Current Wikileaks and Assange News & Releases

[onawah]

New Legal Hurdles for Julian Assange
March 15, 2022
by Craig Murray
https://consortiumnews.com/2022/03/1...UjtTmCnA4HX_yQ

Middlesex Guildhall in London, home of U.K.Supreme Court. (Tristan Surtel, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons)

"Assuming Home Secretary Priti Patel authorizes extradition, the matter returns to the original magistrate’s court for execution. That is where this process takes a remarkable twist.

With Julian Assange still, for no rational reason, held in maximum security, the legal process around his extradition continues to meander its way through the overgrown bridlepaths of the UK’s legal system. On Monday, the U.K. Supreme Court refused to hear Assange’s appeal, which was based on the grounds of his health and the effect upon it of incarceration in the conditions of the United States prison service. It stated his appeal had “no arguable legal grounds.”

This is a setback which is, most likely, going to keep him in jail for at least another year.

The legal grounds which the High Court had previously ruled to be arguable were that the U.S. government should not have been permitted to give at appeal new (and highly conditional) diplomatic assurances about Assange’s treatment, which had not been offered at the court of first instance to be considered in the initial decision. One important argument that this should not be allowed is that if given to the original court, the defence could argue about the value and conditionality of such assurances; evidence could be called and the matter weighed by the court.

By introducing the assurances only at the appeal stage – which is only on points of law and had no fact-finding remit – the U.S. had avoided any scrutiny of their validity. The Home Office have always argued that diplomatic assurances must simply be accepted without question. The Home Office is keen on this stance because it makes extradition to countries with appalling human rights records much easier.

In saying there is no arguable point of law, the Supreme Court is accepting that diplomatic assurances are not tested and are to be taken at face value – which has been a major point of controversy in recent jurisprudence. It is now settled that Britain will send someone back to Saudi Arabia if the Saudis give us a piece of paper promising not to chop their head off.

It interested me in particular that the Supreme Court refused to hear Assange’s appeal on the basis that there was “no arguable point of law.” When the Supreme Court refused to hear my own appeal against imprisonment, they rather stated their alternative formulation, that there was “no arguable point of law of general public interest.” Meaning there was an arguable point of law, but it was merely an individual injustice, that did not matter to anybody except Craig Murray.

My own view is that, with the Tory government very open about their desire to clip the wings of judges and reduce the reach of the Supreme Court in particular, the Court is simply avoiding hot potatoes at present.


U.K. Home Secretary Priti Patel at Essex Police Headquarters for new recruits’ graduation parade, October 2020. (Pippa Fowles, No 10 Downing Street, Flickr)

So the extradition now goes to Priti Patel, the home secretary, to decide whether to extradite. The defence has four weeks to make representations to Patel, which she must hear. There are those on the libertarian right of the Tory party who oppose the extradition on freedom of speech grounds, but Patel has not a libertarian thought in her head and appears to revel in deportation, so personally I hold out no particular hope for this stage.

Assuming Patel does authorise extradition, the matter returns to the original magistrate’s court and to Judge Vanessa Baraitser for execution. That is where this process takes a remarkable twist.

The appeals process that has just concluded was the appeal initiated by the United States government, against Baraitser’s original ruling that the combination of Assange’s health and the conditions he would face in U.S. jails, meant that he could not be extradited. The United States government succeeded in this appeal at the High Court. Assange then tried to appeal against that High Court verdict to the Supreme Court, and was refused permission.

But Assange himself has not yet appealed to the High Court, and he can do so, once the matter has been sent back to Baraitser by Patel. His appeal will be against those grounds on which Baraitser initially found in favour of the United States. These are principally:

the misuse of the extradition treaty which specifically prohibits political extradition;
the breach of the UNCHR Article 10 right of freedom of speech;
the misuse of the U.S. Espionage Act
the use of tainted, paid evidence from a convicted fraudster who has since publicly admitted his evidence was false
the lack of foundation to the hacking charge
None of these points have yet been considered by the High Court. It seems a remarkably strange procedure that having been through the appeals process once, the whole thing starts again after Priti Patel has made her decision, but that is the crazy game of snake and ladders the law puts us through. It is fine for the political establishment, of course, because it enables them to keep Assange locked up under maximum security in Belmarsh.

The defence had asked the High Court to consider what are called the “cross-appeal” points at the same time as hearing the U.S. appeal, but the High Court refused.

So the ray of light that was Baraitser’s ruling on health and prison conditions is now definitively snuffed out. That means that rather than the possibility of release by the Supreme Court this summer, Assange faces at least another year in Belmarsh, which must be a huge blow to him just before his wedding.

On the brighter side, it means that finally, in a senior court, the arguments that will really matter will be heard. I have always felt ambivalent about arguments based on Assange’s health, when there is so much more at stake, and I have never personally reported the health issues out of respect for his privacy. But now the High Court will have to consider whether it really wishes to extradite a journalist for publishing evidence of systematic war crimes by the state requesting his extradition.

Now that will be worth reporting."

Craig Murray is an author, broadcaster and human rights activist. He was British ambassador to Uzbekistan from August 2002 to October 2004 and rector of the University of Dundee from 2007 to 2010. His coverage is entirely dependent on reader support. Subscriptions to keep this blog going are gratefully received.

This article is from CraigMurray.org.uk.

[onawah]

WATCH: A Wedding For the Ages
March 24, 2022
https://consortiumnews.com/2022/03/2...-s9Qx-7cRuZXjc

"Julian and Stella Assange were married yesterday at Belmarsh Prison in London. Here are the wedding videos."

(Go to the link to see the vids)

[onawah]

Julian Assange's lawyer reveals how the WikiLeaks founder is coping in prison | 60 Minutes Australia
230,359 views Mar 27, 2022
3.9K
60 Minutes Australia
4.35M subscribers

"Aitor Martinez, Julian Assange's Spanish lawyer, tells 60 Minutes the Australian WikiLeaks founder has been "destroyed" by his time in prison."

