Assange’s final appeal – Your man in the public gallery, part 2
Craig Murray, Sott.net, Wed, 21 Feb 2024
Comment: This is the continuation of Craig Murray’s coverage of Julian Assange’s final extradition hearing in the UK Royal Court on February 21, 2024. Read the first part here.
Julian Assange is a person in political conflict with the view of the United States, who seeks to affect the policies and operations of the US government.
Section 87 of the Extradition Act 2003 provides that a court must interpret it in the light of the defendant’s human rights as enshrined in the European Convention of Human Rights. This definitely brings in the jurisdiction of the court. It means all the issues raised must be viewed through the prism of the ECHR and from not other angle.
To depend on the treaty yet ignore its terms is abuse of process and contrary to the ECHR. The obligation in UK law to respect the terms of the extradition treaty with the USA while administering an extradition under it, was comparable to the obligation courts had found to follow the Modern Slavery Convention and Refugee Convention
(quotes given here)
Mark Summers KC then arose to continue the case for Assange. A dark and pugnacious character, he could be well cast as Heathcliff. Summers is as blunt and direct as Fitzgerald is courteous. His points are not so much hammered home, as pile-driven.
This persecution, Summers began, was “intended to prohibit and punish the exposure of state level crime”. The extradition hearing had heard unchallenged evidence of this from many witnesses. The speech in question was thus protected speech. This extradition was not only contrary to the US/UK Extradition Treaty of 2007, it was also plainly contrary to Section 81 of the Extradition Act of 2003.
(quotes given here)
This prosecution was motivated by a desire to punish and suppress political opinion, contrary to the Act. It could be shown plainly to be a political prosecution. It had not been brought until years after the proposed offence; the initiation of the charges had been motivated by the International Criminal Court stating that they were asking the Wikileaks publications as evidence of war crimes. That had been immediately followed by US government denunciation of Wikileaks and Assange, by the designation as a non-state hostile intelligence agency, and even by the official plot to kidnap, poison, rendition or assassinate Assange. That had all been sanctioned by President Trump.
This prosecution therefore plainly bore all of the hallmarks of political persecution.
The magistrates’ court had head unchallenged evidence that the Wikileaks material from Chelsea Manning contained evidence of assassination, rendition, torture, dark prisons and drone killings by the United States. The leaked material had in fact been relied on with success in legal actions in many foreign courts and in Strasbourg itself.
The disclosures were political because the avowed intention was to affect political change. Indeed they had caused political change, for example in the Rules of Engagement for forces in Iraq and Afghanistan and in ending drone killings in Pakistan. Assange had been highly politically acclaimed at the time of the publications. He had been invited to address both the EU and the UN.
The US government had made no response to any of the extensive evidence of United States state level criminality given in the hearing. Yet Judge Baraitser had totally ignored all of it in her ruling. She had not referred to United States criminality at all.
At this point Judge Sharp interrupted to ask where they would find references to these acts of criminality in the evidence, and Summers gave some very terse pointers, through clenched teeth.
Summers continued that in law it is axiomatic that the exposure of state level criminality is a political act. This was protected speech. There were an enormous number of cases across many jurisdictions which indicate this. The criminality presented in this appeal was tolerated and even approved by the very highest levels of the United States government. Publication of this evidence by Mr Assange, absent any financial motive for him to do so, was the very definition of a political act. He was involved, beyond dispute, in opposition to the machinery of government of the United States.
This extradition had to be barred under Section 81 of the Extradition Act because its entire purpose was to silence those political opinions. Again, there were numerous cases on record of how courts should deal, under the European Convention, with states reacting to people who had revealed official criminality.
In the judgment being appealed Judge Baraitser did not address the protected nature of speech exposing state criminality at all. That was plainly an error in law.
Baraitser had also been in error of fact in stating that it was “Purely conjecture and speculation” that the revelation of US war crimes had led to this prosecution. This ignored almost all of the evidence before the court.
The court had been given evidence of United States interference with judicial procedure over US war crimes in Spain, Poland, Germany and Italy. The United States had insulated its own officials from ICC jurisdiction. It had actively threatened both the institutions and employees, of the ICC and of official bodies of other states. All of this had been explained in detail in expert evidence and had been unchallenged. All of it had been ignored by Baraitser.…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Political persecution was also apparent in the highly selective prosecution of the appellant. Numerous newspapers had also published the exact same information, as had other websites. Yet only Assange was being prosecuted. Baraitser had simply ignored numerous facts which were key to the case, and therefore her judgment was plainly wrong.
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… Separately, the Secretary of State had failed in her specific duty to obtain assurances that the death penalty would not be implemented, before agreeing an extradition. The United States could add further charges at any time were Assange in the US, including aiding and abetting treason or other Espionage Act charges which attract the death penalty. It was routine in these circumstances to obtain assurances against the death penalty, and it was sinister they had not been obtained.
The law on this point was very clear; in the absence of assurances against the death penalty, the extradition must be stopped by the Home Secretary and the defendant discharged.
On this rather sombre point, Judge Sharp called the end of the day, and we staggered out into a wet London evening. It was a huge amount to pack into our heads in a day for those of us with brains smaller than Mr Fitzgerald, and the large crowd that roared its approval as we emerged hardly registered with me at all.
It had gone better than I expected……………………………………………. https://www.sott.net/article/489199-Assanges-final-appeal-Your-man-in-the-public-gallery-part-2
DAY ONE: Assange Timeline Exposes US Motives
February 20, 2024
Julian Assange’s lawyers on Tuesday argued before the High Court about why the imprisoned publisher must be allowed to appeal against his extradition order, reports Joe Lauria.
By Joe Lauria, in London, Consortium News
On Day One of Julian Assange’s attempt to appeal Britain’s order to extradite him to the United States, his lawyers laid out a timeline that exposed U.S. motives to destroy the journalist who revealed their high-level state crimes.
Before two High Court judges in the cramped, wood-paneled Courtroom 5 at the Royal Courts of Justice, Assange’s lawyers argued on Tuesday that two judges had seriously erred in the case on a number of grounds necessitating an appeal of the home secretary’s decision to extradite Assange to the United States.
High to the left of the court, next to oak shelves with neat rows of law books, was an empty iron cage. The court said it had invited Assange to either attend in person or via video link from Belmarsh Prison, where he has been locked up on remand for nearly five years. But Assange said he was too ill take part in any capacity, his lawyers confirmed.
Vanessa Baraitser, the district judge who presided over Assange’s 2020 extradition hearing, and Jonathan Swift, a High Court judge, came in for heavy criticism from Assange’s lawyers. Baraitser in January 2021 ordered Assange released on health grounds.
But she refused him bail while the U.S. appealed. On the basis of assurances that it would not mistreat Assange in the United States, the High Court reversed Baraitser’s decision. The U.K. Supreme Court then refused to take Assange’s challenge of the legality of these assurance and the home secretary signed the extradition order.
Assange’s last avenue of appeal is of the home secretary’s order as well as Baraitser’s 2021 decision, in which, on every point of law and many of fact, she sided with the United States. The application to pursue this appeal was rejected by a single High Court judge, Swift, last June.
He permitted his rejection of the application to itself be appealed. That two-day hearing began Tuesday before Justice Jeremy Johnson and Dame Victoria Sharp.
The Timeline
Assange lawyer Mark Summers made a forceful argument that the United States in essence is treating Assange no differently than any authoritarian regime would deal with a dissident journalist who revealed its secret crimes.
“There was evidence before the district judge that this prosecution was motivated to punish and inhibit the exposure of American state-level crimes,” Summers told the court. “There was unchallenged evidence” during Baraitser’s 2020 extradition hearing “of crimes that sit at the apex of criminality,” he said.
