Julian Assange and western fascism

Fascism touchstone for ‘democratic’ West

By Rodney Shakespeare

Press TV,

26 April, 2012

It was Sherlock Holmes Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous detective who explained that circumstantial evidence can be deceptive. “It may seem to point very straight to one thing, but if you shift your own point of view a little, you may find it pointing in an equally uncompromising manner to something entirely different."

Furthermore, the Great Man said that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

Which brings us to the strange case of Julian Assange who is being called a rapist by the Western media and must therefore be extradited to Sweden (a land, it is claimed, of sweetness and justice).

Yet Assange has not been charged with anything. Not in Sweden and not in the UK.

Nor did he flee Sweden in order to avoid questioning. Indeed, he remained in Sweden for five weeks for the purpose of being questioned and was then given permission to leave.

So no charge, no questioning and permission to leave because the case against him, which had never had a real existence, had been dropped!

And with good reason. The two alleged plaintiffs had consented to be in bed and consented to sexual intercourse; they had never felt threatened; and they, and Assange, were all good friends (there are photographs indicating this and one of the complainants tweeted so (later deleting the tweet). Indeed, one of the alleged plaintiffs was recommending to a friend that she (the friend) should sleep with Assange!

The situation gets even stranger. A condom, claimed as evidence that Assange had deliberately torn it during sexual intercourse, contains no DNA (of either party) whatsoever.

None

So where did the cry of “Rapist!” come from, remembering that, with the cry everywhere, Assange has still not been charged?

The answer is that Swedish politicians intervened to get a new prosecutor who refused to put into writing Assange’s alleged offences.

In every respect, every conceivable principle of law and of fairness has been broken. And would be further broken if Assange were to be extradited to Sweden because he would there be would be held incommunicado, put into solitary confinement for an indefinite period, and then tried in secret. This is Swedish sweetness and justice.

On top of all this, Assange still offers to be available for questioning either by telephone or by having investigators visit him in London.

Yet Sweden says Assange must be extradited to Sweden for questioning. For this purpose a European Arrest Warrant was issued by Sweden, in disregard for one of its basic restrictions that a Warrant is for prosecution purposes only (and Sweden has laid no charge).

So what would the Great Man make of all this?

He would perhaps first notice that one of Assange’s Australian lawyers has been put on a secret watch list i.e., she is now listed as a suspected terrorist.

The Great Man would further notice that, everywhere in the West, anybody who dares to oppose government is being targeted.

Indeed, the so-called ‘democratic’ West is exhibiting more and more of the criteria for incipient fascism. Thus the UK Foreign Secretary, William Hague ? a nasty bully if there ever was one ? wants to smash into the Ecuadorean Embassy to arrest Assange.

On that he has been forced to back down because those who smash into Embassies will quickly find their own Embassies being smashed into as well.

The Great Man would then discover that Assange is involved with Wikileaks revelations. There are thousands of these but two immediately come back to mind. Firstly, there is the helicopter video of gleeful Americans, as if playing some war game in an amusement arcade, spraying bullets into journalists and civilians. Secondly, the Saudi demand that the USA attack Iran.

Learning these things, the Great Man would light another pipe (he did have his weaknesses) and, reflecting that Government is probably involved, would examine the very circumstantial evidence no doubt finding it pointing “in an equally uncompromising manner to something entirely different."

Bit by bit (and the Great Man’s creator, Conan Doyle, had been trained in microscopic observation and subsequent deduction) he would come to the conclusion that, when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

Well, in this case, the truth is not so improbable. The USA (which has a secret, sealed indictment with which they intend to charge Assange with spying and then torture him until he dies as a warning to journalists right the way round the world) is enraged. It is enraged that it should be exposed as the leader of violence and aggression; and exposed as having Moriarty-like fascist intent to put thirty thousand spy-drones into the skies of the USA.

Not normally political (after all, he must spend his time solving the many difficult crimes), the Great Man can be expected to make an exception and resolve that, as with his struggles with Professor Moriarty, he will fight incipient fascism right until the very end….

A Visiting Professor of Binary Economics at Trisakti University, Jakarta, Indonesia, Rodney Shakespeare is a Cambridge MA, a qualified UK Barrister, a co-founder of the Global Justice Movement www.globaljusticemovement.net, a member of the Christian Council for Monetary Justice. His main website is www.binaryeconomics.net. Shakespeare is also Chair of the Committee Against Torture in Bahrain.  

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