{"id":10607,"date":"2015-08-01T08:41:16","date_gmt":"2015-08-01T13:41:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=10607"},"modified":"2015-08-01T08:41:16","modified_gmt":"2015-08-01T13:41:16","slug":"kafka-like-persecution-of-julian-assange","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=10607","title":{"rendered":"Kafka-like Persecution of Julian Assange"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Kafka-like Persecution of Julian Assange<\/a><\/h3>\n

In an era when powerful institutions demonize decent people \u2013 and the mainstream media joins in, piling on the abuse \u2013 legal proceedings have become another Kafka-esque weapon of coercion. Few cases are more troubling than the persecution of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, as John Pilger describes.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/header>\n

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The siege of Knightsbridge is both an emblem of gross injustice and a grueling farce. For three years, a police cordon around the Ecuadorean embassy in London has served no purpose other than to flaunt the power of the state. It has cost \u00a312 million (about $18.7 million). The quarry is an Australian charged with no crime, a refugee whose only security is the room given him by a brave South American country. His \u201ccrime\u201d is to have initiated a wave of truth-telling in an era of lies, cynicism and war.<\/p>\n

The persecution of Julian Assange is about to flare again as it enters a dangerous stage. From Aug. 20, three quarters of the Swedish prosecutor\u2019s case against Assange regarding sexual misconduct in 2010 will disappear as the statute of limitations expires. At the same time Washington\u2019s obsession with Assange and WikiLeaks has intensified. Indeed, it is vindictive American power that offers the greatest threat \u2013 as Chelsea Manning and those still held in Guantanamo can attest.<\/p>\n

\"WikiLeaks<\/a><\/p>\n

The Americans are pursuing Assange because WikiLeaks exposed their epic crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq: the wholesale killing of tens of thousands of civilians, which they covered up, and their contempt for sovereignty and international law, as demonstrated vividly in their leaked diplomatic cables.<\/p>\n

WikiLeaks continues to expose criminal activity by the U.S., having just published top secret U.S. intercepts \u2013 U.S. spies\u2019 reports detailing private phone calls of the presidents of France and Germany, and other senior officials, relating to internal European political and economic affairs.<\/p>\n

None of this is illegal under the U.S. Constitution. As a presidential candidate in 2008, Barack Obama, a professor of constitutional law, lauded whistleblowers as \u201cpart of a healthy democracy [and they] must be protected from reprisal.\u201d In 2012, the campaign to re-elect President Barack Obama boasted on its website that he had prosecuted more whistleblowers in his first term than all other U.S. presidents combined.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kafka-like Persecution of Julian Assange In an era when powerful institutions demonize decent people \u2013 and the mainstream media joins in, piling on the abuse \u2013 legal proceedings have become another Kafka-esque weapon of coercion. Few cases are more troubling than the persecution of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, as John Pilger describes. The siege of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7742,6963,7745,7743,2001,4376,7744,7746,7679,771,865,880],"class_list":["post-10607","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-coercion","tag-consortium-news","tag-ecuadorean-embassy","tag-john-pilger","tag-julian-assange","tag-kafka","tag-knightsbridge","tag-london","tag-manning","tag-sweden","tag-washington","tag-wikileaks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10607","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10607"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10607\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10608,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10607\/revisions\/10608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}