Sandra Finley

2019-03-11 Glenn Greenwald: Chelsea Manning’s Refusal to Testify Against WikiLeaks Will Help Save Press Freedom. Democracy Now interview.

 Daniel Ellsberg, Julian Assange, Wikileaks, Chelsea (Bradley) Manning, Arjen Kamphuis  No Responses »
Mar 112019
 

https://www.democracynow.org/2019/3/11/glenn_greenwald_chelsea_mannings_refusal_to?autostart=true  

Two very good interviews:  Glenn Greenwald  and  Daniel Ellsberg on Democracy Now.

RECOMMEND:    Go to the link – – the video is at top.

TEXT FOR BACK-UP:

Chelsea Manning has been sent back to jail after refusing to answer questions before a grand jury investigating WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange. Manning, a U.S. Army whistleblower, had been subpoenaed by federal prosecutors in Virginia’s Eastern District to appear for questioning about her 2010 leak to WikiLeaks of hundreds of thousands of State Department and Pentagon documents about the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We speak with Glenn Greenwald, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and one of the founding editors of The Intercept.

Transcript
  1.  GREENWALD
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: Music by Mangueira, Brazil’s most famous samba school. Last week, Mangueira won Carnival in Rio de Janeiro, getting a perfect score from judges for its float honoring Rio Councilwoman Marielle Franco, who was assassinated almost a year ago. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.

U.S. Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning has been sent back to jail after refusing to answer questions before a grand jury investigating WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange. Manning had been subpoenaed by federal prosecutors in Virginia’s Eastern District to appear for questioning about her 2010 leak to WikiLeaks of hundreds of thousands of State Department and Pentagon documents about the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

To talk more about the jailing of Manning, as well as other issues, including what’s happening in Venezuela, we turn right now to Glenn Greenwald, speaking to us from Brazil. He’s a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, one of the founding editors of The Intercept.

Glenn, welcome back to Democracy Now! Talk about Chelsea Manning once again being jailed.

GLENN GREENWALD: I don’t think it’s a surprise to anybody that Chelsea Manning is extraordinarily heroic. She has demonstrated that repeatedly over the last decade in all kinds of ways. But what she’s doing here is really remarkable, because the context is that the Trump administration is trying to do what the Obama administration tried to do but ultimately concluded it couldn’t do without jeopardizing press freedoms, which is to prosecute WikiLeaks and Julian Assange for what it regards as the crime of publishing top-secret or classified documents.

And the media in the United States has spent two years screaming about the threat that Trump poses to press freedoms because he says mean things about the media on Twitter or insults Wolf Blitzer and Chuck Todd, and yet here we have what is really a grave threat to press freedom: the attempt to make it a felony to publish classified material—which is what WikiLeaks did. Even the anti-press freedom Obama administration said this was a bridge too far for us.

And while most reporters are mute on this scandal, on this controversy, and while a lot of Democrats are supportive of it, because they still hate WikiLeaks so much from the 2016 election that they’re happy to see Julian Assange go to jail, even if it means standing behind the Trump administration, Chelsea Manning is not just opposing it, she’s opposing it to the point where she refuses to participate in it, even if it means, as it now does, that she’s going to be jailed for being in contempt of court for refusing to comply with a subpoena. We all owe our immense gratitude to Chelsea Manning for everything she’s done over the last decade, but even more so now.

AMY GOODMAN: I’d like to go back to 2017, when Mike Pompeo talked about Chelsea Manning in his first address as CIA director in April of last year [sic].

MIKE POMPEO: WikiLeaks walks like a hostile intelligence service and talks like a hostile intelligence service and has encouraged its followers to find jobs at the CIA in order to obtain intelligence. It directed Chelsea Manning in her theft of specific secret information. It overwhelmingly focuses on the United States, while seeking support from anti-democratic countries and organizations. It’s time to call out WikiLeaks for what it really is: a nonstate, hostile intelligence service, often abetted by state actors like Russia.

AMY GOODMAN: So, that was Pompeo when he was head of the CIA. Now, of course, he is secretary of state. Can you respond to what he has said, Glenn Greenwald?

GLENN GREENWALD: This is the part I find so amazing. Do Democrats not realize the irony here of cheering for the most reactionary, right-wing forces in the Trump administration, who are the ones trying to imprison Julian Assange and WikiLeaks in order to criminalize journalism—namely, Mike Pompeo—and the person who actually first vowed to put WikiLeaks and Assange behind bars, which was then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who has since left the Trump administration?

The Obama administration tried to create theories to say that WikiLeaks did more than just passively receive documents from Chelsea Manning and then publish them, because they knew they had to do that in order to prosecute WikiLeaks; otherwise, how do you justify prosecuting WikiLeaks for publishing classified documents, without also prosecuting The New York Times and The Guardian? The Justice Department, under Obama, searched high and low for evidence that WikiLeaks participated in Chelsea Manning’s taking of those documents. They found no evidence. She testified under oath that she acted alone, that they played no role whatsoever in her decision to do that.

And now, suddenly, seven years later, Mike Pompeo claims that they have evidence or that they believe that WikiLeaks told her to do it, and therefore they intend to prosecute WikiLeaks. And unfortunately, between the Republicans, who have long hated WikiLeaks for exposing the war crimes of the Bush administration, and Democrats, who now hate WikiLeaks because they published documents that were harmful to or reflected poorly on Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party, very few people are willing to stand up to this very serious attack on press freedom. And thankfully, Chelsea Manning is one of those people.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to turn to John Bolton speaking about Chelsea Manning in the 2012 BBC film Wikileaks: The Secret Life of a Superpower. He was interviewed by Richard Bilton.

RICHARD BILTON: What do you think of Bradley Manning?

JOHN BOLTON: I think he committed treason. I think he should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

RICHARD BILTON: What does that mean?

JOHN BOLTON: Well, treason is the only crime defined by our Constitution, and it says treason shall consist only of levying war against the United States or adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. And he gave our enemies a lot of aid and comfort.

RICHARD BILTON: So what should happen to him?

JOHN BOLTON: Well, he should be prosecuted. And if he’s found guilty, he should be punished to the fullest extent possible.

RICHARD BILTON: And what is that?

JOHN BOLTON: Death.

RICHARD BILTON: You think he should be killed.

JOHN BOLTON: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: “You think you should be killed.” “Yes,” responded John Bolton, now the national security adviser. Of course, Bradley Manning became Chelsea Manning. She announced her transition the day she was sentenced. Glenn Greenwald?

GLENN GREENWALD: These are the sentiments that are driving the current attempt to prosecute WikiLeaks and Assange. And those are the monsters who are responsible for it.

So, I would hope that however angry someone might be at Julian Assange or WikiLeaks for whatever they think they did as part of the 2016 election to undermine Hillary Clinton by publishing truthful documents that showed the corruption of the DNC, however angry one might be at WikiLeaks for having done that, one can separate those emotions and understand that what the Trump administration has nothing to do with the 2016 election. The criminal proceedings that have led to Chelsea Manning’s jailing for the second time in the last decade are all about documents that were published, not in 2016, but in 2011 and 2012.

