Image by Antonio Marín Segovia via Flickr
by Finian Cunningham
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Ireland
July 17, 2022
Finian Cunningham on Jul 11, 2022
Julian: Let’s Take a Stand, original song by journalist Finian Cunningham.
Dedicated to freedom for Julian Assange.
Song produced by John Rachel with video by Randy Martin.
You can support the creativity behind this song and video with a contribution. Bank account direct deposit info: SWIFT BOFIIE2D, IBAN IE61BOFI90334966257626
Finian Cunningham, is a columnist at the Strategic Culture Foundation, Sputnik, and a Writer on Dandelion Salad. He can be reached at cunninghamfinian@gmail.com.
From the archives:
Certifying Julian Assange’s Extradition Puts Him at Great Risk + The Assange Family Struggle
John Pilger: The Supreme Court Refusal to Hear Julian Assange’s Appeal
Chris Hedges: Wedding Speech for Julian Assange + Craig Murray Barred From Attending the Wedding
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Julian Assange is one of my top heroes, perhaps the topmost one. And yet, being a contrarian, I can still find something to disagree with here.
All over the world, there are lots of people saying “let’s take a stand” for one issue or another. The phrase “take a stand” suggests a one-time thing, a final thing. The phrase “choosing a hill to die on” has recently become popular in social media. That phrase suggests you can only take a stand once; you can only do it for one issue.
Really, the many issues are all connected. But that fact is not obvious; on the surface the issues seem to vary widely. To be effective in taking a stand, we must be united, and for that we need to see how all the issues are connected.
As I see it, all our problems stem from a cultural wrong turn that happened 12,000 years ago, a shift from community to self and separateness. I have written about that in anthropological terms in https://leftymathprof.wordpress.com/simplified/. Our culture of selfishness is concretely manifested today in CAPITALISM. In https://leftymathprof.wordpress.com/primer/ I have written about the many ways that capitalism is the root of evil.
A simple example: Julian Assange is imprisoned for exposing war crimes (though the “official” reasons given differ slightly from that). The wars are based on lies to make a few selfish rich men richer — i.e., capitalism. I would recommend taking a stand against capitalism, and make the freeing of Julian Assange just a corollary of that.
Lefty, have you read many of Finian’s articles here on Dandelion Salad? He’s a socialist and points to the ills of capitalism often. This is a beautiful, supportive song for Julian Assange.