Educating the US Imperium: Australia’s Mission for Assange
Then there is the issue of whether the delegation’s urgings will have any purchase beyond being a performing flea act. US State Department officials remain glacial in their dismissal of Canberra’s “enough is enough” concerns and defer matters to the US Department of Justice. The unimpressive ambassador Kennedy has been the perfect barometer of this sentiment: host Australian MPs for lunch, keep up appearances, listen politely and ignore their views. Such is the relationship between lord and vassal.
September 6, 2023 Dr Binoy Kampmark https://theaimn.com/educating-the-us-imperium-australias-mission-for-assange/
An odder political bunch you could not find, at least when it comes to pursuing a single goal. Given that the goal is the release of WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange makes it all the more striking. Six Australian parliamentarians of various stripes will be heading to Washington ahead of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s October visit to test the ground of empire, maybe even plant a few seeds of doubt, about why the indictment against their countryman should be dropped.
That indictment, an outrageous, piffling shambles of a document comprising 18 charges, 17 based on that nasty, brutish statute, the Espionage Act of 1917, risks earning Assange a prison sentence in the order of 175 years. But in any instrumental sense, his incarceration remains ongoing, with the United Kingdom currently acting as prison warden and custodian.
In the politics of his homeland, the icy polarisation that came with Assange’s initial publishing exploits (former Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard was convinced Cablegate was a crime) has shifted to something almost amounting to a consensus. The cynic will say that votes are in the offing, if not at risk if nothing is done; the principled will argue that enlightenment has finally dawned.
The Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and the Opposition leader, Peter Dutton, agree on almost nothing else but the fact that Assange has suffered enough. In Parliament, the tireless work of the independent MP from Tasmania, Andrew Wilkie, has bloomed into the garrulous Bring Julian Assange Home Parliamentary Group.
The Washington mission, which will arrive in the US on September 20, comprises former deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce, the scattergun former Nationals leader, Labor MP Tony Zappia, Greens Senators David Shoebridge and Peter Whish-Wilson, Liberal Senator Alex Antic and the competent independent member for Kooyong, Dr. Monique Ryan.
What will be said will hardly be pleasing to the ears of the Washington establishment. Senator Shoebridge, for instance, promises to make the case that Assange was merely telling the truth about US war crimes, hardly music for guardians from Freedom’s Land. Sounding like an impassioned pastor, he will tell his unsuspecting flock “the truth about this prosecution.”
Joyce, however, tried to pour some oil over troubled waters by insisting on ABC News that the delegates were not there “to pick a fight”. He did not necessarily want to give the impression that his views aligned with WikiLeaks. The principles, soundly, were that Assange had not committed any of the alleged offences as a US national, let alone in the United States itself. The material Assange had published had not been appropriated by himself. He had received it from Chelsea Manning, a US military source, “who is now walking the streets as a free person.”
To pursue the indictment to its logical conclusion would mean that Assange, or any journalist for that matter, could be extradited to the US from, say, Australia, for the activities in question. This extraterritorial eccentricity set a “very, very bad precedent”, and it was a “duty” to defend his status as an Australian citizen.
The Nationals MP also noted, rather saliently, that Beijing was currently interested in pursuing four Chinese nationals on Australian soil for a number of alleged offences that did not, necessarily, have a nexus to Chinese territory. Should Australia now extradite them as a matter of course? (The same observation has been made by an adviser to the Assange campaign, Greg Barns SC: “You’ve got China using the Assange case as a sort of moral equivalence argument.”)
Broadly speaking, the delegation is hoping to draw attention to the nature of publishing itself and the risks posed to free speech and the journalistic craft by the indictment. But there is another catch. In Shoebridge’s words, the delegates will also remind US lawmakers “that one of their closest allies sees the treatment of Julian Assange as a key indicator on the health of the bilateral relationship.”
Ryan expressed much the same view. “Australia is an excellent friend of the US and it’s not unreasonable to request to ask the US to cease this extradition attempt on Mr Assange.” The WikiLeaks founder was “a “journalist; he should not be prosecuted for crimes against journalism.”
While these efforts are laudable, they are also revealing. The first is that the clout of the Albanese government in Washington, on this point, has been minimal. Meekly, the government awaits the legal process in the UK to exhaust itself, possibly leading to a plea deal with all its attendant dangers to Assange. (The recent floating of that idea, based on remarks made by US ambassador to Australia Caroline Kennedy, was scotched by former British diplomat and Assange confidante Craig Murray in an interview with WBAI radio last week.) Best, then, to leave it to a diverse set of politicians representative of the “Australian voice” to convey the message across the pond.
Then there is the issue of whether the delegation’s urgings will have any purchase beyond being a performing flea act. US State Department officials remain glacial in their dismissal of Canberra’s “enough is enough” concerns and defer matters to the US Department of Justice. The unimpressive ambassador Kennedy has been the perfect barometer of this sentiment: host Australian MPs for lunch, keep up appearances, listen politely and ignore their views. Such is the relationship between lord and vassal.
In Washington, the perspective remains ossified, retributive and wrongheaded. Assange is myth and monster, the hacker who pilfered state secrets and compromised US national security; the man who revealed confidential sources and endangered informants; a propagandist who harmed the sweet sombre warriors of freedom by encouraging a new army of whistleblowers and transparency advocates.
Whatever the outcome from this trip, some stirring of hope is at least possible. The recent political movement down under shows that Assange is increasingly being seen less in the narrow context of personality than high principle. Forget whether you know the man, his habits, his inclinations. Remember him as the principle, or even a set of principles: the publisher who, with audacity, exposed the crimes and misdeeds of power; that, in doing so, he is now being hounded and persecuted in a way that will chill global efforts to do something similar.
Russia linked hackers hit UK Ministry of Defence as security secrets leaked
Russian hackers suspected to have leaked sensitive UK military and defence
material on the dark web including information about nuclear submarine base
and chemical weapons lab. Sensitive military and defence material has been
stolen by suspected Russian hackers and leaked on to the internet.
Thousands of pages of data about the HMNB Clyde nuclear submarine base,
Porton Down chemical weapons lab and a GCHQ listening post are understood
to have been posted on to the dark web after the hack. Information about a
specialist cyber defence site and some of Britain’s high-security prisons
was also stolen in the raid on Zaun, a provider of fences for maximum
security sites.
Daily Mail 4th Sept 2023
Russia linked hackers hit UK Ministry of Defence as security secrets
leaked. Hackers targeted the database of a firm which handles the security
for some of Britain’s most secretive sites – including a nuclear submarine
base and a chemical weapon lab.
Mirror 2nd Sept 2023
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/russia-linked-hackers-hit-uk-30850139
What’s Behind Talk of a Possible Plea Deal for Assange?
Were Assange to give up his legal battle and voluntarily go to the U.S. it would achieve two things for Washington:
1). remove the chance of a European Court of Human Rights injunction stopping his extradition should the High Court in London reject his last appeal; and
2). it would give the U.S. an opportunity to “change its mind” once Assange was in its clutches inside the Virginia federal courthouse.
Top U.S. officials are speaking at cross purposes when it comes to Julian Assange. What is really going on? asks Joe Lauria.
By Joe Lauria, Consortium News https://consortiumnews.com/2023/09/03/whats-behind-talk-of-a-possible-plea-deal-for-assange/
It was a little more than perplexing. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, on Australian soil, left no doubt about how his government feels about one of Australia’s most prominent citizens.
“I understand the concerns and views of Australians,” Blinken said in Brisbane on July 31 with the Australian foreign minister at his side. “I think it’s very important that our friends here understand our concerns about this matter.” He went on:
“What our Department of Justice has already said repeatedly, publicly, is this: Mr. Assange was charged with very serious criminal conduct in the United States in connection with his alleged role in one of the largest compromises of classified information in the history of our country. So I say that only because just as we understand sensitivities here, it’s important that our friends understand sensitivities in the United States.”
In other words, when it comes to Julian Assange, the U.S. elite cares little for what Australians have to say. There are more impolite ways to describe Blinken’s response. Upwards of 88 percent of Australians and both parties in the Australian government have told Washington to free the man. And Blinken essentially told them to stuff it. The U.S. won’t drop the case.
A few days before Blinken spoke, Caroline Kennedy, the U.S. ambassador to Australia and daughter of slain President John F. Kennedy, was also dismissive of Australians’ concerns, telling Australian Broadcasting Corporation Radio:
“I met with Parliamentary supporters of Julian Assange and I’ve listened to their concerns and I understand that this has been raised at the highest levels of our government, but it is an ongoing legal case, so the Department of Justice is really in charge but I’m sure that for Julian Assange it means a lot that he has this kind of support but we’re just going to have to wait to see what happens.”
Asked why she met with the parliamentarians at all, she said: “Well, it’s an important issue, it has, as I’ve said, been raised at the highest levels and I wanted to hear directly from them about their concerns to make sure that we all understood where each other was coming from and I thought it was a very useful conversation.”
Asked whether her meeting with the MPs had shifted her thinking on the Assange case, Kennedy said bluntly: “Not really.” She added that her “personal thinking isn’t really relevant here.”
Blowback
Australia has too often behaved as a doormat to the United States, to the point where Australia is threatening its own security by going along with an aggressive U.S. policy towards China, which poses no threat to Australia.
But this time, Blinken got an earful. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese reiterated that he wanted the Assange case to be dropped. Certain members of Parliament brusquely gave it back to Blinken.
Assange was “not the villain … and if the US wasn’t obsessed with revenge it would drop the extradition charge as soon as possible,” Independent MP Andrew Wilkie told The Guardian‘s Australian edition.