He said there was a direct nexus between Assange’s work to expose U.S. crimes and the U.S. pursuing him. “This is a prosecution for those disclosures,” he said. “There is a straight-line correlation between those disclosures and the prosecution, but the district judge (Baraitser) addressed none of this and neither did Swift.”
Summers then sketched out a timeline of events showing successive stages of motivation for the United States to go after Assange. “There was compelling circumstantial evidence why the U.S. brought this case,” he said.
First, he said, there was no prosecution of Assange (despite the Obama administration empaneling a grand jury) until 2016, when the International Criminal Court announced it would look into possible U.S. crimes in Afghanistan, following Assange’s disclosures. The U.S. then denounced him as a political actor.
Summers said “that morphed into plans to kill or rendition Assange” from the Ecuadorian embassy, where he had asylum, following the Vault 7 release of C.I.A. spying tools in 2017.
The then new C.I.A. Director Mike Pompeo, in his first public appearance in that position, denounced WikiLeaks as a hostile, non-state intelligence service, a carefully chosen legal term, Summers said, that permitted taking covert action against a target without Congressional knowledge.
Because these plans to kill or rendition Assange, asked for by President Donald Trump, raised alarms with White House lawyers, a legal prosecution was pursued as a way to determine where to put Assange if he were renditioned to the U.S., Summers said.
“This prosecution only emerged because of that rendition plan,” he said. “And the prosecution that emerged is selective and it is persecution.” It was selective because even though other outlets, such as Freitag and cryptome.org,, had published the unredacted diplomatic cables first, Assange was the only one charged.
“This is not a government acting on good faith pursuing a legal” path, he said……………………………………
Assange lawyer Edward Fitzgerald called espionage, with which Assange is charged, a “pure political offense.” The issue is crucial to Assange’s defense because the U.S.-U.K. Extradition Treaty bars extraditions for political offenses.
However, the Extradition Act, Parliament’s implementing legislation of the Treaty, does not mention political offenses. Baraitser ruled that the Act and not the Treaty should take precedence.
Assange’s team has been arguing that he is wanted for a political crime and therefore the extradition should not proceed. They argued that the Act bars extradition for “political opinion,” which they equate with “political offense.
A considerable amount of time in the five-hour hearing was thus spent by Assange’s lawyers making the point that Assange’s charges are political. Fitzgerald argued that Britain has extradition treaties with 158 nations and in all but two (Kuwait and the UAE), political offenses are barred.
Assange’s work was to influence and change U.S. policy, Fitzgerald said, therefore his work was political and he could not be extradited for his political views or opinions.
Informants!
Justices Johnson and Sharp appeared to be not extremely well-versed in the Assange case and seemed at times surprised by what they were hearing from Assange’s lawyers. But they had been prepared on the U.S. view of Assange allegedly harming U.S. informants.
What they didn’t know is that Assange had actually spent time redacting the names of U.S. informants from the Diplomatic Cables, while WikiLeaks‘ mainstream partners in 2010 did not.
Justice Johnson asked before lunch whether there were cases where someone had published the names of informants and were not prosecuted. After the break, Summers offered the example of Philip Agee, the ex-C.I.A. agent who revealed undercover agents’ names, some of whom were harmed, but he was never indicted for it.
Summers also mentioned The New York Times publishing names of informants in the Pentagon Papers. “The New York Times was never prosecuted,” Summers said. However, Richard Nixon indeed empaneled a grand jury in Boston to indict Times reporters but after it was revealed the government tapped whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg’s phone — and thus also the reporters’ — the case was dropped.
Despite their apparent unfamiliarity with the Assange case both judges seemed intrigued by its serious political, legal and press freedom issues. They are senior judges who might be less susceptible to political pressure.
The Death Penalty
The judges may also have been surprised to learn that under U.S. law and practice, (in this case with agreement from the British government), new charges could be added to Assange’s indictment after he would arrive in America. The Espionage Act, for instance, carries a provision for the death penalty if committed during wartime.
Britain does not have the death penalty and cannot extradite someone who could face capital punishment. Though the U.S. could offer Britain diplomatic assurances that it would not seek the death penalty against Assange, so far it has refused.
Fitzgerald also seemed to shock the courtroom by speaking of instances in U.S. courts where someone convicted for one crime could at sentencing receive time for another offense he or she was never tried for.
He expressed concern that though Assange was never charged with the Vault 7 C.I.A. leak, he might still be sentenced for it. He also said that at sentencing the rules of admissibility could be discarded, for example to consider evidence that was obtained through surveillance.
First Amendment
The judges may have been surprised to hear that the U.S. prosecutor in Virginia has said he may deny Assange his First Amendment rights during trial on U.S. soil because he is not a U.S. citizen. Pompeo stated more categorically that Assange would be without First Amendment protection.
Stripping the right of free speech is a violation of Article 10 of the European Court of Human Rights, Assange’s lawyers argued.
What Strasbourg Would Do
Summers brought the court through a scenario in which the European Court of Human Rights had tried Chelsea Manning, instead of a U.S. military court. He said whistleblower protection laws in Europe had advanced to the point where he believed the court would have weighed the harm done by breaking a confidentiality agreement and the harm prevented by blowing the whistle…….
The overall strategy of Assange’s lawyers appeared to be to make it obvious to these judges that there are vast grounds for appeal as well as arguments to toss the case (such as evidence of C.I.A. spying on Assange’s privileged conversations with his lawyers)
Forseeable
Assange’s lawyers also argued that Article 7 of the European Convention on Human Rights says someone must foresee that their behavior is a crime before he or she could be charged with it.
They said Assange could not have known that publishing his classified disclosures could have led to prosecution under the Espionage Act because no journalist or publisher had ever been charged under it for possession and publication of classified material. Therefore a violation of Article 7 should bar extradition, they say……………………
The hearing continues on Wednesday with lawyers representing the United States presenting their arguments about why Assange should not be allowed to appeal. https://consortiumnews.com/2024/02/20/day-one-assange-timeline-exposes-us-motives/
—
Why Australia should ditch the AUKUS nuclear submarine and-pivot-to-pitstop-power
Dr Elizabeth Buchanan is an expert associate of the ANU National Security College. This is an excerpt from the latest issue of Australian Foreign Affairs.
There is an elephant in the room, even though it is not a concern for current AUKUS leaders and key backers because it won’t need attention for a decade or so.
Nonetheless, the quandary exists, and we should acknowledge it: the SSN-AUKUS probably won’t materialise. Domestic tensions in both the US and UK are simmering away, with Washington already stating it has no plans to ever operate the boat.
Pillar One does have elements worth salvaging. The sale by Washington to Canberra of at least three Virginia-class SSNs from as soon as the early 2030s is reasonable. As is the exchange of expertise through the embedding of personnel and injection of capital into shipyard infrastructure. Increasing SSN visits to Australian ports by our UK and US partners via the Submarine Rotational Force West is also sensible. Indeed, the SRF-W should be put on steroids.
But the design and attempted construction of a future submarine – the SSN-AUKUS – should be scrapped. This would save us time and money, given the high likelihood the SSN-AUKUS won’t eventuate. With the US not intending to operate the SSN-AUKUS and committing to the SSN-X instead, Canberra is left to rely on London. This is precarious to say the least.
Canberra should focus its efforts on interoperability with the US in our maritime backyard. After all, Washington is geographically wedded to the same Pacific arena. It is clear our long-term regional maritime interests align more with Washington than with London.
We should acquire as intended the three Virginia-class subs and get behind the US’s SSN-X. If the UK fulfils the ambitious SSN-AUKUS project, it will likely share similar elements to the SSN-X in any case – not least the weapons and propulsion systems. Theoretically, Australia would provide maintenance and support for the UK’s SSN-AUKUS via SRF-W, as we will for the Virginia-class subs and probably for the SSN-X too.
