Twitter claimed it was reversing course late Thursday and would no longer forbid users from tweeting links to websites containing hacked material so long as the hackers themselves werent the ones doing the sharing. We will no longer remove hacked content unless it is directly shared by hackers or those acting in concert with them, said Twitter general counsel Vijaya Gadde.

The decision a response to the conservative uproar over the blocking of an unverified, self-contradictory, and error-filled smear piece about a presidential candidate weeks before an election would have brought Twitters policies more in line with how U.S. law treats journalists who republish stolen material; which is to say, it generally (but not always) protects their right to do so, provided they arent involved in the actual stealing.

Unfortunately, it turns out Twitters decision to abolish the rule is being unequally applied, which is also sort of fitting. The rule itself was never fairly administered. The best obvious example of Twitter selectively enforcing the rule is WikiLeaks, which exists solely to publish stolen secrets; many, if not most, pilfered electronically.

If a reporter had emailed a Twitter spokesperson last week asking if the platforms bans accounts that disseminate hacked emails, the spokesperson would have said yes, we do, and offered a link to the companys rules. But if the same reporter then asked, Well, what about all those stolen Democratic emails from 2016? the spokesperson would have quietly backed away from their keyboard and maybe gone outside for a smoke.

This is exactly how Twitter responded to me in June when it decided to prevent users from sharing links to the website ddosecrets.com. The website, run by a handful of journalists and transparency activists operating under the name DDoSecrets, is still banned by Twitter, even though CEO Jack Dorsey has claimed doing so is wrong. (Go ahead and try to tweet it yourself.) Twitter also banned the @DDoSecrets account, and it remains banned today.

Twitter took aggressive action against DDoSecrets for publishing one of the largest repositories of leaked U.S. law enforcement files some 270-gigabytes worth of documents from more than 200 police departments dating as far back as 1996. A decent portion, comprising things like outdated training manuals and old FBI bulletins, are completely benign, if not objectively boring.

Crime is down, after all, and 90 per cent of being a cop is learning how to cope with sitting on your arse all day.

After the announcement by Twitter on Thursday, I reached out to ask why the @DDoSecrets account was still suspended and why users are still banned from posting links to its website. Twitter did not respond. Not even to tell me it was working on it.

I also asked why Twitter had banned users from tweeting links to another of DDoSecrets websites, AssangeLeaks.org, which doesnt actually contain any stolen or hacked material. According to Lorax Horne, the sites editor, Twitter banned the URL when the page displayed nothing but a countdown clock. Today it only offers links to 10-year-old chat logs potentially evidence the U.S. government is using in WikiLeaks founder Julian Assanges extradition case.

No, they were not hacked, Horne said of the chat logs. To no avail, DDoSecrets has filed multiple appeals seeking clarification on how Twitters rules are enforced.

They blocked our whole fucking website and every subsequent website we published, said Horne. Reddit also blocks our URL, now. But Twitter blocked us first, so get a special trophy.

Twitters silence is presumably the result of having already gotten what it wanted: A slew of headlines this morning declaring something that is just patently untrue.

This story will be updated if we hear back from Twitter.

Excerpt from:
No, Twitter Did Not Stop Blocking URLs and Hacked Content - Gizmodo Australia

In July 2017, two journalists working for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Dan Oakes and Sam Clark, wrote of a stash of incriminating documents, running into hundreds of pages. They were secret defence force documents leaked to the ABC. These documents gave an unprecedented insight into the clandestine operations in Australias elite special forces in Afghanistan, including incidents of troops killing unarmed men and children.

In exposing these depravities of invasion, adventurism, and war, the devotees of secrecy got busy. Bureaucrats chatted; investigations commenced. On June 5, 2019, officers of the Australian Federal Police raided the Sydney offices of the ABC. It was a busy time for the police; Annika Smethurst of News Corp was also the subject of a warrant, having written about discussions about a proposed enlargement of surveillance powers already possessed by the Australian Signals Directorate. Both warrants had been executed pursuant to alleged breaches of official secrecy under the old version of the Crimes Act 1914 (Cth). Chris Merritt, legal affairs editor of The Australian, was alarmed enough to write of a less than brave new world. Welcome to modern Australia a nation where police raid journalists in order to track down and punish the exposure of leaks inside the federal government.

Both warrants were subsequently challenged. The returns for journalism were mixed. In the case of the ABC, they were abominable. In February, the Federal Court Justice Wendy Abraham dismissed the effort by the broadcaster to impeach the warrant. She found the warrant validly drafted and sufficiency clear. Justice Abraham also affirmed that the implied constitutional right to communicate on political subjects was not a personal, enforceable one, merely a restraint on state power. [T]he notion of speech as an affirmative value has no role to play.

This formulation of Australian law, miraculously extracted from the worn teeth of the Australian constitution, is designed to render any such rights inoffensive and benign, lest the citizenry get uppity with such ideas as free speech. This state of affairs ought to encourage a move towards a bill or charter of rights, but Australias politicians will have none of it. Constitutionally enshrined rights would only inhibit the powers of parliament and frustrate the ever abstract sovereign will.

Smethurst had better luck in invalidating the search warrant on April 15. But the judges of the High Court found against the police the way a teacher might against an essay from a student prone to poor grammar. The warrant in question failed to identify any offence under section 79(3) [of the Crimes Act] and significantly misstated the nature of an offence arising under it. In short, go back to class and mind your punctuation before searching the homes and workplaces of journalists. The ill-gotten gains of the police material taken from the Smethursts home could still be kept, guaranteeing her a run of sleepless nights.

