Nothing shows the dictatorial decline of American Freedom better than — the Trump Administration's terrorization of Julian Assange

12 September 2020

If US citizens were not so sheep-placid . . .

. . . they would be worried about the Julian Assange extradition trial's ultimate effect on their future Liberty. As well as upon their (once presumed) right to learn what is True.

The US is deep into the process of snuffing Lady Liberty's lamp

American Government and media are mercilessly hounding Julian Assange and simultaneously not reporting upon what they're doing.

Happily pushing the Trump Administration's freedoms-crushing agenda, our American Lamestream has not even bothered to inform the public about the details of Britain's — literally Stalinist — Assange show trial extradition to the US.

We the People's lassitude is shocking . . .

. . . provided that we credit Americans with a combination of foresight and common sense.

Admittedly, historically speaking, that's a probably dubious proposition.

Why Assange's fate matters — to anyone with a lick of sense

In May 2019, lawyer-journalist Glenn Greenwald dissected the Trump Administration's Assange-based destruction of the First Amendment:

The U.S. government on Thursday [23 May 2019] unveiled an 18-count indictment against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, charging him under the 1917 Espionage Act for his role in the 2010 publication of a trove of secret documents relating to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and diplomatic communications regarding dozens of nations.

The argument offered by both the Trump administration . . . is . . . that Assange isn’t a journalist at all and thus deserves no free press protections.

[T]his claim overlooks the indictment’s real danger and, worse, displays a wholesale ignorance of the First Amendment. Press freedoms belong to everyone, not to a select, privileged group of citizens called “journalists.”

If Assange can be declared guilty of espionage for working with sources to obtain and publish information deemed “classified” by the U.S. government, then there’s nothing to stop the criminalization of every other media outlet that routinely does the same . . . .

And here we are, 15 months later . . .

. . . and still everyone is asleep.

Including America's genuinely idiotic "press". Which is consistently so blazingly clueless, that it fails to recognize that its currently voluntary Party Line propagandizing will soon become mandatory, under American Government's Constitution-defying Assange standard.

Amnesty International gets the "meaning" proportions right

Julia Hall wrote that:

[I]t is not just Julian Assange that will be in the dock.

Beside him will sit the fundamental tenets of media freedom that underpin the rights to freedom of expression and the public’s right to access to information.

Silence this one man, and the US and its accomplices will gag others, spreading fear of persecution and prosecution over a global media community already under assault in the US and in many other countries worldwide.

If the UK extradites Assange, he would face prosecution in the USA on espionage charges that could send him to prison for decades . . . .

All for doing something news editors do the world over – publishing public interest information provided by sources.

The chilling effect on other publishers, investigative journalists and any person who would dare to facilitate the publication of classified information of government wrongdoing would be immediate and severe.

And the US would boldly go beyond its own borders with a long arm to reach non-citizens, like Assange, who is Australian.

[Imprisonment] has diminished him both physically and emotionally – often to the point of disorientation.

Breaking him by isolating Assange from family, friends and his legal team, seems part and parcel of the US’s strategy – and it seems to be working.

This is Stalinist and Maoist American behavior

There is no rational excuse for not recognizing it as such.

Yet the American public stands silent, eager to criticize other nations for draconian behavior, but not our own for even more egregious doings.

A less obvious point

Caitlin Johnstone goes to the heart of the preserving freedom issue:

[I]t is impossible to gain an accurate understanding of what’s going on in the world through partisan perceptual filters.

Partisan echo chambers exist solely to distort people’s understanding of events to the advantage of the powerful, whether you’re talking about ensuring the dominance of establishment political factions, the advancement of status quo-preserving wars, or the elimination of voices who punch inconvenient holes in power-serving propaganda narratives.

Whoever controls the narrative controls the world.

The source of our world’s problems is the fact that the powerful understand this, while ordinary people do not.

Things won’t change until a critical mass of people begin waking up to this fact.

The moral? — Johnstone's closing comment brings us full circle . . .

. . . to doing the personal mental and emotional work that I referenced yesterday.

Lazy and stupid folk do not stay free.

That probably means that Liberty is ultimately unsustainable.

PeteFree.com

Nothing shows the dictatorial decline of American Freedom better than — the Trump Administration's terrorization of Julian Assange