Were Julian Assange an AFL or NRL footballer who, accused of rape by two women, fled to another country and fought hard to avoid extradition, the cries of outrage from the glittering Pilgerites would be deafening. The Australian government would be pilloried for not demanding his return to face the charges.

Assange, however, is a Pilgerite hero because he caused some short term, minor embarrassment to the United States, thereby feeding the adolescent anti-Americanism that passes for a political viewpoint amongst this fashionable group of pseudo leftists. What of the two women involved? Are they not entitled to have their accusations heard in a court of law? Pilger's smear campaign against a member of the Swedish justice system and his hints of a global anti-Assange conspiracy, though typical, are disgraceful. Assange should do the honourable thing: return to Sweden and defend himself in a Swedish court under Swedish law.

Senior
The comment about the criminal activities of the Swedish lawyer as mentioned in this article are absolutely correct. Check them out.
The obvious dislike you express for anything to do with Julian Assange is a pity as it seems to have blinded you to the same philosophy that was rampant in the days of the "man of steel"

Howard, now rusting away in some quiet corner of the same country he drove to a war based on lies. On his head are the deaths of every Australian soldier to date. Motivations being ego.
The Howard sycophantic attitude prevailed then as well, reflected in the treatment of Mamdouh Habib and David Hicks, Australian citizens incarcerated in an illegal prison system, still operating.

This court action initiated from Sweden is not for Swedish justice as well you would know but to remove Assange into an environment that will act as a stooge for the US for services rendered over time.
Also, one would have to be naïve to think that he would not be on the next plane to the US. Have you considered that? Of course you have and you agree with it, obviously. Swqeden is a charade.

The most relevant comments are the ones in the article referring to the New York Times and its selective policy of using those ‘leaks’ that were not injurious to Israel and using all those that put the US in a bad light. However, there were so many released, most of which did not see the light of day, communications from the US State Department in Tel Aviv that it was far better to paint Assange in a bad light as has been done by Keller than justify why so many leaks did not get printed.

As for Pilger and his “leftist” views, we can all be thankful that such writings do get printed as the need to offset the writings of Murdoch and his masters gives a level of realism to world events, never seen in those pages or in the ramblings and ravings of Fox News.

I’ll leave them to you.

Assange,if he were to be 'extradited' to the U.S. to face a 'secret grand jury', would be lucky to make it to Guantanamo, but would probably wind up with the same fate as Manning, David Hicks and Mamdouh Habib.

But with some luck, some of their torturers will be some day stopped at some European airport and detained, invited to answer a few questions before the International Court of Justice regarding certain allegations of torture against certain individuals. And maybe with some further enlightened governments in the future, convictions can also be obtained against more senior government officials, maybe even heads of state or maybe even a president - or two.

Dream on, Don Quixote!

If the Pilgeresque overblown rhetoric were to be removed, we would be left with a sane and troubling article.

Not to mention, one much - and beneficially - shorter.

The points he makes underneath the verbal flubber are:

- how the total unblushing expediency with which the US and its friends switch allegiances in the Middle East can only be explained by utter self-interest. All the blustering about democracy and rule of law are simply window-dressing to their self-serving, values-free approach.

- that the US only believes in its own constitutional First Amendment when it feels like it. All communication of which it disapproves is viewed as an aggressive act, while it retains the right to disseminate its own disinformation at will.

- that the machinery being used to deal with this "situation" is out of all proportion to the nature and extent of the offence. On the one hand treating Bradley Manning as a first-degree murderer, and on the other allowing the world to believe that Assange will be subject to "rendition" at the earliest opportunity. A strategy that probably appeals to some peon in the Pentagon, and appears on all his Powerpoint presentations, but which can only exist in a blindly ethics-free zone.

It's not a pretty sight, that's for sure.

Victorian Senior,

You must have been around some time; you must have heard the word ‘Democracy’ and you may have an opinion of what it means.

“Government of the people, by the people and for the people” is logically a non-sense, for the sole reason that governments cannot be by any other than people.

A ‘wise Mr. Senior’ may accept the proposition: ‘Democracy is a government of people elected by people’, but if he does, he still has no definition.

Mr. Senior, probably the majority of people of this planet would be happy to hear the definition and meaning of this universally used term. Have a try!

John Pilger,I'm not too sure about Assange.Bradley Manning is the real deal but Assange is looking like a double agent.Everything printed by the Murdoch press and others has the approval of the US State Dept.Why do they approve of leaks which embarrass them? Assange has not revealled anything of serious consequence.

Where did the $2.3 trillion go from the military budget that Donald Rumsfeld admitted to the day before 911? Where did this enormous sum come from let alone evaporate to? The annual defence budget in 2000 was $ 312 billion.$2.3 trillion is 7 times the annual defence budget.No accountant no matter how incompetent can make these sort of errors.The part of the Pentagon that was hit by a plane the next day on 911, was the financial centre of the Pentagon in which these precious records were destroyed.

