Important article re. Julian Assange and his attempt to alert us through Wikileaks

Unlike many of the Republicans spouting their outrage, I do not see Assange or Manning as traitors -- they are trying to expose the underbelly of what used to be our democratic republic and is now an oligarchy that is out of control.  We, the people no longer have any say in what our government does.  As he left office, President Eisenhower warned us about the military/industrial complex that was already getting out of control in those years, and we paid no attention to his warning. The Republicans under Nixon and Reagan and the infamous Bushes continued to give full support to that complex until it has now become a behemoth that runs every part of our government, and the President really has no power at all (as was made clearly evident to us today in Obama's capitulation to the Republicans on everything they demanded). 

The military and corporations now rule our world. The Republicans are their bought-and-paid-for representatives, and We, the people have no representation at all for our interests.  Assange and Manning are heroes in my book, alerting us to what is really going on. We should be up in arms over how we have been betrayed, but the bulk of our citizens are like sleeping sheep.  The mainstream press has abdicated its position as an investigative tool of the people. We no longer have any way of knowing what is being done in our name by our own government.  Assange and Wikileaks are taking the place of what we used to rely on and no longer can: investigative journalism. Read the following report by David Samuels of The Atlantic and learn some truth about this whole matter.  As Samuels says, "Wikileaks is a powerful new way for reporters and human rights advocates to leverage global information technology systems to break the heavy veil of government and corporate secrecy that is slowly suffocating the American press."

http://readersupportednews.org/off-site-opinion-section/369-wikileaks/4170-the-shameful-attacks-on-julian-assange

EXCERPT:  Julian Assange and Pfc Bradley Manning have done a huge public service by making hundreds of thousands of classified U.S. government documents available on Wikileaks -- and, predictably, no one is grateful. Manning, a former army intelligence analyst in Iraq, faces up to 52 years in prison. He is currently being held in solitary confinement at a military base in Quantico, Virginia, where he is not allowed to see his parents or other outside visitors....

The idea that Wikileaks is a threat to the traditional practice of reporting misses the point of what Assange and his co-workers have put together - a powerful tool that can help reporters circumvent the legal barriers that are making it hard for them to do their job. Even as he criticizes the evident failures of the mainstream press, Assange insists that Wikileaks should facilitate traditional reporting and analysis. "We're the step before the first person (investigates)," he explained, when accepting Amnesty International's award for exposing police killings in Kenya. "Then someone who is familiar with that material needs to step forward to investigate it and put it in political context. Once that is done, then it becomes of public interest."

Wikileaks is a powerful new way for reporters and human rights advocates to leverage global information technology systems to break the heavy veil of government and corporate secrecy that is slowly suffocating the American press. The likely arrest of Assange in Britain on dubious Swedish sex crimes charges has nothing to do with the importance of the system he has built, and which the US government seems intent on destroying with tactics more appropriate to the Communist Party of China -- pressuring Amazon to throw the site off their servers, and, one imagines by launching the powerful DDOS attacks that threatened to stop visitors from reading the pilfered cables.

In a memorandum entitled "Transparency and Open Government" addressed to the heads of Federal departments and agencies and posted on WhiteHouse.gov, President Obama instructed that "Transparency promotes accountability and provides information for citizens about what their Government is doing." The Administration would be wise to heed his words -- and to remember how badly the vindictive prosecution of Daniel Ellsberg ended for the Nixon Administration. And American reporters, Pulitzer Prizes and all, should be ashamed for joining in the outraged chorus that defends a burgeoning secret world whose existence is a threat to democracy.