Chomsky quotes have been making the rounds on the Far Left. I think he is now the one driving all opinion on the Far Left. Now, I love Chomsky. He is probably the only Leftist commentator to put the appropriate amount of serious concern on the topic of climate change. In this he goes a little too far to say it is going to destroy all life on the planet, but I much prefer that overstatement to the typical Liberal understatement that climate change is something we should be slightly concerned about, but not as concerned about as Trump’s racism. Even though I don’t think all conscious existence would end, I do think climate change does have a good enough chance of ending or severely inhibiting the continuation of human civilization such that we need to be treating it like Dick Cheney’s quip about terrorism: “If there is a 1% chance, then we need to take it is as a certainty.” That is why I think it is so strange that the Far Left should hold more concern for Julian Assange being freed in order to help in this civilization-ending endeavor rather than concern themselves over his right to continue his “journalistic” assault on scientific reason unhindered.

Chomsky unfortunately adds another political topic that he believes is just as if not more important than climate change: scaling back nuclear weapons on Russia’s border. His dismissal of Russian hacking as something that isn’t really important makes me think that he is taking the deescalation of NATO missile defense to Russia’ border from the Clinton era to be the greater threat than Russia undermining the global effort to curb carbon releases. Putin is not going to reflexively nuke the U.S. over a decision NATO made 30 years ago that didn’t even break any treaties. If the world ends in a nuclear explosion, it is probably going to be over some random accident that has nothing to do with where the NATO defense borders are, or it is going to be over a war for dwindling resources caused by climate change. Giving Putin exactly what he wanted for hacking the U.S. is only going to make him more aggressive, which is more likely to ultimately end in a scenario where he either manages to tilt the American vote to climate catastrophe or cause a military reaction that has a far greater chance of causing nuclear annihilation than where our nukes happen to be stationed. Chomsky even talks as if verbal agreements should be just as good between two superpowers, which is preposterous. Greenwald has compared the Russian hacking to the U.S. spending money in Russia to get Yeltsin reelected, but considering the U.S. role in election interference in favor of Yeltsin is ultimately what gave Putin his route to power, I don’t consider Putin hacking the U.S. to be a 30-year-delayed tit-for-tat fair retaliation.

I posted this message on the website Vridar and the main contributor to the site asked for some references and then wrote:

“Appreciate the reply.

It was the details about Russian aggression that I was particularly thinking of. The only cases I can think of are Georgia and Crimea and support for forces in western Ukraine, each one of which have what to me are very obvious national-defensive-self-interest motives. Nato has indeed been threatening Russia by expanding right up to its very borders even indicating that Ukraine may become a member. As Chomsky himself says, how could the US ever tolerate Russian bases being sprinkled across Canada and Mexico!

As an outsider I do find myself rolling eyes at the outrage expressed in the US over Russian involvement in the 2016 election. It is common knowledge that the US goes all out to influence the elections of other countries — note, e.g., Ukraine itself — and where propaganda and financial assistance fail a coup or war is often not far off as a Plan B.

Meanwhile, as per Chomsky again, the US allows a foreign head of state to address Congress without the permission of the President to sway the US to embrace the foreign nation’s policy towards Iran; it accepts a democratic system where the outcome of elections can be predicted by money spent (i.e. where elections are bought); where legislation is framed by lobbyists and the representatives do not on the whole represent the actual aspirations of those who elected them. To be outraged by Russia in the face of all the above does seem to be a misconstrual of priorities. I find it hard to know where Chomsky’s analysis is wrong or unbalanced.”

I am not asking you to be outraged that Russia would interfere in an election when the U.S. has interfered so much and with other countries. I am asking you to be outraged that they appear to be trying to hack an election in order to sabotage the Paris Agreement which will ultimately destroy the only viable atmosphere this planet has.

I consider hacking into the voter rolls to be aggression against the right of democratic self-determination, such as the flawed college voting system allows for democracy. I completely understand and respect your opinion that NATO went too far with its borders during the Clinton Era, but is it really such an emergency that we have to fix that issue right now, with Trump as president, who is also trying to break up the EU in other ways? That’s the part I’m just not getting.

Here’s a thought experiment: Let’s just say Assange was released, NATO pulls back, and Bernie runs for president. Then at the next presidential election, Assange does the exact same thing and releases hacked emails about Bernie’s wife causing the university she worked at to foreclose. Trump wins again, but then we find out the Russians have put ten times the effort into breaking into the U.S. voting system and this time there is a much larger suspicion that they might have changed some votes electronically. Trump then allies himself even more with Israel and Saudi Arabia and takes an even more aggressive stance against Iran and the Sudan. Climate talks are put off for another four years as Trump continues subsidizing coal. Should we then start doing something about Russia or would you still be saying that the Democrats just have to go further left on their platform?

