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Assange in the Grasp of U.S. Empire
Close Allies Hold Journalist While U.S. Comes Up With Charges and Plans Extradition
People Organizing and Acting to Support WikiLeaks
Julian Assange has entered the firm embrace of the U.S. Empire after publishing diplomatic cables that embarrassed the United States and many countries around the world. Great Britain and Sweden are close U.S. allies who have started a Kabuki False Justice Dance that will deliver him to the U.S. war on terror courts which will treat him like an enemy combatant who committed espionage, when in fact he is an independent journalist and what he did was done by newspapers around the world.
The diplomatic cables and Afghan and Iraq war diaries show Assange is dealing with countries that use threats and blackmail to get their way, look the other way or participate in torture, routinely violate laws and lie to their people. Assange knew that but did not run and hide. As soon as a valid arrest warrant existed his lawyers arranged his voluntary arrest. He demonstrated he wanted to face the charges rather than flee. Yet, in a seemingly pre-determined result, the magistrate held him without bond despite more then 100,000 GBP offered for bail saying the “turn yourself in Assange” was a threat to flee. How can they say such absurdities with a straight face?
But, it is likely this mock process will embarrass the justice systems of Great Britain, Sweden and the United States. The choreography will become more and more evident as Assange goes through the system. Sweden’s on-again-off-again prosecution dismissed by three different Swedish prosecutors, sometimes including rape, sometimes not, sometimes being dropped all together is already raising questions and was so flawed they had a hard time getting a legitimate arrest warrant.. It does not help that one of the woman had CIA connections and bragged about her relationship with Assange in tweets she tried to erase and held a party with him the day after, among other incidents that are inconsistent with rape. She even published a 7 step program for legal revenge against lovers. What we know of the story so far seems to be two one night stands of consensual sex gone badly but perhaps more will be unveiled in court.
Now, that Attorney General Holder has brought the little-used Espionage Act into play, the world will see the U.S. justice system on display. When I graduated law school in 1980, the United States had a justice system of which Americans could be proud. Now after decades of erosion, it is sadly, embarrassing. Assange is likely to be held in solitary, have very limited access to evidence against him and his conversations with lawyers will be recorded – American justice is not what it used to be.
The Espionage Act should be infamous. Passed in 1917 to stifle dissent against World War I, it was used against Eugene Debs, a union organizer and four-time presidential candidate, for making a speech against the war and criticizing the Espionage Act. He was sentenced to ten years and ran for president from prison. One group critical of the U.S. war effort was charged under the Espionage Act for writing against the war. One member of the group was beaten so badly by U.S. police that he died; another was sentenced to 15 years, and three others 20. Another writer, Rose Pastor Stokes, worked in opposition to World War I and was found guilty and sentenced to ten years in prison for saying, in a letter to the Kansas City Star, that "no government which is for the profiteers can also be for the people, and I am for the people while the government is for the profiteers."
The Espionage Act has not recently been used against journalists since its failed use in stopping the publication of the Pentagon Papers in 1971. Its use against Assange would create a conflict between freedom of the press and espionage. Perhaps because of this frailty the Department of Justice is looking at various conspiracy charges. Conspiracy is known as the “prosecutor’s darling” because it is so broad and less difficult to prove than the underlying offense. The desperation of the U.S. government to muzzle Assange shows how insecure the U.S. Empire is – they do not want their citizens or other countries to know the truth.
It is no surprise that Great Britain and Sweden are the client states of the U.S. assisting in the incarceration of Assange. Great Britain is the closest participant in U.S. wars. The WikiLeaks cables show that the new Conservative government was promising to buy even more weapons from the United States than the Labor government. While Tony Blair was seen by many as Bush’s lap dog, the Conservative Party promised to run a “pro-American regime” and the cables describe current government members as fawning over the USA. Sweden has a long-term, annual trade surplus with the United States of billions of dollars. The U.S. is currently the third largest Swedish export trade partner and U.S. companies are the most represented foreign companies in Sweden.
The Los Angles Times reported that the U.S. was considering extradition of Assange to the United States, even though he has not been charged with anything here yet. Even before extradition to Sweden, the U.S. is in talks with Sweden about extradition to the United States. Former U.S. attorney general Michael Mukasey indicated that the Swedish charge may just be a holding charge, a minor offense, to get Assange in custody. Assange could be extradited from either Great Britain or Sweden to the U.S.
