Assange
https://tass.com/world/1630855
June 12, 2023
“It’s not Assange that should be tried, but the ‘hacker empire’ that is pervasively spying and stealing confidential information in other countries,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said
BEIJING, June 12. /TASS/. The Chinese Foreign Ministry believes that it is not WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange that should be put on trial for revealing information about the United States, but a number of senior officials in the United States for spying and theft of sensitive data around the world, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said on Monday.
“It’s not Assange that should be tried, but <…> the ‘hacker empire’ that is pervasively spying and stealing confidential information in other countries,” Wang told a news briefing.
Earlier, Assange’s wife said that her husband would use his last chance to block his extradition to the US through a British court.
Assange, 51, is charged in the United States with crimes related to the largest case in US history involving the disclosure of classified information. He faces a total of 175 years in prison on all counts. In November, leading Western media outlets, including The New York Times, The Guardian, The Times, Le Monde and El Pais, called on the United States government to drop the charges against Assange.
The Western mainstream media have never been so blatant in their propaganda for the U.S. empire
The war in Ukraine is becoming more evident as a war-racket and imperialist proxy war against Russia. That war is in desperate danger of spiralling into an all-out world war that could unleash a nuclear catastrophe.
All Western media outlets have ignored credible investigative reporting by Seymour Hersh (and others) who have very plausibly implicated the sabotage of Nord Stream by the U.S., carried out under the instructions of American President Joe Biden.
The Western mainstream media have never been so blatant in their propaganda for the U.S. empire.
The pretensions are threadbare. As the warmongering U.S. government/regime and its Western/NATO imperialist lackeys are becoming more exposed and desperate to maintain credibility, so too are their media tools. The likes of the New York Times, BBC, CNN – and many more – are a contemptible joke on the public. They are an insult to common intelligence.
Fake news has been around for centuries, but it’s now becoming glaringly obvious and self-destructive. In the same way that the U.S. warmongering empire is becoming glaringly obvious and self-destructive.
The disconnect with reality and degradation of supposed independent journalism is reflected in record levels of distrust among the Western public toward the mainstream, corporate-controlled news media.
In this interview, U.S.-based writers Bruce Gagnon and Daniel Lazare demolish the pretensions of Western media.
The systematic cover-up of the Nord Stream sabotage by the United States and its NATO allies – an act of war and state terrorism – demonstrates the servile function of Western media outlets that claim to be pillars of independent news and freedom of information.
Media outlets like the New York Times, Washington Post, and the British state-owned BBC, among many others, have been exposed as pathetic propaganda tools for the United States and other NATO imperialist regimes.
All Western media outlets have ignored credible investigative reporting by Seymour Hersh (and others) who have very plausibly implicated the sabotage of Nord Stream by the U.S., carried out under the instructions of American President Joe Biden.
Another touchstone subject is the vile persecution of Julian Assange. Western media have again covered up what are a shocking violation of Assange’s rights and principled publishing through the whistleblower organization Wikileaks. Julian Assange’s only “crime” is that he revealed the war crimes committed by the U.S. and its imperialist lackeys.
Assange’s appalling mistreatment, indeed torture – four years in British solitary confinement awaiting extradition to the U.S. over spurious “spying charges” – is a vicious attack on journalism and the public’s right to know. Yet supposed self-declared Western media defenders of “truth” and “fact-based” objective information – have conspired to be silent and permit Assange’s persecution. Western media are shown to be complicit in destroying the very principles of journalism that they claim to uphold.
As Bruce Gagnon and Daniel Lazare point out, it is a crime to tell the truth and Western media stand exposed in their odious dereliction of duty to report independently. They are seen more than ever as out-and-out tools of empire.
A proper understanding of the Nord Stream sabotage and the case of Julian Assange would give the Western public a critical insight into the imperialist nature of their governments – regimes that serve warmongering capitalist interests. Critical mass must be thwarted at all costs by the Empire’s media foot-servants.
From the point of view of U.S.-led Western imperialist power, it is imperative and absolutely vital to cover up the scandals of the Nord Stream attack and Julian Assange, among others. If the public were to become more widely cognizant then the whole edifice of Western governments implodes. This is why the Western media are more blatant than ever to cover up. But the truth will win out.
The war in Ukraine is becoming more evident as a war-racket and imperialist proxy war against Russia. That war is in desperate danger of spiralling into an all-out world war that could unleash a nuclear catastrophe.
The same Western media cover-up is at work with regard to the U.S.-led NATO aggression toward China. Again, the Western media are spinning imperialist propaganda of alleged Chinese menace in order to justify what is an insane warmongering agenda to confront China and prop up American hegemonic ambitions.
A tantalizing positive prospect is that critical, independent media are gradually and relentlessly breaking the monopoly of Western propaganda media. The internet and global communications are seeing to that – albeit against sinister censorship by Western regimes.
Nevertheless, the establishment of Western media are increasingly held in distrust and contempt by the Western public and globally.
We are living in an exemplary time of the fabled Emperor With No Clothes. The false image of dominant Western regimes and their lying corporate media has never been so degraded but also never so fragile. The Western lie machine’s days are numbered. It only has itself to blame because of its abject disservice to the public interest.
Western state-complicit media claim to be “free”. Laughably, they are “free” to be slaves of lies and propaganda.
A crash is long overdue.
The use of the phrase “journalism is not a crime” is an interesting choice since the most common individual case you’ll hear it used in reference to is surely that of Julian Assange, who has been locked in a maximum security prison for four years while the US government works to extradite him for the crime of good journalism.
Apr 7
After a certain point criticizing the hypocrisy and contradictions of the US-centralized empire starts to feel too easy, like shooting fish in a barrel. But hell let’s do it anyway; the barrel’s right here, and I really hate these particular fish.
Russian security services have formally filed espionage charges against Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who has been detained in Russia since his arrest last month. Gershkovich reportedly denies the spying allegations and says he was engaged in journalistic activity in Russia.
This news came out at the same time as a joint statement was published by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell condemning Gershkovich’s detention as a violation of press freedoms.
“Let there be no mistake: journalism is not a crime,” the senators write. “We demand the baseless, fabricated charges against Mr. Gershkovich be dropped and he be immediately released and reiterate our condemnation of the Russian government’s continued attempts to intimidate, repress, and punish independent journalists and civil society voices.”
The use of the phrase “journalism is not a crime” is an interesting choice since the most common individual case you’ll hear it used in reference to is surely that of Julian Assange, who has been locked in a maximum security prison for four years while the US government works to extradite him for the crime of good journalism. Every pro-Assange demonstration I’ve ever been to has featured signs with some variation of the phrase “journalism is not a crime,” and any Assange supporter will be intimately familiar with that refrain.
So as an Assange supporter it sounds a bit odd to hear that slogan rolled out by two DC swamp monsters who have both enthusiastically supported the persecution of the world’s most famous journalist.
“He has done enormous damage to our country and I think he needs to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. And if that becomes a problem, we need to change the law,” McConnell said of Assange after WikiLeaks published thousands of diplomatic cables in 2010.
“Neither WikiLeaks, nor its original source for these materials, should be spared in any way from the fullest prosecution possible under the law,” Schumer said in 2010.
