|
U-Know! Forum » The trial of Assange |
Log In to post a reply
|
|
|
|
| Topic View: Flat | Threaded | |
|
phallus dei 583 posts |
Feb 29, 2020, 15:26
|
||
|
Although it's not getting much coverage in the CIA-controlled press,the trial of Assange is slowly proceeding, in order to provide the fig-leaf "legal" cover for lifetime confinement in the American gulag. Catilin Johnstone, one of the few journalists still worth reading, has some disturbing commentary: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/53050.htm Apparently during the trial Assange is kept in an enclosed, nearly soundproof glass box, so that he can't hear the proceedings or even communicate with his lawyers. The image brings to mind the recent trial of Morsi by the Egyptian military dictatorship, which was widely highlighted in the Western press for its barbarism. Apparently it's only "barbaric" when people of darker skin do it. Johnstone's piece also reminded me of when Black Panther member Bobbby Seale was tried in a US court while he was bound and gagged. So much for Western "justice."
|
|||
Zariadris 286 posts |
Edited Mar 01, 2020, 12:22
Feb 29, 2020, 19:56
|
||
I'd have a lot more sympathy for Assange if he hadn't collaborated with an authoritarian state to help get Trump elected, and in doing so ironically put the legitimacy of a free press in a much more imperiled position as a result of Trump's relentless 'fake news' assault, not to mention help engender the tragic separation of migrant children at the border, the undermining of civil liberties, the unravelling of environmental regulations, corrupt self-dealing of an unprecedented nature in public office, etc, etc. The hacking and leaking of the DNC emails was a disgrace. Assange has aided and abetted the unholy alliance of populists and corporate robber-barons in his one-sided meddling in 2016, driven, let us be clear, by his vain, personal vendetta against Clinton and not by a righteous freedom crusade. In doing so he has done more to further dismantle our woefully imperfect democratic system - and our dwindling freedoms - than to correcting and redeeming it.
|
|||
|
phallus dei 583 posts |
Edited Mar 02, 2020, 00:09
Mar 01, 2020, 15:26
|
||
|
Thanks for taking the time to reply. Though I don't agree with any of your comments. There has never been any proof that the DNC was hacked by an outside source, other than the claims of a mysterious entity named CrowdStrike which examined the servers but then never widely shared their findings. Other people have done analysis of the speed rate at which the data was taken, and came to the conclusion that it was downloaded by someone on the inside, and then shared / leaked (rather than hacked by Russian entities). But let's say it was indeed hacked by Russia. Does that matter? The material revealed how the DNC was conspiring against the presidential campaign of Bernie Sanders. Isn't that in the public interest? Shouldn't the DNC be called out on its anti-democratic behavior? It is not as if Wikileaks was publishing fake information - what they published were actual emails from the Clinton camp and internal documents of the DNC, which presented both in damning ways. When did we enter an era in which the truth can only be published when we agree with it? You say Assange had a personal vendetta against Hilary Clinton. I say Assange was a journalist who published the info he got. Perhaps if we find out he had access to damaging info on Putin but passed on it, your argument would be justified. But again, for the sake of devil's advocate, let's say he was driven by a blind hatred of Clinton (I don't know, perhaps her quip asking if he could "just be taken out" pissed him off?). Again, should that matter? Publishers are almost always driven by their political biases. We quickly identify certain publications as leaning conservative or liberal. And individual journalists and media pundits are no better. Currently, we have complete hatred in the press for figures such as Sanders, Tulsi Gabbard, Corbyn, and Trump. Was Assange's vendetta against Clinton any worse than the current journalistic smears against those figures? At the very least, what Assange published was accurate, as opposed to the mainstream press, who endlessly shill the same talking points "Trump, Gabbard, and Sanders are Russian agents, Corbyn is an anti-Semite" without any proof. Much of your reply lists your criticisms of Trump. What does that have to do with Assange? Did Assange rig the American elections? No, enough people in each state voted for Trump so that he got enough of the electoral vote to win. All Assange did was publish information. How that information may or may not have influenced people is a separate matter. Finally, let's say all your above points are absolutely right - Assange was directly working with Russia to hack the DNC because of his personal hatred of Clinton. And now he's caught. Was his "crime" really so great? So great as to negate the classic liberal values of free speech and the right to a fair trial? Is Assange such a menace that we must become tyrants to put him down? Or are certain rights indeed universal, no matter what?
