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Snipe Hunt for Hate – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on January 7, 2021

It would take quite an expenditure of time and research to determine exactly when the tide turned as media openly began blessing some violent acts while condemning others. The trend has certainly amped up since 2016. Don Lemon and Chris Cuomo have granted violence in the name of woke-ism carte-blanche for years. The mere pretense of rage over police excesses is license to attack the country. The actual numbers on victimhood are never actually crunched on air.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2021/01/tim-hartnett/snipe-hunt-for-hate/

By Tim Hartnett

Where would Will Rogers be today? All he knew was what he read in the papers. If the reigning mediacrats had their druthers it wouldn’t be legal find out anything else. We are expected to believe that a vast, paranoid, racist conspiracy hovers like a sword of Damocles over the country. Anyone with ancestors from south of the Mediterranean or the Rio, east of the Marmara or the Urals runs a daily gauntlet posed by vigilante Caucasoids. Therefore it’s now necessary to socially penalize people who fail to notice the torch bearing lynch mobs on the prowl everywhere. Denying the rhetoric or presenting evidence to the contrary is considered the legacy of Josef Goebells.

The Saturday January, 3rd Washington Post featured the front page story DC becoming a hotbed for violent protesters. The article wildly skews coverage of the factions involved and is supported with contextually absent speculation. It starts in the first sentence:

“For years, West Coast cities have borne the brunt of violent confrontations between far-right extremists and counterprotesters who come to meet them.”

What “years” were these? Who is unaware that violent demonstrations of intolerance—in the new millennium and particularly last summer—have been the specialty of groups opposing free speech, legal consequences for criminals and private property? In the vast majority of cases the only ones coming to “meet them” are the police attempting to keep downtowns intact and bystanders safe from assault. A task they tend to fail at repeatedly. The so-called counterprotesters have become widely known for blocking traffic while damaging vehicles, arson and disruption of community life over any whimsical grievance spurring them on.

This is not to say that racist espousing groups aren’t a threat capable of violent acts. But the mere existence of such people—who comprise much smaller numbers and convene far less frequently –is being used to justify massive social upheaval by others well known to attack victims indiscriminately. Dailies purporting to provide hard news persistently lump all opposition to these hooligans as “far-right,” “white supremacy” and “fascism.” Any careful reading of the copy reveals nothing to justify the picture being painted.

Author Marissa J. Lang tells us, “Brawls broke out in Berkeley, Calif.” She strangely fails to include a date. It would have been helpful. The first Google hit—which is preceded by 6 videos—concerns clashes from March and April of 2017. Here is an SFGate, not known for its conservative slant, description of a typical incident:

“The fighting Saturday started even before the event began, with people throwing punches, swinging signs and tossing smoke bombs. Hundreds of people filled the park, with anarchists and counterdemonstrators far outnumbering what rally sponsors estimated were 60 to 75 Trump supporters.

By 3 p.m., the self-proclaimed anarchists were dominating the crowd. Dressed all in black and wearing cloth bandannas over their faces, they stopped traffic as they marched from the park through downtown with the smaller mix of Trump supporters and counterprotesters. In the park, people opposed to Trump threw eggs and burned both American flags and the red “Make America Great Again” Trump campaign hats.”

Does any reader remain in the dark as to why dates were omitted? Next, we hear, “White-supremacist rallies in Sacramento ended in bloodshed.” Without timely detail, once again, this could refer to a large event last December or much smaller one in June 2016. The problem is that no local coverer of the more recent event says anything about white supremacy. Could the reporter have a motive in the hope that vagary goes unchecked?

We are constantly doused with the presumption anyone at odds with antifa is on a racist mission—without any corroborative evidence. In the 2016 incident—when there was in fact a racist side—it was outnumbered 3 to 1 and generally on the defense. The entire crowd was estimated at 400. It hardly seems relevant next to larger scale rioting, erupting in at least 48 cities, which happened this year. Some of these lasted for months. Even if those events had not materialized—there’s little doubt that alarmist exaggerations of “right-wing” threats is bound to gin up the probability of physical confrontations.

Then we hear: “Violent clashes have become common in Portland, Ore. where gunfire broke out at demonstrations over the summer.” Yes, Marissa and who was overwhelmingly responsible? Preachers of the gospel of Che Guevara were the only ones welcome on those streets from June to September. Seattle, where the so-called CHOP zone enjoyed 6 weeks of the nation’s most violent crime rate per capita, was conveniently left out.

Lang gives aplenty from so-called experts who mostly remain nameless throughout the diatribe.

“Extremism experts who study the far-right warn that D.C. is on a path to become the next battle-ground in increasingly violent confrontations with left-leaning counterdemonstrators.”

How does this author arrive at the difference between “far” and merely “leaning”? The piece of 2500 odd-words includes numerous paragraphs of 100% subjective characterization. It’s the kind of prose that bears little distinction from creative fiction. The above quote is split at the jump which goes to the news section’s back page. The headline there throws a distinctly different shade from the title on page A-1: “Far-right see D.C. as opportunity for clashes, experts say.” The broad brush strokes that follow evince exactly where journalistic standards have fallen prey to naked propagandism.

“As Trump’s hopes of reversing the election results have faltered, those who falsely believe the election was stolen or fraudulent have grown increasingly angry and desperate.

Extremist groups intent on sowing chaos and division have capitalized on these feelings to recruit members and to spread disinformation, experts say. In online chat groups and forums, political rage and disbelief metastasizes into calls for violence.”

“[E]xperts say? Do they have names? Where do you serve an apprenticeship and come out an expert on sore losers? Why does Lang insist on loading a full page of a major daily with abstractions? Her word for “intent on sowing chaos,” capitalizing on “feelings to recruit members” and spreading “disinformation” isn’t reporting even if it was heard from someone she considers trustworthy. Specific description of actual behavior evincing such conclusions is what is expected from undergrads—but we get much less from the pros? Is management at the Post completely oblivious to the value of literalism?

We keep hearing about social media activity but actual quotations are few and far between. She does, finally, give us this one buried deep:

“At what point do armed Americans seize DC and start hanging politicians? It’s an honest question that is not without merit or precedence,” wrote a user in a post that was up-voted by other contributors more than 1,100 times.”

It sounds scary if you have zero familiarity with what is just as common, and violent, in social media exchanges particularly from the so-called “counterprotesters” she never seems to be counting. Searches don’t provide a scientific basis for concluding what ideological camps turn out the most violent rhetoric. But “1,100” is an awfully paltry number of up-votes in light of the antifa mobs that turned out in Chicago, Minneapolis, Seattle, Portland, Milwaukee and scores of other cities throughout the past year.

