WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been charged under seal by the Trump administration. This has been revealed by a purportedly accidental copy-paste error in an unrelated court document which used Assange’s name, interestingly not long after it was reported to the Wall Street Journal that federal prosecutors “have considered publicly indicting Mr. Assange to try to trigger his removal from the embassy because a detailed explanation of the evidence could give Ecuadorean authorities reason to turn Assange over.”
Insider sources have reportedly confirmed to the Washington Post that Assange has been charged. Because those charges are sealed, it’s impossible to know what they are or how they’re being justified. If you ask #Resistance Twitter, it’s because it’s #MuellerTime and Assange is about to be arrested under some mysterious charges involving WikiLeaks’ publication of non-government, non-classified emails in 2016. If you ask QAnon cultists, it’s because Donald Trump is planning to extradite Assange so as to rescue him and deal a fatal blow to the Deep State. If you ask people who actually know what they’re talking about, however, it’s most likely for WikiLeaks’ Afghanistan and Iraq war logs and/or last year’s CIA leak publications, and most likely using the Espionage Act. This would constitute a deadly blow to press freedoms, and arguably a greater leap in the direction of Orwellian dystopia than the Patriot Act.
It also proves once again that Julian Assange was completely right.
Indictment of Assange puts press freedom in peril (Letters) https://t.co/oDre6j2NM0 Many thought Assange was unnecessarily paranoid that the US intended to extradite him. He was right all along. #WikiLeaks
— Emmy B (@greekemmy) November 16, 2018
I’ve had so, so many arguments with people this year about Assange’s publicly stated rationale for remaining in the Ecuadorian embassy, where he was granted political asylum by Ecuador’s previous government on the basis that the US was seeking his extradition. The refrain that he can “leave whenever he wants” is extremely common, with Assange’s detractors insisting that he’d never be arrested and extradited to the United States, and that he is instead hiding from (non-existent) Swedish rape charges. The narrative that Assange couldn’t possibly be hiding from the same government which tortured Chelsea Manning has been aggressively promulgated by mainstream outlets like the The Guardian, as in this article by James Ball from earlier this year titled “The only barrier to Julian Assange leaving Ecuador’s embassy is pride”, claiming that “The WikiLeaks founder is unlikely to face prosecution in the US.”
Ball’s article includes the following galaxy-brained excerpts:
“Visitors, like fish, stink in three days.”
“There is no public criminal case against Assange or WikiLeaks in the US, though Assange frequently says there is evidence of sealed indictments against him and his associates, and there have been publicly disclosed surveillance warrants against WikiLeaks staff, as well as FBI interest in Assange and his current and former co-workers (including me, as I worked with WikiLeaks for a few months in 2010 and 2011). There is no real reason to believe anything has changed with Assange’s situation in the US.”
“The problem for both sides is that neither wants to lose face: Assange wants to be a symbol of resistance against an overreaching US state, and does not want to admit his asylum was about his personal actions and not those of WikiLeaks. Ecuador does not want to suggest it made a mistake in granting Assange asylum.”
Ball was at best completely wrong, and at worst knowingly lying about the very real possibility of secret US charges. We know that the charges are from the US government, so they’ve got nothing to do with any rape or bail violation allegations. But the narrative that Assange is a stinky, stinky weirdo hiding in a cupboard has been so aggressively promulgated by imperial propagandists like Ball it’s (for me at least) literally impossible to talk about Assange’s plight on social media without some stranger coming up and spewing it all over the conversation.
Herpa derpa derp duhhhhhhhttps://t.co/kxxPnC2Enr pic.twitter.com/PSUq5BVuGz
— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) November 17, 2018
And it’s no mystery why that is. The alternative to making Assange the creepy rapist hiding from justice would be to acknowledge the possibility of what we now know for certain: that a vast, sprawling superpower, with so many extremely tight alliances that it is effectively the center of a globe-spanning empire, is working to extradite an Australian journalist from an Ecuadorian embassy in the United Kingdom so that it can punish him for publishing facts. Much, much easier to have him be the stinky cupboard man than the center of an assault on speech with implications stretching to all future generations and every corner of the globe.
