ExColdTypetraIssue 213 / September 2020 The last stand of Julian Assange By Jonathan Cook Art: Antonio Marín Segovia / Marín Segovia www.flickr.com Antonio Art: ColdType Extra September 2020 For years, journalists cheered the abuse of Julian Assange. Now they’ve paved his path to a US gulag
By Jonathan Cook of character assassination against Assange by west- ern governments and a compliant media, the sole ourt hearings in Britain over the justification for this relentless attack on press free- US administration’s extradition case dom is that a 49-year-old man published documents against Julian Assange begin in ear- exposing US war crimes. That is the reason – and the nest on September 7. The decade-long only reason – that the US is seeking his extradition saga that brought us to this point and why he has been languishing in what amounts should appall anyone who cares about to solitary confinement in Belmarsh high-security our increasingly fragile freedoms. prison during the Covid-19 pandemic. His lawyers’ A journalist and publisher has been deprived of his appeals for bail have been refused. Cliberty for 10 years. According to UN experts, he has While the press corps abandoned Assange a dec- been arbitrarily detained and tortured for much of ade ago, echoing official talking points that pilloried that time through intense physical confinement and him over toilet hygiene and his treatment of his cat, endless psychological pressure. He has been bugged Assange is today exactly where he originally pre- and spied on by the CIA during his time in political dicted he would be if western governments got their asylum, in Ecuador’s London embassy, in ways that way. What awaits him is rendition to the US so he can violated his most fundamental legal rights. The judge be locked out of sight for the rest of his life. overseeing his hearings has a serious conflict of inter- There were two goals the US and UK set out to est – with her family embedded in the UK security achieve through the visible persecution, confinement services – that she did not declare and which should and torture of Assange. have required her to recuse herself from the case. First, he and Wikileaks, the transparency or- All indications are that Assange will be extradited ganisation he co-founded, needed to be disabled. to the US to face a rigged grand jury trial meant to Engaging with Wikileaks had to be made too risky ensure he sees out his days in a maximum-security to contemplate for potential whistleblowers. That is prison, serving a sentence of up to 175 years. why Chelsea Manning – the US soldier who passed None of this happened in some Third-World, tinpot on documents relating to US war crimes in Iraq and dictatorship. It happened right under our noses, in Afghanistan for which Assange now faces extradition a major western capital, and in a state that claims – was similarly subjected to harsh imprisonment. She to protect the rights of a free press. It happened not later faced punitive daily fines while in jail to pres- in the blink of an eye but in slow motion – day after sure her into testifying against Assange. day, week after week, month after month, year after The aim has been to discredit Wikileaks and simi- year. lar organisations and stop them from publishing ad- And once we strip out a sophisticated campaign ditional revelatory documents – of the kind that show
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FIRST THE SCOOP: Julian Assange holds the Guardian of July 26, 2010. The paper, along with other imajor international publica- tions, gladly used the WikiLeaks leaks to sell their products. Then the Guardian turned its back on Assange.
