Whistleblowers
… and What the Whistleblower Wanted to Warn Us About—a Tsunami of Health Issues
“Individuals who received COVID-19 vaccines, either mRNA, viral vector, or mixing and matching, were found to be more likely to be diagnosed with inflammatory musculoskeletal disorders compared to those who did not. Our results provide detailed information on the adverse reactions after COVID-19 vaccination. This information will be useful in clarifying adverse reactions to COVID-19 vaccines and educating people about the potential risk of inflammatory musculoskeletal disorders based on their vaccination status.”
https://lionessofjudah.substack.com/p/dr-guy-hatchard-korean-studies-indicate?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=581065&post_id=139727269&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=false&r=fe0e8&utm_medium=email
By Dr. Guy Hatchard
December 5, 2023 This article is available as a PDF document.
The Korean National Health Insurance Service tabulates health data of the whole population, including vaccination status, which allows researchers to compare the ongoing health outcomes of the vaccinated with the unvaccinated.
Precisely the information our government is hiding from independent researchers and public scrutiny—comparative data, which we have been requesting they release.
So what have they found in Korea? Researchers have released a preprint paper entitled “Hematologic abnormalities after COVID-19 vaccination: A large Korean population-based cohort study“.
Haematologic diseases are diseases of the blood and blood-forming organs. The researchers randomly selected half of the population of Seoul (around 4.2 million people) aged 20 and above and identified people who had received treatment for a range of blood disorders. They excluded people who had a history of blood disorders prior to the study period and then compared the rate of development of blood disorders among the vaccinated and unvaccinated over a three month period.
The researchers concluded:
“This study demonstrated the haematologic adverse events associated with COVID-19 vaccination using real-world data. The cumulative incidence rate of nutritional anaemia, aplastic anaemia, and coagulation defects significantly and constantly increased for 3 months after the COVID-19 vaccination compared to the non-vaccinated group.”
Aplastic anaemia is a rare but serious blood condition that occurs when your bone marrow cannot make enough new blood cells for your body to work normally. There is no known cure at this point in time.
Nutritional anaemia refers to anaemia that can be directly attributed to nutritional disorders or deficiencies. Examples include Iron deficiency anaemia and pernicious anaemia.
Coagulations disorders are conditions that affect the blood’s clotting activities. Haemophilia, Von Willebrand disease, clotting factor deficiencies, hypercoagulable states and deep venous thrombosis are all coagulations disorders.
Another study from Korea entitled “The spectrum of non-fatal immune-related adverse events following COVID-19 vaccination: The population-based cohort study in Seoul, South Korea” analysed official health data for Seoul residents between 2020 and 2021 and examined the cumulative incidence rates of non-fatal health outcomes among the vaccinated group which included 1,748,136 individuals compared to the non-vaccinated group which included 289,579 individuals.
The study compared these cumulative incidence rates of non-fatal conditions in the following areas:
Gynecological ( including endometriosis, and menstrual disorders [polymenorrhagia, menorrhagia, abnormal cycle length, oligomenorrhea, and amenorrhea]),
Haematological (including bruises confined to non-tender and yellow-coloured especially on extremities),
Dermatological (including herpes zoster, alopecia, and warts),
Ophthalmological (including visual impairment, and glaucoma),
Otological (including tinnitus, inner ear, middle ear, and outer ear disease),
Dental problems (including periodontal disease)
Subjects with a history of these illnesses were excluded from the analysis.
The researchers concluded:
“The cumulative incidence rates of these conditions at three months following COVID-19 vaccination were significantly higher in vaccinated subjects than in non-vaccinated subjects, except for endometriosis.”
A third study of the same official Korean health data, which we have already reported, found a higher incidence of eight musculoskeletal conditions among the vaccinated when compared to the unvaccinated including:
Plantar Fasciitis (foot/heel fibrous tissue inflammation),
Achilles tendinitis (pain in the back of the leg near the heel)
Bursitis (inflammation that increases friction between tissues in the body)
Rotator Cuff Syndrome (pain affecting the shoulder)
HIVD (upper back herniated disk),
Spondylosis (chronic neck wear and pain),
Adhesive Capsulitis (inflammation of the shoulder)
De-Quervain Tenosynovitis (wrist inflammation).
The researchers concluded:
“Individuals who received COVID-19 vaccines, either mRNA, viral vector, or mixing and matching, were found to be more likely to be diagnosed with inflammatory musculoskeletal disorders compared to those who did not. Our results provide detailed information on the adverse reactions after COVID-19 vaccination. This information will be useful in clarifying adverse reactions to COVID-19 vaccines and educating people about the potential risk of inflammatory musculoskeletal disorders based on their vaccination status.”
I don’t really need to explain much about these results do I? They speak for themselves. These studies analysed the rates of some specific health outcomes for millions of people following Covid vaccination. The researchers concluded that a very wide range of concerning health conditions are initiated over extended periods as a result of Covid vaccination.
Medsafe, the media, and the New Zealand government are telling us that COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective, but they are not publishing any comparable data. A computer systems developer working at the Ministry of Health noticed that death rates among vaccinated populations were unusually high and blew the whistle. He has been arrested and charged with ‘dishonestly accessing health data’ (his job actually).
Who do you believe? The researchers in Korea who have published analyses of millions of post-vaccination health records officially made available by their government or our government who are still refusing to make health records available whilst insisting that COVID-19 vaccination is safe and effective?
In the words of rapper DertySesh (warning: a lot of words begin with ‘f’), who publishes provocative social commentary on X and is unafraid to say how he feels, ‘we don’t want bland reports from the media that someone has been arrested for vaccine disinformation, we want to know if the data he published is real or not?’ One of our data correspondents, Terry Anderson, sums it up as follows:
Terry picks just one week, number 25 of 2022 ending 19th June. In that week 858 people died (the 3rd highest of the year). The MoH tells us there were 61 Covid deaths in that week, made up of around 46 who died with Covid as the underlying cause and 15 where Covid contributed. That means at least 797 people died of something other than Covid. Over the previous five years from 2017 to 2021, an average of 701 people died. Even allowing for a small population increase (around 2%), excluding Covid there appear to be at least 82 excess unexplained deaths in this one June 2022 week alone, 12% above the long term average.
If 82 people died in a train accident the nation would agonise over it for years. Every effort would be made to make sure it never happened again. As we have discussed and documented repeatedly, it is not just one week, there has been an unexplained level of excess death occurring week in week out for three years, at least 6,500 New Zealand deaths in total since the vaccine rollout began. To put it in perspective, that is more than twice the 2,700 New Zealanders who died in Gallipoli, whose heroics and sacrifice we commemorate to this day. The whistleblower is right, excess deaths are completely and absolutely off the scale.
The Korean studies of official health data confirm the chief suspect: COVID-19 vaccination. You would think the newly elected government would be crawling all over the New Zealand health data, enlisting the help of those who are untainted by any association with the prior Covid policy formation and assessment, desperately trying to get to the bottom of what has happened and staunch the flow of injury and death.
In fact, our government, the Ministry of Health, and the media seem to be incapable of facing the facts. Through the arrest and public denouncement of a whistleblower, they have shown themselves to be cowards, afraid to face up to the consequences of past decisions. Unbelievably, they are continuing to push the COVID-19 vaccine on the population against all evidence.
A headline in the New York Times today reads “There Are Politicians Who Lie More Than Is Strictly Necessary”. Once found out, the cover-up begins and then one lie leads to another. Eventually, any erstwhile friend can be abandoned to save your skin. In our case, the health and longevity of New Zealanders has become a political pawn that is being sacrificed to save Parliament and civil servants from public humiliation and disgrace.
The actual effect of the government policy of continued heavy vaccine promotion in the face of concerning data on adverse effects is frightening. It has completely distorted public perceptions and understanding. We have ended up living in an illogical and untenable world governed by propaganda rather than fact.
I am shocked every day by the stories I hear. Just take this, for example, someone has had persistent health problems over months, including a cardiac event after their third booster. After a fourth jab, they couldn’t drag themselves out of bed for three weeks. So they went to see their doctor recently who advised them to get another Covid booster as soon as possible, which they did. Have people lost their minds? Our health service certainly appears to have.
