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Assange Hearing Day 6

360 points by k1m 6y ago

techdragon 6y ago
The more of these I read the stranger I find the conduct of Baraitser as a Judge. I may not be an expert on English Law but it’s not hard to see how under any kind of argumentative process of adjudication, where two sides present their facts and are expected to cross examine, object, and argue as part of the process... that someone could make any of the sorts of pre-written statements that Baraitser has done on multiple occasions so far. Baraitser continues to feel like someone who is merely going through the motions waiting for their pay check and who would much rather not even be there. The pre-written statement stuff also has the stink of prejudice in the most literal sense of the word. So I just cannot even fathom how it hasn’t warranted immediate sanction given the stupid amount of evidence available.
- wearsshoes 6y ago
  To be fair, if I were her I wouldn’t want to be there either. Two governments breathing down my back, my career on the line? Even if I wasn’t only allowed to preside this case because I had the right sympathies - how many other things in my life will I sacrifice for one moment of integrity?
raxxorrax 6y ago
If accusers were kicked out for theft, lying and stealing, you can reasonably sure the FBI made a deal like a good mafia would.
dgellow 6y ago
The title seems to have a typo, it is the hearing day number 6, not number 2.
- k1m 6y ago
  Thank you! Fixed.
  - mAritz 6y ago
    edit: In fact from what I can tell, this is all about day 1 of the hearing. Day 2 is today. According to several other sources [1][2] it seems to me like "2" was correct and the title of the article is wrong. Or are they talking about different things when they refer to this day number? [1] from another comment here in this threrad https://twitter.com/kgosztola/status/1302888230115737600 https://twitter.com/kgosztola/status/1302888230115737600 day 1 yesterday and day 2 today: https://twitter.com/kgosztola/status/1303251577344413696 https://twitter.com/kgosztola/status/1303251577344413696 [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKzXs6kXAac https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKzXs6kXAac (German video summary by someone working in the EU parliament for a small party - but it has "Tag 1" (Day 1) and yesterdays date in the title)
    - k1m 6y ago
      My guess is that he's numbering sequentially from the hearings earlier in the year, e.g. https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2020/02/your-man-in-the-public-gallery-assange-hearing-day-1/ https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2020/02/your-man-in-...
lucasnortj 6y ago
Craig Murray is a conspiracy theorist and Assange is a micro megalomaniac and sex offender. Screw both of them
peteretep 6y ago
This is some truly appalling writing, right from the get to: > I went to the Old Bailey today expecting to be awed by the majesty of the law No you fucking didn’t, I’ve read more than one of these and he was expecting a shit-show and is now reporting on it, with barely veiled suggestions the judge is in on some kind of conspiracy. Craig Murray is the archetypal formerly useful and credible human being who has gone off the deep end, much like the medical doctors who are speaking at Covid Conspiracy rallies. Ugh.
- gadders 6y ago
  I think I'm pretty far from him politically, but he is an interesting read. Particularly the various conspiracies around the Novichok poisoning in Salisbury.
- patrickaljord 6y ago
  Disagreeing with the mainstream narrative doesn't automatically make you a crazy conspiracy theorist you know.
  - hanselot 6y ago
    Considering the background surrounding Assange, I think its almost questionable to not think there is a conspiracy against him.
  - peteretep 6y ago
    No, but he is.
- vidarh 6y ago
  It is quite interesting that you argue against his sarcastic hyperbole with ridiculous hyperbole of your own rather than engaging with his actual arguments.
Tepix 6y ago
A farce. And a big disgrace for the UK.
- jonathanstrange 6y ago
  Absolutely. Assange is facing up to 175 years in solitary confinement and could not possibly get a fair trial in the US. Moreover, He has been illegally recorded and spied upon for the past 7 years by the CIA, including conversations with his lawyer. A case can hardly get more politically motivated than this. He even received death threats from US politicians in the past. It would be ridiculous to extradite anyone under such conditions.
  - mike_d 6y ago
    > He has been illegally recorded and spied upon Which law in what country was broken? The CIA is chartered to spy overseas, against foreigners. Assange is not in the US, not an American citizen, and has ties to Russian intelligence. I'm not aware of any law that affords him any protection.
    - bogle 6y ago
      Spying is, of course, illegal in every country that is spied upon. Assange has been in Ecuador and the United Kingdom. Neither country may permit the interception of confidential conversations between a client and their legal counsel.
- bogle 6y ago
  We do as we are told to do (and there's something in the English character that likes it like that). Current Prime Minister is an American (renounced his citizenship in 2016 after a large tax bill) and there are many other unquestioning free-market cultists here: see Brexit for further examples.
  - pjc50 6y ago
    The appointment of Tony Abbott as a trade negotiator for seemingly no other reason that being a Murdoch darling is the latest outrage on that front.
gadders 6y ago
Also worth mentioning that Craig Murray is facing legal issues of his own in relation to the trial of Alex Salmond in Scotland: https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2020/09/craig-murray-defence-appeal-renewed/ https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2020/09/craig-murray... //edit// I posted this in case anyone wanted to chip in for his defence fund, not to attack his credibility.
- tilthis 6y ago
  Oh, I had not heard anything about this coverage of the Alex Salmond case. Thanks very much for bringing this to my attention, I live in Scotland and the whole thing has been very odd.
  - gadders 6y ago
    Yes, if Craig is to be believed it looks like there is a big slice of SNP in-fighting involved.
    - M2Ys4U 6y ago
      Murray is not the most... reliable person ever, though. He certainly engages in some odd conspiracy theories (see, for example, his stance that Russia was not responsible for using Novichok in Salisbury in 2018)
      - hutzlibu 6y ago
        "see, for example, his stance that Russia was not responsible for using Novichok in Salisbury in 2018" I don't know anyhing about Murray, but tell me again, what was the evidence again, that the russian government was behind it? And for what reason? And why with a substance they are famous for? And not just a bullet/car accident? Why use a very deadly secret toxin? (which happened to not be so deadly apparently) (And a substance btw. where the formula got out and is in posession for examlple of western agencies)
        6y ago
Semaphor 6y ago
https://outline.com/sVp2TY https://outline.com/sVp2TY For those who also can’t concentrate on just reading the article thanks to the scroll hijack
r721 6y ago
Live updates on twitter (by Kevin Gosztola): https://twitter.com/kgosztola/status/1303251577344413696 https://twitter.com/kgosztola/status/1303251577344413696 First day: https://twitter.com/kgosztola/status/1302888230115737600 https://twitter.com/kgosztola/status/1302888230115737600
