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That is the question, whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The Slings and Arrows of outrageous Fortune,
Or to take Arms against a Sea of troubles.
(Hamlet: Act 3, Scene 1)
AS WE APPROACH day one hundred and twenty in this modern day Shakespearian tragedy of Assange versus The State, I can’t help but wonder that, with all the threats of death sentences, trumped up rape charges and assassination, even Macbeth would think: “things may have got a little out of hand here.”
As Julian Assange sits tucked away in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London he, like asylum seekers all over the world, must be asking the question — why me. If I can’t trust Western democracies, where do I go?
How has the pursuit of a world free from corruption and injustice led to this ― the virtual imprisonment of a middle aged man from Dandenong with nothing more to his name than a website?
Assange is not alone in this; we all pontificate from time to time about the hand life has dealt us. I vividly remember the day the school guidance counsellor asking me and my friends: “Where do you see yourself at 40?”
Not one of us had the vision to say: “Hopefully I will have annoyed the world’s largest superpower the point of wanting to assassinate me and, once that’s accomplished, I will wind up locked inside an Ecuadorian embassy somewhere.”
The long game the US is trying to play here is really quite simple — they just want to shut him down.
They can do this in a number of ways: discredit him; damage him to the point where nobody trusts him; lock him up, literally; or lock him up figuratively, by tying him up in two decades worth of legal proceedings as they go through each of the five hundred thousand cable breaches one at time with a tea break in between each one.
Either way they win.
One thing that is working out well for Uncle Sam in their battle against Assange is that he is now looking more rattled than he has for some time. This latest attempted move to Ecuador will, I predict, be just one of many twists.
If you look at the options now faced by Mr Assange, they are like comparing a Contiki tour of Kabul with two Contiki tours of Baghdad. Yes, you might survive, but this little junket is not going to be without some moments where you wished you had purchased travel insurance.
Every year, Transparency International releases a corruption perceptions index, where each country in the world is rated and ranked according to corruption and transparency.
If you compare the current options available to Assange – Britain, Australia, Sweden and Ecuador (or the BASE countries as I shall now call them) – his move seems to fly in the face of all reason and plays straight into the hands of Uncle Sam’s plan to discredit him.
Britain, his first option and current geographical location, is ranked 16th in the world out of 183 countries and 7.8 out of 10 ― so not too bad, even if the economy is stuffed.
Australia, my personal favourite, would give Assange the 8th best country in the world according to the index ― a regular lamb roast with mum and an 8.8 out of 10 overall.
Sweden, where he faces the only real charges against him, is the 4th best nation in the world when it comes to corruption and scores an impressive 9.3 out of 10.
On the surface of it, you may say “this is all looking good so far for Mr Assange with regards to getting a fair trial”. But where does he want to move to continue his Wikileaks efforts to fight global corruption and improve transparency?
Ecuador ― 120th in the world and a pitiful 2.2 out of 10.
So, even with a move to Ecuador, if he keeps doing what he has been doing to date, at some point it seems certain he’s going to fall out with the authorities.
While I don’t anticipate that Assange will meet the same fate as Macbeth, I do hope –as he gazes out over Shakespeare’s Globe from his window at the Ecuadorian embassy – he takes some time to consider this predicament.
What he really needs is a country with a high speed national broadband network and a commitment to free speech that is not afraid to challenge the international community to lift its game. If only such a country existed.
(Matt Grantham is a comedian and writer. You can follow him on twitter @matt_grantham. )
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia License
8 Comments
Has #Assange unwittingly played in the U.S.'s hands by locking himself in the Ecuadorian Embassy? #wikileaks http://t.co/93OY3PP5
Agreed.
Yhe emphasis should be on the word PERCEIVED in the “Perceived Corruption Index”, and a few questions should be asked about just who is doing the perceiving — eg there is a country (not Australia) on the 2011 figures with a score above 9/10.
That same country had its Supreme Court set up in a barter exchange for a series of political assassinations — most of them were disguised as car accidents and heart attacks. In return for the murders (including the murder of a primary school girl), the PM and Attorney-General rammed through new legislation in two afternoon sessions of the parliament — to suddenly change a century and a half of legal tradition, and set up a new Supreme Court. The Bill was passed, the deal was done, and a team of foreign assasins arrived in the country within days.
Same two politicians are both ex prostitutes, and they got another ex prostitute, an alcoholic MP, to organise the cover-up on two of the murders (which did not go as planned).
