[Peace-discuss] Obama: "It is better to have one man die for the people than to have the whole nation destroyed"

[C. G. Estabrook]

"[The release of the] the diplomatic cables have upset the smooth running of the 
corrupt and cynical backroom operations that actually govern our world, behind 
the ludicrous lies and self-righteous posturing that our great and good lay on 
for the public. They didn’t mind being unmasked as accomplices in mass murder 
and fomenters of suffering and hatred; in fact, they were rather proud of it. 
And they certainly knew that their fellow corruptocrats in foreign governments – 
not to mention the perpetually stunned and supine American people – wouldn’t 
give a toss about a bunch of worthless peons in Iraq and Afghanistan getting 
killed. But the diplomatic cables have caused an embarrassing stink among the 
closed little clique of the movers and shakers. And that is a crime deserving of 
vast eons in stir – or death."

December 7, 2010
The Arrest of Julian Assange
Truth in Chains
By CHRIS FLOYD

London. Well, they got him at last. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, the target 
of several of the world’s most powerful governments, turned himself into British 
authorities today and is now at the mercy of state authorities who have already 
shown their wolfish – and lawless – desire to destroy him and his organization.

It has been, by any standard, an extraordinary campaign of vilification and 
persecution, wholly comparable to the kind of treatment doled out to dissidents 
in China or Burma. Lest we forget, WikiLeaks is a journalistic outlet – just 
like The New York Times, the Guardian and Der Spiegel, all of whom are even now 
publishing the very same material – leaked classified documents -- available on 
WikiLeaks. The website is also a journalistic outlet just like CNN, ABC, CBS, 
Fox and other mainstream media venues, where we have seen an endless parade of 
officials – and journalists! – calling for Assange to be prosecuted or killed 
outright. Every argument being made for shutting down WikiLeaks can – and 
doubtless will – be used against any journalistic enterprise that publishes 
material that powerful people do not like.

And the leading role in this persecution of truth-telling is being played by the 
administration of the great progressive agent of hope and change, the 
self-proclaimed heir of Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi, the winner of the 
Nobel Peace Prize, Barack Obama. His attorney general, Eric Holder, is now 
making fierce noises about the “steps” he has already taken to bring down 
WikiLeaks and criminalize the leaking of embarrassing information. And listen to 
the ferocious reaction of that liberal lioness, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who took 
to the pages of Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal to call for Assange to be 
put in prison – for 2,500,000 years:

“When WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange released his latest document trove—more 
than 250,000 secret State Department cables—he intentionally harmed the U.S. 
government. The release of these documents damages our national interests and 
puts innocent lives at risk. He should be vigorously prosecuted for espionage.

“The law Mr. Assange continues to violate is the Espionage Act of 1917. That law 
makes it a felony for an unauthorized person to possess or transmit "information 
relating to the national defense which information the possessor has reason to 
believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of 
any foreign nation." ... Importantly, the courts have held that "information 
relating to the national defense" applies to both classified and unclassified 
material. Each violation is punishable by up to 10 years in prison.”

So there you have it. Ten years for each offense; 250,000 separate offenses; 
thus a prison term of 2.5 million years. Naturally, tomorrow the same newspaper 
will denounce Feinstein for being such a namby-pamby terrorist-coddling pinko: 
“Why didn’t she call for Assange to be torn from limb to limb by wild dogs, as 
any right-thinking red-blooded American would do!?”

Meanwhile, corporate America and its international allies continue to do their 
bit. Joining PayPal and Amazon, who had already cut off their services to 
WikiLeaks, most of the remaining venues through which the internet journal is 
funded are also freezing out the organization -- MasterCard, Visa, and a Swiss 
bank that WikiLeaks used to process donations. All of these organizations are 
obviously responding to government pressure.

What is perhaps most remarkable is that this joint action by the world elite to 
shut down WikiLeaks – which has been operating for four years – comes after the 
release of diplomatic cables, not in response to earlier leaks which provided 
detailed evidence of crimes and atrocities committed by the perpetrators and 
continuers of Washington’s Terror War. I suppose this is because the diplomatic 
cables have upset the smooth running of the corrupt and cynical backroom 
operations that actually govern our world, behind the ludicrous lies and 
self-righteous posturing that our great and good lay on for the public. They 
didn’t mind being unmasked as accomplices in mass murder and fomenters of 
suffering and hatred; in fact, they were rather proud of it. And they certainly 
knew that their fellow corruptocrats in foreign governments – not to mention the 
perpetually stunned and supine American people – wouldn’t give a toss about a 
bunch of worthless peons in Iraq and Afghanistan getting killed. But the 
diplomatic cables have caused an embarrassing stink among the closed little 
clique of the movers and shakers. And that is a crime deserving of vast eons in 
stir – or death.

