Can Australia Please Stop Being Washington’s Bitch And Help Assange Now?
The Wall Street Journal has published an editorial titled “The U.S. Can Get Julian Assange” and subtitled “Avoid extradition and use secret services to airlift him to stand trial in America.” This horrifying article, run by one of America’s major mainstream publications, details how US special forces could technically storm the embassy of a sovereign nation, kidnap an Australian journalist who has broken no laws, and drag him back to the States in a way that the editorial’s author claims has legal precedent in America. The mass media propaganda machine of a government that tortures whistleblowers is openly advocating kidnapping an Australian citizen, from an Ecuadorian embassy, in the UK, in order to stop him from traveling to Ecuador. Because he helped show the American people the truth about their government.
In what other nation would such a suggestion be perceived as anything but outrageous and unacceptable? As anything but an endorsement of an act of war? And yet Assange’s own country — my country — lets this kind of dialogue continue to escalate without a word.
I’ve been to Ecuador. I stayed for three months in 1999 living with locals, travelling by local transport and hitching around the Andes, the Amazon and the coast. It is a beautiful country, so rich in many things — landscape, culture, art, community and heart. But not a lot of money and not a lot of influence and certainly no leverage in terms of military might or trade. When it comes to doing the right thing, they have nothing but heart and soul, nothing but the courage of the underdog.
It is so deeply embarrassing to me that Ecuador, a tiny nation with so little power, had to step in and do the job that Australia should have done for Assange. It’s so shameful that it was not my country showing the kind of “ticker” as we say here that was required in that crucial moment where one of our most significant citizens needed help. Growing up, I thought it was my country that was the plucky underdog that always helped out a mate and set things right. I thought it was my country that had the moral compass and a sense of natural justice that set us apart from our neurotically litigious cousins in the States. I thought we did the right thing because it was the right thing.
Such is life, said Ned Kelly, another famous Australian before he was hanged. Such is life.
We aren’t a particularly patriotic lot here in Oz. We don’t generally hang our flag in our front yards or sing our national anthem before a football game like the Americans do. If you tell someone you were in the Australian armed forces you don’t get an enthusiastic “Oh, thank you for your service,” you get an “Oh bonza, and what are you doing with yourself now?” And I wonder if that’s not so much a part of our culture as the natural result of a general collective awareness that we haven’t got a whole lot to be proud of these days. Washington says jump, Canberra asks how high. Washington says invade Iraq, we send out boys to die and kill and come back irreparably traumatized for a plutocratic resource conflict on the other side of the planet. We’re America’s bitch.
Well, just once I’d like a chance to feel proud of my country. Assange has committed no crimes, nobody has seen a single shred of evidence that he was ever colluding with Russia, and he has brought the light of truth to many parts of the world with nothing to show for it but five years of wrongful imprisonment while his children grew up hearing his name smeared with lies. Among the many great men and women that our nation has produced, none shine brighter than he.
Even if he had committed crimes it shouldn’t have made a difference to Australia; all our favorite national heroes are criminals. All our favorite battles are the ones we lost. We’ve got a curious fondness for the marginal, the underdog, the slightly bent-and-battered, the lost. He’s not being forsaken by his country because of his legal controversies, he’s being forsaken by his country because our so-called leaders don’t have the guts to stand up to the evils of the American corruption machine.
My readers sometimes ask me why I write so much about the American government. This is why. I write about the American government because my nation has no government of its own. We sit here a cowardly, snivelling vassal state, staring at the floor and doing as we’re told while our midget cousin Ecuador stands up to our bully and fights our battles for us. It’d almost be better if we just asked the US to annex us already so at least we’d get an imaginary vote in their pretend democracy.
Again, the US government tortures whistleblowers. Assange needs protection before their ghouls sink their claws into him forever. He’s our man and he will not see justice if they get to him. Canberra’s too crammed full of globalist stooges to do it of their own accord, but if enough of us push for this, they’ll cave.
Allow me to speak to my people in my mother tongue:
Come on Aussies, this is piss weak, this is as soft as a month-old pav from Woollies, what a pack of soft-cock suck-ups you are. Where’s your animal, where’s your digger spirit, where’s your ticker, son? Give us some Aussie mongrel for Christ’s sake! I know you’ve got it in you. Get your head out your arse and give the Yanks some lip and get our boy back home. Youse are acting like a bunch of woolly woofters and youse all know it too. Wake up Australia, this sheila has had a gutful of your bullshit, it’s time to grow a pair.
— — —
Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this, please consider helping me out by sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following me on Twitter, or even tossing me some money on Patreon so I can keep this gig up.
