Julian Assange, 2018: Year 6 in Ecuador's Embassy, London

Moderators: Elvis, DrVolin, Jeff

Julian Assange, 2018: Year 6 in Ecuador's Embassy, London

Postby MacCruiskeen » Wed May 09, 2018 11:53 am

continuing on from this thread:

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=29320&p=657388#p657388

An article published today by Laura Tiernan at the World Socialist Web Site gives some idea of what he has endured since August 2012, and of how his living conditions have worsened even further over the last six weeks:


[...]

WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange has been held incommunicado inside Ecuador’s embassy in London for more than one month. His full period of confinement without charge—a crime under international law—stands at 2,710 days.

Ecuador blocked Assange’s phone and Internet access on March 28, depriving him of all visitors, after a meeting in Quito one day earlier with the US military’s Southern Command. Ecuador stated that Twitter posts by Assange on Catalonia and the Skripal affair had “put at risk” Ecuador’s relations with the United Kingdom, the European Union and “other nations.”

The circumstances of Assange’s political asylum in central London resemble a prison cell. Less than 200 metres from Harrods, conditions at 3 Hans Court fully conform to those of “cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment” outlawed under the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights.

It is more than two years since a United Nations human rights panel ruled that Assange’s persecution by the Swedish and British governments amounts to “arbitrary detention” and a violation of international law. Yet the noose around Assange is tightening. Ecuador’s gag order follows statements made last year by US Attorney General Jeff Sessions that the arrest and prosecution of Assange is a “priority.”

[...]

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/0 ... a-m09.html
"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
User avatar
MacCruiskeen
 
Posts: 10558
Joined: Thu Nov 16, 2006 6:47 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Julian Assange, 2018: Year 6 in Ecuador's Embassy, Londo

Postby liminalOyster » Wed May 09, 2018 12:06 pm

But Swedish case misognynist and manning war dead though Snowden OK and RT and Roger Stone and supported Trump and probably sociopath and Trump again and lotsa former comrades now speak ill of and etc etc.

See?

No big world historical event towards transparency autonomy or accountability. Instead either misogynist right wing crypto fascist all along or corrupted by power.

Also insert something here about Pamela Anderson.

Either way a fine example of why we simply must protect those sacred liberal institutions which in turn protect us from bad guys.

OK Cool?

Can we just lock the thread and carry on now? TIA.
"It's not rocket surgery." - Elvis
User avatar
liminalOyster
 
Posts: 1873
Joined: Thu May 05, 2016 10:28 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Julian Assange, 2018: Year 6 in Ecuador's Embassy, Londo

Postby Rory » Fri May 11, 2018 12:51 pm

https://www.rt.com/news/426406-assange- ... myJzQpx3gg

It's a bizarre situation. How long before Ecudor stitches him up, pushes him into the street and Met custody, where he'll find his way to gitmo, or have an unfortunate accident in custody

Julian Assange has been hit with new rules limiting his communications by officials at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. The new measures include bans on using the phone and having visitors, according to WikiLeaks.

The founder of the whistleblowing website has reportedly found himself isolated within the embassy recently. In March, he had his internet access curtailed after taking to Twitter to criticize Britain’s response to the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury, as well as repeated comments about Spain’s dispute with Catalonia. At the time, the Ecuadorian government said Assange had breached a written commitment “not to issue messages that might interfere with other states.”

Speaking with the foreign press Wednesday, Foreign Minister Maria Fernanda Espinosa confirmed that Assange was still being denied internet access while talks between the UK and Ecuador to decide on his fate are still ongoing.

"He still has no access to the Internet and communications. There is a dialogue, there is a will and an interest to move forward in the solution of that matter," she said, according to El Tiempo.

WikiLeaks claims Assange has been silenced because of pressure from the US. The website also says the description of the measures as a “social media ban” undersells the extent to which he’s being held “incommunicado.”

Assange has been a resident at the embassy in Knightsbridge, central London since June 2012. He fled to the embassy after allegedly skipping bail in the UK.

The WikiLeaks founder previously faced questions in Sweden over sexual assault allegations, but the issue was later dropped. Assange has always insisted that he was willing to go to Sweden to discuss the allegations, but feared that Sweden would extradite him to the US over WikiLeaks' release of classified US government cables and documents.

Sweden refused to provide a guarantee that they would not extradite him, despite Amnesty International stating that such a promise should be issued. "First, it will break the current impasse and second it will mean the women who have leveled accusations of sexual assault are not denied justice," the organization's senior director of research, Nicola Duckworth, said back in 2012. Assange always denied the sexual assault allegations against him.

The WikiLeaks founder now faces arrest by UK authorities if he leaves the embassy, due to his alleged breaching of bail conditions when he fled there. As for his possible extradition to the US from the UK, British Prime Minister Theresa May has been vague. "We look at extradition requests when we receive them on a case-by-case basis," she said last year.

In January, the UK also refused to grant Assange diplomatic status which could have potentially given him legal immunity, allowing him to leave the embassy and the UK without being arrested.

