21 June 2021

JULIAN ASSANGE ROTS IN JAIL AS US SLAUGHTERS FIRST AMENDMENT

From CounterPunch
18 JUNE 2021
Julian Assange Rots in Jail as U.S. Slaughters First Amendment
BY EVE OTTENBERG
Photograph Source: thierry ehrmann – CC BY 2.0

Years pass, and journalist Julian Assange languishes in a British jail. His crime? Truthful reporting of U.S. military atrocities in Iraq, reporting that sparked a lust for vengeance among U.S. politicos and military men. With Assange, the American empire would manage what imperialists couldn’t with whistleblower Edward Snowden, who slipped through their fingers by wisely fleeing to Russia – namely, torture him to death in prison.

For whatever reason, perhaps a mistaken belief in the rule of law, the power of a free press and the force of public opinion, Assange did not take refuge in Russia, China or Venezuela. This was a fatal mistake. Legal niceties simply fall like matchsticks in the wind when the empire takes offense. Its gaudy invocations of truth and justice are then exposed as mere words.

If you doubt that, recall U.S. military jets forcing the grounding of Bolivian president Evo Morales’ plane in Vienna in 2013, because Obama hacks were convinced Snowden hid on board en route to Latin America. The U.S. didn’t hesitate to violate international law, not for a second. Eight years later, the West hollers its outrage over the authoritarian government of Belarus doing the same thing. But it’s useless to call out this hypocrisy, because the U.S. does what it pleases almost anywhere in the world, and the first law of its precious, thoroughly mendacious rules-based order is that those rules never apply to IT.

That so-called rules-based order very damagingly replaces international laws and United Nations agreements. If the U.S. abided by a system of laws applied to all countries equally, it would not impose criminal sanctions on countries it deems too independent; hunger would not stalk Venezuelans, plague would not sicken Iranians, because without sanctions, both would have access to food and medicine. If the U.S. abided by international law, it would not so easily snap its fingers and have a vassal state like the UK assault its own hallowed legacy of press freedom by locking up a journalist in a dungeon.

Think – if the U.S. honored international law, another country might even take legal action against American judicial abuses, like the de facto double jeopardy of Chelsea Manning. Even more critically, if the U.S. adhered to international law, which includes the Nuremberg laws, it never would have committed the war crime that caused its scandalous treatment of Assange and Manning to begin with – namely, invading and destroying Iraq.

Assange has suffered from years holed up in the Ecuadoran embassy in London, where he sought asylum. Dignitaries like Hillary Clinton lamented publicly that he couldn’t be “droned.” The press vilified him for everything from a phony rape case to how he treats his cat. He has been held for years in Belmarsh prison, full of murderers and covid. And yet, if extradited to the U.S., his treatment would surely be shockingly worse. That’s why judge Vanessa Baraitser, no friend to Assange, whom journalist Chris Hedges in fact compares to the Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland, refused his extradition in January – she thought he would commit suicide.

Speaking of the extremely anti-Assange biased Baraitser and how she managed her courtroom, Hedges called the trial “a judicial farce. There was no legal basis to hold Julian in prison. There was no legal basis to try him, an Australian citizen, under the U.S. Espionage Act. The CIA spied on Julian in the embassy…recording the privileged conversations between Julian and his lawyers as they discussed his defense. This fact alone invalidated the trial.”

Hedges also cites the indispensable reporting of Craig Murray, who documented how the U.S. government directed the London prosecutor, James Lewis. “Lewis presented these directives to Baraitser,” Hedges writes. “Bariatser adopted them as her legal decision. It was judicial pantomime.” Close to one thousand years of English law just whooshed out the window with what this courtroom travesty inflicted on Assange, and scarcely a peep about it in our cowardly corporate media.

Those already alarmed by the life-threatening abuse heaped on Assange and Manning by the U.S. government surely noted that prospects for the longevity of the first amendment dimmed even more in early June. That’s when news came of a justice department assault on the first amendment, brewing below the headlines, since the close of the Trump administration. I say below the headlines, because while the four New York Times reporters whose emails the DOJ had demanded did not know about this, Times executives did. However, the Biden administration had imposed a gag order on those executives.

