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Aposematic 1 year, 7 months ago.
Revisiting Julian Assange and Wikileaks :Lest We Forget
[Y: I am bringing to you two articles that provide both the past and future of this man Julian Assange. His final chapter has yet to be written.
Regardless of political views – I believe his actions to lead Wkileaks agianst the most dangerous of enemies should not be forgotten if the fight against George Orwell’s 1984 is to continue.
Again thanks for reading. Y]
The Long Captivity of Julian Assange [1]
Israel Shamir
unz.com
Jun 21, 2018Israel Shamir is native of Novosibirsk , Siberia and a critically acclaimed and respected Russian-Israeli writer and journalist.
Shamir moved to Israel in 1969, served as paratrooper in the Israeli Army and fought in the 1973 Yom-Kippur war. After his discharge, he turned to journalism and writing.
From 1975, Shamir joined the BBC, lived in Japan and returned to Israel writing for the Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz, and was the Knesset spokesman for the Israel Socialist Party (Mapam). After political life he continues writing books and articles for alternative publications.
Shamir currently lives in Jaffa and spends much time in Moscow and Stockholm, and has become a leading proponent of the ‘One Man, One Vote, One State’ solution for Palestine/Israel.
- Julian and Shamir
These long summer days are good for forest walks or swimming; in the evenings, I read classics with my 10 year old son who otherwise spends too much time at video games. This time, it happens to be the Odyssey, to read Book IV on Menelaus bewailing his comrades who fell at Troy or on the perilous way home.
And for me it was the time to beweep my dear comrades-in-arms who have suffered the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. So many of you, who went fighting the beast, are dead, or exiled, or imprisoned, like my Spanish publisher Don Pedro Varela and the American researcher Barrett Brown. Or fired from a university like Julio Pino, professor of Kent State.
And then Menelaus said: “Much as I weep for all my men, for none of all these comrades do I grieve as much as for this one. The one is Ulysses who has been detained for years on the island of Ogygia by Calypso the Nymph.”
It brought to my mind the fate of Julian Assange, this modern Odysseus, who has been held in his luxurious Knightsbridge prison for years. Actually, for full six years, as today, as I write it, is the anniversary of his incarceration in the Ecuador Embassy.
So many epithets used by Homer for the King of Ithaca fit Julian to a tee! He is wise and noble, resourceful and cunning, wily and crafty, brilliant and steadfast, but also evil-starred man of woe.
His name still scares the enemy, and cheers a friend. Though an Antipode by birth, Julian became famous in the North of Europe, where this tall slim handsome youthful silver-haired man came to raise the banner of his revolt. Eight years ago, I compared him to Neo of the Matrix, the man destined to break the matrix of lies and set us free.
- The Amazing Adventures of Captain Neo in Blonde-Land, as no doubt the story of Julian Assange’s escapades in Sweden will be known once it inevitably makes its way into the hands of one of the goofier Hollywood directors – say Robert Zemeckis or Mel Brooks, or perhaps Stephen Herek of Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure. It would do better in the hands of Andy Wachowski, where he might do for Julian Assange what he once did for Keanu Reeves.
- Who could ask for a more beautiful set-up? It’s a story fit for a tabloid, yet it might be transformed into something an intellectual could read without embarrassment. This latest adventure is the stuff of pulp fiction, and chock full of Langley spies, computer hackers, crazy feminists, flatfooted cops and sleazy rags in the female kingdom of Sweden!
- Julian Assange is a character that might have been ripped from the celluloid frames of the Matrix: flaxen and lanky, he moves through cyberspace like a superman. When, on those rare occasions that he does emerge into the real world, it is to perform Kung Fu exercises. He hardly ever eats or drinks. His corporeal body can normally be found sitting in front of a MacPro or two, while his digital alter ego commutes and computes, battling the odds and the system in fantastic virtual combat.
- Like Neo, he is a natural-born hacker who hacked just for the heck of it until he discovered the Matrix. He had hundreds of remarkable hacking achievements to his name when in 1992 he pleaded guilty to twenty-two of them. I like to think that someday, after he has passed on in the fullness of time, he will become a kind of guardian angel for hackers, or perhaps the Greek God of Cyberspace with His Golden Board, forever surfing the web.
Recently this comparison had been repeated by brave Jonathan Cook, the man from Nazareth, but it is suitable for Jonathan himself, and for many of us, including the American Pravda writer, Ron Unz, for we all fight for liberation of mind and discourse.
In the beginning of his political activity, Julian was lionised by media and society. His Wikileaks was considered the most fashionable thing in the known universe. He floated from a party to reception, admired by the Scandinavians from Reykjavik to Stockholm.