And it’s being done by people, like John Bolton, who believe that if you publish top-secret documents that report on the misdeeds and criminal acts of the U.S. government, you’re not only a criminal, but a traitor who deserves to be killed. You just heard that with your own ears. And so, anyone supporting the Trump administration’s efforts to put Julian Assange in prison because you’re angry about what he did in the 2016 election, you’re aligning yourself with and you’re empowering those warped, sociopathic sentiments that you just heard come out of John Bolton’s mouth.

The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.
2.     “I Know No One More Patriotic”: Daniel Ellsberg Praises Chelsea Manning After She Is Jailed Again

RECOMMEND:  Watch the video:

https://www.democracynow.org/2019/3/11/i_know_no_one_more_patriotic

TEXT – BACK-UP:
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: U.S. Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning has been sent back to jail after refusing to answer questions before a grand jury investigating WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange. Manning had been subpoenaed by federal prosecutors in Virginia’s Eastern District to appear for questioning about her 2010 leak to WikiLeaks of hundreds of thousands of State Department and Pentagon documents about the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Manning was in prison from 2010 to 2017 for the leak. President Obama commuted her sentence before he left office. Chelsea Manning briefly spoke to reporters on Friday on her way into court.

CHELSEA MANNING: So, this is a contempt hearing. It’s a sealed hearing. The public isn’t allowed. The proceedings are going to happen in secret. The filings are sealed. So, can’t really talk about the specifics of what’s going on, beyond what we explained in the statement. But, you know, I’m pretty confident that we have a basis and a grounds on which to oppose this.

REPORTER: And you said in your statement you’re prepared to go to jail for this?

CHELSEA MANNING: If it comes to that, yeah. If it comes to that, you know, it comes to that. If it comest to going—you know, I might not leave here today, you know, free, so…

AMY GOODMAN: In a written statement, Chelsea Manning later said, quote, “I will not comply with this, or any other grand jury. Imprisoning me for my refusal to answer questions only subjects me to additional punishment for my repeatedly-stated ethical objections to the grand jury system.

“The grand jury’s questions pertained to disclosures from nine years ago, and took place six years after an in-depth computer forensics case, in which I testified for almost a full day about these events. I stand by my previous public testimony,” she wrote.

Well, on Sunday, Democracy Now! spoke with Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg at his home in California.

DANIEL ELLSBERG: This is a continuation of seven-and-a-half years of torture of Chelsea Manning, in an effort to get her to contribute to incriminating WikiLeaks, so that they can bring Julian Assange or WikiLeaks to trial on charges that would not apply to The New York Times. It’s been speculated for years now that the secret charges, if they did exist—and apparently they do exist—against Julian Assange were under the same charges that I was first—the first person to be prosecuted for, back in 1971: violations of the Espionage Act, conspiracy and theft. It would be the same cases brought against me.

Unfortunately, bringing that against a journalist is even more blatantly a violation of the First Amendment, freedom of the press. And although Donald Trump has made it very plain he would love to prosecute and convict The New York Times, he doesn’t have the guts to do that, to do what he wants, fortunately, because it would be so obviously unconstitutional, that although his base would be happy with it and he would be happy with it, he would get into too much trouble constitutionally. So he wants to find charges against Julian that would be different from mine, because if he brought the same charges that he brought against me—in this case, against a journalist—it would clearly be found unconstitutional.

And so, Chelsea, having failed to give them what they wanted over seven-and-a-half years here she was incarcerated, or since, or in the grand jury—namely, false incriminating charges against WikiLeaks—they’re resorting again to torture, which does work at getting false confessions. That’s what it’s for. That’s what it mainly does. They want her to contradict her earlier sworn testimony many times, that she behaved in relation to WikiLeaks exactly as she would have to The New York Times or The Washington Post, to whom she went first, before going to WikiLeaks. And they didn’t pick up on what she was offering, so she went to WikiLeaks. But she took sole responsibility, not to spare them, but because that was the truth. And she tells the truth.

She’s a very patriotic person. I know no one more patriotic, actually, willing to risk and even give her own freedom, her own life, in order to preserve our constitutional freedoms and the Constitution. I admired her then. I admire her now. And right now she’s refusing to take part in basically a conspiracy against press freedom in this country, led by the president of the United States and the secretary of state.

AMY GOODMAN: Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, speaking on Sunday to Democracy Now! Ellsberg went on to talk about the historical significance of Chelsea Manning’s actions.

DANIEL ELLSBERG: We know the questions that were asked Chelsea in the day that she spent in the grand jury, and also were asked another witness, who did testify, David House. In both cases, they were asked only about their relations with WikiLeaks in 2010, nine years ago, long before the very controversial, and properly controversial, actions of WikiLeaks in the last year or two.

This was when WikiLeaks was putting out what Chelsea gave them, the video of “Collateral Murder,” which I urge people to look at. Now, I’m sure very few have seen that in the last nine years. What they are witnessing is a very typical, by all reporting, act of murder. And I say that as a former Marine operations officer who taught the laws of wars to battalion, 3rd Battalion, 2nd Marines, at Camp Lejeune. And I would hope that anyone that I taught would recognize in that film that what they’re watching is a war crime, is murder. Not all killing in war is murder, but some of it is. And she revealed it.

U.S. SOLDIER 1: Clear. Clear.

U.S. SOLDIER 2: We’re engaging.

U.S. SOLDIER 1: Should have a van in the middle of the road with about 12 to 15 bodies.

U.S. SOLDIER 2: Oh, yeah, look at that. Right through the windshield! Ha ha!

DANIEL ELLSBERG: She also revealed massive, widespread torture being conducted by our Iraqi allies, with our knowledge and complicity, going on into President Obama’s term, from George W. Bush. So there’s a lot of resentment against her in the intelligence community and in the Army, in general, about the shameful things that she revealed. Also assassination squads, death squads, and corruption, in general, that we condoned in our allies, among dictators, like Ben Ali of Tunisia, who was forced out by nonviolent protest on the basis of Chelsea Manning’s revelations through Le Monde.

AMY GOODMAN: Daniel Ellsberg, speaking Sunday to Democracy Now! about Chelsea Manning. Ellsberg himself faced life imprisonment after leaking the Pentagon Papers about the Vietnam War. He was a high-level Pentagon official who obtained the papers while working at the RAND Corporation.

When we come back, we’ll speak to Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept. This is Democracy Now! Back in a minute.

 

2019-03-10 For Your Selection. Most important: Chelsea Manning back in jail. Or maybe the Bolivarian Revolution in South America.

 For your selection (summary list recent postings)  No Responses »
Mar 102019
 

Hi Everyone,

FYI,  the last email sent was:   

2019-02-28   Addressing the corruption that prevents progress  

http://sandrafinley.ca/?p=24102  

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What’s for today?