“Antony Blinken’s allegation that Julian Assange risked very serious harm to US national security is patent nonsense,” said Wilkie said.
“Mr Blinken would be well aware of the inquiries in both the US and Australia which found that the relevant WikiLeaks disclosures did not result in harm to anyone,” the MP said. “The only deadly behaviour was by US forces … exposed by WikiLeaks, like the Apache crew who gunned down Iraqi civilians and Reuters journalists” in the infamous Collateral Murder video.
As was shown conclusively by defense witnesses in his September 2020 extradition hearing in London, Assange worked assiduously to redact names of U.S. informants before WikiLeaks publications on Iraq and Afghanistan in 2010. U.S. Gen. Robert Carr testified at the court martial of WikiLeaks‘ source, Chelsea Manning, that no one was harmed by the material’s publication.
Instead, Assange faces 175 years in a U.S. dungeon on charges of violating the Espionage Act, not for stealing U.S. classified material, but for the First Amendment-protected publication of it.
Labor MP Julian Hill, also part of the Bring Julian Assange Home Parliamentary Group, told The Guardian he had “a fundamentally different view of the substance of the matter than secretary Blinken expressed. But I appreciate that at least his remarks are candid and direct.”
“In the same vein, I would say back to the United States: at the very least, take Julian Assange’s health issues seriously and go into court in the United Kingdom and get him the hell out of a maximum security prison where he’s at risk of dying without medical care if he has another stroke,” Hill said.
Damage Control
The fierce Australian reaction to both Blinken and Kennedy’s remarks appears to have taken Washington by surprise, given how accustomed to Canberra’s supine behavior the U.S. has become. Just two weeks after Blinken’s remarks, Kennedy tried to soften the blow by muddying Blinken’s clear waters.
She told The Sydney Morning Herald in a front-page interview published on Aug. 14 that the United States was now, despite Blinken’s unequivocal words, suddenly open to a plea agreement that could free Assange, allowing him to serve a shortened sentence for a lesser crime in his home country.
The newspaper said there could be a “David Hicks-style plea bargain,” a so-called Alford Plea, in which Assange would continue to state his innocence while accepting a lesser charge that would allow him to serve additional time in Australia. The four years Assange has already served on remand at London’s maximum security Belmarsh Prison could perhaps be taken into account.
Kennedy said a decision on such a plea deal was up to the U.S. Justice Department. “So it’s not really a diplomatic issue, but I think that there absolutely could be a resolution,” she told the newspaper.
Kennedy acknowledged Blinken’s harsh comments. “But there is a way to resolve it,” she said. “You can read the [newspapers] just like I can.” It is not quite clear what in the newspapers she was reading.
Blinken is Kennedy’s boss. There is little chance she had spoken out of turn. Blinken allowed her to put out the story that the U.S. is interested in a plea bargain with Assange. But why?
First, the harsh reaction in Australia to Blinken’s words probably had something to do with it. If it was up to the U.S. Justice Department alone to handle the prosecution of Assange, as Kennedy says, why was the Secretary of State saying anything about it at all? Blinken appears to have spoken out of turn himself and sent Kennedy out to reel it back in.
Given the growing opposition to the AUKUS alliance in Australia, including within the ruling Labor Party, perhaps Blinken and the rest of the U.S. security establishment is not taking Australia’s support for granted anymore. Blinken stepped in it and had Kennedy try to clean up the mess.
Second, as suspected by many Assange supporters on social media, Kennedy’s words may have been intended as a kind of ploy, perhaps to lure Assange to the United States to give up his fight against extradition in exchange for leniency.
In its article based on Kennedy’s interview, The Sydney Morning Herald spoke to only one international law expert, a Don Rothwell, of Australian National University in Canberra, who said Assange would have to go to the United States to negotiate a plea. In a second interview on Australian television, Rothwell said Assange would also have to drop his extradition fight.
Of course, neither is true. “Usually American courts don’t act unless a defendant is inside that district and shows up to the court,” U.S. constitutional lawyer Bruce Afran told Consortium News. “However, there’s nothing strictly prohibiting it either. And in a given instance, a plea could be taken internationally. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. It’s not barred by any laws. If all parties consent to it, then the court has jurisdiction.” But would the U.S. consent to it?
Were Assange to give up his legal battle and voluntarily go to the U.S. it would achieve two things for Washington: 1). remove the chance of a European Court of Human Rights injunction stopping his extradition should the High Court in London reject his last appeal; and 2). it would give the U.S. an opportunity to “change its mind” once Assange was in its clutches inside the Virginia federal courthouse.
“The U.S. sometimes finds ways to get around these agreements,” Afran said. “The better approach would be that he pleads while in the U.K., we resolve the sentence by either an additional sentence of seven months, such as David Hicks had or a year to be served in the U.K. or in Australia or time served.”
Assange’s brother, Gabriel Shipton, told the Herald his brother going to the U.S. was a “non-starter.” He said: “Julian cannot go to the US under any circumstances.” Assange’s father, John Shipton, told the same to Glenn Greenwald last week.
So the U.S. won’t be getting Assange on its soil voluntarily, and perhaps not very soon either. And maybe it wants it that way. Gabriel Shipton added: “Caroline Kennedy wouldn’t be saying these things if they didn’t want a way out. The Americans want this off their plate.”
Third, the U.S. may be trying to prolong Assange’s ordeal for at least another 14 months past the November 2024 U.S. presidential election. As Greenwald told John Shipton, the last thing President Joe Biden would want in the thick of his reelection campaign next year would be a high-profile criminal trial in which he was seen trying to put a publisher away for life for printing embarrassing U.S. state secrets.
But rather than a way out, as Gabriel Shipton called it, the U.S. may have in mind something more like a Great Postponement.
The postponement could come with the High Court of England and Wales continuing to take its time to give Assange his last hearing — for all of 30 minutes — before it rendered its final judgement, months after that, on his extradition. This could be stretched over 14 months. As Assange is a U.S. campaign issue, the High Court could justify its inaction by saying it wanted to avoid interference in the election.
According to Craig Murray, a former British diplomat and close Assange associate, the United States has not, despite Kennedy’s words last month, so far offered any sort of plea deal to Assange’s legal team. Murray told WBAI radio in New York:
“There have been noises made by the U.S. ambassador to Australia saying that a plea deal is possible. And that’s what the Australian Government have been pushing for as a way to solve it. What I can tell you is that there have been no official approaches from the American government indicating any willingness to soften or ameliorate their posihttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnNjwQNV4Gction. The position of the Biden administration still seems to be that they wish to persecute and destroy Julian and lock him up for life for publishing the truth about war crimes …
So there’s no evidence of any sincerity on behalf of the U.S. government in these noises we’ve been hearing. It seems to be to placate public opinion in Australia, which is over 80% in favor of dropping the charges and allowing Julian to go home to his native country…
The American ambassador has made comments about, oh well, a plea deal might be possible, but this is just rubbish. This is just talk in the air. There’s been no kind of approach or indication from the Justice Department or anything like that at all. It’s just not true. It’s a false statement, in order to placate public opinion in Australia.”
Afran said a plea deal can be initiated by the Assange side as well. Assange lawyer Jennifer Robinson said in May for the first time on behalf of his legal team that they were open to discussion of a plea deal, though she said she knew of no crime Assange had committed to plead guilty to.
The U.S. would have many ways to keep prolonging talks on an Assange initiative, if one came, beyond the U.S. election. After the vote, the Justice Department could then receive Assange in Virginia courtesy of the British courts, if this the strategy the U.S. is pursuing.
Nuclear “lobbying” blurs into bribery
So will Congress continue to stanch the bleeding by authorizing more federal funds through the IRA and other legislation in its determination to squander funds on slow, expensive new reactors that could take decades to arrive? Or could the deep pockets of a US oligarch like Gates present an overwhelming temptation to channel some off-the-books funding his way? Is there any reason to assume that members of the US Congress are any less corruptible than their counterparts in the statehouses of Illinois and Ohio?
As money changes hands on Capitol Hill, is it lobbying or bribery?
By Linda Pentz Gunter, Beyond Nuclear, 3 Sept 23
In part two of our investigation into bribery and corruption in the nuclear power sector, we look at lobbying. Does it cross a fine ethical line of undue influence? And how does it really differ from the crimes committed by nuclear executives and corrupt politicians, as we detailed in our July 2nd article? …………..
The temptation toward nuclear bribery and corruption as we detailed in earlier stories on Ohio, South Carolina and Illinois, and updated on July 2, may prove not to be a unique event. The pattern of struggling nuclear power plant owners is countrywide, as the aging US reactor fleet becomes ever more uneconomical, even as owners seek second 20-year operating license extensions out to 80 years.
After a flurry of nuclear plant closures, mainly in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions, new laws have changed the economic landscape and some plant owners are now making the grab for federal and even state subsidies to keep reactors scheduled for shutdown — or, in the case of Palisades in Michigan, already shut down — running for many more years.
But these subsidies may not be enough. And the owners of old reactors are not the only ones with their hands out.
So-called “new” reactor designs, most of which fall under a category known as Small Modular Reactors (SMRs), are likewise too expensive to fund unaided.
For example, even billionaire Bill Gates asked for and got what was effectively a “matching grant” from Congress for his company, TerraPower, to cover the at least $4 billion cost of his proposed Natrium molten salt fast reactor. The US government has agreed to provide Gates with $1.9 billion for the Natrium, $1.5 billion of which will come out of the bipartisan infrastructure bill that includes $2.5 billion for advanced nuclear reactors.