Where do we go from here? The health outcomes reported in this article have, I am sure, been very concerning for readers. For our next report hosted by GLOBE.GLOBAL we will discuss research which points to some positive benefits of health interventions which may help alleviate some of the wide range of symptoms of COVID-19 vaccination adverse effects.
Source: hatchardreport.media
THE REPUBLIC OF OCCLUDED FACTS
CH Exclusive Interview with UFO Whistleblower Dave Grusch
REVEALS BLACK PROJECTS, SAPs, NHIs
Are top Hollywood executives aliens?
By WALTER KIRN
Oct 21, 2023
There are also people of fundamentalist religious views who regard the matter with spiritual horror and would rather it never see the light of day. “Obviously there are some who are going to think these Non-Human Intelligences are extensions of demonic principalities.”
Once out on the trail, surrounded by granite peaks which Grusch loves to climb — as a “masochistic hobby,” I press him for details on The Program. It’s a frustrating interrogation. He swings between a boyish eagerness to share the secrets of the cosmos — “We are not alone!” “Maybe we’re like chimpanzees to them” — and recessive, disciplined discretion. At times, he falls silent in answer to my questions, but his silence reads in different ways. When I ask him, for example, if the “beings” have been with us since ancient times, he gazes off at a mountain in the distance in a matter I find enigmatically affirming.
His most suggestive comment of the hike, one that haunts me throughout the day, involves the cultural history of The Program. When I venture a theory that knowledge of its secrets might induce in insiders, over time, a state of cultic grandiosity, Grusch says I’m on to something, describing a “gnostic” streak in certain initiates. “We are the gatekeepers, they think.” There are also people of fundamentalist religious views who regard the matter with spiritual horror and would rather it never see the light of day. “Obviously there are some who are going to think these Non-Human Intelligences are extensions of demonic principalities.”
For lunch, we zoom off to a toy-like tourist village of art galleries and ice cream shops. Given the peculiar morning I’ve had, the walking tourists eating waffle cones seem childlike and pitiful. They appear not to know that they dwell inside a puzzle world, where recently retired spies with heads full of paradigm-destroying secrets and loaded sidearms in their pants are lurking beside them, only steps away. Or is Grusch lying to me as part of some vast government psy-op, designed to break our minds and render us helpless to further elite manipulation?
At the fancy bistro he takes me to, he orders a gourmet pizza topped with jalapenos and drizzled honey. He turns on his phone and a Google alert appears.
“The Washington Post is attacking me,” he says.
I read the piece on my own phone as we eat. It’s mostly a media story, throwing shade on the upstart News Nation cable channel for devoting so much time to NHIs after running its first big interview with Grusch. The piece accuses the channel, heaven forbid, of chasing ratings. Irked by the article’s insinuation that he is colluding in a grift, Grusch reverts to demolishing his pizza. Later, outside, he takes a phone call from a congressional aide and walks for ten minutes in circles around a park, furrowing his brow and nodding. It’s a scene from a paranoid thriller, fun to watch.
We spend the afternoon together chatting beside a bubbling mountain stream. He clues me in about the mechanics of military secrecy, shooting down the common notion that our government is too incompetent or leaky to hold back the truth about NHIs. By burying pieces of The Program inside already existing “Black Projects” and “SAPs” (Special Access Programs), the enterprise has been erased from view, even the view of many working on it, who can’t see the galaxy for the stars and planets. But surely, I say, our presidents must know, and our CIA directors and their ilk. “Not necessarily,” he says. I ask him to name the person who knows the most out of everyone who at least knows something.
He offers a guess, off the record — a formidable figure from late twentieth century politics, though it’s not among the few that I anticipated. “I’m only guessing,” he reminds me.
I tell him this style of interaction is maddening.
“Welcome to my world,” he says.
A tender issue soon arises. A recent article in The Intercept exposed a difficult moment in Grusch’s life, and used it to question his mental health. Several years ago, while living in Virginia, he fell into an alcoholic funk and muttered about committing suicide. He was then held for 72 hours in a drying-out facility. The reporter found police records of the incident after being tipped off, Grusch believes, by one of his bureaucratic foes.
He now offers me his side of the story. The drunken incident in fact occurred, he says. But he insists it wasn’t as discrediting as the writer made out to be. Like so many combat vets, he lives with a level of trauma, he explains. For a while, he treated it with booze. Strong spirits have always had a bad effect on him, acting on his system almost like “opiates,” a problem he says is common in his lineage. He sought treatment after the event and feels he’s put his low period behind him. I hear in his upbeat tone a plaintive note, one I know from my own struggles with addiction.
This is surely a flawed human being here before me, a suffering child of our indifferent universe. We are all flawed beings. But I’m convinced that his tales of his investigations with the universe of secrets, which surely does exist, is not merely an act. Earlier, recalling Afghanistan, where he identified targets for fiery death, he averred that his new mission — waking our no-longer lonesome species to the folly of seeking “feudalistic dominance” — feels redemptive, morally restorative. Though it does seem that battle excited him too.
“At heart, I’m an operator,” he told me after confessing to feeling a bit awkward wearing a suit to his congressional interview.
He gripped an imaginary weapon and swept its barrel through the air as though clearing an enemy position. His favorite allies in his wartime years? “The Germans and the Brits.” They got the job done. “And the Mongolians.” Toughest guys he knew.
We part for a couple of hours before dinner. I retreat to my motel cabin, lie down, and drift. Paranoia creeps in, possibly a manifestation of what Grusch calls “ontological shock,” which is when new thoughts and old thoughts can’t be reconciled. Do I trust his fantastic tale? Not sure. Do I trust the familiar legacy tales? Not sure. Not as much as I did yesterday.
What I trust more than ever, strangely, is Hollywood. During our long and winding conversation, Grusch shared with me certain private notions about the NHI phenomenon — the creatures may be telepathic, they may use forms of high-tech camouflage, their ships may exist in dimensions beyond our four, their bodies may be drones or avatars — which evoke familiar tropes from movies and TV shows. Are insiders at work in entertainment circles? Have monstrous secrets been seeded throughout our culture to prepare us for the coming shock? Are top Hollywood executives themselves aliens? It all seems possible.
We’re joined at dinner by Jessica, Grusch’s wife of seven years, a former Air Force nurse from Akron, Ohio who served in Afghanistan herself. She’s quietly humorous, polite, possessed of perfect posture, and stoically tough-minded in a way that reminds me of my late mother, also a nurse from the Akron area. I find her presence balancing and calming.
I sense this young couple has faced some novel challenges, not least her husband’s evolution from a lethal, locked-on soldier-spy to a messenger of wild, disruptive truths. “It’s definitely been a journey!” says Jessica. One theme at dinner is Grusch’s obsessive streak: he reveals that he’s been diagnosed as “slightly autistic” and acknowledges having trouble with social niceties such as “remembering people’s birthdays.” He shoots his wife a bashful glance and she returns a forgiving one. When it is time for dessert, they both demur — counting their calories, American style — but then they relent, being naughty, and order cake.
After dinner, I watch them drive off into the dark, up to their house on a ridge beneath the stars. “I always complete my missions,” Grusch said tonight, sawing into his thick steak. “I’ll complete this one too,” he pledged. And I believed him.
I believed he’s a young man who won’t — who can’t — turn back.
According to the report, an analyst has cautioned that the leaks thus far are probably just “the tip of the iceberg” and that there may be additional significant leaks forthcoming or possibly have already occurred. Indeed, the development has the potential to become comparable to the ‘Pentagon Papers’ of the Vietnam War era.
by JD Heyes
Apr 12, 2023
When you live in a country that spends more than nearly all the rest of the world’s nations on a single industry, it only makes sense that the industry itself would become a living, breathing thing that controls its own destiny.
We’re talking about the American defense industry, of course, and at around $800 billion a year, you can see why the industry’s leaders buy and sell politicians in order to help perpetuate their existence.
But of course, a massive defense industry needs war and conflict in order to continue justifying the massive amounts of taxpayer dollars that feed it, and according to Pentagon documents that have been leaked online in recent days, war and conflict have been planned now for years.
