The Arrest of Julian Assange: Truth in Chains

[Better Believe It]

December 7, 2010

The Arrest of Julian Assange
Truth in Chains
By CHRIS FLOYD
London.

It has been, by any standard, an extraordinary campaign of vilification and persecution, wholly comparable to the kind of treatment doled out to dissidents in China or Burma. Lest we forget, WikiLeaks is a journalistic outlet – just like The New York Times, the Guardian and Der Spiegel, all of whom are even now publishing the very same material – leaked classified documents -- available on WikiLeaks. The website is also a journalistic outlet just like CNN, ABC, CBS, Fox and other mainstream media venues, where we have seen an endless parade of officials – and journalists! – calling for Assange to be prosecuted or killed outright. Every argument being made for shutting down WikiLeaks can – and doubtless will – be used against any journalistic enterprise that publishes material that powerful people do not like.

And the leading role in this persecution of truth-telling is being played by the administration of the great progressive agent of hope and change, the self-proclaimed heir of Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi, the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, Barack Obama. His attorney general, Eric Holder, is now making fierce noises about the “steps” he has already taken to bring down WikiLeaks and criminalize the leaking of embarrassing information.

Meanwhile, corporate America and its international allies continue to do their bit. Joining PayPal and Amazon, who had already cut off their services to WikiLeaks, most of the remaining venues through which the internet journal is funded are also freezing out the organization -- MasterCard, Visa, and a Swiss bank that WikiLeaks used to process donations. All of these organizations are obviously responding to government pressure.

WikiLeaks will doubtless try to struggle on. And Assange says he has given the entire diplomatic trove to 100,000 people. By dribs and drabs, shards of truth will get out. But the world’s journalists – and those persons of conscience working in the world’s governments – have been given a hard, harsh, unmistakable lesson in the new realities of our degraded time. Tell a truth that discomforts power, that challenges its domination over our lives, our discourse, our very thoughts, and you will be destroyed. No institution, public or private, will stand with you; the most powerful entities, public and private, will be arrayed against you, backed up by overwhelming violent force. This is where we are now. This is what we are now.

Read the full article at:

http://www.counterpunch.org/floyd12072010.html

[Scurrilous]

1. K & R

Off to the greatest (again!!).

:bounce: :bounce: :bounce: :bounce: :bounce:

[Heidi]

2. Recommended.

:kick:

[tblue37]

3. k&r

[SemiCharmedQuark]

4. No, in China and Burma, dissidents are murdered. He is going to court to

court to face a rape charge the way everyone else has to go to court when charged with a crime.

Rape or assault don't cease to exist because the alleged victim has ties to the CIA and if did indeed agree to wear a condom and then didn't and didn't stop when she realized, that qualifies as rape in Sweden,

[Better Believe It]

5. You claim Assange has been charged with rape. Please post a copy of the rape charges.

If you can't, are you just repeating corporate media slanders against Assange?

[Uncle Joe]

9. Yep, no doubt this part is just a cosmic coincidence.

Rape or assault don't cease to exist because the alleged victim has ties to the CIA and if did indeed agree to wear a condom and then didn't and didn't stop when she realized, that qualifies as rape in Sweden,

[caseymoz]

78. He's not charged with rape. Some things don't translate well from Swedish to English.

If you want to know what he's accused of: having sex without a condom and continuing to have sex after a condom broke. He's also accused of sabotaging the broken condom. In Sweden, those are all apparently illegal to some degree. I can't say they'd match up to being felonies in our justice system.

I'm not making that up, those are what the charges are. Here's the quote "Based on the allegations of a sabotaged condom in one case and a refusal to wear one in the other, the female interviewing officer believed that Jessica had been raped and Sarah had been sexually molested."

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/world/wikileaks-julian-assange-faces-sex-charges-over-one-night-stands/story-e6frf7lf-1225967535427

Now, doesn't that make you feel a little foolish? Yes, there was a major manhunt, he became the most wanted man in the world, and had an Interpol warrant due to these charges. Seems kind of odd. Press hasn't reported how minor these charges really are, have they?

BTW, it seems he agrees that the charges don't disappear if the accuser is CIA. He turned himself in and he's facing trial. With reason to fear he won't get one.