2019-03-08   Chelsea Manning:   Wikileaks source jailed for refusing to testify, BBC.    With a reminder of Chelsea Manning’s incredible gift to us and to democracy.

               http://sandrafinley.ca/?p=24125 

– – – – – – – – – – – – –

2019-03-10 What in hell is the “Bolivarian Revolution”? Important to understanding why we’ve threatened war on Venezuela

I came out of the closet:  I’m a revolutionary.

http://sandrafinley.ca/?p=24110 

– – – – – – – – – – – – –

2019-03-09 The SNC Lavalin debacle: Why is it not asked . . .? Email to the CBC.

http://sandrafinley.ca/?p=24099

– – – – – – – – – – – – –

 2019-03-10 Elizabeth Warren is right – we must break up Facebook, Google and Amazon, The Guardian

http://sandrafinley.ca/?p=24115 

– – – – – – – – – – – – –

2019-03-04 Panama Papers documentary premieres in Canada this week, Canadians for Tax Fairness

http://sandrafinley.ca/?p=24095 

– – – – – – – – – – – – –

2019-03-04 Tell the B.C. government you want a renewable future, Telephone Town Hall with the Minister. Dates and Times.

http://sandrafinley.ca/?p=24093

That is enough.

Have to leave the rest for another day.

2019-03-08 Chelsea Manning: Wikileaks source jailed for refusing to testify, BBC. With a reminder of Chelsea Manning’s incredible gift to us and to democracy.

 Julian Assange, Wikileaks, Chelsea (Bradley) Manning, Arjen Kamphuis  No Responses »
Mar 102019
 

The debt we owe to Chelsea Manning is staggering. 

Before the news reporting that she is back in jail (scroll down),  an abbreviated reminder of what she has done, without mention of what happened to her in prison, and in spite of which she is standing her ground today, in the face of a Court Order that she testify before a grand jury.  

Her courage leaves me in awe.   She is an amazing woman.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

(I prefer to use the words of Chelsea (then Bradley) Manning herself, so mostly from:

2013-05-09 The Death of truth. Chris Hedges’ interview Julian Assange, references to Bradley Manning

EXCERPT:

Manning made it clear last Thursday (in Court) that he leaked the documents to Wikileaks

because he saw serious problems in US foreign policy. Problems which are as serious as they can be: war crimes, criminal behavior at the highest levels up to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, unethical behavior and bullying of other nations. 

Manning’s sole purpose was to

“spark a domestic debate on the role of the military and our foreign policy in general.”*

He hoped the debate

“might cause society to re-evaluate the need or even the desire to engage in counterterrorism and counterinsurgency operations that ignore the complex dynamics of the people living in the effected environment every day.” 

Regarding the collateral murder video which showed civilians, including two Reuters journalists being massacred, he said

I hoped that the public would be as alarmed as me about the conduct of the aerial weapons team crew members. I wanted the American public to know that not everyone in Iraq and Afghanistan are targets that needed to be neutralized, but rather people who were struggling to live in the pressure cooker environment of what we call asymmetric warfare.” 

When discussing the State Department cables (INSERT:  became known as the Cablegate files) Manning

saw that the US was not behaving the way the “de facto leader of the free world” should act as the cables “documented backdoor deals and seemingly criminal activity.” Again, he hoped for a change in policy as the “cables were a prime example of a need for a more open diplomacy” that would avoid conflict and save lives. 

In some of these statements you get a hint of Manning’s empathy for fellow human beings. The incident that really showed it was his comments on David Frankel’s book “The Good Soldier,” where Frankel describes a seriously injured Iraqi civilian on the ground at the end of the Collateral Murder video. He lifts two fingers toward the soldier, a well-known sign of friendship, as he asks for help. The US soldier responds lifting his middle finger as the Iraqi died.

Manning puts himself in the place of the Iraqi thinking his final act was an act of friendship only to be returned by a crude obscenity of unfriendliness. Manning acknowledges that this “burdens me emotionally.” 

Manning was clear that

he was solely responsible for his actions saying “The decisions that I made to send documents and information to the WLO [Wikileaks Organization] and website were my own decisions, and I take full responsibility for my actions.”  He described his conversations with an anonymous person at Wikileaks but made it quite clear there was no espionage conspiracy between Manning and Julian Assange.  His statement made it much more difficult for the US to prosecute Assange under the Espionage Act.

Excerpt from New Statesman:

Manning spent nearly seven years in US jail, first awaiting trial and then post-conviction – after a guilty plea – on 22 counts relating to leaking material to WikiLeaks.

The world’s public got an unprecedented view of US military and foreign affairs.

In the video titled “collateral murder” we could watch first-hand both the shocking callousness and the casualness of the crew of a US Apache as it gunned down a group of suspected militants, which included two Reuters journalists who were killed in the attack. (INSERT:  not all the people were “suspected militants”. Children were not spared.  My memory – – I think there were three children, but at least two.) 

Minutes later we see the same crew launch a Hellfire missile against a home – without even bothering to wait for a pedestrian simply walking near the house to pass.

Material in nearly 90,000 leaked documents from the Afghan conflict revealed similar abuses on a far larger scale – including the existence of Task Force 373, a death squad revealed to have killed civilians and even Afghan police officers on its missions.   (INSERT:  what is known as the publishing of the Afghan War Diary on WikiLeaks.)

A similar cache of documents from Iraq  (INSERT:  The Iraq War Logs), this time nearly 400,000 of them, revealed the huge civilian death toll of US operations in the country, shedding new light on so-called “escalation of force” incidents – a military euphemism for checkpoint shootings – and more.   (INSERT:  there is a chilling news report on the leaked documents regarding “escalation of force” at https://www.aljazeera.com/secretiraqfiles/2010/10/2010102216241633174.html)

More than 250,000 US diplomatic cables showed how the US used its soft power overseas, revealed corruption among US-allied governments, how the US spies on its allies as enthusiastically as its enemies, Middle Eastern power plays, and more.

And a final cache of documents, the Guantanamo Bay Files,  showed what a hollow lie claims that only the “worst of the worst” were sent there, detailing how senile men in their 80s, taxi drivers, and other blameless civilians found themselves shipped halfway around the world, incarcerated without trial, and abused.

For revealing these things to the world – which the US government has repeatedly publicly acknowledged caused no physical harm to anyone – Chelsea Manning spent nearly seven years in jail, until Barack Obama commuted her sentence as one of his presidency’s final acts.

And now she is back in jail.

“I will not comply . . . ”   read her words in the news article below.   Telling truth.  In a United States that has long ago gone rogue.

– – – – – – – –

I hope people understand how much we would not know.

I am doubly indebted:  I would not have been able to piece together the information from the American Ambassador to Canada about American designs on Canada were it not for what came to be known as the Cablegate leaks.    How we became an integrated part of what is now the American Republic long gone rogue, is no mystery.

It is not clear to me that there has been adequate reporting of what is in the Cablegate files that pertain to Canada.   Someday I hope to find time to look into that.  An internet search shows there were thousands of such documents.  I know only of the one that figures in the posting:

2019-02-23    propaganda flourishes if you kill Julian Assange. . . Americans and Canadians vis-a-vis Venezuela, Canadians to buy warships for $105 Billion, Lockheed Martin, Corruption

 

CONVERSION

Chelsea Manning and then

2019-03-10 What in hell is the “Bolivarian Revolution”? Important to understanding why we’ve threatened war on Venezuela 

lead me to say:

I’m out of the closet:  I’m a revolutionary.

