To Clear Up Any Misunderstanding: On Hot 97, Marriage, Abuse, & R. Kelly

From The Desk Of Jakob Musick, 

Secretary-General Of Nothing, 

Winter Park, Florida, USA

July 19 (Thermidor Begins)
1 Thermidor an 225 de la Révolution
Gregorian year 2017
Juche year 106
Year 28 of the Catastrophe

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On Hot 97...Marriage, Abuse, & R. Kelly

When the family of an alleged victim of R&B singer and acquitted sexual offender R. Kelly gave a rather oblique press conference, announcing that their daughter, who lives with the singer, had been "brainwashed" by him, the media went absolutely crazy. Perhaps for good reason. R. Kelly was sued for sexual relations with a 15 year-old in 1997; He allegedly entered an 'illegal marriage' with 15 year-old Aaliyah in 1994; & In 2002, his biggest scandal began when an unknown source sent a sex tape to a newspaper in Chicago. The video, which was posted on the internet and is now infamous, is extremely graphic, showing sexual acts and urination allegedly between the singer and a a girl who was not of legal age. R. Kelly said it was not him in the video. He was indicted on 21 counts of child pornography. When authorities searched one of his homes, they found child pornography, starring the girl who was in the video. Kelly's defense thus broke down. American Culture, pulsing at the bizarre rhythm that it does, was in that very year showering attention and money on Kelly. One of his biggest hits, "Ignition" (Remix) went to #2 in the USA, and topped the charts of New Zealand, Australia, Ireland, and the United Kingdom. "Ignition" sold more than one million copies as a CD single in the United Kingdom. The song was listed by Rolling Stone Magazine as the 494th 'best song of all time.' 

It is not as if the video, the discovery of child pornography, and the attendant charges were a non-event in the news media. Of course American cable news lives for stories like these. News programmes would even show (censored) clips of the sex video on television, leading to the snaking back of a black teenage girl becoming one of the indelible images of the era . The 'bad behaviour' seemed to work in some sort of symbiosis: as things got 'hotter', he got 'hotter'. Now widely known as a sex criminal, R. Kelly scored 5 US Top 40 hits post-Ignition, to 2005. His 2004 LP sold one million, five-hundred copies. His 2005 album even more(!) at 1.52 million. What was going on? A jury acquitted Kelly of the charges in 2008, wrapping up one of his most successful periods. 

Almost ten years later, new allegations have emerged. In the meantime, the consensus has grown. As one of Hot 97's callers plainly states, Americans generally know that R. Kelly is not just very sexual, but that his love objects tend to be young women, and what he engages in skirts the limits of legality. Despite the fact that the initial family at the press conference did not supply much evidence at all beside saying their daughter was "brainwashed," there was a former "cult member" also speaking to the media. Because of R. Kelly's past, these allegations are believable by many in the public (though it is not the 'court of the public' that matters legally.) When more comes out about this alleged "stockholm-syndrome sex-cult" (and it will, because the media will profit enormously from this story) we will be able to determine whether there is validity to this claim, whether these young women are the new 'Family' of Charles Manson. 

That being the background, Hip Hop's premiere station, New York's Hot 97 decided to cover the subject. Completely appropriate. They have played Kelly's musick and definitely contributed to his success, and have leverage when it comes to his career and shaping attitudes towards it. Instead of talking about Kelly and the specific allegations that the families were making, the crew of 3 (including Ebro, the main talker) were inspired by the allegations to invite callers to weigh in on a segment that became "My Friends/Family Made Me Join An Escort Service" on Youtube. The salacious title, which is obviously designed to be clickbait, has nothing to do really with R. Kelly, or with families of hookers forcing the career upon them, as it is clear to hear. When a title is misleading in journalism, when a headline is more than the sum of the story, you can usually count on something being amiss. This is usually harmless, just an invention of writers who are trying to perform the jobs their editors want them to. However, journalism can also be extremely damaging, and can ruin lives, as well as harm the cause of tolerance. This is an instance of the media not being responsible. Not that the creators understand what they are doing, I am not necessarily alleging that. They are clearly ignorant of the lifestyles of a wide swath of people that are not necessarily always open about their relationship with sex.  

Ebro begins the segment, "You know we are talking about R. Kelly alleged cult, and the 6 of-age women who live with him....Look man, I don't like R. Kelly. Man, I think he's a scumbag..." On-topic so far. But literally within 5 seconds, "I guess I'm just too close to people who have ran escort services, people who had polygamous relationships, people who live lifestyles who we would all be like 'nah, fam, nah. That's not normal." Who was talking about escort services? The host invited callers, "I wanna talk to people who are living lifestyles people would look at sideways, but they were happy with it and they got money." This would totally be a logical and valid segment if they had received calls from so-called "Sugar Babies" (young, hot women who make arrangements with older (almost exclusively) men to spend time with them for money), or even the Cannes "Yacht Girls." (Models and actresses whose careers have stopped supplying them with enough money to support a Hollywood lifestyle so that they basically do the same thing as 'sugar babies, but on Yachts.) However, the following conversation focused almost exclusively on prostitution, with a detour into a quite large polyamorous grouping. I also have to say a historical parallel, perhaps with Charles Manson's girls would have been appropriate, or talking about the charms that a rich, older man can have on a young girl. These are valid, and with the internet making 'seeking arrangements' more convenient, emergent issues. However, Ebro and his Hot 97 crew used the segment to attack sex workers and further stigmatize non-Victorian conceptions of the family and relationships. 