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=ZB04WZwH0Sk

[onawah]

Conflicts in Priti Patel’s Power Over Assange
March 30, 2022
By Matt Kennard
Declassified UK
https://consortiumnews.com/2022/03/3...L_1NMB0bz36yl4

U.K. Home Secretary Priti Patel in April 2021.

"Priti Patel, who will soon decide whether to extradite the WikiLeaks publisher, has links to a group that has attacked Assange in the media for a decade, Matt Kennard reports

Patel sat on advisory council of Henry Jackson Society (HJS) with Lord Arbuthnot, whose wife later made two key legal rulings against Assange
Former C.I.A. Director James Woolsey has been an HJS patron since 2006
HJS has hosted three other ex-C.I.A. directors in London since 2014
Patel was paid £2,500 by HJS to fly to Washington for a “security” program in the U.S. Congress
Patel ignores Declassified’s request for clarification of her role in HJS
Priti Patel sat on the Henry Jackson Society’s (HJS) advisory council from around 2013-16, although the exact dates are unclear as neither the HJS nor Patel responded to Declassified’s requests for clarification.

She has also received funds from the HJS, and was paid £2,500 by the group to visit Washington in March 2013 to attend a “security” program in the U.S. Congress.

Patel, who became an MP in 2010 and was appointed home secretary in 2019, also hosted an HJS event in parliament soon after she returned from Washington.

After the U.K. Supreme Court said this month it was refusing to hear Assange’s appeal of a High Court decision against him, the WikiLeaks founder’s fate now lies in Patel’s hands. He faces life in prison in the U.S.

The Henry Jackson Society, which was founded in 2005 and does not disclose its funders, has links to the C.I.A., the intelligence agency behind the prosecution of Julian Assange and which reportedly developed plans to assassinate him.

One of the HJS’s international patrons is James Woolsey, C.I.A. director from 1993-95, who was in this role throughout the period Patel was advising the group. Woolsey’s affiliation to the Henry Jackson Society goes back to at least 2006, soon after it was founded.

In 2014, the group hosted General David Petraeus, C.I.A. director from 2011-12, at a U.K. Parliament meeting from which all media were barred.

Three years later, in 2017, the Henry Jackson Society organized another event at Parliament with General Michael Hayden, C.I.A. director from 2006-9, to “discuss the current state of the American Intelligence Community and its relationships with foreign partners.”

Hayden described “the relationship within the Five Eyes community as strong as ever, despite potential concerns over recent intelligence leaks between members.” Five Eyes is an intelligence alliance comprising Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the U.K. and the U.S.

‘Perception of Bias’

During a visit to the U.K. in July 2020, then U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo spoke at a roundtable hosted by the Henry Jackson Society with what the Washington Post referred to as a group of “hawkish” members of the Conservative Party.

As director of the C.I.A. in 2017, Pompeo had launched a blistering attack on WikiLeaks calling the media organization a “hostile intelligence service” that makes “common cause with dictators.”

Pompeo did not provide evidence but added a threat: “To give them the space to crush us with misappropriated secrets is a perversion of what our great Constitution stands for. It ends now.”


Mike Pompeo as C.I.A. director calling WikiLeaks a nonstate hostile actor. (Screenshot)

On the Henry Jackson Society advisory council at the same time as Patel was Lord James Arbuthnot, a former Conservative defence minister. His wife, Lady Emma Arbuthnot, was Westminster chief magistrate from 2016-2021.

For part of her tenure, she was in charge of the Assange case and made two key rulings against him in 2018. Lady Arbuthnot eventually stepped aside from ruling on the case because of a “perception of bias” but never declared a conflict of interest.

The links between Patel and Lord Arbuthnot go further. In 2010, soon after becoming an MP, Patel was appointed one of five parliamentary officers of the Conservative Friends of Israel when the group was chaired by Lord Arbuthnot.

The Conservative Friends of Israel has been described as “beyond doubt the most well-connected and probably the best funded of all Westminster lobbying groups.” It also does not disclose its funders.

Patel was forced to resign as secretary of state for international development in November 2017 after it was revealed that she had held more than a dozen undeclared meetings with Israeli ministers and organizations while on holiday in the country.

Many of these were arranged by the Conservative Friends of Israel’s honorary president, Lord Polak. Patel’s resignation letter accepted that her conduct “fell below…standards of transparency and openness.”

‘Bonkers & Paranoid’


Assange supporters in London during the hearing of the U.S. appeal. (Don’t Extradite Assange Campaign)

HJS staff have been repeatedly critical of Assange and WikiLeaks in the British media since 2011 when its then associate director, Douglas Murray, engaged in a combative debate with Assange.

The following year, the Henry Jackson Society posted a video of Murray stating on media channel Al-Jazeera English: “There is not a witch-hunt of WikiLeaks. An organisation illegally obtained, or stole as we used to call it, a whole set of government documents and published them with consequences which are still not fully understood.”

Murray continued: “I think Mr. Assange has been bonkers and paranoid for years, it’s part of his alleged political makeup, and indeed I would allege that of many of his supporters.”

Over the following years, the Henry Jackson Society and its staff continued to be among the most active civil society voices for impugning the motives and reputation of Assange.

This stands in contrast to nearly all human rights and press freedom organizations which argue that extraditing the WikiLeaks publisher to the U.S. would be a grave blow to media freedom.

‘Conspiracy Theories’

In October 2016, the Henry Jackson Society released a statement to the media, which claimed:

“Mr. Assange has a long track record of stealing and distributing information, peddling conspiracy theories, and casting aspersions on the moral standing of western democratic governments. He has done this whilst supporting, and being supported by, autocratic regimes.”

No evidence was supplied to support the assertions.

A number of other Henry Jackson Society staff — including spokesperson Sam Armstrong and then chief of staff Ellie Green — have made anti-Assange interventions in the British media.

In April 2019, after Julian Assange was seized from the Ecuadorian embassy in London by British police, Henry Jackson Society Executive Director Alan Mendoza was put up as the counterweight against Assange’s lawyer on BBC’s flagship Newsnight program.

Posted to the Henry Jackson Society’s Youtube channel, Mendoza told the national broadcaster: “Journalists are not allowed to break the law in obtaining their materials.”

