After 14 years of persecution, Julian Assange will go free. We must honor the hundreds of thousands of people across the globe who made this happen.
The dark machinery of empire, whose mendacity and savagery Julian Assange exposed to the world, spent 14 years trying to destroy him. They cut him off from his funding, canceling his bank accounts and credit cards. They invented bogus charges of sexual assault to get him extradited to Sweden, where he would then be shipped to the U.S.
They trapped him in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London for seven years after he was given political asylum and Ecuadorian citizenship by refusing him safe passage to Heathrow Airport. They orchestrated a change of government in Ecuador that saw him stripped of his asylum, harassed and humiliated by a pliant embassy staff. They contracted the Spanish security firm UC global in the embassy to record all his conversations, including those with his attorneys.
The CIA discussed kidnapping or assassinating him. They arranged for London’s Metropolitan Police to raid the embassy – sovereign territory of Ecuador – and seize him. They held him for five years in the high security HM Prison Belmarsh, often in solitary confinement.
And all the while they carried out a judicial farce in the British courts where due process was ignored so an Australian citizen, whose publication was not based in the U.S. and who, like all journalists, received documents from whistleblowers, could be charged under the Espionage Act.
They tried over and over and over to destroy him. They failed. But Julian was not released because the courts defended the rule of law and exonerated a man who had not committed a crime. He was not released because the Biden White House and the intelligence community have a conscience. He was not released because the news organizations that published his revelations and then threw him under the bus, carrying out a vicious smear campaign, pressured the U.S. government.
He was released — granted a plea deal with the U.S. Justice Department, according to court documents — in spite of these institutions. He was released because day after day, week after week, year after year, hundreds of thousands of people around the globe mobilized to decry the imprisonment of the most important journalist of our generation. Without this mobilization, Julian would not be free.
Mass protests do not always work. The genocide in Gaza continues to exact its gruesome toll on Palestinians. Mumia Abu-Jamal is still locked up in a Pennsylvania prison. The fossil fuel industry ravages the planet. But it is the most potent weapon we have to defend ourselves from tyranny.
This sustained pressure — during a London hearing in 2020, to my delight, District Judge Vanessa Baraitser of the Old Bailey court overseeing Julian’s case, complained about the noise protestors were making in the street outside — shines a continuous light on injustice and exposes the amorality of the ruling class. This is why spaces in the British courts were so limited and blurry eyed activists lined up outside as early as 4 a.m. to secure a seat for journalists they respected, my spot secured by Franco Manzi, a retired policeman.
These people are unsung and often unknown. But they are heroes. They move mountains. They surrounded parliament. They stood in the pouring rain outside the courts. They were dogged and steadfast. They made their collective voices heard. They saved Julian. And as this dreadful saga ends, and Julian and his family I hope, find peace and healing in Australia, we must honor them. They shamed the politicians in Australia to stand up for Julian, an Australian citizen, and finally Britain and the U.S. to give up. I do not say to do the right thing. This was a surrender. We should be proud of it.
I met Julian when I accompanied his attorney, Michael Ratner, to meetings in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. Michael, one of the great civil rights attorneys of our era, stressed that popular protest was a vital component in every case he brought against the state. Without it, the state could carry out its persecution of dissidents, disregard for the law and crimes in darkness.
People like Michael, along with Jennifer Robinson, Stella Assange, WikiLeaks Editor-in-Chief Kristenn Hrafnsson, Nils Melzer, Craig Murray, Roger Waters, Ai WeiWei, John Pilger and Julian’s father John Shipton and brother Gabriel, were instrumental in the fight. But they could not have done it alone.
We desperately need mass movements. The climate crisis is accelerating. The world, with the exception of Yemen, stands passive watching a live streamed genocide. The senseless greed of limitless capitalist expansion has turned everything from human beings to the natural world into commodities that are exploited until exhaustion or collapse. The decimation of civil liberties has shackled us, as Julian warned, to an interconnected security and surveillance apparatus that stretches across the globe.
The ruling global class has shown its hand. It intends, in the global north, to build climate fortresses and in the global south to use its industrial weapons to lock out and slaughter the desperate the way it is slaughtering the Palestinians.
State surveillance is far more intrusive than that employed by past totalitarian regimes. Critics and dissidents are easily marginalized or silenced on digital platforms. This totalitarian structure — the political philosopher Sheldon Wolin called it “inverted totalitarianism” — is being imposed by degrees. Julian warned us. As the power structure feels threatened by a restive population that repudiates its corruption, amassing of obscene levels of wealth, endless wars, ineptitude and mounting repression, the fangs it exposed to Julian will be exposed to us.
The goal of wholesale surveillance, as Hannah Arendt writes in “The Origins of Totalitarianism,” is not, in the end, to discover crimes, “but to be on hand when the government decides to arrest a certain category of the population.” And because our emails, phone conversations, web searches and geographical movements are recorded and stored in perpetuity in government databases, because we are the most photographed and followed population in human history, there will be more than enough “evidence” to seize us should the state deem it necessary. This constant surveillance and personal data waits like a deadly virus inside government vaults to be turned against us. It does not matter how trivial or innocent that information is. In totalitarian states, justice, like truth, is irrelevant.
The object of all totalitarian systems is to inculcate a climate of fear to paralyze a captive population. Citizens seek security in the structures that oppress them. Imprisonment, torture and murder are saved for unmanageable renegades such as Julian. The totalitarian state achieves this control, Arendt wrote, by crushing human spontaneity, and by extension human freedom. The population is immobilized by trauma. The courts, along with legislative bodies, legalize state crimes. We saw all this in the persecution of Julian. It is an ominous harbinger of the future.
The corporate state must be destroyed if we are to restore our open society and save our planet. Its security apparatus must be dismantled. The mandarins who manage corporate totalitarianism, including the leaders of the two major political parties, fatuous academics, pundits and a bankrupt media, must be driven from the temples of power.
Mass street protests and prolonged civil disobedience are our only hope. A failure to rise up — which is what the corporate state is counting on — will see us enslaved and the earth’s ecosystem become inhospitable to human habitation. Let us take a lesson from the courageous men and women who took to the streets for 14 years to save Julian. They showed us how it is done.
