U.S. Closer To Arming Syrian Rebels

February 22, 2012

Associated Press

By Matthew Lee and Bradley Klapper

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is trying to ramp up diplomatic efforts against Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime on a trip to North Africa this week, as some countries begin to explore the possibility of arming Syria’s rebels.

Clinton is traveling to London on Wednesday for a conference on Somalia, but U.S. officials will be using the international gathering to lay the groundwork for a major conference on Syria’s future taking place later this week in Tunisia. The trip comes as the Obama administration is opening the door slightly to international military assistance for Syria’s armed opposition.

In coordinated messages, the White House and State Department said Tuesday they still hoped for a political solution. But faced with the daily onslaught by the Assad regime against Syrian civilians, officials dropped the administration’s previous strident opposition to arming anti-regime forces. It remained unclear, though, what, if any, role the U.S. might play in providing such aid.

“We don’t want to take actions that would contribute to the further militarization of Syria because that could take the country down a dangerous path,” White House press secretary Jay Carney told reporters. “But we don’t rule out additional measures if the international community should wait too long and not take the kind of action that needs to be taken.”

The administration had previously said flatly that more weapons were not the answer to the Syrian situation. There had been no mention of “additional measures,” despite daily reports from Syrian activists of dozens of deaths from government attacks.

At the State Department, spokeswoman Victoria Nuland used nearly identical language to describe the administration’s evolving position.

“From our perspective, we don’t believe that it makes sense to contribute now to the further militarization of Syria,” she told reporters. “What we don’t want to see is the spiral of violence increase. That said, if we can’t get Assad to yield to the pressure that we are all bringing to bear, we may have to consider additional measures.”

Neither Carney nor Nuland would elaborate on what “additional measures” might be taken but there have been growing calls, including from some in Congress, for the international community to arm the rebels. Most suggestions to that effect have foreseen Arab nations such as Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia — and not the West — possibly providing military assistance.

Click here for the full report from the Associated Press.

Is Closing Of U.S. Embassy In Syria An Assurance Of War?

February 6, 2012

Washington Post

By Alice Fordham

The United States has closed its embassy in Damascus and pulled all diplomats and U.S. staff out of the country, citing security concerns, the State Department said Monday.

State Department spokeswomanVictoria Nuland said Ambassador Robert S. Ford will continue “his work and engagement with the Syrian people,” who have been demonstrating against the government of President Bashar al-Assad for 11 months.

In an emergency session, the U.N. Security Council failed to approve a resolution calling for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to step aside, following the deadliest one-day crackdown in Syria’s 11-month uprising. (Feb. 5)

Assad’s government has carried out an increasingly violent crackdown on anti-government demonstrators, with new reports of shelling in the cities of Homs and Zabadani on Monday.

The United States wants Assad to cede power and make way for a democratically elected government. It supported a U.N. resolution condemning Syria that was vetoed by Russia and China on Saturday.

While couched in security concerns, the decision to close the embassy could signal a shift in policy toward Syria following the collapse of the U.N. diplomatic efforts. The State Department had long sought to keep the embassy open in order to better monitor the situation in Syria, and to preserve an open channel with the Syrian opposition.

In recent days, however, the administration’s rhetoric has toughened, toward both Syria and its few remaining allies. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Sunday denounced the vetoes by Russian and China as a “travesty.”

Still, the White House has continued to downplay the possibility of a Libya-style military campaign to aid Syria’s rebels. President Obama, in an NBC interview broadcast on Sunday, said it was “very important for us to try to resolve this without recourse to outside military intervention.”

“I think that’s possible,” Obama said. “My sense is that you’re seeing more and more people inside of Syria recognizing that they need to turn a chapter . . . This is not going to be a matter of ‘if.’ It’s going to be a matter of ‘when.’ ”

Click here for the full report from the Washington Post.

Public Schools Are Resembling Prisons More And More

February 3, 2012

Lew Rockwell

By Karen De Coster

Public education, in its current state, is based on the idea that government is the “parent” best equipped to provide children with the values and wisdom required to grow into intelligent, functional adults. To echo what former first lady Hillary Clinton professed, these public school champions believe “it takes a village” to cultivate a society of competent human beings.

