#Hands Off Julian Assange
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Biden Administration Issues “Weasel Words” Assurances To Secure Assange’s Extradition
— Thomas Scripps | Wednesday April 17, 2024 | World Socialist Web Site | WSWS.ORG
The United States has provided “assurances” to the UK government to further its pursuit of WikiLeaks founder and journalist Julian Assange, held in London’s maximum security Belmarsh prison.
The US is seeking to prosecute Assange on charges under the Espionage Act which carry a de facto life sentence for publishing documents exposing war crimes and human rights abuses carried out by Washington and its imperialist allies.
Julian Assange. Photo by David G. Silvers, Cancillería del Ecuador/CC BY-SA 2.0
When, at the end of last month, the UK’s High Court offered the US the opportunity to provide such commitments to prevent Assange from appealing against his extradition to America, the World Socialist Web Site wrote, “The court’s proposals are a fig leaf. US prosecutors will furnish ‘assurances’ as worthless as those already provided in connection with his conditions of imprisonment.”
This has been confirmed. The commitments required by the court were that Assange would not be subject to the death penalty, and two connected points that he would not be prejudiced at trial by virtue of his Australian nationality and would be granted free speech rights under the First Amendment of the US Constitution.
A facsimile of the letter sent by the US Embassy to UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron Tuesday, published by Consortium News, reads:
“Assange will not be prejudiced by reason of his nationality with respect to which defenses he may seek to raise at trial and sentencing. Specifically, if extradited, Assange will have the ability to raise and seek to rely upon at trial… the rights and protections given under the First Amendment.” It then stresses, “A decision as to the applicability of the First Amendment is exclusively within the purview of the U.S. Courts.”
It continues: “A sentence of death will neither be sought nor imposed on Assange… These assurances are binding on any and all present or subsequent individuals to whom authority has been delegated to decide these matters.”
Assange’s wife Stella was quick to point out the “blatant weasel words” of the first assurance, which only states that Assange can “seek to raise” First Amendment rights—it does not guarantee that he will receive them.
Legally, this should bar extradition outright.
Section 87 of the UK’s Extradition Act (2003) requires the courts to “decide whether the person’s extradition would be compatible with the Convention rights [European Convention on Human Rights] within the meaning of the Human Rights Act 1998… If the judge decides the question… in the negative he must order the person’s discharge.”
Article 10 of the Convention is the right to freedom of expression, or free speech. The same protection is enshrined in the US legal system in the form of the First Amendment. But the US Embassy’s letter leaves the door open to this right being denied to Assange at the say so of the US courts.
As Stella Assange noted, the letter pointedly “makes no undertaking to withdraw the prosecution’s previous assertion that Julian has no first amendment rights because he is not a US citizen.”
Both the lead prosecutor Gordon Kromberg and the former CIA Director Mike Pompeo have made this claim.
Stella Assange added that her husband’s “life is at risk” every day he is in prison: 'The diplomatic note does nothing to relieve our family's extreme distress about his future—his grim expectation of spending the rest of his life in isolation in US prison for publishing award-winning journalism.”
Her statement underscores the cynicism of the death penalty assurance offered by the US. Substantial medical evidence has been provided in Assange’s case confirming the significant likelihood of suicide in the event of extradition to and imprisonment in the US. His mental and physical health have already declined sharply in the five years he has spent in Belmarsh.
Nor is it beyond the US government—whose intelligence agencies surveilled Assange and plotted his assassination—to renege on its promise or see to it that Assange is killed “unofficially”.
Underscoring the case’s lawless character, on the same day the US sent its “assurances” to the UK, CIA Director William Burns submitted a statement to the Spanish courts. Burns asserted that “the CIA’s statutory privileges… to protect intelligence sources, methods, and activities at issue” in a case examining the Agency’s spying against Assange, refusing to either confirm or deny its involvement or to provide “factual bases for my privilege assertions”.
None of this was acknowledged by the Democratic Party-aligned New York Times, which sunk to new lows in its reporting of the case by citing some of Stella Assange’s comments while excising her reference to the Biden administration’s “weasel words”, allowing it to run a totally uncritical article headlined, “U.S. Lays Out Protections for Assange if He Is Extradited”.
The UK courts will likely take the same wilfully credulous view.
Geoffrey Robertson KC, founder and joint head of Doughty Street Chambers which is representing Assange, and who previously represented him directly, claimed, “Unless you can guarantee it [free speech rights], I think the British courts will be dubious about extraditing Mr Assange to a situation or to a trial where he doesn’t have the equal protection of the laws.”
This will doubtless be the legally impeccable argument advanced by Assange’s lawyers at the next hearing scheduled for May 20. But the High Court has already accepted equally worthless assurances at an earlier stage in the case to override warnings about Assange’s significant risk of suicide—barring extradition under Section 91 of the Extradition Act.
These “guaranteed” that Assange would not be placed in America’s supermax prison, the ADX Florence, or be subjected to Special Administrative Measures (SAMS), implicitly acknowledged to constitute cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment prohibited under Article 3 of the Convention. But in each case, the undertaking was given “subject to the condition that the United States retains the power to impose SAMs [or an ADX designation] on Mr Assange in the event that, after entry of this assurance, he was to commit any future act that met the test for the imposition of a SAM [or ADX designation].”
The UK’s High Court responded favourably in their December 2021 judgment that it could “see no merit in the criticisms made of the individual assurances… There is no basis for assuming that the USA has not given the assurances in good faith.”
Screenshots of the US Letter of Assurances From X, Formerly Twitter. Megan Specia @meganspecia! US has filed assurances in Assange extradition case, which were requested by a British court before it makes a final decision on his ability to appeal. Next step is a hearing on May 20.
In its latest ruling, dismissing Assange’s right to appeal provided the new assurances were given, the High Court was again at pains to stress the trustworthiness of the US state, even to the point of denying that there was “anything to show” a connection between CIA plots to kidnap or poison Assange and the prosecutor’s attempt to have him extradited.
If the assurances are accepted by the High Court on May 20, Assange’s request for an appeal will be dismissed, leaving him at imminent risk of extradition. His legal team have submitted a preliminary appeal to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, but it is unclear whether the UK would abide by orders from that court to keep Assange in its custody until it has reached a decision even if Strasbourg agrees to hear the case.
Amid the vital and ongoing legal defence being mounted, workers must understand that Assange’s fate depends on stepping up the global campaign demanding his release.
#Britain 🇬🇧#United States 🇺🇸#Australia 🇦🇺#Europe 🇪🇺#Democratic Rights#Media Issues#Julian Assange#Free Julian Assange#Hands Off Julian Assange#War Criminal | Genocidal | Joe Biden Administration#Weasel Words | Assurances#Julian Assange Extradition#World Socialist Web Site | WSWS.ORG
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Similar events will be taking place elsewhere as well, with another massive rally being held outside of the Department of Justice in Washington DC
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Julian Assange’s Grand Inquisitor
February 22, 2024
"The prosecution lawyers in the High Court seeking to ensure Julian’s extradition to the U.S. rely almost exclusively on the judicial opinions of Gordon Kromberg, a highly controversial U.S. attorney.
By the end of the day, it seemed likely that, probably by April, since requested written briefs have to be turned into the judges in March, the two judges will permit an appeal on at least a few of the points. This will, conveniently for the Biden administration — which I expect does not want to take on the contentious issue of extraditing Julian while fueling the genocide in Gaza — mean that any extradition would occur after the election.
The two-day hearing was Julian’s last chance to request an appeal of the extradition decision made in 2022 by the then British home secretary, Priti Patel and of many of the rulings of District Judge Vanessa Baraitser in 2021. If Julian is denied an appeal he can request the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) for a stay of execution under Rule 39, which is given in “exceptional circumstances” and “only where there is an imminent risk of irreparable harm.” But it is possible the British court could order Julian’s immediate extradition prior to a Rule 39 instruction or decide to ignore a request from the ECtHR to allow Julian to have his case heard by the court."
The CIA seeks Julian’s imprisonment in the U.S. because of the release of the documents known as Vault 7, which exposed hacking tools that permit the CIA to access our phones, computers and televisions, turning them — even when switched off — into monitoring and recording devices. The formal extradition request does not include charges based on the release of the Vault 7 files, but the U.S. request also only came after the release of the Vault 7 material. The CIA usually gets what it wants. But for the near future I expect Julian to continue to rot in HM Prison Belmarsh, where he has been imprisoned for nearly five years as he deteriorates physically and psychologically. This slow motion execution is intentional.
It is hard to call any court ruling, other than the dropping of the charges against him, a victory, but the longer he stays out of U.S. hands, the more hope he has of regaining his freedom for carrying out the most important investigative journalism of our generation."
READ MORE https://scheerpost.com/2024/02/22/chris-hedges-julian-assanges-grand-inquisitor/#comments
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‘America Should Look to Itself Before They Start Criticizing Other People’
As jury president of the Red Sea Film Festival in Saudi Arabia, Oliver Stone is taking his role seriously. He sees the festival as an opportunity to explore the cinema being made in a region of the world he views as being misunderstood: “It’s a chance to really dip into the very fascinating Asian and African cinema. There’s a lot of big changes going on. You know, there’s a whole new world and they’re learning how to use film to tell their stories.”
Stone alluded to these changes in his remarks at the opening ceremony: “You see the changes that are coming here, the reforms. I think people who judge too harshly should come and visit this place and see for themselves.”
It was a remark that was bound to cause controversy among critics of the Kingdom’s human rights record. But Stone is unrepentant. “I meant what I said,” the “Platoon” and “JFK” director made clear. “Human rights, Jesus Christ! […] America should look to itself with Julian Assange before they start criticizing other people. Because that’s the worst case I’ve heard. […] America has certainly got a long list of crimes. I don’t think they should be pointing any fingers at anybody.” Stone cites the Iraq War as a particularly egregious example of heavy-handed American intervention.
He continues: “Now they’re arguing about women in Iran? What about here? They’re making tremendous reforms for women. They can’t mention that? You know, all they mention is a murder several years ago. There’s a lot of murders that go on in their country. What they’re doing to Assange is, in some ways, worse than cutting up somebody. It’s killing them slowly. Right. Okay. Enough said.”
The “murder several years ago” is a reference to the killing by Saudi government agents of Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi-American dissident, in 2018.
Returning to film, Stone talks about how he finds the new cinema inspiring. “Certainly, it gives me cause to say I miss my career. I should come back and make 10 more films. I feel horrible. I want to make some of these different stories, but I have maybe one film left. You know, I’m 76 now, right? So yeah. The new movies have gotten in so many ways more sophisticated, better shot. These young kids, young people, have the benefit of seeing everything we did. So naturally, there’s improvements and changes. The question is: what’s changing in the environment? Is there a content change? And are the younger generation more cynical? You know, these are questions that are valid. So yeah, it certainly renews the fountain of desire. But you can’t make films that easily anymore. The film business is kind of horrible, right? It’s never been in worse shape.”
Could “JFK” be made today? Stone insists: “Not even close. You had to have some guts. I mean, a lot of filmmakers will tell you that but it’s true. You did need a lot of guts to make that and Warner Bros. did take a lot of hits on it. We got a lot of establishment criticism. But Terry Semel and Bob Daly, they stuck with it. They said it’s a good movie. What the fuck?”
Stone says he does have a feature lined up but would rather not talk about it. “I may not be able to pull it off. In the last few years. I’ve had setbacks. I was able to do two documentaries. Very complicated ones. This last one was on nuclear energy. Have you seen it?”
“Nuclear” argues for the massive promotion of nuclear energy as the solution to halt global warming. It is a subject Stone feels passionate about. He is also working on the second volume of his memoir “Chasing the Light.” One of the strengths of the extraordinary first volume is Stone’s willingness to admit when he has been wrong in the past, rather than expand only on his successes. “That was the point. Failure was also a learning process. A tremendous amount of failure. And in the movie business, it’s the same thing for me. People hear about the successes but they don’t hear about the failures.”
-John Bleasdale, "America Should Look to Itself Before They Start Criticizing Other People," Variety, Dec 3 2022 [x]
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The United States Supreme Court is facing, yet again, the controversial question of the death penalty. This time, the issue arises in a high-profile case coming out of the District of Massachusetts: the prosecution of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev for participating, with his older brother Tamerlan (who died in a shootout with police), in the bombing at the Boston Marathon finish line that killed three people and injured more than 260 others. The jury recommended that the judge sentence him to death, which District Court Judge George O’Toole did.
However, on July 31, 2020, the Court of Appeals, while upholding the guilty verdict, vacated the death penalty on the ground that Judge O’Toole had failed to sufficiently question the jurors about their knowledge of highly publicized aspects of the crime. As a result, Tsarnaev will spend the rest of his life in a federal “supermax” prison, probably the one in Florence, Colo. — provided that the Supreme Court does not step in to reverse the First Circuit and reinstate the penalty of death. And, indeed, the Supreme Court has already taken what could be the first step in such a reimposition: it agreed on March 22 of this year to review the case and heard oral arguments on Wednesday, Oct. 13.
The oral argument proceeded along predictable lines. The government reviewed, blow-by-blow, the cold-bloodedness and meticulous steps taken by the two brothers in positioning the bombs, and in their timing — setting off one, and a little later the other. This presumably had the effect of making it appear that, after the first bomb went off, nothing would follow. It was the second bomb that did the most damage. And the defense argued, again predictably, that the younger brother, Dzhokhar, was heavily influenced by his controlling older brother, Tamerlan.
The issue of capital punishment, imposed capriciously (and occasionally in error) has long been controversial. It has been sufficiently troubling that the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts outlawed the penalty on the basis of the state constitution. But the feds grabbed the Tsarnaev case out of the hands of state authorities and proceeded to prosecute Tsarnaev in the federal system, where the penalty of death was, and remains, available.
