For Julian Assange, the price of freedom has been five years in jail while he fought extradition to the United States to face charges no democracy worthy of the name should ever have brought.
Joe Biden says he’s “considering” an end to the prosecution of Julian Assange. Anthony Albanese says, “enough is enough,” but not much else. Rex Patrick and Philip Dorling discuss the latest developments in the Assange case.by Philip Dorling and Rex Patrick | Apr 13, 2024
UK judges have denied Julian Assange’s request to file new evidence that the CIA plotted to kill Assange. But the same judges have allowed the US government to file new evidence to give assurances that Assange won’t face the death penalty so Assange can be extradited to the US.
A rally held in Melbourne saw speakers unite against the political system that has imprisoned Julian Assange and crippled free speech, writes Dr Binoy Kampmark.
He exposed that Obama, Hillary Clinton and the C.I.A. backed the June 2009 military coup in Honduras that overthrew the democratically-elected president Manuel Zelaya, replacing him with a murderous and corrupt military regime.
He revealed that the United States secretly launched missile, bomb and drone attacks on Yemen, killing scores of civilians.
No other contemporary journalist has come close to matching his revelations.
Lawyers for the WikiLeaks publisher charge that while British courts looked the other way, the U. S. has been distorting and withholding evidence to engineer his extradition, Cathy Vogan reports. By Cathy Vogan in London Special to Consortium News
A clue to some of the legal arguments Julian Assange’s lawyers will likely make at a two-day hearing this week at the High Court in London is contained in a 150-page submission that a judge rejected last June.
The stakes in the Assange case could not be higher for journalists everywhere. The outcome will determine whether the US can seek to extradite any journalist of any nationality, from anywhere with which it has an extradition treaty, for disclosing US war crimes.
And if Assange is extradited and forced to pleading guilty to some charge in exchange for a relatively lenient Australian served sentence, it implicitly endorses the US claim that its laws have global reach over journalists everywhere. There goes any “free press” and any real prospect of keeping power accountable.
Finally, unless the Australian Government can stop the extradition by the UK or the prosecution by the US or both, it will also show that our ‘alliance’ with them is little more than our subservience.
Gillard’s preposterous and legally prejudicial inept remarks last year, condemning Assange’s activities as “illegal” will forever staple her to the marginalia of Australia’s political history. It immediately signalled to all Australia’s sons and daughters that at the first sign of any ‘trouble’ we are to be immediately abandoned by our Prime Minister and also by her obsequious and flaccid Attorney General, Robert McClelland. Still, we should be getting used to it by now from our Governments. Think Hicks. Think Habib.
THE PERSECUTION of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is one of the greatest crimes against freedom of speech and a significant blow to the pursuit of truth. But if you’re one of the few who don’t know much about the Assange story, The Trust Fall is rather essential viewing.
Given the fact that the US in 2024 has been openly enabling genocide, vetoing the UN, and giving the nod to Bibi to illegally take over Palestine, and it’s all over the internet, why keep Julian Assange locked up? There are no “secrets” Joe. There is Trump and certainly not an effen secret anymore but the Israelis know they have his support. So let Assange go and win some brownie points and deal with AIPAC and let the non Zionist Jews rally in your favour. Become what America pretends to be for once a liberating force
The Russians, Israelis, and Nth Koreans are working their tits off for Trump. Biden is working to unite the English-speaking world against the Chinese and we can see it all. Worst of all we are forced to listen to the bullshit. Listen and watch, watch corporate and right-wing media battle with Rupert Murdoch for any excess gravy flow there is from the least progressive at the very top. After all 2024 is an election year and lobbyists are hard at work making more promises but non in the interests of any Common Good
In terms of posterity’s calling, there are surely fewer better things at this point for a US president nearing mental oblivion to do, or a Tory government peering at electoral termination to facilitate, than the release of Assange. At the very least, it would show a grudging acknowledgment that the fourth estate, watchful of government’s egregious abuses, is no corpse, but a vital, thriving necessity.
“Enough is enough” Prime Minister Albanese said of WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange’s situation. Australians might have thought that meant swift intervention by his government, but Rex Patrick and Philip Dorling reveal the true meaning; jail.
Six members of the Australian parliament will land in Washington D.C. on Sept. 20 armed with a bi-partisan agenda and the backing of an entire nation as they try to convince Congressmen and State and Justice Department officials that the American pursuit of Australian publisher Julian Assange is wrong and must be stopped.
