{"id":397993,"date":"2019-03-05T00:35:22","date_gmt":"2019-03-04T23:35:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/the-prisoner-says-no-to-big-brother\/"},"modified":"2019-03-05T00:35:22","modified_gmt":"2019-03-04T23:35:22","slug":"the-prisoner-says-no-to-big-brother","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/the-prisoner-says-no-to-big-brother\/","title":{"rendered":"The Prisoner Says No to Big Brother"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Drawing by Nathaniel St. Clair<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Whenever I visit Julian Assange, we meet in a room he knows too well. There is a bare table and pictures of Ecuador on the walls. There is a bookcase where the books never change. The curtains are always drawn and there is no natural light. The air is still and fetid.<\/p>\n

This is Room 101.<\/p>\n

Before I enter Room 101, I must surrender my passport and\u00a0\u00a0phone. My pockets and possessions are examined. The food I bring is inspected.<\/p>\n

The man who guards Room 101 sits in what looks like an old-fashioned telephone box. He watches a screen, watching Julian. There are others unseen, agents of the state, watching and listening.<\/p>\n

Cameras are everywhere in Room 101. To avoid them, Julian manoeuvres us both into a corner, side by side, flat up against the wall. This is how we catch up: whispering and writing to each other on a notepad, which he shields from the cameras. Sometimes we laugh.<\/p>\n

I have my designated time slot. When that expires, the door in Room 101 bursts open and the guard says, \u201cTime is up!\u201d\u00a0\u00a0On New Year\u2019s Eve, I was allowed an extra 30 minutes and the man in the phone box wished me a happy new year, but not Julian.<\/p>\n

Of course, Room 101 is the room in George Orwell\u2019s prophetic novel,\u00a01984<\/em>, where the thought police watched and tormented their prisoners, and worse, until people surrendered their humanity and principles and obeyed Big Brother.<\/p>\n

Julian Assange will never obey Big Brother. His resilience and courage are astonishing, even…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Drawing by Nathaniel St. Clair Whenever I visit Julian Assange, we meet in a room he knows too well. There is a bare table and pictures of Ecuador on the walls. There is a bookcase where the books never change. The curtains are always drawn and there is no natural light. The air is still […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-397993","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397993","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=397993"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397993\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=397993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=397993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=397993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}