The human rights community has a lot to celebrate now that Donald Trump is no longer President of the U.S. There are no more bans on travelers from several Muslim countries. Migrant families are no longer separated at the U.S.-Mexico border. There is strong federal action against the climate crisis and rejoining the Paris Accords. There is a more unified and direct coronavirus response that will avert thousands more preventable deaths and return American life to normal faster.

But not everyone is happy.

The outgoing president refused to secure a pardon for WikiLeaks co-founder, Julian Assange. As its name suggests, the site is a database or wiki of leaked documents from various governments and militaries. Since its 2006 founding, the site has generated no shortage of controversy, with opponents slamming the site for publishing classified information and potentially jeopardizing national security. Assange was arrested in April 2019 in London after being evicted from the Ecuadorian embassy, where he had been in hiding since 2012. He has been held in British custody since pending possible U.S. extradition; despite being denied earlier this month, the U.S. plans to appeal. If they win, Assange could spend the rest of his life behind bars. Incoming president Joe Biden has also not shown any desire to even consider pardoning the WikiLeaks founder.

But supporters, including press-freedom and human-rights advocates argue the site has exposed hidden government corruption and transparency crises, and that security concerns that arose following a major 2010 leak never significantly materialized.

That year, WikiLeaks published more than 700,000 files showcasing wrongdoings by American troops in the Middle East. The documents revealed hundreds of previously unknown killings of Afghani civilians by U.S. forces as well as the Iraq Wars civilian death toll being much higher than reported. One video even showed U.S. soldiers massacring multiple civilians and two Reuters journalists in 2007. These leaks revealed a shocking lack of transparency and accountability within the American government and especially the military, and they also underscored the countrys overinvolvement in foreign affairs and harmful obsession with war.

More recently, WikiLeaks published tens of thousands of hacked campaign emails from the Democratic National Committee during Hillary Clintons 2016 presidential run. They unraveled very alarming behavior by Committee officials towards then-Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, including one anti-Semitic comment directed at Sanders, who is Jewish. A few months later, thousands of emails between Clinton and campaign advisor John Podesta were leaked, revealing her hidden infatuation with Wall Street and lack of respect for the working class. The series of leaks, in addition to her suspicious use of a private email server while serving as Secretary of State, revealed just how untrustworthy Clinton is. Her popularity and chances of electoral victory both plunged in the final weeks of the 2016 race, costing her the election.

The documents sparked fierce backlash since they were obtained with the assistance of the Russian government, but publishing secret information obtained through questionable methods is surprisingly common in modern journalism. In 2014, for example, the Washington Post and Guardian won Pulitzer Prizes for their reporting of classified NSA files leaked by whistleblower Edward Snowden, who is facing up to 175 years behind bars for conspiring to hack government computers and espionage but was also not pardoned by Trump.

One of the most high-profile cases of this practice arose when Daniel Ellsberg leaked classified documents from the Pentagon about the Vietnam War that the New York Times then published without its permission. The Pentagon sued the paper, alleging detriment to U.S. national security. But the Supreme Court ultimately ruled in 1971 that the Times was allowed to publish the leaks, now known as the Pentagon Papers.

Over the years, Assange, Snowden and WikiLeaks have fought hard for press freedom and limited government. Trumps refusal to pardon this hero should anger everyone who cares about these issues, especially considering his choice to pardon the Blackwater US military contractors, who were responsible for the deaths of several Iraqi civilians, but not the founder of the website that helped bring these atrocities to light. The former presidents hypocritical 11th-hour actions are also indicative of his overall personality: a desire to do what makes himself happy, not what makes his people happy. In an exclusive interview with Sputnik News, journalist and WikiLeaks proponent Kevin Gosztola argued that Trump only supported people who have a few million dollars as opposed to his countrys best interests.

Unfortunately, there is no indication President Biden is considering stepping up to the pardon plate. In 2010, when he was Barack Obamas vice president, he called Assange a hi-tech terrorist. Biden has remained surprisingly mum on the WikiLeaks founder since then, especially during his presidential campaign, and it is hard to imagine him retracting his decade-old disparagement anytime soon. Unfortunately, that means a pardon for Assange is unlikely within the next several years, and the worst-case scenario of U.S. extradition and imprisonment remains probable.

The demise of the Trump administration is great news for human-rights advocates in the U.S. and beyond, considering its numerous failures and violations. Incoming President Biden has pledged to reverse almost all of its wrongdoings, from its infamous Muslim ban to its botched coronavirus response. But his ignorance and implied complicity in the prosecution of a journalist who has helped hold governments and politicians accountable marks a dark moment for global press freedom and significantly stains his pro-rights agenda.