The deal: First YOU PLEAD GUILTY THEN – It has never changed since the days of signing the historic and broken Treaties with the Indian Nations that saw them locked up on Reservations or Jails
Should any plea deal be successfully reached and implemented, thereby making Assange admit guilt, the terms of his return to Australia, assuming he survives any stint on US soil, will be onerous. In effect, the US would merely be changing the prison warden while adjusting the terms of observation. In place of British prison wardens will be Australian overseers unlikely to ever take kindly to the publication of national security information.
the ACT, Section 81 where you can’t extradite somebody for their political opinions, and that is grouped together with other forms, alongside other forms of discrimination like race and nationality. But then they go on to point out that Julian’s opinion against torture is universal. It’s what they call a jus cogens prohibition. It means that every court in the world is not only against torture, not only regards it as a crime, but it is the responsibility of that court to listen to reports of torture and do whatever they can to prevent it from happening again. So it’s very powerful, Section 81. They should have recognized it. It says there, that exposing crime, including state crime, is a protected political act.
Stella Assange told a packed house at Westminster Central Hall in London Thursday night that her imprisoned husband has become a “deterrent” to stop other journalists from publishing secrets.
“Every day that the prosecution of Julian Assange continues is another day that our own government needlessly undermines our own moral authority abroad and rolls back the freedom of the press under the First Amendment at home.”
Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong has all but confirmed in Parliament the government is doing nothing to bring the world’s foremost political prisoner home. What’s the scam with “quiet diplomacy”?
“As long as the Biden administration continues to deploy tools like the Espionage Act to imprison those who dare to expose war crimes, no publisher and no journalist will be safe,” said one of the tribunal’s co-chairs.
The imprisoned publisher was attacked during a big-name counter-intelligence event in Washington this week with the same kind of innuendo that a larger gang, back in 2019, threw at the Hunter Biden laptop story.
It’s time to call a spade a spade. They’re lying. And they want us to believe their lies. I was at the C.I.A. too. I underwent the same training that they underwent. And if there was one thing the C.I.A. taught me, it was that if I was going to make a judgment or draw a conclusion, I had to offer proof. I wasn’t allowed to hide behind language like, “all the hallmarks of” or “leads me to believe…”. If you don’t have any proof, keep your mouth shut.
In the meantime, I was greatly heartened by the confidence that Pollack exuded at the National Press Club event. Julian Assange is in good hands. Barry will provide him with the best defense possible.
As for these other characters, it’s up to the rest of us to counter them and their propaganda. It’s up to us to demand the truth.
“I think they keep him in Belmarsh because they can get away with it. It’s the most effective way of silencing him.”
“I’m convinced Julian cannot survive under the conditions the US will put him in. The only reason he’s surviving now is because he’s able to see me and the children.”
“If the UK press had reported fairly and critically about this case, would Julian be in Belmarsh prison today? I don’t believe so.”
“These concepts of independence and fairness are the only thing that stand between us and a complete darkness of raw power where they can just crush you.”
The coalition of over 300 doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists, and other medical professionals have repeatedly called for Assange’s release from Her Majesty’s Prison Belmarsh in London and protested “health injustices” that have occurred as a result of the extradition case against him.
Worsening matters, as Doctors for Assange notes, is the fact that Assange tested positive for COVID-19 on October 8.
“Given his chronic lung ailment, Mr. Assange may be at increased risk of serious illness resulting from COVID infection,” the doctors write [PDF]. “In addition, Mr. Assange’s mental health is placed at further risk by the solitary confinement he has been forced to endure since his positive COVID test.”
Doctors For Assange wrote to US and UK officials warning of health concerns if Julian Assange stays in prison. He tested positive for COVID.
The world has turned full circle. Those opening the cabinet of secrets are considered the nasty tittle-tattles, who simply revealed the fact that daddy fiddled and mummy drank. In this world, homicidally excited types like Bolton revel in expressing unsavoury views in the open; those who expose the bankruptcy of such views are to be punished. We await the next grotesquery with resigned disgust.
New revelations show that the CIA secretly took control of the security company hired by Ecuador’s government to guard Julian Assange during his exile in London. The agency’s spying on Assange and his visitors constitutes a major breach of civil liberties.
In giving the rules of the sordid game away – exposing the atrocities, the abuses of power, the bankruptcy of unrepresentative politics – the Australian founder of WikiLeaks became themost prominent political target of the US imperium. Journalism and activism have, in Assange, combined, his case nothing if not political. It remains to be seen if the “competent authority,” to use the words of the poorly drafted, ill-weighted Extradition Treaty, agrees.
