WSWS campaign team members distributed copies of the Autoworker Newsletter containing a statement by the Steering Committee of the Coalition of Rank-and-File Committees calling on all workers to fight for the defense of Assange and Manning.As workers came on and off their shifts many recognized Julian Assange’s face on the team’s signboard and shouted their support. Among those who knew of Assange, “hero” was the expression they used most often to describe him.
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PEPE ESCOBAR—It’s a long and winding road, to be traversed in at least two years, if Julian Assange is ever to be extradited to the US. Two things for the moment are already crystal clear. The USG is obsessed to shut down WikiLeaks once and for all. And because of that, Julian Assange will never get a fair trial in the “so-called ‘Espionage Court’” of the Eastern District of Virginia, as detailed by former CIA counterterrorism officer and whistleblower John Kiriakou.
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BILL VAN AUKEN—The frame-up of Bini is bound up with the Moreno government’s retaliation against the exposure of the president’s and his family’s involvement in a massive corruption scandal involving the funneling of millions of dollars in bribe money from a Chinese construction contractor into an offshore shell company named after the president’s three daughters.The publication of the so-called INA papers exposing this corruption was widely reported and prompted the initiation of a congressional investigation in Ecuador before WikiLeaks called attention to the scandal on its Twitter account last month. The Moreno government seized on the tweet to accuse WikiLeaks and Julian Assange personally—despite the intense surveillance and conditions approaching that of solitary confinement in the London embassy—of having hacked the phones and social media accounts of Moreno and his family to secure the evidence of corruption.
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T. P. WILKINSON—Mere mortals are fortunate to plan in days or months, a year at the most. However “the privileged few” know that they are part of an immortal institution for which time is just another resource. It is a serious mistake to measure institutional time and individual time with the same watch. What was presented as an almost accidental or fortuitous event was in fact the result of careful planning and coordination—of organisational intelligence. Organisational intelligence means that the institution created is capable of controlling the behaviour of all involved in a process even without conscious or deliberate commands.
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PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS—I don’t believe the charge against Assange. If Wikileaks cracked the code for Manning, Wikileaks did not need Manning.The alleged Grand Jury that allegedly produced the indictment was conducted in secret over many years as Washington searched for something that might be pinned on Assange. If there actually was a grand jury, the jurors were devoid of integrity, but how do we know there was a grand jury? Why should we believe anything Washington says after “Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction,” “Assad’s use of chemical weapons against his own people,” “Iranian nukes,” “Russian invasion of Ukraine,” “Russiagate,” and on and on ad infinitum. Why believe Washington is telling the truth this time?
