Reading Parshas Arayos (Homosexuality, Sex Change) With Current Events

Letter to A Friend: The Parasha Is Even More Relevant Today

This entry was posted on April 29, 2019, in original.

(Watch and listen here.)

Dear *****,

As you are aware, this most recent scandal was foreseen by many of us. I am mostly in agreement with the author of this article, although I would also like to make it clear that I have nothing necessarily against Open Orthodoxy. As you know, as the father of many daughters, I am slightly sympathetic to those women who may want an expanded role in communal involvement, and that I believe that that there are halachic grounds for doing so, perhaps even for allowing them into leadership roles, as I have written about earlier. It so happens that where I tend to live there is little demand for such things among the women, and my wife is exceptionally traditional, so I have no reason to personally get involved in such matters. But I do believe that the tolerance of homosexuality among certain circles is surprisingly foolish. As the sages say, “even the Sadducees concede the matter,” that sometimes there are Torah principles that are so clear, even those who deny the authority of the Oral Torah and the sages agree that something is as it is. The ordination of women or the impossibility thereof is not explicit in scripture or even the Talmud or the codes, so at least between us, it is clear that if a scholar were to claim that women could serve as Rabbis, we would not write him off. However, the practice-of-homosexuality issue is entirely different. Even today’s Karaites know that there is no room for it within Judaism. Similarly, those Jews who are knowledgable enough of Judaism and disrespectful enough to poke fun at it realize the obvious incompatibility. This is where, I believe, their downfall has started and where it will ultimately end, and, believe it or not, all of this was alluded to in the coming parashiyot the Jewish world is currently reading.

Secondly, why, among all the other Torah prohibitions, are the forbidden relations connected to the two cultures that had the most profound influences on our people at that time? Keeping kosher, for example, and the laws of ritual purity are distinctly Jewish and practical, yet the Torah does not stress that we should keep those laws in contrast to the practices of our Egyptian former overlords and the Canaanites. It seems that the forbidden relations and the laws against idolatry and its accouterments are the only ones that we were specifically and repeatedly bidden to not pick up from our gentile neighbors. Why? Because these are the sinful facets of their cultures that, unfortunately again, are the easiest to adopt from them. We both know that it is not a  coincidence that the phenomenon of Jewish “Orthodox leadership” accepting the infiltration of homosexuality is in a time and place which accepts the entirety of the LGBT political agenda. As I wrote about last month, religion and politics should not mix, and we are aware of those rabbis who miraculously seem to agree entirely with the conservative political platform, but on the left it has gotten out of control. The Torah was very clear here: the forbidden relations are part and parcel of their cultures, and if you are not vigilant, it will also become part of yours. And notice that the Torah does stress the capital punishments for the forbidden relations as much as it emphasizes the historical and societal consequences for us as a people. (See also Nahmanides’s entire commentary to this chapter; he concludes with a reason as to why the forbidden relations are capital crimes, whereas kashruth and ritual purity are not.) Indeed, many modern researchers have pointed out that a stage of sexual permissibility, especially of homosexuality, is a harbinger of societal disintegration and collapse, and it is already happening in the West.

Thirdly, the list of forbidden relations occurs in both Aharei Moth and Q’doshim, making the latter seemingly redundant. Why the redundancy?

The first list is prefaced with the injunction to not be like the Canaanites and Egyptians. The second is prefaced with the command for us to be uniquely holy Jews.

And then there was this:

In an exceptional move, 56 Orthodox rabbis published a letter of support for Osher Band, a 15-year-old transgender girl from Ashkelon who hasn’t gone to school for more than six months because of violence and threats to her life by other students.