[Uncle Joe]

95. I agree, the charges shouldn't disappear just because the accuser may have connections

to the CIA but in my opinion there are too many "coincidences," inconsistencies and overriding motivations for this to be anything but a "honey trap."

[EFerrari]

12. Dissidents are also murdered in America and in the lapdog countries

-- we just passed the anniversary of the murder of Fred Hampton.

And our state security agencies use sex smears routinely to compromise dissenters, not to mention, Ardin herself delightfully wrote a manifesto on how to revenge yourself on a lover by lodging charges against them. (Thanks, Anna!)

If the Swedish prosecutors believed Julian Assange was a RAPIST, they wouldn't have given him permission to leave the country when he asked for it.

[smiley]

17. and also dismiss the charges previously...

the judge called the charges ludicrous at first. Only after international pressure did the charges come back.

To believe this is anything more than a smear campaign is ridiculous.

[EFerrari]

19. American pressure. This prosecutor fell in line, just as Amazon,

MC & VISA did along with PayPal, just as the Swiss did, just as the British are.

No one who values the rule of law, democracy or press freedom can possibly mistake the stalking of Julian Assange for due process.

[molly77]

43. US reaction to WikiLeaks is saying more than the leaks themselves.

We are proving that the US govt. does not recognize freedom of speech. Another factor is that more journalists are being killed than ever before. The Spanish journalist killed by our military says a lot about who we are. Then WikiLeaks shows how the US squelched the investigation. Fascists.WikiLeaks=Karma and some courageous people getting the truth out. Viva Julian Assange.

[Matariki]

16. Where do all these Authoritarian types come from?

I'm always astounded that there's always a cadre of folks on DU who will defend almost anything the "authorities" do - whether it's the police, the military, the CIA, or the government. No matter how egregious, if an authority figure did it there will be people here defending it.

I can't figure out if it's mental illness, mis-information, or dis-information.

[smirkymonkey]

32. +1000

[xocet]

52. ...

I agree. Here is a description of that mode of thinking, but not an explanation necessarily:

http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/

[OwnedByFerrets]

62. Trolls?? Hell if I know.

[ProudDad]

64. "I can't figure out if it's mental illness, mis-information, or dis-information."

Yes...

Imperially induced...

[October]

67. So true!

[caseymoz]

79. Mis-education, misinformation.

I went to college twice in the 70s and then the 80s. I was struck at how different the students in the 80s were. They seemed more fascinated, or even fixated on power. That is to say, in the stories they read and the shows they watched or in the role-playing games they played. They thought nothing of social justice, thought that money should be the main goal in their life and the main way they could establish social justice. They were more worshipful of Ayn Rand and generally, much more nationalistic.

They saw liberalism as "the system" and capitalism as "the rebellion," and they were disgusted with the counter-culture of the '60s.

It was youthful rebellion turned on its head, and I actually think it was propaganda.

But also, maybe the media did get them used to cruelty and torture. Maybe they just consider that a normal part of the world now.

That generation, they are the Tea Partiers that we see.

[struggle4progress]

36. To my knowledge, Assange has not been charged with anything: he is wanted

for questioning"

[sabrina 1]

54. No, he is not going to court to 'face a rape charge'. He is going

to face a trumped up charge, which even the lead prosecutor in Sweden found to be without merit.

He is being persecuted, Americans, freedom fighters that they claim to be, have called for his assassination, and that of his family.

This government has now become what it once fought against, officially. Not that it wasn't before, but they used to try to hide it at least.

You need to educate yourself about the facts of this 'case' before making statements that are not backed by the facts.

Just FYI, the woman who initiated this witchhunt has stated that there 'was no rape'. I guess that is meaningless to you?

There have been no formal charges, because there is no evidence. I hope men around the world are aware that if a condom breaks during sex, they are guilty of rape.

[Bodhi BloodWave]

74. The 'facts' will come out at trial if there even will be one, it could easily be as simple

as those questioning him looking into it, see that there is no reason for one and off he goes with a warning to be more careful in the future.

You might be willing to simply toss it aside, but i think the charge is serious enough to deserve its day in court, i refuse to simply ignore a charge because the one it targets is seen as a hero by many.

