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FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW...........................

Many of us who write for and read Consortium News are worried about Julian Assange’s personal well-being, especially amid rumors that the British High Court will soon issue a decision to extradite the WikiLeaks publisher to the notorious Eastern District of Virginia (EDVA) to face multiple counts of espionage.

Julian deserves unwavering support, at the very least because he alerted the world to crimes being committed by the U.S. government.  His bravery has been well-documented, even if the government says that he is a danger to American national security.

 

By John Kiriakou
Special to Consortium News

 

The U.S. Justice Department has made something of a sport of attacking people on “national security” grounds.  Just look at what has happened in recent years to Tom Drake, Chelsea Manning, Jeffrey Sterling, Daniel Hale and this writer.

The Justice Department’s attack dogs told Tom Drake and Chelsea Manning that they had the “blood of American soldiers” on their hands.  That was an outrageous lie, of course.  They told Jeffrey Sterlingthat he had aided Iran’s nuclear program.  That was made up out of whole cloth.  They told Daniel Hale that he had weakened America’s war-fighters.  That was ludicrous.  They told me that I had “weakened our democracy” and “aided the enemy” after I blew the whistle on the C.I.A.’s illegal and immoral torture program.  Those were more outrageous lies.

Now they’re going after a man who has done nothing to hurt anyone, who has done literally nothing to weaken the United States or to strengthen its enemies.  I’m talking about Daniel Duggan.  The father of six is facing 60 years in prison for allegedly assisting the Chinese.  Let me explain how ridiculous the accusation is.

Duggan, 54, is a former U.S. Marine Corps pilot who retired from the military in 2002 with the rank of major, married an Australian woman and became an Australian citizen, simultaneously giving up his American citizenship.

From 2005 to 2014, he lived in Australia, where he founded Top Gun Tasmania, a company that offered flights on military jets for tourists.  In 2014, he sold the business and moved to Beijing to work as an aviation consultant.  It was in Beijing that he took a job as an instructor at a South Africa-based flight school, where he trained Chinese fighter pilots.  So what, right?

 

DOJ Cites Sanctions 

Apparently to the Justice Department, that constituted a major crime.  The DOJ maintains that Chinese pilots are on the Treasury Department’s sanctions list.  Prosecutors stated further that the address that Duggan and a Chinese partner used was also on a sanctions list briefly in 2014 and 2016.  As a result, Duggan was charged with arms trafficking and money laundering because of the training.  The odd thing is that literally nobody else associated with the school has been charged with any crime.

Duggan, however, has been held in an Australian maximum-security prison for nearly a year, classified as an “extremely high-risk restricted inmate.”  Much of his time has been in solitary confinement, even though he has not been charged with any crime in Australia and none of the other people at the aviation consultancy has been charged with any crime.

His wife and legal team filed a complaint with the United Nations Human Rights Council saying that his incarceration was unjustified and was causing him severe psychological distress.  Furthermore, he is not receiving appropriate care for a condition he has called benign prostatic hyperplasia.

A clinical psychologist called the conditions in which he’s being held “extreme” and “inhumane.”  Earlier this year the Australian inspector general for intelligence and security announced that he would conduct a formal inquiry into Duggan’s detention.  That’s a decent start, but it’s not going to solve anything.

In the meantime, he’s still facing extradition to the United States.

Dan Duggan is facing the same heavy-handed tactics that Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning, Daniel Hale, and others caught in the U.S. government’s overzealous national security dragnet have faced.  He’s looking at the possibility of spending the rest of his life in prison.  He’s looking at spending much of that in a system that uses solitary confinement in such a way that the United Nations has declared it to be a form of torture.  He’s looking at being isolated in a maximum-security prison, where he will receive substandard medical care and animal-grade food.  And for what?

The deeper problem is that this is not at all a clear-cut case of a person violating national security law.  Duggan is just a guy caught up in big state politics.  The issue here is that the U.S. government is engaged in a cold war with China, whether it’s over trade, Chinese successes in Africa, the Belt & Road Initiative, espionage and counterespionage, or placating the military-industrial complex.  

