The World vs Julian Assange -- Part One: Exposing The Truth

Vampires Exist

They occupy some of the most powerful positions in society, infiltrating the ranks of CEOs, executives, commanders, legislators, bankers, etc. Like Kurt Barlow from Stephen King’s, “Salem’s Lot,” they send out their emissaries to find unknowing victims ripe for subjugation. Whether it’s deceiving the public,

slaughtering people for fun or profit, or stealing trillions of dollars from those who already have less than them, they always find some way to sink their teeth into the throats of innocent people and look good doing it. When our newspapers fail, or the vampires evade the law, a vigilante is needed. A vampire hunter is needed.

           

Julian Assange is one such vampire hunter and is now possibly one of the single most important figures in the world. Born in Townsville, Australia in 1971, he moved around to 37 different schools with his mother, and naturally developed a talent for computer programming when he acquired his first computer at the age of 16. By 1991 he was one of Australia’s most accomplished hackers, having broken into MILNET, the U.S. military’s secret defense data network, and Nortel, an international telecommunications company. A few years later he was charged with 24 counts of hacking, and was let off with only a fine after the judge said he just had a “youthful inquisitiveness.”

           

Although some suspect that autism might be responsible for his genius intelligence, his charisma never failed when he tried to court the prosecution lawyer with flowers. He later studied mathematics at the University of Melbourne, but dropped out for moral reasons, observing that many of his peers were doing computer projects for the military. This principled character was present since his early childhood, as his father, Brett Assange described him as “a sharp kid who always fought for the underdog.”

His OkCupid profile perfectly captured his funny, cynical personality with a description that said:

“WARNING: Want a regular, down to earth guy? Keep moving. I am not the droid you're looking for…Passionate, and often pig headed activist intellectual seeks siren for love affair, children and occasional criminal conspiracy…I like women from countries that have sustained political turmoil. Western culture seems to forge women that are valueless and inane.”

To top it off, online tests apparently say he is “87% slut.”

           

In 2006, Assange founded the infamous website WikiLeaks, a forum where whistleblowers could anonymously leak information and is most well known for releasing Hillary Clinton’s private emails in 2016. The site rose to prominence on the global stage in 2007 when it leaked a report by the international risk

consultancy Kroll, which detailed how former Kenyan President Daniel arap Moi

and his family laundered over a billion dollars of government funds to buy property for themselves in London, France, New York, South Africa, Israel, and dozens of other countries. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of children were dying of malaria. The report was commissioned by the following president, Mwai Kibaki, but never released to the public or acted upon. Assange has since claimed that the exposition of this corruption ultimately swayed the 2007 election in Kenya. A year later, he released another report, this one by the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights, investigating the extrajudicial killings and disappearances of at least 500 Kenyans perpetrated by the police. It was submitted to the Kenyan authorities and the United Nations Committee

Against Torture but was kept hidden from the public until WikiLeaks shoved it into the spotlight. The report details how the executions, sanctioned by the political leadership, were initially carried out against supposed members of the Mungiki gang using firearms, but soon began using other tactics including strangulation, drowning, mutilation, and bludgeoning so they could frame rival gangs for the crimes. Witnesses reported to the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR) that they saw the death squads carrying machetes, iron rods, and rope in their trucks.

           

Assange was given an award for his efforts in Kenya by Amnesty International in 2009, was named Time’s Person of the Year in 2010, and was given a medal by the Sidney Peace Foundation in 2011. The foundation’s director, Professor Stuart Rees, said, “By challenging centuries-old practices of government secrecy and by championing the people’s right to know, WikiLeaks and Julian Assange have created the potential for a new order in journalism and in the free flow of information.”

Among human rights and free-press advocates, Assange has become a venerated figure, and for good reason. His website stands at the epicenter of the fight against tyranny, abuse, corruption, and opacity. He summed up the core philosophy of his work in a blog saying, "The more secretive or unjust an organization is, the more leaks induce fear and paranoia in its leadership and planning coterie … Since unjust systems, by their nature, induce opponents, and in many places barely have the upper hand, mass leaking leaves them exquisitely vulnerable to those who seek to replace them with more open forms of governance.”

           

Assange was applauded by liberals and libertarians in 2010 when U.S. Military Intelligence Analyst Chelsea Manning, then Bradley Manning, leaked over 700,000 documents from diplomatic cables and war logs in Iraq and

Afghanistan. The revelations were horrifying and prompted many questions about the supposed benevolence of U.S. interference in the Middle East. The Iraq war logs revealed that between 2004 and 2010, 109,000 total casualties resulting from violent causes were recorded, 66,000 of which were civilian deaths.

           

These statistics contrast directly with the pronouncement by American Generals and British Ministers that the army does not carry out body counts. They lied to the American public and the world. Additionally, the already shocking numbers are actually much worse, because much data was missing from the report. In Fallujah in 2004, two major battles took place, where Iraq Body Count monitors claim at least 1,200 civilians were killed. The army’s logs do not report any one of these deaths.

           

Also revealed were the medical reports detailing the treatment of detainees who were shackled, blindfolded, and suspended by a rope, then whipped, beaten, and shocked. Several of these cases ended in death. Some Iraqis weren’t even given the chance to surrender; in one case, an Apache helicopter gunned down two insurgents who had laid down their arms. They were given orders to kill them anyway because apparently they “cannot surrender to an aircraft.”

That same helicopter can be seen in this video from 2007, where it killed a dozen Iraqis, including two Reuters reporters and two children.

           

That incident was messy and probably due to poor procedure and communication, but others are just baffling. In the Iraqi town of Ishaqi in 2006, a group of soldiers entered the house of a farmer. They handcuffed four women and five children, all of whom were younger than five years, then shot them all. Afterward, the military bombed the house to cover up the evidence. A military spokesperson said that the building was destroyed in a fight between U.S. soldiers and Al Qaida, but leaked diplomatic cables tell a different story. It can be hard to believe that there is not an innocent explanation for things like this, but two of my other blogs examining atrocities in the military provide a framework for how this brutality is facilitated.

           

Diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks revealed a plot by the American and British governments to bypass a treaty which over 100 countries -- not including the U.S. -- signed in 2008 banning the use of cluster bombs, a type of bomb that fragments into hundreds of smaller explosives after being dropped. The loophole, organized by British Minister David Miliband and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, would allow the U.S. to stockpile the illegal munitions on British soil as “temporary exceptions.” The weapons were banned because of their wild inaccuracy and failure to explode on impact, which presents a residual danger to civilians.

           

David Miliband and Hillary Clinton

The U.S. government dropped thousands of these bombs on Afghanistan knowing from experience how deadly they are. In the 1960s, they dropped about 260 million cluster bombs on Laos alone, which is more than all of the bombs dropped on Europe during World War Two. Because about 30% of the bomblets fail to detonate, it is estimated there are still close to 80 million live explosives hidden in the dirt across the country today. With the help of humanitarian organizations, only .5% of them have been safely collected. Efforts have instead been redirected towards educating the population on how to live with the threat and avoid death or mutilation. Despite this, over 12,000 people have been killed by the leftover Vietnam-era bombs as of 2008, and hundreds more die every year.

Julian Assange has been persecuted for years, and most times he has been able to wriggle out of it safely. But he is in danger now more than ever, and history seems to be arriving at a critical juncture where the rigidity of our rights and freedoms will be tested.