USA is chasing Assange harder than they chased the terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqarwi

The reaction to Wikileaks can accurately be described as hysterical, in the sense of uncontrolled emotional outbursts. Prominent North Americans including Sarah Palin have issued death threats against Julian Assange. In Canada, the Prime Minister's former campaign manager issued such a death threat, and a lawyer has issued a legal challenge against the threatener. It would seem that in the USA there is no law against issuing a death threat, or if there is such a law, nobody cares about it. We shall see.

What is notable is that there has been swift and effective action taken against Wikileaks' financial assets. I was among the last to make a Paypal donation, before Paypal closed the Wikileaks account. They have frozen about 60,000 Euros of Wikileaks assets according to the BBC.

The Swiss have also frozen Julian Assange's personal accounts, on the technicality that he was not domiciled in Switzerland. I wonder what proportion of accounts in Swiss banks would have to be closed if that principle were generally applied.

The US is attacking Assnge with more efficiency than they attack terrorists, organised crime, arms dealers and the like.

 I took an interest in the freezing of terrorists' bank accounts back in November 2004. Basically, I had been writing to the FCO asking about this. Naturally, they said it was all covered, then it turned out that they had not touched the assets of a very prominent terrorist. More here.
 Interestingly, Bush had avoided touching that terrorist, despite twice having a chance of topping him.
His name was Abu Musab Al-Zaqarwi.

So they regard Assange as worse than a terrorist, at least in terms of the

Hoping for a Jihad

Some people in the west not only have an exaggerated fear of Islam but also a tendency to perceive it as a monolith. Thus perceived it is then painted with the colours of the most extreme elements. But Islam is no more monolithic than Christianity. Yes, there are extreme elements; yes, there is violence and again yes, there is bigotry. But these elements exist within Christianity, have always existed within Christianity. It's not just wrong-headed to equate Islam with extremism and terrorism it also serves the purpose of Al-Qaeda, all of those who would seek to present the same undifferentiated view of Christianity and the west that some Christians entertain of Islam and the east.

It would seem to be a self-evident truth that the principle victims of 'Muslim Terrorism' are Muslims themselves. This lesson has not been lost. It's certainly true that Muslim on Muslim violence tended to be overlooked when clerics felt that the religion itself was under attack from the west. But with the staged withdrawal from Iraq this supposed threat, amplified when Dubya referred to the 2003 invasion of that country as a 'crusade', no longer carries the same degree of force. Reporting from Egypt The Economist notes that the appeal of radical Islam there and throughout the Islamic world is in steady decline;

It is not just Osama bin Laden who has been holed up in remote exile. His ideology of global jihad has also retreated. Stung by public disgust with nihilist terror, and seeing the radicals' failure to consolidate tangible gains, some prominent preachers of endless jihad have repented their ways.

The converts to more moderate counsels number among them none other than Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a prominent Egyptian cleric who broadcasts across the Muslim world. Banned from entering the United States and Britain for his views on homosexuals and Jews, he recently denounced al-Qaeda's notion of jihad as "a mad declaration of war on the world that seeks to drive believers shackled towards paradise."

My mind always moves in a complex fashion, seeking patterns and significances were there are perhaps none. It's just that I read a piece recently on the Cathars and the thirteenth century Albigensian Crusade, tying it in with al-Qaradawi's comments. The Cathars were dualist heretics who, in their own fashion, declared war on a material world they believed to be controlled by Satan. It encourages me to think that al-Qaeda, denounced politically and theologically from within the Muslim world, might conceivably take on the form of a heresy, an Islamic heresy. In that event the 'crusaders' can move to one side; a jihad will finish the task with far greater and more lasting effect.

The Possessed-On the Psychology of Terror

I found Michael Burleigh's Blood and Rage: A Cultural History of Terrorism to be altogether fascinating insight into the ‘psychology of terrorism’, a non-fiction account that might very well be set alongside Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent and Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Possessed for the insight they all give into a certain mode of thought.

It's worth stressing that people are often motivated not by grand principles, but by forces altogether baser, more visceral and more personal; excitement, the thrill of danger, social envy and simple resentment all coming before the grand abstractions of politics or religion. Take the case of Emile Henry, a French anarchist, who threw a bomb into the Gare Saint-Lazare Restaurant in 1894, killing one of the diners and seriously injuring twenty more. His motive was to show that the bourgeoisie that their "pleasures would not be untouched", though almost all his victims were workmen.

There is also Vera Figner, the Russian Narodnik, who became a terrorist in part to escape the restrictions placed upon her as a woman. Or there is the example of the young men in the contemporary Muslim world, trapped by chronic unemployment, for whom radical Islam offers a way out…as well as new jeans and cool trainers.

In the 1970s the actions of the German Red Army Faction might be said to have emerged from the 'boredom of privilege' than any meaningful political grievance. In Italy one former member of the Red Brigades, an organisation which killed hundreds in the 1980s, revealed his own motives-"Arms have a fascination of their own. It is a fascination that makes you feel in some way more virile...this sensation of feeling stronger, more manly...I found myself...showing them to women to try to impress them."

So, there you have it. And as Burleigh points out the one thing that unites the German and Italian left-wingers with present-day jihadists is not the thought of Marx or Muhammad, but a fascination with gangster films and splatter movies. Did you know, for instance, that in the Al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan one favoured form of relaxation was to watch Arnold Schwarzenegger movies? Well, now you do!

Terrorism then and now

What Al-Qaeda is for us, anarchism and anarchists was for people living in the late nineteeth and early twentieth centuries. You will find contemporary fears reflected in the literature of the day; from Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent to E. Douglas Fawcett's Hartmann the Anarchist, and George Glendon's The Emperor of the Air. The latter work, published in 1910, actually envisages a terrorist attack on New York from the air, by aircraft loaded with dynamite and piloted by anarchists.

Consider also Emile Zola's Germinal, with the unforgettable and single-minded figure of Souvarine, who can destroy even those he loves in the pursuit of his ideal. It was a time that saw the murder of several heads of state and prominent public figures; a time when bombs were thrown into pavement cafes, at religious processions, or into crowded theatres, as in Barcelona in November 1893.

People were worried, in essence, about the same things they are today: that an unscrupulous and amoral terrorist (or 'freedom fighter' if you prefer; the end result is just the same) would get a hold of ever more destructive weaponry and use it without scruple of conscience.

It was a time also when England, yes, England, was felt by various countries to be a 'refuge for terrorists' because of its lax asylum laws. In 1898 an international conference was held in Rome to try to secure co-operation against the anarchist threat. The recommendations included tougher immigration laws and easier extradition. England attended, but effectively ignored the provisions. It was felt at the time that a more stringent policy in this area would be unpopular with an electorate, suspicious of Continental despotism. How things have changed!