Re: <nettime> Wikileaks - time to switch the focus: save private Manning!

[Paolo Ruffino <p.ruffino@gmail.com>]

I am wondering if a similar condition can actually happen to Assange, now.
In particular I refer to the story that he might end up in Guantanamo

<http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jan/11/julian-assange-wikileaks-execution-gantanamo> 

or even being executed.

Being a media hero it is now much more difficult to persecute him unfairly,
as all the lights of media coverage are around him. The Wikileaks story,
which obviously didn't need an 'hero' to get through, has probably been
handled in the best possible way by Assange. Attracting a lot of attention
on himself he prevented (hopefully) an unfair persecution such as the one
that happened to Manning.

A part from this consideration on media and justice, or maybe particularly
considering this perspective, we should do our best to save private
Manning.


On 13 January 2011 22:00, J.A. Terranson <measl@mfn.org> wrote:

> On Thu, 13 Jan 2011, Patrice Riemens wrote:
>
> <SNIP all of the terrible things happening to Manning>
>
> > I believe this is grossly unfair and calls for redress. Without denying
> > the importance of watching developments around Wikileaks and what
> > happens with its somewhat quixotic supremo, I am getting worried and
> > upset by the fact that this gets far more attention, concern, and I dare
> > say sympathy, at the expense of pressure and campaigning in favor of
> > Bradley Manning, who, like every other defendant, deserves human
> > conditions of detention and a fair trial.
>
> Such is the very nature of whistleblowing: the whistleblower gets shit on,
> often unable to ever find work again (if not worse, like Manning), while
> those who s/he has leaked to make a fortune off the leak(s) (all the while
> not actually working too hard to make the leaks into the tools they were
> envisioned by the leaker, but instead using them as a short term financial
> windfall, afterwhich the source(s) get to GFY, and the public mouthpiece
> get to move on to the next sucker in line.
 <...>

-- 
paolo ruffino
http://paoloruffino.com
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