Best-selling author and award-winning journalist Luke Harding showcases his latest expos in Bishops Stortford on Saturday (July 4).

The Guardian senior international correspondent will be signing copies of Shadow State Murder, Mayhem and Russias Remaking of the West in the Indies North Street office from 10am to noon.

Based upon years of investigation, his eighth book, which is officially launched on Thursday (July 2), reveals how Russian spies helped to elect Donald Trump as US president in 2016 and backed the campaign which resulted in Brexit the same year and how they lied, deceived and murdered to do so, threatening the very basis of Western democracy.

Harding, 52, moved to Stortford in 2012 with wife and fellow writer Phoebe Taplin after the Kremlin deported him from Moscow, where he was The Guardian's bureau chief from 2007 to 2011, in the first case of its kind since the Cold War. The couples two children attended Hockerill Anglo-European College.

Harding has built his reputation as one of the best reporters in the world with a series of investigations. He has reported from Delhi, Berlin and Moscow, and covered wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria.

His previous book, Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win, was a No 1 New York Times best-seller in late 2017. Spy novelist John Le Carr called it "a superb piece of work... and essential reading for anyone who cares for his country. Amazing research and brilliantly collated".

Other titles include A Very Expensive Poison: The Assassination of Alexander Litvinenko and Putins War with the West; The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the Worlds Most Wanted Man and Mafia State: How One Reporter Became an Enemy of the Brutal New Russia.

Harding's books have been translated into 30 languages. Two have been made into Hollywood movies. The Fifth Estate, based on WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assanges War on Secrecy, co-written with David Leigh, was released in 2013, starring Benedict Cumberbatch as Assange. Oliver Stones biopic Snowden, adapted from The Snowden Files and starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt as CIA whistleblower Edward Snowden, appeared in 2016.

A stage version of A Very Expensive Poison premiered in 2019 at the Old Vic theatre in London. Written by Lucy Prebble, it won the Critics Circle award for best new play.

Also by the same author are The Liar: The Fall of Jonathan Aitken (with David Leigh) and Libya: Murder in Benghazi and the Fall of Gaddafi (with Martin Chulov).

See original here:

Top author and journalist to sign copies of new book in Bishop's Stortford - Bishop's Stortford Independent

The Kafkaesque Imperium has taken yet another absurd step towards mean absurdity with another superseding indictment against Julian Assange. This move by the US Department of Justice seems to have surprised those involved in his extradition proceedings. Mark Summers QC, one of the members of the Assange legal team, did not conceal his astonishment at the call over hearing at Londons Westminster Magistrates Court. We are surprised by the timing of this development. We were surprised to hear about it in the press.

What is baffling about this latest act of brutish pantomime is that the spruced up indictment does not contain new charges so much as added flesh. WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson could only remark upon this fact with consternation. We already know the sinister import of the charges, the lions share of 17 focused on alleged violations of the US Espionage Act, and one of conspiring to commit computer intrusion. US prosecutors evidently felt that the latter charge required bulking.

On June 24, the DOJs Office of Public Affairs made mention of a federal grand jurys return of a second superseding indictment [] charging Julian P. Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, with offenses that relate to Assanges alleged role in one of the largest compromises of classified information in the history of the United States. No additional counts are added, but the new document is not immaterial in what it builds upon. It seeks to draw out the character of Assange as the enterprising hacker who also sought to recruit his fellow kind, a move that transparently seeks to undermine any journalistic or publisher credentials. It also casts a wider net against WikiLeaks, its associates and those who gave it a lending hand, while expanding the time line of alleged nefarious acts (no longer restricted to March 2010, it targets alleged activities between 2009 and 2015). According to the charging document, Assange and others at WikiLeaks recruited and agreed with hackers to commit computer intrusions to benefit WikiLeaks.

The document makes mention, for instance, of Sarah Harrison, former spokesperson Daniel Domscheit-Berg, and digital activist Jacob Appelbaum. It also hones in on Assange on the conference circuit, noting how he, along with a WikiLeaks associate, participated at the Hacking at Random conference in the Netherlands. Assange sought to recruit those who had or could obtain authorized access to classified information and hackers to search for, steal, and send to WikiLeaks the items on the Most Wanted Leaks list that was posted on WikiLeakss website.

Assange is described as encourager and provocateur, suggesting to potential recruits that, unless they were a serving member of the United States military, they would have no legal liability for stealing classified information and giving it to WikiLeaks because TOP SECRET meant nothing as a matter of law.

This indictment does little to improve on previous defects. As Kevin Gosztola writes in the indispensable Shadowproof, the DOJ draws heavily on statements from FBI informants, namely Sigurdur Siggi Thordarson and Hector Xavier Monsegur (Sabu) of the LulzSec hacker group. Thordarson was fired from WikiLeaks in November 2011 after his embezzlement ventures amounting to $50,000 were discovered. According to WikiLeaks, In light of the relentless ongoing prosecution of US authorities against WikiLeaks, it is not surprising that the FBI would try to abuse this troubled young man and involve him in some manner in the attempt to prosecute WikiLeaks staff. The Bureaus pieces of silver for Thordarsons services amounted to $5,000.

