Category: News
Andrew Wilkie and George Christensen in London to visit Julian Assange, as Jeremy Corbyn says UK view on extradition is shifting
British Opposition Leader Jeremy Corbyn says he is surprised over what he sees as a shift in the British Government’s position on Julian Assange and the UK’s “unbalanced” extradition relationship with the United States.
Key points:
- Australian MPs have arrived in London ahead of prison meeting with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange
- Andrew Wilkie has met with UK Opposition Leader Jeremy Corbyn
- Mr Corbyn believes the UK Government’s view on its “unbalanced” extradition treaty with the US has shifted
Mr Corbyn made the comments after a meeting with Australian independent MP Andrew Wilkie, who is in London on a privately funded trip to visit the WikiLeaks founder in prison.
The Labour leader told the ABC that British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s answers to House of Commons questions about the extradition deal the UK had with the US last Wednesday (local time) were unexpected.
“He accepted that it is an unbalanced treaty and it is not a fair one, therefore I think that is a big change by the British Government,” Mr Corbyn said.
In the House, Mr Corbyn had argued that the UK had a “one-sided extradition treaty” with the US and asked Mr Johnson to commit to an “equal and balanced” future relationship.
“I do think that there are elements of that relationship that are unbalanced and I certainly think it is worth looking at,” Mr Johnson replied.
Mr Corbyn said he thought this could be partly linked to a high-profile battle underway between the US and UK after Washington rejected a request for the extradition of an American citizen who fled Britain after allegedly causing the death of a teenage motorcyclist.
He said it was also unexpected that Mr Johnson did not argue against him when he questioned whether it was right that someone should be deported for exposing the truth.
“The Prime Minister did not challenge my assertions on this, but seems to me to understand that there is a principle here that somebody who opens up and tells the truth, as Julian Assange has done, should not face deportation to the United States,” Mr Corbyn said.
Assange ‘abandoned by Australian Government’
Mr Wilkie plans to visit Assange in Belmarsh Prison on Tuesday afternoon (local time), along with Queensland federal MP George Christensen, who is also in London.
“I want to convey a message to Julian that although he has been abandoned by the Australian Government, although he seems to have no support from the British Government or the US Government, he does in fact have a lot of support from millions of people right around the world,” Mr Wilkie told the ABC.
Mr Wilkie described the case against Assange as scandalous.
“Let’s not forget the substantive issue here, and that’s that an Australian citizen has publicised a range of important information in the public interest, including hard evidence of US war crimes, and his reward for doing that is facing extradition,” he said.
Ahead of the visit to the prison, Mr Christensen said he wanted to check on Assange’s welfare to inform the Government back home.
“For me to be a bit parochial, he’s a North Queenslander, he is someone who is facing potentially the rest of his life behind bars for simply wanting to publish and publishing the truth,” Mr Christensen said.
“That is wrong, that is morally and ethically wrong, and you’ve got to be in these fights if you believe in free speech and free press.”
‘Family is everything’
Assange’s father John Shipton will facilitate the meeting at the high-security Belmarsh Prison in south-west London.
Mr Shipton moved to London three months ago to be closer to his son and to support and lobby on behalf of the 48-year-old.
There is a strong resemblance between the 75-year old and his son.
Mr Shipton told the ABC he brought his four-year-old daughter to London because he wanted to show the world Assange was surrounded by family.
“I brought her to see Julian,” he said.
“I think the family gathering together and coming to see Julian will help him through this crisis and show people that Julian is not isolated, to show that family is everything.
“Without family you can’t defend yourself against the oppressions or winds of fate blowing in the wrong direction.”
Mr Shipton said he believed his son would not survive if he was jailed in the US.
“They didn’t go through 10 years of persecution to take him over there and put him in a feather bed,” he said.
Crunch time approaching for Assange
In less than a week’s time, Assange will face the legal might of the United States Government, which will argue for his extradition in a court near Belmarsh Prison, where he has been incarcerated since last year.
His own legal team say if the Americans succeed, he will not receive a fair trial and will be jailed for up to 175 years.
