Over the last four years, the loudest critics of President Trump have repeatedly named his contempt for a free and independent press as one of the most dangerous aspects of his presidency. And this criticism is well founded; while Trump is certainly not the first U.S. president to harbor ill will towards the press, his brand of increasingly violent rhetoric towards journalists is entirely unprecedented.

However, a lack of consistency on the part of many of Trumps most vehement critics leaves their critiques feeling somewhat hollow. Pundits on both sides of the aisle have denounced Trumps attacks on the press, and yet, despite an ongoing and quite blatant attack on the most basic principles of a free press there has been nearly unanimous bipartisan silence occurring in the extradition hearing of Julian Assange, an Australian editor, publisher, and activist who founded WikiLeaks in 2006.

Just last month, Assanges United Kingdom extradition hearings concluded, with a final decision by Judge Baraitser expected in early January. Assange faces seventeen counts of violating the Espionage Act of 1917, which, until now, has never been invoked against a journalist or publisher. If Assange is allowed to be extradited to the U.S. for a trial, he will, without a shadow of a doubt, be convicted and spend the rest of his life in solitary confinement in some maximum security hellhole, all while the criminals whose misdeeds he exposed live out their days in luxury.

Assange has become a bipartisan pariah, despised equally by both the liberal and the conservative establishments. The nearly total media blackout on the hearings in the mainstream U.S. press has been almost as troubling as the hearings themselves. The Washington Post (for whom, supposedly, democracy dies in darkness) and the New York Times, both publications which are no strangers to highlighting the threat Donald Trump poses to a free and independent press, have been noticeably silent about Assanges treatment and the blatant attack on the freedom of the press that it represents, and other mainstream outlets have not been much better. This news blackout is especially absurd given that both the Times and the Post, along with every single other major news organization, actively solicit leaks and classified information from anonymous sources (as they well should). Even more importantly, Assange involved these very same outlets in the dissemination of the Afghan and Iraq War logs, alongside The Guardian and Der Spiegel. Jeremy Corbyn remarked of this cynical duplicity: The media that made so much of Wikileaks disclosures is now absent when it comes time to defend the journalist who was their source.

It is largely thanks to the efforts of a few independent journalists that we know the true nature of the Assange show trial. It was a farce from beginning to end, lacking even the faintest veneer of legitimacy. Every morning, Assange was shaken awake at 5 a.m. and taken to the court, where he spent the rest of the day in a glass cage at the back of the courtroom, completely isolated from the proceedings deciding his fate. As if that wasnt humiliating enough, Assange had to get on his knees to communicate with his lawyers through a slit in the box, their discussions audible to the entire court, including the prosecution (which is a violation of due process, if you were wondering). The violation of his rights to privacy and liberty did not begin with his extradition hearing, however. While Assange was trapped in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, he was spied on by the private security firm Undercover Global SL, which worked on behalf of the U.S. government to install cameras and microphones throughout the embassy and feed audio and video feeds directly to the CIA, including audio and video of Assanges legal consultations. At one point, officials even discussed the possibility of poisoning Assange.

While criminality has no bearing whatsoever on the principle of due process, it must be said that Julian Assange is not a criminal. Julian Assanges work with Wikileaks has been an unmitigated good for democracy and transparency. The real reason, of course, that Assange is facing such concerted persecution is because his journalism has presented incontrovertible proof, to the U.S. public and to the world, of the moral depravity of the U.S. government. For the powerful, this is a crime that cannot go unpunished.

We should take a moment to remind ourselves of the immense good Julian Assange has done, for which his reward is persecution and psychological torture.

Thanks to Julian Assange, we have the Afghan and Iraq War logs, which provided further proof of innumerable war crimes committed by the U.S. and its allies in Iraq and Afghanistan. John Sloboda, co-founder of the Iraq Body count, testified during Assanges extradition hearing that the Iraq War Logs make up the greatest contribution of public knowledge about civilian casualties in Iraq, with nearly 15,000 deaths reported that had previously been unreported. In one of the more infamous leaks, a blood-chilling video known as Collateral Murder, we see the crew of an Apache helicopter firing on a crowd of civilians on the streets of Baghdad, laughing gleefully at the deaths of eighteen people, including two Reuters journalists. Dean Yates, chief of the Reuters Baghdad bureau at the time, said that it was only through the Wikileaks revelations that the truth about the deaths of his colleagues came to light.

We also know about the case of Khalid El-Masri, a German citizen, who was kidnapped and renditioned to a CIA black site, where he was brutally tortured for half a year (his torture ranging from extended periods of total sensory deprivation to sodomy), only to be abandoned on a remote road in Albania, blindfolded, once the CIA realized he wasnt even the individual they were looking for. Documents leaked by Wikileaks revealed that the German government did not pursue accountability against the CIA operatives because the U.S. government pressured them into dropping the matter.

More recently, in 2017, Wikileaks published a cache of documents known as Vault 7, which details various CIA surveillance and cyber-warfare projects, including their ability to compromise smartphones, smart TVs, cars and web browsers.

And this list could continue, page after page. There is an entire decades worth of high profile leaks published by Wikileaks, all of which have contributed immeasurably to the publics knowledge of the U.S. government and its conduct at home and abroad. As Noam Chomsky put it in his written testimony, Assange performed an enormous service to all the people in the world who treasure the values of freedom and democracy and who therefore demand the right to know what their elected representatives are doing. The bottom line is that if you have criticized President Trump anytime over the past four years for his attacks on journalists or the freedom of the press, you should care about the fate of Julian Assange. If he is extradited, his trial and inevitable conviction will signal the evisceration of even the pretense of a free press in this country. The imprisonment of Julian Assange will be yet another blow to the ability of journalists to hold the U.S. government accountable for its crimes, past, present and future.

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Julian Assange's Extradition Hearings Are an Attack on Freedom and Democracy - The University News

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#TheCanaryLive Julian Assange, democracy, the media and the US election - The Canary

Written statements by defence lawyers and witnesses, given at WikiLeaks founder Julian Assanges extradition hearings at the Old Bailey, have recently been published online. They suggest that certain events associated with Assanges prosecution bear all the hallmarks of the US political scandal known as Watergate. That scandal saw the leaker exonerated and the US president disgraced.

In one of the statements, defence lawyer Gareth Peirce outlined how the Ecuadorian embassy in London, on behalf of the Ecuadorian government, was placed under close surveillance by Spanish company UC Global. However, its alleged that UC Global head David Morales Guillen provided that surveillance to US intelligence. This was organised via Las Vegas Sands corporation, owned by Sheldon Adelson.

Its worth mentioning that Adelson donated millions of dollars to the Republican Party and to Donald Trumps re-election campaign. Peirce provided further details of the surveillance, including monitoring of visits to Assange by his doctors and lawyers, which violates doctor-patient and lawyer-client confidentiality.

More details were provided anonymously by an employee of UC Global. The witness added:

David Morales indicated that the purpose of installing the microphones, as per the request of the United States, was for the microphones and cameras which were situated in places like the meeting room to record the meetings that Assange has with his visitors, but especially those of his defence attorneys and, very specifically, the coordinator of his legal defence [Spanish lawyer and renowned former judge] Baltasar Garzn.

This video provides a visual explanation:

Pierce has claimed that UC Global also monitored Garzns movements. And that Garzns office was broken into two weeks after conversations took place at UC Global about doing just that. There were even plans to kidnap and/or seriously harm Mr Assange.

Regarding the break-in, a UC Global employee states:

Morales spoke about the possibility of entering the legal offices of ILOCAD, the law firm which is headed by Baltasar Garzn in Madrid, given that Mr. Garzon coordinated the legal defence of Julian Assange. This would allow us to obtain information concerning Mr. Assange for the Americans. Two weeks after this conversation, the national media reported that men in balaclavas had entered Garzns law offices.

