Tag Archives: Great Britain

UK Foreign Secretary Defends Torturing Journalists, Then Says We Must Protect Journalists, by Caitlin Johnstone

Posted on June 3, 2019 | Leave a comment

You can cut the hypocrisy with a knife. From Caitlin Johnstone at medium.com:

British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt has just given a speech extolling the virtues of a free media, praising the journalists who’ve been brave enough to expose the truth about wicked governments in the face of tyrannical oppression. While he was preparing to give this speech, without any indication of any self-reflection at all, he defended the torture of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

After news broke that UN Special Rapporteur on torture Nils Melzer had found that Julian Assange has been the victim of psychological torture for years, Hunt, who is gunning to become the UK’s next Prime Minister, accused him of interfering in British affairs and making “inflammatory statements”.

“This is wrong,” Hunt tweeted. “Assange chose to hide in the embassy and was always free to leave and face justice. The UN Special Rapporteur should allow British courts to make their judgements without his interference or inflammatory accusations.”

“With all due respect, Sir: Mr Assange was about as ‘free to leave’ as a someone sitting on a rubber boat in a shark pool,” Melzer replied. “As detailed in my formal letter to you, so far, UK courts have not shown the impartiality and objectivity required by the rule of law.”

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Lawlessness, by Raúl Ilargi Meijer

Posted on June 1, 2019 | Leave a comment

Five nations have shredded the law in their vendetta against Julian Assange. From Raúl Ilargi Meijer at the automaticearth.com:

With the news that Julian Assange is “wasting away” in Belmarsh prison hospital, and with UN rapporteur Professor Nils Melzer’s report detailing how this happens, I’m once again drawn towards the lawlessness that all “authorities” involved in his case have been displaying, and with impunity. They all apparently think they are literally above the law. Their own laws.

But they can’t be, nowhere, not above their respective national laws nor the international ones their countries have signed up to. They can’t, because that would instantly make any and all laws meaningless. So you tell me where we find ourselves today.

There’s this paragraph in an article by Jonathan Cook entitled Abuses Show Assange Case Was Never About Law, which lists “17 glaring anomalies in Assange’s legal troubles”, that sums it all up pretty perfectly:

Australia not only refused Assange, a citizen, any help during his long ordeal, but prime minister Julia Gillard even threatened to strip Assange of his citizenship, until it was pointed out that it would be illegal for Australia to do so.

See, Cook is already skipping a step there. Gillard didn’t take Assange’s citizenship away, because that is against Australian law, but it’s just as much against Australian law for a government to let one of its citizens rot in some kind of hell. Still, they did let him rot, but as an Australian citizen. At that point, what difference does anything make anymore?

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The UN Torture Report On Assange Is An Indictment Of Our Entire Society, by Caitlin Johnstone

Posted on June 1, 2019 | Leave a comment

They’re killing Julian Assange. His death would be so convenient, and save everyone all that legal bother connected with rule of law, due process, and individual rights. From Caitlin Johnstone at ronpaulinstitute.org:

On the eighth of April, shortly before London police forcibly carried WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange out of the Ecuadorian embassy, a doctor named Sondra S Crosby wrote a letter to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights requesting that the office look into Assange’s case. Today, following a scorching rebuke of multiple governments by UN Special Rapporteur on torture Nils Melzer, mass media outlets around the world are reporting that Julian Assange has been found to be the victim of brutal psychological torture.

Melzer, who by his own admission began his investigation as someone who had “been affected by the same misguided smear campaign as everybody else” regarding Assange, speaks of Assange’s plight with the fresh-eyed ferocity of a man who has not been immersed in a soul-corroding career in establishment politics or mass media. A man has not been indoctrinated into accepting as normal the relentless, malicious character assassinations of the western political/media class against a publisher of inconvenient facts about the powerful. A man who, when looking deeply and objectively into the facts with uncorrupted vision, was able to see clearly just how unforgivably abusive Assange’s treatment has been.

“In 20 years of work with victims of war, violence and political persecution I have never seen a group of democratic States ganging up to deliberately isolate, demonise and abuse a single individual for such a long time and with so little regard for human dignity and the rule of law,” Melzer said. “The collective persecution of Julian Assange must end here and now!”

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Julian Assange Shows ‘Trauma’ Symptoms, UN Torture Expert Says, by Kaye Wiggins

Posted on May 31, 2019 | Leave a comment

Julian Assange’s treatment in Britain’s Belmarsh prison raises grave concerns. From Kaye Wiggins at bloomberg.com:

Julian Assange leaves Southwark Crown Court in a security van on May 1.

Julian Assange leaves Southwark Crown Court in a security van on May 1.