The AFP subsequently confirmed that a brief of evidence had been submitted to the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions (CDDP), the result of the July 11, 2017 referral received from the Chief of the Defence Force and then acting-secretary of defence. It recommended that charges be made, though only against Oakes.

With Oakes facing a gloomy prospect of being charged, the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security released its report on the impact of the exercise of law enforcement and intelligence powers on the freedom of the press. The report, with its 16 recommendations, was predictably weak and timorous. At times, it reads like a cosy overview of how government institutions in the country truly appreciate the role of a free press. There are merry references to Australias vibrant democracy. It notes such fairly meaningless improvements as the Attorney Generals direction of September 19, 2019 that his consent would be required were the CDPP to initiate prosecutions against journalists.

The power to issue warrants against journalists was barely challenged. At most was a qualifying recommendation that the role of the Public Interest Advocate be expanded. This creature was already an oddity, given the secretive nature of the office. We know little about the credentials of those who occupy the office, nor its actual workings. The committee suggests a more active role for the advocate in dealing with warrant applications against journalists and media investigations concerning breaches of government secrecy. The PIA must represent the interests of the principles of public interest journalism, and be authorised to request information to clarify elements of the warrant application provided by ASIO or an enforcement agency to enable the case to be built in their submission. The monstrous chink in this already perforated armour is that that the PIA is wholly dependent on the evidence and claims of the government agency. The balancing act ceases to be credible.

With this less than comforting backdrop, it was confirmed on October 15 that the CDDP would not be taking the matter up against Oakes. According to a statement from the AFP, In determining whether the matter should be prosecuted, the CDPP considered a range of public interest factors, including the role of public interest journalism in Australias democracy. Having applied its own version of a public interest test (all government agencies seem to be doing so these days), the prosecutor found no reason to pursue the case despite believing that there was a reasonable chance of securing a conviction on three criminal charges.

As with such prosecutions, the public interest is a weapon twisted not in the name of the publics interest, whose ignorance must be assured, but in the name of the states interest, ever reliant upon secrecy. To that end, The CDPP determined the public interest does not require a prosecution in the particular circumstances of the case.

The conclusion of the case against Oakes can only be troubling. The CDPP preferred waving the wand of deterrence just in case other journalists might wish to engage in the same practice. After all, there was a reasonable chance of securing a successful conviction. Clark, while welcoming the decision, claimed that the matter should never have gone this far.

As with the dangerous US Department of Justice indictment against WikiLeaks publisher and Australian national Julian Assange, the very fact of its existence is, in itself, threatening. It is a roaring threat, a promise that publishing national security information that reveals the dark side of state power will be pursued, and, importantly, can be pursued.

See original here:
Dropped Prosecutions: The Afghan Files, Public Interest Journalism and Dan Oakes - International Policy Digest

James Doleman reflects on the Old Bailey hearing into the Wikileaks co-founders contested extradition to the US for the publication of classified documents

Every story needs a hero is the quote that kept going round and round in my head when I tried to sum up the four weeks I spent covering the Julian Assange extradition hearing in London.

For the protestors outside, the hero was clear. They chanted and spoke about how Assange was a hero of the modern age, the man who created the intelligence agency of the people. Inside the halls of the Old Bailey, the court heard from witness after witness about the importance of the information that Wikileaks revealed: the exposure of crimes and torture by the US and its allies in the post-9/11 wars.

Yet, Assange himself remains a controversial figure, not least due to his response to sexual assault allegations in Sweden dropped by prosecutors last year and his alleged support for Donald Trump during the 2016 US Presidential Election.

It wasnt hard finding the villain in the tale: the US Government.

We heard in detail about its actions; its original crimes revealed by Wikileaks; torture; the extradition of a German citizen; Khaled El-Masri, who was kidnapped from Macedonia, tortured, taken to a black site in Afghanistan only for four months later to be hooded, put on a plane and landed in Hungary, where he was left. When he returned home to Frankfurt, his family was gone, having assumed he was dead.

Daniel Ellsberg, the former US marine who leaked the Pentagon Papers, which many believe helped to end the Vietnam War by revealing just how the American people had been lied to over the course of the conflict, testified in the second week via video link. He noted that, when he worked at the top level of the American Government, accounts of war crimes in Vietnam were held at the highest level of secrecy, with only a few people having access to the information.

In this case, he testified, the accounts leaked were held on a computer system that could be accessed by more than 100,000 people which he described as a sign that torture and assassination have been normalised.

It was not a normal trial.

Usually a witness stands up in court, gives their evidence, and is cross-examined. In this hearing, the presiding district judge, Vanessa Baraitser, had ruled that evidence would be presented through witness statements.

Witness statements are present in every trial they are produced so that both the prosecution and defence have an idea of what a witness night say, in order for both sides to prepare. They may be referred to by opposing barristers, but usually only to point out if a statement varies from what has been testified from the witness stand. In this case, the statements were the evidence.

This led to the odd situation whereby a witness was only heard from if the US Government wanted to challenge the evidence being presented. Perhaps accidentally, in this way, it led to the American side having an effective veto over what the court heard. The prosecution could simply state that it did not wish to challenge a piece of testimony, while not accepting it was true, and then a summary of it, the gist, was just read out and we all moved on.

The US prison system, which could await Assange, also had its day in court.

The regime facing the Wikileaks co-founder for a potential 170-year prison sentence was that of a US supermax, we were told a jail under the oh so blandly named Special Administrative Measures (SAMs).