The WikiLeaks founder is facing 18 charges — 17 under the espionage act — for conspiracy to receive, obtain and disclose classified information.
Much of the information related to the US prosecution of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“Who can forget that shocking image of American attack helicopters gunning down Iraqi civilians and journalists in the streets in Iraq?” Mr Wilkie said.
“This stuff matters. We should not be persecuting Julian Assange.”
Conservative British MP Bob Seely disagreed. He argued publishing the information was a crime.
“If you don’t want to do the time, don’t do the crime,” he told the ABC outside the UK Parliament in Westminster.
Mr Seely’s grievance also relates to the alleged manipulation of the 2016 US presidential election.
In that year, WikiLeaks obtained and released emails and other documents from the Clinton presidential campaign.
“It was pretty obvious reading the indictments put down by [former special counsel for the US Department of Justice] Robert Mueller that WikiLeaks was used wittingly or unwittingly, knowingly or not, as a vehicle by which the Russians hacked into the Democratic Congress servers and stole lots of information,” Mr Seely said.
“I think Assange has been a useful idiot for people to attack liberal democracies.”
The extradition hearing will last a month in total, but the trial will be split, with one week to begin on January 24 and the remaining proceedings taking place in May.
Defence lawyers for Assange have told preliminary hearings most of the witnesses they wish to call will give evidence anonymously, although the US counsel has already indicated they will argue to have them struck off.
For now, Mr Shipton will continue to call London home.
“Julian’s circumstance is dire,” he said.
“It’s very awkward to speak about it. It just upsets me.”
“The best thing is to take each day as it comes and work as well and as hard as you can on ensuring that your children aren’t oppressed and aren’t persecuted to death.”
Australian politicians to travel to the U.K to lobby the British Government for release of Julian Assange
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange remains in Belmarsh prison in London awaiting for his extradition case to the United States to be heard later this month.
U.S authorities have indicted Assange on 18 charges,17 under the Espionage Act for conspiracy to receive, obtain and disclose classified diplomatic and military documents.
This weekend two Australian politicians will travel to the U.K at their own expense to visit Julian Assange and lobby the British Government for his release.
Andrew Wilkie and George Christensen are co-chairs of the Bring Julian Assange Home Parliamentary Group. Andrew Wilkie speaks with ABC NewsRadio’s Laura Tchilinguirian.
Julian Assange is us
Journalist and filmmaker John Pilger, recently visited Julian Assange in Belmarsh Prison, where he is being held ahead of a hearing on 24th February, to fight his extradition to the US. Pilger discusses the injustice of this case, where he could face up to 174 years in jail if extradited.
Duration: 16min 4sec
Broadcast:
Guests
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John Pilger
Journalist and filmmaker
US efforts to extradite Julian Assange akin to rendition, WikiLeaks editor says
Kristinn Hrafnsson argues case sets ‘dangerous precedent’ for press freedom internationally.
The planned extradition and prosecution of Julian Assange by the United States is a “new form of forced rendition” and a “dangerous precedent” for press freedom, according to the WikiLeaks editor-in-chief, Kristinn Hrafnsson.
Ahead of a private briefing for Australian parliamentarians on Tuesday afternoon, Harfnsson, an Icelandic-based investigative journalist, told the National Press Club in Canberra the “forced rendition” of Assange was not occurring “with a sack over the head and an orange jumpsuit but with the enabling of the UK legal system and with the apparent support of the Australian government”.
“I strongly believe that resolving this issue has important international implications,” Hrafnsson said. “Prolonging it creates an enabling environment for the deterioration of press freedom standards globally”.
Political support for stopping the extradition of Assange has been growing in recent months and Australian MPs from across the political divide have formed the Parliamentary Friends of the Bring Julian Assange Home group. The group has membership from the LNP, National party, ALP and crossbench and is co-chaired by George Christensen and Tasmanian independent Andrew Wilkie.
Hrafnsson acknowledged the work of the friendship group during his press club address. “Thank you for getting it, Barnaby Joyce, Rebekha Sharkie, Rex Patrick, Julian Hill, Steve Georganas, Richard Di Natale, Adam Bandt, Peter Whish-Wilson and Zali Steggal.”
