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Thread: Current Wikileaks and Assange News & Releases

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    United States Avalon Member onawah's Avatar
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    Default Re: Current Wikileaks and Assange News & Releases

    Last edited by onawah; 26th September 2020 at 23:40.
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    Default Re: Current Wikileaks and Assange News & Releases

    More than 160 world leaders and diplomats call for UK to release Julian Assange

    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...O-WbE_8hjeH_2g

    WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange should be released from a UK prison and not be extradited to the US, according to more than 160 world leaders, politicians and diplomats.

    The high-powered group gave their support to Assange in an open letter addressed to prime minister Boris Johnson and other government ministers.

    Signatories of the letter, include the president of Argentina, Alberto Fernandez, and two former presidents of Brazil, Dilma Rousseff and Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

    The letter was also signed by a string of US critics, including Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro, and former Ecuadorian leader Rafael Correa.

    Mr Assange, 49, is fighting extradition to the US where he faces espionage charges over WikiLeaks release of confidential diplomatic cables in 2010 and 2011.

    He could face a prison sentence of up to 175 years if convicted.

    The letter was first written by the Lawyers for Assange group in August and the names of the politicians were released on Monday.

    It contains a series of legal arguments about why Assange should not be extradited, including claims he would not receive a fair trial and “be exposed to torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”

    “This demonstrates the growing opposition around the world to US efforts to extradite and prosecute Assange, and the political nature of this case,” Assange's lawyer, Jennifer Robinson, told NBC News.

    Mr Assange was arrested at the Ecuadorian embassy in April 2019 having claims asylum there for seven years.

    He was immediately arrested and sentenced to 50 weeks in prison for breaching the Bail Act and will remain in HM Prison Belmarsh until his extradition hearing is completed.
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    Default Re: Current Wikileaks and Assange News & Releases

    Source: https://www.assangecountdowntofreedo...s/craig-murray

    Craig Murray in conversation with Randy Credico

    Episode 42: Craig Murray: Your Man In The Public Gallery
    Continuing where we left off in February, Ex UK Diplomat, author and human rights activist Craig Murray summed up his daily unique, lively and colorful dispatches from the Assange extradition hearing public gallery—rife with sharp commentary and ironic analysis of the cruel and malicious prosecution of award winning journalist and publisher Julian Assange. In this exclusive fast paced one hour interview Murray provides a dazzling overview of 17 days of the Kafka show trial now underway at the notorious medieval Old Bailey. The FCO whistleblower Murray with his rapier like aim takes on the ongoing machinations , deceit and complicity of the UK legal system with the immoral and vengeful US DOJ.
    Duration: 1:18:10

    This can also be listened to and downloaded directly from here: https://static1.squarespace.com/stat...ic+Gallery.mp3

    And also now here in the Avalon Library: http://avalonlibrary.net/Julian_Assa...Credico%29.mp3

    The audio drops occasionally but not sufficiently enough to disrupt the flow.
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    Default Re: Current Wikileaks and Assange News & Releases

    LETTER FROM LONDON: The Surreal US Case Against Assange
    September 28, 2020
    By Alexander Mercouris
    https://consortiumnews.com/2020/09/2...ainst-assange/

    "The fox is guarding the henhouse and Washington is prosecuting a publisher for exposing its own war crimes. Alexander Mercouris diagnoses the incoherence of the U.S. case for extradition."


    Julian Assange’s father John Shipton outside the court where his son is on trial in London, September 2020.

    "Following the Julian Assange case as it has progressed through its various stages, from the original Swedish allegations right up to and including the extradition hearing which is currently underway in the Central Criminal Court in London, has been a troubling and very strange experience.

    The U.S. government has failed to present a coherent case.

    Conscious that the British authorities should in theory refuse to extradite Assange if the case against him were shown to be politically motivated and/or related to Assange’s legitimate work as a journalist, the U.S. government has struggled to present a case against Assange which is not too obviously politically motivated or related to Assange’s legitimate work as a journalist.

    This explains the strange succession of one original and two superseding indictments.

    The U.S. government’s first indictment was based on what was a supposedly simple allegation of computer interference, supposedly coordinated in some sort of conspiracy between Assange and Chelsea Manning.

    This was obviously done in an attempt to dispel the idea that the request for Assange’s extradition was politically motivated or was related to Assange’s legitimate work as a journalist.

    However lawyers in the United States had no difficulty pointing out the “inchoate facts” of the alleged conspiracy between Assange and Manning, whilst both lawyers and journalists in the United States and elsewhere pointed out that the facts in the indictment in fact bore all the hallmarks of action by a journalist to protect a source.The result was that the U.S. government replaced its indictment with a first superseding indictment, which this time was founded largely on the 1917 Espionage Act, and was therefore closer to the real reasons why the case against Assange was being brought.

    However, that made the case look altogether too obviously politically motivated, so it has in turn been replaced by a second superseding indictment, presented to the court and the defence team virtually on the eve of the trial, which has sought to veer back towards strictly criminal allegations, this time of involvement in computer hacking.

    More Problems for Another Indictment

    The allegations in the second superseding indictment have however faced major difficulties, in that they do not seem to concern the United States and may not even be actual crimes. Also they rely heavily on the evidence of a known fraudster, whose “evidence” is inherently unreliable.

    The U.S. government has failed to make clear whether the additional allegations in the second superseding indictment are intended to constitute a separate standalone case. Initially they appeared to deny that they did; then they hinted that they might do; now however they seem to be acting as if they don’t.

    As if that were not confusing enough, the U.S. government and its British lawyers have floated confusing and contradictory theories about whether or not the British authorities can extradite Assange even if the case against him is politically motivated, and even if it is related to his journalistic activities.

    Initially they seemed to be arguing that — contrary to all British precedent and the actual text of the extradition treaty between the U.S. and Britain — Britain can in fact extradite Assange to the U.S. on a politically motivated charge, because the enabling Act which the British Parliament passed, which made the extradition treaty between the U.S. and Britain a part of British law, is silent on whether or not individuals can be extradited to the U.S. on a politically motivated charge.

    This argument of course came close to conceding that the case against Assange is politically motivated after all.
    This threadbare argument, at least for the moment, seems to have been abandoned. At least nothing has been heard of it throughout the current hearing. Instead the U.S. government and its British lawyers have argued, in the face of the incredulity of a string of expert and factual witnesses, that the case is not politically motivated after all.

    The same inconsistencies have beset the U.S. government’s arguments as to whether or not Assange is being charged under the Espionage Act for activities related to his work as a journalist.

    Initially the U.S. government’s position was that he was not. This was based on some theory — never satisfactorily explained or articulated — that Assange in some way is not a journalist, even though he is charged with doing things that journalists do.

    Faced by a barrage of expert witnesses who pointed out that the charges brought against Assange under the Espionage Act do in fact relate to work journalists do, the U.S. government midway through the hearing reversed course.

    Now it says that the charges against Assange not only do relate to his work as a journalist, but that they can be brought against any journalist who does the things Assange is being charged with having done. The U.S. government has even argued that The New York Times would have been successfully prosecuted under the Espionage Act for publishing the Pentagon Papers, because that was an action essentially identical to the ones for which Assange is being charged.

    The implications for journalists of this astonishing reversal are truly shocking. It is staggering that in the media it has attracted no attention.

    Trouble with Witnesses

    The U.S. government has shown the same lack of coherence in its response to the defence’s impressive lineup of expert witnesses.

    The conventional way of responding to an expert is to call another expert to state a contrary view. On the critical issues of U.S. law, especially the protections provided to journalists by the First Amendment to the Constitution, as well as on the politics in the U.S. behind the Assange prosecution, the U.S. government has however done no such thing. Presumably it has found it difficult or impossible to find experts who can be relied upon credibly to state a contrary view.

    Instead, armed only with affidavits from U.S. Justice Department officials, who are of course not impartial experts at all, but who are part of the U.S. government’s legal team, the U.S. government’s British lawyers have been left to argue that the defence’s experts are not really experts at all — an impossible argument to make convincingly in my opinion — and to debate with the experts points of U.S. politics and U.S. law — including difficult points of U.S. constitutional and case law — about which the experts are by definition far more knowledgeable than the British lawyers.

    The result, inevitably, has been a series of humiliations, as the lawyers have been repeatedly caught out by the experts making basic errors of fact and interpretation about the points which they have sought to argue.

    Unsurprisingly, the lawyers have attempted to make up for this by trying to intimidate and denigrate the experts, in a way that has only highlighted their own lack of expertise in the relevant areas by comparison with that of the experts.

    Given the collapse into incoherence of the U.S. government’s case, it is unsurprising that the U.S. government’s British lawyers are now reportedly trying to persuade the Judge against hearing closing arguments.

    Given the constant shifts and reversals in the U.S. government’s position, preparing and presenting a closing argument to the court which would be internally consistent and credible must be fast becoming a nightmare. If closing arguments do take place, as I still expect, it will be interesting to see which of the many conflicting arguments and theories they have made the U.S. government’s lawyers finally run with.

    On its face the U.S. government’s case ought to be close to collapse. There was even a point in the hearing where one of the U.S. government’s British lawyers apparently admitted to the judge that the reason for the second superseding indictment was that the first superseding indictment was “failing.”

    If so, then given that the charges being prosecuted against Assange are still basically those set out in the first superseding indictment, the case against Assange ought to be dismissed, and the U.S. government’s request for his extradition ought to be refused.

    The Underlying Truth

    It remains to be seen whether that is what actually happens. However, that brings me to the single most important fact, and the underlying truth, about this extraordinary case.

