SIRATYST (Stuff I Read and Thought You Should Too) --
“To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace.”
(Calgacus, as quoted by Tacitus, Agricola 30-31)"
"On Tuesday, U.S. President Donald Trump, with much fanfare, hosted a ceremony for the signing of the so-called peace agreements between Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain. With smug smiles plastered on their faces, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Emirati Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, and Foreign Minister of Bahrain Abdullatif Al Zayani together hailed the dawn of a new period in the region. According to the poetically-titled Abraham Accords, the aforementioned heads of state and their representatives will work together to achieve a “stable, peaceful and prosperous” Middle East."
***
"On Tuesday, we were afforded the spectacle of religious extremists signing a futuristic manifesto for zealots."
Julian Assange has been held in isolation (23
hours per day) at Belmarsh high-security prison since he was dragged out
of the Ecuadorian embassy in London, April 11, 2019.
British police drag publisher Julian Assange out of Ecuador’s London embassy, April 11, 2019. [Source: theguardian.com]
The United States government claims he violated its Espionage Act of
1917 and committed illegal computer hacking. U.S. authorities requested
England’s government arrest and extradite him. He would be tried in
Alexandria, Virginia. It is there that a secret grand jury began
gathering a case against him on May 11, 2011.
The extradition trial which starts today at Old Bailey, the central
criminal court of London, is expected to last three or four weeks.
Following his arrest, the court’s first legal proceedings against
Assange dealt with his breach of bail conditions; he had sought asylum
in Ecuador’s embassy to avoid imprisonment in the U.S. Assange had only
15 minutes to prepare with his lawyer and the hearing lasted only 15
minutes. As has been widely reported, one judge said that Assange was a “narcissist who cannot get beyond his own self-interest.”
The judges, including Chief Magistrate Emma Arbuthnot, ruled that he
should be held in “custody” for 50 weeks. Bail violations are usually
punished by a fine, and/or a few days in jail. Assange’s “custody” for
such a minor offense resulted in isolation. He has long since served
that time, but the government won’t release him pending results on the
extradition matter. The U.S. government’s original charges against
Assange would have netted a maximum of five years imprisonment.
In June, Magistrate Arbuthnot ruled that a full extradition hearing
should begin February 25, 2020, then expected to last five days. The
trial was postponed while the U.S. initiated more charges against him,
which now amount to 18 counts with a possible sentence of 175 years
imprisonment.
When there are court hearings, Assange is usually too sick to attend,
and participates via video. He is allowed few visitors and even his
lawyer is often not allowed in, or is limited to a few minutes. Julian
is not even allowed to have materials pertaining to the case in his
cell.
Assange’s Alleged Crimes
As CAM readers are well aware,
Assange is the founder of Wikileaks, a non-profit organization that
claimed to have published over 10 million classified documents in the
first ten years of its operations starting in 2006. The most explosive
revelations include war logs from the Afghan War and the infamous “Collateral Murder”
video from July 2007 in which U.S. troops opened fire and killed over a
dozen people in a Baghdad suburb including two journalists. Two
children involved in the rescue were also seriously wounded.[1]
While many herald the Wikileaks’ exposure of government atrocities
and corruption, others have criticized Assange and Wikileaks for
inadequately curating its content and violating personal privacy.
Notwithstanding, Brigadier General Robert Carr, the counter-intelligence
officer who had overseen the investigation by the U.S. Defense
Department, admitted under oath in 2013 that “I don’t have a specific
example” of any person who came to harm due to the publication of the
leaks.[2]
The claim that Assange collaborated with the Russians to leak emails
that depicted Hillary Clinton in a negative light in the 2016 election
has also not been substantiated.[3]
The U.S. government has pursued a vendetta against Assange and Wikileaks because they have been repeatedly humiliated by them.
Whistleblowers have historically
been treated very harshly not primarily because of the content of the
information that they have helped leak, but because they challenge the
legitimacy and authority of the state.[4] The Assange trial should be viewed in this context.
No Fair Trial is Possible
Counsels for the U.S. government contend that Assange has committed
the largest “crimes” of compromises of information in U.S. history. It
was irrelevant to the U.S. government and England’s magistrates that the
“compromises of information” exposed truths of many types of
governmental crimes, including war crimes punishable by years to life
imprisonment.
If Assange is sent to Alexandria, he has no chance of a fair trial.
