When Julian Assange is before a British Justice court hearing extradition as an alternative option to rendition to the “Land of the Free”, where are Main Stream media?
Those pesky Rooskis are running the trail and a quick read suggests Assange is on a hiding to nothing!
Assange detention illegal under English, European and international law, defence argues
Kicking off proceedings at Woolwich Crown Court on Wednesday, defense counsel Edward Fitzgerald argued that 17 of the 18 counts with which the WikiLeaks founder has been charged fall under the US Espionage Act, which makes them political on face value. He added that the 18th count, of conspiracy to commit computer intrusion, was in order to carry out the other alleged offenses.
AND
Assange blasts court for preventing communication with lawyers, alleges legal team is being SPIED on
Amid a prosecution argument about whether or not he stands charged with “political offenses” Assange stood and told the court that “the problem is I cannot participate, I cannot privately communicate with my lawyers.”
Assange is an Australian. But I see nowhere in mainstream Aussie news, the plight of this man.
Can’t find it in Granny Herald or Stuff?
And the BBC? Not even a sentence.
So, the questions I have are:
- Who is paying or putting pressure on Main Stream media, to completely ignore this outrageous American parody – called “ASSANGE”.
- Is folding in face of pressure or withdrawal of funding, or promises of plenty, to ignore the set up of the century, corruption?
Ross Meurant; a former high-ranking police officer, former Member of Parliament, formerly with commercial interests in Syria and Iran and currently Honorary Consul for an African state.
An enigmatic fellow you are Mr Meurant.
Very difficult to “compartmentalise’ you.
There are many who dislike you.
Obviously many did like you or you wouldn’t have been a Tory MP.
You columns must put you offside with “the establishment” yet many see you as part of it.
An enigma indeed.
My respect for Ross Meurant has risen considerably in recent times.
Assange brought us the video footage of Iraqi civilians being massacred in their own street by US helicopter gunners who couldn’t contain their glee as the victims scattered, running in panic and dying in a hail of bullets.
I remember with disgust, the laughter of the American crew as they slaughtered fellow humans.
I guess judges and ‘journalists’ (including those in New Zealand) and the prosecuting lawyers are just paid mercenaries under the collaborative network of the two psychos who run the US and the UK aided and abetted by SComo and his media serfs.
Congratulations to Ross Meurant in joining those principled people who still think the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth are still important.
Under the collaborative network of the two psychos who run the US and the UK aided and abetted by SComo
Rodel,while i totally agree with your sentiments, I hope you are not implying that things would be different and Jullian would now be doing the lecture circuit in the us, if the murderous killary were president?
No. No such implication.
We do what America wants END OF STORY.
I would suggest that the best place to follow this trial is Crai Murrays excellent website:
“There was a separate media entrance and a media room with live transmission from the courtroom, and there were so many scores of media I thought I could relax and not worry as the basic facts would be widely reported. In fact, I could not have been more wrong. I followed the arguments very clearly every minute of the day, and not a single one of the most important facts and arguments today has been reported anywhere in the mainstream media”
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2020/02/your-man-in-the-public-gallery-assange-hearing-day-1/
From Day 2:
“Day 2 proceedings had started with a statement from Edward Fitzgerald, Assange’s QC, that shook us rudely into life. He stated that yesterday, on the first day of trial, Julian had twice been stripped naked and searched, eleven times been handcuffed, and five times been locked up in different holding cells. On top of this, all of his court documents had been taken from him by the prison authorities, including privileged communications between his lawyers and himself, and he had been left with no ability to prepare to participate in today’s proceedings.”
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2020/02/your-man-in-the-public-gallery-assange-hearing-day-2/
That this is a show trial of a political prisoner with a serious message diredted at any future dissenting individual and with the active participation of a media that has agreed to the sacrifice of Assange can not be doubted. That the mainstream media are cowardly in their insatiable desire to destroy Assange and Wikileaks so that awkward truths no longer need to be acknowledeged is also beyond doubt.
https://medium.com/@KitKlarenberg/assange-guardian-new-york-times-betrayal-fe6dbbfe78fa
And
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2020/02/your-man-in-the-public-gallery-the-assange-hearing-day-3/
Spike’s Kit Klarenberg link on the role of the Guardian in particular, and NYT reposting it here
Excerpt:
“Julian was their fall guy. They printed a lie. These two high priests of journalistic integrity very happily colluded, reporting on something that hadn’t happened. The entire searchable Afghan War Logs interface was the sole creation of The Guardian, they promoted it on their website and in the paper, but then they turned round and said ‘we didn’t publish this, Julian did’. They set him up from the start. They should be in jail too,” Davis concluded. (emph added)
I had forgotten about the role of the Guardian in all of this. That is where it all ‘happened’. I think Glenn Greenwald was there then too, and that he left shortly after? I’ve checked the Intercept as I thought they’d have updates on the Woolwich trial or pre-trial or whatever it is, but so far could not find anything there.
