The State's Impending Assault on Julian Assange and WikiLeaks

WikiLeaks, the renown international news media organization of ill repute for its role in declassifying the American Empire's top secret government documents and videos of the Empire's Wars with Iraq and Afghanistan that were clandestinely hidden from the American public, is once again in the cross-hairs of the vile State and its hawkish shills on both sides of the ideological and political aisles. Statist conservatives and liberals are by and large outraged at the organization for its latest release of a set of ten documents unveiling more than 250,000 diplomatic cables.

It is no secret that WikiLeaks is the most reviled, the most despised, the most defamed, and the most uproarious entity by the United States government. The organization is known not only to the U.S., but also to the entire world. Why? Simply because it has the gall to open and disclose files, videos, and other documented evidence of criminal wrongdoing by the American Empire that many libertarians, anarchists, anarcho-capitalists, minarchists, constitutionalists, voluntaryists, left-libertarians, agorists, and other free agents in the libertarian movement have known about for years. Interestingly enough, other governments of many other nations have remained silent on their sentiments over the hubbub, yet that was to be expected nonetheless. To paraphrase Salon.com blogger Glenn Greenwald (who made this a vital point in his post yesterday), this shows that no other organization has generated this much fury, rage, and contempt for an entity as much as the organization's nasty, diabolical critics have. It goes further than that. Groups that expose clandestine evidence of the United States partaking in criminal wrongdoing are more despised than those in power who commit vile and diabolical war criminal acts utilize secrecy as a formidable weapon to preserve, shield, protect, defend, and guard their supreme legitimacy.

The statist conservatives are fired up over the release of these documents, which they claim should have remained clandestine and left alone. These thugs are now calling for the murder of WikiLeaks head honcho Julian Assange without any criminal charges pending against him, due process, an arraignment, and a fair trial. Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin lashed out at him by turning to her Twitter page, caterwauling in part:

Inexplicable: I recently won in court to stop my book "America by Heart" from being leaked,but US Govt can't stop Wikileaks' treasonous act?
6:25 AM Nov 29th via Twitter for BlackBerry® Retweeted by 100+ people

Then she writes a Facebook note titled "Serious Questions about the Obama Administration's Incompetence in the Wikileaks Fiasco," in which she whines in part:

[Assange's] past posting of classified documents revealed the identity of more than 100 Afghan sources to the Taliban. Why was he not pursued with the same urgency we pursue al Qaeda and Taliban leaders?

It's quite convenient for Palin to libel, smear, and lie about Assange with this following statement:

He is an anti-American operative with blood on his hands.

(Interestingly enough, the Pentagon responded to that claim, rejecting it because it is simply untrue. Perhaps someone should send Palin a memo about that.)

Townhall.com statist conservative columnist John Hawkins published a column yesterday morning entitled "5 Reasons The CIA Should Have Already Killed Julian Assange," in which he enumerated 5 reasons why the CIA should have already taken out Assange in broad daylight. Other statist conservative critics such as Seth Lipsky (whose column was posted by Jeffrey Goldberg) [who also accused the WikiLeaks founder of "treason" illiterally]), Mark Thiessen, Congressman Pete King, National Review's Jonah Goldberg, and yesterday's Wall Street Journal branded Assange as a "traitor" and should be assassinated without a trial or due process of law.

Speaking of Goldberg (who asserts that he opposes fascism), he inquired more than two weeks ago as to why Assange wasn't killed in the first place. In case anyone didn't catch it the first time around, he asked again:

Why wasn't Assange garroted in his hotel room years ago?

It gets worse. Today former Arkansas Mike Huckabee has urged for the execution of Assange, further stating that the release of the embassy documents has placed "American lives at risk." According to RawStory.com, Huckabee states in part:

'Whoever in our government leaked that information is guilty of treason,' Huckabee said. 'I think anything less than execution is too kind a penalty.'

Additionally, he asserts:

They’ve put relationships that will take decades to rebuild at risk, and they knew full well that they were handling sensitive documents, they were entrusted and anyone who had access to that level of information was not only a person who understood what their rules were, but they also signed under oath a commitment that they would not violate it. They did.

Furthermore, he opines:

'And I believe they have committed treason against this country, and any lives they endanger, they’re personally responsible for and the blood is on their hands,' he added.

