Alice Walker, Noam Chomsky, and Daniel Ellsberg oppose the extradition of Julian Assange to the US to face charges under the Espionage Act. The extradition hearing starts in London on Monday, Sept. 7th. With host Jimmy Dore.

::::::::

Alice Walker, Noam Chomsky, and Daniel Ellsberg oppose the extradition of Julian Assange to the US to face charges under the Espionage Act. The extradition hearing starts in London on Monday, Sept. 7th. With host Jimmy Dore.

Transcript

Jimmy Dore

Today, we will be speaking to an illustrious panel of champions for free speech. Alice Walker is

a poet, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of books like, 'The Color Purple', a fine essayist, and a civil

rights activist. She is one of our greatest writers and greatest social activists. Noam Chomsky,

professor of linguistics and social critic and one of the foremost intellectuals of our time. And

Daniel Ellsberg joins us, he was a US military analyst who bravely released the Pentagon

Papers in 1971. These documents expose the lives of our government about the Vietnam War,

the fallout of his whistle-blowing helped bring an end to our military involvement in Vietnam. And

all three of these guests are co-chairs of the new US support group for Julian Assange called,

Assange Defense. And if you want more information, you can always go to assangedefense.org

and you will find coverage of the trial and updates on Julian's hearing, that's

assangedefense.org. Mr. Ellsberg, Professor Chomsky, Miss Walker, thank you all for being

here.

Alice Walker

Thank you.

Daniel Ellsberg

Thank You.

Noam Chomsky

Thank you.

Jimmy Dore

So let me just start with, Noam, first. There is some confusion with the public. Many think that

Julian Assange is on trial for something to do with Russia and the DNC and the 2016 election,

but he's being prosecuted for the release of a video showing the US air attack in Iraq that killed

dozens of people, including two Reuters media workers. Now, if they are successful in

prosecuting, Assange won't it allow governments around the world from the US, the UK, to

Europe and Australia to outlaw any reporting about national security.

Let me just put that to you, Noam. It was directed towards you.

Noam Chomsky

Sorry, I couldn't hear.

Well, Julian Assange has, as you said, met the responsibilities of the journalist and the most

effective and courageous fashion. He has released information to the public that the public

should know, journalists, scholars are making extensive use of the information that he provided,

something that all of us should know. Those in power have their own reasons to suppress facts

that display to the general public what they're doing. The essence of a free, democratic society

is that the public should know, understand, and be of critical awareness and analysis of what

their elected leaders are doing.

The highest mission of journalists is to fulfill that responsibility that Julian Assange has done so,

with great merit and courage. We should stress that this effort that he's been punished brutally

for years for having the cheek that carried out this crucial mission of journalism at the highest

level is now being threatened with extremely severe punishment by a government that wants to

silence the revelations of its actions. What will happen at the trial and afterwards will depend

very significantly on public actions and reactions.

The public uproar over this criminal prosecution is sure to have an impact on how it will

eventuate. And not only is Julian Assange's fate at risk in this sordid affair, but so is that of

journalism, freedom of speech, democratic rights. Quite generally, we can't stand by and permit

this monstrous offense against our highest values to proceed.

Jimmy Dore

If I could just ask you a follow up on that, why is the world of journalism so silent about the

persecution of Julian Assange?

Noam Chomsky

You have to ask them. They shouldn't be. Maybe people are afraid or maybe they have other

reasons, but it's not a great tribute to journalism to see them back away from supporting

someone who has lived up to the highest ideals of the profession and is being savagely

persecuted for doing so. This is a mission that journalists should applaud. They should be on

the front lines of defending Assange and in fact, themselves against state power that is out of

control.

Jimmy Dore

Yeah, it seems to me, maybe it's because a small Internet outlet like WikiLeaks, what it

accomplishes, poses a great threat to institutions like The New York Times and The Washington

Post because they're not accomplishing much. But let me move on to

Alice Walker. And this next question is for you. If Julian Assange is successfully prosecuted,

what effect will this have on free speech and activists? And why should Americans care about

this extradition trial? Alice, could you un-mute yourself, please?

Alice Walker

Is that OK?

We need to know that we have people in our country and in the world who stand for something

and who stand up for the people who stand up for the planet. And if they are persecuted in the

way that Julian Assange is being persecuted, our children won't even know that there was

someone who said, hey, you should not shoot anyone from a helicopter and especially people

who are not bothering you, they won't know in the same way that we have lost so many

wonderful people.

I mean, how many people know anything about John Brown, for instance, you know, these great

abolitionists who died, fighting for black people, for our freedom. They hide these people from

us in this very way that they're doing with Julian Assange. They just lock them away. They kill

them.