The United States brought about my conversion.

= = = = = = = = = = =

The BBC Report, followed by the Washington Post Report

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-47501763

Chelsea Manning prepares to enter the Albert V. Bryan U.S. District Courthouse on Tuesday, March 5, 2019, in Alexandria, VA

Former US intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning has been jailed for refusing to testify before an investigation into Wikileaks.

Chelsea E. Manning

✔ @xychelsea

** Chelsea was taken into custody today for resisting a grand jury in the Eastern District of Virginia

A Virginia judge ordered her taken into custody until the grand jury’s work is finished or she decides to testify.

Manning said she shared everything she knows during her court-martial.

Manning was found guilty in 2013 of charges including espionage for leaking secret military files to Wikileaks, but her sentence was commuted.

Manning, 31, told US District Judge Claude Hilton that she would “accept whatever you bring upon me”, but would not testify, the Associated Press reported.

Her lawyers had reportedly asked that she be confined at home due to medical issues, but the judge said US Marshals would address her care needs.

US prosecutors have been investigating Wikileaks for years, and in November prosecutors inadvertently revealed possible charges against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, in court documents from a separate case.

On Friday, Manning said in a statement: “I will not comply with this, or any other grand jury.”

“Imprisoning me for my refusal to answer questions only subjects me to additional punishment for my repeatedly-stated ethical objections to the grand jury system.”

Prosecutor Tracy McCormick said Manning could be freed if she changes her mind and decides to follow the law and testify, according to the Associated Press.

Chelsea Resists!, a group supporting Manning and seeking to raise money for her legal fees, said grand juries were “mired in secrecy, and have historically been used to silence and retaliate against political activists”.

“Chelsea gave voluminous testimony during her court martial. She has stood by the truth of her prior statements, and there is no legitimate purpose to having her rehash them before a hostile grand jury.”

Manning was arrested in Iraq in 2010 for disclosing more than 700,000 confidential documents, videos and diplomatic cables to the anti-secrecy website.

While Manning said she only did so to spark debates about foreign policy, US officials said the leak put lives at risk.

She was sentenced to 35 years after being found guilty of 20 charges related to the leak, but only served seven before former President Barack Obama commuted her sentence in 2017.

Her sentence was the longest given for a leak in US history. Mr Obama said it was “disproportionate” to her crimes.

Republicans criticised the Democratic president’s decision at the time.

Then-Speaker of the House of Representatives Paul Ryan said Mr Obama had set “a dangerous precedent that those who compromise our national security won’t be held accountable”, the New York Times reported.

President Donald Trump has called Manning an “ungrateful traitor” who “should never have been released from prison”.

= = = = = =  ==

Chelsea Manning sent to jail for refusing to testify in WikiLeaks case

By Rachel Weiner and 

Ellen Nakashima
(There’s a video of the interview of Manning’s lawyer outside the Court House at:
March 8

Former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning will be held in jail until she testifies before a grand jury or that grand jury is no longer operating, a federal judge in Alexandria ruled Friday.

Most of the hearing at which prosecutors argued for Manning to be held in contempt was sealed, but the court was open to the public for argument over whether she should be put in jail and Judge Claude M. Hilton’s ruling.

“I’ve found you in contempt,” Hilton said. He ordered her to custody immediately, “either until you purge yourself or the end of the life of the grand jury.”

The investigation Manning was called to testify in remains secret, but she said she was asked about WikiLeaks, the anti-secrecy website she shared classified documents with in 2010. Manning served seven years of a 35-year prison sentence for her leak before receiving a commutation from President Barack Obama.

[Chelsea Manning subpoenaed to testify before grand jury in Assange investigation]

Outside court before the hearing, Manning said she was prepared to go to jail.


Chelsea Manning, 31, was booked into the Alexandria Detention Center on Friday morning after refusing to testify before a grand jury about the website WikiLeaks. (Alexandria Sheriff’s Office)

“These secret proceedings tend to favor the government,” she said. “I’m always willing to explain things publicly.”

Manning held up a large stack of papers — the transcripts from her military trial, which she said would tell prosecutors everything they want to know.

“I’ve given voluminous testimony; I’ve given voluminous information,” she said.

In a 2013 pretrial hearing, prosecutors disclosed excerpts of chat logs taken from Manning’s personal laptop, including one in which Manning allegedly asked Assange for help in cracking a password. In another, Manning allegedly told Assange “i’m throwing everything i’ve got on” Guantanamo detainee reports “at you now,” to which Assange allegedly replied, “OK…great.”

In a long sworn statement at the end of the pretrial inquiry, Manning said “the decisions that I made to send documents and information” to WikiLeaks “were my own.” She was questioned by a military judge about the statement. But she never took the stand during the trial itself, so prosecutors never had the opportunity to question her.


Chelsea Manning leaves the federal courthouse in Alexandria on March 5. (Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post)

Manning’s attorney, Moira Meltzer-Cohen, on Friday told the judge it would be “an act of tremendous cruelty” to send the transgender ex-private to jail given medical and safety concerns. Manning came out as transgender after her sentencing in 2013.

Outside court, Meltzer-Cohen praised Manning’s courage. When asked by a reporter about a possible appeal of the judge’s ruling, Meltzer-Cohen said that would be “quite likely.”

Prosecutor Tracy McCormick said in court that the jail has experience handling both transgender inmates and public figures.

“The government does not want to confine Ms. Manning,” McCormick said. “She could change her mind right now and decide to testify.”

Manning’s attorney did thank prosecutors for working in “good faith,” saying “they bent over backwards to accommodate” medical needs linked to Manning’s gender transition.

Hilton said any medical concerns Manning has should be addressed with the U.S. Marshals but that the court was available if she has problems.

WikiLeaks’s founder, Julian Assange, has been charged in a case that remains under seal but was inadvertently exposed by prosecutors late last year, though the details remain secret. He is under asylum at the Ecuadoran Embassy in London.

 

2019-03-10 Elizabeth Warren is right – we must break up Facebook, Google and Amazon, The Guardian

 Corruption  No Responses »
Mar 102019
 
Thanks to Janet – –
FROM TRUTHDIG:  the same topic, 
– – – – – – – – – –
FROM THE GUARDIAN:

The titans of the new Gilded Age must be busted and the idea has bipartisan support. It’s time big tech was brought to heel

Mark Zuckerberg testifies on Capitol Hill last year.
Mark Zuckerberg testifies on Capitol Hill last year. Photograph: Andrew Harnik/AP

The presidential hopeful Elizabeth Warren announced on Friday she wants to bust up giants like Facebook, Google and Amazon.

America’s first Gilded Age began in the late 19th century with a raft of innovations – railroads, steel production, oil extraction – but culminated in mammoth trusts run by “robber barons” like JP Morgan, John D Rockefeller, and William H “the public be damned” Vanderbilt.

