Julian Assange - WikiLeaks (27 page)

I am responsible for everything except for my very responsibility

–
Jean-Paul Sartre

Julian Assange hadn't met his biological father before he was twenty-five years of age, and since then, he's only met him a few times. John Shipton was a student activist of the 1960s whom Christine Assange fell in love with during an anti-Vietnam War demonstration in Sydney. Today, Shipton is an architect who has been described by his son Julian as a rebel spirit with a high logical and dispassionate intellect. A close friend described him as ‘a mirror shining back at Julian.'

Paternity, maternity, and being in a relationship are values that Julian has experienced in a particular manner: an absent father, an artist/activist mother, a stepfather who treated him like an adult, constantly moving, a failed relationship after two years, a custody battle that lasted over five years and a lost son that was found again.

All these experiences left their mark on him as the child he was deep down inside. For
The First Post
, psychoanalyst Coline Covington explained: “The only stable factor in Julian Assange's early life was his mother. Given this background, it would hardly be surprising if mother and son did not have a strong connection, especially during their years of hiding…” In December of 2010, Christine decided to go to London to re-establish a connection
with her son after she learned of his arrest. On the court steps she declared: “I'm re-connected with him again. I've got the connection.” Covington continued: “Without parents who were able to set limits and recognize their son's vulnerability, there was no stopping Julian's omnipotent behaviour. […] When the mother idolises her child, this early experience of omnipotence remains unmediated and the child's narcissistic bond to the mother is not broken. Mother and son continue to harbour an exclusive relationship from which the father is absent. This can lead in […] having fleeting relationships with women, as a way of defending against being engulfed by the mother.”

Throughout his relationships, Julian has shown the importance he gives to women in his life. He needs them to balance him out, they are present on his path, but he refuses to get attached to them. Here Covington sees a certain vengeance on his mother who probably left him too young, compounded with the pain he felt after the break up with his first wife.

The psychoanalyst also sees a paternal influence. First, in his quest for truth as a desire to intrude in his parents' room, getting involved in a relationship that he's never had, but also in his desire to assume the role of the father and take exclusive possession of the mother. But when it came to impregnation, Julian felt he has some legitimacy. Covington concluded: “In his desire for unprotected sex, Assange is asserting his right to impregnate women – even against their will. But these are not women he has a serious relationship with. Like his unknown father, he too will presumably disappear.” Julian has a personal mission that cannot be hampered by family constraints.

Rumors circulated about Julian having fathered many children. On November 22 2006, he posted a picture on his blog showing a little girl of one or two years old with the comment: “Those
eyes – All the pink ribbons in the world can't hide them.” It has also been said that Julian had a liaison with a French woman who gave birth to a child in 2010. If these rumors are true, these mothers have stayed pretty discrete since Julian gained notoriety, as they could have come out of the shadows. The media would have thrown themselves onto information like this, calling for retribution. Two scenarios seem plausible: they don't have anything to say about their ex-lover's behavior or the resentment isn't worth the media circus they'd have to put up with if they would have divulged their stories.

But what if, despite his mission, we were to find out that Julian Assange assumed his role as a father?

Julian's son Daniel thinks that his dad's best quality is his desire to share his knowledge and talk to him without treating him like a child. In a long interview for the investigative site crickey.com.au in September 2010, Daniel said: “The one thing I found that I appreciated most was that he wouldn't treat me like a child when it came to intellectual concepts: he would speak to me as though he were really trying to get me to grasp the fullness of an idea.” Daniel continued, “I think that really helped me a lot in realizing the nature of reality.”

Daniel Assange was born on January 26 1990. He's a programmer for a small marketing process company that handles search engine optimization. He holds a Bachelor's Degree from the University of Melbourne in Genetics and finished his studies in the same time as his father. No longer interested in genetics, he got into IT. He loves New Age music, science fiction, animated films and manga. He's a well-read atheist and punctuates his thoughts with humor on his blog lemma.org.

During his globetrotting phase, up until the launch of WikiLeaks, Julian was not very present in Daniel's life, as father-son
relations were circumstantially strained during these years. Only in 2007 did Julian contact his son to ask him to join the organization. Daniel didn't really believe in the concept and so, he refused. Since then he hasn't had any contact with his father, but is proud of him and stands behind him. According to Daniel, his father mainly wanted to protect him. “As for him not contacting me following that, it's probably at least in part an attempt to protect me […] If it was known that I was the son and directly involved in some way, there was a likelihood of a direct retaliation, and my father was quite concerned about such things.” He believes Julian is very intelligent and is forced to face all kinds of difficulties dealing with these kind of people and often feels frustrated working with someone who isn't capable of thinking at his level and grasping concepts he seems to get intuitively. He also believes that he's always been interested in political activism in general, but has always had more of an affinity for science and philosophy, as well as the pursuit of higher knowledge and the idea that this knowledge should be made accessible to everyone. WikiLeaks is the culmination of all these concepts.

Daniel shared his thoughts on the Swedish affair. In August 2010, on a friend's Facebook page he said, “That man does have a way of making a lot of female enemies.”
The New York Post
used this message in one of its articles without personally meeting Daniel. Confronted by the media's behavior, he criticized the ethics of the newspaper and would rather give his own opinion. “It looks to me that it's just some sort of cultural misunderstanding or general social failure on the part of my father, or the women, that has led to the situation.”

Today, as an adult observing his father's work, Daniel says: “His actions as a personal individual and his actions in a grand
political sense are completely disconnected things, and they should be considered in that sense.”

July 12, 2006: The truth inside and outside the page

The truth is not found on the page, but is a wayward sprite that bursts forth from the readers' mind for reasons of its own.

Julian Assange likes to philosophize on themes he holds dear. In July 2006, on his blog IQ.ORG, he elaborated theories on the subjective truth of Justice faced with the logical reality of an axiom:

He believes that truth is logical and must rely on these assumptions otherwise it would become “a surging sea of smashed wood, flotsam and drowning sailors.”

But it's this same transitivity that is used many times by all conspiracy theorists when it comes to Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. Many of them elaborate possible links between the organization and political, military and financial conspiracies.

For example, the United States and Israel have been leading a global campaign against Iran for years and want to sway world opinion in any way possible. (A=>B). The diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks shake up world opinion and reveal truths that some didn't dare announce publicly about Iran's nuclear tests. (B=>C). Shouldn't WikiLeaks be a way for the United States and Israel to achieve their goals? (A=>C).

As well, the site of Wayne Madsen, former U.S. Navy officer, now a journalist and commentator on national security issues, assessed a CIA project of twenty million dollars whose goal was to provide the means to Chinese dissidents to simulate attacks on American IT systems coming from China to increase the fear of risking an electronic war. (A=>B). And so WikiLeaks, whose goal is to broadcast confidential information from states, including the United States, bases its communication on the majority representation of Chinese dissidents in its advisory board. (B=>C). The vagueness surrounding this board and the debates on national security weakened by the Internet could make one believe that WikiLeaks is in fact part of a project sponsored by the CIA aimed at justifying them having taken measures to restrict freedom on the Internet. (A=>C).

This transitivity axiom gives way to all kinds of theories about WikiLeaks. Aren't they supposed to be the truth? If some theories seem absurd, others will only be denied by history. One thing is for sure: nothing is being done to diminish the mysteries that weigh down on Julian so that overactive imaginations and creativity can link facts freely.

The most documented assumption remains the relation between WikiLeaks and George Soros, businessman and philanthropist
at the head of the Open Society Institute (OSI), an organization that promotes democracy around the world. Wayne Madsen has established several coincidences linking the actions of this American billionaire with those of WikiLeaks.