The court heard from Maureen Baird, the former warden of the Metropolitan Correctional Centre in New York, who had a unit containing SAMS prisoners. She described a regime of a prisoner being locked for 23 hours a day in a cell the size of a parking space, with their only exercise being taken from that cell and locked in another empty one for an hour and then returned. She told the court that staff were instructed not to interact with the inmates and that the unit was generally speaking unmanned as the prisoners were under lockdown.

You can scream and no one hears you, she said.

There are many other issues in this case to be discussed, but Ill finish with this.

Ive not forgotten about the hero. As the month went on, it was clear that there was one and her name was Chelsea Manning.

Manning was a 22-year-old sergeant in Iraq, working as an intelligence analyst. Watching the evidence of war crimes crossing her desk, she tried to alert her superiors, but they ignored her, so she gave Wikileaks the Iraq and Afghanistan war logs. They revealed what was really happening in our wars of choice, to show the true cost, as she told her court martial.

For that, she was sentenced to 35 years in jail, under Special Administrative Measures.

She served seven years before having her sentence commuted by President Barack Obama in 2017.

In February 2019, she was re-imprisoned for refusing to testify against Assange and spent another year in solitary confinement. She was only released in March 2020.

Every story needs a hero and, in this one, its Chelsea Manning.

A judgement is expected in Julian Assanges extradition hearing on 4 January 2021.

James Dolemans coverage was made possible by Bridges For Media Freedom

Read the original here:

Heroes & Villains: Witnessing the Assange Hearing Byline Times - Byline Times

All Stella Moris wants is for the man she loves to be allowed to come home. Instead the couple are in the fight of their life and trying to avoid his extradition to the United States where he will face charges for treason for his work, even though he is not a US citizen.

Her partner, Australian Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, is facing 175 years in prison for what Moris calls "publishing the most important journalistic scoops in the past fifty years".

"We miss each other terribly," she tells 9Honey. "We talk several times a day and he is able to speak to the boys regularly. It keeps him afloat. But it's been a very long time now and it's very hard.

"We are all suffering and once we are reunited, I hope to go back to a quiet life," she says.

Moris, 37, met Assange, 48, while he was in asylum at Embassy of Ecuador in London from which he was recently removed. He was placed in notorious HM Prison in Belmarsh and is reportedly in ill health. He is now fighting extradition to the United States where he is facing treason charges.

RELATED: Julian Assange to hear UK judge's verdict on US extradition in January

They have two children - Gabriel, two, and Max, one.

"If Julian is extradited our children will be fatherless," Moris says. "I will lose him forever, but so will the rest of the world.

"The children don't yet understand what is happening to their father and I want to shield them as much as possible from this nightmare," she continues. "They know daddy loves them and misses them and wants to come home."

Moris says she tells them their "daddy is a hero".

"I don't tell them he's in a prison, just that he can't come home with us when we go to visit him in the 'big house'."

Before going public with their relationship on Nine's 60 Minutes in June, Moris feared for their safety but felt she had to speak out following the most recent attempts to extradite him to the US.

She has been in court each and every day of the hearing and her contact with Assange is limited to one phone call each day.

"He is brought to court each day in a security van, which is effectively a vertical coffin. It's a claustrophobic hour and a half every morning and afternoon," she says. "He's handcuffed, strip searched and x-rayed. The court proceedings are chaotic."

RELATED: Everything we know about Julian Assange's fiance Stella Moris

She feels frustrated at how Assange is currently being treated, saying he hadn't seen his lawyers for six months when these hearings started.

"The first time he saw them was when the hearings started two and a half weeks ago," she says. "He's a spectator not a participant. The judge has ruled he will not sit with his lawyers, so he can barely speak to them.

"He's in a glass box in the court room. His defence is grossly disadvantaged for these and other reasons."

She says it's hard going to court each day knowing "he will be taken away at the end of the day rather than come home".

"I know that to bring him home I need to raise awareness, so I try to stay focused on that," she says.

Moris wants people to know the Assange she does, a "good, thoughtful man" and "the most principled man I know".

"He feels it is a duty to strengthen democratic accountability by exposing wrongdoing, uncovering war crimes and holding governments and corporations to account," she says.

Moris say she feels "heartened by the growing support" for Assange's plight.

"The cross-party parliamentary group in Australia has done incredible work," she says. "It lifts Julian's spirits to know that there is support from all sides of politics, in the leadership and the grass roots."

She isn't so complimentary of the Australian Government, saying they must "step in to save it's citizen from this situation".

"The Australian government must also step in to show that it really does believe in the right to freedom of expression and the freedom of journalists and publishers to reveal inconvenient truths without fear of a political persecution," she says.

"Scott Morrison can call up his counterpart and tell him the Australian government is opposed to this extradition going ahead," she says.

"The public can also press the government that if Julian wins this case, the Australian government will act to ensure we are safe and refuse any future attempts by the US to extradite Julian if we live there," she says.

On 2 May hearings began into the US government's request to extradite him with a decision expected on 4 January 2021.

Moris says she won't stop fighting for Assange's freedom.

"Whatever happens, we need to continue to fight for Julian's freedom for as long as it takes," she says. "If we lose, we will appeal against the decision and continue the fight in the courts."

Email Jo Abi at jabi@nine.com.au.

Original post:

All Stella Moris wants is to free the man she loves - 9Honey

Stuart Littlewood writes:

This morning [12 October] I was catching up as usual on the ever-reliable Craig Murrays day-to-day reports of what passes for a trial at the Old Bailey under the shabby standards now governing British justice. Im talking of course about the trial to extradite Julian Assange which is nearing its nauseating climax.

