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.
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.
The Australian Government failed to challenge U.S. officials on the fate of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange at the recent AUSMIN defence conference, writes Dr Binoy Kampmark.
After a rather extraordinary month of steadily escalating defence PR and conspiracy opportunities, Australia was sat on its backside over the weekend and reminded to know its subservient place.
America abandons its experiment and political dream
Instead of protecting freedom of the press, to which he pledged allegiance at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in April, Joe Biden is continuing Donald Trump’s prosecution of Assange under the infamous Espionage Act. Journalist James Ball is one of at least four journalists that the Department of Justice (DOJ) and FBI are pressuring to cooperate with the prosecution of Assange, Ball wrote in Rolling Stone.
Chris Hedges: Journalists Abandoned Julian Assange and Slit Their Own Throats The failure by journalists to mount a campaign to free Julian Assange, or expose the vicious smear campaign against him, is one more catastrophic and self-defeating blunder by the news media.
High Court Judge Jonathan Swift — who previously worked for a variety of British government agencies as a barrister and said his favorite clients are “security and intelligence agencies” — rejected two applications by Julian Assange’s lawyers to appeal his extradition last week.
Jonathan Swift, the High Court judge who has rejected Julian Assange’s appeal against extradition to the U.S., has a long history of working for the government departments that are now persecuting the WikiLeaks founder.
Swift, who ruled against Assange on June 6, was formerly the government’s favourite barrister.
If only the media would cover the persecution of Julian Assange with the same the same zeal as the wedding of shock-jock Kyle Sandilands; and the controversial attendance of Albo. At this time, when Jackie-O turned up late to the wedding, Michael West reports on World Press Freedom Day.
However described, the shabby treatment of Julian Assange never ceases to startle. While he continues to suffer in Belmarsh prison awaiting the torments of an interminable legal process, more material is coming out showing the way he was spied upon while staying at the Ecuadorian embassy in London. Of late, the Spanish daily El País…
Below is a list of 3 key issues that show the Anthony Albanese government is not much better than the Scott Morrison government when it comes to openness and transparency.
1 The Albanese government is continuing with it charges against whistleblowers David McBride who exposed war crimes and Richard Boyle who exposed corruption at the Australian Taxation Office (ATO).
2 The Albanese government is abusing FOI laws just as much as the Scott Morrison government and that is set to be exposed in detail in a Senate Inquiry that the Albanese government voted against holding. (Click here to read more)
3 While campaigning for the May 2022 federal election Anthony Albanese promised public hearings for the new National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC). But after being elected Prime Minister Anthony Albanese did a dirty deal with opposition leader Peter Dutton so the NACC will only have public hearings in exceptional circumstances. (Click here to read more)
One of the many, many signs that Australia is nothing more than a US military and intelligence asset is the way its government has consistently refused to intervene to protect Australian citizen Julian Assange from political persecution at the hands of the US empire.
Since then, it is very clear, as with all matters regarding US policy, that Australia will, if not agree outright with Washington, adopt a constipated, non-committal position. “Quiet diplomacy” is the official line taken by Albanese and Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong, a mealy-mouthed formulation deserving of contempt. As Greens Senator David Shoebridge remarks, “‘quiet diplomacy’ to bring Julian Assange home by the Albanese Government is a policy of nothing. Not one meeting, phone call or letter sent.”
Michael West | Mar 13, 2023 There will be no better opportunity than now for Anthony Albanese to ask US President Joe Biden for the release of Julian Assange. Michael West reports on the Belmarsh Tribunal and calls for the release of Australia’s number one political prisoner.
Will Albanese back Australia or Washington on Julian Assange? If he is “sincere,” as the more doe-eyed Labor Party supporters say, what is he waiting for? If he fails to secure Julian’s release, Australia will cease to be sovereign. We will be little Americans. Official.
Kenny MacAskill, a former Scottish justice secretary and the MP who asked questions in parliament, tells Declassified: “This obfuscation and avoidance is, I believe, part of a pattern of a cover up in alliance with US authorities.”
The Puppets and the Puppet Masters The judicial proceedings against Julian Assange give a faux legality to the state persecution of the most important and courageous journalist of our generation.
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
They really do want to kill him. Perhaps it is high time that his detractors and sceptics, proven wrong essentially from the outset, admit that the US imperium, along with its client states, is willing to see Julian Assange perish in prison. The locality and venue, for the purposes of this exercise, are not relevant. Like the Inquisition, the Catholic Church was never keen on soiling its hands, preferring the employ of non-church figures to torture their victims.
In an interview with Oscar Grenfell of the World Socialist Website, John Pilger explains the latest manoeuvres by the U.S. and UK authorities to extradite journalist and publisher Julian Assange to the U.S. where he faces 175 years in prison for the crime of journalism.
If Russia were persecuting a whistleblower like Julian Assange, the US would rightly condemn it as authoritarian abuse. But because that persecution is backed by the US, the mainstream media and American politicians are fine with it.
There are signs that Prime Minister Anthony Albanese seems more interested in dealing with the plight of Julian Assange than was the Morrison government. UK Home Secretary Priti Patel has to decide whether or not to sign off on Assange’s extradition to the US by the middle of this month. Albanese must act now, writes Greg Barns.