Like everything that emerges from the festering abscess that is Haaretz, take the entire article and the original letter with a cup of salt, if you can stomach these celebrations of carnal sin.
Note how these fellows love to constantly be identified as “Orthodox,” although you and I never have a need to broadcast that we are Orthodox, because they are always up to something decidedly not Orthodox. Methinks the lady doth protest too much. The sages said that members of the Sanhedrin should be sharp enough to bring 150 arguments for the purity of the sheretz, but they certainly did not believe that any potential sage could, Heaven forbid, actually rule as a matter of practical halacha that indeed a rat is pure. But look what they have done.
Note how they write to this poor young man using the Hebrew feminine case. Note how they were more than happy to make what should have been a private letter public in order to virtue-signal. Note how their entire position with regard to this issue is entirely in line with modern, Western, (im)moral sensibilities. This is not a coincidence.
What should be done with such a young man? Well, let’s consider the high schools of the Metro New York area of twenty years ago with which we are familiar. Would any of the boys’ high schools, like YUHSB and TABC, have been able to handle a student prancing around dressed like an (immodest) adolescent women? Would any of the girls’ schools, like Central or SKA, have been able to do so either? Or what about the mixed schools, like Frisch or Ramaz? I find it less than surprising he was harassed by his peers wherever he was in school. Kids can be cruel, and there is no justification for their behavior, and we need to educate them to be kinder, but let’s face it: peer pressure is a natural force that is there to keep the naturally developing social structure in order. Kids detect the abnormal, and when imposed on them in order to force a change within their own naturally comfortable system, they push back. And, just so that we are clear, there is no leniency that exists within the halacha for a young man to dress as a woman, no matter how strongly he feels that he is one. Osher Rand needs sympathy and help. He does not need encouragement, especially from self-proclaimed religious authorities. Both will ultimately be harmful to him and his peers, and no school should have to destroy itself and its students in order to indulge his delusions.
But, and this is written in an attempt to try to give them the benefit of the doubt, I believe that they were compelled to write this letter because they suffer from the same malady that torments this poor young man: The obsessive belief, instigated by their drowning in a perverse and pervasive culture, that they are what they are not, and the intolerable demand that others fully accept their delusion despite all the evidence to the contrary and despite the severe harm it inflicts on the members of society.

I pray that this serves as a wake up call for our Jewish brethren in America.

From Avraham Ben Yehudahere.

Hans-Hermann Hoppe: END Government Universities Now!

On the American Ideology and its Proponents and Beneficiaries

Translated from German by Ohad Osterreicher [1]

“We paint the world to ourselves as we like – until everything breaks down and no longer holds.”

We live in the age of the American Empire. It can be that this empire will someday crumble. In the foreseeable future, however, it is here to stay, not on account of its military strength but first and foremost because of its ideological power. For the American empire has achieved something truly remarkable: the internalization of its core belief system as an intellectual taboo into the minds of most people.

Granted, all states rest upon aggressive violence, and the USA is no exception. The United States as well do not hesitate to annihilate everyone who opposes their legislative despotism. Though the USA had thus far employed little actual violence to have its orders submissively followed because the overwhelming majority of the population and especially of the opinion-forming intellectuals have accepted the system of values and convictions which makes up the American empire.

According to the official, USA approved belief system, we are all equally intelligent and reasonable people, who are confronted with the same “harsh reality” and are bound to the same facts and truths. Of course, it is true, that even in the age of the American empire, in the USA, people do not live in the best of all worlds. There are many more problems to be solved. Though with the American system of a democratic state, humanity has found the perfect institutional framework which makes the next step in the direction of a perfect world possible; and if only would the American system of democracy takeover worldwide, would the way to perfection be clear, smooth and free.

The single legitimate form of government is democracy. All other forms of government are worse, and any government is better than none. Democratic states like the USA are of the people, by the people and for the people. In democracies no one rules over the other; instead, the people rule over themselves and are thus free. Taxes in democratic states are therefore contributions and payments for governmentally provided services; accordingly, tax avoiders are thieves, who take without paying. To provide shelter for fleeing thieves is thus an act of aggression against the people, from whom they are trying to escape.

Though there are still other forms of governments around the world. There are monarchies, dictatorships, theocracies, and there are feudal landowners, tribes, and warlords. And for this reason, democratic states often must necessarily deal with non-democratic states. Eventually, all states must be converted to the American ideal, because only democracy allows for a peaceful and continual change for the better.