This more sensible AUKUS pathway takes advantage of Australia’s pit-stop power. Our value proposition to partners is our enhanced ability to maintain and host their SSN capabilities, while also bringing our own capabilities to the table. Come 2030 and through to the 2040s, Australia’s SRF-W is likely to contain no less than five different submarine classes. We could see our trusty but aged Collins-class aside a single visiting British Astute, up to nine Virginias, as well as the SSN-X and, of course, the mystical SSN-AUKUS.
This is surely more submarine capability housed in the Indo-Pacific than the AUKUS partners could poke a stick at, which is good news for Canberra. Keeping the waters of the Indo-Pacific free from coercion and potentially armed conflict is a binding mutual interest for Australia, the US and the UK. This is also true for Australia’s global partners and allies, as maritime security challenges originating in the Indo-Pacific ripple across the globe. Of course, our competitors – and states we don’t see eye to eye with – also want the continued facilitation of maritime trade throughout the world. But the capabilities to marshal and control the world’s seas are strengthening and not necessarily in our favour, with vast military modernisation processes under way in our neighbourhood.
In the wise words of Sean Connery’s naval captain in The Hunt for Red October, “one ping” tells us only part of the picture. The optimal pathway tabled by AUKUS leaders is merely one approach to SSN capability for Australia. There are many options for achieving the right capability. We’ve committed to a pathway that has welcomed extremely limited consultation or public debate. One ping, one approach, offers only part of the picture.
Defence acquisition is an enduring process, involving constant review and revision. But even a capability novice must accept that pursuing a “Frankenstein” approach to delivering an SSN is beyond the pale in terms of risk. This is not a call to walk back on the plan to acquire nuclear-powered submarines.
As the island continent smack bang in the middle of the Indian and Pacific Ocean theatres, Australia cannot bunker down and avoid the fallout of sharpening competition on its doorstep. But nor should Canberra expect to sidestep the competition. As a net beneficiary of the extant rules-based order, secured and administered primarily by our partners, namely Washington, Australia ought to be providing security too.
For our allies and partners, Australia’s geography is unbeatable in an era of Indo-Pacific strategic competition. Our pit-stop power is a potential solution to a glaring problem: the SSN-AUKUS might not ever eventuate. While this would not necessarily be detrimental to Australia, we need an SSN capability. We can arrive at one by putting SRF-W at the centre of AUKUS, making the most of our pit-stop power to support the enhanced operation of partner SSN presence in our backyard, while continuing efforts to acquire and operate our own SSN capability. Any optimal pathway surely needs to be sensible too.
Swarming Our World. What Happens When Killer Robots Start Communicating with Each Other?
“Emergent” AI Behavior and Human Destiny
What Happens When Killer Robots Start Communicating with Each Other?
Tom Dispatch, Michael Klare, FEBRUARY 20, 2024
Make no mistake, artificial Intelligence (AI) has already gone into battle in a big-time way. The Israeli military is using it in Gaza on a scale previously unknown in wartime. They’ve reportedly been employing an AI target-selection platform called (all too unnervingly) “the Gospel” to choose many of their bombing sites. According to a December report in the Guardian, the Gospel “has significantly accelerated a lethal production line of targets that officials have compared to a ‘factory.’” The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) claim that it “produces precise attacks on infrastructure associated with Hamas while inflicting great damage to the enemy and minimal harm to noncombatants.” Significantly enough, using that system, the IDF attacked 15,000 targets in Gaza in just the first 35 days of the war. And given the staggering damage done and the devastating death toll there, the Gospel could, according to the Guardian, be thought of as an AI-driven “mass assassination factory.”
Meanwhile, of course, in the Ukraine War, both the Russians and the Ukrainians have been hustling to develop, produce, and unleash AI-driven drones with deadly capabilities. Only recently, in fact, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky created a new branch of his country’s armed services specifically focused on drone warfare and is planning to produce more than one million drones this year. According to the Independent, “Ukrainian forces are expected to create special staff positions for drone operations, special units, and build effective training. There will also be a scaling-up of production for drone operations, and inclusion of the best ideas and top specialists in the unmanned aerial vehicles domain, [Ukrainian] officials have said.”
And all of this is just the beginning when it comes to war, AI-style, which is going to include the creation of “killer robots” of every imaginable sort. But as the U.S., Russia, China, and other countries rush to introduce AI-driven battlefields, let TomDispatch regular Michael Klare, who has long been focused on what it means for the globe’s major powers to militarize AI, take you into a future in which (god save us all!) robots could be running (yes, actually running!) the show. Tom
By combining AI with advanced robotics, the U.S. military and those of other advanced powers are already hard at work creating an array of self-guided “autonomous” weapons systems — combat drones that can employ lethal force independently of any human officers meant to command them. Called “killer robots” by critics, such devices include a variety of uncrewed or “unmanned” planes, tanks, ships, and submarines capable of autonomous operation. The U.S. Air Force, for example, is developing its “collaborative combat aircraft,” an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) intended to join piloted aircraft on high-risk missions. The Army is similarly testing a variety of autonomous unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs), while the Navy is experimenting with both unmanned surface vessels (USVs) and unmanned undersea vessels (UUVs, or drone submarines). China, Russia, Australia, and Israel are also working on such weaponry for the battlefields of the future.
Michael Klare, Swarming Our World
POSTED ON FEBRUARY 20, 2024
Make no mistake, artificial Intelligence (AI) has already gone into battle in a big-time way. The Israeli military is using it in Gaza on a scale previously unknown in wartime. They’ve reportedly been employing an AI target-selection platform called (all too unnervingly) “the Gospel” to choose many of their bombing sites. According to a December report in the Guardian, the Gospel “has significantly accelerated a lethal production line of targets that officials have compared to a ‘factory.’” The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) claim that it “produces precise attacks on infrastructure associated with Hamas while inflicting great damage to the enemy and minimal harm to noncombatants.” Significantly enough, using that system, the IDF attacked 15,000 targets in Gaza in just the first 35 days of the war. And given the staggering damage done and the devastating death toll there, the Gospel could, according to the Guardian, be thought of as an AI-driven “mass assassination factory.”
Meanwhile, of course, in the Ukraine War, both the Russians and the Ukrainians have been hustling to develop, produce, and unleash AI-driven drones with deadly capabilities. Only recently, in fact, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky created a new branch of his country’s armed services specifically focused on drone warfare and is planning to produce more than one million drones this year. According to the Independent, “Ukrainian forces are expected to create special staff positions for drone operations, special units, and build effective training. There will also be a scaling-up of production for drone operations, and inclusion of the best ideas and top specialists in the unmanned aerial vehicles domain, [Ukrainian] officials have said.”
And all of this is just the beginning when it comes to war, AI-style, which is going to include the creation of “killer robots” of every imaginable sort. But as the U.S., Russia, China, and other countries rush to introduce AI-driven battlefields, let TomDispatch regular Michael Klare, who has long been focused on what it means for the globe’s major powers to militarize AI, take you into a future in which (god save us all!) robots could be running (yes, actually running!) the show. Tom
“Emergent” AI Behavior and Human Destiny
What Happens When Killer Robots Start Communicating with Each Other?
Yes, it’s already time to be worried — very worried. As the wars in Ukraine and Gaza have shown, the earliest drone equivalents of “killer robots” have made it onto the battlefield and proved to be devastating weapons. But at least they remain largely under human control. Imagine, for a moment, a world of war in which those aerial drones (or their ground and sea equivalents) controlled us, rather than vice-versa. Then we would be on a destructively different planet in a fashion that might seem almost unimaginable today. Sadly, though, it’s anything but unimaginable, given the work on artificial intelligence (AI) and robot weaponry that the major powers have already begun. Now, let me take you into that arcane world and try to envision what the future of warfare might mean for the rest of us.
