Today Julian reaches precisely five years of incarceration in the Ecuadorean Embassy and I am on the train down to London for events to mark the anniversary. Given that two days ago I couldn’t make it to my balcony, I feel quite chuffed with my powers of recovery.
Yesterday I wrote that Corbyn’s advance has removed the “unelectable policies” excuse from New Labour and they have now to decide whether they are actually socialist or have adopted neo-liberalism out of belief.
Precisely the same faux-left now face precisely the same challenge over Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. The “sexual allegations” never stood up to five minutes’ serious analysis, but they served their purpose brilliantly for some years. They enabled the “left” of the political establishment completely to evade the question of whether they supported whistleblowers on war crimes and corruption, or whether they supported official secrecy and the spiralling authoritarianism that defends the neo-liberals.
There is now only one active question with regard to Julian Assange. Do you think he should be extradited to the United States to face espionage charges and life imprisonment for publishing the Chelsea Manning Iraq war crime revelations, and for assisting Edward Snowden to escape? Because that is now the only legal jeopardy he faces.
All the faux-left who dodged that question now have to answer it.
Assange is wanted by the Metropolitan Police for what they themselves have called the “minor charge” of missing a bail appointment. It is indeed a minor charge, normally dealt with by a fine, particularly as the extradition request relating to the bail order is no longer in force. Assange’s defence is that he did not skip bail to run away, but to seek an alternative legal remedy – the political asylum process. That this latter has priority is proven by the fact that there are numerous people granted asylum in the UK who face “criminal” charges in their home country. Fear of persecution – often by unjust prosecution – is of course the basis of asylum.
But even ignoring this solid defence, there are many thousand people in the UK today who have missed bail. Julian Assange is the only one of those thousands with a permanent roster of plain clothes detectives keeping watch 24 hours a day. Why, when there are no longer any allegations for him to face? There is no open and honest logic to it.
The answer of course is that Theresa May and Amber Rudd have plans firmly in place for Assange to be arrested and incarcerated, while extradition to the United States is quickly arranged. That is why a man wanted on nothing but a “minor charge” has more police resources devoted to him than any murderer. Again I ask – which side are you on?
Pamela Anderson has written an open letter to and on behalf of Julian Assange displaying a special kind of love for the man.
http://theduran.com/pamela-anderson-writes-open-letter-to-julian-assange/
So they are actively seeking to extradite to a country that has the death penalty. Let alone any notion of proportional sentencing.
By what democrat process was this agreed to?
Independence means nothing, zero, zilch.
Agents of a foreign power subevrting UK democracy.
@ Ishmael June 19, 2017 at 10:10
And the Yanks aren’t the only ones whose agents have that power over us!
They certainly influence the government, as many things can and do.
Of course I’m aware of the nexus of many social realations that influence the system.. I’m just repeating myself really. But in this case it bears repeating.
What if it were the other way round.
Suppose you checked your bank account one day and found a lot of money had gone missing. The bank investigates and finds someone in America had hacked into their computer and emptied your account. Would it be right for that person to be immune from prosecution because they weren’t physically in the UK committing the crime when they were virtually in the UK committing the crime? How about someone grooming children? Should they be immune from prosecution because they do it from a different country?
These are the legal matters relevant to the case, America put into place laws to deal with the legal loopholes the internet created, if you commit a crime using telecommunication equipment owned by an American company you are deemed to have committed it on American soil.
The rights and wrongs of the Assange case are different, this is the law, the law doesn’t always have much to do with right and wrong.
I don’t care about American soil fred. I care how people are treated by this system in this country when under it’s jurisdiction.
I don’t care what America has in place. I care what we have in place. And international law.
Assuming I think people should be immune because I don’t agree to extradition to USA’s cruel and unusual punisment systems is just a bad deflection of the critical basic points in this case.
Quite agree, Fred’s casuisitry is pathetic.
While the USA insists that US law applies when the telecommunication equipment is located on US soil they don’t care if US companies break telecommunication laws outside the US. From Germany the US head companies of “German” companies send too much customer data to the USA. Even collecting such data in Germany from German customers is illegal according to German law. Sending German customer data to the USA is illegal, too. Nevertheless these US companies do that in Germany.
Legal and illegal aren’t really valid terms of practical legal procedures in the US because the US will only apply those laws they themselves deem “useful” for the US.
It is “useful” for the USA to persecute Julian Assange.
It is “useful” for the USA to not punish their own companies illegal activities in- and outside the USA.
Yet American companies do get fined under EU laws. Facebook just got fined $122 million, Microsoft had hefty fines a while back and google is facing a $1 billion fine.
Don’t forget Apple’s €13 billion fine!
That’s not a fine. That’s just an overdue tax bill. But yes, there’s no question the EU messes with American companies all the time.
(Just in competition law, there’s the €1bn fine for Intel, the conditional clearance for Dow/DuPont, a whole pile more merger review, etc.)
That’s a two way street, with the US Federal government stance on Deutsche bank and Credit Suisse.
Britain’s Barclays bank (which received the largest bailout of any bank in the UK during the 2008 crash) is or has already in line for a fine from the US Federal government.
http://www.cnbc.com/2016/12/23/deutsche-bank-and-credit-suisse-agree-billion-dollar-fines-with-us-authorities.html
Hang on a minute. The premise of your post is wrong. The data was not stolen so that its ownership transfered from one party to another. The data was not “emptied” from one account to another; it was simply published somewhere else. The original data is still where it was in the first place. Secondly, you cannot possibly compare the publication of, in the main, crimes or wrong doing by a state, with stolen money. Thirdly, Wikileaks does not generally hack. It merely publishes data or info that others have given it. Not much different from a newspaper publishing information that others have found. For example, a leaked email that exposes a minister as duplicitous is evidence of a crime. Do you consider then that a leaked email is evidence of a crime? A vast amount of wikileaks info is leaked emails.