|
|||
|
Zariadris 286 posts |
Edited Mar 01, 2020, 16:52
Mar 01, 2020, 16:33
|
||
|
phallus dei wrote: ...There has never been any proof that the DNC was hacked by an outside source... But let's say it was indeed hacked by Russia. Does that matter? For me, yes, it does, for the reasons I outlined. Further, the Mueller report clearly implicated Assange in the conspiracy: "Julian Assange not only knew that a murdered Democratic National Committee staffer wasn’t his source for thousands of hacked party emails, he was in active contact with his real sources in Russia’s GRU months after Seth Rich’s death. At the same time he was publicly working to shift blame onto the slain staffer “to obscure the source of the materials he was releasing,” Special Counsel Robert Mueller asserts in his final report on Russia’s role in the 2016 presidential election." Source: https://www.thedailybeast.com/mueller-report-julian-assange-smeared-seth-rich-to-cover-for-russians Or this from the Washington Post: "The report by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III released this past Friday amply documents that Assange, with the support of Russian intelligence, played a critical role in the 2016 presidential election. He is a potential missing link in the chain of understanding the extent to which foreign intervention affected the American electoral process." Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/04/22/mueller-report-confirms-it-assange-is-not-whistleblower-or-journalist/ I appreciate that some may believe the Mueller Report, Daily Beast, NYT, Washington Post are all part of the Deep State/media conspiracy to railroad Assange. But I don't. So here we might just have to respectfully disagree. It's pretty clear to me that the hacking of the DNC profoundly swayed the election. As I'm not best pleased with Trump and the GOP, I hold JA among those responsible for interfering in our election for purely partisan reasons and for causing what I see as the mess we're in. As The Donald said a number of times, "WikiLeaks, I love WikiLeaks"! Where we do agree Phallus Dei, apart from our love of Amon Duul II, is our shared core values - about freedom, fairness, due process, free speech, and the fight against Big Brother. As a Chomsky fan, I profoundly appreciate your concerns, eloquently expressed, regarding all of these. I like to think we're on the same page, but with slightly different perspectives. I just happen to believe - based on the facts as I know them - that Assange is decidedly not the Promethean figure he claims to be: the culture hero chained by a tyrant for revealing state secrets. In short, he's not so much a Shelley as he is a shill.
|
|||
|
phallus dei 583 posts |
Mar 02, 2020, 00:54
|
||
|
Thanks for the civil and thoughtful reply. Craig Murry, the British diplomat turned activist wrote a criticism of the Mueller report that addresses most of the issues you brought up: https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2019/05/the-real-muellergate-scandal/ Ultimately, most of us will never be in a position to know what "really happened." So it comes down to which source we find most persuasive, based on our lived experiences, capability for rational analysis, and insight for probable future developments. The American government and its paid-for press have lied about the Gulf of Tonkin, leftist terrorism in Europe during the 1970s (actually done by NATO and local fascists via Operation Gladio),the throwing of babies from Incubators in the first Iraq War, WMD in the Second Iraq War, that Gadaffi was giving his soldiers Viagra to rape civilians, and that the Syrian Douma gas attack was real (when OPCW inspectors were saying it was clearly staged). And that's just what I remember offhand. So I'm not sure why the American government, which maintains its hegemonic power partly by means of deception, is supposed to be credible now. As I mentioned before, your hatred of Trump is clouding your judgement of Assange. Publishing information to sway an election is not a crime. And just because your preferred candidate didn't win doesn't mean the election wasn't legitimate. But in the quest to get revenge for the "injustice" of Trump, we run the risk of doing very real and permanent damage to the fundamental rights upon which Western society is founded. We should be working to expand those rights, not weaken them.
|
|||
|
Zariadris 286 posts |
Edited Mar 03, 2020, 18:50
Mar 03, 2020, 14:59
|
||
|
Damn, you're a fine writer Phallus Dei. While I'm afraid I can't be won over anymore than you, I recognize and honor the moral imperative of your argument. No doubt my judgement is indeed clouded by personal biases, and this is true not only of my political views (don't get me started on Billie Eilish). As an old New Yorker my low-as-the-ocean-floor opinion of Trump (hate's too strong a word in my book) goes back to the 80s and has long ago transcended any kind of purely irrational dislike of the man personally and taken on something of a much more philosophical nature. (To paraphrase Mikey Wild, "I was a Never-Trumper before you were a Never-Trumper, Never-Trumper!") As we both pointed out, it's hard to really advance an argument if we dispute the legitimacy of each other's sources; of what the facts actually are. It turns the discussion into something like an interminable religious debate where neither party accepts the authority of the other's text. This is truly a problem these days and has lead us into a kind of ghetto-ization of ideas: not a good thing in a democracy. Trump has exasperated this exponentially and deliberately, and for purely cynical, self-serving reasons. Ironically, I feel that wiki-leaks, for reasons I mentioned (and which I realize you roundly refute) is in fact largely responsible for the current sorry state of things, enabling an anti-democratic would-be dictator pursuing a reactionary, far right agenda, apparently for it's own self-serving reasons: Assange's vendetta against Clinton. I also wonder about the legitimacy of an organization that solely attacks the injustices of Western governments (and I acknowledge the facts in your litany of American crimes), but largely ignores the misconduct of their authoritarian adversaries. As someone who has lived and worked in that part of the world, I have something of a keen understanding of the reality of state violence and repression there. Receiving the material and/or moral support of such regimes is disqualifying in my opinion. Wikileaks, knowingly or not (and I say knowingly, as I accept the Mueller report), was weaponized by a repressive regime on behalf of its interests in interfering in a foreign election. While I recognize the sad fact that, say, American or British special interest groups can legally disinform the public to influence the outcome of an election in their own countries, I can't accept the right of a foreign power to do so. I respect the fact that you disagree with these allegations, and I'll be happy to give you the last word in refuting them. Lord knows, my case is full of holes (I only play a political scientist on TV - and occasionally on HH). Let me just end by saying that while we agree to disagree about Assange and other matters, I was moved and inspired by your core ideas and by how passionately you voiced them. I promise to open my mind and pay closer attention to the deeper issues & principles involved in this case and which are at the heart of your argument: principles on which I am in profound agreement. For that, I thank you.