As Hebrew University historian Martin van Crevald points out in his book, The Rise and Decline of the State, nineteenth-century state worshippers who wanted to impose a love of big government ideals upon the youth popularized the archetype for state-directed education. Additionally, there was an overall appetite for discipline of the “unruly” masses that reinforced the campaign to take education out of the hands of individuals. After all, the self-educated masses might resist government decrees, and this kind of disarray would be undesirable in the move toward building a powerful, controlling state apparatus. Prussia’s Frederick William I and France’s Napoleon discerned this, as did a legion of other despotic rulers throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. In a recent article published on the American Daily Herald “Dumberer and Dumberest,” Glenn Horowitz writes:

If you’re not familiar with it, the Prussian system was a teaching methodology designed to stamp out good little worker bees assembly-line fashion, trained to be complacent with their station in life and compliant with every demand of the State. An elite of those better educated but still proven unquestioningly loyal to the State were promoted to lead the proletariat, rewarded with elevated status and material success commensurate with their skills and the zeal they demonstrate in supporting the system. It specifically avoided developing creativity and independent thought, reasoning these were skills the worker classes didn’t need in their roles as mass produced labor.

Modern education is built upon a foundation set forth by tyrants. What is most disquieting about the public education mindset is that those who believe most strongly in it are convinced that there are no other suitable alternatives to the compulsory schooling provided via the public domain. The egalitarian core belief of these public education proponents is that society is responsible for obtaining, maintaining, and paying for the process of equally developing young minds.

Since the laws of the modern state that control the educational system lean heavily toward equality, federal compulsory schooling is necessarily a bias against the best and brightest of America’s children. Federalized education sustains the philosophy that schools have the obligation to treat all students as pure equals – equal in intelligence, work ethic, performance, and desire.

Such nonsense is refuted by H. George Resch in his article “Equality vs. Equity” on the Separation of School and State website. Mr. Resch contends that compulsory, government-controlled education is trying to achieve ends that are not possible due to the fact that general equality is not only impossible to define, but that biological, environmental, and cultural differences among us are so vast that a compulsory, standardized public education poses difficulties that cannot be overcome, and certainly not by a government-run school system.

Click here for the full report from Lew Rockwell.

How Public Schools Keep Your Child a Prisoner of the State

February 1, 2012

LeeRockwell.Com

By Karen De Coster

Public education, in its current state, is based on the idea that government is the “parent” best equipped to provide children with the values and wisdom required to grow into intelligent, functional adults. To echo what former first lady Hillary Clinton professed, these public school champions believe “it takes a village” to cultivate a society of competent human beings.

As Hebrew University historian Martin van Crevald points out in his book, The Rise and Decline of the State, nineteenth-century state worshippers who wanted to impose a love of big government ideals upon the youth popularized the archetype for state-directed education. Additionally, there was an overall appetite for discipline of the “unruly” masses that reinforced the campaign to take education out of the hands of individuals. After all, the self-educated masses might resist government decrees, and this kind of disarray would be undesirable in the move toward building a powerful, controlling state apparatus. Prussia’s Frederick William I and France’s Napoleon discerned this, as did a legion of other despotic rulers throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. In a recent article published on the American Daily Herald “Dumberer and Dumberest,” Glenn Horowitz writes:

If you’re not familiar with it, the Prussian system was a teaching methodology designed to stamp out good little worker bees assembly-line fashion, trained to be complacent with their station in life and compliant with every demand of the State. An elite of those better educated but still proven unquestioningly loyal to the State were promoted to lead the proletariat, rewarded with elevated status and material success commensurate with their skills and the zeal they demonstrate in supporting the system. It specifically avoided developing creativity and independent thought, reasoning these were skills the worker classes didn’t need in their roles as mass produced labor.

Modern education is built upon a foundation set forth by tyrants. What is most disquieting about the public education mindset is that those who believe most strongly in it are convinced that there are no other suitable alternatives to the compulsory schooling provided via the public domain. The egalitarian core belief of these public education proponents is that society is responsible for obtaining, maintaining, and paying for the process of equally developing young minds.

Since the laws of the modern state that control the educational system lean heavily toward equality, federal compulsory schooling is necessarily a bias against the best and brightest of America’s children. Federalized education sustains the philosophy that schools have the obligation to treat all students as pure equals – equal in intelligence, work ethic, performance, and desire.

Such nonsense is refuted by H. George Resch in his article “Equality vs. Equity” on the Separation of School and State website. Mr. Resch contends that compulsory, government-controlled education is trying to achieve ends that are not possible due to the fact that general equality is not only impossible to define, but that biological, environmental, and cultural differences among us are so vast that a compulsory, standardized public education poses difficulties that cannot be overcome, and certainly not by a government-run school system.