Strictly “news” copy was once expected to make a case in concrete examples. That way a reader might be led to a view he believed he found on his own. Post readers will never suffer that delusion. Conclusions can begin in the first sentence and continue for 25 paragraphs straight. Weren’t we all taught proper construction of literary exposition about 8th grade on? Did the University of Maryland rid itself of instructors who rolled their eyes at rants?

Generalizations were once frowned upon even in opinion sections. But here, and elsewhere in Bezos’ paper, innuendo, rather than factual detail, pervades: “Members of the Proud Boys, an all-male far-right extremist group with ties to white nationalism…” Well, what are these “ties” exactly? Washington Post editors don’t bother asking, hoping their highly erudite readership won’t either.

The Proud Boys, according to the ADL, are a gang of several hundred. Those are numbers that leave a wide reader indifferent to all the fuss. The group was founded by the heavily inked 50-year-old Canadian, Gavin McInness. They’ve been known to get rowdy—so do their, supposed, ideological opponents. Who, incidentally, outnumber the proud by at least thousands to one. It’s hard to see how the boys could do any tipping on the national scale of violence—if we were a predominantly Amish nation it’d be different. Whatever their inane goals are if authorities seek to quell the destruction and mayhem these oddballs belong very low on the list of priorities.

I first discovered McInnes in an article laying down the law to sissies. He found it necessary to tell cream puffs how to drink in bars and remain manly. It was just the kind of fare you’d expect from a scrawny, insecure guy trying to glue hair on his chest. Photos reveal a torso as sparse as a reptile’s. Those of us bearing more fur can skip his bumptious advice and order as we like without compunction. The media obsession with this anemic specimen and entourage fulfills his wildest dreams. Meanwhile, it’s the easily misled, who may glean from a variety of sources, who must keep an eye out for all that fake news that’s out of proportion.

It would take quite an expenditure of time and research to determine exactly when the tide turned as media openly began blessing some violent acts while condemning others. The trend has certainly amped up since 2016. Don Lemon and Chris Cuomo have granted violence in the name of woke-ism carte-blanche for years. The mere pretense of rage over police excesses is license to attack the country. The actual numbers on victimhood are never actually crunched on air. Taking everything into account they aren’t nearly so widely skewed as purported. The reasons actual stats are evaded are the same as Lang’s aversion to dates. They either loathe or are incapable of literal precision.

The US definitely has serious malfunctions of justice and accountability in the application of state force. But how long did it take CNN to notice what has been going on with police unions, the SWAT craze, “qualified” immunity or SCOTUS’ cavalier regard for the 4th amendment? Have they even yet? What coverage did they give to the Clinton era birth of the 1033 program? In any case, nearly every nation on this side of the Atlantic endures high levels of violent crime. Heavy-handed police presence is a natural consequence. But in perspective US numbers of citizen victims—from any demographic—are far below that of genocidal or police states. Major media awkwardly avoids any part of this equation. They don’t appear to have the talent to compute it. Coverage is a perpetual game of catch-up as things develop on these fronts.

Though media and academia would have it otherwise–few in this country consciously approve of racists and their self-destructive priorities. But the idea of setting hopped-up idlers out to pummel them doesn’t sound likely to weaken their resolve—in the unlikely event that actual bigots are their victims. Whether she realizes it or not—that plan is 100% of what is between the lines of Lang’s screed.

The Best of Tim Hartnett Tim Hartnett [send him mail] was born in Alexandria, Va. He works as a contractor and sometime bartender in Northern Va. Past columns include “What is the Conservative Movement” and “The Clothes Make the G-Man.”

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Walter Williams: An Unlikely Proponent of Secession | Mises Wire

Posted by M. C. on January 7, 2021

In politics, might often makes right, as evidenced by the Union’s military victory, which apparently settled the secession question at the time. Williams lamented this new precedent that the federal government established:

Because states cannot secede, the federal government can run roughshod over the U.S. Constitution’s limitations of the Ninth and Tenth Amendments. States have little or no response.

https://mises.org/wire/walter-williams-unlikely-proponent-secession

José Niño

There’s no disputing the void that has been left behind since economist Walter Williams passed away in December. Williams had a remarkable ability to convey free market economic concepts in a way the masses could easily digest. Big shoes to fill indeed.

Walter Williams’s Sympathy toward Secession

One overlooked aspect of Williams’s work was his sympathy for the strategy of secession. It may surprise some of us that an African American could even support such an idea. The commonly touted narrative on secession, after all, is that only supporters of the secessionist old Confederacy would even think about supporting secession today. Attempts to connect secession to racism and slavery are common.

But if there is one thing that Walter Williams showcased throughout his career, it is that he was no race hustler and never fell for cheap attempts at race baiting. He spoke the truth no matter how uncomfortable it made others feel. In multiple publications throughout his illustrious publishing career, Williams observed that secession didn’t just start with the Confederacy.

Secession is as American as apple pie. The nation’s very founding involved the thirteen colonies seceding from the British Empire. The radical decentralization embodied by the American Revolution is taken for granted by your typical court historian, but Williams had immense respect for this underappreciated part of American history.

Williams called attention to the fact that the 1783 Treaty of Paris, which brought an end to the American colonies’ war for independence, recognized that the colonies were “free, sovereign and independent states.” In a 2015 column, “Historical Ignorance,” Williams expanded on one of the key provisions that spelled out the sovereignty of the individual colonies:

The 1783 Treaty of Paris ended the war between the colonies and Great Britain. Its first article declared the 13 colonies “to be free, sovereign and independent states.” These 13 sovereign nations came together in 1787 as principals and created the federal government as their agent. Principals have always held the right to fire agents. In other words, states held a right to withdraw from the pact—secede.

During the ratification process of the US Constitution, states that were skeptical of the new constitution being put forward by the Federalist faction of the constitutional debate made it a point to include provisions in their ratification documents that outlined steps for withdrawal. They did so in the case that the federal government overstepped its constitutional boundaries. Williams detailed this in the same column:

In fact, the ratification documents of Virginia, New York, and Rhode Island explicitly said they held the right to resume powers delegated should the federal government become abusive of those powers. The Constitution never would have been ratified if states thought they could not regain their sovereignty—in a word, secede.

