Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks, attends the European council on October 1, 2024, in Strasbourg, France

From LifeSiteNews

By Frank Wright

Speaking after 12 years of confinement, Julian Assange warned of the erosion of free speech in the West, linking his own prosecution to global censorship, political corruption, and attacks on honest journalism.

On October 1, Julian Assange made his first major speech since his release. In it, he delivered a verdict on how we are governed which is as damning as it is revealing.

“I am not free today because the system worked,” Assange said, “I am free today because after years of incarceration I pled guilty to journalism.”

Julian Assange was convicted under the U.S. Espionage Act and spent 12 years in confinement, first taking refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London in 2012, followed by five years in Britain’s maximum-security prison in Belmarsh.

Had his plea not been accepted he faced a sentence of 175 years in prison. He was speaking in Strasbourg, France, at a hearing convened by the Parliamentary Assembly of the European Council – which recognized Assange as a “political prisoner.”

Saying how “incarceration has taken its toll,” Assange noted how the world he had rejoined had changed – for the worse:

I regret how much ground has been lost during that time period. How expressing the truth has been undermined, attacked, weakened, and diminished.

Assange gave a chilling account of the state of the Western world today, saying he now sees “more impunity, more secrecy, more retaliation for telling the truth, and more self-censorship.”

He believes that his own treatment was a turning point for the suppression of freedom of speech in the West:

It is hard not to draw a line from the U.S. government’s prosecution of me – its crossing the Rubicon by internationally criminalizing journalism – to the chill climate for freedom of expression that exists now.

During his speech, Assange alleged that former CIA director Mike Pompeo devised a plan to kill him, following Wikileaks’ revelation in 2017 of CIA operations in Europe.

Citing the testimony of “more than 30 former and current U.S. intelligence officials,” Assange said that “it is a matter of public record that under Pompeo’s explicit direction the CIA drew up plans to kidnap and to assassinate me” while he was in the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

The revelations published by Wikileaks which prompted the plot included evidence of CIA espionage on European governments and industries. In addition, Wikileaks reports “revealed the CIA’s vast production of malware [spy software] and viruses, its subversion of supply chains, its subversion of antivirus software, cars, smart TVs, and iPhones.”

Assange was originally pursued for having publicized U.S. actions in Guantanamo Bay, and alleged war crimes in Iraq, which he explains intensified following Wikileaks’ CIA revelations.

Cracks in our system

Assange’s case and his extraordinary testimony reveals one of many fault lines in the Western world.

“Today, the free world is no longer free.” said Salvadorean President Nayib Bukele, describing also how the West is becoming “more pessimistic,” adding that, “[t]ragically, we can see more evidence of this decline every day.” Speaking at the United Nations on September 30, he said:

When the Free World became free it was due to freedom of expression, freedom before the law. But once a nation abandons the principles that make it free it’s only a question of time before it completely loses its freedom.

The “Free World” is no longer free.

El “Mundo Libre” ya no es libre. pic.twitter.com/IOrLv33KbW

— Nayib Bukele (@nayibbukele) September 30, 2024

His observations are echoed by statements from across the political divide in the U.S.

The former Democrat Tulsi Gabbard warned on October 5 that the party she left now seeks to undermine the First Amendment. She said on X, “People like Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris do not believe in the First Amendment because they see it as an obstacle to achieving their real goal: ‘total control.’”

Her remarks followed those made by Hillary Clinton in a recent video interview, in which Clinton said “whether it’s Facebook or Twitter/X or Instagram or TikTok … if they don’t moderate and monitor the content, we lose total control.”

Hillary said it: when you allow free speech, “we lose total control.” People like Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris do not believe in the First Amendment because they see it as an obstacle to achieving their real goal: “total control.” https://t.co/euQJgAVxV4

— Tulsi Gabbard 🌺 (@TulsiGabbard) October 5, 2024

Clinton’s remarks about losing “total control” come after Sen. John Kerry spoke at the World Economic Forum on September 25, saying “our First Amendment stands as a major block to the ability to be able to just hammer [disinformation] out of existence.”

