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The Julian Assange extradition hearings begin today

We should just send a memo with "Harry Dunn" written on it back with the US Extradition request.

I am no fan of Julian Assange, but he is just a piece of meat for the Tories to appease Trump and the US with in a big, big game of political chess.

We have wasted millions of pounds on policing/guarding the Ecuadorian Embassy, trial costs, imprisonment and now further legal challenges. We should just let him get on a plane and leave. It would send a clear message to the Americans that we are not their poodle. Unfortunately, we clearly are so by doing as they want.
 
The USA is the worlds worst terrorist by a huge margin and at least as guilty as Al Qaeda as witnessed by the state terrorism that was Korea, Iraq, Vietnam, Granada, Afghanistan and the Bay of Pigs etc etc. The mere presence of the American helicopter was a war crime and the machine gunning of journalists and ambulance crew plus innocent passers by was sickening. Going to war, not to defend the people of a country from imminent invasion or aggression but for financial reasons, to maintain profits plundered by controlling proxy states etc etc makes USA the most morally bankrupt nation since Hitlers 3rd Reich.
Please assure me you don't sell your work to Americans.

And to English as well, of course. There are many places around the world that are still are paying the price for English "exceptionalism."
 
There is one thing about Assange I don't like. It's the fact that he worked closely with GRU to elect Trump. He published through a Russian cutout and in a way that was calculated to inflict maximum damage on Clinton.

A journalist simply wouldn't have done that. Wikileaks published plenty of important information before and seem to have retained a reasonable claim to be a journalist organization.

When they (or likely just him) chose to work with Russian intelligence to pursue a personal vendetta against a political candidate, that previous legitimacy was traded away. It was a choice...one he made - and it can't be undone.

He still shouldn't be extradited, at least not during Trump's term and certainly not before the election. My actual concern is that Julian, in order to buy a lighter sentence, will make lots of false statements, accusing Biden and Ukraine of hacking Democrats' servers.

Could be the October surprise.
 

I haven't seen anything about Assange on the Tory BBC television, which is what I am talking about, whose Director-General is Tim Davie.

The latter, according to Wiki, "stood as a councillor for the Conservative Party in Hammersmith in 1993 and 1994 and was deputy chairman of the Hammersmith and Fulham Conservative party in the 1990s."

Davie is a Tory running a biased BBC that Johnson and Cummings use to spread their propaganda. Anybody who doesn't go along with their authoritarian model, like Channel 4 News, is deliberately excluded from asking questions at press conferences. They also don't get to talk to ministers.

If Trump becomes an increadingly hardline dictator after the Presidential election, Johnson will pant behind him.

Jack
 

It's an interesting piece and Craig Murray's assessment is acute.

"If you asked me to sum up today in a word, that word would undoubtedly be “railroaded”. it was all about pushing through the hearing as quickly as possible and with as little public exposure as possible to what is happening. Access denied, adjournment denied, exposition of defence evidence denied, removal of superseding indictment charges denied. The prosecution was plainly failing in that week back in Woolwich in February, which seems like an age ago. It has now been given a new boost.

"How the defence will deal with the new charges we shall see. It seems impossible that they can do this without calling new witnesses to address the new facts. But the witness lists had already been finalised on the basis of the old charges. That the defence should be forced to proceed with the wrong witnesses seems crazy, but frankly, I am well past being surprised by anything in this fake process."

Jack
 

A brilliant insight into the complexities and shameful way the trial is being conducted. It appears that the Judge is working to orders and has ruled that the defence will seemingly have to work with their arms tied behind their back, legs shackled, severely restricted access to their client and with insufficient time to prepare a defence against the charges.
 
If by "brilliant", you mean "in all likelihood biased" I'd say that was a fair description.

Do we have an objective report of the hearing?

You seem to imply that the proceedings are fair and above board. I don't.

Why not give us your 'objective' opinion of what is going on then?
 
If by "brilliant", you mean "in all likelihood biased" I'd say that was a fair description.

Do we have an objective report of the hearing?
Murray links to the following pages near the end of his article:

https://assangecourt.report/september-7-morning
https://assangecourt.report/september-7-afternoon

Both appear to be factual reports of what transpired in the court, and corroborate Murray's version of events (minus his commentary, of course).

Once you get past the weird framing (Assange's "outburst" is the headline) this Guardian report also corroborates some of the factual details in Murray's report:

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2...judge-after-outburst-during-extradition-trial

Though it leaves it right until the ends to mention that on Monday, Assange's lawyers failed to adjourn the extradition case after objecting to newly introduced US prosecution evidence accusing him of recruiting hackers to steal military secrets.
 
It is horrifying. We all need to view this purely from the perspective of scrutinising how our state deals with journalism and whistleblowing, and if our state is prepared to sacrifice human rights and due legal process in order to capitulate to other states for whatever reasons. Assange being a nasty manipulative egotistical twat should be absolutely irrelevant and have no bearing at all on our perspective. We need to hold a mirror up to our state and the processes on display and decide if they are in any way decent or honourable. To my mind we are behaving like a third-rate dictatorship or kangaroo court and I’m not seeing much moral high ground from China, Russia, Iran, Saudi, Zimbabwe or other nations with utter contempt for human rights and civil liberties. This simply isn’t the way to do this.
 