Even on the eve of the American Civil War, Northern politicians acknowledged that secession was a legal tactic states could use when they were dissatisfied with the federal government. Williams duly noted this:

Several months earlier, Reps. Daniel E. Sickles of New York, Thomas B. Florence of Pennsylvania and Otis S. Ferry of Connecticut proposed a constitutional amendment to prohibit secession. Here’s a question for the reader: Would there have been any point to offering these amendments if secession were already unconstitutional?

Williams observed that pro-Union politicians understood how secession was a legitimate right that states possessed at the time:

On the eve of the War of 1861, even unionist politicians saw secession as a right of states. Rep. Jacob M. Kunkel of Maryland said, “Any attempt to preserve the union between the states of this Confederacy by force would be impractical, and destructive of republican liberty.”

Why Secession Still Matters

In politics, might often makes right, as evidenced by the Union’s military victory, which apparently settled the secession question at the time. Williams lamented this new precedent that the federal government established:

Because states cannot secede, the federal government can run roughshod over the U.S. Constitution’s limitations of the Ninth and Tenth Amendments. States have little or no response.

That the North turned the South into rubble, however, does not invalidate the concept of secession. There is an innate desire among people worldwide to pursue self-determination. Historically, the push for self-governance has propelled frequent changes in borders and realignments in political territories. Even in the twenty-first century, continents from Europe to Africa are experiencing secessionist movements grow in strength year after year. Try as many central governments might, they cannot fully extinguish the human penchant for building separate jurisdictions that better reflect their values.

Williams on Local Resistance in Virginia

Williams was a true classical liberal in the mold of Lord Acton who not only understood the power of free markets but also of diffused powers, a nonnegotiable precondition for a market order to function. The late economist did not blurt out vacuous slogans about limited government but genuinely pushed the envelope on every issue that mattered, from public schooling to welfare to identity politics. Williams’s sympathy toward secession further reinforced the late economist’s willingness to buck conventional wisdom in politics.

For example, right before the Second Amendment sanctuary county drama kicked off in Virginia in 2020, Williams praised Virginia Second Amendment activists for their efforts to resist gun control attempts coming from Governor Ralph Northam’s office. Williams cited the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions—two political statements that argued that states have the authority and duty to judge the constitutionality of laws coming from the central government—as potential guides for Virginia Second Amendment activists to follow. Williams wanted his fellow Virginians to apply that logic to the state government as well. He believed that overzealous state governments could also be subject to resistance from local governing bodies. Although Northam and company were able to successfully ram some gun control through, Second Amendment sanctuary county efforts won’t be disappearing any time soon in Virginia and other blue states nationwide.

Let Us Remember Williams for His Radicalism

We should honor Williams at his most radical. Now is not the time to pine for the days of agreeable politics. In recent decades, the US has gone through radical political and cultural transformations that are making the country progressively ungovernable. Any kind of national election from here on out will be viewed as illegitimate by the losing side due to the perceived high stakes of these affairs. No longer do America’s partisan coalitions treat each other as respectable competitors, but rather as existential threats that must be vanquished at the ballot box. As America’s social fabric continues withering and polarization intensifies, it’s only a matter of time before this kind of tension turns violent. Author:

Contact José Niño

José Niño is a freelance writer based in Austin, Texas. Sign up for his mailing list here. Contact him via Facebook or Twitter. Get his premium newsletter here.

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“No One Ever Became Poor by Giving.”

Posted by M. C. on January 6, 2021

For It’s Own Sake

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‘Buckle Up!’ – Schumer Hyperactive After Dem Senate Victory!

Posted by M. C. on January 6, 2021

A massive GOP failure on all fronts.

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Resisting Coercion in 2021

Posted by M. C. on January 6, 2021

In addition to ending his prayer with “amen and awoman,” he asked his prayer “in the name of the monotheistic god Brahma and god known by many names by many different faiths.” Is this guy dumb enough to think that “amen” is masculine and therefore he had to add “awoman” so he could be gender inclusive? Brahma is a Hindu god.

Whether the mask, used in so many satanic rituals, is indeed “the mark,” I believe it is most certainly a mark of the spirit of Antichrist. Therefore, I believe it is the duty, even of those who are unbelievers, to resist coercion; to resist the mask, resist the vaccine, resist all the lies, for much truth and questions in response to those lies are answered on this website where you read my words.

See below for an actual picture of the anti-christ. MCViewPoint

Resisting Coercion in 2021

Daniel Natale of The New American (that also has a YouTube channel), whom I wrote about recently, has another brilliant short video on the truly infernal consequences of wearing masks, from an entirely secular perspective. I hope his wise words and information I had heretofore not considered has an impact on readers. He begins by discussing “Publishers seem to be engaging in a new phenomenon, whereby they are hiding the faces of the people on the covers [of books]. Is this part and parcel of the new culture of masked faces that certain elements seem to want to usher in to our society? What are the sociological effects of such a trend? What does this mean for our once-free republic?” More importantly, he discusses the dehumanizing aspect and the ability of masks to act as cover for evil doers.

https://www.bitchute.com/embed/LTeG6_3iNGg/

Of course, readers aware of my work will see that I’ve written from a Christian perspective, and in finding an answer to Laurence Vance’s question, “Who is this God?” in which he wrote:

Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, a United Methodist minister and a politician (what a combination), was selected to pray at the opening of the new Congress yesterday. In addition to ending his prayer with “amen and awoman,” he asked his prayer “in the name of the monotheistic god Brahma and god known by many names by many different faiths.” Is this guy dumb enough to think that “amen” is masculine and therefore he had to add “awoman” so he could be gender inclusive? Brahma is a Hindu god. It was hard to hear Cleaver with his mask on his face while he prayed, but after listening to his prayer many times, it seems clear to me that he said “Brahma.” And who is this god known by many names and many different faiths? Who is this god of Rep. Cleaver?

I think perhaps the best response is given in this piece,

It is interesting to trace how, over thousands of years, satan has been preparing mankind to accept his religion. Many pagan cults confess some kind of divine triad. The ancient Romans had Jupiter, Juno and Minerva; the Hindus have Brahma, Siva and Visnu; in the Egyptian religion one finds the trinitarian group of Osiris, Isis, and Horus. The concept of a trinity also exists in Buddhism and among the ancient Slavs and Celts. In the Graeco-Roman religious cults this idea was reflected in the veneration of the three-bodied goddess Hecate, the three-headed Scylla, the triune divinities of the Cabiri. At the gate of Hades stood guard the fiendish, three-headed dog, Cerberus. Numerous divine triads have been revered by pagan tribes of the Americas and Africa. The cult of voodoo, which is related to modern satanism and still practiced today, believes in some anti-trinity.

