Why US and Global Capitalism Wants Julian Assange Dead

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Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired

GED/HEO

US capitalism is “merciless” when it comes to defending its profits.German Industrialist.

 

The Collateral Murder Video that showed a US attack helicopter mowing down civilians, (See full video here)  including a Reuters reporter, in Iraq (and laughing about it) is not the only reason the US ruling class wants Julian Assange dead or why he has been incarcerated for so long. Wikileaks, Assange, Chelsea Manning, Bradley Manning at the time, the whistleblower who leaked the video, have been persecuted and tortured by the US government in its brutal efforts to silence free speech and independent journalism.  Edward Snowden is another US citizen wanted by the US regime for informing us and the world of the regime’s crimes and exposing so called diplomacy for what it is.

 

I bought the book, The Wikileaks Files when Verso first published it in 2015. Every activist and socially conscious person should have a copy as a reference source.

 

Here are a few comments from the book about Russia and Ukraine and more:

“…in the decade following the century’s turn, the US has pursued a policy of aggressive NATO expansion, challenging Russia’s regional hegemony within Eastern Europe and the former Soviet area and seeking to subvert nuclear treaties to maintain its strategic advantage. As the cables show, these efforts have not gone unnoticed by Russia and are recurring points of conflict….”

 

Another area of warfare is trade and agriculture. Ukraine, as we now know (some of us didn’t need a war to inform us) is the largest country in Europe and main exporter of grains, particularly wheat. I remember my father, who spoke some Russian, used to call it Europe’s bread basket. We now know it is very much the former colonial world’s bread basket.

 

Wikileaks released 1000 documents from the Cablegate cache related to the US government’s, “pushing (US) industrial manufactures on its allies” but beyond that, The files point out that US support of the biotech industry is aggressive in Europe and plays an even  “…bigger role……in assuring a place for genetically modified agricultural products (GMO’s) in a region that largely wanted nothing to do with them.” The US state representing Monsanto in this example.

 

Wikileaks and the leaked cables showed that the “…American campaign promoting biotech products was a worldwide effort. In all, some 1,000 documents from the Cablegate cache address this effort…..”

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But US biotech was not all that was being pushed on the global community. Along with the  release of cables between the US state department and its representatives abroad revealing their phony diplomacy, the publishing of When Google Met Wikileaks in 2014 by OR Books was the last straw for the US ruling elite. The book is an account of a meeting Assange had (at Google’s request) when he was under house arrest in Norfolk in 2011. In late 2010, Foreign Affairs,  a journal of the Council on Foreign Relations,   published a policy piece co-written by Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google and Jared Cohen, who Assange initially describes as the “director of Google ideas” Assange later referred to Cohen as “Googles director of Regime Change”.  The article, Assange writes, praises the, “reformative potential of Silicon Valley technologies as an instrument of US foreign policy.”  and was the basis for a book published in 2013 titled, The New Digital Age.

 

In When Google Met Wikileaks Assange writes that, “The New Digital Age is a startingly clear and provocative blueprint for technocratic imperialism, from two of its leading witch doctors, Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen who construct a new idiom for United States global power in the twenty first century. This idiom reflects the ever closer union between the State Department and Silicon Valley, as personified by Mr. Schmidt, the executive chairman of Google and Mr. Cohen, a former advisor to Condoleeza Rice and Hillary Clinton who is now director of Google Ideas.”  P53 *

 

He says of Google’s Eric Schmidt that he, “…fits exactly where he is: at the point where the centrist liberal and imperialist tendencies meet in American political life. By all appearances Google’s bosses genuinely believe in the civilizing power of enlightened multinational corporations and they see this mission as continuous with the shaping of the world according to the better judgement of the “benevolent superpower”.. They will tell you that open-mindness is a virtue, but all perspectives that challenge the exceptionalist drive at the heart of American foreign policy will remain invisible to them. This is the impenetrable banality of “don’t be evil”. They believe they are doing good. And that is the problem.” P35 (my added emphasis)

 

The advance of information technology epitomized by Google…., says Assange, “…. heralds the death of privacy for most people and shifts the world toward authoritarianism.” (P57 When Google Met Wikileaks). Through this meeting Assange draws the conclusion that Schmidt, the technocrat, and Jared Cohen, the foreign policy wonk, along with two others that accompanied them to the meeting comprised, a “…..delegation that was one part google three parts US foreign policy establishment.”

