Thanks entirely to the brilliance of Chris Hedges in leading me through the material, I think this is the most clear outline of the Assange case which I have ever given.
I wish to address some social media attacks:
Nobody is paying me to be here to campaign for Julian, other than the subscribers to this blog who fund in a wider sense all of my activity. Where there have been paid ticket events, the money is not for me. I have received some contributions towards expense, totaling about $850, which doesn’t even meet my initial air ticket.
I realise I should not let malicious allegations get under my skin, but I do think it is important to contradict them with facts.
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It shocks anew each time the facts of this extradition hearing are laid out. Listening to you relay it all to Chris Hedges it could not be more obvious that our judicial system is just a sham. A tool of the security state and venal politicians, and ultimately Washington and Langley. That the irregularities and enormities of this case are not treated as a national scandal, even by self-styled adversarial media, suggests to me that Britain is now condemned forever to be a craven puppet nation. If even such blatant railroading as this is treated as normal by the entirety of ‘respectable’ media and politicians what pride can anyone have in this benighted country?
Much the same can also be said of the Scottish judicial system. Just a controlled sham, as you know to your cost.
Speaking on the judicial system: I have asked this before, Assange has been 4 years in Belmarsh now, does anyone know how long Assange can be confined in jail like this? Is there no legal limit?
No, there’s no legal limit.
Wow that is absurd, thanks!
Wonderful!!!
big TQ for all the work you do! some of your endeavours were mentioned in a post by Consortium News yesterday – https://consortiumnews.com/2023/09/15/murray-blocked-from-assange-courthouse-in-virginia/
Free Julian Assange!!
The bastards can do what they will but they can’t contradict you when you reply “I’m still here”.
One commentator who has addressed the contempt shown for the rule of law which CM talks about is C J Hopkins. He’s being prosecuted in Germany for a satirical tweet about Karl Lauterbach the BRD’s (ex?) Minister of health. His take is
“The point of prosecutions like this (and much more serious and significant prosecutions, like that of Julian Assange, for example) is to send a message. The naked disregard for the rule of law, the blatant absurdity of the charges, the open contempt for democratic principles, is all part of the message. It’s not a message about the law. It’s a message about power. Who has it, and who doesn’t. And what happens to those who refuse to bow down to it.”
i.e. the state is saying we’re in charge here, what we say goes, and if you don’t like it – tough.
https://consentfactory.org/2023/08/24/the-road-to-totalitarianism-part-3/
Hopkins has done an interview with Max Blumenthal on the Grayzone. CM has also recently done an interview on the Grayzone about Assange and about his own imprisonment for reporting on the Salmond trial.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zr3DeygcHCY
Just goes to show that C19th liberalism had three bastard children of the C20th, Stalinism, fascism and bourgeois liberalism. They are the three cheeks of the same arse, as George Galloway would put it.
Good point.
I wonder though, if rather than the label “bourgeois liberalism” maybe “(Western) Democracy” is more accurate ?
Stalinism: Stalin, Lenin, Marx;
Fascism: Hitler, Mussolini, Franco;
Democracy: Thatcher, Reagan; Blair, Obama, Clinton.
Just a thought.
All of these ideologies are rather too closely connected with colonial oppression of peoples, as history and ongoing events tells us. Postcolonial theory also rightly reserves a special mention for the bourgeoisie, including the compromised native bourgeoisie among oppressed peoples.
@Alf
I think you put that rather well. The system of robbery extends well beyond national boundaries. The USSR couldn’t do this because of the strategy of containment by the USSA, which meant that the Soviet regime had to make do with its indigenous resources. Boot on the other foot these days….
Democracy is a misnomer because Britain and the US have never been democratic. They are secular republics ruled by oligarchies and an executive president, hence the fake electoral systems and tame unicameral legislatures. There has never been a democratically-elected government in Britain. Even in 1931 when the Tories (Officials) got 55% of the vote it was 55% of a 76% turnout (not to mention plural voting, university constituencies and the gerrymanders in nireland).
Quite !
Democracy is constantly rammed down our gullets by TPTB as the reason why we are so blessed in the west. The fact is that it is just ‘doublespeak’. We are still oppressed, controlled, lied to, jailed and murdered by our wonderful freedom loving establishment.
Voting is just complicity in this sham and an example of keep doing the same thing and expecting a different result – IMO.
That’s what Dugin says.
I mean I agree with the thrust. Just talking about how you phrase it.
