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.