Monsegurs part in the whole business was, according to activist Jeremy Hammond and key figure in the hacking of the intelligence firm Stratfor, to entrap WikiLeaks in a cash-for-leaks scheme. It was also Monsegur who gave the hacker collective AntiSec access to the companys information trove. Hammond was duly entrapped in transferring, without his knowledge, confidential data to an FBI server. Monsegurs rather smelly pride of place in the indictment is that of allegedly fielding requests from Assange to look for (and provide to WikiLeaks) mail and documents, databases and pdfs.

Another protagonist also makes an appearance in the prosecutorial show. To encourage leakers and hackers to provide stolen materials to WikiLeaks in the future, Assange and others at WikiLeaks openly displayed their attempts to assist [Edward] Snowden in evading arrest. Harrison, tagged WLA-4, is noted as assisting Snowden make his exit from Hong Kong to Moscow in 2013. The assistance provided by WikiLeaks is deemed conspiratorial; vocalised support for Snowden given by Assange at the Chaos Computer Club conference on December 31, 2013, is trotted as an example of incitement to theft.

Gosztola notes the purposeful mutilations by the prosecutors regarding statements made by Assange regarding radical transparency. Assange, for instance, is noted as claiming that the famous leaks that WikiLeaks has done or the recent Edward Snowden revelations showed that it was possible now for even a single system administrator tonot merely wreck[] or disabl[e] [organizations]but rather shift[] information from an information apartheid systeminto the knowledge commons. The actual quote is more qualified in its philosophical belligerence, emphasising such liberated knowledge as a disciplining force and constructive constraint upon those with extraordinary power and information while also being used to construct and understand the new world that were entering into.

Assanges stance on information, and his encouragement to the young to rush into the ranks of the Central Intelligence Agency, is taken as an exhortation of bad faith, encouraging the theft of classified information and the ruination of secrecy. A better reading of this, urges Gosztola, is to see this as a call to young people to help the public address a crisis of corruption in government by forcing transparency at a time when the government abuses the classified information system to conceal waste, fraud, abuse, and other illegal actions.

The new indictment has made something of a mockery of the London extradition proceedings. Judge Vanessa Baraitser conceded to being informed of the superseding document by email, but still awaits its official receipt. Prosecution barrister Joel Smith merely remarked that both parties were still pouring over its contents and implications. If we need to involve the court then we will inform the court at the appropriate time. Summers was less sanguine, suggesting that the expansive larding of the new indictment would affect future management hearings. This shows, stated Hrafnsson, how they are abusing due process in the UK and flaunting the legal systems rules.

During the hearing, Judge Baraitser was again her merry self, suggesting that Assange had no good reason to avoid attending the call-over session. According to word from Belmarsh prison officials, he was refusing to attend for fear of contracting COVID-19, which was no reason at all. Medical evidence had to be supplied for any absence at the next call-over session on July 27. Another entry into the book of travesty that is this entire affair has been made.

Read this article:

The Kafkaesque Imperium: Julian Assange And The Second Superseding Indictment - OpEd - Eurasia Review

Read an extract from the updated edition of The Most Dangerous Man in the World, Andrew Fowler's definitive book about Julian Assange.

This is an extract from the The Most Dangerous Man in the World: Updated Edition, by Andrew Fowler.

A sunny spring evening in Madrid. WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson and the organisations Spanish lawyer Aitor Martnez meet up at a caf in the palatial Reina Victoria hotel in the city centre. Three men approach their table and introduce themselves.

One is a journalist, the other two are computer experts, but what they are doing on that April evening in 2019 involves neither journalism nor any particular expertise in computing. Theyve turned their hands to something far more dangerous and potentially rewarding.

On a laptop they show Hrafnsson and Martnez an extraordinary sight: video and audio recordings of the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange inside Londons Ecuadorian Embassy where he had taken refuge in 2012, talking with his lawyers, and meeting journalists and supporters.

The three men want money for the footage and believe they can get 9 million. They will sell to the highest bidder and mention that a foreign TV station is interested. Although Martnez and Hrafnsson want to know why its worth anything to see Assange in the embassy, Hrafnsson negotiates with them and discusses the sum of 3 million.

What the amateur extortionists who claim to be working for freedom of expression and who support Assange dont know is that every word is being recorded. Both Hrafnsson and Martnez are wired for sound.

Martnez asks them, If you are benefactors working for freedom of expression and for Assanges legal battle, why do you want money?

We have to put food on the table too, replies one of the men.

Hrafnsson had been alerted that the material was on offer on Twitter. He had made contact, but hed also tipped off the Spanish police. Several officers from the kidnapping and extortion department are nearby recording every word of the conversation. The deal has hardly been clinched when the police pounce. The audio recordings and surveillance footage, covertly shot by Hrafnsson as he sat at the table, are enough to arrest two of the men.

It could be reasonably argued that uncovering the espionage operation against Assange might have tipped the scales of justice in his favour. The only charge Assange faced in the United Kingdom at the time was the relatively minor offence of skipping bail when he entered the Ecuadorian Embassy. Sex allegations against him by two Swedish women had long been dropped.

