Wikileaks Founder Advised To Avoid American Gov't

eldavojohn writes "Media darling Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks, has been told by his lawyers to avoid the United States on the grounds that the US military would like to ask him a few questions about his source of the Collateral Murder video. Assange claims to be holding yet more video (of a US attack on a village that allegedly killed 140 civilians in May of 2009), as well as a quarter million sensitive cables relating to the current foreign war operations from the US State Department. Assange surfaced for the cameras in Brussels while speaking about the need for the freedom of information. Can he build a high enough profile to protect himself from danger?"

Comments

The Whistleblowers' Blues

[elrous0]

The best thing he can do is get as much press as possible, make as many speeches as possible, engage in as much public activity as possible, and stay in a group at all times (no late night strolls alone). If the general public and press don't know who he is, the U.S. government can just grab him and quietly throw him in a secret jail cell somewhere (or even render him to a country willing to get their hands dirty torturing him with more than a little waterboarding).

It would be nice to live in a world where whistleblowers were rewarded and praised for their efforts. But the truth is that whistleblowers almost always suffer for their sacrifice. At best, they lose their jobs and/or are harassed. At worst, they end up in a filthy jail cell with electrodes on their balls.

Re:The Whistleblowers' Blues

[MrNaz]

Or perhaps a bathtub in a motel.

Re:The Whistleblowers' Blues

[tmassa99]

Obama, like Bush, has a horrendous track record of using "States Secrets" to cover the collective asses of this government and shield us from the big bad wars. Things like covering the illegal rendition and torture of innocents, like Maher Arar. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maher_Arar

He's also using it to continually detain a man proven in court to be innocent, Mohamed Hassan Odaini, who has been wrongfully imprisoned for the last 8 years, in defiance of a court order that he be released. Why? Because mid-term elections are coming up soon.
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/06/21/pundits/index.html

The US government and MIC are monsters dressed in the stars and stripes and I thank %deityOfChoice% that there are sites like Wikileaks, and governments like Iceland who are beginning to see the light that is cast by transparency.

With the SCOTUS decision yesterday, the US can just put Wikileaks on the list of terrorist organizations, and Mr. Assange won't even be able to get a lawyer in the US, assuming he's still alive. The US government, or its people at large, don't care about rights of US citizens, who can now be extra-judicially assassinated (i.e. murdered). What do you think anyone would say if some Australian journalist disappears?

Only sites like Wikileaks can save us from ourselves. Getting the genie back into the bottle is a difficult task, indeed.

Re:The Whistleblowers' Blues

[TheCarp]

> The reality is that there's a lot of information that doesn't belong in the public domain, and it's in the best interest of the
> country/corporation/individual to keep secured.

For an indivudual, or a corporation sure. However, a corporation has share holders and/or trustees. There is no legitimate reason for a "corporation" to withhold information from them. They are the owners, the final deciders.

With a government, or at least, any organization that I am willing to consider as such in a legitimate fashion, the people are the share holders, we are the board. There is no legitimate reason to hide information from even the lowest of us. We OWN IT. It is OUR SECRET.

Keeping information (with the VERY narrow exception of individuals personally identifiable information like tax, employment, or social security records) is corruption. plain and simple. Justice Roberts claims the government deserves a lot of "leeway" in "national security" matters. I argue it deserves no leeway at all, ever, in any circumstance.

The single most important function of government is to provide checks and balances against its own corruption. Even defense should be secondary.

-Steve

Good on him

[Pojut]

I understand the need to keep things secret, and I understand that in war shit happens...but that doesn't mean when things go awry, we the people shouldn't know about it. For the same reason why I think uncensored war footage should be shown on the nightly news, maybe if the average civilian actually saw what goes on in war, the public would be less likely to stand by idly while our government spends billions on killing people on the other side of the planet.

Just my $.02

Re:Good on him

[radtea]

But, do you agree with editing exculpatory footage out of videos and then treating the video as the whole story?

Except that you have no evidence of that other than the Pentagon's say-so, and they aren't known for their honesty and forthrightness. Furthermore, the footage you're talking about is not the least exculpatory: it purportedly shows the same gun crew that asked permission to shoot and kill the good samaritans who were aiding the wounded victims of their previous attack, and then shot and killed the good samaritans who were aiding the wounded victims of their previous attack, did not kill another group of completely innocent people previous to shooting and killing the good samaritans who were aiding the wounded victims of their previous attack.

Only in the mind of someone deluded or evil would not killing innocent people prior to killing innocent good samaritans who are aiding the victims of your previous attack count as "exculpatory."

