A non-blog by Luca Ammendola

Category: Politics

GLOBALISATION AND IDENTITY

From the Film “The New World” by Terrence Malick

Neoliberal globalist capitalism is animated by two tendencies, diametrically opposed in practice and yet absolutely converging in purpose. These propensities are both political and economic. The first is a separative trend while the second is a propensity for homologation. The separative tendency of neoliberal capitalism is a political manoeuvre whose purpose is the attempt to practice the famous Roman adage “divide et impera” while the propensity for cultural homologation of the masses is a condition sine qua non for the unification of the market, of consumers and of products. These two aspirations, despite their apparent divergence, are none other than the two primary methodologies aimed at maintaining, strengthening and developing the system. 

SEPARATIVE TREND

The capitalist economic/political system, as Marx explained much better than me, is naturally, structurally, divisive. In fact, it tends to create, strengthen and favour the division of society into classes of “winners and losers”, exploited and exploiters. The globalist and neoliberal drift of capitalism today has not only highlighted this innate tendency of the system, but has accentuated it. Nowadays, the disproportionate difference between rich and poor has grown out of all proportion and tends to accelerate. As an example, I report the following data: during the year 2018 an average Amazon worker earned $ 30,000; roughly the same amount that Jeff Bezos, CEO of the company, earned every 10 seconds.

Although neoliberal globalist capitalism has as its sole purpose the greatest profit for the least number of people, this discrepancy between the economic power of the “masters of steam” and the vast majority of the people has become a serious problem. Obviously it is a problem for the working people, who see the fruit of their work transferred and concentrated in the hands of a transnational elite, but it has also become a problem for the elite themselves who, responsible for the social injustice (or legalised theft) in action, runs the risk of being overwhelmed by an ever more conceivable “awakening of consciences”

One of the strategies adopted by the “masters of the world” to respond to this problem, and to subvert and channel the growing anger of the people, is that, as mentioned above, of the use of the old Roman stratagem of “divide and rule”. The greatest danger to the status quo, in fact, is a condensation along party lines of the people. A massive organisation of intentions and their political coordination would mark the end of the current system in a short time. It is therefore of paramount importance, from the point of view of the elites, to ensure that this does not happen. Any form of commonality of objectives, of community aggregation and legislative compactness must be (and in fact it is) blocked, ostracised and discouraged.

The capitalist system, in fact, has as its first enemy the social pact intended as a defense of the interests of the many and as a cohesive attempt of the human brotherhood. The dominant economic and political apparatus therefore desires individuals emptied of any collective belonging and therefore politically solitary individuals unable to refuse everything that capital will want to impose on them.

This politically separative tendency is evident in many aspects of today’s social and working life. From the systematic weakening of trade unions, to the impoverishment of community work in favour, for example, of teleworking or the gig economy, which exploits the worker in his condition as an atom separated from the working community (and moreover devoid of any form of right), there are many examples that could be made of this current. But no example is more evident and oppressive than the perpetual separative effort of identity (individual and individualist).

This effort – of culture, media and propaganda – aims to separate the mass, the people, which if united would represent a revolutionary potential, into small nuclei closed in on themselves, not communicating, antagonistic and therefore in constant struggle with each other. This is often rightly defined as a “struggle between the poor”

The people are then incited by power, mainly through propaganda, to form factions at odds with each other. These factions, or non-dialoguing dichotomies, are continuously and alternately fomented by the ruling class through the lever of individual, particular and exclusive identity. So we see white versus blacks, natives versus migrants, men versus women, Christians versus Muslims, heterosexual versus homosexuals, yes-vax versus no-vax and so on step into the ring of social conflict. These conflicts, albeit spontaneously existing, are continuously amplified both by the media drums and by the system itself which, by producing masses of dispossessed forced to compete with each other, creates the conditions for conflict. The purpose of this operation is to push the divided people to fight against themselves horizontally and to distract them from the true source of their discontent (the elite capitalist system) which would instead require a vertical struggle against the guardians of the established social condition.

In other words, the separative attitude of the capitalist system is nothing more than a weapon of mass distraction unsheathed in defense of the uncritical and static conservation of the system itself. The citizen is led to believe that the fault of his condition is, for example, the migrant and that if he were to disappear this would change his social and economic situation. At the same time, the migrant is pushed to believe that he is not well liked by the native population because of the color of his skin and not because, probably without knowing it, he has arrived in a country whose social and economic fabric is at the end of it’s tether and his presence is therefore seen as one too many. These contrasting and specifically targeted narratives allow the system and its defenders to transform two potential allies into bitter enemies.

This is an old trick but it is very efficient. A bit like skilful pickpockets, the defenders of the established power distract the citizen by attracting his attention to the left hand while stealing his wallet with the right. 

HOMOLOGATING TREND

The second propensity of globalist capitalism is diametrically opposite to the one just described. The globalist economic system, in fact, is formed on what the philosopher Diego Fusaro calls “neutralising inclusion” and that is a necessary, from the point of view of the system, neutralisation of regional cultural specificities. This has a purely economic function.

The economic task of this trend is to standardise the production model and the way of consumption of goods. To summarise this task, we can cite the famous exclamation of Henry Ford who, speaking of the choice his customers had on the color of his cars, said: “They can choose the color they want. As long as it’s black! ”. Here, global capitalism similarly exclaims: “You can choose the product you prefer. As long as it’s ours!

The aim of globalised capitalism is to sell as many products as possible to as many consumers as possible. To achieve its aim, the system needs neutral, indistinct, narcissistic and above all homologated consumers. This allows the merchant to exponentially expand the market and therefore the number of consumers that can be reached by the same product. In other words, to achieve the maximum possible profit, the globalised capitalist system wants everything to be selfsame. The product must be the same as must be the consumer.

The homologating trend of the market is particularly visible in the clothing sector. The new frontiers of fashion are pushing more and more towards a thinner proposal of differences. Just think of unisex garments or homogeneous prêt-à-porter whether it is sold in Italy or sold in China. Perhaps the most striking example of this homologation can be found in the famous “United Colors” advertising of the Benetton brand where children of all races, and therefore representatives of different cultures, all pose together dressed in the same way. In short, “United Colors” yes, but under the sign of dollar green.

The biggest obstacle to this consumerist relativism therefore remains the regional and cultural identity under the spur of the specific popular tradition. This tradition, deriving from the particular history of a given people, reflects its peculiarity and therefore, consequently, its identity. This regional typicality is what global capitalism refuses and tries to destroy and level by any means, be it propaganda, cultural, political or economic. It should therefore not be surprising that the two prevailing political visions fork between sovereignty and globalism and that the economic ones between globalised production and consumption and locally sourced one

In short, the capitalist and globalist “open society” wants nothing more than a society emptied of its specific cultural values, a society which, therefore, devoid of tradition, can be moulded at will by the market and in which it is possible to insert products manufactured in mass and consumed by the multitude. This economic system yearns to neutralise any communal aspiration other than that of commercial exchange, that is, the market. The state, a fundamental organ for the democratic expression of the polis, is therefore extorted from its congenital function and forced to govern FOR the market instead of governing THE market.

It should be briefly remembered that all dictatorships tend towards standardisation because this destroys individuality and consequently weakens the attitude and habit of dissent. The concrete example is the uniform imposed by the dictator; which on the one hand unites the wearer and on the other kills all forms of originality. The peculiarity of today’s financial dictatorship is that it simultaneously promotes uniformity of tastes and encourages a false choice (the Fordian “As long as it is black!” Which updated becomes “As long as they are jeans!”). To summarise, it could be said that without cultural roots the citizen loses his specific regional identity, without identity he loses the sense of belonging to a community and without communal awareness he loses his ability to resist. Which is exactly what the system wants.

Following this thought, a question arises spontaneously: if the aim of the system is to homogenise the heterogeneous cultures, which dominant culture must they adapt to? What is the original archetype to clone? The answer is obvious and predictable. The cannibal and oppressive cultural model is that of the “American way of life”. A North American model based on unbridled and low-quality consumption, on extreme individualism, on wild competition and promoter of a childish and infantilising culture. In short, the “fast-food and quick money” model. 

IDENTITY AND BORDERS

The greatest fallacy of modern thought consists in confusing the right and necessary yearning for equality with the erroneous and destructive claim of sameness. While equality is a sacrosanct political claim built on justice, both social and economic, sameness is an overbearing and tyrannical attempt to level the different. This levelling assumes, as we have seen previously, a collective approach to a basic model (in our case the North American one) from which to clone the multiple manifestations of being. Like a virus, sameness takes hold of the other to make it the same, thus destroying the individual and collective identity of peoples.

In fact, identity can only exist in difference. One is one because it is not the other. I am me because I am not you. It is precisely in the mediation of differences that the individual understands, nourishes and enriches his own specificity. Open and respectful dialogue, therefore, becomes a necessary means to ensure that two distinct realities can communicate. Without difference, the dialogue becomes a repetitive and demeaning monologue, a killer of fantasy, education and relationships. On the contrary, true dialogue forces the parties to try to understand each other without therefore abandoning their own perspective. In doing so, true dialogue enriches and embellishes one’s own identity, and that of the other, through comparison.

This peculiarity of the human experience is most noticeable in the act of traveling. During the trip, the citizen comes into contact with a social and cultural reality different from his own. From it, in the first place, he observes and learns different visions, rites and approaches to the human adventure and secondly he compares them with his own. The exploration of the different increases his wisdom and the comparison with it increases his awareness of identity. Anyone who travels, once back home, brings back not only new knowledge and the scent of distant worlds, but also a new sensitivity in observing his own gardens.

It is too often forgotten evidence that every culture, however different, is nothing more than a manifestation of the human race. Humanity, unitary in itself, stands out in its plurality, complexity and variety. In fact, regional cultural identity is nothing more than a narrative identity deriving from specific stories, traditions and memories. 

Just as between two human beings, at the micro level, identity arises from the distinction from the other, at the macro level the national culture is geographically distinguished within the border. The national border, the frontier, is nothing more than the delineation of the limits of a reality beyond which the other exists. This limit defines the historical, cultural and traditional identity of a people but also, and perhaps above all, determines it’s sovereignty, that is, the possibility of governing it’s own destiny.