As for the proposal that Assange be kidnapped or poisoned, the same witness stated:

I recall [Morales] said that the Americans were desperate and that they had even suggested that more extreme measures should be employed against the guest to put an end to the situation of Assanges permanence in the embassy. Specifically, the suggestion that the door of the embassy could be left open, which would allow the argument that this had been an accidental mistake, which would allow persons to enter from outside the embassy and kidnap the asylee; even the possibility of poisoning Mr. Assange was discussed

The witness also claimed to possess photographic evidence of Garzn being followed.

In 1971, Daniel Ellsberg leaked the top-secret History of U.S. Decision-making in Vietnam 1945-68 (which became known as the Pentagon Papers). They were published by the New York Times and the Washington Post. The documents showed how, according to Ellsberg, the Vietnam War had:

been started and continued by the US Government in the knowledge that it could not be won, and that President Johnson and his administration had lied to Congress and to the public in relation to its origins, costs and prospects.

Ellsberg was charged with violations under the Espionage Act. President Richard Nixon then ordered the plumbers, a special investigations unit, to undermine Ellsberg by stealing records from his psychiatrist. Not long afterwards, there followed the infamous break-in of the Democratic offices at the Watergate hotel.

All charges against Ellsberg were dropped once it was known that Nixon organised the burglary and FBI wiretapping of Ellsbergs psychiatrists office.

Ellsberg told the Assange extradition hearings that the surveillance of the WikiLeaks founder was comparable with what happened to himself. In particular, Ellsberg likened Assanges prosecution to his own, in which the US acted in part in revenge in an attempt to crush all such future exposure of the truth.

US civil liberties expert Jameel Jaffer also pointed out that the US Supreme Court:

read the Pentagon Papers case broadly as having upheld the right of the press to publish information of great public concern obtained from documents stolen by a third party.

As was the case with Watergate, its not Assange who should be punished now, but those in the highest office. For they continue to protect the war criminals WikiLeaks exposed. Meanwhile, after further submissions, a ruling regarding the extradition request is due on 4 January 2021.

Featured image via Flickr / Cancillera del Ecuador

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Assange prosecution could be another Watergate. But the real villains are yet to face justice. - The Canary

The World Socialist Web Site is publishing messages of support for Dr. Joseph Scalice from throughout the world. Dr. Scalice who has come under attack from the Philippine Stalinists for his powerfullecture, First as Tragedy, Second as Farce: Marcos, Duterte and the Communist Parties of the Philippines, which examined the support given by the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), and the various organizations that follow its political line, to authoritarian Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte in 2016.

Acutely sensitive to the criticism of the CPP, its founder Jose Maria Sison, without a shred of evidence, has denounced Dr. Scalice as a paid CIA agent and an informer for Duterte. Dr. Scalice, through the establishment of the historical record about the betrayals of the CPP, has done a service to the working class in the Philippines and internationally.

We urge our readers to come to the defence of Dr. Scalice, including by sendingstatements of support to the WSWS opposing the slanderous attack on him by the CPP and sharing his lecture widely.

Michael, a musician from Sydney, Australia

Through his doctoral dissertation and lectures, Joseph Scalice has exposed the perfidious character of Joma Sison and the Communist Party of the Philippines. The large audience Dr. Scalice has reachedunusually so for academic researchis a testament to the importance and contemporary relevance of the subject matter, his skill as a researcher, writer, and speaker, and, critically, to the historical context and global perspective he imparts.

Over and over, the CPP has betrayed the workers, peasants, and students of the Philippines, a country with a proud history of revolutionary struggle. Scalices work demonstrates that these betrayals did not result from momentary tactical errors, but from the partys Stalinist program of socialism in one country and the two-stage theory.

Unable to refute Scalices work on factual grounds, Sison has resorted to blatant lies, slander, name-calling, and threats. Again, this is straight from the Stalinist playbook.

In circumstances of mounting unrest around the world, truth is increasingly dangerous to ruling elites and their servants, the false prophets that claim to represent the working class.

Joseph Scalice, like Julian Assange, and the principled historians who have exposed the falsifications of the 1619 Project, plays a crucial role in exposing the lies and diversions that have suppressed revolutionary struggle for decades.

I wholeheartedly applaud Scalice for his scholarship, and the World Socialist Web Site for its campaign in his defence. I am proud to join the growing number of academics, students, and workers pledging their support for Dr. Scalice.

Erika Zimmer, High School Teacher

In documenting the history of Sison and the connections of the Communist Party of the Philippines to the fascistic dictator Duterte, Joseph Scalice has undertaken a courageous service to those who have studied the bloody betrayals of Stalinism for decades as well as new layers of youth, students and academics entering into a fight against imperialism. Scalices lecture reveals well documented evidence of the opportunism, cynicism and degeneration of the Communist Party of the Philippines through decades. It sheds a light on the political origins of Duterte which I found very clarifying.

The lecture, predictably, resulted in howls of outrage and threats from Sison whose political life has been thoroughly exposed and discredited. The lecture has been and will be closely read by class-conscious workers and young people in the Philippines and internationally who will draw conclusions about the role of Stalinism today in countries of belated capitalist development. I applaud Scalices passionate lecture and his meticulously presented evidence. He has struck a blow against historical falsehood.

Carolyn Kennett, Senior Lecturer at Macquarie University

I would like to express my complete and unequivocal support for Dr. Joseph Scalice and his scholarship on the Stalinist Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP).

The vicious and slanderous attacks by Jose Maria Sison and his supporters are an attack on academic freedomthe right and responsibility to teach, review and discuss knowledge without restriction or interference and to publish the results of their scholarly work.

With historical accuracy, using many sources, Dr. Scalice exposes the role of Stalinism and Maoism in betraying workers and subordinating them to their respective national bourgeoisies. The meticulous research Joseph has conducted is of historical and political significance for the working class in the Philippines, South East Asia and internationally.

Gabriela Zabala, English Academic

The revelations in the lecture by historian Joseph Scalice are of paramount importance in exposing not only the politically criminal role of the CPP and Sison in their efforts to subordinate the Philippine working class to its own national bourgeoisie including the brutal dictator Ferdinand Marcos, but also the CPPs collaboration with the fascistic Duterte regime.

The research is thorough and rigorous and most importantly, it is informed by a historical understanding of Stalinism from a Marxist perspective. This is an important contribution to the development of the political consciousness of not only the Philippine, but also the international working class about the role that Stalinism has played and continues to play in politically disarming the working class. Sison and the CPP cannot answer Scalices research and resort to the tried and true Stalinist method of slanderous denunciations and violence to silence dissent and suppress all opposition to its opportunist alliances with capitalist regimes, including fascist ones, and its betrayal of the working class.

Scalice should enjoy the academic freedom to write, speak and lecture on his research, especially on an issue of such political relevance. As the working class is becoming increasingly radicalised it will require, as part of its political arsenal, all the historical knowledge that is available about its strategic struggles against all forms of oppression and national opportunism, including Stalinism. Scalices lecture, therefore, should be widely disseminated and all slanderous attacks and threats of violence against him by Sison and the CPP should not only be condemned, but must also immediately cease.

Robert, Engineering Student from Newcastle

I extend my support to Dr. Joseph Scalices principled campaign for Marxism in the Philippines.

It is clear to many that read through Scalices exhaustive research on the political history of the Philippines that the Stalinist CPP has played a rotten role in betraying the political confidence of the working class. Throughout the history of the 20th century, the theory of socialism in one country has only served the interests of a privileged bureaucracy.

