Pilger answers Assange critics

 

Journalist John Pilger (L) and Julian Assange (R), founder of the WikiLeaks website, chat before addressing the crowd during the 'Antiwar Mass Assembly' organised by the Stop the War Coalition at Trafalgar Square on October 8, 2011 in London, England.

PILGER ANSWERS
ASSANGE CRITICS

International journalist and renowned anti-war and anti-secrecy campaigner, John Pilger, has produced a swift answer to the spineless meedja and pro-empire bandwaggoners who have been attacking Wikileaks founder, Julian Assange, and the Ecuadorian Government which granted him political asylum under siege in their London Embassy this week:

"The British government's threat to invade the Ecuadorean embassy in London and seize Julian Assange is of historic significance. David Cameron, the former PR man to a television industry huckster and arms salesman to sheikdoms, is well placed to dishonour international conventions that have protected Britons in places of upheaval. Just as Tony Blair's invasion of Iraq led directly to the acts of terrorism in London on 7 July 2005, so Cameron and Foreign Secretary William Hague have compromised the safety of British representatives across the world.

Threatening to abuse a law designed to expel murderers from foreign embassies, while defaming an innocent man as an "alleged criminal", Hague has made a laughing stock of Britain across the world, though this view is mostly suppressed in Britain. The same brave newspapers and broadcasters that have supported Britain's part in epic bloody crimes, from the genocide in Indonesia to the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, now attack the "human rights record" of Ecuador, whose real crime is to stand up to the bullies in London and Washington.

It is as if the Olympics happy-clappery has been subverted overnight by a revealing display of colonial thuggery. Witness the British army officer-cum-BBC reporter Mark Urban "interviewing" a braying Sir Christopher Meyer, Blair's former apologist in Washington, outside the Ecuadorean embassy, the pair of them erupting with Blimpish indignation that the unclubbable Assange and the uncowed Rafael Correa should expose the western system of rapacious power. Similar affront is vivid in the pages of the Guardian, which has counselled Hague to be "patient" and that storming the embassy would be "more trouble than it is worth". Assange was not a political refugee, the Guardian declared, because "neither Sweden nor the UK would in any case deport someone who might face torture or the death penalty".

The irresponsibility of this statement matches the Guardian's perfidious role in the whole Assange affair. The paper knows full well that documents released by WikiLeaks indicate that Sweden has consistently submitted to pressure from the United States in matters of civil rights. In December 2001, the Swedish government abruptly revoked the political refugee status of two Egyptians, Ahmed Agiza and Mohammedel-Zari, who were handed to a CIA kidnap squad at Stockholm airport and "rendered" to Egypt, where they were tortured. An investigation by the Swedish ombudsman for justice found that the government had "seriously violated" the two men's human rights. In a 2009 US embassy cable obtained by WikiLeaks, entitled "WikiLeaks puts neutrality in the Dustbin of History", the Swedish elite's vaunted reputation for neutrality is exposed as a sham. Another US cable reveals that "the extent of [Sweden's military and intelligence] cooperation [with Nato] is not widely known" and unless kept secret "would open the government to domestic criticism".

The Swedish foreign minister, Carl Bildt, played a notorious leading role in George W Bush's Committee for the Liberation of Iraq and retains close ties to the Republican Party's extreme right. According to the former Swedish director of public prosecutions Sven-Erik Alhem, Sweden's decision to seek the extradition of Assange on allegations of sexual misconduct is "unreasonable and unprofessional, as well as unfair and disproportionate". Having offered himself for questioning, Assange was given permission to leave Sweden for London where, again, he offered to be questioned. In May, in a final appeal judgment on the extradition, Britain's Supreme Court introduced more farce by referring to non-existent "charges".

Accompanying this has been a vituperative personal campaign against Assange. Much of it has emanated from the Guardian, which, like a spurned lover,has turned on its besieged former source, having hugely profited from WikiLeaks disclosures. With not a penny going to Assange or WikiLeaks, a Guardian book has led to a lucrative Hollywood movie deal.The authors, David Leigh and Luke Harding, gratuitously abuse Assange as a "damaged personality" and "callous". They also reveal the secret password he had given the paper in confidence, which was designed to protect a digital file containing the US embassy cables. On 20 August, Harding was outside the Ecuadorean embassy, gloating on his blog that "Scotland Yard may get the last laugh". It is ironic, if entirely appropriate, that a Guardian editorial putting the paper's latest boot into Assange bears an uncanny likeness to the Murdoch press's predictable augmented bigotry on the same subject. How the glory of Leveson, Hackgate and honourable, independent journalism doth fade.

