Requiem for the Fourth Estate
The arrest of Julian Assange adds to the steady erosion of the rights we once took for granted, says Ray McGovern.Ray McGovern
11
April, 2019
It
is a very sad day for the rule of law.
Today’s
broad-daylight manhandling and kidnapping of Julian Assange from
political asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in London demonstrates in
bas-relief that in today’s Anglo-America, the Magna Carta and the
Bill of Rights are now “quaint and obsolete,” to use the words of
pseudo-lawyer, Alberto Gonzales.
White
House attorney Gonzales was referring in January 2002 to other basic
principles of international law, the Geneva Conventions, from which
he decided he could grant Bush an exemption so he could authorize
torture — which he did on February 7, 2002. (We have that memo.)
This
no secret; we also have the Gonzales’s memo to Bush. For services
performed, Gonzales was nominated and confirmed as Attorney General,
the chief U.S. law enforcer.
When
WikiLeaks revealed U.S. war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Sam
Adams Associates for Integrity chose Julian Assange for its annual
integrity award. The award’s “Oscar,” a corner-brightener
candlestick holder for shining light into dark places, was presented
to Mr. Assange by UK Ambassador Craig Murray and Daniel Ellsberg
after a major press conference in London on October 23, 2010. Julian
Assange became the eighth in what has become an distinguished line of
sixteen truthtellers — awardees of the Sam Adams Associates.
The
citation reads as follows:
Sam
Adams Associates for Integrity
Julian
Assange
It
seems altogether fitting and proper that this year’s award be
presented in London, where Edmund Burke coined the expression “Fourth
Estate.” Comparing the function of the press to that of the three
Houses then in Parliament, Burke said:
“…but
in the Reporters Gallery yonder, there sits a Fourth Estate more
important far then they all.”
The
year was 1787—the year the U.S. Constitution was adopted. The First
Amendment, approved four years later, aimed at ensuring that the
press would be free of government interference. That was then.
With
the Fourth Estate now on life support, there is a high premium on the
fledgling Fifth Estate, which uses the ether and is not susceptible
of government or corporation control. Small wonder that governments
with lots to hide feel very threatened.
It
has been said: “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set
you free.” WikiLeaks is helping make that possible by publishing
documents that do not lie.
Last
spring, when we chose WikiLeaks and Julian Assange for this award,
Julian said he would accept only “on behalf or our sources, without
which WikiLeaks’ contributions are of no significance.”
We
do not know if Pvt. Bradley Manning gave WikiLeaks the gun-barrel
video of July 12, 2007 called “Collateral Murder.” Whoever did
provide that graphic footage, showing the brutality of the celebrated
“surge” in Iraq, was certainly far more a patriot than the
“mainstream” journalist embedded in that same Army unit. He
suppressed what happened in Baghdad that day, dismissed it as simply
“one bad day in a surge that was filled with such days,” and then
had the temerity to lavish praise on the unit in a book he called
“The Good Soldiers.”
Julian
is right to emphasize that the world is deeply indebted to patriotic
truth-tellers like the sources who provided the gun-barrel footage
and the many documents on Afghanistan and Iraq to WikiLeaks. We hope
to have a chance to honor them in person in the future.
Today
we honor WikiLeaks, and one of its leaders, Julian Assange, for their
ingenuity in creating a new highway by which important documentary
evidence can make its way, quickly and confidentially, through the
ether and into our in-boxes. Long live the Fifth Estate!
Presented
this 23rd day of October 2010 in London, England by admirers of the
example set by former CIA analyst, Sam Adams.
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