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Daniel Ellsberg: Julian Assange’s Case And The Doomsday Machine
Two weeks ago the Trump administration announced it had indicted Julian Assange in the Eastern District of Virginia on 17 counts of violating the 1917 Espionage Act. Assange is currently in the Belmarsh prison hospital in London. If extradited, tried, and convicted he faces 175 years in prison.
The Espionage Act is a 102 year old law used initially to imprison the great socialist Eugene V Debs for an anti-World War I speech he gave in Canton, Ohio and also used to crush the industrial workers of the world, the IWW, a large antiwar union at the time.
In 1971 it was famously used against Daniel Ellsberg who released the Pentagon papers to the New York Times and other media outlets. Lately the Espionage Act has been used against many truth telling whistleblowers during the Obama and Trump administrations.
This is the first time it is being used against a journalist.
Wikileaks Defense Funds:
Guest – Daniel Ellsberg, educated at Harvard and Cambridge and has been an activist since the 1970s. Ellsberg’s latest book, The Doomsday Machine, is an extensive study of nuclear theory and nuclear policy. In 2018 he was awarded the Olaf Palme prize for his “profound humanism and exceptional moral courage.
From 1957-59 he was a Junior Fellow in the Society of Fellows, Harvard University. He earned his Ph.D. in Economics at Harvard in 1962 with his thesis, Risk, Ambiguity and Decision. His research leading up to this dissertation—in particular his work on what has become known as the “Ellsberg Paradox,” first published in an article entitled Risk, Ambiguity and the Savage Axioms—is widely considered a landmark in decision theory and behavioral economics.
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