Indeed, the death penalty has arisen recently in yet another case with Massachusetts ties. Judge Vanessa Baraitser in London refused to extradite Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, to the United States earlier this year. Her reasoning rested on the conditions of the federal supermax prison that Assange would have ended up in if he were extradited. Assange, admitting to having underlying mental health issues, disclosed that he had been considering suicide: ending up in a federal supermax prison in Colorado — the same the Tsarnaev would live out his days in — would likely have ended in his killing himself. Thus, although not a death penalty case per se, extraditing Assange would likely result in his death.
What appears to be ignored in the heated battle over the death penalty is the fact that the alternative punishment — life in prison in one of the federal “supermax” prisons — is hardly a walk in the park. In fact, a very compelling case can be made that a sentence of life is considerably harsher than execution. In order to understand why life is a harsher sentence than death, one has to understand the nature of these prisons and the prisoner’s daily regimen.
Solitary confinement for life spent in a supermax prison might realistically be viewed as borderline torture. It does the defendant no favor to spare him from death. His life becomes a living hell. But vacating a defendant’s death sentence does help spare society of the moral opprobrium of engaging in the killing of a human being.
However, consider the several instances where prisoners have been placed in solitary confinement, supposedly for their own good (in an ironic and even cruel twist, precautions are taken to prevent inmates from killing themselves):
Ian Manuel spent 18 years in solitary confinement in Florida, his sentence beginning at the tender age of 15. He had no window in his cell, no ability to communicate with his fellow inmates and hardly any food. Manuel and other inmates resorted to harming themselves so they could spend time in a hospital, away from their solitary cells, “just so they could feel human again.”
Brian Nelson spent 23 years in solitary confinement in Illinois. He could not speak to anybody within the prison nor outside via phone calls, lost a tremendous amount of weight and had hardly any access to reading material. Nelson, a man who had no prior mental health problems before incarceration, ended up with severe depression and struggled to maintain his sanity.
Tyquine Lee, having dealt with mental illness in the past, spent 600 days in solitary confinement in Virginia. When his family came to visit him in prison, he was entirely unrecognizable, physically deteriorating and speaking to himself in a made-up language. When he was released, he was diagnosed with schizophrenia and personality disorder.
Kalief Browder spent nearly two years in solitary confinement on Rikers Island. After being released, he reproduced a similar solitary environment regimen at home and stayed away from people. He had constant fears of being attacked in public and at home. Although it seemed that some normalcy in Browder’s life was returning, with him having earned a high school education and beginning a college degree, he ended up committing suicide.
Te list of solitary confinement cases could go on and on. According to a Vox article written by Stephanie Wykstra in 2019, “at least 61,000 on any given day and likely many thousands more than that… are in solitary confinement across the country,” Derek Chauvin and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev being among those in solitary.
The issue before the Supreme Court is whether the First Circuit erred in vacating the death sentence, substituting life. That life sentence would be spent in one of the federal supermax prisons. If the Supreme Court reinstates Tsarnaev’s death sentence, it would be doing him, and the entirety of the American prison system, a disservice. But if the high court affirms the First Circuit, it would be doing our society a favor: preventing the phenomenon of state-inflicted death in the name of all of us.
#jahar tsarnaev#dzhokhar tsarnaev#tamerlan tsarnaev#abolish the death penalty#abolish capital punishment#end capital punishment#end the death penalty#abolish solitary confinement#adx#cruel and unusual punishment#kalief browder#modern day torture#inhumane#prisoners rights#prisoner abuse
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The first thing the members of the “Sleuth’s Corner” (colloquially, “the Corner”) want you to know is they’re not zealots, at least not in the way you think.
“It’s not political, that’s the most important thing,” says Hans Mahncke, one of a handful of Corner members to go by his real name on Twitter. “It’s not even a group in a way, it’s totally organic… I’ve never spoken politics to any of these other guys.”
“These other guys” are a loose confederation of internet investigators who, roughly speaking, came together over the Russiagate story. They’re mainly known by Twitter handles: Walkafyre, TECHNO FOG, @RyanM58699717, Stephen McIntyre (a.k.a. @climateaudit), FOOL NELSON, and @Hmmm57474203. Their real names are mostly all out there — you can find many in Barry Meier’s Spooked, for instance — but for simplicity’s sake I’m using their Twitter identities here.
Despite only being mentioned as a group in passing in a few traditional press treatments (a multi-page section in Meier’s book is the closest thing to a full profile), the Corner has broken numerous major stories in the Trump era, specializing in putting names to unnamed figures in news stories. Among others, they identified Igor Danchenko, the primary source of the infamous “Steele Dossier,” as well as Eric Ciaramella, the alleged “whistleblower” in the Ukrainegate case, and Rodney Joffe, also known as “Tech Executive-1” in Special Counsel John Durham’s indictment of former Hillary Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann.
In return, they’ve been denounced as anti-vaxxers, QAnon adherents, Trump operatives, conspiracy theorists, and Russian spies, and that’s just for starters. When @Hmmm57474203, the blogger who outed Brookings fellow Danchenko as Steele’s primary sub-source, confronted New York Times national security reporter Charlie Savage on Twitter, Savage* answered with a reply that suggested “Hmmm” was a foreign plant:
Not that it matters, but these caricatured descriptions seem way off. There are a few Trump supporters in the Corner, for sure, and some have views that may fall out of the mainstream, but the notion that they’ve been motivated to “help Trump” would be laughable to at least some of the members. By geography, age, attitude, and profession, they’re an eclectic group, featuring several lawyers mixed in with a bank officer, a former mining executive, and a postgraduate student, and their political orientation is not only varied, but a poor fit for the blunt descriptor “right wing.”
They seem primarily to be skeptics and anti-authoritarians with a deep distrust of intelligence agencies. It probably is true that the group rarely or never discusses politics in the traditional left-right sense, and “Fool’s” account of how he got involved is typical.
“I like Trump, but I didn’t even register to vote that year,” he laughs, referring to 2016. “But then, once this whole thing, when they tried to start linking Trump to Russia, I thought, ‘Nah, you’re not going to do that.’”
“I’ve never been to a political rally,” adds Mahncke, who says: “There’s certainly more of a Trump tendency than an anti-Trump tendency, but there are also parallels with the old left, the way the left used to be, the left that likes Julian Assange, that kind of left. That, I think, is a commonality. I think everyone [in the group] is a huge Assange fan.”
The characteristic that seems to bind them more than any other is they’re all at least fascinated, and in some cases obsessed, with Russiagate. They have critics who think they’re crazy, conspiratorial, unhinged, abrasive, and beholden to someone or some group of someones, but mainly they seem motivated to fill in the gaps of an all-time complex story with innumerable plot elements still not known to the public. There’s no question that they came up with names like Danchenko and Joffe faster than mainstream counterparts (if the latter were even looking), and that their strategies are clever, if obsessive. Their idea of a fun project is Walkafyre making a comprehensive list of all the people interviewed by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, and determining both their identities and the order in which they were interviewed from publicly released FBI interview reports (“302s”) and, among other things, the sudden and conspicuous mention of certain names in news stories.
“Media stories around that time, everyone talks about Mueller didn’t leak — but there were leaks all the time,” says Ryan. “You start seeing that this interview happened, and two days later, there’s a news article about something that confirmed that this is who was being interviewed.”
“The identifications of the 302s become a fabulous database that can be quantified and used to see what Mueller was actually doing,” says McIntyre.
Russiagate was unique in the sense that a huge portion of the “story” was always its arc as a media phenomenon. Once the idea that Russia and the Trump campaign were in an actual espionage conspiracy as described in the Steele dossier fell apart — after Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation ended with no indictments, and especially after Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz released a damning report on the FBI’s bent pursuit of FISA warrants in the case — Russiagate really became a story about a media story. How was it leaked? Who was responsible for ginning up a bogus national hysteria? How did half-baked spy tales like the pee tape become serious topics discussed in hushed tones on our most respected news programs?
These conspiracy tales for years were advanced primarily by “reputable” politicians and professional media figures, thrusting skeptics like the members of The Corner in roles as debunkers of mainstream reports. “We spend probably half of our time fighting people like these stenographers over at the New York Times,” says Mahncke, “because every time they put out a piece, it’s a narrative, it’s not the truth.”
One of many examples was the taken-seriously hypothesis that Donald Trump’s “Russia, if you’re listening” outburst served as the predicate for the opening of the FBI’s Trump-Russia investigation, because Trump’s comments inspired the Australian government to tip off the Americans about a conversation their diplomat Alexander Downer had with George Papadopoulos.
That story was pushed by former FBI agent Peter Strzok in an interview with CBS correspondent David Martin, who ran a clip of Trump’s infamous statement before saying, “Those Australian diplomats heard that, and contacted the FBI.”
Martin tweeted something similar after airing the story, at which point Mahncke pointed out that Strzok’s story had to be bogus, and Martin should have known as much. Martin has since deleted the tweet:
The group has made mistakes — nowhere near on the scale of the mainstream sources like the New York Times, the New Yorker, the Guardian, CNN, and MSNBC that took the Steele material seriously for years, but still they’ve made them. Among other things, critics note they publicly suggested former KGB officer Yuri Shvets as Steele’s primary source before “Hmmm” discovered Danchenko. Overall, the fact that they’re on the skeptical side of a story most of the commercial press spent years panting for (and still does) has turned them into villains to many traditionalists.
On the flip side, throughout most of the Russiagate period, corporate outlets used both paid researchers like Glenn Simpson and “independent researchers” like Guinness-length tweeter Seth Abramson and Louise “British Invasion” Mensch as end-arounds to traditional fact-checking rules, often inviting them on to air unproven hypotheticals (Did Vladimir Putin personally dictate a Donald Trump Jr. media statement? Did Trump officials meet Russian spies in Prague?). This was an outgrowth of a naughty habit begun decades before in which journalists got otherwise unprintable stories in front of readers by affecting to “report the controversy” of internet theories, a key early example being a front page New York Times report about the “frenzied speculation” that George W. Bush used a transmitter during a debate with John Kerry in 2004.
That story previewed Russiagate in the sense that the Times got a “reputable” political figure, Terry McAuliffe, to legitimize the transmitter theory by commenting on it, saying “If [Bush] had an earpiece on during that debate and those are the best answers that he could do, then he should be impeached.” This means of laundering unsourced theories would be used by the likes of Adam Schiff and Mark Warner repeatedly in the Trump years.
The Corner’s value hasn’t been in unproven theories but in filling in conspicuous blanks in coverage. Politics aside, they should be a template for a type of crowdsourced journalistic operation that in an ideal world would act in partnership with traditional investigative reporters, combining an appetite for records searches, the advantage of sheer person-hours, patience to follow through with Freedom of Information requests, and a little old-school door-knocking technique to produce elusive answers. Many of their biggest “scoops” came via exhaustive document review of the type that’s familiar to anyone who’s lived the 100-hour-work-week life as a young associate. The legal experience shows up in other areas, too.
“I’m not an appellate lawyer. I’m a lawyer that kind of grinds,” says Techno. “I think everybody’s lying to me. I think my clients are lying to me. It happens, you know? So you don’t trust anybody. So when they’re saying [Konstantin] Kilimnik is a Russian agent, you think, wait, let me look at that.”
Journalists, by nature always under time pressure to produce content, have a limited ability to do this kind of work, and even the organizations that can afford to hire people for this purpose mostly don’t do much of it. True, the fastest way to uncovering secrets remains the traditional method of generating sources who disclose the damning thing or things, but in the internet age the quantitative approach used by groups like the Corner can act as a short-cut to identifying gettable information that’s already out there in the public record.
In theory, traditional reporters could partner up with such groups, working to add layers of confirmation to leads and using their input as a warning system, to help avoid contradictions and errors. Chuck Ross of the Daily Caller and Free Beacon was one of the few who made efforts in this direction with the Corner.
“I think the point that we’re here and can answer a lot of these questions because we’re so in the weeds, is right,” says Mahncke.
As an example: if line journalists had the same familiarity with the documents in this story that this group does, numerous myths would have been exploded much earlier. An example is the crucial annex to a document that added legitimacy to years of crazy media stories — the Intelligence Community Assessment of December 30, 2016, used by outgoing President Obama to justify sanctions against Russia — cited on a portion of Steele’s reports we knew at least as early as the Horowitz report relied on a made-up source who never communicated with Steele in any way, a former chief of a small organization called the Russian-American Chamber of Commerce, Sergei Millian.
By identifying Danchenko, and reaching out to Millian, a naturalized American from Belarus — see the interview below — the group helped flesh out the absurdity of the original conspiracy tale. This intelligence “annex” sourced to no one included the key assertions that Russia had cultivated Trump for years, had fed him intelligence on Hillary Clinton, and agreed to use Wikileaks in exchange for policy concessions on NATO and Ukraine:
This passage, a fake on the order of the yellowcake fiasco, remains mostly unexplored in the traditional press, as the story of its origin is seen as “right wing” propaganda, despite the fact that the confirmation mainly came from people like Inspector General Horowitz. It’s too bad for groups like the Corner, because for all the criticism they’ve taken, some of their puzzle-solving on matters like this has been really clever and worth putting to paper. To that end, I talked to “The Corner” members about how they got together, identified Danchenko, and unpacked some other conundrums, while also asking what they think about the regular press and whether or not they could cooperate with groups like theirs:
Matt Taibbi: How did you all get together?