And who are we to let this happen, who are we, who are we to let this happen really? So we

need to press on all the people who awakened to the condition that Julian Assange is suffering

under and his family. I am especially concerned about his family. This is just a wrong, it's an

evil. And we have the power to change it. It takes waking up and it takes acting, that's all. And

also because we are now, all of us, locked down, locked in and locked up with the virus, what a

perfect time to just revolt and say enough already. Free all these people like Julian, although I

don't know how many people are quite like Julian, he's quite exceptional. But it's time to stand

up and say, "free the people".

Jimmy Dore

Yes, agreed. Let me just ask you one more question. Frederick Douglass once said, "To

suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the right of the hearer as well as those of the

speaker". Can you talk about how free speech is integral to the struggle for social justice?

Alice Walker

Well, totally, because if you can't talk about it, how can you do anything about it? And if you're

afraid to speak, how can you ever move anywhere? Because it's absolutely essential. People

can disagree, that's their right. But it should not be their right to lock you up for saying

something they don't like. That's ridiculous. And we actually outnumber these people who are

making these laws, and that's what has to happen, we have to awaken to that fact. I mean,

every one of us should say, what can we do to get Julian Assange and people like him, out of

these prisons. And just find a way, find whatever you can do, it may be small, it may be

whatever, but that's what we can do.

Jimmy Dore

Let me thank you very much. Let me now turn to Daniel Ellsberg, and you were subjected to an

FBI manhunt after you released the Pentagon Papers. Today, Assange is at risk of being

tortured and facing a potential 175-year sentence. Do you see parallels with your case and

Julian Assange's' case?

Daniel Ellsberg

Certainly very close parallels, on the point you just raised, of course, Julian Assange is not in

the potential of being tortured, he has been tortured for, I could really say, for about eight years

now, but in particular, for the last 18 months, kept in a cell in isolation in a prison for terrorists

here for telling the truth at a time when he had in the Ecuadorian embassy, already was

suffering from severe pains in his shoulder, from terrible dental problems, which could not be

dealt with in the Ecuadorian embassy. And the British would not give him any assurance that he

would not be extradited to the United States if he left there to get dental care. I'm not aware that

he's gotten the care that he needs, even now that he's in British custody, all this time. So he is

being tortured for that. What Alice reminded me of here is, of course, the video of the killings

during the first release, which had the title he put on, which was very problematic in many

people's eyes. He was questioned for it and that was Collateral Murder. And as someone, I was

a battalion training officer in the Marine Corps and taught the laws of war not very long, but

briefly and long enough to know that what I was seeing on that video when I first saw it, was

murder. It was the deliberate shooting down of unarmed civilians. It turned out one of them, a

Reuters journalist and his photographer, both killed, hunted down actually, they tried to shield

themselves while they were laughing in the helicopter at this turkey shoot. And the people who

tried to help them were actually told to go mind their business by their superior officers, actually,

people on the ground. This was murder. It was like the Rodney King shooting, which I can't

remember, which had an enormous effect on video, or, of course, recently the George Floyd

murder, which we just saw on television.

It didn't have that same effect because it was Americans killing foreigners. And as many people,

including the people who tried to rescue the people on the ground, pointed out this was a daily

occurrence in Iraq and it didn't get the attention, it got enough attention that he's still being

charged with it 10 years later. And all those wars, of course, are still going on. They have been

going on for nine years in 2010 when this was revealed and now it's 19 years, still going on.

So the question has been answered in a way that is coming up a great deal this year. What if a

president gives unlawful orders to his subordinates, to military subordinates, either the military

to exercise police or vigilante purpose in American cities right now or to start a nuclear war? The

question has arisen directly for the first time under this president. And the answer has come

back, well, of course, we'd point out to him that it's illegal and we'd be sure that he didn't do that.

Actually, not that's really not very likely at all. And that state of affairs is, of course, all hidden by

the veil of secrecy. You asked the question, of the relation to my case. I was the first person

charged for giving information to the American public under the same statutes and charges as

Julian Assange. We do not have an official secrets act in this country, as in the mother country,

Britain, because we have a First Amendment, the freedom of the press, freedom of thought,

freedom of association, which has always, before my case in 1971, been held to preclude either

a prosecution like mine under any section or specifically an Official Secrets Act, which would

criminalize any release of information that the government wanted to keep secret from the

public.

And in this case, they tried the Espionage Act, which was meant for spies who give information

secretly to another country, especially in a time of war, had been used very much for that. And

to use that on someone who gave information to the American public, me, for the first time.