“Now that Julian Assange has been arrested, I hope he will soon be held to account for his meddling in our elections on behalf of Putin and the Russian government,” Schumer tweeted when Assange was dragged from the Ecuadorian embassy in London almost exactly four years ago. (Assange has not been charged with anything related to Russia or the 2016 election, and allegations of collusion with Russia remain completely unsubstantiated to this day.)
These are two of the most powerful elected officials in the world, puffing and posing as brave defenders of press freedoms after having actively facilitated their government’s attempts to destroy those very press freedoms. Their government is working to extradite and imprison Assange under the Espionage Act for engaging in what experts say is standard journalistic activity, which will allow them to set a legal precedent in which any journalist anywhere in the world can be extradited and prosecuted for exposing US war crimes like Assange did.
There is no greater threat posed to world press freedoms than the one the US is presenting with its persecution of Julian Assange, a persecution which has been fervently endorsed by Schumer and McConnell and all the other Washington swamp creatures who are melodramatically rending their garments about Evan Gershkovich today.
Which is of course ridiculous. You don’t get to say “journalism is not a crime” while literally working to criminalize journalism. Those positions are mutually exclusive. Pick one.
It’s worthwhile to point out the hypocrisy of US empire managers, not because hypocrisy in and of itself is some uniquely grave evil but because it shows that these people do not stand for what they pretend to stand for. The US empire does not care about press freedoms, it cares about power and domination, and the noises it makes in support of journalism are only ever made as a cynical ploy with which to bludgeon disobedient foreign governments on the world stage.
Assange exposed many inconvenient facts about the US empire in his work with WikiLeaks, but none have been so inconvenient as what he’s exposed by forcing them to come after him and reveal their true face in their brazen persecution of the world’s greatest journalist.
It’s about effen time and he should be given one billion dollars in compensation.
WASHINGTON — The New York Times and four European news organizations called on the United States government on Monday to drop its charges against Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, for obtaining and publishing classified diplomatic and military secrets.
In a joint open letter, The Times, The Guardian, Le Monde, Der Spiegel and El País said the prosecution of Mr. Assange under the Espionage Act “sets a dangerous precedent” that threatened to undermine the First Amendment and the freedom of the press.
“Obtaining and disclosing sensitive information when necessary in the public interest is a core part of the daily work of journalists,” the letter said. “If that work is criminalized, our public discourse and our democracies are made significantly weaker.”
Waters told RT that the statement from Swedish prosecutors claiming that the evidence against Assange had “weakened” since 2010 was a “mealy-mouthed bunch of bullsh*t” and that there was “no evidence to support the idea that [Assange] injured anybody.”
It’s partly because of this whole “set-up” that Assange is still suffering in London’s Belmarsh Prison with no real process of law being followed, Waters said. “Assange is being slowly murdered by the state because he told uncomfortable truths about US war crimes,” he added.
The law is being thrown out the window at the behest of the growing mono-empire that is the USA — and it is so wrong.
The British rock ‘n’ roll legend said that Assange’s continued detainment behind bars was “purely political” and that there is no question that he is a political prisoner who is being used as a “warning” to others who might be inclined to do real journalism.
In any sane universe, Julian Assange would be lauded as a hero of the people.
Waters also took aim at mainstream media, where he said it is now nearly impossible to find a truthful narrative of events. “To find the truth these days is extremely difficult,” he said.
Assange is currently languishing in Belmarsh awaiting a hearing on extradition to the US, where he could face 175 years in prison for publishing leaked military documents and exposing war crimes. A London court ruled against the whistleblower in October after his lawyers sought to have the extradition hearing delayed.
Pundits, public figures and Julian Assange’s supporters flocked to an event called ‘Free the Truth’ in London. The Ruptly video agency filmed the exhibition of posters decrying Assange’s imprisonment, as well as artworks inspired by him.
“So many activists are coming together at a time when I feel there’s been a real change in public sentiment,” Craig Murray, a former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan who now campaigns for the renowned publisher, commented.
Despite the lack of coverage or biased coverage in mainstream media, there is now an understanding that Julian is being extradited to the United States for nothing except for publishing the truth.
He’s confident that next year “we will see one of the largest campaigns [in support of Assange] of our time.”
It’s extremely important to draw attention to the founder of the WikiLeaks website, because “we are about to set a precedent,” warned Nils Melzer, a United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture.
If Assange gets extradited to the United States and if he gets punished for exposing the truth, then essentially what’s happening is that telling the truth becomes a crime.
Assange is currently being held at London’s high-security Prison Belmarsh while he faces extradition to the United States on conspiracy and espionage charges.
Melzer has previously sounded the alarm about the conditions of his detention, accusing British authorities of subjecting him to “psychological torture” and warning that he could face further cruel treatment if extradited to the US.
“He’s going to be sentenced by the same judge that sentences all of these whistleblowers in a closed court in East Virginia, and he’ll disappear in a high security prison in inhumane conditions for the rest of his life,” Melzer predicted.
ALSO ON RT.COMJulian Assange will ‘disappear for the rest of his life’ inside ‘inhumane’ US prison, UN envoy warns… if he makes it that farLike this story? Share it with a friend!
The Guardian has published an editorial titled “The Guardian view on extraditing Julian Assange: don’t do it,” subtitled “The US case against the WikiLeaks founder is an assault on press freedom and the public’s right to know.” The publication’s editorial board argues that since the Swedish investigation has once again been dropped, the time is now to oppose U.S. extradition for the WikiLeaks founder.
“Sweden’s decision to drop an investigation into a rape allegation against Julian Assange has both illuminated the situation of the WikiLeaks founder and made it more pressing,” the editorial board writes.
Oh okay, now the issue is illuminated and pressing. Not two months ago, when Assange’s ridiculous bail sentence ended and he was still kept in prison explicitly and exclusively because of the U.S. extradition request. Not six months ago, when the U.S. government slammed Assange with 17 charges under the Espionage Act for publishing the Chelsea Manning leaks. Not seven months ago, when Assange was forcibly pried from the Ecuadorian embassy and slapped with the U.S. extradition request. Not any time between his April arrest and his taking political asylum seven years ago, which the Ecuadorian government explicitly granted him because it believed there was a credible threat of U.S. extradition. Not nine years ago when WikiLeaks was warning that the U.S. government was scheming to extradite Assange and prosecute him under the Espionage Act.
Nope, no, any of those times would have been far too early for The Guardian to begin opposing U.S. extradition for Assange with any degree of lucidity. They had to wait until Assange was already locked up in Belmarsh prison and limping into extradition hearings supervised by looming U.S.government officials. They had to wait until years and years of virulent mass media smear campaigns had killed off public support for Assange so he could be extradited with little or no grassroots backlash. And they had to wait until they themselves had finished participating in those smear campaigns.
There is, needless to say, no hint or suggestion in the Mueller Report that Paul Manafort visited Julian Assange ever in his life, let alone 3 times in the Ecuadorian Embassy during the election. It would obviously be there if it happened. How can the @guardian not retract this??