Murray has been extraordinarily dedicated and resourceful in bringing out the truth from a cruelly fixed process to which public access has been suppressed.

Here is an extract from his piece Where is my final Assange report? which for me sums up the disgraceful performance put on to appease the American administration in its lust for revenge for having its vile secrets exposed. Murrays words are a chilling indictment.

In that courtroom, you were in the presence of evil. With a civilised veneer, a pretence at process, and even displays of bonhommie, the entire destruction of a human being was in process. Julian was being destroyed as a person before my eyes. For the crime of publishing the truth. He had to sit there listening to days of calm discussion as to the incredible torture that would await him in a US supermax prison, deprived of all meaningful human contact for years on end, in solitary in a cell just 50 square feet.

Fifty square feet. Mark that out yourself now. Three paces by two. Of all the terrible things I heard, Warden Baird explaining that the single hour a day allowed out of the cell is alone in another, absolutely identical cell called the recreation cell was perhaps the most chilling. That and the foul government expert Dr Blackwood describing how Julian might be sufficiently medicated and physically deprived of the means of suicide to keep him alive for years of this.

I encountered evil in Uzbekistan when the mother brought me the photos of her son tortured to death by immersion in boiling liquid. The US government was also implicated in that, through the CIA cooperation with the Uzbek Security Services; it happened just outside the US military base at Karshi-Khanabad. Here was that same evil paraded in the centre of London, under the panoply of Crown justice.

And who is the Justice Secretary responsible for this nasty charade? Robert Buckland. If anyone deserves a good smacking he surely does.

And so does the journalism profession if they still have the nerve to call themselves that. The Assange case is about journalism true journalism; why werent the mainstream insisting on access and covering it?

More here:

Travesty! A presence of evil pervading the Assange trial destroys all confidence in British justice - Redress Information & Analysis

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Last week marked the close of evidence in the currentproceedings involving Julian Assange. The United States isattempting to have the Australian journalist and publisherextradited from the UK, under the UK-US Extradition Treaty.

This is somewhat suspect as the treaty specifically rules out extradition when the criminal charges involved arepolitical in nature. And seventeen of the eighteen charges laidagainst the Wikileaks founder are espionage related.

Another stark anomaly is that the US government has reachedacross international borders and arrested an Australian citizenover publishing material that took place on foreign soil. Andmeanwhile, the UK has remanded Julian in prison for over a year now.

Presiding over the case in the Old Bailey, Judge VanessaBaraitser indicated at the end of the hearings that she won'tbe handing down her final decision until 4 January: two months after the US presidentialelection.

The eighteen charges Assange is facing carry maximum penaltiesthat add up to 175 years. And the court heard last week that if theAustralian journalist is extradited and subsequently convicted, he's likely to be sent to the federal supermax prison inColorado: the nation's toughest.

Also known as ADX Colorado, this maximum security facility is reserved for those who've been convicted of the mostheinous crimes: the Mexican drug lord El Chapo, the Unabomber, anOklahoma bombing conspirator and the coordinator of the World TradeCentre bombing.

If incarcerated in this centre, Julian would also likely beplaced on the special administrative measures regime or SAMS. This wouldinvolve no communications with other inmates or the outside world,except for one half hour phone call a month.

SAMS also involves being placed in continuous solitaryconfinement, with limited exercise time, which is taken alone. Thisconstitutes torture in most rationally minded books, including theUN'sMandela Rules on the minimum standard treatment ofprisoners.

Australian barrister Greg Barns co-signed the Lawyers forAssange openletter in mid-August, calling on the UK government to releaseJulian, and calling out the torturous treatment the Australiancitizen is already subjected to in London's BelmarshPrison.

As an advisor to the Assange campaign, Mr Barns is keenly awareof the injustices and inconsistencies that are involved in the caseof the man who revolutionised journalism, only to be persecuted forit.

And Barns asserts the Australian government needs to step in toassist the Townsville-born man.

SydneyCriminal Lawyers spoke to Greg Barns SC about the Kafkaesquenature of the extradition trial, the reasons Assange's plightshould be of concern to all Australians, and why it's timelocal journalists put the pressure on foreign minister MarisePayne.

There is no doubt this case is a travesty of justice, at anumber of levels. Firstly, the charges themselves are inherentlypolitical.

It needs to be remembered that the United States are seeking toextradite Assange because he revealed serious war crimes committedby the US in the theatres of war of Iraq and Afghanistan, mostgraphically illustrated by the video CollateralMurder.

It also needs to be remembered that this is the first occasionthe United States has sought to use domestic espionage laws againsta person who has not entered the United States jurisdiction, is nota citizen of the United States, and who has published materialwhich is seen to be adverse to the interests of the UnitedStates.

So, the precedent that's set is quite dangerous for anyother person including journalists who publishmaterial which the United States considers to be adverse to itsinterests, in circumstances where that person never enters theUnited States jurisdiction physically or even in an onlinesense.

The other issue is in relation to the fact that JulianAssange's lawyers in London have had a difficult time beingable to access their client.

He's being held at Belmarsh Prison, which is maximumsecurity. He's being held in conditions which are clearlyinhumane, including effective solitary confinement.

And his lawyers have been acting in circumstances wherethey've had great difficulties in getting access to theirclient.

They're three of the most obvious points that can be madeabout this particular process.

Firstly, it's a complex case, and I'm not privy to thejudge's workload. Although it would have been preferable tohave this matter resolved before Christmas and the new year. But itwill be resolved on 4 January in terms of this court.