By combining AI with advanced robotics, the U.S. military and those of other advanced powers are already hard at work creating an array of self-guided “autonomous” weapons systems — combat drones that can employ lethal force independently of any human officers meant to command them. Called “killer robots” by critics, such devices include a variety of uncrewed or “unmanned” planes, tanks, ships, and submarines capable of autonomous operation. The U.S. Air Force, for example, is developing its “collaborative combat aircraft,” an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) intended to join piloted aircraft on high-risk missions. The Army is similarly testing a variety of autonomous unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs), while the Navy is experimenting with both unmanned surface vessels (USVs) and unmanned undersea vessels (UUVs, or drone submarines). China, Russia, Australia, and Israel are also working on such weaponry for the battlefields of the future.
The imminent appearance of those killing machines has generated concern and controversy globally, with some countries already seeking a total ban on them and others, including the U.S., planning to authorize their use only under human-supervised conditions. In Geneva, a group of states has even sought to prohibit the deployment and use of fully autonomous weapons, citing a 1980 U.N. treaty, the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, that aims to curb or outlaw non-nuclear munitions believed to be especially harmful to civilians. Meanwhile, in New York, the U.N. General Assembly held its first discussion of autonomous weapons last October and is planning a full-scale review of the topic this coming fall.
For the most part, debate over the battlefield use of such devices hinges on whether they will be empowered to take human lives without human oversight. Many religious and civil society organizations argue that such systems will be unable to distinguish between combatants and civilians on the battlefield and so should be banned in order to protect noncombatants from death or injury, as is required by international humanitarian law. American officials, on the other hand, contend that such weaponry can be designed to operate perfectly well within legal constraints.
However, neither side in this debate has addressed the most potentially unnerving aspect of using them in battle: the likelihood that, sooner or later, they’ll be able to communicate with each other without human intervention and, being “intelligent,” will be able to come up with their own unscripted tactics for defeating an enemy — or something else entirely. Such computer-driven groupthink, labeled “emergent behavior” by computer scientists, opens up a host of dangers not yet being considered by officials in Geneva, Washington, or at the U.N.
For the time being, most of the autonomous weaponry being developed by the American military will be unmanned (or, as they sometimes say, “uninhabited”) versions of existing combat platforms and will be designed to operate in conjunction with their crewed counterparts. While they might also have some capacity to communicate with each other, they’ll be part of a “networked” combat team whose mission will be dictated and overseen by human commanders. The Collaborative Combat Aircraft, for instance, is expected to serve as a “loyal wingman” for the manned F-35 stealth fighter, while conducting high-risk missions in contested airspace. The Army and Navy have largely followed a similar trajectory in their approach to the development of autonomous weaponry.
The Appeal of Robot “Swarms”
However, some American strategists have championed an alternative approach to the use of autonomous weapons on future battlefields in which they would serve not as junior colleagues in human-led teams but as coequal members of self-directed robot swarms. Such formations would consist of scores or even hundreds of AI-enabled UAVs, USVs, or UGVs — all able to communicate with one another, share data on changing battlefield conditions, and collectively alter their combat tactics as the group-mind deems necessary.
“Emerging robotic technologies will allow tomorrow’s forces to fight as a swarm, with greater mass, coordination, intelligence and speed than today’s networked forces,” predicted Paul Scharre, an early enthusiast of the concept, in a 2014 report for the Center for a New American Security (CNAS). “Networked, cooperative autonomous systems,” he wrote then, “will be capable of true swarming — cooperative behavior among distributed elements that gives rise to a coherent, intelligent whole.”
As Scharre made clear in his prophetic report, any full realization of the swarm concept would require the development of advanced algorithms that would enable autonomous combat systems to communicate with each other and “vote” on preferred modes of attack. This, he noted, would involve creating software capable of mimicking ants, bees, wolves, and other creatures that exhibit “swarm” behavior in nature. As Scharre put it, “Just like wolves in a pack present their enemy with an ever-shifting blur of threats from all directions, uninhabited vehicles that can coordinate maneuver and attack could be significantly more effective than uncoordinated systems operating en masse.”
In 2014, however, the technology needed to make such machine behavior possible was still in its infancy. To address that critical deficiency, the Department of Defense proceeded to fund research in the AI and robotics field, even as it also acquired such technology from private firms like Google and Microsoft. A key figure in that drive was Robert Work, a former colleague of Paul Scharre’s at CNAS and an early enthusiast of swarm warfare. Work served from 2014 to 2017 as deputy secretary of defense, a position that enabled him to steer ever-increasing sums of money to the development of high-tech weaponry, especially unmanned and autonomous systems.
From Mosaic to Replicator
Much of this effort was delegated to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Pentagon’s in-house high-tech research organization. As part of a drive to develop AI for such collaborative swarm operations, DARPA initiated its “Mosaic” program, a series of projects intended to perfect the algorithms and other technologies needed to coordinate the activities of manned and unmanned combat systems in future high-intensity combat with Russia and/or China…………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
To obtain both the hardware and software needed to implement such an ambitious program, the Department of Defense is now seeking proposals from traditional defense contractors like Boeing and Raytheon as well as AI startups like Anduril and Shield AI. While large-scale devices like the Air Force’s Collaborative Combat Aircraft and the Navy’s Orca Extra-Large UUV may be included in this drive, the emphasis is on the rapid production of smaller, less complex systems like AeroVironment’s Switchblade attack drone, now used by Ukrainian troops to take out Russian tanks and armored vehicles behind enemy lines.
At the same time, the Pentagon is already calling on tech startups to develop the necessary software to facilitate communication and coordination among such disparate robotic units and their associated manned platforms. To facilitate this, the Air Force asked Congress for $50 million in its fiscal year 2024 budget to underwrite what it ominously enough calls Project VENOM, or “Viper Experimentation and Next-generation Operations Model.” Under VENOM, the Air Force will convert existing fighter aircraft into AI-governed UAVs and use them to test advanced autonomous software in multi-drone operations. The Army and Navy are testing similar systems.
When Swarms Choose Their Own Path
In other words, it’s only a matter of time before the U.S. military (and presumably China’s, Russia’s, and perhaps those of a few other powers) will be able to deploy swarms of autonomous weapons systems equipped with algorithms that allow them to communicate with each other and jointly choose novel, unpredictable combat maneuvers while in motion. Any participating robotic member of such swarms would be given a mission objective (“seek out and destroy all enemy radars and anti-aircraft missile batteries located within these [specified] geographical coordinates”) but not be given precise instructions on how to do so. That would allow them to select their own battle tactics in consultation with one another. If the limited test data we have is anything to go by, this could mean employing highly unconventional tactics never conceived for (and impossible to replicate by) human pilots and commanders.
…………………………………… In military terms, this means that a swarm of autonomous weapons might jointly elect to adopt combat tactics none of the individual devices were programmed to perform — possibly achieving astounding results on the battlefield, but also conceivably engaging in escalatory acts unintended and unforeseen by their human commanders, including the destruction of critical civilian infrastructure or communications facilities used for nuclear as well as conventional operations………………………………………………..
What then? Might they choose to keep fighting beyond their preprogrammed limits, provoking unintended escalation — even, conceivably, of a nuclear kind? Or would they choose to stop their attacks on enemy forces and instead interfere with the operations of friendly ones, perhaps firing on and devastating them
……………………………….. Many prominent security and technology officials are, however, all too aware of the potential risks of this “emergent behavior” in future robotic weaponry and continue to issue warnings against the rapid utilization of AI in warfare.
Of particular note is the final report that the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence issued in February 2021. Co-chaired by Robert Work (back at CNAS after his stint at the Pentagon) and Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google, the commission recommended the rapid utilization of AI by the U.S. military to ensure victory in any future conflict with China and/or Russia. However, it also voiced concern about the potential dangers of robot-saturated battlefields……………………………………………………………..