In ancient times of war the victorious aggressor, as a first move, demolished the walls of the conquered city. The demolition of the walls was a conquest for the aggressor but a loss for the attacked. During the Peloponnesian War, when Sparta conquers Athens on the battlefield, it orders, according to the surrender pacts stipulated, to tear down its walls. This is not done to unite Sparta and Athens in brotherhood but to leave Athens naked, so to speak, defenceless, vulnerable to the command of Sparta. It should therefore come as no surprise that Athens would never regain its former prosperity and that the collapse of its walls marks the end of the golden age of Hellenic civilisation. The demolition of the border is always an act of colonisation by the dominant army or thought or economic system which, as we have seen repeatedly, wishes to impose its own supervision and consequently dominate the other. It follows that the famous speech of Pericles to the Athenians “Here in Athens we do so”, in which the famous politician describes the characteristics of Athenian democracy, once the city walls have fallen, no longer subsists. Without the walls that delineate Athens, there is no longer a “here” or a “we”. And without them it is impossible to define the “we do so” as distinct from another doing. 

To return to our times, it is clear that the principles of nation, sovereignty, tradition and cultural identity are under attack from an anthropophagous economic system that intends to destroy the different in order to impose its own. In this context it seems obvious that the current demonisation of national borders is nothing more than a trick of capitalism which wishes to colonise the minds and bodies of the world in the name of profit. The political and media campaigns conceived to execute the very principle of nation as an intrinsically racist, warmongering and isolationist principle serve transnational capital to destroy and abolish all the legal, political and economic defense systems available to the various peoples. The globalist and capitalist “no border” society wishes to see the same triumph on a global scale: one language, one thought, one law, one single way of producing and consuming… in short, a single way of life dictated and controlled by an always narrower elite.

We can therefore conclude that there are two types of universalism: the first perceives the levelling and in-distinction of the parts as the only way of union; the second, on the contrary, celebrates and defends differences as the only healthy and fraternal attitude of being in the world. 

NEOCOLONIALISM

In an episode of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s masterpiece “The Brothers Karamazov” a noblewoman, as pious as she is rich, visits the starec (Christian mystic) Zosima in her monastery. Moved by a profound crisis of conscience, she confesses to him that: “I love humanity, but to my great surprise, the more I love humanity in general the less I love man in particular.” The episode described by the Russian master perfectly describes the dilemma in which today’s societies find themselves.

Driven by an honest desire for peaceful and fraternal coexistence, peoples, guided by globalist propaganda, believe that borders are the problem, forgetting that true equality and true brotherhood is not the elimination of differences but rather the development of them in respect of their specific identity and therefore of their otherness. In short, true equality is the antithesis of standardisation. Or as one of the characters of the Idiot, also by Dostoevsky, exclaims: “In abstract love for humanity, one almost always ends up loving only oneself.”

And it is for this strange game of the human soul that the “no border open society” is nothing but the most vulgar form of nationalism. True nationalism, in fact, is the reduction of cultural differences to one; the desire, in fact, to impose a vision (the “American way of life”) on all the others and to standardise all human expressions. This is called colonialism.

I leave you with extracts from Pericles’ “Speech to the Athenians”, which was pronounced over 2500 years ago. 

Our form of government does not enter into rivalry with the institutions of others. Our government does not copy our neighbours’, but is an example to them. The administration is in the hands of the many and not of the few and for this we are called a democracy.

Here in Athens we do so. 

There exists equal justice to all and alike in their private disputes, the claim of excellence is also recognised; and when a citizen is in any way distinguished, he is preferred to the public service, not as a matter of privilege, but as the reward of merit and poverty is not an obstacle.

Here in Athens we do so. 

There is no exclusiveness in our public life, and in our private business we are not suspicious of one another, nor angry with our neighbour if he does what he likes.We are free, free to live at ease, and yet are equally ready to face the perils which we face.  While we are thus unconstrained in our private business, a spirit of reverence pervades our public acts; we are prevented from doing wrong by respect for the authorities and for the laws, having a particular regard to those which are ordained for the protection of the injured as well as those unwritten laws which bring upon the transgressor of them the reprobation of the general sentiment.

Here in Athens we do so.

We do not consider a man uninterested in the state harmless, but useless; and although few are able to give life to a policy, everyone here in Athens is able to judge it. We do not see discussion as an obstacle on the way to democracy. We believe that happiness is the fruit of freedom, but freedom is only the fruit of merit. In short, I proclaim that Athens is the school of Hellas and that every Athenian grows by developing in himself a happy versatility, self-confidence, readiness to face any situation and that is why our city is open to the world and we we never chase a foreigner. 

Here in Athens we do so.

ALEXEY NAVALNY: HERO OR PUPPET?

From the Film “Snow White and the seven dwarfs” by William Cottrell

Note to the reader: this article in no way wants to argue that Vladimir Putin is a patron saint of democracy, that there is no corruption within his government or that political murder (or attempt) is unconceivable (but whoever is without sin cast the first stone). The intent is simply to take a more careful look at Alexey Navalny’s character.

Who is Alexey Navalny? On his Wikipedia profile we learn that he was born in 1976 in Obninsk about 100 kilometers southwest of Moscow and is of Ukrainian descent. He is described, also by Wikipedia, as “a leader of the Russian opposition, politician, lawyer and anti-corruption activist.” Navalny came to international prominence by organising demonstrations against the corruption of President Vladimir Putin and his government.

As we can read on his official profile, he was trained at the American University of Yale as a member of the “Greenberg World Fellows Program”, a program created in 2002 for which, every year, only 16 people, with such characteristics as to make them “Global leaders”, are selected worldwide. They are part of a network of “leaders globally committed to making the world a better place”, currently made up of 291 members from 87 countries, each in contact with each other and all connected to the US center of Yale. 

In 2000, Navalny joined the Russian Unified Democratic Party Yabloko, a small party within the Russian political landscape (In the last presidential elections, Yabloko won 1.05% of the vote). In April 2004, Navalny becomes chief of staff of the Moscow branch but in 2007 he is expelled for his nationalist views.

In 2005 he co-founded the “Democratic Alternative” movement, one of the beneficiaries of the National Endowment for Democracy (Ned), a powerful US “private non-profit foundation” which, with funds also provided by Congress, finances, openly or under the table, thousands of non-profit non-governmental organisations in over 90 countries to “advance democracy”. It is an open secret that Ned is one of the branches of the CIA for covert operations, which has been, and still is, particularly active in Ukraine. In the country of his ancestors, Navalny supported the Maidan Revolution which, according to him: “overthrew a corrupt government that prevented democracy”. It matters little that, with the Maidan Square’s putsch, an even more corrupt government was installed in Kiev, whose democratic character is represented by the neo-Nazis who occupy key positions (and this is not an euphemism, they are literally neo-Nazis who openly promote ideas such as “white supremacy” and “white power”). 

Another interesting aspect, that I invite you to consider, is the fact that Navalny’s wife is the daughter of a powerful former KGB operator and banker responsible for Russian properties in London, Boris Abrosimov. Abrosimov is a colleague of the better known former KGB colonel and Russian oligarch Alexander Lebedev, owner and editor of some British newspapers, whose son has recently become a Peer of England (a noble title). All of this would seem to indicate that Navalny is deeply connected to the dark places where Russian and Western intelligence services, and their bankers, forge confidential ties. 

In any case, in 2007 Navalny created a second political movement called “The People” which presented a clearly xenophobic, nationalist, identity and anti-immigration program. At the same time he records video blogs in which he compares people from the South Caucasus to dental caries and migrants to cockroaches that should be crushed. In one of these videos, Navalny plays the part of a teleshopping host, explaining the various remedies available to ward off insects and cockroaches. At the end of the video, however, these animals suddenly turn into religious extremists of clear Islamic faith, whom Navalny recommends chasing away with the use of a gun.

Here is the video link: https://youtu.be/oVNJiO10SWw 

In 2013 he ran for the mayor of Moscow, finishing second after the incumbent Sergey Sobyanin. He collects 21.9% of the votes against 60.1% of his opponent.

In 2018 he decides to enter the presidential race. However, he is not allowed to run due to two conditional convictions for fraud (although we must consider that he stood between 1% and 4% in opinion polls before he was declared ineligible for the election).

Navalny’s positions and political views, as we have seen, are far-right, anti-immigration and anti-homosexuals. His economic views, on the other hand, favour privatisation and the free market, and he is supported by many post-Soviet capitalists, from oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky to former head of the Russian central bank, Sergei Aleksashenko.

Importantly, his popularity is high only in large cities, and the situation in the regions is drastically different. While for some people he simply remains an unknown character, and many remain neutral, people in general are more wary of him than they are of the Russian government or of Putin personally. His popularity has grown somewhat in the wake of the alleged poisoning (which I will write about shortly) but he remains a figure of little political significance. In the latest survey on the number of people who trust significant political figures in the Russian political landscape, done in August 2020, Navalny came in third place with 2% (after 40% of Vladimir Putin and 4% of Vladimir Zhirinovsky). Indeed, taking a closer look at the election results and all the available polls it is clear that the most significant opposition to President Vladimir Putin is not Navalny. The real opposition party is the CPRF (The Communist Party of the Russian Federation) which holds a consistent presence in the Duma.

Yet the Wall Street Journal describes Navalny as “the man Vladimir Putin fears most”

HEROIC ICON OF THE WEST

It is interesting to note that the newspaper “La Stampa” (one of the major newspapers in Italy), in 2012, spoke of Navalny as a “xenophobic blogger”, defining the political area within which he militated and still militates as “ultra-right galaxy” and “ultra-nationalist”. Yet eight years later the same newspaper describes Navalny as “the Russian Nelson Mandela” (no less!!). What has changed in these eight years? Well, Navalny was poisoned by Putin in an evil attempt to take out his “most dangerous rival”. At least that’s the official story as told by CNN, the BBC, and all those brave beacons of truth commonly known as mainstream media. Obviously the beacons of truth forget to specify that Putin’s “most dangerous rival” is a man who has never held any office, his political party does not have a single member of parliament in the Duma, and holds about 2% of support from the Russian people. But let’s forget these little details and get to the facts.

