Opinionator Assassinator Strikes Again

[UPDATE Below] [UPDATE II]

After weeks of serving up servile pablum to the readers of the Sunday Times-Standard's so-called "Opinion" As It Stands they all collaborated to take a shot at trying to murder the character of someone with more guts and courage then the whole pack of them put together. Herein lies the wisdom for, and the lesson on, "how to cut your own throat and blame it on someone else for the despicable act of killing you."

So, let me introduce you to the Local Master's latest lesson on Character Assassination: "Is Assange a Robin Hood trying to take the high road by thievery?" This is as pure and as rank a personal attack on an individual person as you could ever want. Take lessons! He pushes all the right buttons, but not one comment on the undisputed facts, the so-called "leaks, that speak for themselves. Maligning, lying and falsely accusing the messenger, trying to destroy the credibility and reputation of decent, honest and worthy people, so as to justify their murderer, is as age old as Jesus Christ, the Garden of Eden and the original murder who killed by lies and filthy false accusations. Might as well put a gun the their head and pull the trigger - there is absolutely NO DIFFERENCE.

On that same A5 page the editors managed to post the perfect counterpoint with Amy Goodman's "'Assangination': from character assassination to the real thing" - The Report could have let her commentary on this issue be the indirect answer, but the very publishing of Dave Stancliff's allegoric attack by the Times-Standard newspaper requires additional consideration for their responsibility for conduct not dissimilar to the New York Times. They justify such abhorrent conduct hiding behind the First Amendment while that very conduct works to delegitimize that very Amendment.

If you haven't read Amy Goodman's article in the newspaper, here's the link. Amy concludes by asking this very important question, a question that goes right at the heart of this article's real agenda.

WikiLeaks, for that matter, is not just Julian Assange, but a geographically distributed network of people and servers, and it has promised that the work of facilitating the release of documents from governments and corporations will continue. The U.S. Justice Department, if it pursues a case, will have to answer the question: If WikiLeaks is a criminal organization, what of its media partners, like The New York Times?

While that's an important question for the Nation, what about here locally? How complicit is the Times-Standard and their editors for publishing Dave Stancliff's As It Stands wanton character assassination that assaults the very legitimacy of the U.S Constitution? When the U.S. government can accuse, prosecute, convict and throw people in jail and torture them for life for what they "supposedly" think, not do, character assassination is extremely serious and potentially life-threatening.

Normally, the Joe Blow Report is only interested in observing facts and related issues - NOT PERSONALITIES - asinine, belief-motivated, worthless opinions. But since it is a proven fact that the writer is incapable of making the distinction and since what he says on the record is personal and all about character assassination, and is so totally corrupt and craven in its attack on decency and reason, it behooves me to address a couple of issues without, hopefully, giving any kind of credence to the writer or the paper it's written on.

Notice his use of the word "thievery." Anyone that knows anything about WikiLeaks knows for a fact that Julian Assange never stole anything, but that's atypical of this guy. He asks, "Is assange a moderern-day Robin Hood stealing information for the masses?" Where's his proof or evidence to substantiate this lie?  He quotes the words of some "law professor's" opinion as if this "opinion" is the last word and asserts with total conviction, because of that opinion, that for an absolute fact "the initial thief" (as yet ONLY accused Pfc. Bradley E. Manning) is for a fact a convicted and guilty "thief." According to their brilliantly convoluted deductive reasonings based upon their worthless opinions they conclude WikiLeaks and by inference Julian Assange are "thieves and co-conspirators in the theft." Absolutely no evidence or proof provided, only perverted and disputed opinions. More importantly, not once does Stancliff talk about what the United States is doing to Bradley Manning as they try to torture some kind of incriminating accusations from him that they can use against Julian Assange.

He also says, "His (Assange) followers threaten governments and corporations with impunity." Another ambiguous statement! Who says these people are "his" "followers"? What is it that he says threatens "governments and corporations with impunity"? Is it people, so-called, unidentified "followers" or INFORMATION, FACTS, OR TRUTH that threatens? Information that has absolutely nothing to do with Julian Assange or WikiLeaks.

As someone that has felt the closeness of the missiles of this guy's many attempts to assassinate my character whiz by, I can speak with some authority when I tell you the following statement is classic. Without a shred of proof other than his all-knowing, manifest god-complex he says: "Even calling him a whistle-blower is misleading, because he's pursuing a personal agenda against the United States." No where does Julian Assange assert that "agenda." There are many outright lies and false lying accusations made against Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, most of them identified, exposed and refuted by Glenn Greenwald over the past weeks in his articles posted on Salon.com, so I'm not going to repeat any of that here.

The tragic reality of these kinds of useless imbecilic tirades is they directly attack all our First Amendment rights and do irreparable damage to the legitimacy of the U.S. Constitution. A fact the Local Master Assassinator readily acknowledges when he makes his first three lies in his second sentence, "He spread illegally obtained raw classified information on his website for the world to view." "He" did not "spread" anything. The information was not "raw" and the information was published in major newspapers first.

