This is About all of Us

By Shawn Ketcham 9/5/2019

London – This is a reminder that Julian Assange, a 47 year old Australian man is still being held at Belmarsh Prison. Assange is serving a year long sentence for evading bail and is still awaiting trial currently set for February 2020 regarding extradition to the U.S. He faces at least 18 criminal charges and a total of 175 years in prison from the US Justice Department, should he be extradited. These charges stem from leaked national defense footage of the Iraq War. Footage which clearly shows U.S. troops engaging in war crimes among other things and can be viewed below. Be advised the footage is graphic in nature.

I wish I could say this footage released from the publishing website Wikileaks on the Iraq War was an outlier, but it is not. There are several other pieces of leaked data from what is now widely regarded as a stain on U.S. history. The charges accuse Assange of putting the U.S. in danger of “serious harm” by illegally obtaining and disclosing the classified documents. Many have further attempted to dispute that Assange is not a journalist. This is of course to calm the masses and feign support of journalism.

Current Assistant Attorney General John Demers has said “Julian Assange is no journalist.”

Many others have insinuated that simply because Assange chose to obtain and release sensitive information that he is not an honest actor. What then does that say about the other media organizations involved? The guardian and other news organizations helped Wikileaks spread the leaked information. Several articles were written and the information was quickly substantiated. A dishonest actor would have fabricated the information or doctored footage but as an honest journalist, Julian simply distributed it.

The growing media organization TYT has also stated that the charges facing Assange are absolute nonsense. Make no mistake he is being charged for the most usual of journalistic practices and this is about all of us. The Justice Department is setting a terrifying precedent with these charges. Chelsea Manning wished to show the truth of the Iraq war to the American public and went to Wikileaks to do so. Chelease Manning interview. Wikileaks then collaborated with other publications to distribute the verified information. The simple truth is that the Pentagon and the U.S. Government are furious because Assange and Manning began what we are seeing now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMK4T0MY-_Q

Increasingly more American’s are coming to terms with the power of the military industrial complex and that angers those involved. The Arrest of Assange and ongoing attempt for extradition to the U.S. is a warning. A warning that has no place in any semblance of a Democracy. This is meant to discourage any publication of military or government secrets. Imagine if we had never heard the Watergate tapes. Imagine if we had never learned of the WMD lies that led us into the Iraq war to begin with. Imagine for a moment if you will of a world without truth tellers or whistle-blowers.

I fear that is where we are headed and where the Justice Department would like to take us. My message to all readers today is that this is about more than Assange; whether you like him as a person or not is irrelevant. This is about a conscious choice we must make between being loud or silent. I fear if we are silent now we will be cursed with a future of silence. Luckily many international journalists and activists continue to visit Assange. But I implore everyone to keep up on this issue and not let it fade away.

If this were a normal case and the powerful weren’t clearly acting out then we wouldn’t see Assange’s mother kicked off of twitter. We wouldn’t see Assange being charged with the Espionage Act even though he did not directly hack anything. We wouldn’t see Assange being tortured in Belmarsh right now as he is. I’ll leave you with fellow journalist John Pilger who spoke on Assange’s behalf September 3rd 2019. He echoes many of the sentiments I have felt necessary to express here albeit with much more elegance. Take care of yourselves and stay strong.