[sabrina 1]

89. It has nothing to do with him being a 'hero'. It has to do with

the facts of the case from the beginning. Both of these women stated early on that there 'was no rape, no violence and no fear of violence'. The case was thrown out by the lead prosecutor, but it had been leaked to a rightwing tabloid, illegal in Sweden, NOT by the police or the prosecutors, so by whom? Most people believe it was Ann Ardin who had connections to the tabloid.

Both women tweeted and messaged friends AFTER the alleged 'rapes' and were extremely happy about what happened with Assange. Tweets are still online from Ann Ardin proving this although she did try to erase them later, after the lawyer, a man who has a very interesting background himself, entered the case.

Prosecutors have verified that the messages on the cell phone of the second woman, AFTER the alleged 'rape', say nothing about rape, or violence of any kind and 'are exculpatory', she was happy to have slept with him.

As for him getting a fair trial, I don't want to sand rude, but are you joking? This 'sex' case is merely a ploy to get him to Sweden and from there to the U.S. where we are not known for our fair trials of detainees we are accusing of terror. He will NOT get a fair trial. Already charges have been added that were not there in any of the evidence from early on and it's clear they are lies.

He is being rail-roaded because his news organization could not be controlled by the U.S. government and he embarrassed them. He also has documents that will most likely expose the Bank corruption and that is what they fear the most.

He may be a hero, in fact he is, in the tradition of MLK. He is an award winning journalist who was instrumental in bringing down a brutal regime in Kenya and was given the 'New Media' award by Amnesty International' for that work. But he stepped on a landmine when he exposed the corruption surrounding the U.S. illegal invasion of Iraq. And for that he will be silenced if possible.

[polly7]

90. +1000

and many agree with you.


Canada AM: Sharron Ward, filmmaker

A filmmaker and founder of the Justice for Assange organization says she has organized a protest because the U.S. has been unsuccessfully trying to shut down WikiLeaks, so a smear campaign and character assassination is their only course of action.

http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/TopStoriesV2/20101208/wikileaks-documents-still-flow-101208/

[caseymoz]

91. The charges aren't even rape.

From my post above (#78):

"If you want to know what he's accused of: having sex without a condom and continuing to have sex after a condom broke. He's also accused of sabotaging the broken condom. In Sweden, those are all apparently illegal to some degree. I can't say they'd match up to being felonies in our justice system.

"I'm not making that up, those are what the charges are. Here's the quote 'Based on the allegations of a sabotaged condom in one case and a refusal to wear one in the other, the female interviewing officer believed that Jessica had been raped and Sarah had been sexually molested.'"

In the US, these are hardly felony charges, or harassment charges, or even sex-crime charges. They might come to a misdemeanor. Maybe they should be a crime here, but I doubt any prosecutor would take a case like this anyway. He's accused of what we would call a couple of "dick moves."

And he didn't take flight. Britain didn't have a warrant. He waited in Britain, hiding because someone might "volunteer" to kill him, kept in touch with the police until they had a warrant, and then immediately turned himself in. Like, they couldn't keep in jail anyway if they didn't have a warrant.

[TexasObserver]

6. recommend

[northoftheborder]

7. Excellent article. Suggest you read the whole thing.

[TexasObserver]

8. recommend

[struggle4progress]

10. Wikileaks makes no effort to ascertain the authenticity of its releases

[EFerrari]

20. Wikileaks stole my cable. n/t

[struggle4progress]

21. Really? I don't get cable: it's too frickin expensive for my tastes

250K pages of diplomatic cables is grabbing lots of hit-and-run headlines but it doesn't seem to be producing in-depth reports of the sort good journalists write -- and how could it?

[Luminous Animal]

63. Then blame that on the NY Times, El Pais, The Guardian, La Monde, and Der Spiegel.

Oh wait. Presumably, they've got good journalists on staff, and they've all done reports, some more in depth than others.

FYI, the cables are being released only after being reviewed by the 5 news organizations listed above and Wikileaks, and in collaboration.

[laughingliberal]

35. Wikileaks turned me into a Newt. nt

[struggle4progress]

46. I'm sorry to hear that. Maybe the Lounge could suggest a witchdoctor who could help.

[laughingliberal]

49. I got better. nt

[Better Believe It]

22. Oh .... so they are fake cables. Thanks for the info. Links please

And how are you familiar with WikiLeaks procedures?

