Step up campaign for release of Assange and defense of Wikileaks.
Now they have Assange in prison. They are trying to shut him up. But it will not work. The cables and information are out there and will be circulated by the hundreds of thousands of people, the millions, who believe that capitalism should not be allowed to conduct its dirty work behind closed doors. We have to step up our defend wikileaks campaign, release Assange and the young soldier and any body else who provided secret material and take on the snarling capitalist hyenas who are calling for Assange to be assassinated or put in prison for life. Assange is an example for all. He is standing up for what he believes and sharing the information he has with all. This is weakening capitalism and is a good thing. He is an example that the union leaders and labor leaders should follow. Also that the left and radical forces should follow. Unfortunately we have to say that many left and radical forces have been slow to put it mildly to move into action against the attacks on wikileaks and Assange.
But we would like to look here at another angle of this. Assange is in prison. Let us look here at who is in prison and who is not in prison. They say in the US that you are innocent until proven broke. This is pretty much still true. See they are cutting off Assange's sources of funds. There is also the political aspect. You are innocent if your crimes suit the interests of the capitalist ruling class.
Look at the the previous Bush regime which gave the identity of its own CIA members when they not go along with the lies of Bush and company on Iraq and weapons of mass destruction which did not exist, but which Bush and company wanted to say existed to justify going to war for oil and power. In this war hundreds of thousands have been and are being killed. Bush and Cheyney and their lying thug friends are not in prison but Assange is. There is no such thing as capitalist justice when it comes to serious business.
Then there is the phone call I got from my young relative last night. He had been in court for a traffic violation in Florida earlier in the day. He was distraught. Waiting for his turn he heard the case of a young man who was up for possession of a gun. He had not killed anybody or tried to kill anybody. Just had possession. The young man's entire family, mother, father, brothers and sisters were all there to give support. The thug of a judge handed down the sentence and a family's life was crushed. He gave the young man twenty years. Twenty years. It would be unbelievable if we did not remember we lived in the US which has a so called justice system which with 5% of the world's population locks up 25% of the world's prisoners.
I cannot stop thinking about people like Clint Eastwood and Swchernegger the governor of California and all the rest of the macho men and women of Hollywood. Both these former actors, and many other actors past and present, became millionaires by glorifying violence and guns. Remember "make my day". It is people like these who should not be walking around not Assange or the young man who was given the twenty years. It is people like this and their class who have created the material conditions in which these young people are forced to live and then they create the images, movies and garbage of so called popular culture, which encourages these young people to have guns.
Take a stand. release Assange. defend wikileaks. force capitalism to back off. Let us see capitalism's real nature. then it will be easier to see that it does not work and also how to change it.
Sean.
6 comments:
In Scotland they have campaigned (including so called socialists) to have automatic jail sentences for possession of air guns and knives. 20 years of being in possesion of a guy seems very harsh.
But wait a minute - I am with you on the wikileaks stuff and it is trully revolutionary and radical but you forget in your blog to even allude to the allegations that have been made against Assange. Why have you done that? Why is it because he has down something radical and even brilliant do you know that he has not done what is alleged of him?
Hopefully the whole thing will be sorted out but the allegations against him are actual serious allegations.
Thank you for your comments. We do not take allegations of sexual misconduct against anybody lightly. But we need to see things in context. The Swedish prosecutor dropped these charges against Assange last September they were so ridiculous. They were only brought up again under pressure of a right wing Swedish MP in the last weeks when the cables started to come out in a big way. These allegations are part of the effort to close Assange down. Also please check and you will see that the main woman making he allegations worked with a CIA front, the so=called Women in White - in Cuba. We need to be on the alert against all allegations of violence and oppression against women. But we also need to be on the alert against being used by capitalism in their dirty campaign of slander against Assange.
Sean.
Check these links out
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1336291/Wikileaks-Julian-Assanges-2-night-stands-spark-worldwide-hunt.html#ixzz17R8TTwJY
or this
The statements by the two women marked the beginning of a case rarely seen in Swedish legal history. The public prosecutor assigned to the case applied for an arrest warrant on charges that included rape. She ...also confirmed the name of the accused when asked by the tabloid newspaper Expressen. Within less than 24 hours, the public prosecutor's office withdrew the arrest warrant and the rape charge, but not a charge of sexual harassment.