Tom Flanagan, a political scientist who is a former adviser to Canadian Prime Minister Steven Harper, even called for Assange's murder on CBC News Network, which prompted a shocked and dumbfounded reply from the anchor of the show that was heard as saying, "Tom, that's pretty harsh stuff! Just for the record, that's pretty harsh stuff!"

Here's a YouTube of Flannigan's remarks, which have been regarded as a "shockingly flippant" fatwa against Assange that aired on Canadian television yesterday at 8:38 a.m.:



Interestingly enough, Flannigan recanted his statement hours later:

'I regret that I made a glib comment about a serious issue,' Flanagan said Tuesday in a statement to CBC News. 'If Mr. Assange is arrested on the recently announced Interpol warrant, I hope [he] receives a fair trial and due process of law.'

A "glib comment," huh? Really, Mr. Flannigan? That's a pathetic excuse, considering you just called for violence against a peaceful individual who believes in honest transparency from not only the U.S. government but all governments throughout the world. Perhaps you should have thought of that before you made that outrageously disgusting statement on the Canadian airwaves. That statement alone, while not covered by the First Amendment in the U.S. because he made the comments on Canadian TV in his native homeland (where there is no First Amendment-protected right to free speech), is tantamount to using free speech as an excuse to incite violence against a human being who has not committed violence against other individuals in any way.

The reason these vile, despicable jackbooted thugs want Assange dead is clear: the WikiLeaks leader had the gall to release the State's own documents to the public, as he and many advocates of Liberty believe the public has the right to know what vital information the files contain. That data pertains to the U.S. government's illegal wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the diplomatic discussions between various embassies around the world, and the truth about the various actions of the State which the government wants to conceal from the American people. Tyrants like Jonah Goldberg, Lipsky, Flannigan, Palin, King, Huckabee, Jeffrey Goldberg, Mark Theissen, John Hawkins, and many others on that side of the aisle will do whatever it takes to get rid of Assange, Private First Class Bradley Manning (who gave Julian the 260,000 embassy cables documents and the Collateral Murder a.k.a. the July 12, 2007 Baghdad airstrike and Granai airstrikes videos), and any one who stands in their way to protect "national security," which is really the State's security.

Here are the Collateral Murder and Granai airstrikes videos:





The other group of people who want Assange and WikiLeaks on the chopping block is the statist progressives, who are the angriest and most incensed of the bunch. For instance, Hillary Clinton, who according to the WikiLeaks documents has been allegedly engaging in espionage against the United Nations, calls the cables release:

[A]n attack on the international community, the alliances and partnerships, the conventions and negotiations that safeguard global security and advance economic prosperity.

It gets uglier between Assange and Clinton. Assange called for Clinton's resignation, which alarmed White House press secretary Robert Gibbs who vehemently called it "absurd." It's apparent that the statists are becoming exceedingly desperate that they have shut down public access to the files stored in the State Department's computers, which have resulted in cutting WikiLeaks off from the U.S. government's servers. In response, WikiLeaks was forced to rent Amazon.com's computer servers so that its website could resume operations at once. Why? Because the U.S. government launched attacks on the stateless-supporting organization's website, effectively rendering it neutralized. This is the Empire's massive attack on free speech yet, although this wasn't the first time that has transpired.

To make matters worse, Interpol has called for the arrest of Assange to face allegations of rape charges brought by two Swedish women. According to The New York Times:

The accusations were first made against Mr. Assange after he traveled to Sweden in mid-August and had brief relationships with two Swedish women.

According to accounts they gave to the police and friends, each had consensual sexual encounters with Mr. Assange that became nonconsensual. One said that Mr. Assange ignored her appeals to stop after a condom broke. The other 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.

The charges certainly are serious but are rather dubious at the same time. It seems very convenient for these two women to charge him with rape on the heels of the cables release if these two women actually exist, and if these incidents really happened the way they described it. Assange himself denies the accusations, which is fathomable given the odd timing of the release of the charges pending against him and that his relationships with the women were, according to him, consensual. Even former Australian intelligence official and current independent member of the Australian Parliament Andrew Wilkie doesn't buy into the charges, theorizing that they "could definitely be a set-up."

