Every time you hear some lackey mewling about Muh Press Freedom when talking about a country that the Empire doesn't like, remember that Snowden is exiled, and Assange is de facto imprisoned on bogus charges.
No one seems to be able to think big picture here. We live in a crumbling society and the powers that be frankly revel in their corruption and evil. It would seem some larger strategy could be developed. As the old saying goes, in crisis there is opportunity. What ways can this situation be used? Personally I wrote in Assange/Manning in the 20 elections, since they are the only ones with any actual character in this whole shit show. They looked the Beast in the eyes and didn't blink. It doesn't get any better than that. Life is short and we all seem to be caught up in the details and miss the larger picture.
Obviously they want to make an example of Assange, not make him a martyr. Actually bringing him back for trial to the United States could prove to be a monumental error on their part, if the narrative can be reversed. How about finding ways to put him up in the pantheon of history's long list of martyrs, From Socrates, to Jesus, to MLK? How about posters of Assange next to Biden, asking who will history see as the real hero our age? How about "Free Assange" bumper stickers being printed up and handed out free on college campuses?
If twitter and facebook decide they need to cancel it, it will just go further to show how deep the rot is. There is the opportunity to throw this back in their faces. How can it be leveraged?
It's good to have someone lay out the events that have unfolded over the last couple of decades. Somebody needs to point out that it puts the lie to the US's incessant bleating about a 'rules based international order' which is just code for whatever the hell the US wants to do. I have always assumed that when Ben Franklin told the woman that, yes, she had her republic if she could keep it, he meant that we needed to be doing the right thing under our own steam and not as a result of someone telling us what the right thing was. In that regard, it seems to me that we have failed.
As always (do I begin every response with these two words?) you lay out this matter with honesty, frankness and with - dare I say it - a tenderness - that makes the ugliness of the political skulduggery against Julian Assange all the more stark. Your literary voice Patrick shines through as it shines a light on the darker forces - Stratfor strategies and deviousness of actions against Julian, against Chelsea Manning and against Ed Snowden. I have noted the lack of action by the Australian government - (on both sides of its same coin government - the so-called LNP and its mirror the ALP) - their fealty to the US never to be doubted - all loyalty and tribute paid to that overlord rather than to its own people and its former sovereignty. I look forward to reading further - and thanks for the chance to become a paid subscriber! (Widow's mite though it be!)
Patrick: All my years living in Japan (two of them not far from Kakeya about which you wrote (pp162-163) with reference to the fall from grace of PM TAKESHITA Noboru - the last time I drove through it only five years ago) even your reference to PM TANAKA Kakuei (p.174) and his singing of "Furusato" itself a "bridge" folk song I often sang myself and have done in Scotland too when hosting Japanese friends there with my kinfolk - the similarity of those of us who grew up in rural parts (me in rural New England, NSW) just a few of many references which convinced me over two decades ago that you were a writer of integrity. That (p. 241) SŌSEKI replaced Lafcadio HEARN/KOIZUMI Yakumo at Tokyo U (whose great-grandson became a friend during my years in Matsue - and as in later years chance brought me to places where his writer ancestor had been - New Orleans, Durham - and local sites - and to Akama Jingū in Shimonoseki). "Botchan" is a SŌSEKI novel I have returned to over the years (the character in the 21st century adopted formally as the "mascot" image of the university at a regional branch campus of which I taught over many years - which grew out of Tokyo Butsuri Gakko. A graduate of which in the early 1940s I once interviewed - who had survived the Cowra Incident (a suicide breakout of Japanese PoWs needing to die in battle according to warped injunction from the Imperial Military Rescript). His wife was from a tiny village (Ichinono) in the heights of Wakayama-ken where I had friends (historian of the many Japanese from its coastal south-eastern parts who went pearl-shell diving in northern and north-western Australia - and in fact one of my students at the university had that same man as his Shingū High School homeroom teacher. It is always a small world. I have literally dozens of cousins scattered throughout the US and friendships too. One of my cousins was a state archivist - she suggested I look at Howard Zinn's A People's History of the US - which she then presented to me. And Studs Terkel - so many of his books - "The Good War", "Coming of Age" and so forth. And in later years - Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz. And about Japan - ranging from Frank Gibney (whom I had met when teaching in Germany in the 1970s - then a VP with Encyclopaedia Britannica), Passat, Chalmers Johnson, John Dower, Edward Seidensticker, Donald Richie, Peter Dale (Nihonjinron), Donald Keene, Ian Buruma, Roger Pulvers, Martin Booth, Alex Kerr, Alan Booth, et al - finding my way through the glib and the exaggerated - the superficial and finding the honest understanding. The fair. I had a privileged life in many ways in Japan and I would say that nearly everyone - students and via other introductions - friends - became my teachers. Suimasen...What do you call this in Japanese? Ajisai? Dōmo! Questions on the origins of the Manyōshu - visits to the isles of exile Dōgo and Dōzen, walking the 88-temples. A mere taste of my life there - of course - but to find a writer/commentator such as yourself whose words I know I can trust - and in the on-line presentations I have watched, too, is a precious thing. One day I might hope to catch up in person. A Covid-controlled world! Jim
Every time you hear some lackey mewling about Muh Press Freedom when talking about a country that the Empire doesn't like, remember that Snowden is exiled, and Assange is de facto imprisoned on bogus charges.
