Julian Assange

I am very upset about this. In fact, I obsess about it. For the man himself and what he has been subjected to obviously, but I also obsess about what this means. In Gordon Dimmack's words "this is the biggest story ever, in ever ever - bigger than Brexit, bigger than anything else" - speaking as someone from the UK. As someone from Turkey, Brexit has never been high on my agenda anyway, but looking at it from here, Julian Assange's plight is a bigger story than all the horror stuff we are currently undergoing in this country also.

I do not want to romanticize this by posting a picture of Assange and his cat. It is simply one of the most expressive pictures of him that I could find, that it is all. What is happening here is far too serious to romanticize. I have been aware, for a long time now, that freedom of press / expression, democracy, human rights are gone from the entire globe. We, here in Turkey, get extremely worked up about what is happening here, in our own country. As we should! What most of us here fail to see however is that we are only a part of a much bigger global pattern. The powers in the West do it far more subtly, that is all. Or that has been the case up until recently. But now with Julian Assange all pretense, all subtlety has finally been tossed out of the window. It is staring us in the face.

What I am especially very upset about is the lack of reaction. Even more than that - no one even knows! The mass medias of the world have hidden this so well that people don't even know! Here, as I said, we are so engrossed in our own tragedies that we don't see it. And also, I think that people here who do see it prefer to not show it in order to maintain this illusion that all is still OK in the West and that once we break out of this yoke of tyranny that we are currently subjected to in this country, and once again join the "free world" all will be fine. Except that the "free world" is no longer free.

So, why are there so many journalists, academicians, and politicians jailed here and not over there then? Could it be that over here there is far more dissent? That the propaganda that we, in this country, have been subjected to has been so clumsy, so ham fisted, so overt, that it simply hasn't worked? That we have seen beyond it - journalists and all? And have landed in jail, as a result. But that instead, the masses in the "free world" are so far propagandized, and in such a subtle way (again journalists and all) that there isn't that much dissent left to worry about? Ergo, no imminent need to throw people in jail en masse? What was it that William Casey said to Ronald Reagan in 1981? "We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything that the American public believes is false."

And then along came Julian Assange. To whose plight (which is actually their own plight, their own freedom, their own future!) no journalist is reacting. So, obviously the plan has worked. Just call the greatest journalist of this century a "Russian Asset", talk about some trumped up rape charge in Sweden, diminish him any which way you can - and you're all set. Do your State's bidding - whatever country you belong to, they are all the same anyway. Get paid well. Couch "dissent" as opposition to the politician de jour, focus people's hatred on personas rather than on the completely corrupt system that the man has exposed by providing a safe haven to whistle blowers from all over the world.

So yes, I am very very very upset.