On August 20, 2020, Navalny falls seriously ill while mid-flight from Tomsk, Siberia, to Moscow. The plane is abruptly rerouted to make an emergency landing in the Siberian city of Omsk, where Navalny is immediately hospitalised for suspected poisoning and placed in a pharmacological coma.

Two days later, Navalny is flown to Germany in an evacuation organised by a human rights NGO based in Berlin. His transport, on an “ambulance/plane” with German specialists on board, is authorised by the Russian authorities.

While Russian doctors in Omsk (who probably saved Navalny’s life) claim they have found no evidence of chemical weapons in his system, the German government, after a quick review, announces that their military lab has found “unambiguous evidence” that Navalny was poisoned by a cold war-era nerve agent, Novichok. The German government seeks explanations from the Kremlin without providing any of this evidence either to Moscow or the public.

Despite being the alleged victim of an extremely lethal military nerve agent, considered worse than sarin or VX gas, three weeks later Navalny comes out of the coma defiantly vowing to return to Russia.

By pure coincidence, all of this happens just as Nord Stream 2, the second line of the huge gas pipeline under construction from Russia to Germany opposed by the United States and several NATO allies, is almost completed. Suddenly, the diplomatic confrontation between Germany and Russia stops the controversial project. Chancellor Angela Merkel and the German government, under pressure from Washington, consider withdrawing from the project that would increase Russian influence on European energy infrastructure and compete with more expensive US exports. But don’t think about it too much, these are just conspiracy theories

Be that as it may, three days before Joe Biden’s inauguration as the new American president (another coincidence?), Navalny returns to Russia where he is promptly arrested for violating the terms of his bail. He knew very well that this would happen and that it would unleash the hysteria of the Western media (which has promptly happened). Hysterics due to his 30-day prison sentence. Yes, you read that right: thirty DAYS, not years. He will be released before the spring and even if he is convicted with the numerous charges of embezzlement and fraud, he risks more or less three years in prison (just for comparison, Nelson Mandela, the real one, was imprisoned for 27 years).

Within Russia, reactions to the allegations against Navalny vary with the political views of commentators: those who support Navalny and his activities generally claim he is not guilty, while his political opponents generally claim otherwise. It is certainly not up to me to judge and I candidly admit my ignorance about it. 

UNCOMFORTABLE QUESTIONS

The doubt remains: is Alexey Navalny a heroic defender of the Russian people persecuted by Putin or a puppet in the hands of the anti-Russian Western propaganda? I will leave it to you, dear readers, to decide using your mind and your sensibility. Like always I invite you to do your own research and, if you’ll like, share with me your findings.

As for me, I have a series of questions that run through my head and to finish off I would like to share them with you:

  • How is it possible that the entire Western political and media apparatus, which thunders against Trump because he is a racist and a nationalist, gives complete and total support to a Russian racist and nationalist?
  • Who truly benefits from this story?
  • Would Russian President Vladimir Putin really try to assassinate an opposition figure who holds a tiny 2% support among the population?
  • If so, why use Novichok, a nerve gas already widely and publicly associated with Russia? What’s wrong with the old bullet in the back of the head and consequential burial somewhere in the Siberian steppe?
  • How the hell it’s possible that Novichok, a deadly military poison, never kills anyone? Has the old KGB, now FSB, really become a den of amateurs unable to kill anyone?
  • If the Russian state, or Putin, poisoned Navalny, why did the plane on which he fell ill made an emergency landing and Navalny was taken directly to a hospital for medical treatment?
  • Why were no traces of unusual substances found by the two Russian laboratories that analysed Alexei Navalny’s blood when he was hospitalised in Omsk?
  • If Navalny was exposed to a highly infectious substance like Novichok, why has no one else around him suffered from it or showed any signs of poisoning?
  • If the Russian state, or Putin, has poisoned Navalny, why was he allowed to leave the country and receive treatment abroad? Especially knowing that sooner or later the Novichok inside his body would be detected.
  • Why has the German government never provided any evidence, either to Moscow or the public, of the poisoning?
  • But above all, and this is the most important question of all, has Navalny been tested for Covid-19? 

A short time after publishing the article above an old friend of mine Oleg Konovalov, a Russian citizen who lives in Moscow, wrote to me to “point out a few things” as he says. Please note that I don’t necessarily agree with everything he writes but am extremely grateful to him for his wonderful insight and decided, with his permission, to add his message to the article. Here it is:

Hi Luca! How are things? I hope all is well! I’ve just read the article you posted on Alexey Navalny. I’d like to point out a few things. For anyone in Russia thinking that the communist party is a true opposition is just naive. There are 4 parties in the parliament with the communist party being one of them. And none of them are actually opposition parties. They are called “systemic opposition” and they are the same muppets of the kremlin as United Russia is. The Duma is not a proper parliament. It has become one of the tools of the kremlin and not an independent state institution. Another thing, you probably wrote the article before yesterday’s court hearings, as now Navalny got a real prison sentence for 2 years and 8 months. And now to the important questions – how is he making all of his investigations into the facts of corruption and how did he manage to not get a real prison sentence before? He is the only person in Russia to have received a conditional term on 2 criminal charges. A second criminal charge never gets a conditional term. I have my version of why this happened. There are several groups of interest in the top power in Russia. Even Putin and Medvedev are different groups and despite being a tandem, when Medvedev was president, at some point he was in a big conflict with Putin and wanted to go for the second term of presidency. These different groups have been using Navalny as a mechanism in their political struggle. They were leaking compromising materials to Navalny and helping him look in the right direction to find the details that he was disclosing in his investigations. They needed some sort of guarantees to keep him from being too active, so he was under the first conditional sentence. The second conditional sentence is on charges that might be real, but the whole process was organised improperly, without following the normal procedures, and there are big doubts about how real the whole situation is. But the guys in power were also scared of him because they don’t know exactly what information he has about them and what may leak into the media in case of his actual imprisonment. And that gave him some sort of comfort. I am actually expecting more revelations to come from his team now that he has been sentenced to a real term. And to answer the question that you put in your article – is he a hero or a puppet? I think the answer is that he is neither one. There are too many forces that thought that they can use him as a puppet, and he played along. He got the support that he needed from abroad. He has far more support in Russia than one may think. The official polls are very misleading. People are afraid of admitting that they support him. And there are many that don’t fully support him, but in the situation that we have with no other people in opposition, when given the choice between him and the current power he would be the lesser of two evils. So he has support both outside and inside the country. And everything that he has been doing, he was doing based on his own personal political and economic interests. He is a very selfish and egoistic character who is making use of the situation. Being a puppet is not something that he is happy with, and being a hero is not on his agenda. And one more thing – the link between him and Alexander Lebedev as a former KGB official doesn’t actually go to show anything. The former KGB officials have ended up in all spheres of life. Lebedev actually has political ambitions and he is in opposition to the current elite, but for him Navalny would be more of a competitor than an ally. And this is the problem of the opposition in Russia. They can’t unite. They all want to be the leaders. That’s what killed Yabloko as a political force, which is where Navalny started his political career. As for being a real political threat to Putin, Navalny is nowhere near that level, at least not yet. But he can be used as an instrument by Putin’s rivals, and that’s what the real threat is. Who exactly would use him – there can be different people. But if Navalny lets them use him, he will definitely try to get something substantial out of it for himself. I know I was a bit hectic and all over the place, but hopefully this will give you some insight from an unbiased source in Russia that will help you get a better understanding of the situation.

THE SAGA OF JULIAN ASSANGE – PART THREE

From the Film “Papillon” by Franklin J. Schaffner

HIGHWAY TO HELL

In November 2011, following the publishing of the Afghan and Iraqi logs, the US government, under the banner of the Grand Jury in Alexandria, Virginia begin investigating Assange and Wikileaks. At the same time the FBI begins an independent investigation. The indictment (the criminal charges) remains secret and sealed for eight years although it takes a small leap of imagination to envisage what it could contain. 

On the 11th of April 2019, the day of Assange’s arrest in London, the indictment against him is unsealed. One could wonder about such timing but the reason is pretty simple: in the eyes of the US government Assange is now in the hands of an allied country (one could say accomplice or vassal, depending on the point of view) that will facilitate Assange extradition. He is charged with conspiracy to commit computer intrusion (hacking into a government computer), a relatively minor crime that carries a maximum 5-year sentence, with a possibility of parole, if found guilty.

The indictment stems from an incident in 2010, when Assange allegedly told his source, then Army private Chelsea Manning, that he would help crack a password that would have given her deeper access to the military computers from which she was leaking classified material to WikiLeaks and allow her to use a different username to avoid detection. At this time it’s not clear if Assange ever successfully cracked the password. 

In other words the US department of justice claims that Julian Assange didn’t just receive info from an informant and then published it (which is not a crime, rather it is good journalism) but that he conspired with his source (Manning) and aided her to obtain information (which is a crime as an act of espionage). The information was then used, the US department of justice claims, to injury the US for the advantage of a foreign nation (this begs the question which nation? And if Assange is a spy, he’s spying on whose account? The people’s?). In short the US government hopes to prove that Assange is a spy and not a journalist

On the 23rd of May 2019, Assange is indicted on 17 new charges relating to the Espionage Act of 1917 in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. These are: conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defense information, conspiracy to commit computer intrusions, seven counts of obtaining national defense information, and nine counts of disclosure of national defense information. These charges carry a maximum sentence of 170 years in prison without the possibility of parole. Most cases brought under the Espionage Act have been against government employees who accessed sensitive information and leaked it to journalists and others. Prosecuting people for acts related to receiving and publishing information has not previously been tested in court.

When the full indictment against Assange becomes of public knowledge a worldwide debate about freedom of speech and freedom of press begins. The whole question revolves around this distinction: is Julian Assange a journalist or a spy?

Most representatives of the US government defend the view that Assange is a spy and not a journalist. The Vice-President of the United States, Joe Biden (the great shining knight of hope), goes as far as calling him a terrorist. Once they finally understand what Assange’s case could mean for journalistic practices, the mainstream media wakes up. The New York Times comments that it and other news organisations obtained the same documents as Wikileaks also without government authorisation. It also says it is not clear how Wikileaks’s publications are legally different from other publications of classified information. The US allegation that Assange’s publication of these secrets was illegal is deemed controversial by CNN, the Washington Post and other mainstream media.The Associated Press claims that Assange’s indictment presents media freedom issues, as Assange’s solicitation and publication of classified information is a routine job journalists perform.

