On Friday, September 25, 2020, 10:59:30 PM PDT, Zenaan Harkness wrote:   What's The Difference Between 'Villain' Assange & 'Intrepid' Woodward?     Lee Camp via Counterpunch.org   https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/09/25/whats-the-difference-between-villain...   https://www.zerohedge.com/political/whats-difference-between-villain-assange...   >  The completely fair super awesome trial of Julian Assange continues in the U.K. as I write this. It’s a beautiful blend of the works of Kafka, Stalin and Joseph Heller. Most people here will be way too old to remember this, but there was the "Pentagon Papers" case in 1971, that pre-dated Watergate by a year or so.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_Papers     The New York Times received some military documents that had been ILLEGALLY copied by Daniel Ellsberg.   The Federal government wanted to enjoin (prohibit) the NYT from publishing that material.  Eventually, the US Supreme Court ruled that the Feds COULD NOT prohibit this publication.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Times_Co._v._United_States    Also, I think nobody was ever prosecuted for this.  They were so embarrassed...                   Jim Bell

On Friday, September 25, 2020, 04:17:00 PM PDT, grarpamp wrote:

The prosecution claimed that Assange had not been caught with a razor. The reason for denying this is that hiding a razor suggests Assange might be thinking of suicide.

The defense pointed out that an official report from the prison confirmed that Assange had hidden a razor in his cell. The prosecution is surely aware of this report. In plain English, the prosecution lied to the court. The judge refuses to consider the prison report, however, because it is new evidence."

BTW, when I was in Federal prison, it was quite common for a prisoner to have a razor (broken to expose the blade) in his cell.  It was used to cut vegetables, because we were not allowed to have knives.                 Jim Bell

https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-kafkaesque-imprisonment-of-julian

UK judge refuses extradition of WikiLeaks founder Assange By JILL LAWLESS January 4, 2021 12:21 GMT LONDON (AP) — A British judge on Monday rejected the United States’ request to extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to face espionage charges, saying he was likely to kill himself if held under harsh U.S. prison conditions. District Judge Vanessa Baraitser rejected allegations that Assange is being prosecuted for political reasons or would not receive a fair trial in the United States. But she said his precarious mental health would likely deteriorate further under the conditions of “near total isolation” he would face in U.S. prison. “I find that the mental condition of Mr. Assange is such that it would be oppressive to extradite him to the United States of America,” the judge said. She said Assange was “a depressed and sometimes despairing man” who had the “intellect and determination” to circumvent any suicide prevention measures taken by American prison authorities. The U.S. government said it would appeal the decision. Assange’s lawyers said they would ask for his release from a London prison where he has been held for more than a year-and-a-half at a bail hearing on Wednesday. Assange, who sat in the dock at London’s Central Criminal Court for the ruling, wiped his brow as the decision was announced. His partner Stella Moris, with whom he has two young sons, wept. Assange’s American lawyer, Barry Pollack, said the legal team was “enormously gratified by the U.K. court’s decision denying extradition.” “The effort by the United States to prosecute Julian Assange and seek his extradition was ill-advised from the start,” he said. “We hope that after consideration of the U.K. court’s ruling, the United States will decide not to pursue the case further.” The ruling marks a dramatic moment in Assange’s years-long legal battles in Britain — though likely not its final chapter. U.S. prosecutors have indicted Assange on 17 espionage charges and one charge of computer misuse over WikiLeaks’ publication of leaked military and diplomatic documents a decade ago. The charges carry a maximum sentence of 175 years in prison. Lawyers for the 49-year-old Australian argue that he was acting as a journalist and is entitled to First Amendment protections of freedom of speech for publishing leaked documents that exposed U.S. military wrongdoing in Iraq and Afghanistan. The judge, however, said Assange’s actions, if proven, would “amount to offenses in this jurisdiction that would not be protected by his right to freedom of speech.” The defense also argued during a three-week hearing in the fall that extradition threatens Assange’s human rights because he risks “a grossly disproportionate sentence” and detention in “draconian and inhumane conditions” that would exacerbate his severe depression and other mental health problems. The judge agreed that U.S. prison conditions would be oppressive. She accepted evidence from expert witnesses that Assange had a depressive disorder and an autism spectrum disorder. “I accept that oppression as a bar to extradition requires a high threshold. ... However, I am satisfied that, in these harsh conditions, Mr. Assange’s mental health would deteriorate causing him to commit suicide with the ‘single minded determination’ of his autism spectrum disorder,” the judge said in her ruling. Lawyers for the U.S. government deny that Assange is being prosecuted merely for publishing the leaked documents, saying the case “is in large part based upon his unlawful involvement” in the theft of the diplomatic cables and military files by U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning. The prosecution of Assange has been condemned by journalists and human rights groups, who say it undermines free speech around the world. They welcomed the judge’s decision, even though it was not made on free-speech grounds. “This is a huge relief to anyone who cares about the rights of journalists,” The Freedom of the Press Foundation tweeted: “The extradition request was not decided on press freedom grounds; rather, the judge essentially ruled the U.S. prison system was too repressive to extradite. However, the result will protect journalists everywhere.” Assange’s legal troubles began in 2010, when he was arrested in London at the request of Sweden, which wanted to question him about allegations of rape and sexual assault made by two women. In 2012, to avoid being sent to Sweden, Assange sought refuge inside the Ecuadorian Embassy, where he was beyond the reach of U.K. and Swedish authorities — but also effectively a prisoner, unable to leave the tiny diplomatic mission in London’s tony Knightsbridge area. The relationship between Assange and his hosts eventually soured, and he was evicted from the embassy in April 2019. British police immediately arrested him for jumping bail in 2012. Sweden dropped the sex crimes investigations in November 2019 because so much time had elapsed, but Assange remains in London’s high-security Belmarsh Prison, brought to court in a prison van throughout his extradition hearing.