|
|||
|
phallus dei 583 posts |
Mar 04, 2020, 00:00
|
||
|
Thanks, Zariadris. You're no slouch in the writing department, either :-) It's refreshing to have a civil conversation where we "agree to disagree" but still maintain basic respect for one another. Such courtesy is indeed lacking these days. In closing, I'd just like to bring up two issues to consider. First, Wikileaks wasn't only focused on the crimes of Western governments. They also exposed incidents in China, Africa, the Middle East, and Russia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_material_published_by_WikiLeaks Naturally, residing in the West, we're going to hear mostly about those releases that strike close to home. But a quick look at their publications list reveals that Wikileaks and Assange were driven by a much greater calling than a personal vendetta against Hillary Clinton. Second, even if the Mueller Report was true (and as I mentioned, there are plenty of reasons to at least be suspicious of its findings), how can that justify the way Assange has been treated? Nils Melzer, a UN human rights official, has described Assange's treatment as a form of torture: https://www.ohchr.org/en/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=25249 Surely, at the very least, Assange - like anyone else - deserves the right to a fair trial, the right to take an active role in preparing his defense, and the right to not be unduly harassed while in prison. At the end of the day, I do fear that Assange will either conveniently "commit suicide," or be subject to lifetime imprisonment. Such an outcome may give a momentary burst of joy to the anti-Trumpers, but the lasting effects will be dangerous for us all. Those glorious days when it looked like the internet might foster the "free exchange of ideas" - and keep our governments in check - are sadly gone.
|
|||
|
phallus dei 583 posts |
Mar 08, 2020, 15:25
|
||
|
Roger Waters gave a good interview on the sad fate of Assange: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOJFFZQTl_U Although I'm partial to Barret-era Floyd, I've got to say that Waters has done a fantastic job as a "musician-activist." He sure puts Bono to shame!
|
|||
|
Amil04 447 posts |
Mar 30, 2020, 21:18
|
||
|
CV..Prisons.. ?
|
|||
thispoison 253 posts |
Edited May 21, 2020, 05:13
May 21, 2020, 04:56
|
||
|
Zariadris wrote: While I recognize the sad fact that, say, American or British special interest groups can legally disinform the public to influence the outcome of an election in their own countries, I can't accept the right of a foreign power to do so. The USA interferes in EVERY foreign election. Their military bases ring the world in multitudes*. Every area of the World us divided into strategic blocks which fall under their sphere of influence and self interest, ie: Africa Command, Central Command, European Command, Indo-Pacific Command, Northern Command, and Southern Command (of course there is also the non- terrestrial Space Command!). Assange should get the total support of every right thinking human being. Wikileaks is worth more than the entire global mass media, many times over. Mueller is a proven liar. Seth Rich WAS the source. That's why he was murdered Hillary is a corrupt war monger, she wanted to enforce a no-fly zone in Syria, which would have led to an air-war with Russia, with, obviously, potentially dire consequences. Her husband is a serial rapist and sexual abuser of women and young girls. He also wrecked the world economy by repealing the Glass–Steagall Act of 1933 in 1999, making the financial collapse of 2008 inevitable. The Clintons are pure evil. Trump is appalling, but he played her like a piano. *The Pentagon stated in 2013 that there are "around" 5,000 US military bases total, with "around" 600 of them overseas. Between October 2015 and October 2017, the US fought in 76 countries.
|
| Pages: 2 – [ 1 2 | Next ] | Add a reply to this topic |
|
|
|
| U-Know! Forum Index | |