He also thanked a group of more than 60 doctors who have written an open letter saying they fear Assange’s health is currently so bad the WikiLeaks founder could die inside a top-security British jail.
Hrafnsson challenged Australian journalists to press the Morrison government to advocate on Assange’s behalf. “Your government did take steps to secure the freedom of James Ricketson, also of Melinda Taylor, also of Peter Greste.
“Please be direct. Please be insistent. Ask for details, not platitudes. Please be unrelenting and prepared to back each other when evasions occur,” he said. “You, above all people, are able to distinguish between publishing and espionage, a distinction the US government and its allies seem intent on erasing, and you know as well as I that if they are successful in this, then Julian Assange won’t be the last of our colleagues to have his life destroyed in this line of work.”
Assange faced allegations of sexual assault in Sweden, which he denied, when he entered the Ecuadorian embassy in London in 2012 and sought asylum because he feared being extradited to America. He spent nearly seven years in the embassy until police removed him in April after Ecuador revoked his political asylum. The Swedish investigation was dropped in November.
The British home secretary, Sajid Javid, has signed a request for Assange to be extradited to the US, where he faces charges of computer hacking. Assange faces an 18-count indictment, issued by the US Department of Justice, that includes charges under the Espionage Act. He is accused of soliciting and publishing classified information and conspiring to hack into a government computer.
As well as pressing Assange’s case, the WikiLeaks editor-in-chief faced questions on Tuesday about the role of the organisation during the US presidential election. In November 2016, Assange issued a statement defending the role of his organisation, saying it published hacked emails from Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign because publication was in the public interest, “not due to a personal desire to influence the outcome of the election”.
WikiLeaks did not publish any material about Donald Trump. Hrafnsson said nothing of consequence was published about Trump because WikiLeaks did not receive anything of importance that it could authenticate and publish about the candidate, who went on to win the presidential election.
Hrafnsson was asked on Tuesday whether in hindsight he felt played by the Trump campaign. The editor-in-chief was unrepentant. He said the primary judgment to be made in cases like the publication of the Clinton emails was whether the disclosure was in the public interest. He said the editorial judgment involved “evaluating the information you have in front of you”.
“If it’s authentic, you just have to decide whether it’s in the public interest or not.”
Post Testimony Interview with Randy Credico
Following his appearance as the main witness for the prosecution against former Trump aide Roger Stone, my good friend Randy Credico has had the entire American mainstream media chasing him for an interview. He has however decided to give only this single interview to me, which is put out here and which is free for everybody to use, with acknowledgement.
Five of the seven charges against Stone relate directly to Randy, who is the witness that Stone is accused of tampering with and attempting to intimidate. There is a tremendous irony here. The Mueller investigation was set up to reveal links between the Trump campaign, Russia and Wikileaks. There are no such links, as has already been proven in another US court. Roger Stone ends up being charged with lying to the Senate Intelligence Committee, by pretending he had links to Wikileaks when he did not. He is also charged with trying to intimidate Randy into saying there was such a link and Randy was the back channel; which I myself can attest is nonsense.
The Mueller investigation has thus ultimately ended up prosecuting people for telling the same pack of lies that Mueller himself was pushing. The Clinton media, including CNN, the Washington Post and New York Times, are baffled by this. They follow the Stone trial assiduously from delight in seeing a long term Trump hanger-on brought down, and in the hope something will come out about Wikileaks or Russia. Their reporting, as that of the BBC, has been deliberately vague on why Stone is being charged, contriving to leave their audience with the impression that Stone’s trial proves Trump connections to Wikileaks and Russia, when in fact it proves the precise opposite. A fact you will never learn from the mainstream media. Which is why I am doing this at 2am on a very cold Edinburgh night, for the small but vital audience which is interested in the truth.
Judge Dismisses DNC Suit Against Trump Campaign and Others
Judge John G. Koeltl of the U.S. District Court for the U.S. District of New York has dismissed a lawsuit by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) against the Trump campaign, President Trump and other associates and high-level members of his campaign, Wikileaks, the Russian government, and others associated with Russian election interference efforts. The ruling is available here and here (source).
