Category Archives: corporate news

Free Julian Assange and All Political Prisoners

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By Rob Urie

Source: Counterpunch

The American war against Iraq was among the more idiotic and gratuitous slaughters in human history. It was premised on lies, prosecuted by criminals and fools, outsourced to professional murderers and it isn’t over. In addition to those murdered directly and indirectly in the war, several million refugees were scattered across the Middle East, including over a million into Syria. ISIS grew from the ranks of the disbanded Iraqi army. This fiasco appeared as it was to all the world, the gasp of a dying empire sunk under the weight of its ignorance and arrogance.

Late in the war Julian Assange and his colleagues at Wikileaks published documents and videos allegedly leaked by Chelsea Manning that brought the gratuitous nature of American violence home for all to see. The most damning was this video that shows American soldiers carefully and methodically slaughtering civilians, including Reuters staffers, outside of any determinable theater of war. The label ‘collateral murders’ was attached to the video, but those murdered were targeted— they weren’t ancillary to otherwise justifiable murders.

Julian Assange has reportedly been charged by an American Grand Jury for his role in publishing this leaked video, among others. He will apparently be extradited to the U.S. where he is expected to stand trial for doing what reporters do— publishing true information in the public interest. The New York Times and other newspapers also published the leaked documents, but have as yet not been charged. This legal maneuvering appears to be a politically motivated vendetta against Julian Assange for embarrassing the War Criminals behind the Iraq war.

National Democrats and the liberal press have spent the last 2.5 years demonizing Mr. Assange for his role in publishing leaked DNC emails in the run up to the 2016 Presidential race. As with the government’s case against him, the content of the leaked videos and documents is not in dispute. They are what they are purported to be. American soldiers did murder civilians and Reuters staffers who posed no immediate threat to them. Hillary Clinton’s campaign staff did screw Bernie Sanders out of the Democratic nomination and she did give contradictory information about her political positions depending on what she thought her audience wanted to hear.

Mr. Assange’s accusers are largely those responsible for the imperial decline that his reporting has illuminated. The leading Republicans and Democrats behind the Iraq war should have been charged with War Crimes. There is no statute of limitations on War Crimes. The national security officials among Mr. Assange’s accusers illegally spied on Americans and lied about doing so under oath to congress. The CIA illegally spied on the congressional committee charged with investigating illegal torture in the Iraq War after illegally destroying videotape evidence of its crimes. What is Julian Assange being charged with again?

What Mr. Assange did is expose the crimes of the rich and powerful. Arguments over his methods conflate process errors with the gratuitous murder of civilians. If these murdered civilians had been well-to-do white Americans and staffers at the New York Times, where might ‘process’ fit into the utterly predictable (and justifiable) calls to give those charged fair trials and prison sentences if convicted. Through what lens are the crimes exposed by Mr. Assange and Wikileaks not crimes? As with everything about a gratuitous war in which a million or more civilians are killed, why aren’t its architects and chief instigators in the dock at The Hague pleading for their lives?

While the political pump has been primed in the U.S. by war-state Democrats and war-state liberals to go after Julian Assange without legal restraint, he is lauded by much of the world for bringing the crimes of the American elite into public view. What will be illuminated by prosecuting Mr. Assange is the crimes of the elite and their use of power and office to cover up their crimes. While most Americans haven’t seen the video (link above) of American soldiers murdering civilians and press staffers, the publicity of a trial will certainly stir public interest.

Much as the Iraq War was a late gasp of an empire in decline, the prosecution of Julian Assange is the desperate act of a political establishment that is losing its grip on power. Mr. Assange is but a messenger. This establishment is the agent of its own demise. And it couldn’t happen to a more deserving group of people. Free Julian Assange and All Political Prisoners. All Power to the People!

The Seven Years of Lies About Assange won’t Stop Now

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By Jonathan Cook

Source: Dissident Voice

For seven years, from the moment Julian Assange first sought refuge in the Ecuadorean embassy in London, they have been telling us we were wrong, that we were paranoid conspiracy theorists. We were told there was no real threat of Assange’s extradition to the United States, that it was all in our fevered imaginations.

For seven years, we have had to listen to a chorus of journalists, politicians and “experts” telling us that Assange was nothing more than a fugitive from justice, and that the British and Swedish legal systems could be relied to handle his case in full accordance with the law. Barely a “mainstream” voice was raised in his defence in all that time.

From the moment he sought asylum, Assange was cast as an outlaw. His work as the founder of Wikileaks – the digital platform that for the first time in history gave ordinary people a glimpse into the darkest recesses of the most secure vaults in the Deepest of Deep States – was erased from the record.

Assange was reduced from one of the few towering figures of our time – a man who will have a central place in history books, if we as a species live long enough to write those books – to nothing more than a sex pest, and a scruffy bail-skipper.

The political and media class crafted a narrative of half-truths about the sex charges Assange was under investigation for in Sweden. They overlooked the fact that Assange had been allowed to leave Sweden by the original investigator, who dropped the charges, only for them to be revived by another investigator with a well-documented political agenda.

They failed to mention that Assange was always willing to be questioned by Swedish prosecutors in London, as had occurred in dozens of other cases involving extradition proceedings to Sweden. It was almost as if Swedish officials did not want to test the evidence they claimed to have in their possession.

The media and political courtiers endlessly emphasised Assange’s bail violation in the UK, ignoring the fact that asylum seekers fleeing legal persecution don’t usually honour bail conditions. That, after all, is why they are seeking asylum.

The political and media establishment ignored the mounting evidence of a secret grand jury in Virginia formulating charges against Assange, and ridiculed Wikileaks’ concerns that the Swedish case might be cover for a more sinister attempt by the US to extradite Assange and lock him away in a high-security prison, as had happened to whistleblower Chelsea Manning.

They belittled the 2016 verdict of a panel of United Nations legal scholars that the UK was “arbitrarily detaining” Assange. The media were more interested in the welfare of his cat.

They ignored the fact that after Ecuador changed presidents – with the new one keen to win favour with Washington – Assange was placed under more and more severe forms of solitary confinement. He was denied access to visitors and basic means of communications, violating both his asylum status and his human rights, and threatening his mental and physical well being.

Equally, they ignored the fact that Assange had been given diplomatic status by Ecuador, as well as Ecuadorean citizenship. Britain was obligated to allow him to leave the embassy, using his diplomatic immunity, to travel unhindered to Ecuador. No “mainstream” journalist or politician thought this significant either.

They turned a blind eye to the news that, after refusing to question Assange in the UK, Swedish prosecutors had decided to quietly drop the case against him in 2015. Sweden had kept the decision under wraps for more than two years.

It was a freedom of information request by an ally of Assange, not a media outlet, that unearthed documents showing that Swedish investigators had, in fact, wanted to drop the case against Assange back in 2013. The UK, however, insisted that they carry on with the charade so that Assange could remain locked up. A British official emailed the Swedes: “Don’t you dare get cold feet!!!”

Most of the other documents relating to these conversations were unavailable. They had been destroyed by the UK’s Crown Prosecution Service in violation of protocol. But no one in the political and media establishment cared, of course.

Similarly, they ignored the fact that Assange was forced to hole up for years in the embassy, under the most intense form of house arrest, even though he no longer had a case to answer in Sweden. They told us – apparently in all seriousness – that he had to be arrested for his bail infraction, something that would normally be dealt with by a fine.

