Don’t minimize for a minute the gravity of Julian Assange’s crime associated with the WikiLeaks disclosures. Whereas an ordinary criminal – a tax evader, a bank fraudster, a child molester, even a Mafia chieftain or the head of a Colombian drug cartel – might seek and eventually find refuge from the long arm of the law in Switzerland or the Cayman Islands, provided of course they had the right kind of connections, clout, and wherewithal, no such luck awaits poor Mr. Assange, I’m afraid.
We’ve long learned since 9/11 there is no greater crime against humanity than a crime against the state, no matter how benevolent or rogue the state. It’s as if all modern states, totalitarian or democratic, consider it the greatest affront whenever even one if them is singled out as the chief perpetrator of duplicitous, behind-the-scenes stately dealings; a collective guilt syndrome, I suppose. Which is why one must view Mr. Assange’s recent request for political asylum in Ecuador as an act of desperation. If we overlook the irony for the moment, hell, even Iran or North Korea would be certain to deny the request, and they’re ideological enemies.
Let’s face it, in the eyes of today’s world powers, great or small, Mr. Assange had committed an unpardonable sin: for in attacking the institution of the state, even the most hated and the most resented of all states, he had attacked them all. Julian Assange, my friends, is a doomed man.
It’s not exactly as though an equitable solution could not be found. For one thing, the Swedish authorities could well consent to interrogate Mr. Assange on British soil without necessarily compromising the integrity or the outcome of the investigation; with the proviso, of course, that once the results were to be found less than satisfactory, he’d face immediate deportation on yet-to-be specified charges. Or barring that, he could have been granted safe passage to Sweden, safe from the threat of extradition, that is.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - El Bicho
No doubt govts are nervous as the sharing of info becomes increasingly easier and technology advances. Interesting the way Assange's story ties in with Manning and his trial.
2 - Anarcissie
I would think that if the U.S. leadership intended to kill Assange they would have done it by now; they certainly would not have been inhibited by notions of legality and due process. The alternative to assassination would be some kind of show trial which would not be to the advantage of Mr. O's current faux-Left positioning, so I don't expect that to happen, at least not before the election.
3 - roger nowosielski
A couple of links:
(1) "Julian Assange's artful dodge."
(2) segment Amy Goodman show, June 20
(3) an interview, Reuters
4 - Glenn Contrarian
Ana -
Mr. O's current faux-Left positioning
That's be funny if it weren't so true.
5 - Igor
Yes, France is the best chance for Assange. They have a history of accomodating mavericks (much more than the USA, which has forfeited freedom in favor of feudalistic conformity).
6 - Kenn Jacobine
Let's not forget the American hero, Bradley Manning, imprisoned for shedding light on the sins of the state.
7 - STM
Nice piece Rog.
Here's the truth though for all the commentators: Assange is not being prosecuted for anything except two alleged rapes in Sweden. The only extradition request has been from Sweden to Britain and they relate only to those criminal charges. I suspect that if the US tried to extradite from Britain or Sweden on any other charges, the process might take a decade given the detailed brief of evidence that would have to be prepared. I doubt the British would ever have extradited him to the US for leaking. The Swedes, don't know for sure on that. But maybe not given their political bent. So far, no other charges have been laid in relation to anything, even if there's been a bit of sabre rattling (and a complete lack of interest by his home country, Australia, except in relation to the criminal charges for which they have offered the normal consular help).
8 - Christopher Rose
STM, that is so naive as to be verging on the gullible.
If I asked you to walk the plank and assured you that you wouldn't get pushed and fall into the shark infested waters below, would you do it?
The USA can easily request his extradition to face charges there. They have already done it several times recently to British citizens and our pathetically weak government just let them, despite the "evidence" being sketchy at best.
Government is supposed to protect we the people, not itself, and the USA, along with many other countries seems to have forgotten that.
9 - Glenn Contrarian
Kenn -
On Bradley Manning, I've thought long and hard about what's right or wrong with this case.
On the one hand I can easily understand why people are so angry with the government and the military for keeping him confined - and let me assure you that his confinement is much tougher than normal prison. Remember, I am a bleeding-heart liberal, dead-set against the death penalty, the drug war, mandatory sentencing for non-violent crimes, and for-profit prisons. AND while no one here (including the supposedly all- knowing Christopher Rose) knows whether those rape charges are true or false (and I trust Sweden's courts more than our own), I strongly support Julian Assange's efforts when it comes to Wikileaks.
But on the other hand, Manning did not pick out specific egregious actions by the military and the government to expose - instead, he uploaded a huge treasure trove of information, much of which was - to someone in Manning's position and level of training and education - frankly innocuous in nature...but may very well have exposed intel that he cannot have known about, and placed in jeopardy intelligence operations to which he was never privy (just as Valerie Plame's exposure by Cheney and company also exposed a whole raft of informants and operatives stateside and overseas...many of whom "disappeared" - THAT, sirs, was high treason!).
Manning swore an oath and he willfully violated that oath. That, and he uploaded not one or two or three egregious acts by the government that needed to be exposed, but many, many more that were NOT egregious acts, but had been (for reasons NOT known to Manning) classified.
