Snowden says Assange prosecution shows Biden’s lip service to ‘brave journalists’ on World Press Freedom Day rings hollow
3 May, 2021 23:21
FILE PHOTO: Demonstrators protest outside of Westminster Magistrates Court during the extradition trial for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, in London, Britain, October 21, 2019. © Reuters / Henry Nicholls
As US President Joe Biden marked World Press Freedom Day with praise of heroic independent media, his government still seeks to jail Julian Assange of WikiLeaks for the act of journalism, said NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.
The famed national security whistleblower took the administration to task on Monday, after Secretary of State Antony Blinken boasted of the US devotion to “press freedom” and “the safety of journalists worldwide.” Assange’s ongoing prosecution is impossible to square with those vows, Snowden said.
Prosecution, or persecution?
“This would be more persuasive if the White House weren't aggressively seeking a 175-year sentence for the publisher of award-winning journalism of global importance – despite pleas from every significant press freedom and human rights organization,” he tweeted.
While Biden himself spoke of the importance of “truth-tellers who refuse to be intimidated” in celebrating World Press Freedom Day, his administration continues to pursue an 18-count indictment against the WikiLeaks publisher, including charges under the Espionage Act brought by the Trump administration in 2019.
Just my opinion, but isn't espionage associated with enemies. Who are the enemies of the exposure of war crimes? Are they not criminals? Are they not Deep State? Are they not the military industrial complex? Are these the people running the world's leading democracy?
Altogether, Assange faces nearly two centuries behind bars, with most charges linked to the publication of classified material – such as the Iraq and Afghan war logs – leaked in 2010 by former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning.
Though the newly installed administration has reversed many of Trump’s policies, it is continuing to seek Assange’s extradition from the UK, over a chorus of objections from press freedom groups.
In a letter addressed to Biden’s Justice Department earlier this year, some two dozen civil liberties groups – including the Freedom of the Press Foundation, the ACLU, Amnesty International and the Committee to Protect Journalists – argued that Assange’s prosecution represents a grave threat to press freedom as “much of the conduct described in the indictment is conduct that journalists engage in routinely.”
Snowden was joined by a number of journalists and activists demanding Assange’s release on World Press Freedom Day, among them Australian MP Andrew Wilkie, as well as the mother of Assange’s children, Stella Morris.
“It is no overstatement to say that the use of the 1917 Espionage Act against Julian is the single biggest, most urgent threat to press freedom and a free society,” she said.
It is also profoundly wrong. Julian isn’t simply just innocent. He is being punished for doing the right thing, for exposing the wrongful killing of journalists and of thousands of civilians, for documenting war crimes.
Assange was arrested in April 2019, after Ecuador revoked his asylum. He has been locked up at the Belmarsh maximum security prison in south London ever since, long after his sentence for skipping bail had expired, as the extradition process drags on.
The continued persecution of Assange goes beyond making him pay for his exposure of criminal acts by western militaries and intelligence. It, in my humble opinion, is an attempt to make sure that neither he, nor anyone else, will risk the exposure of evil being done in secret. This is probably because such dark operations are still going on.
Western countries have proclaimed a disturbing increase in right-wing/far-right crimes. Nearly all such countries are crying that this is the biggest danger to peace in their country. Technically, it may be so, but only if you include far-right propaganda, hate speech and insults, which are the majority of right-wing crimes.
Once you look at violent crimes - far-left radicals are responsible for nearly 50% more than far-right, and they have increased by 45% over the past year while far-right violent crimes have increased by only 11%.
Religiously motivated crimes, including Islamic crimes, have increased by more than 12% last year.
So, why are western governments decrying right-wing crimes as the real threat when left-wing crimes are far worse and are growing much faster? This is what they are feeding the media and the media is eating it up without a trace of scrutiny. The media is almost invariably left-leaning, but why are governments so adamant that the far-right is the problem? What's their end-game?
