Day X Marks the Calendar: Julian Assange’s ‘Final’ Appeal
December 22, 2023, by: Dr Binoy Kampmark https://theaimn.com/day-x-marks-the-calendar-julian-assanges-final-appeal/—
Julian Assange’s wife, Stella, is rarely one to be cryptic. “Day X is here,” she posted on the platform formerly known as Twitter. For those who have followed her remarks, her speeches, and her activism, it was sharply clear what this meant. “It may be the final chance for the UK to stop Julian’s extradition. Gather outside the court at 8.30am on both days. It’s now or never.”
Between February 20 and 21 next year, the High Court will hear what WikiLeaks claims may be “the final chance for Julian Assange to prevent his extradition to the United States.” (This is qualified by the prospect of an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights.) Were that to take place, the organisation’s founder faces 18 charges, 17 of which are stealthily cobbled from the aged and oppressive US Espionage Act of 1917. Estimates of any subsequent sentence vary, the worst being 175 years
The WikiLeaks founder remains jailed at His Majesty’s pleasure at Belmarsh prison, only reserved for the most hardened of criminals. It’s a true statement of both British and US justice that Assange has yet to face trial, incarcerated, without bail, for four-and-a-half years. That trial, were it to ever be allowed to take place, would employ a scandalous legal theory that will spell doom to all those who dive and dabble in the world of publishing national security information.
Fundamentally, and irrefutably, the case against Assange remains political in its muscularity, with a gangster’s legality papered over it. As Stella herself makes clear, “With the myriad of evidence that has come to light since the original hearing in 2018, such as the violation of legal privilege and reports that senior US officials are involved in formulating assassination plots against my husband, there is no denying that a fair trial, let alone Julian’s safety on US soil, is an impossibility were he to be extradited.”
In mid-2022, Assange’s legal team attempted a two-pronged attempt to overturn the decision of Home Office Secretary Priti Patel to approve Assange’s extradition while also broadening the appeal against grounds made in the original January 4, 2021 reasons of District Judge Vanessa Baraitser.
The former, among other matters, took issue with the acceptance by the Home Office that the extradition was not for a political offence and therefore prohibited by Article 4 of the UK-US Extradition Treaty. The defence team stressed the importance of due process, enshrined in British law since the Magna Carta of 2015, and also took issue with Patel’s acceptance of “special arrangements” with the US government regarding the introduction of charges for the facts alleged which might carry the death penalty, criminal contempt proceedings, and such specialty arrangements that might protect Assange “against being dealt with for conduct outside the extradition request.” History shows that such “special arrangements” can be easily, and arbitrarily abrogated.
On June 30, 2022 came the appeal against Baraitser’s original reasons. While Baraitser blocked the extradition to the US, she only did so on grounds of oppression occasioned by mental health grounds and the risk posed to Assange were he to find himself in the US prison system. The US government got around this impediment by making breezy promises to the effect that Assange would not be subject to oppressive, suicide-inducing conditions, or face the death penalty. A feeble, meaningless undertaking was also made suggesting that he might serve the balance of his term in Australia – subject to approval, naturally.
What this left Assange’s legal team was a decision otherwise hostile to publishing, free speech and the activities that had been undertaken by WikiLeaks. The appeal accordingly sought to address this, claiming, among other things, that Baraitser had erred in assuming that the extradition was not “unjust and oppressive by reason of the lapse of time”; that it would not be in breach of Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights (inhuman and degrading treatment)”; that it did not breach Article 10 of ECHR, namely the right to freedom of expression; and that it did not breach Article 7 of the ECHR (novel and unforeseeable extension of the law).
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Other glaring defects in Baraitser’s judgment are also worth noting, namely her failure to acknowledge the misrepresentation of facts advanced by the US government and the “ulterior political motives” streaking the prosecution. The onerous and much thicker second superseding indictment was also thrown at Assange at short notice before the extradition hearing of September 2020, suggesting that those grounds be excised “for reasons of procedural fairness.”
An agonising wait of some twelve months followed, only to yield an outrageously brief decision on June 6 from High Court justice Jonathan Swift (satirists, reach for your pens and laptops). Swift, much favoured by the Defence and Home Secretaries when a practising barrister, told Counsel Magazine in a 2018 interview that his “favourite clients were the security and intelligence agencies.” Why? “They take preparation and evidence-gathering seriously: a real commitment to getting things right.” Good grief.
