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Icelandic MP Claims US Vendetta Against WikiLeaks
Stirling Newberry writes "Icelandic MP Birgitta Jónsdóttir details more of the evidence for what she calls a 'judicial vendetta' against WikiLeaks and its volunteers, including attempts to gain access to her Twitter account. Her efforts to block the National Defense Authorization Act were discussed here previously. The story was taken up last year by Glenn Greenwald and Wired. As a result, the International Parliamentarian Union adopted a resolution on her case. What's new? She asserts that there is a grand jury investigation into WikiLeaks and related organizations, and is calling on Sweden to provide assurances that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange not be re-extradited to the U.S. She says, 'There is no doubt that the U.S. wants to get even with WikiLeaks.'"
they only feed the fire by going after him
the "damage" assange did is done, and there's no way you can hide what has been revealed
just forget about him. move on
because all the efforts the USA goes through just feeds the myth and makes the man a hero, deservedly or not
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Forget Wikileaks. Let's invade Iceland.
The US is like the modern day Roman Empire. Eventually, the rest of the world will get tired of being bullied by the US and stand up.
There is no secret grand jury investigation! I dare you to find the documentation! Besides, there's no place on the Internet where anyone could publish such a damning LEAK! No news site, message board, not even any sort of WIKI.
Sure, most of the documents weren't important and some that were should probably have stayed secret... but that means they would've had to cherry pick which documents to publish. If they'd have cherry picked, people would have said "You obviously have some agenda, as you cherry pick documents that present [entity we like] in a bad light".
Also, by publishing everything they allow people to analyze not only what there was but also what wasn't there.
Also, there is no way that they would've been able to know what documents were important and what not. In some countries the press cross-checked the leaked stuff with their politicians' negotiations and foreign trips, saw if their politicians' public statements matched the data found in documents, etc... but there is no way that Assange or even some major newspaper would've been able to do that all alone.
So... yeah. I am not in the "everything government/officials do should be public" camp as I think officials should be able to do their work and have honest exchanges between each other without the press being able to take quotes out of context to produce artificial scandals... but I don't think that saying "Only x% of the published documents were important" is that good argument.
News organizations do the exact same thing -- find sources and publish their stories -- and you don't see the US gov going after the Guardian or the NYTimes. (They're some of the news outlets that did the actual publishing. Wikileaks worked through them precisely because they were trying NOT to endanger people on the ground.) The US can't go after news outlets. There's this little thing called the First Amendment guaranteeing freedom of speech.
But by de facto torture of Manning and by making an example of Assange (they hope, if they can get their hands on him) they figure they can "discourage" repeat embarrassments.
Because that's all they are: embarrassed. I didn't see anything come out we didn't already know. All Wikileaks did was provide hard evidence of the obvious.
He takes the view that the US is a big bully
He and the other 5,650,000,000 people.
and has made statements about being on a mission to stop "two wars" (i.e. the Iraq war and the war in Afghanistan)
Why would that be illegal? Publishing US secrets was not a crime for Assange because he haven't signed on the dotted line. Manning did, and he is being punished for that.
You mean like Jenny McCarthy in the west on vaccines and autism? Nah, it's just those crazy mooslims that have weird ideas. But unlike McCarthy, those people in that part of the world, and not just the old men in the hills, now have a perfectly good reason to distrust vaccination programs. Because one was used as a CIA front - you know, the same organization that spent 6 years torturing people under Bush and 3 years blowing up weddings and funerals with Predator Drones under Obama.