According to Alexandria’s demographics,
the city of 159,000 people is located 12 kilometers from downtown
Washington D.C. Of 96,500 employed persons, 24,000 work directly for the
government, mainly for intelligence services (CIA, NSA) and defense
departments, and many private company employees are government
contractors.
Grand Juror selection always has government employees or private
workers associated with the government. That is why the government
always prosecutes accused violators of national security and espionage
laws there. No journalist has ever been so tried. The Espionage Act was
made in wartime to prohibit U.S. residents/citizens from supporting U.S.
enemies in times of war. Julian Assange does not fit those criteria.
According to the UN rapporteur on torture, Nils Meltzer, even more
Alexandria residents—more than the demographics agency stated—work for
the U.S. government. He told interviewer Daniel Ryser:
“The
choice of location is not by coincidence, because the jury members must
be chosen in proportion to the local population, and 85 percent of Alexandria residents work in the national security community—at
the CIA, the NSA, the Defense Department and the State Department. When
people are tried for harming national security in front of a jury like
that, the verdict is clear from the very beginning. The cases are always
tried in front of the same judge behind closed doors and on the
strength of classified evidence. No one has ever been acquitted there on
a similar case.”[5]
Niels
Melzer (center), UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Cruel, Inhuman or
Degrading Treatment or Punishment, speaks at a news conference at the
United Nations in New York December 13, 2017, concerning torture used at
the U.S. base in Guantanamo, Cuba. [Source: ijrcenter.org]
The most contentious exposés for the U.S. and England are connected
to the downloading of a “vast amount of classified documents” by Chelsea
Manning when she was a U.S. army intelligence analyst. She subsequently
served seven years in prison. These files included approximately 90,000
reports about the war in Afghanistan, 400,000 Iraq war reports and
800,000 Guantánamo Bay detainee assessments, as well as 250,000 U.S.
diplomatic cables. Many daily newspapers published information and
documentation provided by Assange-led Wikileaks. Many of these
newspapers, which published Wikileaks exposures, such as, The Guardian, New York Times, Washington Post, and BBC TV and radio have since abandoned Assange and this historic case against freedom of the press.
A 2019 study by John O’Day in
Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting found that even muckraking journals
like Mother Jones made a point of dismissing Assange’s claims to be a
journalist, and denounced him for helping leakers to break the law.[6]
In Denmark, the daily Politiken also published some of Wikileaks documents. Yet both it and state-sponsored DR media
headlined news articles of the upcoming extradition trial as an
outgrowth of earlier rape charges” against him, which Swedish
authorities dropped in November 2019[7]
When this reporter confronted the media with this error, they did
nothing to correct the falsehood. This is a typical example of how the
Western mass media in most countries demean and dismiss the
Assange-Wikileaks publications as a legitimate medium.
Sweden Joins the Witch-Hunt
Two Swedish women, Anna Ardin and Sophia Wilén, had consensual sex
with Assange when he visited them and held talks in Stockholm, in August
2010. Ardin invited Assange to her home and bedroom. After hosting a
party for him at her flat, she tweeted friends that she was with
Assange, one of the “world’s coolest, smartest people; it’s amazing.”
After several days of sexual relations, Ardin and Wilén went to police
to ask that Assange be tested for venereal disease. They said he had not
always worn a condom and that one had torn. There was no question of
use of force. Assange did go to the police station on his own. He was
cleared of any illegality by prosecutor Eva Finne, who said, “There is no suspicion of any crime whatsoever.”[8]
Only after the government changed prosecutors, following
encouragement from the CIA, did the new one issue a warrant for simply “questioning”
him. By then, Assange was in England. He agreed to return to Sweden if
the government would guarantee that it would not extradite him to the
U.S., as he realized the Obama government wanted his scalp. Even though
that is frequently granted, Sweden refused to do so for this
publisher-activist.
In the summer of 2012, an English court ordered Assange’s extradition to Sweden for “questioning.”
Assange, his staff, and lawyers were fearful that Sweden would send him
further to the U.S. Assange then sought asylum in the Ecuadorian
embassy when Rafael Correa was president. Correa granted him asylum and
later granted him citizenship.
It took Sweden five years before they finally interviewed him after
his lawyers had suggested dozens of times they come to the Ecuadorian
embassy where he awaited them. Finally, Sweden wanted to drop the case,
but Britain kept urging them not to.
In Ryser’s interview with Nils Meltzer, he asked, “Why were the British so eager to prevent the Swedes from closing the case?”