Again, this proves the point that this case is inherentlypolitical, as there's no doubt there may be some shift inposition on the part of the United States Department of Justiceafter the election.

But you would not want to take that risk, because at the end ofthe day, if Julian is extradited to the United States, he faces aneffective death penalty of 175 years.

So, simply waiting for a new administration in the United Statesto get around to looking at the Assange case is not in my viewsufficient.

There is an urgency about this case for a whole range ofreasons, including the fact that it's a threat to freedom ofspeech, and it needs to be resolved quickly.

One would have thought that there's sufficient technologytoday to ensure that more people get bail, and that includes JulianAssange.

There's no doubt that his detention has led to adeterioration in his mental and physical health. There was evidenceof that in the hearing. And his detention has made life verydifficult for his lawyers in terms of obtaining instructions.

So, it does mean that there's an inherent unfairness aboutthe way in which the proceedings are being conducted.

That evidence was extraordinary, and it confirmed what a numberof us have been saying for many years: that if Julian Assange isextradited to the United States, he will face on a daily basiscruel and unusual punishment and torture, and he will face aneffective death penalty.

The real issue here is, why does the Australian government standaside from this process, sit on its hands and refuse to assist anAustralian citizen in circumstances when that's the future forthem.

If this was a case where Julian Assange was being extradited toChina, the Australian government would be pulling out allstops.

It has to get involved in this case, if for no other reason thanthat sort of punishment should not be tolerated and no Australian in fact, no person should have to endure it.

Successive governments have failed to deal with Julian'scase. I would say a notable exception was Julie Bishop, who, in mydealings with her indirectly, treated this matter more seriouslythan others.

Australia's alliance with the United States is such that theAustralian government thinks for some reason this is not a matterthat it can put on the table for negotiation.

Well, that is wrong.

There is no loyaler ally, as Bob Carr, the former foreignerminister, has said. And therefore, there's no ally in a betterposition to ensure that one of its citizens is not subjected to aneffective death penalty. And that's what needs to happen.

Every Australian should be concerned. It could be you. It couldbe any of us. And that is not an exaggeration.

I am surprised that more Australian journalists have not beenpushing foreign minister Marise Payne on this issue, because thiscase represents a direct threat to freedom of speech for thereasons I've outlined earlier.

It's fundamentally important that the Australian mediainvolve themselves more in this case. They did so in the case ofDavid Hicks some years ago now, in different circumstances. Andthey need to do so again, because it's a direct threat tofreedom of the press.

But it's also a direct threat to the life of an Australiancitizen.

The content of this article is intended to provide a generalguide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be soughtabout your specific circumstances.

Go here to read the rest:

The Australian Government has to get involved: Greg Barns SC on the plight of Julian Assange - Criminal Law - Australia - Mondaq News Alerts

If, a few years ago, youd told the story of 2020, it would have been of the cli-fi genre, a hypothetical, highly fictive tale of climates changing, pandemics pressing and power atomising. In six months, reality has overtaken the fictive and normalised in the new Normal. Except nothings normal and no-one knows whos in control of the story.

Back in 2017, I interviewed Julian Assange at a public event in Australia as he was sequestered in the Ecuadorean Embassy, London. Over the course of 82 minutes he described the conditions of living in the modern, democratic world, a story of an increasingly problematic relationship between government and the people in which the people live under the illusion of governments promise to protect and defend when, in fact, government is serving a set of interests that are almost exclusively private. As his extradition hearings play out in the UK, Ive recalled the emotions in the room that day as the story unfolded, pennies collectively dropping in the audience as confusion gave way to clarity, scepticism to conviction, bemusement to horror. It was a compelling, persuasive reconfiguration of facts, values and principles that contested the dominant world view.

Read: When fiction and life collide

Assanges narrative went further, suggesting an illusory fog had been created to hide the fact that our governments and large corporations were no longer in control of the technology they deployed and invested in, and that this represented an existential threat. Three years ago, it seemed a bridge too far, the stuff of fiction, but it lines up almost perfectly with the story collectively told in The Social Dilemma by a bunch of insiders at Google, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube a counter-narrative to that of their former employers involving the evolution of algorithms that are no longer in the control of their creators and that leverage our base instincts above our better ones for profit. According to former Google Design Ethicist, Tristan Harris, the existential threat has moved from Assanges them, to us. Over 94 minutes, the documentary evinces a similar cocktail of responses in the viewer: fear, horror, confusion and anger.

Contesting the narrative is the sport of our times. Controlling it is an obsession.

It has been made ever more complex by social media platforms that carry a cacophony of multiple texts comprising whole-truths, half-truths, fake news and rants that have atomised the narrative, dispersing it into millions of parts for consumption and cultivation in echo-chambers, chat groups and dark web sites.

I asked Assange whether being cooped up in the one place had altered his ability to tell his own story. He said it was impossible to control your narrative but being physically confined he felt the need to project himself out into the world and, for him, that was through social media. Those platforms did not serve him well. There were many missteps, own goals and traps set by adversaries.

The main problem is the medium.

Truth struggles to be told in sound bites, tweets and memes; they serve bullshit much better. The whistle-blowers of The Social Dilemma attest to that; the algorithm thrives on our base instincts. Unsurprisingly, Donald Trump is a master of the social medium. He holds truth in contempt.

Time is also a casualty, more specifically, the time we devote to things, our attention-span. Reception is reduced to click, swipe and scroll and what was onscreen and in the mind a flick ago, is no longer there now. We are goldfish.

