Assange, O’Chee and the politics of hypocrisy
Just as we hear of a secret court in Virginia, of which the Australian government claims to know nothing, which is mulling over ways to indict Julian Assange, we read in the Sydney Morning Herald that the head of Stratfor, a US private intelligence agency, would like to kill him if he could get away with it!
Previously Stratfor’s vice-president said: ‘Assange is going to make a nice bride in prison. Screw the terrorist. He’ll be eating cat food forever.’
All this vitriol for a man who has risked everything to reveal the secret machinations of thoroughly corrupt power; Julian Assange has turned the spotlight on a naked emperor, the US. While we witness Hillary Clinton pontificating about the human rights of the Syrian people, the Obama administration is busy building yet more drones and even working towards roboticising them so that the machine will decide who lives, who dies. Australia is deeply enmeshed in all this moral squalor.
Compare Julian Assange’s ‘crime’ with that of ex-senator Bill O’Chee who is revealed (thanks to WikiLeaks) as a secret mole burrowing within the Australian government and sending covert intelligence reports to Stratfor.
Rather than democratising information we should all be privy to, O’Chee has sent secret reports about Australia’s military, regional relations with Burma, PNG, Indonesia, China, mining and who knows what else. Could this be treason? We wait anxiously to hear Julia Gillard’s thundering condemnation of this treachery; after all she was quick to slam Julian’s pro-social contribution.
Gareth Smith, Byron Bay
