Chinese antipropaganda: de ontwikkeling van supersoldaten...... ha! ha! ha! ha!

Alsof je een slecht sciencefiction stripboek leest: de angstzaaierij in de VS dat China bezig is om supersoldaten te ontwikkelen..... Ken Dilanian, een reporter van MSNBC, stelde dat 'wat we nu weten is dat de topambtenaren van geheime diensten bewijzen hebben dat China, de 'nieuwe' officiële slechte macht voor het westen, bezig is met biologische experimenten op haar militairen om hun gevechtscapaciteiten te vergroten'.

CIA handlanger Dilanian vervolgde met te zeggen dat hij eerst wel sceptisch stond toen opzichte van deze claim, maar nadat hij zocht in de denktank wereld van militaire experts*, hij erachter kwam dat deze experts e.e.a. hebben bestudeerd en erover hebben geschreven en voldoende bewijs hebben dat Chinese wetenschappers bezig zijn om met biotechnologie toe te passen op het slagveld....... Daarna geeft deze 'reporter voorbeelden van soldaten die voldoende hebben aan 3 uur slaap', en sluipschutters die een keer zover kunnen kijken dan de gemiddelde mens...... (de zogenaamde bewijzen zijn natuurlijk niet voor de openbaarheid geschikt....) Waarna hij nog op moest merken dat wij het in het westen onethisch vinden om met de genen van gezonde mensen te experimenteren...... ha! ha! ha! ha!

Zo de waard is vertrouwt deze de gasten: alles 'wat god verboden heeft' doet men in de VS, zoals het zoeken naar een besmettelijke ziekte die ingezet kan worden op het slagveld, dan wel tegen de bevolking van een 'vijandig land...' Geheel toevallig werd het grote VS militaire laboratorium van Fort Detrick vorig jaar juli gesloten, daar er een gevaarlijk gemanipuleerd virus was ontsnapt.....** Een aantal maanden voor de uitbraak van het Coronavirus...... Intussen draait dit laboratorium weer volop en zoekt men o.a. naar dat soort virussen om als wapen in te zetten...... (hoe gewetenloos en krankzinnig kunnen wetenschappers zijn??!!!) Bovendien als er één land is dat onethisch onderzoek doet naar genetische manipulatie van levende wezens is het de VS wel!!

Terug naar Dilanian: hij refereerde naar een artikel van John Ratcliffe, hoofd 'National Intelligence' (ofwel deze figuur gaat over alle geheime diensten die de VS 'rijk' is), gepubliceerd in de Wall Street Journal, waarin hij in koude oorlogstaal waarschuwde voor China.... Deze Ratcliffe heeft een boek geschreven met de titel: 'China is National Security Threat No 1', een boek met een prent waarop een vervaarlijke rode slang is te zien in de vorm van de Chinese muur die de wereld in een wurggreep houdt....... (vergeet niet dat figuren als Ratcliffe vijanden nodig hebben, immers als die er niet meer zijn, zal een fiks deel van de geheime diensten worden uitgekleed en je weet het: oorlog is voor de VS een vorm van industrie, waarmee vooral voor de grote bedrijven enorme kapitalen zijn te verdienen)

In het artikel van Caitlin Johnstone, waarvan het voorgaande het begin is, stelt ze dat de VS China afschildert als een macht die de wereld wil overheersen..... ha! ha! ha! ha! Nee ik lach niet om Caitlin, maar om dergelijke nonsens die men in de VS werkelijk gelooft, terwijl er niet een flinter aan bewijs wordt meegeleverd en de claims worden gedaan door geheime diensten die vooral bekend staan om hun enorme leugens die alleen deze eeuw al aan meer dan 2,5 miljoen mensen het leven hebben gekost..... En dat van een land dat meer dan 800 militaire bases heeft over de wereld en haar hand niet omdraait om een illegale oorlog te beginnen dan wel een coup te organiseren in landen die niet naar haar pijpen dansen...... De leugen dat het bij de oorlogen die VS begint gaat om het brengen van democratie of vrijheid, is van een dergelijk smerig niveau dat je ervan staat te kijken dat men deze nog langer gelooft, immers de VS is er goed in om democratisch gekozen premiers of presidenten af te zetten met een staatsgreep en daarna een dictator te installeren, bewijzen en voorbeelden te over....... (om maar te zwijgen over de goede banden die de VS zelfs met de meest gewelddadige dictators onderhield en onderhoudt.....)

So We’re Already At The ‘Chinese Super Soldiers’ Part Of The Propaganda Campaign

by Caitlin Johnstone

"What we know is that the nation’s top intelligence official says that the US has evidence that China is conducting biological experiments on its soldiers to enhance their capabilities," said CIA asset and reporter Ken Dilanian on a recent MSNBC segment designed to keep you nice and terrified of the west's current Official Bad Guy.

"I was somewhat skeptical about this claim, but when I started poking around I found that private American military experts in the think tank world have actually studied this issue and written about it and they have found that there is ample evidence that Chinese scientists are very interested in applying bio-technology to the battlefield," Dilanian continued. "Picture super strong commandos who can operate on three hours' sleep, or a sniper who can see twice as far as a normal person. This is the kind of thing that the Chinese aspire to doing, and you know, it’s problematic because in the west we consider that to be unethical, to tamper with the genes of healthy people."

Dilanian was referring to a claim made in a freakish screed of cold war smut recently published in the Wall Street Journal by US Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe titled "China Is National Security Threat No. 1". The piece includes an illustration of a red serpent shaped like the Great Wall squeezing the world in its coils, much like the globe-strangling tentacled beasts traditionally used in propaganda to drum up fears of communists and Jews taking over the world.

Ratcliffe claims that "China poses the greatest threat to America today, and the greatest threat to democracy and freedom world-wide since World War II," asserting that there are "no ethical boundaries to Beijing’s pursuit of power" and its "efforts to drag the world back into the dark”.

Completely unburdened by any need to provide evidence or even anything resembling subtlety, Ratcliffe lists as reasons we should all be afraid of China's sinister desire to "subordinate the rights of the individual to the will of the Communist Party” such things as intellectual property theft and the fact that China (like all major nations) often seeks to influence US politics. Slipped in among these mundane and unimpressive claims, Ratcliffe writes that "China has even conducted human testing on members of the People’s Liberation Army in hope of developing soldiers with biologically enhanced capabilities."