In such a cosmically unattached world, Swift only took three pages to reject the appeal’s arguments in a fit of premature adjudication. “An appeal under the Extradition Act 2003,” he wrote with icy finality, “is not an opportunity for general rehearsal of all matters canvassed at an extradition hearing.” The appeal’s length – some 100 pages – was “extraordinary” and came “to no more than an attempt to re-run the extensive arguments made and rejected by the District Judge.”
Thankfully, Swift’s finality proved stillborn. Some doubts existed whether the High Court appellate bench would even grant the hearing. They did, though requesting that Assange’s defence team trim the appeal to 20 pages.
How much of this is procedural theatre and circus judge antics remains to be seen. Anglo-American justice has done wonders in soiling itself in its treatment of Britain’s most notable political prisoner. Keeping Assange in the UK in hideous conditions of confinement without bail serves the goals of Washington, albeit vicariously. For Assange, time is the enemy, and each legal brief, appeal and hearing simply weighs the ledger further against his ailing existence.
Nuclear Power Fanatic Peter Dutton Shows Off His Nuclear-Powered Christmas Lights
Saying it was the most credible way to power a suburban Christmas light display, Peter Dutton has posted a picture of the Christmas lights at his Brisbane home, with a barely noticeable nuclear power plant in the background.
“I’m seeing a lot more of those ugly solar panels on roofs these days. So I wanted to show Australians what a nuclear-powered option looked like. You can hardly notice it at all,” Dutton said.
He said Australians were making a mistake in rushing towards renewable energy options, instead of the more practical option of nuclear. “People are are mucking around with sun and wind, when the more sensible solution of splitting an atom in a nuclear fission reactor in Australian suburbs is right there in front of us. Or behind me, in my case”.
More serious governance failures in Defence contracting
The pattern of poor governance by Defence has been further exposed following disturbing revelations in yet another contract.
MICHELLE FAHY, DEC 23, 2023 https://undueinfluence.substack.com/p/more-serious-governance-failures?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=297295&post_id=140001297&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&utm_medium=email
It was revealed this week that Defence Department officials congratulated themselves for not recording minutes of a critical meeting in which the work of consultants it had hired was being checked against the contract.
Incredibly, the failure to record minutes was noted as a positive in a post-implementation review of the project, with the only negative point listed being that the donuts arrived too early in the meeting.
This serious accountability failure is a breach of Defence’s contracting rules and the Commonwealth Procurement Rules, adherence to which is fundamental to good governance.
The failure to keep minutes of the key meeting means there’s no official record of who attended the meeting, in what capacity, and what contribution they made.
It was just one of a raft of irregularities found in a $100 million contract between the Defence Department and KPMG, which is part of the One Defence Data program, following a damning review by external consultants, Anchoram Consulting.
Some of the irregularities described in the review bear striking similarities to those found in Defence’s controversial Hunter Class frigate procurement from BAE Systems, Australia’s largest ever surface warship acquisition, which has been referred to the National Anti-Corruption Commission following a scathing report by the auditor general.
One of the grounds for the corruption referral was the absence of a number of important accountability documents, including minutes of key decision making meetings, related to the Hunter Class frigate procurement process. (Read full story on the $46 billion frigate procurement here and here.)
The Australian National Audit Office report on the frigates noted that the Defence Department was a serial offender when it came to deficient record-keeping. The auditors footnoted a comment from the Commissioner for Law Enforcement Integrity that a “lack of record keeping can create corruption vulnerabilities within an Agency”.
A lack of record keeping can create corruption vulnerabilities
Another revelation in the Anchoram review was that Defence had made “a six-figure payment” to KPMG “for work the government knew had not been delivered”.
Similarly, as the audit office revealed in May, during the frigate procurement process the Defence Department made milestone payments to BAE Systems even though BAE had missed the milestones.
Anchoram revealed that the KPMG project was plagued by a “lack of accountability” and “real and perceived conflicts of interest”. Core governance documents were not signed off and key requirements of KPMG’s contract were diluted from “mandatory” to “desirable”, sometimes in consultation with KPMG itself, despite Defence requirements stating explicitly that mandatory items cannot be changed.
