{"id":592,"date":"2024-10-15T11:10:12","date_gmt":"2024-10-15T09:10:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/spblinux.de\/Staying-the-Course\/?p=592"},"modified":"2024-10-15T11:10:14","modified_gmt":"2024-10-15T09:10:14","slug":"he-never-gave-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spblinux.de\/Staying-the-Course\/index.php\/2024\/10\/15\/he-never-gave-up\/","title":{"rendered":"He Never Gave Up"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

reposted from Dilip’s blog<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Site After the truth\u2011shower<\/strong><\/a>
Julian Assange again risks his life defying the CIA and Pentagon to testify against them to a 46-nation gathering in Europe<\/a> By Dilip<\/strong> on 13th October 2024
With myriad crimes committed against those invaded and occupied in the Middle East, those spied upon everywhere, and those trying to expose these abuses, not a single perpetrator has ever been prosecuted or even investigated… If the impunity of genocidal Israel on its current rampage through the Middle East puzzles you, keep in mind that the West as a whole has a much larger, long-standing culture of impunity.<\/em> By Tarik Cyril Amar<\/a>
As the world teeters on the verge of a massive war in the Middle East that could turn into World War Three, it is hard to even notice other important events. What seems to overshadow everything else is the hideous spectacle of Israel and the collective West co-perpetrating a genocide in Gaza while also producing multiple attacks and massacres in the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, and Iran, as well as issuing ceaseless threats to do even worse if the victims dare fight back. When Gaza is being exterminated and Beirut is burning, why would people turn to look, for instance, at sleepy Strasbourg? And yet, on October 1, that\u2019s where a quietly historic event took place, namely the first major public appearance of Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, publisher, and outstanding investigative journalist, after his release in June from some 14 years of vicious American-British persecution and incarceration, some of which, according to UN special rapporteur Nils Melzer and the prestigious medical journal The Lancet<\/a>, amounts to torture. Though he is now free, Assange has not, it is important to note, received justice and most likely never will: A victim of outrageous abuses of state power, the crimes againsthim have not even been acknowledged by their perpetrators. Instead, to escape further persecution he was forced through a plea deal to pretend to recognize his own non-existent guilt. As he put it in Strasbourg \u2013 clearly with ironic reference to the title of a famous Soviet dissident\u2019s memoir \u2013 he \u201cchose freedom over unrealizable justice.\u201d<\/em> Read more<\/a> What the Assange saga says about the state of the American empire<\/a> Justice for him \u201cis now precluded\u201d<\/em> in the future, too, because Washington has written into the plea deal that he \u201ccannot file a case at the European Court of Human Rights or even a freedom of information act request\u201d<\/em> in the US. So much, again, for the rule of law in the \u201crules-based order\u201d<\/em>: Perverted to the last moment and beyond. This extremely murky outcome also means, again in Assange\u2019s own words, that he is \u201cnot free today because the system worked,\u201d<\/em> but because he pleaded guilty to, in effect, journalism, which is, of course, simply not a crime. The occasion for Assange\u2019s statement<\/a> & short Q&A session<\/a> in Strasbourg was a deceptively small-scale hearing at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE, a 46-nation organization not to be confused with the EU). Organized by PACE\u2019s Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights, the hearing preceded a full debate that addressed a detailed report<\/a> on Assange\u2019s treatment and its \u201cchilling effects on human rights.\u201d<\/em> That debate took place on October 2. Its key result was PACE\u2019s official confirmation that Assange was a political prisoner.