Currently, the Obama administration wants to prosecute him for espionage under the Espionage Act of 1917, due to the fact that he can't be tried for "treason," because he's not an American citizen. Extradition may be difficult as Assange's whereabouts are primarily unknown, even though speculation has it that he is living somewhere in the UK.

Even if the Department of Justice wants him on a governmental silver platter, prosecuting him on the grounds of espionage alone will be extremely difficult. Greenwald notes on his Twitter that MSNBC commentator Chuck Todd is correct on this:

He's right: RT @emptywheel "To his credit, @ChuckTodd noted that any prosecution of Assange would justify prosecution of Woodward, too."

The idea that the State has a "right" to privacy is laughable. After all, the attempt to take out WL is not about protecting the lives of all Americans. It's about protecting the life of the State from any political elephants or eggs it always has on its face.

But more importantly, it sends a disturbing message to us all: "You can't make some omelets without cracking a few governmental eggs." Can the statists stop it? They could, but it will be so unlikely, given that they hardly ever care what happens in the final analysis and the ends always justifies the means. That should never be discounted for any reason.

No matter how you slice and dice it, this is the state's impending assault on Julian Assange and his stateless organization known simply as WikiLeaks. Obama, the Democrats, and the Republicans are for the outright crucifixion and persecution of Assange, WikiLeaks, and all who have been and are a part of it must be called on it at any time whatsoever.

The future of human liberty largely depends on it.

Update: Amazon.com, which picked up WikiLeaks yesterday after the State Department shut down its entire mainframe thereby cutting the stateless-supporting organization from continuing to hack into its server and retrieve more classified and videos from the system, has decided to drop WikiLeaks from its rent-a-server system, because it caved in to political pressure from the U.S. federal government. According to The New York Times:

The move to drop WikiLeaks came shortly after members of the Senate’s Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee pressed the company to explain its relationship with WikiLeaks. The site WikiLeaks had previously been using went down for several hours after an Internet attack over the weekend, prompting the group to switch over to an Amazon host site, which rents out bandwidth and other services.

Apparently, dark forces within the government has begun to direct its attack on the company. It appears that Senator Joe Lieberman (I-CT) issued a statement to the press, in which he is taking legal and political action against Amazon for its rapport with the organization. He decrees in the following:

WASHINGTON – Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Joe Lieberman, ID-Conn., Wednesday issued the following statement after Amazon.com decided to terminate its relationship with Wikileaks. After reading press reports that Amazon was hosting the Wikileaks website, Committee staff contacted Amazon Tuesday for an explanation.

'This morning Amazon informed my staff that it has ceased to host the Wikileaks website. I wish that Amazon had taken this action earlier based on Wikileaks' previous publication of classified material. The company’s decision to cut off Wikileaks now is the right decision and should set the standard for other companies Wikileaks is using to distribute its illegally seized material. [Emphasis added.] I call on any other company or organization that is hosting Wikileaks to immediately terminate its relationship with them. [More emphasis added.] Wikileaks’ illegal, outrageous, and reckless acts have compromised our national security and put lives at risk around the world. No responsible company – whether American or foreign – should assist Wikileaks in its efforts to disseminate these stolen materials. I will be asking Amazon about the extent of its relationship with Wikileaks and what it and other web service providers will do in the future to ensure that their services are not used to distribute stolen, classified information.'

In other words, Joe Lieberman is the reason why Amazon backed off on its support for WikiLeaks out of fear of governmental reprisal from the statists in power. Amazon didn't want to take the potential legal and political risks that would more than likely arise in the fall-out, and it more than likely didn't want to be legally charged with "aiding and betting a 'terrorist' organization," so it took the easy way out and give in to the state, without considering that the First Amendment protects them and WikiLeaks on constitutional grounds.

But still, it doesn't excuse Amazon's decision to drop WikiLeaks, even if the State would have gone after them or anyone who supported the news organization in any form. To retreat from supporting, assisting, and helping the group when the U.S. government and the entire world are at a critical juncture is a sign that Amazon is nothing but a whore for the State, not to mention a coward. As WikiLeaks said about Amazon's call to remove the organization's account on their servers on its Twitter page:

If Amazon are so uncomfortable with the first amendment, they should get out of the business of selling books.

Hear, hear WikiLeaks! You won't get an argument from me on that standpoint alone!

Update II: WL has now returned to its original Swedish host Banhof.

