The Rape of Julian Assange

DEFINITION: Rape – noun

1. the unlawful compelling of a person through physical force or duress to have sexual intercourse.

2. any act of sexual intercourse that is forced upon a person.

3. statutory rape

4. an act of plunder, violent seizure, or abuse; despoliation; violation: the rape of the countryside.

5. Archaic: the act of seizing and carrying off by force.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange

POLITICS, MEDIA and CULTURE: I am moved this evening to write in support of the WikiLeaks founder and its editor-in-chief, Julian Assange. I regret to say that as of now Assange continues to languish in the British prison system over Interpol directed extradition orders to face "rape" charges in Sweden. The charges relate to two separate sexual encounters Assange had in Stockholm with more than one woman in a relatively short period of time in August of this year. Let's just say he acted like a 'player'. It seems that one young woman found out from the other that the globe-hopping information maverick had been acting a bit like Snoop Dogg while enjoying the Swedish sights and delivering lectures about war and the commercial media. 

Both women then proceeded to a police station where they attempted to seek "advice" - some strange Swedish pseudo-legal device - about forcing a HIV/STD test on a person (most likely Assange, in this case). We now hear lurid tales of condoms being denied their place on Assange's appendage; either by his autistic-like refusal to wear them, or because the damn rubber things burst mid-horizontal peasant dance during the quickfire dealings with his admirers.

What's perhaps the most remarkable facet of this entire story is the fact that an almost albino-like, wispy, shock-white-haired former computer hacker (with a past penchant for Matrix style leather jackets) has a bevy of groupies to choose from - even if they may be part of a trumped-up honeypot scam run by a shady bunch of world leaders. It must be said however that between Assange and Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg it seems there may be no more sexy ladies left for the jocks and military-men of yesteryear.

ENOUGH WITH THE JOKING. On Friday 10 December at 1pm, there will be a mass protest held at Sydney's Town Hall in support of Assange. Such demonstrations will be repeated around Australia and other parts of the world. The day will coincide with International Human Rights Day. Of utmost concern for many, is that these sexual assault charges against Assange have come at a time when war logs relating to the forced imperialist and 'Orientalist' pillaging and plundering of Iraq and Afghanistan have been released by WikiLeaks in recent months, only to be followed in recent weeks by a massive and embarrassing dump of US diplomatic cables reproduced via traditional media outlets like The Guardian, El Pais, Le Monde, Der Spiegel and The New York Times. 

Protest organisers are hopeful of a good turnout especially with opinion polls run by major newspapers in Australia overwhelmingly in support of WikiLeaks and Assange's position as its editor-in-chief. "The Australian government should be ashamed for its attacks on WikiLeaks, which has been charged with no crime," protest spokesperson Simon Butler said.

 

"Australia should not join the campaign to censor WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks has released evidence of government lies and duplicity — information that, as citizens, we have a right to know.

"We want the Gillard government to make sure Julian Assange has the same basic rights as every other Australian citizen. Threats have been made against Assange’s life, the Australian government has a duty to protect him, not threaten him."

Butler said community support for WikiLeaks was very high. "We expect a good turnout to the rally. There is a great deal of anger at what’s happening. The bid to silence WikiLeaks threatens the rights of everyone."
 
The Australian Greens leader Bob Brown also agrees. Yesterday afternoon after being asked for comments by The Trip Out Corner, Brown responded via email to express his outrage at the Federal Government for almost basically giving up one of its own citizens for crimes that may have no basis in reality. "They threatened to remove his passport and there’s a very strong feeling that Australia’s not enthusiastic about helping this citizen who’s been proven guilty of nothing," he said. 

A Re-Introduction to Psychedelic Research: An interview with Rick Doblin from MAPS

Rick Doblin, founder of MAPS

POLITICS and CULTURE: In the year 2010, the amount of psychedelic research studies taking place in the world is at its highest than at any other point in the last four decades. Following the cultural backlash against psychedelic experiences in the western world from the early 1970s onwards, it is as if in recent years science has gone 'back to the future' and has glimpsed the validity of the early findings of scientists such as Humphry Osmond, Timothy Leary, Stanislav Grof and Walter Pahnke when it comes to treating the mind with entheogens.