McIntyre (a.k.a. @climateaudit): I would say our group in the sense of Fool Nelson, Walkafyre, Hans, and I started a private DM line after the release of the Horowitz Report. And the project that we set for ourselves following the Horowitz Report was identifying Steele’s primary sub-source.
At that point it seemed to us to be a scandal that the sub-source was still unknown. There didn’t seem to be any good reason for it. We were suspicious of the narrative that protecting sources and methods was doing anything other than protecting embarrassment. And what I would say Fool and Walkafyre and Hans and I myself had all noticed more or less independently is that the Horowitz Report indicated that the primary sub-source lived near DC, that he wasn’t Russian-based, and that the whole idea that he was at some risk of being knocked off by Putin was a deception.
Now at that first pass, we weren’t able to figure out who he was, but we were able to get a pretty good profile that he was some sort of expat that was living in Washington, DC, he was familiar with think-tank culture. And so we formed the group, we coalesced, and now each of us had written somewhat different things on it at that time.
MT: What were some of the early hints?
Walkafyre: There was actually a section that Horowitz quoted at some other point in the report that didn’t redact a certain line about him being “Russian-based…” And then in a few other places in the report he quotes basically the same line, but that one section that says “Russian-based” was redacted. So, looking through it, I said, “Wait a minute. I think this is the same quote,” and plugging that in, based on the spacing and everything of the font, it was pretty clear that it was the same line. It was a section where one of the agents was saying, “Hey, we don’t think he’s Russian based,” but that part was redacted in the report.
Mahncke: What’s the significance of that? Well, [FBI attorney Kevin] Clinesmith, the only one who’s so far been convicted of anything, he was the one who lied about the Russian-based stuff. That’s why it’s in there. It says that the analyst told the lawyer, the lawyer being Clinesmith, “Hey, you can’t have Russia-based in here because the guy’s not Russia-based.”
The footnote in the Horowitz report noting that an FBI attorney had been informed Steele’s primary sub-source was not [redacted].
McIntyre: The other big thing that came out of the Horowitz Report that was relevant to our truth pertaining to [Russian Chamber of Commerce Chief] Sergei Millian. And this plays a part later when Danchenko’s identified, that in one of the Horowitz passages, there’s an admission that the primary sub-source never met Person-1.
When we saw that, that was something we talked about a lot, and we were in touch with Millian by that point. What that meant was that in the Steele dossier where there had been in four different reports, which purported to rely on information from “Person-1,” that this was impossible. Danchenko tried to cover it up. In the Horowitz Report they said that Danchenko had told the FBI that he had received an anonymous phone call for 10 to 15 minutes.
So at that point this whole Intel Assessment now is based on an anonymous phone call for 10 to 15 minutes, and you don’t even know whether that was Millian or not. And, even if that phone call existed, the other three attributions to Millian are fake. So those are the things that we knew before we knew who Danchenko was.
MT: What were the next steps? The ominous New York Times description says, “The F.B.I. Pledged to Keep a Source Anonymous. Trump Allies Aided His Unmasking.”
McIntyre: Miraculously, in July 2020, a lightly redacted version of the Danchenko interview was released by Lindsey Graham. That was right in the wheelhouse for people like Walkafyre and Fool. As it turned out, the person who spotted Danchenko was our friend “Hmmm.” But it came out on a Friday, so we were all pretty excited except for the fact that on the Saturday Hans was with his family out camping and Fool was on the lake, on the Ozarks drinking.
Fool: Yeah. For my birthday. I had all weekend.
McIntyre: Walkafyre, and I were kind of holding the fort. We followed some wrong leads. Some of the things that we had on the Saturday were just elementary stuff, like figuring out that the guy was from Russia. He had four letters in his first name, nine letters in his last name. One of the benefits was that the FBI used a Courier font, which made character counting elementary.
MT: How did Hmmm come in?
Hmmm: When the FBI interview was released, I just happened to be following something else I was digging into, and ended up finding one of these guys. I mean, the whole story, I put on that little mini blog that I made when I found Danchenko. The short version: there’s a guy out there who worked for [Steele’s firm] Orbis, and one of his Twitter followers — and they followed each other — was the guy. And, none of it, obviously, would’ve mattered if all of those parameters weren’t already discussed on Twitter, where the size of the name and all of that had been discussed.
So, I started digging in and looking more. And, the key was I found Danchenko’s resume, and it matched perfectly, everything that was in that FBI interview. And, I knew that was the guy. Unfortunately, nobody else was awake at that point, so I had nobody to just pass this along and go private with it. So, I wanted to consolidate that finding, throw it out there in a way that other people could validate it.
McIntyre: Prior to the Danchenko interview being published, we had thought, largely from The New York Times reporting, that the primary sub-source must be a Soviet-era intelligence officer that was expat in the US. We couldn’t quite get anybody to fit, but when we saw the interview, it was very clear that the guy was in his thirties, just from the biography.
What I perceive Hmmm to have done, is look at a blog article by Jacob Appelbaum which had collected a set of social circle connections that included Glenn Simpson… and identified various young associates of Christopher Steele. Kieren Porter was one of them, Sam Stainer was another, and he had pictures of them and showed them cavorting around.
He then looked at the social media connections of Kieren Porter, looked for Russian names, and “four by nine” names. And, it was 600, 700, a thousand people to go through. This is something that is very characteristic of the work that the group’s done, is that we’re not afraid of a thousand names to go through. So, from parsing that list, he found Igor Danchenko. And then, it matched and he quickly found other private things.
MT: Did you do anything else to confirm the story?
Mahncke: But that’s one point I just wanted to make earlier — we didn’t just put Igor Danchenko on Twitter. The media always accuses these Twitter people of not following the proper procedures and you don’t verify.
After the Danchenko interview was released, we emailed Sergei Millian. Some of us had gotten a bit friendly with him. We said, “Hey, Sergei, we’ve got a four plus nine here.” Danchenko had told the FBI, “I sent this guy two emails in July and August.” Okay, so we said, “Sergei, could you please go through all emails from that period, if you still have them, and find a four plus nine?” Luckily, within like 12 hours Hmmm had come up with a name.
So at that point we re-contacted Sergei and said, “Hey, by the way, Sergei, we’ve got an update. You don’t need to look for a four-plus-nine, just look for a Danchenko. Do you have a Danchenko?” And that’s when he said, “Yeah, I’ve got two emails.” And he didn’t know that number was proof.
There’s maybe an ancillary point there. Would he have given those emails to someone from the New York Times, which had already spent four years smearing him? Probably not.
Fool: After that, we were scraping all the Facebook profiles and stuff like that. And then, there was just this one picture of Igor, he’s dressed in armor, or something like that. And then, all these people were liking the posts on there, so I just took a screenshot of that moved on. And then, because we filled in the redactions Walkafyre-style, where we had the first and last name, I could read through which source gave which information. You could basically figure out each of the sub-sources.
MT: In retrospect, what allowed Danchenko’s name to stay secret for as long as it did?
Mahncke: I think an important part of this is that probably the reason we didn’t find Danchenko earlier — because we had put in some effort, as we had even narrowed down where he lived, not only DC, but we said Northern Virginia. And we had a couple of important data points to try to figure this out. So the reason we didn’t, and we couldn’t have, is actually because we didn’t believe that the FBI was so fucking corrupt…
How could you have this guy, who knows nothing about anything, he’s just a Brookings guy just bouncing around in DC, be the centerpiece of the Russia collusion proof, the guy who gave the evidence that Trump was colluding, Trump is being recruited for years. All the shit in the Dossier! So we assumed, and I think fairly so, that at least, at least, the person must have some credibility, be a former KGB agent or a more senior person, or something! It just never occurred to us to look for this junior guy in his thirties. That was the snag. And the snag only exists because we didn’t realize how completely corrupt they were. Or are, because they knew that as soon as they found them as well.
MT: Do you think this could be a template for a new kind of journalism?
Ryan: I hope not.
MT: That’s a funny answer.
Ryan: It’s kind of like what we’ve been talking about, we’re not supposed to be the ones that do this at all. It’s not supposed to be crowdsourced and for everything that we’ve done right, we haven’t been perfect. And people that have training and resources behind them would do a far better job. And I think they could probably present this, they could have had this years ago. And that’s a really tragic takeaway that we have.
McIntyre: In fairness to journalists, and I ran into this in the climate area — if a journalist is trying to evaluate a climate paper, they don’t have time to dig into the data. They’ve got to produce a story a day. The economic model of conventional media has been completely screwed over by Google and Facebook, and the transfer of advertising money away from traditional media to big tech. So most newspapers are struggling to survive. So I don’t fault reporters for not being able to dig into material the way we have.
Mahncke: It should be the traditional media in some form, working with people like us… I think the crowdsourcing is important for the reason Steven mentioned. And so some of the stuff we do is useful to them, because they don’t have the time to dig into these things and so on. Perfect, right? But we spend probably half of our time fighting people like these stenographers over at the New York Times, Charlie Savage and all those people, because every time they put out a piece, it’s a narrative, it’s not the truth.
They spin it. And I have to say, they’re very, very good writers... Just from a command of English language point of view, they’re fantastic. And they could craft it, but then I read it and I get so angry. Then we have to basically go and disprove what the Washington Post wrote…
It would be much better if everyone was just on the same side and that side is the truth. You’ve got people on the internet who dig into things, go deep into the weeds. And then you got these journalists who can write it up and just tell the story. You don’t all have to pull in the same direction. But directionally, it should be kind of the truth.
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Submitted:
Call me crazy, but it sure looks as if Jack Royston, the Newsweek reporter who seems to be vying for Omid’s position, is trying to warn off MM big time; in fact, by my count this is his second such effort trying to get her to “get out now” (to use a phrase from his previous article on the subject),
https://www.newsweek.com/johnny-depp-libel-defeat-spells-trouble-meghan-markles-tabloid-lawsuit-1544031
The actor shares the same solicitor, Jenny Afia, from law firm Schillings, as the Duchess of Sussex hired for her case against the Mail on Sunday.
When Meghan first launched the privacy and copyright action in October last year she also had the same barrister, David Sherborne, though she sacked him over the summer.
Amber Melville-Brown, head of the media and reputation at law firm Withers, told Newsweek: “I definitely think there’s a lesson here for Meghan—watch out because litigation is a very dangerous game.
"A decision to push the nuclear button of litigation can blow up in a claimant’s face.
"She has watched and everybody has watched this disastrous libel action with accusations being thrown by one and another, the private details of their private lives coming out for all to see.
"Meghan must be sitting at home thinking to herself: ‘There but for the grace of God go I.’
"It’s by the grace of her own litigation. She could be going in the same direction. Has she still got the stomach for the fight?
"Does she want to see herself in the same position, being subject to hostile cross-examination, her private life and her private thoughts on display?” …
The BBC reported that after today’s ruling, Afia, both Meghan and Depp’s solicitor, said: “This decision is as perverse as it is bewildering.”
Mark Stephens, who previously represented Julian Assange, told Newsweek Depp’s reputation was damaged by the material he was forced to disclose to the court—and Meghan faced a similar risk.
The U.K.-based attorney, of Howard Kennedy, said: “The salutary lesson for Meghan is that celebrities don’t always win.
"It’s very difficult to lose a libel action in London but if you overstate it or if you lie then you are in real difficulties and worse than that is the disclosure of all your personal relationships. …
"How Meghan curates her reputation through friends and PR people and connections is not something that she wants to show how that sausage is made. She will only be subject to criticism for it, win or lose.”
He added: “When you get a high-profile client like her you don’t say 'oh yes, we’ll sort that out for you no problem.’
"You say: 'Yes, I can deal with this but you need to understand disclosure and you need to understand cross-examination.
”'If you want to go ahead after that then there’s an issue that we can take for you.’
“She seems to have woken up in the middle of this case suddenly finding that all her connections with her friends and her private messages are going to be examined and picked over forensically and that she’s going to be cross-examined on the truth of what’s going on.
"Those are problems for her.”
This was his previous article, from September 30th,
https://www.newsweek.com/experts-tell-meghan-markle-get-out-now-after-blow-tabloid-privacy-case-1535248
____________________________________________________________________
People have been warning her for months. She just raises her hand and says, “no negativity.”
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Just watched Knives Out [spoilers?]
As someone who likes Christie novels and Wodehouse novels and mystery thrillers, I liked it. I liked that the POV character is Watson, not Sherlock, and instead of being A Sidekick, she's a fairly capable and intelligent person on her own. I like the closeups of Ana de Armas big brown anime-character bambi eyes, and she does a lot of heavy lifting flawlessly.
I like the contrast of a modern setting and characters and a 60? 70s? aesthetic. And I like how I actually noticed some of the clues ahead of time, though that may be because I was spoiled.
You know what I didn't like?
The political stuff.
You know, it's funny. I just finished reading Harlan Corben's Fool Me Once, which is absolutely, 100% political. Friggin not-Wikileaks and not-Julian Assange and wealth and even gun control are major parts of the plot, and I enjoyed it. And when Spider-Man PS4 and Far From Home based Jolly Jonah on Alex Jones, I just shrugged and thought 'sure, why not? It's not like boring ol' MSM newscasters are easy to parody well.'
This movie, not so much.
Yep, the Thrombeys are a bunch of dicks. They're also bad because they keep getting Marta's country of origin wrong. They know she's a Hispanic immigrant from South of the border, and keep guessing where she's from. Admirers of the movie keep saying that's racist.
Okay, how?
I'm an Afro-Caribbean immigrant to the UK with a non-standard accent for my home country. Both me and my sister have been mistaken for Yanks, and often people just, y'know, ask us where we're from. Clearly the Thrombey's never did, because she's The Help.
Or they thought it would be rude.
Or they thought they already knew.