Truth needs time to be told. 94 minutes on the machinations of social media; 82 minutes on the existential threat of technology. The US Government wants to put away Assange to ensure he never has the time to tell his story again. If they can imprison him, his time will be on endless pause.

The arts are not without its own constraints. We often feel that we are on the right side of things, fighting battles against the wrong side of things. We often feel ours is the space of affect, of emotions, indeed of harnessing emotions to make a better world. The fact is that our artistic dramaturgies are beholden to a financial dramaturgy that is vested in powerful interests. Self-censorship is implicit in many of our artistic and governance relations. Climate change is a good example.

In her 2019 film, Fossil Fuels and the Arts, contemporary artist Gabrielle de Vietri brilliantly tells a story many of us refuse to listen to and deliberately turn away from: a disturbing intimacy between the arts sector and fossil-fuel producers via board representation, sponsorship and partnership arrangements. The film is only 31 minutes and features a cameo from Australia Council for the Arts Chair and former Rio Tinto CEO, Sam Walsh. It tells a tale that resonates in complexity with the counter-narratives of Harris and Assange. It is not an easy tale for a young artist to tell.

Read: When to say no to sponsorship

These stories stick, they contest vested interests, disrupt the status quo, seek to represent a truth that is alternative to the absolutes enshrined in triumphalist narratives. They are stories that demand our attention across time.

This is an equation that aptly describes the practice of many artists. We need our publics, readers, audiences, spectators to attend to our work in real time. What we make is hard to process and contain. How we make it is an alchemical process that challenges order with its essential elements chaos, irrationality, incompleteness. It needs attention. It requires time. Unfashionable elements in our contemporary world.

Of the three protagonists in this story, only de Vietri is an artist although she is on a professional hiatus, pursuing a career in politics. De Vietri is of special note because of her leadership in the boycott of the 2014 Sydney Biennale, told here in 47 minutes. But there are many artists who tell difficult stories in their own time. I recently worked with novelist Claire G Coleman whose vision of an Australia 10 years into the future is mapped through the conquest of white supremacy spoken in a tick over 15 minutes.

Theres performance artist Casey Jenkins who announced recently on her FB page that the grant for her self-insemination performance, IMMACULATE which can take up to 30 minutes has been rescinded by the Australia Council for the Arts. Theres visual artist Baiducao whose 2020 exhibition titled Made in Hong Kong, Banned In China was shown in Australia 18 months after being made in Hong Kong and banned in China.

Read: China's pursuit of diaspora artists

The world is re-calibrating its matter, direction and values at an exponential rate. It is the task of artists to bend time so that new and alternative narratives can be drawn and attended to, despite the fear and favour meted out by authority. It is also time that we defend each other for doing so.

Art in real time is the most transgressive of contemporary experiences.

Art sends signals that pierce the noise.

Continued here:

The Time to Tell - ArtsHub UK

Boom. Bam. You know who it is. This is Drillminister, aka Young Drilly writing for The Canary. People know me for using my music to fight back against political violence; using words as a weapon against the repression of the poorest people in our society:

But now, Ive got to take it to another level.

Since Jeremy Corbyn was hounded out of the Labour Party by the right-wing guard dogs in our billionaire-owned mainstream media, our chances for a fair and equal Britain have been torn from the bones of our society.

Its been replaced by an opposition that does not oppose; forcing its members to abstain from voting against the Overseas Operations Bill legislation that could literally make it easier to commit war crimes.

We have a resistance that doesnt resist. Its one that says nothing, as journalists like Julian Assange who expose war crimes are sat up in the dock like a criminal.

Oh wait, hold on.

Wasnt Sir Keir Starmer head of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) when they contacted Assanges Swedish prosecutors to tell them not to drop the case?

And if thats whats left for us, whats on the right?

An openly racist, blonde buffoon, leading a party that has punished poor and disabled people with benefit sanctions. A party thats left people to starve to death in one of the richest countries in the world.

A governing party, whose chief advisor can openly break the law without getting any shit.

And why not?

If its legal for the government to sell arms to Saudi Arabia and train pilots thatll help to bomb civilians in Yemen the poorest country in the Middle East with tens of millions of men, women, and children in need of humanitarian aid then what?

If its legal to give out government contracts worth billions of pounds to businesses linked to high-ranking members of government without competition and in a time of national crisis then what?

If its legal to allow the worlds biggest companies to avoid paying tax, losing the country billions of pounds every year then what?

Then, maybe we need new laws. Maybe we need new leaders.

I am running for London mayor in 2021 because we need a change from this disgusting duopoly that our political system has become.

I am building a manifesto that comes from the bottom up; building a better London by working with those who are currently experiencing the worst of it.

Our campaign needs to hear from those the elites want to ignore.

So, if you want justice justice for Grenfell, justice for poor people, and justice for minorities vote for Drillminister.

Watch Drillminister explain further why he is running for London mayor in 2021:

Featured image and additional images via Drillminister

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We need to smash Starmer and Johnsons disgusting duopoly. Thats why Im running for London mayor. - The Canary

Former employees of a security firm accused of spying on Julian Assange at Ecuadors embassy in the UK will be allowed to give evidence to his extradition case anonymously after claiming they would be at risk of kidnapping or poisoning.

Anonymity was granted to two former employees of UC Global after a hearing at the Old Bailey in London was told they feared that its director and owner, David Morales, or others connected to him in the US, could seek to harm them.

Judge Vanessa Baraitser said she would permit their identities to remain anonymous out of respect for a Spanish court that had done the same as part of a case in which they are involved.

