"... the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light." (Luke 16:8)
JULIAN ASSANGE: HUNTED BY THE U.S. GOVERNMENT
[A secularist whose courage to speak out against the
wickedness of the American Empire puts Christians to shame]
By: S.R. Shearer
November 28, 2010
http://www.antipasministries.com/html/file0000347.htm
INTRODUCTION
For the last three years Wikileaks (see below) has become the bane of the U.S. intelligence community. It is "headed-up" by an enigmatic figure: Julian Assange.
Geert Lovink, a Research Professor of Interactive Media at the Hogeschool van Amsterdam (HvA), writes
"Julian Assange has never publicly admitted that he's the brains behind Wikileaks, the website that has so radically rewritten the rules in the information era. He did, however, register a website, Leaks.org, in 1999. 'But then I didn't do anything with it'. "Wikileaks appeared on the internet three years ago. It acts as an electronic dead drop for highly sensitive or secret information: the pure stuff, in other words, published straight from the secret files to the world. No filters, no rewriting, no spin. Created by an online network of dissidents, journalists, academics, technology experts and mathematicians from various countries, the website also uses technology that makes the original sources of the leaks untraceable.
"In April the website released graphic, classified video footage of an American helicopter gunship firing on and killing Iraqis in a Baghdad street in 2007, apparently in cold blood. The de-encrypted video, which Wikileaks released on its own sites as well as on YouTube, caused an international uproar."
WikiLeaks is an international organization that publishes submissions of otherwise unavailable documents from anonymous sources and leaks. Its website, launched in 2006, is run by The Sunshine Press. WikiLeaks has won a number of awards, including the 2008 Economist Magazine New Media Award. In May 2010, the New York Daily News listed WikiLeaks first in a ranking of "websites that could totally change the news". In April 2010, WikiLeaks posted on a website called Collateral Murder video from a 2007 incident in which Iraqi civilians were killed by U.S. forces. In July of the same year, WikiLeaks released Afghan War Diary, a compilation of more than 76,900 documents about the War in Afghanistan not previously available for public review. In October the group released a package of almost 400,000 documents called the Iraq War Logs in coordination with major commercial media organizations.
Lovink continues:
"The Baghdad video has been Wikileaks' biggest coup to date, although an extraordinary number of unauthorized documents - more than a million - have found their way to the website. These include a US government's classified manual of standard operating procedures for Camp Delta at Guantanamo Bay, which revealed that it was policy to hide some prisoners from the International Committee of the Red Cross; a classified US intelligence report on how to marginalize Wikileaks; an internal report by the global oil trader, Trafigura, about dumping toxic waste in the Ivory Coast; a classified US profile of the former Icelandic ambassador to the US in which the ambassador is praised for helping quell publicity about the CIA's activities involving rendition flights.
"Two years ago a Swiss bank in Zurich, Julius Baer, succeeded in temporarily closing down the website with a US District Court injunction after Wikileaks published documents detailing how the bankers hid their wealthy clients' funds in offshore trusts (the banned documents reappeared on Wikileaks ''mirror'' sites in places such as Belgium and Britain)."
To say that the list of rattled people in high places around the world is growing because of Wikileaks is an understatement. The fact that the website has no headquarters also means that conventional retaliatory measures - phones tapped, raids by the authorities, etc. - are impossible.
CIA MOVES TO DISCREDIT ASSANGE
However, things began to change for Assange last August (2010). Suddenly and quite unexpectedly, Assange was arrested in Sweden and charged with two criminal counts - one for rape, one for sexual molestation. The charges were levied at a time when Wikileaks was set to publish 15,000 more secret papers about the war in Afghanistan, having recently released nearly 77,000 papers and sparking charges from the Americans that it had endangered the lives of informants and others.
There could be little doubt that the Americans were sending a warning shot in the direction of Assange: "We have more than one way of "getting rid of you."
Only a few hours later, the charges were dropped; the warning had been delivered.
