And there it is. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been charged by the Trump administration’s Justice Department with 17 counts of violating the Espionage Act, carrying a maximum sentence of 175 years in prison. Exactly as Assange and his defenders have been warning would happen for nearly a decade.
The indictment, like the one which preceded it last month with Assange’s arrest, is completely fraudulent, as it charges Assange with “crimes” that are indistinguishable from conventional journalistic practices. The charges are based on the same exact evidence which was available to the Obama administration, which as journalist Glenn Greenwald noted last year declined to prosecute Assange citing fear of destroying press freedoms.
Hanna Bloch-Wehba, an associate professor at Drexel University’s Thomas R. Kline School of Law, has called the indictment “a worst-case, nightmare, mayday scenario for First Amendment enthusiasts.” Bloch-Wehba explains that that the indictment’s “theories for liability rest heavily on Assange’s relationship with Manning and his tendency to encourage Manning to continue to bring WikiLeaks material” in a way that “is not readily distinguishable from many reporter-source relationships cultivated over a period of time.”
One of the versions of the New York Times‘ report on the new Assange indictment, which has since been edited out but has been preserved here in a quote by Slate, said that “officials would not engage with questions about how the actions they said were felonies by Mr. Assange differed from ordinary investigative journalism. Notably, The New York Times, among many other news organizations, obtained precisely the same archives of documents from WikiLeaks, without authorization from the government.”
This is the issue, in three sentences. https://t.co/VCt9zAzK7s pic.twitter.com/7AjIDW2Avl
— Jameel Jaffer (@JameelJaffer) May 23, 2019
Press freedom organizations have been condemning these new espionage charges in stark and unequivocal language.
“Put simply, these unprecedented charges against Julian Assange and WikiLeaks are the most significant and terrifying threat to the First Amendment in the 21st century,” reads a statement by Freedom of the Press Foundation Executive Director Trevor Timm. “The Trump administration is moving to explicitly criminalize national security journalism, and if this prosecution proceeds, dozens of reporters at the New York Times, Washington Post and elsewhere would also be in danger. The ability of the press to publish facts the government would prefer remain secret is both critical to an informed public and a fundamental right. This decision by the Justice Department is a massive and unprecedented escalation in Trump’s war on journalism, and it’s no exaggeration to say the First Amendment itself is at risk. Anyone who cares about press freedom should immediately and wholeheartedly condemn these charges.”
“The indictment of Julian Assange under the Espionage Act for publishing classified information is an attack on the First Amendment and a threat to all journalists everywhere who publish information that governments would like to keep secret,” reads a statement by Committee to Protect Journalists Executive Director Joel Simon. “Press freedom in the United States and around the world is imperiled by this prosecution.”
“For the first time in the history of our country, the government has brought criminal charges under the Espionage Act against a publisher for the publication of truthful information,” reads a statement by the ACLU. “This is a direct assault on the First Amendment. These charges are an extraordinary escalation of the Trump administration’s attacks on journalism, establishing a dangerous precedent that can be used to target all news organizations that hold the government accountable by publishing its secrets. The charges against Assange are equally dangerous for US journalists who uncover the secrets of other nations. If the US can prosecute a foreign publisher for violating our secrecy laws, there’s nothing preventing China, or Russia, from doing the same.”
BREAKING: For the first time in the history of our country, the government has brought criminal charges under the Espionage Act against a publisher for the publication of truthful information. This is a direct assault on the First Amendment. https://t.co/RJxjFPfkHe
— ACLU (@ACLU) May 23, 2019
Also opposing the new indictment, far too late, have been popular pundits from mainstream liberal news outlets.
“The Espionage indictment of Assange for publishing is an extremely dangerous, frontal attack on the free press. Bad, bad, bad,” tweeted MSNBC’s Chris Hayes.
