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Update(2124ET): WikiLeaks has released its first footage showing Julian Assange as a free man, emerging from Belmarsh prison looking triumphant and joyous, and soon after boarding a plane to his native Australia…

Below is the official statement from WikiLeaks:

JULIAN ASSANGE IS FREE Julian Assange is free. He left Belmarsh maximum security prison on the morning of 24 June, after having spent 1901 days there. He was granted bail by the High Court in London and was released at Stansted airport during the afternoon, where he boarded a plane and departed the UK. This is the result of a global campaign that spanned grass-roots organisers, press freedom campaigners, legislators and leaders from across the political spectrum, all the way to the United Nations.

This created the space for a long period of negotiations with the US Department of Justice, leading to a deal that has not yet been formally finalised. We will provide more information as soon as possible. After more than five years in a 2×3 metre cell, isolated 23 hours a day, he will soon reunite with his wife Stella Assange, and their children, who have only known their father from behind bars.

WikiLeaks published groundbreaking stories of government corruption and human rights abuses, holding the powerful accountable for their actions. As editor-in-chief, Julian paid severely for these principles, and for the people’s right to know. As he returns to Australia, we thank all who stood by us, fought for us, and remained utterly committed in the fight for his freedom. Julian’s freedom is our freedom.

Below is a video statement from his wife, Stella Assange:

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

“Weasel Words” – Stella Assange Challenges US Over Julian’s Fate

April 18, 2024

“Weasel Words” – Stella Assange Challenges US Over Julian’s Fate

Stella Assange claims US diplomatic assurances offer no real protection for Julian under the First Amendment.

Stella Assange has once again urged the Biden White House to give up on prosecuting her husband Julian Assange, at the same time accusing the US authorities of resorting to “blatant weasel words” when addressing the issue of granting the WikiLeaks founder First Amendment protections.

In a post on X, Stella Assange said that a diplomatic note from the US that was supposed to provide assurances regarding Assange’s future if extradited to the US did not succeed in doing that.

When it comes to the First Amendment, the note amounted to being “a non-assurance,” Stella wrote, which did not override the prosecution’s claim her husband had no rights guaranteed in this respect because he is not a US citizen. Instead it now only said that he can “seek to raise” the First Amendment if he finds himself in custody in the US.

At the same time, the note contained “a standard assurance in relation to the death penalty,” the post said. (Reuters cited the document as stating that “a sentence of death will neither be sought nor imposed.”)

The note “does nothing to relieve our family’s extreme distress about his future – his grim expectation of spending the rest of his life in isolation in US prison for publishing award-winning journalism,” Stella Assange wrote.

The “assurances” note she is referring to was requested by the British, as a court there is getting ready to issue its final decision regarding Assange’s ability to again appeal extradition. The High Court in London previously said a new appeal would not be possible if the US side provided “certain guarantees.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

“It’s Disgusting What They’re Doing”: Tucker Carlson Describes Visit With Julian Assange

December 23, 2023

“It’s Disgusting What They’re Doing”: Tucker Carlson Describes Visit With Julian Assange

As Julian Assange approaches his ‘final’ appeal against extradition to the United States, where he faces some 18 counts related to the release of vast troves of damning and embarrassing evidence against the US government, the 52-year-old WikiLeaks founder received a visit from Tucker Carlson to discuss his situation.

Carlson describes Assange as “one of the greatest journalists of our age,” who has “spent his adult life bringing previously concealed facts to the public about what our leaders are doing.”

Perhaps most notably, Assange published internal emails from the Democratic National Committee, revealing among other things that the Hillary Clinton campaign conspired to cheat against rival Bernie Sanders. These leaks, claimed by Democrats to be Russian hacks, were actually internal leaks, according to Carlson.

What’s more, Carlson noted how a fabricated, media-amplified sexual assault charge in Sweden was used against Assange, who spent more than seven years in asylum at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. And when he exposed the CIA’s spying apparatus, former CIA Director Mike Pompeo discussed kidnapping or assassinating him while not being charged with any crime in the US at the time.

