What Assange and WikiLeaks said about Australia – Sydney Morning Herald

He has been called truth-telling hero, evil and perverted traitor, heroic, trickster, mythical reviled. Robert Manne called him the most consequential Australian of the present time. The new US President has called him a high-tech terrorist.

The protean narratives of Julian Assange, who will be 50 in July, have been brewing since 2010, when his website published The Afghan War Diaries, Iraq War Logs and Collateral Murder, a video showing the US military killing two Reuters employees in Iraq.

Supporters of Julian Assange outside Londons Old Bailey during his extradition hearing.Credit:Leon Neal

December marked 10 years since Assange has been arbitrarily detained in Britain, according to Felicity Ruby and Peter Cronau in their introduction to A Secret Australia a collection of 18 essays that survey the impact WikiLeaks has had on Australias media landscape and the consequences of our governments attraction towards Americas intelligence and military empire.

The potpourri of authors and thinkers includes Julian Burnside, Antony Loewenstein, Scott Ludlam and Helen Razer, who critique the powers opposed to openness and transparency and examine the evidence, not the likelihoods, the probabilities, the suspicions, and assumptions around the subversive, technology-based publishing house.

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What Assange and WikiLeaks said about Australia - Sydney Morning Herald