From Sky News: "Acid to destroy Picasso, Rembrandt and Warhol masterpieces if Julian Assange dies in prison, artist claims." Artist Andrei Molodkin says he has gathered 16 works of art - which he estimates are collectively worth more than $45m - in a safe with a caustic chemical substance and an accelerant, connected to a dead man's switch that must be reset every 24 hours by someone checking on Assange daily.
Molodkin told Sky News: "In our catastrophic time - when we have so many wars - to destroy art is much more taboo than to destroy the life of a person.
"Since Julian Assange has been in prison... freedom of expression, freedom of speech, freedom of information has started to be more and more repressed. I have this feeling very strongly now."
The Russian dissident has refused to reveal which pieces of art are inside the safe but says it includes works by Picasso, Rembrandt, Warhol, Jasper Johns, Jannis Kounellis, Robert Rauschenberg, Sarah Lucas, Santiago Sierra, Jake Chapman, and Molodkin himself, among others.
The art either belonged to Molodkin or was voluntarily provided to him by the respective owners. I don't think the intelligence community will care much if the art and Picasso's piece(s) are destroyed.
It's strange to see Warhols name alongside giants like Rembrandt and Picasso. IMHO it'd be no great loss if Warhol's soup cans and Marilyn Monroe "art" was destroyed.
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DeleteAssange should get a medal.
ReplyDeleteOverall, I agree. Secrecy is the enemy of a government by the people and for the people. "National security" should be a limited and rarely used exception to the openness required for the type of government established under the Constitution. But the intelligence community mostly views "national security" as an excuse to cover up their incompetence, negligence, and wrong doing and perpetuate their power. (Sort of like how Democrats view "our Democracy" as meaning just their "democracy," the intelligence community views "national security" as being "their security"). I think I've mentioned it before, but the first use of a "national security" exception to conducting discovery in a lawsuit against the government was invoked to cover up negligent maintenance of an aircraft that led to the aircraft crashing and killing some civilian contractors that were on-board. There was no actual "national security" involved--just a cover up. Same thing happened with the lawsuit by workers at Area 51 injured by the improper disposal of toxic waste at the facility where the government used "national security" to prevent the workers getting the evidence needed to pursue their case. One of the key points from the Vault 7 release from Wikileaks was that the CIA was aware of security exploits that made the U.S. (and citizens) vulnerable to hacking and cyberattacks from our country's enemies, but didn't warn software and hardware companies just so the CIA could use those vulnerabilities itself. Which is a perfect example of an agency putting its own interests ahead of the actual security of the country. "Well, Bob, we could prevent an attack on the U.S. power grid by China, or monitor some low level flunky in a third-world sh**hole. Let's go with the latter option."
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