Assange had no doubt as to the identity of those who were behind the "trumped-up" charges. He remarked later,
"We have been warned that the Pentagon was going to use dirty tricks to destroy us. I have furthermore been warned about set-up sex traps."
Assange continued:
"I have no doubt that the Pentagon is hiding behind these charges."
Gavin MacFadyen, director of the Center for Investigative Journalism writes,
"A lot of us who had any notion of what he was doing have expected this sort of thing to happen for some time now. I'm amazed it has taken this long to get it together."
Assange replied to the charges by saying,
"I have never, neither in Sweden nor in any other country, had sex with someone in a way which wasn't completely voluntary on both sides."
SWEDEN PROVES ITSELF TO BE NOTHING MORE THAN
ANOTHER SLAVE-STATE IN THE AMERICAN EMPIRE
It's now pretty sure who the 31 year old women is that had sex with Julian Assange in Sweden. The Italian newspaper La Republica identifies her as Anna Ardin, the woman who had invited Assange to Sweden to speak at a conference meeting of the Swedish Christian Social Democratic Brotherhood Movement
There seems to be little doubt that Assange stayed in her apartment when he was in Stockholm, and that the two of them had sex "after a traditional Swedish cray-fish-party (where people drink vodka with crayfish)
Israel Shamir, a leading left-wing Russian Israeli writer, and freelance writer Paul Bennett report that there is probably little doubt that Anna Ardin is a CIA asset. Indeed, the moment that Assange sought momentary relief beneath Sweden's reputation as a bastion of free speech, the CIA immediately threatened to discontinue intelligence sharing with SEPO, the Swedish Secret Service.
The Swedish "establishment" wanted nothing of that. The very real fact of the matter is, ever since the murder of Sweden's Prime Minister Olof Palme, the Swedes have been doing everything they can to ingratiate themselves with the United States - after all, they know perfectly well "which side of the toast the butter is on."
And more than that, Swedish politicians now are fully cognizant of what the CIA is capable of if and when they "stray too far off the plantation."
MARTIN LUTHER KING: ANOTHER
LESSON YOU NEED TO BE AWARE OF
Then, of course, there's what the FBI did to Martin Luther King. In the late 1950s the government began spying on MLK because the elites had become convinced that King was a "frontman" for the Communist Party, and his Civil Rights Crusade was nothing more than an instrument of communist subversion. Indeed, in a 1963 internal memo, counterintelligence specialist Charles D. Brennan stated that civil rights agitation represented a clear threat to "the established order" of the United States, and that -
"King is growing in stature daily as the leader among leaders of the Negro movement."
COINTELPRO head William C. Sullivan responded in a letter,
"We must mark [King] now, if we have not before, as the most dangerous Negro in the future of the nation from the standpoint of communism, the Negro, and national security ... it may be unrealistic to limit [our actions against King] to legalistic proofs that would stand up in court or before Congressional Committees."
So, instead of sticking within the constraints of the law, THE FBI AIMED TO DISCREDIT KING BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY. Agents tapped his phone, bugged his rooms, trumpeted his supposed commie connections, and his sexual proclivities, and "sicced" the Internal Revenue Service on him.
When it was announced in 1964 that King would receive the Nobel Peace Prize, the FBI grew desperate. Hoping to prevent King from accepting the award, the Bureau mailed him an anonymous package containing an audio tape of King's alleged extra-marital affairs and a threatening letter. And what was the threat? In barely concealed language, King was told to commit suicide before the award ceremony or risk seeing his "filthy, abnormal fraudulent self" exposed to the nation.
Think about that for a minute! The absolute HORROR of it all. An official agency of the U.S. government - the FBI - suggesting to King that he should commit suicide! Fortunately, King ignored the FBI's advice. He accepted the award and lived for four more years until the elites finally had him gunned down in Memphis.
THIS KIND OF THING HAPPENS TO ORDINARY PEOPLE
AS WELL; MEANING IT COULD HAPPEN TO YOU !!
