The most short sighted folks are the journalists and the media outlets who
haven't come to Assenge's defense. True, Julian Assenge is a difficult person.
He says and does some objectionable things. However, WikkiLeaks does inform the
public about the wrongdoings of many nations. It is available for
whistleblowers as a resource to tell what they know. The New York Times, The
Washington Post, and the Guardian, have all used its information for their
reportage. But they are allowing the US government to target him.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Wednesday, July 25, 2018 11:18 AM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Ecuador Will Imminently Withdraw Asylum for
Julian Assange and Hand Him Over to the U.K. What Comes Next?
What an ugly brute Uncle Sam appears to be these days. He looks like any of
dozens of Despots who have slobbered over their spoils down through our
history. All of our dreams of being the world's Savior, bringing Peace and
Love to one and all, turns out to be nothing other than a Madison Avenue Fairy
Tale.
Carl Jarvis
On 7/23/18, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Ecuador Will Imminently Withdraw Asylum for Julian Assange and Hand
Him Over to the U.K. What Comes Next?
Glenn Greenwald
The Intercept
July 21 2018, 12:17 p.m.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange addresses the media holding a printed
report of the judgement of the UN's Working Group on Arbitrary
Detention on his case from the balcony of the Ecuadorian embassy in
central London on February 5, 2016.During a press conference on
February 5 Julian Assange, speaking via video-link, called for Britain
and Sweden to "implement" a UN panel finding saying that he should be
able to walk free from Ecuador's embassy, where he has lived in
self-imposed confinement since 2012. / AFP / NIKLAS HALLE'N (Photo
credit should read NIKLAS HALLE'N/AFP/Getty Images)
Photo: Niklas Halle'n/AFP/Getty Images
Ecuador’s President Lenin Moreno traveled to London on Friday for the
ostensible purpose of speaking at the 2018 Global Disabilities Summit
(Moreno has been using a wheelchair since being shot in a 1998 robbery
attempt). The concealed, actual purpose of the president’s trip is to
meet with British officials to finalize an agreement under which
Ecuador will withdraw its asylum protection of Julian Assange, in
place since 2012, eject him from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, and
then hand over the WikiLeaks founder to British authorities.
Moreno’s itinerary also notably includes a trip to Madrid, where he
will meet with Spanish officials still seething over Assange’s
denunciation of human rights abuses perpetrated by Spain’s central
government against protesters marching for Catalonian independence.
Almost three months ago, Ecuador blocked Assange from accessing the
internet, and Assange has not been able to communicate with the
outside world ever since. The primary factor in Ecuador’s decision to
silence him was Spanish anger over Assange’s tweets about Catalonia.
Presidential decree signed on July 17 by Ecuadorian President Lenin
Moreno, outlining his trip to London and Madrid.
A source close to the Ecuadorian Foreign Ministry and the president’s
office, unauthorized to speak publicly, has confirmed to The Intercept
that Moreno is close to finalizing, if he has not already finalized,
an agreement to hand over Assange to the U.K. within the next several
weeks. The withdrawal of asylum and physical ejection of Assange could
come as early as this week. On Friday, RT reported that Ecuador was
preparing to enter into such an agreement.
The consequences of such an agreement depend in part on the
concessions Ecuador extracts in exchange for withdrawing Assange’s
asylum. But as former Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa told The
Intercept in an interview in May, Moreno’s government has returned
Ecuador to a highly “subservient” and “submissive” posture toward western
governments.
It is thus highly unlikely that Moreno — who has shown himself willing
to submit to threats and coercion from the U.K., Spain and the U.S. —
will obtain a guarantee that the U.K. not extradite Assange to the
U.S., where top Trump officials have vowed to prosecute Assange and destroy
WikiLeaks.
The central oddity of Assange’s case — that he has been effectively
imprisoned for eight years despite never having been charged with, let
alone convicted of, any crime — is virtually certain to be prolonged
once Ecuador hands him over to the U.K. Even under the best-case
scenario, it appears highly likely that Assange will continue to be
imprisoned by British authorities.
The only known criminal proceeding Assange currently faces is a
pending 2012 arrest warrant for “failure to surrender” — basically a
minor bail violation that arose when he obtained asylum from Ecuador
rather than complying with bail conditions by returning to court for a
hearing on his attempt to resist extradition to Sweden.
That offense carries a prison term of three months and a fine, though
it is possible that the time Assange has already spent in prison in
the U.K. could be counted against that sentence. In 2010, Assange was
imprisoned in Wandsworth Prison, kept in isolation, for 10 days until
he was released on bail; he was then under house arrest for 550 days
at the home of a supporter.
