JULIAN ASSANGE SPEAKS TRUTH TO POWER

 

I THOUGHT I WOULD WRITE a cheerier blog post today, just in case WWIII breaks out in Ukraine, should Zelensky and his crew of con artists decide to do something really stupid like launching missile or drone attacks on critical Russian infrastructure (like oil depots, radar installations, the Kerch Bridge again).* Or, perhaps it will start with the 1,900-strong Canadian NATO contingent in Latvia deciding to get busy building a bunch of drones (no doubt easier to assemble than IKEA shelf units) and sending them into Russia. Where’s the harm? Russia would never return the favour by launching a missile or two into the Canadian base. Why would they? They wouldn’t reverse-prank a regiment of ever-so-polite Canadian peacekeepers, would they? We’re too nice.¹ 

THEN THERE’S THE DOINGS in the Middle East, while the world waits with bated breath to see whether the conflict in Gaza and the West Bank, and now Lebanon, becomes a regional war, possibly going global if Russia and China way in to support Iran. Any bets on how soon the Levant becomes an ashtray if that happens?

 

👉BUT, BUT, BUT…I meant to write about a cheerier event that happened on October 1. That was when Julian Assange made his first public appearance since his release from Belmarsh prison four months ago. He spoke during a parliamentary hearing of the Council of Europe, testifying how the United States government had, for years, harassed, threatened and charged him under the Espionage Act, a draconian law that carries a potential death sentence. As Julian puts it, his real crime, in the eyes of his American accusers, was “doing journalism.”

 

AS WikiLeaks’ founder and publisher, he ran afoul of American authorities in 2010 when he published leaked classified information from Chelsey Manning (then Bradley Manning), an American Army intelligence analyst. Most notable among the leaked files was the infamous 2007 “Collateral Murder” video which depicts American Apache helicopter pilots firing on and murdering a group of Iraqi citizens including two Reuters correspondents. Another tranche of files released by WikiLeaks, called the “Afghanistan War Diary” greatly embarrassed U.S. authorities, and would prove to be, what The Guardian called,

 

"…one of the biggest leaks in U.S. military history ... a devastating portrait of the failing war in Afghanistan, revealing how coalition forces have killed hundreds of civilians in unreported incidents, Taliban attacks have soared and NATO commanders fear neighbouring Pakistan and Iran are fueling the insurgency". Der Spiegel wrote that "the editors in chief of Spiegel, The New York Times and The Guardian were 'unanimous in their belief that there is a justified public interest in the material'." (Wikipedia)

 

Also in 2010, while in Britain, trumped-up rape allegations were made against Julian by Swedish prosecutors. He and his lawyers concluded the charges were simply a pretext to force him to return to Sweden (which has an extradition treaty with the United States) where he would be promptly extradited to the U.S. to stand trial. He battled the Swedish extradition request until 2012 when it looked like he would indeed be extradited to the Scandinavian country. He subsequently sought refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London and was granted political asylum there. He remained in the embassy until 2019 when a new Ecuadorian president revoked his asylum status (having been bribed with a large World Bank loan for his country). Julian was forcibly removed from the embassy and arrested by British police. Further charges of espionage were filed against him by the American Justice Department and his extradition to the U.S. was requested. He was sent to Belmarsh Prison while his “breech of bail” trial took place, followed by years of legal wrangling over the U.S. extradition request. He remained in prison until this year when he pled ‘guilty’ to one charge of “breaching the Espionage Act” and was released for time served. Altogether he spent 12 years in confinement, five of those years in a maximum-security prison in a jail cell twenty-three hours a day. Had he not taken the plea deal, he faced the possibility of 175 years in prison in the United States should he stand trial there.

 

ALL THIS IS TO SAY that the man has a good deal of resiliency, traveling as he has to Europe and speaking before the Council of Europe’s parliamentary committee. He was there because the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) was meeting the next day to rule on a motion declaring Julian’s forced confinement and harsh legal persecution by the United States a breech of international law in that his detention “…far exceeded the reasonable length acceptable for extradition." (Committee) His confinement in a British jail also violated his legal rights to fair treatment, as did the judicial malpractice in not declaring that the U.S. charges against him were politically motivated (and should therefore have annulled the extradition request made by the U.S., as per British law). He was, according to the PACE committee, considered by definition a “political prisoner” who should have had the extradition request by the United States quashed at the get-go, had there been an honest judiciary handling his case.³

The committee said, “...the disproportionately severe charges brought against Julian Assange by the United States of America, as well as heavy penalties foreseen under the Espionage Act for engaged [sic] in acts of journalism” fit the criteria for the definition of a “political prisoner.”