He added: “I think it’s quite clear Mr. Assange has spent many years evading justice, hiding in a room in Knightsbridge … Isn’t it time he actually answered questions in a court of law?”

Secrecy

In October 2019, as home secretary, Patel visited Washington again to meet William Barr, the then U.S. attorney general who was in charge of the Assange case as head of the Department of Justice.

Together they signed the Cloud Act which made it easier for American and British law enforcement agencies to demand electronic data on targets as they undertake investigations.

Assange’s defense team had previously raised the concern in court that Barr may have used Assange’s extradition case in the U.K. for political ends.


Then U.S. Attorney General William Barr and Priti Patel sign the Cloud Act in Washington, D.C., Oct. 3, 2019. (U.S. Department of Justice)

In August 2020, Declassified requested basic information about Patel’s 2019 trip to Washington. The Home Office confirmed it held the information but refused to release it because the department considered “that disclosure of some of the information would prejudice relations between the U.K. and the United States.”

In May 2020, Declassified also requested information about any calls or emails made or received by Patel since she became home secretary which concerned the case of Julian Assange, or mentioned his name.

The Home Office told us “we can neither confirm nor deny whether we hold the information you have requested” because “to do so either way would disclose information that constitutes the personal data of Julian Assange.”

The same request for Sajid Javid’s tenure as home secretary from 2018-19 was rejected because the department said “we have carried out a thorough search and we have established that the Home Office does not hold the information that you have requested.”

This was despite the fact Javid signed the initial U.S. extradition request for Assange in June 2019. The shadow home secretary at the time, Diane Abbott, opposed approving the U.S. extradition request.

Declassified previously revealed that before signing the U.S. request, Javid had attended six secretive meetings, some attended by former C.I.A. directors, which were organized by a U.S. lobby group which has published calls for Assange to be assassinated or taken down.

The Home Office recently admitted it had eight officials working on Operation Pelican, the U.K. government campaign to seize Assange from the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

The department, however, claimed it did not know which other U.K. government ministries were involved in the operation.

Priti Patel and the Henry Jackson Society did not respond to requests for information and comment."

Matt Kennard is chief investigator at Declassified UK. He was a fellow and then director at the Centre for Investigative Journalism in London. Follow him on Twitter @kennardmatt

This article is from Declassified UK.

[onawah]

Chris Hedges on Jailed WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange’s Wedding: He’s "Crumbling" in London Prison
57,863 views Apr 1, 2022
2.6K
Democracy Now!
1.01M subscribers

"Imprisoned WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is "crumbling" physically and psychologically, says journalist Chris Hedges, who last week attended Assange's wedding to his longtime partner Stella Moris at London's Belmarsh prison. Assange has been behind bars for nearly three years awaiting a possible extradition to the United States on espionage charges for publishing documents revealing war crimes committed in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Hedges says Assange exposed the "most important information" of this generation, along with NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden."

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=PqNNlGBThCM

[Flowerpunkchip]

New Hearing at the Westminster Magistrates Court, Wednesday April 20th.
The magistrate will issue the order to extradite Julian Assange to the USA.
The order will then go to Priti Patel for approval.
Assange's defence team will make submissions to Patel (deadline 18th of May)

Wikileaks supporters will there. If you're based near or in London, do please come along.

[onawah]

Assange appears in court today, live coverage
CN LIVE! S4E9 THE ASSANGE FAMILY STRUGGLE
5 waiting Scheduled for Apr 19, 2022
Consortium News
14.1K subscribers

(It looks like it will start airing live at 11pm tonight, CST. )

"Julian Assange will later today appear in Westminster Magistrates Court where an extradition order will be issued. Consortium News will be reporting live from the courtroom. We talk to his father John Shipton, brother Gabriel and Ben Lawrence, director of the film 'Ithaka' which documents the Assange family struggle and is now screening in Australian cinemas."

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=S2OZd04WPWQ

[Anna70]

God help him.

[onawah]

‘The Assange Family Struggle’
April 19, 2022
https://consortiumnews.com/2022/04/1...Ae9NFRUmKBBfJ8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2OZd04WPWQ

"Hours before Julian Assange’s extradition order Wednesday, CN Live! speaks to his father John Shipton, brother Gabriel Shipton and Ben Lawrence, director of Ithaka. Watch the replay.
The extradition order of imprisoned WikiLeaks‘ publisher Julian Assange will be sent to U.K. Home Secretary Priti Patel on Wednesday by Westminster Magistrate’s Court after the U.K. Supreme Court declined to hear Assange’s appeal of a High Court decision to allow the extradition to the United States to go ahead.

Assange faces 175 years in prison for publishing accurate information revealing prima facie evidence of war crimes by the United States. There is a human side to Assange’s story rarely seen.

It is revealed in the new film Ithaka by director Ben Lawrence.
See: https://documentaryaustralia.com.au/project/ithaka/

It tells the story of a father and a wife’s struggle to save their son and husband. The film follows Assange’s father, John Shipton, and his wife, Stella Assange, during the days of Assange’s extradition hearing in February and September 2020 and Shipton’s journeys to the United States and Europe to gain support for his son with governments and the public.

Shipton and Assange’s brother Gabriel Shipton joined CN Live! to discuss the film and their struggle to free Assange. With your hosts Elizabeth Vos and Joe Lauria. Produced by Cathy Vogan. "

[onawah]

The UNTHINKABLE just happend to Julian Assange | Redacted with Natali and Clayton Morris
25,080 views Apr 20, 2022
1.5K
Redacted
644K subscribers
"Julian Assange is one step closer to being extradited to the United States. Do you see the irony here? While he published true data accusing the United States for war crimes, the United States is calling to try Putin for war crimes. This could have chilling consequences for journalism and dissemination of facts."