[struggle4progress]

34. "How do you measure the authenticity of any document?

Wikileaks does not pass judgement on the authenticity of documents. That's up to the readers, editors and communities to do."

http://web.archive.org/web/20080216000537/http://www.wikileaks.org/wiki/Wikileaks:About#Wikileaks_has_1.2_million_documents.3F

[Better Believe It]

38. When governments attack their publication? That's a pretty good sign they are authentic!

[struggle4progress]

44. You are not understanding my point. I have posted here previously

that I expect the vast majority of the 250K pages of diplomatic cables are indeed authentic: a forgery of that magnitude would be an immensely costly and immediately pointless exercise, that would easily be debunked

The question that I raise is different, however: it is whether one ought to regard the Wikileaks release as journalism. We are talking about the equivalent of 500 reams of unverified paper: no one has really verified it in its entirety; whether or not the leaker carefully selected some of it to tell a coherent story or seeded it with a few juicy fakes is completely unknown. The fact, that the vast majority of cables are likely authentic, does not mean all are authentic or unmodified by tampering. And so this does not seem to me to be journalism

[Luminous Animal]

72. As I've posted a half dozen times, there are six news orgs around the world verifying.

The NY Times, El Pais, The Guardian, Der Spiegal, La Monde, and Wikileaks. The NY Times is passing each and every one by the State Dept.

After the review and collaboration with each other, they agree or not agree on specific deletions. Then and only then is a set of cables released.

That is why only 1000 cables have been released to date and that is journalism.

[Q3JR4]

56. What he said. ^

[Krakowiak]

61. How many times are you going to post that OLD link that is NOT relevant here?

You've been corrected on your error many times now. You know full well that is NOT their policy now and it's why you have to post a link that isn't from wikileaks, but from an archive site several years back.

[Luminous Animal]

73. Shell used to sell lead gas, too. Maybe struggle4progress can find an archived link for that

and pass it off as current.

[struggle4progress]

75. I haven't posted that link before

[caseymoz]

92. And this is a lie.

Turns out they've only released 996 pages of the 250,000 page dump that they have. Now, they've threaten to release the whole thing unredacted and unchecked if they are arrested or killed. In which case, they should go for it.

[Egnever]

11. Fuck new Jesus

hes a grandstanding asshat as far as I am concerned.

[PBS Poll-435]

13. Thanks

This whole hero-worship thing is getting a bit long in the tooth.

[Matariki]

15. His 'grandstanding' as you call it, may, just maybe, save his life.

The smartest thing people do when challenging overwhelming power is to be as PUBLIC as possible. The more he's in the public eye, the better.

What is the purpose of your vitriol? Don't you like whistle-blowers? Think Government wrong doing should be kept in the shadows?

[Egnever]

25. Exactly what wrong doing has he exposed?

[Matariki]

29. Jesus. The internet is your friend.

Even doing a search on DU. There's been things Wikileaks has published regarding the Iraq war going back to 2006, for starters.

As much as you may wish, asserting your ignorance doesn't actually call into question Wikileaks' role role as a platform for whistle-blowers in the mind of anyone who's paid even a little bit of attention.

[Egnever]

30. Sorry but thats not news

Back when this was a great site we knew all of that. If you needed to hear that from wiki leaks then the one asserting their ignorance is you.

[Matariki]

31. You were the one implying that Wikileaks never exposed anything. Quite playing bullshit games.

Transparent as hell.

[Egnever]

33. and you have yet to tell me one thing they have exposed

bullshit games indeed.

[laughingliberal]

41. In this last round of releases, I found the cable showing our government knew the Honduran coup...

was illegal while they were dithering around in the news acting as if they weren't sure and avoiding their legal responsibility to sanction the new RW dictator and restoring the democratically elected, liberal president to his rightful place.

Of course, I already knew that but the cable confirmed it and makes it harder for them to continue lying about it.