Since then, ten years went by before there was another prosecution, mine was dismissed for

reasons of governmental misconduct against me during the trial. Criminal conduct, which led

actually to the resignation of Nixon in the end and to the prosecution, the conviction of a number

of his subordinates who had been involved in that. And another 10 years before there was

another case, and then about 10 years after that, a third, only three before President Obama,

one went to the Supreme Court and they refused jurisdiction. So the Supreme Court has never,

to this day, addressed the question of whether it can be constitutional to prosecute someone for

telling the truth to the American public. They haven't ever addressed that, there was a very

strong constitutional case against them, whether the majority on this court would notice that or

not. Nevertheless, it hasn't been tested.

President Obama brought nine such cases, three times more than the three that have been tried

before. But even he did not apply it to someone unlike me, who was an official who had had a

security clearance. All the other cases involved those and try to apply it to a journalist. As the

wording of the Espionage Act permits, it's extremely broad under earlier constitutional doctrines

that Espionage Act would almost surely be thrown out on grounds of over-breadth because it

actually applies in the wording to anyone on giving, plus, it doesn't use the word classified,

information relating to the national defense that's being protected, to an unauthorized person or

reading it or possessing it or keeping it, any of that. In other words, the literal wording would

apply even to readers of a newspaper who were warned that this is a leak of classified

information, and if they give it to their spouse or whoever and they protect it, they don't give it

back to an authorized authority as the wording of the law requires, they could be subject to this,

too.

Well, nobody had ever tried applying the law that far so clearly lead to if it got to the Supreme

Court to a judgment of unconstitutionality and then we wouldn't have any threat to hold over

people at all in terms of legal prosecution. Obama considered using this against Assange

actually in 2010 and 11. And remember, he gets out in 2017, early 2017. In all those years, he

did not apply it to Assange because of the reasons I've given and for the practical reason that

he could not explain using that against Assange and not against The New York Times or for that

matter, the London Guardian Observer who used this.

Assange, after all, who's not an American citizen, is being faced with extradition by the British to

a country, to another country for having allegedly violated its laws on security. Now, a lot of

countries have laws even a lot tougher than ours on security. In China, imagine how this could

be applied elsewhere. So in this case, Assange backed off from charging Assange rather than

charging The New York Times as well, who had published the same material.

The ACLU, (American Civil Liberties Union is a nonprofit organization founded in 1920 "to

defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this ),

warned, at the beginning of this administration, that this president was very likely to extend the

law further to apply to journalists and publishers for the first time, and that is what we see with

Assange. And the very fact, that you mentioned earlier, that some journalists have chosen to

remain aloof from this on the grounds that he's not really a journalist, as Bill Keller put it in The

New York Times, not a journalist as he could see it.

The fact is that if he is extradited and prosecuted here in the current climate, I would say he

would almost surely be convicted. We couldn't count on the Supreme Court to recognize that

this was a clear violation of the First Amendment and we wouldn't have a First Amendment

applying to government secrecy, to national security at all. We'd have nothing but handouts from

then on, and we would have more wars based on lies like Iraq and the others, Vietnam, for that

matter, in my case, Pentagon Papers. So a great deal hangs on this. And finally, Jimmy, if I may

address your question you asked, why is the press staying aloof from this?

To my belief, the press has been a state of denial since my case, and that was 1971. That was

49 years ago. And I have been saying, I can tell you throughout that time to audiences of

journalists, some cases publishers, AP editors and whatnot, this is a buried bomb or a mine, in

fact, waiting for you. If you do not examine and investigate the secrecy system and the abuse of

it and the wrongness of the use of this law against this, it is going to be used directly against you

as well as to your sources.

They were surprisingly acquiescing to the notion of its being used against sources. Actually, the

legal aspects of that in my case were hardly ever examined or in the other cases which have

been going on under Obama, the very frail, the unconstitutionality of really what's being done.

And so they stayed aloof from it all. This will never touch us. We have an arrangement with the

government, we do our best to find secrets and they do their best to keep them. And it works out

pretty well for democracy.

Well, it hasn't worked out well for democracy or for our victims in Iraq and Afghanistan, Somalia,

Sudan, all these other places that are victimized in secret wars and it hasn't worked out well for

our democracy at all. So the Assange case gives journalists a chance now to write, to focus

their attention, at last, on the direct threat to their freedom of speech and the unauthorized

disclosure, which is the lifeblood of a republic.

Jimmy Dore

You know, Barack Obama did not prosecute the people who ordered a torture program or

carried it out. And he said that he wasn't going to prosecute them was because all those crimes

happened in the past and Barack Obama was looking towards the future. And I guess all those

people in prison are upset they committed their crimes in the future, I guess. He most recently at

the Democratic convention, Barack Obama said that nobody's above the law, including the

president, yet war criminals are walking free and Julian Assange isn't in jail. Do you have any

ideas on how we can bring war criminals to justice in this day and age?