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Nobody is going to question basically letting him go? 5 years for that level of a leak? Just going to chalk it up to people protesting? That’s not how they work. What’s really going on? Will deal with him later… Will pursue the rape thing more… different charges… something in Australian courts awaits?
This isn’t over or normal I know that much.
Thanks to all the people who over the years worked in what ever capacity to help Julian’s case no matter how big or small that work was..
👏👏👏👏
The US government released Julian Assange because he’s probably no longer necessary.
Murthy v. Missouri (23-411)
[June 26, 2024]
JUSTICE ALITO, with whom JUSTICE THOMAS and JUSTICE GORSUCH join, dissenting.
This case involves what the District Court termed “a far reaching and widespread censorship campaign” conducted by high-ranking federal officials against Americans who expressed certain disfavored views about COVID–19 on social media. Missouri v. Biden, 680 F. Supp. 3d 630, 729 (WD La. 2023). Victims of the campaign perceived by the lower courts brought this action to ensure that the Government did not continue to coerce social media platforms to suppress speech. Among these victims were two States, whose public health officials were hampered in their ability to share their expertise with state residents; distinguished professors of medicine at Stanford and Harvard; a professor of psychiatry at the University of California, Irvine School of Medicine; the owner and operator of a news website; and Jill Hines, the director of a consumer and human rights advocacy organization. All these victims simply wanted to speak out on a question of the utmost public importance. To protect their right to do so, the District Court issued a preliminary injunction, App. 278–285, and the Court of Appeals found ample evidence to support injunctive relief. See Missouri v. Biden, 83 F. 4th 350 (CA5 2023). If the lower courts’ assessment of the voluminous record is correct, this is one of the most important free speech cases to reach this Court in years. Freedom of speech serves many valuable purposes, but its most important role is protection of speech that is essential to democratic self-government, see Snyder v. Phelps, 562 U. S. 443, 451–452 (2011), and speech that advances humanity’s store of knowledge, thought, and expression in fields such as science, medicine, history, the social sciences, philosophy, and the arts, see United States v. Alvarez, 567 U. S. 709, 751 (2012) (ALITO, J., dissenting)
The speech at issue falls squarely into those categories. It concerns the COVID–19 virus, which has killed more than a million Americans.1 Our country’s response to the COVID–19 pandemic was and remains a matter of enormous medical, social, political, geopolitical, and economic importance, and our dedication to a free marketplace of ideas demands that dissenting views on such matters be allowed. I assume that a fair portion of what social media users had to say about COVID–19 and the pandemic was of little lasting value. Some was undoubtedly untrue or misleading, and some may have been downright dangerous. But we now know that valuable speech was also suppressed.2 That is what inevitably happens when entry to the marketplace of ideas is restricted. Of course, purely private entities like newspapers are not subject to the First Amendment, and as a result, they may publish or decline to publish whatever they wish. But government officials may not coerce private entities to suppress speech, see National Rifle Association of America v. Vullo, 602 U. S. 175 (2024), and that is what happened in this case.
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-411_3dq3.pdf
Any admission of guilt by a person under duress of torture has no credibility under law so the pantomime of pleading guilty in a banana republic by a sham court is laughable.
Julian Assange is free and the lesson learnt is not to stay silent in the face of crimes but to call out the criminals…call out those who persecuted Julian and persue them through the courts then jail them for the term Julian served…that will be true justice.
Its up to you Americans…these criminals are your people and still have power…do you want them to represent you? Do these people represent American standards…American truth and justice?
Now you got to save his baller source, the guy who got Julian in trouble for primo warez, gamer and CIA torture victim Josh Schulte. They’re torturing him now.
https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/4522151/Download.pdf
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.480183/gov.uscourts.nysd.480183.447.0.pdf
https://www.innercitypress.com/sdnylive103schultefurman062722.html
Josh demolished the bullshit facts of the CIA shysters pro se but CIA pulled out the Epstein videos of Jesse Furman fisting Jonbenet’s stiff corpse and got the convinction.
https://wikileaks.org/vault8/
https://wikileaks.org/ciav7p1/
But you can see why the CIA cocksuckers got their panties in a bunch and framed and tortured Schulte. Their Stasi voyeurism got exposed.
No surprise that two-thirds of the Justices ducked the question, or how. Your natural rights to read & write, speak & hear, and think for yourself are in$ufficient to be vindicated. From a comment I posted last year:
No one from the Establishment – not even Trump’s judicial appointees – is going to rescue you from itself.
This article’s sole purpose is to further the lie of “the climate crisis”, which the author breathlessly states is making our planet “inhospitable to human habitation.”
What a crock. Mr. Hedges is grief-stricken about “wholesale surveillance” and “totalitarian systems” without ever apparently realizing the “climate crisis” is precisely the preferred method to institute the world control he sooooo despises. (Of course, he knows what he’s pushing.)
To sneak in such vile lies, (which in reality is coal pollution from China and India) into an article on Julian Assange is the height of hypocrisy. Shame on you, Mr. Chris. “Scumbag” is too good a word for you.
You go right ahead and scold those Chinese and sub-continental Indians for burning all that coal, threatening your summer cottage by the seashore. (Just like Obama’s). Get back to us after you get kicked out of Modi’s and Xi’s offices. Somehow I think you’ll never get that far.
World population is crashing and Mr. Chris knows it. “The Climate” lie is there to finish us off. We exhale carbon dioxide, Mr. Chris. According to you, we must kill humanity in order to save it.
A few comments:
First off, excellent essay and defense of the movement that saved Julian Assange. The writing is outstanding
Second, we must be careful about the “climate change” banner of accusations. As you brilliantly analyze the machinery of modern-day totalitarianism you should realize that “climate change” is a vague term that masks a very clear ideological agenda as another vehicle of mass control and the insinuation of global government. There are enough independent scientists out there of outstanding reputation and career background who dispute the mainstream take, or ‘narrative’ on this subject.
In addition, what may be in fact “climate engineering” or so-called “geo-engineering” compounds the issue.
