printThis is from my new, WND.COM column, “Assange is us”:
” … What is top-secret to some, however, is open-source for others. First-Amendment jurisprudence is … clear-cut with respect to the great guerrilla journalism of WikiLeaks.
WikiLeaks operators have committed no crime in publishing what is undeniably true, newsworthy information. Antsy America has no jurisdiction over a foreign entity (WikiLeaks) and its proprietor (Julian Assange). The Wall Street Journal’s Law Blog confirmed that U.S. law looks upon WikiLeaks as ‘a passive recipient of the material.’ ‘Most First Amendment lawyers would say that preventing the publication of material is justified only where absolutely necessary to prevent almost immediate and imminent disaster. It’s an extremely high standard,’ Jack Balkin, a First Amendment expert at Yale Law, told the WSJ. …
… Why has this individual become the enemy? Should Americans not have an inkling, by now, of what it’s like to live at the mercy of the federal government’s imperially imposed edicts? Aren’t we all being treated as potential terrorists at the nation’s federally controlled airports, by the TSA, an arm of the government now stalking Assange?”
The complete column is “Assange is us.”
The Second Edition of Broad Sides: One Woman’s Clash With A Corrupt Society (the print edition may be purchased here) is now also available on Kindle.
UPDATE (Dec. 10): The reader below (see Comments Section) says Assange provided the identities of “pro-freedom, pro-democracy activists in places like Afghanistan, Iran, Venezu.” First, provide proof of such online Wikileaks.
Second: Let me get this. The minions in the military may freely ad-lib about the subjects they’ve “liberated” (and sicced upon one another) in far-flung places. Conversely, the publisher of this stuff—which was forsaken for every military tom, dick and harry to read—must be extra careful in its publication. The statist will always apply a different standard to his cherished government. Frederick Bastiat the statist is not.
But then the reader conflates, 1) democracy and freedom. 2) The wrecking ball we applied to Afghanistan and Iraq with freedom. When you hold 1 & 2 to be true, your premises are shaky from the start.
Why is Julian Assange the enemy? Because truth is to The Big State as holy water is to vampires. (Thanks to Robert Higgs for this phrasing, from another context.)
I want to thank Mr. Assange for his bravery and wish him well.
Oh, I don’t know – maybe because he has given away the names and identities of pro-freedom, pro-democracy activists in places like Afghanistan, Iran, Venezuela?
Just a thought.
I would caution those who are getting giddy over Assange. The enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend, and we still don’t know what the man’s motivations are. If he is a true devotee of liberty and is willing to expose all governmental malfeasance regardless of content, then he should be applauded. If on the other hand he is a left-wing agent whose purpose is simply to harm the West (as, frankly, seems more likely), then his leaking of governmental malfeasance is incidental. And if it comes out that the latter is true, then his conviction under a fanatically leftist Swedish law will be poetic justice.
A friend commented to me the other day that Assange is a terrorist. I didn’t bother to argue, seeing that he gets his views of the world from tv news. This man is salt of the earth, good people, an ordained minister, totally debt free, husband, father etc. Definitely not a liberal kook. But like the vast majority of Americans he is ‘disinformed’ from getting his information from a corrupted and controlled news media. The US government cannot stand up to scrutiny.
I think it’s a good thing for it’s actions to be exposed. If enough exposure occurs, we will probably bring back public hangings.
When I was in Military Intelligence, there was very little classified information that we had that the bad guys didn’t already know. I felt that most of the security procedures were there to insure that the citizens didn’t know what their government was up to. looking at these leaked files, it seems that nothing has changed.
The government refuses to abide by the Constitution.
The government wages wars that have miniscule or less relationship to defending the freedom and lives and property of Americans.
The government keeps “secrets” – of which maybe 99% are not important or should not be secret.
The government is NEGLIGENT to monitor if one or a few people are downloading hundreds of thousands of these documents!
There are, certainly, legitimate secrets (nuclear launch codes, for example) – but what we have is a political theater of the absurd. In that sense, it is just like the TSA “security theater”. Meanwhile, the “cure” to Bradley Manning will be more costly to the government than the “disease” (of the leaks).
P.S. By my calculation, Richard “Shoebomber” Reid has caused $12 Billion of shoe fondling time waste for his “firecracker in the shoe” stunt – more damage than blowing the airplane. [4 billion boardings x 3 minutes/boarding x $1/minute]
Assange is not me. I may have published some of the material but not all of it.
Embarrassing governments and exposing corruption is a noble pursuit but I would never disseminate any classified information that could possibly put our soldiers, intel assets, or strategic locations at risk.
However, Assange is not the problem, the lax security of our government systems in this so-called war time is the real issue, what ever happened to “loose lips sink ships”?
Whatever one thinks about the current use of our Guys and Guns one thing is very clear: Anyone in the US military or Government responsible for giving classified documents to outside interests should be on trial for treason and upon conviction the tried and true sentencing guidelines from the past should prevail.
A great example of the US government’s tentacles in other countries can be seen with Marc Emery…a Canadian citizen deported by the Canadian government to the US to face charges for selling pot seeds.
Governments around the world generally work in a synergistic manner…what’s the one thing a pack of wolves can agree on? – eat sheep!
Hear, hear. The reaction of our corrupted ideologues to WikiLeaks is much like the Sadducee (conservatives) and the Pharisee (liberals), who were quite put out with one another most of the time, but eagerly banded together against the One they perceived as a common threat to their authority. In the end, it saved neither of them, nor their Sanhedrin (government). Assange is us. If we pervert “the Law” to condemn him, we risk suffering the same fate as Judaea, and ultimately, Rome itself. Thanks Ilana.