[struggle4progress]

45. Obama says coup in Honduras is illegal (Reuters | 29 June 2009)

By Arshad Mohammed and David Alexander
WASHINGTON | Mon Jun 29, 2009 7:26pm EDT
... "We believe that the coup was not legal and that President Zelaya remains the president of Honduras, the democratically elected president there," Obama told reporters after an Oval Office meeting with Colombian President Alvaro Uribe ... http://www.reuters.com/article/idUKTRE55S5J220090629

So the day after the coup, the President in public called it a coup and described it as illegal. I'll agree the Administration didn't do a good job of handling this, but we didn't learn about the situation from the cable, and the White House wasn't "lying" about it

[laughingliberal]

48. Here's the dithering and refusal to take a strong stand against it:

President Obama said yesterday that the military ouster of Honduran President Manuel Zelaya was illegal and could set a "terrible precedent," but Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the United States government was holding off on formally branding it a coup, which would trigger a cutoff of millions of dollars in aid to the impoverished Central American country.

THIS STORY
New Honduran Leadership Flouts Worldwide Censure
World Briefing Podcast: Changes in Iraq and Honduras
U.S. Condemns Honduran Coup
View All Items in This Story
Clinton's statement appeared to reflect the U.S. government's caution amid fast-moving events in Honduras, where Zelaya was detained and expelled by the military on Sunday. The United States has joined other countries throughout the hemisphere in condemning the coup. But leaders face a difficult task in trying to restore Zelaya to office in a nation where the National Congress, military and Supreme Court have accused him of attempting a power grab through a special referendum.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/29/AR2009062904239.html


The Obama administration condemned the coup, but when Zelaya journeyed to the Honduran-Nicaragua border, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton denounced him for being "provocative." It was a strange statement, since the State Department said nothing about a report by the Committee of Disappeared Detainees in Honduras charging 1,100 human rights violations by the coup regime, including detentions, assaults, and murder.

http://www.fpif.org/articles/honduran_coup_the_us_connection

When push came to shove, we supported it by not standing against it and that initial statement that it was illegal was watered down, in time, to suggest it might have been, somehow, justified.

[Luminous Animal]

69. Actually, the Admin refused to call it a military coup (though the cable did).

If the Admin had correctly classified it, by law, specific economic sanctions against Honduras would have had to kick in. The Admin refused to do this, thus implicitly sanctioning a brutal campaign against citizens of Honduras and, subsequently, allowing an illegal election.

In Spain, human rights activists (much more influential than their counterparts in the U.S.) are pissed off that their government was a lapdog to U.S. interests.

And there are other revelations...

But, for me, as a U.S. citizen, the most telling aspect of the leaks is how far we've strayed from the Constitutional right of freedom of the press.

[struggle4progress]

76. I posted a direct quote from Obama above; maybe you should read a post before you respond

[Luminous Animal]

81. Why Obama Won't Use the M-Word for Honduras' Coup

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1920725,00.html
"The legal semantics matter. If the State Department labels a coup "military" — the most brutal and anti-democratic kind of overthrow — it automatically triggers a suspension of all non-humanitarian and non-democracy-related U.S. aid. In the case of Honduras, State Department officials insist that those measures have already been taken without the military-coup tag (See my note below. But critics, who fear Obama is keeping the Honduras coup designation downgraded to mollify conservative Republicans, argue that further steps, like freezing Honduran bank accounts in the U.S., are still available to the Administration.

Either way, foreign policy analysts say Obama is setting a precarious precedent by trying to have it both ways. In the future, restless militaries in other countries may look at the U.S.'s Honduras ruling and decide coups are worth chancing as long as they don't install a guy wearing epaulettes in the president's chair. In that scenario, a full-bore U.S. aid cut-off won't kick in by default — and there's always the possibility, they'll reason, that the White House won't adopt enough punitive steps to make them cry uncle in the end."

My note: In regards to suspending funds, John McCain did, in fact funnel 43 million to the brutal Honduran government.

[Luminous Animal]

86. Delete. Posted in the wrong place.

[xocet]

53. Hard Evidence of Murder to Begin With....

Murder of civilians in Iraq. How about that? If you don't believe it check the video:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x8103179

There is a frame grab of the second before the walking man is blown away with part of the building. The video is on YouTube. The time index is in my post.


OR

Maybe you just prefer keeping the collateral damage out of sight and out of your beautiful mind.

[laughingliberal]

40. Not sure members of DU were the only ones he was trying to inform.

Most of us in the Bush years knew much more about what was going on than the general public. You may recall we learned a lot of it from a group of people loosely known as 'the media in exile.' Wikileaks has succeeded in getting some information previously known only by those following the media in exile.

