and all relevant and official docs about the extradition case here:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YDUL2riBNz-N2By4fGtVkx-sByfzFAC71ADk3L6Ss1U/edit?usp=sharing
"By the way, I am of the opinion that Julian Assange should be released immediately."
#FreeAssange NOW
https://www.dw.com/en/wikileaks-founder-julian-assange-will-he-be-extradited/a-68278969
#FreeAssange NOW
Hallelujah!
Bundeskanzler Olaf Scholz hat sich beim Besuch einer Schule in Sindelfingen gegen die Auslieferung von Julian Assange an die USA ausgesprochen.
#FreeAssange NOW
âAnd you are talking about a potential risk to US informants who might come to harm, against actual war crimes which really had happened. Thousands of people who had been assassinated, tortured, renditioned etc.â
Assange - Final Appeal - by Craig Murray ( âYour man in the public galleryâ)
Excellent report!
Free #Assange Now!
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2024/02/assange-final-appeal-your-man-in-the-public-gallery/
#FreeAssange
La Resistenza
Lawyer and former investigative journalist Davis debunks âthe endlessly recycled lieâ that Assange didnât redact.
He says - contrary to all accusations of the indictment - that Assange did redact carefully.
His Statement at the Sydney University, 2023-03-03
https://archive.org/download/the-endlessly-recycled-lie/20240224_021222.mp4
I know what you mean. That's exactly why many other journalists are distancing themselves and why the big outcry hasn't happened. But it's simply not accurately portrayed. Everything they accuse him of in this regard is turning out to be untrue. Like, for example, he didn't redact, he acted recklessly, people were harmed by the leaks: It's not true. For instance, the Guardian journalists Harding/Leigh published the password to the data, the data was initially published by John Young on a US server (before WikiLeaks), Assange warned the US authorities, there are witnesses like Goetz and Davis who totally refute this allegation of the prosecution: None of this has been revealed to the public in recent years. It's good that all of this is coming to light now. Finally!
No extradition! #FreeAssange Now!
https://freeassange.org/2024/02/23/julian-assange-could-face-death-penalty-in-us-high-court-hears/
The rest is behind a paywall - but you can get a 7-day free trial
I respect the authors work and efforts - I'm not going to share the rest - independent journalist have to make some money for their work too and we should start to appreciate their work by contributing a fair share.
Myth 2: WikiLeaksâ disclosures put the lives of individuals in at risk
The second pillar of the US prosecutorâs case is that by âindiscriminatelyâ publishing âunredactedâ sensitive material, WikiLeaks put the lives of US sources and informants at risk. This argument was first made by then-US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates following the publication of the Afghan War Logs in 2010 â tens of thousands of classified files documenting numerous attacks and slaughters of civilians by US and Western forces in Afghanistan. Gates accused WikiLeaks and Assange of âhaving blood on their handsâ â a claim that was widely echoed in the international media.
The truth is that the publication of the Afghan War Logs was far from indiscriminate. In fact, the information had been carefully redacted by WikiLeaks and its partnership media organisations precisely to avoid putting the lives of individuals at risk. The same line was followed with respect to all subsequent publications as well. Indeed, on more than one occasion WikiLeaks contacted the US authorities to help them minimise the risk of the leaks putting anyoneâs life in danger, but they refused to cooperate.
Myth n. 1: WikiLeaksâ work is not journalism
Much of the American case rests on the argument that Assangeâs and WikiLeaksâ work is not journalism â and therefore does not enjoy the protections afforded to the latter by the US Constitution. I suspect many people out there would probably instinctively agree: the decade-and-a-half-long smear campaign waged against Assange and WikiLeaks has been instrumental in depriving Assange of public support by painting him as a reckless narcissist, a hacker-spy, a cyber-criminal â anything but a journalist. But the reality is that WikiLeaksâs work is no different from that of traditional media organisations. As the New York Times wrote:
Though he is not a conventional journalist, much of what Mr Assange does at WikiLeaks is difficult to distinguish in a legally meaningful way from what traditional news organizations like The Times do: seek and publish information that officials want to be secret, including classified national security matters, and take steps to protect the confidentiality of sources.
Indeed, WikiLeaks partnered with some of the worldâs biggest and most prestigious newspapers to bring their revelations to the public, including the Guardian, Der Spiegel, Le Monde, El PaĂs and, of course, the New York Times itself â many of which would subsequently, shamefully, turn their backs on Assange.
In other words, the US authoritiesâ argument â that what sets Assange aside from âtrueâ journalists is that he actively sought out the information he published â has no merit whatsoever. âGood reporters donât sit around waiting for someone to leak information, they actively solicit itâ, renowned journalism professor Mark Feldstein testified. âWhen I was a reporter, I personally solicited and received confidential or classified information, hundreds of times. Like Assange, I was actively âcomplicitâ in gathering secret records from government employeesâ.
Indeed, the impossibility of distinguishing WikiLeaksâ work from that of traditional media organisations, especially WikiLeaksâ journalistic partners, is precisely the reason Obama and his justice departments, despite massively expanding the use of the Espionage Act â and using it to prosecute more whistleblowers and sources than all the US presidents before him combined â ultimately decided against bringing charges under the Espionage Act against Assange. They understood that if they indicted Assange they would also have to prosecute the New York Times and other news organisations and writers who published classified material. They called it the âNew York Times problemâ.
âThe problem the department has always had in investigating Julian Assange is there is no way to prosecute him for publishing information without the same theory being applied to journalistsâ, former Justice Department spokesman Matthew Miller told the Washington Post. âAnd if you are not going to prosecute journalists for publishing classified information, which the department is not, then there is no way to prosecute Assangeâ.
As for the claim that Assange directly assisted Manning in gaining access to classified information, by helping her crack a password, it was thoroughly debunked by expert testimony in 2020.
Ultimately, there is no question that what Assange did was journalism â and indeed journalism of the highest order. Knowing the state crimes committed, often in our name, by those in power should be a basic principle of democratic societies; and exposing those crimes should be a basic principle of journalism.
While it is only natural for states to operate with some degree of secrecy, that secrecy is justified only insofar as it is used to protect the safety and security of citizens; not if it used âto conceal state crimes, to ensure impunity for the officials in the institutions that commit those crimes, and to keep the public from discovering the truth and holding them to accountâ, as the Italian journalist Stefania Maurizi, who has collaborated with WikiLeaks for several years, wrote.