Daniel Ellsberg

In countries like the U.S., superpowers, victorious or defeated, as in Vietnam, we don't have

crimes trials, and we refuse, of course, the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court, which

I think was an American idea and a considerable extent, I could be wrong there in the

beginning. But of course, then we saw, no, that's not going to apply to us.

In fact, I think there have actually been statements and even legislation to the effect that we

would use force to free Americans who were otherwise going to be brought to trial in The

Hague, in the International Criminal Court. Of course, the very Collateral Murder video, which

was the first big release on Americans that I saw, by the way, people have forgotten that Julian

had been revealing crimes of state in other countries, including China, for years, before that.

This caught people's attention because it was the Americans.

Truth is that Americans have not shown any interest in prosecuting war crimes by Americans

when there have been some trials, and in this case, of course, we have the obscene spectacle

of this president using Eddie Gallagher as actually a campaign supporter, and this from, a

convicted war criminal whom he pardoned for this. And as I mentioned earlier, as a former

lieutenant in the Marine Corps, platoon leader, and company commander, I still have enough of

that identification in me, despite the sorrows of recent decades of the Marines to be shocked

and shocked as a Marine leader, as a platoon leader on that, at the idea of the message that

sends to everybody that atrocities of which Gallagher was possibly accused by his other people

working in the military on that. Ah, no problem if it's an American, meaning that our wars,

whether they're aggression like Iraq or possibly otherwise, there are no laws of war as far as

Americans are concerned, and that will mean even far more victims than otherwise.

One last thing, why did we have been such in pursuit of Obama and of Chelsea Manning, who

was his source actually at that time, it struck me that one of the things that hit home to the

Obama administration was that the torture that Chelsea Manning revealed going on in Iraq

could be put to the White House itself, to Obama, because it extended into the Obama

administration that she revealed these were clear cut war crimes.

What she revealed was that as an intelligence operative, at the time, analysts, she became

aware, then Bradley Manning in the military, that we were turning over Iraqi prisoners to the

Iraqi people, we'd captured with a clear knowledge that they would be tortured and that they had

been tortured. Now, the law of torture in this case, which is international, it's even called just

Cogan's. A crime that cannot be legitimized, cannot be legalized by any legislature, it goes

beyond that, it's an international crime that under any circumstances, whatever part of the law of

that is that to fail to investigate a credible accusation of torture and to fail to prosecute and

punish it is itself a crime equivalent to the torture itself. And for us to turn those people over as

criminal as to do it ourselves. Now, what Chelsea revealed and what Julian published was a

huge pattern of these crimes showing that it wasn't an isolated instance, but clearly was a

policy.

She had been told and many people that she revealed in the Iraqi reports the war logs, and I

was with Julian when he released the Iraq war logs in London, had actually done what she'd

done, which was say these people are going to be tortured and in every case, clearly, as a

matter of policy, they were told, "leave it alone, don't follow that up,". That was an illegal order, it

was followed by everyone but Chelsea, who spent seven and a half years in prison as a result,

essentially, but a policy like that goes up the chain and clearly was allowed by the White House,

by the president.

So she was revealing crimes, war crimes by President Obama and his predecessor, George W.

Bush. And I suspect that has a lot to do with why this is continuing pursuit goes on. Alice has

said, if crime stops at the foot of the government if officials can't be prosecuted and what

Obama did essentially was to decriminalize torture by refusing to prosecute. Jimmy, you're

quoting him and saying, well, that's in the past, strictly speaking, prosecutions referred to the

past, certainly still in this country. And that if you're not going to prosecute, it's effectively not a

crime. He has decriminalized that, which I must say, I think is a terrible stain on Obama. And it's

not too late to reverse that.

Jimmy Dore

Well, you know, one of the reasons why you prosecute a crime, one is for punishment, but the

other is to discourage it from happening in the future. And when you don't prosecute a crime, it

guarantees it's going to continue to happen in the future even if it's not happening right now. So

let me just say, one point you made where you talked about the message it sends to the troops

when Trump goes around with a war criminal and pardons him and the message that sends.

What message does it send when Barack Obama tortures Chelsea Manning, which is what he

did for revealing war crimes? What message does that send?

Daniel Ellsberg

Well, it answers itself, doesn't it? Namely, it's just this pattern that I described. I suspect that's

not solely an American problem. Other countries, I'm sure, are not quick to recognize crimes by

their own people. But really, I remember following the Nuremberg trials when I was young, and I

was very struck by Justice Jackson's, which I remember from the time actually, saying we are

applying laws that are meant to be universal, here.

And if these, this is a paraphrase now, but if these are not to be applied equally to Americans in

the future, this will have been a mockery. Well, that's what happened. They haven't been

applied, they're not being applied, and they should be.

