The Stuffing 'Em Post: Mediaganda

Can Assange escape unlike Galileo who died under house arrest?

Assange, Wikileaks, Galileo's Telescope And The New Irrational Religion

Galileo Galilee's heroic, but nevertheless, tragic battle against the church over his right to speak the truth, as observed through his telescope [i.e. the heliocentric solar system], has been celebrated by generations of scientists, professors, teachers, philosophers, atheists, intellectuals, revolutionaries, visionaries, free-thinkers and proponents of established Western culture alike to promote the advantages of a modern rational society freed from the absurd religious dogma of a bygone age. However, recent events involving Julian Assange indicate that, with regard to heresy, little has changed in the civilised west in over 500 years and the current presiding despotic empire still persecutes non-believers with as much original savagery as its lunatic contemporaries could ever muster.

It is crucial that we see Julian Assange's incarceration inside London's Ecuadorian Embassy and the 17th century polymath's house arrest, from which he never escaped and died there at the age of 77, as not only analogous but exactly the same. Only historical and societal nuances differ. The charge of 'blasphemer' in the age of irrationalism was no different from that of 'conspiracy theorist' in this, the age of rationalism, wherein modern political 'thinking' is simply re-branded dogmatic religion and, as such, Mr Assange's imprisoners should be given no more credence than their backward medieval counterparts. Power structures have always struggled to keep their secrets secret as society's technology evolves and, in this way, Wikileaks is no different from Galileo's telescope; merely a mechanism for those whom allow themselves to seek the truth to do so and thus become heretics themselves.

The concept of a which hunt has never changed and will continue to persist as long as there are those who seek to demonize their opponents in order to remove them from problematic political discourse. Might maybe right but diplomacy, or nowadays public relations, ensures propaganda remains the weapon of choice within the postmodern political armoury. Although orders for detention and arrest now come by email instead of parchment, they still come from a cabal of primitive tribal elders and, though these individuals may no longer feel the need to wear ridiculous 3 ft high hats reminding everyone of their immutable 'Godlike' importance, they still attire themselves in whatever conspicuously tribal pomp is necessary to ingratiate themselves to fellow cultists. No doubt, as in Mr Assange's case, spurious rape allegations, or their historical equivalent, would have been trumped up against Mr Galilee had he not acquiesced to the demands of Pope Paul V. The US empire's perverted and far-reaching power is no different from that wielded by the Vatican 500 years ago and, importantly, its endless wars, rapacious desire for world power, sickening witch hunts and boundless hypocrisies, no less a threat to world civilization evolving along the lines of justice and rationality. One can only hope, that unlike Galileo, Mr Assange somehow escapes the clutches of this tyrannous empire, the same tyrannous empire that currently blights our own lives and the lives of millions of others who do not share its brutal beliefs. Then perhaps society will not repeat one of its most lamentable crimes and, in the process, commit us all back half a millennium to a dark world of irrationalism and enslavement to religiously-enforced political dogma.