UPDATED: Does Assange have an Identity Crisis, or Do Governments just want to confuse his Identity?
There is a false debate rearing its head in the days leading up to Assange’s US Extradition hearing, beginning Monday Feb. 24th, 2020.
Let me put it this way:
Who among you does not have an internet connection?
Who among you does not use the internet to communicate with others?
Who among you has a phone (landline, satellite), or a smart phone with phone apps and internet access?
Who among you does not have these things?
Fundamentally, the phone, the internet and new forms of technology have emerged onto and into the field of communications. Communications form the basis of all journalism.
A person cannot function as a journalist without access to the internet, even if s/he begins with an unconnected audio, video, written report or observation. Eventually, it becomes public via the internet.
Assange emerged as a digital journalist before other journalists were aware that computer communications could be protected between sources, journalists and publishers, and before other journalists had the skills to gather, index, organize and disclose massive data sets which could be searchable by other persons (journalists, activists, lawyers and citizens).
Swedish and British courts have acknowledged that Assange is/was a publisher and that Wikileaks is a media organization. The US is attempting to deny Assange’s status as a journalist or publisher. Read it here on page 8.
Anyone who has known Assange for the past ten years has seen him on television, in interviews, read his articles and commentary online and is aware that he has published books, given talks and is a sought-after political analyst. He does exactly what any other journalist does, will do and hopes to do in the future. He redacts information, shares information with other media organizations and serves the public by educating the public. For this he has won many journalism awards. For this, he also faces a life sentence in a US human mausoleum, under Special Administrative Measures (S.A.M.s) which is extreme isolation.
To condemn Assange as a non-journalist is to convert “the Internet” and all communications (phone, internet, phone apps, meetings with other persons, metadata, emails and even tracking history of one’s internet searches) into weapons of “Espionage”. Communication = Espionage, JustLikeChina. This will increase the need for government and corporate surveillance of all employees, associates, sub-contractors and business partners. Eventually, it will increase the surveillance of politicians, human rights /environmental defenders and lawyers who represent them. It will increase the surveillance of journalists and media organizations. This has already happened.
Employees of a company or government contractor can expect increased “security” or surveillance measures to be deployed. Their personal space, now includes communications on their phones, laptops, and other bridged devices, will be invaded by surveillance. After 8 yrs of research on multi-modal biometric human enslavement, the future is foreboding, dark and subjugating, JustLikeChina, (book to follow…eventually).
If you deny that Assange is a journalist, public educator, digital innovator, intellect, author and a public servant, then you are essentially consenting to have the internet locked down, your privacy invaded even more aggressively, laws changed to calcify more restrictions on privacy and you are inviting authoritarian, dictatorial Totalitarianism, JustLikeChina.
Assange leveraged technology, communications, his intellect and intention to inform the public about important matters all to the good of humanity. No harm was done from a body count perspective. To exclude Assange from the identity of being a Journalist, Reporter, Educator or Publisher is to eventually grant permission to those with abusive power to invade our every communication. To exclude him from this fundamental identity is to grant permission to “the Powerful” to do the same to you.
Whatever you “permit” for Assange will become the permission slip allocated to you in the future. Whatever you allow or disallow for Assange will be calcified in law, normalized and you will see more journalists in prison. JustLikeChina.
The “Rules for Journalism” will not be rewritten overnight. They will be incrementally adjusted and tightened and later applied to other professions, including Law and Education. Then everything and everyone else.
There really is no identity crisis for Assange. There is a communications crisis, an internet crisis and a human rights crisis. Resist accordingly. Protest!
“We must resist the UK’s extradition.” ~Julian Assange
Please participate in a GLOBAL PROTEST tomorrow, Mon. Feb. 24th and rally for Assange in London UK. Turn UP ! Details below.
Gravitas,
Jude Fleming