Thread: Julian Assange, on the Cross

Daniel Ellsberg has called on the U.S. to indict him for having the same unauthorized possession of classified material as Julian Assange. Ellsberg follows the Cryptome.org founder who has also invited prosecution, reports Joe Lauria.





Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg has told the U.S. Justice Department and President Joe Biden that he is as indictable as WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange for having unauthorized possession of classified materials before they were published by WikiLeaks and that he would plead “not guilty” because the Espionage Act is unconstitutional.

Ellsberg revealed this week to the BBC interview program Hard Talk that Assange had given him the files leaked by U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to keep as a backup before they were published by WikiLeaks in 2010.

Assange has been charged with violating the Espionage Act for possession and dissemination of classified information and faces 175 years in a U.S. prison if he is extradited from Belmarsh Prison in London.


Ellsberg is the second figure this month to come forward calling on the U.S. government to indict them for the same reasons Assange has been charged.

“Cryptome published the decrypted unredacted State Department Cables on September 1, 2011 prior to publication of the cables by WikiLeaks,” John Young wrote in a Justice Department submission form, which Young posted on Twitter last week.

“No US official has contacted me about publishing the unredacted cables since cryptome published them,” he wrote. “I respectfully request that the Department of Justice add me as a co-defendant in the prosecution of Mr. Assange under the Espionage Act.”

The 1917 Espionage Act does not exempt journalists from receiving and publishing classified information, which Ellsberg says is a clear violation of the First Amendment and should be challenged in the U.S. Supreme Court.

Anyone who has downloaded a classified document from WikiLeaks, Cryptome or any other source, or posted it online is liable to prosecution under the Act, which would include millions of people around the world.

Receiving and publishing classified information is routine work for journalists at major publications. Five newspapers partnered with WikiLeaks to publish Manning’s material in 2010 but only Assange has been charged. Those five newspapers last week called on the Biden administration to drop the charges on Assange because of the threat to the First Amendment.

The Obama administration declined to indict Assange in 2011 because it understood that it would also have to indict New York Times editors and reporters for having published the same materiel Assange did. That is the only material Assange was indicted for.

He was not charged for releases exposing Central Intelligence Agency hacking activities in 2016, though that so infuriated then C.I.A. Director Mike Pompeo that Pompeo later asked for plans to be drawn up to either kidnap or kill Assange while he was living under asylum in Ecuador’s London embassy. The Trump administration then had Assange arrested and charged under the Espionage Act in 2019. Despite being part of the Obama administration, Biden has refused to drop the case.

When those plans were first revealed at Assange’s extradition hearing in 2020, Ellsberg said that the government was treating Assange worse than he had been treated and that it should have set Assange free.

“That’s essentially the same information that ended my case and confronted Nixon with impeachment, leading to his resignation!,” Ellsberg said in an email to Consortium News at the time.

Ellsberg’s prosecution for leaking the Pentagon Papers ended in a mistrial after President Richard Nixon’s “Plumbers” broke into Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office trying to get dirt on him by stealing his medical files; Nixon had Ellsberg illegally wiretapped; the government said it lost the wiretaps when asked to produce them at trial; and the government tried to bribe Ellsberg’s judge with the directorship of the F.B.I.

Daniel Ellsberg: Indict Me Too

Originally Posted by sabang

The 1917 Espionage Act does not exempt journalists from receiving and publishing classified information, which Ellsberg says is a clear violation of the First Amendment and should be challenged in the U.S. Supreme Court.

It is indeed and should be dumped along with simular laws which allow government organizations to hide wrong doings via simply deeming their illegal activities to be "classified".

‘Free Julian Assange!’ Say Latin America’s Leftist Leaders: Lula, AMLO, Petro, Maduro, Ortega, Kirchner, Evo, Zelaya




Latin America’s leftist presidents are leading the campaign to free Julian Assange. The WikiLeaks journalist has the support of Brazil’s Lula da Silva, Mexico’s Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Argentina’s Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, Colombia’s Gustavo Petro, Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro, Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega, Bolivia’s Evo Morales, and Honduras’ Manuel Zelaya.

