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From Democracy Now!:
“DemocracyNow.org – Speaking via videolink from the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange addressed a side meeting of the U.N. General Assembly on Wednesday evening.
(The rush transcript will follow soon. Ah. Toolwielderhas it now. Most coverage says he ‘mocked’ OBomba and Cameron. And Glenn Greenwald’s up on ‘Communicating With the Enemy” under Article 104 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ). Lord love a duck.)
Thank you, Julian Assange and Bradley Manning. All the best to both of you; we owe you a great debt, imo. I don’t know what else to say, so I’ll let a Roman philosopher speak for me. For all of us, maybe.
“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear. The traitor is the plague.”
~ Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 B.C.)
(h/t: Isaiah)
(cross-posted at kgblogz.com)
41 Comments
“Most coverage says he ‘mocked’ OBomba and Cameron.”
It might not be a good idea, but I’d love to see Assange stick his thumbs in his ears, wiggle his fingers and give a raspberry to Obama and Cameron.
The PTB’s hatred of Assange is evident in this Glenn Greenwald article:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/sep/27/wikileaks-investigation-enemy
FOIA papers suggest that the US military now formally characterizes WikiLeaks and Assange as an “enemy”, the same designation it gives to groups such as Al Qaeda and the Taliban.
Thanks, Rec’d
Yeah, I think he played it just right, but folks got the subtext of a Paul Revere warning.
Thanks for the link, Scrabbleddie. I did put it in the post, but this way folks who missed it can access it easily.
Just a bit too much these days by way of: Wrong, Not Fair, Ugly, Evil.
I need to stop skimming over your stuff, even if we’re in the same choir. Keep up the good work!
“Just a bit too much these days by way of: Wrong, Not Fair, Ugly, Evil.”
What’s worse, is that we keep trending farther in that direction (into right-wing extremism) I wonder, at what point, will the pendulum swing back towards decency and reason? Presently the cards are stacked.
That Lennon song has been my ringtone since October 2002.
Already commented on this at the other place, but thanks for cross-posting it here. Guess you haven’t gotten much traffic due to Kevin’s post on this subject, which has already disappeared from the front page. The NFL ref coverage is still there, as are meaningless posts in.re. the election to decide which mask the corporate machine will don come 01/2013 to continue the oppression of the 99% and increase our level of debt enslavement/servitude.
This particular stack laid out so soberly…was overwhelming today, Scrabbleddie. For me, first comes grief, a bit of depression…then more burning rage.
I don’t believe in pendulums so much; we’ll have to take it back. Some days I see that better than others.
Ach; I should have known Kevin would have covered it. In any event, at times there is a different readership here in the peanut gallery. ;o)
I was busy writing on the food security movement, and ran into this. No contest. This house is on fire, and so few even smell the smoke yet, or recognize how toxic it is.
Thanks, holeybuybull. (great name, by the by)
I’d forgotten about it until Isaiah quoted it last week, mattcarmody.
Thanks, it reflects my atheism. The Cicero “Enemy Within the Gates” quote is especially appropriate. It reminds me of Walt Kelly’s Pogo quote that “we have met the enemy and it is us”.
Recommended.
Yes, the atheistic jest rings like a bell. ;o)
I think it was shekissesfrogs who used the quote on one of my posts a long while back; it fair’ took my breath away.
I reckon Pogo may have been right insofar as we allowed it to happen, but it’s all snowballing so quickly now. We’re collectively waiting for the *next* shoe to drop, and know from which direction it will fall. Strange days.
Thank you Jane Hamsher, but the rec is surely for Manning and Assange. My stars. Words fail.
I heard the Democracy Now! broadcast on my way home from work on the Case Western public radio station. Great stuff. Thanks for posting it here.
Recc’d.
I particularly like the part about the great audacity of the Obama Administration in taking credit for the Arab Spring. I’m sure that Tunisians, Egyptians, Bahrainians, and Syrians were astounded to learn that Obama was responsible for promoting democracy in their countries.
They must feel really ignorant about now(dripping sarcasm intended).
“Yes, very fine words from President OBomba.”
“It must have come as a surprise to ____ (fill in the blanks).
Mohamed Bouazizi (محمد البوعزيزي)
(I don’t get out much, so no sign info.)
OMG! I am speechless at Assange’s speech. Incredible.
Too bad this isn’t required listening for all the bobbleheads and every other idiot on the MSM. Nah. They wouldn’t get it.
I’m sick.
Julian Assange speaks about what POTUS Obama does not want spoken.
Meanwhile who was been/is in jail? Assange. Manning.
B.H.Obama is not. How the wicked twisting has twisted in all this.
B.H.Obama belongs in a jailhouse. Not the WH.
Electing Obama to be in the WH again?
This is wickedness then done by too many USians.
To think doing so is not wicked is willed blindness done by USians.
I know that some will wax ho-hum, saying ‘of course this is the inevitable next step along the same road’, but…I feel unclean after hearing it, considering all the implications, including the indictment of this nation, and this President who campaigned on transparency, and then…
It’s a bit like living through an ‘audacious’ global military McCarthy era scenario that no one could have imagined not too long ago.
