An Irish publican has been prosecuted after police found dozens of "nuns" drinking illegally, several hours past closing time on his premises.
Christy Walsh, who runs the bar in Listowel, County Kerry, has been fined a total of 700 euros (£605) after his pub was raided twice in one night.
Pope Benedict fired by the Knights of Malta?
Popes don’t resign are fired
by Kevin Barrett
Sometimes they’re “fired” by God, who has been known to dismiss them from this mortal coil. On other occasions, Satan – through one of his secret societies infesting the Vatican – slips the Pontiff one of those patented papal poisons.
But Popes do not resign because they’re getting old. If you believe that Papal Bull, I have a “we killed Bin Laden and threw him in the ocean” story to sell you.
Noted Catholic scholar Michael Jones, editor of Culture Wars magazine, could not contain himself when, in the lobby of Tehran’s Parsian Hotel, he was confronted with the news. “But…but that’s unprecedented!” Jones shouted.
So…why did Pope Benedict XVI REALLY step down?
Dr. Robert Moynihan, editor of Inside the Vatican magazine, is no conspiracy theorist. He’s THE quasi-official Vatican-embedded journalist and commentator.
So when Moynihan let slip a soupçon of skepticism about the “resigned due to old age” story, my ears pricked up and my hair stood on end. Moynihan points out in his latest journalistic encyclical that the Pope sure didn’t look like he needed to resign for health reasons: “I saw the Pope twice this week, once at a concert (on Monday evening, where I was sitting about 20 yards away from him) and at his General Audience on Wednesday. For a man of 85, he looked well, though he did seem tired.”
Why, pray tell, did he “seem tired”? What, precisely, was weighing on his infallible mind?
Moynihan takes a guess:
On Saturday, I intended (sic) a funeral Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica for a cardinal who died last week (Cardinal Giovanni Cheli). Pope Benedict was scheduled to attend, but at the very last minute, he canceled his attendance. This was an indication to me already Saturday evening that he was unusually tired (he had spent several hours that monring (sic) with the Order of the Knights of Malta). Normally he would have been present at a cardinal’s funeral.
Monihan’s typo “monring” (“my ring”) is suggestive. The Pope’s office is symbolized by the Ring of the Fisherman, which is ceremonially transferred when the papacy changes hands. Wikipedia, the Zionist authority on everything, explains:
During the ceremony of a Papal Coronation or Papal Inauguration, the Dean of the College of Cardinals slips the ring on the third finger of the new Pope’s right hand. Upon a papal death, the ring was ceremonially broken in the presence of other cardinals by the Camerlengo, in order to prevent the sealing of backdated, forged documents during the interregnum, or sede vacante.
What a scurrilous bunch those papal hangers-on must be!
Moynihan’s Freudian slip occurs in the middle of the sentence:
This was an indication to me already Saturday evening that he was unusually tired (he had spent several hours that monring (sic) with the Order of the Knights of Malta).
So THAT’S what was weighing so heavily on Pope Benedict: Spending several hours that morning with the Knights of Malta. The meeting exhausted him. So he resigned.
Somehow I don’t think it was just the exhaustion.
What did the Knights of Malta tell the Pope that caused His Holiness to take the “unprecedented” step of stepping down?
Was it a simple “you’re fired”?
The Knights of Malta are one of the most feared and whispered-about secret societies in the world. Originally a gang of fanatical crusaders dedicated to perpetrating genocide in the Holy Land, the Knights apparently have not changed very much – at least if you believe Seymour Hersh. He says the Knights of Malta are a key part of “how eight or nine neoconservatives, radicals if you will, overthrew the American government.” (Hersh is too polite to mention that they did it by way of the 9/11 inside job.)
Seymour Hersh explains:
“[The] attitude (toward the Iraq invasion) was, ‘What’s this? What are they all worried about, the politicians and the press, they’re all worried about some looting?” Hersh was quoted as saying. “Don’t they get it? We’re gonna change mosques into cathedrals. And when we get all the oil, nobody’s gonna give a damn.’ That’s the attitude. We’re gonna change mosques into cathedrals. That’s an attitude that pervades, I’m here to say, a large percentage of the Joint Special Operations Command [JSOC].”
Hersh further claimed that Gen. Stanley McChrystal, Vice Admiral William McRaven and others in the JSOC were members of the “Knights of Malta” and “Opus Dei,” two little known Catholic orders.
