Julian Assange and the Imperium’s Face: Day One of the Extradition Hearings
If we are to believe it, Julian Assange of WikiLeaks, the man behind showing the ugliness of power, is the one responsible for having abused it. It is a running theme in the US case against this Australian publisher, who has been given the coating of common criminality hiding the obvious point: that the mission is to make journalism on official secrets, notably those covering atrocity and abuse, a crime.
The first day of full extradition hearings against Assange at Woolwich Crown Court was chocked with a predictable prosecution case, and a robust counter by the defence. Central to the prosecution’s case for extradition to the US is the emphasis on the ordinariness of Assange’s alleged criminality, to diminish the big picture abuses of empire and focus on the small offences of exposure. In so doing, that seemingly insurmountable problem of journalism becomes less important. If you publish pilfered material from whistleblowers, you are liable, along with those unfortunates who dared have their conscience tickled.
As James Lewis QC advanced at London’s Woolwich Crown Court, “What Mr Assange seems to defend by freedom of speech is not the publication of the classified materials but the publication of the names of the sources, the names of the people who had put themselves at risk to assist the United States and its allies.”
Here, the rhetorical shift is clear: there were those who assisted the US, and Assange was being very naughty in exposing them via the State Department cables and the Iraq and Afghanistan war logs. In doing so, he had also conspired with US army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to hack a password and conceal his identity in accessing and downloading relevant files.
Relegating Manning to the status of wooed conspirator was a ploy convincingly swatted by defence barrister Edward Fitzgerald QC. He merely had to consult Manning’s own court martial, in which she clearly stated that “the decisions I made to send documents and information to the WikiLeaks website were my own decisions and I take full responsibility for my actions.”
According to Lewis, the disclosures by WikiLeaks had grave consequences. Fascinatingly enough, enough, these were not the sort identified by Pentagon studies which took a less punitive view on the subject. Unconvincingly, the prosecution argued that, “The US is aware of sources, whose redacted names and other identifying information was contained in classified documents published by WikiLeaks, who subsequently disappeared, although the US can’t prove at this point that their disappearance was the result of being outed by WikiLeaks” [emphasis added]. This is almost incompetent in its measure: to accuse WikiLeaks of inflicting such harm, only to suggest that proof of causation was absent.
Lewis was also keen to shrink the panoramic view of the proceedings against Assange, preferring to see it as a hearing rather than a trial on the merits of the case. He does not want broader issues of reporting or journalism to be considered, nor thinks it relevant. The only issue on that front, insisted the prosecution, was whether crimes alleged by the US would also constitute crimes in the UK, a matter surely not in dispute from the defence. Fitzgerald begged to differ on that point as the Official Secrets Act that accords with the US Espionage Act contravenes the freedom of expression and information right outlined in Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
The US Department of Justice indictment, which makes essential if grotesque reading, links journalism on national security matters to the punitive nature of the national security state, cocooned, as it were, by the US Espionage Act of 1917. Counts 15 to 17, as was noted by Gabe Rottman in Lawfare last year, “represent a profoundly troubling legal theory, one rarely contemplated and never successfully deployed. Under these counts, the Justice Department now seeks to punish the pure act of publication of newsworthy government secrets under the nation’s spying laws.”
The very fact that the documents in question were posted is what is central to them. They do not even lie in any conduct of inducement or seduction. For even the most reserved legal commentators, this suggests a gluttonous overreach on the part of the imperium.
The issue was raised in questioning by Judge Vanessa Baraitser. In making their remarks, the prosecution was stopped to clarify what was meant by “obtaining” classified documents. Could anybody obtaining them, even in the absence of “aiding and abetting,” be the subject of prosecution? The response, after hesitation was: Yes. Newspapers and media outlets, beware.
The defence effort was sharp and to the point. The entire prosecution against Assange, submitted Fitzgerald, was an abuse of process, constituting a “political offence” which would bar extradition under the US-UK Extradition Treaty of 2003. The judge was reminded that the alleged offences took place a decade ago, that the Obama administration had decided not to prosecute Assange, and that the decision to do so in 2017 by the Trump administration saw no adducing of any new evidence or facts. The decision by Trump to initiate a prosecution was an “effective declaration of war on leakers and journalists.” The US president’s own disparaging remarks on the Fourth Estate were cited. Assange “was the obvious symbol of all that Trump condemned.”