“Today the Trump DOJ becomes the first administration to ever charge a publisher with *espionage* — an assertive, unprecedented legal crackdown on the traditional rights and protections for publishers,” tweeted MSNBC’s Ari Melber. “That is a legal fact, regardless of one’s views of Julian Assange. The new Trump DOJ indictment treats activities most top newspapers engage in — gathering and publishing classified material — as criminal plotting, claiming Assange ‘conspired’ with and ‘aided and abetted’ his source in the pursuit of classified material.”
One need only to look at the outraged “this is a horrible take” comments underneath these tweets to see that these condemnations are coming long after the propaganda they’ve helped advance against WikiLeaks has seeped well into the bloodstream. It’s impossible to tell the same group of people day after day that Assange is an evil Nazi Putin puppet rapist who smells bad and mistreats his cat, and then persuade them to respond to a depraved Trump administration agenda against that same person with an appropriate level of resistance.
I find no satisfaction in saying ‘I told you so’ to those who for 9 years have scorned us for warning this moment would come. I care for journalism. If you share my feeling you take a stand NOW. Either you are a worthless coward or you defend Assange, WikiLeaks and Journalism. https://t.co/NkUfZWYan8
— Kristinn Hrafnsson (@khrafnsson) May 23, 2019
“I find no satisfaction in saying ‘I told you so’ to those who for 9 years have scorned us for warning this moment would come,” tweeted WikiLeaks Editor-in-Chief Kristinn Hrafnsson. “I care for journalism. If you share my feeling you take a stand NOW. Either you are a worthless coward or you defend Assange, WikiLeaks and Journalism.”
Indeed, WikiLeaks staff and their supporters have been warning of this for many years, only to be dismissed as paranoid conspiracy theorists and rape apologists by smearers who insisted Assange was merely avoiding rape charges by taking asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in London back in 2012. There are many tweets by the WikiLeaks Twitter account warning that the US is trying to charge Assange under the Espionage Act all the way back in 2010, and they’ve been warning about it over and over again ever since, but nobody’s listened.
“The only barrier to Julian Assange leaving Ecuador’s embassy is pride,” blared a Guardian headline last year by the odious James Ball, with the sub-header “The WikiLeaks founder is unlikely to face prosecution in the US, charges in Sweden have been dropped – and for the embassy, he’s lost his value as an icon.”
Assange has been warning for years that this was coming. He’s been unequivocal about the fact that he was perfectly willing to participate in the Swedish investigation from the beginning and was only taking asylum with Ecuador due to fear of extradition and political prosecution in the US, which Ecuador explicitly stated were its reasons for granting him asylum. He was absolutely correct. He’s been correct the entire time. History has vindicated him. He was right and his critics were wrong.
We are also already seeing Assange vindicated in his warnings of what his prosecution would mean for the free press. He hasn’t even been extradited yet and we’re already seeing a greatly escalated war on journalism being implemented, with new developments in just the last few days like a San Francisco journalist now being charged with conspiracy for receiving internal documents from the San Francisco Police Department, and a prominent French journalist being summoned by police for reporting on corruption in the Macron government.
WIKILEAKS RESPONDS TO ESPIONAGE ACT INDICTMENT AGAINST ASSANGE: UNPRECEDENTED ATTACK ON FREE PRESS pic.twitter.com/F0iUyr0R7F
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) May 24, 2019
All this of course begs the question: what else has he been right about? Anyone with an ounce of intellectual honesty who has previously had their doubts about Assange will necessarily begin asking themselves this question now. It’s worth reviewing the things Assange has been saying about Russia not being the source of the 2016 Democratic Party emails that WikiLeaks published, about what really happened in Sweden, and about his general understanding of what’s going on in the world with opaque and unaccountable power structures leading us all down a very dark and dangerous path.
If you open your mind to the possibility that Assange has been right about more than you’ve given him credit for previously, the implications can shatter your world. Give it a try. There’s no longer any legitimate reason not to.
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28 responses to “How Many Times Must Assange Be Proven Right Before People Start Listening?”
