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John Pilger invokes George Orwell in calling on his compatriots to stand up for the freedom of 'a distinguished Australian', the founder and editor of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, and for 'real journalism of a kind now considered exotic'.Whenever I visit Julian Assange, we meet in a room he knows too well. There is a bare table and pictures of Ecuador on the walls. There is a bookcase where the books never change. The curtains are always drawn and there is no natural light. The air is still and fetid.
Last night, the U.S. Coalition dropped internationally banned white phosphorous on the last Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL/IS/Daesh) enclave in eastern Syria.
According to reports from eastern Syria, the U.S. Coalition specifically dropped the white phosphorous on the Islamic State's positions inside the Baghouz camp.
Video footage of the U.S. Coalition dropping white phosphorous on the Islamic State's positions was captured by 'Ayn Al-Firat (Eye of the Euphrates) on Saturday:
"During the Korean War, the US dropped more bombs on North Korea than it had dropped in the entire Pacific theater during World War II. This carpet bombing, which included 32,000 tons of napalm, often deliberately targeted civilian as well as military targets, devastating the country far beyond what was necessary to win the war. Whole cities were destroyed, with many thousands of innocent civilians killed and many more left homeless and hungry.... Dean Rusk, a supporter of the war and later secretary of state, said the United States bombed "everything that moved in North Korea, every brick standing on top of another." ...The number of inhabitants of Pyongyang killed by bomb splinters, burnt alive and suffocated by smoke is incalculable..." ("Americans have forgotten what we did to North Korea", Vox World)The US-North Korea Summit in Hanoi has ended in failure just as all previous attempts at peace have ended in failure. This is by design. Washington has refused to incrementally lift the sanctions on the DPRK because sanctions are Washington's way of prosecuting an economic war against an enemy who, for the last six and a half decades, has been the target of US hostility. In case you hadn't noticed, US policy towards North Korea is regime change, the same as it is towards Iran, Cuba, Russia, Venezuela and any other country that doesn't accept Washington's moral superiority and divine right to rule the world. Economic strangulation (sanctions) is just one way that Washington cracks down on the dissidents and imposes its will with an iron fist. But don't kid yourself, this isn't about nuclear weapons, in fact, the Trump administration hasn't even bothered to assemble a team of weapons inspectors to investigate probable nuclear sites. Why? Because it isn't about nuclear weapons, it's about regime change, it's about inflicting maximum pain and suffering on the Korean people so they take up arms against the government and violently depose Kim and his cabinet. That's the goal. That's always been the goal. The blocking of heating oil, essential medicines and vital food supplies are all being used to promote social unrest, fratricidal warfare, and political anarchy. Sound familiar? It should, Washington has it down to an art.
Comment: Organize a protest/riot or flash-mob through which Assange could be secreted into a waiting vehicle or nearby safe-house, and from there hopefully escape Blighty, preferably to safety in Russia as he's not safe anywhere else in NATOstan.