Correction. I meant: For example leaked emails often expose a minister as duplicitous, and are published in newspapers. Do you consider that a crime, or in the public interest?
Thank you for a post of such good sense.
So if someone hacks into a computer and steals the bank account details of thousands of people then sells them on the internet they aren’t doing anything illegal? They haven’t removed the details, just copied them, the originals are still where they were in the first place, so they have done nothing wrong?
Fred. Ever heard of straw men?
Fred, you insist on making a connection between personal bank details/accounts and STATE information which by default should be transparent in the first place, unless a rock solid case for it not being transparent can be made. Almost all of Wikileaks published info highlights either the illegality of state departments’ activities or hidden agendas that are not democratically arrived at, nor are in the interests of those it claims to “protect”. Included in this information are records of many not only illegal acts but violent illegal acts.
I don’t understand how you arrive at any connection at all between the above and the personal and private data of an individual. Perhaps you could find a more convincing comparison.
We have a freedom of information act to ensure information the public has a right to know they get to know. We have independent judges to decide if the public has a right to know or not. Much of the information held by state bodies is also our personal information, much of it is necessary state secrets it wouldn’t be to our benefit for a hostile foreign power to know, much is commercially sensitive.
Who should be able to know what is not something I believe should be decided by Julian Assange, whatever the legal implications of his affairs in Sweden they left little doubts as to his moral character.
So they are actively seeking to extradite to a country that has the death penalty.
Who is “they”? If they = the UK, the answer is no, they’re not. (Except in the self-aggrandising fever dreams of Assange et al, resisting for dear life the inevitable irrelevance that follows all those who sell their soul to Putin.)
I had you down as a man with at least the basic skills in literacy. You ask who is ‘they’? I think the post makes it quite clear. Have you read it?
“The answer of course is that Theresa May and Amber Rudd have plans firmly in place for Assange to be arrested and incarcerated, while extradition to the United States is quickly arranged.”
Oops, sorry.
Still, unless there is some kind of evidence provided, this sounds like a feverish conspiracy theory to me.
The most recent reason why comes from the Supreme Court last week:
R (on the application of Kiarie) (Appellant) v Secretary of State for the Home Department (Respondent), and R (on the application of Byndloss) (Appellant) v Secretary of State for the Home Department (Respondent), [2017] UKSC 42
https://www.supremecourt.uk/cases/docs/uksc-2016-0009-press-summary.pdf
(Although, admittedly, that’s an immigration case not an extradition case.)
If this was just an ordinary skipped bail case which IT IS NOW, then the UK Govt wouldn’t still have the Ecuadorian Embassy under 24 hr surveillance. This tells you all you need to know about the true intentions of the british state. Should Corbyn win the next election and declare independence from the US Empire there might be a change but until then Assange is right to stay put.
I’ll be there, megaphone & all.
It is a tragedy that John Jones QC will no longer be able to attend to Julian Assange’s travails. J
Great article!
Its not in JC’s interest to keep this man in self incarceration, he must see the value of Wikileaks and its information flows of truth. We will have to see as to how the relationship between Labour and the so called special relationship with a hedgehog works out, but I’m for Julian’s immediate release and full accountability of Scotland Yards already meagre budget wasted on him.
Should the public have their own watch on the streets outside, by now increasingly bust with various intelligence services ‘having an interest’ wanting to get at him.
Julian should be offered a safe passage to a country of his choice, or should he wish to stay here, be given the freedom to do so.
And lets stop bashing truth speakers and whistle blowers, we need them if we value free information, we need more of them, not less.
World Government, should it ever come about, will happen amongst people, via information flows and positive thinking, not from controlling, arming, warring and causing general displeasure.
World government, should it ever come about, will completely eliminate the notion of political asylum or extradition.
@ Krief June 19, 2017 at 12:47
Ah, the One World Gulag the Banksters aim to force upon us….political asylum and extradition won’t be the only things that will be completely eliminated.
Craig
“All the faux-left who dodged that question now have to answer it.”
Faux left? Barricades? Socialism? LOL
Several times when you have banged on about Assange I, and others, have posed challenges to your very partial and male perspective. You respond to comments that are easily dismissed but ignore what I consider questions of substance. Now you accuse others of dodging questions. Again. LOL.
Faux left? Barricades? Socialism? LOL
Just to clarify this. This is brazen. Craig is not of the left. He is a liberal. He recently boasted of being on the board of 5 companies, some with multi million pound turnover. He is very far from a socialist. As for Assange – his politics are far from clear but what I have seen he seems more atuned to the libertarian right. He often repeats he is a fan of markets and that markets just need to be free.
This post is the bourgeoisie co-opting the language of the left. Laughable.
Better to get things done than worry about ideological purity. The best progressive governments who actually achieved a lot didn’t worry about how left they were. They just got on with it. The reforming Liberal governments of the years before the First World War. Roosevelt’s New Deal administration. The Atlee government, which included a lot of Labour right wingers. The SNP governments of the last ten years battling against the neoliberal consensus.
Even Jeremy Corbyn went to a grammar school. Does that mean he might not be 100% socialist?
Correct. Jeremy Corbyn is not a socialist. Not because of what school he went to but because he does not advocate a socialist political programme.
Corbyn advocates a more social market economy.
Whereas speaking generally both Tories and Blairites would like a free market economy like in the USA. There might be Tories and Blairites who don’t go full free market economy but the general direction of their policies is free market.
“The freedom of the shark is the death of the little fishes.”
If a free market economy develops then the little man is going to lose out. And that has and is happening in the USA.
Phil Ex-Frog,
When I was learning complex stuff at school, and I was still going to class to learn highly technical stuff at the age of 50, the teacher often used to give simpler working examples to illustrate the simplicities of the complexity under discussion and the real reason we were there – wanting to learn.