I had to ask my white (ex-)flatmate if he was Scottish or just a Northerner, because I struggle to tell the difference between UK regional accents. Is that racist of me? Or is it just a lack of knowledge?
Don Johnson's character Richard says "good" immigrants should enter the country legally. (This is concerning to Marta, who's a legal immigrant, but her mother is not.) Then he hands his empty plate to Marta. Which was widely taken as evidence of racism.
Again, how?
How do we know he wasn't just seeing her as The Help? Or just randomly handing a plate off to someone who he thought could help? Classism is bad, sure, but it's not the same as racism. He's much more of a dick because he had an affair.
People say Ransom gets his 'racism' from his dad Richard. Thing is, I don't really remember much racism, unless you count calling Marta Brazilian*. He's much more concerned that Marta is an "outsider" to the family.
We never actually find out where Marta's from. It's entirely possible one of the family's guesses is actually correct.
Linda, played by Jamie Lee-Curtis, styles herself as a self-made woman. In reality, she got a million dollar loan from her dad to start her business. Which she, admittedly, paid back long ago.
But that's not the point. It's an Orange Man joke, geddit?
Admittedly, it's a lot more subtle than most, and the point about the character's hypocrisy still stands without the reference.
Incidentally, it's funny how the people who mock Trump's statement also like to bring up how he's gone bankrupt several times. And also lots of people get a windfall and then squander it.
Meg, Harlan's Marxist "SJW" college student granddaughter, as her cousin Ransom puts it (boy that was jarring), is also kind of a hypocrite. She and her mum live on inherited wealth, and her mom's a professional social media alternative wellness influencer. She's nice-ish to Marta, but TVtropes suggests she may be virtue-signalling, or just doing what's required by the ingroup.
And she ends up tricking Marta at the behest of her family, though she later says she was pressured and Marta forgives her. We never find out for sure.
Meg's cousin is a teenage "alt-right troll", as she puts it. He spends most of the movie on his phone. He represents the people who yelled at Rian Johnson, the director, for The Last Jedi.
Apparently Johnson said so.
Disclaimer: I liked TLJ, and have defended the film many times, and think a great deal of the criticism against Johnson is unfair and even factually incorrect. But, if you think the critics are trolls, why give them the attention they crave by immortalizing them in film? And they weren't particularly 'alt-right' either.
Someone implied the film is leftist because it ends with radical wealth redistribution. Yes, by a capitalist using the legal mechanisms available to give everything he owned to someone deserving, not by the Workers seizing the means of production. In fact, Walt’s inability to write best selling mystery books like his dad is actually a major plot point. Ransom shows that he’s pretty smart and capable, but he’s also lazy and selfish.
I'm pretty sure most of this Current Year stuff could've been removed entirely, and you'd still have a solid film. It's nice for characterization, but most of it isn't really relevant. And there's the classic argument that it dates the movie and keeps it from being 'timeless'.
Unlike the themes of rich people, entitlement, classism, truth, and how families treat 'outsiders'.
Maybe if you want to be topical, it's also a good idea to underpin it with more universal themes, so the audience will still understand without the specific references.
Also, Chris Evans' sweaters have a fandom, apparently? That certainly explains all these GIFs.
* One tvtropes editor said that was racist because Brazil's main language is Portuguese, not Spanish. As someone who knows almost nothing of the latter and literally nothing of the former, so what? Why would you expect someone like me to tell the difference in someone's accent? Spanish and Portuguese are apparently 90% "lexically similar".
I have trouble distinguishing between different Afro-Caribbean accents, and that's where I'm from, with extensive family throughout the region.
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* you know rina benton-moa, right? they’re twenty-four, and they’ve lived in irving for, like, their whole life on and off? well, their spotify wrapped says they listened to reinvent by phoebe green like, a million times this year, which makes sense ‘cause they’ve got that whole fury encased by the reflection of daylight in the eyes; lines etched into skin from lifetimes over of squinting into midsummer skies, odd trinkets lined carelessly along a mantlepiece shrouded by aged dust, a split in the lip lancing keenly as the tongue darts out to wet it thing going on. i just checked and their birthday is july 15th, so they’re a cancer, which is unsurprising, all things considered.
hi i’m cee .. u all know me...... regrettably gone for a cutla weeks but now i’m back ready n waiting to finally write rina (rip to their intro i never wrote last time around) kisses u all so tenderly let us plot shall we.......
AESTHETICS.
a weather-worn baseball cap ( jacksonville jazz festival 1983 ) adorned with dried sweat akin to the rings of saturn that collects dust on the back seat of a car, neglected piles of unopened government letters spilling from a haphazard tower onto the floor, a moth-eaten cotton shirt, johnny cash at four a.m. on the jukebox hits radio station, hand me down trainers marred by crowsfoot grass stains, dollar store candy older than your own existence, blinking grocery store fluorescent lights, the acrid scent of tyres set aflame.
CHARA INSPO.
frankie ( animal kingdom ), theo ( catherine house ), libby bray ( dark places ), frances ( conversations with friends ), ruth ( ozark ), tommy ( never let me go )
BACKGROUND.
lilac ridge’s newest, unwelcome baby for 1997. rina’s mother is gone before they have the chance to memorise a voice, the touch of a hand on their fever-ridden forehead. she forever remains in old polaroids - their parents look happy here, sun-blushed and clutching amber bottles of schlitz. their dad tries and tries, often in a futile effort, to be the parent an unruly rina needs. that old woman in the trailer next to them hates the saturday morning cartoons that they play too loud: she says the catdog theme loops in her sleep, now.
TW NEGLECT despite the one or two friends rina manages to keep, school isn’t lonely. it’s lilac ridge that’s hollow, an ugly reflection of the way their father returns wordlessly to the chair found on hard rubbish collection day once, gesturing for a drink and waving them out of the trailer as he lights a cigarette. he doesn’t say he’s lonely. they’re too young to understand, or too foolhardy, and spends the afternoon fashioning bracelets from creek reeds until the cicadas quiet and the evening sky turns imperial violet, led back by constellations. some nights, rina isn’t there but in the alien comfort of a tentative friend’s trundle bed, eyes fixed on the owl nightlight and stereo that emits a soft tick as it reaches the end of a 4kids cd. TW END
the trailer is often empty without warning. rina’s in fernandina beach, florida one month. the next two, it is macon, georgia. the louisiana dirge for a friend of a friend of a friend’s funeral holds their attention better than any maths teacher can. to make friends is hard, but money is money and it puts food on the table. rina becomes used to tucking away their life in a tattered rucksack. prized possessions are rare. when they find one, it makes a home at the very bottom of their bag, cushioned by old newspaper and a spare pair of socks.
one tepid night, rina wakes to a clear desert sky wheeling above them. in the front seat, knees cramped under a too-thin blanket, their father is nowhere to be found in the street emptied by midnight. without keys the radio doesn’t start. for hours, they wait in silence for him to return. he does, eventually, fifty dollars short and reeking of beer.
TW DEATH live and let die — an eighty-cent find from a gas station in texas that exists permanently under a layer of dust some time in the nineties, the garish yellow sticker stubbornly remains on the back window of her father’s car. it’s not a day after his funeral that she peels it off. cirrhosis and failing lungs, they say. the more stubborn parts of the sticker come away easily by the blade of a pocket knife and sat on the bottom cinder block step to the now-empty trailer back at lilac ridge, rina sets it alight. the sticker melts and warps above the flame. heat stings the pad of their thumb that grips to the top of it for as long as they can bear it and the melted bits stick to the hem of the navy dress the old lady next door lent them for the day. she asks if they need anything else. they say no. TW END
at sixteen, nobody has impeccable financing. rina doesn’t leave irving until after graduating high school, sustenance made off cup noodles that they microwave despite the label saying not to, a quick buck made to sit the SAT for that quarterback who thinks he’s hot shit, yale material, for the mousy girl who likes literature written by dead people exclusively and scrunches her nose up at rina’s rates, upfront, but pushes across the seventy bucks anyway. the school’s careers counsellor catches them eventually - you could make it into an ivy league if you applied yourself a bit more. rina’s brow quirks. their grades are fine, more than fine. what else do they need to do?
on blind faith alone — a rarity, perhaps something rina let free after the hideous, lonely last two years — hands that never quiver submit college applications. pre-med at dartmouth awaits, but two years in the structure and demand wigs them out. lilac ridge is the glue trap dangling from the ceiling and rina is the fly, buzzing relentlessly. they are nothing, just as they suspected.
TRAITS & QUIRKS.
dumbass sun, fuckwit moon, muppet rising
unofficial mensa member with zero motivation. self-help books won’t work, neither will a stern word from an exasperated mentor
at their core, all seems numb. rina is nowhere close to understanding themselves. really, there’s a stubbornness that makes them reliable, even at the worst of times. a warmth, too, not a raging flame but embers that never go cold. hands which caress despite the bruised knuckles and nail bitten fingertips. outwardly, rina’s personality depends on whichever standout film or book antihero has their attention at the time.
petty criminal and relegated to dead-end jobs because of it. it’s rare for a boss to re-hire them, simply because their habit of up and leaving town without warning is too expensive and too frustrating
refused bail once for being a flight risk on account of their propensity to disappear into a louisiana bayou
although rina has never breathed a word of it to anyone, they’re desperate to scrape together enough money to leave for new zealand and track down their mother’s family, if only for the prospect of a better life than thier father’s derelict trailer, the only inheritance received from him
absolute parasite :/
julian assange apologist. took up skateboarding after the infamous ecuadorian embassy footage came on the news one evening
on that note, rina hacks for a spot of extra money. cites their resume for it, so they’re reliable. it consists of them hacking into the irving mayor’s website once and photoshopping che guevara onto the face of every councillor
WANTED PLOTS.
ummmmm
a childhood friend, particularly one whose house rina ended up staying at far longer than planned on account of concerned parents
rina’s natural enemy whose own rigid academics competed against their disorganisation and confounding, cherry red a+’s. bonus: debate club rivals
literally anything. i’ll take it. gimme
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Amanda Marcotte is a liar
Amanda Marcotte is a liar. Her talent--her career--is her ability to say objectively untrue things that flatter the prejudices of center-right liberals. There is no good reason to engage with her or her kind. There is no way to achieve anything resembling a good faith discussion. Nothing she says is worth thinking about. She is a liar.
A recent, prominent example of Amanda Marcotte being a liar is demonstrated in these tweets:
Every single measurement of donation data proves that every single thing she says here is untrue. Sanders receives the smallest average donation of any Democratic candidates; Sanders’ donors mostly come from the lower and lower-middle classes, with teachers and nurses being his most prominent backers; and Sanders’ donors are disproportionately non-male and non-white. Every last part of Marcotte’s analysis, from the basal assumptions to the implications thereof, is incorrect. They are all lies. Amanda Marcotte is a liar.
But there’s no retraction forthcoming. She will face no personal or professional consequences. Anyone who dares to direct toward contradictory data is immediately dismissed as a Russian bot or accused of inciting violence against her. This is because, contrary to Marcotte’s worldview, a person’s identity markers only have so much bearing how loudly their voice gets projected or on whether or not one’s statements will be subject to scrutiny. In the end, all that really matters is whether or not a writer is willing to carry water for the powerful. And that’s all Marcotte does: she is a liar, and she lies to excuse the violence and incompetence of Democratic Party.
But, heck, why am I talking about her? Just a few paragraphs ago, I said there’s no point in engaging with her, because she is a liar. Sorry. Chalk this one up to self-indulgence. It’s rare to have your own point of view as thoroughly validated as mine was today, when Marcotte wrote a piece for Salon, in which she lies about the arrest of Julian Assange.
Not quite a year ago, I wrote a post about how identity liberals like Marcotte share the same worldview and basal assumptions of white supremacists like Richard Spenser. I said:
...
And then, today, Marcotte said:
It’s tempting to write this off as derangement, a symptom of a liberal culture so unable to account for its own shortcomings and so deeply dedicated to understanding all social relations through the lens of identity that it attributes a criticism of war crimes to a fear of powerful women. But this is much more malignant than that. Marcotte’s worldview makes sense within its own plane of reference. That plane, however, is racist and sexist. It’s as grounded to a white supremacist worldview as anything you’ll find in the contemporary Republican party.
People who operate within this worldview assert that personal agency is impossible in the face of race and gender-based determinism. She says, explicitly, that Assange’s actions were determined entirely by his fear and hatred of non-white and non-males exerting power--no other forms of causality or motivation warrant consideration. The unstated implication here is that Obama also had no choice but to authorize and cover up literal war crimes, and Clinton likewise could not have done anything other than deny and plan to perpetuate those war crimes, because that is simply how agency is structured within white supremacist patriarchy. The system is uncontrollable and absolutely deterministic: the best we can do is diversify the caste that benefits from it. Understanding structural horrors as the price that simply must be paid for the token success for a handful of elite minorities is the exact inverse of believing that minority success is the cause of these horrors. It’s impossible to come to such a conclusion without basing your worldview on a set of assumptions that are demonstrably false, but that’s okay, that actually benefits Marcotte. Because she is a liar.
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Week in Review: When will Labour get real about how screwed it is?
By Ian Dunt
There's a weird tone to the Labour leadership contest. They're in a moment of existential collapse, but most of the candidates don't show any real sense of urgency. It's like they've been given a cancer diagnosis and decided to drink some Lemsip and get an early night.
This weekend will see a final frantic spasm of campaigning before voting kicks off on Monday. There's still several weeks more of this to go after that, but in previous contests many members cast their votes early. So we're set for a strange - but perfectly fitting - slumping finale, with five weeks of candidates campaigning despite the race probably having already been decided.
