The CIA Democrats vs. Julian Assange & related news
By Patrick Martin
23 April 2018
The lawsuit filed by the Democratic National Committee (DNC), naming WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange as co-conspirators with Russia and the Trump campaign in a criminal effort to steal the 2016 US presidential election, is a frontal assault on democratic rights. It tramples on the First Amendment to the US Constitution, which establishes freedom of the press and freedom of speech as fundamental rights.
Neither the Democratic Party lawsuit nor the media commentaries on it acknowledge that WikiLeaks is engaged in journalism, not espionage; that its work consists of publishing material supplied to it by whistleblowers seeking to expose the crimes of governments, giant corporations and other powerful organizations; and that this courageous campaign of exposure has made both the website and its founder and publisher the targets of state repression all over the world.
Assange himself has been effectively imprisoned in the Ecuadorian embassy in London for the past six years, since he fled there to escape efforts by the British, Swedish and American governments to engineer his extradition to the United States, where a secret grand jury has reportedly indicted him on espionage and treason charges that could bring the death penalty. Since the end of March, the Ecuadorian government, responding to increasing pressure from US and British imperialism, has cut off all outside communication with him.
The reason for the indictment and persecution of Assange is that WikiLeaks published secret military documents, supplied by whistleblower Chelsea Manning, revealing US war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as diplomatic cables embarrassing to the US State Department because they detailed US attempts to manipulate and subvert governments around the world.
The Democratic National Committee on Friday filed a 66-page complaint that reeks of McCarthyism, with overtones of the Wisconsin senator’s demagogy about “a conspiracy so vast” when he was spearheading the anticommunist witch hunts more than 70 years ago. After detailing a long list of supposed conspirators, ranging from the Russian government and its military intelligence agency GRU to the Trump campaign and Julian Assange, the complaint declares: “The conspiracy constituted an act of previously unimaginable treachery: the campaign of the presidential nominee of a major party in league with a hostile foreign power to bolster its own chance to win the Presidency.”
Such language has had no place in official American public life since the right-wing political gangster McCarthy left the scene in the late 1950s. Ultra-right groups like the John Birch Society kept alive such smear tactics in ensuing decades, but they were relegated to the fringes of the political system. Now the Democratic Party has sought to revive these methods as the central focus of its bid for power in the 2018 elections.
In the targeting of WikiLeaks, the antidemocratic content of this campaign finds its foulest expression. The DNC suit asserts, without the slightest evidence, that “WikiLeaks and Assange directed, induced, urged, and/or encouraged Russia and the GRU to engage in this conduct and/or to provide WikiLeaks and Assange with DNC’s trade secrets, with the expectation that WikiLeaks and Assange would disseminate those secrets and increase the Trump Campaign’s chance of winning the election.”
According to Assange and WikiLeaks, however, the material from the DNC and from Clinton campaign Chairman John Podesta that it made public in 2016 was provided by an anonymous whistleblower whose identity WikiLeaks does not know because it observed its normal security practices to preserve secrecy and protect its sources. Not a shred of evidence has been presented to prove otherwise.
The DNC legal complaint cites the negative consequences of the WikiLeaks revelations in passages worth quoting:
135. The illegal conspiracy inflicted profound damage upon the DNC. The timing and selective release of the stolen materials prevented the DNC from communicating with the electorate on its own terms. These selective releases of stolen material reached a peak immediately before the Democratic National Convention and continued through the general election.
136. The timing and selective release of stolen materials was designed to and had the effect of driving a wedge between the DNC and Democratic voters. The release of stolen materials also impaired the DNC’s ability to support Democratic candidates in the general election.
But the DNC lawsuit does not explain why the WikiLeaks material was so damaging. On the contrary, it says nothing about the actual content of what was leaked, other than claiming that it included “trade secrets” and other proprietary information of the Democratic Party leadership.
The material published by WikiLeaks about the Democrats fell into two main categories. First were internal emails and documents of the DNC showing that DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz and her top aides were engaged in a systematic effort to block Clinton’s challenger Bernie Sanders and make sure Clinton received the Democratic nomination. In other words, while complaining that Russia was engaged in rigging the 2016 campaign, the DNC was seeking to rig the outcome of the Democratic primary contest.
The second batch of documents came from Clinton campaign Chairman John Podesta and included the transcripts of speeches delivered by Hillary Clinton to financial industry groups for fees as high as $300,000 per appearance. In these remarks, she reassured the bankers that they need not be alarmed by any campaign rhetoric about punishing them for the financial skullduggery that triggered the 2008 Wall Street crash and destroyed the jobs and living standards of millions of working people. She made clear that a Clinton government would continue the pro-Wall Street policies of the Obama administration.