And one should be very clear, this kind of "sliming" happens to ordinary people as well as to people like Bobby Seale, Martin Luther King and Julian Assange. Take what happened to Mitchell Crooks - who was on vacation during the weekend of July 4th 2002 in Inglewood near downtown Los Angeles - when he heard a woman scream, "Don't resist
Crooks, who is white, grabbed his camera and ran outside his motel in time to catch on video tape the now infamous beating of Donovan Jackson, a black youth, by a GANG of Inglewood cops. His videotape clearly shows how the cops took the 16-year old Donovan and beat him mercilessly, and then brutally slammed the half-conscious young man onto the hood of a car and beat him some more.
THE COPS COME AFTER MITCHELL CROOKS
After Crooks realized that the cops had seen him videotaping the event, you can hear him say on the tape, "They're gonna come up and come after me now." Worried about turning the video over to the police, Crooks took the precaution of separating the tape from his camera and giving it to some other guests. Within minutes, SEVENTEEN armed sheriff deputies were combing through the motel looking for Crooks. And for what? - committing a crime? No! - for simply videotaping the police in the "routine course of their duties" in downtown Los Angeles. Obviously, the police didn't want the "general public" to know what those duties consisted of.
Crooks said, "Ninety percent of the people there knew I'd taped it, but no one said a word. We all knew that if they got it, it would be the end of it, it would disappear." Think about that! - that's quite an indictment against the crude methodologies of the L.A. police by average people in Inglewood - or maybe they're all wrong and the police (and the elites who protect them) are all right.
Is that what you think about Bobby Seale? Is that what you think about Martin Luther King? Is that what you think about Julian Assange?
And is that what you think about ordinary people (e.g., blacks, Hispanics, gays, etc.) - people such as Mitchell Crooks - when they are brutalized by the police? - if you do, then you are a victim (like almost everyone else in the United States) of the pervasive and very wicked propaganda of the corporate media against the poor in this country as purveyed to average Americans in such TV programs as "Cops," "Most Wanted," "FBI Files;" etc. - the kind of propaganda that predisposes middle-class Americans to take the word of the few (the cops) against the many (the poor). This isn't a ringing endorsement for the assumptions that are supposed to underpin a democracy.
The cops didn't find the tape. And - much to the horror of the Los Angeles law enforcement and judicial communities - Crooks, with the help of other eyewitnesses to the event, made sure that the media got copies of it the next day. His footage was aired on all the major L.A. news broadcasts, and it was picked up nationally and even internationally. But in making sure that the media got a hold of his tape, Crooks of necessity was forced out of the shadows and into the open where the law enforcement community could at last "draw a bead on him."
TRUMPED UP CHARGES
The next day, while Crooks was being interviewed live on the radio, the Chief Deputy District Attorney of Los Angeles phoned in and said threateningly, "Mitchell, there's a grand jury subpoena out on you; I suggest you honor it? Show up at the Criminal Courts Building." Crooks, however, was under no obligation - absent a subpoena that had been PERSONALLY served on him (and absent a criminal indictment) - to volunteer to be interviewed by the grand jury. Crooks knew that by delivering himself up to the grand jury he would at the same time be delivering himself up to the "tender mercies" of the D.A. who controlled the grand jury. And then what?
Crooks didn't want to find out. He told his interviewer, "They're coming after me because I shot the video. I fear for my life." That kind of statement would, of course, sound like an absurd exaggeration to most white, middle-class Americans, but to the denizens of the underclass, it isn't - as the recent exposes of the TERROR TACTICS of the Ramparts Division of the L.A. Police Department clearly indicate.
Obviously, the subpoena "ruse" wasn't working, and the cops had to find another way of stopping Crooks; so - as Crooks made his way around Los Angeles being interviewed by the media - the cops busied themselves in a painstaking "warrants search" and found an old traffic violation (can you imagine, an old, very routine traffic violation?) and a BOGUS petty theft charge (alleging that Crooks was guilty of theft of his grandmother's property - charges that she repudiated) that they felt they could arrest him on and get him off the streets and away from the media. And that's exactly what they did. When Crooks arrived at CNN the next day for a nationwide interview that the network had arranged with him in advance, undercover cops jumped out of unmarked cars and arrested him when he tried to enter the station.
