If West Persists in Persecuting Assange, We'll Get What We Deserve: Jornal De Noticias, Portugal

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Jornal de Notícias, Portugal

If West Persists in Persecuting Assange, We'll Get What We Deserve

"If all this doesn’t cause an earthquake that begins with civil society, we will all deserve the plight of countries that we've hitherto classified as lacking respect for human rights - or even fundamentalist. However, we won't feel deprived of freedom, because this will, after all, prove we never truly desired it."

Translated By Brandi Miller

December 16, 2010

Portugal - Jornal de Notícias - Original Article (Portuguese)

Founder, spokesperson and editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks Julian Assange: Life on the Internet will never be the same.

AL-JAZEERA VIDEO: Frost over the World - Extraditing Assange, Dec. 18, 00:23:29

Rarely does the precarious balance Western democracies are based on been revealed in such an obvious way. The reactions of nations unmasked by the WikiLeaks disclosures show just how rotten are the elites who hold power in our name. The case, as simple as it is, is frightening.

1. WikiLeaks has published evidence of activities that are dubious ethically and even criminal - in some cases promoted by supposedly “decent” states.

2. The means used by sources for passing on this information were irregular, but given the nature and crystal clear public interest of many of them, it would have been condemnable not to act.

WikiLeaks, through its leader Julian Assange, will pursue an anti-American agenda. It may have been irresponsible not to filter data that may put people in danger, or that was irrelevant to the high values that Assange claims to defend. Such filtering is possible. All of which justifies more elaborate procedures such as those proposed by the new organization called OpenLeaks: to disclose what it receives from anonymous sources by means of social communication and selected by them for journalistic treatment, rather than disclosing it directly.

Posted by WORLDMEETS.US

4. Countries that we though had mature legal structures like Sweden and Great Britain have, in the end, proven terribly susceptible to political pressure. It is unacceptable to persecute Julian Assange under the guise of the banal accusations of two Swedish women who regretted sharing the sheets with someone they had only known for a few hours.

5. If all this doesn’t cause an earthquake that begins with civil society, we will all duly deserve the plight of countries that we've hitherto classified as lacking respect for human rights - or even fundamentalist. However, we won't feel deprived of freedom, because , after all, we never truly desired it.