{"id":32195,"date":"2010-12-15T17:00:57","date_gmt":"2010-12-15T22:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=32195"},"modified":"2011-06-03T17:04:53","modified_gmt":"2011-06-03T21:04:53","slug":"assangination-from-character-assassination-to-the-real-thing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/daily-astrology\/assangination-from-character-assassination-to-the-real-thing\/","title":{"rendered":"Assangination: From Character Assassination to the Real Thing"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Amy Goodman<\/strong><\/p>\n

Despite being granted bail, WikiLeaks founder and editor Julian Assange remains imprisoned in London, awaiting extradition proceedings to answer a prosecutor\u2019s questions in Sweden. He hasn\u2019t been formally charged with any crime. His lawyers have heard that a grand jury in the United States has been secretly empaneled, and that a U.S. federal indictment is most likely forthcoming.<\/p>\n

Politicians and commentators, meanwhile, have been repeatedly calling for Assange to be killed.<\/p>\n

Take Democratic strategist and commentator Bob Beckel, who said on a Fox Business show: \u201cWe\u2019ve got special ops forces. A dead man can\u2019t leak stuff. … This guy\u2019s a traitor, he\u2019s treasonous, and he has broken every law of the United States. And I\u2019m not for the death penalty, so … there\u2019s only one way to do it: illegally shoot the son of a bitch.\u201d U.S. Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., called WikiLeaks a \u201cforeign terrorist organization\u201d and said that the website \u201cposed a clear and present danger to the national security of the United States.\u201d He went on: \u201cThis is worse even than a physical attack on Americans; it\u2019s worse than a military attack.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of Assange\u2019s lawyers in London, Jennifer Robinson, told me, in response to the flood of threats: \u201cObviously we take these sorts of very public pronouncements incredibly seriously. And people making these statements ought to be reported to the police for incitement to violence.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of Beckel\u2019s co-panelists on Fox said what needed to be done was to \u201ccut the head off the snake,\u201d a phrase which, ironically, gained more significance when it appeared days later in one of the leaked cables. In the cable, Saudi Ambassador to the U.S. Adel al-Jubeir \u201crecalled the King\u2019s frequent exhortations to the U.S. to attack Iran and so put an end to its nuclear weapons program. \u2018He told you to cut off the head of the snake’. \u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Assange has found support in some surprising quarters. Conservative Harvard Law professor Jack Goldsmith blogged: \u201cI find myself agreeing with those who think Assange is being unduly vilified … it is not obvious what law he has violated. … I do not understand why so much ire is directed at Assange and so little at The New York Times.\u201d (WikiLeaks has partnered with several news organizations, including The New York Times, in its document releases.)<\/p>\n

Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, the former chief of staff of Secretary of State Colin Powell, joined a group of former government officials in a letter of support for Assange, writing, \u201cWikiLeaks has teased the genie of transparency out of a very opaque bottle, and powerful forces in America, who thrive on secrecy, are trying desperately to stuff the genie back in.\u201d<\/p>\n

Likewise from a feminist group in Britain. Since the principal, public reason for Assange\u2019s arrest relates to questions about potential sexual crimes in Sweden, Katrin Axelsson, from the group Women Against Rape, wrote in a letter to the British newspaper The Guardian: \u201cMany women in both Sweden and Britain will wonder at the unusual zeal with which Julian Assange is being pursued for rape allegations. …. Women don\u2019t take kindly to our demand for safety being misused, while rape continues to be neglected at best or protected at worst.\u201d<\/p>\n

Assange, in an Op-Ed piece published in The Australian newspaper shortly after his arrest, wrote there is a chorus in the U.S. State Department of \u201c\u2018You\u2019ll risk lives! National Security! You\u2019ll endanger troops!\u2019 by releasing information, and \u2018then they say there is nothing of importance in what WikiLeaks publishes. It can\u2019t be both.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n

In a statement released to Australian television, Assange said: \u201cMy convictions are unfaltering. I remain true to the ideals I have expressed. … If anything, this process has increased my determination that they are true and correct.\u201d<\/p>\n

Extradition proceedings are complex, lengthy affairs. WikiLeaks, for that matter, is not just Julian Assange, but a geographically distributed network of people and servers, and it has promised that the work of facilitating the release of documents from governments and corporations will continue. The U.S. Justice Department, if it pursues a case, will have to answer the question: If WikiLeaks is a criminal organization, what of its media partners, like The New York Times?<\/p>\n

Amy Goodman is the host of \u201cDemocracy Now!,\u201d a daily international TV\/radio news hour airing on more than 800 stations in North America. She is the author of \u201cBreaking the Sound Barrier,\u201d recently released in paperback and now a New York Times best-seller.<\/p>\n

Copyright \u00a9 2010 by Amy Goodman<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Amy Goodman Despite being granted bail, WikiLeaks founder and editor Julian Assange remains imprisoned in London, awaiting extradition proceedings to answer a prosecutor\u2019s questions in Sweden. He hasn\u2019t been formally charged with any crime. His lawyers have heard that a grand jury in the United States has been secretly empaneled, and that a U.S. … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32195"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32195"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32195\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}