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Wikileaks

Julian Assange And The End Of American Democracy

September 14, 2023 Chris Hedges, The Real News Network. , , , , ,
The US government has hounded Julian Assange since WikiLeaks first revealed the extent of US war crimes in 2010. In the process of persecuting Assange, the federal government has used every tool at its disposal and even pushed beyond the boundaries that supposedly restrict state power in defense of civil liberties. One of the most insidious tactics is the use of the Espionage Act, which had not been used for against whistleblowers and journalists for almost a century before Assange’s case. In the first part of a two-part conversation, lawyer and human rights defender Stella Assange, spouse of Julian Assange, joins Chris Hedges for a look at the vast and vicious campaign by the US to silence Julian Assange, and what it all portends for our democracy.

What’s Behind Talk Of A Possible Plea Deal For Assange?

September 4, 2023 Joe Lauria, Consortium News. , , , ,
Australia has too often behaved as a doormat to the United States, to the point where Australia is threatening its own security by going along with an aggressive U.S. policy towards China, which poses no threat to Australia. But this time, Blinken got an earful. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese reiterated that he wanted the Assange case to be dropped. Certain members of Parliament brusquely gave it back to Blinken. Assange was “not the villain … and if the US wasn’t obsessed with revenge it would drop the extradition charge as soon as possible,” Independent MP Andrew Wilkie told The Guardian‘s Australian edition. “Antony Blinken’s allegation that Julian Assange risked very serious harm to US national security is patent nonsense,” said Wilkie said.

Environmentalists Owe An Enormous Debt To Julian Assange

August 24, 2023 Mitchel Cohen, Counter Punch. , , ,
Environmentalists throughout the world owe an enormous debt of gratitude to political prisoner Julian Assange, the founder and publisher of Wikileaks — and most of them don’t know it. It wasn’t only secret recordings pertaining to war and crimes-against-humanity that Wikileaks published, based on the heroic work of Chelsea Manning who downloaded thousands of secret US military files. A slew of cables Assange published revealed massive U.S. government attempts on behalf of Monsanto to coerce governments to allow foreign corporate land ownership, and with it genetically engineered agriculture throughout the world

No, The Truth About Biden Is Not Democratic

July 28, 2023 Patrick Lawrence, Scheer Post. , , , ,
Let us cast our minds back just briefly to the very fine afternoon of July 22, 2016. It was an especially bright Friday, as you may recall, because WikiLeaks released a lot of Democratic Party emails that day, so shining a light worthy of a night game at Yankee Stadium on the party’s corrupt machinations to destroy Bernie Sanders’ presidential bid in the service of the first Goldwater Democrat, the ever-endearing Hillary Clinton. Pause a moment to summon the time. Now recall the following Sunday, July 24, when Robbie Mook, Clinton’s campaign manager, appeared back-to-back on the Sunday morning news programs to proclaim that never-named “experts” had never-shown “evidence” that it was the Rrrrrrussians who pilfered the mail and gave it to Julian Assange’s operation.

Corporate Media Are The Anti-Wikileaks

April 18, 2023 Elizabeth Vos, Consortium News. , , ,
It was impossible to imagine four years ago when WikiLeaks Editor Julian Assange was hauled out of the Ecuadorian embassy in London and thrown in Belmarsh Prison that corporate media, which had smeared Assange, could stoop to new lows of government servitude. But it has now happened with the arrest of Jack Teixeira, a 21-year-old Air National Guardsman, for allegedly leaking top secret government documents. The leaks exposed a number of significant lies told by both the U.S. government and corporate media about the ongoing war in Ukraine. Among many items of interest, the documents revealed that U.S. Special Forces as well as NATO forces are on the ground in Ukraine; that Ukraine is significantly unprepared for its planned spring offensive;  as well as evidence of U.S. spying on its allies and  António Guterres, the secretary-general of the United Nations.

Belmarsh Warden Blocks Assange From Meeting With Press Freedom Advocates

April 7, 2023 Kevin Gosztola, Scheer Post. , , ,
The warden of Her Majesty’s Prison Belmarsh blocked representatives with the press freedom organization Reporters Without Borders (RSF) from visiting WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, despite previously reviewing RSF’s request and agreeing to grant access. Rebecca Vincent, the director of operations and campaigns for RSF, declared, “We followed all rules this morning. We were there very early with all required documentation. Without even checking our documentation, we were told that we would not be allowed in.” “The first official that we spoke to said that they had received ‘intelligence’ that we were journalists, and therefore we would not be allowed to visit,” Vincent added.

Assange Belmarsh Tribunal In Sydney

March 4, 2023 Consortium News. , , ,
As the pressure mounts on the Australian government to intervene with the U.S. government, the Assange Belmarsh Tribunal in Sydney on Saturday heard some of Australia’s most prominent politicians, lawyers, journalists and whistleblowers testify in defense of imprisoned publisher Julian Assange. Guests include former Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr; Assange lawyer Jennifer Robinson; former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis; Assange’s wife Stella Assange; C.I.A. whistleblower John Kiriakou; whistleblower David McBride, as well as journalist Kerry O’Brien, lawyer Bernard Collaery, Kylie Moore-Gilbert, an Australian freed from Iranian captivity by the Australian government; Karen Percy, director of the Australian journalists’ union MEAA and more.

