Who is Assange? Part 1: Isolation, Empathy and Julian Assange
“Social isolation is one of the most devastating things you can do to a human being. I don’t care how old you are.” — Rosalind Wiseman
In the past year communities all over the globe have gone into lockdown. The measures adopted have caused incredible distress to populations from New York to New Zealand and beyond. The result of these events has been increased depression, anxiety, suicides and domestic violence, as people have found their economic well being destroyed. Futures hang in the balance and what used to be called your home became your prison cell.
With the lockdowns implemented worldwide, each of us should possess an increased understanding of the suffering of Julian Assange. He has been arbitrarily detained for nearly four thousand days. It has been more than eighteen-hundred days since the UN ruled that he should be released and compensated. He has been gagged and prevented from practicing journalism for more than a thousand days and it has now been more than seven-hundred days since he was illegally seized from the Ecuadorian embassy. Think about the significance of those numbers. Most countries have been under lockdown for a little over a year. Imagine if the extent of lockdown were close to what Julian Assange has endured. But wait, according to major media outlets, Assange’s isolation in the embassy was self imposed. Many mainstream outlets have asserted he could’ve left any time he wanted.
According to Nils Melzer, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture who has looked into this case in depth:
“Assange was about as free to leave as a man on a rubber boat in a shark pool.” — Nils Melzer
It is my fervent hope that minds can be opened to examining more closely the case made against Assange. The mainstream press and criminal pseudo-democracies, namely the U.S. and UK, have lead the pack in his public assassination. These countries have proven to be the most adept at inflicting death and destruction the world over. In over half a century this has not changed. On April 4, 1967, MLK jr. delivered his iconic anti-war speech, Beyond Vietnam, at the Riverside Church in NYNY during which he stated:
“The greatest purveyor of violence in the world today is my own government.” — MLK jr.
One thing Julian Assange and MLK jr. have in common is a disdain for the injustice of war. Assange’s anti-war speech at Trafalgar Square on October 8, 2011 was loaded with truth and delivered with courage. Some people are unaware of this speech. Some are unaware that opposition to war is an integral component of his character. There are many things people must learn about Assange.
War of Terror
When teaching about the “War on Terror” in my History courses I use a video compilation which ends with Julian Assange being illegally expelled from the Ecuadorian Embassy. He looked decades older than he had when he sought asylum there seven years earlier. His hair and beard were long and gray. I cannot imagine what that many years of isolation must have felt like. Especially the last year he was in the Embassy, after being cut off from the internet and silenced.
It was as if time had accelerated for Assange and seven years became three times that. Like Rip Van Winkle waking up after twenty years. Only Assange hadn’t been asleep. In reality, time must have passed quite slowly. What he had endured, as well as, what he faced was a living nightmare. He appeared frail from his ordeal. But his voice rang out clear and strong;
“UK must resist!”
It has now been two years since this illegal seizure of Assange.
How is this footage of Assange being dragged out of the Ecuadorian Embassy germane to a lesson on war? Because Assange is currently the only person who is being punished for the lies and crimes committed by powerful governments during their War on Terror, which has in reality become their War OF Terror. Only Chelsea Manning has suffered as well and she was the person who leaked the documents revealing these crimes.
The video compilation also includes a summary of the Iraq wars logs and press conference, as well as, Afghanistan war diaries and press conference. As my students watch this video they see the disturbing scene of collateral murder and hear Ethan McCord tell his story.
They listen to the “debate” in Congress which Joe Biden masterfully manipulated by excluding testimony, available at the time, that Iraq absolutely did not have WMDs. Selling this War was a priority Biden took seriously.
“I don’t believe this is a rush to war. I believe it’s a march to peace and security. I believe that failure to overwhelmingly support this resolution is likely to enhance the prospects that war will occur.” — Joe Biden
My students learn that wars come about as the result of lies. They learn that innocent people, including children, are hurt and killed due to wars. They learn that collateral damage is a fact of war the powerful have tried to hide and Assange helped expose. This is the most important thing to know about Julian Assange; he has exposed war crimes that have yet to be punished. This is square one because it offers the perspective required to process the price he has paid for these disclosures.
It’s been over eleven years since war crimes were revealed by Wikileaks and still the only persons punished for it have been the publisher who exposed the evidence and the whistleblower, Chelsea Manning, who leaked the documents.
In spite of these important disclosures, despite successfully placing millions of documents important to the public interest, in the public record, many people hold a negative view of Julian Assange. It wasn’t always like that.