 

It’s important to remember that prior to the publishing of these books, the rape accusations against Assange and his house arrest on November 28^th 2010, Wikileaks released US diplomatic cables (Tunileaks) between the US Embassy in Tunisia and the US State Department revealing what every Tunisian knew and felt; the corruption of the US supported regime. Less than an hour after WikiLeaks had published the diplomatic cables on its own site, they were published by the dissident Tunisian website Nawaat with whom Wikileaks had formed association. "The monopoly of state media in most authoritarian Arab regimes had been progressively undermined for several years as citizens sought alternative information from dissident bloggers and television.”, Yasmine Ryan wrote in Al Jazeera at the time, but “WikiLeaks……. offered the final blow, and, in fact, found partners in the Arab world in the alternative media.”

 

Wikileaks was gaining a following among dissidents, and news outlets (primarily bloggers) in corrupt despotic regimes the US either installed or supported.

 

In December, what we know as the Arab Spring took off as a Tunisian street vendor set fire to himself protesting the rotten corrupt regime of Ben Ali, the US supported head of state that ran Tunisia, as many Arab regimes do, like a family business. The revolts spread, assisted by social media and numerous heads of Arab gangster regimes were dislodged including Hosni Mubarak who Hilary Clinton described as a “family friend”and  who Joe Biden stressed was “not a dictator” and said he should not resign. Obama and Clinton only abandoned the torturer Mubarak when it was clear the Egyptian people were removing him.

 

Julian Assange, is presently incarcerated in Belmarsh prison in the UK. The US is aiming to get the UK government to extradite him where he will no doubt be tried and likely executed for “….obtaining classified information with reason to believe that the information was to be used to the injury of the United States or the advantage of a foreign nation.” Read more at the United States Department of Justice website. As of this writing, the information Wikileaks and Chelsea Manning released to the American people and the world has not caused harm to the working class of the United States or anywhere else.

 

Julian Assange is a friend of the working class. He has not revealed things to us that we don’t already know in the abstract, what he, Chelsea Manning and people like Edward Snowden have done, is make them social fact. This undermines the pretense that diplomacy is about honor, cooperation, democracy and principles.

 

Assange is imprisoned having had no trial, having been convicted of no crime.  Sigurdur Ingi Thordarson who claimed Assange asked him to hack in to government computers has since admitted he fabricated that story and instead was, “…recruited by US authorities in order to build a case against Assange, and misled them into believing he was a close associate of the Wikileaks founder. In reality, however, he had only “volunteered on a limited basis to raise money for Wikileaks in 2010 but was found to have used that opportunity to embezzle more than $50,000 from the organisation” Key Witness Admits He Lied, US Media Ignores Exculpatory Revelations The Wire 7-7-21,

 

Assange is not a socialist to my knowledge. He does not appear to have any history of trade unionism or such activity and in When Google Met Wikileaks he doesn’t see the working class as a force for change. Why would he? But he is not an enemy of the working class or the workers who, with little other opportunity, end up in uniform being sent by those in power in to military ventures that are waged in the rapacious quest profits. As I write, Ukrainian and Russian workers are dying in a proxy war between two imperialist powers, one much more powerful than the other.

 

Working class people owe Julian Assange, Wikileaks, and others like Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning a debt of gratitude. They are heroic figures and we must support them in some way. If you are in a union get your local to pass a resolution condemning the continued incarceration of Julian Assange. Speak out for Edward Snowden and others as well. It’s in our interests to do so.

 

In the book Assange points out that, “for us as an organization, we are in a. position where we have the full force of a superpower and its investigative organs, and the rest of NATO, operating against us, bribing people, monitoring communications, et cetera”.

 

I know that there are millions of US workers, if they were reading this (and I wish they were so share it) would agree. The most distrusting of the US rogue regime is the US working class. Look at how they treat us. But like any citizens of any nation, without a powerful force speaking for us, one we can join, participate in and build, one that has real power, the general approach is, “better the devil we know than the one we don’t”. I get that but unfortunately that road leads to hell too.

 

Free Julian Assange

 

*Google Ideas is now Jigsaw. Cohen was the CEO as of last year.

Assange, Manning and Snowden, Standing with the Conscience of Truthtellers

Snowden, Assange and Manning Statues in Berlin

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Assange, Manning and Snowden, Standing with the Conscience of Truthtellers

First and foremost, all of these truth tellers exposed or published documents exposing government misdeeds and crimes. All of the disclosures were of information that was valuable to the public debate of United States war tactics, intelligence gathering and privacy concerns, with no documentable damage to national security interests. For example, Chelsea Manning exposed American involvement in torture centers in Iraq, an unauthorized war in Yemen, and the so-called "collateral murder" of thousands of Iraqi citizens. Manning brought the "Collateral Murder" video and other documents to Wikileaks after going to people above her in the chain of command who refused to act. In fact, none of these truth tellers had another way to get this information out, which should afford them protections from prosecution.

And, the incredible value that should be ascribed to the Snowden leaks is clearly present in the Manning disclosures, which exposed the brutal and illegal nature of America's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Manning's disclosures opened up an entirely new public debate on the nature of modern war and diplomacy. 

