Julian Assange

Labour MPs hand letter to Belmarsh prison governor demanding meeting with Assange

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Labour MPs hand letter to Belmarsh prison governor demanding meeting with Assange

LABOUR MPs Richard Burgon and Diane Abbott handed a letter to the governor of HMP Belmarsh today, demanding permission for a meeting with Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.

The two socialist MPs joined Mr Assange’s fiancee Stella Moris outside the prison to deliver the letter on behalf of a parliamentary working group.

Mr Assange remains locked up at the Covid-hit south London prison pending an appeal after he beat an extradition case brought by the US.

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The letter is signed by 20 parliamentarians including former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, MPs Bell Ribeiro-Addy, John McDonnell, Zarah Sultana, Caroline Lucas, Claudia Webbe and members of the House of Lords.

Julian Assange is a ‘journalist of distinction’ & has to be set free, Jeremy Corbyn tells RT outside UK’s Belmarsh Prison

Julian Assange’s case should’ve ended as soon as a UK judge denied his extradition to the US, Jeremy Corbyn, former Labour leader, told RT as he joined other MPs to demand a meeting with the WikiLeaks founder in a London prison.

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Corbyn described Assange as “somebody that has stood up for truth around the world. He’s helped us to understand what happened in Guantanamo Bay and so many places around in the world where the US military has done terrible things. We think that he’s a journalist of distinction.”

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FBI Fabrication Against Assange Falls Apart

Continue ReadingLabour MPs hand letter to Belmarsh prison governor demanding meeting with Assange

WSWS on “Free speech” hypocrisy following Charlie Hebdo

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The World Socialist Website comments on Western “Free Speech” hypocrisy after the strange events of Charlie Hebdo in Paris.

While I support free speech, some reporting has been worse than useless. Does anyone know if there were two or three attackers yet? Were they Kalashnikovs or AK47s? I know what a rocket launcher is, but what’s a rocket grenade launcher? Do you really believe that an attacker left his identity card in the getaway vehicle? How fortunate … and haven’t we heard that one before many times?

“Free Speech” hypocrisy in the aftermath of the attack on Charlie Hebdo

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Throughout Europe and the United States, the claim is being made that the attack on the magazine Charlie Hebdo was an assault on the freedom of the press and the unalienable right of journalists in a democratic society to express themselves without loss of freedom or fear for their lives. The killing of the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists and editors is being proclaimed an assault on the principles of free speech that are, supposedly, held so dear in Europe and the United States. The attack on Charlie Hebdo is, thus, presented as an another outrage by Muslims who cannot tolerate Western “freedoms.” From this the conclusion must be drawn that the “war on terror”—i.e., the imperialist onslaught on the Middle East, Central Asia and North and Central Africa—is an unavoidable necessity.

In the midst of this orgy of democratic hypocrisy, no reference is made to the fact that the American military, in the course of its wars in the Middle East, is responsible for the deaths of at least 15 journalists. In the on-going narrative of “Freedom of Speech Under Attack,” there is no place for any mention of the 2003 air-to-surface missile attack on the offices of Al Jazeera in Baghdad that left three journalists dead and four wounded.

Nor is anything being written or said about the July 2007 murder of two Reuters journalists working in Baghdad, staff photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen and driver Saeed Chmagh. Both men were deliberately targeted by US Apache gunships while on assignment in East Baghdad.

The American and international public was first able to view a video of the cold-blooded murder of the two journalists as well as a group of Iraqis—taken from one of the gunships—as the result of WikiLeaks’ release of classified material that it had obtained from an American soldier, Corporal Bradley Chelsea Manning.

And how has the United States and Europe acted to protect WikiLeaks’ exercise of free speech? Julian Assange, the founder and publisher of WikiLeaks, has been subjected to relentless persecution. Leading political and media figures in the United States and Canada have denounced him as a “terrorist” and demanded his arrest, with some even calling publicly for his murder. Assange is being pursued on fraudulent “rape” charges concocted by American and Swedish intelligence services. He has been compelled to seek sanctuary in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, which is under constant guard by British police who will seize Assange if he steps out of the embassy. As for Chelsea Manning, she is presently in prison, serving out a 35-year sentence for treason.

That is how the great capitalist “democracies” of North America and Europe have demonstrated their commitment to free speech and the safety of journalists!

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Continue ReadingWSWS on “Free speech” hypocrisy following Charlie Hebdo

I don’t want to do this any more

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First revision 13 july 2013

I don’t want to do this any more. I would much prefer to be sailing. I’d like to buy a small boat but then I’d need to be working and earning. I’d like a regular boyfriend. I’d like to drink less and make fewer rather embarrassing remarks.

I don’t want to do this any more. I want to be working and earning so that I can buy a small boat and go sailing. The trouble is that I can’t be working and earning because these bastards get in the way all the time.

I could be working and earning or just working on earning to start with if it wasn’t for these bastards. I’ve got some skill and knowledge with puters – it’s just problem-solving, analysis, understanding systems. I think that I’ve demonstrated that I’m able and bright enough to do that. I am. I have the ability to be a sys admin, network admin, programmer, etc. These bastards will never let me do that.

