The western world has a very high opinion of itself and its supposed values, and its treatment of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange makes a lie of it all.
Truth. Justice. Freedom. Democracy. We are taught from an early age that these are the sacred values our society upholds with the utmost reverence, and that we are very fortunate to have been born in a part of the world which holds such virtue.
You see this haughty self-righteousness pop up on a daily basis in the most influential circles on earth, from the way US presidents are still to this day referred to as the “leader of the free world”, to US Secretary of State Tony Blinken recently babbling about the “shared values” of the “free and open rules-based order”, to Magnitsky Act manipulator Bill Browder recently referring to the US-centralized power alliance as “the civilized world” in a bid to get Australia up to pace with the rest of the empire’s China hawkishness.
Australia is under pressure to pass its own version of a Magnitsky Act after it failed to join the civilized world in sanctioning Chinese officials over the Uyghur concentration camps https://t.co/H0c7J4En4b
— Sir William Browder KCMG (@Billbrowder) April 3, 2021
All of this is nonsense. All of this is fake. Everything the western world believes about itself and its values is invalidated by its treatment of Julian Assange.
The western world does not value truth.
If the western world valued truth, there wouldn’t be a journalist languishing in Belmarsh Prison for publishing it.
11 years ago today WikiLeaks published Collateral Murder. It was a defining moment in our understanding of the Iraq war.
The publisher, Julian Assange, faces a 175 year sentence for publishing evidence of such crimes, government abuses & corruption https://t.co/7ZquWpnImm pic.twitter.com/cgXkjouO02
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) April 5, 2021
Julian Assange is in prison entirely because of his authentic publications of the 2010 Manning leaks. He remains locked up for no other reason than the Biden administration’s efforts to appeal a British court’s rejection of its extradition request to try him in the United States for those entirely truthful publications.
If the western world valued truth, Julian Assange would be free. He never would have been imprisoned in the first place. He would be a celebrated hero.
The western world does not value justice.
Join our Protests 11th April 2021 Marking two years of #Assange in HMP Belmarsh https://t.co/kY0t22k4aQ via @greekemmy
— Rotkehlchen (@Buche1789) April 5, 2021
If the western world valued justice, Julian Assange would not have been forced into arbitrary detention for years trying to avoid a known (and since proven) campaign to extradite him to the United States. He would not have been dragged out of the Ecuadorian embassy by force, and he would not have then been imprisoned for a further two years and counting. He would not have endured a Kafkaesque show trial culminating in the judge proclaiming him mentally unfit but still keeping him locked up in Belmarsh anyway pending a US extradition to a nation in which he stands no chance at a fair trial and would be completely silenced and disappeared under US Special Administration Measures.
The western world does not value freedom.
https://twitter.com/SilvermanJacob/status/1377942746804142085?s=20
If the western world valued freedom it would not be gravely imperiling press freedoms around the world by making a public example of what happens to an award-winning journalist who reveals inconvenient truths about the empire, and working to strengthen a legal precedent which some imperialists argue has already been set for the future persecution of disobedient press.
The western world does not value democracy.
Humanity Is Making A Very Important Decision When It Comes To Assange
"We are collectively being asked a question here, and our answer to that question will determine the entire course we will take as a species."https://t.co/KHlcCOLr5w
— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) March 1, 2020
If the western world valued democracy, it would not be persecuting a journalist for trying to create a more informed voting populace. Without an informed populace, democracy has no real existence. As long as public perception is being manipulated and obscured by government secrecy and propaganda, then people aren’t casting their votes based on a clear and educated perception of reality, they’re voting based on the convenience of the powerful.
Democracy’s reliance on an informed voting populace is the only reason the press are the only explicitly named profession protected in the US Constitution, yet a member of the press is being persecuted for trying to do exactly that.
The western world does not oppose the tyrannical oppression of political dissidents.