Continued here:
OPINION: Trump failed to pardon Julian Assange is a dark moment for press freedom, limited government advocates - UNCW Seahawk

A U.S. flag attached to a QAnon symbol flies outside the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images

During a childhood of compulsory Catholic masses, hundreds upon hundreds of them, I perfected the art of retreating deep into an imagined world, such that I never did learn the liturgy. But this I remember: The Romans were ridiculous, objects of pity and derision get with the program; this man is magic. Narratively, early doubters existed to make the rest of us feel superior in our belief. Ninety nine uniformed schoolgirls stared at the image of a spiked corpse and ate what we were told was his flesh. It was a beautiful thing to do.

Six days into this new year, ecstatic believers attacked the Capitol. The images from this riot are, in large part, images of unrestrained joy. Followers of QAnon forced their way through, believing that, there, they would receive further instructions from the president. He was going to greet them, affirm them, assume the throne for another four years. Rhapsodic with purpose, his disciples crushed against one another. Ecstasy is always and everywhere the enemy of the state. Brought outside ourselves, we are dangerous to order.

Theres an American positivity about QAnon, a hale resistance to fatalism. QAnon brings good news. The enemy (pedophiles, eaters of babies, the pope) is apparent, and the good guys are winning. There is a plan in place to clear the world of wicked-doing, and an all-powerful man executing that plan. January 6 was meant to be The Storm, a day of reckoning. But when that didnt materialize, Qs faithful regrouped and bounced back. The Joe Biden you see on TV is merely an actor, keeping the peace while strings are pulled backstage. Donald Trump will return to the presidency sometime in March. Positivity, it turns out, is endlessly plastic.Dark to Light, tweeted Ashli Babbitt the day before she died.

QAnon is not a state religion, but it is a religion for which the state has made space.The infiltration of our political infrastructure by evil and secret powers is not a conspiracy, writes someone calling himself SerialBrain2 in the collaborative work, QAnon: An Invitation to the Great Awakening. I would express this thought differently than SerialBrain2 does. That said, we live our lives in the shadow of the largest secret bureaucracy in the history of the world. How large we dont know, as the budgets are classified. There exists, absent any conspiracy at all, a vast alternative geography of agencies and their contractors, staffed by well over 100,000 ordinary Americans who cannot tell their families what it is they do. More than one percent of Americans have security clearance, which suggests less a security state than caste system.

The infiltration of our political infrastructure by secret powers post-9/11 is not a product of paranoia; it is a solid foundation on which to build an enduring set of beliefs about a Satanist pedophilic cabal. The relevance of the NSA in this story cannot be understated, writes one Joe M in Great Awakening. The National Security Agency figures with particular prominence in this theology because it has been particularly aggressive in granting itself godlike powers. It has undertaken illegal mass surveillance of Americans based on justifications so secret even its own lawyers cannot read them; it has repeatedly lied about bulk information collection until leakers or whistleblowers force it to do otherwise. There are, across the bureaucracy, an unknown number of programs so classified few in Congress can be informed of them, and those few with access cannot tell us what they learn. Against such a vast backdrop of unknowing, it is hard for those charged with oversight to know how to even frame an inquiry. In his recent book Dark Mirror, Barton Gellman quotes former Michigan representative Justin Amash: You have to start just spitting off random questions. Does the government have a moon base? Does the government have a talking bear? Does the government have a cyborg army?

Does the government have a talking bear? Is the government run by a cabal of Clintons and Bushes trading in small children? Donald Trump drew attention to an absence and projected upon it an imaginary world. Instead of objecting to the individual crimes of that state, he pointed to the whole structure a secret, parallel government of officials running secret programs with secret money, unelected deep state operatives who defy the voters to push their own secret agendas. Trump supporters could not know what went on at Langley or Fort Meade, so Donald Trump painted a picture for them: A bunch of men no one had elected, whose names no one knows, were conspiring to destroy the man they had chosen to lead them. This was the deep state.

Q is a whistleblower; he would not exist without Edward Snowden. (Q stands for Q clearance, which Q, ostensibly some sort of deep state official, would like us to believe Q has.) Q is the source you conjure when you feel truth is only available via disenchanted insiders. Qs various prophecies are incredibly fucking weird, which doesnt necessarily distance them from other texts to which people turn for spiritual guidance. There is, as one often finds in American abortion politics, a particular focus on the perfect innocent savaged by the selfish cosmopolitan; reading Great Awakening is like reading the story of Julian Assange as narrated by Marquis de Sade. And yet, with repetition, anything becomes mundane. Theres a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take this global cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles out, says Georgia representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, and I think we have the president to do it. A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity! True believers speak of Satanism with the bored fluency of someone selling condos.