"Libertarians" or Libertarians, Part 1: The Real Advocates of Liberty Are The Original Leftists

In the late afternoon of Christmas Eve last Wednesday, sometime after my parents and I arrived at my brother's house to celebrate the holiday with him, my sister-in-law (his wife), and my niece (their daughter), my brother, my dad, and I sat at the table in his kitchen discussing politics (that is, his brand of "right-wing"/conservative with a heavy dose of libertarianesque Republican politics being monopolized in the discussion). These discussions have always been a politically religious tradition in the Barnett family on an annual basis, even if they are held on Thanksgiving Day and Xmas Eve. My mom, my sister-in-law, and my niece stepped out a few times for intervals of five to ten minutes, during which my dad, my brother, and I got into our political chats. (Interestingly enough, my sister-in-law, according to my brother, has grown quite intolerant of the political conversations that are often held at his house or anywhere with all of us together for dinner. Apparently, she can't stomach such discourse during those times together, from what I can gather.)

At one point during the talks, my brother, my father, and I found ourselves in a discussion over the ObamaCare bill that the Senate had just voted to pass its version of it. (The final vote tally is 60 to 39, with Biden presiding over the key vote on the mandate.) Now the Senate and the House (and even my sibling confirmed this at the table) are scrambling to match their provisions contained in their versions of the bill, so that they can draft a final bill to be passed by both chambers of the House and Obama to sign it into law.

(Keep in mind that, all his best intentions notwithstanding, my brother idealistically -- but not erroneously -- believes that the law will be successfully challenged by the courts on constitutional grounds. It's possible that the U.S. Supreme Court can and might overturn the impending law, but given the fact that most conservatives -- not to mention their right-wing populists and allies - have historically gone along with government programs once and long after they have passed, it stands to reason that this program will remain in place and be nearly impossible to abolish at the federal level.)

At one point in the conversation, (I'm paraphrasing here!), my brother states that when he talks to people regarding health care, they respond, "We have a right to health care!" My brother argues against that proposition (assuming those people with whom he spoke are of the progressive mindset), claiming that no one has a right to it because he takes the constitutional position that an individual "has a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." (While the praxeology per se is valid, it is not a good argument to make against the so-called public option because it is a cookie cutter talking point that libertarianesque conservatives like him take.)

The reason for his argument against the "public option"? He says that it's taking money from those who didn't pay for it and giving it to those who can't. It's a fair and valid point, and quite a solid libertarian one at that. Who can rightfully argue against that? (The progressives can make a counter-argument in response to that standpoint, but that's a subject for another post.)

Of course, I interjected by saying that the same argument can be made about Social Security, and I made that point after he applied that same principle to Medicare. He even agreed that Social Security "should never have been created in the first place." It's nice to know that we concur on the principles, because his talking points are libertarian to the core. I even pointed out that those programs absolutely should never been created in the first place, and that I have told my listeners and guests on my BlogTalkRadio.com Internet talk radio show Liberty Cap Talk Live (specifically, some of those listeners who really don't get the point yet) that, once those programs are created, they eventually morph into something other than they were originally intended to be. (Interestingly enough, he agreed. I did even bring up my criticisms of the Big Players of the insurance industry who had a stake in this mess, but we were cut off because my mother, my sister-in-law, and my niece returned from their "in-the-garage" cigarette break.)

But this is what I wanted to ask him, and I wish I had the opportunity to ask him this but didn't have a chance to do so: "Do you oppose or support the big corporate players in the insurance industry (specifically the big corporate insurance firms like Blue Cross Blue Shield and BlueCare Network) that are on board with ObamaCare?" Furthermore, I wanted to ask him, "Do you oppose welfare in all of its forms? Or do you oppose welfare only for the poor, but support corporate welfare (or corporatism) all the way?"

I suspect he supports the latter. After all, his admission of his supporting the government bailouts of the Big Three and the automotive industry that transpired in the last few months of Bush's final term of his presidency (when I was at his house for Christmas Eve last year) is an overwhelming indication of that.

Herein lies the heart of the problem with my brother's thinking, including the mindset that dominates the old libertarian movement. The mentality that has long pervaded the libertarian movement is this: "Despite government intervention in the economy, corporations are still needed, are not the creature of the state, and are not protected by but are victims of the state. Oh, and we do need limited liability laws to protect the interests of our shareholders, specifically the small ones."