But further reading made my hair stand up when he discusses the “mark of the beast” and see this brief excerpt:

Many people think that the seal of the Antichrist will be something like a stamp or brand, or an electronic chip implanted under the skin. The basis for such thinking lies in the fantastically rapid development of science and technology in this direction. Most likely, however, this scientific development is designed to distract mankind’s attention from the real mark of Antichrist, which will have nothing to do with the advances of science, technology or medicine. At a time when people’s suspicions and anxieties are fixed upon some innovation of progress—the implantation of computer chips in humans, for example—the real seal of Antichrist will be imprinted quietly, without any particular commotion. [Emphasis added.]

In a spiritual sense, this satanic mystery—the imprinting of the mark of Antichrist—will be the antithesis of the Christian Mystery of Chrismation, which, we recall, is the placing of the seal of the Holy Spirit, while imitating its external form. Just as in the Mystery of Chrismation, the priest anoints the newly-illumined on the forehead and hands, so, too, in the placing of the mark of Antichrist, his servants may well anoint people with some kind of “sacred” oil, which will symbolize the voluntary acceptance of Antichrist and his religion. The iconographic tradition of the Orthodox Church supports this supposition. In the iconographic sketch, illustrating the pouring out of God’s wrath upon those bearing the mark of the beast—that is, the seal of Antichrist (Rev. 16:1,2)—we see satan wearing a fiery three-horned crown (symbolizing the trinity of evil); he is signing people on the forehead with the mark of the beast—the seal of Antichrist. Moreover, he is using a brush, dipping into a vial that he is holding in his other hand (The Illuminated Bible, 1914). Why is it that the illustration depicts satan himself placing the mark?

Because it symbolizes his spiritual presence among those numerous servants of the religion of Antichrist, who will actually place the mark upon the peoples of the earth.

Of course, the sign of Antichrist may be placed by means other than a brush—by some other “sacred” instrument or simply by the hand of a servant of the universal (Antichrist’s) religion. Whatever the actual means, the aim is to induce people to renounce Christ.

Whether the mask, used in so many satanic rituals, is indeed “the mark,” I believe it is most certainly a mark of the spirit of Antichrist. Therefore, I believe it is the duty, even of those who are unbelievers, to resist coercion; to resist the mask, resist the vaccine, resist all the lies, for much truth and questions in response to those lies are answered on this website where you read my words.

Christians are aware (and I’ve written in the past) on the betrayals by Greek Orthodox and Catholic church leadership. This site, which is traditional Orthodox, has videos on the nature of the Antichrist, which I hope remain on YouTube.

For Catholics, perhaps this video will be helpful, on “Antichrist According To The Great Catholic Mystic Maria Valtorta”:

In any event, I hope there is growing resistance to the tyranny forced on us, which I believe is a great spiritual evil, by both believers and those who might not have faith but in their heart understand a great evil is growing in power all around us. I believe we must resist to the best of our abilities and we must not give in to fear or despair. Perhaps the book Wounded by Love, summarized here, may help to inspire all believers; the power of the evil one is not to be scorned but it is trivial compared to the power of God.

The Best of Yvonne Lorenzo Yvonne Lorenzo [send her email] makes her home in New England in a house full to bursting with books, including works on classical Greece and Russian history and literature, and has contributed to LewRockwell.com, Unz.com and to TheSaker.is. Her interests include gardening, mythology, ancient history, The Electric Universe, and classical music, especially the compositions of Handel, Mozart, Bach, Haydn, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Mahler, Wagner and the Bel Canto repertoire. She is the author of he Spear of Odin Trilogy: Son of Thunder, The Cloak of Freya and the just published The Well of Mimir.

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Comedian Rowan Atkinson: Cancel Culture “Like A Medieval Mob” | ZeroHedge

Posted by M. C. on January 6, 2021

Not that warnings are not all over the place.  MIT’s Gideon Lichfield tells us that there is no going back to normal from Covid.  Controls over our behavior are the new normal.  Freedom, liberty, civil rights are not compatible with a Covid world and the Great Reset that the Covid world is being used to put in place. The World Economic Forum isn’t bashful about describing what is being put in place for us.

The change that elites are bringing to us is so radical that people dismiss it.  But their smart devices have already ensnared them into the change.

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/comedian-rowan-atkinson-cancel-culture-medieval-mob

Tyler Durden's Photoby Tyler Durden

Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,

In an interview with the UK’s Radio Times, Atkinson described online trolls trying to ban everything as “the digital equivalent of the medieval mob.”

“The problem we have online is that an algorithm decides what we want to see, which ends up creating a simplistic, binary view of society,” he said.

“It becomes a case of either you’re with us or against us. And if you’re against us, you deserve to be ‘cancelled’,” the British comedian emphasised.

The Mr Bean creator fears for the long-term future of free expression https://t.co/PlJV5tr9dY — The Telegraph (@Telegraph) January 5, 2021

Atkinson also blasted social media, saying that it fills him with “fear about the future,” because it continues to lower tolerance for differing opinions, which widens divisions in society.

“What we have now is the digital equivalent of the medieval mob roaming the streets looking for someone to burn,” Atkinson urged.

He noted that he has been on the end of the hate mob, not only owing to some of the skits in Mr Bean, many of which were written 30 years ago, but also because of his long history of standing up for free speech.

“It is scary for anyone who’s a victim of that mob and it fills me with fear about the future,” Atkinson declared.

Atkinson opposed the introduction of so called ‘hate speech’ laws in 2005, describing the legislation as like taking “sledgehammer to crack a nut”.

Atkinson also opposed the introduction of homophobic ‘hate speech’ clauses into UK law in 2009.

At the time in 2009, Atkinson outlined where such moves to quell speech were heading, prophesising “a culture of censoriousness, a questioning, negative and leaden attitude that is encouraged by legislation of this nature.”

The comedian warned that it would only be “considerably and meaningfully alleviated by [a] free speech clause.”

In 2012, Atkinson further railed against “insulting” behaviour being classed as a criminal offence.

“The clear problem of the outlawing of insult is that too many things can be interpreted as such. Criticism, ridicule, sarcasm, merely stating an alternative point of view to the orthodoxy, can be interpreted as insult,” Atkinson stated at the time during an impassioned defence of free speech:

In 2020, Atkinson was again targeted by the mob he speaks about when he publicly opposed Scotland’s ‘hate crimes’ bill, saying that it “risked stifling freedom of expression, and the ability to articulate or criticise religious and other beliefs”.