“They do see what they’re doing — and this is not an atypical attitude among some military — it’s a crusade, literally,” Hersh reportedly continued. “They see themselves as the protectors of the Christians. They’re protecting them from the Muslims [as in] the 13th century. And this is their function.”
He added that members of these societies have developed a secret set of insignias that represent “the whole notion that this is a culture war” between religions.
Reading Hersh between the lines, it appears that the Knights of Malta – a radical secret society penetrated by Freemasonic agents – helped bring us 9/11 and the 9/11 wars. Have they forced Pope Benedict to resign…or at least caused him so much worry (about what future plans?!) that Benedict felt he had to flee the Vatican rather than shoulder responsibility for whatever is coming?
Are the Knights of Malta and their Israeli friends about to ramp up the clash of civilizations? Are they going to nuke an American city and blame it on Iran? Are they planning some other dastardly act that Benedict couldn’t stomach?
Or could the Pope’s resignation have been caused by some other intrigue involving the Knights of Malta?
At this point, we just don’t know. The choice of the next pope may reveal the hidden agenda.
Here’s the hot rumor going around Italy, passed to me by journalist Roberto Quaglia: Pope Benedict was fired in order to pave the way for a new Pope who will sanction homosexual marriage, non-celibate priests, and other projects aimed at sexualizing and de-sacralizing the Church. According to this analysis, the judeo-freemasonic secret societies responsible for Vatican II have been pushing Benedict to allow gay marriage and a sex-lovin’ priesthood – but Benedict’s eternal response is “not on my watch!” So, goeth the rumor, they ended Benedict’s watch.
My Muslim friends here in Tehran have a different story: They suspect that the Pope resigned because the Church is about to be blown to smithereens when the 2nd-century Gospel of Barnabas is made public. My most knowledgeable informant on this matter, a certain Professor Ben Isa, claims to know from a trusted source, a Turkish parliamentarian, that a copy of the Gospel of Barnabas, currently under armed guard in a special room of the Turkish capitol in Ankara, has been carbon-dated and certified as arguably the oldest extant Gospel.
The copy of Barnabas in the Turkish capitol, Dr. Ben Isa adds, appears to be identical – word for word – with the other copies, which Western scholars have tried to dismiss as Muslim forgeries.
Now it looks like the “Muslim forgery” predates the canonical gospels!
Barnabas’s Gospel, already known from much later copies, reveals that early Christianity was much closer to today’s Islam than to today’s Christianity. Like the Qur’an, it is unitarian. Like the Qur’an, it suggests that Jesus was not actually crucified. And in anticipation of the Qur’an, it predicts the coming of the Prophet Muhammad.
The import of the new Barnabas is staggering. In a nutshell:
Bye-bye Christianity as we’ve known it.
Hello Islam.
Will the Turkish government soon be announcing this news to the world? Rumor has it that powerful forces are trying to persuade the Turks, through threats and bribes, to relinquish Barnabas. If they do, it will probably disappear into the deepest sub-basement of the Vatican.
Or are the Turks resisting the pressure?
Did the Pope resign in order to avoid having to captain the ship of Christianity after it hits the iceberg namedBarnabas?
Only God (and possibly the Knights of Malta) knows for sure
When it comes to stories like this… sometimes it feels like the proper words are hard to find. In 1990 Alan Kempster was in a nasty motorcycle accident- hit by a drunk driver that caused his right arm and leg to be amputated. That didn’t keep him from his passion and love for motorcycles. From maintaining his race bike to taking first place… he does it all plus some.
I’d just like to say to anyone with a disability: If you have a dream and a passion you have to follow it. You’re the one that has to make it happen, no one else will make it happen. - Alan Kempster
In case you need more inspiration today, here’s his video “Left Side Story”.
This video goes to show that good riding posture on track is not limited to your legs and how close you can get your knee to the ground-
Thanks Alan for being a total bad ass and inspiration to motorcyclists everywhere. If you ask me, this can say a lot about life and living in general and not just riding!
Because ladies were born to ride. And motorcycles were made for riding.
The Queen has kept silent about the child rape scandal of the BBC and their superstar Jimmy Savile, which is the worst crisis to hit the BBC in 50 years. She has been hiding from the subject, despite the fact, that the scandal is a moral issue directly involving her and public interest, where she is directly involved in the BBC as it's boss, which is run by 21 trustees appointed by the Queen herself. She granted Savile knighthood in 1990, who was supposed to be vetted by her secret services M15 ?