This is after all the same Guardian which published the transparently ridiculous and completely invalidated report that Trump lackey Paul Manafort had met secretly with Assange at the embassy, not once but multiple times. Not one shred of evidence has ever been produced to substantiate this claim despite the embassy being one of the most heavily surveilled buildings on the planet at the time, and the Robert Mueller investigation, whose expansive scope would obviously have included such meetings, reported absolutely nothing to corroborate it. It was a bogus story which all accused parties have forcefully denied.
This is the same Guardian which ran an article last year titled “The only barrier to Julian Assange leaving Ecuador’s embassy is pride,” arguing that Assange looked ridiculous for remaining in the embassy because “The WikiLeaks founder is unlikely to face prosecution in the U.S.”
The article was authored by the odious James Ball, who deleted a tweet not long ago complaining about the existence of UN special rapporteurs after one of them concluded that Assange is a victim of psychological torture. Ball’s article begins, “According to Debrett’s, the arbiters of etiquette since 1769: ‘Visitors, like fish, stink in three days.’ Given this, it’s difficult to imagine what Ecuador’s London embassy smells like, more than five-and-a-half years after Julian Assange moved himself into the confines of the small flat in Knightsbridge, just across the road from Harrods.”
This is the same Guardian which published an article titled “Definition of paranoia: supporters of Julian Assange,” arguing that Assange defenders are crazy conspiracy theorists for believing the U.S. would try to extradite Assange because “Britain has a notoriously lax extradition treaty with the United States,” because “why would they bother to imprison him when he is making such a good job of discrediting himself?”, and “because there is no extradition request.”
This is the same Guardian which published a ludicrous report about Assange potentially receiving documents as part of a strange Nigel Farage/Donald Trump/Russia conspiracy, a claim based primarily on vague analysis by a single anonymous source described as a “highly placed contact with links to US intelligence.” The same Guardian which just flushed standard journalistic protocol down the toilet by reporting on Assange’s “ties to the Kremlin” (not a thing) without even bothering to use the word “alleged,” not once, but twice. The same Guardian which has been advancing many more virulent smears as documented in this article by The Canary titled “Guilty by innuendo: the Guardian campaign against Julian Assange that breaks all the rules.”
A look at how sleazeball journalists at the Guardian tried to ‘Russiagate’ Assange https://www.thecanary.co/global/world-analysis/2018/12/20/guilty-by-innuendo-the-guardian-campaign-against-julian-assange-that-breaks-all-the-rules/ …
Guilty by innuendo: the Guardian campaign against Julian Assange that breaks all the rules | The…
Assange prefers transparency
thecanary.co
You can see, then, how ridiculous it is for an outlet like The Guardian to now attempt to wash its hands of Assange’s plight with a self-righteous denunciation of the Trump administration’s extradition request from its editorial board. This outlet has actively and forcefully paved the road to the situation in which Assange now finds himself by manufacturing consent for an agenda which the public would otherwise have found appalling and ferociously objectionable. Guardian editors don’t get to pretend that they are in some way separate from what’s being done to Assange. They created what’s being done to Assange.
The deployment of a bomb or missile doesn’t begin when a pilot pushes a button, it begins when propaganda narratives used to promote those operations start circulating in public attention. If you help circulate war propaganda, you’re as complicit as the one who pushes the button. The imprisonment of a journalist for exposing U.S. war crimes doesn’t begin when the Trump administration extradites him to America, it begins when propagandistic smear campaigns begin circulating to kill public opposition to his imprisonment. If you helped promote that smear campaign, you’re just as responsible for what happens to him as the goon squad in Trump’s Department of Justice.
Really great talk by @RonPaulInstitut‘s Daniel McAdams titled “How Not To Be a CIA Propagandist” on the importance of never facilitating propaganda narratives against governments targeted for regime change, even if you disagree with their ideology.https://youtu.be/IgoEFSrRnds?t=5948 …
Before they launch missiles, they launch narratives. Before they drop bombs, they drop ideas. Before they invade, they propagandize. Before the killing, there is manipulation. Narrative control is the front line of all imperialist agendas, and it is therefore the front line of all anti-imperialist efforts. When you forcefully oppose these agendas, that matters, because you’re keeping the public from being propagandized into consenting to them. When you forcefully facilitate those agendas, that matters, because you’re actively paving the way for them.
Claiming you oppose an imperialist agenda while helping to advance its propaganda and smear campaigns in any way is a nonsensical and contradictory position. You cannot facilitate imperialism and simultaneously claim to oppose it.
They work so hard to manufacture our consent because they need that consent. If they operate without the consent of the governed, the public will quickly lose trust in their institutions, and at that point it’s not long before revolution begins to simmer. So, don’t give them your consent. And for God’s sake don’t do anything that helps manufacture it in others.
Words matter. Work with them responsibly.
Caitlin Johnstone is a rogue journalist, poet, and utopia prepper who publishes regularly at Medium. Follow her work on Facebook, Twitter, or her website. She has a podcast and a new book “Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers.”
This article was re-published with permission.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
Australian-born John Pilger has worked for over five decades as a reporter and documentary film-maker covering wars and conflicts all over the world. In the following interview, the award-winning journalist says the world is arguably at a more perilous geopolitical juncture than even during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 at the height of the Cold War. This is because American “exceptionalism” – which, he points out, mirrors that of Nazi Germany – has developed into a hyper-rogue phase. The relentless denigration of Russia by American and Western media show that there are few red lines left to restrain aggression towards Moscow, as there were, at least, during the past Cold War. Russia and China’s refusal to bow down to Washington’s dictate is infuriating the would-be American hegemon and its desire for zero-sum world domination.
John Pilger also gives his wide-ranging views on the systematic deterioration of Western mainstream journalism which has come to function as a nakedly propaganda matrix for power and corporate profit. He further condemns the ongoing persecution and torture of fellow-Australian publisher Julian Assange who is being held in a maximum-security British prison commonly used for holding mass murderers and convicted terrorists. Assange is being persecuted for telling the truth and for exposing huge crimes by the US and Britain, says Pilger. It is a grim warning of a covert war that is being conducted against independent journalism and free speech, and, more ominously, indicative of a slide towards police-state fascism in so-called Western democracies.
INTERVIEW
Question: In your documentary film, The Coming War on China (2016), you assess that the United States is on a strategic collision path with China for control of Asia-Pacific. Do you still see the threat of war looming between these two powers?
John Pilger: The threat of war may not be immediate, but we know or should know that events can change fast: a chain of incidents and missteps can ignite a war which can spread unpredictably. The calculations are not in dispute: an “enemy” has barely 12 minutes to decide whether and where to order a nuclear retaliation.
Question: Recently, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo accused China of being “truly hostile to America’s interests”. What in your view is motivating US concerns about China?
John Pilger: The State Department once declared, “To seek less than preponderant power would be to opt for defeat.” At the root of much of humanity’s insecurity is, remarkably, the self-belief and self-delusion of one nation: the United States. America’s notion of itself is often difficult for the rest of us to comprehend. From the days of President Teddy Roosevelt, the “sacred mission” has been to dominate humanity and its vital resources, if not by intimidation and bribery then by violence. In the 1940s, American “war intellectuals”, such as the diplomat and historian George F Kennan, described the necessity of American dominance of the “Grand Area”, which is most of the world, notably Eurasia, and especially China. Non-Americans were to be cast in “our image”, wrote Kennan; America was the exemplar. Hollywood has reflected this with striking accuracy.
