America: The Grim Truth

America: The Grim Truth: Information Clearing House - ICH: By Lance Freeman

April 08, 2010 "Information Clearing House" -- Americans, I have some bad news for you:

You have the worst quality of life in the developed world – by a wide margin.

If you had any idea of how people really lived in Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and many parts of Asia, you’d be rioting in the streets calling for a better life. In fact, the average Australian or Singaporean taxi driver has a much better standard of living than the typical American white-collar worker.

I know this because I am an American, and I escaped from the prison you call home.

I have lived all around the world, in wealthy countries and poor ones, and there is only one country I would never consider living in again: The United States of America. The mere thought of it fills me with dread.

Consider this: you are the only people in the developed world without a single-payer health system. Everyone in Western Europe, Japan, Canada, Australia, Singapore and New Zealand has a single-payer system. If they get sick, they can devote all their energies to getting well. If you get sick, you have to battle two things at once: your illness and the fear of financial ruin. Millions of Americans go bankrupt every year due to medical bills, and tens of thousands die each year because they have no insurance or insufficient insurance. And don’t believe for a second that rot about America having the world’s best medical care or the shortest waiting lists: I’ve been to hospitals in Australia, New Zealand, Europe, Singapore, and Thailand, and every one was better than the “good” hospital I used to go to back home. The waits were shorter, the facilities more comfortable, and the doctors just as good.

This is ironic, because you need a good health system more than anyone else in the world. Why? Because your lifestyle is almost designed to make you sick.

Let’s start with your diet: Much of the beef you eat has been exposed to fecal matter in processing. Your chicken is contaminated with salmonella. Your stock animals and poultry are pumped full of growth hormones and antibiotics. In most other countries, the government would act to protect consumers from this sort of thing; in the United States, the government is bought off by industry to prevent any effective regulations or inspections. In a few years, the majority of all the produce for sale in the United States will be from genetically modified crops, thanks to the cozy relationship between Monsanto Corporation and the United States government. Worse still, due to the vast quantities of high-fructose corn syrup Americans consume, fully one-third of children born in the United States today will be diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes at some point in their lives.

Of course, it’s not just the food that’s killing you, it’s the drugs. If you show any sign of life when you’re young, they’ll put you on Ritalin. Then, when you get old enough to take a good look around, you’ll get depressed, so they’ll give you Prozac. If you’re a man, this will render you chemically impotent, so you’ll need Viagra to get it up. Meanwhile, your steady diet of trans-fat-laden food is guaranteed to give you high cholesterol, so you’ll get a prescription for Lipitor. Finally, at the end of the day, you’ll lay awake at night worrying about losing your health plan, so you’ll need Lunesta to go to sleep.

With a diet guaranteed to make you sick and a health system designed to make sure you stay that way, what you really need is a long vacation somewhere. Unfortunately, you probably can’t take one. I’ll let you in on little secret: if you go to the beaches of Thailand, the mountains of Nepal, or the coral reefs of Australia, you’ll probably be the only American in sight. And you’ll be surrounded crowds of happy Germans, French, Italians, Israelis, Scandinavians and wealthy Asians. Why? Because they’re paid well enough to afford to visit these places AND they can take vacations long enough to do so. Even if you could scrape together enough money to go to one of these incredible places, by the time you recovered from your jetlag, it would time to get on a plane and rush back to your job.

If you think I’m making this up, check the stats on average annual vacation days by country:

Finland: 44
Italy: 42
France: 39
Germany: 35
UK: 25
Japan: 18
USA: 12

The fact is, they work you like dogs in the United States. This should come as no surprise: the United States never got away from the plantation/sweat shop labor model and any real labor movement was brutally suppressed. Unless you happen to be a member of the ownership class, your options are pretty much limited to barely surviving on service-sector wages or playing musical chairs for a spot in a cubicle (a spot that will be outsourced to India next week anyway). The very best you can hope for is to get a professional degree and then milk the system for a slice of the middle-class pie. And even those who claw their way into the middle class are but one illness or job loss away from poverty. Your jobs aren’t secure. Your company has no loyalty to you. They’ll play you off against your coworkers for as long as it suits them, then they’ll get rid of you.

Of course, you don’t have any choice in the matter: the system is designed this way. In most countries in the developed world, higher education is either free or heavily subsidized; in the United States, a university degree can set you back over US$100,000. Thus, you enter the working world with a crushing debt. Forget about taking a year off to travel the world and find yourself – you’ve got to start working or watch your credit rating plummet.

