For obvious reasons, the New York Times does not like Julian
Assange very much although they don’t spell out their political
differences but prefer to use cheap ad hominem attacks. For
example, John Burns described him as “erratic and imperious” in an
October 23rd story. Indeed, it seems almost impossible for the
Times to write about Assange without including such terms.
This Sunday the magazine section will include an 18 page article
on Assange by the paper’s executive editor, one Bill Keller. It is
basically an exercise in character assassination relieved only by
a pro forma defense of the Wikileak founder’s right not to be
kidnapped, tortured, killed or imprisoned. Keller writes:
But while I do not regard Assange as a partner, and I would
hesitate to describe what WikiLeaks does as journalism, it is
chilling to contemplate the possible government prosecution of
WikiLeaks for making secrets public, let alone the passage of new
laws to punish the dissemination of classified information, as
some have advocated. Taking legal recourse against a government
official who violates his trust by divulging secrets he is sworn
to protect is one thing. But criminalizing the publication of such
secrets by someone who has no official obligation seems to me to
run up against the First Amendment and the best traditions of this
country. As one of my colleagues asks: If Assange were an
understated professorial type rather than a character from a
missing Stieg Larsson novel, and if WikiLeaks were not suffused
with such glib antipathy toward the United States, would the
reaction to the leaks be quite so ferocious? And would more
Americans be speaking up against the threat of reprisals?
If Keller had simply left it at this, one might have forgiven him
despite his extensive record as a willing accomplice to
imperialist war. Implicit in his hatchet job on Assange is the
idea that someone hostile to American foreign policy is beyond the
pale. For a newspaper that has been responsible for Judith
Miller’s lies that led to a massive loss of Iraqi lives, it is
high time for it to reexamine its role as propagandist. Of course,
as long as there is a class system in the US, this is not likely
to happen.
On February 8th, 2003, Keller wrote an op-ed piece in the Times
titled The I-Can’t-Believe-I’m-a-Hawk Club that stated among other
stupidities:
We reluctant hawks may disagree among ourselves about the most
compelling logic for war — protecting America, relieving oppressed
Iraqis or reforming the Middle East — but we generally agree that
the logic for standing pat does not hold. Much as we might wish
the administration had orchestrated events so the inspectors had a
year instead of three months, much as we deplore the arrogance and
binary moralism, much as we worry about all the things that could
go wrong, we are hard pressed to see an alternative that is not
built on wishful thinking.
This is really what sticks in the craw when it comes to someone
like Julian Assange or a Noam Chomsky. They stubbornly refuse to
buy into the “arrogance and binary moralism” that are at the heart
of American foreign policy whichever party is in power.
Furthermore, despite Keller’s assurance that he “deplores” such a
stance, he is the living embodiment of it. The only reason the NY
Times has written anything critical of the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan is that they have turned sour. If you go back and
review coverage of the invasions of Grenada or Panama, you will
find nothing of the sort. Imperialist liberals of Mr. Keller’s
persuasion only begin to think twice about American foreign policy
when it fails to achieve its immediate goals.
full:
http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2011/01/28/bill-kellers-hatchet-job-on-julian-assange/
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