[24601]

59. Yep, without the Internet, we might never have known about Bill

and Monica.

[Egnever]

26. Exactly what wrong doing has he exposed?

[laughingliberal]

42. ....

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=9713426&mesg_id=9715447

[mrfrapp]

47. Example

How about the US Government asking its diplomats to gather personal information on UN officials. Information that includes credit card numbers, passwords, ID photos, fingerprints, DNA and iris scans.

Now, my question is this: what possible reason could the government have for wanting this information and in particular, biometric information? One possibility is that they suspect the UN officials to be guilty of a crime of some sort. This seems unlikely to me because they can't possibly suspect ALL UN officials to be criminals, can they? Besides, surreptitious evidence gathering is not the accepted way to conduct a criminal investigation.

The only other reason I can think of is quite simply, blackmail. I'm quite open to ideas but I've been thinking about this for a couple of days and I honestly can't come up with any other explanations.

[caseymoz]

93. I know you only find a victim of public torture to be heroic

but I'll point out in that great work of fiction that is the Bible, Jesus was thought to be a fraud in his time, but people just weren't looking close enough and just took the word of their leaders about him. Results: he was tortured and killed unjustly.

Maybe you should now look closer and not take the word of your leaders.

[strawberryfield]

14. My conversation with my father

My dad has been a life-long union man, and has walked many picket lines for his union brothers. He served as shop steward for more than 20 years, and was manning Democratic phone banks on Election Day before most of this board was even born. I remember him talking about the need for universal healthcare 35 years ago.

But my dad is also a veteran of the Korean War and a proud member of the VFW. He refers to fascists and communists, alike, as “bastards”. He salutes soldiers when he sees them in uniform.

I talked to him last night about this wikileaks thing. He believes that government and the people that work for it have the right (and the need) to keep certain things secret. He talks about this all very dispassionately and completely without nuance; in other words, that is just the way it is, end of discussion. He would have considerable difficulty with the notion that Assange is a hero to anybody, and he would certainly not see anybody who believes that to be on the same side as him. He is an old school liberal.

[smiley]

18. times have changed

[Better Believe It]

24. I hope your dad didn't support the McCarthyite "anti-communist" witch-hunt during the 50's.

Does he ever discuss that dark period of government attacks on civil liberties, free speech and a free press with you and if so what's his take on it?

[Dawson Leery]

27. The generationa divide is blinding in this case.

[kas125]

28. My dad is also a veteran of the Korean war and was a

member of both the American Legion and the VFW, however in the last six or eight years his views about those organizations have changed due to their support for these illegal and immoral wars. Now he's a member of Veterans for Peace. He supports Julian Assange and Wikileaks.

[leftstreet]

23. K&R

Interesting article

[Jeffersons Ghost]

37. K&R sad but true

[me b zola]

39. K&R

[bluestate10]

50. The Arrest of Julian Assange. I could not have a better Christmas present. nt.

[Octafish]

51. So you celebrate the end of the First Amendment at your house?

Because that is what his arrest is about.

[Pavulon]

57. Im celebrating the call options I bought on RTN

thanks to assange identifying Iran's now public ICBM's. RTN will the the boost phase interceptor project next congress. Sure as can be.

Thanks julian.

[Luminous Animal]

71. Where is the cable asserting that Iran has ICBMs?

[Pavulon]

82. 19 of them exactly. That can hit countries we are obligated to defend under NATO

treaty. bought in as soon as i saw that hit. nail in the coffin for start as well. now BPI has to be in the body of the treaty, not the preamble.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-11-29/iran-may-have-missiles-from-north-korea-cables-posted-by-wikileaks-show.html

[Luminous Animal]

84. No. Where is the actual cable. Because, if you read the actual cable, there is more doubt

than certainty that Iran has these missiles. Of course, you won't read that in the NY Times who consulted with the U.S. government and the U.S. government advised against posting the text of the cables (but rather the government's spin on it). So , the NY Times said, "OK boss."

That is why Wikileaks is valuable. We can verify or reject the basis on which our corporate own media presents its spin. You apparently, swallowed the whole tainted hog.