Manning, Assange, and Snowden all did their civic duty by disclosing information on government overreaching. They all exhibited great moral courage in doing so. And they all deserve far more than unfair imprisonment and exile for the service they have done for the American people and for people all around the world. 

After being forcibly removed from the Ecuadorian Embassy, Julian Assange is now in a high security prison in London where he faces extradition to the United States and imprisonment for the rest of his life.  The charges Assange faces are a major threat to press freedom. The charge against Assange for ‘conspiring’ with a source is the most dangerous we can think of with respect to the First Amendment.  

Two years after being released from prison where she had served seven years for exposing U.S. war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, Chelsea Manning was jailed once again for refusing to answer questions before a grand jury investigating WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange.  “I will not comply with this, or any other grand jury,” Manning declared in a written statement. “Imprisoning me for my refusal to answer questions only subjects me to additional punishment for my repeatedly-stated ethical objections to the grand jury system.” 

Noted whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg praised Manning. “Chelsea Manning is in jail again, this time for resisting a grand jury system whose secrecy and lack of witness rights makes it prone to frequent abuse,” Ellsberg said. “She is also resisting its current abuse, as it is used to attack freedom of the press by pursuing criminal charges for publication of the very war crimes and corruption she courageously revealed to WikiLeaks nine years ago.”

When Edward Snowden shared US intelligence documents with journalists in June 2013, he revealed the shocking extent of global mass surveillance. He showed how governments were secretly scooping up huge chunks of our personal communications, including private emails, phone locations, web histories and so much more. All without our consent.

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Another attack on Wikileaks and Assange from Capitalist Press

Above are parts 1 and 2  of a recent interview of Julian Assange by Megan Kelly of Fox News. In part 2, Assange responds briefly to the accusation recent Wikileaks releases have harmed innocent people in Saudi Arabia.

by Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired

The supporters of this blog have consistently taken a strong position in support of Wikileaks and its founder Julian Assange. Six years ago we were engaged in a series of internal discussions to determine how to deal with the accusations of sexual abuse and rape that were being directed at Assange in light of our commitment to taking any and all accusations of rape and abuse of women very seriously.

We decided that under no conditions could we support handing Assange over to any institution of  global capitalism in particular the US bourgeois, many of whom have called and are still calling for his murder or assassination or death through a drone attack. Even among women and feminist groups there was contentious debate about this issue.  Our position six years ago we believe was correct. Read more on Assange and our position on the rape accusation here.

Now new accusations have arisen in an article written by two writers, Raphael Satter and Maggie Michael who work for the capitalist mass media outlet, the Associated Press. The AP as it is called is a "non profit" organization owned and run by major US newspapers, television and media outlets. In other words, it is capitalist media organization. See the table of its directors below.  We first saw the article in the Times of  Israel which we assume got it from AP though it has also been published in Slate Magazine and perhaps other sources. This time Wikileaks has been accused of releasing information that has harmed people, in particular, women and gay people in Saudi Arabia.  Apparently thousands of pieces of information have been published and the two journalists in their article give two or three examples with quotes from some of the people who could be harmed by this information if the quotes are accurate.

The UK gay publication Pink News also picked up the story and wrote: "Among the thousands of documents, the data includes personal information identifying at least one man with a gay sex conviction – as well as a number of rape victims and people living with HIV."  If true, these details could be very harmful to people living in Saudi Arabia, one of the most barbaric and ruthless US allies in the region.

As we were 6 years ago, we are extremely suspicious when the US mass media, and the global capitalist press attacks Wikileaks and Assange. The organization faced a similar assault when it published the video Collateral Murder that the whistleblower Chelsea Manning released, and for which she is serving 35 years being subjected to torture and inhumane treatment. As Assange points out in the interview above,  even the US government admits that no US personnel have been harmed due to that publication.  It is the US government that places the sons and daughters of the US working class in unnecessary danger. We have reason to believe that Wikileaks does its very best to ensure what it releases does not contain information that would harm innocent people and we reject accusations in the media that this all about Assange's personality.

We do not know for certain if these accusations are true or not. We contacted Wikileaks and were told they are not. Assange says little about the accusations in the Fox News interview above other than it is a "nonsense Story." that has arisen in the aftermath of the release of thousands of cables detailing the dirty goings on and e mails of Hillary Clinton.

So Facts For Working People is not going to join a witch hunt against Wikileaks and Julian Assange based on this recent information. It is also suspicious that a significant follow up is absent form the Wall Street Journal this week; this journal of the 1% detests Wikileaks. And again, we are suspicious of the source.

