WikiLeaks issued a statement today confirming that its founder Julian Assange has been transferred to the medical ward of Britain’s Belmarsh Prison. The media organisation said it has “grave concerns about the state of health of our publisher.”
It reported: “During the seven weeks in Belmarsh his health has deteriorated and he has dramatically lost weight. The decision of prison authorities to transfer him to the health ward speaks for itself.”
The statement must sound the alarm for all defenders of democratic rights. The British authorities’ detention of Assange at Belmarsh Prison, a maximum-security facility dubbed the UK’s Guantanamo, is a continuation of the eight-year campaign by the US government and its allies to physically and psychologically destroy the WikiLeaks founder.
It is part of the ongoing denial of Assange’s fundamental legal and human rights, aimed at preventing him from mounting any defence against unprecedented US Espionage Act charges over WikiLeaks’ exposure of war crimes, mass surveillance operations and global diplomatic conspiracies.
The World Socialist Web Site and the Socialist Equality Parties around the world demand Assange’s immediate release from prison.
The WikiLeaks founder must be taken to a hospital, with the best medical care available, provided with doctors selected by himself, his colleagues and lawyers, and allowed to recuperate and fully recover his health.
The persecution needs to stop and we need to grasp that the wrong people are being tossed in prisons. Let's put the War Hawks in prison, not the people who tell us the truth.
This is C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot" for Thursday:
Thursday, May 30, 2019. No justice in Iraq and no justice in the US
press which attacks candidates who take stands against war and promotes
those who back wars.
In the US, there is a race for the Democratic Party's 2020 presidential nomination. Anyone following the press coverage of the candidates, if they're honest, has already noticed that all candidates are not treated fairly. Stand up against war? Watch the press attack. Beto O'Rourke began calling out the endless Iraq War and suddenly he was no longer the press' favorite candidate. Even though he had been promoted and fawned over while running for the US Senate, even though he continued to be fawned over by the press after that run. When Beto noted that the Iraq War had been going on for decades, THE DAILY BEAST and others showed up to trash him.
Beto was right about the Iraq War. But not right in the eyes of the press. The corporate press applauds a candidate who voted for the Iraq War and then says today that, looking back on his votes and actions, there's nothing he's sorry about.
Yes, be Joe Biden and watch the press fawn and give you easy press. Stolen election? The corporate press loves to pimp that notion -- except when it's the US doing the stealing. Joe Biden was Vice President and went to Iraq to explain to various officials -- including the winner of the 2010 election Ayad Allawi -- that the results didn't matter. The will of the Iraqi people? Didn't matter.
They voted against Nouri al-Maliki. But they and their votes didn't matter. The US government negotiated a contract, The Erbil Agreement, that overturned the election and gave thug Nouri al-Maliki a second term. That second term led to the rise of ISIS in Iraq.
Why are these not questions for Joe Biden? Why are these not details in the press coverage of Joe Biden?
Because Joe is a corporate whore's ideal candidate. He votes for war and he doesn't apologize. Millions dead due to the Iraq War -- Iraqis, foreign fighters (US forces, UK forces, etc) -- and Joe has no regrets.
That's the killer that the corporate press loves -- blood thirsty and shallow.
Beto was attacked by the same press that fawned over him and all he did was note how long the US has been at war with Iraq. That's too much reality for a press that exists to sell wars.
He wasn't even running as an anti-war candidate. But it was too much for the whorish press. What if he was an anti-war candidate? What if he were Senator Bernie Sanders or US House Rep Tulsi Gabbard? Danny Haiphong (BLACK AGENDA REPORT) outlines the kind of treatment the corporate press delivers to those who speak out against war:
The New York Times has historically led the Cold War against socialism in the mediaand recently showed its anti-communist teeth in a two-pronged attack on Bernie Sanders in mid-May. The Times called Sanders the “Foreign Minister” of Burlington for participating in rallies and actions against U.S.-proxy wars in Nicaragua in the 1980s. Sydney Ember, the co-author of the original Sanders hit piece, followed up with an interview of the Vermont Senator . Ember urged Sanders to remember instances of “anti-American” chants during his trips to Nicaragua. Forgotten was the fact that U.S.-backed death squads, also known as Contras, killed tens of thousands of civilians in Nicaragua and Honduras. For Ember and the rest of the Cold Warriors at The New York Times, U.S. wars of mass destruction in Central America were justified and Sanders should apologize for his opposition to them. In a Meet the Press interview that same week, Sanders was asked if he would apologize for his anti-war activism against the Vietnam war and his vote against the Iraq war. To his credit, Sanders declined to apologize on all accounts of his anti-war history.
Tulsi Gabbard is also no stranger to Cold War smears from the corporate media. In an article in the Daily Beast , Gabbard was accused of being supported by “Putin apologists.” Who were these apologists? Professor and Russia expert Stephen Cohen, a mysterious “Goofy Grapes” said to be a former employee of Lee Camp’s RT America program Redacted Tonight, and Sharon Tennison, a leader in the Center for Citizen Initiatives which organizes regular delegations to Russia in an effort to ease tensions between the nuclear armed nations. The Daily Beastarticle was cited by ABC’s George Stephanopoulos in his most recent interview with Tulsi Gabbard. Gabbard’s principle crime against the corporate media has been to publicly condemn the New Cold War with Russia and China.
That the corporate media is aligned with the poorly written smear against Gabbard in theDaily Beast should come as no surprise. The outlet is owned by media monopolist Barry Diller . Diller is the founder of Fox Broadcasting Company and a board member of the Coca-Cola corporation. In addition to Diller, the IAC board sports Chelsea Clinton as one of its many directors. Clinton is a leader in the now greatly tarnished Clinton Foundation. The leadership of Dillard and Clinton alone make the Daily Beast nothing more than a mouthpiece for the Cold War hawks that dominate Washington and the corporate media.
What the attacks on Sanders and Gabbard show is that there is a deep crisis within the ruling imperialist system of the United States. A larger portion of the U.S. population support socialist policies and believe that the U.S. military should be used as a “last resort.” The two-party corporate duopoly not only disagrees with most of the population but is also incapable of providing any relief from the many miseries of endless war and austerity. U.S. imperialism is built to enrich the few at the expense of the working and oppressed masses all around the world. High-tech monopoly capitalism and run-away financial plunder have made U.S. imperialism a drag on the progress of humanity. The maintenance of such a system requires trillions of dollars-worth of investments in the military to ensure social control at home and a check on the rising economic and military power of Russia and China abroad.
These conditions have ensured that there will be no New Deal 2.0 in either the Democratic Party or the White Man’s Party. Individuals such as Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard unsettle the oligarchs because their policy positions are dangerously desired yet unobtainable under the current arrangement of society. Of course, under a socialist system, policies such as Medicare For All, a Green New Deal, and an end to regime change wars are more than possible; they are the existing reality in nations such as China and Cuba. Despite the heavy pressure of U.S. military and economic warfare, both nations have committed to eradicating poverty, providing healthcare to all, and respecting international law and the environment. This has come about only through centralized, public, and planned control of the means of production, something that the U.S. ruling class fears its increasingly pauperized working-class population, especially Black America, may find attractive if their expectations are raised by the likes of Gabbard or Sanders.
If only they could be suck ups like Mayor Pete who trashes whistle-blower and hero Chelsea Manning with transphobia. The US press whores hate those against wars but they love the candidates who trash truth tellers. As Mayor Pete makes clear to them, he will continue the war on whistle-blowers that Barack Obama started. They will applaud that.
They love it when whistle-blowers are attacked . . . until they realize too late that they are included on that list.
James Risen was attacked during the Obama administration. Today, he's just another whore attacking others.
Surprising? Not really.
Back in the 90s, I gave a talk about the media and how our portrayals are enforced by the media. Two characters can suffer abuse, for example, and in one case it's character building, in another it's seen as the abuse it is.
In PRIVATE BENJAMIN, Goldie Hawn's character is targeted and abused by her superior. It's abuse. And Goldie and the others extract the only justice they can. In AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN, Richard Gere's character also suffers abuse. But don't worry, men, you only experience character modling. By the end of the film, Richard's Zach is fond of the ass who tried to destroy him.
Asses like Zach (a character) and James Risen need to lie to themselves because men are never victims and certainly they themselves are not.
There's one victim of the Obama administration who doesn't try to happy-spin it.
In the US, there is a race for the Democratic Party's 2020 presidential nomination. Anyone following the press coverage of the candidates, if they're honest, has already noticed that all candidates are not treated fairly. Stand up against war? Watch the press attack. Beto O'Rourke began calling out the endless Iraq War and suddenly he was no longer the press' favorite candidate. Even though he had been promoted and fawned over while running for the US Senate, even though he continued to be fawned over by the press after that run. When Beto noted that the Iraq War had been going on for decades, THE DAILY BEAST and others showed up to trash him.
Beto was right about the Iraq War. But not right in the eyes of the press. The corporate press applauds a candidate who voted for the Iraq War and then says today that, looking back on his votes and actions, there's nothing he's sorry about.
Yes, be Joe Biden and watch the press fawn and give you easy press. Stolen election? The corporate press loves to pimp that notion -- except when it's the US doing the stealing. Joe Biden was Vice President and went to Iraq to explain to various officials -- including the winner of the 2010 election Ayad Allawi -- that the results didn't matter. The will of the Iraqi people? Didn't matter.
They voted against Nouri al-Maliki. But they and their votes didn't matter. The US government negotiated a contract, The Erbil Agreement, that overturned the election and gave thug Nouri al-Maliki a second term. That second term led to the rise of ISIS in Iraq.
Why are these not questions for Joe Biden? Why are these not details in the press coverage of Joe Biden?
Because Joe is a corporate whore's ideal candidate. He votes for war and he doesn't apologize. Millions dead due to the Iraq War -- Iraqis, foreign fighters (US forces, UK forces, etc) -- and Joe has no regrets.
That's the killer that the corporate press loves -- blood thirsty and shallow.
Beto was attacked by the same press that fawned over him and all he did was note how long the US has been at war with Iraq. That's too much reality for a press that exists to sell wars.
He wasn't even running as an anti-war candidate. But it was too much for the whorish press. What if he was an anti-war candidate? What if he were Senator Bernie Sanders or US House Rep Tulsi Gabbard? Danny Haiphong (BLACK AGENDA REPORT) outlines the kind of treatment the corporate press delivers to those who speak out against war:
The New York Times has historically led the Cold War against socialism in the mediaand recently showed its anti-communist teeth in a two-pronged attack on Bernie Sanders in mid-May. The Times called Sanders the “Foreign Minister” of Burlington for participating in rallies and actions against U.S.-proxy wars in Nicaragua in the 1980s. Sydney Ember, the co-author of the original Sanders hit piece, followed up with an interview of the Vermont Senator . Ember urged Sanders to remember instances of “anti-American” chants during his trips to Nicaragua. Forgotten was the fact that U.S.-backed death squads, also known as Contras, killed tens of thousands of civilians in Nicaragua and Honduras. For Ember and the rest of the Cold Warriors at The New York Times, U.S. wars of mass destruction in Central America were justified and Sanders should apologize for his opposition to them. In a Meet the Press interview that same week, Sanders was asked if he would apologize for his anti-war activism against the Vietnam war and his vote against the Iraq war. To his credit, Sanders declined to apologize on all accounts of his anti-war history.
Tulsi Gabbard is also no stranger to Cold War smears from the corporate media. In an article in the Daily Beast , Gabbard was accused of being supported by “Putin apologists.” Who were these apologists? Professor and Russia expert Stephen Cohen, a mysterious “Goofy Grapes” said to be a former employee of Lee Camp’s RT America program Redacted Tonight, and Sharon Tennison, a leader in the Center for Citizen Initiatives which organizes regular delegations to Russia in an effort to ease tensions between the nuclear armed nations. The Daily Beastarticle was cited by ABC’s George Stephanopoulos in his most recent interview with Tulsi Gabbard. Gabbard’s principle crime against the corporate media has been to publicly condemn the New Cold War with Russia and China.
That the corporate media is aligned with the poorly written smear against Gabbard in theDaily Beast should come as no surprise. The outlet is owned by media monopolist Barry Diller . Diller is the founder of Fox Broadcasting Company and a board member of the Coca-Cola corporation. In addition to Diller, the IAC board sports Chelsea Clinton as one of its many directors. Clinton is a leader in the now greatly tarnished Clinton Foundation. The leadership of Dillard and Clinton alone make the Daily Beast nothing more than a mouthpiece for the Cold War hawks that dominate Washington and the corporate media.
What the attacks on Sanders and Gabbard show is that there is a deep crisis within the ruling imperialist system of the United States. A larger portion of the U.S. population support socialist policies and believe that the U.S. military should be used as a “last resort.” The two-party corporate duopoly not only disagrees with most of the population but is also incapable of providing any relief from the many miseries of endless war and austerity. U.S. imperialism is built to enrich the few at the expense of the working and oppressed masses all around the world. High-tech monopoly capitalism and run-away financial plunder have made U.S. imperialism a drag on the progress of humanity. The maintenance of such a system requires trillions of dollars-worth of investments in the military to ensure social control at home and a check on the rising economic and military power of Russia and China abroad.