Even if you were being paid to campaign for Julian, so what? Would that somehow ennoble the actions of these judges and their handlers? Or those who support them? All it does is confirm they have no answer for the outrageous abuses of the law in this case. It is also most likely projection. If anybody is being paid surely it is these lickspittles who relentlessly leap to the defence of venal elites.
Most precise, all inclusive and comprehensive, an excellent all round representation of Julian’s plight under a western cabal.
Thank you Craig. It takes 6 hrs. for any extradition flight and activist around the world will have to be on a minutes readiness to act, prepare press releases in advance and be on the tarmac if that is possible.
I hope that Craig is able to be there, but expect that the revenge bloodhounds will try their best to frustrate his moves, in which case others will have to take up the baton and run with it.
Democracy and party politics are dead ducks, only the people, the ignored and bamboozled, are left to show our contempt for what is happening.
take good care of yourself.
If/When Assange is extradited/renditioned to the USA I suspect it will be via military transport and military airbases and it will be immediate, an American plane will already be on the tarmac awaiting the foregone verdict.
Where are you, ET, when we most need you, and your hovering wisdom?
As frankygiggles mentions, there’d be nothing wrong to get paid to campaign for Julian. Actually, as Tatyana well knows, there’s no free lunch in America.
For lack of a tomahawk steak, a filet mignon might suffice.
Stevie boy, worry not. There’s absolutely no chance Julian would be extradited before Election Day in November 24. That’d be bad publicity for both candidates. CIA would probably accept Julian’s suicide in a UK jail, but they don’t need it. The message is already clear enough: if you’re just confused, like Chelsea Manning, we can let go after a while, but if you’re a die-hard adversary like Assange, you’ll never get out.
They don’t need him in Alexandria. He’s already cooked.
When the day comes that Mr Murray buys a round trip ticket to the States for USD 850, please let me know the name of the travel agent.
Meanwhile, he should be more than careful about his laptop if he uses Amtrak at any time.
Good luck !
Re. “There’s absolutely no chance Julian would be extradited before Election Day in November 24.”
Unfortunately, I’m a pessimist, glass half empty guy. I’ve seen no evidence amongst the general public that they give a damn or are sympathetic to Julian’s plight. As such, I don’t see an extradition negatively impacting the results of the election. What’s more, all main stream parties (the Uniparty) support his extradition, gutless c*nts that they are. in the event, I would also expect that a media blackout would be voluntarily imposed plus some distracting tactics like the public Crucifixion of Russell Brand.
I sincerely hope I’m completely wrong.
Extremely well put. Sadly, you’re correct in that the country, in general, don’t care one bit; even more to the point if they knew who Julian Assange is. If any TV station took a camera team into the streets to film the reaction to Assange’s plight I’d wager they would look into the camera and respond with’Who he ?’ Most sadly of all is that his fellow main stream media journalistic colleagues don’t use their trade union to protect themselves from speaking out on Assange’s behalf.
The working class has more immediate problems than the fate of a (former) member of the middle class. I’m sure that when the facts are put to them, individual workers are sympathetic but that means it’s up to us to get the vote out.
Good old “democratic” Britain, where you can literally be locked up for years in prison without having been convicted of any crime. At some point, even Kim Jong-un is going to start looking like a moderate.
That’s liberals for you, cardigan with leather elbow-patches when the going’s good, cardigan off to reveal the jack-boots when there’s a bump in the road. Britain now is Germany 1937 but then, it’s always been that to respectable society’s outsiders.
Great interview that says it all.
You would presume journalists for solidaristic and self protection reasons would be outraged by all the illegalities judges have wilfully ignored in this extradition case.
You would be wrong.
Peter Oborne’s new column for Declassified UK.
“Over Assange, Britain’s Press Prefers to Serve Power Not Media Freedom”
https://www.declassifieduk.org/over-assange-britains-press-prefers-to-serve-power-not-media-freedom/
Thanks for the link Dom. I shall forward it to others.
What would a US jury decide on? If it is about the question of “national security” the US government will prep the jury members by convincing them of protecting the greater good with convicting Assange. So eventually this would be about morals, about what the US government considers morally sound and what it believes the majority of the American people feels morally sound to ensure its safety and well-being. Thus it is a moral, not a legal, argument manipulating the personal feelings and judgement of the individual members of the jury. Additionally they would use the Russiagate ruse and the current war.
p.s. wasn´t Zola convicted on similar grounds by the French during the Dreyfus affair? They too argued with the threat to French national security even though Zola was simply defending Dreyfus in his paper. Unlike Assange Zola could flee to – England. Ha-Ha.
To quote Chomsky, if an argument brings up “national security” it most likely is never about the security of the nation. In fact they are contradicting each other. “The greater good” is the opposite of its true meaning.