Jimmy Dore

Let me take it back to Professor Chomsky and, you know, the international corporate state fears

investigative journalism. Does the fact that all major news outlets are controlled by billionaires

and corporations? Does that pose a threat to our democracy?

Noam Chomsky

Very seriously, if the United States notices one of the very few countries that does not have any

substantial, meaningful public broadcasting, it's only under private control that this was a battle,

what goes way back to the days of the framing of the Constitution. One of the parts of the

constitution is establishing the post office. This is very much under threat today. Why the post

office? The post office was instituted by the framers as a way to support the free and

independent press. Almost everything that the post office is doing in the early years of the

Republic was providing very inexpensive distribution of press journals, magazines to the

country, I think that was maybe 80% of what they were doing. This was intended as a way to

ensure that there would be a free and independent press, given, what amounts to a subsidy to

be adversarial and independent, that's the source of the post office. One of the reasons why

there are such major attacks against it today. We don't want those of the corporate sector and

those who work for them, don't want a free and independent press. They want to control it. It's

called neoliberalism, turn decisions away from government, which has the flaw that it is

responsible, responsive to some extent of the population. Turn it over into unaccountable

private and then you're safe.

This is going on through American history. When radio came along in the 1920s and 1930s,

there was a great battle there was a very significant battle about whether the airwaves publicly

owned should be used for the benefit of the public and controlled by the church groups,

educational institutions. Other groups wanted it to be free and open. Public radio under public

control, corporate business sectors were strong enough to be able to beat that down. Radio

became private, privately controlled, tiny fringe. The same thing happened in the late 1940s with

television, the same battle. Should it be in the public domain, it's public property, after all, or

should it be handed over to private institutions to run the way they do? Well, you know the

outcome of that the United States has nothing like BBC, France, others, it's a privately owned

system.

Well, the system works. We shouldn't overlook the fact that the press does perform a major

service. I mean, journalists are overwhelmingly honest, courageous. Describe what they see,

you can trust what they say. Just speaking for myself, the first thing I do every morning is read

The New York Times, knowing the flaws of the company, once we understand, we can

compensate for the way the news is framed for what's chosen and what isn't chosen, we can fill

in the gaps. We can correct for the ways in which things are modified and presented. But that is

the main that and others like it are the main source of information.

However, the idea that the media should be truly under the public control, independent, free, the

way the founders interpreted the First Amendment, that's the way they interpreted it, the First

Amendment wasn't just what are called negative rights, the government can't interfere with the

press. The First Amendment was understood by the framers as conferring positive rights, the

government should actively take action to ensure that there is a free and independent press.

Well, that's again, why the post offices in the Constitution is compared to today when the

government is trying to savagely punish and viciously prosecute someone who is carrying out

that mission, and it tells you something about, what we have allowed to happen to our own

freedoms, we can take them back, we don't have to abandon them to a powerful and

accountable institution.

Jimmy Dore

Alice, let me ask you, you've been an activist your entire life. Can you speak to how the current

period of protest is unique and what are the most alarming aspects that you're seeing today?

Alice Walker

Well, I'd actually rather continue talking about Assange, if you don't mind, because I'm really

concerned about him and his family and what is going to happen to them if we fail to free him. I

have lived long enough to witness so many assassinations, for instance, where the person is

killed or put in some dungeon and then the family is just left to, sink or swim, as it will.

And this is an area where I really think we should spend a lot more time really thinking about

what we are doing when we consign people to these dungeons, literally dungeons, and go on

about our lives as if they don't exist. I mean, the talent for forgetting is just amazing to me that

these are people who actually give us so much of their very substance. I mean, Julian didn't

have to do this, but he did because this is the kind of person that he is, he's made like that.

Some people are just made to stand and he is one of those people. And this is a good person.

And it's really just shocking to realize that people can't any longer tell when someone is good. I

mean, they just lost that ability. And we used to have it, you used to just know, oh, that's a good

person there. And now, you know, you just, uh-.

-Anyway, so this is you know, this is an area where we need to do some soul searching,

homework, whatever it takes to regain that ability to -We used to say grok somebody, you have

to be able to grok somebody and know that this person is really the medicine that your

community, your world needs right now in order to stay worth living in. You know, we're losing

the planet because we've forgotten how to tell when somebody is trying to save it. We just can't

tell.

This is a tragedy and it's a human tragedy and we're catching it. You know, we're really

inheriting what happened. And also back to Noam, listening to him and thinking how, all that

early stuff about this country didn't even apply to people of color, and that is also what you're

seeing in the way, war is made on them. You know, the people who are making the war still

believe that the people of color in the world don't really count as people, and so you can just do

whatever you want. And that's the deep, deep racism. Which coming back to your earlier

question, I would say, you know, some of the people now, some of the youth, especially, are

attempting to address-I mean, the white people, they're actually now in many, many numbers,

which is great to see of white people trying to deal with the history of racism, which has to be

dealt with in order for the United States to live and for the rest of the world to live. It is a terrible

wounding that has affected this land. And we have to figure out a way to deal with that,

otherwise, we're sunk.