It is not ruled out that Wikileaks could make a mistake and release material that would harm innocent people. The global bourgeois are at war with Wikileaks and would like to destroy it and murder its  co-founder. The group is under tremendous pressure and needs money as well. But we cannot see why they would do such a thing intentionally if they did it at all. And there is nothing to indicate the group or Assange is hostile to gays. After all, they have stood by Manning. They never "outed" her as the source of the collateral Murder video.

So Facts For Working People starts from the following understanding of the objective situation in which these events arise. Lets look at what Wikileaks does. This organization has basically uncovered and published the dirty, dishonest communications that take place between the ruthless and violent characters, the war criminals, that rule the world. In particular, they have embarrassed the world's most powerful ruling class, the US bourgeois. We all know that these people are murderers and thieves and that their diplomacy is phony, but when we read their notes to each other that confirm that as far back as 2006 the US ambassador to Syria urged the US government join with the Saudis and the notorious Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak to destabilize Syria that led to the current crisis for example. Or that they cover up the most violent crimes committed in our name, that they spy on each other and are architects of wars and death all for profit and personal gain. This makes it social fact, it pulls the mask from their phony diplomacy, this is one major reason they want Assange's death and an end to Wikileaks. Capitalism cannot exist without its secrets and lies; its capitalist diplomacy.

We cannot underestimate the crisis that Wikileaks has caused within the US ruling class in its panic to keep its secrets from the American people and the world.  In the introduction to the The Wikileaks Files, Julian Assange points out that the US State Department is like a state within a state. Its role is to put a "friendly face" on one of the most ruthless and efficient killing machines in history. Each working day 71,000 people "representing twenty seven different US government agencies" go to work at the 169 embassies and other US missions abroad while as of 2014 there are more than 5.1 million Americans with active security clearances.  This is "big government"  that does us no service. Given today's technology and the vast numbers involved, the potential for leaks is immense.  It is inconceivable that there aren't thousands of potential Edward Snowdens and Chelsea Mannings out there.

For potential whislteblowers, the heroic people who cannot with good conscience keep quiet any longer, it is the fear of the all powerful state, the possibility of death or life in prison at the hands of torturers honed in their art through years of practice on the mentally ill, the incarcerated in the US that capitalism has abandoned and the victims of imperialist aggression in Guantanamo or various CIA prisons in throughout the world.   Chelsea Manning's treatment and her 35 year sentence was a warning to them all to keep their mouths shut especially those in the military.

The existence and in particular success, of Wikileaks in protecting its sources as it did Manning and providing a hub, a publishing house through which the truth can be disseminated to the rest of us is correctly seen as a serious threat to the stability of US capitalism and the capitalist world order. It will encourage more people, Americans and others, to bring to light information that the public should see knowing  there is a secure outlet with a long record of protecting sources. It is capitalism's worse nightmare. Without doubt, there is panic among the US bourgeois as they cannot safely talk to each other behind closed doors.

This is the context, these are the conditions under which these these attacks are taking place on this information agency. And recognizing this must be the starting point when workers, socialists and all of those fighting to build a better world decide where we stand.

Board of Directors of the Associated Press: (source: Wikepedia)

Mary Junck (Chairman)	Lee Enterprises, Inc.
Donna J. Barrett	Community Newspaper Holdings, Inc.
Richard A Boehne	The E.W. Scripps Company
Elizabeth Brenner	The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
	Journal Communications, Inc.
Robert Brown	Swift Communications
William Stacey Cowles	The Spokesman-Review
	Cowles Publishing Co.
Kirk Davis	GatehouseMedia, LLC
	New Media Investment Group
Michael Golden	The New York Times Co.
Bill Hoffman	Cox Media Group
Rob King	ESPN
Terry J. Kroeger	BH Media Group
	The Omaha World-Herald
Isaac Lee	Univision Communications, Inc.
	Fusion
Robin McKinney Martin	The Santa Fe New Mexican and The Taos News
Gracia C. Martore	Gannett Co., Inc.
Jim M. Moroney III	A. H. Belo Corporation
William O. Nutting	The Ogden Newspapers Inc.
David M. Paxton	Paxton Media Group
Steven R. Swartz	Hearst Corporation
Patrick J. Talamantes	The McClatchy Company
Paul C. Tash	Times Publishing Company

Three Years Anniversary: Free Chelsea Manning

As readers are aware, we have given considerable time and space to the plight of Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning who is serving a 35 year sentence for informing the American public and the world of the crimes committed by the US military through its illegal and predatory wars, particularly in Iraq, a nation and people that never threatened or harmed the US in  any way. Chelsea Manning, Julian Assange and Edward Snowden are heroic figures and workers owe them a debt of gratitude. Rumsfeld, Bush, Obama, Wolfowitz, and all those representatives of US imperialism who have cooperated in this mass murder including spying on and undermining the rights of the American people and imprisonment of Manning are war criminals. 