If you’re “lucky,” you might even land a job good enough to qualify you for a home loan. And then you’ll spend half your working life just paying the interest on the loan – welcome to the world of American debt slavery. America has the illusion of great wealth because there’s a lot of “stuff” around, but who really owns it? In real terms, the average American is poorer than the poorest ghetto dweller in Manila, because at least they have no debts. If they want to pack up and leave, they can; if you want to leave, you can’t, because you’ve got debts to pay.

All this begs the question: Why would anyone put up with this? Ask any American and you’ll get the same answer: because America is the freest country on earth. If you believe this, I’ve got some more bad news for you: America is actually among the least free countries on earth. Your piss is tested, your emails and phone calls are monitored, your medical records are gathered, and you are never more than one stray comment away from writhing on the ground with two Taser prongs in your ass.

And that’s just physical freedom. Mentally, you are truly imprisoned. You don’t even know the degree to which you are tormented by fears of medical bankruptcy, job loss, homelessness and violent crime because you’ve never lived in a country where there is no need to worry about such things.

But it goes much deeper than mere surveillance and anxiety. The fact is, you are not free because your country has been taken over and occupied by another government. Fully 70% of your tax dollars go to the Pentagon, and the Pentagon is the real government of the United States. You are required under pain of death to pay taxes to this occupying government. If you’re from the less fortunate classes, you are also required to serve and die in their endless wars, or send your sons and daughters to do so. You have no choice in the matter: there is a socio-economic draft system in the United States that provides a steady stream of cannon fodder for the military.

If you call a life of surveillance, anxiety and ceaseless toil in the service of a government you didn’t elect “freedom,” then you and I have a very different idea of what that word means.

If there was some chance that the country could be changed, there might be reason for hope. But can you honestly look around and conclude that anything is going to change? Where would the change come from? The people? Take a good look at your compatriots: the working class in the United States has been brutally propagandized by jackals like Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity. Members of the working class have been taught to lick the boots of their masters and then bend over for another kick in the ass. They’ve got these people so well trained that they’ll take up arms against the other half of the working class as soon as their masters give the word.

If the people cannot make a change, how about the media? Not a chance. From Fox News to the New York Times, the mass media in the United States is nothing but the public relations wing of the corporatocracy, primarily the military industrial complex. At least the citizens of the former Soviet Union knew that their news was bullshit. In America, you grow up thinking you’ve got a free media, which makes the propaganda doubly effective. If you don’t think American media is mere corporate propaganda, ask yourself the following question: have you ever heard a major American news outlet suggest that the country could fund a single-payer health system by cutting military spending?

If change can’t come from the people or the media, the only other potential source of change would be the politicians. Unfortunately, the American political process is among the most corrupt in the world. In every country on earth, one expects politicians to take bribes from the rich. But this generally happens in secret, behind the closed doors of their elite clubs. In the United States, this sort of political corruption is done in broad daylight, as part of legal, accepted, standard operating procedure. In the United States, they merely call these bribes campaign donations, political action committees and lobbyists. One can no more expect the politicians to change this system than one can expect a man to take an axe and chop his own legs out from underneath him.

No, the United States of America is not going to change for the better. The only change will be for the worse. And when I say worse, I mean much worse. As we speak, the economic system that sustained the country during the post-war years is collapsing. The United States maxed out its “credit card” sometime in 2008 and now its lenders, starting with China, are in the process of laying the foundations for a new monetary system to replace the Anglo-American “petro-dollar” system. As soon as there is a viable alternative to the US dollar, the greenback will sink like a stone.

While the United States was running up crushing levels of debt, it was also busy shipping its manufacturing jobs and white-collar jobs overseas, and letting its infrastructure fall to pieces. Meanwhile, Asian and European countries were investing in education, infrastructure and raw materials. Even if the United States tried to rebuild a real economy (as opposed to a service/financial economy) do think American workers would ever be able to compete with the workers of China or Europe? Have you ever seen a Japanese or German factory? Have you ever met a Singaporean or Chinese worker?

There are only two possible futures facing the United States, and neither one is pretty. The best case is a slow but orderly decline – essentially a continuation of what’s been happening for the last two decades. Wages will drop, unemployment will rise, Medicare and Social Security benefits will be slashed, the currency will decline in value, and the disparity of wealth will spiral out of control until the United States starts to resemble Mexico or the Philippines – tiny islands of wealth surrounded by great poverty (the country is already halfway there).