Assange’s lawyer, Jen Robinson, told The Intercept that he would argue
that all of that prison time already served should count toward (and
thus completely fulfill) any prison term imposed on the “failure to surrender”
charge, though British prosecutors would almost certainly contest that
claim. Assange would also argue that he had a reasonable, valid basis
for seeking asylum rather than submitting to U.K. authorities: namely,
well-grounded fear that he would be extradited to the U.S. for
prosecution for the act of publishing documents.
Beyond that minor charge, British prosecutors could argue that
Assange’s evading of legal process in the U.K. was so protracted,
intentional and malicious that it rose beyond mere “failure to
surrender” to “contempt of court,” which carries a prison term of up
to two years. Just on those charges alone, then, Assange faces a high
risk of detention for another year or even longer in a British prison.
Currently, that is the only known criminal proceeding Assange faces.
In May 2017, Swedish prosecutors announced they were closing their
investigation into the sexual assault allegations due to the futility
of proceeding in light of Assange’s asylum and the time that has elapsed.
The far more important question that will determine Assange’s future
is what the U.S. government intends to do. The Obama administration
was eager to prosecute Assange and WikiLeaks for publishing hundreds
of thousands of classified documents, but ultimately concluded that
there was no way to do so without either also prosecuting newspapers
such as the New York Times and The Guardian, which published the same
documents, or creating precedents that would enable the criminal prosecution
of media outlets in the future.
Indeed, it is technically a crime under U.S. law for anyone —
including a media outlet — to publish certain types of classified
information. Under U.S. law, for instance, it was a felony for the
Washington Post’s David Ignatius to report on the contents of
telephone calls, intercepted by the NSA, between then National
Security Adviser nominee Michael Flynn and Russian Ambassador Sergey
Kislyak, even though such reporting was clearly in the public interest
since it proved Flynn lied when he denied such contacts.
That the Washington Post and Ignatius — and not merely their sources —
violated U.S. criminal law by revealing the contents of intercepted
communications with a Russian official is made clear by the text of 18
§ 798 of the U.S. Code, which provides (emphasis added):
“Whoever knowingly and willfully communicates … or otherwise makes
available to an unauthorized person, or publishes … any classified
information … obtained by the processes of communication intelligence
from the communications of any foreign government … shall be fined
under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.”
But the U.S. Justice Department has never wanted to indict and
prosecute anyone for the crime of publishing such material, contenting
themselves instead to prosecuting the government sources who leak it.
Their reluctance has been due to two reasons: First, media outlets
would argue that any attempts to criminalize the mere publication of
classified or stolen documents is barred by the press freedom
guarantee of the First Amendment, a proposition the DOJ has never
wanted to test; second, no DOJ has wanted as part of its legacy the creation
of a precedent that allows the U.S.
government to criminally prosecute journalists and media outlets for
reporting classified documents.
But the Trump administration has made clear that they have no such concerns.
Quite the contrary: Last April, Trump’s then-CIA Director Mike Pompeo,
now his secretary of state, delivered a deranged, rambling, highly
threatening broadside against WikiLeaks. Without citing any evidence,
Pompeo decreed that WikiLeaks is “a non-state hostile intelligence
service often abetted by state actors like Russia,” and thus declared:
“We have to recognize that we can no longer allow Assange and his
colleagues the latitude to use free speech values against us.”
The longtime right-wing congressman, now one of Trump’s most loyal and
favored cabinet officials, also explicitly rejected any First
Amendment concerns about prosecuting Assange, arguing that while
WikiLeaks “pretended that America’s First Amendment freedoms shield
them from justice … they may have believed that, but they are wrong.”
Pompeo then issued this bold threat: “To give them the space to crush
us with misappropriated secrets is a perversion of what our great
Constitution stands for. It ends now.”
Trump’s Attorney General Jeff Sessions has similarly vowed not only to
continue and expand the Obama DOJ’s crackdown on sources, but also to
consider the prosecution of media outlets that publish classified
information. It would be incredibly shrewd for Sessions to lay the
foundation for doing so by prosecuting Assange first, safe in the
knowledge that journalists themselves — consumed with hatred for
Assange due to personal reasons, professional jealousies, and anger
over the role they believed he played in 2016 in helping Hillary
Clinton lose — would unite behind the Trump DOJ and in support of its efforts
to imprison Assange.
During the Obama years, it was a mainstream view among media outlets
that prosecuting Assange would be a serious danger to press freedoms.