A recent leak of classified materials has reportedly revealed a wider range of information than previously disclosed. The leak includes documents marked as “Top Secret” and covers topics ranging from the conflict in Ukraine to security issues in the Middle East and China.
The documents surfaced on social media sites on Friday, causing concern for the Pentagon and adding to the challenges faced by the Biden administration. The extent and source of the leak have not been confirmed at this time.
“A new batch of classified documents that appear to detail American national security secrets from Ukraine to the Middle East to China surfaced on social media sites on Friday, alarming the Pentagon and adding turmoil to a situation that seemed to have caught the Biden administration off guard,” The New York Times reported Friday evening.
“The scale of the leak — analysts say more than 100 documents may have been obtained — along with the sensitivity of the documents themselves, could be hugely damaging, U.S. officials said,” the report noted further.
According to the report, a senior intelligence official described the leak as “a nightmare for the Five Eyes” — a reference to the intelligence-sharing alliance among the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
Similar to the previously leaked Ukraine war plans reported by The New York Times, some of the latest leaked documents have surfaced on social media platforms such as Twitter. These documents are labelled with one of the highest classification ratings, “Secret/NoForn,” indicating the information is too sensitive to even share with foreign allies, Zero Hedge reported this week.
“Interestingly, the NY Times notes that one intelligence slide which is circulating features ‘an alarming assessment of Ukraine’s faltering air defense capabilities.’ But these leaks, some of which actually appeared on a Discord server devoted to discussing Minecraft and other unusual places, include more than the initial content on Ukraine war planning,” Zero Hedge noted further.
The Times noted:
But the leaked documents appear to go well beyond highly classified material on Ukraine war plans. Security analysts who have reviewed the documents tumbling onto social media sites say the increasing trove also includes sensitive briefing slides on China, the Indo-Pacific military theater, the Middle East, and terrorism.
According to the report, an analyst has cautioned that the leaks thus far are probably just “the tip of the iceberg” and that there may be additional significant leaks forthcoming or possibly have already occurred. Indeed, the development has the potential to become comparable to the ‘Pentagon Papers’ of the Vietnam War era.
Mick Mulroy, a former high-ranking Pentagon official, expressed concern over the leak, noting “many of these were pictures of documents” and thus “it appears that it was a deliberate leak done by someone that wished to damage the Ukraine, U.S., and NATO efforts.”
His assessment implies that the leak may have originated from within allied forces rather than from a foreign adversary.
Info posted online ranged from Ukraine’s air defences to Israel’s Mossad spy agency
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/us-intelligence-leak-1.6805909
Thomson Reuters · Posted: Apr 09, 2023
Highly classified military and intelligence documents that appeared online, with details ranging from Ukraine’s air defences to Israel’s Mossad spy agency, have U.S. officials scrambling to identify the leak’s source, with some Western security experts and U.S. officials saying they suspect it could be someone from the United States.
Officials say the breadth of topics addressed in the documents, which touch on the war in Ukraine, China, the Middle East and Africa, suggest they may have been leaked by an American rather than an ally.
“The focus now is on this being a U.S. leak, as many of the documents were only in U.S. hands,” Michael Mulroy, a former senior Pentagon official, told Reuters in an interview.
U.S. officials said the investigation is in its early stages and those running it have not ruled out the possibility that pro-Russian elements were behind the leak, which is seen as one of the most serious security breaches since more than 700,000 documents, videos and diplomatic cables appeared on the WikiLeaks website in 2013.
The Russian embassy in Washington and the Kremlin did not respond to requests for comment.
WATCH | Leak of secret Pentagon documents on Ukraine sparks probe
Following the disclosure of the leak, Reuters has reviewed more than 50 documents labelled “Secret” and “Top Secret” that first appeared last month on social media websites, beginning with Discord and 4Chan. While some of the documents were posted weeks ago, their existence was first reported Friday by the New York Times.
Reuters has not independently verified the authenticity of the documents. Some giving battlefield casualty estimates from Ukraine appeared to have been altered to minimize Russian losses. It is not clear why at least one is marked unclassified but includes top secret information. Some documents are marked “NOFORN,” meaning they cannot be released to foreign nationals.
Two U.S. officials told Reuters on Sunday they have not ruled out that the documents may have been doctored to mislead investigators about their origin or to disseminate false information that may harm U.S. security interests.
The White House referred questions to the Pentagon.
In a statement on Sunday, the Pentagon said it was reviewing the validity of the photographed documents that “appear to contain sensitive and highly classified material.”
The Pentagon has referred the issue to the Department of Justice, which has opened a criminal investigation.
One of the documents, dated Feb. 23 and marked “Secret,” outlines in detail how Ukraine’s S-300 air defence systems would be depleted by May 2 at the current usage rate.
Such closely-guarded information could be of great use to Russian forces, and Ukraine said its president and top security officials met on Friday to discuss ways to prevent leaks.
Watching allies
Another document, marked “Top Secret” from a CIA Intel update from March 1, says the Mossad intelligence agency was encouraging protests against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plans to tighten controls on the Supreme Court.
The document said the U.S. learned this through signals intelligence, suggesting the United States had been spying on one of its most important allies in the Middle East.
In a statement on Sunday, Netanyahu’s office described the assertion as “mendacious and without any foundation whatsoever.”
Another document gave details of internal discussions among senior South Korean officials about U.S. pressure on Seoul to help supply weapons to Ukraine, and its policy of not doing so.
A South Korean presidential official said on Sunday the country was aware of news reports about the leaked documents and it plans to discuss “issues raised” with Washington.
The Pentagon has not addressed the contents of any specific documents, including the apparent surveillance of allies.
Two U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that while there is concern about the leak at the Pentagon and intelligence agencies, the documents showed a snapshot in time from more than a month ago, rather than more recent assessments.
The two officials said the military and intelligence agencies are looking at their processes to determine how widely some of the intelligence is shared internally.
Officials are looking at what motivations a U.S. official or a group of officials would have in leaking such sensitive information, said one of the officials who spoke to Reuters.
The official said investigators are looking at four or five theories, from a disgruntled employee to an insider threat who actively wanted to undermine U.S. national security interests.
The Pentagon and Justice Department say they are investigating the alleged unauthorized disclosures
https://www.rt.com/news/574385-us-secret-documents-leak/
April 8, 2023
FILE PHOTO: Ukrainian soldiers fire a mortar on the frontline near the city of Artyomovsk, Donetsk region, March 26, 2023. © AP / Libkos
Scores of secret US national security files have appeared online after another major leak, the New York Times has reported, noting that the new documents include “sensitive” material related to Ukraine, China, the Middle East and terrorism.
The breach comes just one day after other “top secret” papers showing US and NATO war plans in Ukraine made the rounds on social media.
The new trove of documents was spotted on Twitter and other platforms on Friday afternoon, in what one senior US intelligence official described as a “nightmare” for Western security services, according to the NYT. While the full scope of the leak has yet to be determined and the authenticity of the files remains unverified, the outlet suggested the latest breach could include “more than 100 documents” in total.
Similar to another classified disclosure first reported on Thursday, some of the files detail intelligence related to the conflict in Ukraine. One “top secret” document shows a US assessment of the situation in the city of Artyomovsk (known as Bakhmut in Ukraine), which has largely come under Moscow’s control after months of bitter fighting.
READ MORE: ‘Secret’ NATO war plan leak triggers Pentagon probe – NYT
However, the new leak does not stop with Ukraine and covers a variety of other subjects, including “sensitive briefing slides on China, the Indo-Pacific military theater, the Middle East and terrorism,” the NYT added, stating that the scale of the breach appears to have caught the White House “off guard.”
The Pentagon said on Thursday that it would investigate the matter, while the Justice Department later announced its own separate probe. It said it was in communication with military officials, but neither have shared any additional details.
Following the prior leak earlier this week, officials said they were working to remove the material from the internet, though those efforts appear to have been unsuccessful so far, as many of the documents remain accessible on social media.