Two related bombshell revelations following today's hearing:
1) US prosecutors are arguing the 1st amendment doesn't apply to foreign journalists;
2) #JulianAssange will be under Special Administrative Measures if extradited.@JohnWRees, @DEAcampaign, reacts to both: pic.twitter.com/m6WBoaaNqo— Mohamed Elmaazi (@MElmaazi) January 23, 2020
If the western world opposed the tyrannical suppression of political dissidents it wouldn’t be punishing a journalist for embarrassing the most powerful government on earth.
The western world does not oppose the torture of political dissidents.
How Julian #Assange was stitched up by the corrupt Swedish state, Britain and the US. Read this interview with the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Nils Melzer. It's a lesson for every journalist who challenges power and why #Assange must be freed.https://t.co/KWTFILoHKV
— John Pilger (@johnpilger) February 1, 2021
If the western world opposed the torture of political dissidents, UN Special Rapporteur on torture Nils Melzer wouldn’t have found Assange showing signs of psychological torture, and they wouldn’t be working to send him into a torturous prison system.
Melzer reports:
“The case falls into my mandate in three different ways: First, Assange published proof of systematic torture. But instead of those responsible for the torture, it is Assange who is being persecuted. Second, he himself has been ill-treated to the point that he is now exhibiting symptoms of psychological torture. And third, he is to be extradited to a country that holds people like him in prison conditions that Amnesty International has described as torture. In summary: Julian Assange uncovered torture, has been tortured himself and could be tortured to death in the United States.”
The western world purports to value truth, justice and freedom and to oppose tyranny and oppression, but if you look at how that same western world has been treating a journalist whose only proven “crime” is publishing inconvenient truths about the powerful, you see this is a lie.
We believe our society upholds noble values because that’s what we’ve been trained to believe by our schooling systems and by our media, but those same information systems have also trained us to accept a ruling model wherein a journalist is being punished for telling the truth.
We’ve been lied to.
We’ve been duped.
Assange has proven this beyond a shadow of a doubt. With his publications, yes, but first and foremost with the brutish and tyrannical response to those publications.
We all owe him a great debt for exposing the lie of the western world.
_____________________________
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50 responses to “Everything The West Claims It Values Is Invalidated By Its Treatment Of Assange”
Melbourne May Day: march to demand that the Australian government act to end the illegal imprisonment and torture of Julian Assange from Trades Hall, South Carlton https://candobetter.net/node/6116 Be there at 1:30pm and help us hold up our banner and distribute leaflets
Apologies, that the following is a duplicate of what I have already posted to https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2021/03/28/corrupt-power-cant-function-in-the-light-notes-from-the-edge-of-the-narrative-matrix/
Somehow, I was not able to see this most recent article by Caitlin Johnstone about Julian Assange. It seemed that the article, linked to above was the most recent, so that is where I first posted that comment. Nonetheless, given the urgency of this issue, I am now re-posting that post here.
James Sinnamon, 11:08pm Mon 26 April 2021
Video: Julian Assange’s father, John Shipton, interviewed prior to embarking on his “Home Run for Julian” World Tour (25/4/2021) https://candobetter.net/node/6113
On Saturday 24 April, at the iconic A1 Bakery Restaurant on Sydney Road in Melbourne’s northern suburb of Brunswick, supporters of Julian Assange had lunch to see off Julian Assange’s father John Shipton, just before he embarked on his second “Home Run for Julian” tour. He was going to visit Northern New South Wales and Southern Queensland. Then on 17 May they would depart Australia for the United States. They would firstly tour the Eastern states, including New York and Washington, D. C. Thence he would tour California. Then he planned to visit Ireland, Scotland and Britain. He will be speaking to political figures and media figures in those countries.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2ZPbIYbtiE
John is now hopeful that Julian Assange will be accompanying them back home in the final leg of his “Home Run for Julian” tour.
