WIKILEAKS, ASSANGE NEWSLETTER #12, 4-14-19

OMNI

WIKILEAKS/ASSANGE NEWSLETTER #12, April 14, 2019

https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2019/04/wikileaksassange-newsletter-11-may-25.html

Compiled by Dick Bennett for a Culture of Peace

(#9 July 21, 2011; #10, Jan. 30, 2012, #11, May 25, 2018).

Special connection to the University of Arkansas is its motto “Veritate Duce Progredi.”  To advance with truth as our leader.

See separate OMNI Manning Newsletters, OMNI Investigative Journalism Newsletters, OMNI Whistleblower Newsletters, and more.

http://omnicenter.org/donate/

 

OMNI’S REPORTING OF US EFFORTS TO SILENCE ASSANGE

WIKILEAKS, ASSANGE NEWSLETTER #6, 2-4-11

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2011/02/wikileaks-6.html 

(#7 I couldn’t find the http today)

WIKILEAKS, ASSANGE, MANNING NEWSLETTER, #8, April 4, 2011  http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2011/04/wikileaks-8.html

OMNI WIKILEAKS, ASSANGE, MANNING NEWSLETTER #9, JULY 21, 2011, Compiled by Dick Bennett for a Culture of Peace

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2011/07/wikileaks-newsletter-9.html

WIKILEAKS, ASSANGE, MANNING NEWSLETTER #10, January 30, 2012.  https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2019/04/wikileaksassange-newsletter-10-1-30-12.html     (go to Manning Newsletters)

WIKILEAKS/ASSANGE NEWSLETTER #11, May 25, 2018

https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2019/04/wikileaksassange-newsletter-11-may-25.html

 

Sample Bradley Manning newsletter 2011 http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2011/03/bradley-manning-in-danger-irish-call-to.html

 

WIKILEAKS/ASSANGE NEWSLETTER #12, 4-14-19

CONTENTS

3 NADG Arrest Reports

Andy Greenberg.  US Hacking Case v. Assange

Tariq Ali.  US Motives to Punish Assange

US vs. Investigative Journalism. 

     Greenwald and Lee. 

     Pilger.

Tulsi.  Political Action to Defend Assange

Newsletter #11

TEXTS

ASSANGE ARRESTED, US REQUESTS EXTRADITION

Page one coverage in the Northwest Arkansas Democrat -Gazette.

Staff.  “Assange Extracted from Embassy.”  4-12-19.

He is charged by the US with  hacking (“conspiracy-to-commit-computer-intrusion”) “to help former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning break a password to the Defense Department.”  But no evidence is presented showing their success.  Specifically he was jailed by the British for “breaching his bail conditions.”   Page one importance is enhanced by his attorney’s claim that “’Journalists around the world should be deeply troubled by these unprecedented criminal charges.”

Staff.  “Assange Extradition Raises Concern in U.K.”  4-13-19.

Labor Party leader Jeremy Corbyn opposed extradition to the US seeks to punish him for exposing  “‘evidence of atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan.’”  Officially he is charged with “conspiring to break into a classified government computer at the Pentagon.”  The article gives considerable history, background, and related matters (Trump’s earlier praise of Wikileaks, his crackdown on leakers, Hillary Clinton, the Vault 7 leak whistleblower, Daniel Ellsberg’s denunciation of criminalizing investigative journalism).

Gregory Katz. (AP).  “Britons Call for Sending Assange to Sweden, if Rape Case Reopens.”  4-14-19.  Elaborates on the preceding report especially on the possible Swedish extradition.  New are the inquiries rising over Equador’s president Moreno ‘s possible corruption and “abandonment of Assange,” and the role of Ola Bini, encryption expert.

(End NADG reports)

Robert Mackey.    “Julian Assange Arrested in London After Ecuador Withdraws Asylum; U.S. Requests Extradition. “ The Intercept (4-13-19).

READ THE STORY →

ANDY GREENBERG. “Breaking Down the Hacking Case Against Julian Assange.”  wired, April 11, 2019.

FOR THE FIRST time since 2012, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange no longer has the legal protections of the Ecuadorean Embassy in London. He now faces the criminal charges he's always suspected and feared—although it's now clear that he's accused of criminal behavior not as a journalist, or even a spy, but a hacker.