Edward Snowden said it best: “The Department of Justice just declared war––not on Wikileaks, but on journalism itself. This is no longer about Julian Assange: this case will decide the future of media.” He was echoed by Ron Paul (a candidate in the Republican primaries of 2008 and 2012): “In a free society we’re supposed to know the truth… In a society where truth becomes treason, then we’re in big trouble. And now, people who are revealing the truth are getting into trouble for it.” He added “This is media, isn’t it? I mean, why don’t we prosecute The New York Times or anybody that releases this?”

This is the whole problem with the Assange’s case. The charges built against Assange could be applied to any other media and journalist. With Assange trial what is really at stake is not only the life of the most courageous journalist and publisher of our time but the freedom of the press itself. If Julian Assange is considered a publisher he is imprisoned as one. And it this message goes through, that publishing material that damages the reputation and activity of the Us government will put you in jail, every journalist in the world should be scared. And that’s exactly the point. Julian Assange is being used as an example to send a clear message to journalists around the world: your rights to freedom of press exist as long as we decide they do. If you ever dare publishing damaging material against the US government you will be put in prison.

The case against Julian Assange could be epitomised with the latin motto “Unum castigabis, centum emendabis” (strike one to educate a hundred), which, in modern times, was brought back into fashion by none other than Mao Tse-Tung.

EXTRADITION TRIAL

The first hearing into the US request for Assange’s extradition is held in London on the 2nd of May 2019. The trial is presided by Judge Emma Arbuthnot. When asked whether he consented to extradition, Assange replies: “I do not wish to surrender myself for extradition for doing journalism that has won many, many awards and protected many people”. The judge then denies Assange’s lawyers any more time to prepare their case – even though their client is prevented in prison from receiving legal documents and other tools with which to defend himself.

Towards the end of 2019, Judge Arbuthnot, steps aside because of a “perception of bias”. It turns out that her husband, Lord James Arbuthnot, a former Conservative defence minister with links to the British military and intelligence establishment, was working closely with the neo-conservative Henry Jackson Society (HJS), a right wing lobby group with a strongly anti-Assange agenda.The HJS has called Assange “bonkers and paranoid” and described the asylum given to him by the government of Ecuador as “the last seedy bolthole to which Mr Assange thinks he can run”. Vanessa Baraitser is appointed as the presiding judge. As Chief Magistrate, Arbuthnot remains the supervising legal figure “responsible for… supporting and guiding” Baraitser. In other words she remains as the puppet master. Hardly an example of impartiality of the British justice system. 

On the 21st of October 2019, Assange appears in court for a case management hearing. When Judge Baraitser asks about his understanding of the proceedings, Assange replies: “I don’t understand how this is equitable. This superpower (the US) had 10 years to prepare for this case and I can’t access my writings. It’s very difficult where I am to do anything but these people have unlimited resources. They are saying journalists and whistleblowers are enemies of the people. They have unfair advantages dealing with documents. This is not equitable what is happening here.

Then the Covid crisis explodes around the world. This slows down proceedings considerably. In September some witnesses testify remotely via video link. Technical problems cause extensive delays. Amnesty International and eight Members of the European Parliament have their access to the livestream revoked. No real explanation is given for this. Other witnesses testify that the conditions of imprisonment, which would be likely to worsen upon extradition to the US, place Assange at a high risk of depression and suicide which is exacerbated by him being on the autism spectrum. Psychiatrist Michael Kopelman testifies that a hidden razor blade has been found in Assange’s prison cell.

Then comes the turning point of the trial. Patrick Eller, a former forensics examiner with the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command, testifies that Assange did not crack and could not have cracked the password mentioned in the US indictment, as Chelsea Manning had intentionally sent only a portion of the password’s hash. Moreover, Eller states that Manning’s message was unrelated to the classified documents which were already in her possession. In other words the ONLY charge that could have turned Assange’s position from that of a journalist to that of a spy is proven to be false

In December 2020 Assange requests a pardon from president Trump and six Nobel Prize winners write a letter requesting a pardon for Assange as well.

On the 4th of January 2021, Judge Baraitser rules that Assange cannot be extradited to the United States, citing concerns about his mental health and the risk of suicide in a US prison. The US has 14 days to appeal the ruling, during which time Assange may remain in prison. Mexican President Andres Manuel López Obrador, during a press conference, says that Mexican diplomats would look for Assange’s liberation and offer political asylum. Assange’s attorneys ask that he be released on bail. On the 6th of January, Assange is denied bail.

A PYRRHIC VICTORY

The news that Julian Assange will not be extradited to the United States is a welcome legal victory, but one tainted by legal arguments that should deeply worry us. The denial of his extradition doesn’t come because of the numerous principled arguments against the US extradition case – all of which were rejected by the judge – but because Assange is considered a suicide risk. The US mass incarceration system is so obviously barbaric and depraved that Assange would be at grave risk of committing suicide should he become another victim of its super-max jails. In other words the US demand for extradition was rejected on what is effectively a technicality and not on the basis of principles.

Judge Baraitser has backed all the US government’s main legal arguments for extradition, even though they were comprehensively demolished by Assange’s lawyers. She accepted their dangerous new definition of investigative journalism as “espionage”, and implied that Assange had also broken Britain’s draconian Official Secrets Act in exposing government war crimes. Furthermore she agreed that the 2007 Extradition Treaty applies in Assange’s case, ignoring the treaty’s actual words that exempt political cases like his. With her judging she has opened the door for any journalist guilty of embarrassing Washington to be seized in their home countries and be sent to the US for trial. As if this was not enough Baraitser accepted that protecting sources in the digital age – as Assange did for whistleblower Chelsea Manning, an essential obligation on journalists in a free society – now amounts to criminal “hacking”. She trashed free speech and press freedom rights, saying they did not provide “unfettered discretion by Mr Assange to decide what he’s going to publish”. What’s more, she appeared to approve of the ample evidence showing that the US spied on Assange inside the Ecuadorian embassy, both in violation of international law and his client-lawyer privilege – a breach of his most fundamental legal rights that alone should have halted proceedings.

So as we celebrate this ruling for Assange (although he is not out of the woods yet. The US has said it will appeal the decision) we must also loudly denounce it as an attack on press freedom, as an attack on our hard-won collective freedoms, and as an attack on our efforts to hold governments accountable for the crimes they commit in our name. 

There is another worrying element in the ruling: after a decade spent discrediting, disgracing and demonising Assange, this ruling is nothing more than a continuation of that process. The extradition was denied ONLY on the grounds of Assange’s mental health and his autism, and the fact that he is a suicide risk. If he ever regains his freedom, it will be SOLELY because he has been characterised as mentally unsound. That will be used to discredit not just Assange, but the cause for which he fights, the Wikileaks organisation he helped to found, and all wider dissidence from establishment narratives

The final problem with Judge Barrister’s ruling is, in practical terms, that her arguments become weak on appeal. The judge could have (inadvertently???) offered the US their ace in the hole. Because of the nature of the sentence all the US government would have to do is to give assurances to the judge on the treatment of Julian Assange. The strategy for the US appeal, essentially, will consist in proving their appalling gulag will not induce Julian to commit suicide (or suicide him, Epstein style… you know, when fate decides that guards fall asleep and cameras break down all at once).

Personally I fear (although I sincerely hope to be proven wrong) that this was an attempt of the UK government to pull a Pontius Pilate and wash their hands of the case in front of their country’s public opinion. All the appeal has to consider now is: is a UK jail safer than a US jail? Based on the suicide rate of prisoners in the UK it will be easy to prove that it’s not and Assange will lose the appeal. And so finally the US government will have their vengeance for Assange unleashing the truth about state murder of innocent people.

If this will be the case the Uk and the US governments will have de facto issued a death penalty for both Assange and the freedom of the press. 

AND NOW?

We like to believe, through the work of propaganda, that the West lives in a liberal free democracy that values individual freedom, freedom of speech and opinion and freedom of the press. But one of the many things that we have learned thanks to Julian Assange is that those are nothing more that beautiful bedtime stories. For the past 10 years Julian Assange has been persecuted by the system in an unprecedented attempt to silence a news publisher. His crime? To have brought to light US war crimes and the shady affairs of the Western elite that governs much of the world. 

I invite you to reflect on this: what is journalism? What is it’s role and it’s duty in a free society? Should journalists report only what authorities allow them to or should it be their duty to report specifically and before all else what authorities don’t want them to? True journalism was the check of power. It was the critical voice in defense of the common good, of the constitution, of the ethical soul of the nation against those in power who would dare to overstep their duties. But in the past thirty years, through corruption and threats, these dissenting voices have slowly been silenced. Then, on the 4th of January 2021 the sentence given by Judge Vanessa Barrister (a name that will live in infamy) marked the ultimate death of journalism. 

Assange’s sacrifice and his persecution show us that, beyond the proclamations on democracy and freedom of the press, the essence of freedom is not compatible with a system where a small oligarchy reigns, manipulates, governs and influences billions of people unaware of what surrounds them and of the truth before their eyes. This because, in the words of another true journalist Glenn Greenwald: “Those who do not seek to meaningfully dissent or subvert power will usually deny — because they do not perceive — that such dissent and subversion are, in fact, rigorously prohibited. They will continue to believe blissfully that the society in which they live guarantees core civic freedoms — of speech, of press, of assembly, of due process — because they have rendered their own speech and activism, if it exists at all, so innocuous that nobody with the capacity to do so would bother to try to curtail it.”

Julian Assange’s battle to defend our freedoms, to defend those in far-off lands whom we bomb at will in the promotion of the selfish interests of a western elite, his struggle to make our societies fairer, to hold the powerful to account for their actions, to make our politics less corrupt, our legal systems more transparent, our media less dishonest should be our battle also.For it is OUR DUTY as citizens. If we don’t fight for these values our societies are doomed and destined for tyranny

Julian Assange, a hero of our times, showed us the way. It is up to us to carry the torch in the hope that he was yet again right when he claimed: “It is my strong belief that courage is contagious”

The battle of and for Julian Assange will only end when he is freed.