The scum rises to the top. The very worst, evil people rule over the rest of us. This is the tragic history of humans on this planet. Unless this is stopped, the very worst outcome for all of us is inevitable. Rich people and their pawns are that scum that we need to free ourselves from.
Sounds harsh BUT 100 percenttrue.
99 percent of Western Sheeple are asleep at the wheel.
Without freedom of speech and the press we are screwed!
Its clear to me that is where this scum is taking us .The Fourth Reich is alive and well.
I fully expect in the near future passage of some sort of Enabling Act just like good ole Adolph did.These scumbag deep statists are good very good.While the sheeple play and watch superheroes and grossly overpaid atheletes etc the foundations of Freedom and Democracy are being destroyed bit by bit by a Fascist Corporate Elite.
Things are not going to end well .I feel for the current and subsequent generations who will be the benefactors of this dystopian envinroment
I think that first we have to change the terminology we use. It is not a government, not in USA, Canada, Australia or anywhere else in western society. It is a for-profit corporate de facto authority controlled by the Vatican / OWO that has forced its way into our countries and led us to believe that it owns the landmass. It doesn’t.
The People own the landmass. We have simply abdicated our responsibility to protect our landmass and thrown one another under the bus to ensure we can personally survive, instead of standing with all those oppressed at all times.
So, once we clear our heads and realize we are up against the most depraved corporate entities mankind has ever produced, we, the billions who are suffering at their hands, will then see the way to end corporatocracy and enslavement forever.
As the Pope said, WWIII has already started, with silent weapons for the silent war a-blazing. It is waged in piecemeal fashion, attacking us on every flank. Yet, there are billions of us to their few hundred thousand, we do nothing. How does the Pope know this? The Roman Catholic Church has orchestrated every major atrocity, war and installation of despots, dictators and psychopathic leaders since 300 AD. It made Hitler, the Nazis, Mussolini what they were…read world leading authority on the Vatican, Avro Manhattan’s two books.
The depressing truth of your statements is reminiscent of the axiom, “ Never Give a Sucker a Fair Break”…
Royal Elites are subordinate to the power of Jewish Rabbis and Priests in the mix of all things about the money changers and the religious “Free Lunch” The power to control the dystopian mind set is just as bad as sanctions placed on governments and people like Julian Assange… These are Talmudic in nature, because it uses the law of divine right. The old school Hebrew patriarchs saw divine fate as a signal that the gods favored the intellegencia of gifted humans with extraordinary foresight. They christened themselves the orators of the law… These gifted men gave us attorneys like the Rabbis of intellectual junk and magic like the Talmudic Kabalistic Zohar…Voodoo Magic and conjure in the form of superstition and fear for the goyim masses, as well the bondage and subjugation to the lords of their kingdoms, as well, the riches they amassed under the umbrella of the mosaic clusterfuck… yet men will follow in their ignorance of their true human spirit as they worship the lesser gods of intelligencia and conjured illusions of divine right. The devil is In the “thought”, elevated by behaviour means… that men conjure in the creative mind to keep the masses of believers under control… They us wars to divide the essence of the true human spirit, contrary to working towards emancipation from our illusionary masters.
Today the modern world is reminiscent of the old ancient ways of dictation through voodoo magic called modern intelligentsia… the sciences are incorporated into a modern dystopia of past powers of religions that control the mind of the state educated commoner… the matrix of that system finds the best minds to incorporated into the system and keep the ponzi going. Yet we are thought that we are emancipated by our intelligence… but it is not natures way… It’s the lords of Flatbush and the shaman soothsayers world of illusion and fakery in the truth of injustice…
There is no justice for the commoner! If the man Jesus did exist… His commoner mentality crossed paths with this injustice long before our time… Unhappy Jews, aka, Hebrews were fed up with right by might rules they were subjugated to by the psychopaths of their time, minutia and self absorbed narcissistic deviance . Self appointed DNA and mythological bitterness created the divine right of so called Sumerian lore and the genealogy of temporal hell on earth. They were looking for mental freedom from bondage to shamanic thought and illusionary cosmic fake reality’s, The latter, conjured by the religious order of these dystopian police of their age. Rulers good and bad were the failings of the commoners of Flatbush…
We now are regressing as history repeats it self… “Atlas Shrugged” as the one percent control the power of life an death… sanctions, war, then patriots that are used to keep the lords in power, spill the blood in the hornets nest of dystopian religious and secular false intelligentsia. Mother earth purges the men that live by the sword… The innocent are players in the dystopian fallout of complacent material games of materialism as part of the fodder of war by the sword. There are no righteous in this complacency, as children of the corn have been born into the behavioural ignorance of the human stain of their parents! There are no innocent… just ignorant players in a game of life and death.