Equally likely is a sudden collapse, perhaps brought about by a rapid flight from the US dollar by creditor nations like China, Japan, Korea and the OPEC nations. A related possibility would be a default by the United States government on its vast debt. One look at the financial balance sheet of the US government should convince you how likely this is: governmental spending is skyrocketing and tax receipts are plummeting – something has to give. If either of these scenarios plays out, the resulting depression will make the present recession look like a walk in the park.

Whether the collapse is gradual or gut-wrenchingly sudden, the results will be chaos, civil strife and fascism. Let’s face it: the United States is like the former Yugoslavia – a collection of mutually antagonistic cultures united in name only. You’ve got your own version of the Taliban: right-wing Christian fundamentalists who actively loathe the idea of secular Constitutional government. You’ve got a vast intellectual underclass that has spent the last few decades soaking up Fox News and talk radio propaganda, eager to blame the collapse on Democrats, gays and immigrants. You’ve got a ruthless ownership class that will use all the means at its disposal to protect its wealth from the starving masses.

On top of all that you’ve got vast factory farms, sprawling suburbs and a truck-based shipping system, all of it entirely dependent on oil that is about to become completely unaffordable. And you’ve got guns. Lots of guns. In short: the United States is about to become a very unwholesome place to be.

Right now, the government is building fences and walls along its northern and southern borders. Right now, the government is working on a national ID system (soon to be fitted with biometric features). Right now, the government is building a surveillance state so extensive that they will be able to follow your every move, online, in the street and across borders. If you think this is just to protect you from “terrorists,” then you’re sadly mistaken. Once the shit really hits the fan, do you really think you’ll just be able to jump into the old station wagon, drive across the Canadian border and spend the rest of your days fishing and drinking Molson? No, the government is going to lock the place down. They don’t want their tax base escaping. They don’t want their “recruits” escaping. They don’t want YOU escaping.

I am not writing this to scare you. I write this to you as a friend. If you are able to read and understand what I’ve written here, then you are a member of a small minority in the United States. You are a minority in a country that has no place for you.

So what should you do?

You should leave the United States of America.

If you’re young, you’ve got plenty of choices: you can teach English in the Middle East, Asia or Europe. Or you can go to university or graduate school abroad and start building skills that will qualify you for a work visa. If you’ve already got some real work skills, you can apply to emigrate to any number of countries as a skilled immigrant. If you are older and you’ve got some savings, you can retire to a place like Costa Rica or the Philippines. If you can’t qualify for a work, student or retirement visa, don’t let that stop you – travel on a tourist visa to a country that appeals to you and talk to the expats you meet there. Whatever you do, go speak to an immigration lawyer as soon as you can. Find out exactly how to get on a path that will lead to permanent residence and eventually citizenship in the country of your choice.

You will not be alone. There are millions of Americans just like me living outside the United States. Living lives much more fulfilling, peaceful, free and abundant than we ever could have attained back home. Some of us happened upon these lives by accident – we tried a year abroad and found that we liked it – others made a conscious decision to pack up and leave for good. You’ll find us in Canada, all over Europe, in many parts of Asia, in Australia and New Zealand, and in most other countries of the globe. Do we miss our friends and family? Yes. Do we occasionally miss aspects of our former country? Yes. Do we plan on ever living again in the United States? Never. And those of us with permanent residence or citizenship can sponsor family members from back home for long-term visas in our adopted countries.

In closing, I want to remind you of something: unless you are an American Indian or a descendant of slaves, at some point your ancestors chose to leave their homeland in search of a better life. They weren’t traitors and they weren’t bad people, they just wanted a better life for themselves and their families. Isn’t it time that you continue their journey?

The Fight Over Food Deserts – Corporate America Weighs In

The Fight Over Food Deserts – Corporate America Weighs In | Food First/Institute for Food and Development Policy:

Some 38.2% of households seeking food aid are home to at least one working adult. As the nation’s largest employer, it would seem obvious that the first step Wal-Mart would take to end hunger is ensure that the jobs it provides don’t leave its employees needing food aid. In 2008 alone, Wal-Mart settled 63 cases of wage theft.The settlement totalled $352 million in unpaid wages and involved hundreds of thousands of current and former Wal-Mart employees across the country.iv]

Even when the company does pay the agreed upon wage, workers still come up short. According to Good Jobs First, taxpayers subsidize Wal-Mart stores through numerous forms of public assistance--Medicaid, Food Stamps, public housing--that often allow workers to subsist on the company’s low wages. A report by the House Education and Workforce Committee conservatively places these costs deferred by the retail giant at $420,750 per store; the Wal-Mart Foundation's per-store charitable giving is just 11 percent of that amount ($47,222).[v]

Three companies will own U.S. meat market

If JBS gobbles up Smithfield, three companies will own U.S. meat market | Grist: "High on the hog

A typical supermarket's meat counter displays a landscape of easy bounty: shrink-wrapped chops, cutlets, steaks, roasts, loins, burger meat, and more, almost all of it priced to move.

