The State's Impending Assault on Julian Assange and WikiLeaks

WikiLeaks, the renown international news media organization of ill repute for its role in declassifying the American Empire’s top secret government documents and videos of the Empire’s Wars with Iraq and Afghanistan that were clandestinely hidden from the American public, is once again in the cross-hairs of the vile State and its hawkish shills on both sides of the ideological and political aisles. Statist conservatives and liberals are by and large outraged at the organization for its latest release of a set of ten documents unveiling more than 250,000 diplomatic cables.

It is no secret that WikiLeaks is the most reviled, the most despised, the most defamed, and the most uproarious entity by the United States government. The organization is known not only to the U.S., but also to the entire world. Why? Simply because it has the gall to open and disclose files, videos, and other documented evidence of criminal wrongdoing by the American Empire that many libertarians, anarchists, anarcho-capitalists, minarchists, constitutionalists, voluntaryists, left-libertarians, agorists, and other free agents in the libertarian movement have known about for years. Interestingly enough, other governments of many other nations have remained silent on their sentiments over the hubbub, yet that was to be expected nonetheless. To paraphrase Salon.com blogger Glenn Greenwald (who made this a vital point in his post yesterday), this shows that no other organization has generated this much fury, rage, and contempt for an entity as much as the organization’s nasty, diabolical critics have. It goes further than that. Groups that expose clandestine evidence of the United States partaking in criminal wrongdoing are more despised than those in power who commit vile and diabolical war criminal acts utilize secrecy as a formidable weapon to preserve, shield, protect, defend, and guard their supreme legitimacy.

The statist conservatives are fired up over the release of these documents, which they claim should have remained clandestine and left alone. These thugs are now calling for the murder of WikiLeaks head honcho Julian Assange without any criminal charges pending against him, due process, an arraignment, and a fair trial. Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin lashed out at him by turning to her Twitter page, caterwauling in part:
 

Inexplicable: I recently won in court to stop my book “America by Heart” from being leaked,but US Govt can’t stop Wikileaks’ treasonous act?
6:25 AM Nov 29th via Twitter for BlackBerry® Retweeted by 100+ people

Then she writes a Facebook note titled “Serious Questions about the Obama Administration’s Incompetence in the Wikileaks Fiasco,” in which she whines in part:
 

[Assange's] past posting of classified documents revealed the identity of more than 100 Afghan sources to the Taliban. Why was he not pursued with the same urgency we pursue al Qaeda and Taliban leaders?

It’s quite convenient for Palin to libel, smear, and lie about Assange with this following statement:
 

He is an anti-American operative with blood on his hands.

(Interestingly enough, the Pentagon responded to that claim, rejecting it because it is simply untrue. Perhaps someone should send Palin a memo about that.)

Townhall.com statist conservative columnist John Hawkins published a column yesterday morning entitled “5 Reasons The CIA Should Have Already Killed Julian Assange,” in which he enumerated 5 reasons why the CIA should have already taken out Assange in broad daylight. Other statist conservative critics such as Seth Lipsky (whose column was posted by Jeffrey Goldberg) [who also accused the WikiLeaks founder of "treason" illiterally]), Mark Thiessen, Congressman Pete King, National Review‘s Jonah Goldberg, and yesterday’s Wall Street Journal branded Assange as a “traitor” and should be assassinated without a trial or due process of law.

Speaking of Goldberg (who asserts that he opposes fascism), he inquired more than two weeks ago as to why Assange wasn’t killed in the first place. In case anyone didn’t catch it the first time around, he asked again:
 

Why wasn’t Assange garroted in his hotel room years ago?

It gets worse. Today former Arkansas Mike Huckabee has urged for the execution of Assange, further stating that the release of the embassy documents has placed “American lives at risk.” According to RawStory.com, Huckabee states in part:
 

‘Whoever in our government leaked that information is guilty of treason,’ Huckabee said. ‘I think anything less than execution is too kind a penalty.’

Additionally, he asserts:
 

They’ve put relationships that will take decades to rebuild at risk, and they knew full well that they were handling sensitive documents, they were entrusted and anyone who had access to that level of information was not only a person who understood what their rules were, but they also signed under oath a commitment that they would not violate it. They did.

Furthermore, he opines:
 

‘And I believe they have committed treason against this country, and any lives they endanger, they’re personally responsible for and the blood is on their hands,’ he added.