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=BBfiQwNsOLA

[onawah]

Who Is the Hero? Albright vs. Assange
April 28, 2022
By Lawrence Davidson
https://consortiumnews.com/2022/04/2...9lJYT3XxnLYVd4


The traveling art installation Anything to Say? by Davide Dormino in Berlin on May Day 2015. Bronze sculptures of Julian Assange, Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning stand on chairs; a fourth, empty, chair invites individuals “to stand up instead of sitting like the others.” (CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons)

"Our image of a hero has two aspects. The first consists of generic, stereotypical traits: bravery, determination in the face of adversity, achievement against heavy odds — the kind of person who saves the day.

The second aspect is more culturally specific, describing and contextualizing the circumstances of bravery and determination, and the nature of achievement in terms that are narrowly defined. In other words, cultural descriptions of bravery are most often expressed in terms compatible with the social and political conditions of the hero’s society.

Heroes are ubiquitous. For instance, there are American heroes, Russian heroes, Israeli heroes, Arab heroes, Ukrainian heroes, and so on. Where does good and bad come into it? Well, that too becomes a cultural judgment. Below are two examples of “heroes.” I will leave it to the reader to decide who is good and who is bad.

Albright —From Outside the Establishment

Madeleine Albright was the first woman to serve as American secretary of state (1997-2001). She served in this capacity under President Bill Clinton during his second term.

As such, she must be seen as a loyal promoter of her president’s foreign policy — a policy she may have helped create — regardless of any moral or ethical considerations. In other words, she is a “company” point person.

Whether this requires bravery is questionable. As we will see, it will require a persistence toward a single end defined in societal or national terms. This does indicate determination and achievement in the face of an alleged foe.When Madeleine Albright died in 2022, the following “achievements” were critically cited in the obituaries written by those outside the establishment and thus critical of Albright:

(1) Russia was “her obsession” and this led to her being the U.S. government’s point person on the expansion of NATO eastward into what had been the Soviet sphere of influence. This was done in violation of guarantees given to Russia in 1989 that NATO would not go further than the border of the newly united Germany — an act that helped prepare the ground for the present war in Ukraine.

(2) In 1997-1998, acting as secretary of state, she threatened Iraq with aerial bombardment if its government did not allow for weapons inspections at designated sites. The Iraqis eventually complied but got bombed anyway.

(3) She also made sure draconian sanctions were applied (including banning many medicines) to Iraq for an extended period of time. The result was the death of hundreds of thousands of civilians, including 500,000 Iraqi children. When asked by the journalist Lesley Stahl on the TV show 60 Minutes whether the draconian sanctions were worth the price of the deaths of approximately a half-million Iraqi children, she replied, “we think this was a very hard choice, but the price—we think the price is worth it.”

This led one critic of the U.S. government to judge Albright’s career as follows:

“It is the ultimate moral crime to target for misery, pain and death those least responsible for the offenses of their tyrannical rulers. Yet this is the very policy Madeleine Albright, made “Standard Operating Procedure for US diplomacy.”

Albright — From Inside the Establishment

From inside the establishment, that is, from inside the U.S. government and foreign policy establishment as well as an allied media, she was lauded as a dedicated, talented and energetic leader.

One member of the House of Representatives said upon her death,

“Our nation lost a hero today. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was the face of US foreign policy throughout some of the most difficult times for our nation and the world. … She brought nations together to expand NATO and defend the very pillars of democracy across the world. … She taught us that we can solve some of the world’s most difficult issues by bringing people together and having tough, uncomfortable conversations.”

According to the eulogistic obituary published by The New York Times,

“Her performance as secretary of state won high marks from career diplomats abroad and ordinary Americans at home. Admirers said she had a star quality, radiating practicality, versatility and a refreshingly cosmopolitan flair.”

What can we conclude from these contrasting views? We quickly come to realize that inside the establishment one rarely, if ever, hears any reference to such things as the human cost of a policy, the end of which is defined in terms of national interest. In the case of Madelene Albright, national interest trumped human interest. Still, she was held a hero nonetheless.

Assange & Manning

Julian Assange is an Australian computer specialist who founded WikiLeaks in 2006. It is a website dedicated to providing “primary source materials” to journalists and the public alike.

WikiLeaks eventually released “thousands of internal or classified documents from an assortment of government and business entities.” The site raised immediate hostility from many governments and corporations, which decried the “lack of ethics” of Assange and his fellows — who were exposing the often unethical, and sometimes murderous, behavior of those now attacking the website.

Bradley (aka Chelsea) Manning was an Army intelligence specialist assigned to a base near Baghdad during the Iraq War. Manning was suffering from a gender identity crisis. He also had serious second thoughts about the Iraq War.

Eventually, his growing opposition to the war led him to secretly send Assange “750,000 classified, or unclassified but sensitive, military and diplomatic documents.” Manning was later exposed and arrested, court-martialed and eventually had his sentence commuted by President Barack Obama.

From Inside the Establishment

As the writer and therapist Steven Berglas observes,

“for as long as there have been moral canaries in our societal coal mines they have been denigrated for being as corrupt, or more so, than the miscreants they attack.”

Assange and Manning face just such charges.

The complaints were, if you will, weaponized in 2010 after

WikiLeaks released “half a million documents” relating to U.S. actions in Iraq and Afghanistan, obtained from the then young, disillusioned Army intelligence analyst Manning.
This was followed by another release of about a quarter-million U.S. diplomatic cables, many of which were classified.
Assange was now deemed “a terrorist” by the government terrorists he had exposed. Subsequently, these actions were deemed “a threat to U.S. national security” by the U.S. government.As a result, Manning was jailed and suffered court-martial while Assange, now living in England, has been fighting extradition to the U.S. for years.

From inside the establishment both Assange and Manning are criminals. Both exposed secrets of governments and it is an established principle that states cannot run without secrets. This is partially because all states sometimes act in criminal ways. To expose these episodes is deemed more criminal than criminal acts of the states. Why so? Because governments say so and design their laws accordingly.

This rather arbitrary position taken by governments has been sold to the citizenry as necessary for the security of their state, but as we see, the consequences of WikiLeaks’mass release of classified documents has not been shown to have endangered the nation in any obvious way. Nonetheless, Assange and Manning are deemed criminals for setting a precedent that threatens other potential criminals employed by state and business.