Perhaps its best to allow Julian Assange to answer Ross Meurant’s questions
1. Who is paying or putting pressure on Main Stream media, to completely ignore this outrageous American parody – called “ASSANGE”.
2. Is folding in face of pressure or withdrawal of funding, or promises of plenty, to ignore the set up of the century, corruption?
All the people and interests who support war are opposed to Assange..
https://twitter.com/IntheNow_tweet/status/1233081864014876672/video/1
1. Julian Assange helped expose a pedophile ring
2. Duress, greed, corruption
Mhmmm… its obvious that this man is being’crucified’.
They have him firmly in their sights and they are determined to get him. And by ‘ they ‘ I mean the alliance between the USA and the UK. Along with other servers of the 5 eye agreement. And that includes us and Australia. He has embarrassed the USA and by default the rest of the 5 eye alliance.
And yet this man has done humanity as a whole the greatest of services by exposing the corrupted methodology of high political office in the West…
Years ago , in a more crude and barbaric way , with far less media coverage than is possible today ,… was another similar unfortunate. And although different, the treatment of this man was similar in many respects, and the end goal of crushing him and erasing him from history was essentially the same.
The mans name was Captain Alfred Dreyfus , who was wrongfully convicted of treason. And although conducted in an era of antisemitism ,… was still… an example of state power being used against an individual to essentially dismantle, discredit and erase the memory of an individual.
The same tactics are seen today in the silence of the mainstream media regarding Assange , and his shoddy treatment by state authority’s.
This , is quite a scary area we enter into… this,… is the very area people go when they take on the state. When every little thing they or their lawyers say is viewed with suspicion by media and state legal entities alike… this is why we have here laws that prevent us from talking freely about a trial until it is over. So that public opinion cannot sway the outcome.
Yet what greater swaying of the outcome can there be when media do not report accurately or even at all ? When defendants are quietly disposed of behind closed court doors and silently shipped out to serve out the rest of their lives in a prison cell while the memory of them and what they stood for is lowly dimmed in the public’s memory?
Because this is how Julian Assange is being treated right now as we speak.
Just like Captain Alfred Dreyfus was 100 years before him.
Captain Alfred Dreyfus
A commendable and poignant analogy Wild Katipo
No one is pressuring the media to ignore this issue – mainstream journalists know instinctively where there the boundary of acceptable reporting is.
If any of them do show worrying signs of independent thought, well, just ask Rachel Stewart, Gordon Campbell, and John Campbell where that gets you. Also take a look at where Robert Fisk and John Pilger do their reporting these days. They’re two of the best reporters of their generation and they’re totally pushed to the margins
Totally agree Aaron, Robert Fisk and John Pilger two of the best reporters of their generation and they’re totally pushed to the margins. We do have genuine journalists in NZ, Jon Stephenson, Nicky Hager, Paula Penfold, Eugene Bingham those you have mentioned and a handful of others, but they are an endangered breed. I am old enough to remember when quite a number of our msm repeaters got all expenses payed trips to murica to learn how to present “the news” some of whom are still active in the industry. The obscene way these hacks have bent over to distribute the party propaganda line makes me physically ill. IMHO, most of these repeaters are not fit to lick Jullian Assange’s shoes, the idea that any of them would hold power to account is simply laughable. I can only hope that should one of them actually attempt to do there job one day and is strung up by the corrupt system, that i am still around to watch. Thank you Ross for this blog, i was seriously beginning to wonder if any media were even going to mention Julian. I still chuckle when i think of the bands of intrepid repeaters who used to go on honest john’s junkets and would all stand around with brownley key etc. looking ridiculous in flack jackets and helmets when anybody with half a brain was aware that they were not going to get within a hundred miles of any live munitions, but hey the hotels and the perks were great. I have a sinking feeling in my gut that for telling the truth about the empires obscene murderous wars and theft, Jullian may spend the rest of his life in a yankee prison with the assistance of borris the buffoon and his scumbag judiciary.