And I see you are very distracted. What are you doing?

Jimmy Dore

Who me? What am I doing?

Alice Walker

Yes, you.

Well, you seem totally somewhere else, and that's the other problem. You know, we have to

cultivate better listening, you know, and right along with better seeing. And we had to forget

about how things look perfect. None of us are perfect, it's perfect in its imperfection, and just go

on with that.

Jimmy Dore

OK. You know, let me just ask you this question, I was searching for this next question, maybe

that's what you were seeing, my eyes go down to the paper.

We tolerate the horrors of foreign policy in order to achieve the smallest reforms in domestic

policy. We adjust to Internet censorship until it affects us. We live with unspeakable cruelties

towards the Earth and the planet, focusing on human rights, although they are unshakably

interconnected. Can you speak to what the danger of accepting the war on whistle-blowers is,

as many liberals have done throughout the Obama administration and beyond?

Alice Walker

Well, I've been banned a lot in my lifetime, you know, I have been called everything but a child

of God. So what that does is, it hurts. And sometimes, you know, you look for your books or

whatever you produced and they're just not there. Well, they've been banned. Right. So then

you have to think about your livelihood. So that's totally reasonable. You know, you have to eat

and you have to live within housing if you have children and take care of them. So all these

things have to be considered when you then make the decision, whether you're going to just

step up anyway. And that is what is called for, now, just step up anyway.

Jimmy Dore

OK, let me go back to Professor Chomsky if I could. You know, the Internet has given us an

extraordinary platform for dissenting journalism, my show being an example, but now we're

seeing monopolies of big tech that works with government to silence free speech. What is the

future of dissenting journalism in the world when big tech seems to have the power of

censorship and people accept it because it's a quote-unquote, "private company"?

Noam Chomsky

"If people accept it," is the crucial phrase if people accept it to be submissive to private power,

then, of course, they'll take over. But we don't have to be. I mean, Alice mentioned the books

being banned and when books are banned by private power, civil libertarians don't take notice. I

actually had experience with this as well, going back to 1971, which they mentioned, I often

wrote books jointly with my friend Edward Herman.

The first book we published was in 1971, it was a book on counter-revolutionary violence. The

violence used to suppress the popular movements I'm thinking primarily about Vietnam. The

book was published 20,000 copies, pretty small but flourishing publisher, with a conglomerate

and executive of the conglomerate that owned the publisher. Time Warner said they didn't like

the book, ordered the publisher to retract it. When they refused, he put the entire publisher out

of business, destroying all of their books.

This was brought to the attention of civil libertarians, they didn't see any problem with it, after all,

the conglomerate owns the publisher. They want to put them out of business and destroy every

one of their books, not just theirs, that's a liberty, which is I think, was one major exception. Ben

Bagdikian did not stand up and say this is wrong, virtually no one else.

Part of the genius of what we call neoliberalism, what we've been living under for 40 years was

encapsulated in Ronald Reagan's inaugural speech. Everyone knows the phrase, "government

is the problem, not the solution". Translate that into English, that means that these decisions are

going to be made somewhere, but they shouldn't be made in government because the

government is somewhat responsive to the public, and somewhat under the control of the

public. So take them out of public hands, put them in the hands of private tyrannies, which are

totally unaccountable to the public, in law and in practice. And then we will have what's called

liberty. You have liberty if you abandon everything to unaccountable private power. And that's

always been living with for 40 years. And this is very closely connected to the government itself,

if we lose even the capacity to influence the government to permit, not only to permit but to

support and advocate freedom of independent adversarial journalism, we've given up

everything. We've given up the freedoms that the founding fathers established in the

Constitution, we've given up any hope to influence, control the fears that affect us and others.

Very serious issues around that.

Jimmy Dore

You know, Julian Assange said that power is a thing of perception, they don't need to be able to

kill you, they just need you to think they can kill you. Can you speak a little bit about how Julian

Assange imprisonment has already had an effect on dissenting journalism?

Noam Chomsky

Well, I think, Julian Assange, first of all, provided the vast amount of material we've been talking

about, one particular case, exposing the workrooms, but there's a huge amount of important

material, which is being widely used by journalists, by scholars in all sorts of domains, as well as

others, I'm sure, have.