Ashli Babbitt made her way into the Capitol, deep within a raging crowd, first through a door on the northwest side of the building, then up the stairs, around the second floor, and, finally, close to the House Chamber where members of Congress lay scared on the floor. There were doors flanked by windows, and behind them an officer with a gun drawn. Men around Babbitt smashed through the windows with the end of a flagpole and a helmet. Wrapped in a Trump flag, she pushed her way to the front of the crowd. A fellow believer hoisted her into space left by the glass. Now shes a martyr to the cause.

Softened by centuries, how does the narrative reveal itself? The state is corrupt, rigged against The People for the benefit of a perverse global oligarchy. A golden-haired leader emerges to save the children of the innocent. At the eleventh hour, he is betrayed by his most loyal subject, and the Storm is delayed. Believers are forced underground. Now they wait, and plan, and wait some more. Hell come again.

By springtime, half a million Americans will be dead. It doesnt matter whether the prophecy is right or the prophecy is wrong. In the negative space around the bright rise of belief, the rest of us argue using words that no longer work. Do you even know how to frame the question? Surrounding the birth of every new theology, forgotten or ridiculed, are the people who watched their neighbors come apart from the world. Dark to Light. We are the dark. Its stifling in here, and full of fear.

The one story you shouldn't miss today, selected byNew York's editors.

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QAnon and the Bright Rise of Belief - New York Magazine

LONDON: The Westminster Magistrates Court has ordered the extradition of Abraaj Group founder and businessman Arif Naqvi to face charges of fraud, money-laundering and racketeering which carry, in total, an incredible 300 years in prison.

Senior District Judge Emma Arbuthnot ordered that the Pakistani national businessman should be extradited to the US and that his safety and rights will not be at risk in the US jail as argued by Naqvis lawyer during the extradition hearings. Arif Naqvi expressed no emotions when the decision was read out. Arif Naqvis lawyer will appeal against the extradition at the London High Court. He didnt speak to the media when he arrived at the court with his lawyers ahead of the decision but exchanged pleasantries with the reporters when he was leaving the court.

Arif Masood Naqvi is accused of 16 counts of fraud and related money- laundering said to have been committed between 2014 and 2018. American government has described him as the leader of a criminal enterprise that quoted Abraaj.

The judge noted in her decision that the alleged fraud started unravelling in September 2017 when an anonymous email was sent to some of the investors. Funds were also said to have been used to bribe a politician in Pakistan to obtain approval for the sale of Abraajs stake in an electrical energy utility company, according to the judgment released by the Ministry of Justice.

The judge accepted that Arif Naqvi has mental health issues and this deteriorated during the extradition proceedings at Westminster.

The judge rejected almost all grounds relied on by the legal team of Pakistani businessman and wrote that she was satisfied with the assurances given by the US administration that Mr Naqvi will have the right to a fair trial; his human rights will not be impacted and he will be provided a reasonably safe environment to live in.

She ruled: The burden on the defence is less than on the balance of probabilities but the risk must be more than fanciful. The prosecution and defence rely on different authorities but there is no dispute that the burden of establishing the real risk lays on Arif Naqvi.

The judge accepted that there are gangs in some if not all of the housing units and that there are leadership issues in some jails. I accept that there are some bad apples amongst the correctional officers and there is also some violence amongst the prisoners. Finally, I accept that the prison is having the same trouble with COVID-19 that each prison in every country is having, staff are off with COVID-19 or self-isolating which is causing a staff shortage.

The judge noted she was satisfied that Mr Naqvi will live in a special dormitory reserved not just for Federal inmates but for those who are aged 50 and over and have no disciplinary issues.

She said she didnt accept that the gangs in that unit would be able to threaten Arif Naqvi with impunity or be allowed to flourish. She said the US soil is the right forum for Mr Naqvi to stand trial and not London as Mr Naqvi held Abraaj meetings in the US when misrepresentations to the investments were made and harm was caused to the US investors.

The decision comes weeks after a similar request for Wikileaks founder Julian Assange was blocked by Judge Vanessa Baraitser.

The US request to extradite Assange was blocked on basis of the 49-year-old Australian editors deteriorating physical and mental health conditions, with District Judge Vanessa Baraitser saying she refused due to fears that he could commit suicide, similar in Naqvis case as his lawyers have publicly stated during the proceedings before the chief magistrate, Senior District Judge Emma Arbuthnot.