If you’d like to help out here are some websites than host a variety of actions:

https://assangedefense.org

https://dontextraditeassange.com

https://www.assangecampaign.org.au

THE SAGA OF JULIAN ASSANGE – PART TWO

From the film “V for Vendetta” by James McTeigue

AFTER SWEDEN

Following the events in Sweden only one word is on the mouth of the mainstream media: rape. It is printed and repeated over and over again by journalists, commentators and Tv anchors. This (as we’ve seen in the first part of this article) is simply not an accurate description of the events nor a fair assessment of the judicial accusations. But after all, the whole point is not to fairly report what happened but to have the connection “Assange equal rapist” sink into the public’s mind. He is betrayed by his peers.

The journalists that worked with him on the leaks of the Afghan and Iraqi logs turn their backs on him and a smearing campaign of unprecedented proportions begins. He is called a “rapist”, a “narcissistic individual”, described as “full of himself”, an “attention seeker”, a “tool of Russian intelligence”, a “useful idiot”, a “criminal”, a “spy”… He is accused of having “hygiene problems”,                                                  of not “washing his hair” and “smearing his own excrements all over the walls” (this last one is from The Guardian). 

This marks the first time in history that an award winning journalist, who brought to the public attention war crimes, is vilified for not washing his hair. Needless to say this is one of the lowest points in journalism’s history. But after all the intention is clear and, so it seems, no low blow is low enough. The mainstream media wants to assassinate his character, to turn Assange, a very popular figure amongst the public, into a monster

Why would they do that? I can only give you my personal opinion and the first thing that comes to mind is the famous quote by Upton Sinclair: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!”. Furthermore I believe they hated him because his model of publishing was a threat to their existence

Assange believes that: “Transparency and accountability are moral issues that must be the essence of public life and journalism.” Or, in the words of Australian journalist, and friend of Assange, John Pilger “He believes that journalists are the agents of people, not power: that we, the people, have a right to know about the darkest secrets of those who claim to act in our name”. In fact Assange forced these “journalists” to look at themselves in the mirror and what they saw was their continuous compromising with the integrity of their profession and their advocating on behalf of the powers-that-be, because this is the easy way to do journalism. In short Assange put them to shame and they hated him for it.

POLITICAL ASYLUM IN THE ECUADORIAN EMBASSY

On the 20th of November 2010, the Swedish police issues an international arrest warrant for Assange. On the 8th of December, he gives himself up to British police and attends his first extradition hearing. He remains in custody.

On the 16th of December, during the second hearing, he is granted bail by the High Court and released after his supporters pay £240,000 in cash. A further hearing on 24 February 2011 rules that Assange should be extradited to Sweden. This decision was upheld by the High Court on the 2nd of November and by the Supreme Court on the 30th of May the next year.

Assange continuously claims his innocence and that he is not concerned about the proceedings in Sweden as such. He believes that the Swedish allegations are designed to discredit him and are a pretext for his extradition from Sweden to the United States where, he fears, he would face an unfair and biased trial that would conclude with his reclusion in some far away American hellhole. A proof of this belief is that Assange’s lawyers made over 30 offers to arrange for Assange to visit Sweden in exchange for a guarantee that he would not be extradited to the US. Of course these offers were never accepted

On the 19th of June 2012, Julian Assange steps into the Ecuadorian Embassy in London seeking political asylum. Two months later, on the 18th of August, Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa confirms that Assange can stay at the embassy indefinitely. In its formal statement, Ecuador says that “as a consequence of Assange’s determined defense to freedom of expression and freedom of press… in any given moment, a situation may come where his life, safety or personal integrity will be in danger”.

The Ecuadorian embassy is small; a three bedrooms flat surrounded by tall buildings that block all sun light. Assange describes it as “living in a spaceship”. He has no proper medical care, little space and little privacy. Heavily armed officers of the Metropolitan Police Service surround the building 24/7 ready to arrest him if he steps out. Long range cameras are placed in the buildings surrounding the embassy enforcing a 24/7 surveillance (spying?) system. In fact this becomes one of the most surveilled places in the world. Please remember that at this point all that Assange is accused of by the British justice system is skipping bail

The police surveillance is withdrawn on grounds of cost in October 2015 (3 years later), but the police says they would still deploy “several overt and covert tactics to arrest him”. The cost of the policing for the period was reported to have been something between £12.6 and 16 million of taxpayers money. 

On 5 February 2016, the UN’s Working Group on Arbitrary Detention studies the case of Assange and concludes that he has been subject to arbitrary detention by the UK and Swedish Governments since the 7th of December 2010 (6 years), including his time in prison, on conditional bail and in the Ecuadorian embassy. The Working Group says Assange should be allowed to walk free and be given compensation. The UK and Swedish governments reject the claim.

Meanwhile Julian Assange continues to run WikiLeaks from inside the embassy.

EDWARD SNOWDEN AND GOOGLE

In 2013 Edward Snowden, a CIA employee and subcontractor, leaks highly classified information from the National Security Agency (NSA). His disclosures reveals numerous mass global surveillance programs run by the NSA with the cooperation of European governments. This initiates an international discussion about national security and individual privacy.

WikiLeaks has nothing to do with the leak nor it’s publishing other than, maybe, a spiritual affinity amongst whistleblowers. That is the most likely reason why, in June 2013, Assange and others in WikiLeaks help Snowden flee from US law enforcement and save his life. The details of the story are very interesting and entertaining but a bit long to tell in this article. I invite you to look for them on the internet.

In 2014 Assange publishes the book “When Google met WikiLeaks” which tells the story of Assange and Eric Schmidt’s (at the time the CEO of Google) encounter. In the book Assange reports the close intrinsic link between the various American espionage agencies that, through Google, monitor all the information that passes through the network. Furthermore, he warns us of the danger of the monopoly of Google’s services. He states “Over the last 15 years Google has grown within the internet like a parasite. Internet browsing, social networks, maps, satellites-drones, Google is inside our phone, on our desktop, it is invading every aspect of our lives: both personal and commercial. At this point, Google has a very real power over anyone who uses the internet; that is practically anyone in the contemporary world”. He also adds: “Google has become evil. It is now aligned with American foreign policy. This means for example that Google can intervene in the interest of the United States, it can end up compromising the privacy of billions of people, it can use the power of advertising for propaganda purposes.”

The two visions of the future of the internet that emerge from the book are the polar opposites: for Assange, “the liberating power of the network lies in its freedom and in its being a world without a state”. For Schmidt, however, “the emancipation of the internet coincides with the objectives of American foreign policy“.

“People like Schmidt”, Assange writes, “will tell you that open-mindedness is a virtue, but any point of view that challenges American exceptionalism, at the basis of US foreign policy, will remain invisible to them. They believe they are doing good. And this is the problem”.

2016 US PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

During the 2016 US Democratic Party presidential primaries, WikiLeaks pulls one of their most daring leaks ever by publishing emails sent or received by presidential candidate Hillary Clinton while she was Secretary of State. It’s a political earthquake of biblical proportions. 

In short this is the story: Hillary Clinton sets up a private email server and network for herself, her family and her closest collaborators. This is forbidden by the law because doing so prevents her emails from being accessible to the federal government and the Congress. The server is stored at a Clinton-owned office in Midtown Manhattan, where it shares physical space with the Clinton Foundation’s server. Hillary Clinton has a lot of classified information on that server. Clinton team emails end up in the hands of Assange and he publishes them on WikiLeaks. The FBI begins an investigation on the premise that Hillary Clinton violated the Espionage Act of 1913 by allowing national defense information to be “lost, stolen, abstracted, or destroyed” through “gross negligence.”

When she finds out about the FBI investigation Hilary Clinton deletes thousands of emails with a software program called “BleachBit.” Clinton and her legal team use the software to destroy about 30,000 emails which she deems “personal.” But as Trey Gowdy, member of the House Oversight Committee, pointed out: “You don’t use BleachBit for yoga emails or bridesmaids emails. When you’re using BleachBit, it is something you really do not want the world to see,”

The FBI report says that Justin Cooper, an aide of the Clintons, destroyed two Clinton’s old mobile phones by “breaking them in half or hitting them with a hammer.” Nevertheless, following the investigation, FBI Director James Comey claims that Clinton was “extremely careless,” but there aren’t enough grounds to prosecute.

So what do these leaked email reveal? For the most part nothing new to those who had paid attention to Hillary Clinton’s political career. That is the questionable relationship between the Clinton Foundation and its donors, Clinton’s ease with powerful interests on Wall Street and her ties to wealthy campaign contributors (other than her secret recipe for the “perfect risotto” – I kid you not!).

But what else? Did the emails provide a smoking gun of some sort? No. But, in Assange’s words: “Clinton emails (…) create a rich picture of how Hillary Clinton performs in office, but, more broadly, how the US Department of State operates.”

One of these “rich pictures”, according to multiple observers, although this was never proven, portrayed the real reasons of the French/NATO invasion of Libya and the proactive involvement of Hillary Clinton in making the war happen. I must stress that this has not been officially proven by the emails (or any other source) but I report it because I personally find it both interesting and plausible. 

So the story goes that Rais Muammar Gaddafi was trying, with the partnership of other African states, to free himself from the yoke of the IMF with the creation of a new pan-African currency. He wanted to stop selling Libyan oil in US dollars and begin demanding payment instead in gold-backed “dinars” (a planned single African currency made from gold-of which Libya had an estimated 150 tons of). This had the potential to bring down the dollar and the world monetary system by extension and is, allegedly, the reason for the invasion and the removal of Gaddafi. 

Whatever happened in Libya, what’s certain is that on the 22nd of July 2016, WikiLeaks releases another batch of emails and documents from the Democratic National Committee seemingly presenting ways to undercut Clinton’s more popular competitor Bernie Sanders and showing apparent favouritism towards her. This leads to the resignation of party chairman Debbie Wasserman Schultz and raises some very serious questions about the legitimacy of Hillary Clinton’s election as the Democratic candidate. The revelations made by WikiLeaks most definitely play a big role in her defeat against Donald Trump. 