Tom Flanagan, a political scientist who is a former adviser to Canadian Prime Minister Steven Harper, even called for Assange’s murder on CBC News Network, which prompted a shocked and dumbfounded reply from the anchor of the show that was heard as saying, “Tom, that’s pretty harsh stuff! Just for the record, that’s pretty harsh stuff!”

Here’s a YouTube of Flannigan’s remarks, which have been regarded as a “shockingly flippant” fatwa against Assange that aired on Canadian television yesterday at 8:38 a.m.:

Interestingly enough, Flannigan recanted his statement hours later:
 

‘I regret that I made a glib comment about a serious issue,’ Flanagan said Tuesday in a statement to CBC News. ‘If Mr. Assange is arrested on the recently announced Interpol warrant, I hope [he] receives a fair trial and due process of law.’

A “glib comment,” huh? Really, Mr. Flannigan? That’s a pathetic excuse, considering you just called for violence against a peaceful individual who believes in honest transparency from not only the U.S. government but all governments throughout the world. Perhaps you should have thought of that before you made that outrageously disgusting statement on the Canadian airwaves. That statement alone, while not covered by the First Amendment in the U.S. because he made the comments on Canadian TV in his native homeland (where there is no First Amendment-protected right to free speech), is tantamount to using free speech as an excuse to incite violence against a human being who has not committed violence against other individuals in any way.

The reason these vile, despicable jackbooted thugs want Assange dead is clear: the WikiLeaks leader had the gall to release the State’s own documents to the public, as he and many advocates of Liberty believe the public has the right to know what vital information the files contain. That data pertains to the U.S. government’s illegal wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the diplomatic discussions between various embassies around the world, and the truth about the various actions of the State which the government wants to conceal from the American people. Tyrants like Jonah Goldberg, Lipsky, Flannigan, Palin, King, Huckabee, Jeffrey Goldberg, Mark Theissen, John Hawkins, and many others on that side of the aisle will do whatever it takes to get rid of Assange, Private First Class Bradley Manning (who gave Julian the 260,000 embassy cables documents and the Collateral Murder a.k.a. the July 12, 2007 Baghdad airstrike and Granai airstrikes videos), and any one who stands in their way to protect “national security,” which is really the State’s security.

Here are the Collateral Murder and Granai airstrikes videos:

The other group of people who want Assange and WikiLeaks on the chopping block is the statist progressives, who are the angriest and most incensed of the bunch. For instance, Hillary Clinton, who according to the WikiLeaks documents has been allegedly engaging in espionage against the United Nations, calls the cables release:
 

[A]n attack on the international community, the alliances and partnerships, the conventions and negotiations that safeguard global security and advance economic prosperity.

It gets uglier between Assange and Clinton. Assange called for Clinton’s resignation, which alarmed White House press secretary Robert Gibbs who vehemently called it “absurd.” It’s apparent that the statists are becoming exceedingly desperate that they have shut down public access to the files stored in the State Department’s computers, which have resulted in cutting WikiLeaks off from the U.S. government’s servers. In response, WikiLeaks was forced to rent Amazon.com’s computer servers so that its website could resume operations at once. Why? Because the U.S. government launched attacks on the stateless-supporting organization’s website, effectively rendering it neutralized. This is the Empire’s massive attack on free speech yet, although this wasn’t the first time that has transpired.

To make matters worse, Interpol has called for the arrest of Assange to face allegations of rape charges brought by two Swedish women. According to The New York Times:
 

The accusations were first made against Mr. Assange after he traveled to Sweden in mid-August and had brief relationships with two Swedish women.

According to accounts they gave to the police and friends, each had consensual sexual encounters with Mr. Assange that became nonconsensual. One said that Mr. Assange ignored her appeals to stop after a condom broke. The other said that she and Mr. Assange had begun a sexual encounter using a condom, but that Mr. Assange did not comply with her appeals to stop when it was no longer in use.

The charges certainly are serious but are rather dubious at the same time. It seems very convenient for these two women to charge him with rape on the heels of the cables release if these two women actually exist, and if these incidents really happened the way they described it. Assange himself denies the accusations, which is fathomable given the odd timing of the release of the charges pending against him and that his relationships with the women were, according to him, consensual. Even former Australian intelligence official and current independent member of the Australian Parliament Andrew Wilkie doesn’t buy into the charges, theorizing that they “could definitely be a set-up.”

