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I appreciate your comments on Oliver Kamm's talk page. Although I have other pressing tasks to attend at the moment, I'll eventually return to the discussion. Also, don't let TJive intimidate you. He's nothing but a bully. Sir Paul 06:24, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
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Consensus at WPMED is to keep refs generally over one line. Please do not switch them to over many. [1] Best Doc James ( talk · contribs · email) 13:13, 7 August 2016 (UTC)
Jonesey95 has suggested the syntax highlighter gadget as a possible solution to the near-impossibility of reading and editing pages full of LHTs. [b]
Initial thoughts:
Conclusion: better than nothing, but not really a solution to the problem. By providing a makeshift patch that papers over the problem, it reduces the pressure to get the problem fixed properly. It does mark the beginning and end of templates clearly (very good!), but the ETVP script also does that. The ETVP format also makes it easy to spot errors instantly, and the highlighter is of no help in that regard. -- NSH001 ( talk) 21:51, 28 February 2017 (UTC)
Further thoughts:
I vaguely remember trying some sort of highlighter or edit-helper several years ago, [c] and rapidly rejecting it as too cluttered and too distracting; if my memory is correct it also suffered from a lot of bugs. In contrast, I can see that I might sometimes use this highlighter, even though most of the time I will have it turned off. The author of this highlighter, Remember the dot, deserves some thanks and credit for the thought and effort he or she has put into this script. It's obviously useful to many editors, but it's not a solution to the problem of LHT clutter. -- NSH001 ( talk) 09:44, 1 March 2017 (UTC) and NSH001 ( talk) 10:32, 2 March 2017 (UTC)
I have seen other editors (not just Doc James), when talking about this infuriating problem, use the phrase "over one line" to refer to horizontal cite templates and "over many lines" to refer to other formats.
Yes, it is true that the annoying LHT format only occupies one physical line of the computer file. But to use "over one line" in the context of a discussion of the merits of the different formats is very misleading. On the actual edit window that real-life editors use, it also occupies many lines. The difference is that the LHT format will line-wrap at unpredictable positions, depending on where in the text it occurs, what font size is being used and the width of the edit window, among other factors. At least the line-breaks in the "vertical" format are predictable (making it more readable than the LHT format), while the ETVP format is specifically designed to make it as readable as possible.
Incidentally, this problem of line-wrapping is one reason why, generally, I don't mind manually formatted citations; as long as they don't contain long URLs, or other long items, they will usually fit into one line of an edit window, so they don't disrupt the readability of the wikitext in the same way that LHTs do. (I have mentioned elsewhere that there are compelling reasons for preferring templated citations, of course.) There is another reason why manual citations are generally acceptable in the body of an article: they are still in a narrative format, so (unless they contain a long URL) they fit in quite naturally with the rest of the article. Very different from cite templates, where the important task for the editor is to visually parse the argument-value pairs (updated December 2017).
-- NSH001 ( talk) 15:53, 14 March 2017 (UTC)
Well, I really don't know. It baffles and perplexes me that anyone could possibly tolerate this mess. But any strategy for getting rid of LHTs needs to address this paradox. Some possible explanations:
-- NSH001 ( talk) 07:39, 16 June 2017 (UTC)
This section has been prompted by the this discussion on the talk page of Actuary (a featured article), and the simultaneous discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Deprecate parenthetical citations (archived here). In addition, my private ETVP script has been under near-constant development since most of this thread was first written, so an update is needed anyway.
The ETVP script now allows the choice of four different ways of getting rid of LHT clutter: [k]
|refs=
parameter of the {{
reflist}} template. This was the second option that I developed. It succeeds in getting rid of the turds, but it also comes with some disadvantages, notably the difficulty in handling page numbers (which can still be done, but not very easily).In practice, I find that I use option 1 as an interim stage before using one of the other options. Option 1 is very helpful: firstly because it automatically corrects many of the errors that you find in citation templates, and, secondly, having the templates in ETVP format makes them much easier to edit. Any solution (and my script) has to take account of the vast amount of crap that editors type into citation templates. You won't believe the amount of crap that you find in citation templates. Not just editors, most of the citation-generating tools generate crap citations too, notably Visual Editor (VE), which was one of the worst, although it seems to be getting a bit better recently. [l] A huge amount of the effort that has gone into my script has been writing code to correct this mountainous pile of crap. One of the reasons that there is so much crap in citation templates is that the LHT clutter style makes it very difficult to find errors, and even if you do find one, the LHT format makes it hard and time-consuming to correct. So the epithet "turd" is indeed appropriate to describe this style.
Anyway, for now, option 1 is used only as an interim, preliminary stage. I save the result on my own computer (it would be easy to save it on Wikipedia, but that carries the risk of another editor coming along and messing up my work) and then examine it manually. Firstly, to correct the usual crap. Then to check the changes option 1 has offered; the most common of these is the | ref = {{harvid|...}}
it generates if there are no authors or editors, or no date/year is specified.
[m] Of course, this stage may not be needed if I'm already familiar with the page and its history; on the other hand it's essential if someone has been dumping LHTs ("turds") using VE or one of the citation-generating tools. Once I'm satisfied with the results, I run one of the other options to generate the final result.
I still believe using in-line ETVP formatting (option 1) is a valid and useful option (it keeps the citation next to the text it's supporting), but before that can win general acceptance, I think two changes are necessary to the wiki text editor (I refuse to go anywhere near the VE editor):
<ref>...........</ref>
should be changed so that what you see in the edit window looks something like this:where the coloured [ref]s are clickable, resulting in either a pop-up that can be edited, or expanded in-line for editing.blah blah,[ref 23][ref 3][ref 24 name="Smith"] blah blah.[ref 11]
I believe the first change will be welcomed by all editors (even those who are fans of the turd format), since it makes the wikitext much more readable.
The purpose of the ETVP script
Worth reiterating:
The purpose of the ETVP script is to get rid of LHT clutter. That was its original motivation, and will always remain its primary function. In doing this, it provides options to switch from the dungheap citation style to any of the citation formats mentioned above.
But its purpose remains to get rid of LHT clutter. Of course it can be used to switch citation style, and I hope to support every reasonable citation style, but it will never allow a turd-formatted citation to remain in place.
I am always open to reasonable requests for improving the ETVP script. But the one thing that is, and will always remain, non-negotiable, is its fundamental, basic purpose, which is to get rid of turd-formatted citations.
-- NSH001 ( talk) 14:13, 9 August 2020 (UTC)
Although a power supply with a larger than needed power rating will have an extra margin of safety against overloading, such a unit is often less efficient and wastes more electricity at lower loads than a more appropriately sized unit. For example, a 900-watt power supply with the [[80 Plus Silver]] efficiency rating (which means that such a power supply is designed to be at least 85-percent efficient for loads above 180 W) may only be 73% efficient when the load is lower than 100 W, which is a typical idle power for a desktop computer. Thus, for a 100 W load, losses for this supply would be 37 W; if the same power supply was put under a 450 W load, for which the supply's efficiency peaks at 89%, the loss would be only 56 W despite supplying 4.5 times the useful power.<ref>{{cite web | url = http://www.anandtech.com/show/2624/3 | title = Debunking Power Supply Myths | date = 2008-09-22 | accessdate = 2014-10-07 | author = Christoph Katzer | publisher = [[AnandTech]] | page = 3}}</ref><ref>{{cite web | url = http://www.coolermaster.com/xresserver01-DLFILE-P130218025925ba-F13032500212140.html | title = Cooler Master UCP Product Sheet | year = 2008 | accessdate = 2014-10-11 | publisher = [[Cooler Master]] | format = PDF}}</ref> For a comparison, a 500-watt power supply carrying the [[80 Plus Bronze]] efficiency rating (which means that such a power supply is designed to be at least 82-percent efficient for loads above 100 W) may provide an 84-percent efficiency for a 100 W load, wasting only 19 W.<ref>{{cite web | url = http://www.anandtech.com/show/4908/silverstone-strider-plus-500w-modular-power/4 | title = SilverStone Strider Plus{{snd}} 500 W Modular Power | date = 2011-10-10 | accessdate = 2014-10-11 | author = Martin Kaffei | publisher = [[AnandTech]] | page = 4}}</ref>
Although a power supply with a larger than needed power rating will have an extra margin of safety against overloading, such a unit is often less efficient and wastes more electricity at lower loads than a more appropriately sized unit. For example, a 900-watt power supply with the [[80 Plus Silver]] efficiency rating (which means that such a power supply is designed to be at least 85-percent efficient for loads above 180 W) may only be 73% efficient when the load is lower than 100 W, which is a typical idle power for a desktop computer. Thus, for a 100 W load, losses for this supply would be 37 W; if the same power supply was put under a 450 W load, for which the supply's efficiency peaks at 89%, the loss would be only 56 W despite supplying 4.5 times the useful power.<ref>{{cite web
| url = http://www.anandtech.com/show/2624/3
| title = Debunking Power Supply Myths
| date = 2008-09-22 | accessdate = 2014-10-07
| author = Christoph Katzer | publisher = [[AnandTech]]
| page = 3
}}</ref><ref>{{cite web
| url = http://www.coolermaster.com/xresserver01-DLFILE-P130218025925ba-F13032500212140.html
| title = Cooler Master UCP Product Sheet
| year = 2008 | accessdate = 2014-10-11
| publisher = [[Cooler Master]] | format = PDF
}}</ref> For a comparison, a 500-watt power supply carrying the [[80 Plus Bronze]] efficiency rating (which means that such a power supply is designed to be at least 82-percent efficient for loads above 100 W) may provide an 84-percent efficiency for a 100 W load, wasting only 19 W.<ref>{{cite web
| url = http://www.anandtech.com/show/4908/silverstone-strider-plus-500w-modular-power/4
| title = SilverStone Strider Plus{{snd}} 500 W Modular Power
| date = 2011-10-10 | accessdate = 2014-10-11
| author = Martin Kaffei | publisher = [[AnandTech]]
| page = 4
}}</ref>
cite book
|editor-link=Robert W. Watson
|editor-first=Robert W.
|editor-last=Watson
|title=White House Studies Compendium
|volume=2
|first=Harold
|last=Holzer
|authorlink=Harold Holzer
|isbn=9781600215339
|chapter=New Glory for Old Glory: A Lincoln-Era Tradition Reborn
|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=mFDl3fo9iEQC&pg=PA316
|year=2007
|publisher=Nova Publishers
|pages=315–318, at p. 316
cite book|editor-link=Robert W. Watson|editor-first=Robert W.|editor-last=Watson|title=White House Studies Compendium|volume=2|first=Harold|last=Holzer|authorlink=Harold Holzer|isbn=9781600215339|chapter=New Glory for Old Glory: A Lincoln-Era Tradition Reborn|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=mFDl3fo9iEQC&pg=PA316%7Cyear=2007%7Cpublisher=Nova Publishers|pages=315–318, at p. 316
I'm aware that I need to produce a full set of documentation about ETVP – the underlying principles, the ETVP script, and why it does what it does, and a full discussion/tutorial of the merits and demerits of each of the options it offers. I've been slow in doing this because for the foreseeable future the script will remain private, so that only I can use it. In the meantime, the long thread here provides a good description of the motivation for writing it, and you can find examples of its use at User:NSH001/ETVP/examples. -- NSH001 ( talk) 14:13, 9 August 2020 (UTC)
This section is pinned and will not be automatically archived. |
A turd template is another name for a Long horizontally formatted template (LHT) as defined above. As explained above, LHTs make editing difficult or impossible (with some exceptions), in addition to being undesirable on general grounds.