Watch below as Carlson lays out the Assange situation…

Subscribers to the Tucker Carlson Network (which of course, everyone should be) can watch the rest of the segment, in which Carlson describes sitting down with Assange for around an hour (no cameras allowed). He also discusses the situation with Assange’s wife, Stella.

Highlights:

“We talked about why he is in prison, and my first question to him was: ‘what do you think this is actually about?’,” to which Assange replied that he “first became famous when WikiLeaks published documents and videos that the US government had kept secret from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that were politically embarrassing to the Pentagon…

…click on the above link to read the rest…

WATCH: Assange: Can Exposure Bring Justice?

January 3, 2022

WATCH: Assange: Can Exposure Bring Justice?

Join Fidel Narváez, former consul at the Ecuador embassy in London, and John Kiriakou, former C.I.A. officer and CN columnist, discussing Julian Assange’s case. Produced by the First Unitarian Society of Milwaukee, WI. Watch the replay.

What really went down at the Ecuadorian Embassy that allegedly triggered the C.I.A. plot to kidnap or kill Julian Assange? Former consul general at the embassy for over 6 years Fidel Narváez, tells the inside story. John Kiriakou explains what it’s really like inside a U.S. prison.

NBC News Uses Ex-FBI Official Frank Figliuzzi to Urge Assange’s Extradition, Hiding His Key Role

January 2, 2022

NBC News Uses Ex-FBI Official Frank Figliuzzi to Urge Assange’s Extradition, Hiding His Key Role

The most dangerous, and under-discussed, development in corporate media is the spate of ex-security state agents now employed to deliver the “news.”

Twitter profile of former FBI Assistant Director Frank Figliuzzi, now of NBC News

Two of the television outlets on which American liberals rely most for their news — NBC News and CNN — have spent the last six years hiring a virtual army of former CIA operatives, FBI officials, NSA spies, Pentagon chiefs, and DOJ prosecutors to work in their newsrooms. The multiple ways in which journalism is fundamentally corrupted by this spectacle are all vividly illustrated by a new article from NBC News that urges the prosecution and extradition of Julian Assange, claiming that the WikiLeaks founder, once on U.S. soil, will finally provide the long-elusive proof that Donald Trump criminally conspired with Russia.

The NBC article is written by former FBI Assistant Director and current NBC News employee Frank Figliuzzi, who played a central role during the Obama years in the FBI’s attempt to investigate and criminalize Assange: a rather relevant fact concealed by NBC when publishing this. But this is how U.S. security state agents now directly control corporate news outlets.

During the Cold War and then in the decades following it, the U.S. security state constantly used clandestine measures to infiltrate U.S. corporate media outlets and shape U.S. media coverage in order to propagandize the domestic population. Indeed, intelligence agencies have a long, documented record of violating their charter by interfering in domestic politics through formal programs to manipulate U.S. media coverage.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Julian Assange should be freed

January 1, 2022

Julian Assange should be freed

The appeal by the US government to extradite Julian Assange to the United States bewilders this writer. Even that the US should seek to extradite Julian Assange for the crime of WikiLeaks’ publication of secret US military documents a decade ago is equally bewildering. For the opinion of this writer is that Assange has done no wrong. That he has in fact revealed information that we, the general public, have every right to know, He should be freed.

Even President Biden’s administration plans to continue to seek to extradite the WikiLeaks founder.

And yet the Australian government has consistently refused to support him.

The UK court of appeal is equally confusing. Lord Burnett of Maldon, Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales, and Lord Justice Holroyde ruled that the lower court ought to have afforded the US “the opportunity to offer assurances” about Assange’s treatment. The judges accepted that the assurances now provided-by a state which, they were told in the appeal hearing, plotted Assange’s “assassination, kidnap, rendering poisoning”-were “sufficient to meet the concerns” about his well-being. It ordered that Assange be extradited.