When the leading advocates of autonomous weaponry tell us to be concerned about the unintended dangers posed by their use in battle, the rest of us should be worried indeed. Even if we lack the mathematical skills to understand emergent behavior in AI, it should be obvious that humanity could face a significant risk to its existence, should killing machines acquire the ability to think on their own…………… more https://tomdispatch.com/emergent-ai-behavior-and-human-destiny/—
Utility EdF Writes Down $14B Loss on Delayed UK Nuclear Megaproject
By Peter Reina, February 20, 2024, https://www.enr.com/articles/58180-utility-edf-writes-down-14b-loss-on-delayed-uk-nuclear-megaproject
Following recent news of additional delays and cost hikes on the U.K.’s 3,260-MW Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant, the project company has reported an impairment of $14 billion on its assets.
French state controlled utiilty firm Electricité de France (EdF), which controls project financing and construction, last month updated Hinkley Point C’s forecast completion to between 2029 and 2031, with costs rising to a range of $39-43 billion. The previous completion target set in May 2022 was June 2027. EdF is currently financing all project construction costs.
Announcing its 2023 annual report, the utility also set this March as the expected target date for fuel loading at its 1,650-MW Flamanville 3 nuclear power plant on the north French coast. When work started in 2007, fuel loading was forecast for 2011.
What comes after Rafah
By David Donovan | 22 February 2024, https://independentaustralia.net/life/life-display/what-comes-after-rafah,18353
What will happen after Israeli forces raze Rafah? Founder and director Dave Donovan discusses the ongoing genocide in Gaza and its likely aftershocks.
THIS IS a very important Independent Australia editorial because the world is at a crucial stepping point, a junction, a crisis, where whichever path is chosen will dictate the next 30, or maybe 50, years for global peace.
The crisis is Gaza. The choices are clear. A messy, indeterminate peace or a walk through the tombstones. On from which this world will be – for at least some, and maybe the rest of us – irrevocably altered. A world in which murder and death reign.
Currently, as these words are written, Israel stands on the brink of launching an offensive into the last desperate holdout of the Palestinian people: Rafah.
Israeli nationalists – let’s not dignify their objectives with their favoured demonym, Zionists – weaponise the extremely loaded term, anti-Semitism, to accuse any who object to their expansionary doctrine and indisputable war crimes.
And let us be clear: opposing war crimes is not anti-Semitism. It is not even anti-Zionist or anti-Israel. It is pro-humanity. Our position has been plain and consistent, ever since we began publication. We have indeed held all parties to account in this sphere. We are anti-violence and anti-war.
It is undeniable that not all Jewish people or Zionists are comfortable with the actions of the Israeli Armed Forces in this conflict; nor do all Palestinians endorse Hamas or its actions.
Racism and bigotry are evil but using past wrongs – admittedly horrifying, brutal and evil genocidal wrongs – does not excuse an ongoing mass slaughter, a genocide we have witnessed unfolding night after night on our TV screens, including images of burned and dismembered people, even most distressingly, of babies and small children. No past sin, no sense of self-righteousness, not even the horrific and evil October 7 actions by Hamas, no matter how callous and disgusting, can excuse wholesale slaughter.
But we are on the verge of exactly that.
Let’s make no bones about it, Israel is a rogue state. Netanyahu, Israel’s Far-Right Prime Minister, has repeatedly refused to recognise international law – most recently via the International Court of Justice, which has declared Israel’s current onslaught in Gaza an ongoing genocide – and plans to raze Rafah until the last Hamas fighter is killed.
No one is safe — not refugees, not journalists, not medical professionals, not aid workers.
And so the last of the Palestinians in Gaza will die, even the smallest children, just in case there is a Hamas fighter left among them.
That Australians may be okay with this ethnic cleansing beggars belief. Yet, at best we are complacent onlookers and sadly, more accurately, we are compliant cronies.
And what happens next?
WHAT SHOULD HAPPEN NEXT
The United States should intervene to halt the Israeli Defence Force’s invasion of Rafah. The U.S., the closest ally of Israel, is the only power that could turn it back from its murderous, genocidal intent.
WHAT WILL LIKELY HAPPEN NEXT
After Israel crushes Rafah and sends what remains of the Palestinian people fleeing to refugee camps, perhaps in Egypt, then Israel will, under the guise of eradicating the remaining Hamas terrorists, continue its grand campaign into the Middle East.
Probably first in Lebanon, which it has already begun bombing but wherever territory can be acquired. Then a massive international Islamic force will be mobilised to take on Israel. The U.S. and its allies, including Australia, will step in. World War III.
Total victory in Gaza might be the spark that ignites a global war which has been looming for decades. Russia appears to be spoiling for a war. Global outrage over Israel’s actions is such that the forces which are inclined to oppose America, including Russia and China, will likely use this confrontation to finally mobilise against Israel and the United States.
And if such a war were to occur, which seems likely given any pyrrhic Israeli victory, it would finally end the Zionist dream. One thing is quite certain, irrespective of how such a catastrophic conflagration might end, Israel would be no more.
Israel may win this “battle” against the Palestinians, but it will lose the war. That is what beckons.
Sadly for Australia, when our imperial masters dictate, we will be active participants.
And it would mean that we would once again be needlessly spilling the blood of our children over the “holy land”, as we have done over and over again in numerous conflicts for more than a century.
This is not just a crucial editorial, this is a wake-up call.
Chris Hedges: Julian Assange’s Day in Court
The defense must convince the two judges that the District Judge made serious legal errors to see an appeal granted.
They argued that espionage is, as a matter of law, a political offense and that the extradition treaty with the U.S. prohibits extradition for political offenses. They focused on the extensive UK law, common law and international law that defines espionage as a “pure political offense” because e it is directed against a state apparatus. For this reason, those charged with espionage should be protected from extradition.
The hearing was, after those in 2020 that focused on Julian’s mental and psychological health, refreshing in that it discussed the crimes committed by the U.S. and the importance of making them public.
Julian Assange’s lawyers — in a final bid on Tuesday to stop his extradition — fought valiantly to poke holes in the case of the prosecution to obtain an appeal.
By Chris Hedges https://scheerpost.com/2024/02/21/chris-hedges-julian-assanges-day-in-court/
LONDON — By the afternoon the video link, which would have allowed Julian Assange to follow his final U.K. appeal to prevent his extradition, had been turned off. Julian, his attorneys said, was too ill to attend, too ill even to follow the court proceedings on a link, although it was possible he was no longer interested in sitting through another judicial lynching. The rectangular screen, tucked under the black wrought iron bars that enclosed the upper left hand corner balcony of the courtroom where Julian would have been caged as a defendant, was perhaps a metaphor for the emptiness of this long and convoluted judicial pantomime.
he arcane procedural rules — the lawyers in their curled blonde wigs and robes, the spectral figure of the two judges looking down on the court from their raised dais in their gray wigs and forked white collars, the burnished walnut paneled walls, the rows of lancet windows, the shelves on either side filled with law books in brown, green, red, crimson, blue and beige leather bindings, the defense lawyers, Edward Fitzgerald KC and Mark Summers KC, addressing the two judges, Dame Victoria Sharp and Justice Johnson, as “your lady” and “my lord” — were all dusty Victorian props employed in a modern Anglo-American show trial. It was a harbinger of a decrepit justice system that, subservient to state and corporate power, is designed to strip us of our rights by judicial fiat.
The physical and psychological disintegration of Julian, seven years trapped in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London and nearly five years held on remand in the high-security HM Prison Belmarsh, was always the point, what Nils Melzer the former U.N. Special Rapporteur on torture calls his “slow-motion execution.” Political leaders, and their echo chambers in the media, fall all over themselves to denounce the treatment of Alexei Navalny but say little when we do the same to Julian. The legal farce grinds forward like the interminable case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce in Charles Dickens’ novel Bleak House. It will probably grind on for a few more months — one can’t expect the Biden administration to add the extradition of Julian to all its other political woes. It may take months to issue a ruling, or grant one or two appeal requests, as Julian continues to waste away in HM Prison Belmarsh.