<\/a> <\/strong> Despite Washington\u2019s blatant abuse of the 1917 Espionage Act to persecute him, everyone not completely brainwashed by US propaganda has, of course, long known that much. And not just any<\/em> political prisoner: All political prisoners suffer unjustly and deserve support. But, due to the worldwide reverberations of his persecution by the US, the rogue hegemon of the West, history will look back on Julian Assange as the single most important political prisoner of the first post-Cold War decades, without a grain of hyperbole. The issues at stake were and remain of global importance and will shape the future of humanity, for better or worse: freedom of expression; the role of free, unimpeded media in holding the powerful to account; their increasingly aggressive efforts to shut down such challenges, especially across borders; the lack of protection for individuals targeted by powerful states that manipulate or disobey their own laws; and, last but not least, the enormous abuses suffered by ordinary people, especially in the Global South, at the hands of a West that wages wars of aggression and torture campaigns and now is co-perpetrating genocide. That was one reason the meeting in Strasbourg was so important. The other is the fact that Assange\u2019s fate is connected to the horrors that are currently being inflicted on the Middle East. For it was Assange\u2019s revelations of decades of crimes committed by the US and its Western followers in the Middle East (broadly understood) that most of all led to his ordeal. While he also came under Russiagate<\/em>\/Russia Rage fire for exposing Democratic Party corruption and manipulations during the 2016 elections which Hillary Clinton still cannot believe she lost, that was not the key issue. And Assange has obviously not somehow functioned as a Russian agent. Indeed, in Strasbourg he bent over backwards repeatedly to falsely imply equivalence between the systematic mass murder by Israel of (mostly) Palestinian journalists and the killing of their counterparts from both sides in the Ukraine war. Read more<\/a> Julian Assange once told me his secret to surviving impossible odds<\/a> What really started tripping up WikiLeaks was their exemplary investigative work on US atrocities during the fundamentally illegal war of aggression in Iraq. That <\/em>painted a first big American target on Assange\u2019s back in 2010. In that year, WikiLeaks released the by-now famous video \u201dCollateral Murder<\/a>\u201d<\/em> that provided clear evidence of war crimes committed in 2007 by a merrily murderous (and chatty!) crew of American gunship pilots. More revelations, including about what in effect were death squads run by the US and their auxiliaries during the US-NATO war in Afghanistan<\/a>, as well as US \u2019rendition<\/a><\/em>\u2019 programs \u2013 that is, kidnapping, black sites, and torture, including in Europe \u2013 followed. There was only one other WikiLeaks exploit that rivaled its exposure of the very dirty realities of the so-called Great War on Terror (and its sequels) in enraging the US: the \u201cVault 7\u201d<\/em> documents, released in 2017, that, in Assange\u2019s own summary in Strasbourg \u201crevealed the CIA\u2019s vast production<\/a> of malware and viruses, its subversion of supply chains, its subversion of antivirus software, cars, smart TVs and iPhones.\u201d<\/em> After that<\/em>, and under the same Donald Trump who may well be the next US president and flaunts his friendship with X owner Elon Musk, who pretends to promote \u201cfree speech,\u201d<\/em> the US pulled out all the stops. As Assange explained during the Q&A in Strasbourg this week, WikiLeaks had angered the national security state, \u201cone of the constitutive powers\u201d<\/em> of the real<\/em> political system in the US. In response, then-CIA Director Mike Pompeo \u201claunched a campaign of retribution\u201d<\/em> that included not only Assange\u2019s brutalization by isolation and incarceration but also \u201cplans to kidnap and to assassinate him\u201d<\/em> inside the embassy of another state (Ecuador) in another country (the UK). \u201cTheft, hacking attacks, and the planting of false information\u201d<\/em> were used against Assange\u2019s associates and WikiLeaks staff. In a particularly vile and creepy episode, his wife and infant son were in the Americans\u2019 sights as well. Instructions were given to obtain DNA from his baby son\u2019s diaper. It is obvious that Assange was compelled to strike a plea deal that perverted justice. Yet, one fact is too often overlooked because we have become used to it: With myriad crimes committed against those invaded and occupied in the Middle East, those spied upon and manipulated everywhere, and those trying to expose these abuses, not a single perpetrator has ever been prosecuted or even investigated, as the PACE report stresses<\/a>. If the impunity of genocidal apartheid Israel on its current rampage through the Middle East puzzles you, keep in mind that the West as a whole has a much larger, long-standing culture of impunity. This legal nihilism can be creative. After 2017, to go after Assange, some of the finest minds of US jurisprudence invented a whole new and completely perverse theory. In Assange\u2019s concise summary, according to this piece of skullduggery, \u201conly US citizens have free speech rights; Europeans and other nationalities do not have free speech rights.