Hearing a submission for anonymity from the WikiLeaks founders legal team on Tuesday, she asked if the witnesses required protection from the director of UC Global, or from the American state, or from whom do you think?

Mark Summers QC responded that they required protection mainly from Morales, but also from those associated with him. He said that Morales, who had been detained in Spain and subsequently bailed, had military training and that a firearm with the serial numbers removed had been found at one of his addresses.

James Lewis QC, acting for the US government, did not contest the submission for anonymity but said that checks would be carried out on the witnesses, whose evidence would be read into the record. He added that the US case was likely to be that their evidence was wholly irrelevant.

In allegations first reported by El Pais, the Spanish defence and private security company provided security for the Ecuadorian embassy, where Assange lived for seven years until April 2019. According to a complaint lodged by Assange in Spain, the company handed over audio and video of meetings he held with his lawyers and supporters inside the embassy to the CIA, breaching privacy laws and legal privilege.

Earlier in Tuesdays hearing, a lawyer for Abu Hamza, the radical Muslim cleric serving a life sentence in the US for terrorism offences, told the court that Assange would almost certainly end up in the extreme conditions of a notorious supermax jail if sent to the US.

The lawyer, Lindsay Lewis, accused US authorities of going back on assurances that she said had been given to courts in the UK and Europe before Hamza was extradited from Britain in 2012.

Assange is fighting extradition to the US on charges relating to leaks of classified documents allegedly exposing US war crimes and abuse. He could face a prison sentence of up to 175 years if convicted on all charges and be moved to the supermax administrative maximum facility near Florence, Colorado.

It is currently holding Abu Hamza, an Egyptian-born former imam at the Finsbury Park mosque in north London, who was born Mustafa Kamel Mustafa.

The 62-year-old had suffered serious psychological consequences from enforced isolation in the US, Lewis told the Old Bailey. The US lawyer represented Hamza during his New York terrorism trial and has been called by Assanges defence team.

I would note he was almost never out of his cell except for legal visits, she said, adding that calls and communications to his family were also sporadic.

There was no reason to believe that the conditions US authorities could impose on Assange would be any less arbitrary, oppressive or difficult to challenge, Lewis said.

Her evidence follows a week of testimony by medical experts who referred to Assanges history of depression and what was said to be a high risk of him taking his life if extradited.

I think he would be unlikely to get anywhere near the care or accommodation he has had in the UK, said Lewis, giving evidence via videolink.

Another witness called by the Assange legal team, a former warden at the Metropolitan Correctional Centre in New York, said there would have to be a severe change in Assanges medical status for him to get out of the prison in Florence.

Cross-examining, Clair Dobbin, for the US government, said it was only a possibility that Assange would be subject to what are known as Sams (special administrative measures).

Read more here:

Assange case: former security firm staff allowed to give anonymous evidence - The Guardian

Two of the rebels I admire most,Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks publisher, andRoger Hallam, the co-founder of Extinction Rebellion, are in jail in Britain. That should not be surprising. You can measure the effectiveness of resistance by the fury of the response. Julian courageously exposed the lies, deceit, war crimes and corruption of the ruling imperial elites. Roger has helped organized the largest acts of mass civil disobedience in British history, shutting down parts of London for weeks, in a bid to wrest power from a ruling class that has done nothing, and will do nothing, to halt the climate emergency and our death march to mass extinction.

The governing elites, when truly threatened, turn the rule of law into farce. Dissent becomes treason. They use the state mechanisms of control intelligence agencies, police, courts, black propaganda and a compliant press that acts as their echo chamber, along with the jails and prisons not only to marginalize and isolate rebels, but to psychologically and physically destroy them. The list of rebels silenced or killed by ruling elites runs in a direct line from Socrates to the Haitian resistance leader Toussaint L'Ouverture, who led the only successful slave revolt in human history and died in a frigid French prison cell of malnutrition and exhaustion, to the imprisonment of socialist Eugene V. Debs, whose health was also broken in a federal prison. Rebel leaders from the 1960s, includingMumia Abu-Jamal,Sundiata Acoli, Kojo Bomani Sababu, Mutulu Shakur andLeonard Peltier, remain, decades later, in U.S. prisons. Muslim activists, including those who led the charityThe Holy Land FoundationandSyed Fahad Hashmi, were arrested, often at the request of the Israeli government, after the hysteria following 9/11, and given tawdry show trials. They also remain incarcerated.

Resistance, genuine resistance, exacts a very, very high price. Those in power drop even the pretense of justice when they face an existential threat. Most rebels, like Ernesto "Che" Guevara, and the tens of thousands of rebels the U.S. has had kidnapped, disappeared and brutally tortured and killed throughout American history, end up as martyrs.

Once a rebel is caged, the state uses its absolute control and array of dark arts to break them. Julian, whose extradition hearing is underway in London, and who spent seven years trapped as a political prisoner in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, is taken from his cell in the high security Belmarsh Prison at 5a.m. He is handcuffed, put in holding cells, stripped naked and X-rayed. He is transported an hour and a half each way to court in a police van that resembles a dog cage on wheels. He is held in a glass box at the back of court during the proceedings, often unable to consult with his lawyers. He has difficulty hearing the proceedings. He is routinely denied access to the documents in his case and is openly taunted in court by the judge.

It does not matter that Julian, who is being prosecuted under the 1917 Espionage Act, is not a U.S. citizen. It does not matter that WikiLeaks, which he founded and publishes, is not a U.S.-based publication. The ominous message the U.S. government is sending is clear: No matter who or where you are, if you expose the inner workings of empire you will be hunted down, kidnapped and brought to the U.S. to be tried as a spy and imprisoned for life. The empire intends to beunaccountable, untouchable and unexamined.