The US, for its part, has made clear that it has no intention to go light on Assange. In April 2017, US Attorney General Jeff Sessions said arresting Assange was a "priority." That same month, then-CIA Director Mike Pompeo, who now serves as US Secretary of State, referred to the WikiLeaks founder as a "fraud" and a "coward hiding behind a screen."
Rory
 
Posts: 1596
Joined: Tue Jun 10, 2008 2:08 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Julian Assange, 2018: Year 6 in Ecuador's Embassy, Londo

Postby MacCruiskeen » Sat May 12, 2018 2:48 pm

Their vindictiveness knows no bounds:

Ecuador hints it may hand over Julian Assange to Britain and the US
By James Cogan
12 May 2018

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/05/12/assa-m12.html

Julian Assange is in immense danger. Remarks made this week by Ecuador’s foreign minister suggest that her government may be preparing to renege on the political asylum it granted to the WikiLeaks editor in 2012 and hand him over to British and then American authorities.

On March 28, under immense pressure from the governments in the US, Britain and other powers, Ecuador imposed a complete ban on Assange having any Internet or phone contact with the outside world, and blocked his friends and supporters from physically visiting him. For 45 days, he has not been heard from.

Ecuadorian Foreign Minister Maria Fernanda Espinosa stated in a Spanish-language interview on Wednesday that her government and Britain “have the intention and the interest that this be resolved.” Moves were underway, she said, to reach a “definite agreement” on Assange.

If Assange falls into the hands of the British state, he faces being turned over to the US. Last year, US Attorney General Jeff Sessions stated that putting Assange on trial for espionage was a “priority.” CIA director Mike Pompeo, now secretary of state, asserted that WikiLeaks was a “non-state hostile intelligence service.”

In 2010, WikiLeaks courageously published information leaked by then Private Bradley [now Chelsea] Manning that exposed war crimes committed by American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. WikiLeaks also published, in partnership with some of the world’s major newspapers, tens of thousands of secret diplomatic cables, exposing the daily anti-democratic intrigues of US imperialism and numerous other governments.

For that, Assange was relentlessly persecuted by the Obama administration. By November 2010, it had convened a secret grand jury and had a warrant issued for his arrest on charges of espionage—charges that can carry the death sentence.

[...]

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/0 ... a-m12.html


"I think they are trying to kill him. It is torture” - Pamela Anderson in an open letter to Kanye West. Good on her; she didn't have to stick her neck out, but she did. That took courage, which is rare and getting rarer by the day. If she keeps up with it, she too will be living dangerously.
"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
User avatar
MacCruiskeen
 
Posts: 10558
Joined: Thu Nov 16, 2006 6:47 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Julian Assange, 2018: Year 6 in Ecuador's Embassy, Londo

Postby Rory » Wed May 16, 2018 1:30 pm

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives ... f-assange/

Craig Murray speaking to the latest establishment hitpieces, courtesy of the grauniad. It itself might be a topic for study in years to come. How a somewhat self rigorous, but arguably principled outlet for progressive and left wing journalism became yet another vector for state propaganda.

It's one of the curious facets of late capitalism to see how the power blocs actively manipulate charities, formerly progressive media, aid agencies, etc stripmining them of their effective utility, using them as vectors in information and proxy warfare, eroding their credibility terminally, along the way.

The long term implications are appalling

...


The Guardian article gives another complete lie, this time in the Harding penned section, where it says that “sources” reveal that Assange had hacked into the Embassy’s communications. That is completely untrue as are the “facts” given about Julian’s relationship with the Embassy staff, whom I know well. It is plain that these “sources” are separate from the Ecuadorean security dossier published in Focus Ecuador by the CIA. I would bet any money that these anonymous “sources” are as always Harding’s mates in the UK security services. That the Guardian should allow itself to be used in a security service disinformation campaign designed to provoke distrust between Assange and Embassy staff, is appalling.

I had a front row seat in 2010 when the Guardian suddenly switched from championing Assange to attacking him, in a deeply unedifying row about the rights and money from a projected autobiography. But they have sunk to a new low today in a collaboration between long term MI6 mouthpiece Luke Harding and the CIA financed neo-con propagandists of Focus Ecuador.

The Guardian pieces are full of truly startling revelations. Would you ever have guessed, for example, that Julian Assange was visited by his Wikileaks colleague Sarah Harrison, his friends Vaughn Smith and, err, me, and his lawyer Gareth Peirce?! This great scandal, Harding states in an assertion as evidence-free as his entire “Russia hacked the elections” book, “will interest Mueller”. Despite the fact none of these visits was secret and mine was broadcast live to the world by Wikileaks on Brexit referendum night.

The aim of the “Guardian” piece is of course to help urge Ecuador to expel Julian from the Embassy. There is no doubt that the actions of Lenin Moreno, under extreme pressure from the USA, have been severely disappointing, though I am more inclined to praise Ecuador for its courageous defiance of the US than blame it for eventually caving in to the vast resources the CIA is spending on undermining it. It is also worth noting that, post the Francoist human rights abuses in Catalonia, it was Spain and the EU joining in US pressure which tipped the balance.

Julian’s principled refusal to abandon the Catalan cause, against direct Ecuadorean threats to do precisely what they have now done, has not received the credit it deserves.

The same Blairites who supported the latest Israeli massacre will this morning be revelling in the Guardian’s celebration of the silencing of a key dissident voice. I have no wish to try and understand these people.
Rory
 
Posts: 1596
Joined: Tue Jun 10, 2008 2:08 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Julian Assange, 2018: Year 6 in Ecuador's Embassy, Londo

Postby MacCruiskeen » Wed May 16, 2018 5:37 pm

Ecuador’s Ex-President Rafael Correa Denounces Treatment of Julian Assange as “Torture”

https://theintercept.com/2018/05/16/ecu ... s-torture/

some very interesting details in this greenwald article published today
"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
User avatar
MacCruiskeen
 
Posts: 10558
Joined: Thu Nov 16, 2006 6:47 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Julian Assange, 2018: Year 6 in Ecuador's Embassy, Londo

Postby Rory » Thu May 17, 2018 2:19 pm

https://www.buzzfeed.com/amphtml/markdi ... ssion=true

He's an inconvenient presence for everyone these days.

The UK inquiry looking into Russia and the Cambridge Analytica scandal had agreed a provisional date for a public interview session with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, before abandoning the plan after a call from the Foreign Office, BuzzFeed News has learned.

...

Assange’s lawyer Robinson told BuzzFeed News the situation raised questions about foreign officials trying to intervene in the conduct of a committee.

“It is disturbing if the government has intervened in what should be an independent Parliamentary process,” Robinson said.

“It is particularly concerning if the Foreign office intervened behind the scenes to prevent Julian Assange from speaking to the Committee, and giving evidence directly that could have been interrogated and informed the Committee.”
Rory
 
Posts: 1596
Joined: Tue Jun 10, 2008 2:08 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Julian Assange, 2018: Year 6 in Ecuador's Embassy, Londo

Postby MacCruiskeen » Fri May 18, 2018 11:24 am

Moreno tugs forelock, obeys Pompeo, Trump and Bolton:

Ecuador removes Julian Assange's extra security
5 hours ago

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-44166810


They want him dead.
"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
User avatar
MacCruiskeen
 
Posts: 10558
Joined: Thu Nov 16, 2006 6:47 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Julian Assange, 2018: Year 6 in Ecuador's Embassy, Londo

Postby conniption » Thu Jun 07, 2018 6:54 am

ICH

John Pilger And Roger Waters Support Vigils And Rallies For Julian Assange

By John Pilger

June 04, 2018 "Information Clearing House"
- On 19 June 2018, it will be six years since Julian Assange was forced to take refuge in the Ecuadorean embassy in London. He had been warned that the US planned an extradition warrant for his arrest. His 'crime' was that of a scrupulous editor - WikiLeaks had revealed the war crimes of the US. Today, Julian has never been more isolated, and his health is failing.

On Sunday 17 June, the SEP will stage a rally for Julian in the heart of Sydney, Australia, his homeland. This is backed by John Pilger, Roger Waters, Julian Burnside QC and Terry Hicks, father of former Guantanamo prisoner, David Hicks. John Pilger will address the rally from the steps of Sydney Town Hall, which starts at 1pm.

On Tuesday 19 June, there will be a rally and vigil outside the Ecuadorean embassy in London, beginning at 6pm. Other vigils will be held outside British embassies around the world on the same day. In Dublin, Nobel Peace Prize winner Mariead Maguire and members of the Irish parliament, Clare Daly and Mick Wallace, will speak in support of Julian outside the British embassy.

This article was originally published by "John Pilger" -

The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Information Clearing House.


Comments (24)

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49562.htm


~~~

ICH

Justice and Freedom For Julian Assange Mean Free Speech For Us All

By John Pilger

June 05, 2018 "Information Clearing House" - The Courage Foundation announces an urgent campaign to support Julian Assange and demand his freedom. Keep an eye on our liveblog for updates.

This month, it will be six years since Julian was forced to take refuge in the Ecuadorean embassy in London. He had been warned; the US Department of Justice was likely to file an application with Britain’s Home Office for his extradition to the United States. The allegations against Julian and WikiLeaks in the US were subsequently declared secret by a US District Court judge, but it has since been confirmed that a grand jury in Virginia has concocted a number of possible ‘charges’ against the WikiLeaks founder.

The most likely of these is ‘espionage,’ which harks back to a long-defunct First World War law designed to punish conscientious objectors.

Julian is not an American; neither has he ‘betrayed’ any state. His ‘crime’ has been free journalism and publishing, which are protected under the US Constitution, a document whose sanctity has apparently been jettisoned.

WikiLeaks has done no more than the New York Times and the Washington Post in their celebrated past—it has revealed the truth about rapacious wars and the machinations of a corrupt elite. In response to this truth-telling, a Cold War fantasy known as ‘Russiagate’ has attempted to paint Julian—and by extension all journalists—as some ‘spies.’

What CNN and the rest of the media do not tell you is that the most senior of US intelligence have admitted under oath that their agencies have found not the slightest evidence to link Assange or WikiLeaks to Russia.

Julian’s status as a political refugee under the 1951 Convention has the backing of the United Nations, whose Working Party on Arbitrary Detentions has demanded an end to his persecution. The Working Party, one of the world’s highest authorities on international law, conducted an investigation in which the British Government took part, and found unanimously in Julian’s favour.

The UN calls on Britain to honour its responsibilities under the Convention and give Julian right of passage out of the embassy.

Although his health is suffering, Julian cannot go to a hospital for an X-ray as almost certainly he will be arrested.

Since Easter, Julian’s isolation has become extreme; according to Human Rights Watch, “His refuge in the embassy looks more and more like solitary confinement.”

He is denied basic communications; he is refused access to the phone and internet and visitors are forbidden. In forging a new, deferential relationship with the United States, President Lenín Moreno and the Ecuadorean government clearly aim to make life so difficult for Julian that he is silenced completely or he is forced to leave the embassy, into the waiting arms of the police.

A US extradition application is likely to follow and Julian will be destined for the kind of penal hell-hole that Chelsea Manning endured. The former president of Ecuador, Rafael Correa, whose government granted Julian political asylum, has condemned his treatment as ‘torture.’

We at Courage ask people to support vigils on June 19—at the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, 6-8pm, info here, as well as the demonstration in Sydney, Australia on 17 June, at 1pm at Town Hall Square, info here.

John Pilger, Courage Trustee

This article was originally published by "The Courage Foundation" -


Comments (5)

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49572.htm


~~~

ICH

Did CIA’s Digital Innovation Directorate Do the ‘Russian Hacking’?

Circumstantial evidence points in that direction, as Ray explains in this 16-minute video.

Must Watch

Ray McGovern at Left Forum 2018


https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_cont ... 75RKjfJ18M

June 06, 2018 "Information Clearing House" - The bus ride to NYC from Washington on June 1 was unusually long, so Ray was a bit weary and bedraggled arriving at John Jay University for the Left Forum. But Wilton Vought, the real-pro videographer who runs Other Voices, Other Choices, had just finished setting up for the forum and asked to interview Ray.

Even were Ray to have been in top shape, 16 minutes do not suffice. It is not that the material is so complicated; it just requires two things: (1) more than 16 minutes (ideally including Q & A) and (2) listeners/readers willing to make the effort to understand seemingly intimidating technical issues. Even Ray has been able to grasp the relevance of the basic principle of physics called fluid dynamics, which explains, as conclusively as physics can, why the download/copy at the DNC on July 5, 2016 could not have been a hack — by the Russians or by anyone else.

Those with lingering questions can find answers in the three links below. Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), especially members with decades of experience at NSA, have been glued to this issue like chewing gum — with no axes to grind.

Ray welcomed the chance to address these key issues before the forum even started. Besides, Ray likes New York in June; how about you?

Ray McGovern served as an Army Infantry/Intelligence officer prior to working for 27 years as a CIA analyst. He is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS). http://raymcgovern.com

Links:
https://consortiumnews.com/2017/07/24/intel-vets-challenge-russia-hack-evidence/
https://consortiumnews.com/2017/09/20/m ... narrative/
https://consortiumnews.com/2017/01/20/o ... hack-case/
conniption
 
Posts: 2480
Joined: Sun Nov 11, 2012 10:01 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Julian Assange, 2018: Year 6 in Ecuador's Embassy, Londo

Postby conniption » Fri Jun 15, 2018 6:00 am

consortium news

The Eerie Silence Surrounding the Assange Case

June 9, 2018

52 Comments

Julian Assange remains cut off from the world in Ecuador’s London embassy, shut off from friends, relatives and thousands of supporters, leaving him unable to do his crucial work, as John Pilger discusses with Dennis J. Bernstein.

By Dennis J Bernstein

In a recent communication between Randy Credico, an Assange supporter, comic and radio producer, and Adam Schiff, the ranking member on the House Judiciary Committee, Assange’s fear of arrest and extradition to the US was confirmed by the leader of the Russia-gate frenzy.

Credico received the following response from Schiff after meeting the the Congressman’s staff, in which Credico was trying to connect Assange with Schiff: “Our committee would be willing to interview Assange when he is in U.S. Custody and not before.”

Dennis Bernstein spoke with John Pilger, a close friend and supporter of Assange on May 29. The interview began with the statement Bernstein delivered for Pilger at the Left Forum last weekend in New York on a panel devoted to Assange entitled, “Russia-gate and WikiLeaks”.

Click here to listen to this interview.
https://kpfa.org/episode/flashpoints-may-29-2018/


Pilger’s Statement

“There is a silence among many who call themselves left. The silence is Julian Assange. As every false accusation has fallen away, every bogus smear shown to be the work of political enemies, Julian stands vindicated as one who has exposed a system that threatens humanity. The Collateral Damage video, the war logs of Afghanistan and Iraq, the Cablegate revelations, the Venezuela revelations, the Podesta email revelations … these are just a few of the storms of raw truth that have blown through the capitals of rapacious power. The fakery of Russia-gate, the collusion of a corrupt media and the shame of a legal system that pursues truth-tellers have not been able to hold back the raw truth of WikiLeaks revelations. They have not won, not yet, and they have not destroyed the man. Only the silence of good people will allow them to win. Julian Assange has never been more isolated. He needs your support and your voice. Now more than ever is the time to demand justice and free speech for Julian. Thank you.”

Dennis Bernstein: We continue our discussion of the case of Julian Assange, now in the Ecuadorian embassy in Great Britain. John Pilger, it is great to talk to you again. But it is a profound tragedy, John, the way they are treating Julian Assange, this prolific journalist and publisher who so many other journalists have depended on in the past. He has been totally left out in the cold to fend for himself.

John Pilger: I have never known anything like it. There is a kind of eerie silence around the Julian Assange case. Julian has been vindicated in every possible way and yet he is isolated as few people are these days. He is cut off from the very tools of his trade, visitors aren’t allowed. I was in London recently and I couldn’t see him, although I spoke to people who had seen him. Rafael Correa, the former president of Ecuador, said recently that he regarded what they are doing to Julian now as torture. It was Correa’s government that gave Julian political refuge, which has been betrayed now by his successor, the government led by Lenin Moreno, which is back to sucking up to the United States in the time-honored way, with Julian as the pawn and victim.

Should be a ‘Constitutional Hero’

But really it comes down to the British government. Although he is still in a foreign embassy and actually has Ecuadorian nationality, his right of passage out of that embassy should be guaranteed by the British government. The United Nations Working Party on Unlawful Detentions has made that clear. Britain took part in an investigation which determined that Julian was a political refugee and that a great miscarriage of justice had been imposed on him. It is very good that you are doing this, Dennis, because even in the media outside the mainstream, there is this silence about Julian. The streets outside the embassy are virtually empty, whereas they should be full of people saying that we are with you. The principles involved in this case are absolutely clear-cut. Number one is justice. The injustice done to this man is legion, both in terms of the bogus Swedish case and now the fact that he must remain in the embassy and can’t leave without being arrested, extradited to the United States and ending up in a hell hole. But it is also about freedom of speech, about our right to know, which is enshrined in the United States Constitution. If the Constitution were taken literally, Julian would be a constitutional hero, actually. Instead, I understand the indictment they are trying to concoct reads like a charge of espionage! It’s so ridiculous.That is the situation as I see it, Dennis. It is not a happy one but it is one that people should rally to quickly.

DB: His journalistic brethren are sounding like his prosecutors. They want to get behind Russia-gate freaks like Congressman Adam Schiff and Mike Pompeo, who would like to see Assange in jail forever or even executed. How do you respond to journalists acting like prosecutors, some of whom used his material to do stories? This is a terrible time for journalism.

JP:You are absolutely right: It is a terrible time for journalism. I have never known anything quite like it in my career. That said, it is not new. There has always been a so-called mainstream which really comes down to great power in media. It has always existed, particularly in the United States. The Pulitzer Prize this year was awarded to The New York Times andThe Washington Post for witch-hunting around Russia-gate! They were praised for “how deeply sourced their investigations were.” Their investigations turned up not a shred of real evidence to suggest any serious Russian intervention in the 2016 election.

Like Webb

Image
Pilger and Assange, London. (Oct. 7, 2011 – Photo: Oli Scarff/Getty Images Europe)

The Julian Assange case reminds me of the Gary Webb case. Bob Parry was one of Gary Webb’s few supporters in the media. Webb’s “Dark Alliance” series contained evidence that cocaine trafficking was going on with the connivance of the CIA. Later Webb was hounded by fellow journalists and, unable to find work, he eventually committed suicide. The CIA Inspector General subsequently vindicated him. Now, Julian Assange is a long way from taking his own life. His resilience is remarkable. But he is still a human being and he has taken such a battering.

Probably the hardest thing for him to take is the utter hypocrisy of news organizations—like The New York Times, which published the WikiLeaks “War Logs” and “Cablegate,” The Washington Post and The Guardian, which has taken a vindictive delight in tormenting Julian. The Guardian a few years ago got a Pulitzer Prize writing about Snowden. But their coverage of Snowden left him in Hong Kong. It was WikiLeaks that got Snowden out of Hong Kong and to safety.

Professionally, I find this one of the most unsavory and immoral things I have seen in my career. The persecution of this man by huge media organizations which have drawn great benefit from WikiLeaks. One of Assange’s great tormentors, The Guardian‘s Luke Harding, made a great deal of money with a Hollywood version of a book that he and David Lee wrote in which they basically attacked their source. I suppose you have to be a psychiatrist to understand all of this. My understanding is that so many of these journalists are shamed. They realize that WikiLeaks has done what they should have done a long time ago, and that is to tell us how governments lie.

DB:One thing that disturbs me greatly is the way in which the Western corporate press speculate about Russian involvement in the U.S. 2016 election, that it was a hack through Julian Assange. Any serious investigator would want to know who would be motivated. And yet the possibility that it might be the dozen or so pissed-off people who went to work for the Clinton machine and learned from the inside that the DNC was all about getting rid of Bernie Sanders…this is not a part of the story!

Eight Hundred Thousand Disclosures on Russia

JP:What happened to Sanders and the way that he was rolled by the Clinton organization, everybody knows that this is the story. And now we have the DNC suing WikiLeaks! There’s a kind of farcical element to this. I mean, none of this came from the Russians. That WikiLeaks is somehow in bed with the Russians is ludicrous. WikiLeaks published about 800,000 major disclosures about Russia, some of them extremely critical of the Russian government. If you are a government and you are doing something untoward or you are lying to your people and WikiLeaks gets the documents to show it, they will publish no matter who you are, be they the United States or Russia.

DB:Randy Credico, because of his work and his decision to devote a very high-profile series to the persecution of Julian Assange, recently found himself under attack. He went to the White House Press Roast and, after having a nice discussion with Congressman Schiff, he yelled out “What about Julian Assange?” The room was packed full of reporters but Randy was attacked and dragged out. It was if everyone there was embarrassed to recognize that one of their brethren was being brutalized.

JP:Randy shouted some truth. It is very similar to what happened to Ray McGovern. Ray is a former member of the CIA but extremely principled. I might suggest he is a renegade now.

DB:It was hysterical to watch these four armed guards who kept shouting “Stop resisting, stop resisting!” and they are beating the hell out of him!

JP:I thought the image of Ray being hauled off was particularly telling. These four overweight, obviously ill-trained young men manhandling Ray, who is 78 years old. There was something highly emblematic about that for me. He stood up to challenge the fact that the CIA was about to hand over leadership to a person who had been in charge of torture. It is both shocking and surreal, which of course the Julian Assange case is as well. But real journalism should be able to get through the shocking and the surreal and get to the truth. There is so much collusion now, with all these dark and menacing developments. It is almost as if the word “journalism” is becoming blighted.

DB:There has certainly been a lot of collusion when it comes to Israel. Then the word “collusion” is quite appropriate.

Image
Wikileaks’ “Collateral Damage” video.

JP:That’s the ultimate collusion. But that’s collusion with silence. Never has there been a collusion like the one between the U.S. and Israel. It suggests another word and that is “immunity.” It has a moral immunity, a cultural immunity, a geopolitical immunity, a legal immunity, and certainly a media immunity. We see the gunning down of over 60 people on the day of the inauguration of the new U.S. embassy in Jerusalem. Israel has some of the most wickedly experimental munitions in the world and they fired them at people who were protesting the occupation of their homeland and trying to remind people of the Nakba and the right of return. In the media these were described as “clashes.” Although they did become so bad that The New York Times in a later edition changed its front page headline to say that Israel was actually killing people. A rare moment, indeed, when the immunity, the collusion was interrupted. All the talk of Iran and nuclear weapons is without any reference to the biggest nuclear power in the Middle East.

DB:What would you say have been the contributions that Julian Assange has made in this age of censorship and cowardice in journalism? Where does he come into the picture?

JP:I think it comes down to information. If you go back to when WikiLeaks started, when Julian was sitting in his hotel room in Paris beginning to put the whole thing together, one of the first things he wrote was that there is a morality in transparency, that we have a right to know what those who wish to control our lives are doing in secret. The right to know what governments are doing in our name—on our behalf or to our detriment—is our moral right. Julian feels very passionately about this. There were times when he could have compromised slightly in order to possibly help his situation. There were times when I said to him, “Why don’t you just suspend that for a while and go along with it?” Of course, I knew beforehand what his answer would be and that was “no.” The enormous amount of information that has come from WikiLeaks, particularly in recent years, has amounted to an extraordinary public service. I was reading just the other day a 2006 WikiLeaks cable from the U.S. embassy in Caracas which was addressed to other agencies in the region. This was four years after the U.S. tried to get rid of Chavez in a coup. It detailed how subversion should work. Of course, they dressed it up as human rights work and so on. I was reading this official document thinking how the information contained in it was worth years of the kind of distorted reporting from Venezuela. It also reminds us that so-called “meddling” by Russia in the U.S. is just nonsense. The word “meddling” doesn’t apply to the kind of action implied in this document. It is intervention in another country’s affairs.

WikiLeaks has done that all over the world. It has given people the information they have a right to have. They had a right to find out from the so-called “War Logs” the criminality of our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. They had a right to find out about Cablegate. That’s when, on Clinton’s watch, we learned that the NSA was gathering personal information on members of the United Nations Security Council, including their credit card numbers. You can see why Julian made enemies. But he should also have made a huge number of friends. This is critical information because it tells us how power works and we will never learn about it otherwise. I think WikiLeaks has opened a world of transparency and put flesh on the expression “right to know.” This must explain why he is attacked so much, because that is so threatening. The enemy to great power is not the likes of the Taliban, it is us.

DB:And who can forget the release of the “collateral murder” footage by Chelsea Manning?

JP:That kind of thing is not uncommon. Vietnam was meant to be the open war but really it wasn’t. There weren’t the cameras around. It is indeed shocking information but it informs people, and we have Chelsea Manning’s courage to thank for that.

DB:Yes, and the thanks he got was seven years in solitary confinement. They want to prosecute Assange and maybe hang him from the rafters in Congress, but what about Judith Miller and The New York Times lying the West into war? There is no end of horrific examples of what passes for journalism, in contrast to the amazing contribution that Julian Assange has made.

Click here to listen to this interview.
https://kpfa.org/episode/flashpoints-may-29-2018/

Dennis J. Bernstein is a host of “Flashpoints” on the Pacifica radio network and the author of Special Ed: Voices from a Hidden Classroom. You can access the audio archives at http://www.flashpoints.net. You can get in touch with the author at dbernstein@igc.org.

https://consortiumnews.com/2018/06/09/t ... ange-case/
conniption
 
Posts: 2480
Joined: Sun Nov 11, 2012 10:01 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Julian Assange, 2018: Year 6 in Ecuador's Embassy, Londo

Postby conniption » Fri Jun 15, 2018 6:42 am

paul craig roberts

In The Western World Truth Is An Endangered Species: Come To Its Support

June 10, 2018

Paul Craig Roberts

Nowhere in the Western world is truth respected. Even universities are imposing censorship and speech control. Governments are shutting down, and will eventually criminalize, all explanations that differ from official ones. The Western world no longer has a print and TV media. In its place there is a propaganda ministry for the ruling elite.

