Jeffrey Sterling is a former CIA officer and whistleblower, jailed on trumped-up charges under the Espionage Act. He spoke to Jacobin about how he was victimized — and why the district court that convicted him is sure to be stacked against Julian Assange.
Source: CIA Whistleblower: “Julian Assange Will Not Receive an Impartial Jury”
The US Justice Department has appealed a British judge’s ruling that prevents Wikileaks founder Julian Assange being extradited to the United States to face espionage charges.
Biden administration appeals Assange’s non-extradition ruling
The UK, having adopted a position as Washington’s proxy jailor, is not about to quit its sordid role. Assange’s wellbeing and health continue to be jeopardised by his stay in Britain’s most notorious prison, where determined despair, as Baraitser herself has acknowledged, can take their toll.
Proxy Jailor: Denying Assange Bail – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Whether you call it the sweep of history or the sweep of revolution, in the end, the surveillance state cannot stop people from moving toward the kind of change that will make their lives better.”
The Empire is Not Done with Julian Assange | The Smirking Chimp
Julian Assange’s defeat of extradition to the United States was a huge victory — one that couldn’t have been achieved without a public pressure campaign. That same public pressure will now be needed to free Assange from prison.
How Julian Assange Beat Extradition
Refusing to extradite Assange to the US on mental health grounds is humane, but it doesn’t protect future whistleblowers
The Julian Assange extradition ruling: right result, wrong reason | Julian Assange | The Guardian
Carlson was certainly convinced, taking a position at odds with various national security wonks that pullulate the US airwaves. “Whatever you think of Julian Assange and what he did, he is effectively a journalist. He took information and he put it in a place the public could read it.” The Australian was spending time in prison for releasing documents “he did not steal,” merely providing a platform for their dissemination, showing that “the US government was illegally spying on me, and everybody else in this country.”
The Julian Assange Pardon Drive – » The Australian Independent Media Network
President Trump has a golden opportunity to pardon Assange, which would go a long way toward transforming the outgoing president into a defender of American values. President-elect Biden, for his part, will have to decide whether he follows the footsteps of Obama, or, to this point, Trump. Leaders across political divides should be pressured by the public to free Assange and defend press freedom. Recognizing the crucial role of journalists, Hanks’ Bradlee in The Post perhaps said it best: “We have to be the check on their power. If we don’t hold them accountable, I mean my God, who will?”
US, UK Governments Should Free Julian Assange | The Smirking Chimp
Assange’s liberty represents that of all journalists and publishers whose job is to expose government and corporate criminality without fear of prosecution.
Biden’s Choice on Julian Assange and the First Amendment
Julian Assange’s partner, Stella Moris, has tweeted President Donald Trump on Thanksgiving, appealing to him to pardon the WikiLeaks founder. Moris posted a photo of their two young children on Twitter on Thursday, local time, and wrote: “These are Julian’s sons Max and Gabriel. They need their father. Our family needs to be whole again. “I beg you, please bring him home for Christmas.”
Julian Assange’s partner appeals to Trump to pardon him
There is no need to inform the conscious world that the United States is applying all its power and influence to extradite Julian Assange from England in order to put him on trial in America. The case against him is based on his having committed journalism in publishing leaked secret government information on Wikileaks. While it is comprised of multiple charges, crafted with cynicism and malice in order to convict and imprison him for life, not one of them has any legal merit.
Assange And The Empire | The Smirking Chimp
Julian Assange’s lawyer of ten years Jennifer Robinson speaks with Rhys Muldoon about Assange’s extraordinary trial and the relationship between the world’s most famous political prisoner and huckster in chief, Donald Trump.
EXCLUSIVE: Q and A with Julian Assange’s lawyer Jennifer Robinson
Assange would never receive a fair trial in the U.S., but he’s not receiving one in Britain either.
The Illegal Campaign to Eliminate Julian Assange
The entire computer crime case against Assange is based on a brief discussion, between a publisher and source, about cracking a password — but the cracking never actually happened.
Assange Case: Government “Hacking” Charges Are Weak
The most important press freedom case in a generation is unfolding in London.
Deconstructed: Why You Should Care About Assange’s Extradition
The Pentagon Papers leaker previously called Assange’s prosecution the most “significant attack on freedom of the press” since his 1971 case.
Daniel Ellsberg Tells UK Court That US Seeks Both ‘Revenge’ Against Julian Assange and to ‘Crush’ Future Whistleblowers | Common Dreams News
As the Julian Assange hearing resumed, the WikiLeaks founder formally declined to be extradited to face a superseding indictment issued by the US in June. Protesters and lawyers say the prosecution will stifle press freedom.
London court resumes Assange hearing amid worldwide protests against his extradition to US — RT World News
He faces five to 10 years imprisonment per charge if found guilty — the process rigged to assure he never again sees the light of day as a free man, despite having committed no criminal offenses.
via New Trump Regime Indictment of Assange Expands Phony Charges – Stephen Lendman
Britain is ready to do America’s job and kill Assange in prison (ODT)
Even Christenson is right for a change (ODT)
via Julian Assange: Australian MPs call on UK to block US extradition | Media | The Guardian
The increasing surveillance by government paranoia to the failing systems of control (ODT)
The probe by the court, the Audiencia Nacional, into the activities of UC Global, along with leaked videos, statements, documents and reports published by the Spanish newspaper El País as well as the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, offers a window into the new global security state. Here the rule of law is irrelevant. Here privacy and attorney-client privilege do not exist. Here people live under 24-hour-a-day surveillance. Here all who attempt to expose the crimes of tyrannical power will be hunted down, kidnapped, imprisoned and broken. This global security state is a terrifying melding of the corporate and the public. And what it has done to Assange it will soon do to the rest of us.
via What Is Happening to Assange Will Happen to the Rest of Us | The Smirking Chimp
LNP Shame up close and personal with the USA and down distant and who gives a fuck with it’s citizens. America constructed crimes to fit Assange and our LNP has done nothing but applaud. (ODT)
IN A WATERSHED CASE for journalistic freedom, the hearing for Julian Assange’s extradition to the U.S. begins in London on 24 February 2020. If extradited to the U.S., Assange will face 18 charges under the 1917 Espionage Act and a potential sentence of 175 years in prison for “crimes” that include some of the greatest pieces of citizen journalism of the 21st century: the Iraq War Logs, the Afghan War Logs, Cablegate and the famous collateral murder video.
