WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson gave a brief statement to the press after the latest court hearing for Julian Assange’s extradition case in London today, saying the Trump administration is arguing that the First Amendment of the US Constitution doesn’t provide press freedom protection to foreign nationals like Assange.
“We have now learned from submissions and affidavits presented by the United States to this court that they do not consider foreign nationals to have a First Amendment protection,” Hrafnsson said.
“Now let that sink in for a second,” Hrafnsson continued. “At the same time that the US government is chasing journalists all over the world, they claim they have extra-territorial reach, they have decided that all foreign journalists which include many of you here, have no protection under the First Amendment of the United States. So that goes to show the gravity of this case. This is not about Julian Assange, it’s about press freedom.”
Hrafnsson’s very newsworthy claim has as of this writing received no mainstream news media coverage at all. The video above is from independent reporter Gordon Dimmack.
This prosecutorial strategy would be very much in alignment with remarks made in 2017 by then-CIA Director Mike Pompeo.
“Julian Assange has no First Amendment freedoms. He’s sitting in an embassy in London. He’s not a U.S. citizen,” Pompeo told the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
That, like nearly every sound which emits from Pompeo’s amorphous face, was a lie. The First Amendment is not a set of special free speech privileges that the US government magnanimously bestows upon a few select individuals, it’s a limitation placed upon the US government’s ability to restrict rights that all persons everywhere are assumed to have.
This is like a sex offender who’s barred from living within 500 yards of a school claiming that the school he moved in next to is exempt because it’s full of immigrants who therefore aren’t protected by his restriction. It’s a restriction placed on the government, not a right that is given to certain people.
Attorney and Future of Freedom Foundation president Jacob Hornberger explained after Pompeo’s remarks, “As Jefferson points out, everyone, not just American citizens, is endowed with these natural, God-given rights, including life, freedom, and the pursuit of happiness. That includes people who are citizens of other countries. Citizenship has nothing to do rights that are vested in everyone by nature and God. At the risk of belaboring the obvious, that includes Julian Assange.”
The Empire’s War On Oppositional Journalism Continues To Escalate
"Journalist Glenn Greenwald has been charged by the Bolsonaro government in Brazil with the same prosecutorial angle used by the US to target WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange." #FreeAssangehttps://t.co/jaWaaB0p3a
— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) January 22, 2020
Journalist Glenn Greenwald, who is himself now being legally persecuted by the same empire as Assange under an indictment which Hrafnsson in the aforementioned statement called “almost a carbon copy of the indictment against Julian Assange”, also denounced Pompeo’s 2017 remarks.
“The notion that WikiLeaks has no free press rights because Assange is a foreigner is both wrong and dangerous,” Greenwald wrote at the time. “When I worked at the Guardian, my editors were all non-Americans. Would it therefore have been constitutionally permissible for the U.S. Government to shut down that paper and imprison its editors on the ground that they enjoy no constitutional protections? Obviously not.”
Greenwald, who is a former litigation attorney, referenced a Salon article he’d written in 2010 skillfully outlining why Senator Susan Collins’ attempts to spin constitutional rights as inapplicable to foreigners would be outlandish, insane, illegal and unconstitutional to put into practice.
“To see how false this notion is that the Constitution only applies to U.S. citizens, one need do nothing more than read the Bill of Rights,” Greenwald argued in 2010. “It says nothing about ‘citizens.’ To the contrary, many of the provisions are simply restrictions on what the Government is permitted to do (‘Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion . . . or abridging the freedom of speech’; ‘No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner’). And where rights are expressly vested, they are pointedly not vested in ‘citizens,’ but rather in ‘persons’ or ‘the accused’ (‘No person shall . . . . be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law’; ‘In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed . . . . and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense’).”
“The U.S. Supreme Court, in 2008, issued a highly publicized opinion, in Boumediene v. Bush, which, by itself, makes clear how false is the claim that the Constitution applies only to Americans,” Greenwald wrote. “The Boumediene Court held that it was unconstitutional for the Military Commissions Act to deny habeas corpus rights to Guantanamo detainees, none of whom was an American citizen (indeed, the detainees were all foreign nationals outside of the U.S.). If the Constitution applied only to U.S. citizens, that decision would obviously be impossible.”