The answer then was to bust up the railroad, oil and steel monopolies.

We’re now in a second Gilded Age, ushered in by semiconductors, software and the internet, which has spawned a handful of hi-tech behemoths and a new set of barons like Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, Jeff Bezos of Amazon, and Sergey Brin and Larry Page of Google.

The answer is the same as it was before: bust up the monopolies.

The current effort is bipartisan. At a Senate hearing I attended last week, the arch-conservative Missouri Republican Josh Hawley asked me, rhetorically: “Is there really any wonder that there is increased pressure for antitrust enforcement activity, for privacy activity when these companies behave in the way that they do?”

Hawley added: “Every day brings some creepy new revelation about these companies’ behaviors. Of course the public is going to want there to be action to defend their rights. It’s only natural.”

Nearly 90% of all internet searches now go through Google. Facebook and Google together account for 58% of all digital ads, which is where most ad money goes these days.

They’re also the first stops for many Americans seeking news (93% receive news online), and Amazon is now the first stop for a third of all American consumers seeking to buy anything.

With such size comes the power to stifle innovation. Amazon won’t let any business that sells through it sell any item at a lower price anywhere else. It’s even using its control over book sales to give books it publishes priority over rival publishers.

Google uses the world’s most widely used search engine to promote its own services and content over those of competitors. Facebook’s purchases of WhatsApp and Instagram killed off two potential competitors.

Contrary to the conventional view of America as a hotbed of entrepreneurship, according to the Census Bureau, the rate at which new job-creating businesses have formed in the US has halved since 2004.

Size also confers political power.

Amazon – the richest corporation in America – paid nothing in federal taxes last year. Meanwhile, it is holding an auction to extort billions from states and cities eager to host its second headquarters.

It also forced Seattle, its home city, to back down on a plan to tax big corporations like itself to pay for homeless shelters for a growing population that cannot afford sky-high rents caused in part by Amazon.

Facebook withheld evidence of Russian activity on its platform far longer than had been disclosed. When the news came to light, it employed an opposition research firm to discredit critics.

Zuckerberg, who holds the world speed record for falling from one of the most admired figures to one of the most reviled, just unveiled a plan to “encrypt” personal information from all his platforms.

The plan is likely to give Facebook even more comprehensive data about everyone. If you believe it will better guard privacy, you don’t remember Zuckerberg’s last seven promises to do that.

The New America Foundation, an influential thinktank Google helped fund, fired researchers who were urging antitrust officials to take on the company. And Google has been quietly financing hundreds of professors to write research papers justifying Google’s market dominance.

What to do? Some argue the tech mammoths should be regulated like utilities or common carriers, but this would put government in the impossible position of policing content and overseeing products and services.

Break up Facebook (and while we’re at it, Google, Apple and Amazon)

A better alternative is to break them up. That way, information would be distributed through a large number of independent channels without a centralized platform giving all content apparent legitimacy and extraordinary reach. And more startups could flourish.

Like the robber barons of the first Gilded Age, those of the second have amassed fortunes that gave them unparalleled influence over politicians and the economy.

The combined wealth of Zuckerberg ($62.3bn), Bezos ($131bn), Brin ($49.8bn) and Page ($50.8bn) is larger than the combined wealth of the bottom half of the American population.

A wealth tax, also proposed by Warren, would help.

Some of the robber barons of the first Gilded Age were generous philanthropists, as are those of today. That didn’t excuse the damage they did to America.

Monopolies aren’t good for anyone except for the monopolists. In this new Gilded Age, we need to respond as forcefully as we did the first time around. Warren’s ideas are a good start.

2019-03-10 What in hell is the “Bolivarian Revolution”? Important to understanding why we (Canada) has threatened war on Venezuela

 Lockheed Martin, War Economy (includes Cdn Census & Trials), Trade Deals, PPPs, Integration Canada-U.S.  No Responses »
Mar 102019
 

RELATED TO: 

2019-02-21  Venezuela: US/Canadian Attempted Coup Not About Democracy – Paul Jay (Pt1/2) (Real News Network)

There’s all those revolutions – –  the Russian Revolution, the American Revolution, the French Revolution, Revolutions in China that we  know nothing about, the Cuban Revolution, Revolutions in 1848 all over Europe, the Haitian, the Iranian,  the Industrial Revolution, Orange, Green Revolutions,  the Civil Rights Movement was a Revolution,  so was the Women’s Movement.   There was the Quiet Revolution in Quebec.

Maybe that’s why Canadians think it’s been the ideal of “peace, order and good governance“.    We keep quiet and we forget:  The “On to Ottawa Trek / Regina Riot” in 1935  was a Revolution.

“We were pretty militant, but we had a reason to be,” says Llewellyn. “If you were going hungry in the richest country in the world you would have done it too.”

Prime Minister R.B. Bennett , blaming the riot on communist agitators  (who else?!), endorsed an inquiry that whitewashed the authorities of any wrongdoing. According to Waiser, a University of Saskatchewan history professor: “In truth, it was a police-provoked riot. They raided a peaceful meeting and the people fought back.”

NOTE THE CONTEXT:  The Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) was founded in Calgary in 1932 as a political coalition of progressive, socialist and labour groups that wanted economic reform, to help Canadians affected by the Great Depression.

Three years later “exploitation” had only become more apparent.  Starting from B.C., men set out to “ride the rails” more than 4,000 kilometres to Ottawa.  From Ottawa you can see the army coming from a long way off, gathering momentum and members as it hurtles down the tracks at the target.

 

But what in hell is the Bolivarian Revolution?   And why is it important to understanding how it comes about that Canadians are threatening military action against Venezuela?

Corporate media hides that the crisis in Venezuela is a class struggle, and whatever its faults, the Bolivarian revolution is a struggle for equality and democracy,  a quote from:

2019-02-21  Venezuela: US/Canadian Attempted Coup Not About Democracy – Paul Jay (Pt1/2) (Real News Network)

 

With thanks to Wikipedia (I need to, and will send them another donation):

The Bolivarian Revolution is named after Simón Bolívar, an early 19th-century Venezuelan and Latin American revolutionary leader, prominent in the Spanish American wars of independence in achieving the independence of most of northern South America from Spanish rule.

(Today)  According to Hugo Chávez (former President of Venezuela) and other supporters, the Bolivarian Revolution seeks to build an inter-American coalition to implement Bolivarianism, nationalism and a state-led economy.

On his 57th birthday, while announcing that he was being treated for cancer, Chávez announced that he had changed the slogan of the Bolivarian Revolution from “Motherland, socialism, or death” to “Motherland and socialism. We will live, and we will come out victorious“.[4]

To me, that explains pretty well why today the North American imperialists and other Powers of Exploitation (transnational corporates), mount counter-insurgency attacks triggered by dirty words and leaders like “Bolivarian”,  Rafael Correa (former president of Ecuador). God forbid SOCIALISM!  COMMUNISM!  Che Guevara, Chelsea Manning, Julian Assange . . .  Venezuela has a democratically-elected Government.  But the Government is “Bolivarian“.  It needs to be overthrown.  Canada will assist.