She knighted Savile at a time, when his child rape was well known in British establishment circles and the Queen should have stopped the royal family, from being further intimately involved with her pedophile employee at that time, immediately after allegations of his perverted activity was originally made public. However the Queen herself has not taken responsibility, neither has her her office for the royal family. Despite all she knew of the Savile’s scandalous behaviour, she still decided to decorate him regardless, why ?
The BBC is employed under a Royal Charter, with the present one having come into force from 2007, which runs until 2016. The BBC Trust, with a board of 21 trustees is directly appointed by the Queen, to choose the BBC’s director general, who is in charge of the BBC's Executive Board, governing its services and output. She was also well acquainted with Savile's intimate relationships with several British Prime ministers over several decades, which includes intimate activity over 10 Xmas holidays.
Was it not her duty to prevent this abuse of Parliamentary privilege? We can be certain that either the head of M15 or the Queen, depending on which of them are really in charge of governing the UK were well acquainted with the facts.The question of who is really in charge of running the UK, is a bit of a hot potato in the corridors of power in Britain currently, with a broad consensus being, that MI5 are really in charge of running the UK, with a pedophile ring involving the British Prime Minister’s office and the British Royal family being a major power point of leverage.
The seriousness of the Savile child rape scandal, with the drama of Tom Watson MP openly suggesting in parliament, that there is a pedophile ring involving the British Prime Minister’s office at No 10 Downing Street, raises more questions about the Queen of England. Why, if the Queen is aware of the facts of the scandal, which is being kept secret from the public, including police investigators, why is she and her family not helping inquiries?
The Queen appears to be evading responsibility for knighting Savile, her former employee of the BBC, a sovereign body of members, directly appointed by the Queen, which leads many to believe, she is taking her orders from MI5. This begs some very serious questions about her role and that of several members of her extended family, with regard to their relationship with Savile and his pedophile ring. A Royal Prerogative recently stolen and destroyed by the UK's Secret Services in British Occupied Ireland, without even a Royal rebuke for this criminal perversion of justice, suggests MI5 are calling the shots. The Presidential maxim of its special democratic partner, certainly demonstrates that Sterling pound, neither stops at Cameron or the Queen's desk and that Britain is being administered from the spooky shadows.
Some Guinness was spilled on the barroom floor when the pub was shut for the night. Out of his hole crept a wee brown mouse and stood in the pale moonlight. He lapped up the frothy brew from the floor, then back on his haunches he sat. And all night long you could hear him roar, 'Bring on the goddamn cat!'
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by Freedom Fighting Nerd
LYRICS:
Theres a county map to go on the wall, A hurling stick & a shinty ball, The bric, the brac, the craic & all, Lets call it an Irish pub, Caffreys, Harp, Kilkenny on tap, The Guinness pie & that cabbage crap, The ideal wannabee Paddy trap, We'll call it an Irish pub,
Whale, oil, beef, hooked! I swear upon the holy book, The only 'craic' you'll get is a slap in the ear, Whale, oil, beef, hooked! I'll up & burst yer filthy mug, If you draw one more shamrock in me beer!
We'll raise the price o' beer a dollar, We'll make em wear a shirt & collar, We'll fly a bloody tri-colour, And call it an Irish pub, Jager bombs & double shots, The underagers think its tops, We'll spike the drinks & pay the cops, We got us an Irish pub.
The quick one in the filthy bog, The partin' glass across the lug, O' the lady-O, the dirty dog, We got us an Irish pub, It's over to me and over to you, We'll skip along the Avenue, And who t'hell is Ronnie Drew? We got us an Irish pub.
Plasma screens & neon lights, Kara-farkin-oke nights, The bouncers they can pick the fights, We'll call it an Irish pub, Plastic cups, a polished floor, We'll hose the blood right out the door, And let the knucklers back for more, We got us an Irish pub,
Oh top o' the mornin', Garryowen, Kiss me I'm Irish, Molly Malone, Failte, Slainte, Pog ma thon, We got us an Irish pub, Spike the punch & strip the willow, Strike me up the rakes o' Mallow, The Liffey never ran so shallow, We got us an Irish pub.
