Press Freedom - Julian Assange Arrested

wednesday

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Hey! I am so saddened by the news that Julian Assange was taken out of the Ecuadorian Embassy in London a couple of hours ago by the UK police by force.

Anyone else care about this story? He should not have had to be holed up there to begin with, but now it is unclear what will happen to this outstanding journalist and publisher.

The hypocrisy of the UK and US media about freedom of the press makes my blood boil.

 
It's horrific. He's doomed if he gets extradited to the US. The government don't want to lock him up, they want him dead.
 
It's horrific. He's doomed if he gets extradited to the US. The government don't want to lock him up, they want him dead.

I am so worried about that! Chelsea Manning refused to testify before a grand jury just recently and they sent her to jail again. Assange has done nothing other than publish information that was given to him. His platform WIKILEAKS exposes corruption and war crimes. He should be given the Pulitzer and Nobel Peace Prize and be lauded like those journalists in the film "The Post" with Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep. :angry:

Dangerous double standards.
 
I am so worried about that! Chelsea Manning refused to testify before a grand jury just recently and they sent her to jail again. Assange has done nothing other than publish information that was given to him. His platform WIKILEAKS exposes corruption and war crimes. He should be given the Pulitzer and Nobel Peace Prize and be lauded like those journalists in the film "The Post" with Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep. :angry:

Dangerous double standards.

Yeah... I feel so bad for him. These whistleblowers sacrifice everything. They deserve huge respect and lifelong sanctuary. I feel like Julian might get killed in prison and it'll be blamed on natural causes, suicide, or another inmate. I really hope I'm wrong.
 
Yeah... I feel so bad for him. These whistleblowers sacrifice everything. They deserve huge respect and lifelong sanctuary. I feel like Julian might get killed in prison and it'll be blamed on natural causes, suicide, or another inmate. I really hope I'm wrong.

And the craziest thing is that YouTube is BLOCKING all independent news channels who are reporting on it like everyone else! I can watch on the computer but not on the phone and people who are commenting on these videos are experiencing the same. It's the first time in my life I have witnessed censorship in action and in real time. :censored:

Makes you want to live in a bubble. #FreeAssange :praying
 
And the craziest thing is that YouTube is BLOCKING all independent news channels who are reporting on it like everyone else! I can watch on the computer but not on the phone and people who are commenting on these videos are experiencing the same. It's the first time in my life I have witnessed censorship in action and in real time. :censored:

Makes you want to live in a bubble. #FreeAssange :praying

What? what does this mean?
 
What? what does this mean?

Shortly after the videos were uploaded, including the first two I posted in this thread, they were made unavailable by YouTube. They are working for me now btw.

I have no idea whether it is some kind of algorithm or what, but big channels like cnn were not affected. However, I couldn't care less about cnn's propaganda spin on this story (they were basically cheering for his arrest).
 
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Here is a really good explanation of this situation by Mike Figueredo of the HUMANIST REPORT:

 
Kyle Kulinski of Secular Talk:

"If you hyperventilated over Trump screaming 'fake news' & calling media hacks mean names then you should be at defcon 1 over the literal arrest of a man who exposed your government committing war crimes with your money and in your name. This is the real threat to press freedom."



https://twitter.com/KyleKulinski/status/1116332768076677121
 
julian-header.jpg
 
Protest for Press Freedom with Chinese dissident artist Ai Wei Wei in Berlin

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The sentencing of Julian Assange: A legal travesty

2 May 2019

Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks publisher and journalist, was sentenced to almost a year in prison by a UK judge Wednesday in what can only be called a show trial.

The sentence, handed out to cries of “shame” by protestors, is aimed at keeping Assange imprisoned, unable to receive visitors or hold private conversations, as the White House moves to extradite him for exposing US war crimes.

In the tradition of British class justice, the judge not only passed a prejudiced and excessive sentence, but insulted Assange. She told the journalist, effectively detained at the Ecuadorean embassy in London for seven years, that he was guilty of “exploiting your privileged position to flout the law and advertise internationally your disdain for the law of this country.”

The sentencing came just one day before the beginning of Assange’s extradition hearing. The very fact that the United States, a country that practices torture, capital punishment, and operates outside the framework of international law, is seeking to extradite Assange constitutes prima facie evidence that his reasons for seeking asylum were entirely justified.