As we all know (it’s been repeated endlessly over the past four years) after her loss Hillary Clinton and the Democratic party began accusing both Julian Assange and Donald Trump of being Russian (Putin’s) puppets. They accuse Assange of being a Russian spy and the Russian government of having provided Assange with the leaked emails. In other words for the past four years the Democratic party has being accusing Russia to have hacked (stolen) the 2016 elections (Which is in itself interesting considering that today the same people claim that it’s impossible to do so). 

Julian Assange never said where the leaks came from. In a July 2016 interview, he implied that DNC staffer Seth Rich was the source of the leak and that Rich had been killed as a result. WikiLeaks offered a $20,000 reward for information about his murder. Special prosecutor Robert Mueller, who conducted the investigation on possible Russian interference in the 2016 elections, claimed that Assange “implied falsely” that Rich was the source to obscure the fact that Russia was the source. 

It is impossible, for now, to tell what the truth is. But one thing is certain: Julian Assange, in the eyes of the US government, had crossed the line. He had to be stopped. No matter how

ARREST IN THE ECUADORIAN EMBASSY

On the 2nd of April 2017 Lenín Moreno, the centre-left candidate in the 2017 Ecuadorian presidential election wins a narrow victory. Soon after his election Moreno drastically shifts his political stance to the right, distancing himself from Correa’s leftist legacy and making neoliberal changes to both domestic and foreign policy. He wants, first and foremost, to improve the country’s relations with the US. 

Following a June 2018 visit by US Vice President Mike Pence, Moreno buys weapons, radar sets, six helicopters and other equipment from the US. He also begins a cooperation with the US government that would include training and intelligence sharing. During their meeting Pence and Moreno also talk about Julian Assange. It becomes obvious to most that Assange is an item on the agreement

Moreno and his government impose new restrictions to Assange. They place cameras everywhere in the embassy, search every visitor, cut his internet connection, forget to supply Assange with food and toilet paper… in short they make his life impossible.

Furthermore they allow an extensive surveillance operation against Assange from within the embassy. Then they accuse him of being rude to the staff, of being unclean, of stinking, of leaving shit in the toilet, of smearing faeces on the embassy walls… It is worth noting that during the 6 years Assange stayed in the embassy not one negative comment was made about his behaviour. And yet, during the 18 months of Moreno’s presidency, if we are to believe the official narrative, Assange becomes a wild beast

In any case on the 11th of April 2019, Ecuador revokes his asylum, with Moreno saying Ecuador has “reached its limit on the behaviour of Mr Assange”. Moreno refers to Assange as a “spoiled brat” and a “miserable hacker”. On the same day the Metropolitan Police is allowed entrance into the embassy and arrests Assange in connection with his failure to surrender to the court in June 2012 for extradition to Sweden. 

It is interesting to note that at this time Lenín Moreno and the Ecuadorian government were awaiting an upcoming decision by the International Monetary Fund to grant Ecuador a $4.2 billion loan. I’m sure that had nothing to do with the decision of revoking Assange’s asylum. 

Assange is taken to Her Majesty’s Prison Belmarsh, a Category-A (High security) men’s prison in Thamesmead, south-east London, known “amongst friends” as the UK’s Guantanamo. The prison is considered one of he toughest prisons in the world and is home to violent terrorists and murderers. The prison has been accused multiple times of mistreating it’s detainees. 

The prison regime forces detainees to remain in small cells for 22 hours a day with precarious health and psychological assistance. Assange is denied the right to fraternise with other prisoners, he has no internet nor telephone access which considerably hinders his ability to prepare his defense.

At the cost of sounding repetitive I must remind you that at this time all that Assange is culpable of, in the eyes of the British law, is SKIPPING BAIL!!

On the 1st of May 2019 he is sentenced to 50 weeks imprisonment. The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention says that the verdict contravenes “principles of necessity and proportionality” for what it considered a “minor violation”. Nils Mielzer, special rapporteur on torture at the UN, who visits Assange together with two doctors who are experts in torture, confirms that the activist will probably die in prison if he is detained for a long time.

It is surprising to note that organisations, such as Amnesty International, which formally denounce any violation of human rights in countries classified as non-liberal, have not said a word or organised awareness campaigns for Julian Assange. The deafening silence of all journalist associations is less surprising but just as shameful.

END OF PART TWO To be continued…

THE SAGA OF JULIAN ASSANGE – PART ONE

From the film “We steal secrets. The story of Wikileaks” by Alex Gibney

Who is Julian Assange? For the government of the United States he is a dangerous hacker, a spy and a terrorist who used his skills to steal sensitive information that harmed the US and it’s operatives. For his supporters he is a news publisher, a freedom of speech hero who was the victim of an unprecedented attempt by the system to silence a journalist. His only crime, they claim, is to have brought to light US war crimes and the shady affairs of the Western elite that governs much of the world.

But what’s the truth? I invite you all to follow me in a story of military secrets, computer hacking and political power that gives John le Carré a run for his money and coincidentally also happens to be one of the most important stories of our time.

YOUTH

Julian Paul Assange was born on the 3rd of July 1971 in Townsville, Queensland, Australia. His mother, Christine Ann Hawkins is a visual artist and is father, John Shipton, an anti-war activist and builder. 

The family is financially poor but intellectually rich; art and politics are often the subject of conversation at the family’s table. Young Julian is a smart and witty young boy nicknamed “the wizard” by friends and family for his ability to find unexpected and left-field solutions to problems

After his parents divorce Julian has a nomadic childhood, living in over 30 Australian towns and cities by the time he reaches his mid-teens,when he settles with his mother and half-brother in Melbourne.

Melbourne in the mid 80’s is home to underground communities of hackers and social revolutionaries; it is a place of ideas, political ideals and experimentation. There young Julian develops a passion for computers. He and his friends foresee the coming digital revolution, want to understand it and not only be part of it but be at it’s forefront. He’s a little nerd spending most of his days in front of a computer.

In 1987, aged 16, Assange begins hacking under the nickname Mendax. A security hacker is someone who explores methods for breaching defenses in a computer system or network. They may be motivated by a multitude of reasons, such as profit, political protest, information gathering… To young Julian Assange it is first and foremost an intellectual challenge

Imagine being a teenager in front of a computer in your room in Melbourne and hacking into NASA computers. I mean these are the people who put a man on the moon… how smart would you feel? And how exciting!

Allegedly (this was never proven) Assange may have been involved in the WANK (Worms Against Nuclear Killers-but also slang for masturbation) hack at NASA in 1989. The worm (a computer malware capable of self-replicating) is believed to have been created by Melbourne-based hackers but no-one was ever charged. The WANK worm was one of the first worms ever and was of a playful and political nature. The worm was programmed to trick users into believing that files were being deleted, by displaying a file deletion dialogue that could not be aborted, though no files were actually erased. The worm contained over sixty randomised messages that would be displayed to users. These included “Vote anarchist” and “The FBI is watching YOU”. The slogan of the worm, “You talk of times of peace for all, and then prepare for war”, was drawn from the lyrics of the song “Blossom and Blood” from the Midnight Oil an Australian rock band known for their political activism.

In September 1991, Assange was discovered hacking into the Melbourne master terminal of Nortel, a Canadian multinational telecommunications corporation. He was arrested, pleaded guilty to 24 charges, was ordered to pay reparations of A$2,100 and released on a good behaviour bond.

In 1993, Assange provided expert technical advice and support to assist Victoria Police Child Exploitation Unit to prosecute people suspected of involvement in child pornography offences on the internet.

After that Assange studied programming, mathematics and physics at Central Queensland University and later at the University of Melbourne. He never finished his degree.

BIRTH OF WIKILEAKS

Now there’s a thing that’s common to most hackers: they see the world from a different perspective. Their ability to understand and enter the workings of complex informatics systems allows them to see the structure that hides behind the surface. Just like an architect understand the physical structure of the building hiding under a beautiful cathedral, a hacker understands the wiring of digital systems. This allows them to have access to the actual information that structures the reality of our digitalised world. They get to see what’s behind the curtain, they see the difference between the information that is presented to the public and what is really under  the hood of the machine, so to speak. In other words they see the lies.

Many things can be said about Julian Assange but in 2006, when he co-founded WikiLeaks, no one can deny he was driven by a noble and just cause: that of exposing to the public the lies that governments and powerful figures around the world were trying to hide. 

WikiLeaks was set up as an anti-secrecy group with the said intention of making a platform that would enable leaked paperwork to be revealed safely on-line. Technically WikiLeaks was nothing more than an anonymous digital dropbox that allowed whistle blowers to anonymously upload information. Spiritually it was a news organisation that would use this information to blow the whistle on the injustices of this world. This had never been done before and it’s fair to say that everything that happened next was an exploration, an experiment, on freedom of speech by a guerrilla organisation.

In the first years of it’s existence nobody paid much attention to WikiLeaks. After all they were only publishing informationfrom far away countries including revelations about drone strikes in Yemen, corruption across the Arab world,  extrajudicial executions by Kenyan police, Tibetan unrest in China, and the “Petrogate” oil scandal in Peru.

But in 2007 they became of interest to the US authorities after they published the “Camp Delta Standard Operating Procedures”, a military manual detailing the day-to-day operations of the U.S. military’s Guantánamo Bay detention facility. The manual showed continuous abuse and indicated that some prisoners were hidden from Red Cross representatives.

The material WikiLeaks published between 2006 and 2009 attracted various degrees of international attention, but it’s only after they began publishing documents supplied by U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea (born Bradley) Manning, a young soldier shocked by what she saw happening around her, that WikiLeaks became a household name.

COLLATERAL MURDER

The first of the classified documents provided by Chelsea Manning that WikiLeaks released  was the infamous Collateral Murder video,which showed United States soldiers killing 18 civilians from a helicopter in Iraq. Amongst these civilians were Reuters journalists Namir Noor-Eldeen and his assistant Saeed Chmagh

Upon receiving the video Assange and others worked for a week to break the US military’s encryption of the video; and when they succeeded what they saw shocked the world. 

The video, recorded on the 12th of July 2007, showed the crew of two US AH-64 Apache helicopters firing a 30 mm cannon on a group of civilians in Baghdad, Iraq. 

On the video we can see a group of men walking down a street, this group is mistakenly considered, by the US soldiers, to be a group of rebels. Part of the mistake is due to the cameras the two Reuters journalists are holding which the soldiers believe to be guns. 