I looked to see why Rowan Atkinson is trending and it’s the usual. A comedian comes out in favour of free speech and is called ’problematic’. Forget the fact his career has been spent lampooning racists and fascism, that’s an inconvenient fact. He’s toxic now. Fuck off, Twitter. — Jonathan Pie (@JonathanPieNews) August 11, 2020

Several other comedians have railed against the rise of cancel culture, including Monty Python star John Cleese, The Office creator Ricky Gervais, the ‘podfathers’ Joe Rogan and Adam Carolla, as well as Bill Burr and ‘politically incorrect’ star Dave Chapelle, to name just a few.

Cancel culture has seen some comedians self-censoring in order to appease the mob:

Great bit by @awilliamscomedy on how comedians play it safe to shield their careers from the outrage mob.

FULL: https://t.co/71OKHn6RB1 pic.twitter.com/oGk9TbdzdM — Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) April 26, 2019

Comedy is the canary in the coal mine when it comes to cancel culture, however. There are signs that its tentacles are penetrating deeply into all aspects of society.

A recent study by leading education focused think tank Civitas revealed that free speech at the world’s leading universities is being eroded at an alarming rate.

The study found that within the past three years, more than 68 per cent of universities in the UK have seen free speech severely restricted, with academics unable to meaningfully discuss the nuances of issues such as race and gender.

The report notes that universities including Oxford, Cambridge and St Andrews, three of the world’s premiere institutions are among those that have fallen into a “red” category for free speech following instances of “no platforming” of scheduled speakers.

Last year, 150 of the world’s top intellectuals, authors and activists signed an open letter decrying leftist cancel culture, censorship and the totalitarian march of “ideological conformity.”

The letter warned that cancel culture is creating a climate of risk aversion that is preventing anyone from dissenting from the monolithic consensus of social justice rhetoric, creating a “stifling atmosphere will ultimately harm the most vital causes of our time.”

In the US, the Deputy Secretary of The Department of Homeland Security also recently warned that the actions of tech companies in embracing cancel culture, and censoring opinions they do not agree with constitutes a “grave threat to national security.”

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EconomicPolicyJournal.com: Best Evidence Top Federal Reserve Officials Have No Clue

Posted by M. C. on January 6, 2021

This climb in asset prices will very likely find its way in 2021 to consumer prices and the spike in consumer prices will be well over 2%. In the EPJ Daily Alert, I am forecasting price inflation will easily hit 3% this year and then 5% and possibly 10% within 18 months.

The Fed has no clue.

https://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2021/01/best-evidence-top-federal-reserve.html

Loretta J. Mester, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland delivered a speech at the Allied Social Science Associations Annual Meeting (via videoconference). Here is her remarkable comment on price inflation in the talk:

I expect this post-vaccination phase of the recovery to continue over the next few years, with growth above trend, declines in the unemployment rate, and gradually rising inflation…Nor would the strengthening in growth I expect to see later this year necessitate a change in our policy stance because I expect that the economy will still be far from our employment and inflation goals…The economy’s intrinsic dynamics suggest that inflation is not going to move up quickly above 2 percent. 

At the same ASSA meeting,  Chicago Federal Reserve President Charles Evans said:

It likely will take years to get average inflation up to 2 percent, which means monetary policy will be accommodative for a long time…The bottom line is that it will take a long time for average inflation to reach 2 percent.

This is the type of thinking going on in the Federal Reserve System.

It is absolutely stunning. They are simply looking at price inflation over recent past years and are making projections based on the recent past that price inflation will not spike above 2%.

This despite the fact that in 2020, the Federal Reserve increased the money supply by $4 trillion (an increase of 25% plus) and that asset prices from housing to the stock market to Bitcoin are soaring because of the massive money pump.

This climb in asset prices will very likely find its way in 2021 to consumer prices and the spike in consumer prices will be well over 2%. In the EPJ Daily Alert, I am forecasting price inflation will easily hit 3% this year and then 5% and possibly 10% within 18 months.

The Fed has no clue. By the end of 2022, I am going to have to update my book, The Fed Flunks: My Speech at the New York Federal Reserve Bank, with a new chapter pointing out the above failure of Federal Reserve officials to recognize the irresponsible money printing that they are now conducting. –RW

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Covid Is an Orchestration for Serving an Agenda—The Destruction of Freedom – PaulCraigRoberts.org

Posted by M. C. on January 6, 2021

Not that warnings are not all over the place.  MIT’s Gideon Lichfield tells us that there is no going back to normal from Covid.  Controls over our behavior are the new normal.  Freedom, liberty, civil rights are not compatible with a Covid world and the Great Reset that the Covid world is being used to put in place. The World Economic Forum isn’t bashful about describing what is being put in place for us.

The change that elites are bringing to us is so radical that people dismiss it.  But their smart devices have already ensnared them into the change.

https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2021/01/05/covid-is-an-orchestration-for-serving-an-agenda-the-destruction-of-freedom/

Paul Craig Roberts

The accumulated evidence is overwhelming that Covid is an orchestration the purpose of which is to eliminate human autonomy and make the concept of freedom a dirty word that will bring you Covid illness and death.  

As physical currency is one necessity for human autonomy, globalists are working on its replacement with digital money. Paper currency, coins, money orders, and checks pass hand to hand and allegedly carry possible infection with Covid. In contrast, digital money is virtual.  No one touches it. More importantly for the globalists, It cannot be drawn out of an account in physical form and horded or hidden.  You cannot make anonymous payments with digital money.  Privacy leaves your life. You become totally transparent.

Some hope that people will have their own private digital money in the form of crytocurrencies. However, transfers can be prevented between an official digital monetary system and private crytocurrencies.  Moreover, private cryptocurrency payment of rents, mortgages, car loans, grocery store bills, and so forth can be banned and enforced.  A private cryptocurrency economy would have to operate outside of the official digital money economy. As the purpose of digital money is to eliminate human autonomy, such a parallel economy would be suppressed. 

The same goes for payments with gold and silver coins.  You could pay for a private service or for privately grown food from gardens if gardens are permitted in a world of artificial food made in factories, which is what the World Economic Forum’s “Great Reset” encompasses. But you couldn’t purchase a house or car or airline ticket with gold or silver. 

People welcomed the digital revolution without recognizing its totalitarian consequences. They love their smart phones, the Internet, video games, social media, online payments, the ability to work from home.  Perhaps many are agreeable to giving up independence and autonomy for these conveniences.  Even if they are not, they are likely to find themselves trapped inside such a system before they become aware of its consequences.

