Song for Bradley Manning

The Chair of the US House Committee on Homeland Security shows why Wikileaks is essential. His words are simply repellent and fascistic.

WikiLeaks today condemned calls from the chair of the House Committee on Homeland Security to “strangle the viability” of WikiLeaks by placing the publisher and its editor-in-chief, Julian Assange, on a US “enemies list” normally reserved for terrorists and dictators.

Placement on the US “Specially Designated National and Blocked Persons List” would criminalize US companies who deal with WikiLeaks or its editor. “The U.S. government simply cannot continue its ineffective piecemeal approach of responding in the aftermath of Wikileaks’ damage,” King wrote in a letter to the Secretary of the US Treasury, Geithner. “The U.S. government should be making every effort to strangle the viability of Assange’s organization.”

’The Homeland Security Committee chair Peter T. King wants to put a Cuban style trade embargo around the truth—forced on US citizens at the point of a gun,’ said Julian Assange.

’WikiLeaks is a publishing organization. It is time to cut through the bluster. There is no allegation by the US government or any other party, that WikiLeaks has hurt anyone, at any time during its four-year publishing history, as a result of anything it has published. Very few news organizations can say as much.’

’WikiLeaks has “terrorized” politicians from Kenya to Kansas over the last four years. Quite a few have lost office as a result. That doesn’t mean we are “terrorists”—it means we doing our job. We intend to “terrorize” Peter King, Hillary Clinton, corrupt CEOs and all the rest for many years to come, because that is what the people of the world demand.’

King noted that some U.S. companies had voluntarily cut off ties to Wikileaks, but that a New York publisher had recently agreed to pay Assange for an autobiography. Assange has said the eventual book royalties would help ’keep Wikileaks afloat’.

’By targeting WikiLeaks and the US publisher Knopf for economic censorship, King reveals his abiding hatred for the US constitution. When the founding fathers wrote, “Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press”, they did not provide an exception for blustering fools like Peter T. King.’

Related Links

Bradley Manning Charge Sheet 5th July, 2010 [.pdf]

Today’s Wikileaks Links

Exclusive Interview: Julian Assange on Murdoch, Manning and the threat from China
Wikileaks volunteer detained and searched (again) by US agents
Welcome to AnonOps Network
Wikileaks: Publication of Twitter data may violate EU law
I’ve got secret files on Murdoch as ‘insurance’, claims Assange
“WikiLeaks condemns US embargo move”
The Media’s Continuing War On Wikileaks

Today’s Palestine / Israel Links

Rabbi: Sins led to woman’s murder
Israeli ambulances refuse to enter ‘unrecognized’ Palestinian villages
Iran says US, Israel ‘sabotaged’ Lebanon govt
Israeli troops capture Lebanese man: army
Torture by Israel : 1999 to the present
The Holocaust, Palestine and the Arab World: Gilbert Achcar interviewed
Israel’s Orthodox Rabbis: ‘Palestinians to the Ovens!’
Thirteen homes and three school buildings destroyed by Israeli forces
DANKNER: Decline to brutality – I am ashamed
Israeli FM’s visit protested in Greece
Erdogan says Israeli FM is despicable

Other Links

What if Tunisia had a revolution, but nobody watched?
Police Stopped Loughner’s Car on Day of Shooting
The social significance of the Arizona massacre
Mayhem Spreads in Tunisia; Curfew Decreed
Soldiers on the streets as Tunisian violence reaches capital
Tomgram: William Hartung, Lockheed Martin’s Shadow Government
Steve Bell on Sarah Palin’s ‘blood libel’
Tunisia in turmoil
Letters from Tunisia
Ghetts, the census and Guantánamo Bay
Flood shark sightings have residents on edge
The CIA File on Luis Posada Carriles
How Haiti was abandoned : the broken promises of support for Haiti from the world’s most powerful governments–and the neoliberal agenda they are pursuing instead.