A claim without evidence made by a spy chief about the world being threatened by Chinese supervillains with extraordinary powers given to them by unethical Chinese mad scientists should of course be dismissed with a scoff and a vulgar gesture. Instead, CIA assets like Dilanian are leading the charge to throw the entire might of the plutocratic media into driving this nonsense as far into western consciousness as possible. This ridiculous story has been picked up not just by Murdoch outlets like The New York Post, but by outlets like The Guardian and NBC as well.

Every day there's more dehumanisation of Chinese people in the MSM. Today, @adamgabbatt presents Trump appointee John Ratcliffe's racist ranting undigested.
"China conducting biological tests to create super soldiers, US spy chief says" https://t.co/F8KUnCJc9R

— Anna Chen (@MadamMiaow) December 4, 2020

Truth, as they say, is the first casualty in war. With its emphasis on global narrative control in lieu of conventional military tactics, this is doubly true of cold war.

Painting the Chinese government as a cartoon villain willing to perpetrate any evil to conquer the world and drag it into the darkness, opposed only by the plucky forces of light in our own government, is as transparent a propaganda construct as it gets. If we had an actual news media this idiocy would be called out, questioned and and scrutinized for all the world to see, and the public reminded of the US intelligence community's extensive history of lying to promote pre-planned agendas against targeted governments.

What we will get instead is a steady stream of increasingly incendiary claims about China being parroted without evidence by the mass media who serve as mouthpieces for the most sociopathic government agencies on this planet. This is because China, like Russia, Iran, Venezuela and the other nations which have resisted absorption into the US-centralized empire, insists on its own self-sovereignty and has therefore found itself in the imperial crosshairs.

There is no evidence that China wants to take over the world. There is only evidence that it wishes to create a multipolar world, which has been the norm throughout the entirety of human history minus the last three decades. People have been told that China is trying to replace America as the global hegemon so many times that they simply accept it as a basic fact, but there is no actual evidence anywhere that the Chinese government has any interest in ruling over a bunch of random foreigners with whom it has little in common.

“One myth I think really that needs to be dispelled is that somehow China is aiming to replace America and going to run the world, and it’s not,” said Chinese venture capitalist and social scientist Eric Li in the John Pilger documentary The Coming War on China.

“First of all, the Chinese are not that stupid. The west, with its Christian roots, are about converting other people into their beliefs. The Chinese are not about that. It’s just that–again, I’m not degrading the western culture, I’m just pointing out the inherent nature, the DNA of two different cultures–the Chinese two thousand years ago built the Great Wall to keep the barbarians out, not to invade them.”

Ratcliffe's screed of sinophobic cold warrior porn includes an illustration of a red Chinese dragon shaped like the Great Wall squeezing the world in its coils, much like the globe-strangling tentacled beasts historically depicted in anti-communist and anti-semitic propaganda. pic.twitter.com/VthDgOXnG4

— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) December 5, 2020

(voor de jonkies een verduidelijking: het eerste affiche is van 2020 en de tweede stelt Sovjet dictator Stalin voor, een affiche uit 1938)

Whenever I criticize the US empire's aggressions toward and propaganda about China my social media notifications are quickly flooded with blithering imbeciles who claim I love the CCP and think it's awesome and wonderful. I don't know what species of brain worm makes people think if you oppose western imperialism it means you love the governments who are being targeted by western imperialism, but it would be good if it went extinct. I simply wish to live in a world where armageddon weapons aren't being brandished about in steadily escalating acts of insane brinkmanship.

There is no sane reason we should have to live on a planet where governments are waving nuclear weapons at each other in increasingly aggressive battles for global domination. There is no reason the western empire and China cannot pursue detente and work to peacefully coexist on this planet. Most of the rank-and-file public you see babbling hysterically about China online are completely unaware of the existence of the word "detente" and don't even know it's an option; they're so saturated in brain-melting propaganda that they think these standoffs which are seeing more and more military buildup near China's borders are the only possibly course that can be taken.

Well it's not the only possible course. We humans, as a species, can use the power of our numbers to force an end to the collision course with disaster we've been set on by a changing world order meeting with the perverse neoconservative ideology that US hegemony must be preserved at all cost. It absolutely is possible for humanity to live in a state of healthy collaboration with itself and with its ecosystem, if only we can pry loose the fingers of the ruling sociopaths from the steering wheel and turn our world toward peace and harmony.

With the incoming Biden administration being packed to the gills with ravenous China hawks, it is clear that this multi-front cold war and its accompanying propaganda campaign is only going to get crazier and crazier. Be a voice beckoning the world to sanity.

_________________________________________

Thanks for reading! The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following my antics on Twitter, throwing some money into my tip jar on Patreon or Paypal, purchasing some of my sweet merchandise, buying my new book Poems For Rebels or my old book Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge.

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Caitlin Johnstone | December 5, 2020 at 3:44 am | Tags: china, Ken Dilanian, media, news, Politics, propaganda, ratcliffe, super soldiers | Categories: Article, News | URL: https://wp.me/p9tj6M-2p3

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*  De denktank wereld van militaire axperts zit bomvol fantasten die grootlobbyist zijn van de wapenindustrie >> bewijzen te over!!

** Zie: 'Coronavirus: alles wijst erop dat dit virus uit een militair laboratorium van de VS komt' (Fort Detrick) (en in Frankrijk zijn de eerste officiële besmettingen aangetroffen: zo bleek in het voorjaar van dit jaar, uit nader onderzoek van bloedmonsters die in november 2019 in dat land werden afgenomen!!!)    

Het proces tegen Assange: een verslag van de voormalige Britse ambassadeur Craig Murray

Craig John Murray, historicus, voormalig ambassadeur van Groot-Brittannië en mensenrechtenactivist, volgt het proces tegen Assange en doet daar verslag van op zijn internetsite. 