“We
have to stop believing that there was really an interest in leading an
investigation into a sexual offense,” Meltzer replied. “What Wikileaks
did is a threat to the political elite in the U.S., Britain, France and
Russia in equal measure. Wikileaks publishes secret state
information—they are opposed to classification. And in a world, even in
so-called mature democracies, where secrecy has become rampant, that is
seen as a fundamental threat.”
Sweden finally dropped the case in November 2019. By that time, Russiagate was
in full swing. So, that replaced the Sweden “rape” card. The Democratic
Party National Committee, with Hillary Clinton in the lead, claimed
Russia hacked into its server and had Wikileaks publish emails,
revealing corruption by Hillary Clinton and sabotaging the primaries.
Democratic leaders and the CIA saw
a good chance to blame Putin and Assange, their two main enemies, for
what was a probable disenchanted insider’s leak.[9]
Authorities didn’t even do forensics on the equipment. No proof was
found, not even by the anti-Trump, anti-Putin Robert Mueller inquiry.
Probably in an effort to compromise, Trump and cohorts decided to blame
Julian Assange alone for exposing state secrets, i.e. “espionage.” By
that time, Wikileaks had disclosed millions of documents exposing crimes
and corruption of scores of governments.
The new Ecuadorian president, Lenin Moreno, withdrew Assange’s asylum
and revoked his Ecuadorian passport overnight, without consulting or
even informing Assange. Moreno did so after assurances that the U.S.
would guarantee loans, increase trade and investments. USAID funding for
U.S. propaganda programs returned to Ecuador after its new president
betrayed his fellow citizen.
After a decade of internment, either in jail, under house arrest, or
seven years in a small area of the Ecuadorian embassy in London, the
efforts to undermine Assange intensified. The CIA even had a Spanish
company, Undercover Global, spy on him while in the Ecuadorian embassy.
The Spanish National Court has opened an investigation into this.[10]
“Undercover
Global is suspected of having installed microphones in a fire
extinguisher at the embassy as well as in the women’s toilets where
Assange used to meet with his lawyers for fear of being spied
on…´Meetings which Assange held with his lawyers, as well as medical
visits and those of other nature were recorded,’ the court said.”
The information, including video film, was then transferred to
computer servers that were accessible to both the Ecuadorian and U.S.
intelligence services, the court added.
Judicial Conflict of Interest
Judge Arbuthnot’s husband, Lord Arbuthnot of Edrom,[11] “a former defense minister, is a paid chair of the advisory board of military corporation Thales Group,” and was an adviser to arms company Babcock International. Both companies have major contracts with the UK Ministry of Defence.
British judges are required to declare any potential conflicts of
interests to the courts, but Emma Arbuthnot did not excuse herself from
judging the Wikileaks publisher. Lady Arbuthnot began presiding over
Assange’s legal case in 2017. She remains the supervising legal figure
in the process. According to the UK courts service, the chief magistrate is “responsible for…supporting and guiding district judge colleagues.”
“At a
time when Lady Arbuthnot was in her former position as a district judge
in Westminster, she personally benefited from funding together with her
husband from two sources which were exposed by WikiLeaks in its
document releases,” wrote Mark Curtis and Matt Kennard.[12]
There is more than a mere “appearance of bias.” The judge’s husband
was part of a delegation, including a former chair of the British joint
intelligence committee, which co-ordinates GCHQ, MI5 and MI6, who met
with Turkey’s foreign minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu and energy minister
Berat Albayrak, PM Erdoğan’s son-in-law. In 2016, WikiLeaks published
57,934 of Albayrak’s personal emails, of which more than 300 mentioned
Çavuşoğlu, in its “Berat’s Box” release.
“Thus
at the same time Lady Arbuthnot was presiding over Assange’s legal
case, her husband was holding talks with senior officials in Turkey
exposed by WikiLeaks, some of whom have an interest in punishing Assange
and the WikiLeaks organization,” wrote Curtis-Kennard.
Assange is still isolated in Belmarsh prison despite torturous conditions
described by UN special rapporteur on torture, Nils Meltzer. He and two
doctor specialists in torture, examined Assange in prison, and
concluded that he is a victim of “psychological torture.” Meltzer went
so far as to compare what was being done to Assange with what the Nazis
did. They realized that using psychological torture is more effective in
breaking victims than physical torture.