Furthermore, the traditional automobile industry, a fossil fuel company such as you denounce here, is creating cars with very low emissions. They are not the enemy.
Meanwhile, I do not see any “climate change” activists protesting the plastics industry (the real horror) or Chinese embassies (the worst perpetrator of pollution—-and what happened to “pollution”?)
As for the surveillance state among us, we must also give blame where blame is due: the masses themselves. We as a population gleefully and zealously entered the digital age not giving a damn about the information being collected on us; submitted to the Patriot Act and the NDAA and all the rest of it; submit to biometrics and every kind of instant-recognition wizardry and spend all day with gadgets and social media venting away one’s liberties. “The People” did this to themselves in the name of convenience.
These matters aside, bravo for an eloquent defense of Mr Assange
Unfortunate that mister Hedges makes of the subject a vehicle to express his climate change psychosis.
The old left’s hate of capitalism these days gets expression in a psychosis of the largest scale ‘the Earth’s ecosystem’. It is the ultimate art of drama.
Your arguments are not fit for proper leftist drama.
Save the Planet
Save all Life on Earth
These are the lines of the leftist play, the ultimate scale, the biggest scale, the biggest sensations, the largest good, the largest bad.
He’s a preacher.
Denouncing that sin, as well as “white supremacy,” is part of the Progressbyterian doxology.
The Great Net Zero Debate—Sandi Adams: Net Zero in Context.
https://www.ukcolumn.org/video/the-great-net-zero-debate-sandi-adams-net-zero-in-context
‘We’, that is 99.9999 percent of the US population, media, and govt., did absolutely noting to free Assange.
Hedges probably alludes to the holohoax every time he takes a crap.
“Meanwhile, I do not see any “climate change” activists protesting the plastics industry (the real horror) or Chinese embassies (the worst perpetrator of pollution—-and what happened to “pollution”?)”
Where were the activists when the Nordstream pipeline was blown up, with all that oil leaking into the Baltic? Where were they then to protest this environmental crime vs the planet’s sacred ecosystems?
The “reléase” of Julián Assange is nothing more than the cessation of a crime of aggravated deprivation of liberty perpetrated by the United States of América. A true “states crime”. A crime of the so-called Continuum, committed by each of presidentes of the United States, in addition to their secretaries of states, secretaries of justice and attorneys general. It is de same for the dangerous criminales who usurp positions of magistrates and prosecutors in England and had a share un this bestial persecución. Clearly all of them should be imprisoned for a long time, and be disqualified fron holding any public office in perpetuity. Surely it Will not be like that. The decline of a nation dominated by foreing lobbies and corporations with no Lili on the commission of the kind of amorility that serves to “become strong”, at the expende of rampant corrupción, clearly seems a path of no return. I hope to See them bite the dust. In Sprite of everything.
They have earned it amply. Especially the “dual nationality”. That itvis not doble amd if it is simple genocidal. A vocation that Will not be applied only to the palestinisns, but to all the “unchosen races”, if we do not react. Needless to add, it’s all crazy?
Yes we did…(alternately flexes chest muscles).
Fourteen years is a long time to be taking bows. Fourteen years feels more like a derisive demonstration of our impotence. How many years have they held Leonard Peltier? Snowden, a superb true patriot, will live out his life in exile — and dine with Jefferson in Elysium.
Imho- Mr. Assange has been freed to enable his removal from this earth. If they killed him in prison it would make him a martyr.
He has till Christmas at best.
“Climate crisis” ?
The earth has gone through heating and cooling cycles throughout millenia, and you still find yourself fearful of the same rogues and liars who pushed the COVID shot for their Bilderberg masters ?
Please.
Thomas Huxley, I think you put the finger in the wound. The story of Julian Assange is being exploited to sneak in the climate crisis hoax. How should we classify this behavior?
I think Palestinians saved Assange. Biden’s team thought they could win back some people they lost by arming a genocide and this was the bone they decided to throw them.
I don’t understand the dichotomy of bundling the clear case of civil rights violation that the Assange case represents with the attack on fossil fuel and the freedom to use it by the masses. Doesn’t the writer realize that the orchestrated assault on cheap and affordable energy is engineered by the same establishment that is dead set on stamping on our face with a military boot and depriving us of the blessing of free expression and all civil liberties.
Look at the Green Party in Germany, the most belligerent pro war party in Europe. Do the environmentalists seek the eradication of the human race to materialize their dream of a pristine planet. If they claim that this is not the case then I would be most interested in hearing about their alternative to fossil energy. And please let no one waste my time talking about solar and wind as the solution.
Repeatedly pro-Israel Julian Assange – who has had Rothschild family lawyers – has been ‘released’ from jail in a global media show … because maybe Israel needs some more support now?
Consider the evidence pointing to how Stinky Leaks seems a spook operation … and that in fact maybe Julian was never ‘living in the London Ecuador embassy’ for 7 years … and never ‘jailed in Belmarsh prison’ for the previous five years … but perhaps living quietly on a UK Rothschild estate aside from the photo sessions?
Assange was theoretically ‘indicted’ on massive criminal charges and a ‘threat’ to all Western & NATO security … but his fundraising was generally allowed to go on like gangbusters, without ‘de-banking’ … when so many people not even accused of criminality, were massively ‘de-banked’ just for slightly anti-establishment internet posting? Assange didn’t hesitate to order a half-million-dollar private-jet flight back to Australia, with mysterious (spook agency?) massive bitcoins arriving for him?
Why did Bibi Netanyahu directly tell Israeli media a decade ago, that the often pro-Israel, anti-9-11-truth, sometimes anti-Palestinian Julian Assange, was a Mossad asset who would be protecting Israel in his ‘leaking’? (link just below)
Why did Zbigniew Brzezinski say out loud in 2010 on the USA PBS News Hour, that ‘Wikileaks was an intel feed’?
Why have people who trusted Assange with leaks, such as Peter W Smith and Seth Rich, turned up dead, Assange and Wikleaks even denying they got Smith’s files? Are there others killed & liquidated after contacting a possibly CIA-tied Wikileaks?