Yes to all, shootthatarrow. And…even you are more economical with your indictment in the face of this. Thank you, my friend.
Interesting Assange speech. Makes some excellent points I must say. Thanks Wendy for passing this along to us.
Agree. I’m glad a westerner with a little fame said this stuff that needs to be said.
A pitch perfect response.
And another fine essay. I don’t comment much when the writer has said everything I’d want to better and with more emotional maturity than I can (I suspect I’m decades older than you). And not that it should matter or flatter, but I read most everything you post, wendydavis.
Thank you.
Thanks for listening to it, Kurt Sperry.
Welcome, bigchin, but I really couldn’t think *what* to say, so I said… nothing. Maybe that’s what you enjoyed, lol!
But thank you for reading my posts; heartwarming it is. But if you’re several decades older…you must be mature indeed. ;o) I’m 61. (gads; that cannae be so, can it?)
Aloha, wendy…! I gave ya a hat tip…! ;-)
Bibi as Wile E. Coyote and Obama at the UN…
Recc’d.
We SHALL overcome. (no video link this time)
And when we do, it will be because of julianassange, and bradleymanning, and wendydavis, and every ragged Firedog still speaking truth to power, and every Occupy protester, and working class heroes everywhere, and the singers and songwriters and poets who give the world the truth every day.
The truth is too big to fail.
All we have to do is keep telling it.
;o)
I’ll read it in the mornin’, Tuttle. Intriguing title.
‘The truth is too big to fail’.
That’s the most heart-warming sentence I’ve read lately. The Isaiahs speak truth to power very well. And for you; sleep well.
Ha! Another pitch perfect response! Keeep ‘em coming!!!
And I’m 56 so I do feel a little bit better about my too frequently immature comments around here when I get pissed off by the FDL regulars… although at my age having the emotional control of a 4 year old is not something to brag about.
And one more thing… if Jane is still around (yeah right, huh?) maybe she can explain why your post, currently second on the MyFDL page and by some margin attracting the most comments and a rec from J.H. herself is not to be found on FDL’s front page under the “MyFDL’s recommended diaries” list.
Curious that…
Well well, imagine that… suddenly, there you are… albeit near the bottom of the list. Another stunningly transparent display of FDL editors covering their faux progressive behinds…
Amen. And thank you for posting this diary, wendydavis. It’s another welcome bit of respite from all the silly chatter about Romney and Ryan, two fools who will be forgotten by history.
Fabulous, wendy! Recommended.
He was, wasn’t he? It seemed not only by way of an alert, but a bit of an insurance policy.
Nice to see, you, pasta-fedup. You’ve been a stranger, and I was thinking about you earlier today when I when I was vacuuming and de-Havishaming this place a bit. (Not that the two have anything to do with each other…) ;o)
Who?
Welcome; I really did want folks to see it.
Bugger! I outed my old crone state fer nothin’ then! (Shhhhhh…I’ll go back to tryin’ to pass for 36, okay?)
It was nice of the mods to left-page this, wasn’t it? I got to thinking after a bit that a different shift of people might be able to see it than saw Kevin’s.
But hmmm… the rest:
The rec’d list is odd, and diaries pop on and off it, and some professional posts seem to go there with automatic rec’s or something. But the Readers list is just a timing thing. X amount of posts were published after this, so it slid off the list after 20 more came onto it.
There were a couple people and organizations who posted 3 yesterday, and the TOS here asks for a *maximum* of two, one might even be better is the impression I get. I even flagged one, with an explanation to the author. And it looks like he may never have even commented, given the comment numbers, lol.
Anyhoo, just because a post gets left-paged, it doesn’t mean that it’s on the Most Rec’d list.
But again, like Radar O’Reilly said when he was asked by Colonel Potter if he understood any of the army paper-shuffle, “I try not to, sir; it just slows down the work”. Same here, I reckon. ;o)
Cicero, as usual, sets the table.
Seemed to be a fitting quote, yes, TuffsNotEnuff.
wd–
Excellent diary. Thanks for this post.
I will have to wait until I get “my internet connection” fixed, before I’ll be able to hear his remarks. (It “buffers,” endlessly.) I look forward to it.
Sure do admire Rafeal Correa and his Administration for giving him asylum. (Can’t imagine that he’ll ever actually make it to Ecuador, though.)
Recommended.
Blue
This is the first chance I’ve had to view Assange’s remarks; my first impression of same is of how as a child, when viewing the repercussions of the Vietnam debacle on t.v. I thought, “Well, at least people won’t try to do this sort of thing again, and we can improve from here…” After all, my whole future was ahead of me then. Ee-yeah. Thanks, wendy.
Thanks, Blue. I guess he’s not a favorite of the Indigenous and Leftists, but it was a damned fine thing he did for Assange. ;o)
Who knows what they might come up with to get him to Ecuador? An invisibility cloak? (Yes, I watched some Harry Potter last night…) ;oP
Welcome, times. And yes, we are shackled still, prisoners of promises and small gains. I guess. Now…we are all potential threats to the Ruling Body.