Rixstep
 About | ACP | Buy | Industry Watch | Learning Curve | News | Products | Search | Substack
Home » Learning Curve » Red Hat Diaries

John Pilger on Julian Assange

Things are in focus.


Get It

Try It

Don't ever underestimate John Pilger's abilities as a writer. Based on his latest essay, he's unapproachable. John has done the impossible in this essay: touched on each and every last element of the growing rumble over truth, the media, and the increasingly corrupt powers that be.

Today's dawning also brings with it good news: the corrupt government of Tunisia has been toppled, and a lot of credit for this is given to the leaked cables about the conditions in the country. At the same time, a lot of credit must be given to the people of Tunisia, who showed they'd finally had enough and helped oust the government. Well done!

Pilger on Assange

'The attacks on WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange are a response to an information revolution that threatens old power orders in politics and journalism', begins John Pilger in a great nutgraf. 'The incitement to murder trumpeted by public figures in the United States, together with attempts by the Obama administration to corrupt the law and send Assange to a hell-hole prison for the rest of his life, are the reactions of a rapacious system exposed as never before.'

Pilger goes on to describe the secret operations of the US justice department and the propitious choice of a location for these operations: right across the Potomac in an eastern district of Virginia dense with employees and families of the Pentagon, the CIA, and the Department of Homeland Security.

But the US is not the biggest threat, insists Assange. The biggest threat is China.

'China is the worst offender. China has aggressive, sophisticated interception technology that places itself between every reader inside China and every information source outside China.'

WikiLeaks staff have been fighting a battle all along to get information in and out of China. Today there are myriad methods Chinese citizens can use to still get at the WikiLeaks information flood.

Masterhector

The moronic conduct of British journalists is also brought up and chopped to bits. Catherine Bennett is hung out to dry, as are Kirsty Wark and Bennett's partner and Mastermind host John Humphrys. (Expect the ratings of that show to drop considerably and watch for the BBC to possibly cancel it entirely.)

Bill Blum's comments to Pilger on Humphrys' dumb question to Assange asking him if he's a 'sexual predator' are precious.

'Would even Fox News have descended to that level? I wish Assange had been raised in the streets of Brooklyn as I was. He then would have known precisely how to reply to such a question: *you mean including your mother?*'

'What is most striking about these 'interviews' is not so much their arrogance and lack of intellectual and moral humility; it is their indifference to fundamental issues of justice and freedom and their imposition of narrow prurient terms of reference', comments Pilger, hitting the nail squarely on the head. 'Fixing these boundaries allows the interviewer to diminish the journalistic credibility of Assange and WikiLeaks, whose remarkable achievements stand in vivid contrast to their own.'



Pilger then goes on to attack what's left of the Nick Davies carrion and the unabashed attempt by Alan Rusbridger and David Leigh of the Guardian to regain their status as 'journalists'. James Catlin wrote to Pilger about it, citing points raised several times by this site.

'The complete absence of due process is the story and Davies ignores it. Why does due process matter? Because the massive powers of two arms of government are being brought to bear against the individual whose liberty and reputation are at stake.'

And the Guardian, as also pointed out by this site, have been making money hand over fist by their collaboration with WikiLeaks but have hardly given anything back. All the while WikiLeaks has to survive on donations which the repressive government in the US have tried to stifle.

Then too there's the spurious Amazon title organised by David Leigh of the Guardian who now claims there's a typo in the name Amazon published and that he's going to change the title once again. How nice.

Right now it says 'The End of Secrecy: the Rise and Fall of WikiLeaks'; but according to Leigh it's supposed to be 'The Rise (and Fall?) of WikiLeaks'; and now he's changed it yet again to 'WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy'. Yeah right. How old is David Leigh anyway? And was Alan Rusbridger away on a coffee break or in the head at the time?

Part of a Healthy Democracy

Pilger also lights on the facts that the behaviour of Bradley Manning is required by the principles of the Nürnberg trials and that the great US president Barack Hussein Obama went on record while still campaigning for his office to say 'government whistleblowers are part of a healthy democracy and must be protected from reprisal'. Considering people have now seen what many suspected - that all the 'yes we can' and 'CHANGE' was just the old 'okey-dokie' - it's now widely understood that the 'regime' of Obama is one of the most repressive ever.

Hmm, Barack?

Assange goes on to speak about the imminent threat to journalists in the US - something that makes the more wide awake thinkers gawk in disbelief. Bill Keller of the NY Times is worried; most publications in the US were strongly supportive of WikiLeaks until the embarrassing details of corruption in Washington became known; don't they realise that with a dictator like Obama at the helm, they're going to go down too? 'Every news organisation', a leading US constitutional lawyer told Pilger, 'should recognise Julian Assange is one of them and his prosecution will have a huge and chilling effect on journalism'.



But up to now? No. Instead they try an about-face, try to distance themselves from the whistleblowers His Excellency Barack Obama called a 'part of a healthy democracy'. And to this date, not a single thing has been done on either side of the Atlantic in the Axis of Abusive Power (UK/US) to investigate war crimes as deputy PM Clegg and the UN have both demanded. They're simply ignored and the peoples of those countries simply refuse to react.

A document from the MoD in the UK describes journalists who serve the people without fear or favour as 'subversive' and 'threats'. Fewer and fewer people of the world agree. And yet it's still a big step from there to actually doing something about the situation - to reacting as responsible people should.

The Tunisians reacted - their abusive government is no more. How about the peoples of the UK and the US?

See Also
Truth Out: John Pilger's Investigation Into the War on WikiLeaks and His Interview With Julian Assange

The Atlantic: Blacklisting WikiLeaks
Sofia Echo: Secrecy is the problem, not leakers
Daily Mail: Tunisia: 1st Revolution Caused by WikiLeaks

WikiLeaks: Support WikiLeaks
Rixstep: Assange/WikiLeaks RSS Feed
Radsoft: Assange/WikiLeaks RSS Feed

About | ACP | Buy | Industry Watch | Learning Curve | News | Products | Search | Substack
Copyright © Rixstep. All rights reserved.