Why was Assange lawyer John Jones thrown under a train and killed, possibly after he learned much of the Julian Assange story was fake, with Assange maybe never actually ‘living in the London Ecuador Embassy’, nor ‘jailed in Belmarsh prison’?
Why have Rothschild family members posted Assange bail, and Rothschild-tied lawyers been working for Assange?
Both Julian Assange and Edward Snowden were originally super-pumped by mainstream media, as real dissidents in the West almost never are … is this not a sign they and their ‘stories’ are CIA fakes to mislead the plebs, and maybe even kill other dissidents by tricking them into ‘trusting’ Wikileaks or Glenn Greenwald etc?
https://www.henrymakow.com/2018/11/assange-snowden-rat-traps.html
The creator of NYT propaganda during civil Bosnia in the 90s wrote, for the first time, one text where he did not insert the false genocide of Serbs against Muslims, which he did before regularly, regardless of what the topic was. Now he inserted ‘climate change’.
It is clear that not everyone could get the editorial position in NYT. Now he apparently condemns the Israeli genocide against the Palestinians, but he only repeats what everyone saw with his own eyes, while on the other hand he relativizes, among other things, by using a comparison with the fake genocide in Bosnia. He writes without any shame:
Now in the case of Assange, about whom he has not written anything all these years, he suddenly sheds crocodile tears and throws us a climate cuckoo’s egg. Again, we see the hypocrisy without shame just like in the case of the Palestinians.
The finance industry will come after him, deprive him of a decent living. All tricks in the book, a “team” to keep the nagging up till he is completely demolished. If the public sees this scene of a bad drama as a time to rejoice, and Hedges points to that, it is proof of stumped manners and understanding. Hedges should not be taking seriously, he is one of those whores who colour inside the lines.
“The fossil fuel industry ravages the planet.” Really? How so? Got any specifics on that?
And exactly who is this “global ruling class” Hedges speaks of?
P.S. Mumia Abu-Jamal is exactly where he belongs.
Yeah, if Assange were a real threat to Deep State he would’ve been liquidated.
Then we hear the CIA had plans to kill him but didn’t carry through. Huh? If true why would they and/or their Mockingbird Media reveal this, even if not carried out?
If Assange were such a threat, and needed to be in solitary confinement, why was he allowed to have regular guests? Robert Hanssen, Aldrich Ames, Harold Nicholson were never allowed any guests, to include media. But Assange could meet with Tucker Carlson, et al. Assange was even allowed to get married in prison and have regular visits from his wife.
They have a statue of Assange in the city square of Berlin, Germany, a country which is a totally enslaved bitch of Foggy Bottom and Langley. Funny they have a statue of Assange in the capital of a country which will throw you in prison if you merely doubt the 6 million figure.
You’re welcome.
Hedges, though, can’t help himself, and raises all sorts of other rubbish having nothing to do with Julian’s life aod case.
Americans? What’s that? Someone hasn’t been paying attention.
The elite that had Assange thrown in jail have been working for generations to destroy the nation-state in general, and the United States in particular, and in the process make the word American both meaningless and valueless (the two go together). The idea being that all that will remain will be the elite, their money, and the people they use and abuse.
This is another way of saying that the elite has failed. The reason people don’t see it is because they have been too impressed with the elite’s destructive power, which no doubt is considerable. But they have failed. The reasons why are too many to go into here.
But that’s ok. Because the behavior of the elite is going to make the reasons for their failure painfully obvious to everyone. And sooner than later.
“Progressbyterian doxology”
Thanks, Greta. I love that phrase. I have a few relatives and friends who worship in that church and need to be properly labeled.
It’s not true that Ames never got to have visitors, he gave a television interview. Hanssen was subjected to the psychological torture CIA terms “Sprecial Administrative Methods” but when the government locked up its domestic refuseniks, no UN special rapporteurs accused them of the arbitrary dentention CIA used on Assange.
So anonymous, while you’re pissing on Assange, that he likes Izzies, that he’s a CIA fake, kindly tell us, since you’re clearly read in by your NHB superiors – Is Josh Schulte a CIA agent too?
Because Schulte got framed and imprisoned for releasing CIA’s tools for spying on you through your Samsung TV, through you ISP’s router, through every fuckin thing you ever bought. It’s in Vault 7 and Vault 8, which I hope you downloaded because CIA censored it again.
At least Snowden has a comfortable exile, the Russian govt. even arranged for his gf to join and marry him, thought that was a very clever move.
Poor Leonard Peltier has been locked up forever, should have been pardoned by at least five U.S. prexidents, but it never happens.
He must be very old now, will likely die in gaol, while many radicals of his generation who committed far worse crimes (mainly Jews, check the ‘Chicago Seven’, all but one certainly Jewish, also others like Angela Davis) have early release and ridiculously overpaid sinecures in U.S. academia for decades to now.
No friggin way!
As much as I like Chris Hedges, this is the most absurd and demonstrably false statement ever. This would be like the last reason on earth for his release. It implies that the justice department was listening with great consternation at the very low-grade support for Assange around the world and finally couldn’t take it anymore and relented.
I have a better explanation, how about that they got hold of Trump’s debate notes, and decided to neutralize his advantage. Or that they wanted to prevent the legal precedent, or every other excuse, except that the justice [sic] department’s conscience was finally jarred by the minuscule public mobilization.
Exactly. Gimme a fuckin break with the “climate crises” bullshit.
I am 74 and it was orders of magnitude colder in the 70’s and hotter in the 80’s.
God bless Julian, there are no protests to join here in KC but I made a T-Shirt with his face on it and wear it everywhere just hoping someone will say something. Nuttin… That was my only contribution besides penning texts to everyone I know in support of him (That did work.).
Chris talks about how we are manipulated by “fear” out of one side of his mouth and tells us to duck and run for the chopper because he is wet by every rain and blown by every wind.
Obama spent 8 years telling us all the ice cap was melting and the oceans were gong to rise next year, then took whitey’s money and bought a 20 million dollar mansion 50 yards from the ocean on Martha’s Vineyard.
I am guessing he also flew a private jet up there to check out the property.
