17 September 2020 — Assange Defense
It was another day of explosive testimony in Julian’s extradition hearing, with two witnesses taking the stand. Journalist John Slobada explained to the court the important journalistic contributions of WikiLeaks in revealing civilian casualties, while legal scholar Carey Shenkman stressed how the U.S. indictment of Julian is for a “political offense” and that Julian’s human rights are being violated.
15 September 2020 — Assange Defense
Two experts testified in Julian’s hearing today, making important arguments against extradition.
You can read a full recap of the day’s hearing at our blog. Let’s get right into today’s highlights:
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9 September 2020 — Media Lens
The use and misuse of George Orwell’s truth-telling is so widespread that we can easily miss his intended meaning. For example, with perfect (Orwellian) irony, the BBC has a statue of Orwell outside Broadcasting House, bearing the inscription:
‘If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.’
10 September 2020 — Craig Murray
The great question after yesterday’s hearing was whether prosecution counsel James Lewis QC would continue to charge at defence witnesses like a deranged berserker (spoiler – he would), and more importantly, why?
9 September 2020 — Off Guardian
I began a recent post with this assertion:
The western world is inhabited by those who know we are ruled by sociopaths … and that much larger group which, taking at face value the surface forms of democracy informed by independent media, either cannot or will not accept this admittedly frightening truth.
8 September 2020 — Moon of Alabama
Today the London show trial over the extradition of Wikileaks editor Julian Assange to the U.S. has begun. U.S. prosecutors claim that Assange’s publishing of evidence of U.S. war crimes has violated the U.S. Espionage Act.
Why an Australian publisher who worked from Europe and evidently published truthful evidence of war crimes should by guilty under a political U.S. law is beyond me.
14 July 2020 — Craig Murray
28 April 2020 — Counter Currents
“Mr Assange will be facing a David and Goliath battle with his hands tied behind his back.”
Edward Fitzgerald QC, lawyer for Julian Assange, April 27, 2020
Julian Assange must have had time amidst cramped and hostile surrounds, paper work, pleas and applications, to ponder what circle of Dante’s Hell he finds himself in. Ailing but still battling, the WikiLeaks publisher, through his lawyers, made another vicarious appearance at the Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Monday to delay the next stage of extradition proceedings slated for May 18. He would have appeared via video link, but medical advice suggested it would be unsafe for him to do so at Belmarsh prison.
25 March 2020 — Craig Murray
Unfortunately I am in lockdown at home in Edinburgh and cannot get down to Westminster Magistrates Court for Julian Assange’s urgent bail application today. Several hearings ago, Magistrate Baraitser stated pre-emptively that she would not grant bail, before any application had been made. Today’s application will argue that Assange’s ill health puts him at extreme danger from COVID-19, and that prison conditions make it impossible to avoid infection.
15 March 2020 — LA Progressive
In 2015 I was wrongfully convicted of, and imprisoned for, violating the U.S. Espionage Act. Now, while there is no question that I stand in solidarity with WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange in a British court as he fights extradition, little did I know that my presence is also there as fodder to support extradition. If I am going to be used in such a way, there should at least be a modicum of truth to my inclusion. I found nothing reasonable about being persecuted and sentenced to prison under the Espionage Act.
13 March 2020 — Angelof-truth.com
Doctors 4 Assange, who are the many doctors who sent a letter to the Home Secretary in Great Britain, tweeted a concerning statement today. According to them, Craig Murray’s reporting on the trial of Assange only escalated his mistreatment rather than helping to aid Assange.
Here is a list of things you can do to help. Everyone can do at least one of these.
1) Put 18 May firmly in your diary. The hearing stands adjourned until 18 May. Turn up on 18 May and join the protests there all day – show the world this is a political trial, and we know it. Woolwich Crown Court is walking distance from Plumstead Railway Station in South East London. If you feel able to do so, bring your tent and join the Free Assange Village that sets up on the grass banks around the court – there is loads of available space. But if you can just turn up for the day, that is just as valuable. Protests will roll on every day throughout the hearing which will continue for a minimum of three weeks.
3 March 2020 — WSWS
By Thomas Scripps and Chris Marsden
Journalist Cassandra Fairbanks has revealed an explosive series of communications on the case of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange between herself and Republican operative Arthur Schwartz.
29 February 2020 — Resumen
By Katu Arkonada
The trial against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is a perfect metaphor for how United States imperialism operates in the world today.The Armed Forces, the Department of State, and the CIA caused thousands of deaths in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya or Syria, but it’s the person who showed to the world those crimes who is going to be sentenced to 175 years in prison for 18 crimes (17 of them described in the Espionage Act of 1917, passed on the occasion of War World I).
2 March 2020 — Caitlin Johnson
The propagandists have all gone dead silent on the WikiLeaks founder they previously were smearing with relentless viciousness, because they no longer have an argument. The facts are all in, and yes, it turns out the US government is certainly and undeniably working to exploit legal loopholes to imprison a journalist for exposing its war crimes. That is happening, and there is no justifying it.
2 March 2020 — InfoBrics
Johanna Ross, journalist based in Edinburgh, Scotland
Julian Assange’s extradition hearing came to an end on Thursday; a trial which, according to his supporters bears all the hallmarks of a ‘show trial’ straight from the pages of a Kafka novel. The former Wikileaks editor, has already served around 13 years in arbitrary detention, despite not having been charged with any crime. If there was ever any confirmation of the helplessness of the individual in relation to the state, this was it. And if there was ever any demonstration needed that the West is moving away from democracy towards authoritarianism, this was it.
2 March 2020 — Craig Murray
In Thursday’s separate hearing on allowing Assange out of the armoured box to sit with his legal team, I witnessed directly that Baraitser’s ruling against Assange was brought by her into court BEFORE she heard defence counsel put the arguments, and delivered by her entirely unchanged.
29 February 2020 — Consortium News
It’s quite fitting that the – imperially pre-determined – judicial fate of Julian Assange is being played out in Britain, the home of George Orwell.
As chronicled by the painful, searing reports of Ambassador Craig Murray, what’s taking place in Woolwich Crown Court is a sub-Orwellian farce with Conradian overtones: the horror…the horror…, remixed for the Raging Twenties. The heart of our moral darkness is not in the Congo: it’s in a dingy courtroom attached to a prison, presided by a lowly imperial lackey.
29 February 2020 — Caitlin Johnson
Assange, verb. Use: To be assanged.
Meaning: when the nationless alliance of elites imprison a dissident by using their power to manipulate vagaries in the laws of their respective nations.
Eg “I have information on war crimes that I should leak but I don’t want to be assanged.”
The New Dark Age 