But the dizzying variety cloaks a disturbing uniformity. As the chart below shows, the great bulk of the meat consumed in the United States comes from just four large, powerful companies. These companies wield tremendous power to dictate not just what meat is available, but how that meat is raised.

For these "meat titans," turning a profit selling cheap meat means slashing the cost of doing business. And that in turn means paying their farmer-suppliers as little as possible for live animals, and paying workers as little as possible to slaughter and process them.

Since the meat market began its dramatic arc of consolidation three decades ago, farmers have had to choose between scaling up, to make up on volume what they were losing on price, or exit the business altogether. As a result, millions of small, diversified farms have closed down their animal-raising operations over the past 30 years, and surviving farms have mostly scaled up, specialized in one species, and placed that species by the thousands in vast confinements known as concentrated animal feedlot operations, or CAFOs. These fragrant, teeming spaces are notorious sources of pollution and social decay in rural areas.

Three of the companies that now dominate the U.S. meat market -- Tyson, Smithfield, and Cargill -- will be familiar to most readers; the fourth isn't exactly a household name. Over the last two years, a Brazilian beef-packing conglomerate called JBS has come barreling into the U.S. meat market, taking advantage of a weak dollar and economic troubles among top domestic players.

First, it bought up two prominent beef players, grabbing a nearly quarter of the U.S. beef market. Only Tyson, with 28 percent, has a larger share; the agribusiness giant Cargill is tied with JBS for second place, with 24 percent of the market. Then JBS swooped in and bought two-thirds of chicken giant Pilgrim's Pilgrim's pride, giving it 18 percent of the U.S. poultry market, second only to Tyson's 22 percent. In the course of its dealmaking, JBS also acquired some pork interests, taking 12 percent of that market -- putting it in third place behind Tyson (19 percent) and hog king Smithfield (26 percent).

After all of those U.S. deals -- and its recent takeover of its former Brazilian beef rival, Bertin -- JBS is now the largest industrial-meat purveyor on the planet, bigger in terms of global meat sales than even Tyson and Cargill.

Nanotechnology: Transforming Food and the Environment - Spring 2010 | Food First/Institute for Food and Development Policy

Nanotechnology: Transforming Food and the Environment - Spring 2010 | Food First/Institute for Food and Development Policy:

Nano Food in the Grocery Store
A wide variety of nano-based products and processes are already on our plates, largely driven by the corporate sector, including Kraft Foods, H.J. Heinz, Nestle, Unilever, Cargill, Pepsi-Cola, Syngenta and Monsanto (Friends of the Earth, 2008). The Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars estimates at least 84 food-related items containing nano products are in the market, while investigations by Friends of the Earth report 104 food items and an additional 400-500 nano packaging products (Friends of the Earth, 2008). So what are the agri-food corporations up to at the nano scale?

Nano Farming
The agri-chemical and information technology industries have shifted down to the nano-scale to produce new agricultural chemicals, seeds, and livestock with novel functions and capabilities, as well as new systems of farm monitoring and management (Kuzma and VerHage, 2006; Friends of the Earth, 2008). Syngenta, BASF, Bayer Crop Science, Cargill and Monsanto are all undertaking research and commercialization in these areas. Syngenta, for example, has harnessed the properties of nano-scale materials to produce nano pesticides including “gutbuster” microcapsules that contain pesticides engineered to break open in the alkaline conditions of an insect’s stomach. They argue this will enable the more targeted delivery of pesticides (Syngenta, 2007). The convergence of nanotechnologies with biotechnology, also provides industry with new tools to modify genes and even produce new organisms. For example, nanobiotechnologies enable nanoparticles, nanofibres and nanocapsules to carry foreign DNA and chemicals that modify genes (ETC Group, 2004; Torney et al., 2007). In addition to the re-engineering of existing plants, novel plant varieties may be developed using synthetic biology; a new branch of technoscience that draws on the techniques of genetic engineering, nanotechnology and informatics. In a recent breakthrough in this area, researchers completely replaced the genetic material of one bacteria with that from another—transforming it from one species to another (ETC Group, 2007). These technologies clearly up the ante, increasing both the opportunities and risks offered by each of these technologies in isolation.