Judge Baraitser had ruled at the Old Bailey Court on January 4, 2021, that Assange could not be extradited to the US due to risks pertaining to his mental health and took notice to the submissions by the editors lawyers in relation to increased concerns that came to light in recent years over prison conditions at the US facilities.

Several expert witnesses had appeared during the Arif Naqvi case proceedings to testify before the judge about conditions at the US prison facilities where the Pakistani businessman would likely be held.

Naqvi has through his lawyers continued to strongly protest the disturbingly long, 300-year sentence.

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Arif Naqvi will be extradited to US, rules UK judge - The News International

Dinah Rose QC is a human rights lawyer of great distinction. A former Barrister of the Year, she has appeared in several high profile cases, ranging from extraordinary rendition and Julian Assange to the admissions policy of the Jewish Free School. After the Jimmy Savile scandal, the BBC appointed her to investigate bullying and sexual harassment among its staff. She resigned on principle from the Liberal Democrats in protest at Nick Cleggs support for the secrecy provisions of the Coalitions Justice and Security Act 2013. An admirer of Lord Pannick and the late Lord Lester, scourges of authoritarian governments, she is a pillar of the liberal legal establishment.

Why, then, is Ms Rose suddenly under fire from Stonewall and other LGBT lobby groups? There are two reasons. The first is that she is representing the Cayman Islands in a case brought by a lesbian couple that has now reached the Privy Council, the final court of appeal for many Caribbean jurisdictions. Her critics claim that she is helping the Cayman government to ban same sex marriage. Edwin Cameron, a former South African judge, has accused her of litigating on behalf of homophobia in the Caribbean.

The second reason why Ms Rose is under pressure is that last year she was elected President of Magdalen College, Oxford. As the first female head of one of Englands greatest academic institutions, she has inherited the weight of 563 years of history. Among the most colourful characters in that history is Oscar Wilde. By the time he graduated with a First in 1878, Wilde had not only won the Newdigate Prize for poetry but already created his own myth as a literary aesthete. His spectacular rise and fall have made him perhaps the worlds most celebrated icon of the gay rights movement, indelibly associated with the cruelty of a criminal justice system that incarcerated him.

Hence Ms Rose finds herself, through no fault of her own, depicted as a hypocrite: simultaneously representing a homophobic regime while also representing the alma mater of Oscar Wilde. In the words of Edwin Cameron, it is appalling that, 125 years after Wildes prosecution, trial and imprisonment, the President of his college can ally herself with those who seek to persecute LGBTIQ persons in the Caribbean by denying them equal rights. He accuses her of potentially deterring LGBT undergraduates from studying at Magdalen. This latter charge seems, to say the least, implausible.

Camerons line of argument is roundly rejected by Dinah Rose, although her careful legal reasoning is unlikely to be heard amid the uproar. She points out that, far from persecuting anybody, the Cayman Islands is actually one of the most progressive countries for LGBTQ+ rights in the Caribbean. It already allows for civil partnerships and the case before the Privy Council only concerns the proper interpretation of the Cayman constitution. The question at issue is not about prohibiting same-sex marriage, but rather whether the decision to provide it is to be imposed on the Cayman Islands by the court, or remains a political question for parliament.

Another, less complex issue is also at stake here, as she points out: It is a long-standing principle, essential to the maintenance of access to justice and the rule of law, that a lawyer is not to be equated with their client. On this principle, she is seconded by her opponent in court, the equally eminent barrister Edward Fitzgerald QC. In his view, she was acting perfectly properly in accepting the Caymans brief. It would be a breach of her professional duty to return it now, he told The Times. It is an important constitutional principle that barristers should not be identified with the clients they represent.

Indeed, they should not. Under oppressive regimes such as Russia, lawyers have been imprisoned and even murdered for defending dissidents. The fact that Dinah Rose is acting for the Cayman Islands in court does not imply that she personally agrees with its position on the right to gay marriage. And the narrow point of law on which the case will turn does not even concern that right. To imply that she should either return the brief or resign as President of Magdalen, because her legal role is a stain upon the college, is a pernicious example of cancel culture. For the first woman to hold such a venerable office to be evicted merely for performing her legal duty to a client would itself be a form of persecution. The Fellows should have none of it.