- readred 6y ago
  thanks
dalbasal 6y ago
A lot of time has past since the Assange saga started, and the pertinence to UK politics has gone from top-of-mind to minor. Combined with covid & brexit, this farce has an unthinkable chance of passing without much attention. To anyone in the UK, please make an effort to stay informed. Thank you to the author for your coverage. You are a patriot, in George Orwell's sense of the term.
roenxi 6y ago
Assange's crime here is embarrassing powerful people. On the one hand, we are never going to get a law that explicitly states this is a crime. On the other hand, that seems unlikely to matter. The US is apparently happy to literally scour the world for places where Assange has done something wrong if the Iceland claim is even a half-truth. The basic issue that this article goes to is that the judge has broad discretionary power to hurry the defence along, and is using it. That is not unreasonable - defence by stalling tactics can't a legitimate strategy, so the judge must have those powers and be free to exercise them at her discretion. It is appropriate for the judge to have powers to guillotine witness time and to make procedural decisions. Even if they are unusual decisions. The only thing Assange's defenders can hope for here is a great case study of how the US government doesn't care about details, they will reach out and try to grab anyone who makes it clear how they are operating. And then develop a rationalisation after the fact. Really the most interesting thing in this article is the pervasive misspelling of "Sweden" as "the United States". I seem to recall a whole bunch of people arguing that Assange wasn't going to be extradited to the United States once they extracted him from the embassy. Possibly I am not remembering correctly and nobody admits to arguing that now.
- pjc50 6y ago
  The facts change: the charges against him were dropped/timed out in Sweden, and then the US started an extradition request. The idea that it was harder to extradite him to the US from the UK than from Sweden, and that the extradition to Sweden was a pretext, was a very odd one - a priori I would have said it was the other way round.
  - belorn 6y ago
    You have switched the time stamps. The US started their extradition request and then Sweden dropped the case. The exact date was on 2 May 2019 when the first hearing was held in London into the United States request for Assange's extradition. The Swedish prosecution announced that their 7 years investigation had been dropped on 19 November 2019.
  - acqq 6y ago
    As far as I remember, Sweden did deliver to the US certain wanted people practically without a court procedure (or with less than it's certain it would be needed in the UK). It's not that Sweden or the UK would not deliver somebody to the US, it's that in the UK the procedure is more complex. Apparently, the US would have needed to fulfill less formalities to get him from Sweden, and that is what Assange worried about. But as he spent enough time in the embassy, that advantage of Sweden became irrelevant.
malwarebytess 6y ago
Cases like these reveal the rot at the heart of western governments. In what sense is what Craig Murray has just relayed to us justice? It seems perfunctory, a stage play, to disguise the reality that the judgement has already been handed down. I remember when it was denied, forcefully and repeatedly, for nearly a decade that the US was behind the Swedish extradition conspiracy. That there was no ongoing US attempt to get their hands on Julian. That he was in the embassy for no good reason. Now we see that there was very good reason for him to remain in that embassy. There is no justice when you cross a corrupt empire.
- nuker 6y ago
  > rot at the heart of western governments Lets name names. US and UK the lap dog.
  - rosege 6y ago
    And Australia (Source: Am Australian and Google Witness K for evidence)
    - ChuckNorris89 6y ago
      So, the Five Eyes countries basically. ... And the EU countries. ... And the non-EU countries. ... Basically the whole world, if you piss off the rich and powerful you'll suffer.
      - nuker 6y ago
        Nope. All of EU were decent on this, except Sweden, which was on and off and on.
        ChuckNorris89 6y ago
        Austria grounded the plane of the Bolivian president because the US thought Snowden was on board and it's not even a member of NATO. The US can persuade or twist the arm of any EU nation to get want it wants. When dealing with the US, none of them will take the high road.
simion314 6y ago
What a joke, with all the energy US and their friends put into it and they still have to use such shameful tactics to block a fair trial. The already poor image of Western powers is getting even worse, the fucking "values" are shown to be just a propaganda, if you upset the leaders you don't get poisoned but you get a similar bad faith( honestly I think if Assange was in US we would have gotten the news that he committed suicide and for some reason the cameras did not work and the guards were busy ).
- raxxorrax 6y ago
  Overall it is a far, far greater threat to security than the necessary leak itself. Not only do governments and their judiciary look weak and hypocritical, they also actively undermine the trust in their own institutions. This fear to face these issues could really be the end of US hegemony.
  - dane-pgp 6y ago
    The implicit excuse of the US during the Cold War was "It's okay if we break a few rules, because we're fighting against an opponent that is literally evil". That excuse starts to break down when the two sides become more and more similar, which might be what we're seeing now, but it's never a good situation to be in, even before it breaks down. See also, the internal US political scene.
- wazoox 6y ago
  We're firmly at the point where I strongly doubt that anything significant is actually happening in Xinjiang and Hong-Kong (compared to the general high level of repression and dictatorship in whole China -- I don't mean that China is a model in any way). Particularly in HK, the police repressive violence was for months at a significantly lower level than French police violence against the yellow vests (just to remind you that several thousands yellow vests were jailed, and a significant number still are on more or less dubious pretenses -- but Macron is a nice polite guy, and China is an adversary). Another funny story is this supposed "good guy" Navalny (I don't believe any funny story about him either). The guy declared himself "pro-western" and a Putin opponent, therefore he's always depicted as some sort of white knight or something. Check his political program: this guy is a xenophobic nationalist worse than Putin, he even planned to throw out all foreigners from Russia. As Roosevelt once said, "he's a bastard, but he's our bastard". Disgusting, and all of the mainstream media in the West (US lackeys?) harp on how bad Putin is and how cool Navalny is (did you notice that Putin apparently didn't move a finger to prevent Navalny from leaving Russia? How weird for someone he supposedly wanted dead a few days before). Last one for the road: did you hear that a Turkish lawyer, Ebru Timtik, died in jail recently in Turkey? She was on a hunger strike. But hey, Erdogan is "our bastard" so all is fine and dandy, I suppose.
tomalpha 6y ago
