JULIAN ASSANGE AND THE END OF AMERICAN DEMOCRACY

The revival of the Espionage Act in the persecution of Assange is destroying the very foundation of democracy

The US government has hounded Julian Assange since WikiLeaks first revealed the extent of US war crimes in 2010. In the process of persecuting Assange, the federal government has used every tool at its disposal and even pushed beyond the boundaries that supposedly restrict state power in defense of civil liberties. One of the most insidious tactics is the use of the Espionage Act, which had not been used for against whistleblowers and journalists for almost a century before Assange’s case. In the first part of a two-part conversation, lawyer and human rights defender Stella Assange, spouse of Julian Assange, joins Chris Hedges for a look at the vast and vicious campaign by the US to silence Julian Assange, and what it all portends for our democracy.

…..one of the things that’s disturbed me from the start is how all of the international bodies and the legal entities that have gone after Julian, have broken their own rules and it’s so blatant. That’s what I find kind of incomprehensible because it’s public. It’s not a secret. I mean, there is many secret stuff they’ve done, too, of course. But, you know, revoking political asylum, allowing British police to go in on sovereign territory, charging him under the Espionage Act when he’s not an American citizen, recording his meeting with his attorneys. I mean, any one of these things in a normal legal procedure, would have seen the case dismissed and yet they keep doing it and doing it.

…………. if they eviscerate the rule of law, it’s not just going to be for Julian. They set those kinds of precedents and if they’re allowed to get away with it with anyone, it’s dangerous. That’s what, for me, is just so frustrating.

STELLA
But don’t you think they’re deliberately dismantling the system? They want to show that they are dismantling it.

CHRIS
Yes, of course, they are. But they’re dismantling it right in front of us and we’re just watching. I’m talking about the broader public and not reacting.
Yes, of course, that is the goal.

And so in a way, that passivity makes us complicit in what is ultimately our own enslavement. I mean, this is all, of course, even beyond Julian as a person and as a journalist. And that’s what, you know, having followed this case for several years and as you know, I was very close friends with Michael Ratner, which is how I met Julian, because I would come to London with Michael. I’m just kind of mystified at how people can’t see where this is going to lead………………………………………………………….

CHRIS
……… I think reading the CIA, which is a state within a state, it’s not even accountable within the Congress. And there was a few years ago, Feinstein, after the torture was exposed, tried to do a congressional report and there was this really revealing moment. I’m no fan of Feinstein, but she was, at that moment, trying to do the right thing.And she came out and she was just ashen. And I can’t remember the exact words, but it’s something like, “we can’t take on these people…”, because they had bugged all the computers in the congressional office, they destroyed information.

And I think it was that moment where she personally realised that we can’t control, there’s no regulation, there’s no oversight, there’s no control. And unlike the Church and the Pike committees that in the middle 70s, had exposed the crimes. That was it. That moment is gone. And I think that Vault 7, because of this kind of imperial attitude on the part of the CIA where they can do anything, because the CIA, we have 17 intelligence communities in the United States. I mean, the CIA as an intelligence organization is kind of redundant.

And what it has done is transformed itself into a paramilitary, especially after 9/11. And it’s completely in the dark. It has its own drones and special forces units. Having had friends who served in Afghanistan and Iraq, these people create more problems than they solve because they’ll go on extraction and night raids and anger an entire village and then the next day the Rangers will go through the village and they open fire on…I mean, they’re counterproductive. And I think that what happened with Vault 7 is that you now have an incredibly powerful organisation that is, in essence, a paramilitary organisation with huge resources and that exposure of Vault 7, they’re not used to being monitored, exposed in any way. I think the anger, I think it was more visceral. I think the anger within the CIA was ran really deep. And, you know, again, I haven’t spoken to anyone in the CIA, but my guess is that at that point, they laid down the law. We’re getting Julian. That’s my my guess.

I think it’s all being, because Biden, no matter who’s in the office, Obama, you can’t, at this point they talk about the Dark State. I mean, these are the, you know, figures like Biden are the puppets. In the military, you know, the US military has not been audited for a decade. I read somewhere we spend more on military bands than we do on the State Department. I mean, again, it’s like ancient Rome. I mean, it’s its own entity, almost severed from the government.
But that’s how I read what happened after Vault 7.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. there is no investigative journalism now within the government, with the inner workings of government, because everyone’s too frightened to talk, because they they’re they can immediately be traced.

So the last readout of any kind of exposure of the the the crimes, the criminal activity of power comes through people who are like Chelsea manning or Snowden, who have access to documents and will leak them,……………………………………………………………….

It means there is no power is in no way accountable. There’s no transparency, and we know history has taught us that when that kind of secrecy is imposed on autocratic power, it just in abuse grows upon abuse grows upon abuse. And that is why they’re just determined to crucify Julian.
That’s the crisis that we’re in.
We’ve lost the ability to know what power is doing.

STELLA
I have this feeling that in order to establish the baseline, you would have to give a history lesson.

Because, for example, the use of the Espionage Act, you have to understand that it wasn’t used for almost 100 years against whistleblowers and journalists. There was a shift with Obama that opened the doors to maybe one day the Espionage Act being used against publishers in the same way now being used against whistleblowers. And the way it was being used against whistleblowers was as if they were spies to begin with. So, there was a progressive shift. And that’s why Julian was surprised when Michael Ratner told him that he tought the US would try him under the Espionage Act after he had published. Because it was unprecedented, because the First Amendment is clear. And the First Amendment is really a revolutionary instrument, and it is the gold standard in the world…………………………………………………………..

And then, with what’s been done to Julian, because it’s been so protracted, we’re in a completely different information and security environment, as in the powers of the security state are far greater and have eroded all these other rights that came.

…………………………………since the surveillance state has become so powerful, there’s been an ability to control communication in such an aggressive and invisible manner.
In the 12 or 13 years since WikiLeaks published this, we’re in a completely different environment……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. more https://therealnews.com/julian-assange-and-the-end-of-american-democracy