The inspiration for Assange’s revelations through Wikileaks was Daniel Ellsberg’s release of the Pentagon Papers in 1971. The New York Times said that the Pentagon Papers had demonstrated that the Johnson Administration had “systematically lied, not only to the public but also to Congress.” Ellsberg is now regarded as a hero. Assange should equally get the same regard.

What did Julian Assange do that such powerful countries want him condemned ? For he is not guilty of any crime. Guilty only of exposing wrongdoings that we, the general public, had the full right to know.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Julian Assange Loses Appeal: British High Court Accepts U.S. Request to Extradite Him for Trial

December 14, 2021

Julian Assange Loses Appeal: British High Court Accepts U.S. Request to Extradite Him for Trial

Press freedom groups have warned Assange’s prosecution is a grave threat. The Biden DOJ ignored them, and today won a major victory toward permanently silencing the pioneering transparency activist.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange speaks to the media outside the High Court in London on December 5, 2011 where he attended a ruling in his long-running fight against extradition to Sweden (Photo by GEOFF CADDICK/AFP via Getty Images)

In a London courtroom on Friday morning, Julian Assange suffered a devastating blow to his quest for freedom. A two-judge appellate panel of the United Kingdom’s High Court ruled that the U.S.’s request to extradite Assange to the U.S. to stand trial on espionage charges is legally valid.

As a result, that extradition request will now be sent to British Home Secretary Prita Patel, who technically must approve all extradition requests but, given the U.K. Government’s long-time subservience to the U.S. security state, is all but certain to rubber-stamp it. Assange’s representatives, including his fiancee Stella Morris, have vowed to appeal the ruling, but today’s victory for the U.S. means that Assange’s freedom, if it ever comes, is further away than ever: not months but years even under the best of circumstances.

In endorsing the U.S. extradition request, the High Court overturned a lower court’s ruling from January which had concluded that the conditions of U.S. prison — particularly for those accused of national security crimes — are so harsh and oppressive that there is a high likelihood that Assange would commit suicide. In January’s ruling, Judge Vanessa Baraitser rejected all of Assange’s arguments that the U.S. was seeking to punish him not for crimes but for political offenses…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Assange persecution lays out Western savagery at its most transparent

November 2, 2021

The Assange persecution lays out Western savagery at its most transparent

The first day of the US appeal in the Julian Assange extradition case saw grown adults arguing in court that the US government could guarantee that it wouldn’t treat the WikiLeaks founder as cruelly as it treats other prisoners.

I wish I was kidding.

In their write-up on Wednesday’s proceedings, The Dissenter’s Kevin Gosztola and Mohamed Elmaazi report that the prosecution argued that “the High Court should accept the appeal on the basis that the US government offered ‘assurances’ that Assange won’t be subjected to Special Administrative Measures (SAMs) or incarcerated in ADX Florence, a super-maximum prison in Colorado.”

What this means is that in order to overturn the January extradition ruling which judge Vanessa Baraitser denied on the basis that the notoriously draconian US prison system is too cruel to guarantee Assange’s health and safety, the prosecution has established as one of their grounds for appeal the claim that they can offer “assurances” that they would not inflict some of their most brutal measures upon him. These would include the aforementioned Special Administrative Measures, wherein prisoners are so isolated that they effectively disappear off the face of the earth, or sending him to ADX Florence, where all prisoners are kept in solitary confinement 23 hours a day.

What’s ridiculous about these “assurances,” apart from the obvious, is that within its own legal argument the US government reserves the right to reverse those assurances at any time and impose SAMs or maximum security imprisonment upon Assange if it deems them necessary. As Amnesty International explains:

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

‘Gamechanger’ Hearing As US Seeks Overturn Of Extradition Ban

October 27, 2021

Julian Assange In Court For ‘Gamechanger’ Hearing As US Seeks Overturn Of Extradition Ban

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who still languishes in London’s high security Belmarsh Prison, will appear in court on Wednesday and Thursday for a key hearing that could prove to be a potential gamechanger.

