Well there we are; Julian Assange is in custody and the world is safe. Amazon.com, Paypal and Visa have stopped doing business with his company, Wikileaks – who have nothing to do with Wikipedia by the way – so they won't be able to make any money any more.
Now let's get this straight: WikiLeaks have been leaking secret information – not TOP secret - so what is the difference between what Julian Assange and what his WikiLeaks web site is doing and what Scooter Libby did and even what Bob Woodward writes?
Secret not TOP secret, don't forget.
But Julian Assange isn't in gaol because of the WikiLeaks cables he's there because of a sex charge. Now isn't that well timed?
Why is it that when some people become nuisances they are suddenly arrested on some sex charge or are involved in a scandal?
Charles Dilke was a right honourable gentleman during Victorian times in England; a right honourable gentleman because he was a cabinet minister in the Liberal Government of Gladstone – a radical Liberal, by the way and he supported laws giving the municipal franchise to women, legalising labour unions, improving working conditions and limiting working hours, as well as being one of the earliest campaigners for universal schooling – that last little bit I got from Wikipedia – nothing to do with WikiLeaks.
He was brought down by a sex scandal.
Charles Stewart Parnell almost achieved home for Ireland but just when he had an Irish Parliament in the palm of his hand (his words) he was brought down by the Kitty O'Shea scandal.
Look these people up on Wiki – not Leaks but pedia.
There are people who will question Wikipedia, by the way; but they shouldn't!
I don't know whether Julian Assange is guilty of what he is being charged with but isn't it coincidental that he is being charged for it now?
Julian Assange (I love to say that name) is an Australian; Australians are usually people who don't stand for bullshit; they, like the Americans, are the nemesis of England. They are fellow members of the New World and react strangely to the English.
The Americans and Australians like the Irish – who the English don't like generally – but when Australians went to England they asked “when the English are by themselves do they speak normal?”
As an Australian how can the USA ask the British to extradite him to America? Isn't espionage something you do when you are in that country and not what Julian Assange is doing from abroad?
In Britain, before the Internet, people would kind of disappear; people like Assange, and Daniel Ellsberg would have some kind of accident or end up in a mental hospital.
These days with the Internet they get shot in the face!!
When he was a radical thorn in the side of the British and South African Governments Peter Hain was arrested for and eventually tried for bank robbery. He was trying to stop the South African cricket and rugby teams from touring Britain because of their apartheid policies and was set up. He was eventually found not guilty.
By the way he became a cabinet minister in the British Labour Government but a couple of years ago he resigned – some kind of financial scandal!!
But going back to these WikiLeaks cables: isn't this given governments the chance to send false cables in the future to let the public know what they (the governments) want them to know?
I bet the governments are laughing.
