View 27th Vigil, a Fortnight After Assange’s Arrest

Yahweh,

You left out Yemen.

Also you left out Macron’s efforts to go after the French journalists who broke the story that the Saudis depend on weapons sales from the U$A, the U.K., and France to kill the civilians whom the Saudis are intentionally targeting.

Macron’s effort to intimidate and threaten those who reveal the truth of the vary things you list, kind of, sort of, relates, very directly,to the assault on Assange and what he represents.

You are saying, “Ignore the messenger, forget about the messenger, forget even the message, and look elsewhere!”

Had you been in Athens, would you have said, “Socrates is dead, which he well deserved. Let us move on to other more important things.”?

There are many things that deserve attention, but turning away from the plight of Assange, who might face a very severe fate, perhaps even a death sentence, is to belittle the efforts forever tied to combatting all those interests who pursue the wars and the violence so profitable to the few seeking obscene wealth and total power.

You seem to be implying that those who expose the truth behind the destruction, and reveal those interests, are not worthy of the concern and continuing support of the rest of us.

Presumably then, from your perspective, Chelsea Manning, or the many other whistleblowers who Obama savaged, should be forgotten and left to their fates, should be but “minor” concerns shifted to the periphery of thought and consideration?

That said, if you wish to provide the rest of us considered analysis and thoughtful perspective and history around those other many things you mention, all very important, without a doubt, then you may count on my rapt attention to your thoughts on those matters.

I would hope you might seek to reveal underlying connections among those things and reflect, as well, upon even other issues which have potential impacts on the whole of humanity, you know, nuclear Armageddon, human-induced environmental catastrophe by other means, or even the vicious assault on even the merest pretense of democracy, anywhere and everywhere on the planet.

Not forgetting the next Wall Street scam on the commons through privatization of everything, including Social Security, here in the U$, or aspects of the social contract elsewhere in the We$t, or those places subject to We$tern “intervention” all over the rest of the globe.

I would add, as well, the behavior of “educational” systems, be they the MSM or academia itself, in ensuring that the kinds of critical thinking Assange’s revelations well ought encourage, are attacked, belittled, or kept from even being heard.

Yes, it is complex, the daily and ongoing outrage, the corruption, perversion, and destruction of conscience and principle, it is a massive moral crisis which confronts humanity, and it is all interconnected as well as connected to an economic system more akin to cancer than to the sniffles.

Do you think that the fate of individuals might not presage the fate of all?

As goes Assange, is it possible, so go we all?

Or will the many be “safe” if they simply ask no questions and follow the doctrine of, “I know nothing ..,”?

Socrates admitted that there were many things about which he knew nothing, and because he did not pretend to know things he did not, the Oracle of Delphi said that he was the wisest man in Athens.

Sergeant Shultz, on the other hand, when he claimed to know nothing, sought to hide what he did know.

There is a difference between these assertions of not knowing.

In a world where ignorance is bliss, wisdom is a curse and crime.

Do you suggest that sharing knowledge of what power does, in the name of the people, is such a small thing as to deserve, not merely punishment, but banishment from the thoughts of those who should insist upon knowing what is done in their name?

Of course, Consortium News has little need of my meager defense of what chooses to focus on. Nor any need to justify those choices.

At a time when many sites seem to be increasingly bowing to conventional assumption, especially in those areas that lead to, and seek to justify aggression and violence as, for example, the clamorous assertion that Russia is attacking the U$, without any proof but that empty assertion which could, all too easily, however righteously, lead to very dire and grim ends, Consortium News chooses to support those who dare question and expose corruption and deceit.

Consortium News is in the forefront of raising the critical, and moral, questions demanded by our time and by conscience, as well as exposing the crimes being waged against the many, including Julian Assange by those who seek by all means, subtle or gross, to subjugate and enslave the many in what amounts to a global neofeudal oligarchy controlled by as few as several thousand “folks” who care not a whit for the existence of other life forms, including human beings, or even about the continued capacity of the planet to support such life forms.

We are dealing with a social pathology which has access to a technology that permits levels of control and domination heretofore unimaniginable and unobtainable for any who might have had the Machiavellian desire for such total and absolute power.

Assange recognized this crisis for what it is and seeks further to become.

He permitted many others to grasp the depth and extent of it.

He deserved to be thought about, by everyone, every single day.

Those who hate him for exposing their crimes and deceits, those who have been harmed by those crimes and deceits, and even those who are manipulated to hate and believe the worst lies about him, as well, especially, as those who dare recognize and value the courage it took and takes to question when prudence and “looking out for number one” dictate being quiet, subservient, and small.

Assange is not a small person.

Perhaps what is happening to him reveals those who are.

What do you think?

Yahweh- I can only conclude that you HAVEN’T been reading Wikileaks, or Consortium News, or listening to the vigils. If you had, you would have learned a lot more about the issues you complain are being ignored- and about our illegal wars, and torture, and the evisceration of our civil liberties and human rights, and social and economic injustice, and the corruption of our political institutions and judiciary, and much, much more- and maybe you’d have a clue about how important this case is to independent journalism, and the public’s right to be informed with unassailable facts and truthful narrative- and how that is so essential if we are to hold those in power accountable to the rule of law.

I applaud Joe Laurie, and Elizabeth Vos, and Suzie Dawson and all of the other participants in these weekly vigils. Hopefully, more and more people will be watching to understand the existential issues of this case, and get involved in some way or other in that fight for justice.