Assange Show Trial: Craig Murray's daily court reports

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Re: Assange Show Trial: Craig Murray's daily court reports

Postby Harvey » Wed Dec 15, 2021 9:17 pm

And while we spoke of many things, fools and kings
This he said to me
"The greatest thing
You'll ever learn
Is just to love
And be loved
In return"


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Re: Assange Show Trial: Craig Murray's daily court reports

Postby Harvey » Thu Dec 16, 2021 1:18 pm

And while we spoke of many things, fools and kings
This he said to me
"The greatest thing
You'll ever learn
Is just to love
And be loved
In return"


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Re: Assange Show Trial: Craig Murray's daily court reports

Postby Harvey » Thu Dec 16, 2021 1:49 pm

^ I maintain that Tucker is a loss leader for Fox and Murdoch (How I Stopped Worrying and Learned To Love My Lying, Duplicitous Oligarchs) that said, tell me where the reality reflected in this discussion is also reflected anywhere near anything calling itself the 'Left' media?

Nowhere.

Nowhere.

Nowhere.
And while we spoke of many things, fools and kings
This he said to me
"The greatest thing
You'll ever learn
Is just to love
And be loved
In return"


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Re: Assange Show Trial: Craig Murray's daily court reports

Postby conniption » Thu Dec 16, 2021 6:43 pm

Afshin Rattansi: Analysis of Assange Show Trial

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkibZko2kUA
Live on the Fly with Randy Credico
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Re: Assange Show Trial: Craig Murray's daily court reports

Postby Grizzly » Thu Dec 16, 2021 11:56 pm


https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/rgmqka/bernie_rat_sanders/
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Mainstream Media has been lying since Fox lawyers proved it was legal in 2000.



"It is an understatement to say that this righteous cause is a scam. there is a core truth — an unintentional one — that lies at the crux of this elite war on "disinformation." It is absolutely true that U.S. political discourse is drowning in deliberate disinformation campaigns and lies. But it comes not from ordinary citizens on Facebook or 4Chan, but from the very media corporations -- led by NBC News -- that most flagrantly complain about "disinformation" to the point of wanting to censor the internet in its name. We dissect a two-minute NBC report on Assange from Joe Scarborough and Claire McCaskill to show how casually, easily, aggressively and frequently they tell outright lies."

- Glenn Greenwald



The War on Information.
“The more we do to you, the less you seem to believe we are doing it.”

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Re: Assange Show Trial: Craig Murray's daily court reports

Postby conniption » Sun Dec 26, 2021 8:58 pm

RT

Treatment of Julian mirrors US & allies’ ‘corruption, criminality’ – Assange’s father to RT

John Shipton, the father of Julian Assange, told RT his son’s prolonged incarceration fits the patterns of “corruption, criminality of enormous depth” by the US and its allies that Assange exposed.

26 Dec, 2021


On the latest episode of RT’s On Contact, host Chris Hedges asked the 78-year-old father of the renowned publisher to share his thoughts on Julian Assange’s long, drawn-out incarceration and whether he thought it was the US and allies’ plan to just let his son wither away behind bars, not intending to ever end the legal saga.

Shipton responded by saying that he thought it would be wrong to conflate the responsibility of the US and the UK, where the WikiLeaks’ co-founder has been kept in a maximum-security prison since April 2019 while awaiting a decision on his extradition to the US. Assange’s father emphasized that authorities in London were just as guilty, and should not be seen as simply doing Washington’s bidding.

“It’s always been thought that the UK is a proxy for the intentions of the United States. That, in fact, is wrong. The actual torture is committed by the institutions of the crown prosecuting service, the foreign and colonial office, and the judiciary. It’s actually committed by those people … who then go home and have a glass of wine.”

Shipton pointed out that the kind of harsh treatment and protracted incarceration of Assange mirrors, albeit on a smaller scale, the overall patterns of “murders, corruption, criminality of enormous depth and conviction by the United States and its NATO allies,” which was exposed for the whole world to see by Assange and WikiLeaks.

The father of the jailed publisher went on to describe the ever-growing amounts of the “most vicious hatred, the most unscrupulous slander, calumny and lies that have surrounded Julian like a tornado in these 13 years.”

Shipton told Chris Hedges that it is the wide and unrelenting support for Julian Assange from lawmakers and ordinary people alike, from all across the world, that keeps him going and gives him strength to continue to fight for his son’s freedom.

When asked to illustrate recent instances of humiliation at the hands of the British authorities that Assange has had to go through, his father recounted how in September, during a court hearing, Julian was placed in a “glass box,” which had only a tiny slot in it, through which Assange could communicate with his lawyers.

However, to do so, the WikiLeaks’ co-founder had to kneel each time, while the lawyers on the other side had to stand on their toes. When Assange and his defense team asked to let him sit next to his lawyers, the judge refused, with that “farce” continuing for three weeks. Understandably, Assange’s father found it too painful to go into detail about his son’s gradual physical and mental decline over the years.

Shipton concluded by saying that WikiLeaks’ revelations may have contributed to the ending of the Iraq and Afghan Wars, which were once deemed “endless,” describing this as the “gifts of Julian, of Chelsea and of WikiLeaks to the people of the United States and to people of the United Kingdom and Australia.”

On December 10, the UK High Court of Justice ruled that Assange could be extradited to the US, overturning a previous decision by a lower court. The case was remitted back to Westminster magistrates court, while Assange’s team announced it would appeal the decision. Stella Moris, Assange’s fiancée, dismissed the ruling as a “grave miscarriage of justice.”

Watch the full interview here:

Slow-motion execution of Julian Assange

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mua9wksjnmY
• Dec 25, 2021 •
On the show, Chris Hedges discusses the torture of Julian Assange with his father, John Shipton.


Julian Assange committed empire’s greatest sin. He exposed it as a criminal enterprise. He documented its lies, callous disregard for human life, rampant corruption and innumerable war crimes. Republican or Democrat. Conservative or Labour. Trump or Biden. It does not matter. The goons who oversee the empire sing from the same Satanic songbook. Empires always kill those who inflict deep and serious wounds.

That Assange, who is in precarious physical and psychological health and who suffered a stroke during court video proceedings on October 27, has been condemned to death should not come as a surprise. The ten years he has been detained, seven in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London and nearly three in the high security Belmarsh prison, were accompanied with a lack of sunlight and exercise and unrelenting threats, pressure, anxiety and stress. “His eyes were out of sync, his right eyelid would not close, his memory was blurry,” his fiancé Stella Moris said of the stroke.

His steady physical and psychological deterioration has led to hallucinations and depression. He takes antidepressant medication and the antipsychotic quetiapine. He has been observed pacing his cell until he collapses, punching himself in the face and banging his head against the wall. He has spent weeks in the medical wing of Belmarsh. Prison authorities found “half of a razor blade” hidden under his socks. He has repeatedly called the suicide hotline run by the Samaritans because he thought about killing himself “hundreds of times a day.” The executioners have not yet completed their grim work. Toussaint L’Ouverture, who led the Haitian independence movement, the only successful slave revolt in human history, was physically destroyed in the same manner, locked by the French in an unheated and cramped prison cell and left to die of exhaustion, malnutrition, apoplexy, pneumonia and probably tuberculosis. And, unless we mobilize to halt this judicial execution, it will be Assange’s fate as well.

https://www.rt.com/news/544433-assange- ... execution/
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Re: Assange Show Trial: Craig Murray's daily court reports

Postby MacCruiskeen » Wed Jan 05, 2022 9:42 pm

Tonight is his 1,000th night in Belmarsh.

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Re: Assange Show Trial: Craig Murray's daily court reports

Postby Joe Hillshoist » Sun Jan 30, 2022 8:44 pm

Your Man in the Public Gallery: Assange Hearing Day Oh God It Never Ends

It feels like a recurring nightmare. On the sadly misnamed sleeper train once again, down to London and a dash to the Royal Courts of Justice to hear yet another judgement intoned. Julian not in court again and not in good health; Stella battling on but fighting to keep her health as well; Gareth Peirce her calm and unstoppable self; my friends from Wikileaks marshaling legal and media resources and remaining determinedly resolute and cheerful.

The Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales, Ian Duncan Burnett, is just the sort of chap you would want to play the role in a comic opera production. Burly, with a broad open face crowned with full white hair, he exudes solidity, bonhommie and natural command. You expect him to deliver his judgement and then stroll over the Strand to Simpson’s for a few thick slices of roast sirloin and a bumper of claret. I don’t mean that as a criticism; I like nothing better myself.

The Lord Chief Justice doesn’t just get his own office; he does not just get the best scarlet silly costume you can imagine; he gets his very own court. What a court it is; acres of polished wood, larger than some theatres; galleried and storeyed, walls at every level lined all round with thousands upon thousands of exquisitely bound law books, locked behind glass doors which I strongly suspect are only ever opened to add another book destined to spend its natural life in there unvisited, with no possibility of parole.

The Lord Chief Justice gets a very high bench, so you all have to look right up to him; a construction made of several tons of mahogany, which looks like it should be draped with potted palms, have moustachioed waiters in tight white jackets popping in and out of its various stairways and entrances carrying silver trays, and house a string quartet in the corner. Rumour has it that there is in fact a string quartet in a corner, which has been trying to leave since 1852.

The Lord Chief Justice suddenly materialises from his own entrance behind his bench, already high above us, so he doesn’t have to mount the mahogany and risk tripping over his scarlet velvet drapery. I like to imagine he was raised up to the requisite level behind the scenes by a contraption of ropes and pulleys operated by hairy matelots. Next to him, but discreetly a little lower, was Lord Justice Holroyde, who delivered the judgement now appealed against, and today looked even more smug and oleaginous in the reflected glow of his big mate.

The appearance lasted two minutes. Burnett told us that the Court certified, as being a matter of general public interest, the question of whether “Diplomatic Assurances” not submitted in the substantive hearing, could be submitted at the appeal stage. It did not so certify the other points raised; it refused leave to appeal to the Supreme Court.

You can ignore the last phrase; it is customary that the High Court refuses leave to appeal; with the certification of public interest, Julian can now appeal direct to the Supreme Court which will decide whether or not to take the case. The refusal of leave by the High Court is purely a show of deference to the Supreme Court, which decides itself what it will take. The lawyers put this as “the Supreme Court dines a la carte”.

Now some of the appeal points which the High Court refused to certify as arguable and of general public interest, were important. One point was that the diplomatic assurances by the United States promised not to engage in certain illegal practices amounting to torture, but made that assurance conditional on Assange’s future behaviour.

Now, legally prohibited treatment of prisoners does not become lawful if the prisoner does something wrong. That ought to have been a slam-dunk argument, even without the fact that the decision on Assange’s future behaviour would be made by precisely the same authorities who plotted to kidnap or murder him.

All of which was not certified as an arguable point of law of general public interest.

What is certified and going forward is the simple question of whether the diplomatic assurances were received too late. Rather peculiarly, the High Court judgement of Burnett and Holroyde, against which Julian was seeking leave to appeal, blamed extradition magistrate Vanessa Baraitser for not having asked the United States for diplomatic assurances at the earlier stage.

The doctrine that a judge should suggest to counsel for one party, helpful points to strengthen their case against the other party, is an entirely new one in English law. The United States could have submitted their diplomatic note at any stage, but chose not to do so, in order to see if they could get away with making no commitment as to Assange’s treatment. They only submitted a diplomatic note after they lost the original case. It was not for Baraitser to ask them to do it earlier and the suggestion is a ludicrous bit of special pleading by Burnett.

This is more than just a procedural point. If the assurances had been submitted to the magistrate’s court, their value could have been objected to by Assange’s defence. The self-canceling conditionalities within the assurances themselves could have been explored, and the United States’ long record of breaking such assurances could have been discussed.

By introducing them only at the appeal stage, the United States had evaded all scrutiny of their validity.

That was confirmed by today’s judgement. Questions of the viability of assurances that, inter alia, make torture a future option, were ruled not to be arguable appeal points.

So the certified point, whether assurances can be submitted at the appeals stage, is not really just about timing and deadlines, it is about whether there should be scrutiny of the assurances or not.

However it does not look like a substantial point. It looks like just a technical point on timing and deadlines. This is very important, because it may be the screen behind which the British Establishment is sidling slowly towards the exit. Was Lord Burnett looking to get out of this case by one of the curtained doors at his back?

If any of the other points had been certified, there would have been detailed discussion in court of the United States’ penchant for torture, its dreadful prison conditions, and its long record of bad faith (it is an accepted point of law in the United States that domestic authorities are not bound by any assurance, commitment or even treaty given to foreign governments). For the Supreme Court to refuse Assange’s extradition on any of those grounds would be an official accusation against the United States’ integrity, and thus diplomatically difficult.

But the Supreme Court can refuse extradition on the one point now certified by the High Court, and it can be presented as nothing to do with anything bad about the USA and its governance, purely a technical matter of a missed deadline. Apologies all round, never mind old chap, and let’s get to the claret at Simpson’s.

Can there really be an end in sight for Julian? Is the British Establishment quietly sidling to the exit?


https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives ... ever-ends/
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WTF? NFT!

Postby JackRiddler » Mon Feb 21, 2022 11:33 am

Weird article loads for 2 seconds then disappears in my browser; don't know if you'll have same problem. Extracted text by using a browser-reading app:

https://news.artnet.com/market/pak-juli ... on-2070993

news.artnet.com
Julian Assange and Crypto Artist Pak Have Raised $54 Million for the WikiLeaks Founder's Defense Fund With an NFT Auction
Sarah Cascone, February 10, 2022
5-6 minutes

Imprisoned Wikileaks founder Julian Assange and anonymous crypto artist Pak have raised over $54 million with their NFT collection “Censored.” The proceeds will support Assange’s legal fees as he fights pending extradition to the U.S. from London.

“It’s really a way of getting a different narrative out about Julian’s case,” Assange’s brother, Gabriel Shipton, told the Hill. “It’s a way to use this platform, to use this art to get to the real heart of what this case is about: censorship and press freedoms, freedom of communication, free internet.”

More than 10,000 supporters of the detained WikiLeaks founder joined AssangeDAO to fund the winning bid of 16,593 ETH, or $52 million, in the 48-hour online auction for Clock, a single-edition NFT that counts the number of days since Assange was arrested in April 2019. It is now the second-most expensive NFT artwork, behind only Everydays—The First 5000 Days by Beeple.

The “Censored” auction also featured a pay-what-you-wish open-edition NFT where each participant could create their own work by writing a short message to be “censored.” Each contribution was converted into an image.

A total of 29,766 buyers paid a collective 671 ETH ($2.1 million), breaking Pak’s existing record for an open-edition NFT. The artist was the work’s top bidder, paying 100 ETH ($31,000).

After the U.K.’s High Court approved Assange’s extradition in December, Shipton stepped up his efforts to win Assange’s freedom, communicating with a number of cryptocurrency enthusiasts on the secure messaging app Telegram.

The team that came together to form AssangeDAO includes developer Amir Taaki, Irish journalist Rachel-Rose O’Leary, Berlin mathematician Silke Noa, and two hacker activists known as McKenna and Fiskantes.

The first piece in the open edition of <em>Censored</em>, made in support of imprisoned Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, was created and purchased by Pak, the artist behind the work. Each buyer could input a short phrase that would appear "censored" in the final work. Courtesy of Pak.

The first piece in the open edition of “Censored” was created and purchased by Pak. Courtesy of Pak.

AssangeDAO is a decentralized autonomous organization that operates on a blockchain and is run by the community at large, rather than a central governing body. By pooling the financial resources of thousands of people, DAOs have the ability to make large-scale financial transactions that are normally the purview of billionaires and massive corporations.

Contributors to AssangeDAO each get a proportional percentage of the DAO’s governance token, which will be used to make decisions about what to do with the NFT. Based on CoinMarketCap data, the tokens are trading at around $0.002165 as of press time, down over 28 percent since launching at 10 a.m. yesterday.

In December, 4,000 contributors to the similarly motivated FreeRossDAO raised 2,836 ETH ($12.2 million) to purchase the Ross Ulbricht Genesis Collection NFT for $5.93 million on SuperRare. The auction was raising money for the legal efforts of Ross Ulbricht, founder of the darknet market website Silk Road, who was given a double life sentence without parole in 2015 on numerous charges including money laundering, narcotic trafficking, and computer hacking.

'Censored," an NFT collection by Pak and Julian Assange. Courtesy of Pak.

“Censored,” an NFT collection by Pak and Julian Assange. Courtesy of Pak.

“FreeRoss happened, and that was a big success—that gave us an indication” a similar project for Assange might work, Taaki told Wired.

“This is tens of thousands of people coming together to show real strength—the Power of the People,” AssangeDAO community lead Joshua Bate wrote on Discord. “In less than one week, we have shown that decentralized and distributed peoples can band together to fight injustice.”

The power of DAOs can only go so far, however. In November, ConstitutionDAO raised more than $40 million in an effort to win a first printing of the U.S. Constitution at a Sotheby’s New York auction. The widely publicized effort failed when Citadel CEO Kenneth Griffin, a major art collector, purchased it for $43.2 million.

Ross Ulbricht, Perspective from freeross's Ross Ulbricht Genesis Collection.

Ross Ulbricht, Perspective from freeross’s Ross Ulbricht Genesis Collection.

The money from the sale will not go directly to Assange, but to the Hamburg-based non-profit Wau Holland Foundation, which is supporting his legal battle. On February 7, the day the “Censored” auction began, Assange’s legal team put in an appeal application to the U.K. Supreme High Court, and is now waiting to hear back whether the court will hear the case.

“Julian’s like a rat in a maze, really. There’s no way out,” Shipton said. “The legal battle just extends and extends, and it’s looking more and more likely that he will be in the U.S.A. sooner than we think.”

Due to Wikileaks’ role in leaking confidential documents provided by U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, Assange has been charged with violating the Espionage Act of 1917. He faces up to 175 years in jail if convicted.
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Re: Assange Show Trial: Craig Murray's daily court reports

Postby Grizzly » Wed Mar 23, 2022 6:32 pm

Image

The UK’s treatment of Julian Assange posed a public relations problem for the Foreign Office’s media freedom campaign, files seen by Declassified UK show.

In July 2019, the UK co-hosted a Global Conference for Media Freedom, a first-of-its-kind event where 50 countries gathered to form a Media Freedom Coalition.

Costing £2.4 million, the event was hailed as “a major milestone” in the UK government’s “campaign to protect journalists doing their job”.

The conference was held just months after WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange was dragged out of the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

He was transferred to Belmarsh prison, “the closest comparison in the United Kingdom to Guantánamo”, as a UK parliamentary report has described it.

Addressing the media conference, then foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt declared: “If we act together, we can shine a spotlight on abuses and impose a diplomatic price on those who would harm journalists or lock them up for doing their jobs”.

‘We should be ready’

The hosting of a media freedom event within miles of Belmarsh prison in southeast London was seen as a public relations problem. Internal Foreign Office emails show UK officials monitored online behaviour accordingly.

After Hunt announced plans for the conference in February 2019, one official complained about “a few individual crazy responses to the FS’ [Foreign Secretary’s] tweet”.

By June, officials were requesting “Lines to Take on how best to respond to questions we expect to be raised on this occasion about the UK handling of the case of Julian Assange”.

In particular, “Icelandic criticism of UK handling of [the] Assange case” was seen to be “affecting messaging on media freedom”.

This email was likely related to former Icelandic Interior Minister Ögmundur Jónasson, who had asserted in June that the Assange case put “the British justice system…on trial”.

“Our current approach is right and we shouldn’t engage”.

On 8 July, two days before the conference began, an unnamed official wrote about “a ramp up in activity by Assange campaigners”.

One cause for concern was Assange’s mother Christine, who had “joined calls for a tweetstorm during the conference”, as well as “accounts [which] are small scale or are run by active trolls and provocateurs”.

The official outlined rules for engagement, noting “our current approach is right and we shouldn’t engage…However, we should be ready. I’m keen that we agree ahead of time how and when our approach would evolve”.

In an email with the subject line “Media Freedom Conference – online register of interest form”, one official even questioned: “what if someone like Assange applied to attend?”

The Foreign Office emails discussing Assange remain heavily redacted for reasons of “national security”.

‘No communications strategy can make this go away’

According to a recent academic study, Julian Assange “was by far the most frequently discussed individual on Twitter” with regards to the Media Freedom Coalition.

“Numerous tweets highlighted the apparent irony that the UK was establishing and leading an international initiative on media freedom, while simultaneously undermining free media…in their handling of Assange”, the researchers found.

Since 2019, the UK has nonetheless continued to use the Global Conference for Media Freedom as a vehicle through which to claim it supports press freedom.

Rebecca Vincent, the Director of International Campaigns for Reporters Without Borders (RSF), commented:

“It is disappointing that rather than looking to address the very serious substantive concerns about the case of Julian Assange, the UK Foreign Office seems to have treated the matter as only a public relations inconvenience as it prepared to host the Global Media Freedom Conference and launch the Media Freedom Coalition.

“But the truth is that no communications strategy can make this go away. As long as Assange remains detained in the UK and as long as the US continues to seek his extradition and prosecution for publishing information in the public interest, this case will serve as a thorn in the sides of both governments and the Media Freedom Coalition itself.”

She added: “They should instead lead by example by dropping the charges, releasing Assange, and putting an end to his persecution once and for all”.


https://declassifieduk.org/julian-assange-posed-pr-problem-for-uk-governments-media-campaign/

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Re: Assange Show Trial: Craig Murray's daily court reports

Postby Harvey » Tue Mar 29, 2022 2:10 pm

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2022/03/free-enduring-love/

Free, Enduring Love

March 25, 2022 by Craig Murray

Looking through my photos, I just came across this one of Stella showing the panel on which Vivienne Westwood embroidered her personal wedding message to the couple. I thought you might like to see it.

Image

It was a cheap, white, trestle table, its thin top slightly bowed down in the middle, of the type made of a weetabix of sawdust and glue with a sheet of plastic glued on top and plastic strips glued to the sides, held up on four narrow, tubular, black metal legs. On it was a register. In front of it stood Stella Moris, looking beautiful and serene with delight. She wore a stunning gown in a light lilac, designed for her by Vivienne Westwood. It had a mild satin shimmer, and appeared both sumptuous and tightly tailored, with an expansively lapeled jacket section diving in to a wasp waist, that the apparently soft billows never intruded upon, no matter how she moved.

Close up, the details on the dress were extraordinary. The cloisonne buttons were uniquely designed and commissioned by Vivienne for this gown, and she had herself embroidered a message of solidarity, love and support on one panel. The long veil was hand embroidered, with bright multicoloured words striding across the gauze. These were words chosen by Julian as descriptive of the Power of Love, and they were in the handwriting of close friends and family who were not able to be inside the jail, including Stella’s 91 year old father. I am proud to say one of those handwritings was mine, with the word “inexorable”. It really was embroidered on looking exactly as I wrote it, as witness the fact nobody could tell what it said. Julian’s chosen motif for the wedding was “free, enduring love”.

Image
Stella in the dress, with Julian’s dad John in the background. Photo: Isabell Jezek

By Stella’s side stood Julian Assange, whom she described to me as “simply the love of my life”, outfitted in a kilt, shirt, tie, and waistcoat, again specially designed by Vivienne Westwood in a purple based tartan, and featuring hand embroidery, lacing and cloisonne buttons. Unlike Stella’s dress, which she later showed us in detail, I have not seen the kilt but am told the design is relatively traditional.

There was a two minute delay at the start of the ceremony as Julian had no sporran, and his brother Gabriel, resplendent in full highland dress for the first time, removed his own sporran and put it on Julian. Both Julian and Gabriel are proud of their Scottish heritage, in each case through their respective mothers.

The British authorities had done everything they could firstly to prevent, and then to mess up, this wedding. Permission to marry had first been formally requested of the prison service in 2020, and in the end was only granted by involving lawyers and threatening legal action. There followed a whole list of antagonisms on which I shall not dwell, one minor example of which was banning me from the wedding and then lying about it.

But now, on the wedding day, the ordinary, working staff of the prison were delighted to be hosting such a happy event. The searches of the bride were distinctly token and friendly. At the security checks, Julian and Stella’s three year old son Max managed to tangle himself so comprehensively around the legs of one guard that he fell over, and the large guard and small boy then had a hilarious mock wrestle on the floor. The guards who conducted Stella through the jail did so as though they were the escort of a Queen.

Gates and steel doors opened before the procession and were locked again behind them, until deep in the bowels of this maximum security prison they arrived in a banal room, oppressive and completely windowless, with plain magnolia emulsioned walls. It was about twenty feet by fifteen feet, and is used as a store room for the adjoining Chaplaincy. At the back of the room were piles of Muslim prayer mats, boxes of red-jacketed Christian hymnals, stacks of cheap chairs and folded trestles.

From which that one cheap trestle had been set up, and a single row of eight chairs in front of it. Present were Julian and Stella, and their permitted limit of six invited guests. These were Stella’s mother Teresa and brother Adrian, Julian’s father John, brother Gabriel, and Julian and Stella’s two children, Gabriel (4) and Max (3). One of the torments had been that the UK Ministry of Justice insisted that the two tots counted against the six person limit, contrary to the prison’s original advice.

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A very unglamorous photo of the veil I took in Stella’s kitchen, with my illegible “inexorable” in the middle!

Also in the room were the registrar who conducted the civil wedding, the Catholic chaplain and two prison guards, one for each door. Julian was able to hug and hold each of his family as they arrived, even though that was very much against the rules. That kind of physical comfort is something he will have been craving for years, and all eyes were full of tears. Julian’s father John was alarmed by his appearance. Julian was a stooped figure, and worryingly thin, even though obviously very happy in the moment.

The service went ahead as such services do, transcending the grim environment. Light relief was provided by little Gabriel running around and threatening to push each in turn of the room’s two alarm buttons, forcing the guards to chase him around, but in a playful manner. Max, who was disappointed by the slowness in appearance of the promised cake, had fallen asleep bent over at the waist, with his feet on the floor and his head on the chair, as only small children can.

Each person at the wedding was allowed by the registrar to stand up and say a few words about the event and the couple, who having exchanged vows and being pronounced wed, Julian was then invited to kiss the bride, which was perhaps done with more gusto than is usual on these occasions; to the extent that Julian’s brother Gabriel jokingly proffered the bride some tissues!

The legal part of the wedding being over, the couple now received a blessing from the Catholic priest, whose friendship and spiritual and emotional support has been invaluable to Julian during the ordeal of the last few years. The priest had brought a tablecloth and candles, and suddenly the nasty trestle was transformed into an altar. The priest was particularly careful to provide the couple with several more opportunities to kiss during the short ceremony. Then suddenly it was finished.

The authorities had insisted that no wedding photos could be taken, but had eventually agreed that a prison guard could take photos using the prison’s own camera. The prison will eventually give one or two prints of photos of their choosing to Julian, on the condition that they must never be published or made public.

According to the authorities this repression is because photos “could endanger the security of the prison”. Plainly this is a nonsense. How could a picture of the bride and groom, standing in a plain storage room that has no windows, endanger the security of the prison?

Belmarsh prison was comprehensively pictured, including drone footage of the entire jail and lengthy interiors of every part, including the most secure units, in several documentaries including by right wing populist Ross Kemp, in which the Ministry of Justice fully cooperated. The dishonesty of complaining that wedding photos would be a security risk, is a callous and arrogant act by authorities who expect that they can never be held to account.

The truth is that the Establishment has put in years of consistent effort to dehumanise Julian in the public mind. That includes false allegations, ridiculous media stories about him not flushing the toilet, and fake claims that his journalism endangered lives. They simply wish to avoid any public exposure of Julian, the real man, that may challenge their drive to demonise. Wedding photos would never be a danger to the prison, but would be a danger to the state narrative.

This is of course the same reason that Pullitzer prize winning journalist Chris Hedges and I were vetoed by the Ministry of Justice from the original guest list. They did not want words or pictures to convey the love of the occasion or the joy of the family. They could not, however, prevent me from speaking to Stella and to all the guests who were there, and giving you this portrait in words.

After the wedding Julian and Stella were allowed time together – which meant that they were taken to the normal prison visiting room, where they could talk for half an hour amidst the other prisoners who were receiving their visitors, and back with the normal surveillance and restrictions of no touching. This must have been a terrible jolt, preparatory to the still worse jolt of being torn away from the one you love immediately after marrying.

I just cannot imagine how that feels; I suspect few people can.

Stella and Julian’s marriage is indeed a testimony to the power of love, and to the power of hope and human resilience. Just the preceding week their hopes were bruised for the umpteenth time as the Supreme Court refused to hear Julian’s case against the High Court’s agreement with the US appeal on his extradition. Julian faces a possible 175 years in jail under the US Espionage Act, for revealing the war crimes of the very state which is trying to extradite him. As Stella said, to marry in the face of this is both an act of resistance and an assertion of love.

The legal battle goes on, and we shall eventually win.

Those of us who value peace and love and freedom do not often get to feel that we are winning. But we do get days when we can triumph in the affirmation of our values. That Stella and Julian have done. That plain white table witnessed something more romantic than all the tosh of royal weddings and high altars. In Julian’s words, “free, enduring, love”.

They cannot stop that with their steel doors and iron bars.

With grateful thanks to those who donated or subscribed to make this reporting possible. This article, as with all the content of my blog, is entirely free to reproduce and publish, including in translation.
And while we spoke of many things, fools and kings
This he said to me
"The greatest thing
You'll ever learn
Is just to love
And be loved
In return"


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Re: Assange Show Trial: Craig Murray's daily court reports

Postby MacCruiskeen » Tue Mar 29, 2022 7:32 pm

Many thanks for posting that, Harvey.

Viva la vida. Venceremos.
"Ich kann gar nicht so viel fressen, wie ich kotzen möchte." - Max Liebermann,, Berlin, 1933

"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts." - Richard Feynman, NYC, 1966

TESTDEMIC ➝ "CASE"DEMIC
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Re: Assange Show Trial: Craig Murray's daily court reports

Postby Harvey » Tue Apr 19, 2022 4:50 pm

And while we spoke of many things, fools and kings
This he said to me
"The greatest thing
You'll ever learn
Is just to love
And be loved
In return"


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Re: Assange Show Trial: Craig Murray's daily court reports

Postby MacCruiskeen » Tue Apr 19, 2022 5:06 pm

The only way of stopping this is to besiege the prison. There are precedents.

Image
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ ... stille.jpg

It would take a lot of very determined people. It would also be entirely justified, a counter-siege after a brutal two-year war of attrition that's now intensifying daily. COUPVID already brought us the pseudo-plague and the mass pricking with poison, coupled with the planned destruction of "the economy", and now we have an entirely avoidable war in Europe. The worldwide famine they've been busily engineering is imminent.

The now-globalised ruling class is at war with humankind. No joke, no exaggeration. I'm deadly serious, as are they.
"Ich kann gar nicht so viel fressen, wie ich kotzen möchte." - Max Liebermann,, Berlin, 1933

"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts." - Richard Feynman, NYC, 1966

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Re: Assange Show Trial: Craig Murray's daily court reports

Postby RocketMan » Wed Apr 20, 2022 8:48 am

The court has sent the extradition on to Patel.

The machine grinds on.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/4/2 ... xtradition

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is a step closer to being extradited to the United States following an order by a United Kingdom court.

With Assange supporters gathered outside, the Westminster Magistrates’ court in London formally issued an order on Wednesday to extradite the Australian to the US to face spying charges for publishing a trove of classified information more than 10 years ago.
-I don't like hoodlums.
-That's just a word, Marlowe. We have that kind of world. Two wars gave it to us and we are going to keep it.
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