And possibly most egregiously of all, most of the media refused to acknowledge that Assange was a journalist and publisher, even though by failing to do so they have exposed themselves in the future to the use of the same draconian sanctions should they or their publications ever need to be silenced.

This was never about Sweden or bail violations, as anyone who was paying the vaguest attention should have worked out. It was about the US Deep State doing everything in its power to crush Wikileaks and make an example of its founder.

It was about making sure there would never again be a leak like that of Collateral Murder, the military video released by Wikileaks in 2007 that showed US soldiers celebrating as they murdered Iraqi civilians. It was about making sure there would never again be a dump of US diplomatic cables, like those released in 2010 that revealed the secret machinations of the US empire to dominate the planet whatever the cost in human rights violations.

Now the pretense is over. The British police invaded the diplomatic territory of Ecuador – invited in by Ecuador after it had revoked Assange’s diplomatic status – to smuggle him off to jail. Two vassal states cooperating to do the bidding of the US empire. The arrest was not to help two women in Sweden or to enforce a minor bail infraction. The British authorities were acting on an extradition warrant from the US.

Still the media and political class is turning a blind eye. Where is the outrage at the lies we have been served up for these past seven years? Where is the contrition at having been gulled for so long? Where is the fury at the most basic press freedom – the right to publish – being sacrificed to silence Assange? Where is the willingness finally to speak up in Assange’s defence?

It’s not there. There will be no indignation at the BBC, or the Guardian, or CNN. Just curious, impassive reporting of Assange’s fate.

And that is because these journalists, politicians and experts never really believed anything they said. They knew all along that the US wanted to silence Assange and to crush Wikileaks. They knew that all along and they didn’t care. In fact, they happily conspired in paving the way for today’s kidnapping of Assange.

They did so because they are not there to represent the truth, or to stand up for ordinary people, or to protect a free press, or even to enforce the rule of law. They don’t care about any of that. They are there to protect their careers, and the system that rewards them with money and influence. They don’t want an upstart like Assange kicking over their apple cart.

Now they will spin us a whole new set of deceptions and distractions about Assange to keep us anaesthetised, to keep us from being incensed as our rights are whittled away, and to prevent us from realising that Assange’s rights and our own are indivisible. We stand or fall together.

What the arrest of Assange means for human rights of all

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By Prof Marcello Ferrada de Noli, chairman of Swedish Doctors for Human Rights, SWEDHR

Source: The Indicter

We have repeatedly expounded the issue of right to existence as the primary of all human rights, and of human rights for all. War and its willfully killing is thus N° 1 enemy of such humanity’s essential right.

Hence, we have warmly supported the denounce of preparations, propaganda and perpetration of occupation-wars, illegal wars, war-abuses, crimes perpetrated under the name of one power’s ‘national security’ against the international security of many nations, the widespread killing of civilians, the using of prohibited chemical weapons, etc. All that denouncing has been a leit motif in the endeavors of WikiLeaks. Julian Assange, the founder of that organization, has established an example of civil courage, a behaviour  which has been followed by important other exposures at different latitudes.

This movement, which also perfectioned the mechanisms of modern alternative media to counter arrest the disinformation routine that has characterized MSM,  have provided free information, and thus education, as to how deal with the alienation pursued by the messages of those in power that are transmitted by the media at their service.

The arresting of the WikiLeaks publisher Mr Julian Assange signifies not only a hard blow for Western democratic principles referred to freedom of speech and freedom of the press. It also entails a further threat to all honest journalists, public and private officials which have undertaken the honourable mission of  denouncing war crimes allegedly perpetrated by NATO and its aligned forces in various scenarios of illegal wars.

On the other hand, amidst the dramatic circumstances in the now unpredictable fate of Mr Julian Assange, emerges another truth. This is, the Western media  in consensus, invariably dismissed the risk of extradition of Assange as the invention of “conspiracy theorists” –referring to the NGOs that defended Assange’s human rights. Instead, the first news arising after the arrest of Assange was known, is the public acknowledgement of an extradition request from the part of the US government. Hence, it was not “Assange’s paranoia”. And our analyses were accurate.

Let’s began by clarifying that Julian Assange has never been charged with any crime, neither in Sweden nor elsewhere. Instead, he has been made responsible for the legendary exposures in “Collateral Murder”, the documentary which denounced atrocities in the Iraq war, including the killing of civilian journalists ­–and already viewed by over 16 million people.

Due to WikiLeaks exposures on alleged US war crimes in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars,  the US has been after the extradition of Assange since 2010. After the publication of WikiLeaks of over 70,000 classified documents covering the war in Afghanistan, the US urged nations participating in the US-led coalition in Afghanistan to initiate prosecution against Julian Assange. This is documented in the ‘Snowden papers”, which text relevant to this issue  was republished in The Indicter Magazine in 2016. Of the countries then consulted, only Sweden complied with the US request and subsequently they opened an investigation against Assange on alleged sexual offences to permit a warrant for his arrest. Those accusations probed to be unsustainable, and the case had to be dropped afters years of Assange being held under the Swedish arrest warrant.

The real reason for the arrest was, according to open investigations SWEDHR has access to and which we earliest denounced, the extradition of Assange to the US.  A sealed process against Assange had been opened in Virginia –also negated by the authorities at that time– and which only recently has been confirmed by the U.S. Department of Justice.

While in house arrest, and in order to avoid the impending rendition to Sweden from the part of the London authorities, Julian Assange sought asylum at the Embassy of Ecuador in London.  The government of Ecuador under the presidency of Rafael Correa granted political asylum to him due to the risk of his extradition to the US from Sweden.

The UK then instructed Sweden to protract the ‘investigation’ on Assange, to which the Swedish authorities docilely complied. Meanwhile the process against Chelsea Manning continued.

But after Sweden dropped the investigations on Assange, The UK has said that it will arrest Assange anyway in case he leaves the embassy’s premises. This on the argument that Assange would have violated the conditions of his house arrest by seeking instead asylum at the Ecuador embassy.

In the meantime the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (UNWGAD), had requested the immediate freedom of Mr Assange.

When I met Julian Assange at the embassy in London in August 2017, his situation had been substantially changed. Although efforts deployed by the outgoing ambassador, Assange’s health was deteriorating after years of isolation, sun deprivation, etc. He also told me about the unjustified accusations of involvement with Russian interests around the US presidential election narrative, which he categorically denied.  But the change of government in Ecuador had started to show consequences for his juridical, and physical safety at the Embassy.

President Moreno had another stance on issues of Ecuador’s national sovereignty – read, relationships with the US government. which openly consider South America as “our backyard”–  and in pursuing better terms for financial deals for his country with the US, president Moreno was said to include the fate if Assange in those negotiations. At east, according to WikiLeaks reports.

One first complaint against Assange was his use of Internet connections, provided to him at the Embassy, to embarrass “friendly governments”, such the US. But the real reason turn out being another “embarrassing”. Which was President Moreno’s own.