Julian’s nearly 15-year legal battle began in 2010 when WikiLeaks published classified military files from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — including footage showing a U.S. helicopter gunning down civilians, including two Reuters journalists in Baghdad. He took refuge in London’s Ecuadorian embassy, before being arrested by the Metropolitan Police in 2019 who were permitted by the Ecuadorian embassy to enter and seize him. He has been held for nearly five years in HM Prison Belmarsh.
Julian did not commit a crime. He is not a spy. He did not purloin classified documents. He did what we all do, although he did it in a far more important way. He published voluminous material, leaked to him by Chelsea Manning, which exposed U.S. war crimes, lies, corruption, torture and assassinations. He ripped back the veil to expose the murderous machinery of the U.S. empire.
The two-day hearing is Julian’s last chance to appeal the extradition decision made in 2022 by the then British home secretary, Priti Patel. On Wednesday the prosecution will make its arguments. If he is denied an appeal he can request the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) for a stay of execution under Rule 39, which is given in “exceptional circumstances” and “only where there is an imminent risk of irreparable harm.” But the British court may order Julian’s immediate extradition prior to a Rule 39 instruction or may decide to ignore a request from the ECtHR to allow Julian to have his case heard by the court.
District Judge Vanessa Baraitser in January 2021, at Westminster Magistrates’ Court, refused to authorize the extradition request. In her 132-page ruling, she found that there was a “substantial risk” Julian would commit suicide due to the severity of the conditions he would endure in the U.S. prison system. At the same time, she accepted all the charges leveled by the U.S. against Julian as being filed in good faith. She rejected the arguments that his case was politically motivated, that he would not get a fair trial in the U.S. and that his prosecution is an assault on the freedom of the press.
Baraitser’s decision was overturned after the U.S. government appealed to the High Court in London. Although the High Court accepted Baraitser’s conclusions about Julian’s “substantial risk” of suicide if he was subjected to certain conditions within a U.S. prison, it also accepted four assurances in U.S. Diplomatic Note no. 74, given to the court in February 2021, which promised Julian would be treated well. The “assurances” state that Julian will not be subject to Special Administrative Measure. They promise that Julian, an Australian citizen, can serve his sentence in Australia if the Australian government requests his extradition. They promise he will receive adequate clinical and psychological care. They promise that, pre-trial and post-trial, Julian will not be held in the Administrative Maximum Facility in Florence, Colorado.
Continue readingBiden Casts 3rd UN Veto Allowing Israeli Genocide in Gaza To Continue
by Walt Zlotow , https://www.antiwar.com/blog/2024/02/21/biden-casts-3rd-un-veto-allowing-israeli-genocide-in-gaza-to-continue/
No surprise President Biden cast his third veto in the UN Security Council to prevent a full, permanent ceasefire in Gaza. Biden’s depraved support of Israeli genocide in Gaza has no limits. Over 25,000 tons of US weapons have contributed to over 100,000 deaths and injuries, displacement of nearly 2,000,000 Palestinians and destruction of nearly all medical, educational and cultural institutions. The appropriate word for all that? Genocide.
President Biden ludicrously claims his veto was cast because it interfered with the US ceasefire plan and efforts to get aid to beleaguered Palestinians. Biden’s first reason is ghoulish. His plan calls for a temporary ceasefire to get all the hostages out, after which Israeli ethnic cleansing, with unlimited US aid, can resume till complete. His second reason is preposterous The UN accurately states Israel blocks virtually all aid from reaching sick, starving and wounded Palestinians.
President Biden may not be in mental and physical decline severe enough to prevent his functioning as president. But his enabling of Israel’s genocidal ethnic cleansing of Gaza for 5 months now, makes Biden’s moral decline a disqualifier for further serving as president.
Walt Zlotow became involved in antiwar activities upon entering University of Chicago in 1963. He is current president of the West Suburban Peace Coalition based in the Chicago western suburbs. He blogs daily on antiwar and other issues at www.heartlandprogressive.blogspot.com.
Julian Assange judge previously acted for MI6
The judge set to rule on the Assange extradition case was previously paid to represent the interests of MI6 and the Ministry of Defence – whose activities WikiLeaks has exposed.
MARK CURTIS AND JOHN MCEVOY, 19 FEBRUARY 2024
One of the two High Court judges who will rule on Julian Assange’s bid to stop his extradition to the US represented the UK’s Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) and the Ministry of Defence, Declassified has found.
Justice Jeremy Johnson has also been a specially vetted barrister, cleared by the UK authorities to access top secret information.
Johnson will sit with Dame Victoria Sharp, his senior judge, to decide the fate of the WikiLeaks co-founder. If extradited, Assange faces a maximum sentence of 175 years.
His persecution by the US authorities has been at the behest of Washington’s intelligence and security services, with whom the UK has deep relations.
His persecution by the US authorities has been at the behest of Washington’s intelligence and security services, with whom the UK has deep relations.
Assange’s journalistic career has been marked by exposing the dirty secrets of the US and UK national security establishments. He now faces a judge who has acted for, and received security clearance from, some of those same state agencies.
As with previous judges who have ruled on Assange’s case, this raises concerns about institutional conflicts of interest.
Exactly how much Johnson has been paid for his work for government departments is not clear. Records show he was paid twice by the Government Legal Department for his services in 2018. The sum was over £55,000.
Briefed by MI6
Justice Johnson became a deputy High Court judge in 2016 and a full judge in 2019. His biography states he has been “often acting in cases involving the police and government departments”.
As a barrister, in 2007 he represented MI6 as an observer during the inquests into the deaths of Princess Diana and Dodi Al Fayed.
Johnson worked alongside Robin Tam QC, previously described by legal directories as a barrister who “does an enormous amount of often sensitive work” for the UK government…………………………………………………….
Defending the ministry
Johnson has also represented the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) on at least two occasions.
In 2013, he acted for the department during the high-profile Al-Sweady inquiry, which looked into allegations that “British soldiers torture and unlawfully killed Iraqi prisoners” in 2004.
The MoD’s lawyers said the Iraqi allegations were a “product of lies” and that those making the claims “were guilty of a criminal conspiracy”.
Johnson argued there was “compelling and extensive and independent forensic evidence” to refute the case. The five-year inquiry, which cost around £25m, exonerated the British troops.
Johnson also acted for the MoD in 2011, in an appeal case against Shaun Wood, a Royal Air Force (RAF) serviceman. ………………………….
‘Highest security clearance’
Johnson was appointed by the Attorney General to be a “special advocate” in around 2007, Declassified understands. These are specially vetted barristers who act for the purpose of hearing secret evidence in a closed court.
Special advocates “must undergo and obtain Developed Vetting (the highest level of HM Government security clearance) prior to their appointment”, government guidance states.
Developed Vetting is required for individuals having “frequent and uncontrolled access to TOP SECRET assets or require any access to TOP SECRET codeword material”. ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. https://www.declassifieduk.org/julian-assange-judge-previously-acted-for-mi6/
TODAY. How the USA betrays and disdains its allies – the case of Julian Assange.
Right now, USA leaders are bewailing and admiring Alexei Navalny – the courageous Russian who stood up to Putin, and paid the ultimate price for publicly exposing the government’s crimes .
The hypocrisy of Joe Biden and the rest of these phony U.S. “patriots” – too cowardly to face up to the truth, – to accept that their great “exceptional” nation could have done some wrong things! Like the Russian government, you get rid of, you kill, the person who exposed your wrongdoing.