Opening, in edit mode, an article full of LHTs is like entering a house where every previous visitor (editor) has left a "deposit" all over the floor. Hence the name.
-- NSH001 ( talk) 22:28, 3 May 2018 (UTC)
The dungheap citation style is another name for the LHT clutter citation style. Note that I am being too kind to LHT clutter here: dungheaps can be composted into useful, sweet-smelling fertiliser that can be used by farmers to help produce healthy, nutritious organic food. By contrast, the stink of LHT clutter is permanent until the turds are flushed away, or otherwise disposed of.
-- NSH001 ( talk) 10:23, 11 November 2019 (UTC)
First, some remarks copied from above:
(Sorry to wander off the topic, but the whole thing is so outrageous I'm finding it difficult to think of anything else.) At this moment, I'm wondering what to do about this kangaroo court, reminiscent of stories coming out of the USSR when I was a boy growing up some 60 years ago. The (mis-)treatment of an innocent man, amounting to torture, breaks every fucking legal rule in the book, but our so-called "mainstream" media is remarkably silent on the massive human rights abuse of a good man, yet they are fully capable of pointing out human rights abuses in countries they don't like. It's crystal clear to me that the time has come to revise Wikipedia's rules on "reliable sources"; taking account of the propaganda function of the media would be a good place to start. Jeez, even RT is more reliable on this farce. -- NSH001 ( talk) 01:18, 25 October 2019 (UTC)
Sources on Assange (only a start; this is going to be a very long list):
In exactly the same way we saw a coordination between the U.S., U.K., Sweden, Ecuador and Australia to immobilize, and then silence, and then imprison Julian Assange, we are seeing a uniform movement toward silencing oppositional journalism throughout the entire U.S.-centralized empire.
{{
cite news}}
: External link in |quote=
(
help) On similarities between the US's nefarious activities in Brazil and the Assange case. Also available at
caitlinjohnstone.comMurderous governments who deceive their citizenry are not entitled to any degree of secrecy whatsoever.More quotes:
'Kafka's work is characterized by nightmarish settings in which characters are crushed by nonsensical, blind authority,' says Merriam-Webster. 'Thus, the word Kafkaesque is often applied to bizarre and impersonal administrative situations where the individual feels powerless to understand or control what is happening.'
Until yesterday I had always been quietly sceptical of those who claimed that Julian's treatment amounted to torture – even of Nils Melzer, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture – and sceptical of those who suggested he may be subject to debilitating drug treatments. But having attended the trials in Uzbekistan of several victims of extreme torture, and having worked with survivors from Sierra Leone and elsewhere, I can tell you that yesterday changed my mind entirely and Julian exhibited exactly the symptoms of a torture victim brought blinking into the light, particularly in terms of disorientation, confusion, and the real struggle to assert free will through the fog of learned helplessness.- the case management hearing at Westminster Magistrates Court on Monday, 21 October 2019. My comments:
While the US Government prosecutes Mr. Assange for publishing information about serious human rights violations, including torture and murder, the officials responsible for these crimes continue to enjoy impunity.
the founder and former editor of Wikileaks, the publishing organisation which since established in 2006 has removed the cloak of democracy from the face of an empire whose high crimes and war crimes would make Genghis Khan blush, has been placed on a metaphorical cross at in the name of nothing more ennobling than vengeance and retribution.
But I find myself wondering what exactly the difference is between his alleged crime of publishing leaked US diplomatic cables and the Mail on Sunday's offence of publishing leaked Foreign Office cables. Why is Assange treated by the bulk of the British media as a pariah? And the Mail on Sunday as a doughty defender of press freedom? After all, Julian Assange is responsible for breaking more stories than all the rest of us put together.
Viele prominente UnterzeichnerZu den Unterzeichnern gehören unter anderen die ehemaligen Bundesministerinnen und -minister Katarina Barley, Sigmar Gabriel, Herta Däubler-Gmelin, Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul (alle SPD) und Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger (FDP). Gerhart Baum, FDP-Bundesinnenminister von 1978 bis 1982, sagte bei einer Pressekonferenz, es gehe "nicht nur um das Menschenschicksal", sondern darum, "dass wir hier für die Pressefreiheit kämpfen". Sevim Dağdelen, Bundesabgeordnete der Partei Die Linke, nannte Assange einen Menschen, "der alles in Kauf genommen hat", um "Kriegsverbrechen von Mächtigen und von herrschenden Regierungen öffentlich zu machen". Deshalb sitze Assange in Haft. Auch Bundestagsvizepräsident Wolfgang Kubicki, der frühere Bundestagspräsident Wolfgang Thierse sowie Bundestagsabgeordnete wie Gregor Gysi (Linke) und Karl Lauterbach (SPD) haben sich dem Aufruf angeschlossen.Außerdem unterschrieben die Literaturnobelpreisträgerin Elfriede Jelinek, die Schriftsteller Navid Kermani und Martin Mosebach, der Journalist Günter Wallraff, aber auch Benediktinerpater und Autor Anselm Grün sowie viele weitere Persönlichkeiten aus Kabarett, Theater und Film und das PEN-Zentrum Deutschland.["Many prominent signatories"Among the signatories are former Federal Ministers Katarina Barley, Sigmar Gabriel, Herta Däubler-Gmelin, Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul (all SPD) and Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger (FDP). Gerhart Baum, FDP Federal Minister from 1978 to 1982, said that 'we're not just talking about the fate of a human being, we're fighting for freedom of the press.'" Sevim Dağdelen, a member of the Bundestag for the Left Party said that Assange was a person who had withstood everything to publish the war crimes of powerful people and of governments and that's why Assange is in prison. Also the vice-president of the Bundestag Wolfgang Kubicki, the former president of the Bundestag Wolfgang Thierse as well as Bundestag members such as Gregor Gysi (Left Party) and Karl Lauterbach (SPD) have signed."In addition, the Nobel Prize for Literature winner Elfriede Jelinek, the writers Navid Kermani and Martin Mosebach, the journalist Günter Wallraff, but also the Benedictine padre and author Anselm Grün as well as many other personalities from cabaret, theatre and film, and the PEN Centre of Germany.]
A panel of experts will confront the dangerous consequences of the US government prosecuting Julian Assange under the Espionage Act of 1917.
I am sometimes asked why I have championed Assange. For one thing, I like and I admire him. He is a friend with astonishing courage; and he has a finely honed, wicked sense of humour. He is the diametric opposite of the character invented and then assassinated by his enemies.Also available on johnpilger.com.
The indictment raises important questions about the protection of those that publish classified information in the public interest, including those that expose human rights violations. [...] Furthermore, any extradition to a situation in which the person involved would be at real risk of torture or inhuman or degrading treatment would be contrary to Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
Leigh — who allegedly "fawned all over" Assange in the bunker — would go on to coauthor 2011's WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy with the notorious Luke Harding. Underlining Guardian journalists' negligent approach to operational security, in that book the pair decided — contrary to Assange's explicit warnings — to use the confidential encryption password for the entire, uncensored 'Cablegate' archive as a chapter heading, which resulted in the dumping of hundreds of thousands of State Department cables on the web without the selective redactions Assange and other WikiLeaks staffers prepared for them over a period of eight months.
WikiLeaks severed future projects with the Guardian in December last year after it was discovered that the Guardian was engaged in a conspiracy to publish the cables without the knowledge of WikiLeaks, seriously compromising the security of our people in the United States and an alleged source who was in pre-trial detention. Leigh, without any basis, and in a flagrant violation of journalistic ethics, named Bradley Manning as the Cablegate source in his book. David Leigh secretly passed the entire archive to Bill Keller of the New York Times, in September 2011, or before, knowingly destroying WikiLeaks plans to publish instead with the Washington Post & McClatchy. David Leigh and the Guardian have subsequently and repeatedly violated WikiLeaks security conditions, including our requirements that the unpublished cables be kept safe from state intelligence services by keeping them only on computers not connected to the internet. Ian Katz, Deputy Editor of the Guardian admitted in December 2010 meeting that this condition was not being followed by the Guardian. [...] Two weeks ago, when it was discovered that information about the Leigh book had spread so much that it was about to be published in the German weekly Freitag, WikiLeaks took emergency action, asking the editor not allude to the Leigh book, and tasked its lawyers to demand those maliciously spreading its details about the Leigh book stop.
And you know what? I think the power behind his [ Melzer's] testimony comes from the fact that he realized that he had been duped, and if he, a very intelligent, well read, worldly, informed and educated person could be duped, then anyone can be. No one is immune. Human minds are hackable. We're all very busy with our lives. We're all kept busy by capitalism, and very few of us have the time to do what he did and sit down and take a look at the facts and assess them. And even if they did that, even fewer of them have had the courage of their convictions to put up with the social consequences of changing course. Being manipulated isn't immoral, being a manipulator is. People feel ashamed when they've been conned, but it's not their fault; it's always the fault of the con man. That's why fraud is the crime, and being defrauded is being a victim of that crime.