HOWEVER,   it appears to me that the attempted coup may have been thwarted.

How?  Why?  Outrage has been high.   North American mainstream media has not been able to control the narrative.

TOO MANY people and countries understand and can identify the tactics used to overthrow Governments and establish puppet regimes willing to sell out their people for power and wealth.  It’s then that the exploitation of resources (oil in Venezuela), suppression of human rights and brutality really set in.   Too many people know the pattern.

How do we understand the Canadian role, now that we are integrated with the U.S. military-industrial complex, thanks to our Quisling Government, “The Generals” and “The Collaborators”?   Using as a reference point,

2016-07-08 Democracy overtaken by Corporatocracy = coup d’état. Citizens fight to regain democracy = Revolution (insurgency) . Corporatocracy fights to hold on = counter insurgency.

The Venezuelans are in a fight to regain democracy.   In the media of the Empire, they are cast as bad guy “insurgents”.  Dirty socialists, communists, BOLIVARIANS.

It’s fascinating to watch the messaging, and then be able to access an explanation from these “freedom fighters”.   The manipulation of images and stories by The Corporatocracy doesn’t fail to astound.   It reminds me of that Hill & Knowlton creation of heart-wrenching, but totally staged – – Hollywood at its best – – testimony:

2018-12-05 How False Testimony and a Massive U.S. Propaganda Machine Bolstered George H.W. Bush’s War on Iraq

The Corporatocracy wants to re-assert its power and control over Venezuela.  They want the oil and other resources on THEIR TERMS.  Canadians are threatening to go into Venezuela on behalf of the Corporatocracy.  So we Canadians are “countering” the Venezuelan people, the Revolutionaries or Insurgents or Freedom Fighters, whatever you wish to call them.   (The phrases counter-revolutionary and counter-insurgency refer to the same people – – the ones trying to take over control of the country from the people who live there.  Most often it is done to ensure access to the country’s resources.  The “counter-revolutionaries” in this case are once again the strong men for the Big Corporates – – the American-Canadian military and surveillance forces.)

So then,  what am I?  There has been a coup d’etat in Canada,  the most recent evidence of which is SNC Lavalin.  I want Canada back – – what I have discovered is actually a MYTH of what Canada is.   Never mind that it’s a myth.  The reality is destroying the Planet.  I will not stand by and see the beauty, awe and wonder destroyed.  I’m firmly against Canada’s counter-insurgency role in the world.   I am a Bolivarian, a revolutionary.

As I wrote in

2019-03-08 Chelsea Manning: Wikileaks source jailed for refusing to testify, BBC. With a reminder of Chelsea Manning’s incredible gift to us and to democracy.

CONVERSION

Chelsea Manning and then

2019-03-10 What in hell is the “Bolivarian Revolution”? Important to understanding why we’ve threatened war on Venezuela 

lead me to say:

I’m out of the closet:  I’m a revolutionary.

The United States brought about my conversion.

 

2019-02-28 Addressing the corruption that prevents progress

 For your selection (summary list recent postings)  No Responses »
Mar 092019
 

When your economy is converted to a war economy, there are but crumbs leftover.  The war profiteers and the Banksters take the lions’ share of the money and leave the country saddled with mountains of debt.   (Look south of the border.)

 

If Canadians purchase warships for $105 Billion dollars (Feb 8 news),  we have to be really stupid and weak.

(2019-02-22  It’s taboo to talk about Canada’s real corporate scandal, rabble.ca, Matthew Behrens)

 

AND,  I’d like to know:

How has it happened that we Canadians are joining the war on Venezuela,  overthrowing a democratically-elected Government?

It’s not too big a mystery:

Julian Assange (Wikileaks) published a cable from the U.S. Ambassador to Canada.  The cable sheds a whole lot of light on the question.  Please see:

2019-02-23     propaganda flourishes if you kill Julian Assange. . . Americans and Canadians vis-a-vis Venezuela, Canadians to buy warships for $105 Billion, Lockheed Martin, Corruption

2019-03-09 The SNC Lavalin debacle: Why is it not asked . . .? Email to the CBC.

 Corruption, Orwell, Propaganda  2 Responses »
Mar 092019
 

To: thehouse <@> cbc.ca
Subject: Re: the SNC Lavalin debacle

Dear crew of “The House”,

My experience of events is this:

  • The ASSERTION of a statement does not make it so.
  • That the assertion goes unchallenged does not make it so.
  • The assertion that Deferred Prosecution Agreements are legal and legitimate does not make it so.   Just because other people use them,  does not speak to their legitimacy.   It speaks to the fact that the Governments of the U.S., the U.K. and Canada enact legislation that serves large corporations.   If it was otherwise,  the legislation for DPA’s would have been openly debated and even celebrated.  It would not have been hidden in the depths of an omnibus bill.

 

I interpreted the SNC Lavalin events through this set of beliefs:

  • Citizens forget.  The forgetfulness is inter-generational.  White society does a poor job of transferring knowledge down through generations.  George Orwell spelled out the consequences of our forgetfulness.
  • We might be good at reading.  And oh! we can do “analysis” like nobody else.
  • Cheerleaders?  Absolutely.  We clap our hands enthusiastically.
  • BUT we are lousy integrators.  Mountains of knowledge – – – of no use because it doesn’t get  integrated – –  it does not INFORM our actions.

 

The consequence?

Rabid all-consuming concentration on the wrong questions.

 

There is an unease you might be missing because you, like me, live in our own networks.

From your networks, I don’t hear:

  • WHAT are the benefits to the corporations of DPA’s?   And are they really “deferred”?  (No – – the prosecution is not “deferred”.  That is Orwellian new speak.   Our Justice system relies on “public disclosure” to help dissuade others from committing the same crimes.  Trials are open to the public.  A DPA hides the corporation and its activities from scrutiny.  The not-prosecution is done behind closed doors where the light doesn’t shine.)

 

  • WHY does SNC Lavalin have such a long and abominable record of corruption?

 

  • WHY in the public discourse,  can SNC corruption only be whispered and hinted at?  God forbid it be said assertively:  SNC Lavalin is a TRULY BAD APPLE.   SNC is THE REASON  Justin Trudeau and Bill Morneau are in serious trouble.  SNC is a major player in the drama but its role has been written out of the script.

 

  • WHY can it not be asked:  what are the EFFECTS of corruption on the country of Canada?

 

  • WHAT Has been done historically to address corruption?   This is not a new phenomenon.  If DPA’s continue to go unchallenged, you can bet your booties that there will be more “SNC Lavalin affairs”.

 

  • WHY is there no connection made to parallel cases?   Daniel Turp is waiting to hear whether the Supreme Court will hear an appeal of lower court decisions on a challenge to the $15 Billion dollar Saudi arms deal.  Canadians don’t hear that the beneficiaries of that deal is the General Dynamics plant in London, ON.   Both the Liberals and the Conservatives will stoop.  It does not matter which party we elect, it will not be the public interest that is represented.  The spin doctors will go to work:  decisions will be made in the interests of General Dynamics.   The hard questions will not be aired.  The same as is happening today with SNC.  Fluff – – focus on those being jerked about by the puppet masters.