Joma Sisons slandersthat Scalice is a CIA agent conducting a psychological operationreflect his desperate position as a result of his own bankrupt, nationalist politics. The only way socialism can be realised is through the independent mobilisation of the working class on an international program. The working class owns no borders or propertyit has a world to win.

Trotsky wrote of those parties which sacrifice the historic interests of workers for short term parliamentary gains with the bourgeoisie, the great events which rush upon mankind will not leave of these outlived organizations one stone upon another.

Today, Trotskys writingsparticularly on the USSRstand as a vindication. It is impossible to understand the history of the 20th century, as well as the 21st, without them. I encourage all workers throughout South East Asia to study them as part of the fight for genuine socialism, and to rally to Scalices defence.

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Statements from Australia in opposition to the Stalinist slanders of Dr. Scalice - WSWS

Under the guise of a phenomenon called security, currently interpreted as suspect any pro-China sentiment, or Dont reveal murder by United States forces, sinister theatrics are at play across Australia.

These reveal Shaoquett Moselmane MP as one victim, ABC journalist Dan Oakes another and in Londons Belmarsh security prison sits Julian Assange.

Labor MP Moselmanes return to parliament took place after the Australian Federal Police (AFP) had repeated that he was not suspected of anything, nor had there ever been any plan to charge him.

In which case, why the raid on his home, why the derision by the media and politicians, why the stress on his family, why the failure of parliamentary colleagues and mainstream journalists to stand up for Shaoquett and show courage and a touch of decency?

In the Oakes case, the AFP has taken three years to confirm that this journalist would not be prosecuted for reporting on alleged war crimes carried out by Australian special forces in Afghanistan.

With that confirmation came the groveling claim there was a reasonable chance of securing a conviction against Mr. Oakes. This shifty conduct looks like cover for years of so-called administration of justice, in which suspicions were maintained but human and financial costs ignored.

The Moselmane-Oakes-Assange cases are different in detail, but each is mired in trends towards greater police and Australian Security and Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) powers, greater secrecy and authoritarianism which make it possible for almost any citizen to be pursued, humiliated and the perpetrators not held accountable.

In a sinister drama, lets identify the players and ask whether they would be prepared to apologise and support claims to pay reparation to the victims.

From the right-wing of the stage enter journalists and politicians, who jumped at the chance to deride someone who had been positive about Chinas handling of the COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan.

The cast, led by Ray Hadley of Radio 2GB, lined up to head kick Moselmane. They included: shock jock Alan Jones, Sky News anchor Peta Credlin; former politicians Stephen Conroy and Graham Richardson; Sydney Morning Herald journalists Lisa Ventin and Nick McKenzie; plus a representative of the Daily Mail and home affairs minister Peter Dutton, NSW Labors Walt Secord and Mark Latham of One Nation.

Without too much reflection, these characters were enthusiastic singers in a chorus of anti-Chinese sentiment, with Moselmane an easy target.

Between March 31 and April 10, their performance reached fever pitch. Moselmane was the subject of 32 articles and broadcasts in which Hadleys language plumbed the depths of the shock jock repertoire.

In his contribution to a civilized society, Hadley described Moselmane as this jerk, a train wreck, a Chinese PR spokesperson, a lunatic, a low filthy bludger, this low life, this bastard, this cancerous growth, unworthy traitor and a dolt.

Other head kickers who may be feeling ashamed that they echoed Hadleys behavior may appear on Sky News or in columns for the Daily Telegraph and the SMH to concede that they made a terrible error of judgement and, in future, will be more reflective, more analytical and far more professional.

The next extras to appear on stage are 40 representatives of the AFP, complete with sniffer dogs and a well-briefed posse of media to film their work.

Fortified by foreign interference legislation, McDonalds hamburgers and Subway sandwiches, the police are diligent in collecting dust and hair samples from someone they suspected of doing nothing wrong. Nevertheless, they trashed his civil liberties, traumatised his wife and elderly parents and, over five months, gave the public reason to think that this MPs suspension from the Labor Party was justified.

Perhaps the police cant apologise and may only be puppets on strings pulled by a Prime Minister, Attorney General and Home Affairs Minister. If so, the string pullers also need to move into the confessional.

The next extras to appear are ghosts there but not there.

They played a part, but stayed silent and invisible. They contributed to stigmatizing, but the audience must imagine what they might have said. This is a reference to media, often referred to as the mainstream, who failed to do their job, who did not write about the significance of civil liberties, and whose silence could be interpreted as endorsement of Hadley and Co.

The silence of NSW ALP colleagues has also been significant, and sad, suggesting that courage to stand above the fray should be kept in cold storage for fear of upsetting the headkickers.

The Moselmane and Oakes cases prompt concern for another victim of abuse by the powerful states of the US, UK and Australia, that have been fascinated with suppressing truths.

Fellow journalists have failed to advocate freedom for Julian Assange. They have not even been interested in reporting his extradition hearings in Londons Old Bailey, let alone protesting the cruelty inherent in his continued imprisonment.

Peter Greste cries crocodile tears about the absence of press freedom in Australia, but in proud civil liberties tradition had labeled Assange as not really being a journalist. One exposes truths. The other stays silent about a massive injustice.

Where were the mainstream media when Hadley was hurling abuse about Moselmane, when Peta Credlin developed her brand of insults and Dutton was hinting that Moselmane was traitor?

In the last act of these theatrics, amends may be made.

In a centre stage, solo performance, Jodi McKay, leader of the NSW ALP may appear and recall that the Parliamentary Privileges Committee exonerated Shaoquett. She may therefore concede that her colleague had never been given any presumption of innocence, hence her apology and statements that Shaoquett is welcome back in the parliament and his party suspension will be lifted.

Justice could be restored as the bread of parliament and of the people.

The question of substantial reparations for Shaoquett and his family may eventually be addressed. But in this search for a touch of justice, it may take three years of thoughtlessness and an eventual decision to do nothing.

The audience in this theatre leaves dumfounded, yet has learned that these cases are a warning for all who cherish democracy and civil liberties, let alone the ideals of a common humanity.

[Stuart Rees OAM is Professor Emeritus at the University of Sydney and author of Cruelty or Humanity, Challenges, Opportunities and Responsibilities.]

Read more:
Moselmane, Oakes and Assange: What price justice? - Green Left

Fidel Narvez was in the court in Londonfor the majority of the hearings and offers this comprehensive summary.

Old Bailey court in London. (Wikimedia Commons)

By Fidel Narvezand translated by Ben NortonThe Grayzone

At the end of the hearings that seek to extradite journalistJulian Assangeto the United States, on Oct. 1, his defense team should have felt triumphant. Because with more than 30 witnesses and testimonies, throughout the whole month of September, they gave a beating to the prosecution representing the U.S.

If the case in London were decided solely on justice, as it should in a state based on law, this battle would have been won by Assange.

However, this trial of the century is, above all, a political trial, and there remains the feeling that the ruling was made beforehand, regardless of the law.

The court kicked off on Sept. 7 with hundreds of protesters outside, in contrast with the restrictions that the court imposed inside in what is the most important case against the freedom of expression in an entire generation.

It only permitted the entry of five people on the list of family members, and five people from the public, who were put in an adjacent room, where they were barely able to follow the video transmission.

The judge, Vanessa Baraitser, who is overseeing the case, without a convincing reason cut the access to the video stream that had previously been authorized to nearly 40 human rights organizations and international observers, including Amnesty International, Reporters Without Borders and PEN International.

Each day, starting at 5 am, selfless activists stood in line so that observers like Reporters Without Borders, for example, could enter and take one of the five available seats. Thanks to them, and to family members of Assange, I was able to be in court to attend the majority of the hearings.