Dr. Gill: 'The reports from Nils Melzer are deeply concerning but come as no surprise. Deprivation of liberty, lack of due process, character assassination, threat of extradition and solitary confinement are grossly disproportionate consequences for the allegations made against Julian Assange. The effects of such treatment have devastating effects on mental health and functioning. Chronic stress, poor living conditions, lack of sunlight and human companionship have serious negative physical effects on the body ranging from accelerated cardiovascular disease and neurological deterioration. Given these obvious impacts on Julian Assange's health, it is remarkable that his authorised medical personnel have failed to identify the harms his continued detention are having. The prison regime have consciously decided to continue with Assange's torture by not supporting his immediate release from Belmarsh. The NHS and prison management should be held to account for their actions but there seems little chance of this given all normal processes have been ignored in the treatment of Assange for political reasons.'
The defense for Assange provided a background that led to this prosecution of his client. He noted that 'President Trump came into power with a new approach to freedom of speech …. effectively declaring war on investigative journalists.' He said that 'President Trump met with FBI Director James Comey and agreed that they should be "putting a head on a pike" as a message to journalists over leaks, and "putting journalists in jail."' Edward Fitzgerald QC indicated Assange has become a target of Trump's 'war on leakers and journalists.' He stated that his client was 'the obvious symbol of all that Trump condemned. He had brought American war crimes to the attention of the world.'
In yesterday's proceedings in court, the prosecution adopted arguments so stark and apparently unreasonable I have been fretting on how to write them up in a way that does not seem like caricature or unfair exaggeration on my part. What has been happening in this court has long moved beyond caricature. All I can do is given you my personal assurance that what I recount actually is what happened.Day 3 (Wednesday 26 February) at the kangaroo court
{{
cite episode}}
: CS1 maint: postscript (
link) with
Stefania Maurizi, Investigative journalist;
James Ball, global editor at the
Bureau of Investigative Journalism;
Rebecca Vincent, UK bureau director,
Reporters Without Borders;
Nils Melzer, UN special rapporteur on tortureBritain likes to cultivate the image of a country which plays by the rules, but as the WikiLeaks' founder's extradition proceeding enters a crucial phase, the UK authorities are treating a journalist who revealed war crimes and torture as if he were a dangerous criminal. And yet revealing war crimes is the quintessential role of journalism in a democratic society.
Doctors4Assange further notes that the U.K.'s psychological torture of Julian Assange, also called out by Nils Melzer in letters to the U.K. last year, and by our letter to the Lancet in February of this year, continues unabated. We repeat our demand for the immediate release of Assange to an academic hospital for relief from the conditions causing his torture, and for treatment of its effects. In addition, we join leading legal and human rights authorities in calling for the denial of the U.S. extradition request, with its prospect of further psychological torture, including under so-called Special Administrative Measures. Crucially, we repeat that as an untreated victim of ongoing psychological torture Julian Assange is, by definition, unfit for trial.
It is not just our family who suffers from the infringement of Julian's rights. If our family and Julian's lawyers are not off-limits, then nothing is. The person responsible for allegedly ordering the theft of Gabriel's DNA is Mike Pompeo, who last month threatened the family members of lawyers working at the International Criminal Court. Why? Because the court had had the temerity to investigate alleged US war crimes in Afghanistan. The same crimes that Julian exposed through WikiLeaks, and which the US wants to imprison him over.
If there was an ounce of sincerity in the foreign secretary's claim that he is a supporter of media freedom, he would be resisting the US attempt to get its hands on Assange with every bone in his body. There's not the slightest suggestion that he's doing that. As Human Rights Watch has pointed out, the British authorities have the power to prevent any US prosecution from eroding media freedom. Britain has so far - at least - shown no appetite to exercise that power. Unfortunately for Raab, Assange's real crime is doing journalism. I've never met Assange. Some people that I know and respect say that he is vain and difficult. I believe them. There's no denying, however, that Assange has done more than every other journalist in Britain put together to shed light on the way the world truly works. For example, thanks to Assange that we now know about many violations including: British vote-trading with Saudi Arabia to ensure that both states were elected onto the United Nations human rights council in 2013; the links between the fascist British National Party and members of the police and army; the horrifying details of civilians killed by the US army in Afghanistan.
{{
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: External link in |quote=
(
help)
The extradition process in March 2020 prolonged this legal farce, with the British prosecutor briefing the media in advance of the hearing on what they should report for the evening deadline. US representatives bizarrely argued to Baraitser that Assange was subject to the US Espionage Act but was not entitled to the protection of the US Constitution, and that the UK Treaties Act applied to him but not the US/UK Extradition Treaty. Whatever produces the desired outcome is what the Americans and their British sycophants will predictably continue to say is legal.
In themselves they [Wikileaks' revelations] don't explain the degree of rage WikiLeaks provoked in the US government and its allies. This was a response to Assange's assault on their monopoly control of sensitive state information, which they saw as an essential prop to their authority. [...] if disclosures of this kind went unpunished and became the norm, it would radically shift the balance of power between government and society – and especially the media – in favour of the latter. It is the US government's determination to defend its ongoing monopoly, rather than the supposed damage done by the release of the secrets themselves, that has motivated it to pursue Assange and to seek to discredit both him and WikiLeaks. This campaign has been unrelenting and has had a fair measure of success, despite the fact that most of the charges made against Assange are demonstrably untrue.[...]It was a sign of desperation on the part of the counterintelligence officers that in seeking evidence against WikiLeaks they were reduced to citing the Taliban as a source. And, as Carr admitted during the defence cross-examination, the Taliban turned out to be lying: 'The name of the individual killed was not in the [WikiLeaks] disclosures.' Despite all this, the lawyer representing the US government at Assange's extradition hearings in London earlier this year still argued that Assange had put the lives of US sources in Iraq and Afghanistan at risk.[...]Given the gravity of the issues at stake, the silence of journalists about Assange's detention in Belmarsh following Ecuador's revoking of his asylum status is striking. Here was evidence of a radical shift in US security policy, towards the position taken by countries like Turkey and Egypt, which have sought to criminalise criticism of the state and to conflate the publication of news it doesn't want the public to hear with terrorism or espionage. The creeping suppression of press freedom in Hungary and India is frequently criticised by the Western commentariat. But, as Glenn Greenwald has pointed out in the Intercept, Western media have 'largely ignored what is, by far, the single greatest attack on press freedoms by the US government in the last decade at least: the prosecution and attempted extradition of Julian Assange for alleged crimes arising out of WikiLeaks's ... publication – in conjunction with the world's largest newspapers – of the Iraq and Afghanistan war logs and US diplomatic cables'. They couldn't jail the editor of the New York Times so they pursued Assange instead.
[Reuters' Baghdad bureau chief Dale] Yates, [...] held the Baghdad post in 2007 when an Apache helicopter airstrike killed two of his staff members, Saeed Chmagh and Noor-Eldeen. Yates wasn't allowed to report on what two U.S. Generals had shown Reuters at the time. What we learn now is what Reuters wasn't able to report, in particular how the death of one Reuters employee strongly appears to be a war crime. Yates reels at the deception and says Reuters was cheated by the U.S. brass. Sami Ramadani speaks of the Iraqi reaction to the 'Collateral Murder' release and the evidence WikiLeaks published of torture at Abu Ghraib prison. The second Guardian article points out that in Assange's indictment there is no mention of the Baghdad air strike footage, even though 40 of the 175 years in prison Assange faces relates to "Collateral Murder." Robinson explains that the charges are in fact about the publication of the Rules of Engagement, which Manning leaked to show that the Baghdad air strike had violated them.
Mr Assange is at grave risk from contracting COVID-19. As he is non-violent, being held on remand, and arbitrarily detained according to the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, he meets internationally recommended criteria for prisoner release during COVID-19. A bail application with a plan for monitored home detention was refused, however, and Mr Assange is held in solitary confinement for 23 hours each day. Isolation and under-stimulation are key psychological torture tactics, capable of inducing severe despair, disorientation, destabilisation, and disintegration of crucial mental functions. Given recent attacks against journalists, the psychological torture of a publisher and journalist sets a precedent of international concern. We reiterate our demand to end the torture and medical neglect of Julian Assange. IBAHRI states that, in view of Mr Assange being a victim of psychological torture, his extradition to the USA would be illegal under international human rights law. The World Psychiatric Association emphasises that withholding appropriate medical treatment can itself amount to torture, and under the Convention Against Torture, those acting in official capacities can be held complicit and accountable not only for perpetration of torture, but for their silent acquiescence and consent. As physicians, we have a professional and ethical duty to speak out against, report, and stop torture. Silence on Mr Assange's torture might well facilitate his death.
The kangaroo court resumed on 7 September 2020, this time at the Old Bailey.
The following sources were published in the period leading up to the main hearing at the Old Bailey.
GOSZTOLA: That raises an important question in my mind, which is, how can someone who is not from the U.S. be expected to submit to these U.S. secrecy laws and regulations, especially when he never signed a non-disclosure agreement?A key part of these Espionage Act prosecutions are that they are brought forward as strict liability offenses, that he signed something. It seems that there is no evidence whatsoever in favor of the U.S. government that he signed anything to agree to not disclose information. POLLACK: That's correct. In the cases that have been brought to date, the charges have been against an employee of the government, a government contractor, a former employee of the government, all people who entered into an agreement with the government that they would not disclose classified information. Journalists don't enter into that type of agreement, and every day the New York Times and the Washington Post publish classified information. The Department of Justice has never charged a domestic reporter under the Espionage Act. Up until the current administration, I think it was widely understood that doing so would be inconsistent with the First Amendment. Publishers do not have those kinds of non-disclosure agreements. They report what is newsworthy, and that includes classified information that comes into their possession.