The first Canadian to walk in space had another first last night when he became the first person to participate in an twitter exchange as Gaeilge from outer space writes ÉANNA Ó CAOLLAÍ
Cmdr Chris Hadfield tweeted a night-time photograph of Dublin taken from the International Space Station (ISS) with a message written in Irish.
The Ontario-born flight engineer posted his tweet or tuít in Irish, with the message: “@Cmdr_Hadfield: Tá Éire fíorálainn! Land of green hills dark beer. With Dublin glowing in the Irish night.”
Cmdr Hadfield (53) first engaged the Irish twitter community last month when he tweeted a daylight photograph of Dublin. He triggered a flurry of online responses when he admitted he was unsure as to what port city he had just snapped.
As with his first photograph of Dublin, last night’s tweet attracted a great deal of online interest. Many wondered if his daughter was to thank for his Irish after he participated in an “Ask me Anything” session on Reddit on Sunday during which he revealed that his daughter was living in Ireland.
@CilliandeBurca tweeted “Maith Thú A Cheannasaí! Nice to see there’s some Gaeilge in space! :-)”
@LaurenNiCuinn tweeted “is maith liom do cuid gaeilge. Go raibh maith agat!!!”
The Canadian astronaut responded to his many Irish followers: “Wow, I can feel the warmth of the Irish all the way up here – go raibh maith agaibh!”
"We’re Losing Our Civic Courage.” Julian Assange By John Keane
February 18, 2013 "Information Clearing House" - Everybody warned this would be no ordinary invitation, and they were right. Three hundred metres from Knightsbridge underground station, just a stone’s throw from fashion-conscious Harrods, I suddenly encounter a wall of police. I try to remember my instructions. Look straight ahead. Avoid eye contact. If asked my name, reply with a question. Ask who authorised them to ask. Climb the stone steps. Act purposefully. Appear to know exactly where you’re heading. I don’t.
Through a set of double doors, I’m confronted by more police officers, this time armed, with meaner faces. “Good afternoon”, I say politely, as I edge towards the receptionist. “I’ve an appointment at the Ecuador embassy. Am I at the correct address?” “Ring the brass bell”, grunts the bored-looking man squatting at his desk. A few minutes later, after some confusion about whether or not my name’s on the appointments list, I’m ushered inside. I’m greeted by the personal assistant of the most wanted man in the world. “Julian is taking a call,” says the well-spoken and debonair young man in black-rimmed glasses. “I’m terribly sorry. Please do have a seat. Would you like some tea, or coffee, or polonium, perhaps?” There’s a smile, but it’s pretty faint. I know I’ve reached my destination: a prison with wit and purpose.
The deadpan irony sets the tone of the lunch and dinner to come. The silver-haired “high-tech terrorist” (Joe Biden’s description) appears quietly, dressed in crumpled slacks, a V-necked pullover, socks. He’s relaxed, and welcoming. The quarters are cramped. We shuffle down a corridor into his office, where we occupy a desk covered in laptops and cables and scraps of paper. It’s black coffee for him and tea for me. I offer gifts that I’m told he’ll like. Popular delicacies from down under: a couple of honeycomb Violet Crumbles, chocolate biscuit Tim Tams, a bottle of Dead Arm shiraz from my native South Australia. I know he likes to read. Lying on his desk is a biography of Martin Luther, the man who harnessed the printing press to split the Church. To add to his collection, I hand my pale-skinned host a small book I’ve mockingly wrapped in black tissue paper with red ribbon, tied in a bow. The noir et rouge and dead arm pranks aren’t lost on him. Nor is the significance of the book: José Saramago’s The Tale of the Unknown Island. Inside its front cover, I’ve scribbled a few words: ‘For Julian Assange, who knows about journeys because there aren’t alternatives.’
I’d been told he might be heavy weather. Fame is a terrible burden, and understandably the famous must find ways of dealing with sycophants, detractors and intruders. People said he’d circle at first, avoid questions, proffer shyness, or perhaps even radiate bored arrogance. It isn’t at all like that. Calm, witty, clear-headed throughout, he’s in a talkative mood. But there’s no small talk.
