The WikiLeaks Case: Is ‘Freedom Of The Press’ Another U.S. Catch phrase for totaliniarisn with a democratic facade?
elsa.s | 08.12.2010 09:49 | Analysis | Culture
Whistleblower Julian Assange has been dubbed ‘the world’s most dangerous man’ not because he has revealed U.S. secret documents and war crimes but his WikiLeaks website has exposed the arrogance and prepotency of a U.S. system that shoots first, asks questions later and treats its allies with imperial disdain.
The WikiLeaks Case: IS ‘FREEDOM OF THE PRESS’ ANOTHER U.S. CATCH PHRASE FOR TOTALITARIANISM WITH A DEMOCRATIC FAÇADE?
By Uli Schmetzer
www.uli-schmetzer.com
MELBOURNE, Australia, December 6 – Whistleblower Julian Assange has been dubbed ‘the world’s most dangerous man’ not because he has revealed U.S. secret documents and war crimes but his WikiLeaks website has exposed the arrogance and prepotency of a U.S. system that shoots first, asks questions later and treats its allies with imperial disdain.
Assange gave himself up to London police Tuesday after Swedish investigators reopened a sex crime investigation against him they had already abandoned, U.S officials promised to prosecute him for posting the first of some 250,000 US diplomatic cables on his website and fanatics threatened to kill him.
The case has important ramifications. As prominent intellectuals, lawyers, film-makers and entertainers rallied behind Assange and his WikiLeaks website it became clear that pitted against one another is the universal right to freedom of information and the ever tighter government noose (known as ‘national security’) to strangle what the public is entitled to know.
For example why should people around the world not be informed that U.S. diplomatic envoys (many of them political appointees in return for campaign donations) classified Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan as ‘a power-hungry Islamist surrounded by corrupt and incompetent ministers’ or described Germany’s foreign minister Guido Westerwelle as ‘a wild card’ or reported that Italy’s Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is so exhausted after his nocturnal parties he nods off during bilateral talks.
In fact what many of the first batch of 250,000 diplomatic cables WikiLeaks intends to post offer a fascinating insight into U.S. horse-trading with some of the most vilified governments and their leaders. The real result of these revelations is not danger to national security but an acute embarrassment to the United States, one reason why outraged rightwing U.S. senators are shrieking for Assange to be charged with espionage.
After all the cables prove that in Yemen the U.S. provides weapons for a tyrannical government’s civil war against Shiites in return for being allowed to pursue Al-Queda terrorists. In Libya the irrepressible Colonel Gadaffi handed over 5.2 kilos of highly enriched uranium and guaranteed more oil concessions in return for the British liberating the Libyan bomber of PanAm flight 103 in which 270 people, mainly Americans, died in 1988.
Promiscuous Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi now travels to Russia to have wild parties with his pal Vladimir Putin (because at home he is watched too closely) and together with his ‘cronies’ is profiting ‘personally and handsomely’ from energy deals between Italy and Russia. Putin and Berlusconi have formed a commercial Axis which worries Washington. The U.S. ambassador in Italy writes Berlusconi admires Putin for his ‘macho’ style of governing.
In the past WikiLeaks posted a U.S. military video showing how U.S. soldiers in broad daylight brutally gunned down six unarmed civilians in Baghdad, including two Reuters journalists while their commander urged them on the radio: ‘Light them up! Light them up!’
The irony of similar leaked documents is that America’s allies, rather then infuriated by Washington’s high-handed diplomatic ways or cowboy- style warfare, are now actively cooperating to persecute Assange and to close down or jam his website, his bank accounts even private donations. Credit card companies like Visa and Mastercard have canceled the whistleblower’s cards; Pay-Pal has refused to transmit donations to his website illustrating once again how corporations quickly tow the U.S. line, afraid to be haunted out of business or crippled by Washington.
Just as despicable (though no surprise) is the tragedy of a mass media which, rather then follow up what are legitimate revelations about dubious practices, fell into line with the pro-U.S. collaboration policies of their governments. (Sweden has unearthed an old charge already dismissed, Switzerland has closed WikiLeak’s bank account and Britain has locked up Assange).
This loyal collaboration will allow our so-called ‘democratic systems’ to become even more secretive. By keeping the public ignorant and by turning more and more information into ‘classified,’ ‘secret’ or ‘matter of national security’ categories our democracies can then embark on even more undemocratic practices.