These fuckin liars in government, Wall Street, the “intelligence” agencies, big media, big tech should all be hauled out into the street and lined up against a wall and Ceaușescued.
The damage done by government institutions, mostly controlled by Jews, in and out of government from Silicon Valley, to Wall Street and down through the Acela Corridor into the Radix Malorum of evil, Washington D.C. is Satanic level, end of times destruction that can only be cauterized in the fires of retribution.
Yeah, after the Green Party kept Germany out of the Iraq war II, with Joshka Fischer’s “sorrry, but I am not convinced,’ line, the intelligence community went to work so that things like that would never happen again.
“So anonymous (195) while you’re pissing on Assange, that he likes Izzies”
‘Revealer of Inconvenient Truths’ – Julian Assange’s Impact on Palestine
One of the various contributions of Wikileaks to Palestine were cables that worked to confirm an element of Israel’s agenda in the Gaza Strip, aiding in shaping our overall understanding of the reality on the ground today during the genocidal assault launched by the Israeli government.
Secret classified cables, from March 2008, revealed that US diplomats had learned that Tel Aviv’s intentions with its comprehensive siege imposed upon the Gaza Strip, were “to keep the Gazan economy functioning at the lowest level possible consistent with avoiding a humanitarian crisis”.
What we came to learn from the leaked documents was a confirmation that Israel was pursuing the strategy outlined in 2006 by Dov Weisglass, a senior advisor to Israeli Prime Minister at the time Ehud Olmert, who talked of putting the “Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger.”.
In 2011, Wikileaks cables also corroborated the Al-Jazeera leaked ‘Palestine Papers’ which exposed the depth of the collusion between corrupt officials belonging to the Palestinian Authority and their Israeli counterparts.
Another important revelation that emerged from Wikileaks documents was the close ties between Israel and foreign governments in the Muslim World, such as the regime in Azerbaijan, shaping how the public interprets these close ties.
In the cases of Syria and Egypt, Wikileaks also revealed the nature of Israeli security concerns during the unrest that took place during the Arab Spring, allowing us to get a better glimpse into Tel Aviv’s agendas in the surrounding Arab nations…..
https://www.palestinechronicle.com/revealer-of-inconvenient-truths-julian-assanges-impact-on-palestine/
The people who you talk of aren’t “old leftists.” I should know. I’m an “old leftist” myself. These are woke piss liberal reactionaries.
I would want to direct you to this brilliant speech by Karl Marx.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1856/04/14.htm
“Steam, electricity, and the self-acting mule were revolutionists of a rather more dangerous character than even citizens Barbés, Raspail and Blanqui. But, although the atmosphere in which we live, weighs upon every one with a 20,000 lb. force, do you feel it? No more than European society before 1848 felt the revolutionary atmosphere enveloping and pressing it from all sides. There is one great fact, characteristic of this our 19th century, a fact which no party dares deny.
On the one hand, there have started into life industrial and scientific forces, which no epoch of the former human history had ever suspected. On the other hand, there exist symptoms of decay, far surpassing the horrors recorded of the latter times of the Roman Empire. In our days, everything seems pregnant with its contrary: Machinery, gifted with the wonderful power of shortening and fructifying human labour, we behold starving and overworking it; The newfangled sources of wealth, by some strange weird spell, are turned into sources of want; The victories of art seem bought by the loss of character.
At the same pace that mankind masters nature, man seems to become enslaved to other men or to his own infamy. Even the pure light of science seems unable to shine but on the dark background of ignorance. All our invention and progress seem to result in endowing material forces with intellectual life, and in stultifying human life into a material force.
This antagonism between modern industry and science on the one hand, modern misery and dissolution on the other hand; this antagonism between the productive powers and the social relations of our epoch is a fact, palpable, overwhelming, and not to be controverted. Some parties may wail over it; others may wish to get rid of modern arts, in order to get rid of modern conflicts.”
Quote 1:
Agreed [as to ‘surrender’], but corrupt ‘Western’ politicians have no shame; Quote 2:
Also agreed [but the Iraq ‘ultimate war-crime’ showed protests to be ‘ineffective’]; my Q: Cui bono?
IMHO all too sudden, but [apart from protests, ‘they never listen’] = essentially unprompted. It could be Biden’s ‘re-election team,’ ditto Albo’s, but I don’t see it.
Me = waiting for ‘the penny to drop.’ rgds
“The ruling global class has shown its hand.”
I doubt that category includes Chinese, Indian, Arab, African and Mestizo (if there are any) billionaires… the group is made up of Ashkenazi Jews and White Christians.
Julian Assange is and has always been controlled opposition
The proof is he never spilled the beans on 911
And he hasn’t mentioned the Genocide in Gaza
That’s what you call honest critical thinking.
It’s a shame about those fossil fuels “ravaging the planet.”
At least my lights are on. And so are Chris Hedges’s.
We’d miss them sorely.
And that’s be a shame, too. A REAL one.
At the cost of Wikileaks purging their HRC archives, seems protecting the beeches legacy is priority number one in Washington.
Ask why nobody has EVER queried who was the real mastermind of 9/11, the mastro who was NYC savvy.
There is one obvious candidate for that role, whose name release confirmed world rip America into pieces.
Ancient conflicts were SO much-better than the modern ones.
At least in some ways, I guess.
Its always easy to pin the blame on foreigners for big crimes, newspapers and novelist always like this, it doesn’t offend the paying customers.
Having to consider a crime is from domestic traitors alway churns the stomach. its a situation that is hard to face.
You are welcome.
Many are thoughtful and interesting about things other than politics, but the American credentialed class is the most conformist by an order of magnitude. And they’re far more inclined to tiresomely proclaim their views and put out feelers for those of others. (Assuring those who bring up politics that I’ll never cancel their vote and immediately changing the subject usually shuts it down without angering them.)
No a la carte or substitutions on those In This House We Believe yard signs!