The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) already provides various incentives for new reactors, including a $25-per-MWh production tax credit during a new plant’s first 10 years of operation, or a 30 percent investment tax credit for those plants that start operation on or after 2025.
But, as TerraPower CEO Chris Levesque, reminded the press in a November 2021 video call, “One important thing to realize is the first plant always costs more.”
Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems (UAMPS), has discovered precisely that. Of the Salt Lake City-based group of 50 municipal utilities in six Western states, 36 originally forged a deal with the Portland, Oregon-based small modular reactor manufacturer, NuScale, to explore construction of a commercial SMR production plant. But the costs are exploding.
NuScale, the only company to receive a federal design certification license for a small modular reactor so far, first projected a $4.2 billion cost, which it revised in 2020 to $6.1 billion. Today the estimated all-in construction cost stands at $9.3 billion. The plant is to be built at the US Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory site near Idaho Falls.
As prices began to climb from an initially estimated $55/MWh, eight of the public utilities involved pulled out and the proposed nuclear project dropped from 12 modular units to six. By late 2020, the projected completion date had already been extended by three years.
The target power price estimates have since climbed higher, from $58/MWh in 2021 to $89/MWh today. That number factors in an approximate $30/MWh subsidy from the IRA. Without it, the still volatile target price would be $119/MWh.
One municipal representative described NuScale’s cost increase announcement as “a punch to the gut,” while another told his board of directors that the project will “probably fail” the economic competitive test.
So will Congress continue to stanch the bleeding by authorizing more federal funds through the IRA and other legislation in its determination to squander funds on slow, expensive new reactors that could take decades to arrive? Or could the deep pockets of a US oligarch like Gates present an overwhelming temptation to channel some off-the-books funding his way? Is there any reason to assume that members of the US Congress are any less corruptible than their counterparts in the statehouses of Illinois and Ohio?
Energy companies have a long history of powerful lobbying influence on Capitol Hill. In a 2014 paper for Princeton University, authors Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page observed that “it is well established that organized groups regularly lobby and fraternize with public officials, move through revolving doors between public and private employment, provide self-serving information to officials, draft legislation, and spend a great deal of money on election campaigns.”
These groups, including lobbyists and executives from major energy companies promoting nuclear power, represent their own business and shareholder interests and rarely, as Gilens and Page noted, “the poor or even the economic interests of ordinary workers”.
With climate change mitigation very much on the agenda at the White House and in Congress, energy companies have ramped up their spending power and influence. This is particularly true of fossil fuel companies, ……………………………
The Chicago-based company, Exelon, operates the most US reactors at 14, and has enjoyed similar open door access, particularly during the Obama administration. Future Chicago mayor, Rahm Emanuel, orchestrated the $16 billion merger of Unicom Corp. and PECO Energy Co. that created Exelon Corp., and later became President Obama’s chief of staff. When offered the job, Emanuel immediately phoned Exelon CEO, John Rowe, for advice. Unsurprisingly, Rowe urged him to take it.
Exelon then enjoyed unprecedented access in Washington, DC, doubtless helped in no small part by John W. Rogers Jr., a top Obama fundraiser and Exelon board member and David Axelrod, Obama’s long- time political strategist and a former Exelon consultant.
In 2022, Exelon fielded 39 lobbyists to work the Congressional beat, according to Open Secrets, which also detailed the involvement of Exelon lobbyists in H.R. 4024, the Zero-Emission Nuclear Power Production Credit Act of 2021, introduced on June 21, 2021 by Democratic Representative Bill Pascrell, Jr. of New Jersey. The Act allows a new business-related tax credit through 2030 for the production of electricity from what it misleadingly describes as “zero-emission” nuclear power.
All of this is perfectly legal, of course, a kind of sanctioned corruption that allows the corporations with the deepest pockets and greatest access to broker the best deals for their interests, mainly those of shareholders, not consumers. This year, TerraPower’s director of external affairs, Jeff Navin, will be back on the Hill like Oliver Twist, asking for yet more to shore up the Natrium project, which currently relies on a fuel only produced in Russia.
But some nuclear company executives — and the compliant politicians who take their money — have seemingly crossed that rather blurry legal boundary between lobbying and bribery and are now facing the consequences.
Former Ohio House speaker, Larry Householder and his fellow conspirators were convicted for taking bribes in exchange for favorable legislation from FirstEnergy, which has paid a heavy fine. On June 29, Householder was handed down the maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. His co-conspirator, Matt Borges, the former Ohio GOP Chairman, was sentenced on June 30 to five years in federal prison.
In South Carolina, the debacle over the canceled new nuclear reactors at V.C. Summer have seen SCANA CEO, Kevin Marsh go to prison for two years, while SCANA COO, Stephen Byrne received a 15-month sentence in March.
Two Westinghouse executives were also charged, although company executive, Jeffrey Benjamin, has walked away, for now, from all charges when the judge in August dismissed the case, agreeing with defense lawyers who argued that negatively affected South Carolina ratepayers were improperly allowed on the grand jury, thereby denying Benjamin an unbiased jury. However, the judge did not prevent prosecutors from seeking another indictment against Benjamin if conducted properly.
In Chicago, former Illinois House Speaker, Mike Madigan and his long-time ally, former legislator and lobbyist, Michael McClain, were indicted on 22 counts in an alleged $3 million criminal enterprise that included racketeering conspiracy, attempted extortion, bribery and other charges.
McClain was tried separately from Madigan, along with former ComEd CEO Anne Pramaggiore, former ComEd lobbyist, John Hooker, and former head of the City Club of Chicago, Jay Doherty. On May 2, all four were found guilty on nine different counts of conspiracy, bribery and falsification of records.
US Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio, David DeVillers, a Trump appointee, may be feeling vindicated by Householder’s 20-year sentence. In July 2020, when DeVilliers arrested the former speaker, he called Householder’s crimes, “likely the largest bribery money-laundering scheme ever perpetrated against the people of the state of Ohio.” And it made him angry.
“We’ve got people dying of overdoses of fentanyl, people stacked up like cord wood at a coroner’s office,” DeVillers said at the press conference announcing the arrests. “And we have to take our resources away from those real victim cases and investigate and prosecute some politicians who just won’t do their damn job.”
Householder created an enterprise, DeVillers said, that “went looking for someone to bribe them”. But where does lobbying end and bribery begin? The fine line between Householder’s orchestration of bribes for bills and the Capitol Hill lobbyists who pay for — and even write — them, is blurry indeed.
Linda Pentz Gunter is the international specialist at Beyond Nuclear and writes for and curates Beyond Nuclear International. https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2023/09/03/undue-influence/
US Victim of Own Propaganda in Ukraine War
The aggression of Kiev’s coup regime against ethnic Russians in Ukraine, which led to Russia’s intervention, has been airbrushed from history.
The brutality of these neo-Nazis surfaced again on May 2 when right-wing toughs in Odessa attacked an encampment of ethnic Russian protesters driving them into a trade union building which was then set on fire with Molotov cocktails. As the building was engulfed in flames, some people who tried to flee were chased and beaten, while those trapped inside heard the Ukrainian nationalists liken them to black-and-red-striped potato beetles called Colorados, because those colors are used in pro-Russian ribbons.
‘Burn, Colorado, burn’ went the chant.
As the fire worsened, those dying inside were serenaded with the taunting singing of the Ukrainian national anthem. The building also was spray-painted with Swastika-like symbols and graffiti reading ‘Galician SS,’ a reference to the Ukrainian nationalist army that fought alongside the German Nazi SS in World War II, killing Russians on the eastern front.”
Photos and a video can be seen on the original of this article
The U.S. embassy in Prague furthered the suppression of the historical context of the Ukraine conflict, which has dangerously trapped Americans in ignorance about the war.
SCHEERPOST, By Joe Lauria / Consortium News, August 30, 2023
The whitewashing of the historical context for the war in Ukraine has resulted in a profoundly embarrassing episode for the United States embassy in Prague.
An Aug. 21 Tweet from the embassy with a message roughly translated from Czech to mean “Aggression always comes from the Kremlin,” showed two photographs: the first displayed Soviet tanks in the streets of Prague in 1968. The second showed fire burning in front of a building and was marked “Odesa 2023.”
Twitter users were quick to point out the embassy’s error. “The bottom photo is from 2014 Odessa Clashes where pro federalism (mostly pro Russian) got burned alive in clash with Ukrainian nationalist(s) while police and fireman stood watching. To this day no one was jailed,” wrote one commenter.
Someone else wrote: “You vile people, twisting the history to whitewash the crimes of the Ukrainian far-right against peaceful Ukrainians, and in fact using their crimes with the diametrically opposite meaning!”
The embassy got the message. “Thanks for the heads up and apologies for the incorrect use of the graphic. We wanted to illustrate the ongoing Russian aggression against Ukraine and we chose the wrong photo,” it wrote.
That prompted another Twitter user to sarcastically respond: “You wanted to illustrate the Ukrainian aggression against the Russian people and you chose the right photo.”
The embassy then deleted the Tweet. It never acknowledged the event depicted in the bottom photo. That signifies either ignorance of the event or intentional suppression of it. The massacre in Odessa is a key point in understanding the cause of the war and has been buried by the West, creating a propagandized narrative about Russia’s intervention.
May 2, 2014
Demonstrators in Odessa on May 2, 2014 were protesting the violent overthrow two and a half months earlier on Feb. 21, 2014 of the democratically-elected President Viktor Yanukovych. U.S. involvement in the coup is revealed in a leaked telephone conversation between Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland and Geoffrey Pyatt, the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine at the time.
