The Heretical 2: Requests for Asylum and Letters from Santa Ana Jail

The Heretical 2:
Requests for Asylum and Letters from Santa Ana JailVDARE
September 17, 2008

On July 31, in The Heretical 2: Asylum Seekers the Refugee Industry Won't be Fighting for, I wrote of two Englishmen, writer Stephen Whittle (pen name Luke O'Farrell), 41, and his publisher, Simon Sheppard, 51, both of whom were convicted in July in England of "publishing racially inflammatory written material."

On September 11, I wrote on the case of 19-year-old Jeremiah Munsen, an American who on Monday began a four-month federal prison sentence in Louisiana for engaging in symbolic speech that is protected by the First Amendment. Monday's VDARE.com mailout asked, "Why is Obama's Friend Bill Ayers Free and Jeremiah Munsen in Jail?" Until fairly recently, the English-language world was a beacon of freedom of opinion. Today, however, the "land of the free," England, Canada and Australia are increasingly indistinguishable from EU, Communist, and Third-World tyrannies.

Whittle is guilty of having written essays variously excoriating and mocking Jews, Moslems and blacks (and Jews), Jews, blacks (and Jews), Jews and their Gentile "useful idiots," homosexuals (and Jews); and Sheppard of having published them, which in England are crimes. (In England, it is not a crime to write anti-white, anti-Christian screeds.)

Yes, folks, we're in Alex Linder country.

While free pending sentencing, Whittle and Sheppard fled to America, where they immediately sought asylum and were arrested. Since then, America's MSM have kept their existence a more closely guarded secret than what Barack Obama/Dunham/Soetoro did on the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. If only Whittle and Sheppard were belligerent Moslem Bantu, HIV+, or Hispanic, illegal immigrant, gang-bangers, they'd by now be safely ensconced in the refugee-industrial complex.

Writing from jail, Whittle and Sheppard asked a mutual acquaintance, who has requested anonymity, to pass along their letters and requests for political asylum to me. Note that the legal arguments used against them by the Bush Administration could transform the Internet from a tool of worldwide intellectual liberation to one of global enslavement. [VDARE.COM note: All links below were added by VDARE.com—the pleas themselves were written with a Bic pen.]

REQUESTS FOR POLITICAL ASYLUM

SHEPPARD, SIMON GUY and WHITTLE, STEPHEN

The Applicants arrived at LAX on 14 July 2008 and made their asylum request to the first official they encountered. The basis for their asylum claim. Is a three-year claim of legal harassment by the governing British Labour Party, culminating in an unprecedented prosecution and subsequent conviction for internet web pages hosted in Torrance, California. Were the applicants to be returned to Britain they would face substantial prison terms.

The Applicants were prosecuted in Britain on the basis that a website they contributed to or maintained was "available in England and Wales." A "Plea to the Jurisdiction" challenging the extension of jurisdiction of a British court to internet material hosted in the USA was made in September 2007, but was rejected by the same judge that later presided over the trial.

Up to this point the Applicants had been confident that all of their activities were completely lawful.

Under this novel application of the law, American citizens, or indeed citizens of any nation, are rendered subject to arrest and prosecution by the British authorities for any "racially inflammatory material" deemed "threatening, abusive or insulting" placed on the world wide web.

No equivalent legislation exists in American law, indeed the Applicants are aware of a letter from Californian authorities stating that the material hosted on the Heretical website enjoys the highest protection of the US Constitution.

No evidence was presented at the Applicants' trial, during June and July 2008, that any "racial hatred" had resulted from the internet material. The Applicant's defense, essentially, was that the material was irony, satire, and parody of political correctness, intended in good humor and for the stimulation of debate. However, the applicable law, the Public Order Act 1986, removed the requirement to prove intent on the part of defendants and prosecutions have recently been brought in the absence of a complainant.

The maximum penalty under this law was increased (in a supplement to the Prevention of Terrorism Act 2000) from two years to seven years.

No evidence was presented at the Applicants' trial that anyone had accessed the relevant internet pages other than the single police officer who had downloaded the website for the purpose of the prosecution.

Numerous defense attempts were blocked during an extremely zealous prosecution. An earlier Appeal Court ruling was invoked stating that "The truth is no defense." Attempts to demonstrate that comparable material to that being prosecuted was readily available in British stores were also blocked.

Applicant Sheppard has endured three police raids, each of which is believed to have been unlawful and all of which considerably exceeded their proper scope. These took place on 30 March 2005, 12 April 2006 (at which time Applicant Whittle was also raided) and 4 July 2007. Large quantities of books, scientific papers, computer equipment, journalistic material, publisher records and personal items were removed on each occasion, none of which has ever been returned. It was admitted by the authorities that the third police raid was unlawful.

