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Heavyweights Weigh In On Assange “Show Trial”

September 7, 2020 Popular Resistance. , , ,
An online Zoom call will take place for members of the press this Wednesday, September 9 at 1:00 pm EST to address the United States attempt to extradite WikiLeaks’ publisher, Julian Assange.  The call will feature Dan Ellsberg, the whistleblower whose release of the Pentagon Papers helped to bring the Viet Nam War to an end, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges, and James Goodale, former Vice President of the New York Times. "If Julian Assange--the first journalist to be indicted in the US for doing journalism--is extradited and prosecuted, the First Amendment will be in a terminal state as protection for investigative reporting on "national security," said Dan Ellsberg.

WikiLeaks, Still Revealing Truths About Power

September 7, 2020 Patrick D. Anderson, Black Agenda Report. , , ,
WikiLeaks is among the most important organizations of the twenty-first century. It has profoundly affected the world by disrupting countless geopolitical, economic, journalistic, and technological norms, reminding us that digital technology is an indispensable tool in the global fight for justice.  Yet WikiLeaks remains highly misunderstood, especially in the United States. One major cause of this misunderstanding is the decade-long disinformation campaign waged by those in the U.S. government and corporate media who view Julian Assange and WikiLeaks as political enemies.

War On Journalism Resumes On Monday

September 7, 2020 Nozomi Hayase, Commondreams. , , ,
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s extradition hearing is set to start on Monday, Sept. 7 at the Old Bailey, the Central Criminal Court of London, and could last three or four weeks. Assange has been indicted on 17 charges of espionage and one charge of conspiring with a source to violate the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act for his reporting on the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the torture at Guantanamo Bay.  These charges against Assange are a part of a war on journalism. This is the first time that the Espionage Act of 1917 has been used to prosecute a journalist, in this case an Australian citizen publishing material from outside of the U.S.

US Determined To Make Assange Pay For Exposing The Cruelty Of Its War

September 3, 2020 By Vijay Prashad, Globetrotter. , , ,
The hearing that Assange will face has nothing to do with the reasons for his arrest from the embassy of Ecuador in London on April 11, 2019. He was arrested that day for his failure to surrender in 2012 to the British authorities, who would have extradited him to Sweden; in Sweden, at that time, there were accusations of sexual offenses against Assange that were dropped in November 2019. Indeed, after the Swedish authorities decided not to pursue Assange, he should have been released by the UK government. But he was not. The true reason for the arrest was never the charge in Sweden; it was the desire of the U.S. government to have him brought to the United States on a range of charges. All these years later, that war remains alive and well in a courtroom in London; there Julian Assange—who revealed the truth of the killing—will struggle against being one more casualty of the U.S. war on Iraq.

Documentary – The War On Journalism: The Case Of Julian Assange

September 2, 2020 Consortium News. , , ,
Journalists are under attack globally for doing their jobs. Julian Assange is facing a 175 year sentence for publishing if extradited to the United States. The Trump administration has gone from denigrating journalists as ‘enemies of the people’ to now criminalizing common practices in journalism that have long served the public interest. Imprisoned WikiLeaks founder and editor Assange’s extradition is being sought by the Trump administration, in a hearing to begin Sept. 7,  for publishing U.S. government documents, which exposed war crimes and human rights abuses.

Assange ‘In A Lot Of Pain’ Says Partner After Prison Visit

August 29, 2020 Alan Jones, The Irish Examiner. , , ,
Julian Assange’s partner has visited him in prison for the first time in almost six months, and said he looked much thinner than last time she saw him. Stella Moris took the couple’s two young children to meet their father, who is being held in Belmarsh Prison in south-east London, awaiting an extradition hearing on behalf of the United States government. Ms Moris and the WikiLeaks founder had to wear face masks and visors for the 20-minute meeting and were not allowed to touch each other. “We had to keep social distancing and Julian was told he would have to self-isolate for two weeks if he touched the children. Julian said it was the first time he had been given a mask because things are very different behind the doors. I could not see him very clearly because of the visors, but he looked a lot thinner."

Torturing Assange: An Interview With Andrew Fowler

August 21, 2020 John Kendall Hawkins, Counterpunch. , , ,
Andrew Fowler is an Australian award-winning investigative journalist and a former reporter for the ABC’s Foreign Correspondent and Four Corners programs. and the author of The Most Dangerous Man in the World: Julian Assange and WikiLeaks’ Fight for Freedom. This is an updated edition of his 2011 account of the rise and political imprisonment of Assange. Much of that account explained how Assange seemingly inevitably moved toward an adversarial positioning against American imperialism abroad. He was a tonic for the indifference expressed by so many ordinary Americans in the traumatic aftermath of 9/11 and the rise of the surveillance state. Boston Legal’s Alan Shore (James Spader) seems to sum it up succinctly. His updated version discusses the torture Assange is currently undergoing at Belmarsh prison in Britain.

Discussion Of Wikileaks Or ‘Hacked Information’ Banned Under New YouTube Rules

August 17, 2020 By Alan Macleod, Mintpress News. , , , ,
Social media giant YouTube announced yesterday a host of new measures it says are aimed at preventing any interference in the upcoming presidential elections. Chief among the list it wrote on its blog, is “removing content that contains hacked information, the disclosure of which may interfere with democratic processes, such as elections and censuses.” An example it gives would-be deleting “videos that contain hacked information about a political candidate.” It also promised to “raise up authoritative voices” when it comes to current events and politics by changing its algorithm to show users more credible channels and “reduce the spread of harmful misinformation and borderline content.” Example channels that produce authoritative content, it tells readers, includes Fox News and CNN. It also noted it would expand information panels underneath videos.

