US Government Compelled Julian Assange To Plead Guilty To a Crime He Did Not Commit | Updated
Dylan Eleven • Truth11.com
There is much speculation and varied reactions to the release of Julian Assange, some are outlined in the articles below.
The bottom line is whatever the actual situation is or was about Julian Assange, be it he was in prison, or he had a double, he is related to Trump or he is not, he works for the CIA or is against them: It does not matter to free speech and for the rule of law because whatever true event or fabrication transpired; the reality is that a real or fabricated illegal detention, tortured induced coerced guilty plea to something that should not be illegal does not make it illegal.
Getting someone to confess after years of imprisonment and torture is not a true confession, and trying to apply this as a precedent in law it ridiculous. Although it is exactly what they will try to do.
Free speech is not a crime, no matter what psy-op or twisted torture plot they throw at us.
The footage Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning released showed us that war is not a fight but a slaughter. This showed us war is a crime and should be stopped. Therefore Julian Assange did his part for the good of our side no matter what transpired because this message got out there. His plea is not worth the paper it is written on. He is out. He should be out. The message has been out for years. The rest is crap.
EuropeReloaded.com
There is much buzz on the backchannels about what Assange’s liberation really means and what is really going on with this. Below we present two smart conventional views from Scott Ritter and Paul Craig Roberts, who take the story of his liberation as given.
But there is much buzz on the backchannels about what is really going on here, none of which can be proven. Did he really go to US North Mariana Islands near Guam? Was it him who was incarcerated or a double? Is he related to Trump? Has he been an intelligence asset all along? Here we present a little of that buzz. Recall that Assange has in his servers some of the most explosive information known to humanity, which can PUBLICLY blow apart the Rothschild-controlled deep state. This is Waking Up The Normies on warp speed.
From BioClandestine’s Telegram channel,
Assange is airborne! He departed London, and is on his way to see his wife and kids! I don’t want to get ahead of my skis, but if Assange gets back in the Information War, we might have just got our most valuable solider back. Deep State panic inbound.
And —
When Assange dropped the Clinton campaign emails, that should have been the nail in the coffin for the DNC. Yet the Dems were able to avoid having to answer for the fact that the elite families of the DNC, were having “spirit cooking” dinners with satanic witch, Marina Abramović. If Donald Trump hung out with a satanic cannibal witch lady, that smeared pig blood, feces, semen, and breast milk, in creepy messages all over the walls… the world would stop. But when the Clintons/Podestas do it… it’s no big deal, and if you talk about it, you’re a Russian propagandist/QAnon conspiracy theorist. They shut Assange down for a reason. He knows their deepest and darkest of secrets.
SCOTT RITTER
By allowing the US government to compel Julian Assange to plead guilty to a crime he did not commit, America has condemned itself to be a land where telling the truth is a crime.
“The press was to serve the governed, not the governors. The Government’s power to censor the press was abolished so that the press would remain forever free to censure the Government. The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of the government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government. And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell.”
Justice Hugo Black, The New York Times versus The United States, 1971
Julian Assange is soon scheduled to appear before a US Court on the island of Saipan, where he is expected to plead guilty to a single violation of the Espionage Act, namely conspiring to obtain and disclose national defense information.
Assange is guilty of no crime. It is the United States government which operates in violation of the law and, by suppressing Julian Assange’s duty as a publisher to expose deception on part of the government about war crimes committed by American servicemembers in Iraq and other lies and deceptions perpetrated by the State Department and Department of Defense, in gross disregard for the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States.
By subjecting Julian Assange to five years of imprisonmentunder horrific conditions in a British maximum-security prison, where he was held under solitary confinement 23 hours a day, the US government broke the spirit and will of a man whose cause had come to personify the fundamental issue of free speech.
The UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights, Juan E. Mendez, has declared that “[s]olitary confinement, [as a punishment] cannot be justified for any reason, precisely because it imposes severe mental pain and suffering beyond any reasonable retribution for criminal behavior and thus constitutes an act defined [as]…torture.”
Every American, whether they operate as a journalist or simply a citizen who believes in the fundamental right of free speech and a free press, must understand the significance of what Assange’s plea deal means—it is a frontal assault on free speech, effectively overturning the landmark Supreme Court decision in The New York Times versus The United Statesthat spawned Hugo Black’s words in defense of this basic American freedom.
Let there be no doubt: Julian Assange is free, but free speech and the notion of a free press is dead in America today, killed by our collective passivity in the face of the brutalization of Julian Assange by the US government for the “crime” of exposing their crimes for all the world to see.