Whistleblowers are prosecuted and imprisoned despite their protection by federal statue. The US Department of Justice is a Department of Injustice. It has been a long time since any justice flowed from the DOJ.

The total corruption of the print and TV media led to the rise of Internet media such as Wikileaks, led by Julian Assange, a prisoner since 2012.

Assange is an Australian and Ecuadorian citizen. He is not an American citizen. Yet US politicians and media claim that he is guilty of treason because he published official documents leaked to Wikileaks that prove the duplicity and criminality of the US government.

It is strictly impossible for a non-citizen to be guilty of treason. It is strictly impossible under the US Constitution for the reporting of facts to be spying. The function of the media is to expose and to hold accountable the government. This function is no longer performed by the Western print and TV media.

Washington wants revenge and is determined to get it. If Assange were as corrupt at the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, National Public Radio, MSNBC, etc., he would have reported the leaker to Washington, not published the information, and retired as a multi-millionaire with Washington’s thanks. However, unfortunately for Assange, he had integrity.

Integrity today in the Western world has no value. You cannot find integrity in the government, in the global corporations, in the universities and schools, and most certainly not in the media.

After leaving Assange, an Australian citizen, to Washington’s mercy since 2012, belated pro-Assange protests in Australia forced the US vassal state to come to Assange’s aid before the new corrupt president of Ecuador sells him to Washington for multi-millons of dollars by revoking his asylum.

When the story was printed in the Sydney Morning Herald, the incompetent or brainwashed, or bought-and-paid-for journalist, Nick Miller, wrote:

“Assange entered the embassy on June 19, 2012, after he had exhausted his appeals against an extradition order to go to Sweden to face rape and sexual assault allegations. Swedish authorities have since closed their investigation, saying it couldn’t continue without Assange’s presence in their country.” https://www.smh.com.au/world/europe/aus ... 4zk7w.html

Nick Miller has committed libel, whether from his ignorance or from pay.

There was no extradition order from Sweden for Assange to be returned to Sweden “to face rape and sexual assault allegations.” No such charges were issued by the Swedish prosecutorial office, and no such charges were made by the women involved.

The case had already been closed by the Swedish prosecutorial office, and the two women who willingly shared their beds with Assange did not press any charges. The Swedish female prosecutor, who many suspect reopened the closed case at the urging of Washington, wrote in the extradition request that she only wanted Assange for questioning.

Normally, extraditions are not granted for questioning. There has to be actual criminal charges, and there were no such charges against Assange. However, under pressure from Washington, a corrupt UK court granted, perhaps for the first time in history, extradition for questioning.

Assange’s attorneys understood that if Assange left his embassy refuge and travelled to Sweden to be questioned, there was nothing to prevent Sweden from turning him over to Washington to be tortured, as Washington does, into confession of some crime.

Consequently, Assange’s attorneys told the Swedish female prosecutor, a person who seems shortchanged on integrity, that Assange would be available for questioning in his place of refuge. The prosecutor, showing her hand, refused to question Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy in London. After refusing for many months while the presstitutes blackened Assange’s reputation as a “rapist who was escaping justice,” the sort of ignorant nonsense that Nick Miller writes, the prosecutor consented to go to London to interview Assange.

As nothing incriminating emerged from the questioning and as neither of the women claimed that they were raped, the female prosecutorclosed the case for the second time. But the corrupt British would not release Assange. They claimed that he was wanted for jumping bail, an argument that made no sense as the charge for his arrest had been dismissed. But Washington insisted, and British “justice” again served Washington instead of justice.

The basis of the political assault on Assange came from the concern of one of his willing sex partners that he had not used a condom. With everyone worried crazy about HIV and Aids, the woman inquired at a Swedish public office if Assange could be required to take a HIV/Aids test. Assange, not realizing his vulnerability, apparently refused the test, and thus opened himself to a controversy that Washington immediately took advantage of.
It is safe for rock stars to have groupies, but not for truth-tellers.

If you understand the extreme extent to which the US government has gone, riding roughshod over many laws and traditions, to destroy Assange, perhaps you can understand the threats that the very few of us who have the education, experience, and integrity to tell you the truth live under.

When I write an article, it does not inform me. I already know. When I inform you, I am doing so at my risk. I am not going to take this risk if readers do not support this website. I do this for you. If it is not important to you, I have no need to do it.

You need to support truth-tellers as we are a disappearing breed under constant assault.

https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2018/0 ... e-support/
conniption
 
Posts: 2480
Joined: Sun Nov 11, 2012 10:01 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Julian Assange, 2018: Year 6 in Ecuador's Embassy, Londo

Postby Elvis » Fri Jun 15, 2018 2:52 pm

Thanks, conniption — John Pilger is like a ray of sunshine.
“The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists.” ― Joan Robinson
User avatar
Elvis
 
Posts: 7411
Joined: Fri Apr 11, 2008 7:24 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Julian Assange, 2018: Year 6 in Ecuador's Embassy, Londo

Postby Sounder » Fri Jun 15, 2018 8:51 pm

John Pilger said....
It detailed how subversion should work. Of course, they dressed it up as human rights work and so on. I was reading this official document thinking how the information contained in it was worth years of the kind of distorted reporting from Venezuela. It also reminds us that so-called “meddling” by Russia in the U.S. is just nonsense. The word “meddling” doesn’t apply to the kind of action implied in this document. It is intervention in another country’s affairs.