In the 1950s and throughout the next decade scientists were eager to test the 'mind-manifesting' properties of psilocybin and LSD, with up to 1000 articles appearing in medical journals in little over ten years. A cultural example of where this research was heading can be found in a 1960 Paris Review magazine interview with the great literary artist and intellectual Aldous Huxley; where only three years before his death he spoke freely of how this field of scientific exploration could develop. Talking of LSD specifically, Huxley remarked:

"While one is under the drug one has penetrating insights into the people around one, and also into one’s own life. Many people get tremendous recalls of buried material. A process which may take six years of psychoanalysis happens in an hour—and considerably cheaper! And the experience can be very liberating and widening in other ways. It shows that the world one habitually lives in is merely a creation of this conventional, closely conditioned being which one is, and that there are quite other kinds of worlds outside. It’s a very salutary thing to realize that the rather dull universe in which most of us spend most of our time is not the only universe there is. I think it’s healthy that people should have this experience."

In the intervening years since Huxley's analysis, science has also discovered the potential mind-healing benefits of 'recreational' substances such as cannabis and MDMA. Leading this renewed charge is the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies [MAPS] - a US organisation determined to bring credibility and mainstream attention to this often poorly understood arena of scientific endeavour.

The Spirit of Soul (Music): A Mixtape and Essay

MUSIC and CULTURE: This mixtape aims to trace the ‘spirit’ of what is now deemed the classic soul sound of the mid-1960s to early 1970s emanating from a number of cultural spaces in the USA. Places like inner-city Detroit, Philadelphia, Memphis (and the soul from the South). The project will foreground a cultural, historical and phenomenological viewpoint whilst also focusing on questions of racial inequality and a burgeoning market ideology.

By ‘spirit’ I refer to what the Ancient Greeks would call pneuma (the breath). For the Ancient Greeks, artistic creation came about by possessing the powers of muses (performance, action, memory) and pneuma (the artistic breath of others past). This project hopes to demonstrate how any cultural object, through time and technology, becomes an artefact of memory. But this very process always remains reliant on what else has come before; the voices, the places, the struggles, the inherent contradictions of other periods.

It is in this respect I will follow the spirit of soul: from swing, bebop jazz, gospel, urban rhythm and blues, and country (what is country if not the rural lament, or the rural blues?), and eventually through rock, psychedelia and hip-hop. Hopefully, I can show somewhat convincingly that soul music had its zenith in an era when its greatest purveyors were heavily involved with African-American cultures, social struggles and politics but were so at a time when racial inequality was entrenched by statutes and social mores.

Many of the institutional statutes (such as Jim Crow laws in southern USA promoting segregation) may have been removed in contemporary times but societal prejudices linger. The Godfather of Soul, James Brown, may well have stopped riots in Boston in 1968 a day after the shooting murder of Martin Luther King but we all remember the racist beatings and struggles of the 1992 Rodney King Uprising in Los Angeles. NWA then rapped 'Fuck tha Police', and how right they were. And what of scenes in 2005 when Hurricane Katrina came and took away the whole town of New Orleans, and the US Government decided it was more important to send Army snipers to kill poor people looking for food and supplies (ie. 'looters') than help the dispossessed urban black population? It took Kanye 'Gold Digger' West of all people to lay down some truth in that maelstrom.

In 2010, though, there would be many who point to widespread change for the better. As of today, the USA has a man of African-American heritage, Barack Obama, as its president. A great claim for political diversity, say flag-wavers. Here's a short brutal fact though. In the entire democratic history of the grand American nation since the unveiling of its constitution in 1788, only three African-American individuals have been popularly voted for roles in the US Senate (in 2004, Obama being one of them), while no African-American from any of the former Confederacy states in almost 250 years has achieved the office. Now, that's equality and progress! That's a post-racial society!

On Cannabis, California and Proposition 19

POLITICS and CULTURE: Can you smell it? That familiar pungent odour? That scent could very well be the gentle, lazy stench of legal, recreational cannabis wafting over from sunny California. Freedom does have a habit of traveling far. Early next week, citizens of America’s Golden State will vote on a referendum to pass The Regulate, Control, and Tax Cannabis Act of 2010 - also known as Proposition 19. The initiative requires just over 50% of all votes cast; and if recent opinion polls are any guide with voters seemingly split, this year could prove to be a historic moment.

Almost a century after the misguided, and thinly racist "war on drugs" was launched with cannabis a convenient scapegoat and the US its chief adversary, on November 2, Californians will hit the polls to vote on whether to start treating weed as just another adult recreational drug. The act would legalize the possession of an ounce (28g) of cannabis and the cultivation of a small number of plants for adults over 21, while handing authority to counties and cities to regulate commercial marijuana production and distribution.

Fourteen states in the US, including California, as well as the District of Columbia already allow cannabis use for medical reasons. If Proposition 19 is passed, it could perhaps be the sign of a further maturing society, and one which others may in the near future be interested in replicating elsewhere. Proponents of the bill say if they fail this time, they will return to the Californian ballot box in 2012 better organised and better funded.