[ExI] Who is safe? was Re: Wikileaks

[Darren Greer]

>Since Australia has troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Australians could
probably charge Assange with treason.<

I wonder why none of those claiming "Assange must die" or something like
bother to mention the fact that if Wikileaks is through some legal or
national security bullshit slight-of-hand held criminally, civically or even
morally responsible for leaking the documents, then the New York Times, The
London Guardian and host of other newspapers should be as well. It was a
joint effort: the mainstream press worked with Wikileaks in going through
the documents to decide which should be leaked, and which should be held
back due to security concerns. I imagine editorial board meetings at the
Times are interesting these days. Those guys are smart enough to know the
score, and politically savvy enough to know what they can print and what
they can't.

Wikileaks takes the fall, and yet they were interested enough to see what
would happen to stir the pot. You can't trust the news, because in this
case, the news is the news. I don't recall anyone trying to shut down the
Washington Post because they leaked Watergate. Perhaps Nixon and Kissinger
should have taken just that tack: savage the fifth estate and ignore the
content of the revelations as "harmful."  And like most major scandals,
nothing in the end will get resolved in the mind of the public because
people will just get "sick" of the story and wish it would go away. Meantime
governments will try and pass some draconian international law that will
protect their operational freedoms by limiting those of their citizens.

I'm not sick of hearing about it. I'm fairly sick of hearing ordinary people
repeat the evening news party line that Wikileaks is responsible because
they "
put us all at risk."  I keep thinking of that prescient quip by Benjamin
Franklin that states: "Any nation that sacrifices liberty for security
deserves neither, and will lose both."

Darren

On Sun, Dec 12, 2010 at 9:44 AM, David Lubkin <lubkin at unreasonable.com>wrote:

> Stathis wrote:
>
>  I think Keith was talking about the original leaker, a US soldier, not
>> Assange. But in any case, Australia has been so consistently close to the US
>> in foreign policy for so long that Australians may as well feel the same
>> responsibility as US citizens. One of the WikiLeaks documents shows a major
>> figure in the current Australian federal government effectively spying on
>> his own party for the Americans, and my impression of the reaction is that
>> this isn't even seen as particularly surprising or concerning here.
>>
>
> Since Australia has troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Australians could
> probably charge Assange with treason.
>
> The public discussion here in the US has focused on our Constitution and
> legal principles. But Assange has angered the Powers That Be of assorted
> governments, with differing legal standards, punctiliousness, and comfort
> with extra-judicial violent solutions.
>
> And some of them have long memories. I suspect he will be at risk for the
> rest of his life.
>
> But he did make it to an SNL skit last night, played by Bill Hader.
>
>
> -- David.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> extropy-chat mailing list
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>



-- 
"In the end that's all we have: our memories - electrochemical impulses
stored in eight pounds of tissue the consistency of cold porridge." -
Remembrance of the Daleks
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20101212/58cd0afe/attachment.html>