Present-day analysis of Wikileaks often centres around political influence, Russia, Trump, Clinton and the 2016 US Presidential election. Articles about Julian typically centre around the Swedish allegations now cancelled, the geopolitics of his incarceration, the substance of the US Grand Jury indictments, or the legality of UK extradition. But seldom do they focus on Julian's idea behind Wikileaks — not just the leaks themselves and the changes they have swept before them, but the formidable concept of surveillance being applied to structural power. This article aims to help address this imbalance, providing some personal perspectives on Julian as a thinker, his motivation for harnessing the tools of cryptography for the strength of the fourth estate, and his profound achievements in shining light on structural influence in the 21st Century. If the analysis of the possible UK extradition is what you're after, the Open Letter from Lawyers for Assange is an excellent start: https://www.lawyersforassange.org/en/open-letter.html [...]Julian argued that the greatest achievement of Wikileaks isn't the exposure of 15,000 unreported civilian deaths in Iraq. Nor the corruption in Kenya, India, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Yemen, and countless countries around the world. Nor the exposure of the Church of Scientology, or the British National Party, or Stephen Conroy's Internet filter, or the behaviour of Barclays, Kaupthing and the Julius Baer Bank. Nor the documentation of generations of global political fealty to the US State Department. Nor the exposure of vast privatised surveillance across continents. Instead, the greatest achievement of Wikileaks is to shine the spotlight of surveillance on those who wield structural power. To help make a world where people who do wrong in the public's name, get found out. To make governments of the future pause before they commit to the unethical, illegal or unconstitutional. To make those who would commit acts of atrocity consider the possibility of future exposure.
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help)Khaled El-Masri is a German and Lebanese citizen who was mistakenly abducted by the Macedonian police in 2003, and handed over to the CIA. In 2012 the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Macedonia had been complicit in El-Masri's torture at the hands of the US authorities. Mr El-Masri's written statement was entered into the court record on Friday 18 September 2020.
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help)Yancey Ellis is a Washington DC-based defence attorney admitted to the Eastern District of Virginia, where he worked in the Public Defender's Office for several years. This evidence focuses on prison conditions in the city of Alexandria, where Assange would be likely to be held pre-trial if extradited. Mr Ellis testified in court on Monday 28 September 2020.
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help)1. This statement responds to the First Declaration of Gordon D. Kromberg, signed on January 17th, 2020, and also updates my first Declaration, signed on December 17th, 2019, in respect of conditions at the Alexandria Detention Centre (ADC) in Virginia.
Mark Feldstein is a Professor of Broadcast Journalism at the University of Maryland. He has twenty years' experience as an investigative journalist. Professor Feldstein's evidence sets out Julian Assange's place in the history of national security journalism in the United States and assesses the First Amendment ramifications of his prosecution. Professor Feldstein testified in the extradition proceedings on Monday 7 September 2020.
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help)Carey Shenkman is a New York based freedom of speech and civil rights attorney. His evidence provides a history of the legislation under which Assange has been charged, namely the Espionage Act and Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Mr Yates testified in the extradition proceedings on Thursday 17 September and Friday 18 September 2020.
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help)2. I published on Cryptome.org unredacted diplomatic cables on September 1, 2011 under the URL https://cryptome.org/z/z.7z and that publication remains available at the present 6.Since my publication on Cryptome.org of the unredacted diplomatic cables, no US law enforcement authority has notified me that this publication of the cables is illegal, consists or contributes to a crime in any way, nor have they asked for them to be removed.
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The following sources report, or comment on, the main hearing at the Old Bailey.
If you asked me to sum up today in a word, that word would undoubtedly be "railroaded". it was all about pushing through the hearing as quickly as possible and with as little public exposure as possible to what is happening. Access denied, adjournment denied, exposition of defence evidence denied, removal of superseding indictment charges denied. The prosecution was plainly failing in that week back in Woolwich in February, which seems like an age ago. It has now been given a new boost. How the defence will deal with the new charges we shall see. It seems impossible that they can do this without calling new witnesses to address the new facts. But the witness lists had already been finalised on the basis of the old charges. That the defence should be forced to proceed with the wrong witnesses seems crazy, but frankly, I am well past being surprised by anything in this fake process.(Day 6 = Monday 7 Septermber 2020)
Today we had two expert witnesses, who had both submitted lengthy written testimony relating to one indictment, which was now being examined in relation to a new superseding indictment, exchanged at the last minute, and which neither of them had ever seen. Both specifically stated they had not seen the new indictment. Furthermore this new superseding indictment had been specifically prepared by the prosecution with the benefit of having heard the defence arguments and seen much of the defence evidence, in order to get round the fact that the indictment on which the hearing started was obviously failing. On top of which the defence had been refused an adjournment to prepare their defence against the new indictment, which would have enabled these and other witnesses to see the superseding indictment, adjust their evidence accordingly and be prepared to be cross-examined in relation to it. Clive Stafford Smith testified today that in 2001 he would not have believed the outrageous crimes that were to be perpetrated by the US government. I am obliged to say that I simply cannot believe the blatant abuse of process that is unfolding before my eyes in this courtroom.(Day 7 = Tuesday 8 Septermber 2020)
The great question after yesterday's hearing was whether prosecution counsel James Lewis QC would continue to charge at defence witnesses like a deranged berserker (spoiler – he would), and more importantly, why? QC's representing governments usually seek to radiate calm control, and treat defence arguments as almost beneath their notice, certainly as no conceivable threat to the majestic thinking of the state. Lewis instead resembled a starving terrier kept away from a prime sausage by a steel fence whose manufacture and appearance was far beyond his comprehension.(Day 8 = Wednesday 9 Septermber 2020)
The mainstream media are turning a blind eye. There were three reporters in the press gallery, one of them an intern and one representing the NUJ. Public access continues to be restricted and major NGOs, including Amnesty, PEN and Reporters Without Borders, continue to be excluded both physically and from watching online. It has taken me literally all night to write this up – it is now 8.54am – and I have to finish off and get back into court. The six of us allowed in the public gallery, incidentally, have to climb 132 steps to get there, several times a day. As you know, I have a very dodgy ticker; I am with Julian's dad John who is 78; and another of us has a pacemaker. I do not in the least discount the gallant efforts of others when I explain that I feel obliged to write this up, and in this detail, because otherwise the vital basic facts of the most important trial this century, and how it is being conducted, would pass almost completely unknown to the public. If it were a genuine process, they would want people to see it, not completely minimise attendance both physically and online. [CORRECTED from the Day 10 (Tuesday) report: 'In conclusion I need to correct something I published yesterday, that there were only three journalists in the video gallery to cover the trial. James Doleman led me to another hidden nest of them and there are about ten in total. The main titles are inexcusably unrepresented, but press agencies are, even if their feed is being little used.'](Day 9 = Monday 14 Septermber 2020)
The court heard a great deal more truth than it could handle today, and great effort was put into excluding more truth. The US Government succeeded in preventing John Goetz eyewitness contradicting their promulgation of Luke Harding's lie about what Assange said at El Moro. The US Government also objected, successfully so far, to Khaled el-Masri's giving evidence on the grounds that he will allege he was tortured in the USA. Given that the European Court of Human Rights and the German courts had both found el-Masri's story to be true, only in the wacky world of Lewis and Baraitser could it be considered wrong for him to tell the truth in court.(Day 11 = Wednesday 16 Septermber 2020)
I have two main points to make. The first is that Shenkman was sent a 180 page evidence bundle from the prosecution on the morning of his testimony, at 3am his time, before giving evidence at 9am. A proportion of this was entirely new material to him. He is then questioned on it. This keeps happening to every witness. On top of which, like almost every witness, his submitted statement addressed the first superseding indictment not the last minute second superseding indictment which introduces some entirely new offences. This is a ridiculous procedure. My second is that, having been very critical of Judge Baraitser, it would be churlish of me not to note that there seems to be some definite change in her attitude to the case as the prosecution makes a complete horlicks of it. Whether this makes any long term difference I doubt. But it is pleasant to witness.(Day 12 = Thursday 17 Septermber 2020)
I should start by saying that the government of the United States had objected to almost all of the defence evidence. They want the defence witnesses ruled as either not expert (hence the sustained rudeness and attacks) or not relevant. Judge Baraitser had ruled that she will hear all the evidence, and decide only when she comes to judgement, what is and is not admissible. Against that we then have her decision that the witnesses can only have half an hour of going through their statements before cross-examination. That is against a US government request that witness statements should not be heard before cross-examination at all. Theoretically Baraitser agreed to this, but she let in half an hour to "orient the witness", which gets the basic facts out there. Baraitser rejected the defence arguments that statements should be read or explained at length by the witness in court, for the benefit of the public, on the basis that the statements are published. But they are not published. The Court does not publish them. It gives copies to journalists registered to cover the trial, but those journalists have no interest in publishing them. [...]The fact is that the USA wants to avoid the political embarrassment and media publicity of el-Masri's torture and the events of the Collateral Murder video being detailed in court. Why an English court is complying in this censorship is beyond me. I am deeply suspicious of the "breakdown" of the videolink making el-Masri's evidence in person "technically impossible" after days in which the US government tried to block that evidence. I am also deeply suspicious of the strange fact that unlike other witnesses with video problems, there was no rescheduling. Video and sound quality has been deplorable for several defence witnesses. In a world where we have all got used to videocalls this last few months, the extraordinary failure of the court to operate everyday technology is a level of incompetence it is difficult quite to believe in.(Day 13 = Friday 18 Septermber 2020)
Monday was a frustrating day as the Assange Hearing drifted deep into a fantasy land where nobody knows or is allowed to say that people were tortured in Guantanamo Bay and under extraordinary rendition. The willingness of Judge Baraitser to accept American red lines on what witnesses can and cannot say has combined with a joint and openly stated desire by both judge and prosecution to close this case down quickly by limiting the number of witnesses, the length of their evidence, and the time allowed for closing arguments. For the first time, I am openly critical of the defence legal team who seem to be missing the moment to stop being railroaded and say no, this is wrong, forcing Baraitser to make rulings against them. Instead most of the day was lost to negotiations between prosecution and defence as to what defence evidence could be edited out or omitted.(Day 14 = Monday 21 Septermber 2020)