“The principle that the Constitution applies not only to Americans, but also to foreigners, was hardly invented by the Court in 2008,” Greenwald added. “To the contrary, the Supreme Court — all the way back in 1886 — explicitly held this to be the case, when, in Yick Wo v. Hopkins, it overturned the criminal conviction of a Chinese citizen living in California on the ground that the law in question violated his Fourteenth Amendment rights to due process and equal protection. In so doing, the Court explicitly rejected what Susan Collins and many others claim about the Constitution.”
These “and many others” Greenwald referred to would now include both Mike Pompeo and the Department of Justice prosecutors who are attempting to extradite and imprison Assange for publishing information exposing US war crimes.
Kristinn Hrafnsson editor in chief of WikiLeaks: “We learned today from the prosecution that the US does not consider foreign nationals to be protected under the 1st Amendment” #DontExtraditeAssange #FreeJulianAssange pic.twitter.com/9tNb6bCF0s
— Juan Passarelli (@JuanAndOnlyDude) January 23, 2020
So let’s be clear here: the Trump administration isn’t just working to establish a legal precedent which will demolish press freedoms around the world, it’s also working to change how the US Constitution operates on a very fundamental level.
Does now seem like a good time to fight against this to you? Because it sure as hell seems like that time to me.
Hrafnsson also said in this same statement that Assange’s extradition trial is going to be split into two separate dates, the first on February 24 for one week and then reconvening again for three weeks starting May 18. If you care about freedom of virtually any sort, I highly recommend paying very, very close attention.
___________________________
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 my website, 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, checking out my podcast on either Youtube, soundcloud, Apple podcasts or Spotify, following me on Steemit, throwing some money into my hat on Patreon or Paypal, purchasing some of my sweet merchandise, buying my new book Rogue Nation: Psychonautical Adventures With Caitlin Johnstone, or my previous 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 or use any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge.
Bitcoin donations:1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2
58 responses to “WikiLeaks Editor: US Is Saying First Amendment Doesn’t Apply To Foreigners In Assange Case”
News from Strasbourg on Julian Assange:
.
> The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) has called on member states to oppose the extradition of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to the United States and resolve that “he must be promptly released.” Assange is fighting extradition to the United States in an unprecedented Espionage Act prosecution for journalistic activity. His extradition hearing opens at Woolwich Crown Court in London on 24 February 2020.
.
Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly calls for Assange’s “prompt release” — Bridges for Media Freedom — 28 January 2020
https://bridgesforfreedom.media/council-of-europes-parliamentary-assembly-calls-for-assanges-prompt-release/
And with the UK getting out of the EU ,how much weight will PACE have ?
Well, there is the Council of Europe, and there is the European Union.
.
The Council of Europe has 47 member states, which are all the European countries except Belarus (for human rights concerns and death penalty), Kazakhstan (also human rights concerns), and the Vatican City (a theocracy).
.
The Council of Europe promotes democracy, human rights, the rule of law, and cooperation in Europe. 27 of its members are also the members of the European Union (28 before Brexit).
.
Brexit means UK’s exit from the the European Union, not from the Council of Europe and its European Court of Human Rights, which enforces the European Convention on Human Rights.
.
Although the Parliamentary Assembly’s call for Assange’s “prompt release” has no binding force, a possible last resort judgement by the European Court of Human Rights would have it.
.
However, shamefully, some British conservative politicians want to also leave the European Convention on Human Rights after Brexit, in order to for example facilitate extraditions and deportations that breach human rights.
.
Because of this, Liberty — the UK organization protecting civil liberties and human rights since 1934 — has made the following statement:
.
“The ‘Withdrawal Agreement’ drawn up by the UK and the EU — and any extra treaties that are made — must require the UK to remain a member of both the Council of Europe and the European Convention on Human Rights.”
.
Brexit negotiations and human rights | Liberty
https://www.libertyhumanrights.org.uk/human-rights/human-rights-uk-after-brexit/brexit-negotiations-and-human-rights
.
See also:
.
“it is highly likely that that the EU would insist on continued ECHR membership in almost any kind of future relationship”
.
General election 2019: what are the prospects for UK human rights, and the Human Rights Act after the election? | Democratic Audit
https://www.democraticaudit.com/2019/11/25/general-election-2019-what-are-the-prospects-for-uk-human-rights-and-the-human-rights-act-after-the-election/
Thank you for your comment .Not knowing what is happening in the UK/EU in the future ,your information is helpful.