western governments are not the “good guys” manag- course, fully vindicated – that he was evading US ing world affairs for the benefit of mankind, but are efforts to extradite him and lock him away for good. in fact highly militarised, global bullies advancing The media continued with their mockery even as evi- the same ruthless colonial policies of war, destruction dence mounted that a grand jury had been secretly and pillage they always pursued. convened to draw up espionage charges against him And second, Assange had to be made to suffer and that it was located in the eastern district of Vir- horribly and in public – to be made an example of – ginia, where the major US security and intelligence to deter other journalists from ever following in his services are headquartered. Any jury there is domi- footsteps. He is the modern equivalent of a severed nated by US security personnel and their families. head on a pike displayed at the city gates. His hope of a fair trial was non-existent. The very obvious fact – confirmed by the media Instead we have endured eight years of misdirec- coverage of his case – is that this strategy, advanced tion by the corporate media and its willing complic- chiefly by the US and UK (with Sweden playing a less- ity in his character assassination, which has laid er role), has been wildly successful. Most corporate the ground for the current public indifference to As- media journalists are still enthusiastically colluding sange’s extradition and widespread ignorance of its in the vilification of Assange – mainly at this stage horrendous implications. by ignoring his awful plight. Corporate journalists have accepted, entirely at face value, a series of rationalisations for why the Story hiding in plain sight interests of justice have been served by locking As- hen he hurried into Ecuador’s embassy sange away indefinitely – even before his extradition back in 2012, seeking political asylum, – and trampling his most basic legal rights. The other journalists from every corporate me- side of the story – Assange’s, the story hiding in plain W dia outlet ridiculed his claim – now, of sight – has invariably been missing from the cover- ColdType | Mid-February 2020 | www.coldtype.net | Page 3 ColdType Extra September 2020
age, whether it has been CNN, the New York Times, emails, allegedly “hacked” by Russia, from the Demo- the BBC or the Guardian. cratic party’s servers. The content of those emails, obscured in the coverage at the time and largely for- From Sweden to Clinton gotten now, revealed corruption by Hillary Clinton’s irst, it was claimed that Assange had fled ques- camp and efforts to sabotage the party’s primaries to tioning over sexual assault allegations in Swe- undermine her rival for the presidential nomination, den, even though it was the Swedish authori- Bernie Sanders. ties who allowed him to leave; even though the Foriginal Swedish prosecutor, Eva Finne, dismissed Guardian fabricates a smear the investigation against him, saying “There is no hose on the authoritarian right have shown suspicion of any crime whatsoever”, before it was little concern over Assange’s lengthy con- picked up by a different prosecutor for barely con- finement in the embassy, and later jailing in cealed, politicised reasons; and even though Assange Belmarsh, for his exposure of US war crimes, later invited Swedish prosecutors to question him Twhich is why little effort has been expended on win- where he was (in the embassy), an option they regu- ning them over. The demonisation campaign against larly agreed to in other cases but resolutely refused Assange has focused instead on issues that are likely in his. to trigger liberals and the left, who might otherwise It was not just that none of these points was ever have qualms about jettisoning the First Amendment provided as context for the Sweden story by the cor- and locking people up for doing journalism. porate media. Or that much else in Assange’s favour Just as the Swedish allegations, despite their was simply ignored, such as tampered evidence in non-investigation, tapped into the worst kind of the case of one of the two women who alleged sexual kneejerk identity politics on the left, the “hacked” assault and the refusal of the other to sign the rape emails story was designed to alienate the Democrat- statement drawn up for her by police. ic party base. Extraordinarily, the claim of Russian The story was also grossly and continuously hacking persists even though years later – and after misreported as relating to “rape charges” when a major “Russiagate” inquiry by Robert Mueller – it Assange was wanted simply for questioning. No still cannot be stood up with any actual evidence. charges were ever laid against him because the In fact, some of those closest to the matter, such as second Swedish prosecutor, Marianne Ny – and her former UK ambassador Craig Murray, have insist- British counterparts, including Sir Keir Starmer, ed all along that the emails were not hacked by Rus- then head of the prosecution service and now sia but were leaked by a disenchanted Democratic leader