 

  • Another parallel case:  why do Canadians not know that we are to pay $105 Billion for warships, $60 Billion of which will go to Super-Sized Corruption Specialist Lockheed Martin Corporation?  How about if someone follows the money on that one?   SNC, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, . . .  the list goes on.   And yet,

 

  • And yet . . .  I heard one of your guests make the statement  “THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH THE SYSTEM.”   The statement went unchallenged.     . . . huh?   WHY? Seems pretty damn obvious to me there’s lots wrong with the system.

 

  • Pushing it under the rug only ensures the status quo mockery of democracy.

 

In the contrite words of the apologist,  I think we can do better.

 

Best wishes,

Sandra Finley

2019-03-04 Panama Papers documentary premieres in Canada this week, Canadians for Tax Fairness

 Corruption  No Responses »
Mar 042019
 

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Panama Papers documentary premieres in Canada this week
Pass the popcorn. A documentary about one of the most explosive leaks in history makes its Canadian debut this week in Toronto. The Panama Papers tells the story of how a global network of investigative journalists worked together to uncover widespread use of offshore entities by the world’s wealthiest and most powerful individuals. It also looks at the extent to which that combined tax evasion falls on the shoulders of the average citizen as countries lose out on an estimated $32 trillion hiding in 80 tax havens in 2010 alone.

The film has received many positive reviews including 100 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. “The Panama Papers is a lively and level-headed exposé, but it’s also a moral inquiry into how the top echelon is now united, structurally and spiritually, in robbing the rest of us blind,” writes one review in Variety Magazine.

The documentary is playing at the Hot Docs Rogers Cinema at 506 Bloor St. W Wednesday March 6 at 6:30 p.m. and Thursday March 7 at 6:45 p.m. More information on screenings is available online.

Canadians for Tax Fairness, which is based in Ottawa, will be reaching out to other independent theatres to request the documentary be aired in other cities as well. We encourage our supporters across Canada to do the same in their respective communities.

Wealth, greed and corruption make for great story-telling so it’s no surprise that three years later, the Panama scandal continues to attract not only documentary film makers but Hollywood elite as well. Shooting began last year on The Laundromat, a major motion picture starring Meryl Streep, Gary Oldman and Antonio Banderas. It follows the journalists who analyzed the banking data leak and pieced together links between powerful political figures and billions in tax avoidance. The film, directed by Steven Soderbergh, is expected to be released later this year.

We hope these exposes of the massive extent of tax evasion through tax havens, pressure from the public, and advocacy by Canadians for Tax Fairness and our allies in Canada and around the world will convince governments to finally fix the broken systems that allow corporations and the very wealthy to evade and avoid paying their fair share of taxes to profit while ordinary people struggle to get by.

2019-03-04 Tell the B.C. government you want a renewable future, Telephone Town Hall with the Minister. Dates and Times.

 Climate, Sustainability  No Responses »
Mar 042019
 
Dear Sandra,

This month, B.C.’s Minister of the Environment and Climate Change George Heyman is holding telephone town halls to talk about “CleanBC” and what a renewable future means in your community.

We need people with progressive views to join the calls and speak up about why moving to renewables is essential to ensuring a sustainable future for us all.

Trish Cocksedge, a member of the Council of Canadians’ Powell River Chapter, explains why she hopes people will participate: “Karen Tam Wu, B.C. Director of the Pembina Institute, states on Clean B.C.’s site that ‘B.C.’s new climate plan signals an exciting vision for a clean economy. In just over 10 years, all new homes and buildings will be low carbon. In just over 20 years, all new cars sold will be zero-emission.’

This sounds wonderful, but in the meantime, the Horgan government is supporting the Site C dam, new pipelines and the LNG industry – with the exception of the Trans Mountain pipeline. For a government promising lower carbon emissions and clean energy, this is not the way to go.

Please make your voice heard on the town hall conference calls this month. We all need to speak up for a future with alternative energy sources and no more pipelines, no more LNG. Tax dollars need to be spent shoring up sustainability, not rushing us to the brink of climate catastrophe.

CleanBC town hall conference call dates and times (sign up link below):

  • March 6, 7:00 to 8:30 p.m. (PT) for the Lower Mainland and Southwestern B.C.
  • March 13, 7:00 to 8:30 p.m. (PT) for the Kootenays, the Interior and Northern B.C.
  • March 25, 7:00 to 8:30 p.m. (PT) for Vancouver Island and communities throughout the coast.
  • March 27, 7:00 to 8:30 p.m. (PT) for the Lower Mainland and Southwestern B.C.

Visit the CleanBC website to sign up to join one of these conference calls.

Thank you for adding your voice!

For more information, please contact Trish with the Powell River Chapter at pcocksedge@telus.net and be sure to follow the chapter on Facebook.

Malheureusement, les informations contenues dans ce courriel ne sont pas disponibles en français pour le moment. Pour des renseignement en français sur nos campagnes, veuillez composer le 1-800-387-7177 ou visiter https://canadians.org/fr.
The Council of Canadians, 300-251 Bank Street, Ottawa, ON, K2P 1X3
1 800 387 7177 | inquiries  <@>  canadians.org | https://canadians.org
Facebook Page | @CouncilofCDNS

 

2019-03-03 John Pilger: ‘Defy the Thought Police’, Stand With Assange, teleSur

 Julian Assange, Wikileaks, Chelsea (Bradley) Manning, Arjen Kamphuis, Orwell, Propaganda  No Responses »
Mar 042019
 
By:John Pilger
  • Supporters of WikiLeaks founder Assange demonstrate in front of presidential palace regarding his Ecuadorian citizenship in Quito

    Supporters of WikiLeaks founder Assange demonstrate in front of presidential palace regarding his Ecuadorian citizenship in Quito | Photo: REUTERS file phot

John Pilger says of Assange that the room he’s held in resembles “Room 101” from the famous novel “1984” by George Orwell.

Whenever I visit Julian Assange, we meet in a room he knows too well. There is a bare table and pictures of Ecuador on the walls. There is a bookcase where the books never change. The curtains are always drawn and there is no natural light. The air is still and fetid.

This is Room 101.

Before I enter Room 101, I must surrender my assport and  phone. My pockets and possessions are examined. The food I bring is inspected.

The man who guards Room 101 sits in what looks like an old-fashioned telephone box. He watches a screen, watching Julian. There are others unseen, agents of the state, watching and listening.

Cameras are everywhere in Room 101. To avoid them, Julian maneuvers us both into a corner, side by side, flat up against the wall. This is how we catch up: whispering and writing to each other on a notepad, which he shields from the cameras. Sometimes we laugh.

I have my designated time slot. When that expires, the door in Room 101 bursts open and the guard says, “Time is up!”  On New Year’s Eve, I was allowed an extra 30 minutes and the man in the phone box wished me a happy new year, but not Julian.