The U.S. created in the so-called "war on terror" parallel legal and penal codes to railroad dissidents and rebels into prison. These rebels are held in prolonged solitary confinement, creating deep psychological distress. They are prosecuted under special administrative measures, known as SAMs, to prevent or severely restrict communication with other prisoners, attorneys, family members, the media and people outside the jail. They are denied access to the news and other reading material. They are barred from participating in educational and religious activities in the prison. They are subject to 24-hour electronic monitoring and 23-hour lockdown. They must shower and go to the bathroom on camera. They are permitted to write one letter a week to a single member of their family, but cannot use more than three pieces of paper. They often have no access to fresh air and must take the one hour of recreation in a cage that looks like a giant hamster wheel.

The U.S. has set up a segregated facility, the Communication Management Unit, at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana. Nearly all the inmates transferred to Terre Haute are Muslims. A second facility has been set up at Marion, Illinois, where the inmates again are mostly Muslim but also include a sprinkling of animal rights and environmental activists. Their sentences are arbitrarily lengthened by "terrorism enhancements" under the Patriot Act. Amnesty International has called the Marion prison facility "inhumane." All calls and mail although communication customarily is off-limits to prison officials are monitored in these two Communication Management Units. Communication among prisoners is required to be only in English. The highest-level "terrorists" are housed at the Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility, known as Supermax, in Florence, Colorado, where prisoners have almost no human interaction, physical exercise or mental stimulation. It is Guantnamo-like conditions in colder weather.

Julian is already very fragile. His psychological and physical distress include dramatic weight loss, severe respiratory problems, joint problems, dental decay, chronic anxiety, intense, constant stress resulting in an inability to relax or focus, and episodes of mental confusion. These symptoms indicate, as Nils Melzer, the UNspecial rapporteur on torture who met and examined Julian in prison has stated, that he is suffering from prolonged psychological torture.

If Julian is extradited to the U.S. to face 17 charges under the Espionage Act, each carrying a potential 10-year sentence, which appears likely, he will continue to be psychologically and physically abused to break him. He will be tried in the burlesque of a kangaroo court with "secret" evidence, familiar to Black and Muslim radicals as well as rebels such as Jeremy Hammond, sentenced to 10 years in prison for hacking into the computers and making public the emails of a private security firm that works on behalf of the government, including the Department of Homeland Security, and corporations such as Dow Chemical.

Roger is being held inPentonville Prisonin London, which was built in 1842 and is in disrepair. He is charged with breaking bail conditions over an action that saw activists throw paint on the walls of the four major British political parties, as well as conspiracy to cause criminal damage. A Green Party member leaked to the British police a recorded Zoom discussion Roger hadwith three other members of Burning Pink, an anti-political party organized to create citizen assemblies to replace ruling governing bodies, as they discussed upcoming actions. The homes of the four activists on the Zoom meeting along with Roger, they were Blyth Brentnall, Diana Warner, Ferhat Ulusu and Anglican priest Steven Nunn were raided on Aug.25. Their electronic devices were confiscated by police and they were arrested.

Roger is housed in a dirty, vermin-infested cell and denied books and visitors. A vegan, he is forced to live on a diet of cold cereal and bread. On many days there is no hot food served in the prison. Violent altercations within the prison are commonplace. The overcrowded cells often lack lighting and heat. He has no change of clothes and has been unable to wash the clothes he is wearing for weeks. He stuffs bedsheets and paper in the cracks of the door to block mice and cockroaches. The toilet in his cell has no seat, is covered in excrement and does not flush properly. He goes days without access to the outside. His reading glasses are broken. He is waiting on a request for tape to fix them. The COVID-19 pandemic is in the prison. Two of the staff have died from the virus. Roger could be imprisoned in these conditions until February, if he is denied bail in a hearing scheduled for this week.

Roger's arrest came as Extinction Rebellion was planning ablockade of the printing presses of News Corps Printworks, which prints several major British newspapers, including The Times, Sun on Sunday, Sunday Times, The Daily Mail and The London Evening Standard. The blockade took place on Sept.4 to protest the failure of thosenews outlets to accurately report on the climate and ecological emergency. The blockade delayed distribution of the papers by several hours.

"The days of standing up to tyranny have long faded,"Roger writes from prison. "The life-and-death struggle against Hitler and fascism is consigned to the history books. Today's liberal classes believe only in one thing: maintaining their privilege. Their one priority is power. The number one rule is: preserve our careers, our institutions at all cost. The historical rule number one of fighting evil is the willingness to lose your career and to risk the closing down of your institution. The prospect of death and destruction is lost in a postmodernist haze. Leadership has decayed into sitting behind a desk, following public relations protocols (otherwise known as lying). Leading from the front, the first to go to prison Martin Luther King-style died with the passing of the World War II generation."

"The game is up," Roger continued. "The old alliance with the liberal classes is dead. New forms of revolutionary initiative and leadership are rising up. Members of the new political party Burning Pink have thrown paint at the doors of the NGOs and political parties calling for open dialogue and public debate. The response, true to form, has been a lethal and deafening silence. We are now in prison from where I write this article after a Green Party member recorded a Zoom call and passed it to the police. We have not been let out for exercise for the first five days. We have no kettle, no pillows, no visits. But we don't give a shit. We are doing something about Evil."

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The true cost of resistance: Consider what happened to Julian Assange and Roger Hallam - Salon