On May 2, football hooligans and far-right groups deliberately set fire to a labor union building in Odessa where protestors against the coup had taken refuge. As many as 48 people were killed. Police did not intervene. Video footage shows at least one police officer and others firing their guns into the building. The crowd is cheering as many of the people trapped inside jumped to their deaths.
Pleas at the time from the United Nations and the European Union for Ukraine to investigate were ignored. Three Ukrainian local government probes were stymied by the withholding of secret documents.
A report on the incident from the European Council (EC) at the time makes clear it did not conduct its own investigation but relied on local probes, especially by the Verkhovna Rada’s Temporary Investigation Commission. The EC complains in its reports that it too was barred from viewing classified information. The EC said the Ukrainian government probes “failed to comply with the requirements of the European Human Rights Convention.”
Relying only on the flawed local inquiries, the EC reports that pro-Russian, or pro-federalist, protestors attacked a pro-unity march in the afternoon, prompting street battles. Then:…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
The local investigation thus blamed the anti-Maidan protestors for starting the fire throughout the building. But this video, which shows events on that day leading to the fire, depicts the main blaze in the lobby. It shows Right Sector extremists lobbing Molotov cocktails into the building and a policeman firing his gun at it.
It does not show any cocktails thrown from the building. It doesn’t show clashes earlier in the day, though one pro-unity protestor says they were attacked at Cathedral Square and they’ve come to burn the anti-Maidan protestors in the building for revenge.
The Fallout
Eight days after the Odessa massacre, coup resisters in the far eastern provinces of Donetsk and Lugansk, bordering on Russia, voted in a referendum to become independent from Ukraine.
The U.S.-backed coup government had launched a military attack two weeks earlier, on April 15, 2014 against ethnic Russians in Donbass protesting against the coup, including seizing government buildings, in defense of a democratic election. This phase of the war continued for nearly eight years, killing thousands of people before prompting Russian intervention in the civil war on Feb. 24, 2022.
Russia says it had proof that the Ukrainian military, which had amassed 60,000 of its troops at the line of contact, was on the verge of an offensive to retake the Donbass provinces. OSCE maps showed a dramatic increase of shelling from the government side into the rebel areas in February last year.
Russia invaded Ukraine with the stated purpose of “de-Nazifying” and “de-militarizing” Ukraine to protect Russian-speakers and the people of Donbass. The events in Odessa on May 2, 2014 played a role.
Western Media Coverage
The New York Times buried the first news of the massacre in a May 2, 2014 story, saying “dozens of people died in a fire related to clashes that broke out between protesters holding a march for Ukrainian unity and pro-Russian activists.”
……………… The late Robert Parry, who founded Consortium News, reported on Aug. 10, 2014:
“The brutality of these neo-Nazis surfaced again on May 2 when right-wing toughs in Odessa attacked an encampment of ethnic Russian protesters driving them into a trade union building which was then set on fire with Molotov cocktails. As the building was engulfed in flames, some people who tried to flee were chased and beaten, while those trapped inside heard the Ukrainian nationalists liken them to black-and-red-striped potato beetles called Colorados, because those colors are used in pro-Russian ribbons.
‘Burn, Colorado, burn’ went the chant.
As the fire worsened, those dying inside were serenaded with the taunting singing of the Ukrainian national anthem. The building also was spray-painted with Swastika-like symbols and graffiti reading ‘Galician SS,’ a reference to the Ukrainian nationalist army that fought alongside the German Nazi SS in World War II, killing Russians on the eastern front.”
Consequences of Suppressing Information
Though they were reported at the time, the events of May 2, 2014 have virtually vanished from Western media. It was one of the seminal events that led to Russia’s eventual intervention in the Ukrainian civil war.
Similarly the role Ukrainian neo-Nazis played in the 2014 coup and the 8-year war on Donbass — which had been widely reported on at the time in Western mainstream media — disappeared, erasing the context of Russia’s invasion. The December 2021 Russian offer of treaties with the U.S. and NATO to avoid war was forgotten too. A campaign was then launched by so-called disinformation monitors to try to suppress alternative media from reporting on these facts.
The consequences of these efforts is clear. The aggression of Kiev’s coup regime against ethnic Russians in Ukraine, which led to Russia’s intervention, has been airbrushed from history.
What’s left is a cartoon version that says the conflict began, not in 2014, but in February 2022 when Putin woke up one morning and decided to invade Ukraine. There was no other cause, according to this version, other than unprovoked, Russian aggression against an innocent country.
Thus the U.S. Embassy in Prague either deceptively used that photo, or more likely, had no idea what happened in Odessa in 2014, as it has hardly been reported on since, thinking that a prime example of Ukrainian aggression against ethnic Russians was instead a photo showing Russian aggression against Ukrainians.
This is what happens when you believe your own propaganda. https://scheerpost.com/2023/08/30/us-victim-of-own-propaganda-in-ukraine-war/
Most ‘experts’ pushing for endless conflict in Ukraine share a common benefactor.
the top 50 think tanks received over a billion dollars from the US government and its defense contractors and manufacturers, including some of the biggest beneficiaries of weapons production today ‘for Ukraine’. The top recipients of this funding include the Atlantic Council, German Marshall Fund of the United States, Brookings Institution, Heritage Foundation, Center for Strategic and International Studies, New America Foundation, RAND Corporation, Center for a New American Security, Council on Foreign Relations, and the Stimson Center.
A whopping 85% of media quotes on US military involvement come from someone paid by the defense industry
rachelmarsden.com 20 Aug 23
Experts with important-sounding titles linked to academic-sounding entities have been shaping hearts and minds in the press, both at home and abroad, in favor of endless conflict in Ukraine. Guess what deep-pocketed benefactor lurks beneath the surface?
During the Iraq War, the Pentagon backed retired generals to make the rounds of TV and radio shows as ‘military analysts’ to promote the Bush administration’s agenda in the Persian Gulf. It was like inviting Ronald McDonald on a program to debate and discuss the merit of Big Macs. You could almost see the strings attached to the puppets, linked to the military-industrial complex that benefited from war without an off-ramp.
Fast forward 20 years, and the sales tactics have drastically changed. The generals have been replaced by various experts with academic credentials, typically linked to one or more ‘think tanks’. Far from the neutral academic centers of intellectual integrity that the names suggest, these entities are little more than laundromats for discreet special interests. I should know – I used to be a director of one.
Every Wednesday, some of the highest-ranking figures of the Bush administration would come to our Washington, DC office to deliver their main agenda points for the week, requesting assistance in placing and promoting them to both grassroots activists sympathetic to the cause and to the general public. The experts within the think tank were hired based on political litmus tests, no doubt to ensure that their views aligned with the organization’s. When they no longer do, you’re either fired or you leave.
The donors, many of whom were well-known millionaires and billionaires driven by a passion for certain issues, would come straight out and ask for bang for their buck in exchange for the opening of their wallets. In some cases, an entire project or department would be mounted at the think tank with the understanding that it would be fully funded by a single donor. These rich, influential folks typically had business or investment interests that benefited from shaping the establishment narrative in their favor, and they wanted to do so without leaving any footprints. What better way than to have it all fronted by a shiny veneer of expert credibility?
So while the generals of the Iraq War era had all the subtlety of a sledgehammer in representing the interests of the military-industrial complex, the new salesmen of endless armed conflict in Ukraine have overwhelmingly adopted the more subtle model. A study published in 2020 found that the top 50 think tanks received over a billion dollars from the US government and its defense contractors and manufacturers, including some of the biggest beneficiaries of weapons production today ‘for Ukraine’. The top recipients of this funding include the Atlantic Council, German Marshall Fund of the United States, Brookings Institution, Heritage Foundation, Center for Strategic and International Studies, New America Foundation, RAND Corporation, Center for a New American Security, Council on Foreign Relations, and the Stimson Center.
Some of these black boxes are more ideologically-driven than others. The Heritage Foundation, for example, leans overwhelmingly neoconservative and interventionist. Others, like the Atlantic Council and German Marshall Fund, are effectively force multipliers for NATO talking points. But the RAND Corporation also houses systems analysts and scientists specializing in space and computing. The fact that not all of these entities – or even the people who work within some of them – can be tossed into the same basket and labeled mere parrots for the special interests of their organization’s benefactors helps to muddy the waters.
In an analysis published in June of media coverage related to US military involvement in Ukraine, the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft found that, when a think tank is cited regarding the issue, 85% of the time it’s a think tank with “financial backing from the defense industry.” Taken at face value, this risks being interpreted by the general public as expert ‘consensus’ on the need for US taxpayers to continue flooding Ukraine with weapons, unaware that it’s really just a bunch of Pentagon-backed actors agreeing with each other about the need to pursue the most profitable course of action on behalf of their War Inc. sugar daddies. Just like when climate scientists, who have parlayed climate change into endless funding and a perpetual justification for their existence, aren’t going to kill their cash cow by arguing that the climate can’t be controlled by man and that throwing cash at the issue – or at them – is futile.
Many of the Ukraine think tank experts are quick to attack analysis and information published on platforms they don’t like – such as RT – as ‘Russian-backed’. You’d have to be living under a rock these days to not know that RT is linked to Russia. No transparency issues there.
But there is far less transparency around their own organizations’ financing. Where is their insistence on being above board about the use of defense industry cash to influence not just the general public but the course of the conflict itself? Around a third of top foreign policy think tanks don’t disclose this Pentagon funding, according to the Quincy Institute. Nor is it unheard of for these experts to springboard from these establishment-friendly platforms and the public notoriety they provide, right into public office – where they can translate the same agenda that they promoted into actionable policy. Isn’t it important for voters to consider the powerful hidden hand who helped to get them there?