Depressing is just the idea we’d conjure to explain the latter!
Neoliberalism is the agenda to roll back all of our hard-won rights and protections. Why? To this nation’s policy controllers, a healthy middle class and political power are considered a threat, unlike other democratic countries.
The major flaw of Neoliberalism:
John Nash (A Beautiful Mind) put forward a game theoretic formulation which argued that a system driven purely by self-interest could maintain equilibrium as everyone’s self-interest would be balanced by everyone else’s
Nash won a Nobel Prize in economics
His most famous game was called “Fuck You Buddy” where the only way to win was to betray your opponent
Reinforced priority of competition and irrelevance of cooperation for personal or group strategies
Paranoid schizophrenia later acknowledged as a cause of this excessively individualistic approach to social relations
Yet, a whole global economic system continues based on the mental illness of one of its major theorists.
Toward the end of his life, Nash himself admitted that his game theory was incorrect.
Even before John Nash, Friedrich von Hayek, an Austrian economist considered the father of neoliberalism, did not believe in social justice or anything ‘public’. Today, we are seeing the effects of privatization of everything, the ‘greed is good’ mantra of fellow libertarian Milton Friedman that has taken predatory capitalism repeatedly beyond the brink of disaster. It has become THE threat to humankind and the natural environment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5u5JpvuiTQ
It’s evident that progressive policies are increasingly under attack as the goal to turn the entire world fascist is actually underway:
The Struggle For Our Future
“Netanyahu’s problem is that the post-World War II international laws and treaties seeking to prevent aggressive nationalism, racism, and the oppression of minorities now stand in the way of Israeli ambitions. So, oddly, the only way Israel can realize its Zionist ambitions while also being seen as a “normal” country—one that is in tune with the international community— is by changing international norms.
That is, Israel now seeks to undermine the progressive international environment that was, in good part, designed to protect the remnants of European Jews. And it would seem, many of those who voted for Netanyahu knew exactly what sort of society they were endorsing.
It would seem that we are in a decisive struggle that will determine the shape of our future. Will it be reactionary or progressive in nature? Organized conservatism has evolved into a reactionary force throughout much of the West, and the hard-fought-for, progressive aspects of our world are in serious danger.
The fate of Donald Trump, the U.S.’s ersatz Mussolini, in the 2020 election might be a pivotal moment in this struggle. In the meantime the struggle seems over in Israel—the reactionaries have won.”
http://tothepointanalyses.com/the-struggle-for-our-future/?fbclid=IwAR00t5f7rtI10Dco7DgsYrxe–6tyU0B578Z9anSyawRvKIESuekrW1ODek
Making Progressives The Enemy
“The truth of the matter is that the Zionists are hell-bent on moving the world backwards: back to the days when racist conquest was mistaken for the spread of civilization, when efforts to institutionalize standards of human and civil rights were seen as impingements on sovereignty, back to the days when no one gave a second thought to oppressed peoples (including oppressed Jews).”
http://tothepointanalyses.com/making-progressives-the-enemy/?fbclid=IwAR0ebXAngJpSZY0-WdB-zOgfqWnGsmYzqkYMP4A69kqbHrTI6WqjSpWM4Ow
The Zionists totally control the USA, UK, France, Canada and Australia, politically and in the media and other brainwashing systems. They control as much of the rest of the West as they desire. All through straight money power and the ‘antisemitism’ scam. They are, in fact, de facto world rulers, save for China, their greatest fear. There will be no Confucian or Maoist-Zionist cabal or movement take over China, and the Chinese dare to treat Jews as fellow human beings, nothing more, nothing less. And that is the worst ‘antisemitism’ of all-not knowing your place.