The  piece below is an excerpt from The United States vs Pvt Chelsea Manning, an account of Manning's court-martial published from the transcripts by OR Books. In it she describes some of her prison conditions.  FFWP also recommends reading When Google Met Wikileaks also at OR Books and The Wikileaks Files.  This book has an introduction by Julian Assange—writing on the subject for the first time—exposes the ongoing debates about freedom of information, international surveillance, and justice.  With contributions by Dan Beeton, Phyllis Bennis, Michael Busch, Peter Certo, Conn Hallinan, Sarah Harrison, Richard Heydarian, Dahr Jamail, Jake Johnston, Alexander Main, Robert Naiman, Francis Njubi Nesbitt, Linda Pearson, Gareth Porter, Tim Shorrock, Russ Wellen, and Stephen Zunes.  RM

From The United States vs. Pvt. Chelsea Manning

The United States vs. Pvt. Chelsea Manning

A Graphic Account from Inside the Courtrom
by Clark Stoeckley

BUY THE BOOK MORE ABOUT CHELSEA MANNING




www.orbooks.com

Panic sets in and calls for Assange's murder get louder as the US political crisis deepens.

"You don't publish a million secrets a year without making a few enemies" #WikiLeaks https://t.co/MsNZhrBYvb pic.twitter.com/H7ujQAFErm

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) August 7, 2016

"So, the freedom of communication, in some sense, is the fundamental right, because it is the enabling right that allows us to speak to each other to understand the importance of all our other rights. And so, when the freedom of communication is degraded or maligned, when whistleblowers are prosecuted, when one organization starts to develop a monopoly on the internet and interfere with our communication, then all our rights suffer, because this fundamental enabling right is degraded." Julian Assange

by Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired
Member GPUSA

I am frustrated at the moment. I read the Tweet from Michael Grumwald who says he "can't wait" to praise the drone strike that murders Julian Assange. In the video above we hear all the pimps, the supporters of a rotten decaying social system, condemn Assange and call for his murder or assassination. Academics, economists politicians, news reporters and those like Grumwald who claims to be a journalist are on the front lines of the mass media war against Assange. Information has a purpose, it has class character. Grumwald is an enemy of workers, the middle class and the poor. The mass media is owned by a few thousand people, the unelected clique that determines how we live our lives and how society is governed; who lives and who dies.

I have met a few people in the last few days since returning from the Green Party Convention who have not heard of Assange and others who have have bought in to the propaganda that he has harmed American interests, and the American people.  Well he has.  The question is which "American" interests and people has he harmed.

What has Assange and Wikileaks done that has made the politicians, billionaires, finance capitalists and the US ruling class call for his death?   Most recently Wikileaks released thousands of e mails that are very unfavorable to one of the two candidates of the US ruling class, Hillary Clinton. This is very disturbing as she is one of the two most unpopular presidential candidates in US history but is the first choice for the serious US bourgeois in November's election. Donald Trump is so unstable, so damaging to business and profit taking, that those who hate Clinton with a passion, conservatives and misogynists alike, will support her. After all, money and profits is the trump card in the capitalist game.

Wikileaks also released millions of diplomatic cables between US diplomats who are supposedly representing us, and their foreign counterparts as well as between the diplomats of of other countries. It was Wikileaks that released the Collateral Damage video allegedly leaked to the news agency by Chelsea Manning who was arrested, tortured and sent to prison for 35 years.

I urge readers to read The Wikileaks Files as the information included is all from the horses' mouth. It is information the citizenry should know in a democracy.  We know how rotten our own government is. When there's a strike, the media is anti-American worker and pro-American capitalist------it has a class base.  There are no "United We Stand" billboards directed at workers unity when a union or group of workers are on strike, are fighting for their lives against a corporation here at home, even a foreign owned one.

What Julian Assange and Wikileaks has done is open the files of the US ruling class, the unelected clique that manages society in their interest not ours and shared them with the American working class, with you and me.  This is a good thing. The 1% as they are called are frantic. Their phony diplomacy, has been revealed, their lying, double crossing thieving methods are there for us all to see. We always believed it but Assange has made it social fact; is this the face of America we want foreigners to see?  This is why they hate him and want his head, This is why they want Wikileaks destroyed.

Wikileaks and Assange, as well as Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning have done us all a favor, we owe them a debt of gratitude.  But we must do more than that, we must send money. We must defend Wikielaks and counter the lies of the representatives of the 1% when we talk to co-workers and neighbors about this.  I have said in earlier commentaries that the left has missed the boat on this issue. The Green Party had Assange speak to its convention and it must be commended, it is a courageous thing to do. Jill Stein, the GPUSA candidate for president has said she would appoint Edward Snowden to a cabinet post. But the left and all anti-capitalists must collectively take this issue up and there should be weekly demos at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London where Assange has been holed up for 5 years to avoid the US governments death squads.