Of all the candidates, Lisa Nandy is the only one who has really demonstrated the kind of passionate energy you might expect from a party which is staring into the abyss. She's been charismatic, thoughtful and authentic throughout and a credit to her party. She is very unlikely to find the numbers to win it, but she's done more than enough to secure herself a prominent position on the front bench from now on.
Rebecca Long-Bailey is precisely what you would expect. She's shown not a smidgen of understanding, or even that much interest, in the national difficulties Labour faces. One of her first policy announcements was open selections of candidates at an election. It was the kind of proposal someone would come up with if their intention was to run as far away from reality as possible at the greatest speed available.
Unless something changes, Keir Starmer looks like he will be the next leader. He's a smart, principled and impressive political figure, but there's not been much imagination or clarity in his campaign.
The strategy is plain. He feels he can bank Labour Remain votes for his record during the last few years. And he deserves them. He was the man, more than anyone, who tried to steer the Labour leadership into a sensible position on Brexit - or indeed towards any position at all. That left a vulnerability on the left-wing of the party. He had built credibility here, sticking in the shadow Cabinet when others left and largely refraining from criticising the leader. And he has been careful to let left-wingers know he shares their values.
It all makes perfect strategic sense. But it leaves us with a very vague and indecipherable candidacy. Is this just a way of winning an election? Or will this also be the way he leads the Labour party? If the latter, it will be a disaster. This period of politics demands firm, easily-understood positions, an immediate sense of who someone is. Trying to be a little bit of this and a little bit of that on issues which voters are perceived to care about will not work. It'll repeat the Miliband years.
Labour has just been handed a very robust beating by the British electorate. It is important that the party shows that it heard them. At the moment, that is not the case. Starmer is too nervous of the Corbyn lobby to be explicit about what happened. And that creates a sense of a party which does not have the honesty with itself that it needs to ever be able to win again.
There is a problem with the morality of it as well. This week, shadow chancellor John McDonnell paid a two hour visit to Wikileaks founder Julian Assange and decided it was suitable to compare his plight to that of Alfred Dreyfus, the Jewish officer who was the subject of a deranged outbreak of nationalist anti-semitism in turn of the century France.
But that was clearly not the lesson McDonnell took from this incident. He said Assange was "the Dreyfus case of our age, the way in which a person is being persecuted for political reasons for simply exposing the truth of what went on in relation to recent wars".
To say it is a misreading of history is to put it in its kindest possible light. It's nonsense of the highest order. Dreyfus didn't 'expose the truths' about wars. He was simply fitted up for a crime because he was Jewish. And Assange is not persecuted for recent wars. He is a self-serving amoral catastrophe.
McDonnell took an anti-semitic incident and wallpapered it into one of his standard anti-war conspiracy theory warbles. It's not just wrong on the facts. It's worse than that. It's further evidence of precisely the kind of wilful blindness and utter lack of interest which allowed anti-semitism to take root in the Labour party in the first place.
The Corbyn period of Labour will be remembered with shame. You can understand - grudgingly - why a leadership candidate might need to take it easy on the criticism when running to replace him. But they shouldn't mistake that for what is required once the contest is over. Labour needs to make massive, honest, hard-headed changes. It needs to face the reality of what has happened - tactically, politically, electorally and morally. Or else it won't just be five years in the wilderness, or even ten. It'll be game over.
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"If you step back for a moment and look at the world map like you're playing Risk, things might come into focus a bit better about what is actually going on.
Yesterday it was revealed that the conservative Tory party is receiving a lot of Russian money into its campaign coffers. We know that the biggest threat to Russian aggression is NATO. So if you're a gangster with more personal wealth than Jeff Bezos, what would you do with that money if you wanted to cause some havoc against your enemies?
Would you hand some cash to some people in an attempt to break up the European market with an idea like Brexit? Because that's what Putin has done. He didn't face any consequences for that because the people who got their money are simply outraged that you are outraged that they took money to do something against their own interest. But to understand why these Brexiters want to shoot themselves in the foot so badly you have to first remember that historically, conservatives have always had the slime of sedition coursing through their veins.
With the aid of Rupert Murdoch's propaganda machine, people in Britain went a little nuts after imbibing the lies that Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage began spewing about the NHS spending $300 billion on immigrants. Beating up on immigrants has always been an effective tool for the rich to turn the poor against the poorer because most of the poor are convinced that they are just premature millionaires themselves so it must be all those foreigners coming to take their jobs.
The irony and hypocrisy that Murdoch is himself an immigrant should not be lost on anyone but it is his megalomania that should have more of us alarmed. He was quoted as saying that when he calls a politician in England and America, they always answer the phone. When he calls anyone in Brussels, nobody cares. Malignant narcissists do not like being slighted in such a way as we saw with the prime minister of Denmark when she refused to sell Greenland to Trump.
Both Murdoch and Putin are at their roots, insurgents who mean to undermine liberal democracy. But Putin is not merely satisfied with sowing chaos in England and the United States. He wants to destroy NATO and there was a real danger of the Ukraine becoming a member of NATO and Putin would do anything to prevent that. So he needed what people in the spy trade-craft call a 'useful idiot.'
Putin has said that the breakup of the Soviet Union was the most humiliating thing ever visited on the Russian people and that he means to restore mother Russia to its former glory. So Putin has been sowing chaos as best he can all across Europe by filling the campaign coffers of the most right wing conservative candidates that he can find. But why only conservatives you might ask? Because as there power has declined through contrition, their wacky ideas have become revolting to the kids coming of voting age and they know that in politics, money is everything. If they mean to hold seats of power, they must have an endless supply of cash. Putin has done this all across Europe with great success and he has one ally with control of huge media sources in Rupert Murdoch.
Putin started this campaign to make Russia great again by first establishing some pro-Russia groups in Crimea. These agents then took to the newspapers and television claiming the Ukrainians were oppressing them and gee willikers, Vlad was not about to let the pro-Russian separatist languish under the tyranny of a president who fled to Moscow once the people revolted. So he invaded Crimea and killed anyone in his way. Then he built a bridge tying Crimea to Russia. Of course this wasn’t entirely kosher with the rest of the world so NATO imposed the harshest sanctions they could on Russia. The effect has been reducing a country which spans eleven time zones to an economy smaller than Italy and New York state.
Now that he was paying for the crime he didn’t get religion, he just did more crime. Putin then invaded eastern Ukraine killing 13,000 people. Then the Russian navy began ramming Ukrainian boats and seizing their sailors while claiming they were the aggressors. This has gone on on Trump’s watch.
Putin knew one thing for certain and that was Hillary Clinton helped craft the heavy sanctions against Russia so if she were elected president, she wouldn’t be so inclined to lift those sanctions so what could Putin do to keep Hillary from becoming president? Anything he possibly could.
It’s important to remember now that when Trump was claiming anyone could have hacked into the DNC server that he knew Russia did it. Yesterday at Roger Stone’s trial it was revealed that Roger Stone was telling Paul Manafort that he was in contact with Julian Assange and that he had access to Russian intelligence about Hillary. This is documented. Roger Stone told Manafort he knew a way to win the election but, ‘it ain’t pretty’ meaning collaborating with the Russians via Julian Assange. This is not speculation, these are facts laid out in federal court by a US Attorney. Trump’s purpose of saying it could be China or a 300 pound guy in his basement was to deflect from the verifiable fact that it was Russia. He didn’t want the truth known that they helped him win the election.
Since Trump’s election, Putin has been on a killing spree in European countries where his critics have fled his retribution. He has brazenly murdered former spies in England and Germany. He has not faced any further sanctions for these crimes because he has one very devoted fan, Trump.
If you look at the Risk map again, you can see in the Middle East, the threat of a regime change in Syria is now gone. The only base that Russia has on foreign soil is in Syria. Putin has again effectively gotten a right-wing nationalist to win a functional dictatorship in a NATO member state, Turkey.
Putin has been selling arms to Erdogan to shore up his dictatorship and Erdogan has embraced Putin’s tactics in dealing with any political opposition. He has done this by paying two members of Trump’s inner circle, Mike Flynn and Rudy Giuliani. Erdogan has offered big money to both to get Trump to deport a cleric that Erdogan wants to kill, badly. The last time Erdogan was in the United States to visit Trump, his security detail brutally assaulted protesters here and Trump did absolutely nothing about it. Not even a, ‘hey don’t do that here.’
We now know that Trump withdrew our troops in northern Syria after a call with Erdogan. Erdogan told Trump that he was going to invade northern Syria and kill him some Kurds. Trump did not put up any resistance at all to this planned genocide. Why? Well Trump has hotels there and other business interests in Turkey and Erdogan can snap his fingers and take away any money from Trump. After the blowback of abandoning our allies, Erdogan did Trump a solid and gave him Al-Baghdadi.
So if you look at the Risk map before Trump became president and now, you can see England in chaos. Poland in chaos. Ukraine is invaded and losing control of their eastern territory and their coastal waters. Putin has a very good relationship now with Turkey, he has strengthened the Assad regime and completely restored its territorial control of Syria. He has gotten Iran to come in to sow even more chaos and this was all done in the name of ‘bringing home the troops.’ Not one soldier is coming home. In fact Trump sent 1800 extra soldiers to guard oil wells in Saudi Arabia because they are paying us like mercenaries.
When both houses of congress voted to stop weapons sales to Saudi Arabia so they couldn’t kill Yemeni civilians, Trump overruled them and sold them anyway. The fact that Trump has sent our troops to Saudi Arabia as mercenaries has not perturbed any Republican in congress.
That’s because Republicans no longer have any interest in National Security. Putin funneled $30 million through the NRA to help elect Trump and his henchman have filled Republican coffers with cash they need to keep themselves in office. It’s so very curious how easily Republicans so quickly went from being harsh critics of Russia and then changing their presidential platform specifically on Russian aggression in Ukraine to be a little more accommodating to what can only be called a pro-Putin stance.
We know Trump lied about his Trump-Moscow deal. We know that Trump cares only for money. After losing more money than any single person the IRS ever kept track of, Trump is more than eager to get that billion dollars he lost of his father’s money. He has proven over and again that he will lie, cheat and steal from anyone in his quest to pad his bank account and Putin *knows* this.
Trump has never once missed an opportunity to lie for Putin nor has he missed an opportunity to praise him. After Russia rammed a Ukrainian vessel and took its crew hostage, the State Department thought it might look a bit bad if Trump had a meeting with Putin in South America. So they put out a statement saying that the meeting was cancelled because what Russia did was an outrageous violation of international law. Not even an hour later, Russia announced that the meeting was still on. Hmmm. So how do those Russian bastards have the unmitigated gall to tell the world what the president of the United States is going to do after he just said the meeting was off? Was Trump finally going to stand up to Russia? Nope. The meeting happened just as it was previously scheduled with no record whatever of what was said.
Russia effectively said that Trump was their bitch and after announcing there would be no meeting with Putin, they told their bitch that he wasn’t calling off any meeting and that he was going to meet when they said they would meet and Trump did. How do you think that went over in the State Department?
Any one of the things I have mentioned merits being impeached. If Barack Obama had paid off two women to keep them quiet, he would have already been removed from office and justly so. This is how far they have fallen. They have abandoned any semblance of ethics because their leader has no ethics. They are entirely amoral in ways not seen since Caligula was walking around. They have completely abandoned any belief in the rule of law or the constitution. There is not one Republican in congress who can open their mouths and not lie. What’s most troubling is the way that they have become so servile to Vladimir Putin at the costs of American lives.
This trade-war has caused China to go looking for other suppliers for their agricultural needs and who have they turned to? Putin. We were making a profit from China to the tune of $26 billion for the American farmers. Now we are borrowing money from China to give money to American farmers to *not* sell their crops to China. Republicans think this is a good deal because they cannot admit that this is lunacy at its putrid worst.
As more and more damning testimony is revealed about Trump’s incompetence, Republicans are contorting themselves into debased loons trying to defend a president we now know beyond any reasonable doubt, lies as easily as he breathes and who has committed multitudes of felonies that they care nothing about. After last night’s revelation from the senior Trump official writing A Warning by Anonymous, I am left wondering why Mitch McConnell and Mike Pence have not begun 25th amendment proceedings but doing so would mean that they would have to have some allegiance to the constitution that we know without question they do not have.
Donald Trump and the Republican party have become an existential threat greater than any enemy before to the United States. No amount of hand-wringing is going to cure us of this scourge. It’s going to take some drastic measures because the common Republicans are not up in arms about the complete servility of Donald Trump to Vladimir Putin because they are too busy getting poisoned a little every day from the propaganda that tells them comforting lies instead of inconvenient truths. The truth is that Trump has not missed an opportunity to hurt America and help Russia.
If we do not take action now, the epitaph of the United States will read, ‘when fascism came to the United States, it was welcomed with open arms because the unbridled power of propaganda poisoned the minds of Republicans everywhere who sold out every principle this country was founded upon to own the libs.’"
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Down with U.S. imperialism! demonstration
June 15 -14:00
Salvadore-Allende-Platz, Hamburg
Hosted by No Pasarán Hamburg
On 14 June 1928 ERNESTO CHE GUEVARA was born. His name is forever bound to the victorious socialist revolution in Cuba and the proliferation of liberation movements in the Americas, Europe, worldwide. Che’s example, his internationalism, his love for humanity, influenced countless people.
But also his murder on 8 October 1967 and the murder of his comrade Tamara Bunke and many militants from the Bolivian guerrillas are examples of the determination of US-imperialism to smother the struggle for liberation through any and all means necessary. CIA agents instructed Bolivian special forces and led them to do what they would continue to do over the next decades throughout Latin America — like Che said, crueler than all prior to US military interventions. The US consulates turned into the General Staff for the oppression of Latin America.