To start with, Ebro, if you really knew people who ran escort services (well) you probably wouldn't know it (why would they blab to someone who literally talks publicly for a living?) Also polygamy is illegal, and denotes actual multiple religious marriage ceremonies, usually restricted to small sects in the west (USA.) 'Cheating,' in the context of a 'conventional' (or Victorian) relationship or marriage is not polygamy. Nor is that polyamory. Also dating multiple woman is not polygamy or polyamory. These two are not 'common' practices, so they are probably not what you think you are describing. While you have valid concerns about R Kelly, and I share them, I really think, with all due respect, you and your co-horts have literally no idea what you are talking about here. And I am glad that they chose the people they talked to as living 'lifestyles people would look sideways at,' because all three of them were totally unapologetic about it! 

First of all, at this point, we literally known next-to-nothing about this alleged 'cult.' If it is true, that these women are 'brainwashed' by Kelly, suffering from loving their 'captor,' or (even worse) being physically restrained and abused by him, than comparing them to prostitutes is little more than a complete insult. I don't say that to mean that being a prostitute is an insult (though in society it is), but that prostitution proper usually involves a choice (even if it is choice made of necessity.) No woman (in their right mind anyway) walks into a romantic situation, knowing that she will be controlled, abused, manipulated, and isolated from everything she has known. Usually the refrain one will hear (with remarkable similarity) is "he wasn't like this at the beginning." It is completely inappropriate to purport that abuse victims are "living lifestyles people would look at sideways, but they were happy with it and they got money." Ebro is redolantly asinine here. 

If there is 'brainwashing'/abuse/coercion, and multiple girls live with R. Kelly willingly, all with romantic and sexual ties to him, than the situation is different. They may see money as a reward for their companionship with R. Kelly. Or they may desire fame. Who knows? However, even if this is true, this is not prostitution formal. How is this different from one woman marrying a man because he has money? The only difference is the number(?) But a Victorian marriage is not considered 'unconventional' or something that one would look askance at in most people's imaginary. But is it not but just a few stepping stones from prostitution itself? Of course, the Victorian marriage has been stretched to almost untenable circumstances due to Women's Liberation and Feminism (there is no longer a financial/social/religious injunction to marry: a woman can choose whether she wants to or not, for whatever reason.) But the rather-new veil of the love-marriage cannot but hide what pre-feminist marriage was often a time: Socially-sanctioned transfers of sexual and reproductive access for resources. Was this not the motivator in most marriages pre 20th century in the United States? Is this still not the motivator in the south Asian sub-continent and the Islamic world today? The modern (serially) monogamous lifestyle with love-marriage is but an atavistic evolution of what marriage was really intended for-- the exchange of status, money, property, and sexual access. And so the main 'reason' for such an institution has gone for almost everybody in the Western World with sexual liberation, the working woman, birth control, and the lessening of multi-generational families (so a spouse would not longer be an asset in taking care of aging parents, or to be counted on to do that, as in some Asian cultures.) And so marriages, such an old, unwieldy anchor of an arrangement that they are, are hardly an effective vehicle for the post-modern era. And so we see a 'divorce epidemic'. But I digress. 

To get back to what is my main point here: The varieties of romantic, sexual, and other relationships is expanding as the conventional marriage begins to fail to satisfy the needs of its participants. Many people, like Ebro, are clearly clueless about the difference between sex trafficking, sex work/prostitution, polyamory, polygamy, etc etc... If the women are his 'slaves' and are being subject to a more powerful abuser day in and day out (like millions of women before them), then it is shameful to be discussing prostitution (a career one chooses) and "getting money from it." He seems to not like R. Kelly, so I would err that he thinks they are being held against their will. Why would you even introduce the conversation of possible abuse by regarding it as a potential "lifestyle"?

& if they happen to be involved in his life, then.....it is what it is. We have to respect the fact that adult women can make decisions, and can choose to live with another adult...no matter what their parent says about it. 

The three callers that were allowed onto the programme -- 1) a friend of a woman who was sex trafficked/coerced into prostitution, 2) a man involved in a polyamorous relationship, and 3) a 24 year-old woman who "has no regrets" about being a prostitute for 7 years --as adherents to "lifestyles people would look at sideways" , condemned by the hosts for their abnormality, for "sacrificing their health and wellbeing" are going to be, more and more, the new normal (hopefully excepting the sex trafficking part, but I am sure more people will know of people who become involved in that type of activity as it becomes less stigmatized for the men and women, boys and girls who were forced into the business to speak to their experience.) 

"Why are you sacrificing your Health and Wellbeing for your 'lifestyle'?"

