Joseph Kishore
WSWS

Julian Assange must be vigorously defended. The World Socialist Web Site calls on all working people—and all those seeking to oppose imperialism and the attack on democratic rights—to mobilize their collective strength to demand an immediate end to the persecution of Assange and WikiLeaks.

Over the past several months, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been the target of a state-orchestrated campaign based on trumped-up allegations of sexual misconduct. He was named in an international arrest warrant, detained in a London prison, initially denied bail and held in isolation for nine days. Assange’s lawyers are fighting extradition to Sweden while he remains under virtual house arrest.

The extradition of Assange to Sweden could be followed by his extradition to the US. There are reports of discussions between the American and Swedish governments, and a grand jury has purportedly been convened in Virginia to charge Assange with violations of the US Espionage Act. Government officials and politicians have branded Assange a “terrorist.” Some have called for his assassination.

The vendetta against Assange is a political provocation that has all the characteristics of a dirty tricks operation.

The exploitation of charges of sexual and personal misconduct as a cover for a political attack is a well-known modus operandi. Those who might be sufficiently gullible to take the charges in Sweden at face value should recall previous cases: the FBI’s taping of bedrooms and hotel rooms used by Martin Luther King, Jr. to obtain evidence of extramarital affairs; Nixon’s break-in at the office of Daniel Ellsberg’s therapist in search of personal information damaging to the leaker of the Pentagon Papers; more recently, the use of the Monica Lewinsky scandal by the Republican Party and its media backers in the rightwing conspiracy to drive President Bill Clinton from office.

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Stephen Lendman

Washington is a world class menace, waging imperial wars for global dominance called peace, stability and democracy.

In the run-up to the 1950 Korean War, Truman used South Korea to goad Pyongyang into a conflict it didn't want. Nor does it now, but events may spiral out of control unless cooler heads prevail.

Last March, the latest confrontation began when North Korea was falsely blamed for sinking a South Korean ship. At the time, evidence suggested a false flag, manufactured to blame Pyongyang.

Then on November 23, US media reports said North Korea incited the gravest incident since the July 1953 armistice. Analysts called it a deliberate provocation, even though South Korean forces fired first, goaded by the Obama administration for what Pyongyang, with good reason, called a rehearsal for invasion.

Decades of sanctions crippled its economy. Ten years under Bush/Obama were intimidating. South Korea's right-wing Lee Myung-bak Grand National Party replaced Uri Party's Roh Moo-hyun's Sunshine Policy, initiating hostile, provocative relations.

Lee rescinded his cooperative economic agreements, cancelled emergency communications between both sides to avoid possible conflict, stopped family reunions, ended the North's Mt. Kumgang tourist operations, and closed the North-South railroad benefitting both sides, keeping only a Kaesong, North Korea industrial park operating.

He also violated a 2004 agreement to halt propaganda campaigns, sending 400,000 disinformation leaflets north on balloons. Annual South Korean/US military exercises heighten tensions, especially with extra Washington/Seoul saber rattling. Pyongyang warned about current ones, calling them "reckless military provocations (in) our maritime territory." Promising another response, Reuters, on December 20, said:

"North Korea stepped back from confrontation over 'reckless' military drills by the South on Monday and reportedly issued a new offer on nuclear inspections, drawing a cautious response from Seoul and Washington," preferring confrontation to diplomacy.

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Ralph Lopez
t r u t h o u t

(Illustration: Jared Rodriguez / t r u t h o u t)

One peculiar outcome of the new clampdown on whistleblowers is the spectacle of Americans cheering on the destruction of their own rights, as in the case of avowed tough guys commenting in blogs that people like Bradley Manning "did the crime and now does the time," deserve no sympathy and merit the clear torture he is now undergoing. The tough consistently miss the point that while Manning has been accused of leaking classified military and State Department files to WikiLeaks, he has been convicted of nothing. The treatment he is undergoing has become the new norm in the case of high-profile cases purportedly involving national security.

The peerless Glenn Greenwald in this case gets it wrong when he says Manning's treatment is "possibly" torture. Isolation is torture and has been proven to be so. Hardened prisoners have said they would take almost any other punishment for misbehavior over isolation and its effects on the mind and the spirit. According to Greenwald, Manning has been kept in his cell without any human contact whatsoever for 23 out of 24 hours every day for six months, is prohibited from exercising in his cell, takes his meals alone and is being administered what he is told are anti-depressants by the prison doctor to keep his mind from snapping from the effects of the constant, steady quiet, the artificial light which makes it impossible to distinguish night from day and the aloneness with one's own thoughts. Hard as it may be to understand without experiencing it, interaction with other humans, even other accused, is a vital part of the touchstones with reality which frame our psyche. In testimony introduced at the trial of another prisoner accused of material assistance to terrorists, Fahad Hashmi,who was held in isolation for two years, doctors concluded that:

"after 60 days' solitary detention people's mental state begins to break down and gradually develops into psychosis as the mind disintegrates."

Prolonged isolation produces fear, anxiety and stress as lack of human contact denies the victim the opportunity to affirm the validity of what they are thinking. Victims hear voices and begin to question who they are.

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