Concerned citizens of all these countries will have to wait for a future Wikileak-esque disclosure for proof that these countries are colluding to hold Assange. But the actions are consistent with a DoD plan on how to deal with WikiLeaks. As attorney and writer Scott Horton wrote in “WikiLeaks: The National-Security State Strikes Back,” a highly classified Army Counterintelligence Center 32-page memorandum said that the threat presented by WikiLeaks can only be eliminated by striking WikiLeaks not only in cyber attacks, but against the individuals, particularly Julian Assange, who were critical to the operation of WikiLeaks.
A prosecution of Assange, if the U.S. terror war courts allow the case to come to trial, could be the John Peter Zenger case of the digital age. It will define government transparency and free speech for the initial decades of the 21st Century and therefore is of great import to all Americans and, in particular, to the media.
WikiLeaks sharpens the battle between corporate-government and the people. The United States enlisted Visa, MasterCard, Pay Pal (eBay which owns it) and Amazon to help prevent WikiLeaks from having the funds needed to fight back. Big corporations are joining with the United States to prevent the exposure of the misdeeds of U.S. foreign policy. Julian Assange said that among its next disclosures will be abuses by the big banks.
Citizens are getting organized. Hacktivists working under the name Anonymous and others are attacking financial institutions that refuse to take WikiLeak donations as well as the prosecutor’s office in Sweden and Sarah Palin through cyber attacks. The attack on WikiLeaks is going to create more on-line cyper resistance and cyper disobedience that will present new challenges for government.
Prominent academics, lawyers, writers, whistleblower activists and others are joining together under WikiLeaks is Democracy to urge that charges not be filed against Assange for releasing documents and to stop his extradition to the United States. “This is the first step in an ongoing campaign to support Julian Assange, WikiLeaks and to re-assert the concept that the U.S. government is accountable to its citizens,” said Linda Schade the initiator of the project. “We will not accept the manipulation of our legal system to criminalize a journalist; a free and independent press is non-negotiable.”
All citizens concerned about free speech and transparency of government should join the effort to defend and support WikiLeaks which is engaged in a dramatic confrontation with the American Empire. Sign up at www.WikiLeaksIsDemocracy.org.
Kevin Zeese is executive director of Voters for Peace (www.VotersForPeace.US).
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Kevin Zeese's article, above, is definitely excellent and the Espionage Act history is definitely appreciated by me, even if it does draw a tear or two and a little heart-pacing.
Most of the articles, below, are variably but still very related to what's presently happening with or to Julian Assange, while the rest are defense of Wikileaks releasing the cables.
"Assange Could Face Espionage Trial In US"
by Kim Sengupta, Independent, UK, Dec. 8, 2010
www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=22340
The whole article is worth reading. The four so-called charges against Julian Assange evidently are a mix of bogus and not meriting being refused bail, but there's definitely more than this to the rest of the article and some of what wasn't excerpted, above, is good.
The following video is for an interview with Eric Garris, founder and managing editor of Antiwar.com, on Russia Today, and it's interesting. Among other things, he says that the number of Wikileaks mirrors has soared to over 1,000, even saying around 2,000 without stating an exact figure, if I understood correctly. And further below is an article that provides a rather funny contrast for story. It's about Amazon UK's Web site providing an e-book for the contents of the cables released by Wikileaks; rather peculiar, hypocritical, but also comical after Amazon kicked Wikileaks off of Amazon hosting.
"Cyber War: Wiki Hackers v. Govt" (6:40)
TheAlyonaShow, Dec. 6, 2010
www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUz1re3s0OY
"Amazon Selling WikiLeaks Cables as eBook"
by Jason Ditz, Dec. 9, 2010
www.antiwar.com/blog/2010/12/09/amazon-selling-wikileaks-cables-as-ebook
I don't understand why the above is a "headache" for Wikileaks, for the Amazon e-book won't prevent the Wikileaks team from continuing their work, which we already have sufficient proof that they need to continue and, hopefully, complete. Currently, the counter says that 1,193 cables out of the total 251,187 to be released have now been released. There's a long way to go before full release.
And if Washington doesn't order Amazon to remove this e-book from being available, then nothing can be held against Wikileaks for releasing the cables; I believe. If that's right in the legal sense, then Amazon making this e-book available should help remove a headache, instead of adding to headaches.