“Where the people fear the government you have tyranny. Where the government fear the people you have liberty.” Quite a naive way of putting it.
I think the plan is to have the trial in a district close to Langley, so that all the jurors will in some way be connected to the security state, so that the trial verdict will predictably be guilty..Daniel Hale, who blew the whistle on Obama’s drone program was tried in a court across the river from Washington.
yeah. I was in D.C. once. Even the coffee shop owner was essentially a government employee.
On the other hand, some of the most critical fellows worked on the “Mall”.
I am unsure as to whether Julian will be allowed a jury trial in the USA or not. Trials involving “treason” are a special category and may not allow for either a jury or independent witnesses. The trial of Chelsea Manning was one such, if the courts can be persuaded that the “offence” is serious enough that the whole absurd case may be held in a closed court. He is not classed as a US citizen and therefore may not get even basic civil rights. How a UK judge might entertain the idea that a fair trial could proceed on what is simply a case of publishing inconvenient facts that have embarrassed the military powers that be is hard to understand without thinking that such a decision has been in some manner bought and paid for.
That thing masquerading as a judge (although she may have been a magistrate and not a judge if it makes any difference) during Assange’s UK court appearances told me all I needed to know. Assange is NEVER going to get a fair trial in the UK/US. The things that she was doing were so ridiculous. The bias, the sneering contempt, and this is the judge I am talking about! It was incredible to witness (not in person of course).
Our ‘justice’ systems are so far gone at this point. I would say these various concocted persecutions (usually involving sexual accusations of course) are easily as bad as any ‘show trial’. And these are not inconsequential people. Some are the democratically elected leaders of political parties and former First Minsters.
I really fear for Mr Assange. Nothing has been fair about this entire charade from the very start. They are railroading him. Just like Lady Dorrian did to you Craig. It is all so disgusting to me it is beyond belief, surreal. What country are we in, what century? It has been a real eye-opener for me these last 10 years especially…
That’s what Assange is for.
I was already very ‘cynical’ shall we say well before wikileaks appeared on the scene. When they did, I did not trust them at all.
My doubt or question at the time was, let’s see what subjects they don’t leak versus what they do… Let’s see if there is any pattern to that.
Wikileaks never developed anywhere near long enough to answer that question but the relentless, ruthless persecution of Assange ever since does answer it, at least for me. It’s vindictive and it is wildly so.
This is what it actually means to be a beacon of democracy and a leader in the glorious free world that is the West today. And ‘they’ believe their BS !
Your comment about your own jail time probably being for supporting Julian Assange seems plausible, jigsaw identification seemed to lack the precision needed in the law. I forgive my own naivety in believing there was some attempt at fairness in the justice system after you express the same. I had 80 years life experience before the last 3 years really pulled all the rugs that supported my belief in many institutions.
I had less than your 80 years of life experience including some unpleasant ones with student activism but the last – 2 – years pulled some rug from under my assumptions of how institutions work, at least concerning Germany, and GB too, regarding Labour and some media outlets (since these affairs were never reported in Gemany.)
p.s. just like in GB, top level trade unionists in Germany intend to support UKR wholeheartedly.
With all due respect (and you certainly are due a huge amount, way more than most who are, sadly, in positions of power far higher than Ambassador), how the prosecution of Trump looks to the rest of the World is the State finally starting to catch up on one of the Mob’s biggest bosses. The idea that you espouse about that in this interview is, frankly, utter nonsense to anyone who’s spent even half as much time – listening to the legal details of the different cases, as well as to Trump incriminating himself over and over again in MSM interviews – as you spent detailing the cases of Assange, Salmond and yourself. And if you read nothing else on the matter, you really should take a look at the 14th Amendment.
Trump himself doesn’t even believe he should be the next POTUS – he professes to *believe* that he was already elected for a second term (regardless of whether he served it or not), ergo constitutionally he can’t run for a third.
As for the rest of the interview, it’s quite breathtaking to have to come to the same conclusion – based on pattern of behaviour – as you have about the British (in)“justice” system. It’s like all other systems in the UK; the corpo vultures are tearing them to shreds so they can’t actually function in anything other than an inequitable manner, if at all. They are the real anarchists (in the modern sense, not Spanish Civil War sense), trying to make the UK libertarian at best, uninhabitable at worst. I really hope that you will have time to organise to support Assange if it comes to that but I fear that it won’t be the biggest news in the World on that day as they will likely move him out to a black site with such speed that neither you, nor other activists, are aware until the deed is done and then media coverage will be muted by some other distraction event. I also fear that there won’t be any sort of public trial and that it will simply go before a closed-door military “hearing”. After all, since due process has clearly failed multiple times in the UK, why would we expect it to be followed any better in the US (where judges are overtly bought and paid for through election campaigns)? I really hope I’m wrong on this and that it doesn’t even come to extradition because somehow justice finally functions in the UK but I do fear it.