of the Labour party – seemingly wished to party insider. avoid testing the credibility of their allegations by An even more important point, however, is that actually questioning Assange. Leaving him to rot a transparency organisation like Wikileaks had no in a small room in the embassy served their pur- choice, after it was handed those documents, but to poses much better. expose abuses by the Democratic party – whoever When the Sweden case fizzled out – when it be- was the source. came clear that the original prosecutor had been The reason that Assange and Wikileaks became right to conclude that there was no evidence to justify entwined in the Russiagate fiasco – which wasted the further questioning, let alone charges – the political energies of Democratic party supporters on a cam- and media class shifted tack. paign against Trump that actually strengthened rath- Suddenly Assange’s confinement was implicitly er than weakened him – was because of the credulous justified for entirely different, political reasons – coverage, once again, of the issue by almost the entire because he had supposedly aided Donald Trump’s corporate media. Liberal outlets like the Guardian presidential election campaign in 2016 by publishing newspaper even went so far as to openly fabricate a
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story – in which it falsely reported that a Trump aide, conditions is permitted if there is “reasonable cause” Paul Manafort, and unnamed “Russians” secretly vis- – and fleeing political persecution is very obviously ited Assange in the embassy – without repercussion just such a reasonable cause. or retraction. Similarly, the media wilfully ignored the conclu- sions of a report by Nils Melzer, a Swiss scholar of Assange’s torture ignored international law and the United Nations’ expert on ll of this made possible what has happened torture, that the UK, US and Sweden had not only since. After the Swedish case evaporated denied Assange his basic legal rights but had colluded and there were no reasonable grounds left in subjecting him to years of psychological torture – a for not letting Assange walk free from the form of torture, Melzer has pointed out, that was re- Aembassy, the media suddenly decided in chorus that fined by the Nazis because it was found to be crueller a technical bail violation was grounds enough for and more effective at breaking victims than physical his continuing confinement in the embassy – or, bet- torture. ter still, his arrest and jailing. That breach of bail, Assange has been blighted by deteriorating health of course, related to Assange’s decision to seek asy- and cognitive decline as a result, and has lost signifi- lum in the embassy, based on a correct assessment cant weight. None of that has been deemed worthy that the US planned to demand his extradition and by the corporate media of more than a passing men- imprisonment. tion – specifically when Assange’s poor health made None of these well-paid journalists seemed to him incapable of attending a court hearing. Instead remember that, in British law, failure to meet bail Melzer’s repeated warnings about the abusive treat-
Read our ColdType Extra :fc[K p g \ By John Pilger m m m$YebZjof[$d[jr<[XhkWho(&(&
■ @E>DF?B=;H T @kb_Wd7iiWd][ A s o n e o ft h e o ld e s t“ d ip lo m a ti c m is s io n s ” in th e U n it e d K in g d o m , Julian Assange this relic of empire provides a ckijX[\h[[Z" p le a s u r a b le s in e c u r e fo r A n tip o d e - a n p o lit ic ia n s a: “ m a t e ” r e w a r d e d or a troublemaker exiled. dejX[jhWo[Z K n o w n a s H ig h C o m m is s io n e r , the equivalent of an ambassador, the current benefi ciary is George E February 22, people marched from Australia B r a n d is w, h o a s A t o r n e y G e n e r a l House in London to Parlia- tried to water down Australia’s must be freed, ment Square, the centre of R a c e D is c r im in a ti o n A c ta n d a p - E British democracy. They proved raids on whistleblow- carried pictures of the Aus- ers who had revealed the tralian publisher and jour- truth about Australia’s ille- nalist Julian Assange who, gal spying on East Timor on February 24, faced a during negotiations for the court that will decide carve-up of that impoverished w h e th e r o r n o th e is to b e country’s oil and gas. This led to extradited to the United t h e p r o s e c u t io n o f w h is t le b lo w e r s not betrayed Bernard Collaery and “Witness St at es a nd a l iv i ng deat h . I k n o w A u s t r a li a H o u s e w e l . Flickr.com / Osipov Valeriy Art: K ” o, n b o g u s c h a r g e s L. ik e J u lia n A s a n Au s t r a li a n my s e lf ,I u s e d t o A s s a n g e t,h e y a r e to b e s ile n c e d in go there in my early days in Lon- a Kaf kaesque trial and put away. don to read the newspapers f r o m h o m e .O p e n e d b y K in g George V over a century ago, 7ustralia House was the ideal i t s v a s t n e s s o f m a r b le a n d s t o n e , starting point for the Assange chandeliers and solemn portraits, march. Free at ColdType imported from Australia when “ I c o n fe s s ”, w r o t e L o r d C u r z o n , Australian soldiers were dying in War, have ensured Viceroy of India, in 1898, “that the slaughter of the First World its landmark as an countries are pieces on a chess- imperial pile of monumental board upon which is being played servility. out a great game for the domina- tion of the world.” Cold T y p e | Mid-February 2020 | www.coldtype.net
