Here’s a question. Suppose that a reporter for (say) the New York Times obtained top-secret documents from within North Korean government revealing its inner workings and secret deals and strategies. And let us assume (because I don’t know) that, unlike the US, that country has no equivalent of the First Amendment but does have something like the Official Secrets Act that exists in England and some other countries that makes it a crime for anyone to disclose secret government information.

Would we condemn the reporter and the newspaper for publishing the secret documents and let the reporter be extradited to North Korea to be tried by them for violating their laws?

That’s an easy one. The answer is no, and someone who merely gave such an option serious consideration would be treated with derision. Not only that, the reporter and the paper would be lauded for landing such a scoop and given all manner of awards, including the Pulitzer.

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One of the amusing things about the WikiLeaks saga is to watch people try to wriggle around the fact that what WikiLeaks did is what journalists for the ‘respectable’ media do every day, which is get top secret leaks from their sources and publish them. In fact, this is the entirety of Bob Woodward’s career.

In this episode of CNN’s Parker/Spitzer, watch Jeffrey Toobin squirm while he tries to find the difference between WikiLeaks’ actions and Woodward’s.

Greenwald is doing heroic work defending WikiLeaks all over the place. In this segment, he demolishes alleged CNN journalist Jessica Yellin and former Homeland Security advisor to George W. Bush (and now CNN employee) Fran Townsend. The authoritarian mindset of these people and their willingness to ignore the facts is astonishing (via Balloon Juice)

Greenwald provides some background to the program.

The video highlights two things: (1) that WikiLeaks is not only about the US but exposes secrets of governments the world over; and (2) that I suspect that most ordinary people (like those in the audience) have an instinctive sympathy for WikiLeaks as fighting for what is right. (via Norm)

Glenn Greenwald highlights [link fixed] an under-reported but strange and important aspect of the Bradley Manning case.

Our Secretary of State is concerned and saddened by a Russian court’s guilty verdict on a tycoon on embezzlement charges.

“This and similar cases have a negative impact on Russia’s reputation for fulfilling its international human rights obligations and improving its investment climate,” Mrs Clinton said.

She said the verdict “raised serious questions about selective prosecution – and about the rule of law being overshadowed by political considerations”.

It never ceases to amaze me that she can say these things about other countries with a straight face. Selective prosecution? Violations of human rights obligations? The law subverted for political reasons? These things never happen in the US. We are so, so scrupulous about the rule of law and due process, aren’t we, that we can sanctimoniously lecture other countries on these virtues.

There has been much discussion lately of what makes Julian Assange tick, what drives him and WikiLeaks to do what they do.

Thanks to commenter Jared A, here is a link to a thoughtful analysis of Julian Assange’s philosophy, based on things he has actually written.

When people are fearful, they do irrational things. Tom Englehardt looks at who benefits from all these allegedly terrorist plots that have been uncovered with great fanfare and which seem to be aimed purely and simply at keeping people scared.

We now live not just with all the usual fears that life has to offer, but in something like a United States of Fear.
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Here’s a singular fact to absorb: we now know that a bunch of Yemeni al-Qaeda adherents have a far better hit on just who we are, psychologically speaking, and what makes us tick than we do. Imagine that. They have a more accurate profile of us than our leading intelligence profilers undoubtedly do of them.
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This is a new definition of asymmetrical warfare. The terrorists never have to strike an actual target. It’s not even incumbent upon them to build a bomb that works. Just about anything will do. To be successful, they just have to repeatedly send things in our direction, inciting the expectable Pavlovian reaction from the U.S. national security state, causing it to further tighten its grip (grope?) at yet greater taxpayer expense.
In a sense, both the American national security state and al-Qaeda are building their strength and prestige as our lives grow more constrained and our treasure vanishes.

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I have written before about ‘jury nullification’, the right of juries to decide that a law is wrong and refuse to convict someone of a crime even if the facts are clear that that person is guilty. (See here and here.)

I said last year (see the post script to this) that drug laws against minor offenses such as possession of marijuana in small amounts are the most likely to be nullified and recently there was another example of this.