According to one unnamed official cited by the NYT, determining the source of the breach would begin with “identifying which officials had access to them.” Staffers at several national security agencies described a “rush” to find the leaker, voicing concerns that this week’s disclosures would turn into a “steady drip of classified information” published online.
The whistleblower pointed at an AP investigation on how the Covid-19 pandemic has “normalized” spying on citizens
No matter how it’s being used, what is being built is the architecture of oppression.” He added, “As authoritarianism spreads, as emergency laws proliferate, as we sacrifice our rights, we also sacrifice our capability to arrest this slide into a less liberal, less free world.”
https://www.rt.com/news/568848-snowden-covid-spying-normalized/
Dec 24, 2022
FILE PHOTO © AP / Armando Franca
Former CIA and National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden has claimed vindication after a media report exposed how surveillance tools deployed to fight Covid-19 are now being abused by law enforcement and other authorities – as he predicted over two years ago.
“I talked about this back in early 2020 and was dismissed as paranoid, as is our tradition when someone points to the predictable outcome of a dangerous but popular new trend,” Snowden said in a Twitter post on Friday. The former US intelligence contractor cited this week’s Associated Press article on how Covid-19 had “accelerated and normalized” the use of state surveillance and tracking tools against ordinary citizens and activists.
Snowden linked to an April 2020 interview with Vice founder Shane Smith in which he predicted that emergency measures used to deal with the Covid-19 crisis would become permanent and be used to infringe civil liberties. At the time, pandemic fears were at their height, and many governments across the globe were being lauded for using cutting-edge surveillance applications to track infections and quarantine people who had possibly been exposed to the virus.
“When any of us looks at where this is heading, we need to think about where we’ve been,” Snowden told Smith. “And sadly, these kinds of emergency powers that are born out of crises have a perfect history of abuse. I mean, down the board, whenever you look at these things, the funniest part about it, in a dark way, is that the emergency never ends and becomes normalized.”
The AP article cited mobile-phone tracking and other technology being used to accuse people of crimes, block citizens from travelling, harass “marginalized communities” and link personal health data to surveillance and law enforcement systems.
Snowden came to fame by exposing the US government’s global and domestic surveillance tactics that sprung from an earlier crisis, the September 11 terrorist attacks. He lamented that with pandemic-related technology already being abused, “stopping this will be harder, now.”
READ MORE: Snowden highlights ‘most important video of the year’
In the 2020 interview, Snowden argued that because everyone was so fearful about the present, they neglected to think about how the decisions that were being made would affect the future. “No matter how it’s being used, what is being built is the architecture of oppression.” He added, “As authoritarianism spreads, as emergency laws proliferate, as we sacrifice our rights, we also sacrifice our capability to arrest this slide into a less liberal, less free world.”
Waters told RT that the statement from Swedish prosecutors claiming that the evidence against Assange had “weakened” since 2010 was a “mealy-mouthed bunch of bullsh*t” and that there was “no evidence to support the idea that [Assange] injured anybody.”
It’s partly because of this whole “set-up” that Assange is still suffering in London’s Belmarsh Prison with no real process of law being followed, Waters said. “Assange is being slowly murdered by the state because he told uncomfortable truths about US war crimes,” he added.
The law is being thrown out the window at the behest of the growing mono-empire that is the USA — and it is so wrong.
The British rock ‘n’ roll legend said that Assange’s continued detainment behind bars was “purely political” and that there is no question that he is a political prisoner who is being used as a “warning” to others who might be inclined to do real journalism.
In any sane universe, Julian Assange would be lauded as a hero of the people.
Waters also took aim at mainstream media, where he said it is now nearly impossible to find a truthful narrative of events. “To find the truth these days is extremely difficult,” he said.
Assange is currently languishing in Belmarsh awaiting a hearing on extradition to the US, where he could face 175 years in prison for publishing leaked military documents and exposing war crimes. A London court ruled against the whistleblower in October after his lawyers sought to have the extradition hearing delayed.
Pundits, public figures and Julian Assange’s supporters flocked to an event called ‘Free the Truth’ in London. The Ruptly video agency filmed the exhibition of posters decrying Assange’s imprisonment, as well as artworks inspired by him.
“So many activists are coming together at a time when I feel there’s been a real change in public sentiment,” Craig Murray, a former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan who now campaigns for the renowned publisher, commented.
Despite the lack of coverage or biased coverage in mainstream media, there is now an understanding that Julian is being extradited to the United States for nothing except for publishing the truth.
He’s confident that next year “we will see one of the largest campaigns [in support of Assange] of our time.”
It’s extremely important to draw attention to the founder of the WikiLeaks website, because “we are about to set a precedent,” warned Nils Melzer, a United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture.
If Assange gets extradited to the United States and if he gets punished for exposing the truth, then essentially what’s happening is that telling the truth becomes a crime.
Assange is currently being held at London’s high-security Prison Belmarsh while he faces extradition to the United States on conspiracy and espionage charges.
Melzer has previously sounded the alarm about the conditions of his detention, accusing British authorities of subjecting him to “psychological torture” and warning that he could face further cruel treatment if extradited to the US.
“He’s going to be sentenced by the same judge that sentences all of these whistleblowers in a closed court in East Virginia, and he’ll disappear in a high security prison in inhumane conditions for the rest of his life,” Melzer predicted.
ALSO ON RT.COMJulian Assange will ‘disappear for the rest of his life’ inside ‘inhumane’ US prison, UN envoy warns… if he makes it that farLike this story? Share it with a friend!
The Guardian has published an editorial titled “The Guardian view on extraditing Julian Assange: don’t do it,” subtitled “The US case against the WikiLeaks founder is an assault on press freedom and the public’s right to know.” The publication’s editorial board argues that since the Swedish investigation has once again been dropped, the time is now to oppose U.S. extradition for the WikiLeaks founder.
“Sweden’s decision to drop an investigation into a rape allegation against Julian Assange has both illuminated the situation of the WikiLeaks founder and made it more pressing,” the editorial board writes.
Oh okay, now the issue is illuminated and pressing. Not two months ago, when Assange’s ridiculous bail sentence ended and he was still kept in prison explicitly and exclusively because of the U.S. extradition request. Not six months ago, when the U.S. government slammed Assange with 17 charges under the Espionage Act for publishing the Chelsea Manning leaks. Not seven months ago, when Assange was forcibly pried from the Ecuadorian embassy and slapped with the U.S. extradition request. Not any time between his April arrest and his taking political asylum seven years ago, which the Ecuadorian government explicitly granted him because it believed there was a credible threat of U.S. extradition. Not nine years ago when WikiLeaks was warning that the U.S. government was scheming to extradite Assange and prosecute him under the Espionage Act.
Nope, no, any of those times would have been far too early for The Guardian to begin opposing U.S. extradition for Assange with any degree of lucidity. They had to wait until Assange was already locked up in Belmarsh prison and limping into extradition hearings supervised by looming U.S.government officials. They had to wait until years and years of virulent mass media smear campaigns had killed off public support for Assange so he could be extradited with little or no grassroots backlash. And they had to wait until they themselves had finished participating in those smear campaigns.
There is, needless to say, no hint or suggestion in the Mueller Report that Paul Manafort visited Julian Assange ever in his life, let alone 3 times in the Ecuadorian Embassy during the election. It would obviously be there if it happened. How can the @guardian not retract this??
This is after all the same Guardian which published the transparently ridiculous and completely invalidated report that Trump lackey Paul Manafort had met secretly with Assange at the embassy, not once but multiple times. Not one shred of evidence has ever been produced to substantiate this claim despite the embassy being one of the most heavily surveilled buildings on the planet at the time, and the Robert Mueller investigation, whose expansive scope would obviously have included such meetings, reported absolutely nothing to corroborate it. It was a bogus story which all accused parties have forcefully denied.
This is the same Guardian which ran an article last year titled “The only barrier to Julian Assange leaving Ecuador’s embassy is pride,” arguing that Assange looked ridiculous for remaining in the embassy because “The WikiLeaks founder is unlikely to face prosecution in the U.S.”
