Friday, December 10, 2010

Our Fight for Information Will Survive the Assault on Julian Assange

With the case against Julian Assange weakening, as at least one of his accusers appears to have backed down, we have been assured that even if Assange goes to prison, WikiLeaks will continue to keep citizens informed.

What is interesting, is the reaction to WikiLeaks and it's founder.

The governments' response is predictable, especially in the U.S., but Assange is quickly gaining a folk hero status.

As one letter in the London Independent confirms: Keep Assange From the Lynch Mob
The US wants to extradite Julian Assange from Sweden to try him for "espionage". Assange is not a terrorist, nor is he a spy. He is simply the founder of an organisation publishing information that not only embarrasses the US and its allies, but makes the public aware of how duplicitous our governments are. He cannot be charged or tried by any government on these grounds – unless of course we wish to see a return to Stalinist Russia or Nazi Germany.

The hysterical reaction to WikiLeaks and its very careful release of information is worrying. More than one high-profile person in the US and elsewhere have voiced their desire to see Assange killed. One would hope that Britain does not support assassination. It certainly doesn't support the death penalty, but, that aside, this country should not and cannot legally be party to "rendering" Assange to Sweden in the knowledge that he will then be sent to the US, where he could face assassination or execution.
His army continues to grow, made up of people from all ages and social strata, including a 16-year-old, recently arrested for hacking into the MasterCard site.

The root cause of this war is corporate media and the silencing of journalists. If that climate did not exist, we would never have heard of Julian Assange, and he would never have felt the need to go to such lengths to inform the global public.

And this bloodless war will not end until we once again have a free flow of information.

The media inadvertently created this folk hero, and now they have no idea how to control him, without drawing attention to their own failings.
"There are only two forces that can carry light to all the corners of the globe... the sun in the heavens and the Associated Press down here." - Mark Twain

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