Assange Watch

[biffvernon]

John Keane is another who gets it right
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/julian-assange ... aw-1542363

As does Dinah PoKempner
https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/02/05/ass ... uting-them

[UndercoverElephant]

http://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2016- ... t-assange/

The readiness of all sections of the British media to spread this lie and even expand on it is illustrated by a truly despicable piece of journalism from the Guardian’s columnist Marina Hyde. She is not some freelance blogger; she’s one of the most senior staff writers at the newspaper. Her voice can be considered to reflect the prevailing view of the paper’s editors.

Hyde not only echoes Hammond but uses her well-known cutting wit to deride the UN panel. Apparently, these leading experts on international law are really know-nothings:

"I don’t want to go out on too much of a limb here, but my sense is that the finest legal minds are not drawn to UN panels as a career path. … Perhaps UN panellists are like UN goodwill ambassadors, and even Geri Halliwell could be one. …

As for their almost-amusing diagnosis of “house arrest”, the only possible rejoinder, if you’ll forgive the legalese, is: Do. Me. A. Favour. Assange’s bail conditions – I’m sorry if the term is confusing to the panel – saw him placed with an electronic tag in a stately home from which he was free to come and go all day long."

And so on.

How times have changed at The Guardian. Once upon a time, not so long ago, The Guardian could have been relied on to defend the truth instead of parroting blatant lies at the behest of the government. I can perhaps shed some light on what happened to change things.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/j ... uardian-uk

General Keith Alexander, the then director of the NSA, was briefed that the Guardian was prepared to make a largely symbolic act of destroying documents from Edward Snowden last July, new documents reveal.

The revelation that Alexander and Obama's director of national intelligence, James Clapper, were advised on the Guardian's destruction of several hard disks and laptops contrasts markedly with public White House statements that distanced the US from the decision.

White House and NSA emails obtained by Associated Press under freedom of information legislation demonstrate how pleased Alexander and his colleagues were with the developments. At times the correspondence takes a celebratory tone, with one official describing the anticipated destruction as "good news".

On 20 July 2013, three Guardian editors destroyed all copies of the its Snowden material held in London (video), under the supervision of two GCHQ staff following a period of intense political pressure in the UK.

I know the person who wrote this article. He's a friend of my wife, who used to be a sub-editor at The Guardian. He also once worked for Wikileaks, and he was present when the reported incident happened, and it is not as described.

What actually happened was that a bunch of GCHQ staff turned up unexpectedly at the office of The Guardian, forced staff to take several computers - including monitors, keyboards and even mice - into the basement, where they were smashed to pieces in act that can only be described as "state terrorism". Literally. It did not even serve the purpose it purported to, because the information in question could, and probably was, backed up somewhere in a cloud or a disk in a safe. The true purpose was a show of strength - a warning from GCHQ to the staff at The Guardian about what might happen to them if they continued to support whistleblowers.

And it seems that a decision has been taken at the highest level at that newspaper that being a voice of freedom, truth and justice is not worth the risk it carries of retribution from the "security services".

What sort of country do we live in?

[biffvernon]

I honestly don’t know what to say, or to think, any more. When you have a government which believes it does not even have to pretend that its words and actions have even the remotest relationship to truth, I cannot conceive how society can continue to function in any direction other than fascist.

[UndercoverElephant]

http://original.antiwar.com/thomas-knap ... ormentors/

When we consider the context and background – namely that Sweden and the UK have served and continue to serve as proxies for the United States in its pursuit of Assange for his role in exposing US war crimes in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere – an array of possible charges before the International Criminal Court quickly begin to look quite plausible.

Among those charges are the war crime of denying a fair trial, the attempted war crime of unlawful deportation and transfer, the war crime of unlawful confinement, and the offense against administration of justice of “obstructing or interfering with the attendance or testimony of a witness, retaliating against a witness for giving testimony, tampering with or interfering with the collection of evidence …”

Are these the possible “criminal consequences” Assange foresees? There’s good reason to believe so.

In his speech, Assange notes that the ruling is based on “binding covenants which the UK, Sweden, and the United States (for the most part) have agreed to.” That’s clearly a reference to the US remaining non-signatory to the Rome Statute and holding itself out as beyond the jurisdiction of the ICC (it isn’t, at least not entirely).

Prior to this ruling, Assange’s persecutors might have been able to plausibly claim legal uncertainty as an extenuating circumstance. That defense is no longer available. Assange’s continued confinement after the ruling constitutes the knowing and intentional commission of several prosecutable war crimes.

Assange is no longer the hunted, but once again the hunter. And his aim is true.

[Automaton]

Prosecutor to request interview at Ecuadorian embassy:

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/f ... an-embassy

And about time too.

[UndercoverElephant]

This case just gets stranger and stranger.

http://www.dw.com/en/swedish-prosecutor ... a-19035665

Chief prosecutor Marianne Ny is currently working on a new application to interview Julian Assange in Ecuador's embassy in London," Swedish authorities announced in a statement.

In January, Ecuador rejected "on formal grounds" Sweden's request to interview Assange, asking the Scandinavian country to resubmit its request.

Why did Ecuador reject the previous request? All I can find reported is that it was "on formal grounds". What is going to be different about the new request? Why aren't the details being reported, given that without them it is impossible to work out what the f*** is actually going on? Why are the press saying "Sweden to request to interview Assange in the embassy despite the UN ruling" when Assange has been trying to get Sweden to interview him in the embassy for months/years? He's never showed any sign of wanting to avoid being interviewed. He's in that embassy because he doesn't want to travel to Sweden, which is not the same thing, and the reason the interview has not take place is because until recently the Swedish prosecutor refused to come to the UK.

The whole thing is shrouded in mystery. I wonder, though, whether the Swedes may have had enough of this and want to wash their hands of the affair by dropping the rape allegation. I also wonder what would happen next if they do drop it.

[Little John]

The Yanks are implacably determined to get Assange. Therefore, if the Swedes back out of the game, then I would not be surprised if some other dubious legal pretext is cooked up in short order by the USA and UK to get him nonetheless.

[UndercoverElephant]

The Yanks are implacably determined to get Assange. Therefore, if the Swedes back out of the game, then I would not be surprised if some other dubious legal pretext is cooked up in short order by the USA and UK to get him nonetheless.

Well, that is the obvious move, but there is surely a problem. At the moment, those who are controlling the media and political worlds have done a pretty good job of convincing people that this really is all about a rape case and that Assange is hiding from justice for a sex crime. They downplay, dismiss or omit Assange's version of what is really going on. But if Sweden drops the case and the US/UK immediately invent some new legal ploy to prevent him getting to Ecuador, then it is going to be very hard to convince people that Assange is still stuck in that embassy for a completely different reason to the one that has supposedly kept him there for the last three years.

It is one thing building up a massive propaganda lie. It is quite another to switch it to a different massive propaganda lie three years later when the first one disintegrates. They might still try it, but I think it will leave a lot of people who currently think Assange is a sex criminal very confused. They'd basically have to argue that Assange has completely lost his grip on reality.

[Automaton]

According to this RT article, it seems the Ecuadorians weren't happy about just letting the Swedes come in and interview Assange directly.

https://www.rt.com/news/329733-assange- ... st-sweden/

I think they hadn't agreed to this previously, but now they have (though for the life of me I don't know where I read that).

[UndercoverElephant]

According to this RT article, it seems the Ecuadorians weren't happy about just letting the Swedes come in and interview Assange directly.

https://www.rt.com/news/329733-assange- ... st-sweden/

I wonder whether it was a dispute about whether or not the Swedes could arrest Assange inside the embassy. You can certainly arrest somebody before a charge has been brought, but can you do it on foreign territory?

[UndercoverElephant]

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-02-1 ... ry-clinton

Julian Assange is one of the most wanted men in the world. After a recent tweet, however, he might also be at the top target of Hillary Clinton’s alleged “hit list.”

On Wednesday, the WikiLeaks founder took to Twitter to urge Americans not to waste their vote on President Barack Obama’s former Secretary of State — unless they want the country to be involved in yet another ongoing military entanglement.

In a post shared by the WIkiLeaks account, Assange began with the statement:

“A vote today for Hillary Clinton is a vote for endless, stupid war.”

He went on to claim Clinton bears responsibility for the Iraq War, but for other failed military campaigns undertaken by the United States.

“Hillary didn’t just vote for Iraq,” he said. “She made her own Iraq. Libya is Hillary’s Iraq and if she becomes president she will make more.”

During his many years of experience scrutinizing official U.S. communications, Assange has had access to “thousands” of her cables. To the Australian truth-seeker, “Hillary lacks judgement and will push the United States into endless wars which spread terrorism.” Despite her current popularity among some of the most established figures of the Democratic party, Assange argues that her “personality combined with her poor policy decisions have directly contributed to the rise of ISIS.”

Clinton has long-reviled WikiLeaks, and last year, her email records revealed that while she served as Secretary of State, her aides coordinated with CBS’s 60 Minutes to craft a narrative against Assange while he was interviewed on the show. Assange had previously leaked cables about her State Department.

Regardless of their direct hostility towards each other, Assange is not the only one who has accused Clinton of playing a major part in the rise of the Islamic State.

During a campaign stop in Biloxi, Mississippi, Republican front-runner and business mogul Donald Trump claimed Clinton helped President Barack Obama to create ISIS.

“I’m pretty good at signals, and I see a lot of things happening,” he told the audience. “They’ve created ISIS. Hillary Clinton created ISIS with Obama—created with Obama,” he repeated.

When questioned about the deadly attack against the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya by Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), the then-Secretary of State failed to answer whether the United States was using the Benghazi embassy to smuggle guns to Syrian rebels. While many dismissed Paul’s theory as a “conspiracy theory,” the senator was vindicated when Judicial Watch obtained documents that confirmed U.S. agencies were aware of the gun smuggling operation.

