re: "Why is Australia silent on Julian Assange? "

John Birmingham ("Blunt Instrument") at the Brisbane Times (Australia) provides a robust caution from Down Under.

Money quote(s):

"I had dinner once with Salman Rushdie. Meh. Big deal. Everyone in publishing's had dinner at least once with The Rush. Which means that we all had the interesting experience of dining under armed guard because of the fatwa hanging over him.

It's Allah knows how long since that vicious, sex- and death-obsessed old scrote Khomeini dropped a death sentence on Rushdie for having the temerity to commit a thoughtcrime against his barbarous form of religious derangement. And in that time, despite the damnable inconvenience of it all, and a significant lobby both inside and outside government in favor of letting the mad mullah's hitmen have their way, the West as a whole has mobilised the resources of the various states through which Rushdie has passed to safeguard him from mullah-sanctioned murder.

What a long way we've fallen then, to a position where various spokeswhores of the American Right - some of them occupying positions of state power - can call for the assassination or extrajudicial kidnapping of an Australian citizen with nary a word of protest from our own government or dissenting opinion from the opposition."

Some have made a decent start to a discussion of how Assange might qualify as an enemy combatant. I won't go into that here, other than to suggest one begin one's reading at Opinio Juris, but will note that Assange wouldn't be Australia's first such enemy combatant in the current unpleasantness. At least one former Gitmo detainee presently resides in his home country of Australia. So the good offices of the Australian government appear to have at least some pull with our own.

Which is as it should be. We loves us some aussies. They're like us, after all. Cranky and curmudeonly. Prickly about their honor and their rights. Hard not to admire that.

"(I)n the end Assange remains an Australian citizen and he is due the protection we offer to all our citizens when they are threatened by rogue actors, even states, because their actions have upset somebody in power somewhere. It doesn't mean he gets a free pass on the allegations against him in Sweden, but it should mean that at the very least those moronic politicians and media celebretards in the US who've been calling for his murder should be getting a visit from one of our consular officials, preferably an ex-SAS or Commando Regiment old boy, to have a quiet word in their shell-like about how seriously we take incitement to murder our fellow little Vegemiters."

See above. I'm all for consular access, after all, but might prefer that Australian consuls enjoy such with Mr. Assange in an American jail. Such as that operated at our former naval coaling station in Cuba.