One of the most ironic things about this situation is that Edward Snowden has
become, I think, President of the Freedom of the Press Foundation and the
Freedom of the Press Foundation has refused to take a public position on the
Assange case.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Roger Loran Bailey
(Redacted sender "rogerbailey81" for DMARC)
Sent: Friday, March 20, 2020 10:54 AM
To: blind-democracy <blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [blind-democracy] Assange: Empire of Surveillance and Imperialism
https://socialistaction.org/2020/03/18/assange-empire-of-surveillance-and-imperialism/
Assange: Empire of Surveillance and Imperialism Socialist Action / 2 days ago
By KATU ARKONADA
The trial against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is a perfect metaphor for
how United States imperialism operates in the world today. The Armed Forces,
the Department of State, and the CIA caused thousands of deaths in Afghanistan,
Iraq, Libya or Syria, but it’s the person who showed to the world those crimes
who is going to be sentenced to 175 years in prison for 18 crimes (17 of them
described in the Espionage Act of 1917, passed on the occasion of War World I).
Former Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa expressed it categorically. If
Assange’s revelations had been about China or Russia, the Assange Memorial
would have been built already in Washington in defense of freedom of expression
and against war crimes.
But in this digital age, the messenger is killed, whether he is Australian,
like Assange, or from the U.S., like Chelsea Manning, who spent seven years in
prison (from a 35-year sentence commuted by Barack Obama). Exactly seven years
more than any U.S. intelligence analyst who has tortured Afghan or Iraqi
civilians.
Seven years (2,487 days) also were spent by Julian Assange as a refugee in the
Ecuadorian embassy in the United Kingdom before the withdrawal of his political
asylum status by Lenin Moreno; a subordinate of the interests of the United
States.
If Assange is guilty of anything, it is for opening our eyes to U.S. war
crimes, of putting in front of us the Guantanamo torture manuals, or the
collateral murder video, where AH-64 Apache helicopters opened fire on the
streets of Baghdad and massacred 11 civilians (including two reporters of
Reuters). Manuals and images that made it difficult to look the other way in
the face of war crimes committed by the United States and its allies across the
planet.
But tortures and massacres of civilians is only the tip of the iceberg of a new
digital age where there is no longer privacy and though there is an apparent
freedom of communication thanks to the Internet, our communications are spied
on and the cyberspace and civil life, in general, have been militarized.
WikiLeaks brought the iceberg to the surface and it suddenly became an elephant
that was in front of us and that did not allow us to look the other way. Thanks
to WikiLeaks we know what SIPRNet is, a secret protocol of interconnected
computer networks used by the U.S. Department of Defense to transmit classified
information.
The Collateral Murder or the Iraq War Logs leaks in April and October
2010 paved the way for Edward Snowden to leak information about the U.S.
National Security Agency’s (NSA) PRISM and Xkeyscore programs in 2013.
Programs used to obtain and analyze massive data and metadata collected from
companies such as Google, Facebook or Apple.
It is for showing us how the empire of surveillance and imperialism operates in
the digital age, an alliance between the military security apparatuses and the
big Internet companies, that Snowden is taking refuge in Russia and Assange is
being held in the high security prison of Belmarsh, London, while he is being
tried with the aim of extraditing him to the United States in a trial that will
be resumed between May 18 and June 5. Meanwhile, the first week of Assange’s
trial has also become a metaphor for what awaits the founder of WikiLeaks if he
is extradited:
on the first day of the trial he was stripped naked twice, held in five
different cells and handcuffed 11 times.
Regardless of what a court that is a strategic ally of the U.S. in NATO
decides, both the U.N. Human Rights Council and the Inter-American Court of
Human Rights have described Assange’s situation as arbitrary detention and
insisted on the need to guarantee asylum. Not to mention the worldwide
condemnation of the attempt to censor free speech in a case protected by the
First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
That’s why the trial of the founder of WikiLeaks is a trial against freedom of
expression, because as Assange himself said, “Every time we witness an
injustice and don’t act we are more passive in its presence and with this we
can lose all ability to defend ourselves and those we love”.
But in addition, Assange’s trial is the possibility of demonstrating against
the imperialism of the digital age and the empire of surveillance it builds.
Snowden said it himself: “I don’t want to live in a world where everything that
I say, everything I do, everyone I talk to, every expression of creativity, or
love, or friendship is recorded.”
We do not want governments to monitor their citizens, but we do want citizens
that keep an eye on the sewers of power so that they can answer for their
crimes committed in wars to plunder the planet’s natural resources.
Originally published in La Jornada
Share:
Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook
(Opens in new window)Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)
March 18, 2020 in Uncategorized.
Related posts
Book Review: The Trials of Julian Assange
Free Julian Assange! Defend freedom of the press!
Bradley Manning convicted of espionage
Post navigation← System Change, Not Climate Change: Monthly Climate Crisis News
RoundupFrench Strikes Wane but Not the Outrage → Search for articles Search
Search … Get Involved!
Donate to help support our work
Get email updates
Join Socialist Action
Social Media
View socialistactionusa’s profile on FacebookView SocialistActUS’s profile on
Twitter Subscribe to Our Newspaper
Newspaper Archives
Newspaper Archives
Upcoming Events
No upcoming events
--
___
Neil deGrasse Tyson
“God is an ever-receding pocket of scientific ignorance.”
― Neil DeGrasse Tyson