The trade union leaders we know are a disgrace, they refuse to even defend their own members against the very same forces that are seeking Assange's death and the shutting down of Wikileaks. They refuse to call for Snowden to be hailed a hero along with Manning. There is no evidence that what has been released has hurt the American people, the young men and women in the military or the millions of us that are suffering due to the austerity agenda of the 1% or the poor, the millions incarcerated and those that lost their homes to the bankers. Assange has opened the doors to the 1%'s vaults and let us in

If you are in a trade union you should discuss this issue on the job and at the union hall. You should pass resolutions supporting Assange, Snowden, Manning and Wikileaks, all whistleblowers.

Lastly, a DNC staffer was shot dead last month in a possible robbery attempt although it's not been confirmed  if it was a robbery. “If it was a robbery, it failed, because he still had his watch, he still had his money, he still had his credit cards, still had his phone, so it was a wasted effort except we lost a life.” said his father. This follows the "mysterious" death of process server Shawn Lucas who filed a lawsuit against the DNC and its chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz on behalf of Bernie Sanders. "It leveled the following serious charges: fraud, negligent misrepresentation, deceptive conduct, unjust enrichment, breach of fiduciary duty, and negligence." See what Assange said and read more here

The media is trying to portray Assange as "fanning" the flames of conspiracy by commenting on the alleged robbery attempt saying as he does in the video that he and journalists are concerned when things like this happen. But why would they not be concerned?

Given the successful offensive against US workers over the past 40 years, the power of the mass media, the absence of a workers political party and the complete capitulation of the heads of organized labor to capital, class consciousness is low and conspiracy theories abound. But remember Jessica Lynch , the Gulf of Tonkin incident?  And how we were convinced of WMD's in Iraq. The CIA has assassinated or assisted the forces that assassinated hundreds of political opponents abroad. Lumumba, Allende, Walter Rodney, a failed attempt at Chavez. The Reuters journalist was killed in the collateral murder video and an Al Jazeera journalist was also killed by US fire in Baghdad. And as anyone that reads this blog knows, I believe Pat Tillman was assassinated by the US military.

There is every reason for Assange and Journalists to be "concerned".

We have an expression here in the US when we ask people how they are or if we express concern about something: "It's all good" people say.  But all's not good by any measure of success. US society is in a deep economic and political crisis. We have come through an unbelievable election period the last year. Trump cannot win and we have right wing Republicans and bourgeois supporting the hated Hillary.

Now Wikileaks is constantly undermining her election run.  There is panic behind the scenes we cannot imagine how deep that panic runs; the US ruling class is well aware of the explosive history of the working class and oppressed peoples in this country.  The American people to a great extent are in a bubble, sports, stupid reality shows, partying, all diversions under the mantra, "its all good".  But there is alongside this a "real" reality and in the last analysis consciousness, ideas, have a material base and this base is, massive debt and insecurity, a crude health care system that does not provide the basic care for millions of people and often leads to bankruptcy for others.  Homelessness or the fear of it, the lost job, lost home, remnants of the Great Recession fear of hunger. The phony reality of the mass media and other detours will only work for so long.

I read today that a child starved to death in West Virginia.West Virginia is a basket case, a third world country within our borders as are many urban areas, wracked with unemployment and drugs, but it's all their fault we are told. It's all due to personal failure and individual choice the mass media and dominant ideology would have us believe. Accepting that argument is part of the psychological warfare against us and we will free ourselves of that malady when we come to realize the crises around us are due to policies coming out of the US Congress written by representatives of the very people calling Assange our enemy and that he should be a victim of a drone attack. Our resistance to them is met with police violence, more security and spying.

It's time to get off your asses fellow workers. If you love your community, your friends, your children and grandchildren, your camping trips, hunting trips, the great outdoors, you cannot avoid a fight any longer, a fight against the real enemy and those who harm us most are not outside our borders, not in exile in Russia like Snowden or Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy in London or Manning serving 35 years for telling us the truth

They're here in the US and we outnumber them.

Assange is not a prisoner becasue society cares about rape victims

Manning: 35 years jail for telling  people the truth

by Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

This blog has taken a strong position in defense of Julian Assange and others like him, Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden for instance.  In Assange’s case, when accusations of rape arose, we were very firm in arguing that under no condition should he be handed over to the capitalist courts or any capitalist institution and most certainly not to the US government or any arm of US capitalism. 

This does not mean we do not take the issue of violence against women seriously. We reprint below what we wrote about how this investigation of the accusations could be dealt with.  A lot of time has passed since then and we would probably update and fine tune update these comments but the general position would be the same. The most ruthless and violent force on earth, the US ruling class, wanted his head.