Julian is profoundly worried that his medical history will be used to discredit him and all that he has worked for, to paint the achievements of Wikileaks in promoting open government and citizen knowledge as the fantasy of a deranged mind. I have no doubt this will be tried, but fortunately there has been a real change in public understanding and acknowledgement of mental illness. I do not think Julian's periodic and infrequent episodes of very serious depression will be successfully portrayed in a bad light, despite the incredibly crass and insensitive attitude displayed today in court by the US Government, who have apparently been bypassed by the change in attitudes of the last few decades. I discuss this before coming to Tuesday's evidence because for once my account will be less detailed than others, because I have decided to censor much of what was said. I do this on the grounds that, when it comes to his medical history, Julian's right to privacy ought not to be abolished by these proceedings. I have discussed this in some detail with Stella Moris. I have of course weighed this against my duty as a journalist to you the reader, and have decided the right to medical privacy is greater, irrespective of what others are publishing. I have therefore given as full an account as I can while omitting all mention of behaviours, of symptoms, and of more personal detail.(Day 15 = Tuesday 22 Septermber 2020)
I fear that all over London a very hard rain is now falling on those who for a lifetime have worked within institutions of liberal democracy that at least broadly and usually used to operate within the governance of their own professed principles. It has been clear to me from Day 1 that I am watching a charade unfold. It is not in the least a shock to me that Baraitser does not think anything beyond the written opening arguments has any effect. I have again and again reported to you that, where rulings have to be made, she has brought them into court pre-written, before hearing the arguments before her. I strongly expect the final decision was made in this case even before opening arguments were received. The plan of the US Government throughout has been to limit the information available to the public and limit the effective access to a wider public of what information is available. Thus we have seen the extreme restrictions on both physical and video access. A complicit mainstream media has ensured those of us who know what is happening are very few in the wider population. Even my blog has never been so systematically subject to shadowbanning from Twitter and Facebook as now. Normally about 50% of my blog readers arrive from Twitter and 40% from Facebook. During the trial it has been 3% from Twitter and 9% from Facebook. That is a fall from 90% to 12%. In the February hearings Facebook and Twitter were between them sending me over 200,000 readers a day. Now they are between them sending me 3,000 readers a day. [...] It is the insidious nature of this censorship that is especially sinister – people believe they have successfully shared my articles on Twitter and Facebook, while those corporations hide from them that in fact it went into nobody's timeline. My own family have not been getting their notifications of my posts on either platform.(Day 16 = Wednesday 23 Septermber 2020)
During the hearing of medical evidence the last three days, the British government has been caught twice directly telling important lies about events in Belmarsh prison, each lie proven by documentary evidence. The common factor has been the medical records kept by Dr Daly, head of the jail's medical services.(Day 17 = Thursday 24 Septermber 2020)
There's a great deal of evil in that place [The Old Bailey].[...] There are things the media have printed about him [Assange] which are simply completely untrue, for example that his personal hygiene is bad and that kind of thing, you know, ... in fact there is an article here from the Mail ... yesterday, which was attacking Julian Assange, and one of the things it said was 'it is a well known fact that his personal hygiene is bad', well that's just complete nonsense, just absolutely untrue, his personal hygiene is good, just like any other person ... it astonishes me that from the small things like that to the huge things like these ridiculous allegations he was facing in Sweden ... governments have done so much to vilify and calumnise him, and of course the media has joined in, and it's simply not true. When you know him, these things are simply untrue.
But this entire hearing has been conducted in effective secrecy, a comprehensive secrecy that gives sharp insight into the politico-economic structures of current western society. Physical access to the courtroom has been extremely limited, with the public gallery cut to five people. Video link access has similarly been extremely limited, with 40 NGOs having their access cut by the judge from day 1 at the Old Bailey, including Amnesty International, PEN, Reporters without Borders and observers from the European Parliament, among many others. The state and corporate media have virtually blacked out this hearing, with a truly worrying unanimity, and despite the implications of the case for media freedom. Finally, the corporations that act as internet gatekeepers have heavily suppressed social media posts about Assange, and traffic to those few websites which are reporting.(Day 18 = Friday 25 Septermber 2020)
Today was the worst day for the defence since the start of the trial, as their expert witnesses failed to cope with the sheer aggression of cross-examination by the US Government and found themselves backing away from maintaining propositions they knew to be true. It was uncomfortable viewing.[...] You will note that none of this has anything to do with the truth of the actual evidence, and to date almost all witnesses have easily, sometimes contemptuously, seen off this intellectually shallow method of attack. But today was another story. The irony was that, when it came to the real subject matter of the evidence, it was obvious to any reasonable person that the prosecution claims of the good conditions in the American Prison service for high profile national security prisoners are just nonsense. But it was a day when the divorce between truth and court process was still plainer than usual. Given the horrific reality this process was disguising, it was a hard day to sit through.[...] [junior prosecuting barrister Clair] Dobbin is officious beyond the point of offensive; she comes over as properly obnoxious as a person. The unpleasant irony in all this is that both Sickler and Ellis [defence witnesses] were mocked and scorned for their lack of personal knowledge of ADX Colorado, when prosecution and judge had combined just on Friday to bar two witnesses who the defence both wished to testify, who had expert personal experience of ADX Florence. That is yet another striking example of the fact that this process is divorced from any genuine attempt to find truth or justice.(Day 19 = Monday 28 Septermber 2020)
The totality of defence witnesses and the sheer extent of mutual corroboration they provided could not simply be dismissed by the prosecution attempting to characterise all of them as uninformed on a particular detail, still less as all acting in bad faith. To portray one witness as weak may appear justified if they can be shaken, but to attack a succession of patently well-qualified witnesses, on no basis but aggression and unreasoning hostility, becomes quickly unconvincing. [...] The cross-examinations by the US government of the last four defence witnesses have all relied on precisely the same passages from [US Assistant Attorney Gordon] Kromberg and [Board of Prisons psychiatrist Dr Alison] Leukefeld, and every single one of the defence witnesses has said Leukefeld and Kromberg are wrong as to fact. Yet under US/UK extradition agreements the US government witnesses may not be called and cross-examined. When the defence witnesses are attacked so strongly in cross-examination on the points of disagreement with Kromberg and Leukefeld, it becomes glaringly wrong that Kromberg and Leukefeld may not be similarly cross-examined by the defence on the same points.(Day 20 = Tuesday 29 Septermber 2020)
Twenty minutes sufficed for the reading of the "gist" of the astonishing testimony of two witnesses, their identity protected as their lives may be in danger, who stated that the CIA, operating through Sheldon Adelson, planned to kidnap or poison Assange, bugged not only him but his lawyers, and burgled the offices of his Spanish lawyers Baltazar Garzon. This evidence went unchallenged and untested. [...] I have noted before, and I hope you have marked my disapproval, that some of the evidence is being edited to remove elements which the US government wish to challenge, and then entered into the court record as uncontested, with just a "gist" read out in court. The witness then does not appear in person. This reduces the process from one of evidence testing in public view to something very different.(Day 21 = Wednesday 30 Septermber 2020)
But in that courtroom, you were in the presence of evil. With a civilised veneer, a pretence at process, and even displays of bonhommie, the entire destruction of a human being was in process. Julian was being destroyed as a person before my eyes. For the crime of publishing the truth. He had to sit there listening to days of calm discussion as to the incredible torture that would await him in a US supermax prison, deprived of all meaningful human contact for years on end, in solitary in a cell just fifty square feet.Fifty square feet. Mark that out yourself now. Three paces by two. Of all the terrible things I heard, Warden Baird explaining that the single hour a day allowed out of the cell is alone in another, absolutely identical cell called the "recreation cell" was perhaps the most chilling. That and the foul government "expert" Dr Blackwood describing how Julian might be sufficiently medicated and physically deprived of the means of suicide to keep him alive for years of this.
The U.K. extradition hearing for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is now in its third week, but you would hardly realize it if you read only mainstream news outlets. Despite the fact that most of the major newspapers in the United States vehemently condemned the Trump administration's charges against Assange as a threat to press freedom, there has been a worrying lack of coverage of the case. [...] But if the precedent the Trump administration is seeking in the Assange case existed at the start of Woodward's career, he certainly wouldn't be reporting on what the president secretly told him about Covid-19 or the many other revelations in his new book. In fact, Woodward's legendary investigation into Watergate, which made him the household name he is today, likely never would have gotten off the ground.
Publishing evidence furnished by whistleblowers is at the heart of any journalism that aspires to hold power to account and in check. Whistleblowers typically emerge in reaction to parts of the executive turning rogue, when the state itself starts breaking its own laws. That is why journalism is protected in the U.S. by the First Amendment. Jettison that and one can no longer claim to live in a free society. Aware that journalists might understand this threat and rally in solidarity with Assange, U.S. officials initially pretended that they were not seeking to prosecute the WikiLeaks founder for journalism — in fact, they denied he was a journalist. That was why they preferred to charge him under the arcane, highly repressive Espionage Act of 1917. The goal was to isolate Assange and persuade other journalists that they would not share his fate.
That the true purpose of the U.S. government's relentless pursuit of Assange is to prevent him from exposing more of its crimes, and to punish him for exposing those of its crimes which he did expose, if only so as to deter others from doing the same thing, is perfectly obvious to any unbiased and realistic observer. However, the hearing in London is being conducted as if this were not the case.[...] I am aware of the many criticisms which have been made of Vanessa Baraitser, the judge who is hearing Assange's case. I don't disagree with any of them. However, I do get the impression that Baraitser's patience has been sorely tried by the U.S. government's repeated and dizzying changes of position. I also get the impression that she was particularly annoyed when the U.S. government, on the virtual eve of the hearing, presented to the court and the defence its second superseding indictment, which in effect made a nonsense of the first.
58min documentary on ARD1 (might be by NRD?)