Even the Washington Post editorial page, which vehemently condemned
WikiLeaks, warned in 2010 that any such prosecution would “criminalize
the exchange of information and put at risk” all media outlets. When
Pompeo and Sessions last year issued their threats to prosecute
Assange, former Obama DOJ spokesperson Matthew Miller insisted that no
such prosecution could ever
succeed:
For years, the Obama DOJ searched for evidence that Assange actively
assisted Chelsea Manning or other sources in the hacking or stealing
of documents — in order to prosecute them for more than merely
publishing documents — and found no such evidence. But even that
theory — that a publisher of classified documents can be prosecuted
for assisting a source — would be a severe threat to press freedom,
since journalists frequently work in some form of collaboration with
sources who remove or disclose classified information. And nobody has
ever presented evidence that WikiLeaks conspired with whoever hacked
the DNC and Podesta email inboxes to effectuate that hacking.
But there seems little question that, as Sessions surely knows, large
numbers of U.S. journalists — along with many, perhaps most, Democrats
— would actually support the Trump DOJ in prosecuting Assange for
publishing documents. After all, the DNC sued WikiLeaks in April for
publishing documents — a serious, obvious threat to press freedom — and few
objected.
And it was Democratic senators such as Dianne Feinstein who, during
the Obama years, were urging the prosecution of WikiLeaks, with the
support of numerous GOP senators. There is no doubt that, after 2016,
support among both journalists and Democrats for imprisoning Assange
for publishing documents would be higher than ever.
If the U.S. did indict Assange for alleged crimes relating to the
publication of documents, or if they have already obtained a sealed
indictment, and then uses that indictment to request that the U.K.
extradite him to the U.S. to stand trial, that alone would ensure that
Assange remains in prison in the U.K. for years to come.
Assange would, of course, resist any such extradition on the ground
that publishing documents is not a cognizable crime and that the U.S
is seeking his extradition for political charges that, by treaty,
cannot serve as the basis for extradition. But it would take at least
a year, and probably closer to three years, for U.K. courts to decide
these extradition questions. And while all of that lingers, Assange
would almost certainly be in prison, given that it is inconceivable
that a British judge would release Assange on bail given what happened the
last time he was released.
All of this means that it is highly likely that Assange — under his
best-case scenario — faces at least another year in prison, and will
end up having spent a decade in prison despite never having been
charged with, let alone convicted of, any crime. He has essentially
been punished — imprisoned — by process.
And while it is often argued that Assange has only himself to blame,
it is beyond doubt, given the grand jury convened by the Obama DOJ and
now the threats of Pompeo and Sessions, that the fear that led Assange
to seek asylum in the first place — being extradited to the U.S. and
politically persecuted for political crimes — was well-grounded.
Assange, his lawyers and his supporters always said that he would
immediately board a plane to Stockholm if he were guaranteed that
doing so would not be used to extradite him to the U.S., and for years
offered to be questioned by Swedish investigators inside the embassy
in London, something Swedish prosecutors only did years later. Citing
those facts, a United Nations panel ruled in 2016 that the actions of
the U.K. government constituted “arbitrary detention” and a violation
of Assange’s fundamental human rights.
But if, as seems quite likely, the Trump administration finally
announces that it intends to prosecute Assange for publishing classified U.S.
government documents, we will be faced with the bizarre spectacle of U.S.
journalists — who have spent the last two years melodramatically
expressing grave concern over press freedom due to insulting tweets
from Donald Trump about Wolf Blitzer and Chuck Todd or his mean
treatment of Jim Acosta — possibly cheering for a precedent that would
be the gravest press freedom threat in decades.
That precedent would be one that could easily be used to put them in a
prison cell alongside Assange for the new “crime” of publishing any
documents that the U.S. government has decreed should not be
published. When it comes to press freedom threats, such an indictment
would not be in the same universe as name-calling tweets by Trump
directed at various TV personalities.
When it came to denouncing due process denials and the use of torture
at Guantanamo, it was not difficult for journalists to set aside their
personal dislike for Al Qaeda sympathizers to denounce the dangers of
those human rights and legal abuses. When it comes to free speech
assaults, journalists are able to set aside their personal contempt
for a person’s opinions to oppose the precedent that the government
can punish people for expressing noxious ideas.
It should not be this difficult for journalists to set aside their
personal emotions about Assange to recognize the profound dangers —
not just to press freedoms but to themselves — if the U.S. government
succeeds in keeping Assange imprisoned for years to come, all due to
its attempts to prosecute him for publishing classified or stolen
documents. That seems the highly likely scenario once Ecuador hands over
Assange to the U.K.