Would you ask that question of a coal-miner? Would you ask that question of a service-sector worker, who lives on minimum wage, on her feet all day in a retail store? Would you ask someone who works night-shift? Would you ask that of someone who drives a car for a living? Would you ask someone who is very old and still works that question? What about people who ride horses? What about people who have/shoot guns? What about those men who work on tankers gathering oil in the middle of the ocean? No, you wouldn't, because your concepts of normality are completely shaped by the totems and taboos of an age that is slowly dying. 

Would you ask a soldier why they are "living their lifestyle, sacrificing their health and wellbeing" for their job? No, of course not, because that is socially acceptable and prestigious, even hailed. The reason why you look at the prostitute, or the polyamorous couple/thruple/whatever differently, and see that as "a health risk", the only reason you even bring that up, is because you find it personally repugnant. And that is not knowledge. That is prejudice. When you are old and gray and witness the changes that are just beginning to take place now, you will be quite surprised. But then, maybe you will be less ignorant.

Again, I want to state that if the 6 women in question are the victims of abuse, then I sincerely hope that their captor is finally stopped by the authorities. We know of R. Kelly's past. He married a 15 year-old. He had sex with other young girls. There are anecdotal stories of people who have known R. Kelly and said that he would specifically target young girls at their Proms seemingly to give them "the night of their life" with a glamorous celebrity. I don't know what the truth of the matter is, but I do know that this conversation was idiotic and depending on what the truth is-- is either completely blind to the conditions of women in abusive relationships, or , seeing an (albeit unconventional) but consensual relationship as some sort of 'health risk'  and akin to having sex for money because he is dating more than 1 of them at a time (with their knowledge.) 

To use hip-hop terminology, the discussions generated by this so far have been 'whack,' absolutely whack. 

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You can view the press conference here -https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6RELLuCA2c

You can view the Hot 97 segment referred to here-- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zv5xgjnIHKs

The Decline Of The Daesh Caliphate

From The Desk Of Jakob Musıck: Secretary-General of Nothing
Orlando, Florida, United States of America
July 5 (Venezuelan Independence Day)
17 Messidor an 225 de la Révolution
2017/106

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The Decline Of The Daesh Caliphate

We are entering a merciful period in world history, as one of Post-Modernity’s biggest human tragedies nears its inevitable end. Daesh (AKA Islamic State, ISIL, ISIS, IS etc etc…) lost Raqqa, the city it was using as a fortress-capital for 4 years. Mayadin, legally part of Syria, is now functioning as the de facto capital of this crumbling empire. The most heartening news for humanity has been the presumed death of the Caliph Abū Bakr al-Baghdadi, whom Russian airstrikes seem to have done-in. The Islamic Republic of Iran, Russian Federation, & Iraq have all confirmed his demise. However, within the panicking Islamic State remnant, there remain ‘isolated’ elements within which the remaining leadership has found it possible to keep ignorant of their great loss (and presumably the fact that their ‘caliphate’ is about to become the disgusting footnote in history it was meant to be.) Sputnik News Agency of the Russian Federation reported that Daesh has executed one of their own clerics, Abu Qutaiba, because he had alluded to the Caliphs demise in a sermon. The reports indicate that Islamic State burned Qutaiba alive. A punishment of 50 lashes for every person who questions the continued existence of the Caliph is now the law of the still-occupied lands. The reports of Sputnik seemed to indicate the remaining leaders are struggling to contain spreading reports of Baghdadi’s demise. Islamic State’s governor of Daesh-occupied Syria (Abdulrahman Mustafa al-Qaduli) was already killed last year, though their Iraq minister (Abu Fatima al-Jaheishi) is still alive from what we know.

Since their appearance and swift rise as a phenomenon in 2013-2014, Islamic State has never had this much swift momentum. The difference is that this momentum is in the *opposite* direction than four years ago. An embattled, war-torn Syrian Arab Republic continues to fight for self-determination and territorial integrity under President Assad and the SAA, with support from the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Russian Federation, and paramilitaries like Hizbullah. The Kurds and the various Leftist and internationalist factions that fight with them are putting pressure on Islamic State’s north, though direct confrontation with Damascus seems to be what will follow after Daesh and other religious fanatics are disposed of. The only possible ways in which this tide against Islamic State would be reversed would be 1) They began to do remarkably well militarily, receive tons of fresh new recruits, or a combination (I rate this as unlikely, but hey I’m not a ‘war expert’ so there.) 2) Israel continues to ramp up their involvement in the war (they have been bombing Syria up to 2 times a week in June; which works out rather conveniently for Islamic State, providing distractions for the Damascus-allied forces, amid their alleged support for Daesh as long as their spheres of influence did not overlap [Note Islamic State has never attacked Israel or Israeli forces, even when they incurred into Syrian territory which Islamic State ostensibly claimed for itself.]) or 3) In a last ditch efforts to unite the opposition, the other assorted anti-government forces try to incorporate whatever is left of the destructive Wahhabi machine into their operations, now as a junior partner. Any of these options would be lethal, as displayed by previous actions of this unconscionable, anti-human organization of religious excess.