In 1945, this vision, or mania, was given a moral makeover with the defeat of Nazi Germany. Today, many Americans believe their country won the Second World War and that they are the “exceptional” human beings. This mythology (reminiscent of Nazi propaganda) has long had an evangelical hold in the US and is the central pillar of the need to dominate, which requires enemies and fear. America’s long history of racism towards Asia and its historic humiliation of the Chinese people make China a perfect fit as the current enemy.
I should add that “exceptionalism” is not only embraced by the American right. Although they may not admit it, many liberals believe it in it, as do those who describe themselves as “left”. It’s the spawn of the most rapacious ideology on earth: Americanism. That this word is rarely uttered is part of its power.
Question: Do you think it is a strange anomaly that the Trump administration has adopted an aggressive policy towards China, yet this American president appears to seek more friendly relations with Russia?
John Pilger: Dividing China and Russia with the aim of weakening both is a venerable American game. Henry Kissinger played it. As for Trump, it’s impossible to know what he thinks. Regardless of his overtures to Putin, the US has aggressively subverted Ukraine and militarized Russia’s western border and is a more immediate threat to Russia than it is to China.
Question: Do you think the impeachment process underway against Trump is tantamount to a coup to get rid of him by the Deep State because of his relatively benign stance towards Russia?
John Pilger: That’s one theory; I’m not so sure. Trump’s election in 2016 disturbed a Mafia-like system of tribal back-scratching, which the Democrats dominate. Hillary Clinton was the Chosen One; how dare Trump seize her throne. Many American liberals refuse to see their corrupt heroine as a standard bearer of Wall Street, a warmonger and an emblem of hi-jacked gender politics. Clinton is the embodiment of a venal system, Trump is its caricature.
Question: You have worked for over five decades as a war reporter and documentary film-maker in Vietnam, elsewhere in Asia, Africa and Latin America. How do you see current international tensions between the US, China and Russia? Do you think the danger of war is greater now than in previous times?
John Pilger: In 1962, we all may have been saved by the refusal of a Soviet naval officer, Vasili Arkhipov, to fire a nuclear torpedo at US ships during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Are we in greater danger today? During the Cold War, there were lines that the other side dared not cross. There are few if any lines now; the US surrounds China with 400 military bases and sails its low-draught ships into Chinese waters and flies its drones in Chinese airspace. American-led NATO forces mass on the same Russian frontier the Nazis crossed; the Russian president is insulted as a matter of routine. There is no restraint and none of the diplomacy that kept the old Cold War cold. In the West, we have acquiesced as bystanders in our own countries, preferring to look away (or at our smart phones) rather than break free of the post-modernism entrapping us with its specious “identity” distractions.
Question: You travelled extensively in the US during the Cold War years. You witnessed the assassination of presidential candidate Robert Kennedy in 1968. It seems the American Cold War obsession with “communism as an evil” has been replaced by an equally intense Russophobia towards modern-day Russia. Do you see a continuation in the phobia from the Cold War years to today? What accounts for that mindset?
John Pilger: The Russians refuse to bow down to America, and that is intolerable. They play an independent, mostly positive role in the Middle East, the antithesis of America’s violent subversions, and that is unbearable. Like the Chinese, they have forged peaceful and fruitful alliances with people all over the world, and that is unacceptable to the US Godfather. The constant defamation of all things Russian is a symptom of decline and panic, as if the United States has departed the 21st century for the 19th century, obsessed with a proprietorial view of the world. In the circumstances, the phobia you describe is hardly surprising.
Question: How has news journalism, specifically in Western states, changed over the course of your career? You have won multiple awards for your writing and film-making, yet today one rarely reads your articles published in mainstream media even though you are still actively working as a journalist as per your own website?
John Pilger: Journalism wasn’t corporate when I began. Most newspapers in Britain were a faithful reflection of the interests of what was known as the Establishment, but they could also be idiosyncratic. When I came to Fleet Street in London during the early 1960s, then known as the “Mecca of newspapers”, the times were optimistic and the most right-wing newspapers tolerated, even encouraged mavericks, who are often the best journalists. The Daily Mirror, then the biggest circulating newspaper on earth apart from the People’s Daily, was the soldiers’ paper during the Second World War and became, for millions of Britons, their paper. To those of us on the Mirror, it was something of an ideal to be the agents and defenders of people, not power.
Today, true mavericks are redundant in the mainstream media. Corporate public relations is the real force in modern journalism. Look at the way news is written: almost none of it is straight. I wrote for many years for the Guardian; my last piece was five years ago after which I received a phone call. I was purged, along with other independent writers. The Guardian now promotes fiction about Russia, obsessively, the interests of Britain’s intelligence services, Israel, the US Democratic Party, bourgeois gender imperatives and an unctuous view of itself. The paper’s witch-hunt against Julian Assange – part of a campaign which the UN Rapporteur on Torture refers to as “mobbing” – includes fabrication of a kind previously associated with the rightwing Murdoch press; certainly, its cruelty towards Assange is a profanity on the liberal values for which it claims to stand.
Question: You have been a prominent supporter of Julian Assange, the founding editor of WikiLeaks, who is currently imprisoned in Britain awaiting an extradition trial next year to the US on charges of espionage. What’s really behind the incarceration of Assange?
John Pilger: Julian Assange is what journalists should be and rarely are: he is a tireless, fearless truth-teller. He has exposed, on a vast scale, the secret, criminal life of great power: of “our” governments, their lying and violence in our name. Ten years ago, WikiLeaks leaked a British Ministry of Defense document that described investigative journalism as the greatest threat to secretive power. Investigative journalists were rated higher on the threat scale than “Russian spies” and “terrorists”. Assange and WikiLeaks can claim that laurel. If the Americans come for him and incarcerate him in a hell hole, they will come for others, including those journalists who simply do their job. And they will come for their editors and publishers too.
Question: You make the point that Assange shames the mainstream Western media because Wikileaks published damning information exposing huge war crimes committed by the US and its NATO allies in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, while the mainstream media ignored those crimes or give them relatively scant coverage. Does that explain why these media are ignoring Assange’s plight?
John Pilger: There is, at last, a growing realization that the gross injustice against Assange is likely to happen to others. The recent statement by Britain’s National Union of Journalists is a sign of change. The silence must be broken if journalists are to reclaim their honor.
Question: You have recently visited Assange in Britain’s maximum-security Belmarsh Prison where he is being held in solitary confinement. How would you describe his physical and mental condition? You say he is being subjected to a show-trial. Is his mistreatment comparable to what Western media would condemn as persecution under dictatorships?
John Pilger: Julian’s last court appearance on October 21 was effectively controlled by four Americans from the US Embassy who sat behind the prosecutor and passed their written instructions to him by hand. The judge watched this outrage and allowed it to continue. At the same time, she treated Julian’s lawyers with contempt. When Julian, who is ill, struggled to speak his name, she sneered. The difference from a Cold War show-trial was that this was not broadcast on state television; the BBC blacked it out.