The truth no longer sets us free.
Rather, shining light on the inconvenient truth has become a crime.
America is a far worse place today than it was before our government compelled this plea agreement from Julian Assange.
This is a dark day in the history of our country.
Julian Assange is Free: Washington Crafted “A Face Saving Deal”
PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS via COVERT GEOPOLITICS
If the news report from Sky News that reached me early this morning is not a hoax, the US government, increasingly regarded worldwide as a criminal organization, could not convince British courts to extradite Julian Assange. Washington was unable or unwilling to provide the British assurances that Assange would not be abused and denied his rights.
Many of us think Assange has been abused enough by the British government, which held him in solitary confinement for 62 months, a massive violation of habeas corpus, as a favor to Washington.
Perhaps “British justice” grew tired of the shame of serving as Washington’s jailer and imprisoning a man who has not been convicted of anything. The brownie points that the British were earning from Washington were offset by the appearance of complicity in Washington’s act of vengeance against a journalist who published leaked information embarrassing to Washington.
Perhaps the British judges decided that the 13 years Washington stole from Assange’s life and the life of his wife and children was enough.
Perhaps Washington decided that 13 years of Assange’s incarceration in one form or another sufficed to serve as a warning to all journalists within Washington’s reach not to blow the whistle on Washington’s crimes. For whatever the reason, Washington crafted a face-saving plea deal to end the persecution that destroyed the First Amendment. In exchange for Assange pleading guilty to one count of “conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defense information,” Assange’s sentence will be time served in the British prison.
Thus ends for Assange one of the most shameful episodes in the history of the US government.
Americans will never be able to live down this shame heaped upon them by Washington, because the US Department of Justice (sic) continues to practice it on American citizens themselves.
The corrupt Biden regime, using wrongful conviction and coerced guilty pleas, has sentenced 1,000 Americans who exercised their constitutionally protected rights to protest to prison as “insurrectionists.” (ER: The J6er’s)
The same corrupt regime is prosecuting a former, and many believe current, American President, including his attorneys, on false charges. This tells Americans that if a [controlled opposition] president can be abused in this way, they haven’t a chance. [Or that is what they want us to think] The consequence is that fear causes Americans to give up their rights and submit to Washington’s growing tyranny.
My country today is entirely different from what it was when I was born into it. University and public education is focused on teaching the replacement generations that America is a white racist exploiter and that people can be born into the wrong body, with a person’s gender now determined by self-declaration. The Democrats in the US and the ruling parties in Europe are committed to replacing their ethnic populations with immigrant-invaders. This, together with what is indoctrinated in schools, destroys Western civilization. Already there is very little commitment to it politically and intellectually. White universities are the most rabid denouncers of Western civilization.
By November we should know three things that, depending on how they turn out, will speed up or slow down our demise.
One is that we will know what the Democrats are going to do to Trump, and if it is an outrage whether the people will accept it from fear of being treated as January 6 protesters were treated.
Another is we will know whether the repudiation of ruling European parties in the recent European parliamentary elections carries over into the national French election. If it does, it will signal the return of European nationalism and the beginning of the breakup of NATO and US warmongering.
The third is that we will know if Washington and its European puppets are sufficiently insane to deploy NATO soldiers in Ukraine and to continue to target missiles on Russian civilians as Israel does on Palestinians. If Putin accepts these provocations, as he has previous ones, we could be faced with the rise of a Russian war leader who terminates our existence and that of Europe.
The fact that these three are not focus points in Western discussion means a lack of awareness and preparedness should events develop badly.
Meanwhile, American youth facing conscription and deprogramming as citizens of Western civilization scroll their cell phones in the constant search for entertainment.
Original Article: https://www.europereloaded.com/reaction-to-assanges-liberation/
Note: Comments placed in [ ] are added by Truth11.com editor. For example; [Flu]
Prof Michel Chossudovsky | GlobalResearch.ca
1. Julian Assange is Free, but “Freedom of Speech is Dead”
Julian Assange left Belmarsh maximum security prison on the morning of 24 June. He was granted bail by the High Court in London and was released at Stansted airport during the afternoon, where he boarded a plane and departed the UK.
We must acknowledge the “dodgy nature” of the negotiations with the US DOJ: The deal reached on June 24, was that Assange:
“agrees to plead guilty to ONE felony related to the disclosure of national security information in exchange for his release from Belmarsh Prison in the United Kingdom” (Common Dreams, June 24, 2024)
Holding the Assange Court Case in a Remote “Territorial Court” in the Northern Mariana Islands?