Julian himself was also woken up, every day, at 5 am and, naked and handcuffed, subjected to humiliating inspections and x-ray scans, before being put into a police car and crossing through London traffic for more than an hour and a half.

At 10 a.m., when court was finally in session, Julian had already endured five hours of insult, before being put in a glass cage for the rest of the day.

To communicate with his lawyers, Julian had to get on his knees to talk to them through a slit in the cage, just a few meters away from the ears of the prosecutions attorneys something that clearly violates due process.

The defense began by requesting deferment of the hearings, in light of the fact that the U.S. had filed a new extradition request at the last minute, with new accusations that not Assange himself was able to look over.

Assange supporters outside the Old Bailey courthouse in London at the start of the extradition trial of Julian Assange. (You Tube, AcTivism Munich still)

In the previous six months, Julian had practically no access to his lawyers. The judge, however, rejected any deferment.

The defense had based its strategy on proving that the legal process was being abused in many interrelated ways. In this extensive summary, allow me to explain 10 reasons that I identified as important factors against the extradition.

For this exercise I have relied, furthermore, on thereportingof American journalistKevin Gosztolaand that of the former British diplomatCraig Murray, next to whom I shared a seat in the court.

1) The accusation is for a political crime, which is not subject to extradition. Publishing classified, and truthful, information is not a crime.

Julian Assange would be prosecuted under the Espionage Act of the United States for a political crime, which is excluded from the extradition agreements between the United Kingdom and U.S.

The U.S. attorney generals office has furthermore said that Assange, as a foreigner, would not be able to exercise the right of the First Amendment. That is to say, punishments apply to foreigners in the U.S., but not legal protections.

The director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, Trevor Timm, told the court that the extradition of Assange would be the end of national security journalism because it would criminalize all reporters who receive secret documents.

Please Contributeto Consortium News25th Anniversary Fall Fund Drive

He criticized the accusation that having a SecureDrop is a crime, as The Guardian, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and more than 80 other news organization, including the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, also currently use SecureDrop.

Timm said the Department of Justice has a political orientation, that the prosecution cannot decide who is a journalist and who is not, and that the charges against Assange would radically rewrite the First Amendment.

This was also affirmed in the written testimony by the director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, Jameel Jaffer, who insisted that the accusation against Assange is meant to discourage journalism that is essential for democracy, and represents a grave threat to the freedom of the press.

The professor of journalism and former investigative reporter Mark Feldstein testified that leaks are a vital element of journalism, that the collection of classified information is a standard operating procedure for journalists, and that WikiLeaks publications are constitutionally protected.

The U.S. lawyer Eric Lewis, a former law professor at Georgetown University, noted that the Obama administration had finally decided not to try Assange because of what is known as The New York Times problem that is to say, there was not a way to prosecute him for publishing classified information without the same principle applying to many other journalists.

Lewis testified that the Trump administration had put pressure on prosecutors from the Eastern District of Virginia, and cited a New York Times article that referencedMatthew Miller, the former Justice Department spokesman under Obama, who warned the case could establish a precedent that threatens all journalists.

This same concern was expressed before the court by the lawyer Thomas A. Durkin, a former assistant United States attorney and professor of law, who warned that the Trump administration ordering the reopening of the case was clearly a political decision.

Both Durkin and Lewis affirmed that Assange would be condemned for life, given that the sentences for spying in the U.S. are generally life in prison, and the most lenient are from 20 to 30 years.

The lawyer Carey Shenkman, who wrote a book about the history and use of the Espionage Act, testified that the law is extraordinarily broad and one of the most divisive laws of the United States. Never, in the history of the Espionage Act, has there been an accusation against an American editor and neither has there been an extraterritorial accusation against a non-American editor.

The prosecution, for its part, in what was one of the most terrifying admissions heard in the court, recognized that, while the Espionage Act had never been used against a journalist, its extensive scope would allow them to use it in this occasion.

The lawyer Jennifer Robinson, a member of Assanges legal team, submitted to the court a written testimony detailing an offer of a pardon by President Donald Trump, in exchange for Assange identifying the source of the leaks that WikiLeakspublished from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) in 2016.

Dana Rohrabacher. (Gage Skidmore/Wikimedia Commons)

The offer was made through the U.S. Representative Dana Rohrabacher during a visit to the embassy of Ecuador. The congressman had explained that the information from Assange about the source of the leaks would be interest, value, and assistance for the president, and would resolve the ongoing speculation about Russian involvement.

The offer from the White House demonstrated the politicized nature of the case, given that the charges were made after Assange refused to provide any information.

The award-winning journalist Patrick Cockburn, who has written for The Independent for more than 30 years, submitted written testimony in which he said that Assange is being persecuted because he exposed the way the US, as the worlds sole superpower,really conducted its wars something that the military and political establishments saw as a blow to their credibility and legitimacy.

For his part, the journalistIan Cobain, who worked for The Guardian during the publication of WikiLeaks materials in 2010, said in written testimony that Assange is being persecuted because, There is always the understanding one that is so clear that it needs not be spoken that anyone who has knowledge of state crimes, and who comes forward to corroborate allegations about those crimes, may face prosecution.

The renowned professorNoam Chomskytold the court in written testimony that Assange has performed an enormous service to all the people in the world who treasure the values of freedom and democracy and who therefore demand the right to know what their elected representatives are doing. His actions in turn have led him to be pursued in a cruel and intolerable manner.

Yet, if there remain doubts about the political nature of the case, there was also Judge Baraitser herself, who in the court said her original intention was to have the verdict before the U.S. presidential elections, and who asked the defense and the prosecution what implications a ruling would have had after said elections.

Why is a British judge, who is supposed to impart justice solely based on facts and evidence, waiting for a purely political event in another country to reveal her verdict?

2) There was never a reckless disclosure of names. No one has been hurt due to WikiLeaks publications.

The legendary leaker of the Pentagon Papers, Daniel Ellsberg, told that court that he totally disagrees with thegood Ellsberg / bad Assange theory. He said Julian did everything possible to redact and withhold damaging information, working with media outlets in the redaction process.

The Pentagon Papers were top secret, but WikiLeaks documents were not classified as restricted and hence, by definition, there should be nothing that is truly sensitive.

Daniel Ellsberg in 2020. (Christopher Michel, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons)

Ellsberg said that Assange withheld 15,000 files from theAfghan War Diaryto protect names, and also requested help from the State Department and Defense Department to redact names, but the U.S. government refused to help, despite the fact that it is standard journalistic practice to consult with officials to minimize damage.

In the court-martial of Chelsea Manning, Ellsberg noted, the Defense Department admitted that it could not identify a single death caused by WikiLeaks publications.

The co-founder of the organization Iraq Body Count (IBC), John Sloboda, whose work has been recognized by the United Nations and European Union, testified that he worked with WikiLeaks and media outlets to prepare theIraq War Logsbefore their publication. Sloboda recounted that Assange demanded and directed a very strict redaction process to prevent possible harm.

WikiLeaks used a software that was able to edit thousands of documents, identifying each word that was not in the English-language dictionary and automatically removing it, such as Arab names for example. Then, the files were scanned again to remove occupations, such as doctor or driver, in order to better protect identities.

This editing took weeks and was a meticulous process, Sloboda recounted. There was considerable pressure on WikiLeaks because other media outlets wanted to push it to publish more quickly, but the position of Assange and WikiLeaks was to be excessively cautious.

John Goetz, the current director of investigations for German public television NDR, confirmed that when he worked with Assange in 2010, representing Der Spiegel, WikiLeaks had a rigorous redaction process, and that Assange was obsessed with keeping classified documents secure and preventing harmful disclosures.

