Assange "fails in bid to delay extradition battle with US"

Fri Nov 8 02:39:24 PST 2019

  A New Kind Of Tyranny: The Global State's War On Those Who Speak
  Truth To Power
  https://www.zerohedge.com/political/new-kind-tyranny-global-states-war-those-who-speak-truth-power
  https://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/john_whiteheads_commentary/a_new_kind_of_tyranny_the_global_states_war_on_those_who_speak_truth_to_power

    “What happens to Julian Assange and to Chelsea Manning is meant
    to intimidate us, to frighten us into silence.
    By defending Julian Assange, we defend our most sacred rights.
    Speak up now or wake up one morning to the silence of a new kind
    of tyranny.
    The choice is ours.”
        - John Pilger, investigative journalist
        https://www.rt.com/news/467833-pilger-julian-assange-warning/

  All of us are in danger.

  In an age of prosecutions for thought crimes, pre-crime deterrence
  programs, and government agencies that operate like organized crime
  syndicates, there is a new kind of tyranny being imposed on those
  who dare to expose the crimes of the Deep State, whose reach has
  gone global.

  The Deep State has embarked on a ruthless, take-no-prisoners,
  all-out assault on truth-tellers.

  Activists, journalists and whistleblowers alike are being
  terrorized, traumatized, tortured and subjected to the
  fear-inducing, mind-altering, soul-destroying, smash-your-face-in
  tactics employed by the superpowers-that-be.

  Take Julian Assange, for example.

  Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks—a website that published secret
  information, news leaks, and classified media from anonymous
  sources—was arrested on April 11, 2019, on charges of helping U.S.
  Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning access and leak more than
  700,000 classified military documents that portray the U.S.
  government and its military as reckless, irresponsible and
  responsible for thousands of civilian deaths.
  https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/08/21/julian-assange-a-man-without-a-country

  Included among the leaked Manning material
  https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/08/21/julian-assange-a-man-without-a-country
  were the Collateral Murder video (April 2010),
  https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/06/07/no-secrets
  the Afghanistan war logs (July 2010),
  the Iraq war logs (October 2010), a quarter of a million diplomatic
  cables (November 2010), and the Guantánamo files (April 2011).

  The Collateral Murder leak included gunsight video footage from two
  U.S. AH-64 Apache helicopters engaged in a series of air-to-ground
  https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/06/07/no-secrets
  attacks while air crew laughed at some of the casualties. Among the
  casualties were two Reuters correspondents who were gunned down
  after their cameras were mistaken for weapons and a driver who
  stopped to help one of the journalists. The driver’s two children,
  who happened to be in the van at the time it was fired upon by U.S.
  forces, suffered serious injuries.

  This is morally wrong.

  It shouldn’t matter which nation is responsible for these
  atrocities: there is no defense for such evil perpetrated in the
  name of profit margins and war profiteering.
  https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2019/02/21/military-spending-defense-contractors-profiting-from-war-weapons-sales/39092315/

  In true Orwellian fashion, however, the government would have us
  believe that it is Assange and Manning who are the real criminals
  for daring to expose the war machine’s seedy underbelly.

  Since his April 2019 arrest, Assange has been locked up in a
  maximum-security British prison—in solitary confinement for up to
  23 hours a day
  https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/9ke87d/julian-assange-could-barely-say-his-own-name-at-his-latest-extradition-hearing
  —pending extradition to the U.S., where if convicted,
  he could be sentenced to 175 years in prison.
  https://www.rt.com/news/467833-pilger-julian-assange-warning/

  Whatever is being done to Assange behind those prison
  walls—psychological torture, forced drugging, prolonged isolation,
  intimidation, surveillance—it’s wearing him down.

  In court appearances, the 48-year-old Assange appears disoriented,
  haggard and zombie-like.

