Julian Assange: Collateral Damage & Poster Boy For Empire In Decline

Who among us is not happy for the Assange family as they welcome back their dad, husband, brother, and son? For the crime of doing 21st century-style journalism and building a worldwide publishing platform for information that corporate media would never reveal, Julian Assange was tortured by the U.S. and UK governments for years.

Kevin Gosztola, who wrote the great book Guilty of Journalism: The Political Case Against Julian Assange, commented:

The U.S. national security state would have been comforted if Assange had died at Belmarsh, but the opposite happened. He walked out of Belmarsh. The world saw a refreshing image of someone boarding a plane, who was once one of the best known political prisoners.

Many of us recognize that the end of the biggest press freedom case in the 21st century does not represent an end to this important struggle for freedom of the press. The U.S. government will continue to try and define "responsible journalism" in a manner that protects the military and national security agencies.

 

Assange's most famous publication in my mind is the war crime documentation "Collateral Murder," a video of U.S. soldiers firing down on Reuters journalists and civilians including children in Baghdad. Their schoolboy glee at killing with impunity is ably captured on the video that whistleblower Chelsea Manning saw while on active duty, shared with wikileaks, and did seven years in prison for herself. This event changed the life of soldier Ethan McCord who was on the ground attempting to rescue the children whose father had been shot going to the rescue of the wounded journalists.

Many other publications by wikileaks have changed the course of history in our lifetime: in 2021, the Pandora Papers exposed how the very wealthy hide their wealth from taxation in the nations where they use public services; in 2016,  the "Podesta emails" from the Democratic National Committee revealed how corrupt the electoral system of the U.S. really is; and in 2017 "Vault 7" shared CIA technical documents revealing a multitude of spying practices. Subsequently, we learned that Donald Trump and Mike Pompeo made plans for the CIA to assassinate Assange and that they had been spying on his communications with his legal counsel while taking refuge in Ecuador's embassy in London.

Aside from the torture in Belmarsh Prison, the U.S. government has extracted a guilty plea to a felony violation of the Espionage Act -- from a citizen of Australia. Also a fine structured as a £520,000 fee for the charter flight from London to a U.S. imperial outpost in the Northern Mariana Islands to enter his plea. (You can donate to a fundraiser for that here.)

Why not let Assange take a commercial flight from London to the U.S. to enter his plea there? Let me answer that question with a question: why is the Democratic National Convention nominating process going to be virtual this year rather than being held as is customary in person? A: Because the peasants are revolting and it's in the empire's interest to keep evidence of this out of the public eye.

Of the many truths about an empire in decline revealed by Assange's work, these stand out in my mind:

• War crimes are not crimes, but reporting them is. (Cf. John Kiriakou)

• The 1st amendment of the U.S. constitution guaranteeing freedom of the press is defunct. Branches of the press which our corporate overlords cannot control, they will seek to destroy

• No one is safe from the vindictive fury of a national security state embarrassed in public. Your country of citizenship is irrelevant.

• Fabricated sex crimes will be used against critics of the U.S. government (cf. Scott Ritter). You may remember Sweden tried to prosecute Assange for "rape" based on allegations that he deliberately damaged a condom used in consensual sex.

• There is no meaningful difference between Republican and Democratic administrations on any of these matters. Obama, Trump, and Biden all had a hand in punishing Assange for publishing nothing but the truth.

Assange Can Be Extradited Rules UK Court While Press Freedom Dies A Lingering Death

Julian Assange can be extradited to the United States because that government has given assurances he will be treated humanely. 

So says the court in the UK which has seen Assange, his health broken and mental health in jeopardy, and turned away.

His crime? Revealing the truth about governments. For instance, what the U.S. government was doing in Iraq with our tax dollars in the now infamous "Collateral Murder" video i.e. gunning down Reuters journalists and shooting up a good Samaritan's van carrying children in Baghdad.

The U.S. government tortured Chelsea Manning at length for allegedly leaking evidence of U.S. war crimes in Iraq.

The UK government tortured Julian Assange by holding him captive in the London embassy of Ecuador for seven years as his health deteriorated.

On what legal grounds? In so-called "free democracies" the publication of truth is a protected right of journalists. Indeed, a free press is considered the cornerstone of democracy.

Trumped up charges of rape (i.e. nonconsensual condomless intercourse) in Sweden was the ostensible reason Assange was targeted for lawfare, but the Assange's accuser has now retracted his accusation. And the machinations behind getting her to make it in the first place have been revealed as bunk.

How Edward Snowden, NSA whistleblower, escaped the long arm of U.S. imperial power to suppress the truth makes for a thrilling documentary. Snowden remains a guest in Russia, and is now raising a family rather than returning to the U.S. to languish in prison himself.

