Assange: Australian of the year?

This article was published in ABC News 8 December 2010

How would Mick Young have handled the Julian Assange affair? Famous for defusing difficult subjects with a mild, commonsense one-liner, Mick would have said, “Well, we’ll have to arrest Laurie Oakes too. And David Marr. And Bob Woodward”.

Hard to find the argument against this. Marr told how his prime minister called the Chinese ‘rat-fuckers’, Assange let it be known how he proposed to bomb them for being difficult. Oakes once published a budget speech before it was given, thus imperilling for a while our economy. Woodward pretty much hobbled the US presidency by showing its burglaries, bad language, and hate campaigns.

And Assange has done similar things, albeit a thousandfold, and prominent Americans including presidential candidates and vice-presidential candidates think he should be killed for it. In this they go against the First Amendment - Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances - thoughan opposite mode of thought has been Fox Newspeak lately: no-one but Hannity, Beck and O’Reilly, it yells, can say anything at all. They should be waterboarded if they do.