By the end of the 60s, the guerrilla movement in Brazil was mostly smashed, as were Tupamaro’s urban guerrillas in Uruguay.
The putsch on 11 September 1973 against the Unidad Popular and the president Salvadore Allende in Chile was financed, prepared , and guided by the CIA and US conglomerates, such as ITT.
It was no different three years later with the military putsch in Argentina, through which the democratic mass movement and guerrilla campaign were oppressed. Thirty-thousand victims lost their lives, being tortured and then ‘disappeared’ — many of whom were thrown from helicopters into the sea.
The CIA and US military also organised Operation Condor, based in Argentina. The goal of this operation was the extermination of resistance throughout all of Latin America.
The liberation movements in Nicaragua, El Salvafor, Guatemala, and Mexico were attacked through similar methods.
One hardly need mention the attempts of the USA to topple socialism in Cuba — entire libraries are filled with the testament.
Since President Hugo Chavez began the Bolivarian Revolution in 1998, the USA has attempted to strangle this path to socialism. They have organised multiple putsch attempts with the Venezuelan reactionaries against both Hugo Chavez and his successor President Nicolas Maduro. Today, the USA conducts a war against Venezuela, utilising sanctions, blockades, sabotage, cyberterrorism, and elaborate mass media manipulation.
In Colombia, where the US military and CIA supported the regime’s dirty war against the FARC and ELN, they continue to do everything they can to sabotage the peace treaty between the state and the FARC. They now demand the extradition of FARC commandanté Jesus Santrich.
Julian Assange, who brought to light the terrorist practices of the USA and CIA and was forced to live for seven years in exile in the Ecuadorian consulate in London, was arrested weeks ago. Since then, his health has deteriorated to a critical condition, as he is being threatened with 175 years of imprisonment in the USA.
Freedom for Julian Assange! No extradition for Jesus Santrich! Hands off Venezuela!End the murderous sanctions against Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, the People’s Republic of Korea, Syria, Gaza…!
Hasta la victoria siempre!
#Hamburg#Germany#protest#anti-imperialist#Che Guevara#imperialism#antiwar#HandsOffVenezuela#Cuba#Colombia#Jesus Santrich#No Pasaran Hamburg
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to help yourself understand the Mueller investigation, read this novel
“This novel” being, of course, a stack of court documents filed in the course of the investigation.
Hear me out.
This isn’t to trivialize or sensationalize an ongoing existential threat to western democracy. Precisely because it is not a fucking game, I think it’s really important for people to get new ways into this story. Because it still seems alarmingly common for even generally well-informed people to throw up their hands and say “well, the right says ‘no collusion!’ and liberals say ‘he’s a Russian agent!’ but the partisans all seem really worked up, I guess the truth is somewhere in between/it must not be as big a deal as they think.”
Maybe sometimes that’s motivated reasoning or sheer ignorance. But it’s also possible that “this Rusher thing with Trump and Russia” is unusually resistant to understanding as a conventional news story. We want our news to be solid, with “hard facts.” Maybe this is more like gas. Like gas, it always takes up as much space as it’s allowed. On slow news days it can expand to envelop everything else; unrelated dramatic events can compress it down to almost nothing. And you can’t get a grip on gas.
This whole bizarre situation is genuinely unprecedented in American history, which is perhaps why special prosecutor Robert Mueller has been doing something unusual in issuing a series of speaking indictments. Remember, a bill of indictment is basically a list of the crimes that a prosecutor has convinced a grand jury that someone has probably committed. Prosecutors are smart to keep these minimal, because every fact they allege in their indictment, they damn well have to be ready to prove. A speaking indictment means that the prosecutor is saying more than they have to say. In a case like this – which deals with a lot of sensitive information, and implicates people who haven’t yet been charged or even interviewed – that’s even trickier, because there’s a lot it has to avoid.
Generally, when a person makes their own job harder, they’re doing it for a reason. And I think at least part of the reason here is that the special prosecutor’s office is trying to tell the American public a story. Our minds can comprehend dramatic plot lines more easily than the seedy, fact-heavy, choppily-paced web of a real criminal conspiracy. There’s a narrative logic to the pre-election events described in the most notable speaking indictments in the order we’ve seen them, moving relentlessly closer in time, space, and relationship to Donald Trump on Election Day, 2016.
So if you’re frustrated or baffled by what you catch of this story in the news or on your Facebook feed, it’s not because you, personally, can’t understand it. You might just need a new angle of approach. If you are a movie person, I can recommend the documentary Active Measures (Hulu, iTunes). If you’re more of a reader, these documents, in this order, can be read like an epistolary novel – specifically, a pulpy, beach read-y spy thriller.
Part I: United States of America v. Paul J. Manafort, Jr. and Richard W. Gates III
Part II: United States of America v. Internet Research Agency, et al
Part III: United States of America v. Paul J. Manafort, Jr. and Konstantin Kilimnik
Part IV: United States of America v. Viktor Borisovich Netyksho, et al
Part V: United States of America v. Michael Cohen (a)(b)
Part VI: United States of America v. Roger Jason Stone, Jr.
TO BE CONTINUED [probably]…
I’m serious. Download the pdfs onto your e-reader – remember to make a note of the order! – brew yourself some tea, and turn off pop-up notifications for a while. (Don’t get too hung up on figuring out who “Organization 1″ or “Person 2″ are - sometimes it’ll be obvious, but don’t worry if it’s not. You can just treat the big tables like illustrations: look and see what they’re about, but you don’t need to read every line to get the gist. You can also skip the last page or so if you start hitting headers like “statutory allegations” or “substitute assets.” There’s no post-credits stingers.)
These aren’t all the documents that have been filed in court by the special counsel, let alone in related cases, and I doubt even the courts have heard the whole story yet. Most of the documents related to former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn are still redacted. Maria Butina was charged by a different prosecutor’s office just as she was about to make a run for it, but her infiltration of the National Rifle Association could quite possibly be Chekhov’s gun. And it doesn’t even mention the UK spinoff! But I think they’re the ones that are, intentionally, useful to someone who wants to understand.
Still skeptical? Recap/analysis below.
Part I: United States of America v. Paul J. Manafort, Jr. and Richard W. Gates III
The first indictment of Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort took its focus far away from, and several years before, the main story, deep into a 2010 election in Ukraine which ominously foreshadowed the 2016 election. Manafort, an old friend of Stone, a Trump Tower resident, and the employer of his co-defendant Rick Gates and of future Sanders consultant Tad Devine, ran the campaign of a buffoonish businessman who was in hock to the Russian government. Their strategy relied heavily on exacerbating ethnic tensions within Ukraine and seeding skepticism about international alliances, as well as a vicious smear campaign of his opponent, an accomplished public servant who would have been the nation’s first woman president. Manafort’s candidate took office, was exactly as bad as his opponents believed he would be, and had his opponent imprisoned and tortured – but was eventually forced to release her and flee the country for Russia.
Part II: United States of America v. Internet Research Agency, et al
The Internet Research Agency indicted Russian nationals who worked on the propaganda campaign, spending over a million dollars a month to manipulate American public opinion from a nondescript office building in St. Petersburg. The action starts in 2014 and picks up in 2016, but still takes place a continent away. It deliberately stays away from the hacking and dumping of Democratic party emails, and pointedly does not accuse any Americans of committing crimes.
Part III: United States of America v. Paul J. Manafort, Jr. and Konstantin Kilimnik
An installment with a foot in both worlds indicted Manafort and a Ukraine-based co-conspirator, while also showing Manafort’s corruption of a respected American law firm. This part shows us how Trump’s campaign manager – both his dirty politics and his illicit money – moved from Ukraine to the United States, set in the same time frame as Part II.
Part IV: United States of America v. Viktor Borisovich Netyksho, et al
Then another indictment did name the Russian military intelligence officers who stole Democrats’ emails in the spring of 2016, and traced their cooperation with “Organization 1,” which released those emails. This moves the story closer in time to the election, and shows the stolen data moving west from Moscow to Julian Assange’s hideout in London before being dumped on the American public.
Part V: United States of America v. Michael Cohen (a)(b)
The next installment targeted Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen, a New Yorker like Trump. Cohen pleaded guilty to hiding what appears to have been early 2016 real estate negotiations for a property in Moscow, and of committing apparently unrelated crimes to affect the election illicitly by covering up the candidate’s affairs in the weeks before the election. The Southern District of New York – filing at the same time and in clear cooperation with the special prosecutor, but not working directly for him – overtly said it could prove Trump’s complicity in crimes. Trump is tagged “Individual 1.”
Part VI: United States of America v. Roger Jason Stone, Jr.
Currently in the barrel is Roger Stone, a longtime supporter of Trump’s political career and an old business partner of Manafort. Stone has a colorful backstory of extensive wrongdoing, but his indictment is laser-focused on conversations he had with a known Russian intelligence cutout in the summer and fall of 2016, and the crimes and lies he tried to use to hide those conversations. This indictment mentions the Trump campaign by name, and it includes a lot of specific conduct by individuals who are not named but are nonetheless readily identifiable. The document is succinct, clinical, clear as a bell. But it leaves one omission which leaped out screaming at just about everyone who read the whole document.
[A] senior Trump Campaign official was directed to contact STONE about any additional releases and what other damaging information Organization 1 had regarding the Clinton Campaign.
If you’ve taken high school English, you already know the million ruble question. “Was directed”? Who gave that direction? The indictment doesn’t say.
If you’re trying to avoid drawing conclusions the way a newscaster might, you would probably think it was not another senior campaign officer – otherwise, why not refer to them as “Senior Campaign Officer 2”? – but still someone important enough to boss around a senior campaign officer. Maybe if the candidate had adult family members who were not given official positions on the campaign, they would be suspects – though only because they could reasonably be assumed to be speaking for the most likely culprit. The simplest explanation for They-Who-Must-Not-Be-Pseudonymed is the most dramatic one. The candidate is not a senior campaign officer. The candidate is the candidate.
We don’t have all the facts yet. The only thing we can be sure of is that the special prosecutor has, quite deliberately, not yet shown this particular card.
But if you’ve taken high school English, you have a pretty good idea about the answer.
Okay, the genre snob reviewers might say it’s a little heavy-handed. Personally, I’ve always felt that subtlety is overrated.
#donald trump#trump russia#paul manafort#rick gates#konstantin kilimnik#internet research agency#michael cohen#roger stone#mueller investigation
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1. The Swedish Police constructed a story of rape
Nils Melzer, why is the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture interested in Julian Assange?
That is something that the German Foreign Ministry recently asked me as well: Is that really your core mandate? Is Assange the victim of torture?
What was your response?
The case falls into my mandate in three different ways: First, Assange published proof of systematic torture. But instead of those responsible for the torture, it is Assange who is being persecuted. Second, he himself has been ill-treated to the point that he is now exhibiting symptoms of psychological torture. And third, he is to be extradited to a country that holds people like him in prison conditions that Amnesty International has described as torture. In summary: Julian Assange uncovered torture, has been tortured himself and could be tortured to death in the United States. And a case like that isn’t supposed to be part of my area of responsibility? Beyond that, the case is of symbolic importance and affects every citizen of a democratic country.
Why didn’t you take up the case much earlier?
Imagine a dark room. Suddenly, someone shines a light on the elephant in the room – on war criminals, on corruption. Assange is the man with the spotlight. The governments are briefly in shock, but then they turn the spotlight around with accusations of rape. It is a classic maneuver when it comes to manipulating public opinion. The elephant once again disappears into the darkness, behind the spotlight. And Assange becomes the focus of attention instead, and we start talking about whether Assange is skateboarding in the embassy or whether he is feeding his cat correctly. Suddenly, we all know that he is a rapist, a hacker, a spy and a narcissist. But the abuses and war crimes he uncovered fade into the darkness. I also lost my focus, despite my professional experience, which should have led me to be more vigilant.
Let’s start at the beginning: What led you to take up the case?
In December 2018, I was asked by his lawyers to intervene. I initially declined. I was overloaded with other petitions and wasn’t really familiar with the case. My impression, largely influenced by the media, was also colored by the prejudice that Julian Assange was somehow guilty and that he wanted to manipulate me. In March 2019, his lawyers approached me for a second time because indications were mounting that Assange would soon be expelled from the Ecuadorian Embassy. They sent me a few key documents and a summary of the case and I figured that my professional integrity demanded that I at least take a look at the material.
And then?
It quickly became clear to me that something was wrong. That there was a contradiction that made no sense to me with my extensive legal experience: Why would a person be subject to nine years of a preliminary investigation for rape without charges ever having been filed?
Is that unusual?
I have never seen a comparable case. Anyone can trigger a preliminary investigation against anyone else by simply going to the police and accusing the other person of a crime. The Swedish authorities, though, were never interested in testimony from Assange. They intentionally left him in limbo. Just imagine being accused of rape for nine-and-a-half years by an entire state apparatus and by the media without ever being given the chance to defend yourself because no charges had ever been filed.
You say that the Swedish authorities were never interested in testimony from Assange. But the media and government agencies have painted a completely different picture over the years: Julian Assange, they say, fled the Swedish judiciary in order to avoid being held accountable.
That’s what I always thought, until I started investigating. The opposite is true. Assange reported to the Swedish authorities on several occasions because he wanted to respond to the accusations. But the authorities stonewalled.
What do you mean by that: «The authorities stonewalled?»
Allow me to start at the beginning. I speak fluent Swedish and was thus able to read all of the original documents. I could hardly believe my eyes: According to the testimony of the woman in question, a rape had never even taken place at all. And not only that: The woman’s testimony was later changed by the Stockholm police without her involvement in order to somehow make it sound like a possible rape. I have all the documents in my possession, the emails, the text messages.
«The woman’s testimony was later changed by the police» – how exactly?
On Aug. 20, 2010, a woman named S. W. entered a Stockholm police station together with a second woman named A. A. The first woman, S. W. said she had had consensual sex with Julian Assange, but he had not been wearing a condom. She said she was now concerned that she could be infected with HIV and wanted to know if she could force Assange to take an HIV test. She said she was really worried. The police wrote down her statement and immediately informed public prosecutors. Even before questioning could be completed, S. W. was informed that Assange would be arrested on suspicion of rape. S. W. was shocked and refused to continue with questioning. While still in the police station, she wrote a text message to a friend saying that she didn’t want to incriminate Assange, that she just wanted him to take an HIV test, but the police were apparently interested in «getting their hands on him.»
What does that mean?
S.W. never accused Julian Assange of rape. She declined to participate in further questioning and went home. Nevertheless, two hours later, a headline appeared on the front page of Expressen, a Swedish tabloid, saying that Julian Assange was suspected of having committed two rapes.
Two rapes?
Yes, because there was the second woman, A. A. She didn’t want to press charges either; she had merely accompanied S. W. to the police station. She wasn’t even questioned that day. She later said that Assange had sexually harassed her. I can’t say, of course, whether that is true or not. I can only point to the order of events: A woman walks into a police station. She doesn’t want to file a complaint but wants to demand an HIV test. The police then decide that this could be a case of rape and a matter for public prosecutors. The woman refuses to go along with that version of events and then goes home and writes a friend that it wasn’t her intention, but the police want to «get their hands on» Assange. Two hours later, the case is in the newspaper. As we know today, public prosecutors leaked it to the press – and they did so without even inviting Assange to make a statement. And the second woman, who had allegedly been raped according to the Aug. 20 headline, was only questioned on Aug. 21.
What did the second woman say when she was questioned?
She said that she had made her apartment available to Assange, who was in Sweden for a conference. A small, one-room apartment. When Assange was in the apartment, she came home earlier than planned, but told him it was no problem and that the two of them could sleep in the same bed. That night, they had consensual sex, with a condom. But she said that during sex, Assange had intentionally broken the condom. If that is true, then it is, of course, a sexual offense – so-called «stealthing». But the woman also said that she only later noticed that the condom was broken. That is a contradiction that should absolutely have been clarified. If I don’t notice it, then I cannot know if the other intentionally broke it. Not a single trace of DNA from Assange or A. A. could be detected in the condom that was submitted as evidence.
How did the two women know each other?
They didn’t really know each other. A. A., who was hosting Assange and was serving as his press secretary, had met S. W. at an event where S. W. was wearing a pink cashmere sweater. She apparently knew from Assange that he was interested in a sexual encounter with S. W., because one evening, she received a text message from an acquaintance saying that he knew Assange was staying with her and that he, the acquaintance, would like to contact Assange. A. A. answered: Assange is apparently sleeping at the moment with the “cashmere girl.” The next morning, S. W. spoke with A. A. on the phone and said that she, too, had slept with Assange and was now concerned about having become infected with HIV. This concern was apparently a real one, because S.W. even went to a clinic for consultation. A. A. then suggested: Let’s go to the police – they can force Assange to get an HIV test. The two women, though, didn’t go to the closest police station, but to one quite far away where a friend of A. A.’s works as a policewoman – who then questioned S. W., initially in the presence of A. A., which isn’t proper practice. Up to this point, though, the only problem was at most a lack of professionalism. The willful malevolence of the authorities only became apparent when they immediately disseminated the suspicion of rape via the tabloid press, and did so without questioning A. A. and in contradiction to the statement given by S. W. It also violated a clear ban in Swedish law against releasing the names of alleged victims or perpetrators in sexual offense cases. The case now came to the attention of the chief public prosecutor in the capital city and she suspended the rape investigation some days later with the assessment that while the statements from S. W. were credible, there was no evidence that a crime had been committed.
But then the case really took off. Why?
Now the supervisor of the policewoman who had conducted the questioning wrote her an email telling her to rewrite the statement from S. W.
What did the policewoman change?
We don’t know, because the first statement was directly written over in the computer program and no longer exists. We only know that the original statement, according to the chief public prosecutor, apparently did not contain any indication that a crime had been committed. In the edited form it says that the two had had sex several times – consensual and with a condom. But in the morning, according to the revised statement, the woman woke up because he tried to penetrate her without a condom. She asks: «Are you wearing a condom?» He says: «No.» Then she says: «You better not have HIV» and allows him to continue. The statement was edited without the involvement of the woman in question and it wasn’t signed by her. It is a manipulated piece of evidence out of which the Swedish authorities then constructed a story of rape.
Why would the Swedish authorities do something like that?
The timing is decisive: In late July, Wikileaks – in cooperation with the «New York Times», the «Guardian» and «Der Spiegel» – published the «Afghan War Diary». It was one of the largest leaks in the history of the U.S. military. The U.S. immediately demanded that its allies inundate Assange with criminal cases. We aren’t familiar with all of the correspondence, but Stratfor, a security consultancy that works for the U.S. government, advised American officials apparently to deluge Assange with all kinds of criminal cases for the next 25 years.
2. Assange contacts the Swedish judiciary several times to make a statement – but he is turned down
Why didn’t Assange turn himself into the police at the time?
He did. I mentioned that earlier.
Then please elaborate.
Assange learned about the rape allegations from the press. He established contact with the police so he could make a statement. Despite the scandal having reached the public, he was only allowed to do so nine days later, after the accusation that he had raped S. W. was no longer being pursued. But proceedings related to the sexual harassment of A. A. were ongoing. On Aug. 30, 2010, Assange appeared at the police station to make a statement. He was questioned by the same policeman who had since ordered that revision of the statement had been given by S. W. At the beginning of the conversation, Assange said he was ready to make a statement, but added that he didn’t want to read about his statement again in the press. That is his right, and he was given assurances it would be granted. But that same evening, everything was in the newspapers again. It could only have come from the authorities because nobody else was present during his questioning. The intention was very clearly that of besmirching his name.
Where did the story come from that Assange was seeking to avoid Swedish justice officials?
This version was manufactured, but it is not consistent with the facts. Had he been trying to hide, he would not have appeared at the police station of his own free will. On the basis of the revised statement from S.W., an appeal was filed against the public prosecutor’s attempt to suspend the investigation, and on Sept. 2, 2010, the rape proceedings were resumed. A legal representative by the name of Claes Borgström was appointed to the two women at public cost. The man was a law firm partner to the previous justice minister, Thomas Bodström, under whose supervision Swedish security personnel had seized two men who the U.S. found suspicious in the middle of Stockholm. The men were seized without any kind of legal proceedings and then handed over to the CIA, who proceeded to torture them. That shows the trans-Atlantic backdrop to this affair more clearly. After the resumption of the rape investigation, Assange repeatedly indicated through his lawyer that he wished to respond to the accusations. The public prosecutor responsible kept delaying. On one occasion, it didn’t fit with the public prosecutor’s schedule, on another, the police official responsible was sick. Three weeks later, his lawyer finally wrote that Assange really had to go to Berlin for a conference and asked if he was allowed to leave the country. The public prosecutor’s office gave him written permission to leave Sweden for short periods of time.
And then?
The point is: On the day that Julian Assange left Sweden, at a point in time when it wasn’t clear if he was leaving for a short time or a long time, a warrant was issued for his arrest. He flew with Scandinavian Airlines from Stockholm to Berlin. During the flight, his laptops disappeared from his checked baggage. When he arrived in Berlin, Lufthansa requested an investigation from SAS, but the airline apparently declined to provide any information at all.
Why?
That is exactly the problem. In this case, things are constantly happening that shouldn’t actually be possible unless you look at them from a different angle. Assange, in any case, continued onward to London, but did not seek to hide from the judiciary. Via his Swedish lawyer, he offered public prosecutors several possible dates for questioning in Sweden – this correspondence exists. Then, the following happened: Assange caught wind of the fact that a secret criminal case had been opened against him in the U.S. At the time, it was not confirmed by the U.S., but today we know that it was true. As of that moment, Assange’s lawyer began saying that his client was prepared to testify in Sweden, but he demanded diplomatic assurance that Sweden would not extradite him to the U.S.
Was that even a realistic scenario?
Absolutely. Some years previously, as I already mentioned, Swedish security personnel had handed over two asylum applicants, both of whom were registered in Sweden, to the CIA without any legal proceedings. The abuse already started at the Stockholm airport, where they were mistreated, drugged and flown to Egypt, where they were tortured. We don’t know if they were the only such cases. But we are aware of these cases because the men survived. Both later filed complaints with UN human rights agencies and won their case. Sweden was forced to pay each of them half a million dollars in damages.
Did Sweden agree to the demands submitted by Assange?
The lawyers say that during the nearly seven years in which Assange lived in the Ecuadorian Embassy, they made over 30 offers to arrange for Assange to visit Sweden – in exchange for a guarantee that he would not be extradited to the U.S. The Swedes declined to provide such a guarantee by arguing that the U.S. had not made a formal request for extradition.
What is your view of the demand made by Assange’s lawyers?
Such diplomatic assurances are a routine international practice. People request assurances that they won’t be extradited to places where there is a danger of serious human rights violations, completely irrespective of whether an extradition request has been filed by the country in question or not. It is a political procedure, not a legal one. Here’s an example: Say France demands that Switzerland extradite a Kazakh businessman who lives in Switzerland but who is wanted by both France and Kazakhstan on tax fraud allegations. Switzerland sees no danger of torture in France, but does believe such a danger exists in Kazakhstan. So, Switzerland tells France: We’ll extradite the man to you, but we want a diplomatic assurance that he won’t be extradited onward to Kazakhstan. The French response is not: «Kazakhstan hasn’t even filed a request!» Rather, they would, of course, grant such an assurance. The arguments coming from Sweden were tenuous at best. That is one part of it. The other, and I say this on the strength of all of my experience behind the scenes of standard international practice: If a country refuses to provide such a diplomatic assurance, then all doubts about the good intentions of the country in question are justified. Why shouldn’t Sweden provide such assurances? From a legal perspective, after all, the U.S. has absolutely nothing to do with Swedish sex offense proceedings.
Why didn’t Sweden want to offer such an assurance?
You just have to look at how the case was run: For Sweden, it was never about the interests of the two women. Even after his request for assurances that he would not be extradited, Assange still wanted to testify. He said: If you cannot guarantee that I won’t be extradited, then I am willing to be questioned in London or via video link.
But is it normal, or even legally acceptable, for Swedish authorities to travel to a different country for such an interrogation?
That is a further indication that Sweden was never interested in finding the truth. For exactly these kinds of judiciary issues, there is a cooperation treaty between the United Kingdom and Sweden, which foresees that Swedish officials can travel to the UK, or vice versa, to conduct interrogations or that such questioning can take place via video link. During the period of time in question, such questioning between Sweden and England took place in 44 other cases. It was only in Julian Assange’s case that Sweden insisted that it was essential for him to appear in person.
3. When the highest Swedish court finally forced public prosecutors in Stockholm to either file charges or suspend the case, the British authorities demanded: «Don’t get cold feet!!»
Why was that?
There is only a single explanation for everything – for the refusal to grant diplomatic assurances, for the refusal to question him in London: They wanted to apprehend him so they could extradite him to the U.S. The number of breaches of law that accumulated in Sweden within just a few weeks during the preliminary criminal investigation is simply grotesque. The state assigned a legal adviser to the women who told them that the criminal interpretation of what they experienced was up to the state, and no longer up to them. When their legal adviser was asked about contradictions between the women’s testimony and the narrative adhered to by public officials, the legal adviser said, in reference to the women: «ah, but they’re not lawyers.» But for five long years the Swedish prosecution avoids questioning Assange regarding the purported rape, until his lawyers finally petitioned Sweden’s Supreme Court to force the public prosecution to either press charges or close the case. When the Swedes told the UK that they may be forced to abandon the case, the British wrote back, worriedly: «Don’t you dare get cold feet!!»
Are you serious?
Yes, the British, or more specifically the Crown Prosecution Service, wanted to prevent Sweden from abandoning the case at all costs. Though really, the English should have been happy that they would no longer have to spend millions in taxpayer money to keep the Ecuadorian Embassy under constant surveillance to prevent Assange’s escape.
Why were the British so eager to prevent the Swedes from closing the case?
We have to stop believing that there was really an interest in leading an investigation into a sexual offense. What Wikileaks did is a threat to the political elite in the U.S., Britain, France and Russia in equal measure. Wikileaks publishes secret state information – they are opposed to classification. And in a world, even in so-called mature democracies, where secrecy has become rampant, that is seen as a fundamental threat. Assange made it clear that countries are no longer interested today in legitimate confidentiality, but in the suppression of important information about corruption and crimes. Take the archetypal Wikileaks case from the leaks supplied by Chelsea Manning: The so-called «Collateral Murder» video. (Eds. Note: On April 5, 2010, Wikileaks published a classified video from the U.S. military which showed the murder of several people in Baghdad by U.S. soldiers, including two employees of the news agency Reuters.) As a long-time legal adviser to the International Committee of the Red Cross and delegate in war zones, I can tell you: The video undoubtedly documents a war crime. A helicopter crew simply mowed down a bunch of people. It could even be that one or two of these people was carrying a weapon, but injured people were intentionally targeted. That is a war crime. «He’s wounded,» you can hear one American saying. «I’m firing.» And then they laugh. Then a van drives up to save the wounded. The driver has two children with him. You can hear the soldiers say: Well it’s their fault for bringing their kids into a battle. And then they open fire. The father and the wounded are immediately killed, though the children survive with serious injuries. Through the publication of the video, we became direct witnesses to a criminal, unconscionable massacre.