Thus, in corporate libertarianese (particularly those espoused by those self-proclaimed libertarians from both the CATO Institute and Lew Rockwell's Ludwig von Mises Institute), corporations are the apotheosis of laissez-faire and that they can exist without state-sanctioned privileges and guarantees and state-furnished subsidies. (Imagine the health insurance corporations that stand to gain everything once the state-provided, vile ObamaCare is set in stone. After all, consider how much tax money is riding on this bill by the entire corporate insurance establishment that's colluded with the state with this bill.) Furthermore, it's also another reason why many progressives revile libertarians for adopting Ben Steinan/Lawrence Kudlowesque rhetoric that has significantly dominated the vast majority of the movement, thus harming and scathing it in its entirety.

"Left-libertarian" a.k.a. ideologically pure libertarian/anarchist/agorist Sheldon Richman, who has been in the old libertarian movement for nearly 40 years, had this to say about the state of libertarianism as it stands today:

There are also good strategic reasons for associating libertarianism with the left and not with the right. The modern movement has, despite futile protests that we pro-Liberty activists are "neither left nor right," been placed on the right as sort of a hip variant of conservatism. Some of this comes from the observers' lack of perceptiveness, but much of it is the movement's own fault. A good deal of libertarian commentary sounds like corporate apologetics.

Sheldon is right on the money. Today's "modern movement" is seen by progressives and many other nonlibertarians as a "cool" aberration of the modern conservative movement. This is not a good PR image for the movement, whether we care to admit it or not. It does not bode well for us in the long run.

Furthermore, libertarians who take -- and not to mention embrace -- the unconvincing (and largely unbelievable) "neither left nor right" stance have given their adversaries excuses to think that conservatives and libertarians come from the same family when that is not so. Conservatives are fundamentally different from true advocates of liberty (whether those advocates use the label "libertarian" or not). Moreover, the movement has been infiltrated by shady opportunists and collectivists who seek to use the state to their advantage. Look at alleged "libertarians" like Wayne Allyn Root whose most recent book reads like a playbook for a Republican football team and former Libertarian Party activist and now retired Republican talk radio show host Larry Elder who fled the LP a few years ago because of its old non-interventionist position on foreign policy! He even has supported Bush's invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan consistently and the government's incessant intervention of the economy via corporate protectionism and mercantilism. Is that the image that we as pro-Liberty activists want to portray?

(Furthermore, how about the pro-preemptive war comments that GOP senatorial candidate Peter Schiff recently made? How would anti-war nonliberal leftists respond to that rubbish? Or how about Rand Paul's recent statements on the Gitmo detainees in his senatorial campaign's press release on the issue? What are civil libertarians and antiwar activists supposed to take away from that crud? Many of the defenders of those two candidates are "libertarian" [actually conservative] supporters of the Lew Rockwell/Ron Paul wing of the movement who, while trying not to come off as not very corporatist in rhetoric, appear to be very apologetic of the corporate state. Some of them take the "libertarian Republican" [quite an oxymoron to boot!], or what should be called the neolibertarian, position that an aggressive foreign policy and a solid national defense [conservative concepts, by the way!] will keep us safe from would-be terrorists and produce peace only by means of an offensive war.)

This is what "free market anticapitalist" Kevin Carson was referring to when he coined the term "vulgar libertarianism" -- the brand of libertarianism practiced by those "libertarians" who believe that today's corporate market would be what the free market entails if decades of government intervention and central planning had not been in the way. When libertarians have that attitude about the marketplace in that fashion, then they give the progressives legitimate reasons to discredit us and persecute us, thus making our jobs harder or even nearly impossible to remove the state from our lives.

Let's not forget that many free marketeers come off as very combative, very belligerent, and very antagonistic when a morsel of sympathy is given to working class laborers who are the true victims of government taxes, regulations, and pro-state business/corporate guarantees, protections, subsidies, and privileges. A number of those libertarians who complain about this spew this nonsensical attitude that a free market (especially one without state privileges, guarantees, and the like) would not last very long and that the current market, despite the government's incessant interventions, could not exist in the absence of the state. That assertion tells me several things: that ilk lacks an extraordinary amount of deep perception and objectivity, certainly fathoms the concept of a free market but has never experienced it in a real sense, and has never fathomed how the pains of government intervention have affected the poor and the blue-collar middle "working" class on all levels, physical, economic, mental, and psychological.

