Everywhere you turn, go, see or hear in the last couple of weeks, there is no escaping the Julian Assange/ Wikileaks saga, accused by various governments especially the US of exposing classified documents which they claim could "cost innocent lives". Assange has voluntarily given himself up to UK police and is now sitting in a UK jail awaiting his hearing, fighting for his life to stay off extradition charges to the US where it is more than certain he would face the US government hell bent on building a case based on trumped up charges against him to silence off his Wikileaks organization and stem the tide that have caused them so much irreparable damage. Secret cables released expose the US governments of criticizing other countries presidents, prime ministers, ministers, ambassadors and what not and this has embarassed the US considerably and put a strain in their foreign relations.
Lets face it, it has never been about endangering anyones lives but more about the embarassment that it has brought the US government. It has exposed their lies in Iraq and Afghanistan and it has exposed their political conversations and provided the public some inside into what the US really thinks about the rest of the world. If anything the cables have reinforced what we knew that the US is the one and only remaining super power and there is no point in being a citizen of any other country as Julian Assange is finding out at the moment. =
Politicians don't like openess and scrutiny and Asssange has exposed the US in an unprecedented manner and obviously unsure of a suitable response apart from shooting the messenger by building up trumped up charges and some even calling for him to be executed/ assassinated etc. While there is a low chance that the US government will actually assassinate Assange, you'll never really know with its poor record in the past of abiding its own laws and standards it sets others. What about these irresponsible people who are calling for the head of Assange that really concerns me is that some lunatic, maybe the Israeli Mossad who will actually see some value in following the suggestions made by these influential people and do the deed.
What Julian Assange has done here is that he has exposed government incompetence, lies and secret political conversations. He has not put anyone's life at risk. When a senior counter intelligence office who had just come back from Afghanistan was asked by Kerry O'Brien on the 7:30 Report whether there was any evidence of lives lost because of the Wikileaks cables, he answered "No", and this coming from a guy who currently works for the intelligence department who went on the program to "shoot down" Julian Assange. When asked what repurcussions there was, he said mainly "political repurcussions". There you have it from a senior intelligence officer who just came back from Afghanistan saying that there is no evidence that the Wikileaks cables were used by the Taliban to hunt and kill people. It gets even better, he praised Wikileaks for concealing some of the names which had the potential to be used by the Taliban for retribution, mainly against locals. From his statement you can actually suggest that Wikileaks are aware that free speech have boundaries and are focused on exposing the government's lies without endangering the lives of innocent people. So much for shooting Wikileaks down!
The only reason Assange is in the situation he is in is because the cables have made the US government "uncomfortable" and "embarassed". The silence by other governments is defeaning to the stage of causing a disgusting feel of nausea. As Assange is an Australian citizen, his plight has the potential to be the Labor party's David Hicks in which the most Australians formed the opinion that the Australian government (at the time John Howard's Liberal party) did not do enough to ensure sufficient representation to one of it's citizens against what people viewed as the harsh treatment he received while in US custody, and the Assange case has the potential to be just like th Hicks case. On the one hand Prime Minister Gillard had already concluded that Assange had broken the law and on the other hand the Attorney General stated that Assange will be accorded full access to consular assistance while in custody. That's going to be difficult providing someone who you believe is guilty full consular assistance.
What laws have Assange broken? No one seems to know. When the US Assistance Attorney General was asked by Kerry O'Brien tonight, he said he is no law expert. Reading between the lines I would say no laws were broken and the US are finding something on him. Most apolitcical commentators, respected law professors from ANU, Oxford and so forth have said that they can't find that Assange has broken any laws. So far there is no evidence that he took any of the documents in question but he merely published it. There are a host of other more mainstream larger media organizations that did the same, so why target the little guy? To make an example of him? If the US really wanted to prosecute someone, it should be the person who stole the documents but that would be too difficult and Assange would be an easier target to make an example for any future "offenders".
The charge that finally led to his arrest has got nothing to do with Wikileaks. It's about the rape of a couple of Swedish women where the case when it initially went to court was thrown out by the judge for insufficient evidence. So what happened from then until now? His lawyer said that Assange waited for forty days and forty nights in Sweden to assist police and the prosecutor but they never called him in. What happened after that? Was there political pressure push these trumped up charges, get Assange out of action and finally extradited to the US and charged with some sort of outdate draconian law like the Espionage Act which by the way has never been used since 1918? Sure smells like a rat!
Assange voluntarily gave himself up to authorities, so for the judge to deny him bail seems somewhat unjust. You can only conlcude that the reason to keep him locked up is to deny him the ability to further publish more embarassing documents but just today his lawyer said that the Wikileaks organization is going strong despite being hacked and abandoned by it's former partners and today was only cable number 301 and they can't wait to publish a further 250,000 cables more. Good on ya I say, can't wait myself to see what further government lies, embarassing truths and incompetence is revealed!
It's a David vs. Golliath scenario where the sling shot is a $2,000 computer. There is no point being an Australian citizen when under the slightest pressure from the US whom apparently don't really like Australia anyway (according to the leaked cables) you get abandoned by the very government that has a duty of care to ensure your well being. All Assange wants according to his biographer is more transparent government and for them to stop lying to the people like the war on Iraq and you can't really argue with that. When a Danish cartoonist drew unflattering pictures of the prophet Mohammed most governments stood on the side of "freedom of expression" even though that case had the potential to explode into more severe violence that this case could ever be but now when they themselves are exposed, they have strangely gone numb on the subject of "freedom of information".
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