I remember being very irritated by Assanges constant and endless reminders that we needed to be safe, and that WikiLeaks ended up removing more things than even the Defense Department, Goetz said. Assange frequently discussed how to find confidential names so that we can redact them and take measures to make sure that nobody is at risk.

The journalist Nicky Hager, author of the book Other Peoples Wars: New Zealand in Afghanistan, Iraq and the war on terror, testified that one of his jobs was to identify any cable that should not be released for reasons like the personal security of people mentioned, and that WikiLeaks personnel were committed to a careful and responsible process.

He was shocked to see the level of care that they were taking to redact information that could hurt third parties. People were working in silence for hours and hours reviewing documents, he recalled.

The veteran Italian journalistStefania Maurizi, whose persistent reporting showed howBritish prosecutors pressured their Swedish counterpartsto not interrogate Assange in London, said in her writtentestimony:

I myself was given access to 4,189 cables I sat down with Mr, Assange and went through the cables as systematically as possible Everything was done with the utmost responsibility and attention That was the first time I had ever worked in any publishing enterprise involving strict procedures of that kind. Even experienced international colleagues found the procedures burdensome, involving protections considerably beyond those which any of them were accustomed to exercising Not even the work done by close colleagues about the Italian mafia required such extreme precaution and security, it never rose to those levels.

3) WikiLeaks publications are truthful information that is historically relevant.

The British-American lawyer Clive Stafford Smith, the founder of the human rights organization Reprieve, testified that WikiLeaks shined a light on torture of detainees in Guantnamo, and revealed that many were not terrorists, but rather had been arrested in Afghanistan in a bounty system. The worst accusations had been staged against prisoners, who were sometimes forced to admit to them under torture.

Stafford Smith explained that it was thanks to WikiLeaks that the use of these torture techniques are known, such as the pulley, or hanging someone by their wrists until their shoulders are dislocated, and cited as an example Binyam Mohamed, a U.K. citizen whose genitals were on a daily basis cut with a shaving razor.

(thierry ehrmann, Flickr)

The lawsuits against the United States drone assassination program in Pakistan would have been impossible without WikiLeaks, Stafford Smith said.

John Sloboda of Iraq Body Count said that the Iraq War Logs constitute the greatest contribution to public knowledge about civilian casualties in Iraq, revealing around 15,000 deaths that had previously been unknown.

Patrick Cockburn, of The Independent, insisted, WikiLeaks did what all journalists should do, which is to make important information available to the public, enabling people to make evidence-based judgments about the world around them and, in particular, about the actions of their governments.

The files published by WikiLeaks convey the reality of war far better than even the most well-informed journalistic accounts, Cockburn added, showing how the dead were automatically identified as terrorists caught in the act, regardless or evidence to the contrary.

The former journalist Dean Yates, who was chief of Reuters Baghdad bureau in 2007 and 2008, said in his written declaration that it was not until 2010, when WikiLeaks published the famous Collateral Murder video, that he knew the truth about the death of his journalist colleagues Namir Noor-Eldeen and Saeed Chmagh.

Yates recounted the attempts by the United States to cover up the truth, and that the military only showed him part of the video. The only person who told the truth was Assange.

Had it not been for Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange, the truth of what happened to Namir and Saeed, the truth of what happened on that street in Baghdad on July 12, 2007, would not have been brought to the world,Yates said. What Assange did was 100 percent an act of truth-telling, exposing to the world what the war in Iraq in fact was and how the U.S. military behaved and lied.

On this point, Judge Baraitser interrupted Yates testimony, due to repeated pressure by the prosecution. It is ironic that a court would seek to criminalize journalism, while refusing to hear about the crimes exposed by journalism.

That is what happened in the much-anticipated testimony by the German-Lebanese citizen Khaled el-Masri, who was kidnapped and tortured by the CIA and who for technical problems with the online transmission was not able to testify in person.

The judge stopped listening to him, also under pressure by the prosecution. This is what provoked an indignant reaction from Julian Assange, who shouted, I will not censor the testimony of a torture victim before this tribunal I will not accept it!

The prosecution, finally, allowed the summary of the written statement to be read: El-Masri was brought to a CIA black site in Afghanistan, where he was beaten, strip searched, sodomized, force-fed with a tube through his nose, and subject to total sensory deprivation and other cruel forms of inhumane treatment for six months.

Finally, when the torturers realized that they had the wrong man, El-Masri was abandoned with his eyes blindfolded on a remote road in Albania. When he returned to Germany, his house was empty and his wife and kids had gone.

The journalist John Goetz, onGerman public television, demonstrated that El-Masris story was true, and tracked down the CIA agents who were involved. German prosecutors sent out orders for the arrest of the kidnappers, but they were never executed.

WikiLeaks publications proved that the United States put pressure on the German government to block a legal investigation into the crime.

The European Court of Human Rights, using the WikiLeaks cables, agreed with El-Masri, who wrote to the court:

WikiLeaks publications have been essential to accept the truth of the crime and the cover-up without dedicated and brave exposure of the state secrets in question, what happened to me would never have been acknowledged and understood.

4) WikiLeaks was not the first to publish the diplomatic cables without redaction, but only Julian Assange is being persecuted.

Three of the 18 charges against Assange accuse him specifically of publishing U.S. diplomatic cables without redactions. But the defense and its witnesses showed that WikiLeaks was not the first media outlet to publish these files, and those who did it were not prosecuted. WikiLeaks was careful to encrypt the archive, but actions out of Assanges control led to its publication.

The German computer science professor Christian Grothoff testified about an investigation into the chronology of the events of 2011. Grothoff reviewed the timeline: In the summer of 2010, WikiLeaks shared the cables with The Guardianjournalist David Leigh, through a file on a temporary website protected with a very strong encryption password. Assange only wrote part of the password on paper. WikiLeaks and its media partners began to publish the edited cables in November 2010.

WikiLeaks suffered constant attacks on its servers and mirror copies of its archive were created around the world to protect the information. Those copies were not accessible without a secure code. In February 2011, The Guardian journalists David Leigh and Luke Harding published a book in which the title of a chapter was the complete password for the unredacted cables. When the book published the key, WikiLeaks no longer had the ability to delete the mirror archives or change the encryption.

On Aug. 25, 2011, the German newspaper Der Freitag published an article in which it explained that the password revealed by Leigh and Harding could be used, and in a few days the complete archive, without redaction or editing, appeared on Cryptome.org, a page created in the United States. The websites MRKVA and Pirate Bay also published copies of the archive. On Sept. 1, the U.S. government accessed the unredacted cache for the first time, through Pirate Bay.

Professor Grothoff testified that he had not been able to find a single example of the code published online before The Guardian journalists published it in their book.

Assange and his WikiLeaks colleague Sarah Harrison called the U.S. State Department to warn that the unredacted cables were online, but their warnings were ignored. The journalist Stefania Maurizi recounted in her testimony that she was meeting with WikiLeaks the same day that she found out that the cables had been published, out of Assanges control.

I remember that when I arrived there were fierce discussions as to what to do.Julian was clearly acutely troubledby the situation with which Wikileaks was faced, she recalled. For more than a year, he had been taking all of the possible measures to prevent this. Assange was himself making urgent attempts to inform the (US) State Department the information was circulating out of Wikileaks control.

WikiLeaks had to release the cables on Sept. 2, 2010, and published an editorial note indicating that AGuardian journalist has negligently disclosedtop secret WikiLeaks decryption passwords to hundreds of thousands of unredacted unpublished US diplomatic cables.