 

Craig John Murray

In een uitvoerig schrijven doet hij verlag van het proces in de Old Bailey, waar hij in het begin m.i. Iets teveel ingaat op het gebouw en haar geschiedenis.

Het schrijven geeft aan dat er van een onafhankelijke en transparante rechtspraak geen sprake is in deze zaak, zo worden door de verdediging aangevoerde getuigen niet gehoord, dat is volgens de rechter niet nodig daar ze al een schriftelijke verklaring hebben gegeven...... Schandalig uiteraard, immers zo'n verklaring op schrift is altijd beknopt en het is dan ook zaak dat iedereen mag weten wat deze getuigen nog meer te zeggen hebben...... De rechter was zo zot om te beweren dat justitie is gebaat bij de meer dan belachelijke en beperkende maatregelen die zijn genomen.... Alsof je zegt dat een eerlijk proces is gebaat bij afwezigheid van de advocaat van de verdachte......

De rechter durft zelfs te stellen dat wanneer getuigen een mondelinge verklaring afleggen, de kans groot is dat er nieuwe feiten boven tafel komen en dat dit niet in het belang is van een eerlijk proces........ Eventueel nieuw aangevoerde feiten zijn juist van belang voor Assange en komen daarnaast ook de transparantie van het proces voor het publiek ten goede...... Hoe is het gvd mogelijk??!!!

Daarover gesproken, transparantie en het recht van het volk om te weten hoe het proces verloopt, wordt ernstig schade aangedaan daar er vanwege het Coronavirus maar weinig mensen in de zaal mogen aanschuiven en moeten Murray en anderen het in een ander zaaltje doen, waar men NB naast elkaar mag zitten, als is er 'na elke rij' één rij leeg..... Daar moet men op een klein scherm proberen te horen wat er wordt gezegd, iets dat moeilijk is daar het geluid zo slecht is dat John Pilger, filmmaker en onderzoeksjournalist, de ruimte al snel verliet.......

Waarom is er voor zo'n groot proces een zo kleine zaal uitgekozen? Juist, om de beperkende maatregelen te kunnen legitimeren die de rechter aanvoert......

Het voorgaande is nog maar het puntje van de spreekwoordelijke ijsberg, wat (nogmaals) aangeeft dat er van een eerlijk proces geen sprake is en kan zijn (al moet ik zeggen dat het tegenovergestelde me enorm zou hebben verbaasd.....).....

Het smerige spel van de VS over de uitlevering van Assange is ook een vuig stuk werk dat tijdens het spel gewoon wordt aangepast met andere zogenaamde criminele daden van Assange, je gelooft je ogen niet..... (en dan durven te stllen dat mondelinge getuigenissen ongewenste nieuwe feiten kunnen opleveren.....) Men durft commentaar te leveren op rechtszaken in China, terwijl het Kafkiaanse gehalte van dit proces een heel stuk groter is dan processen daar en vergeet daarbij niet dat Groot-Brittannië en de VS zich in tegenstelling tot China voordoen als democratische rechtsstaten!!

Lees het geheel en zie de video onder het artikel van Information Clearing House. Geeft het door mensen, tijd dat de wereld zich het vreselijk lot van Assange aantrekt, dat andere journalisten eindelijk erkennen dat ze fout zitten met de door hen gevoerde aanvallen op Assange, die de waarheid heeft verteld over o.a. het uiterst agressieve optreden (grootschalige terreur) van de VS over de wereld en daarbij niemand maar dan ook helemaal niemand in gevaar heeft gebracht..... 

Assange heeft in tegenstelling tot de meeste van zijn collega's zijn werk wel gedaan, zonder zich te verlaten op misleidende informatie van neoliberale regeringen, regeringen die samen met de VS illegale oorlogen voerden en voeren op basis van door geheime diensten aangeleverde leugens, die met grote graagte werden herhaald door de 'collega's van Assange....' (bewijzen te over: vele meters aan dossiers!!)

Beste bezoeker het is een lang artikel, maar lees het, Murray is een goede schrijver, is bij tijd en wijle uiterst sarcastisch (op een humoristische manier), kortom meer dan de moeite waard!! Onder het artikel nog een uiterst lollige video van een paar mninuten, zien! (onder het artikel kan je klikken voor een Nederlandse [Dutch] vertaling, dit neemt enkele tientallen seconden tijd in beslag):

The Assange Hearing Day 6: Your Man in the Public Gallery

By Craig John Murray

September 08, 2020 "Information Clearing House" - I went to the Old Bailey today expecting to be awed by the majesty of the law, and left revolted by the sordid administration of injustice.

There is a romance which attaches to the Old Bailey. The name of course means fortified enclosure and it occupies a millennia old footprint on the edge of London’s ancient city wall. 
It is the site of the medieval Newgate Prison, and formal trials have taken place at the Old Bailey for at least 500 years, numbering in the hundreds of thousands. For the majority of that time, those convicted even of minor offences of theft were taken out and executed in the alleyway outside. It is believed that hundreds, perhaps thousands, lie buried under the pavements.

The hefty Gothic architecture of the current grand building dates back no further than 1905, and round the back and sides of that is wrapped some horrible cheap utility building from the 1930’s. It was through a tunnelled entrance into this portion that five of us, Julian’s nominated family and friends, made our nervous way this morning. We were shown to Court 10 up many stairs that seemed like the back entrance to a particularly unloved works canteen. Tiles were chipped, walls were filthy and flakes of paint hung down from crumbling ceilings. Only the security cameras watching us were new – so new, in fact, that little piles of plaster and brick dust lay under each.

Court 10 appeared to be a fairly bright and open modern box, with pleasant light woodwork, jammed as a mezzanine inside a great vault of the old building. A massive arch intruded incongruously into the space and was obviously damp, sheets of delaminating white paint drooping down from it like flags of forlorn surrender. The dock in which Julian would be held still had a bulletproof glass screen in front, like Belmarsh, but it was not boxed in. There was no top to the screen, no low ceiling, so sound could flow freely over and Julian seemed much more in the court. It also had many more and wider slits than the notorious Belmarsh Box, and Julian was able to communicate quite readily and freely through them with his lawyers, which this time he was not prevented from doing.