How you can help John Shipton bring Julian Assange back home to Australia with him
To help ensure that John Shipton does bring Julian Assange back home to Australia, supporters of Julian Assange back here, in Julian’s home town of Mebourne, and elsewhere, could, in the following ways, make the wider Australian public aware of the facts about Julian Assange:
1. Attend the weekly Friday evening vigil from 6:30pm outside Melbourne’s Flinders Street Station.
2. Help organise other protests in support of Julian Assange;
3. At these events:
(i) Hand out leaflets in support of Julian Assange, for example leaflets printed from the PDF file at https://candobetter.net/sites/default/files/upholdTheRuleOfLawForJulian.pdf;
(ii) Ask to borrow the megaphone so that you, yourself, can speak to members of the public in support of Julian Assange as I and others have.
4. Distribute leaflets about Julian Assange elsewhere.
5. Post to Twitter, Facebook, other social media, and on web blogs and on news sites, such as https://wsws.org, messages in support of Julian Assange
When more other fellow Australians, who share our anger at the treatment of Julian Assange, become active in ways, such as is described above, it should be possible to get a proper discussion of Julian Assange on the floors of Federal Parliament and in our newsmedia.
When this occurs, Prime Minister Scott Morrison will face the choice: Either uphold his duty of care to all Australian citizens and demand that the British government end its illegal imprisonment of Julian Assange or face political oblivion. The same goes for other Federal politicians on both sides of Parliament who have, up until now, ignored Julian’s plight.
What I find just as disturbing as his ongoing imprisonment, is the pretext upon which he was imprisoned. That the US had authority to criminally charge a citizen of a foreign nation, for acts not committed on US soil. Thereby the US claims judicial authority over ever single journalist in the world. And the UK actually thought such was a good case for extradition, only defeated because the UK had already destroyed his health in their cause.
You seem to be a bit confused. Any Nation can file charges against anybody in another country.
If those two countries have reciprocal agreements, the native Justice System will evaluate the charges and decide what to do.
Otherwise, bank robbers would stage robberies in neighboring countries and then slip across the border.
You’re trying to defend an accused rapist, a man who draws on the walls with poop.
He published the Russian hacked emails to establish the Rigging hoax.
He’s corrupt.
Truer words have never been spoken.
The “civilized world” as well as the “international community” they’re always referring to are basically Wall Street, its armed branch the CIA as well as a few warmongering think tanks made of pathological liars, murderous psychopaths and cynical and/or schizoid bastards.
I read this the other day in Wikipedia about Guantanamo Detention Camp:
The Washington Post, in an 8 May 2004 article, described a set of interrogation techniques approved for use in interrogating alleged terrorists at Guantánamo Bay. Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, characterized them as cruel and inhumane treatment illegal under the U.S. Constitution.[121] On 15 June, Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, commander at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq during the prisoner abuse scandal, said she was told from the top to treat detainees like dogs “as it is done in Guantánamo [Camp Delta].” (…) In an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer in June 2005, Vice President Dick Cheney defended the treatment of prisoners at Guantánamo: “There isn’t any other nation in the world that would treat people who were determined to kill Americans the way we’re treating these people. They’re living in the tropics. They’re well fed. They’ve got everything they could possibly want”.
Can’t make that stuff up!
“The German people must have it driven home to them that the whole nation has been engaged in a lawless conspiracy against the decencies of modern civilization.”
~ President Franklin D. Roosevelt, August, 1944.
We’ve been lied to.
We’ve been duped.
Yeah, a LOT of people have been duped.
They’ve accepted this hoax that Assange is a hero, when we have proof he’s part of the Russian disinformation network.
Uh, no. Wall Street doesn’t rule America.
You’re describing the corruption of the Bush/Cheney Administration.
Yes, all Republican led Administrations are corrupt, and they’re getting worse.
I appreciate your concern over Assange because his treatment is a perfect example of the propaganda we so often face. Consider this quote from him, however: “I’m constantly annoyed that people are distracted by false conspiracies such as 9/11, when all around we provide evidence of real conspiracies, for war or mass financial fraud.” That line alone puts him in the controlled opposition/limited hangout category in my mind. How do you reconcile his misguided stance?
I think “anyone who disagrees with me about 9/11 is controlled opposition” is a very silly and arbitrary line to hold, born of sloppy thinking.
