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 ArrestReports
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 →
READ THE STORY →
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
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.
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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. |
"Julian Assange arrest" - by John Pilger
4-14-19,7:05 AM (2 hours ago) |  | |||
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POLITICAL ACTION IN DEFENSE OF ASSANGE
FROM TULSI
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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