By Robert Scheer and Chris Hedges
May 12, 2021 "Information
Clearing House" - The mistreatment of WikiLeaks
founder Julian Assange over the past decade has
been defined as “psychological
torture” by the UN Special Rapporteur on
Torture, Nils Melzer. Yet, there is still no
real end in sight to Assange’s promethean
plight. Several months after a
British judge blocked his extradition to the
U.S.--citing that conditions in America’s
inhumane prison system would be detrimental to
his health--the WikiLeaks founder continues to
be held in a maximum security prison in the U.K.
The U.S. government, first under Donald Trump’s
rule and now under Joe Biden’s, is appealing the
extradition ruling. With a new decision in the
case is due to be announced any day now,
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and
ScheerPost columnist Chris Hedges joins
Robert Scheer on this week’s installment of
“Scheer Intelligence” to discuss what Hedges has
called
Assange’s “martyrdom.”
Scheer and Hedges assert that
Assange’s case is a clear threat to freedom of
the press given that he acted in the capacity of
a publisher in the same way the global media
outlets that printed the content released by
WikiLeaks did. Should the publishers of the
Washington Post, New York Times and other media
have been charged with a crime for publishing
the content? Hedges and Scheer, who have both
been staunch supporters of the WikiLeaks
founder, conclude that there can only be one
reason for all recent Republican and Democratic
administrations to doggedly persecute Assange:
he is a major threat to the establishment’s most
sinister interests.
“Your job [as a publisher] is not
to be partisan,” says Hedges. “Your job is to
expose the machinations of power, the crimes of
power, the lies of power--whoever's in power.
And that's precisely what Julian did. when he
was going after Bush with the Iraq War Logs, the
Democrats loved him. But as soon as his
journalistic integrity led him to also expose
the inner workings of the Democratic Party
establishment, they turned on him as
vociferously as the Republicans.
“I've been stunned at what an
egregious assault [Assange’s persecution] is on
press freedom and how the institutions that
purport to care about freedom of the press have
been complicit in the persecution of Julian.”
As Assange is tortured before our eyes,
Hedges decries the silence of organizations such
as PEN, which “are tasked with holding up the
kind of liberties and press freedoms that we
care about.” The award-winning journalist argues
that PEN and others have not only sold out to
their liberal donor base, but have been “taken
over” by Democratic establishment figures such
as
Suzanne Nossel, the current head of PEN
America and former member of the State
Department under Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton. Scheer also highlights the plight of
another person who has become collateral damage
in America’s tyrannical mission against
Assange.
“The real hero of this whole thing
is Chelsea Manning,” says Scheer. “The
U.S. government has been tormenting Chelsea
Manning because they basically want to get
her to say: ‘Julian Assange put me up to this;
he's the really bad guy.’ It's a horrible story
of government torture and manipulation that you
have this rare, exemplary citizen, Chelsea
Manning, who does the right thing and says our
government, in our name, is committing war
crimes--killing innocent children and
journalists and everything--and then they want
to now break her so she'll go against Julian
Assange.”
Listen to the full conversation
between Hedges and Scheer as they examine in
detail the U.K.’s role in the Assange trial, as
well as discuss the very real dangers the
results of the case could pose to journalists
and journalism the world over.