John Chuckman
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY ELIZABETH VOS IN CONSORTIUM NEWS
“A Year of Silencing Julian Assange
“On this date in 2018, the Wikileaks publisher was cut off from the work of journalism”
This is a good summary of events.
For me, what the story shows is the capacity of power simply to ignore all proper procedures, protocol, and civilities.
It does this without the least investigation by the press or objection from leaders on all sides in Washington.
Of course, it could be still blunter and more openly brutal, with armed men simply dragging Assange away to prison somewhere, but that kind of completely open abuse of authority tends mostly to be avoided by the United States and compliant helper states like Britain.
So, we have this elaborate charade of a man having been granted asylum, but being quietly treated as though he were a prisoner in solitary confinement, and of governments superficially complying with international law, while quietly doing all they can to suppress its meaning and spirit.
This is a familiar pattern now. It is the way the United States carries on its affairs in dozens of places, as with the bloody Neocon wars where certain charades are carried out to destroy countries rather than the kind of openly lawless assault we saw in Iraq or in Vietnam. It’s what we see in Venezuela too.
And just as with Assange’s case, the press is silent about details and absolutely avoids anything that could be called investigation. Virtually every politician of both parties carries on the same way, as do leaders of America’s major institutions.
The only voices for justice, for the actual rule of law, are the largely powerless, and their voices are only heard if you go out of your way to hear them because the conventional press is simply part of the imperial apparatus.
It truly is a creepy, insidious use of power, and it involves a continuous and expanding web of lies and pretense. It is the world America, that self-proclaimed land of liberty and rights and humanity, has given us. Brass knuckles covered over in pretty velvet gloves.