Not that warnings are not all over the place.  MIT’s Gideon Lichfield tells us that there is no going back to normal from Covid.  Controls over our behavior are the new normal.  Freedom, liberty, civil rights are not compatible with a Covid world and the Great Reset that the Covid world is being used to put in place. The World Economic Forum isn’t bashful about describing what is being put in place for us:  https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2020/11/19/the-insane-tyrant-who-head-up-the-world-economic-forums-great-reset-says-it-means-the-end-of-human-autonomy/ 

The change that elites are bringing to us is so radical that people dismiss it.  But their smart devices have already ensnared them into the change.

The future that is unfolding is a restoration of ancient times when people were regimented under the control of priests or Druids.  Any person showing any sign of independence was a prime candidate for sacrifice to appease the gods. Throughout the Western World this is already happening to truth-tellers.  Manning, Assange, Snowden.

If people want to be free, they are going to have to eliminate the globalists and dispossess the billionaires.  Every last one. It is pointless to peacefully protest, because as the stolen US presidential election makes completely clear, the elites have no regard whatsoever for democracy and the people’s voice.  They hate the concept of government accountable to the people.  

The preferred government is one accountable to the elites, just as ancient governments were accountable to priests, Druids, and pharaohs.  It seems clear enough that this is the direction in which the Western World is headed. World Economic Forum Founder Klaus Schwab explained on May 13, 2019, to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs that the era of freedom was over and done with. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVIy3rjuKGY 

Notice that the new era of freedom’s absence “is upon us.”  

Why is is upon us? How is it that it is independent of “us.”  Did God unleash the new era?  No.  It is upon us because it is what the elites are doing to us.  The global elites are making us think that it is ordained and cannot be resisted. If we fall for this and permit it, we will be responsible for destroying our own freedom.  Why not instead destroy those who seek to destroy us?

They can be resisted.  All that has to be done is to round up a handful of totalitarian globalists.  Nothing like the casualties of the Bolshevik Revolution, the American Revolution, the French Revolution are required.  Freedom is not up against an established multitude that needs to be eliminated.  Only a few globalists who are seizing power while people sit cowering sucking their thumbs.

If the globalists are not eliminated, they will eliminate us in the sense of our autonomy, our independence, our ability to express a point of view contrary to the elite’s, our humanity.  

These last few lines will produce demands to know if I am advocating violence.  I am advocating nothing.  I am describing a situation and asking a question. We are losing our freedom.  Are we going to do anything about it?

Perhaps I am mistaken.  But based on available information it is apparent that governments in the Western World are committing violence against the peoples whom they allegedly represent. Violence against people goes far beyond arrests for not wearing a mask and fines for not maintaining social distance.  Lockdowns are dispossessing people of their businesses, prohibiting family gatherings and freedom of association.  These are massive interferences with rights that took centuries of struggle to achieve.  And it is all for nothing as the death rate from Covid is miniscule.

The Western World frozen in fear by lies and propaganda has abandoned freedom.

Are the people of the Western World going to accept the violence enacted upon them and the cancellation of their rights?

If the people of the Western World will not defend their freeom, they will not have it.  

See also: https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2021/01/05/the-covid-deception-updated/ 

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Soros Soars, GOP Cowards Cower – Taki’s Magazine

Posted by M. C. on January 6, 2021

https://www.takimag.com/article/soros-soars-gop-cowards-cower/print

David Cole

I devoted my Dec. 15 column to newly elected Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón and his benefactor George Soros. Gascón has one goal: to put the people of L.A. at the mercy of criminals. He’s the face of anarcho-tyranny, and George Soros is the wallet. The night after my column, Tucker Carlson devoted his opening segment to Gascón and Soros. I’m not claiming causation; Carlson’s done pieces on Gascón before. But what struck me about Carlson’s commentary was what he left out.

Tuck opened his Gascón/Soros monologue with a claim that is at once true and misleading:

Many of the most important elections are the ones you hear nothing about. The news media barely covers them and most voters don’t know they’re happening. As a result, a small group of committed extremists get to control the outcomes of those elections, often with disastrous results.

Look, I despise the media more than anyone. I was writing anti-media screeds back when Tuck was still under the impression that the bow tie was killing it. But it’s disingenuous to blame the media in this instance. As I wrote in my Dec. 15 column, a key element in Gascón’s victory was the fact that the local GOP didn’t lift a finger to oppose him.

Let me illustrate that in a personal way (and as self-indulgent as this illustration may seem, it has legitimate relevance). As my regular readers know, from 1998 through 2013 I went by the name of David Stein, and I was a fancy-ass big-timey GOP organizer here in L.A. And then in May 2013 I was “outed” in The Guardian for hurty words I’d said about Auschwitz in the early 1990s.

In May 2013, the Westside Republicans (the GOP org that covers L.A.’s prosperous Westside) sent out no less than three email bulletins alerting members to my malevolence (here’s one example). That same group, those same Westside Republicans, didn’t send out one single email or one single Facebook post or tweet this year alerting members to the dangers posed by George Gascón.

Not one. “If Californians fight back against Soros and win, Dems nationwide will begin to see his agenda as political poison.”

I merited three, for words I’d spoken twenty years earlier. But Gascón, whose policies will actually kill Angelenos, merited zero.

I find it hilarious that rightists are blaming the media for not “informing” voters about Gascón. Rightists trusting a life-or-death decision to the media? And then acting surprised and indignant when the media fails to serve the public good? Have we all gone tarded? It’s not up to the fucking media to do our work for us. It was up to the people who in theory should’ve been against Gascón to take the initiative and raise awareness and money to defeat him.

Mainstream conservatives are doing everything they can to avoid acknowledging the lack of GOP opposition to George Soros and his puppets. A Dec. 17 Washington Examiner piece wondered why Soros scored so many wins in November while Republicans did well in most other down-ballot races. And not once in the Examiner piece was the issue of opposition and the lack thereof even hinted at.

The defining domestic issue of the next five years will be crime. The seeds planted by Soros—“progressive” DAs refusing to prosecute and releasing the incarcerated—will blossom into stinking corpse lilies of skyrocketing crime rates (it’s already happening). And the key question is, will the GOP step up and help itself by helping the victims of Soros’ supervillainry?