I tackle the obvious by asking him about life inside his embassy prison. “The issue is not airlessness and lack of sunshine. If anything gets to me it’s the visual monotony of it all.” He explains how we human beings have need of motion, and that our sensory apparatus, when properly “calibrated”, imparts mental and bodily feelings of being in our own self-filmed movie. Physical confinement is sensory deprivation. Sameness drags prisoners down. I tell how the Czech champion of living the truth Václav Havel, when serving a 40-month prison spell, used to find respite from monotony by doing such things as smoking a cigarette in front of a mirror. “Bradley Manning did something similar,” says Assange. “The prison authorities claimed his repeated staring in the mirror was the mark of a disturbed and dangerous character. Despite his protestations that there was nothing else to do, he was put into solitary confinement, caged, naked and stripped of his glasses.”
US serviceman Bradley Manning faces decades in prison after allegedly leaking classified documents to Wikileaks.EPA/BradleyManning.Org
Life in the Ecuador embassy is nothing like this. It’s a civilised cell. After eight months, Assange tells me, the embassy staff remain unswervingly supportive, friendly and professionally helpful. They get what’s at stake. When delivering messages, they knock politely on his office door, as they did more than a few times during our time together. Yet despite feeling safe, Assange feels the pinch of confinement. He says the “de-calibration” (he uses a term borrowed from physics) that comes with “spatial confinement” is a curse. That’s why he listens to classical music, especially Rachmaninov. He has boxing lessons (gloves are on his study shelf) and works out several times a week (“just to get the room moving around”) with a wiry ex-SAS whistleblower. The need for variety is why he welcomes visitors and why, judging from the long and animated conversation to come, he’s desperately passionate about ideas.
Assange begins to enjoy the moment. Nibbling a chocolate biscuit and sipping coffee, he springs a surprise. “Truth is I love a good fight. Many people are counting on me to be strong. I want my freedom, of course, but confinement gives me time to think. I’m focussed and purposeful.” It sounds implausible. Entrapment wounds; it’s painful. Psychic defences are needed to ward off the unbearable. But striking is his utter defiance. “Never, ever become someone’s victim is a golden rule,” he says. In graphic detail, he then sketches his ten days in solitary confinement, in the basement of Wandsworth Prison, in south-west London, in late 2010. “I had expected to be completely out of my depth. But I felt no fear. I was tremendously enthusiastic about the challenge to come. I learned to adapt on my feet.” He means what he says.
I’m keen to talk about courage and its political significance. We do so for well over an hour. Lunch arrives: soup and a vegetable wrap from the local Marks and Spencer. His boxing mate appears. Assange says “it will be a while” and politely asks him to wait in the adjoining room.
I remind Assange that he’s holed up in the right-wing Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, home to one of the safest Tory seats in Britain. So, just for fun, I play devil’s advocate by repeating the well-known remark of Winston Churchill that success is never final, failure is never fatal, and that what really counts in life is courage, the ability of people to carry on, despite everything. Assange lights up. “That’s undoubtedly true.” He’s never written or spoken at length about courage, but our time together convinces me he’s thought deeply and in sophisticated ways about the subject. He’s been forced to.
We discuss the detention without trial and torture of Bradley Manning. Assange mentions how the authorities are “picking off people all around me” (he’s referring to the ongoing FBI investigation and arrests of WikiLeaks activists). There’s no maudlin wobble. He understands the traps of “obsessive self-preoccupation” and speaks of the vital importance of cultivating a strong personal sense of “higher duty” to carry on. Courage is for him something that’s more important than fear because it involves putting fear in its place. I quote Aristotle at him: courage is the primary virtue because it makes all other virtues possible. “Yes, and that’s what’s worrying about present-day trends. We’re losing our civic courage.”
So where does courage come from, I ask? What are its taproots? Some people evidently draw breath from spiritual or religious sources, I say. He frowns. “My case is quite different. It’s hardship that makes or breaks us. True courage is when you manage to hold things together, even though most people expect you to fall to pieces.” The words ooze resilience. They could easily be his personal anthem, the proverb engraved on his Knightsbridge prison walls. He goes on to explain that although courage may or may not be a quality within human genes, a good measure of it is always learned. Courage is cultivated. It’s infectious. “Women on average have more of it than men,” he says. We discuss examples: on our list are Raging Grannies, Pussy Riot and the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp. “These women show men what courage is. Treated as outsiders, women have learned the hard way how to deal with structural power. They’re consequently much more adaptable than men. The world of men is structured force.”