Question: With the arrest of Julian Assange and other independent journalists like Max Blumenthal in the US who exposed Washington’s regime-change crimes in Venezuela, and given the silent indifference of Western media, do you think it is a real concern that the US is sliding towards police-state fascism?
John Pilger: Some would argue the slide has happened.
Waters told RT that the statement from Swedish prosecutors claiming that the evidence against Assange had “weakened” since 2010 was a “mealy-mouthed bunch of bullsh*t” and that there was “no evidence to support the idea that [Assange] injured anybody.”
It’s partly because of this whole “set-up” that Assange is still suffering in London’s Belmarsh Prison with no real process of law being followed, Waters said. “Assange is being slowly murdered by the state because he told uncomfortable truths about US war crimes,” he added.
The law is being thrown out the window at the behest of the growing mono-empire that is the USA — and it is so wrong.
The British rock ‘n’ roll legend said that Assange’s continued detainment behind bars was “purely political” and that there is no question that he is a political prisoner who is being used as a “warning” to others who might be inclined to do real journalism.
In any sane universe, Julian Assange would be lauded as a hero of the people.
Waters also took aim at mainstream media, where he said it is now nearly impossible to find a truthful narrative of events. “To find the truth these days is extremely difficult,” he said.
Assange is currently languishing in Belmarsh awaiting a hearing on extradition to the US, where he could face 175 years in prison for publishing leaked military documents and exposing war crimes. A London court ruled against the whistleblower in October after his lawyers sought to have the extradition hearing delayed.
Swedish prosecutors announced on Tuesday that they would drop a dubious rape inquiry against Assange, as oral testimony against the publisher had “weakened,” and corroborating evidence was not strong enough to pursue a case. A Swedish arrest warrant was issued against assange in 2010, and a British court upheld a decision to extradite him in 2012. Threatened with what many saw as a politically motivated extradition, Assange sought refuge in London’s Ecuadorian embassy.
“Today’s collapse of Sweden’s #Assange investigation was inevitable,” rapporteur Nils Melzer tweeted on Tuesday. “Given its gross arbitrariness, there must now be a full investigation, and accountability & compensation for the harm inflicted on #JulianAssange.”
Today’s collapse of Sweden’s #Assange investigation was inevitable. Given its gross arbitrariness, there must now be a full investigation, and accountability & compensation for the harm inflicted on #JulianAssange https://twitter.com/nilsmelzer/status/1193841574586781698 …
Nils Melzer@NilsMelzer#Assange: My follow-up letter of 12 Sept asking #Sweden to explain, point by point, the #HumanRights compliance of 50 perceived due process violations, to conduct a prompt & impartial investigation and reiterating my unanswered queries of 28 May. Link: http://bit.ly/2NXUAEN
Melzer had previously claimed that Assange was subjected to “psychological torture” and had his due process rights “systematically violated” by the governments of Britain and Sweden. The WikiLeaks founder is still languishing in a maximum security unit at Belmarsh prison, awaiting a hearing on extradition to the US, where he potentially faces 175 years behind bars for publishing leaked military documents.
In a document tweeted by Melzer, the envoy accuses Sweden of “actively and knowingly” contributing to Assange’s torture, and accuses prosecutors there of working in tandem with Britain’s Crown Prosecutorial Service to keep the case against Assange alive in the face of exculpatory evidence.
With the rape case against him dropped, some commentators have warned that the path to extradition to the US may now be clearer. WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson told supporters that their focus should now shift to the most important “threat” that Assange was “warning about for years: the belligerent prosecution of the United States and the threat it poses to the First Amendment.”
http://www.paulcraigroberts.org
Paul Craig Roberts
November 7, 2019
This Shows How Impotent Western Peoples Are—They Cannot Even Save the Journalist Who Told Them the Truth
Persecution of Assange — more of the same
For nearly a decade the United States has been pursuing and persecuting Julian Assange in collaboration with three vassal states, aided and abetted by mainstream media. That appalling spectacle has been accompanied by a steady stream of eloquent denunciations and growing demands for Julian’s liberation.
The legal and moral grounds for all those demands and denunciations are indisputable. And yet he remains in prison under false pretexts, with no prospect of liberation in sight.
How is that possible? Because forces hostile to Julian Assange and what he represents have gained control of the institutions and superior resources of the collaborating governments. They have done so by means of ”democratic” elections which legitimise their control and — in the absence of any substantial opposition — ignore legal and ethical constraints on their conduct. In all of this, the complicity of the mainstream media has been essential.
A not-so-modest proposal
It is or should be obvious by now that Julian’s freedom is very unlikely to be won by appeals to reason and expressions of moral sentiment — no matter how often they are repeated and how widely they may be shared — as long as they remain disparate and unorganized, as they have been thus far. That is why I have proposed* the following:
• a global campaign dedicated to the release of Julian Assange from captivity, with an appropriate title such as ”Assange Freedom Now!”
• a qualified and influential steering committee to lead and legitimise the campaign.
• an adequately staffed and funded campaign headquarters, presumably in London but possibly elsewhere, to carry out tasks including:
Create and constantly maintain an attractive, easily read and technically efficient website to provide continual and authoritative reports on Julian’s current situation and related matters, correct errors in other media, answer reader enquiries, etc.
Develop and maintain a comprehensive list of solidarity groups around the world, document their actions, respond to their requests for information and guidance, etc.
Help plan, co-ordinate and execute major actions.
Indifferent response
In the two weeks that have passed since it was made, the response to that proposal has been less than overwhelming.
Two individuals have offered to help implement it. A few others have expressed approval but argued that it would be too difficult or take too long. Still others have explained that they want to do something, anything, without delay in order to vent their anger and frustration.
But the main response has been no response.
Instead, there has been more of the same, including several admirable initiatives involving a great deal of hard work and dedication. It goes without saying that I devoutly hope that they succeed in their variously expressed purpose of securing Julian’s freedom. It is extremely unlikely that they will.
One reason for that is reflected in the experience of two similar initiatives. Today, the author of one wrote of the other: ”This is completely different from my letter.… It started with my letter and got completely changed. Mine was against imprisonment, this is against extradition. Both are necessary but not the same. There is certainly a lack of coordination.”
There is indeed a lack of coordination, but I have found it extremely difficult to persuade others that overcoming that lack is of the highest priority. Very few have even been willing to discuss the issue.
And so it continues, with no one discernibly in charge of Julian’s struggle for freedom and very few who seem to believe that there ought to be, while millions of Julian’s supporters around the world remain uninformed and unorganised.
Apart from writing this memorandum, I lack the means to alter that perplexing and perturbing state of affairs. I can only hope that others with more power and greater resources will choose to do so
A final observation: As things now stand, Julian’s best hope may be for the Labour Party to win enough votes in the forthcoming U.K. election to form the next government. Party leader Jeremy Corbyn has condemned the current government’s treatment of Julian and has declared his intention to release him from prison if elected. Although it is conceivable that he might then change his mind or feel compelled to change his policy, there are ample grounds to trust Mr. Corbyn in this matter. I therefore urge that every possible effort be made to ensure that he becomes the next prime minister.