Australia: Civil Society faces imposition of an AUKUS military High Level nuclear waste dump
https://nuclear.foe.org.au/wp-content/uploads/AUKUS-nuclear-waste-David-Noonan-brief-13Aug2023.pdf Updated Briefing by David Noonan, Independent Environment Campaigner 13 August 2023
The Federal ALP belatedly disclosed a secret pre-condition in AUKUS plans to buy existing US nuclear submarines: for Australia to keep the US subs military High Level nuclear waste forever.
In a breach of trust the ALP is seeking to ‘normalise’ High Level nuclear waste in Australia. Claims of
‘nuclear stewardship’ in taking on US nuclear subs and in retaining the US sub wastes are a farce.
Disposal of High Level nuclear waste is globally unprecedented, with our AUKUS ‘partners’ the US
and UK having proven unable to do so in over 60 years since first putting nuclear submarines to sea.
New military Agencies are being set up with an ‘Australian Submarine Agency’ (ASA) set up to:
“enable the necessary policy, legal, non-proliferation, workforce, security and safety arrangements”.
A new military nuclear regulator, the statutory ‘Australian Nuclear-Powered Submarine Safety
Regulator’ is to be established. Both Agencies will report directly to the Minister for Defence.
An array of federal legislation is required to manage nuclear submarines, supporting infrastructure
and facilities, from acquisition through to disposal. The Reforming Defence Legislation Review
proposes to take on Defence Act powers to override State and Territory legislation to ‘provide
certainty’ to Defence roles, operations and facilities.
Minister for Defence Richard Marles MP has stated there will be ‘an announcement’ by early 2024 on
a process to manage High Level nuclear waste and to site a waste disposal facility, saying “obviously
that facility will be remote from populations” (ABC News 15 March 2023).
Defence is already working to identify potential nuclear waste disposal sites. Political leaders in WA,
Queensland and Victoria have rejected a High Level nuclear waste disposal site. The SA Labor
Premier has so far only said it should go to a safe ‘remote’ location in the national interest.
AUKUS compromises public confidence in government and sets up a serious clash with
hcivil society:
- Defence must be transparent and made accountable over AUKUS policy, associated rights and
legal issues, and the proposed High Level nuclear waste dump siting process; - Defence must commit to comply with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous
Peoples Article 29 provision of Indigenous People’s rights to “Free, Prior and Informed Consent”
over storage or disposal of hazardous materials on their lands. - Defence must declare whether the SA Nuclear Waste Storage (Prohibition) Act 2000 is intended
to be over-ridden to impose an AUKUS dump on lands and unwilling community in SA.
The public has a right to know who is targeted and a right to Say No to imposition of nuclear wastes.
The ALP National Platform (2021, Uranium p.96-98) makes a commitment to oppose overseas waste:
- Labor will: 8. d. Remain strongly opposed to the importation and storage of nuclear waste
that is sourced from overseas in Australia.
In contrast, AUKUS proposes Australia buy existing US military nuclear reactors in subs that are to be
up to 10-12 years old, loaded with intractable US origin weapons grade High Level nuclear wastes.
An AUKUS military nuclear dump is likely to be imposed on community in SA or in NT, with override
of State laws, compulsory land acquisition, and disregard for Indigenous Peoples rights to Say No.
Woomera is being targeted as a ‘favoured location’ for an AUKUS nuclear dump, in an
untenable affront to democratic rights in SA and to Indigenous People’s rights
SA community and the Barngarla People have just overcome federal plans to store ANSTO nuclear
fuel wastes and ILW on agricultural land near Kimba that had divided community on Eyre Peninsula.
The Bargarla People won a hard fought court case against the Federal Government that set aside the
Kimba dump siting decision by Coalition Minister Pitt as affected by bias and pre-judgement.
In response, Labor Minister Hon Madeleine King MP decided to not appeal the Judge’s finding of
apprehended bias, saying “The judgement was clear, and the Government is listening.”
The next day the national press reports: “Woomera looms as national nuclear waste dump site
including for AUKUS submarine high-level waste (afr.com) (11 August 2023). The article states the
AFR understands the Woomera rocket range is the ‘favoured location’ for the submarine waste.
The federal gov may also decide to ‘co-locate’ AUKUS submarine waste with ANSTO nuclear fuel
wastes and long lived ILW. However, the regulator says ANSTO wastes can be securely retained at the
Lucas Heights reactor site for decades. An imposed AUKUS dump will discredit any associated plans.
A suite of public interests are already at stake. For instance, which Ports will be requisitioned for
roles in AUKUS nuclear waste plans? (the federal gov previously targeted the Port of Whyalla).
AUKUS nuclear waste dump plans trigger the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous
Peoples (adopted by United Nations, Sept 2007) in Indigenous People’s Article 29 rights to “Free,
Prior and Informed Consent” over storage or disposal of hazardous materials on their lands.
Traditional owners must have a right to Say No to nuclear wastes, see “AUKUS nuclear waste dump
must be subject to Indigenous veto” (By Michelle Fahy May 2023): “Bipartisan secrecy and Defence’s
poor record with Indigenous groups at Woomera are red flags for consultations over an AUKUS
nuclear waste dump. Human rights experts say government must establish an Indigenous veto right.”
The “Woomera Protected Area” (WPA) a large Defence weapon testing range in SA had already been
flagged by other State Premiers as a site for a military High Level nuclear waste disposal facility.
Most of the WPA is State owned Crown land and not federal owned Defence lands. Siting a nuclear
dump on the WPA would be imposed through compulsory land acquisition and over-ride of SA laws.
Storage and disposal of nuclear wastes compromises the safety and welfare of the people of South
Australia, that is why it is prohibited by the SA Nuclear Waste Storage (Prohibition) Act 2000.
The Objects of this Act cover public interest issues at stake, to protect our health, safety and welfare:
“The Objects of this Act are to protect the health, safety and welfare of the people of South
Australia and to protect the environment in which they live by prohibiting the establishment
of certain nuclear waste storage facilities in this State.”
Defence are already ignoring Aboriginal Heritage law and contravening protections in SA, see
“Defence bombing Indigenous site in Woomera” (May 2023). Defence is now further ‘angling for
exemption from State laws it admits serve important public purposes’.
The SA Premier is yet to say if he will support an Indigenous right to Say No to an AUKUS dump in SA.
South Australians have a democratic right to decide their own future and to reject an AUKUS dump.
McCarthyism Is Back, and It’s Coming for the Peace Movement
https://portside.org/2023-08-12/mccarthyism-back-and-its-coming-peace-movement
With rising global tensions, unsurprisingly the same old McCarthyite playbook is again being dusted off. We reject these smears.
Defending Rights & Dissent condemns in the strongest possible terms the increasing McCarthyite attacks on leftwing and peace groups critical of US-policy towards China. As tensions between the US and China escalate, we have unsurprisingly seen attacks against those who dissent from the prevailing foreign policy orthodoxy.
Over the weekend, the New York Times published an inflammatory regurgitation of innuendo, aspersions, and propaganda focusing on a number of groups, including Code Pink and the People’s Forum.
With the “paper of record” giving these smears a veneer of legitimacy, Senator Marco Rubio sent a letter to the Department of Justice urging them to investigate these activist groups under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. This would not be the first time that biased reporting was used to predicate an FBI investigation.
Defending Rights & Dissent has worked with Code Pink for decades. Just days before the Times published their hit job, we joined with Code Pink to deliver a letter to the State Department about imprisoned journalist Julian Assange. In 2020, we launched our report Still Spying on Dissent: The Enduring Problem of FBI First Amendment Abuse at the People’s Forum. We also co-sponsored the New York session of the Belmarsh Tribunal, which was held at the People’s Forum. In spite of the attempted intimidation of Sen. Rubio, Defending Rights & Dissent fully plans to continue working with both Code Pink and the People’s Forum.
Code Pink has been a courageous and bold voice and the People’s Forum has been an invaluable space for activists. These efforts to silence them have far-reaching implications beyond just US-China policy.
On October 10, 1960, Defending Rights & Dissent was formed as the National Committee to Abolish the House Un-American Activities Committee. The New York Times covered the event, regurgitating the press release issued by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), which noted that HUAC had accused six of our founders of being Communists. Over a decade later when we sued the FBI under the Freedom of Information Act, it was revealed the FBI were the true authors of the HUAC press-release the New York Times dutifully parroted.
In those days, merely opposing HUAC or questioning the FBI’s vast domestic surveillance leviathan was enough to tar someone with suspicion of something sinister. During the Cold War, J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI, HUAC, and other forces of political repression all treated the holding of verboten views on anything from civil rights to foreign policy as evidence the speaker was part of a subversive plot. According to Hoover, although it was difficult to prove membership in the Communist Party, it was easy to prove they were speaking the “Communist Line.” The FBI compiled reports on the “Communist Line” and did side-by side comparisons with activist groups or political publications. Both membership in a subversive organization or the belief that one may be influenced by subversives opened one up to the same intensive surveillance and dirty tricks of the FBI.
After restrictions were placed on the FBI in the 1970s, the FBI used its nebulous foreign counterintelligence powers to say it was combatting “active measures” in the form of Soviet disinformation and international terrorism to target dissent. The official reasoning may have changed, but the internal logic was the same, and the FBI set out in pursuit of opponents of Ronald Reagan’s murderous Central American policy arguing they were “foreign agents” or supporting terrorism as evidenced by their political views.