    It is very easy when following the intricacies of such a complex legal process to lose sight of what this case is really about.

    Ultimately the U.S. government is not pursuing Julian Assange because he helped Chelsea Manning take certain steps with a computer to conceal her identity, or because he had some historic contacts with hackers, or because he became involved in some activities in Iceland, which caused him to fall foul of a fraudster (and FBI informant).

    Nor is it because Assange received and published classified material. In the U.S. the receipt and publication by the news media of classified material has grown to almost industrial levels.

    It is because Assange, to a greater extent than any other journalist since the end of the war in Vietnam, has exposed the darkest and most terrible secrets of the U.S. government.

    Quote John Pilger
    @johnpilger
    Outside the court where his son endures what the judge now admits is a political trial, Julian #Assange's father, John Shipton, describes the human carnage caused by America and utters an unforgettable truth: "Julian didn't do anything, they did."

    Don't Extradite Assange
    @DEAcampaign
    WATCH: John Shipton 'Julian didn't do anything, they did'
    TWEET]1309502641202962434[/TWEET]
    https://twitter.com/i/status/1309502641202962434

    3:38 AM · Sep 26, 2020
    4.9K
    3.2K people are Tweeting about this
    The case against Assange has its origin in the calamitous “War on Terror” launched by the Bush administration in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.

    That “war” provided the cover for a series of violent military aggressions, primarily in the Middle East, by the U.S. and its closest allies, first and foremost Britain but also including other countries such as Saudi Arabia and France.

    The result has been a series of wars in a succession of Middle East countries — Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen— fought by the U.S. and its allies and proxies, which have caused the devastation of whole societies, and the death and dispersal of millions.

    In the process the U.S. has become drawn increasingly into practices which it once condemned, or at least said it condemned. These include the “extrajudicial killing” (i.e. murder) of people — who have included children and U.S. citizens — by drone strikes, a practice which has now become routine; the kidnapping of individuals and their detention without trial in places like Guantanamo, a practice which despite unconvincing protestations that “extraordinary rendition” no longer happens almost certainly continues; and the practice of torture, at one time referred to as “enhanced interrogation techniques,” which almost certainly still continues, and indeed appears to have become normalized.

    All of this activity straightforwardly violates international (and domestic U.S.) law, including war crimes law and human rights law, and does so moreover in fundamental ways.

    It also requires, in order to implement the policies that result in these unlawful acts, in the creation of a vast and ultimately unaccountable national security apparatus of a sort that is ultimately incompatible with a democratic society. Inevitably its activities, which have become routinely unlawful, are becoming unlawful within the territory of the United States, as well as outside it.

    This manifests itself in all sorts of ways, for example through the vast, indiscriminate and illegal bulk-surveillance program exposed by the whistleblower Edward Snowden, and by the systemic FISA surveillance abuse exposed over the course of the Russiagate “scandal.”

    The extent to which the very existence of the national security apparatus, required to implement various U.S. illegal activities and to achieve its foreign policy goals, has become incompatible with a democratic society, is shown by one of the most alarming of recent developments, both in Britain and in the United States.

    This is the growing complicity of much of the media in concealing its illegal activities. Obviously without that complicity these activities would be impossible, as would the serial violations of international law, including war crimes law and human rights, which the United States and some of its allies now routinely engage in.

    Quote Joe Lauria
    @unjoe
    US post-war aggressive history of coups and invasions for geo-strategic & economic interests has been covered up by the establishment media, explained as 'spreading democracy', and Julian Assange, almost single-handedly, lifted that cover. Hence he is in the dock.
    9:48 AM · Sep 20, 2020
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    All this explains the extreme reaction to Julian Assange, and the determined attempts to destroy him, and to pulp his reputation.

    Julian Assange and his organization WikiLeaks, have done those things which the U.S. government and its national security apparatus most fear, and have worked hardest to prevent, by exposing the terrible reality of much of what the U.S. government now routinely does, and is determined to conceal, and what much of the media is helping the U.S. government to conceal.

    Thus in a series of astonishing revelations Julian Assange and WikiLeaks have exposed in the so-called embassy cables the extraordinarily manipulative conduct of U.S. foreign policy; in the Vault 7 disclosures the instruments the CIA uses in order to — as U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has said, “lie” and “cheat” — and, most disturbingly, in collaboration with Chelsea Manning, the rampant war crimes and egregious human rights abuses carried out by the U.S. military during the illegal war and occupation of Iraq.

    This is an extraordinary record for a journalist, and for an organization, WikiLeaks, which was only set up in 2006.

    Not surprisingly, the result has been that the pursuit of Assange by the U.S. government has been relentless, whilst the media, much of which has been complicit in covering up its crimes, has preferred to look the other way.

    Hence, the Surreal Quality

    It is this underlying reality which gives the whole case currently unfolding in London’s Central Criminal Court its surreal quality.

    That the true purpose of the U.S. government’s relentless pursuit of Assange is to prevent him from exposing more of its crimes, and to punish him for exposing those of its crimes which he did expose, if only so as to deter others from doing the same thing, is perfectly obvious to any unbiased and realistic observer. However, the hearing in London is being conducted as if this were not the case.

    Thus, the extraordinary zigzags in the U.S. government’s rationale for bringing the case, as it cannot admit the true reason why the case has been actually brought.

    Thus, also the U.S. government’s strenuous efforts throughout the hearing to prevent evidence being produced of its crimes which Assange exposed.

    The U.S. government has strenuously opposed all attempts to introduce as evidence the appalling “Collateral Murder” video, which shows the deliberate murder of civilians in Iraq by members of the U.S. military. It has also strenuously opposed the introduction of evidence from a defence witness about his own torture. This despite the fact that in both cases the fact of the U.S. crimes is scarcely disputed, and has in fact been all but admitted.



    The result is the paradoxical and bizarre situation whereby the U.S. authorities try to cobble together a case against Assange based on a confusing medley of discordant and conflicting claims and facts, whilst failing to prosecute or hold to account those who were responsible for the very serious crimes which he has exposed.

    In fact, as the U.S. government’s case has unraveled, the argument has become increasingly confined to the discrete issue of whether — by exposing the U.S. government’s crimes —Assange “irresponsibly” put the safety of various U.S. government informants at risk.

    As it happens the evidence is clearly that he did not. Over the course of the hearing the court has heard of Assange’s many and serious attempts to conceal the identities of these informants, and of the reckless and even possibly malicious actions of certain others, who actually exposed them.

    The court has also been told of the absence of any evidence that any one of these informants has in fact been harmed by any disclosure by WikiLeaks or Assange. Moreover, an expert witness has argued convincingly that the disclosure by a journalist of the identities of such informants would not under U.S. law be a crime anyway.

    In response the U.S. government’s lawyers have relied heavily, not on the evidence of any actual witness, but on passages in a book by two Guardian journalists who are known to be hostile to Assange, and who — by publishing a password — seem to have done more to compromise the identities of the informants than Assange ever did.



    Neither of these journalists has been called to give evidence on oath about the contents of their book. Doing so would, of course, have exposed them to cross-examination by the defence about the truth of the book’s contents. Given the weight the U.S. government is apparently placing on the book, I find it astonishing that they were not called.

    The surreal quality of the U.S. government’s treatment of this issue is shown by the fact that when an actual witness — the German journalist John Goetz — did in fact come forward and offer to give evidence on oath about a specific allegation in the book — refuting an allegation in the book that Assange supposedly made comments at a dinner, which Goetz attended, that showed a reckless disregard for the safety of the informants — the U.S. government’s lawyers strenuously objected, and were able to get the judge to exclude this evidence.

    However, it is the staggering disproportion between the scale of the crimes Assange has exposed, and the crimes of which he is accused — if they are even crimes, and of which he anyway appears to be innocent — which for me stands out.

    Assange and WikiLeaks have exposed rampant war crimes and human rights abuses over the course of illegal wars waged by the U.S. government and its allies. The death toll from these wars runs at the very least into the tens of thousands, and more plausibly into the hundreds of thousands or even millions.

    By contrast over the course of the entire hearing no evidence whatsoever has been produced that as a result of any of Assange’s actions anyone has come to any actual physical harm.

    Yet it is Assange who is in the dock, facing demands for his extradition to the United States, where a 175-year sentence may await him, whilst the persons responsible for the colossal crimes he has exposed, not only walk free, but are amongst those who are trying to jail him.

    The point was made forcefully during the hearing by one of the defence’s most powerful witnesses, Daniel Ellsberg.

    It was also made forcefully to Consortium News by one of its readers, who has correctly pointed out that the crimes which Assange exposed were clearly defined as war crimes by the Nuremberg Tribunal, whose decisions are universally accepted as forming the bedrock of international war crimes law.

    The Nuremberg Tribunal moreover made it clear that there is not only a positive duty to refuse to participate in such crimes, even when ordered to do so, but that no sanctions should ever been imposed for exposing such crimes when they occur.

    In other words, it is Assange and his sources, first and foremost Chelsea Manning, who are the defenders of international law, including the Nuremberg Principles, and including in the case which is currently underway, whilst it is those who persecute them, including by bringing the current case against Assange, who are international law’s violators.

    This is the single most important fact about this case, and it explains everything about it.

    Assange and Manning have paid an enormous price for their defence of international law, and for the principles of basic human decency and humanity.

    Manning was recently held in long spells of solitary detention, and has had her savings confiscated by the U.S. authorities, for no reason other than that she has refused to testify against Assange.

    Assange has been subjected to what various UN agencies have characterized as long periods of arbitrary detention and psychological torture.

    He continues to be denied bail, despite his known health problems, and is separated from his family.

