Saturday, May 25, 2019

DOES JULIAN ASSANGE'S INDICTMENT SET DANGEROUS PRECEDENT FOR JOURNALIST? - Isn't it really about protecting the unconvicted criminals ruling America?


AFP: Does Assange Indictment Set Dangerous Precedent for Journalists?



Assange
ADRIAN DENNIS/AFP/Getty Images
BREITBART LONDON
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4:14

(AFP) — Does the indictment of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange under the U.S. Espionage Act for publishing classified military and diplomatic documents threaten the constitutional right to freedom of the press?

Many legal experts fear it does, and say journalists could find themselves facing similar charges if they try to protect their sources.
“What he is accused of doing is exactly what professional journalists do every day — seeking, receiving and publishing important information about our government,” said Sonja West, a law professor at the University of Georgia.
“When it comes to the Espionage Act, this is a line that press advocates have been closely watching, and the Trump administration just crossed it.”
Sixteen of the 17 new charges against the 47-year-old Australian unveiled Thursday by the U.S. Justice Department are related to obtaining and disseminating classified information.
The military documents and diplomatic cables were obtained by former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, who was sentenced in 2013 under the Espionage Act to 35 years in prison over the leaks.
In a bid to head off a stampede of criticism from press freedom groups, Assistant Attorney-General John Demers said: “Julian Assange is no journalist.”
Ben Rhodes, a former senior official in the administration of Barack Obama, agrees.
“This is not journalism,” Rhodes said on his ‘Pod Save the World’ podcast.
“Julian Assange has essentially been operating at least in recent years as an extension of Russian intelligence. His motivation behind what he’s doing is not transparency,” he said. “It’s on behalf of a very specific agenda.”
But others note that the events date back to 2010, long before the 2016 presidential election campaign, when WikiLeaks published documents about the Democratic Party obtained by Russian intelligence.
“For the first time in the history of our country, the government has brought criminal charges against a publisher for the publication of truthful information,” said Ben Wizner of the American Civil Liberties Union.
“This is an extraordinary escalation of the Trump administration’s attacks on journalism, and a direct assault on the First Amendment.”
Bound for the Supreme Court? 
For Floyd Abrams, a prominent constitutional law specialist, “the question, I think, should not be whether Assange is a journalist but whether the First Amendment protects his conduct.”
Indeed, the amendment is seen as the bedrock worldwide for the defence of media rights.
“If Julian Assange is convicted… the concern is that there will be no meaningful principle to distinguish the rejection of the First Amendment argument for him from the application of the First Amendment defense to the mainstream media,” explains Mary-Rose Papandrea, a professor at the University of North Carolina School of Law.
“There actually isn’t a very good way of defining who counts as a journalist these days,” she said.
“There never has been, but particularly with the internet, anybody can be a journalist, anybody can be a third party that receives information from a source.”
The indictment also raises questions about the precise scope of the Espionage Act, which was passed in 1917 — shortly after the United States entered World War I — to prevent leaks of confidential information during wartime.
“What makes the indictment against Assange so concerning is that it exposes just how vulnerable journalists are under the Espionage Act,” West said, saying the law is written “very broadly.”
The Obama administration targeted leaks from within the government like no White House before it, but did not indict any journalists under the law, and also elected not to file such charges against Assange.
Before Obama took office, a handful of people, including at least one journalist, were charged with violating the Espionage Act for obtaining and publishing classified information, but each time, the cases were dropped.
An editor has never been charged. Some say Assange would fall under that title at WikiLeaks.
Papandrea says she believes the Assange case will end up in the U.S. Supreme Court, which has yet to consider the constitutionality of the law.
“If the U.S. can prosecute a foreign publisher for violating our secrecy laws, there’s nothing preventing China, or Russia, from doing the same,” the ACLU’s Wizner warned.

CHINESE AND RUSSIAN SPIES ALREADY HAVE 1,000xs MORE SHIT ON THE CRIMINALS RULING OUR COUNTRY!