And so we arrive to the “INAPapers” affair, which was appartently used by Moreno as a pretext to justify his decision of rendering Julian Assange to the UK authorities (and subsequently to the US). Here is the “INAPapers affair in summary:

According to reports published in Ecuador local media, Ina Investment Corporation is an offshore company related to Xavier Macías Carmigniani, his wife María Auxiliadora Patiño Herdoiza, and the Ecuador president Lenin Moreno’s family.

Between 2012-2016 the company had a bank account in the  Balboa Bank de Panamá. WikiLeaks mentioned in a tweet some of the information that has been already published in Ecuador. Also an investigation in Ecuador’s National Assembly was opened. One issue that I could read is that that several furniture items were acquired and stored at Lenin Moreno’s apartment in Geneva, Switzerland, in 2015. The published source that I am using here (Periodismo de Investigación),  also reported that from such account departed transfers to purchase  an apartment in the Mediterranean coast, in 2016.

The transfer pertaining the furniture deal, is alleged to consist in $19 342, and the recipient firm was described as  “Moinat S.A. Atiquities” en Suiza. And regarding the apartment of Moreno in Switzerland, this would have correspond to the residence he has at the time he served as UN Special Envoy on Disability and Accessibility –an appointment he received from Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. All according to what has been described by  Periodismo de Investigación.

Already on April 4, WikiLeaks tweeted that “A high level source within the Ecuadorian state has told WikiLeaks that Julian Assange will be expelled within “hours to days” using the INAPapers offshore scandal as a pretext–and that it already has an agreement with the UK for his arrest.”

This was immediately denied by Ecuador’s Foreign minister José Valencia:

In the morning of April 5, 2019,  Ecuador Foreign Minister José Valencia tweeted (he later did withdraw it) in response to the above mentioned post by WikiLeaks:

“Diplomatic asylum is a sovereign privilege of a state, which has the right to grant it or withdraw it unilaterally when deemed necessary”

Ensuing, SWEDHR produced the following statement:

Defending Julian Assange; Defending the Truth

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By Robert J. Burrowes

On 11 April 2019, WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange was dragged from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London by UK police and arrested for breaching a bail condition. See ‘Arrest update – SW1’. Upon arrival at a London police station, Julian was ‘further arrested’ on behalf of the United States government to satisfy an extradition warrant under Section 73 of the UK Extradition Act. See ‘UPDATE: Arrest of Julian Assange’.

Following a brief court hearing in which the extraordinary prejudice of the district judge was on clear display – see ‘Chelsea and Julian Are in Jail. History Trembles’ – Julian is now imprisoned in south London’s maximum security Belmarsh Prison. He will appear in custody at Westminster Magistrates’ Court for a preliminary extradition hearing on 2 May and the US must produce its case for requesting Julian’s extradition from the UK by 12 June but, as Nicholas Weaver reports, Julian could be in UK custody for years as the extradition is contested in court. See ‘The Wikileaks Case Is Just Beginning’.

Prior to his arrest, Julian had been living in the Ecuadorian Embassy since 2012, having been granted citizenship of Ecuador and asylum by that country because many people were well aware of the risk he faced if he was tried in a kangaroo court in the United States. This asylum, to which Julian was entitled under long-standing provisions of international law, had been granted by previous Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa, who clearly understood this law (and the moral principles on which it is based).

As a result of his recent arrest however, Julian is under threat of extradition to the United States so that he can face criminal prosecution/persecution – see the US indictment of Julian Assange or ‘Read the Julian Assange indictment’ – for his role in exposing the truth about US war crimes in Afghanistan (the Afghan War Diary) and Iraq (the Iraq War Logs), as did The Guardian and The New York Times, by publishing leaked evidence of these crimes – including the ‘Collateral Murder’ video – as well as publishing evidence of widespread government corruption on the WikiLeaks website. It was this threat of persecution by US authorities that led Julian to seek asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy in the first place.

However, since the election in Ecuador on 24 May 2017 of the criminal and cowardly president Lenín Moreno, Julian’s asylum has been under threat and the conditions of his stay in the Embassy have rapidly deteriorated. This is because Moreno has been anxious to divert public attention from the spotlight of corruption currently shining directly on him – see ‘Ecuador National Assembly to Start Corruption Probe of Moreno’ – and to secure the loans offered as bribes by US officials while capitulating to US government pressure to illegally terminate Julian’s political asylum. See ‘Ecuador Bowed to US Pressure, Violated Law – Assange’s Associate’ and ‘WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange Arrested, Activists Rally to Stop US Extradition’.

Of course, the criminal and cowardly nature of Moreno’s action is highlighted by the fact that the decision of the Ecuadorian government to terminate Julian’s asylum was done in violation of article 79 of Ecuador’s constitution which forbids extradition of its own citizens. See ‘Republic of Ecuador Constitution of 2008’. As Moreno’s predecessor, Rafael Correa noted simply in one Facebook post: ‘Moreno is a corrupt man’. See ‘Facebook Removes Page of Ecuador’s Former President on Same Day as Assange’s Arrest’.

Unfortunately, as further evidence of its function as an elite agent, rather than facilitating free speech, Facebook promptly ‘unpublished’ Correa’s Facebook page. Clearly, Moreno’s corruption is not a subject that Facebook wants advertised. See ‘Facebook Removes Page of Ecuador’s Former President on Same Day as Assange’s Arrest’. Still, it should be pointed out, Twitter’s function as an elite agent is no different. See ‘Twitter Restricts Account of Julian Assange’s Mother’.

Naturally enough, despite elite efforts to control the narrative, many people and organizations around the world have been outraged at the treatment of Julian (as well as other truthful journalists and whistleblowers such as Chelsea Manning, who has recently been imprisoned yet again, and Edward Snowden) who act courageously on the basis that the public has a right to know about the criminality of their governments as well as to know the truth generally.

As long ago as 5 February 2016, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) at the United Nations issued a statement in which they ‘called on the Swedish and British authorities to end Mr. Assange’s deprivation of liberty, respect his physical integrity and freedom of movement, and afford him the right to compensation’ noting that its opinions are ‘legally-binding to the extent that they are based on binding international human rights law, such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR)’. See ‘Julian Assange arbitrarily detained by Sweden and the UK, UN expert panel finds’.

Moreover, in recent days, UN officials have spoken openly of their serious concern if Julian’s asylum was illegally revoked. See ‘UN expert on privacy plans to visit Julian Assange’ and ‘Two UN Rapporteurs Are Concerned About Julian Assanges’ Situation’.

And just recently, on 11 April 2019, the American Civil Liberties Union issued its response to Julian’s arrest, noting that ‘Criminally prosecuting a publisher for the publication of truthful information would be a first in American history, and unconstitutional.’ The report added that ‘Any prosecution by the United States of Mr. Assange for Wikileaks’ publishing operations would be unprecedented and unconstitutional, and would open the door to criminal investigations of other news organizations. Moreover, prosecuting a foreign publisher for violating U.S. secrecy laws would set an especially dangerous precedent for U.S. journalists, who routinely violate foreign secrecy laws to deliver information vital to the public’s interest.’ See ‘ACLU Comment on Julian Assange Arrest’.

So once extradited, would Julian have any chance of defending himself with the truth? As US attorney Bill Simpich explains, Julian will be prevented from presenting the essential elements of his defense because ‘The [US] government doesn’t want a fair fight. In a fair fight, the government will lose.’ See ‘The Julian Assange Case: Revealing War Crimes Is Not a Crime’.

