Wikileaks Founder Assange Force-Feeding Truth To World That Has No Stomach For It

http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/dvld0/wikileaks_founder_julian_assange_forcefeeding/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter


http://www.deathandtaxesmag.com/33545/julian-assange-life-is-hard-in-a-world-without-hippies/

News
Julian Assange: Life is Hard in a World Without Hippies
By Alex Moore Saturday, October 23, 2010

Julian Assange’s countercultural mission is having a hard time finding a home in a world without counterculture.

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Decades later, we don’t blame Ellsberg for telling the truth, we blame the government for being corrupt. We remember the Gulf Of Tonkin incident as a lie the government told, not as a good plan foiled by a leaky brat. Ellsberg was received as a hero, not a traitor.

But Ellsberg lived in a generation of hippies—a generation that valued integrity and the principle of truth—and Ellsberg’s revelation caught like wildfire.

Forty years later, Julian Assange steps onto the world stage with WikiLeaks as a twenty-first century Ellsberg. He’s nationless, garnering his information from the porous openings in the World Wide Web—an apt commentary on the modern world. And his operation leaks documents on a much larger scale than the 1,000 page Pentagon Papers. His revelations, including new information about the killings and torture in Iraq after Abu Ghraib, including 66,081 Iraqi civilian deaths, may be more shocking than those exposed by the Pentagon Papers. And yet all anyone seems to talk about is what a jerk the guy is.

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Assange may be homeless right now, seeking asylum with any country who will have him—he was recently denied citizenship in Sweden, and the New York Times describes him as being literally on the run after a brief stint in Iceland. But Assange’s real alienation comes from his ideological homelessness.

40 years later David Ellsberg describes himself as feeling a “kinship” with Assange, but that kinship is not materializing on a broader scale. Assange’s leaks do not inspire marches on Washington or palpable protests of any kind. President Barack Obama, for all his campaign rhetoric of transparency and integrity, hasn’t praised Assange as a champion of truth, and in fact the Pentagon is hoping to silence him. Even foreign governments whose agendas aren’t complicated by hiding military secrets are hesitant to take him in.

Assange may have been born at the wrong time. It’s as if he’s force-feeding truth to a world that has no stomach for it. An ally of no one, an ideological nomad, it’ll be interesting to see how long Assange’s voice keeps leaking the truth. Historically, leading voices of opposition—from Martin Luther King to Malcolm X to John Lennon—seem to have a way of getting silenced sooner or later.

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be disturbed or reminded what lies for them at the end.

which may well be describable by now as a largely tyrannical media-spun virtual reality.

richard nixon, jack anderson, and rise of washington's scandal culture"

he called jack anderson the wikileaks of his day--and pointed out that the title was no accident, or play on words--nixon, or at least his inner circle, had serious plans to poison anderson, or find some other way to kill him.

I truly hope assange has decent security.

I heard an interview with Feldstein on his book a week or so ago. Very interesting.

knew that tricky dick was one evil sob (as well as his inner circle) --and to think, the current crop of repukes makes that bunch look like pikers.

Assange had better be very careful.

is telling us. We have sensed it all the whole time.

We elected Obama, thinking he would have the strength to bring change. I guess he is the best we can get, but that is not saying much.

Sure, he has done some good things. But when it comes to core moral courage, the courage to call the American people to his side in rejecting the excesses of the military-industrial complex, Obama is sorely wanting.

So, Assange has done something wonderful for our children and for us. But we are just too exhausted and too disappointed to even acknowledge it. We are beaten.

Obama is sort of the last hope, and . . . .

Some other country has to fulfill the role that America claimed to be filling, that of the conscience of the world. America is just falling apart. Obama could save us but refuses to take the risks he would have to take to do it.

So, France? Netherlands? Germany? Russia? What country will finally call on the world to right the wrongs that have been and are being done. What country still has a soul?

Think about it; We as a group oppose the death penalty for sadistic serial murderers, but cheer the release of documents whose content will almost certainly result in the deaths of at least one of your countrymen/women. At least one, probably hundreds, and possibly THOUSANDS will die ON ALL SIDES before this is done because of the release of this information and before some President has the intestinal fortitude to end this failed policy of American intervention in the Middle East immediately and totally. "Hey, this is your President... pack up your shit and start coming home tomorrow". That's not going to happen though...

The number of people who die (whose nationalities will include every one of the Middle Eastern countries plus a number of others) because of the release of this information will continue to rise for a generation or more.

Good stuff that. The only rationalization you need to twist yourself into in order to make that OK is "collateral damage" is acceptable in order to achieve a goal.

Never forget that "collateral damage" can and will be used to describe anyone who gets in the way and gets hurt. The scary thing is that is how YOUR government feels. When will come the day that your entry into the category of "collateral damage" will be acceptable in order to implement some unpopular policy here in the US.

You Go Julian; and may you someday be called to answer for even ONE of the deaths you'll cause with this release, no matter WHOSE team they play for.

None. No evidence that it occurred with the Afghanistan War Logs and ALL names have been redacted from the Iraq War Logs.

BUT, it could save some lives, by preventing future atrocities, and ending the atrocities that are ongoing. No rationalization there at all. And people who have died and those who have lost loved ones deserve to have the truth.

Think about it. The public followed him into War, now they want a credible reason to believe they were deceived. Assange is giving them that reason.

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/opinion/todaysbuzz/os-wikileaks-todays-buzz-102510,0,5356916.story?track=orl-todays-buzz-discussion

and have voting machines, we have blogs, write articles and books, all of which are barely enough to off balance the great military industrial powers. We are ignored by the media and dismissed as whiners for demanding human rights and justice for war criminals and other collaborators. What we count on are people waking up, we need everyone we can get.

The corrupt are an enormous group of people, but we have to keep up the pressure and not give up, no matter how we are marginalized by the media. How we defeat these criminals will shape the next century, as a brutal violent world, or a world healthy and safe enough to live in.