The most ardent of the U.S. allies is Australia’s new Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, who seems to be in trembling awe of Washington. She promised to help capture the ‘grossly irresponsible’ whistleblower, an Australian citizen, and announced he was not welcome back home.
In her haste to be of service, Gillard ignores Assange has not been charged with any crime, apart from a murky accusation in Sweden that he allegedly had sex with a woman last August without using a condom and while guest at the home of another woman made love to her while she was asleep. These charges were made after WikiLeaks posted U.S. military cables illustrating how badly the war was going in Iraq and Afghanistan. The charges were then forgotten, but resurfaced once WikiLeaks issued its first batch of diplomatic cables.
Undeterred by Assange’s detention on a Swedish extradition warrant WikiLeaks Wednesday posted new material with details of NATO’s defense plans for Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, plans that infuriated Russia.
At the same time Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s ‘you are not wanted at home Julian’ announcement illustrated just how far a country’s sovereignty can be sacrificed when Washington so demands. Gillard was strongly criticized Wednesday by Australian jurists and academics who argued as a citizen of Australia Assange must enjoy the protection and consular aid of his country while the verdict is still out whether WikiLeak’s exposes are in the global public’s interests or harmful to global security. Its unpardonable he should be vilified by his own Prime Minister.
“What does it mean to be an Australian citizen – does that mean anything at all,” Assange was quoted in the Melbourne daily, The Sunday Age.
The case for Assange does not look good. Australia has a history of bowing to U.S. interests. He has compared his fate to that of Australian David Hicks who was caught in the Afghan dragnet as a suspected terrorist, taken to Guantanamo Bay for years without the Australian government lifting more then the occasional token finger for him. Hicks was finally released as innocent.
‘Are we all to be treated like David Hicks at the first possible opportunity merely so that Australian politicians and diplomats can be invited to the best US embassy cocktail parties,” Assange said during a question and answer sessions with the British daily The Guardian.
Today millions already consider Assange a hero, a man comparable to Daniel Ellsberg, a U.S. State Department insider whose ‘Pentagon Papers’ - secret documents showing U.S. bungles and atrocities in Vietnam - contributed greatly to the end of the Vietnam war. Ellsberg too was vilified. He was also called ‘the world’s most dangerous man’ and dragged into court but eventually released.
Like Ellsberg, Assange may well be indicted for ‘espionage’ but this will hardly dent the admiration of those who have already dubbed him “The Che Guevara of the Information Age.”
Ends
By Uli Schmetzer
www.uli-schmetzer.com
MELBOURNE, Australia, December 6 – Whistleblower Julian Assange has been dubbed ‘the world’s most dangerous man’ not because he has revealed U.S. secret documents and war crimes but his WikiLeaks website has exposed the arrogance and prepotency of a U.S. system that shoots first, asks questions later and treats its allies with imperial disdain.
Assange gave himself up to London police Tuesday after Swedish investigators reopened a sex crime investigation against him they had already abandoned, U.S officials promised to prosecute him for posting the first of some 250,000 US diplomatic cables on his website and fanatics threatened to kill him.
The case has important ramifications. As prominent intellectuals, lawyers, film-makers and entertainers rallied behind Assange and his WikiLeaks website it became clear that pitted against one another is the universal right to freedom of information and the ever tighter government noose (known as ‘national security’) to strangle what the public is entitled to know.
For example why should people around the world not be informed that U.S. diplomatic envoys (many of them political appointees in return for campaign donations) classified Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan as ‘a power-hungry Islamist surrounded by corrupt and incompetent ministers’ or described Germany’s foreign minister Guido Westerwelle as ‘a wild card’ or reported that Italy’s Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is so exhausted after his nocturnal parties he nods off during bilateral talks.
In fact what many of the first batch of 250,000 diplomatic cables WikiLeaks intends to post offer a fascinating insight into U.S. horse-trading with some of the most vilified governments and their leaders. The real result of these revelations is not danger to national security but an acute embarrassment to the United States, one reason why outraged rightwing U.S. senators are shrieking for Assange to be charged with espionage.