Trump’s own erratic behaviour – instructing US Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher to take a message to Assange in the embassy in 2017 – was also noted. The message was uncomplicated enough. Should Assange disclaim any Russian involvement in the 2016 Democratic National Committee leaks, he would be pardoned. Fitzgerald was cool on the president’s blanket denial that this ever took place. “He would, wouldn’t he?”
More broadly, the entire prosecution and extradition effort was based on the naked political act of state, spiced with a good deal of violent endeavour. The destruction of legal professional privilege, the principle protecting the confidences of Assange and those of his defence team, suggest that point. “We know,” submitted Fitzgerald, “that the US intelligence agency was being provided with surveillance evidence of what was being done and said in the Ecuadorean Embassy.”
And that’s not the half of it. According to Assange’s barrister, various “extreme measures” against the long-time embassy tenant were also considered. Kidnapping or poisoning were high on the list. With such rich attitudes, it is little wonder that the defence reiterated the dangers facing Assange should he make his way across the Atlantic to face the US judicial system. In the Eastern District of Virginia, punitive sentences are all but guaranteed. Special Administrative Measures would spell mental ruin and death. The second day awaits.
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Return to home pageHaven’t read the article yet, but it will take some shifting, my belief that dark and smelly pockets of prejudiced MSM are against Assange, right or wrong.
Stuff The US. they are a law unto themselves and will NOT allow any of their citizens be sent back overseas to face charges for crimes they have committed.
We in Australia should be supporting Assange and the UK need to remember the case recently where an American spies wife Hit and run from a motor accident that cost an Englishman’s his life.
And that was that piece of shit TRUMP who said they would NOT send the woman back to face court!
Thanks, Binoy.
There are some things that worry me about Julian Assange, and some things that worry me about ‘our’ response to what’s happening now. Does anyone else feel this way?
I hear you, Kate. And I’m with you.
Thanks, Michael. So how do we begin to express our doubts? I’m a cowardy custard, so I thought I might just pull this one thread out of the tangle – to start with.
If, indeed, Assange did publish the names of US operatives in sensitive locations, I’d have a great big problem with that.
It’s a big “IF”, Kate. I believe nothing America says.
Pingback: Julian Assange and the Imperium’s Face: Day One of the Extradition Hearings #newsoz.org #auspol - News Oz
Michael, If you were to do what Assange did, would you try so hard to avoid the law? Why wouldn’t you acknowledge and accept your punishment? Isn’t that what civil disobedience is all about?
Michael, The doubt is not that big – not insurmountable. Are the names revealed or not? You’re probably in a much better position to find that out than I am. Hope so.
Kate, I don’t really support what Assange did, but neither do I want him extradited to the USA. I strongly oppose the latter. His confession – if what he did was actually a “crime” – means zero at this stage.
I really think Kate Ahearn needs to return to Binoy Kampmark’s article and reread it, this time more closely.
It is true that Wikileaks has always claimed that it redacted names and so it is obvious that if spies were detected, this could have been through other means involving logical deduction, eg, a report in Wikileaks focusing on trouble in Benghazi, say, as to military supplies, it becomes a matter of working who had access to info and tracking from there. Let us suggest that if spies here sold out to foreign powers
we would angrily condemn such people as “traitors”, yes?
Unlike a number of more timid souls, I fully commend Assange and his friends, like Manning, for revealing for a moment the REAL nature action of global politics, the Mid East in particular, the interference of Big Powers there has NOT been about “growing democracy” but having dictatorships in place to protect oil and trade route interests.
The most spectacular example of course has been Iraq, where $Trillions of dollars of mainly US taxpayers, then Iraqi wealth, was used to ensure that the interests of Oil TNC s and banks, Dick Cheney and the Bush family, This guarded and developed for fake”security” reasons, to ensure huge oligarchic profits after the “Hanging Chads” hijacking of the US government in 2001. We know about the following process so corrupted also including with the vile Howard government,, from the following chronology.
