ANTIFASCISTS

TEODROSE FIKRE—Many within the US and UK government and the broader media-political establishment have cunningly noted that Assange was free to leave anytime. Their duplicity was revealed this afternoon in London, Assange was never free to leave because he knew he would be arrested on sight the minute he left the Ecuador compound. Where is the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), where is Human Rights Watch, where are the people who cry crocodile tears for journalists who are killed by tin pot dictators as Julian Assange is being tormented and silenced by the American and British governments in real time? This entire episode is showing the world that we are being served by public serpents who pretend to care about justice when they are really accomplices of the invisible hands who are bleeding our planet.

JEFF J. BROWN—Interviewing Ed Curtin on the anniversary of Martin Luther King’s 1967 “he signed his own death warrant” speech, Beyond Vietnam: a Time to Break the Silence, and his cold blooded assassination at the hands of the US government exactly 365 days later, was a meaningful, memorable time. After hanging up, I felt better about my global point of view and the future of humanity, against all the odds. He told me that in two months, he is being pushed out of his 20-year professorship at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. This school and its students will be greatly diminished by his involuntary departure.

CHRIS MARSDEN—“Jeremy Corbyn did the same as soon as he was elected Labour leader and maintains his silence to this day. He has done nothing to challenge the plot against Assange or any assault on democratic freedoms by the state apparatus. And he would not do so, even if he formed a government.”

JOHN R. HALL—In the depths of despair during the deaths of loved ones, I abandoned my own true hero’s journey, ceased writing, discontinued paying any attention to the crimes of Empire, the deep state, the military/industrial complex, and all the usual suspects, turning my back on the very issues I cared about most deeply.  In retrospect this may have been my second inexcusable regret and mistake.  The decision didn’t even give me any peace of mind, didn’t stop the anger and rage, didn’t ease the pain of knowing that the crimes against humanity and the assault of Pachamama continued unabated and with growing acceleration.

JOHN PILGER—WikiLeaks has also revealed how the United States spies on its allies; how the CIA can watch you through your I-phone; how Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton took vast sums of money from Wall Street for secret speeches that reassured the bankers that if she was elected, she would be their friend. In 2016, WikiLeaks revealed a direct connection between Clinton and organised jihadism in the Middle East: terrorists, in other words. One email disclosed that when Clinton was US Secretary of State, she knew that Saudi Arabia and Qatar were funding Islamic State, yet she accepted huge donations for her foundation from both governments.