The Convention on Torture—to which the U.S., UK, Sweden and Ecuador
are parties persecuting and/or prosecuting Assange—requires that member
countries conduct investigations into such charges by the UN rapporteur.
They all refused to do so.
Several politicians have publicly stated that Assange should be
“hunted down” (Sarah Palin), or “assassinated” (Tom Flanagan). Flanagan
was a senior adviser to the Canadian PM Stephen Harper when issuing “a fatwa against Assange,”
on the Canadian TV station CBC. “I think Assange should be
assassinated…I think Obama should put out a contract and maybe use a
drone or something.”[13]
Hillary Clinton said the same to her staff on November 23, 2010: “Can’t we just drone him?”[14]
Cablegate
Wikileaks disclosure of U.S. diplomatic cables between 1966 and 2010
are an extreme embarrassment to the U.S. government. Among the
disclosures were various Hillary Clinton orders to U.S. diplomats, U.S.
ambassadors’ complaints about U.S. allies and other embarrassing
commentary and revelations:
British troops in Afghanistan are not very good at the job. This
angered British politicians who always stand beside U.S. warmongers.
The
U.S. is working with Sweden’s military and secret services inside NATO,
although Sweden is not a member and the majority are opposed to NATO
membership. Cables revealed this “real politic” in which Sweden’s
parliament was in the dark.
Secretary of State Clinton ordered
diplomats to steal personal material information including DNA,
fingerprints, iris scans, credit card information. She also requested
tapping phones from UN officials, even its general secretary, as well as
human rights group leaders.
Britain’s Iraq inquiry was fixed to “protect U.S. interests.”
Cables
further show that the U.S. supported Sri Lanka’s Sinhalese governments’
massacre of tens of thousands of Tamil civilians over decades, even
before a civil war broke out. During the last days of the civil war,
April-May 2009, when guerrilla forces surrendered, thousands of
civilians were massacred, and surrendering fighters were executed.
So yes, a truly free press can be
dangerous to criminal politicians. That is why a free press must be
turned into a servile adjunct.
Jonathan Cook explains how the media has failed in its mission to inform the public honestly.
“Eight
years of misdirection by the corporate media has laid the ground for
the current public indifference to Assange’s extradition and widespread
ignorance of its horrendous implications…Journalists do not need to care
about Assange or like him. They have to speak out in protest because
approval of his extradition will mark the official death of journalism.
It will mean that any journalist in the world who unearths embarrassing
truths about the U.S., who discovers its darkest secrets, will need to
keep quiet or risk being jailed for the rest of their lives. That ought
to terrify every journalist.
He went on to say: “Assange did not just expose the political class,
he exposed the media class too—for their feebleness, for their
hypocrisy, for their dependence on the centers of power, for their
inability to criticize a corporate system in which they were embedded.”[15]
“In
order for the division of powers to work, the state must be monitored
by the press as the fourth estate. WikiLeaks is the logical consequence
of an ongoing process of expanded secrecy: If the truth can no longer be
examined because everything is kept secret, if investigation reports on
the U.S. government’s torture policy are kept secret and when even
large sections of the published summary are redacted, leaks are at some
point inevitably the result.”
On this episode of Going Underground, we speak to the author of ‘The Monster Enters: COVID-19, Avian Flu and the Plagues of Capitalism’, award-winning author...
Kevin Zeese has walked on, leaving his partner in life and good trouble, Margaret Flowers. Met them both when I went all the way to DC when they initiated Occupy Freedom Square right before Occupy began.
His legacy is a life well lived involved in work to straighten out our messed up planet. We will miss you, Kevin. Courage and comfort to Margaret.
On Thursday, August 27th, the same day Donald Trump formally accepted the Republican nomination, National Public Radio aired an interview with Vicky Osterweil, author of a book called In Defense of Looting.
The white trans daughter of a science professor, Osterweil told a credulous
NPR interviewer that looting was justified because it “strikes at the
heart of property, of whiteness and of the police,” and also “provides
people with an imaginative sense of freedom and pleasure.” She added
riots reveal how “without police and without state oppression, we can
have things for free.”
I was so sure the Osterweil book was satire — a clever comic doing a Marxist Andy Kaufman routine — that I bought it. It’s not a joke! In Defense of Looting is supposed to be the woke generation’s answer to Steal This Book, another anarchist instructional published in an epic period of unrest. But the differences between the books are profound.