His tormentors make the point of Assange's persecution. Charged with no crime, he is not a fugitive from justice. Swedish case documents, including the text messages of the women involved, demonstrate to any fair-minded person the absurdity of the sex allegations - allegations almost entirely promptly dismissed by the senior prosecutor in Stockholm, Eva Finne, before the intervention of a politician, Claes Borgstr? At the pre-trial of Bradley Manning, a US army investigator confirmed that the FBI was secretly targeting the "founders, owners or managers of WikiLeaks" for espionage.

Four years ago, a barely noticed Pentagon document, leaked by WikiLeaks, described how WikiLeaks and Assange would be destroyed with a smear campaign leading to "criminal prosecution". On 18 August, the Sydney Morning Herald disclosed, in a Freedom of Information release of official files, that the Australian government had repeatedly received confirmation that the US was conducting an "unprecedented" pursuit of Assange and had raised no objections. Among Ecuador's reasons for granting asylum is Assange's abandonment "by the state of which he is a citizen". In 2010, an investigation by the Australian Federal Police found that Assange and WikiLeaks had committed no crime. His persecution is an assault on us all and on freedom".

FearFeasaMacLéinn

Áth Cliath/Dublin

Lunasa/August 24 2012

Julian Assange appears in public at Embassy

WASHINGTON IN A RAGE
AS ASSANGE TAKES
THE STAGE:

Having been granted political asylum by the Government of Ecuador, Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, the internet whistle blowers site, appeared on a balcony of the country's Embassy in London on Sunday to give a statement to scores of waiting Press and photographic journalists crowding outside along with a large crowd of Assange supporters who had also gathered to express solidarity with the controversial journalist.

With London Metropolitan Police officers standing only yards away, Assange called on President Obama to abandon what he called a "witch-hunt" against WikiLeaks. He said an alleged "FBI investigation" against his whistleblowing website should be "dissolved" and that the US should go back to its original "revolutionary" values.

"As WikiLeaks stands under threat, so does the freedom of expression and the health of our societies," Assange said, standing on a small balcony just above the pavement, and flanked by Ecuador's yellow, blue and red flag. He added: "I ask President Obama to do the right thing: the United States must renounce its witch-hunt against WikiLeaks."

Assange also thanked Ecuador's social democrat president, Rafael Correa, for granting him political asylum. Correa's decision, announced last Thursday, has set off a growing international row. Assange also thanked several other Latin American countries for their support – implicitly warning Britain that any dispute with Ecuador could rapidly snowball into a conflict with the entire region.

More than 50 police officers had  surrounded the Embassy in Knightsbridge, south-west London, on Sunday, with a police helicopter in the skies above. Assange addressed  the crowd of supporters including Tariq Ali and former British ambassador Craig Murray making speeches from the street.

Assange spoke for 10 minutes. This was his first public appearance since he arrived at the Embassy two months ago and the latest surreal episode in a political circus that has seen him go from the High Court to house arrest in Norfolk and then to an embassy camp-bed in genteel Kensington and Chelsea.The 41-year-old Australian took refuge in the Embassy after the Supreme Court ordered his extradition to Sweden, where he faces allegations of "serious sexual misconduct" of dubious authorship. Assange stated his predicament was a universal one of free speech struggling to survive in a "dangerous and oppressive world". Britain says it is obliged to implement EU extradition law and will arrest Assange the moment he leaves the building. Speaking from the balcony in southwest London, Assange claimed that the Metropolitan Police had come close to storming the Embassy late last Wednesday. Britain sent a letter to Ecuador last week stating that it believes it is entitled to arrest Assange inside the building under the Diplomatic and Consular Premises Act 1987. The claim has enraged the government in Quito, which says the 1961 Vienna Convention protects its – and others' – diplomatic territory.

Assange said: "Inside this embassy in the dark, I could hear teams of police swarming up inside the building through its internal fire escape." He said the only reason the UK "did not throw away the Vienna Convention the other night" was because "the world is watching". He also thanked embassy staff, "who have shown me hospitality and kindness, despite the threats we all received".

But, Assange's provocative balcony appearance, in which he praised "courageous Ecuador" while disparaging Britain, will have antagonised an already hostile Downing Street anxious, as ever, to please its Washington masters. Assange's supporters claim that if he is sent to Sweden he is in danger of being extradited to the US to be charged with espionage. Sweden has vehemently denied this.

On Sunday, Assange said: "Will the US return to and reaffirm the revolutionary values it was founded on, or will it lurch off the precipice, dragging us all into a dangerous and oppressive world?" He said there should be no "foolish talk" about prosecuting media organisations, mentioning not only WikiLeaks but also the New York Times, a paper Assange has previously bitterly criticised.

He also called on the US to end its "war on whistleblowers", and demanded that Bradley Manning, the US army intelligence analyst suspected of leaking information, be released.

