It continues to appear that Britain left the European Union because the EU did not have a taste for traversing the world as arms dealers the way Britain and the USA have done. The EU was cramping Britain’s arms sales style?
“Honestly, the human race does not need killing devices, it needs health care,” says Dr. Buni, near Deir Ezzor on the Euphrates River at a small medical clinic in Syria, where life is a certain hell.
Would a journalist give a persecutor of a journalist a fair hearing? Of course. And in the case of Julian Assange, there are no angels. But journalists are not angels, they are the people’s observers and reporters. Sometimes that requires resourcefulness. The reporter who posed as a restaurant waiter to overhear Hitler’s plans was no angel. In this case, Julian Assange sneaked away information from a (maybe angelic) whistleblower that shone light on very serious war crime and hopefully by doing so will eventually prevent further impunity for such crimes. The perpetrators of those crimes seem to want impunity for war crimes and seek to have the reportage stopped. That’s what this article is all about. That’s the Assange story.
by Micheal John, Editor
- Donald Trump is leaving the White House perhaps either voluntarily or in handcuffs and Boris Johnson may be left high and dry on the original ‘bad-boy‘ deal unless President-elect Joseph Biden negotiates a substantial trade agreement with Britain. Europe appears to have made that less essential by closing a generous trade deal with Britain late in 2020.
- Meanwhile, the ‘bad boy’ dirty-arms-deals plans of Johnson and Trump are getting the ouster, it seems certain. Journalists around the world have that game under close watch. As Dr. Buni says, the world needs health care not murderous weapons and not more war.
- Both America and Britain’s ‘bad boys‘ are also under ‘examination‘ by at least the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
- The two partners in arms’ exposure is linked to people like Julian Assange, a journalist/publisher who is the famed leader of the whistleblower ‘Wikileaks’ news agency.
2007 Was a more violent time in Iraq when Americans attacked a Medivac and mass murdered Iraqi civilians. Reuters journalists were murdered for carrying a camera that gunship occupants claim was an RPG. The evidence of these crimes was acquired by ‘Wikileaks’, a whistleblower group. — Julian Assange has been charged with espionage for this ‘whistleblowing’. That is the short version of a long story. His matter of extradition to the United States is being heard on 4 January 2021 in the United Kingdom as an epic saga of horrid abuse of journalist Julian Assange continues. Video Screen capture from Al Jazeera’s professional analysis report.
Among the ‘damage’ done to the Americans and the British by news reportage of their crimes was the ‘Collateral Murder’ video.
The “Collateral Murder” video published by WikiLeaks, confirmed that Reuters reporter Namir Noor-Eldeen and reporter’s assistant Saeed Chmagh were murdered in Baghdad on 12 July 2007 by US military personnel.
Julian Assange, of Wikileaks has been under attack by the Trump White House for exposing American war crime using ‘secret‘ video. At the end of this article is the widely published video which most people should not watch too closely as it is the horrible reality of mass murder of civilians including journalists and children, by American soldiers.
As journalists are being murdered or attacked by lawfare tactics in Somalia, Myanmar, the Philippines and also by British and American seats of power, the Julian Assange case has attracted some attention. Not much outrage.
Do Americans really want to wake up to what really happens when their soldiers go away warfighting as is seen in the ‘Collateral Murder’ video?
Do Americans really understand why some American soldiers come home with serious PTSD?
The Assange matter has been a never-ending saga of abuse of Mr. Assange that somehow dragged on for so long with Assange’s opponents using all of their state apparatus to discolour Assange’s journalistic reputation, have pushed his matter to the back page. Meanwhile Assange has been close to death’s door more than a few times.
China joined America in persecuting Journos and Human Rights Defenders
Sophia Huang Xueqin, a budding China journalist and human rights defender, had her passport confiscated in August 2019; was banned from Hong Kong law study in September 2019; and was for a time locked up in Guangzhou, the province nearest Hong Kong. She has been outspoken about Hong Kong freedom demonstrators, but she was truthful, as always. She is accused of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” by Beijing police after she complained in 2014 as a journalist intern for state broadcaster CCTV that she was assaulted by a TV host, a story she widely reported elsewhere in the first person.
