Steve Kroft interviews the controversial founder of WikiLeaks.
It's possible that this arrest is a 'deep fake'. Here is one breakdown with some interesting questions from about the 8:30 mark to 19:00.
Many were likewise surprised that the same man who told uncomfortable truths about Hillary Clinton also told uncomfortable truths about her nemesis Bashar al-Assad. Assange was someone who one day literally talked about the importance of Wikileaks in leading to the so-called Arab Spring yet is likewise being persecuted by the western politicians who actively orchestrated the most deadly aspects of the so-called Arab Spring.
Assange’s releases had something for everyone to love and had something for everyone to cringe at . This is the nature of the truth and as truth becomes an ever more scarce commodity, it becomes an increasingly alien concept to many. It is because Assange could not be coaxed into transforming himself from a publisher and journalist into a propagandist, public relations man or ideological advocate, that he made many enemies ranging from the government of Iran to its geopolitical nemesis, the government of the United States.
But while such a statement might sound odd in a political context, to a traditional iconoclastic journalist like Assange, this would have been the highest compliment. In an age where even science has become politicized, Assange was able to maintain traditional truth telling standards whilst using innovative technologies to distribute his honest information. His record of not having to retract a single publication under the guise of being materially false is a testament to his high level of work.
It is therefore ironic that many who would never publicly say that they want only comforting truths rather than only the real truths, nevertheless make Assange out to be the villain. While the corporate liberal narrative that Assange is somehow a villainous traitor for exposing American war crimes and political corruption is pervasive in western societies, there are also plenty of individuals who accuse Assange of being a western intelligence asset due to the fact that some of his publications were received in a deeply negative light in parts of the Middle East, Asia and Africa that are broadly ruled by so-called “anti-western” leaders.
But even so, the factual nature of everything ever published on Wikileaks withstands the test of material honesty every time. In this sense, to argue with Wikileaks and Assange is to argue with the truth itself.
Whilst Assange is often called an activist (including on these pages) because of his tendency to resist the prosecutors of war and violence, Assange should be best though of as someone who was willing and able to expose the truth about the powerful, whether the powerful were good or evil. Because the powerful during Assange’s time in charge of Wikileaks tended to be overwhelmingly evil, it became easy for some to confuse Assange for a moralist when in fact he was only ever an iconoclast.
Like a physician, it is not the job of a journalist to say that things are going well when they are not. If a doctor diagnoses a horrible disease, it is his or her duty to inform the patient about the illness and what if anything can be done to palliate it.
It is perhaps therefore little wonder that most so-called journalists today aren’t actually journalists at all. They are instead a combination of advocates, activists, propagandists and public relations people. In some ways, one can’t blame them. Their non-journalism is more fun, generally better paying, more relaxing and far less dangerous than the real journalism that Julian Assange took to new heights.
That is why people should be honest with themselves. Most could not be a true journalist and when faced with the choice, most would at least privately admit that they do not want to be. Assange however never abandoned his journalistic ethics. This is why some of those who once loved him now hate him and it is why some who once loathed him now read his publication and are grateful for what Wikileaks has put out. And yet even those who always hated him are aware of him and cannot deny the truths that he unilaterally exposed.
It’s not easy being a journalist because the price of freedom, honesty and integrity is often the loss of friendship and the loss of money. But in a free society, it should never result in the loss of personal or professional liberty. This is why the story of Julian Assange’s sacrifice is all the more tragic. He may have been prepared to lose friends, but what kind of man is prepared to lose his freedom for the crime of honesty?
Hi Laura, sorry for the delay in replying.Did you infer this from the data, or are you saying it was implied?
Julien Assagne from Wikileaks (wikileaks.org) talk at Ars Electronica (aec.at) September 2009.
There are at least to events in this month that strike more than just a little ominous and dreadful which both sort of have the hallmarks of significant marker events that might be related at least in part to the "April drop dead day" the C's mentioned on a couple of occasions:
- Assange unlawful, shocking and appalling arrest in plain sight of the world while society as a whole seems to have shrugged it off already and nobody seems to really know what is done to him and not even care while many even celebrate it
[...]
Assange arrest is shocking any way you look at it. I sort of get the feeling that this is a serious sign of a civilization that has lost the moral compass and has been fully indoctrinated now. At the same time it strikes me as a very dark omen of the times ahead that actually already started years ago. It also sort of struck me as a symbol of the violent death that higher realms have declared against striving for truth and decency. John Pilger's article sort of hits the Nail at least partly on this "The Assange Arrest is a Warning From History". The number one symbol/figure in our times of resistance against nefarious elites and criminal acts by exposing the truth about this has now been arrested in broad daylight daylight with the dead silence about what he is actually now subjected to.
Here just a little snipped from Pilgers article:
Real journalism is the enemy of these disgraces. A decade ago, the Ministry of Defence in London produced a secret document which described the “principal threats” to public order as threefold: terrorists, Russian spies and investigative journalists. The latter was designated the major threat.
