Posts Tagged ‘Assange’
John Pilger on the shabby persecution of Julian Assange
I have respected John Pilger since before I trained and entered journalism in the 1980s. I respect his courage and his tenacity, his willingness to show up and tell the truth as he sees it. He’s also no fool. So, although it may not be a popular stand, in terms of some people’s interpretation of […]
Does anyone else think this spy agency ‘Discredit a target’ strategy might have been used against Julian Assange?
Wow, read this: Snowden Docs: British Spies Used Sex and ‘Dirty Tricks — NBC and ask yourself if Julian Assange might have been a ‘target’. British spies have developed “dirty tricks” for use against nations, hackers, terror groups, suspected criminals and arms dealers that include releasing computer viruses, spying on journalists and diplomats, jamming phones […]
Jemima Khan’s must-read article about Julian Assange
In this insightful, articulate article, Jemima Khan addresses some of the issues and events surrounding Wikileaks and Julian Assange … and echoes one of my perennial themes: tribalism and how it blunts understanding. On the subject of Assange, pundits on both the left and the right have become more interested in tribalism than truth. The […]
Lost in translation? … Assange not just ‘wanted for questioning’, but charged
From Julian Assange is charged, there is no doubt about it — Göran Rudling. On numerous occasions we have heard Julian Assange say that he is not charged with any crime. For English speaking people that means Julian Assange will be detained by three Swedish courts without a charge. I can understand why so many English […]
Media contempt for #Assange. Useful idiots?
I’m completing the design for a book by a friend of mine at present, Slouching Towards Bethlehem. It’s a fascinating study of the rise of the antichrists — note the plural. Graeme’s definition of ‘antichrist’ differs considerably from The Omen/Damien/666 stuff of the 1970s movies, and encompasses the repeated incidences of elevation of heads of […]
He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it
That’s a quote from Martin Luther King. One of the themes of this blog (apologies to those who don’t like recurring topics) is whistle blowers (as I write this, 66 posts are so tagged). I believe in supporting and encouraging them. As I have explained, I think the *urge* to tell the truth, despite possible […]
Spy fiction? Kinda fits.
Barrister Carl Gardner, writing at Head of Legal blog: Julian Assange: Can he get out of this? … All in all, I think the [UK] Supreme Court made quite a hash of the Assange case. I’m not the only critic, either – Tiina Pajuste at the CJICL Blog argues that they were wrong to bring […]
Upstaging an important public moment
I spotted this statement from Susan Benn on behalf of the Julian Assange Defence Fund over the weekend, which makes some good points about the challenge the Swedish and British authorities (surely) must be having trying to maintain the pretense that they’re treating Julian Assange as they would any other ‘person of interest’. The ludicrous […]
Assange allegations deeply fishy with dangerous undertones
I’ve always said the allegations (not actually criminal charges) against Julian Assange seemed like a jack-up and a smear campaign. What do you think?: 2) The process by which Assange was accused, cleared, and then re-accused of these incidents beggars belief. Two women went to a Stockholm police station one Friday afternoon in August 2010, […]
NY Times smears former collaborator Assange: ‘a nut job’
What a sleazy smear. But just the latest in a long line. His reputation has taken a deep plunge since he shook the world in 2010 by releasing, in cooperation with The New York Times and several other news organizations, masses of secret government documents, including battlefield reports from Iraq and Afghanistan. Most news organizations […]
Sad saga of co-operation breaking down
Best line: Julian’s ghostwriter delivered a brilliant first draft of the book, bang on schedule, at the end of March. We read it and loved it. Julian didn’t. He didn’t love it. We’re not even sure how much he actually read. It was an extraordinary reaction to a manuscript he should have been grateful for […]
Assange … a right to scrutinise the state.
We support a cause that is no more radical a proposition than that the citizenry has a right to scrutinise the state. The state has asserted its authority by surveilling, monitoring and regimenting all of us, all the while hiding behind cloaks of security and opaqueness. — Julian Assange Pretty hard to argue with that. […]
Julian Assange on 60 Minutes
A decent length 60 Minutes interview with Assange. Worth watching. Still with the ‘oooh Julian Assange is soooo paranoid’ shtick. (What a disrespectful, unrealistic angle, that is.) And then there’s this ‘not one of us’ arse-covering comment (… an editorial line from CBS? You decide.) : “Some have argued that he’s [Assange] not really a […]
How the smear works: Now Assange = ‘lothario’ … as a given?
This super sleazy opening line from Marcus Baram (maybe we can blame his subeditor?) illustrates the lazy acceptance of a smear … or is he just trying to be a colourful writer? FAIL. NEW YORK — A super-secret organization led by a white-haired, cold-blooded lothario that uncovers revelations exposing the wrongdoing of the world’s most […]
