Eric has the pleasure of interviewing renowned author and activist David Swanson. Eric and David discuss the relationship between war and morality and the way in which media and the establishment normalize the concept of war. In addition, they examine the willingness of the mainstream Left to line up behind war, the subservience of the foundation-funded organizations and media to the imperialist ruling class, and the insidious doctrine of "humanitarian intervention" (R2P). Eric and David also try to envision a way to unite anti-war voices from all over the political spectrum in the struggle against the imperialist war machine.
Real Social Control is the definition of Morality, Human Nature, dissolving abstract "Utopia", partially developed, crippled, deformed democracies by class systems, hence class republics, class democracies, into fully developed middle classes, that are independent, free from its Zero sum class hierarchies, thus indivisible. A global social revolt against fascist austerity, fascist Capitalism, fascist foreign policies would reject all support for ANY class systems, ALL class parties, thus reclaiming a concrete "Utopia", a social historical mechanism, that automates, creates a semi permanent, universal, symmetrical social principle which allows social control over wealth, labor, as a social means of production. MORALITY IS AN IDEOLOGY BUT IT IS LINKED TO THE SOCIAL MATRIARCHY THAT EXISTED BEFORE THE RISE OF CLASS SYSTEMS, AND PATRIARCHY:
The Pursuit of Julian Assange is an Assault on Freedom and a Mockery of Journalism
http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Pursuit-of-Julian-Assa-by-John-Pilger-120822-341.html
excerpt:
"The British government's threat to invade the Ecuadorean embassy in London and seize Julian Assange is of historic significance. David Cameron, the former PR man to a television industry huckster and arms salesman to sheikdoms, is well placed to dishonor international conventions that have protected Britons in places of upheaval. Just as Tony Blair's invasion of Iraq led directly to the acts of terrorismin London on 7 July 2005, so Cameron and Foreign Secretary William Hague have compromised the safety of British representatives across the world.
Threatening to abuse a law designed to expel murderers from foreign embassies, while defaming an innocent man as an "alleged criminal," Hague has made a laughing stock of Britain across the world, though this view is mostly suppressed in Britain. The same brave newspapers and broadcasters that have supported Britain's part in epic bloody crimes, from the genocide in Indonesia to the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan,now attack the "human rights record" of Ecuador, whose real crime is up to the bullies in London and Washington.
It is as if the Olympics happy-clappery has been subverted overnight by a revealing display of colonial thuggery. Witness the British army officer-cum-BBC reporter Mark Urban "interviewing" a braying Sir Christopher Meyer, Blair's former apologist in Washington, outside the Ecuadorean embassy, the pair of them erupting with Blimpish indignation that the unclubbable Assange and the uncowed Rafael Correa should expose the western system of rapacious power. Similar affront is vivid in the pages of the Guardian, which has counselled Hagueto be "patient" and that storming the embassy would be "more trouble than it is worth."
Assange was not a political refugee, the Guardian declared, because "neither Sweden nor the UK would in any case deport someone who might face torture or the death penalty."
The irresponsibility of this statement matches the Guardian's perfidious role in the whole Assange affair. The paper knows full well that documents released by WikiLeaks indicate that Sweden has consistently submitted to pressure from the United States in matters of civil rights. In December 2001, the Swedish government abruptly revoked the political refugee status of two Egyptians, Ahmed Agiza and Mohammedel-Zari, who were handed to a CIA kidnap squad at Stockholm airport and "rendered" to Egypt, where they were tortured. An investigation by the Swedish ombudsman for justice found that the government had "seriously violated" the two men's human rights.
In a 2009 US embassy cable obtained by WikiLeaks, entitled "WikiLeaks puts neutrality in the Dustbin of History," the Swedish elite's vaunted reputation for neutrality is exposed as a sham. Another US cable reveals that "the extent of [Sweden's military and intelligence] cooperation [with Nato] is not widely known" and, unless kept secret, "would open the government to domestic criticism."
The Swedish foreign minister, Carl Bildt, played a notorious leading role in George W. Bush's Committee for the Liberation of Iraq and retains close ties to the Republican Party's extreme right. According to the former Swedish director of public prosecutions Sven-Erik Alhem, Sweden's decision to seek the extradition of Assange on allegations of sexual misconduct is "unreasonable and unprofessional, as well as unfair and disproportionate."
Having offered himself for questioning, Assange was given permission to leave Sweden for London where, again, he offered to be questioned. In May, in a final appeal judgment on the extradition, Britain's Supreme Court introduced more farce by referring to non-existent "charges."
Accompanying this has been a vituperative personal campaign against Assange. Much of it has emanated from the Guardian, which, like a spurned lover, has turned on its besieged former source, having hugely profited from WikiLeaks disclosures. With not a penny going to Assange or WikiLeaks, a Guardian book has led to a lucrative Hollywood movie deal. The authors, David Leigh and Luke Harding, gratuitously abuse Assange as a "damaged personality" and "callous." They also reveal the secret password he had given the paper in confidence, which was designed to protect a digital file containing the US embassy cables. On 20 August, Harding was outside the Ecuadorean embassy, gloating on his blog that "Scotland Yard may get the last laugh."