Furthermore, Anchoram concluded that “the Commonwealth has a significant risk that it absolved [KPMG] from its commercial obligations and consequently transferred delivery risk from [KPMG] to the Commonwealth.”
The review said the Commonwealth’s ability to govern the One Defence Data program’s financials and ensure value for money had been “significantly compromised”.
Similarly, with the frigate procurement process, Defence sidelined the central procurement rule of achieving value for money. Numerous conflicts of interest and revolving door appointments, including the secretive involvement in the frigate tender evaluation process of people formerly employed by BAE Systems (as I reported exclusively in July) prefigure the serious governance issues exposed by Anchoram in Defence’s cosy arrangement with KPMG.
The Anchoram Consulting report, dated April 2022, has been released publicly this week following an order from independent senator David Pocock to the Defence Department.
Meanwhile, the Parliamentary Joint Committee of Public Accounts and Audit is conducting an inquiry into Defence’s frigate procurement process.
Labor MP Julian Hill, the chair of the committee, has stated: ‘It does feel like someone has back-engineered a decision and gone, “we want to go with BAE”…’.
The Anchoram Consulting report on the One Defence Data program can be downloaded here.
The ‘Greater Israel’ Scheme And Its Global Power Play: A Delusional Recipe For Armageddon
AuthorMatthew Ehret, The Last American Vagabond,
In 1996, a nest of American-born imperialists revolving around Paul Wolfowitz, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Richard Perle created a new think tank called “The Project for a New American Century.”
While the principled aim of the think tank ultimately hinged on a new “Pearl Harbor moment” that would justify a new era of regime-change wars in the Middle East, a secondary but equally important part of the formula involved the dominance of “Greater Israel” Likud fanatics then taking power over the murdered body of Yitzhak Rabin.
It was toward the start of the new regime of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Richard Perle wrote the report “Clean Break: A Strategy for Securing the Realm,” which outlined a series of goals that would govern the strategic vision of Washington and Tel Aviv for the next two decades. It called for:
Canceling the foundations for the Oslo Accords that threatened to bring about a climate of peace through economic cooperation in the Middle East under a two-state solution- Launching a new doctrine of “right of hot pursuit” justifying armed incursions into Palestinian territories
- Inducing the United States to overthrow Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq
- Armed incursions into Lebanon and possible strikes against Syria and Iran
In 2007, General Wesley Clark added even more detail to this neocon program when he revealed the content of a discussion he had with Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld 10 days after 9/11. General Clark stated that he was told of planned invasions of seven countries scheduled to take place within five years… namely: “Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran.”
This program was, in short, a recipe for establishing the long-awaited “Greater Israel” promoted by the likes of Theodor Herzl, Vladimir Jabotinsky, and Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook over a century ago.
While the Anglo-Zionist timeline was disrupted over the ensuing years (sometimes involving brave intervention by individuals within America’s intelligence community), the intention embedded in “Clean Break” never disappeared.
With the coming breakdown of the over-inflated Western financial system on one side and the emergence of a viable new multipolar security and economic architecture on the other side, it appears the ghouls that orchestrated 9/11, assassinated Rabin (1995) and Arafat (2004), and revived the Crusades have decided to kick over the chess board.
Conducting a rational analysis of the motives for this type of dynamic poses a major difficulty for any geopolitical commentator used to thinking in academically acceptable terms, which presume that rational self-interest animates the players within a game. In this case, rational self-interest is infected by heavy doses of self-delusional Hegemonism, fanatical imperial zealotry, and end-times eschatology with a Messianic twist (taking both Christian and Jewish forms).
Sifting out Order from Chaos
Netanyahu and his neocon (see: uniparty) supporters in America and Britain appear to be supportive of Israel’s ambition to provoke a vast regional war on one hand, while also believing that perhaps they will be able to use Israel as a wedge to disrupt Russian and Chinese-led development corridors (BRI, short for Belt and Road Initiative, and International North-South Transport Corridor) on the other hand.………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
If Israel wishes to have full control over Gaza’s maritime oil/gas reserves, it can only achieve its goal if the legal owners and beneficiaries living in Gaza disappear.