Download at: http://coldtype.net/Assets20/PDFs/ColdType200.PilgerAssange.pdf or read it at: https://issuu.com/coldtype/docs/coldtype200.pilgerassange
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ment of Assange and its effects on him have fallen was all swept aside in an instant. Suddenly Assange’s on deaf ears. The media has simply ignored Melzer’s nine years of confinement over a non-existent sexual findings, as though they were never published, that assault investigation and a minor bail infraction were Assange has been, and is being, tortured. We need narratively replaced by an espionage case. And the only pause and imagine how much coverage Melz- media lined up against him once again. er’s report would have received had it concerned the A few years ago the idea that Assange could be treatment of a dissident in an official enemy state like extradited to the US and locked up for the rest of Russia or China. his life, his journalism recast as “espionage”, was mocked as so improbable, so outrageously unlawful A power-worshipping media that no “mainstream” journalist was prepared to ast year British police, in coordination with countenance it as the genuine reason for his seeking an Ecuador now led by a president, Lenin asylum in the embassy. It was derided as a figment of Moreno, who craved closer ties with Wash- the fevered, paranoid imaginations of Assange and ington, stormed the embassy to drag Assange his supporters, and as a self-serving cover for him to Lout and lock him up in Belmarsh prison. In their avoid facing the investigation in Sweden. coverage of these events, journalists again played But when British police invaded the embassy in dumb. They had spent years first professing the April last year and arrested him for extradition to need to “believe women” in the Assange case, even the US on precisely the espionage charges Assange if it meant ignoring evidence, and then proclaiming had always warned were going to be used against the sanctity of bail conditions, even if they were used him, journalists reported these developments simply as a pretext for political persecution. Now that as though they were oblivious to this backstory.
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8jjXe^\ Alc`Xe K _ \ j c X ` iK The Trials Of f ] Julian Assange
;8M@;:IFDN Download your copy at: www.coldtype.net/Assets19/pdf/ColdType183.May2019.pdf or read it at: https://issuu.com/coldtype/docs/coldtype183.may2019 www.coldtype.net | Page 6 ColdType September 2020 Extra The media erased this context not least because it These journalists repackage press releases and lobby would have made them look like willing dupes of US briefings, they tap sources inside government who propaganda, like apologists for US exceptionalism use them as a conduit to the large audiences they and lawlessness, and because it would have proved command, and they relay gossip and sniping from Assange right once more. It would have demon- inside the corridors of power. strated that he is the real journalist, in contrast That is the reality of access journalism that consti- to their pacified, complacent, power-worshipping tutes 99 per cent of what we call political news. corporate journalism. Nonetheless, Assange’s abandonment by journal- ists – the complete lack of solidarity as one of their The death of journalism number is persecuted as flagrantly as dissidents once ight now every journalist in the world ought sent to the gulags – should depress us. It means not to be up in arms, protesting at the abuses only that journalists have abandoned any pretence Assange is suffering, and has suffered, and that they do real journalism, but that they have also the fate he will endure if extradition is ap- renounced the aspiration that it be done by anyone Rproved. They should be protesting on front pages at all. and in TV news shows against the endless and bla- It means that corporate journalists are ready to tant abuses of legal process at Assange’s hearings be viewed with even greater disdain by their audi- in the British courts, including the gross conflict of ences than is already the case. Because through their interest of Lady Emma Arbuthnot, the judge over- complicity and silence, they have sided with govern- seeing his case. ments to ensure that anyone who truly holds power They should be in uproar at the surveillance the to account, like Assange, will end up behind bars. CIA illegally arranged inside the Ecuadorian em- Their own freedom brands them as a captured elite bassy while Assange was confined there, nullify- – irrefutable evidence that they serve power, they do ing the already dishonest US case against him by not confront it. violating his client-lawyer privilege. They should be The