In order to further my understanding of your view of The Left and Socialism – can you please give me some working examples of the kind of society that you believe in…That Works.
And please do not give me Cuba – or a hippie living in a Wigwam with George Monbiot.
Been there done that (well actually I didn’t turn up to George’s gig – but I knew where it was and its always nice to be invited.)
Meanwhile, I didn’t know about Assange’s Lawyer John Jones even being dead till I read it here today. I personally think on the evidence I have read that the official story about his death is probably correct.
RIP John Jones
Tony
Tony
I can offer no working example because it has so far never existed but I can keep it simple: I dream of a world free of states, class and money.
Happy to discuss further if you want.
Jeremy Corbyn isn’t a socialist either, at least under any definition of socialism I would recognise. He’s an old-fashioned tax-and-spend Keynesian. That he can be reviled as a socialist shows how astonishingly far the UK has moved to the right over the last thirty years.
Not sure that Craig Murray has ever claimed to be a socialist himself. But there’s no reason why socialists cannot make common cause with liberals on such matters as civil liberties. J
JSD
I have not seem Craig claim to be a socialist. However…
…he does seem under the illusion that Corbyn’s policies, which he supports, are socialist.
Using the language of the left, confusing socialism with social democracy, Craig is attacking anyone of the left who fails to stand by a libertarian rightist over charges that are as not clear as he insists. Very poor.
You cannot have a socialist society until the the majority of the Peaple understand and want to claim ownership of the the land and the means of production with which they will then organise a proper egalaterian society witch be for the benefit of all.
Mmm. If we are getting into this what you describe sounds more like communism to me. Communism is stateless and so requires the understanding and agreement of the people. Socialism is not stateless and so can be imposed by a minority with their hands on the functions of the state.
Imposed? Socialism which is imposed isn’t socialism.
“Economic equality alone is not social liberation. It is precisely this which all the schools of authoritarian Socialism have never understood. In the prison, in the cloister, or in the barracks one finds a fairly high degree of economic equality, as all the inmates are provided with the same dwelling, the same food, the same uniform, and the same tasks. The ancient Inca state in Peru and the Jesuit state in Paraguay had brought equal economic provision for every inhabitant to a fixed system, but in spite of this the vilest despotism prevailed there, and the human being was merely the automaton of a higher will on whose decisions he had not the slightest influence. It was not without reason that Proudhon saw in a “Socialism” without freedom the worst form of slavery. The urge for social justice can only develop properly and be effective when it grows out of man’s sense of freedom and responsibility, and is based upon it. In other words, Socialism will be free or it will not be at all. In its recognition of this fact lies the genuine and profound justification of Anarchism.” Rudolf Rocker, Anarchism and Anarcho-Syndicalism, 1948.
‘Progressive’ is more precise a label across the Pond. He’s every bit of it.
@ Phil Ex-Frog June 19, 2017 at 11:24
I totally agree with Craig’s use of the term ‘Faux Left’; you do not have to be a member of a party/group to comment on it.
For instance a man can comment on women, and vice-versa.
‘Faux-Left’ is precisely what we have in Britain, France, the USA and doubtless elsewhere, a Left that laps up the propaganda against Assad, that supports Clinton, that refuses to even discuss the possibility that some of the ‘terrorist attacks’ may in reality be arranged by our own ‘Security Services’.
Hopefully a Corbyn-led Labour Party will begin to sort the problem out.
One can only wonder if you will be shipped off too to the States for claims that you provided WikiLeaks with those emails before Special Counsel Mueller..
It’s one of the most clear indications that the whole Russia hacking thing in the US is a crock of sh..t. If it wasn’t they’d have had Craig Murray interviewed on Day1. It’s as farcical as investigating a murder while deliberately failing to notice the guy standing there with the blood soaked clothes and knife in his hand.
The Barricade..
One side that seeks to divide- Tories, Terrorists, The mainstream media, Banking elite, Corporate government. ISIS. Most of the labour party. …Donald duck…
What are we waiting for..
Hard to choose! The facts are mixed up!
Political policing, Political “justice”.
Easy.
The ‘Russia theory of everything’ after the US elections was another example of the faux left using it’s own shit to smear Assange, and incidentally legitimising US intelligence agencies to the faux left, to a degree those agencies haven’t enjoyed for many years.
What unites most of them against Assange? Deep down they would rather remain ignorant of what exactly the state does in their name. How else to continue enjoying their skiing holidays with a clear conscience? How else to avoid having to do something about what they know?
These nuggets from the emails for example:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/hillary-emails-reveal-nato-killed-gaddafi-to-stop-libyan-creation-of-gold-backed-currency/5594742
I have no trouble on which side I am on when it comes to disclosing truths, like what happened to Gareth Williams et al. over disclosing the Afghan File to the media, and Assange has paid the price for doing so without redacting the names.
Seriously, “incarceration”??? Do we need to have that whole conversation again? Just last week I ended up having the entire discussion again, patiently explaining that a working group opinion is not a judgement and has no binding force. (Never mind that it’s difficult to see how someone can be incarcerated if they’re free to leave at any time.)
This is getting embarrassing.
Yes, and we’ll have it again as often as you want, because the United Nations says that the working group’s opinion is binding. Sorry if you don’t like it, but that’s the fact.
Well, for one thing, I think the link you posted was not from “the United Nations”, but from the secretary general. Secondly, as I explained last week, it doesn’t say what you think it says. (And what you think it says is wrong, as confirmed by a whole pile of international law professors I linked.)
It wasn’t from the Secretary General, but from an official of the United Nations whose appointment was confirmed by the General Assembly. Secondly, your opinion of last week was wrong. The intention of the statement could not be clearer. Thirdly, I couldn’t care less what your blogs say. I care what the United Nations says – that fact that it does not say what you want it to say is your problem, not mine.
Since the General Assembly speaks for the UN even less than the secretary general does, I’m not sure why GA confirmation matters.