Democratic states like the USA and its European allies are inherently peaceful and do not wage war against each other. If they must fight any wars all at, then these are preventive wars of defense and liberation against aggressive and undemocratic states, that is, just wars. All countries and territories that are presently in war with or occupied by American troops or its European allies – Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Libyan, Syrian, Sudan, Somalia and Yemen – were therefore guilty of aggression and their war waging and occupation on behalf of the democratic West were an act of self-defense and liberation. However, there is still much to be done. Especially Russia and China still pose a huge threat and must be liberated, in order to make the world finally safe.

Private property, markets, and profits are useful institutions, but a democratic state must ensure that with the appropriate legislation, private property and profits are acquired and used in a socially responsible manner and that markets function efficiently. Moreover, markets and profit-seeking entrepreneurs cannot produce public goods and are thus incapable of satisfying any social needs. And they cannot take care of the truly needy. Only the state can take care of social needs and the less fortunate. The state alone can, through the finance of public goods and aid to the poor, increase the public welfare, and diminish poverty and the number of the needy, if completely not eliminate.

Especially the state has to put the private vice of greed of the pursuit of profit under control. Greed and the pursuit of profit were the leading causes of the most recent large financial crisis. Reckless financiers generated an irrational exuberance among the public, which ultimately had to crash into reality. The market was wrecked, and only the state stood ready to save the day. Only the state, through appropriate regulation and supervision of the banking industry and financial markets, can prevent such a thing from happening again. Banks and companies went bankrupt, yet the state and its central banks held ground and protected the money and jobs of the workers.

Advised by the leading and best-paid economists in the world, states and especially the USA have discovered the causes of economic crises and realized that in order to get out of an economic mess, the people must simultaneously consume more as well as invest more. Every cent under the mattress is a cent withheld from consumption and investment, which in turn impairs future consumption and investment expenditure. In a recession, spending must first of all and under all circumstances be increased; and when the people do not spend enough of their own money, the state has to do it instead. Prudently, states have this option, for their central banks can produce any necessary liquidity. If billions of Dollars or Euros are not enough, then trillions will do; and if trillions do not meet the goal, then surely quadrillions will. Only massive state expenditure can prevent an otherwise unavoidable economic meltdown. In particular, unemployment is the result of low consumption: people who do not have enough money to buy consumer goods; this problem must be remedied by providing them with higher wages or higher unemployment benefits.

When the last financial crisis is finally overcome, the democratic state can and must devote itself once more to the really urgent remaining problems of humanity: the battle against inequality, the elimination of all unjust discrimination, and the control of the global environment and the global climate in particular.

In principle, all people are equal. Differences are only apparent, shallow and meaningless: some people are white, some brown, some black, some are big, others are small; some are fat and others thin; some are male, and some are female; some speak English and others Polish or Chinese as mother tongue. These are accidental human traits. It is a coincidence that some people possess these and some do not. But accidental traits like these have no influence whatsoever on and do not correlate with mental properties like motivation, time preference or intellectual abilities, and they do not contribute to the explanation of economic and social success, especially of income and wealth. Mental and psychic properties have no physical, biological or ethical basis and are limitlessly malleable. In this regard is everyone, except for a few pathological individual cases, equal to the other, and every nation has made in the course of history a contribution to civilization of equal value or would have done so, if only it would have gotten the same chance. Seemingly obvious differences are solely the result of different external circumstances and education. All differences in income and achievements between Whites, Asians, and Blacks, women and men, Latins, Anglos-Saxons and Thais as well as Christians, Hindus, Protestants, and Moslems would disappear, if only equality of opportunity would be established. If instead it will be discovered, that all these different accidental groups are unequally represented in and distributed across different levels of income, wealth, or professional status, some are richer and more successful than others, then this demonstrates unjust discrimination; and such discrimination must be counterbalanced through appropriate, targeted affirmative action on behalf of the state, in which the discriminators have to compensate the unjustly discriminated.