Latest reports from today (June 5 2017) indicate that Islamic State controls ‘less than 1KM’ of Mosul. Let us hope that it falls to Iraqi forces, and that this momentum continues for all forces that are full-heartedly opposed to the Caliphate. If this is accomplished, we must still wonder whether the Arab League Secretary-General’s fear of ‘permanent occupation zones/spheres of influence’ in Syria will come to pass after the Al-Baghdadi clique is wiped away. Turkey, the Damascus government, Israel, The Kurdish coalition, the Free Syrian Army, Russia, Iran, The United States...they all currently occupy or have forces stationed in the various regions of this once stable and rich country.

If this is the beginning of the end of the Civil War (and for the Syrian people’s sake let us hope it is), then what next?

Long live the long-suffering Syrian People - Arab and all minorities-- who are returning to their homes now under the national reconciliation effort, and those still seeking refuge elsewhere!

Long live the Leftist forces of the Kurdish Coalition -- The Kurdish Worker’s Party, The Marxist-Leninist Communist Party, The Communist Party Of Turkey (Marxist-Leninist), The Marxist-Leninist Propaganda Union, The Communist Reconstruction of the Marxist-Leninist Party, & The Communist Labour Party Of Turkey! May these forces come to an agreement with Damascus on how they will proceed, living together as one.

Long live the regional national-liberation movements of the region, such as Hizbullah!

Long live the valiant, brave beyond belief, and amazingly heroic International brigades, whose fight this was not, but they made it theirs for the sake of the sovereignty of a state not theirs. The international Left praises your courage in the face of Islamic Fundamentalism and forces of Imperialism!

Down with Islamic State!

Wahhabism will never thrive when the weapons of knowledge are furnished and unleashed upon the earth!

Caliph, if you are not dead now, you will be soon. And will you ‘meet your creator??’ I hope you are prepared. Truly. If there exists a ‘judgement,’ then you are going to need all the luck in the world for what you have been party to.

The Two Freedoms: Julian Assange III

From The Desk Of Jakob Musıck: Secretary-General of Nothing

Orlando, Florida, United States of America
June 2 2017 (Fenian Victory In Quebec)
14 Prairial an 225 de la Révolution
Year Juche 106

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The Two Freedoms II

Julian Assange III

We continue in our tale, reaching the point where, as the saying goes, ‘the shit hit the fan.’ As the Western governments plotted to ‘take him down’ Julian Assange and Wikileaks were still hard at work, releasing the batch of documents known as “Guantanamo Bay Files Leak,” which was a group of 779 files revealing that the United States, in their operations in pacifying the Middle East, were detaining Middle Eastern men without charge and on an indefinite basis. The documents relate 150 individuals affected by this policy from the US-ally Pakistan, and the client state Afghanistan. The victims included peasants, urban professionals, and also taxi drivers-- quite indiscriminate. Even though the documents list 150 people, the actual number is much higher, and Afghans and Pakistanis all know a family member or neighbour who had been detained by the ‘occupier,’ or even worse (killed by drone aircraft.) Out of the 150 listed in the documents, the youngest detainee was 14, and the oldest was 89 year-old Mohammad Sadiq. In the midst of this, with Wikileaks being one of the biggest news stories of 2010-2011, Julian Assange visited US-ally Sweden.  While in Sweden, the authorities questioned him with regards to what he was told was sexual assault allegations from 2 women. They gathered information, and then told him he was fine “to leave the country.” Therefore, he did just that. Late in 2010, the case was re-opened by a special prosecutor, and she stated that she wanted the opportunity to question Assange with regard to charges of “unlawful coercion” and “lesser rape.” Assange, who was in the another US ally, the United Kingdom, said he would participate in the investigation and would accept questions in the United Kingdom. The Special prosecutor in Sweden said she would not accept video link or any sort of telephone and must see Assange in person. That is where associates and on-lookers around the world started to get even more suspicious (from the beginning, the charges were seen as the plot by the United States-led clique to nab Assange legally.) It took 6 years of legal-stalling until the Swedish Special Prosecutor said that she would accept a testimony from where he was seeking refuge at the time, in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, UK. The statute of limitations on the cases expired a year before questioning by the Special Prosecutor even began, making this case extraordinary and quite bizarre. For these reasons, even more have now seen this legal proceedings as akin to ‘show trials.’ Sweden, just last month finally stopped what was no-doubt a failure for their handlers, and said that, while Assange could be questioned if he visited the nordic nation before the year of 2020, they were ending active investigations of him, and they would no longer seek his arrest.

