This powerful track from British rapper and activist Lowkey a.k.a Kareem Dennis. featuring Mai Khalil and The Grime Violinist called Free Assange has been released as part of States of Violence, a collaboration between a/political https://a-political.org/ WikiLeaks https://wikileaks.org/ and the Wau Holland Foundation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wau_Holland_Foundation on the 20th anniversary since George Bush and Tony Blair launched their criminal invasion of Iraq, leading to the death of more than a million people, that also saw the Iraq state smashed into smithereens.
It sent shockwaves reverberating around the wider region, greatly strengthening the terrorism it professed to be combatting. A month before the war on February 15rg. eight million people on five continents, me included, 1.5 million of them in London took to the streets and marched against the coming invasion. We were ignored and sadly the masters of war around the world today remain as arrogant and belligerent as they were two decades ago.
Wikileaks the whistleblowing news site that was founded in 2006 alongside courageous journalist Julian Assange were at the forefront of the many information leaks that helped expose the morally, despicable and illegal activities committed by governments and corporations at the time of the Iraq war. and now in 2023 WikiLeaks is partnering with the London-based
arts organisation a/political and the freedom of information
organisation Wau Holland Foundation to present an exhibition this month
which will include a physical copy of some of the top secret US
diplomatic cables it leaked in 2010.
The
leak, widely known as “cablegate”, began on 28 November 2010 when
Wikileaks began releasing 250,000 diplomatic cables gathered from US
embassies around the world, including logs from the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan which exposed human rights abuses. Wikileaks’ founder Julian
Assange was shortly after arrested on espionage charges in London and
remains in Belmarsh Prison facing extradition to the US where he could
receive 175 years in prison under the Espionage Act.
Titled States of Violence,
the aim of the London show (24 March-8 April) is to “unite the people
who support both Wikileaks and Julian Assange”, according to Joseph
Farrell, a Wikileaks ambassador, and Chloe Schlosberg, an art consultant
at the Wau Holland Foundation.
Describing
Wikileaks as “a persecuted organisation”, Farrell and Schlosberg say:
“Julian Assange is sitting in a maximum security prison for publishing
the truth about war and government corruption. As a result we understand
more than most what it means to live and work under insidious and
secretive states of violence."
They
add: “We have had great success with rallies and demonstrations in
support of Julian and here we are creating the chance that allows people
to reflect and consider the gravitas of what both Julian and the
organisation have been through in the last 16 years.”
States of Violence brings together artists, agitators and icons such as Ai Weiwei, Dread Scott and The Vivienne Foundation to unveil and oppose techniques of government oppression, from war and torture to police brutality and surveillance. The world’s most outspoken individuals turn the spotlight on global power structures, releasing material which lays bare the darkest truths of our contemporary reality. This is presented alongside “SECRET+NOFORN” (2022), a body of work by the Institute for Dissent & Datalove, which comprises the highest classification of cables, SECRET and NOFORN (meaning no foreign nationals), from the 2010 WikiLeaks Cablegate publication of U.S. diplomatic cables. It is the largest-ever physical publication of top secret government cables, never before available in the UK in hardcopy.
The video above https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hytO-oSzdD8 features a clip from 'Collateral Murder' released by WikiLeaks on the 5th of April 2010. It shows a classified US military video depicting the indiscriminate slaying of over a dozen people in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad -- including two Reuters news staff and his rescuers. Two young children involved in the rescue were also seriously wounded.
Next month marks 4 years since Julian Assange, a man who committed his life to transparency was buried in Belmarsh supermax prison for lifting the lid on numerous war crimes and human rights abuses, while as Lowkey has pointed out ' war criminals like Bush and Blair are free, delicately humanised, solemnly listened to, and even revered, while Julian who published information about their crimes, is cursed, spied on, imprisoned, and ignored.'
And let us not forget that all these years later too many of the pundits who cheered on the carnage two decades ago continue to stink out the opinion pieces of national newspapers.
The Iraq War was an unnecessary conflict, launched on the basis of flawed
intelligence, secret diplomacy and with no sound legal basis, 20 years has not diminished the horror of the Iraq War,and it's
only because of Mr Assange and WikiLeaks that the world knows of some
of the shocking war crimes committed by the United States in Iraq, and
for the US to be pursuing him the way they are is simply unconscionable, and it is long past time that those responsible were held to account.
Is it not now hypocritical that Western leaders are calling currently calling for Vladimir Putin, a U.S ally I will remind you in the early years of the so called war on terror- to face trial for war crimes but those others mentioned continue to evade justice for their own crimes.
Thank you Lowkey for speaking truth to power with your beautiful and empowering words, and for reminding us that we must free Julian Assange before it is too late and that it really shouldn't be the case that :
' The poor get bullets and the bombers get medals
Contracts for the rich and a cell for the rebels.'
