All you need to know about Julian Assange's value as a crusading journalist is that The New York Times and most of the world's other leading newspapers have led daily with important news stories based on his WikiLeaks releases. All you need to know about the collapse of traditional support for the constitutional protection of a free press is that Dianne Feinstein, the centrist Democrat who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, has called for Assange "to be vigorously prosecuted for espionage."
Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Feinstein, who strongly supported the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, has the audacity to call for the imprisonment of the man who, more than any other individual, has allowed the public to learn the truth about those disastrous imperial adventures -- facts long known to Feinstein as head of the Intelligence Committee but never shared with the public she claims to represent.
Feinstein represents precisely the government that Thomas Jefferson had in mind when he said, in defense of unfettered freedom of the press, "[W]ere it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter."
In the 1787 letter in which he wrote those words, Jefferson was reflecting the deep wisdom of a political leader who often had been excoriated by a vicious press that would make the anarchist-inflected comments of an Assange seem mild in comparison. More than 35 years later, after having suffered many more vitriolic press attacks, Jefferson reiterated his belief in a free press, in all its vagaries, as the foundation of a democracy. In an 1823 letter to Lafayette, Jefferson warned: "The only security of all is in a free press. The force of public opinion cannot be resisted when permitted to be freely expressed. The agitation it produces must be submitted to. It is necessary, to keep the waters pure."
It is precisely that agitation that so alarms Feinstein, for the inconvenient truths she has concealed in her Senate role would have indeed shocked many of those who voted for her. She knew in real time that Iraq had nothing to do with the 9/11 attack, yet she voted to send young Americans to kill and be killed based on what she knew to be lies. It is her duplicity, along with the leaders of both political parties, that now stands exposed by the WikiLeaks documents.
That is why U.S. governmental leaders will now employ the massive power of the state to discredit and destroy Assange, who dared let the public in on the depths of official deceit--a deceit that they hide behind in making their claims of protecting national security. Claims mocked by released cables that show that our puppets in Iraq and Afghanistan are deeply corrupt and anti-democratic, and that al-Qaeda continues to find its base of support not in those countries but rather in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, the very nations we arm and protect. The notion that the official tissue of lies enhances our security is rejected by the growing strength of radical Islam in the region, as evidenced by the success of Iran, the main beneficiary of our invasion of Iraq, as the leaked cables make clear.
The pretend patriots who use the national security argument to gut what remains of our most important security asset -- our constitutional guarantees of a truly free press -- are just what President George Washington feared when in his farewell address he warned "against the mischiefs of foreign intrigue, to guard against the Impostures of pretended patriotism. ..."
The pretended patriotism of Feinstein, the first Democrat to co-sponsor the bill extending the U.S. Patriot Act, represents the death of the Democratic Party as a protector of our freedoms. As a California resident, I will not vote for her again, no matter how dastardly a right-wing Republican opponent she might face. There is no lesser evil to be found in one who would so cavalierly imprison practitioners of a free press.
That is the issue here, pure and simple. It is unconscionable to target Assange for publishing documents on the Internet that mainstream media outlets have attested had legitimate news value. As in the historic case in which Daniel Ellsberg gave The New York Times the Pentagon Papers exposé of the official lies justifying the Vietnam War, Assange is acting as the reporter here, and thus his activities must be shielded by the First Amendment's guarantee of journalistic freedom.
Actually Ellsberg's position, as morally strong as it was, was weaker than that of Assange, in that the former Marine and top Pentagon adviser was working at the government-funded Rand Corp., where he had agreed to rules about the handling of classified information, including the Pentagon Papers. Assange operates under no such restraints and is an even clearer example of the journalist who ferrets out news and attempts to report it. He had no special clearance that provided him access, and what he did was no different from what the editors of The New York Times did in publishing news that was fit to print.
It 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 on this issue, as distinct from what increasingly appear to be trumped-up charges that led to his voluntary arrest on Tuesday in London in a case involving his personal behavior. Abandon Assange and you abandon the bedrock of our republic: the public's right to know.
The American Republic is every day shown more and more clearly to be a sham - the republic has been replaced by a Roman Empire like tyranny run by the powerful and the privileged.
Laws are only for suckers, now.
Too bad.
Absurd!
there's a petition going on to save press freedom and wiki-leaks.
Please sign everybody
http://civoc.com/m/news/view/Wikileaks-Unleashes-Conspiracies
as for now, more than 10000 signatures per hour.
We have at our fingertips information which our government and others routinely "classify" to keep from us. This is not OK as a matter of course.
Should governments keep secrets? Sure, politics, intrigue, human nature all involve some deceit of sorts, putting one's best foot forward, not tipping your hand and so on. But Mr. Assange is pulling aside the veil of secrecy by putting into the public doman information which as it comes out, is making clear that there is an institutional bias towards "misinformation" by the government.
That is not the type of government we should want or expect to have.