On Thursday, London's metropolitan police physically dragged Assange out of his residence at the embassy and into a police van. Hours later, a grand jury unsealed an indictment against the WikiLeaks founder for one count of conspiracy to commit computer intrusion. The UK government has already made clear that it carried out Assange's arrest on behalf of the US government, implying that it intends to comply with his extradition to the US to face those hacking charges.

The indictment—which you can read in full below—centers on an incident nine years ago ago, when Assange allegedly told his source, then Army private Chelsea Manning, that he would help crack a password that would have given her deeper access to the military computers from which she was leaking classified material to WikiLeaks.

"On or about March 8, 2010, Assange agreed to assist Manning in cracking a password stored on United States Department of Defense Computers connected to the Secret Internet Protocol Network, a United States government network used for classified documents and communica­tions," the indictment reads, referring to the Pentagon's SIPRNet network of computers that store classified information.

That brief alleged offer of active assistance from Assange may be all the US government needs to charge him not as a journalist recipient of Manning's leaks, but as a coconspirator with Manning in the theft of Pentagon data.

"It can be as simple as that," says Bradley Moss, an attorney for the Washington, DC, law firm Mark Zaid P.C. who focuses on issues in national security and intelligence community personnel.   MORE

https://www.wired.com/story/julian-assange-arrest-indictment-hacking-cfaa/

WHY DO THE US AND ITS IMPERIAL SATRAPIES WANT TO PUNISH ASSANGE and call it rule of law?  Assange revealed their lawlessness!

“Julian Assange outside the Gate of Hell.”

Posted Apr 13, 2019 by Tariq Ali

Topics: Incarceration

Places: Ecuador

Originally published: Verso (April 11, 2019)   | 

I’ve been to see Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian Embassy several times, mainly when Rafael Correa was President and the Embassy felt like a liberated space. A few weeks ago I met him again. By now Correa’s successor, Lenín Moreno, had capitulated on every level to the American Empire. The Embassy became a prison and Assange’s health deteriorated. He was in no doubt that Moreno had been asked and had agreed to expel him from the Embassy. The U.S. demand for extradition was no longer a secret. The Embassy handed him over to the British police earlier today.

If we lived in a world where laws were respected, then Assange would be charged with jumping bail (a minor offense), fined or kept in prison for a few weeks and then released to return to his native Australia. But both the UK and Australia are, effectively, imperial satrapies and likely to bow to U.S. demands. The secret and not-so-secret state in both countries work closely with (or under) its U.S. masters. Why do they want him so badly? To set an example. To incarcerate and isolate him as a warning to others not to follow the Wikileaks path. Chelsea Manning has been re-arrested because she refused to testify to a Grand Jury against him. Since the Russian and Chinese intelligence agencies are pretty much aware of what the U.S. is up to in most parts of the world, the threat posed by Wikileaks was that it made its information available to any citizen, anywhere in the world, who possessed a computer. US/EU foreign policy and its post 9/11 wars have been based on lies, promoted by global TV and media networks and often accepted by a majority of North American and European citizens. Information contradicting these lies challenges the stated motives for war — human rights, democracy, freedom, etc.

Wikileaks has been exposing all this by publishing classified documents that shine a light on the real reasons. It is an astonishing record. Till now WikiLeaks has published almost 3 million diplomatic cables and other U.S. State Department records, comprising some two billion plus words. This stupendous and seemingly insurmountable body of internal state literature, which if printed would amount to some 30,000 volumes, represents something new in the world. This is where the Internet becomes a subversive force, challenging the propaganda networks of the existing order. Assange and his colleagues made no secret that their principal target was the American Empire and its global operations. The response of U.S. institutions has been hysterical and comical. The Library of Congress, blocked Internet access to WikiLeaks. The U.S. National Archives even blocked searches of its own database for the phrase “WikiLeaks.” So absurd did the taboo become that, like a dog snapping mindlessly at everything, eventually it found its mark — its own tail. As Julian Assange pointed out: “By March 2012, the Pentagon had gone so far as to create an automatic filter to block any emails, including inbound emails to the Pentagon, containing the word ‘WikiLeaks.'” As a result, Pentagon prosecutors preparing the case against U.S. intelligence analyst PFC Manning, the alleged source of the Cablegate cables, found that they were not receiving important emails from either the judge or the defense.