The article was authored by the odious James Ball, who deleted a tweet not long ago complaining about the existence of UN special rapporteurs after one of them concluded that Assange is a victim of psychological torture. Ball’s article begins, “According to Debrett’s, the arbiters of etiquette since 1769: ‘Visitors, like fish, stink in three days.’ Given this, it’s difficult to imagine what Ecuador’s London embassy smells like, more than five-and-a-half years after Julian Assange moved himself into the confines of the small flat in Knightsbridge, just across the road from Harrods.”
This is the same Guardian which published an article titled “Definition of paranoia: supporters of Julian Assange,” arguing that Assange defenders are crazy conspiracy theorists for believing the U.S. would try to extradite Assange because “Britain has a notoriously lax extradition treaty with the United States,” because “why would they bother to imprison him when he is making such a good job of discrediting himself?”, and “because there is no extradition request.”
This is the same Guardian which published a ludicrous report about Assange potentially receiving documents as part of a strange Nigel Farage/Donald Trump/Russia conspiracy, a claim based primarily on vague analysis by a single anonymous source described as a “highly placed contact with links to US intelligence.” The same Guardian which just flushed standard journalistic protocol down the toilet by reporting on Assange’s “ties to the Kremlin” (not a thing) without even bothering to use the word “alleged,” not once, but twice. The same Guardian which has been advancing many more virulent smears as documented in this article by The Canary titled “Guilty by innuendo: the Guardian campaign against Julian Assange that breaks all the rules.”
A look at how sleazeball journalists at the Guardian tried to ‘Russiagate’ Assange https://www.thecanary.co/global/world-analysis/2018/12/20/guilty-by-innuendo-the-guardian-campaign-against-julian-assange-that-breaks-all-the-rules/ …
Guilty by innuendo: the Guardian campaign against Julian Assange that breaks all the rules | The…
Assange prefers transparency
thecanary.co
You can see, then, how ridiculous it is for an outlet like The Guardian to now attempt to wash its hands of Assange’s plight with a self-righteous denunciation of the Trump administration’s extradition request from its editorial board. This outlet has actively and forcefully paved the road to the situation in which Assange now finds himself by manufacturing consent for an agenda which the public would otherwise have found appalling and ferociously objectionable. Guardian editors don’t get to pretend that they are in some way separate from what’s being done to Assange. They created what’s being done to Assange.
The deployment of a bomb or missile doesn’t begin when a pilot pushes a button, it begins when propaganda narratives used to promote those operations start circulating in public attention. If you help circulate war propaganda, you’re as complicit as the one who pushes the button. The imprisonment of a journalist for exposing U.S. war crimes doesn’t begin when the Trump administration extradites him to America, it begins when propagandistic smear campaigns begin circulating to kill public opposition to his imprisonment. If you helped promote that smear campaign, you’re just as responsible for what happens to him as the goon squad in Trump’s Department of Justice.
Really great talk by @RonPaulInstitut‘s Daniel McAdams titled “How Not To Be a CIA Propagandist” on the importance of never facilitating propaganda narratives against governments targeted for regime change, even if you disagree with their ideology.https://youtu.be/IgoEFSrRnds?t=5948 …
Before they launch missiles, they launch narratives. Before they drop bombs, they drop ideas. Before they invade, they propagandize. Before the killing, there is manipulation. Narrative control is the front line of all imperialist agendas, and it is therefore the front line of all anti-imperialist efforts. When you forcefully oppose these agendas, that matters, because you’re keeping the public from being propagandized into consenting to them. When you forcefully facilitate those agendas, that matters, because you’re actively paving the way for them.
Claiming you oppose an imperialist agenda while helping to advance its propaganda and smear campaigns in any way is a nonsensical and contradictory position. You cannot facilitate imperialism and simultaneously claim to oppose it.
They work so hard to manufacture our consent because they need that consent. If they operate without the consent of the governed, the public will quickly lose trust in their institutions, and at that point it’s not long before revolution begins to simmer. So, don’t give them your consent. And for God’s sake don’t do anything that helps manufacture it in others.
Words matter. Work with them responsibly.
Caitlin Johnstone is a rogue journalist, poet, and utopia prepper who publishes regularly at Medium. Follow her work on Facebook, Twitter, or her website. She has a podcast and a new book “Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers.”
This article was re-published with permission.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
Australian-born John Pilger has worked for over five decades as a reporter and documentary film-maker covering wars and conflicts all over the world. In the following interview, the award-winning journalist says the world is arguably at a more perilous geopolitical juncture than even during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 at the height of the Cold War. This is because American “exceptionalism” – which, he points out, mirrors that of Nazi Germany – has developed into a hyper-rogue phase. The relentless denigration of Russia by American and Western media show that there are few red lines left to restrain aggression towards Moscow, as there were, at least, during the past Cold War. Russia and China’s refusal to bow down to Washington’s dictate is infuriating the would-be American hegemon and its desire for zero-sum world domination.
John Pilger also gives his wide-ranging views on the systematic deterioration of Western mainstream journalism which has come to function as a nakedly propaganda matrix for power and corporate profit. He further condemns the ongoing persecution and torture of fellow-Australian publisher Julian Assange who is being held in a maximum-security British prison commonly used for holding mass murderers and convicted terrorists. Assange is being persecuted for telling the truth and for exposing huge crimes by the US and Britain, says Pilger. It is a grim warning of a covert war that is being conducted against independent journalism and free speech, and, more ominously, indicative of a slide towards police-state fascism in so-called Western democracies.
INTERVIEW
Question: In your documentary film, The Coming War on China (2016), you assess that the United States is on a strategic collision path with China for control of Asia-Pacific. Do you still see the threat of war looming between these two powers?
John Pilger: The threat of war may not be immediate, but we know or should know that events can change fast: a chain of incidents and missteps can ignite a war which can spread unpredictably. The calculations are not in dispute: an “enemy” has barely 12 minutes to decide whether and where to order a nuclear retaliation.
Question: Recently, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo accused China of being “truly hostile to America’s interests”. What in your view is motivating US concerns about China?
John Pilger: The State Department once declared, “To seek less than preponderant power would be to opt for defeat.” At the root of much of humanity’s insecurity is, remarkably, the self-belief and self-delusion of one nation: the United States. America’s notion of itself is often difficult for the rest of us to comprehend. From the days of President Teddy Roosevelt, the “sacred mission” has been to dominate humanity and its vital resources, if not by intimidation and bribery then by violence. In the 1940s, American “war intellectuals”, such as the diplomat and historian George F Kennan, described the necessity of American dominance of the “Grand Area”, which is most of the world, notably Eurasia, and especially China. Non-Americans were to be cast in “our image”, wrote Kennan; America was the exemplar. Hollywood has reflected this with striking accuracy.
In 1945, this vision, or mania, was given a moral makeover with the defeat of Nazi Germany. Today, many Americans believe their country won the Second World War and that they are the “exceptional” human beings. This mythology (reminiscent of Nazi propaganda) has long had an evangelical hold in the US and is the central pillar of the need to dominate, which requires enemies and fear. America’s long history of racism towards Asia and its historic humiliation of the Chinese people make China a perfect fit as the current enemy.
I should add that “exceptionalism” is not only embraced by the American right. Although they may not admit it, many liberals believe it in it, as do those who describe themselves as “left”. It’s the spawn of the most rapacious ideology on earth: Americanism. That this word is rarely uttered is part of its power.
Question: Do you think it is a strange anomaly that the Trump administration has adopted an aggressive policy towards China, yet this American president appears to seek more friendly relations with Russia?
John Pilger: Dividing China and Russia with the aim of weakening both is a venerable American game. Henry Kissinger played it. As for Trump, it’s impossible to know what he thinks. Regardless of his overtures to Putin, the US has aggressively subverted Ukraine and militarized Russia’s western border and is a more immediate threat to Russia than it is to China.
Question: Do you think the impeachment process underway against Trump is tantamount to a coup to get rid of him by the Deep State because of his relatively benign stance towards Russia?
John Pilger: That’s one theory; I’m not so sure. Trump’s election in 2016 disturbed a Mafia-like system of tribal back-scratching, which the Democrats dominate. Hillary Clinton was the Chosen One; how dare Trump seize her throne. Many American liberals refuse to see their corrupt heroine as a standard bearer of Wall Street, a warmonger and an emblem of hi-jacked gender politics. Clinton is the embodiment of a venal system, Trump is its caricature.