The DNC suit is a deepening of the effort by the Democratic Party to become the premier party of the CIA and the military-intelligence apparatus as a whole. In targeting WikiLeaks and Assange, the Democrats are embracing the smear by CIA Director Mike Pompeo—now Trump’s choice for secretary of state—that WikiLeaks is a “non-state hostile intelligence service,” allegedly allied with Moscow.
If, moreover, Assange is a traitor because he exposes the lies and crimes of the US government, then by implication all those publications, websites and individuals who defend him and challenge the government propaganda disseminated by the corporate media are themselves complicit in treason and should be dealt with accordingly.
As the World Socialist Web Site has previously explained, the anti-Russia campaign mounted by the Democrats is a reactionary concoction, backed by no factual evidence, aimed at pushing the Trump administration to sharply escalate the war in Syria and adopt a more aggressive policy against Russia. At the same time, it has been used as the justification for a massive and coordinated campaign to censor the Internet. The manipulation of search and news feed algorithms by Google and Facebook will be followed by more direct efforts at the suppression of left-wing, anti-war and socialist publications.
The campaign has also served to position the Democrats as the party that stands up for the “intelligence community” in its conflict with the Trump White House. This is now being supplemented, in advance of the November midterm elections, by an influx of candidates for Democratic congressional nominations in competitive districts drawn heavily from the ranks of the CIA, the military, the National Security Council and the State Department (see: “The CIA Democrats”).
The conduct of the DNC demonstrates the reactionary and bankrupt character of the claims by liberal and pseudo-left groups—all of whom have maintained a complete silence on the isolation and persecution of Assange—that the election of a Democratic-controlled Congress is the way to fight back against Trump and the Republicans. The truth is that the working class confronts in these parties two implacable political enemies committed to war, austerity and repression.
—Patrick Martin
Protesters denounce silencing of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange
By Robert Stevens
30 March 2018
Protesters held placards as they chanted, “Assange is not silent, we are his voice!” Others read, “Free Assange!” “USA: Stop Attacks on Whisleblowers and Journalists!” and “Free Press and Free Assange!”
In a reference to the 2016 United Nations ruling stating that Assange is a victim of arbitrary detention from which he must be released—with which the UK government refuses to comply—another read, “UN to UK: Free and Compensate Assange.”
WikiLeaks tweeted of Assange, “He cannot tweet, speak to the press, receive visitors or make telephone calls.”
Deprived of his only remaining liberties, Assange has fewer rights than prisoners. Yet he has never been charged, let alone prosecuted.
Speaking to the media outside the Embassy Thursday, fashion designer Vivienne Westwood said, “Julian Assange is one of the greatest heroes of the world, we are very concerned now that he can’t have visitors. It’s really important that he’s got access to the world by all the exposures he has managed to do.” Assange was “a war hero, he exposed American war crimes,” she added.
The measures imposed by the Embassy on Assange—who is now an Ecuadorean citizen after being naturalised last December—are draconian. Based on information from a WikiLeaks source, RT said, “The embassy reportedly installed electronic jammers to block all radio communications on its premises hours after an individual representing Assange’s interests was informed of ‘strong discomfort and concern that his declarations have caused in Ecuador’s government’…”
So extensive is the blockade that “The jammers cause some disruption for embassy staff, who can no longer use their mobile phones due to the communication blackout.”
Ecuador has given no time scale as to how long its restrictions on Assange will be in place, stating only that it will meet with his attorneys next week.
Ecuador’s measures are in violation of a 2016 United Nations resolution that “condemns unequivocally measures to intentionally prevent or disrupt access to or dissemination of information online.” The UN affirmed “that the same rights that people have offline must also be protected online, in particular freedom of expression, which is applicable regardless of frontiers and through any media of one’s choice.”
Stepping up the persecution of the WikiLeaks founder is bound up with the efforts by Britain and the US to silence opposition to their preparations for war. This is made clear by the fact that the justification used for Ecuador’s censorship was the tweets Assange posted on Monday challenging Britain’s accusation that Russia is responsible for the alleged nerve agent poisoning of former double agent and Russian citizen, Sergei Skripal, and his daughter, Yulia, in Salisbury, England.
This is an entirely fabricated charge, for which the British authorities have still to provide any credible evidence. Assange pointed this out in his tweet, which read, “While it is reasonable for [British Prime Minister] Theresa May to view the Russian state as the leading suspect, so far the evidence is circumstantial & the OCPW [Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons] has not yet made any independent confirmation, permitting the Kremlin to push the view domestically that Russia is persecuted.”
In an interview with Sputnik Thursday, Australian barrister and adviser to Assange, Greg Barns, was asked, “Do you think that it is Assange’s comments on the Skripal case that caused this cut-off?”
