The Ongoing Wikileaks Saga

As everyone probably knows by now, Julian Assange turned himself in to British authorities as a result of his European arrest warrant and will face sex charges filed in Sweden. This could be either a good or bad development. It's possible the charges will stick, he'll be convicted, thrown in jail and essentially discredited as a sex criminal. On the other hand, there is probably a decent chance that there won't be enough evidence for a conviction, he'll walk free, and use the incident to portray himself as a martyr.

Despite the situation with Assange, Wikileaks says it will continue releasing stolen U.S. diplomatic cables. Assange alone is not the problem, and regardless of what happens to him personally, Wikileaks remains a hostile non-state organization engaged in a direct attack on the United States. Along with the Assange situation, there have been some other positive developments. Visa and Paypal have both suspended business arrangements with Wikileaks, and the Swiss closed Assange's bank account. Those are helpful measures, but they don't go nearly far enough.

As I've argued before, Wikileaks has already inflicted significant damage on the U.S. Instead of waiting around for the next attack, the U.S. should take both overt and covert action to destroy this organization. Attacking its finances is well and good, but the U.S. should directly target the key individuals running Wikileaks. It's past time for some of them to start dying or disappearing. Unfortunately it is unlikely that our current president will act beyond the usual strongly-worded statements, and tentative legal tactics. We can wage an extensive assassination campaign in Afghanistan/Pakistan, but we apparently can't act to destroy an enemy that has carried out a successful assault, and caused far more damage than most of the people we are killing.

Spineless Bowing Before Radical Islam

The Museum of World Culture in Gothenburg, Sweden has canceled an art exhibit "featuring homosexuality in religion." Why would they do that? Apparently they feared "it might offend some believers." Hmm, I wonder which ones might be most offended, and who the museum might actually care about enough to remove a planned exhibit. What religious believers could they be talking about? According to the article, museum officials "consulted" with Jewish, Christian and Islamic representatives before making the decision. I can't remember the last time people putting up art exhibits seriously worried that Christians or Jews might be offended. In fact, there is plenty of art specifically designed to offend Christians. There's no doubt that some Christians & Jews might be offended by an exhibit featuring gay sex and passages of scripture. They might even write some nasty letters, boycott, or show up to protest at the gallery. But the UPI adds to the spineless cave-in by the museum in the face of intimidation with its own cowardly refusal to mention the real reason for the cancellation: fear of radical Islamic violence.

A quick search about the Museum of World Culture turned up this Wikipedia entry.

In February 2005 the museum decided to remove the painting "Scène d’Amour" by Louzla Darabi. The painting was part of a temporary exhibition about HIV/AIDS, and depicted a man and a woman having sexual intercourse. The artist and the curator had received numerous death threats from Muslims enraged over the Koran quotations which were featured in a corner of the painting. Some threats were telling the artist to "learn from the Netherlands", referring to the murder of van Gogh and threats against Hirsi Ali.

I'm sure the museum canceled this latest exhibit before it even opened out of fear of offending Christians and Jews.