Weeks later, the attorney for the two women managed to convince the prosecution to reopen its investigation of the rape allegation. A new arrest warrant was issued in November and the Swedes began the search for Assange. But the European arrest warrant contained a technical error. A revised version now exists.
It is now up to the courts to determine what exactly happened in those two nights. Both women testified that they initially had consensual sex with Assange. But they claim that this changed later on, when arguments erupted over the use of condoms.
Swedish legal practice in relation to sex offenses is more rigid than German practice. Under the Swedish criminal code, a person who threatens to perform sexual acts is to be convicted of rape and sentenced to a minimum of two years and a maximum of six years in prison. Moderately severe cases are punishable with up to four years in prison.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,733154-3,00.html
Ms Chief, we cannot ignore the objective situation here. Global capitalists, the biggest misogynists, are wagign a war agianst someone revealing their dirty deals. We would not ignore the objective situation if a white woman were accusing a black man in Selma Alamaba circa 1958 would we?
I do not trust the judge here and maybe we should offer an alternative.
This is from today's Guardian letters:
Rape claims, WikiLeaks and internet freedom
Many women in both Sweden and Britain will wonder at the unusual zeal
with which Julian Assange is being pursued for rape allegations
(Report, 8 December). Women in Sweden don't fare better than we do in
Britain when it comes to rape. Though Sweden has the highest per
capita number of reported rapes in Europe and these have quadrupled in
the last 20 years, conviction rates have decreased. On 23 April 2010
Carina Hägg and Nalin Pekgul (respectively MP and chairwoman of Social
Democratic Women in Sweden) wrote in the Göteborgs-Posten that "up to
90% of all reported rapes never get to court. In 2006 six people were
convicted of rape though almost 4,000 people were reported". They
endorsed Amnesty International's call for an independent inquiry to
examine the rape cases that had been closed and the quality of the
original investigations.
Assange, who it seems has no criminal convictions, was refused bail in
England despite sureties of more than £120,000. Yet bail following
rape allegations is routine. For two years we have been supporting a
woman who suffered rape and domestic violence from a man previously
convicted after attempting to murder an ex-partner and her children –
he was granted bail while police investigated.
There is a long tradition of the use of rape and sexual assault for
political agendas that have nothing to do with women's safety. In the
south of the US, the lynching of black men was often justified on
grounds that they had raped or even looked at a white woman. Women
don't take kindly to our demand for safety being misused, while rape
continues to be neglected at best or protected at worst.
Katrin Axelsson
Ms Chief, we cannot ignore the objective situation here. Global capitalists, the biggest misogynists, are wagign a war agianst someone revealing their dirty deals. We would not ignore the objective situation if a white woman were accusing a black man in Selma Alamaba circa 1958 would we?
I do not trust the judge here and maybe we should offer an alternative.
This is from today's Guardian letters:
Rape claims, WikiLeaks and internet freedom
Many women in both Sweden and Britain will wonder at the unusual zeal
with which Julian Assange is being pursued for rape allegations
(Report, 8 December). Women in Sweden don't fare better than we do in
Britain when it comes to rape. Though Sweden has the highest per
capita number of reported rapes in Europe and these have quadrupled in
the last 20 years, conviction rates have decreased. On 23 April 2010
Carina Hägg and Nalin Pekgul (respectively MP and chairwoman of Social
Democratic Women in Sweden) wrote in the Göteborgs-Posten that "up to
90% of all reported rapes never get to court. In 2006 six people were
convicted of rape though almost 4,000 people were reported". They
endorsed Amnesty International's call for an independent inquiry to
examine the rape cases that had been closed and the quality of the
original investigations.
Assange, who it seems has no criminal convictions, was refused bail in
England despite sureties of more than £120,000. Yet bail following
rape allegations is routine. For two years we have been supporting a
woman who suffered rape and domestic violence from a man previously
convicted after attempting to murder an ex-partner and her children –
he was granted bail while police investigated.
There is a long tradition of the use of rape and sexual assault for
political agendas that have nothing to do with women's safety. In the
south of the US, the lynching of black men was often justified on
grounds that they had raped or even looked at a white woman. Women
don't take kindly to our demand for safety being misused, while rape
continues to be neglected at best or protected at worst.
Katrin Axelsson
We need to know what is going on behind our backs. We cannot assume that our country is always right. We need to examine all the information and come to fair and objective judgements
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