As for Julian Assange, I can but recall the tragic death of Dr David Kelly, hounded to death by Tony Blair for showing that the Weapons of Mass Destruction pretext was a hoax and indeed, the ousting earlier of British Foreign Affairs minister Robin Cook for begging Blair not to join with the American invasion, which had nothing to do with bringing democracy and peace to Iraq and the Mid East but everything to do with greed.
I admire Assange for daring to tell the truth about government criminality, the financing of it with our money, revealing of lies and propaganda to peddle such adventures, sorrow for all the innocent blood spilt for such shabby reasons and the courage it must have taken, knowing that the Oligarchy would pursue him and his friends and other whistleblower truth tellers right down to today in the Dutton Surveillance State Australia where journalists are currently persecuted for the legitmate revealing of government crimes revealed that embarrass such a government and its fairy stories for what it does.
How lightly freedom and integrity are cast aside for oligarchs and their rotten security states with the corruption and looting that follows.
“I am thirty-two times an idiot…”
– Hercule Poirot.
How could I mention Iraq without mention of the infamous AWB oil for wheat scandal of 2005 as the paradigm of just about all that was REALLY going on as to Iraq and Western corruption.
Other powers did more and worse, but that scandal really revealed what it was all about right through to the top echelons of various governments, as did the Timor L’Este Gasfields heist of roughly the same time.
Needless to say the shock waves of our bugging of Timer L’Este government offices to find out their position as to access to their own gasfields in the Timor Gap continue to this very day and the current governments surveillance/censorship regime.
Free the heroes now!
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/w/over-1000-journalists-from-across-the-world-unite-in-defence-of-julain-assange
Michael. I think you have made a very important distinction between not supporting what Assange did, and his being extradited to the U.S. We’re not seeing this distinction being made. It’s important.
Paul. What about Assange’s part in the Hillary Clinton leaks which helped to bring us Donald Trump?
No. The Democrats stuffed THEMSELVES up. Had Clinton gone to the blue collar states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Ohio and reassured workers and the unemployed, the Democrats would have won, but Hillary was too busy brown nosing the Wall St Establishment to remember the blue collars ruined by neo liberalism.
Nor was Assange responsible for the utter corruption of the DNC and the kneecapping of Bernie Sanders- that was Clinton and her Establishment allies trying to engineer a result that suited Wall St, but not millions of working people.
Why would have Assange have supported people who were trying to destroy him anyway?
So, do you mean Libya, Egypt etc, 2011, the “Arab Summer”, when Clinton actively undermined democracy movements for control and oil and brought about bloody, expensive, civil wars in Mid East states, using agents you think should have been protected.
If there had been no corruption, there would have been no story.
If justice was important rather than spite and Wall st.authoritarianism, there would have been no Clinton enemy holed up at The Ecuadorian Embassy.
In the end, that pride led to a result far worse than the fair treatment of Assange would have led to.
Paul, so you’re happy with that we ended up with Trump? He’s less corrupt than Hillary? And Assange did no wrong, favoured no-one in the Presidential race? Is Assange guilty of any ‘mistake’ at all?
No, mate.
It is what Clinton wanted and people like you wanted, because vanity preceded decency.
Kate, it’s a bit of a paradox (which is an excuse not to call myself a hypocrite): I was pleased when he outed dark secrets, yet very displeased in the part he played in hoisting Trump into the White House. I think he’ll be best remembered for the latter.
And speaking of hypocrites, Trump himself stands out as one for his attitude towards Assange. He loved him, now he wants him to face a death sentence.
He must not be extradited.
Paul, was that response intended for me? Or for someone else? Either way, it’s not making a lot of sense, as it stands. Perhaps you could elucidate?
Thanks, Michael. It seems to me that one of our biggest problems as human beings is that we want things and/or people to be 100% perfect or 100% evil. We want things to be 100% true, even though they never can be, and we tie ourselves up in all kinds of knots as a consequence.
