As you surely know, as a result of a plea deal he should never have had to enter into, Julian Assange is a free man.
This is unequivocally a good thing, though I'm sure you don't need me to tell you that.
I was very happy last year to have a chance to feature Assange's brother on the Tom Woods Show and refute the Boomer myths about Assange that you hear not just from the regime's professional liars but even from people who really should know better.
And incidentally, the contrast between Mike Pence and Vivek Ramaswamy in how they reacted to the news speaks volumes:
The campaign against Assange by various governments was intended simply to break him, not bring him to trial. "Sweden did not intend to prosecute Assange because it never had a case," wrote Jonathan Cook. "The aim was to trap him in an interminable process of non-prosecution while confining him in ever-worse conditions while the public was turned against him."
Glenn Greenwald was correct years ago when he likewise wrote, "These governments never wanted to put him on trial. You think Biden DOJ wants the spectacle of bringing him onto US soil, trying him for espionage? The goal was to neutralize and break him by keeping him locked up with no trial."
Back in 2012, Greenwald noted what made Western journalists so irrationally hostile to Assange:
Many journalists (and liberals) like to wear the costume of outsider-insurgent, but are, at their core, devoted institutionalists, faithful believers in the goodness of their society's power centers, and thus resent those (like Assange) who actually and deliberately place themselves outside of it.
By putting his own liberty and security at risk to oppose the world's most powerful factions, Assange has clearly demonstrated what happens to real adversarial dissidents and insurgents – they're persecuted, demonized, and threatened, not befriended by and invited to parties within the halls of imperial power – and he thus causes many journalists to stand revealed as posers, servants to power, and courtiers.
Should you for some reason be tempted to send me the Boomer response that Assange "endangered Americans," it would be better for you simply to unsubscribe and instead follow someone like Mike Pence, who unlike me will reliably transmit the regime's perspective on things.
Nathan J. Robinson took that one down:
Despite absolutely exhaustive efforts to prove that harm had been done by the disclosures [relating to Iraq and Afghanistan], the government has never been able to tie a single death to the WikiLeaks documents, in part because they were not disclosures of top secret national security information.
According to [Patrick] Cockburn, a "team of 120 counterintelligence officers" wasn't "able to find a single person, among the thousands of American agents and secret sources in Afghanistan and Iraq, who could be shown to have died because of the disclosures." Government officials even admitted privately that the leaks were less damaging than their public statements suggested. The only thing the WikiLeaks disclosures damaged was vague "U.S. interests," which in practice means the country's preference not to have embarrassing information about its wrongdoing exposed, which might cause people to dislike us.
What was done to Assange would have killed lesser men. He endured it and survived, and is a genuine hero in a world run by liars and sociopaths. It filled me with joy to see the video of him boarding that plane.
Now I'd like to share with you something very meaningful to me.
This month two things happened whose confluence made me particularly sentimental: (1) Father's Day; and (2) my eldest daughter, Regina, turning 21.
I asked Regina if she'd consider letting me interview her, the way I would a podcast guest (except it would be published in print rather than in audio form). She consented.
I don't usually share online what I write in the print newsletter that I mail to members of the Supporting Listeners program, but I'm making an exception here.
I hope my conversation with my wonderful Regina lifts your spirits:
