Tag Archives: Julian Assange extradition

Exposing War Crimes Should Always Be Legal. Committing And Hiding Them Should Not. By Caitlin Johnstone

Posted on September 22, 2020 | Leave a comment

The two sentences above should be non-controversial, but they’re not. From Caitlin Johnstone at medium.com:

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The Kafkaesque extradition trial of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange continues, with each frustrating day making it clearer than the day before that what we are watching is nothing other than a staged performance by the US and UK governments to explain why it’s okay for powerful governments to jail journalists who expose inconvenient truths about them.

The Assange defense team is performing admirably, making the arguments they need to make to try and prevent an extradition that will set a precedent which will imperil press freedoms and creating a chilling effect on all adversarial national security investigative journalism around the world. These arguments appear to fall on deaf ears before Judge Vanessa Baraitser, who has from the beginning been acting like someone who has already made up her mind and who has been reading from pre-written judgements at the trial regardless of the points presented to her (an unusual behavior made all the more suspicious by her supervision under Chief Magistrate Emma Arbuthnot, who has a massive conflict of interest in this case).

And while it is essential to fight this fight with every intention of winning, I’d also like to issue a friendly reminder that this entire trial is illegitimate at its very foundation.

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Posted in Civil Liberties, Foreign Policy, Government, Intelligence, Media, Military

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The War on Assange is a War on Truth, by Ron Paul

Posted on September 22, 2020 | Leave a comment

If Assange is railroaded, will any journalist in the future dare publish any kind of government secret? From Ron Paul at ronpaulinstitute.org:

It is dangerous to reveal the truth about the illegal and immoral things our government does with our money and in our name, and the war on journalists who dare reveal such truths is very much a bipartisan affair. Just ask Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, who was relentlessly pursued first by the Obama Administration and now by the Trump Administration for the “crime” of reporting on the crimes perpetrated by the United States government.

Assange is now literally fighting for his life, as he tries to avoid being extradited to the United States where he faces 175 years in prison for violating the “Espionage Act.” While it makes no sense to be prosecuted as a traitor to a country of which you are not a citizen, the idea that journalists who do their job and expose criminality in high places are treated like traitors is deeply dangerous in a free society.

To get around the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of the press, Assange’s tormentors simply claim that he is not a journalist. Then-CIA director Mike Pompeo declared that Wikileaks was a “hostile intelligence service” aided by Russia. Ironically, that’s pretty much what the Democrats say about Assange.

Earlier this month, a US Federal appeals court judge ruled that the NSA’s bulk collection of Americans’ telephone records was illegal. That bulk collection program, born out of the anti-American PATRIOT Act, was first revealed to us by whistleblower Edward Snowden just over seven years ago.

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Empire’s mask slips at Julian Assange trial, by Pepe Escobar

Posted on September 19, 2020 | Leave a comment

US government lawyers are arguing in Julian Assange’s extradition proceeding that any journalist publishing classified information can be subject to prosecution under the Espionage Act. There was not a peep from any mainstream media so-called journalist about this. From Pepe Escobar at zerohedge.com:

Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Asia Times,

The concept of “History in the making” has been pushed to extremes when it comes to the extraordinary public service being performed by historian, former UK diplomat and human rights activist Craig Murray.

Murray – literally, and on a global level – is now positioned as our man in the public gallery, as he painstakingly documents in vivid detail what could be defined as the trial of the century as far as the practice of journalism is concerned: the kangaroo court judging Julian Assange in Old Bailey, London.

Let’s focus on three of Murray’s reports this week – with an emphasis on two intertwined themes: what the US is really prosecuting, and how Western corporate media is ignoring the court proceedings.

Here, Murray reports the exact moment when the mask of Empire fell, not with a bang, but a whimper:

“The gloves were off on Tuesday as the US Government explicitly argued that all journalists are liable to prosecution under the Espionage Act (1917) for publishing classified information.” (italics mine).

“All journalists” means every legitimate journalist, from every nationality, operating in any jurisdiction.

Interpreting the argument, Murray added, “the US government is now saying, completely explicitly, in court, those reporters could and should have gone to jail and that is how we will act in future. The Washington Post, the New York Times, and all the “great liberal media” of the US are not in court to hear it and do not report it (italics mine), because of their active complicity in the “othering” of Julian Assange as something sub-human whose fate can be ignored. Are they really so stupid as not to understand that they are next?

Err, yes.”

The point is not that self-described paladins of “great liberal media” are stupid. They are not covering the charade in Old Bailey because they are cowards. They must keep their fabled “access” to the bowels of Empire – the kind of “access” that allowed Judith Miller to “sell” the illegal war on Iraq in countless front pages, and allows CIA asset and uber-opportunist Bob Woodward to write his “insider” books.