Thejournalist Glenn Greenwald, who won the Pulitzer Prize for the Edward Snowden revelations, wrote that day:

Once WikiLeaks realized what had happened, they notified the State Department, but faced a quandary: virtually every governments intelligence agencies would have had access to these documents as a result of these events, but the rest of the world including journalists, whistleblowers and activists identified in the documents did not. At that point, WikiLeaks decided quite reasonably that the best and safest course was to release all the cables in full, so that not only the worlds intelligence agencies but everyone had them, so that steps could be taken to protect the sources.

The journalist Jakob Augstein, editor of Der Freitag, confirmed in his written testimony that, in August 2010, his media outlet published an article titled Leak at WikiLeaks, about the about the release of the password by The Guardianjournalists. Assange called him and requested that he not publish anything that could reveal where the archive could be found, worried about the security of the informants of the U.S. government.

Finally,John Young, the representative of Cryptome.org, confirmed in his written testimony that his U.S.-based website first published the unredacted diplomatic cables, before WikiLeaks republished it:

I published on Cryptome.org unredacted diplomatic cables on September 1, 2011 and that publication remains available at the present no US law enforcement authority has notified me that this publication of the cables is illegal, consists or contributes to a crime in any way, nor have they asked for them to be removed.

5) Assange never helped Chelsea Manning access national security information.

Chelsea Manning in 2017. (Vimeo)

One of the charges against Julian Assange is that he supposedly conspired with the soldier Chelsea Manning to obtain greater access to government databases y hid his identity to do it.

The argument is that Manning spoke in an encrypted chat with the user Nathaniel Frank (who the United States alleges, but has not proved, was Assange) and requested help from him to open an encrypted part of a password. The defense argues that Manning asked for help to protect her identity, something that journalists are obligated to do with their sources.

The defense brought before the court the best possible expert on the material: Patrick Eller, a forensic digital expert who worked for two decades for the U.S. Army and now is a professor of forensic evidence and the president of Metadata Forensics, which investigates civil and criminal cases. Eller reviewed the transcriptions from the court-martial of Manning in 2013 and came to the following conclusions:

In his testimony, Eller also established that neither he nor the U.S. government can prove that Nathaniel Frank was truly Julian Assange, or any other person.

6) Assange would not have a fair trial in the U.S. Spy Court.

US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia at Alexandria. (Court website)

Julian Assange would be tried in the Spy Court of the United States, where national security cases go, and which in 2010 opened a secret investigation against WikiLeaks and Assange, for which he requested political asylum from Ecuador.

Continued here:
Julian Assange's 'Trial of the Century': 10 Reasons Why it Threatens Freedom of Speech - Consortium News

Too often we hear that protests do not succeed. That resistance does not achieve results. With press freedom on trial, the stakes are too high to subscribe to such pessimism.

Julian Assanges extradition hearings in central London have now come to a close after a full week trial, with the verdict set to be decided in January 2021. During Assanges hearings, the Progressive International hosted the Belmarsh Tribunal in order to put the United States on trial for its imperialist crimes against humanity.

The Belmarsh Tribunal was inspired from the Russell-Sartre Tribunal of 1966, when representatives of 18 countries gathered to hold the United States accountable for their war crimes in Vietnam, in the absence of an international authority that dared to do so. Tariq Ali present at the Belmarsh Tribunal is known for his testimony at the Russell Tribunal addressing US involvement in Vietnam.

At the tribunal, we gathered to defend Julian from 175 years in an American prison. To defend the right to publish government policy made behind closed doors. And the right of whistleblowers to expose corruption. It included voices of politicians, journalists, philosophers, human rights lawyers, and many courageous supporters lining the street outside the courthouse of Old Bailey:

Lets be clear: Julian Assange should have never been charged with a crime, unless its a crime to expose war crimes. Roger Waters, Activist, Pink Floyd co-founder

We must turn the tables on those who seek to persecute Julian and make them defendants who must answer for their crimes. Yanis Varoufakis, DiEM25 co-founder

The trial in Old Bailey is a farce: a parody to give the appearance of justice over the criminalization of a man who removed the veil over war crimes, surveillance, and corruption. Alicia Castro, Argentine diplomat, ambassador to the UK 2012-2016

We found out that, in exchange for financial support, my successor Lenin Moreno agreed to hand over Julian Assange to the United States. Rafael Correa, former President of Ecuador

The insistence by the Western world, mainly the United States and its British satellite, is to impose one narrative and to prevent other news that might challenge the narrative. That is the war against Julian Assange. Tariq Ali, activist, historian, journalist, filmmaker

The media that made so much of Wikileaks disclosures is now absent when it comes time to defend the journalist who was their source. Jeremy Corbyn, former UK Labour party leader

Julian showed us that there is a dark side of the Moon, and that the worst unfreedom is the unfreedom which we experience as freedom. Slavoj iek, philosopher and DiEM25 Advisory Panel member

Ive cited Wikileaks cables in the International Court of Justice, so its striking to me that the person who helped us lead these accountability efforts is in jail. Jennifer Robinson, human rights lawyer

Belmarsh is the prison where Julian is currently held. 11 October marked 18 months in the jail designed to hold terrorists. While Belmarsh has reportedly improved since being deemed Britains Guantanamo, Julian Assanges detention is excessive and clearly meant to further torture the Wikileaks founder.

Make no mistake: Assange is persecuted because Wikileaks publishes material governments do not want you to see. The US government has made no illusion about their case, charging him under the Espionage Act. Espionage Act charges against a publisher would criminalise journalists, the Obama administration decided after mulling over charges against Assange.

We must not forget the ongoing unjust proceedings occurring along with the case itself. Technical issues prevented Assange representatives from being heard and the press was frequently barred from video streaming access. We expand on these and other problems in our trial coverage.

As mentioned, a verdict on Assange extradition is set for January 4, 2021 though this is seen as just the beginning of the legal saga, as appeals are likely to ensue. While prosecution and defense lawyers prepare closing arguments, which will be written and not delivered orally in November, Assange remains in Belmarsh with growing concerns over self-harm, including suicide.

As long as Julian remains in Belmarsh, the Belmarsh Tribunal will resist extradition. If Julian is extradited, we will resist the case seeking to shut him away. If he is found guilty in the US, we will resist imprisonment.

This is not just about Julian Assange, but about the free press and the right for whistleblowers to expose corruption.

We must not, cannot, give up this fight.

Sign the petition against Julian Assanges extradition here.

Photo Source: Screenshot from Collateral Murder by Wikileaks.

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The Belmarsh Tribunal put the US on trial for crimes revealed by Assange - DiEM25

One day in June 2019, Jitarth Jadeja went outside to smoke a cigarette. For two years he'd been in the virtual cult of QAnon. But now he'd watched a YouTube video that picked apart the last element of the theory he believed in. Standing there smoking, he would say later, he felt "shattered." He had gone down the QAnon rabbit hole; now, having emerged from it, he had no idea what to do next.

QAnon is a virtual cult that began in late 2017.

The most basic QAnon belief casts President Trump as the hero in a fight against the "deep state" and a sinister cabal of Democratic politicians and celebrities who abuse children. And it features an anonymous government insider called "Q" who purportedly shares secret information about that fight via cryptic online posts.

Travis View is a conspiracy theory researcher who co-hosts the podcast "QAnon Anonymous."

The theory's believers "always fantasize that they are saving children and they're bringing criminals to justice," View says. "But QAnon only hurts people. It has helped nobody."

There aren't solid estimates for the number of QAnon followers worldwide, but it's clear their ranks are growing. A CNN investigation reviewed QAnon-related Facebook pages and groups based only outside the US and found a total of at least 12.8 million interactions between the beginning of the year and the last week of September.

Lisa Kaplan and Cindy Otis lead Alethea Group, a company that tracks disinformation to protect its clients' brands. They followed false claims that Wayfair was complicit in a child exploitation plot as they spread from havens for QAnon to the mainstream in the summer of 2020.