The 12 Million UK Pounds At Work

So how did Julian Assange evade the Western governments? United States, UK, and Sweden all extradite individuals to and fro among each other, and the UK, from 2012, took an active (some would say suspiciously-high) level of interest in nabbing him. With this amount of interest and worry that he might be sent to the United States to face his ultimate fate after being simply quickly found not guilty in Sweden, Assange fled to a non-US ally, Bolivarian Ecuador. He sought asylum in the embassy of that nation in London, UK, and the Quito government announced it had accepted Assange’s request in June 2012. The big question, among supporters and detractors, at this time and since were never really focused much on the ‘rape charges,’ but instead were focused on what would happen to Assange when Sweden was done with him. It was likely Sweden would heed to inevitable American requests to send Assange to Guantanamo or Washington at the behest of the Obama Administration, or even secretly to one of various ‘rendition sites.’ Many people thought (and still do) that the United States wishes to see Assange dead, whether through a judicial or extra-legal proceeding. On 16 August, 2012, Ecuador officially granted asylum to Julian Assange, based on the “threat” to his life that the United States posed. President Correa of Ecuador proclaimed that Assange could stay indefinitely, but whom would think that this affair would still be dragging on? That he would still be confined 5 whole years later? Before Ecuador had granted asylum, Britain had let embassy staff know that they would not hesitate to enter the embassy and detain Assange, breaching Bourgeois norms of diplomacy which Britain (usually) almost always followed. This was clearly an extraordinary case for many reasons. If only the United Kingdom and Sweden chased every ‘rapist’ as doggedly as this! Surely the UK and Sweden are heavens for the victim if they are willing to employ police full-time to wait out the accused victimizer and station police and surveillers on buildings, on every possible escape route, on every door, waiting for the alleged rapist to come out.

I say the above, because it is quite obvious that there is no rapist that has been pursued as doggedly as Julian Assange has. And, considering who was behind the charges, the political situation, and watching the collapse of the legal proceedings since 2010, it is reasonable to conclude that *this* was what President Obama and the allied leaders had worked out as the way to ‘deal’ with Assange in 2010, while still technically doing everything legally. This arrangement had failed, as of 2016. Assange is still safe, though confined in the embassy, and with the dropping of active pursuing by the Swedish Special Prosecutor, I think it could be just a matter of weeks before the United Kingdom gives up as well. That is why this series is “the Two Freedoms.” Chelsea Manning has achieved her freedom early, and I believe that Assange will follow. The commanding heights of American leadership right now are in a terribly confused state. The Reality Star may very well find himself ‘fired.’ The reaches of Empire, in foreign policy, special forces, and the normal activities of subversion, domination, and manipulation are all thrown into a tizzy. This weakening, the new administration, and the lack of cuing by Washington may have led to Sweden’s giving up the ghost in this instance. This next question is whether the United Kingdom will. They have been the most overtly dogged, much more so than Sweden was, in militantly attempting to make sure that Assange were to be arrested if he even made one step outside of Ecuador’s diplomatic headquarters. For a remarkable 40 months, Metropolitan police of London were ready, at the hare-trigger, to arrest assange for extradition and “for breach of bail,” which indicates that the West is really scraping the bottom of the barrel here. Again, what other bail delinquent would be targeted so vehemently and systematically? It is not about the alleged ‘crime.’ The Liberal Democracies are just limited by their own norms -- the way in which people are deprived of their autonomy is through the rule of law- and so the rule of law was deployed, but it failed. If law is not authoritarian, prosecutory efforts could, of course, fail. The United Kingdom spent 12.6 million UKP during these 40 months on the policing and monitoring of Julian Assange.

During these same 40 months, the Conservative government itself addressed what was the country’s growing debts by cutting back public services to UK citizens. The United Kingdom was still participating in the United States’ pacification attempts in Afghanistan, which surely were not cheap. During this time the Value-Added tax had to be raised to raise funds. The UK participated in the couping of Libya which led to the horrific, televised execution and torture of the leader of a sovereign nation. Massive riots occurred in 2011. In 2012, the city of London hosted the Olympic Games (Again, *not* cheap.) The UK narrowly avoided Scotland seceding, the ‘democracy’ of the United Kingdom led to a one-candidate race for Prime Minister (What ‘Freedom’!), and the Civil Service of the Kingdom revealed that their former leader Cameron had told them *not* to prepare for their eventual exit from the European Union. While the United Kingdom ranks high on many life-quality metrics and is generally a wonderful place to live, it is not without its problems. That is what makes the constant 40-month dogged surveillance of Julian Assange all the more outrageous for British people. It shows that, despite years and years of attempted independent development, Britain’s government still serves Washington as its lackey!

The up-and-down ascent-descent of United Kingdom Independence Party was but one of many manifestation of this attempt at trying to reclaim full sovereignty, instead of being the United States’ semi-European servant.

The whole affair shows much about the essential character of the British government and elite, the character of Julian Assange, his bravery, and the ingenuousness of the Wikileaks structure and organization. It is remarkable that it, like the Boers in the early 1900’s, went up against the largest power in the world, and were able to retain their autonomy and independence and continue on.

The example of Wikileaks and Julian Assange are inspiration to all of us, no matter whether we think the disclosures harmed ‘people’ or ‘their nation.’ When somebody, anybody, takes actions (without hiding) that they know will bring such a tough response, that is commendable. Even the stooges of Empire have been wowed by his ‘cajones’ as they say in the United States.

Long Live!

& May We All Look Forward To The Fine Day, Coming Soon, Where Julian Assange Will Be Able To Walk Out A Free Man!

