Julian Assange’s Greatest Leak: Americans Prefer Their Government Mostly Masked

By Darrell Smith

I have been vocal both on line and on bar stools in my full support of Julian Assange and Wikileaks since the first post I read from them. I haven’t wavered until the last reported document dump, following which my government and their owners decided to show the upstart internet companies who’s really in charge. They told them and told us all we can’t handle the truth about how our Government goes about its business, ostensibly in the name of us, the American people. So they made them block the site, at least in the United States. It’s now available from servers in Switzerland.) Hoping this will make us forget it existed, make us think that this information, this cat that somehow got out of the informational bag, never existed

Of course, that’s only for the small percentage of us the government hasn’t already convinced that this man and his information is not only evil, but dangerous to our safety, our way of life and our soldiers. This guy is a terrorist, rapist, anarchist, atheist and blond. He needs to be indicted, arrested, deported or assassinated. How dare he tell us facts.

Funny, but when he was just leaking stuff about government misdeeds, he was merely annoying and embarrassing, no matter what he exposed. Corruption, torture, murder, incompetence theft and lies that cost us our treasure, our sons and doubtlessly our identity and our nation’s soul, who really cared? Yawn. Our trusted press was sure to focus not on the horrors that were undeniably confirmed, but on the messenger. Did you hear he’s wanted for rape in Sweden? Nothing new here folks, move along….

Then late last month the idiot said his next release would be about one of the largest American banks, and the truth would document actual financial mega-crimes against the people, our government and the world. Using their own documents. Promised it would bring them down, using their own words. Word got out it was Bank of America, Jesse Helms’s own creation. Charlotte’s finest.

Suddenly, the game changed for Mr. Assange. Hubris. It may have been deserved, but definitely a bad tactical decision to tip his hand.

After publishing videos of murder by helicopter, documenting hundreds of thousands of innocent civilian deaths and hundreds of billions of our dollars stolen by our ex-vice president’s ex company, military incompetence that would stagger any West Point freshman and seeing it handsomely rewarded, he was merely an annoyance. But when you cause BOA’s stock to drop 3 percent in one day, you gotta’ die, boy. That’s serious Assange there.

Suddenly everyone from Glen Beck to the normally religious Mike Huckabee says he gotta go. MSNBC, Fox, CBS, NPR, Republican, Democrat, Hindu, Beagle, it didn’t matter, the terrorist anarchist America-hating hippie had to be eliminated. Executed. Within one week it all changed.

I’ve been talking to a lot of the Tea Party libertarian and redneck types lately about this. They all agree Assange is a traitor and terrorist. When I ask them if they trust their government, it’s always not only no, but hell no. But they can’t explain how someone that exposed the lies and undeniable misdeeds they themselves suspected, using the government’s own words, is a bad thing. Someone who had the courage to dedicate his life to let the world know what was really going on is not a kindred soul, but a mortal enemy who must die. Somehow there’s a serious disconnect in their thinking, or else as I’ve always suspected, they really don’t think at all.

So let us take the charges against Assange we have been told of so many times in the last few weeks week and check what we can document as truth. One at a time.

1. Wikileaks has released information indiscriminately, putting our troops and allies at risk. Reality: Not one case of anybody being harmed by the disclosures has even been claimed, let alone documented. And trust me, if there was one, we would have heard about it constantly. Before the release, Assange asked the US government to review the documents and redact any names or information that might compromise anybody mentioned. The government refused. He then insisted that the magazines and papers that printed the information show them to the government to ask if it was OK to publish. They did. Nothing that the US government or the publishers questioned was printed.

2. Wikileaks has released 250,000 diplomatic cables. Reality: They released 951 out of more than 250,000 they have available. They’re releasing more, slowly.

3. Assange should be arrested/assassinated for treason. Reality: The U.S. government can’t even come up with a misdemeanor to charge him with. Not one. It’s not illegal to publish government documents, no matter what classification, that you come by as long as you didn’t steal them yourself. The Supreme Court has ruled in several cases that the public’s right to know what their government is doing in their name outweighs any claim to secrecy short of military plans prior to execution.

There are many more, but nothing Assange released was considered worth killing him for until he threatened the bank. Now he’s toast. If we cared about our honor, our reputation, our soul as a nation, we would have had some media outlet somewhere in this Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave come up with the stones to rub our nose in this when Wikileaks released it months ago. Few in this country have seen it. It was front page news all over the world, but somehow it didn’t squeeze the results from Dancing With the Stars off our screens. Watch it and try not to feel shame in what’s being done in our name, what we should kill someone for showing us.

So hippie or redneck, socialist or fascist, rich, poor black white old young yankee rebel democrat republican coke pepsi ford chevy earnhart gordon boston manhattan shaken or stirred, the only thing anybody who walks upright and is smarter than a fifth grader can agree on in America 2010 is this: After Ruby Ridge, Waco, 9/11 inconsistencies, and the last decade of the politics of globalization and trickle-down economic lies, we know we cannot trust our government. Not one bit. If you do, you’re not reading this, your watching Dancing With the Stars reruns now.

If you prefer your eyes wide open, Assange and Wikileaks are a godsend.

Darrell Smith is a Flagler Beach business owner. He comments at FlaglerLive as NortonSmitty. Read his previous column here.