Bury Julian Assange’s Heart at Wounded Knee
"I shall not be there. I shall rise and pass. Bury my heart at Wounded Knee." (Stephen Vincent Benét)
Declan Hayes | [...] | And then there is Julian Assange. Remember him, that random Australian dude MI6 still has banged up in Belmarsh Prison because he was shocked into action, as we all should be, by America’s war crimes in Iraq, Afghanistan and far too many other places to adumbrate here.
Julian Assange should be spending Christmas at home with his wife and children, waiting for Santa to climb down their chimney (whatever!), scarpering back up it and letting Julian settle in to read, for the time of year that is in it, Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee (download the book here), which deals not only with the American Army’s December 29 1890 slaughter of the Lakota Indians but with many of the other Yankee campaigns of genocide against their own indigenous populations that preceded that notorious war crime.
Not that Yankee war crimes or their mutilation of the dead stopped there; because war crimes are what they do, there will be no tears shed within the Beltway for today’s Palestinian Baby Jesuses and Virgin Marys, who don’t even have a donkey’s stable to rest in, nor a Julian Assange-style journalist without an Israeli bullseye on his back to tell their tale. Even British MP Layla Moran, whose relatives are Gazan Catholics, is completely powerless to save their lives. As Finian Cunningham recently wrote about the Israelis mowing down their own, why not? Why not, in the words of Dostoevsky (sorry Russophobes), commit horrible crimes when there is no punishment, no moral compass to guide them?
■ Julian Assange: "Truth ultimately is all we have." (Links on this blog)