The persecution of WikiLeaks ’ Julian Assange

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The persecution of WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange
3 December 2010

The American state, its spokesmen in the mass media, and its allies around the
world are engaged in an international campaign of vilification and persecution
against WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange.

This campaign has nothing to do with any supposed crime he has committed, since
he has committed none. He is the target of an international manhunt for his role
in lifting the lid on the lies and criminal operations of imperialist powers the
world over—above all, in the United States.

The same mafia-type criminality is now being deployed with full force against
WikiLeaks and Private Bradley Manning, who is charged with leaking some of the
documents. In the US, politicians of both parties are united in their
determination to see Assange arrested. The Obama administration has branded the
leakers, as well as WikiLeaks, “criminals,” with the US attorney general pledged
to “close the gap” by inventing a pseudo-legal basis for prosecution if one does
not exist at present.

Former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee and ex-military officials have
demanded the death penalty for Manning, while Sarah Palin has insisted that
WikiLeaks be branded a terrorist organization.

Washington’s junior partners abroad have been equally adamant in their attack.
Tom Flanagan, a former adviser to the Canadian prime minister, declared that
Assange should be “assassinated,” that Obama should “put out a contract and
maybe use a drone or something.” And the fact that Assange is a citizen of
Australia did not prevent Julia Gillard, the prime minister of that country,
from declaring, without any evidence, that Assange’s actions were “illegal,”
while placing her government at the service of the US witch-hunt.

Assange faces the immediate threat of arrest on the basis of trumped-up charges
in Sweden. On Thursday, Swedish authorities obtained a new arrest warrant on
alleged sexual misconduct charges—invariably, and falsely, described in the mass
media as “rape.” The charges were initially considered so specious that the
prosecutor ordered them dropped. This decision was reversed, however, and Sweden
on Thursday submitted a warrant to Interpol. Police in Britain—where Assange is
believed to be located—have pledged his arrest, which could happen as early as
today.

There can be no doubt that the charges leveled against Assange in Sweden are
only a convenient pretext to seek his detention.

Indeed, among the more revealing documents posted so far by WikiLeaks is one
from the US ambassador to Sweden, who notes that Sweden’s close ties to the
United States military “give the lie to the official policy” of
non-participation in military alliances. In what has begun to emerge as a theme
in the released cables from the US State Department, the ambassador warns that
these ties should not be revealed because this would “open up the government to
domestic criticism.”

The documents obtained by WikiLeaks—only a small fraction of which have been
released so far—help expose what is a permanent conspiracy against the
democratic rights of the world’s population: from covering up US bombings of
civilians in Yemen, to working behind the scenes to obstruct the prosecution of
CIA agents guilty of torture, to spying on UN officials in violation of
international treaties.

Those who are leading the campaign against WikiLeaks are themselves responsible
for horrific atrocities. In the face of allegations from Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton that WikiLeaks had placed lives in danger, Assange gave an
appropriate response in an interview with Time magazine. WikiLeaks, he noted,
“has never caused an individual … to come to any sort of physical harm or to be
wrongly imprisoned and so on. That is a record compared to the organizations
that we are trying to expose who have literally been involved in the deaths of
hundreds or thousands or, potentially over the course of many years, millions.”

This criminality continues, now under the Obama administration. One document
released by WikiLeaks that has been virtually ignored in the media is
particularly revealing. In the spring of 2009, the Obama administration, in
alliance with top figures in the Republican Party, intervened to pressure the
Spanish government to derail an investigation into torture carried out by the
Bush administration.

At one point, a representative of the US embassy, together with former chairman
of the Republican Party Mel Martinez, met with the acting Spanish Foreign
Minister to insist that “the prosecutions would not be understood or accepted in
the US and would have an enormous impact” on US-Spanish relations. The
prosecutions were quickly scuttled.

If the actions of WikiLeaks have helped reveal, in real time, the lies of the
American government, they have also exposed the role of the chief propagators of
these lies: the American media. For decades, the US government has cultivated
the media to the point where it engages in self-censorship as a matter of
course, where it does not even blush to declare itself “embedded” with this or
that military unit or other state body.

The major newspapers regularly clear major articles with the White House and the
Pentagon, delaying stories that could be politically harmful. Now, what is
supposedly a central obligation of the media—to expose government secrets and
provide information to the population—is treated by the media itself as if it
were a criminal enterprise.

The mainstream media has long been concerned in particular about the potential
of the Internet to allow people to access information unfiltered through
official channels. There can be no doubt that the WikiLeaks revelations will
provide further impetus to the campaign by the US government to assert greater
control over online networks.

The WikiLeaks web site has already been the target of repeated denial of service
attacks, of suspicious origin. In an attempt to get WikiLeaks back online, the
organization rented servers from Amazon. On Wednesday, Amazon blocked WikiLeaks
from using its servers, apparently under pressure from US officials and staff
members of Democrat turned Independent Senator Joseph Lieberman, chairman of the
Homeland Security Committee.

The state persecution of Assange—enthusiastically backed by the mass media—is
one expression of a far-reaching decay of democracy in the United States and
internationally. World governments, led by the United States, are carrying out
deeply unpopular policies—the multi-trillion dollar bailout of financial
institutions, relentless demands for social austerity and the expanding war and
global plunder.

The constant proclamations about the need for secrecy, which WikiLeaks has
violated by publishing government documents, arises fundamentally from the
irreconcilable conflict between the social interests that these governments
represent and the needs and aspirations of the vast majority of the population.

The persecution of Assange in an effort to silence this exposure is not simply a
threat to one individual. The methods employed against WikiLeaks will be used
against all opposition to the policies of the corporate and financial aristocracy.

The World Socialist Web Site demands an immediate halt to the campaign against
WikiLeaks and Julian Assange. All the documents WikiLeaks has in its possession
should be released for the world to see.

In the final analysis, the hysterical witch-hunt against Assange and WikiLeaks
is not any sign of strength on the part of the American ruling elite and its
state, but rather of fear and weakness. Intensely conscious of the crisis and
instability of the political and economic system, they fear that revelations of
state crimes will only fuel the inevitable eruption of mass working class
opposition to their reactionary policies in the US and around the world. It is
this emerging movement of social struggles on a global scale that must undertake
an implacable defense of Assange, WikiLeaks and all those who seek to drag the
crimes and conspiracies of imperialism into the light of day.

Joseph Kishore

http://wsws.org/articles/2010/dec2010/pers-d03.shtml

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