But the enemy prepared its snares. A CIA-friendly feminist got to his bed by a dirty trick: she offered him her small flat saying she was leaving the city for a few days, and when he accepted and moved in, she suddenly returned and offered to share the only bed. He didn’t know she had carried out a CIA mission in Cuba, otherwise he would have been more cautious. Or not: a full-blooded man, he was easy to tempt. The next day she Tweeted friends about her success, about sharing the limelight with this celebrity.
And a few days later she complained to police that he possessed her without protection; this is an offence of second-degree rape in feminised Sweden. Her accusation has been seconded by another girl, who was unhappy that Julian didn’t call her the next day after their loving tryst. A man-hating Swedish prosecutor Marianne Ny took over the job of hunting Julian, and Swedish newspapers displayed headlines “Rapist At Large.” Immediately Julian lost all his admiring entourage. The Empire knew the vulnerability of his crowd.
However, in a few days his case was closed down, and Julian was free to leave Sweden. He went to England, and there he prepared the great publication of Cablegate, that is the vast collection of the State Department and the US Embassies’ cables from around the world. Stolen by Manning, these cables opened to us the full picture of the Empire dealings with the nations.
I wrote:
- One quarter of a million secret and confidential US Embassy cables sit like so many digital wasps waiting to be released into cyberspace. They will strike at the tender underbelly of the empire, the flattering self-delusions that maintain the imperial armies. It just might be enough to turn the tide in the battle to recover our evaporating freedoms.
- These dirty little cables throw a bright light upon the murky policies of the American Imperium, on their methods of collecting information, of delivering orders, of subverting politicians and robbing nations. Yet before we lapse into a comfortable and reflexive anti-Americanism, let us never forget that this, arguably the greatest revelation of criminal wrongdoing in history, was only made possible because brave and honest Americans were willing to risk life and limb to leak the truth.
- Tensions run high when you dare oppose the awesome power of the Matrix. It is impossible not to admire Julian Assange. He is forever kind, quiet, gentle, and even meek; like the Tao, he leads without leading, directs without commanding. He never raises his voice; he hardly needs to speak and the way becomes clear. Our Neo is guided by the ideal of social transparency. Bright light is the best weapon against conspiracies.
The Empire responded by having Sweden re-open the case and issue an arrest warrant. England picked it up, and Julian had lost his freedom. For a long while he stayed in East Anglia, in the house of a friend, and then he moved to London, with an electronic bracelet on his arm and under constant police supervision.
When he was perilously close to deportation to Sweden, and to a long stretch of solitary confinement in a jail cell to be followed by extradition to the US and to its Guantanamo tropical paradise, he jumped the boat and asked for asylum in the Ecuador Embassy in London, after he received the then President of Ecuador Rafael Correa’s promise. That was in June 2012, and since that time, Assange has been immured within the walls of the Embassy.
Meanwhile, Sweden closed his case completely, but English authorities still will not allow him to leave. The UN deemed him a victim of arbitrary imprisonment, but even that didn’t help the unlucky man. Ecuador gave him its citizenship and diplomatic passport, but England refused to honour it.
Recently the US began to court the new president of Ecuador, Mr Lenin Moreno, and he cut off all the means of communication between Julian and the world. He is no longer permitted to receive guests, he can’t make calls, he is barred from the internet. If he were deported to a far-away island of the sea he would not be more isolated than he is now.
Looking back, Julian did a lot of great things since the Cablegate.
* He saved Edward Snowden, by navigating him from Hong Kong to Moscow. He had sent the wonderful Sarah Harrison to operate this miraculous escape. I supported him in this and in other enterprises, and I wrote that Russia is the only safe place for a fugitive and a whistle blower of such a calibre. Snowden thought to find a safe refuge in Cuba or Venezuela, but none of these Latin American countries is strong enough to withstand American pressure. Indeed, Cuba refused to let him in, and Venezuela could not accept Snowden for other reasons. Even mighty China refused to give Snowden asylum, and intended to ship him to the US. Iran was not keen on accepting him. Russia, with all its faults, is still the only state fully independent of the Empire on earth.
It is said that Assange was in cahoots with the Russians, that they guided him and provided with the stuff they hacked and even that “Wikileaks is a Front for Russian Intelligence”. As a matter of fact, Russians were extremely hesitant to have anything to do with Assange. They could not believe he was for real. Are you so naïve, they told me, that you do not understand he is a CIA trap? Such people do not exist.
It is a problem of the Russian mind: as a rule, they do not understand and do not trust Western dissidents of Assange’s ilk. They want their western sympathisers to be bought and paid for. Free agents are suspicious in their eyes. God knows there are many people in the West whose opinions roughly coincide with those of the Russians; but the Russians would prefer to buy a journalist off the peg. That’s why RT has had more than its fair share of defectors, that is of broadcasters who denounced RT and went to the Western mass media.
