Whatever the current upfront technical or legal wrangle pivots around, (sexual accusations, bail infringements, etc.), everyone knows that the real issue is that Julian Assange provided a showcase for exposing the secret machinations of the economic, political and financial capitalist elite. The real substantive wrong-doing of Assange - in the eyes of the US and UK establishment - is not in transgressing the rights of females to chose who to partner with, but in providing a secure publishing organization for whistle-blowers. Their capitalist system is economically, financially and morally approaching a series of end-game crisis points. They will do everything in their power, to prevent full transparency of what they are up to.

The capitalist and pro-capitalist elite are eminently capable of paying someone to lie or fabricate charges against someone they don’t like, in order to get their hands on them. This has been done in the past and will continue to be done in the future. The real reason that the US and the UK have not provided emphatic guarantees, that they will not pursue extradition, is because that is most likely what they wish to do. Perhaps that is also why the Swedish authorities have refused to interview him in the Ecuadorian embassy. The ruthlessness the US intend to pursue has been demonstrated by the case of Bradley Manning and his degrading incarceration. It is also demonstrated by the antics the US and UK have previously got up to with regard to Guantanamo Bay and numerous extraordinary renditions, leading to torture and death.

A death sentence, is a highly unlikely sentence for Assange, even though right-wing US politicians have openly called for such punishment, but incarceration and harsh treatment certainly is. One also only need recall, how the close allies of the US elite in Israel (who collaborate in such matters), dealt with the atomic bomb whistle-blower Mordechai Vanunu. They pursued him relentlessly using all kinds of misinformation and intrigue, including being trapped by using the intimate sexual attractions of a female secret service operative. Those in power and privilege will go to any lengths to prevent or silence those who in any way, small or large, threatens to expose the nature of their continued rule.

The granting of asylum by Ecuador to Julian Assange, ramps up the diplomatic tensions around this issue. Clearly those currently in power in Ecuador, who themselves (as with other Latin American countries) suffer from the devious and subversive machinations of the US capitalists and state forces, have some sympathy with Assange‘s project to expose the US. How far, this sympathy will extend is as yet unknown and remains to be seen. They could of course, grant him Ecuadorian citizenship, in some way and even appoint him later to some diplomatic status. He could perhaps be elected in absentia to a parliamentary position in a supportive Ecuadorian community.

They could perhaps even consider employing or appointing him as a junior minister of information, in the Ecuador government. Any tactics such as these would increasingly create problems for the UK and the US but the repercussions which the vindictive elites in these latter two countries would go to, make them unlikely. It would be a very courageous and epoch making outcome if such strategies were adopted by Ecuador. Meanwhile it is to be hoped that whatever the outcome, other internet activists can replicate what Wikileaks pioneered and continue to provide an avenue for those people who are horrified, sickened, or both at what the economic, political and financial elite perpetrate against their fellow citizens, yet strive to keep secret.

Roy Ratcliffe (August 2012) [Also at www.critical-mass.net]