So in the first instance, he provided a great spur to independent journalism. But then the silence

that you've been talking about is casting a pall over that and they're saying we tolerate

suppression of the independent journalism that we, ourselves, benefit from. We're tolerating its

suppression by looking the other way when there's a sacrifice to be made by a person who

stood out for achieving the goals of true independent journalism, he's being sacrificed. We'll stay

silent. That's a very dangerous threat to the independence and freedom, not only of the press,

but of the free democratic society altogether, something that the framers of the Constitution

understood very well, as we mentioned. We want to give it up, let's do it openly and honestly.

Jimmy Dore

Let me go now to Daniel Ellsberg, let me just put that same question to you. Have you seen the

imprisonment of Assange, the effect that it's had already on dissent in journalism?

Daniel Ellsberg

Remember, I'm not a journalist, I'm a soldier, so I see it from that aspect. There's no question

that the various prosecutions you've seen, especially under Obama and now even more, as was

predicted, President Trump has brought more prosecutions, actually, than Obama against

sources, as well as this one against a journalist here. And the intent of that, obviously, is to dry

up the sources, which journalists in general, my impression, as a source, journalists don't see

sources as part of the journalist's process, their raw material or their resources of some sort, I

think journalists tend to see sources, including me, the way that cops feel about their informers,

their informants in the gangs and their snitches. They're criminals. They're breaking a law which

they aren't, as I was trying to explain, that the journalists assume there is a law that applies to

sources, not themselves. And I have to say one more time, the same law that applies to sources

can be directed at the journalists and now is being directed in the form of Julian, and he will not

be the last.

So the intention of this, of course, is to confront people with extreme punishment and to go back

to the nature of this punishment, by the way, let's say, Snowden, despite the fact that this week

there was actually some good news for the first time, which is that a court has held that the law

that Snowden revealed actually, that is to say, the process that he revealed of hearing

everybody in America having denied that they were doing that and having been forbidden by

law to do that, that that was criminal. The law was illegal and probably unconstitutional. Does

that mean that Snowden is home free, that he can't be prosecuted for breaking a law that was

held to be unconstitutional here or exposing a practice that was unconstitutional? No, no,

revealing it is still, the offense, and what would happen to him if he came back? I can predict

that on the excuse of keeping him from telling more secrets to inmates in the general population

in prison, he will be held in solitary confinement for the rest of his life.

I would say, like my friend Mordechai Vanunu, (AKA John Crossman), in Israel, who spent 11

and a half years of a 17-year sentence in solitary confinement. And when Alice mentioned the

human aspects of this, I was really disappointed also, by Jeffrey Sterling, a CIA person that was

not given proper medical attention when he had revealed a total bungle by the CIA and they

were out to get him as a result.

OK, Chelsea's case, where she was held in solitary confinement for 10 and a half months in

Quantico, which led to a lot of public protests, made people aware of how common this solitary

confinement actually is.

Jimmy, you started out by asking questions about torture. It is clear that that is torture, as the

rapporteur for torture at the UN two of them actually in succession, have said that this is

torture. And I think Chelsea's own case made a lot of people aware for the first time what was

happening to a white person. It made them aware, wait a minute, this happens all the time.

People are held for years in solitary confinement and of course, mainly people of color are

convicted of that. That is torture, that is going on right now and should be illegal. So that's a

practice that should change. One last thing, when Alice mentioned how so much of this is done

to people of color. Well, so many of our illegal war, imperial wars in the world are to keep hold of

former colonies, and who were former colonies they are almost always people of color, right. So

they've been screwed over, in other words, for centuries now and by us, in turn.

Well, when Julian published Chelsea's revelation of the State Department's diplomatic cables, a

lot of points were made of the fact that a lot of that didn't involve crimes by us, it involved

offenses in crimes and repressions by other people. And Chelsea, why was that worth her

risking prison and actually suffering prison for? Well, Chelsea said at the time her intention was

to show how the First World, us, deals with the Third World, in terms of busting unions in Haiti,

for example. And a very good example is what was revealed about Tunisia, that had Julian

given the information, let's say, only to The New York Times and not to six or seven newspapers

competing with each other, assuring that a lot of it would get out, the information about Tunisia

was not put out by The New York Times and would not have been about the extreme corruption

of their dictator, Ben Ali. [Tom] LaBonge was one of the people that Julian gave this to and they

gave it to their former colony, Tunisia.

It was printed in Le Monde, picked up in Tunisia, and that led to the freeing of Tunisia from

that dictator who fled days later, there should be a statue in Tunisia, in Tunis to

Chelsea and to Julian, actually. And that's one of the rare cases where the Arab uprising, which

it led to, actually, really has worked out reasonably well so far, a genuine liberation that would

not have happened without Julian and Assange and Chelsea putting out this massive

information from which people could find oppressions all over the world. So it isn't just American

freedom of speech that's at stake here. The imperial order as a whole is maintained by secrecy

and needs to be challenged.