Unable to shut WikiLeaks down the Americans turned on Julian Assange instead. They created laws and crafted charges that nobody had previously faced in order to try to have him extradited to the US. The State has persecuted this one man more than a decade and even harder than they did Chelsea Manning the American GI who leaked the information in the first place. They claim worldwide universal juristiction no matter where. If a crime has been comitted against what they declare are their laws even if not committed in the US they will be applied. However that doesn’t apply in reverse.
The US have openly and without regard killed civilians and treated their actions as “collateral damage” without anybody being arrested or charged and wthe world has witnessed it. They have assisted in the massacre of journalists and other professionals simply because they can, have misfired and killed innocents whenever they wished and then denied it unless it became impossible to do so. The set up the model for Israel to copy and get away with.
Nevertheless the organization Assange helped found WikiLeaks continues and is held in greater respect than any news or information alleged to be held as truth in the US.
WikiLeaks continues as one of the world’s most remarkable organisations, despite numerous attempts to shut it down.
Its founder, Julian Assange, is gaoled in the United Kingdom’s Belmarsh Prison as a “political” prisoner and faces extradition to the Medes-in-wait. Assange has not murdered anyone — but he is hounded as if he has.
Despite resistance, WikiLeaks continues its fight for the truth
As Australian journalist Julian Assange faces the hell of extradition, it is more urgent and necessary than ever for the Australian government to intervene on his behalf.
The justice system has failed to defend the principles it should protect in the case of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, so the public must wake up to the necessity of peaceful global protest to run parallel with Assange’s legal battle, write Sara Chessa.
Patel, for her part, was never exercised by the more sordid details of the case. Her approach to matters of justice is one of premature adjudication: the guilty are everywhere, and only multiply. When it came to WikiLeaks, such fine points of law and fact as a shaky indictment based on fabricated evidence, meditations on assassination, and a genuine, diagnosed risk of self-harm, were piffling distractions. The US Department of Justice would not be denied.
Prime Minister Albanese has said that the pursuit of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange served no purpose; it is now time to do all in his power to bring him home, writes Dr Binoy Kampark.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been given the chance to challenge a decision allowing him to be extradited to the United States to face 18 criminal charges including breaking a spying law to Britain’s Supreme Court.
Assange is currently detained for publishing “crimes” he’s said to have committed in the USA when not even there. Simply out the Americans can ask for you or me to be brought to them form our beds. Currently, the world is watching Australia for having released Djokovic for a real crime. One he admits to and he did commit here, in Spain, and in Serbia. So why did Australia agonize over Djokovic and do sweet FA about Assange whose as innocent as an assylum seeker?
It’s time to kick these do nothing assholes out
Julian Assange has now been in the maximum-security facilities of Belmarsh prison for over 1,000 days. On the occasion of his 1,000th day of imprisonment, campaigners, supporters and kindred spirits gathered to show their support, indignation and solidarity at this political detention most foul.
Marise Payne has displayed her bias and chosen not to SHUT UP while declaring Julian’s fate rests in the hands of the UK and USA. It appears like Pontius Pilate she’s more than just washed her hands of Assange but has convicted him on behalf of the LNP,yes,but only a minority of Australians.
Why, in the middle of Assange’s High Court hearing, was Foreign Minister Marise Payne using her friends in the Murdoch media to portray Assange as un-Australian, snubbing her patriotic ‘’Aussie help’’?Assange’s father John Shipton commented: “I get no help from Marise Payne in any way whatsoever. Saying I have been snubbed 29 times by Julian is to defend her. It’s only to defend her. It’s nothing to do with Julian.”The family have continually asked for Payne and Morrison to actively engage with Australia’s UK and U.S. allies. They see extradition as an outrageous surrender of Australian sovereignty and they expect that Morrison and Payne should tell UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and U.S. President Joe Biden so.Shipton, who has travelled to 50 countries to garner support for Julian, said: “Everywhere I go, people ask where is the Australian Government in this? What is the substance of Australia in its relationship with the UK that it allows this show trial to go on without comment?”
Warning of Dangerous Deterioration Following Assange’s Reported Stroke, Doctors Implore Australian Deputy Prime Minister to Intervene Over 300 doctors from around the world have today written to the Deputy Prime Minister of Australia, Barnaby Joyce, imploring him to seek Julian Assange’s immediate release from prison in the UK on medical grounds. (Here is the link to the letter.)