Martinned
Bizarre that you claim that neither the Secretary-General nor the General Assembly can speak for the UN. If not them, then who does then? Only the self-selected Security Council?
In law, only the Security Council’s statement have any effect. The Secretary-General speaks for the UN to the extent that he is careful not to go beyond his brief. (More or less the way Donald Tusk speaks on behalf of the EU Council.)
Martinned, have a look at this:
https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/876753817546752000/photo/1
Centre column at the bottom, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. And top of extreme right hand column, human rights lawyer.
Yes, and it is clearly true that the underlying treaties are binding on the UK. But the opinion – not ruling!, the working group itself also doesn’t call it a ruling, because they got in trouble in the past for doing that – of the working group is not. And that’s what the High Commissioner is saying.
No. that is not what the High Commissioner is saying. The language is plain: the opinion is binding.
Maybe she said that at some point, but not in the quote I was referred to, which is what my comment was about. (And, for the avoidance of doubt, if the High Commissioner had said that, it’d be wrong.)
The link I referred you to last week or whenever said exactly that. And you’ll forgive me if I prefer the High Commissioner’s word to yours, thanks.
You’re forgiven. People generally prefer opinions that accord with their own.
Yes, don’t they just.
Julian Assange, WikiLeaks & the rest of the journalists that i am being blocked from reading their stories…. TRUTHTELLERS! My right to cognitive integrity is being violated at the moment…..somewhere in my media mess of stiries there us a glummer of truth. but have to be able to see it.
There is no argument here, no deflection, no contortion of the facts by the self-serving entanglement of morality and legality now so often voiced by state authoritarians and their cohorts of liars and opinion shapers… not one word against Assange that justifies his detention with threat of torture and life imprisonment in the USA.
All the arguments are now repetition. We have heard all the deflections, distortions and contortions. This case is no longer just about protection for whistleblowers, or how unfree our press is – it has become the mirror in which we see the corruption of US hegemony in stark outline. We are seeing how vassal states act under the boot of their master.
Assange is not just a political prisoner. Assange is your wake up call.
The hounding of Assange is a national scandal. The government can cut funds to the police, fireman, social services but is willing to waste money on this endless political persecution.
All the more reason I hope to see Jeremy Corbyn as PM ASAP. JC would put an end to this nonsense immediately.
What if Mueller prosecutor Robert Weissman secures aa international warrant for CM to come to the States, and testify about his involvement in the Russian probe?
I’m pretty sure that, at the moment, the UK authorities are spending £0 on “persecuting” Assange, except for the resource spent answering stupid press questions.
We all knew that you would soon be back, Martinned, and with stuff like this, and the bit about Pamela Anderson.
Facts have a well-known anti-nuttiness bias. I’m sorry.
Oh, like Pamela works for MI6? The Brits too have always had an obsession with using honey-traps.
Clearly my attempt at using crazy people to rebut other crazy people struck home…
“I’m pretty sure that, at the moment, the UK authorities are spending £0 on “persecuting” Assange,”
Oh really? The police on the Ecuadorean embassy are doing it it in their spare time, are they?
Which police on the Ecuadorean embassy? There hasn’t been any police there in years.
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/oct/12/julian-assange-police-removed-from-outside-ecuadorian-embassy
“There hasn’t been any police there in years”. If true, since October 2015 (according to that link). Hardly ‘years’.
I think Julian will be in danger from the lawless gangster nation for as long as he lives. The mafia never forgets. If he flees the embassy the journey will be dangerous but if the US becomes a little more lawless it may eventually storm the embassy. Our government couldn’t stop it. He might be safe from kidnap in Russia or China but his life couldn’t be guaranteed in either, whatever his legal status becomes.
While that might be true Wikileaks will continue doing its work in helping to keep us all safe regardless of what happens to Julian Assange. So in a way the power elites have nothing to gain by targeting him. Even the argument of a deterrent is facile. People who support the aims and achievements of Wikileaks are doing so for altruistic reasons and those manning the barricades cannot be bought.
While they have nothing to gain by targeting him they’ll still do it. Hillary was only talking about her own kind when she asked what difference does it make? Authoritarians are not forgiving people, nor are they law-abiding. But people will still blow the whistle, as not even the cruelties of Hitler and Stalin could silence the brave, but Julian will be in danger for the rest of his life.
So you’re still happy that Trump won? Good to know…
“Authoritarians are not forgiving people, nor are they law-abiding.”
I suspect authoritarianism is probably more of a circumstantial property rather than a defining characteristic. The people we’re discussing are most often very pragmatic, through the naked opportunism afforded by their system of morality, which is where the often denied ideological component of these people is most visible.
“While they have nothing to gain by targeting him they’ll still do it.”
Take heart. They might, but they might not. A lot of assassinations and suspected assassinations (Seth Rich and Michael Hastings for example) only rally support agains the perpetrators (the deep state).
“flees”? You mean, “walks out of”? Remember, there’s no police presence there. No one would notice him leaving unless he calls a press conference first. (Which, I imagine, he absolutely would.)
Just more official nuttiness.
Remember, there’s no police presence there. No one would notice him leaving unless he calls a press conference first.
You are ill informed or disingenuous. When the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) announced they would end the presence of UNIFORMED officers outside the embassy, they also stated “the MPS will deploy a number of overt and covert tactics to arrest him.” It was a cosmetic change to disguise the cost of guarding the embassy.
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/oct/12/julian-assange-police-removed-from-outside-ecuadorian-embassy
Or, more likely, a way to achieve the same effect without ever having to spend any money.
Occam’s razor is your friend.
Occam’s razor is the worst guide when dealing with human deviousness.
Then there’s always Hanlon’s Razor.
Or, more likely, a way to achieve the same effect without ever having to spend any money. Occam’s razor is your friend.