    He continues to have difficulties consulting privately with his lawyers, and has been exposed to the indignity — qualified in other cases by the European Court for Human Rights as a human rights violation — of being kept inside court rooms confined to a glass box or cage.

    John Pilger has described vividly and in great detail, including to Consortium News, the inhuman conditions to which Assange is daily exposed to. That these amount to human rights violations ought not to require discussion or explanation.

    International Conventions

    That these human rights violations breach a host of international conventions to which Britain is a signatory, including against torture and arbitrary detention, in respect of the right to a fair trial, in respect of the right to privacy and dignity of the person, and of the right to a family life, also ought not to require discussion or explanation.

    Recently there has been an outcry in Britain because legislation the British government is proposing, which would allow it to modify unilaterally the terms of the Withdrawal Agreement it agreed last year with the European Union, breaches international law.

    Without in any way disputing the importance of this issue, which may have important consequences for peace in Ireland, I find the angry protestations of some British journalists and politicians, that Britain never violates international law, frankly unreal.

    If they want examples of Britain violating international law they need look no further than the facts of Assange’s case. They might also benefit from looking at what has been said over the course of the ongoing hearing in the Central Criminal Court.

    Despite all the difficulties, there is however no reason to give up hope.The extraordinary zigzags the U.S. government has been forced to make as it tries and fails to put a coherent and convincing case against Julian Assange together, show that the law, for all its many flaws, remains an important defence.

    I am aware of the many criticisms which have been made of Vanessa Baraitser, the judge who is hearing Assange’s case. I don’t disagree with any of them.

    However, I do get the impression that Baraitser’s patience has been sorely tried by the U.S. government’s repeated and dizzying changes of position. I also get the impression that she was particularly annoyed when the U.S. government, on the virtual eve of the hearing, presented to the court and the defence its second superseding indictment, which in effect made a nonsense of the first.

    That may explain why the U.S. government’s British lawyers have largely conducted the case as if the second superseding indictment did not exist, basing their arguments mostly on what the first superseding indictment says, though perhaps unsurprisingly, and to the bafflement of the experts, they are now increasingly making arguments which have no basis in any indictment.

    Moreover, and perhaps more importantly, Baraitser has rejected the U.S. government’s various attempts to exclude en masse the evidence of defence witnesses, even if she has imposed a 30-minute guillotine on their examination in chief (direct examination) by defence lawyers.

    In summary, and in my opinion, there is still a chance, however small, that Baraitser will decide the case in Assange’s favour.

    If she does not do so, then I would have thought, based on what has happened over the course of the hearing, that Assange will have good prospects on appeal.

    More encouraging than what has been happening inside the court, where the outcome remains very much in doubt, and where the prospects must be considered problematic to say the least, is what has been happening outside.

    My wife, who attended one of the hearings last week, saw placards held up by some of Assange’s supporters outside the court, which called on road users to honk their horns in support of Assange. To her delighted astonishment, despite the media blackout which surrounds the case, and despite the long campaign of character assassination to which Assange has been subjected, an extraordinarily high proportion of road users (more than a quarter) did so.

    That reinforces my sense that the tide of opinion, at least in Britain, is shifting. The battle is far from over, and can still be won.

    Alexander Mercouris is a political commentator and editor of The Duran.

    The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News."
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    United States Avalon Member onawah's Avatar
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    Default Re: Current Wikileaks and Assange News & Releases

    Exclusive: Spanish judge seeks Sheldon Adelson security chief in Assange spying case
    MAX BLUMENTHAL·JULIAN ASSANGE·
    SEPTEMBER 29, 2020
    https://thegrayzone.com/2020/09/29/s...31pI4V4DhdrbuQ

    "A Spanish judge’s request to probe a Las Vegas Sands staffer’s apparent role in a criminal spying operation against Julian Assange indicates the investigation is homing in on US intelligence. Tellingly, the Department of Justice is stonewalling the application.

    By Max Blumenthal

    "The Spanish judge presiding over the trial of a security firm owner apparently hired to spy on jailed Wikileaks publisher Julian Assange has sent a request to the US Department of Justice for an interview with Zohar Lahav, the Israeli-American vice president for executive protection at Las Vegas Sands.

    Sands is owned by the ultra-Zionist casino tycoon Sheldon Adelson, one of the single largest donors to Donald Trump’s presidential campaigns and the Republican Party.

    According to court documents reviewed by The Grayzone, the judge seeks to probe Lahav’s relationship with disgraced UC Global CEO David Morales, who was indicted for an array of crimes after allegedly presiding over a spying operation targeting Assange while he was confined within Ecuador’s embassy in London.

    This request follows a previous attempt at securing witness interviews that was effectively blocked by the US Department of Justice.

    The judge outlined four objectives for the interview with Lahav:

    Determine Lahav’s relationship with Morales
    Determine the occasions when Morales and Lahav met in the United States and Spain
    Determine if Lahav had communications and meetings with Morales regarding the alleged illegally obtained information under investigation
    Determine if Lahav or his superiors in Las Vegas Sands, Sheldon Adelson and Brian Nagel, had access to the alleged illegally obtained information under investigation.
    The judge’s interest in Nagel indicates that the Spanish investigation is now probing the suspected role of US intelligence as the guiding hand behind UC Global’s criminal spying operation.
    Before he was hired as Adelson’s director of global security, Nagel serving as the top cyber-crime investigator for the US Secret Service – a role which earned him a medal of commendation from the CIA. Together with Lahav, he was likely to have played a central role in coordinating between Sands, UC Global, and US intelligence.

    Morales has fervently denied being a double agent, maintaining that UC Global was contracted exclusively by the Ecuadorian security service known as SENAIN to protect Assange while he was trapped in Ecuador’s embassy in London.

    Fernando Garcia, the lawyer defending Morales in the Spanish case, insisted to The Grayzone in a garbled email, “David Morales never spied [on] anybody, never sent any legal information [to] anybody but helped Assange [stay] safe and comfortable [in the] Ecuador Embassy with NO[T] ONE incident under their protection.”

    But as The Grayzone first reported in May, witnesses in the Spanish case testified that Lahav recruited UC Global’s Morales when the Spanish mercenary visited a security fair hosted at Adelson’s Las Vegas Sands Convention Center. The two became fast friends, with Lahav communicating constantly with Morales as the operation escalated from snooping to theft, fraud, and assassination plots, according to testimony by several witnesses.

    Emails obtained by the Spanish court and reviewed by The Grayzone contained IP addresses revealing that Morales sent spying instructions to his employees while he was staying at Adelson’s Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas.

    The Grayzone has now learned that Lahav and Morales have been identified together in at least one US-allied South American country since the operation at the embassy ended. Further, a Spanish police document seen by this reporter placed Morales on Adelson’s Queen Miri luxury yacht in July 2019.

    Private communications by Morales and testimony by his former employees strongly suggested that Adelson’s Sands was functioning as a front for the CIA.

    According to a former UC Global business partner, Morales boasted that he was “working for the dark side” after returning from his first trip to Las Vegas and explicitly stated he had been contracted by US intelligence, describing the CIA alternately as his “American friends” and “the American client.”

    In a text message obtained by The Grayzone, Morales told an employee that his company had been hired to spy on Assange by “the agency of the stars and stripes.”

    By seeking an interview with Lahav and information about Nagel, the Spanish judge presiding over the criminal trial of Morales is effectively investigating the role of Adelson’s security team as a channel between the CIA and UC Global.

    American cooperation with the Spanish judge’s request for a US-based witness is mandated under the 2004 US-Spain Mutual Legal Assistance Instrument.

    However, in an email reviewed by The Grayzone, DOJ trial attorney Susan Park Hunter attempted to stall the investigation with vague and frivolous requests for “additional information,” including the “factual basis to suspect [David] Morales Guillen of bribery and money laundering.”

    Hunter’s language indicates that the US government recognizes the gravity of the judge’s request, and given the consequence of allowing a figure like Lahav to testify, has resolved to do whatever is necessary to avoid compliance.

    The CIA’s men in Vegas?
    Proof of UC Global’s spying campaign and evidence of the firm’s relationship with the CIA emerged following the September 2019 arrest of David Morales. Spanish police had initiated a secret investigation called “Operation Tabanco” under a criminal case managed by the same Madrid-based National Court that presided over the arrest of former Chilean military dictator Augusto Pinochet in 1998.

    Morales was charged in October 2019 by the Spanish court with violating the privacy of Julian Assange and abusing his attorney-client privileges, as well as money laundering and bribery. A former Spanish special forces officer turned mercenary, Morales was also accused of illegal weapons possession when police found two guns with the serial numbers filed off on his property.

    Documents and testimony revealed in the Spanish court have exposed shocking details of UC Global’s campaign against Assange, his lawyers, friends, and even American journalists. Evidence of crimes ranging from spying to robberies to kidnapping and even a proposed plot to eliminate Assange by poisoning has emerged from the ongoing legal proceedings.

    Several former UC Global employees stated in court this August that Morales explicitly proposed killing Assange with poison. One former staffer testified that Morales devised the extreme measures after being informed that “the Americans were desperate” to end Assange’s presence in the embassy.

    Perhaps the most striking element exposed in the Spanish courtroom has been the apparent relationship between UC Global, Adelson’s Las Vegas Sands, and Mike Pompeo’s CIA.

    In a previous report, The Grayzone detailed how the Las Vegas Sands corporation of Trump mega-donor Sheldon Adelson seemingly operated as a liaison between UC Global and US intelligence, contracting the former on behalf of the latter.