Opposition legal affairs spokesman George Brandis failed to identify any relevant law that might have been breached, either Australian or US. Liberty Victoria president Spencer Zifcak was “astonished” that a lawyer of presumed competence could have made such remarks. “There is no charge, there is no trial, there is no properly constituted court, and yet the Prime Minister deems it appropriate to say that Mr Assange has committed a criminal offence.”
Within less than a fortnight, the AFP, in concluding its investigation, informed Attorney-General Robert McClelland that “given the documents published to date are classified by the United States, the primary jurisdiction for any further investigation into the matter remains the United States.” After evaluating the material concerned, the federal police had failed to establish “the existence of any criminal offences where Australia would have jurisdiction.”
Dismay at the decision was expressed by Amnesty International’s Deputy Research Director for Europe, Julia Hall. “The Supreme Court has missed an opportunity to clarify the UK’s acceptance of deeply flawed diplomatic assurances against torture. Such assurances are inherently unreliable and leave people at risk of severe abuse upon extradition or other transfer.” The next stage in this diabolical torment of the WikiLeaks founder involves remitting the case to Westminster Magistrates’ Court, which will only serve a ceremonial role in referring the decision to the Home Secretary, Priti Patel. Only the most starry-eyed optimists will expect extradition to be barred. (Patel is fixated with proposed changes to the UK Official Secrets Act that will expansively criminalise journalists and whistleblowers who publish classified information.) The defence will do their best in submissions to Patel ahead of the decision, but it is likely that they will have to seek judicial review.
Unfortunately, there is only one Democratic Party in America that protects or seems to protect Democractic processes. It’s not the Republican Party. There needs to be a redefinition of what “news ” is and a re-examination of the First Amendment Protection given. Julian Assange a publisher and journalist is accused of a crime he didn’t even commit in America and is being extradited without bein afforded any First Amendment Protection. He is recognized by the rest of the world as a member of the press and has won awards in recognition of that. Fox News is in America and is recognized as the very antithesis of news but receives that protection. America isn’t the living example of a Democracy it professes to be.
By Heather — December 19, 2021 As we’ve discussed here many times (and others have as well), the rest of the corporate media needs to stop treating Fox as a legitimate news outlet, and start acknowledging that they’re nothing more than right-wing propaganda dressed up as “news.” The recently revealed January 6th texts between Mark Meadows and many of the anchors on Fox has forced networks such as CNN and others to finally start treating Fox in the manner they deserve, with Don Lemon wondering why they’re even allowed into the White House press room to ask questions: This was met with the reaction you might expect from Media Buzz host Howard Kurtz, who opened his show this Sunday complaining about Lemon. Kurtz pointed to Fox’s defense of Jim Acosta (who had his press badge revoked after Trump lost it during one of his insane briefings, because he didn’t like a question Acosta asked him) as justification that Fox is somehow worthy of the same professional courtesy from CNN now. Kurtz followed up by bringing on Special Report host Bret Baier to join him in complaining about Lemon. Baier also helped play cleanup on aisle five over the mess the network finds themselves in now that
This brings me to the quotation at the top of this article: ‘Let us look at ourselves, if we can bear to, and see what is becoming of us.’ Jean-Paul Sartre wrote this in his preface to Frantz Fanon’s ‘The Wretched of the Earth’, the classic study of how colonised and seduced and coerced and, yes, craven peoples do the bidding of the powerful. Who among us is prepared to stand up rather than remain mere bystanders to an epic travesty such as the judicial kidnapping of Julian Assange? What is at stake is both a courageous man’s life and, if we remain silent, the conquest of our intellects and sense of right and wrong: indeed our very humanity.
The injustice brought against WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange is an affront to not only truth in journalism but human rights for all, writes John Pilger.
As the US government fights to extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, a bombshell new report has revealed just how far the CIA contemplated going in its war on the Australian journalist. It weighed not just kidnapping but assassinating Assange.
As the High Court’s final decision on the Julian Assange trial draws nearer, John Pilger bears witness to the latest development in the attack on journalistic integrity.
The criminal ruling class has all of us locked in its death grip. It cannot be reformed. It has abolished the rule of law. It obscures and falsifies the truth. It seeks the consolidation of its obscene wealth and power. And so, to quote the Queen of Hearts, metaphorically of course, I say, “Off with their heads.”
“After years of indefinite detention without charge or trial; a history of torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment; and multiple attempts at a thoroughly failed and discredited military commission process, it is past time to close Guantánamo’s detention facility and end indefinite detention.”
—24 senators
“Mr. Assange is not a criminal convict and poses no threat to anyone, so his prolonged solitary confinement in a high security prison is neither necessary nor proportionate and clearly lacks any legal basis.”
The Australian government’s treatment of Julian Assange has revealed more than a library of leaked documents ever could about how power is exercised in the relationship with the United States, writes Andrew Fowler.
John Pilger has watched Julian Assange’s extradition trial from the public gallery at London’s Old Bailey. He spoke with Timothy Erik Ström of Arena magazine, Australia.
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