You claim the simplest explanation is that after tens of thousands of police hours at a cost of £12m, the MPS simply abandoned the excercise?
Looks like ‘disingenuous’ rather than ‘ill informed’.
They “abandoned the exercise”, but mumbled something on the way out to make it seem as if they were still doing something. Sounds like civil service sop to me.
They “abandoned the exercise”
Cite? By convention going back to before the internet, to the days of Usenet, the person who makes a claim has to be ready to supply a link to back up that claim. The onus is not on me to Google to find out whether you’re talking nonsense.
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2017/06/wikileaks-choose-side-barricade/comment-page-1/#comment-688347
What puzzles me is this : Assange said he needed to seek asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy to avoid his extradition to Sweden, which could then have resulted in his extradition to the US – he said that the Swedish charges were trumped up just to get him in custody so that the US could extradite him from Sweden.
However, if the US wanted to extradite him, couldn’t they have tried it while he was in prison here in the UK ?
Or they could have issued an extradition request when he was staying at Ellingham Hall, which would have been far simpler than waiting for him to go to Sweden and then extradite him from there.
Don’t worry about it. Even if Sweden wanted to, the EAW framework decision doesn’t allow them to extradite someone to a 3rd country if they came to be in Sweden through an EAW, at least not without the permission of the sending state. So if Sweden tried to send Assange to the US, he’d be able to start an unholy litigation sh*tstorm in both the UK and Sweden simultaneously. It’d take decades and at the end the likelihood that he’d end up in the US is virtually zero. See Pinochet, Augusto.
None of this makes any sense. It’s just a Kellyanne Conway-style PR offensive, i.e. simply saying something that sounds halfway plausible that the true believers can cling onto if they don’t want to believe the truth. Assange preferred locking himself up in the Ecuadorian embassy for five years to going to Sweden and answering a couple of questions about a – I am told – entirely unmeritorious investigation.
They’ve done it before.
You are seriously drawing an analogy with Pinochet? He pulled a sickie, was helped by Jack Straw, and had a remarkable recovery from “Alzheimer’s” at the top of the aeroplane steps when he got back to Chile and leapt up to greet his admiring fascist supporters.
Silly analogy to Pinochet there. Of course you can get off the hook for war crimes, if you did them for CIA. Pissing off the CIA is another kettle of fish. Find me a naïf who actually thinks NATO satellites let their CIA duties get in the way of EAW red tape, where CIA’s political enemies are concerned.
It may seem a better way to fit him up but as I understand the UK has (or had) a more stringent process. And he is a high profile figure in the UK.
Can’t just shove him through the back door like others. Were as Sweden extradites 100% on demand.
Doing someone over isn’t that simple.
Were as Sweden extradites 100% on demand.
Cite?
It’s a blog, not a trial.
If you care that much cite contrary evidence. This is what I recall while following the case as a laymen, That there are no cases of refusal.
By convention going back to before the internet, to the days of Usenet, the person who makes a claim has to be ready to supply a link to back up that claim. The onus is not on me to Google to find out whether you’re talking nonsense.
“May he live in interesting times”
Assange and Oliver Stone should form an alliance to make Russia great again. They could consult Trumplandia for best practices.
Hasn’t it been adequately demonstrated that the Russian angle is entirely bogus? More to do with the neo-liberal Democrats obscuring their involvement in the destruction of Libya and Syria and even more to do with wishing to obscure their role in fixing the Democrat primaries. Proof of both resides in Wikileaks. Identity driven politics in the USA assures character assassination as a useful temporary tool to avert people from the information itself. It’s beginning to backfire.
How has that been demonstated..public denial?
Lack of evidence not always exculpatory.
Maybe your bubble should grow beyond the confines of your islands .
You may find this helpful, Ben. The character Guccifer2, who pre-emptively boasted on 15th June 2016 of sending all his DNC hacks to Wikileaks, was discovered – via the metadata of the DNC documents he posted on his own blog – to have faked the ‘Russian fingerprints’ that fooled Crowdstrike, numerous other so-called cybersecurity experts and the US intelligence community. Actually, it’s thought Crowdstrike themselves are behind the fake Guccifer2 persona, having introduced him to the world via a Washington Post article on 14th June 2016, which, curiously, was only two days after Assange had publicly announced on the Peston show that WikiLeaks was in possession of “more emails related to Hillary Clinton that are pending publication” (12th June).
http://g-2.space/
Thanks but I don’t respond positively to Nationalism or despots no matter the Flag.
I don’t have to know the engineering on a bulldozer to forestall being rolled over. And I’ve long ceased trusting in a human being because ideas are bulletproof . You might benefit from this as advice.
I don’t really understand your comment below, Ben – or why there’s no facility to reply directly to it. I was just providing the forensics which show that Wikileaks did not receive what it published last year relating to the US elections from any Russian middleman. The forensics prove that was an entirely false narrative. I believe Craig also has evidence that Wikileaks simply published what it received from Washington DC-based insiders, same as it’s done with every other leak it’s received over the years. It’s really strange how differently people have reacted this time, though.
I enjoy your research acumen but perhaps it’s not objective. You are protective of Assange and that lens is not my optics. There is a pre cold war loyalty amongst some Leftists that mimics the worship of Moscow. That road has been blazed once and that’s enough.
That’s right – the Russian angle has been proven “entirely bogus” by the fact that Trump fired the head of the FBI who was investigating it. I mean, seriously – what more proof would one need?
You’re pointing to the theatre and yelling “proof!”
My last comment got deleted.
What you appear to be dismissing is a large barrel of evidence, including the on-the-record testimony of Trump himself, his family and associates, where he brags about his major dealings with a bunch of very dodgy Russians. Then he denies his own words, and that’s that as far as you appear to be concerned.
In addition, he fires the head of the FBI – and brags about having done so to Russian agents – when the investigation Comey was conducting concerned the same Russian connections.
