They do a public service.
If you don't like what they do, that's on you.
But it's not criminal.
John Stauber Retweeted
US admits it has charges to arrest Assange according to CNN http://edition.cnn.com/2017/04/20/politics/julian-assange-wikileaks-us-charges/index.html …
Contribute to his defense: https://justice4assange.com/Donate.html
This is beyond stupid.
There is no reason for the US government to pursue Julian Assange.
He's a publisher.
He published things they don't like.
Too damn bad, get over it.
C.I. summed up Julian Assange pretty well yesterday:
Safe passage defined as "official protection for someone when they are in danger or passing through a dangerous area."
Reconnecting a bridge is not creating a safe passage.
WIKILEAKS Julian Assange, for example, is in London at the Ecuadorian Embassy.
His supporters have long called for a safe passage for him.
Yes, Julian can travel to an airport or a dock to leave on a boat.
Or he can try to.
But there's no guarantee he won't be grabbed en route.
That's why they want a safe passage.
And on the topic of Julian Assange, let me be very clear since the slime that is SALON has published another trash attack on him.
Julian Assange is not a rapist.
That has never been determined.
Go back to the archives. When some of his supporters began insulting the two women involved in the case, we defended them from attacks.
There is no reason to attack those women with smears and lies.
There is also no reason to minimize rape or belittle it.
(Naomi Wolf failed to learn that lesson.)
But taking rape seriously does not mean that we say, "_____ is a rapist!"
Julian deserves the same benefit of the doubt as anyone else who has not been convicted.
Amanda Marcotte seems to think she's 'justice.'
She's not.
Julian has been convicted of nothing.
Rape or alleged rape also has no bearing on WIKILEAKS. (Which is why our advice was two-fold back in the day: Stop attacking those two women and get back to publishing.)
For fools like Marcotte to say they 'know' Julian (she's never met him) based on her interactions with men online -- how sad for Amanda that this is her only interaction, get out and live a little, there's a whole world offline -- to say the release of e-mails on Hillary were about sexism is to be invited to be called a damn liar.
Hillary Clinton attacked Julian, she attacked his supporters.
There is no question that there is personal animosity on both sides.
Does Hillary hate men?
I've never accused her of that.
So Amanda and her ilk need to stop smearing Julian's work as based on hatred for women.
What Julian hates is public record: Lies.
His whole career is about that.
The fact that it took place on the international stage explains why Marcotte has no clue.
She's another simpleton who never realized that there's a whole word far beyond her nose. She's got a big nose, but it's a big world.
She is the ugly face of US feminism that so angers British activists. She's ignorant, she fails to see that various factors can converge. She's a single-issue type person, the sort of White feminist in the 70s that would refuse to recognize that women of color could face additional issues, real issues, that need to be addressed.
The problem with "the personal is political" has always been that some have only seen their own personal life.
The personal is political is a response to the idiots -- today it would be Michael Walzer to name but one -- who would look at, for example, spouse abuse and decree it a personal problem.
Marlo Thomas has spoken at length and with far more wisdom on this topic than I ever could, but to short hand: issues like rape and spouse abuse were deemed "personal problems." They are not personal problems. Murder is not a personal problem. But when men like Amanda were in charge, they would judge what worked as important for them.
That's what "the personal is political" was truly about, destroying this separate spheres argument that undermined the rights of so many to protect those in power.
Julian Assange has not been convicted of rape.
It is dishonest to call him a "rapist."
It's flat out lying to say he's sexist.
Exactly.
Exactly.
The US government needs to leave Julian alone.
And in regards to possible rape, that's not a US issue.
So there's no reason for the US to be involved in any of this.
Are they going to go after LE MONDE next?
The BBC?
Where does it end.
It's time to end it now: Hands off Julian Assange.
Here's C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"
Friday, April 21, 2017.
We're going to have to deal nonsense right off the bat.
We're going to have to deal nonsense right off the bat.
So some balding, pasty bitch is going to tell us all what to do based on her vaginal hiccups and anal seizures?
No f**king way.
Feminism is not Leah Balding McElrath's personal toy.
Feminism is a movement.
Feminism is about equality.
It's not about specialism.
I'm sick to f**k of trash like that bald idiot insisting Hillary was the most qualified candidate for president ever.
In 2007 and 2008 (long before I supported her), I would hear people scoff at the idea that she even had qualifications.
I would defend her.
And you can say she was qualified.
But you can't lie that she was the most qualified.
And I'm sorry Baldy McElrath if that bit of truth ripped off a butterfly's wing in some alternate universe. (Where your oversized forehead is, no doubt, worshiped).
As Ann noted earlier this week ("Hillary was not more qualified than Al Gore, JFK or LBJ"), we already imploded that myth at THIRD with "Hillary was not 'the most qualified candidate ever..." where we noted how LBJ, JFK and Al Gore were all more qualified than Hillary.
Maybe were she running for talk show host, she'd be the most qualified?
Maybe not.
But for President of the United States?
I struggled to list meaningful credits she possessed in 2008 in exchanges with cab drivers.
Because she really doesn't have any.
She had one complete term as a senator and two years of a second one when she became Secretary of State. Without even evaluating those two positions in terms of any accomplishments, that's really not that impressive.
First Lady doesn't count.