Confirmed by media reports (CBS, BBC): Assange will not spend time in US custody. He will receive “credit for the time spent incarcerated in the UK”.
“Assange will return to Australia, according to a letter from the Justice Department”.
His guilty plea to only ONE charge is slated to be finalized in the “Remote” “District Court” of the Northern Mariana Islands on June 26. The Northern Mariana are remote islands of 50,000 inhabitants in the Pacific North of Guam which belong to the U.S. Commonwealth.
The Criminalization of Justice? Threat to the First Amendment
What is the End-Game of Assange’s “guilty plea” to be decided upon at the hearings of the “Territorial Court’ of the Northern Mariana Islands?
Assange had agreed to plead guilty to “one felony for conspiring to unlawfully obtain and disseminate classified information related to U.S. national defense”, as outlined in a DOJ Letter together with other documents which were filed in U.S. District Court in the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. territory in the Pacific.
Below is the letter of the US Department of Justice (National Security Division) addressed to Hon. Judge Ramona N. Manglosa
This letter dated June 24, 2024 (FILED on the District Court on June 25, 2024) reads as an instruction to the Judge prior to the actual Court Procedure on June 26, 2024.
The Court hearings are pre-determined by the US Department of Justice (DOD) Instructions contained in the Letter.
American Jurisprudence requires a Court Judge who is independent and cannot under any circumstances be instructed by the prosecutors.
The DOD Letter Overrides the Responsibility of the District Court Judge. It scraps the fundamental premise of Judicial Independence. Moreover, the Judge is NOT ALLOWED to make a statement or judgement in Support of Free Speech.
It’s the criminalization of Justice.
See here for supporting legal documents (Document 1 Pages 1-4)
Establishing a Legal Precedent? Demise of the First Amendment
Is the objective of the federal court hearing in Saipan to establish a legal PRECEDENT, whereby both mainstream as well as independent journalists can be prosecuted for “conspiring to unlawfully obtain and disseminate classified information related to U.S. national defense.”
There was a prior commitment to the effect that the Saipan NMI Judge would approve Assange’s plea in accordance with the terms set out in the letter of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) (National Security Division)
“You will be able to walk out of this courtroom a free man,” said Hon Judge Ramona Manglona upon approving your plea.
The terms of the deal were discussed. The Judgment was predetermined, decided in Washington.
Addressing the court, “Assange said he believed the Espionage Act under which he was charged contradicted First Amendment rights in the US Constitution, but that he [WAS FORCED TO] accept [in his plea] that encouraging sources to provide classified information for publication could be unlawful. As a condition of his plea, he will be required to destroy information provided to WikiLeaks.”
Image right. Saipan District Court
Bear in mind the Northern Mariana Islands District Court which was chosen by the US Department of Justice. is not an Article III U.S. District Court:
—Article III District Courts:The 13 United States courts of appeals and the 91 United States district courts (including the districts of D.C. and Puerto Rico.
— Article IV Territorial Courts: The territorial district courts of the Northern Mariana Islands, Guam, and the Virgin Islands
This choice of the Saipan “District Court” was no doubt intentional. Whereas judgments can be appealed (Ninth Circuit), the Article IV territorial Courts are NOT “De Jure” Federal District Courts.
Does this not open up a Pandora’s box regarding the legality of the June 26 “Fake Judgment” pertaining to Julian Assange, all of which emanates from a DoD Letter?
In the words of Scott Ritter:
“By allowing the US government to compel Julian Assange to plead guilty to a crime he did not commit, America has condemned itself to be a land where telling the truth is a crime.” (Scott Ritter)
See the procedures of the Mariana Islands District Court
2. History: Assange was betrayed and misled by those who allegedly supported him.
In October 2021, the U.S. government began a legal challenge to extradite Julian Assange from the U.K. “to face charges of violating the Espionage Act”.
The U.K. Supreme Court turned down Assange’s appeal to “prevent his extradition to the United States”.
On April 20, 2022, a U.K magistrates court formally approved the extradition of Julian Assange to the US “on espionage charges”.
According to Paul C. Roberts:
The most extraordinary thing about Julian Assange is that he is being treated as if he were an American citizen. “Treason” was the original cry, now converted to “espionage.”
There was no espionage. Wikileaks published, and made available to the New York Times, The Guardian, and other media organizations leaked information. The media organizations published the information, just as did Wikileaks, but they are not charged.”