On October 13, 2023, a policy paper authored by Israel’s Ministry of Intelligence was leaked. It recommended “the forcible and permanent transfer of the Gaza Strip’s 2.2 million Palestinian residents to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula,” as +972 reported.
The paper laid out three possible scenarios for the people of Gaza. The first involves the replacement of Hamas with the Palestinian Authority in Gaza. The second involves the emergence of a new local Gaza authority (not Hamas or PA), and the third includes the expulsion of all civilians into Egypt. The report clearly identifies the third scenario as the most preferable option. The report’s authors write that this third option “will yield positive, long-term strategic outcomes for Israel, and is an executable option. It requires determination from the political echelon in the face of international pressure, with an emphasis on harnessing the support of the United States and additional pro-Israeli countries for the endeavor.”
Of course, US support for moving Gazans into the Sinai Peninsula began literally minutes after October 7. This would create a serious problem for future retaliation by extremely radicalized and traumatized people whose families have been killed by Israel’s crimes for decades. Hamas’ Qatar-based Muslim Brotherhood leadership of multi-billionaires would then easily be able to coordinate with Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood to act as agent provocateurs attacking Israel.
The Muslim Brotherhood has served as a major organizing force led by Anglo-Zionist intelligence for decades, was instrumental in orchestrating the Arab Spring, and supported the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad.
Perhaps if this was still 1996, and no powerful coalition of Russia, China, and Iran existed to defend Egypt against the threatened Anglo-Zionist war, then perhaps the PNAC Clean Break Strategy for Securing the Realm might be possible. The decision to ignore reality by rehashing this obsolete program implies the height of incompetence, which threatens to grow far beyond a regional war and into a global thermonuclear conflagration more quickly than many imagine.
This foreshadowing of a prophetic global war to usher in the Messiah (as many Christian rapturists dream of), was outlined in depth by Greater Israel advocate and Jabotinsky collaborator Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook 100 years ago.
Kook was Britain’s selection for the Chief Ashkenaz Rabbi for Jerusalem and Palestine from 1919 to 1935, and his influence in shaping several generations of radical Zionist zealots that took over control of much of Israel’s government after the inside job that was the Six Day War is immense. His prophetic remarks should not be easily dismissed. In his book Orot, Kook said:
“In wars, national characters crystalize. Israel, as the universal reflection of mankind, benefits thereby. The heels of Messiah follow upon World Conflagration… At the hour of the downfall of Western civilization, Israel is called upon to fulfill its divine mission by providing the spiritual basis for a New World Order.” [emphasis added]
The only hope to avoid this calamity and disrupt this flight toward an Armageddon scenario steered by End Times Messianic cultists is to force a ceasefire, as Russia, China, and the vast majority of world citizens (even Americans) demand.
Without this restoration of sanity, the world as a whole will be in for an experience that will make the 14th-century Dark Age appear to be an uncomfortable hiccup in world history. https://www.thelastamericanvagabond.com/greater-israel-power-armageddon/
What? Ukraine Is Not Winning the War? The Narrative Turns. Now What?
Patrick Lawrence ScheerPost, December 20, 2023.
“Putin’s Russia is closing in on a devastating victory. Europe’s foundations are trembling.”
This was the headline atop a Dec.9 commentary in The Telegraph, the farthest right of the major London dailies. The subhead elaborated the theme in yet graver terms: “Kyiv’s counteroffensive has ended in failure. This could be NATO’s Suez moment.” The piece that followed included all sorts of goodies in this line.
It is not official, not yet, that Ukraine’s grand counteroffensive, the great Russophobic hope of the Zelensky and Biden regimes earlier this year, has proven a bust and that defeat is in the offing. The closest we have to such an admission came from Volodymyr Zelensky earlier this month, when the Ukrainian president declared that the counteroffensive “did not achieve the desired results.” I loved that moment, to be honest. It reminded me of Emperor Hirohito’s famous declaration on August 15, 1945, when he announced the surrender on Japanese radio. “The war,” he told his desperate subjects, “has not necessarily progressed to our advantage.”