Dan Duggan is a victim of that cold war.  He’s a victim of a Justice Department that’s gone hog wild in its prosecution of low-hanging fruit, especially in national security cases. It’s a Justice Department where eager young prosecutors get promoted by prosecuting you, not for not prosecuting you.  It’s going to be a long road for Duggan and his family.  We can only hope that his legal team has the wherewithal to fight that fight.

John Kiriakou is a former C.I.A. counterterrorism officer and a former senior investigator with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. John became the sixth whistleblower indicted by the Obama administration under the Espionage Act — a law designed to punish spies. He served 23 months in prison as a result of his attempts to oppose the Bush administration’s torture program.

 

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW...................

free julian today.....

FETE DE L’HUMANITE : Projection du documentaire ITHAKA suivi d’un échange avec Stella Assange et John Shipton - Espace Jack Ralite, Samedi 16 Sept. 18:20 > 20:10

La campagne pour libérer Julian Assange prend des dimensions intimes dans ce portrait documentaire du combat d’un homme âgé pour sauver son fils. Sans doute le prisonnier politique le plus célèbre au monde, le fondateur de WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, est une figure sur laquelle presque tout le monde a une opinion ; peut-être plus important encore, il sert d’emblème d’un bras de fer international sur la liberté du journalisme, la corruption gouvernementale et les crimes de guerre impunis. Pour les membres de sa famille qui risquent de le perdre à jamais dans l’abîme du système judiciaire américain, cependant, cette lutte entre David et Goliath est personnelle - et, avec sa santé déclinante dans une prison britannique à sécurité maximale et les procureurs du gouvernement américain mettant tout en œuvre pour l’extrader, le temps presse.

https://www.legrandsoir.info/fete-de-l-humanite-project-documentaire-ithaka-suivi-d-039-un-echange-avec-stella-assange-et-john-shipton-l-humanite.html

 

Julian Assange, le journaliste le plus primé du XXIème siècle, qui a révélé les secrets sordides des puissants, notamment les crimes de guerre, la torture et la corruption, qui n’a commis aucun crime, qui n’est inculpé ni accusé de rien, est pourtant privé de liberté depuis 12 ans, isolé et torturé, dans l’indifférence générale.

L’Affaire Assange, c’est l’histoire d’un arbitraire judiciaire délibéré dans des démocraties occidentales qui tiennent par ailleurs à se présenter comme exemplaire en matière de Droits de l’Homme. Alors que certains considèrent que c’est la plus grande affaire de presse du siècle, nous n’en entendons quasiment pas parler.

C’est pour cela que le lundi 18 septembre à la MJC de Kerfeunteun au 4 rue Teilhard de Chardin, la MJC de Kerfeunteun et l’Université Populaire du Pays Glazik invitent Viktor Dedaj, informaticien à la retraite et administrateur du site d’information alternative Le Grand Soir, qui couvre cette affaire depuis ses débuts en 2010. Auteur de nombreux articles sur le sujet et traducteur du livre « Julian Assange Parle », il est cofondateur du Comité de Défense de Julian Assange. Depuis quelques années, il sillonne la France pour nous ouvrir les yeux sur ce que signifie la persécution d’ Assange pour nos droits à l’information, pour nos libertés fondamentales, et plus généralement pour la justice et la démocratie.

https://www.legrandsoir.info/quimper-julian-assange-conference-debat-avec-viktor-dedaj-le-lundi-18-septembre-a-20-h-a-la-mjc-de-kerfeunteun-a-quimper-l.html

 

Der schlimmste Analphabet ist der politische Analphabet. Er hört nicht, spricht nicht, und nimmt nicht an den politischen Ereignissen teil. Er weiß nicht, dass die Kosten des Lebens, der Preis der Bohnen, des Fisches, des Mehls, der Miete, des Schuhes und des Medikamentes von politischen Entscheidungen abhängen.

Der politische Analphabet ist so dumm, daß er stolz ist und sich in die Brust wirft um zu sagen, daß er Politik hasst.