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Claims that Assange ‘endangered lives’ rubbished in U.S. extradition proceedings, by Tareq Haddad

Posted on September 17, 2020 | Leave a comment

Wikileaks goes to extraordinary lengths to redact information in its disclosures that might result in harm to sources and operatives if it was revealed. The claim that Julian Assange endangered lives has little support. From Tareq Haddad at tareqhaddad.com:

An American helicopter flies over Afghanistan where the U.S. military has waged an illegal invasion for the last 19 years. (credit: Flickr)
(London, U.K.) A senior investigative journalist who worked on the release of thousands of military and diplomatic cables with WikiLeaks has rubbished prosecution claims that Julian Assange and his organisation put the lives of U.S. service members and informants at risk.

John Goetz, an investigations editor with the German public broadcaster NDR, had been a reporter with Der Spiegel at the time of the releases between 2010 and 2011. That included the Afghan and Iraq war diaries, in addition to the release of U.S. diplomatic cables that came to be known as Cablegate.

James Lewis QC, on behalf of the U.S. government, told the Old Bailey last week that Assange is not being prosecuted for receiving the documents, but because he risked lives with “reckless publication”.

Goetz told the court on Wednesday (September 16) that Assange and WikiLeaks in fact had a “very rigorous redaction process” – on occasion more censorious than the Pentagon when the same documents were released by Freedom of Information Act requests.

As the lead investigative journalist for Der Spiegel, Goetz was among a handful of journalists to be invited to the Guardian’s “bunker” in London where they, alongside WikiLeaks and New York Times staff, worked on removing sensitive names from documents.

Goetz said that redaction and what Assange called the “harm-minimisation process” was central from the very beginning of his involvement in June 2010 and how Eric Schmitt of The New York Times was tasked with contacting the White House prior to publication due to the newspaper’s location and existing relationship.

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The Stalinist Trial of Julian Assange: Whose Side Are You On? by John Pilger

Posted on September 8, 2020 | Leave a comment

Can journalists reveal secrets about governments they’d rather not have revealed or not? From John Pilger at johnpilger.com:

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When I first met Julian Assange more than ten years ago, I asked him why he had started WikiLeaks. He replied: “Transparency and accountability are moral issues that must be the essence of public life and journalism.”

I had never heard a publisher or an editor invoke morality in this way. Assange believes that journalists are the agents of people, not power: that we, the people, have a right to know about the darkest secrets of those who claim to act in our name.

If the powerful lie to us, we have the right to know. If they say one thing in private and the opposite in public, we have the right to know. If they conspire against us, as Bush and Blair did over Iraq, then pretend to be democrats, we have the right to know.

It is this morality of purpose that so threatens the collusion of powers that want to plunge much of the world into war and wants to bury Julian alive in Trumps fascist America.

In 2008, a top secret US State Department report described in detail how the United States would combat this new moral threat. A secretly-directed personal smear campaign against Julian Assange would lead to “exposure [and] criminal prosecution”.

The aim was to silence and criminalise WikiLeaks and its founder. Page after page revealed a coming war on a single human being and on the very principle of freedom of speech and freedom of thought, and democracy.

The imperial shock troops would be those who called themselves journalists: the big hitters of the so-called mainstream, especially the “liberals” who mark and patrol the perimeters of dissent.

And that is what happened. I have been a reporter for more than 50 years and I have never known a smear campaign like it: the fabricated character assassination of a man who refused to join the club: who believed journalism was a service to the public, never to those above.

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EDITORIAL: A Trial Begins in London, from Consortium News

Posted on September 7, 2020 | Leave a comment

Is the ruling in Julian Assange’s extradition proceeding a foregone conclusion? It sure looks that way. From the Consortium News editorial board at consortiumnews.com:

Judging by the first week of hearings in February, it doesn’t seem to be important whatever the prosecution says or does, or how the defense responds. The decision already appears to have been made.

There can surely be a surprise when the next three to four weeks of hearings in the extradition case of Julian Assange at Old Bailey are completed. There is still every possibility that when the last word is said in court, Magistrate Vanessa Baraitser will decide that the United States has not made its case and that Assange will not be sent to stand trial in Alexandria, Virginia.

But judging from the first week of hearings in February at Woolwich Crown Court, all signs point to a decision already having been made to extradite Assange, and that the next three to four weeks will be simply justice going through the motions to make it appear that the WikiLeaks publisher is getting a fair trial.  There is a name for such a thing:

“A show trial is a public trial in which the judicial authorities have already determined the guilt, and/or innocence, of the defendant. The actual trial has as its only goal the presentation of both the accusation and the verdict to the public so they will serve as both an impressive example and a warning to other would-be dissidents or transgressors.” (Wikipedia)

Is there any better way to describe what has been happening to Assange than the above definition?

A Weak Case

The prosecution’s case against Assange is exceedingly weak, but it doesn’t seem to matter. In the first week, America’s British lawyers didn’t mention the only technicality that Assange can really be charged with:  unauthorized possession and dissemination of classified information.

That’s because it’s a charge that directly implicates the rest of the press, which for years has possessed and disseminated secret material and never faced charges. It was an issue so much in the forefront of U.S. thinking that it had its Queen’s Councillor directly address the press gallery at the beginning of February’s proceedings to try to convince the reporters that they were not a target.