Question: You have worked for over five decades as a war reporter and documentary film-maker in Vietnam, elsewhere in Asia, Africa and Latin America. How do you see current international tensions between the US, China and Russia? Do you think the danger of war is greater now than in previous times?
John Pilger: In 1962, we all may have been saved by the refusal of a Soviet naval officer, Vasili Arkhipov, to fire a nuclear torpedo at US ships during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Are we in greater danger today? During the Cold War, there were lines that the other side dared not cross. There are few if any lines now; the US surrounds China with 400 military bases and sails its low-draught ships into Chinese waters and flies its drones in Chinese airspace. American-led NATO forces mass on the same Russian frontier the Nazis crossed; the Russian president is insulted as a matter of routine. There is no restraint and none of the diplomacy that kept the old Cold War cold. In the West, we have acquiesced as bystanders in our own countries, preferring to look away (or at our smart phones) rather than break free of the post-modernism entrapping us with its specious “identity” distractions.
Question: You travelled extensively in the US during the Cold War years. You witnessed the assassination of presidential candidate Robert Kennedy in 1968. It seems the American Cold War obsession with “communism as an evil” has been replaced by an equally intense Russophobia towards modern-day Russia. Do you see a continuation in the phobia from the Cold War years to today? What accounts for that mindset?
John Pilger: The Russians refuse to bow down to America, and that is intolerable. They play an independent, mostly positive role in the Middle East, the antithesis of America’s violent subversions, and that is unbearable. Like the Chinese, they have forged peaceful and fruitful alliances with people all over the world, and that is unacceptable to the US Godfather. The constant defamation of all things Russian is a symptom of decline and panic, as if the United States has departed the 21st century for the 19th century, obsessed with a proprietorial view of the world. In the circumstances, the phobia you describe is hardly surprising.
Question: How has news journalism, specifically in Western states, changed over the course of your career? You have won multiple awards for your writing and film-making, yet today one rarely reads your articles published in mainstream media even though you are still actively working as a journalist as per your own website?
John Pilger: Journalism wasn’t corporate when I began. Most newspapers in Britain were a faithful reflection of the interests of what was known as the Establishment, but they could also be idiosyncratic. When I came to Fleet Street in London during the early 1960s, then known as the “Mecca of newspapers”, the times were optimistic and the most right-wing newspapers tolerated, even encouraged mavericks, who are often the best journalists. The Daily Mirror, then the biggest circulating newspaper on earth apart from the People’s Daily, was the soldiers’ paper during the Second World War and became, for millions of Britons, their paper. To those of us on the Mirror, it was something of an ideal to be the agents and defenders of people, not power.
Today, true mavericks are redundant in the mainstream media. Corporate public relations is the real force in modern journalism. Look at the way news is written: almost none of it is straight. I wrote for many years for the Guardian; my last piece was five years ago after which I received a phone call. I was purged, along with other independent writers. The Guardian now promotes fiction about Russia, obsessively, the interests of Britain’s intelligence services, Israel, the US Democratic Party, bourgeois gender imperatives and an unctuous view of itself. The paper’s witch-hunt against Julian Assange – part of a campaign which the UN Rapporteur on Torture refers to as “mobbing” – includes fabrication of a kind previously associated with the rightwing Murdoch press; certainly, its cruelty towards Assange is a profanity on the liberal values for which it claims to stand.
Question: You have been a prominent supporter of Julian Assange, the founding editor of WikiLeaks, who is currently imprisoned in Britain awaiting an extradition trial next year to the US on charges of espionage. What’s really behind the incarceration of Assange?
John Pilger: Julian Assange is what journalists should be and rarely are: he is a tireless, fearless truth-teller. He has exposed, on a vast scale, the secret, criminal life of great power: of “our” governments, their lying and violence in our name. Ten years ago, WikiLeaks leaked a British Ministry of Defense document that described investigative journalism as the greatest threat to secretive power. Investigative journalists were rated higher on the threat scale than “Russian spies” and “terrorists”. Assange and WikiLeaks can claim that laurel. If the Americans come for him and incarcerate him in a hell hole, they will come for others, including those journalists who simply do their job. And they will come for their editors and publishers too.
Question: You make the point that Assange shames the mainstream Western media because Wikileaks published damning information exposing huge war crimes committed by the US and its NATO allies in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, while the mainstream media ignored those crimes or give them relatively scant coverage. Does that explain why these media are ignoring Assange’s plight?
John Pilger: There is, at last, a growing realization that the gross injustice against Assange is likely to happen to others. The recent statement by Britain’s National Union of Journalists is a sign of change. The silence must be broken if journalists are to reclaim their honor.
Question: You have recently visited Assange in Britain’s maximum-security Belmarsh Prison where he is being held in solitary confinement. How would you describe his physical and mental condition? You say he is being subjected to a show-trial. Is his mistreatment comparable to what Western media would condemn as persecution under dictatorships?
John Pilger: Julian’s last court appearance on October 21 was effectively controlled by four Americans from the US Embassy who sat behind the prosecutor and passed their written instructions to him by hand. The judge watched this outrage and allowed it to continue. At the same time, she treated Julian’s lawyers with contempt. When Julian, who is ill, struggled to speak his name, she sneered. The difference from a Cold War show-trial was that this was not broadcast on state television; the BBC blacked it out.
Question: With the arrest of Julian Assange and other independent journalists like Max Blumenthal in the US who exposed Washington’s regime-change crimes in Venezuela, and given the silent indifference of Western media, do you think it is a real concern that the US is sliding towards police-state fascism?
John Pilger: Some would argue the slide has happened.
Waters told RT that the statement from Swedish prosecutors claiming that the evidence against Assange had “weakened” since 2010 was a “mealy-mouthed bunch of bullsh*t” and that there was “no evidence to support the idea that [Assange] injured anybody.”
It’s partly because of this whole “set-up” that Assange is still suffering in London’s Belmarsh Prison with no real process of law being followed, Waters said. “Assange is being slowly murdered by the state because he told uncomfortable truths about US war crimes,” he added.
The law is being thrown out the window at the behest of the growing mono-empire that is the USA — and it is so wrong.
The British rock ‘n’ roll legend said that Assange’s continued detainment behind bars was “purely political” and that there is no question that he is a political prisoner who is being used as a “warning” to others who might be inclined to do real journalism.
In any sane universe, Julian Assange would be lauded as a hero of the people.
Waters also took aim at mainstream media, where he said it is now nearly impossible to find a truthful narrative of events. “To find the truth these days is extremely difficult,” he said.
Assange is currently languishing in Belmarsh awaiting a hearing on extradition to the US, where he could face 175 years in prison for publishing leaked military documents and exposing war crimes. A London court ruled against the whistleblower in October after his lawyers sought to have the extradition hearing delayed.
Swedish prosecutors announced on Tuesday that they would drop a dubious rape inquiry against Assange, as oral testimony against the publisher had “weakened,” and corroborating evidence was not strong enough to pursue a case. A Swedish arrest warrant was issued against assange in 2010, and a British court upheld a decision to extradite him in 2012. Threatened with what many saw as a politically motivated extradition, Assange sought refuge in London’s Ecuadorian embassy.
“Today’s collapse of Sweden’s #Assange investigation was inevitable,” rapporteur Nils Melzer tweeted on Tuesday. “Given its gross arbitrariness, there must now be a full investigation, and accountability & compensation for the harm inflicted on #JulianAssange.”
Today’s collapse of Sweden’s #Assange investigation was inevitable. Given its gross arbitrariness, there must now be a full investigation, and accountability & compensation for the harm inflicted on #JulianAssange https://twitter.com/nilsmelzer/status/1193841574586781698 …
Nils Melzer@NilsMelzer#Assange: My follow-up letter of 12 Sept asking #Sweden to explain, point by point, the #HumanRights compliance of 50 perceived due process violations, to conduct a prompt & impartial investigation and reiterating my unanswered queries of 28 May. Link: http://bit.ly/2NXUAEN
Melzer had previously claimed that Assange was subjected to “psychological torture” and had his due process rights “systematically violated” by the governments of Britain and Sweden. The WikiLeaks founder is still languishing in a maximum security unit at Belmarsh prison, awaiting a hearing on extradition to the US, where he potentially faces 175 years behind bars for publishing leaked military documents.
