22 Comments

Another brilliant post, Caitlin, worthy of the topic it covers.

Getting fooled is one thing; what we're seeing is the psychological aberration of fooling oneself on a massive scale. In short, too many people don't want the damn light.

I'm a nobody. The ultimate Regular Guy with no special powers of observation or intelligence, yet it's clear to me what a tawdry shit-show our politics has descended to since 9-11, so why does it feel like I'm hanging out on an empty street corner?

Above all else people want their beliefs. People want their team. People want to feel like moral beings. So it's easier going to church and being reassured than it is to squarely encounter the mysteries of life at three in the morning. For instance.

Yes, Assange is brilliantly dragging all this muck into the light. But it looks like in three years or so Americans will once again elect another version of that muck as president and do their best to keep forgetting on purpose.

I hope I'm wrong.

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“Secrets must be exposed when found. Detours must be taken when encountered. And if you are the one who stands at the crossroads or the place of concealment, you must never leave it to another to act in your place.”

- Qui-Gon Jinn.

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A fine tribute to an extraordinary man.

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These greedy and corrupt people are doing untold and possibly irreparable damage to not only our legal system, but also how others view us. You cannot shine the light on corruption, war for profit and torture in foreign lands, when our Government and its agencies’ are proceeding along the same path, aided and abetted by a dishonest legal system.

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Every time some shill for empire gets weepy about how a country that the United States doesn't like doesn't respect Muh Freedom Of Speech, just remind them of Julian Assange and Edward Snowden.

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All this is true and a complete indictment of the UK & US governments, their criminal justice systems and the utterly corrupt corporate media - especially The Guardian here in the UK. However, if it is true that:

"the western news media are so propagandistic and morally bankrupt that they will viciously smear a dissident journalist"

then what about the news media in societies such as Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt and China, where there are many more journalists being imprisoned for their work - and, no doubt, being slandered by their corrupt news media, government-controlled. None of these men and women, suffering far worse conditions as part of a criminal justice system much less worthy of the name than that in the UK, receives even a modicum of coverage or support in the West. This is despite several of those countries' governments being close allies of the UK and USA. Bahrain, for example, has a British military base.

So there are good reasons for Left media and activists to shine a light on imprisoned journalists in addition to Mr Assange. I have not seen any demonstrations by pro-journalistic freedom protestors outside the Chinese embassy in Portland Place, for example. Why are they not happening? Do non-Western journalists matter less?

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I'm not really clear on what you're trying to say here.

Are you casting those who express concern for Assange as less than sincere since you haven't seen them also raising concerns for the press in foreign lands? You realize this is the exact same tactic that Israel uses to try to impugn the motivations of its many critics: "Hey, if you're so concerned about injustice, why aren't you protesting __________? (Here you insert some other, totally unrelated atrocity, usually somewhere in Africa.) So no one can criticize Israel until every other wrong in the world is righted first. Very handy.

Why do you believe such protests as you described are not happening? I can think of two right off the top of my head: Lack of resources/language/first hand knowledge as to what is actually happening, and, two: the idea that the actions of one's own government is of primary concern to one's own self and their readers/viewers.

Oh, I just thought of a third: outrage over-saturation. So many things are so very shitty right now that the ability to cover every single outrage is simply impossible. I'm not saying that any injustice anywhere shouldn't merit our attention; just trying to account for the current situation.

And of course my alarm appears to be rooted 180 degrees from your own: why are so few of our so-called journalists covering the Assange case to begin with?

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My concern is for the other journalists as well as for Mr Assange. All are important. It does appear from pieces in Left media as if Mr Assange's case is of supreme importance simply because it's so close, which is a form of availability bias. Yes, it's very important, but so are the many others we haven't heard about. There is also the fact that Mr Assange's treatment, appalling as it is, doesn't even come close to the dreadful conditions suffered by those journalists languishing in Chinese, Bahraini, Saudi, Egyptian and Turkish cells today. To claim otherwise is to go against the facts. At least Mr Assange has some kind of criminal justice process to use, with his own legal team and a judge who is meant to be impartial - however little that means in reality.

But of course you are right about the mainstream media, especially The Guardian which worked so hard to put Mr Assange where he is today. It is possible to hold both concerns simultaneously.

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I dunno, I've been reading lots of articles about foreign journalists being imprisoned or murdered in their countries embassy while they were seeking permission to marry.

But as Riff says, its hard enough to keep track of Assange, Donzinger and Hale, let alone those dozens and dozens like Kiriakou and Manning who have been "cancelled".

You're asking folks in Minneapolis to forget about George Floyd and protest the murders of two tourists, reportedly from nations not in the Americas, in Tulum when they were caught in a cross-fire between two rival gangs.

Yeah, the world requires an awakening, but just exactly how do you go about it when (for example) the hundreds of thousands marching through San Francisco against the invasion of Iraq are simply ignored; when Obama cuts down Occupy Wall Street without any repercussions and is now held in high-esteem by most Americans; when the Pussy-Hat rebellion was destroyed by Biden's denial of his pedophile proclivities.

Sure, we should be protesting the conditions of foreign journalists in prison. How? Where? When?

I don't have an answer. I've been neutered as much as any American. Those who join quasi-militia groups like the Oath Keepers may be on the right track, but they don't realize that they've been heavily infiltrated by the FBI.

In any case, guns don't seem to solve the problem we're talking about here.

