DAILY BEAST: Dressed in a light blue shirt and red tie, his trademark white hair cropped short, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange dramatically stepped into the world’s spotlight again today, addressing supporters—and the global media—from a small balcony on the first floor of the Ecuadoran Embassy in London’s plush Knightsbridge district…
While praising Ecuador and the other members of the Organization of American States that have agreed to debate the issue (despite vetoes from Canada and the U.S.) Friday in Washington, D.C., Assange also tried to politicize his case into a wider issue of press freedom and state repression. While he briefly mentioned the Pussy Riot trial, which saw three Russian singers jailed for two years for an anti-Putin concert in a church, his main focus was on the U.S. In ever more apocalyptic language Assange asked if America would use the opportunity “to affirm the revolutionary values it was founded on … Or will it lurch off the precipice, dragging us all into a dangerous and oppressive world in which journalists fall silent under the fear of prosecution and citizens must whisper in the dark?”…
“The war on whistleblowers must end,” said Assange, who questioned Manning’s treatment in jail for the last two years and called for his immediate release: “He is hero and an example to all of us … one the world’s foremost political prisoners.”… (more)
