Whenever I talk about the need to dismantle government secrecy I always get some know-it-all empire simp going “Without secrecy we wouldn’t be able to wage wars and coordinate against our enemies and have nukes, you idiot.”
And it’s like, uh, yeah. That’s kind of my point. They only use secrecy to do evil things and act against the interests of normal human beings.
The lie is that the government uses secrecy in order to counter its enemies and win wars, when in reality the government uses secrecy to make enemies and start wars.
Julian Assange said “The overwhelming majority of information is classified to protect political security, not national security.” It doesn’t exist for our benefit, it exists for theirs. It’s so our rulers can keep doing depraved things with no accountability. That’s why they keep expanding government secrecy and increasing the punishment of those who breach it: because they want to do more depraved things and remain unaccountable.
It really is nuts how there’s now talk of Julian Assange being offered a “plea bargain” for rightly exposing US war crimes. What’s he meant to plead guilty to? Good journalism?
The last time there was a credible military threat to the United States near the US border, the US responded so aggressively that it nearly ended the world. The reason people don’t tend to get it when you compare Ukraine or Taiwan to a hypothetical scenario in which Russia or China were amassing heavily armed proxy forces on the Mexican border is because people literally can’t wrap their minds around that happening. It’s just too remote and unthinkable a proposition in today’s world.
But that shows you just how clear it is that the US is the aggressor in those standoffs: it’s doing something so freakishly aggressive that people literally cannot imagine it happening on the US border. If you see amassing a heavily armed threat on the border of an enemy nation as normal and fine in one instance and literally unfathomable in another, that shows you your perception and expectations have been warped by propaganda.
If a political commentator isn’t routinely drawing outraged responses from both Republicans and Democrats, they’re not talking about the world’s problems accurately and authentically enough.
Whenever you see someone with a high profile taking a stand against the establishment and whipping up rebellious populist enthusiasm in the US, just watch and wait: 95 percent of the time they’ll get around to telling you that the best way to channel your revolutionary ideals is to vote for Democrats or Republicans.
[…]
Via https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/an-assange-plea-deal-for-what-crime?publication
The Most Revolutionary Act 
“. . . . the government uses secrecy to make enemies and start wars.”
This is what it seems like to me too.
LikeLike
I think Caitlin is stating the obvious, Aunty.
LikeLiked by 1 person
“The files Assange shared in 2010 included footage of a U.S. airstrike in Baghdad that killed 18 civilians — including journalists — and hundreds of thousands of field reports from the Iraq War.”
So let me get this straight, Assange is being held pending charges by the U.S. because he exposed the horrendous atrocities committed by this savage treacherous, thieving, lying, filthy cesspool of a shithole???!!!
Since he is an Australian citizen, Australia should declare war against this hell hole and commence to sending missiles up our homeless asses, straight away! I so hope that the BRICS nations finally puts the final nail in this putrid coffin called “AmeriKKKa!” There! I told everyone how I really feel!!!!
LikeLike
Assange has already been indicted in the US, Shelby, for violating the Espionage Act. And in September 2021 Australia joined AUKUS, a trilateral nuclear pact under which Australia will acquire nuclear submarines. Thank God New Zealand isn’t involved in that mess because of their 30 year antinuclear stand, which bans all US warships from our ports owing to the US refusal to declare whether they are nuclear powered or not.
LikeLike
The US is the aggressor in most wars since the Brits settled here. Before that, the British Empire was the largest the world had ever known. Is the US trying to beat that record, by hook or crook? We are busy making enemies around the world. No wonder the BRICS countries are trying to bypass the US fiat dollar.
LikeLike
Katherine, Matthew Ehret, who is a Canadian historian, says the British Empire never really ended. Canada, Australia, New Zealand are all still part of the British Empire. We all still have governor generals, appointed by the British monarch, who must sign off on every law passed by our Parliaments. Along with the US, we are also compulsory members of the Five Eyes intelligence network and if we try to disengage, the governor general has the power to dismiss our parliament, as was none to Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam in 1975: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/23/gough-whitlam-1975-coup-ended-australian-independence
In his Clash of the Two Americas, Ehret also describes the ways in which British intelligence continues to have undue control over both Wall Street and the US political process, via selective assassination of US president unfriends to British aims, the Rhodes Scholar program and a secretive fifth column left behind after the US War of Independence.
LikeLike