From Outside the Establishment Outside the establishment the view is 180 degrees in the other direction. Again, to quote Steven Berglas

“whistleblowers are rare, courageous birds that should be considered national treasures not disgraces.… It is clear that most snitches have more integrity–-and are infinitely more altruistic-than their government or corporate counterparts.”

For instance, according to journalist Glenn Greenwald, Manning is “a consummate hero, and deserves a medal and our collective gratitude, not decades in prison.”

At court-martial, Manning stated that the leaked material to WikiLeaks was intended to

“spark a domestic debate of the role of the military and foreign policy in general … and cause society to reevaluate the need and even desire to engage in counterterrorism and counterinsurgency operations that ignore their effect on people who live in that environment every day.”

A heroic act, but also perhaps a naive one.

The Issue of EthicsGovernmental leaders and their aides often reserve for themselves the right to do illegal things such as

(a) using sanctions that undermine opposition governments while ignoring the negative consequences on the wellbeing of civilian populations;

(b) aiding and abetting coups that overthrow democratic and undemocratic governments alike, depending on how, in each case, Washington sees their economic and military stance; and

(c) carrying out of illegal actions such as assassination, torture, and illegal imprisonment. All of this is immoral and unethical while being deemed necessary within the context of national interest.

Nonetheless the common citizen, who lives within what we shall call a propaganda bubble spun by his/her own government and its cooperating mainstream media, has a hard time understanding events except in propaganda designed terms.

Most will pay no attention at all to the fate of whistleblowers, who speak in opposition to the propaganda, because their actions do not touch their lives, which are locally focused. For the small number who find that there is something not quite right about negative media reports of whistleblower revelation, there is often a sense of helplessness and inertia that causes their momentary uneasiness to go nowhere.

The unfortunate truth is that this phenomenon of mass indifference to what the government does in the name of national interest and security, backed up by seemingly blind support of the media, has become one of the pillars of societal stability.

That does not mean that challenges such as those launched by Assange and Manning are not worth the effort. They might lead to reforms (the Watergate scandal and its consequences comes to mind), but under ordinary circumstances the status quo will carry on.

So, who are the heroes? Is it those who promote state policies which, regardless of their immorality, allegedly sustain state prestige, security and stability? Or is it those who shine a momentary light into dark places and reveal the immorality of state behavior — often at the cost of the destruction of their careers and reputations? You choose.

Lawrence Davidson is professor of history emeritus at West Chester University in Pennsylvania. He has been publishing his analyses of topics in U.S. domestic and foreign policy, international and humanitarian law and Israel/Zionist practices and policies since 2010.

This article is from the author’s site, TothePointAnalysis.com. "

[onawah]

The Latest in Assange Case
May 17, 2022
https://consortiumnews.com/2022/05/1...tqN_g1iCjRwqhg

"Consortium News is in London as the home secretary decides whether to extradite Julian Assange. Watch Stella Assange’s address at the Home Office plus a CN Live! interview with Kristinn Hrafnsson.

Stella Assange spoke to about 300 protestors on Tuesday outside the Home Office in London, where Home Secretary Priti Patel will decide by May 31 whether to extradite imprisoned WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange, to the United States. He faces up to 175 years in prison for revealing America’s war crimes and other dirty secrets. On Tuesday, Assange’s lawyers made their final submissions to Patel. Following Stella Assange’s address, CN Live! spoke for 22 minutes with WikiLeaks Editor-in-Chief Kristinn Hrafnsson. Interview and photos by Joe Lauria. Videos by Cathy Vogan. "

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=md9aBUZ0Q1Q

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=_BCPYY7eGWc

[Michel Leclerc]

Juridical rationality is perhaps one degree less estranged from Life and wisdom than technological rationality but it is estranged nevertheless, as rationality is when it is not integrated into Life itself. Those who defend wisdom ("the right thing") will not forget that and if and when they prevail the absence of wisdom of the technicians of "the rule of law" will find little mercy with the wise judges. Karma will be meted out, and nothing prevents those judges from being its instruments in the "here and now". The Sin against Life is the same as the Sin against the Holy Ghost. It is unforgivable.

I hope – pray – Ms Patel will remember the values of her ancestors’ civilisation and act wisely.

[onawah]

Caitlin Johnstone: They Fear Information, Not Disinformation
May 23, 2022
by Caitlin Johnstone
https://consortiumnews.com/2022/05/2...8VPemvUL9dGDtU


"All the safeguards being setting up now to manipulate information online are not there to eliminate lies, they’re there to eliminate truth.
We’re in the final countdown to British Home Secretary Priti Patel’s decision on the fate of Julian Assange, with the WikiLeaks founder’s extradition to the United States due to be approved or rejected by the end of the month. Joe Lauria has an article out with Consortium News on the various pressures that Patel is facing from both sides of this history-making issue at this crucial time.

And I can’t stop thinking, as this situation comes to a boil, about how absurd it is that the U.S. empire is working to set a precedent that essentially outlaws information-sharing that the U.S. doesn’t like at the same time Western news media are full of hand-wringing headlines about the dangerous threat of “disinformation.”

Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) has an article “‘Disinformation’ Label Serves to Marginalize Crucial Ukraine Facts” about the way the mass media have been spinning that label to mean not merely the knowing distribution of false information but also of information that is true but inconvenient to imperial narrative-weaving.

“In defense of the U.S. narrative, corporate media have increasingly taken to branding realities inconvenient to U.S. information goals as ‘disinformation’ spread by Russia or its proxies,” writes FAIR’s Luca Goldmansour.

FAIR
@FAIRmediawatch
'Disinformation' Label Serves to Marginalize Crucial Ukraine Facts
fair.org

‘Disinformation’ Label Serves to Marginalize Crucial Ukraine Facts
Corporate media have increasingly taken to branding realities inconvenient to US information goals as “disinformation” spread by Russia.
5:14 PM · May 18, 2022·FAIRmediawatch

Online platforms have been ramping up their censorship protocols under the banner of fighting disinformation and misinformation. Those escalations always align with narrative control agendas of the U.S.-centralized empire.

