The attempt to prosecute Julian Assange for doing journalism is a travesty. If the US is successful in its efforts, then no journalist is safe.
All investigative journalist use sources who they are bound to protect. Sometimes those sources have indeed broken the laws of their own country in order to provide the materials they offer to journalists for publication.
The case of Daniel Ellsberg is instructive. He, like Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning, had legitimate access to materials that were not available to the public. He, like Chelsea Manning, felt a moral duty to make these materials public.
Do you want to know what the government is doing in your name? If so, then you have an interest in protecting the rights of journalists to do their jobs by ferreting out information that governments do not want us to know.
While there can be legitimate reasons for secrecy, it is not legitimate to maintain secrecy in order to cover up crimes. The information that Manning provided to Wikileaks via Julian Assange, was truthful information about war crimes that were committed in our names. I don’t know about you, but I do not want our government to sanction killing innocent people. Yet that is exactly what the famous video “Collateral Murder” showed: US troops who treated real people as if they were figures in a video game, saying “Light ’em up!” before opening fire… and then continuing to shoot people who were already disabled, killing them; and also shooting and killing people who attempted to assist the injured.
This is not something that was done in the heat of warfare. These military men who committed the shootings were sitting far away from the action, and were clearly itching to pull the trigger. Our military is supposed to operate within strict rules of engagement, and among other things, is supposed to avoid killing journalists. Yet they killed a Reuters journalist even though he clearly was carrying a camera with a telephoto lens.
But this is just one of the many issues that Assange and Wikileaks have brought forward. They have exposed political corruption in the US as well as in Russia, Peru and other countries.
How can we hope to know the truth if we imprison the truth tellers among us? Answer: we can’t.
Please take a moment to visit the Assange Defense organization and do what you can to stop the travesty of justice that is occurring right now in the UK!
Thanks,
–Plain