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.