Alex Constantine - February 22, 2024
"What is the point of the CIA? Its chiefs and agents bungled and murdered their way through the Cold War, Vietnam, Cuba and the Middle East, providing a stream of misinformation to successive US administrations and killing the wrong people." - Max Hastings, Sunday Times (UK), Feb. 11, 2024
JULIAN ASSANGE IS AMERICA'S NAVALNY
S0 "no one is above the haw?" In 3948, the CIA executed George Polk, the reporter whose name graces the vaunted Polk Award for journalism. No one was arrested. There have been an untold number of CIA murders since.
Polk Award recipients aren't particularly concerned about this. They mount the award on their bookshelves, and look the other way.
When is a CIA operative ever prosecuted for anything other than leaking files on the wanton malfeasance of a federal agency that wastes tens of billions of dollars of tax revenue annually to function secretly as a corrupt state within a state?
The leaks have been coming since the CIA's inception: Mind control atrocities including the slaughter of 900 innocents at Jonestown, collusion with organized crime, heroin and cocaine smuggling, war crimes like those exposed by Assange, the mustering of death squads throughout South America, the targeting of American citizens with non-lethal weapons, the assassination of elected leaders here and abroad?
Whatever did poet Pablo Neruda do to deserve summary execution? How was the sponsorship of Augusto Pinochet justified?
The Agency is crying out for accountability and reform, but remains above the law. Julian Assange isn't a criminal. He exposed criminals. We need many more like him to bring the CIA to justice. The unimpeded corruption of our "shadow warriors" is every bit as extreme as Putin's bloody oligarchy. - Alex Constantine
Related - The world mourns Navalny, but his Western doppelganger twists in the wind: After this week’s Julian Assange court hearing, this is clear: extradition would amount to a death sentence - At the high court, lawyers posed the pivotal question: how can exposing crime and torture be worse than committing them?
PROTESTERS GATHER OUTSIDE THE UK HIGH COURT DURING JULIAN ASSANGE'S EXTRADITION HEARING (IMAGE: JAMES WARREN/SOPA IMAGES/SIPA USA)
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s legal team told the High Court in London they have proof there was a CIA plot during Donald Trump’s presidency to kidnap or assassinate him when he lived in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, the BBC reports. Lawyer Mark Summers alleged senior CIA officials requested plans, Trump requested ways to do it and “sketches were even drawn up”. A court in Spain is looking into whether a Spanish security firm spied on him during those seven years. Assange’s team also warned of “extra-legal attack elimination” in the US, as The Guardian reports, particularly if Trump becomes president again. Assange didn’t attend court, or appear by video, because he was too mentally and physically sick. His team is appealing his extradition to the US to face espionage charges — if rejected, his legal options in the UK are exhausted. But only a limited number of people were able to witness the proceedings, the Beeb notes, and journalists got a dodgy audio feed.