In the tape’s audio we can hear the order to engage being given and the helicopter’s cannon firing. We can also hear the US soldiers cheering and laughing and making fun of the victims with tremendous viciousness and coldness of heart; as if playing a videogame. 

When the massacre is finished and the shooting stops a civilian van, driven by Saleh Matasher Tomal, drives by. Mr. Tomal parks the van and exits to help and assist the wounded. It is at this point that the US helicopters begin to fire again, aiming at the van and killing Mr. Tomal. 

When the aerial attack is finally over US ground troops arrive on the scene. They look into the van and find two wounded children, the son and the daughter of Mr. Tomal. The little girl couldn’t blink because her eyes were full of glass. One of the soldiers wants to take her to a hospital nearby but his superiors tell him to “stop being a pussy”. 

When the news of the wounded children is relayed to the helicopter’s crew we can clearly hear the commander state: “Well, it’s their fault for bringing their kids into battle”.

In the end the helicopter attack provoked 18 dead, 2 wounded children and no one from US military has ever been held accountable

For Assange it was a moral and civil duty to publish the video. He needed to show the public the war crimes the US military was committing in Iraq. This is what WikiLeaks was created for in the first place: to expose the wrongdoings governments commit in our name. He was fearless and on April 5th 2010 he released the video. 

This became front page news all over the world and helped considerably in changing the public perspective on the Iraqi war. Assange became a public figure, a rockstar a symbol for protesters all over the world. And the US government never forgave him.

Here is a link to the video. I can’t show it here but follow the “Watch on Youtube” link below. WARNING: it contains graphic images and will shock and sicken any soulful human being.

Collateral Murder video

IRAQ AND AFGHAN WAR LOGS

Throughout the rest of the year Chelsea Manning continues her whistle blowing activity and provides WikiLeaks with huge amounts of information

WikiLeaks proceeds with very difficult job of redacting and organising the information and in October 2010, they publish the Iraq War logs, a collection of 391,832 United States Army field classified reports from the Iraq War covering the period from 2004 to 2009. 

This marks the first time Wikileaks works in collaboration with mainstream media. The logs were also published by newspapers such as the Guardian, the New York Times and Der Spiegel.

These logs were written by military men while in service in Iraq. They were reports of things they’ve seen or experienced during their military duties. They were a sort of very detailed war diary. In fact they were and still are the most accurate description of a war ever released to the public. And the story they told was a story of unspeakable horror. 

First it became evident that the US and their allies were under reporting civilian casualties. The files recorded 66,081 civilian deaths out of 109,000 recorded deaths. This is 15,000 civilian deaths more than previously admitted by the US government.

Then it became clear that prisoners of war were subjected to violent torture.

Furthermore the logs confirmed previous allegations that the US military handed over many prisoners to the Iraqi Wolf Brigade (an Iraqi special commando police) which was accused of beating prisoners, torturing them with electric drills and executing suspects.

The Guardian stated that the logs show “US authorities failed to investigate hundreds of reports of abuse, torture, rape and even murder by Iraqi police and soldiers” for they had a formal policy of ignoring such allegations. 

The logs also proved that the US military cleared an Apache helicopter gunship to open fire on Iraqi insurgents who were trying to surrender and that Us military personnel were reported to have been involved in child prostitution.

When you start publishing these kind of secrets governments start losing control of the narrative. Up to that point the US government had sold the US population the story of a just war fought to get rid of a brutal and inhumane dictator and that only few civilians were being killed. WikiLeaks exposed their lies and public opinion began to change. That is the power of WikiLeaks. 

Of course such revelations are bound to enrage many people within the US military complex and they did. Julian Assange suddenly became enemy number one.

The US government accused WikiLeaks of putting lives at danger by providing sensitive information to the enemy. It is true that the documents could have been redacted better but it is worth noting that this was a first: never before in the history of humanity such a quantity of sensitive military material ended up on the desk of a news agency. It is also worth noting that WikiLeaks contacted the White House before publishing the papers and asked for their helped to redact the information. The White House refused.  

Assange said that he hoped the publication would “correct some of the attack on the truth that occurred before the war, during the war, and which has continued after the war”.

This was the biggest leak ever and shed light on the long list of war crimes committed by US and their allies.

No one in the US military has ever been held accountable for any of it.

CABLEGATE

One month later, on the 28th of November 2010, Assange and his WikiLeaks team were at it again publishing a quarter of a million U.S. diplomatic cables from 1966 to 2010. This came to be known as the “Cablegate”

These Cables were a set of documents consisting in reports and analysis written by US diplomats all over the world and delivered back to the State Department. 100.000 of these documents were marked as confidential and 15.000 as secret.

WikiLeaks initially worked with established Western media organisations while also publishing the cables upon which their reporting was based. 

The files showed United States espionage against United Nations and other world leaders, revealed tensions between the U.S. and its allies, and exposed corruption in countries throughout the world as documented by US diplomats, helping to spark the Arab Spring.

From the revelations of these documents it came to light that all the Western chancelleries, the UN secretaries, the secretary general in the role of Ban Ki Moon were spied on by the United States government.

Furthermore the cables exposed the kind of political pressure US diplomats exercise on their international counterparts. Why? In the words of Julian Assange himself: “Nearly every war started in the past 50 years has been the result of media lies. Populations don’t like wars. They have to be fooled into wars.”

A typical tactic that the documents revealed worked something like this: a US diplomat would write to a local politician of any allied country. He would say something along the lines of: “We have a problem with your country’s public opinion: they don’t seem to support our wars in Afghanistan or Iraq. I need you to do something about it. I want you to organise for your main TV channel to interview, say, an Afghan woman during primetime. She will tell your audience a story of how helpful the US military intervention has been for the Afghan people. Don’t worry… we will provide the woman in question. If you don’t do this there will be consequences.

In short the Cablegate showed the world the extent to which the US government was willing to go to maintain it’s hegemony on the world.

It is at this point that the US government launched an investigation into WikiLeaks and Julian Assange on charges of espionage

SWEDISH ALLEGATIONS

After releasing the Collateral Murder video Julian Assange became a rockstar; he was at the height of his popularity and had become a cultural icon for many people around the world. He was young, good looking, on the front page of all international newspapers and considered a noble warrior ambitiously fighting against the system. He was admired and desired just as he was hated and despised

In August 2010 he is invited to Stockholm, Sweden, to deliver a speech. The woman who organises the event offers him to stay in her one bedroom studio apartment. She tells him she will be away during his stay and he can have the flat for himself. Julian accepts. 

But when he arrives in Sweden the woman, aged 31, changes her plans, tells Assange she won’t be leaving anymore and invites Assange to stay at her place anyway. Julian accepts the offer. One thing leads to another and they have a consensual sexual encounter

Some days later Assange meets a second woman, aged 26. By all accounts she’s a fan of Assange. One thing leads to another and they have a consensual sexual encounter

Now what Assange doesn’t know is that the two women know each other. When the two women discover that he slept with both of them they report him to the police on the 20th of August 2010. They report that Assange had engaged in unprotected sexual activity with them that allegedly violated the scope of their consent (they allegedly wanted him to use a condom and he didn’t). One of the women also accuses Assange of having unprotected sex with her (after their first sexual encounter) while she was asleep. It is important to understand that all they want is for the police to force Assange to take an STD/HIV test. The police tells them that they cannot simply tell Assange to take an STD test, but that their statements would be passed to a prosecutor. NO rape allegations were ever made. Julian is questioned, the case is closed, he is told he can leave the country and he does, returning to the UK. 

In November 2010, however, the case is reopened by a special prosecutor who says that she wants to question Assange over two counts of sexual molestation, one count of unlawful coercion and one count of “lesser-degree rape”. This is the beginning of the legal battle Assange has been fighting ever since. 

In is interesting to point out that in 2019 UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Nils Melzer investigated the rape accusations against Assange and said he had not seen a comparable case where a person was subjected to nine years of a preliminary investigation for rape without charges being filed. He said Assange’s lawyers made over 30 offers to arrange for Assange to visit Sweden in exchange for a guarantee that he would not be extradited to the US and described such diplomatic assurances as routine international practice. Melzer criticised the Swedish prosecutors for, among other things, allegedly changing one of the women’s statements without her involvement in order to make it sound like a possible rape. Melzer describes the Swedish rape investigation as “abuse of judicial processes aimed at pushing a person into a position where he is unable to defend himself”.

On the 19th of November 2019 prosecutor Eva-Marie Persson closes the Swedish criminal case against Julian Assange without pressing formal charges. She announces that she had discontinued her investigation, saying that the evidence was not strong enough.

END OF PART ONE

BACK TO THE FUTURE?

From the film “Back to the future” by Robert Zemeckis

On March 23, 1933, the German parliament passed “The Law to Remedy the Distress of the People and the Reich” (later known as the Enabling Act). This became the cornerstone of Adolf Hitler’s dictatorship and allowed him to enact laws, including ones that violated the Weimar Constitution, without the approval of either parliament or the president of the Reich. German judges (namely the Supreme Court) did not challenge the law. They viewed Hitler’s government as legitimate and continued to regard themselves as state servants who owned him their allegiance. The Law “formally granted the government the authority to issue whatever edicts it wanted under the guise of remedying the distress of the people.” This gave Hitler full decisional power on all political decisions in Germany. Ten years later this Law gave way to the Ghettos, the deportations of Jews and dissidents, the appropriation of private wealth, the night incursions in private residences from the SS, the war machine and ultimately the Holocaust. 

On November 18, 2020, the German parliament passed a law called “The Infection Protection Act” (“Das Infektionsschutzgesetz” in German). The Law “formally grants the government the authority to issue whatever edicts it wants under the guise of protecting the public health.” Up to now, the German government has mainly relied on decrees to tackle the coronavirus crisis — a practice that has been criticised by parliamentarians from all parties and deemed unconstitutional by some. Officially this new Law transfers some legislative power from the parliament to the executive, the government. The infection protection law will now create a legal basis for the government to restrict some fundamental rights enshrined in the German constitution in its attempt to fight the pandemic (?). The government has been doing this anyway — ordering lockdowns, curfews, travel bans, banning demonstrations, raiding private homes and businesses, harassing and arresting dissidents, etc. — but now it has been legitimised by the Bundestag and enshrined into law.

