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Craig Murray of Information Clearing House writes about his observation at Westminster Magistrates Court:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/52433.htm
Before I get on to the blatant lack of fair process, the first thing I must note was Julian's condition. I was badly shocked by just how much weight my friend has lost, by the speed his hair has receded and by the appearance of premature and vastly accelerated ageing. He has a pronounced limp I have never seen before. Since his arrest he has lost over 15 kg in weight.
But his physical appearance was not as shocking as his mental deterioration. When asked to give his name and date of birth, he struggled visibly over several seconds to recall both. I will come to the important content of his statement at the end of proceedings in due course, but his difficulty in making it was very evident; it was a real struggle for him to articulate the words and focus his train of thought.
Until yesterday I had always been quietly sceptical of those who claimed that Julian's treatment amounted to torture – even of Nils Melzer, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture – and sceptical of those who suggested he may be subject to debilitating drug treatments. But having attended the trials in Uzbekistan of several victims of extreme torture, and having worked with survivors from Sierra Leone and elsewhere, I can tell you that yesterday changed my mind entirely and Julian exhibited exactly the symptoms of a torture victim brought blinking into the light, particularly in terms of disorientation, confusion, and the real struggle to assert free will through the fog of learned helplessness.
I had been even more sceptical of those who claimed, as a senior member of his legal team did to me on Sunday night, that they were worried that Julian might not live to the end of the extradition process. I now find myself not only believing it, but haunted by the thought. Everybody in that court yesterday saw that one of the greatest journalists and most important dissidents of our times is being tortured to death by the state, before our eyes. To see my friend, the most articulate man, the fastest thinker, I have ever known, reduced to that shambling and incoherent wreck, was unbearable. Yet the agents of the state, particularly the callous magistrate Vanessa Baraitser, were not just prepared but eager to be a part of this bloodsport. She actually told him that if he were incapable of following proceedings, then his lawyers could explain what had happened to him later. The question of why a man who, by the very charges against him, was acknowledged to be highly intelligent and competent, had been reduced by the state to somebody incapable of following court proceedings, gave her not a millisecond of concern.
Now tell me some fine arguments justifying the legality and justness of such person destruction methodics, I wish to hear them.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday October 29 2019, @06:19AM (9 children)
To me, the will and spirit of the West were broken when Assange, Manning, and Snowden were imprisoned, tortured, and exiled. What we're living in now is a zombie reality that hasn't yet realized it's dead.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 29 2019, @07:10AM (4 children)
Translation: I woke up from the American Dream and I'm living now the American Nightmare. Welcome to the living IRL.
In your spare time, ponder a bit on the fact that no modern "West country" is doing what the modern USoA is doing. Where does that leave "the will and spirit of the West", that one you call "broken"?
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 29 2019, @02:59PM (3 children)
I though Mr. Assange was still in the UK.
Pretty sure it is up there in the summary.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Tuesday October 29 2019, @07:29PM (2 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 30 2019, @08:26AM (1 child)
But not for long...!
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Wednesday October 30 2019, @01:12PM
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 29 2019, @08:43AM (1 child)
The root cause of this has been the increasing power, money and influence given to the "Intelligence Community" since 9/11. They are now applying the same tactics at home which they and counterparts applied abroad.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 29 2019, @04:09PM
The only reason it waned for a period in the 1990s was the dissolution of the USSR and the effective bankruptcy of Russia. Combined with the initial DotCom bubble which allowed a new level of rampant inflation to fiat currencies worldwide, helping the wealthy 'get wealthier' while diluting the 'immobile' classes financial savings, the wealthy got wealthier, the poorer got tired of it, and eventually make political moves and scrutiny that were unfavorable to the holy trifecta of aristocrats, politicians and the legal/illegal intelligence arms of this country (law enforcement/military and clandestine intelligence NSA/CIA/FBI.)
The end results being columbine, 9/11, boston marathon, and other events being allowed to happen because it helped move along the narratives needed for the legislature allowing their increasing overreach, just like Nixon's War on Drugs help provide when the McCarthy Communist Witchhunts got kiboshed.
American history is full of security theater, from Washington's march on rioters during the Whiskey Rebellion, to the Pinkertons being the largest private investigative and enforcement branch in the US (both legal and illegal), to the eventual creation of the FBI because of prohibition era cross-border crime.
What set it apart was our attitude towards all these things with the benefit of WW2 Nazi research on all these subjects and more, and Russian/American seizure of them during their sacking of Berlin when the War was won.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 29 2019, @08:59AM
Eh?, what's with this 'will and spirit of the West' nonsense? I refer you to that seminal work on the West
'The Ballad Of Waterhole #3'
The code of the west
You must do unto others
Do unto others before they do it unto you
No, what you're living in is theatre, you're the entertainment...just like the rest of us, and it's always been so, and they don't like anyone peeking behind the curtains and then giving the game away to the great unwashed..
(Score: 3, Insightful) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Tuesday October 29 2019, @03:06PM
I can't argue with this.
This is what my thesesytemsarefailing.net project is about.
Institutional forces have been literally plotting for decades to do away with the magna carta because their secrets are now too gruesome to risk any media organization ever being able to get them out.
To do this, they have had to infiltrate civilian society to a large extent. The wikileaks organization, I believe, became heavily infiltrated with police. Arjen Camphuis might have been an agent, his wikipedia article went offline, total mystery. Appelbaum to me appears, after quite a bit of reading, a fake as well.
If you wanted to make an organization that could be credible in the face of these forces, it would take a lot of money and an organization of people who had actual credibility and scruples, the exact opposite of assange, whose antics embarrassed a very important movement.
I am trying to publish the details of the police state bullshit that has been done against me, and report I am being stalked in germany, but there is no place in the world for me to go to talk to a journalist who cares. Totalitarians attack first those things they need to get out of the way, then they make their big move. Journalism, rights, outspoken counterculture figures are early things to go, then things start really moving.
It looks like that is what is headed our way, some kiind of big move for trump or a 9/11-ish thing because after epstein and weinstein, the narrative is spiraling out of their control.
And, of course, the word is out 9/11 was not done by islamic people, so history is literally splitting right before our eyes, and that is what leads to real war.
Remember the WWI debt payments anyone? How many people will have to die before every last person who does not believe the 19 hijackers and OBL did it are eradicated? How many books and websites will have to be burned?
Have they planned a final solution for those who refuse to believe the bald lies? If so, making sure we can be indefinitely detained based upon political beliefs is one of their most important goals, and here it is.