborne attended. All friends together.

The current pro US grovelment is acting on behalf of the United States. As Assange's attorney said a couple of days ago, the Swedish rape accusation is a "holding charge".
David Guyatt Wrote:
Peter Lemkin Wrote:Karin Rosander, director of communications for Sweden's prosecutor's office, told the Guardian: "The decision was made by the British prosecutor. I got it confirmed by the CPS this morning that the decision to appeal the granting of bail was entirely a matter for the CPS. The Swedish prosecutors are not entitled to make decisions within Britain. It is entirely up to the British authorities to handle it."

As a result, she said, Sweden will not be submitting any new evidence or arguments to the high court hearing tomorrow morning. "The Swedish authorities are not involved in these proceedings. We have not got a view at all on bail."

The CPS is completely politicized"

Quote:Director of Public Prosecutions

[Image: keir_starmer_110x138.jpg]
Keir Starmer QC

The CPS is headed by the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), Keir Starmer QC, who took up office on 1 November 2008.

As DPP, he is responsible for prosecutions, legal issues and criminal justice policy.

The Director is superintended by the Attorney General, who is accountable to Parliament for the Service.

Actually, the Attorney is completely answerable to, ahem, the Prime Minster who has the power to appoint him and fire him:

The current Attorney General is Dominic Grieve:

[Image: 225px-Dominic_Grieve%2C_October_2007.jpg]

He was educated at Magdalen College, Oxford - the same college Bullingdon Boy Georgy-Porgy Osborne attended. All friends together.

The current pro US grovelment is acting on behalf of the United States. As Assange's attorney said a couple of days ago, the Swedish rape accusation is a "holding charge".

On WHAT point of LAW can the Grovelment step in here. Sweden has filed NO charges; the INTERPOL Red Warning was Public, not Secret, as it is supposed to be; the Judge granted bail with the most strict of measures - like someone who is accused of murder or mass murder!.....If Assange is denied to go free today and if there aren't riots, I say pull up the anchor and let the UK sink in its own muck.

And what exactly is it with British University College Clubs - they seem more like organized crime gangs in nice expensive tweeds.
Peter Lemkin Wrote:
David Guyatt Wrote:
Peter Lemkin Wrote:Karin Rosander, director of communications for Sweden's prosecutor's office, told the Guardian: "The decision was made by the British prosecutor. I got it confirmed by the CPS this morning that the decision to appeal the granting of bail was entirely a matter for the CPS. The Swedish prosecutors are not entitled to make decisions within Britain. It is entirely up to the British authorities to handle it."

As a result, she said, Sweden will not be submitting any new evidence or arguments to the high court hearing tomorrow morning. "The Swedish authorities are not involved in these proceedings. We have not got a view at all on bail."

The CPS is completely politicized"

Quote:Director of Public Prosecutions

[Image: keir_starmer_110x138.jpg]
Keir Starmer QC

The CPS is headed by the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), Keir Starmer QC, who took up office on 1 November 2008.

As DPP, he is responsible for prosecutions, legal issues and criminal justice policy.

The Director is superintended by the Attorney General, who is accountable to Parliament for the Service.

Actually, the Attorney is completely answerable to, ahem, the Prime Minster who has the power to appoint him and fire him:

The current Attorney General is Dominic Grieve:

[Image: 225px-Dominic_Grieve%2C_October_2007.jpg]

He was educated at Magdalen College, Oxford - the same college Bullingdon Boy Georgy-Porgy Osborne attended. All friends together.

The current pro US grovelment is acting on behalf of the United States. As Assange's attorney said a couple of days ago, the Swedish rape accusation is a "holding charge".

On WHAT point of LAW can the Grovelment step in here. Sweden has filed NO charges; the INTERPOL Red Warning was Public, not Secret, as it is supposed to be; the Judge granted bail with the most strict of measures - like someone who is accused of murder or mass murder!.....If Assange is denied to go free today and if there aren't riots, I say pull up the anchor and let the UK sink in its own muck.

And what exactly is it with British University College Clubs - they seem more like organized crime gangs in nice expensive tweeds.

Tsk, tsk dear boy - "point of law"? Whatever is that when it's at home?

The judicial system is politicized remember. The Director of Public Prosecutions answers to the Attorney, the Attorney answers to the Crime Minister, and he, our beloved Cameron,.... he answers to the United States.

This is "The Law" of reality. So please no more word plays about the perception of it all, let's simply stick to what we all know is the actualite, 'kay.