To be fair: as of today it would be mildly unjust to compare the two Laws. Mainly because, for now, all government decrees, passed under this new law, can only be temporary measures and expire after four weeks. But I do strongly advise us all to think how dangerously we are playing with our Constitutional rights (I’m using the example of Germany but most Western countries are using similar political tactics). 

Of course I can hear the most basic (I wanted to write primitive-oops I just did) retort to this: “this is an emergency and under an emergency extreme measures must be taken”. Let’s assume, for the sake of conversation, that such thinking is correct. When will the emergency end? With the  total disappearance of the virus (highly unlikely)? With mass mandatory vaccinations (no I’m not entering this conversation here and now)? When the great economic reset will be completed? When the media will decide it has ended? With the second coming of the Christ? When? I have no answer. But what I do know for certain is that once a law has made it’s way into the books it is very rare it gets deleted (delete limitless executive power just for the sake of democracy? You crazy?) A very recent example of this comes from our American friends. Do you remember the rhetoric after 9/11? It went something like this: “this is an emergency and under an emergency extreme measures must be taken” (sounds familiar). This gave birth to the patriot act and to the largest state surveillance program the world has ever seen. It was meant to be a temporary measure. Although slightly amended (mainly thanks to the American patriot Edward Snowden and one of the last true journalist on earth Julian Assange) it remained active until March 27, 2020, 19 years after the declaration of emergency.

It is worth remembering that totalitarianism never appears from one day to the next. You don’t go to sleep in a democracy and wake up the next morning in a totalitarian state. Totalitarianism is like a plant that needs watering and time to grow (I apologise to all plants for the unflattering metaphor). It grows little by little, step by step, accommodation by accommodation, rationalisation by rationalisation. It grows out of apathy and ignorance and fear and compliance with power. It grows out of conformism (on this topic I suggest you all to go watch, if you haven’t already, Bernardo Bertolucci’s masterpiece “The conformist”). The turn from a democracy to totalitarianism takes months… years. And many concessions from the people to the power. But the result is always the same. Although the narratives and symbols change, totalitarianism always leads to less freedom, more control and violence as a form of governance. 

Last Wednesday as the Protection Act was being passed by the parliament, thousands of protesters gathered in the streets. Most were men, women and children protesting peacefully. They were met by thousands of riot Police who beat up and arrested hundreds of them and then hosed down the rest with cold water. (By the way isn’t it ironic that a government so worried about the health of it’s people would spray protesters with ice cold water in November in Germany? Pneumonia anyone? Do I need to remind you that the common flu is part of the Coronavirus family?).  Of course these protesters were described by the media as “Corona deniers”, “far-right extremists”, “anti-vaxxers”, “neo-Nazis” and so on. To be clear, like in all protests that gather thousands of people undoubtedly some of these elements were present. But for the most part the protest was a peaceful one (until police brutality took over) lead by honest citizens carrying copies of the Grundgesetz (the constitution of the Federal Republic of Germany), worried about the dangerous game their government was playing. They were staging these protests to challenge the government’s right to suspend the German constitution indefinitely and rule society by decree and force. And they were met with violence. 

Now to those of you who are saying to themselves that I’m exaggerating, that I’m overly pessimistic, a Cassandra, a crazy conspiracist or a down right fool and that these kind of totalitarian states cannot and will not exist in our modern democracies I want to remind you that any alternative media outlet, who doesn’t marry the official narrative, is being censored (what happened to the good old democratic mantra “I don’t agree with what you are saying but am willing to die for you to say it”?) that a well known dissident lawyer who was filing lawsuit after lawsuit against the German government calling their management of the crisis unconstitutional was forcibly committed to a psychiatric ward (just for couple of days rest assured. Just enough time for her to think about the consequences of her misbehaviour) that heavily armed police are arresting bloggers (although it isn’t clear exactly what for, as the authorities have released no details and the mainstream media is not reporting it) to name just a few fun examples.

One of these bloggers is Dr. Andreas Noack, who was accused of providing medical assistance (yes you read correctly: medical assistance) to hundreds of protestors during lockdown protests against the German government. Reports also indicate that Dr. Noack was under investigation by the authorities for being non-compliant with the COVID-19 lockdown laws. If you don’t believe me click the link below. No need for you to speak German. But I warn you: this is the scariest video you’ll watch all week. (Please note the clear Dr. No style lair this dangerous individual is in.)

https://dein.tube/watch/KfyFyIpd2qDxbnA?fbclid=IwAR11dJ_SqwSlfspjdMsk6gY-CkLaWlEJyRSyaM5cxzT2zH4e9OLwZ4_Kj7I

Finally, as the proverbial cherry on the cake, we have this democratic gentleman: Aziz Bozkurt the Chairman of the migration and diversity group of the SPD (the Social Democratic Party of Germany – I feel like crying) calling on a tweet for people who refuse to conform to the “New normal” to be deported “No matter how. Does not matter where. Just get out of my country.” Presumably his no matter how and where has something to do with trains?

I want to be clear here. This is not me bashing against our German friends. The same is happening in Italy, in France, in England and so on and so on. It is not a German problem it is generalised. All over Europe the police is hunting down the mask-less on the streets, raiding restaurants, bars, and people’s homes. All over Europe our constitutional rights are being suspended in the name of an emergency that might have no end. All over Europe the crisis is being used fas a form of governance through fear and violence. All over Europe democratic debate is being silenced in favour of state propaganda (without debate there can only be propaganda). All over Europe the conformists, those who let their lives be run by fear, apathy and cowardice are giving the state more and more power because “they know best” and “they are doing it for our own good” (these, of course, are the same people than in a not too distant future will claim: “I was only following orders!”). All over Europe disagreement with and protest against the “New normal” is being met by violence.

I only ask, to you and to myself, “until when”? When will this dangerous, dangerous, dangerous game we are playing will stop? I’ll admit I’m a pessimist on this topic. Once this kind of thing gets started, in the best case scenario, it does not stop until democracy is nothing but a fairy tale to tell the children as they go to bed (the worst case scenario ends with millions of dead). It might take us some time to get there, but, make no mistake, the very clear and present danger is that’s where we’re headed. 

FOR THINGS TO REMAIN THE SAME, EVERYTHING MUST CHANGE

From the film “The leopard” by Luchino Visconti

WARNING: this will probably anger both Biden and Trump supporters!

I keep on seeing celebrations and jubilation every time I open Facebook: the “monster” Donald Trump is defeated (maybe?) and Joe Biden will be the next president of the USA (maybe? and if yes for how long?). 

I understand the joy; I’ve always disliked Trump for he represents everything I despise in a man. But these celebrations seem frankly excessive to me. 

We should keep in mind who Joe Biden is and what his track record shows. So as not to be overwhelmed by our enthusiasm and forget that it is the duty of every citizen who believes in social justice, equality, love, compassion and creating a better and fairer world to keep the people in power in check. It is our duty to give Mr. Biden the same level of scrutiny and political pressure we gave Trump. 

Joe Biden, we must always keep this in mind, was the vice president of the ‘Nobel Peace Prize’ Barack Obama. Another president celebrated as a hope for change in the USA. We all know how it went. The ‘Nobel Peace Prize’ (and his second in command), during his presidency dropped bombs on Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, Pakistan, Yemen, Iraq and Syria. He green lit the “drone wars”, the “kill lists” and kept Guantanamo up and running (despite promising to do the opposite). He has imposed criminal sanctions against Venezuela, defined as an “unusual and extraordinary threat to national security”, armed the coup leaders in Caracas as well as in Managua in a failed attempt to overthrow the Sandinista government led by Commander Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua. Supported the lawfare operations in Latin America that led to the parliamentary coup against socialist president Dilma Rousseff in Brazil and the political killing of former Argentine president Cristina Kirchner (a center-left social democrat).

The Biden family has unclear links and deals with neo-Nazis in Ukraine. Hunter Biden – Joe’s son – joined the board of directors of Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian gas company, in May 2014, with a salary of $ 50,000 a month. Biden’s son was chosen despite not speaking the language and having no particular experience in the energy field. But he was co-opted a few months after Obama’s decision to entrust his vice president with the task of following the political transition in Ukraine. Where by transition we mean the color revolution that brought neo-Nazis to power in Ukraine in place of President Viktor Yanukovych.

Then there is the infamous 1994 Crime bill which extended the death penalty to 60 new crimes, stiffened sentences, offered states strong financial incentives for building new prisons, and helped lead to the wave of mass incarceration (of mostly black men) that resulted in the United States accounting for 25% of the world’s prison population.

In short, sincere democrats and anti-imperialists have no reason to celebrate the election of Joe Biden other than he ain’t Trump. And please keep in mind the undying words of Gore Vidal: “American democracy is an eagle that has two wings: both right.”

So I invite you to listen to the wise words of the presidential candidate for the Green Party Howie Hawkins, when he states via his Twitter profile: “It doesn’t matter who sits in the White House, we will continue to fight for social justice, democracy and people(s)-centered human rights.” 

That is the duty of every sincere humanist and faithful believer in democracy with the knowledge that the world can and must be a paradise for all. 

So tone down the celebrations, and get ready to fight again because if Biden does step into the White house he will not not magically become a shining white knight. An indication of this is the fact that his campaign was largely financed, amongst others, by multiple Wall Street’s hedge funds and 44 billionaires (according to Forbes). According to bloomberg.com he raised almost 1 billion dollars (an all time record amount). These donors will put pressure on his presidency and no, they don’t have the people’s best interests at heart. 

So PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE stay vigilant and don’t think that all that a healthy democracy requires is 15 minutes in a voting booth every four years and couple of celebratory memes on Facebook. It is a continuous struggle for knowledge and information and action against the powers that direct our political and social life, no matter who they are. 

This said, and I’m pretty sure this is wishful thinking (but you never know), if old Joe should choose the UN Charter path instead of the old and already trodden path of bombs, sanctions and international crimes, I am ready to make amends and to become his first supporter. My wish is to be able to tell with amazement about the discontinuity policies applied by the Biden’s administration. It seems (to me) very difficult this can happen given the premises. But I don’t want to put limits on providence.