Only the Russians do it quickly, without finesse.
The American government constructs an elaborate legal justification, and, with the sycophantic support of the British government, a long-drawn out procedure of torture – over many years – punishing the truth-speaker – the Australian citizen Julian Assange – in the name of “justice”.
Julian Assange is not an American citizen. He was not an official of the USA government. He did not hack into U.S. government computers to discover classified documents. Yet Assange is charged with this computer misuse, and espionage of classified documents! With violating 17 counts of the 1917 Espionage Act, with a potential sentence of 170 years!
What Assange did was to do what journalists do – publish information given to him by a source (- Chelsea Manning). The New York Times, The Guardian, and Der Spiegel also published this information. Why are their editors and journalists not also being charged with espionage?
Assange revealed crimes – massacres of civilians, torture, assassinations, the list of detainees held at Guantanamo Bay and the conditions they were subjected to, as well as the Rules of Engagement in Iraq, helicopter pilots who gunned down two Reuters journalists and 10 other civilians and severely injured two children. These perpetrators have never been charged. with anything.
Apart from the intrinsic injustice of the claims against Assange, there has been a whole series of illegal and very questionable actions against him. Some examples – the surveillance of Assange and his lawyers by a Spanish firm, while he was in the Ecuadorian Embassy, Ecuador’s rescinding Julian’s asylum status allowing police in, the UK court’s acceptance of the claim that Assange is “not a journalist”. A key witness admitted to fabricating the accusations against him. The CIA made plans for kidnapping and assassinating him.
Julian was convicted of breaching his bail conditions. The punishment? Almost 5 years in solitary confinement in maximum security Belmarsh prison. Belmarsh is for Category A prisoners, those who “pose the most threat to the public, the police or national security” and stand accused of terrorism, murder, or sexual violence.
Article 4 of the Extradition Treaty between USA and UK prohibits extradition for political offenses. Why has this been ignored in the drive to send Assange to trial in the USA?
It is likely that the British court will continue the British kow-towing to America.
As for Australia – the Australian Parliament, including Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, actually now have put their heads above the parapet, and called on the USA to release Assange. A bit of courage on their part – not seen since the days of Gough Whitlam (who was severely punished for attempting to stand up to the USA.)
But it matters little – what Australia wants for its citizen Assange. Australia has signed up for the nuclear submarine boondoggle, and for plastering U.S. military bases around the nation, and for being ready to join in attacking China whenever asked to.
Right now, Australia IS making some feeble attempts to separate itself from Joe Biden’s fealty to Israel, and even from castigating China. These will be disregarded by the mighty USA.
“Friendship’ with the USA is entirely one way, and Assange awaits his ultimate persecution.
An Open Letter from Editors and Publishers: Publishing is Not a Crime
The following is a letter from The New York Times, the Guardian, Le Monde, El Pais and DER SPIEGEL urging the U.S. government to end its prosecution of Julian Assange for publishing secrets.
By The New York Times, the Guardian, Le Monde, El Pais and DER SPIEGEL, https://scheerpost.com/2024/02/18/an-open-letter-from-editors-and-publishers-publishing-is-not-a-crime/
Twelve years ago, on November 28th 2010, our five international media outlets – The New York Times, the Guardian, Le Monde, El Pais and DER SPIEGEL – published a series of revelations in cooperation with Wikileaks that made the headlines around the globe.
“Cable gate”, a set of 251,000 confidential cables from the US State Department disclosed corruption, diplomatic scandals and spy affairs on an international scale.
In the words of The New York Times, the documents told “the unvarnished story of how the government makes its biggest decisions, the decisions that cost the country most heavily in lives and money”. Even now in 2022, journalists and historians continue to publish new revelations, using the unique trove of documents.
For Julian Assange, publisher of Wikileaks, the publication of “Cable gate” and several other related leaks had the most severe consequences. On April 11th, 2019, Assange was arrested in London on a US arrest warrant, and has now been held for three and a half years in a high security British prison usually used for terrorists and members of organized crime groups. He faces extradition to the US and a sentence of up to 175 years in an American maximum security prison.
This group of editors and publishers, all of whom had worked with Assange, felt the need to publicly criticize his conduct in 2011 when unredacted copies of the cables were released, and some of us are concerned about the allegations in the indictment that he attempted to aid in computer intrusion of a classified database. But we come together now to express our grave concerns about the continued prosecution of Julian Assange for obtaining and publishing classified materials.
The Obama-Biden Administration, in office during the Wikileaks publication in 2010, refrained from indicting Assange, explaining that they would have had to indict journalists from major news outlets too. Their position placed a premium on press freedom, despite its uncomfortable consequences. Under Donald Trump however, the position changed. The DOJ relied on an old law, the Espionage Act of 1917 (designed to prosecute potential spies during World War 1), which has never been used to prosecute a publisher or broadcaster.
This indictment sets a dangerous precedent, and threatens to undermine America’s First Amendment and the freedom of the press.
Holding governments accountable is part of the core mission of a free press in a democracy.
Obtaining and disclosing sensitive information when necessary in the public interest is a core part of the daily work of journalists. If that work is criminalised, our public discourse and our democracies are made significantly weaker.
Twelve years after the publication of “Cable gate”, it is time for the U.S. government to end its prosecution of Julian Assange for publishing secrets.
Publishing is not a crime.
The editors and publishers of:
- The New York Times
- The Guardian
- Le Monde
- DER SPIEGEL
- El Pais
For Biden, ending Israel’s mass murder in Gaza is a ‘non-starter’
As Palestinians face mass starvation and new ethnic cleansing in Rafah, the White House rejects even token humanitarian gestures.
AARON MATÉ, FEB 20, 2024
At the White House last week, President Biden claimed to have concerns about Israeli plans for a ground invasion of Rafah, the southern Gaza area where more than one million Palestinians have fled. In the process, he committed a gaffe that revealed his actual stance.
“Our military operation in Rafah,” Biden began, before correcting himself. “Their — the major military operation in Rafah should not proceed without a credible plan… for ensuring the safety and support of more than one million people sheltering there. They need to be protected.”
Although unintentional, Biden was accurate to refer to an Israeli military operation in Gaza in the possessive form. Every Israeli atrocity in Gaza is committed with US support. Accordingly, within 24 hours, the White House made clear that despite Biden’s words of caution, only Israel’s mass murder campaign will remain protected.
According to three US officials, the Biden administration “is not planning to punish Israel if it launches a military campaign in Rafah without ensuring civilian safety,” Politico reports. Therefore, “no reprimand plans are in the works, meaning Israeli forces could enter the city and harm civilians without facing American consequences.” In another likely sign that Biden supports an Israeli assault, its allied regime in Egypt – a US client state — is now building an 8-square-mile walled enclosure that would cage fleeing refugees on its side of the Rafah border.
Biden’s spokespeople have also relayed that Israel has his green light to harm Rafah’s civilians.
“We’re going to continue to support Israel,” John Kirby said at the White House. “And we’re going to continue to make sure they have the tools and the capabilities to do that.” Asked directly if the US would punish Israel if it attacked Rafah without the Biden-demanded “credible plan” for civilian safety, Kirby responded: “I’m not going to get into a hypothetical game.”
To supply Israel with the proper “tools,” the US is rushing a new shipment of at least 1,000 bombs and related munitions. According to US intelligence officials, Israel has used about half the 21,000 bombs supplied by the US since the Oct. 7th attack. Israel’s remaining stockpile would be enough for 19 more weeks — but just days if war breaks out with Hezbollah on the northern border.