Thanks for that. How many Conservative politicians I wonder want to keep as much barbarism as possible? Conservative, of course, means rightwing and the entire UK political class is rightwing.
> US Is Saying First Amendment Doesn’t Apply To Foreigners In Assange Case
.
However:
.
“The First Amendment covers everyone. . . . The First Amendment also covers non-citizens such as Assange.”
— Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, May 30, 2019
.
Special Analysis of the May 2019 Superseding Indictment of Julian Assange — The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press
https://www.rcfp.org/may-2019-assange-indictment-analysis/
.
Investigative journalist and publisher Julian Assange never broke a law, but now the US government wants to select which laws do apply to foreign journalists and publishers (Espionage…) and which ones don’t (First Amendment…).
.
“The only person who’s abided by the law the entire time this epic tragedy has now lasted has been Julian Assange . . .
“What Assange practiced when he published ‘US war files’ is called journalism. Which thank god is perfectly legal. Much of what those files reveal is not. What he did when he allegedly ‘skipped bail’ in the UK is called requesting asylum. Also perfectly legal, a basic human right. He never broke a law.”
.
Assange Is The Only One To Abide By The Law — Raúl Ilargi Meijer
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/assange-only-one-abide-law
.
“Two related bombshell revelations following today’s hearing:
“1) US prosecutors are arguing the 1st amendment doesn’t apply to foreign journalists;
“2) #JulianAssange will be under Special Administrative Measures if extradited.
“@JohnWRees, @DEAcampaign, reacts to both: [VIDEO]”
.
M. A. E. — Jan 23, 2020
https://twitter.com/MElmaazi/status/1220329982523854849
.
“The US is saying that if Julian Assange is extradited he will immediately be placed under ‘Special Administrative Measures’.
“That means that he will not be able to speak to the press or the public, and neither will his legal team.
“He will be put in a black hole.”
.
John Rees, Somerset Bean — Jan 23, 2020
https://twitter.com/SomersetBean/status/1220416277359071233
.
In summary, the US government is saying that Julian Assange basically does not have any rights.
.
So now we know that, basically, they are Nazis.
Yes they sure act the part and some of us have known this for quite some time.
Indeed.
“Fake History Is Changing Global Perceptions of Reality ” by Wayne Madsen / https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2020/01/04/fake-history-is-changing-global-perceptions-of-reality/
“Nazi America” / https://arrby.wordpress.com/2018/02/01/nazi-america/
“The Nazis Are Dead And Dying! Long Live The Nazis!” / https://arrby.wordpress.com/2017/08/23/the-nazis-are-dead-and-dying-long-live-the-nazis/
I think Jim Croce had it right in his song “you dont mess around with jim” sums up life pretty well.
So “the Trump administration is arguing that the First Amendment of the US Constitution doesn’t provide press freedom protection to foreign nationals like Assange.”
If foreign nationals like Assange are not protected by the First Amendment of the US Constitution, why are they being prosecuted under a U.S. law, the Espionage Act?
Probably because the function of life (evolution) is to overcome or avoid problems contrary to it’s nature.
The psychopaths in charge don’t want a founding document written mainly by freedom loving individualists.
They want one that enables psychopaths. It has been that way for 230 years and it will not get better.
“An organism is a collection of problem solving devices – adaptations – that were shaped by natural selection over evolutionary time to promote, in some specific way, the survival of the genes that directed their construction.”
Symon’s, 2005
Because the US is a bully and a terrorist, not to mention a False Prophet. The Christian Bible depicts the US as a wild beast that ascends out of the earth (a time when nation States are more or less determined – solid, like earth – with fixed boundaries and distinct cultures) and it has two horns like a righteous, inoffensive lamb, but a mouth like an all-devouring dragon.
You have to play their game, but they don’t have to play by any rules, including those they themselves agreed to. And that’s how monesters come to rule in this dark world.
They huddle with us (and look and talk like us, ergo…) to hammer out the rules that, ostensibly, will conduce to social harmony and peace and security for all and then they proceed to strategically break them. In that way, they come to dominate in society, as the ‘sucker’ sheep, who buy the law & order rhetoric, continue to follow the rules hoping for a decent future for themselves and especially for their offspring. From positions of dominance, the wolves among us can then dictate economic and other outcomes, ensuring prosperity and security for their class and for themselves personally.
We the people can not defeat such darkness.