Al Burke
6 November 2019
References
OHCHR, “UN expert on torture sounds alarm again that Julian Assange’s life may be at risk”
https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=25249&LangID=E
John Pilger, “Did this happen in the home of Magna Carta?”
http://johnpilger.com/articles/did-this-happen-in-the-home-of-magna-carta-
Fidel Narvaez & Stefania Maurizi, ” “I Was Fired for Helping Julian Assange, and I Have No Regrets”
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/10/julian-assange-fidel-narvaez-ecuador-moreno
Craig Murray, ”Assange in Court”
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/category/uncategorized/
*Al Burke, “Liberating Assange: A woeful lack of leadership”
http://www.nnn.se/nordic/assange/lead-lack.pdf
—
_________________________
Al Burke
E-mail: editor@nnn.se
Internet: http://www.nnn.se
Tel. +46/(0)8 – 731 9200
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(TRI Opinion) — All of us are in danger.
In an age of prosecutions for thought crimes, pre-crime deterrence programs, and government agencies that operate like organized crime syndicates, there is a new kind of tyranny being imposed on those who dare to expose the crimes of the Deep State, whose reach has gone global.
The Deep State has embarked on a ruthless, take-no-prisoners, all-out assault on truth-tellers.
Activists, journalists and whistleblowers alike are being terrorized, traumatized, tortured and subjected to the fear-inducing, mind-altering, soul-destroying, smash-your-face-in tactics employed by the superpowers-that-be.
Take Julian Assange, for example.
Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks—a website that published secret information, news leaks, and classified media from anonymous sources—was arrested on April 11, 2019, on charges of helping U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning access and leak more than 700,000 classified military documents that portray the U.S. government and its military as reckless, irresponsible and responsible for thousands of civilian deaths.
Included among the leaked Manning material were the Collateral Murder video (April 2010), the Afghanistan war logs (July 2010), the Iraq war logs (October 2010), a quarter of a million diplomatic cables (November 2010), and the Guantánamo files (April 2011).
The Collateral Murder leak included gunsight video footage from two U.S. AH-64 Apache helicopters engaged in a series of air-to-ground attacks while air crew laughed at some of the casualties. Among the casualties were two Reuters correspondents who were gunned down after their cameras were mistaken for weapons and a driver who stopped to help one of the journalists. The driver’s two children, who happened to be in the van at the time it was fired upon by U.S. forces, suffered serious injuries.
This is morally wrong.
“What happens to Julian Assange and to Chelsea Manning is meant to intimidate us, to frighten us into silence. By defending Julian Assange, we defend our most sacred rights. Speak up now or wake up one morning to the silence of a new kind of tyranny. The choice is ours.”—John Pilger, investigative journalist
It shouldn’t matter which nation is responsible for these atrocities: there is no defense for such evil perpetrated in the name of profit margins and war profiteering.
In true Orwellian fashion, however, the government would have us believe that it is Assange and Manning who are the real criminals for daring to expose the war machine’s seedy underbelly.
Since his April 2019 arrest, Assange has been locked up in a maximum-security British prison—in solitary confinement for up to 23 hours a day—pending extradition to the U.S., where if convicted, he could be sentenced to 175 years in prison.
Whatever is being done to Assange behind those prison walls—psychological torture, forced drugging, prolonged isolation, intimidation, surveillance—it’s wearing him down.
In court appearances, the 48-year-old Assange appears disoriented, haggard and zombie-like.
“In 20 years of work with victims of war, violence and political persecution I have never seen a group of democratic States ganging up to deliberately isolate, demonise and abuse a single individual for such a long time and with so little regard for human dignity and the rule of law,” declared Nils Melzer, the UN special rapporteur on torture.
It’s not just Assange who is being made to suffer, however.
Manning, who was jailed for seven years from 2010 to 2017 for leaking classified documents to Wikileaks, was arrested in March 2019 for refusing to testify before a grand jury about Assange, placed in solitary confinement for almost a month, and then sentenced to remain in jail either until she agrees to testify or until the grand jury’s 18-month term expires.
Federal judge Anthony J. Trenga of the Eastern District of Virginia also fined Manning $500 for every day she remained in custody after 30 days, and $1,000 for every day she remains in custody after 60 days, a chilling—and financially crippling—example of the government’s heavy-handed efforts to weaponize fines and jail terms as a means of forcing dissidents to fall in line.
This is how the police state deals with those who challenge its chokehold on power.
Make no mistake: the government is waging war on journalists and whistleblowers for disclosing information relating to government misconduct that is within the public’s right to know.
Yet while this targeted campaign—aided, abetted and advanced by the Deep State’s international alliances—is unfolding during President Trump’s watch, it began with the Obama Administration’s decision to revive the antiquated, hundred-year-old Espionage Act, which was intended to punish government spies, and instead use it to prosecute government whistleblowers.
Unfortunately, the Trump Administration has not merely continued the Obama Administration’s attack on whistleblowers. It has injected this war on truth-tellers and truth-seekers with steroids and let it loose on the First Amendment.
In May 2019, Trump’s Justice Department issued a sweeping new “superseding” secret indictment of Assange—hinged on the Espionage Act—that empowers the government to determine what counts as legitimate journalism and criminalize the rest, not to mention giving “the government license to criminally punish journalists it does not like, based on antipathy, vague standards, and subjective judgments.”
Noting that the indictment signaled grave dangers for freedom of the press in general, media lawyer Theodore J. Boutrous, Jr., warned, “The indictment would criminalize the encouragement of leaks of newsworthy classified information, criminalize the acceptance of such information, and criminalize publication of it.”
Boutrous continues:
[I]t doesn’t matter whether you think Assange is a journalist, or whether WikiLeaks is a news organization. The theory that animates the indictment targets the very essence of journalistic activity: the gathering and dissemination of information that the government wants to keep secret. You don’t have to like Assange or endorse what he and WikiLeaks have done over the years to recognize that this indictment sets an ominous precedent and threatens basic First Amendment values…. With only modest tweaking, the very same theory could be invoked to prosecute journalists for the very same crimes being alleged against Assange, simply for doing their jobs of scrutinizing the government and reporting the news to the American people.
We desperately need greater scrutiny and transparency, not less.
Indeed, transparency is one of those things the shadow government fears the most. Why? Because it might arouse the distracted American populace to actually exercise their rights and resist the tyranny that is inexorably asphyxiating their freedoms.
This need to shed light on government actions—to make the obscure, least transparent reaches of government accessible and accountable—was a common theme for Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, who famously coined the phrase, “Sunlight is the best disinfectant.”
Writing in January 1884, Brandeis explained:
Light is the only thing that can sweeten our political atmosphere—light thrown upon every detail of administration in the departments; light diffused through every policy; light blazed full upon every feature of legislation; light that can penetrate every recess or corner in which any intrigue might hide; light that will open up to view the innermost chambers of government, drive away all darkness from the treasury vaults; illuminate foreign correspondence; explore national dockyards; search out the obscurities of Indian affairs; display the workings of justice; exhibit the management of the army; play upon the sails of the navy; and follow the distribution of the mails.