Now I counted it in 2008.
But I go by how people treat things.
Hillary doesn't think First Lady matters as evidenced by her sexist announcement that, were she elected, Bill would be over the economy.
He wouldn't, she assured us in this last run, be planning state dinners or picking out china.
Because it's too much to expect a male spouse of a president to do what we'd expect a woman to do?
Hillary's always been a troubling sort of feminist.
No, 2016 Hillary insisted, she, as president, would do that herself.
That's not feminism.
Nor is it practical.
Hillary was not the most qualified.
She was probably somewhere in the middle.
But that may be generous.
It's interesting that no one can criticize Hillary according to the balding "human rights activist" (means she supports LGBT rights, she doesn't speak out in favor of those destroyed by US wars), but she can -- and has -- slammed Jill Stein.
Slamming Jill Stein is okay?
That's a funny sort of feminism.
Again, as with Hillary, I judge people by the standards they apply to others.
Hillary Clinton was a lousy candidate.
Matthew Yglesias -- who I have no reason to defend now or ever -- calling Hillary "a weak candidate" does not, as Balding Leah McElrath insists, "commit psychological violence against women/girls."
To allow this bitch to get away with this is to destroy free speech.
She's a liar and she's a loon.
Hillary was an awful candidate, not weak, awful.
And feminism is about telling the truth.
Telling the truth about men, about women, about the whole system.
If Hillary's a lousy candidate -- and she was -- then you say so.
And it's not violence against anyone.
But a hagged old balding bitch wants to tell us that we can't speak freely and wants to presume that women and girls can't handle truth?
That we're too delicate for public discourse?
A presidential election is not a cover of 16 MAGAZINE.
Drop the hysteria.
But if she did, people could speak honestly and that's what Leah really fears.
Hillary was a lousy candidate.
In 2008, she did know how to campaign.
She lost it.
In 2016, she lost it.
And she was not the most qualified ever.
She wasn't even the most qualified in the Democratic primary.
"She persisted" is what Leah calls her Twitter feed.
Having read it, I think Leah should retitle it "She farted."
Or, possibly, she'd prefer "She quifed."
She's trying to blackmail people into silence. That's not feminism.
Let's reset with Tori.
This four-year-old girl doesn't even flinch at gunfire -- trapped in Mosul, Iraq, she's never known anything but war cnn.it/2pLFW9H
That's a reality.
It's a reality that 'human rights activists' (especially those who are Temple Love Slaves for War Hawk Hillary) will never face.
14 years and still going.
The Iraq War.
When does it end?
Molly Hennessy-Fiske and W.J. Hennigan (LOS ANGELES TIMES) report:
It also appears that the number of civilian casualties has risen in recent months as combat has shifted to densely populated west Mosul and the coalition has undertaken the heaviest bombing since the war began almost three years ago.
[. . .]
Raed Mohammed Hasan, 30, said he lost neighbors and relatives, including his 11-month-old daughter, Rania, in an airstrike in east Mosul on Jan. 21. He and other residents say 11 civilians died in that strike, which occurred during the months-long battle to oust Islamic State from Iraq’s second-largest city. Coalition records show a strike was carried out in Mosul that day, but officials say it is not being investigated for civilian deaths.
The report also contains numerous photos by Marcus Yam.
Day 185 of The Mosul Slog.
It never ends.
And it never ends because solutions are not sought.
Nouri al-Maliki was the mid-wife to the Islamic State.
His actions allowed them to rise.
That's on Bully Boy Bush and the Congress of the United States who all agreed to benchmarks for Iraq, remember that?
Congress was going to cut off support if Iraq did not show progress.
Congress was as full of it as was Bully Boy Bush (Democrats controlled both houses them).
But so was Nouri. He agreed to those 2007 benchmarks.
One of which was political reconciliation.
But he never pursued it, he never enacted it.
And then Barack comes along.
He doesn't make Nouri stop persecuting the Sunnis.
He doesn't demand that Nouri keep the reconciliation promise.
In fact, when Nouri loses the 2010 election (to Ayad Allawi), Barack goes out of his way to overturn the elections results (via the US-brokered Erbil Agreement) and give Nouri a second term that the Iraqi voters did not want.
And Nouri only got worse.
There is still no political reconciliation in Iraq.
And stop pretending that the US government has no power.
They've always had power.
And that has nothing to do with troops or war.
It has to do with Iraq's needs.
Currently, the Iraqi government defines needs as: More weapons.
And the US government's response: To whip it out on request, no conditions.
IANS reports, "The US State Department has approved arms sales worth $295 million to Iraq, the Pentagon confirmed."
There's a thing called "the diplomatic toolbox."
John Kerry couldn't find it because he was too busy, as Secretary of State, playing toy solider.
But now Donald Trump is in the White House and yet another administration will fork over everything to the Iraqi government (that the US installed and keeps in power) without any conditions.
Let's stop pretending that the never-ending Iraq War is seen as 'tragic' or even 'problematic' by the US government.
It doesn't want it to end.
If it did, it would follow textbook examples of diplomacy.
Three administration, over 14 years, and the war continues?
That's obviously the intent and the plan.
We're going to have to wrap up. Sorry so much was spent on an idiot but we cannot allow anyone to dictate what we can and cannot say.
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