The document was duly leaked to WikiLeaks, which published it. “We had no choice,” Assange told me. “It’s very simple. People have a right to know and a right to question and challenge power. That’s true democracy.”
What if Assange and Manning and others in their wake — if there are others — are silenced and “the right to know and question and challenge” is taken away?
In the 1970s, I met Leni Reifenstahl, close friend of Adolf Hitler, whose films helped cast the Nazi spell over Germany.
She told me that the message in her films, the propaganda, was dependent not on “orders from above” but on what she called the “submissive void” of the public.
“Did this submissive void include the liberal, educated bourgeoisie?” I asked her.
“Of course,” she said, “especially the intelligentsia …. When people no longer ask serious questions, they are submissive and malleable. Anything can happen.”
And did.
The rest, she might have added, is history.
Julian Assange's mother reported yesterday that the WikiLeaks founder has not been permitted any visitors during his detention in Belmarsh Prison, including from doctors and his lawyers. Doctors who visited Assange in the Ecuadorian Embassy have attested that he urgently needs medical care. Belmarsh is a maximum security prison sometimes referred to as "the UK's Guantanamo Bay".
And yet we're asked to believe that this has something to do with an alleged bail violation and a US extradition request for alleged computer crimes carrying a maximum sentence of five years. If you zoom out and listen to the less-informed chatter of the overt propagandists and the brainwashed rank-and-file Western mass media consumers, you will also see that people believe this has something to do with Russia and rape allegations as well.
Actually, none of these things are true. Assange is being imprisoned under draconian conditions for journalism, and for journalism only.
SOTT article said:As we've discussed previously, the prosecution of Assange is really designed to set a legal precedent which will enable the US government to imprison journalists for trying to hold it to account using journalism. The reason you are seeing the phrase "Assange is not a journalist" bleated constantly by empire lackeys all around the world today is because they need a counter-narrative for the indisputable fact that this precedent poses a threat to journalists around the world, the argument being that since Assange isn't a journalist (pure bullshit by the way), this isn't setting a precedent for journalists. As though their personal definition of what a "real journalist" is will be the one used by the US government when determining whether or not to prosecute other people for doing things similar to what Assange did, instead of whatever definition happens to suit US government agendas in that instance.
Q: (L) You have said that the Holocaust was basically a 'practice run' for the ultimate space invasion. Is this invasion supposed to take place as an actual 'aliens invading the planet' scenario, or...
A: Too many thought patterns at once. Step by step, please.
Q: (L) Let's boil it down. Was Hitler's agenda a practice run for a future scenario?
A: Close. Was a "testing" of the will.
Q: (L) Whose will was being tested?
A: Yours.
Q: (L) Me specifically, or the planet?
A: Latter.
Weeks have passed now and nobody even seems to ask basic questions like „how is he doing?“ and „what is he enduring at the moment?“, "why don't we here anything from him or his closed ones or lawyers?", in fact, nobody seems to notice, nobody seems to care:
Speaking of mean, this may be a particularly mean thing for me to say, because it may cause some politically polarized brains to explode, but I’ll say it anyway: Narrative Isn’t Everything. The world is split into people who thrive on clicks, views, likes, shares, reposts, ratings and other such nonsense; for them, narrative does seem like everything. After all, people like being told stories, and a lot of the simpler people don’t see the point of drawing a sharp line between fiction and nonfiction. [..]
Just because a certain narrative has become more popular than another doesn’t mean that it has won; it may just mean that the sad, insane people whose minds it has infested have lost. The replacement of the popular narrative “Clinton is a crook; that’s why she lost” with the popular narrative “Trump is a Russian stooge; that’s why he won” has not changed the underlying reality.
What it did was produce a pocket of stark-raving feces-flinging insanity. Helpful Russian clinicians in white coats are standing by with straitjackets and syringes of lorazepam while the rest of the world watches nervously. All hope that this bout of mass insanity will eventually run its course without requiring major medical intervention. Meanwhile, the denizens of the insane asylum obsess over the color of flower petals to scatter over the cesspool of their national politics in 2020. [..]
And it is rather questionable whether the British government has legitimate grounds to hold him: he jumped bail by entering the Ecuadoran embassy, but the arrest, and the bail, had been granted in connection with the Swedish extradition request, which is no longer valid, making the entire matter null and void. [..]
From this point of view Assange’s liberation from the Ecuadoran embassy and imprisonment in a British jail on charges of violating bail for an arrest grounds for which have since been dismissed starts to look like a major success. He is once again in the public eye, with numerous supporters throughout the world. If all goes well, he will be released and reestablish himself as a media personality of great stature. And if everything goes badly and the Americans do get their hands on him and torture him to death, he will die as a martyr and live in public memory forever.