The Assange saga is clearly very polarising. Different people have extremely strong views on both sides. Trying hard to steer a neutral course in this comment, there are a few things that stand out to me in and about this article, and the case: 1. The author is clearly on one of those sides 2. The author, along with like-minded others, want and expect the court hearings around the extradition to consider the case(s) in some detail. 3. The state and, I'd guess other individuals with different views to the author, want the court hearings to focus narrowly on the technical aspects of the extradition process itself. Personally I'm unconvinced by at least some of the arguments that the author puts forwards, and I would like to see further, more neutral reporting around the case. The partisanship of the author (whether justified or not) on at least some points makes it hard for me to have confidence in the rest of the post.
- raxxorrax 6y ago
  Which arguments convince you and which don't?
- implements 6y ago
  My understanding is that a journalist can receive and publish unlawfully obtained material, but they can’t incite or assist someone to obtain it. Does sufficient evidence exist that Assange broke US law? If so it would seem that he’s extraditable - and I’m not sure how the ‘bigger picture’ (‘Whistleblower’ public interest, ‘time served’ in the Embassy) overrides UK’s legal obligations here.
  - dalbasal 6y ago
    >"* Does sufficient evidence exist that Assange broke US law*" I don't believe this is the full extent of extradition conditions.
  - hutzlibu 6y ago
    "Does sufficient evidence exist that Assange broke US law?" It used to be, that you only can break a state law, if you are within that state. (with rare exceptions). That seems to be history.
kmlx 6y ago
> Unlike our adversaries including the Integrity Initiative, the 77th Brigade, Bellingcat, the Atlantic Council and hundreds of other warmongering propaganda operations wut?
- pjc50 6y ago
  Craig Murray is a crank. He's a former ambassador, and he's also right about quite a lot of things, but he's also got the fundamental problem of seeing enemies everywhere. Bellingcat, for example, is just another blogger, although doing "OSINT" to, for example, locate the BUK launcher likely used in the shooting down of MH17, and with various claims as to the involvment of GRU officers in poisonings such as Salisbury and Navalny. 77th Brigade is a British Army propaganda unit. "Integrity Initiative" are widely suspected to be such.
  - auggierose 6y ago
    As a former ambassador, he probably knows that enemies ARE everywhere.
  - pessimizer 6y ago
    > Bellingcat, for example, is just another blogger This is a weirder take than any of Craig Murray's.
- M2Ys4U 6y ago
  Murray is a known conspiracy theorist, he went off the deep end some time ago...
  - zadkey 6y ago
    Claims should be evaluated individually based on their merits. Overly broad labels such as conspiracy theorist prohibit meaningful discussion of the merits or demerits of the individual theories and are in general a cognitive shortcut that people use to give themselves the excuse to casually discredit and disregard what someone says without meaningfully getting to know the character or claims of the individual. More concisely, it is a term used to promote intellectual laziness over due diligence of investigation.
tomalpha 6y ago
https://www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance/extradition https://www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance/extradition has a lot of details on what an extradition court hearing can/must consider, and the legal basis of arguments against a non-consensual extradition (which this case clearly is). It bears reading through, regardless of your personal views on the case, because this is what the UK's prosecution service thinks the law is. It's likely to be the same or close to the UK Government / 'state' view too and indicative of what the presiding magistrate in the case is working off.
mothsonasloth 6y ago
Assange is the litmus test that privacy concerns are not safe from being monopolised by one part of the political spectrum. Before Trump and the Clinton leaks, Assange was a darling for the liberal media and even on the conservative ring. Then when the leaks came out, Assange became a figure of hate for the same liberal groups who were praising and supporting him before. Now ironically its people on both sides of the fringe that have remained stalwart in supporting him. The middle have declared him "problematic" and have decided to throw him under the carpet along with all the privacy concerns and government overreach of surveillance that he and WikiLeaks had highlighted. Sure this is just human nature that people come and go out of favour, but this 180 flip is just hypocritical (especially with the Guardian becoming hostile to him). What we are seeing here in the court room, is powerful people who want rid of him, not even treating him like a bargaining chip. Just literally wanting to sweep him away like a nuisance.
- croon 6y ago
  I'm digressing from this specific case, I too am a strong critic of the US being globally handsy, but I instead want to focus on the public discourse. There's nothing ironic or hypocritical about it. You can appreciate earlier leaks about governmental/agency misconduct in the pursuit of transparency. Then wikileaks (if not Assange specifically) took it upon themselves to meddle in elections, selectively leaking DNC hacked data and not the RNC equivalent, antithetical to transparency. Public opinion didn't do a 180, wikileaks did. https://apnews.com/ce9a4541f903109079900528d9f0a9e7 https://apnews.com/ce9a4541f903109079900528d9f0a9e7 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-russia-senate/senate-committee-concludes-russia-used-manafort-wikileaks-to-boost-trump-in-2016-idUSKCN25E1US https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-russia-senate/s... https://theintercept.com/2018/02/14/julian-assange-wikileaks-election-clinton-trump/ https://theintercept.com/2018/02/14/julian-assange-wikileaks...
  - hanselot 6y ago
    Yet, before those documents leaked, it was not so obvious how biased the US/Western media was. After the wikileaks fiasco, and more importantly, how the MSM downplayed it and tried to sweep it under the rug, how could anyone have any faith left in "credible sources".
GeneralTspoon 6y ago
Can some legal eagle explain why a magistrate is presiding over the case, rather than a judge? (For those who don't know, in the UK a magistrate is just a layperson volunteer, not a legally trained judge)
- oliwarner 6y ago
  They're a judge. https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Vanessa_Baraitser https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Vanessa_Baraitser (hack piece also by author of TFA)
  - mrow84 6y ago
    Tfa is by Craig Murray whereas the edit history of the wikispooks piece [0] at least claims to be by Patrick Haseldine. What makes you say to the contrary? [0] https://wikispooks.com/w/index.php?title=Vanessa_Baraitser&action=history https://wikispooks.com/w/index.php?title=Vanessa_Baraitser&a...
    - oliwarner 6y ago
      You're absolutely correct, that was my mistake. I think I saw that the related documents are Craig's blog posts and interpreted that table incorrectly. The tone being very similar didn't help.
- M2Ys4U 6y ago
  IANAL or legal expert, but: Magistrates' courts are where criminal cases are first dealt with in English law. If the offence is indictable then the next step will be to move the case to the crown court (unless the offence is an "either way" offence and the summary procedure is elected instead). So it would make sense to me that extradition hearings are dealt with, in the first instance, by a magistrates' court; after all the court is not actually determining guilt, but merely whether there's a prima facie evidence of guilt. There are procedural safeguards in place, namely that one may appeal to the High Court (and then, ultimately, the Supreme Court) if the magistrate's court send the case to the Secretary of State for approval and the latter approves the extradition.