The phrase catches me by surprise, but it captures in the most concise way exactly what the prisoner sitting across the table has done, in style, with great courage: he’s confronted structured force head-on. Julian Assange could be described as the Tom Paine of the early 21st century. Drawing strength from distress, disgusted by the hypocrisy of governments, willing to take on the mighty, he’s reminded the world of a universal political truth: arbitrary power thrives on secrets. We run through how WikiLeaks perfected the art of publicly challenging secretive state power. This “intelligence agency of the people” (as Assange calls his organisation) did more than harness to the full the defining features of the unfinished communications revolution of our time: the easy-access multi-media integration and low-cost copying of information that is then instantly whizzed around the world through digital networks. WikiLeaks did something much gutsier. It took on the mightiest power on earth. It managed to master the clever arts of “cryptographic anonymity”, military-grade encryption designed to protect both its sources and itself as a global publisher. For the first time, on a global scale, WikiLeaks created a custom-made mailbox that enabled disgruntled muckrakers within any organisation to deposit and store classified data in a camouflaged cloud of servers. Assange and his supporters then pushed that bullet-proofed information (video footage of an American helicopter gunship crew cursing and firing on unarmed civilians and journalists, for instance) into public circulation, as an act of radical transparency and “truth”.
We’re at the several hours mark, but everybody around me remains gracious. Nobody looks at watches; in fact, there’s not a clock to be seen. The debonair assistant pops in and out of the office, sometimes squatting at our table, tapping out messages on his laptop, fielding phone calls, several times handing his mobile to Assange. “It’s the latest crisis,” he whispers during the first of them. “We handle on average at least four or five a day.” He looks undaunted. This one’s just to do with the FBI investigation.
Julian Assange says “visual monotony” is the most troubling part of his confinement in the Ecuador embassy in London. EPA/Karel Prinsloo
When Assange comes off the phone, I change topics. I ask him about his pre-Christmas speech from the embassy balcony, when he predicted that in the next Australian federal parliament an “elected senator” would replace an “unelected senator” (he was referring to Foreign Minister Bob Carr, appointed through the casual vacancy rule). Now that the federal election date (September 14th) has been announced, is he still seriously intending to stand as a candidate?
Our conversation grows intense. For several years, Assange has been serious about entering formal politics. A new WikiLeaks Party is soon to be launched. He’s sure it will easily attract the minimum of 500 paid-up members required by law. The composition of its 10-member national council is decided. There’s already a draft election manifesto. The party will field candidates for the Senate, probably in several states. And, yes, Assange is certain to be among them, probably as a candidate in Victoria, where (conveniently) three Labor senators face re-election.
Assange bounces through the probable scenarios. Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa will be re-elected, for another four years. He’ll stand firm in his personal and political support for Assange. This will ramp up pressure on the Swedish authorities, whose case against him is “falling apart”, with the two women plaintiffs looking for a way to extricate themselves from the protracted messy drama. “The Swedish government should drop the case. But that requires them to make their own thorough investigation of how and why their system failed.” The man’s not for turning. He’s certainly no intention of apologising for things he hasn’t said, or done. If he wins a seat in the Senate, he says, the US Department of Justice won’t want to spark an international diplomatic row. The planet’s biggest military empire will back down. It will drop its grand jury espionage investigation. The Cameron government will follow suit, says Assange, otherwise “the political costs of the current standoff will be higher still”. So the obvious question: what are the chances of that happening? Can bytes and ballots trump bullets? Can dare claim victory in his personal battle for political freedom?
What he has in mind has never before been attempted in Australian federal politics. Eugene Debs ran for the US presidency from prison (in 1920). Sinn Fein MP Bobby Sands was elected to Westminster while on hunger strike (in 1981). Under house arrest, Aung San Suu Kyi won a general election (in 1990). In defiance of Israeli occupation and prison confinement, Wael Husseini was elected to the Palestinian Legislative Council (in 2006). There are plenty of similar examples, so why shouldn’t Julian Assange attempt to do the same, and in style?
By now the boxing mate, kept waiting several hours, has gone home. The young assistant has left for another appointment outside the embassy. Dinner is nowhere in sight. We reach for chocolate biscuits and spend the last hour drilling down into the barriers Assange might well face. We start with nagging questions about his eligibility to stand. He’s characteristically upbeat. The technical objections (raised byGraeme Orr and others) aren’t real, he says. He’s no traitor to his country, and most definitely not under the “acknowledgement of allegiance, obedience or adherence to a foreign power” (section 44 of the Australian constitution). Truth is he was let down by a gutless Gillard government and forced into political asylum, under threat of extradition. “I’m safe here inside the embassy walls,” he mocks, “protected by more than a dozen police, including one stationed night and day right outside my bathroom window.”
