Julian Assange and Wikileaks

Julian Assange, the man behind Wikileaks, continues to be smeared by the mainstream media.  Gosh, cowardice is in good supply!  So comforting to know that the most base characteristics of human nature manage to thrive no matter what the circumstances.

AP reports today that the trumped-up charges against Assange, formerly dropped, have been resurrected.  And thanks to hatchet jobs on him by the likes of the New York Times, which only a few weeks ago took precedence over the substance of the leaks themselves, Assange is again on the run and in hiding.

Is he paranoid?  Duh.  You sure as shit would be paranoid, too, if you had been the whistleblower on war crimes committed by the most powerful nation on earth and no country would give you asylum.  But that's the way it works in the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave, where lip service is paid to high and mighty concepts like "freedom" and "liberty," but where if you're a good boy or girl you'll hold your tongue and mind your manners and do whatever your overlords tell you to do.  Don't question, don't challenge, just accept authority, and everything will be okay.

Assange and his helpers, at least one of whom is still in jail, and another of whom was detained, are brave people, the way Daniel Ellsberg was brave.  Too bad so many of journalism's finest don't see it.

 ADDENDUM:  Unlike so much of the U.S. media, which is under the Orwellian spell of "enhanced" this and "enhanced" that, the U.K. newspaper the Guardian is unafraid to use real words to describe real actions.  Read about Frago 242, if you can stomach it.

Comments

[Ray M]

Lisa - I'm assuming you intended to enclose "journalism's finest" in sarcasm tags, right?

[Lisa Simeone]

Mon ami, yes, I was being sarcastic.

[Maria Ann]

I was just re-watching the X-Files the other day and pondering if the show held up well in a post-9/11 world...but the more things change the more they stay the same, eh?

[Joe]

Gee, the rest of us folks have to answer for criminal charges, particulary charges of violence against women. I don't know if the charges are true or not, but does he get a pass on showing up to face and refute them? The rest of us would not.

[minstrel hussain boy]

it is an old, old, story. in vietnam the abuses tended to occur in (designated by another FRAGO) "free fire zones" where all living things (often including livestock) were to be considered hostile and therefore to be "eliminated" or (my personal favorite) "terminated with extreme prejudice."

at the time the approved military method of keeping score was the "body count." the more bodies a young officer in the field counted, the better his performance was rated.

combining the order creating the zone where bodies could be accumulated without question and the emphasis on dead bodies to count almost instantly devolved into rampaging u.s. units slaughtering every living being indiscriminately. i personally saw the effects of one such action. it made me sick. today, when i recall the sights there, and the smells, in aging scenes of brutal killings you cannot discount the smells, i still feel my stomach turn and my gorge rise.

the inevitable progression of events when standards of conduct and morality are lowered to "deal with exigent circumstance" is rapid. war, with blinding swiftness, becomes nothing but mass murder, rape, torture, and pillage.

it wasn't our once strong refusal to engage in or tolerate atrocity that caused our failures in the field of vietnam. we simply should never have been there in the first place. it took the combined folly of five successive administrations to set the table and scene for that clusterfuck. it wasn't the dogged reporting, often at great danger to themselves by guys like sy hersch, david halberstram, and philip caputo that brought about the failure there.

it is sad, terribly sad, that we seem to always learn the wrong lessons.

So, in the Libyan fable
it is told

That once an eagle,
stricken with a dart, Said, when he saw
the fashion of the shaft,

"With our own feathers,
not by others' hands,
Are we now smitten."

aeschylus

such an old, sad story.

[Joe]

FYI, that's a different Joe commenting than me. I guess from now on I should go by a different moniker. Probably JoeS

[Lisa Simeone]

Joe, I imagine he will. He can't stay in hiding forever. But do you really believe that's why they want to apprehend him? And do you really believe that he conveniently assaulted two different women within days of setting foot in Sweden after the first leaks?

Come on, I'm one of the loudest-mouthed feminists out there, and even I think this stinks like days-old fish.

Read what Glenn Greenwald reminds us of in the link above. Here's an excerpt:

There are a lot of lessons here, most of them obvious. In 2003, the ex-Marine and U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter -- who had become one of the most persuasive opponents of the attack on Iraq, repeatedly and presciently insisting that there was no evidence of WMD -- was the subject of a media smear campaign, accusing him of having engaged in criminal sex acts with adolescents. That led to commentary like this from the nation's sleaziest bottom-feeders: