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Julian Assange (Photo: New Media Days / Flickr)
If you’ve been following the Julian Assange extradition story, and reading about it at the US Guardian, you may be wondering how it is that Mark Weisbrot seems at times to be the only person on the Guardian staff who is committed to telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth — in context — about Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. For every fact-filled, straightforward Weisbrot piece like this one, there seem to be half a dozen little hit pieces — some subtle, some blatant — like this one, this one and this one.
So what’s behind the Guardian‘s war on Assange — a war that relies on snide assertions and the careful avoidance of certain facts?
It looks to my eye — and the eyes of others — that it may be bound up in how the collaboration between the Guardian and WikiLeaks fell apart when the Guardian’s investigative editor David Leigh, in violation of the signed agreement the paper had with WikiLeaks, published top-secret decryption passwords to the WikiLeaks archive in his book on WikiLeaks.
To paraphrase Molly Ivins, it’s difficult for us to forgive those whom we have deeply wronged. So it is with the Guardian and its vendetta against WikiLeaks in general and Assange in particular. The Guardian staff did WikiLeaks a deep wrong, and thus will never forgive WikiLeaks for it. They blame WikiLeaks and not their own David Leigh for releasing all of the WikiLeaks cache into the wild, even though the facts show otherwise.
You might want to keep this fact in the back of your mind whenever you read anything on Assange or WikiLeaks by any Guardian published writer not named Mark Weisbrot.
31 Comments
Fixed it 4 u.
Hell hath no fury like a journalist revealed to be an idiot.
The assault against Assange is clearly part of Obama’s and the US’ larger assault on whistleblowers, but let’s not be naive about Assange; he is clearly some sort of US propaganda asset. He’s basically a twofer for the US State. The information Wikileaks releases does not seriously challenge US State policy, and it often enhances US State agendas; at the same time Assange is used as part of the assault on freedom of the press, freedom of speech and whistleblowers.
The State sees it as a win win.
Given that, I’m surprised the roof hasn’t blown off the WH press room from all the fury.
Freak! I have a note on my desk that I wrote right after His speech, saying
Hell hath not fury
Like
a womanan old rich assholescorned.embarrased by his deeds and thoughts.Not a good day for The Guardian.
Maybe Greenwald should reconsider his move from Salon?
Those are extremely good points that you are making.
I have heard this claim, that Assange is a US intelligence asset, from others as well. It doesn’t really set well with what I know of this affair.
Other than the several releases , among half a million or so, that you deem “mild” or “enhancing” can you elaborate further? I seem to have read more than a few that thoroughly embarrassed the US State Dept.
Interesting points. However, I think the bit about Wikileaks not challenging US State policy has more to do with the surrounding corporate media, which serves to strangle all sustained discussion of anything important.
In any case, Glenzilla is certainly going to call it as he sees it and The Guardian must know that.
Or, maybe Glenzilla is being set up on this one. Hmmmmm!
Doubt it. Salon seems to be transforming themselves into an even more middle-brow version of Slate. Case in point the leading story over there right now:
MY BAD BABY-SITTER YEARS
Now that I’m a mom, I shudder to think of what a snoop I once was — and and how many naughty secrets I learned
The “Collateral Murder” video wasn’t damaging? Ahem.
The WikiLeaks cache was very embarrassing to the US and enraged many nations, particularly those in Latin America — and Ecuador was one of the most enraged. (Google “ecuador wikileaks cables” sometime.)
Exactly. The residents of Latin America don’t consider the WikiLeaks revelations small potatoes. That’s why Ecuador’s sheltered Assange and offered him asylum.
Oh, my:
BTW, here’s Trevino’s disgusting tweet:
“Dear IDF: If you end up shooting any Americans on the new Gaza flotilla – well, most Americans are cool with that. Including me.”
Beyond reprehensible that the Guardian or anyone else would hire this creep.
And from Edward Teller’s link:
Maybe someone got ‘em to thinking that we like “balance” over here. Or that someone does, anyway.
I don’t really see those Guardian articles as hit pieces. I feel that Assange should be extradited to Sweden to face the rape charges. But I also feel that Sweden should guarantee that he will not be extradited to the U.S., and from what I understand, Sweden will not agree to those conditions.
Why do you feel that he should be extradited “to face the rape charges?” There are no rape charges. This whole thing is over “questioning” that the swedish prosecutor wants to do. JA was already questioned about the whole affair and told that there was nothing to charge him with so he was free to leave the country. The women have dropped their charges because they said that all they wanted was for him to take an hiv test. He did and was pronounced clean.
No nation threatens to end the diplomatic immunity of another nation’s embassy to send someone somewhere else for questioning. The questioning is a ruse to get him and send him to the usa. JA was questioned in sweden and agreed to be questioned in the uk, but sweden wants to get him out of the uk. The hysterical denial by victoria nuland that the usa has no interest in JA and it is a matter for the uk and sweden doesn’t pass the laugh test, because she verbally attacked Ecuador for giving JA asylum to avoid being sent to the usa for a sham prosecution, more like a persecution ala Bradley Manning.
Glenn Greenwald’s move to The Guardian means that I will be visiting there regularly. Glenn is great at exposing the systemic insanity of our lobbyist government, with its endemic myriad facets of dizzying stupidity.
I’ve been reading his articles on Salon for years and know what a critic he is of the Obama administration’s carry-over of Bush’s war of terror and its associative civil liberty encroachments.
He has long supported Assange and Manning.
I don’t envy Greenwald at all. In fact, I suspect he’s been compromised.
Time will tell.
why would anyone even consider trusting such an agreement?
The Guardian’s unhinged, clearly personal treatment of Assange has seriously damaged its credibility. Very disappointing.
They’ve not been good on Syria either.
And I first went there years ago to get away from the warmongering and propaganda at the NY Times.
Thank goodness for FDL! And Glenn Greenwald!
The US Government has enough power to treat every situation in this manner.
The intention is to crystallize power in the hands a tiny minority of economic interests even further. You don't need conspiracies (not that you are asserting one, Imka). It's the sole function of the entire apparatus.
Indeed, the tree of our criminal, scoff-law behavior finally bears its rotten fruit! Of course, if the USA had an even translucent (yet alone, transparent) government Wikileaks would not even had been an issue.
If I was JA I'd be certain if the American authorities got a hold of me the best I could hope for was the calculated behavior of PFC. Bradley Manning, no matter whom promised what in speeches and TV appearances.
He has not been charged with rape. He is being asked in for questioning. The odds are he will never be charged with rape. The whores, who were undoubtedly recruited by the CIA, fled the country and are now nowhere to be found. This was a set-up from the get-go.
At this point I would say "US policy" and "corporate media", and by extension all corporations, are all but interchangeable terms.
Knut, they are our whores, and as such US ass-ettes.
Probably of much use for the PTB to keep congress critters, and other possible strays, in line.
Be very interesting to know where they are up to such tricks.
This post and the comments inspire me to say that when Barack became prez, Betrayal became more the rule than the exception, from the U.S. presidency, to the Guardian (media), to foreign policy (extradition and diplomatic immunity). I feel that the globe has become populated by “used car salesman” with apologies to actual used car salesman (they at least provide a necessary service).
I wouldn’t call the two women “whores”. One of them at least seems to have gone to the police merely as a way to get Assange, with whom they both had had consensual sex without condoms, to get tested for STDs; when she found out that the Swedish police were planning to go after him for rape, she apparently became upset at having been manipulated by the cops and refused to sign off on the testimony she’d already given them. Neither woman actually filed charges against Assange.
Both Assange and the Ecuadorean government have made that very offer, and the Swedes keep refusing it without saying why.
Both Assange and the Ecuadorean government have also offered to have him be interviewed — again (remember, the Swedish police questioned him in September of 2012, three weeks after the two women first went to the police station to get him tested for STDs and did not press charges) — via video conferencing or in-person interview with interrogators sent to the embassy (which as former Stockholm chief district prosecutor Sven-Erik Alhem noted was what the Swedish authorities should be doing, and that their choice of extradition over video conferencing or embassy visit was ‘unreasonable and unprofessional, as well as unfair and disproportionate’). The Swedes refused that as well.
the Nation recently did a series of articles on the effect Wikileaks had in South America