And the studies of the leading and best paid social scientists have clearly shown, who, above all, are the discriminators. The people in question are first and foremost white heterosexual males and the institution of the traditional, patriarchal organized family. It is, therefore, most notably this group of people and this institution which must compensate all other groups and apologize to all other forms of social organization.

But this would not do. The reparations to all disadvantaged, to all victims of inequality and discrimination, require likewise strong governmental support of multiculturalism. The highly developed and white male dominated countries of the Western world have obtained their wealth at the expense of the inhabitants of all other regions of the world and are caught in a disastrous and prejudiced particularism and nationalism. This situation lends itself to be overcome through the promotion and systematic incentivization of immigration of people from different, foreign countries and cultural environments, in order to ensure that the foreign immigrants could finally unleash their full human potential and simultaneously replace the Western parochialism with an authentic cultural diversity.

And with the victory over the disastrous particularism and nationalism through a systematic policy of multiculturalism is one finally able to turn to the crucial stride toward a solution to the undoubtedly biggest global, borderless and world-encompassing problem of climate change. Divergent particularistic and nationalistic interests have thus far lead to the fact that the production and the consumption of non-renewable energy sources were left mostly unregulated and worldwide uncoordinated. And that is why, as the leading and best-paid climate researchers have undoubtedly proven, is the whole globe threatened by unimaginable catastrophes: floods, strong and sudden rising sea levels and the emergence of fatal ecological disequilibria and instabilities. Only through a worldwide, concentrated action by all states, and ultimately the establishment of a supranational world government under the leadership of the USA and an enforced systematic regulation of any production and consumption activities, can this life-threatening danger be avoided. “The common good comes before the individual good” – this is above all, what the problem of climate change shows, and it is on the states and especially on the USA to permanently implement this principle.

Now, I tell you no secret when I admit that I hold this for a massive pile of rubbish, for complete nonsense and a highly dangerous one at that – but I also do not belong to the leading and best-paid economics and social scientists, and of climate research, I understand nothing at all! Except that I know, for example, that a global climate warming is no global problem, but one that affects people in different places of the globe entirely differently, a curse for one is a boon for the other, and insofar downright forbids a global solution.

Question: who are we to thank for this nonsense, whom does it benefit, and how is it that we are fed daily with it by the official media?

Here I want to hint at the answer only very briefly. It has two parts. One has to do with the institution of a state, and especially of a democratic state, with its occupants and representatives. And the other has to do with the intellectuals.

The state is a monopoly of legislation and law enforcement. In all conflicts, including those which it or its representatives are involved in, the state or people appointed by the state decide who is right or wrong. The predictable result is: the state is always right, in everything that does. Whether robbed, plundered, killed, lied to and threatened in the name of the state – or summarized in single sentence: when force is exerted on other people and violence is used against other persons – everything can and everything will be painted by it and its agents as just and assigned with another, deceptive and attractive name. This makes the institution of the state naturally attractive for all people who would like to rob, plunder, kill, lie, defraud other people, that is, use violence against others. Above all, it is these kinds of people who therefore try to infiltrate and take over the institution of the state. And if, as under democratic conditions, the entrance in and the occupation of the state stands free and open for everyone, that is, when it becomes a downright competition for votes between power thirsty crooks, then it is to expect, that the persons who will get to the top of the state are those who possess the greatest talent of rhetorically covering up their own predatory, treacherous and murderous intentions and selling these as good deeds to the voting masses. In short: The best demagogues, the best pied pipers, and corrupters get to the top.

Though when one looks at these democratically elected politicians and members of parliament, whom day by day impose their obvious megalomaniac will though law or decree on millions of people– can one only marvel. Because these people are as a rule not some kind of formidable, impressive alpha males or females, but an epitome of mediocracy or merely a collection of losers, idiots and failures, who have never in their entire life produced a product or rendered a service which someone would have voluntarily bought with his own money.

And faced with these tragic figures, who grandiosely claim to be “our” highest representatives, the question then arises, whether such light-calibrated people are even in the position of conceiving by themselves the entire nonsense which they tell us every day, and furthermore, whether they have what it takes to come up with the diverse justifications and rationalizations for this nonsense which they everywhere feed us.