“Identity politics has created a prison of the mind…while Julian rots in one which is far more real”


“Attorney General Eric Holder's tenure was a low point even within the disgraceful scandal-ridden Obama years.” DANIEL GREENFIELD / FRONTPAGE MAG

New charges against Julian Assange under the Espionage Act criminalize journalism

In a historic assault on the freedom of the press, the US Justice Department announced Thursday that WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange had been indicted on 17 counts under the Espionage Act.
Assange is being persecuted by the US government for carrying out journalistic activities protected under the First Amendment of the US Constitution. The indictment alleges that Assange, “having unauthorized possession of, access to, and control over documents relating to the national defense, willfully and unlawfully caused and attempted to cause such materials to be communicated, delivered, and transmitted to persons not entitled to receive them… by publishing them on the Internet.”
The new charges supersede a previous indictment against Assange released in April, related to alleged computer hacking and carrying no more than five years in prison. These charges were simply a fig leaf to give Ecuadorian government cover for ejecting Assange from its embassy in London.
The charges carry up to a combined 170 years in prison. However, there is nothing to prevent US authorities from bringing additional charges bearing the death penalty if he is extradited to the United States from his current imprisonment in the UK.
The prosecution of Assange is the spearhead of the drive by the American ruling class to eviscerate the First Amendment and dismantle democratic rights. If Assange is convicted, it will mean that the publication of documents outlining the illegal activities of the US military/intelligence apparatus will be effectively criminalized.
Chelsea Manning, the former Army intelligence officer who provided the documents released by WikiLeaks, condemned the indictments, declaring that administration officials “use the law as a sword, and have shown their willingness to bring the full power of the state against the very institution intended to shield us from such excesses.” Manning remains imprisoned for contempt after she courageously refused to testify before the grand jury hearing the case against Assange.
Notably, several of the charges pertain specifically to obtaining and publishing documents related to the US government’s torture at Guantanamo Bay and other sites throughout the world. Assange sought to publish, according to the indictment, “operating and interrogation procedures at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; documents relating to Guantanamo detainees,” and “CIA detainee interrogation videos.”
Those who carried out these crimes have gone unpunished, and in many cases—including that of current CIA Director Gina Haspel—retain posts at the highest levels of the American state.
The move marks the first time that a journalist has been charged under the 1917 Espionage Act.
US prosecutors attempted to convict Daniel Ellsberg, a contractor at the RAND Corporation who photocopied internal reports on the Vietnam War and distributed them to the press as the Pentagon Papers, under the act. Based on its claims that Ellsberg violated the law in obtaining the documents, the Nixon White House attempted to stop the New York Times and Washington Post from publishing the papers.
In its 1971 ruling on the New York Times Co. v. United States, the Supreme Court upheld the right of the Times to publish the stolen secret documents, declaring, “Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government. And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell.”
The prosecution of Assange for publishing “documents relating to the national defense” represents an attempt not only to reverse this ruling, but to make the very dissemination of documents by journalists a crime.
The New York Times published an editorial Thursday night stating that the indictment “is a marked escalation in the effort to prosecute Mr. Assange, one that could have a chilling effect on American journalism as it has been practiced for generations. It is aimed straight at the heart of the First Amendment,” which protects “the ability of publishes to provide the public with the truth.”
The editorial concludes that the “case now represents a threat to freedom of expression and, with it, the resilience of American democracy itself.”
However, for the last decade, the Times’ coverage of the persecution of Assange has been compromised by malicious hostility to the WikiLeaks publisher. Indeed, in the very editorial criticizing the attack on the First Amendment, the Times lends credence to the Justice Department’s case, declaring that “there is much to be troubled by in Mr. Assange’s methods and motives, which remain murky.”
In its accompanying “news” article, the Times states as fact that Assange has “morphed” into a “tool of Russia’s election interference,” and that WikiLeaks “published Democratic emails stolen by Russia as part of its covert efforts to help elect President Trump.” The anti-Russia narrative, promoted by the Democratic Party and the media, has been used not only to justify the persecution of Assange, but also to create the framework for internet censorship and other attacks on free speech.
For years, both the Times and the Post lent credibility to the US government’s fraudulent campaign against Assange and the manufactured allegations of sexual assault. When Assange was dragged by British police from the Ecuadorian embassy last month, the Times commended the White House’s handling of the case, declaring, “The administration has begun well by charging Mr. Assange with an indisputable crime.” The Post likewise praised his arrest, declaring Assange to be “long overdue for personal accountability.”
Assange, the Times states in its news article, is not a “conventional journalist.” Yes, he is not “conventional” because he does what the corporate media dares not do—fearlessly expose the crimes of the American state. Over the past two decades, the media, led by the Times, has transformed itself into an apologist and propagandist for the United States’ endless wars.
This reality was summed up by the boast by former Times Editor Bill Keller in 2010 that “Freedom of the press includes freedom not to publish, and that is a freedom we exercise with some regularity.” Assange and a small number of other journalists have refused to go down that road.
All those involved in the attack on Assange—from the Trump administration, which has filed charges against him; to the media and the Democratic Party, which have supported his persecution and provided the political ammunition; to the various pseudo-left, upper middle class organizations that have justified his arrest or remained silent—bear responsibility not only for his tragic situation, but also for the precarious state of the First Amendment and democratic rights as a whole.
The working class is the only social force committed to the defense of democratic rights, and it is the working class, mobilized on the basis of a socialist perspective, that will free Assange. It is urgent that the fight for the freedom of Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning be extended and connected to the growing struggles of workers throughout the world against inequality, war, authoritarianism and the capitalist system.