I know a good crowd who run a social enterprise. Basically it means that they make very little money but at least they are doing some good and improving themselves. I could hang round with them and do some work if it wasn’t for those bastards. Those bastards that interfere all the time spying and prying and breaking networks and things. I’ve tried, I can’t work at the social enterprise that I know.

Looks like I can’t have a boat because of the bastards. [24/07/13 edit: Then earn money doing some different work.]

I don’t want to do this any more. It started years ago around 98 or 99. I was one of the early bloggers. Reality cracking, rejecting the bullshit that they feed us every day, they take us for fools. That’s asking for it.

Ian Blair is quite a pathetic figure really. He’s achieved very little apart from covering up for murder and a big pension. Corrupt and promoted far above his intellect and abilities for political reasons. New Labour to the last he even blamed Boris when he cut the deal with Jacquie. He’s just a useless bastard really, a parasitic tic with the sadim touch.

It is worth looking at Ian Blair’s tenure as boss of the Metropolitan police. You’ll see that he did a lot of politicking and very little policing. There’s a lot of very thinly disguised bullshit going on, a definite agenda other than policing being followed. He was Tony Blair’s butler. I’ve lately been having this image of the two Blairs being cheeks of the same arse sharing a mouth. Ugh.

I don’t really want to do this any more because – contrary to some speculation in the past – I have achieved what I set out to achieve. I have cracked reality. I have reached an understanding of what it’s all about. It’s about a lot of things and about the interactions of a lot of things. I’m not likely to be able to explain even if you were accepting and attentive which is unlikely but perhaps I should try explaining some main points.

The concept of parallax. [Thanks Parallax:)

Things look different according to where you’re looking from.

So, being a suspected terrorist of the self-exploding type I can reason that there are no real terrorists. Since I know for a fact that I am not a terrorist but instead labelled as a terrorist I can reasonably conclude that there are many more similar to me. I am in fact aware that there are many others similar to me. For example, in UK whole political groups of non-terrorists have been labelled terrorists.

What’s going on here then? Are there terrorists or not?

There are certainly terrorists.

There is the odd one or two obviously insane terrorists like the failed shoe bomber. This is interesting because labelling people as terrorists as the authorities do is likely to lead to self-fulfilling prophesies in some cases. It is also likely that that is the intention since there is a definite dearth of terrorist terrorists.

Then there are people who hack people to death on crowded streets in daylight. They’re not terrorists. They’re racially-motivated murderers. Incidentally, it’s interesting to see how the press and media were manipulated in such cases.

Then there are the real terrorists. The SAS got caught with bombs in Basra. Terrorists. We know that they’re terrorists because they had bombs, were disguised, didn’t have a reasonable explanation and were broken out of jail by the UK army.

Then there is the modus operandi of the terrorists. They arrange a security drill to make sure they’re all in place to control the act and the press and media. Then they blame Islam and Muslims, even sometimes making false claims on websites. Sometimes they even sneakily change laws just to make sure they will never be held to account for their terrorism. The timing is also often very convenient or accords to some higher (Non-Muslim) reason.

Then there are terrorist acts which are known as military operations like killing hundreds of thousands on innocent Iraqis or war crimes using banned chemical weapons like white phosphorous. Oh FM don’t mention that, that was the Israelis. Somehow these incidents are not recognised as terrorism.

I’ve got it. Terrorists are the people that the Fascist scum criminals in power are opposed to. So political activists and opponents to scum politicians are terrorists except of course that they’re not: they’re political activists and opponents of scum politicians. You get people like Julian Assange and Edward Snowden labelled as terrorists except of course that they’re not. They’re not even traitors – they’re serving their people and opposing scum politicians / real terrorists.

So why does Islam and Muslims get blamed so much?

Islam and Muslims are a hindrance to Capitalism. Capitalism needs to make more profit and expand into Muslim countries. How can Capitalism do that if these people look after each other and indulge in charitable giving and the like? Capitalism needs to burn that oil.

Is that about it?

That’s about it except about scum politicians. Tony Blair and his bunch of shits weren’t socialists. Nick Clegg and his bunch of shits are not liberals. They’re all Neo-Liberal Neo-Conservatives who have hijacked their respective parties. The UK ‘Liberal Democrats’ are doing some awfully illiberal things because Clegg and his crew are huge Tory bastards pretending to be liberals.

I feel a bit better now. I suppose that I have to do it. Nobody else will.

 

13/07/13 7.50am typos corrected

19/07/13 11am added links

 

Continue ReadingI don’t want to do this any more

Season’s greetings

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Season’s greetings to all.

Julian Assange made an address from his exile at the Ecuadorian Embassy yesterday saying that he is open to try to resolve his situation and that Wikileaks intend to do much more leaking of documents in 2013.

Assuming that the World doesn’t end today, stopping smoking is always a good New Year’s resolution – that’s assuming that you do smoke of course. I’ve stopped smoking for over five weeks. I suggest that ‘cold turkey’ – simply stopping smoking – is the way to go. If you intend to stop smoking, you need to stop smoking. Patches, pills and anything else is simply not addressing the issue.

Continue ReadingSeason’s greetings