These conditions have ensured that there will be no New Deal 2.0 in either the Democratic Party or the White Man’s Party. Individuals such as Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard unsettle the oligarchs because their policy positions are dangerously desired yet unobtainable under the current arrangement of society. Of course, under a socialist system, policies such as Medicare For All, a Green New Deal, and an end to regime change wars are more than possible; they are the existing reality in nations such as China and Cuba. Despite the heavy pressure of U.S. military and economic warfare, both nations have committed to eradicating poverty, providing healthcare to all, and respecting international law and the environment. This has come about only through centralized, public, and planned control of the means of production, something that the U.S. ruling class fears its increasingly pauperized working-class population, especially Black America, may find attractive if their expectations are raised by the likes of Gabbard or Sanders.
If only they could be suck ups like Mayor Pete who trashes whistle-blower and hero Chelsea Manning with transphobia. The US press whores hate those against wars but they love the candidates who trash truth tellers. As Mayor Pete makes clear to them, he will continue the war on whistle-blowers that Barack Obama started. They will applaud that.
They love it when whistle-blowers are attacked . . . until they realize too late that they are included on that list.
James Risen was attacked during the Obama administration. Today, he's just another whore attacking others.
Surprising? Not really.
Back in the 90s, I gave a talk about the media and how our portrayals are enforced by the media. Two characters can suffer abuse, for example, and in one case it's character building, in another it's seen as the abuse it is.
In PRIVATE BENJAMIN, Goldie Hawn's character is targeted and abused by her superior. It's abuse. And Goldie and the others extract the only justice they can. In AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN, Richard Gere's character also suffers abuse. But don't worry, men, you only experience character modling. By the end of the film, Richard's Zach is fond of the ass who tried to destroy him.
Asses like Zach (a character) and James Risen need to lie to themselves because men are never victims and certainly they themselves are not.
There's one victim of the Obama administration who doesn't try to happy-spin it.
Why is @TheJusticeDept still using your tax $ to fight Attkisson v. DOJ for govt. computer intrusions-- instead of providing justice?
Clip below.
Full video here: youtube.com/watch?v=FjLjjK…
Please RT.
Attkisson 4th Amendment Litigation Fund: gofundme.com/manage/sharyl-…
There are some men who challenge -- but check out the popular, cultural fairytales and grasp that they are not encouraged to challenge. There are some women who play safe.
Look at Senator Elizabeth Warren. She's too scared to call out the never-ending wars. She timidly stepped up to calling out the DoD budget. That's as far as she could go. But, think about it, if she hadn't made that calling out part of her initial campaign, would the press have treated her better?
I don't care for Elizabeth and she lost me the second she became the warrior for impeachment. But I won't pretend she's treated fairly by the corporate press.
Senator Kamala Harris? She's stuck to what many are calling "identity politics."
It's not identity politics. I'm so sick of that term.
We should all be equal in the eyes of the law.
Kamala Harris is not fighting for equality. She's grabbing the easiest -- and most popular -- positions possible. Senator Cory Booker does the same.
This isn't "identity politics.'' A better term for what they do would be "virtue signaling."
They're not at the forefront demanding equality. They've waited to see what existing positions the American public already favors. They present themselves as brave for reciting popular opinion.
And they get away with that. The press doesn't bring that reality up -- has anyone brought that up until right now? I don't think so.
The press saves their caustic behavior for those who call out wars.
While politicians cry crocodile tears over lives already lost, they make plans to sacrifice more lives on the altar of new regime change wars & the new cold war. As commander-in-chief, I’ll only send our troops on missions worthy of their great sacrifice. tulsi.to/honor
- Bernie Sanders Retweeted
Thank you to Democratic Presidential candidate @BernieSanders for signing our veterans’ #EndForeverWar pledge!
Veterans overwhelmingly say it’s time to bring our troops home.
Anyone who wants to be Commander-in-Chief should follow his lead. #MemorialDay
NowThisTHE NEW YORK TIMES trashed Bernie Sanders earlier this month for . . . being against the Vietnam War. That's not a joke, that's what they did. They trashed him for being against Ronald Reagan's attack on the Sandinistas and Reagan's promotion and backing of the Contras. I guess they missed the part, on the latter issue, where the US Congress cut off all funding for the Contras? Somehow the whores of NYT missed that because it was such a minor issue, right? It's not like Reagan's refusal to stop funding the Contras didn't lead to the Iran-Contra issue -- one of the biggest domestic stories of the 80s.
The whorish corporate press is so pro-war (remember, as Lily Tomlin used to point out all the time, war is big business) that they will pretend that Bernie being against backing the Contras is an extreme position and one that he needs to disown. No, he was right.
