The US, the country I love, is behaving, like a small child caught in a lie, red faced and angry because it has been found out. Amazon was easily cajoled into terminating Wikileaks by Senator Joe Lieberman (I-CT) because the 1st Amendment means nothing to him, or evidently, to Amazon. Daniel Ellsberg is calling for boycott of the bookseller and web service provider. Lieberman introduced legislation, Thursday, that would make it a federal crime to tell the public the truth.
“This legislation will help hold people criminally accountable who endanger these sources of information that are vital to protecting our national security interests,” he continued.
The so-called SHIELD Act (Securing Human Intelligence and Enforcing Lawful Dissemination) would amend a section of the Espionage Act that already forbids publishing classified information on U.S. cryptographic secrets or overseas communications intelligence — i.e., wiretapping. The bill would extend that prohibition to information on HUMINT, human intelligence, making it a crime to publish information “concerning the identity of a classified source or informant of an element of the intelligence community of the United States,” or “concerning the human intelligence activities of the United States or any foreign government” if such publication is prejudicial to U.S. interests.
Last night EveryDNS.net another US firm canceled its domain name service to Wikileaks.org forcing it to use its IP number http://213.251.145.96/cablegate and move to Switzerland, Wikileaks.ch.
While no diplomatic memorandum have been released between Sweden and the US (you can bet the secure lines have been burning) Sweden is taking the highly unusual act of issuing an warrant for his arrest on allegations of rape. The Daily Mail reports he will be picked up today.
An extradition warrant is expected to be passed to the Metropolitan Police today or early next week.
The Lahore High Court dismissed a petition to block Wikileaks because it might “create a rift among Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and other Muslim and Western countries”. This is Pakistan, for chrissakes!
For goodness sakes, even Russia is calling the US corrupt and hypocritical and making a hell of an argument and condemnation.
it is duplicitous and corrupt; it will go to any extremes to insulate from prosecution, and in many cases civil liability, persons whose crimes facilitate this duplicity and corruption; it has abdicated its responsibility to serve as a “check-and-balance” against the other two branches of government, and has instead been transformed into a weapon exploited by the wealthy, the corporations, and the politically connected to defend their criminality, conceal their corruption and promote their economic interests; and, finally, that the oft-quoted adage “Nobody is above the law” is a lie.
So, like the red faced kid, instead of addressing the very important issues of the Obama administration interfering with Spanish judiciary enforcing international law, instead the US is swinging its weight around like the giant bully it is. The cat is out of the bag. The US has been caught red handed and should behave like an adult and take its punishment or at least show a little contrition.
[photo Guardian]