It is ironic, if entirely appropriate, that a Guardian editorial putting the paper's latest boot into Assange bears an uncanny likeness to the Murdoch press's predictable augmented bigotry on the same subject. How the glory of Leveson, Hackgate and honorable, independent journalism doth fade.
His tormentors make the point of Assange's persecution. Charged with no crime,he is not a fugitive from justice. Swedish case documents, including the text messages of the women involved, demonstrate to any fair-minded person the absurdity of the sex allegations -- allegations almost entirely promptly dismissed by the senior prosecutor in Stockholm, Eva Finne, before the intervention of a politician, Claes Borgstrom. At the pre-trial of Bradley Manning, a US army investigator confirmed that the FBI was secretly targeting the "founders, owners or managers of WikiLeaks" for espionage...."
All class systems are crippled, deformed "DISTOPIAS", partial, divisible, dependent, zero sum, rigged class systems that uses the Orwellian class/Empire principle, its ideological class thugs, class elites, deformed, proto fascist middle class professionals, shock troops, who ROUTINELY MANIPULATE, INVERT, CO OPT, CORRUPT, SUBSTITUTE, FALSELY CONFLATES, class control with their professed support for social principles, while conflating ideological manipuilation, lying, into class deformed language, and class deformed Human Nature. We must end all class systems to regain social control, morality, real social Human Nature, end all distopian class systems, end all class myths, all class deformed language, and end the totalitarian , parasistical alliance between class hierarchies and ruling classes. Thus morality, social control has never been a reality throughout class history, its milleniums of degenerating class cycles, its proto totalitarianism, today's capitalist form, proto fascism, UNLESS THE WORLD BOYCOTTS ALL CLASS POLITICIANS, for a social agenda that ends class hierarchies, by fully developing viable middle classes, that end class hierarchies and its parasitic ruling classes:
IDEOLOGICAL MANIPULATION REFLECTS A RIGGED CLASS SYSTEM AND ITS PARASTICAL, SERVILE CLASS SHOCK TROOPS DEFENDING TOTALITARIANISM, PROTO FASCISM. GUARDIAN LIKE THE NEW YORK TIMES REPRESENT THESE CLASS WHORES, IDEOLOGICAL THUGS:
New York Times Pro-Israeli Bias
http://warisacrime.org/content/new-york-times-pro-israeli-bias
PROTO TOTALITARIAN, DEGENERATING CLASS CYCLES, DEFORMED LANGUAGE IS A FUNCTION OF THE PROTO FASCISM OF LATE CAPITALISM:
The bizarre, unhealthy, blinding media contempt for Julian Assange
http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-bizarre-unhealthy-bl-by-Glenn-Greenwald-120822-111.html
EXCERPT:
It is possible to protect the rights of the complainants in Sweden and Assange's rights against political persecution, but a vindictive thirst for vengeance is preventing that.
Julian Assange: the British press's public enemy No1. Photograph: Chris Helgren/Reuters
(updated below - Update II)
Earlier this week, British lawyer and legal correspondent for the New Statesman David Allen Green generated a fair amount of attention by announcing that he would use his objective legal expertise to bust what he called "legal myths about the Assange extradition." These myths, he said, are being irresponsibly spread by Assange defenders and "are like 'zombie facts' which stagger on even when shot down."
In addition to his other credentials, Green -- like virtually the entire British press -- is a long-time and deeply devoted Assange-basher, and his purported myth-busting was predictably regurgitated by those who reflexively grasp onto anything that reflects poorly on western establishmentarians' public enemy No1. It's really worth examining what Green argued to understand the behavior in which Assange detractors engage to advance this collective vendetta, and also to see how frequently blatant ideological agendas masquerade as high-minded, objective legal expertise.
But before getting to that, let us pause to reflect on a truly amazing and revealing fact, one that calls for formal study in several academic fields of discipline. Is it not remarkable that one of the very few individuals over the past decade to risk his welfare, liberty and even life to meaningfully challenge the secrecy regime on which the American national security state (and those of its obedient allies) depends just so happens to have become -- long before he sought asylum from Ecuador -- the most intensely and personally despised figure among the American and British media class and the British "liberal" intelligentsia?
In 2008 -- two years before the release of the "collateral murder" video, the Iraq and Afghanistan war logs, and the diplomatic cables -- the Pentagon prepared a secret report which proclaimed WikiLeaks to be an enemy of the state and plotted ways to destroy its credibility and reputation. But in a stroke of amazing luck, Pentagon operatives never needed to do any of that, because the establishment media in the US and Britain harbor at least as much intense personal loathing for the group's founder as the US government does, and eagerly took the lead in targeting him. Many people like to posit the US national security state and western media outlets as adversarial forces, but here -- as is so often the case -- they have so harmoniously joined in common cause.
Whatever else is true, establishment media outlets show unlimited personal animus toward the person who, as a panel of judges put it when they awarded him the the 2011 Martha Gellhorn prize for journalism, "has given the public more scoops than most journalists can imagine." Similarly, when the Australian version of the Pulitzers -- the Walkley Foundation -- awarded its highest distinction (for "Most Outstanding Contribution to Journalism") to WikiLeaks in 2011, it cited the group's "courageous and controversial commitment to the finest traditions of journalism: justice through transparency," and observed: "So many eagerly took advantage of the secret cables to create more scoops in a year than most journalists could imagine in a lifetime."