Celebrity Justice
Catherine Bennett has thought provoking piece in today's Observer newspaper.
Instead of swallowing the whole conspiracy theory line - so beloved of Mr Assange and his celebrity supporters - she actually poses some relevant, if rhetorical, questions.
Here's an extract of what Catherine Bennett has to say - read the full text in today's Observer:
"So, Mr Assange, why won't you go back to Sweden now?"
"The WikiLeaks founder's reluctance to face his accusers sits badly with his avowed role as champion of freedom
It could be a quality lost on suspicious interviewers, or one he has quite recently acquired, but in all the profiles I have read of the extraordinary Julian Assange, none has begun to convey the man's dazzling effect on his admirers, male as well as female.
For the woman who last week flourished the placard: "Julian, I want your babies", his release from Wandsworth must have come as particularly welcome news. But his chief British benefactor, the former army officer Vaughan Smith, has shown that the Assange effect goes way beyond standard manipulation of the groupie-reflex.
Smith's atmospheric account of the night before his hero turned himself in might easily have been set in the Tower of London, on the eve of a royal execution. "I feel that I am intruding," Smith writes, "but Julian smiles at me. He does that: brings you in and makes you feel you are important to him when most of us would feel too preoccupied to do such a thing." All too soon it is morning. "Julian is hungry, as he had no dinner last night."
In the most unexpected places, any interest in establishing the truth through the Swedish legal process, as opposed to claim and counter-claim in the media, instantly translates as disloyalty to Assange, the world's greatest champion of the truth.
Any sympathy for the women he slept with, as their frailties are indefinitely, globally exposed, will earn you none from, say, John Pilger, slamming the "false tribunes of feminism" he blames for trusting the "chaotic, incompetent and contradictory accusations against Assange".
On the internet, of course, the women can be joyfully named, pictured and pilloried, assessed and obscenely condemned for everything from their feminism to loose morals, clothing and idle, pre-WikiLeaks blogs.
Of course, if Julian Assange accepts his extradition, travels to this liberal hell-hole and answers the relevant questions, something approaching the facts might be established. Why doesn't he just do it? He could clear his name.
But any outcome would, surely, be better for his reputation than celebrity-funded evasion. To keep delaying the moment of truth, for this champion of fearless disclosure and total openness, could soon begin to look pretty dishonest, as well as inconsistent."
Quite so - and as Mr Assange himself might say: "Why run if he has nothing to hide?"
Instead of swallowing the whole conspiracy theory line - so beloved of Mr Assange and his celebrity supporters - she actually poses some relevant, if rhetorical, questions.
Here's an extract of what Catherine Bennett has to say - read the full text in today's Observer:
"So, Mr Assange, why won't you go back to Sweden now?"
"The WikiLeaks founder's reluctance to face his accusers sits badly with his avowed role as champion of freedom
It could be a quality lost on suspicious interviewers, or one he has quite recently acquired, but in all the profiles I have read of the extraordinary Julian Assange, none has begun to convey the man's dazzling effect on his admirers, male as well as female.
For the woman who last week flourished the placard: "Julian, I want your babies", his release from Wandsworth must have come as particularly welcome news. But his chief British benefactor, the former army officer Vaughan Smith, has shown that the Assange effect goes way beyond standard manipulation of the groupie-reflex.
Smith's atmospheric account of the night before his hero turned himself in might easily have been set in the Tower of London, on the eve of a royal execution. "I feel that I am intruding," Smith writes, "but Julian smiles at me. He does that: brings you in and makes you feel you are important to him when most of us would feel too preoccupied to do such a thing." All too soon it is morning. "Julian is hungry, as he had no dinner last night."
In the most unexpected places, any interest in establishing the truth through the Swedish legal process, as opposed to claim and counter-claim in the media, instantly translates as disloyalty to Assange, the world's greatest champion of the truth.
Any sympathy for the women he slept with, as their frailties are indefinitely, globally exposed, will earn you none from, say, John Pilger, slamming the "false tribunes of feminism" he blames for trusting the "chaotic, incompetent and contradictory accusations against Assange".
On the internet, of course, the women can be joyfully named, pictured and pilloried, assessed and obscenely condemned for everything from their feminism to loose morals, clothing and idle, pre-WikiLeaks blogs.
Of course, if Julian Assange accepts his extradition, travels to this liberal hell-hole and answers the relevant questions, something approaching the facts might be established. Why doesn't he just do it? He could clear his name.
But any outcome would, surely, be better for his reputation than celebrity-funded evasion. To keep delaying the moment of truth, for this champion of fearless disclosure and total openness, could soon begin to look pretty dishonest, as well as inconsistent."
Quite so - and as Mr Assange himself might say: "Why run if he has nothing to hide?"