To be clear, it’s been pretty obvious that a pattern of behaviour established in the UK and the US since before the Millennium justifies your conclusions about the nature of “democracy” in those places but to argue that one of the most overtly corrupt people – who got to the very top and so egregiously exploited the nature of that system – being prosecuted for it is an example of how undemocratic the system is, is a facile argument.
Sure, could and should others have been prosecuted before him, yes. But that doesn’t mean the system actually trying to do its job in respect of him is a live example of the system being undemocratic.
To turn such logic as you espoused on its head: you necessarily imply that it would at least *look* democratic to the rest of the World if the system deliberately chose not to prosecute a Mob boss. Actually, you imply that there’s a specific timing required for this condition to be met and that that timing is in the (in theory) democratic choosing of the system’s next leader! That implication is as illogical as you so exquisitely explain is the USSC’s ruling on US legal jurisdiction and rights for foreign, abroad USAID participants.
The non-existence of UK/US “justice” having been so comprehensively demonstrated, you kind of have to start wondering why Australian Special Forces don’t break Assange out of Belmarsh and repatriate him.
a short interview snippet vie Twitter on a CEO who suggested to introduce digital IDs with an individual carbon allowance which then you can start selling or buying up others´ carbon overspending just like between business today. Cooooool.
“Dutch political commentator Eva Vlaardingerbroek speaks out on the WEF’s plan to impose a personal carbon allowance, linked to a digital identity card, under the guise of solving the climate ”
https://twitter.com/WallStreetSilv/status/1702806616511242745?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1702806616511242745%7Ctwgr%5E48b9e821509f60b2cb8f728c8b7f69b8714e2fac%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nakedcapitalism.com%2F2023%2F09%2Flinks-9-19-2023.html
Thanks for another brilliant exposure of the lies used to keep Julian is custody.
Vis-à-vis Trump incriminating himself on video (which he uses as a form of self-promotion), see GlockGate…
Berliner Zeitung with report & interview with Stella Assange on the occasion of Julian Assange receiving the Konrad-Wolf Award by Berlin Academy of the Fine Arts last night.
“Stella Assange in Berlin: His children have never been alone with their father
The wife of the WikiLeaks founder accepted the Konrad Wolf Award in Berlin on Sunday evening on behalf of her husband. He protects Julian Assange, she says.”
https://www.berliner-zeitung.de/kultur-vergnuegen/debatte/stella-assange-in-berlin-julian-hat-es-mit-einer-rachsuechtigen-macht-zu-tun-li.2151754
“(…)
Film director Thomas Heise will speak of the German government’s droning silence in the matter of Julian Assange on Sunday evening at the Akademie der Künste.
The director of the AdK’s Film and Media Art section will give the laudatory speech for this year’s winner of the Konrad Wolf Prize, Julian Assange. In order to be able to honor him, the Academy has deviated from the usual practice of honoring an artist.
Julian Assange, founder of the WikiLeaks disclosure platform, receives the award for having provided journalistic clarification in the best sense, says Thomas Heise. The AdK will show one of the most famous film documents that came to public attention thanks to WikiLeaks in 2010: “Collatoral Murder- Kollateralmord” is the name of the short film that shows on-board videos of two U.S. combat helicopters during a mission in Baghdad in June 2007, in which civilians, including two journalists, were killed and two children were injured. Thomas Heise calls it a war crime. We spoke to Julian Assange’s wife Stella Assange, who traveled from London to represent her husband, before the award ceremony.
* * *
Mrs. Assange, you are here to accept the Konrad Wolf Award for your husband Julian Assange. When was the last time you saw him and did he give you a message for Berlin?
I saw him on Thursday, and he asked me to express his appreciation to the jury. By acknowledging him, you keep his case alive. The worst thing that can happen to him is that he is forgotten. The Konrad Wolf Award is much more than an appreciation, it means protection.
Julian Assange has been in prison for four and a half years, what about the attention to his case?