In February 2024 . The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) confirmed that “the prosecution of Assange represents a global threat to media freedom.”
“The ongoing prosecution of Julian Assange jeopardizes media freedom everywhere in the world,” the IFJ and EFJ said in a joint statement.
That statement is contradictory. The mainstream media continues to be the source of extensive media disinformation.
It sustains the lies concerning the Covid crisis and the mRNA vaccine, which has resulted in an upward trend of excess mortality.
It routinely endorses the US-NATO war agenda, while describing the Neo-Nazi Kiev regime as a flourishing democracy.
And now they allegedly come to his rescue.
3. Julian Assange’s Relation with the Mainstream Media
Julian Assange was initially lauded and supported by the mainstream media. In 2008 The Economist, which is partly owned by the Rothschild family granted Assange The New Media Award.
Was this a genuine endorsement of Assange’s commitment to “freedom of the press”? Or was it a public relations ploy?
Assange was framed by those who supported him:
The Guardian, The New York Times, The Economist, Vaughan Smith, George Soros, the Rothschilds, the Council on Foreign Relations, et al.
Assange has been accused by the same corporate media which praised his achievements.
In retrospect, it was a carefully planned operation. The Wiki “Leaks” were selectively “overseen”.
Here are details regarding some of the key players. Below is my 2019 article entitled “Wiki-Gate”: Julian Assange Was Framed, by the People Who Supported Him
4. Henry Vaughan Lockhart Smith
Vaughn Smith is a former British Grenadier Guards captain who came to his rescue. Assange was provided refuge at his house in Norfolk. They had a close friendship.
Vaughn Lockhart Smith was the founder of the London based Frontline Club (A Media entity supported by George Soros’ Open Society Institute).
In 2010, the Frontline Club served as the de facto U.K “headquarters” for Julian Assange.
Vaughan Smith is not an “independent journalist”, He actively collaborated with NATO, as an embedded reporter and cameraman in several US-NATO war theaters including Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Chechnya, and Kosovo
In 1998 –prior to the onslaught of NATO’s war on Yugoslavia– he worked as a video journalist in Kosovo in a production entitled The Valley, which consisted in “documenting” alleged Serbian atrocities against Kosovar Albanians on behalf of US-NATO which invaded Yugoslavia on March 24, 1999.
The video production was carried out with the support of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), whose leader Hashim Thaci became president of Kosovo. In 1998, Thaci was on the Interpol list. Twenty-two years later, Thaci was indicted by the ICTY Hague Tribunal for crimes against humanity including “murder, enforced disappearances, persecution and torture”.
5. David E. Sanger, New York Times
The New York Times was complicit: David E Sanger, Chief Washington correspondent of the NYT was involved in the redacting of Wikileaks in consultation with the US State Department:
“[W]e went through [the cables] so carefully to try to redact material that we thought could be damaging to individuals or undercut ongoing operations. And we even took the very unusual step of showing the 100 cables or so that we were writing from to the U.S. government and asking them if they had additional redactions to suggest.” (See PBS Interview; The Redacting and Selection of Wikileaks documents by the Corporate Media, PBS interview on “Fresh Air” with Terry Gross: December 8, 2010, emphasis added).
David E. Sanger is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and the Aspen Group. The NYT also has links with U.S. intelligence.
It is worth noting that several American journalists, members of the Council on Foreign Relations had interviewed Wikileaks, including Time Magazine’s Richard Stengel (November 30, 2010) and The New Yorker’s Raffi Khatchadurian. (WikiLeaks and Julian Paul Assange : The New Yorker, June 11, 2007)
6. The Insidious Role of the U.S. State Department
In a February 20, 2024 report:
“The United States’ bid to prosecute Julian Assange is “state retaliation”, the High Court has heard in his final bid to escape extradition.
The Wikileaks founder faces extradition to the US over an alleged conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defence information following the publication of hundreds of thousands of leaked documents relating to the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.
In a January 2021 ruling, then-district judge Vanessa Baraitser said that Assange should not be sent to the US, citing a real and “oppressive” risk of suicide, while ruling against him on all other issues.”
The New York Times redaction of classified material was carried out in close consultation with the U.S. State Department (See David Sanger’s statement above).
It’s a bombshell: The State Department was collaborating with the NYT in facilitating the release of classified documents. This in itself raises legal issues.
In a February 21, 2024 report:
“The United States’ bid to prosecute Julian Assange is “state retaliation”, the High Court has heard in his final bid to escape extradition.