No, nothing to see here – move along folks.
*
If this gets deleted too, I give up.
To be as clear as possible, you’re discussing evidence that Trump is or maybe corrupt. And that he knows some Russians.
How big are those barrels?
there are many thousand people in the UK today who have missed bail.
Assange’s bail was £340K or so, wasn’t it? For details of how it was recovered, see here:
http://www.corkerbinning.com/bail-securities-vs-sureties-lessons-from-the-julian-assange-case/
How many (thousand) people in the UK today have jumped bail at this level? Of those, how many would not have second thoughts about letting their friends pay, not for their freedom, but for the certainty of arrest and subsequent imprisonment (if only for jumping bail) once the law caught up with them? And how many of those have access on demand to the media – having only to appear on the balcony of the embassy in which they have, to its major inconvenience, gone to earth? Of those, again, how many, however ineffectually, publish restricted material*
I think we must be down to one or two individuals by now. And I’m sure the police are after most of them.
*Randomly. And most of it of no practical use even to keyboard revolutionaries
Radio Four chose this week to serialise a book by an Andrew Hagan, haing being plugged by Andrew Marr on Starttheweek, which bravely aims to prove that Julian Assange as a person has not a single admirable quality. Not one. Is there anyone anywere who fits that bill? The object of this unrelenting denigration is still in what UN law professors deemed “arbitrary” detention and in danger of arbitrary treatment
This point may have been made already but nothing would induce me to wade thru all these posts
This tale has many twists. Assange does not deserve to be arrested, but it seems strange that Trump’s administration is pursuing him even though his leaks helped Trump get elected as president! Seems like ingratitude.
It seems that jumping bail is worth a conversation, regardless of what happened to the underlying charges. I would think that compliance with bail conditions is the kind of thing the legal system has a general interest in encouraging.
Bit tricky for the UK to get its “bail jumping” warrant to stick, I’d imagine. It was only issued 12 days after Assange had already claimed asylum. Under international law asylum applications take precedence over extradition proceedings. UK tried to make some PR capital by writing to Assange 10 days after he’d gone into the embassy, demanding he surrender to Belgravia police station the following day, then issuing its “failure to surrender” warrant when he didn’t show up. But trying to make it an arrestable offence to seek asylum is not going to do the UK’s image any good.
Press Statement: By Julian Assange Defense Fund Outside the Ecuadorian Embassy
Friday June 29th, 16:00
https://wikileaks.org/Press-Statement-By-Julian-Assange.html
One wonders how much it is costing the taxpayer to keep PC Plod and his mates loitering on the corners of the Ecuadorian embassy 24/7, pretending to read a newspaper. In the hope of arresting Mr Assange.
Surely the expenses route if one were to try and dissuade the government that, the surveillance and hopeful apprehension of Assange, is one that’s far too costly, and unacceptable to the taxpayer. Is the road to go down.
Or is the Great Satan, footing the bill? I wonder.
One wonders how much it is costing the taxpayer to keep PC Plod and his mates loitering on the corners of the Ecuadorian embassy 24/7, pretending to read a newspaper.
Easy, £0.
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/oct/12/julian-assange-police-removed-from-outside-ecuadorian-embassy
So no one is on the street, just spotters looking out the window from the apartment across it, eavesdroppers on the phones, spies to drop by the see what JA is planning, etc.
You have really come back with a vengeance!
Made less obvious, probably costs more.
Easy, £0.
You continue to claim there is no police presence even after it has been pointed out to you that the Metropolitan Police Service have stated “the MPS will deploy a number of overt and covert tactics to arrest him.”
Please provide proof that the MPS is lying, or stop making the claim. Here’s what you said to Ishmael at 15.36 today :
Put up or shut up.
Not this thread tony.
That loon Stubblemeyer didn’t have a brain to put the dots together.
Trowbridge,
Well his cv, looks pretty impressive to me. It seems to me, that only after he retired that US Intelligence got incredibly stupid. You can hardly blame him for that.
“Albert “Bert” Newton Stubblebine III (February 6, 1930 – February 6, 2017)[1] was a United States Army major general whose active duty career spanned 32 years. Beginning as an armor officer, he later transferred to intelligence. He is credited with redesigning the U.S. Army intelligence architecture during his time as commanding general of the U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM) from 1981 to 1984, after which he retired from active service.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Stubblebine
Tony
Intelligence officers were noted for their cracjkpot ideas, and Stubblebine was no exception.
He just goes on about having it all, though he declined to admit that the Pentagon was hit by that plane with Barbara Olson, and Khalid al-Midhar on board.
He sounds like that crazy Professor James Fetzer who claims something similar, and denied a shotting at Sandy Hook.
Trowbridge,
“Intelligence officers were noted for their cracjkpot ideas”
So that’s how you got the job.
Tony
Trowbridge, “The Soviets were dropping troops in the Massive Central, miles away for which we had no transport.”
The Massif Central is an elevated region in the middle of southern France, consisting of mountains and plateaus. It covers approximately 15 percent of the country.
I’ve been there in my brother’s 1963 Ford Cortina. I’ve never met any Russians there.
When exactly was this?..and what the hell were you doing France? I went as a tourist.
Tony
I am more with Phil Ex-Frog, than right wing German loonies – “prepping” like right wing American loonies. However I am not convinced that at least some of the following article is not true. I do not have any evidence that would suggest they are making it all up. However, I could probably write a similar article about some parts of London or Manchester, except I have never come across such a No Go area in The UK – particularly if there is a good music festival on.
But Maybe Germany is different.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-06-18/germany-police-powerless-against-middle-eastern-crime-gangs
Extract
“Middle Eastern crime syndicates have established themselves across Germany, where they engage in racketeering, extortion, money laundering, pimping and trafficking in humans, weapons and drugs.