Wherefore art thou Julian Assange? Is Julian a man or a puppet?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlnQTcLHaMM

Since you never get tired of reporting the same old rubbish, Arjay, I won't get tired of putting you right. Maybe - just maybe - you'll eventually discover that you have been working a barren seam all this time, and give up.

>>Where did the $2.3 trillion go from the military budget that Donald Rumsfeld admitted to the day before 911?<<

For at least the dozenth time, it didn't "go" anywhere.

Because it never existed, except in a huge mass of data files that didn't balance.

What he actually said was:

"The technology revolution has transformed organizations across the private sector, but not ours, not fully, not yet. We are, as they say, tangled in our anchor chain. Our financial systems are decades old. According to some estimates, we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions. We cannot share information from floor to floor in this building because it's stored on dozens of technological systems that are inaccessible or incompatible."

And for the full context, read the full speech.

http://www.defense.gov/speeches/speech.aspx?speechid=430

Let me explain it in terms that you might actually understand.

Let's imagine for a moment that there are only two systems, not the "dozens of technological systems that are inaccessible or incompatible", that are supposed to track expenditure.

One says that the budget is $1 trillion under-allocated. The next one say that the budget is $1.3 trillion over-allocated. Since the systems don't talk to each other, there is no way to balance out the anomalies. So the first agency reports that "we are unable to track $1 trillion in transactions." The other reports "we are unable to track $1.3 trillion in transactions".

In total, that's "$2.3 trillion in transactions".

Is the light starting to get through the haze?

Rumsfeld did not say "$2.3 trillion has gone missing".

And to be fair to the guy, he was none too pleased.

Rubbish Pericles? The evidence is here in Rumsfeld's own words.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlnQTcLHaMM The annual defence budget was only $312 billion.7 times their annual budget? This amount gets allotted annually and spent on that basis.Why would Congress allot this huge sum in one year,just to be lost? Rumsfeld did not say he made a mistake.Rumsfeld has not corrected himself since that day.Why not? No one in the media dares ask him that question.

The financial centre where these records were destroyed was hit by a plane or missile.So many co-incidences Pericles.

OK, Arjay, one more time, from the top.

$2.3 trillion was not lost.

Let's read again, together, what Rumsfeld actually said. Without moving your lips, please...

"According to some estimates, we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions."

That does not mean that it was lost.

In fact, if you insist that a discrepancy exists between the budget amount and the actual expenditure (which is of course a mis-reading), then the amount of $2.3 trillion could equally be under-spent, not over-spent.

Understand?

Here's where you start to go wrong:

>>The annual defence budget was only $312 billion.7 times their annual budget?<<

Where is there any indication that this tracking problem only occurred in the one year? Clearly - especially given the amount involved - the systems problems had been going on for a number of years, and the amount that was inadequately tracked accumulated over time.

And this is where you completely lose the plot:

>>This amount gets allotted annually and spent on that basis.Why would Congress allot this huge sum in one year,just to be lost?<<

The fact is that they did not allocate this amount. So by definition a) it could not be lost and b) we are left with a tracking problem, not a "missing trillions" problem.

And finally, here is where you veer off into conspiracy-fabulist territory.

>>Rumsfeld did not say he made a mistake.Rumsfeld has not corrected himself since that day.Why not? No one in the media dares ask him that question.<<

Simple fact is, he didn't make a mistake, he described a systems problem, accurately. Which is why he has not corrected himself.

Also, it is why the media doesn't raise the issue: even journalists don't like looking that stupid.

So, which part of this does not make sense to you, Arjay?

Or can we at long last rely upon you not to bring it up again?

Pericles,Is not the Military budget balanced on an annual basis? You mean to say they let 7 yrs pass before tracking missing money? At the very least is total incompetence.

Can you find records of this $2.3 trillion being accounted for? At that time the GDP for the whole of the USA was $ 10 trillion.It was almost 25% of their GDP!Perhaps Rumsfeld is a fool and does not know the difference between a trillion and a billion.George Bush wanted to know how much was a Brazillian? I think the furry bits got stuck in his brain.

You're still not listening, Arjay, are you.

>>Is not the Military budget balanced on an annual basis? You mean to say they let 7 yrs pass before tracking missing money?<<

There is no money missing. If you check, you will not find Rumsfeld, or anyone, claim that there is. The budget was allocated, it was spent on keeping the army, navy and airforce doing whatever it is that they do. But the systems that were supposed to keep track of the transactions, didn't.

It is so simple to understand, that I can only assume that you are wilfully ignoring the obvious, simply in order to provide yourself with some perverse form of enjoyment.

Find another means to keep yourself amused, Arjay, if you keep on doing this it will turn you blind, you know what they say.