linspace 6y ago
From the article: "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." I'm trying to understand nonetheless why still they chose to sit together.
fareesh 6y ago
The fact that this is a relatively obscure story and the otherwise vocal western media journalists who screech about press freedom when someone is mean to them are so silent about it by comparison, is frankly really disgusting to witness. It's embarrassing.
- bboygravity 6y ago
  The political (US) indoctrination is incredibly effective in the Western world I feel. I'm from The Netherlands (living abroad now in the EU) and most people there believe that the 100% state sponsored news is mostly factual, with good intent and unbiased, because we are the good people. This news is consumed by the vast majority of Dutch. From what I've seen in other EU countries is that their news systems are comparable (owned by a handful of companies and/or completely reliant on state sponsoring). Ask a person on the street about Assange and assuming they know who you're talking about their image of him will most likely be: scary criminal sociopath nerd rapist who leaked important military state secrets and doesn't wash himself. "Coincidentally" that's the opinion in the best interest of the US elite who's egos where hurt by Assange. This is to say: the consent which the political US manufactures is extremely effective outside of the US as well. It seems to me the US has full control over media in any Western country for any issue that matters to the US. At school we where/are actively taught that this sort of manipulation only happens in evil dictatorships and can never ever happen "here". The majority of people seem to believe this strongly. I find all of this mind blowing and tragic. When Assange gets sent to the US the feelings of the vast majority of people in the Western world will be "ah, good, that's another bad guy out of the way". And guess what: they'd think the same about Snowden if he ever gets suicided/dissapeared/extradited/used as political change.
  - dontcarethrow2 6y ago
    Reminds me of a quote: "It's hard to see yourself a villain when you think you're the hero."
  - bgorman 6y ago
    This is one of the v things Donald Trump is helping address. He has called CNN "fake news", and is generally making a mockery of the press and truth. Trump is correct that CNN, MSNBC and the New York times are propoganda machines. It if getting less subtle all the time
sschueller 6y ago
Let's not forget this is a trial to shot the messenger of a war crime for which no one has been held accountable for. Hillary Clinton and many others actually made the remark that what Assange is doing is putting American lives at risk. So in essence saying American lives are worth more than other humans.
- chrisweekly 6y ago
  Your comment is a tangent, but I feel compelled to point out that a US Secretary of State has an obligation to prioritize American lives over those of other countries' citizens.
  - pessimizer 6y ago
    There is absolutely no obligation of a US Secretary of State that they consider the lives of Americans who murder other countries' citizens more important than the lives of those other countries' citizens. I'm not sure where you read or heard this.
    - chrisweekly 6y ago
      That's quite a leap, and a strawman "argument". I said nothing of the kind.
  - whatshisface 6y ago
    There may be a competing duty to deal with war crimes somewhere in there as well... "Your side can do absolutely anything and it's still in the right" is a very common idea in national capitals around the world, but some would disagree with it.
- MisterBastahrd 6y ago
  Have you ever been to America? There is no politician on either side of the political aisle who would ever openly disagree with that statement.
motohagiography 6y ago
The Assange odyssey may be the Dreyfus Affair of our time. As insane as this reads, the job of litigators is not to make sense, it is to press whatever possible advantage they can construe. They are not in the pursuit of truth, that is not what the court establishes. If a litigator is on the receiving end of public outrage for things like the absolutely insane assertions by the prosecution, they take it as credit for doing their job. This professional contempt for truth and principle outside the narrow constraints of legalism is what gives lawyers the reputation for being assholes, and what makes some of them insufferable when their work habits bleed into their personal lives. The trouble in this case that I read from these updates is that the judge is clearly acting like a second prosecutor. I blame it on a generation of people who don't understand impartiality, and who see it as a weakness because they don't need to be impartial if they "know" what they are encountering. Once they have internalized the notion of history as progress, attacks on levers and institutions that can facilitate it are attacks on progress itself. They are litigating ideology, and law is just a host or vehicle. In exposing corruption in the most powerful institutions in the world, to his persecutors Assange's crimes are against progress itself, and I don't think they are capable of impartiality.
- toyg 6y ago
  Would have upvoted for the parallels to Dreyfus (which are there), but downvoted for some reasoning in the last paragraph that I think are a bit of a stretch. Bad judges have existed in governments of all ages, even when the concept of "history as progress" didn't even exist (or was even the opposite, with the judicial system feeling like the last defense against widespread corruption and decay). It's simply that judges are themselves the expression of the system that selected them, and as such are naturally defensive towards the existing order of things. To get where they are, they have made alliances, accepted compromises, exchanged favors. They built a social capital that they would stand to lose from upsets to the established order. We remember the times when they go against those insticts precisely because they are so few and far between.
  - motohagiography 6y ago
    Judges aren't just bureaucrats. Their role is held to a higher standard than petty interest. When they are compromised, they need to leave. The US system has judges elected, where the british and commonwealth system is by appointment, and few would argue that the mentally ill are not well represented in both their ranks, but there is a level of petulance in some of them that indicates risk of a total compromise of the institution.
jjgreen 6y ago
This story is pretty-much absent from the UK news. Radio 4's 6pm news had time to report a magnitude 3.3 earthquake in Leyton Buzzard (no structural damage), but a miscarriage of justice unrolling before their eyes? Not interested.
slim 6y ago
I feel ashamed and powerless for not being able to help Assange
cutler 6y ago
Anyone know what tech stack the original Wikileaks was built on? There's not much on Google, it seems, other than much later when the Panama Papers were released.
CassSunscreen 6y ago
Assange is being forced into the endgame, everyone should download his deadman's switch that he put out
scoot_718 6y ago
Surprised anyone would waste their time defending Assange.