FBI Asks Court For 66 Years To Release Seth Rich Laptop Information LOL https://www.theepochtimes.com/fbi-asks-court-for-66-years-to-release-informa... https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23218831-doj-reconsideration-motion https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23218685-seidel-declaration FBI Asks Court for 66 Years to Release Information From Seth Rich’s Computer By Zachary Stieber October 28, 2022 Updated: October 29, 2022 biggersmaller Print The FBI is asking a U.S. court to reverse its order that it produce information from Seth Rich’s laptop computer. If the court does not, the bureau wants 66 years to produce the information. Rich was a Democratic National Committee staffer when he was killed on a street in Washington in mid-2016. No person has ever been arrested in connection to the murder. U.S. District Judge Amos Mazzant, an Obama appointee, ruled in September that the bureau must hand over information from the computer to Brian Huddleston, a Texas man who filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for the info. The FBI’s assertion that the privacy interest Rich’s family members hold outweighed the public interest was rejected by Mazzant, who noted the bureau cited no relevant case law supporting the argument. But the ruling was erroneous, U.S. lawyers said in a new filing. The bureau shouldn’t have to produce the information because of FOIA exemptions for information that are compiled for law enforcement purposes and “could reasonably be expected to disclose the identity of a confidential source,” the lawyers said in a motion for reconsideration. Another exemption, which enables agencies to withhold information that would disclose law enforcement techniques also applies, they said. “Given the Court’s findings that except for the information related to Seth Rich’s laptop withheld pursuant to Exemptions 6 and 7(C) based on privacy interests, the FBI properly withheld or redacted all other information responsive to Huddleston’s requests, the production order seems inconsistent with the rest of the order,” the motion stated. The FBI, after claiming it never possessed Rich’s laptop or any information from it, acknowledged in 2020 that it had thousands of files from the computer. The bureau “is currently working on getting the files from Seth Rich’s personal laptop into a format to be reviewed,” the government said at the time. Epoch Times Photo Seth Rich, the voter expansion data director for the Democratic National Committee, in a file photograph. (LinkedIn) Information and material extracted from the computer were provided by a source to an FBI agent during a meeting on March 15, 2018, FBI records officer Michael Seidel said in a declaration. He said the files included photographs and documents, among other material. In the new filing, government lawyers said the FBI never extracted the data, which it revealed as originating with a law enforcement agency. They said the information is on a compact disc containing images of the laptop. “The FBI did not open an investigation into the murder of Seth Rich, nor did it provide investigative or technical assistance to any investigation into the murder of Seth Rich. As a result, the FBI has never extracted the data from the compact disc and never processed the information contained on the disc,” they said. To produce the information, the FBI would have to convert information on the disc into pages and then review the pages to redact information per FOIA, according to the government. If Mazzant upholds his order, the FBI wants a lengthy period of time to perform the work—66 years, or 500 pages a month. “If the court overrules the FBI’s motion, the FBI wants to produce records at a rate of 500 pages per month. At that rate, it will take almost 67 years just to produce the documents, never mind the images and other files,” Ty Clevenger, a lawyer representing Huddleston, told The Epoch Times in an email. “After dealing with the FBI for five years, I now assume that the FBI is lying to me unless and until it proves otherwise. The FBI is desperately trying to hide records about Seth Rich, and that begs the question of why.” WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has suggested Rich leaked Democratic National Committee (DNC) files to WikiLeaks, but special counsel Robert Mueller said the real source was Russian hackers. Still, Mueller’s finding conflicts with statements from CrowdStrike, the firm hired to investigate how the DNC files were released.

