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Despite Crippling Financial Blockade And Other Efforts To Set Them Back, Publishers Of Biggest Leaks In Journalistic History Press On
By Michael Ratner, President Emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights
Julian Assange
December 19, 2012 – Six months ago today, Julian Assange was forced to seek asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy to avoid extradition to the United States via Sweden. Assange knew this could mean an indefinite stay at the embassy, but he also knew it was the only way to avoid sharing Private Bradley Manning’s tragic fate of being locked up and tortured by the U.S. government for allegedly revealing its crimes.
Many thought Assange’s high-wire situation signaled the end of WikiLeaks. They were wrong. Despite efforts to silence their publisher-in-chief and his confinement to the embassy in London, a crippling financial blockade, and the silence of the major media who once partnered with WikiLeaks and still use their material, the transparency group continues providing civilians all over the world with an honest record of what their governments do in their name.
Assange is wanted for questioning on unrelated allegations in Sweden, and those allegations must be taken seriously and answered. He has been willing to do so in London and has said he would go to Sweden if guaranteed he would not be sent to the United States. Sweden, however, has refused both suggestions.
Despite it all, WikiLeaks has kept busy. In 2012 alone the group published over a million documents, including the rules for the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and Camp Bucca in Iraq, as well as U.S. military interrogation manuals. This year they also began publishing the Syria files – more than two million emails from political figures and ministries that demonstrate the duplicity of Western countries and corporations in dealing with Syria. WikiLeaks’ work continues to play an active role in shaping the actions of governments throughout the world. Just a few days ago the European Court of Human Rights, citing cables published by WikiLeaks, ruled that the CIA’s rendition and treatment of Khaled El-Masri constituted torture.
While at the embassy, Assange also co-authored a groundbreaking book, Cypherpunks: Freedom and the Future of the Internet. The thesis that “the power of the internet to provide free uncensored communications” has also given governments “the power to surveil all the communications that were occurring” is both provocative and important for us to remember. As if on cue, The Wall Street Journal recently revealed that the National Counterterrorism Center is now examining millions of records, including databases of Americans hosting foreign-exchange students and flight records of U.S. citizens, even if they have no relationship to any crimes or investigations.
But defending our right to know and bearing the brunt of the United States’ war on whistleblowers and their publishers has a high cost. There is no end in sight for Assange’s stay at the embassy as Britain continues to neglect its diplomatic obligations under the UN’s Refugee Convention by preventing Ecuador from safely transferring him out of the country. And credit card companies, including American Express, Master Card, Visa and PayPal, have taken their cue from the American and British governments and done everything in their power to bankrupt WikiLeaks by refusing to accept donations on their behalf.
Those allegedly involved in furnishing document to WikiLeaks are likewise facing serious consequences for their actions. Bradley Manning was not only tortured, but faces life imprisonment. Jeremy Hammond, the alleged leaker of the Stratfor documents, was denied bail and faces imprisonment of 37 years to life.
Let the sacrifices of these heroic individuals serve as a reminder to citizens all over the world that it is our duty to defend those who defend our right to know what our governments do in our name, with our tax money and against our most fundamental principles.
The cost of exposing state crimes is now higher than ever. WikiLeaks is still standing but only because supporters worldwide have gone on the offensive. It is vital that this support stays strong. In light of all this year’s obstacles, doing so just got a bit easier. This week, the Freedom of the Press Foundation, a nonprofit with a board that includes Pentagon Papers publisher Daniel Ellsberg, journalist Glenn Greenwald, writer Xeni Jardin, filmmaker Laura Poitras, Electronic Frontier Foundation co-founder John Perry Barlow, and actor John Cusack, was launched to support media organizations like WikiLeaks dedicated to transparency and accountability. WikiLeaks’ fight to open governments continues to stay on course. Let us all stand with them in 2013.
Image by robertxcadena under Creative Commons license
16 Comments
It seems to me that the cypherpunks have won their basic point: if one is to have civil society and an internet, the widespread deployment of cryptography is necessary. Without it, there is no way to prevent the abuses of government authority on the internet and, at the same time, there is no way for governments to exercise appropriate authority: to identify and punish criminals–spammers!–or to maintain the integrity of business and legal transactions.
At the same time, I do not endorse the whole of either the original cypherpunk manifesto, with its creepy libertarianism, or Assange’s later, more liberal version, as I understand it through the interviews and excerpts I have read.
Speaking Truth to Horsepower:
http://freewayblogger.blogspot.com/2012/12/one-thousand-signs-plus.html
Remember all those flags that went up after 9/11? That’s why I can do this.