The US government through illegal wars, has murdered hundreds of thousands of individuals, and destroyed sovereign countries with impunity, and yet their courts, and their laws protecting the US police state, and their elites, are going to severely punish the whistle blowers who had the courage to inform the rest of the world of America’s murderous psychopathic criminality.
What kind of justice is this?
The fact is that the US government wants only revenge.
But it wants to camouflage it in beautiful words of justice.
They will do it with a method, there will be a great trial and a great show,“Justice has to be done.”
In reality it is pure and simple revenge, one hundred percent revenge.
But it is done with great ritual, in a beautiful temple of justice, in the court, where paid servants of society are sitting as judges.
These paid servants of society will go through a ceremonial ritual, which they call a trial, and finally if they have their way, the whistle blower Julian Assange will be unlawfully sentenced in Virginia!
Your courts and your judges are not really men of justice, they are just your hangmen.
They are the murderers appointed by the society, in the name of justice, to take revenge.
They murder, they kill, but in the name of so-called justice.
Society cannot tolerate somebody who is rebellious, because they can destroy the whole rotten structure.
Justice will only begin to happen when the people stop supporting and stop voting for all these mentally ill politicians, who are all sociopaths, liars, cheats, and insane war criminals.
And create an honest and fair systems of law, a system that truly works for the people!
And it is only when the people begin to realize that nothing will change until this whole rotten, this so called democracy is replaced, by a fair, transparent, and honest system of direct representation, the only system that truly represents the people.
Until then nothing will change!
https://medium.com/@WhenWarDisappears/animal-farm-with-tweets-2ad6732d2975
When the people realize there is no longer rule of law, they will create their own courts to start prosecuting the politicians and all the oligarchs who are responsible for all the injustice in the world, and for all the war crimes committed by the politicians, Trump, the Clintons, Bush, Obama, Blair and all the rest of them, we all know who they are!
When will we start imprisoning them, and confiscating all of their ill gotten wealth, and that of all their cronies, who carry out all their criminal, and profitable enterprises with impunity?
It will be the most evolved society when there will be no need for any law, no need for any morality, no need for the state, for politicians, for courts, for the magistrate, for the police, for the military.
When there is only one intelligent standard, the spiritual.
Yet until we have a universally acknowledged constant of intelligence, truth, justice and freedom, and all these criminals are fully exposed to the rule of law, and are fully cleansed from ever holding power, only then will the people be free from tyranny to create an evolved, fair and just society.
Camus was right that when he said, “The only way to create justice is through living it.”
But Camus was only a philosopher.
He himself never lived the life of a rebel.
He lived the life of a very respectable man, honored by the society with a Nobel Prize, honored around the world as a great thinker, novelist, a creative genius.
If he had lived the life of a rebel he would have been on the cross.
Can you ever conceive of a Christ receiving a Nobel Prize!
Quite a disconnect between the real world and the false narrative the Washington regime substitutes in its place, eh? About a 180-degree difference in most cases. The American propagandists daily twisting the truth inside out and upside down, resulting in unfathomable harm to foreigners and citizens alike, make O’Brien of “1984” (Winston Smith’s sadistic interrogator) look like a sympathetic altruist in comparison.
Screw the Constitution. Everybody on the planet knows that denying free speech is immoral as hell.
No Treason
The Constitution of No Authority
by Lysander Spooner
I.
The Constitution has no inherent authority or obligation. It has no authority or obligation at all, unless as a contract between man and man. And it does not so much as even purport to be a contract between persons now existing. It purports, at most, to be only a contract between persons living eighty years ago. [This essay was written in 1869.] And it can be supposed to have been a contract then only between persons who had already come to years of discretion, so as to be competent to make reasonable and obligatory contracts. Furthermore, we know, historically, that only a small portion even of the people then existing were consulted on the subject, or asked, or permitted to express either their consent or dissent in any formal manner. Those persons, if any, who did give their consent formally, are all dead now. Most of them have been dead forty, fifty, sixty, or seventy years. and the constitution, so far as it was their contract, died with them. They had no natural power or right to make it obligatory upon their children. It is not only plainly impossible, in the nature of things, that they could bind their posterity, but they did not even attempt to bind them. That is to say, the instrument does not purport to be an agreement between any body but “the people” THEN existing; nor does it, either expressly or impliedly, assert any right, power, or disposition, on their part, to bind anybody but themselves. Let us see. Its language is:
We, the people of the United States (that is, the people THEN EXISTING in the United States), in order to form a more perfect union, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves AND OUR POSTERITY, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
It is plain, in the first place, that this language, AS AN AGREEMENT, purports to be only what it at most really was, viz., a contract between the people then existing; and, of necessity, binding, as a contract, only upon those then existing. In the second place, the language neither expresses nor implies that they had any right or power, to bind their “posterity” to live under it. It does not say that their “posterity” will, shall, or must live under it. It only says, in effect, that their hopes and motives in adopting it were that it might prove useful to their posterity, as well as to themselves, by promoting their union, safety, tranquility, liberty, etc. The rest here: https://jim.com/treason.htm
1st comment …… The First Admendment is more important than is indicated here or that most people acknowledge. First, the actual text (note no reference to it only applying to American citizens)
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. ”
———
Here is why it is even more important than most realize ….. The US Constitution was initially REJECTED by the American people. After the Constitutional Convention, it needed 9 states to ratify it to go into effect. It only got 8, and could not get more. It was defeated.