People worldwide should not have to wait for rare Deathbed Confessionals to discover that their best option as humanity is to permanently disband their governments, all of which are corrupt by definition. Leak, Deeply, Widely, Disruptively, and At Will, let the cards fall. Reagan Ally Worked To Prolong Iran Hostage Crisis: Aging 'Witness' https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/18/us/politics/jimmy-carter-october-surprise... https://www.jimmycarterlibrary.gov/research/hostages_and_casualties https://www.britannica.com/event/Operation-Eagle-Claw https://www.nytimes.com/1991/04/15/opinion/the-election-story-of-the-decade.... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_United_States_presidential_election https://www.amazon.com/October-Surprise-Gary-Sick/dp/0812920872 https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/history-october-surprise-180960741/ As former President Jimmy Carter nears death, an aging Texas politician has come forward to get something big off his chest -- claiming that, in 1980, he accompanied former Texas governor John Connally on a whirlwind Middle East tour aimed at keeping Americans hostage of Iran until after the presidential election that elevated Ronald Reagan to power. “History needs to know that this happened,” 85-year-old Ben Barnes tells the New York Times. “I think it’s so significant and I guess knowing that the end is near for President Carter put it on my mind more and more and more. I just feel like we’ve got to get it down some way.” Barnes is a former Democratic speaker of the Texas House and lieutenant governor. Barnes (left) and Connally with Egypt's President Anwar el-Sadat (Ben Barnes via New York Times) The claims that Reagan cronies worked to prolong the Iran hostage crisis and torpedo President Carter's reelection bid aren't new, but Barnes is by far the most prominent figure to step forward and claim to have been a witness to such a conspiracy. In the wake of the 1979 Iranian revolution, college students sympathetic with the revolution overran the US embassy in Tehran and took 66 Americans hostage. The long crisis that ensured dominated the presidency of Carter, who ordered an April 1980 military rescue mission that itself turned into a disaster, killing eight service-members and an Iranian civilian. The US hostage-rescue mission was aborted after a helicopter crashed into a C-130 at the "Desert One" staging area in the Iranian desert Reagan routed Carter by a 489-49 electoral-college margin. The hostages were released just minutes after President Reagan's January 1981 inauguration -- and after 444 days in captivity. Days later, the US government began facilitating the flow of weapons to Iran via Israel. Barnes tells the Times that Connally, who'd been famously wounded in the JFK assassination, invited him on a multi-country Middle East trip in the summer of 1980. He says that it was only after the trip was underway that he realized its purpose: to ask various regional officials to pass on a message to Iran. Here's how Barnes paraphrases the pitch: “‘Look, Ronald Reagan’s going to be elected president and you need to get the word to Iran that they’re going to make a better deal with Reagan than they are Carter,’ “[Connally] said, ‘It would be very smart for you to pass the word to the Iranians to wait until after this general election is over'." Records at the LBJ museum reflect Connally and Barnes leaving Houston on July 18, 1980 and returned Aug. 11 after visiting Israel, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, the Times reports. News accounts at the time characterized Conally's trip as "strictly private." Barnes says he next joined Connally in an early-September meeting to brief William J. Casey -- chairman of the Reagan presidential campaign and future CIA director -- about the Middle East trip. He says the session at the Dallas/Fort Worth Regional Airport spanned three hours. CIA Director William Casey and President Reagan (Getty via The Intercept) “I’ll go to my grave believing that it was the purpose of the trip," Barnes says. "It wasn’t freelancing because Casey was so interested in hearing as soon as we got back to the United States.” He says Casey wanted to know whether “they were going to hold the hostages.” Although previous Congressional investigations debunked the claim of Reagan campaign efforts to interfere in the hostage crisis, a possible Connally role wasn't examined. Barnes doesn't venture to establish that Reagan had knowledge of the undertaking. Barnes identified four living people with whom he'd previously shared his account. The Times says all four confirmed that Barnes had done so years before. In 1991, former Carter national security aide Gary Slick fleshed out the theory of Reagan-crony meddling in the hostage situation, first with a Times essay and then a book, October Surprise. That term first came to prominence via Reagan-Bush campaign warnings that Carter might exploit the crisis by achieving the hostages' release in the final run-up to the election. The term has been attributed to Casey himself. “I just want history to reflect that Carter got a little bit of a bad deal about the hostages,” Barnes tells the Times. “He didn’t have a fighting chance with those hostages still in the embassy in Iran.”