A movement is growing in Latin America to demand the freedom of political prisoner Julian Assange, the Australian journalist persecuted by the United States for his work exposing its war crimes.

FULL- https://scheerpost.com/2022/12/07/free-julian-assange-say-latin-americas-leftist-leaders-lula-amlo-petro-maduro-ortega-kirchner-evo-zelaya/

‘Free Julian Assange!’ Say Latin America’s Leftist Leaders

It's good to know he'll have somewhere he'll be welcome when he gets out.

PILGER, BURCHETT AND ASSANGE: THREE EXTRAORDINARY AUSTRALIAN JOURNALISTS THAT SPOKE TRUTH TO POWER



Australia has produced extraordinary journalists across three generations: Wilfred Burchett (deceased in 1983), John Pilger (80 years old but still active) and Julian Assange (48 years old, currently in London’s Belmarsh prison).

Each of these journalists made unique contributions to our understanding of the world. Although Australia is part of the western world, each of these journalists exposed and criticized Western foreign policy.

WILFRED BURCHETT

Wilfred Burchett lived from 1911 to 1983. He was a farm boy and his experience in the depression shaped his dislike of oligarchs and preference for the poor. He went to Europe trying to volunteer for Republicans in the Spanish Civil War but that did not work out. Instead, he assisted Jews escaping Nazi Germany.

Burchett became a journalist by accident. Having seen the reality in Germany, he started writing many letters to newspaper editors. One of the editors took note of his fluid writing style and intensity. They contacted him to ask if he would like to report for them. Thus began a forty year writing career.

He covered WW2, first stationed with British troops in India then Burma. Then he covered the Pacific campaign stationed with U.S. troops. He was the first international journalist to report on Hiroshima after the atomic bomb. He evaded US military restrictions to go to Hiroshima and see reality for himself. In his story “The Atomic Plague”, published in the London Daily Express, Burchett said, “I write this as a warning to the world” and “Doctors fall as they work”. Immediately the US launched a campaign to smear his reputation and deny the validity of his story. The US military was intent on preventing people from knowing the long term effects of nuclear radiation.

Burchett’s report from Hiroshima was broadcast worldwide and called the “scoop of the century”. It exemplified his career based on first-hand observation and experience.

Over his 40 year career, he reported the other side of the story from the Soviet Union, China, Korea and Vietnam. He wrote thousands of articles and over 35 books. On China, he wrote “China’s Feet Unbound” in 1952. Two decades later he wrote (with Rewi Alley) “China: The Quality of Life”.

Burchett wrote “Vietnam: The Inside Story of a Guerrilla War” (1965) “My War with the CIA: The Memoirs of Prince Norodom Sihanouk”(1974), “Grasshoppers and Elephants: Why Vietnam Fell” (1977) and then “Catapult to Freedom: The Survival of the Vietnamese People” (1978).

Burchett’s life, experiences and observations are brilliantly recorded in his autobiography “At the Barricades: Forty Years on the Cutting Edge of History” (1980). They reveal the hardscrabble youth and early years, the leftist sympathies, the decades of journalistic work based on first-hand observations.

Burchett was vilified by the establishment political leaders in Australia. His Australian passport was taken, the government refused to issue him a new one and he was barred from entering Australia. Even his children were denied their Australian citizenship. Finally, after 17 years, Wilfred Burchett’s citizenship and passport were restored when Gough Whitlam became Prime Minister in 1972.

With his unassuming and affable manner, Wilfred Burchett became friends with leaders such as Ho Chi Minh, Norodom Sihanouk, and Chou en Lai. Bertrand Russell said, “One man, Wilfred Burchett, alerted Western public opinion to the nature of this war and the struggle of the Vietnamese people.”

This interview gives a glimpse into the character and personality of Wilfred Burchett.


JOHN PILGER


John Pilger is another extraordinary Australian journalist. After starting journalism in the early ’60s, he became a war correspondent covering Vietnam, Cambodia, Bangladesh and Biafra. He worked 25 years at London’s Daily Mirror and then had a regular fortnightly column for 23 years at the New Statesman.

