The online Oxford dictionary defines the word siege as a "military operation in which enemy forces surround a town or building, cutting off essential supplies, with the aim of compelling those inside to surrender."
The strategy dates back to medieval times after the proliferation of the castle, where a defending force could hole itself up inside an easily defended fortress against an invading enemy who would be at a major disadvantage in a direct attack. To get around this, an army who wanted to depose the leadership within a castle or other impregnable construct would simply surround it and refuse to allow any food or supplies to be brought in. With enough patience, those inside would be forced to either starve or surrender.
This is precisely the strategy that is being employed against Julian Assange. If you try to talk about Assange being in a state of functional house arrest on any online forum you will be swiftly inundated by accounts asserting in fascinatingly uniform language that Assange is free to leave the Ecuadorian embassy whenever he wants, which just so happens to be the desire of the empire which currently has him under siege.
Doctors who examined Assange earlier this year say that his health is in a "dangerous" state of deterioration. They had to conduct their examination using improvised means in an unsanitary environment because the embassy isn't set up for medical examinations, much less healthcare. They say he badly needs care, and he can't get that care from where he's at.
In her epic breakdown of the way perception of WikiLeaks is being extensively manipulated by the empire titled "Being Julian Assange", journalist Suzie Dawson thoroughly documents the effects that Assange's detention are having on his mental and physical wellbeing. Here is a small sample:
"In his most recent live appearance, Assange is insightful, learned and brilliant as ever. But he is visibly suffering the ever exacerbating physical effects of his 7 year confinement.
After more than half a decade without fresh air to breathe, he coughs and clears his throat constantly. He struggles to maintain cognitive flow – breaking and reforming his thoughts, soldiering on in a concerted effort to express his ideas. It is obvious to any viewer that his vision has been affected. Our eyes need regular exposure to both short and long distances, as well as natural light changes, to maintain their health. With only four close walls to look at, Assange faces partial blindness, as well as a host of other negative effects from his unjust confinement.
Although there are countless social media threads and tweets circulating about Julian and WikiLeaks every day, few if any seem to register the serious and grave possibility that, immersed in our collective complacency, we may lose them forever."
Julian Assange cannot "leave whenever he wants". A judge with severely corrupt ties ruled in February that his arrest warrant still stands for an absurd bail-jumping charge from 2012 that Assange has already served his sentence for many times over according to the law as it is written. As soon as he sets foot outside the embassy he will most certainly be arrested, and then most certainly extradited to the US where the Trump administration is aggressively pursuing his arrest.
Chelsea Manning was tortured. CIA black sites exist. The hoards of online trolls promulgating the narrative that Assange can "leave whenever he wants" would crack like eggs under the treatment that is inflicted upon individuals who have dared to stand up to the US-centralized empire.
Assange isn't hiding from justice, he is hiding from injustice. There is no reason to believe that this draconian empire would give him a fair trial and humane treatment. He can no more "leave whenever he wants" than he could if there was a firing squad stationed outside the embassy door.
And now this same western empire has pressured Ecuador into cutting off Assange's internet access, phone calls and visitors to its siege, with electronic jammers being placed inside the embassy to make doubly certain that he is completely cut off from the world. A whole new array of weapons have been added to the empire's siege, and it's getting a lot hotter in there.
What all this has done, however, is prove irrefutably that Julian Assange has been right all along. The empire that he has been railing against throughout his entire time in the spotlight is every bit as depraved, oppressive and Orwellian as he has claimed, and is unquestionably deserving of his relentless assault upon it.
If you speak out against the US-centralized empire, you will be silenced. If you expose the truth about it, it will lay siege to you until you either surrender or die. Dissent is being stomped out. Truth is being attacked.
Light is feared by vampires.
And we need to be real with ourselves: their siege might work. They may well succeed in squeezing the life out of Assange until he either sets foot outside the embassy, cracks under the mental pressure, or dies, and in any of those cases his voice will be cut off from the world forever.
But remember this! Never, ever forget this: if their siege does work and the empire finally does get its sociopathic claws on him alive or dead, all they will have accomplished is showing the world just how right he always was. They will force us all to become Julian Assange in order to take apart the oppression machine which forever snuffed out the voice of truth one day in London, and we will let truth roar through all of us.
No matter what the brainwashed MSM zombies tell you, any power establishment which will stomp out the voice of someone who simply shares facts about it is worthy of nothing other than relentless tooth-and-claw opposition.
Assange is right. He has always been right. Let's take these bastards down.
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Julian Assange has sacrificed his life for the rest of us , at this point it is very obvious to everyone that all the charges on him are BS.
Also very obvious is the blatant hypocrisy of MSM which will only discuss the mode of leak and NEVER the content of the leak.
It looks like the Russian bots have reverse engineered themselves.
In spite of MSM he's definitely not losing on the public relations front. Yet it seems the powers that be feel so vulnerable that they would ruin their image, compromise their hallowed ideology just to see to it he suffers and is made an example of.
Wow!
One thing is Chelsea Manning wasn't tortured, calling serving prison time being tortured is a slap in the face to those who have been physically brutally tortured. There is absolutely no comparison between physical abuse she exposed even and being served bad food while confined to prison grounds. None. Period. Get over that.
