Pepe Escobar: Naked emperor hails sex by surprise

Information has never been so free. Even in authoritarian countries information networks are helping people discover new facts and making governments more accountable.
- US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, January 21, 2010


Naked emperor hails sex by surprise
By Pepe Escobar
Dec 9, 2010

Julian Assange, unfortunately, got it wrong. He should have tried to make it to the Tora Bora - the rugged mountains in Afghanistan and the best place to escape the emperor's fury, as former al-Qaeda icons Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri can abundantly attest. OK, no broadband; but at least no danger of sex tricks, apart from a brush-off with a rock face.

World public opinion has not failed to notice the spectacular crossover between WikiLeaks founder Assange's bizarre Swedish sex saga charges and the emperor's (and his minion's) fury. This is stuff to blow Monty Python's Life of Brian out of the park. To the delight of those "democrats" who want to take him down - or out - Assange, now firmly established as a global underground icon, will spend his next days at London's Wandsworth prison, which The Guardian has quaintly depicted as "a beautiful example of Victorian prison architecture". Pentagon supremo Defense Secretary Robert Gates said this is "good news". What is good for the Pentagon simply can't be good for the rest of the world.

The plot thickens. The post-arrest Assange thriller will clarify everything one needs to know about the state of Western democracy as embodied by three of its supposed icons - Britain, Sweden and the United States. Imagine if the roller-coaster narrative so far - including a manhunt merging into a Burn the Witch! (pirate) hysterics among the establishment - was taking place in China, Russia or, ayatollahs forbid, Iran.

The emperor - and his minions - can hardly wait to return to business as usual, as in an ocean of hypocrisy never contaminated by the hardcore mud-wrestling match which WikiLeaks reveals to be the real "making of diplomacy". The moment the self-satisfied Democratic West - this happy-ever-after end of history - faces a totally new, and radical, transgression, its response is to try to turn the concept of freedom of information upside down. The emperor is disgusted: Who are these "criminals" - WikiLeaks - who dare to steal what we say we are?

As Mark Stephens, Assange's London attorney, had told AOL News this past weekend, Swedish prosecutors want Assange "not for allegations of rape, as previously reported", but for something called "sex by surprise", which Stephens said "involves a fine of 5,000 kronor or about $715". Stephens added, "We don't even know what 'sex by surprise' even means, and they haven't told us."