Standing outside the Woolwich courthouse adjacent to the Belmarsh prison where Assange is detained, WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson said, “This is an anti-terrorist court here beside Belmarsh, and Julian is treated as a terrorist. He is strip-searched. He is handcuffed ten or 11 times a day. His [legal] material is taken away from him. It is totally unacceptable.”
Hrafnsson was speaking about the toll the proceedings and confinement are taking on Assange. In the afternoon, when the judge asked Assange if he needed a break, he stood up to address the court. He complained yet again about the lack of access to his attorneys and how there are security guards around him any time he wants to have a privileged conversation.
And, the defense informed the judge they would like Assange to be able to sit with them in the well instead of the glass box. [The judge] opposed the request, contending it was unreasonable to think she could approve that without a “risk assessment” from personnel involved in security.
When the defense made it clear they would make a formal request, she seemed to think they would have to ask for bail, which the prosecution would oppose. That prompted Lewis, the prosecutor, to inform the judge they took a “neutral stance.” He did not think a bail application was appropriate nor did he think it was as complicated as the judge was making it. Assange could have a security guard stand by him while he sat with his attorneys.
Kevin Gosztola is in London covering the trial. Excerpts from Shadowproof
So, the judge denied Assagne’s application to sit with his lawyers (even when the prosecution did not raise objections). His father, John Shipton, speaks out about this here on SBS
Excerpts:
Australian John Shipton says his son is experiencing “psychological torture” as he bids against US extradition in Woolwich Crown Court.
He says District Judge Vanessa Baraitser denying Assange’s request to leave the dock and sit with his lawyers in the court is “another failure of due process”.
“You see that this ends up as a continuance of the psychological torture of Julian that’s continued (to be) ramped up over 10 years,” Mr Shipton said.
“So the beginning of the week saw Julian strip-searched three times, handcuffed nine times, put in five different holding cells and his court reports and court work confiscated by prison authorities.
“Ending the week, as we’ve explained, (there was) refusal of the judge to allow him to move out of the glass box into the body of the court so he could be equally armed as due process requires.” More at the link.
“And I am absolutely outraged,” Hrafnsson said outside court.
“Even in America accused murders sit beside their lawyers in the courtroom without shackles.”
Back to day one: The defense for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange alleged that the director of a Spanish security company known as Undercover Global was contracted by Sheldon Adelson, a billionaire who is one of President Donald Trump’s biggest donors.
The allegation was made during the first day of a week-long extradition hearing unfolding at Woolwich Court in London. It is adjacent to Her Majesty’s Prison Belmarsh, where Assange is detained.
What happens this week will be a kind of prequel to a more substantial hearing scheduled to occur in late May and early June.
As the Spanish newspaper El País previously reported, Undercover Global targeted Assange when he lived in the Ecuador embassy in the United Kingdom on behalf of the CIA.
Personnel spied on privileged meetings between Assange and his lawyers. He met with his legal team in the women’s bathroom to ensure privacy, but it did not matter. They planted microphones in the women’s bathroom too.
Edward Fitzgerald, a defense attorney for Assange, alleged Morales returned from Las Vegas in 2017 after attending a security trade fair. The contract was to provide security for Adelson’s private yacht, but while he was in the United States, he inked a “side agreement” to go to the “dark side” and spy on Assange for U.S. intelligence.
A whistleblower, who worked for Undercover Global and was referred to in court as “Witness #2,” revealed data was collected and uploaded daily to a remote server. That information was accessed by U.S. intelligence. Original recordings, including sound, were collected from several microphones every 14 days.
This, too, is from Kevin Gosztola. Read more at Shadowproof
I remember the small posse on The Standard who react badly to the name of Assange because of the sexual taint. Nothing that he has done, is deserving of praise. What is happening to him now was always on the cards.
I hope he can hold on and survive mentally and physically. I have just looked at Donald Caskie’s book The Tartan Pimpernel- He was held only for a day thank goodness in a bottle cell at San Remo in Italy. Then in darkness for about a month in solitary. He had to use his imagination to transport his mind away. He had a strong faith and good times as a child to look back on. So I hope Assange has got those.)
(It is hard to accept this reality. Can anyone show me the way out of this ugly movie. Perhaps through the back door of John Malkovich’s brain.)