Anyhow, the law of consequences is at work here. Assange is not in this deep shit because he made mistakes, or because he was misguided. He’s in big trouble because there were predicatable consequences to what he did, even if he was 100% genuine and 100% wise and unbiased in what he did. For many years now, he has chosen to try to avoid those consequences, and my heart is sorry for him. In a way, he’s a lesson to all of us, because the way he has behaved has been human, and imperfect in the way that all of us are. But none of it makes him a hero.
I am no fan of Assange, but all he did was pass on information, that was already out there, about the disgusting behaviour of people acting in the name of, with the knowledge of, and almost certainly at the behest of sections of the government of the United States of America.
When it does not get its own way – an increasingly common occurrence – the United States is spiteful, vindictive and mendacious. Plus it is unceasing in its pursuit of people – or countries – that displease it.
Cuba
Venezuela
Nicaragua
Assange.
Australia’s response to the plight of one of its own is repugnant. Contrast the US refusal to extradite a woman who as a drunken driver on the wrong side of an English road killed a local man, fled to the USA and claimed, falsely but successfully, to be entitled to diplomatic immunity.
‘Land of the free’ indeed. Free to do what you like and to hell with ‘the rule of law’, whatever that is. Whatever it is, it’s the ‘phrase du jour’ of what is the classic rogue state.
Kate,
I share your concerns about Assange. I usually avoid commenting on articles about him because I am conflicted. I think he was used (by Russia) and that troubles me. I don’t think he put in the hard work to be discerning about what he shared and how he did it and I don’t think he looked hard enough at who was feeding him info and why.
Nevertheless, he has been persecuted enough. I also disagree with extradition.
I am surprised Kaye Lee is “conflicted” as to Assange, especially after a number of clarifying articles from Dr Kampmark.
It is a very straightforward case.
Truth precedes fascism, or you have fascism.
This is how it was with Dr Kelly in Brit, Dr Haneef here in 2007 and how it is with Assange and Manning and the journalists persecuted by Dutton.
It is like, you can’t be a little bit pregnant, you either are or you are not. You can have truth, justice and democratic government OR fascism in its various permutations, increasingly including throughout the western world.
Now, back to 730 and this incomplete story about the ten million dollar grant for the luxury swimming pool on the North Shore. So hard to follow when there is secrecy before open government, this sort of thing, esp when struggling communities can only get a kick in the face.
Oh, Brave New World.
Paul.
I also do not understand the negative attitude toward Assange. The matter for which he is imprisoned is patently a charade, and the sexual allegations made against him appear to have been fabricated.
I don’t consider him to be a charming man, but his charmlessness is not what he is charged with.
In his Wikileaks revelations – for which he was simply a postman – he has been wholly admirable, trying to bring to the attention of the world that ‘the last best hope’ Is actually just another rancid empire, perhaps not the worst ever but certainly worse than most.
Happily, Trump has inadvertently allowed other nations who formerly remained mute to finally have the balls to say ‘we do not like what the USA has done and continues to try to do’.
Sadly, our country is not one of them.
Assange is a dead man walking, The trial is a sham, if not for the involvement of some celebrity lawyers and journalists, Assange would have already been helped to hang himself in his cell a long time ago. What they are waiting for to terminate him with extreme prejudice is, anyone’s guess.
To call Assange a traitor after what has been revealed about the American and British establishment over the last seventy years is laughable. Vietnam, and the crimes of McNamara, Laos, Cambodia, Iran, Iraq, Libya, ( Clinton ref Qaddafi. we came we saw he died giggle giggle laugh. ) U.S involvement in South America ‘ Spy Catcher ‘ ‘ A Secret Country ‘ these are just a few snippets from my memory. It would take all night to google up the crimes of the American and British governments. They just don’t like the competition. Assange was mercenary he did it for the money, I don’t believe for a minute, he did anything charitable.
Assange unfortunately has to go, the penny among the plebs is starting to drop, My God Sinn Féin just one elections in Northern Ireland. Yea I know, Johnson just won a big mandate but hey, the English are such racists they’ll do anything to get rid of the immigrants. These bastards know we are finally on to them.
Well written Phil, when others so seem to miss (the forest for the trees) what Kampmark’s article points out.
So what if Assange WAS ‘used by Russia?’ Which I doubt. Russia didn’t make up
the war crimes, unlike the United States, which does it all the time as a pretext to steal its targets assets.