Rather to our surprise, nobody else was allowed into the public gallery of court 10 but us five. Others like John Pilger and Kristin Hrafnsson, editor in chief of Wikileaks, were shunted into the adjacent court 9 where a very small number were permitted to squint at a tiny screen, on which the sound was so inaudible John Pilger simply left. Many others who had expected to attend, such as Amnesty International and Reporters Without Borders (RSF), were simply excluded, as were MPs from the German federal parliament (both the German MPs and Reporters Without Borders at least later got access to the inadequate video following strong representations from the German Embassy).

The reason given that only five of us were allowed in the public gallery of some 40 seats was social distancing; except we were allowed to all sit together in consecutive seats in the front row. The two rows behind us remained completely empty.

To finish scene setting, Julian himself looked tidy and well groomed and dressed, and appeared to have regained a little lost weight, but with a definite unhealthy puffiness about his features. In the morning he appeared disengaged and disoriented rather as he had at Belmarsh, but in the afternoon he perked up and was very much engaged with his defence team, interacting as normally as could be expected in these circumstances.

Proceedings started with formalities related to Julian’s release on the old extradition warrant and re-arrest under the new warrant, which had taken place this morning. Defence and prosecution both agreed that the points they had already argued on the ban on extradition for political offences were not affected by the superseding indictment.

Magistrate Baraitser then made a statement about access to the court by remote hearing, by which she meant online. She stated that a number of access details had been sent out by mistake by the court without her agreement. She had therefore revoked their access permissions.

As she spoke, we in the court had no idea what had happened, but outside some consternation was underway in that the online access of Amnesty International, of Reporters without Borders, of John Pilger and of forty others had been shut down. As these people were neither permitted to attend the court nor observe online, this was causing some consternation.

Baraitser went on to say that it was important that the hearing was public, but she should only agree remote access where it was “in the interests of justice”, and having considered it she had decided it was not. She explained this by stating that the public could normally observe from within the courtroom, where she could control their behaviour. But if they had remote access, she could not control their behaviour and this was not in the “interests of justice”.

Baraitser did not expand on what uncontrolled behaviour she anticipated from those viewing via the internet. It is certainly true that an observer from Amnesty sitting at home might be in their underwear, might be humming the complete soundtrack to Mamma Mia, or might fart loudly. Precisely why this would damage “the interests of justice” we are still left to ponder, with no further help from the magistrate. But evidently the interests of justice were, in her view, best served if almost nobody could examine the “justice” too closely.

The next “housekeeping issue” to be addressed was how witnesses should be heard. The defence had called numerous witnesses, and each had lodged a written statement. The prosecution and Baraitser both suggested that, having given their evidence in writing, there was no need for defence witnesses to give that evidence orally in open court. It would be much quicker to go straight to cross-examination by the prosecution.

For the defence, Edward Fitzgerald QC countered that justice should be seen to be done by the public. The public should be able to hear the defence evidence before hearing the cross-examination. It would also enable Julian Assange to hear the evidence summarised, which was important for him to follow the case given his lack of extended access to legal papers while in Belmarsh prison.

Baraitser stated there could not be any need for evidence submitted to her in writing to be repeated orally. For the defence, Mark Summers QC was not prepared to drop it and tension notably rose in the court. Summers stated it was normal practice for there to be “an orderly and rational exposition of the evidence”. For the prosecution, James Lewis QC denied this, saying it was not normal procedure.

Baraitser stated she could not see why witnesses should be scheduled an one hour forty five minutes each, which was too long. Lewis agreed. He also added that the prosecution does not accept that the defence’s expert witnesses are expert witnesses. A Professor of journalism telling about newspaper coverage did not count. An expert witness should only be giving evidence on a technical point the court was otherwise unqualified to consider. 
Lewis also objected that in giving evidence orally, defence witnesses might state new facts to which the Crown had not had time to react. Baraitser noted that the written defence statements were published online, so they were available to the public.

Edward Fitzgerald QC stood up to speak again, and Baraitser addressed him in a quite extraordinary tone of contempt. What she said exactly was: “I have given you every opportunity. Is there anything else, really, that you want to say”, the word “really” being very heavily emphasised and sarcastic. Fitzgerald refused to be sat down, and he stated that the current case featured “substantial and novel issues going to fundamental questions of human rights.” It was important the evidence was given in public. It also gave the witnesses a chance to emphasise the key points of their evidence and where they placed most weight.

Baraitser called a brief recess while she considered judgement on this issue, and then returned. She found against the defence witnesses giving their evidence in open court, but accepted that each witness should be allowed up to half an hour of being led by the defence lawyers, to enable them to orient themselves and reacquaint with their evidence before cross-examination.

This half hour for each witness represented something of a compromise, in that at least the basic evidence of each defence witness would be heard by the court and the public (insofar as the public was allowed to hear anything). But the idea that a standard half hour guillotine is sensible for all witnesses, whether they are testifying to a single fact or to developments over years, is plainly absurd. What came over most strongly from this question was the desire of both judge and prosecution to railroad through the extradition with as little of the case against it getting a public airing as possible.

As the judge adjourned for a short break we thought these questions had now been addressed and the rest of the day would be calmer. We could not have been more wrong.

The court resumed with a new defence application, led by Mark Summers QC, about the new charges from the US governments new superseding indictment. Summers took the court back over the history of this extradition hearing. The first indictment had been drawn up in March of 2018. In January 2019 a provisional request for extradition had been made, which had been implemented in April of 2019 on Assange’s removal from the Embassy. In June 2019 this was replaced by the full request with a new, second indictment which had been the basis of these proceedings before today. A whole series of hearings had taken place on the basis of that second indictment.

The new superseding indictment dated from 20 June 2020. In February and May 2020 the US government had allowed hearings to go ahead on the basis of the second indictment, giving no warning, even though they must by that stage have known the new superseding indictment was coming. They had given neither explanation nor apology for this.

The defence had not been properly informed of the superseding indictment, and indeed had learnt of its existence only through a US government press release on 20 June. It had not finally been officially served in these proceedings until 29 July, just six weeks ago. At first, it had not been clear how the superseding indictment would affect the charges, as the US government was briefing it made no difference but just gave additional detail. But on 21 August 2020, not before, it finally became clear in new US government submissions that the charges themselves had been changed.