A national sporting icon (KNIGHTHOOD AND ALL)from the same country was gunned down – and the same PM, who had organised his assassination, gave the eulogy at the memorial service, greeting her victim’s kids and widow like some sort of long time family friend.
Part of the reason the “perception” is so inaccurate is that the country’s media hides the corruption — they sort of have to, since so many of them are paedophiles being blackmailed.
And this is the place getting a score near 10 out of 10!!
At least where one country is concerned, the corruption index perception figures are a “ROAD OF LUBBISH!”.
[The murder of the national sporting hero was another barter deal - he had annoyed some commercial and political interests with his environmental activism, so in exchange for some added political support, his PM had him murdered, and then grandstanded through the eulogy service.]
Julian’s situation sure sux! But telling the truth (maybe) can get you into all sorts of strife. The world is a crazy place when this man is hounded & criminalised because he has tried to make the actions of governments more transparent. Julian’s biggest mistake was not to have organised his escape from the UK much earlier when he had the chance. He will never receive fair treatment because the mighty USA want him. Don’t like his chances, just hope his outcome is better then Bradley Mannings.
As for corruption, human beings are not rational, reasoned or honest & unfortunately largely tend to operate on self interest. The more reason for transparency in human affairs, something to which Julian aspires. Show me anyone who wants to be scrutinised. For governments, corporations, banking & the internationl/national economies, the military, religions, the rich, powerful, & priviledged secrecy & loaded rules/social sysyems/bureaucracies/education etc maintain the power of elites.
Look around, anyone who challenges elites becomes a target.
Maybe as a species we don’t want the “truth” because this would be too painful, & we would then have to acknowledge that we are all responsible for our world?
Ecuador sounds honest.
Scrutiny is good applied with humanity. As with all, who watches the scrutinisers watching the scrutiny. This is where the mainstream media has failed us miserably by heavy associations to politics and commercial and corporate entities.
The burdens and assaults from the corruptions and overindulgences of the scrutineers on those doing the scrutiny come to light and apparition in the community and on the community and their seems to be no addressing.
The corruptions index also could read the abilities to hide or controls of the people. It holds no value in humanity scale, especially where capability and actual come into terms.
Even quite a few exposures mean nothing to the whole of good,teething problems and lessons of addressing. To judge on matters that slip through. Though I see matters hidden by the heights for heights advantage over the majority and often hidden under other values of sound management or owl wisdom and for the best for majority.
So many times,corruptions that make the public are treated as one off occurrence and the usual soap opera of politics follows, the media outrages and fights the problem to the death in theatre and it’s on with the show and business as usual for above in endemic.
The scale of perceived corruption has good value and guides to the globe coming closer in values and determinations and the greatest things of humanity and understanding. Though it is my view from the bottom that public service and corporate need reigning in here. The evidence is in the lower and the profits of above.
Rastus, I like your argument there. I do wonder if our proclivity towards self interest is part of “Human Nature” (Anthropoligists and the like are debating whether it actually exists at all) or if they are simply adaptation to a man-made world where self interest is the best course of action for the individual, and if our concept of individuality is not somewhat tainted itself. History is littered with tales of true egalitarianism. Shortlived, yes, violently removed from the world, often, but egalitarianism all the same.
As to how all this affects Assange:
“What he really needs is a country with a high speed national broadband network and a commitment to free speech that is not afraid to challenge the international community to lift its game. If only such a country existed.”
Says it all, really.
BSkinner, another thought provocking & intelligent post. I wonder too.
The corruption in Sweden applies to Julian as well. One of the women was taken to the police because she was told that they could force Julian to be tested for HIV. She was anxious about this because her long-term American boyfriend had always used condoms with her. But when she left the police station she had been set up as a rape victim of Julian without her knowledge or consent. She was interrogated by the police but there was nothing illegal in the interrogation and the prosecutor who read it dismissed the case. The interrogation was doctored the following day, the allegations behind the European Arrest Warrant were inserted into it by the police without the woman’s knowledge. It’s all been documented, mainly in Sweden, there’s an English account, Julian Assange in Sweden by Guy Sims, it’s an e-book. The evidence is so strong that Julian ought to be able to sue the Swedish police and government, but the Swedish judges and courts might not be impartial enough for that to succeed.
The game US is playing on #Assange is really quite simple – they just want to shut him down http://t.co/fJRepiYq #svpol #eupol #wikileaks
RT @HansCJohansson The game US is playing on #Assange is really quite simple – they just want to shut him down http://t.co/pJTDeVUd