It’s obvious that public schooling is neither beneficial to most students, nor is it efficient. Education is an acquired good, a good that has to meet the needs of the consumers or else face rejection in the free market. Accordingly, there is a necessity for unique, private educational institutions that cater to the urgencies of the marketplace, or home schools that provide a quality environment for each student’s direct needs.

Click here for the full report.

Obama To The World: ‘Do As We Say, Not As We Do’

October 31, 2011

Info Wars

By Patrick Henningsen

It’s not so much we are witnessing history unfold, as it is Washington’s hypocrisy unravel before our eyes.

Washington is infested with busy-bodies who run from one briefing to the next, one press conference to the next, in a drive to conduct their symphonies of policy and media in a desperate bid to remain relevant. Some try harder than others. Inside the beltway, original ideas, humility, honor and integrity are somewhat hard to come by these days.

They are the high-flying political class in the United States, an elite tribe who are so detached from reality that it’s become an almost embarrassment to watch. The Orwellian doublespeak which is now coming out the State Department’s office of nation-building is hitting new highs.

They grandstanded on the TV, and fawned Tunisia and Egypt during the celebrated Arab Spring. Then they ordered Libya and Syria to ‘show restraint and let democracy take it’s natural course’.

Even if – armed insurgents were burning down government buildings in Tripoli, and or firing upon and killing police in Syria.

Obama confidently that other governments “must be responsive for their citizens aspirations”.

Even if, those citizens are being backed and financed by the US State Department, Whitehall, Élysée Palace and allies Qatar.

Hillary Clinton ordered Libya to “respect the universal rights of its own people, including the right to free expression and assembly.”

Even if – her own government cannot even manage to cater for this right any more, even in the United States of America.

In the US, the erosion of our basic rights provided by the Bill of Rights and US Constitution has been a long and painful process.

9-11 gave us the naziesque Patriot Acts I & II – two bills which have achieved nothing since their inception, and yet, are still as enthusiastically championed by Barack Obama as they were by GW Bush.

The anti-war demonstrations of 2003 gave us “free speech zones”, in country where freedom to assemble, where and when you want, used to be a god-given inalienable right. Now its a mere privilege.

The G20 demonstrations of 2009 gave us police brutality on a mass militarized scale, not seen before domestically. Thousands of paramilitary police where shipped in to Pittsburgh, sound canons were deployed and students were chased down, tear gassed and beaten in what came to known as forced compliance.

Even an obvious avant garde demonstration, a silent disco at the Jefferson Memorial saw police beat and injure Americans who were only trying to test the vital signs of a US Constitution in critical condition.

What elite political performers like Barak Obama and Hillary Clinton are really saying to the governments of Libya, and now Syria, and later to Algeria and Iran- is that you cannot put down an armed insurrection in your countries, but in the US we reserve the right to beat and shoot our own citizens, and arrested without charges- if they attempt to demonstrate in public.

In other words, “Do as we say, not as we do.”

President Obama will have the world believe that America is less brutal to its own citizens than the rest of the world, but as hundreds of thousands of people in the Occupy Movement now get their first taste of civil disobedience, it is inevitable that some will be unlucky enough to get the hard end of the state’s velvet fist. Indeed, Scott Olsen found this out the hard way in Oakland this week.

And the Occupy Movement will also learn very quickly that we cannot ignore the rights which our US political elite have been denying the people of Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and Libya for all these years now- and expect to be afforded those same rights by the same criminal US government here at home.

Click here for the full report from Infowars.

The Butchering Of Gaddafi Is America’s Crime

October 27, 2011

Disinformation.Org

By Glen Ford

Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton appeared like ghoulish despots at a Roman Coliseum, reveling in their Libyan gladiators’ butchery.”

Last week the whole world saw, and every decent soul recoiled, at the true face of NATO’s answer to the Arab Spring. An elderly, helpless prisoner struggled to maintain his dignity in a screaming swirl of savages, one of whom thrusts a knife up his rectum. These are Europe and America’s jihadis in the flesh. In a few minutes of joyously recorded bestiality, the rabid pack undid every carefully packaged image of NATO’s “humanitarian” project in North Africa – a horror and revelation indelibly imprinted on the global consciousness by the brutes’ own cell phones.