The Wikileaks founder faces extradition to the US over an alleged conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defence information following the publication of hundreds of thousands of leaked documents relating to the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.
In a January 2021 ruling, then-district judge Vanessa Baraitser said that Assange should not be sent to the US, citing a real and “oppressive” risk of suicide, while ruling against him on all other issues.”
From a legal standpoint, it is not “State Retaliation”, quite the opposite, it’s “State Collusion”:
The U.S. State Department is on record: It provided a green light to the NYT for the release of redacted classified documents.
Was there not a conflict of interest somewhere? From a legal standpoint, the U.S. State Department was in violation of the Espionage Act.
7. The Open Letter by the NYT, Guardian, Der Spiegel, Le Monde, El Pais
The five major news media which were instrumental in the release and “redacting” of the WikiLeaks documents issued in 2019 a somewhat contradictory joint statement (Open letter) requesting the release of Julian Assange.
They accuse Assange for releasing classified documents on corruption and US government fraud, while acknowledging their role in releasing redacted texts of classified documents. Are they not also in violation of the Espionage Act.
Below is the text of the letter.
An open letter from editors and publishers: Publishing is not a Crime
“Twelve years ago, on 28 November 2010, our five international media outlets – The New York Times, the Guardian, Le Monde, El País and DER SPIEGEL – published a series of revelations in cooperation with Wikileaks that made the headlines around the globe.
“Cable gate”, a set of 251,000 confidential cables from the US State Department disclosed corruption, diplomatic scandals and spy affairs on an international scale.
In the words of The New York Times, the documents told “the unvarnished story of how the government makes its biggest decisions, the decisions that cost the country most heavily in lives and money”. Even now in 2022, journalists and historians continue to publish new revelations, using the unique trove of documents.
For Julian Assange, publisher of Wikileaks, the publication of “Cable gate” and several other related leaks had the most severe consequences. On 11 April 2019, Assange was arrested in London on a US arrest warrant, and has now been held for three and a half years in a high security British prison usually used for terrorists and members of organised crime groups. He faces extradition to the US and a sentence of up to 175 years in an American maximum security prison.
This group of editors and publishers, all of whom had worked with Assange, felt the need to publicly criticise his conduct in 2011 when unredacted copies of the cables were released, and some of us are concerned about the allegations in the indictment that he attempted to aid in computer intrusion of a classified database. But we come together now to express our grave concerns about the continued prosecution of Julian Assange for obtaining and publishing classified materials.
The Obama-Biden Administration, in office during the Wikileaks publication in 2010, refrained from indicting Assange, explaining that they would have had to indict journalists from major news outlets too. Their position placed a premium on press freedom, despite its uncomfortable consequences. Under Donald Trump however, the position changed. The DOJ relied on an old law, the Espionage Act of 1917 (designed to prosecute potential spies during World War 1), which has never been used to prosecute a publisher or broadcaster.
This indictment sets a dangerous precedent, and threatens to undermine America’s First Amendment and the freedom of the press.
Holding governments accountable is part of the core mission of a free press in a democracy.
Obtaining and disclosing sensitive information when necessary in the public interest is a core part of the daily work of journalists. If that work is criminalised, our public discourse and our democracies are made significantly weaker.
Twelve years after the publication of “Cable gate”, it is time for the U.S. government to end its prosecution of Julian Assange for publishing secrets.
Publishing is not a crime.”
The editors and publishers of:
The Guardian, The New York Times, Le Monde, DER SPIEGEL, El País
8. Who are the criminals?
Those who leak secret government documents which provide irrefutable evidence of extensive crimes against humanity or the politicians in high office who order the killings and atrocities?
What is unfolding is not only “the criminalization of the State”, the judicial system is also criminalized with a view to upholding the legitimacy of the war criminals in high office.
And the corporate media through omission, half truths and outright lies upholds war as a peace-making endeavor.
When the lie becomes the truth there is no moving backwards
We stand in solidarity with Julian Assange.
Original Article: https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2024/06/26/professor-michel-chossudovsky-of-global-research-provides-the-history-of-the-julian-assange-saga/
Perpetual War
Truth11 Films 5th short film: We have been tricked into fighting perpetual wars of mass genocide for pointless profit. There is no enemy. The enemy is within the US government. All exterior enemies are created to justify the advancing military industrial complex.
There is only one way war will end. The masses must rise up, unite, and demand world peace.
This film contains the footage released by Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange.
Film Released 2011