Nano Food
Nanotechnologies are being used to manufacture entirely new foods. These include ‘smart’ foods—nutritional profiles that respond to an individual’s allergies, dietary needs or food preferences. While such
designer food sounds like the stuff of fantasy, nanotechnologies make them scientifically possible. Nanotechnology is also being used to alter the properties and traits of food; including its nutrition, flavor, texture, heat tolerance and shelf life. For example, Unilever has reported breakthroughs in the manufacture of lowfat and low-calorie food that retains its rich and creamy taste and texture, applying this to a range of very low-fat ice-creams, mayonnaise and spreads (Daniells, 2008). Meanwhile, food companies are using microcapsules to deliver food components such as omega 3-rich fish oil. The release of fish oil into the human stomach is intended to deliver claimed health benefits of the fish oil, while masking its fishy taste (Friends of the Earth, 2008).

Nano Food Packaging
Nano food packaging is the most commercialized of the agri-food nanotechnologies. Nano packaging materials include barrier technologies, which enhance the shelf life, durability and freshness of food—or at least slow the rotting process. DuPont produces a nano titanium dioxide plastic additive that reduces UV exposure that they claim will minimize damage to food contained in transparent packaging (ElAmin, 2008).

Nano packaging is also being designed to enable materials to interact with the food it contacts; emitting antimicrobials, antioxidants, nutraceuticals and other inputs. This ‘smart’ or ‘active’ packaging, as manufacturers brand it, is being developed to respond to specific trigger events. For example, packaging may contain nanosensors that are engineered to change color if a food is beginning to spoil, or if it has been contaminated by pathogens. This technology is already being used in the U.S. with carbon nanotubes incorporated into packaging materials to detect microorganisms, toxic proteins and food spoilage (ElAmin, 2008).

How the Pentagon Turns Working-Class Men into the Deadliest Killers on the Planet | | AlterNet

How the Pentagon Turns Working-Class Men into the Deadliest Killers on the Planet | | AlterNet:
An excerpt from antiwar activist Swanson's new book, War Is a Lie.
December 10, 2010

Since the Vietnam War, the United States has dropped all pretense of a military draft equally applied to all. Instead we spend billions of dollars on recruitment, increase military pay, and offer signing bonuses until enough people "voluntarily" join by signing contracts that allow the military to change the terms at will. If more troops are needed, just extend the contracts of the ones you've got. Need more still? Federalize the National Guard and send kids off to war who signed up thinking they'd be helping hurricane victims. Still not enough? Hire contractors for transportation, cooking, cleaning, and construction. Let the soldiers be pure soldiers whose only job is to kill, just like the knights of old. Boom, you've instantly doubled the size of your force, and nobody's noticed except the profiteers.

Still need more killers? Hire mercenaries. Hire foreign mercenaries. Not enough? Spend trillions of dollars on technology to maximize the power of each person. Use unmanned aircraft so nobody gets hurt. Promise immigrants they'll be citizens if they join. Change the standards for enlistment: take 'em older, fatter, in worse health, with less education, with criminal records. Make high schools give recruiters aptitude test results and students' contact information, and promise students they can pursue their chosen field within the wonderful world of death, and that you'll send them to college if they live ? hey, just promising it costs you nothing. If they're resistant, you started too late. Put military video games in shopping malls. Send uniformed generals into kindergartens to warm the children up to the idea of truly and properly swearing allegiance to that flag. Spend 10 times the money on recruiting each new soldier as we spend educating each child. Do anything, anything, anything other than starting a draft.

But there's a name for this practice of avoiding a traditional draft. It's called a poverty draft. Because people tend not to want to participate in wars, those who have other career options tend to choose those other options. Those who see the military as one of their only choices, their only shot at a college education, or their only way to escape their troubled lives are more likely to enlist. According to the Not Your Soldier Project:

"The majority of military recruits come from below-median income neighborhoods.

"In 2004, 71 percent of black recruits, 65 percent of Latino recruits, and 58 percent of white recruits came from below-median income neighborhoods. "The percentage of recruits who were regular high school graduates dropped from 86 percent in 2004 to 73 percent in 2006. "[The recruiters] never mention that the college money is difficult to come by - only 16 percent of enlisted personnel who completed four years of military duty ever received money for schooling. They don't say that the job skills they promise won't transfer into the real world. Only 12 percent of male veterans and 6 percent of female veterans use skills learned in the military in their current jobs. And of course, they downplay the risk of being killed while on duty."

