As I mentioned to a good friend a few days ago, Assange scares the living shit out of our gov-corp. I told her they'll track him down to the ends of the earth, and then wondered aloud why they couldn't do the same with Osama bin Laden. Well, as we know, Mr. Assange surrendered to London police last Tuesday as a response to a warrant issued as part of a Swedish sex-crimes investigation, trumped-up and surely as hollow as a dead oak tree. They've got him where they want him; in jail, without the provision of bail, and tied to a short leash. Mr. Assange is being held in solitary confinement in London with restricted access to a phone and only his lawyers.
Amazingly, he is being vilified as someone who is a terrorist for releasing diplomatic cables to the world, and even more astonishingly, he has been accused of treason against America -- even though he is not an American. The U.S. government is investigating whether Mr. Assange can be prosecuted for spying against the U.S. government under the 1917 Espionage Act, or other offenses still being conceived and conjured up, and not surprisingly, to me anyway, several Republicans have even called for his death.
According to Jennifer Robinson, one of Mr. Assange's lawyers, she did not believe the Espionage Act applied to Assange, adding: "In any event he's entitled to first amendment protection as publisher of WikiLeaks and any prosecution under the Espionage Act would in my view be unconstitutional and puts at risk all media organisations in the US."
But I wonder if those embarrassing cables were really what staged undoubtedly one of the largest manhunts in modern history? Or was it something else? (No, I'm not referring to the mockingly insane "having-sex-without-a-condom" sexual assault charge.) Was it something beyond even the previously released "Collateral Murder" video, which must have been so embarrassing to the Pentagon and was published by WikiLeaks earlier this year? Is it the yet-to-be "megaleak", promising to disclose unethical behavior at a major American bank? Early next year, Mr. Assange said, WikiLeaks plans to expose tens of thousands of documents that "could take down a bank or two" and promises to "give a true and representative insight into how banks behave at the executive level in a way that will stimulate investigations and reforms". So is the real barnburner -- the reason Mr. Assange is now considered by many to be the "most dangerous man in the world" (Mr. bin Laden, you've been upstaged), because WikiLeaks is now taking aim at corporate America?
This is the process and underlying treachery indicative of totalitarian regimes, and obviously the tactics shared by government that bows and serves the elite, the wealthy, the corporatocracy. This isn't what Jefferson and Madison, Washington and Franklin, and countless others thought, or laid their lives and fortunes on-the-line for. All these men believed, and their signatures on either the Declaration of Independence or the U.S. Constitution prove it, that first and foremost the unparalleled freedom of a press (i.e., "unrestricted journalism") is paramount to the health and vibrancy of a functioning democracy. As Mr. t is outrageous for any journalist, or respecter of what every American president has claimed is our inalienable, God-given right to a free press, not to join in Assange’s defense." I agree, but I know our corporatist president thinks otherwise.
3 comments:
I heard yesterday on Thom Hartmann that there isn't even enough evidence to charge him with anything! Sweden hasn't charged him with a crime, and one of the two "witnesses" has left the country!
What bullshit! No charges, no crime, yet held without bail?? Naturally both the UK, and Sweden more surprisingly, are acting as U.S. Corpoment lackeys. The U.S. will Manufacture some trumped up charge, and then lock him away forever with no trial, because we are now a fascist country. No habeus corpus? No right to a trial or to hear charges presented against you in open court? No democracy.
This has nothing to do with "security", the convenient excuse of the fascist operator. Nothing in those leaks has compromised anything, and no military commander can point to any damage caused by it.
As you pointed out, this has to do with protecting corpo-world, which has become indistinguishable from the U.S. "government".
They did it to Scott Ritter when he "outed" King George the Lesser's lies about WMDs in Iraq - why wouldn't they do it to Assange in exactly the same way, painting him with a brush which tars his defenders as immoral rape apologists?
Thanks for being on top of this.
BTW, I got here from Anna's blog, and I'm energized to find you both!
TheCunningRunt, I recall reading somewhere years ago, after the string of politically motivated killings in the 1960s, that it wasn't necessary to assassinate the person any longer; just assassinate his character. Since those days they've been able to pull this off in dramatic fashion, time and time again.
Anna and I are definitely on the same page; we've recognized the true enemy of We the People, and hope you have too. Thank you for your very thoughtful comment. Please visit anytime.
By the way, I thought a lot about your comment regarding Scott Ritter vis-à-vis Julian Assange, and fully realize the legal path our government will undoubtedly pursue in putting Mr. Assange behind bars for a long time. Assuming the trumped up rape charge to be only a stopgap measure, I think they're going to pin their hopes on his previous notoriety as a hacker, ignoring his credentials as a publisher and journalist.
From Forbes interview by Andy Greenberg (November 2010)
Greenberg: You were a traditional computer hacker. How did you find this new model of getting information out of companies?
Assange: It’s a bit annoying, actually. Because I cowrote a book about [being a hacker], there are documentaries about that, people talk about that a lot. They can cut and paste. But that was 20 years ago. It’s very annoying to see modern day articles calling me a computer hacker.
I’m not ashamed of it, I’m quite proud of it. But I understand the reason they suggest I’m a computer hacker now. There’s a very specific reason.
I started one of the first ISPs in Australia, known as Suburbia, in 1993. Since that time, I’ve been a publisher, and at various moments a journalist. There’s a deliberate attempt to redefine what we’re doing not as publishing, which is protected in many countries, or the journalist activities, which is protected in other ways, as something which doesn’t have a protection, like computer hacking, and to therefore split us off from the rest of the press and from these legal protections. It’s done quite deliberately by some of our opponents. It’s also done because of fear, from publishers like The New York Times that they’ll be regulated and investigated if they include our activities in publishing and journalism.
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