Just the other day we learned that Twitter has a new policy which expands its censorship practices to fight “misinformation” about wars and other crises, and the Ukraine war (surprise surprise) will be the first such situation about which it will be enforcing these new censorship policies.Then there’s the recent controversy over the Department of Homeland Security’s “Disinformation Governance Board,” a mysterious institution ostensibly designed to protect the American people from wrongthink coming from Russia and elsewhere.

The board’s operations (whatever they were) have been “paused” pending a review which will be led by Michael Chertoff, a virulent swamp monster and torture advocate. Its operations will likely be resumed in one form or another, probably under the leadership of someone with a low profile who doesn’t sing show tunes about disinformation.

Nina Jankowicz 🇺🇦🇺🇸
@wiczipedia
You can just call me the Mary Poppins of disinformation 💁🏻‍♀️

3M views
0:39 / 0:45
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Nina Jankowicz 🇺🇦🇺🇸
@wiczipedia
· Feb 17, 2021
I had two on-camera interviews today and still have a face full of makeup; what should I make a TikTok about?

And this all comes out after U.S. officials straight up told the press that the Biden administration has been deliberately sowing disinformation to the public using the mainstream press in order to win an infowar against the Kremlin. They’ve literally just been circulating completely baseless stories about Russia and Ukraine, but nobody seems to be calling for the social media accounts of Biden administration officials to be banned.

Consortium News
@Consortiumnews
Pressure Mounts on Patel Over Assange Decision
consortiumnews.com
Pressure Mounts on Patel Over Assange Decision

The British home secretary is under pressure as she's about to decide whether to extradite WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange. By Joe Lauria Special to Consortium News At some point during the next...
7:00 PM · May 22, 2022·Twitter Web App

You see so many discrepancies between what the oligarchic empire says and what it actually does regarding the issue of disinformation because the empire has no problem with disinformation. The empire that is built on propaganda and lies has no problem with propaganda and lies. It has a problem with the truth.

They’re not worried about disinformation, they’re worried about information. They’re worried about journalists using the unprecedented information-sharing power of the internet to reveal inconvenient facts about the largest and most murderous power structure on earth. They’re worried about people finding out that they’ve been lied to their entire lives about their world, their nation and their government. They’re worried about people using their newly connected minds to decide together that they don’t much like the status quo as it’s been laid out for them, and deciding to build a new one.

All the safeguards they’re setting up now to manipulate the flow of information online are not there to eliminate lies, they’re there to eliminate truth. These people have a vested interest in keeping things dark and confused, and we the ordinary people of the world have a vested interest in shining a big inconvenient spotlight on everything. The elite agenda to keep things endarkened is at direct odds with the people’s agenda to get things enlightened.

We are not being protected by a compassionate alliance of corporations and governments who only want us to know the truth. We are being manipulated and oppressed by an oligarchic empire that wants us to believe lies. That’s why they’re locking up Assange, that’s why they’re censoring the internet, that’s why they’re filling our minds with propaganda and that’s why we can’t let them win."

This article is from CaitlinJohnstone.com and re-published with permission.

[onawah]

WATCH: CN Live! — Assange: Remembering the Embassy
May 31, 2022
https://consortiumnews.com/2022/05/3...S4SmwRASH-zMB8

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=NhiFCCdhBgM

"CN Live! is in London and looks back at the seven years that the WikiLeaks publisher was exiled in the Ecuador Embassy, with Fidel Narváez and Emmy Butlin.On June 19, 2012 Julian Assange, fearing extradition to the United States for publishing some of the biggest news of the day, sought refuge in the Embassy of Ecuador in London. Ten years later, he sits in a maximum security prison in London as the United States is still trying to put the journalist on trial for exposing its dirtiest secrets.

Some of its biggest scoops came when WikiLeaks‘ de facto headquarters were confined to two small rooms on the first floor of a redbrick building in Knightsbridge.

As we approach the 10th anniversary of Assange entering the embassy, CN Live! looks back on those important years. CN Editor Joe Lauria speaks with Fidel Narváez, who was consul at the Embassy until he was fired in 2018 for helping Assange; and Emmy Butlin, who stood outside the Embassy protesting Assange’s treatment until April 11, 2019, the day he was dragged out by London police. "

[Michel Leclerc]

Posted by onawah (here)

(...)

We are not being protected by a compassionate alliance of corporations and governments who only want us to know the truth. We are being manipulated and oppressed by an oligarchic empire that wants us to believe lies. That’s why they’re locking up Assange, that’s why they’re censoring the internet, that’s why they’re filling our minds with propaganda and that’s why we can’t let them win."

(...).

Actually, they do not care whether we believe them or not. They themselves do not believe them.

What they want us to do is to say we believe them, lying ourselves. They want us to lie the Lie, to live the Lie.

Be the Lie we lie to you! Lie the Lie we want you to be!

[onawah]

John 8:44
"You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies."

Posted by Michel Leclerc (here)

Posted by onawah (here)

(...)

We are not being protected by a compassionate alliance of corporations and governments who only want us to know the truth. We are being manipulated and oppressed by an oligarchic empire that wants us to believe lies. That’s why they’re locking up Assange, that’s why they’re censoring the internet, that’s why they’re filling our minds with propaganda and that’s why we can’t let them win."

(...).

Actually, they do not care whether we believe them or not. They themselves do not believe them.

What they want us to do is to say we believe them, lying ourselves. They want us to lie the Lie, to live the Lie.

Be the Lie we lie to you! Lie the Lie we want you to be!

[onawah]

The Power of Lies
June 2, 2022
By Craig Murray
CraigMurray.org.uk
https://consortiumnews.com/2022/06/0...e1m3Da9vBpwskI

"The comments on Peter Oborne’s excellent article on Julian Assange in The Guardian on May 20 are a damning indictment of the media’s ability to instill near universal acceptance of “facts” which are easily proven lies.

The Guardian chose a comment full of these entirely untrue assertions as its “Guardian pick” to head the section:



If you look through all the comments, they repeat again and again that Wikileaks published un-redacted documents, including names of U.S. agents, which put lives at risk. The entire basis of most of the comments is simply untrue – and none of the readers seems to have any information to contradict them.