The court will decide among other things whether the US Justice Department’s assurances that he won’t face cruel confinement in the US should be extradited are convincing enough to overturn a prior ban on extraditing him. This is precisely what the US is seeking to do after gaining an appeal following the January decision of the High Court which said he’d be facing the American federal prison system’s strict, harsh confinement, likely at a place like ADX Florence supermax.

Ahead of the start of this week’s proceedings, WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson said it woudl be “totally unacceptable” and “unthinkable” for the London court to reverse the prior decision, lifting the extradition ban.

“It is unthinkable that the High Court will come to any other decision but to uphold the magistrates’ court decision. Anything else is totally unacceptable,” Hrafnsson said.

“It would be such a stain on the system in this country that I certainly hope there will be enough pressure and realization of how devastating it would be for this country if somehow the judge comes to the decision of reversing the magistrates’ court decision.”

Also not helping the case of the US prosecutor is the recent devastating Yahoo News investigation exposing details of an alleged CIA plot to either assassinate or kidnap Assange, and render him to US soil by force. Both Assange’s legal team and his family – especially his fiancé – have lately pointed out that the CIA revelations alone destroy Washington’s case and standing:

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Netflix To Launch WikiLeaks Smear Job Three Days Before Assange Court Date

October 14, 2021

Netflix To Launch WikiLeaks Smear Job Three Days Before Assange Court Date

Listen to a reading of this article:

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Netflix will begin streaming a brazen hatchet job on Julian Assange and WikiLeaks for its American subscribers on October 24th, just three days prior to a significant court date in Assange’s fight against extradition from the UK to the United States on October 27th.

“You can stream We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks on Netflix starting Sunday, October 24, 2021, at 12 AM PT / 3 AM ET,” Netflix Schedule reports.

We Steal Secrets was a “documentary” that is now so outdated beyond its 2013 release that one of its central characters, Chelsea Manning, is referred to by a dead name throughout its entirety. Why choose this specific moment to release it?

Well it doesn’t make much sense at all, if the timing wasn’t deliberately geared toward damaging Assange’s reputation in the nation whose government is trying to extradite him for exposing its war crimes. Assange’s October court date was set way back in August and Netflix didn’t announce it had scheduled to begin streaming this film until two weeks ago.

After all, We Steal Secrets was so egregious in its spin that not only did WikiLeaks supporters like World Socialist Website and journalist Jonathan Cook pan it as a smear at the time, but WikiLeaks itself went to the trouble of publishing a line-by-line refutation of the mountains of propaganda distortion heaped on the narrative by filmmaker Alex Gibney.

“The title (‘We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks’) is false,” WikiLeaks writes at the beginning of its response. “It directly implies that WikiLeaks steals secrets. In fact, the statement is made by former CIA/NSA director Michael Hayden in relation to the activities of US government spies, not in relation to WikiLeaks. This an irresponsible libel. Not even critics in the film say that WikiLeaks steals secrets.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

“They Were Seeing Blood”: Bombshell Report Details CIA’s ‘Kidnap Or Kill’ Plans Against WikiLeaks’ Assange

September 27, 2021

“They Were Seeing Blood”: Bombshell Report Details CIA’s ‘Kidnap Or Kill’ Plans Against WikiLeaks’ Assange

A bombshell Yahoo News investigation published Sunday is being called the most important deep-dive exposé in years detailing the lengths the CIA and US national security state went to nab WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange while he was holed up at the Ecuadoran embassy. US officials were even having meetings discussing possible assassination of the man who exposed so many secrets of American military and clandestine actions abroad.

Dozens of US intelligence officials, including many who had served under the Trump administration, are now confirming the CIA considered “options” for kidnapping and/or assassinating Assange and that plans were mulled over at the highest levels of CIA leadership. “More than 30 former U.S. officials — eight of whom described details of the CIA’s proposals to abduct Assange,” are sourced in the report, which further reveals the CIA targeted journalists who worked closely with WikiLeaks, including Glenn Greenwald.