This is the point that any discerning person can see and it shows well the absurdity of the Russia-phobic element in our population.
Sounder
 
Posts: 4054
Joined: Thu Nov 09, 2006 8:49 am
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Julian Assange, 2018: Year 6 in Ecuador's Embassy, Londo

Postby conniption » Mon Sep 24, 2018 5:11 pm

RT

Guardian’s ‘deliberate lies’ over Assange Russia plot slammed by Craig Murray

Published time: 24 Sep, 2018

Image
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange stands on the balcony to speak to the media outside the Ecuador embassy in west London August 19, 2012 / Reuters

British ambassador turned whistleblower, Craig Murray, has accused the Guardian of ‘deliberate lies’ over their reporting that Russian diplomats plotted to covertly help Wikileaks’ Julian Assange flee the UK to Russia.

Murray stated that he was “closely involved” with Assange and Fidel Narvaez, an Ecuadorian consul then woking in the UK, “at the end of last year in discussing possible future destinations for Julian.” The blogger added: “It is not only the case that Russia did not figure in those plans, it is a fact that Julian directly ruled out the possibility of going to Russia as undesirable.”

Craig Murray

@CraigMurrayOrg

Extraordinary and Deliberate Lies from the Guardian - I am just back from a family funeral - one of a succession - and a combination of circumstances had left me feeling pretty down lately, and not blogging much. But I have to drag myself to the keyboard http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/ ... -guardian/
11:02 AM - Sep 23, 2018

1,569
1,284 people are talking about this


The original Guardian article, published on September 21, reads: “One ultimate destination, multiple sources have said, was Russia, where Assange would not be at risk of extradition to the US. The plan was abandoned after it was deemed too risky.”

The Russian embassy in London called the article a clear example of "disinformation and fake news by British media.”

According to Murray, Narvaez told the Guardian that there was “no truth” in the story. The publication ran the story, which was written by, among others, former Guardian Moscow correspondent Luke Harding, regardless. The piece relied on four separate sources for their claims, though they give no more details than that.

Of the Guardian’s sources, Murray states: “I strongly suspect that, as usual, MI6 tool Luke Harding’s “anonymous sources” are in fact the UK security services, and this piece is entirely black propaganda produced by MI6.”

Harding worked for the Guardian in Russia for four years before his visa expired. After being subsequently refused entry to Russia, Harding claimed he had been expelled from the country for being critical of the Kremlin, a claim denied by the Russian government. He has since wrote extensively on Russia while based in the UK.

Jonathan Cook @Jonathan_K_Cook

Who to believe on Russia's supposed plans to spring Julian Assange? Former British ambassador turned whistleblower on torture Craig Murray or the Guardian's rent-a-hack and best pal to the UK secret services Luke Harding? Hmm... tough one https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives ... -guardian/
12:05 AM - Sep 24, 2018

238
164 people are talking about this


“It is very serious indeed when a newspaper like the Guardian prints a tissue of deliberate lies in order to spread fake news on behalf of the security services. I cannot find words eloquent enough to express the depth of my contempt for Harding and Katharine Viner, who have betrayed completely the values of journalism. The aim of the piece is evidently to add a further layer to the fake news of Wikileaks’ (non-existent) relationship to Russia as part of the “Hillary didn’t really lose” narrative. I am, frankly, rather shocked,” Murray concluded.

Mysterious disappearance: Cybersecurity expert with links to Assange & WikiLeaks goes missing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovMrYKBRRVo
RT
Published on Sep 3, 2018

Police in Norway are looking into the disappearance of Arjen Kamphuis, a Dutch citizen with links to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Versions on Twitter have ranged from a hiking incident, to a secret assignment, to a CIA hit.


In a final twist, Murray provided an update, noting that following his meeting with Assange he went straight to the Guardian’s office for an off-the-record meeting with veteran reporter Ewen MacAskill. Murray told the journalist in a meeting “on the strategy for Julian” that Russia as destination “was ruled out.”

Following the Guardian’s publication, Murray attempted to get in contact with MacAskill only to hear the veteran reporter had “'retired' the day the lying article was published.”

https://www.rt.com/uk/439213-assange-ru ... eaks-lies/
conniption
 
Posts: 2480
Joined: Sun Nov 11, 2012 10:01 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Julian Assange, 2018: Year 6 in Ecuador's Embassy, Londo

Postby conniption » Mon Sep 24, 2018 6:47 pm

^ ^ ^ ^ ^
off-guardian

Published on September 24, 2018
Comments 16

Craig Murray: the Guardian tells “deliberate lies” about Assange and alleged Russia ties

Catte

Image

Craig Murray’s allegations about the extent of the selectivity and frank dishonesty underpinning the Guardian’s recent “reveal” regarding Julian Assange and his alleged (and seemingly entirely invented) bid to “escape” to Russia, should shock us all. Even those of us all too familiar with the Graun’s decline, and with self-styled journalist Luke Harding’s previous collisions with basic ethics and confused relationship with veridical reality.

For those not familiar with the story, here’s a quick recap...

https://off-guardian.org/2018/09/24/cra ... ssia-ties/
conniption
 
Posts: 2480
Joined: Sun Nov 11, 2012 10:01 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Next

Return to General Discussion

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: Belligerent Savant and 42 guests