Hear, hear. I don’t care what Julian Assange’s take on 9/11 is. That has nothing to do with what is happening to him at the behest of the war criminals whose crimes he exposed.
Exactly.
9/11 is the entire falsified justification for the global war on terror which allowed our government to commit the very war crimes that Assange has exposed. It has everything to do with why those crimes were committed.
That’s unfortunate and regrettable. Being annoyed by “false” conspiracies like 9/11 is not a defensible position.
You may be missing an opportunity to tell the truth about an event that not even Assange would touch.
Since none of us is as pure as the driven snow, by what logic does one dismiss the accomplishments of Julian Assange, because he holds what another believes to be an erroneous opinion regarding a particular subject? It may indeed be erroneous. WTF does that have to do with his exposure of truth? 9/11 conspiracy may in fact be true. But Julian’s exposure of what he is being imprisoned for exposing comes directly from the state’s own documentation. A thing unlikely to be found regarding 9/11. Or, conversely, simply hasn’t been found, YET!
There’s hardly a weaker argument, I agree. Although screeching that someone is a troll, a bot, named Sergei, are in contention.
Assange is only exposing part of the truth is the argument being made. A comparable example would be Chomsky who has done tremendous work as Assange has done but has a blind spot for 9/11.
I simply cannot imagine anyone feeling the need to nitpick about Assange. The reality, hardly needing to be said is that the forces requiring Assange to blow the whistle are enormous, in influence and finances. They include the military, the MSM, and the 1%ers.
Yet you want to add to the opposition, your voice. What on earth is wrong with you? Do you fear their influence won’t be felt?I am gobsmacked. Hint: those evil forces don’t need you.
If every journalist like Assange, Taibbi, Scahill, Chomsky, Greenwald, etc. had unapologetically told the complete and awful truth about 9/11 then maybe we don’t have the Patriot Act, Guantanamo, mass surveillance, or the global war on terror. I am not nitpicking in the slightest. The enormity of the lie demands that we put it in the proper order. 9/11 is the root cause of all of that.
Francis the First thought of the WikiLeaks publisher languishing in his cell on Palm Sunday and should consider sending a second message:
https://consortiumnews.com/2021/03/31/pope-needs-to-send-easter-message-to-biden-on-assange/
First, they came for the Conspiracy Theorists, and not enough realized the long-term goals of the (star chambered) conspirators.
https://seaclearly.com/2018/10/27/keepers-of-the-light/
Wish You Were Here:
Another excellent analysis! I want to donate with crypto, but Bitcoin fees are too high. If you will put a DASH receive address on your site, I will donate. See Dash.org. Thanks for all your work!
“The western world does not value freedom”
Of course not… it does not value God either…
However, it seems that it values vaccines:
https://computingforever.com/2021/04/05/covid-vaccine-the-new-sacred-cow/
Truly we are living in the return of the days of Noah. Decadence is everywhere more acutely in the upper socio-economic layers. The end of the world must be very near.
Keeping my Rosary on hand!
There is no freedom when a pastor is harassed in his church which is supposed to be some kind of sanctuary. But this pastor knew how to defend himself against totalitarianism:
https://on.rt.com/b5az
Truly we live in the return of the days of Noah just before the end of the world as it was written it would be on earth just before the return of Jesus.
Keeping my Rosary on hand!
There is no such thing as god. This is the 21st century. The crimes against humankind are perpetrated by other humans. It is the society–and most specifically capitalist society–that allows these human criminals to continue their war on humanity.
Have you watched the links I submitted?
Keeping my Rosary on hand!
Open your heart, not your eyes.
Gee! I thought YOU were God, since you claim the position as the ultimate arbiter of truth. Curious I’ve never heard of you before. Pursue truth. When you think you have discovered some, try to find a way to disprove it. Test it. Constantly. Truth can easily withstand any scrutiny, criticism, or argument. It neither needs, requires, nor desires protection by censorship. LIES DO!!! What you think you have discovered as truth is nothing more than a theory, until proven one way or the other. Which is unlikely to happen. Which is why we should constantly pursue it. Not simply proclaim it.
