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.