Australia and Julian Assange - back to hating him

I knew it wouldn't last. Australians love cutting down their most successful people to size. The mainstream media in Australia, in particular the Murdoch press, which has not been privy to the ongoing exclusives that the WikiLeaks Cablegate is providing for its main competitor, the Fairfax press (Sydney Morning Herald and Melbourne's Age) has decided to push the idea that Assange is a hypocrite - something that its rather shallow demographic has swallowed completely. Now your average Aussie doesn't like educated and prominent people like Assange at the best of times, so when they're told he's a hypocrite too, well, that goes against their idea of what is 'noice'. In their eyes, Oprah Winfrey would never be like that. This post from the Australian website 'Things Bogans Like' pretty accurately describes the mainstream Australian attitude.

In an interview with the London Times, Assange expressed his disappointment with one of his media partners, the Guardian, for revealing selected details of the allegations that have been made against him in Sweden, which in turn has not helped his case. The way that the Australian mainstream media has presented this is that Assange is now 'turning on everyone' and has made 'attacks on former friends'. This is of course completely exaggerated, but effective enough to get many in Australia now accusing Assange of being a 'stuck-up hypocrite' and 'insane'. To get some idea of the atmosphere created from this, the rather 'enlightened' comments on the popular Australian gutter news website news.com.au are shockingly typical. They're a firm example that the herd can be easily swayed and has an attention span that only lasts for the first two paragraphs at most in an article. According to these brain-dead zombies (and these are actual comments), it's "Pot. Kettle. Black" and "So it is ok for him to publish confidential information but it is not ok to publish information regarding him." Fortunately not everyone in Australia is like this, as some of the comments well point out how revealing the lurid personal details of a case facing the court is not the same as revealing the corrupt and truly hypocritical practices of public officials. Unfortunately, the majority cannot see through the crap and will grab any chance of knocking, to quote one comment, 'the A-grade douchebag' (how American) to the ground.

But if you want to go even more gutter, then check out this story by New York's Daily News titled 'WikiCreep'. This takes 'low' to new levels.

It's best here to quote that other prominent Australian crusader for transparency, justice and freedom of expression, John Pilger:
During the Cold War, a group of Russian journalists toured the United States. On the final day of their visit, they were asked by their hosts for their impressions. 'I have to tell you,' said their spokesman, 'that we were astonished to find after reading all the newspapers and watching TV, that all the opinions on all the vital issues were by and large, the same. To get that result in our country, we imprison people, we tear out their fingernails. Here, you don't have that. What's the secret? How do you do it?'