The British government is insisting that they will follow the law. We shall see. The U.S. Department of Justice has stated that Assange could face five years in a U.S. prison. Diane Abbot, a leading member of Jeremy Corbyn’s Shadow Cabinet, said in parliament today:

On this side of the house, we want to make the point that the reason we are debating Julian Assange this afternoon–even though the only charge he may face in this country is in relation to his bail hearings–is entirely to do with the whistleblowing activities of Julian Assange and Wikileaks. It is this whistleblowing activity into illegal wars, mass murder, murder of civilians and corruption on a grand scale that has put Julian Assange in the crosshairs of the U.S. administration. It is for this reason that they have once more issued an extradition warrant against Julian Assange … Julian Assange is not being pursued to protect U.S. national security, he is being pursued because he has exposed wrongdoing by U.S. administrations and their military forces.

We will learn more in the days and weeks ahead. In the meantime, Wikileaks and its founder expect and deserve the solidarity of all those of us who believe that citizens should not be treated like children and that most politicians in the US/EU orbit are untrustworthy and hate their lies and corruptions being exposed.

·        

ARREST OF ASSANGE VS. INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM

Glenn Greenwald, Micah Lee “The U.S. Government’s Indictment of Julian Assange Poses Grave Threats to Press Freedom.”   The Intercept (4-13-19). The Trump DOJ is exploiting animosity toward Assange to launch a thinly disguised effort to criminalize core functions of investigative journalism. READ MORE →

"Julian Assange arrest" - by John Pilger

Justice Initiative via uark.onmicrosoft.com	4-14-19,7:05 AM (2 hours ago)
to James

JUSTICE INITIATIVE    John Pilger.    “The Assange arrest is a warning from history.”  Justice Initiative.  April 14, 2019. johnpilger The glimpse of Julian Assange being dragged from the Ecuadorean embassy in London is an emblem of the times. Might against right. Muscle against the law. Indecency against courage. Six policemen manhandled a sick journalist, his eyes wincing against his first natural light in  almost seven years. That this outrage happened in the heart of London, in the land of Magna Carta, ought to shame and anger all who fear for "democratic" societies. Assange is a political refugee protected by international law, the recipient of asylum under a strict covenant to which Britain is a signatory. The United Nations made this clear in the legal ruling of its Working Party on Arbitrary Detention. But to hell with that. Let the thugs go in. Directed by the quasi fascists in Trump's Washington, in league with Ecuador's Lenin Moreno, a Latin American Judas and liar seeking to disguise his rancid regime, the British elite abandoned its last imperial myth: that of fairness and justice. Imagine Tony Blair dragged from his multi-million pound Georgian home in Connaught Square, London, in handcuffs, for onward dispatch to the dock in The Hague. By the standard of Nuremberg, Blair's "paramount crime" is the deaths of a million Iraqis. Assange's crime is journalism: holding the rapacious to account, exposing their lies and empowering people all over the world with truth. The shocking arrest of Assange carries a warning for all who, as Oscar Wilde wrote, "sow the seeds of discontent [without which] there would be no advance towards civilisation". The warning is explicit towards journalists. What happened to the founder and editor of WikiLeaks can happen to you on a newspaper, you in a TV studio, you on radio, you running a podcast. . . .[I excised a section mainly condemning The Guardian.] Even if journalists who published WikiLeaks' leaks are not summoned by an American grand jury, the intimidation of Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning will be enough. Real journalism is being criminalised by thugs in plain sight. Dissent has become an indulgence. In Australia, the current America-besotted government is prosecuting two whistle-blowers who revealed that Canberra's spooks bugged the cabinet meetings of the new government of East Timor for the express purpose of cheating the tiny, impoverished nation out of its proper share of the oil and gas resources in the Timor Sea. Their trial will be held in secret. The Australian prime minister, Scott Morrison, is infamous for his part in setting up concentration camps for refugees on the Pacific islands of Nauru and Manus, where children self harm and suicide. In 2014, Morrison proposed mass detention camps for 30,000 people. Real journalism is the enemy of these disgraces. A decade ago, the Ministry of Defence in London produced a secret document which described the "principal threats" to public order as threefold: terrorists, Russian spies and investigative journalists. The latter was designated the major threat. The document was duly leaked to WikiLeaks, which published it. "We had no choice," Assange told me. "It's very simple. People have a right to know and a right to question and challenge power. That's true democracy." What if Assange and Manning and others in their wake - if there are others - are silenced and "the right to know and question and challenge" is taken away? In the 1970s, I met Leni Reifenstahl, close friend of Adolf Hitler, whose films helped cast the Nazi spell over Germany. She told me that the message in her films, the propaganda, was dependent not on "orders from above" but on what she called the "submissive void" of the public. "Did this submissive void include the liberal, educated bourgeoisie?" I asked her. "Of course," she said, "especially the intelligentsia.... When people no longer ask serious questions, they are submissive and malleable. Anything can happen." And did. The rest, she might have added, is history. John Richard Pilger is an Australian journalist and BAFTA award-winning documentary film maker. He has been mainly based in the United Kingdom since 1962.