In a document tweeted by Melzer, the envoy accuses Sweden of “actively and knowingly” contributing to Assange’s torture, and accuses prosecutors there of working in tandem with Britain’s Crown Prosecutorial Service to keep the case against Assange alive in the face of exculpatory evidence.
With the rape case against him dropped, some commentators have warned that the path to extradition to the US may now be clearer. WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson told supporters that their focus should now shift to the most important “threat” that Assange was “warning about for years: the belligerent prosecution of the United States and the threat it poses to the First Amendment.”
http://www.paulcraigroberts.org
Paul Craig Roberts
November 7, 2019
This Shows How Impotent Western Peoples Are—They Cannot Even Save the Journalist Who Told Them the Truth
Persecution of Assange — more of the same
For nearly a decade the United States has been pursuing and persecuting Julian Assange in collaboration with three vassal states, aided and abetted by mainstream media. That appalling spectacle has been accompanied by a steady stream of eloquent denunciations and growing demands for Julian’s liberation.
The legal and moral grounds for all those demands and denunciations are indisputable. And yet he remains in prison under false pretexts, with no prospect of liberation in sight.
How is that possible? Because forces hostile to Julian Assange and what he represents have gained control of the institutions and superior resources of the collaborating governments. They have done so by means of ”democratic” elections which legitimise their control and — in the absence of any substantial opposition — ignore legal and ethical constraints on their conduct. In all of this, the complicity of the mainstream media has been essential.
A not-so-modest proposal
It is or should be obvious by now that Julian’s freedom is very unlikely to be won by appeals to reason and expressions of moral sentiment — no matter how often they are repeated and how widely they may be shared — as long as they remain disparate and unorganized, as they have been thus far. That is why I have proposed* the following:
• a global campaign dedicated to the release of Julian Assange from captivity, with an appropriate title such as ”Assange Freedom Now!”
• a qualified and influential steering committee to lead and legitimise the campaign.
• an adequately staffed and funded campaign headquarters, presumably in London but possibly elsewhere, to carry out tasks including:
Create and constantly maintain an attractive, easily read and technically efficient website to provide continual and authoritative reports on Julian’s current situation and related matters, correct errors in other media, answer reader enquiries, etc.
Develop and maintain a comprehensive list of solidarity groups around the world, document their actions, respond to their requests for information and guidance, etc.
Help plan, co-ordinate and execute major actions.
Indifferent response
In the two weeks that have passed since it was made, the response to that proposal has been less than overwhelming.
Two individuals have offered to help implement it. A few others have expressed approval but argued that it would be too difficult or take too long. Still others have explained that they want to do something, anything, without delay in order to vent their anger and frustration.
But the main response has been no response.
Instead, there has been more of the same, including several admirable initiatives involving a great deal of hard work and dedication. It goes without saying that I devoutly hope that they succeed in their variously expressed purpose of securing Julian’s freedom. It is extremely unlikely that they will.
One reason for that is reflected in the experience of two similar initiatives. Today, the author of one wrote of the other: ”This is completely different from my letter.… It started with my letter and got completely changed. Mine was against imprisonment, this is against extradition. Both are necessary but not the same. There is certainly a lack of coordination.”
There is indeed a lack of coordination, but I have found it extremely difficult to persuade others that overcoming that lack is of the highest priority. Very few have even been willing to discuss the issue.
And so it continues, with no one discernibly in charge of Julian’s struggle for freedom and very few who seem to believe that there ought to be, while millions of Julian’s supporters around the world remain uninformed and unorganised.
Apart from writing this memorandum, I lack the means to alter that perplexing and perturbing state of affairs. I can only hope that others with more power and greater resources will choose to do so
A final observation: As things now stand, Julian’s best hope may be for the Labour Party to win enough votes in the forthcoming U.K. election to form the next government. Party leader Jeremy Corbyn has condemned the current government’s treatment of Julian and has declared his intention to release him from prison if elected. Although it is conceivable that he might then change his mind or feel compelled to change his policy, there are ample grounds to trust Mr. Corbyn in this matter. I therefore urge that every possible effort be made to ensure that he becomes the next prime minister.
Al Burke
6 November 2019
References
OHCHR, “UN expert on torture sounds alarm again that Julian Assange’s life may be at risk”
https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=25249&LangID=E
John Pilger, “Did this happen in the home of Magna Carta?”
http://johnpilger.com/articles/did-this-happen-in-the-home-of-magna-carta-
Fidel Narvaez & Stefania Maurizi, ” “I Was Fired for Helping Julian Assange, and I Have No Regrets”
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/10/julian-assange-fidel-narvaez-ecuador-moreno
Craig Murray, ”Assange in Court”
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/category/uncategorized/
*Al Burke, “Liberating Assange: A woeful lack of leadership”
http://www.nnn.se/nordic/assange/lead-lack.pdf
—
_________________________
Al Burke
E-mail: editor@nnn.se
Internet: http://www.nnn.se
Tel. +46/(0)8 – 731 9200
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(TRI Opinion) — All of us are in danger.
In an age of prosecutions for thought crimes, pre-crime deterrence programs, and government agencies that operate like organized crime syndicates, there is a new kind of tyranny being imposed on those who dare to expose the crimes of the Deep State, whose reach has gone global.
The Deep State has embarked on a ruthless, take-no-prisoners, all-out assault on truth-tellers.
Activists, journalists and whistleblowers alike are being terrorized, traumatized, tortured and subjected to the fear-inducing, mind-altering, soul-destroying, smash-your-face-in tactics employed by the superpowers-that-be.
Take Julian Assange, for example.
Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks—a website that published secret information, news leaks, and classified media from anonymous sources—was arrested on April 11, 2019, on charges of helping U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning access and leak more than 700,000 classified military documents that portray the U.S. government and its military as reckless, irresponsible and responsible for thousands of civilian deaths.
Included among the leaked Manning material were the Collateral Murder video (April 2010), the Afghanistan war logs (July 2010), the Iraq war logs (October 2010), a quarter of a million diplomatic cables (November 2010), and the Guantánamo files (April 2011).
The Collateral Murder leak included gunsight video footage from two U.S. AH-64 Apache helicopters engaged in a series of air-to-ground attacks while air crew laughed at some of the casualties. Among the casualties were two Reuters correspondents who were gunned down after their cameras were mistaken for weapons and a driver who stopped to help one of the journalists. The driver’s two children, who happened to be in the van at the time it was fired upon by U.S. forces, suffered serious injuries.
This is morally wrong.
“What happens to Julian Assange and to Chelsea Manning is meant to intimidate us, to frighten us into silence. By defending Julian Assange, we defend our most sacred rights. Speak up now or wake up one morning to the silence of a new kind of tyranny. The choice is ours.”—John Pilger, investigative journalist
It shouldn’t matter which nation is responsible for these atrocities: there is no defense for such evil perpetrated in the name of profit margins and war profiteering.
In true Orwellian fashion, however, the government would have us believe that it is Assange and Manning who are the real criminals for daring to expose the war machine’s seedy underbelly.
Since his April 2019 arrest, Assange has been locked up in a maximum-security British prison—in solitary confinement for up to 23 hours a day—pending extradition to the U.S., where if convicted, he could be sentenced to 175 years in prison.
Whatever is being done to Assange behind those prison walls—psychological torture, forced drugging, prolonged isolation, intimidation, surveillance—it’s wearing him down.
In court appearances, the 48-year-old Assange appears disoriented, haggard and zombie-like.
“In 20 years of work with victims of war, violence and political persecution I have never seen a group of democratic States ganging up to deliberately isolate, demonise and abuse a single individual for such a long time and with so little regard for human dignity and the rule of law,” declared Nils Melzer, the UN special rapporteur on torture.
It’s not just Assange who is being made to suffer, however.