Among the many key new revelations in the report includes that then CIA chief Mike Pompeo was itching for revenge against WikiLeaks and Assange after the “Vault 7” leaks, considered a massive embarrassment to the agency almost without parallel. This began years-running US intelligence “war” on the whistleblower organization publisher of leaked and classified materials, which had the end goal of destroying it and Assange.

WikiLeaks itself had publicized on multiple occasions reports of its legal and media team being victims of “professional operations” by CIA assets, and even provided surveillance footage of a “grab team” at various points camped outside the Ecuadorian embassy in London. We also learn that attempts to tie WikiLeaks to the Russian government was part of a CIA propaganda campaign tied to its ‘dirty war’ on the media entity.

Here’s how the lengthy and stunning investigative report begins:

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

WikiLeaks Puts Afghanistan Back on Media Agenda

September 13, 2021

WikiLeaks Puts Afghanistan Back on Media Agenda

Immigration Dominates Cable News

The war in Afghanistan — a subject that has generated periodic spikes in media interest but not a high level of sustained coverage — was back atop the mainstream news agenda last week. And this time, the catalyst was neither violence on the ground nor deliberations in Washington, but the leak of about 90,000 classified war reports by a whistleblower website.

Driven by WikiLeaks’ dissemination of those documents — which highlighted the difficult challenges faced by NATO forces — Afghanistan led the news for the week of July 26-Aug. 1, according to the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. Taken together, coverage of the WikiLeaks saga and the overall war effort combined to fill 19% of the newshole.

Afghanistan coverage has generally followed a roller-coaster trajectory in the past year. It jumped to 9% of the newshole in the last quarter of 2009 when President Obama decided on his surge of 30,000 troops. It then plunged to only 3% in the first five months of 2010. In late June, coverage spiked again when Obama removed Gen. Stanley McChrystal as Afghanistan commander after Rolling Stone published negative comments by him and his staff about the administration.

The WikiLeaks story triggered a renewed debate over the wisdom of U.S. strategy in Afghanistan. But it remains to be seen how long that will keep the war prominent in the headlines.

A number of other events, though, also competed for space last week. Indeed, four of the five media sectors examined in PEJ’s News Coverage Index had different lead stories. The WikiLeaks story led network news, but the economy topped the newspaper and radio sectors, the Gulf oil spill was No. 1 online and immigration was first in the cable sector.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Investors in US Weapon-Makers Only Clear Winners of Afghan War

August 22, 2021

Investors in US Weapon-Makers Only Clear Winners of Afghan War

Share prices of military manufacturers vastly outperformed the stock market overall during the Afghanistan War.

May 25, 2002: Two U.S. Army CH-47 Chinook helicopters land at Bagram Airfield in Parwan, Afghanistan, after completing a mission. (U.S. National Archives)

As the hawks who have been lying about the U.S. invasion and occupation of Afghanistan for two decades continue to peddle fantasies in the midst of a Taliban takeover and American evacuation of Kabul, progressive critics on Tuesday reminded the world who has benefited from the “endless war.”

“Entrenching U.S. forces in Afghanistan was the military-industrial complex’s business plan for 20+ years,” declared the Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group Public Citizen.

[Related: A People’s Guide to the War Industry, Part 1 and Part 2 and Part 3 and Part 4 and Part 5.]

“Hawks and defense contractors co-opted the needs of the Afghan people in order to line their own pockets,” the group added. “Never has it been more important to end war profiteering.”

In a Tuesday morning tweet, Public Citizen highlighted returns on defense stocks over the past 20 years — as calculated in a “jaw-dropping” analysis by The Intercept — and asserted that “the military-industrial complex got exactly what it wanted out of this war.”

The Intercept‘s Jon Schwarz examined returns on stocks of the five biggest defense contractors: Boeing, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and General Dynamics.