Israel’s dependence on US weaponry gives the White House instrumental leverage to impose conditions on its conduct – including demanding an end to the Gaza assault. But instead of using that influence, this latest transfer is part of “a broader effort by the Biden administration to speed the flow of weapons to Israel,” the Wall Street Journal observes…………………………………………………………………………………………….. more https://www.aaronmate.net/p/for-biden-ending-israels-mass-murder?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=100118&post_id=141822384&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=ln98x&utm_medium=email
The odds of China using nuclear war to resolve the Taiwan issue
By John F. CopperFeb 20, 2024, https://johnmenadue.com/the-odds-of-china-using-nuclear-war-to-resolve-the-taiwan-issue-u-s-expert-versus-taiwan-experts/
Recently the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, a thinktank in Washington, DC, did a survey asking U.S. and Taiwan Experts if China might use nuclear weapons in a conflict with or over Taiwan. The results were astonishing to most who read the study. Almost half of U.S. experts reported they thought China would. Only one quarter that number of Taiwan experts, 11 percent, so opined.
Different histories and variances in views of the world order explain this.
The US view
The United States was born out of war in the late 1700s. Americans call it a revolutionary war or a war of independence. It was the latter. (Social classes did not change.)
Growing from a small country on the East Coast to a two-ocean nation in a century was built on wars with the indigenous people (American Indians) that were reduced from 100 percent of the population to 2 percent today. The wars were vicious, including the use of germ weapons and deliberately starving the enemy. Essentially wars of annihilation.
In the late 1800s the Indians were defeated marked by a victory (some called a massacre) in the Battle of Wounded Knee. Thenceforth the U.S. became an external expansionist power: incorporating Hawaii, defeating Spain to colonise the Philippines, and taking some other Pacific Islands.
World War I and II enhanced America’s world power status: from being an important nation to being a preeminent world power (superpower). In 1991, the U.S. defeated the Soviet Union, the only other superpower, with an arms race that America won—to become the world’s sole superpower.
Four years ago, former President Jimmy Carter noted America had been at peace only 16 of the last 242 years and concluded the U.S. was the most warlike nation in history. By contrast, China had not been at war in the last 40 years.
Meanwhile, after World War II the U.S. built a new world order employing its superior national power and its view of what the world should be –a world of global trade and economic growth and dragooned democracy. It worked well for a while.
But America became overstretched from its role as a military giant, and in some ways soft or at least tired of its global responsibilities. After the fall of the Soviet Union, it was not ready to lead a unipolar world.
More important, it faced a growing challenge. Mao, China’s great leader, died in 1976 and two years later Deng Xiaoping reconstructed China, getting rid of Mao’s radical communism and replacing it with free-market capitalism, trade and a system that built on China’s education tradition. China boomed economically.
It even grew during the world recession of 2008 and the subsequent almost slowest U.S. recovery in recent history. China became the number one nation in the world economically based on purchasing power. It led the word in steel production and other measures of big power status. In made the UN’s poverty eradication project work by helping developing countries grow with its formidable Belt and Road Initiative that was heading toward spending a trillion dollars compared to America’s biggest, the Marshall Plan (costing a bit over 100 billion in today’s dollars). Meanwhile, China passed the U.S. in registering patents and publishing academic articles while building modern airports and fast trains (more than the rest of the world combined while American had none).
President Trump met the China challenge with a make America great again policy. He sought to bring important industries back and restore U.S. capitalism. However, he faced virtually impossible hurdles to do this: an inflated and powerful government bureaucracy, too many lawyers that impeded business, horribly expensive penal and welfare systems, high taxes and a burdensome debt. Plus, the intelligence agencies and the federal police (FBI), the mainstream media, and American academe all opposed him while the Democratic Party that was bigger than his party had more money.
President Biden sought to destroy Trump’s America. As a globalist he advocated the idea of the US as an exceptional country and a superpower. America was to be a nation organising a bloc of democracies facing off against the China-led authoritarian nations. But this failed. America’s democracy appeared to many to have evolved into partisan rule by the deep state. Europeans did not want to be led by the U.S. Europe and Japan did not wish to end important economic ties with China. The Biden administration engaged in a financial and technology war with China, which hurt the U.S. more than China. The developing countries of the world continued to admire China for its aid and investments.
Good luck competing with China…
Meanwhile, pundits were taken by an idea expressed in the ancient book by Thucydides, The Peloponnesian Wars, that competition and eventually war between a status quo power (Sparta) and a rising power (Athens) was the model for most major wars after that. The relationship between America and China fit the model well. Thus, war was coming.
Provoking a war by demonising China as an expansionist power and an abuser of human rights meant that the U.S. should to go to war soon—before China, experiencing a renaissance and rising in national power, might defeat the U.S. that was experiencing decline.
The Taiwanese view
Taiwan has a very different history and view of the world from America. It early on grew up in isolation. Then it was exposed to the world outside via trade handled by its merchants, pirates, and outsiders. Chinese migrated to Taiwan and subdued the indigenous population reducing it to 2 percent of residents as happened in America; but this did not make Taiwan a world power.
Instead, Taiwan was ruled by Westerners (the Netherlands) for a brief time that improved its economy and more. For two centuries it was then ruled by China that did not have much interest in Taiwan and eventually abandoned it. Forthwith, Taiwan became a colony of Japan, during which time it saw economic modernisation without political choice or democracy.
Then the United States defeated Japan in war and returned Taiwan to China according to wartime agreements made at Potsdam and Tehran. Taiwan was not given any choice in the matter.
But China was at war with itself–a civil war between Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists and Mao Tse-tung’s Communists. Four years later Chiang lost and retreated to Taiwan to regroup. Again, Taiwan had no voice.
Owing to the Korean War the United States viewed Mao as a confederate of the Soviet Union and therefore an enemy. America gave aid and protection to Chiang’s Republic of China based on Taiwan. But the U.S. did not want a war with China allied with the Soviet Union and the result was a stalemate.
Chiang shifted his attention to Taiwan’s economic development and succeeded beyond almost anyone’s expectations. Its gross national product grew at a pace that far exceeded Western countries or Japan at their halcyon growth days.
Peace made this possible. Economic growth produced prosperity. Prosperity begat a middle class. A middle class serve to create political change and democracy.
Taiwan became a model for economic development and political change. Something similar happened in China under Deng: a booming economy and some political liberalisation. China and Taiwan linked up with trade and investments such that it made for mutual understanding and the avoidance of war, the same conditions that made the European Community work.
Strategically, Taiwan aligned with the United States against China in the Cold War. Like before it had no choice. But it avoided developing a nuclear weapon believing Chinese leaders when they said they would not use its nukes against Taiwan as they would not consider killing their own people.
Taiwan believed this because China did not engage in a nuclear arms race with America even though in the last two or three decades it could afford to do so. China sought to deal with Taiwan with its economic prowess, though it pulled its punches in using pressure and Taiwan knew it.
Taiwan’s residents’ national identity made it favour its sovereignty and separation from China or independence. Yet they knew this was contingent on America’s protection, regarding which they had some doubts.
Washington’s policy was that there was one China and Taiwan was part of China. President Biden restated this in the presence of world leaders at an APEC meeting in San Francisco. Feelings grew in Taiwan that America regarded it a pawn. The Biden administration forced Taiwan to invest in producing top-of-the line computer chips in Arizona, thus disabling what President Tsai called Taiwan’s “silicon shield.” She and Taiwan’s population could also see that China was on the rise; the U.S. was not.
Opinion polls in Taiwan reflected this. While residents’ identity favoured Taiwan and they picked independence over unification, they fancied the status quo more, and perceived Taiwan would reunify with China in the long run. Most of all they wanted peace. War, even if the U.S. kept its promises and fought for Taiwan, would still mean Taiwan would suffer grievously.
Finally, they preferred China’s world order that was founded on financial and technological power, not America’s system which relied on military might that Henry Kissinger, among others, opined was in quick decay.
Hence, it is understandable why U.S. pundits see China attacking Taiwan even with nuclear weapons much more likely than Taiwan scholars.
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