    “In 20 years of work with victims of war, violence and
     political persecution I have never seen a group of democratic
     States ganging up to deliberately isolate, demonise and abuse a
     single individual for such a long time and with so little regard
     for human dignity and the rule of law,”
    declared Nils Melzer, the UN special rapporteur on torture.
    https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=24665&LangID=E

  It’s not just Assange who is being made to suffer, however.

  Manning, who was jailed for seven years from 2010 to 2017 for
  leaking classified documents to Wikileaks, was arrested in March
  2019 for refusing to testify before a grand jury about Assange,
  placed in solitary confinement for almost a month, and then
  sentenced to remain in jail either until she agrees to testify or
  until the grand jury’s 18-month term expires.
  https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/16/us/chelsea-manning-jail.html

  Federal judge Anthony J. Trenga of the Eastern District of Virginia
  also fined Manning $500 for every day she remained in custody after
  30 days, and $1,000 for every day she remains in custody after 60
  days, a chilling—and financially crippling—example of the
  government’s heavy-handed efforts to weaponize fines and jail terms
  as a means of forcing dissidents to fall in line.
  https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/16/us/chelsea-manning-jail.html

  This is how the police state deals with those who challenge its
  chokehold on power.

  Make no mistake: the government is waging war on journalists and
  whistleblowers for disclosing information relating to government
  misconduct that is within the public’s right to know.

  Yet while this targeted campaign—aided, abetted and advanced by the
  Deep State’s international alliances—is unfolding during President
  Trump’s watch, it began with the Obama Administration’s decision to
  revive the antiquated, hundred-year-old Espionage Act, which was
  intended to punish government spies, and instead use it to
  prosecute government whistleblowers.
  https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/06/11/america-choosing-security-over-liberty-since-1798/
  https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/08/21/julian-assange-a-man-without-a-country

  Unfortunately, the Trump Administration has not merely continued
  the Obama Administration’s attack on whistleblowers.  It has
  injected this war on truth-tellers and truth-seekers with steroids
  and let it loose on the First Amendment.

  In May 2019, Trump’s Justice Department issued a sweeping new
  “superseding” secret indictment of Assange—hinged on the Espionage
  Act—that empowers the government to determine what counts as
  legitimate journalism and criminalize the rest, not to mention
  giving “the government license to criminally punish journalists it
  does not like, based on antipathy, vague standards, and subjective
  judgments.”
  https://www.thedailybeast.com/trumps-justice-department-uses-julian-assange-as-stalking-horse-to-make-journalism-a-crime

  Noting that the indictment signaled grave dangers for freedom of
  the press in general,
  https://www.thedailybeast.com/trumps-justice-department-uses-julian-assange-as-stalking-horse-to-make-journalism-a-crime
  media lawyer Theodore J. Boutrous, Jr., warned,

    “The indictment would criminalize the encouragement of leaks of
     newsworthy classified information, criminalize the acceptance
     of such information, and criminalize publication of it.”

  Boutrous continues:

    [I]t doesn’t matter whether you think Assange is a
    journalist, or whether WikiLeaks is a news organization.
    The theory that animates the indictment targets the very
    essence of journalistic activity: the gathering and
    dissemination of information that the government wants to
    keep secret.
    https://www.thedailybeast.com/trumps-justice-department-uses-julian-assange-as-stalking-horse-to-make-journalism-a-crime

    You don’t have to like Assange or endorse what he and WikiLeaks
    have done over the years to recognize that this indictment sets
    an ominous precedent and threatens basic First Amendment
    values…. With only modest tweaking, the very same theory could
    be invoked to prosecute journalists for the very same crimes
    being alleged against Assange, simply for doing their jobs of
    scrutinizing the government and reporting the news to the
    American people.

  ...