It’s growing. There is a global movement that is campaigning for Julian’s freedom. Every day there are protests somewhere. In his home country of Australia, 80 to 90 percent of the population is in favor of his release. That puts pressure on the government. In Italy, there is a grassroots movement to make Julian an honorary citizen in various cities. In Naples and Rome, that just happened. Last year, the European Parliament selected him as one of three finalists for the Sakharov Prize. More and more people are realizing what his case has to do with freedom of the press, and the public’s right to know the truth, which is especially important in times of war.
What can this pressure do?
His case is political.
You say that, the British judiciary would deny it.
The judiciary moves in the political space, that’s an unspoken secret. Whether the judicial process is seen as legitimate depends on what the public thinks about it. That’s why the court focuses primarily on the trial itself, the process, rather than around the principles underlying it. This is a trick, and it has been going on for years now. In that time, human rights groups have looked at Julian’s case in detail, Amnesty International, Reporters Without Borders, and their interpretation is also getting out to the public. A lot depends on that.
So there is hope?
Absolutely! No one can argue away the fact that Julian is paying with his life. He was in the Ecuadorian embassy for seven years without being able to leave the building, and now he has been in prison for four and a half years. He is dealing with a vengeful power that is corrupting the laws and the justice system to keep him imprisoned. The law would simply have to be applied for his arbitrary detention to end. Julian Assange is a political prisoner.
The UN Special Rapporteur Nils Melzer describes Julian Assange’s prison conditions as torture. What are these conditions like?
Nils Melzer visited Julian in Belmarsh prison. That’s a maximum security prison in the UK, it’s known as the UK’s Guantanamo Bay. He is in his cell for 22, 23 hours a day, has no internet access. After a year, they gave him a laptop so he could prepare for his trial. A laptop without a word processor. You can read PDFs with it, but he can’t take notes for his lawyers, for example. How is he supposed to defend himself like that? The way he is treated is cruel, it is dehumanizing. Few people have been in Belmarsh as long as Julian. In his wing, he is the one who has been there the longest. The others have long since been transferred or discharged. When we talk on the phone, the conversation is cut off after ten minutes.
How often can you visit him?
Once or twice a week for an hour and a quarter or an hour and a half. We sit on one side, he on the other.
We – do you mean your children? What is it like for them?
They only know it in this environment, this big hall where about 40 detainees sit with their friends and family. It’s incredibly loud. They’ve never been alone with their father. They have to stay seated the whole time, he can read to them, they get to sit on his lap. I can hold his hand across the table. There are cameras everywhere, security guards, everything is recorded. He’s not even convicted, but he’s been there longer than some violent criminals. They serve their sentences and are released, but Julian is still there.
Why doesn’t the British justice system either extradite him to the U.S. or release him?
That’s a good question. The High Court won’t even let him appeal the extradition. He is not allowed to present his arguments in court. This is absolutely astonishing, precisely because there are human rights organizations that attach great importance to the case. It’s about freedom of the press, but the High Court doesn’t want to hear that. I don’t know what’s going on behind the scenes, but this is just shocking.
What happens if Julian Assange is extradited to the US?
If there is a public hearing and the decision is made to extradite him, we would be at the end of our options in the UK. He can then appeal to the European Court of Human Rights.
Despite Brexit?
The U.K. is actually still obligated to accept that court as the final authority on human rights issues, even if the current U.K. government wants to change that by law. But suppose they just break the rules and extradite him before anyone can tell them not to – then he would be taken to Alexandria in Virginia, which is something like the security center of the US. The headquarters of the CIA, the Pentagon – everything is in close proximity. Most of the residents work for government institutions. If you convene a jury here, you can’t stop someone from working for the government because so many do. Julian would be put in solitary confinement, maybe even the strictest form, because his case is about national security.
What is the strictest form of solitary confinement?
In the U.S., there are a lot of prisoners in solitary confinement, it’s routine there. Currently there are about 80,000. The worst form is called SAM, Special Administrative Measure, which covers housing, correspondence and visitors. One can make a 15-minute phone call once a month. Visits are probably not allowed at all. When it came to his extradition, the U.S. assured him SAM would only be applied if he did something that required that measure. And the British court accepted that.
Should that come to pass: How can one live like that?
One can’t. That is the point.
(…)”
US retired law prof. Marjorie Cohn with a commentary on Australia´s bidding to drop charges against Assange. She argues (see hyperlinks) the Assange case would put a strain onto US-Australian relations since 90% of Australians oppose the extradition.
“Assange Freedom May Be Pivotal in Australia’s Support for US Cold War With China – Australian cooperation with the United States’ cold war against China is not a slam dunk.”
24/10/23
https://scheerpost.com/2023/10/24/assange-freedom-may-be-pivotal-in-australias-support-for-us-cold-war-with-china/