PS Quote 3:
Nope; ‘hope’ is hopeless policy [and [repeat] ‘they never listen’]. Note: No mention [until the comments] of ((the true, *wicked* perpetrators)). What is needed is a *true* ‘final solution.’ [Oops! You didn’t hear me say that! [= ‘standard self-defence against ‘anti-Semitic’ attack accusation’ disclaimer]. But ((off)) must be said; it’s our, we the people’s only possible ‘way out’]. WHEN we can THEN ((all)) off to Birobidzhan, say. Then build a Pal-style ‘apartheid’ wall around ((them)), one-way entry/*no* exit. rgds
Timid troll. Why not go all the way and tell us Assange is actually a Jew?
Agreed. ‘Climate sceptics’ do themselves no favours;
So the tide, also the CO2 ‘greenhouse effect.’
IMHO ‘climate sceptics’ is another name for ‘heads in the sand’ or better: ‘heads up own arse.’ rgds
PS Q: Why ‘climate sceptics’ anyway?
Suggested A: Vested interests precluding valid examination of in-your-face incontestable facts, like increasingly melting glaciers, floods & fires, say.
The Nine Black Robe$ are a juridicial farce…at best. Down deep, each and every one of them are (1. lawyers for starters and (2. highly political members and likely contributors to, one of the other of the two peas in a pod political parties…where the DNC and the RNC are closely vetted by and instructed by agents of the ruling financier elite.
Much in the same vein/vain/vane of the now completely dismissed $enile One in the “Awful Orfice”; the “Supremes” lost any and all credibility when they “ruled” on the “Citizens United’ case…in which they granted the equivalent of citizenship to artificial entities known as “corporations” by allowing them to spend as much money as they choose to political campaigns which interests their special interests.
No doubt, whatsoever: Along with other individuals in highest orfices; the Nine Black Robe$ must be abolished…along with the United $tates of America CORPORATION, duly entered under the corporate statutes of the state of Dupont (aka Delaware) in 1938.
If you step into any “American” courtroom and observe the yellow-fringed flag next to the judge’s bench…you need to do some research, if not already done…to realize that that emblem is NOT Old Glory, per se…which is not fringed by the fringe on top. It is the MARITIME flag which places defendants under ADMIRALTY law.
Any honest lawyer would have to admit that as a fact.
Must read. It’s about you.
Mike Stone – Ten Things I Hate About my Fellow Americans on thetruthseeker.co.uk or on henrymakow’s site.
Good article except for the gratuitous environmentalism. It’s a pity the author tries to use Assange as a poster boy for his irrelevant hobbyhorse.
Something is afoot.
Obama, the Snake, gave the dog whistle from the top down to throw Biden under the bus last night. All the ” American Pravda” usual suspects are now shocked! horrified! enraged! that an 81 year old might get confused.
Assange was released to distract us. To make us believe some normalcy is returning.
Don’t fall for it.
He is the kind of White that needs to be sent to live in Sub-Saharan Africa.
You can’t have a Christian, Liberal, Western, High Trust society with blacks and browns.
Not possible.
What does a comment that is all questions, no statements or opinions, tell you about the poster? Two descriptive adjectives come to my mind: Lazy and ignorant.
If I believed in “Climate Change” by Anthropomorphic gases increases, I would disavow a dummy and simpleton like you, which makes the false case tarnished by association with a low level dunce like you.
You are humble, but wasting others’ time is the bumble and stumble. Stick with something you can understand like washing cars.
May 20, 2024 How Assange won the right to appeal extradition to the US
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has won his bid to appeal his extradition to the United States on espionage charges. Assange has been fighting extradition from the UK for more than a decade after Wikileaks revealed classified information about the US military in 2010.
Jun 25, 2024 Julian Assange arrives in Bangkok
https://twitter.com/RT_com/status/1805554760776376327
Another moron from Moronica. Simpletonians abound like iguana lizard reptiles in Florida.
Correction: USA is a Bagel Republic not banana.
This all happened in our time, but they still go on about the bad days of McCarthyite Red Scare and Nixon’s abuse of power.
By invoking those two, it’s as if the managerial class can comfort itself that we’ve come a long way and live in a true democracy.
It’s like the globalists pointing to Trump and the ‘far right’ as threats to democracy even as they themselves erode the laws and institutions that make democracy feasible.
Bagelobalism
None of us saved Assange.
This was a political agreement by the US and the UK political/judiciary.
The ‘tyrants’ released him as part of a cover-up operation. What are they covering-up? A big mess they made early last year. ‘Mess’ is an euphemism. The protests didn’t achieve/wouldn’t have achieved anything. Yes, I did. Unwittingly. Indirectly. AKA the butterfly effect. But he is a goner, anyway. The people who were trying to destroy him used him to save their own asses from the big fire that’s coming to burn them. Will they succeed AGAIN, in evading justice? Let’s wait and see.
BTW, ‘inverted’ is a veeery nice word, indeed! I like it A LOT.
Wow, this author beclowns himself by comparing Assange to a two bit low life murdering negro, and then double downs on his obtuseness by referring to oil as “fossil fuel.”
Can’t take anything else he says seriously.
That can happen only in places with brave people.
@Poupon Marx
I’ve marked you as ‘commenter to ignore’ for good reason.
Trolls stink:
I**3 = identify, inform, ignore
This approaching extinction is a repeat of Dinosaur extinction from a fatal uncontrollable farting.
Not only fake statistics, but truncated fake statistics! Bravo!!
Morons are those with out arguments
Like you
There are rumours that Assange was released because he agreed to destroy documents that implicate the Clintons, Bidens and Democrats in numerous crimes which would be extremely detrimental in the election if released.
https://headlineusa.com/assange-agreed-to-destroy-unpublished-wikileaks-material-as-part-of-plea-deal/
https://consortiumnews.com/2024/06/27/assange-agrees-to-destroy-unpublished-classified-material/
https://operationdisclosureofficial.com/2024/06/26/shadow-of-ezra-julian-assange-ordered-to-destroy-all-remaining-classified-documents/
I believe that the primary reason for Assange’s release at this time, is politics. Biden very much needs votes on Nov 5.
Assange is a deserving hero of America’s lower intellectual elites. A few may be grateful and vote for Biden.
That is too harsh.
In any case, this
may remind you of the main reason he is so hated by the U.S.G.