Meanwhile Assange has been under house arrest at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London for five years.  What has Assange done that would lead dominant world powers like the US and the UK to hound this man?

Think of this: Why would the British police alone spend $15 million ensuring Assange can’t leave the embassy and the country, he can’t go to Ecuador, the country that has given him asylum? Why would Chelsea Manning get 35 years in prison after 18 months of torture for revealing to the American people atrocities our government was committing in our name? No US service personnel have suffered death or maiming due to Manning providing Wikileaks with information the US public should know about. Why would Edward Snowden be facing death or prison for doing the same? Bush, Obama, Rumsfeld, Clinton, and the nefarious Henry Kissinger are all murderers.

It surely can’t be because the US and British authorities place rape, a violent and vicious crime high up there on the list of anti-social behavior.  It’s can’t be due to a strict and constantly vigilant war against rape in the courts and society as a whole.   Most women don’t even report rapes because having their personal lives being dragged through the courts and being treated like the cause of a crime rather than the victim of one isn’t worth it.

6 months in jail for rape

The US military alone is a haven for rapists.   And as I write, I read in yesterday’s San Francisco Chronicle that a college student at Stanford University, a former champion swimmer, who raped an unconscious woman he’d met at a party just got 6 months in jail. Naughty boy.  He “   thought he was having consensual sex with the woman, who authorities said was ‘completely unresponsive’ as she lay near a tree and a trash bin.”, the Chronicle reports. He was drunk.  

The woman this young student raped, he never referred to it as a sexual assault apparently, finally got to address him in court.

“I shuffled from room to room with a blanket wrapped around me, pine needles trailing behind me, I left a little pile in every room I sat in. I was asked to sign papers that said “Rape Victim” and I thought something has really happened. My clothes were confiscated and I stood naked while the nurses held a ruler to various abrasions on my body and photographed them. The three of us worked to comb the pine needles out of my hair, six hands to fill one paper bag. To calm me down, they said it’s just the flora and fauna, flora and fauna. I had multiple swabs inserted into my vagina and anus, needles for shots, pills, had a Nikon pointed right into my spread legs. I had long, pointed beaks inside me and had my vagina smeared with cold, blue paint to check for abrasions.

After a few hours of this, they let me shower. I stood there examining my body beneath the stream of water and decided, I don’t want my body anymore. I was terrified of it, I didn’t know what had been in it, if it had been contaminated, who had touched it. I wanted to take off my body like a jacket and leave it at the hospital with everything else.”

Speaking to her assailant directly she said,  “You took away my worth, my privacy, my energy, my time, my intimacy, my confidence, my own voice,” the victim told Turner at the sentencing hearing. “The damage is done. No one can undo it.”

You can read her entire statement at Buzzfeed.

No, Julian Assange is not having his freedom curtailed because he is wanted on questioning by authorities with regard to accusations of sexual assault. Cases like the above show how important rape is to the justice system. The power in society doesn’t give a damn about rape.

That there is not a worldwide movement, from the left and from workers organizations in particular for the release of Assange, of Manning, and a pardon for Snowden is a disgrace.

Note: Here is what we wrote in relation to the case of Assange when it happned.

#Support Wikileaks in its distribution of the documents and materials it has available.

#Support Wikileaks in its safeguarding of these documents by downloading them and storing them as they suggest.

#Support Wikileaks by being part of the international campaign to release Assange and Manning and to free all its financial assets and financial accounts of these activists and of Wikileaks.

#Boycott all organizations that are involved in attacking Wikileaks.

#For an international coalition of all forces that are defending Wikileaks.

#Investigate the allegations of the women against Assange but in an a forum totally independent of any capitalist state. In any institution of a capitalist state it will be a show trial. For the investigation to be held in an elected body made up of elected representatives from a women's union, anti-rape groups, representatives, male and female from the shop floor, and representatives from the trade union movement as a whole.

#Build Hands Off Wikileaks committees in the workplaces, neighborhoods, trade unions, labor organizations, regionally, nationally and internationally. In this way give a democratic structure to the movement in defense of wikileaks. A structure which can make decisions democratically and which can have a collective leadership which can replace itself when and if capitalism removes some more of of its members.

#For priority in publication of the 250,000 documents to be given to those which show the internal workings and dirty dealings of the financial institutions, the bail- outs for the rich, the reasoning behind the capitalist classes internationally as they pursue a course of cutting wages, jobs, conditions and social services. Wikileaks say they have a trove of documents on Bank of America and other banks. These should be immediately released and all the documents which show the financial, industrial and economic dirty tricks of Capitalism. This would strengthen the understanding of the working class as to where it stood.

