Witch Hunt?

When the shoe's on the other foot, which is to say the left on the right or vice versa, it can be most uncomfortable.  So the very individual who used his considerable technological skills to reveal secret documents that he and his followers feel should be open to the curious public, now finds it most inconvenient to have his personal life revealed in such an alarming manner.  The intrusion of a state, finding him wanting in his handling of intimate relations with casual admirers.


He contends he took no advantage of adoring women, that the sex he and they enjoyed was completely consensual.  And he's probably right about that.  Although the two women who have laid charges against him obviously feel otherwise.  They did, it would appear, enjoy casual sex with him, but he still took advantage of them and that obviously rankled their sense of dignity and fairness.  Now justice calls.  It really is up to him to prove unequivocally that their charges bear only a faint resemblance to reality.


But WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has no intention, if he can at all avoid it, of appearing before a Swedish court of law.  Britain, where he was forcibly staying, meant to extradite him to Sweden to stand trial, as required by a European arrest warrant.  Julian Assange decided to skip his bail and temporarily reside as an asylum-seeker at the Embassy of Ecuador, and they happily obliged. 


As far as the good man is concerned, the request by Sweden to have him extradited to stand trial on an inconvenient, cooked-up charge was planned by the United States.  Seeking to avenge themselves on someone who unleashed upon the world 250,000 U.S. Embassy cables where ambassadors and other assigned diplomats wrote their impressions of their host countries in a manner that proved to be most embarrassing.


Not that the U.S. was the only country whose secret communications were revealed, but certainly the most indignant, feeling it had much to lose in the revelations that were exposed to public scrutiny, impugning friend and foe alike; that's what secure communications do; convey significant facts and impressions, alerting the State Department to how the land lies, here and there.


In targeting WikiLeaks, Mr. Assange declared, speaking from the balcony of the Ecuadorian embassy to his supporters and the waiting news media, the U.S. is engaged in "dragging us all into a dark, repressive world in which journalists live under fear of prosecution".  The U.S., for its part, shrugs its metaphorical shoulders, disclaiming interest or involvement.  And the hero of disclosure of official documents to the public at large, wishes to shield himself from being conveyed to a court of justice.


All those countries whose secrets he has revealed are out to get him, poor Julian Assange.  "Inside this embassy in the dark, I could hear teams of police swarming up inside the building through its internal fire escape.  If the U.K. did not throw away the Vienna Convention the other night, it is because the world was watching."


And the 'journalist' who decried the penchant of governments keeping secret items of interest to the public, characterizing them as corrupt and oppressive and a danger to journalists, has made common cause with a country offering him refuge from a morally bankrupt system of justice, chirping the while his innocence and their unacceptable hounding of an innocent man.


Perhaps incidentally, Ecuador holds position 120 out of 182 on corruption, and 104 on press freedom as stated by Transparency International.  According to Human Rights Watch: "President Correa frequently rebukes journalists and media that criticize him and has personally taken journalists to court for allegedly defaming him ... in order to rebut media criticism the government has also used a provision of the broadcasting legislation that obliges private broadcasters to interrupt scheduled programs to transmit government messages."


And according to Amnesty International: "Indigenous and community leaders faced spurious criminal charges.  Those responsible for human rights violations continued to evade justice."  Whereas Sweden is fourth in the world for an absence of state corruption, and 12th for press freedom. 

Whoops!