The USA has interfered in the electoral process of just about every other country on earth, including Russia (which you may have noticed is another capitalist country.) it is mildly amusing that it shits Itself when it thinks someone might try to do the same to them.
paul walter.
Cheers Bud. Yep Kampmark is spot on. You know as a very wide aside, I was reading about the British in Ireland. It was mostly about the Easter uprisings in 1916. It was heart breaking to read about the executions of the Irish patriot ring leaders, I was sick reading it.. And I thought to myself, if I had been born in Ireland I too would have no doubt been a member of the IRA. I could also have done what Assange did and would have slept like a baby. One has to make up ones mind, you either run with the Hare’s or the Hounds you cannot do both. This as you know is about the Capitalists keeping a firm grip on the system, they will not let some upstart like Assange and others f-ck up a system that been honed into a machine that keeps the owners in an opulence f-ckers like us, will never see.
As the great and late George Carlin RIP said. it’s a big club and we aint in it.
Phil.
My family is Liverpool-Irish, and arrived in Liverpool after the 19th century potato famine. (Liverpool sent a Sinn Feiner to the English Parliament for a number of terms in the early 20th C.)
My mothers uncle went to America after arriving in England, but the rest of the family settled in Liverpool.
The Irish uncle prospered in the US, but never married, and in the late 1930s invited my own uncle – then only 18 – to come and live with him with the idea that would look after and eventually inherit his large property holdings.
But when WW2 broke out, my uncle said he wanted to join up to fight for Britain.
The old uncle said that if he did so, he would strike him out of his will.
The boy (by then 20, I think) ignored him
and actually walked to Canada and enlisted in the Canadian Black Watch. He thus lost his inheritance and actually spent some time as a POW in Germany.
He didn’t flourish in Britain post-war. Lived in
A temporary pre-fab until the mid-60s when he was housed in the dreadful tenements they built. Liverpool started late in rehousing and its slums were described as the worst in Europe for almost 20 years post-war.
His lost inheritance in Massachusetts was given to the Catholic Church, I think.
All due to the old uncles (perfectly justifiable) hatred of the English.
Phil re:
To get the full affect, visit Kilmainham Gaol (now a museum) – do the ‘tour’ and listen to the execution story as told by the guide with the cells in front of you and the ‘killing site’ also in the view. Unforgettable.
(As an aside. We chose to walk there. Some distance from the heart of Dublin, and with roads and streets taking on a new name, seemingly after each and every block, we soon became disoriented. So asked the fabled ‘little old lady’ if we were going in the right direction to Kilmainham Gaol. Her reply – Yes, yes, yes! Keep going down this road till you get to the end. And then keep on going.
An Irish experience without peer. And at any number of levels.)
MN, I must do the walk if I ever get back to Dublin. Which is highly unlikely. I have no plans to return.
Jack, that’s a good mix. I love Ireland (apart from Dublin) and I love Liverpool. I would return to Liverpool just to buy some chips from the Red Lobster Cafe (it’s near the top end of the mall if you’re ever there).
Sorry to be off topic, folks, but I love a good chip. I was clearly a seagull in a former life.
Michael.
In Penny Lane there is evidently a chip shop specialising in ‘fish and finger pie’, which is a very funny Scouse pisstake. Tourists asking for it would be mortified if they knew what it really is.
Jack, in that case I’ll stick to the Red Lobster Cafe when I’m back there. 😀
Jack Cade.
Loved the story. I was in the Pool two years ago my cousins live in Blackpool they gave me the guided tour. I went to the cavern and on the ferry of the ‘ Ferry Cross the Mersey ‘ legend. I am a muso it blew my mind. There is something in the water there, that’s for sure. I was born in Portsmouth which incidentally half of which was still on the ground from WW2 when I was a kid. We threw broken wall bricks at each other on bomb sites, which was funny at the time but, not the stitches. We still had an Anderson Shelter in the back yard. My old mum was telling me ref the bombing in the end they got sick of getting out of bed and took their chances staying in the house. They exploded some ordinance just off Pompey harbour when I was there 2 years ago. My dad’s side are from Aberdeen and mums Irish descent. . My mum btw is 92 she can drink me under the table and it would be a sorry day if some sod gave her any lip. She could fight like a bloke no shit.