BEATEN UP AND JAILED
As they spirited him away in a SUV, Crooks' screams, "They're gonna kill me," could be clearly heard. Later that night he was treated for unspecified injuries at a hospital (he had plainly been beaten up by the cops), and the next day he was extradited to a remote, rural county in northern California (far from all the "action" in L.A.) to face the "trumped up" charges against him.
He was kept in custody for SIX MONTHS, locked down 23 HOURS A DAY, and allowed no mail and no contact with the outside. By the time he finally got out, the incident had largely "blown over." Later, in an interview on radio station KPFK after he had finally been released, Crooks said, "It's really scary to challenge the SYSTEM, and I knew that's what I was doing."
GETTING BACK TO JULIAN ASSANGE
With all this in mind - and knowing that these examples have all been taken out of the government's handbook (so to speak) on how to deal with those who dare to challenge the "SYSTEM," - we return to our story concerning Julian Assange: Despite the warning shot (as it were) from the CIA across Assange's head - and by that we mean the original trumped up charges of rape and sexual molestation levied against him last August - Assange refused to "back-off." Instead he released on the Wikileaks website his biggest bombshell yet - nearly 4,000,000 secret US military documents detailing graphic accounts of torture, killing of over 66,000 civilians and Iran's role in the conflict.
In October - one month before the Swedes re-opened their criminal probe of Assange - the Swedish Migration Board rejected Assange's application to live and work in the Scandinavian country. "We have decided not to grant him a residence permit," said Gunilla Wikstršm, in charge of his case. "He did not fulfill the requirements," Wikstršm asserted, while refusing to provide any details. Very obviously, the CIA's noose around Assange's neck was tightening.
Shortly thereafter - in mid-November - Swedish prosecutor, Marianne Ny, issued an international arrest warrant for Assange based on the charges that were originally made against him in August, and then dropped. Naturally enough, the timing of the renewed arrest warrant raised questions among the supporters of Wikileaks.
Prosecutors released no details about the allegations against Assange.
The pressure to re-open the case against Assange emanated from Claes Borgstršm, a prominent attorney and a Social Democratic politician. He served in the Swedish government of Gšran Persson from 2000 to 2007. He now operates a law firm in partnership with another Social Democratic politician (and former Minister for Justice) Thomas Bodstršm. Persson, Borgstršm and Bodstršm are all part of the Swedish "establishment" that was rattled to its very core by the CIA assassination of Olof Palme, and which now, as a result, slavishly dances to the dictates of the CIA.
Having learned its lesson well as a result of the Palme assassination, the Social Democratic government of Persson went out of its way to support the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and even dispatched 500 Swedish troops to the conflict in early 2002.
Ardin, Wilen, Borgstršm and Bodstršm - i.e., those associated in pursuing the rape and sexual molestation charges against Assange - are all associated with the Social Democratic Party which, as we just indicated, acts today as a TOADY for U.S.
interests in Sweden - while all the while hiding behind Left-Wing political goals that pursue a "radical feminist" agenda and other social policies that ostensibly are anathema to American neoconservatives. The CIA knows perfectly well how to hide its interests in foreign countries. [Please see our articles, "The Neoconservatives" and "The Invasion of Europe by America's Apostate Church."]
The international arrest warrant for Assange was placed by Ny in the Schengen Information System, or SIS, which is used by the 27 European countries under the Schengen Agreement Application Convention, and the Interpol database.
It means that countries can now arrest Assange and upon court order transfer him to Sweden without having to examine the allegations made against him. Countries in the European Union are required to do so under the European Arrest Warrant, which is valid throughout all EU member states.
Mark Stephens, Assange's lawyer, remarked:
"My client is now in the extraordinary position that, despite his innocence, and despite never having been indicted, and despite never receiving a single piece of paper about the allegations against him" he must remain on the run."
As a result of this CIA-inspired witch hunt, Assange, is now reported to be living a "hunted life" fearing arrest. Stephens says that Assange now hides himself like a mouse while the CIA hunts him like a cat.