A few times I have defended Julian on Russian TV shows. Usually my opponents would say: he is a tool of Western intelligence services. Wait, he will soon publish something really nasty about Russia. With years, this mistrust didn’t diminish. So for good or for bad, mighty Russia does not and did not stand by Julian, who was and remained his own master.
On the other hand, Julian has no special feelings for Russia. Geopolitically, he is very much a man of the West. Even in his ostensible defence of Russia, he is always doing it from the Western point of view. He was against expulsion of Russian diplomats during the Skripal Affair, because it would “help the Kremlin further a narrative that it is under conspiratorial siege led by the US,” in other words, it was damaging the West and entrenching Russian suspicions of a hostile Western agenda.
* Assange published the DNC documents, Podesta emails, Hillary Clinton email thus helping the US voter to make up his mind for whom to vote in these last fateful elections. In my view, President Trump is heavily indebted to Assange.
* His Wikileaks published expose of hackers’ tools used by CIA and NSA, their surveillance programs, their interference in foreign elections, i.e. in recent French elections;
*He allowed us to have a look at the secret correspondence of the Saudis and Syrians, of the Russians and French, of Turks, of the IMF and what not;
*He disclosed the conspiracy of Labour MPs against Jeremy Corbyn.
*His own opinions expressed in his Tweets were very valuable. In the midst of the Skripal campaign, Assange reminded that us “while it is reasonable for Theresa May to view the Russian state as the leading suspect, so far the evidence is circumstantial & the OCPW has not yet made any independent confirmation, permitting the Kremlin push the view domestically that Russia is persecuted.”
He and his organisation provided opinions and expertise on North Korea at the time of Kim-Trump summit, publishing Clinton’s confidential disclosure that the US does not want unification of Korean peninsula, and hundreds of confidential and secret documents on NK nuclear tests.
I would love to see him free, as I admire him. He is not a spent force, and he still will be able to contribute a lot for mankind’s wellbeing. And good people, our comrades-in-arms, understand that and struggle for his freedom.
- Roger Waters concert last night in Berlin #PinkFloyd
- “Resist the attempted silencing of @JulianAssange”
- pic.twitter.com/2dQw61VpB1
- — WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) June 3, 2018
Roger Waters, of Pink Floyd fame, life-long supporter of [the] Palestinian struggle, displayed a banner in support of Julian Assange at a concert in Berlin. Many journalists of the Disobedient Media are organizing an online vigil under the banner of #ReconnectJulian. Yes, reconnect, by all means, but let him go! This is more important and more urgent. Six years of imprisonment is too much for this guiltless man.
Israel Shamir
adam@israelshamir.net
This article was first published at The Unz Review.
Conspiracy Builds to Force Assange Out of Ecuadorian Embassy[2]
James Cogan
Information Clearing House / World Socialist Website (Cross-Published)
Jun 8, 2018James Cogan, 37, has been a staff writer for the World Socialist Web Site since 1998. Raised in the Victorian city of Bendigo, James enlisted in the Australian Army at the age of 17, serving with the infantry until 1990. Opposed to the Hawke-Keating Labor government and the first US-led war against Iraq,
James joined the SLL in 1991. He moved to Sydney in 1994 and was elected branch and then Sydney Area Secretary. Over the past four years James has written extensively on the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq. In 2004 he represented the SEP in the federal seat of Kingsford Smith, opposing Labor’s Peter Garrett.
- James Cogan speaking at a ‘Free Assange’ rally : Jun 19, 2018 (18:06 mins)
- John Pilger speaking at a ‘Free Assange’ rally : Jun 19, 2018 (17:53 mins)
One day after Ecuadorian Foreign Minister María Fernanda Espinosa declared that her government would continue blocking WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange from all communications and deny him any personal visitors, she was elected president of the United Nations General Assembly. Today marks 10 weeks since Ecuador’s government deprived Assange of his rights, which it is obliged to honour after granting him political asylum in its London embassy in 2012.
The UN vote in support of Espinosa was a substantial 128, versus 62 for the only other nominee, Honduras’s UN ambassador Mary Elizabeth Flores Flake, and two abstentions. The vote suggests that the United States did not energetically intrigue on behalf of Honduras. Washington was believed to favour Honduras because its right-wing government supported the provocative relocation of the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.
There is little doubt that the treatment of Assange by Ecuador’s government—and behind it, the small country’s corporate elite—is the outcome of pressure and threats by the US and other powers. Washington is demanding Assange’s head as the price of restoring relations. CIA director Mike Pompeo, now US secretary of state, asserted last year that WikiLeaks was a “non-state hostile intelligence agency,” due to its publication of documents exposing the operations of US intelligence.