&

That Britain Will Proclaim Its Independence and Sovereignty Once Again, Instead of Having To Exist In Peonage To Big Brother

Long Live Bolivarian Ecuador, The Harbour Of Freedom & Beacon Of Light For The World!

Truth Heeds No Borders (The Two Freedoms II: Julian Assange II)

From The Desk Of Jakob Musıck: Secretary-General of Nothing

Orlando, Florida, United States of America
June 1 2017 (Execution of Mary Dyer)
13 Prairial an 225 de la Révolution
Year Juche 106

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The Two Freedoms II: Julian Assange II

Let us continue where we left off. Julian Assange and his organization Wikileaks began to gain the attention of the Empire through generally shaking up the world rulers, by releasing information they wished to shield from the world. Kenya, People’s Republic of China, and the United Kingdom were targeted, among others, and the United States started to be the target of more and more of the ‘leaked’ information around 2010. In 2010, the infamous ‘collateral damage’ video, provided from the stash of Chelsea Manning, was released onto the web. It detailed the vicious American attack on Reuters journalists and the children they had attempted to aid after the bullets began to fly. This came at the same time as an extremely slow dawning, in ‘progressive’ circles first, that the United States was engaged in a new type of war, as vicious as it was impersonal -- assassination of personages by drone.  The ‘collateral damage’ video was part of what led to Chelsea Manning’s detention, and the Obama administration approached several allies on how to nab Julian Assange, the head of Wikileaks. By this point, he and his organization were becoming hindrances in the foreign policy programme of the Empire, as it was exposing the side that embedded television journalism did not; it was not co-opted by the military, and so it showed unvarnished glimpses of what happens under American military occupation. The slow trickle opened into a ravine.

2010 (cont.): At this point, as Western leaders worked behind the scenes to attempt to stem the tide of information on their activities in the Third World, Wikileaks kept on releasing thousands of documents regarding American military operation in Afghanistan, including the names of American collaborators. Former leaders of the country, the Islamist Taleban cited Wikileaks as a source as to which they would use to extract justice on the informants. This drew criticism from groups like Amnesty International, which has previously condemned the United States based on Wikileaks information. As written in the last post, Wikileaks had asked the United States government to help it redact names, and it had declined. Wikileaks also approached NGOs to similar reaction. In response to this criticism, which included that of prominent western governments now branding Wikileaks a ‘threat’ to their associates and as a ‘Islamist-collaborator,’ Wikileaks said it had actually withheld about 15,000 documents for the very reason of protecting the identity of certain individuals. Again, Wikileaks reached out to the White House, asking for a list of whom it had endangered. It received no response. This is perhaps as the White House could have reasonably believed it was about to, along with its Western European allies, contrive a basis for the arrest of Julian Assange, and as such wouldn’t have to deal with it for much longer. They were very wrong, as Wikileaks continues to discharge its duties up until 2017. In October 2010, Wikileaks provided several outlets with access to 400,000 documents related to the Iraq War. When Al-Jazeera, Qatar’s external news service, released their coverage of the documents 30 minutes before Wikileaks had asked of them, Wikileaks tweeted that the embargo was lifted, and a torrent of publications revealed what they had been provided. BBC News quoted American intelligence apparatus as saying that these documents were “the largest leak of classified information in history.” Again, a main theme of the documents was that the United States continued to remain involved in torture, this time not acting to stop client state Iraq from torturing its citizens. In September, Wikileaks also began to release the telegrams exchanged between the various American embassies and Washington. A shadow culture was revealed, shining a light upon the underbelly of the American Imperial infrastructure, and how their officials viewed their outposts. The United States government sent ‘cease and desist’ orders to UK newspapers, but they had no obligation to heed this order. Assange reached out again to the United States, asking for it to provide who could be harmed by the release of the cables, before it released this batch of leaked documents. The State Department announced the United States government would not “engage” with Wikileaks at all. The Wikileaks website was then the subject of a massive ‘Denial of Service attack’ before the diplomatic cables, as they are called, were released. This was possibly the first major volley against Wikileaks by the Western governments, if they were behind this. Certainly, they were the ones with the most face to lose if more information came out. Wikileaks vowed that major publication would release their upcoming cables, and the Guardian revealed that President-In-Waiting Hilary Clinton had ordered diplomats at the United Nations to obtain the credit card numbers of security council officials of both allies and enemy. It also became public that the scheming arab monarchies had persistently tried to get the United States to ‘pre-emptively’ attack the Islamic Republic of Iran. This was suspected, but not known for sure until the leaks of the diplomatic cables. The American diplomats also, it was revealed, looked at their host leaders in rather unflattering, almost condescending lights, as befit an Empire looking down on its fiefdoms. Hilary Clinton, at the time Secretary of State (Essentially the FM equivalent in other countries), said that the disclosure of her order for American diplomats to collect credit card numbers of foreigners working at the United Nations “is an attack on the international community…”

In the next installment, we will continue to follow this Freedom Fighter as the Western governments unleashed their plan to de-fang Assange, and how he escaped their grasp, to this day.

Long Live Freedom Of Information!

Long Live Wikileaks!

Long Live the Creative Commons & The Un-ending Freedom of The World Wide Web!