Media dead silent as Wikileaks insider explodes the myths around Julian Assange
It is the journalists from The Guardian and New York Times who should be in jail, not Julian Assange, said Mark Davis last week. The veteran Australian investigative journalist, who has been intimately involved in the Wikileaks drama, has turned the Assange narrative on its head. The smears are falling away. The mainstream media, which has so ruthlessly made Julian Assange a scapegoat, is silent in response.
Greg Bean likens the revolutionary work of Julian Assange to that of Johannes Gutenberg who invented the printing press. Government reaction, 580 years later, is similarly savage.
Five hundred and eighty years ago, Johannes Gutenberg introduced the printing press to the world. That single act created a free press which gave birth to the concept of freedom of speech. The two are inextricably linked; printing is a form of speech.
Gutenberg’s invention started the Printing Revolution, a milestone of the 2ndmillennium that initiated the modern period of human history including the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Age of Enlightenment, and the Scientific Revolution, and began the knowledge-based economy that spread learning to the masses.
Such mass communication permanently altered the structure of society. Removing control of information from the hands of the powerful and delivering it into the hands of the disempowered.
The broad circulation of information, including revolutionary ideas, in many languages, undermined Latin’s dominant status and the authority previously held by those trained in Latin, it transcended borders, threatened the power of political and religious authorities, increased literacy breaking the monopoly of the literate elite on education and learning, and bolstered the emerging middle class. It increased cultural self-awareness and cultural cohesion and undermined the authority of distant rulers and high priests.
His major work, the Gutenberg Bible was the first printed version of the Bible.
A global game-changer
Until 1439, Bibles were hand-scribed by rooms full of monks. There were virtually no mass produced books. Only an organisation able to fund these scribe factories could generate information that could be shared with others, in Latin. The Catholic Church was not impressed that Gutenberg made these scribe factories redundant.
But that’s just one enemy Gutenberg created. As well as destroying religious control he destroyed political control, which was largely aligned with the Church across Europe.
And then he destroyed the monopoly of the literate elite, creating educated populations where previously, powerful nobles had unchallenged control. Then, by supporting the local languages, all of which could be printed, he destroyed the dominance of Latin as the only language worth knowing.
Gutenberg was a game changer. He undermined the control of monarchs and the ruling class, the church, the political establishment, the Latin speaking elite, the educated upper-class, and probably also the authority and reliance on masters in every field of human endeavour as their previously spoken instructions, to a limited set of apprentices, could now be shared to the world in print.
Gutenberg destroyed the masters in virtually every realm by providing the means to expose knowledge to everyone. The genie was out of the bottle.
Imagine the masters’ anger.
Though anger could not save them from what Gutenberg had done.
From paper revolution to digital revolution
Today in 2019, 580 years since Gutenberg unleashed his printing press, the powerful are still trying to put the free press and freedom of speech genie back in the bottle.
Their present strategy is to make their knowledge, the element that is the key to retaining authority, as it was in Gutenberg’s day, secret, even Top Secret, and criminalising any action that reveals these secrets to anyone outside their circle of authority.
One of the ways this has been achieved is by enlisting the very core of what should be the free press, granting them almost monopoly rights to information dissemination and transmission and in exchange attaining for themselves the guarantee that their secrets will not be revealed.
Media concentration and control
In the US today, it is estimated that five dominant media organisations have almost total control of information transmission to the entire 325 million Americans. While the Internet was meant to democratise the transmission of information we see a few giant technology companies, Google, Facebook, and Twitter, have near total control of what is seen and shared.
The situation is even worse in Australia with two or three media companies and the same technology giants having control. And the Government of Australia has granted them ever wider market access to extend their monopolies. As an aside, it’s both funny and ironic that the Turnbull Government last increased the capacity for Australian media to further consolidate and then Malcolm Turnbull was deposed by that same media for being insufficiently sycophantic to their wishes.
But in 2006, something akin to the arrival of Gutenberg’s press appeared that would threaten the tightly held master’s control as surely as Gutenberg’s press threatened autocratic control in 1439.
