(First published in Independent Australia)
It is now the Swedes’ plan, and their ally America’s plan, for a ‘Lee Harvey Oswald moment’ when, emerging handcuffed from the embassy gates, Assange will be shot from a high window across the street in an ‘incident’ Scotland Yard will profoundly regret, and his funeral will be watched by half a billion viewers across the world and the assassin get away.
This is their plan now. Their previous plan was not to try him for rape in Sweden, since his accusers were plainly right-wing conspirators who publicly kissed and hugged him for days and days after the supposed offence, but to beat him to death in gaol, in an ‘incident’ the authorities would profoundly regret.
This was always their plan. This is why they never charged him with anything, wanting only to ‘question’ him in Sweden. Though they could have questioned him in London, he had to be in Sweden. There can be no other reason for this, as any fan of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo will tell you, but to kill him there.
It is not far-fetched or paranoid to say this. Four American presidential candidates have called for his death, two by assassination. His informant, Bradley Manning, is under torture and facing execution. Drone missiles take out, once a month, America’s political opponents without an arrest, or a lawyer, or a period of detention, or a day in court, just a sudden explosion in the house which they – and their children, sometimes – live in. Assassination is American foreign policy now, and an assassinated Assange is on their menu.
How are we to save him? Well, we could ask the Swedes to interview him in the embassy, and find him, as they did before, a person of no interest. Or we could ask the British to send him home. Once here he could be questioned on what happened, and the accusers flown out to be questioned too. If they have a case, he can be tried by Skype from Sweden and, if found guilty, if a fair trial is possible after the publicity, gaoled here.
And his life preserved.
It is not too large a thing to call him our Dreyfus. For Dreyfus too was accused of giving information to the enemy, amid newspaper headlines that divided a nation, and the nation’s families with it, for decades. Dreyfus was found to be guiltless of any breach of the law in any jurisdiction.
It is a pity that the now all-too-common alliance of American hubris, Fox News hysteria and the far right wing has brought this world hero, the truthful, stern, impelled auteur of the Arab Spring, to this mortal pass with the craven assistance of Australian inertia, Swedish greed and mendacious American vengefulness.
Or perhaps you disagree.
Name:
It’s times like these that one wishes Olof Palme was still alive, Bob. Would you agree?
In the time since he was violently murdered while still Prime Minister of Sweden (in similarly mysterious circumstances to what you’ve hypothetically outlined above), Sweden has gone from being the premier social democracy of the world, and an unapologetic critic of the United States’ bully-boy tendencies, to just another Western lacky of their foreign policy needs.
Palme never ceased in his outright condemnation of the Vietnam War, comparing it to Guernica, Treblinka and Sharpeville – and his government accepted the asylum of hundreds of American boys and men fleeing the draft. Nixon and Kissinger subsequently suspended diplomatic relations with Sweden for over a year – yet Palme did not cease from his outspoken position.
In addition, he spoke out against Apartheid a decade before any other Western Government would do so, and provided immense foreign aid to the A.N.C. and left-wing movements in Africa, Palestine and South America.
Does anyone doubt where he would have stood on Julian Assange? Where are the Olof Palmes of today?
I agree.
Has any embargo been placed on the New York Times, The Guardian or Der Spiegel from further publishing of the cables?
No.
Nor will any of their editors suffer execution.
Just the lordly, eccentric Australian.
Like letting boat people drown when we could save them, Assange is a warning to the others. Even the Guardian needs informants (such as the one who sparked the Milly Dowler phone-hack/wipe story – which ironically the police proved to have possibly been partly wrong on – that brought Rupert low)
Any reasonable person would simply interview him in the UK to say otherwise under the circumstances is simply duplicitous. It offers punishment from a crime unproven in disproportionate measure. I’m sick to the back teeth of the bullshit legalistic arguments, show me the justice in the extradition and I’ll show you Lassiter’s reef.
bingo!
The return flight’s half a day all up. Hardly punishment, especially when he left Sweden shortly after they told his Swedish lawyer to get him in again for final questioning.
Before his lawyer was told to bring him back he’d been seeking a residence permit for Sweden so he could make a Wikileaks base there because of their whistle-blower protection laws. Afterwards he discovered that Sweden is a lackey of the Evil American Imperialists. Ain’t coincidence a lovely thing?
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again :
The interview will be followed immediately by charges. For that to make any sense the Swedish authorities want him in their custody.
Legal bullshit it may be, but that is the reason.
Charges can be made, and extradition requested, in England.
What they fear is no charges can be made, because he is innocent, as he was found to be in Sweden before they let him leave the country.
Hmmm, they have just done the extradition thing.
Assange can thumb his nose at proper legal process and the British legal system and get away with it.
Mind you, if I were he I’d do exactly the same.
Doesn’t mean I have to like it, and as my position has always been, he is no hero, no messiah and not a nice person; a psychopathic personality if ever I saw one. Just ask the lawyers he has succeeded in alienating, and almost anyone who ever worked with him.
And he should be killed for this?
What has so warped, old friend, your sense of justice?
I would propose that Assange is a true “artist”, in that he has managed to become what he is, and married his purpose and his self in a coherent existence, and yes that takes an enormous amount of ego, selfishness, monomaniacal dedication, and, it seems to me as time goes on he is becoming promethean, monumental almost, as his personality becomes stamped upon the culture.
Even his appearance marks him out, his stature as he wades through the Press and crowds, the white hair, the ever youthful shining face, there is something almost Christ like in the way he appears in front of the Courts in the arc lights and flash of cameras.
You can use the Jesus story as a template in this ongoing saga, Bradley Manning as John the Baptist if you will. The Parables of Wikileaks, his many disciples, the undermining of the authority of the Pharisees, exposing their manipulations and conspiring, their fraternizing with the enemy, the electronic sermons on the mount, the betrayal by a kiss and then some. The winning of influential friends convinced of his good. And now we have him spirited away for maybe three days or more, before he transcends his current situation and amazingly turns up in Sweden to face his accusers, or live a life as a computer software support techie in Ecuador.