Manning has been charged with transferring classified data and delivering national defence information to an unauthorised source. He faces up to 52 years in jail.

Assange called him a hero and "an example to all of us" – drawing cheers from WikiLeaks fans packing the Knightsbridge pavement. "On Wednesday, Bradley Manning spent his 815th day of detention without trial," Assange said. "The legal maximum is 120 days."

Assange also made mention of his children, "who have been denied their father". He said he hoped soon to be back with them and the rest of his family, adding: "Forgive me, we will be reunited soon."

ASYLUM DECISION

The asylum decision was announced by the Foreign Affairs minister, Ricardo Patiño, in the Ecuadorian capital of Quito and was watched live by Assange and embassy staff via a video link to the press conference.

Senor Patiño said the Ecuadorian government had conducted lengthy diplomatic talks with the British, Swedish and US governments. None would give the guarantees about Assange's future that the South American country was seeking and had shown "no willingness" to negotiate on the issue. US authorities were specifically asked if they had any intention to seek Assange's extradition so they could start legal proceedings against him, and what the maximum penalty was that he could face.

"The response from the United States has been that it cannot offer any guarantees. With these precedents in mind the Ecuadorian government, loyal to its tradition to protect those who seek refuge with us and in our diplomatic mission, have decided to grant diplomatic asylum to Mr Assange."

Senor Patiño called for Assange to be guaranteed safe passage to leave the embassy but the Foreign Office insisted this would not be offered.

ECUADOR SEEKS REGIONAL SUPPORT 

Ecuador has secured an emergency meeting of the Organisation of American States over what Ecuador says is Britain's threat to invade its Embassy in London to arrest Assange, the Ecuadoreans are pushing for similar meetings of the Union of South American Nations, the ALBA association of Bolivarian states and the UN.On the agenda for the OAS meeting will be both Ecuador's claims that the UK has threatened the principle of "inviolable" status of its embassy in the UK and demands that the UK grant "safe passage" for Assange out of the UK. The OAS voted to hold a meeting Friday 24th following Ecuador's decision to grant political asylum to Assange. Assange has described the move as a "historic victory" 

The decision by the OAS to debate the affair follows a letter from the British Foreign Office to Ecuadorean authorities, warning it believed it had a legal basis to arrest Assange in the Embassy, interpreted by Ecuador as a threat to raid the building – although this has been denied by the UK which says it prefers a "negotiated outcome".

The US, Canada and Trinidad and Tobago opposed the resolution, but 23 members voted in favour of the meeting. There were five abstentions and three members were absent. OAS secretary general José Miguel Insulza said the meeting would be about "the problem posed by the threat or warning made to Ecuador by the possibility of an intervention into its embassy". He added: "What is being proposed is that the foreign ministers of our organisation address this subject and not the subject of asylum nor whether it should be granted to Mr Julian Assange. That will be discussed between Great Britain and Ecuador. The issue that concerns us is the inviolability of diplomatic missions of all members of this organisation."

Ecuador's president, Rafael Correa, said in a radio interview on Friday that his nation was not trying to undermine Sweden's attempts to question Assange. He said: "The main reason why Julian Assange was given diplomatic asylum was because his extradition to a third country was not guaranteed; in no way was it done to interrupt the investigations of Swedish justice over an alleged crime. In no way."

The British whore press has mounted a smear campaign against Ecuador's President Rafael Correa calling him megalomaniac, dictatorial and unstable, parrotting Washington's

similar propaganda line against any Latin American leaders who fail to comply with US neo-colonialist demands. This is the main issue in this affair, not the allegations in Sweden

against Mr Assange. It should be remembered that these allegations were investigated by Swedish police and Mr Assange was told he could leave Sweden. Sometime later, a different Swedish prosecutor re-entered the case and demanded Mr Assange return to Sweden for "questioning". No criminal charges were ever brought to indictment. This has led to the reasonable suspicion that the second application was politically motivated. The subsequent attempts by Swedish authorities to have Mr Assange extradited from Britain were unjustified since he had already agreed to answer any questions from Swedish police at any time in London. The London High Court, in agreeing the extradition demand, went against majority precedent in European cases which do not allow extradition for mere "questioning" so this decision too, must be suspect of political motivitation. Those who insist

on making this a "feminist" issue are doing Washington's work either by default or by deliberate choice. It is the criminal acts of murder by the USA across the world which should be indicted and its subversion and interference in the internal affairs of countries hostile to US foreign policy which should be roundly condemned by all those who believe in Universal Human Rights and application of International Law to all countries, however powerful.

FearFeasaMacLéinn

Áth Cliath/Dublin

Lunasa/August 21 2012

Craig Murray speech outside Ecuador Embassy, London, 19.08.2012:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlt_IiQvjNo