There were now new charges that were standalone and did not depend on the earlier allegations. Even if the 18 Manning related charges were rejected, these new allegations could still form grounds for extradition. These new allegations included encouraging the stealing of data from a bank and from the government of Iceland, passing information on tracking police vehicles, and hacking the computers both of individuals and of a security company.

“How much of this newly alleged material is criminal is anybody’s guess”, stated Summers, going on to explain that it was not at all clear that an Australian giving advice from outwith Iceland to someone in Iceland on how to crack a code, was actually criminal if it occurred in the UK. This was even without considering the test of dual criminality in the US also, which had to be passed before the conduct was subject to extradition.

It was unthinkable that allegations of this magnitude would be the subject of a Part 2 extradition hearing within six weeks if they were submitted as a new case. Plainly that did not give the defence time to prepare, or to line up witnesses to these new charges. Among the issues relating to these new charges the defence would wish to address, were that some were not criminal, some were out of time limitation, some had already been charged in other fora (including Southwark Crown Court and courts in the USA).

There were also important questions to be asked about the origins of some of these charges and the dubious nature of the witnesses. In particular the witness identified as “teenager” was the same person identified as “Iceland 1” in the previous indictment. That indictment had contained a “health warning” over this witness given by the US Department of Justice. 
This new indictment removed that warning. But the fact was, this witness is Sigurdur Thordarson, who had been convicted in Iceland in relation to these events of fraud, theft, stealing Wikileaks money and material and impersonating Julian Assange.

The indictment did not state that the FBI had been “kicked out of Iceland for trying to use Thordarson to frame Assange”, stated Summers baldly.

Summers said all these matters should be ventilated in these hearings if the new charges were to be heard, but the defence simply did not have time to prepare its answers or its witnesses in the brief six weeks it had since receiving them, even setting aside the extreme problems of contact with Assange in the conditions in which he was being held in Belmarsh prison.

The defence would plainly need time to prepare answers to these new charges, but it would plainly be unfair to keep Assange in jail for the months that would take. The defence therefore suggested that these new charges should be excised from the conduct to be considered by the court, and they should go ahead with the evidence on criminal behaviour confined to what conduct had previously been alleged.

Summers argued it was “entirely unfair” to add what were in law new and separate criminal allegations, at short notice and “entirely without warning and not giving the defence time to respond to it. What is happening here is abnormal, unfair and liable to create real injustice if allowed to continue.”

The arguments submitted by the prosecution now rested on these brand new allegations. 
For example, the prosecution now countered the arguments on the rights of whistleblowers and the necessity of revealing war crimes by stating that there can have been no such necessity to hack into a bank in Iceland.

Summers concluded that the “case should be confined to that conduct which the American government had seen fit to allege in the eighteen months of the case” before their second new indictment.

Replying to Summers for the prosecution, Joel Smith QC replied that the judge was obliged by the statute to consider the new charges and could not excise them. “If there is nothing proper about the restitution of a new extradition request after a failed request, there is nothing improper in a superseding indictment before the first request had failed.” Under the Extradition Act the court must decide only if the offence is an extraditable offence and the conduct alleged meets the dual criminality test. The court has no other role and no jurisdiction to excise part of the request.

Smith stated that all the authorities (precedents) were of charges being excised from a case to allow extradition to go ahead on the basis of the remaining sound charges, and those charges which had been excised were only on the basis of double jeopardy. There was no example of charges being excised to prevent an extradition. And the decision to excise charges had only ever been taken after the conduct alleged had been examined by the court. There was no example of alleged conduct not being considered by the court. The defendant could seek extra time if needed but the new allegations must be examined.

Summers replied that Smith was “wrong, wrong, wrong, and wrong”. “We are not saying that you can never submit a new indictment, but you cannot do it six weeks before the substantive hearing.” The impact of what Smith had said amounted to no more than “Ha ha this is what we are doing and you can’t stop us.” A substantive last minute change had been made with no explanation and no apology. It could not be the case, as Smith alleged, that a power existed to excise charges in fairness to the prosecution, but no power existed to excise charges in fairness to the defence.

Immediately Summers sat down, Baraitser gave her judgement on this point. As so often in this hearing, it was a pre-written judgement. She read it from a laptop she had brought into the courtroom with her, and she had made no alterations to that document as Summers and Smith had argued the case in front of her.

Baraitser stated that she had been asked as a preliminary move to excise from the case certain conduct alleged. Mr Summers had described the receipt of new allegations as extraordinary. However “I offered the defence the opportunity to adjourn the case” to give them time to prepare against the new allegations. “I considered of course that Mr Assange was in custody. I hear that Mr Summers believes this is fundamental unfairness”. But “the argument that we haven’t got the time, should be remedied by asking for the time.”

Mr Summers had raised issues of dual criminality and abuse of process; there was nothing preventing him for raising these arguments in the context of considering the request as now presented.

Baraitser simply ignored the argument that while there was indeed “nothing to prevent” the defence from answering the new allegations as each was considered, they had been given no time adequately to prepare. Having read out her pre-prepared judgement to proceed on the basis of the new superseding indictment, Baraitser adjourned the court for lunch.

At the end of the day I had the opportunity to speak to an extremely distinguished and well-known lawyer on the subject of Baraitser bringing pre-written judgements into court, prepared before she had heard the lawyers argue the case before her. I understood she already had seen the outline written arguments, but surely this was wrong. What was the point in the lawyers arguing for hours if the judgement was pre-written? What I really wanted to know was how far this was normal practice.

The lawyer replied to me that it absolutely was not normal practice, it was totally outrageous. In a long and distinguished career, this lawyer had very occasionally seen it done, even in the High Court, but there was always some effort to disguise the fact, perhaps by inserting some reference to points made orally in the courtroom. Baraitser was just blatant. The question was, of course, whether it was her own pre-written judgement she was reading out, or something she had been given from on high.