Nearly eight months of incessant bombing by the air forces of nations that account for 70 percent of the world’s weapons spending, all culminating in the gang-bang slaughter of Moammar Gaddafi, his son Mutassim and his military chief of staff, outside Sirte. The NATO-armed bands then displayed the battered corpses for days in Misurata – the city that had earlier made good on its vow to “purge Black skin” through the massacre and dispersal of 30,000 darker residents of nearby Tawurgha – before disposing of the bodies in an unknown location.

The saner sections of America’s psychological operations machinery – including their collaborators in the corporate media – were doubtless as horrified as anyone at the Libyan jihadis’ insistence on revealing so graphically to the entire planet the barbaric character of the “revolution.” The months of gushing, ad nauseam press reports of near-universal jubilation in Tripoli and elsewhere at rebel “victories” – always under cover of NATO bombs – now made great sense. Who but those in search of instant martyrdom would voice displeasure at the NATO-jihadi triumph, with murderous fiends such as this roaming the streets?

“In a few minutes of joyously recorded bestiality, the rabid pack undid every carefully packaged image of NATO’s “humanitarian” project in North Africa.”

The United Nations Human Rights Office and Amnesty International found themselves compelled to ask for investigations into Gaddafi’s death – as if the immediate circumstances were not excruciatingly apparent to anyone with eyes and ears. Although the same U.S. domination of the UN that enabled NATO’s regime-change operation will ensure that the neocolonial powers escape legal liability for the results, the world still sees the executioners, correctly, as monsters in league with Washington, Paris, London and Riyadh. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, who gave a snarling thumbs down to Gaddafi just days before his death, appeared like ghoulish despots at a Roman Coliseum, reveling in their Libyan gladiators’ butchery. Their hands and gums ooze blood – a lasting impression on decent world opinion.

The assault on Libya began as a desperate bid by the West and Persian Gulf royalty to bludgeon their way into the dangerous (for them) dynamic of the Arab Spring. The “rebels” (now, ludicrously, the “revolutionary” government) are their guys, just as the Afghan “mujahidin” were the foot soldiers of the Saudis and Washington from 1979 through the Eighties and (for the Saudis) beyond. Here lies the certainty of catastrophic “blowback.” As Trinity College political scientist Vijay Prashad points out, Tripoli may soon resemble 1996 Kabul, a place of mass carnage between rival warlords.

“The world still sees the executioners, correctly, as monsters in league with Washington, Paris, London and Riyadh.”

The Libyan jihadis are far more Saudi Arabia’s and Qatar’s brethren, than the West’s. The Arab Spring has both emboldened and frightened the wealthy Persian Gulf despots, who have their own agendas in the Arab world that are not necessarily consonant with the U.S. and Europe (the same applies in Pakistan and elsewhere in the region). All reactionaries are not alike. The oil-rich monarchs are fighting to preserve legitimacy in their own, Muslim milieu, not for Western-based corporate hegemony, and will cause at least as much problems for Washington as the accommodating Gaddafi they set out to depose at the beginning of the Arab Spring.

But that is secondary. As always, U.S. imperialists cannot resist the temptation to overreach. John Pilger writes, “With Libya secured, an American invasion of the African continent is under way.” It is by no means certain that Libya will remain “secure” or under American sway. And President Obama’s all-out offensive to the south – now centered in East and Central Africa, but soon to become generalized – takes place with the cell phone imagery of Gaddafi’s demise fresh in minds of tens of millions of Africans. Obama may believe the pictures send the message that resistance is futile, but it is likely to have the opposite effect. As Venezuelan President Caesar Chavez said, of the Americans, “The most lamentable thing is that in their determination to dominate the world…they are setting it alight.”

Click here for the full report from Disinformation.Org.

Afghanistan To Back Pakistan If Wars With U.S. Middle East Is On To America’s Schemes

October 24, 2011

Reuters

By Augustine Anthony

Afghanistan would support Pakistan in case of military conflict between Pakistan and the United States, Afghan President Hamid Karzai said in an interview to a private Pakistani TV channel broadcast on Saturday.

The remarks were in sharp contrast to recent tension between the two neighbors over cross-border raids, and Afghan accusations that Pakistan was involved in killing the chief Afghan peace envoy, former Afghan president Burhanuddin Rabbani, by a suicide bomber on September 20.