But on April 11, 2019, within hours of Hrafnsson calling a press conference in London to reveal the covert operation at the Ecuadorian Embassy, the Metropolitan Police stormed in and dragged Assange out.

Exposing the internal surveillance had seemingly forced the British governments hand.

***

For the seven years that Julian Assange lived there, the Ecuadorian Embassy, just around the corner from Harrods the luxury department store in Knightsbridge, was publicly recognised as one of the most surveilled places in the world from the outside.

In the early days, shortly after Assange sought political asylum in 2012, the security was obvious. Dozens of police surrounded the ornate Queen Anne style red brick building in a show of force.

As the months passed, the number of uniformed police dwindled, but in their place arose a more insidious threat. Across the road from the embassy high resolution cameras peered down on every person who entered the building.

When I first visited Assange at the embassy in November 2013 I was stopped at the door by a uniformed officer from the Metropolitan Police who demanded my name. I told him he had no right to ask and he went no further. It was an act of mild intimidation.

Inside, as we sat down to talk in the booklined conference room, Assange opened the window. Along with a fresh breeze the noise of trucks delivering goods to Harrods entered the narrow room, making it harder for us to be overheard. During another meeting, although the window remained closed, Assange turned on a machine that created white noise to make the job of eavesdropping that much harder.

He had every reason to be concerned about his conversations being overheard. Just a few months earlier a bugging device had been under the desk in the ambassadors office in the next room. Exactly who planted it there is still a mystery, but suspicion fell on everyone from the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to the UKs domestic spies at MI5 to renegade Ecuadorian intelligence officers opposed to the then-Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa who had granted Assange asylum. Just who was spying on whom at the embassy became what former CIA counterintelligence chief James Jesus Angleton famously described as a wilderness of mirrors.

Without taking into account what other countries were up to, the British government itself was spending 4 million a year on watching the embassy. British security agencies photographed and identified everyone who entered the embassy. Assange estimated that employed 30 people a day.

The embassy already had its own security and surveillance operations in place. They were run by a little-known company based in the Spanish town of Jerez de la Frontera. Twelve kilometres inland from the Atlantic Coast, close to the Cdiz mountains, Jerez de la Frontera is better known for its fortified wine than spying. But not far from the ancient city centre, former Spanish naval officer David Morales had managed to build a successful business, Undercover Global (UC Global), specialising in security and surveillance.

In 2015 Ecuador signed a contract with Morales to protect its London embassy. What we now know is that some time later, according to documents filed in a Spanish court, UC Global began working as a double agent, around January 2017.

The material the company gathered wasnt only being collected for the Ecuadorian government; secret access to the UC Global server had been given to others, with the explicit instruction from Morales that the Ecuadorian government was not to be told about this special arrangement.

Morales boasted repeatedly to his staff in emails that I have gone to the dark side and that those in control are the American friends. Morales spoke of US intelligence and believed the North American will get us a lot of contracts around the world.

Questioning the euphemistic references to Americans, one employee demanded to know exactly who they were working for. According to a court statement, Morales replied: la inteligencia de los Estados Unidos (United States intelligence).

Whatever the truth of that, material from surveillance of the Ecuadorian Embassy certainly ended up with the US government. Detailed evidence pieced together during research for my book, The Most Dangerous Man in the World, unmasks at least some of the secret recipients of Assanges private conversations. As we shall see, the trail goes all the way to the US State Department and a Trump family adviser.

UC Globals spying activities might have remained secret but for that clumsy attempt to extort 3 million from WikiLeaks. It was bad luck for Morales. The extortionists had nothing to do with his company, but their greed exposed what he had been up to.

When the Spanish police raided Morales home, they found 20,000 and guns with their serial numbers filed off. Morales was charged with privacy violations, illegal possession of guns and money laundering.

At the company headquarters police seized computers, mobile phones and thousands of records. As they sifted through the material, details of UC Globals secrets began spilling out.

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The botched extortion scheme that forced the UK's hand on Assange - Crikey

The US Department of Justice (DoJ) has issued a new superseding indictment against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. But the indictment fails to disclose crucial information as generally required under UK law.

This failure could be seen as highly prejudicial and therefore present another opportunity for the defence to lodge a challenge to the extradition request.

On 24 June, the DoJ released a statement accusing Assange of conspiring with Anonymous affiliated hackers, among others. A 49-page document accompanying that statement provides further details.

According to Shadowproofs Kevin Gosztola, the document, one-third of which merely reiterates the original 18 charges, significantly:

expands the [original] conspiracy to commit computer intrusion charge and accuses Assange of conspiring with hackers affiliated with Anonymous, LulzSec, AntiSec, and Gnosis.

The computer crime charge is not limited to March 2010 anymore. It covers conduct that allegedly occurred between 2009 and 2015.