Jean Ziegler the former UN special ambassador for the right to food explains” German fascism needed six war years to kill 56 million people .The neoliberal economic system does this easily in one year” We must focus on ourselves and ask why we do not react with proper moral indignation and counter-measure to totalitarian thought system with such destructive consequences we are responsible for our actions and non -actions and for the society in which we live. Start with not consuming we are citizen and not consumers. Neoliberalism is the greatest global redistribution project of history using a very polished psychologically indoctrination system to pervade all areas of our lives.
Since the US government is obviously determined to prevent any free and open comment on its plans and actions, the only course remaining is to assume – at all times – that its motives are the very worst, and its intentions hostile to all decency and humanity.
Which of course has been the case for a very long time already.
It’s very disappointing to see what a large percentage of our fellow citizens can look at the same facts we see and fail to realize the truth of your words.
A comment on the indictments: The authority to charge a crime is useful, but becomes geometrically more useful with the discretion NOT to charge.
Mockingbird on steroids.
Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning are Knights in Shining Armour embattled with the evil dragon of US imperialism.
The 17 indictments spell the death knell, not only for Julian Assange (ifTrump’s slavering dogs of war get their blood-stained hands on him), but also for freedom of an honest press all over the world.
The phoneys who hid behind the bogus “sexual assault” allegations are now fully exposed for the cowards, windbags, and unprincipled stooges of US imperialism that they are.
Now it is clear for all with eyes to see that Assange and Wikileaks are in the front trench of a ruthless war against a free press and freedom of speech by the killing machine of US imperialism. It is lining up two more Wars for Oil in Venezuela and Iran, and does not want any Journalist exposing its war crimes there too.
It is time for every decent human being in the world to stand up and be counted in the counter-offensive against Trump and his salivating Dogs of War, Bolton and Pompeo. They threaten to darg the world into a Third, Nuclear World War.
They can only be stopped – and Assange and Manning can only be freed – by a mass uprising of the world’s working classes.
The petit-bourgeois, fake radical, “identity politics” brigade has been called to arms over this issue, and every single one of them – including Corbyn, Diane Abbot, and company – have been exposed as drafty dodgers.
The Julian Assange case is the 21st century equivalent of the Dreyfus case in 19th Century France, only with even more momentous political and world significance.
All those who genuinely support human rights, peace, and justice will rally to the support of Assange and Manning. All those who don’t, or who engage in dissembling and equivocation of any kind, are deserters and traitors to the cause of humanity.
If Trump and his Dogs of War are not stopped, they will drag us all into a nuclear holocaust. Where will the pathetic, anaemic, and self-interested “identity politics” agenda be then? Reduced to ashes like everyone and everything else.
FREE JULIAN ASSANGE AND CHELSEA MANNING!! FORWARD TO THE WORLD SOCIALIST REVOLUTION!! JAIL THE WARMONGERS AND MURDERERS!!
The United States is becoming like the Soviet Union. This indictment is of a piece with Trump’s abrogation of treaties, disregard for environmental regulations, or other violations of the rules.
Still, I thought the “Justice Department” was supposed to wait until after Assange was extradited before throwing these extra charges at him. I wonder why they did this now?
Why now?? In my estimation this is why:
https://nypost.com/2019/05/23/trump-orders-intelligence-agencies-help-barr-with-probe-into-russia-investigation/
Repeated emails and communications to “our” government leaders go unanswered.Julian would be getting more assistance as a convicted drug runner in Bali.It’s a disgrace!