What should a constitutional democracy do in such a situation?
A constitutional democracy would probably investigate Chelsea Manning for violating official secrecy because she passed the video along to Assange. But it certainly wouldn’t go after Assange, because he published the video in the public interest, consistent with the practices of classic investigative journalism. More than anything, though, a constitutional democracy would investigate and punish the war criminals. These soldiers belong behind bars. But no criminal investigation was launched into a single one of them. Instead, the man who informed the public is locked away in pre-extradition detention in London and is facing a possible sentence in the U.S. of up to 175 years in prison. That is a completely absurd sentence. By comparison: The main war criminals in the Yugoslavia tribunal received sentences of 45 years. One-hundred-seventy-five years in prison in conditions that have been found to be inhumane by the UN Special Rapporteur and by Amnesty International. But the really horrifying thing about this case is the lawlessness that has developed: The powerful can kill without fear of punishment and journalism is transformed into espionage. It is becoming a crime to tell the truth.
What awaits Assange once he is extradited?
He will not receive a trial consistent with the rule of law. That’s another reason why his extradition shouldn’t be allowed. Assange will receive a trial-by-jury in Alexandria, Virginia – the notorious «Espionage Court» where the U.S. tries all national security cases. The choice of location is not by coincidence, because the jury members must be chosen in proportion to the local population, and 85 percent of Alexandria residents work in the national security community – at the CIA, the NSA, the Defense Department and the State Department. When people are tried for harming national security in front of a jury like that, the verdict is clear from the very beginning. The cases are always tried in front of the same judge behind closed doors and on the strength of classified evidence. Nobody has ever been acquitted there in a case like that. The result being that most defendants reach a settlement, in which they admit to partial guilt so as to receive a milder sentence.
You are saying that Julian Assange won’t receive a fair trial in the United States?
Without doubt. For as long as employees of the American government obey the orders of their superiors, they can participate in wars of aggression, war crimes and torture knowing full well that they will never have to answer to their actions. What happened to the lessons learned in the Nuremberg Trials? I have worked long enough in conflict zones to know that mistakes happen in war. It’s not always unscrupulous criminal acts. A lot of it is the result of stress, exhaustion and panic. That’s why I can absolutely understand when a government says: We’ll bring the truth to light and we, as a state, take full responsibility for the harm caused, but if blame cannot be directly assigned to individuals, we will not be imposing draconian punishments. But it is extremely dangerous when the truth is suppressed and criminals are not brought to justice. In the 1930s, Germany and Japan left the League of Nations. Fifteen years later, the world lay in ruins. Today, the U.S. has withdrawn from the UN Human Rights Council, and neither the «Collateral Murder» massacre nor the CIA torture following 9/11 nor the war of aggression against Iraq have led to criminal investigations. Now, the United Kingdom is following that example. The Security and Intelligence Committee in the country’s own parliament published two extensive reports in 2018 showing that Britain was much more deeply involved in the secret CIA torture program than previously believed. The committee recommended a formal investigation. The first thing that Boris Johnson did after he became prime minister was to annul that investigation.
4. In the UK, violations of bail conditions are generally only punished with monetary fines or, at most, a couple of days behind bars. But Assange was given 50 weeks in a maximum-security prison without the ability to prepare his own defense
In April, Julian Assange was dragged out of the Ecuadorian Embassy by British police. What is your view of these events?
In 2017, a new government was elected in Ecuador. In response, the U.S. wrote a letter indicating they were eager to cooperate with Ecuador. There was, of course, a lot of money at stake, but there was one hurdle in the way: Julian Assange. The message was that the U.S. was prepared to cooperate if Ecuador handed Assange over to the U.S. At that point, the Ecuadorian Embassy began ratcheting up the pressure on Assange. They made his life difficult. But he stayed. Then Ecuador voided his amnesty and gave Britain a green light to arrest him. Because the previous government had granted him Ecuadorian citizenship, Assange’s passport also had to be revoked, because the Ecuadorian constitution forbids the extradition of its own citizens. All that took place overnight and without any legal proceedings. Assange had no opportunity to make a statement or have recourse to legal remedy. He was arrested by the British and taken before a British judge that same day, who convicted him of violating his bail.
What do you make of this accelerated verdict?
Assange only had 15 minutes to prepare with his lawyer. The trial itself also lasted just 15 minutes. Assange’s lawyer plopped a thick file down on the table and made a formal objection to one of the judges for conflict of interest because her husband had been the subject of Wikileaks exposures in 35 instances. But the lead judge brushed aside the concerns without examining them further. He said accusing his colleague of a conflict of interest was an affront. Assange himself only uttered one sentence during the entire proceedings: «I plead not guilty.» The judge turned to him and said: «You are a narcissist who cannot get beyond his own self-interest. I convict you for bail violation.»
If I understand you correctly: Julian Assange never had a chance from the very beginning?
That’s the point. I’m not saying Julian Assange is an angel or a hero. But he doesn’t have to be. We are talking about human rights and not about the rights of heroes or angels. Assange is a person, and he has the right to defend himself and to be treated in a humane manner. Regardless of what he is accused of, Assange has the right to a fair trial. But he has been deliberately denied that right – in Sweden, the U.S., Britain and Ecuador. Instead, he was left to rot for nearly seven years in limbo in a room. Then, he was suddenly dragged out and convicted within hours and without any preparation for a bail violation that consisted of him having received diplomatic asylum from another UN member state on the basis of political persecution, just as international law intends and just as countless Chinese, Russian and other dissidents have done in Western embassies. It is obvious that what we are dealing with here is political persecution. In Britain, bail violations seldom lead to prison sentences – they are generally subject only to fines. Assange, by contrast, was sentenced in summary proceedings to 50 weeks in a maximum-security prison – clearly a disproportionate penalty that had only a single purpose: Holding Assange long enough for the U.S. to prepare their espionage case against him.
As the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, what do you have to say about his current conditions of imprisonment?
Britain has denied Julian Assange contact with his lawyers in the U.S., where he is the subject of secret proceedings. His British lawyer has also complained that she hasn’t even had sufficient access to her client to go over court documents and evidence with him. Into October, he was not allowed to have a single document from his case file with him in his cell. He was denied his fundamental right to prepare his own defense, as guaranteed by the European Convention on Human Rights. On top of that is the almost total solitary confinement and the totally disproportionate punishment for a bail violation. As soon as he would leave his cell, the corridors were emptied to prevent him from having contact with any other inmates.
And all that because of a simple bail violation? At what point does imprisonment become torture?
Julian Assange has been intentionally psychologically tortured by Sweden, Britain, Ecuador and the U.S. First through the highly arbitrary handling of proceedings against him. The way Sweden pursued the case, with active assistance from Britain, was aimed at putting him under pressure and trapping him in the embassy. Sweden was never interested in finding the truth and helping these women, but in pushing Assange into a corner. It has been an abuse of judicial processes aimed at pushing a person into a position where he is unable to defend himself. On top of that come the surveillance measures, the insults, the indignities and the attacks by politicians from these countries, up to and including death threats. This constant abuse of state power has triggered serious stress and anxiety in Assange and has resulted in measurable cognitive and neurological harm. I visited Assange in his cell in London in May 2019 together with two experienced, widely respected doctors who are specialized in the forensic and psychological examination of torture victims. The diagnosis arrived at by the two doctors was clear: Julian Assange displays the typical symptoms of psychological torture. If he doesn’t receive protection soon, a rapid deterioration of his health is likely, and death could be one outcome.
Half a year after Assange was placed in pre-extradition detention in Britain, Sweden quietly abandoned the case against him in November 2019, after nine long years. Why then?
The Swedish state spent almost a decade intentionally presenting Julian Assange to the public as a sex offender. Then, they suddenly abandoned the case against him on the strength of the same argument that the first Stockholm prosecutor used in 2010, when she initially suspended the investigation after just five days: While the woman’s statement was credible, there was no proof that a crime had been committed. It is an unbelievable scandal. But the timing was no accident. On Nov. 11, an official document that I had sent to the Swedish government two months before was made public. In the document, I made a request to the Swedish government to provide explanations for around 50 points pertaining to the human rights implications of the way they were handling the case. How is it possible that the press was immediately informed despite the prohibition against doing so? How is it possible that a suspicion was made public even though the questioning hadn’t yet taken place? How is it possible for you to say that a rape occurred even though the woman involved contests that version of events? On the day the document was made public, I received a paltry response from Sweden: The government has no further comment on this case.
What does that answer mean?
It is an admission of guilt.
How so?
As UN Special Rapporteur, I have been tasked by the international community of nations with looking into complaints lodged by victims of torture and, if necessary, with requesting explanations or investigations from governments. That is the daily work I do with all UN member states. From my experience, I can say that countries that act in good faith are almost always interested in supplying me with the answers I need to highlight the legality of their behavior. When a country like Sweden declines to answer questions submitted by the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, it shows that the government is aware of the illegality of its behavior and wants to take no responsibility for its behavior. They pulled the plug and abandoned the case a week later because they knew I would not back down. When countries like Sweden allow themselves to be manipulated like that, then our democracies and our human rights face a fundamental threat.
You believe that Sweden was fully aware of what it was doing?
Yes. From my perspective, Sweden very clearly acted in bad faith. Had they acted in good faith, there would have been no reason to refuse to answer my questions. The same holds true for the British: Following my visit to Assange in May 2019, they took six months to answer me – in a single-page letter, which was primarily limited to rejecting all accusations of torture and all inconsistencies in the legal proceedings. If you’re going to play games like that, then what’s the point of my mandate? I am the Special Rapporteur on Torture for the United Nations. I have a mandate to ask clear questions and to demand answers. What is the legal basis for denying someone their fundamental right to defend themselves? Why is a man who is neither dangerous nor violent held in solitary confinement for several months when UN standards legally prohibit solitary confinement for periods extending beyond 15 days? None of these UN member states launched an investigation, nor did they answer my questions or even demonstrate an interest in dialogue.
5. A prison sentence of 175 years for investigative journalism: The precedent the USA vs. Julian Assange case could set
What does it mean when UN member states refuse to provide information to their own Special Rapporteur on Torture?
That it is a prearranged affair. A show trial is to be used to make an example of Julian Assange. The point is to intimidate other journalists. Intimidation, by the way, is one of the primary purposes for the use of torture around the world. The message to all of us is: This is what will happen to you if you emulate the Wikileaks model. It is a model that is so dangerous because it is so simple: People who obtain sensitive information from their governments or companies transfer that information to Wikileaks, but the whistleblower remains anonymous. The reaction shows how great the threat is perceived to be: Four democratic countries joined forces – the U.S., Ecuador, Sweden and the UK – to leverage their power to portray one man as a monster so that he could later be burned at the stake without any outcry. The case is a huge scandal and represents the failure of Western rule of law. If Julian Assange is convicted, it will be a death sentence for freedom of the press.
What would this possible precedent mean for the future of journalism?
On a practical level, it means that you, as a journalist, must now defend yourself. Because if investigative journalism is classified as espionage and can be incriminated around the world, then censorship and tyranny will follow. A murderous system is being created before our very eyes. War crimes and torture are not being prosecuted. YouTube videos are circulating in which American soldiers brag about driving Iraqi women to suicide with systematic rape. Nobody is investigating it. At the same time, a person who exposes such things is being threatened with 175 years in prison. For an entire decade, he has been inundated with accusations that cannot be proven and are breaking him. And nobody is being held accountable. Nobody is taking responsibility. It marks an erosion of the social contract. We give countries power and delegate it to governments – but in return, they must be held accountable for how they exercise that power. If we don’t demand that they be held accountable, we will lose our rights sooner or later. Humans are not democratic by their nature. Power corrupts if it is not monitored. Corruption is the result if we do not insist that power be monitored.
You’re saying that the targeting of Assange threatens the very core of press freedoms.
Let’s see where we will be in 20 years if Assange is convicted – what you will still be able to write then as a journalist. I am convinced that we are in serious danger of losing press freedoms. It’s already happening: Suddenly, the headquarters of ABC News in Australia was raided in connection with the «Afghan War Diary». The reason? Once again, the press uncovered misconduct by representatives of the state. In order for the division of powers to work, the state must be monitored by the press as the fourth estate. WikiLeaks is a the logical consequence of an ongoing process of expanded secrecy: If the truth can no longer be examined because everything is kept secret, if investigation reports on the U.S. government’s torture policy are kept secret and when even large sections of the published summary are redacted, leaks are at some point inevitably the result. WikiLeaks is the consequence of rampant secrecy and reflects the lack of transparency in our modern political system. There are, of course, areas where secrecy can be vital. But if we no longer know what our governments are doing and the criteria they are following, if crimes are no longer being investigated, then it represents a grave danger to societal integrity.
What are the consequences?
As the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture and, before that, as a Red Cross delegate, I have seen lots of horrors and violence and have seen how quickly peaceful countries like Yugoslavia or Rwanda can transform into infernos. At the roots of such developments are always a lack of transparency and unbridled political or economic power combined with the naivete, indifference and malleability of the population. Suddenly, that which always happened to the other – unpunished torture, rape, expulsion and murder – can just as easily happen to us or our children. And nobody will care. I can promise you that.
#julian assange#torture#freedom of the press#journalism#class warfare#wikileaks#united nations#sweden#united kingdom#ecuador#us state department#afghan war diary#chelsea manning#war crimes#war criminals#yugoslavia#yugoslav wars#rwanda
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