Der Schwachsinnige weiß es nicht, daß aus seiner politischen Ignoranz die Prostitution, der verlassene Minderjährige, der Räuber und der schlimmste von allen Verbrechern – der politische Betrüger, korrupt, Lakai der nationalen und multinationalen Unternehmen resultieren.“

Bertolt Brecht, deutscher Dichter und Dramatiker (1898/1956)

 

http://www.buchkammer.de/haftnotizen/der-politische-analphabet-bertolt-brecht/

 

“The worst illiterate is the political illiterate. He does not listen, does not speak, does not participate in political events. He does not know that the cost of living, the price of beans and fish, the price of flour, rent, the price of shoes and medicine depend on political decisions. The political illiterate is so stupid that he gets proud and puffs up his chest to say that he hates politics. He does not know, the imbecile, that it is his political ignorance which produces the prostitute, the street child, the thief, the worst of all bandits and above all the dishonest, lying and corrupt politician, who licks the feet of national and multinational companies. »

Bertolt Brecht, German poet and playwright (1898/1956)

 

 

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW..............

saving Julian.....

 

By Monique Ryan MP

 

Later this month I’ll travel to Washington, as part of a Parliamentary delegation, to advocate on behalf of Julian Assange. The Parliamentary delegation includes representatives from across the political colour spectrum – Forest Green (senior Nationals member Barnaby Joyce), Green (Senators Peter Whish-Wilson and David Shoebridge), Red (Labor backbencher Tony Zappia), Navy Blue (Liberal member Alex Antic) and Teal. This alliance, unlikely as it might appear, reflects the relative unity of Australian opinion about Julian Assange and his fate. While we might not agree with his actions – and we might not like how he’s comported himself in the past – 79% of Australians believe it’s past time for Julian Assange to be freed.

In 2006 Assange – a former computer hacker turned editor, activist and publisher – founded Wikileaks, a non-profit online document archive. In 2010, WikiLeaks published a trove of US intelligence about American activities in Iraq and Afghanistan. That data had been leaked by a US intelligence officer, Chelsea Manning, who was subsequently charged by the US government with 22 offences including violating the US Espionage Act and aiding the enemy. She pled guilty to 10 charges but was imprisoned for only three years before her sentence was commuted by President Obama in 2017.

The many tranches of documents released by Wikileaks were damaging and embarrassing for the US intelligence services; hence their ongoing, relentless attempts to secure Assange’s extradition to the US from the UK to face charges under the Espionage Act. Politically, the Democrats’ dislike of Assange was not helped by WikiLeaks 2016 publication of Hillary Clinton’s emails and documents from the Democratic National Committee. WikiLeaks subsequent release of the largest CIA leak in history in 2017 won Assange no friends in the Trump administration.

Assange has been an inmate of the UK’s Belmarsh Prison (dubbed “Britain’s Guantanamo Bay”) since April 2019, having previously taken refuge within the Ecuadorian Embassy in London for almost 7 years. The US-UK Treaty under which Assange’s extradition is being sought explicitly bans extradition for political offences, but the proceedings continue despite the obvious political overtones of this case. Daniel Ellsberg, leaker of the Pentagon Papers exposing US misconduct in the Vietnam War, was also prosecuted under the Espionage Act. Ellsberg, whose case was dismissed with prejudice. Ellsberg described Assange’s prosecution as a greater abuse of process than his own. Assange’s position has been defended by the former United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, the Council of Europe’s Commissioner for Human Rights, media and human rights organisations, and politicians from around the world.

Assange’s lawyer, London-based Australian Jennifer Robinson, has argued that his indictment represented “the most terrifying threat to freedom of speech in the 21st-century”. When she spoke at the National Press Club last year, Ms Robinson repeatedly referred to claims that in 2017 the CIA plotted to kidnap or assassinate Assange while he was a political refugee in London. She suggested that, if extradited, he might be subjected to Special Administrative Measures, a regime of extreme isolation described by human rights groups as inhumane and possibly amounting to torture.

There is some urgency to this mission because of the imminent possibility of Mr Assange’s extradition to the US, and his deteriorating physical and mental health. He had a minor stroke in 2021 and is described by family members as increasingly frail. His wife, Stella, has stated that she believes he will commit suicide if extradited to maximum security conditions in the US.

There have been mixed messages from the US Government this year: Caroline Kennedy, the US Ambassador to Australia flagged a possible plea deal in August. More recently, however, the US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, stipulated that “The actions that he has alleged to have committed risked very serious harm to our national security, to the benefit of our adversaries, and put named human sources at grave risk – grave risk – of physical harm, and grave risk of detention.” 

