WikiLeaks

In recent weeks, the US Justice Department has established a secret grand jury just across the river from Washington in the eastern district of the state of Virginia. The object is to indict Julian Assange under a discredited espionage act used to arrest peace activists during the first world war, or one of the “war on terror” conspiracy statutes.

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On 18 March 2008, a war on WikiLeaks was foretold in a secret Pentagon document prepared by the “Cyber Counterintelligence Assessments Branch”. US intelligence, it said, intended to destroy the feeling of “trust” which is WikiLeaks’ “centre of gravity”. It planned to do this with threats of “exposure [and] criminal prosecution”.

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What is most striking about [recent Assange interviews in the media] is [...] their indifference to fundamental issues of justice and freedom and their imposition of narrow, prurient terms of reference. Fixing these boundaries allows the interviewer to diminish the journalistic credibility of Assange and WikliLeaks, whose remarkable achievements stand in vivid contrast to their own.

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Assange’s former barrister James Catlin wrote to me: “The complete absence of due process is the story [...] Why does due process matter? Because the massive powers of two arms of [the Swedish] government are being brought to bear against the individual whose liberty and reputation are at stake.” I would add: so is his life.

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For his part, Julian Assange is just as worried about what will happen to Bradley Manning, the alleged whistleblower, being held in horrific conditions which the US National Commission on Prisons calls “tortuous”. At 23, Private Manning is the world’s pre-eminent prisoner of conscience, having remained true to the Nuremberg Principle that every soldier has the right to “a moral choice”. His suffering mocks the notion of the land of the free.

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“Government whistleblowers”, said Barack Obama, running for president in 2008, “are part of a healthy democracy and must be protected from reprisal.” Obama has since pursued and prosecuted more whistleblowers than any other president in American history.

  John Pilger

Are you still with me? Did you get that? Barack Obama, whose golden (somewhat robotic) tongue showered hope on hundreds of thousands of American dupes who wanted to see government excess and corruption brought to an end, has done just the opposite.

Assange also told Pilger

”[P] ublishers and reporters were protected by the First Amendment that journalists took for granted. That’s being lost. The release of the Iraq and Afghanistan war logs, with their evidence of the killing of civilians, hasn’t caused this – it’s the exposure and embarrassment of the political class: the truth of what governments say in secret, how they lie in public; how wars are started.”

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[The] US is not WikiLeaks’ main “technological enemy”. “China is the worst offender. China has aggressive, sophisticated interception technology that places itself between every reader inside China and every information source outside China. We’ve been fighting a running battle to make sure we can get information through, and there are now all sorts of ways Chinese readers can get on to our site.”

We’re better than China. That’s encouraging.

When [I met Assange] in London last year, I said, “You are making some very serious enemies, not least of all the most powerful government engaged in two wars. How do you deal with that sense of danger?” His reply was characteristically analytical. “It’s not that fear is absent. But courage is really the intellectual mastery over fear – by an understanding of what the risks are, and how to navigate a path through them.”

A few courageous people. Once upon a time I might have been encouraged by that. Now, it feels more like martyrdom in the age of the Inquisition. Or Jesus on the road to Golgotha (since this is Sunday).

As the US Justice Department, in its hunt for Assange, subpoenas the Twitter and email accounts, banking and credit card records of people around the world – as if we are all subjects of the United States – much of the “free” media on both sides of the Atlantic direct their indignation at the hunted.

At least Assange has some “insurance,” which may prevent his actual crucifixion.

“We have never published as much as we are now. WikiLeaks is now mirrored on more than 2,000 websites. [...] If something happens to me or to WikiLeaks, ‘insurance’ files will be released. They speak more of the same truth to power, including the media. There are 504 US embassy cables on one broadcasting organisation and there are cables on Murdoch and Newscorp.”

Of course, that assumes that the internet is still standing.

I invite you to read the whole Pilger article, as it explains the situation with Sweden, among other things.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.