We saw this same playbook repeated again after September 11, 2001 and applied to critics of the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the suppression of civil liberties at home. Repeatedly, supporters of Palestinian rights have also been subject to similar McCarthyite tactics. In many cases, the FBI justified its investigations and inquiries based on information coming from right wing groups. That is precisely what Sen. Rubio and others are hoping will be the result of the Times piece.
With rising global tensions, unsurprisingly the same old McCarthyite playbook is again being dusted off. We reject these smears.
Sweden’s “Energiforsk” should remove misleading reports on nuclear power”.
Do you want an energy policy based on opinions and misleading information
or should we demand an energy policy based on research and facts?
Basing our energy policy on opinions without factual basis is bad, but even worse
is that the research company Energiforsks is currently providing Sweden’s
politicians with incorrect and misleading information about the
possibilities of nuclear power, writes energy consultant Hugo Franzén in a
debate post on SMB.
Some time ago I met a politician who claimed that we
must invest in nuclear power if we want a sustainable energy supply. The
politician was adamant in his conviction and referred to a “research report
from the UN where the authors concluded that nuclear power is an
indispensable tool for achieving the global sustainability goals formulated
in Agenda 2030″.
I work as an energy consultant and know that the UN does
not take such positions and was then curious about the source. I searched
and found the mentioned report on Energiforsk’s website, see further on
this link. On the website, Energiforsk highlights the report and writes,
among other things, “The 155-page long report states that nuclear power is
an indispensable tool for achieving the global sustainability goals
formulated in Agenda 2030″.
I emailed Energiforsk’s CEO, Markus Vråke, and
asked if it was a fact-based conclusion that was presented on the website
and that Energiforsk stood behind. Markus then replied “We do not stand
behind other people’s messages”. Now that Energiforsk’s CEO admits that it
is not a conclusion that can be drawn from the report but rather an
opinion, or a message from the report authors, I suggested that they should
remove the report from the website, or alternatively be clear that the
report is misleading and has no scientific support . Markus Vråke did not
respond to my email but continues to mislead by highlighting the report on
the website as a credible source of knowledge.
Supermiljobloggen 12th Aug 2023
Zelensky Fires All Military Enlistment Office Chiefs Over Corruption Allegations
DAILY WIRE, By Zach Jewell, Aug 12, 2023
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced Friday that he will dismiss every single head of the country’s regional military enlistment offices over allegations of abuse of power, fraud, and corruption.
In a statement released by Zelensky’s office, the president said that a recent inspection of “military commissars” revealed that some of the military officials illegally obtained cash or cryptocurrency while others illegally transported people eligible for military service across the border. The inspection began in June after journalists uncovered that the former head of the Odesa Oblast military enlistment office purchased property in Spain worth $4.5 million, according to the Kyiv Independent. ………………….
In all, 112 criminal cases have been opened following the inspection of enlistment offices and 33 people have been charged. …………………….
The Ukrainian president said he will replace the fired commissars with officers who have experience on the battlefield. The replacements will be reviewed by the country’s Security Service.
Earlier this year, Zelensky fired one of his top generals and numerous top officials were fired or resigned after they were hit with allegations of corruption. Many of the officials who were fired or resigned were accused of leaving the country and living lavish lifestyles while their country fought the Russian invaders.
Zelensky’s firing of the enlistment office chiefs comes as President Joe Biden asked Congress to approve more than $24 billion in aid to Ukraine as part of a $40 billion package. In the package, Biden asked for $20 billion more to go to Ukraine than he requested be used to address the ongoing border crisis, POLITICO reported.
The U.S., which is by far the largest supporter of Ukraine’s war effort, has failed to track its shipments of weapons and military equipment to the European country, according to a report last month from the inspector general for the Department of Defense. After describing the inability of the U.S. to track all of the weapons it had sent to Ukraine, the report listed several examples of groups in the country obtaining military equipment for nefarious purposes, though the origin of the equipment remained unclear as the report was heavily redacted.
Americans are becoming increasingly wary of U.S. involvement in the Ukraine-Russia war with a majority of voters now saying they oppose more funding for Ukraine, according to a recent CNN poll. Biden, however, has repeatedly said that the U.S. will support Ukraine for “as long as it takes.”
Secret Pakistan cable documents US pressure to remove Imran Khan
“All will be forgiven,” said a U.S. diplomat, if the no-confidence vote against Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan succeeds.
The Intercept, Ryan Grim, Murtaza Hussain, August 9 2023,
THE U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT encouraged the Pakistani government in a March 7, 2022, meeting to remove Imran Khan as prime minister over his neutrality on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, according to a classified Pakistani government document obtained by The Intercept.
The meeting, between the Pakistani ambassador to the United States and two State Department officials, has been the subject of intense scrutiny, controversy, and speculation in Pakistan over the past year and a half, as supporters of Khan and his military and civilian opponents jockeyed for power. The political struggle escalated on August 5 when Khan was sentenced to three years in prison on corruption charges and taken into custody for the second time since his ouster. Khan’s defenders dismiss the charges as baseless. The sentence also blocks Khan, Pakistan’s most popular politician, from contesting elections expected in Pakistan later this year.
One month after the meeting with U.S. officials documented in the leaked Pakistani government document, a no-confidence vote was held in Parliament, leading to Khan’s removal from power. The vote is believed to have been organized with the backing of Pakistan’s powerful military. Since that time, Khan and his supporters have been engaged in a struggle with the military and its civilian allies, whom Khan claims engineered his removal from power at the request of the U.S.
The text of the Pakistani cable, produced from the meeting by the ambassador and transmitted to Pakistan, has not previously been published. The cable, known internally as a “cypher,” reveals both the carrots and the sticks that the State Department deployed in its push against Khan, promising warmer relations if Khan was removed, and isolation if he was not.
The document, labeled “Secret,” includes an account of the meeting between State Department officials, including Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs Donald Lu, and Asad Majeed Khan, who at the time was Pakistan’s ambassador to the U.S.
The document was provided to The Intercept by an anonymous source in the Pakistani military who said that they had no ties to Imran Khan or Khan’s party. The Intercept is publishing the body of the cable below, correcting minor typos in the text because such details can be used to watermark documents and track their dissemination………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
The Intercept has made extensive efforts to authenticate the document. Given the security climate in Pakistan, independent confirmation from sources in the Pakistani government was not possible. The Pakistan Embassy in Washington, D.C., did not respond to a request for comment……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
more https://theintercept.com/2023/08/09/imran-khan-pakistan-cypher-ukraine-russia/—
Atomic Bombing of Japan Was Not Necessary to End WWII. US Gov’t Documents Admit It
US government documents admit the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was not necessary to end WWII. Japan was on the verge of surrendering. The nuclear attack was the first strike in Washington’s Cold War on the Soviet Union.
By Ben Norton / Geopolitical Economy Report August 10, 2023 https://scheerpost.com/2023/08/10/atomic-bombing-of-japan-was-not-necessary-to-end-wwii-us-govt-documents-admit-it/
It is very common for Western governments and media outlets to tell the rest of the world to be afraid of North Korea and its nuclear weapons, or to fear the possibility that Iran could one day have nukes.
But the reality is that there is only one country in human history that has used nuclear weapons against a civilian population – and not once, but twice: the United States.
On the 6th and 9th of August, 1945, the US military dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Around 200,000 civilians were killed.
Today, nearly 80 years later, many US government officials, journalists, and educators still claim that Washington had no choice but to nuke Japan, to force it to surrender and thus end World War Two. Some argue that this horrifying atrocity was in fact a noble act, that it saved even more lives that would have been lost in subsequent fighting.
This narrative, although widespread, is utterly false.
US government documents have admitted that Japan was already on the verge of surrendering in 1945, before the nuclear strikes. It was simply not necessary to use the atomic bomb.
The US Department of War (which was renamed the Department of Defense later in the 1940s) conducted an investigation, known as the Strategic Bombing Survey, analyzing its air strikes in World War II.
Published in 1946, the Strategic Bombing Survey stated very clearly, “Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped”:
… it seems clear that, even without the atomic bombing attacks, air supremacy over Japan could have exerted sufficient pressure to bring about unconditional surrender and obviate the need for invasion.
Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts, and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey’s opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated
The nuclear strikes on Japan represented a political decision taken by the United States, aimed squarely at the Soviet Union; it was the first strike in the Cold War.
In August 1945, the USSR was preparing to invade Japan to overthrow its ruling fascist regime, which had been allied with Nazi Germany – which the Soviet Red Army had also just defeated in the European theater of the war.
Washington was concerned that, if the Soviets defeated Japanese fascism and liberated Tokyo like they had in Berlin, then Japan’s post-fascist government could become an ally of the Soviet Union and could adopt a socialist government.
The atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, therefore, were not so much aimed at the Japanese fascists as they were aimed at the Soviet communists.
This expressly political decision to use nuclear weapons against Japan was in fact opposed by several top US military officials.
As one of the most famous generals in US military history, Dwight Eisenhower led operations in the European theater of the war and oversaw the subsequent occupation of what was formerly Nazi Germany.
Eisenhower later became president of the United States, following Harry Truman, the US leader who had nuked Japan.
Eisenhower is renowned worldwide for his leadership in the fight against fascism in Europe. But what is little known is that he opposed the US nuclear attacks on Japan.
After leaving the White House, Eisenhower published a memoir titled Mandate for Change. In this 1963 book, the former top general recalled an argument he had in July 1945 with then US Secretary of War Henry Stimson.
Stimson had notified him that Washington was planning to nuke Japan, and Eisenhower criticized the decision, stating that he had “grave misgivings” and was convinced “that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary”.