One must have very, very good reason to break a solemn oath. If he had chosen even ONE egregious act by the government to speak up about - as did the ones who spoke up about My Lai and Tailhook and Abu Ghirab - then he could have been held up as a courageous hero. But he did NOT do that. He used the "shotgun approach" and sent reams of intel essentially hoping that some would something would stick, but did not identify any one particular item that was truly worthy of attention.
So...no. I feel bad for the kid because his life is wasted, done, finis. Whatever his intent may have been, he willfully violated his solemn oath without sufficient cause to do so. He will therefore be prosecuted and punished as an example to all the intelligence community. Anyone who has a clue on the vital importance of keeping intel secure knows that this is how it will be, how it MUST be - for having the right snippet of intel at the right time is the most important, the most powerful weapon of all.
Bradley Manning can rot in prison. Indeed, this bleeding-heart liberal states that Manning must must rot in prison so that others in the intel community can learn from his mistake.
10 - Christopher Rose
Glenn, couldn't disagree more.
1. You're not a liberal.
2. I don't think I am all knowing; I am all doubting!
3. Revealing the secrets of corrupt governments isn't treason and consecutive US and, indeed, UK governments have been corrupt for the best part of two generations now.
11 - Glenn Contrarian
Chris -
1 - Apparently, you don't know the definition of 'liberal'.
2 - A cynic knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
3 - Intelligence won us WWII and the Cold War...and whether you like it or not, war is a fact of humanity. Although corruption has been a part of US and UK government since we existed - anyone with half a mind about history knows that! - if it weren't for the US and the UK, we might all be singing the Internationale now.
Or do you somehow think the Cold War was a joke?
So that's your choice, Chris - you can either protect the governments that give you significant freedom (as the US and the British Commonwealth certainly do) or you can go pretend that all governments are just as corrupt. Which do you choose, Chris?
Note - while I may decry the American way of life, and while I may state time and again how life can be better elsewhere and that as a whole, and while America's done a great deal that is not just wrong, but flat out evil, and while Americans are quite ignorant about the rest of the world, don't go pretending that the US and the UK are so very bad...because you're only showing your ignorance of life in Russia and China and most other places that are not part of the community of First World nations.
12 - Christopher Rose
Glenn:
1) One of us doesn't know what a liberal is and that person isn't me.
As usual in your conceited way you assign qualities to yourself that can only be assigned to you by others. I don't think of you as liberal so to me you will never be regardless of how you think of your self.
2) Quoting an irrelevant cliché is neither liberal or helpful. Why exactly are you trotting out this trite response that has no bearing on what I wrote?
3) Again, don't really see where you are going with this tangential remark but I don't understand your assertion that "intelligence won us WWII and the Cold War"; sure, it played a part but it didn't win the war.
Similarly, nobody, least of all me, was talking about war, as a fact of humanity or otherwise. As you appear to be talking to yourself and certainly aren't responding to what I actually wrote, I think it is best just to let you get on with your odd mental masturbation by yourself.
You are far too full of yourself and far too certain of things for my liking; these are qualities which are the antithesis of liberalism and intelligent enquiry.
What you appear to be is just another aged old blow hard that has persuaded their self that they know what is what. As is almost always the case, you are mistaken...
13 - Cindy
war is a fact of humanity
hubris is a fact of macho idiocy
14 - Cindy
and btw humanity doesn't start wars, macho idiots do
15 - Cindy
One must have very, very good reason to break a solemn oath.
Maybe Bradley manning doesn't agree with your own assessment of the military and what it is about after what he uncovered. He seems to have had different experiences than you. You may wish to give him credit for that. You may wish to acknowledge that there are things you haven't had any experience with--and therefore you might see you likely make a poor judge when plugging those events into your presumed model.
16 - Glenn Contrarian
Cindy -
You'll hear no argument from me about the follies of macho idiocy. Problem is, half of humanity is made up of men, most of whom have at least some degree of macho idiocy. As long as there are men, there's going to be macho idiocy...and wars.
My point stands.
17 - Glenn Contrarian
Cindy -
Manning's own "assessment" of the military matters not at all. Why? Included in the TWO HUNDRED AND SIXTY THOUSAND DIPLOMATIC CABLES that he sent to Wikileaks was classified information concerning seemingly routine information. It is all but certain that such a huge amount of intel would have included info that would have seemed routine to you and me, but would have allowed people who don't like the U.S. to identify and eliminate U.S. agents or informants.
In other words, Manning almost certainly got some very valuable people killed. We'll likely never know, for such is the nature of the intelligence world (I held a secret clearance for several years, and for some time after I retired from the Navy).
260,000 diplomatic cables, Cindy. Do you really think he read through each and every one of them to see if they were worthy of public attention? Do you? What manning did was download documents willy-nilly without regard to what most of them held. Sure, he knew what some of them were, but all 260,000? No. No freaking way.
He was a not-so-stupid kid who did a really, truly stupid thing that almost certainly got people killed and sure as heck did harm to our national security. Whatever Manning's "assessment" of our military was makes not one whit of difference.
