This was originally published at Renegade Inc. on 25th October 2017: https://renegadeinc.com/washingtons-war-on-julian-assange/
***
Washington in general, and the CIA in particular, are going after Julian Assange for one simple reason: Because he reveals the truth about the crimes they commit. The rest of it is bullshit.
“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win – Mahatma Ghandi”
- Donald Trump Rally Poster, Instagram, 29th February 2016
The above quotation is a great insight into how the British Empire resisted Ghandi’s mission to achieve independence for India. Unfortunately, Ghandi never said those words. Something similar was voiced by a trade unionist called Nicholas Klein in 1918, during an address to the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America…but clearly the Donald isn’t big on research, and besides, poor Mr Klein doesn’t make for ‘great poster’ if you’re running for president.
Despite the absurdity of a weak and self-obsessed poseur likening himself to the man who led India to freedom through non-violent civil disobedience, Trump hit the spot with that misquote:
If you confront powerful vested interests, they do pretend to ignore you, they do seek to trivialise you, and then…if that doesn’t work…they do come at you with lies, threats & character assassination, and sometimes…you might even find yourself involved in an unfortunate accident.
But that is only the case if you are telling the truth - about something that exposes their lies.
Lies are of no consequence to powerful criminals, whether they come from the public or private sector. If you are lying, they will have no need of anything more than laughter. You’re doing them a favour every time you say something that marks you out as a poor deluded fool seeking attention. If you’re lying it means that they’re telling the truth.
Julian Assange is way past the laughter stage with the White House, the CIA, the Congress, the DNC, the GOP, the WaPo & the MSM in general - the whole cesspit that is Washington DC and its vassals. On the Washington loathing list, the Wikileaks founder comes just below Iran and North Korea, ties with Russia, but ranks considerably higher than the devastation that Hurricane Irma wreaked on Puerto Rico.
It is not my purpose here to describe the history of the abuse heaped upon Julian Assange, or to debunk the swathe of anti-Wikileaks propaganda that spews out of Washington almost on a daily basis. There is far too much of it, and others have already done a grand job of debunking most of it. For example, the latest hysterical nonsense from Hillary Clinton, currently embarked on her ‘don’t blame me I was only the candidate’ book tour, has been thoroughly taken apart by Caitlin Johnstone in her excellent article ‘Hillary Clinton just told five blatant lies about Wikileaks’.
Unless you’ve been holed up in a cave in Afghanistan for the past five years you will know that Julian Assange is himself holed up in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London. What you may not know, because your government and the media don’t want you to know, is that there are no rape charges against him in Sweden or anywhere else (the charges were dropped earlier this year). You may also be unaware that the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention have stated the following:
“The Working Group maintains that the arbitrary detention of Mr Assange should be brought to an end, that his physical integrity and freedom of movement be respected, and that he should be entitled to an enforceable right to compensation…
…The Working Group established that this detention violates Articles 9 and 10 of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, and Articles 7, 9(1), 9(3), 9(4), 10 and 14 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights"
http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=17013;
You may be similarly unaware that nobody has ever proved that Wikileaks has published false information…ever. And for some inexplicable reason, they never seem to challenge its authenticity. Of course this is not inexplicable at all, for one simple reason: the people involved are in a perfect position to know whether or not the leaks are genuine.
If you were guilty would you want to talk about your crimes, or would you prefer to deflect attention to the manner in which the evidence came to light?
And yet, despite all this, if Julian Assange takes one step out of the Ecuadorean Embassy, the following will occur:
1. He will be immediately arrested by the British Police on charges of ‘failing to surrender to the court on 29th June 2012’
2. Washington will find a unified voice that it only ever manages to summon when it wants to destroy someone or something – it will place London under enormous pressure, explicit and implicit
3. The British Government will fold like a guy holding a ‘Jack High’ in a game of five-card stud
4. Assange will be extradited and transported to a high security cell in Langley Virginia or some other high-tech dungeon
5. After a period of ‘interrogation’ he will be brought out for a show-trial by the media, he will be found guilty, and then he will disappear back into a Federal hellhole, never to see the light of day again
6. Trump, the CIA, and the rest of the goon squad will declare victory for truth, for liberty and for ‘the Constitution of these United States’
7. Jefferson and Ghandi will turn in their graves. Liberty lovers with their feet still on the mortal coil will simply puke
8. The public will be falsely reassured that justice has been done, and will forget about Julian Assange…until the next time a government official gets caught with his hand in the cookie jar, his surveillance device somewhere it shouldn’t be or his fingerprints on a false flag. There will always be a new Julian Assange – because there has to be – holding power to account is an evolutionary niche, and nature hates a vacuum
That’s how it’s supposed to pan out – if you’re the US government. But I doubt that it will…not this time. This is not just a prediction – it’s an observation. Just as Washington cannot conduct another Middle-East war with its own troops - because the American public won’t stand for it – the public’s faith in the charade of ‘righteous government’ has passed its sell-by date.
People are slowly beginning to recognise who the enemies of truth and liberty really are. And their names are not Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning or Julian Assange. Their names are Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, George Bush, Bill Clinton, Robert Mueller, James Comey, David Petraeus, John Brennan, & Mike Pompeo...just of few of the many professional liars employed in Washington these last few years.