The incident took place in [July] 1945 when Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act. … But the Secretary, upon giving me the news of the successful bomb test in New Mexico, and of the plan for using it, asked for my reaction, apparently expecting a vigorous assent.
During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of “face”. The Secretary was deeply perturbed by my attitude, almost angrily refuting the reason I gave for my quick conclusions.
These “completely unnecessary” nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed some 200,000 civilians. But they had a political goal, aimed at the Soviet Union.
The political reasons behind the atomic bombing of Japan have been publicly acknowledged by the US Department of Energy’s Office of History, which runs a website with educational information about the Manhattan Project, the scientific initiative that developed the bomb.
The US government website conceded that the Truman administration’s decision to nuke Japan was politically motivated, writing:
After President Harry S. Truman received word of the success of the Trinity test, his need for the help of the Soviet Union in the war against Japan was greatly diminished. The Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin, had promised to join the war against Japan by August 15th. Truman and his advisors now were not sure they wanted this help. If use of the atomic bomb made victory possible without an invasion, then accepting Soviet help would only invite them into the discussions regarding the postwar fate of Japan.
Other historians argue that Japan would have surrendered even without the use of the atomic bomb and that in fact Truman and his advisors used the bomb only in an effort to intimidate the Soviet Union.
…
Truman hoped to avoid having to “share” the administration of Japan with the Soviet Union.
Mainstream historians have acknowledged this fact as well.
Ward Wilson, a researcher at the establishment London-based think tank the British American Security Information Council, published an article in Washington’s elite Foreign Policy magazine in 2013 titled “The Bomb Didn’t Beat Japan. Stalin Did”.
“Although the bombs did force an immediate end to the war, Japan’s leaders had wanted to surrender anyway and likely would have done so before the American invasion planned for Nov. 1. Their use was, therefore, unnecessary”, he wrote.
Wilson explained:
If the Japanese were not concerned with city bombing in general or the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in particular, what were they concerned with? The answer is simple: the Soviet Union.
…
Even the most hard-line leaders in Japan’s government knew that the war could not go on. The question was not whether to continue, but how to bring the war to a close under the best terms possible.
One way to gauge whether it was the bombing of Hiroshima or the invasion and declaration of war by the Soviet Union that caused Japan’s surrender is to compare the way in which these two events affected the strategic situation. After Hiroshima was bombed on Aug. 6, both options were still alive. … Bombing Hiroshima did not foreclose either of Japan’s strategic options.
The impact of the Soviet declaration of war and invasion of Manchuria and Sakhalin Island was quite different, however. Once the Soviet Union had declared war, Stalin could no longer act as a mediator — he was now a belligerent. So the diplomatic option was wiped out by the Soviet move. The effect on the military situation was equally dramatic.
When the Russians invaded Manchuria, they sliced through what had once been an elite army and many Russian units only stopped when they ran out of gas.
…
The Soviet invasion invalidated the military’s decisive battle strategy, just as it invalidated the diplomatic strategy. At a single stroke, all of Japan’s options evaporated. The Soviet invasion was strategically decisive — it foreclosed both of Japan’s options — while the bombing of Hiroshima (which foreclosed neither) was not.
Attributing the end of the war to the atomic bomb served Japan’s interests in multiple ways. But it also served U.S. interests. If the Bomb won the war, then the perception of U.S. military power would be enhanced, U.S. diplomatic influence in Asia and around the world would increase.
…
If, on the other hand, the Soviet entry into the war was what caused Japan to surrender, then the Soviets could claim that they were able to do in four days what the United States was unable to do in four years, and the perception of Soviet military power and Soviet diplomatic influence would be enhanced. And once the Cold War was underway, asserting that the Soviet entry had been the decisive factor would have been tantamount to giving aid and comfort to the enemy.
Thus, before World War II was even over, the United States launched a Cold War against its ostensible “ally”, the Soviet Union – and against the potential spread of socialism anywhere around the world.
US spy agencies began recruiting former fascists and Nazi collaborators. US officials freed Class A Japanese war criminals from prison, some of whom went on to lead the government in Tokyo.
Many of these figures were involved in founding the right-wing Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which has essentially run Japan as a one-party state since 1955 (excluding a mere five years of opposition rule).
A textbook example of this was Nobusuke Kishi, a notorious war criminal who ran the Japanese empire’s Manchukuo puppet regime and oversaw genocidal atrocities in collaboration with the Nazis. He was briefly imprisoned, but later pardoned by US authorities and, with Washington’s support, rose to become prime minister of Japan in the 1950s.
Kishi’s fascist-linked family still commands significant control over Japanese politics. His grandson, Shinzo Abe, was the longest-serving prime minister in the East Asian nation’s history.
Today, it remains important to correct widespread myths about this history, because they have a profound impact on popular culture.
In July 2023, Hollywood released a blockbuster film, “Oppenheimer”, by award-winning director Christopher Nolan. The movie was a huge commercial success, but was also criticized for its politics.
The film humanized the eponymous physicist who directed the Manhattan Project’s Los Alamos laboratory, J. Robert Oppenheimer, commonly known as the “father of the atomic bomb”.
Later in life, Oppenheimer came to regret the role he played in developing the weapon, and he campaigned against nuclear proliferation.
Ironically, Oppenheimer also became a victim of the US government’s McCarthyism, and was persecuted for his links to left-wing groups.
But while the movie was celebrated for depicting Oppenheimer’s complex internal struggles, it was accused of whitewashing the brutality of the US atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The Japanese civilians who lost their lives in these totally unnecessary attacks were eerily absent from the film.
By incessantly repeating the falsehood that nuking 200,000 people was the only way to get Japan to surrender, US officials have normalized this erasure of the civilian victims of its unnecessary, politically motivated war crimes.
…
The nuclear arms race’s legacy: Toxic contamination, staggering cleanup costs and a culture of government secrecy
Advocates for a full Hanford cleanup warn that without such a commitment, the site will become a “national sacrifice zone,” a place abandoned in the name of national security.
By William J. Kinsella, 6 Aug 23, https://japantoday.com/category/features/opinions/the-nuclear-arms-race’s-legacy-at-home-toxic-contamination-staggering-cleanup-costs-and-a-culture-of-government-secrecy
RALEIGH, North Carolina
Christopher Nolan’s film “Oppenheimer” has focused new attention on the legacies of the Manhattan Project – the World War II program to develop nuclear weapons. As the anniversaries of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on Aug. 6 and Aug. 9, 1945, approach, it’s a timely moment to look further at dilemmas wrought by the creation of the atomic bomb.
The Manhattan Project spawned a trinity of interconnected legacies. It initiated a global arms race that threatens the survival of humanity and the planet as we know it. It also led to widespread public health and environmental damage from nuclear weapons production and testing. And it generated a culture of governmental secrecy with troubling political consequences.
As a researcher examining communication in science, technology, energy and environmental contexts, I’ve studied these legacies of nuclear weapons production. From 2000 to 2005, I also served on a citizen advisory board that provides input to federal and state officials on a massive environmental cleanup program at the Hanford nuclear site in Washington state that continues today.
Hanford is less well known than Los Alamos, New Mexico, where scientists designed the first atomic weapons, but it was also crucial to the Manhattan Project. There, an enormous, secret industrial facility produced the plutonium fuel for the Trinity test on July 16, 1945, and the bomb that incinerated Nagasaki a few weeks later. (The Hiroshima bomb was fueled by uranium produced in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, at another of the principal Manhattan Project sites.)
Later, workers at Hanford made most of the plutonium used in the U.S. nuclear arsenal throughout the Cold War. In the process, Hanford became one of the most contaminated places on Earth. Total cleanup costs are projected to reach up to US$640 billion, and the job won’t be completed for decades, if ever.
Victims of nuclear tests
Nuclear weapons production and testing have harmed public health and the environment in multiple ways. For example, a new study released in preprint form in July 2023 while awaiting scientific peer review finds that fallout from the Trinity nuclear test reached 46 U.S. states and parts of Canada and Mexico.
Dozens of families who lived near the site – many of them Hispanic or Indigenous – were unknowingly exposed to radioactive contamination. So far, they have not been included in the federal program to compensate uranium miners and “downwinders” who developed radiation-linked illnesses after exposure to later atmospheric nuclear tests.
On July 27, 2023, however, the U.S. Senate voted to extend the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act and expand it to communities near the Trinity test site in New Mexico. A companion bill is under consideration in the House of Representatives.
The largest above-ground U.S. tests, along with tests conducted underwater, took place in the Pacific islands. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union and other nations conducted their own testing programs. Globally through 2017, nuclear-armed nations exploded 528 weapons above ground or underwater, and an additional 1,528 underground.
Estimating how many people have suffered health effects from these tests is notoriously difficult. So is accounting for disruptions to communities that were displaced by these experiments.
Polluted soil and water
Nuclear weapons production has also exposed many people, communities and ecosystems to radiological and toxic chemical pollution. Here, Hanford offers troubling lessons.
Starting in 1944, workers at the remote site in eastern Washington state irradiated uranium fuel in reactors and then dissolved it in acid to extract its plutonium content. Hanford’s nine reactors, located along the Columbia River to provide a source of cooling water, discharged water contaminated with radioactive and hazardous chemicals into the river through 1987, when the last operating reactor was shut down.
Extracting plutonium from the irradiated fuel, an activity called reprocessing, generated 56 million gallons of liquid waste laced with radioactive and chemical poisons. The wastes were stored in underground tanks designed to last 25 years, based on an assumption that a disposal solution would be developed later.
Seventy-eight years after the first tank was built, that solution remains elusive. A project to vitrify, or embed tank wastes in glass for permanent disposal, has been mired in technical, managerial and political difficulties, and repeatedly threatened with cancellation.
