[ A new book offers a sweeping defense of the controversial
Wikileaks publisher.] [[link removed]]

THE TRIALS OF JULIAN ASSANGE   [[link removed]]

 

Michael Steven Smith
November 19, 2019
The Indypendent
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_ A new book offers a sweeping defense of the controversial Wikileaks
publisher. _

Protestors in support of freedom for Julian Assange in Quito, Ecuador
in April., (Photo by Franklin Jacome/Agencia Press South/Getty Images)


 

Whistle-blowing, truth-telling journalist and WikiLeaks founder Julian
Assange now sits in solitary confinement in London‘s infamous
Belmarsh prison. The Trump administration has asked that he be
extradited to Virginia for trial as a spy. 

The just-published book _In Defense of Julian Assange_ demonstrates
convincingly that what is at stake in his upcoming trial is the future
of free journalism, here and abroad. It is edited by British socialist
scholar and writer Tariq Ali and civil rights attorney Margaret
Kuntsler.

Assange is an Australian citizen. He never set foot in the United
States. He never published untruthful materials. Yet the Trump
administration wants to reach across the ocean, have him extradited to
the United States, try him and put him in solitary in a
maximum-security prison for the rest of his life. If the government
can get away with this, it will have established a precedent that
could lead to the destruction of free journalism. It is the most
significant challenge to a free press in our lifetimes.

Assange faces a 175-year sentence under the century-old Espionage Act,
passed during World War I to be used against spies. He is charged with
conspiring with Chelsea Manning to publish the Iraq War Logs, the
Afghanistan War Logs, and State Department cables that embarrassed
U.S. diplomats around the world and helped spark a 2011 revolt in
Tunisia that was the beginning of the Arab Spring.

Former CIA director and current Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has
called WikiLeaks a “non-state intelligence service.” Hillary
Clinton wanted Assange assassinated by drone. The United Nations
special rapporteur on torture Nils Melzer recently visited him in
prison and concluded that he was being tortured. When he last appeared
in court, he was incoherent and couldn’t remember his name or date
of birth.  

Julian Assange is not getting the support he needs. Too many
progressive-minded people have been taken in by government propaganda
about him.  He detests Hillary Clinton, but many people think he
supported Trump in the last election. In truth, Assange said it’s
“a choice between cholera and gonorrhea.” He insists he did not
collaborate with Russia to help Trump and rape charges against him in
Sweden have been dropped by the prosecutor in that case. 

The great human rights attorney and president of the Center for
Constitutional Rights Michael Ratner represented Assange, who was
his last client. Michael died in 2016. Heidi Boghosian, myself and
Michael used to record our WBAI radio show _Law And Disorder _in
the ante-room outside of Michael’s office in the basement of his
home in the Village. Assange would often call. Michael had a secure
encrypted telephone installed to speak with Assange who had received
political asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. 

We knew what the United States would do if it got its hands on him. 
Michael wrote at the time that “if there is one take away from the
shared experience in truth-telling and courage, it is a note of
extreme caution: never doubt the mendacity and cruelty of the state.
It will make pariahs and outcasts of those who will someday be
recognized as heroes.“

The United States claims the right to snatch Assange up in England and
drag him into court in the Eastern District of Virginia where the
evidence he needs to use in his defense will be barred and where the
bar for conviction is low.

Three years after the Bush administration commenced the illegal,
catastrophic war against Iraq, Assange launched WikiLeaks in 2006. A
computer genius, Assange devised a way for publishers to receive
leaked materials anonymously. That year, he published his first
bombshell, a shocking video obtained from whistleblower Chelsea
Manning who was then in the military.

The video showed U.S. soldiers in a helicopter committing a war crime,
gunning down and executing almost a dozen unarmed Iraqi civilians in
the streets of Baghdad, including several children and
two _Reuters_ journalists. The soldiers can be heard chuckling about
it. A photo of the murders is shown on _In Defense_’s cover. 

The video, which offered an unvarnished glimpse into the casual
brutality and racism of the U.S. occupation of Iraq, made headlines
around the world, much to the chagrin of U.S. leaders. More
embarrassing leaks followed, and the government undertook a years-long
campaign to close down WikiLeaks.

It has successfully poisoned a lot of people’s minds against
Assange, first smearing him as a rapist and then a Trump supporter
responsible for Hillary Clinton’s defeat. The editors write of a
decade-long character assassination campaign: “The US espionage
indictment against Assange shows that he has been the victim of
psychological operation warfare — rumor, dis-information, and false
news — designed to destroy his reputation and defame his
character.“

The people at the helm of the U.S. disinformation and propaganda
machine figured character assassination is just as effective as a
bullet to the back of the head. The smears against him are blown out
of the water in this book.

_In Defense _is being published by OR Books at the initiative of its
co-founder and editor Colin Robinson and with the support of the
Courage Foundation. It consists of a powerful introduction by the
editors followed by 38 essays, many of them commissioned for the
book. 

Some of the authors — Noam Chomsky, Chris Hedges, Matt Taibbi —
are well known and all are knowledgeable. Jen Robinson the London
human rights barrister is currently Julian’s attorney. She
contributes an essay. So does Ai Weiwei, the internationally-acclaimed
Chinese contemporary artist, activist and dissident, who visited
Julian in prison, and Margaret Kimberly, an editor and senior
columnist at Black Agenda Report. 

The editors wisely chose to include the indictment of Julian Assange.
Reading it is chilling. The 18-count indictment includes conspiracy to
receive national defense information, obtaining national defense
information, disclosure of national defense information, and computer
intrusion. None of it has anything to do with Sweden, rape charges or
the last U.S. election. 

Until now it has been legal for a publisher to publish truthful
information no matter how she or he got it. (Chelsea Manning sits in
jail as of this writing because she will not give further testimony to
a grand jury on the subject. She had previously served seven years in
prison after pleading guilty to furnishing materials to WikiLeaks.)
That was the precedent set in 1971 in the famous _New York
Times_ case when Daniel Ellsberg gave the Pentagon papers to the
newspaper and they published it showing the criminality of the war in
Vietnam. Attorney Jim Goodale was the chief attorney for
the _Times_ back then. He is a vigorous supporter of Assange. 

Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn has promised he would deny the U.S.
request for Assange’s extradition if elected prime minister on Dec.
12. His shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott said in Parliament on the
day of Assange’s arrest that it was his “whistle-blowing activity
[against] illegal wars, mass murder, murder of civilians and
corruption on a grand scale that has put Julian Assange in the
crosshairs of the U.S. administration.”

In a letter from his highly restrictive confinement in Belmarsh
Prison, Assange wrote on May 13, 2019: “I am unbroken, albeit
literally surrounded by murderers, but the days when I could read and
speak and organize to defend myself, my ideals and my people are over
until I am free! Everyone else must take my place. I am defenseless
and I am counting on you and others of good character to save my
life… Truth, ultimately, is all we have.“

Get the book. Spread the word. Free Julian. 

_In Defense of Julian Assange_
Ed. by Tariq Ali & Margaret Kuntsler
OR Books, 2019

_PURCHASE A COPY OF _IN DEFENSE OF JULIAN ASSANGE _TODAY FOR $25 AND
SHOW YOUR SUPPORT FOR A FREE PRESS._ _AL__L PROCEEDS GO TO
SUPPORT _THE INDYPENDENT_, NYC’S RADICAL NEWSPAPER._
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