Something that has caught my attention over the last little while has been the case of Julian Assange and Wikileaks.
I have to express my outrage firstly at some of the comments of our Prime Minister and Attorney General. Too fast to judge and far too eager to impugn his innocence were outrageous and inappropriate of them. I am stunned that an Australian citizen could be thrown to the American wolves almost with glee by the leader of the country and our leading lawmaker. I thought those days were behind us when the Howard Government fell. God help all of us, we can even have our passport taken from us. This is disgusting, an act of errant betrayal. Thank God for Kevin Rudd who appears to provide some sense of sanity in government circles. We already turned our back on one Australian and let him languish in a hellhole in Cuba for 5 years, we can't let that happen again.
The leaks are neither here nor there in the end, gossip and snide remarks from diplomats and staffers who clearly lack either discretion or class. Big bloody deal, let's be clear no one's life is in danger, no governments will fall and no war will break out because of what WikiLeaks has published. so let's chill and show a bit of maturity.
Clearly the US government wants to do him in, hellbent on destroying his reputation particularly...oh diddums. Poor centre of Western civilisation, someone called you on your own bad behaviour and overly sensitive psyches...suck it up I say. Be mature enough to say 'ok we got caught, someone cracked our secrets. We shouldn't have been so easy to bring unstuck, how can we fix it'. Hell, there might even be cause to thank Assange!
So some naughty army person got bored in Iraq or Afghanistan and instead of killing his brain cells watching Internet porn he crashed into some juicy documents and sent them off to the leak place. If anyone really cares about the content then it's the GI who has broken laws not Assange. He is doing no more than all the newspapers that re publishing the leaks have done.He is merely the conduit to the story.
In case you are unsure, Assange's arrest in London is related to a number of sexual assault claims in Sweden. As I understand it he hasn't been charged as such but is subject to a deportation order to answer the allegations against him. I have no sympathy for sexual predators of any sort but I do hold dear the concept of innocent until proven guilty. Here is my understanding of what happened to lead to these claims.
He attended a series of meeting of a left wing group in Sweden, staying at an apartment and slept with the woman who owned the flat. On one occasion his condom broke. Visiting a small town (the town where the shifting spanner was invented - but that's another story) he hooked up with another woman who was attracted to him (a fan would be an apt term), they slept together and one time he had unprotected sex with her. She knew of the first woman and called her to say she was worried about the unprotected sex. The first woman tells her about the broken condom. Diseases, unwanted pregnancies etc entered the picture not to mention a bit of 'he screwed you while he had been sleeping with me?'. They went to the cops, admitting all acts were consensual but the investigator told them they had grounds for charges under Sweden's quirky rape laws(in some cases it can be argued coercion may be said to occur if the sex act might endanger life or liberty - in this case the unprotected sex and the broken condom could be seen as that).
So when the claims were examined by a prosecutor she dismissed them out of hand as not having any solid basis. However when the women asked for that decision to be reviewed (and we are now at the exact time the current leaks were surfacing), the authorities decided to go for him.
I'm not sure that questionable morals, voracious sexual appetites and just plain stupid acts are grounds for prosecution but there we have it.
What I'm hoping is that everyone will look at what is happening with open eyes and scepticism and not accept all that is going to be thrown around about Assange. I'm not sure he's a saint but I'm pretty sure he's not evil.