Photographer: Jack Taylor/Getty Images

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is suffering from “intense psychological trauma” as he serves a British jail sentence, and his human rights could be seriously violated if he’s extradited to the U.S., the United Nations’ special rapporteur on torture said.

Assange is suffering from extreme stress and chronic anxiety, Nils Melzer, who visited him in jail this month, said Friday in a statement. If transported to the U.S. he may face a life sentence or possibly the death penalty if new charges are added, Melzer said, urging the U.K. government not to send him there.

The comments come after Assange’s attorney said her client was unwell when the Australian failed to show up for a London court hearing on Thursday in his extradition battle. The 47-year-old is serving a 50-week sentence in the U.K.’s Belmarsh jail for skipping bail and has been moved to the prison’s health ward, according to Wikileaks.

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UK deep state plots to thwart Brexit, by George Callaghan

Posted on May 23, 2019 | Leave a comment

If Brexit goes through, ordinary British people may get the idea that they, rather than the Deep State, should be deciding how they’re governed. By George Callaghan at theduran.com:

  • In 2016 the British people voted for independence. This was despite the despicable threats of the EU elite

Decades ago the British deep state hatched a nefarious plot against the British people.  The elite wanted to foist European unity on an unwilling populace. The notion of the conceited Whitehall elite was that the peasants were stupid and the mandarins knew best. In late 1940s the United Kingdom politely declined offers to join the proposed European Coal and Steel Community. This was an embryonic European Economic Community. As Churchill said ‘we are with Europe but not of it.’ One Labour MP sagely said of joining the European project ‘the Durham miners won’t wear it.’ Those were the days when MPs quaintly cared about serving their constituents.

Harold Macmillan sought British accession to the European Economic Community. The French President de Gaulle rightly rejected the British application. De Gaulle was doing the British a favour. He correctly surmised that the United Kingdom would never be fulling committed to the EEC and that the bulk of the British people were adamantly opposed to such a venture. Charles de Gaulle was a visionary perhaps 70 years ahead of his time. He said that if the UK were admitted it would be forever sticking its oar in. These were prophetic words!

In the late 60s Harold Wilson’s Labour Government sought British membership of the EEC and was again rebuffed. In the early 1970s Edward Heath’s Conservative Government applied to the EEC for a third time. On this occasion Heath’s efforts were crowned with success. It only succeeded through subterfuge of the grossest character. Heath was warned by civil servants that the United Kingdom would have to sublimate itself to European sovereignty. Nevertheless Heath would not let the truth get in the way of his vaulting ambition. He released an official statement that ‘this involves no loss of essential national sovereignty’. Edward Heath did that in full knowledge of this being an outrageous falsehood. The public were assured that the idea there would one day be a single currency was a preposterous scare mongering tactic. In 2002 Heath was asked whether in the early 1970s he had envisaged the UK joining a single  European currency. ‘Yes, of course’ he chortled.

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With Gun Ban Not Working, Politicians In Britain Now Want To Ban Knives Nationwide, by Tyler Durden

Posted on May 1, 2019 | 5 comments

A once great country continues to plummet. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

If ever we needed proof of the expression that “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” look no further than Britain, where families may have to start practicing cutting their steak and bread at dinner with a spoon. This is, of course, because Britain’s politicians have now made the absurdly ridiculous move to call for the banning of what Reason magazine called “the most useful tool ever invented” – the knife.

Reason reported this morning that British politicians have “declared war on knives” and are moving swiftly to try and ban them, since gun laws aren’t working to help stop crime altogether:

Having failed to disarm criminals with gun controls that they defy, British politicians are now turning their attention to implementing something new and different: knife control. Because criminals will be much more respectful of knife laws than of those targeted at firearms, I guess.

“No excuses: there is never a reason to carry a knife. Anyone who does will be caught, and they will feel the full force of the law,” London’s Mayor Sadiq Khan tweeted on April 8.

Not to be outdone, his predecessor, Boris Johnson, currently Foreign Secretary, called for increased use of stop-and-search powers by police. “You have got to stop them, you have got to search them and you have got to take the knives out of their possession.”

Poundland (the British equivalent of a dollar store) announced last week that it will no longer sell kitchen knives in any of its 850 stores. Similar stores are being slapped with fines for selling knives to minors.

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Posted in Civil Liberties, Crime, Government, Horseshit

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Act II of the Most Important Political Event of the 21st Century Begins in May, by Tom Luongo

Posted on April 21, 2019 | Leave a comment

The fate of Brexit will make or break the EU and Great Britain. From Tom Luongo at moneyandmarkets.com:

Brexit is the most important political event of the 21st century. It cuts across so many of the dominant narratives playing out daily in the headlines that it is almost mind-boggling.