[Q3JR4]

55. Even if Wikileaks fails completely that won't be the end of it.

Assange and his crew have shown us the way. Whether you or I deign to follow through on the lessens presented for our view, others WILL do so.

The internet gives us tools such that any group that wants to distrubute state secrets to every corner of the earth under cover of darkness and subterfuge will be able to do so without fail.

This is the reality of the age we live in.

Q3JR4.

[Pavulon]

58. you have to steal them first. Assange's need mannings, and the mannings are the ones

who will do the majority of the suffering. You willing to die in florence ADX to steal to help the assanges bang swedish chicks? nahh, most people will not.

[Luminous Animal]

65. Mannings, the idiot, took the initiative and confessed with zero necessity to do so.

He's the only Wikileaks contributor than has been exposed and he exposed himself.

[Pavulon]

83. he is like the plumber you leave in your house who steals, assange is the fence

brokering your belongings. He is in a space that can be very dangerous, for everyone he brought to the table.

[Luminous Animal]

87. So that makes the NY Times a fence too, eh? If Manning hadn't bragged, he may have never been caught

[Better Believe It]

96. Assange didn't steal or "fence" anything that belonged to me or anyone else here.

Comparing Assange to a common criminal falls right in line with the government smear and character assassination campaign against him.

[pmorlan1]

60. Hackers Go After Bank That Froze Assange Defense Money

Looks like it's more than Wikileaks website that is under attack now. Wow.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Raw-Story--Hackers-take-d-by-the-web-101206-940.html

[Matilda]

88. Strange, isn't it?

If you put money from criminal activities in a Swiss bank, you're cool. They don't give a shit where it came from
or where it's going to.

But if you embarrass the United States of Empire, they'll freeze your account.

Ssome of that is my money, dammit! I have a right to donate it to whomever I choose.

[ProudDad]

66. This is just the beginning of the war against the Empire

but it's typical...

They trump up a bogus charge...

Make sure the British judge puts him "in custody" where he cannot fight back as well...

Now they'll extradite him to Sweden...

Obama will declare him an Enemy Combatant...

Then they will extradite him from Sweden (without telling Sweden that he's going to be flown DIRECTLY to Gitmo)...

And then they will fly him to Gitmo...

To add to the hundreds of thousands sacrificed to the bogus "war on terror(tm)"...

And 100 will take his place...

Face it, fuckers, the Matrix is dead...

[RZM]

97. If Assange ends up in gitmo, I'll eat my hat

Even a republican administration would think twice about such a lousy PR move. When this doesn't happen, I hope you will be willing to admit you were wrong.

[ooglymoogly]

68. The kabuki mask of sanctimonious riotousness has been ripped away to

to reveal the malignant cancerous boiling face of fascism ruthlessly and deceitfully running the world from behind that masque. That is what Wiki leaks has done and exposed evil; naked to the world. Goodonya Julian. Suppression of truth is totally unacceptable and is fast becoming our downfall.

[ooglymoogly]

70. sadness that I have only one rec to give. nt

[kgnu_fan]

77. Violence of USA is now visible to all

[Canuckistanian]

80. Comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable

That USED to be the job of the media. Wikileaks is all we have left.

[bertman]

85. Anyone who has been in the military in a combat zone knows that our

'superiors' cover up crimes and atrocities all the time. Every day we see more examples of government officials of one stripe or another who are engaging in criminal acts but who are protected because they can make a claim for their actions to be classified as 'Secret' or 'Top Secret'.

Nothing more than a protective mechanism for perps in many cases.

Of course, there are some truly sensitive documents and activities that should be concealed from public view, but they should be considered the exception rather than the routine.

Recommend this thread.

[fatbuckel]

94. It`s really about motivation. Have you ever noticed how quick they find the perp

in a crime against a police officer? We had a local police officer meet an untimely and unfortunate end a few years back and those zany and madcap coppers found the badguy ten states away in under 72 hours. We had another officer go bonkers a while ago and twenty police officers responded instantly but if I were to call in a disturbance in the neighborhood they may get there within four hours. (They`re busy,you know.)Poor Julian Assange had some fluffed up charges that may or may not have occurred but somehow the entire world managed to turn 180 degrees to get a hold of him. God forbid they could unite like that to end hunger or fight disease. It`s all about motivation. Maybe they need re purposed.