WIKILEAKS EXPOSES THE OBAMA CONSPIRACY TO FLOOD AMERICAN WITH DEM VOTING ILLEGALS

“The watchdogs at Judicial Watch discovered documents that reveal how the Obama administration's close coordination with the Mexican government entices Mexicans to hop over the fence and on to the American dole.”  Washington Times

Obama Funds the Mexican Fascist Party of LA RAZA “The Race”… now calling itself UNIDOSus.


"This is country belongs to Mexico" is said by the Mexican Militant. This is a common teaching that the U.S. is really AZTLAN, belonging to Mexicans, which is taught to Mexican kids in Arizona and California through a LA Raza educational program funded by American Tax Payers via President Obama, when he gave LA RAZA $800,000.00 in March of 2009!

Previous generations of immigrants did not believe they were racially superior to Americans. That is the view of La Raza Cosmica, by Jose Vasconcelos, Mexico’s former education minister and a presidential candidate. According to this book, republished in 1979 by the Department of Chicano Studies at Cal State LA, students of Scandinavian, Dutch and English background are dullards, blacks are ugly and inferior, and those “Mongols” with the slanted eyes lack enterprise. The superior new “cosmic” race of Spaniards and Indians is replacing them, and all Yankee “Anglos.” LLOYD BILLINGSLEY/ FRONTPAGE mag



VIDEO:
THE FRAUDULENT CLINTON FOUNDATION EXPOSED.
PAY-TO-PLAY FROM THE FIRST DAY!


Is it a signal that she's back in the game because she's selling her president-ability to the world's global billionaire crowd and laying the groundwork for more funds?  There are all kinds of ways for foreign billionaires to get money to the U.S. without consequences, after all.  What's more, it's pretty much the biggest base of support she has, which is at least one reason why she lost the 2016 election.
*
“The couple parlayed lives supposedly spent in “public service”
into admission into the upper stratosphere of American wealth, with incomes in the top 0.1 percent bracket. The source of this vast wealth was a political
machine that might well be dubbed “Clinton, Inc.” This consists essentially of
a seedy money-laundering operation to ensure big business support for the
Clintons’ political ambitions as well as their personal fortunes.
*
The basic components of the operation are lavishly paid speeches to Wall Street and Fortune 500 audiences, corporate campaign contributions, and donations to the ostensibly philanthropic Clinton Foundation.”
*
"But what the Clintons do is criminal because they do it wholly at the expense of the American people. And they feel thoroughly entitled to do it: gain power, use it to enrich themselves and their friends. They are amoral, immoral, and venal. Hillary has no core beliefs beyond power and money. That should be clear to every person on the planet by now."  ----  Patricia McCarthy - AMERICANTHINKER.com
///

THE DEMOCRAT PARTY’S BILLIONAIRES’ GLOBALIST EMPIRE requires someone as ruthlessly dishonest as Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama to be puppet dictators.

http://hillaryclinton-whitecollarcriminal.blogspot.com/2018/09/google-rigged-it-so-illegals-would-vote.html

1.     Globalism: Google VP Kent Walker insists that despite its repeated rejection by electorates around the world, “globalization” is an “incredible force for good.”

2.     Hillary Clinton’s Democratic party: An executive nearly broke down crying because of the candidate’s loss. Not a single executive expressed anything but dismay at her defeat.

3.   Immigration: Maintaining liberal immigration in the U.S is the policy that Google’s executives discussed the most.

HILLARY CLINTON’S GLOBALIST VISION:

SURRENDER OF OUR BORDERS WITH NARCOMEX AND SUCKING IN GLOBAL BRIBES FOR THE PHONY CLINTON FOUNDATION


Even though it has gone virtually unreported by Corporate media, Breitbart News has extensively documented the Clintons’ 
longstanding support for “open borders.” Interestingly, as the Los Angeles Times observed in 2007, the Clinton’s praise for 
globalization and open borders frequently comes when they are 
speaking before a wealthy foreign audiences and donors.