“God forbid, If ever there is a war between Pakistan and America, Afghanistan will side with Pakistan,” he said in the interview to Geo television.

“If Pakistan is attacked and if the people of Pakistan needs Afghanistan’s help, Afghanistan will be there with you.”

Such a situation is extremely unlikely, however. Despite months of tension and tough talk between Washington and Islamabad, the two allies appear to be working to ease tension.

In a two-day visit to Islamabad, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton issued stern warnings and asked for more cooperation in winding down the war in Afghanistan, but ruled out “boots on the ground” in North Waziristan, where Washington has been pushing Pakistan to tackle the Haqqani network.

The Haqqani are a group of militants Washington has blamed for a series of attacks in Afghanistan, using sanctuaries in the Pakistani tribal region along the Afghan border.

Pakistan is seen as a critical to the U.S. drive to end the conflict in Afghanistan.

Pressure on Islamabad has been mounting since U.S. special forces found and killed Osama bin Laden in May in a Pakistani garrison town, where he apparently had been living for years.

The secret bin Laden raid was the biggest blow to U.S.-Pakistan relations since Islamabad joined the U.S. “war on terror” after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

Karzai said tensions between the United States and Pakistan did not have any impact in his country’s attitude toward Pakistan.

The TV channel, Geo, did not say when the interview was conducted.

Afghans have long been suspicious of Pakistan’s intentions in their country and question its promise to help bring peace. Karzai repeated that concern in his remarks.

“Please brother, stop using all methods that hurt us and that are now hurting you.

“Let’s engage from a different platform, a platform in which the two brothers only progress toward a better future in peace and harmony,” he said.

Following the death of Rabbani, Karzai said he would cease attempting to reach out to the Afghan Taliban and instead negotiate directly with Pakistan, saying its military and intelligence services could influence the militants to make peace.

Click here for the full report from Reuters.

Sec. Clinton Admits Fraudulent Drug War Is All About Money

February 9th, 2011

Natural News

By: Jonathan Benson

In what is now being dubbed one of the most incoherent and nonsensical statements to be made by a politician in recent days concerning the “drug war”, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently told Mexican reporters that drugs like marijuana can never be legalized because “there is just too much money in it.” Displaying a complete lack of understanding concerning basic economics and simple common sense, Clinton foolishly tried to claim that legalization would benefit criminal drug lords, despite the fact that simple supply and demand proves otherwise.

“You can legalize small amounts for possession, but those who are making so much money selling, they have to be stopped,” Clinton said. “They can’t be given an even easier road to take, because they will then find it in their interest to addict even more young people.”

On the contrary, legalization would actually drive down drug prices, which would in turn be a disincentive to drug lords to continue selling as they currently do. Instead of all the violence and corruption that currently takes place in the “black market” of drug dealing, legal dealers would have little reason to resort to such actions in normal market settings.

“Clinton evidently does not understand that there is so much money to be made by selling illegal drugs precisely because they are illegal,” writes Jacob Sullum in an article at Reason.com. “Prohibition not only enables traffickers to earn a ‘risk premium’ that makes drug prices much higher than they would otherwise be; it delivers this highly lucrative business into the hands of criminals who, having no legal recourse, resolve disputes by spilling blood.”

Several pro-legalization groups have also come out against Clinton, calling her statements “ignorant” and “preposterous,” noting that if someone like Sarah Palin had said such things, she would have immediately been the laughing stock of the media.

Others say that Clinton’s statements were not birthed out of ignorance, but rather are a clear reflection of central government efforts to protect the illegal drug market. A 1998 PBS investigation, for instance, explains how the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) relies on international drug dealing to finance covert operations, which offers insight into the real reasons for the war on drugs.

Click here for the full report from Natural News

Just 1 Percent of WikiLeaks’ Files Released

January 27th, 2011

AOL News

By: Raphael G. Satter

Nearly two months after WikiLeaks outraged the U.S. government by launching the release of a massive compendium of diplomatic documents, the secret-spilling website has published 2,658 U.S. State Department cables – just over 1 percent of its trove of 251,287 documents.

Here’s a look at what the consequences of the cables’ release have been so far, and what the future could hold for WikiLeaks.

