“Kevin Gosztola was awarded the Serena Shim Award for Uncompromised Integrity in Journalism for his work thus far on WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s case.

The Association for Investment in Popular Action Committees, based in California, is an antiwar group that gives the award to those whose work is ‘deemed important, courageous, and relentless in pursuit of truth, however inconvenient it may be to those who use deception for political gain.'”

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“The War on Terror had failed on every level—at home as well as abroad. While the US military and its allies bombed and droned their way across foreign lands, their governments were busy waging war on civil liberties on domestic soil…

Whistle-blowers who revealed the crimes in Iraq and elsewhere were severely punished. Chelsea Manning was pardoned, but Edward Snowden, who exposed the scale of the surveillance carried out by the National Security Agency, had to flee the country. And Julian Assange remains in Belmarsh prison, wondering whether the British judicial system will send him to be entombed in a US security prison on the basis of a dangerous, precedent-setting charge of violating the Espionage Act.”

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“It’s a twisted irony that the 50th birthday of jailed journalist Julian Assange comes just a day before the US’ Independence Day. That reminds us of the dark aspects of the ‘Land of the Free’ and most of Western democracies.”

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“[Assange’s] detention, it is stressed, is not about rape charges or his character. It is about releasing information that the US wanted to hide: the true extent of civilian casualties from drone attacks; the ignoring of torture at Abu Ghraib; US complicity with pro-Iraqi government death squads.”

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Free Julian Assange!

I declare an interest: Julian Assange is my friend. But I do not defend him because he is a friend. He is a friend because he is worth defending, because he disclosed vital information to the public on actions taken in our name and because he has sacrificed his freedom to do it. The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, Nils Melzer, has visited Assange in Britain’s high security Belmarsh prison and concluded that he is suffering “full-fledged psychological torture.” In addition, Spanish contractors working for the CIA have monitored privileged lawyer-client discussions with his defense team. Assange is not receiving a fair hearing in Britain. He is unlikely to receive a fair trial in the United States, when the prosecution knows all about his legal strategy while he knows nothing of theirs.

The criminals who perpetrated war crimes revealed in their own communications documented and made public by WikiLeaks did not want you to know about them. Nor do they want you to know about those they commit in the future. To conceal the truth, they will put the truth-teller in an oubliette where he will never again discover and reveal anything. By depriving Julian Assange of his freedom and thus intimidating his journalistic colleagues, US and UK prosecutors are abetting criminality by spies, secret policemen, torturers, and kleptocrats everywhere. If they succeed in putting Julian Assange in a concrete cell for the rest of his life, it will give them a long breathing space to commit more crimes and amass illegal wealth in secret.

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Must-read on the persecution of Wikileaks whistleblower

Never before have so many states, intelligence agencies and powerful individuals invested such effort into confining, silencing and neutralising a single individual on account of his desire to inform people about the misdeeds of their governments and elites. In Defence of Julian Assange is an anthology of essays, articles, and commentaries written by journalists, lawyers and supporters among others who discuss Assange’s enduring persecution, his countless successes in exposing those deemed untouchable through the medium of Wikileaks and the terrifying implications that an extradition to the United States would pose not just to Assange but to journalism and democracy as a whole.

Divided into four sections, the book focuses on Assange’s confinement in the Ecuadorian embassy, his expulsion and arrest, the internet and censorship and the legacy of Assange and Wikileaks.It reveals how Assange, alongside whistleblowers such as Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden, knowingly took great risks to perform an invaluable service to journalism and the truth by informing the public about war crimes and other wrongdoings committed by those in power.

Read the full review here.

The Plot to Discredit and Destroy Julian Assange

A day after dozens of doctors around the world released a statement about their mounting concerns regarding Julian Assange’s health as he’s detained in a U.K. prison, Truthdig Editor in Chief Robert Scheer spoke with Tariq Ali, a renowned British journalist and co-editor of the recent collection of essays, “In Defense of Julian Assange.” To Scheer, Ali and the many contributors to the book, the case against Assange boils down to an international effort to suppress press freedoms. Yet as Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States have all co-authored the WikiLeaks founder’s demise, many other journalists and publishers, including at The Guardian and the New York Times—two publications that published work based on Wikileaks—have refused to defend Assange.

“What we did in assembling ‘In Defense of Julian Assange,’” explains Ali, “was to take every single facet of the case and present it before a reading public. And one reason we had to do this is because the [liberal] press have given up on him, having used WikiLeaks, having got their scoops, having raised their own circulations.”

Listen to the full show here.

Interview With Margaret Kimberley Of Black Agenda Report

In a wide-ranging dismantling of mainstream media reporting on Julian Assange, award-winning journalist John Pilger has blasted the Guardian for its coverage of the WikiLeaks founder. Pilger took aim at a Guardian editorial published this week, which made the case for not extraditing the Australian to the US, where he could face 175 years behind bars for possession and dissemination of classified information.

The BAFTA award-winning documentary filmmaker has offered his interpretation of what the editorial actually meant.

“What the Guardian was really saying was this: ‘We are the fourth estate, the bearers of true liberal principles, the guardians of sacred rights. Such as the right to suck up to power. The right to invade countries and the right to smear those who expose our double standards and, if necessary, the right to destroy them,’” he said.

Listen to the full show here.

In Defense of Julian Assange

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. Today we interview Margaret Kunstler and Tariq Ali who edited and introduce the just published book In Defense of Julian Assange The book demonstrates convincingly that what is at stake in his upcoming trial is the future of free journalism, here and abroad. Julian 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.

Former CIA director and current Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has called WikiLeaks a non-state intelligence service. Hillary Clinton wanted him assassinated by drone. The United Nations special rapporteur on torture Nils Melzer recently visited him in prison and concluded that indeed he was being tortured. When he last appeared in court he was incoherent and couldnt remember his name or date of birth.