In the document, the DoJ identifies a witness, simply referred to as Teenager. According to WikiLeaks, that witness is a convicted felon, child abuser, and an FBI informant:

It was just over a year ago that WikiLeaks forewarned that the DoJ would likely use this Star Witness, who it claimed was central to an FBI entrapment operation:

In its accompanying press release, WikiLeaks named this Star Witness as Sigurdur (Siggi) Thordarson. WikiLeaks pointed out how Thordarson had served time in prison for paedophilia (involving nine boys) and additionally two years imprisonment on 18 charges of embezzlement, theft, and fraud.

Birgitta Jonsdottir, an Icelandic MP with the Pirate Party who worked on the WikiLeaks Collateral Murder video, commented:

When Julian met him [Thordarson] for the first or second time, I was there. And I warned Julian from day one, theres something not right about this guy I asked not to have him as part of the Collateral Murder team.

Another key witness named in the superseding indictment is Sabu, who represented the hacker groups Lulzsec and offshoot AntiSec. Sabus real name is Hector Xavier Monsegur. The superseding indictment refers to the hacking of Intelligence Consulting Company. From the context, that company can safely be inferred as Stratfor.

Monsegur worked for the FBI to entrap anarchist activist Jeremy Hammond via the Stratfor hack, though ultimately to try and implicate Assange too.

Daily Dot quotes Monsegurs lawyer regarding his relationship with the FBI:

The government tracked everything he typed with a key-logging program, attorney Peggy Cross-Goldenberg told the court. In addition to monitoring his Internet activity, the FBI installed a camera in his house to provide constant video surveillance. Judge Loretta Preska, who repeatedly praised Monsegurs extraordinary level of cooperation, described the relationship as virtual around-the-clock cooperation where Mr. Monsegur was sitting with agents.

Hammond claims that Monsegurs hacking ops were not only sanctioned by the FBI but were on behalf of the Feds:

What many do not know is that Sabu was also used by his handlers to facilitate the hacking of targets of the governments choosing including numerous websites belonging to foreign governments.

The documents hacked from Stratfor were leaked to WikiLeaks and became known as the Global Intelligence Files. Hammond was jailed for 10 years for his part in the Stratfor hack. However, Monsegur, who worked with the FBI for approximately three years, was sentenced to just time served (seven months).

According to World Socialist Web Site, in early 2011 Thordarson contacted Lulzsec to see if it could help hack into Icelandic government departments. At that point in time, Sabu was working with the FBI. To prove he was a bona-fide WikiLeaks worker Thordarson uploaded to Lulzsec a video that showed Assange in a room at Ellingham Hall, where he was staying while on bail, interspersed with Thordarsons and Sabus chat logs:

In effect, the alleged hacking operation was instigated and carried out by two FBI informants (Thordarson was later paid $5,000 by the FBI) apparently to entrap Assange (he subsequently denied all knowledge of the op).

These alleged email exchanges between the FBI and Thordarson talk of payment. According to Thordarson a receipt was provided by the FBI to Thordarson for delivery of 1TB of data across eight hard drives that included chat logs, videos, documents, pictures, and other related data to WikiLeaks:

According to the US Office of the Attorney General, informants are expressly forbidden from engaging in entrapment. They also cannot initiate or instigate a plan or strategy to commit a federal, state or local offense. The evidence suggests that Thordarson and Monsegur clearly violated those rules.

Furthermore, in the UK context, unless there are exceptional circumstances, an informants identity is generally required to be disclosed to the courts as, according to the Crown Prosecution Service, openness of judicial proceedings is:

a fundamental principle enshrined in Article 6(1) of the European Convention on Human Rights (the right to a fair trial). This underpins the requirement for a prosecution witness to be identifiable not only to the defendant, but also to the open court. It supports the ability of the defendant to present his case and to test the prosecution case by cross-examination of prosecution witnesses.

The US superseding indictment, lodged with the UK court, fails to disclose information regarding the true identity of key witnesses, full details of their role as FBI informants; or their criminal background. In doing so, rather than enhancing the prosecution case, the superseding indictment arguably undermines it, thus providing Assanges lawyers with a potential legal challenge to the extradition.

That challenge, together with other alleged flaws and errors in the US case, and UK procedural irregularities, could result in a request to dismiss the extradition case.

Featured image via YouTube

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US indictment against Assange fails to disclose crucial information as required by UK law - The Canary

This is not the first timebut, as you can imagine, every time I hear his voice I feel honoured and moved that he should dial my number when he has such few and far between opportunities to place calls.

I want a perspective on world developments out there I have none in here, he said. Which, of course, placed a considerable burden on me to articulate thoughts on capitalisms fate during this pandemic and the repercussions of it all on politics, geopolitics etc. The knowledge that Her Majestys Prison authorities would discontinue our discussion at any moment made the task harder.

Never before has the world of money (i.e. the money markets, that include the share markets) been so decoupled from the world of real people, real stuff from the real economy.

We watch in awe as GDP, personal incomes, wages, company revenues, businesses small and large, collapse while the stock market is staying relatively unscathed. The other day, Hertz declared bankruptcy. When a company does this, its share price goes to zero. Not now. In fact, Hertz is about to issue $1 billion worth of new shares. Why would anyone buy shares of an officially bankrupt company? The answer is: Because central banks print mountain ranges of money and give it for almost free to financiers to buy any piece of junk floating around the stock exchange.