That something was a technology suite, from WikiLeaks, that protected the anonymity of individuals who leaked the secrets of corruption that powerful governments preferred to keep hidden.
The strategy was quite elegant in its simplicity. WikiLeaks recognised that organisations and governments can only succeed if they can communicate their instructions to the operational workforce. If the instructions are legal and legitimate, this can be done publicly and with no need to hide any of these instructions.
What have they got to hide?
If however, the instructions entail illegal or illegitimate actions, then the only way these can be communicated to the entire workforce is as secrets. And to ensure they remain secret the organisation or government must impose a penalty on anyone who breaks that secrecy and divulges the information to person not authorised to see it.
The very act of defining something as secret and restricting its dissemination is a clear indicator that the actions or events are very likely illegal or illegitimate. Imposing penalties on those who disseminate these secrets outside authorised channels is another indicator of illegal or illegitimate actions or events.
Authoritarian regimes, murderous military organisations, human rights breaching spy agencies, polluting or corrupt organisation, mind control religious cults, and many more examples are available where their ability to continue with the illegal or illegitimate actions or to hide past events all must utilise secrecy and impose punishment on leakers to ensure that secrecy.
WikiLeaks destroyed that ability. Anonymous leaking of illegal or illegitimate actions or events destroys the ability of corrupt organisations to continue being corrupt.
That undermines their authority and control. And that’s what WikiLeaks introduced to the world — a mechanism and technology that was as pivotal to educating, enlightening, and promoting corrective action as was previously achieved by the creation of Gutenberg’s printing press.
WikiLeaks destroyed the masters in virtually every realm by providing the means to expose knowledge worldwide. The genie was out of the bottle.
Imagine the master’s anger.
A drastic response
WikiLeaks’ threat to the powerful was recognised and every effort was, and is, being made to criminalise anonymous leaking, which would be akin to criminalising Gutenberg’s printing press, but there is not much chance this criminalisation will succeed.
Their strategy however, as exposed in a document leaked by WikiLeaks, outlined how WikiLeaks uses trust by protecting the anonymity and identity of leakers and concluded that damaging or destroying this trust would deter leaking; defame Assange and WikiLeaks to kill the threat posed by anonymous leaking.
For 12 years, since 2008, that is exactly what powerful organisations, powerful media and government, powerful military and corrupt corporations have been doing. They are trying to destroy the public’s trust in Julian Assange and, by so doing, destroying the trust in WikiLeaks and ensuring this mechanism of educating the world fails.
Slowly, instance by instance, the malicious and deceitful smears of Julian Assange’s character have been exposed for what they are; an effort to destroy trust in a system of anonymous leaking that will educate everyone. As an example, on Thursday, August 8, 2019, at an event in a pub in Sydney, Mark Davis, a multi-Walkley award winning video journalist destroyed the smear that Assange was cavalier; cavalier that is about the risk of death of informants whose names appeared in documents in one of the sets of releases.
Davis said that, not only was Assange quite worried about the risk, but that The Guardian and New York Times journalists showed little if any worry. The video is here. It is quite remarkable.
As well as these smears, numerous torturous actions were visited on Assange, aimed at achieving not just his discrediting but also to break him mentally and physically.
Assault on human dignity
The UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Nils Melzer, recently wrote a damning articlepublished on the United Nations Human Rights website describing the situation in detail and comments, “In 20 years of work with victims of war, violence and political persecution I have never seen a group of democratic States ganging up to deliberately isolate, demonise and abuse a single individual for such a long time and with so little regard for human dignity and the rule of law,” Melzer said. “The collective persecution of Julian Assange must end here and now!”.
Sydney based Clinical Psychologist Lissa Johnson has also written about the treatment of Julian Assange ( link ) and the complicit actions of many who turn a blind eye.
“At this democratic crossroads, although establishment media have signalled their reluctance to support Espionage Act charges, in the knowledge they could be next, many nevertheless appear willing to act as instigators of torture, inciting publics to morally disengage, so that states can continue persecuting Julian Assange,” wrote Johnson. “Every act of ‘journalism’ that buries crucial information, and every utterance that vilifies or dehumanises Julian Assange, or sanitises his abuse, is complicit.. “.
