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Original Content at https://www.opednews.com/articles/Giving-Thanks-to-the-Whist-by-John-Hawkins-America_Assange_Detainees_FOIA-200822-676.html (Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher). |
August 22, 2020
Giving Thanks to the Whistleblowers
By John Hawkins
A thank you piece to some of the whistleblowers of recent years who have risked everything to help us Keep the Bastards Honest. Also, a reminder of the humans being detained at Guantanamo, most of them, after many years, without charges. Links to their poetry and artwork are included.
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Those of us who care about the criminal excesses of the Orwellian dystopia that we find ourselves thumb-driven under by predatory algorithms that ferret out our alpha waves for "security" and commercial purposes, might want to remember that if not for legitimate whistleblowers we would know next to nothing about what the Bastards are up to. It's a far more depressing world for the knowing, but like climate change, we're no better off for the ignorance. So, here's to Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, and Chelsea Manning -- all of whom have given up their freedom in order to reveal the criminality and deceit of the Masters of Endless War and pocket Marshall plans (Rebuilds 'R Us). Here's to our Three Amigos in this festive season of convenient whistleblowing.
First, thanks to Julian Assange, who told us years ago that the Bastards just wanted him to be put on a plane to Sweden so that he could be put on another plane to America -- against his will. He rightfully sought asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London to avoid such extradition that would have made him a circus clown before a politically-motivated 'national security' trial in America that would have seen him jailed for life. The MSM took his wiki goodies and made money selling papers with them, but bailed on him when the government told them to attack his character. Now, out of self-interest, the MSM will be forced to begrudgingly defend Assange's journalism credentials should he be forwarded, like a soccer ball, to America's fascist foot.
It looks grim for Julian. He will be tried, if brought to America, under the Espionage Act, a version of which has been shored up under each of the Five Eyes super-surveillance partners. His best chance at avoiding being putsched before a show trial is for lawyers to show that Spanish security company, UC Global, hired by Ecuador to provide security for its London embassy, actually spied on Assangeand his visitors with mikes and cams, and handed their work over to the CIA. This would (or should) demonstrate that Assange can't receive a fair trial in America (again, the reason he took refuge in the embassy), and provide lawyers with the ammo they need to knock back the extradition.
Now would be a good time to catch up on the issues surrounding his case, and, really, the best way to do that is by reading the collection of supporting voices -- from computer technicians to philosophers -- put out by OR Books, an independent publisher, In Defense of Julian Assange. Next, write to him. You might actually be able to get a message to him, in this festive season, if you go online and send him a letter -- either through L-Mail, which takes your e-message and snail-mails it to him, or, more conveniently, you can use Email A Prisoner (don't forget to use a VPN). He's said he wants messages short and sweet. Maybe send him a joke or limerick. I sent him a poem.
And there's Edward Snowden to salute. Others have made zoodles of dollars explaining the importance of his 2013 revelations, including Glenn Greenwald, who won a well-deserved Pulitzer for his details of Snowden's global surveillance revelations and his subsequent escape to Russia. Then Snowden put out Permanent Record, his memoir full of insider details of the deep state (his words) that he worked for as a kind of demi-god of data -- before its criminality (his words) made him unable to go on lying and collecting for the government. He revealed, with diagrams, how the US government spies on everyone connected to a communications system -- Internet and mobile services. Importantly, he shows how contractors (see chapter, Homo Contractus) are the ball carriers of the deep state.
Unfortunately, but predictably (his words), the US government sued his publisher to take his book profits away -- and they won. Snowden, nowlarfing as a much-sought-after six-figure online speaker, has suggested that the public buy a copy and hand it off, when finished, to a friend. Great idea (remember the days of file-sharing)! A short cut to obtaining a free copy of his memoir is to visit the wondrous Internet Archive where several borrowable copies are there for downloading. "I wanted to help, but I didn't know how," he writes of his decison to whistleblow. "I'd had enough of feeling helpless, of being just an a**hole in flannel lying around on a shabby couch eating Cool Ranch Doritos and drinking Diet Coke while the world went up in flames."
Thanks again to Assange and Wikileaks, for risking further criminal abuse, by helping Snowden escape from Hong Kong. And remember that the audacious Obama would have nailed Snowden had he been on the Bolivian president's airplane when it was forced down. This gangster cut-him-off move might have led to a hot WWIII had the plane been Putin's, instead of Evo Morales.
Edward can be reached in his exile, either by mailing him at Freedom of the Press Foundation or through his account at Twitter: @Snowden .
And finally, thanks to Chelsea Manning, for getting the ball rolling back in 2010 with the Iraq Logs and Afghan Logs, but, most devastatingly, the so-called Collateral Murder video that not only showed s double-tap helicopter gunship attack on civilians, including two Reuters reporters, but provided the gunship audio that suggested jolly titilation as bodies fell. The video demonstrated, among other things, that the so-called War on Terror was going to involve its own moments of terrorism, with not a lot of hand-wringing, once the gloves were off.
Chelsea was court-martialed and sentenced to 35 years for delivering classified information to Julian Assange and Wikileaks. President Obama commuted Manning's sentence (after six harsh years in the slammer) -- just before the Trump inauguration in Jan 2017. In February 2019, she was found in contempt of court for refusing to testify before a grand jury looking to gather evidence on Julian Assange and Wikileaks and put back in jail. Then, upon release, told a new grand jury to f*ck off, and is back in prison again on contempt charges. She reasoned that, "[T]his grand jury seeks to undermine the integrity of public discourse with the aim of punishing those who expose any serious, ongoing, and systemic abuses of power by this government."
As with Assange above, Manning can be reached through a convenient write and snail-post system, called Jmail. She can be reached by post at:
The William G. Truesdale Adult Detention Center
2001 Mill Road, Alexandria, Virginia 22314
Tel: 703.746.4114
You'll have to call the switchboard to get her prisoner ID number.
In this festive season, as we ready ourselves for the short-lived Senate dismissal of the House's impeachment of Trump (yawn), just in time for the presidential primary season, let's remember that there are still other things that we can do to bolster the defences of Assange, Snowden, and Manning, as they ready for consequential appearances before judges in the next few months. We can, for instance, put our heads together and try to force the government into 'necessity defense' legislation that Assange and Snowden could use in the future to defend themselves. And we could also file, online, Freedom of Information Act requests, say, the Rogers-Brennan-Clapper emails leading up their DNC hacking assessment in 2016.
Me, a couple of days ago, I filed a FOIA for access to the poems Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was said to have penned to his interrogator's wife after 183 waterboardings. I very much look forward to reading these Sufi sonnets. Talk about curing writer's block, huh? In the meantime, Marc Falkoff, an intrepid lawyer for non-high value detainees - most of them picked up for next to nothing, no charges pending and nowhere to go - collected and published, Poems from Guantanamo: The Detainees Speak. You can hear selections read aloud by Amnesty International here. Along with a collection of detainee art work from Gitmo, some of which can be found here, you can remember that these detainees are still there, and still human.
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John Kendall Hawkins is an American ex-pat freelance journalist and poet currently residing in Oceania.