360 points by k1m 6y ago

The more of these I read the stranger I find the conduct of Baraitser as a Judge. I may not be an expert on English Law but it’s not hard to see how under any kind of argumentative process of adjudication, where two sides present their facts and are expected to cross examine, object, and argue as part of the process... that someone could make any of the sorts of pre-written statements that Baraitser has done on multiple occasions so far. Baraitser continues to feel like someone who is merely going through the motions waiting for their pay check and who would much rather not even be there. The pre-written statement stuff also has the stink of prejudice in the most literal sense of the word. So I just cannot even fathom how it hasn’t warranted immediate sanction given the stupid amount of evidence available.

wearsshoes 6y ago
To be fair, if I were her I wouldn’t want to be there either. Two governments breathing down my back, my career on the line? Even if I wasn’t only allowed to preside this case because I had the right sympathies - how many other things in my life will I sacrifice for one moment of integrity?

raxxorrax 6y ago

If accusers were kicked out for theft, lying and stealing, you can reasonably sure the FBI made a deal like a good mafia would.

dgellow 6y ago

The title seems to have a typo, it is the hearing day number 6, not number 2.

k1m 6y ago
Thank you! Fixed.
- mAritz 6y ago
  edit: In fact from what I can tell, this is all about day 1 of the hearing. Day 2 is today. According to several other sources [1][2] it seems to me like "2" was correct and the title of the article is wrong. Or are they talking about different things when they refer to this day number? [1] from another comment here in this threrad https://twitter.com/kgosztola/status/1302888230115737600 https://twitter.com/kgosztola/status/1302888230115737600 day 1 yesterday and day 2 today: https://twitter.com/kgosztola/status/1303251577344413696 https://twitter.com/kgosztola/status/1303251577344413696 [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKzXs6kXAac https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKzXs6kXAac (German video summary by someone working in the EU parliament for a small party - but it has "Tag 1" (Day 1) and yesterdays date in the title)
  - k1m 6y ago
    My guess is that he's numbering sequentially from the hearings earlier in the year, e.g. https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2020/02/your-man-in-the-public-gallery-assange-hearing-day-1/ https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2020/02/your-man-in-...

lucasnortj 6y ago

Craig Murray is a conspiracy theorist and Assange is a micro megalomaniac and sex offender. Screw both of them

peteretep 6y ago

This is some truly appalling writing, right from the get to: > I went to the Old Bailey today expecting to be awed by the majesty of the law No you fucking didn’t, I’ve read more than one of these and he was expecting a shit-show and is now reporting on it, with barely veiled suggestions the judge is in on some kind of conspiracy. Craig Murray is the archetypal formerly useful and credible human being who has gone off the deep end, much like the medical doctors who are speaking at Covid Conspiracy rallies. Ugh.

gadders 6y ago
I think I'm pretty far from him politically, but he is an interesting read. Particularly the various conspiracies around the Novichok poisoning in Salisbury.
patrickaljord 6y ago
Disagreeing with the mainstream narrative doesn't automatically make you a crazy conspiracy theorist you know.
- hanselot 6y ago
  Considering the background surrounding Assange, I think its almost questionable to not think there is a conspiracy against him.
- peteretep 6y ago
  No, but he is.
vidarh 6y ago
It is quite interesting that you argue against his sarcastic hyperbole with ridiculous hyperbole of your own rather than engaging with his actual arguments.

Tepix 6y ago

A farce. And a big disgrace for the UK.

jonathanstrange 6y ago
Absolutely. Assange is facing up to 175 years in solitary confinement and could not possibly get a fair trial in the US. Moreover, He has been illegally recorded and spied upon for the past 7 years by the CIA, including conversations with his lawyer. A case can hardly get more politically motivated than this. He even received death threats from US politicians in the past. It would be ridiculous to extradite anyone under such conditions.
- mike_d 6y ago
  > He has been illegally recorded and spied upon Which law in what country was broken? The CIA is chartered to spy overseas, against foreigners. Assange is not in the US, not an American citizen, and has ties to Russian intelligence. I'm not aware of any law that affords him any protection.
  - bogle 6y ago
    Spying is, of course, illegal in every country that is spied upon. Assange has been in Ecuador and the United Kingdom. Neither country may permit the interception of confidential conversations between a client and their legal counsel.
bogle 6y ago
We do as we are told to do (and there's something in the English character that likes it like that). Current Prime Minister is an American (renounced his citizenship in 2016 after a large tax bill) and there are many other unquestioning free-market cultists here: see Brexit for further examples.
- pjc50 6y ago
  The appointment of Tony Abbott as a trade negotiator for seemingly no other reason that being a Murdoch darling is the latest outrage on that front.

gadders 6y ago

Also worth mentioning that Craig Murray is facing legal issues of his own in relation to the trial of Alex Salmond in Scotland: https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2020/09/craig-murray-defence-appeal-renewed/ https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2020/09/craig-murray... //edit// I posted this in case anyone wanted to chip in for his defence fund, not to attack his credibility.

tilthis 6y ago
Oh, I had not heard anything about this coverage of the Alex Salmond case. Thanks very much for bringing this to my attention, I live in Scotland and the whole thing has been very odd.
- gadders 6y ago
  Yes, if Craig is to be believed it looks like there is a big slice of SNP in-fighting involved.
  - M2Ys4U 6y ago
    Murray is not the most... reliable person ever, though. He certainly engages in some odd conspiracy theories (see, for example, his stance that Russia was not responsible for using Novichok in Salisbury in 2018)
    - hutzlibu 6y ago
      "see, for example, his stance that Russia was not responsible for using Novichok in Salisbury in 2018" I don't know anyhing about Murray, but tell me again, what was the evidence again, that the russian government was behind it? And for what reason? And why with a substance they are famous for? And not just a bullet/car accident? Why use a very deadly secret toxin? (which happened to not be so deadly apparently) (And a substance btw. where the formula got out and is in posession for examlple of western agencies)
      - 6y ago