Complete zombification of the corporations, is how I put it to Julian. Julian commented that this proves that governments and central banks can keep corporations afloat even when they sell next to nothing at the marketplace. I agreed. But, I also pointed out a major conundrum that capitalism faces for the first time. It is this:

Central bank money printing keeps asset prices very high while the price of stuff and wages fall. This disconnect can go on growing. But, when Hertz, British Airways etc. can survive in this manner, they have no reason not to fire half the workforce and to cut the wages of the other half. This creates more deflation/depression in the real economy. Which means that the Central Banks must print more and more to keep asset and share prices high. At some point, the masses out there will rebel and governments will be under pressure to divert some income to them. But this will deflate asset prices. At that point, because these assets are used by corporations as collateral for all the loans they take out to stay afloat, they will lose access to liquidity. A sequence of corporate failures will commence under circumstances of stagnation. I dont think capitalism can easily survive, at least not without huge social and geopolitical conflicts, this conundrum, was my conclusion.

Julian thought about this for a moment and asked me: How important is consumption to capitalism? What percentage of GDP is at stake if consumption does not recover? Do the corporations need workers or customers? I answered that it was high enough to make this conundrum real. Yes, Central Banks and robots can keep the corporations going without customers or workers. But, robots cannot buy the stuff they produce. So, this is not a stable equilibrium. The losses in peoples incomes will accelerate, thus generating pivotal discontent.

Julian then said something along the lines of: That will benefit Trump who knows how to feed off the anger of the multitudes toward the educated, upper middle-class elites. I agreed, saying that DiEM25 has been warning since 2016 that socialism for the oligarchy and austerity for the many, in the end, feeds the racist ultra-right. That we are experiencing again what happened in the 1920s in Italy with the rise of Mussolini.

Julian agreed entirely and said: Yes, like then, there is an alliance forming between rich people and the discontented working class. He then added that most of the prisoners and the prison officers in Belmarsh support Trump. At that point the connection was cut off.

Our conversation lasted 947. It was more substantive, and of course moving, than any conversation I have had in a while.

Read more of Yanis Varoufakis thoughts on his personal blog.

Do you want to be informed of DiEM25's actions? Sign up here

Continued here:
Julian Assange just called. To talk about the pandemic's effect on capitalism & politics! - DiEM25

On the day the far right clashed with police in London, economist Yanis Varoufakis spoke by phone with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, currently held in custody in Belmarsh prison. Their conversation was about the prevailing economic crisis resulting from the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic and what it could lead to.

Their conclusion is frightening.

On Saturday 13 June, former Greek finance minister Varoufakis received a phone call from Assange. It lasted just under 10 minutes. Assange asked: I want a perspective on world developments out there I have none in here.

Varoufakis observed:

We watch in awe as GDP, personal incomes, wages, company revenues, businesses small and large, collapse while the stock market is staying relatively unscathed. The other day, Hertz declared bankruptcy. When a company does this, its share price goes to zero. Not now. In fact, Hertz is about to issue $1 billion worth of new shares. Why would anyone buy shares of an officially bankrupt company?

The answer is: Because central banks print mountain ranges of money and give it for almost free to financiers to buy any piece of junk floating around the stock exchange.

Varoufakis then explained how:

Central bank money printing keeps asset prices very high while the price of stuff and wages fall. This disconnect can go on growing. But, when Hertz, British Airways etc. can survive in this manner, they have no reason not to fire half the workforce and to cut the wages of the other half. This creates more deflation/depression in the real economy. Which means that the Central Banks must print more and more to keep asset and share prices high. At some point, the masses out there will rebel and governments will be under pressure to divert some income to them. But this will deflate asset prices. At that point, because these assets are used by corporations as collateral for all the loans they take out to stay afloat, they will lose access to liquidity. A sequence of corporate failures will commence under circumstances of stagnation.

Varoufakis concluded:

I dont think capitalism can easily survive, at least not without huge social and geopolitical conflicts, this conundrum.

But he was not suggesting a post-capitalist utopia could arise from the ashes. Just the opposite.

Varoufakis says Assange responded by asking:

How important is consumption to capitalism? Also, what percentage of GDP is at stake if consumption does not recover? Do the corporations need workers or customers?

In reply, Varoufakis explained that when people dont have enough income to live on this will likely lead to widespread discontent.

Assange argued that this kind of crisis would benefit Donald Trump, who could exploit the discontent by blaming the crisis on upper class elites. Or, as Varoufakis puts it:

socialism for the oligarchy and austerity for the many, in the end, feeds the racist ultra-right. That we are experiencing again what happened in the 1920s in Italy with the rise of Mussolini.

It is a shocking but plausible analysis and a wake-up call.

Assange further responded by observing that there is an alliance between the rich and the discontented working class, and he gave the US under Trump as an example.

The phone call then abruptly ended.

But it can be argued that the final observations made by Assange and Varoufakis in that short conservation were not just about Trump and the politics of the US, but can easily apply to the UK. In particular, the populist alliance between the current Tory elite, led by the likes of Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings, and disenchanted workers across the UK, worried that the prevailing economic crisis has no end.

