Tag: Wikileaks

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crime and punishment First Amendment rights

Assange: Freedom & Statuary

Julian Assange, freedom of the press, free speech, Wikileaks

Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, has been set free, time served. 

On Monday, presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., called him a “generational hero,” celebrating his release from a decade and a half in confinement, under threat of U.S. prosecution for publishing “hacked documents.” 

Loathed by the American establishment, left and right, Mr. Assange had ruffled feathers of the war machine and then the Democratic Party — the latter for publishing the contents of Hillary Clinton’s infamous email stash. The attempt to get him to America from overseas was a complex (and failed) ordeal that pushed him first into confinement in an Ecuadorian embassy and then placed in a maximum-​security London prison.

Assange, who admitted guilt in a plea deal deal, did not agree to set foot on the American continent, so the court hearing took place in a U.S. District Court in Saipan on Tuesday.

“The bad news,” RFK, Jr., went on, “is that he had to plea guilty to conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defense info. Which means the US security state succeeded in criminalizing journalism and extending their jurisdiction globally to non-citizens.”

Empire’s gonna imperialize.

While Mike Pence, the 48th Vice President, fully objected to the plea deal, Representative Thomas Massie (R.-Ky) echoed Kennedy’s sentiments: “My plane landed in DC & I just heard Julian Assange will soon be free due to a deal. His liberation is great news, but it’s a travesty that he’s already spent so much time in jail. Obama, Trump, & Biden should have never pursued this prosecution. Pardon Snowden & Free Ross now.” 

Massie mentions two more persecuted individuals, leaker of unconstitutional NSA secrets, Edward Snowden (hiding from the American empire in Russia) and darknet (“Silk Road”) publisher Ross Ulbricht (a prisoner now in Tucson’s federal penitentiary, sentenced to two life terms).

In a follow-​up tweet, Kennedy offered “Next steps,” including erecting “a monument to Assange in Washington as a civics lesson for the American public about the importance of free speech,” pardoning Ed Snowden, and releasing Ross Ulbricht … “to show our commitment to transactional freedom.”

That latter commutation has been promised by former president and current Republican candidate Donald Trump. But “transactional freedom” is not exactly the byword of our age.

And statuary is hardly in vogue.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability media and media people moral hazard national politics & policies responsibility

A Leaner Bear

Hillary Clinton, Russia, Wikileaks

Russia is being painted as Enemy No. 1 by Hillary Clinton, despite her predecessor’s mocking of the same notion four years ago, when Republican Mitt Romney said it.

Of course, Mrs. Clinton is just using Russia as a distraction from her conspiracies and crimes and inadequacies as revealed by WikiLeaks.

What’s more worrying is Russia’s military adventuring, surely.

Before we wander into the morass that is foreign policy, maybe we should consider the Russian military itself … and its supporting economy.

Last year, TASS confidently informed us that the military budget was going up 0.8 percent in 2016, with $750 million slated for nuclear weaponry. I still hear talk of the latter fact; not much of the former factoid, that shockingly modest increase.

Even last year it was commonly noted that Russia’s military budget was getting “squeezed” … by hard times. Lack of revenue.

Now the hammer has fallen on the sickle: “Russian defence budget set to drop by 12%” in yesterday’s IHS Jane’s 360 article by Craig Caffrey.

First, don’t be alarmed: “defence” is how Brits misspell “defense.”

Second, take heart: Russia simply cannot do all it may want even in its darkest hearts.

Third, take caution: a weaker Russia is still dangerous, in some ways more so. We might see increased (and relatively cheap) cyber-​warfare, of which Mrs. Clinton is so particularly mindful.

Finally, let’s acknowledge that American politicians have never focused rationally on the Russian threat, often hyping it gratuitously to enhance their own power, or, for that same reason, ignoring the threat entirely, as when smirking at Romney’s wise concerns.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Hillary Clinton, Russia, Wikileaks

 

Questions Answered:
Is Russia a threat?
Why are Democrats obsessed with Russia?
Why is Russia reducing its military budget?

Ask the next question. --Theodore Sturgeon

Ask The Next Question:
What kind of defense should a free people insist upon?

 

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crime and punishment First Amendment rights government transparency national politics & policies

Secrecy Broken

The “Wikileaks” controversy proceeds to grow and mutate, like Clostridium botulinum in a Petri dish with spoiled pork, and I’ve avoided talking about it up till now.

Wikileaks is a website devoted to publishing leaked documents from governments and other scandal-​prone institutions. You probably know the major players, and the various permutations of the story. You can hardly miss them. Because of that, I’m not going to go through the story in detail. Instead, I’d like to take a step back and offer a few “meta-​thoughts” … ideas that might help produce a good conclusion.

  1. Republican forms of government require a great deal of transparency, though not on everything. There are military secrets and diplomatic info-​dumps that, for our security, would best remain secret and un-dumped.
  2. Politicians, soldiers and bureaucrats tend to hate transparency. Why? They don’t like being second-​guessed by “non-​professionals.” So they often make government more opaque than it should be. 
  3. Some of our leaders have tried to put nearly everything foreign-​policy-​related into the tightest security, demanding high clearances even for viewing. Much of this is self-​serving, not truly security-related.
  4. A government worker who breaks security protocols to leak documents can be at once a hero and still prosecutable by law. 

Now’s a good time to rethink transparency and our government’s secrecy protocols. 

But, rethought or not, no one’s been surprised to learn of more amazing lapses in ethics and judgment on the part of our leaders. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.