Semaphor 6y ago

https://outline.com/sVp2TY https://outline.com/sVp2TY For those who also can’t concentrate on just reading the article thanks to the scroll hijack

r721 6y ago

Live updates on twitter (by Kevin Gosztola): https://twitter.com/kgosztola/status/1303251577344413696 https://twitter.com/kgosztola/status/1303251577344413696 First day: https://twitter.com/kgosztola/status/1302888230115737600 https://twitter.com/kgosztola/status/1302888230115737600

readred 6y ago
thanks

dalbasal 6y ago

A lot of time has past since the Assange saga started, and the pertinence to UK politics has gone from top-of-mind to minor. Combined with covid & brexit, this farce has an unthinkable chance of passing without much attention. To anyone in the UK, please make an effort to stay informed. Thank you to the author for your coverage. You are a patriot, in George Orwell's sense of the term.

roenxi 6y ago

Assange's crime here is embarrassing powerful people. On the one hand, we are never going to get a law that explicitly states this is a crime. On the other hand, that seems unlikely to matter. The US is apparently happy to literally scour the world for places where Assange has done something wrong if the Iceland claim is even a half-truth. The basic issue that this article goes to is that the judge has broad discretionary power to hurry the defence along, and is using it. That is not unreasonable - defence by stalling tactics can't a legitimate strategy, so the judge must have those powers and be free to exercise them at her discretion. It is appropriate for the judge to have powers to guillotine witness time and to make procedural decisions. Even if they are unusual decisions. The only thing Assange's defenders can hope for here is a great case study of how the US government doesn't care about details, they will reach out and try to grab anyone who makes it clear how they are operating. And then develop a rationalisation after the fact. Really the most interesting thing in this article is the pervasive misspelling of "Sweden" as "the United States". I seem to recall a whole bunch of people arguing that Assange wasn't going to be extradited to the United States once they extracted him from the embassy. Possibly I am not remembering correctly and nobody admits to arguing that now.

pjc50 6y ago
The facts change: the charges against him were dropped/timed out in Sweden, and then the US started an extradition request. The idea that it was harder to extradite him to the US from the UK than from Sweden, and that the extradition to Sweden was a pretext, was a very odd one - a priori I would have said it was the other way round.
- belorn 6y ago
  You have switched the time stamps. The US started their extradition request and then Sweden dropped the case. The exact date was on 2 May 2019 when the first hearing was held in London into the United States request for Assange's extradition. The Swedish prosecution announced that their 7 years investigation had been dropped on 19 November 2019.
- acqq 6y ago
  As far as I remember, Sweden did deliver to the US certain wanted people practically without a court procedure (or with less than it's certain it would be needed in the UK). It's not that Sweden or the UK would not deliver somebody to the US, it's that in the UK the procedure is more complex. Apparently, the US would have needed to fulfill less formalities to get him from Sweden, and that is what Assange worried about. But as he spent enough time in the embassy, that advantage of Sweden became irrelevant.

malwarebytess 6y ago

Cases like these reveal the rot at the heart of western governments. In what sense is what Craig Murray has just relayed to us justice? It seems perfunctory, a stage play, to disguise the reality that the judgement has already been handed down. I remember when it was denied, forcefully and repeatedly, for nearly a decade that the US was behind the Swedish extradition conspiracy. That there was no ongoing US attempt to get their hands on Julian. That he was in the embassy for no good reason. Now we see that there was very good reason for him to remain in that embassy. There is no justice when you cross a corrupt empire.

nuker 6y ago
> rot at the heart of western governments Lets name names. US and UK the lap dog.
- rosege 6y ago
  And Australia (Source: Am Australian and Google Witness K for evidence)
  - ChuckNorris89 6y ago
    So, the Five Eyes countries basically. ... And the EU countries. ... And the non-EU countries. ... Basically the whole world, if you piss off the rich and powerful you'll suffer.
    - nuker 6y ago
      Nope. All of EU were decent on this, except Sweden, which was on and off and on.
      - ChuckNorris89 6y ago
        Austria grounded the plane of the Bolivian president because the US thought Snowden was on board and it's not even a member of NATO. The US can persuade or twist the arm of any EU nation to get want it wants. When dealing with the US, none of them will take the high road.

simion314 6y ago

What a joke, with all the energy US and their friends put into it and they still have to use such shameful tactics to block a fair trial. The already poor image of Western powers is getting even worse, the fucking "values" are shown to be just a propaganda, if you upset the leaders you don't get poisoned but you get a similar bad faith( honestly I think if Assange was in US we would have gotten the news that he committed suicide and for some reason the cameras did not work and the guards were busy ).

raxxorrax 6y ago
Overall it is a far, far greater threat to security than the necessary leak itself. Not only do governments and their judiciary look weak and hypocritical, they also actively undermine the trust in their own institutions. This fear to face these issues could really be the end of US hegemony.
- dane-pgp 6y ago
  The implicit excuse of the US during the Cold War was "It's okay if we break a few rules, because we're fighting against an opponent that is literally evil". That excuse starts to break down when the two sides become more and more similar, which might be what we're seeing now, but it's never a good situation to be in, even before it breaks down. See also, the internal US political scene.
wazoox 6y ago
We're firmly at the point where I strongly doubt that anything significant is actually happening in Xinjiang and Hong-Kong (compared to the general high level of repression and dictatorship in whole China -- I don't mean that China is a model in any way). Particularly in HK, the police repressive violence was for months at a significantly lower level than French police violence against the yellow vests (just to remind you that several thousands yellow vests were jailed, and a significant number still are on more or less dubious pretenses -- but Macron is a nice polite guy, and China is an adversary). Another funny story is this supposed "good guy" Navalny (I don't believe any funny story about him either). The guy declared himself "pro-western" and a Putin opponent, therefore he's always depicted as some sort of white knight or something. Check his political program: this guy is a xenophobic nationalist worse than Putin, he even planned to throw out all foreigners from Russia. As Roosevelt once said, "he's a bastard, but he's our bastard". Disgusting, and all of the mainstream media in the West (US lackeys?) harp on how bad Putin is and how cool Navalny is (did you notice that Putin apparently didn't move a finger to prevent Navalny from leaving Russia? How weird for someone he supposedly wanted dead a few days before). Last one for the road: did you hear that a Turkish lawyer, Ebru Timtik, died in jail recently in Turkey? She was on a hunger strike. But hey, Erdogan is "our bastard" so all is fine and dandy, I suppose.