There one surely has a considerable doubt! And that leads me directly to the second part of my answer to the question of the originators and beneficiaries of the above described “politically correct” view of the world and the nature of things: the intellectuals, or put more precisely, those intellectuals who occupy themselves with social, economic and philosophical question and problems, and their connection to the state and its leaders.

As in the case of the politicians, so is there in the case of the intellectuals hardly a person who through her intellectual work, her writings and speeches, for these are what she produces, that could secure a comfortable livelihood and income. The market demand for such products is low and is furthermore subject to large deviations. Only a small number of intellectuals would succeed in making a profession out of their writings and speeches. The vast majority of actual or alleged intellectuals would be advised to conduct their scientific interests as a mere inner vocation and to earn their livelihood elsewhere, by the practice of a normal civilian profession. But this naturally contradicts the feeling of self-esteem of an intellectual, and all those who view themselves as such. The intellectuals are convinced of the importance and value of their work like no other group and are accordingly resentful when the alleged appropriate high social recognition fails to materialize.

What is then left for them instead? They are usually not suitable for politics, for they are typically too honest and wonkish, too shy, awkward, introverted and particularly antisocial. And for this reason, they mostly lack the desire for power, which is precisely what makes a politician.

But the intellectuals are naturally smart enough to know that even if they are not made to be politicians, they nevertheless need the politicians to get the money required for a comfortable living. And they obviously also know what they must offer as a service in return so to get the biggest possible cut of their pillage: namely well-sounding justifications for continually expanding the powers of the state, and “bold” visions and programs with noble, well-intentioned goals, for example, that of “equality of all people” which cannot ever be achieved, no one can ever achieve, but precisely because of this one never has to give up on, but can repetitively revive and ceaselessly renew.

And so it comes to an unholy alliance: that of the early, monarchical times between church and crown, and that of today, in the American age, between democratic politicians and intellectuals. The result? Never before were there so many politicians and above all so many alleged intellectuals as well who live and indulge in luxuries at the expanse of an ever-decreasing number of productive persons. And never before, in order to stay among the intellectuals, have the numerous and large universities, as the publicly funded and supported citadels of intellectual power and influence and the breeding ground of future politicians and intellectuals, produced so much horrific intellectual nonsense and contributed to the misleading of the public as in our times.

In light of this fact, what can one do? I am afraid that not much – except to repetitively and openly call out the whole hoax. This means that for one thing, to recognize and describe the politicians for what they really are: a band of liars, crooks, robbers, murderers, and associates to murder; and treat them accordingly with contempt, scorn, and ridicule. But also their intellectual masterminds and assistants, without whom the politicians could never carry out their evil work, must be targeted, and as the first step toward a return to normalcy and sound human understanding, to common sense, it is imperative to push for the financial draining of the universities. Not only should all centers for Blacks, Latins, women, gender, and Queer-studies, and everything else that there is of this then unheard of exotica, be closed, but also the social science departments altogether, starting with political science and history, through sociology and up to economics and social and economic statistics (whose statistics also serve the goals of uncovering ever new “inequalities” and to call for redistribution or reeducation!) And likewise should the profession of the academic literary studies and criticism and, as much as it hurt me to say, the profession of the academic philosophers as well be thinned out. And the people who believe, that they know how one controls the climate, one should issue them a certificate of illness and send them for treatment in a psychiatric clinic.

This does not mean that one should have anything in principle against the work of political scientists, sociologists, economists, statisticians, literary critics, philosophers or climate scientists, or wish that they should cease to exist. Without a doubt, there will be people who genuinely occupy themselves with questions and problems of all disciplines. And that is good and necessary. But surely would the number of such scientists be much smaller. But quantity is not the same as quality, and the reduction in the number of tax-funded social scientists of all kinds is by no means tantamount to an intellectual descent. Completely the opposite. Freed from the intellectual pollution which is currently produced by the universities, appear once more the possibility of a rise of a class of new and better intellectuals, characterized by firm stance and authentic understanding of reality.