The website at www.heretical.com consists of 750 pages and over 2 million words, being a collection of articles and excerpts covering a wide range of topics. Twelve web pages were the subject of criminal charges. The main purpose of the website is to act as a vehicle for Sheppard's scientific ideas.

Applicant Sheppard qualifies as an individual with exceptional abilities in the sciences or the arts, i.e. he would ordinarily be a potential candidate for the "Third Preference" visa category. He holds an Honors degree (B.Sc.) in Mathematics from the University of Sussex and has published two medical scientific papers as sole author, the latter qualifying him in the older, more stringent system of academic accreditation) for two Doctorates. Subsequently he developed an original system of behavior analysis called Procedural Analysis, which is considered to be a significant advance in human understanding. More recently he has been self-employed as a web developer, supplier of computer products and publisher.

Applicant Whittle holds a First Class Honors degree (B.A.) in Language and Linguistic Science from the University of York and has written over twenty books on a variety of topics, including literary criticism of, and work inspired by, the California writer Clark Ashton Smith.


0800006408
c/o Santa Ana Jail,
Santa Ana, CA 92701
16th Aug., 2008

Dear …….…,

Thanks very much for your letter and the VDARE print-out. Mr. Stix – whose work I'm an admirer of – will himself be subject to arrest and prosecution if the British authorities decide he has violated our "hate speech" laws and he happens to visit the U.K. That is the full implication of our conviction for web-pages hosted in Torrance, CA.

Steve Sailer's advice of a few months past, ("Use a pseudonym if you discuss certain topics") is therefore something to follow. My own pseudonym didn't protect me in the end, but ti meant they had to tap Simon's phone to find out where I lived. And if Americans think the same thing couldn't happen here, they should think again. Tribal individuals like Mr. Stix, Noam Chomsky, Ezra Levant et al may be some of the most articulate defenders of free speech, but unfortunately they do not match the power and influence of organized tribalists like the A.D.L. and (in the U.K.) the Board of Deputies.

I'm not a Holocaust denier, by the way: I'm a Holocaustianity denier, i.e. I think that, whatever the historical reality, the ideology based on it is highly pernicious. In Mr. Stix's own words, it's part of the campaign to "disenfranchise and dispossess ordinary whites". If you oppose that campaign, you're a "hater", of course, just as those who opposed communism were "crazy". Well, the truth is very often hateful and everything I've seen in this jail has confirmed what VDARE says about immigration and California's future. I hope Luke O'Farrell will soon be writing at greater length on the topic, but until then it's good to have your support and to know that VDARE continues to fight the good fight!

All best,

Stephen Whittle

Many thanks for your valued support!


Simon Sheppard
0800006408
c/o Santa Ana Jail,
P.O. Box 22003,
Santa Ana, CA 92701

4 Aug., 2008

Dear —

Many thanks for your letter and for passing our summary to Mr. Stix. Please make use of this and my previous letter as you see fit – the prose isn't perfect, but there's no delete button on a Bic and it will have to do.

There's been no explicit statement by the British government about its right to detain foreigners for speech crime, at least that I'm aware of, but that right was established in a pre-trial hearing. Simon's barrister tried to use "jurisdiction" to have all the internet charges dropped, arguing that the website was based in California and therefore beyond the reach of U.K. law. The judge ruled that the availability of the pages in England and Wales (Scotland has separate speech crime laws) rendered this argument void. Pending appeal to a higher court, therefore an American could be arrested in transit at a British airport for a website based in and entirely maintained from the U.S. Americans staying here longer would be even more at risk. And the laws are expanding: "Islamophobia" is now illegal and "homophobia" may soon join it.

The liberal orthodoxy is being protected as religious orthodoxy once was, but then I think it is religion in a new guise, concerned with power rather than truth or reason.

Thanks very much for the stamped envelope too, but thanks to generous donations we are able to buy stationery now. Books to fight off boredom would be very gratefully received, however! Hardbacks are banned, but any paperbacks by the following should be allowed: Waugh, Wodehouse, Wells, Dickens (except ATOTC, GE and DC), Clark Ashton Smith (CA's neglected great), H.P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, John Buchan, Stevenson, Agatha Christie. We will toast you in milk or kool-aid on receipt, and hope to see the civilization they represent finally begin to defend itself anew. Books by VDARE and AmRen authors would likely not be allowed through. That's also why I use terms like "tribal" — anything else might cause problems. But tribalism is at the heart of this in all sorts of ways: attempting to suppress it in the majority, while encouraging it in the ever-growing roll-call of minorities, is not a recipe for a peaceful future. We need more enlightened self-interest and less pious fantasizing. And sorry for the sloganeering — I'm practising for when I get out!

All best,

Stephen W.

Best wishes also from

Simon Sheppard