Long Live Julian Assange!

May Freedom Ring All Around the World!

Truth heeds no border.

The Two Freedoms II: Julian Assange I

From The Desk Of Jakob Musıck: Secretary-General of Nothing
May 30 2017 (England Peasant Revolt of 1381 Begins)
11 Prairial an 225 de la Révolution
Year Juche 106

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The Two Freedoms: Julian Assange

Winner of the Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism and founder of the information agency Wikileaks Julian Assange has spent 1,807 days confined to one building. That is 4 years, 11 months, and 2 days. He spends his life in the embassy of Bolivarian Ecuador day-in and day-out. Police of the United Kingdom are posted everywhere outside the embassy-- facing every door, every window, every possible escape route. Osama Bin Laden lived in less confined circumstances his entire life!

The crime this man must have committed surely is great. For what other reason would the United Kingdom, a country with several problems, nonetheless actual terrorism, keep such a close eye on whether Assange tried to leave? His crime is ‘resisting the summons of the British Police.’ This was originally in connection with a request of the Swedish government, which was pursuing a rape charge on Assange. What great feminists these countries are! Defending women at all costs, eh? I’m sure every rape case is carried out so doggedly. What a paradise for women the UK and Sweden must be!

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Assange was an accomplished hacker when he registered the domain “leaks.org” in the 1990’s. He began activist work on the internet, which was then gaining traction as a source for alternative information, news, and distribution that could go around governments and their controls. He was said to have blasted an NSA “voice-data harvesting” patent of August 1999, and said "This patent should worry people. Everyone's overseas phone calls are or may soon be tapped, transcribed and archived in the bowels of an unaccountable foreign spy agency." (Assange being Australian, although NSA is alien to all non-robot life, I would offer.)

How many people then could have seen where this was going? What a remarkable, visionary mind one must have to be able to pontificate on the future, and do so correctly? As we know, writers blather about ‘The Future’ all the time. We know of the absolutely ludicrous predictions of futurism in the 1800’s, the 1950’s, and Soviet leaders’ prediction of “Communism by the 1980’s.” For most people, trying to predict the future, is a futile game. We can only judge based on what the past provides us as evidence, our guiding ideology, and the laws of history. It a wise man who does not often make statements he cannot back up. But there are exceptions, of course, and that is why it is important to remark at how extraordinary Assange’s prediction of where the National Security Agency would go in utilizing their new patent. For just 2 years after his prediction, we began to learn the American intelligence agency was doing just as he said! What prescience

Assange had called the internet ‘the greatest tool for our emancipation’, but now qualified it by saying it could be the highest asset for totalitarian control. I guess it remains to be seen which vision will prevail as time goes. In the grand scheme of things, we live in ‘the internet age,’ but we are only the fore-bearers.

Wikileaks was established in 2006 by Assange, and he remains editor-in-chief, authorizing a wide variety of information releases submitted by an army of unknown and mostly anonymous sources: people of courage and principle, many working within organizations that violate basic human rights. Often times information would end up in Wikileaks’ pile that would inform American citizens, through their broad platform, what cost the American Empire was exacting from Arabs and Pashtun peoples half-way around the world.

By 2015, Wikileaks had published 10 million secret or semi-secret documents held by governments that the organization determined were in the public interest to know. Here are some things we know because of this blessed organization, dating back more than 10 years. It is important to actually look at the information revealed by Wikileaks, because, at least in the American media, more attention is placed on the organization, the government’s response to it, and the person of Assange rather than any incriminating information:

2006: first leak posted on Somalia

2007: Corruption of Kenyan political elite exposed;

“Standard Operating Procedures For Camp Delta” -- the US military’s guide to their activities in the prison camp in Cuba. Statements that the United States had made were found to be contradicted by their own SOP-- that they used dogs to terrorize prisoners, and also that the Red Cross was told some prisoners were “off-limits” to them

2008: Videos of protesters in the Tibet region in the People’s Republic Of China were made available on the site, going around censors of that country. The world could see that, indeed, civil protests were going on, and that in the all-important year of the Olympic Games, the PRC was initiating a crack-down they were trying to hide. Also, the various expensive theological materials of the Scientology Religion were leaked, giving people access to what was several hundreds of thousands of US dollars worth of information.