Of course, transparency is futile without a populace that is informed, engaged and prepared to hold the government accountable to abiding by the rule of law.
For this reason, it is vital that citizens have the right to criticize the government without fear.
After all, we’re citizens, not subjects. For those who don’t fully understand the distinction between the two and why transparency is so vital to a healthy constitutional government, Manning explains it well:
When freedom of information and transparency are stifled, then bad decisions are often made and heartbreaking tragedies occur – too often on a breathtaking scale that can leave societies wondering: how did this happen? … I believe that when the public lacks even the most fundamental access to what its governments and militaries are doing in their names, then they cease to be involved in the act of citizenship. There is a bright distinction between citizens, who have rights and privileges protected by the state, and subjects, who are under the complete control and authority of the state.
Manning goes on to suggest that the U.S. “needs legislation to protect the public’s right to free speech and a free press, to protect it from the actions of the executive branch and to promote the integrity and transparency of the US government.”
Technically, we’ve already got such legislation on the books: the First Amendment.
The First Amendment gives the citizenry the right to speak freely, protest peacefully, expose government wrongdoing, and criticize the government without fear of arrest, isolation or any of the other punishments that have been meted out to whistleblowers such as Edwards Snowden, Assange and Manning.
The challenge is holding the government accountable to obeying the law.
Almost 50 years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in United States v. Washington Post Co. to block the Nixon Administration’s attempts to use claims of national security to prevent The Washington Post and The New York Times from publishing secret Pentagon papers on how America went to war in Vietnam.
As Justice William O. Douglas remarked on the ruling, “The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government. And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell.”
Almost 50 years later, with Assange being cast as the poster boy for treason, we’re witnessing yet another showdown, which pits the people’s right to know about government misconduct against the might of the military-industrial complex.
Yet this isn’t merely about whether whistleblowers and journalists are part of a protected class under the Constitution. It’s a debate over how long “we the people” will remain a protected class under the Constitution.
Following the current downward trajectory, it won’t be long before anyone who believes in holding the government accountable is labeled an “extremist,” is relegated to an underclass that doesn’t fit in, must be watched all the time, and is rounded up when the government deems it necessary.
Eventually, we will all be potential suspects, terrorists and lawbreakers in the eyes of the government
Partisan politics have no place in this debate: Americans of all stripes would do well to remember that those who question the motives of government provide a necessary counterpoint to those who would blindly follow where politicians choose to lead.
We don’t have to agree with every criticism of the government, but we must defend the rights of all individuals to speak freely without fear of punishment or threat of banishment.
Never forget: what the architects of the police state want are submissive, compliant, cooperative, obedient, meek citizens who don’t talk back, don’t challenge government authority, don’t speak out against government misconduct, and don’t step out of line.
What the First Amendment protects—and a healthy constitutional republic requires—are citizens who routinely exercise their right to speak truth to power.
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the right to speak out against government wrongdoing is the quintessential freedom.
Be warned: this quintessential freedom won’t be much good to anyone if the government makes good on its promise to make an example of Assange as a warning to other journalists intent on helping whistleblowers disclose government corruption.
Once again, we find ourselves reliving George Orwell’s 1984, which portrayed in chilling detail how totalitarian governments employ the power of language to manipulate the masses.
In Orwell’s dystopian vision of the future, Big Brother does away with all undesirable and unnecessary words and meanings, even going so far as to routinely rewrite history and punish “thoughtcrimes.”
Much like today’s social media censors and pre-crime police departments, Orwell’s Thought Police serve as the eyes and ears of Big Brother, while the other government agencies peddle in economic affairs (rationing and starvation), law and order (torture and brainwashing), and news, entertainment, education and art (propaganda).
Orwell’s Big Brother relies on Newspeak to eliminate undesirable words, strip such words as remained of unorthodox meanings and make independent, non-government-approved thought altogether unnecessary.
Where we stand now is at the juncture of OldSpeak (where words have meanings, and ideas can be dangerous) and Newspeak (where only that which is “safe” and “accepted” by the majority is permitted). The power elite has made their intentions clear: they will pursue and prosecute any and all words, thoughts and expressions that challenge their authority.
This is the final link in the police state chain.
Having been reduced to a cowering citizenry—mute in the face of elected officials who refuse to represent us, helpless in the face of police brutality, powerless in the face of militarized tactics and technology that treat us like enemy combatants on a battlefield, and naked in the face of government surveillance that sees and hears all—our backs are to the walls.
From this point on, we have only two options: go down fighting, or capitulate and betray our loved ones, our friends and ourselves by insisting that, as a brainwashed Winston Smith does at the end of Orwell’s 1984, yes, 2+2 does equal 5.
As George Orwell recognized, “In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”
By John W. Whitehead | Ruthford.org | Republished with permission
The views in this article may not reflect editorial policy of The Mind Unleashed.
Oscar Grenfell
2 August 2019
A federal court ruling last Tuesday dismissing a Democratic National Committee (DNC) civil suit against Julian Assange “with prejudice” was a devastating indictment of the US ruling elite’s campaign to destroy the WikiLeaks founder. It exposed as a fraud the entire “Russiagate” conspiracy theory peddled by the Democratic Party, the corporate media and the intelligence agencies for the past three years.
The decision, by Judge John Koeltl of the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, rejected the smears that Assange “colluded” with Russia. It upheld his status as a journalist and publisher and dismissed claims that WikiLeaks’ 2016 publication of leaked emails from the DNC was “illegal.”
Despite the significance of the ruling, and its clear newsworthiness, it has been subjected to an almost complete blackout by the entire media in the US and internationally.
The universal silence on the court decision—extending from the New York Times (which buried a six-paragraph report on the ruling on page 25) and the Washington Post, to “alternative” outlets such as the Intercept, the television evening news programs and the publications of the pseudo-left—can be described only as a coordinated political conspiracy.
Its aim is to suppress any discussion of the court’s exposure of the slanders used to malign and isolate Assange, and to justify the unprecedented international pursuit of him over WikiLeaks’ exposure of US war crimes, surveillance operations and diplomatic conspiracies.
The New York Times, the Washington Post and other corporate outlets have relentlessly smeared Assange as a “Russian agent” and depicted him as the linchpin of a conspiracy hatched in Moscow to deprive Democratic Party candidate Hillary Clinton of the presidency in the 2016 US elections.
Now that their claims have been subjected to judicial review and exposed as a tissue of lies and fabrications, they have adopted a policy of radio silence. There is no question that if the court ruling had been in favour of the DNC, it would have been greeted with banner headlines and wall-to-wall coverage.
The response exposes these publications as state propagandists and active participants in the campaign by the Democratic Party, the Trump administration and the entire ruling elite to condemn Assange for the rest of his life to an American prison for the “crime” of publishing the truth.
The editors and senior writers at these outlets, such as New York Times editorial page editor James Bennet, are in constant contact with the CIA and other intelligence agencies. Behind the scenes, they work out an editorial line that will advance the interests of the Wall Street banks and the military-intelligence apparatus. At the same time, they decide what news and information they will hide from the American and world population.