From the Ecuador embassy to the staid chambers of the Australian Senate – Julian Assange’s journey will be packed with surprises. Australian Senate/Wikimedia
The man of courage clearly relishes the thought of being the first Australian senator catapulted from prison into a debating chamber. I crack a bad joke, telling him that he’d better hurry up, reminding him that the Commonwealth Electoral Act stipulates that people who’ve been sentenced for more than 3 years in prison don’t have the right to vote in federal elections while they’re serving their sentence. His eyes twinkle, before laying into those who insist that the federal electoral laws are against him, that he’s ineligible because candidates must already be registered to vote. “That’s untrue,” he notes. “The Act specifies only that candidates must in principle be qualified to become a voter.” Assange is right, but since he’s not currently on the electoral roll much turns on whether his preferred strategy of registering as an overseas voter will work. Courtesy of legislation pushed through by John Howard, I know from bitter experience, having once lived abroad for more than three years, what it means to lose the right to vote. Assange says his case is different. He’s been overseas for less than three years (he was last in Australia in June 2010) and intends to return home within six years – that’s why he’s just applied to be on the electoral roll in Victoria.
That leaves two final snags. If victorious, some advisors speculate, Assange might need to take oath before the Governor-General. For this to happen he’d have to be set free, naturally, but it could also be done, “for the first time ever, by video link”. Whatever the situation, continued confinement, he says, would breach the rule that he must take up his Senate seat within two months. “In that case, the Senate could vote to evict me. But that would trigger a big political row. Australians probably wouldn’t swallow it. They’ve learned a lesson from the controversial dismissal of Gough Whitlam.”
I’m curious about the kind of political party WikiLeaks will launch. “The party will combine a small, centralised leadership with maximum grass roots involvement and support. By relying on decentralised Wikipedia-style, user-generated structures, it will do without apparatchiks. The party will be incorruptible and ideologically united.” I flinch at his mention of ideological unity. He explains that the party will display iron self-discipline in its support for maximum “inclusiveness”. It will be bound together by unswerving commitment to the core principles of civic courage nourished by “understanding” and “truthfulness” and the “free flow of information”. It will practise in politics what WikiLeaks has done in the field of information. It will be digital, and stay digital. Those who don’t accept its transparency principles will be told to “rack off”. That’s the ideological unity bit.
Assange agrees the WikiLeaks Party must address and respond creatively to the creeping local disaffection with mainstream politicians, parties and parliaments. “I loathe the reactiveness of the Left,” and that’s why, he says, much can be learned from clever new initiatives in other countries. We discuss Beppe Grillo’s 5 Star movement (it could well win up to 15% of the popular vote in Italy’s forthcoming general election). On our list is the Pirate Party in Germany (it practises “liquid democracy” and has representatives in four state parliaments). So is Iceland’s Best Party. It won enough votes to co-run the Reykjavik City Council, partly on the promise that it would not honour any of its promises, that since all other political parties are secretly corrupt it would be openly corrupt. Assange lets out a laugh. “Parties should be fun. They should put the word party back into politics.” The WikiLeaks Party will try to do this, and to learn from initiatives in other democracies. Supported by networks of “friends of WikiLeaks”, it will be seen as “work in progress” designed “to outflank its opponents”.
He and his party supporters are bound to attract hordes of detractors. Tom Paine was cursed by foes; he even suffered the dishonour of being called a “filthy little atheist” by Theodore Roosevelt. Assange is similarly facing an army of spiteful enemies. In Britain and the United States, there are signs they’re now closing in on him with new arguments. He used to be denounced as a “cat torturer”, a “terrorist” and “enemy combatant” and accused of committing “an illegal act” (Julia Gillard). He was attacked as both an “anti-Semite” and a “Mossad agent”. There were murderous calls to “illegally shoot the son of a bitch” (Bob Beckel). These days the language is milder but no less vicious. He’s said to be ‘paranoid’, all ‘alone’ in his gilded prison, abandoned by his supporters, at the British taxpayers’ expense. He and WikiLeaks are guilty of the same “obfuscation and misinformation” (Jemima Khan) they claim to expose. Swedish media and politics are meanwhile crammed with crass epithets: “rapist”, “repugnant swine”, low-life “coward”, “Australian pig” and “pitiful wretch” hooked on sex-without-a-condom.