Assange is being used as a bargaining chip in sordid negotiations between the US and Ecuador. On June 4, US Vice President Mike Pence met with Ecuadorian President Lenín Moreno. Amid the stepped-up persecution of Assange, Pence issued a statement lauding their discussion on “opportunities to reinvigorate the bilateral relationship” between the two countries. In words dripping with imperialist deceit, he said they would work together “to protect and promote freedom” and “build prosperity, security and democracy.”
Such “freedom” does not include freedom of speech or freedom of the press. Such “democracy” does not include the right to expose or oppose the crimes of American imperialism or other capitalist governments. The Orwellian “freedom” espoused by Pence means submission and subservience to the control of the world’s wealth by a minuscule financial and corporate oligarchy.
Moreno’s evidently friendly discussion with Pence, and Espinosa’s victory in the UN, follow Moreno’s own attacks on Assange and democratic rights last week.
On May 30, Moreno again hinted that Ecuador will renege on the political asylum that the previous government granted to the WikiLeaks editor in 2012. Moreno declared that Assange could remain in the London embassy only on the condition that he accept a permanent ban on “speaking out about politics or intervening in the politics of other countries.”
Espinosa stated on Monday that such flagrantly anti-democratic terms were “not a matter of censorship.” In reality, Assange has been delivered an unacceptable ultimatum. Unless he renounces the mission of WikiLeaks, which is to publish and comment on whistleblower leaks that expose government and corporate criminality and abuses around the world, he will be forced out of the embassy to be arrested and imprisoned by waiting British police on a bail-related charge.
Assange defied the terms of his bail in June 2012 and sought asylum from Ecuador because his life was in danger. The sole motive behind efforts to extradite him to Sweden, to purportedly answer “questions” in an investigation into allegations of sexual offenses, was to silence him while Washington sought his extradition to stand trial on espionage charges that potentially carry the death penalty.
After years of delay, in late 2016 the Swedish police and prosecutors agreed to Assange’s repeated offer to be “questioned” in London. It belatedly took this action after a December 2015 ruling by the UN Working Party on Arbitrary Detentions.
That ruling stated: “The Working Group considered that Mr. Assange has been subjected to different forms of deprivation of liberty… detention was arbitrary because he was held in isolation during the first stage of detention and because of the lack of diligence by the Swedish Prosecutor in its investigations, which resulted in the lengthy detention of Mr. Assange.”
The ruling concluded: “The Working Group also considered that the detention should be brought to an end and that Mr. Assange should be afforded the right to compensation.”
In May 2017, Sweden finally abandoned its investigation. Assange was still unable to leave the embassy, however, because the British government of Prime Minister Theresa May insisted it will seek his imprisonment for jumping bail. Moreover, it refused to rule out continuing to hold him in custody while his legal defenders fought protracted court action against a US extradition warrant.
With each passing day, the danger facing Julian Assange increases. For six years, he has been confined inside a small building with no access to direct sunlight. He has been denied medical and dental treatment for serious conditions. Now he has been inflicted with the additional pressure of being prevented from continuing his work as a journalist, and denied outside communication or contact, even with his family.
The vindictive operation underway is intended to either force Assange to “voluntarily” leave the embassy, or create conditions in which Ecuador evicts him via claims he has “violated” its terms.
Crucial demonstrations and vigils have been called to defend Assange. They must be understood not as one-off protests, but the renewal of a determined campaign to win his freedom, especially if he is forced into a British prison and faces a protracted legal struggle against extradition to the US.
The movement that is required will be built by the most determined fight to independently mobilise the social force that has the power to win Assange’s freedom: the international working class. It will not be built by appeals to the ex-liberal and ex-left organisations and trade union apparatuses that have aligned themselves with their own ruling classes and governments.
Around the world, millions of working-class people are entering into immense struggles for their social right to decent living standards, education and health care, and against the persecution of refugees and immigrants, police-state policies and the threat of war. These struggles are inseparable from the fight for democratic rights, including an end to Internet censorship and the defence of a free, critical and independent media, such as WikiLeaks.
Every effort must be made to break the silence imposed by the official political and media establishment and raise awareness of the immense implications of the effort to destroy WikiLeaks and railroad its editor into a prison cell or worse.
Again, we urge readers of the WSWS to turn to the workplaces, factories, campuses and high schools to fight for maximum participation in the demonstrations and vigils demanding Julian Assange’s immediate and unconditional freedom.
James Cogan
This article was originally published by “WSWS”
Copyright © 1998-2018 World Socialist Web SiteCitations
[1] http://www.unz.com/ishamir/the-long-captivity-of-julian-assange/
[2] http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49590.htm
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