More bluntly, Jonathan Turley points out:

‘[T]he Justice Department is likely to move aggressively to strip Assange of his core defenses. Through what is called a motion in limine, the government will ask the court to declare that the disclosure of intelligence controversies is immaterial. This would leave Assange with only the ability to challenge whether he helped with passwords and little or no opportunity to present evidence of his motivations or the threat to privacy.

‘The key to prosecuting Assange has always been to punish him without again embarrassing the powerful figures made mockeries by his disclosures. That means to keep him from discussing how the U.S. government concealed attacks and huge civilian losses, the type of disclosures that were made in the famous Pentagon Papers case. He cannot discuss how Democratic and Republican members either were complicit or incompetent in their oversight. He cannot discuss how the public was lied to about the program.’ See ‘Julian Assange Will Be Punished for Embarrassing the DC Establishment’.

Hence, while the Ecuadorian, British and US governments are flagrantly violating the law in persecuting Julian, it is being left to individuals and civil society organizations to defend him and many are mobilizing to do so already.

As a result, people have signed petitions – see ‘Don’t extradite Assange!’ and ‘Block Extradition & Prosecution of Julian Assange for First Amendment-Protected Journalism’ – some have participated in demonstrations at UK embassies and consulates around the world – see, for example, ‘Protesters Call on UK to #FreeAssange Outside British Embassy in DC’ – and others have engaged in other acts of solidarity as suggested, for example, by Julian’s mother Christine or on the website ‘Defend WikiLeaks’ and in this article: ‘Julian Assange Arrested, Take Action Now’.

Given the importance of defending our access to accurate information about our world, rather than the propaganda marketed as ‘news’ by the corporate media, it is worth reflecting on how best we can do this and, in doing so, defend people like Julian and Chelsea (who play such a vital role in giving us access to the truth in particular contexts) at the same time.

Hence, because of my own longstanding interest in developing thoughtfully-designed nonviolent strategies in our struggle to make our world one of peace, justice and ecological sustainability, let me suggest a strategic way forward that will honor the courage of Julian and Chelsea by maximizing the impact of their truth-telling on the longer-term struggles just mentioned while also taking separate action to provide some additional pressure to assist them in the short and medium terms.

In order to design this strategy well, let us first analyze the issue of why those who tell the truth are persecuted. If we do not understand, precisely, why this happens, we cannot respond powerfully.

Accurate Strategic Analysis Depends on Knowing the Truth

If we are to understand, accurately, the context and structural dimensions of a conflict (that is, the ‘big picture’ in which it is contained) so that we can identify and analyze the underlying drivers of the conflict in order to develop a coherent strategy to address these drivers, then the very first prerequisite is that we have truthful information. Without this truthful information, activists have zero prospect of accurately understanding and analyzing what is happening in the world (such as in relation to war and the climate catastrophe, for example).

Because the global elite is highly aware of the importance of the truth, it goes to enormous effort to make it difficult, if not impossible, to access the truth, particularly in certain critical contexts. And there are some classic historical examples, among many others, where not knowing the truth has allowed elites to inflict monumental atrocities in our name while crippling efforts to strategically mobilize opposition to these atrocities.

The most obvious examples of this phenomenon include ‘false flag’ attacks such as those conducted by US authorities and their allies on 9/11 as the prelude to launching their ‘war on terror’ which has caused immeasurable damage to, if not virtually destroyed, entire countries across west Asia and north Africa. If the truth about those behind the 9/11 attacks had been immediately available, rather than still ‘dribbling out’ nearly 20 years later, then it would have been far easier to mobilize resistance to the US-led wars on other countries and to campaign, strategically, for the profound changes needed to ensure that our world is spared the scourge of such atrocities in future. To access the definitive account of the overwhelming evidence in relation to 9/11 as a false flag attack, see 9/11 Unmasked: An International Review Panel Investigation which is reviewed in ‘The Fakest Fake News: The U.S. Government’s 9/11 Conspiracy Theory’. For a long but incomplete list of false flag attacks, see ‘The Ever-Growing List of ADMITTED False Flag Attacks’.

So if we ask the question ‘Who played the primary role in deceiving us about 9/11 and molding the desired public response?’, the answer is that it was some key government, corporate, military and bureaucratic spokespeople and, particularly, the corporate media projecting the words of these official spokespeople far and wide. But if we ask the question ‘Who was controlling these spokespeople and the corporate media?’ the answer is ‘the global elite’.

This is because a primary function of the global elite, which it has long understood, is to create (using individuals employed within its think tanks as well as compliant academics) and maintain (through education systems, the entertainment industry and the corporate media) the dominant narrative in society so that the information available to the public is the information that the elite needs to shape public perception in favor of elite interests, such as perpetual war and chronic over-consumption, which ensure perpetuation of elite power, profit and privilege.

Hence, as you can see, people like Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning and organizations like WikiLeaks represent a fundamental threat to elite power, profit and privilege precisely because their truth-telling functionally undermines the elite narrative, for example, that our ‘enemy’ is a bunch of terrorists somewhere rather than the global elite itself.

While the false flag examples offered above highlight how suppression of the truth disempowers activists and populations thus helping to minimize any effective mobilization in response, there are also a great many examples where the truth was critical to informing and helping to mobilize activists to resist injustice, in one form or another. For example, Kevin Zeese superbly illustrates the crucial importance of WikiLeaks in facilitating awareness of the truth during the uprisings in 2011 across north Africa and west Asia. See ‘Julian Assange: At the Forefront of 21st Century Journalism’.

In essence then, it is individuals like Julian and Chelsea, rather than the sycophantic editors, reporters and journalists working for the corporate media, who give us the information we need to know so that we can better understand how our dysfunctional and violent world works and campaign effectively to change it.

And so they are enemies of the elite who must be silenced and discredited, legally or otherwise.

If you would like to read other accounts by individuals who astutely warn us of the deeper implications of what is happening to Julian, see the recent articles by Chris Hedges ‘The Martyrdom of Julian Assange’ and John Pilger ‘The Assange Arrest Is a Warning from History’.

So what do we do?

Well, I believe we honor individuals like Julian and Chelsea by using the truths they reveal to us to develop and implement thoughtfully-designed nonviolent strategies to make our world one of peace, justice and ecological sustainability. This is why they risk paying (and are now paying) such a high personal price to get us the truth that must inform these struggles. But we can also assist courageous individuals like Julian and Chelsea in the short-term too. So let me also add to the suggestions made by others mentioned above.

If we are to make the most use of the truth that Julian and Chelsea have risked (and paid) so much to get to us, then we must campaign strategically. By doing this, as I just mentioned, we truly honor their efforts and sacrifice. So, for example, if you want to campaign to end the elite’s wars and destruction of our climate from which it profits so enormously, then consider doing it strategically. See Nonviolent Campaign Strategy. This site identifies, among other key elements of strategy, the two strategic aims and the basic list of strategic goals necessary to achieve these outcomes. See ‘Campaign Strategic Aims’.

Irrespective of whether or not you are keen on campaigning in this way, there is a fifteen-year strategy for tackling all elements of our environmental crisis in ‘The Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth’.