Progressives would likely hope that when an economic crisis reaches its zenith, the dispossessed would seek to overthrow by ballot or other means the government that has helped create that crisis. But it can easily result in a very different scenario of a push, by stealth, towards authoritarian rule. In effect, a non-militarised version of fascism.

Ironically, its that same authoritarian tendency that has seen publisher and journalist Assange jailed, to face possibly decades in prison in the US gulag. And with the full cooperation of the UK political and judicial establishment.

That too is a warning. We ignore these warnings at our peril.

Featured image via Mohamed Elmaazi

Read the original:
Assange and Varoufakis warn why the prevailing economic crisis could lead to fascism - The Canary

Good morning,

Throughout the coronavirus crisis, many Republicans have remained skeptical about the threat of Covid-19. But as the disease moves from urban Democratic strongholds such as New York into some of the rural and exurban areas that voted for Donald Trump, research suggests those partisan attitudes to the pandemic may be shifting.

Coronavirus cases are climbing in Arizona, Florida, South Carolina and Arkansas. In Texas, hospitalisations for Covid-19 are up 42% since Memorial Day. In Oklahoma, health officials have expressed concern that a Trump campaign rally in Tulsa this weekend could contribute to the spread of the disease in a city that has experienced a recent rise in cases.

The president, however, sees mass rallies as his best chance of changing the narrative and putting him back on track for re-election, reports David Smith:

A Trump rally with a cheering crowd eschewing face masks, and a packed convention crowning him as the Republican nominee, could be used to draw a striking contrast in optics with the mask-wearing, basement-bound Biden, selling the incumbent as a happy warrior.

China has won the battle over world opinion in a survey that found just three out of 53 countries believed the US has handled the coronavirus better than its superpower rival.

But Beijing is back on lockdown after dozens of new cases were linked to two seafood markets in the Chinese capital.

After weeks of protests sparked by the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, a fresh tragedy in Atlanta on Friday has further fuelled the Black Lives Matter movement. Rayshard Brooks, a 27-year-old black man, was shot in the back by a police officer, after what began as a friendly encounter. His death has now been ruled a homicide by the Fulton county medical examiners office.

Leading Democrats said on Sunday that Brookss killing underlines the need for significant change in US law enforcement. This did not call for lethal force, said the House majority whip, James Clyburn. And I dont know whats in the culture that would make this guy do that. It has got to be the culture. Its got to be the system.

The shooting puts a spotlight on two VP contenders, Atlanta mayor, Keisha Lance Bottoms, and former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, both touted as potential running mates for Joe Biden. Bottoms said the footage of Brookss death broke her heart.

Beyonc has called for justice for Breonna Taylor. in an open letter to the attorney general of Kentucky, Knowles complained no arrests had been made in the case of the 26-year-old African American EMT shot dead in her home by police.

Trump interrupted his own 74th birthday, spent in seclusion at his New Jersey golf club on Sunday, to tweet that Seattle has been taken over by the radical left. The president appeared to be referring to the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone established by demonstrators in the citys Capitol Hill neighborhood, where police vacated a precinct amid the protests.

Meanwhile, there was outrage over distressing footage of police macing a seven-year-old boy during a peaceful protest in Seattle on 30 May. Evan Hreha, the 34-year-old who captured the incident on camera, has since been arrested and spent two days in jail, for what some consider police retribution over the video going viral.

US prosecutors say Julian Assange risked American lives by releasing hundreds of thousands of US intelligence documents. But their indictment against the Wikileaks founder does not include perhaps his most shocking revelation: the video entitled Collateral Murder, which depicted an Apache helicopter gunning down a group of Iraqi civilians in Baghdad in July 2007. Its omission has raised accusations that the US is trying to avoid having its war crimes exposed in public.

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While the debate goes on over whether trans children ought to be allowed to transition, or even to express their gender, their families often need guidance on how to parent them. New Yorks Gender and Family Project is the largest independent program for transgender youth and families in the US. Katelyn Burns reports.

How coronavirus shook a neglected neighborhood

New Yorks coincidentally-named Corona neighbourhood has been hard hit by Covid-19, with economic and health consequences that will likely shake the community for years to come. Amanda Holpuch explains how race, poverty and inequality left this corner of Queens vulnerable.

The GOP is feigning a fainting fit over calls to defund the police. And yet, argues David Sirota, they gladly slash budgets for those charged with policing the worlds most dangerous and powerful criminals.

Apparently, were expected to be horrified by proposals to reduce funding for the militarized police forces that are violently attacking peaceful protesters but were supposed to obediently accept the defunding of the police forces responsible for protecting the population from the wealthy and powerful.

A December 2019 report revealed young New Zealanders use the internet as their primary source of sex education, while a third of the countrys most popular porn clips depict non-consensual sexual activity. The governments answer? This web safety ad.

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First Thing: Covid-19 skeptics may convert as virus hits Trump country - The Guardian

Service Prosecuting Authority drops all but one investigation into British war crimes in Iraq By Jean Shaoul 13 June 2020

The Ministry of Defences (MoD) Service Prosecuting Authority (SPA) has acknowledged that none of the allegations of war crimes made against British soldiers in Iraq are likely to lead to a criminal prosecution.