Julian Assange’s Family Members Are Touring The United States With Ithaka

February 20, 2023 Margaret Flowers, Clearing the FOG, , , , ,
This April will mark four years since Julian Assange was forcefully removed from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he had been granted asylum, and jailed in Belmarsh Prison. Assange, whose health is declining, is being persecuted for being a publisher who made leaked material available to the public through Wikileaks. The materials, which exposed war crimes and corruption, were reported on by major media outlets around the world. The Biden administration could free Assange immediately by dropping the charges made by the Trump administration. Clearing the FOG speaks with Gabriel Shipton, Assange's brother, who is starting a US tour with his father, John Shipton, at the end of the month to show his documentary, Ithaka, and call on President Biden to act. The film provides an intimate view of Assange's family's fight to free him. 

Wikileaks Exposed US Meddling Abroad And Corruption At Home

February 5, 2023 Chris Hedges, The Real News. , , ,
Julian Assange and WikiLeaks have carried out the most important investigative journalism of our generation, revealing to the public the inner workings of power through the release of luminous documents. No other news organization has come close. This information has exposed the crimes, lies, and fraud of the powerful, sparking the judicial lynching of Assange who awaits extradition to the US in a high security prison in London. It allowed people across the globe to understand what their governments are doing behind their backs. In this show, we will speak with the Italian investigative journalist, Stefania Maurizi, author of Secret Power: WikiLeaks and Its Enemies, about some of the most important information provided to the public by WikiLeaks. These include the US War logs from Afghanistan and Iraq, a cash of 250,000 diplomatic cables and 800 Guantanamo Bay detainee assessment briefs, along with the 2007 collateral murder video in which US helicopter pilots banter as they gunned down civilians, including children and two Reuters journalists in a Baghdad street.

Chris Hedges: Will Julian Assange Ever Be Freed?

January 29, 2023 Chris Hedges, The Real News. , , ,
The film Ithaka, the title taken from a poem by C.P Cavafy, chronicles the slow-motion torture and execution of the Australian journalist Julian Assange, currently awaiting extradition to the United States in a high security prison in London. It charts his journey from publisher of the most important revelations of our generation of fraud, war crimes, lies and corruption by the powerful to his refuge for seven years in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London from 2012 to 2019, his seizure and arrest by British police, who enter the embassy to detain him, and harsh imprisonment in Belmarsh prison where he currently fights a U.S. extradition request. It unflinchingly portrays the terrible emotional cost to him and his family, including his father John, his wife Stella, and their two young children.

Could Julian Assange Be Released In Two Months?

January 8, 2023 Kevin Gosztola, The Dissenter. , , ,
As the new year began, ABC Global Affairs Editor John Lyons stated during a broadcast segment that he expected WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange would be released “within the next two months or so.” “I know [Australia Prime Minister] Anthony Albanese. He’s working strongly behind the scenes,” Lyons added. “He has said as much, but enough is enough.” Lyons is sympathetic to Assange’s plight, making him one of the few correspondents in the world working for establishment news media who is willing to endorse calls to end the United States case against him. But the key question is whether Lyons knows about some shift in the so-called “quiet diplomacy” between the US and Australia that may result in Assange being released from Belmarsh prison and returned home to Australia.

Chelsea Manning On Her New Memoir

October 25, 2022 The Real News Network. , , ,
Chelsea Manning was imprisoned in 2010 after leaking 750,000 military documents to the website WikiLeaks. Chelsea’s revelations exposed heinous war crimes by the US military. While the perpetrators of the atrocities she exposed have never faced justice, Chelsea herself spent seven years behind bars, including several months in solitary confinement before her trial. README.txt is Chelsea’s first full-length memoir detailing what led her to speak out, and her experiences in prison. In an event organized by Baltimore worker cooperative bookstore Red Emma’s, Chelsea Manning joins Baltimore-based activist and independent journalist Ryan Harvey for a special discussion on her memoir.

Chris Hedges Report: Julian Assange’s Father Speaks Out

September 25, 2022 Chris Hedges, The Real News. , , ,
The long campaign against Julian and WikiLeaks is a window into the collapse of the rule of law, and the rise of what the political philosopher Sheldon Wolin calls a system of inverted totalitarianism—where the outward symbols of capitalist democracy remain, but the system itself is captured by corporate interests. Assange has spent over a decade fighting imprisonment, extradition, and CIA espionage. On Oct. 8, Chris Hedges and others will gather in Washington, DC, to demand Assange’s release at the same time that protestors surround the British Parliament. For this special episode of The Chris Hedges Report, John Shipton, Assange’s father, shares updates on the international campaign to free his son.

Stella Assange: ‘We Are Going To Fight This’

June 20, 2022 Joe Lauria, Consortium News. , , ,
Julian Assange’s wife and one of his lawyers on Friday vowed to fight the decision of British Home Secretary Priti Patel to sign an extradition order earlier in the day sending imprisoned WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange to the United States to face trial on espionage and computer intrusion charges. “This is the outcome that we have been concerned about for the last decade,” Assange lawyer Jennifer Robinson told a London press conference. “This decision is a grave threat to freedom of speech, not just for Julian, but for every journalist, editor and media worker.” She said he faced up to 175 years in a U.S. prison for publishing material for which he has won numerous press awards as well as a nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize. “This should shock everyone,” she said.

UK Government Approves Request To Send Assange To US For Trial

June 19, 2022 Kevin Gosztola, The Dissenter. , , ,
United Kingdom Home Secretary Priti Patel approved the extradition of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to the United States. Patel’s decision to hand over a journalist to the US government for prosecution was immediately condemned by human rights and press freedom organizations. The Assange legal team planned to submit an appeal in the High Court of Justice challenging the political nature of the case and how extradition law was interpreted. "The decision by the secretary of state was always predictable. It is nevertheless regrettable that she elected not to engage with serious issues of substance raised by Mr. Assange," Assange's lawyers at Birnberg Peirce declared. "He will appeal her decision."
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