If you would like to tackle the problem at its core, consider making ‘My Promise to Children’ so that your children grow up with the conscience and courage of Julian and Chelsea. Unfortunately, individuals of their conscience and courage are incredibly rare in our world: not a powerful place to start in tackling a global elite that is utterly insane.

‘Insane?’ you might ask. Remember this: the global elite and many of its political, corporate, bureaucratic, military and academic agents, spend their time planning and implementing strategies to kill people (using military violence and economic exploitation) to make a profit. Do you really believe that this is something that a sane person would spend their time doing? I know you have been inundated with propaganda throughout your life to make you accept (or ignore) the violence in our world without question but pause and ponder it now: is it really sane? Are we not capable, as a species, of organizing our world to achieve peace, justice and ecological sustainability? See ‘The Global Elite is Insane Revisited’ with a lot more detail in ‘Why Violence?’ and ‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice’.

Moreover, individuals who are not incredibly psychologically damaged do not manipulate elite institutions – such as the legal system: see ‘The Rule of Law: Unjust and Violent’ – to persecute powerful individuals like Julian and Chelsea. The conscience and courage of Julian and Chelsea are readily recognized by those who are not psychologically damaged: they are qualities of exceptional individuals whom we should honor.

If you would like to join the worldwide movement to end all violence, you are welcome to sign the online pledge of ‘The People’s Charter to Create a Nonviolent World’.

But we do not need to confine our acts of solidarity with Julian and Chelsea to those regarding strategies for profound change or the others mentioned above either. If you want to act powerfully in their support, consider the following five options as well and do as many as you can:

  1. Boycott The Guardian and The New York Times (because they were two of the original outlets that published material sourced from WikiLeaks but now hypocritically engage in the persecution of Julian and Chelsea). And suggest to others that they also boycott these media outlets.
  2. Boycott all media outlets (anywhere in the world) that advocate or support the arrest, trial and/or imprisonment of Julian and/or Chelsea. And suggest to others that they boycott these media outlets too. If you want the truth about our world, get it from news outlets like the one you are reading now.
  3. Boycott Facebook. And suggest to others that they boycott this medium too.
  4. Boycott Twitter. And suggest to others that they boycott this medium too.
  5. Write letters of solidarity to Julian and Chelsea. Tell them what you are doing to make best use of the truths they have revealed.

Given elite control of all political, economic, commercial, legal, social and media institutions of any consequence in our world, it will not be easy to liberate Julian (and, perhaps, even Chelsea) in the short term. UK and US elites may even conspire to secretly put Julian on a rendition flight to the US or simply be content with a protracted legal struggle which distracts many of us from the issues that Julian and Chelsea so courageously put in the spotlight.

For that reason, while we struggle to liberate them we can also struggle to liberate the vast number of other people who suffer the elite’s military violence and economic exploitation so that the efforts of Julian and Chelsea are not in vain.

 

Biodata: Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of ‘Why Violence?’ His email address is flametree@riseup.net and his website is here.

 

Here’s Why the Book Julian Assange Was Holding When He Was Arrested is Vitally Important

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As he was dragged from the embassy in handcuffs, Julian Assange managed to grab a very important book.

By Matt Agorist

On Thursday, several men in black suits, surrounded by a dozen cops, raided the Ecuadorian embassy in London and kidnapped Julian Assange. Moments later, the Department of Justice released a statement charging Assange with computer hacking “conspiracy” for allegedly working with US Army soldier at the time, Chelsea Manning. Assange was in handcuffs when he was brought out and as he was being dragged from the embassy, he managed to grab the book, Gore Vidal: History of the National Security State. As he was shoved into the van, Assange held the book facing forward so that it could be seen by the camera.

For those who may not know, Gore Vidal was an American author who has studied the actual history of the United States—not the propagandistic chest pumping horse manure taught in schools—but the very real, violent and corrupt history of the United States government.

Vidal was born inside this system, educated in expensive private schools in Washington DC and grew up, quite literally, surrounded by the elite. His father was a high ranking official in the Franklin Roosevelt administration and his grandfather was US senator Thomas Pryor Gore (D-Oklahoma). He was incredibly smart and would eventually become a best-selling author.

In his 30s, after writing a series of mainstream novels, Vidal decided to try his hand at historical fiction. This decision would set him on a path to waking up to the atrocities carried out by the United States dating back to Abraham Lincoln.

Vidal was one of the first public figures to question the motives and wisdom of Lincoln—and he was lambasted for it. Despite bipartisan attacks on all fronts for his critical skepticism of the United States, Vidal’s six-volume “American Chronicle” series of historical novels about the United States became best sellers.

As the years went on, Vidal became outspoken about the rise of the military industrial complex and predicted the very situation we find ourselves in today.

“USA belongs to a handful of men who also control the media. Look at General Electric. It produces nuclear weapons for the Pentagon and also owns the NBC News cable channel, which is a very sophisticated censure apparatus, intrinsic to the system. It’s genius. It’s like an electronic cage around the nation which blocks information from getting through.” ~ Gore Vidal

In the book Assange was pictured holding, Vidal explained how the United States established the “massive military-industrial-security complex” and the “political culture that gave us the ‘Imperial Presidency.’”

The book was written by Vidal and The Real News Network senior editor Paul Jay. In it, the two dissected the apparatus that would eventually facilitate Assange’s arrest. Through propaganda and manipulation, the establishment has tricked the masses into accepting their corrupt order as the norm. Both Vidal and Assange knew this.

“It doesn’t actually make any difference whether the President is Republican or Democrat. The genius of the American ruling class is that it has been able to make the people think that they have had something to do with the electing of presidents for 200 years when they’ve had absolutely nothing to say about the candidates or the policies or the way the country is run.” ~ Gore Vidal

In the book, Vidal explains the false history of the US and how this false history is used to manipulate people into supporting mass murder and corruption.

“I think everybody should take a sober look at the world about us, remember that practically everything that you’re told about other countries is untrue, what we’re told about ourselves and our great strength and how much we are loved – forget it,” wrote Vidal.

“Our strength is there, but it’s the kind of strength that blows off your hand while you hold up the grenade; it’s a suicidal strength as well as a murderous one.”

Although Vidal died before realizing the plight of Julian Assange and the attack on the freedom of the press that it represents, he saw it coming decades in advance.

Sadly, not many people heeded Vidal’s words and we are witnessing a full scale attack on true independent journalism as we know it, and we are seemingly powerless to stop it. This is likely the reason Julian Assange grabbed that book and made sure we saw it as he yelled out through dozens of cops that we “must resist.”

Though Vidal had become somewhat cynical in his final years, his wisdom can help to free us from our self-imposed slavery of worshiping corruption and statism.

Julian Assange is a hero. His actions helped to expose horrifying crimes carried out by the US government, including mowing down innocent journalists with a .50 cal. His persecution by the UK and the US is retaliation and punishment for exposing these crimes and their actions, as Assange said, must be resisted.

If this established behemoth of media, government and tech giants are allowed to persist and snub out the independent press—as they are currently doing—we may soon realize George Orwell’s prediction of a boot stomping on a human face—forever.

Like Vidal, Assange wanted people to know true history as this is the path to peace. “If wars can be started by lies,” Assange so eloquently noted, “they can be stopped with the truth.” 

We must resist.