O.K., let’s leave Zelensky to Zelensky, Joe Biden to Joe Biden, and Antony Blinken to Antony Blinken. We can count news of failure unofficially official when mainstream media start dropping such news on their readers and viewers. The Telegraph, so far as I know, was the first big daily on either side of the Atlantic to make such blunt admissions. Others have already followed, if in gentler, more oblique language—in Zelensky-speak, this is to say.
A significant moment may be upon us. What will follow once it is acknowledged that the Nazi-infested crooks in Kyiv have failed? President Biden, as is his consistently unwise wont, radically overinvested in the proxy war he chose to start with the Russian Federation as soon as he took office three years ago next month. Having defined the Ukraine conflict as a war in the name of democracy and freedom —“values” rather than interests, this is to say—he has left the U.S. and its European clients no room for compromise and nearly none even for negotiation. What is the next move when defeat is too obvious any longer to deny?
If we are about to enter uncharted territory, will it prove dangerous ground? It may, but this is not yet clear. It will be uncertain and probably unstable: This we know. Of the many things I do not like about this circumstance, I will mention a few straightaway. Biden may be the stupidest president of the postwar era on the foreign policy side: He exhibits no capacity whatsoever for nimble or imaginative thought. He is a warmonger of long standing, an election year is upon us, and he is by now in obvious danger of being impeached. His mental incompetence, atop all this, is plain for all to see. ………………………………………………………………………………………………………
‘“People Snatchers:’ Ukraine’s Recruiters Use Harsh Tactics to Fill Ranks,” appeared Dec. 15. In it, Thomas Gibbons–Neff describes how plainclothes goons have taken to kidnapping draft-age Ukrainian men, some with mental or physical disabilities, and forcing them into the military induction process. This is sometimes done at gunpoint. People are taken off the streets, at factory gates, from inside shop:
Recruiters have confiscated passports, taken people from their jobs and, in at least one case, tried to send a mentally disabled person to military training, according to lawyers, activists and Ukrainian men who have been subject to coercive tactics. Videos of soldiers shoving people into cars and holding men against their will in recruiting centers are surfacing with increasing frequency on social media and in local news reports.
The harsh tactics are being aimed not just at draft dodgers but at men who would ordinarily be exempt from service — a sign of the steep challenges Ukraine’s military faces maintaining troop levels in a war with high casualties, and against a much larger enemy.
Lawyers and activists say the aggressive methods go well beyond the scope of recruiters’ authority and in some cases are illegal. They point out that recruiters, unlike law enforcement officers, are not empowered to detain civilians, let alone force them into conscription. Men who receive draft notices are supposed to report to recruitment offices.
We are reading here about a desperate regime that has sent too many of its able-bodied to their deaths and is now running out of bodies.
A day later, Carlotta Gall, with several colleagues sharing the byline, published “Ukrainian Marines on ‘Suicide Mission’ in Crossing Dnipro River.” Here we read about incensed grunts at the front condemning the Kyiv regime’s incessant propaganda as to the military’s progress against Russian forces. Again this is very effective reporting:
Soldiers and marines who have taken part in the river crossings described the offensive as brutalizing and futile, as waves of Ukrainian troops have been struck down on the river banks or in the water, even before they reach the other side …
In the case of the Dnipro, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine and other officials have suggested recently that the marines have gained a foothold on the eastern bank. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs posted a statement last month claiming they had established several strongholds.
But marines and soldiers who have been there say these accounts overstate the case.
“There are no positions. There is no such thing as an observation post or position,” said Oleksiy, who withheld his last name. “It is impossible to gain a foothold there. It’s impossible to move equipment there.”
“It’s not even a fight for survival,” he added. “It’s a suicide mission.”
…… The Times is not yet prepared to state plainly that Kyiv is not far from defeat. But, in that way, The Times thinks American readers must be gently prepared for bad news, as if we are a nation of kindergartners—well, let’s not “go there”—we are being so prepared.
…………………………………………………………..In plain English, the kind you and I speak: The Biden regime has no idea what to do in the face of failure, but, as failure cannot be admitted, it must be dressed up as a new strategy.
………………………………………………………………The significance of the moment is in large part in the collapse of the propaganda. ………………………………..more https://scheerpost.com/2023/12/20/patrick-lawrence-what-ukraine-is-not-winning-the-war/
1 This month
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