I get your point, Caity and can’t help but agree where Assange and his treatment are the issues. And in other instances as well. However, I’m sorry to say that I don’t feel as though it is confined to the West. Personal observation that shown me the concept of integrity is, to varying degrees, a lost art. And even those who do retain some, tend to practice it to a certain degree which, after reaching it, anything goes.
There are those who don’t covet what others have, nor who never wish to practice revenge against someone who committed a perceived wrong against them. But as I see it, integrity is a 100% thing, or it is a false position.
One must create a value system and stick with it without exception. No excuses. Technically, that would excuse a criminal from participation but, even he or she is integrous to the degree that the criminal never steps over that designated line, never thinks of the excuse, ‘Well just this one time.’
An analogy might be those who constantly promise, but rarely follow through. After a while, it is determined that their word is worthless, because one can never know when, if ever, their promises will be upheld.
I wonder how many of us would actually like to live in a perfect world. I’d be happy to give it a try – if I could only find one.
The United States will ignore the message from Anchorage. It is already testing China over Taiwan, and is preparing an escalation in Ukraine, to test Russia.
~
Sun Tzus The Art of War (c. 500 BCE) advises that: “To secure ourselves against defeat lies in our own hands; yet the opportunity of defeating the enemy is provided by the enemy himself .. Therefore the clever combatant imposes his will; and does not allow the enemys will to be imposed on him”.
~
This is the essence of the Chinese resistance economy – a strategy which has been fully unveiled in the wake of the Anchorage talks; talks that silenced any lingering thoughts in Beijing that the United States of America might somehow find some modus vivendi with Beijing in its headlong pursuit of primacy over China.
~
Although earlier there had been tantalising glimpses of deshabille, the full reveal to Chinas tough stance and rhetoric has only been permitted now – post-Anchorage – and the talks confirmation that the United States intends to block Chinas ascent.
~
This great article can be read here:
China and Russia Launch a “Global Resistance Economy” by Alastair Crooke!
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2021/04/05/china-russia-launch-global-resistance-economy/
And we live in shock from having to work around the psychological dissonance in our poisoned milieu in order to see reality as it should be seen. We accommodate, thus absorbing the bs, become mechanical, dull and brainwashed. Assange is not the only one that is being tortured by the powers that be. In 1984, Winston at the end of his torture session is left out of touch with reality declaring he loves big brother. I do not love big brother but am weakened by the milieu. Many others are sadly just like him. Thank you for your wairk.
Thank you for putting so much into such simple language, a great talent.
As long as the MSM has flushed Julian Assange down the memory hole, there is no chance of him being freed. Television has destroyed rational thought and civic engagement. The proles are being fed bread and circuses. It is this mindlessness on such a vast scale that will be civilization’s ultimate demise. Ooh gotta go. Entertainment Tonight has Oprah on.
This is why I got rid of my television in 2012. Television is the greatest brainwashing machine in anyone’s home, bar none. Along with the complicit government propaganda press, such as the New York Times, poison emanates from that TV set. Frank Zappa warned us years ago to kill our televisions. He was right.
500+ years now of the West plundering, enslaving, and geocoding the entire planet – yet here in the West there is no self-reflection whatsoever regarding our ongoing attempts to maintain this corrupt amoral barbaric control at any cost. All the pretty supposed “values” Caitlin dismantled are simply the window dressing and apologetics for West’s ruthless campaign of global domination. They are just the updated versions of the Colonia era: “white man’s burden,” and “we’re saving the souls of the savages,” once proclaimed as we enslaved and genocided millions around the world over centuries. Caitlin as usual is spot on regarding this Western hypocrisy.
That should be “genociding” in the first sentence, but for some reason auto-correct doesn’t like to allow that word.