For those who can’t get past the thought: ‘surely they wouldn’t lie to us about something like that’ – yes they would…and they do.
Julian Assange and Wikileaks are guilty of nothing more than revealing the crimes and misdemeanours of the rich and powerful. Here’s a reminder of just a few:
- Hillary Clinton abused her position as Secretary of State to direct her staff to provide special attention to friends of Bill Clinton - people seeking to win contracts for the $10 billion Haiti recovery programme
- The DNC rigged the primary process on behalf of Clinton, against Sanders
- The relationship between the media and the Clinton campaign was rotten to the core – e.g. information was provided to give her an easy ride in interviews and media appearances
- The Clinton team strategized on how to delay the release of her private server emails, knowing that they were breaking the law by doing so
- John Podesta told aides in March 2015 to steer the media’s attention from Clinton’s email scandal to the Benghazi investigation, which the media had already painted as a Republican witch hunt
You will notice that this simple list of five things does not include any of the embarrassing stuff, like her mocking of evangelicals, or her cosy relationship with Wall Street. No need - the five examples above are enough to put any ‘normal’ person out of a job and behind bars. They demonstrate a government official with a complete lack of integrity, an egregious bidding process for the disbursement of public funds, corrupt management of a major political party, and a media that is as trustworthy as a $9 bill.
Thanks to Wikileaks we also know that the CIA lost control of its library of hacking tools; that it has created it’s own version of the NSA with even less accountability than the original; and that it has developed malware to target iPhone, Android, Samsung Smart TVs and computer operating systems such as Windows, Linux & OSX - I’m guessing that covers about 95% of the population.
What do these people do when confronted with this? They deflect attention away from their crimes, towards to the nefarious intent of the ‘puppet’ Julian Assange, and his alleged boss - the evil ‘puppeteer’ Vladimir Putin.
I have a few questions at this point:
- How dumb do you have to be, in order to fall for all this crap…again?
- Do you really trust an organisation, the CIA, that funded al-Qaeda to attack Syria, that disowned them when they got out of hand & rebranded themselves as ISIS, that started funding them again when it became clear that Syria and its allies were winning the war, that stopped funding them for the 2nd time when it became too embarrassing even for Trump…and now according to a number of sources, is still providing intelligence and assistance to them at Deir ez-Zor?
- Do you believe that a government carrying out actions such as these has any right to claim that it represents a set of superior moral values?
You’re not supposed to ask yourself questions like these. You’re supposed to fall into line with a set of principles, I prefer to call them ‘beliefs’, that are targeted and reinforced in the mainstream media each day. My thanks to David P. Hamilton for putting together the following list:
https://consortiumnews.com/2017/10/16/understanding-the-fake-news-hysteria/
1. The U.S. is never wrong in any conflict with other nations
2. If the U.S. ever happens to be wrong, it was a reasonable mistake
3. U.S. intentions are always benign and honourable.
4. U.S. judgment is always objective and fair
5. The U.S. is a democracy and always supports democracy
6. Americans are a peaceful people
7. Americans are a superior people, so American lives matter more
8. Americans are always on the high moral ground because God is on our side
9. The word of our leaders is sufficient proof of any assertion
10. The U.S. is the greatest nation in history
The work of Wikileaks reveals this list of ‘beliefs’ for what it is – a crock.
With regards to Assange himself, this is what you are supposed to believe - here is Mike Pompeo, CIA Director, Centre for Strategic and International Studies, 13th April 2017:
“WikiLeaks walks like a hostile intelligence service and talks like a hostile intelligence service….It is time to call out WikiLeaks for what it really is – a non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia…
Assange claims to harbour an overwhelming admiration for both America and the idea of America. But I assure you that this man knows nothing of America and our ideals…No, I am quite confident that had Assange been around in the 1930s and 40s and 50s, he would have found himself on the wrong side of history.
We know this because Assange and his ilk make common cause with dictators today. Yes, they try unsuccessfully to cloak themselves and their actions in the language of liberty and privacy; in reality, however, they champion nothing but their own celebrity. Their currency is click bait; their moral compass, non-existent. Their mission: personal self-aggrandizement through the destruction of Western values…
Julian Assange and his kind are not the slightest bit interested in improving civil liberties or enhancing personal freedom. They have pretended that America’s First Amendment freedoms shield them from justice. They may have believed that, but they are wrong…
So we face a crucial question: What can we do about this? What can and should CIA, the United States, and our allies do about the unprecedented challenge posed by these hostile non-state intelligence agencies?
First, it is high time we called out those who grant a platform to these leakers and so-called transparency activists…
Second, there are steps that we have to take at home—in fact, this is a process we’ve already started. We’ve got to strengthen our own systems…We need to be as clever and innovative as the enemies we face. They won’t relent, and neither will we…
Third, we have to recognize that we can no longer allow Assange and his colleagues the latitude to use free speech values against us. To give them the space to crush us with misappropriated secrets is a perversion of what our great Constitution stands for. It ends now”
I would probably need a separate article just to express everything that is wrong with those extracts, which are only a fraction of a much longer speech, but I’ll finish with just this one statement:
The Bill of Rights in general, and the 1st amendment in particular, was not created to protect the American people from men like Julian Assange; it was created to protect the American people from men like Mike Pompeo.