Julian Assange’s life is in danger

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By Eric London

Source: WSWS.org

Following Thursday’s arrest of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in London, the governments of the US, Britain and Ecuador are engaged in a conspiracy to facilitate the whistleblower’s extraordinary rendition to the US. Julian Assange’s life and liberty is in imminent danger. It is necessary to mobilize all supporters of free speech to prevent him from falling into the hands of the American government.

Over 40 years ago, a Rand Corporation analyst Daniel Ellsberg provided the Washington Post with evidence regarding the US government’s illegal activity in the Vietnam War. Yesterday, Ellsberg issued the following statement:

It’s a very serious assault on the First Amendment. A clear attempt to rescind the freedom of the press…This is the first indictment of a journalist and editor or publisher, Julian Assange. And if it’s successful it will not be the last. This is clearly is a part of President Trump’s war on the press, what he calls the enemy of the state. And if he succeeds in putting Julian Assange in prison, where I think he’ll be for life, if he goes there at all, probably the first charge against him is only a few years. But that’s probably just the first of many.

The official pretext being used to extradite Assange is a transparent lie. In a previously-sealed indictment made public Thursday, the US Department of Justice charged Assange only with violating a federal law against conspiring to break passwords to government computers.

The fact that the crime carries only a 5-year sentence and does not fall under the Espionage Act provides all involved parties with a cover for handing Assange over to the Americans. In particular, the US-UK extradition treaty excludes transfer for “political offenses,” including espionage. Citing the Justice Department document, the British government will claim in courts that Assange’s extradition will not be prevented by this exclusion.

The Ecuadoran government, moreover, claims it could revoke Assange’s asylum because the indictment shows he will not face the threat of the death penalty.

In fact, once Assange is in the hands of the United States, he will quickly confront a series of additional charges, including espionage. The efforts to downplay the threat to the freedom of the press and understate the charge against Assange are aimed at sowing complacency in the population and distracting from the core free speech issues at stake.

The language of the indictment itself makes clear the government is targeting Assange for political reasons, despite the official charge at its conclusion. It asserts: “The primary purpose of the conspiracy was to facilitate [Chelsea] Manning’s acquisition and transmission of classified information related to the national defense of the United States so that WikiLeaks could publicly disseminate the information on its website.”

The indictment notes that the information WikiLeaks released to the public included “approximately 90,000 Afghanistan war-related significant activity reports, 400,000 Iraq war-related significant activities reports, 800 Guantanamo Bay detainee assessment briefs, and 250,000 U.S. Department of State cables. Many of these records were classified pursuant to Executive Order No. 13526,” signed by Barack Obama in 2009. The indictment claims these releases “reasonably could be expected to cause serious damage to the national security.”

This language mirrors the text of the Espionage Act, which bars releasing information “relating to the national defense.” The Espionage Act criminalizes anyone who “communicates, delivers, transmits or causes to be communicated, delivered or transmitted” such information.

Based on the language of the indictment, both Assange and Manning could face criminal persecution under this law. By announcing that Assange is being prosecuted based explicitly on Manning’s activity, the government is demonstrating her future is at risk as well. In fact, the first two words of the indictment are “Chelsea Manning.”

This language also confirms last year’s “inadvertent” release by prosecutors of documents arguing Assange should be extradited because there are “charges”—plural—against him. Prosecutors convened a secret grand jury to investigate Assange at least as far back as 2011, and the US government sought warrants to spy on WikiLeaks employees based on allegations of “espionage” in 2012.

Only the complicit or the naïve could accept that a secret grand jury spent over eight years to charge Assange with just one count of password manipulation.

The response of leading political figures in the US, as well as previous statements, makes clear that the ruling elite is eager to seize Assange and lock him up for life—if not impose worse punishments.

Democratic Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer tweeted, “I hope he will soon be held to account for his meddling in our elections on behalf of Putin and the Russian government.” Democratic Senator Mark Warner called Assange “a direct participant in Russian efforts to weaken the West and undermine American security. I hope British courts will quickly transfer him to U.S. custody so he can finally get the justice he deserves.”

Prosecuting Assange on the basis of the unfounded allegations of “meddling” would be charges of espionage.

Like a dungeonmaster who has been handed his latest victim, Democratic Senator Joe Manchin declared: “He is our property and we can get the facts and the truth from him.” On the basis of this statement, Assange is being transferred to the US for the purpose of interrogation—which would fall under the category of extraordinary rendition, not extradition.

Assange has also faced open death threats in the press and from the government over the past several years. Rightwing radio personality Rush Limbaugh called for Assange to receive “a bullet to the brain.” Former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly told Assange: “We’re going to hang you.” Former Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich said, “Julian Assange is engaged in terrorism and should be treated as an enemy combatant.” Democratic Vice President Joe Biden called Assange a “high-tech terrorist.” Democratic operative Bob Beckel said, “this guy’s a traitor” and the US should “illegally shoot the son of a b***h.”

Another function of the indictment is to provide the corrupt and lying media with a cover for applauding Assange’s arrest. The New York Times and Washington Post have played a particularly criminal role in downplaying the indictment by claiming the use of a lesser charge means prosecuting Assange poses no threat to free speech.

In an editorial board statement yesterday, the New York Times wrote: “The government charged Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, not with publishing classified government information, but with stealing it, skirting—for now—critical First Amendment questions.”

The single count against Assange, the Times wrote, means the arrest does not pose “a direct challenge to the distinction between a journalist exposing abuse of power through leaked materials—something traditional newspapers like the Times do all the time—and a foreign agent seeking to undermine the security of the United States through theft or subterfuge… The administration has begun well by charging Mr. Assange with an indisputable crime.”

The Washington Post’s editorial is titled, “Julian Assange is not a free-press hero. And he is long overdue for personal accountability.”

The Post wrote, “Mr. Assange’s case could conclude as a victory for the rule of law, not the defeat for civil liberties of which his defenders mistakenly warn.” The Post labeled concerns over Assange’s safety as “pro-WikiLeaks propaganda.” The fact that the indictment does not charge Assange with violating the Espionage Act proves he “had no legitimate fears for his life, either at the hands of CIA assassins or, via extradition, the US death penalty.”

The Post explained that “Britain should not fear that sending him for trial on that hacking count would endanger freedom of the press” because Assange is “unethical” and not a “real journalist” because he “dumped material into the public domain without any effort independently to verify its factuality or give named individuals an opportunity to comment.”

Who are the New York Times and the Washington Post to lecture about “real journalism”? These statements expose the Times and the Post as nothing but government propaganda organs.

The Times is synonymous with peddling the Bush administration’s false claim of “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq, and the Post is owned by Jeff Bezos, the billionaire CEO of Amazon, which recently reached a $600 million service contract with the Pentagon.

The conspiracy against Assange underscores the collapse of any constituency in the political establishment and corporate media for the defense of democratic rights. If Ellsberg approached the Post today with photocopies of Pentagon-commissioned Rand reports on the war, the Post would call the FBI and have him arrested for threatening “national security.”

The Times and the Post may convince their affluent readers that Assange aided Russia by publishing evidence showing Hillary Clinton received hundreds of thousands of dollars secretly telling audiences of bankers and CEOs she would represent their interests if elected president. Meanwhile, the Democrats have made common cause with the leaders of the military and intelligence agencies responsible for the crimes Assange has revealed. The rightwing character of the Democrats’ opposition to Trump is exposed by the fact that they support his administration’s attacks on Assange.