There is a famous precedent at the college for the Fellows standing firm behind a President and a principle under intolerable pressure. In 1687, there was a vacancy for the Presidency of Magdalen. King James II proposed Anthony Farmer, a Catholic of dubious reputation, to the college. The Fellows rejected him as ineligible he was not a Fellow and elected John Hough, who was. The King tried again, proposing a compromise candidate: Samuel Parker, Bishop of Oxford. But the Fellows defied the King, as there was no longer a vacancy. James then resorted to force, imposing Parker and expelling the Fellows. This episode marked the moment in his reign when public opinion turned against James. The Glorious Revolution followed. It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that the obstinate adherence to their own statutes of the Fellows of Magdalen decided the future course of British history.

In their present predicament, the Fellows do not face an absolutist monarch, merely a lobby group though the power of social media should not be underestimated. Were the dons of Magdalen to cave in to this hue and cry by abandoning their embattled President, no head of house at Oxford or indeed any academic establishment could feel secure. Inspired by their 17th-century predecessors, the Fellows of Magdalen should stand behind President Rose.

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Should the President of Magdalen be forced out over a gay marriage case? - TheArticle

LONDON: The Westminster Magistrates Court has ordered the extradition of Abraaj Group founder and businessman Arif Naqvi to face charges of fraud, money-laundering and racketeering which carry, in total, an incredible 300 years in prison.

Senior District Judge Emma Arbuthnot ordered that the Pakistani national businessman should be extradited to the US and that his safety and rights will not be at risk in the US jail as argued by Naqvis lawyer during the extradition hearings.

Arif Naqvi expressed no emotions when the decision was read out. Arif Naqvis lawyer will appeal against the extradition at the London High Court. He didnt speak to the media when he arrived at the court with his lawyers ahead of the decision but exchanged pleasantries with the reporters when he was leaving the court.

Arif Masood Naqvi is accused of 16 counts of fraud and related money- laundering said to have been committed between 2014 and 2018. American government has described him as the leader of a criminal enterprise that quoted Abraaj.

The judge noted in her decision that the alleged fraud started unravelling in September 2017 when an anonymous email was sent to some of the investors. Funds were also said to have been used to bribe a politician in Pakistan to obtain approval for the sale of Abraajs stake in an electrical energy utility company, according to the judgment released by the Ministry of Justice.

The judge accepted that Arif Naqvi has mental health issues and this deteriorated during the extradition proceedings at Westminster.

The judge rejected almost all grounds relied on by the legal team of Pakistani businessman and wrote that she was satisfied with the assurances given by the US administration that Mr Naqvi will have the right to a fair trial; his human rights will not be impacted and he will be provided a reasonably safe environment to live in.

She ruled: The burden on the defence is less than on the balance of probabilities but the risk must be more than fanciful. The prosecution and defence rely on different authorities but there is no dispute that the burden of establishing the real risk lays on Arif Naqvi.

The judge accepted that there are gangs in some if not all of the housing units and that there are leadership issues in some jails. I accept that there are some bad apples amongst the correctional officers and there is also some violence amongst the prisoners. Finally, I accept that the prison is having the same trouble with COVID-19 that each prison in every country is having, staff are off with COVID-19 or self-isolating which is causing a staff shortage.

The judge noted she was satisfied that Mr Naqvi will live in a special dormitory reserved not just for Federal inmates but for those who are aged 50 and over and have no disciplinary issues.

She said she didnt accept that the gangs in that unit would be able to threaten Arif Naqvi with impunity or be allowed to flourish. She said the US soil is the right forum for Mr Naqvi to stand trial and not London as Mr Naqvi held Abraaj meetings in the US when misrepresentations to the investments were made and harm was caused to the US investors.

The decision comes weeks after a similar request for Wikileaks founder Julian Assange was blocked by Judge Vanessa Baraitser.

The US request to extradite Assange was blocked on basis of the 49-year-old Australian editors deteriorating physical and mental health conditions, with District Judge Vanessa Baraitser saying she refused due to fears that he could commit suicide, similar in Naqvis case as his lawyers have publicly stated during the proceedings before the chief magistrate, Senior District Judge Emma Arbuthnot.

Judge Baraitser had ruled at the Old Bailey Court on January 4, 2021, that Assange could not be extradited to the US due to risks pertaining to his mental health and took notice to the submissions by the editors lawyers in relation to increased concerns that came to light in recent years over prison conditions at the US facilities.

Several expert witnesses had appeared during the Arif Naqvi case proceedings to testify before the judge about conditions at the US prison facilities where the Pakistani businessman would likely be held.

Naqvi has through his lawyers continued to strongly protest the disturbingly long, 300-year sentence.

See the article here:
Arif Naqvi will be extradited to US, British judge rules - The News International