WikiLeaks was launched by Julian Assange in 2006, three years after Bush and Cheney commenced the illegal catastrophic war against Iraq in 2003.

Julian is a computer genius. He invented a way for publishers like WikiLeaks to receive truth telling information anonymously. The first bombshell he published in 2006 was The Iraqi war logs. He got them from whistleblower Chelsea Manning who was then in the military. They showed a video of American soldiers in a helicopter committing a war crime by gunning down and executing a number of Iraqi civilians, two Reuters journalists, and several children. Then they chuckled about it. A photo of the murders is shown on the books cover. This leak, furnished by Chelsea Manning, was devastating to the United States. Other whistleblower leaks followed. The government became relentless in trying to close down WikiLeaks.

Guest – Margaret Kunstler – a civil rights attorney who has spent her career providing movement support and protecting the rights of activists. A powerful speaker on human rights issues, Kunstler is a consultant to the emerging voices of Occupy Wall Street protesters and Anonymous supporters. Kunstlers Hell No: Your Right to Dissent in Twenty-First Century America, co-authored with Michael Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights, is the leading handbook for activists today.

Guest ” Tariq Ali, writer, journalist and film-maker, born in Lahore and educated at Oxford University. He writes regularly for a range of publications including The Guardian and The London Review of Books. He has written more than a dozen books including non-fiction as well as scripts for both stage and screen.

Listen to the full interview here.

‘Sacred right to suck up to power’: Pilger blasts ‘cruel’ media coverage of Julian Assange

In a wide-ranging dismantling of mainstream media reporting on Julian Assange, award-winning journalist John Pilger has blasted the Guardian for its coverage of the WikiLeaks founder. Pilger took aim at a Guardian editorial published this week, which made the case for not extraditing the Australian to the US, where he could face 175 years behind bars for possession and dissemination of classified information.

The BAFTA award-winning documentary filmmaker has offered his interpretation of what the editorial actually meant.

“What the Guardian was really saying was this: ‘We are the fourth estate, the bearers of true liberal principles, the guardians of sacred rights. Such as the right to suck up to power. The right to invade countries and the right to smear those who expose our double standards and, if necessary, the right to destroy them,’” he said.

Read the full article here.

In Defense of Julian Assange Event

Margaret Kunstler, Aaron Mate, Nathan Fuller, Amy Goodman, and Barry Pollack urge justice for wrongly prosecuted Julian Assange on the occasion of the recent publication by Or Books of In Defense of Julian Assange composed of 39 authors offering insights and perspective. Event held at the home of the late Michael Ratner, Assange’s former attorney.

Watch the video here here.

The Annihilation of Julian Assange

I was deeply shaken while witnessing yesterday’s events in Westminster Magistrates Court. Every decision was railroaded through over the scarcely heard arguments and objections of Assange’s legal team, by a magistrate who barely pretended to be listening.

Before I get on to the blatant lack of fair process, the first thing I must note was Julian’s condition. I was badly shocked by just how much weight my friend has lost, by the speed his hair has receded and by the appearance of premature and vastly accelerated aging. He has a pronounced limp I have never seen before. Since his arrest he has lost over 15 kg in weight.

Read the full piece here.

Assange: Enema of the State

Crikey, he gives them the shits.

Hillary once said — even before the 2016 election — “Can’t we just drone him?”

Maybe you’re thinking she was just joking, like Obama that time at the White House Correspondents Dinner in 2010, when he cracked that he’d take out the Jonas Brothers with a Predator drone strike, if they got grabby with his daughters. Laughter all around. Of course, the joke was on them, because there was no drone warfare program at the time, WINK. Obama wouldn’t acknowledge the existence of such drone usage until he zapped out Anwar al-Awlaki a year later, and his 16 year-old son, Abdulrahman,shortly thereafter, both Americans.

The MSM darn near bust a gut. (The joke’s been told over and over since. Punch line here.)

Julian Assange had warmed the Press up nearly a month earlier when he released the top secret “Collateral Murder” video into the wilds of the public imagination. You could hear all kinds of laughter from the gunship soldiers machine-gunning away at civilians, like Chuck Connors, Russian mole, in the film Embassy. Rat-a-tat-tat! Who knew the War on Terror could be so funny? You don’t even want to call The Hague and file a report, you’re laughing so hard.

And he followed up that gag with a bing-bang-boom fusillade: the Afghan War Logs (all those unreported haw-haw casualties); the Iraq War Logs had Abu rolling over in his graib, with laughter; Cablegate released all that global goss and started the Arab Spring (Tunisia 2011); the Guantánamo Files — so many Code Reds the bulls went insane; the Spy Files demonstrated “the industrialization of global mass surveillance” — what an effing hoot; the Syria Files made Assad shoot off laughing gas at the rebels; elites fell over themselves, like drunken clowns, when Assange published “the secret draft of the TransPacific Partnership (TPP)”; the Saudi Cables brought on the Curly Shuffle in Riyadh.

You almost couldn’t believe that a guy who one wag described as having had a “wild…Tom Sawyer-like” childhood could cause so much angst. Why, he even spent his early years in an honest-to-goodness Jumping Frog of Calaveras County atmosphere on a small island, called Magnetic. How could he be found so unattractive by so many? When he moved to mainland Oz for his teen years he became John Connor, where he had his whole future in the rearview mirror, and spent his time in MILNET “hacking Pentagon generals’ emails,” he tells Ai WeiWei in the new collection of testimonials and supportive documents that make up In Defense of Julian Assange edited by Tariq Ali and Margaret Kunstler.

Read the full review here.