There is one thing about Assange I don't like. It's the fact that he worked closely with GRU to elect Trump. He published through a Russian cutout and in a way that was calculated to inflict maximum damage on Clinton.

A journalist simply wouldn't have done that. Wikileaks published plenty of important information before and seem to have retained a reasonable claim to be a journalist organization.

When they (or likely just him) chose to work with Russian intelligence to pursue a personal vendetta against a political candidate, that previous legitimacy was traded away. It was a choice...one he made - and it can't be undone.

He still shouldn't be extradited, at least not during Trump's term and certainly not before the election. My actual concern is that Julian, in order to buy a lighter sentence, will make lots of false statements, accusing Biden and Ukraine of hacking Democrats' servers.

Could be the October surprise.


Good post.

And you are correct in that some of the links have long been in play. For example, one of the go-betweens, enabling comms between Trump 's team and Assange in that election was (as made clear in Seth Abramson's first book on Trump) ... one Nigel Farage.


"What is 'rotten in the state of Denmark' in Hamlet?"
When Marcellus states, 'Something is rotten in the state of Denmark' he is talking about Denmark's relationship with Norway but on the symbolic level he is summing up Claudius' corrupting effect on the kingdom which is intensified by his unpunished crime.'

Names of States to protect the gulty/mc
 
And you are correct in that some of the links have long been in play. For example, one of the go-betweens, enabling comms between Trump 's team and Assange in that election was (as made clear in Seth Abramson's first book on Trump) ... one Nigel Farage.

It was very widely reported at the time, e.g. Guardian. I really have no time at all for Assange. I view him as a puffed-up, vain and self-interested enabler of fascism. He annoys me hugely as the basic concept of Wikileaks was (and still is) genius, and he blew it. Having a safe globally mirrored repository to dump whistleblowing data that exists far beyond the reach of petty nationalism is truly a worthy goal and to my mind one of the best ideas since the birth of the internet. Such a shame its creator turned out to be a corrupt cock. Regardless, he absolutely deserves a fair trial.
 
An extradition hearing is not a 'fair trial'. The hearing is to establish if there are reasonable grounds for extradition, to face trial elsewhere - a rather different matter. I am sure if Assange does end up in America, for a full trial, there will be no shortage of well qualified lawyers wanting to take his case and make a name for themselves.

I would be happier if the UK tore up the US extradition agreement - it is very one-sided and, for instance, France seems to get by perfectly well by refusing to extradite its own citizens. What is the ratio of extraditions from the US to UK vs the other way round? But Assange is an Australian citizen, is he not? Is that a factor in this somewhere?

I agree with others - his original Wikileaks was a force for 'good' - but if it has strayed into hacking and 'making the news' then it has gone too far and he has over-reached himself and believed his own hype.

Wikileaks would continued to have done a great service to the world so long as it did not take 'sides'. It actually seems bizarre that he would take Wikileaks into an active anti-Democrat road. Somewhere in the background lurks money? Of course, I reckon.
 
An extradition hearing is not a 'fair trial'. The hearing is to establish if there are reasonable grounds for extradition, to face trial elsewhere - a rather different matter. I am sure if Assange does end up in America, for a full trial, there will be no shortage of well qualified lawyers wanting to take his case and make a name for themselves.

I would be happier if the UK tore up the US extradition agreement - it is very one-sided and, for instance, France seems to get by perfectly well by refusing to extradite its own citizens. What is the ratio of extraditions from the US to UK vs the other way round? But Assange is an Australian citizen, is he not? Is that a factor in this somewhere?

I agree with others - his original Wikileaks was a force for 'good' - but if it has strayed into hacking and 'making the news' then it has gone too far and he has over-reached himself and believed his own hype.

Wikileaks would continued to have done a great service to the world so long as it did not take 'sides'. It actually seems bizarre that he would take Wikileaks into an active anti-Democrat road. Somewhere in the background lurks money? Of course, I reckon.
That's the only point that's directly relevant to this thread. He faces extradition and may spend the rest of his life in prison because he leaked information that the US government wanted to keep secret. Not that it matters, but the charges predate any reasonable accusations of partiality on Assange's part. Personally, I want to know what governments are doing "in my name", and I expect journalists to dig for truth. A fundamental democratic principle is at stake and most liberal journalists turn and look away - shame on them.
 
You seem to imply that the proceedings are fair and above board. I don't.

I don't think I stated that. What I wanted to raise is the possibility that a report on the hearing by someone with Craig Murray's interests and views may not a balanced report of proceedings. Your post infers that you consider Murray's article as objective but with no further reasons to support that; it leads me to the obvious conclusion that you only think it 'brilliant' because it confirms / supports your views on the matter. Sometimes, there seems a confusion between 'objectivity' and 'wot I think'.

Why not give us your 'objective' opinion of what is going on then?

I can't. I wasn't present in court nor am I a legal expert to understand and assess whether the decisions made are legal and / or have an agenda behind them.



Murray links to the following pages near the end of his article:

https://assangecourt.report/september-7-morning
https://assangecourt.report/september-7-afternoon

Both appear to be factual reports of what transpired in the court, and corroborate Murray's version of events (minus his commentary, of course).

Thanks - I will have a look at them but I note they are not official court records and I do not know the provenance of the source.
 


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