Julian Assange founded an innovative leak outlet on the premise that corrupt power can be fought with truth and transparency. Corrupt power responded by silencing, persecuting and smearing him. In so doing they succeeded in slowing down the leaks, minimizing the impact of publications, and nullifying Assange’s ability to defend himself, and in exchange they have publicly proved that his thesis was, and is, absolutely correct. There is a power establishment which uses lies and secrecy to manipulate and deceive us, and it hates having the light of truth shone upon it more than anything. We know that for certain now. There is no doubt whatsoever.
Julian Assange was never hiding from justice. Julian Assange is, and always has been, hiding from injustice. He has been proven right about his reasons for seeking political asylum from Ecuador, as he has been proven right about so very much before.
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29 responses to “The Empire Keeps Proving Assange Right About Everything”
The day of whistleblowers coming forward is long gone! This basically boils down to punishing Assange because the information he released, embarrassed and prove what a den of thieves, liars, and murderers, the US government is, and has been, since FOREVER! Despite these truths, the vast majority of Americans believe whatever the MSM and US government feeds them.
References & links to those like Ball, who get it so wrong, intentionally or un-, are all the reader needs. Quoting them extensively, as you tend to do, slows down and gets in the way of your insightful analysis, which is what I’m here for. I feel compelled to edit out most of the quoted drivel when I pass your articles on to others, just so they won’t lose interest before they get to the good stuff.
“Rogue journalist”, eh? I like the concept. Perhaps you’ll be the one to break the state seal on this one: http://losthorizons.com/A/TheConversation.htm
While I suppose that I could be wrong (no time to research that), I do believe that it is unreasonable for the U.S. to charge Assange, or anyone else, with espionage, unless that person was complicit in the actual ‘theft’ of the documents in question. Mere receipt of them cannot be construed to be espionage, nor can their being printed in the exact form in which they were received.
Furthermore, as Assange is not an American citizen, nor has he visited the U. S., I don’t see where the U.S. government has a leg to stand on. In my view, Edward Snowden is a hero, as is Assange. The major difference is that Snowden is a U.S. citizen so, no matter how wrong it may be, the U.S. government could bring charges against him, but I see nothing that would justify any U.S. charges against Assange.
Also, if we go one step further and look at the dictionary definition of espionage, it says that it is “the practice of spying or of using spies, typically by governments to obtain political and military information.” I see no reasonable way that Assange could possibly be considered to be a government. That would more likely seem to apply to the fraudulent Russiagate accusations.
An URGENT read for ALL Australians!
“Pence unveils Plan For US-Australian Pacific Base”
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-11-17/pence-unveils-plan-us-australian-pacific-base-stirring-tensions-china
Australians MUST speak up loudly on this, we are becoming a TARGET for US wars against ANY country it chooses!
“Accidentally Revealed.” Yeah, right. And, Britain just “accidentally” ignored a UN Human Rights ruling that Assange was “being arbitrarily detained in violation of International Law.” And, he will be just “accidentally” tortured. And, (mistaken) Leaks will “accidentally” provide details of all his (False) confessions obtained through endless “enhanced interrogations.”
But, then again (and again, and again), these types of worldwide repercussions often happen with “simple copy-paste error[s].”
https://commons.commondreams.org/t/dangerous-path-for-democracy-and-dire-threat-to-press-freedom-trump-dojs-secret-charges-against-wikileaks-julian-assange-revealed/57590/7
Christine Assange: Julian in ‘Critical Danger,’ ‘Torture’
Australia is part of the “Five Eyes” network, which is described by Wikipedia as follows:
The “Five Eyes” (FVEY) refers to an alliance comprising Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States. These countries are bound by the multilateral UKUSA Agreement for joint cooperation in signals intelligence, military intelligence, and human intelligence. In recent years, documents of the FVEY have shown that they are intentionally spying on one another’s citizens and sharing the collected information with each other in order to circumvent restrictive domestic regulations on spying.[8]
As the surveillance capabilities of the FVEY continue to increase to keep up to pace with technological advancements, a global surveillance system has been gradually developed to capture the communications of entire populations across national borders.[9] The following list contains a handful of targets of the FVEY who are public figures in various fields. In order for a person to be included in the list, there must be well-documented evidence based on reliable sources, such as leaked or declassified FVEY documents or whistleblower accounts, which demonstrate that the person involved is, or was, intentionally targeted for surveillance.