“Pentagon generals objected to destroying the Libyan state,” explained Assange in his long-form tweet.. “They felt Hillary did not have a safe post-war plan.”

But despite the generals’ warnings, “Hillary Clinton went over their heads.”

To Assange, Clinton’s decisions helped create a safe haven for the Islamic State. With the looting of the Libyan national armory and the transference of weapons to jihadists in Syria, Assange argues that “Hillary’s war has increased terrorism, killed tens of thousands of innocent civilians and has set back women’s rights in the Middle East by hundreds of years.”

Assange closes his pledge by saying Clinton shouldn’t even “be let near a gun shop, let alone an army. And she certainly should not become president of the United States.”

[UndercoverElephant]

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/0 ... a-f11.html

The Guardian has played a critical role as a propaganda outlet for the British government in its attempts to silence WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

This is absolutely true and everybody who still has anything to do with this vile, reprehensible, sewer of a newspaper, including buying it, should hang their heads in shame. F*ck Alan Rusbridger. F*ck Katharine Viner. May they go to hell and rot there.

[johnhemming2]

So which media outlets are supportive of his claiming Asylum in the Embassy. Are the others all under contract to the USA?

Or perhaps would it be that they believe the Swedes when they say he really does not run a risk of being extradited from Sweden to the USA.

In the end he will have to make a decision at some stage whether to stay where he is or go to Sweden.

[UndercoverElephant]

So which media outlets are supportive of his claiming Asylum in the Embassy.

Newsweek:

http://europe.newsweek.com/uk-and-swede ... 6722?rm=eu

“Those states who claim to be at the vanguard of human rights should give good example, even if they do not agree with the conclusions of UN experts,” de Zayas said in a statement. “The international order depends on the consistent and uniform application of international law, and is undermined when states pick and choose. The concept of human dignity is holistic. An à la carte approach to human rights erodes the credibility of the entire system.”

Following the UN’s ruling on February 5, U.K. Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond dismissed the idea that Assange has been arbitrarily detained as “ridiculous” and accused the Australian of evading justice. Assange stated he would not leave the embassy until he is guaranteed not to be arrested by U.K. police upon exiting.

One of Assange’s lawyers, Melinda Taylor, claims the U.K. and Sweden’s unwillingness to adhere to the U.N. ruling highlights double standards by the two countries when it comes to human rights, and suggests their relationship with the U.N. is that of a fairweather friend.

“You can’t just support the U.N. when it says what you want it to say,” Taylor tells Newsweek . “Laws have to be universal and they have to be applied universally. You can’t criticize other states for locking up activists arbitrarily and then allow the same thing to happen on your own territory.

“So it really does highlight that both the United Kingdom and Sweden, if they’re serious about the United Nations being impartial and effective, they really can’t allow these double standards to be propagated. Eventually they’ll lose their moral authority and will join the list of rogue nations that they themselves have pointed the finger at.”

Dozens of Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) have also called on the UN’s ruling to be implemented, arguing that the deprivation of fundamental rights—such as freedom of movement, expression and access to sunlight—violate the European Bill of Human Rights.

In a letter to Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission, 38 MEPs called for “immediate and effective measures” to be taken.

The letter states: “The silence of the EU institutions in this area is a major concern, considering the lawlessness and arbitrariness that Julian Assange has suffered.”

The fact that most of the American and British media are continuing to victimise Assange and failing utterly to report the story in a fair manner is not evidence of their being right, either factually or morally. On the contrary, it is evidence of the level of impartiality and government control over those media outlets.

This article is correct. You cannot pick and choose which UN rulings on human rights to respect. Either you respect all of them, or you have absolutely no right to criticise governments in other parts of the world when they choose to arbitrarily ignore UN rulings. In other words, this is about far more than Julian Assange. It is about the integrity of international law and the credibility of the United Nations with respect to human rights.

The message being sent out by the UK and Sweden could not be clearer: "When governments we don't approve of are found guilty of human rights abuses by the United Nations, they must free the individuals who are being illegally detained. But when it is us who are found guilty of arbitrarily detaining people, then we are free to declare that the ruling is ridiculous, and ignore it."

The whole point in having an independent panel at the United Nations to rule on cases like this is so that governments cannot get away with arbitrarily detaining their own dissidents, critics and whistleblowers. And the whole system collapses into a heap of useless double-standards if those countries which claim to be at the vanguard of human rights and international law choose to ridicule the UN panel when it rules that those countries are abusing the rights of dissidents.

[johnhemming2]

The fact that most of the American and British media are continuing to victimise Assange and failing utterly to report the story in a fair manner is not evidence of their being right, either factually or morally. On the contrary, it is evidence of the level of impartiality and government control over those media outlets.

It is evidence of the widespread view that he should go to Sweden.

Evidence of government control would have to be some system of control. The fact that a media outlet says something you don't like does not mean that the government is in control of it.