Thanks, Caitlin, for your succinct eloquent truth telling!
I am glag you mentioned about US.gov going after a foreigner: Julian was never a US citizen as far as I have ever heard, nor ever pledged any oaths of allegiance to the USA! Australian citizenship is now nothing more than a worthless suzerain colony if its citizenry is obliged to self censor to oblige sycophants of foreign countries!
Now the clowns will parade around in another day for Memorial Day which is a farcical high mass for war profiteer cannibals pretending to care about defending constitutional freedoms while standing aloft the bones of millions killed in illegal wars!
Meanwhile Trump insults his hapless deplorable voters by kowtowing to the Clinton Cheney clique. That these servants of war blame Wikileaks for their own failures to abide by laws and protect their data will be recorded in history and will become the true memorial.
Let the hunger strikes begin!
Australia must be competing with Britain for “poodle” status.
And the Australian government continues to sit on it’s hands like the good little Five Eyes lackey that it is.
In our minds we know that the ” shit ” is coming; we know that the “shit” is going to stink; all that we can ever hope for is that the ” shit” will forever clog up the toilet and the “facade of freedom, democracy, and the rule of law under the United States Constitution” no longer is believed by the populace anywhere!!!! President Trump is determined to ignore the United States Constitution and he clearly dares everyone to try and stop him!!!
“Without a Free Press, Democracy cannot exist.”
Thomas Jefferson
And the answer is blowing in the wind as the best singer bard said. Seriously between one or two possible war coming (Venezuela, Iran/q, Syria) and Julian and others whistle blowers treatment by US gov people have to start organize. It is not hard two come up with banner’s ideas. My platform – Richard Wolff, Noam Chomsky may speak from his home. We might starts to think about speeches and share ideas. I don’t want status quo to continue, that may end up with military revolt and blood all over, or antisemitic pogroms from ultra right. I am Jew from Leningrad. 30 years in US, NYC metro area. B well Caitlin!
Good thing the Trump Administration is SO heavy handed in this pursuit.
Maybe they’ll keep going, adding “global warming” to Julian’s list of alleged “high crimes”?
Generally crude and buffoonish in its propagandizing of the US population, this Administration has already pushed the general population’s BS detectors to the “HI” setting.
(except of course for the ~31% that would eagerly follow Trump right into Hell)
Perhaps the best would be for Assange to be extradited to the US, put on trial, and EXONERATED.
Yes, a VERY high stakes situation for Julian!
But a US Court exoneration would set him free in the western world and pretty much neuter the US from further messing with him. And, I don’t believe that the US Government could appeal or re-try such an exoneration verdict.
Regardless, Wikileaks needs to be morphed into some kind of a non-human, faceless, automated (pseudo blockchain), type of enterprise. Thus depriving despotic regimes of ANY individual or group to flak, incarcerate, or kill.
Long before the “Citizens United Decision”, “The US Espionage Act of 1917” was, and remains, a very odious instrument for public suppression by our military-industrial complex and its elected officials.
“(except of course for the ~31% that would eagerly follow Trump right into Hell)”
Don’t forget that there is about an equal number who would follow Hillary (or whomever her replacement turns out to be.) Between them a solid majority.
” WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been charged by the Trump administration’s Justice Department with 17 counts of violating the Espionage Act, carrying a maximum sentence of 175 years in prison.”
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And the US is conducting an ongoing economic and mercenary war against Venezuela.
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And the US is helping Saudia Arabia commit genocide in Yemen.
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And the US tore up a legally binding agreement with Iran; placing illegal economic sanctions against Iran and threatening any nation who does business with Iran with economic warfare, even though Iran was fullfilling its obligations under the JCPOA.
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And the US is still trying to do a regime change in Syria; repeatedly falsely accusing the Assad govt. of using chemical weapons; illegally occupying part of Syria and supporting terrorists in Syria who are trying to overthrow the Assad govt.; declaring the Syrian Golan to be part of Israhell.