No one seems to be able to think big picture here. We live in a crumbling society and the powers that be frankly revel in their corruption and evil. It would seem some larger strategy could be developed. As the old saying goes, in crisis there is opportunity. What ways can this situation be used? Personally I wrote in Assange/Manning in the 20 elections, since they are the only ones with any actual character in this whole shit show. They looked the Beast in the eyes and didn't blink. It doesn't get any better than that. Life is short and we all seem to be caught up in the details and miss the larger picture.
Obviously they want to make an example of Assange, not make him a martyr. Actually bringing him back for trial to the United States could prove to be a monumental error on their part, if the narrative can be reversed. How about finding ways to put him up in the pantheon of history's long list of martyrs, From Socrates, to Jesus, to MLK? How about posters of Assange next to Biden, asking who will history see as the real hero our age? How about "Free Assange" bumper stickers being printed up and handed out free on college campuses?
If twitter and facebook decide they need to cancel it, it will just go further to show how deep the rot is. There is the opportunity to throw this back in their faces. How can it be leveraged?
Thank you. See "martyr" Jim Acosta on martyr Julian Assange:
YouTube Promotes CNN Lies and Hate Speech -- Matt Orfalea
YouTube Promotes CNN's Lies and Hate Speech - by Matt Orfalea - Censored News (substack.com)
https://censorednews.substack.com/p/youtube-promotes-cnn-lies-and-hate
https://censorednews.substack.com/p/youtube-promotes-cnn-lies-and-hate?r=byea&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&utm_source=
Jim Acosta Refuses to Defend the First Amendment in Julian Assange Case - YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyb7fUrjajk
It's good to have someone lay out the events that have unfolded over the last couple of decades. Somebody needs to point out that it puts the lie to the US's incessant bleating about a 'rules based international order' which is just code for whatever the hell the US wants to do. I have always assumed that when Ben Franklin told the woman that, yes, she had her republic if she could keep it, he meant that we needed to be doing the right thing under our own steam and not as a result of someone telling us what the right thing was. In that regard, it seems to me that we have failed.
As always (do I begin every response with these two words?) you lay out this matter with honesty, frankness and with - dare I say it - a tenderness - that makes the ugliness of the political skulduggery against Julian Assange all the more stark. Your literary voice Patrick shines through as it shines a light on the darker forces - Stratfor strategies and deviousness of actions against Julian, against Chelsea Manning and against Ed Snowden. I have noted the lack of action by the Australian government - (on both sides of its same coin government - the so-called LNP and its mirror the ALP) - their fealty to the US never to be doubted - all loyalty and tribute paid to that overlord rather than to its own people and its former sovereignty. I look forward to reading further - and thanks for the chance to become a paid subscriber! (Widow's mite though it be!)
Among the most generous remarks my pieces've ever elicited, Jim. Big thanks for it. P.L.
Patrick: All my years living in Japan (two of them not far from Kakeya about which you wrote (pp162-163) with reference to the fall from grace of PM TAKESHITA Noboru - the last time I drove through it only five years ago) even your reference to PM TANAKA Kakuei (p.174) and his singing of "Furusato" itself a "bridge" folk song I often sang myself and have done in Scotland too when hosting Japanese friends there with my kinfolk - the similarity of those of us who grew up in rural parts (me in rural New England, NSW) just a few of many references which convinced me over two decades ago that you were a writer of integrity. That (p. 241) SŌSEKI replaced Lafcadio HEARN/KOIZUMI Yakumo at Tokyo U (whose great-grandson became a friend during my years in Matsue - and as in later years chance brought me to places where his writer ancestor had been - New Orleans, Durham - and local sites - and to Akama Jingū in Shimonoseki). "Botchan" is a SŌSEKI novel I have returned to over the years (the character in the 21st century adopted formally as the "mascot" image of the university at a regional branch campus of which I taught over many years - which grew out of Tokyo Butsuri Gakko. A graduate of which in the early 1940s I once interviewed - who had survived the Cowra Incident (a suicide breakout of Japanese PoWs needing to die in battle according to warped injunction from the Imperial Military Rescript). His wife was from a tiny village (Ichinono) in the heights of Wakayama-ken where I had friends (historian of the many Japanese from its coastal south-eastern parts who went pearl-shell diving in northern and north-western Australia - and in fact one of my students at the university had that same man as his Shingū High School homeroom teacher. It is always a small world. I have literally dozens of cousins scattered throughout the US and friendships too. One of my cousins was a state archivist - she suggested I look at Howard Zinn's A People's History of the US - which she then presented to me. And Studs Terkel - so many of his books - "The Good War", "Coming of Age" and so forth. And in later years - Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz. And about Japan - ranging from Frank Gibney (whom I had met when teaching in Germany in the 1970s - then a VP with Encyclopaedia Britannica), Passat, Chalmers Johnson, John Dower, Edward Seidensticker, Donald Richie, Peter Dale (Nihonjinron), Donald Keene, Ian Buruma, Roger Pulvers, Martin Booth, Alex Kerr, Alan Booth, et al - finding my way through the glib and the exaggerated - the superficial and finding the honest understanding. The fair. I had a privileged life in many ways in Japan and I would say that nearly everyone - students and via other introductions - friends - became my teachers. Suimasen...What do you call this in Japanese? Ajisai? Dōmo! Questions on the origins of the Manyōshu - visits to the isles of exile Dōgo and Dōzen, walking the 88-temples. A mere taste of my life there - of course - but to find a writer/commentator such as yourself whose words I know I can trust - and in the on-line presentations I have watched, too, is a precious thing. One day I might hope to catch up in person. A Covid-controlled world! Jim