On Mon, Oct 21, 2019 at 09:15:08AM -0700, Greg Newby wrote:
> Spotted in Fox news online, but it looks like this is also on the AP wire
> https://www.foxnews.com/world/wikileaks-julian-assange-appears-in-court
> 
> Meanwhile, it appears Chelsea Manning is still in jail in Alexandria, for refusing to cooperate with the grand jury investigation against Assange: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelsea_Manning
> 
> 
> The Fox article:
>  
> WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange fails in bid to delay extradition battle with US
> Greg Norman
> By Greg Norman | Fox News
> 
> Will Julian Assange be extradited to the US?
> 
> The Department of Justice charges WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in 18-count superseding indictment; Catherine Herridge reports.
> 
> WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange came up short Monday in a bid to delay his extradition to the United States to face espionage charges.
> 
> Assange, who appeared with his legal team at the Westminster Magistrates Court in London, failed to convince District Judge Vanessa Baraitser that a delay in the already slow-moving case was justified, The Associated Press reported.
> 
> Assange, who hasn’t been seen in public for several months since his dramatic arrest inside Britain's Ecuadorian embassy, appeared with his silvery-gray hair slicked back and wore a blue sweater and blue sport coat for the hearing. At one point, he defiantly raised a fist to acknowledge supporters who jammed the public gallery in the courtroom.
> 
> The U.S. is seeking to bring Assange overseas to face espionage charges. The full hearing to decide his extradition is still set for a five-day period in late February, with brief interim hearings in November and December.
> A court artist sketch showing Julian Assange facing District Judge Vanessa Baraitser at Westminster Magistrates' Court in London, on Monday.
> 
> A court artist sketch showing Julian Assange facing District Judge Vanessa Baraitser at Westminster Magistrates' Court in London, on Monday. (AP/Elizabeth Cook)
> 
> After the judge turned down the bid for a three-month delay, Assange said he didn't understand the events in court.
> 
> 
> He said the case is not "equitable" because the U.S. government has "unlimited resources" while he doesn't have easy access to his lawyers or to documents needed to prepare for his battle against extradition due to his confinement in Belmarsh Prison, on the outskirts of London.
> 
> "They have all the advantages," the 48-year-old Assange said.
> 
> U.S. authorities accuse Assange of scheming with former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to crack a password that provided access to classified material on a government computer.
> 
> Assange's lawyer, Mark Summers, told the judge more time was needed to prepare his client's defense because the case has many facets -- including the very rare use of espionage charges against a journalist, as Assange defines himself -- and requires a "mammoth" amount of planning and preparation.
> 
> "Our case will be that this is a political attempt to signal to journalists the consequences of publishing information," he said. "It is legally unprecedented."
> Supporters of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange demonstrate outside Westminster Magistrates' Court in London. (AP)
> 
> Supporters of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange demonstrate outside Westminster Magistrates' Court in London. (AP)
> 
> BRITISH COURT SETS 2020 DATE FOR ASSANGE EXTRADITION HEARING
> 
> Summers also accused the U.S. of illegal actions during its investigation, including illegally spying on Assange while he was inside the Ecuadorian Embassy seeking refuge.
> 
> "The American state has been actively engaged in intruding into privileged discussions between Mr. Assange and his lawyers in the embassy, also unlawful copying of their telephones and computers [and] hooded men breaking into offices," he said.
> 
> Summers did not provide evidence of these claims, which likely would be part of Assange's defense against extradition when the full hearing is held next year.
> 
> Summers said the initial case against Assange was prepared during the administration of former President Barack Obama in 2010 but wasn't acted on until Donald Trump assumed the presidency. He said it represents the administration's aggressive attitude toward whistleblowers.
> 
> Attorney James Lewis, representing the U.S., opposed any delay to the proceeding.
> 
> The public gallery was jammed with Assange supporters, including former London Mayor Ken Livingstone, and outside the courthouse, some chanted demanding Assange be freed while others carried placards calling for his release.
> 
> The judge said the full hearing will be heard at Belmarsh Court, which is adjacent to the prison where Assange is being held. She said this would be easier for Assange to attend and contains more room for the media.
> 
> Former Home Secretary Sajid Javid had signed an order in June allowing Assange to be extradited.
> 
> 
>  