Speaking truth to corporate fascist in the past or today in America is difficult. They don’t want to hear it. Just as a crackhead or a slave-owner does not want to hear truth? Sucks when legitimate whistle blowers out government/corpo-fascists, then the fascists scum go after the messenger, whistle blower? Right out of Hitler’s fascist’s handbook
No problem here. Buy “gasoline” and go shopping, Pavlov. Don’t forget your dog, Brutus?
I recently saw the image of an archival print of a military communications unit assigned to the telegraph (I have to go back to my Tweet timeline to grab the link for you if you wish). In my research and from my experience in multiple fields that touch Telecomm, I see strong evidence that that people have been systematically spied on via the very communications systems their tax dollars indeed have paid for and built since the advent of electronic communications. The cyperpunks writings do have a systems theory and technical context that is very hard to deliver in a nice package. I wouldn’t label it libertarian to object to banksta-owned and driven systems that make it so darn easy to murder with with the slight movement of a joystick (yes, drones are in effect part of Telecomm when in fact all along Telecomm has been part of military operations).
Fuck the world…. We want profit at life’s expense. SO what if the polar caps melt, ain’t our problem.
This is the mind set of oil whores, as with tobacco whores as NRA whores who lie right through those pearly whites, to protect profit and power…. Fuck them all!
Super hawt and I am behind it all the way! Thank you for dropping by to tell us about it.
“I see strong evidence that that people have been systematically spied on via the very communications systems their tax dollars indeed have paid for and built since the advent of electronic communications.”
Retroactive telecom immunity granted by Congress to corporations who aided and abetted in the total evisceration of the “Bill of Rights,” to protect America? I recall it well. It is called fascism orchestrated by a police state, not to protect America, but to protect entrenched corporate power which has turned fascist. Primarily that strategic interest called oil? Energy? Where we Americans get to waste a billion dollars a day out the tailpipe, going to work? Just like as fugitive slave laws protected the business model of agrarian Aristocrat’s monopoly on labor, called Slavery?
Yes that was about energy to. America is ignorant of our own history!
You’re one of my heroes, Mr. Ratner, welcome aboard.
I’m disappointed to report, though, that when I tried to contribute $100 to the Free Press Foundation, it declined my credit card payment on the grounds that the United States is not a valid country.
I understand that we’re a colonialist hyperpower in the process of undergoing a fascist shift, but I feel that if the FPF allows its political critique of the U.S. to govern who it will or won’t accept contributions from it’s not due for a long lifespan.
Or should I say I’m from Venezuela or something?
Saalam FreeWayBlogger! Who couldn’t get behind this excellent activist’s tool? The freeway sign, “Wake up and smell the permafrost,” is one of my personal favorites.
I also would like to see that photo and it’s provenance, if available.
Good to hear from you, esteemed FB! Keep up the good work!
You never know what research tidbits drop out of a FDL book salon. Here’s the following statement by Tim Weiner re his book Enemies: A History of the FBI that got me really thinking and looking for the evidence re the underpinnings of the US’ Mexico operations:
Recall that Pancho Villa had used photography and moving pictures (a still here), Now think about the how/where/financing for that. Here’s a “Civil War Signal Corps and United States Military Telegraph” website. I still have to paw around for the exact photo I saw of a group of men in uniform. Check out the covered wagon for the signal corps unit. Hrm. So, I do believe there is a very interesting technology and infiltration/spy story here.
Link for “Civil War Signal Corps and United States Military Telegraph” at http://www.civilwarsignal.org sporting “FLASH MESSAGE!!!! THE ORIGINAL BEARDSLEE “FLYING TELEGRAPH” NUMBERED BOX FIVE FOUND!”
I agree that telecomm monitoring is probably widespread.
I knew some of the founding cypherpunks back when, so I know from personal knowledge that they were libertarian. As the cypherpunk manifesto says, “We the Cypherpunks are dedicated to building anonymous systems. We are defending our privacy with cryptography, with anonymous mail forwarding systems, with digital signatures, and with electronic money. ” Under the rubric of “crypto-anarchism,” they argued for the use of widespread cryptography in finance, so as to make the financial system independent of government oversight. This, they believed, would free them from abuses of power.
It is odd–I suppose you could say that a version of that agenda has been implemented by the banksters. If I ever see a particular person again, I may ask him if he thinks he got what he wanted, and how he feels about it.
So glad to see your fonts. Should you have the time please grace us with an update.
Crap. Don’t know how i missed the link. I must be skimming too fast. Thanks freewayblogger.