“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.
The United States also says it will not object to Assange serving any custodial sentence he may receive in Australia. Summers cited a case in which the U.S. reneged on its assurances that Spanish drug trafficker David Mendoza Herrarte could serve his prison sentence in Spain if he was first extradited to the U.S. for trial. The U.S. retorted that the prosecutor had just assured that Mendoza could apply for a transfer to Spain and the DOJ denied the application. Moreover, the U.S. cannot guarantee that Australia would consent to host Assange’s incarceration. It will be several weeks before the High Court issues its ruling on Biden’s appeal. The losing party can ask the U.K. Supreme Court to review the case. More than two dozen press freedom, civil liberties and international human rights groups, and people around the world, are protesting the persecution of Assange. This case is a bellwether for the future of investigative journalism and the survival of the First Amendment right to freedom of the press.
During the latter part of the day’s proceedings, Fitzgerald had a moment of reflection that has become something of a trademark. “I sometimes wonder whether my learned friend is reading the same judgment we are.” He is, but doing so through his own version of crystal ball jurisprudence.
The High Court justices will now consider whether to continue this lamentable, sadistic enterprise. The defence team are considering cross-appealing parts of the original decision on the grounds that it constitutes a grave threat to press liberties. Whatever the outcome, an appeal to the Supreme Court is likely. In the meantime, the torture of Assange by process will continue.
“The U.S. government’s unrelenting pursuit of Julian Assange makes it clear that this prosecution is a punitive measure, but the case involves concerns which go far beyond the fate of one man and put media freedom and freedom of expression in peril.”
Is the imperium showing suspicions about its intended quarry? It is hard to believe it, but the US House Intelligence Committee is on a mission of discovery. Its subject: a Yahoo News report disclosing much material that was already in the public domain on the plot to kidnap or, failing that, poison Julian Assange. Given that such ideas were aired by officials within the Central Intelligence Agency, this struck home. On the Yahoo News “Skulduggery” podcast, Committee chairman and Democratic Representative Adam Schiff said, “We are seeking information about it now.” Making sure to put himself in the clear of having any knowledge of plans against Assange, Schiff claimed that the committee had sought a response from “the agencies” (the CIA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence) after the publication of the Yahoo News piece. As to whether the agencies had responded, Schiff was not forthcoming. “I can’t comment on what we’ve heard back yet.”
Within just a few days, the United States will once again make its case in a UK court that it has a right to extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to be tried under the Espionage Act, in what remains this century’s most dangerous attack on global press freedom.
By penetrating the realities of war and pulling it out of its carefully orchestrated public context, by publicizing its raw horrors, he became a danger to the country’s political status quo.
“We appreciate that the government has a legitimate interest in protecting bona fide national security interests, but the proceedings against Mr. Assange jeopardize journalism that is crucial to democracy,” wrote the organizations.
“In our view, a precedent created by prosecuting Assange could be used against publishers and journalists alike, chilling their work and undermining freedom of the press.”
As Common Dreams reported last month, under former President Donald Trump, the CIA reportedly discussed kidnapping or assassinating Assange, who is currently imprisoned in London’s maximum-security Belmarsh prison.
“The actions laid out in the indictment are virtually indistinguishable from common practices in newspapers around the country.”
Yahoo News first reported the revelations that officials at the “highest levels” of the agency considered attacking Assange, as well as “extensive spying on WikiLeaks associates, sowing discord among the group’s members, and stealing their electronic devices.” “In February, members of this coalition wrote to the Acting Attorney General, urging that the criminal charges against Mr. Assange be dropped,” the groups said. “We now renew that request
Answering those questions won’t be easy. But democracy may be at a tipping point. With its recognition of two investigative journalists and the crucial – and dangerous – work they do to support democracy, the Nobel Committee has invited us to begin the debate.
America’s relentless pursuit of Julian Assange, up to and including planning to kidnap or murder him, also affected people brave enough to support him. So why is the Australian government remaining silent?
Assange’s US lawyer Barry Pollack wishes that this grubby state of affairs will lead to a sensible conclusion. “My hope and expectation is that the UK courts will consider this information and it will further bolster its decision not to extradite to the US.” The US appeal against the refusal to extradite Assange will be doing its best to avoid such thorny, and telling, revelations. Assange’s defence team will be doing its best to foil such efforts.
Stunning revelations have emerged overseas about the reckless and duplicitous methods used by US law enforcement against Julian Assange. But in the US, the story has been subject to an almost total media blackout.
The highest standard of torture in the world has been shown and set by the USA
The UK’s High Court has granted the US government permission to appeal a decision that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange cannot be sent to the United States to face espionage charges. The judicial office said on Wednesday that the appeal had been granted and the case would be listed for a High Court hearing. No date has been set.
While we all dream of unrestricted travel, parties, dinners in our favourite restaurants and all the other luxuries we have come to accept as our inalienable rights to enjoy, I hope we can spare some thoughts to a brave Australian who has been held in harsh lockdown for more than two years.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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