SPA Director Andrew Cayley, speaking to BBC Radio 4s Law in Action programme last week, said that most of the cases had been dismissed at a very early stage in the investigations because of the low level of offending and lack of credible evidence. Even the last remaining case was unlikely to result in a prosecution.

The government has summarily dismissed countless allegations of mistreatment by British troops that emerged following the illegal invasion, war and occupation of Iraq in 2003including videos of soldiers carrying out wanton acts of crueltyas trivial or without corroborating evidence. But there have been scores of well documented cases of British troops committing war crimes in Iraq, in relation to the abuse of detainees, including murders by a soldier from the SAS special forces, as well as deaths in custody, beatings, torture and sexual abuse by members of the Black Watch.

These crimes are not the result of some bad apples but flow inexorably from the thoroughly predatory and criminal motives behind the US-led invasion of Iraq.

The case of Baha Mousa, a hotel worker in Basra, who died after being tortured and beaten by troops while in custody in a British base in 2003, is the most well-known. After six years of public campaigning, six soldiers finally appeared before a court martial, before being acquitted of wrongdoing. One soldier pleaded guilty and served just one year in jail. Most of the cases of alleged abuse and torture never even reached a court hearing.

The Iraq Historic Allegations Team (IHAT) investigated 3,405 war crimes allegedly committed by British troops during the occupation of Iraq between 2003 and 2009. It found evidence of widespread abuse and mistreatment, including the killing of unarmed civilians and children.

Conservative Prime Minister Theresa Mays government closed down the investigation in 2017 without any prosecutions, using the excuse that Phil Shiner, a lawyer who had taken more than 1,000 cases to IHAT, had paid fixers in Iraq to find clients. May pledged, We will never againin any future conflictlet those activist, left-wing human rights lawyers harangue and harass the bravest of the brave.

Penny Mordaunt, her defence secretary, announced that the Tories would introduce legislation protecting British troops and veterans from investigation over actions on the battlefield abroad after 10 years, except in exceptional circumstances, to prevent the repeated or unfair investigations that followed operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is a carte blanche for future war crimes.

Both the civil courts and public inquiries have found extensive evidence of torture by British forces in Iraq, with government being forced to pay out millions of pounds in out-of-court settlements to avoid criminal prosecutions.

So damning was the evidence in some cases that, in 2014, International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor Fatou Bensouda accepted a complaint alleging UK military personnel committed war crimes against Iraqis in their custody between 2003 and 2008 and ordered a preliminary investigation.

It was the first time the ICC had opened an enquiry into a Western state. Almost all the ICCs indictees have been African heads of state or officials. The USnot a signatory to the Rome Statute that established the ICC in 2002and the other major powers get off scot-free, even as the imperialist powers cynically use the court to target people hostile to their interests.

The ICC has turned a blind eye to the most blatant human rights abuses in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, the West Bank and Gaza, where their perpetrators are protected by a US veto at the United Nations Security Council. On Thursday, US President Donald Trump announced sanctions against ICC officials investigating claims of abuses by Americans and its allies, meaning Israel, freezing the assets of targeted ICC investigators in the US and banning them and their families from entering the country.

Andrew Cayley once served as a Senior Trial Attorney at the ICC Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and the ICC in The Hague between 2001 and 2007, where he was responsible for the investigation and prosecution of serious violations of international humanitarian law in the Darfur region of Sudan. He expressed his confidence that the ICCs separate investigation into allegations of war crimes by British soldiers would end later this year without any prosecutions.

Allegations of abuse and worse against British troops have provoked fury in the ruling class. Political leaders and the corporate media have dismissed them, saying that the soldiers were betrayed by vexatious claims, vile slurs and a witch hunt.

In March, the government introduced legislation proposing a five-year limit on prosecutions for soldiers serving outside the UK. The Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) bill creates a presumption against prosecution that gives the green light to future war crimes, including the mass murder of civilians. Henceforth, the military will be above the law. It will further serve to encourage the culture of delay and cover-up within the MoD, which repeatedly covered up war crimes committed by British forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The governments exoneration of the soldiers constitutes a sharp warning of how far the government will go to block any prosecution for alleged war crimes. This is in marked contrast to the treatment meted out to the WikiLeaks journalist and publisher Julian Assange. Assanges only crime was to expose war crimesincluding killings, torture, abuseregime-change operations, and global spying committed by the US and its allies, including Britain. In the eyes of the ruling class, whistle-blowers, not the perpetrators, are the real criminals.

Assange sits in Londons maximum-security Belmarsh Prison, dubbed the UKs Guantnamo Bayamid the spread of COVID-19 through the facilityas the US seeks his extradition to face jail for life, if not execution, on US Espionage Act charges.

The medias silence on the significance of Cayleys announcement and the proposed legislation, as well as the persecution of Assange, makes plain that the fight for truth and justiceand compensation for the Iraqi peoplecan proceed only in struggle against the capitalist ruling class.