How the Oligarchs Took Over America | Economy | AlterNet

How the Oligarchs Took Over America | Economy | AlterNet: "you can't understand how the rich seized control of American politics, and arguably American society, without understanding how a small group of Americans got so much money in the first place.

There's no mistaking how, in less than a year, Citizens United has radically tilted the political playing field. Along with several other major court rulings, it ushered in American Crossroads, American Action Network, and many similar groups that now can reel in unlimited donations with pathetically few requirements to disclose their funders.

What the present Supreme Court, itself the fruit of successive tax-cutting and deregulating administrations, has ensured is this: that in an American “democracy,” only the public will remain in the dark. Even for dedicated reporters, tracking down these groups is like chasing shadows: official addresses lead to P.O. boxes; phone calls go unreturned; doors are shut in your face.

The limited glimpse we have of the people bankrolling these shadowy outfits is a who's-who of the New Oligarchy: the billionaire Koch Brothers ($21.5 billion); financier George Soros ($11 billion); hedge-fund CEO Paul Singer (his fund, Elliott Management, is worth $17 billion); investor Harold Simmons (net worth: $4.5 billion); New York venture capitalist Kenneth Langone ($1.1 billion); and real estate tycoon Bob Perry ($600 million).

Then there's the roster of corporations who have used their largesse to influence American politics. Health insurance companies, including UnitedHealth Group and Cigna, gave a whopping $86.2 million to the U.S. Chamber to kill the public option, funneling the money through the industry trade group America's Health Insurance Plans. And corporate titans like Goldman Sachs, Prudential Financial, and Dow Chemical have given millions more to the Chamber to lobby against new financial and chemical regulations.

As a result, the central story of the 2010 midterm elections isn’t Republican victory or Democratic defeat or Tea Party anger; it’s this blitzkrieg of outside spending, most of which came from right-leaning groups like Rove's American Crossroads and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. It's a grim illustration of what happens when so much money ends up in the hands of so few. And with campaign finance reforms soundly defeated for years to come, the spending wars will only get worse.

Indeed, pundits predict that spending in the 2012 elections will smash all records. Think of it this way: in 2008, total election spending reached $5.3 billion, while the $1.8 billion spent on the presidential race alone more than doubled 2004's total. How high could we go in 2012? $7 billion? $10 billion? It looks like the sky’s the limit.

The 9 Weirdest Things About the WikiLeaks Story | | AlterNet

The 9 Weirdest Things About the WikiLeaks Story |AlterNet:

The 9 Weirdest Things About the WikiLeaks Story

Here are the 9 craziest facets of the international uproar surrounding WikiLeaks and Julian Assange.

December 6, 2010 |

Photo Credit: AFP

The release of the US embassy cables has thus far been one of the most... interesting moments in recent US (and World) history, impacting global politics in a way that is unprecedented. Nestled amid the outrage and debate are some truly weird aspects that make the brouhaha seem like a lost installment in the Jason Bourne chronicles (or Catch Me If You Can). More important than the drama and gossip, WikiLeaks is a tentpost in the information age, a milestone potentially heralding a new era of internet transparency. As world governments balk at the exposure of their secrets -- and scramble to suppress the information -- Assange and his crew are expressing their right to free speech and facilitating the public's fundamental right to know exactly what their leaders are up to, particularly when it entails wars, torture, and secret military action. Here are the 8 craziest facets of the international uproar surrounding WikiLeaks and Julian Assange.

1. Hackers on the Offensive

A group of hackers have pledged to wage war against companies that have "censored" WikiLeaks. Yesterday morning Operation Payback targeted PayPal in a DDoS attack (the company no longer lets people donate to WikiLeaks through its service). Later in the day they launched a successful attack on PostFinance, the bank that froze the assets of the Julian Assange Defense Fund. As of last night, the PostFinance site was still down.

2. Julian Assange Has Not Broken Any Laws ... Yet Our Government and Others Treat Him Like He Has

A Canadian advisor called for Assange's assassination, Joe Lieberman pressured Amazon to hypocritically tear down the cables, and officials and media repeat accusations that he is a terrorist despite the fact that the Wikileaks' actions have resulted in no physical harm to anyone -- unlike, say, certain governments. But amid all this, it is important to note that neither Julian Assange nor WikiLeaks have broken any laws, whether American or Australian, in releasing the leaked documents. And yet some lawmakers are so hysterical, such as GOP Senate Minority Leader Mitch O'Connell, they are suggesting the US invent new laws, solely for the purpose of bringing Assange to trial. Meanwhile, the government continues to intimidate companies who host the cables, with no actual legal ground whatsoever. As Glenn Greenwald points out:

People often have a hard time believing that the terms "authoritarian" and "tyranny" apply to their own government, but that's because those who meekly stay in line and remain unthreatening are never targeted by such forces. The face of authoritarianism and tyranny reveals itself with how it responds to those who meaningfully dissent from and effectively challenge its authority: do they act within the law or solely through the use of unconstrained force?