This battle for the emails started under Trump – no surprise there, from that sworn enemy of truth and a free press – and continued under Biden, for the first few months of his administration. Biden’s March 3 “gag order prevented the executives from disclosing the government’s efforts to seize the records,” according to the Times on June 4, “even to the executive editor, Dean Baquet, and other newsroom leaders.”

The Biden administration ultimately “notified the four reporters that the Trump administration, hunting for their sources, had in 2020 secretly seized months of their phone records from early 2017,” the Times reported. Google had refused to cooperate with these prosecutorial excesses. A similar confiscation of records and gag order involving CNN and the Washington Post unfolded recently also.

If this news didn’t chill every reporter and potential source who read about it, I don’t know what would. It is classic, brazen, government overreach to subvert freedom of the press. The Times article also reveals that “the government had never before seized the Times’ phone records without advance notification of the effort.” So things are getting worse. U.S. rulers and their legal henchmen became even more arrogant under Trump. Surprise! But it didn’t stop there. There were also secret seizures of congressional phone records. The Trump team drove several nails in the coffin of the first and fourth amendments, and the Biden folks quite tellingly hesitated for months to pull them out.

So while Biden claims to support free speech, actions speak louder than words. Prosecuting Julian Assange speaks loudest of all. If Assange is convicted under the Espionage Act, that will kill off the first amendment once and for all. It will mean any reporter, of any nationality, working in any country, who digs into the U.S. government’s dirt, risks fatal grasp in the empire’s iron talons, namely, being hustled onto a plane, hijacked to Northern Virginia, charged with Espionage Act violations and being buried alive, for 175 years, in supermax, solitary confinement. True, most reporters are far too timorous ever to find themselves in that predicament. But for those brave souls who do, it will be cold and bitter comfort to know that their abduction, arrest and imprisonment testify to the truth of their reporting.

.Eve Ottenberg is a novelist and journalist. Her latest book is Birdbrain. She can be reached at her website.

11 June 2021

ASYLUM SEEKERS - AUSTRALIAN POLITICIANS

In 94 years and four countries I would have hoped, still being alive in a country priding itself on humanity and human rights, that I would find that there is still some compassion left somewhere in the world and in members of parliament who make up the people who are supposed to represent the people of Australia.

If those people really represent the mass of the country who actually voted them into office, then I suggest we consider ourselves worthy of being back as cave people of some thousands of years ago. Unless our families of the moment consider taking action to restore some modicum of humanity into our lives and behaviours, we really are no better than our ancestors from a bygone age.

I have never seen people who consider themselves adherents of religions which claim to have compassion, humanity and support for the more under-priveleged among us behave towards people who have managed to get away from societies where they are persecuted, assaulted, incarcerated, murdered, perpetrate the same abuses on asylum seekers, and who become involved with the equivalent of what these people desperately hoped they had escaped from.

To hold the sword of Damocles over their heads and threaten to return them to the purgatory from which they have fled, is a sort of torture one had hoped we were civilised enough never to contemplate. Yet here we have some so-called religious maniacs threatening to do just that.

Is there no shame left anywhere and enough people in our societies who will object and ensure this doesn't happen?

I would have hoped this wouldn't happen in my lifetime, but it seems it is an idle hope.

07 June 2021

AGED CARE IN AUSTRALIA

I am 94 years old. My partner died last year aged 98. He was being treated at St Vincent's Hospital for metastatic prostate cancer.

He told the oncologist at the hospital that he did not intend going into an age care facility and that he intended dying at home.

He did not have an advanced care directive but knew that I would follow his requests for care until the end, knowing I would respect his wishes. As he has died and I am now on my own, I have no guarantee that anybody around me when I am at a stage when my end is approaching will necessarily heed my requirements.

Unlike my partner, I do have an advanced care directive, but nobody close in Melbourne who will necessarily obey my requests.

As things stand at the moment in Australia, and more specifically as they stand in Melbourne, I would sooner commit suicide - or do euthanasia if you prefer those words - to being committed to an aged care facility.