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Should We Be Protesting About George Floyd or Julian Assange? by Paul Craig Roberts

Posted on August 1, 2020 | Leave a comment

A death due to a drug overdose is worthy of protest, a man jailed for telling the truth about the US government is not. From Paul Craig Roberts at paulcraigroberts.org:

Some Americans are so pathetic they don’t even know what gender they are. A female with a vagina thinks she is a male.  A male with testicles and a penis thinks he is a female.  Those among us who are normal are supposed to be oh-so-concerned about these confused people that we stop using gender pronouns.  He/she/him/her have become transphobic.  If you persist in using the English language, you are uncaring and, well, evil to boot.

The transgendered are busy at work making themselves into another preferred minority with all the special privileges in law that that designation brings. I wonder what happens when everyone needs the protection of the special privilege designation, and men and women no longer exist.

Somehow I cannot imagine a country absorbed in transgender issues being exceptional and indispensable, as the neocons say we are, much less being a military power. I very much doubt that Russia and China regard a country as a military threat whose population is confused about what gender they are.

Looking at the evidence, I would say that America has had its 15 minutes of fame.  What convinces me that America is all washed up is Americans’ acceptance of the horrors inflicted by the American/British police state on Julian Assange. In Assange’s treatment we see the violation of every human right.  And the Western public has accepted it.

Instead of protesting against the persecution of a truth-teller, agents of the Establishment, pretending to be “peaceful protesters,” are burning and looting properties belonging to black, Asian, white, and Hispanic business owners and destroying public monuments for no other reason than a felon, misogynist, drug addict, George Floyd, killed himself by overdosing on Fentanyl.

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Posted in Civil Liberties, Collapse, Crime, Governments, Insurrection, Law

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Damage to the Soul, by Craig Murray

Posted on July 15, 2020 | 1 comment

“Gross injustice heaped upon gross injustice” is how Craig Murray correctly characterizes the persecution of Julian Assange. From Murray at craigmurry.org.uk:

The imprisonment of Julian Assange has been a catalogue of gross injustice heaped upon gross injustice, while a complicit media and indoctrinated population looks the other way. In a truly extraordinary twist, Assange is now being extradited on the basis of an indictment served in the UK, which is substantially different to the actual indictment he now faces in Virginia if extradited.

The Assange hearing was adjourned after its first full week, and its resumption has since been delayed by coronavirus. In that first full week, both the prosecution and the defence outlined their legal arguments over the indictment. As I reported in detail to an audience of millions, Assange’s legal team fairly well demolished the key arguments of the prosecution during that hearing.

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Assange’s US Extradition, Threat to Future of Internet and Democracy, by Nozomi Hayase

Posted on May 7, 2020 | Leave a comment

Julian Assange clearly understands the threat to freedom of expression from the Big Tech-government alliance. From Nozomi Hayase at antiwar.com:

On Monday May 4, the British Court decided that the extradition hearing for WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange, scheduled for May 18, would be moved to September. This four month delay was made after Assange’s defense lawyer argued the difficulty of his receiving a fair hearing due to restrictions posed by the Covid-19 lockdown. Monday’s hearing at Westminster Magistrates’ Court proceeded without enabling the phone link for press and observers waiting on the line, and without Assange who was not well enough to appear via videolink.

Sunday May 3rd marked World Press Freedom Day. As people around the globe celebrated with online debates and workshops, Assange was being held on remand in London’s Belmarsh prison for publishing classified documents which exposed US war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. On this day, annually observed by the United Nations to remind the governments of the importance of free press, Amnesty International renewed its call for the US to drop the charges against this imprisoned journalist.

The US case to extradite Assange is one of the most important press freedom cases of this century. The indictment against him under the Espionage Act is an unprecedented attack on journalism. This is a war on free speech that has escalated in recent years turning the Internet into a battleground.

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What if Ignored Covid-19 Warnings Had Been Leaked to WikiLeaks? by Ray McGovern

Posted on April 13, 2020 | Leave a comment

Ray McGovern speculates on alternative history if WikiLeaks had made its trademark disclosures. From Ray McGovern at antiwar.com:

The British court system continues to mock the Magna Carta. Bowing vassal-like to U.S. pressure it persists with Star Chamber proceedings against WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange until he is either extradited to the US or winds up dead.

The judicial pantomime under way in London, under the guise of an extradition hearing, would make the English nobles who wrested precious civil rights from King John eight centuries ago sob in anger and shame. But nary a whimper is heard from the heirs to those rights. One searches in vain for English nobles today.

Yet the process stumbles along, as awkward as it is inexorable, toward extradition and life in prison for Assange, if he lasts that long.

The banal barristers bashing Assange now seem to harbor hope that, unlike the case of Henry II and Thomas More, the swords of royal knights will be unneeded to “deliver the Crown from this troublesome priest” – or publisher. Those barristers may be spared the embarrassment of losing what residual self-respect they may still claim. In short, they may not need to bow and scrape much longer to surrender Assange to life in a US prison. He may die first.

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