The Crucifixion of Julian Assange

     The Washington Post released a clips video of late night TV hosts Seth Meyers, Trevor Noah, and Jimmy Fallon "reacting" to yesterday's arrest by UK police of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.  I guess the video's intent is humor, though all three well-paid corporate comedians should acquaint themselves with the direction satire goes: it punches up, not down.
     Assange has been receiving sanctuary in the Ecuadorian embassy in London for seven years.  While former Ecuador President Rafael Correa was in power, Assange was safe from U.K. and U.S. molestation of his rights.  The U.S. under Presidents Obama and Trump (who have more in common than is understood by many conservatives and liberals both) has sought to extradite Assange for his role in publishing damning documents detailing criminal conduct such as war crimes committed by the U.S. military and institutionalized torture.
     President Correa bravely defied the behemoth power to the north of his small country, seeking freedom from first world neoliberal policies, wanting nothing to do for instance with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.  He allied his country with Hugo Chávez's Venezuela.  In 2016 he was succeeded by his vice president, Lenín Moreno, who's proven pliable to the scumbags running America and the U.K.  During the last year, at the direction of Moreno through his masters in Washington and London, Assange's life in the embassy shrank to no internet contact, no access to Twitter, monitored visits, total surveillance.  Hounded to the brink by power-mongering shits with criminal secrets to hide, Julian Assange reportedly became more and more belligerent, i.e. louder, such as when he was recently visited by a journalist and friend and the embassy employees gave her the runaround, putting them in separate rooms for an unreasonable period.
     Assange's only companion has been a cat.  After his arrest, "journalists" on Headline News wrinkled their noses about unconfirmed reports (deriving, some of them, from Donald Trump's hand puppet President Moreno) of Assange's lack of cleanliness.  He reportedly smeared feces on a wall.  He didn't keep his cat's litter box in clean shape.  I suggest that over the last year Assange was given less and less resources to maintain a normal lifestyle.  He grew a bushy beard, he looks unhealthy.  Is this because he's a defiant treacherous creep?  Did Saddam Hussein, when caught in 2004 in his "spider hole," look like shit because he wanted to look that way, or because he lacked the resources and personal security to maintain a well-groomed appearance?
     Some might call these questions nuanced and irrelevant, but it's not difficult to figure out that a man like Assange, who's been condemned by the U.S. press at the behest of power brokers on both sides of the aisle, has been figuratively crucified by a gang of fucking idiots in the journalism profession who don't realize they're shitting on their own jobs and ripping up the First Amendment by not defending Julian Assange.
     Assange, as publisher, did what the New York Times and Washington Post did in publishing the leaked documents known as the Pentagon Papers.  Steven Spielberg made a movie, The Post, celebrating the courageous decision by Katherine Graham (Meryl Streep) to reveal to the world, via her source Daniel Ellsberg, the lies, duplicities, and crimes of the Vietnam War.  Assange is Katherine Graham, Ellsberg is Chelsea Manning and countless other whistleblowers supplying documents to Wikileaks about every country on the planet.  The parallel, if explained well, would be obvious to a five year old.
     Assange's arrest should alarm every journalist on the planet.  It alarms the honest ones, for sure.  The ones who are bought and paid for by corporations and governments (the mainstream news media) approach the situation, however, from the angle of "Assange is a bad guy."
     Donald Trump, asked about the Assange arrest in the Oval Office during a bullshit session in the company of his guest, the President of South Korea, said Wikileaks "is not my thing."  He professed unbelievable ignorance.  Mainstream news has broadcast a clip of Trump, while campaigning in 2016, extolling the virtues of Wikileaks.  He liked Wikileaks when it revealed dirt on Hillary Clinton.  MSNBC and much of the mainstream news media liked Wikileaks when it revealed dirt on the Bush administration.
     Typically, these people lack consistency.  They also don't seem to realize that press freedom is under attack by the Trump administration, that their defense of Assange's arrest is another way of saying, "We support Donald Trump."  Or they do realize it, and, having no integrity, continue to rely on the current president as the cash and ratings cow he's been to them since 2015.
     The comedians of late night TV presented by the Washington Post in the clips video mentioned above did not produce a single laugh or even a slight smile from me.  Instead, my reaction consisted of the words, "You motherfuckers."
     They showed photos of Assange in 2012 when his time in sanctuary began and his appearance yesterday when arrested, the bearded man of failing health pulled and dragged by cops into a police van.  The audience reacted with laughter.  Look at some Renaissance paintings of onlookers at Christ's humiliation.  They laugh, ignorant and stupid, some of them just vicious.  It's funny, isn't it, when a person gets manhandled by cops?
     Trevor Noah, Jimmy Fallon, and Seth Meyers, corporate lackeys all, evidently think it is.  The precedent set by this arrest may be used against other journalists who don't fall in line with what Trump and his henchmen want.  (Note that Hillary Clinton and Chuck Schumer, prominent Democrats, are in favor of Assange's arrest and upcoming meeting with "justice.")
     Trump's denial of his knowledge of Wikileaks is attributable to his chronic lying.  Even when showing the clips demonstrating his past benevolent interest in Assange's organization, anchors and pundits have failed to remark that Trump is lying, that he's actively interested in bringing the Australian citizen publisher to the U.S. for trial for his alleged role in helping Chelsea Manning hack into the Defense Department, which led to the release of truthful information about war crimes committed by U.S. forces.
     Assange and Manning's unforgivable sin is that they pointed fingers at cruelty and injustice.  Those committing the cruelty and injustice, even those who have killed hundreds of thousands of people, receive no punishment, but often get interviewed by the same types of failed but well-paid journalists who now go along with Julian Assange's ruination.
     Even late night talk show hosts are joining in the fun of kicking a man when he's down, assisting President Trump and Vice President Pence as they continue with their imperial agenda.
     To Trevor Noah, Seth Meyers, Jimmy Fallon, and others in entertainment media who may have done similar segments ridiculing Assange, his cat, while failing to mention the parallel downfall of the Fourth Estate, I can only say this: I wish that my "Fuck you!" could, with its sound waves, send you straight to Hell.

                                                                              Vic Neptune