My criticism is not of people who are involved in aged care - most of them deeply committed to their work - doctors, nurses, everybody else working in aged care homes, nursing homes in general and all related places, because they are permanently underfunded, understaffed, inadequately provided with equipment and medications required and all related issues, but as of at this time, in Melbourne, on 8 June 2021, Covid has taken its toll, vaccination of everybody concerned is lacking and the federal government has shown that it is not in the least interested in remedying the situation at any time soon.

I am in my own home with little assistance from government agencies of any sort, don't have any means of transport, and have just been notified that the urgent requirement for me to protect myself should I require help from Personal Alert Victoria will be available and installed in my home - "wait time" - is approximately 14 to 16 weeks for the system called MePACS, the letter being dated 27 May 2021.

It is interesting to realise that when sporting teams or other such events require to fulfill they charters, goverments are there to assist them immediately.

The letter I received states: "We apologise for the delay, this is due to the limited number of funded units available for Victorians."

It is not surprising that people have died waiting for help when they have tried to get ambulances for emergencies because so mush is underfunded - so much has been privatised and all such services are grossly underfunded - sports facilities and sports grounds are much more urgently required - unless you are rich and can pay for everything - as ever, money talks, loud and clear.

MANNIE DE SAXE

04 June 2021

HOW PALESTINIAN RESISTANCE ALTERED THE EQUATION

1 June 2021

How Palestinian Resistance Altered the Equation

by Ramzy Baroud

Photograph Source: Neil Ward – CC BY 2.0

The ceasefire on May 21 has, for now, brought the Israeli war on Gaza to an end. However, this ceasefire is not permanent and constant Israeli provocations anywhere in Palestine could reignite the bloody cycle all over again. Moreover, the Israeli siege on Gaza remains in place, as well as the Israeli military occupation and the rooted system of apartheid that exists all over Palestine.

This, however, does not preclude the fact that the 11-day Israeli war on the besieged Gaza Strip has fundamentally altered some elements about Israel’s relationship with the Palestinians, especially the Palestinian Resistance, in all of its manifestations.

Let us examine the main actors in the latest confrontation and briefly discuss the impact of the Israeli war and the determined Palestinian resistance on their respective positions.

‘Mowing the Grass’ No More

‘Mowing the grass’ is an Israeli term used with reference to the habitual Israeli attacks and war on besieged Gaza, aimed at delineating the need for Israel to routinely eradicate or degrade the capabilities of the various Palestinian resistance groups on the street.

‘Mowing the grass’ also has political benefits, as it often neatly fit into Israel’s political agendas – for example, the need to distract from one political crisis or another in Israel or to solidify Israeli society around its leadership.

May 2021 will be remembered as the time that ‘mowing the grass’ can no longer be easily invoked as a military and political strategy by the Israeli government, as the Gaza resistance and the popular rebellion that was ignited throughout all of Palestine has raised the price by several-fold that Israel paid for its violent provocations.

While Israeli military and political strategists want to convince us, and themselves, that their relationship with Gaza and the Palestinian Resistance has not changed, it actually has and, arguably, irreversibly so.

The Altered Equation

The Palestinian fight for freedom has also been fundamentally altered, not only because of the unprecedented resilience of Palestinian resistance, but the unity of the Palestinian people, and the rise of a post-Oslo/peace process Palestinian nation that is united around a new popular discourse, one which does not differentiate between Palestinians in Jerusalem, Gaza, or anywhere else.

Palestinian unity around resistance, not peace process, is placing Israel in a new kind of quandary. For the first time in its history, Israel cannot win the war on the Palestinians. Neither can it lose the war, because conceding essentially means that Israel is ready to offer compromises – end its occupation, dismantle apartheid, and so on. This is why Israel opted for a one-sided ceasefire. Though humiliating, it preferred over-reaching a negotiated agreement, thus sending a message that the Palestinian Resistance works.

Still, the May war demonstrated that Israel is no longer the only party that sets the rules of the game. Palestinians are finally able to make an impact and force Israel to abandon its illusions that Palestinians are passive victims and that resistance is futile.