Currently, the Obama administration wants to prosecute him for espionage under the Espionage Act of 1917, due to the fact that he can’t be tried for “treason,” because he’s not an American citizen. Extradition may be difficult as Assange’s whereabouts are primarily unknown, even though speculation has it that he is living somewhere in the UK.

Even if the Department of Justice wants him on a governmental silver platter, prosecuting him on the grounds of espionage alone will be extremely difficult. Greenwald notes on his Twitter that MSNBC commentator Chuck Todd is correct on this:
 

He’s right: RT @emptywheel “To his credit, @ChuckTodd noted that any prosecution of Assange would justify prosecution of Woodward, too.”

The idea that the State has a “right” to privacy is laughable. After all, the attempt to take out WL is not about protecting the lives of all Americans. It’s about protecting the life of the State from any political elephants or eggs it always has on its face.

But more importantly, it sends a disturbing message to us all: “You can’t make some omelets without cracking a few governmental eggs.” Can the statists stop it? They could, but it will be so unlikely, given that they hardly ever care what happens in the final analysis and the ends always justifies the means. That should never be discounted for any reason.

No matter how you slice and dice it, this is the state’s impending assault on Julian Assange and his stateless organization known simply as WikiLeaks. Obama, the Democrats, and the Republicans are for the outright crucifixion and persecution of Assange, WikiLeaks, and all who have been and are a part of it must be called on it at any time whatsoever.

The future of human liberty largely depends on it.

Update: Amazon.com, which picked up WikiLeaks yesterday after the State Department shut down its entire mainframe thereby cutting the stateless-supporting organization from continuing to hack into its server and retrieve more classified and videos from the system, has decided to drop WikiLeaks from its rent-a-server system, because it caved in to political pressure from the U.S. federal government. According to The New York Times:

The move to drop WikiLeaks came shortly after members of the Senate’s Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee pressed the company to explain its relationship with WikiLeaks. The site WikiLeaks had previously been using went down for several hours after an Internet attack over the weekend, prompting the group to switch over to an Amazon host site, which rents out bandwidth and other services.

Apparently, dark forces within the government has begun to direct its attack on the company. It appears that Senator Joe Lieberman (I-CT) issued a statement to the press, in which he is taking legal and political action against Amazon for its rapport with the organization. He decrees in the following:

WASHINGTON – Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Joe Lieberman, ID-Conn., Wednesday issued the following statement after Amazon.com decided to terminate its relationship with Wikileaks. After reading press reports that Amazon was hosting the Wikileaks website, Committee staff contacted Amazon Tuesday for an explanation.

‘This morning Amazon informed my staff that it has ceased to host the Wikileaks website. I wish that Amazon had taken this action earlier based on Wikileaks’ previous publication of classified material. The company’s decision to cut off Wikileaks now is the right decision and should set the standard for other companies Wikileaks is using to distribute its illegally seized material. [Emphasis added.] I call on any other company or organization that is hosting Wikileaks to immediately terminate its relationship with them. [More emphasis added.] Wikileaks’ illegal, outrageous, and reckless acts have compromised our national security and put lives at risk around the world. No responsible company – whether American or foreign – should assist Wikileaks in its efforts to disseminate these stolen materials. I will be asking Amazon about the extent of its relationship with Wikileaks and what it and other web service providers will do in the future to ensure that their services are not used to distribute stolen, classified information.’

In other words, Joe Lieberman is the reason why Amazon backed off on its support for WikiLeaks out of fear of governmental reprisal from the statists in power. Amazon didn’t want to take the potential legal and political risks that would more than likely arise in the fall-out, and it more than likely didn’t want to be legally charged with “aiding and betting a ‘terrorist’ organization,” so it took the easy way out and give in to the state, without considering that the First Amendment protects them and WikiLeaks on constitutional grounds.

But still, it doesn’t excuse Amazon’s decision to drop WikiLeaks, even if the State would have gone after them or anyone who supported the news organization in any form. To retreat from supporting, assisting, and helping the group when the U.S. government and the entire world are at a critical juncture is a sign that Amazon is nothing but a whore for the State, not to mention a coward. As WikiLeaks said about Amazon’s call to remove the organization’s account on their servers on its Twitter page:

If Amazon are so uncomfortable with the first amendment, they should get out of the business of selling books.

Hear, hear WikiLeaks! You won’t get an argument from me on that standpoint alone!

Update II: WL has now returned to its original Swedish host Banhof.

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