The Swiss government has also frozen his legal defense fund, so even if someone does invent a way to nab him legally, his right to a fair trial is compromised.

3. Julian Assange Preps “Poison Pill” in Case He’s Killed or Arrested
As established, Wikileaks leader Assange is not wrong in assuming at some point he may be arrested (Interpol’s on the hunt) or killed (world leaders want his head). Or that WikiLeaks will be shut down. And so, like anyone who knows he's a walking target, he has put out a little bit of insurance on himself and WikiLeaks. Today he announced that, should anyone attempt to harm (or incarcerate) a hair on his head, he’ll pull the trigger on a “poison pill” that would allegedly expose even more explosive information, including some documents about BP, Bank of America and Guantanamo Bay. According to the Daily Mail, an encrypted file sent out to various fellow hackers contains the information, and can be disseminated all across the internet if he decides to give them the key -- an uncrackable password consisting of 256 digits. Mark Stephens, Assange’s lawyer in Britain, has said the information is tantamount to a “thermonuclear device,” consisting of “doomsday files.” Another lawyer, Jennifer Robinson, claims she’s been receiving intimidating letters from Washington.

Ms Robinson references a letter from a state department legal adviser addressed to both herself and Mr Assange - appearing to suggest that Wikileaks and its lawyers were one and the same.

She said: 'By eliding client and lawyer, that was a very inappropriate attempt to implicate me. That is really inappropriate to come from the state department of all places; they understand very well the rules on attorney-client protocol.'

Meanwhile, the lawyers have claimed they’re being watched by strange men in dark cars parked outside their homes. Reading newspapers. Probably about their client.

4. But You Can’t Really Arrest Julian Assange
A great novelist once wrote, “Sometimes a man retreats so far inward he mistakes isolation for dominion.” In this case, though, Assange’s essential MIA-ness (he’s supposedly in England) is pretty close to dominion. He is acting like a man without a country, and this is his armor against the world. As AOL notes, “The international nature of his organization makes questions of jurisdiction nearly impossible to answer.” And because he is not a US citizen, he can’t be tried for treason, a technicality apparently lost on some leaders and journalists. While the US could technically arrest him for spying, the best bet for those searching for his hide is if Sweden could extradite him for charges related to alleged rape. That is, if Sweden managed to get it together... their first attempt at extradition was foiled by bungled paperwork -- extradition papers filed with Great Britain did not state the maximum sentence for his charges, a small but important requirement for extradition. Meanwhile, Assange’s native Australia has upped the ante, promising him consular help if he’s arrested by a foreign government, even while condemning the leaks -- meaning he might be able to, simply, return home Down Under.

5. Columbia Students Warned Against Linking to Wikileaks ... then Columbia Decides Linking to Wikileaks is OK
Last week, Columbia University’s School of International and Political Affairs told its students not to link to or Tweet anything having to do with WikiLeaks, warning their curiosity could endanger their chances of ever being employed by the government. The school’s employment office sent out an email to the students, many aspiring diplomats, saying an alumni from the State Department gave them a heads up about seeking Wiki info, noting that even posting comments about the leaks "would call into question your ability to deal with confidential information." The directive scared a lot of grad students for quite a few days. That is, until yesterday, when SIPA Dean John H. Coatsworth decided to err on the side of free speech, clarifying the Columbia email that was initially seen as a scare tactic. In a subsequent email to students, Coatsworth wrote:

“Freedom of information and expression is a core value of our institution. Thus, SIPA’s position is that students have a right to discuss and debate any information in the public arena that they deem relevant to their studies or to their roles as global citizens, and to do so without fear of adverse consequences.”

Furthermore, another SIPA Professor told Wired.com that students would be remiss if they didn’t seek out the Wikileaks cables. “If anyone is a master’s student in international relations and they haven’t heard of WikiLeaks and gone looking for the documents that relate to their area of study,“ said Middle East expert Gary Sick, “then they don’t deserve to be a graduate student in international relations.” The First Amendment prevails. Also... touche.