POLITICAL ACTION IN DEFENSE OF ASSANGE

FROM TULSI

Dick—  4-14-19 On Twitter, CNN, and MSNBC, Tulsi called out the arrest of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange as a clear warning shot to journalists and Americans: This is such a dangerous and slippery slope, not only for journalists but also for every American. That our government has the power to lay down the hammer to say, “Be careful, be quiet, fall in line — otherwise we have the means to come after you.” Tulsi is standing up for our freedoms to the Washington establishment who are celebrating Assange’s arrest — and she’s taking fire for it. Will you show Tulsi that you stand with her? Click here to say you agree that the job of the US government is to protect our rights— not infringe on our civil liberties, restrict the freedom and flow of information, and wage costly interventionist wars around the world. There is a reason that Assange’s arrest is happening now—because President Trump has turned the swamp into a cesspool of corruption. Assange’s activities are a threat to US intelligence overreach and any powerful politician who seeks to subvert the will of the American people by subterfuge. As a result, the establishment has long sought to take him down. President Obama’s administration looked into the charges against Assange and chose not to extradite him because they were concerned about setting a precedent that threatens the freedom of the press. But as Trump surrounds himself with chickenhawk neocons like Pompeo and Bolton, he’s lost any ability to thwart the establishment agenda. As Tulsi said on CNN, “This is what happens when we have people in government who can identify an individual as a foreign asset because they disagree with you.” This isn’t about the charges brought against Assange, which should be litigated fairly in a court of law. This is about shining light on a corrupt professional political class that shuns transparency and seeks to create a culture of fear in order to keep the American people in line. We can’t let that happen. Our democracy depends on transparency, freedom of speech, and freedom of the press. Click here to stand with Tulsi in this fight to hold our government accountable for actions taken at home and abroad. Thank you for standing with us. TULSI2020   STAND WITH TULSI »

PAID FOR BY TULSI NOW PO Box 75255 Kapolei HI 96707

Contents  Wikileaks/Assange Newsletter #11, May 25, 2018  (Newsletters 1-10, 714pp.)

2 essays from #7,2011,  on Wikileaks, Assange, and Democracy (copied 4-13-19)

Books by Assange:

The Wikileaks Files: the World According to U.S. Empire.

    Freedom and the Future of the Internet.

Film About Assange:

Ales Gibney, We Steal Secrets: The Story of Wikileaks.

Catching Up with Assange 2017-2018

Roots Action 5-18, Petitioning Equador Not to Cave to US Pressure

Catching Up with Assange 2016   Amy Goodman:  UN Panel Says Assange Being Arbitrarily Detained.  What Will
      Happen Now?  Jan. 2016

Wikileaks/Assange Google Search Feb. 4, 2016

Strong ACLU Protest against 6 Years of Arbitrary Detention  Feb. 6, 2016

Veterans for Peace:  Give Assange his Freedom, Feb. 12

New Paperback Edition of The Wikileaks Files: The World According to US Empire.  Verso, 2016. 

 

 

Assange 2012-2015

Assange, Google is Privatized NSA

Assange, Cypherpunks

Gibney, Film about Assange

Greenberg, Wikileaks vs. Secrecy

Hayase, Assange and the Tilted Scale of Justice

Moon, et al., Saving the Internet

 

OMNI Newsletters

Wikileaks/Assange Newsletters Nos. 9 and 10

 

END WIKILEAKS/ASSANGE NEWSLETTER #12, 4-14-19