Here is another recent conversation I had on Vridar:

Neil Godfrey: “It is easy to find fault with Julian Assange as a person and with some of the views of John Pilger, but it is also easy to find much good in both of them. I found John Pilger’s address on behalf of Julian Assange very moving”

Bringing Julian Assange Home

Jeff Foster: Rape apologia. How repugnant of you.

Neil Godfrey: I’m sorry you react that way to an appeal for a just outcome for Julian Assange.

Geoff: Hi Jeff. From one Geoff to another, have you actually looked in detail at the allegations?
I’m as certain as I can be, from my own detailed study of the documents and timeline of the case, that the accusations of rape have been concocted and weaponised by the US security state.
This method of character assassination was well-chosen, since
1/ Assange is a bit of a tart, and easy meat for a honey trap
2/ Assange was at that point very popular with leftists
3/ What better way to destroy his reputation with the left?

In any case, the allegations in question would, even if true, not amount to rape in any other country that I’m aware of. There are also serious concerns about the physical evidence (which favours Assange) and the conduct of the prosecution in the case.
If you have relied on mainstream media reports, these have been seriously misleading when compared to primary documents.

Ross Cameron: Australia has always rejected whistle-blowers and failed to understand that, unless we have those brave enough to expose the corruption that exists on all levels across our society, we will never reach our full potential. They often lose their job, family and assets, but continue to step up to the challenge. Governments fiddle with protective legislation, but these heroes are still punished by those in power. Assange is both an Aussie and a whistle-blower.

Me: If in the future, we learn that climate change really did end up killing and/or displacing millions of people and costing quadrillions of dollars in damage, then Julian Assange could probably be put on the Top 100 List of people who helped cause it. He was so consequential in Trumps’s election. He’s the one who gave Trump the idea to refuse acceptance of the election if it went against him. He dumped illegally-obtained emails an hour after the Trump-Bush tape was released, knowing full well that no one would read them and the Fox News crowd would just accept the lies told about them in right wing media. The exact same thing happened with “Climategate”. Before “Climategate”, there were still some on the right that actually believed in the “Climate Hoax”. You don’t really need something to find damaging information when you steal emails for the right-wing media to embellish. Just dump some emails and lie about it. Sometimes whistleblowers need to break the law for the greater good but ensuring that Trump won the election isn’t one of those times. It isn’t whistle-blowing. It’s political sabotage.

Assange wasn’t expecting just a pardon out of it. He was also expecting an ambassadorship to Australia from Trump. But he got betrayed by Trump. He’s not the only one. Trump has been involved in 3,500 lawsuits. I’ve been reading the comments about the Palestinian conflict and I definitely side with you on the that topic, but after watching all of the pain and suffering going on with the Palestinians and now the Mexican border, it is really hard for me to sympathize with how bad Julian Assange is feeling when he isn’t meeting with right-wing politicians like Nigel Farrage.

Neil Godfrey: Is there nothing good at all in Assange’s record? (I don’t like him personally by any means and I have little time for what we hear about his political sympathies, by the way.)

In 2016 I was very worried about a Clinton victory because from outside the United States it really did look like she would lead to a war with Russia. That scared the hell out of me and I am sure many other non-Americans.

Perhaps we will have to wait for Assange to die before we hear a more balanced summing up of what he has achieved, the good along with the bad.

Geoff: Wikileaks did not originally leak or publish the ‘ClimateGate’ emails, although they later hosted a mirror archive.

Me: When you talk about Assange’s “political sympathies”, that makes it sound very hypothetical, as if my complaint is about the way he votes in Australia. My point is that his actions overruled the will of over half of the United States’ population as they voted to try to push us away from climate disaster, which in my own humble opinion, is far more likely to destroy human civilization than war with Russia. Even if Wikileaks had done nothing other than post a link to ClimateGate, it’s beyond irresponsible. I’m for giving free speech to Nazis, but only when we outnumber the Nazis. Same for climate denial. Stopping climate change is by far the most important political goal in the long term, but given that U.S. Liberals would rather talk about Trans bathrooms, it’s hard to believe anyone is taking seriously the idea that mass famine and destabilization from massive dust bowls will really occur or that the oceans might really take the world’s coastal cities away.