"Criminalizing Whistleblowers: Wikileaks and America's SHIELD Legislation
Securing Human Intelligence and Enforcing Lawful Dissemination Act (SHIELD)"
by Rady Ananda, FoodFreedom.wordpress.com, Dec. 8, 2010
www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=22326
The commenter's phrasing is exaggerated; calling people who have said that they have not seen anything yet about any cables revealing any important information that was not already known and reported, before, "stupid dipshits" is definitely not a recommendable approach for anyone to take. And that commenter would do well to carefully read the essay by Andrew Gavin Marshall that I'll provide a link for later in this post.
But, the important thing the "commenter" said or wrote and which I've repeated several times in posts here, already, is that there certainly are, already, some cables that've been released through Wikileaks, thanks to [conscientious] whistleblowers, leakers who provided the leaks to Wikileaks, that would be usable for prosecutions; if we had a real system of real justice. If we don't have the "official confirmation", i.e., evidence, then our denunciations are readily treated as mere "conspiracy theory" or "pure speculation", so getting the diplomatic cables that provide actual evidence is needed information. The problem is that we don't have a real system of real justice.
The article continued:
That's the commenter's interpretation and while it's understandable that many people also have the same interpretation, it is definitely lacking, very short of being complete. There's no analysis to it at all and there [needs] to be.
The Saudi monarchy is in power [because] of the US and it is for the same reason that the monarchy continues to be in power. We know what happened with Saddam Hussein when he ceased being a puppet of the US; or I certainly hope that we all know what happened and why it happened, anyway. And the monarchies of other Arab countries in the Middle East are [because] of England and like with the Saudi monarchy, all of these monarchies extremely or else totally depend upon the US and UK. Otherwise, the populations of these countries would probably OUT these monarchies; definitely in Saudi Arabia anyway. I don't know how bad the others are, but most people know that the monarchy in Saudi Arabia is [hell] for most of the Saudi population.
It's like the many anti-Zionist "activists" trying to defend the non-existent righteousness of the government of the US by claiming that Israel and its lobby control this government. It's [BS] (double emphasis)! Israel and the lobby [are] dependent on the US.
All of these monarchies and Israel really serve as proxies for the western imperialist powers. And of course the latter need the cooperation from these monarchies and Israel, so the west's imperialists strategically need to let their proxies have their psychopathic and sociopathic "fun". And the west's imperialists have no significant history of caring about human rights, anyway.
I'll include a link to a [thorough] essay by Andrew Gavin Marshall at the end of this post, since I posted the link here yesterday.
The above article from Food Freedom continued:
That's another example of believing that what's literally written is absolutely true; as if analysis is not called for with any and everything imperialist powers and their "worker bees" say. Do we have actual proof that what "commenter" says, above, is true? I certainly don't know that we do.
Like Andrew Marshall excellently explains in his article, and I've posted basically the same argument at Youtube before reading his article yesterday, just because the diplomatic cables are authentic does [not] mean that they are necessarily accurate. The people who wrote the cables can sometimes be less than truthful. Some of these cables, which are evidently all authentic as Andrew Marshall says or explains, and which only means truly from US embassies or diplomatic offices, some of them can bear imperialistic propaganda of lies and misinterprations made by the diplomats. Andrew Marshall justly argues that American diplomats are salaried employees of the imperialist rulers of the government of the USA and like many other government-employed people, many diplomats are going to work to protect their salaries, perks, and so on; they'll work to please their masters, personal "prestige", bank accounts, and so on.
One very well known example of imperialist diplomats is John Negroponte's notorious and truly evil history in Latin America. He has surely lied [many] times; very criminal lies.
Unless the related cable is truly proven to be accurate, the Gmail attacks could have originated in China and the US and its western imperialist allies, as well as Israel, would all be singing like diabolical or mischievous choir about the Chinese Poliburo being responsible without the Politburo really being responsible. We should have realized by now that the imperialist leaders of the West and many or most of their employees [regularly] LIE.
The US and NATO continue to militarily build up in their very threatening way towards Russia and China, and the US and NATO governments have a history of FALSE FLAG attacks. A diplomatic cable saying that the Chinese Politburo was responsible for the gmail attack could be another false flag.
The Food Freedom article continues, but I won't excerpt any more from it.
"Murder Poster for Assange"
by James Bovard, Dec. 7th, 2010
www.antiwar.com/blog/2010/12/07/murder-poster-for-assange
I believe that it's illegal to verbally threaten someone even if the person making the threat commits no related physical act of violence. And inciting murder, which includes assassination, is most surely illegal; if incitement to riot is illegal, then inciting murder definitely should be, also, anyway. The poster of which an image is shown in the article should certainly be illegal and a prosecutable act. And the Washington Times writer is clearly not meaning to use the poster as part of a joke piece to mock government officials and others who have called for Julian Assange to be assassinated.