Spoiler: It won’t. That’s why I referenced my personal situation with the Westside Republicans, who exemplify the absolute worst of what the GOP has become. Those “beware of David Cole” emails won no election, and furthered no candidate or cause. They were nothing but exercises in “see how not racist we are!” virtue signaling. A party obsessed with looking “not racist” will never have the will to counter Soros, because doing so will mean coming into conflict with blacks. Not all blacks, to be sure. Not the law-abiding ones. But any “lock up criminals” policies will inevitably lead to a disproportionate number of locked-up blacks. Expecting otherwise is like expecting to mount a Broadway musical without encountering gays.

The GOP could ride the current and upcoming crime wave to innumerable electoral victories, but that would mean being seen as the party that “locks up blacks,” and neither the party nor Con Inc. has the stomach for that.

It’s one of the reasons I don’t mourn Trump. A second-term Trump would’ve used that slight bump he received in black votes to greatly accelerate his Kardashian-influenced brand of black deincarceration. Trump’s second term would have been defined by that black bump; Trump would’ve viewed that increased share as his greatest accomplishment, and there’d have been no end to the “Platinum Plan” pandering.

So I’m not weeping for the loss. What I am weeping for are the lost opportunities to come. The Republican establishment, Con Inc., the neocons, and corporate GOP donors see no benefit in protecting ordinary citizens from crime. There’s simply nothing in it for them. Remember—Soros doesn’t profit financially from his anarcho-tyranny. He spends millions on his passion; his reward is the misery he creates. The right doesn’t have anyone willing to take a financial loss to counter him. That means he’ll prevail.

There’s also the Breitbartian fetish about “changing the culture,” which keeps rightists focused on pie-in-the-sky fantasies while neglecting immediate practical fixes. After my last anti-Soros column, a decent but dim Hollywood Republican messaged me, “Well, maybe we should make a movie where a Soros-type character rains crime on a city and the people learn to fight back! And that movie could energize anti-Soros sentiment!” As if there’s anyone in the U.S. right now who’s like, “I’m okay with my mom getting raped and murdered,” but then they see this incredible movie, and they’re like, “Whoa, now I don’t want my mom raped and murdered! That film totally changed my views!”

The anti-Soros sentiment is here, right now. Right fucking now. No need to “change the culture.” Just harness what already exists.

But that’s not going to happen. And I’ll close with a perfect example of why my pessimism’s justified.

L.A.’s prosecutors are suing Gascón to try to rein in his madness. They’re literally suing their boss to protect the city they serve. It’s a bold move, and honorable. But not to Hot Air’s intellectual lightweight “Jazz” Shaw, who tweeted an article about the lawsuit with the comment, “Too late. You elected him. Now sleep in the bed you made.”

A group of principled prosecutors have taken it upon themselves to oppose a vile, murderous Soros minion, and the response from this conservative hack is to dismiss the endeavor and attack those who are attacking Soros (shades of how Newt Gingrich shills for Soros while playacting the role of foe).

So we ask ourselves why. Why was this dipshit’s first instinct to condemn the people putting their careers on the line to actually fight Soros (something the local GOP refused to do)?

Well, part of it is that guys like “Jazz” are just not that bright. This Rain Man likely didn’t understand that the DA’s race was countywide, and encompassed red cities like Beverly Hills (which went against Gascón in the election). In fact, the DA race electoral map shows plenty of anti-Gascón precincts, enough that it’s not unreasonable to believe that a little effort on the part of the GOP could’ve tipped the scales.

But “Jazz’s” Kallikak grunting absolves the GOP of the responsibility it shirked. Soros wins when no one opposes him, and “Jazz” typifies the conservative imbeciles who excuse GOP inaction. Soros depends on guys like this. Because Soros knows his formula for success, and he doesn’t want the right to replicate it. When he lost his first few bids to dismantle California’s Three Strikes law (the main impediment to his progressive DAs), did he give up? Did he become fatalistic? Did he dismissively tell the state, “Fine, sleep in the bed you made”? Did he decide that he’d have to make a movie to change the culture?

No. He spent more, and electioneered harder.

That’s why he wins.

What makes the “Jazz” example instructive is that it demonstrates why Soros will keep winning. The right’s instincts are off. If a rightist reads of a potentially effective counterattack against Soros, and his first instinct is to do anything other than cheer it on, that means his instincts are warped, for the reasons I’ve already detailed, and a few others, including an inability to part with treasured falsehoods. Last week, a gang of thugs went on a looting spree in Beverly Hills, and rightist Twitter exploded with exclamations of “Good! Those rich leftists are getting what they voted for!” And every time I attempted to point out that Beverly Hills went for Trump and against Gascón, I was condemned as a “leftist,” because I was challenging a comforting illusion.

That illusion is dangerous, and it’s another factor that enables the GOP establishment’s do-nothing attitude toward Soros. Nobody on the right thought affirmative action would fail in California in November. The GOP did absolutely nothing to help defeat the affirmative-action proposition (fatalism combined with “We don’t wanna look racist”). Yet the proposition lost by a landslide. And guess what? In December, during his book tour, Obama repeatedly brought up affirmative action as something that reasonable people can oppose. Affirmative action was rejected in California, and Democrat leaders got the message—it’s a toxic issue. Because Democrats look to California as a barometer, a way to get a heads-up on what to embrace and what to back away from.

Tucker broached that point in a monologue last week:

California matters, and not just because it’s our biggest state. What happens there is, at some point, almost certain to happen where you live. Find a national trend that didn’t begin in California. There may be some, but there aren’t many. If you want to know the future, or if you want to prevent it, look west.

He’s right, but he was framing the message as “ooga-booga, you don’t want to end up like Cali!” However, what Tuck was saying about this state works in reverse—as in, yes, what begins here spreads elsewhere, but, at the same time, what ends here ends elsewhere. In other words, if Soros can be stopped here—here, of all places—he can be stopped anywhere. And just as with affirmative action, if Californians fight back against Soros and win, Dems nationwide will begin to see his agenda as political poison.

Remember when neocons told us that we had to “fight the terrorists in Iraq so we don’t have to fight them here”? Well, here’s a line that’s not bullshit: Soros (a genuine terrorist) needs to be fought wherever he rears his fetid head. You actually do need to fight him in L.A. so that you won’t have to fight him elsewhere.

Let’s hope in 2021 the GOP comes to understand this.

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Opinion: – Assange wins. The cost: Press freedom is crushed, and dissent labeled mental illness

Posted by M. C. on January 6, 2021

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/56130.htm

By Jonathan Cook

January 04, 2020 “Information Clearing House” – The unexpected decision by Judge Vanessa Baraitser to deny a US demand to extradite Julian Assange, foiling efforts to send him to a US super-max jail for the rest of his life, is a welcome legal victory, but one swamped by larger lessons that should disturb us deeply.