tomalpha 6y ago

The Assange saga is clearly very polarising. Different people have extremely strong views on both sides. Trying hard to steer a neutral course in this comment, there are a few things that stand out to me in and about this article, and the case: 1. The author is clearly on one of those sides 2. The author, along with like-minded others, want and expect the court hearings around the extradition to consider the case(s) in some detail. 3. The state and, I'd guess other individuals with different views to the author, want the court hearings to focus narrowly on the technical aspects of the extradition process itself. Personally I'm unconvinced by at least some of the arguments that the author puts forwards, and I would like to see further, more neutral reporting around the case. The partisanship of the author (whether justified or not) on at least some points makes it hard for me to have confidence in the rest of the post.

raxxorrax 6y ago
Which arguments convince you and which don't?
implements 6y ago
My understanding is that a journalist can receive and publish unlawfully obtained material, but they can’t incite or assist someone to obtain it. Does sufficient evidence exist that Assange broke US law? If so it would seem that he’s extraditable - and I’m not sure how the ‘bigger picture’ (‘Whistleblower’ public interest, ‘time served’ in the Embassy) overrides UK’s legal obligations here.
- dalbasal 6y ago
  >"* Does sufficient evidence exist that Assange broke US law*" I don't believe this is the full extent of extradition conditions.
- hutzlibu 6y ago
  "Does sufficient evidence exist that Assange broke US law?" It used to be, that you only can break a state law, if you are within that state. (with rare exceptions). That seems to be history.

kmlx 6y ago

> Unlike our adversaries including the Integrity Initiative, the 77th Brigade, Bellingcat, the Atlantic Council and hundreds of other warmongering propaganda operations wut?

pjc50 6y ago
Craig Murray is a crank. He's a former ambassador, and he's also right about quite a lot of things, but he's also got the fundamental problem of seeing enemies everywhere. Bellingcat, for example, is just another blogger, although doing "OSINT" to, for example, locate the BUK launcher likely used in the shooting down of MH17, and with various claims as to the involvment of GRU officers in poisonings such as Salisbury and Navalny. 77th Brigade is a British Army propaganda unit. "Integrity Initiative" are widely suspected to be such.
- auggierose 6y ago
  As a former ambassador, he probably knows that enemies ARE everywhere.
- pessimizer 6y ago
  > Bellingcat, for example, is just another blogger This is a weirder take than any of Craig Murray's.
M2Ys4U 6y ago
Murray is a known conspiracy theorist, he went off the deep end some time ago...
- zadkey 6y ago
  Claims should be evaluated individually based on their merits. Overly broad labels such as conspiracy theorist prohibit meaningful discussion of the merits or demerits of the individual theories and are in general a cognitive shortcut that people use to give themselves the excuse to casually discredit and disregard what someone says without meaningfully getting to know the character or claims of the individual. More concisely, it is a term used to promote intellectual laziness over due diligence of investigation.

tomalpha 6y ago

https://www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance/extradition https://www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance/extradition has a lot of details on what an extradition court hearing can/must consider, and the legal basis of arguments against a non-consensual extradition (which this case clearly is). It bears reading through, regardless of your personal views on the case, because this is what the UK's prosecution service thinks the law is. It's likely to be the same or close to the UK Government / 'state' view too and indicative of what the presiding magistrate in the case is working off.

mothsonasloth 6y ago

Assange is the litmus test that privacy concerns are not safe from being monopolised by one part of the political spectrum. Before Trump and the Clinton leaks, Assange was a darling for the liberal media and even on the conservative ring. Then when the leaks came out, Assange became a figure of hate for the same liberal groups who were praising and supporting him before. Now ironically its people on both sides of the fringe that have remained stalwart in supporting him. The middle have declared him "problematic" and have decided to throw him under the carpet along with all the privacy concerns and government overreach of surveillance that he and WikiLeaks had highlighted. Sure this is just human nature that people come and go out of favour, but this 180 flip is just hypocritical (especially with the Guardian becoming hostile to him). What we are seeing here in the court room, is powerful people who want rid of him, not even treating him like a bargaining chip. Just literally wanting to sweep him away like a nuisance.

croon 6y ago
I'm digressing from this specific case, I too am a strong critic of the US being globally handsy, but I instead want to focus on the public discourse. There's nothing ironic or hypocritical about it. You can appreciate earlier leaks about governmental/agency misconduct in the pursuit of transparency. Then wikileaks (if not Assange specifically) took it upon themselves to meddle in elections, selectively leaking DNC hacked data and not the RNC equivalent, antithetical to transparency. Public opinion didn't do a 180, wikileaks did. https://apnews.com/ce9a4541f903109079900528d9f0a9e7 https://apnews.com/ce9a4541f903109079900528d9f0a9e7 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-russia-senate/senate-committee-concludes-russia-used-manafort-wikileaks-to-boost-trump-in-2016-idUSKCN25E1US https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-russia-senate/s... https://theintercept.com/2018/02/14/julian-assange-wikileaks-election-clinton-trump/ https://theintercept.com/2018/02/14/julian-assange-wikileaks...
- hanselot 6y ago
  Yet, before those documents leaked, it was not so obvious how biased the US/Western media was. After the wikileaks fiasco, and more importantly, how the MSM downplayed it and tried to sweep it under the rug, how could anyone have any faith left in "credible sources".