"There's not sort of one sort of set doctrine or belief system," Otis said. "But a lot of it goes down to what goes viral and what doesn't."

Like many previous conspiracy theories, QAnon has become as much about community as actual theory. The result is a convoluted and ever-changing web of beliefs which branch off from the central worldview. In this case, that includes things like members of the supposed cabal also worshipping Satan, and JFK Jr. having faked his 1999 death in a plane crash to escape the deep state plotters. QAnon has also started assimilating unrelated conspiracy theories, including false ideas about the supposedly dangerous nature of 5G infrastructure and the false, dangerous notion that the Covid-19 pandemic is a ploy to monitor private citizens.

Since there's no leadership or structure to QAnon, its supporters incorporate existing conspiracy theories and develop new ones. QAnon "really does take on a life of its own, which can, in fact make it a more significant threat," Kaplan said.

Jadeja, the former QAnon believer, is Australian. But he said he's he's always been interested in American politics. He spent time studying in the US, living in Queens, New York. His nationality is a testament to the fact that QAnon has spread well beyond the United States.

"If you'd look in Australian politics, it's boring by comparison," Jadeja said. "American politics, it's like it's like a car crash you can't look away from."

During the 2016 US presidential election, Jadeja said, he was drawn to then-candidate Bernie Sanders. He liked what Sanders had to say about inequality and his "anti-establishment sentiment."

But then Trump won. "That kind of really kicked it all off for me," Jadeja said.

It felt to him like the world was shocked by Trump's win. How had seemingly no one seen it coming? And most importantly, who had? "I kind of switched off from all mainstream media," Jadeja said.

That's when he began listening to conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and reading Infowars, which exposed him to QAnon theories for the first time. By December 2017, he identified as a Q follower.

Around this period, Jadeja said, he was in the midst of a 15 year struggle to finish his degree. He'd pulled away from friends and become socially isolated. "I just felt completely overwhelmed... I was probably in a deep depression I think when I found Q," he says.

Once Jadeja found QAnon he was quickly sucked in. He would spend time on websites that aggregated posts supposedly from Q, which often first appear on darker corners of the internet like 8kun. Then he'd move on to read the interpretations of those posts from other believers. These interpretations are popular among the QAnon community because posts from "Q" are often so vague that they can be read in any number of ways. The tactic tends to lure in supporters the way fraudulent psychics can - because there's little solid information given, almost anything can be taken as confirmation of a pronouncement by "Q."

"There'd be a lot of Youtube and Reddit mini-celebrities within the community that would be like the anointed decrypter for that point in time," Jadeja noted.

QAnon was all he wanted to talk about. That made life offline increasingly difficult for him, and he pulled away from friends.

"No one believes you. No one wants to talk to you about it. ... You get all angsty and crabby and whatnot. [S]uch shouting, irrational, you sound like the homeless guy on the street yelling about Judgment Day," Jadeja said.

One of the few people in his regular life who he was able to talk with about his newfound interest with was his father. "We used to talk about it a lot. We used to only talk about it with each other. We show each other things like, did you see that? Did you see that?" Jadeja said.

"I think superficially it did seem like [QAnon] gave me comfort," Jadeja said. "I didn't realize the nefarious kind of impact it was having on me because it was very insidious how it slowly disconnected me from reality."

Experts say that people often seek out conspiracy theories in times of crisis.

"I think we tend to underestimate the extent to which these sorts of narratives are appealing," Alethea Group's Otis said, "especially when we're in a time of great stress and emotions are high."

Otis noted that the 2016 US presidential election was one of those times for many people. Now the coronavirus pandemic means uncertainty and anxiety are once again at a high point.

"It's a very compelling narrative to say all of this is orchestrated," Otis said. "There's a cabal coming after you. They're trying to make your life miserable. You want an answer for why bad things are happening? Here they are."

View, the conspiracy theory researcher, said QAnon preys on vulnerable people who in some cases might be suffering from mental health issues.

"I think it's a mistake to say that QAnon is a conspiracy theory, because this kind of makes it sound like Area 51 or Big Foot," he said. "It's a community of people that radicalizes them into a world view, that just essentially detaches them from reality."

For Jadeja, the impulses he developed while he believed in QAnon are a source of shame. "I would have been so happy to see Hillary Clinton dragged in front of a military tribunal, even though she's a civilian," he said.

"That still bothers me to this day, how willing and happy and joyfully I would have reacted to something that I would normally want no part in... This is how you get good people to do bad things."

In a May 2019 bulletin, the FBI warned that conspiracy theories like QAnon could "very likely" motivate criminal and sometimes violent activity in the US especially because of the reach and volume of conspiratorial content available online.

QAnon theories often start out on fringe internet forums like 8kun and 4chan, according to Alethea Group's Kaplan. But once a claim gains popularity there it can quickly catapult onto mainstream social media networks. "It becomes especially dangerous once these conspiracies go on to platforms like Twitter and Facebook, because it increases the breadth of the reach that these false conspiracies have," she said.

Reddit banned a popular QAnon subreddit in 2018. In July 2020, Twitter said it had removed more than 7,000 QAnon-associated accounts. Last week, Facebook announced it would ban any pages, groups or Instagram accounts representing QAnon. And on Wednesday, YouTube joined the other platforms, saying it would prohibit conspiracy theory content that threatens or harasses an individual or group. It stopped short of banning QAnon and other dangerous theories completely.

But the task of identifying and policing these kinds of accounts is massive. Facebook, for one, has previously made promises to ban certain groups or types of content in the past but enforcement has sometimes been slow or inconsistent.

"This isn't something that there's one solution that will, you know, remove this group from from their platform for all eternity," Otis said. "It's going to be an ongoing and dynamic problem."

View believes these actions may be too late. "This is a group who are very highly motivated, and they believe that they are fighting essentially an information war."

After two years in the world of QAnon, Jadeja said, cracks began to form in his conviction. He believed Wikileaks founder Julian Assange had been instrumental in "exposing" Hillary Clinton and had helped win Trump the election. If Trump was trying to bring down the cabal, Jadeja wondered, how could he let Assange face extradition to the US for charges related to publishing secret military and diplomatic documents? On top of that, Jadeja said, he was noticing more logical inconsistencies in QAnon's theories.

But there was one particular piece of "proof" he was still holding on to.

It went like this: A QAnon follower had supposedly asked Q to tell President Trump to use the phrase "tip top" in a speech. Then Trump did.

To Jadeja, that had been proof that Q existed and had the ear of the president.

But then, as his doubts mounted, he decided to research it further and came across a YouTube video that showed other times Trump had previously said the phrase or something similar. Suddenly "tip top" was no longer irrefutable proof, it was probably just coincidence.

For others, that might have easily been glossed over, a blip easily dismissed in their belief. But for Jadeja, who was nearing a break with QAnon, it was a turning point.

"It was the worst feeling I had in my life," Jadeja said.

That's when he went outside for a smoke.

r/Qult_Headquarters is a forum on Reddit "dedicated to documenting, critiquing, and debunking the chan poster known as 'Q' and his devotees." Its 30,000 members pick apart QAnon theories and point out inconsistencies.

It's where Jadeja turned when he stopped believing. He wrote a 659-word post that began with the words "Q fooled me."

He thought the group would ridicule him for believing in the conspiracy theory. "I expected to be torn apart," he said.

Instead, the opposite happened. According to Jadeja, he got over a hundred responses to his post and nearly all of them were supportive. "These guys put me back together again."

He now thinks one of the toughest challenges in trying to deradicalize a QAnon believer is that they view the opposition as "pure evil."