only conclusion to be drawn is that corpo- expressing outrage at Washington’s manoeuvres, rate journalists care less about the truth than they accorded a thin veneer of due process by the Brit- do about their careers, their salaries, their status, ish courts, designed to extradite him on espionage and their access to the rich and powerful. As Ed charges for doing work that lies at the very heart of Herman and Noam Chomsky explained long ago in what journalism claims to be – holding the powerful their book Manufacturing Consent, journalists join to account. a media class after lengthy education and training Journalists do not need to care about Assange or processes designed to weed out those not reliably like him. They have to speak out in protest because in sympathy with the ideological interests of their approval of his extradition will mark the official death corporate employers. of journalism. It will mean that any journalist in the world who unearths embarrassing truths about the A sacrificial offering US, who discovers its darkest secrets, will need to riefly, Assange raised the stakes for all jour- keep quiet or risk being jailed for the rest of their nalists by renouncing their god – “access” – lives. and their modus operandi of revealing occa- That ought to terrify every journalist. But it has sional glimpses of very partial truths offered had no such effect. Bup by “friendly”, and invariably anonymous, sources The vast majority of western journalists, of course, who use the media to settle scores with rivals in the never uncover one significant secret from the centres centres of power. Instead, through whistleblowers, of power in their entire professional careers – even Assange rooted out the unguarded, unvarnished, those ostensibly monitoring those power centres. full-spectrum truth whose exposure helped no one www.coldtype.net | Page 7 ColdType Extra September 2020 in power – only us, the public, as we tried to under- organisations long ago, as well as full-throated de- stand what was being done, and had been done, in our nunciations of his oppressors. He and Wikileaks were names. For the first time, we could see how ugly, and on the front line of a war to remake journalism, to often criminal, the behaviour of our leaders was. rebuild it as a true check on the runaway power of Assange did not just expose the political class, he our governments. Journalists had a chance to join exposed the media class too – for their feebleness, for him in that struggle. Instead they fled the battlefield, their hypocrisy, for their dependence on the centres leaving him as a sacrificial offering to their corporate of power, for their inability to criticise a corporate masters. system in which they were embedded. Few of them can forgive Assange that crime. Which this essay first appeared on Jonathan Cook’s blog: is why they will be there cheering on his extradition, https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/ if only through their silence. A few liberal writers will wait till it is too late for Assange, till he has been Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special packaged up for rendition, to voice half-hearted, Prize for Journalism. His books include “Israel mealy-mouthed or agonised columns arguing that, and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the unpleasant as Assange supposedly is, he did not de- Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and serve the treatment the US has in store for him. “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in But that will be far too little, far too late. Assange Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is needed solidarity from journalists and their media www.jonathan-cook.net. Get your FREE subscription to ColdType www.coldtype.net www.coldtype.net | Tony Sutton FROM www.coldtype.net | NASHVILLE TO NURE | Rebecca Gordon PREADING FARTS OF DEATH Conn Hallinan ANOTHER HIROSHI | Joe Allen COVID-S W GREAT GAME MA I MBERG | Ed Clark | Joe Allen . P G. WODEHOUSE IN FA W PANDEE DON ’T AC T NO THE 21ST-CENTURY’S NE I S S U E 2 1 3 W LABOUR IN A TIME OF STRUGGLE | Trevor Hoyle TECH ANTS ON A TOURBUS | John Pilger MIC | Carly Osborn STAYING HUMAN THROUGH A TECHNO-PLAGUE I S S U E 2 1 1 LOST WRITERS, FORGOTTEN GEMS I S S U E 2 1 2 2020 September WRITING :fc[WORTH READING 2020 August WORTH SEEINGK p g \ ■ PHOTOS ■ PHOTOS WORTH SEEING WORTH READING K pg \ WRITING K p g \ :fc[ Mid- August 2020 ■ PHOTOS WORTH SEEING :fc[WRITING WORTH READING 'R MID O IN T H E M I N K E YS ST GloboCap %XECU TIN G ! M E RIC A N S THE AND ELEP HA N T S TRAPPED IN A V N ) SI O N O F T H E SHADOW L OF A M WAR R O . W E . Woman the Republicans call a Marxist S R CHILD REN ! CL O H O C LG I A RENTS FEA R THEI RETTES America gets its own WHEN PA T A XIS ¡ AN D # O V ID Colour Revolution Covid 19: Who could have known? GloboCap is determined to crush any populist [Page resistance 12] to its ideology, no matter how much social chaos– C.J. and Hopkins destruction it unleashes in the process Email [email protected] – write SUBSCRIBE in the subject line www.coldtype.net | Page 8