Pleading Guilty To Committing Journalism

Julian Assange has made his first public appearance, since being released from Belmarsh prison in London, pleading guilty to receiving and publishing U.S. government "secrets".

Julian Assange makes first public statements since being released from “high-max” security prison in London for publishing government secrets. The Australian WikiLeaks founder addressed the Council of Europe in Strasbourg.

Ever since the advent of the modern capitalist state, bourgeois regimes have sought to possess a monopoly over publicly knowable information, particularly the sort of evidence that would suggest or prove wrongdoing or corruption. The class-struggle tug of war between the rulers and the ruled consists of working people pushing back against attacks on democratic rights, but it cannot be completely resolved unless and until the ruled become the new rulers.

The forms such censorship have taken are various, although more contemporary justifications deal with phrases like “official secrets” (in the case of the United Kingdom), or the more contemporary “misinformation” and “disinformation” in the case of the European Union, the United States and virtually every capitalist co…