    It was the second time Adelson’s company had been identified as a CIA asset. The first was in 2010, when a private intelligence report sponsored by the gambling industry alleged that an Adelson-owned casino in Macau was capturing footage of Chinese officials blowing huge sums of money at card tables and feeding it back to US intelligence so those officials could be blackmailed into serving as CIA informants.


    One of just a few publicly available photos of Las Vegas Sands Director of Global Security Brian Nagel, taking during congressional testimony in 2007
    Throughout this period, Adelson’s Las Vegas Sands employed Brian Nagel as its director of global security. Nagel earned his stripes through nearly two decades at the US Secret Service, helping the agency set up an array of anti-cybercrime partnerships with the FBI, Los Angeles Police Department, and Department of Homeland Security.

    To take down cyber-thieves, Nagel reportedly employed wiretaps, used undercover informants, and oversaw an initiative to “turn the tables on criminal groups” by empowering law enforcement to use “the same technologies” hackers and cyber-criminals typically employed.

    His efforts ultimately earned him the CIA’s Intelligence Community Seal Medallion, an award given to non-CIA personnel “who have made significant contributions to the Agency’s intelligence efforts.”

    Nagel was mentioned in the Global Intelligence Files published by Wikileaks, which consist of thousands of internal communications by employees of Stratfor, a US-based intelligence firm known as the “Shadow CIA.” In an October 2009 email, a Stratfor analyst detailed Nagel’s offer of a contract for Stratfor to conduct “proactive monitoring” of security threats against Las Vegas Sands casinos around the globe.

    In December 2017, UC Global’s David Morales made one of several trips to Adelson’s Venetian hotel in Las Vegas. From there, he sent instructions to employees on setting up a secret surveillance channel from the Ecuadorian embassy in London that could be fed back to another party without Ecuador’s security services noticing.

    “David Morales obviously didn’t have the technical knowledge,” a former UC Global IT specialist who received the instructions testified, “so the document must have been sent by another person. Because it was in English, I suspect that it could’ve been [created by] US intelligence.”

    The Spanish-speaking Morales told his employees at the time, “these people have given me the following instructions, drafted in English.”

    Which employee of Las Vegas Sands had the technical expertise in electronic surveillance to conceive the instructions? And who boasted years of coordination with US intelligence and federal law enforcement, developing the very tools that would have been deployed against Wikileaks when it first came online? All evidence pointed to Nagel.

    Now, a Spanish judge seeks to probe Nagel’s involvement in the illegal spying ring run by UC Global. But first, the judge has to secure an interview with Lahav, who was Nagel’s colleague at Las Vegas Sands and, by all indications, the personal handler of Morales.


    UC Global CEO David Morales (left) at a 2016 security fair in Las Vegas

    Business in Bolsonaro’s Brazil, cruising on the Queen Miri
    The relationship between David Morales and Sheldon Adelson’s security team began during a trip the Spanish mercenary took to Las Vegas in 2016, according to testimony by former UC Global employees. At a security fair hosted inside Adelson’s Sands Expo Convention Center, Morales was approached by Zohar Lahav, the VP of the billionaire’s executive protection team.

    A former UC Global business partner testified against Morales in Spanish court, “the head of security of Las Vegas Sands, a Jewish guy named Zohar Lahav, made contact with Mr. Morales, getting to become good friends with him at the security fair in Las Vegas. I sense that this person offered him to collaborate with American intelligence authorities to send information about Mr. Assange.”


    A recommendation letter written by Zohar Lahav on official Sands letterhead for his friend, UC Global CEO David Morales

    Morales and Lahav formed a close friendship that has outlasted UC Global’s contract to spy on Assange inside the embassy. According to a witness in the Spanish case, the two pals took a business trip to Brazil in 2018.

    Fernando Garcia, the lawyer of Morales, told The Grayzone his client has “decided to stop talking about any travel because no journalist has published his version of facts.”
    However, Garcia confirmed that “UC Global has clients in Mexico, Colombia, Brazil and other countries in South America.” He would not deny that Morales traveled to Brazil for work.
    In 2018, when Morales allegedly traveled to Brazil with Lahav, the country was governed by President Jair Bolsonaro, a right-wing ally of the US. During his first US trip in March 2019, Bolsonaro made a special visit to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.
    Adelson has lobbied hard for a relaxation of Brazilian laws forbidding casino gambling in the country. This January, he experienced a breakthrough when the president’s son, Senator Flavio Bolsonaro, traveled to Las Vegas for a meeting with the Sands tycoon to discuss a proposal to allow casinos inside Brazilian resorts. (Flavio Bolsonaro was indicted by Brazilian police this September for embezzlement, money laundering, and operating a criminal organization.)


    Flavio Bolsonaro’s letter announcing a meeting with Sheldon Adelson to discuss “investments for the installation of new resorts in our country”

    Morales, for his part, appeared to have maintained his working relationship with Adelson and Lahav up until the point that he was arrested in September 2019. Notes by Spanish police agents surveilling Morales as part of the “Operation Tabanco” investigation indicate his presence on Adelson’s yacht, the Queen Miri, while it was docked on the Spanish island of Ibiza.

    “I’m busy now with a client that always comes in summer,” Morales told a friend, referring to Adelson, “and we have a lot of activity going on in August with this yacht thing. I’m now at Ibiza, like, I’ve been a couple of weeks, been to Palermo, Saint Tropéz, Mónaco, and now we’ve arrived to Ibiza and I’m staying here with these people until the 5th.”

    Morales continued by complaining about “these messes at the [Ecuadorian] embassy,” and commented, “I’m fed up with the company, I’m going to send it all to hell.”

    The conversation was recorded on July 29, 2019 by Spanish police, according to a document reviewed by The Grayzone. Less than three months later, Morales was arrested by those investigators.

    L) Loren Slocum Lahav with her husband, Sands VP for executive protection Zohar Lahav. It is the only publicly available photo of the security professional. (R) Slocum Lahav with longtime business partner Tony Robbins.

    Family ties to Trump Inc.’s favorite self-help guru
    Zohar Lahav’s status as director of executive protection for Adelson, perhaps the largest individual donor to the president, is not his only connection to Trump Inc. The Israeli-American is married to a motivational speaker, Loren Slocum Lahav, who has worked closely with Tony Robbins, facilitating 160 workshops for the wealthy self-help guru over the past 14 years, according to her bio.

    Robbins happens to have been a business partner of Trump during his brief and abortive campaign for president in 2000. During Robbins’ Results 2000 speaking tour, he reportedly paid Trump $1 million to deliver 10 speeches at seminars where participants were charged $229 each for entry. Candidate Trump’s exploratory committee described the appearances as campaign events. “Trump is making money running for president,” an advisor told the press at the time.

    Coverage of Trump’s ethically questionable business relationship with Robbins surfaced during the 2016 campaign when Wikileaks published an email by a Democratic National Committee employee disseminating opposition research on the rival candidate.

    When Trump entered the Oval Office in January 2017, the UC Global spying campaign against Assange began. Initiated under the apparent watch of then-CIA Director Mike Pompeo, who labeled Wikileaks a “hostile non-state intelligence agency,” the operation appears to have been managed by Lahav from its inception.

    Sworn testimony by Lahav in a Spanish court might provide the final confirmation of his suspected role as a liaison between US intelligence and Trump’s most influential donor in an illegal spying operation that violated the rights of Assange, his lawyers, and associates while he was trapped in Ecuador’s embassy in the UK.

    As The Grayzone reported, former employees of Morales have publicized a rumor that Lahav was fired by Las Vegas Sands. When Morales was asked during a court appearance this February if the rumor was true, he confirmed it, stating that Lahav was terminated because of the “mess” he helped create.

    Further evidence demonstrating the CIA’s hand in a campaign of sabotage, surveillance, and assassination plots would be certain to reverberate in the Old Bailey courtroom in London, where lawyers for Assange are battling a US demand for the journalist’s extradition and prosecution under the Espionage Act.

    Perhaps it is no wonder that the Department of Justice is stonewalling the request for Lahav."
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    Default Re: Current Wikileaks and Assange News & Releases

    LIVE Outside the Old Bailey as Assange's extradition hearing reaches its final stages

    https://www.facebook.com/RTUKnews/vi...0995634636602/
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    Default Re: Current Wikileaks and Assange News & Releases

    The U.S. reportedly considered poisoning Assange court heard
    3,508 views•Sep 30, 2020
    RT UK
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    "The U.S. reportedly considered poisoning or kidnapping Julian Assange while at the Ecuadorian embassy, his extradition has heard.

    RT UK’s Shadia Edwards-Dashti reports from outside the Old Bailey. "

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    Default Re: Current Wikileaks and Assange News & Releases

    6 Wikileaks Revelations Expose Corporate Abuse at Expense of People and Planet
    OCTOBER 02, 2020
    https://childrenshealthdefense.org/n...3-fd97f29acaa0

    "By Jeremy Loffredo

    People around the world are watching as U.K. Judge Vanessa Baraitser hears arguments and decides whether or not to extradite Wikileaks Founder Julian Assange to the U.S.

    While the Obama administration chose not to charge Assange, wary of the precedent it might set in criminalizing journalism, the Trump administration indicted him with 18 criminal charges that may land Assange in one of the U.S.’s most notorious prisons for 175 years.

    Assange’s Wikileaks has won numerous journalism awards and has never had to retract a single publication despite releasing more than 10 million documents exposing, among other things, U.S. war crimes. Former CIA Director Leon Panetta recently indicated that the ongoing persecution of Assange is meant to “send a message to others not to do the same thing.”

    As the world debates whether Assange is a hero or a traitor, Children’s Health Defense takes a step back to examine some of the things his organization has revealed for those fighting for health and environmental justice.