 

“For their part, the UK authorities had failed to effectively protect Assange’s freedom of expression and right to liberty, the parliamentarians said, 'exposing him to lengthy detention in a high-security prison despite the political nature of the most severe charges against him'” (Committee)

 

And the fight for press freedom continues….

 

Cheers, Jake. ______________________________________

 

* After all, it is quite possible the recent (and failing) Ukrainian incursion into the Kursk region of Russia had as a mission goal the capture of a nuclear power plant (NPP) located some sixty kilometers from the border. There is also, apparently, a nuclear weapons depot near the facility, which might have been the actual target of Zelensky’s Charge of the Light Brigade. Fortunately, they got nowhere near the NPP (or the nukes depot), and Russia is methodically whittling down the Ukrainian forces in their tactically brilliant but strategically foolish invasion.

Nukes and Zelensky! What could go wrong?

 

1. BTW, contrary to what most Canadians are given to understand, Canadian munitions, military parts and hardware are making their way into Israel, despite the so-called “arms embargo” of Israel Global Affairs Canada put in place earlier this year. This is because Canada signed the “Arms Trade Treaty” with the United States in 2019 that allows, “reciprocal arrangements [between the U.S. and Canada] to ensure permit-free/license-free movement of most military items between our two countries.” (Al Jazerra) For example, explosive munitions for mortars can be sold to the United States and wind up in their military exports to Israel, where they will be used to further decimate the Gazan population, and in Lebanon. Why should we be surprised? Money trumps ethics nine times out of ten. And as American journalist and publisher, I.F. Stone, reminds us: “All governments are run by liars and nothing they say should be believed.” Couldn’t have said it better myself!

   

2. Unlike the European Union, the Council of Europe (which is a separate organization from the EU), founded in 1949, cannot make binding laws. However,

 

“…the council has produced a number of international treaties, including the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (European Convention on Human Rights, ECHR) of 1953. Provisions from the convention are incorporated in domestic law in many participating countries. The best-known body of the Council of Europe is the European Court of Human Rights, which rules on alleged violations of the EHCR. (Wikipedia)

 

The Council of Europe has a parliamentary assembly composed of “306 members drawn from the national parliaments of the Council of Europe's member states and meets four times a year for week-long plenary sessions in Strasbourg….”

Julian testified at the parliamentary committee meeting on October 1. He attended the Assembly’s plenary session the next day where an overwhelming majority of representatives voted in favour of a motion declaring Julian had been a “political prisoner”, and that his abusive treatment at the hands of the U.S. government and British authorities was done for political purposes, namely, to create a “chilling effect” on journalists who attempt to expose government malfeasance, corporate greed, or who otherwise ask uncomfortable questions of elites and politicians, while demanding transparency and full disclosure of what goes on 'behind the curtain' of state and executive boardroom. [Or as I like to think of it: Real journalists like Assange show us how the sausage is made, even if it makes us want to puke some of the time. Ed.] The PACE Assembly saw this type of harassment, some calling it "lawfare", as a growing threat to freedom of speech rights, and an attack on journalists and publishers everywhere.

AS AN ASIDE: In 2024, near the end of his arduous, years-long extradition hearing and imprisonment, Julian and his lawyers were preparing to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights in a last-minute bid to forego his extradition to the U.S. He pleaded out instead.

