Roger Waters on Julian Assange

28 Oct

Waters gets better and better. Here he is on RT: eloquent, informed, passionate. Not just on the shameful – and in its Orwellian implications terrifying – treatment of a man whose ‘crime’ was to tell us the truth about the very real crimes of the US Empire and its lackey states. Roger goes wider, as we must if we are to grasp the enormity of what is being done.

And let’s not forget how assiduously the Guardian’s coverage – remember Suzannah Moore’s “massive turd” gibe? – eroded support for Julian from a liberal intelligentsia which should have rushed to his defence.

After Roger Waters, stick around for the interview with Priscillia Ludosky, co-founder of the gilets jaunes.

6 Replies to “Roger Waters on Julian Assange

  1. That British Parliamentarians & Judges permit this daily outrageous further illegal abuse of the UK Legal System on behalf of foreign actors (& against Assange), a system that pretends freedom of speech & a right to publish for Julian Assange, all serves to demonstrate how wholly corrupted the corporate media & politicians have become & how wholly legally unaccountable they are … Not to mention UK Judges prejudice & support of the national security state’s outrageously illegal endeavours, above any human rights. Not only has the corporate media lost its’ focus, credibility & purpose completely, but any relevant Law has become meaningless, no longer subject to QC’s just purpose, today, it is just QE’s that count as quantitative easing of democracy into Corporate Fascism. Unquestionably ‘Lord’ Judge Arbuthnot should have recused herself, given Wikileaks revelations regarding her husband Lord Arbuthnot, but does any body care, Legally ! ?

    Judges & Politicians pimp War, daily: sanctioned by the National Security State of elitist corporate self-interests, from ego to financial: & with odd exceptions like Chris Williamson, there is actually no individual government body of any meaningful substance that gives a damn, any more: until, the history of the national security state catches up with them, personally & individually, in whatever body, and then they behave like the sheep they have become, rather than find any courage based on their moral conviction and any principle in Law: even if this means the National Security State pimping kids from Orphanages, (like Gary Hoy), for sexual abuse & political control of politicians >>> Democracy has failed, in every sense, until the collective members of the National Security State are held accountable for censoring news on National Security State Actor’s actions of Fascism pure !

    Regulate Corporate Media immediately: they are out of self-control: censoring & remaining silent when the National Security State pimps orphaned children to politicians to abuse @WILL and they will continue to do so, with deep state actors, by any means available, especially today via computerised algorithmic methods: the N.S.S. includes pimping your children to be dispatched to war on corporate others behalf & against anybody who dares question the fanatical fascism of the national security state … Censorship is Suicide of all values anybody ever dreamed of attaining, individually, and it undermines the very foundations of Law, including Scientific Law. Words simply fail me, other than: stop funding corporate fascism &

    ‘Free Julian Assange’ !

  2. Hi Tim. Max Blumenthal of the Grayzone – I was quoting them just two days ago – has been arrested now. See WSWS.

    The illusion of truely independent media is vital to the illusion of democracy. The best opportunity in my lifetime for press regulation came in the wake of the phone hacking scandals. The Cameron Government made a few deprecatory noises then allowed the whole thing to die down. Business as usual.

    • “The illusion of truely independent media is vital to the illusion of democracy.”

      Which presents a problem. What happens when this illusion becomes harder and harder to sustain. That reminds me of one of my favourite Zappa quotes:

      “The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it’s profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater.”

      • The question you pose, George, in your second paragraph has exercised me for years. To anyone who looks into these matters, two things are clear. One is that should our ruling classes be forced to choose between maintaining profits, and maintaining a largely (not entirely) illusory democracy, they’ll without hesitation choose the former. Indeed, given the human capacity for self serving ideologies, they’ll make that choice in the firm belief it is for the greater good.

        The other is that vital to the illusion of democracy is the myth of independent media. Should that myth implode, the first point will kick in. My sense is of our rulers hedging their bets. On the one hand they do what they can to discredit challengers to their monopoly. (A monopoly effected via billionaire ownership, yes, but also by dependence on advertising – so disciplined by market forces – and in a few nations through seemingly independent media like the BBC: reliant on politicians linked in diverse ways, one being the ‘revolving door’, to big capital. Hence the war on ‘fake news’, attacks on social media freedom – in the name of lofty ideals, naturally – and other means of marginalising alternative sources of information.

        All the while, however, I suspect as Frank did that they will indeed pull back the curtain – remove the velvet glove – to reveal the true face of an insatiable despotism which is capitalism’s inherent nature. People really don’t get that. Even folk who don’t care for capitalism fail to see, I suspect because the truth is too shocking, the rapaciously totalitarian nature of capital’s intrinsic laws of motion. The law of maximising profits subordinates all else.

        • PS – re my final sentence, above, see this from WSWS three days ago. Boeing rushed through and cut corners on the 737 Max 8 plane, responsible for the hundreds of deaths at Jakarta and Addis Ababa, to cut costs and to grab market share before Europe’s Airbus arrived.

          Boeing, like Lockheed Martin, is a corner stone of America’s trillion dollar military-industrial complex: a means not only of bringing death and terror to the middle east and elsewhere by the world’s foremost rogue state, but also of transferring wealth within the USA from the many to the few.

          • I apologise for the length of this response but it seemed to just grow as it went along.

            The part of that WSWS article that struck me most was this:

            “At Wednesday’s hearing, Muilenburg did not even acknowledge the presence of family members of the deceased who stood behind him holding up photos of their lost spouses, children, parents and siblings. He turned around to face them only after a member of the group demanded that he “look at people when you say you’re sorry.””

            The word “evil” doesn’t even seem relevant here. The people assembled and the people in their photos do not even register in the logic of capital. Muilenberg may have flinched a bit when confronted by the human cost but I think that the true perpetrators are always the hidden ones further up and they always have their various fall-guys and henchmen to protect them. It’s not even a case of proposing some kind of “lizard peope” in the style of David Icke. It’s far more terrifying than that. It is the aforementioned logic of capital. Although – if there is a flicker of thought in the uppermost echelons, it is that these exalted ones do not see themselves as the cream of humanity. They see themselves as the ONLY humanity and all the minions below them are a kind of sub-human slime.

            And on that note, Samir Amin – amongst others – has observed the curious convergence between Nazi Germany and America with its blather about “American exceptionalism”. The latter looks like the doctrine of “the Master Race” with a liberal gloss. But what this implies is that all that familiar stuff about the Nazi regime and “the banality of evil” and the unthinking calculations of concentration camp statics applies to the entire edifice of capitalism as it has existed down through the last few centuries. “Arbeit macht frei” is the constant refrain of capitalism. But then long before this, Marx had already pointed out the ferociously callous logic of capital.

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