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And the US is still conducting a war of aggression within Afghanistan while occupying Afghanistan.
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And the US conducted a coup in Ukraine.
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And the US is still accusing Russia of things it never did, and no doubt more of those things are being cooked up as I type in order to justify more and more economic war.
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Etc. Etc. Etc. I know it. You know it. We all know it. WTF can we do about it? The same thing we did about the Vietnam invasion and genocide in the 1960s and early ’70s, which accomplished exactly zero? The only thing that’s happened to the US govt. in the last 50 years is that, internationally, it has become even more of a threat to the survival of humanity.
..
The good thing is that the US Elite are now fighting among themselves, more and more violently and looking more and more downright ridiculous with each passing day. I’m hoping to see some fisticuffs in the chambers of congress in the near future. Something tells me it won’t be as entertaining as those Ukrainian parliament battles.
..
And speaking of fisticuffs, maybe next year we can all participate in a repeat of the history of the DNC convention in Chicago in 1968. So mark your placards, go out and buy some heavy-duty protective gear, including gas masks, to press the flesh with the wonderful riot police who will greet you with smiles on their faces and batons in their hands in the streets in front of Milwaukee’s Fiserv Forum July 13-16 for the wonderul D convention.
..
Then from August 24 to 27, travel to the streets in front of the Spectrum Center in Charlotte, North Carolina — a state that I’m sure just loves, as they used to say in the ’60s, “outside agitators” coming in to stir things up. There, it will be more like one of those annual Civil War re-enactments that are so popular in cities where famous Civil War battles took place.
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Make sure you bring plently of bandages and powerful pain killers for the festivities, because the riot police of today are far better equipped than they were in the ’60s. Infinite fiat dollars will fund the whole shebang.
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“You know it. We all know it. WTF can we do about it? The same thing we did about the Vietnam invasion and genocide in the 1960s and early ’70s, which accomplished exactly zero?” — Ish
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And yet you advocate more of the same?
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We both agree that gradual, generational change isn’t an option — all that will happen is the police surveillance state will grow larger, more intrusive and overbearing…
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Then, when the government begins attempting widespread weapons confiscation (and some Presidential wannabes are proposing exactly that) individual and scattered resistance will be cast by the MSM (will there even be an alt media by then?) as either deranged or homegrown terrorism.
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Which is exactly why we should be tendering blank ballots at the next election — at every election.
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Turn it into a meme, make it viral, underground and popular if at all possible. All we need do is agree that elite corruption and governance is killing the world, the nation — us — and it must be stopped now.
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Even if we fail, at least we can gauge our numbers and political strength…
What can Australians do to prod our government to show some backbone and stand up to the US, UK, for telling the truth re war crimes committed in Iraq and Afghanistan. I am so ashamed of our so-called ‘Christian’ PM and his foreign minister Ms Payne for not assisting an Australian citizen.
Scummo locked up refugee children until they went mad, and/or attempted suicide-and he’s proud of it. As Treasurer he brought in vicious austerity targeting the poor and defenceless. His tax cuts are designed to massively further enrich the wealthy. He is as much a follower of Jesus Christ as Ted Bundy.
As usual, a first rate article. I have just recently discovered your work, Caitlin – it is superb, and provides real insight into the issues of our day that count. Thank you so much, Robert Thorpe, Toronto, Canada
I’m as ashamed as the Germans that found out what the Nazis were doing in their name and behind their backs.
Like Israel, the U.S. has become what we fought and died against, not that long ago.
I wonder if I live in a dystopian1984, in a Government ruled by fascists, Under Nazi rule or am I just lost in a nightmare?
This sickens me. As an American, I am totally ashamed of, and disgusted with, my government. I would call or write letters but what’s the point? The Powers That Be have shown time-and-again that they don’t care about the concerns of the hoi polloi. They are making the same mistake other rulers have made throughout history and they will wake up one day and find their necks on the chopping block – a day that can’t come soon enough for me.