Kerry argued that opposition to the polices of the WEF was fueled by “disinformation” when critics in fact simply dislike its policies. Populism generally is described as a threat to democracy in the West, when it is also simply the preference for popular policies, against the unpopular ones of the current ruling elite.

“Disinformation,” and “misinformation” are terms invented and used by the language and ideological police to hide their malicious intent.

It appears that unpopular policies such as those of permanent war, Net Zero, deindustrialization, and denationalization can only be pursued with “total control” of the information seen by the public.

The meaningful political debate is not about left and right. It is about the meaning of what is right, and the outrage at what is obviously wrong. Assange says “it is uncertain what we can do” about the “impunity” of our leadership, which as yet has faced no meaningful consequences for its pursuit of deeply unpopular policies at the expense of widespread corruption and defended by censorship.

From the Daily Caller News Foundation 

By Robert Schmad

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in May 2023 launched a $12 million grant program designed to increase “equity” in disaster responses by making greater investments in communities with high concentrations of racial and sexual minorities, documents show.

FEMA’s 2023 Regional Catastrophic Preparedness Grant Program sought to disburse multi-million dollar grants designed to bolster disaster preparedness “equity” for what it called “underserved communities,” a label later defined in grant documents as “populations sharing a particular characteristic, as well as geographic communities, who have been systematically denied a full opportunity to participate in aspects of economic, social and civic life.” Examples of these groups cited in the FEMA documents include African Americans, Hispanics, Middle Easterners, LGBT people and people living in rural areas, among others.

“LGBTQIA people, and people who have been disadvantaged, already are struggling,” FEMA emergency management specialist Tyler Atkins said in a leaked Zoom recording that surfaced on Sunday. “They already have their own things to deal with. So, you add a disaster on top of that, it’s just compounding on itself.” 

Maggie Jarry, an emergency management specialist at the Department of Health and Human Services, responded to Atkins by stressing that emergency management is moving away from providing “the greatest good to the greatest amount of people” and working towards “disaster equity.”

FEMA Disaster Preparedness Meeting:

"We should focus our efforts on LGBTQIA people… they struggled before the storm"

"FEMA relief is no longer about getting the greatest good for the greatest amount of people…. It's about disaster equity." pic.twitter.com/IqXeKI8OTT

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) October 7, 2024

Black and gay people disproportionately live in areas where the effects of climate change, alongside poor infrastructure and a lack of resources, make natural disasters more dangerous, according to the FEMA documents. The agency used this position to argue that investments in these communities are needed to “effectively address equity in emergency management.”

FEMA instructed entities applying for grant funding under the program to use the Biden-Harris administration’s Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool (CEJST) to identify disadvantaged communities where they would spend their federal grant dollars.

CEJST provides users with a map of every county the federal government considers “underserved” for the purposes of federal grantmaking. Many of the counties hit hardest by Hurricane Helene in western North Carolina and northern Georgia were made ineligible for funding through this program as a result of CEJST’s designations.

Hurricane Helene had left 227 people dead as of Saturday and damages caused by the storm could reach as high as $35 billion, according to estimates from the reinsurance company Gallagher Re. North Carolinians have received $27 million in individual assistance approved by FEMA, The Associated Press reported.

Entities that requested FEMA grant funding had their applications evaluated based on whether or not they selected communities labeled as “underserved” by CEJST as well as the degree to which they centered equity in their proposal.

“To advance considerations of equity in awarding RCPGP grant funding, FEMA will add additional points to the scores of projects that will benefit disadvantaged communities,” the grant document reads.

“We are expecting another hurricane hitting,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said on Wednesday “FEMA does not have the funds to make it through the season.”

FEMA’s shortfall in funding comes after the agency spent nearly $1 billion on migrant assistance programs in the 2023 and 2024 fiscal years.

Hurricane Milton is a Category 5 storm on track to hit the Florida Gulf Coast on Wednesday, CNN reported. Florida is still recovering from Helene.

FEMA did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.