When libertarians become indifferent and cold to people who experience true cruelty and misery by defending rotten employers who treat their good employees like a pile of rubbish, it gives nonlibertarians and progressives an excuse to attack free enterprise and side with the state. Of course, there are rotten employees too, and that's a given in any business, yet that's not the point. Not only that, it's an unfair talking point, because libertarians (and conservatives as well) who employ that argument lump in the good laborers with the bad.

And that also raises another paramount standpoint as well: when shady, politically-protected firms abuse their good workers, and those libertarians come to their defense despite all that nonsense, that alienates those workers, thus pushing them into the arms of the politically-connected unions, the bureaucrats, and the politicians who will use them as political and campaign fodder to score some political points, even on the campaign trail. That transpires all the time during every election and legislative cycle. If the politicians, as opportunistic as they are, capitalize on the pains of the working class by appearing to be champions of the poor and the middle class, then those groups will flock to them and see their employers and the entire marketplace as enemies of the "working man."

This is a massive reason why libertarians of all stripes in the Liberty movement lose on economic liberty big time every single time, before, during, and after every election season. They will keep losing until they stop seeing big employers' workers as albatrosses on the necks of their businesses and understand that, without their customers and employees, employers don't have their businesses. If libertarians and employers do that, then the working class and the poor, who are the victims of the state like the entrepreneurs and every non-politically-connected businesses are, will side with them and support a real return to the free market. Why can't they just do that? What have we go to lose if we do exactly that?

The real advocates of liberty are the original leftists who support and advocate a voluntary society based on mutual consent, not the kind of society that these corporatists and their government cronies want to engineer for all of us.

Obama and Press Secretary Gibbs to Everyone: No to Marijuana Legalization

Raw Story leaked this story about President Obama's answer to the press about his position on the legalization of marijuana during his town hall Q & A event (simply billed as the "Open for Questions Town Hall event"). YouTubers and the American public, as reported by the mainstream "government" media, print media, and blogs like the Huffington Post, were online, asking him questions from his plan to nationalize the banks and mortgage industries to his insane socialized medicine plan. (Here's a New York Times transcript of the event here.)

In response to the questions that 3.5 million people voted on the "Open for Questions" section of the White House website, one user with the username "Green Machine" asked the following question on the site:

Will you consider decriminalizing the recreational/medical use of marijuana(hemp) so that the government can regulate it, tax it, put age limits on it, and create millions of new jobs and a multi-billion dollar industry right here in the U.S.?

Obama answered the question by issuing the following statist response:

THE PRESIDENT: Three point five million people voted. I have to say that there was one question that was voted on that ranked fairly high and that was whether legalizing marijuana would improve the economy -- (laughter) -- and job creation. And I don't know what this says about the online audience -- (laughter) -- but I just want -- I don't want people to think that -- this was a fairly popular question; we want to make sure that it was answered. The answer is, no, I don't think that is a good strategy -- (laughter) -- to grow our economy. (Applause) [Emphasis on the "applause" added.]

Here's the video of Obama's response:



Here's White House Press Secretary Robert Gibb's repugnant and sick response to a reporter's question about Obama's position on pot:



[Cross-posted at The Freeman Chronicles.]

Serve Oversalted Burger to Cop, Go to Jail

[Cross-posted at Libertas.]

Now does that seem like an abuse of police power to you? Or doesn't it?

A young lady working at a McDonald's accidentally spilled too much salt on some of the meat. She and a co-worker and her supervisor attempted to wipe the excess salt off before serving the meat in hamburgers. In hindsight, perhaps they should have thrown the meat away but could they have known in advance that they couldn't get enough of the excess salt off? Well, the police officer in question returned to the fast food restaurant complaining that the burger made him sick. He questioned the young lady and then arrested her for 'serving food without regard for the consumer's well-being." Samples of the "tainted" meat were even sent off to the crime lab.

The young lady, Kendra Bull, gets to the heart of the matter: "If it was too salty, why did (Adams) not take one bite and throw it away?" For crying out loud, it's just salt!