© Michelle Renée Matisons, Ph.D.
These “different arguments” form Julian Assange’s legal defense.
Drop charges and renumerate Assange, his family and affiliates-supporters.
Drop charges and release Julian Assange!
Source: © Michelle Renée Matisons, Ph.D./ Emergency Ethics/ Pure Chance Productions, 2024-. All rights reserved. Photo credit: © Michelle Renée Matisons, Ph.D. “As American as Apple Pie.” 2024.
- Assange’s charges violate Freedom of Press, part of the larger First Amendment. (FYI to all Fascists and Right conservatives, the First Amendment also kept your Jan. 6 prison sentences down.) Assange’s extradition slides the U.S. further into barbarism, chaos and violence because it violates the first principle of our fledgling democracy. The First Amendment is part of a critical check and balance power-sharing, since the U.S. is so ideologically polarized.
- Assange’s charges are an obvious ideological attack on progressive journalism’s critical mission to collect information for public health and safety. Newsflash: this includes militaristic excesses of all varieties.
- Assange’s actions uphold international humanitarian journalism protocols. WikiLeaks has released world-historic documents/data beneficial to all of humanity.
- Assange’s-WikiLeaks’ own publishers have themselves not been charged, indicating Assange’s U.S. trial is a “kangaroo court.”
- The kangaroo court climate is fueled by a biased application of 1917’s Espionage Act (EA): a piece of legal anti-commie drivel that should be abolished.
- Julian Assange is not a U.S. citizen: can the EA even apply to him?
- There’s even a British-Australian nationalist argument: His extradition undermines Brit-Aussie national sovereignty by “snatching” a Belmarsh prisoner, or Aussie national, up!
- Is Julian Assange being unfairly pursued because he’s a citizen-activist-resident of a “five eyes” nation: U.S., Australia, New Zealand, UK and Canada?
Painting of Julian Assange by Caitlin Johnstone (?) This portrait depicts his impact as a mediator of imperial power, and his prophet image in the globalized digital judiciary era.
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Over the years, Assange’s case represents the worse of U.S. militarism-conservativism and its attendant neo-liberalism with a near-viral bipartisan security state tech fetish for new projects (like Ukraine’s version of “The Great Reset” and feminist containment). As we bemoan the downside of the technological domination of social-public life internationally, the upside of digitization is the new and global groundswell of support for the Palestinian people. Always an elemental cause for WikiLeaks and its supporters since its inception, Palestine will one day be free since we have so many courageous and sacrificial fighters in the field who know how high the stakes are here for global peace and climate change- abolition in our lifetimes and those of future generations.
As Crazy Horse eloquently envisioned:
“I see a time of Seven Generations when all the colors of mankind will gather under the Sacred Tree of Life and the whole earth will become One Circle again.”
Crazy Horses’s “Seven Generations” reference grew into a leadership-activist principle second to none for contemporary activism– including the diverse WikiLeaks community. (Don’t tell me you all didn’t think ahead and realize advanced industrial children are highly trained in useful data acquisition skills, and that this would aid anti-imperialist, anti-war, media democracy efforts globally.)
You have to think ahead these days. One version of this philosophy is Wilma Mankiller’s use of Crazy Horse’s Seven Generation’s idea to describe Iroquois decision-making in her more modern era:
Like Wilma Mankiller’s own contributions, Julian Assange’s visionary journalistic leadership is itself a model of Seven Generations thought. Freedom of speech, peace between nations, is never as urgent as it is today.
- One new reason to release Assange now is the overwhelming US and international call for an Israeli ceasefire. Assange’s WikiLeaks leadership occurred at the same time that international awareness of Israel’s human rights violations, war crimes and perpetration of mass atrocities was growing into today’s Ceasefire/ Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement and related struggles.
- While still locked into financial-weapons areements with Israel, Biden is developing a public voice against some of the most egregious Isareli settler actions and plans. He has released an executive order against West Bank settlements. Maybe just an electoral opportunism at play here, and however tokenistic and late-arriving, Biden’s executive order signals an opening for new anti-genocidal policies and humanitarian changes. Assange’s persecution occurs in a climate governed by a violent racist and colonial Israeli settler class– upheld by the U.S. military industrial complex, NATO, etc.
The release of Assange shifts power to the humanitarian worldview WikiLeaks represents: a humanitarianism Biden scrambles to establish within his “bipolar” strategy of hawkish aggression and then doveish “token” admonitions of excessive force, i.e. Biden’s West Bank settlement executive order. Other trivializations of recent violence include the Hague’s condemnation of Israeli aggression stopping short of supporting a ceasefire.
South Africa again proves a beacon of light, vision and humanity as it acts at the end of the world tunnel(vision) built when the modern nation-state of Israel was founded. Nakba– the result of the deep colonial-genocidal launch into Palestine– commenced and the Palestinian struggle continued.
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Create peace, not war, in the Middle East and everywhere, President Biden!
Release Julian Assange today!
Drop charges against Assange and WikiLeaks affiliates.
Call for an Israeli ceasefire!
Stop U.S. military aid to Israel.
Stop testing U.S. military technology in the Middle East.
Refund UNRWA and other humanitarian aid organizations.
Follow South Africa’s lead and demand the International Court of Justice, the Hague, find Israel’s war against Gaza a Genocide Convention violation.
Support a full World Court investigation into U.S.-Israeli war crimes.
Stop the murders, arrests and persecutions of journalists!
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It may be a reason to release Assange/ drop his charges that there are so many reasons (we have eleven here). To wrap up, last but not least, (drumroll, please!), #11 steadfastly upholds a guiding idea (Seven Generations) Emergency Ethics recommends readers follow:
- WikiLeaks’ actions reflect the Seven Generation’s principle.
Julian Assange’s visionary journalistic leadership is an example of Seven Generations thought. Freedom of speech, cooperation, diplomacy and peace between nations, is never as urgent as it is today.
Emergency Ethics recommends Julian Assange for the Nobel Peace Prize, on that note.
Let February 20, 2024 be the end to Assange’s persecution, with his release to his loving family and community of global supporters. Charges dropped, may he be renumerated to his satisfaction by all courts and entities persecuting him, his family, and communities of global support.
Emergency Ethics 