Absolute And ArbitrAry power 'How the media is helping to kill Extinction Rebellion and Julian Assange
The US and British establishments do not care where Assange is imprisoned – be it Sweden, the UK or the US. What has been most important to them is that he continues to be locked out of sight in a cell somewhere, where his physical and mental fortitude can be destroyed and where he is effectively silenced, encouraging others to draw the lesson that there is too high a price to pay for dissent. The personal battle for Assange will not be over till he is properly free. And even then he will be lucky if the last decade of various forms of incarceration and torture he has been subjected to do not leave him permanently traumatised, emotionally and mentally damaged, a pale shadow of the unapologetic, vigorous transparency champion he was before his ordeal began.
The arrest eviscerates all pretense of the rule of law and the rights of a free press. The illegalities, embraced by the Ecuadorian, British and US governments, in the seizure of Assange were ominous. They presaged a world where the internal workings, abuses, corruption, lies and crimes — especially war crimes — carried out by corporate states and the global ruling elite will be masked from the public. They presaged a world where those with the courage and integrity to expose the misuse of power will be hunted down, tortured, subjected to sham trials and given lifetime prison terms in solitary confinement. They presaged an Orwellian dystopia where news is replaced with propaganda, trivia and entertainment.
We held what was called the Belmarsh Tribunal, inspired by ? where we gathered for precisely the purpose you are articulating, to turn the tables: instead of constantly defending Julian, to start prosecuting the war criminals that are killing him as we speak. And that is a process that we are continuing. You've given me a great pass for discussing the assassination that precedes the actual murder, that's the character assassination - what you mentioned regarding Jeremy is precisely what I experienced in 2015 - I was actually warned ... - precisely 10 days later every major newspaper, FT, WSJ, Times of London (sic) El País, all of them, unleashed a torrent of abuse against me, just complete fake news about me ... I experienced that, why? Because that was a moment when the will of the Greek people had to be bent ... so they created essentially a narrative that made it impossible for any of my arguments or facts to emerge, because suddenly it became something about me. This is exactly what they did with Jeremy [Corbyn] and this is exactly what they did with Julian - and you know, the Deep State, call it whatever you want, they've become much, much better at it than they used to be ... but now what they do is something that is far worse, they accuse you of something that really hurts you, calling somebody like us a racist, a bigot, an anti-Semite, you know, a rapist, this is what really hurts, because if anybody calls me a rapist, today, right, even if it's complete baloney, right, I feel as a feminist I have the need to give the woman implied the opportunity to speak against me, because this is what we left-wingers do, so this is what they do, the character assassination is what, that he elected Trump single-handedly, right, and that he was a rapist ... Allow me to do some reporting, right? ... I'm going to finish off with an account of a discussion I had with Julian in the Ecuadorian embassy in November 2017. It's no secret to the US authorities, because - as I found out recently, I actually watched the video that they taped of me, ... as part of the court case the Spanish judge started against the company employed to videotape me and Julian having this conversation, so I'm only telling you that which the NSA already knows ... so he had actually sent me a message, I was in Athens, and he said, I need to speak with you, can you get on a plane and come to London, which I did a number of times, but this is of interest to all of us especially in the context of the character assassination, of calling him a Trumpist, ... he said to me, one of the Republcan senators came to visit me recently - I thought OMG, a senator, that's big news, a senator going into the Ecuadorian embassy, along with sombody else, and they offered me a pardon, a presidential pardon from Trump. I said, OK on condition of? - that I reveal that the Hillary Clinton emails ... did not come from the Russians, and I said, Julian, from what you've told me in the past, you don't know where your information comes from, Wikileaks is structured in such a way that it's double-blind, nobody knows anything, even Julian does not know who is sending the stuff, this is the whole point of the design of the software. He said, yes that's true, but this person actually made himself known to me - himself or herself, I'm not sure, and I said, so what, can you confirm it was not the Russians? He said, absolutely, I said well, why don't you then? Because that goes against the whole principle of Wikileaks, non-disclosure of sources. I said well, what if your source says that he/she is OK with the idea of it being disclosed? He said, well, look, firstly, it's very dangerous, because if I get in touch with this person, ... he may be found out, ... so I don't want to jeopardise the person, but even if they gave me the OK to disclose the that I got the emails from them, it would be against the principles of Wikileaks to do this, so I said, what did you do, what did you say to the Trump representatives? He said, I told them to fuck off. Now this is the man we're talking about - I find Julian infuriating many times ... but he's a man of principle, he had a chance of being pardoned by telling the truth, but because that would mean disclosing his sources, he didn't do it. ... I said, you may end up in a supermax prison, he said, yeah, I know, ... because I turned the Trump people down, thay may be even more determined to bring me down. That was in November 2017, I have the video.
No 'flight risk" – There were reasons, however, to be suspicious of what Baraitser was really up to even as she made her ruling in Assange's favour.... During the hearings back in September, Baraitser had endlessly indulged lawyers representing the US while showing absolute disdain for Assange's legal team, obstructing them at every turn. Her contempt for Assange and his political and moral worldview was on show throughout the proceedings. She often arrived in court with a prepared script she read from, barely feigning a pretence that she had listened to the legal arguments presented in court. She ignored the facts, the expert testimony presented in court and the legal arguments – all of which favoured Assange – and backed instead what amounted to a purely political [emphasis in original] case made by the US."No flight risk" In fact, the judge was up to something else entirely in delaying the bail hearing till Wednesday, two days later. She wanted – as presumably did those who have been supervising her behind the scenes – to refashion the image of her court, which for months has given every appearance of being entirely beholden to the US administration.As the corporate media briefly raised its head from its slumber to meaningfully acknowledge for the first time the Assange hearings, she wanted to ensure those reports noted how independent her court was. For two days, commentators could crow about British legal sovereignty and humanitarian values, even as most tacitly accepted her dangerous premise that the US has a justified claim to extradite Assange. When Baraitser slammed the cell door shut once again on Assange, leaving him exactly where he was before she discharged him, her decision was presented as little more than a technical ruling based on a reasonable assessment of Assange's "flight risk". In fact, Assange is no flight risk, and never was. He didn't "jump bail" in 2012 by heading into the Ecuadorean embassy. He sought political asylum there to escape the very real threat of being extradited to the US for his journalism. He was accepted by the Ecuadorean authorities because they believed his fears were genuine. Back then, a Swedish prosecutor had revived demands Assange return to Sweden for questioning over flimsy sexual assault allegations – allegations that had been dismissed by a previous prosecutor. That investigation, we now know, was kept alive at British insistence. Nonetheless, Sweden refused to give assurances that they would not extradite Assange on to the US, where a grand jury was drawing up charges against him.
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(
help)Julian is a wonderful and complex person, but like all of us, he is also a flawed and fallible man. He has a brilliant mind, a generosity of spirit, intense focus, a strong sense of justice, and a passion and drive to improve the world for his fellow human beings. Likewise, Julian is beautifully flawed: he can be aloof, stubborn, and, at times, impetuous; he can be socially awkward, is a terrible dancer, always late, and very messy. Julian also has his quirks. His favourite film is the Dr Strangelove, he can go days without sleep, he can drink more milk in a day than most people I know, and, above all, he thinks outside the box in ways I haven't seen before. At the same time, he's surprisingly ordinary: he loves Pink Floyd, board games, and Japanese food; he's an avid reader, and he isn't above a bit of harmless gossip about people in our social circle.
If I had written an article in a major publication claiming there was "no real reason" to believe Assange would face extradition proceedings if he left the Ecuadorian embassy, and then that claim had proved horrifyingly wrong, I personally would have done what any normal person would do and shut the entire fuck up about Julian Assange for the rest of my life. Not James Ball though. There's a certain type of personality that guarantees it will always fail upward because it possesses a remarkable combination of power-worshipping obsequiousness, a total lack of shame, and a complete lack of scruples. It's the same type of personality that still gets lucrative punditry work after pushing for the Iraq invasion. ... I'm pretty good with words, but I've never succeeded in finding any which adequately articulate the absolute depravity of the mass media smearmeisters who've spent years getting paid to churn out deceitful hit pieces about Assange while he's silenced and unable to defend himself. There's simply no one lower. There's shit, there's the shit that would come out of shit if shit could shit, and then there's people like James Ball. ... People like James Ball are directly responsible for the empire's ability to make an example of what happens to a journalist who exposes US war crimes, and they must never be forgiven for it.
A disclosure at the end of Ball's latest WikiLeaks smear reads: "James Ball, one of the authors of this article, worked for WikiLeaks for a short period between late 2010 and early 2011." (The disclosure does not appear on earlier articles on the same topic. Such as this one.) What the disclosure fails to mention is that James Ball was in fact fired from WikiLeaks in early 2011.
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(
help)
Half a year after Assange was placed in pre-extradition detention in Britain, Sweden quietly abandoned the case against him in November 2019, after nine long years. Why then? The Swedish state spent almost a decade intentionally presenting Julian Assange to the public as a sex offender. Then, they suddenly abandoned the case against him on the strength of the same argument that the first Stockholm prosecutor used in 2010, when she initially suspended the investigation after just five days: While the woman's statement was credible, there was no proof that a crime had been committed. It is an unbelievable scandal. But the timing was no accident. On Nov. 11, an official document that I had sent to the Swedish government two months before was made public. In the document, I made a request to the Swedish government to provide explanations for around 50 points pertaining to the human rights implications of the way they were handling the case. How is it possible that the press was immediately informed despite the prohibition against doing so? How is it possible that a suspicion was made public even though the questioning hadn't yet taken place? How is it possible for you to say that a rape occurred even though the woman involved contests that version of events? On the day the document was made public, I received a paltry response from Sweden: The government has no further comment on this case. What does that answer mean? It is an admission of guilt.
The conditions [in Belmarsh Prison] are oppressive and dire.[Recorded before the verdict was given.]
The Guardian has profited a lot from Julian Assange's work, but over the years has become increasingly hostile towards him.
The list above can be daunting; there is far too much to read in one session. I recommend starting with Melzer 2020 – well written, by an expert who knows what he's talking about, and who covers all the main points. Still quite substantial, but possible to read in one sitting. A top-quality, impeccable source.
The next on the list should be Caitlin Johnstone's superb compilation at Johnstone 2019. I've put it at the top of my list because it is so good. Probably too long for most people to read in one go; I recommend reading the introduction, then skimming through the rest, but do come back to it from time to time until you've read it all.