I have mixed feelings on some points, though never ‘controlled opposition’, that is a bad joke. but have always supported his freedom, on-line, and person-to-person.
Now is not the time to list any negatives.
Oh, hai thar!＼(^-^)／
I agree, but at least he is released. I doubt that many ‘murrican voters would even know who he is.
Agreed. A lot of the Christian minister types have bought heavily into the climate crisis nonsense.
They have to see themselves as virtuous, as stewarding and bringing God’s kingdom to earth. They’re psychologically addicted to virtue rather than honor. They’re also evidently more easily brainwashed by what they read.
“This case was being radically pushed by the US intelligence establishment and mainly by the CIA as a form of revenge against Julian Assange for the material he had published,”
https://www.rt.com/news/600118-assange-national-security-veil-us/
Assange’s attorney also highlights how CIA uses its national security get-out-of-jail-free card. That option is going away thanks to two new circumstances:
1. The CIA regime was shamed into ratifying the UNTOC transnational-crime convention.
2. Russia, China, and Iran are ready to enforce this law at gunpoint.
UNTOC restricts national security justification to actions that are (1) in conformity with the UN Charter, and (2) undertaken in a sovereign capacity.
So CIA’s undeclared war of aggression: not in conformity with the UN Charter. CIA’s foreign intervention: not in conformity with the UN Charter. CIA’s complicity in Jew supremacist genocide: not in conformity with the UN Charter. CIA’s banned biological weapons use: not in conformity with the UN Charter.
Covert operations unacknowledged by the state are not national security anymore – now they’re serious crimes. CIA’s sneaky little ratfucks like sabotage, and violation of diplomatic communications, and theft of assets in fiduciary custody: not national security, just crime. When CIA loses this World War it started, CIA ratfuckers can go up the river for all of it. Their fig leaf got ripped off.
This provision – no secrecy to conceal violations of law – is nothing but E.O. 13526§1.7(1). The difference is CIA shits on Executive Orders because it can murder US bureaucrats and judges, but UNTOC can be enforced by allied nuclear-armed great powers waging unrestricted warfare. Teeth, motherfucker.
So either lots of beltway assholes are gonna get nuked, or the US will cooperate with Russia’s request for international legal assistance in prosecuting CIA criminals like Avril Haines, Michael Pompeo, George Tenet, Gina Haspel, Beth Kimber, and David Marlowe.
Great comment! Thanks!
And you may be right about the reasons. But whatever they are it definitely wasn’t because the elite grew a conscience. That is so beyond belief that one is inclined to raise curious doubts about why Hedges made that statement in the first place.
Don’t hold your breath for Ron to comment.
Bingo!
Desperate.
Of course, the list of words are practically endless. Evil would be an obvious one. Opportunistic another. But, for now, Desperate will do.
Even worse is anyone calling it fossil fuel. No dinosaur bones 10000 feet deep.
Yeah, but this injun who killed fbi agents has never denied guilt.
We need an international Julian Assange day.
mmmmmm…
“This article’s sole purpose is to further the lie of “the climate crisis”, which the author breathlessly states is making our planet “inhospitable to human habitation.”
What a crock. Mr. Hedges is grief-stricken about “wholesale surveillance” and “totalitarian systems” without ever apparently realizing the “climate crisis” is precisely the preferred method to institute the world control he sooooo despises. (Of course, he knows what he’s pushing.)
To sneak in such vile lies, (which in reality is coal pollution from China and India) into an article on Julian Assange is the height of hypocrisy. Shame on you, Mr. Chris. “Scumbag” is too good a word for you.”
==============
Hedges’ privileging the “climate emergency”—at least twice— in this otherwise decent essay immediately popped out. It may not be the sole purpose of the essay, but seems to be high priority.
But, I think Hedges probably actually does believe the climate fearmongering. It may be that he, like others, has confused genuine environmental concerns, such as habitat loss, pollution, etc. with the “climate emergency” message. That is the main aim of much of the propaganda. Hedges is more likely a well-meaning person who ends up being a tool than an intentional co-conspirator.
There are so many who can spot the propaganda tsunami in, say, the Gaza conflict or the Julian Assange case, who totally miss the same red flag in the covid and climate ops.
In the climate case, the multi-generational propaganda effort is so deep-seated by now, so ubiquitous, that it doesn’t look like propaganda anymore.
In the covid case, even though plenty of counter-facts and revelations have started to appear even in the MSM, it seems like flu=fear is a new embedded psycho-switch that is very easy to turn on. Today in a flower nursery to my amazement and horror I overheard two staff members talking about the need for six-foot distance. This after Fauci was reported in the MSM as stating that this “rule” appeared out of nowhere and meant, actually, nothing at all! It has also been reported in the MSM that Redfield acknowledged that there were serious jab side effects. Ditto the Kansas case against Pfizer.
Maybe this flu-fear is clung to because it serves some psychological purpose? Or gives life structure and meaning?
Otherwise I can’t fathom why people would continue to go along with it.
The goal of the text has been achieved just as in the case of the Palestinians. The inserted distraction diluted the discussion and now a part of the readers is dealing with the never-ending topic, climate changes, so the edge of the discussion has become dull. It is much more effective than writing something directly against Assange and against what he did and why he did, although, due to the completeness of the strategy, there are also those who even deny that he was in prison at all, but on some Rothschild estate.
Well, who is/was it?
Don’t be coy!
Yeah right. Assange was released at this time because for some reason it suits the people who imprisoned him. Most likely because their court case against him was no longer sustainable, but we’ll never be sure. It certainly had nothing to do with the opinion of members of the pubic or the stern letters they wrote.
Yeah, I noticed that little “fossil fuel” flag—also the ueber-emotional “ravaged.” I wonder whether Chris has seen the view from Nantucket of the horizon of the Atlantic Ocean lately. That magnificent view has been ravaged. Not to mention huge swaths of on-land habitat ravaged by wind farms and the millions of bats and birds ravaged by wind turbine blades.
The reason genuine debate on the origins of hydrocarbons fuels (Is that the correct term? i.d.k.) is verboten is probably that the abiotic origin theory has primarily been worked out by the Russians.