\u201d<\/em> At the same time, the US \u201cEspionage Act still applies to them regardless of where they are. So, Europeans in Europe must obey US secrecy law with no defenses at all,\u201d<\/em> that is even less than what American citizens are formally granted under their first amendment rights. \u201cAn American in Paris\u201d<\/em> (note the Gene Kelly allusion this time), Assange pointed out, \u201ccan talk about what the US government is up to \u2013 perhaps. But for a Frenchman in Paris, to do so is a crime without any defense and he may be extradited just like me.\u201d<\/em> The ongoing case of Julian Assange is about many crucial things. But if I had to pick only one as the single most important question, it would be this almost comically arrogant and crude US overreach. Not<\/em> because it is such an obvious slap in the face to every other state in the world; that\u2019s just the American establishment\u2019s way. They really can\u2019t, it seems, help themselves. What makes this the decisive issue is something else: Whatever perversions and abuses American leaders will come up with, they will affect either only the US, as they should, or all of us, as they often do now. In other words, the US does not have healthy boundaries. It will always overstep, as long as it feels strong enough. Or that others are weak enough. The first, strategic step toward at least limiting and containing American abuses is for other countries to preserve or reclaim their sovereignty. In that regard, it is sadly ironic that Assange spoke in the EU before a European institution. Because, notwithstanding PACE\u2019s best efforts, Western Europe is the part of the world least likely to regain sovereignty. Others, however, have never lost it or are well on their way to reasserting it https:\/\/thefreeonline.com\/2024\/10\/04\/why-this-man-is-the-most-important-political-prisoner-alive\/<\/a> ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Julian Assange on the way of our world<\/a> WikiLeaks\u2019s Assange arrives in Australia following release on US plea deal<\/a> CHRIS HEDGES: Julian Assange exposed the crimes of empire; and that can\u2019t be tolerated<\/a> We are Spartacus<\/a> Alexandre Koyr\u00e9: The Political Function of the Modern Lie (1943)<\/a> In video from Gaza, former CEO of Pegasus spyware announces millions for new venture<\/a> Daniel Nemenyi: Submarine state \u2013 On secrets and leaks<\/a> Samizdat: Russia\u2019s Underground Press (1970)<\/a> Nobel Peace Laureate: \u2018We journalists are the defence line between dictatorship and war\u2019 (2021)<\/a> Like<\/a><\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

reposted from Dilip’s blog After the truth\u2011shower Julian Assange again risks his life defying the CIA and Pentagon to testify against them to a 46-nation gathering in Europe By Dilip on 13th October 2024 With myriad crimes committed against those invaded and occupied in the Middle East, those spied upon everywhere, and those trying to expose these abuses, not a single perpetrator has ever been prosecuted or even investigated… If the impunity of genocidal Israel on its current rampage through the Middle East puzzles you, keep in mind that the West as a whole has a much larger, long-standing culture Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52,238,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-592","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-giraffe","category-guardians-of-humanity","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spblinux.de\/Staying-the-Course\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spblinux.de\/Staying-the-Course\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spblinux.de\/Staying-the-Course\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spblinux.de\/Staying-the-Course\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spblinux.de\/Staying-the-Course\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=592"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/spblinux.de\/Staying-the-Course\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":593,"href":"https:\/\/spblinux.de\/Staying-the-Course\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592\/revisions\/593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spblinux.de\/Staying-the-Course\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spblinux.de\/Staying-the-Course\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spblinux.de\/Staying-the-Course\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}