President Biden is perhaps constrained in his ability to intervene in this case by the ongoing legal cases against his predecessor and his son. The president has indicated that he is “committed to an independent Department of Justice”, but the commuting of Chelsea Manning’s sentence by President Obama seems at odds with the Biden administration’s ongoing pursuit of Assange. This is especially true given the absence of repercussions for the major newspapers which published the Wikileaks documents – media organisations like the Guardian, New York Times, Der Spiegel and Le Monde.

The reality remains that Julian Assange is an Australian citizen. He has won awards in Australia and internationally for his journalism. His prosecution in the US would raise concerning questions about the precedent set for journalists anywhere around the globe should they publish truthful information in the public interest and if that information is felt to be at odds with the US government’s perception of its own interest.

As my partner in the delegation – Barnaby Joyce – argued last week: “If the Americans can extradite an Australian to America after an affront to one of their laws, even though he is not a citizen and never committed a crime in America, how long before the Chinese ask for the same?”

The Australian Prime Minister will follow us to the US next month, and his first state visit to Washington will be an excellent opportunity to secure Assange’s release. Unlike previous Prime Ministers, Anthony Albanese has consistently backed Assange. He’s said publicly – before and after ascending to the Prime Ministership – that this affair has gone on too long.

This situation is one of politics, not of law. If the extradition request is approved, Australians will witness the deportation of one of our citizens from one AUKUS partner to another – our closest strategic ally – with Assange facing the prospect of spending the rest of his life in prison. The case represents an important test of our relationship with the US, and of our government’s ability to advocate on behalf of its citizens with our allies. The Parliamentary delegation will speak to our US peers regarding our respect for their First Amendment right of free press and free speech. We will echo the words of their own former President Thomas Jefferson; we will do our very best to convince the US Government that “our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost”.

https://johnmenadue.com/going-to-the-mountain-for-assange/

 

READ FROM TOP.

 

 

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW..............

 

rotten pompeo.....

Michael Isikoff and  Zach Dorfman30 September 2021 

Former CIA Director and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Wednesday called for the criminal prosecution of sources who spoke to Yahoo News for a storydetailing proposals by the intelligence agency in 2017 to abduct WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and discussions within the Trump administration and CIA to possibly even assassinate him.

Pompeo, appearing on Megyn Kelly’s podcast, was asked to respond to the Yahoo News story, which was based on interviews with 30 former U.S. intelligence and national security officials with knowledge of the U.S. government’s efforts against WikiLeaks.

“I can’t say much about this other than whoever those 30 people who allegedly spoke to one of these [Yahoo News] reporters — they should all be prosecuted for speaking about classified activity inside the Central Intelligence Agency,” Pompeo said.

At the same time, Pompeo declined to respond to many of the details in the Yahoo News account and confirmed that “pieces of it are true,” including the existence of an aggressive CIA campaign to target WikiLeaks in the aftermath of the organization’s publication of highly sensitive so-called Vault 7 documents revealing some of the CIA’s hacking tools and methods.

“When bad guys steal those secrets we have a responsibility to go after them, to prevent [that] from happening,” Pompeo said. “We absolutely have a responsibility to respond. ... We desperately wanted to hold accountable those individuals that had violated U.S. law, that had violated requirements to protect information and had tried to steal it. There is a deep legal framework to do that. And we took actions consistent with U.S. law to try to achieve that.”

Pompeo’s comments came as some human rights activists, civil liberties groups and supporters of Assange said the revelations by Yahoo News should be investigated and were grounds to drop the Justice Department’s efforts to extradite Assange from a British prison in order to face criminal charges in the U.S. for publishing classified government secrets in violation of the World War I-era Espionage Act as well for allegedly conspiring to hack into a classified U.S. government network.

“We now know that this unprecedented criminal case was launched in part because of the genuinely dangerous plans that the CIA was considering,” said Ben Wizner, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Speech, Privacy and Technology Project. “This provides all the more reason for the Biden Justice Department to find a quiet way to end this case.”

Also weighing in about the Yahoo News story was Nils Melzner, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture. “This is not about the law. It is about intimidating journalism; it’s about suppressing press freedom; it’s about protecting immunity for state officials,” he said in a video he posted on Twitter. Assange’s case has “become impossible to ignore,” he added. “And I would encourage journalists from all media outlets to look deeply into this case, assemble all the evidence and expose misconduct, because the public deserves to know the truth.”

