Assange

Assange case: Five things you may not know about it

as seen on RT.com https://www.rt.com/news/331361-assange-case-five-facts/

Julian Assange is co-founder of whistleblower website WikiLeaks, who has been living in Ecuadoran embassy in London since 2012 because leaving it would likely result in his extradition to Sweden. In Sweden he was accused of sex crimes against two women. Assange says the case is part of US attempt to try him for espionage. Here are five facts about the situation often omitted by the media.   

1.  There was no charge against Assange in Sweden. Swedish law enforcement wants to question him as part of a preliminary inquiry and insist on doing it on Swedish soil.

2.  The US espionage case against Assange is not something he “believes” in - it is a fact. It exists as repeatedly confirmed by US Justice Department and the FBI.

3.  The accusation of alleged rape by Assange has been disproven by the Swedish prosecutors in 2010. But the case was reopened on insistence of Claes Borgström, a Swedish politician and lawyer, who represented the two women.

4.  After Assange left the country, Swedish investigators questioned 44 people in connection with the case in UK. Assange is not among them. The Swedish Court of Appeal (confirmed by Sweden’s Supreme Court) found in 2014 that the prosecutor had breached her duty in the Assange case by refusing to accept Assange’s statement in the UK for 5 years.

5.  Assange left Sweden after being denied a residence and work permit, not fleeing an imminent arrest. He departed five weeks after the initial accusations were brought before the Swedish police, during which time the prosecutor declined to question him on a number of occasions.

whistleblowing in the wind

Bradley Manning was judged today to be guilty of 20 of the 22 charges against him and faces sentencing tomorrow.  He will very likely spend the rest of his life in prison.
Those guilty of the war crimes he exposed continue to walk free without question.
Imagine a scenario where you witness a variety of serious crimes, lets say you yourself are aware and have evidence of work colleagues repeatedly stealing, covering up fraud, blackmailing, bullying and harassing people.  You decide you cannot knowingly let this happen behind closed doors anymore and expose them with specific undeniable evidence.  You feel a moral obligation to blow the whistle.  Your bosses then decide it is you that should be punished for revealing secrets about your work environment and turn a blind eye to the colleagues you exposed because your bosses were in on it all along!.  You've done the right thing but the system is against you.
Bradley Manning knew his government was corrupt and that he would be punished but he still leaked the documents, he is a hero and should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
Among the war crimes he exposed were;

• U.S. Military officials withheld information about the indiscriminate killing of Reuters journalists and innocent Iraqi civilians.
• There is an official policy to ignore torture in Iraq.
• Guantanamo prison has knowingly held mostly innocent people and low-level operatives.
• The Obama Administration allowed Yemen’s President to cover up a secret U.S. drone bombing campaign.
• U.S. officials were told to cover up evidence of child abuse by contractors in Afghanistan.
• Known Egyptian torturers received training from the FBI in Quantico, Virginia.
• There is an official tally of civilian deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan- for every death that is classified as a combatant, two innocent men, women or children are also killed.

At least his trial will have drawn public attention and hopefully raised further awareness of the western world's military practices.  These war crimes won't stop, it's all part of a much bigger agenda but will potential whistleblowers of the future now still be brave enough to expose the truth?  Your government hope not.

Free Bradley Manning

Bradley Manning is private in the US army who was arrested in May 2010 in Iraq on suspicion of having passed classified material to the website WikiLeaks. He was ultimately charged with 22 offences, including communicating national defence information to an unauthorised source and aiding the enemy.  Having been detained for 3 years without charge he is currently on trial answering these charges with the trial due to conclude in the next few days with his probable lifetime incarceration.

Amongst the many documents he leaked was the video known as 'Collateral Murder' (see below), the video from July 12, 2007 showed an American helicopter firing on a group of men in Baghdad. One of the men was a journalist, and two other men were Reuters employees carrying cameras that the pilots readily mistook for weapons. The helicopter also fired on a van that stopped to help the injured members of the first group; two children in the van were wounded and their father killed.  
The video reveals the sickening blase attitude towards killing innocent civilians and at one point we hear someone begging for clearance to open fire (9:13) on the group of men in the van who's apparent crime is turning up to collect the bodies of the men that these US soldiers had gunned down moments before.
The details of what WikiLeaks revealed courtesy of Manning expose a full menu of scandalous, shameful, disgusting, corrupt revelations that were fully intended to be kept under wraps forever.  However it is the heroic whistleblower Manning that is being brought to 'justice' as if to make an example to other potential whistleblowers that if you tell the public about these atrocities then you will be hunted down and destroyed.  This is why Julian Assange is holed up in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London with round the clock police guard waiting outside to arrest him should he set foot outside, this at a cost of over £3million over the last year.  This is why Edward Snowdon is stuck in a Russian airport unable to fly to any of the countries who have granted him asylum for fear of being captured and brought back to US soil to face a similar fate to Manning.  
The truth is not a crime. Exposing war crimes is not a crime.  Bradley Manning faces life in prison for telling the truth.  Truth is only treason in an empire full of lies.  Free Bradley Manning!



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WHISTLEBLOWER feat Edward Snowden

Another video for you, this time the news in rap form featuring whistleblower of the moment Edward Snowden. May not mean as much to you if you're not up to speed on the NSA/Snowden news but even funnier if you are