Finally, it is not possible to understand the attacks against Assange (both the physical (especially the torture), and the verbal attacks (the propaganda)) without understanding how propaganda operates in nominally democratic countries:
I suggest writers call the growing number of Western democracies who are going back to the third world model 'hamburger republics'. 'Ham' as in ham actor,etc. Best wishes for the new, even if probably more digusting, year. Nishidani ( talk) 13:18, 31 December 2019 (UTC)
Well, it looks like this country (England at any rate, but possibly not Scotland) is doomed (Friday 13 Dec 2019).
In the 1930s in Germany it was anti-Jewish racism (=antisemitism); today in England it's anti-immigrant racism.
Given the extraordinary vicious, unprincipled campaign of lying, smears, deceit and deception against Corbyn and the Labour Party, it would not be surprising to find these liars using every dirty trick in the book. Hard to imagine that they would have any scruples about rigging the vote-counting process, probably focussing on the postal votes in about 50 to 100 marginal constituencies. Unfortunately it takes time and effort to dig up the evidence to prove it, but some people are working on it. Watch this space.
Quite a good analysis from The New York Review of Books [b] [c] [d] by David Graeber.
In summary, the evidence suggests that the current regulatory framework for political advertising and campaigning during elections is not fit for purpose and wholly inadequate for the digital terrain on which elections are increasingly fought. There is no greater threat to democracy than disinformation, especially when it is produced and disseminated by an incumbent government and reinforced by the bulk of the mainstream press. As well as fact checking claims in real-time, broadcasters should provide viewers with regular updates and data on the scale of falsehoods put out by rival parties. As for online advertising, it seems clear that the current policies and enforcement operated by the platforms is nothing more than minimal and feeble given the scale of the problem. Unless and until the major platforms are able to implement a robust fact checking approval system before publication, there is an unanswerable case to ban all political advertising online during election periods ( Schlosberg 2021).
Quotes and notes
Sources
it is also undeniable that the election was affected by a political smear campaign that was entirely unprecedented in scale and vitriol in the history of western democracy. This smear campaign was driven by billionaire-controlled media outlets, along with intelligence and military agencies, as well as state media like the BBC.
I have voted Tory all my life. But I have become so repelled by Johnson's endless lying that I will be voting for Jeremy Corbyn when I enter the polling booth this morning.
What was particularly striking about the Conservatives' false or misleading ad campaigns was the degree to which they were concentrated on the last week before polling day. On Google, the party ran nearly 50% of all their false advertising during this single crucial week. Given that the average time lag for Google to remove ads deemed in breach of its policies was 7 days, this strategy ensured that any such removals would have a negligible impact on the campaign. Indeed, five of the ads that were banned by Google were only removed on polling day itself.
I strongly recommend this book:
This book is the definitive work on the bogus-antisemitism smear campaign that destroyed Corbyn. Winstanley has had the help of dozens of people, and they have gone to great lengths to ensure that everything has been accurately sourced and verified. I used to think that I knew everything about the smear campaign, having watched, with horror, its progress, but this book is an eye-opener. Everything about the smears has been based on lies, from top to bottom and beginning to end. To a much greater extent than I had imagined. One point surprised me, and that was the extent of Corbyn's capitulation, towards the end of the campaign, under the intense military-Zionist pressure. At first sight I had thought this was a good thing (it's always good, in peace-making, to look for compromise), but he started apologising for telling the truth. It's fine to apologise for making a mistake, but never, ever apologise for telling the truth. Once you start on that path, the military-Zionists will never stop. Just like blackmailers, they will come back again and again, asking for more and more. You absolutely cannot, and should not, appease them. An important lesson for the future. -- 11:06 (UTC), Friday 13 October 2023.
Hello :) I am writing my MA dissertation on Wikipedia Wars and the Israel-Palestine conflict, and I noticed that you have contributed to those pages. My dissertation will look at the process of collaborative knowledge production on the Israel-Palestine conflict, and the effect it has on bias in the articles. This will involve understanding the profiles and motivations of editors, contention/controversy and dispute resolution in the talk pages, and bias in the final article.
For more information, you can check out my meta-wiki research page or my user page, where I will be posting my findings when I am done.
I would greatly appreciate if you could take 5 minutes to fill out this quick survey before 8 August 2021.
Participation in this survey is entirely voluntary and anonymous. There are no foreseeable risks nor benefits to you associated with this project.
Thanks so much,
Sarah Sanbar
Sarabnas I'm researching Wikipedia Questions? 20:51, 20 July 2021 (UTC)
Can you work it on Israeli occupation of the West Bank? Copied some refs from another article and made a mess I think. nableezy - 14:59, 6 September 2023 (UTC)
Ten years ago, you were found precious. That's what you are, always. -- Gerda Arendt ( talk) 08:10, 29 September 2023 (UTC)
A category or categories you have created have been nominated for possible deletion, merging, or renaming. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2023 October 1 § Category:WikiProject X members on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. Qwerfjkl talk 09:34, 2 October 2023 (UTC)
“ | Defenders of Israel’s bombing and invasion of Gaza have challenged me to offer a ‘chapter-and-verse’ list of war crimes that Israel has committed since the Hamas Offensive of 7th October. Here is an indicative, but not exhaustive, list. There is no doubt: Israel is investing in war crimes to effect its recapture and ethnic cleansing of Gaza while, at the same time, practising similar tactics in the West Bank and East Jerusalem | ” |
Those html comments will stop CB from editing those parameters? Or are you expecting humans who run the bot to read them? If the former, cool! I didn't know that. If the latter, I don't think it'll work because the whole problem (in my view) is editors run the bot on articles without ever checking to see if the bot made any mistakes afterwards. Either way, I hope your solution works -- if it does, I'll probably adopt it in the future, so thanks either way. Levivich ( talk) 16:55, 2 November 2023 (UTC)
The Wikipedia Library: Books & Bytes
Issue 61, January – February 2024
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --16:32, 5 March 2024 (UTC)
I consider WP:REFVAR to include the headings and organization of the references. I have put them back to the way they were before you started editing the article Tell (archaeology). If you want to change them, get consensus on the talk page, do not continue to edit war over it. Skyerise ( talk) 21:54, 22 April 2024 (UTC)
The Wikipedia Library: Books & Bytes
Issue 62, March – April 2024
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --11:02, 23 April 2024 (UTC)
I am able to edit only intermittently until further notice, and may not respond swiftly to queries. |
I may publish openly any e-mails you send me. |
E-mail is enabled on my account, but before using it to contact me please be aware that:
In any case, I am likely to respond more quickly to a request on my talk page than one by e-mail.
Don't worry if you want to send me an e-mail that has nothing whatsoever to do with Wikipedia; if that is the case, then there is no reason why I should publish it here.
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I appreciate your comments on Oliver Kamm's talk page. Although I have other pressing tasks to attend at the moment, I'll eventually return to the discussion. Also, don't let TJive intimidate you. He's nothing but a bully. Sir Paul 06:24, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
This section is pinned and will not be automatically archived. |
Consensus at WPMED is to keep refs generally over one line. Please do not switch them to over many. [1] Best Doc James ( talk · contribs · email) 13:13, 7 August 2016 (UTC)
Jonesey95 has suggested the syntax highlighter gadget as a possible solution to the near-impossibility of reading and editing pages full of LHTs. [b]
Initial thoughts:
Conclusion: better than nothing, but not really a solution to the problem. By providing a makeshift patch that papers over the problem, it reduces the pressure to get the problem fixed properly. It does mark the beginning and end of templates clearly (very good!), but the ETVP script also does that. The ETVP format also makes it easy to spot errors instantly, and the highlighter is of no help in that regard. -- NSH001 ( talk) 21:51, 28 February 2017 (UTC)
Further thoughts:
I vaguely remember trying some sort of highlighter or edit-helper several years ago, [c] and rapidly rejecting it as too cluttered and too distracting; if my memory is correct it also suffered from a lot of bugs. In contrast, I can see that I might sometimes use this highlighter, even though most of the time I will have it turned off. The author of this highlighter, Remember the dot, deserves some thanks and credit for the thought and effort he or she has put into this script. It's obviously useful to many editors, but it's not a solution to the problem of LHT clutter. -- NSH001 ( talk) 09:44, 1 March 2017 (UTC) and NSH001 ( talk) 10:32, 2 March 2017 (UTC)
I have seen other editors (not just Doc James), when talking about this infuriating problem, use the phrase "over one line" to refer to horizontal cite templates and "over many lines" to refer to other formats.
Yes, it is true that the annoying LHT format only occupies one physical line of the computer file. But to use "over one line" in the context of a discussion of the merits of the different formats is very misleading. On the actual edit window that real-life editors use, it also occupies many lines. The difference is that the LHT format will line-wrap at unpredictable positions, depending on where in the text it occurs, what font size is being used and the width of the edit window, among other factors. At least the line-breaks in the "vertical" format are predictable (making it more readable than the LHT format), while the ETVP format is specifically designed to make it as readable as possible.
Incidentally, this problem of line-wrapping is one reason why, generally, I don't mind manually formatted citations; as long as they don't contain long URLs, or other long items, they will usually fit into one line of an edit window, so they don't disrupt the readability of the wikitext in the same way that LHTs do. (I have mentioned elsewhere that there are compelling reasons for preferring templated citations, of course.) There is another reason why manual citations are generally acceptable in the body of an article: they are still in a narrative format, so (unless they contain a long URL) they fit in quite naturally with the rest of the article. Very different from cite templates, where the important task for the editor is to visually parse the argument-value pairs (updated December 2017).
-- NSH001 ( talk) 15:53, 14 March 2017 (UTC)
Well, I really don't know. It baffles and perplexes me that anyone could possibly tolerate this mess. But any strategy for getting rid of LHTs needs to address this paradox. Some possible explanations:
-- NSH001 ( talk) 07:39, 16 June 2017 (UTC)
This section has been prompted by the this discussion on the talk page of Actuary (a featured article), and the simultaneous discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Deprecate parenthetical citations (archived here). In addition, my private ETVP script has been under near-constant development since most of this thread was first written, so an update is needed anyway.