Yet all of this lies, if it is even possible to arrive at, in the far future. But thank god one need not wait for it any longer. For in the niches of the present madhouse, totally apart from today’s universities and schools and the ongoing charade, there is, in any case in Vienna, around Vienna, and all around Vienna in the German-speaking region, still – or even better: once more – a place in which though one cannot earn any professional credentials or governmental certificates, but in which man can acquire real education and learn and practice critical thought and argumentation: Rahim’s Scholarium.

[1] Ohad Osterreicher is studying undergraduate economics at the University of Bayreuth, Germany.

Reprinted with the author’s permission.

From Lewrockwell.com, here.

Why the Empire Kidnapped Julian Assange

Julian Assange Is Guilty Only of Revealing the Evil Soul of US Imperialism

Julian Assange was bundled away by British police after Lenin Moreno, the president of Ecuador, gave the green light for the expulsion of the Wikileaks publisher from the Ecuadorian embassy in London. Assange’s arrest represents an abuse of power, highlighting not only how true journalism has now been banished in the West, but also how politicians, journalists, news agencies and think-tanks collude with each other to silence people like Julian Assange and his Wikileaks foundation who are a nuisance to US imperialism.

Assange is “guilty” of two “cardinal sins”: revealing US war crimes committed in Iraq and committing the unpardonable sin of publishing the emails of Clinton, Podesta and the Democratic National Committee, thereby revealing such chicanery in US domestic politics as the fraud committed against Bernie Sanders in the 2016 Democratic primaries.

These revelations among the many (Vault 7, Torture, Diplomatic cablegrams), by Assange’s Wikileaks, these transgressions in the eyes of the US ruling elite, struck at the very foundations on which the edifice of “American exceptionalism” is built, namely, the democracy that is meant to be a light unto the world, and the “just wars” that flow from a missionary zeal to make the world safe for democracy. The media and politicians accordingly crow about the “beautiful missiles” and other high-tech weaponry that will be employed in the ensuing humanitarian interventions, while omitting to mention that the military-industrial complex that benefits so much from endless wars may be the very donors who fund the warmongering politicians into office, and that the warmongering editorial line of newspapers may be influenced by share portfolios of the editors themselves.

Releasing footage of US military personal laughing as they slaughter dozens of clearly unarmed Iraqis civilians from the distant safety of an Apache helicopter is one of the strongest ways of showing how false, artificial and propagandistic the concept of “humanitarian war” and “responsibility to protect” (R2P) is.

In today’s communication age, that footage, those images, that laughter, are a very powerful antidote against the lies we are daily fed by our media corporations.

The mainstream media will never tell us that the reason why Washington has been at war for half of the last two centuries is because of US imperialism. They will never tell us that the ceaseless interventions are driven by an insatiable greed for resources, or often enough by the simple desire to plunge a country into chaos if its recalcitrant leaders refuse to genuflect appropriately and show due respect.

That footage straightforwardly debunked all the thousands of accumulated hours of media propaganda that had been built up to convince us that Washington beneficently bombs countries in order to bring democracy and free the oppressed.

In the same way, by pulling back the curtain to show how the Democratic primaries were a farce, Wikileaks revealed how the concept of democracy in the United States is worn out and in fact now non-existent. The political parties are fed and controlled by donor money, and the accompanying media coverage can be bought, allowing for tens of millions of Americans to be fed on a steady diet of false news, lies and promises that will never be kept.

It becomes clear, reading the revelations published over the years by Wikileaks, that terms such as democracy and R2P are nothing more than excuses and justifications for the US to bomb whomever it wishes. The moneyed interests ensure the election into office of those who can be relied upon to look after the interests of the 1% at the expense of the 99%, all the while giving moral lectures to the rest of the world while ignoring the inherent double standards.

The mainstream media are tasked by the powers that be with marketing war in order to advance US foreign-policy objectives. Without the moral justification for war, it becomes more difficult to convince Americans and Europeans to send their sons to die thousands of miles away from home. It is straightforward Brainwashing 101: repeat a lie long enough, and people will start to believe it.