    1. U.S. diplomatic efforts to overturn resistance to GMOs at the behest of Monsanto

    Wikileaks published hundreds of diplomatic cables exhibiting attempts by the U.S. to quell opposition to genetically modified organisms or GMOs. As reported by The Guardian, “the cables show U.S. diplomats working directly for GM companies such as Monsanto.”

    In a 2007 cable, Craig Stapleton, then U.S. Ambassador to France, advised the U.S. to prepare for economic war with countries unwilling to introduce Monsanto’s GM corn seeds. He recommended the U.S. “calibrate a target retaliation list that causes some pain across the E.U.”

    Another dispatch, this one from 2009, demonstrated that the U.S. funded a GMO workshop in Mozambique that, according to the authors, helped advance biotech-friendly policies in the country.

    In another cable from 2009, a U.S. diplomat stationed in Germany relayed intelligence on Bavarian political parties to several U.S. federal agencies and the U.S. Secretary of Defense, telling them which parties opposed Monsanto’s M810 corn seed and tactics that the U.S. could impose to resolve the opposition.

    One cable from Hong Kong shows a State Department employee requesting $92,000 in U.S. public funds for “media education kits” to combat a growing popular movement calling for the labeling of GMO foods in Hong Kong. The cable indicates a desire to “make it much more difficult for mandatory labelling advocates to prevail.” The State Department’s Anita Katial, who wrote the cable, also recalled a time when her office facilitated the sending of pro-biotech and bio-agriculture DVDs to every highschool in Hong Kong.

    According to Food & Water Watch Executive Director Wenonah Hauter, the trove of cables “really gets down to twisting the arms of countries and working to undermine local democratic movements that may be opposed to biotech crops, and pressuring foreign governments to also reduce the oversight of biotech crops.”

    2. Multinational commodities trader dumping toxic waste in West Africa

    In 2006, Trafigura, the world’s second largest oil trader, illegally discharged more than 500 tons of highly toxic oil waste near the Port of Abidjan in the Ivory Coast. Some of the dump sites were near agriculture fields or water supplies, and the UN estimates that more than 100,000 people sought medical treatment due to the incident. Wikileaks would later call this incident “possibly the most culpable mass contamination incident since Bhopal.”

    Trafigura’s lawyer commissioned a confidential study that listed what the environmental and health impacts of the dumping incident would be after people living near the port started flooding hospitals.

    The report explained that contact with the offloaded compounds could lead to eye damage, lung damage, skin burns, headaches, breathing difficulty, permanent skin ulceration, coma and death. The report also states that the chemical compounds would have a “severe and negative effect” on the environment.



    As recently as 2016, residents were complaining about the smell of the waste, headaches, breathing problems and skin problems.

    Wikileaks published the classified report in 2009, the first time the public could see the company’s true negligence.

    3. Gates Foundation sees environmental activists as a threat

    In 2008, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation hired an intelligence firm called Stratfor to put together a “threat assessment report” and determine current and future threats to the foundation.

    Stratfor’s report saw environmental activists, indigenous farming groups, and peasant political parties in Asia and South America, as “potential threats” to the foundation.

    “Threats to the foundation are likely to be directly related to the public association between the foundation and a controversial issue such as GMOs, animal testing, clinical trials and reproductive rights,” the report reads.

    Stating that the primary threat to the foundation’s agriculture program comes from its work promoting GMOs, the report notes the rise of anti-GMO campaigning in developing countries, including a “staunch opposition to GMOs in India.” It even names specific activists, such as the U.S.-based anti-GMO campaigner Jeffrey Smith.

    The report also mentions the work of large organizations like Greenpeace and PETA as well as alternative media outlets like the Center for Public Integrity, Mother Jones, AlterNet and the LA Times, which had just published a series accusing the foundation of “reap[ing] vast financial gains from investments in companies that contribute to the human suffering in health, housing and social welfare.”

    Wikileaks published the threat assessment as part of its release of more than 5 million Stratfor emails in 2012.

    4. Pharma intel and espionage operation

    In 1996, Pfizer, one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies, conducted clinical trials in Nigeria for an antibiotic called Trovan. The results were devastating, as Nigerian officials reported more than 50 children died in the experiment and dozens became disabled.

    In 2006, a Nigerian government panel concluded that Pfizer violated international law and called the experiment “an illegal trial of an unregistered drug.” In 2007, Nigerian state and federal authorities sued Pfizer for $7 billion, alleging the company did not have proper consent from the children’s parents.

    A 2009 U.S. diplomatic cable published by Wikileaks revealed that while the case was in federal court, Pfizer had hired a private intelligence firm to get blackmail on Nigerian Attorney General Michael Aondoakaa.

    According to the cable, “Pfizer’s investigators were passing this information to local media,” who published articles on the attorney general’s “alleged” corruption. “Aondoakaa’s cronies were pressuring him to drop the suit for fear of further negative articles,” it reads.

    A few months after the negative articles, the Nigerian ministry of justice signed a settlement with Pfizer.

    5. U.S. is a climate bully

    Cables disclosed by Wikileaks in 2010 present the U.S. using what The Guardian called “spying, threats and promises of aid” to get international support for the 2009 Copenhagen Accord — an industry-friendly international climate deal with non-binding agreements to lower emissions. (Climate activist Naomi Klein described, at the time, the accord as “nothing more than a grubby pact between the world’s biggest emitters”.)

    The State Department sent a secret cable to foreign embassies seeking human intelligence, or “dirt,” on UN diplomats regarding climate policy. And, as reported by Democracy Now!, the cables also indicated that the U.S. cut funding to Bolivia and Ecuador after both governments opposed the accord.

    Bill McKibben, founder of the climate organization 350.org, said the cables exposed that “the U.S. was both bullying and buying countries into endorsing their do-little position on climate.”

    6. International organizations consulting with Big Pharma

    In 2009, Wikileaks revealed documents that the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers & Associations (IFPMA) gave its members a report by the UN’s World Health Organization(WHO)’s Expert Working Group on research and development financing.

    IFPMA members include pharmaceutical giants like Bayer, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Novartis, Pfizer and Sanofi, and the organization represents these entities when dealing with the UN. What makes the Wikileaks document dump significant is that the working group gave IFPMA access to these documents months before their scheduled public release, suggesting that the UN’s health expert group was more accountable to the pharmaceutical industry than to its own member states.

    “The compilation of documents shows the influence of ‘Big Pharma’ on the policy making decisions of the WHO,” Wikileaks commented when publishing the files."
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    Default Re: Current Wikileaks and Assange News & Releases

    Julian Assange’s extradition hearing comes to close
    6,931 views•Oct 1, 2020

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    "RT UK’s Shadia Edwards-Dashti reports from outside the #OldBailey as Julian Assange’s hearing comes to a close."
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    Default Re: Current Wikileaks and Assange News & Releases

    "We were here for the ultimate of what the philosopher Guy Debord called The Society of the Spectacle: a man fighting for his life. Yet his crime is to have performed an epic public service: revealing that which we have a right to know: the lies of our governments and the crimes they commit in our name. His creation of WikiLeaks and its failsafe protection of sources revolutionised journalism, restoring it to the vision of its idealists. Edmund Burke’s notion of free journalism as a fourth estate is now a fifth estate that shines a light on those who diminish the very meaning of democracy with their criminal secrecy. That’s why his punishment is so extreme."
    - John Pilger, October 2020

    __________________________

    Here, the legendary John Pilger in conversation with Arena giving a perspicacious account of the 'show trial' over what must have felt like an excruciating three weeks for all, not the least of which for Julian.

    Related: regarding the astounding UC Global 'Witness 2' testimony on the penultimate day of the hearing Craig Murray presented the statement on his blog post on October 1st. Craig had provided these as JPG files on his write-up and I've saved these along with Noam Chomsky's contribution and have now placed them in the appropriate place in the Avalon library.

    In the meantime back to John:

    EYEWITNESS TO THE AGONY OF JULIAN ASSANGE

    Source: Arena

    ARENA ONLINE | JOHN PILGER | 2 OCT 2020

    Journalist John Pilger has spent the last three weeks watching Julian Assange’s extradition trial at London’s Old Bailey. He spoke with Arena Online’s editor, Timothy Erik Ström:

    Q: Having watched Julian Assange’s trial firsthand, can you describe the prevailing atmosphere in the court?

    The prevailing atmosphere has been shocking. I say that without hesitation; I have sat in many courts and seldom known such a corruption of due process; this is due revenge. Putting aside the ritual associated with ‘British justice’, at times it has been evocative of a Stalinist show trial. One difference is that in the show trials, the defendant stood in the court proper. In the Assange trial, the defendant was caged behind thick glass, and had to crawl on his knees to a slit in the glass, overseen by his guard, to make contact with his lawyers. His message, whispered barely audibly through face masks, was then passed by post-it the length of the court to where his barristers were arguing the case against his extradition to an American hellhole.

    Consider this daily routine of Julian Assange, an Australian on trial for truth-telling journalism. He was woken at five o’clock in his cell at Belmarsh prison in the bleak southern sprawl of London. The first time I saw Julian in Belmarsh, having passed through half an hour of ‘security’ checks, including a dog’s snout in my rear, I found a painfully thin figure sitting alone wearing a yellow armband. He had lost more than 10 kilos in a matter of months; his arms had no muscle. His first words were: ‘I think I am losing my mind’.