But before Assange was taken into custody, he fired off one last message to the 
world, in The Australian, a newspaper in his native land. With supreme irony, he 
tied WikiLeaks’ operation to the roots of the Murdoch media empire, which began 
by speaking truth to murderous and wasteful power – and now, of course, is one 
of the most powerful and assiduous instruments of murderous and wasteful power 
itself. Assange writes:

“IN 1958 a young Rupert Murdoch, then owner and editor of Adelaide’s The News, 
wrote: “In the race between secrecy and truth, it seems inevitable that truth 
will always win.” His observation perhaps reflected his father Keith Murdoch’s 
expose that Australian troops were being needlessly sacrificed by incompetent 
British commanders on the shores of Gallipoli. The British tried to shut him up 
but Keith Murdoch would not be silenced and his efforts led to the termination 
of the disastrous Gallipoli campaign.

“Nearly a century later, WikiLeaks is also fearlessly publishing facts that need 
to be made public. … Democratic societies need a strong media and WikiLeaks is 
part of that media. The media helps keep government honest. WikiLeaks has 
revealed some hard truths about the Iraq and Afghan wars, and broken stories 
about corporate corruption.

“WikiLeaks is not the only publisher of the US embassy cables. Other media 
outlets, including Britain ‘s The Guardian, The New York Times, El Pais in Spain 
and Der Spiegel in Germany have published the same redacted cables.

“Yet it is WikiLeaks, as the co-ordinator of these other groups, that has copped 
the most vicious attacks and accusations from the US government and its 
acolytes. I have been accused of treason, even though I am an Australian, not a 
US citizen. There have been dozens of serious calls in the US for me to be 
“taken out” by US Special Forces. Sarah Palin says I should be “hunted down like 
Osama bin Laden”, a Republican bill sits before the US Senate seeking to have me 
declared a “transnational threat” and disposed of accordingly. An adviser to the 
Canadian Prime Minister’s office has called on national television for me to be 
assassinated. An American blogger has called for my 20-year-old son, here in 
Australia, to be kidnapped and harmed for no other reason than to get at me.”

These, of course, are the defenders of Western Civilization, that pinnacle of 
human progress, that bulwark against savagery like murder and torture, that 
bastion of temperance and reason. But in his piece, Assange once more gives the 
lie to the ferocious canards of Feinstein, Holder, Obama and Palin about the 
“great harm” the leaks have done:

“WikiLeaks has a four-year publishing history. During that time we have changed 
whole governments, but not a single person, as far as anyone is aware, has been 
harmed. But the US, with Australian government connivance, has killed thousands 
in the past few months alone.

“US Secretary of Defence Robert Gates admitted in a letter to the US congress 
that no sensitive intelligence sources or methods had been compromised by the 
Afghan war logs disclosure. The Pentagon stated there was no evidence the 
WikiLeaks reports had led to anyone being harmed in Afghanistan. NATO in Kabul 
told CNN it couldn’t find a single person who needed protecting. The Australian 
Department of Defence said the same. No Australian troops or sources have been 
hurt by anything we have published.”

Yes, how many thousands of people, how many tens of thousands, have been killed 
by our bipartisan Terror Warriors in the four years of WikiLeaks’ existence? How 
many millions have been “harmed” not only by the direct operations of the Terror 
War, but by the ever-widening, ever-deepening violence, hatred and turmoil it is 
spreading throughout the world? (Not to mention the accelerating collapse of 
American society, which has been financially, politically and morally bankrupted 
by the acceptance of aggressive war, torture, elite rapine and authoritarian rule.)

But none of the perpetrators of these acts, past or present, are in jail, or 
have even been prosecuted, or investigated, or inconvenienced in any way. Yet 
Assange is in a British prison tonight – and it is certainly not for the “sexual 
misconduct” charges that were filed against him in August, which then became the 
basis of an unprecedented worldwide arrest order of the type ordinarily reserved 
for war criminals – for those, in fact, accused of aggressive war, torture, 
elite rapine and authoritarian rule. The judge refused to grant bail, saying 
that Assange had “access to financial means” and could flee the country – 
perhaps a bitter joke on milord’s part, aimed at a man whose means of financial 
support are being systematically shut down by the most powerful government and 
corporate forces in the world. Journalist John Pilger and filmmaker Ken Loach 
were among those who appeared in court ready to stand surety for Assange, but to 
no avail.

WikiLeaks will doubtless try to struggle on. And Assange says he has given the 
entire diplomatic trove to 100,000 people. By dribs and drabs, shards of truth 
will get out. But the world’s journalists – and those persons of conscience 
working in the world’s governments – have been given a hard, harsh, unmistakable 
lesson in the new realities of our degraded time. Tell a truth that discomforts 
power, that challenges its domination over our lives, our discourse, our very 
thoughts, and you will be destroyed. No institution, public or private, will 
stand with you; the most powerful entities, public and private, will be arrayed 
against you, backed up by overwhelming violent force. This is where we are now. 
This is what we are now.

Chris Floyd is an American writer and frequent contributor to CounterPunch. His 
blog, “Empire Burlesque,” can be found at www.chris-floyd.com.