His first documentary, “The Quiet Mutiny”, depicted US soldiers in Vietnam resisting their officers and the war. In 1974, when Palestine was often unmentionable, he produced “Palestine is Still the Issue”. Nineteen years later, he wrote the second part and described how Palestine is still the issue.

John Pilger has written/edited over ten books and made over 50 films. He told the story of atrocities in Pol Pot’s Cambodia with “Year Zero“. He exposed Indonesia’s stranglehold on East Timor in “Death of a Nation: The Timor Conspiracy”. In a four year investigation, he showed how working-class victims of the drug thalidomide had been excluded from a settlement with the drug company.

John Pilger exposed uncomfortable truths about his home country and its treatment of aboriginal people. He did this through films including “The Secret Country: First Australians Fight Back” (1985), “Welcome to Australia” (1999), and “Utopia: An Epic Story of Struggle and Resistance” (2013). He gives more history and detail in the book “A Secret Country” (1992).

In 2002 Pilger produced and movie and book titled “The New Rulers of the World” revealing the grotesque inequality in this “globalized” world where a few individuals and corporations have more power and wealth than entire countries.

In 2016 Pilger came out with the urgent and prescient video “The Coming War with China”.

More recently he produced “The Dirty War on the NHS” which documents the stealth campaign to privatize the UK’s National Health System. Many of John Pilger’s films can be seen at his website johnpilger.com .

In the 1960s and ’70s, Pilger’s brave and bold journalism received many awards and he was twice recognized as Journalist of the Year. But in recent years, there has been less acceptance as media has become more homogenized and controlled. In 2018 Pilger said, “My written journalism is no longer welcome – probably it’s last home was The Guardian, which three years ago got rid of people like me and others in pretty much a purge …”

Harold Pinter, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, says “John Pilger unearths, with steely attention, the facts, the filthy truth. and tells it like it is.


JULIAN ASSANGE


The third extraordinary Australian journalist is Julian Assange. He was born on 3 July 1971. He became a skilled computer programmer and hacker as a teenager. Later he later studied mathematics and physics at Melbourne University. According to one of his math teachers he was an exceptional student but he clearly had other tasks and priorities.

Assange has edited or co-authored at least four books. For three years he worked with Australian journalist and co-author Suelette Dreyfus to write “Underground : Tales of Hacking, Madness and Obsession in the Electronic Frontier”. First published in 1997, the Sydney Morning Herald called it “astonishing”. Rolling Stone described it as “An entirely original focus on the bizarre lives and crimes of an extraordinary group of teenage hackers.”

In 2012, Assange produced the TV series “The World Tomorrow”. Over 12 segments, he interviews Ecuador President Rafael Correa, the current President of Pakistan Imran Khan, the leader of Hezbollah Hasan Nasrallah, leaders in the Occupy movement, Noam Chomsky, Tariq Ali and many more.

In 2013, Assange and WikiLeaks produced the movie Mediastan. It shows WikiLeaks’ global travels to meet publishers of the secret documents. In 2014 OR Books published “When WikiLeaks met Google”. It consists of a discussion between Julian Assange and Google founder Eric Schmidt plus two companions. Assange writes a 51-page introduction which puts the discussion in context: how Google and other internet giants have become part of US foreign policy establishment.

In 2015 Assange edited “The WikiLeaks files: the world according to the US Empire” and in 2016 the book “Cypherpunks: Freedom and the Future of the Internet” was published.Assange and three other computer experts discuss the future of the internet and whether computers will emancipate or enslave us. One reviewer says, “These guys are really getting at the heart of some very big issues that practically no one (outside of Cypherpunk circles) is thinking about.”

