While obituaries this week will rightfully laud Daniel Ellsberg for his disclosure of the lies and deceptions behind the Vietnam War, two ideological descendants of the Pentagon Papers, Julian Assange and Edward Snowden, remain unfree.
This weekend marks 11 years since Julian Assange entered the Ecuadorian Embassy in London and began his confinement as a political prisoner.
Now, Assange faces 175 years in prison for charges under the Espionage Act, a 1917 law used to jail President Woodrow Wilson's political opponents and critics of US involvement in World War I. Presidential candidate Eugene Debs was sentenced to ten years in federal prison in 1918 for telling a crowd of followers, "You need to know that you are fit for something better than slavery and cannon fodder."
A century later, Assange faces death in an American prison for exposing the cannon fodder of the War on Terror.
"Assange is not persecuted for his own crimes, but for the crimes of the powerful," writes Nils Melzer, UN Special Rapporteur on Torture and author of The Trial of Julian Assange.
"The persecution of Assange establishes a precedent that will not only allow the powerful to keep their crimes secret but will even make the revelation of such crimes punishable by law. Let us not fool ourselves: once telling the truth has become a crime, we will all be living in tyranny."
The meaning of Julian Assange is simple: should the powerful be able to indemnify themselves from legal and reputation recourse, or do citizens have a right to hold their officials accountable? His case represents more than his right to publish information - it is a question of whether we have a right to the information necessary to expose the crimes and corruption of our leaders.
https://brownstone.org/articles/julian-assange-and-the-war-against-you/
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