I have never liked the Clintons. I think Bill probably did rape Juanita Broadrrick. (While we’re on the subject, I don’t like the way the sex accusations against Assange have been described as “rape” when they had more to do with negotiations over safe sex, but Assange’s “honey pot” talking point goes to the other extreme in assuming that the women he chose to help hide him had already sided with the U.S. extradition forces when he was staying with them.) Anyway, Bill Clinton pushed the Democratic Party to the right in both economics and foreign policy and Hillary probably would have done the same. But the idea that Hillary had such control over the Dems that she would be able to declare war on Russia and the whole party would lock step in line — despite the fact that Liberals had forced her to apologize for her vote on Iraq — is really out of the realm of possibility. If we were going to fight Russia over anything, it would have been over Crimea, not Syria. I would definitely put my money on Trump getting us into 3 more wars before Hillary would have attacked Russia. Heck, I’d put more money on Trump going to war with Russia, collusion or no collusion, than Clinton.

Neil Godfrey: Again, my views of Wikileaks and Assange himself developed prior to his seeking asylum with Ecuador. My views of Assange’s accomplishments are based on his work up until then and I have given limited interest to what his involvement in the U.S. election of 2016 and since because I see all of that as a postscript to what he has done. I have found John Pilger very insightful and moving in many of his works but I have also seen evidence that his views are ideologically based more than fact-based (e.g. his writing on Australia’s military involvement in East Timor). But despite areas of disagreement, even strong disagreement with both persons, I fully back Pilger’s plea for a humane response to Julian Assange’s predicament right now.

Me (in a different post): “Defector: Wikileaks ‘Will Lie to Your Face'”:

“[Former Assange supporter, “Iain”] finally found what he sees as a kind of Rosetta Stone into Assange’s thinking in a leaked email Assange wrote way back in 2007 while soliciting support for the nascent WikiLeaks concept. One of the goals for WikiLeaks, Assange wrote, “is total annihilation of the current U.S. regime and any other regime that holds its authority through mendacity alone.”

The “total annihilation of the current U.S. regime” line, which got some attention during the Chelsea Manning leaks, explains everything, said Iain, including Assange’s curious embrace of alt-right conspiracy theories and memes during the 2016 election season and beyond.

WikiLeaks baffled some supporters when it started seeding or promoting fake news about Hillary Clinton’s health, Pizzagate, and even Democrats engaging in satanic rituals at the same time it was releasing genuine material stolen from the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign.

This was not, as it might appear, a cynical bid to garner Donald Trump’s favor; nor was it simple pandering to a new funding base, argues Iain. It was part and parcel of Assange’s alignment with Russian President Vladimir Putin against their common adversary, the United States.

In retrospect, the shift was apparent way back in 2013, during Assange’s failed bid to win a Senate seat in Australia, Iain said. To that end Assange established the country’s WikiLeaks Party, with a platform built on government transparency and libertarianism. But just weeks before the election the party was roiled by a controversy over its ranking of other political parties in Australia’s ranked-choice voting, preferencing, in two races, the white-nationalist Australia First Party and the right-wing Shooters and Fishers Party above the liberal favorite, the Australian Greens.

The WikiLeaks Party blamed the choices on an “administrative error,” and Assange took to Australian TV to deny any role in the scandal, saying he was too preoccupied helping Edward Snowden to pay attention to what was happening in the party he led.

But as soon as the election was over, the WikiLeaks Party transformed. Its website was suddenly overrun with posts that would have been at home on Kremlin outlets like RT and Sputnik. “The puppet politicians who Washington intended to put in charge of Ukraine have lost control,” read a post on the Ukraine conflict. “The government of Crimea, a Russian province… has disavowed the illegitimate government that illegally seized power in Kiev and requested Russian protection.” Posts on Syria described the 2013 Ghouta chemical-weapons attack by forces loyal to Bashar al-Assad as “unsubstantiated” and “staged.” ”

Ross Cameron: “Jeff, why do we insist our heroes are squeaky clean? Even JC, who may never existed and I`m sure he didn`t, wasn`t perfect. Why not weigh up a person`s contributions, the good and the bad, and judge accordingly?”

Doug Shaver: “In my weighing-up of Assange’s contributions, the good outweigh the bad.”