Barns replied, “I can only speculate, because there seems to have been some information from Ecuador that that was the case.”
The British and US authorities are using the Skripal affair to accelerate the campaign against “Moscow meddling”, to justify NATO’s build-up against Russia and, associated with this, a clampdown on social media and internet freedoms.
An essential component of this military escalation is state censorship against political and social opposition. Under the guise of combating “fake news,” websites and social media pages of many groups and individuals are being closed down by states across Europe.
Accompanying this is the strengthening of police state measures. Only days before Ecuador’s act of censorship, the German government, intelligence services and police collaborated with Spanish intelligence operatives to arrest the democratically-elected president of Catalonia, Carles Puigdemont. He was arrested in Germany as he was travelling back to Belgium after a visit he had made to Finland for talks with parliamentary deputies.
Puigdemont is detained under the draconian European Arrest Warrant (EAW) system. He potentially faces 30 years in prison for advocating the separation of Catalonia from Spain.
As the WSWS warned at the time, the detention of Assange in 2010 under an EAW established a precedent for the railroading of political opponents on trumped up and bogus allegations. Assange’s arrest—on US instructions—was upheld by the British courts despite no charges being laid against him.
To avoid the kind of treatment meted out to whistleblower Chelsea Manning, Assange—like Edward Snowden—has been forced into exile. The EAW, under which he was initially held, was dropped in May last year after Sweden finally admitted there were no grounds for prosecution, but Assange still faces arrest.
These events mark a serious escalation in the onslaught on free speech and democratic rights. Ecuador complained that Assange’s entirely legitimate and well-founded questioning of the Skripal events and Puigdemont’s arrest “put at risk the good relations [Ecuador] maintains with the United Kingdom, with the other states of the European Union, and with other nations.” On whose instructions it arrived at its decision is unclear.
There is a real and immediate threat that Assange may be handed over to the US for extradition, either by Embassy officials or a British raid.
On Tuesday UK Foreign Office minister Alan Duncan described Assange in parliament as a “miserable little worm” who should hand himself in to the British authorities. He said, “It is of great regret that Julian Assange remains in the Ecuador embassy. It is of deeper regret that even last night he was tweeting against Her Majesty’s Government for their conduct in replying to the attack in Salisbury.”
Within hours of this provocative statement, Assange had his communications severed. In response, Assange tweeted, “As a political prisoner detained without charge for 8 years, in violation of 2 UN rulings, I suppose I must be ‘miserable’; yet nothing wrong with being a ‘little’ person although I’m rather tall; and better a ‘worm’, a healthy creature that invigorates the soil, than a snake.”
In 2010, US diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks revealed that Duncan was the focus of particular interest by US intelligence. It disclosed a 22 January 2010 cable, signed off by Elizabeth Pitterle, the US head of intelligence operations, stating that analysts were preparing “finished products on the Conservative leadership for senior policymakers” and speculating on the “political ambitions” of the former oil trader—then international development minister.
On Wednesday, May launched the UK’s National Security Capability Review. The review is based on a “Fusion Doctrine”, mobilising all elements of the state and private sector against the threats to the UK. Foremost among these is what the document refers to as “The resurgence of state-based threats” and “Hostile State Activity.”
Russia is explicitly targeted for military action on its borders, diplomatic isolation and measures to clamp down on alleged interference in UK politics through the dissemination of supposed “fake news.” The very day this justification for the new “Fusion Doctrine” was advanced, Assange was silenced.
—By Robert Stevens
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Things to ponder
While our media prostitutes, many Hollywood celebs, and politicians and opinion shapers make so much noise about the still to be demonstrated damage done by the Russkies to our nonexistent democracy, this is what the sanctimonious US government has done overseas just since the close of World War 2. And this is what we know about. Many other misdeeds are yet to be revealed or documented.
Parting shot—a word from the editors
The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found
In his zeal to prove to his antagonists in the War Party that he is as bloodthirsty as their champion, Hillary Clinton, and more manly than Barack Obama, Trump seems to have gone “play-crazy” — acting like an unpredictable maniac in order to terrorize the Russians into forcing some kind of dramatic concessions from their Syrian allies, or risk Armageddon.However, the “play-crazy” gambit can only work when the leader is, in real life, a disciplined and intelligent actor, who knows precisely what actual boundaries must not be crossed. That ain’t Donald Trump — a pitifully shallow and ill-disciplined man, emotionally handicapped by obscene privilege and cognitively crippled by white American chauvinism. By pushing Trump into a corner and demanding that he display his most bellicose self, or be ceaselessly mocked as a “puppet” and minion of Russia, a lesser power, the War Party and its media and clandestine services have created a perfect storm of mayhem that may consume us all.— Glen Ford, Editor in Chief, Black Agenda Report
