IN OTHER exciting highway news, a naked man, hurling himself into the paths of frantically braking traffic, was finally subdued near the Mendo-Sonoma line Wednesday evening by a half dozen cops. Naked Man was struck by several vehicles after he was first seen dashing into the road at 6:20 p.m. At 6:29 p.m., he was hit by two vehicles and was thrown over their roofs. Both lanes of traffic were closed so that the man could be airlifted from the scene. Neither his condition nor his name has been revealed.
MOST North Coast grape growers said Friday they will voluntarily comply with rules designed to protect endangered fish in the Russian River although adoption of the new frost protection rules was postponed Thursday by Mendocino County Superior Court Judge Ann Moorman until a pending challenge to them could be heard. The rules prohibit growers from spraying their crops with water during frost season unless they have submitted plans that described the steps they will take to protect the river.
WIKILEAKS FOUNDER Julian Assange was interviewed at length last month by Rolling Stone reporter Michael Hastings about his own status and his organization. Here’s just a short excerpt:
In diplomatic cables, the investigation into WikiLeaks by the US government has been called “unprecedented both in its scale and nature.” How much do you know about it?
Since last September, a secret grand jury was empaneled in Alexandria, Virginia. There is no defense counsel. There are four prosecutors, according to witnesses who have been forced to testify before the grand jury. The jury itself is taken from the local area, and Alexandria has the highest density of government and military contractors anywhere in the United States. It is a place where the US government chooses to conduct all national-security grand juries and trials because of that makeup of the jury pool.
The investigation has involved most of the US intelligence apparatus, the FBI, the State Department, the United States Army. It has subpoenaed the records of most of my US friends or acquaintances. Under what are called Patriot Act production orders, the government has also asked for their Twitter records, Google accounts and individual ISPs. The laws which they're working toward an indictment on are the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986.
And they're going after Manning, who is facing a life sentence, to get him to say that you're a spy?
To be another chess piece on the board in the attack on us. The US government is trying to redefine what have been long-accepted journalistic methods. If the Pentagon is to have its way, it will be the end of national-security journalism in the United States.
How so?
They're trying to interpret the Espionage Act to say that any two-way communication with a source is a collaboration with a source, and is therefore a conspiracy to commit espionage where classified information is involved. The Pentagon, in fact, issued a public demand to us that we not only destroy everything we had ever published or were ever going to publish in relation to the US government, but that we also stop “soliciting” information from US government employees. The Espionage Act itself does not mention solicitation, but they're trying to create a new legal precedent that includes a journalist simply asking a source to communicate information. A few years ago, for example, the CIA destroyed its waterboarding interrogation videos. In the Manning hearing, prosecutors described how we had a most-wanted list, which included those interrogation videos if they still existed.
The WikiLeaks site had a “most-wanted” list of stories you were eager to get?
This list was not put together by us. We asked for nominations from human rights activists and journalists from around the world of the information they most wanted, and we put that on a list. The prosecution in the Manning hearing has been attempting to use that list as evidence of our solicitation of information that is likely to be classified, and therefore our complicity in espionage, if we received such information.
From a journalist's perspective, a list like that would be the equivalent of a normal editorial meeting where you list the crown jewels of stories you'd love to get.
Exactly.
So if you're going to jail, then Bob Woodward's going to jail.
Individuals like Sy Hersh and Dana Priest and Bob Woodward constantly say to their sources, “Hey, what about this, have you heard anything about it? I heard that there's been an airstrike in Afghanistan that's killed a bunch of civilians — do you have any more details, and can you prove them with paper?” And all those would be defined as conspiracy to commit espionage under the Pentagon's interpretation.
THE KIDS who go to school on the bus
Should put up a pretty big fuss
If bus budgets are cut
It’d hit the kids in the gut
While the educrats say, Don’t cut us
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