What do you mean “our”? Speak for yourself instead of making blanket assumptions about everyone else. As a Marxist, I work against the capitalist crime system all the time and have for many years. There are thousands of people like me all over the world who recognize the evil of this system.
for due process. Those things are self evident to anyone with more than 2 neurons to rub together. But Julian Assange is guilty of unwritten law. Julian has violated the code of those invisible powerful men referred to by FDR, Woodrow Wilson and in 1952 described by Justice Frankfurter as the real rulers in Washington and across the globe. exercising power from behind the scenes. The threat to those oligarchs is more serious than any imagined crime WikiLeaks and Assange may have committed. The evidence for this assertion is necessarily circumstantial but many a person has been convicted on less.
Timing is telling. It may be the strongest evidence of the concerted effort to take down WikiLeaks and Julian Assange. The collateral murder tape was released on April 5, 2010. The rest of the Iraq War Logs were released in October 2010. The result on the part of the government and the media echo chamber ran the gamut from nothing to thankfulness and affirmation to the call for hanging of a traitor. Manning was arrested because he could not keep his mouth shut and since he was in the military under a different legal system, if you can call it that, he was subjected to what seemed more like a Stalin era show trial.
In August 2010 WikiLeaks published internal documents from the collapsed Icelandic bank Kaupthing actually resulting in the arrest of some of the officials involved. To my knowledge they are the only banksters arrested, tried, convicted and sentenced for financial crimes committed during the 2007-2010 financial rape and pillage of the 99% and their countries. These actions by the government of Iceland were the direct result of popular outrage and a change in government. Michael Moore humorously relates some of what happened in his movie “Where To Invade Next” but there was little coverage of those events in the media in the US. The crimes exposed in the war logs were the crimes of “little people” and few were reluctantly charged and convicted for those crimes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaupth ing_Bank
On Nov. 29 2010, well after the publication of the war logs, Forbes published an interview with Julian Assange. In the interview Assange reveals that WikiLeaks has massive amounts of documents from the business sector revealing illegal activity. Such activity as led to the conviction of the banksters in Iceland he said they would begin to release them in early 2011. Among those soon to be published was said to be a copy of the hard drive of the CEO of a major too big to fail bank speculated by Time Magazine to be The Bank of America. When asked of the significance of the documents, Assange said they could take down a big bank or two. The price per share of B of A stock dropped by 2/3 at the end of 2010 and began a dramatic quintupling of price in 2012-2018 after Assange was safely in asylum. I am sure there are other factors in that stock fluctuation but the WikiLeaks documents were probably a major part of it. https://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2010/11/29/an-interview-with-wikileaks-julian-assange/#d3566172c27c
I imagine the concern that spread across the financial community on Wall Street caused many nightmares and much indigestion. The response was immediate. On Dec. 1, 2010 Amazon, that served as the host for WikiLeaks’ web site kicked that dangerous publisher out of its service. Most of Amazon’s profits come from government contracts including with the CIA. It is curious that more than 4 months after the release of the Afghan War Logs but only 2 days after the Forbes article, Amazon chose to follow the desires of the US state and kick WikiLeaks off of its web servers. WikiLeaks quickly found other hosts among the Scandinavian countries including Iceland. Problem solved. On Dec. 2, 2010 PayPal, started by Musk & Thiel, refused to allow their services to be used to donate to WikiLeaks. https://www.wired.com/2010/12/paypal-wikileaks/
On Dec. 3, 2010 Visa, MasterCard, American Express and Western Union followed suit. WikiLeaks had quickly been left to wither in a financial desert. All these financial institutions cited pressure from the US government as the reason for their actions. The US government probably had been pressuring these same companies since the war logs were released and before to no avail, yet within days of the publication of the Forbes interview these institutions responded in unison to financially eviscerate WikiLeaks. https://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2010/12/07/visa-mastercard-move-to-choke-