This was a pretty shocking morning. The guillotining of defence witnesses to hustle the case through, indeed the attempt to ensure their evidence was not spoken in court except those parts which the prosecution saw fit to attack in cross-examination, had been breathtaking. 
The effort by the defence to excise the last minute superseding indictment had been a fundamental point disposed of summarily. Yet again, Baraitser’s demeanour and very language made little attempt to disguise a hostility to the defence.

We were for the second time in the day in a break thinking that events must now calm down and get less dramatic. Again we were wrong.

Court resumed forty minutes late after lunch as various procedural wrangles were addressed behind closed doors. As the court resumed, Mark Summers for the defence stood up with a bombshell.

Summers said that the defence “recognised” the judgement Baraitser had just made – a very careful choice of word, as opposed to “respected” which might seem more natural. As she had ruled that the remedy to lack of time was more time, the defence was applying for an adjournment to enable them to prepare the answers to the new charges. They did not do this lightly, as Mr Assange would continue in prison in very difficult conditions during the adjournment.

Summers said the defence was simply not in a position to gather the evidence to respond to the new charges in a few short weeks, a situation made even worse by Covid restrictions. It was true that on 14 August Baraitser had offered an adjournment and on 21 August they had refused the offer. But in that period of time, Mr Assange had not had access to the new charges and they had not fully realised the extent to which these were a standalone new case. To this date, Assange had still not received the new prosecution Opening Note in prison, which was a crucial document in setting out the significance of the new charges.

Baraitser pointedly asked whether the defence could speak to Assange in prison by telephone. Summers replied yes, but these were extremely short conversations. They could not phone Mr Assange; he could only call out very briefly on the prison payphone to somebody’s mobile, and the rest of the team would have to try to gather round to listen. It was not possible in these very brief discussions adequately to expound complex material. 
Between 14 and 21 August they had been able to have only two such very short phone calls. The defence could only send documents to Mr Assange through the post to the prison; he was not always given them, or allowed to keep them.

Baraitser asked how long an adjournment was being requested. Summers replied until January.

For the US government, James Lewis QC replied that more scrutiny was needed of this request. The new matters in the indictment were purely criminal. They do not affect the arguments about the political nature of the case, or affect most of the witnesses. If more time were granted, “with the history of this case, we will just be presented with a sleigh of other material which will have no bearing on the small expansion of count 2”.

Baraitser adjourned the court “for ten minutes” while she went out to consider her judgement. In fact she took much longer. When she returned she looked peculiarly strained.

Baraitser ruled that on 14 August she had given the defence the opportunity to apply for an adjournment, and given them seven days to decide. On 21 August the defence had replied they did not want an adjournment. They had not replied that they had insufficient time to consider. Even today the defence had not applied to adjourn but rather had applied to excise charges. They “cannot have been surprised by my decision” against that application. 

Therefore they must have been prepared to proceed with the hearing. Their objections were not based on new circumstance. The conditions of Assange in Belmarsh had not changed since 21 August. They had therefore missed their chance and the motion to adjourn was refused.

The courtroom atmosphere was now highly charged. Having in the morning refused to cut out the superseding indictment on the grounds that the remedy for lack of time should be more time, Baraitser was now refusing to give more time. The defence had called her bluff; the state had apparently been confident that the effective solitary confinement in Belmarsh was so terrible that Assange would not request more time. I rather suspect that Julian was himself bluffing, and made the call at lunchtime to request more time in the full expectation that it would be refused, and the rank hypocrisy of the proceedings exposed.
I previously blogged about how the procedural trickery of the superseding indictment being used to replace the failing second indictment – as Smith said for the prosecution “before it failed” – was something that sickened the soul. Today in the courtroom you could smell the sulphur.

Well, yet again we were left with the feeling that matters must now get less exciting. This time we were right and they became instead excruciatingly banal. We finally moved on to the first witness, Professor Mark Feldstein, giving evidence to the court by videolink for the USA. It was not Professor Feldstein’s fault the day finished in confused anti-climax. The court was unable to make the video technology work. For ten broken minutes out of about forty Feldstein was briefly able to give evidence, and even this was completely unsatisfactory as he and Mark Summers were repeatedly speaking over each other on the link.

Professor Feldstein’s evidence will resume tomorrow (now in fact today) and I think rather than split it I shall give the full account then. Meantime you can see these excellent summaries from Kevin Gosztola or the morning and afternoon reports from James Doleman. In fact, I should be grateful if you did, so you can see that I am neither inventing nor exaggerating the facts of these startling events.

If you asked me to sum up today in a word, that word would undoubtedly be “railroaded”. it was all about pushing through the hearing as quickly as possible and with as little public exposure as possible to what is happening. Access denied, adjournment denied, exposition of defence evidence denied, removal of superseding indictment charges denied. The prosecution was plainly failing in that week back in Woolwich in February, which seems like an age ago. It has now been given a new boost.

How the defence will deal with the new charges we shall see. It seems impossible that they can do this without calling new witnesses to address the new facts. But the witness lists had already been finalised on the basis of the old charges. That the defence should be forced to proceed with the wrong witnesses seems crazy, but frankly, I am well past being surprised by anything in this fake process.

Craig's coverage of Julian’s case is entirely dependent on your financial support. Unlike our adversaries including the Integrity Initiative, the 77th Brigade, Bellingcat, the Atlantic Council and hundreds of other warmongering propaganda operations, this blog has no source of state, corporate or institutional finance whatsoever. It runs entirely on voluntary subscriptions from its readers – many of whom do not necessarily agree with the every article, but welcome the alternative voice, insider information and debate. - "Source" -

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See also

Craig Murray: Your Man in the Public Gallery: Assange Hearing Day 7; Clive Stafford Smith said he had been “profoundly shocked” by the crimes committed by the US government against his clients.

In Extradition Hearing, Julian Assange’s Legal Team Focuses On US Torture And War Crimes Exposed By WikiLeaks

Honest Gov?

Click for Spanish, German, Dutch, Danish, French, translation- Note- Translation may take a moment to load.

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Zie ook: 'Liveblog: Julian Assange Under Threat - Defend Wikileaks'

En zie voorts:
'Het martelen van onderzoeksjournalist Julian Assange: een interview met Andrew Fowler'

'YouTube verwijdert in aanloop naar presidentsverkiezingen video's met info verkregen middels hacken, censuur door VS techreuzen' (o.a. censuur op info van Wikileaks....)