There's a huge difference between being a traitor to one's country and exposing the truth. That's why Chelsea got such a lengthy prison sentence. Sure you can say they can say he was a co-conspirator but co-conspirators of any crimes normally don't get the same length of sentences. Most Americans have a genuinely good impression of Assange for exposing the truth, that's a plus in his favor given he would get the best attorneys in the country more than likely at pro bono. Just the exposure alone defending someone of his status would have them jumping at the opportunity. Furthermore if he were to be detained and extradited doing so during the Trump administration is going to be way more in his favor. Trump is going to be less likely to want to put pressure on his case then if he waits and ends of taking a chance with another democratic administration. A democratic administration is going to want to see him hang (figure of speech) and will put the best lawyers they have to see to it. A really good lawyer could see him possibly getting less than a ten year sentence if that. As a matter of fact he could go into a sentencing agreement if he decided to turn himself over to the authorities if he wanted and hardly face any time at all, of course I'd imagine such a sentence would have to come with conditions that once paroled, pardoned, whatever he desist from such activities. I think we all know that not doing some jail time is probably zilch and there's not much any of us can do other than being cheerleaders thanking him for what he has done for people and that will never be forgotten, on the other hand we would all accept the fact that yes this is only one life time, he has done his part and it's time he found a way to go home to his family and enjoy the rest of his life. If he can't live by that then as with any occupation someone chooses in life he will face the consequences that encompass the boundaries set forth by choosing to do so.
What trial? If the evil empire ever gets its hands on him he'll end up spending the rest of his life rotting away in Guantánamo.
I hardly think so. Get real.
I'm going to ignore this comment until you respond to the actual facts of Manning's treatment instead of babbling about "bad food".
lol, I am rolling on the floor laughing. Almost a year....my brother was in solitary confinement for almost two years, maybe longer. In the US solitary confinement isn't what you think, yes you get privileges taken away from you, like you don't get television, radios, your food comes on a cart is often cold which ads to the displeasure of the garbage they feed them, though her being in a federal prison the food was probably better, you are shackled for visits and when taken outside your cell for showers and yard time. Yard time is restricted to one hour a day in a small screened in area, which is next to another screened in area where you can talk to someone. On the other hand in your cell you can still talk with other inmates next to you, usually in a awkward position like near venting or a pipeline running through your cell. They also have room under their door that after guard checks they write notes to each other then slips them from one cell to the next, they have a term they call it, I'll have to ask him next time I talk to him. Your family can still write you letters, order you books and magazines, like I order my brother lots of puzzle magazines to keep his mind occupied, not to mention they can also still order books from the prison library. After several months you are still considered a level five solitary confinement but you earn back your television and radio so it doesn't necessarily mean he spent the whole two years without those items, earning them back means you don't give the guards a hard time when they are transporting you around, be acting all crazy, like some guys will spread feces all around in their cells or call the guards names when they walk by. Chelsea was practically famous, I am sure she got all kinds of letters, probably cash in her account from people she never heard of, though in solitary you don't get to order goods but it sure did come in handy when she would have gotten out of solitary, had lawyers coming and going...none which ever came out and said she was being tortured, plus if I recall right they ordered the prison system to give her transgender surgery....outrageous considering that prison inmates have to pay five bucks every time they go see a prison doctor if they have money in their accounts. Torture in the true sense it's not and is demeaning to anybody who has ever suffered and/or died from real torture.
If your are wondering what earned him that bit, he killed his bunkie in another prison.
Thank you @caitoz the 🇺🇸 are pissing on 🌏 and atleast your telling people, anyone can read the tweets of those work for the private sector CIA NSA can that Jammers-stop-assange-from-using-internet is a act of war.
"Assange isn't hiding from justice, he is hiding from injustice. There is no reason to believe that this draconian empire would give him a fair trial and humane treatment"
Bingo.
”Leave whenever he wants”
What a load of rubbish.
We will just have to be louder.
Soliderity ✊🏿
There is a huge fight going on now to get the elites etc out of power and assange is but one of many who fight...
Well, there’s always going to be something wrong with taking someone’s correspondence or business records and making them public without their consent. That wrong could be outweighed by the right the public has to know about matters of civic interest. Wikileaks is basically a fence for those who steal private information, in the eyes of its detractors. It was only ever going to catch shit, and being in the middle, or the front of it, was a prescription for getting bloody.
The left and progressives and libertarians and all those concerned with some transparency for public policy making {should be on Assange’s side}(https://disobedientmedia.com/2018/03/op-ed-if-ecuador-withdraws-support-and-protection-from-julian-assange-it-will-be-a-tragedy/), and the government should be reformed such that the need for a Wikileaks organization is obviated by systemic transparency. That governmental reform, though, is not likely to happen, or happen sufficiently, as governments are wont to abuse their power.
As others have pointed out here, Assange is a hero and Ecuador deserves our support. It would be nice to see support vigils outside of Ecuador’s embassy in the UK, and protests by Americans at the U.S. embassy in Ecuador. Is there a fund to assist Ecuador and defray the cost of hosting Julian there?