The attitude of European institutions is changing after years of silence. In this case, it was Andrej Hunko and Gianni Marilotti that convinced the European Assembly to speak up.
The moment that press freedom advocates have been waiting for so long has finally arrived. The European institutions are starting to officially state that they don’t want Julian Assange to be extradited to the U.S.
The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) has become the first one to step in and call for Assange’s immediate release, joining the call of the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, Nils Melzer, who some months ago clearly stated that Assange should walk free.
Julian Assange has done less than Trump in crime and criminal intent than Donald Trump and has been punished as if he were Satan incarnate. America has gone off the rails and become the planets most delinquent nation. (ODT)
via JOHN PILGER: Julian sat alone, his fist clenched and held high
A gaunt, hesitant and apparently confused Julian Assange has told a London judge he is in an inequitable fight against a superpower which has been spying on his “interior life” and on confidential meetings with his legal team.
The WikiLeaks founder is trying to avoid extradition to the US to face 17 espionage charges and one computer hacking charge.
His legal team revealed on Monday they want to deal a knockout blow to the case against him, by establishing that the charges are a “political offence” for which extradition cannot be granted.
via Wikileaks’ Julian Assange says he’s in an unfair fight against a super power at extradition hearing
Even any solicitation of the part of WikiLeaks to obtain such material (prosecutors, take note) was irrelevant. “A person is entitled to publish stolen documents that the publisher requested from a source as long as the publisher did not participate in the theft.”
The logical implication following from punishing individuals and entities for doing so, acknowledged the court, would “render any journalist who publishes an article based on stolen information a co-conspirator in the theft”. Assange and his legal team will be more than a little heartened by this acknowledgement, one that repels efforts to treat WikiLeaks as a hacking rather than publishing enterprise.
If the government gets to define journalism, what’s to stop it from making similar rulings about any outlet whose coverage it doesn’t like?
Reframing the definition of Julian Assange in the most Fascist way (ODT)
In this war of language, the treatment of Assange can only be seen as one thing: an act of muzzling a publisher framed as a computer security breach. In so doing, it criminalises the very act of investigative journalism, the sort that actually exposes abuses of power rather than meekly accommodating them.
Dr. Sondra Crosby, an associate professor of medicine and public health at Boston University and an expert on the physical and psychological impact of torture, has evaluated detainees held by the United States, including at its prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. She quietly began meeting with and evaluating Assange in 2017 inside the embassy where he had sought refuge.
via Julian Assange Was Denied Medical Care, Says Doctor Who Examined Him in Embassy
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was arrested by British police on Thursday after they were invited into the Ecuadorian embassy where he has been holed up since 2012.
“Julian Assange, 47, has today, Thursday 11 April, been arrested by officers from the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) at the Embassy of Ecuador,” police said.
Police said they arrested Assange after being “invited into the embassy by the Ambassador, following the Ecuadorian government’s withdrawal of asylum.”
via Julian Assange arrested at Ecuadorian embassy by British police
America’s Free Press is a farce Assange is a publisher. (ODT)
via WikiLeaks: Julian Assange to be expelled within hours to days | The Smirking Chimp
12 YEARS AGO THIS MONTH, WikiLeaks began publishing government secrets that the world public might otherwise never have known.
What it has revealed about state duplicity, human rights abuses and corruption goes beyond anything published in the world’s mainstream media.
via Julian Assange and Wikileaks’ service to journalism should be applauded
The US Senate Intelligence Committee has asked Julian Assange to give evidence on what he knows about Russian influence in the US election – and the WikiLeaks editor is said to be “considering the offer”.
If he agrees, and the interview takes place, it is likely to focus on Assange’s role in publishing Democratic Party emails that were allegedly hacked by Russian military intelligence then passed on to WikiLeaks.
via Trump: Julian Assange ‘considering’ testifying on Russian role in US election
The excuse for the Democrats failure (ODT)
A note from Harry Cheadle writing for Vice in the lead up to the 2016 election is instructive in painting the picture that emerged from the DNC-Podesta trove released by WikiLeaks. The emails portrayed an “organization that is contemptuous of opposition, often obsessed with how an issue is perceived, and yet sometimes prone to decisions that seem self-defeating and dance on the knife edge of political disaster.” The chickens, notably of the socialist variety, are vengefully coming back to roost.
Scratching for ideas and options in ambushing President Donald Trump, it is clear that the senators have latched on to the next best thing: revoking the political status of a man with no internet access who will be arrested the moment he steps out of the embassy door. How fittingly democratic of them.
GREAT IDEAS in publishing are rare, but in 2006 Julian Assange came up with one.
Assange reasoned that the key structure that generated bad governance was conspiracy. To fight the conspiracies behind corrupt governments, he advocated a strategy to expose the conspirators and the conspiracies through a systematic use of leaks.
His subversive proposal was to build a website for whistleblowers where they could upload their information in safety and from where it could be collectively analysed by citizen journalists. The name he gave his whistleblower-enabling website was WikiLeaks.