If Julian Assange is a thief, a criminal, a terrorist or a spy then so is the New York Times along with a half-a-dozen or so other major newspapers and all their collaborating news reporters. The greatest threat to everyone and everything this country was founded upon is viciously attacked by these kinds of people and their supporters. The greatest threat to the "journalism world" is defined by the very actions of these kinds of opinionated hacks that believe in and fight for the Darkness using lies, innuendo, false accusations and murder.

The following is a compilation of links to the many Glenn Greenwalds articles dealing with this specific issue. First, consider this posted today: 1) Why Julian Assange is a journalist - And why WikiLeaks is entitled to the same First Amendment protections as The New York Times. By Scott Gant. 2) The government's one-way mirror.

Here is the list of articles:

1. Joe Biden v. Joe Biden on WikiLeaks
2. Getting to Assange through Manning
3. The inhumane conditions of Bradley Manning's detention
4. Attempts to prosecute WikiLeaks endanger press freedoms
5. The media's authoritarianism and WikiLeaks 
6. The crux of the WikiLeaks debate
7. Anti-WikiLeaks lies and propaganda - from TNR, Lauer, Feinstein and more
8. The lawless Wild West attacks WikiLeaks
9. WikiLeaks debate with Steven Aftergood
10. More Joe Lieberman-caused Internet censorship
11. Joe Lieberman emulates Chinese dictators
12. The moral standards of WikiLeaks critics
13. WikiLeaks reveals more than just government secrets
14. The wretched mind of the American authoritarian
15. More on the media's Pentagon-subservient WikiLeaks coverage
16. NYT v. the world: WikiLeaks coverage
17. How propaganda is disseminated: WikiLeaks Edition

The war is engaged and the conspirators and their enablers are self-identifying. It isn't just a war of the Power Elite against the American people, looting their money, their right to own property and ability to feed themselves, but a war against everything they hold dear, truth, honor, honesty, dignity, pride, ability-granting freedom to think for themselves and the self-worth of their individuality that makes them a people of value.

[UPDATE :: Friday, December 24, 2010]
A Christmas gift from WikiLeaks via Glenn Greenwald: What WikiLeaks revealed to the world in 2010 - 
This blog article about the As It Stands newspaper article's assault on the messenger is typical of a more widespread disease as illustrated in the following quotes. They demonstrate, to a large extent, why I shined a light on the character assassination by the As It Stands opinion:

To understand why I've (Greenwald) done so, and to see what motivates the increasing devotion of the U.S. Government and those influenced by it to destroying that organization, it's well worth reviewing exactly what WikiLeaks exposed to the world just in the last year:  the breadth of the corruption, deceit, brutality and criminality on the part of the world's most powerful factions.

As revealing as the disclosures themselves are, the reactions to them have been equally revealing.  The vast bulk of the outrage has been devoted not to the crimes that have been exposed but rather to those who exposed them: WikiLeaks and (allegedly) Bradley Manning.

*** Greenwald's expose defines why I had to engage this issue with local newspaper, the Times-Standard.

It's unsurprising that political leaders would want to convince people that the true criminals are those who expose acts of high-level political corruption and criminality, rather than those who perpetrate them.  Every political leader would love for that self-serving piety to take hold.  But what's startling is how many citizens and, especially, "journalists" now vehemently believe that as well.  In light of what WikiLeaks has revealed to the world about numerous governments, just fathom the authoritarian mindset that would lead a citizen -- and especially a "journalist" -- to react with anger that these things have been revealed; to insist that these facts should have been kept concealed and it'd be better if we didn't know; and, most of all, to demand that those who made us aware of it all be punished (the True Criminals) while those who did these things (The Good Authorities) be shielded. 

To see the list of just some of what WikiLeaks has offered, click this link.

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[UPDATE :: Saturday, December 25, 2010 - What is a "HACKER?"]

The following excerpt from an essay by Bruce Sterling, The Blast Shack, is well worth reading the whole essay. It adds a lot of context to the above article. He concludes by saying:

Well… every once in a while, a situation that’s one-in-a-thousand is met by a guy who is one in a million. It may be that Assange is, somehow, up to this situation. Maybe he’s gonna grow in stature by the massive trouble he has caused. Saints, martyrs, dissidents and freaks are always wild-cards, but sometimes they’re the only ones who can clear the general air. Sometimes they become the catalyst for historical events that somehow had to happen. They don’t have to be nice guys; that’s not the point. Julian Assange did this; he direly wanted it to happen. He planned it in nitpicky, obsessive detail. Here it is; a planetary hack.

I don’t have a lot of cheery hope to offer about his all-too-compelling gesture, but I dare to hope he’s everything he thinks he is, and much, much, more.

--Joe