Julian Assange in his labyrinth
Posted By José R. Cárdenas
Tuesday, December 4, 2012 - 10:32 AM
... Holed up now for some five months in the Ecuadorean embassy in London to evade police questioning on sexual assault charges, the self-styled paladin of transparency and free expression appeared on CNN for an interview with host Erin Burnett and wound up insulting his Ecuadorean hosts.
Fumbling about to answer an obvious question on how he reconciled his seeking the political protection of a country whose president, Rafael Correa, has one of the worst track records against a free press in the hemisphere, Assange asserted he did not want to talk about "little things in small countries," and, when Burnett persisted, dismissed the situation of press freedom in Ecuador, because it is "not a significant world player" ...
Last month, Ecuadorean ambassador to the United States Nathalie Cely and another close Correa crony traveled to Miami to pressure a local Spanish language station not to air a documentary critical of Correa's presidency ...
As far as Julian Assange is concerned, as much as he desperately tries to convince anyone who will listen that his cause is openness and transparency and, now apparently, speaking out against purveyors of strategic surveillance technologies, his alignment with someone like Rafael Correa, who as recently as last month said that control of information should be "a function of the state, like the judiciary," leaves his credibility in shambles ...
http://shadow.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/12/04/julian_assange_in_his_labyrinth
Gregorian
(23,867 posts)My point being, it seems awfully ignorant to be focusing on the messengers. 1 million dead Iraqis. Something tells me we're spending far too little energy focusing on the real problems. Like Cheney. Rice. Rumsfeld. After all, that's what Assange was trying to reveal in the first plac.e
Luminous Animal
(27,310 posts)"Shadow Government"
Notes from the loyal opposition
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struggle4progress
(118,043 posts)reveal Assange's personality
... When pushed about Ecuador's press freedom record, described by the Committee to Protect Journalists as one of the worst in Latin America, Assange said: "Its people have been generous to me, but it's not a significant world player."
"Whatever little things occurring in small countries are not of concern," he said. "We must concentrate on what is happening in the entire civilization of the world" ...
Assange disregards questions on free press, his reported ill health
By Chelsea J. Carter, CNN
updated 9:55 AM EST, Thu November 29, 2012
http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/29/world/europe/uk-assange-interview/index.html
Luminous Animal
(27,310 posts)And they can see for themselves the very important points that Assange was making and that his supposed horrible quote was but a few seconds of an 11 minute interview.