This is about free speech and freedom of the press and anyone who thinks otherwise is too concerned with "keeping up appearances," rather than facing reality.
"It 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 on this issue, as distinct from what increasingly appear to be trumped-up charges that led to his voluntary arrest on Tuesday in London in a case involving his personal behavior. Abandon Assange and you abandon the bedrock of our republic: the public's right to know."
Amen.
This is the moment for the journalists (and not only), claiming to champion freedom of speech and press, to stand up for the man who has risked all to realize these ideals in his life and work.
It is their chance to show that they are not only willing to invoke freedom in their well-crafted op-eds for the glorious make-benefit of China and Somepiddlystan, but do it here and now, where it really matters most and when they may actually risk something -- and test (and taste) the limits of that very freedom themselves.
More please.
And I haste to add, just in case, that the above term was *not* a snide attack at emerging democracies, gods -- and not CIA -- bless their resolve.
Progressives are supportive of the principle of innocent until proven guilty.
It isn't a puzzle.
;-]
In just about every other HuffPo forum, guys accused of rape are guilty 'cause women never lie about rape. What you are suggesting, "Innocent until proven guilty" is just plain out of sync with HuffPo fans.
Australia is one of America's closest allies (we can cite the wikileaked document where you say so) & yet one of our citizens is being treated like a terrorist.
Assange did not steal the documents, he did not place a disturbed individual with a history of leaking sensitive documents in charge or more sensitive documents. He is neither American nor in America.
His treatment - by friends - is offensive. We can only hope that the Australian Government continues to support his legal rights, and should this bill against him in the US Senate be taken even half way seriously, I expect our Prime Minister to make very clear to everyone that we deem it, as a nation, a serious insult.
You and I and everyone else knows how: there would be no end to outrage and calls for justice. The US is very, very good in lecturing other countries on freedom and democracy (or spreading both by other means, if lectures alone are insufficient), but somehow it has not been able to cope with the burdens and demands of both within its own society.
But we've got that lecturing part down pat -- just check Hillary's speech on Internet Freedom from last January. Here are some choice cuts:
"On their own, new technologies do not take sides in the struggle for freedom and progress, but the United States does. We stand for a single internet where all of humanity has equal access to knowledge and ideas.
(...) the internet is a network that magnifies the power and potential of all others. And that’s why we believe it’s critical that its users are assured certain basic freedoms. Freedom of expression is first among them. This freedom is no longer defined solely by whether citizens can go into the town square and criticize their government without fear of retribution. Blogs, emails, social networks, and text messages have opened up new forums for exchanging ideas, and created new targets for censorship."
There is more -- hang on.
"Some countries have erected electronic barriers that prevent their people from accessing portions of the world’s networks. They’ve expunged words, names, and phrases from search engine results. They have violated the privacy of citizens who engage in non-violent political speech. These actions contravene the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, which tells us that all people have the right “to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.” With the spread of these restrictive practices, a new information curtain is descending across much of the world. And beyond this partition, viral videos and blog posts are becoming the samizdat of our day.
As in the dictatorships of the past, governments are targeting independent thinkers who use these tools. In the demonstrations that followed Iran’s presidential elections, grainy cell phone footage of a young woman’s bloody murder provided a digital indictment of the government’s brutality. We’ve seen reports that when Iranians living overseas posted online criticism of their nation’s leaders, their family members in Iran were singled out for retribution. And despite an intense campaign of government intimidation, brave citizen journalists in Iran continue using technology to show the world and their fellow citizens what is happening inside their country. In speaking out on behalf of their own human rights, the Iranian people have inspired the world. And their courage is redefining how technology is used to spread truth and expose injustice."
http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2010/01/135519.htm
Wikileaks as diplomatic “security threat” ; will be sold to congress. Truth be told. Failed administration endless policy of war, not Assange, cause needless casualties.
The historian Henry Steele Commager, denouncing President John Adams' suppression of free speech in the 1790s, argued that the Bill of Rights was not written to protect government from dissenters but to provide a legal means for citizens to oppose a government they didn't trust. Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence not only proclaimed the right to dissent but declared it a people's duty, under certain conditions, to alter or abolish their government”.
Here Come the Thought Police by Ralph E. Shaffer Nov 19, 2007, BaltimoreSun opinion which received a Pulitzer prize nomination in 2008:
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/11/19/5320
Diverse groups are coalescing to support Assange and oppose Ms. Feinstein's effort to stifle dissent.
Since at least 2001, the NSA has been surveilling EVERYTHING we say or do on the Internet and Domestic Telecom system, storing and data-mining it for their purposes. What wikileaks has done is put our government under the exact same regimen as they have done to us.
He is not American, this did not happen in America.
Why is there not more on the fact that very lax security in America, by Americans, allowed this to happen? Did not give the private access to secret information or fail to catch him copying it onto the cd.
You've got that right. The real story here isn't what's in 250,000 diplomatic cables, but that a PFC in Baghdad would have access to them.
That's CRAZY.