Politically motivated crimes are ‘on the rise’ in Germany; far-right offenses hit record numbers in 20 years – Interior Minister
4 May, 2021 17:29
FILE PHOTO. © Reuters / Annegret Hilse
Germany has seen its highest number of politically motivated crimes in a decade in 2020, Interior Minister Horst Seehofer said, calling it a “very worrying” trend and adding that more than a half of them were far-right offenses.
The number of politically motivated crimes in Germany in 2020 has risen by more than 8.5% in comparison to the previous year, Seehofer told a press conference, citing fresh data provided by the Federal Criminal Police (BKA). The number of such crimes in 2020 was the highest over the last decade, according to the statistics.
Although all politically motivated crimes still constitute just over 1% of all offenses committed in Germany, the minister still called the numbers “very worrying” and said that this upward trend is “solidifying” and that the officials see a “clear tendency towards brutality.”
"These numbers are very alarming mainly because a trend has been established over the last few years," he said, adding that the Covid-19 pandemic had further contributed to the “polarization of the political discussion.”
More than a half of all politically motivated crimes were committed by far-right radicals, the minister said, adding that the police reported more than 23,000 such offenses in 2020 – an increase of 5.7% in comparison to 2019 – that were mostly related to far-right propaganda, hate speech and insults. Their number was still the highest since 2001 when such statistics were reported for the first time, according to the interior minister.
Left-wing extremist offenses, although much smaller in number than the right-wing ones, were still rising at a faster pace and reached 10,971 in 2020, which is 11.39% more than in the previous year. “Religiously motivated” crimes, including Islamist ones, were also up by 12.24% and accounted for 477 offenses in 2020, according to the police data.
“This shows again that right-wing extremism is the biggest threat for our country,” Seehofer said during the press conference while admitting that “extremism in all its forms remains a threat for our society.”
Statistics on violent offenses showed that leftist radicals appeared to be more aggressive throughout 2020 than even the far-right ones. Out of a total of 3,365 violent politically motivated crimes, 1,526 were attributed to far-left radicals, which is 45% more than in 2019. Right-wing radicals committed 1,092 violent crimes over the same period, which is 11% more than the previous year.
Surely, a 45% increase in violent crimes is startling and worthy of far more attention than an 11% increase. Why is Seehofer, a right-winger himself, more concerned about propaganda, hate-speech, and insults, than violent crimes? It makes no sense!
These numbers include 11 murders and 13 attempted murders, Seehofer said without specifying who the perpetrators were in each particular case.
The number of anti-Semitic crimes also rose by almost 16% over the last year, while the number of xenophobic crimes directed against “foreigners” doubled, increasing from 3,073 to 5,298. The term “foreigner”, which generally means any non-German citizen in German, is also sometimes used to describe people of non-European ethnic background as well as migrants and refugees.
The police reported more than 3,500 crimes related to the Covid-19 pandemic, ranging from “propaganda” offenses and violation of the law on public assemblies to bodily harm. Most such crimes could not be attributed to either left-wing or right-wing radicalism, but law enforcement officials said they observed a worrying tendency of ordinary people teaming up with “conspiracy theorists”, anti-vaccination activists and various radicals.
The news comes the same day German law enforcement also announced the arrest of a suspect who had been using the acronym of a neo-Nazi gang to send hate mail to politicians during a three-year campaign.
Dozens of individuals and organizations received more than 100 letters from a 53-year-old man who used the name ‘NSU 2.0’ – a reference to an infamous neo-Nazi gang responsible for 10 murders, two bombings, and numerous bank robberies between 2000 and 2007.
It’s the second year in a row that German police have been ringing the alarm over the threat from the far right. Back in May 2020, Seehofer – together with the head of the Federal Criminal Police Office, Holger Munch – also spoke about a dramatic increase in anti-Semitic and politically motivated crime, adding that half of politically motivated crimes in 2019 were connected to the far right.
And the other half?
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