De hele
wereld kijkt mee naar wat er met Julian Assange gebeurt nu hij is
gevangengezet door GB, die hem tegen internationale regels in
ontvoerde uit de ambassade van Ecuador.
Caitlin
Johnstone publiceerde het hieronder opgenomen artikel op haar site, een artikel waarin ze uitlegt dat de gijzeling van
Assange veel verder gaat dan de zaak waarvoor Assange vastzit. Deze
zaak gaat elke (echte) journalist* aan, waar deze ook
werkzaam is in onze wereld, hetzelfde geldt uiteraard voor
klokkenluiders als Chelsea Manning, die volkomen terecht zware
(oorlogs-) misdaden openbaarde en doorspeelde naar WikiLeaks…..
Met de
informatie die Manning naar buiten bracht werd ten overvloede nog
eens bewezen dat de VS zich gedraagt als een politiemacht van een
bloedige dictatuur en waar die macht niet werd aangewezen door de
wereldgemeenschap, maar door de opvolgende regeringen in de VS…..
‘Een politiemacht’ die niet opkomt voor mensenrechten en democratie
zoals de VS keer op keer laat weten, maar die de belangen van de VS behartigen,
zoals het veiligstellen (‘stelen…’) van grote olievoorraden voor eigen gebruik…..
Met het
klokkenluiden van Manning werd ten overvloede nog eens aangetoond dat de
reguliere westerse media aan de leiband lopen van de plutocratische
eigenaren die deze media bezitten en van de westerse regeringen….. Het laatste daar die media en regeringen Assange afschilderen als een nep-journalist en WikiLeaks beschrijven
als een site die een groot aantal mensen in gevaar heeft gebracht. ‘Natuurlijk’ wijzen deze media Manning aan als een landverrader…….
Dit
alles waar deze media* juist het werk van Assange
hadden moeten doen en hem uit en te na hadden moeten beschermen en
helpen tegen de neoliberale willekeur en zucht naar censuur…. Niet
vreemd dus dat de reguliere westerse media negatief commentaar gaven op Assange na diens ontvoering uit de Ecuadoraanse ambassade in Londen……. Assange wordt gegijzeld in
een gevangenis die het Britse Guantanamo Bay wordt genoemd……
Het gaat om HM Prison Belmarsh, een gevangenis waar Assange zelfs niet met zijn familie en
advocaten mag spreken, een schande van formaat en een gang van zaken
die in een dictatuur thuishoort, hetzelfde geldt voor de hernieuwde
gevangenschap van Manning in de VS, Manning die ook al geruime tijd in isolatiefolter wordt gehouden……..
Johnstone heeft het gelijk aan haar kant, waar ze stelt dat de ontvoering en gijzeling van Assange een waarschuwing is voor iedere klokkenluider die zaken naar buiten wil brengen en voor iedere journalist die van plan is deze gelekte documenten te publiceren, zoals Assange dit deed op WikiLeaks…… Jammer dat Johnstone stelt dergelijke zaken niet te zullen publiceren, daar ze te bang is voor gevangenschap en zij is daarin jammer genoeg bepaald niet alleen……..
The
Prosecution Of Julian Assange Is Infinitely Bigger Than Assange
Julian
Assange’s mother reported
yesterday that
the WikiLeaks founder has not been permitted any visitors during his
detention in Belmarsh Prison, including from doctors and his lawyers.
Doctors who visited Assange in the Ecuadorian Embassy have
attested that
he urgently needs medical care.
Belmarsh
is a maximum security prison sometimes referred to as “the
UK’s Guantanamo Bay“.
And
yet we’re asked to believe that this has something to do with an
alleged bail violation and a US extradition request for alleged
computer crimes carrying a maximum sentence of five years. If you
zoom out and listen to the less-informed chatter of the overt
propagandists and the brainwashed rank-and-file western mass media
consumers, you will also see that people believe this has something
to do with Russia and rape allegations as well.
Actually,
none of these things are true. Assange is being imprisoned under
draconian conditions for journalism, and for
journalism only.