As to the rest: yeah, we'll stop killing them when they stop killing us; and they'll stop killing us when we stop killing them. Sounds like the security-industrial complex is going to be a major profit center for America for decades to come, building all that deadweightloss gear so young American men and women can go off to kill and be killed. Not a bad gig: getting taxpayers to fund the wanton destruction--body and soul--of their own children, all in the name of bigger profits for Lockheed, Haliburton and Blackwaster(Xe).

Re:Good on him

[darjen]

Any of the "good things" that might possibly come out of war can also be done without war.

Re:Good on him

[MrNaz]

Tell me, what is the worst that could be released on Wikileaks? Total schematics for the F35 aircraft along with source code? What would the Afghans do with it? Build one out of moistened sand? How about the Chinese? Trust me, the so-called free-world has nothing to fear from a poorly injection-molded plastic F35.

The military might of the US lies in its industrial output, not its secrets. Secrets only protect the US regime from its own population.

Re:Good on him

[Feyshtey]

For the same reason why I think uncensored war footage should be shown on the nightly news, maybe if the average civilian actually saw what goes on in war, the public would be less likely to stand by idly while our government spends billions on killing people on the other side of the planet.

Just my $.02

Hey, I'm good with that. Lets bring all the troops home, stop spending money "killing people on the other side of the planet", and only show the footage of the what other people do. How's that grab ya?

Just think, we can have hours of news footage daily of the plight of Muslim women alone. Being arrested for having a suntan? Being beaten, caned and stoned to death. Marital rape being legal? How about footage of rapes before their beheadings? How about child marriages? How about female castrations as punishment?

Would you like to talk about kids being strapped with explosives? That'll be juicy footage. How about bombs set off in weddings and funerals? How about 7 year old kids being murdered because their grandfather spoke out against the violence of the Taliban?

The point is that you're so quick to condemn the military on this situation. And if they were actually knowingly murdering innocent people then they should be condemned. But the fact is that you dont have all the facts, and yet you want desperately to see them all hanged along with the entire US military establishments. You casually ignore the attrocities commited around the world, many of which we have military might in place to help prevent. But the world media is so complicit that they don't report on those things, except for a by-line here and there quickly denouncing the act and distancing themselves, governments, and religions from them. It's glossed over as if to say "Yeah, that's a real shame... So anyway lets get those US Soldiers and hang 'em high!".

You think that we should show the world how brutal we are? Fine. As soon as we show the world how brutal the WORLD is I'll be right there with you. As soon as we start showing people WHY we are in many of the places we are, instead of shielding everyone here from the horrible acts that people outside our rubber-bumber nation commit then we can start showing them how all people compare. You don't want to show both sides. You don't want to give context. You don't want people here to see how bad some of these dictators and regimes are because you know it will do nothing if not ensure the resolve our nation has for kicking the crap out of some of the nutjobs out there.

War sucks. It's horrible. It's ugly. It changes people forever. But quite frankly, better that than live in a world where everyone's too afraid to stand up and fight the tyrants because it's not politically correct. You can hope for flowers and bunnies all you want. But there will always be people who really don't care what you hope for and are willing to crush any dream you ever had for your kids. And I'll always be supportive of us not standing there watching and doing nothing, while shielding our citizens because it might damage their delicate psyche's.

Re:I am not very sympathetic and here's why...

[Clandestine_Blaze]

Furthermore, I have no sympathy for Reuters' guys because Reuters has a history of being embarrassed in that region by having its "correspondents" not only embed themselves with guerrilla forces, but often hires people who are working both sides (ex: the egg on Reuters' face when it came out that its subcontractors in Lebanon were actually members of Hezbollah).

Well, how else are we to get both sides of the story? If journalists are only embedded on one side, then we're only getting half of the story, no? Journalism should be neutral, unless you're implying that we shouldn't hear their side unless it came directly from us. At that point, it is no longer journalism. Instead, it is full blown-out propaganda.

Re:I am not very sympathetic and here's why...

[slyborg]

And you have the information to back up this "often" claim, besides the one example you claim?

I know a guy who worked for a number of years for Reuters as a communications tech in war zones all over the world, and he never "worked both sides" whatever that means to you but whose life was endangered on a number of occasions. He was paid for it and he accepted the possible consequences. However, he, along with I would suspect are the majority of Reuters employees, did not work for for Hezbollah, and didn't, as you appear to suggest, deserve a couple of 30mm shells for doing his job.

Since this is the Internet, though, people who disagree with you of course deserve death, I suppose.