The syndicates, which are run by large clans with origins in Lebanon, Turkey, Syria, among other places, operate with virtual impunity because German judges and prosecutors are unable or unwilling to stop them.
The clans — some of which migrated to Germany during Lebanon’s 1975-1990 civil war and have grown to thousands of members — now control large swathes of German cities and towns — areas that are effectively lawless and which German police increasingly fear to approach.”
Tony
That article appears to have been authored by Soeren Kern who is:-
“… a senior fellow at the New York-based Gatestone Institute, a non-partisan foreign policy think tank chaired by Ambassador John R. Bolton.”
Some idea of Soeren Kern’s interests can be found at his web site http://soerenkern.com/
Further information on further articles at https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/author/Soeren+Kern
Just the job for a day when some right wing nut job starts attackingmuslims leaving a place of worship.
I know too many people like Darren Osborne. Ready to kick off on any given day should the clockwork orange PR kick in.
I live among terrorists. Yet they don’t identify as such, like ukip thugs.
We need some kind of program of theropy for radicalised Sun (etc) readers, explain how they were lied to, had their buttons pushed for the most base instincts in human beings. How they like the Army are brutalised by prison etc, and made to think it’s normal….
Or this will never end.
I do think it should be clear these outlets feed racial hatred like fire hose feeds water.
When did this become acceptable?
Even I remember when it was far less prevalent than now. It may not be as blatant and crude as some before but it’s more pervasive.
I find this comments thread more than usually hilarious. I post an article saying that, the Swedish allegations being off the table, people now have to honestly face the question of whether or not Assange should face espionage charges in the US due to the work of WikiLeaks.
So how do commenters respond to this invitation to honestly face the issue:
– Craig and Corbyn are not real socialists (Phil)
– There are no police any more watching him (Martinned)
– People lost their bail money (Baal)
– Russia (Ben)
All the above avoided the question I had asked them to address, whether they believe Assange should face espionage charges in the US. Click the link on the words “he faces” in the main article above to see that this danger is not a fantasy.
Only Fred had the balls to say he actually thinks Assange should be charged in the US, on the grounds that Fred thinks publishing state secrets is the same as bank robbery, ie secrets are property and have been stolen. Which is not a position I agree with, but is at least more honest than Martinned, Ben, Phil and Ball who all avoided the question with pathetic whataboutery.
Been on the whisky Craig?
No am on the train back to Scotland Phil.
Comrade Craig
The central committee of Perth language reassignment bureau send their best wishes. They very much agree that liberal party membership, then nationalist party membership, alongside multiple executive board roles, a faith in capitalism tempered by some nationalisation of natural monopolies is indeed the very best definition of the word socialist. They reject the counter revolutionary lie that being a socialist has anything to do with advocating socialism. They accept that the definition of socialism as the common ownership of the means of production is, well, unhelpful shall we say. Outdated even. Everyone to the wayward side of comrade Ken Clarke is a socialist these days. What are words anyway? A goat can be a sheep. A mixed economy can be socialism if we call it so.
Welcome to the party comrade Craig. Perhaps we can talk of a posting as Jezzas man in Havana. Great night life there comrade.
Man the barricades, time to make a stand, whose side are you on, the social democrat cliche and word play division approaches!
Fair play to you. I was certain you were going to delete this comment.
And in return I will FWIW answer your question, though lord knows why it is so important to you. No, of course I don’t think Assange should face charges in the US. I never have. I have never said anything to indicate otherwise.
However, I do find it ridiculous you say you know he didn’t commit rape in Sweden (when you mean you take his word). I would in no uncertain terms caution my sisters and neices about going on a date with him.
Phil the ex-frog, I don’t know what Craig Murray knows, but I know to a high degree of certainty that Julian Assange did not commit rape, not due to what he said, but by the actions of the two girls involved, and what they said and tweeted live at the time, and everything else that subsequently happenned. For some obscure reason I followed this case almost live as it was happenning. It was reported in detail not just in Aftonbladet, but by other online mainly Swedish blogs. The entire story was significantly changed months later, after quite obvious high pressure American involvement.
Other than that, I have other issues with Julian Assange, but when I post them here, they get deleted.
Tony
Tony
“I know to a high degree of certainty”
Exactly. You don’t know. I am pointing out the simple fact that those who proclaim his innocence do so as a matter of faith. Disregard all the circumstantial and It boils down to you believing him.
I assumes for a chunk who post here it went without saying. But I assume way to much.
Maybe they believe it doesn’t matter that they think. Or maybe can’t think. OR assume it was a rhetorical question.
I know sometimes it’s the case SOME things clearly wouldn’t do to think about, Let alone express an opinion on. …I hear that’s what a good education does for you.
I haven’t explicitly said on which side of the fence I stand on this issue. However those who know me also know I have tried to support Julian Assange at every opportunity without making it a one-club campaign. Perhaps others feel likewise that their views are already known and therefore they do not need to reiterate them. I don’t know this but speculate that it may be true.
Anyway just to make it perfectly clear: I support Julian Assange against those who would have him extradited 100%.
“Perhaps others feel likewise that their views are already known and therefore they do not need to reiterate them”
I expect so.
For what it’s worth, I support Julian Assange 100% and oppose all those who want to extradite him to the US. He should never have been forced to seek asylum in the first place.
Actually I thought you abstained from the borscht of Russophilia that Assange/Stone embrace.
I don’t feel the need to jail him but henceforth viewing him like Alex Jones or Criswell.
I don’t know if WL can reacquire credibiljty.
“Only Fred had the balls to say he actually thinks Assange should be charged in the US, on the grounds that Fred thinks publishing state secrets is the same as bank robbery, ie secrets are property and have been stolen. Which is not a position I agree with, but is at least more honest than Martinned, Ben, Phil and Ball who all avoided the question with pathetic whataboutery.”
Then why do we have a data protection act to prevent companies and public bodies revealing our personal information? Should our health records be made public?