Cindy, we swear an oath for a reason...and if we break that oath, we'd better have a doggone good reason. He broke that oath TWO HUNDRED AND SIXTY THOUSAND TIMES...and even if one or two or a hundred or a hundred thousand of those diplomatic cables were worthy of public media attention, that makes ZERO excuse for releasing the tens of thousands of other diplomatic cables.
Bradley Manning will rot in prison for many years to come...and he has to do so - he MUST do so, for the intelligence community that did so much to win WWII and the Cold War for the West depends on our military service members to keep their solemn oaths.
18 - Cindy
I don't think I'd be inclined (or required by anyone I'd respect) to keep a good faith oath I to what turned out to be the devil.
19 - Cindy
should be "I [made] to"
20 - Glenn Contrarian
Cindy -
Maybe you've got no use or inclination to defend the country of your birth - but that's you, and not me.
And I guess maybe that would explain why you see no problem at all with some kid - for that's what he was - exposing TWO HUNDRED SIXTY THOUSAND DIPLOMATIC CABLES and putting the lives of informants and agents in jeopardy.
Cindy, I don't know where you got the idea that all government is bad or that all intelligence agents are evil and only intent on doing harm - it's not and they're not. The vast majority of the time, government workers are good people trying to do a good job, and the vast majority of the time, intelligence agents are good people trying to do a good job. Granted, sometimes they're not good people, and sometimes they're good people who are being used by bad people in the administration...
...but most of the time, they ARE good people. That's a lesson that you would do well to learn, that most people really are good people, regardless of where they work. It's just the few bad apples (especially in positions of power) that make the rest look bad.
Now I know that probably doesn't fit your personal paradigm, but that's reality...and by releasing TWO HUNDRED AND SIXTY THOUSAND DIPLOMATIC CABLES, Manning HAD to have put people at risk.
But if you're going to continue down this road of blindly believing that everything having to do with intelligence operations is all bad and does nothing to benefit America, then there's nothing I can do for you - for if that's the case, then you've chosen to be every bit as self-delusional as the old white men who are glued to Fox News every day.
21 - Cindy
The wars are not about defending your country.
You claim that Bradley surely must have injured someone. You do this in the face of a video showing the US military murdering innocent people.
I believe people are good. Unfortunately there are evil institutions. If you are a person who wants to do good, I urge you to question your presumptions about those institutions. I don't see that you have done that. I hope some day you will. For now though, what you are saying sound like self-righteous privilege is speaking.
Over the years the US military has destroyed lives, murdered, raped, and pillaged, attacked the poor and suffering, created ghettos and destroyed livelihoods--turning women and girls into prostitutes, installed dictators and functioned to oust democratically elected leaders.
Not once did anyone representing any other country every do any of those things to me or anyone else in the US. Your claim of self-defense seems like piece of unquestioned indoctrination that is valuable in protecting military power.
I think its other countries that should have the right to protect themselves--from the US.
22 - roger nowosielski
Moving back to CA, Cindy, early July.
Wish me luck.
23 - Glenn Contrarian
Cindy -
Not once did anyone representing any other country every do any of those things to me or anyone else in the US
No? Remember 9/11?
Cindy, I'm not at all excusing what America has done wrong - you should know better than that! BUT by releasing 260,000 diplomatic cables Manning HAD to have put innocent people at risk, people who were doing a job. It is incredibly fallacious to think that all those people were bad or that all their jobs were evil.
Manning was a low-level nobody in the intel community, and as such, even had he personally read each and every one of those 260,000 diplomatic cables, he CANNOT have known whether the information in this or that cable would lead to agents and informants (innocent and not-so-innocent) being exposed and put at serious risk of jail or execution.
What he did was irresponsible in the extreme. He's wasted his life, but chances are very high that his actions led to the imprisonment or executions of others. Whatever his motivation may have been, and wherever your sympathies may lie, we cannot wish away the fact that his actions almost certainly put a lot of innocent (and not-so-innocent) people at very real risk.
And Cindy - you can decry the U.S. all you want, but just bear in mind that what you're doing here with impunity would get you imprisoned in reeducation camps in several other nations. To be sure, there's better nations, better places to live...but there's many more where speaking out against the government places at risk the speaker and the speaker's family.
I'm not saying to not speak out against the U.S. or what our government does. I'm only saying that you should be grateful that you can do so with impunity.
24 - Glenn Contrarian
Roger -
I'm not Cindy, but I do wish you luck. I think you'll do a lot better there even given the rotten economy. As for ourselves, we often discuss moving to Oxnard - the area's very nice and has a lot to recommend it.
Good luck, Rog.
P.S. As soon as the cover art is done, my book will be e-published in August, and in the acknowledgments I credit you, Clavos, and Dave for the criticisms you all gave me that helped me to be come a better writer. When I have it printed later this year, I'd like to send you a signed copy.
25 - roger nowosielski
One shouldn't be grateful for being able to speak freely, regardless of the conditions in other parts of the world.
It's natural human right.