The article that James Bovard linked to is the following and clearly is not using the poster in a joking way. I'll only excerpt the first paragraph of the article.
"KUHNER: Assassinate Assange?
Web provocateur undermines war on terror, threatens American lives"
by Jeffrey T. Kuhner, Dec. 2, 2010
That, imo, is incitement, encouragement for murdering Julian Assange, and Khuner is full of balony in claiming that Wikileaks is endangering national security. Plenty of qualified people who've seen the released cables have said that there's nothing that's been released of these cables that endangers either national security or persons. I read an article last week that said that even US Sec. of Def. Robert Gates has said that the released cables aren't endangering anything.
The following article might be valid reporting, but it causes a question to come to mind and it's, "Why would such a cable be classified as only secret, instead of top secret?".
"WikiLeaks cable exposes NATO war plan against Russia"
by Bill Van Auken, Dec. 9th, 2010
www.wsws.org/articles/2010/dec2010/nato-d09.shtml
Andrew Gavin Marshall's article:
"Wikileaks and the Worldwide Information War
Power, Propaganda, and the Global Political Awakening"
by Andrew Gavin Marshall, Dec. 6, 2010
www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=22278
It's a long essay, but strongly qualitative for defense of what Wikileaks is doing. He addresses this from what I believe is [all] possible angles.
This is a real "hitter" for diplomatic cable. It should be a strong example to refer to when wanting to explain, illustratively, that there certainly are cables of serious importance included in the release by Wikileaks. This is surely not a cable that is favorable for either Israel or the US. It's favorable for Hezbollah and all Lebanese people opposed to the extreme criminality of Israel, as well as for those opposed to having a treasonous political leadership in Lebanon.
That's imo, anyway.
"Lebanese Newspaper Site Downed for Covering WikiLeaks
Paper Printed Cables Embarrassing to Lebanese Officials"
by Jason Ditz, Dec, 9, 2010
http://news.antiwar.com/2010/12/09/lebanese-newspaper-site-downed-for-co...
How is that cable about what Elias Murr treasonously said going to endanger national security or any person; except for Murr, politically? He committed high treason against the population of all of Lebanon! That definitely should be exposed.
The above article by Jason Ditz links to the following piece.
"Al-Akhbar Under Cyber Attack", Dec. 9, 2010
naharnet.com/domino/tn/NewsDesk.nsf/0/A70D3CD3A49AE8DBC22577F4003EFA77?OpenDocument
Jason Ditz also linked to the following piece.
"Lebanese paper's website attacked over WikiLeaks"
by Bassem Mroue, AP, Dec. 9, 2010
thestate.com/2010/12/09/1598505/lebanese-papers-website-attacked.html
Could it be Israeli hackers, or hackers working for Israel? Israel certainly has such capabilities.
I read the naharnet.com piece, first, and the last paragraph of the article reminded me of what the following piece says about Israeli operations in Lebanon when former Lebanese PM Rafiq al-Hariri was assassinated. The STL is the Special Tribunal for Lebanon and it evidently was set up in respect to that assassination.
"The Hariri Assassination: All Eyes on Lebanon"
by Rannie Amiri, Dec. 2, 2010
www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=22233
I'll excerpt from the following copy.
intifada-palestine.com/2010/12/all-eyes-on-lebanon/comment-page-1
The following interview is an additional link I'm providing because, firstly, of what Lebanese PM Sheikh Saad al-Hariri (Saad-eddine Rafiq Al-Hariri), son of Rafiq Hariri, says about the STL, assassination, and the related false witnesses who were discovered and who've admitted to having lied. However, the interview is also interesting to listen to for what he says about, both, Israel being [responsible] for no progress being made for peace in the Middle East, and relations with Syria and Iran; including that he or the Lebanese government support Iran's right to its nuclear energy program.
"Al-Hariri: Israel not fit for peace" (9:11)
RussiaToday, Nov. 15, 2010
www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzNjtxyZDFA
He supports the STL, which, again, I believe to be the international tribunal that's been set up and which he says Russia supports; and this worries me, because these tribunals can [not] be trusted when we consider how they've been very corrupt, so far. The UNSC is dominated by the imperialist permanent member states, the US being the very worst of them, and the same has been and will remain true of the ICC and Hague. It is [essential] that the tribunal act as Rannie Amiri's article explains. Otherwise, it will be another corrupt process.