Assange has a family, too, but his children are not permitted to know their father's care.

People who dare tell the truth about the most powerful government in history pay a harsh price. 

Their families pay a harsh price.

Meanwhile Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook accelerate censorship of dissident views. Sometimes on behalf of convicted pedophiles and their close friends in high place.

We all pay a harsh price as truth and real journalism subside into darkness.

Why The U.S. Government Is So Mad At Julian Assange And Chelsea Manning

Julian Assange is a journalist who changed the way journalism gets done. He was arrested in London this week at the behest of the U.S. government. Chelsea Manning is whistleblower who is back in prison for a second time, because she refuses to testify to a secret grand jury about Assange.

Their most famous revelation is probably this U.S. Army video of helicopter troops laughing and firing on Reuters journalists, a dad who went to their rescue, and the children riding in his van in Baghdad in 2007.



(If the embedded video doesn't work for you, see it here on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rXPrfnU3G0)

Wikileaks released the video with supporting documents on April 5, 2010 at http://collateralmurder.com.

Between the two, Assange and Manning have shone the light of public scrutiny on many dark dealings.

The U.S. government appears to be persecuting them, not because you can close Pandora's box, but as a lesson to other journalists and whistleblowers.

Stand up for Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange now, before there are no journalists left unmuzzled to stand up for them.

Free Chelsea Manning (again!) resources at Courage to Resist.

Whistleblower Chelsea Manning Back In Prison For Refusing To Testify In Secret

Chelsea Manning is a martyr to the 1st amendment.

I don't think that is too strong of a statement. After her complaints about illegal activity by the U.S. military in Iraq were ignored by her chain of command, Manning shared a trove of material on those war crimes including the now iconic "Collateral Murder" video.




U.S. army personnel shooting from a helicopter over Baghdad murdered, not only Reuters journalists engaged in their work, but a father who tried to evacuate the wounded men in a van containing his children. (He was just driving by and was thus rewarded for acting as a good Samaritan.)

In retaliation for leaking evidence of war crimes, Manning was first imprisoned in a cage in the desert in Iraq. There, she believed she would die of exposure and dehydration.

Then, she was shipped home and imprisoned at Quantico Marine Base in Virginia. I demonstrated with others outside Quantico (you can read my account of that here) after news that she was being tortured in detention reached me.

She spent nine months in solitary confinement.

Manning was subsequently imprisoned at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas. My husband and I demonstrated with others outside Leavenworth (see photo above, and you can read my account of that here), calling for her freedom. President Obama had promised to protect whistleblowers, but he did nothing of the kind. 

She was courtmartialed and held for years after that. As soon as that verdict was announced, she came out as transgender and changed her first name from Bradley to Chelsea. 

Finally, Obama gave her clemency for time served as he was leaving office. Her entire imprisonment and torture happened on his watch.

Very sadly, Manning is back in prison again. As the U.S. government continues to pursue the journalist Julian Assange, alleged to have received Manning's leaked war crime evidence, they have convened a grand jury that meets in secret. A subpoena to appear and testify before the grand jury was rejected by Manning on the grounds of secrecy. She has indicated that she will testify, but not in secret.

Both Manning and Assange continue to be targeted by the U.S. empire and its warmongering presidents. Their crime is not gunning down children or torturing innocent men at Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo. Their crime: telling the truth to the American people.

To support Chelsea Manning you can go here for more information, including how to donate to her defense fund and how to send messages of support. She may be in prison for up to 18 months this time, or as long as the grand jury is impaneled. And the government can repeat their harassment of her.


https://youtu.be/aKj_i4lCfs8  "Chelsea Manning spoke to the press prior to be taken into custody, March 8, 2019, at the U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Virginia."


Why won't the federal government let Manning testify in public? What are they afraid she might reveal?

The Washington Post, which functions mostly as a mouthpiece for corporate government, has a new, somewhat ironic slogan. It refers to the demagogue with bad hair's attacks on the press; the Post and other corporate media are rightly worried that if the government can go after Assange for publishing inconvenient truths via Wikileaks, it can similarly go after them.

They should stand up for Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange now, before there are no journalists left unmuzzled to stand up for them.

Truth About Killing Children Is The First Casualty Of 21st Century Wars

Photo credit: Omar Sobhani/Reuters, published by Al Jazeera next to Oct. 28 article "Afghans fear being left out in the cold"

Whether killing children by cold and starvation, as "collateral damage" in drone strikes, by targeted assassination via drone, or for generations to come by poisoning the land, the U.S corporate war machine profits. The moral imbeciles who run the companies draining the Treasury at the expense of young humans everywhere will not stop until one of two things happens: the people rise up and quit cooperating with the system (women's strike anyone?) or Mother Nature swamps the machinery of evil with floodwaters so they grind mercifully to a halt.