Schwarz found that a $10,000 investment in stock evenly split across those five companies on the day in 2001 that then-President Georg W. Bush signed the authorization preceding the U.S. invasion would be worth $97,295 this week, not adjusted for inflation, taxes, or fees.

According to The Intercept:

“This is a far greater return than was available in the overall stock market over the same period. $10,000 invested in an S&P 500 index fund on September 18, 2001, would now be worth $61,613.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Reporters Once Challenged the Spy State. Now, They’re Agents of It

May 14, 2021

Reporters Once Challenged the Spy State. Now, They’re Agents of It

News companies are pioneering a new brand of vigilante reporting, partnering with spy agencies they once oversaw

*Former CIA director John Brennan was a media villain, now he’s media himself.*

What a difference a decade makes.

Just over ten years ago, on July 25, 2010, Wikileaks released 75,000 secret U.S. military reports involving the war in Afghanistan. The New York Times, The Guardian, and Der Spiegel helped release the documents, which were devastating to America’s intelligence community and military, revealing systemic abuses that included civilian massacres and an assassination squad, TF 373, whose existence the United States kept “protected” even from its allies.

The Afghan War logs came out at the beginning of a historic stretch of true oppositional journalism, when outlets like Le Monde, El Pais, Der Spiegel, The Guardian, The New York Times, and others partnered with sites like Wikileaks. Official secrets were exposed on a scale not seen since the Church Committee hearings of the seventies, as reporters pored through 250,000 American diplomatic cables, secret files about every detainee at Guantanamo Bay, and hundreds of thousands of additional documents about everything from the Iraq war to coverups of environmental catastrophes, among other things helping trigger the “Arab Spring.”

There was an attempt at a response — companies like Amazon, Master Card, Visa, and Paypal shut Wikileaks off, and the Pentagon flooded the site with a “denial of service” attack — but leaks continued. One person inspired by the revelations was former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, who came forward to unveil an illegal domestic surveillance program, a story that won an Oscar and a Pulitzer Prize for documentarian Laura Poitras and reporters Glenn Greenwald and Jeremy Scahill. By 2014, members of Congress in both parties were calling for the resignations of CIA chief John Brennan and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, both of whom had been caught lying to congress.

The culmination of this period came when billionaire eBay founder Pierre Omidyar launched The Intercept in February 2014. The outlet was devoted to sifting through Snowden’s archive of leaked secrets, and its first story described how the NSA and CIA frequently made errors using geolocation to identify and assassinate drone targets. A few months later, former CIA and NSA director Michael Hayden admitted, “We kill people based on metadata.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Worse Than the Dreyfuss Affair: the Persecution of Julian Assange

May 12, 2021

Worse Than the Dreyfuss Affair: the Persecution of Julian Assange

It may appear unnecessary to repeat the truism that democracy depends on transparency and accountability, and yet, how often has the democratic order been betrayed by our leaders in the recent past? How often have the media abandoned their watchdog function, how often have they simply accepted the role of an echo-chamber for the powerful, whether government or transnational corporations?

Among the many scandals and betrayals of democracy and the rule of law we recognize the persecution of inconvenient journalists by governments and their helpers in the media. Perhaps the most scandalous and immoral example of the multinational corruption of the rule of law is the “lawfare” conducted against Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, who in the year 2010 uncovered war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by the United States and its NATO allies in Afghanistan and Iraq.

In a world where the rule of law matters, these war crimes would have been promptly investigated, indictments would have been issued in the countries concerned. But no, the ire of the governments and the media focused instead on the journalist who had dared to uncover these crimes. The persecution of this journalist was a coordinated assault on the rule of law by the United States, United Kingdom and Sweden, later joined by Ecuador. The instrumentalization of the administration of justice – not for purposes of doing justice, but to destroy a human being pulled more and more people into a joint-criminal conspiracy of defamation, trumped-up charges, investigations without indictment, deliberate delays and covers-up.

In April 2021 my colleague, Professor Nils Melzer, the UN Rapporteur on torture, published a meticulously researched and methodically unassailable documentation of this almost incredible saga…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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