I don't know whether Julian Assange ever committed rape, and neither do you. Sweden wants him for those charges, and the British have him and plan to let him go. Probably he should stand trial for this and then we'll all know if he did or he didn't. He did, however, publish for all the world to read, documents which the U.S. government considered secret. This he cheerfully admits. As far as I can deduce, most of those are harmless to U.S. interests and many of them are not really secrets, they're just embarrassing. I am judging by what I've read and heard about them, because I am not going to wade through a hundred thousand documents. My ignorance, however, is no block to my ability to form an opinion.
During the Nixon Administration, we got used to hearing news like this. Information was revealed that was intended to be kept secret, but the only people apparently left in the dark were American voters. A good example was the news about the bombing the Nixon government was doing in Cambodia. Turns out the Cambodians knew about it (duh-h), the enemy (North Vietnamese) knew about it because they saw the bombs falling on them, and the American government knew about it, naturally. But the American people did not, and we got angry when we did find out. It became an item in the impeachment process.
Being familiar with the tendency of the American government to fabricate itself into wars (Vietnam and Iraq, for instance) I think we Americans have a right to know what the hell the government is doing. We shouldn't let the bastards hide behind their "confidential" and "top secret" stamps any more. The burden of sorting out what the democratically inspired people of our nation should be protected from ought not to be in the hands of the liars and cheats.
In the matter of the Wikileaks papers, I know that the Saudis and other Middle Easterners would like to keep secret the fact they want the U.S. to whack Iran. This is NOT a secret that should be kept from the American people. I, for one, and I hope I speak for gazillions of Americans, don't care if they're embarrassed by their own phony sanctimoniousness.
So, yes, I hope Assange goes free on the "leaking" changes, and I hope he keeps up his good works.
5 comments:
It's clear that if the person wasn't Julian Assange - then the Swedish govt would not be pursuing this case - in fact, the police were not even going to investigate the matter. I would like to see the secret correspondence which shows that the US govt is pressuring the Swedish authorities to pursue the rape charge. It's the only law he's possibly broken - the only way they can get him. BTW - isn't the US govt the party at fault here for not protecting their classified info? How embarrassing - who's going to tell them anything anymore!!! Finally, I have never been on Wikileaks. No one I know ever has. So why do I know so much about the leaked information? Because the mainstream media has distributed the stolen information far and wide. Is this a crime too?
Good point about the Saudis. The US people should know who's pressuring the US to take on Iran - before they are duped yet again.
You're absolutely right about the media spreading the information.I don't think Assange could disseminate this information so widely all by himself.
However, this is what the media are supposed to do, we can't be too surprised. My gripe with them is they edit out lots of news people might need to know, or ought to know, and throw in so much gossipy tripe.
I saw on Facebook, that sometime reader MARGARET has recommended this wham-bam article:
http://dissidentvoice.org/2010/12/a-tale-of-two-websites/
I agree that the mainstream press edits out what they don't want to get around. For instance did you know that Daniel Elsberg got arrested and jailed in the past week for joining with a group to handcuff themselves to the White House fence? There have been a number of large rallies in Washington in the past two weeks, related to the various bills before the Senate. On the other hand everytime S.P. pees we hear about her whether in ridcule or feigned support. I hope Wikileaks keeps it up. I want to know about Bank of America.
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