Good News, Bad News As Assange Extradition Hearing Gets Underway

Cancillería del Ecuador / Flickr

It's shaping up to be quite a month, possibly a turning point in world history. One the one hand we've got U.S. Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, opining on CIA cutout Alexey Navalny's death in prison: "The fear of one man only underscores the weakness and rot at the heart of the system that Putin has built."

And on the other hand we've seen evidence that the CIA planned to assassinate Julian Assange and we know the U.S. wants to extradite him for "espionage" aka journalism sharing inconvenient truths about the inner workings of empire. In other words, fear of one man underscoring the weakness and rot at the heart of the U.S. imperial system.

https://twitter.com/SMaurizi/status/1759890416852226357

Today it appears that journalists at the Assange extradition hearing in the UK are being deliberately handicapped in their efforts to cover the proceedings. The palpable fear that we, the public, might have access to this information underscores the weakness and rot at the heart of the system Blinken feeds off of, don't you think?

Some are blaming problematic tech in the very fancy courtroom with poor acoustics and no audio feed to the overflow rooms.

Speaking of very fancy tech that is problematic right now, how about those Houthis shooting down their second $30,000,000 MQ-9 Predator drone? Using technology that costs a few thousand dollars. U.S. military-industrial complex response: ka-ching!

Besides which the Houthis have sunk a British ship carrying fertilizer, and hit two more U.S. ships.

https://twitter.com/SprinterMedia1/status/1759889244313591868/photo/1

Did the Western powers not believe Ansar Allah leaders when they warned that they'll go on denying access to the Red Sea as long as the genocide in Gaza the West is supporting continues?

Meanwhile in the last couple of weeks we saw CIA whistleblower Joshua Schulte sentenced to 40 years for leaking "Vault 7" documents to wikileaks exposing illegal and immoral actions of that federal agency. Here's whistleblower John Kiriakou on the case:

Prosecutors had literally no evidence that Schulte had taken the data from the CIA and transferred it to Wikileaks. But they contended that he was a computer genius who was so brilliant that he was able to cover his tracks. That was enough for the jury..

The CIA leadership apparently thought the leak was so damaging that then-CIA Director Mike Pompeo ordered the Agency to come up with a plan to kidnap or to kill Julian Assange in London. One former Trump Administration national security official said that Pompeo and other senior CIA leaders, “were completely detached from reality because they were so embarrassed about Vault 7. They were seeing blood.”

You remember John Kiriakou right? From his Covert Action Magazine bio:

Kiriakou is the sole CIA agent to go to jail in connection with the U.S. torture program, despite the fact that he never tortured anyone. Rather, he blew the whistle on this horrific wrongdoing.

At this point we're all sorely in need of more good news as we await news on Assange that is likely to be very, very bad. Maybe historian Ilan Pappe's article belongs here: "It is dark before the dawn, but Israeli settler colonialism is at an end."

This historical project has come to an end and it is a violent end  – such projects usually collapse violently and thus it is a very dangerous moment for the victims of this project, and the victims are always the Palestinians along with Jews, because Jews are also victims of the Zionism. Thus, the process of collapse is not just a moment of hope it is also the dawn that will break after the darkness, and it is the light at the end of the tunnel.

As War On Journalism Continues, Our Ignorance Deepens

Maine Voices for Palestinian Rights worked with the Union of Maine Visual Artists' ARRT! to create this puppet of Gazan journalist Bisan Owda sharing her quote: "My job is to document our stories. Your job is to end this genocide."

In conjunction with slaughtering or detaining a record number of Palestinian journalists, and barring foreign reporters from entering Gaza, our corporate overlords have tightly controlled the flow of information via legacy media. For example, by covering only Israel's refutation of charges at the International Court of Justice but not the presentation of the case by South Africa the preceding day.

Here are just a few current events that you probably don't know about if all your information comes from corporate sources like the New York Times, NPR, CNN, et al.

Screenshot from @AROC #FreePalestine account on Twitter

• Protesters shut down the entire port of Oakland, California for a day on January 13. Big support from workers who refused to cross the picket lines!

Source: ANSWERcoalition.org "National March For Gaza Brings Giant Crowd To Joe Biden's Doorstep"

• 400,000 in Washington DC on Saturday in a Muslim-led demonstration with terrific speakers, signage, and an after dark visit to the White House fence.

Screenshot from Alice Rothchild's newsletter

• Interstate-5 in Seattle was shut down for 4 hours to protest genocide in Gaza.

But how can we know about these things if billionaire Jeff Bezos' Washington Post and the like leave us in the dark? Social media, of course. Journalists like Bisan and Motaz Azaiza have huge followings on Instagram eager for their reporting.  Never have people been so empowered to document their own collective punishment. When Israel cuts the power and internet to Gaza, it's these reporters they are trying to silence. That's why we like and reshare any news that leaks out from reliable sources.

Of course there are alt-media sites with real information for those with ears to hear it. Mondoweiss, Electronic Intifada, If Americans Knew, Black Agenda Report, Popular Resistance, MintPressNews, and Pressenza are among my favorites. Folks who prefer video praise BreakThroughNews, Sabby Sabs, Glenn Greenwald, Russell Brand, and Abby Martin among others.

Did you know that there are still two Palestinian journalists missing in Gaza since October 7? Haitham Abdelwahed and Nidal al-Waheidi were detained by Israel's military and have not been heard from since. Their families fear they may have been tortured or even executed. You can send a letter to support them via Amnesty International who will then convey your message to the Israeli authorities, the Embassy of Israel in the U.S., and the U.S. State Department.

Review: Circle In The Darkness By Diana Johnstone

Today I'm sharing my review of a book that's not new but has new significance for our understanding of geopolitical realities unfolding in Europe today.

