Matt Taibbi: Free Julian Assange

From Matt Taibbi's latest article, "Why Julian Assange Must Be Freed."

[S]ecrets do not belong to governments. That information belongs to us. Governments rule by our consent. If they want to keep secrets, they must have our permission to do so. And they never have the right to keep crimes secret.

I’m an American. Many of you are from the U.K. In our countries, we’re building skyscrapers and huge new complexes to store our secrets, because we don’t have room to keep them all as is!

Why do we have so many secrets? Julian Assange told us why. From an essay he wrote:

'Authoritarian regimes give rise to forces which oppose them by pushing against the individual and collective will to freedom, truth and self realization. Plans which assist authoritarian rule, once discovered, induce resistance. Hence these plans are concealed by successful authoritarian powers.'

When governments become authoritarian, they inspire resistance. Techniques must then be developed to repel that resistance. Those techniques must then be concealed.

In short: the worse a country is, the more secrets it has. We have a lot of secrets now.

Julian Assange became famous as we were creating a vast new government-within-a-government, a system of secret prisons, extraordinary rendition, mass surveillance, and drone assassination. Many of these things we know about only because of Wikileaks. Ostensibly, all this secrecy was needed to fight foreign terrorism.

The brutal irony now is the architects of that system no longer feel the need to hide their dirty tactics. My government, openly, wants to put this man in jail for 175 years, mostly for violations of the Espionage Act. These include crimes like “conspiracy to receive national defense information,” or “obtaining national defense information.”

What is “national defense information?” The answer is what makes this law so dangerous. It’s whatever they say it is. It’s any information they don’t want to get out. It doesn’t even have to be classified. What is conspiracy to obtain such information? We have a word for that. It’s called journalism.

My government wants to put Julian Assange in jail for 175 years for practicing journalism. The government of this country, the U.K., is going to allow it to happen.

If they did this to Andrei Sakharov, or Nelson Mandela, every human rights organization in the world would be denouncing this as an intolerable outrage. Every NGO would be lining up to lend support. Every journalist would be penning editorials demanding his release.

But because our own governments are doing it, we get silence.

If you’re okay with this happening to one Julian Assange, you’d better be okay with it happening to many others. That’s why this moment is so important. If Assange is successfully extradited and convicted, it will take about ten minutes for it to happen again. From there this will become a common occurrence. There will be no demonstrations in parks, no more news stories. This will become a normal part of our lives.

Don’t let that happen.

Free Julian Assange.

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Left-Leaning Corporate Media Tries to be Respectful of the Need for Joe and Hunter Biden to Have some Together Time Shaking Down Chinese Businessman

The New York Post reports:

The IRS Whistle-Blower disclose a disturbing Hunter Biden text message shakedown:

"[IRS whistle-blower] Shapley, who sat for a six-hour deposition with the committee on May 26, took over the Hunter Biden case in January 2020 and said that investigators had turned up fresh evidence of Joe Biden’s involvement in his family’s overseas income.

That included eye-popping communications from Hunter Biden’s iCloud account, Shapley said, citing a message that directly implicated the president in an attempt to coerce money from a Chinese businessman.

“[W]e obtained a July 30th, 2017, WhatsApp message from Hunter Biden to Henry Zhao, where Hunter Biden wrote: ‘I am sitting here with my father and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled. Tell the director that I would like to resolve this now before it gets out of hand, and now means tonight. And, Z, if I get a call or text from anyone involved in this other than you, Zhang, or the chairman, I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction. I am sitting here waiting for the call with my father,'” Shapley recounted.

“We couldn’t believe that we saw that,” the second whistleblower told the committee. “That was more indication that the dad might have been involved.”"

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Who is refusing to discuss this disclosure? NYT, CNN, MSNBC, Washington Post and NPR (as of June 24 at noon, CT).

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Meanwhile, at today's WH Presser, KJP is twisting in the wind, as this video demonstrates at length:

Glenn Greenwald breaks down the story in detail, including the blatant corporate media complicity, at System Update, "Media Silent as IRS Whistleblowers Expose Blatant Biden Family Corruption."

These developments must be terrifying for DNC operatives. Biden is borderline senile and not competent to have conversations without teleprompters. He is so inept that the DNC will not allow Joe Biden to engage in a primary debates, including with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (currently have the support of 20% of Democrats) or Marianne Williamson (currently having the support of 8% of Democrats). Recent results here.

Further complicating things is that there is no Plan B to Joe Biden, given the repeatedly-demonstrated incompetence of Kamala Harris. The DNC won't deny Harris the chance to run for President because they simply would not be able to bear the resulting inevitable charges that they are racist. That's what happens when a corrupt political party decides to pick a VP purely based on optics rather than competence.

Continue ReadingLeft-Leaning Corporate Media Tries to be Respectful of the Need for Joe and Hunter Biden to Have some Together Time Shaking Down Chinese Businessman

The Fine Financial Fortunes of Clarence Thomas

In past decades I looked forward to visiting Washington DC, mostly to see the museums and historic sites. Back in the day, DC brought me good vibes because it reminded me about the genius of the American project and all of the good things the Founders gifted for millions of American people. It was far from perfect, but it was better than what we could see in most other countries and that's why immigrants clamored to join us.

My attitude has soured over the years based on countless revelations of financial conflicts of interests, not the least of which was Nancy Pelosi's surreal ability to know when to buy winning stocks, notably semi-conductor chip stocks. I now think of DC as a cesspool of corruption, not as collateral damage but as its defining attribute. I can no longer look at the photos of the iconic DC architecture without thinking these thoughts. I hear corruption whenever I hear about an acquaintance who has accepted a new job in DC. I think about this whenever a new idealistic politician bursts onto the scene--I shrug and assume it's just a matter of time before their conscience is unburdened by new financial "opportunities." We have so many examples of politicians who choose personal gain over serving the people that it has ceased to be news. More than ever, the job description of politician is this: non-stop fundraising to hire the best PR machine so one can surf the election cycle to accrue more money and power.

That's how I see it, more than ever. Until recently, my concern and distress have been focused on the Legislative and Executive branches of government. But now Propublica has dropped this bomb about the financial fortunes of Clarence Thomas. Follow the full tweet-thread if you dare.

What do you think? Could this lifestyle possibly influence one's judicial mindset? In how many ways could it scramble one's mind and conscience to ride this private gravy-train for years while purporting to serve the public? I wish Propublica had the bandwidth to run deep investigations into the financial and social ties of ALL of our federal judges, as well as all of our federal representatives. I'd like to know this as a mere curiosity, as the U.S. continues its slide toward third world status.

Photos by Erich Vieth

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About Two “So-Called” Journalists and the Corrupt Congresswoman who Attacked Them

Russell Brand, as animated as ever, showcases the corrupt history of Debbie Wasserman-Schultz as he simultaneously advocates for free speech. Brand didn't appreciate that Wasserman-Schultz called Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger "so-called reporters." Got him a bit riled up. I had the same reaction when I watched the hearings live . . .

Continue ReadingAbout Two “So-Called” Journalists and the Corrupt Congresswoman who Attacked Them