2009: More on corrupt Kenya. Wikileaks publishes the material of a Kenyan human rights group criticizing the Kenyan police’s extra-judicial killings of its citizens. A few months later, Kenya responded. 2 prominent organizers from the Kenyan National Commission On Human Rights were assassinated. Also in 2009, Wikileaks releases private communications of climate scientists, with the end result being that climate organizations decide on the need to act more openly and reveal more of their internal discussion to the public, for the sake of public faith in their profession. Previous to this, the scientists had been seen as ‘secretive’ and climate ‘denialists’ made much hay of their private communications. In the same year, Assange’s native country, Australia, proposed a list of websites it intended to ‘ban’ access to. Wikileaks published this policy and list. Because of the same law, Reporters Sans Frontiers re-classified Australia as ‘under surveillance.’ The government of Australia claimed that its intent was to target pornography of children, violence, and activities that broke the laws of the nation. After Wikileaks brought out the information, the Rightist-Liberal government withdrew its support for the ‘black-list.’ But the government did not need to take this action necessarily; In 2011 two internet providers voluntarily implemented the blacklist. In the next year, Labour withdrew support for its internet filtering scheme. The ISPs that voluntarily implemented the list, however, covered 90% of Australians using the internet. It was not the government that announced the filters had become mandatory, but ISPs that made it public, despite the major political parties dis-avowing themselves from it due to backlash. In 2015, an internet blacklist protecting private ‘intellectual-property’ holdings was passed in the country. I want to stay brief but draw attention to this interesting note that, even before Wikileaks drew attention from the Empire, it was already quite effective at not only disseminating information, but also changing behaviour (whatever the consequences of that may be.) In this case, the Australian intelligence establishment passed it anyway, revealing that policies in that country were not necessarily controlled by the bourgeois political parties.  Also of note is the origination of a policy with ‘public safety’ and specifically to ‘save the children’ ending up protecting corporation’s profits is a solid, recurring pattern in the Liberal Democracies with laws of this ilk.  Denmark and Thailand’s ‘ban-lists’ were also posted. The Bilderberg group, the NGO that feeds the fantasies of millions of ‘lizard-watchers’, also were the subject of a Wikileaks penetration in 2009, with meeting notes spanning decades released. Corruption in Peru revealed by Wikileaks also was distributed by commercial media in that country. In the Islamic Republic of Iran, the nuclear ministry in that country was shaken by the removal of an official and the mysterious reduction in nuclear materials the country held. Wikileaks was able to establish that there had been a major nuclear accident at Natanz, affecting an unknown amount of people. It was also possibly tied to the infamous western-governments’ Stuxnet virus. Wikileaks was used against Switzerland-based Trafigura corporation, which was dumping their chemicals off of the Ivory Coast ‘affecting 108,000’ Ivoiriens. When an internal review, detailing all of the horrible side-effects of being exposed to such materials of their dumping was to be published by the Guardian, the corporation ran to the United Kingdom government, which gave them something called a ‘super-injunction,’ after threatening the Guardian, Norway’s external news service, and academic journals. No media outlets were even allowed to quote the questions of Parliamentarians to Trafigura. Because of the existence of Wikileaks, which is extra-legal, unlike the establishment media, the world was given access to Trafigura’s own knowledge of how much damage they were doing to Africans. In regard to the world financial depression in the late 2000’s, Wikileaks published information on the banking sector of Iceland, which spectacularly collapsed both financially and politically following the crisis. The bank threatened Wikileaks, but the uproar over improprieties causing the instability in the Icelandic economy fueled the push-back against the banker-regime there.

2010: It was in this year that Wikileaks became infamous because it crossed the Empire’s cross-hairs  in a major way. First, Wikileaks publishes the efforts of the prominent Barclays Bank to avoid paying tax to the United Kingdom government. The publication the Guardian, which served as the mirror for many Wikileaks publications, revealed that because of budget cuts and the allocation of funds, government officials were having to rely on services like Wikileaks to be able to do their investigation, revealing the duality of the nature of Wikileaked information -- it is, by definition for everyone. Conceivably, governments could benefit from the free flow of information just as private individuals could. However, Wikileaks targets those of power and money, therefore, governments end up being the target often-times. The United States, after the leaks of how much it was spending on weapons and human rights violations in its prison camp, was developing protocol on how to deal with Wikileaks. Wikileaks released that very document, and then went further, releasing one of the most consequential videos of all time (mentioned in the last post): the 2007 Baghdad airstrike video, obtained from Chelsea Manning. It shows American forces attempting to assassinate Reuters journalists, wounding children, and then not stopping the fire once the remaining alive tried to carry the children to safety. This video drew international outcry, led to the identification of Chelsea Manning as a leaker and her detainment, and inside the United States provoked the commercial media to debate leakers and the Wikileaks organization (if not what it had leaked.) Chelsea Manning was arrested, in court saying that there lies a “scandal” in every US embassy and declaring that the Wikileaks files detail how “the first world exploits the third world, in detail…” Next came the group of leaks called “The Afghan War Diary.” This leak came with provisions in case that Assange was assassinated or Wikileaks dismantled. According to Assange, his organization reached out to the Pentagon and NGOs to help redact personal information from the leaks to no avail. Governments, banks, and other organizations that are targeted by Wikileaks often protest that Wikileaks puts people in danger by revealing their personal information. At this point, according to the website Daily Beast, the Obama government in the United States approached allies UK, Germany, and Australia to develop criminal charges against Assange personally. This will be the end of this post, but in the next edition, we will see how these efforts bore fruit in Assange’s surrender to UK police, detainment, his exile to the Ecuadorian embassy in London, and multi-government efforts to detain and possibly assassinate him, and most importantly, how they have thusfar failed spectacularly.

Long Live Wikileaks!

Long Live Freedom Of Information And The People’s Right To Know!

Long Live Julian Assange & His Associates!

Red Salute!