Equally important, we can no longer discuss popular resistance and armed resistance as if they are two separate notions or strategies. It would have been impossible for the armed resistance to be sustained, especially under the shocking amount of Israeli firepower, without the support of Palestinians at every level of society and regardless of their political and ideological differences.

Facing a single enemy that did not differentiate between civilians and fighters, between a Hamas or a Fatah supporter, the Palestinian people throughout Palestine moved past all of their political divisions and factional squabbles. Palestinian youth coined new terminologies, ones that were centered around resistance, liberation, solidarity and so on. This shift in the popular discourse will have important consequences that have the potential of cementing Palestinian unity for many years to come.

Israel’s Allies Not Ready to Change

The popular revolt in Palestine has taken many by surprise, including Israel’s allies. Historically, Israel’s Western supporters have proven to be morally bankrupt, but the latest war has proved them to be politically bankrupt as well.

Throughout the war, Washington and other Western capitals parroted the same old line about Israel’s right to defend itself, Israel’s security and the need to return to the negotiation table. This is an archaic and useless position because it did not add anything new to the old, empty discourse. If anything, it merely demonstrates their inability to evolve politically and to match the dramatic changes underway in occupied Palestine.

Needless to say, the new US Administration of Joe Biden, in particular, has missed a crucial opportunity to prove that it was different from that of the previous Donald Trump Administration. Despite, at times, guarded language and a few nuances, Biden behaved precisely as Trump would have if he was still President.

What ‘Palestinian leadership’?

The head of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, and his circle of supporters represent a bygone era. While they are happy to claim a large share of whatever international financial support that could pour in to rebuild Gaza, they do not represent any political trend in Palestine at the moment.

Abbas’s decision to cancel Palestine’s elections scheduled for May and July left him more isolated. Palestinians are ready to look past him; in fact, they already have. This so-called leadership will not be able to galvanize upon this historic moment built on Palestinian unity and resistance.

The Palestinian Authority is corrupt and dispensable. Worse, it is an obstacle in the way of Palestinian freedom. Palestine needs a leadership that represents all Palestinian people everywhere, one that is truly capable of leading the people as they attempt to chart a clear path to their coveted freedom. Expanding the Circle of Solidarity The incredible amount of global solidarity which made headline news all over the world was a clear indication that the many years of preparedness at a grassroots level have paid off. Aside from the numerous expressions of solidarity, one particular aspect deserves further analysis: the geographic diversity of this solidarity which is no longer confined to a few cities in a few countries.

Pro-Palestine solidarity protests, vigils, conferences, webinars, art, music, poetry and many more such expressions were manifest from Kenya to South Africa, to Pakistan to the UK and dozens of countries around the world. The demographics, too, have changed, with minorities and people of color either leading or taking center stage of many of these protests, a phenomenon indicative of the rising intersectionality between Palestinians and numerous oppressed groups around the globe.

A critical fight ahead for Palestinians is the fight of delegitimizing and exposing Israeli colonialism, racism and apartheid. This fight can be won at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), the International Criminal Court (ICC), the International Court of Justice (ICJ), UNESCO and numerous international and regional organizations, in addition to the countless civil society groups and community centers the world over.

For this to happen, every voice matters, every vote counts, from India to Brazil, from Portugal to South Africa, from China to New Zealand, and so on. Israel understands this perfectly, thus the global charm offensive that right-wing Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has been leading for years. It is essential that we, too, understand this, and reach out to each UN member as part of a larger strategy to deservingly isolate Israel for ongoing war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of five books. His latest is “These Chains Will Be Broken: Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons” (Clarity Press, Atlanta). Dr. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA), Istanbul Zaim University (IZU). His website is www.ramzybaroud.net

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90 years old, political gay activist, hosting two web sites, one personal: http://www.red-jos.net one shared with my partner, 94-year-old Ken Lovett: http://www.josken.net and also this blog. The blog now has an alphabetical index: http://www.red-jos.net/alpha3.htm

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