Dale Carnegie, please...

Barely one day after Gerard Henderson tried to spin the apparently politically-motivated violence in Arizona into an Australian leftist issue (with the ABC -now sans Kerry O'Brien- as usual suspect), The Sydney Morning Herald publishes a link to the website "People OK with murdering Assange".

And, boy! oh, boy! isn't that website a veritable treasure trove of right-wing bigotry, imbecility and ignorance. How can Mr. Henderson possibly ignore this?

Just two examples:

"A dead man can't leak stuff... This guy's a traitor, he's treasonous, and he has broken every law of the United States. And I'm not for the death penalty, so... there's only one way to do it: illegally shoot the son of a bitch." Bob Beckel (Fox News commentator).

Find the video here and here.

Two little questions: Isn't to call for an illegal act defined as incitement to crime, murder in this case? Don't you need to be an American citizen to be a traitor to the United States?

And, to be fair to American right-wingers and to Mr. Henderson, the other fat man, right-end of the screen, appears to be... a "liberal"!

"Julian Assange is not an American citizen and he has no constitutional rights. So, there's no reason that the CIA can't kill him." John Hawkins (far-right blogger)

Unlike Mr. Beckel, at least Mr. Hawkins is right on this: Julian Assange is not an US citizen. This, however, does not mean he has no constitutional rights, or human rights, for that matter. Find Mr. Hawkins' text here.

For Christ's sake, please will someone give Julian Assange a copy of Dale Carnegie's "How to Win Friends and Influence People"?

Open letter: To Julia Gillard, re Julian Assange

As I tend to be pessimistic about human kind, I tend to value whatever signs that maybe not all is lost.

Here is one such sign:

Knee-Jerk Reactions and WikiLeaks

Even if one doesn't follow the news in detail, the subject of the moment is the WikiLeaks/Julian Assange saga.

In my experience, in this kind of situations one can easily discern two diametrically opposite stances: the Right and the Left Wing.

Basically, whatever the lefties say (either praising or deploring, as the situation might be), the right-wingers oppose furiously (deploring, if the lefties praised it, praising, if the lefties did the opposite).

Surprisingly, thus, in this occasion the reaction has been much less clear: basically, most people commenting have given some support to both WikiLeaks and Julian Assange.

Here's a sample. I chose this example deliberately: apart from a considerable number of comments (which give an idea of what the posters think about the matter), its author is known for its centre-right opinions. And yet, he manages to sound rather reasonable on this matter.

All that is good and well, to be sure.

But if you stop and observe, you notice few people actually know what Assange and WikiLeaks have done. And here is an interesting detail: the Australian media coverage of this case has been spectacularly mediocre. Compare any local medium (let's say ABC, SBS, and SMH) with Der Spiegel International Online or The Guardian.

To be fair with the 3 media chosen as Australian examples: they did not get any special information release directly from WikiLeaks, as the foreign media did. And, if anything,  their local competitors' coverage is even worse.

So what have WikiLeaks and Assange actually done? Well, to a large extent the documents released are merely a source of unnecessary embarrassment for the US Government.

But there is more to it than that. The leaks reveal that Germany, for instance, has been object of espionage by the US Government. The information gathered by the US Government appears to be of little sensitivity and was offered spontaneously by the German source (a senior staffer from the business-friendly FDP party).

However, once a source has been compromised, it could become potentially susceptible to blackmail and could be forced to provide much more sensitive information. This would explain why the FDP has moved swiftly to relieve the source of its current duties.

More troubling is the role of some senior German politicians, like former Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble. According to Der Spiegel:

"The Bush administration saw Schäuble as a sort of Trojan horse in Europe, a man who could help Washington achieve its goals."

It's understandable the parties affected are less than happy with the exposure given to them by the WikiLeaks leaks.

One could also understand that the US Government may feel outraged by these leaks.

It's quite possible that the German authorities might feel a little embarrassed by these leaks, too. This could be the case for other governments, explaining the knee-jerk reaction of condemnation to WikiLeaks and Julian Assange.

But one thing seems quite certain: the national interest of the Federal Republic of Germany appears to have been served by the leaks.

WikiLeaks Shut Down

According to ABC News, the WikiLeaks website was shut down. Few details are made available:

"WikiLeaks says servers in the United States have killed the site's domain name following 'mass attacks'.
The domain hosting withdrawal means the website is down worldwide. Earlier this week Amazon booted WikiLeaks from its servers."

You can try the WikiLeaks site here. When I tried (7:33 PM), it re-directed me to the WikiLeaks blog.

Frankly, I don't know much about the legislation covering the Internet. I do believe domain names are subject to copyright, as they are registered. This implies that they can be sold or leased, like any other asset. If they are similar to any other asset, they are private property.

I don't think it fits well with a Government that respects the sanctity of property rights to simply tamper with private property. If the reader is better informed, I would appreciate comments.

Notice that this could also be construed as an attack to the freedom of expression, which is granted by the US Constitution even to extremist groups, as the KKK. 

The reader will notice in the ABC News above that so far WikiLeaks has not been charged,  by the US Government, of any crime; just as Julian Assange himself has not been charged by the Swedish Government of any crime (at least, as of the date of writing this).

In any case, there is another perhaps even more troubling twist to the WikiLeaks/Julian Assange saga.

Tom Flanagan, one time adviser to Canadian Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, has publicly called for Assange's assassination:

Flanagan: "I think Assange should be assassinated, actually. (...) Maybe use a drone or something."
Voice outside screen: "Just for the record: this is tough stuff..."
Flanagan: "I am feeling very manly today..."

Commenting on the WikiLeaks website and Assange saga, The Jerusalem Post's Pinchas Landau had this to say:

Do not expect the Internet to survive as an open arena for much longer, and don’t expect the change in the sociopolitical environment to stop at the Internet.

I fear he might be right.