I woke up this morning thinking about the epic flooding of Wall St. yesterday by the biggest storm in recorded history. I wondered who would clean up the mess, and I realized that Halliburton or some other war profiteers were probably already wining and dining the people who can award those contracts. Perhaps 2012 will be the turning point where this sort of thing begins to end.

Meanwhile, people with their humanity still intact were busy organizing relief for residents of afflicted boroughs in NYC. Here's a tweet from Occupy Wall St. with directions on how you can help if you're so inclined:

If you're on the Lower E. Side & in need, text us at (646) 580-7473 or visit https://lowereastside.recovers.org if you have internet. #SandyVolunteer

Why not warmth? is being organized by the Afghan Peace Volunteers and Voices for Creative Nonviolence as winter approaches. According to Kathy Kelly, who lives in Kabul for a month at a time several times a year, women there can be paid to create comforters, or duvets, that will be distributed to families in need:

 A harsh winter is on its way following last year's January that killed over 100 small Afghan children, 26 of them in Kabul's overflowing refugee camps...If you’d like to help with outreach and fundraising, welcome aboard! Checks can be made payable to Voices for Creative Nonviolence, with “duvet project” written in the Memo section and sent to Voices at VCNV, 1249 West Argyle, Chicago, IL 60640.

One of the many news items that galled me before Hurricane Sandy hit was this report on an Obama administration spin doctor explaining why killing a 16 year old U.S. citizen by drone strike in Yemen was okay.

Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, a U.S. citizen, was 16 when assassinated by a drone.

From Ryan Grim blogging in Huffpo:

A 16-year-old American boy killed in an Obama administration drone strike "should have [had] a far more responsible father," Obama campaign senior adviser Robert Gibbs says in a new video released by the group We Are Change.

Abdulrahman al-Awlaki was the son of Anwar al-Awlaki, an al Qaeda propagandist killed by a U.S. drone a year ago. But the child was killed in a separate strike some two weeks after his father was killed..."I would suggest that you should have a far more responsible father if they are truly concerned about the well being of their children. I don't think becoming an al Qaeda jihadist terrorist is the best way to go about doing your business," Gibbs, the former White House press secretary, told the interviewer from We Are Change, when asked to justify "an American citizen that is being targeted without due process, without trial -- and, he's underage, he's a minor."

 Esquire ran an in-depth piece on the incident if you want to know more: "The Lethal Presidency of Barack Obama."

The assertion that it is okay to kill kids if you disagree with their parents' political views has been made before. You may remember Bradley Manning, still in jail for allegedly having leaked via Wikileaks this video of U.S. soldiers shooting down on civilians COMING TO THE RESCUE of other civilians they have just shot. One of the men in the helicopter is heard observing that there are kids in the van they have just shot up. "Well, it's their fault for bringing their kids into a battle," says his buddy. Those kids survived the attack, but their father did not. I guess it was his fault for trying to help Reuters journalists who were injured in a battle.

The moral rot at the heart of the U.S. empire continues to eat away at what's left of our soul.

Bradley Manning Supporters At Fort Leavenworth Sticker Up Sign At Main Gate

For more coverage of yesterday's action, see Press TV You.S Desk "People Know Best" article

The most significant political prisoner of our time has been in prison now for three years. Bradley Manning is currently held in the military prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas which he returns to between pre-trial hearings at Fort Meade in Maryland.

Manning is in prison for allegedly revealing the truth about U.S. war crimes, including the notorious "Collateral Murder" video showing soldiers shooting down on civilians, including journalists and children, gleefully, in Baghdad. Many believe he is the source of thousands of files on U.S. foreign policy published by Wikileaks. Its founder, Julian Assange, has also been the target of harassment by the U.S. and UK, and is currently holed up at Ecuador's embassy in London battling extradition.

One of the reasons Manning is so significant is that he is all President Obama's political prisoner. Despite the fact that charges had not yet been brought, Obama said on camera of Manning: "He broke the law."  Thus spake judge, jury, and executioner; so much for due process.

We stopped on our cross country journey yesterday to stand with local supporters of Bradley Manning outside Fort Leavenworth's main gate in 108 degree heat. Mark and I agreed that the coldest day on the bridge in Maine was more comfortable than an hour on the pavement outside of Leavenworth.

But it was well worth it for the chance to support Manning, imprisoned for trying to bring a few shreds of truth to the fabulously ignorant U.S. public. (Those who take the time to read blogger Kevin Gosztola can get some real information.)

We also met up with a terrific group of activists from the Kansas City area, part of the Trifecta Resista that includes protesting at Leavenworth and other sites of the galloping militarization of our nation.