On Dec. 10, 2010 Assange was arrested in London on an Interpol warrant issued by Sweden. Assange had been in Sweden to arrange for the hosting of WikiLeaks’ site on a secure bank of underground vaulted servers. WikiLeaks staff probably knew that having Amazon as a host was problematic and had been searching for another host for a while. While released on bail, in January of 2011 CBS News filmed an interview with Assange conducted by Steve Kroft. During the interview Assange was asked about the financial crime documents that WikiLeaks were going to release. It is the only time during the interview that Assange appeared flustered. He did not reveal anything about those documents during the interview.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/julian-assange-the-2011-60-minutes-interview/
While Assange was out on bail in London, he participated in a public discussion that I saw on Free Speech TV or LinkTV. During the question and answer segment a person from the audience asked about the business documents that were supposed to be released in early 2011. Assange’s response was that he was not at liberty to discuss that issue and added that the audience could imagine why. He was not at liberty to discuss some business documents but he was at liberty to discuss classified documents from the most powerful military state with multitudes of secret enforcement agencies like the CIA and FBI? Assange is a brave man obviously but he was more afraid of B ofA than The CIA or a drone attack? I imagine that Assange, various others and families were threatened with death if the business documents were released and WikiLeaks responded that if anything whatsoever happened to those threatened, the documents would be released. Everybody involved knew that there was no way that any government, corporation or agency could stop the release of the documents. They would have been stored securely in many places away from WikiLeaks and there may even be paper copies stored in strategic places. Stalemate accomplished or as said during the Cold War, mutually assured destruction.
Enter Ecuador and the asylum granted, or should we say, forced on Assange. Assange’s son and the mother of his son were already underground either in a witness protection like program or just hidden there is little information that I could find on that, but I am sure the deep state knew where they were and wanted to keep them safe. The discussions that preceded the granting of asylum by Ecuador were in secret and will probably never be known barring a whistleblower. The reason to make sure Assange was in a safe and well surveilled space was so no “patriotic” loose cannon could take him down. The Ecuadorian Embassy was considered safer and more reliable politically than jail. Seven years in an Embassy is easier to accomplish with death threats against family than seven years in prison on questionable charges. Seven years later, 2019, was when the statute of limitations on financial crimes committed in 2009 and before have expired.
Rafael Correa, the president of Ecuador, had a reputation as a defier of American imperialism and Wall Street and was considered part of what was called the “Pink Tide” of social reform in South America. All were incorrect or if at one time correct were no longer. At least since 2012 Rafael Correa has been a neoliberal of the first order. This I know after living in Ecuador for 6 years and talking with the top law students here. There is a plethora of oppressing laws and economic policies that have been enacted during his administration.
To support this part of the argument, I will have to give a little history. In 1999 Wall Street attacked the Ecuadorian currency, the Sucre, and crashed the economy. In response Ecuador wisely abandoned the Sucre and took the US dollar as their currency. Wall Street does not attack the USD as that is where they hold their assets. Ecuador used gold and oil revenues to purchase hard currency for circulation and created bookkeeping currency by counterfeiting it just like BofA and the rest of the private banks in the US do. The central bank also payed public employees and contractors by transferring money digitally into their accounts just like the Federal Reserve transfers money. Using money created in this manner the government of Ecuador stimulated the economy at 4-7% annually for 14 or more years. It spent much of it on increasing infrastructure, especially roads, water and hydroelectric plants and production. When I came here in 2014 I was reminded of the massive amounts of infrastructure building and general construction that I witnessed in California in the 60s.
The political and economic waters of the US are crystal clear compared to murky waters of Ecuador so through chance or fate I met a person who was a former employee of the IRS and the Ministry of the Environment. She is very smart and ethical, so ethical that she was denied promotion because her personality profile test showed her unable to be cruel enough for the job. Because of her inside view I learned that among the first things Rafael Correa did was to pass a law forbidding the Central Bank of Ecuador from printing money. I could give many more examples to prove that from the start of his presidency, Rafael Correa was a minion and mercenary of Wall Street and no socialist.