Read: The Lions are Eating The Butterflies
Photo Credit: source supplied
Photo Art/Cropping/Enhancement: Rosa Yamamoto / Feminine-Perspective Magazine
“I think that there is no way you see a photographer with pro gear lining up a shot, wearing my credentials around my neck,” said freelance journalist Linda Tirado, who lost sight in her left eye after Minnesota State Police shot her with a foam bullet 29 May 2020.
The International Center for Journalists ( Jennifer Dorroh | 06/06/20) reported that “Detroit city’s police sprayed tear gas into the crowd of protesters that Free Press reporter Branden Hunter was covering. He ran to meet up with his colleagues. “While I’m wiping the tear gas out of my eye, you can see in the video where the [Detroit Police Department] cop comes up with a shotgun and points it at me, telling me to move,” he said. He frantically showed his press badge and said, “‘I’m press, I’m press!’ and his colleague said the same thing. “Two seconds later, they threw another canister of tear gas at us, and we had to run.”
On the same night, elsewhere, police arrested a CNN crew to stop their reportage. It didn’t work. They left the camera running.
CNN Crew arrested for covering Black Lives Matter Protest, leaving camera running and recording the subsequent events. Photo Credit: Live CNN screen capture.
Read: The Lions are Eating The Butterflies
The murder of Jamal Khashoggi. America’s de facto endorsement of this murder via Donald Trump indicates how vile America has become under Donald Trump. Another nation must take the global lead. Photo Credit: Original, Twitter.Art: Rosa Yamamoto, Feminine Perspective Magazine
Reporters without borders (RSF) say “District Judge Vanessa Baraitser is due to give her decision in a 10 am hearing at London’s Central Criminal Court (the Old Bailey)”
“RSF condemns the targeting of Assange for his contributions to journalism and calls for his immediate release. It is clear that this case is politically motivated and that it aims to make an example of Assange in order to intimidate media outlets all over the world. If the US government is successful in securing Assange’s extradition and prosecuting him for his contributions to public interest reporting, the same precedent could be applied to any journalist anywhere. The possible implications of this case simply cannot be understated; it is the very future of journalism and press freedom that is at stake.” Reporters Without Borders.
If there is any doubt about the ill-will of Assange’s attackers, note that the soon to be former US President Trump sneakily pardoned persons who commit serious crimes against humanity, war crimes that amount to mass murder of civilians on 12 July 2007.
Nicholas Slatten (first-degree murder), Dustin Heard, Evan Liberty, Paul Slough, and Evan Liberty (all attempted manslaughter) were pardoned by Donald Trump for having worked as American mercenaries when they opened fire in bustling traffic in a Baghdad square killing 14 unarmed Iraqi civilians including children.
“They worked for the disgraced firm ‘Blackwater‘, a group of personality-disordered murderers which was owned by the brother of Trump’s education secretary,” notes Simon Baldock, a senior security consultant based in Israel.
Trump pardoned these men, who had in the first place dodged international law with only mild convictions, like first-degree murder where the crime was against humanity.
“The Geneva Conventions oblige states to hold war criminals accountable for their crimes, even when they act as private security contractors,” Jelena Aparac, head of the United Nations working group on the use of mercenaries, said in a statement last week, reported by Reuters on 31 December.
Julian Assange was doing what the UN’s Jelena Aparac said should happen: “hold war criminals accountable for their crimes“. Trump’s America wants that stopped.
Warning: American Forces “Collateral Murder” scenes. US Forces shoot up a Medivac Van and unarmed white-coated workers evacuating the wounded civilians whom Americans had already shot. Some scenes, readers may find disturbing, particularly knowing that here were children in the Medivac van. “America has made some very serious mistakes in Iraq with rules of engagement that are too loose.” The wounded children were passed over by three levels of command.