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Despair is not an option if we want a liveable future. The elites have been working hard for a long time to ensure the wealth we create and they hold is increasingly in their hands. The Oath Keepers et al might be angry but they have no solutions, thinking only of themselves. My concern regarding Mr Assange from here in the UK is that his appalling treatment is being regarded on the Left as the worst it could be... when in other nations, journalists have it so much harder. Caitlin Johnstone's piece here is superb and I recommend it to anyone - so long as we realise he's not the only one.

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Agree with much that you say but let me add this by way of context: adopting the West's own meme for a second, we're supposed to be the good guys, with a long history of press and speech freedom. Those scary, repressive horrible countries over there are expected to mistreat their reporters, with no pedigree of individual rights. So when we start acting just like them, it's doubly alarming -- which makes it both dangerous and newsworthy.

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Absolutely. We claim so much for ourselves, whether here in the UK or over in the USA, as if we're exceptional. Conversely, we should not give nations such as Bahrain (a close UK ally with a British military base) or China (a close UK trading partner bizarrely regarded as the UK's enemy) a free pass to abuse their citizens just because that's what they've always gotten away with. I wonder, if journalists imprisoned around the world are aware of the Assange case, what they think of it?

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Change what you can. You have even less control of what happens in foreign countries than you do in the US/UK, so fight your battles in the US/UK. There's also the issue of hypocrisy to criticize others while ignoring the moat in your own eye.

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The mote is not in our eyes who want Mr Assange released today. We can criticise the US and UK governments as well as those of Bahrain, China, Egypt and Turkey for imprisoning their own journalists. Why refrain from showing what is going on elsewhere, especially when it's far worse than what's being done to Mr Assange, horrendous as that is? There seems to be some kind of Anglophilia here, in which Western journalists attract more attention and sympathy.

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Yes, you briefly mentioned Assange. I was not suggesting you personally ignore Assange, but divert attention from him thus encouraging others to ignore what is happening to him. You devoted most of your comment to other countries like Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt and China. You even suggested protests "outside the Chinese embassy in Portland Place." Such protests would have no affect on Chinese policies toward dissidents, and would only serve to contribute to the frenzy of hate currently being directed against China as justification for conflict and to divert attention away from totalitarian internal policies in the West. The Chinese themselves would assume that those protests were organized by Western elites pounding the war drums and diverting attention from rights violations associated with Covid.

There's also the epistemological issue of what you really know about China. Have you been there, or are you basing your criticism strictly on what you see in Western media? Daniel Dumbrill is a Canadian who lives in China, speaks the language, and has traveled extensively there, including to Xinjiang. I trust his reports and commentary far more than Western media who base their reports of human rights violations entirely on the Western intelligence reports and people associated with the ETIM.

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I can't agree. Are you claiming that China doesn't have 47 journalists in prison? You'd need proof to counter the many well-evidenced reports from AI, HRW and other organisations. Or that Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain (a close ally of the UK, with a British military base) and Turkey are fine places for the human and civil rights of journalists and other citizens?

Your response is that we in the UK or the USA should ignore the vastly greater abuses of human rights in other countries. No, I just won't do that. Why should I? I can protest Assange's injustice while at the same time recognising he has it rather better than, say, Abduljalil Al-Singace in Bahrain who has been in a cell there since March 2011. He has no crowds of supporters noisily calling for his release. Who else will do this, if not us?

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"...well-evidenced..." by what? Testimony from ETIM members or paid defectors? Western NGOs like AI and HRW are not free from Western elite influence. Are you not aware of the corruption of the OPCW, for example?

I'm arguing that we should focus on what our government is directly responsible for and not be distracted by what may or may not be happening in other countries, especially since you gave no specifics. Since Abduljalil Al-Singace is being abused by an allied despotism, reports of that are more believable as in a "statement against interest." Also, the US government has influence over Bahrain so pressuring our own government to stop Bahrain's abuse of Shia might have some value. I have no objection to citing that specific case, but nothing you believe, do or say about 47 journalists in China will have any affect whatsoever to free those journalist if they exist and are not imprisoned for actual crimes, but fussing about those reports WILL contribute to the climate of hostility against China and WILL distract from what has been happening to Julian Assange. I give absolutely no credibility to Western media reports of abuses in countries that are truly independent of empire, unless those reports are corroborated by reliable journalists within those countries or in countries that are non-aligned, where "reliable" means they don't always echo what's reported in Western media. Examples would be Pepe Escobar, Jonathan Cook in Israel or Elijah Magnier.

I note also that you have nothing to say about the heaps of abuse dumped upon Palestinians by Israel, something the US could halt immediately simply by suspending aid.

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Further, I'm fully aware of the scandalous corruption in the OPCW, as well reported by Grayzone. I support much of what you write; but I cannot agree that Mr Assange should be regarded as a unique case. His suffering, hideous and unjust in every way that it is, merely represents one part of what many journalists working in repressive societies such as China, Bahrain etc have to endure.

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Regarding China, your view seems to be that no journalists are imprisoned for their work criticising the government or otherwise 'upsetting social stability'. You present nothing to support this. Despite the known biases of AI & HRW towards the US and UK governments, they still produce work that is relatively trustworthy and which routinely and vigorously attacks state crimes in the West. Your view, which I have encountered elsewhere on the Left, seems to be that those in undemocratic societies such as China, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain et al are simply unfortunate victims for which nothing can or should be done. That callous fatalism appals me. I reject it.

I have commented elsewhere on many, many occasions (such as on MintPress News) about apartheid Israel, countering the trolls which infest such sites. I support the work here in the UK of Palestine Action, a radical group which occupies the sites of arms companies such as Elbit Systems owned by the apartheid Israeli government.

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If the Trump/Biden administration gets its way, going forward, the punishment of foreign journalists will be the ONLY ones we hear about.

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