– People lost their bail money (Baal)
If you want to miss the point of my comment, that is up to you. I didn’t miss the point of one of yours, and highlighted the inconvenient detail you’d missed. You clearly implied that because ‘thousands’ of bail jumpers (no source offered) were at large, Assange was receiving special attention. The scale of his crime – and it is, under UK law, a crime – at least partially justifies the attention he is getting.
One of the major themes of this blog is the injustice of ‘one law for the influential, another for the peasants’. Assange is manifestly influential. Very well. The law* applies to him. And so does the old villain adage: ‘if you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime’.
*Including US law on the theft and release of classified material…
Martinned, Ben, Phil and Ball who all avoided the question ( … I had asked them to address, whether they believe Assange should face espionage charges in the US). with pathetic whataboutery.
Oh, sorry. Yes. He should face charges if there is evidence that he has breached US law, whether of espionage specifically or lesser offences relating to the publication of classified material not his property.
I hadn’t realised my opinion was so valuable, or that the question was specifically addressed to me. It looked more like a rhetorical flourish.
My bad.
In conclusion I would just like to say that having spent many happy hours following the career of another slippery,. self-serving manipulator with narcissistic personality disorder, Tony Blair, it would be shamefully remiss of me to endorse the behaviour of Julian Assange….
I have very mixed feelings about this. It is difficult not to see that there has been an unusual concerted campaign against Assange, by the ‘authorities’. He is certainly a thorn in their flesh. I am also conflicted over ‘secrecy’. I think some secrecy is probably necessary but it is routinely and more or less used as a reason to obscure the less than benign doings of powerful folk. It is used to minimise accountability and it is definitely not in the interest of the majority of people to have harsh laws against whistleblowers or for people such as Blair, the arch narcissist, the opportunity to operate with impunity( legal immunity?)
Some of the WIKILEAKS have been instrumental in shaping peoples’ appreciation of the hidden world that largely defines their lives. So they are quite important.
I have been listening to Andrew O’Hagan’s account( on BBCR4) of the time he spent with Julian Assange and his confreres. The picture that emerges is not an enticing one. As you note- Assange is represented in such a way that suggests he is, indeed, rather narcissistic, and also rather more lightweight, than his adopted role of whistleblower to the stars would suggest. As always one does not know the agenda of the journalist Andrew O’Hagan and the internecine war that broke out between the Guardian and Assange takes a little bit of detailed following and it is difficult to be sure what has really been going on. One sense powerful forces are at play.
TY DGP. You’ve pointed to the positive outcome of Wikileaks which I had ignored (below) and fair play to them for that. OTOH readers of the embassy cables might well come to the conclusion that US officials in foreign service are a good deal saner, more savvy and have better judgement than either their political masters or the pundits of the Left.
As to O’Hagan, I don’t think he’s any kind of Establishment shill. This is worth a read:
https://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n05/andrew-ohagan/ghosting
Ba’al you are entirely wrong on this one. O’Hagan is a deeply unpleasant establishment shill. He is wall to wall on the BBC lately. During the election campaign he was given an amazing uninterrupted ten minute monologue of the R4 Today programme for a piece on how the government now needs to employ tens of thousands of censors in “Battalions” for real time censorship of the internet. Yes, really, I am not making it up.
O’Hagan received £100,000 from Canongate to ghost write Assange’s autobiography. £50,000 was due to be passed on to Assange. After being given all the documentary materials by Assange, O’Hagan decided to renounce the deal and keep all the cash by himself by doing it without Assange – keeping the documentary material. A very very nasty person.
O’Hagan’s piece on censorship of the Internet is at 2:46:35 in the Radio 4 Today programme of 06/06/2017:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08sks3s
Craig: You succeeded in rattling our cages. Is there solace?
Censorship of the internet is bad, Craig? Surely not. It would deprive evil racists like Bevin of the oxygen of publicity, surely?
I find it extraordinary that some people here really think that an organisation which offers a SERVICE to citizens about the illegal stuff their governments do in their name is somehow beyond the pale, which is clearly what they are implying. They then continually conflate a completely different matter relating to Assange’s personal behaviour which,whether they like it or not, HAS BEEN ABANDONED.
Fred I agree at least has the balls to address the central issue directly, but I’m afraid his naivity is breathtaking. As someone who tried getting relatively trivial info out of the Information Commissioner about a non controversial matter, and on which they have a duty to co-operate, I was met with months of delay, obfuscation, clear collusion with the party whom I requested FOI information from, stonewalling, refusal to respond properly and several more months of delays. Eventually I received threadbare info but with all the relevant information so severely redacted that it was useless, page after page covered in thick black ink. This the typical methodology employed – to wear you down so you just give up.
If Fred really thinks FOI requests are going to inform him of anything approaching duplicity by governments he really needs to try it himself and see how far he gets. The one thing Assange has that almost no other whistleblower can claim, is that he never worked for the organisations he whistleblew on. All the other whistleblowers I can think of willingly became the employee of the organisations they later turned against. I’m not condeming them for that but it is a significant truth.
Headline in the Sun: Boris Johnson wants to serve under Jeremy Corbyn!
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DCtq-f-XsAE2NqZ.jpg
And it’s in the Daily Mirror:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DCtv0kbXsAAljT7.jpg
And the Daily Mail:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DCtwAsMXgAA0WFy.jpg
It looks very much as though the May government will fall on Wednesday. Boris Johnson says he has signed this petition calling on Corbyn to table a motion of no confidence and bring down the government. Boris says he’s putting “country before party” (sic).
No excuse for the rest of us not to sign it, then 🙂 He must have consumed far too much Bullingdon Powder if he thinks Corbyn will keep him on as Foreign Secretary!
John Carter,
I think it highly probable that your 3 headlines are spoofs – not true and also entirely counter-productive.