Auguste Millière’s portrait (1880) of the great English champion of liberty of the press Tom Paine. Auguste Millière/Wikimedia
I can’t tell from our time together whether any of this stuff hurts. It’s clear he’s aware that going into parliamentary politics will involve permanent fire-fighting, but unflappable he sounds. “I’ve had to deal with the FBI, the British press and more than a few rank functionaries. The Australian press are decent by comparison. No doubt the Australian Tax Office will show an interest in our campaign. Old enemies may make an appearance.”
Assange knows that in the age of surveillance and media saturation little remains of the private sphere. I put to him a prediction: the way he dodged questions about the Swedish allegations during a recent video-link appearance before the Oxford Union (“I have answered these questions extensively in the past”) isn’t sustainable, that avoiding the subject when running for the Senate will be blood to the hounds of the press pack. He asks what he should do. I put to him a positive alternative, which is to come clean on his alleged misogyny. “I’m not interested in softening my image by planting attractive women around me, as for instance George W. Bush did. I like women. They’re on balance braver than men, and I’ve worked with many in exposing projects that damage women’s lives. An example is the scandalous practice of UN peacekeepers trading food for sex that we exposed. Our WikiLeaks Party will attract the support of many women.” But what about the charge of misogyny, I ask? Isn’t Julia Gillard’s use of the word to attack the Leader of the Opposition worth widening? The reply is very Julian Assange: “Let’s just say I prefer miso to misogyny.”
There are moments when Assange seems much too serious, nerdish even, yet one thing’s very clear: prison hasn’t ruined his deadpan humour. He’s smart, and he’s shrewd; he’s a fox, not a hedgehog. That’s why he’s counting on lots of public support down under. “When people speak up and stand together it frightens corrupt and undemocratic power”, he says. “True democracy is the resistance of people armed with truth against lies.” I wonder whether he’s right. Australians can be a politically lazy bunch, but we’re also known for our cheeky cheerfulness, our taste for the matter-of-fact, plus our strong dislike of bullshit. We respect hard work and admire courageous achievement. We’re mawkish in the company of Ned Kelly underdogs. And so, if a political fight over his election to the Senate were to break out, strong public support for Assange might suddenly surface.
Time’s up. Not wanting to overstay my welcome, I slip on my coat, prepare to say goodbye, to pass back through the wall of mean-faced police. Assange shakes my hand, twice in fact. Both of us are pretty tired and stuck for words, so I let myself loose by asking him to ponder a wild southern hemisphere fantasy, a hero’s welcome later this year, a rapscallion’s reunion with spring sunshine, fresh ocean air, flowers, banners, tweets, whistles, haunting sounds of didgeridoos. For a few seconds, he smiles, then draws back, looks down, and glances sideways. It’s the reaction of a man who knows in his guts there are no easy solutions in sight. The cards are stacked, piled high against success. He’s trapped. He knows his fate will be decided not by legal niceties, or diplomatic rulebooks, but by politics. That’s why he’s aware that in the great dramas to come, nothing should be ruled out.
The Irish bookmaker Paddy Power lists his odds of winning a Senate seat as seven-to-two. The cautious fortune telling may be significant. Down under, nationwide polls conducted by UMR Research, the company used by the Labor Party, show (during 2012) that a clear majority of Australians think he wouldn’t receive a fair trial if extradited to the United States, and that in any case he and WikiLeaks shouldn’t be prosecuted for releasing leaked diplomatic cables. Green voters (66%) and Labor supporters (45%) are sympathetic to Assange. Significant numbers of Coalition supporters (40%) think the same way. In the most recent UMR poll, Assange tells me, around 27% of voters say they’ll vote for him.
That should be enough to slingshot him from Knightsbridge to Canberra. Set aside the cheap diatribes and what you think of Julian Assange as a person, or whether he’s done this or not achieved that. The fact is that electoral victory for him later this year would be one of those rare political miracles that make life as a citizen worth living. In a country weighed down by sub-standard politicians, sub-standard journalists and sub-standard freedom of information laws, the political triumph would be great. It would breathe badly-needed life into Australian democracy. And, yes, if the miracle happened, from that very moment the fun party down under would begin.
John Keane, Professor of Politics at University of Sydney
Popes don’t resign are fired