Manning, who was jailed for seven years from 2010 to 2017 for leaking classified documents to Wikileaks, was arrested in March 2019 for refusing to testify before a grand jury about Assange, placed in solitary confinement for almost a month, and then sentenced to remain in jail either until she agrees to testify or until the grand jury’s 18-month term expires.
Federal judge Anthony J. Trenga of the Eastern District of Virginia also fined Manning $500 for every day she remained in custody after 30 days, and $1,000 for every day she remains in custody after 60 days, a chilling—and financially crippling—example of the government’s heavy-handed efforts to weaponize fines and jail terms as a means of forcing dissidents to fall in line.
This is how the police state deals with those who challenge its chokehold on power.
Make no mistake: the government is waging war on journalists and whistleblowers for disclosing information relating to government misconduct that is within the public’s right to know.
Yet while this targeted campaign—aided, abetted and advanced by the Deep State’s international alliances—is unfolding during President Trump’s watch, it began with the Obama Administration’s decision to revive the antiquated, hundred-year-old Espionage Act, which was intended to punish government spies, and instead use it to prosecute government whistleblowers.
Unfortunately, the Trump Administration has not merely continued the Obama Administration’s attack on whistleblowers. It has injected this war on truth-tellers and truth-seekers with steroids and let it loose on the First Amendment.
In May 2019, Trump’s Justice Department issued a sweeping new “superseding” secret indictment of Assange—hinged on the Espionage Act—that empowers the government to determine what counts as legitimate journalism and criminalize the rest, not to mention giving “the government license to criminally punish journalists it does not like, based on antipathy, vague standards, and subjective judgments.”
Noting that the indictment signaled grave dangers for freedom of the press in general, media lawyer Theodore J. Boutrous, Jr., warned, “The indictment would criminalize the encouragement of leaks of newsworthy classified information, criminalize the acceptance of such information, and criminalize publication of it.”
Boutrous continues:
[I]t doesn’t matter whether you think Assange is a journalist, or whether WikiLeaks is a news organization. The theory that animates the indictment targets the very essence of journalistic activity: the gathering and dissemination of information that the government wants to keep secret. You don’t have to like Assange or endorse what he and WikiLeaks have done over the years to recognize that this indictment sets an ominous precedent and threatens basic First Amendment values…. With only modest tweaking, the very same theory could be invoked to prosecute journalists for the very same crimes being alleged against Assange, simply for doing their jobs of scrutinizing the government and reporting the news to the American people.
We desperately need greater scrutiny and transparency, not less.
Indeed, transparency is one of those things the shadow government fears the most. Why? Because it might arouse the distracted American populace to actually exercise their rights and resist the tyranny that is inexorably asphyxiating their freedoms.
This need to shed light on government actions—to make the obscure, least transparent reaches of government accessible and accountable—was a common theme for Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, who famously coined the phrase, “Sunlight is the best disinfectant.”
Writing in January 1884, Brandeis explained:
Light is the only thing that can sweeten our political atmosphere—light thrown upon every detail of administration in the departments; light diffused through every policy; light blazed full upon every feature of legislation; light that can penetrate every recess or corner in which any intrigue might hide; light that will open up to view the innermost chambers of government, drive away all darkness from the treasury vaults; illuminate foreign correspondence; explore national dockyards; search out the obscurities of Indian affairs; display the workings of justice; exhibit the management of the army; play upon the sails of the navy; and follow the distribution of the mails.
Of course, transparency is futile without a populace that is informed, engaged and prepared to hold the government accountable to abiding by the rule of law.
For this reason, it is vital that citizens have the right to criticize the government without fear.
After all, we’re citizens, not subjects. For those who don’t fully understand the distinction between the two and why transparency is so vital to a healthy constitutional government, Manning explains it well:
When freedom of information and transparency are stifled, then bad decisions are often made and heartbreaking tragedies occur – too often on a breathtaking scale that can leave societies wondering: how did this happen? … I believe that when the public lacks even the most fundamental access to what its governments and militaries are doing in their names, then they cease to be involved in the act of citizenship. There is a bright distinction between citizens, who have rights and privileges protected by the state, and subjects, who are under the complete control and authority of the state.
Manning goes on to suggest that the U.S. “needs legislation to protect the public’s right to free speech and a free press, to protect it from the actions of the executive branch and to promote the integrity and transparency of the US government.”
Technically, we’ve already got such legislation on the books: the First Amendment.
The First Amendment gives the citizenry the right to speak freely, protest peacefully, expose government wrongdoing, and criticize the government without fear of arrest, isolation or any of the other punishments that have been meted out to whistleblowers such as Edwards Snowden, Assange and Manning.
The challenge is holding the government accountable to obeying the law.
Almost 50 years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in United States v. Washington Post Co. to block the Nixon Administration’s attempts to use claims of national security to prevent The Washington Post and The New York Times from publishing secret Pentagon papers on how America went to war in Vietnam.
As Justice William O. Douglas remarked on the ruling, “The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government. And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell.”
Almost 50 years later, with Assange being cast as the poster boy for treason, we’re witnessing yet another showdown, which pits the people’s right to know about government misconduct against the might of the military-industrial complex.
Yet this isn’t merely about whether whistleblowers and journalists are part of a protected class under the Constitution. It’s a debate over how long “we the people” will remain a protected class under the Constitution.
Following the current downward trajectory, it won’t be long before anyone who believes in holding the government accountable is labeled an “extremist,” is relegated to an underclass that doesn’t fit in, must be watched all the time, and is rounded up when the government deems it necessary.
Eventually, we will all be potential suspects, terrorists and lawbreakers in the eyes of the government
Partisan politics have no place in this debate: Americans of all stripes would do well to remember that those who question the motives of government provide a necessary counterpoint to those who would blindly follow where politicians choose to lead.
We don’t have to agree with every criticism of the government, but we must defend the rights of all individuals to speak freely without fear of punishment or threat of banishment.
Never forget: what the architects of the police state want are submissive, compliant, cooperative, obedient, meek citizens who don’t talk back, don’t challenge government authority, don’t speak out against government misconduct, and don’t step out of line.
What the First Amendment protects—and a healthy constitutional republic requires—are citizens who routinely exercise their right to speak truth to power.
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the right to speak out against government wrongdoing is the quintessential freedom.
Be warned: this quintessential freedom won’t be much good to anyone if the government makes good on its promise to make an example of Assange as a warning to other journalists intent on helping whistleblowers disclose government corruption.
Once again, we find ourselves reliving George Orwell’s 1984, which portrayed in chilling detail how totalitarian governments employ the power of language to manipulate the masses.
In Orwell’s dystopian vision of the future, Big Brother does away with all undesirable and unnecessary words and meanings, even going so far as to routinely rewrite history and punish “thoughtcrimes.”
Much like today’s social media censors and pre-crime police departments, Orwell’s Thought Police serve as the eyes and ears of Big Brother, while the other government agencies peddle in economic affairs (rationing and starvation), law and order (torture and brainwashing), and news, entertainment, education and art (propaganda).
Orwell’s Big Brother relies on Newspeak to eliminate undesirable words, strip such words as remained of unorthodox meanings and make independent, non-government-approved thought altogether unnecessary.
Where we stand now is at the juncture of OldSpeak (where words have meanings, and ideas can be dangerous) and Newspeak (where only that which is “safe” and “accepted” by the majority is permitted). The power elite has made their intentions clear: they will pursue and prosecute any and all words, thoughts and expressions that challenge their authority.
This is the final link in the police state chain.
Having been reduced to a cowering citizenry—mute in the face of elected officials who refuse to represent us, helpless in the face of police brutality, powerless in the face of militarized tactics and technology that treat us like enemy combatants on a battlefield, and naked in the face of government surveillance that sees and hears all—our backs are to the walls.
From this point on, we have only two options: go down fighting, or capitulate and betray our loved ones, our friends and ourselves by insisting that, as a brainwashed Winston Smith does at the end of Orwell’s 1984, yes, 2+2 does equal 5.
As George Orwell recognized, “In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”
By John W. Whitehead | Ruthford.org | Republished with permission
The views in this article may not reflect editorial policy of The Mind Unleashed.