"This is a big problem, not just because people are being taken in and their families are like being ripped apart," he said. "This is an existential battle between good and evil that these people think they're fighting." He says he used to think the same thing.

Another Reddit community called QAnonCasualties functions as a support group for friends and family members of QAnon believers. It has more than 28,000 members. There are hundreds of stories of loved ones "lost" to QAnon. Friendships ruined. Relationships ended. Families suffering.

Looking back, Jadeja said, he doesn't think there isn't a single relationship in his life that wasn't affected by his time believing in QAnon. "It's destroyed some of them to this day. It's strained a lot of them to this day."

But there's one thing in particular that he regrets the most: sharing QAnon with his father. CNN reached out to Jadeja's father multiple times for a comment but he did not respond.

Jadeja thinks it's possible more QAnon believers can follow his path out.

"It has to start with empathy and understanding," Jadeja said. That's what the QultHeadquarters community on Reddit gave him.

In View's opinion, confronting QAnon believers with facts isn't the best way to deradicalize them.

He said the best way to help believers is to remind them of their life before Q. Believers need to be encouraged to ask themselves "if this new life that they built for themselves is actually productive, if it's actually building towards something good or if it's just a waste of time and it's filling some kind of emotional void."

Potentially being known as "the QAnon guy" among his friends is the last thing Jadeja wants. But he fears the community will continue to grow. That's why, he said, he decided to share his story in the hope that other believers might see that there is life after QAnon and reevaluate their choice to support it.

Ultimately, he said, he's glad he went down the QAnon rabbit hole. It taught him a lot about hubris, he believes. And, he said, "It allowed me to really confront, like, the own darkness that's in my own heart."

Additional reporting by Sofia Barrett

More:
He went down the QAnon rabbit hole for two years. Here's how he got out - KCTV Kansas City

Defence ministers have ordered a new inquiry into how war crimes are investigated, after their new combat zone immunity bill was ripped apart by the human rights committee.

Since the second reading of the Overseas Operations Bill on 23 September, the legislation has been attacked by members of the human rights committee. With the proposals proving deeply unpopular and controversial, panicked Tories have launched a judge-led inquiry into how war crimes are investigated.

In a press release on 13 October, defence secretary Ben Wallace said:

Nobody wants to see service personnel subjected to drawn-out investigations, only for the allegations to prove to be false or unfounded.

At the same time, credible allegations against those who fall short of our high standards must be investigated quickly and efficiently.

This review, which will run in tandem with our Overseas Operations Bill and build on the recommendations of the Service Justice System Review, will help future-proof investigations and provide greater certainty to both victims and service personnel.

The new move begs a question:

If the bill is as solid as the government says, why launch an inquiry into a key aspect which they claim their new proposal deals with?

Organisations like the Quakers, Royal British Legion, and Liberty, as well as former military officers, have fiercely condemned the proposed new laws.

The Ministry of Defence has framed the bill, including in its new announcement, as a defence of UK troops against so-called vexatious prosecutions and reinvestigations.

Critics, including the vice-chair of the Law Society, have warned that the bill would strip personnel and veterans of their right to sue the MOD. It would also strip overseas victims of UK military abuse of their right to justice, and badly damage international law.

The war crimes immunity bill is part of a broader pattern of authoritarian moves alongside:

It seems the Tories are on the run over their war crimes bill. But this new wave of authoritarian moves, which endangers the lives and freedoms of people in the UK and beyond, must continue to be resisted.

Featured image via Elite Forces UK

See the original post:
Under-fire Tories launch new inquiry after war crimes immunity bill is ripped to shreds - The Canary

Where do we stand today compared to the 2016 election lead up?

Social media platforms were vulnerable in 2016 because they didnt realize what was happening. Now theyre closing down inauthentic accountspeople pretending to be someone theyre notand theyve been doing it extensively. Many now are performing a fact-checking operation by blocking or annotating posts containing false health information, so theres a corrective function in place. YouTube is now identifying government-funded sources of information, so viewers will be able to identify the source behind a message.

Beyond that, the platforms have put rules in place that make it very difficult for foreign nationals to buy advertising; you now have to have a business ID and address thats an actual location in the U.S. That doesnt mean a foreign operation couldnt still plant someone here and satisfy those rules, but its much more difficult. The platforms have stepped up in important ways and made it less likely that a comparable Russian operation to the one in 2016 would have the same effect in 2020.

What about media outlets? Has their approach changed?

Reporters are now participating in seminars examining their treatment of illegally gotten content in 2016. Newsrooms have discussed it. The question is, if a hack-and-release happens in the pressure of an ongoing campaign and a lot of content is released, will that pressure overwhelm newsrooms? Will those same mistakes be made or will their awareness of what happened in 2016 prompt them to resist the impulse to act too quickly?

So far, we havent heard about hacked content in this election. If it comes up, how can journalists disseminate it responsibly?

Its appropriate to use this kind of content under certain circumstances. For one, if its illegally gotten, the public needs to know that, and if it came through an intermediary, the public needs to know that persons agenda. Every time that content gets discussed, the source and any biases should be noted. Julian Assange was on record saying he wanted Hillary Clinton defeated, yet the press made scant mention of that through October and November 2016.

During the last election, under the pressure of a very large amount of content being dumped on a weekly basis, journalists also lost track of newsworthiness, and in two key instances took information out of context in ways that disadvantaged Hillary Clinton. They should be using traditional newsroom judgement about any hacked content and make sure its kept in context.

Finally, they should characterize content as they report on it, using phrases like Russian-stolen, for example. Instead of leaked, they should say hacked. Keep the sourcing linguistically tied to the reporting all the way through and make sure any intermediary remains tied to the content, too. We know that audiences judge messages, in part, by assessing whether they trust the source.

In the past few months, reports have emerged of China, Russia, and Iran trying to influence the U.S. election, some to oust President Trump, others to help him. How is our election infrastructure protected?

The Russians penetrated this infrastructure in 2016. As far as the intelligence community can tell, votes were not changed, but we actually dont know with certainty because the states didnt have the mechanisms in place to tell. Its still an open question whether we have put in place the needed protections for our electoral infrastructure this time.

Here, there is an irony, too. The big debate has been about the integrity of mail-in ballots, but you cant engage in cyberwar as readily with mail-in ballots. My ballot is more secure when I drop it in the mail than when I walked three blocks to my voting place and pushed a button in a system registering digitally in 2016 because with that there was an opportunity for malware to simply reverse votes. I actually view mail-in balloting as a Russia-thwarting move.

How does Trumps relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin factor in?

The United States hacked back against the Russians in 2018 to prevent cyber influence over that election. We dont know whether President Trump approved that or whether relevant agencies simply did that under authorizations they already had. But the president confirmed that it happened. The question is, to what extent are our capacities to deal with Russian interventions shaped by President Trumps view of Vladimir Putinwhich is, shall we say, less wary than his predecessors.

What the presidents rhetoric calls into question is how the level of preparation against Russia as an adversary will compare to that against China or Iran should they try to intervene. One would hope that were being equally protective against all foreign nations that might intervene and that we are being as protective as we can against all of them. Whatever electoral outcome a foreign state anticipates, interference in our election is inappropriate.

Does the average citizen understand the intricacies of whats happening?

In all likelihood, no, because its complex and the citizenry is focused on so many other factors, particularly around COVID-19. There isnt much that ordinary people can do in any event. They can make sure theyre informed by using sites such as FactCheck.org and SciCheck, which are aggressively trying to counteract misperceptions. They can also get their ballots in as early as possible and get verification that it has been received. They can then go back to the rest of their lives having cast an informed vote. Everything else? Its in the hands of election officials and the U.S.s cyber professionals.

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