6. “Sex by Surprise?"
The charges against Assange in Sweden have now been characterized as “sex by surprise” -- and no one seems to know exactly what that even means.

Assange's London attorney, Mark Stephens, told AOL News today that Swedish prosecutors told him that Assange is wanted not for allegations of rape, as previously reported, but for something called "sex by surprise," which he said involves a fine of 5,000 kronor or about $715. "Whatever 'sex by surprise' is, it's only a offense in Sweden -- not in the U.K. or the U.S. or even Ibiza," Stephens said. "I feel as if I'm in a surreal Swedish movie being threatened by bizarre trolls. The prosecutor has not asked to see Julian, never asked to interview him, and he hasn't been charged with anything. He's been told he's wanted for questioning, but he doesn't know the nature of the allegations against him."

The charges have something to do with condoms, and their lack of use, or breakage, although it’s largely unclear exactly what. The women accusing Assange have stood behind their accounts, but he believes the Swedish government's seemingly wishy-washy actions are part of a larger conspiracy to nab him for WikiLeaks. The New York Times:

According to accounts the women gave to the police and friends, they each had consensual sexual encounters with Mr. Assange that became nonconsensual. One woman said that Mr. Assange had ignored her appeals to stop after a condom broke. The other woman said that she and Mr. Assange had begun a sexual encounter using a condom, but that Mr. Assange did not comply with her appeals to stop when it was no longer in use. Mr. Assange has denied any wrongdoing and has questioned the veracity of those accounts.

Yesterday, new warrants were issued for Assange and he is presently making arrangements to meet with Scotland Yard. The premise for the warrants has not been revealed.

7. Future Cables Reference UFOs!
So maybe this is more like the X-Files. In a rare interview with the Guardian last week, in which Assange answered reader-submitted questions, he confirmed that not-yet-published documents reference unidentified flying objects. And lest you think he is jumping any sort of shark, it should be known that his information was vetted with journalistic rigor, just like every other piece of info he’s published. The full question and answer:

Mr Assange,
Have there ever been documents forwarded to you which deal with the topic of UFOs or extraterrestrials?

Assange: Many weirdos email us about UFOs or how they discovered that they were the anti-christ whilst talking with their ex-wife at a garden party over a pot-plant. However, as yet they have not satisfied two of our publishing rules.
1) that the documents not be self-authored;
2) that they be original.
However, it is worth noting that in yet-to-be-published parts of the cablegate archive there are indeed references to UFOs.

Of course, it’s not exactly proof of the existence of aliens (or even alien-like bacteria here on earth), but it is a fascinating bit that not only intrigues, but illustrates the breadth of information Assange is sitting on.

8. Feds Go Nuts to Prevent Soldiers from Seeing Wikleaks
Soldiers in Iraq attempting to read the leaked cables -- or even read articles about them -- get a redirect notice on their government network saying they’re on the verge of breaking the law. The redirect has affected virtually every major news website, clearly, since not one has refrained from covering Wikileaks (despite their mass condemnation of the stuff). But as Gawker points out, “Many of those soldiers receiving the warnings have security clearances that would have granted them access to the State Department cables before they were leaked.” One presumes the same goes for some of the government employees, who were issued a similar warning about reading the documents.

9. Iran Accuses US of Leaking Wikileaks
An ironic conspiracy theory when one considers the outrage Cablegate has sparked among everyone from Hillary Clinton to Mike Huckabee, although our Secretary of State exercised quite a bit more restraint than the gun-happy Huckabee. But considering what the leaks revealed -- that countries all across the Middle East have urged the US to strike against Iran -- it’s an understandable conclusion. The leaks prompted an Israeli paper to express triumphant joy in feeling solidarity for its extreme stance on Iran -- an op-ed was titled The World Thinks Like Us–and Ahmadinejad stated his view on the matter explicitly, asserting the American government made the cables ”organized to be released on a regular basis and they are pursuing political goals.” Meanwhile, cables that stated Iranian dissidents had some involvement with the Israeli Mossad would not only strengthen current powers but undermine the dissident movement itself -- endangering the lives of Iranians critical of Ahmadinejad’s policies. The Daily Beast:

“New and harmful” was how Freilich described the WikilLeaks revelation that Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, consulted with Washington about working with Iran's students and ethnic minorities to topple Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's regime in Iran.

Julianne Escobedo Shepherd is an associate editor at AlterNet and a Brooklyn-based freelance writer and editor. Formerly the executive editor of The FADER, her work has appeared in VIBE, SPIN, New York Times and various other magazines and websites.