Me: When you are posting stories about how Hillary is holding secret pedophile meetings in a pizza parlor basement that doesn’t exist, then you are a propaganda network, not a news network. Why don’t we just start calling every brain-dead conservative blogger whining about cultural Marxism a “news organization” while we’re at it? I will never understand the Liberal obsession with saving the guy who handed the election to Trump. His “Collateral Murder” video was not THAT instrumental in protesting the Iraq War, okay? Frankly I’m surprised anyone thought it was at all informative given what we already knew, but I guess videos sometimes force people to accept realities they would normally brush away. What else did he do that was so important? Neil just posted his concern that Trump is going to start building concentration camps. Well, he wouldn’t be worrying about that if it wasn’t for Assange. I’m not that worried about that, but I am extremely worried about climate change, which could possibly bring about the end of human civilization. Wikileaks released stolen emails just before the Copenhagen Conference in order to undermine it to help oil and methane producers destroy the only viable atmosphere that all life on this planet needs, then he did the same thing with the DNC emails knowing that Trump would undermine the Paris Accords, so as far as I am concerned, he is a traitor against all life on this planet, just like every Republican is. The Nazis at least wanted the Third Reich to last 1,000 years. These guys could care less if the world ends the day after they die. They basically want to destroy all coastline cities, farmland, and the oceans in the next century so that a few billionaires who will never gain or lose enough money to change their extravagant lifestyle can look at a computer screen and see bigger numbers next to their bank account numbers. If he discovered the cure for cancer tomorrow, I would still say let Trump rescue his sorry butt. There are thousands of people wrongfully being held in prison for victimless crimes right now. Why give up time and blog space defending them to help a guy who will probably just go right on undermining the last tiny shreds of chance we have at stopping the Mad Max series from being a prophecy?

Bumb: For sure. Assange himself might not come across as particularly likeable to a lot of people and some of the shit the accounts associated with Wikileaks have posted is bizarre. Of course any potential compromise on his part is interesting to know/probe about and undoubtedly a lot of the support he gets from Russian strongmen is due to disempowering some of the US propaganda, not a genuine love of transparency from some of the most corrupt entities around but he should clearly be supported by anyone who cares about keeping those in power honest. I personally come to his support from a wholly different perspective than his right-libertarianism.

Had the Democrats offered a better, more appealing package, this sort of thing would have been a blip. Greater turnout would have buried the small lead the Republicans got due to myriad potential factors, the e-mails being one of many. It shouldn’t even be a factor, unless you’re the sort of centrist Democrat that wholly supports the state apparatus, no matter what, and hence are against whistleblowers in general.

As for “Climategate”, Wikileaks wasn’t even the primary, or at least oldest, conduit of dissemination and I recall Assange at least paying some lip service to the fact that the leaked e-mails were thoroughly misused by all sorts of right-wing hack journalists and going by his usual defense of transparency. In general, I don’t recall him personally being some climate skeptic either but rather the opposite.

Me: Yes, the election was close so there are multiple factors that caused them to lose. That doesn’t change the fact that Assange’s propaganda system is one of the most prominent and undeniable reasons for the failures of the climate conferences, which means many more years of permanent exponential damage to the stability of the planet’s ecosystem.

I wanted Bernie to win. I believe in the Nordic model. I hate what Hillary did centralizing power in the party and I think Bill Clinton is a rapist and a mass murderer of Sudanese. I think Bernie had a better chance at winning, but when I hear people on the Left say they want Oprah to run for president, I am far less confident than Glenn Greenwald and Kyle Kulinski are in believing it’s the issues that drive the election.

Like Glenn Greenwald and Kyle Kulinski, I take a great deal of my political stances from Noam Chomsky. Chomsky is one of the few political commentators who is able to put things in perspective and constantly point to climate change as an existential danger that the vast majority of news, both left and right, ignores. Where I differ on Chomsky, Greenwald and Kulinski is they think that the danger from nuclear war with Russia is on the same level as climate change, so they are actually on the same side as Trump and Putin in wanting to scale back and disarm NATO. I think Putin is only suicidal from a climate change perspective, not a nuclear holocaust perspective, so I think stopping any further hindrances to the climate conferences should be the absolute top priority for the species.

I know that Assange hasn’t put himself out as a climate denier. I don’t think that matters. Like the vast majority of people, he just doesn’t consider the issue to be important. Like Putin, his goal seems to be to destroy the current global alliance system, I think perhaps because he thinks there will be a lot less violence if America lost it’s dominance. It was Bush and McCain’s Republican party that wanted to go to war with Russia and murder Assange outright over his reporting on the Iraq War, and yet both Putin and Assange ended up allying with the leader of that party against centrist Democrats. Reading his secret conversation with Trump Jr. and his subsequent excuses afterwards have convinced me he’s just a complete bullshitter. It’s not just that he’s “unlikeable”. He’s fundamentally at war with the continuance of human civilization. I would much rather have had Hillary in power supporting the climate talks than to let Republicans scrap them for four years for a slightly better chance at changing the party platform.