UK Foreign Secretary Suffering From Doublethink?

Op-Ed Contributor

by Greg Smith

(WireNews+Co) - London, England - 17 August 2012

Listening yesterday to UK Foreign Secretary William Hague give the reasons why the United Kingdom is prepared to wait until Hell freezes over for Julian Assange to exit the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, I was immediately reminded of the case of Boris Berezovsky.

Berezovsky is a Russian criminal who was tried in his absence and sentenced to more than 19 years in prison, but who has been granted asylum and remains free in Great Britain.

The Russian authorities have vigorously pursued various criminal charges against Berezovsky over the years. In fact, a Moscow trial in November 2007 found him guilty of embezzling £4.3 million from Aeroflot, one of the oldest airlines in the world and he was sentenced to 6 years in prison.

The court in Moscow said that in the 1990s Berezovsky was a member of an "organised criminal group" that stole the airline's foreign currency earnings.

Then, in June 2009, the Krasnogorsk City Court near Moscow sentenced Berezovsky to a further 13 years imprisonment for defrauding AvtoVAZ, a Russian automobile manufacturer that is perhaps better-known as Lada, out of more than US$1.9 million.

In both cases, Berezovsky was represented by a court-appointed lawyer but he chose not to return to Russia to clear his name.

Unlike Berezovsky, Assange has not been charged with a crime. In fact, if you believe the UK, USA and Sweden, the Wikileaks founder is merely wanted for questioning. But then most people know that isn't true.

A SkyNews reporter today incorrectly suggested that Assange could not be questioned until he'd been arrested and that he could not be arrested until he had returned to Sweden, but that's not true at all because Swedish authorities have already "arrested" Assange in his absence after they had questioned and cleared him of the preposterous allegation of "rape". Assange waited patiently in Sweden for more than 5 weeks to ensure that his presence was no longer needed and was told he could leave the country.

As most people know, Assange is actually sought by the American government for exposing their dirty secrets on a global scale.

Despite what's been reported by the lamestream media recently it would be very difficult if not impossible for the Americans to extradite Assange from the UK for espionage. Espionage against the United States is not illegal in the UK; in fact, the UK government practice it as often as possible. On the other hand, Sweden, which has always been an obedient lap dog when torture or rendition is required, would gladly comply with such a request from the United States.

Hague apparently can't or doesn't want to accept that for the UK to pursue Assange with such vigour while at the same time the country harbours a convicted Russian criminal is tantamount to Orwell's Doublethink. Orwell wrote that Doublethink was identified by the:

"...power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them... To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just as long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies – all this is indispensably necessary."

It should be embarrassing for Foreign Secretary Hague. He isn't merely suffering from hypocrisy as most politicians do these days and he's apparently not inflicted with cognitive dissonance because the Foreign Secretary doesn't perceive the obvious conflict.

No, he actually believes that in both cases the UK government is correct and that fact alone should worry the rest of the world.

Tweeted this link (https://twitter.com/wirenewsco/status/236041175369388032) yesterday and will repeat it here. If you have not done so already I encourage you to watch this video (http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/stories/2012/07/19/3549280.htm).