 

    Hassan Hamad

👉FUN FACT: 128 journalists and media workers have been killed by Israeli bombing and targeted assassinations since the Gazan genocide began on October 8, last year. And recently, a 19-year-old Palestinian journalist, Hassan Hamad, was killed in a targeted drone attack at his home in the Jabalya refugee camp. He had received several death threats prior to his murder last Sunday. Additionally, an American journalist for the Grayzone publication, Jeremy Loffredo, along with several other journalists were arrested at a West Bank crossing by the Israeli Defense Force (IDF), beaten and imprisoned. Loffredo was accused of uploading video footage censored by the Israeli authorities. He was released but is forced to remain in Israel “pending an investigation.” The U.S. State Department has done virtually nothing to procure his release, which is to be expected because the Grayzone and Loffredo provide the public with information about what is really going on, and they challenge the propaganda gruel MSM spews out in their relentless support of the government's official narrative⁴ and its attempts to suppress reporting on things like…oh, I don’t know…genocide, maybe? Tears of joy would be running down Big Brother's cheeks if he could see the rise of authoritarianism in the West, today.

 

    Jeremy Loffredo

KILLING AND ARRESTING journalists for doing journalism I guess means Israel must not want reporters alive and kicking on the ground in the hellscape that is Gaza. I wonder why? Murders and imprisonment of journalists, and the clamp down on free speech in general—whether by brain dead MSM’s self-censoring and sanitizing of the news; to cancelling alternative news outlets and podcasts, etc., and challenges to the right of assembly and to protest; to new internet "hate speech” laws popping up everywhere—all these are becoming a global threat to people's ability to access unbiased reporting and information which they need to make informed decisions in their lives, and without which governments and miscreants everywhere can spew lies and propaganda, unchecked by law or custom.       

 

3. And he would have been released years earlier if the British government and the mendacious hacks within its judiciary had not been complete and utter cucks, bowing and scraping before the American hegemon, doing everything and anything to please their master and maintain the “special relationship” that supposedly exists between Britain and the U.S. [Note: Britain is “Baby Girl” to the U.S.’s “Big Daddy” in this arrangement. Ed.]😲

 

4. It must be said, there are cracks forming in the official narrative (Israelis good, Arabs bad; Ukrainians good, Russians bad) of late. It’s becoming harder for Israel and its enabler, the United States, to ignore or deliberately disguise events in Gaza, the West Bank, and now Lebanon. In large part, this is due to social media and the ubiquitous cell phone capture of horrific events as they happen on the ground. Slowly, people are coming to trust their own 'lying eyes', and to judge for themselves the truths behind news stories and events. More and more people realize the emperor has no clothes, irrespective of how much he preens and prances about showing off his non-existent robes.😱

AND IN THAT OTHER potential global flashpoint (nuclear and otherwise) the narrative around the conflict in Ukraine is beginning to wear thin. For example, the war, contrary to the official narrative, did not begin in 2022. It began earlier, with the coup in 2014-15, engineered by the U.S. and the State Department’s maiden of death, Victoria Nuland, and with the ousting of the elected president and installing in his place a pro-Western puppet. A low-intensity civil war followed between  western and eastern Ukraine.  It is increasingly acknowledged that the roots of the conflict go back even earlier, to the 1990s, when Western elites formulated plans to encircle the former USSR with NATO member countries and carve it up like a butterball turkey. The official narratives are breaking down.

ALTERNATIVE NEWS REPORTING and valuable political analysis podcasts are reaching more and more of the public. One example of this is the changing narrative around the blowing up of the Nord Stream pipeline in the Baltic Sea in the fall of 2022. High mucky mucks of the chattering class first claimed it was the Russians who conveniently blew up their own pipeline (LOL!) 😆 Investigations were done but no reports were made public. Then, American journalist Sy Hersh’s exposé in February 2023 hit the fools propagating such drivel like a wet fish slapped up the side of their face. Hersh declared it was—wait for it—the Americans who done it! Well Duh! Now they're trying to put the blame on a motley crew of drunken Ukrainians who cruised out one night from a Polish port and decided for fun to blow up a billion-dollar pipeline. But the story isn't gaining much traction. Compared to Hersh's thoughtful reporting, blaming anyone other than the Americans seems foolish to most people.

THIS IS HOW JOURNALISM chips away at the edifice of bullshit that elites in government and corporations throw up daily to disguise, distort and keep hidden their nefarious activities. Lies, lies, and more lies. This should reminds us, how vitally important a free press is for the maintenance of a healthy polity.

P.S. The Russians are winning. Deal.

[The original Feb. 2023 Hersh Nord Stream story is behind a paywall on his Substack page. Ed.]