It marks an explicit repudiation of international law and the abandonment of any pretence that the UK is guided by anything other than its own predatory interests. On this, Boris Johnsons Conservative government and Sir Keir Starmers Labour Party are agreed. Their unconditional defence of Britains war crimes in Iraq and elsewhere is a warning to the working class that far greater crimes are being prepared, as London demonstrates its support for US imperialism in its escalation of economic war and military confrontation with China, amid growing social and political unrest.

The only force that can prevent war is the working class, the great revolutionary force in society, uniting behind it all progressive elements in the population across national borders, in a struggle for socialism.

The author also recommends:

UK covered up war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq [22 November 2019]

Five British Royal Marines charged with murdering Afghan insurgent [16 October 2012]

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Service Prosecuting Authority drops all but one investigation into British war crimes in Iraq - World Socialist Web Site

June 13, 2020

Journalists Max Blumenthal & Stefania Maurizi & former Ecuadorian diplomat Fidel Narvez will join a panel moderated by academic Deepa Driver that will drive deep into CIA spying on Julian Assange in Ecuadors embassy in London.

In any other court case, revelations that the prosecuting government spied on the defendant would be immediately thrown out by the judge. But the case against WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange is not just any case. It is an attempt by the United States and Britain to send a journalist to the U.S. where he would face life in prison for publishing state secrets that exposed U.S. war crimes and other abuses of power.

Journalist Max Blumenthal recently wrote a piece in which he revealed how casino magnate and major Republican donor Sheldon Adelson worked with the CIA and the Spanish surveillance firm UC Global to provide 24/7 video and audio monitoring of Assange inside the embassy.

Join us live on Consortium News at 1 pm EDT Saturday for a live re-stream of a panel discussion with Blumenthal, journalist Stefania Maurizi, and former Ecuadorian diplomat Fidel Narvez, moderated by academic Dr. Deepa Driver.

Tags: Deepa Driver Fidel Narvez Julian Assange Max Blumenthal Stefania Maurizi

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WATCH: 'Spying on Assange' With Max Blumenthal, Stefania Maurizi and Fidel Narvez Live at 1 pm EDT Today - Consortium News

I know SpaceX is impressive from a technical point of view. It must be a bit fiddly to build a rocket but its nothing compared to teaching my mum how to use her new iPad.

Elon Musk wouldve given up long before shed finally managed to connect to the Wi-Fi. My mum lives in Wales. I havent seen her in months because Im not Dominic Cummings.

I thought buying an iPad for her would help. We could FaceTime each other. She could watch Portrait Artist Of the Year in the airing cupboard if she likes. But I know she hates computers.

In fact, anything metal that requires setting up. Even a spice rack would have her quaking in her boots. Anyone would think I was sending her a mail bomb the way she was reacting.

Ive bought you an iPad.

Oh God, why?

I thought we could Skype?

Whats wrong with the phone? Now Ill have to do my hair. I knew connecting to the Wi-Fi would be the hardest bit.

It would be like one of those films where a man has 30 seconds to disconnect a wire and stop the world from exploding, but he doesnt know which one and hes staring at the wires and sweating.

So, with this in mind, I wrote some very detailed notes on what to do when she switches it on. Id thought of everything but then on the morning of its delivery my phone rang

That machines arrived. I CANT GET IT OUT OF THE BOX! she said.

Id tried to take some of the pain out of it by setting up apps, email and accounts on it before I sent it to her.

This was no easy task because, like all parents, she has five different email accounts. Actually more than that. Anyone would think she was running a sophisticated money-laundering business. Not even Julian Assange would be able to crack her encryption method which is to constantly start new email accounts when she cant remember the old one, and cant find the beermat that she writes the passwords on.

Click on your network and press enter.

It doesnt say enter.

Maybe it says connect?

No.

Does it say continue?

No. Nothing like that.

What does it say?

It says Join.

THEN PRESS JOIN! (Pause)

Its asking me to put the passcode in!

WELL PUT IT IN!

What if it rings?

Why will it ring? It isnt a phone.

To simplify things, I removed most of the apps I didnt think shed use/need/like which was all of them. Well almost. This left only the weather app. Which is like me buying her an expensive robot butler, removing his brain and chucking it in the bin, then pinning the puzzle page from the Daily Express on his eye-hole. I downloaded one other app for her: a meditation app.

The irony. JUST CLICK ON THE TIBETAN SINGING BOWL! I thought it would help to lower her blood pressure, but at this rate Im worried itll finish us both off. I thought this would be a good thing. You see adverts on TV with children waving to their smiling grandparents on Skype.

It doesnt show my angry mother unwrapping an iPad, swearing, and then using it as a coaster. Im making a mental note to try and stay on top of technological advances. I think it helps if you have kids, but I dont, and you shouldnt give birth just to have someone help you with your IT, thats frowned upon.

Luckily, I can write all about it here, because Im fairly confident shell never be able look up the online version of this, and its too dangerous to go to the shop these days. Meanwhile, Im going to teach her how to double-click.

Wish me luck.

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Diane Morgan: Teaching my mum to use an iPad in lockdown has pushed us both over the edge - iNews