IT’S LIFTED THE VEIL ON INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

WikiLeaks has given the world’s public an unprecedented, behind-the-scenes look at U.S. diplomacy. Among the most eye-catching revelations were reports that Arab countries had lobbied for an attack on Iran, China had made plans for the collapse of its North Korean ally, and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton had ordered U.S. diplomats to gather the computer passwords, fingerprints and even DNA of their foreign counterparts.

Some of the most controversial cables dealt with a directive to harvest biometric information on a range of officials. U.S. diplomats have been forced repeatedly to deny spying on their counterparts – although none have specifically addressed the instructions to gather personal details, sensitive computer data, and even genetic material or iris scans.

Anthony Cordesman, an analyst for the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, cautioned that some cables were less explosive when taken in the context they were written. He noted that Arab belligerence toward Tehran has festered for years – and suggested the rhetoric was being ratcheted up at a time of high tensions over Iran’s nuclear program.

As for the cables on scooping up fingerprints, frequent flyer numbers, and other personal information, Cordesman said that “there isn’t a diplomatic service in the world that doesn’t serve its intelligence community.”

IT’S SHOWN HOW LEADERS LIE

Over and over again, the cables captured world leaders lying – to each other, to their allies, and to their own citizens.

Diplomacy “comes across as a scheming, duplicitous profession – which it kind of is,” said Carne Ross, a former British diplomat who resigned over the Iraq war.

Click here for the full report from AOL News

Where in the World Is Julian Assange?

December 6th, 2010

AOL News

By: Deborah Hastings

Seemingly everyone wants a piece of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange this week, with Interpol, Sweden, the United States, Australia, Sarah Palin, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Bill O’Reilly joining the posse.

Palin says he should be hunted down “like al-Qaida.” O’Reilly calls him a “sleazebag.” Government officials want him tried for espionage, and Interpol is after him for alleged sex crimes. Others want him banned from the Internet.

Good luck with all of that. The 39-year-old recluse and self-described misfit — whose latest secret-documents dump comprises more than 250,000 diplomatic memos — has been on the lam for months.

So where is he? This month he’s apparently been in London, where he gave an interview to Forbes magazine, posted online this week after the chat was recorded at an undisclosed London apartment. The Australian native has cut and dyed his hair again to avoid detection, and promised that his site’s rage-inspiring and ongoing upload of U.S. State Department documents was only the beginning — of his latest controversy.

Up next is the disclosure of thousands of damning internal documents showing corruption by a major American bank, he told Forbes. But Assange won’t say which bank or give specifics of what it did wrong. That’s not unusual for a man who is both revered and reviled.

Assange has been laying low for several weeks now, staying with friends, using credit cards owned by others or paying in cash, canceling public appearances at the last minute or sending others in his stead. He is dogged by rape allegations in Sweden and is now under investigation by the U.S. Justice Department and his native Australia.

On Monday, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said Assange was under criminal investigation by federal agents. “This is not saber-rattling,” he told reporters at a news conference, The Associated Press reported. Saying the Obama administration condemns the publication of classified State Department documents, Holder said the posts endangered national security and the safety of diplomats abroad.

Secretary of State Clinton said much the same. “Some mistakenly applaud those responsible,” Clinton said in Washington this week. “There is nothing laudable about endangering innocent people.”

Not true, Assange shot back in a series of e-mails to ABC News from a clandestine hideout. “U.S. officials have for 50 years trotted out this line when they are afraid the public is going to see how they really behave,” he wrote.

Apparently, only one country welcomes him — Ecuador, which offered him residency, Reuters reported today. The South American country is highly critical of U.S. doctrines and policies.

Earlier this month, Sweden issued an international sex crimes warrant against Assange in connection with two incidents in which women claimed rape and molestation. Assange said both interludes were consensual sex. This week, he was placed on Interpol’s wanted list, according the agency’s website.

Assange fled to Sweden in August, seeking protection for WikiLeaks under the country’s whistle-blowing laws after he posted nearly 400,000 classified documents pertaining to the Iraq war. Weeks before, he had posted some 77,000 classified Pentagon documents on the Afghan conflict.

Then the rape allegations surfaced, and Assange was on the run again.

In October, he sat for an interview in London with The New York Times, sporting a beanie cap and a wispy beard and speaking just above a whisper lest he be overheard. The former computer hacker said, essentially, that he was doing the Lord’s work in publishing leaked secret and classified documents.

“By being determined to be on this path, and not to compromise, I’ve wound up in an extraordinary situation,” he said.

Click here for the full report from AOL News

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