Drips & Drabs
It's hard to believe that I'd agree with even half of anything John Howard has to say, even over "Wikileaks", but I do. Half, anyway. Frankly, I don't regard the leaks as any more of an offense than I do Julian Assange's action in publishing them. What I do see is the media ganging up on someone stepping on the turf they'd been gaming for decades and politicians crying foul over being caught out in lies and obfuscation. In both cases I think we all know we knew it all along. No surprises here, except insofar as we now see how far even ostensibly liberal governments will go along with the kinds of prosecutorial abuses we thought were only a Bush II purview. Whether or not the Swedish courts have a case against Assange, the fact that the U.S. is already in discussions with them over extradition show how valuable Guantanamo is to Obama, and Australia's Julia Gillard's self-serving assessments of Assange's "irresponsibility", insofar as it allows her to declare illegality without coming straight out with it, give us Labor as Howard-lite, even while Howard distances himself from such an assessment.
I welcome Wikileaks. Post that crap. But let's see what else we can get: from Britain, France, Germany, China . . . . it shows up every creep in the public service, free society or not, for exactly what we know them to be: self-serving, greedy, rapacious bastards causing more trouble than they're worth.
Funny I should post such an assessment after bagging the Tea-Baggers, I suppose, but I'm no less put out by Obama caving at every turn than I am by Palin mischaracterising all of U.S. history than I am by Labor's failures here or the Liberal's fight against the working class than I am by . . . . we need something better than democracies that have abandoned democracy. Transparency and a strong, fearless, but righteous media are valuable, even in the form of socio-inadroit (or even sociopathological) individuals like Julian Assange.
Publish and be damned, but publish. We need to know for sure what's all too easily hidden or told as lies.
08 December 2010
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2 comments:
It is very unlikely that either the Swedes or the English will extradite Assange. First of all, unless it has happened under seal he hasn't been charged with anything. Secondly, if he were charged with, hypothetically, espionage, before he could be extradited the US would have to stipulate that it would not seek the death penalty-- an improbable stipulation under the circumstances of the hypothetical. Finally, there is some question as to dual criminality.
It is easy enough to see this arrest/these charges as some sort of gigantic international conspiracy, but to me what it looks more like is Assange trying to defend himself from accusations of sexual assault: "I'm not a rapist: I am an international champion of transparency. And they were asking for it." Knowing what I do about the creaking machinery of international law that seems far more likely, and the fact that he turned himself in suggests to me that he is endeavoring to control the narrative more or less along the lines I'm suggesting.
Yes, and I'm betting the "rape" thing is trumped up, too. The guy may be weird but I doubt he's also pathological. And I certainly agree he should use his hacker skills on more of our holier than thou governments.
It couldn't hurt.
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