Joyce’s reasoning, while jejune on the historical contributions of WikiLeaks, has the merit of unusual clarity. He argues that the UK “should try him there for any crime he is alleged to have committed on British soil or send him back to Australia, where he is a citizen.” Assange never pilfered any US secret files; did not breach Australian laws and was not in the US when “the event being deliberated in the court now in London occurred.” To extradite him to the US would not only be unjust but bizarre. “If he insulted the Koran, would he be extradited to Saudi Arabia?”
The corrupt process must be exposed and all Assange supporters must speak up. The United States should not be allowed to use the Espionage Act or any other mechanism to snatch up anyone, anywhere and charge with a crime of dubious legality. If they are allowed to do so in this case they will certainly do it again. Anyone who wants to expose high crimes will find themselves in Assange’s position. People who oppose the empire and its machinations are all at risk if Assange is extradited and stands trial in the Eastern District court. He is a political prisoner and others will be too if the prosecution proceeds. It is no exaggeration to say that we are all Julian Assange.
Barnaby Joyce speaks out when the PM doesn’t and he speaks out clearly when he says Julian Assange is being extradited to a country for a crime he didn’t even commit in that country. Meanwhile Scott Morrison stays silent, setting the bar showing what every Australian citizen can expect from this Prime Minister…NOTHING
Mr Joyce says Mr Assange didn’t steal secret US files but only published them, which did not breach any Australian laws at the time, and he was not in the US when leaks were put online. “The question is then: Why is he to be extradited to the US? If he insulted the Koran, would he be extradited to Saudi Arabia? “If we are content that this process of extraditing one Australian to the US for breaking its laws even when he was not in that country is fair, are we prepared therefore to accept it as a precedent for applying to any other laws of any other nation to any of our citizens?” Mr Joyce’s opinion piece came a day after independent Tasmanian MP Andrew Wilkie called on Prime Minister Scott Morrison to pick up the phone to US President Joe Biden and British PM Boris Johnson to end the prosecution. Mr Wilkie, a former intelligence analyst, said the prosecution of Mr Assange had always been political and could be solved politically by Mr Morrison. Mr Assange faces 175 years in prison in the US.
The justices also failed to consider the murderous elephant in the room, one that had been submitted by the defence at both the extradition hearing and the appeal: that US government officials had contemplated abducting and assassinating the very individual whose extradition they were seeking. This was a view that held sway with former US Secretary of State and CIA chief Mike Pompeo. In the United States, talking heads expressed their satisfaction about the glories of the US justice and prison system. Former Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill told MSNBC that, “This was really a guy who just violated the law.” Concerns by Assange’s defense team that his “safety in [US] prison” would be compromised showed that “they really don’t have perspective on this.” It is fittingly monstrous that this decision should be handed down the same day the Nobel Peace Prize was being awarded to two journalists, Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov. Or that it should happen on Human Rights Day, which saw US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s boast that “we will continue to promote accountability for human rights violators.” Except one’s own. Inevitably, these cruel, gradually lethal proceedings move to the next stage: an appeal to the Supreme Court. As the paperwork is gathered, Assange will muse, grimly, that the entire period of his discharge never saw him leave Belmarsh Prison.
The federal government has “raised the situation” of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s confinement with the UK and US, but has stopped short of calling for the Australian to be released.
The UK court’s decision has drawn ire from the United Nations’ special rapporteur on torture, Nils Melzer, who sharply criticised the verdict.
“This is a shortcoming for the British judiciary,” Mr Melzer told the DPA news agency on Friday.
“You can think what you want about Assange but he is not in a condition to be extradited,” he said, referring to a “politically motivated verdict”.
The nation that allows Fox News and Trump’s “alternative facts” to flourish hammers those that publish inconvenient truths.
“Julian’s life is once more under grave threat, and so is the right of journalists to publish material that governments and corporations find inconvenient,” WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson said. “This is about the right of a free press to publish without being threatened by a bullying superpower.”
A U.K. court is set to rule Friday on whether WikiLeaks publisher and journalist Julian Assange can be extradited to the United States, an impending decision that led press freedom advocates and human rights campaigners to redouble their calls for his immediate release. “We fully believe that Assange has been targeted for his contributions to journalism.” “Freedom should be the only possible outcome for Assange,” Kristinn Hrafnsson, the editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks, said Thursday.
The US government is begging the British High Court to allow Julian Assange to be extradited to the United States. Doing so would be a human rights disaster, given that American prisons violate the most basic human rights of political prisoners like Assange.
Regardless of the court battle to prevent his extradition to the U.S., there appears to be little hope for Julian Assange — the Americans are relentless.
olddogthoughts 
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