The defense of Julian Assange, along with Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden, is now a central political question that confronts the working class. Attitudes toward these whistleblowers break down largely upon class lines. As the ruling class cracks down on free speech and freedom of the press, class conflict is intensifying across the world.

The Socialist Equality Party and the World Socialist Web Site make the broadest appeal to all those who are serious about defending democratic rights to join the fight to defend Assange, Manning and Snowden. Workers and youth internationally must mobilize immediately to defend these class war prisoners. Their lives depend on it.

The fight for Assange’s freedom is the spearhead of the political struggle in defense of democratic rights, against imperialist militarism and capitalism. Only to the extent that the power of the working class can be harnessed can a defense of these whistleblowers be mounted.

As Socialist Equality Party (Australia) National Committee member Nick Beams said at Friday’s emergency rally in Sydney, “the attack on democracy is a symptom of a profound disease. There is no defense of democracy without tackling the problem at its source, that is, the profit system of global capitalism, a system in crisis that has played out its historic role and now has to tear up, trample, defile even the democratic rights that it once stood for. We have to begin as part of this struggle the part for a socialist perspective. Only then can the world be cleansed of all the horrors that it is conjuring up.”

The Martyrdom of Julian Assange

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By Chris Hedges

Source: Truthdig

The arrest Thursday of Julian Assange eviscerates all pretense of the rule of law and the rights of a free press. The illegalities, embraced by the Ecuadorian, British and U.S. governments, in the seizure of Assange are ominous. They presage a world where the internal workings, abuses, corruption, lies and crimes, especially war crimes, carried out by corporate states and the global ruling elite will be masked from the public. They presage a world where those with the courage and integrity to expose the misuse of power will be hunted down, tortured, subjected to sham trials and given lifetime prison terms in solitary confinement. They presage an Orwellian dystopia where news is replaced with propaganda, trivia and entertainment. The arrest of Assange, I fear, marks the official beginning of the corporate totalitarianism that will define our lives.

Under what law did Ecuadorian President Lenin Moreno capriciously terminate Julian Assange’s rights of asylum as a political refugee? Under what law did Moreno authorize British police to enter the Ecuadorian Embassy—diplomatically sanctioned sovereign territory—to arrest a naturalized citizen of Ecuador? Under what law did Prime Minister Theresa May order the British police to grab Assange, who has never committed a crime? Under what law did President Donald Trump demand the extradition of Assange, who is not a U.S. citizen and whose news organization is not based in the United States?

I am sure government attorneys are skillfully doing what has become de rigueur for the corporate state, using specious legal arguments to eviscerate enshrined rights by judicial fiat. This is how we have the right to privacy with no privacy. This is how we have “free” elections funded by corporate money, covered by a compliant corporate media and under iron corporate control. This is how we have a legislative process in which corporate lobbyists write the legislation and corporate-indentured politicians vote it into law. This is how we have the right to due process with no due process. This is how we have a government—whose fundamental responsibility is to protect citizens—that orders and carries out the assassination of its own citizens such as the radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki and his 16-year-old son. This is how we have a press legally permitted to publish classified information and a publisher sitting in jail in Britain awaiting extradition to the United States and a whistleblower, Chelsea Manning, in a jail cell in the United States.

Britain will use as its legal cover for the arrest the extradition request from Washington based on conspiracy charges. This legal argument, in a functioning judiciary, would be thrown out of court. Unfortunately, we no longer have a functioning judiciary. We will soon know if Britain as well lacks one.

Assange was granted asylum in the embassy in 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden to answer questions about sexual offense allegations that were eventually dropped. Assange and his lawyers always argued that if he was put in Swedish custody he would be extradited to the United States. Once he was granted asylum and Ecuadorian citizenship the British government refused to grant Assange safe passage to the London airport, trapping him in the embassy for seven years as his health steadily deteriorated.

The Trump administration will seek to try Assange on charges that he conspired with Manning in 2010 to steal the Iraq and Afghanistan war logs obtained by WikiLeaks. The half a million internal documents leaked by Manning from the Pentagon and the State Department, along with the 2007 video of U.S. helicopter pilots nonchalantly gunning down Iraqi civilians, including children, and two Reuters journalists, provided copious evidence of the hypocrisy, indiscriminate violence, and routine use of torture, lies, bribery and crude tactics of intimidation by the U.S. government in its foreign relations and wars in the Middle East. Assange and WikiLeaks allowed us to see the inner workings of empire—the most important role of a press—and for this they became empire’s prey.

U.S. government lawyers will attempt to separate WikiLeaks and Assange from The New York Times and the British newspaper The Guardian, both of which also published the leaked material from Manning, by implicating Assange in the theft of the documents. Manning was repeatedly and often brutally pressured during her detention and trial to implicate Assange in the seizure of the material, something she steadfastly refused to do. She is currently in jail because of her refusal to testify, without her lawyer, in front of the grand jury assembled for the Assange case. President Barack Obama granted Manning, who was given a 35-year sentence, clemency after she served seven years in a military prison.

Once the documents and videos provided by Manning to Assange and WikiLeaks were published and disseminated by news organizations such as The New York Times and The Guardian, the press callously, and foolishly, turned on Assange. News organizations that had run WikiLeaks material over several days soon served as conduits in a black propaganda campaign to discredit Assange and WikiLeaks. This coordinated smear campaign was detailed in a leaked Pentagon document prepared by the Cyber Counterintelligence Assessments Branch and dated March 8, 2008. The document called on the U.S. to eradicate the “feeling of trust” that is WikiLeaks’ “center of gravity” and destroy Assange’s reputation.

Assange, who with the Manning leaks had exposed the war crimes, lies and criminal manipulations of the George W. Bush administration, soon earned the ire of the Democratic Party establishment by publishing 70,000 hacked emails belonging to the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and senior Democratic officials. The emails were copied from the accounts of John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman. The Podesta emails exposed the donation of millions of dollars from Saudi Arabia and Qatar, two of the major funders of Islamic State, to the Clinton Foundation. It exposed the $657,000 that Goldman Sachs paid to Hillary Clinton to give talks, a sum so large it can only be considered a bribe. It exposed Clinton’s repeated mendacity. She was caught in the emails, for example, telling the financial elites that she wanted “open trade and open borders” and believed Wall Street executives were best positioned to manage the economy, a statement that contradicted her campaign statements. It exposed the Clinton campaign’s efforts to influence the Republican primaries to ensure that Trump was the Republican nominee. It exposed Clinton’s advance knowledge of questions in a primary debate. It exposed Clinton as the primary architect of the war in Libya, a war she believed would burnish her credentials as a presidential candidate. Journalists can argue that this information, like the war logs, should have remained hidden, but they can’t then call themselves journalists.

The Democratic leadership, intent on blaming Russia for its election loss, charges that the Podesta emails were obtained by Russian government hackers, although James Comey, the former FBI director, has conceded that the emails were probably delivered to WikiLeaks by an intermediary. Assange has said the emails were not provided by “state actors.”