The only way the US sees to fix the problem is to silence the source and ignoring the consequences, even when we are talking about a journalist of international fame who has sought asylum in an embassy and has been confined there for seven years.

This Australian has succeeded in simultaneously becoming the number one enemy of the military-industrial complex, the Democrats, and therefore for all American Russophobes. He did his job so well that he managed to become a target of practically all of the Washington establishment, which is determined to lock away the likes of Assange and Snowden (if only they could) and throw away the key.

His destiny seems marked, with a probable extradition to the US, where a secret trial based on false accusations awaits him, without him even being able to examine the evidence with a lawyer. They would have sent him to Guantanamo at an earlier time, but the effect is the same. Of course, this is not bad news for everyone, with many rejoicing at the news of his arrest. All the #MeToo crowd and groups related to human rights applaud Lenin Morero’s decision to kick Assange out of the embassy and his arrest by the British police. Those who would be expected to make their voices heard reveal themselves to be agents of imperialism by their shameful silence.

Print and broadcast media outside the US play their role in contributing to a wave of disinformation, omissions and lies in the interests of US propaganda. They may be divided over US presidents and their preference for Democrats or Republicans, but they are firmly united in the belief that Washington (and Tel Aviv) is always in the right.

In the meantime, we see more and more wars caused by the US, whether directly or indirectly and regardless of who sits in the White House. True, authentic journalism disappears under the waves of censorship. In the West, lies and fake news runs rampant, and the three-year Mueller hoax will be remembered in history as a prime example of how the elite can program the minds of tens of millions of citizens by simply repeating again and again a complete and utter falsehood without any supporting evidence.

Assange’s arrest and those of Meng Wanzhou, chief financial officer of Chinese technology company Huawei, and Marzieh Hashemi, anchorwoman for Iran’s English- language Press TV, leads us to pause for a moment to reflect on the changes taking place and on how the US empire is reacting aggressively to the ongoing transformation from a unipolar to a multipolar world. The loss of prestige, respect, dignity, loyalty and honesty are all consequences that the US now faces, partly as a result of the excellent journalistic work of Wikileaks over the last 15 years.

Arresting a journalist, who is an Australian citizen, in an embassy, then extraditing him to a third country, to be tried in secret, without seeing the evidence (because classified top secret), where he is accused of espionage, is is a new low even for Washington, which should worry anyone who still cares about freedom of information.

The flaccid response of Assange’s journalistic colleagues can best be explained by the words of the late Udo Ulfkotte, a German journalist who revealed that he had published fake material fed to him by the CIA, claiming that this was common amongst mainstream journalists:

“Non-official cover occurs when a journalist is essentially working for the CIA, but it’s not in an official capacity. This allows you to create a partnership between your partner and your partner. The CIA will find young journalists and mentor them. Suddenly doors will open up, rewards will be given, and you know it, you owe your entire career to them. That’s essentially how it works. I was publishing articles under my own name written by agents of the CIA and other intelligence services, especially the German secret service. I was taught to lie, to betray and not to tell the truth to the public.”

Or we could mention the great Robert Parry:

“This perversion of principles – twisting information to fit a desired conclusion — became the modus vivendi of American politics and journalism. And those of us who insisted on defending journalistic principles of skepticism and even-handedness were more shunned by our colleagues, to hostility that first emerged on the right and by neoconservatives but eventually sucked into the progressive world as well… The demonization of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russia is just the most dangerous feature of this propaganda process — and this is where the neocons and the liberal interventionists most significantly are together. The US media approach to Russia is now virtually 100 percent propaganda.”

Basically, Assange’s major fault lies in having revealed the true face of US imperialism through images, news, emails, cablegrams and videos, an imperialism that has for decades brought wars, death and destruction around the world for its own political and economic gain, using illegitimate justifications that are backed up by self-proclaimed experts and amplified and repeated endlessly by the mainstream media.

Fact: Jewish Leaders Are Imperfect. So What?!

Who Deserves to be Our Hero?