Leaked Julian Assange Message:

 

Hillary Is A ‘Well Connected, Sadistic, Sociopath’

 


"But what the Clintons do is criminal because they do it wholly at the expense of the American people. And they feel thoroughly entitled to do it: gain power, use it to enrich themselves and their friends. They are amoral, immoral, and venal. Hillary has no core beliefs beyond power and money. That should be clear to every person on the planet by now."  ----  Patricia McCarthy - AMERICANTHINKER.com

Clinton Foundation Put On Watch List Of Suspicious ‘Charities’


"But what the Clintons do is criminal because they do it wholly at the expense of the American people. And they feel thoroughly entitled to do it: gain power, use it to enrich themselves and their friends. They are amoral, immoral, and venal. Hillary has no core beliefs beyond power and money. That should be clear to every person on the planet by now."  ----  Patricia McCarthy - AMERICANTHINKER.com

An appeal to young people

Defend the right to tell the truth! Defend Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning!

Today, thousands of young people will demand that governments “tell the truth” about the scale and dangers of climate change. While this takes place, two champions of press freedom, of the right to tell the truth, are imprisoned, their lives in danger.
Julian Assange is locked-up in Belmarsh maximum security prison in London, facing US extradition proceedings on 17 charges under the Espionage Act that carry 175 years in prison. He has been charged for publishing true information about US government war crimes.
The founder of the groundbreaking investigative news outlet, WikiLeaks, Assange is the recipient of Amnesty International’s UK Media Award, the Reader's’ Choice Award for Time Person of the Year, the Voltaire Award for Free Speech and a Gold Medalist of the Sydney Peace Foundation. He has also repeatedly been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Julian Assange
WikiLeaks’ major exposures include:
  • The “Collateral Murder” video showing the brutal killing of unarmed Iraqi civilians by the US military.
  • The Afghan war logs revealing the killing of 195 civilians, suppressed by the US and its allies, and the creation of a “black unit” assassination squad.
  • The Iraq war logs revealing 15,000 civilian deaths known to the US military and suppressed, the cultivation of sectarian death squads and the use of torture.
  • The Guantánamo Files documenting the illegal imprisonment of at least 150 Afghan and Pakistani civilians, who the US authorities knew had no connection to terrorism.
Chelsea Manning, a former US soldier and whistleblower, leaked material to WikiLeaks that played a vital role in the exposure of war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Both she and Assange have suffered appallingly as a result.
Manning spent seven years in prison, one of those in solitary confinement, before being released, but crucially not pardoned, by President Barack Obama in 2017. She is now back in prison for refusing on principle to testify to a secret grand jury convened to bring trumped up criminal charges against Assange and WikiLeaks.
Assange was confined for nearly seven years in prison-like conditions in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he was granted political asylum against US extradition threats for espionage. He could not leave as UK police were stationed 24/7 outside, ready to seize him for a minor breach of bail before passing him on to the American government. In 2016, the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention ruled that he was being “arbitrarily detained” and that he should be released and compensated.
Last month, a visibly ill Assange was dragged out of the Ecuadorian Embassy by a squad of British police after the Ecuadorian government illegally removed his political asylum. The UN Special Rapporteur on torture warned that this decision exposed him “to a real risk of serious violations of his human rights, including his freedom of expression, his right to a fair trial and the prohibition of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”
Assange is now serving a maximum sentence of nearly a year for a bail violation in Belmarsh—normally used to house those convicted of major crimes such as murder and terrorism offences. He is kept to his cell 23 hours a day and has had contact with his lawyers impeded.
A series of hearings is underway to secure his extradition to the US, where he faces decades of imprisonment if not the death penalty. This past Monday, his personal effects, including his correspondence with his legal team, were handed over by the Ecuadorian Embassy to the United States.
Assange and Manning’s democratic rights have been torn to shreds. This has only been made possible by the disgusting campaign of lies and slander waged against Assange in the mainstream press. A manufactured case of sexual assault in Sweden, already closed twice due to lack of evidence, is being used to blacken his name and provide a pretext for imprisoning him until the real case can be brought in America. At the same time, every political organization—including Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party, the Greens and Scottish National Party—has either maintained a shameful silence on Assange’s persecution or is actively supporting it.
These forces have sought to isolate WikiLeaks from the immense popular support that exists for the work of Assange and his dedicated staff. To the extent that young people protesting today are unaware of what has been described above, the forces of reaction have been successful. With the fate of Assange and Manning reaching a crossroads, however, an international movement is now building in their defence.
Neither is a prisoner by any legal right. They are prisoners of class war, being made an example of by the ruling elite whose crimes they exposed. The final responsibility for their release therefore does not lie with the courts or capitalist politicians, but with the working class and youth who owe them a great debt.
Assange and Manning’s most important contribution to the world has been their exposure of imperialist intrigues and militarism. In Assange’s own words, WikiLeaks acts as an “intelligence agency of the people”—against their governments. A damage assessment authored by the US Department of Defense after the WikiLeaks releases on Iraq and Afghanistan admitted the main threat posed by WikiLeaks was that it “could be used by the press or our adversaries to negatively impact support for current operations in the [Middle East].”
Today’s protest is focused on the imminent catastrophe—in the next few decades—facing humanity if climate change is not averted and repaired. Yet such is the ferocity of the ruling elites’ war plans today that a more imminent danger is posed by the threat of major wars, including a third world war fought with nuclear weapons which promises catastrophe for humanity.
Tensions between the US and Iran, China, Russia and even Europe are at an unprecedented level. The Trump administration is engaged in an immense trade war with Beijing and is seeking to cripple Chinese technology company, Huawei. Washington is throttling the Venezuelan and Iranian economies with crippling sanctions to force regime change and has threatened military action if these plans fail. There are 12,000 NATO troops, along with tanks, aircraft and artillery, stationed on Russia’s Western border.
Meanwhile, UK Foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt has said that the UK must double its military budget in a decade. Overall global military spending in 2019 topped $1.8 trillion dollars, the highest on record.
The Middle East, the South China Sea, Venezuela, the India-Pakistan border, the Russian border—any of these flashpoints could be the spark to a global conflagration.
Defending Assange and Manning is the first critical step in building a powerful anti-war movement to prevent such a catastrophe. The International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) calls on all young people concerned about the fate of the planet to join the campaign for their freedom.

