Reply #12

has shown them is possible. Assange has unleashed a flood of potential security breaches that threaten the way we protect "secrets" and embarrassing facts.

But, Assange is the future. And along with death and taxes, one thing we cannot avoid is the future. Arrest Assange and someone else will begin to do what he did in a different way. Whistleblowers do not create crimes; crimes create whistleblowers. Whistleblowers are just witnesses, just reporters. And Assange was reporting on things that needed, in most cases, to be known by voters.

What national security freaks must remember is that if Britain invades the Ecuadorian embassy to arrest a relatively unimportant individual like Assange, (after all, he is not a mass murderer and is not holding anyone hostage), then no embassy is safe anywhere.

Just recently, the US embassy in Beijing housed a self-proclaimed Chinese dissident. We finally made a deal so that he could leave. I would like to know what happened to that person in the end. He may have been mentally ill, but may have seriously sought refuge from political persecution in our embassy.

So, what Ecuador is doing for Assange is something we have done for dissidents in other countries. If embassies are not safe for political refugees, if embassies can be invaded by the authorities of the countries in which the embassies are located, then we revert to international law under which the strongest and best armed prevail in everything. That is medieval, and we don't need to go there.

No matter what you think about Assange, devil or saint, you have to understand that embassies around the world must be able to harbor political refugees and rescue them from oppression.

And no country can claim to be innocent of all oppression at all times. Doesn't exist.