But what makes Assange extraordinary is his work as editor in chief and publisher of WikiLeaks. Following are a few examples of information they have conveyed to the public:

* Corruption by family and associates of Kenyan leader Daniel Arap Moi.
* Corruption at Kaupthing Bank in the Iceland financial crisis
* Dumping of toxic chemicals in Ivory Coast.
* Killing of Reuters journalists and over 10 Iraqi civilians by US Apache attack helicopter in “Collateral Murder” video.
* 92,000 documents on the war in Afghanistan (and civilian casualties previously hidden)
* 400,000 documents on the war in Iraq (including reports showing the US military ignoring torture by their Iraqi allies)
* corruption in Tunisia (helping spark the Arab Spring)
* NSA spying on German leader Merkel, Brazilian leader Roussef, French presidents (Sarkozy, Hollande, Chirac) and more.
* secret agreements in the proposed Trans Pacific Partnership
* emails and files from the US Democratic National Committee
* CIA spying and other tools (“Vault 7”).

Julian Assange has received much recognition: Sam Adams Award, Time’s Person of the Year, Le Monde Person of the Year, Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism, Sydney Peace Foundation Gold Medal, Serena Shim Award and others.

But Assange has incurred the wrath and enmity of the US government. The “Collateral Damage” video and war logs exposed the brutal reality of US aggression and occupation. Kofi Annan, former Secretary-General of the United Nations, said the US invasion of Iraq violated international law. But there has been no accountability.

In response to WikiLeaks’ revelations, the United States has ignored the crimes and gone after the messenger who revealed the crimes. Thus Julian Assange was confined to the Ecuador Embassy for 7 years and is now in Belmarsh maximum-security prison. The US wants him extradited to the US where he has been charged with 18 counts of “Illegally Obtaining, Receiving and Disclosing Classified Information”. The extradition hearing is scheduled to begin on 24 February 2020.


ACROSS THREE GENERATIONS


Australia should be proud of these exceptional native sons. Each one has made huge contributions to educating the public about crucial events.
Wilfred Burchett reported from the “other side” when the West was waging war on Korea, Vietnam, Laos, and China. He was demonized and even called “Public Enemy Number One” during the Cold War. But those who read his reports and many books found an accurate and objective writer. His many books stand the test of time.

From the 60s to today, John Pilger has told stories that were never or rarely told. He has exposed facts and drawn conclusions which shame or should shame powerful forces, whether in the U.K., U.S.A. or Australia. He has documented the real heroes who are otherwise ignored.

Julian Assange is from the new generation. He has reported and published secret information about military-political power on “this side”. He has revealed truths that powerful forces do not want the public to know, even when it is being done in their name.

Now Assange is in prison and in danger of being extradited to the United States. If this is allowed to happen, it will mark a crushing setback and perhaps the death of independent investigative journalism.

John Pilger is a major supporter of Julian Assange. So is the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, Nils Melzer. In a blockbuster interview, he says “I have never seen a comparable case….The Swedish authorities … intentionally left him in limbo. Just imagine being accused of rape for nine-and-a-half years by an entire state apparatus and the media without ever being given the chance to defend yourself because no charges have ever been filed.” He goes to describe reading the original Swedish documents, saying “I could hardly believe my eyes…. a rape had never taken place at all…. the woman’s testimony was later changed by the Stockholm police… I have all the documents in my possession, the emails, the text messages.”

Melzer describes the refusal of governments to comply with his requests. He sums up what is happening and the significance. “A show trial is to be used to make an example of Julian Assange….. Four democratic countries joined forces – the U.S., Ecuador, Sweden, and the U.K. – to leverage their power to portray one man as a monster so that he could be later burned at the stake without any outcry. The case is a huge scandal and represents the failure of Western rule of law. If Julian Assange is convicted, it will be a death sentence for freedom of the press.”

The three extraordinary Australian journalists were all rebels and all international. They all depended on freedom of the press which is now at stake.

Feature photo | Pictured from left to right: John Pilger, Wilfred Burchett and Julian Assange

Rick Sterling is an independent investigative journalist. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and can be contacted at rsterling1@protonmail.com

https://www.mintpressnews.com/three-...-power/264753/

If Julian Assange's actions could be labelled "reporting", there is an interesting and ironic statement at the end of this article....the last few lines. He has received (from memory) about 30 international awards for reporting.




