The Irreverent Buddhist

http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2028734_2028733,00.html

Go there to vote for Julian Assange – in court today he was denied his freedom despite such luminaries as Ken Loach, John Pilger and Jemima Khan standing bail of £20,000 each.

Justice must be done here.

Those who are in a position to nominate candidates for the Nobel Peace Prize need to ask themselves if they want to live in a world where, as Congressman Dr Ron Paul so eloquently said, “If telling you the truth makes you a traitor we’re in big trouble”?

Assange deserves Time Magazine Award and the Nobel Peace Prize this year – the whistle blower systems he has in place will make Government around the world, corporations and others accountable to the press. Behind all the rhetoric this is the real reason Assange sits in gaol tonight.

Bloggers are oft accused of bad journalism. It’s true in many cases. Bloggers do not have access to the databases, resources and sources that traditional journalists command. Nor do they have the training and professionalism. However, the wikileaks/Assange scandal is creating a very widespread picture of bad journalism in some of the most renowned journals worldwide.

Numerous prestige publications continue to state that Asssange is wanted in Sweden on charges of rape. This is completely untrue. He is sought on charges of not using a condom. One of the women concerned “twittered” about her wonderful night with him – before comparing notes with the other accuser, trying to remove the record of her tweets then going to police to enquire. The first arrest warrant for rape was struck down immediately and many legal sources in Sweden have decried the treatment of Assange.

Many of these same publications accuse him of putting lives in danger by carelessly releasing 270,000 cables to the internet. Untrue. The cables are being redacted to remove such information by the five major News organisations Wikileaks is working with. As of yesterday 871 cables were in the public domain.

The truth is that Wikileaks last major release proved that the USA had been committing war crimes in Iraq recklessly. Over 100,000 civilians dead. Not a single death anywhere can be or has been traced to any of Wikileaks leaks. Ever.

The fact is that the USA is highly embarrassed by these leaks and so it should be: they contain highly embarrassing material. More embarrassing still is the unconstitutional and undemocratic pressure exerted through Corporate America via enterprises such as Amazon and Paypal to try and “hit them where it hurts”.

The only thing that will lead to the full 270,000 cables being released to the wild is if the USA and it’s allies maintain their current stance in the face of undeniable truth. Hillary Clinton ordered illegal spying on senior UN figures. US politicians, broadcasters and other idiots are calling for Assange to be killed. These are criminal acts.

Publishing leaked documents is not as many US legal commentators have maintained.

History will not be kind to the people trying to demonise Wikileaks.org and it’s staff. Nor will it be kind to the commercial enterprises such as Amazon.com and Paypal who have quickly caved to US Government pressure.

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, in his Q&A at the Guardian website today replied to a question about the commercial organisations showing their true colours:

rszopa

Annoying as it may be, the DDoS seems to be good publicity (if anything, it adds to your credibility). So is getting kicked out of AWS. Do you agree with this statement? Were you planning for it?

Thank you for doing what you are doing.

Julian Assange

Since 2007 we have been deliberately placing some of our servers in jurisdictions that we suspected suffered a free speech deficit inorder to separate rhetoric from reality. Amazon was one of these cases.

So the land of the free has been caught again with it’s pants down. For several years Wikileaks have been deliberately placing servers in countries which they suspected suffered a “free speech deficit”. The actions of Amazon and other commercial US enterprises shows this as fact. Not only that but Congressman Ron Paul agrees in a tweet today:

RepRonPaul Ron Paul

Re: Wikileaks- In a free society, we are supposed to know the truth. In a society where truth becomes treason, we are in big trouble.

The wikileaks “Cablegate” exposes in stark detail the real problems in the world: secrecy, ideas of supremacy and outright stupidity – all on the part of Governments, politicians and the security apparatus.

…. The DCM asked Hague whether the relationship between the UK and the U.S. was “still special.” Hague said he, David Cameron and George Osborne were “children of Thatcher” and staunch Atlanticists. Speaking more broadly, Hague acknowledged that this was a hard question to answer. Politicians, in his view, “sit at the top of the pyramid” of the general public and it is unclear whether the British people will maintain the network of ties to America that has sustained the special relationship. For his part, said Hague, he has a sister who is American, spends his own vacations in America, and, like many similar to him, considers America the “other country to turn to.” Asking his Senior Advisor her views, Helic (who is Bosnian), said, “America is the essential country.” Hague said whoever enters 10 Downing Street as Prime Minister soon learns of the essential nature of the relationship with America. He added, “we want a pro-American regime. We need it. The world needs it.” ….

from: http://213.251.145.96/cable/2008/04/08LONDON930.html (April 2010)

Aside from the cringeworthy brown-tongueing of Mr Hague towards the USA this statement in particular reveals the truth of politics in the modern age, “Hague acknowledged that this was a hard question to answer. Politicians, in his view, “sit at the top of the pyramid” of the general public ….”

