With the speed and degree of attack breathtaking but anticipated, Julian Assange has officially pissed off almost ever government in the world and is now being targetted financially, criminally and physically.
Numerous different articles in the Guardian and CBC have outlined the fight both Wikileaks and Assange are facing.
On the financial attacks:
The international pressure on Julian Assange increased today after the banking arm of the Swiss post office [PostFinance] announced that it had closed the WikiLeaks founder's account because he had given "false information".
PostFinance is the latest institution to sever its ties with Assange and WikiLeaks. Last week, Amazon.com withdrew its hosting of WikiLeaks' cables site and the WikiLeaks.org domain was taken offline by Everydns.net. On Saturday, PayPal, which is owned by the auction website eBay, froze WikiLeaks' account, saying it was being used for "illegal" activity. - Guardian
None of these companies took action against Wikileaks with the posting of the Afghan and Iraqi warlogs.
On criminal attacks:
[Wikileaks lawyers] Jennifer Robinson and Mark Stephens of the law firm Finers Stephens Innocent told the Guardian they had been watched by people parked outside their houses for the past week.
"I've noticed people consistently sitting outside my house in the same cars with newspapers," said Robinson. "I probably noticed certain things a week ago, but mostly it's been the last three or four days."
Stephens told BBC1's Andrew Marr Show: "It is quite bizarre, because the chief prosecutor in Sweden dropped the entire case against him, saying there was absolutely nothing for him to find back in September, and then a few weeks later on – after the intervention of a Swedish politician – a new prosecutor, not in Stockholm where Julian and these women had been, but in Gothenburg, began a new case which has resulted in these warrants and the Interpol Red Notice being put out." - Guardian
On death threats:
Former U.S. Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin, who is widely expected to run for president in 2012, has called the former computer hacker an "anti-American operative with blood on his hands" and accused Obama of not doing enough to stop the WikiLeaks founder.
"Why was he not pursued with the same urgency we pursue al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders?" she said.
"I think Assange should be assassinated, actually," Tom Flanagan [former Stephen Harper advisor and mentor] said with a laugh, and when asked to expand upon his answer, added that he "wouldn't be unhappy" if Assange "disappeared."
Canadian author and columnist Ezra Levant [another Flanagan protege] questioned why the Obama administration has treated the Australian-born Assange differently than the Taliban leaders targeted for assassination, saying he and his WikiLeaks colleagues "act like spies, not journalists."
"Why is Assange still alive?" Levant wrote in his column for QMI Agency earlier this week.
"Why is he being treated as a journalist or political activist? If someone had published the intimate details of the D-Day plans during the Second World War, he would never have been seen again." - CBC
Former US presidential candidate Mike Huckabee also suggested that Assange be charged with treason and face the death penalty. Interestingly enough, all these suggested death threats happened within one week of each other. Almost as if some kind of campaign was organized with talking points....
Your oblique suggestion of an established conspiracy to assassinate Assange is dubious. You are giving these people too much credit. The people asking for Assange's death aren't capable of devising something so fragile as a covert propaganda campaign. These are people with American nativist values. Look at the things they say "he is a traitor"; "he is a terrorist"; "...a threat to national security"; "...anti-American"; "...anything less than death would be indequate"; and so on. It's interesting to note the arguements against Assange are not arguements at all. They are sets of rhetorical sentences... here is a great article in regards your article's topic. http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/i...
Hey Willem,
Thanks for your post. To clairify, I was not suggesting that Conservative pundits were plotting to assassinate Assange, I was simply highlighting that the suggestion that he could/should be killed were all happening at the same time.
This could be due to pure happenstance, or possible coordinated talking points.
If it's the latter, one would have to ask why they were doing so. Trying to discredit his very existence? Anticipating that someone is going to bump him off? Who knows.
Thanks for the article link.
Considering there's already a hit squad available to the executive. I thought it was something of an open secret.
I gather Sy Hersh is a credible source...
Greenwald at Salon knows too, for that matter.
So O'Reilly, Flanagan, Levant are probably also more than aware of the fact, and know perfectly well what they're doing by pushing this messaging out into the culture. Which is what makes the spectacle of their banging the drum even more disturbing.
Assange has turned himself in to INTERPOL anyways so we'll see what happens next.
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