All ten Amendments, the Bill of Rights, were put in to get enough support to pass the Constitution. In other words, the Constitution would not exist without them.
They are essential to the deal that was made with the American people. This government has zero legitimacy without them, as it would not exist without them.
The very concept that an American Congress could make a law that would apply overseas would have seemed incredible to the writers of the Constitution.
In about 20 years, they would fight a war against the awful English Empire over English claims along similar lines. In 1812, it was the imperial British trying to enforce a blockade on republican France, and it was the Americans objecting saying this was illegal under international law.
It is these events that leads us to being able to remember an anniversary on August 24. This year it will have been 206 years since Washington DC was burned to the ground.
The UNITED STATES is a signatory to the UN declaration of human rights, and GUESS WHAT IS INCLUDED IN THERE.. FREEDOM OF SPEECH!
Yes:
.
Universal Declaration of Human Rights
.
“Article 19.
.
“Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”
.
Universal Declaration of Human Rights | United Nations
https://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/
.
Universal Declaration of Human Rights — Article 19
Interesting. In the US Constitution, there is what is known as the Supremacy Clause. It states that the US Constitution is the highest law in the land (duhh), but it also puts all treaties ratified by the USA into the same co-equal status. Thus, what you quoted above is, under the Constitution, the highest law in America.
Found the following article by Jimmy Carter which was interesting ….https://www.cartercenter.org/news/documents/doc1369.html
In the United States. the national security establishment, which consists of the Pentagon, the military industrial complex, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the National Security Agency, is effectively a fourth branch of government, one whose power structure is based outside of Washington,D.C., in Virginia and Maryland.
By virtue of its military might, intelligence-gathering capabilities, and self-assumed omnipotent, non-reviewable power of assassination, it has developed into the most powerful of the four branches of the federal government. Please read this relevant article here:
https://www.fff.org/2020/01/24/copying-the-communists-2/
Cliff: Excellent and logical rejoinder. I don’t know where you live, but here’s hoping you have drone protection. Fortunately for me, I live in a large apartment building *somewhere* so they can’t take me out without killing scores of innocents.
Innocents? Lucky you! That’s sure to stop ’em …
This is to say Thank You to Tim and Caitlin. Some smart people have just agreed that the cause you’ve taken on is among the most serious human civilization has ever faced.
“To: Leaders and citizens of the world
Re: Closer than ever: It is 100 seconds to midnight
Date: January 23, 2020
Humanity continues to face two simultaneous existential dangers—nuclear war and climate change—that are compounded by a threat multiplier, cyber-enabled information warfare, that undercuts society’s ability to respond.”
–Bulletin of Atomic Scientists
https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/current-time/
after all, “cyber-enabled information warfare” is exactly the cause in which Caitlin fights for us all every day on Twit-Twit.
Thank you to you both for trying to save humanity!
Orwell, Huxley and several other prophet-philosophers of a bygone era predicted all this, but unfortunately we live among a depressingly under-educated and purposely mis-educated population here, most of whom have never read those writers, or much anything else more demanding than People magazine.
So they can be easily manipulated, lied to, programmed by TV, popular culture, celebrity worship, perpetual football extravaganzas, incessant propaganda aimed to make them docile, obedient consumers addicted to mindless distractions (anyone notice the cell phone addiction epidemic literally everywhere all the time?), and so most of them have never heard of Assange, Edward Snowden or Chelsea Manning.