This started right after WWII and was kept secret until recently. Also see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UKUSA_Agreement
So you see, 1984 was 1984 and had been for quite a while, since WWII’s aftermath.
But, hey, let’s celebrate James Acosta’s recovering press credentials and the protection of the right to be boorish rather than protection of real journalist heroes, after all, “see no evil, hear no evil, report no evil” is the current motto of the monkeys who control the MSM (my apologies to simians everywhere for lumping them with faux journalist propaganda peddlers).
I know. It’s so ironic I just want to puke.
“Julian Assange founded an innovative leak outlet on the premise that corrupt power can be fought with truth and transparency,” and Tor? Tor, for those who don’t know, is, as Yasha Levine explains in “Surveillance Valley,” essentially the dark web, used by child pornographers, assassins for hire and ads for assassins, people selling weapons and drugs and, of course, intelligence community people.
Julian Assange made a witting or unwitting huge mistake in endorsing Tor’s biggest, cool and creepy, salesperson, Jacob Appelbaum. Edward Snowden is another big fail in that regard, having performed a similar service (salesperson for Tor). EFF is another faker.
“…a vast, sprawling superpower, with so many extremely tight alliances that it is effectively the center of a globe-spanning empire” you could call Condor World. There’s no terror here folks. Nothing at all but the love of God, aka USA.
” extradite an Australian journalist from an Ecuadorian embassy in the United Kingdom so that it can punish him for publishing facts.” Meanwhile the Australian government is M.I.A.
To its shame.
The current and any probable 2019 government is useless – worse than useless – re Assange. Can anyone suggest any Australian MP who might be interested in making a statement, at least?
The Australian government, like the US Congress and other “Western” governments, has been bought and paid for.
Austrlia’s political status is indistinguishable from that of Puerto Rico: a US province with no political rights.
I discovered in my graduate law research studies on international cybercrime that Australian scholars are very skeptical, almost scornful, about the US’s much more stringent formal First Amendment requirements. They think we are positively strange for enshrining free speech in our constitution even when it arguably jeopardizes the state and think it is unnecessary. They do not have the same formal traditions of limited government quite as much as we supposedly do. The stress in Australia is placed on protecting the state rather than the individual when a conflict arises. Therefore, it is logical that Assange is not likely to get help from Australia, in my opinion.
Don’t forget, the whole farce started in Sweden.
The Australian govt. is spineless…lapdog of US/UK.Pathetic bunch.
Absolutely right, Caitlin. Julian Assange spread the truth, and what’s worse, with evidence to back it up, and to the imperialists and their death squads that was a crime. If the former Soviet Union had done this to anyone back in the day, the United States would have jumped on it and howled and raged about “communist” lack of freedom. Of course now, some elements would like it to be the Russians behind it. Unfortunately, Chelsea (Bradley) Manning is not a Russian. She it was, however, who provided the material to Wikileaks, and as a responsible publisher, Assange published it. Time was when the NY Times published the Pentagon Papers. Time was when the Washington Post broke the Watergate story. Those times are long gone.
bravo. I disagree on a fraction of it but nice work and writing. One thing though, why would you refer to “Qanon cultists”? Was that tongue in cheek?
Tonights thoughts. This of course relates to Julians freedom of speech.
Sober up, fella!
James Ball is a self-righteous twit.
A naive immature twerp, for sure.
I saw the smear job this morning on the “news”. They flat out lie. They are going to railroad him for sure.
Nice summary. The dystopia approaches at an ever accelerating pace.
And San Francisco currently has the perfect weather for it.
Warmer with thunderstorms approaching in Brisbane
Which Brisbane? Brisbane, California, south of San Francisco, or Brisbane Australia?