The legacy media appears to have completely ignored the unusual step Julian Assange took in fleeing to the Ecuadorian embassy in London rather than to the ‘safety’ of the Australian High Commission when being pursued by British authorities on behalf of the US. Julian Assange after all was and remains an Australian.
No one in the legacy media had the presence of mind or probing journalistic quality to query why Julian took such a radical and unusual step as to seek asylum at the Ecuadorian embassy in London when confronted with a real life threat to his life, liberty and freedoms.
No single media outlet in the ‘free world’ has to date raised that question or queried Assange’s asylum at the Ecquadorian embassy in London. And nor did anyone inquire as to why Julian Assange had sought refuge in a third world foreign mission in the UK instead of seeking the protection of the Australian diplomatic mission in that country. After all it was and remains Australia’s duty to protect its citizens. To protect them amongst other things whilst in a foreign jurisdiction, against arbitrary arrest, unfair treatment and to ensure they get a fair trial whatever the charges proffered against them.
ASSANGE MUZZLED AND BETRAYED
Today Assange serves what is essentially a life sentence of silence and restricted movements in Australia. He is gagged for life. His movements restricted and his every statement, correspondence and communications, monitored by censors and relayed to the US by Australia. That’s the price Julian Assange and has to pay for his “freedoms”.
Julian was sold to the Americans by a weak and many say, spineless Australian government. Australia’s conduct in this matter from the time Assange was being pursued by the US was like that of a subservient colony or protectorate of the US and the UK.
Assange was being relentlessley pursued by the US for what they believed was a crime he committed by being part of a clandestine network of conscience-stricken individuals who secured information which embarrassed and exposed the criminality of the US government and its armed forces in Irak and Afghanistan. If it was a crime, it was not a crime he committed in the US.
There are differing opinions on this point. It certainly is not a crime in Australia to publish information that however obtained, consits of the truth and is relevant to public safety and public interests. Some would argue against such a defence of what Assange did by publishing what unlawful acts the US armed forces ommitted in 2 theatres of war.
Julian Assange’s biggest and most strategic blunder that led to him being cut lose from the other “offenders” in the pack was his indulgent self-promotion about being The super sleuth hacker who uncovered US military criminality in several theaters of war. In truth it was Sgt. Chelsea Manning who did the spade work for which Assange claimed credit.
Assange’s love of media attention and his departure from the facts gave the US the opportunity to play on his vanity and to draw him and his mates into a trap.
VANITY THEY NAME IS ASSANGE
Assange was part of a network of individuals that did the job of hacking the US military establishment (most of it the result of social rather than technical hacking) with Julian Assange responsible in part for creating Wikileaks the platform for distribution and spreading the results of those hacks to the world.
Many, in the anti-NATO establishment believe Assange was unfairly and disproportionately grabbing the limelight for himself by appropriating all credit over the hacking of US defense installations to himself. They disapproved of it but wisely refrained public commentary on the subject through self censorship. Not Assange though.
Former US army Sgt. Chelsea Manning (the real hero and hacker of US’s intelligence networks in the group) shouldered the greatest personal risk to himself for the hack and the leaks via Wikileaks and has since paid a heavy price for it with a 30 year jail sentence in a US prison.
Julian was like a deer caught in the headlights of a car. And he began to revel in it much to the consternation of others in the Wikileaks group.
Assange and Wikileaks were mimicing what another legendary insider in the US defence establishment had achieved decades ago through exposing illegality at the highest levels of government.
Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers. Ellsberg was a Pentagon insider who leaked secret and sensitive information on US government activities in Vietnam the lightning rod for social activism during that period.
The Wikileaks network though was dealing with a more dangerous enemy than what Ellsberg faced with the Nixon Kissinger Whitehouse of the 1960’s.
WAS ASSANGE BETRAYED BY HIS LEGAL REPRESENTATIVES
Assange had the services of a very high-profile lawyer in Geoffrey Robertson KC. An Australian born anti establishment icon of the late 60’s and early 70’s turned establishment man later. Much like Assange, Robertson is very much a man who loves and covets media attention and the spotlight through courting controversy.
It has been suggested by some and confirmed by others close to Assange, that inspite of Robertson’s championing of unpopular causes such as the Wikileaks case, and even if partly for the attention it draws to himself, Robertson is, -as a part time recorder, a silk and Master of the Middle Temple- compelled by law and convention to report matters considered a threat national security, to prevent a serious crime or in preventing a danger to the lives and safety of anyone in Britain (or elsewhere).
Assange, Sgt. Chelsea Manning and Wikileaks and their role in the hacking and dissemination of sensitive US defence materials, constituted such a threat and danger to national security and the safety and welfare of many.
And the claim now is that Robertson’s office kept the foreign office and Whitehall informed of critical details of some of the more serious aspects of Assange’s clandestine anti state activities.
It is suggested by some with access to Whitehall, that Robertson’s office, playing the informer to Whitehall and the Foreign office is what gave Robertson leverage to secure Assange’s release and to escape the very real prosect of the death sentence at the hands of the US justice system. That suggestion according to others is mere speculation.
All along, Australia’s ministry of foreign affairs played a pivotal role in keeping Julian Assange locked up. First at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, then later in Britain’s Belmarsh prison.
Finbar Nolan and Siddique Khan
