"What Is The Death Count Attributed To Each Journalist" Julian Assange Occupy London 08 October 2011
Chris Hedges: Assange & the Collapse of the Rule of Law
June 11, 2021
Chris Hedges gave this talk at a rally Thursday night in New York City in support of Julian Assange. John and Gabriel Shipton, Julian’s father and brother, also spoke at the event, which was held at The People’s Forum.
A society that prohibits the capacity to speak in truth extinguishes the capacity to live in justice.
This why we are here tonight. Yes, all of us who know and admire Julian decry his prolonged suffering and the suffering of his family. Yes, we demand that the many wrongs and injustices that have been visited upon him be ended. Yes, we honor him up for his courage and his integrity. But the battle for Julian’s liberty has always been much more than the persecution of a publisher. It is the most important battle for press freedom of our era. And if we lose this battle, it will be devastating, not only for Julian and his family, but for us.
Tyrannies invert the rule of law. They turn the law into an instrument of injustice. They cloak their crimes in a faux legality. They use the decorum of the courts and trials, to mask their criminality. Those, such as Julian, who expose that criminality to the public are dangerous, for without the pretext of legitimacy the tyranny loses credibility and has nothing left in its arsenal but fear, coercion and violence.
The long campaign against Julian and WikiLeaks is a window into the collapse of the rule of law, the rise of what the political philosopher Sheldon Wolin calls our system of inverted totalitarianism, a form of totalitarianism that maintains the fictions of the old capitalist democracy, including its institutions, iconography, patriotic symbols and rhetoric, but internally has surrendered total control to the dictates of global corporations.
https://consortiumnews.com/2021/06/11/chris-hedges-assange-the-collapse-of-the-rule-of-law/
Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, gave a speech to one group of protesters about anonymity after he was challenged by police for wearing a mask as he walked to the protest.
He said: "I ask that all of you demand that foreign bank accounts be opened up and made transparent, the same way that I today have been forced to be made transparent."
A spokeswoman for the protesters said Mr Assange then gave a speech where he talked about Wikileaks, police oppression and the current economic situation.
One protester, Anna, said she was hopeful that the demonstration would have an impact on governments and big businesses.
"These things take time. If they don't listen today, then we will stay here until they listen. This movement is not going away, this is a building global movement.
"There's a shift in the world - you don't have to be a genius to see our system's broken."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-15322134
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