After all the cables prove that in Yemen the U.S. provides weapons for a tyrannical government’s civil war against Shiites in return for being allowed to pursue Al-Queda terrorists. In Libya the irrepressible Colonel Gadaffi handed over 5.2 kilos of highly enriched uranium and guaranteed more oil concessions in return for the British liberating the Libyan bomber of PanAm flight 103 in which 270 people, mainly Americans, died in 1988.
Promiscuous Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi now travels to Russia to have wild parties with his pal Vladimir Putin (because at home he is watched too closely) and together with his ‘cronies’ is profiting ‘personally and handsomely’ from energy deals between Italy and Russia. Putin and Berlusconi have formed a commercial Axis which worries Washington. The U.S. ambassador in Italy writes Berlusconi admires Putin for his ‘macho’ style of governing.
In the past WikiLeaks posted a U.S. military video showing how U.S. soldiers in broad daylight brutally gunned down six unarmed civilians in Baghdad, including two Reuters journalists while their commander urged them on the radio: ‘Light them up! Light them up!’
The irony of similar leaked documents is that America’s allies, rather then infuriated by Washington’s high-handed diplomatic ways or cowboy- style warfare, are now actively cooperating to persecute Assange and to close down or jam his website, his bank accounts even private donations. Credit card companies like Visa and Mastercard have canceled the whistleblower’s cards; Pay-Pal has refused to transmit donations to his website illustrating once again how corporations quickly tow the U.S. line, afraid to be haunted out of business or crippled by Washington.
Just as despicable (though no surprise) is the tragedy of a mass media which, rather then follow up what are legitimate revelations about dubious practices, fell into line with the pro-U.S. collaboration policies of their governments. (Sweden has unearthed an old charge already dismissed, Switzerland has closed WikiLeak’s bank account and Britain has locked up Assange).
This loyal collaboration will allow our so-called ‘democratic systems’ to become even more secretive. By keeping the public ignorant and by turning more and more information into ‘classified,’ ‘secret’ or ‘matter of national security’ categories our democracies can then embark on even more undemocratic practices.
The most ardent of the U.S. allies is Australia’s new Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, who seems to be in trembling awe of Washington. She promised to help capture the ‘grossly irresponsible’ whistleblower, an Australian citizen, and announced he was not welcome back home.
In her haste to be of service, Gillard ignores Assange has not been charged with any crime, apart from a murky accusation in Sweden that he allegedly had sex with a woman last August without using a condom and while guest at the home of another woman made love to her while she was asleep. These charges were made after WikiLeaks posted U.S. military cables illustrating how badly the war was going in Iraq and Afghanistan. The charges were then forgotten, but resurfaced once WikiLeaks issued its first batch of diplomatic cables.
Undeterred by Assange’s detention on a Swedish extradition warrant WikiLeaks Wednesday posted new material with details of NATO’s defense plans for Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, plans that infuriated Russia.
At the same time Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s ‘you are not wanted at home Julian’ announcement illustrated just how far a country’s sovereignty can be sacrificed when Washington so demands. Gillard was strongly criticized Wednesday by Australian jurists and academics who argued as a citizen of Australia Assange must enjoy the protection and consular aid of his country while the verdict is still out whether WikiLeak’s exposes are in the global public’s interests or harmful to global security. Its unpardonable he should be vilified by his own Prime Minister.
“What does it mean to be an Australian citizen – does that mean anything at all,” Assange was quoted in the Melbourne daily, The Sunday Age.
The case for Assange does not look good. Australia has a history of bowing to U.S. interests. He has compared his fate to that of Australian David Hicks who was caught in the Afghan dragnet as a suspected terrorist, taken to Guantanamo Bay for years without the Australian government lifting more then the occasional token finger for him. Hicks was finally released as innocent.
‘Are we all to be treated like David Hicks at the first possible opportunity merely so that Australian politicians and diplomats can be invited to the best US embassy cocktail parties,” Assange said during a question and answer sessions with the British daily The Guardian.
Today millions already consider Assange a hero, a man comparable to Daniel Ellsberg, a U.S. State Department insider whose ‘Pentagon Papers’ - secret documents showing U.S. bungles and atrocities in Vietnam - contributed greatly to the end of the Vietnam war. Ellsberg too was vilified. He was also called ‘the world’s most dangerous man’ and dragged into court but eventually released.
Like Ellsberg, Assange may well be indicted for ‘espionage’ but this will hardly dent the admiration of those who have already dubbed him “The Che Guevara of the Information Age.”
Ends
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