Now, officials are considering mixing some radioactive sludges with concrete grout and shipping them elsewhere for disposal – or perhaps leaving them in the tanks. Critics regard those proposals as risky compromises. Meanwhile, an estimated 1 million gallons of liquid waste have leaked from some tanks into the ground, threatening the Columbia River, a backbone of the Pacific Northwest’s economy and ecology.
Radioactive trash still litters parts of Hanford. Irradiated bodies of laboratory animals were buried there. The site houses radioactive debris ranging from medical waste to propulsion reactors from decommissioned submarines and parts of the reactor that partially melted down at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania in 1979. Advocates for a full Hanford cleanup warn that without such a commitment, the site will become a “national sacrifice zone,” a place abandoned in the name of national security.
A culture of secrecy
As the movie “Oppenheimer” shows, government secrecy has shrouded nuclear weapons activities from their inception. Clearly, the science and technology of those weapons have dangerous potential and require careful safeguarding. But as I’ve argued previously, the principle of secrecy quickly expanded more broadly. Here again, Hanford provides an example.
Hanford’s reactor fuel was sometimes reprocessed before its most-highly radioactive isotopes had time to decay. In the 1940s and 1950s, managers knowingly released toxic gases into the air, contaminating farmlands and pastures downwind. Some releases supported an effort to monitor Soviet nuclear progress. By tracking deliberate emissions from Hanford, scientists learned better how to spot and evaluate Soviet nuclear tests.
In the mid-1980s, local residents grew suspicious about an apparent excess of illnesses and deaths in their community. Initially, strict secrecy – reinforced by the region’s economic dependence on the Hanford site – made it hard for concerned citizens to get information.
Once the curtain of secrecy was partially lifted under pressure from area residents and journalists, public outrage prompted two major health effects studies that engendered fierce controversy. By the close of the decade, more than 3,500 “downwinders” had filed lawsuits related to illnesses they attributed to Hanford. A judge finally dismissed the case in 2016 after awarding limited compensation to a handful of plaintiffs, leaving a bitter legacy of legal disputes and personal anguish.
Cautionary legacies
Currently active atomic weapons facilities also have seen their share of nuclear and toxic chemical contamination. Among them, Los Alamos National Laboratory – home to Oppenheimer’s original compound, and now a site for both military and civilian research – has contended with groundwater pollution, workplace hazards related to the toxic metal beryllium, and gaps in emergency planning and worker safety procedures.
As Nolan’s film recounts, J. Robert Oppenheimer and many other Manhattan Project scientists had deep concerns about how their work might create unprecedented dangers. Looking at the legacies of the Trinity test, I wonder whether any of them imagined the scale and scope of those outcomes.
Australian MPs Blast Blinken Over Assange
The MPs called the U.S. secretary of state’s remarks that Julian Assange threatened U.S. national security “nonsense” and said the U.S. is only bent on revenge, reports Joe Lauria.
SCHEERPOST, By Joe Lauria / Consortium News August 2, 2023
Three Australian members of Parliament have dismissed U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s strong statement in support of prosecuting imprisoned WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange as “nonsense.”
Independent MP Andrew Wilkie told The Guardian‘s Australian edition that Assange was “not the villain … and if the US wasn’t obsessed with revenge it would drop the extradition charge as soon as possible.”
“Antony Blinken’s allegation that Julian Assange risked very serious harm to US national security is patent nonsense,” Wilkie said.
“Mr Blinken would be well aware of the inquiries in both the US and Australia which found that the relevant WikiLeaks disclosures did not result in harm to anyone,” said Wilkie. “The only deadly behaviour was by US forces … exposed by WikiLeaks, like the Apache crew who gunned down Iraqi civilians and Reuters journalists” in the infamous Collateral Murder video.
Speaking at a press conference with Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong in Brisbane on Saturday, Blinken said he understood Australians’ concerns about their imprisoned citizen, but took a hard line against any move to end his persecution. Blinken said:
“…………………………………………………….Mr Assange was charged with very serious criminal conduct in the United States in connection with his alleged role in one of the largest compromises of classified information in the history of our country.
The actions that he is alleged to have committed risked very serious harm to our national security, to the benefit of our adversaries, and put named human sources at grave risk of physical harm, grave risk of detention…………”
As was shown conclusively by defense witnesses in his September 2020 extradition hearing in London, Assange worked assiduously to redact names of U.S. informants before WikiLeaks publications on Iraq and Afghanistan in 2010. U.S. Gen. Robert Carr testified at the court martial of WikiLeaks‘ source, Chelsea Manning, that no one was harmed by the material’s publication.
Instead, Assange faces 175 years in a U.S. dungeon on charges of violating the Espionage Act, not for stealing U.S. classified material, but for the First Amendment-protected publication of it.
The Meaning of ‘National Security’
WikiLeaks has indeed threatened “national security” if the “nation” is defined as merely its rulers. If “national security” however is meant to be the security of the entire nation, then Blinken’s obsession with continuing the war in Ukraine with the risk of nuclear conflict is truly a threat to the nation’s security.
Liberal MP Bridget Archer, another co-chair of the pro-Assange parliamentary group, said: “He continues to suffer mentally and physically, as does his family, and the government should redouble their efforts to secure his release and return to Australia.”
………………………..Labor MP Julian Hill, also part of the Bring Julian Assange Home Parliamentary Group last week called on Assange to take a plea deal, which should not reflect badly on him. In the meantime, Hill said improving prison conditions “should not be difficult to do even while argument continues about resolution of this matter.”
A recent opinion poll shows that 79 percent of Australians want Assange released and bought home. https://scheerpost.com/2023/08/02/australian-mps-blast-blinken-over-assange/—
US rejects Australian plea to drop Assange case
29 July 23, https://www.rt.com/news/580512-blinken-rejects-assange-australia/
Secretary of State Antony Blinken insisted that the WikiLeaks founder caused “serious harm” to US national security
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has confirmed that Australia has raised the case of Julian Assange’s continued prosecution, but declared that Washington will not cease seeking the extradition of the former WikiLeaks boss and intends to try him for espionage.
Speaking alongside Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong in Brisbane on Saturday, Blinken said that while he understands “the concerns and views of Australians,” Assange’s alleged actions “risked very serious harm to our national security, to the benefit of our adversaries, and put named human sources at grave risk – grave risk – of physical harm, and grave risk of detention.”
Assange, he said, was “charged with very serious criminal conduct” and had allegedly taken part in “one of the largest compromises of classified information in the history of our country.”
An Australian citizen, Julian Assange is currently being held in London’s Belmarsh Prison. He is fighting extradition to the US, where he faces 17 charges under the Espionage Act and potentially a 175-year prison sentence. Human-rights and press-freedom activists have demanded his release, citing his deteriorating mental and physical health, while Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said in May that he was “working through diplomatic channels” to press the US into dropping the case.
The charges against Assange stem from his publication of classified material obtained by whistleblowers, including Pentagon documents detailing alleged US war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, and more than 250,000 diplomatic cables exposing US efforts to – among other things – spy on its allies and influence foreign elections.
While Assange did not personally steal these documents, he is nevertheless being prosecuted for espionage. He and his supporters argue that WikiLeaks’ publication of this material is protected by the First Amendment of the US Constitution.
“We have made clear our view that Mr Assange’s case has dragged on for too long,” Foreign Minister Wong said on Saturday. “We’ve said that publicly and you would anticipate that that reflects also the position we articulate in private.”
The extradition of Assange from Britain to the US was approved in 2020 by then-UK Home Secretary Priti Patel. The publisher lodged his final appeal against the decision in June, after all eight grounds of a previous appeal were rejected by a British High Court judge.
Responding to Blinken’s comments on Saturday, Assange’s brother, Gabriel Shipton, said that it is now up to Prime Minister Albanese to make a public appeal for Assange’s freedom, during his upcoming visit to the US.
1 This Month
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com/
29 Jan. Thursday 7-8 p.m. Webinar – World’s Largest Nuclear Station in Port Hope, ON?
31st January – Challenging the War Machine – a DECLASSIFIED UK SUMMIT
Website of the Week
Now until to February 10, 2026 Radioactive waste storage in France: the debate is finally open! How to participate?
-
Archives
- January 2026 (259)
- December 2025 (358)
- November 2025 (359)
- October 2025 (376)
- September 2025 (258)
- August 2025 (319)
- July 2025 (230)
- June 2025 (348)
- May 2025 (261)
- April 2025 (305)
- March 2025 (319)
- February 2025 (234)
-
Categories
- 1
- 1 NUCLEAR ISSUES
- business and costs
- climate change
- culture and arts
- ENERGY
- environment
- health
- history
- indigenous issues
- Legal
- marketing of nuclear
- media
- opposition to nuclear
- PERSONAL STORIES
- politics
- politics international
- Religion and ethics
- safety
- secrets,lies and civil liberties
- spinbuster
- technology
- Uranium
- wastes
- weapons and war
- Women
- 2 WORLD
- ACTION
- AFRICA
- Atrocities
- AUSTRALIA
- Christina's notes
- Christina's themes
- culture and arts
- Events
- Fuk 2022
- Fuk 2023
- Fukushima 2017
- Fukushima 2018
- fukushima 2019
- Fukushima 2020
- Fukushima 2021
- general
- global warming
- Humour (God we need it)
- Nuclear
- RARE EARTHS
- Reference
- resources – print
- Resources -audiovicual
- Weekly Newsletter
- World
- World Nuclear
- YouTube
-
RSS
Entries RSS
Comments RSS
nuclear-news 