Julian Assange has never said that governments should have no secrets. That would be a ridiculous position and clearly some information held by government is rightly confidential. He has said that governments should be very much more open to the public, and that most government secrecy is unjustified.

Nor has Wikileaks ever dumped data unread and unedited onto the internet. The commenter is correct to say that Wikileaks has shared editing responsibilities with organisations including The Guardian and The New York Times. This is precisely because the material needs to be edited to avoid revealing inappropriate material, and to make journalistic decisions on what to write stories about.

The notion that Assange was “lazy” because he did not read all the material and do all the editing himself is self-evidently ridiculous. The U.S. diplomatic cables and Iraq and Afghan war logs alone constituted over 600,000 documents. It was simply impossible for Assange to read it all personally. He was the editor of Wikileaks. This is tantamount to criticising Katherine Viner for not writing every single article in The Guardian personally.

The extradition hearing of Julian Assange heard numerous highly professional and respected journalists testify to the rigorous nature of Wikileaks’ editing process to remove names. Here is one extract from my reporting of the trial:

“John Goetz was the first witness this morning. Senior Investigations Editor at NDR since 2011, he was at Der Spiegel from 2007-11. He had published a series of articles on German involvement in the Afghan War, including one on a bombing raid on Kunduz which massacred civilians, for which he had won Germany’s highest journalism award. In June 2010 he went to London to meet with Wikileaks and the Guardian to work on the Afghan War Logs.

In a series of meetings in ‘the bunker’ at the Guardian with the NYT and the other major media partners, the partnership was formed whereby all would pool effort in researching the Afghan War Logs but each party would choose and publish his own stories. This cooperative venture between five major news organisations – normally rivals – was unique at the time.

Goetz had been struck by what seemed to him Julian Assange’s obsession with the security of the material. He insisted everything was encrypted and strict protocols were in place for handling the material. This had been new territory for the journalists. The New York Times was tasked with liaison with the White House, the Department of Defence and State Department on questions of handling the material.

Asked by Mark Summers to characterise the Afghan War Logs, Goetz said that they were fascinating first-hand material giving low level reports on actual operations. This was eye witness material which sometimes lacked the larger view. There was abundant first-hand evidence of war crimes. He had worked with Nick Davies of the Guardian on the Task Force 373 story.

Julian Assange had been most concerned to find the names in the papers. He spent a lot of time working out technical ways to identify names in the tens of thousands of documents. Mark Summers asked f he had been looking for the names for the purpose of redaction, and Goetz confirmed it was for redaction. He had interviewed Assange on the harm minimisation programme of the operation.

On behalf of the group Eric Schmitt of the NYT had been speaking to the White House and he had sent an email identifying 15,000 documents the White House did not want published to prevent harm to individuals or to American interests. It was agreed not to publish these documents and they were not published. Summers asked Goetz if he was aware of any names that slipped through, and he replied not.

Goetz was not so involved for family reasons when the consortium went through the same process with the Iraq war logs. But he knew that when a large number of these were released in the USA under a FOIA request, it was seen that Wikileaks had redacted those they released more heavily than the Department of Defense did. Goetz recalled an email from David Leigh of the Guardian stating that publication of some stories was delayed because of the amount of time Wikileaks were devoting to the redaction process to get rid of the ‘bad stuff’”.

Further very detailed evidence on this point was given by Professor John Sloboda, by Nicky Hager and by Professor Christian Grothoff.

Yet there is no public awareness that this careful editing and redaction process took place at all. That is plain from those comments under The Guardian article. This is because people are simply regurgitating the propaganda that the media has given them.

My blog was effectively the only source for detailed reporting of the Assange hearings, which were almost ignored by the mainstream media. [Consortium News had access to the courtroom every day and filed daily written and video reports.]

This was deliberate choice – the information was freely available to the mainstream media. This is what the Reuters News Agency, to which they all subscribe, produced on Dr Goetz’s evidence, for example:

“WikiLeaks’ Assange was careful to protect informants, court hears
By Reuters Staff

LONDON, Sept 16 (Reuters) – WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange was careful to ensure that the names of informants in hundreds of thousands of leaked secret U.S. government documents were never published, his London extradition hearing was told on Wednesday.

Australian-born Assange, 49, is fighting against being sent to the United States, where he is charged with conspiring to hack government computers and violating an espionage law over the release of confidential cables by WikiLeaks in 2010-2011.

A lawyer for the United States told the court last week that it was requesting Assange’s extradition over the publication of informants’ names, and not for handling leaked documents.

John Goetz, an investigative reporter who worked for Germany’s Spiegel magazine on the first publication of the documents, said the U.S. State Department had been involved in a conference call suggesting redactions, and WikiLeaks had agreed to hold back about 15,000 documents for publication.

“There was sensitivity and it was one of the things that was talked about all the time,” Goetz told the court. Assange was concerned that the media should take measures “so no one would be harmed”, he said.

Goetz said WikiLeaks was later frustrated when a password that allowed access to the full, un-redacted material was published in a book by Guardian reporters in February 2011.

Assange made international headlines in 2010 when WikiLeaks published a U.S. military video showing a 2007 attack by Apache helicopters in Baghdad that killed a dozen people, including two Reuters news staff.”

I can find no evidence that any mainstream media used this report from Reuters, or indeed any of Reuters’ daily news feed that covered the major points for the defence. The BBC managed to report prominently the false claim that has entered public consciousness:



But could not find space for any of the witnesses who contradicted this claim.

It is of course a very delicate subject for The Guardian, whose journalists David Leigh and Luke Harding were in fact responsible for the dumping of un-redacted material on the net. The court heard evidence of this from numerous witnesses, of whom Professor Christian Grothoff gave the most detail:

“Summers then asked Professor Grothoff whether David Leigh released the password. Grothoff replied that yes, Luke Harding and David Leigh had revealed the encryption key in their book on Wikileaks published February 2011. They had used it as a chapter heading, and the text explicitly set out what it was. The copies of the encrypted file on some mirrors were useless until David Leigh posted that key.
Summers So once David Leigh released the encryption key, was it in Wikileaks’ power to take down the mirrors?
Grothoff No.
Summers Could they change the encryption key on those copies?
Grothoff No.
Summers Was there anything they could do?
Grothoff Nothing but distract and delay.