But being right or telling the truth never matters to the corporate whores. That's why no one (except scapegoat Judith Miller) got punished for the Iraq War. Everyone else kept their jobs, many got promotions. Jeffrey Goldberg comes to mind. And while FAIR likes to point that out, FAIR never does the real job which is to point out that liars and cheerleaders for the Iraq War also got rewarded with jobs in the Beggar Media -- Kevin Drum works for MOTHER JONES. They hired him. Not a blogger who was against the Iraq War.
In the US crafted Iraq, there is no justice. Maybe no justice by design? But this puts millions at risk. The ones at risk currently? French citizens. Rebecca Rosman (ALJAZEERA) reports:
Activists and lawyers have pleaded with the French government to recognise flaws in Iraq's
justice system after two more of its citizens accused of ISIL
membership were given the death penalty, bringing the total to six.
The executions could be carried out at the end of the week.
"We have
information from Iraqi lawyers who do not want to take on these cases on
because it's too dangerous for them," Raphael Chenuil-Hazan, Executive
Director of the French NGO Together Against the Death Penalty (ECPM) told Al Jazeera.
Human rights groups accuse the Iraqi
government of conducting thousands of unfair trials against those
suspected to be members of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS).
A report from Human Rights Watch said the trials are based on limited criminal evidence, often relying solely on a defendant's forced confession.
There is no justice in Iraq. The courts are a joke -- and have demonstrated that repeatedly -- in one case, ahead of a trial, the justices held a press conference to announce the guilt of someone (then-Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi) and one of the justices, in the press conference, went even further declaring that Tareq had tried to attack him. That's how a judiciary works?
No.
Forced confessions are the norm. These 'confessions' even get aired on TV. Forced 'confressions' resulted in the death of one of Tareq's employees.
There is no justice. And now death sentences are imposed.
Earlier this week, Jane Arraf discussed the issue with Mary Louise Kelly on NPR's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED:
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
In Iraq, a court has sentenced four French members of ISIS to death. They're among a dozen French citizens who were captured and handed over to Iraqi authorities to be tried. And they illustrate what happens when a country - in this case, France - decides not to try their citizens at home. NPR's Jane Arraf has been following the trial. She joins us from Irbil in the Kurdistan region of Iraq in the north of Iraq. Hi, Jane.
JANE ARRAF, BYLINE: Hi, Mary Louise.
KELLY: So tell us more about who these ISIS fighters are.
ARRAF: So a lot of these are dual nationals, some from North Africa. The ones that have been sentenced to death Sunday and Monday, they include a postal worker, a truck driver, a military contractor. And they're all appearing in Baghdad's counterterrorism court. So these prisoners come in, and they're dressed in yellow shirts and trousers. There are rows of seats with French consular officials as well as journalists watching. And they're brought in, and they stand in this wooden dock kind of like a cage.
So one of the men was brought in. He's an Algerian French citizen, 33 years old. And he told the judge he was actually tortured in detention. So the judge postponed his case for a medical investigation. Another one came in. He actually started to cry. I mean, very often, they don't react at all, but this man started to cry. And the judge asked him to lift up his shirt to see if he'd been tortured. He appeared not to have been, according to the judge, and they proceeded with it. And he was sentenced to hang.
A lot of these people are saying that they didn't fight for ISIS, but Iraq says it has evidence that they did. And even if they didn't fight, its terrorism laws are so sweeping that even being convicted of being a member of ISIS can land you with the death penalty.
KELLY: And why does France not want to try these? You mentioned some of them are dual nationals, but they're French citizens. Why don't they want to try them in France?
ARRAF: Well, part of it is France was the country where most of the Western Europeans who went to fight for ISIS came from. And France, like other countries, is worried that if they bring them back, they won't have the evidence to convict them there. It's a much higher bar there, particularly since the crimes were committed in this region. Also there's a lot of public opposition to bringing them back.
KELLY: And opposition, I guess, to if they're not able to convict based on evidence in Western Europe, then these people might just be let go and released back onto the streets.
ARRAF: Absolutely. But here's the big problem. They've been sentenced to death. And France, along with almost every other European country, bans the death penalty. At the same time, it did not oppose them being brought to Iraq from Syria where they were captured knowing that they could well be sentenced to the death penalty.
The following sites updated:
Marianne Williamson
11 hours ago
They just won't let the crazy go
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FOSSE/VERDON, STAR
11 hours ago
What Mike said
11 hours ago
Go, Joe, away -- far, far away
11 hours ago
Joe Biden's plagiarizing again!
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creepy joe needs to keep his hands to himself
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Regarding THIRD, Ava and I spent Sunday writing our piece. Why isn't new content up yet? I have no idea but Dona e-mailed us that we could go ahead and post our piece if we wanted so we have. As far as I know, that'll be it for new content at THIRD this week.