Actually Mr Hague, you sit at the bottom of a pile of crap – probably ranking lower than lawyers, estate agents and even journalists in the public eye now. “The System” of which you are a part – and sit at the top of – has been turned on it’s head, decries freedoms and lies perennially. The people do not like your class of person, way of acting, do not need them, do not want them – and will soon be rid of you, for, as Assange said in one of his final comments today:

History will win. The world will be elevated to a better place.

And in that better place, we will not have to rely on leaks to let us know the truth. Without wikileaks it would never be known just how brutal and lying the US and other governments are. Here is an excellent example of wikileaks work, facilitating Ethan McCord to comment graphically on his personal journey through the murder of two Reuters journalists and several other Iraqi civilians – and the total disregard for Iraqi children’s lives:

“Cablegate” at wikileaks is going to make a lot of people very unhappy. After all what we have now is just a start. How are the German Government feeling, I wonder? Vindicated, probably – the Cablegate releases so far include their “concerns” over US Data  Protection measures:

http://cablegate.wikileaks.org/cable/2010/01/10BERLIN128.html

.... However, in these meetings, our German counterparts
consistently raise concerns about U.S. data protection
measures and policy. Furthermore, the German views often
distort and misrepresent U.S. policy. For example, current
Federal Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger
(FDP) - who has considerable influence - is particularly
outspoken and does not appear to have (or perhaps want) an
informed view of USG data privacy practices. It is critical
that we aggressively and vocally counter these
misrepresentations of U.S. policy. ....

However “aggressively” the “misrepresentations” were countered, you cannot counter the fact that many thousands of highly embarrassing documents, including the one linked above are coming to the public domain. And therefore it does not look like misrepresentation of US policy but rightly justified concern.

No wonder America has been playing a game of smooth-talk-politicking in advance of these documents coming to light, on the one hand, whilst demonising Wikileaks on the other. They talk down on their friends and enemies alike in the cables – and no one likes getting caught with their pants down.

The bank bail outs will fail for a simple reason. Their intention is to get lending flowing again. Unfortunately markets have inherent innefficiencies and one of them is the corporation. The corporation is selfish. The bail out money being used by stronger banks is being used to consolidate and expand portfolio’s whilst offloading toxic assets to the government – and ultimately you. Meanwhile neither you nor your employer are finding easier access to money. Why? Because you are a bad credit risk. The bank has been saved but you are still stuffed.

The efficient route to solve this issue would have involved two steps:

STEP 1) For the last twenty five years huge sums of wealth have moved beyond any scrutiny. The wealth of the wealthy is underestimated and the discrepancy with the poor understated. Tax havens such as Panama – where it is illegal to ask who owns a company – are used by the British Crown and all other super wealthy people and organisations. This tax avoidance has resulted in a redistribution of wealth from the rich to the poor and from the government to the corporation. This is the only reason the differential has worsened constantly and considerably and why governments are bust.

This redistribution has to be reversed. All offshore havens should be subjected to international law to reveal the ultimate owners of all assets immediately. After collating the account data, identified persons with an excess of $10 million liquid assets or greater should be subjected to a progressive taxation of liquid assets starting at 50% and rising to 99% at $100 million. This would raise a one off tax levy in the trillions of dollars. Anyone caught avoiding or aiding persons in avoiding the incorporation of their assets and income into the tax base in any way must get a mandatory 10 year gaol sentence with no luxury.

STEP 2) Redistributing this revenue by writing down all debt on a progressive basis of individuals and businesses would achieve:

a) Allowing people to stay in their homes, feel secure and participate in the economy.

b) Revalue the toxic securities immediately – even the most toxic would be almost fully paid down by the debt write off payments and restored to 100% value.

c) Restore banking confidence, support underlying asset markets including bonds, stocks and commodities.

d) Facilitate banks to lend to business in moderation.

e) Keep small, medium and large businesses in operation whilst allowing a slow re-structuring of innefficient business over time.

f) Not leave the government – and ultimately you – with huge debts.

g) Not increase the money supply leading to inflationary pressures and bubble effects.

This will not happen because the actual plan of the people making the decisions leading to government action is to enrich the banks, collapse the middle classes, tread down the poor and consolidate global power over energy, communications, food and information – through the consolidated banks.

Such an integration of industry and government is called national socialism, or fascism. It is a dangerous beast. Especially when the public government is merely a puppet of the real government, which is the case unless you live in one of a very few places on Earth.

The way out is to take sovereignty over your life. Learn to meditate, centre yourself, then take right action. Reduce spending, pay debts, then whilst stocks remain on shelves buy those things you can grow, eat, barter or use to survive and defend yourslef if the system is deliberately collapsed in order to fully wrench all semblance of freedom from your life.

Liberty will prevail and tyrrany will fall because they are few and we are multitude. Wake up.