    I tried to assure him he wasn’t. His resilience and courage are formidable, but there is a limit. That was more than a year ago. In the past three weeks, in the pre-dawn, he was strip-searched, shackled, and prepared for transport to the Central Criminal Court, the Old Bailey, in a truck that his partner, Stella Moris, described as an upended coffin. It had one small window; he had to stand precariously to look out. The truck and its guards were operated by Serco, one of many politically connected companies that run much of Boris Johnson’s Britain.

    The journey to the Old Bailey took at least an hour and a half. That’s a minimum of three hours being jolted through snail-like traffic every day. He was led into his narrow cage at the back of the court, then look up, blinking, trying to make out faces in the public gallery through the reflection of the glass. He saw the courtly figure of his dad, John Shipton, and me, and our fists went up. Through the glass, he reached out to touch fingers with Stella, who is a lawyer and seated in the body of the court.

    We were here for the ultimate of what the philosopher Guy Debord called The Society of the Spectacle: a man fighting for his life. Yet his crime is to have performed an epic public service: revealing that which we have a right to know: the lies of our governments and the crimes they commit in our name. His creation of WikiLeaks and its failsafe protection of sources revolutionised journalism, restoring it to the vision of its idealists. Edmund Burke’s notion of free journalism as a fourth estate is now a fifth estate that shines a light on those who diminish the very meaning of democracy with their criminal secrecy. That’s why his punishment is so extreme.

    The sheer bias in the courts I have sat in this year and last year, with Julian in the dock, blight any notion of British justice. When thuggish police dragged him from his asylum in the Ecuadorean embassy—look closely at the photo and you’ll see he is clutching a Gore Vidal book; Assange has a political humour similar to Vidal’s—a judge gave him an outrageous 50-week sentence in a maximum-security prison for mere bail infringement.

    For months, he was denied exercise and held in solitary confinement disguised as ‘health care’. He once told me he strode the length of his cell, back and forth, back and forth, for his own half-marathon. In the next cell, the occupant screamed through the night. At first he was denied his reading glasses, left behind in the embassy brutality. He was denied the legal documents with which to prepare his case, and access to the prison library and the use of a basic laptop. Books sent to him by a friend, the journalist Charles Glass, himself a survivor of hostage-taking in Beirut, were returned. He could not call his American lawyers. He has been constantly medicated by the prison authorities. When I asked him what they were giving him, he couldn’t say. The governor of Belmarsh has been awarded the Order of the British Empire.

    At the Old Bailey, one of the expert medical witnesses, Dr Kate Humphrey, a clinical neuropsychologist at Imperial College, London, described the damage: Julian’s intellect had gone from ‘in the superior, or more likely very superior range’ to ‘significantly below’ this optimal level, to the point where he was struggling to absorb information and ‘perform in the low average range’.

    This is what the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, Professor Nils Melzer, calls ‘psychological torture’, the result of a gang-like ‘mobbing’ by governments and their media shills. Some of the expert medical evidence is so shocking I have no intention of repeating it here. Suffice to say that Assange is diagnosed with autism and Asperger’s syndrome and, according to Professor Michael Kopelman, one of the world’s leading neuropsychiatrists, he suffers from ‘suicidal preoccupations’ and is likely to find a way to take his life if he is extradited to America.

    James Lewis QC, America’s British prosecutor, spent the best part of his cross-examination of Professor Kopelman dismissing mental illness and its dangers as ‘malingering’. I have never heard in a modern setting such a primitive view of human frailty and vulnerability.

    My own view is that if Assange is freed, he is likely to recover a substantial part of his life. He has a loving partner, devoted friends and allies and the innate strength of a principled political prisoner. He also has a wicked sense of humour.

    But that is a long way off. The moments of collusion between the judge—or magistrate, a Gothic-looking Vanessa Baraitser, about whom little is known—and the prosecution acting for the Trump regime have been brazen. Until the last few days, defence arguments have been routinely dismissed. The lead prosecutor, James Lewis QC, ex SAS and currently Chief Justice of the Falklands, by and large gets what he wants, notably up to four hours to denigrate expert witnesses, while the defence’s examination is guillotined at half an hour. I have no doubt, had there been a jury, his freedom would be assured.

    The dissident artist Ai Weiwei came to join us one morning in the public gallery. He noted that in China the judge’s decision would already have been made. This caused some dark ironic amusement. My companion in the gallery, the astute diarist and former British ambassador Craig Murray wrote:

    I fear that all over London a very hard rain is now falling on those who for a lifetime have worked within institutions of liberal democracy that at least broadly and usually used to operate within the governance of their own professed principles. It has been clear to me from Day 1 that I am watching a charade unfold. It is not in the least a shock to me that Baraitser does not think anything beyond the written opening arguments has any effect. I have again and again reported to you that, where rulings have to be made, she has brought them into court pre-written, before hearing the arguments before her.

    I strongly expect the final decision was made in this case even before opening arguments were received.

    The plan of the US Government throughout has been to limit the information available to the public and limit the effective access to a wider public of what information is available. Thus we have seen the extreme restrictions on both physical and video access. A complicit mainstream media has ensured those of us who know what is happening are very few in the wider population
    .

    There are few records of the proceedings. They are: Craig Murray’s personal blog, Joe Lauria’s live reporting on Consortium News and the World Socialist Website. American journalist Kevin Gosztola’s blog, Shadowproof, funded mostly by himself, has reported more of the trial than the major US press and TV, including CNN, combined.

    In Australia, Assange’s homeland, the ‘coverage’ follows a familiar formula set overseas. The London correspondent of the Sydney Morning Herald, Latika Bourke, wrote this recently:
    The court heard Assange became depressed during the seven years he spent in the Ecuadorian embassy where he sought political asylum to escape extradition to Sweden to answer rape and sexual assault charges.
    There were no ‘rape and sexual assault charges’ in Sweden. Bourke’s lazy falsehood is not uncommon. If the Assange trial is the political trial of the century, as I believe it is, its outcome will not only seal the fate of a journalist for doing his job but intimidate the very principles of free journalism and free speech. The absence of serious mainstream reporting of the proceedings is, at the very least, self-destructive. Journalists should ask: who is next?

    How shaming it all is. A decade ago, the Guardian exploited Assange’s work, claimed its profit and prizes as well as a lucrative Hollywood deal, then turned on him with venom. Throughout the Old Bailey trial, two names have been cited by the prosecution, the Guardian’s David Leigh, now retired as ‘investigations editor’ and Luke Harding, the Russiaphobe and author of a fictional Guardian ‘scoop’ that claimed Trump adviser Paul Manafort and a group of Russians visited Assange in the Ecuadorean embassy. This never happened, and the Guardian has yet to apologise. The Harding and Leigh book on Assange—written behind their subject’s back—disclosed a secret password to a WikiLeaks file that Assange had entrusted to Leigh during the Guardian’s ‘partnership’. Why the defence has not called this pair is difficult to understand.

    Assange is quoted in their book declaring during a dinner at a London restaurant that he didn’t care if informants named in the leaks were harmed. Neither Harding nor Leigh was at the dinner. John Goetz, an investigations reporter with Der Spiegel, was at the dinner and testified that Assange said nothing of the kind. Incredibly, Judge Baraitser stopped Goetz actually saying this in court.

    However, the defence has succeeded in demonstrating the extent to which Assange sought to protect and redact names in the files released by WikiLeaks and that no credible evidence existed of individuals harmed by the leaks. The great whistle-blower Daniel Ellsberg said that Assange had personally redacted 15,000 files. The renowned New Zealand investigative journalist Nicky Hager, who worked with Assange on the Afghanistan and Iraq war leaks, described how Assange took ‘extraordinary precautions in redacting names of informants’.

    Q: What are the implications of this trial’s verdict for journalism more broadly—is it an omen of things to come?

    The ‘Assange effect’ is already being felt across the world. If they displease the regime in Washington, investigative journalists are liable to prosecution under the 1917 US Espionage Act; the precedent is stark. It doesn’t matter where you are. For Washington, other people’s nationality and sovereignty rarely mattered; now it does not exist. Britain has effectively surrendered its jurisdiction to Trump’s corrupt Department of Justice. In Australia, a National Security Information Act promises Kafkaesque trials for transgressors. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation has been raided by police and journalists’ computers taken away. The government has given unprecedented powers to intelligence officials, making journalistic whistle-blowing almost impossible. Prime Minister Scott Morrison says Assange ‘must face the music’. The perfidious cruelty of his statement is reinforced by its banality.

    ‘Evil’, wrote Hannah Arendt, ‘comes from a failure to think. It defies thought for as soon as thought tries to engage itself with evil and examine the premises and principles from which it originates, it is frustrated because it finds nothing there. That is the banality of evil’.

    Q: Having followed the story of WikiLeaks closely for a decade, how has this eyewitness experience shifted your understanding of what’s at stake with Assange’s trial?

    I have long been a critic of journalism as an echo of unaccountable power and a champion of those who are beacons. So, for me, the arrival of WikiLeaks was exciting; I admired the way Assange regarded the public with respect, that he was prepared to share his work with the ‘mainstream’ but not join their collusive club. This, and naked jealousy, made him enemies among the overpaid and undertalented, insecure in their pretensions of independence and impartiality.

    I admired the moral dimension to WikiLeaks. Assange was rarely asked about this, yet much of his remarkable energy comes from a powerful moral sense that governments and other vested interests should not operate behind walls of secrecy. He is a democrat. He explained this in one of our first interviews at my home in 2010.

    What is at stake for the rest of us has long been at stake: freedom to call authority to account, freedom to challenge, to call out hypocrisy, to dissent. The difference today is that the world’s imperial power, the United States, has never been as unsure of its metastatic authority as it is today. Like a flailing rogue, it is spinning us towards a world war if we allow it. Little of this menace is reflected in the media.