Here again timing is telling. When Assange was evicted from the Ecuadorian Embassy into the custody of the British police, the probable crimes revealed in the Wikileaks trove of documents had passed their statute of limitations. So even if there are financial crimes revealed ever, no one is going to be prosecuted, fined or sent to jail. Thus it will be business as usual on Wall Street and their scrotums can relax and they can continue bribing legislatures to make what was once illegal, legal. They will continue torturing and imprisoning Assange. The .00001% want to make sure that potential whistleblowers will quell their consciences and not risk releasing sensitive information and publishers will hesitate to publish what the whistleblowers release.
The international finance connection with the asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy is most evident in timing. On the very hour of the day of the ejection from the embassy the IMF made available 4.5 billion dollars to the Ecuadorian government. Several years before Ecuador had eliminated all IMF debt. It had created most of the money that it needed digitally just like the Fed so did not really need IMF private banksters’ money. The money loaned by the IMF has not been spent into the economy which is still declining. And on that same day Ola Bini a friend of Assange who was in Ecuador was arrested by the Ecuadorian government and kept in custody without charge for over 2 months. I could go on and on providing evidence to support this argument. Perhaps in a later article, I will explore the evidence further. On an upbeat note that the international banksters are not in complete control an Icelandic court found Visa guilty of illegally blocking payments to WikiLeaks. So little Iceland is the only country to be brave enough to face up to the banksters and hold them to the rule of law.
https://grapevine.is/news/2019/04/25/valitor-sentenced-to-pay-1-2-bill
Highly informative spot(light)on truth!
Difficult though it is to absorb and digest the info on Rafael Correa, but completely understandable behaviour of any person.
This speaks further volumes of the courage and integrity of Julian Assange.
Everything you say here is True, Caitlin.
However, you write not one world about the Australian Government.
Why has your Australian Government not spoken in defense of Assange?
Why have you not spoken one world on this silence?
Seems to me, to Free Assange, the protest needs to start with his own Australian Government.
To be Silent is to be complicit.
A casual search would have shown you I’ve criticized the Australian government many times over this.
Caitlin, you wrote –
‘ ….still keeping him locked up in Belmarsh anyway pending a US extradition to a nation in which he stands no chance at a fair trial and would be completely silenced and disappeared under US Special Administration Measures.’
I have heard nothing of this ‘pending’ in any UK media – there is utter silence. There must be US pressure on the UK court. What is your source?
The extradition was blocked by the UK due to health concerns, a decision that is currently under appeal by the US. The appeal has a good chance of succeeding- and if it doesn’t, they’ll just keep appealing thus keeping him in jail indefinitely either way.
I wish to thank you for allowing me to share this article Caitlin. I run a Conservative blog here in Australia and I have just published it there, with due links and acknowledgment to you, of course.
https://patriotrealm.com/index.php/1051-everything-the-west-claims-it-values-is-invalidated-by-its-treatment-of-assange
Perhaps you have. But not in this article.
AGREED. Umm…WHAT FREE WORLD? In 2006 I went to the only Kali temple in the UK, and met the guru, who went barefoot and wore heavy chains on his forearms. Used to do food runs to homeless in the East End. HE DEFINITELY GOT IT.
He said that he would not take the chains off until humanity/ASSANGE was free.
“The West claims” means nothing. You sound like a child who believes in fairy tales. I’m 80 years old, have lived all my life in the West, in American and European countries and can assure you Truth. Justice. Freedom. Democracy is a myth. You should remember politicians took over from their Masters, the Church, the great experts at “make believe”.
You should also not forget that the Church, or Religion, has not ‘retired’. They are still there, hiding behind the political curtains, to ensure politicians keep covering up their lies.
If you wish me to give you MANY examples of what I say, let me know.
Alberto
A couple of your best examples would suffice.
What kind of democracy has a military with no accountable budget? Which categorically refuses to cooperate with audits?
Has a Justice system in which prosecutors have no accountability and fudge the evidence regularly?
Ooh! Ooh! I know this one!
RUSSIA!
If you want to speak out in class Pasha, put up your hand first. I will nod if I want you to speak. And if you persist in giving silly, “tell us something we know don’t know” answers, you”ll be put back.
If you look back, I did say democracy. Maybe I should have said faux democracy but same cohort.