Will
we wait until they come for us because our homes are built atop
resources they wish to plunder, because we shared information online
they found objectionable, because we dared to question why madmen are
in control of our country and much of the world?
by
Whitney Webb
This
morning, the London-based branch of Empire made good on its threat
and boldly moved to begin dismantling the vestiges of democracy and
press freedom that still remain, vestiges that have allowed people
throughout the Western world to pretend that their government and
politicians still respect their rights and the rule of law.
Julian
Assange, the man who has helped expose a litany of crimes and the
in-your-face corruption of the world’s most powerful people and
governments, was pulled from the embassy of the country where he not
only holds citizenship but had been granted asylum. The dangerous
precedents Assange’s arrest has set — not just for journalism,
but also for national sovereignty and international law — are
staggering.
With
Assange now in U.K. custody, his fate will mirror our own, as
Assange’s fate and that of journalists around the world, as well as
the public itself, are increasingly intertwined. After all, those who
are after Assange and seek to rob him of his freedom — the U.S.
Empire, the “deep state,” the shadow government, the global
elite, etc. — are after our freedom as well.
If we
remain silent as they jail, extradite, torture or even kill this man,
we may expect a similar fate for ourselves. It will not come
tomorrow. It will not come next week. It could be years away. But
make no mistake, the global empire, whose core is the U.S.
government, will now be empowered to charge and imprison anyone it
deems a threat to its operations.
Those
operations, including those that Assange helped to expose, often
involve the mass murder of innocent civilians — untold numbers of
children among them — in order to loot the resources of other
sovereign nations. They also often involve the installation of puppet
governments by either covert (e.g., election “meddling”) or overt
(e.g., regime-change wars) means.
Those
responsible for the most egregious violations of international law,
for war crimes, for the slaughter of innocent life, are not
imprisoned, degraded or tortured — they are rewarded and promoted.
As we have seen today — and in recent weeks, particularly following
Chelsea Manning’s imprisonment — those who seek to expose these
crimes are the ones who are threatened, tortured and punished.
Like
it or not, we are all already a part of this war
The
world has known for years that Assange would meet this fate. Little
was done. Now, the turning point is here. Will we continue to escape
into the false realities of television, cinema, video games, and
whatever we use to distract us and numb our pain while the actual
world in which we live devolves into a technocratic, imperial
dictatorship? Will we continue to ignore the obvious threats to our
lives and our children’s lives because confronting these threats is
uncomfortable and often difficult?
Will we
wait until they come for us because our homes are built atop
resources they wish to plunder, because we shared information online
they found objectionable, because we dared to question why madmen are
in control of our country and much of the world?
Such an
eventuality may seem laughable to some, but those days are not far
away and are already here for many people around the world, even in
the West. Assange’s arrest is the first shot of a war to which all
of us, like it or not, have already been drafted because it is a war
for the very world in which we live — a war for our society, our
planet, our livelihood, our right to self-determination. You can try
to escape to the ends of the Earth, thousands of miles away from “the
West” (as I myself did), only to find that there is no country
anywhere in the world that is not currently under siege.
Never
before in history has the global oligarchy been more powerful. The
concentration of power and wealth in the hands of the few is
unprecedented, worse even than in the Gilded Age or the final days of
the Roman Empire. These people do not plan to cede any of this power
to you. They do not want you to have control over your own lives. To
them, we are already slaves. And those who are silent, especially
now, are sending a signal to the elites that they embrace that
servitude.
The
revolution will not be televised and the war will not be won on
social media
For too
long, actions in defense of Assange, and more broadly in protest of
Empire, have been focused in the virtual realm — that is, on the
internet and social media. While the internet and social media are
important tools for sharing information, their use for that end is
being suppressed like never before and it will not be long before
social media is entirely censored and devoid of dissent. If we wait
until that day comes, and put all our eggs in the social media
basket, we will have shot ourselves in the foot and it could well be
a fatal blow.
We can
no longer run from the world, escape into our remaining comforts —
particularly those online — while the world burns. Assange may be
the first journalist to be arrested and extradited under these
circumstances, but he will not be the last. What we do now will
determine how far they go.
The U.S.
and its allies are prepping for several wars, many of them against
countries much larger than Iraq, and such wars could make Iraq and
Afghanistan look like skirmishes by comparison. The people behind
Assange’s arrest and perpetual imperial wars do not care about your
tweets or Facebook posts. They want your focus to remain on the
virtual world and away from the real one over which they are
consolidating their control.
Now is
the time to resist. Now is the time to insist. Now is the time to
take to the streets, to talk to your neighbors, family and co-workers
of the dangers facing us all. Your voice and your actions matter. The
longer we wait, the worse things will become. The turning point is
here. Don’t let them win.
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