Of course, as history has shown, our founding fathers were not perfect. They had their own hypocrisy and contradictions manifested in the genocide of natives, enslavement of blacks and suppression of women. But I would like to think that the signers of this document, 56 people who put their livelihood and lives on the line to achieve America's independence, believed in the ideals spelled out in the document. I would like to think those words were not lies. I see them as promises and believe that Jefferson had aspired to create a society that lives up to the words that he had written.
I think WikiLeaks released documents helped us see the unaccounted power inside the US and its history. The publication of the collateral murder video, the US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and illegal torture at the Guantanamo Bay showed us how America had become a global empire, repeating its dark past of killing natives and destroying their culture, now under the name of fighting terrorism abroad in the oil-rich Middle East. We were able to see America's betrayal of its own ideals and how this nation lost its own course.
Also, WikiLeaks release of Vault 7, the largest leak in CIA history that exposed their cyberwarfare and malicious hacking tools was significant. It let us see how the republic has been turned into a national security state.
Sources of WikiLeaks' publications risked their personal liberty to inform people about this subversion of American ideals. Whistleblowers like Chelsea Manning and Jeremy Hammond who allegedly provided the Stratfor documents to WikiLeaks, the private Texas-based global intelligence company, reminded us of the ideals that founded the United States and how they are universal ideals that apply to everyone around the world.
Manning demonstrated this by giving WikiLeaks raw video footage that captured the US military strike in Iraq, killing innocent civilians. Through her own act of conscience, she upheld the principle of equality and liberty for all people. She made it possible for those who were conjured into enemy combatants by the US military industrial complex to tell their side of the story.
In her request for a presidential pardon, she made clear the motive of her action. She indicated how she is willing to serve her time knowing that one has to pay a heavy price to live in a free society and how she wishes to have a country that is truly conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all women and men are created equal.
What Assange did was by enabling the true function of free press to help whistleblowers to fulfil the promise that our founders made. It is not just for the American people, but ordinary people all around the world can now engage in a participatory process of creating a society based on a principle of liberty and equality for all people.
When we truly recognise the significance of WikiLeaks, we can see why Assange has been put into prison, tortured and politically persecuted. We can understand why the former CIA director and Trump's Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo called WikiLeaks "a non-state hostile intelligence service" and declared war against the whistleblowing site. We can understand why the CIA, via a Spanish security firm, spied on Assange and his privileged communication with his lawyers while he was inside the Ecuadorian Embassy in London and as Assange's defense evidence revealed, the intelligence agency plotted to poison him. I hope people then realise what is truly at stake with Assange's extradition case and how we need to do whatever it takes to stop this.
I like your notion of the contagion of courage. It seems really vital right now with regard to privacy. Do you agree with that and, if so, could you elaborate.
With the phrase contagion of courage, I am referring to the waves of whistleblowers that have emerged in recent years; how one person's act of courage created a ripple effect for social change. For instance, Jeremy Hammond and Snowden both indicated how they were inspired by Manning's act of conscience.
The principle of civil disobedience was put forward by an American transcendentalist and philosopher, Henry David Thoreau. He believed this was a vital mechanism that enables a democracy, one that bridges between the ideals in the Declaration of Independence and the constitution.
Thoreau's idea taught us how the premise of equality and liberty expressed in America's founding document can be made legally binding through each individual's act of conscience, by refusing to obey certain unjust laws in order to uphold the higher moral laws.
From women's suffrage, civil rights and free speech movements, ordinary people from history have shown the power of We the People. They all risked their lives to engage in an act of civil disobedience in order to truly codify the ideals in the Declaration of Independence into law. Now, a new generation of people from the Internet are carrying on this past struggle for justice. As America increasingly moves away from its own original vision, we desperately need more people who are willing to act courageously to defend her spirit.
With that said, I need to now emphasise on how those who engaged in civil disobedience have been attacked and broken down. The US government has been using the Espionage Act of 1917 to punish whistleblowers who performed a vital duty to hold power accountable. Now, with Assange's extradition case, the Trump administration is going after not just the source but also the journalist. The Espionage Act was created during WWI to prosecute spies and it prohibits public interest defense. Those who are tried under the Espionage Act are not allowed to talk about their motivations for their actions.
For publishing evidence of the war crimes and human rights abuses of the US government and their allies, Assange now faces the risk of extradition to the US, where he could receive no trial. If convicted, he would be sentenced up to 175 years in prison and be subjected to very harsh conditions through Special Administrative Measures. History is happening now inside the Old Bailey that could determine the future of press freedom and democracy. We need to act now and take back our own narrative to end the political prosecution of Julian Assange.
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