“Identity politics has created a prison of the mind…while Julian rots in one which is far more real”

Oxford University student calls for defence of Julian Assange

The following letter was received from Kristen, a student at Oxford University who attended the May 12 public meeting in London convened by the Socialist Equality Party, in defence of jailed WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and courageous whistleblower Chelsea Manning.
Kristen sent her comments to Alice Summers from the International Youth and Students for Social Equality, responding to her remarks at the meeting. Alice’sspeech dealt with fundamental political and theoretical issues that must be tackled in taking forward the defence of Assange and Manning in the universities, where identity politics and other forms of anti-Marxism are so prevalent.
Alice Summers speaking at London meeting
I attended the meeting on Sunday because Julian Assange is one of us. If Assange is extradited to America and tried under the Espionage Act, he will likely face the death penalty. But this is not simply a matter of the life or death of one man. Nothing less than the truth and freedom are at stake. It is dismaying to witness the silence of media. Many journalists serve as nothing more than a mouthpiece for governments, and it seems to be sheer cowardice that is preventing more from speaking out.
Today they have come for Assange, but tomorrow they will continue to find all those who seek the truth and to hold established powers to account. This is why the meeting held in London and the motion passed there is of such great importance. We must stand together and protect all whistle-blowers, journalists, and publishers who undertake huge personal risk for our right to know. If nothing else, the media must see it as their responsibility to make such uncovered information known to society. It is our responsibility to act as a people.
The condemnation of Assange by students is a worrying illustration of the power identity politics has come to hold over this generation. Many are unaware that Assange has made clear his willingness to face charges in Sweden, provided prosecutors can promise no further extradition to America will be carried out. To me it seems clear that this is evidently not about sexual assault, yet many have condemned him before he has even been found guilty.
The triumph of identity politics in our universities has rendered students incapable of serious analysis that goes behind the news curtain. In such an environment, it becomes increasingly difficult to speak against the opinions which appear to be held by a very loud majority. Such stifling of behaviour and thought allows the treatment of Assange to go unobstructed, privileging language and perception over very real and very dangerous realities. Identity politics is curtailing our freedom.
We must move beyond this constraining mindset, we must rid ourselves of the cage in which it keeps our thoughts and actions, and we must act together to secure the freedom of Assange. Identity politics has created a prison of the mind we languish in, while Julian rots in one which is far more real.
On the occasion of the Peterloo Massacre in 1819, Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote the Mask of Anarchy. Its last stanza serves for me as a message of courage, at a time when we may need it now more than ever:
“Rise like lions after slumber,
In unvanquishable number,
Shake your chains to earth like dew,
Which in sleep had fallen on you,
Ye are many—they are few.”
We must unite together against the treatment of Julian Assange and for all those who place the freedom of man higher than their own. We must rid ourselves of the fear that keeps us caged. Above all, we must remember we have nothing to lose but our chains.

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