This global security state is a terrifying melding of the corporate and the public. And what it has done to Assange it will soon do to the rest of us.
By Chris Hedges
Truthdig (2/10/20)
David Morales, the indicted owner of the Spanish private security firm Undercover Global, is being investigated by Spain’s high court for allegedly providing the CIA with audio and video recordings of the meetings WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange had with his attorneys and other visitors when the publisher was in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. The security firm also reportedly photographed the passports of all of Assange’s visitors. It is accused of taking visitors’ phones, which were not permitted in the embassy, and opening them, presumably in an effort to intercept calls. It reportedly stole data from laptops, electronic tablets and USB sticks, all required to be left at the embassy reception area. It allegedly compiled detailed reports on all of Assange’s meetings and conversations with visitors. The firm even is said to have planned to steal the diaper of a baby—brought to visit Assange— to perform a DNA test to establish whether the infant was a secret son of Assange. UC Global, apparently at the behest of the CIA, also allegedly spied on Ecuadorian diplomats who worked in the London embassy.
WikiLeaks has done more than any other news organization to expose the abuses of power and crimes of the American empire.
The probe by the court, the Audiencia Nacional, into the activities of UC Global, along with leaked videos, statements, documents and reports published by the Spanish newspaper El País as well as the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, offers a window into the new global security state. Here the rule of law is irrelevant. Here privacy and attorney-client privilege do not exist. Here people live under 24-hour-a-day surveillance. Here all who attempt to expose the crimes of tyrannical power will be hunted down, kidnapped, imprisoned and broken. This global security state is a terrifying melding of the corporate and the public. And what it has done to Assange it will soon do to the rest of us.
The publication of classified documents is not yet a crime in the United States. If Assange is extradited and convicted, it will become one. Assange is not an American citizen. WikiLeaks, which he founded, is not a U.S.-based publication. The extradition of Assange would mean the end of journalistic investigations into the inner workings of power. It would cement into place a terrifying global, corporate tyranny under which borders, nationality and law mean nothing. Once such a legal precedent is set, any publication that publishes classified material, from The New York Times to an alternative website, will be prosecuted and silenced.
The flagrant defiance of law and international protocols in the persecution of Assange is legion. …
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“Late stage capitalism is finding out just how late it really is. The oligarchs are afraid, which is why they are taking to the electoral field with their own money, to defend their dictatorship. In desperation and monumental hubris, they make huge mistakes that need to be captured and displayed. Outside the imperial homeland, they widen their wars with sanctions as well as bombs and bullets, attempting to terrorize the planet, but instead quicken the processes of their own decline.”
— Glenn Ford, Black Agenda Report, Free All Political Prisoners — Including Julian Assange & Chelsea Manning
(Commoner Call cartoon by Mark L. Taylor, 2020. Open source and free for non-derivative use with link to www.thecommonercall.org )