Afterwards Marc, Jane, Alan, David, and our family went our for Kansas City-style barbeque and great conversation.  We were honored to join this dedicated group in action yesterday, and the dinner that followed made me wonder why people think peace workers don't have fun. My husband and I agreed: you meet the nicest people doing this work wherever you may find yourself. (Special thanks to CODEPINK Local Coordinator Priti and her friend Jim, who were with us in spirit and had helped organize the action.)

We were especially impressed by activist Marc Saviano's graphic of Manning with PATRIOT underneath his face, and the poster Marc gave us will be shared in a future blog post.

The Trifecta Resistas are gearing up for a Hiroshima and Nagasaki remembrance on August 5 in Kansas City, Missouri that will include testimony from Ann Wright, -- clearly a local she-ro based on our conversations at dinner -- Kathy Kelly, and former Attorney General Ramsey Clark. We'll be back on the bridge in Maine by then, but we'll be thinking of them.

Reprehensible U.S. Policies and Practices in Afghanistan

One of eighteen photos of U.S. soldiers posing with corpses alleged to be insurgents. The Los Angeles Times warned the Pentagon before today publishing two of them.

The POTUS got right up on his bully pulpit to denounce the most recent combat porn photos to emerge from Afghanistan as artifacts of "reprehensible" conduct. Rather, he had his p.r. guy do it for him. Here's how the Guardian reported it:

President Barack Obama on Wednesday demanded an investigation and for those responsible to be held accountable, White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters. "The conduct depicted in those photos is reprehensible."

Although many readers vilified the newspaper for endangering active duty troops (seeming to forget that is who took the photos and shared them in the first place) I was proud of the Los Angeles Times, which does occasionally do some fine investigative reporting.  Because of their decision I saw the incident reported on morning television news in the San Francisco Bay area, amid the sensationalism and fluff that customarily passes for journalism in our day.

(One of the results of the erosion of free and truthful reporting is that citizens no longer even recognize it as a bulwark of democracy; they think it exists only to make the government look good, and to shore up support for current programs.)

Here are your very own government officials at the helms of the State Department and the Pentagon, respectively, reacting to the same news.

Photograph: John Thys/AFP/Getty Images

So what's more reprehensible?

From Michael Hasting's article "The Rise of Killer Drones: How America Goes to War in Secret" this week in Rolling Stone:

In his first three years, Obama has unleashed 268 covert drone strikes, five times the total George W. Bush ordered during his eight years in office. All told, drones have been used to kill more than 3,000 people designated as terrorists, including at least four U.S. citizens. In the process, according to human rights groups, they have also claimed the lives of more than 800 civilians. Obama's drone program, in fact, amounts to the largest unmanned aerial offensive ever conducted in military history; never have so few killed so many by remote control.

From veteran and whistleblower Ethan McCord's facebook posting of the LA Times article:

I've been saying this was what happens. I kept being told you're lying its just a few bad apples. NO!!! This is how we are trained!! Wake the fuck up America!!

McCord, as you may recall, heroically came forward to corroborate the incidents depicted in Collateral Murder, the gleeful shooting of civilians, journalists and even children by U.S. soldiers in a helicopter over Bagdhad. It is the video alleged to have been sent to Wikileaks by Bradley Manning, and currently it has 12,563,351 views on the YouTube version.

The local t.v. station included some facts that appear to back up McCord's claim, reminding viewers that the photos were published at a particularly "sensitive" time for public perception of the war in Afghanistan. Three bullet points provided context: 1) recent photos of troops pissing on corpses alleged to be Taleban; 2) burning of Qurans at a U.S. dump near Bagram; and 3) a lone soldier alleged to have killed 17 civilians in a night time rampage near Kandahar. The t.v. reporter didn't bother to say that alleged could just as well be applied to lone as to killer in that sentence, as eyewitnesses have provided ample testimony that Robert Bales was not acting alone.

Here's what I find the most reprehensible: that the U.S. takes our money and spends it on training drone operators who refer to kills they cause and witness on their video monitors as "bug splats" while sanctimonious hypocrites like Obama, Clinton and Panetta get upset when a little bit of truth about how soldiers act in war leaks out to the public.

I am ashamed of my country. I sympathize with Afghans, whose reactions were reported as "Afghans revolted by U.S. troops posing with dead suicide bombers" in a blog of the LA Times:

The fact that the photos in question were taken two years ago did little to blunt the disdain. “Nothing has changed since then, and nothing will,” said Farhad Mohammad, a merchant in the southern city of Kandahar. “Always it is a matter of disrespect.”

Suicide bombers, who cause hundreds of Afghan civilian deaths every year, are widely despised. Even so, the taboo against desecration of the dead is strong in this religiously conservative country.