Like your old uncle, I have a visceral hate not for the working class English but, the Johnson’s and the Reece Moggs of the English aristocracy, they putting it mildly, make my skin crawl. When I see that Priti Pattel, I give up the will to live.
My father spent a lot of time in New York during the war and after, he was telling me about the signs in the windows of the business’s there ” No Blacks ” No Irish ” Need apply for jobs. English sailors weren’t that welcome either because of the damage they caused in pub brawls.
I asked my dad years ago did he hate the Germans, his reply was, why would I they were just doing a job like I was.
You know should I live to be two hundred I will never understand the English putting the Tories back in power, I would like to believe it was an aberration, maybe they were all on the piss on election day? I wish. But I am now old and seen much of the world. The English think this is going to cure their immigration problem not that I believe for a second there is one. That rule Britannia mentality is still alive and well. This fact btw would not be helping Assange.
Oh one other thing if I had my time over I would have lived in Liverpool. I will always remember the The Hillsborough disaster a fatal human crush during an association football match at Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield, England, on 15 April 1989. In the after math and the cover ups and lies. Fans holding up a sign at their ground, ” We are not English we are Scousers. These are my people not the dog f#ckers in Tory electorates. If my burst get a bit disjointed forgive me, I had a mild stroke 3 yrs ago it f#cked up any ideas of me being Charles Dickens.
To get the full affect, visit Kilmainham Gaol (now a museum) – do the ‘tour’ and listen to the execution story as told by the guide with the cells in front of you and the ‘killing site’ also in the view. Unforgettable.
Unfortunately I think my run because of health problems, is just about done. I would have loved to have traveled to Dublin two years ago but , time was against me. It is easy to understand the Irish hating the English. Just reading about the executions from those times, sent a chill down my spine. I have a cousin ten years younger than me, she lost her husband in the troubles. He was a British soldier on a tour of duty there. Me being a rampant lefty does not go down well with her. So it is easy to see how the hate is just regenerated and regenerated. She thinks I should wrap myself in the Union Jack. No chance. More interesting reading is about the English conscientious objectors who refused to fight in WW1 they threatened to hang them. They relented in the end and made them stretcher bearers. If not for General Monash during WW1 the Brits would have hung some Australian soldiers for desertion etc.
I did however visit my guitar hero’s grave. The Irish guitarist Gary Moore. Who is buried in a village in England called Rottingdean near Brighton where he lived.
Just directed to the following by a friend:
Am angered that I have to go to US Libertarian site to get some sort of detailed reportage on Assange’s Showtrial.
But don’t be put off. Ron Paul and his obsequious side kick do a surprisingly good effort, far better than some of the vicious muck on ABC for example. Given the cowardice of the Left on the issue, should I contemplate a conversion to Libertarianism, when I can’t see much “Democracy” operative at mo?
Was I just complaining about the ABC?
Cop a look at this:
https://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/episodes/drought/11995952
Paul Walter.
It is good to contemplate alternatives, but like the pig finding out that he would be judged by the company he keeps, just look at libertarians as if they are in a zoo, then get up and walk away.
Having said that, after a long life as a Labour/Labor man, I now invite a Tony Windsor-like Indi to collect my vote at the next election, whether state or federal.
Phil.
The original Cavern was a slave-holding pen and when the Beatles were performing there it still had the rings attached to the walls where the slaves were chained pending transportation to the U.S. of A.
Scouse Humour.
In the days when Liverpool had 36,000 people working on the docks, before the evil
bitch from Grantham suggested ‘Why don’t we just let Liverpool die?’, and before the ‘roll on roll off’ containers were extant, the following exchange between two dockers occurred (I can attest to it)
Docker 1, (on deck, shouting into the hold). ‘Tommy!!!‘
No response.
‘ Hey, Tommy, I’m talking to yew!!’
No respone.
‘HEY, BIG DICK!!!!’
Response – ‘Your bloody wife tells you everything, doesn’t she??’
That’s my Liverpool.