Attack on Wikileaks 'incredibly dangerous' - David Swanson
Channel: #Unity4J
Date: 2019-01-19

Joe Lauria interviews David Swanson during this weeks #Unity4J 13.0 vigil. '67% of the Federal discretionary budget in the United States goes to war' says David Swanson. and every spec of it is done as a supposed 'last resort'. This is a 'meaningless and dangerous phrase' says Swanson, as is of course what 'hurts the country.' There is no agreement on what it means and for people to be prosecuted on that basis is in violation of the obvious facts blurted out by Julian is 'incredibly frightening.' 'Hurt the country' is supposed to be heard by viewers as meaning hurt them. If it actually means anything at all it means 'hurt the interests of the people making the decision.' It is good as propaganda it is extremely dangerous as public policy.

Actions against Julian and Wikileaks are 'incredibly dangerous' he says, 'it really ought not to matter whether you like what Wikileaks has done or not. This is threatening the institution of journalism.' Swanson believes that the U.S. government 'should be thanking Wikileaks for the service of informing the U.S. public about what the Democratic Party was up to.' He adds 'We're supposed to know. This is what actual democracy involves.' 

If Julian Assange ever ended up in the U.S. he would likely be tried in Alexandria, Virginia like previous whistleblowers and journalists. 'This court' he says, 'is about the least likely place in the world perhaps outside of an Israeli court for a Palestinian activist that anybody is going to find justice for anything.' 

Swanson mentioned the trial of Jeffrey Sterling the C.I.A. agent who was blamed for providing the service of informing the U.S. public that the C.I.A. had been giving nuclear weapons parts, diagrams, plans to Iraq. A C.I.A.program Swanson calls 'insane'.  'The U.S. public ought to know what its government was doing' he says, and even though Sterling went through the proper channels and informed Congress, 'Congress didn't do a damm thing.' 

Sterling was put through a 'mockery of a trial' with Condoleeza Rice and the rest of them coming in and 'very ineptly revealing new information' that they would have 'prosecuted anybody else for revealing' in the course of the trial. They were essentially 'sending a man to prison for providing a public service.'

He says that 'Russiagate has largely drifted so far afield that most of it has to do with Facebook ads and all this nonsense and the question of who gave the information to Wikileaks has largely been dropped' but he stresses 'we need to increase our vigilance now.'