{"id":46840,"date":"2019-06-23T08:01:52","date_gmt":"2019-06-23T13:01:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=46840"},"modified":"2019-06-23T08:01:58","modified_gmt":"2019-06-23T13:01:58","slug":"the-coming-show-trial-of-julian-assange","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=46840","title":{"rendered":"The Coming Show Trial of Julian Assange"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.truthdig.com\/articles\/the-coming-show-trial-of-julian-assange\/\">The Coming Show Trial of Julian Assange<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.truthdig.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/Empire-DC-418x500.jpg\" alt=\"The Coming Show Trial of Julian Assange\"\/><figcaption>Mr. Fish \/ Truthdig<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">LONDON\u2014On Friday morning I was in a small courtroom at Westminster Magistrates\u2019 Court in London. Julian Assange, held in Belmarsh Prison and dressed in a pale-blue prison shirt, appeared on a video screen directly in front of me. Assange, his gray hair and beard neatly trimmed, slipped on heavy, dark-frame glasses at the start of the proceedings. He listened intently as Ben Brandon, the prosecutor, seated at a narrow wooden table, listed the crimes he allegedly had committed and called for his extradition to the United States to face charges that could result in a sentence of 175 years. The charges include the release of unredacted classified material that posed a \u201cgrave\u201d threat to \u201chuman intelligence sources\u201d and \u201cthe largest compromises of confidential information in the history of the United States.\u201d After the prosecutor\u2019s presentation, Assange\u2019s attorney, Mark Summers, seated at the same table, called the charges \u201can outrageous and full-frontal assault on journalistic rights.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Most of us who have followed the long persecution of Assange expected this moment, but it was nevertheless deeply unsettling, the opening of the final act in a Greek tragedy where the hero, cursed by\u00a0<em>fortuna<\/em>, or fate, confronts the dark forces from which there is no escape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The publication of classified documents is not a crime in the United States, but if Assange is extradited and convicted it will become one. Assange is not an American citizen. WikiLeaks, which he founded and publishes, is not a U.S.-based publication. The message the U.S. government is sending is clear: No matter who or where you are, if you expose the inner workings of empire you will be hunted down, kidnapped and brought to the United States to be tried as a spy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&nbsp;\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Coming Show Trial of Julian Assange LONDON\u2014On Friday morning I was in a small courtroom at Westminster Magistrates\u2019 Court in London. Julian Assange, held in Belmarsh Prison and dressed in a pale-blue prison shirt, appeared on a video screen directly in front of me. Assange, his gray hair and beard neatly trimmed, slipped on [&hellip;]<\/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":[26119,9035,827],"class_list":["post-46840","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-belmarsh-prison","tag-chris-hedges","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46840","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=46840"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46840\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46841,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46840\/revisions\/46841"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=46840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=46840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=46840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}