The efforts by the mainstream news outlets to bury the ruling presents a clear example of the type of media manipulation that has led millions of people to seek alternative sources of news on the internet, of which WikiLeaks is itself an example.
Judge Koeltl’s decision made plain the anti-democratic and dictatorial logic of the DNC case against Assange. He warned: “If WikiLeaks could be held liable for publishing documents concerning the DNC’s political, financial and voter-engagement strategies simply because the DNC labels them ‘secret’ and trade secrets, then so could any newspaper or other media outlet.” This, he stated, would “override the First Amendment” protection to freedom of the press mandated by the US Constitution.
Koeltl’s finding was an absolute vindication of Assange and WikiLeaks’ 2016 publications exposing the attempts by the DNC to rig the Democratic Party primaries against self-declared “democratic socialist” Bernie Sanders in favour of Hillary Clinton.
The judge found these releases, together with the publication of Clinton’s secret speeches to Wall Street banks, in which she pledged to be their representative, were “matters of the highest public concern.” They “allowed the American electorate to look behind the curtain of one of the two major political parties in the United States during a presidential election.”
Koeltl, moreover, found there was no evidence to justify the DNC’s assertion that WikiLeaks had colluded with the Russian state to obtain the material. Assange and WikiLeaks have always maintained that the documents were not provided to them by the Putin regime.
The ruling demonstrated the flagrant illegality of the US vendetta against Assange. The slander that he was operating as a “Russian agent” to “interfere” in US politics was used by the American government and its intelligence agencies to pressure the Ecuadorian regime to sever Assange’s internet access in 2016, and again in 2018. It served as a central pretext for its illegal termination in April of his political asylum in the embassy building.
The judgment was also an implicit exposure of the lawlessness of the attempts by the Trump administration, with the full support of the Democrats, to extradite Assange from Britain, so that he can be prosecuted on 18 US charges, including 17 espionage counts, carrying a maximum sentence of 175 years’ imprisonment.
The Trump administration and the Justice Department are claiming that it was illegal for WikiLeaks and Assange to publish US army war logs from Iraq and Afghanistan, hundreds of thousands of diplomatic cables and other documents exposing US war crimes and intrigues, provided by the courageous whistleblower Chelsea Manning.
Koeltl’s ruling, however, reasserted the fundamental democratic principle that WikiLeaks had a right to publish the 2016 DNC documents, even if they had been obtained by the Russian government, or any other entity, illegally.
The clear implication is that even if Manning’s decision to leak US military and diplomatic documents was a violation of the law, WikiLeaks’ publication of them was not. The publication of both the 2010 and the 2016 leaks was constitutionally protected journalistic activity.
Koeltl further undermined the claims of the Trump administration, the Democrats and the media that Assange is a “hacker,” undeserving of First Amendment protections. The judge repeatedly referred to Assange as a “journalist” and WikiLeaks as a “publisher.”
In other words, the attempt to extradite Assange to the US and prosecute him is a frontal assault on the US Constitution and press freedom. In its disregard for domestic and international law, it can be described only as an extraordinary rendition operation, similar to the kidnappings and torture operations conducted by the CIA.
The hostile response to Koeltl’s ruling on the part of the entire political and media establishment, in the US and internationally, demonstrates that this conspiracy will not be defeated by plaintive appeals to the governments, political parties and media corporations that have spearheaded the assault on Assange’s legal and democratic rights.
All of them are using the persecution of Assange as a test case for the imposition of ever-more authoritarian measures, aimed at suppressing mounting popular hostility to war, social inequality and an assault on democratic rights.
What is required is the development of a mass movement from below, to mobilise the immense social and political power of the working class internationally to secure Assange’s liberty and to defend all democratic rights.
To take forward this critical struggle, the WSWS and the International Committee of the Fourth International last month called for the formation of a Global Defence Committee to free Assange and the courageous whistleblower Chelsea Manning. All workers, young people and supporters of democratic rights should contact the WSWS today to take up the fight to free Assange and Manning!
This fake justice from the USA, the West, is an abomination, an affront to humanity. Justice in the USA is now an oxymoron.
Speaking outside Westminster Magistrates’ Court in London on Friday following the decision to open a new, full US extradition hearing in February 2020, Pilger insisted that the motivation of the American authorities in pursuing Assange was clear to see.
… [It] is quite clear that on a wider level this is an attempt to shut down WikiLeaks and put Assange away, but it’s also about shutting down dissent. It’s mainly about shutting down investigative journalism.
The Australian journalist suggested that other reporters in the UK and around the world were reluctant to show solidarity with Assange due to a “certain anxiety” that they may also be targeted for their investigative journalism.
Pilger, who was in court to witness the condition of Assange as the journalist appeared via video link, said that his compatriot looked “shaky” and in “a fragile state.” He believes the action taken against Assange amounts to “war on journalism.”
It’s a psychological war on this individual, an attack on him as a human being, but also an attack on journalism, on basic rights.
The US Justice Department has filed 18 charges against the 47-year-old Australian journalist, including one count of conspiring with Chelsea Manning, the former intelligence analyst and whistleblower, to gain access to the US Pentagon network.
Assange is currently serving a 50-week prison sentence in the UK for jumping bail in 2012. He was too ill to appear at the last hearing at Westminster Magistrates’ Court regarding the US request in May.
Shame on you Sweden, you used to be a light in the world. Now, You are merely another submissive lapdog of the USA. What did the USA offer you? Pathetic.
Former Labour MP George Galloway has told RT that Sweden is even more of a US vassal state than Britain. He believes attempts to get to the truth of rape allegations against the WikiLeaks co-founder are not genuine.
Given that the allegations against Julian Assange has been twice investigated and twice abandoned, there is no reason to believe this is a serious effort to try him for sexual assault allegations dating back almost an entire decade.
The political firebrand sees this latest move by Sweden as part of a bigger operation being conducted by the US.
Galloway insists that there is “every reason to believe that this is part of a maneuver whereby if the British courts don’t free him and comply fully with the United States’ wishes, well, the Swedes will.”
ALSO ON RT.COMSwedish prosecutor reopens case probing Assange rape allegations
Sweden’s Director of Public Prosecutions Eva-Marie Persson made the announcement on Monday morning, confirming her office’s decision.
Persson told reporters at a press conference: “I have taken the decision to reopen the preliminary investigation.”
“As Mr Assange is currently incarcerated in the UK the circumstances now allow him to be extradited to Sweden on a rape warrant,” she added.
Responding to the announcement, WikiLeaks Editor-in-Chief Kristinn Hrafnsson has claimed that the “case has been mishandled throughout.”
Hrafnsson added that several key details surrounding the investigation were suspicious after a Swedish prosecutor initially found that “no crime at all” had occurred, after which the case was reopened at the behest of the British authorities.
ALSO ON RT.COMAssange rape case politicized, ‘mishandled throughout’ says WikiLeaks Editor-in-Chief
The rape allegations were leveled against Assange in a case which began almost a decade ago, before he sought refuge in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London in 2012. He has repeatedly denied them.