GeneralTspoon 6y ago

Can some legal eagle explain why a magistrate is presiding over the case, rather than a judge? (For those who don't know, in the UK a magistrate is just a layperson volunteer, not a legally trained judge)

oliwarner 6y ago
They're a judge. https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Vanessa_Baraitser https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Vanessa_Baraitser (hack piece also by author of TFA)
- mrow84 6y ago
  Tfa is by Craig Murray whereas the edit history of the wikispooks piece [0] at least claims to be by Patrick Haseldine. What makes you say to the contrary? [0] https://wikispooks.com/w/index.php?title=Vanessa_Baraitser&action=history https://wikispooks.com/w/index.php?title=Vanessa_Baraitser&a...
  - oliwarner 6y ago
    You're absolutely correct, that was my mistake. I think I saw that the related documents are Craig's blog posts and interpreted that table incorrectly. The tone being very similar didn't help.
M2Ys4U 6y ago
IANAL or legal expert, but: Magistrates' courts are where criminal cases are first dealt with in English law. If the offence is indictable then the next step will be to move the case to the crown court (unless the offence is an "either way" offence and the summary procedure is elected instead). So it would make sense to me that extradition hearings are dealt with, in the first instance, by a magistrates' court; after all the court is not actually determining guilt, but merely whether there's a prima facie evidence of guilt. There are procedural safeguards in place, namely that one may appeal to the High Court (and then, ultimately, the Supreme Court) if the magistrate's court send the case to the Secretary of State for approval and the latter approves the extradition.

linspace 6y ago

From the article: "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." I'm trying to understand nonetheless why still they chose to sit together.

fareesh 6y ago

The fact that this is a relatively obscure story and the otherwise vocal western media journalists who screech about press freedom when someone is mean to them are so silent about it by comparison, is frankly really disgusting to witness. It's embarrassing.

bboygravity 6y ago
The political (US) indoctrination is incredibly effective in the Western world I feel. I'm from The Netherlands (living abroad now in the EU) and most people there believe that the 100% state sponsored news is mostly factual, with good intent and unbiased, because we are the good people. This news is consumed by the vast majority of Dutch. From what I've seen in other EU countries is that their news systems are comparable (owned by a handful of companies and/or completely reliant on state sponsoring). Ask a person on the street about Assange and assuming they know who you're talking about their image of him will most likely be: scary criminal sociopath nerd rapist who leaked important military state secrets and doesn't wash himself. "Coincidentally" that's the opinion in the best interest of the US elite who's egos where hurt by Assange. This is to say: the consent which the political US manufactures is extremely effective outside of the US as well. It seems to me the US has full control over media in any Western country for any issue that matters to the US. At school we where/are actively taught that this sort of manipulation only happens in evil dictatorships and can never ever happen "here". The majority of people seem to believe this strongly. I find all of this mind blowing and tragic. When Assange gets sent to the US the feelings of the vast majority of people in the Western world will be "ah, good, that's another bad guy out of the way". And guess what: they'd think the same about Snowden if he ever gets suicided/dissapeared/extradited/used as political change.
- dontcarethrow2 6y ago
  Reminds me of a quote: "It's hard to see yourself a villain when you think you're the hero."
- bgorman 6y ago
  This is one of the v things Donald Trump is helping address. He has called CNN "fake news", and is generally making a mockery of the press and truth. Trump is correct that CNN, MSNBC and the New York times are propoganda machines. It if getting less subtle all the time

sschueller 6y ago

Let's not forget this is a trial to shot the messenger of a war crime for which no one has been held accountable for. Hillary Clinton and many others actually made the remark that what Assange is doing is putting American lives at risk. So in essence saying American lives are worth more than other humans.

chrisweekly 6y ago
Your comment is a tangent, but I feel compelled to point out that a US Secretary of State has an obligation to prioritize American lives over those of other countries' citizens.
- pessimizer 6y ago
  There is absolutely no obligation of a US Secretary of State that they consider the lives of Americans who murder other countries' citizens more important than the lives of those other countries' citizens. I'm not sure where you read or heard this.
  - chrisweekly 6y ago
    That's quite a leap, and a strawman "argument". I said nothing of the kind.
- whatshisface 6y ago
  There may be a competing duty to deal with war crimes somewhere in there as well... "Your side can do absolutely anything and it's still in the right" is a very common idea in national capitals around the world, but some would disagree with it.
MisterBastahrd 6y ago
Have you ever been to America? There is no politician on either side of the political aisle who would ever openly disagree with that statement.

motohagiography 6y ago

The Assange odyssey may be the Dreyfus Affair of our time. As insane as this reads, the job of litigators is not to make sense, it is to press whatever possible advantage they can construe. They are not in the pursuit of truth, that is not what the court establishes. If a litigator is on the receiving end of public outrage for things like the absolutely insane assertions by the prosecution, they take it as credit for doing their job. This professional contempt for truth and principle outside the narrow constraints of legalism is what gives lawyers the reputation for being assholes, and what makes some of them insufferable when their work habits bleed into their personal lives. The trouble in this case that I read from these updates is that the judge is clearly acting like a second prosecutor. I blame it on a generation of people who don't understand impartiality, and who see it as a weakness because they don't need to be impartial if they "know" what they are encountering. Once they have internalized the notion of history as progress, attacks on levers and institutions that can facilitate it are attacks on progress itself. They are litigating ideology, and law is just a host or vehicle. In exposing corruption in the most powerful institutions in the world, to his persecutors Assange's crimes are against progress itself, and I don't think they are capable of impartiality.

toyg 6y ago
Would have upvoted for the parallels to Dreyfus (which are there), but downvoted for some reasoning in the last paragraph that I think are a bit of a stretch. Bad judges have existed in governments of all ages, even when the concept of "history as progress" didn't even exist (or was even the opposite, with the judicial system feeling like the last defense against widespread corruption and decay). It's simply that judges are themselves the expression of the system that selected them, and as such are naturally defensive towards the existing order of things. To get where they are, they have made alliances, accepted compromises, exchanged favors. They built a social capital that they would stand to lose from upsets to the established order. We remember the times when they go against those insticts precisely because they are so few and far between.
- motohagiography 6y ago
  Judges aren't just bureaucrats. Their role is held to a higher standard than petty interest. When they are compromised, they need to leave. The US system has judges elected, where the british and commonwealth system is by appointment, and few would argue that the mentally ill are not well represented in both their ranks, but there is a level of petulance in some of them that indicates risk of a total compromise of the institution.

jjgreen 6y ago

This story is pretty-much absent from the UK news. Radio 4's 6pm news had time to report a magnitude 3.3 earthquake in Leyton Buzzard (no structural damage), but a miscarriage of justice unrolling before their eyes? Not interested.

slim 6y ago

I feel ashamed and powerless for not being able to help Assange

cutler 6y ago

Anyone know what tech stack the original Wikileaks was built on? There's not much on Google, it seems, other than much later when the Panama Papers were released.

CassSunscreen 6y ago

Assange is being forced into the endgame, everyone should download his deadman's switch that he put out

scoot_718 6y ago

Surprised anyone would waste their time defending Assange.