Monday, July 25, 2016

Assange Re Clinton & Trump and American Politics

"Our civiliation can only be as good as our knowledge. [...] We can't possibly hope to reform that which we do not understand.  So, those Hillary Clinton emails, they connect together with the cables that we've published [...] , creating a rich picture of how Hillary Clinton performs in office, but more broadly, how the US Department of State operates.  For example, the disastrous, absolutely disastrous, intervention in Libya: the destruction of the Qaddafy government, which led to the occupation of ISIS of large segments of that country; weapons flows going over to Syria, being pushed by Hillary Clinton to jihadists in Syria, including ISIS - that's there in those emails.  That's more than 1700 emails in Hillary Clinton's collection that we've released just about Libya alone."  
That's from a Democracy Now! interview, during which Amy Goodman asks Julian Assange what he thinks of the choice of Trump v. Clinton (citing a new CNN poll that now puts Trump ahead).  His answer was, "You're asking me, do I prefer cholera or gonorrhea?"   Not sure which is whom.
"We know how politics works in America.  Whatever political party gets into government is going to merge with the bureaucracy, pretty damn fast, [and when it's] in a position where it has some levers in its hands,  [...]  corporate lobbyists will move in to help control those levers, so it doesn't make much difference in the end.  What does make a difference is political accountability - deterrents set to stop political organizations behaving in a corrupt manner.   [...]  Almost always you should choose the principled position, which is to send a disciplinary signal about acting in a corrupt way and take a philosophical position which is that our institutions can only be as good as our understanding of our institutions."
I have to agree.

h/t Glenn Greenwald Twitter for posting this excerpt of Assange's response to Amy Goodman's question about whether the Russians were the source of the DNC emails:



I would encourage you to watch the whole video segment (in three parts).  Or read the transcript.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

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