The Obama administration declined
to prosecute him after
WikiLeaks’ publication of the Manning leaks out of concern that doing
so would endanger press freedoms, and the Obama administration didn’t
have any more evidence at
its disposal than the Trump administration has now. The “crime”
Assange is accused of consists of nothing other than standard
journalistic practices that
investigative journalists engage
in all the time,
including source protection and encouraging the source to obtain more
material. The only thing that has changed is an increased willingness
in the White House to prosecute journalists for practicing
journalism, and there are an abundance of reasons to
believe that he will be hit with far
more serious charges once
extradited to US
soil. They’re not going to all this trouble for a bail violation and
a five-year maximum sentence.
But
if you zoom out even further, in the grand scheme of things this
barely even has anything to do with Assange. Sure, he has of course
been a thorn in the side of those who operate the transnational
western power alliance, and given the choice they would of course
prefer him to be locked up or dead than free and alive. But that’s
not what the corrupt influencers who are strangling our world are
shooting for here. They are making a grab for something much, much
bigger. Assange just happens to be a stepping stone along the way.
As
we’ve discussed
previously,
the prosecution of Assange is really designed to set a legal
precedent which will enable the US government to imprison journalists
for trying to hold it to account using journalism. The reason you are
seeing the phrase “Assange is not a journalist” bleated
constantly by empire lackeys all around the world today is because
they need a counter-narrative for the indisputable fact that this
precedent poses a threat to journalists around the world, the
argument being that since Assange isn’t a journalist (pure
bullshit by
the way), this isn’t setting a precedent for journalists. As though
their personal definition of what a “real journalist” is
will be the one used by the US government when determining whether or
not to prosecute other people for doing things similar to what
Assange did, instead of whatever definition happens to suit US
government agendas in that instance.
But
in order to get the really, really big picture perspective of what
these bastards are going for, we need to zoom out even further than
that.
In
the sci-fi novel Ender’s
Game,
the young protagonist applies a vicious beating to one of his
bullies, killing him. When asked why he did this by his handlers, the
boy, who has been bred and raised to become a strategic savant,
explains that he did it not out of malice toward the bully, nor only
to win the fight, but to win all future fights as well. If the kids
at school see what savagery he’s capable of and know he’s not to be
trifled with, he won’t ever have to fight them.
If
this sounds a bit sociopathic to you, that’s because it is. And, with
the notable difference of the bully and victim roles being reversed,
this is exactly the principle we are seeing exercised with Assange.
The
entire world is watching what is being done to Assange currently. No
matter how propagandized you are, no matter how much you hate the man
personally, you’re watching that happen and learning a lesson from
it. And that lesson is, never do anything remotely like what that guy
did, or you’ll meet the same fate. This is the real goal of Assange’s
persecution, and it doesn’t impact merely one Australian publisher in
a UK jail cell, nor even merely the investigative journalists around
the world who are interested in practicing the lost art of holding
power to account using journalism, but everyone in the world who
consumes news media.
And
it works. I know it works because it works on me. I’ll say right here
and now, if you’ve got information that incriminates the most
powerful people in the world, keep it the hell away from me. Give it
to someone else, literally anyone else, because I myself am far too
cowardly and have far too much to lose by getting involved in
anything that could lead to me rotting in some overseas prison cell.
I’ve got kids. I’m in love. I cannot and will not go down that path.
And if this is true for me I know for certain that it’s true for
countless others as well. They’ve brutalized whistleblowers to the
point that it’s surely had a severe chilling effect on those who
would otherwise become key leak sources, and now they’re brutalizing
the journalists who publish those leaks as well. The odds of someone
willing to blow the whistle on real power meeting a journalist who is
willing to help them are rapidly diminishing to zero.
They’re
winning this fight against Assange in brutal fashion to ensure that
they win all future fights as well.
Which
is why it’s absolutely stupid that this conversation so often gets
fixated on Assange the man, whether it’s smears or praise.
The
other day I published a massive
mega-article attacking
the major smears about Assange I’ve encountered. There are 27 of them
in total so far, and I’ll be adding more soon. This mountain of
smears exists because instead of paying attention to the
world-shaping dangers I just outlined which threaten to make it
impossible to oppose the leaders of the US-centralized empire who are
marching us towards either
extinction or dystopia,
people are babbling about Assange’s personality, or whether or not he
cleaned up after his cat while at the embassy.
The
flip side of this is people who fixate on Assange as a hero, which
can of course help draw attention to his plight and therefore be of
some benefit, but ultimately that’s also missing the forest for the
trees.
This
is so very, very much bigger than Assange, and we need to oppose it
for reasons that are far, far more significant than the individual
characteristics of one man who, depending on what we’ve heard, we may
or may not believe is a nice person.
Never
lose sight of this: the intimidation of whistleblowers and leak
publishers threatens to stop truth from informing the behaviors of
our entire species, leaving only the whims of the most powerful to
decide our fate. The most powerful people are those most dedicated to
pursuing power, those sociopathic enough to step on anyone’s head and
do whatever it takes to secure as much control as possible over as
many humans as possible. That’s who we’re handing the steering wheel
of our world to if we allow truth to be intimidated into silence.
And
never lose sight of this, either: with the imprisonment and
prosecution of Julian Assange, these same sociopathic oppressors have
exposed themselves. They have ripped off the friendly Big Brother
mask and exposed the dark infernal entities which squirm and hiss
underneath. This sudden interest in the legal technicalities of bail
protocol and journalistic source protection protocol happen to look
exactly the same as prosecuting a journalist for publishing facts
because that is exactly what is happening. Don’t ever let anyone
gaslight you into believing otherwise, and don’t you dare miss this
rare opportunity to point out to your fellow humans how our
oppressors have revealed their true nature.
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Caitlin
Johnstone |
April 22, 2019 at 2:09 am | Tags: assange, chilling
effect, journalism, prosecution, revolution, wikileaks |
Categories: Article |
================================
*
Echte journalisten, dus niet die
van de reguliere media, van wie de journalisten braaf
herkauwen wat hun regering, grote bedrijven en de geheime diensten hen opdienen. Echte
journalisten die hun werk doen: het blootleggen van smerige misdaden,
of die nu worden begaan door bedrijven of door overheidsdienaren als
militairen, of zelfs het aangaan van illegale oorlogen door de VS…….. Zie wat dat laatste betreft eens wat de reguliere
media brachten in aanloop van en tijdens de illegale oorlogen die de
VS begon tegen landen als Afghanistan, Irak, Libië, Oekraïne en Syrië, als één blok stonden de reguliere westerse media achter deze
illegale oorlogen en inderdaad, men herkauwde braaf alle leugens gebracht door de VS
geheime diensten, de opvolgende VS regeringen, haar denktanks als Atlantic Council (denktanks waar
je zelfs het achterlijke HCSS toe kan rekenen) en haar NAVO partners….. Kortom deze reguliere media brachten op grote
schaal fake news (nepnieuws), desinformatie en manipuleerden daarmee
de westerse bevolkingen, waarbij zelfs het melden van massamoorden
begaan door de VS en haar NAVO partners, onder de pet werden (en
worden) gehouden……
Zie ook:
‘Julian Assange (brekend nieuws) veroordeeld tot 50 weken gevangenisstraf……‘
‘VS Navy SEALs werden gewaarschuwd geen oorlogsmisdaden te melden‘
‘Russiagate: nog overtuigd van bestaan daarvan? Lees dit!‘ (en zie de links in dat bericht)
‘Chelsea Manning blijft voor onbepaalde tijd in de gevangenis‘
‘VN heeft eerder de ‘detentie’ van Assange al als onwettig verklaard‘
‘Julian Assange gearresteerd, een flagrante schending van de persvrijheid!‘
Assange’s ‘Conspiracy’ to Expose War Crimes Has Already Been Punished
Assange Held at “Britain’s Guantanamo Bay” as UN Urges Fair Trial
The Arrest of Julian Assange is an Existential Threat to Journalism
‘Julian Assange, valse beschuldigingen, Big Brother en VS steun voor terrorisme‘
‘Russiagate en Assange: The Guardian wordt nu zelfs door collega’s voor zot uitgemaakt‘
‘De prijs op het hoofd van Julian Assange: 1 miljard dollar…..‘
‘Media tonen ware gezicht door weigering Julian Assange te verdedigen‘
‘WhiteHouse: US, Ecuador Coordinating About Future Of Assange Asylum‘
‘Stop de isolatie van Julian Assange!’