And if you tell them about these courageous figures they’ll pretend to care, if you’re animated enough, like a movie actor, but 10 minutes later won’t remember a thing you said. The cell phone has their full attention once again.
I was struck in the 2012 elections how little people paid attention. I had a call center job, with the usual people who will take a $10 an hour job. And it was amazing how there was no attention to politics and no political discussion at all among the workers. If you wanted to have a conversation, it was most likely about the latest MMA fight, the local NFL team, or the popular reality TV show concerning housewives of the time. But politics did not exist in that world.
Only in a hyper- individualistic society like ours that the ruling elites can keep a gentleman like Mr Assange in jail indefinitely.
It could have been that way during the days of Noah. So today, we are in the return of the days of Noah just before the Second Coming of Jesus and I pray the Rosary to hasten the return of Jesus because I have seen enough.
Interesting article here:
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/01/24/assa-j24.html
‘hyper- individualistic”?
That is totally absurd.
Perhaps you should contact a lawyer to see if you can sue the people that provided your education.
Meanwhile, we all keep validating these US Sociopaths In Charge by participating in their rigged election process. Given two “parties” that are nothing more than two branches of the same party, no one in their right mind would vote for ANY of the proposed candidates for ANY office.
Two problems with this. The big lie is the word in all caps. It deliberately smears and distorts the situation in order to lie to you. For one example, it assumes that Tulsi Gabbard is exactly the same as Joe Biden and Hillary. Which appears to be quite mistaken.
And of course, it also white-washes out of the picture all of the courageous people who run as minor candidates and who by spending most of their lives for months at a time doing so do indeed provide a real choice on the ballot.
The overall appeal is for people to just stay out of politics and let those great and sacred Oligarchs do anything they like.
So, so, so many propaganda messages take this form. They tell you a big lie, then on the basis of the big lie they urge you to act against your own self-interests.
(We are approaching the first votes of the next US election cycle. Thus it is no surprise that the “Suppress The Vote” campaigns are starting to hit overdrive.)
You, Caitlin and most of the readership here want a world in which the truth and morality prevail. (I know I do.) Sadly, we Americans live in a country where the truth is not allowed to be told in the public forum and morality constantly morphs to facilitate the agenda of those in control. Those with the power are so entrenched, I’m not sure if anyone presently alive will live long enough to see any of that change.
I love three terms that are widely underused/unknown.
1. Odious Debt
2. False Claims Act (Qi Tam)
3. Jury Nullification.
You think making the American populace aware of Jury Nullifaction would help Julian Assange and other court cases where people find it objectionable that people are being sentenced to prison time, say for having weed?
Whenever people tell you that voting can not change anything ….. I’m sitting here enjoying my wake-up bowl in perfect legality with no threat of prison time ….. BECAUSE I VOTED!!!!!
And yes, Jury Nullification is very important right enshrined in the American system. The Oligarchs hate it so much that you can be arrested for telling people about it outside a courthouse.
What a world we live in! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80nUhHofw0U
Slightly off topic, but the US State Dept has just declined a UK request for the extradition of Anne Sarcoolas over the death of Harry Dunn, because according to the deranged creatures in Washington, it would create…. “an extraordinarily troubling precedent”.
Seriously…. WTF? Planet La La?
This, while Julian Assange sits in Belmarsh waiting to be extradited to the United States gulag for publishing the truth and facing up the rest of his life in jail. And he hasn’t killed anyone.
The jaw dropping mind boggling hypocrisy is just off the richter scale.
Disappointingly small bunch of supporters outside the venue.
Dear World:
There are 2 types of people on this planet:
1). Americans
2). Untermenschen (aka, non-Americans)
Please come to accept this reality.
Sincerely,
The United States of America!
Welcome to the United States Plantation you can Earth; we own you and everything you have. We will do anything we please to do to you and your family; resistance is futile!
Is the world catching on yet to what agenda the regime in Washington is really imposing upon the entire human race? It claims the right to do anything, anywhere to anybody no matter the consequences. It claims this right not through any natural philosophy or set of moral precepts, but simply on the basis of the raw naked power and ability to intimidate all in its path that it has accrued by persistent ever-escalating acts of aggression. It is doing everything it ever accused Hitler, Stalin or Mao of trying; i.e., to take over the entire world by use of unrestrained force.