WikiLeaks has done more to expose the abuses of power and crimes of the American Empire than any other news organization. In addition to the war logs and the Podesta emails, it made public the hacking tools used by the CIA and the National Security Agency and their interference in foreign elections, including in the French elections. It disclosed the internal conspiracy against British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn by Labour members of Parliament. It intervened to save Edward Snowden, who made public the wholesale surveillance of the American public by our intelligence agencies, from extradition to the United States by helping him flee from Hong Kong to Moscow. The Snowden leaks also revealed that Assange was on a U.S. “manhunt target list.”

A haggard-looking Assange, as he was dragged out of the embassy by British police, shook his finger and shouted: “The U.K. must resist this attempt by the Trump administration. … The U.K. must resist!”

We all must resist. We must, in every way possible, put pressure on the British government to halt the judicial lynching of Assange. If Assange is extradited and tried, it will create a legal precedent that will terminate the ability of the press, which Trump repeatedly has called “the enemy of the people,” to hold power accountable. The crimes of war and finance, the persecution of dissidents, minorities and immigrants, the pillaging by corporations of the nation and the ecosystem and the ruthless impoverishment of working men and women to swell the bank accounts of the rich and consolidate the global oligarchs’ total grip on power will not only expand, but will no longer be part of public debate. First Assange. Then us.

 

 

What Julian Assange’s Arrest Tells Us About Our World

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By Arjun Walla

Source: Collective Evolution

John Kiriakou, a CIA-anti-torture whistle-blower recently tweeted, “a fair trial in the Eastern District of Virginia, under Judge Leonie Brinkema, is utterly impossible. They don’t call the EDVA the ‘Espionage Court for nothing.’”

And it’s true. Julian Assange was just arrested and dragged out of the Ecuadorian Embassy in relation to an extradition warrant from the US that was issued in December of 2017 for conspiracy with Chelsea Manning in early 2010. To expect that he will receive a fair trial is a bit of a dream.

The New York Times is reporting:

“The United States has charged WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange of conspiring to hack a computer as part of the 2010 release of reams of secret American documents, according to an indictment unsealed Thursday, putting him just one flight away from being in American custody after years of seclusion in the Ecuadorean embassy in London.”

Regardless of what the headlines are reading, the world knows why the hunt for Julian Assange has been ongoing for so long, and it’s because he leaked secrets and exposed those who keep them. He exposed the lies, corruption and deceit that represents the backbone of the Western military alliance and the American empire. He exposed, in the words of John F. Hylan, former Mayor of New York City, the “real menace of Republic”, the “invisible government, which like a giant octopus sprawls its slimy legs over our cities, states and nation.” He exposes the ones “who virtually run the United States government for their own selfish purposes.” (source)(source)

JFK warned the citizenry about “an announced need for increased security” that would be “seized upon by those anxious to expand its meaning to the very limits of official censorship and concealment.” Today, this is known as “national security,” and it’s a term used to justify unethical and enormous amounts of secrecy that do not protect the public, but protect those in power and their corporate, financial and political interests.

This is exactly what is being pinned on Julian Assange. And it’s done so under the guise of “national security.” As public relations professional Edward Bernays, who had many political clients, wrote:

The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in the democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.  (Propaganda, 1928)

Transparency Doesn’t Favor The Powerful

Transparency is what Julian Assange was all about, and the American empire, more so the global empire, has been desperate to keep its secrets and prosecute anyone or anything that threatens this transparency. That’s what this is all about. And they proved this with Chelsea Manning.

It’s not just people like Assange who are being demonized and hunted, it’s alternative media as well. The war on ‘fake news’ that has been happening for the last little while has had alternative media outlets presenting credible information and sources deemed as ‘fake.’ Any media outlet who even questions a controversial issue has been made out to be ‘wrong’ or ‘fake.’

Fake news watchdog NewsGuard aims to hold independent media accountable for their stories. Funded by Clinton donors and big pharma, with ties to the CFR, NewsGuard seems to have a clear agenda in favour of mainstream media. You can read more about that here.

The current vaccine discussion is another great example. Those who are currently concerned with vaccine safety are being completely shut down and silenced. Meanwhile, those who support vaccinations do not even address the concerns that are being made by people raising concerns, and instead are resorting to finger pointing, ridicule and name calling. The latest example would be the world’s leading expert on aluminum toxicology, professor Christopher Exley, who has been completely shut down with regards to his research efforts. You can read more about that here.

The mainstream media has so much control over the minds of the masses that they can actually convince a large chunk of the citizenry that this war on ‘fake news’ is completely justified, and the arrest of Julian Assange is completely justified, but is it truly? Are we asking the right questions? Or simply believing what we are told?

Again, national security is not being threatened here, what’s being threatened, and has been threatened here as a result of Julian Assange and multiple alternative media networks, is the ability for the global elite to control human consciousness. Quite simply, exposing the truth is a huge threat to the global elite and their heightened national security state that rivals what George Orwell wrote in 1984, the stripping of our rights and freedoms, and the justification to impose more measures on the populace under the guise of national security.

Truth Is The Culprit

Truth and free press threaten the ability of the global elite to create problems and at the same time propose the solution. Some of the biggest leaks WikiLeaks has made were detailing the connection between supposed terrorist organizations like Al-Qaeda and ISIS to the western military alliance, more specifically the US government. We saw arms deals and the funding/support of terrorist organizations that the US claimed to be fighting against. This is a great example of funding and creating a problem in order to justify heightened national security measures back home, to protect people from ‘the war on terror’ and justify their infiltration of another country for ulterior motives.

Look at William Binney, he’s a former high ranking intelligence official with the National Security Agency (NSA), and is one of the highest placed intelligence officials to ever blow the whistle on insider NSA ‘knowings.’ He made headlines when he resigned in 2001 after 9/11, having worked more than thirty years for the agency. He was a leading code-breaker against the Soviet Union during the Cold War, and was repelled by the United States’ massive surveillance programs.

Binney hasn’t stopped, one of the highest-level whistleblowers to ever come out of the NSA. He is now saying:

“At least 80% of fibre optic cables globally go via the US, this is no accident and allows the US to view all communication coming in. At least 80% of all audio calls, not just metadata, are recorded and stored in the US. The NSA lies about what it stores. The ultimate goal of the NSA is total population control.” (source)

Again, this is exactly why the hunt for Julian Assange has gone on like it has, as well as the crackdown on non mainstream journalism.

One final thing to address, those that feel this is all part of ‘the plan’ within the Q community, while it may be possible that his extradition could lead to his ultimate exoneration, the evidence does not yet seem to point to that. We should still be open, question and ultimately still discuss how this is an opportunity for us to wake up to truth.

The Takeaway

We’re at a point where anything the global elite, Shadow Government or Deep State does to silence anything that threatens their interest, will simply wake up more and more people as to what’s really going on. It’s exactly like 9/11, that tragic event woke up millions and millions of people around the world to deception they otherwise knew nothing about. Every move they make, like extraditing Julian Assange, simply makes it more obvious that they are trying to block the truth, and protect their own interests.

Below is a video from CE founder Joe Martino going in a little deeper and explaining what we can expect from all of this now.

Does it really make sense that we’re taking journalists, that we’re taking people and putting them in jail for bringing forward a story that is important for humanity to see, does this really make sense? – Joe Martino

 

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