Looking up Kafka on google, there was this:
https://foreignpolicy.com/2014/01/29/kafka-and-orwell-the-rest-of-this-headline-has-been-redacted-by-the-nsa/
and
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jul/28/surveillance-law-france-uk-kafka
2015 Julia Powles
…the Conservative government has already made abundantly clear its intention to enact a single, comprehensive law – the so-called “snooper’s charter” – which many fear would unleash a tidal wave of surveillance at political and executive discretion.
This is where the other side of the channel comes in. Late on Thursday 23 July, in France’s highest constitutional body, the last safeguard of the rule of law fell, approving what is, by all measures, an intrusive, comprehensive, virtually-unchecked surveillance law.
A pipe-dream for two years, the French law gathered momentum in March this year in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attack, and was put together in the French parliament under emergency procedures, drastically reducing discussion time and preventing any meaningful debate. The law was overwhelmingly approved by parliament in June and immediately referred to the constitutional council by nearly everyone who could do so, including François Hollande – the first time the president has deferred a law voted by parliament in the Fifth Republic.
We all know Weka protects McFlock. McFlock who pushes woke ideology like an intellegience asset. And the authors of that place can’t even see it because they’re indoctrinated so hard into woke ideology.
“In courageously upholding political beliefs that most of [us] profess to share, [Julian Assagne] has performed an enormous service to all those in the world, who treasure the values of freedom and democracy and who therefore demand the right to know what their elected representatives are doing.”
That from Noam Chomsky, who gave evidence at the court.
He added, “So Julian Assange’s positive impact on the world is undeniable.” And, “The hostility it has provoked from the Trump administration is equally undeniable.” Linked here (scroll to end of article)
Great Questions.
Travesty of justice and freedom of speech in the prosecution of Julian Assange. Also the sovereignty of individuals is at risk, aka anybody can now be put on trial to be extradited to foreign countries for whistleblowing.
It’s a bad time to be an investigative journalist! Real news is now a crime.
At Scoop, Binoy Kampmark covered each of the four days of the proceedings.
Assange Hearings Day One
“The mission is to make journalism on official secrets, notably those covering atrocity and abuse, a crime.”
Excerpt:
The entire prosecution against Assange, submitted Fitzgerald, was an abuse of process, constituting a “political offence” which would bar extradition under the US-UK Extradition Treaty of 2003. The judge was reminded that the alleged offences took place a decade ago, that the Obama administration had decided not to prosecute Assange, and that the decision to do so in 2017 by the Trump administration saw no adducing of any new evidence or facts. The decision by Trump to initiate a prosecution was an “effective declaration of war on leakers and journalists.”
Assange Hearings Day Two
Assange Hearings Day Three
Excerpt:
Julian Assange, whose deteriorating condition has been noted for months by psychologists, doctors and UN Special Rapporteur on torture Nils Melzer, has been making a fist of it in the dock, despite being in Kafkaesque isolation. Exhaustion, however, is manifest. Judge Vanessa Baraitser has been keeping an eye on Assange’s demeanour, prodding his lawyers at one point to inspect him. His eyes had closed, his attention seemingly wavering. A point of permanent frustration for the WikiLeaks founder has been the din the hearings are causing and the distance, physical and symbolic, from his legal team. “I am as much a participant in these proceedings as I am at Wimbledon.”
———
As for the extradition treaty itself, Article 4 stipulates that, “Extradition shall not be granted if the offense for which the extradition is requested is a political offense.”
…The prosecution effectively relied on a peculiarity of the Westminster system: the Treaty, ratified in 2007, had not been incorporated into UK domestic law.
Assange Hearings Day Four
“As former UK diplomat Craig Murray observed, [Judge Baraitser] started to resemble something worse than a Dalek, a particularly stupid local government officer of a very low grade.”
Case to recommence on 18th May.
For those who want a daily witness to this appalling charade please visit Craig Murray’s site, eg:
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2020/02/your-man-in-the-public-gallery-assange-hearing-day-four/
This keeps me awake at night and I am so ashamed that it is Britain where it is happening.
And the BBC? Not even a sentence.
BBC does have a couple of articles on the first days of the extradition hearings, listed here
This is the latest that’s there: bbc 25th Feb Assange Phoned White House to Warn of Risks
And that is why previously trusted news outlets like BBC (Radio NZ in NZ) are no longer trusted and listened too by increasingly more people. They have the neoliberal news agenda to blame!
I have complained many times about the imbalance and inaccuracies in RNZ news, but the commercial stations are worse.
