My views on transparent government operations are clear, from the tiniest rural township to the pros that manage Parliament - lots of it, all the time. My chief gripe with our Harperista regime and its ministerial inmates is less to do with policy (except when Messrs. Toews and Clement are on point), and more centred on their fixation that there is only ever single permitted message on any issue, with no deviation, qualification, or (God forbid) room for honest debate. We say it – it is thus.
It is in this spirit that I offer you a take on the most repellent self-proclaimed champion of open government ever spawned, the legend in his own mind that is Julian Assange, now living in Ecudaor (or the studio apartment that Ecuador, another great contributor to global human rights owns in its London England embassy), staring down a determined UK government that seems a wee bit pissed that the great Wikileaks crusader for government honesty couldn’t keep his own word on a bail he agreed to with the Brits while he fought extradition on sex assault charges to the totalitarian regime otherwise known as Sweden.
As edited from a piece that currently appears on Borderless News and Views, America’s contribution to true freedom of opinions…
Julian Assange – Hypocrisy’s Poster Boy
One wonders if the breathless Julian Assange supporters that rally for their hero’s freedom have ever been able to see past their own noses, let alone peer carefully into the dark intellectual Mirkwood where Assange rules. Their fears for Julian’s pending martyrdom are based on the simplest and most enduring lefty global mantra – the spectre of American manipulation of international extradition treaties will have their brilliant boyo spending the rest of his life in some Stateside crowbar hotel. These supposed truths proclaimed by the Assangeristas deserve a critical airing.
For these fearless defenders of free speech, Assange is the digital new-age Scarlet Pimpernel, the crusader poised to rescue the Western world from its secretive oppressors. His infamous Wikileak ‘dumps’ are the apparent proof that left to its own devices, US interests will stop at nothing to get their man. Assange inspires a patriot-like fervor in his global constituency, one united in its love of freedom from government manipulation.
As the peerless Samuel Johnson once told his biographer Boswell, ‘Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel’ – the Tea Party screamers are only the latest American proof in a long, sorry line where McCarthy’s anti-communists and Nixon’s plumbers are two examples. As lord of his global kingdom, Assange has decreed that he cannot get a fair trial on sex assault allegations (note – not yet charges) that have bubbled up in Sweden. Two women allege that fair Julian put an interesting spin on how consent operates when adults get intimate. He refuses to return to answer his accusers, preferring careful proclamations of innocence passed along through an often fawning media. He exhausts all available British legal avenues to battle requested Swedish extradition. He finally finds comfort in the welcoming arms of Rafeal Correa, President of Ecuador and the apparent new face of the international human rights movement. Ecuador will not consent to any attempted Assange extradition, anywhere, on ‘political issues’ – Hallelujah! Free at last! Our Julian is free at last!
Such bilge…like any other tyrant, Assange is prosecutor, judge, and jury… of his own case. His principles are revealed, so pathetic and self serving – perfectly suited to tin pot quasi-dictatorships and his new Ecuadorian home-sweet-home. Sweden has a well-deserved reputation as one of the world’s most committed liberal democracies, its justice system constructed on the rule of law and the presumption of innocence. ‘Swedish justice system corruption’ is a problem that seems to have previously escaped international attention. Assange sycophantic fears seem a little strong for the place where 1970s sex censorship battles helped to define its now uncompromisingly liberal social vibe. But Assange will have none of it. And good news, people of Assange, if the duplicitous Yanks had wanted to do the dirty on your King Julian, weren’t they are more likely to have pressured staunch US ally Britain to arrest him on their behalf sometime in the past 18 months while he tilted at his extradition windmills?
Where are we left with the Julian Assange? Unrepentant sex offender? Incomplete data. Accessory to treason and associated violations of US law through the Wikileaks releases? Allegations only, and if spurious they are readily rebutted. Intellectual fraud? Guilty… really, really, guilty.
