ACTIVISTS & HEROES

JOHN PILGER—When we greet each other, I can feel his ribs. His arm has no muscle. He has lost perhaps 10 to 15 kilos since April. When I first saw him here in May, what was most shocking was how much older he looked. “I think I’m going out of my mind,” he said then. I said to him, “No you’re not. Look how you frighten them, how powerful you are.” Julian’s intellect, resilience and wicked sense of humor – all unknown to the low life who defame him — are, I believe, protecting him.  He is wounded badly, but he is not going out of his mind.

KOLLIBRI T SONNENBLUM—The Seattle Indymedia website had been set up by anarcho-techies (using open-source code originated in Australia) with the intention of just providing a tool for reporting the WTO protests. But when the on-the-ground, from-the-people, non-corporate coverage proved so popular, they gladly and graciously helped it spread. The worldwide network that emerged was based on the anarchist principles of mutual aid and individual liberty. Local sites ran things their own way and network-wide decisions were made by consensus. Though Indymedia was popularized in the US, it was animated by the spirit of the worldwide anti-globalization movement whose rallying cry was Otro Mundo Es Possible—”Another World Is Possible.”

RAMIN MAZAHERI—A big difference between the two movements is that Occupy was led by many college-educated “do-gooders” – and God bless them – whereas the Yellow Vests are undoubtedly a movement of the most marginalised classes. Seemingly the most comprehensive survey thus far showed that few Vesters are unemployed, two-thirds of Vesters make less than the average national wage, and an even greater percentage regret a lack of cultural resources and social links. In other words: hard-working, (yet still) poor, isolated citizens who yearn for more cultural enrichment.

OSCAR GRENFELL—As UN Special Rapporteur on Torture Nils Melzer stated in an official letter to the Swedish government publicly released last week, the investigation “was the primary factor that triggered, enabled and encouraged the subsequent campaign of sustained and concerted public mobbing and judicial persecution against Mr. Assange in various countries, the cumulative effects of which can only described as psychological torture.” Despite never coming close to the issuing of criminal charges, the Swedish investigation was used to embroil Assange in the legal system and was the chief mechanism for enforcing his arbitrary detention.

The judiciary in Chile reported Friday that a total of 26,126 Chileans have been arrested since October 18, when demonstrations and protests began in rejection of the Neoliberal policies imposed on the South American nation for 30 years. Out of this number – cited local media – a total of 8,664 people are from the metropolitan region of Santiago, a Chilean province where strong and massive mobilizations were registered in rejection of the measures, intensified during the government of Sebastián Piñera.