Assange Wins Award, Appears In Court Facing New Charges

August 4, 2020 Thomas Scripps, WSWS , , ,
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s case management hearing yesterday continued the travesty of legal due process to which he has been subjected for more than a decade. The journalist and publisher is fighting extradition to the United States, where he faces politically motivated frame-up charges of espionage with a combined potential sentence of 175 years. He has not attended hearings via videolink for the last three months on the advice of doctors, due to his fragile state of health and the threat of exposure to coronavirus. At the previous hearing on June 29, District Judge Vanessa Baraitser had scolded Assange for not being present, demanding medical evidence to justify his non-appearance in future. But yesterday, Baraitser ruled the hearing could go ahead without Assange after Belmarsh prison disrupted his plans to attend. Prison authorities claimed to have forgotten to arrange videolink facilities for the world-famous political prisoner.

UK Government Refuses To Release Information About Assange Judge Who Has 96% Extradition Record

August 3, 2020 Matt Kennard and Mark Curtis, Daily Maverick. , , ,
Declassified has also discovered that the judge, Vanessa Baraitser, has ordered extradition in 96% of the cases she has presided over for which information is publicly available. Baraitser was appointed a district judge in October 2011 based at the Chief Magistrate’s Office in London, after being admitted as a solicitor in 1994. Next to no other information is available about her in the public domain. A request under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) was sent by Declassified to the Ministry of Justice (MOJ) on 28 February 2020 requesting a list of all the cases on which Baraitser has ruled since she was appointed in 2011. The MOJ noted in response that it was obliged to send a reply within 20 working days.  Two months later, on 29 April 2020, an information officer at the HM Courts and Tribunals Service responded that it could “confirm” that it held “some of the information that you have requested”.  But the request was rejected since the officer claimed it was not consistent with the Constitutional Reform Act. “The judiciary is not a public body for the purposes of FOIA… and requests asking to disclose all the cases a named judge ruled on are therefore outside the scope of the FOIA,” the officer stated.

It’s Not Assange Who Should Be Facing Prosecution

July 31, 2020 Tom Coburg, The Canary. , , ,
On 27 July two court hearings took place – one in the UK, the other in Spain. Both concerned WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. From their proceedings, it became clear that it’s not Assange who should be facing prosecution, but the current office holder of the US presidency and his associates. At the 27 July ‘administrative hearing’ at Westminster magistrates court, Judge Vanessa Baraitser stated that the prosecution had failed to present its latest ‘superseding indictment‘. That superseding indictment was first made public on 24 June, just prior to the last court hearing, though the prosecution failed to submit the document to that hearing too.

Julian Assange’s Next Hearing On Monday, July 27

July 26, 2020 Don't Extradite Assange. , , ,
WikiLeaks Editor-in-Chief Kristinn Hrafnsson said “Julian has not been able to see his lawyers for seventeen weeks. The computer supplied to him after over a year of asking has its keys glued down and the typing function is disabled. The case material consists of tens of thousands of pages, and Julian cannot even type up notes or instructions for his lawyers. Each and every step of the way, the tools Julian should have to be able to put up a fight are being taken away from him. I call on UK prisons minister Robert Buckland to take every step necessary to reverse restrictions that are preventing Julian from being able to take part in and prepare his legal defence.”

Transparency International Silent On Jailed Transparency Journalist Assange

July 26, 2020 Patrick Maynard, The Grayzone. , , ,
Berlin, Germany - On a cool July day, the Berlin neighborhood where Transparency International’s global headquarters is situated feels a thousand miles away from London’s Belmarsh Prison. But it is not just the pleasant setting a few blocks from the Spree River that makes the influential NGO seem so detached from the maximum security penitentiary’s most famous inmate, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.  Transparency International has been vocal in defending jailed opposition activists in states like Zimbabwe, Russia, and Venezuela.

Trade Unionists Back Campaign To Free Assange

July 18, 2020 Don't Extradite Assange. , , ,
In Birmingham, Plymouth, and Newcastle trades councils have voted to join the campaign to halt the extradition of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to the United States where he could face 175 years in jail. In recent weeks the three metropolitan trades councils, which are attended by delegates from all the local unions, have voted overwhelmingly to support Assange. Even in Plymouth where a similar motion was defeated last year the National Union of Journalists’ inspired resolution sailed through last week. Both Birmingham and Plymouth meetings invited a speaker from the Don’t Extradite Assange campaign to address them before the vote was taken.

Assange’s Father Speaks Out

July 18, 2020 Denis Rogatyuk, The Grayzone. , , ,
Well we fight against the United Kingdom, Sweden, the United States, and to a certain extent Australia. They have marshaled all of their forces and broken every law in human rights and due process in order to send Julian to the United States and destroy him. Before our eyes, we have watched the gradual murder of Julian through psychological torture, through ceaseless breaking of procedures and due process. So that is what we fight against. During the latest hearing, the judge Barrett asked Julian to prove that he was unwell, that he didn’t come onto the video. So again, we see a process that we witness over and over again, blaming the victim.
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