    WikiLeaks, on the other hand, has allowed us to glimpse a rampant imperial march through whole societies—think of the carnage in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Yemen, to name a few, the dispossession of 37 million people and the deaths of 12 million men, women and children in the ‘war on terror’—most of it behind a façade of deception.

    Julian Assange is a threat to these recurring horrors—that’s why he is being persecuted, why a court of law has become an instrument of oppression, why he ought to be our collective conscience: why we all should be the threat.

    ________________________________________________

    The judge’s decision will be known on the 4th of January.

    John Pilger in conversation with Julian Assange

    Last edited by Tintin; 3rd October 2020 at 10:11.
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    Default Re: Current Wikileaks and Assange News & Releases

    Usually I'll have had a chance to have had a proper listen before adding this here, but, while this isn't possible to do right away there's every reason to expect this is a must listen approx 29 minutes.

    Source: Consortium News

    WATCH: John Pilger: The Hell That WikiLeaks Exposed Is Now Being Imposed on Assange
    October 4, 2020

    John Pilger, the legendary journalist and filmmaker, who attended the Assange hearing, spoke to Afshin Rattansi on the RT show “Going Underground.”

    Description provided:
    On this episode of Going Underground, we speak to legendary journalist and filmmaker John Pilger. He discusses the extradition trial of Julian Assange being held at the Old Bailey in London, the war crimes Julian Assange uncovered, why the United States and Wear want to persecute him, key statements delivered in court by witnesses that may help the Wikileaks founder, allegations of bias against Judge Baraitser, the gruelling schedule Julian Assange has to go through for court hearings, the likelihood of Julian Assange committing suicide if he is jailed in a supermax prison which John Pilger describes as a ‘clean hell’, the role of the mainstream media outlets such as The Guardian in facilitating the persecution of Julian Assange and more.
    “If a man does not keep pace with [fall into line with] his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.” - Thoreau

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    Default Re: Current Wikileaks and Assange News & Releases

    Reporters Claim Facebook is Censoring Information on Julian Assange Case
    by Alan Macleod
    https://www.mintpressnews.com/report...P62JNg.twitter
    10/5/20


    "Craig Murray, the former British ambassador to Uzbekistan and longtime confidant of Julian Assange, has been fastidiously reporting on the Australian publisher’s extradition hearing to the United States. Yet few people have been reading it. This, according to Murray, is because of a deliberate decision by online media giants to downplay or suppress discussion of the case. On his blog, Murray wrote that he usually receives around 50 percent of his readers from Twitter and 40 percent from Facebook links, but that has dropped to 3 percent and 9 percent, respectively during the hearing. While the February hearings sent around 200,000 readers to his site daily, now that figure is only 3,000.
    To be plain that is very much less than my normal daily traffic from them just in ordinary times. It is the insidious nature of this censorship that is especially sinister – people believe they have successfully shared my articles on Twitter and Facebook, while those corporations hide from them that in fact it went into nobody’s timeline,” he added.

    Asked about the situation by former New York Times reporter Chris Hedges, Murray explained that

    Anybody who is at all radical or takes any view of anything that is outwith the official establishment view gets used to occasional shadow banning, but I have never seen anything on this scale before.”

    “90% of my traffic has just been cut off by what seems to be a general algorithm command of some kind to downplay Assange,” he added. “I think it is as simple as that.”



    There has been considerable public interest in the court proceedings, but very little mainstream attention given to them. To be fair, British authorities have made it inordinately difficult to cover the case, allowing only a small handful of journalists into the Old Bailey court system, where they can watch a live television link up but cannot bring in recording devices. An online stream can only be watched if one registers and signs in between exactly 9:30 and 9:40 a.m., and if they suffer even a momentary lapse in wifi connection, they are shut out of the session. The court system has also blocked human rights groups, including Amnesty International, from monitoring proceedings.


    Still, considering the implications for the future of journalism, the lack of coverage might surprise some. The New York Times, the flagship outlet of American print media (and a Wikileaks partner) printed only two articles on the subject and has not mentioned Assange in over two weeks. Its broadcast journalism equivalent CNN, meanwhile, has not touched the issue at all.

    Online media creators have, for many years, lived with the threat of algorithmic suppression or demonetization of content on sensitive or controversial issues. YouTube regularly cuts all advertising on videos on the Syrian Civil War, fracking, or other topics on which advertisers might not wish to promote scrutiny. Even airsoft and paintball enthusiasts have learned not to use words like “shoot” and “gun” in their titles, lest the platform demonetizes their content.

    Perhaps more alarmingly, however, Silicon Valley tech giants are becoming increasingly closely intertwined with the state department, to the point where it is often difficult to tell where one ends, and another begins. “What Lockheed Martin was to the twentieth century…technology and cyber-security companies [like Google] will be to the twenty-first,” wrote Google executives Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen in their book, “The New Digital Age: Reshaping the Future of People, Nations and Business.” For example, Facebook is now in a close partnership with the Atlantic Council, who essentially decides for them what content to promote in people’s news feeds and what content is discarded as fake news, misinformation, or low quality. The problem is that the Atlantic Council is a NATO cutout, and a government-funded organization whose board of directors is a who’s who of deep state officials, including virtually every living ex-C.I.A. director, Bush-era cabinet members like Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell, and military generals like Wesley Clark and David Petraeus. Thus, an organization like this deciding what the world sees on their screens is barely one step removed from total government control of the flow of information.

    The U.S. government also frequently directly interferes with content appearing on prominent social media. Earlier this year, Facebook announced that it would remove all comments or posts in praise of recently-slain Iranian General Qassem Soleimani from all its platforms. This was done to comply with the Trump administration’s designation of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (which Soleimani led) as a terrorist organization. The problem is that Soleimani was Iran’s most popular political figure, with an over 80 percent approval rating, and that Instagram is used by around one-third of the entire Iranian population. Thus, Iranians speaking in their local language were barred from sharing a majority opinion with their country folk because of a decision by Donald Trump.

    The Middle East is a particularly contentious area of the world. Yet when news broke that the British Army’s online psychological operations brigade had managed to become a senior Twitter executive, responsible for Middle Eastern content, media largely ignored it, raising even more questions. Algorithm changes have also hammered independent alternative media outlets — often precisely the ones most likely to cover the Assange case — drastically reducing their search engine traffic flow.

    Former C.I.A. chief Leon Panetta (an honorary director of the Atlantic Council) recently admitted that Assange is being prosecuted as a warning to journalists. “All you can do is hope that you can ultimately take action against those that were involved in revealing that information so you can send a message to others not to do the same thing,” he told a German documentary crew. While the message is being heard loud and clear by journalists, the public is far less aware that anything is going on, thanks, in part, to online suppression of news about the case. Judge Vanessa Baraitser is scheduled to pronounce judgment on the media “trial of the century” on January 4, after the U.S. presidential election. Murray will doubtless be there. But will anyone read what he has to say?"

    Alan MacLeod is a Staff Writer for MintPress News. After completing his PhD in 2017 he published two books: Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting and Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent. He has also contributed to Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, The Guardian, Salon, The Grayzone, Jacobin Magazine, Common Dreams the American Herald Tribune and The Canary.
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    Default Re: Current Wikileaks and Assange News & Releases

    Tulsi Gabbard calls for USA to drop prosecutions of Edward Snowden and Jillian Assange.

    When you express from a fearful heart in the now moment, You create a fearful future.
    When you express from a loving heart in the now moment, You create a loving future.

    Have no fear, Be aware and live your lives journey from a compassionate caring nurturing heart to manifest a compassionate caring nurturing future. Billyji


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    Default Re: Current Wikileaks and Assange News & Releases

    Quote Posted by Billy (here)
    Tulsi Gabbard calls for USA to drop prosecutions of Edward Snowden and Jillian Assange.
    Many thanks indeed, and that's truly impressive.

    A personal note: for anyone who's so out of touch as to think that I'm some kind of alt-right supremacist , I'm a very strong Tulsi Gabbard supporter. She has a ton of integrity. That she wasn't invited to attend the US Democratic Convention tells us everything we may need to know.


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    Default Re: Current Wikileaks and Assange News & Releases

    Quote Posted by Bill Ryan (here)
    Quote Posted by Billy (here)
    Tulsi Gabbard calls for USA to drop prosecutions of Edward Snowden and Jillian Assange.
    Many thanks indeed, and that's truly impressive.

    A personal note: for anyone who's so out of touch as to think that I'm some kind of alt-right supremacist , I'm a very strong Tulsi Gabbard supporter. She has a ton of integrity. That she wasn't invited to attend the US Democratic Convention tells us everything we may need to know.

    A palm reader on Coast Radio recently said Gabbard is a probable future president.

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    Default Re: Current Wikileaks and Assange News & Releases

    Quote Posted by TomKat (here)
    Quote Posted by Bill Ryan (here)
    Quote Posted by Billy (here)
    Tulsi Gabbard calls for USA to drop prosecutions of Edward Snowden and Jillian Assange.
    Many thanks indeed, and that's truly impressive.

    A personal note: for anyone who's so out of touch as to think that I'm some kind of alt-right supremacist , I'm a very strong Tulsi Gabbard supporter. She has a ton of integrity. That she wasn't invited to attend the US Democratic Convention tells us everything we may need to know.