Assange spent way too much time imprisoned to be controlled opposition.
But thanks anyway Hasbara
Sjaloom
If there is one thing which has been the lodestone of manipulation over the decades to control and paralyze the population to the point of utter captivity, it has to be the narrative of “climate change”. Year in and year out, it has always been the same message. Humans are destroying the Earth and we (meaning very powerful people) have to rule in order to save it. Everyone else is to be considered subservient and disposable.
The “rulers” of society have abused their privilege and authority to create, as Hedges says, “a climate of fear to paralyze a captive population”. I find it ludicrous that he would promote one narrative, that is Julian Assange’s freedom, and yet extol the very same State System that puts us all in danger.
You can’t have your cake and eat it too. Either we all go free from State oppression or the State rules us all. No one is free until all are free, and climate change has nothing to do with it.
By embracing the climate agenda and equating Assange to the filthy murderer and radical Mumia Abu-Jamal, Hedges shows his communist arse and completely sullies an otherwise reasonable analysis.
The incident you mention was forgotten in days
It was just another American slaughter of innocents one of many
The really big scandal was the Abu Ghraib
And no one ever went to jail for that
Again as ask where is the great truth teller when it comes to the crime of the century?
The Israeli false flag attack on the US?
He is controlled opposition.
No doubt about it.
You are aware are you not?
That Assange got himself a wife and children in “prison”?
In other words he led a normal life all this time
How the fuck do you explain that???
How do you know that Assange’s time in the Ecuadoran embassy wasn’t just his day job
And he went home every night
Who’s to know, if the British government were in on it, no one? (yes, that’s a crazy conspiracy theory)
And BTW where is the great guy when it comes to the mass slaughter of innocents in Gaza?
What has he said about that?
Nothing, and he will continue to say nothing.
Answer me that Batman?
Thanks from my side also!
There is, I think, in journalism also a great story-teller side and they probably want to, every so often, write a happy ending into the story so as not to become monotonous.
I just don’t see why he felt he needed to fabricate a story which is so transparently obvious. I also think that it won’t take too much digging to find the real reason why the JD made this obviously political decision, having previously continued Julian’s inhuman torture for all those years, only to wave it off 6 months before the election.
BTW, I hope the first institution Assange sues is the British Justice [sic] Department for having held him in the conditions they did while his supposed crime never justified such conditions.
All Western “Values” are being shown here, in all the wars they’re involved in, and most especially in Gaza to be merely a Potemkin village.
Perhaps. I would use other words, but don’t think now is the right time for criticism.
Neither were the others I mentioned able to deny serious crimes, they along with many others from the same kind of situation are long free and many in very comfortable and influential positions.
Looking at U.S. history, the C.S.A. had ‘Injun’ allies. The north did not.
Someone like the maniac John Brown did not care at all about the Injuns in the west; he was part of invading them. Hell, he sure cared about negroes in the abstract!
As Jewish power in the U.S.A. increased from the late 19th century, they also didn’t care at all about Injuns. Simply not useful to their goals. Their mentality was much like that which Jewish-based heresy had installed in the insane John Brown.
So, free Leonard Peltier!
This is not a good article at all. It contributes nothing of worth to the anti-Imperialist discourse.
In summary all it proves is that Hedges has devolved into or always has been a rotten reactionary scumbag. He tries to give us credit for “freeing Assange” despite the fact that we have done nothing. Nobody used force to free him from captivity and ultimately he capitulated, which was both expected and quite understandable. Which trade unions went on strike over Assange? How many of the piss liberal elite have been killed over his detention?
Then we have the force-fed Green environmentalist bullshit. No thank you.
While I would not rule it out, I suspect there are people who would say that even if he had been sent to the USA/Guantanamo or even executed. They would say he was on a beach in Tel Aviv with Epstein, or something like that. The powers that be went after him with rape charges (effective attack – I knew a feminist who was convinced, apparently because women never lie about something like that) then arresting him the moment he exited an embassy, followed by a lengthy stay in Belmarsh Prison. Pretty elaborate cover, if that is what they were building for him…
Don’t you know that women are saints and bring peace to Earth? Just look at Margaret Thatcher!
He’s either a complete fool, or he’s a mouthpiece of the very elite he claims to disdain. Either way, he’s not worth reading.
Yeah, I agree. He’s also an old fool who thinks we’re still in 1975.
I had previously never found these trenchant lefties even digestible in the past, it’s just that in the war against, well, war they came with a certain “legitimacy” and tradition.
At least I could agree with them on this, if not the rest of their silly baggage. And because of this tradition they can usually avoid the charge of antisemitism when opposing wars which the right has previously been less able to do, see Pat Buchanan, Joe Sobran, and the alt-right.
As such Hedges and his side are useful allies in this endeavor, though articles like this do raise one or three eyebrows as to their motives and fitness.
Is it Anthropogenic Climate Change, or Climate Geo-engineering?
The experiment to do, however politically insurmountable that it seems is to simply stop the perpetual Climate Geo-engineering that has been going on since at least the Vietnam War, and after allowing maybe a decade for the Earth’s atmosphere to settle down observe any differences.
Too many underreported and ignored calamities and disasters, most frequently very convenient for Climate Change supporters to immaturely declare, “See! It’s Climate Change.”
Ask the people of Lahaina, Paradise, CA, the people of Acapulco, anywhere where ‘blue roofs’ survive and trees don’t burn but structures will.
Ask the Indigenous in Canada where the forest surrounding them bursts into flames in simultaneous fires over a geographical space the size of New York state, on a clear, sunny day that had no weather warnings the night before.
I know nothing about “Climate Geo-engineering” so I asked a search-engine:
One response:
These are presumably ideas as to how to *counter* Anthropogenic Climate Change. Images of recent events in the European alps:
Apart from catastrophic damage, nothing to see here; just what we expect from weather ‘goosed’ by ever-increasing excess CO2 – documented by wiki’s image of the Keeling-curve above. rgds
PS The rot goes on:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-07-02/nves-loophole-car-makers-rush-polluting-cars-into-country/104046976