Those who campaigned so vigorously to keep Assange’s case in the spotlight, even as the US and UK corporate media worked so strenuously to keep it in darkness, are the heroes of the day. They made the price too steep for Baraitser or the British establishment to agree to lock Assange away indefinitely in the US for exposing its war crimes and its crimes against humanity in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But we must not downplay the price being demanded of us for this victory. https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?dnt=true&embedId=twitter-widget-0&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1346059260539637760&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.jonathan-cook.net%2Fblog%2F2021-01-04%2Fassange-wins-the-cost-press-freedom-is-crushed-and-dissent-labelled-mental-illness%2F&siteScreenName=Jonathan_K_Cook&theme=light&widgetsVersion=ed20a2b%3A1601588405575&width=500px

A moment of celebration

We have contributed collectively in our various small ways to win back for Assange some degree of freedom, and hopefully a reprieve from what could be a death sentence as his health continues to deteriorate in an overcrowded Belmarsh high-security prison in London that has become a breeding ground for Covid-19.

For this we should allow ourselves a moment of celebration. But Assange is not out of the woods yet. The US has said it will appeal the decision. And it is not yet clear whether Assange will remain jailed in the UK – possibly in Belmarsh – while many months of further legal argument about his future take place.

The US and British establishments do not care where Assange is imprisoned – be it Sweden, the UK or the US. What has been most important to them is that he continues to be locked out of sight in a cell somewhere, where his physical and mental fortitude can be destroyed and where he is effectively silenced, encouraging others to draw the lesson that there is too high a price to pay for dissent.

The personal battle for Assange won’t be over till he is properly free. And even then he will be lucky if the last decade of various forms of incarceration and torture he has been subjected to do not leave him permanently traumatised, emotionally and mentally damaged, a pale shadow of the unapologetic, vigorous transparency champion he was before his ordeal began.

That alone will be a victory for the British and US establishments who were so embarrassed by, and fearful of, Wikileaks’ revelations of their crimes.

Rejected on a technicality

But aside from what is a potential personal victory for Assange, assuming he doesn’t lose on appeal, we should be deeply worried by the legal arguments Baraitser advanced in denying extradition.

The US demand for extradition was rejected on what was effectively a technicality. The US mass incarceration system is so obviously barbaric and depraved that, it was shown conclusively by experts at the hearings back in September, Assange would be at grave risk of committing suicide should he become another victim of its super-max jails.

One should not also discard another of the British establishment’s likely considerations: that in a few days Donald Trump will be gone from the White House and a new US administration will take his place.

There is no reason to be sentimental about president-elect Joe Biden. He is a big fan of mass incarceration too, and he will be no more of a friend to dissident media, whistleblowers and journalism that challenges the national security state than was his Democratic predecessor, Barack Obama. Which is no friend at all.

But Biden probably doesn’t need the Assange case hanging over his head, becoming a rallying cry against him, an uncomfortable residue of the Trump administration’s authoritarian instincts that his own officials would be forced to defend.

It would be nice to imagine that the British legal, judicial and political establishments grew a backbone in ruling against extradition. The far more likely truth is that they sounded out the incoming Biden team and received permission to forgo an immediate ruling in favour of extradition – on a technicality.

Keep an eye on whether the new Biden administration decides to drop the appeal case. More likely his officials will let it rumble on, largely below the media’s radar, for many months more.

Journalism as espionage

Significantly, Judge Baraitser backed all the Trump administration’s main legal arguments for extradition, even though they were comprehensively demolished by Assange’s lawyers.

Baraitser accepted the US government’s dangerous new definition of investigative journalism as “espionage”, and implied that Assange had also broken Britain’s draconian Official Secrets Act in exposing government war crimes.

She agreed that the 2007 Extradition Treaty applies in Assange’s case, ignoring the treaty’s actual words that exempt political cases like his. She has thereby opened the door for other journalists to be seized in their home countries and renditioned to the US for embarrassing Washington.

Baraitser accepted that protecting sources in the digital age – as Assange did for whistleblower Chelsea Manning, an essential obligation on journalists in a free society – now amounts to criminal “hacking”. She trashed free speech and press freedom rights, saying they did not provide “unfettered discretion by Mr Assange to decide what he’s going to publish”.

She appeared to approve of the ample evidence showing that the US spied on Assange inside the Ecuadorian embassy, both in violation of international law and his client-lawyer privilege – a breach of his most fundamental legal rights that alone should have halted proceedings.

Baraitser argued that Assange would receive a fair trial in the US, even though it was almost certain to take place in the eastern district of Virginia, where the major US security and intelligence services are headquartered. Any jury there would be dominated by US security personnel and their families, who would have no sympathy for Assange.

So as we celebrate this ruling for Assange, we must also loudly denounce it as an attack on press freedom, as an attack on our hard-won collective freedoms, and as an attack on our efforts to hold the US and UK establishments accountable for riding roughshod over the values, principles and laws they themselves profess to uphold.

Even as we are offered with one hand a small prize in Assange’s current legal victory, the establishment’s other hand seizes much more from us.

Vilification continues

There is a final lesson from the Assange ruling. The last decade has been about discrediting, disgracing and demonising Assange. This ruling should very much be seen as a continuation of that process.

Baraitser has denied extradition only on the grounds of Assange’s mental health and his autism, and the fact that he is a suicide risk. In other words, the principled arguments for freeing Assange have been decisively rejected.

If he regains his freedom, it will be solely because he has been characterised as mentally unsound. That will be used to discredit not just Assange, but the cause for which he fought, the Wikileaks organisation he helped to found, and all wider dissidence from establishment narratives. This idea will settle into popular public discourse unless we challenge such a presentation at every turn.

Assange’s battle to defend our freedoms, to defend those in far-off lands whom we bomb at will in the promotion of the selfish interests of a western elite, was not autistic or evidence of mental illness. His struggle to make our societies fairer, to hold the powerful to account for their actions, was not evidence of dysfunction. It is a duty we all share to make our politics less corrupt, our legal systems more transparent, our media less dishonest.

Unless far more of us fight for these values – for real sanity, not the perverse, unsustainable, suicidal interests of our leaders – we are doomed. Assange showed us how we can free ourselves and our societies. It is incumbent on the rest of us to continue his fight.

Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His books include “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jonathan-cook.net. If you appreciate his articles, please consider making a donation

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