He gets into hotels under fictitious names, dyes his hair, changes his style of dressing to escape detection by the secret police sleuths; he sleeps not on beds but on sofas and floors. He does not use his credit cards and spends cash often borrowed from his friends, relatives and well-wishers. Recently he lost his bag and three encysted laptops during a journey from Sweden to Germany - which has given rise to the suspicion that US Intelligence agents are now intercepting his baggage.
Assange was quoted as telling the New York Times:
"By being determined to be on this path, and not to compromise, I've wound up in an extraordinary situation."
He continued,
"When it comes to the point where you occasionally look forward to being in prison on the basis that you might be able to spend a day reading a book, the realization dawns that perhaps the situation has become a little more stressful than you would like."
HOW LONG WILL ASSANGE BE ABLE TO RUN
The question is, How long will this truth bearer be able to run away from his tormentors? How long will it be before the CIA catches up to him? He does have one thing going for him. HE IS BY NOW A WELL-KNOWN INTERNATIONAL FIGURE - and that fact alone affords him a measure of protection. But should the CIA continue its campaign to SMEAR him, there is the very grave reality that he could eventually be "DISAPPEARED" with no one of importance to "give a damn."
The greater danger for Assange in all this, however, is not so much that he will be caught and thrown into a Swedish jail, but that he will be "tracked-down" by the CIA and "VANISHED" into the CIA's Gulag while all the time America's intelligence agencies deny they have been able to find him.
"HE HAS GONE TO GROUND; HE IS IN THE WIND" - that's what the CIA will claim, while all the time he is rotting away in one of America's "BLACK SITES." THIS IS PROBABLY WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO OSAMA BIN LADEN.
God help Assange if that happens to him!
A description of the inner circle of Dante's Inferno would probably not do justice to the hell that is occurring in these "BLACK SITES," but the experiences of three Yemeni men and one Canadian who were "disappeared" into this netherworld of pain and horror are instructive as to the actual living conditions there.
According to Amnesty International, the four men were moved several times, but were always held in complete isolation, always in cells with blank walls, no floor coverings, no windows, no natural light. They spoke to no one but their interrogators and no one spoke to them. In their cells there was a constant low-level hum of "white noise" (indistinct, non-musical sounds), sometimes replaced by loud "rock" music. For over a year the men did not know what part of the world they were in, whether it was night or day, hot or cold, raining or sunny. They spent nearly every waking hour staring at the four blank walls of their cells, leaving only to go to interrogation. None of the men ever saw each other, or any other detainee.
The detention regime imposed on these men was aimed at inducing maximum disorientation, dependence and stress. Hooding, cuffing and shackling were common practices. The experience of one of the men - Mahar Arar, a Canadian national - speaks for itself: Arar was changing planes in New York City on his way home to Canada from a family holiday in Tunisia. He was taken into custody by the US Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and was then held in incommunicado detention in New York for 13 days before being told he would be deported to Syria. He was taken, in chains, to a small private jet, which flew him to Jordan, where he was interrogated and beaten before being taken overland to Syria. In Syria, he says he was severely beaten with electrical cable during six days of interrogation, and threatened with electric shocks. He says he was held alone in a tiny, basement cell without light, which he called "the grave" for more than 10 months. He was finally released without charge one year later, in October 2003.
In February 2004, Canadian authorities established a "Commission of Inquiry into the Actions of Canadian Officials in Relation to Maher Arar." Professor Stephen Toope was appointed "fact finder" by the Commission. In his October 2005 report, Professor Toope noted:
"...as the beatings became less intense, it was the daily horror of living in the tiny, dark and damp cell all alone and with no reading material that came to be the most disturbing aspect of the detention. Whereas at first the cell was a refuge from the infliction of physical pain, later it became a 'torture' in its own right. ... He remained in this cell for ten months and ten days, and saw almost no sunlight except for when he was transferred for consular visits ... Mr. Arar describes the cell as 'a grave' and as a 'slow death'."
