Assange is an independent person practicing legitimate journalism. He published leaked documents, exactly as did the New York Times when the newspaper published the Pentagon Papers leaked by Daniel Ellsberg, a US citizen with top secret clearances. Unlike Ellsberg, Assange was not the leaker. Assange was the publisher like the New York Times. The US government’s effort to punish Ellsberg and the NY Times failed in the courts. Ellsberg was awarded the Olof Palme Prize for “profound humanism and moral courage.”
But times have changed. In Ellsberg’s time, the US government still had enough standing to survive the deception revealed by the Pentagon Papers. But by the time of Assange, the crimes and misdeeds of the US government had hollowed out Washington’s reputation. The decision was made to make an example of Assange in order to prevent journalists from ever again revealing Washington’s war crimes and deceptions of the American people and US allies.
Rafael Correa, the former president of Ecuador, who was able to
remove Assange from Washington’s reach for several years, said that
Washington’s aim in its illegal an unconstitutional prosecution of
Assange is to “scare others” and shut down real journalism. Correa
stated the facts as they are: “If Assange would have exposed the secrets
of China, Russia or left-wing Latin American governments, including my
government, he would have been praised by the international press,
honored by US Congress and the British parliament. But because his
actions were against the interests of the US, the hegemonic country, he
was labeled a criminal.” https://www.rt.com/news/542890-rafael-correa-assange-case/
American journalism is already shut down. All that print, TV, and PBS
journalism delivers is official narratives. American journalism serves
as a Ministry of Propaganda and as nothing else. It is no longer
possible in the “Free West” to practice journalism.
This fact is obvious from journalism’s treatment of Assange. Real journalism is dependent on the First Amendment. Without it, there is no journalism. Assange’s persecution signifies the death of the First Amendment. Yet American journalists have served as Washington’s mob squad and have done Washington’s dirty work for a decade beating up Assange with endless lies.
To see the encroaching totalitarianism in the Western World, observe that in the 1970s the case against Ellsberg was thrown out of court, but in the 21st century with a case so weak as to be nonexistent, Washington has managed to corrupt the British High Court to turn over Assange to Washington, not for legal reasons, but for vengeance. This is persecution, not legitimate prosecution. Add to this Australian concentration camps for citizen suspected of having been exposed to Covid, imprisonment of unvaccinated citizens in Austria and Germany, job- and GDP-destroying lockdowns, restrictions on freedom of association and freedom of movement, silencing of scientific experts who disprove the official false Covid narrative. You can add to this list.
People in the “Free West” are so insouciant that most have accepted the presstitutes’ portrayal of Assange as a Russian spy. People are too insouciant to recognize that even if the lie were true, it is not grounds for prosecution as Assange is not an American citizen or legal resident.
Rafael Correa is correct. Washington is determined, even at the cost of lawlessness, to make an example of Assange and thereby guarantee that the only permissible “journalism” is propaganda in behalf of Washington’s narratives. This is the same complete control over explanations as exists in George Orwell’s dystopian novel, 1984.
1984 arrived 37 years later, but it is here now.
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