@Hugo Schmidt on 12.10.10 3:26 am – Please substantiate your allegation of name and identity revelations by Cablegate. List each cable specifically for reference purposes.
@Bill on 12.10.10 6:22 am – You allege that Wikileaks has released ‘all of it.’ Please substantiate your claim. As of 1800 GMT on this date, 12/10/10, Wiki has released 1,269 of 251,287 cables.
Reference: http://213.251.145.96/cablegate.html
Bill, the lax security is merely a symptom, not the problem. The real problem, and one rarely raised, is our imperial overreach. A gigantic empire of bases coupled with our incessant meddling makes the police state tactics and secretive government possible.
End the empire, bring the troops home, and mind our own business. Only then can we reclaim our country and our lost liberties.
Ms. Mercer, you hit this one right on the head. Happy holidays and good health to you.
“he has given away the names of pro-democracy activists…”
(1) Did Assange really release names – or is this just blather according to Joe Lieberman? The same Joe Lieberman who claimed there were 27,000,000 Iraqis against 1,000 “terrorists” (yet somehow we needed to have 150,000 troops to protect people who outnumbered the terrorists by 2700 to 1 !!).
(2) How “active” can these “activists” be if their activity is completely secret. The Russians KNEW who Sakharov was because he was publicly dissenting. Are these people really “activists” or just some corrupt stoolies taking some money from the US (and possibly feeding us rubbish in return)??
You asked for some proof:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/7917955/Wikileaks-Afghanistan-Taliban-hunting-down-informants.html
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/06/07/100607fa_fact_khatchadourian?currentPage=all
And so on.
Oh, and I’d almost forgotten – as you seem to have – this post:
http://barelyablog.com/?p=12266
[What is this spot-on comment about Wikipedia bios supposed to prove? For a “scientist” your thought process is messy.—IM]
This is an issue I struggle with. Not so much the latest set of Wikileaks but, more so the previous. In some ways the latest set of leaks confirmed what many of us already knew or at least suspected.
In many ways the Israelis were vindicated when it comes to the Middle East. There have been rumors that Israel and Saudi Arabia had worked out a deal to give Israeli aircraft unfettered use of Saudi airspace should they decide to attack Iran by air. So the fact that the Saudi’s were encouraging Obama to “take care of Iran” is not particularly surprising. You’d think with all of he aircraft we’ve sold the Saudi’s they might be able to do it on THEIR OWN. However, we know from recent previous history that the Saudis’s like to delegate their defense to others (Desert Storm).
I understand the first amendment so I understand why the WSJ would say it would be difficult to prosecute someone for information that had been leaked to them.
Clearly the Military needs more discipline within the ranks. By definition the major responsibility of the Military is to defend he country and when necessary wage war. War is a dirty but, disciplined business.
I do not consider Assange a hero as I’m still suspicious of his motives. I still suspect he is a “lefty” at heart. Although I have not researched enough to prove it… However, he has provided us an interesting view into the world of diplomatic cables and diplomacy.
PS Having the US Military defend our border would be an interesting concept would it not?
[No, Posse Comitatus.]
@Hugo Schmidt on 12.11.10 3:11 am
How you have associated two media articles which contain unsubstantiated allegations to facts is beyond me.
The cables, not opinion pieces.
BTW – Wikipedia and Wikileaks are entirely different entities.
[And Hugo professes to know something about the scientific method. Trust readers of this site to do the work I don’t have time to do.]
You know as soon as I made that comment the wheels of my memory went to work leading me to believe that I had made an error on that one. (Military guarding the border) Thanks for pointing it out to me. Also thanks for the link to some of your earlier work on Asange. BTW when I read the Pentagon Papers when I was in High School it really pointed out to me in addition what Nixon had done clearly, JFK and LBJ did not have clean hands!
Um, Hugo, you were asked for references to the specific cables that substantiate your allegations…not links to “media” organizations that spout random conclusions: your first link goes on to say “Information from the documents could reveal…” – “could” is not equal to “did” or “does”. Your second link bogged down my computer to the point of crashing…my guess is that it is of the same caliber as #1. It seems that you have “forgotten” a great deal.
Due to the shear volume of the cables, Assange could not be expected to sift through them, sanitizing them of all references to “informants” anyways. Besides, given the muslim track record, my guess is that most of these “informants” are mis-informants trying to use the occupying US military to gain the advantage for their respective factions. Just like the Salem witch hunts: you don’t get along with your neighbor, so claim he’s a witch.
Well, I could explain in some detail the hows, wheres and whyfores – but it’s the oddest thing, every time there’s a comment that casts some doubt on Ms. Mercer’s infallibility, it is lost to the ether. It really is the oddest bug…
[Learn a thing or two about property rights, buy yourself a web-domain, thereon you can spout second-hander neoconnerie, in addition to your odd take on the scientific method, exposed here by readers who have the time to follow you “evidence.” I am sure your blog will be as populated/frequented as the moon.—IM]
Hugo, to my knowledge, Ilana never claimed “infallibility”. She does her research and applies precise logic to the data gathered (hence leaving little room for error) – don’t fault her because you don’t see her making the same gross mistakes that you do.
The fact that we all have to bear your random ramblings on this site is proof that our host is allowing your comments to go through.
P.S. what kind of “scientist” are you Hugo? My expertise is electronics engineering (primarily analog, some digital), software engineering (including RISC and x86 Machine Code, C++, JavaScript, VBScript, Object Pascal, Python, and Lua, to name a few). Power conversion technology is my primary field of interest. Admittedly, these fields all hinge on logic and reasoning, which is why logic and reason are recognized and appreciated in the few places my eyes see them.
P.P.S. what does “whyfores” mean? – my unabridged Webster dictionary knows nothing of this word, neither does Wiktionary. Is this a scientific term?