Assange Russian TV Show

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange plans to host a show on Russian TV in March. The show will be taped in the United Kingdom so the long-running case of alleged sexual assault against Assange in Sweden would not necessarily interfere.
However, it wasn't clear how shows taped weeks in advance could be timely.

Ria Novosti, the official Russian news agency, confirmed plans for show.
It was an embarrassment for the U.S. media, coming on the same day that Reporters Without Borders lowered its ranking for press freedom from 20th to 47th.

Assange’s appeal of an extradition order is scheduled for a hearing in England’s high court on Feb. 1. The authencity of the allegations have has been challenged by Wikileaks and many others. Some consider it a U.S.-influenced attempt to discredit Wikileaks for the release of negative inform about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Assange has been under house arrest in England for more than a year.

The show will have ten half-hour segments with many outside guests, the channel Russia Today said. It will be called “The World Tomorrow," the station said.

“Guests of the show’s host and creator Julian Assange will include politicians and revolutionaries; people, who in his opinion, will form tomorrow’s agenda,” the channel said.

“We are proud and delighted that our channel will premiere Julian Assange’s project because the RT channel has gained a worldwide audience that's disappointed by the mainstream and has become open to new angles, making this show fitting for the purpose” RT Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan said.

U.S. viewers likely would have to watch the show on the Internet or via satellite, barring a decision by commercial American television to pick it up.

Wikileaks said on its Web site that this is timely because some in the U.S. Congress were pushing legislation which would virtually shut down the free flow of information on the Web.

“Upheavals and revolutions in the Middle East have started an era of political change that is still unfolding," WikiLeaks stated on its website. "In the West, the deterioration of the rule of law has demonstrated the bankruptcy of once leading political institutions and ideologies. The Internet has never been so strong, or so much under attack.”

Pentagon Hacked While Crusading Against Wikileaks

In March, while the Pentagon and Obama Administration were in the middle of trying to shut down the whisteblowing Wikileaks, 24,000 sensitive files were stolen from the defense department's computers.

It could not have been Pfc. Bradley Manning, who has been in a military prison for nearly a year for revealing information about controversial killings of civilians in Iraq.

These were not whistleblowers, but a foreign power, theCBC reported. Rupert Murdoch does not qualify as a foreign power as far as is known, simply a capitalist power.

Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn said cyberspace needs to be treated as a new theater of war. To use an expression employed against Julian Assange and Wikileaks, that is nothing new. They have been saying that for at least several years.

Lynn said defense has a new plan it is rolling out.

Lynn told The Associated Press: "Keystrokes originating in one country can impact the other side of the globe in the blink of an eye."

I know I have heard that somewhere. Sure, Jurassic Park. It was called the Butterly Effect, that something like the movement of a butterfly in Brazil could affect things thousands of miles away. It was much clearer in the film Run Lola Run.

Follow Robert Weller on Twitter: www.twitter.com/mozart99


Previously published on the Huffington Post