'Labourpolitici in oorlog met elkaar: de antisemitisme leugen tegen Jeremy Corbyn die hem de verkiezingen kostte' (met o.a. aandacht voor Assange en zie de links in dat bericht over de verkiezingen in GB) 

'Internationale Dag van de Persvrijheid: ARD hekelt geheel hypocriet Turkije zonder ook maar één woord te besteden aan Julian Assange' (en zie de links in dat bericht naar oudere artikelen over Assange)

Democratische Conventie: niet één woord over Russiagate domweg omdat het een leugen is

Tijdens de gehele Democratische Conventie van 17 t/m 20 augustus, viel letterlijk niet één keer het woord 'Russiagate', terwijl de Democraten het de laatste 4 jaar wel 1.000 keer werd uitgespuugd door de hypocriete politici van die partij. Logisch dat men er nu maar mee is gestopt, immers het is bewezen flauwekul en alleen door de partij in stelling gebracht om Hillary Clinton uit de wind te houden, die op een smerige manier de voorverkiezingen van de Democraten in 2016 heeft gewonnen, ofwel: zij heeft destijds de voorverkiezingen gestolen ten koste van Bernie Sanders......

Een lid van Clintons verkiezingsteam, Seth Rich was zo pissig over de handelswijze van Clinton en de top van dat team, dat hij een enorme stapel mails van Clinton doorspeelde naar Wikileaks...... Een paar weken later werd Rich vermoord op straat gevonden, volgens de politie een roofmoord, hoe vreemd dan dat er werkelijk niets was gestolen van Rich, terwijl hij ook opzichtig dure sieraden droeg....... (bovendien waarom zou je iemand 2 maal in de rug schieten als je deze wilt ontdoen van diens kostbaarheden en geld??)

Nee, i.p.v. een Russische agent, bleek Trump de figuur die een enorme legermacht heeft samengetrokken langs delen van de Russische westgrens, waarbij hij nu ook nog de beschikking heeft over een raketschild 'tegen Iran' maar waarvan de raketten in een mum van tijd kunnen worden voorzien van meerdere kernkoppen en dat op raketten die tot 5.000 kilometer kunnen vliegen, waardoor steden als Moskou en Sint-Petersburg vanaf de voordeur van Rusland kunnen worden geraakt met kernraketten.... 

Met dat schild heeft de Trump administratie het INF-verdrag geschonden, iets waarvan de VS en haar oorlogshond NAVO Rusland volkomen ten onrechte beschuldigden....... (Rusland zou nieuwe raketten hebben die volgens de VS onder dat verdrag vallen, echter op meerdere uitnodigingen van het Kremlin om te komen inspecteren ging de VS niet in, daar de duivelse Trump administratie dondersgoed wist en weet dat Rusland de waarheid sprak......)

Lees het volgende artikel van Caitlin Johnstone die dieper op deze zaak ingaat en onder andere de stelling van Max Blumenthal steunt dat Russiagate een manier was om Trump zo onder druk te zetten dat hij wapens leverde aan Oekraïne (ben het daar deels mee eens, zeker daar ook wordt gesteld dat Obama Oekraïne niet wilde bewapenen, terwijl zijn minister van BuZa Joe Biden dat land onder druk zette het strafrechtelijk onderzoek tegen zijn corrupte zoon te stoppen, daar men anders een levering van wapens uit de VS kon vergeten):   

Dem Convention Made No Mention Of Russiagate Or Impeachment, Because They Were Fake

Caitlin Johnstone <donotreply@wordpress.com>

The only interesting thing about either of the conventions held by America's two mainstream political parties this month was not anything that was said by the interminable parade of vapid speakers, but rather what those speakers did not say.

Despite their dominating mainstream news cycles for years on end, at no time during the four-day Democratic National Convention was the word "impeachment" ever uttered, nor was any mention made of the Mueller investigation into allegations of collusion between Trump and the Russian government.

Politico reports:

Eight months after Democrats mounted a historic effort to remove Donald Trump from office, not a single speaker uttered the word “impeachment” during their four-day convention.

...

For Democrats to completely omit impeachment from their convention was once unthinkable. Democrats had mounted a case that Trump had abused his power to blackmail Ukraine into investigating his political adversaries, including Biden. And they made an existential argument that without removing him from office, Trump’s behavior would get worse and democracy itself would be at risk.

...

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia — which Democrats once thought could topple Trump for obstruction of justice — also went unmentioned, even as it was a defining feature of Trump’s nearly four years in office.

  
At DNC, "the word 'impeachment' [was] entirely left out over the course of the 4-night event. Mueller’s investigation of the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia... also went unmentioned, even as it was a defining feature of Trump’s nearly 4 years in office." https://t.co/Dgt9WQ3LeA pic.twitter.com/q8EvEthwZq

— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) August 28, 2020

"The fact that Democrats couldn't bring themselves to even mention Russiagate or Ukrainegate (the first-ever sequel to a flop?) at their convention should maybe hasten some reflection for those who made these issues the 'defining feature of Trump's nearly four years in office,'" quipped incisive Russiagate skeptic Aaron Maté of the omission on Twitter.

"Next on Unsolved Mysteries: Democrats and media allies accused Donald Trump of being a Russian agent for four years," Maté added. "They chanted 'All Roads Lead to Putin' and 'The Walls Are Closing In.' But at their political convention, they forgot all about it. Did Russia give them amnesia?"

"I personally feel like if the President of the US seeking re-election is beholden to and controlled by an adversarial foreign power, the opposition party should find a few seconds to squeeze in a mention of it if, you know, it wasn't utter bullshit," tweeted The Intercept's Glenn Greenwald.

And, of course, it was utter bullshit. And that is indeed why the Democrats saw no need to mention it at their own four-day convention despite dominating news cycles with it for years. Russiagate and Ukrainegate were never the cataclysmic scandals that the Democrats and their allied media factions portrayed them as. They weren't even actually about getting rid of Trump.

