Looking Beyond Assange to the Ongoing War on Free and Honest Press
What the release of Julian Assange means, and what it doesn't.
Julian Assange is home and free in Australia. He was held without even a charge of crime (for a large period of his imprisonment) by foreign nations and the international community allowed it, to their shame.
The Anglo-Saxon empire of tyranny and criminality has shown the cracks in its armour. The world now has the opportunity to see the light through the very Assange so righteously fell through to a place which should be and hopefully is safety on the Australian continent. The name of this crack is “Honesty,” which will, in time, always find a way to let the light in, even if we don’t see it and especially when the dark is omnipresent and overbearing.
Assange was deprived of his right to engage freely in the international community in 2010 when Swedish authorities issued a warrant for his arrest, the jurisdiction of which spanned the majority of Western Europe. In 2012 he sought and found temporary refuge in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London and since then he has been effectively imprisoned.
Kierkegaard’s unique perceptions of time in relation to theories of Justice, which he refers to as ‘the Good,’ come to mind in the reflection of the extended persecution of Assange. The Danish philosopher writes it perfectly, “Time, that was ignored by contemplation, begins to assert its validity. And it is obvious that in all eternity, time has no right to deny that the Good has all the advantage on its side. But it [the Good] has permission to stretch time out, and thereby to make somewhat more difficult what in contemplation is apparently so plainly understood.” He continues to explain that a “double-minded” person makes the often fatal mistake of interacting with time itself as a barrier to the very contemplation that could save him.
The details surrounding his release, available in documents, provide ample material for such contemplation.
For example, why is there a US District Court for the Mariana Islands? Why do US officials dare use words such as “freedom” when they are the most prominent colonial power left in a world which proclaims to have rejected such practices?
Another example of hypocritical tyranny shows itself in the mere wording of the document, as seen in the following excerpt, stating that information deemed classified can only be “lawfully accessed” by individuals deemed “appropriate” by the US government. The fallacy here is obvious—if presented with information deemed classified without having specifically requested it, which is impossible considering that, in theory, there was no previous awareness of its existence, the receiving party is somehow guilty of what is in reality an inaction.
It is not uncommon for tyrants to betray themselves through the ridiculous illogical nature of their own words. To state that information can “only be stored” in certain locations, by certain people, is inherently ridiculous. Information is not a physical entity, and treating it as if it were a car, and therefore limited to exact physical boundaries, is insensible. What happens if that information happens to “get out” of the theoretical box it was relegated to? Vague and undefinable legislation lends itself to arbitrary persecution characterized by vengeance and the desire to hide inappropriate conduct. Perhaps worse is the blatant admission by the US government that they had no jurisdiction to prosecute Assange in the first place.
Something about the document’s tone elicits a cringe reaction. The inherent contradictory and arbitrary nature within the authors’ general sentiment is evident. Still, Assange’s release is an individual victory to be celebrated. It should not, however, prove to function as a distraction from the essential injustice that lay at the center of the arena—the same arena in which Joshua Schulte was condemned to decades of torture in a detention center located not in Guantanamo, which would be bad enough, but in Manhattan.
What are we doing besides letting a tyrannical system take advantage of our best human instincts to our own disadvantage? Celebrate the freedom of Assange—at the same time, please, do not let the names of other men who find themselves silently in the same position who by and large are just as admirable, slip from your lips. Moreover, we ought not let this publicized victory give way to an undeserved respect for the Anglican justice system which has, by force, taken hold of the Western world. The problem is bigger than Assange, and the fact that he had to plea to a charge he was obviously not guilty of in order to be released prove that.
A single battle and the totality of a war should not be confused, and to say Assange won any battle at all is hard pressed. The abuses he endured are arguably the overarching characteristic of the Western legal system, and they will continue to assail political dissidents for as long as the system remains intact.
-M. Shultz