Although the Justice Department under two attorneys general appointed by President Trump brought indictments against Assange, federal prosecutors under President Biden’s attorney general, Merrick Garland, are continuing to pursue the case. They have filed appeals of a British judge’s ruling earlier this year that Assange should not be turned over to the U.S. government because he would pose a risk of suicide in a U.S. prison.

Assange’s lawyers were due on Wednesday to file responses to the Justice Department’s arguments and are actively considering ways to raise issues of government misconduct based in part on many of the details in the Yahoo News story. Among them is the revelation that in the aftermath of the Vault 7 leak, viewed at the time as the largest data loss in the CIA’s history, Pompeo was enraged and demanded a multi-pronged campaign to dismantle WikiLeaks. Publicly, he described the group as a “non-state hostile intelligence service.” But privately, he pushed for aggressive action at meetings with top Trump administration officials, including a snatch operation to abduct Assange from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.

Sources told Yahoo News that at the White House and CIA there were also discussions regarding a possible assassination, although former officials said the idea of killing Assange was not taken seriously. But when White House lawyers learned about some of the agency’s plans targeting Assange, particularly Pompeo’s rendition proposals, they raised objections, resulting in one of the most contentious intelligence debates of the Trump presidency.

Pompeo’s comments on Kelly’s podcast came the day after he appeared on Glenn Beck’s podcast and asserted, “I’m all about a big, bold, strong First Amendment.” But his call Wednesday for the criminal prosecution of sources who spoke to Yahoo News drew a strong rebuke from a member of Assange’s legal team.

“I find it highly disturbing that his reaction is to try to prevent information about misconduct from being known by the American people,” said Barry Pollack, Assange’s U.S. lawyer.

Wizner, the ACLU lawyer, said Pompeo’s comments effectively “just verified the truth of the [Yahoo News] story. Because the only reason to prosecute someone is that they revealed legitimate classified information. ... This was public interest journalism of the first order and the question is whether the public has a right to know that the government is engaged in this kind of conduct.”

When first asked about the Yahoo News story by Kelly, Pompeo responded, “It makes for pretty good fiction.” But when pressed by the host whether that meant he was denying what Yahoo News reported, he acknowledged “there are pieces of it that are true.”

“Were we trying to protect American information from Julian Assange and WikiLeaks? Absolutely, yes. Did our Justice Department believe it had a valid claim that would result in the extradition of Julian Assange to stand trial? Yes. I supported that effort, for sure. Did we ever engage in activity that was inconsistent with U.S. law? We are not permitted by U.S. law to conduct assassinations. We never acted in a way that was inconsistent with that. ... We never conducted planning to violate U.S. law — not once in my time.”

He did not address any of the details about other actions the CIA was contemplating, such as Assange’s possible abduction, or steps U.S. intelligence actually took, including conducting audio and visual surveillance of Assange inside the Ecuadorian Embassy or monitoring the communications and travels of his associates throughout Europe.

But Pompeo did take issue with a statement made by Trump, who had embraced WikiLeaks during the 2016 campaign after it published Democratic Party emails embarrassing to Hillary Clinton. Asked for comment in the Yahoo News story, Trump said that Assange was being treated “very badly.”

Pressed by Kelly if he agreed with that assessment, Pompeo said: “No. Assange treated the U.S. and its people very badly.”

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/pompeo-sources-for-yahoo-news-wiki-leaks

 

OKAY.... MIKE POMPEO AND ALL THE AMERICANS SHOULD BE IN PRISON SHOULD THEY SUPPORT CHARGING JULIAN ASSANGE WITH THE AMERICAN SINS.... AMERICA IS BULLSHITTING, AND DOING NAUGHTY PSYCHOPATHIC THINGS DAILY, JOE BIDEN INCLUDED... 

SEE:

daily american bread: the bombing of innocent people.....

 

the empire strikes butts....

 

madder than a cut snake.....

 

AND ALL ARTICLES ON THIS SITE SINCE 2005.... INCLUDING:

 

"The Age of Deceit"

 

THE TRILOGY

 

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