Re: <nettime> Ben Quinn: Julian Assange shows psychological torture symp

Dear Nettimers - Lest we all forget that scapegoating Assange will ultimately help DT and his dastardly concept of victimization through "fake news" (meaning just about all media outlets except Wikileaks, apparently) and for him to complete his rationale for destroying "free press."

https://theintercept.com/2019/05/24/the-indictment-of-julian-assange-under-the-espionage-act-is-a-threat-to-the-press-and-the-american-people/

Excerpt <<The Obama Administration began the government’s investigation of Assange and WikiLeaks over the Manning leaks, but the issue of how to distinguish between WikiLeaks and the rest of the media is generally thought to have given them pause.

The Trump administration has no such qualms. President Donald Trump sees the media as the enemy of the people; charging Assange opens the door for his Justice Department to go after the rest of the press corps.

The great irony, of course, is that Trump publicly declared his love for WikiLeaks during the 2016 presidential campaign, when WikiLeaks acted as a kind of intermediary between shadowy front entities put up by Russian intelligence and the U.S. media in the distribution of hacked emails and other documents from the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic Party.

Whether WikiLeaks and Assange knew they were getting the materials at least indirectly from Russian intelligence is still an open question. But there is no doubt that the New York Times, The Intercept, and other major media organizations largely ignored their provenance and instead lapped up the leaked materials and published them in the midst of the 2016 campaign.

The results were very good for Trump.

But the government’s case against Assange has nothing to do with his role in laundering documents stolen by Russian spies to help Trump win the 2016 election. Instead, it focuses on his earlier work, which brought new light to the dark corners of the war on terror.

The selective nature of the charges against Assange underscores the fact that this is a highly politicized case brought by a Justice Department now run by Trump lackey William Barr. Even as it pursues Assange for his role in producing groundbreaking journalism, Trump’s Justice Department is ignoring the one known instance when Assange actually worked, perhaps unwittingly, with a foreign intelligence service.>>

I think Julian Assange should be given medical support and let go back to Australia.

What right has the US government to threaten a non-national with "treason" - seemingly an overreach of the power of one nation? How can anyone who is not a citizen of a country be called a "traitor" to that country and be used as an "example" of its empirical power? Our empire pisses off the rest of the globe for its myopic lens on life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness - its oil wars and extreme consumption - and thinks itself exempt from criticism! An Australian hacker founds an organization to open the channels of free speech and get's slammed for doing it because our Secretary of State (at the time) was content to lead the neo-liberal face of waning democracy.

We have tortured enough people already. Let Assange go, and if Sweden wants to chase him down for a rape charge, well, good. It doesn't have anything to do with releasing that disgusting abuse of power by our boys the marines in copters playing battlefield with civilians.

Unfortunately now, in his weakest hour, Assange is ball being batted in the "king's court" of the Trump White House playpen.

Thank some diety or other - for the lawyers currently protecting the civil rights of yet another prisoner. Medically infirm, weakened; life ruined; dismal Australian government doing nothing because their own economy is lapdog of US.

I have absolutely no truck with anyone who wants to further condemn Assange for leaking any f**king emails. IMHO this is not why Trump got elected. Trump got elected because in the USA - "anyone" can run for President and win. Clinton was a weak candidate beyond those emails.

And as a woman, feminist...if Assange is convicted of rape then put him in a jail for it, but please, that possibility has nothing to do with the circus going on around him now.

Molly

On Fri, May 31, 2019 at 2:41 PM Flick Harrison <flick@flickharrison.com> wrote:

Ugh... glad I blocked Morlock. Shurely such explicit rape apologism should be grounds for banning? If not that, then what? Is this discourse or rape culture we're nurturing here?

But to the point of Assange: You know who's really being tortured? Everyone... because of people like Assange who decided that Hillary was "the ultimate crime that warrants any punishment one can think of."

https://sph.umich.edu/pursuit/2018posts/family-separation-US-border.html

Unfortunately I think Assange is being charged for things he did that I would call transparency and journalism, so I think it's dangerous to take sides against him, but I just can't work up any empathy for that little jerk.

There are kids in cages being sexually assaulted, gas is getting reclassified as "freedom molecules..." We've got freedom to burn! And the world's most powerful democracy is being sorely tested at every nook and cranny of its civil structure: corruption, politicization of the military, incompetence, nepotism, unaccountability, eroding rule of law, election fraud, even the simple control of the purse strings is being bypassed, and its all accelerating under the skilled leadership of the world's most dangerous con-man and Assange ally. Hell, we're ALL being tested... my country has its share of up-and-coming authoritarian douchebags like Doug Ford and Andrew Scheer, ready to trample on human rights, the environment, education, health care, etc, and growing ever more powerful as the civil discourse gets more and more strident, twittish and botty.

https://www.google.com/search?q=psychological+effects+of+trump&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-b-ab

I can't think of any punishment worse than helping Trump get elected.

On Fri, May 31, 2019 at 1:15 PM tbyfield <tbyfield@panix.com> wrote:

Morlock wrote:

Unprotected penetration of a sleeping woman (or sleeping women) is the
ultimate crime that warrants any punishment one can think of. This
worldview will be remembered as the only lasting achievement of identity
politics and victimhood industry.

Considering that ever so slightly more than 50% of the people doing the remembering will be women, even an incremental step toward being able to sleep in peace would a big thing.

Ted

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