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“Every time we witness an injustice and do not act, we train our character to be passive in its presence and thereby eventually lose all ability to defend ourselves and those we love. In a modern economy it is impossible to seal oneself off from injustice.
If we have brains or courage, then we are blessed and called on not to frit these qualities away, standing agape at the ideas of others, winning pissing contests, improving the efficiencies of the neocorporate state, or immersing ourselves in obscuranta, but rather to prove the vigor of our talents against the strongest opponents of truth we can find.
If we can only live once, then let it be a daring adventure that draws on all our powers. Let it be with similar types whose hearts and heads we may be proud of.
Let our grandchildren delight to find the start of our stories in their ears
but the endings all around in their wandering eyes.
The whole universe or the structure that perceives it is a worthy opponent,
but try as I may I can not escape the sound of suffering.
Perhaps as an old man I will take great comfort in pottering around in a lab and gently talking to students in the summer evening and will accept suffering with insouciance.
But not now; men in their prime, if they have convictions are tasked to act on them.”
― Julian Assange
“You have to start with the truth. The truth is the only way that we can get anywhere. Because any decision-making that is based upon lies or ignorance
can't lead to a good conclusion.”
― Julian Assange
THE INSANE PERSECUTION OF JULIAN ASSANGE
The following are excerpts from a Guardian article written 4 years ago.
His situation has become much, much worse since then
Julian Assange is showing all the symptoms associated with prolonged exposure to psychological torture and should not be extradited to the US, according to a senior UN expert who visited him in prison.
Nils Melzer, UN’s special rapporteur on torture, is expected to make his appeal to the UK government on Friday. It comes after Assange, the co-founder of WikiLeaks, was said by his lawyers to be too ill to appear by video link for the latest court hearing of the case on Thursday.
“One of the best ways to achieve justice is to expose injustice.”
― Julian Assange
Assange has been moved to the health ward of Belmarsh prison, London, where he has been serving a 50-week sentence for skipping bail while fighting extradition to the US. He is accused of violating the Espionage Act by publishing secret documents containing the names of confidential US military and diplomatic sources.
After meeting Assange earlier this month in the company of medical experts who examined him, Melzer will say on Friday that he fears the Australian’s human rights could be seriously violated if he is extradited to the US and will condemn what he describes as the “deliberate and concerted abuse inflicted for years” on him.
“In the course of the past nine years, Mr Assange has been exposed to persistent, progressively severe abuse ranging from systematic judicial persecution and arbitrary confinement in the Ecuadorian embassy, to his oppressive isolation, harassment and surveillance inside the embassy, and from deliberate collective ridicule, insults and humiliation, to open instigation of violence and even repeated calls for his assassination,” Melzer will say on Friday.
“I was surprised, for example, to see that on the date he was arrested he was immediately brought to court after six years in the embassy and then convicted. Under the normal rule of law you would expect someone to be arrested and then given a couple of weeks to prepare his defence at least.”
The former legal adviser to the Red Cross will say on Friday: “In 20 years of work with victims of war, violence and political persecution I have never seen a group of democratic states ganging up to deliberately isolate, demonise and abuse a single individual for such a long time and with so little regard for human dignity and the rule of law.”
Full article link:
“The act of assassination - the targeting of visible individuals, is the result of mental inclinations honed for the pre-literate societies in which our species evolved,”
― Julian Assange
Song for Julian Assange | "The Wrong Man"
“Courage is not the absence of fear. Only fools have no fear.
Rather, courage is the intellectual mastery of fear by understanding
the true risks and opportunities of the situation and keeping those
things in balance”
― Julian Assange
LYRICS
I was set up My credit was gone I was a patsy In a world gone wrong
Because I revealed That the truth was a lie Though I committed no sin Committed no crime
So they locked me away And buried the key So that the world Would forget about me
Now I′m the boy in the bubble I'm the link + the chain I′m the cause and the trouble That's bringing you pain
I was set up I was deceived Even my Guardian angel Cheated on me Through the media-hype Political waste This dirty propaganda Made me a figure of hate
All I needed Was a few more days All I needed Was a friendly face
All I needed Was a distant hope Not a hopeless dream Going up in smoke
All I needed Was the air to breathe All I needed Was your belief
I wasn't looking for fame To change the world To make my name Or to fill my purse
Now there′s no time No time to live No rail for the peace train On a broken bridge
But when the battle′s over When the fear recedes You'll see that your demon Was just little ′ol me
I'm not important It′s not about my voice I don't call these changes I don′t have such a choice
So please forgive me If I done you wrong If I have strayed From the path we're on
All I'm saying is It′s time to choose All I′m saying is The honest truth
We're all living on A dead end street People dying Hungry mouths to feed
Oh, I know That the pressure′s on I don't know Where the next buck comes from
Must be something More to it all Than sittin′ contemplating Our decline and fall
So be damned Let's take this stand Though it won′t be easy We'll follow the plan
With documentary evidence Undeniable proof Why deny the ocean? When it's a mountain of truth
So if you agree That water makes sand Why deny the ocean? When you′ve got the wrong man
And like the truth is written Why deny the proof? Why deny the evidence? It′s the burden of proof
Just for a moment A moment in time The truth comes out And the world will be fine
But if you're looking in the ocean Why deny the sand? You′re looking in the wrong place When you've got the wrong man.
Writer(s): Alan Tarney, Leo Sayer Lyrics
Julian Assange speaks of the control of the internet
“The world is not sliding, but galloping into a new transnational dystopia. This development has not been properly recognized outside of national security circles. It has been hidden by secrecy, complexity and scale. The internet, our greatest tool of emancipation, has been transformed into the most dangerous facilitator of totalitarianism we have ever seen. The internet is a threat to human civilization.
These transformations have come about silently, because those who know what is going on work in the global surveillance industry, and have no incentives to speak out. Left to its own trajectory, within a few years, global civilization will be a postmodern surveillance dystopia, from which escape for all but the most skilled individuals will be impossible. In fact, we may already be there.
While many writers have considered what the internet means for global civilization, they are wrong. They are wrong because they do not have the sense of perspective that direct experience brings. They are wrong because they have never met the enemy.”
― Julian Assange, Cypherpunks: Freedom and the Future of the Internet
“The internet, our greatest tool of emancipation, has been transformed into the most dangerous facilitator of totalitarianism we have ever seen.
The internet is a threat to human civilization.”
― Julian Assange, Cypherpunks: Freedom and the Future of the Internet
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