Australian of the Year: Julian Assange

All nice folk I’m sure, but I’ll wager that none have changed the world for the better for millions quite as remarkably as WikiLeaks has by exposing, humiliating, debunking and unmasking lies and misrepresentations of politicians including, but not limited to, former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, Senator Mark Arbib, Chinese leadership’s views of Australia’s Defence Forces, United States Department of State’s deep hostility to Russia, calling it a “mafia state” and pan-Arabian fear of Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

In the process Assange has empowered all of us.

So who exactly is Mr Assange and why are his contributions of more merit than those of other Australians?

Assange is a journalist who reports but doesn’t comment. His politics are unclear, he doesn’t seem “left” or “right” but closer to what Americans term “libertarian” than to anything else.

While it is expected that he will broaden WikiLeaks focus to unmasking deceit and double-dealing of nations beyond the United States, to date he has not done so, but the early signs are comforting. Neither has he so far set the dogs of transparency on the corporate world. In particular, on who did what to whom and when in respect of the breathtaking $800 billion stimulus package so many on Capitol Hill took great pride in selling. But the good oil is that all will be revealed soon.

When United States taxpayers learn the intimate details of the sweetheart deals involved, perhaps once more American working families will look with contempt at Washington and its sycophants on Wall Street. We can only hope.

A reading of Julian Assange’s “State and Terrorist Conspiracies” reveals that his goal for years has been to employ technology in his quest to “radically shift regime behavior [for which] we must think clearly and boldly for if we have learned anything, it is that regimes do not want to be changed.”

Assange likens nations and corporations to massive conspiracies, which need to be brought down in their entirety. Not by exposing their lies, but through degrading their ability to communicate and to connive, by impeding the organisation’s ability to think as a conspiratorial mind. He seeks to oppose the power of the state by treating it like a laptop, removing its plastic cover, pouring treacle all over its hard drive, while jamming one screwdriver into each of its USB ports. He is not interested in merely surreptitiously copying a file or two, as it were, when nobody’s watching.

He views conspiracy and authoritarianism as two sides of the same coin by arguing that the only way authoritarianism can continue to exist and function without oversight is by preventing its intentions from being widely known. By virtue of its concealment it inevitably becomes a conspiracy.