The net allows sampling of opinions which are particularly valuable for offshore and war zone information.
It is not Julian who is on trial here, it is our corrupt system of “justice”.
Seeing how he is treated, handcuffed, isolated, repeatedly strip-searched, exhausted, humiliated, denied communication with those who would represent him, …reminds me of this. They are still doing it, right here in our faces. Only, the corporate media turn away, pretend it is not happening, deny its significance for all of us.
terrible
Independent Australia covers the hearing here. Independent Aus Julian Assange Fights Extradition
This article dated 1st March references comments by other groups and individuals, including John Pilger.
Thank you for writing this article Ross. Naturally the spindoctors for the machine would wield an algorithm (or a billion of them) to prevent humans from accessing truth. Better off watching dating shows eh? They crucified Jesus over three days, apparantly; for Assange it has been years. To quote someone:
‘The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights Article 12 states: ” No one shall be subjected to interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour or reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks” Nils Metzler has already made his report condemning Assange’s treatment yet he, therefore the U.N., goes unheeded, snubbed even. One can only assume the worst: that the latest in BCI tech is being used on him against his wishes and in direct contradiction of Article 4: (no one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.) For to be held down and drugged, mugged and forced to reveal the intricacies of a lifetime’s work and learning is not only theft but virtual slavery.’
I also noted somewhere an article which read Julian Assange had helped expose a pedophile ring in Australia so that’s the motivation to shut him up and punish him for being a human. Doesn’t anybody believe Donald Marshall yet? Organic robots have no soul.
This guy has an interesting take on it:
https://www.michaelwest.com.au/media-dead-silent-as-wikileaks-insider-explodes-the-myths-around-julian-assange/?fbclid=IwAR3iHmUk6JPcp6GqH4RaCKqQUWQ-m7eCrn86gcETYm-r9nvauK5prE1cuuo
I’m ashamed to say I’m not wearing my “Free Assange” t-shirt everyday. With every report from the Kafka room, humanity’s chances of survival appear to be further down the plughole.
Thank you Jane
sorry about the multiple rants, some comments didn’t show for ages and I added more.
1. Read a headline I could not access the article but something like: ‘Assange helps expose pedophile ring in Australia’ (as we know, pedophile rings operate internationally)
2. I’d say more like duress than corruption, dunno really, it’s the machine in action as usual
Last year David Swanson of World Beyond War wrote 10 Reasons Assange Should Walk Free. No. 10 is particularly relevant.
Excellent article by Craig Murray again on the continued ‘torture” of Julian Assange and the indifference or even malevolence of the presiding magistrate.
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2020/03/the-armoured-glass-box-is-an-instrument-of-torture/
The Australian ABC have stepped up and give comprehensive coverage of the hearings here: Surveillance of Julian Assange Captured Lawyers Conversations
“It is incredibly troubling that our secret and privileged legal conversations with Julian Assange were recorded and apparently handed to US authorities,” [human rights lawyer Jennifer Robinson] told the ABC.
“It is one of the most fundamental principles of protecting attorney-client relationships that we are able to have confidential and private meetings, to discuss legal strategy.”
Robinson said that she believed Canberra had not done enough to protect Assange, an Australian citizen.
“This is a case in which an Australian citizen is facing 175 years in prison in the United States for the same publication for which he won a Sydney Peace Prize and the Walkley award for the most outstanding contribution to journalism,” she said, referring to WikiLeaks’ publication in 2010 and 2011 of confidential US documents that revealed, among other things, war crimes and illegal spying on world leaders.
“His Australian lawyers — all of us Australian citizens — have [also] had our rights as lawyers and our ability to give him a proper defence superseded by the US and potentially the UK Government.
“This is something that the Australian Government ought to be taking very seriously and ought to be raising both with the UK and with the United States. It is time the Australian Government stands up for this Australian citizen and stops his extradition.”
Nils Melzer is the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture and Professor of international law at the University of Glasgow. In this video he talks about the case of Julian Assange. It was recorded on 4th February 2020 at the Royal National Hotel in London, in a public rally organized by the “Don’t Extradite Assange Campaign.”
Youtube video here
A transcript of the speech is here
Please help his mother to try and get some light shed on this monstrous injustice..
https://www.gofundme.com/f/save-my-son-julian?utm_source=customer&utm_medium=copy_link&utm_campaign=m_pd+share-sheet
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