    A palm reader on Coast Radio recently said Gabbard is a probable future president.
    I would love to see that! And I hope she's able to bring the right attention to the Assange trial. Public outrage would be his best chance at freedom.
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    Default Re: Current Wikileaks and Assange News & Releases

    Quote Posted by Sarah Rainsong (here)
    Quote Posted by TomKat (here)

    A palm reader on Coast Radio recently said Gabbard is a probable future president.
    I would love to see that! And I hope she's able to bring the right attention to the Assange trial. Public outrage would be his best chance at freedom.
    It would have to be a third party kind of thing, neither major party would ever allow "the likes of her".

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    Default Re: Current Wikileaks and Assange News & Releases

    Tulsi, Tulsi, Tulsi. Sister. I think to myself....What a waste of a heart. What a waste of an intellect. Then I say, what a waste of the Truth you just flushed down the toilet. Maybe that's the best the intel minions can do these days.

    How about this? During a democratic party debate earlier this year, she refuted another candidate on the stage, by noting his inaccurate depiction of the (non-existent) foreign plotters of an attack by stating, "The Taliban didn't attack us. Al Queda did". It's irrefutable that neither attacked us in our country.

    What? She really said that. Count on the ego of a politician to go against their handlers and "go there". ("Hey Rufus, didn't you tell her, remind her at least, to keep our crimes out of the discussions?", said one handler to the other.)


    Really? You think you can get that past who? So, you're okay with protecting Assange's rights while lying about the attack on your own country, against your own soldiers, and ultimately against your OATH AS A SOLDIER? You know those just like me. You wanna get something off of your mind? I'm listening................................................................

    Hey, keep doing good. Just don't expect any support from me. Don't protect the bigger lies and not just if it means a threat to your career or your political life. Let the truth out Because it is a threat to your financial and career aspirations, along with all of those years of grooming yourself and being groomed by the dogs of the deeper wars being created in the minds of their real enemies, humans. That's what real warriors, real oath takers do.

    She's not clueless about any of this. She's all in and you can see when she gets that righteous buzz about doing that right thing she does. What slightly surprises me is seeing heartfelt and intelligent people not recognizing her deceit.

    Is this because the times are so full of mental abuse that you take it wherever you can get it? I do understand position and opposition, the craft of double speak and the imaginary limitations of the truth. Those imaginary limitations can only exist in a very dishonest and emotionally manipulated construct, on a planet just like this has been, for a very long time. Just like now. Though that is possible, it is obviously impossible to deny the truth.

    'Well, we like 90% of what she is saying', the truthful say. 'Maybe even 95% of it all'. 'She can't tell the whole truth, can she?' That is my query to all of you.



    When you breathe in the fresh scent of a new politicians truths(?) make sure you breathe in very deeply.

    Hold that breath and pause........

    It'll come to you, whatever that WHOLE and COMPLETE truth is. Let's discuss it, if you are willing to investigate, to share your insights, your gut feelings and listen. But hey, why should I care. We're all awake here. Right?



    I'd warn about Tulsi's incomplete truths, but you'll take them, because you are so conditioned to locking yourselves in the globalist prison you become accustomed to, even at the far end of the media narratives, still attached to some blindness of the soul. None of those are close to the Heart of The Matter. Not a one.

    In the real world, in the Grand Plot of These Lives, this is about YOU. Yes, even the narrative that is much more humanitarian than the others becomes a bigger lie when it is restricted and manipulated. In the context of living, these truths are forever bound together. There is no exception to the truth.

    Love has no restrictions. The Truth has no barriers, especially in political speech. This is about our lives and our integrities, not any other.

    Watch out for the slick ones who do the "good" deeds, but who will NEVER challenge the giant corruption that has deeply enslaved your society. That day and the world that followed is much bigger than the day, Dec.7, 1941, that "lived in infamy". Until those bigger lies are confronted, adjudicated and resolved, as much as murder, grand larceny, collusion, digital enslavement and global "cleansing" can be resolved....expect more infamies in your lives.

    Who wouldn't take that support for Julian Assange, when it is given to support free speech, the freedom of movement and the right to confront oppression and corruption anywhere, especially from her own government. I see she forgot to include her own right to "free speech", or was it just not the "right time" to tell the truth. Is that her honest reason for introducing the bills in congress, or her partial acceptance of the truth which, of course, is an oxymoron?

    The difference between me and you is I'd confront her about her political and career protecting suppression of her own knowledge about the facts that have changed this country into what it isn't today. In the space of us standing together as humans and talking, all of the spirit in these words could be summed up in a very short period of time, seconds likely. I doubt she'd respond. I'd wish her well and watch her move on her way to her plastic stardom.


    Like the show Democracy Now, I agree with some of the reporters focus, while disagreeing about the rest and noting the proofs of their being gatekeepers of the controlled opposition. THEY ALL know the truth of the fictitious narratives they never mention. Like all paid gatekeepers she furthers the gigantic criminality of the attack on her own country, her own people, the theft of billions in taxpayers monies, the implementation of unconstitutional "acts" upon her fellow citizens and the death of a million people in another country. Trust that now, do you?

    Here is what I wrote on the thread "The Real Life Adventures of Shadowman", Post #81, on June 24th, 2020:

    https://projectavalon.net/forum4/show...=1#post1362595


    FYI: I toned this post way down, because even though she has heard the same words in her OATH BOUND years in the military, many here would think that more than a little harsh. Though I'll never meet her and I don't want or need to, she knows the truth she just b.s.'d about.


    And now she wants to protect a whistle blower? Good for her. Do some good, Gabbs. Remember, not one of us in the real world of challenging the war on consciousness and truth will back you.

    Yes. She looks like a presidential candidate. She's already paid into the system. Just watch her connections and the pay offs. It's up to you as a voter to accept the conditions of your surrender, or accept your answer to the call of your rational mind, your heart and your soul. Her handlers gave her a pass way before she began to look the way she has looked in her public persona.

    Around me, like that of anyone speaking truth to b.s., she would only get to the topic of the truth of this country's attack on itself, or we wouldn't be talking. She has handlers too, even if one is permanently parked in her mind. Handlers don't count points made for or against political narratives . They only punish truths. That's their pay point. What's hers, beyond those she's already worked for? As a voter you should ALWAYS know this.
    Last edited by Hym; 9th October 2020 at 03:54.

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    Default Re: Current Wikileaks and Assange News & Releases

    Quote Posted by Hym (here)
    During a democratic party debate earlier this year, she refuted another candidate on the stage, by noting his inaccurate depiction of the (non-existent) foreign plotters of an attack by stating, "The Taliban didn't attack us. Al Queda did".
    You're blaming 9/11 on the Taliban?

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    Default Re: Current Wikileaks and Assange News & Releases

    Of course not, TomKat. Neither of them did it. It was all DS from the states and their global partners. It sure wasn't Al Queda or the Taliban, or some guy on dialysis running it all, hiding in a cave in Tora Bora either.

    When the inserted link I added is read, it's clear that I'm doing my best to give the reader a view into the mindset of those who purposely kill innocent civilians for political and financial gain alone. Those who plan and carry out those crimes do not do so without the knowledge, even the tertiary, yet clearly accurate testimonies they hear from others in their same professions, like Gabbard.



    Granted, few national political figures have acknowledged the real criminals in their own gov't and military who planned all that happened on that day, with ramifications that now affect the entire world. Either way it is egregious for any politician to lie about who really carried out such a far reaching operation, knowing full well it was the elite in their own country who perpetrated the crimes and their own countrymen, as well as the world, who were and are still the victims of those crimes.

    I call it complicity in the crimes when a politician knowingly pays that price to enter the political theater, which few with integrity dare to take on.
    If a politician doesn't know who did it, why would anyone choose to vote for someone that ignorant?

    The gist of my comments were all about the hypocrisy of Tulsi Gabbard saying that Al Queda did that. It would have been as dishonest to say the Taliban did it. What a load of crap, especially when dealing with Assange, the one who exposed some of that deep state criminality.

    I did like what she said about some other things, like helping out Assange, but that pales in comparison to lying about any other group, outside of the military terrorists we train and hire to do what they do all over the world and have done for decades.

    Most people know them as their military or ex-military and their inside, technical partners. Home grown and the best trained, national and international military contractors/killers/assassins, scientists, bankers, financiers, investors, media moguls, etc..

    I do not compare them for one second with those mostly honest, self-sacrificing service members, who outnumber those specialist, deep inside, well-paid military psychopaths 10,000 to 1. (I know many in the services would dispute that number, with all of the crap, as well as abuse, some take from each other, but we're talking about the hard core killers here.)

    Our hard working military members are the ones owed continued care, in all the ways they need. If the country and the corporate controlled politicians really cared about them, they'd prevent all wars and end their use as pawns in dominating the world. Pay them, MORE, to keep the peace, not the killers who get paid way too much.

    TG is a refreshing breed of politician who connects on some levels that I agree with, then she completely sells out. Very disappointing if you connect with those issues. And she is nothing like Assange, nor will she likely ever do what he has done in telling the truth. If she does ever tell the truth she knows, and it surely has its limitations knowing her rank, I'll be appreciative.

    Like I said, she'd most likely never have the honesty to discuss this with me or anyone else personally. Yeah, she represents the servants of this country, and Yes I'll call her and any other oath taker out when they lie like that.

    I highly recommend Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler's "War Is A Racket", to get an insiders view on the complex system of corporate controlled, military criminality that has terrorized the world for years, not unlike those in the west, the east and elsewhere.

    Butler was, at one time in the 1930's, offered a large contingent of military personnel by the banking and corporate cartel to overthrow his own government, but being the most honest man of his generation, as well as a two time Congressional Medal of Honor recipient, he refused. He also said he left military service because he was tired of killing for corporations.
    Last edited by Hym; 9th October 2020 at 17:41.

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