The judge made no serious effort to refute the arguments of Assange’s defense, documented in a nine-page note of mitigation, that surrendering to British authorities would open him to the type of illegal persecution that led the government of Ecuador to grant him asylum.

Assange sought and received political asylum because of his “fear that he would be surrendered to the USA by Sweden, and be subjected to treatment there, including persecution and indefinite solitary confinement, relating to his involvement in WikiLeaks’ publication of sensitive US military and diplomatic materials (such as the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture had concluded happened to Chelsea Manning).”

Ecuador granted the persecuted journalist asylum, “based upon its assessment of a well-founded risk of him being refouled [extradited] by Sweden to the USA and there being subjected to persecution, inhuman treatment and physical harm.”

Ecuador’s decision took into consideration the fact that “Sweden also had, at the material time, a long and unfortunate history of illicit co-operation with the USA in the mistreatment of detainees and their rendition.”

The document referenced a pair of rulings by the UN’s Committee Against Torture, describing Sweden’s “total surrender of power” to US authorities carrying out illegal rendition and torture. These judgements found, in the words of Assange’s lawyers, that “Sweden had passively allowed US military personnel to mistreat detainees on Swedish soil (including stripping, blindfolding, hooding, manacling, forcible sedation by forced anal suppository, handcuffing into specially designed stress position harnesses etc.) and in delivering them to torture in third states.”

Despite the lying arguments made by the New York Times and Washington Post that Assange is facing extradition for a minor computer hacking charge and faces no danger to his life, the Justice Department has made clear that it is investigating him for “obtaining and disseminating secret information,” a charge that could lead to prosecution under the Espionage Act and be punishable by death.

The legal proceeding against Assange is not, in fact, an extradition, but a rendition, reminiscent of the treatment of “terrorism suspects” who were snatched on the streets of Europe or the Middle East, bound and shackled with bags over their heads, and flown to America’s torture “black sites” or Guantanamo Bay.

It has been three weeks since Assange was dragged from the Ecuadorian Embassy on April 11 and hauled off to Belmarsh Prison, called the UK’s Guantanamo, where he has been held in isolation, denied his right to meet with lawyers and family members, and subjected to what his father called “touchless torture.”

And it has been nearly eight weeks since the jailing of Chelsea Manning, the courageous whistleblower who helped expose US war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, for refusing to testify against Assange. Manning has been held in solitary confinement for much of her imprisonment and, according to her lawyer, denied appropriate medical care.

The persecution of Assange and Manning comes as the United States is intensifying its efforts at regime change in Venezuela, while escalating its conflict with Russia and China. By jailing the founder of WikiLeaks, which documented and exposed US war crimes, the United States is seeking to silence opposition to its unpopular and criminal wars.

Assange’s persecution takes place under conditions of growing class conflict and social opposition. The ruling class is well aware that its policies of war and social counter-revolution are encountering mass resistance, which will increase. By making an example of Assange, it is seeking to silence all news outlets that oppose the dictates of the financial oligarchy.

The attitude of political organizations and tendencies to the persecution of Assange defines their character. Those who have actively or tacitly supported this pseudo-legal abomination have upon them a black mark that can never be washed clean.

This includes the Trump administration, which is demanding the extradition of Assange; the Democratic Party, which has campaigned against Assange as part of its anti-Russia campaign; the media, which has vilified him and spread lies and slander; and the middle-class pseudo-left organizations that lent credence to the trumped-up rape allegations used as the pretext for his persecution. All oppose Assange because they support American imperialism.

The social force that must come to the defense of Assange and Manning is the international working class. Unlike the affluent and complacent functionaries that staff the mainstream media outlets, the Democratic Party and its pseudo-left appendages, the working class has a vital stake in the defense of democratic rights.[...]

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/05/02/pers-m02.html
 
Unfortunately I cannot access the WaPo article so I am posting Jimmy Dore Show breaking it down:

 
The fact that Julian Assange is still arrested and the biggest crooks Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are running free makes me sick to my stomach. :(
 
The fact that Julian Assange is still arrested and the biggest crooks Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are running free makes me sick to my stomach. :(
Fixed your comment :)

Im not fully in the loop on this but wikileaks is a good thing in terms of letting info get out that would otherwise be suppressed.
 
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