Bring Julian Assange home
It’s time to bring Julian Assange home. Torturing and punishing him has never been legitimate and serves absolutely no purpose.
It’s time to recognise that anonymous leaking is here to stay and promote the world changing benefits that this system of mass education will deliver.
How can I be sure anonymous leaking is here to stay? Like Gutenberg’s printing press, WikiLeaks is not a one-off unit, it is a model for how to approach and overcome an issue. Many printing presses were built after Gutenberg revealed the concept and they were soon powered, automated and churning out printed material in huge volumes.
The same has happened with Julian Assange’s concept of a mechanism and technologies that can support anonymous leaking. A group called The Freedom of The Press Foundation, founded among others by Daniel Ellsberg, the man famous for leaking the Pentagon Papers that exposed the lies about the War in Vietnam, created a freely available WikiLeaks-like system called SecureDrop that is now in use by many news organisations.
And a number of these SecureDrop implementations are multi-national and so shield the recipient from AFP-style raids as they exist out there … somewhere … out of AFP and Australian authority reach … out of the reach of any other nation attempting to clamp down on anonymous leaking.
The WikiLeaks style anonymous leaking genie is out of the bottle and is not going back in.
Vive la revolution!
ALISON BROINOWSKI. Julian Assange One case dismissed: one to go
From the Australian mainstream media most readers won’t know it, but on 29 July a Federal Court in New York dismissed the Democratic National Committee’s case against Julian Assange for publishing leaked internal emails in 2016.
The Australian media usually overcome their mutual antipathy and band together to defend journalistic freedom and the rights of whistle-blowers, as we can expect to see in the case of Witness K. But Julian Assange is different. Denying that what he does is journalism is the excuse given by many in the media for taking no interest in the truth of his case or in finding out what is happening to him in Belmarsh supermax prison.
If Australian journalists were doing their job they would pursue Assange’s case with at least as much enthusiasm as they and the government brought to those of Peter Greste jailed in Cairo, Hakeem al-Araibi arrested in Bangkok, and Alek Sigley detained in Pyongyang.
The New York Times and Washington Post buried the highly significant story of WikiLeaks’ recent exculpation (Oscar Grenfell, ‘Media silent on dismissal of DNC suit against Julian Assange‘).To do otherwise would have brought down the house of negative cards about Assange which they have built ever since 2010. The New York Timespublished the war-log documents Assange passed to them before he, working through the night, had finished redacting 10 000 names. David Leigh at the Guardian published the very password for the cables database over which Assange is now facing prosecution.
All the media beneficiaries, and leaders of several governments, claimed repeatedly that Assange recklessly endangered the lives of people mentioned in the classified reports. They ignored that fact that in 2013 the Pentagon’s Brigadier-General Robert Carrconceded that no-one had been killed as a result of the leaked cables. The US and other governments were greatly embarrassed, but no-one died, while their killing of un-numbered civilians in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria continues to this day.
Australia’s dearth of public interest journalism on the Assange case was somewhat relieved by Nick Miller’s coverage for Fairfax of statements by the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture (SMH, 28 July 2019). Nils Melzer visited Assange in Belmarsh in May, but his written concerns about the effects on Assange of anxiety and long incarceration have since been rejected by Sweden and the US.
Then came ABC Four Corners, with episodes on 22 and 29 July about Assange’s prosecution, ‘Hero or Villain’ Part 1 and Part 2. Telling viewers little that they haven’t already seen in Linda Poitras’ documentary Risk and Alex Gibney’s feature We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks (a deliberately misleading title), the two ABC programs recalled that only after the US papers ignored Chelsea (then Bradley) Manning’s offer did she seek out WikiLeaks, and that Assange told her what he could and couldn’t do to help with encryption. Concerned about balance, Four Corners gave Assange’s enemies a lot of air-time for personal allegations and familiar smears like ‘vanity’ and ‘megalomania’. But about his present condition it said nothing.
