Assange in British custody. (Bet he turns out to be made of wood!)

Remember this line from the film Se7en?

Tell me, what was the indisputable evidence you were going to use on me right before I walked up to you and put my hands in the air?

Via Chris Floyd I learn that Julian Assange is now in British custody, having "turned himself in".  In some ways that seems anticlimactic, but I'm sure Assange has his reasons.  He even published a message in The Australian before doing so.  Among its contents:

WikiLeaks has a four-year publishing history. During that time we have changed whole governments, but not a single person, as far as anyone is aware, has been harmed. But the US, with Australian government connivance, has killed thousands in the past few months alone.

US Secretary of Defence Robert Gates admitted in a letter to the US congress that no sensitive intelligence sources or methods had been compromised by the Afghan war logs disclosure. The Pentagon stated there was no evidence the WikiLeaks reports had led to anyone being harmed in Afghanistan. NATO in Kabul told CNN it couldn’t find a single person who needed protecting. The Australian Department of Defence said the same. No Australian troops or sources have been hurt by anything we have published.

This matters not, of course, to those who call openly for his murder, or worse.  Those who lie continually, professionally, simply cannot abide having their secrets exposed.  (How telling is it that, for all the sanctimonious bluster about the grievous potential harm these leaks might somehow cause, that there is almost no denial of the veracity of their content?  That, itself, is astonishing.)

Now, of course, the international wolf pack can have their way with him, and (as usual) will probably thoroughly enjoy that.  Assange, of course, will turn out to be a witch (just you watch), and we'll burn him at the stake with great fanfare.





The real story, of course, is not Assange at all, nor even WikiLeaks itself, but the idea of WikiLeaks.  What will become of it?  The modern example has now been set.

What will we do with it?  We've got a choice, and it's time to decide.  (And let's be very clear about this:  Master will make note of our response, and act accordingly.)