After apparently getting kicked out of the Ecuadoran embassy for insulting their president and bad cat hygiene, not to mention pruriently pleasing but likely genuinely annoying visits by blousy airhead trash Pam Anderson, Julian Assange (resembling a disoriented Father Time) alighted unto the welcoming arms of the London Police. He needs a haircut and a shave. Or perhaps he’s morphed into martyr/guru mode and we’re supposed to take his slovenly appearance for evidence of cosmic wisdom.
Not quite.
Assange is facing a year in stir because of a British bail violation, one of the women who has accused him of rape in Sweden wants the case reopened, and he could get extradited to the U.S. where he’s looking at jail time for the leak of classified documents to Bradley Manning, then a U.S. Army intel analyst.
And yes, there’s a free press question here. For if Assange had stopped before compromising American security and possibly getting American service personnel killed, he may have been hailed exclusively as a muckraking journalist.
But he didn’t.
Yes, he exposed some of the political corruption of Hillary Clinton. For that we should be grateful. And aside from that Mrs. Kennedy, how was Dallas?
His complete devotion to attention whoredom, a fealty that makes Donald Trump seem like Will Rogers, and his bizarre messiah complex are bad enough. Then add the fact that he knowingly published U.S. intel and it makes him no hero. Only a self-obsessed journo who puts his ego above the lives of the very same soldiers fighting to protect his way of life.
I know a tad of where I speak on this, as I’m a journo, of sorts, and was for four years in my youth a U.S. Army intel analyst. This is the same post Manning served in. In that position you have ample access to sensitive material, as you need the raw data to compose good analysis for use by decision makers. To betray that trust should have made Manning a candidate for life in Leavenworth, if not the noose. However, a no doubt sympathetic Barack Obama (as they share the same goals. Manning just got caught) let the traitor off the hook. While Assange is not as guilty as Manning, he shares a portion of the responsibility.
So, how do we punish him but still uphold the freedom of proper journalists to do their jobs?
Get him over here, try him. If found guilty nail him with the max in jail on this charge, five years. However, suspend half the sentence. If he compromises U.S. security again he serves the remainder. And in jail, no Internet access. That oughta really frost him, as it would kill his celebrity status.
Yeah, I know it seems very soft for what he did. I get that. Nevertheless we’ve got to be careful here. A responsible free press is one of the main guarantors of liberty. The ideal must be upheld even if Assange and so many others in the field fail to live up to it.
Note: Want to thank you for reading to the end. I’ve just checked out the comment section on some of my articles. You’d be bloody amazed how many people just comment on the headline without reading the piece itself at all. Thus, when I write a headline that absurdly claims the president caused the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, to showcase the absurdity of recent Dem allegations against Trump, people call it “fake news” for accusing Trump of control over natural phenomenon. Scores of others actually try to challenge the credibility of the headline by citing Trump’s age as too young to have caused the calamity. Still others feel comfortable with the president’s pre-birth supernatural powers and cite them as proof God favors him because he was granted said powers.
I mean…um…er…well, whoa.
