NOTE: On many YouTube links, Google has been redirecting people to some nonsense page about browsers. Copying a link exactly as it appears here, and pasting it to your address bar, then hitting ENTER (NOT enter and paste!), increases the odds of getting to the right place. Also, check what you pasted and if anything has been added, such as http, carefully delete that part.
THE UNITED STATES ENJOYS KILLING MOCKINGBIRDS
(…but likes to torture them first)
They do it all the time, but this short piece is about the World’s Most Amazing “Mockingbird”, Julian Assange. Having recently watched To Kill a Mockingbird for a second time in many years, it hit me hard that it’s long past time to tie this famous 1960 movie to the United States’ fear of truth, along with its eagerness to kill those who speak it.
Cliff Notes, available online, gives an intro to the movie and related items…
“To Kill a Mockingbird is primarily a novel about growing up under extraordinary circumstances in the 1930s in the Southern United States. The story covers a span of three years, during which the main characters undergo significant changes. Scout Finch lives with her brother Jem and their father Atticus in the fictitious town of Maycomb, Alabama.”
Atticus is a lawyer raising his children on his own, with help from a daytime maid. He is played by Gregory Peck, in an award winning performance. At one point Atticus tells Scout and Jem that it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird. Scout is surprised and wants to know why. Atticus replies, “Mockingbirds only do one thing, and that is to make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens or nest in corncribs. Mockingbirds are innocent creatures who do not hurt anyone and only make the world a better place.”
Mockingbirds are symbolic. They are known for their beautiful songs, with varied repetitions and artful imitations of other birds. Like so many species, these birds are in rapid decline, yet also considered one of the most intelligent species of bird. I fear the same is all too true for bona fide journalists, with Julian Assange heading the list by a wide margin.
Ironically, and by design, the CIA created “Operation Mockingbird” to infiltrate all major media stations and make sure they were “all on the same page, singing the same song.” They succeeded, to say the least, and continue to work relentlessly to infiltrate or censor any media that most humans ever see. Case in point… deadspin.com/how-americas-
With a reminder from Scout, characters like Boo Radley and Tom Robinson come to be seen in the movie as mockingbirds, targeted now for exposing truth no one wants to hear. Tom, a kind and gentle soul, is a hard worker, black, and wrongly accused of raping a white woman. Boo Radley, though out of sight through most of the movie, regularly gives gifts to the children, secretly, in the hollow of an old tree. He also helps them in important ways, as they finally come to realize.
Julian and his WikiLeaks team have exposed rich and powerful people and governments, mass murders, plotting and executing political coups, stealing resources, starting wars for corporations, and a list too long to write about here (see The CIA’s Greatest Hits, by Mark Zepezauer).
Much of Julian’s work in exposing truth shocked the world. The mainstream media freely used it to buttress their income, only to abandon him in the end. But it was his “Collateral Murder” video in particular that blew many minds, including my own.
The video shows a Reuters journalist, Namir Noor-Eldeen and his driver, Saeed Chmagh, whom the Apache operators enthusiastically shoot and murder in a public square in Iraq. What I can only describe as pathological dialogue, between the airborne operators and their supervisor, goes direct to the heart of darkness of the U.S. Empire. Collateral Murder Video, Iraq, 2007 https://youtube.com/watch?v=HfvFpT-iypw ~17 min. 46 sec. Even now, the last few seconds of the van being blasted away has been cut off, along with two children and several innocent adults. One more related video from Julian’s work, with a most human side to it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kelmEZe8whI ~ 17 minutes
As the world now knows, we were lied to about “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq, and that the real mission of the U.S. was the plunder of the rich oil fields, with untold billions now being made by Americans and others, in a still unfolding tragedy. Do some homework on Blackrock Investing and take a serious look into those behind “9/11,” if you haven’t already. And watch this short video of reporter Chris Hedges, telling why he quit his job at the New York Times was going to fire him for telling truth about the Iraq War: https://youtube.com/watch?v=j0ETKNHLvEs
I can think of no more fitting summary of the U.S. military-industrial-
If you make it through even half of the collateral murder video, and even if you don’t, I recommend watching or re-watching To Kill a Mockingbird. Black and white, technology of the day, excellent acting and plot, and a credible slice of the 1930s, with societal problems that are on steroids today.
And the all-too-perfect metaphor for what the U.S. and others are doing to Julian Assange for telling truth, and thus to chill and eliminate serious reporting from other journalists, making our First Amendment utterly null and void (the one Amendment that Thomas Jefferson and others have deemed more important than the Constitution itself), and now most likely sentencing Julian to death with 175 years in what is hailed as the worst of American prisons.
Here is a one-hour video, easily skimmed, for a look into the history and importance of this case. youtube.com/watch?v=
My personal conclusion, along with recent words from the President of Mexico who offered asylum to Assange, is that if we don’t free Julian, it will be time to send the Statue of Liberty back to France, rather than make a further mockery of what the United States claims to stand for… zerohedge.com/markets/mexican-
Daniel Geery
P.S. Recommended: Eliminate our unhinged so-called “National Security State.”
truthcomestolight.com/the-
Please share this site freely it is not copyrighted.