{"id":11238,"date":"2015-08-19T07:26:43","date_gmt":"2015-08-19T12:26:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=11238"},"modified":"2015-08-19T07:26:43","modified_gmt":"2015-08-19T12:26:43","slug":"assange-and-democracys-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=11238","title":{"rendered":"Assange and Democracy\u2019s Future"},"content":{"rendered":"<header>\n<h3 class=\"entry-title\"><a href=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/2015\/08\/18\/assange-and-democracys-future\/\" target=\"_blank\">Assange and Democracy\u2019s Future<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/header>\n<div class=\"entry-content\">\n<p>Democracy rests on citizens getting\u00a0real facts and\u00a0applying rational analysis. The ability of governments,\u00a0including\u00a0the U.S. government, to suppress facts and thus manage perceptions represents the opposite, a power over the people that WikiLeaks\u2019 Julian Assange threatened, says Norman Solomon.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>Three years after Ecuador\u2019s government granted political asylum to Julian Assange in its small ground-floor London embassy, the founder of WikiLeaks is still there \u2014 beyond the reach of the government whose vice president, Joe Biden, has labeled him \u201ca digital terrorist.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Obama administration wants Assange in a U.S. prison, so that the only mouse he might ever see would be scurrying across the floor of a solitary-confinement cell.<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"image-anchor\" href=\"http:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/assange_face0.jpg?55ac53\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1980\" src=\"http:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/assange_face0.jpg?55ac53\" alt=\"WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange\" width=\"191\" height=\"191\" data-lazy-loaded=\"true\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Above and beyond Assange\u2019s personal freedom, what\u2019s at stake includes the impunity of the United States and its allies to relegate transparency to a mythical concept, with democracy more rhetoric than reality. From the Vietnam War era to today \u2014 from aerial bombing and torture to ecological disasters and financial scams moving billions of dollars into private pockets \u2014 the high-up secrecy hiding key realities from the public has done vast damage. No wonder economic and political elites despise WikiLeaks for its disclosures.<\/p>\n<p>During the last five years, since the release of the infamous\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=5rXPrfnU3G0\"><u>\u201cCollateral Murder\u201d video<\/u><\/a>, the world has changed in major ways for democratic possibilities, with WikiLeaks as a catalyst. It\u2019s sadly appropriate that Assange is so deplored and reviled by so many in the upper reaches of governments, huge corporations and mass media. For such powerful entities, truly informative leaks to the public are plagues that should be eradicated as much as possible.<\/p>\n<div>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Assange and Democracy\u2019s Future Democracy rests on citizens getting\u00a0real facts and\u00a0applying rational analysis. The ability of governments,\u00a0including\u00a0the U.S. government, to suppress facts and thus manage perceptions represents the opposite, a power over the people that WikiLeaks\u2019 Julian Assange threatened, says Norman Solomon. Three years after Ecuador\u2019s government granted political asylum to Julian Assange in its [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[6963,204,338,1320,2001,584,8279,4114,843,880],"class_list":["post-11238","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-consortium-news","tag-democracy","tag-freedom","tag-joe-biden","tag-julian-assange","tag-obama","tag-rhetoric","tag-transparency","tag-us-government","tag-wikileaks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11238","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11238"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11238\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11239,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11238\/revisions\/11239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}