Of course, Room 101 is the room in George Orwell’s prophetic novel, 1984, where the thought police watched and tormented their prisoners, and worse, until people surrendered their humanity and principles and obeyed Big Brother.

Julian Assange will never obey Big Brother. His resilience and courage are astonishing, even though his physical health struggles to keep up.

Julian is a distinguished Australian, who has changed the way many people think about duplicitous governments. For this, he is a political refugee subjected to what the United Nations calls “arbitrary detention”.

The U.N. says he has the right of free passage to freedom, but this is denied. He has the right to medical treatment without fear of arrest, but this is denied. He has the right to compensation, but this is denied.

RELATED

Julian Assange’s Lawyers Blocked From Ecuadorean Embassy

As founder and editor of WikiLeaks, his crime has been to make sense of dark times. WikiLeaks has an impeccable record of accuracy and authenticity which no newspaper, no TV channel, no radio station, no BBC, no New York Times, no Washington Post, no Guardian can equal. Indeed, it shames them.

That explains why he is being punished.

For example:

Last week, the International Court of Justice ruled that the British government had no legal powers over the Chagos Islanders, who in the 1960s and 70s, were expeled in secret from their homeland on Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean and sent into exile and poverty. Countless children died, many of them, from sadness. It was an epic crime few knew about.

For almost 50 years, the British have denied the islanders’ the right to return to their homeland, which they had given to the Americans for a major military base.

In 2009, the British Foreign Office concocted a “marine reserve” around the Chagos archipelago.

This touching concern for the environment was exposed as a fraud when WikiLeaks published a secret cable from the British government reassuring the Americans that “the former inhabitants would find it difficult, if not impossible, to pursue their claim for resettlement on the islands if the entire Chagos Archipelago were a marine reserve.”

RELATED

IACHR Requests Information on Assange’s Conditions

The truth of the conspiracy clearly influenced the momentous decision of the International Court of Justice.

WikiLeaks has also revealed how the United States spies on its allies; how the CIA can watch you through your I-phone; how presidential candidate Hillary Clinton took vast sums of money from Wall Street for secret speeches that reassured the bankers that if she was elected, she would be their friend.

In 2016, WikiLeaks revealed a direct connection between Clinton and organized jihadism in the Middle East: terrorists, in other words. One email disclosed that when Clinton was U.S. secretary of state, she knew that Saudi Arabia and Qatar were funding the Islamic State group, yet she accepted huge donations for her foundation from both governments.

She then approved the world’s biggest ever arms sale to her Saudi benefactors: arms that are currently being used against the stricken people of Yemen.

That explains why he is being punished.

WikiLeaks has also published more than 800,000 secret files from Russia, including the Kremlin, telling us more about the machinations of power in that country than the specious hysterics of the Russiagate pantomime in Washington.

This is real journalism — journalism of a kind now considered exotic: the antithesis of Vichy journalism, which speaks for the enemy of the people and takes its sobriquet from the Vichy government that occupied France on behalf of the Nazis.

Vichy journalism is censorship by omission, such as the untold scandal of the collusion between Australian governments and the United States to deny Julian Assange his rights as an Australian citizen and to silence him.

RELATED

Chelsea Manning Challenges Subpoena to Testify Against Assange

In 2010, Prime Minister Julia Gillard went as far as ordering the Australian Federal Police to investigate and hopefully prosecute Assange and WikiLeaks — until she was informed by the AFP that no crime had been committed.

Last weekend, the Sydney Morning Herald published a lavish supplement promoting a celebration of “Me Too” at the Sydney Opera House on Mar. 10.  Among the leading participants is the recently retired Minister of Foreign Affairs, Julie Bishop.

Bishop has been on shows in the local media lately, lauded as a loss to politics: an “icon,” someone called her, to be admired.

The elevation to celebrity feminism of one so politically primitive as Bishop tells us how much so-called identity politics have subverted an essential, objective truth: that what matters, above all, is not your gender but the class you serve.

Before she entered politics, Julie Bishop was a lawyer who served the notorious asbestos miner James Hardie which fought claims by men and their families dying horribly with black lung disease.

Lawyer Peter Gordon recalls Bishop “rhetorically asking the court why workers should be entitled to jump court queues just because they were dying.”

Bishop says she “acted on instructions … professionally and ethically.”

RELATED

Assange Starts Legal Bid to Unseal US Charges Against Him

Perhaps she was merely “acting on instructions” when she flew to London and Washington last year with her ministerial chief of staff, who had indicated that the Australian Foreign Minister would raise Julian’s case and hopefully begin the diplomatic process of bringing him home.

Julian’s father had written a moving letter to the then Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, asking the government to intervene diplomatically to free his son. He told Turnbull that he was worried Julian might not leave the embassy alive.

Julie Bishop had every opportunity in the U.K. and the U.S. to present a diplomatic solution that would bring Julian home. But this required the courage of one proud to represent a sovereign, independent state, not a vassal.

Instead, she made no attempt to contradict the British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt, when he said outrageously that Julian “faced serious charges.” What charges? There were no charges.

Australia’s Foreign Minister abandoned her duty to speak up for an Australian citizen, prosecuted with nothing, charged with nothing, guilty of nothing.

Will those feminists who fawn over this false icon at the Opera House next Sunday be reminded of her role in colluding with foreign forces to punish an Australian journalist, one whose work has revealed that rapacious militarism has smashed the lives of millions of ordinary women in many countries: in Iraq alone, the U.S.-led invasion of that country, in which Australia participated, left 700,000 widows.

So what can be done? An Australian  government that was prepared to act in response to a public campaign to rescue the refugee football player, Hakeem al-Araibi, from torture and persecution in Bahrain, is capable of bringing Julian Assange home.

The refusal by the Department of Foreign Affairs in Canberra to honor the United Nations’ declaration that Julian is the victim of “arbitrary detention” and has a fundamental right to his freedom, is a shameful breach of the letter and spirit of international law.

Why has the Australian government made no serious attempt to free Assange? Why did Julie Bishop bow to the wishes of two foreign powers? Why is this democracy traduced by its servile relationships, and integrated with lawless foreign power?

The persecution of Julian Assange is the conquest of us all: of our independence, our self respect, our intellect, our compassion, our politics, our culture.

So stop scrolling. Organize. Occupy. Insist. Persist. Make a noise. Take direct action. Be brave and stay brave. Defy the thought police.

War is not peace, freedom is not slavery, ignorance is not strength. If Julian can stand up, so can you: so can all of us.

John Pilger gave this speech at a rally for Julian Assange in Sydney on Mar. 3. John Pilger, renowned investigative journalist and documentary film-maker, is one of only two to have twice won British journalism’s top award; his documentaries have won academy awards in both the UK and the US. In a New Statesman survey of the 50 heroes of our time, Pilger came fourth behind Aung San Suu Kyi and Nelson Mandela. “John Pilger,” wrote Harold Pinter, “unearths, with steely attention facts, the filthy truth. I salute him.”

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