#The attack on wikileaks, Assange and Manning originate from capitalism's biggest powers and ruling classes/circles. They are meant to defend the capitalist system as a whole from critical or even just honest eyes. Capitalism cannot exist without its secrets and lies, its capitalist diplomacy. When a tiny minority rules the great majority and when this tiny minority live in unimagined wealth and the majority live in great poverty and want, then capitalism must obscure this reality, must obscure this class struggle. The role of capitalist diplomacy is to do this. It is to lie. The peoples of the world cannot afford capitalist diplomacy, cannot afford capitalism's secrets and lies. They need to know what is what. The defend Wikileaks campaign needs to work not just to end the secrets and lies of capitalist diplomacy, we also have to work to end capitalism, the system with which these secrets and lies are inseparably linked. We have to work to build a Democratic Socialist World.

Is your password secure? Edward Snowden doesn't think so.

John Oliver getting some advice from whistleblower Edward Snowden on passwords.

Edward Snowden receives the Sam Adams prize for integrity

Edward Snowden receiving the Sam Adams prize for integrity. This award is given by former US intelligence and law enforcement officials who are concerned about the increased US government surveillance of the general population

Edward Snowden: No regrets

Snowden and human rights activists in Moscow

We share this Snowden interview from Reader Supported News for our readers interest.  The media war against Snowden is intense with absolutely no response whatsoever from the heads of organized labor to this attack on the rights and freedoms of all workers and despite over half of Americans considering him a whistleblower and not a traitor according to a recent poll.

 

 It Was the Right Thing to Do

By Edward Snowden, Reader Supported News

13 July 13

NSA Whistleblower asks for support from international community and human rights campaigners.

ello. My name is Ed Snowden. A little over one month ago, I had family, a home in paradise, and I lived in great comfort. I also had the capability without any warrant to search for, seize, and read your communications. Anyone's communications at any time. That is the power to change people's fates.

It is also a serious violation of the law. The 4th and 5th Amendments to the Constitution of my country, Article 12 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and numerous statutes and treaties forbid such systems of massive, pervasive surveillance. While the US Constitution marks these programs as illegal, my government argues that secret court rulings, which the world is not permitted to see, somehow legitimize an illegal affair. These rulings simply corrupt the most basic notion of justice - that it must be seen to be done. The immoral cannot be made moral through the use of secret law.

I believe in the principle declared at Nuremberg in 1945: "Individuals have international duties which transcend the national obligations of obedience. Therefore individual citizens have the duty to violate domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity from occurring."

Accordingly, I did what I believed right and began a campaign to correct this wrongdoing. I did not seek to enrich myself. I did not seek to sell US secrets. I did not partner with any foreign government to guarantee my safety. Instead, I took what I knew to the public, so what affects all of us can be discussed by all of us in the light of day, and I asked the world for justice.

That moral decision to tell the public about spying that affects all of us has been costly, but it was the right thing to do and I have no regrets.

Since that time, the government and intelligence services of the United States of America have attempted to make an example of me, a warning to all others who might speak out as I have. I have been made stateless and hounded for my act of political expression. The United States Government has placed me on no-fly lists. It demanded Hong Kong return me outside of the framework of its laws, in direct violation of the principle of non-refoulement - the Law of Nations. It has threatened with sanctions countries who would stand up for my human rights and the UN asylum system. It has even taken the unprecedented step of ordering military allies to ground a Latin American president's plane in search for a political refugee. These dangerous escalations represent a threat not just to the dignity of Latin America, but to the basic rights shared by every person, every nation, to live free from persecution, and to seek and enjoy asylum.

Yet even in the face of this historically disproportionate aggression, countries around the world have offered support and asylum. These nations, including Russia, Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Ecuador have my gratitude and respect for being the first to stand against human rights violations carried out by the powerful rather than the powerless. By refusing to compromise their principles in the face of intimidation, they have earned the respect of the world. It is my intention to travel to each of these countries to extend my personal thanks to their people and leaders.

I announce today my formal acceptance of all offers of support or asylum I have been extended and all others that may be offered in the future. With, for example, the grant of asylum provided by Venezuela's President Maduro, my asylee status is now formal, and no state has a basis by which to limit or interfere with my right to enjoy that asylum. As we have seen, however, some governments in Western European and North American states have demonstrated a willingness to act outside the law, and this behavior persists today. This unlawful threat makes it impossible for me to travel to Latin America and enjoy the asylum granted there in accordance with our shared rights.

This willingness by powerful states to act extra-legally represents a threat to all of us, and must not be allowed to succeed. Accordingly, I ask for your assistance in requesting guarantees of safe passage from the relevant nations in securing my travel to Latin America, as well as requesting asylum in Russia until such time as these states accede to law and my legal travel is permitted. I will be submitting my request to Russia today, and hope it will be accepted favorably.

If you have any questions, I will answer what I can.

Thank you.