Glenn Greenwald ✔ @ggreenwald

In an extremely strange and confounding development, the Democrats *never once* mentioned what this NYT columnist calls "the biggest lie in American politics" at their Convention.

In fairness, they only had 4 full nights so maybe they couldn't squeeze in any mention of it. https://twitter.com/michelleinbklyn/status/1295743070672162821 …

Michelle Goldberg ✔ @michelleinbklyn

The biggest lie in American politics, which you hear from parts of the left as well as the right, is that Russiagate hasn't been borne out by investigators https://twitter.com/jimsciutto/status/1295720689043939333 …

689

1:00 AM - Aug 29, 2020

Anyone with an ear to the ground knew that Russiagate would fizzle, and anyone capable of counting Senate seats knew impeachment would fail to remove Trump. The drivers of these attention-monopolizing narratives knew this also.

If there'd been any solid evidence to find that the Kremlin was blackmailing Trump, or that his campaign had conspired with the Russian government to steal the 2016 election, the US intelligence community would have found some of it and leaked it to The Washington Post long before Trump took office. The Russiagate narrative has been completely dismantled from the very beginning by journalists like the late Robert Parry, and then Maté after Parry's death. There was never any real evidence for it, and the people pushing Russiagate from the beginning knew there was never any real evidence for it.

All you really need to know about Russiagate was that it was started by unsubstantiated claims by the US intelligence community, and in the end it facilitated pre-existing plans by the US intelligence community. Everything else in between those two points is just empty narrative fluff.

In 2017 Parry documented how the original assessment that Russia meddled in the US election in the first place was put forward without proof by just a couple dozen officers from three intelligence agencies hand-picked by the notoriously Russophobic then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. Maté has documented that this allegation remains just as suspicious and porous as the day it was first made. Despite having sweeping investigative powers Mueller indicted not one single American for conspiracy with the Russian government. The recent evidence-free Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report did nothing to change the flimsy nature of the entire Russiagate narrative.

So the whole thing has been plainly bogus from the beginning, with the foundation laid by secretive and unaccountable intelligence agencies who have an extensive history of lying about exactly this sort of thing. And it just so happens to have paved the way for operations against a longtime geostrategic foe that were being unfolded well before Trump's arrival in 

the White House.

This is an excerpt from an article by legendary Australian journalist John Pilger from March 2016:

In the last eighteen months, the greatest build-up of military forces since World War Two -- led by the United States -- is taking place along Russia's western frontier.  Not since Hitler invaded the Soviet Union have foreign troops presented such a demonstrable threat to Russia.

Ukraine - once part of the Soviet Union -  has become a CIA theme park. Having orchestrated a coup in Kiev, Washington effectively controls a regime that is next door and hostile to Russia: a regime rotten with Nazis, literally. Prominent parliamentary figures in Ukraine are the political descendants of the notorious OUN and UPA fascists. They openly praise Hitler and call for the persecution and expulsion of the Russian speaking minority.

This is seldom news in the West, or it is inverted to suppress the truth.

In Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia -- next door to Russia - the US military is deploying combat troops, tanks, heavy weapons. This extreme provocation of the world's second nuclear power is met with silence in the West.

This was all happening during the Obama administration. But he was still more doveish than the spooks and cold warriors who drive US foreign policy would prefer, resisting for example loud calls from the warmongers to arm Ukraine against Moscow and forcibly install a no-fly zone in Russia's ally Syria.

The heir apparent to Obama's throne, Hillary Clinton, did not suffer from such peacenik scruples. She'd already been making people on both sides of the aisle nervous with her anti-Russia hawkishness, and supported both arming Ukraine and installing a no-fly zone in Syria.

So these escalations were already underway, and more were being prepared for.

Then what happened? Somehow a political neophyte who'd been talking about making nice with Russia got in instead.

We suddenly found ourselves bombarded with narratives from the US intelligence community and its mass media stenographers about Russian election meddling and Trump playing some mysterious role in it. These narratives were pushed with steadily increasing frequency and shrillness, with the help of a humiliated Democratic Party that stood everything to gain by participating, until those of us who expressed any skepticism of them at all were being accused on a daily basis by MSM-brainwashed dupes of running psyops for the Russian government.

We were never at any time presented with any proof of these claims which rose anywhere near the level required in a post-Iraq invasion world, but we were hammered with them anyway, day in and day out, year after year.

This ended up putting a lot of political pressure on Trump to keep existing sanctions and military tensions with Russia, and he ended up adding dozens more new cold war escalations including further sanctions, shredded nuclear treaties, NATO expansionism and more. He even armed Ukraine due to these pressures, just like the anointed queen was scheduled to do.

Max Blumenthal ✔ @MaxBlumenthal

For years, neocons and arms industry darlings like @RepAdamSchiff have sought to re-arm Ukraine and escalate the conflict in Donbas. By stirring up Russiagate, they finally got their deadly deal. My latest: https://www.truthdig.com/articles/russiagate-helped-secure-dangerous-arms-deal/ …

How 'Russiagate' Helped Secure a Dangerous Arms Deal Both Barack Obama and Donald Trump resisted sending weapons to Ukraine. Then the investigation into Trump-Russia collusion was launched. truthdig.com

341    9:51 PM - Jan 8, 2018

The cold warriors wanted their escalations, and they got them. From beginning to the end, that's all this was ever about. They pushed the narratives, the media joined in because it was great for ratings, and the Democrats joined in because it took the focus off their 2016 scandals and gave them a kayfabe phantom to punch instead of pushing for actual progressive changes.

And now the slow motion third world war between the US-centralized power alliance and the loose collective of unabsorbed governments is right on schedule, with Biden all set and ready to carry the omnicidal torch forward. The 2016 scandals are well enough forgotten, no progressive changes have been made, and there is no need to talk about Russiagate or impeachment at the Democratic National Convention.

Because everyone already got what they wanted. Everyone except ordinary people, of course.

____________________

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Caitlin Johnstone | August 29, 2020 at 2:54 am | Tags: #Trump, convention, democrats, DNC, impeachment, Mueller, Russia, Russiagate | Categories: Article, News | URL: https://wp.me/p9tj6M-2hX