It will kill you without compunction and make up bullshit arguments to justify the murder if you ever get in its way. Just General Saleimani. Better yet, ask the millions of victims of the dozens of wars it has perpetrated since WWII. Ask the millions of homeless made refugees by its scorched earth policies. Ask the millions of global jobless, impoverished by ruthless economic “sanctions,” which are just another form of warfare. Ask the multitudes of dead children and chronically ill of all ages, brought down decades before their time by the blockades and embargoes of life’s necessities by this legion of demons that masquerades as the legitimate American government. Ask all those tens of millions of human souls if their sacrifices were “worth it” to prop up the interests of the trans-national aristocracy propped up by the might of the American economic and military regime. Most of them will beg to differ with the assholes in Washington who think they have a right to micromanage the entire planet.
Yes—thank you!
Clear example of United States HYPOCRISY. They use subversion and military force to impose “Democracy” on countries who refuse their Petrodollar; but deny principles of democracy for those who expose United States HYPOCRISY and corruption.
It seems the western ruling elites, no matter being left or right, are united as one people on the case of Mr Assange.
No doubt, we are dealing with a mystery…
It is worth noting that the only people defending Mr Assange are not from the ruling elites.
So the problem seems to be the entire “System”.
We live in the return of the days of Noah just before the Second Coming of Jesus and I pray the Rosary to hasten His Glorious return because I am fed up with all the bullshit.
Anyone looking with sober eyes upon today’s world and the feeble economic and geopolitical underpinnings holding the system together must accept the fact that a new system WILL be created. Please read this article here:
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2020/01/23/putin-calls-for-new-system-guided-by-un-charter-but-possible/
Maybe I am being naive but I never could understand how the US government could arrest and imprison a non-citizen on foreign soil for our internal laws in a non combat situation.
Don’t worry, you’re not the only one. As far as I can tell, it uses unscrupulous lawyers to re-interpret its laws to suit the requirement, and then forces the result onto the country in question by a variety of threats to make the country comply. The threats behind the scenes are how it gets its way, not the legal arguments.
Since all laws, and even constitutions, are subject to interpretation, it becomes a game of semantics, twisting and distorting the language to derive and justify a particular argument.
A deeply corrupted nation like the USA no longer understands that it is corrupt. It simply doesn’t see anything wrong with its tactics and behaviour. It is incapable of seeing any other reality apart from its own.
Sounds like good reasoning to me .Well said.
MIkey Pompeo = Tony Soprano. Get it?
If it’s not about Julian Assange, but of press freedom, how come he is locked up in a high security prison awaiting charges under the espionage act that will put him away for 175 years? The Trump administration doesn’t even consider him a journalist or a publisher.
No, no, no Assange is being held captured because he had the gall to reveal the horrendous crimes committed by those who rule over us. His incarceration is an unforgivable act of vengeance, so evil it make tears well in my eyes just thinking about it.
So, would this interpretation mean that they are saying they could not go after Glenn Greenwald for the same made up crime as Julian Assange, because he is a U.S. citizen? Not that they would need to, since they have their little fascist errand boy Bolsonaro to do it for them. And Bolsonaro could, if it applied under Brazilian law, go after Glenn Greenwald using the same claim that he’s not a citizen of Brazil, so he has no rights.
Sounds a lot like the spy agreement between the U.S and U.K., where they illegally spy on their own citizens by swapping their “intelligence”, so they can each claim they only spied on foreigners.
That red-haired fellow is wearing a VERY dapper blazer, if I do ssay so myself.
“Without a Free Press, there can be No Democracy”
Thomas Jefferson
He would be so ashamed of us today.
Wow, sucks to be a foreign national… subject to all domestic laws of the usa whether you’ve ever set foot here or not, yet protected by none of the inalienable human rights of the constitution.
its just a matter of time and there coming for me
Apparently you don’t understand who we are.
We interpret our laws and we hold the keys to life, death, suffering and pleasure.
YOU broke our rules and we are making you suffer until we kill you.
Everybody else seems to get it.
The Empire
Pompeo is always pissing on Thomas Paine’s grave.
Let’s take the Trump regime’s nonsense proposition a logical step further: If the US Constitution does not apply to foreigners or outside of the US, then neither do any laws under that Constitution apply to any foreigner outside of its borders. Therefore, the converse is also true – if the law applies, then so do all of the rights. The regime can’t have it both ways.
Spot on!