Jimmy Dore

Let me just give everybody a chance to give our closing statement and wrap up as we're coming

to the end of our panel here. Let me start with Professor Chomsky, if you would like to, any last

words you'd like to add?

Noam Chomsky

I would just like to stress once again that popular action in support of Julian Assange will be

critical in determining the outcome of this process of prosecution of someone who is standing up

for our rights, silence is not an option.

Jimmy Dore

Thank you very much and thanks for being a part of the Assange Defense Team and doing this,

and now let's move to Alice Walker. Alice, go ahead. Do you have any final thoughts you'd like

to share?

Alice Walker

Well, I think ignorance is our greatest enemy. And lucky for us, ignorance is something that can

be defeated, you know, and I think if people take the time to actually look into this case and

understand what Assange did and what he's doing and what he's standing for, it will be fairly

simple to realize that this is someone who is trying to give us all a fuller life, a freer life, a

happier life. This man is actually bringing us a gift. And we should be very, very, intelligent

enough to see that, to see that if we look into our lives, there will be all these areas where we

can be free people. We don't have to be just stooges and slaves of whatever the media is telling

us, is the flavor of the week. You know, this is really something I mean, it's a great, great

offering and we should rise up and accept it as the offering that it is. I mean, I don't want it to be

his life, though, that's being offered or the father of the children of Julian Assange. I don't want

them to be like so many of the children of assassinated, imprisoned people where they grew up

without a father. If that happens, how can we bear it, when we could prevent it? We can prevent

it. So I would just say for all of us, you know, just start studying. I believe in study. I believe in

learning. I think learning is one of the greatest things you could do to free yourself. Learn

everything you can about this case. It'll reveal your country to you in a way that perhaps you've

never seen it. And let's just get on with it, we are the many, they are the few.

Jimmy Dore

All right, and let me go to Daniel Ellsberg, any closing thoughts?

Daniel Ellsberg

Yes, I can't help feeling that it's an honor to be on this panel and to see the faces of my fellow

panelists here. I had to laugh when you raised the question about censorship and one of us,

Alice said, "Well, I've been banned, my books are good". And when it comes to my case, I was

prosecuted. Last night, I was reading a book that was one of my great inspirations, actually, for

the Pentagon Papers, I don't know if you can see this, it's Noam Chomsky book. Why was I

reading this now, because I was looking up his chapter on the beginnings and the rationale for

World War Two in the Pacific, and it's the 75th anniversary of Hiroshima, has put me on to

study, from the Japanese point of view, actually the ending of the war. And this book is the one

that first really put in my head as a former official. The notion that, as Noam says over and over

again in the logic of withdrawal in this book, at that time, that Americans act as if we had a right

to be doing what we're doing to be invading Vietnam, to be regime change, as it's now a

commonplace in the idea's very definition of imperialism is, yes, we don't like that country's

leaders, let's get rid of it, assassinate or not, is assassination possible.

What is happening to Assange right now? It can only be understood as a desire by British and

American authorities to see him die rather than to make his case in court. That is my belief.

That's the speculation if you like. That's just the judgment. It's outrageous. It is criminal the way

he is being treated. Many jurists and many doctors in Britain have signed petitions exactly to

that effect that for medical reasons, along with that Alice keeps mentioning. He should be

released or put in totally different offices. And in general, that he is, as I say, being tortured right

now and for, as Alice said, for informing us of information we had a right to know, needed to

know and has made a difference. So as each of them said, Chelsea said that she was,

unfortunately, that she was prepared to go to prison for life or even be killed to get this

information out. And if it wasn't acted on, she would despair of the human species. Snowden

said, who, by the way, Julian was critical in getting Snowden out of Hong Kong and with his

assistant, his aide, Sarah Harrison, who accompanied him on his trip and helped him in Russia,

get exiled in Russia, and Julian, I think, hasn't gotten the credit that he deserves for that on

Snowden. But Snowden said there are things worth dying for. Well, that's true. And these

people should not have to die for what they did, and it's up to us to help keep that from

happening.

Authors Website: https://theanalysis.news/

Authors Bio:

Join "theAnalysis.news" Mailing List.  Paul Jay is a journalist and filmmaker. He's the founder and publisher of theAnalysis.news https://theanalysis.news/ and President of Counterspin Films http://counterspinfilms.com/. His films have won numerous awards at major festivals around the world. He is past chair of the Documentary Organization of Canada, the main organization of documentary filmmakers in Canada. Jay is the founding chair of the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival and chaired the Hot Docs! board for its first five years.  Jay was the co-creator and co-executive producer of Face Off and counterSpin, nightly prime time debate programs that ran for ten years on CBC Newsworld. Jay was the founder of The Real News Network.