Biden Says If Trump Wins, Reporters Fearing Jail Plan to Flee the US

Jennifer Jacobs
23 February 2024


(Bloomberg) -- President Joe Biden told donors at a fundraiser Thursday that he heard from journalists who were planning to flee the US if Donald Trump was reelected because they feared being jailed.


Biden acknowledged former network news anchor Katie Couric, who was attending the event in California as a guest, and warned about the possibility of a Trump victory in an expected rematch this November.
“Katie, there’s two of your former colleagues — not at the same network — that have told me personally, that if he wins they’re going to have to leave the country because he’s threatened to put them in jail,” Biden said.
Couric previously worked at CNN, NBC News, CBS News, and Yahoo News, but in 2017 founded Katie Couric Media, a company that creates content for corporate partners and publishes newsletters. Biden did not elaborate further on which journalists he meant.
Trump, the frontrunner for the GOP nomination, has long claimed that many mainstream media outlets are biased against him and other Republicans, accusing them of coverage that casts conservative ideas and politicians unfavorably in favor of Democrats.
“Just another example of journalists who have over-inflated egos making themselves the center of attention because they have hyperactive imaginations,” Steven Cheung, a spokesman for the Trump campaign, said in response to Biden’s remarks.
Trump previously suggested Politico journalists who reported a draft Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade should be imprisoned if they did not reveal their sources to investigators examining the leak.
“You say ‘Who is the leaker? National security,’” Trump told attendees at an October 2022 rally in Texas. “And they say ‘We’re not going to tell you.’ They say ‘That’s O.K., you’re going to jail.’ And when this person realizes he’s going to be the bride of another prisoner very shortly, he will say ‘I’d very much like to tell you exactly who that leaker is!’”



The White House subsequently condemned Trump’s remarks as an “egregious abuse of power.”

“The freedom of the press is part of the bedrock of American democracy,” White House spokesman Andrew Bates said. “Calling for egregious abuses of power in order to suppress the Constitutional rights of reporters is an insult to the rule of law and undermines fundamental American values and traditions.”

Biden Says If Trump Wins, Reporters Fearing Jail Plan to Flee the US

Biden Says If Trump Wins, Reporters Fearing Jail Plan to Flee the US (Bloomberg) -- President Joe Biden told donors at a fundraiser Thursday that he heard from journalists who were ...

Originally Posted by Salsa dancer

If Julian Assange's actions could be labelled "reporting", there is an interesting and ironic statement at the end of this article....the last few lines. He has received (from memory) about 30 international awards for reporting.

And he got baldy orange cunto elected by being a pawn for russian intelligence.

So fuck him.

^ A documentary series, Web of Make Believe: Death, Lies, and the Internet, has an episode about the Seth Rich murder in DC. It goes into Assange’s part in spreading right wing conspiracy lies about Rich. Not feeling particularly sorry for Assange after being reminded of that.

"There's probably not a single topic regarding Julian Assange that makes my blood boil more than the endlessly recycled LIE that he didn't redact names."


- Mark Davis

Letting the bloke off would help generate 50 years worth of guff about how libertarian the US is.

Punishing him further serves no purpose.

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

Originally Posted by Salsa dancer
If Julian Assange's actions could be labelled "reporting", there is an interesting and ironic statement at the end of this article....the last few lines. He has received (from memory) about 30 international awards for reporting.

And he got baldy orange cunto elected by being a pawn for russian intelligence.

So fuck him.

Quite the comment.

Originally Posted by Salsa dancer

IHe has received (from memory) about 30 international awards for reporting.

And Obama won aNobel peace prize.

so what!

Originally Posted by helge

Quite the comment.

Quite the truth, too.

Originally Posted by DrWilly

And Obama won aNobel peace prize.

so what!

And why did he get it ?

Beats me

Originally Posted by helge

And why did he get it ?

Beats me

In fairness there weren't a lot of contenders.

2009 Nobel Peace Prize - Wikipedia