In fact, just about any theory you can dream up as to why Prime Minister Theresa May has worked so assiduously to betray and delay Brexit likely has an element of truth to it. I could spend this entire article listing them.

The biggest issue, of course, is that the European Union is a project without end. Its goal is creating the template for world government with only nominal nods to individual states still retaining control over their destinies.

But they don’t get to do so over anything that actually matters. And not in perpetuity, either.

So, with May openly conspiring with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on pushing back the date of Article 50 to Halloween, it’s clear that the next six months will be used to step-by-step end this pesky Brexit nonsense once and for all.

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Debunking All The Assange Smears, by Caitlin Johnstone

Posted on April 20, 2019 | 3 comments

This is the definitive and comprehensive source for anyone who wants to defend Julian Assange in an argument and win. From Caitlin Johnstone at theburningplatform.com:

Have you ever noticed how whenever someone inconveniences the dominant western power structure, the entire political/media class rapidly becomes very, very interested in letting us know how evil and disgusting that person is? It’s true of the leader of every nation which refuses to allow itself to be absorbed into the blob of the US-centralized power alliance, it’s true of anti-establishment political candidates, and it’s true of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

Corrupt and unaccountable power uses its political and media influence to smear Assange because, as far as the interests of corrupt and unaccountable power are concerned, killing his reputation is as good as killing him. If everyone can be paced into viewing him with hatred and revulsion, they’ll be far less likely to take WikiLeaks publications seriously, and they’ll be far more likely to consent to Assange’s imprisonment, thereby establishing a precedent for the future prosecution of leak-publishing journalists around the world. Someone can be speaking 100 percent truth to you, but if you’re suspicious of him you won’t believe anything he’s saying. If they can manufacture that suspicion with total or near-total credence, then as far as our rulers are concerned it’s as good as putting a bullet in his head.

Those of us who value truth and light need to fight this smear campaign in order to keep our fellow man from signing off on a major leap in the direction of Orwellian dystopia, and a big part of that means being able to argue against those smears and disinformation wherever they appear. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to find any kind of centralized source of information which comprehensively debunks all the smears in a thorough and engaging way, so with the help of hundreds of tips from my readers and social media followers I’m going to attempt to make one here. What follows is my attempt at creating a tool kit people can use to fight against Assange smears wherever they encounter them, by refuting the disinformation with truth and solid argumentation.

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Posted in Civil Liberties, Geopolitics, Governments, Horseshit, Investigations, Law

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Can WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange Get a Fair Trial? by Reese Erlich

Posted on April 19, 2019 | Leave a comment

Reese Erlich ponders the possibility of Assange getting a fair trial. His conclusion: don’t hold your breath. From Erlich at antiwar.com:

British police dragged WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange out of the Ecuadorian Embassy in London on April 11, witnessed by a scrum of international media. Authorities in the United Kingdom and US then tried to drag Assange’s reputation through the mud.

The official story was that Assange wore out his welcome at the embassy. News stories reported that he skateboarded through the offices, dirtied his bathroom, and let his cat poop in the halls. The man who had exposed government wrongdoing around the world had become the Hacker Who Came to Dinner.

Whatever the truth to those accusations, in reality, Assange was the victim of regime change. In 2017, Ecuadorians elected Lenin Moreno president and, in asharp departure from previous government policy, the new president sought closer relations with the US. Moreno decided to expel Assange as part of the bargain.

The US cares nothing about cat poop in the embassy hallways. But it does want to send a warning to the media, according to John Kiriakou, a former CIA case officer and whistleblower. He says in an interview that Presidents Donald Trump, like Barack Obama before him, has a “Nixonian obsession with national security leaks.” But the real goal is to send “a message to all journalists that there’s a lot less freedom of press than you might think.”

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Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters “Ashamed To Be An Englishman” Over Assange Saga, by Tyler Durden

Posted on April 18, 2019 | Leave a comment

There are still many decent English people left, and even some decent English celebrities. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

As the establishment attempts to paint a narrative of Julian Assange in cahoots with every thug and terrorist in the world – and definitely not a journalist – many ‘dissenters’ refuse to allow the whitewashing to go unanswered.

One such voice is legendary Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters, who told RT, in a wide-ranging interview this week, that he was “ashamed to be an Englishman” after seeing Assange being physically removed from his shelter at the Ecuadorian Embassy.

“To think that the UK has become such a willing accomplice and satellite of the American Empire that it would do such a thing in contravention with all laws, moral, ethical, and actual legal restrictions is absolutely, stunningly appalling and makes me ashamed to be an Englishman.“

UK authorities will soon decide whether to deport Assange to Sweden, where he faces possible rape charges, or to the US, where he is wanted for conspiring with former army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to break into a classified government computer.

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