An Australian seeks refuge in France

Julian Assange has just written an open letter to French president François Hollande asking to be received in France. Click here to access the French-language version of that letter.

As a French-naturalized Australian-born citizen, I would be immensely happy if the French president were to respond positively to this request for asylum. I’ve always been convinced that Assange is an exceptional and exemplary case of a citizen of the world using his state-of-the-art Internet knowledge, political awareness and imagination in a constant combat, often of a spectacular nature, for the betterment of humanity.

Free Assange now!

Click to enlarge

Richard Dawkins has just retweeted a message from WikiLeaks informing us that, as of today, the UK has spent 7 million quid of taxpayers’ dough in their attempts to foil the asylum of Julian Assange.

Marching in step

In French, the expression "noise of boots" (le bruit des bottes) evokes an obsession of Fascist dictators: the desire to transform their people into robots that march in step.

This theme of marching robots is developed in an Orwellian setting in Apple's celebrated 1984 video.

In the following fascinating video, we see a couple of dozen metronomes that start out by beating time in a totally chaotic manner. Then, they seem to get around to obeying an invisible Big Brother, and end up in unison. It appears to be mysterious, vaguely frightening... but there's an elementary scientific explanation for what has happened.

In a quite different domain, the trailer for the movie on Julian Assange is now available.

Benedict Cumberbatch's attempts at reproducing an Australian accent are quite amusing, but reasonably plausible. Meanwhile, there's an interesting interview of the real Assange:

Concerning the tribulations of Julian Assange and Edward Snowden, this morning's Dilbert strip offers us an explicit allusion.

Dilbert's mum is a hilarious character. The government files "stolen" by Dilbert were in fact simply company databases generated by Dilbert's employer, which had then been ripped off stealthily by the government. So, Dilbert wasn't really stealing anything at all; he was merely recuperating data that had been created initially by his employer. To understand this setting, you need to consult the Dilbert daily strips over the last week.

Our American "ally"

In my Antipodes blog, I've often expressed my consternation concerning Australia's failure to protect her citizen Julian Assange.

Besides, this disgusting subservience on the part of the land where both Assange and I happened to be born has meant that I would be ashamed, these days, to imagine ever setting foot once again on that unfriendly soil, polluted by ages of unpleasant "politics". In spite of all the blood spilt stupidly in Europe, I prefer to remain here (maybe I have no other alternative), since many of us Europeans do seem to believe in liberty, equality and fraternity... not just egotism and fake "mateship".

Today, there's another endangered whistle-blower, pursued relentlessly by the ugly police of Uncle Sam: the US citizen Edward Snowden.

— photo Reuters, Bobby Yip

It's enlightening to observe that, while the Australian nation wouldn't of course lift a little finger to protect this individual on the run (contrary to our legendary Robin Hood mentality, once expressed in the case of fleeing bushrangers), the Australian citizen Assange has been doing so, as best he can.

Meanwhile, we Europeans are totally shocked to learn that the supposedly nice black guy Barack Obama has apparently been treating us Europeans as if we were second-class citizens of the world, because he has been spying upon us, night and day.

— drawing by Hammer, Austria

Whenever we Europeans have been crying out ceaselessly for the above-mentioned great human principles of universal liberty, equality and fraternity, Obama has apparently preferred to think of us as untrustworthy foreigners.

— drawing by Schot, Netherlands

Mickey's ears say "Hear, hear..." in all the languages of Europe. And we Europeans must reply emphatically to big-eared Obama that a so-called friendly ally shouldn't treat us that way. Meanwhile, we must also do everything that's imaginable to save the soldier Snowden...

Australian expatriates in London

When I was a science student at Sydney University in the '50s, the future celebrated author Robert Hughes [1938-2012] was studying architecture. The following photo shows Hughes more or less as I remember him, physically, in those days.

Admired as an outspoken dashing dandy on the campus, he was known above all for his comic strip in the university weekly Honi Soit. The main character was a student, like Hughes, attired in a duffel coat and shoes with thick crepe soles (the winter fashion at that time). I forget the theme of Hughes's comic strips, but it was no doubt related to the major enemy of university activists at that time: the much-maligned apathy of their fellow students. The greatest insult an intellectual could hurl at other people was to describe them as zombies overcome by apathy, unconcerned by politics, society, art, sex, etc. I've often wondered if these comic strips have survived in the university archives.

It was hard to imagine that Bob might have evolved into the excruciated spectacle of Bill Leak's astounding portrait:

Robert Hughes — Nothing if not critical 2001
by Bill Leak [1956- ], National Portrait Gallery

In the wake of Hughes's death on 6 August 2012, the media have often evoked the theme of celebrated Australian expatriates in London. Besides Hughes, four inevitable names appear:

Left to right: Rolf Harris (82), Barry Humphries (78), Germaine Greer (73) and Clive James (72).

Today, I believe that Australia has a champion expatriate in London:

The audacious style in which Julian Assange addressed Britain, Sweden and the US from a pulpit above the heads of the bored bobbies—waiting like vultures on the off-chance that he might fall down into their claws—was most spectacular.

I'm trying to imagine an escape scenario that would involve Julian's getting picked up from the London rooftops by a helicopter, before being let down in a nearby London park where a waiting automobile would take him down to the East London docks, where he would board secretly a ship leaving for Ecuador....

Save Julian

As a fifth-generation Australian, whose ancestors were English or Irish, I'm disgusted to realize that our compatriot Julian Assange has been obliged, following an "Australian declaration of abandonment", to seek political asylum at the embassy of Ecuador in London.

Meanwhile, Australian authorities dare to evoke retrospectively the question of "the possibility of cancelling Mr Assange's passport'', as if a modern nation might have the option of deciding to blacklist one of her citizens and chase him into exile. Shame upon Australia!

The inspirational origins of our international English-speaking community—indeed a former empire and civilization—were largely Judeo-Christian. And one of our symbolic personages was the Wandering Jew, cursed and outcast forever.

                                   — Samuel Hirszenberg (1865-1908)

Alone, torn from his roots, Julian Assange awaits his destiny in a dull ambassadorial building in London, where the otherwise kind people don't speak the same language that kids like Julian and me used to speak Down Under. His isolation is a shame upon Australia.

In France, not so long ago, there was a great man, like Julian, named Emile Zola [1840-1902].

If you shut up truth and bury it underground, it will but grow and gather to itself such explosive power that, the day it bursts through, it will blow up everything in its way.