Grothoff continued to explain that on 25 August 2011 the magazine Der Freitag had published the story explaining what had happened. It did not itself give out the password or location of the cache, but it made plain to people that it could be done, particularly to those who had already identified either the key or a copy of the file. The next link in the chain of events was that nigelparry.com published a blog article which identified the location of a copy of the encrypted file. With the key being in David Leigh’s book, the material was now effectively out. This resulted within hours in the creation of torrents and then publication of the full archive, unencrypted and unredacted, on Cryptome.org.

Summers asked whether Cryptome was a minor website. Grothoff replied not at all, it was a long established platform for leaked or confidential material and was especially used by journalists.”

It is telling that in The Guardian itself, scores of commenters on Oborne’s article reference the release of un-redacted files, but nobody seems to know that it was The Guardian that was actually responsible, or rather, massively irresponsible. The gulf between public perception and the truth is deeply troubling.

In a related matter, the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal has published an article with that attribution about the “Russiagate” hoax around the 2016 election, which is stunning:

“The Russia-Trump narrative that Clinton sanctioned did enormous harm to the country. It disgraced the FBI, humiliated the press, and sent the country on a three year investigation to nowhere. Putin never came close to doing as much disinformation damage.”

The problem is The Wall Street Journal has one thing wrong. The press is not humiliated – like Boris Johnson, it is entirely brazen and has no capacity for humiliation. The press has not been found out, because most of the country still believes the lies they were told and have not seen corrected.

Hillary’s 2016 campaign manager has stated “Russiagate” was a lie knowingly planted by Hillary. Mueller could find no firm evidence of Russian hacking, and the CEO of CrowdStrike, the Clinton appointed firm who made the original claim, testified to congress there was “no hard evidence”.

Neither the FBI nor Mueller even inspected the DNC servers. The Christopher Steele “peegate” dossier has fallen apart and is now a thing of ridicule. Roger Stone was jailed for false evidence to the FBI – which consisted of him inventing a Wikileaks-Trump link for purposes of self-aggrandisement. The Manafort/Assange story was the most egregious press fabrication since the Zinoviev letter.

But the media who pushed all these false narratives have never backed away from them.

My favourite example ever of almost entirely unreported news was the dismissal by New York federal judge John Koeltl of the Democratic National Committee’s lawsuit against Trump and the state of Russia over the 2016 elections. Judge Koeltl ruled that nothing whatsoever had been produced which met the bar of evidence.

There is plainly a crisis in western neo-liberal societies. The wealth gap between rich and poor has become so extreme as to be insupportable, and even in the wealthiest countries in the world, people in employment are struggling to achieve decent accommodation, heating and food. The billionaire-controlled state and media systems contrived to neuter both Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders, who sought to restore some social justice.

In consequence, inevitable public discontent has been channelled into populist courses – Brexit, Trump, Johnson – which themselves alarm the establishment, though less than Sanders and Corbyn did. There is a space for comforting fiction to explain the social shock.

Therefore the populist wave is explained, not as a result of popular discontent at the extreme economic imbalance of modern neo-liberalism, but by the Deus Ex Machina of hacking, or Cambridge Analytica, all of which is then itself sourced back to the designated devil Putin.

Modern society is not really much more rational than the Middle Ages. Myth is still extremely potent. Only the means of myth dissemination are more sophisticated.

Craig Murray is an author, broadcaster and human rights activist. He was British ambassador to Uzbekistan from August 2002 to October 2004 and rector of the University of Dundee from 2007 to 2010. His coverage is entirely dependent on reader support. Subscriptions to keep this blog going are gratefully received.

This article is from CraigMurray.org.uk.

The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News."

[Kryztian]

Spanish Court Demands Pompeo Testify on Apparent Plot to Kill Assange
EXPLIQUE, POR FAVOR
Rachel Olding - Breaking News Editor - Published Jun. 03, 2022 9:51AM ET
https://www.thedailybeast.com/spanis...julian-assange

Donald Trump’s former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has been ordered to appear in a Spanish court to explain a possible U.S. government plot to kidnap and assassinate WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, ABC Spain reports, citing legal sources close to the case. Yahoo News broke the news of the alleged 2017 plot last September, reporting that Trump’s then-CIA Director Pompeo wanted revenge after WikiLeaks published a massive trove of sensitive CIA hacking tools. “They were seeing blood,” an ex- Trump national security official told Yahoo. Separately, Spain’s National Court has been probing a Spanish security firm that may have spied on Assange for the CIA while providing security for the Ecuadorean Embassy in London. National High Court Judge Santiago Pedraz agreed to summon Pompeo and former U.S. counterintelligence official William Evanina as witnesses to explain whether a plot was drawn up. They must appear in June and can testify via videoconference. Pompeo has not yet commented on the ruling.

[onawah]

WATCH: CN Live! — ‘Doctors’ Orders: Don’t Extradite Assange’
June 13, 2022 6PM CST
https://consortiumnews.com/2022/06/1...MPgnOgEWPOul2Q

"Jill Stein, Bill Hogan, Sue Wareham & Mary Kostakidis join CN Live! tonight 7pm EDT on Doctors for Assange’s letter telling Priti Patel it is medically and unethically “unacceptable” to extradite Julian Assange to the U.S.
More than 300 doctors have written to U.K. Home Secretary Priti Patel to remind her that Julian Assange‘s stroke has not been discussed in the courts and that the U.S. assurances, based on a mental health condition only, are obsolete.

Guests: Dr. Jill Stein, Prof. Bill Hogan, Dr. Sue Wareham & Mary Kostakidis.
Time: Monday June 13 at 7pm EDT / Tuesday June 14 12am BST / 9am AEST
Hosts: Elizabeth Vos, Joe Lauria and Cathy Vogan.
Producer: Cathy Vogan "

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=YSej_j71C9s