In 2011, it was the People who saved him from being illegally taken from the Ecuadorian Embassy.
“So the next time someone tells you that it is pointless to defend the rights that we hold dear, remind them of your vigil in the dark before the Embassy of Ecuador. Remind them how, in the morning, the sun came up on a different world and a courageous Latin America nation took a stand for justice.” — Julian Assange
Unfortunately, Assange’s popularity would wane as his releases began to make the most powerful people on earth extremely nervous. The mainstream press has peddled propaganda so efficiently, that one can hardly talk about Assange with the majority of people without having the lies repeated back to them in carefully crafted talking points they hardly know they’re parroting. Any conversation about his positive contributions to humanity must take a back seat to debunking the propaganda against him. The smears, excessive and predominant, have to be addressed before minds open to even considering the remainder of Assange’s story in an objective manner. The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, Nils Melzer is the most succinct source for unraveling the propaganda which has dominated the mainstream press over the past decade.
Debunking the Lies
If you stumbled upon this blog and you’re thinking of Assange in a negative light, please, I implore you, read the writing of Nils Melzer, as he Demasks the Torture of Julian Assange, and explains the reality of the narrative surrounding him, which has been distorted by Western media.
Point by point he explains every smear, including rape allegations. Yes, allegations. Assange has NEVER BEEN CHARGED with a sex crime. There were allegations ONLY. The response to Melzer was swift. Immediately he found himself under attack for protecting a “rapist.” Academics signed an open letter against him, prompting Melzer to respond on the defensive.
Coming to the defense of Assange and Melzer, was Activist and Journalist Suzie Dawson who wrote an open letter of her own dated July 2, 2019. An open letter which I signed. In this letter, she stated that those of us who have been raped are opposed to rape allegations being weaponized against innocent men.
“As a survivor of rape, it is gutting to have to continually watch people who profess to act in defence of women attack and destroy good men in the name of protecting survivors. I can not simply sit by and allow rape to continue to be weaponised for political gain.” — Suzie Dawson
But Nils Melzer and Suzie Dawson weren’t the only people to defend Assange. Award winning feminist author, social critic and long time advocate for rape survivors, Naomi Wolf, now editor of Daily Clout, called out the rape narrative in December of 2010, and suffered a relentless smear campaign for defending him. In this article she states:
“How do I know that Interpol, Britain and Sweden’s treatment of Julian Assange is a form of theater? Because I know what happens in rape accusations against men that don’t involve the embarrassing of powerful governments.” — Naomi Wolf
Appearing on Democracy Now! in 2010, Naomi Wolf had this to say about the accusations:
The extent of the misinformation in the press on Assange has been so egregious as to constitute psychological torture, according to Melzer. In addition to the torture and violations of his human rights, these smears have been a distraction.
With the propaganda placed in proper context it is easier to engage in further inquiry. Ultimately it leads to the truth, Assange is a visionary and a truth teller with the best of intentions, not an agent of Russia.
Russiagate
The new McCarthyism, created by the Russiagate scandal, has ushered in a peculiar amnesia in Americans. People have forgotten that the Cold War ended DECADES ago. Too many appear ignorant of the fact that Russia has had free market capitalism for many years and that the United States has over 3,000 businesses in Russia, including some of our top companies. This New Cold War has tainted an accurate depiction of Julian Assange in the public mind.
This is the history the media, at the behest of the powerful, have written for us: ‘Julian Assange is an operative of Russia who published DNC emails to damage Clinton and get Trump elected.’
This narrative is as flawed as WMDs in Iraq, babies being thrown out incubators, and the Tonkin Gulf incident. Assange is not politically motivated. In an interview with 60 minutes, January 2011 he explained that he and Wikileaks are a particular type of activist.
Assange did not release information about Hillary Clinton and the DNC, because he supported Trump or the GOP. Assange released this information because it was in the public interest to do so. I’m very grateful he did. We now know beyond any doubt that the DNC deliberately rigged the 2016 Democratic Primary in favor of Hillary Clinton. We know Hillary was the architect of Libya. We know what she said to Goldman Sachs, which included the assertion that they were in the best position to manage the economy. These facts among other things that deserve investigation. If you haven’t looked at the DNC Leaks, or the Podesta Leaks, maybe it’s long past time you did.
Looking further back is critical to understanding the motivations and goals of Julian Assange, which have nothing to do with being Putin’s Puppet or helping to “interfere in an election.”