Dr Lissa Johnson brought to the story her expertise as a clinical psychologist. She observed on 8 August that Four Corners ignored Melzer’s statements, and accused the mainstream media of contributing to Assange’s torture by cultivating the established narrative (https://newmatilda.com/2019/08/06/talk-to-the-totalitarian-hand-state-responses-to-the-torture-of-julian-assange-morally-disengaging-media-and-what-it-means-for-us-all/). Melbourne-based blogger Caitlin Johnstone has countered 27 smears against Assange, providing quotable ripostes, in ‘Debunking All The Assange Smears’. And lest Australians not forget, by April this year, more than 100 000 had signed Philip Adams’ petition to the government to act (https://newmatilda.com/2019/04/23/petition-calling-for-intervention-into-assange-extradition-passes-100000-signatures/). In the UK, that petition would trigger a debate in Parliament.
While public support for Assange builds through social media, Australian ministers have consistently refused to seek assurances that he will not be extradited to the US, which imposes the death penalty, and threatens him with its equivalent, more than 170 years imprisonment. Although his Australian lawyer Jennifer Robinson met politicians in Canberra in late July and informed them about Assange’s case, the Prime Minister made it known that he would not raise it with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (Australian, 2 August 2019: 4). If Marise Payne mentioned it to the British Foreign Secretary at a Global Conference for Media Freedom (sic) in July, she didn’t say so.
Lissa Johnson was joined on 8 August by Mark Davis, a veteran of ABC and SBS, whose talk in a Sydney pub was screened on Consortium News. Davis was in the Guardian‘bunker’ in July 2010 when Assange decided to get the leaked documents published by mainstream media in the UK, US, and Europe. Exasperated that the ‘complete lie’ about Assange’s ‘lack of integrity’ has widely been accepted as truth, Davis blames the Guardian’s then editor, the plausible and urbane Alan Rusbridger, his brother-in-law David Leigh, and Leigh’s co-author, the ardent Russo-phobe Luke Harding. Davis says they claimed that the Guardian was only reporting about what Assange had published, thus avoiding blame for publishing it themselves while still claiming credit for the scoop. The Guardian decided that as Leigh had already published the password to the cache of documents it was ‘best to publish the whole thing’, Davis says. By December Julian Assange was under arrest. ‘Julian’s in jail now because of that subterfuge’, Davis told his Sydney audience (Mark Davis, ‘Julian Assange and the Culture of Revenge’ https://www.youtube.com/watch).
The recent dismissal by the Federal Court relates not only to allegations about Wikileaks, but also Donald Trump jr, Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort over ‘Russiagate’. But the political establishment hasn’t dropped it, says a former UK ambassador (https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2019/08/in-the-world-of-truth-and-fact-russiagate-is-dead-in-the-world-of-the-political-establishment-it-is-still-the-new-42). That establishment still controls what is happening to Assange, and his coming extradition to the US, charged with espionage.
John Pilger, who visited him in Belmarsh last week, has expressed serious concern about his health. More worrying, given what has happened to other public enemies – Seth Rich and Jeffrey Epstein in the US and Sergei Skripal in the UK – is that someone may rid the world of this troublesome truth-teller.
Dr Alison Broinowski was a Senate candidate for the WikiLeaks Party.
FOIA litigation appeal hearing, activists filled up the Court in support of Stefania Maurizi
The appeal hearing for the full access to the documents related to Julian Assange’s case has been held today at the Upper Tribunal, decision is expected on Friday
The Court officers said they were not expecting such a public for the FOIA litigation hearing where the Italian journalist Stefania Maurizi appealed in order to obtain the full access to Julian Assange’s case documents, denied in the previous hearing.
The jam packed Court lasted from 10:30 am to around 4pm with a 45 min break and it was an experience worth remembering as it seeks to make history in the FOIA litigation in this country. Will the court’s decision become a catalyst in unlocking the Julian Assange’s case as we know it today? Judge Mitchell promised to reach his decision by Friday this week.
Here is a short video from outside the court.
This litigation is extremely important for the UK FOIA law and practice. Here is 
Unity4J Greece 