UN Rapporteur Says Assange Should NOT Be Prosecuted!!

The United Nations representative for freedom of opinion and expression says he is now working on a new report on free speech and the internet. Frank La Rue says he doesn't think that the United States Government will be able to make a case against Julian Assange, but he warns it would set a very bad example for free speech if it did take action against him. He spoke to Eleanor Hall earlier today from his home in Guatemala City: You mention freedom of expression and attempts to curtail it around the world. Do you agree with supporters of WikiLeaks that its founder Julian Assange is now a martyr for free speech? Frank's answer: "It certainly is. If there is a responsibility by leaking information, it is an expression of the person who made the leak and not related of the media which decided to publish it. This is the way transparency works, and also the method by which corruption has been confronted. I do believe that there are some limitations to these types of limitations, but essentially these have to be in exceptional form. Not only do they have to be established by law, but they also have to protect a superior goal and imminent danger. Meanwhile, Senators Joe Lieberman and Diane Feinstein have engaged in acts of serious aggressions against their own constituents, and the American people in general. They both invoked the 1917 Espionage Act, and urged its use in going after Julian Assange (My hero ever since I left our Army, after serving honorably as Advisory Team Leader in Vietnam)!!!! For good measure, Lieberman extended his invocation of the Espionage Act to include a call to use it to INVESTIGATE the New York Times, which made the apparently horrible mistake to publish to publish WikiLeaks' diplomatic cables. Reports yesterday suggest that US Attorney General Eric Holder (at the behest of his moronic employer), may seek to invoke the Espionage Act against Assange. These two idiotic "Senators", and the rest of the "Congressional" and "White House Leadership", who are coming forward in support of this appalling development, are cynically counting on Americans' ignorance of their own history - a history that should alert all of us at once of the fact that this "Act" was designed deliberately to be used to silence people like you and me. Woodrow Wilson crafted this act in 1917, because he wanted a war. Faced with the troublesome First Amendment, he wanted to criminalize any speech against any speech against US involvement in that horrible war. At the time, there were many educators, journalists, publishers, civil rights leaders, and union activists who had been speaking out against US involvement in that war! The Espionage Act was used to round up these citizens for the "new crime" of exercising their First Amendment Rights!!