CIRCLE IN THE DARKNESS: Memoir of a World Watcher 

by Diana Johnstone Clarity Press, 2020

With German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock cheerleading the proxy war in Ukraine and telling reporters that Russian President Vladimir Putin had better make a 360 degree turn or else, many of us wonder what happened to turn Green Party members in Europe toward supporting NATO’s wars. Now that I’ve read this rich memoir by Diana Johnstone, former press secretary for the Green Group in the European Parliament that preceded the EU, I can see how it happened. And probably why.

Paris, 1967 AFP/Getty Images

Johnstone’s story starts long before the current three party coalition government took power in Germany. When she found herself a divorced single mother in an era when the history department of her state university declared that they didn’t “give teaching positions to women,” she switched disciplines, moved to France, and still found time to join the vibrant expatriate antiwar movement of the Vietnam era. A self-described “timid militant,” Johnstone found herself studying French literature for a Ph.D. and French colonialism in “Indochina” for her own edification.

 

It wasn’t long before she found her true path: journalism. Reflecting on the conditions she describes for reporters in the mid 20^th century compared with today’s harsh, even fatal consequences for authentic reporting shows how profoundly things have changed. Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh once received a Pulitzer prize and was published in major outlets eager to share his exposé of events like the My Lai massacre coverup. He’s now spurned by his former publishers and must self-publish in order to report on “How America Took Out The Nord Stream Pipeline.” Johnstone’s long career straddled this divide.

 

She identifies the moment when the Green Group in Europe lost its soul as occurring in 1995 during NATO’s war to break up the former Yugoslavia. “Something grave..happened to the Greens. They..allowed mass media choice of star personalities to determine a major policy issue.” As mainstream media today continues its shift toward infotainment requiring colorful personalities to cover in lieu of challenging government officials, her experiences seem prescient. A legion of photogenic performers like Foreign Minister Baerbock continue to entertain while the real decisions affecting the fate of the world are made in secret, deep behind the façade of elected personalities.

Nevada, 1951

A quote from Albert Einstein serves as Johnston’s epigram and the source of her title: “As our circle of knowledge expands, so does the circumference of darkness surrounding it.” Today, the circumference of darkness is ever widening; in Eurasia with proliferating nuclear weapons, and globally as war moves into outer space, darkness threatens to engulf us.

War On Palestine Requires War On Truth, Death To Journalists

Women in Jordan mourn Shireen Abu Akleh  photo source: Haaretz

With sadness I awoke to the news that Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh was shot in the head by Israeli forces (IDF) in the West Bank region of occupied Palestine. 

The journalist was wearing body armor with PRESS in bold letters on her flak vest; presumably a sniper aimed for her head?

Here's the last known photo of Abu Akleh, doing her job:

Photo source: Arwa Ibrahim on Twitter

Israel has been violently evicting families in the West Bank while bombing Gaza and Damascus in recent days. Abu Akleh was covering an IDF raid on the Jenin refugee camp when she was murdered.

Rapper Lowkey took the Associated Press to task in a tweet about their reporting of the incident.

She was killed by the same army that bombed your offices in Gaza. Say it. https://t.co/EKjLME5iRH

— Lowkey (@Lowkey0nline) May 11, 2022

https://twitter.com/Lowkey0nline/status/1524289928405921794

All the terror is not on one side. For the second Ramadan in a row the IDF targetted worshippers at Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, wounding some and arresting others, while Palestinians repelled IDF soldiers by throwing rocks and petrol bombs. And an unusual event inside Israel this week resulted in three deaths by stabbing in a knife and ax attack near Tel Aviv. The two assailants were believed to be Palestinian young men from Jenin.

Also hard to see as coincidental was an act of terrorism (i.e. instilling fear) on a flight from Israel's Ben Gurion Airport where passengers were sent photos of various airline crashes while waiting to fly to Turkey. Twitter eerily reported these two news events consecutively in their "What's Happening" section this morning.

A search of the Committee to Protect Journalists database revealed 17 other journalists killed by the IDF in either occupied Palestine or Israel itself:

War on journalists is not new but has ramped up in recent years especially as the poster boy for press freedom, Julian Assange, languishes in Belmarsh Prison awaiting word of his possible extradition to the U.S. to be charged as a spy. Assange is an Australian citizen whose wikileaks website published evidence of U.S. and Israeli war crimes, and he has been publicly tortured for practicing journalism in the years since.

RIP Shireen Abu Akleh and all who dare to report truth amid the fog of wars.

Investigative Journalist To Speak On The Defense Industry And Nuclear Weapons In New England At USM June 2

Hope you can join us for what is sure to be an informative lecture, with lively Q&A.

Link to facebook event to rsvp here.

Who: Alex Nunes, investigative journalist specializing in weapons corporations esp. General Dynamics. Read his excellent website here: Nunes Weekly

What: Lecture on "The Defense Industry and Nuclear Weapons in New England"

Where: USM in Portland, Wishcamper building, 2nd floor

When: Saturday, June 2 from 6:30pm-8:30pm

Why:  Alex Nunes is the investigative journalist in Providence who helped so much with the campaign against LD1781, the $45 million tax giveaway from Maine to Bath Iron Works/General Dynamics. He investigates corporate influence on government in New England with special attention to Rhode Island, Connecticut and Maine. We got to know him during the Aegis 9 trial which ended with our acquittal of charges of criminal trespass at BIW.

Nunes currently has a Freedom Of Access Act (FOAA) appeal before Justice Dan Billings contesting the denial by Bath Police Chief of records of BIW and Bath PD discussions about how to deal with protesters.

Hope to see you there!

Edited May 28 to include event co-sponsors:
Peaceworks of Greater Brunswick, Peace Action Maine, Global Network Against Nuclear Weapons & Power in Space, Pax Christi Maine, Maine Natural Guard