THE LAST DITCH An Englishman returned after twenty years abroad blogs about liberty in Britain
Don't worry...
This is what teaching them to write got for us

Julian Assange: which side are you on?

Julian Assange: Sweden issues fresh arrest warrant for WikiLeaks founder | Media | The Guardian.

The most interesting thing about the Wikileaks story is not the information published (was anyone really naieve enough to be surprised?) but the responses of state power everywhere. Totalitarians, kleptocrats, democrats; their angry reactions barely differ. The criminal charges brought against Julian Assange in Sweden, for example, are not so much stitched up as haute couture. All the casual observer will recall is that he was accused of rape. So much for the benevolence of states.

If Assange has endangered lives in Afghanistan or elsewhere that is to be deplored, but most of the leaked material is merely embarrassing to politicians and their servants. It reveals them (to whose surprise?) to be petty, stupid and monumentally careless with our money. He has provided a useful litmus test. People you should like and trust admire his courage and worry about his future. People you should fear and despise call for his head.

Every state represents a dangerous concentration of power and resources, all too tempting for those in charge to deploy against those who irritate them. If Assange is able to name Litvinenko's killers, for example, who can doubt he is in danger of an expensive and painful death? Yet even social-democratic Sweden is prepared to trump up charges. He is a brave man taking great risks.

Hilary Clinton is coldly furious, but who ever doubted which side she is on when it comes to State vs. Citizen? Sarah Palin - supposed friend of the people - has unmasked herself too. A former advisor to the Canadian PM is calling for a hit, and Mr Harper does not disown him. At the other end of the political food chain, Iain Dale quivers with indignation. Look around you. All over the place, people are revealing their true colours. For this, Julian Assange has put himself in harm's way. It's an odd choice but, as Dr King said,

If you haven't found something worth dying for, you aren't fit to be living.

Good luck, Mr Assange. Watch your back.

Comments

Feed You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.

John B

Crushed and Tom Paine:

While one's enemy's enemy is not necessarily your friend, is your enemy's friend, your friend or enemy?

I think it is significant that the organisation he has been working through in the UK, and the one that raised his bail and has provided his base, is the Front Line Club.

Trooper Thompson

"Tom, you know damn well I'm a Trotskyist but if we want to tear down the corrupt morals of this system we need something morally better to put in it's place."

Yeah, something morally better than trotskyism!

Crushed

You're stung response, Mr Adams suggests you would tell a man's wife he's cheating on her...

Why?

Would you report a man to the police if you were in the car with him and he drove at eighty miles an hour?

So why would you do it?

Morals?

Crap. You'd do it out of envy.

JGAdams

> Come on, Tom! You know as well as I do the man who tells your wife you're cheating on her (not saying you are, just an example) isn't a moralist, he's just a sneak and a troublemaker.

...oh wow, you're an asshole.

Crushed

'My enemies enemy is my friend'

This Machiavellian logic may be of practical use short term but only if acknowledged for what it is. It's one of those double standards, as for example cosying up to Stalin to fight Hitler. But it's a fallacy. Your enemy's enemy is NOT your friend, he's a tool you use against your enemy and when you have defeated your enemy may turn on you.

In this instance, may I put it another way. The blogosphere is a very good challenge to what you call the craven attitudes sometimes showed by the MSM.

Sometimes. But in some ways, it stoops to the the very worst dirty tricks played by these people and this would be such an example.

No one can claim that these leeks are in the public interest. Much of it is scurrilous gossip which reveals- shock horror- that the things people say in private aren't as polite and diplomatic as they say in public.

Well, that's reality. Human existence necessitates we all pretend to like and respect eachother. Privately, we often think quite the opposite to what we publically say. It stands to reason world leaders and the like have private opinions and private lives. It is not in our interest to know what those opinions are because revealing them actually poisins the well. It makes it harder for the general workings of human interactions to go on.

It's the mentality of the snitch 'Guess what such and such says about you behind your back?'

Come on, Tom! You know as well as I do the man who tells your wife you're cheating on her (not saying you are, just an example) isn't a moralist, he's just a sneak and a troublemaker.

Far be it from me to find anything goof to say about the French, because usually to my mind if you find something the French do but no one else does it's inevitably the stupidest thing anyone ever thought of, but in one instance they're right.

They have sensible laws on invasion of privacy. You can't publish stuff about people unless you can prove that people DO have a right to know, that the public interest outweighs the damage done to someone's privacy.

For example, it's perfectly justifiable for me to out James Higham as a hypocrite by pointing out that for a good many years he was shagging a girl old enough to be his daughter whilst in Russia because the sanctimonious hypocrite likes to pretend online that he's a protector of vulnerable women when the facts prove otherwise; he preys on young women whilst accusing others who actually would never shag a woman that much younger than them of doing so.

That would, in fact, be perfectly responsible, because it's pointing out that a man banging on about the sexual morals of others has, himself, the morals of a sewer rat and masks it under a veneer of Christianity that is completely incompatible with abusing a position of power inappropriately to gain romantic affection from women significantly younger than himself.

That would be an example of responsible leaking, because it is warning people that the guy has no moral compass which would make him say to a woman under forty 'You're too young for me to have sex with, I will not abuse my responsible position as an older man'.

What Assange has done is leak a load of scurrilous gossip to gain attention. Ok, I don't much like the system. But with Freedom of speech come responsibilities.

Tom


There's no evidence he has hacked anything. Again you are falling for State smears. Wikileaks gets its data from disgruntled or ashamed state insiders so any misbehaviour is on the part of government employees. Essentially he's doing good investigative journalism of the kind our lame, craven, statist media neglects. You pick your heroes your way. For me, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. The more they hate and revile him, the more I admire him. 

Katabasis

"What we're talking about here is hacking and theft. Just because the people he stole from "

Absolute lies.

Assange hasn't "hacked" or "stolen" anything. He's the messenger, not the leaker.

Crushed

I was actually being flippant but actually, dealing with the Assange issue...

What we're talking about here is hacking and theft. Just because the people he stole from happen to be a government doesn't make it anything other than theft.

Yes, freedom of speech is a good thing. But think on this; if Obama's e-mails can't be protected from the likes of Assange, who is protecting YOUR privacy?

This guy is NOT a fighter for freedom against corrupt government; if he were he'd be out there with something constructive to say himself. He doesn't.

He's just a hacker trying to make a name for himself by robbing embarrassing e-mails and directing attention to himself by embarrassing others.

That sort of yaboo politics is not political activism.

Tom, you know damn well I'm a Trotskyist but if we want to tear down the corrupt morals of this system we need something morally better to put in it's place.

Abd Assange is not that. He may not be a rapist, that's yet to be proven, but he's a man who will rob, deceive and expose the innocent for personal self glory.

If the cause of liberty does not choose it's heroes wisely, the tyrants win, Tom.

Tom

You are falling for the smear. Both women in the Assange case have said the sex was consensual.

Crushed

Well, if true, he needs to be dealt with. Rapists can't be allowed to walk free.

On the issue of morals, Tom, what would you think if I told you a certain blogger, while in Russia had a long sexual relationship with a woman twenty years his junior then tried pretending online to be a protector of women?

The guy is in his fifties, she was in her twenties when it started.

In his own words it was a 'volatile relationship' with 'intense feelings'.

Would you not think it even worse if this borderline paedophile then went round online judging others for their sexual morals?

Any opinions, Tom?

jameshigham

He's a very brave man, with Them after him globally.

Andrew Withers

The State hates to be embarrassed that is in their eyes a capital crime.

Evil is often banale

Trooper Thompson

Katabasis,

Ignorance is strength, as our leaders teach.

Katabasis

Very well put indeed Tom. A Litmus test indeed. Now the monsters that rule us, supposedly in benevolence, are revealing their fangs for all to see:

http://news.antiwar.com/2010/12/03/state-dept-warning-students-not-to-read-share-wikileaks/

"Columbia University’s Office of Career Service is said to have passed around an email warning students that if they read WikiLeaks or make comments related to the releases it would render them ineligible for any government jobs in the future, based on a warning sent by a former student working at the State Department.

State Department spokeswoman Nicole Thompson insisted the warning wasn’t an official Department directive but added that making public comments or posting links to WikiLeaks content wasn’t “a good move for any US citizen.”

Diogenes

Lol. I should be so lucky.

Trooper Thompson

Diogenes,

it wasn't when a condom split, was it?

Diogenes

Twice this week random people have asked me if I am 'that Wikileaks fella'. I've taken to wearing a hat.

Trooper Thompson

Oh, I thought you were asking him! You're right about everyone unmasking themselves. I think we should remember what it is they are angry about, namely that the peasants (us) got to find out what they say when we're not around. It has punctured their egos.

Nevertheless, I think we must be wary about hidden agendas. Leaks sometimes come from whistle-blowers, but very often they come from elements within the government. For all we know, this could be due to a power struggle inside the American Kremlin.

The comments to this entry are closed.