The ETVP script now allows the choice of four different ways of getting rid of LHT clutter: [k]
|refs=
parameter of the {{
reflist}} template. This was the second option that I developed. It succeeds in getting rid of the turds, but it also comes with some disadvantages, notably the difficulty in handling page numbers (which can still be done, but not very easily).In practice, I find that I use option 1 as an interim stage before using one of the other options. Option 1 is very helpful: firstly because it automatically corrects many of the errors that you find in citation templates, and, secondly, having the templates in ETVP format makes them much easier to edit. Any solution (and my script) has to take account of the vast amount of crap that editors type into citation templates. You won't believe the amount of crap that you find in citation templates. Not just editors, most of the citation-generating tools generate crap citations too, notably Visual Editor (VE), which was one of the worst, although it seems to be getting a bit better recently. [l] A huge amount of the effort that has gone into my script has been writing code to correct this mountainous pile of crap. One of the reasons that there is so much crap in citation templates is that the LHT clutter style makes it very difficult to find errors, and even if you do find one, the LHT format makes it hard and time-consuming to correct. So the epithet "turd" is indeed appropriate to describe this style.
Anyway, for now, option 1 is used only as an interim, preliminary stage. I save the result on my own computer (it would be easy to save it on Wikipedia, but that carries the risk of another editor coming along and messing up my work) and then examine it manually. Firstly, to correct the usual crap. Then to check the changes option 1 has offered; the most common of these is the | ref = {{harvid|...}}
it generates if there are no authors or editors, or no date/year is specified.
[m] Of course, this stage may not be needed if I'm already familiar with the page and its history; on the other hand it's essential if someone has been dumping LHTs ("turds") using VE or one of the citation-generating tools. Once I'm satisfied with the results, I run one of the other options to generate the final result.
I still believe using in-line ETVP formatting (option 1) is a valid and useful option (it keeps the citation next to the text it's supporting), but before that can win general acceptance, I think two changes are necessary to the wiki text editor (I refuse to go anywhere near the VE editor):
<ref>...........</ref>
should be changed so that what you see in the edit window looks something like this:where the coloured [ref]s are clickable, resulting in either a pop-up that can be edited, or expanded in-line for editing.blah blah,[ref 23][ref 3][ref 24 name="Smith"] blah blah.[ref 11]
I believe the first change will be welcomed by all editors (even those who are fans of the turd format), since it makes the wikitext much more readable.
The purpose of the ETVP script
Worth reiterating:
The purpose of the ETVP script is to get rid of LHT clutter. That was its original motivation, and will always remain its primary function. In doing this, it provides options to switch from the dungheap citation style to any of the citation formats mentioned above.
But its purpose remains to get rid of LHT clutter. Of course it can be used to switch citation style, and I hope to support every reasonable citation style, but it will never allow a turd-formatted citation to remain in place.
I am always open to reasonable requests for improving the ETVP script. But the one thing that is, and will always remain, non-negotiable, is its fundamental, basic purpose, which is to get rid of turd-formatted citations.
-- NSH001 ( talk) 14:13, 9 August 2020 (UTC)
Although a power supply with a larger than needed power rating will have an extra margin of safety against overloading, such a unit is often less efficient and wastes more electricity at lower loads than a more appropriately sized unit. For example, a 900-watt power supply with the [[80 Plus Silver]] efficiency rating (which means that such a power supply is designed to be at least 85-percent efficient for loads above 180 W) may only be 73% efficient when the load is lower than 100 W, which is a typical idle power for a desktop computer. Thus, for a 100 W load, losses for this supply would be 37 W; if the same power supply was put under a 450 W load, for which the supply's efficiency peaks at 89%, the loss would be only 56 W despite supplying 4.5 times the useful power.<ref>{{cite web | url = http://www.anandtech.com/show/2624/3 | title = Debunking Power Supply Myths | date = 2008-09-22 | accessdate = 2014-10-07 | author = Christoph Katzer | publisher = [[AnandTech]] | page = 3}}</ref><ref>{{cite web | url = http://www.coolermaster.com/xresserver01-DLFILE-P130218025925ba-F13032500212140.html | title = Cooler Master UCP Product Sheet | year = 2008 | accessdate = 2014-10-11 | publisher = [[Cooler Master]] | format = PDF}}</ref> For a comparison, a 500-watt power supply carrying the [[80 Plus Bronze]] efficiency rating (which means that such a power supply is designed to be at least 82-percent efficient for loads above 100 W) may provide an 84-percent efficiency for a 100 W load, wasting only 19 W.<ref>{{cite web | url = http://www.anandtech.com/show/4908/silverstone-strider-plus-500w-modular-power/4 | title = SilverStone Strider Plus{{snd}} 500 W Modular Power | date = 2011-10-10 | accessdate = 2014-10-11 | author = Martin Kaffei | publisher = [[AnandTech]] | page = 4}}</ref>
Although a power supply with a larger than needed power rating will have an extra margin of safety against overloading, such a unit is often less efficient and wastes more electricity at lower loads than a more appropriately sized unit. For example, a 900-watt power supply with the [[80 Plus Silver]] efficiency rating (which means that such a power supply is designed to be at least 85-percent efficient for loads above 180 W) may only be 73% efficient when the load is lower than 100 W, which is a typical idle power for a desktop computer. Thus, for a 100 W load, losses for this supply would be 37 W; if the same power supply was put under a 450 W load, for which the supply's efficiency peaks at 89%, the loss would be only 56 W despite supplying 4.5 times the useful power.<ref>{{cite web
| url = http://www.anandtech.com/show/2624/3
| title = Debunking Power Supply Myths
| date = 2008-09-22 | accessdate = 2014-10-07
| author = Christoph Katzer | publisher = [[AnandTech]]
| page = 3
}}</ref><ref>{{cite web
| url = http://www.coolermaster.com/xresserver01-DLFILE-P130218025925ba-F13032500212140.html
| title = Cooler Master UCP Product Sheet
| year = 2008 | accessdate = 2014-10-11
| publisher = [[Cooler Master]] | format = PDF
}}</ref> For a comparison, a 500-watt power supply carrying the [[80 Plus Bronze]] efficiency rating (which means that such a power supply is designed to be at least 82-percent efficient for loads above 100 W) may provide an 84-percent efficiency for a 100 W load, wasting only 19 W.<ref>{{cite web
| url = http://www.anandtech.com/show/4908/silverstone-strider-plus-500w-modular-power/4
| title = SilverStone Strider Plus{{snd}} 500 W Modular Power
| date = 2011-10-10 | accessdate = 2014-10-11
| author = Martin Kaffei | publisher = [[AnandTech]]
| page = 4
}}</ref>
cite book
|editor-link=Robert W. Watson
|editor-first=Robert W.
|editor-last=Watson
|title=White House Studies Compendium
|volume=2
|first=Harold
|last=Holzer
|authorlink=Harold Holzer
|isbn=9781600215339
|chapter=New Glory for Old Glory: A Lincoln-Era Tradition Reborn
|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=mFDl3fo9iEQC&pg=PA316
|year=2007
|publisher=Nova Publishers
|pages=315–318, at p. 316
cite book|editor-link=Robert W. Watson|editor-first=Robert W.|editor-last=Watson|title=White House Studies Compendium|volume=2|first=Harold|last=Holzer|authorlink=Harold Holzer|isbn=9781600215339|chapter=New Glory for Old Glory: A Lincoln-Era Tradition Reborn|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=mFDl3fo9iEQC&pg=PA316%7Cyear=2007%7Cpublisher=Nova Publishers|pages=315–318, at p. 316
I'm aware that I need to produce a full set of documentation about ETVP – the underlying principles, the ETVP script, and why it does what it does, and a full discussion/tutorial of the merits and demerits of each of the options it offers. I've been slow in doing this because for the foreseeable future the script will remain private, so that only I can use it. In the meantime, the long thread here provides a good description of the motivation for writing it, and you can find examples of its use at User:NSH001/ETVP/examples. -- NSH001 ( talk) 14:13, 9 August 2020 (UTC)
This section is pinned and will not be automatically archived. |
A turd template is another name for a Long horizontally formatted template (LHT) as defined above. As explained above, LHTs make editing difficult or impossible (with some exceptions), in addition to being undesirable on general grounds.
Opening, in edit mode, an article full of LHTs is like entering a house where every previous visitor (editor) has left a "deposit" all over the floor. Hence the name.
-- NSH001 ( talk) 22:28, 3 May 2018 (UTC)
The dungheap citation style is another name for the LHT clutter citation style. Note that I am being too kind to LHT clutter here: dungheaps can be composted into useful, sweet-smelling fertiliser that can be used by farmers to help produce healthy, nutritious organic food. By contrast, the stink of LHT clutter is permanent until the turds are flushed away, or otherwise disposed of.
-- NSH001 ( talk) 10:23, 11 November 2019 (UTC)
First, some remarks copied from above:
(Sorry to wander off the topic, but the whole thing is so outrageous I'm finding it difficult to think of anything else.) At this moment, I'm wondering what to do about this kangaroo court, reminiscent of stories coming out of the USSR when I was a boy growing up some 60 years ago. The (mis-)treatment of an innocent man, amounting to torture, breaks every fucking legal rule in the book, but our so-called "mainstream" media is remarkably silent on the massive human rights abuse of a good man, yet they are fully capable of pointing out human rights abuses in countries they don't like. It's crystal clear to me that the time has come to revise Wikipedia's rules on "reliable sources"; taking account of the propaganda function of the media would be a good place to start. Jeez, even RT is more reliable on this farce. -- NSH001 ( talk) 01:18, 25 October 2019 (UTC)
Sources on Assange (only a start; this is going to be a very long list):
In exactly the same way we saw a coordination between the U.S., U.K., Sweden, Ecuador and Australia to immobilize, and then silence, and then imprison Julian Assange, we are seeing a uniform movement toward silencing oppositional journalism throughout the entire U.S.-centralized empire.
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help) On similarities between the US's nefarious activities in Brazil and the Assange case. Also available at
caitlinjohnstone.comMurderous governments who deceive their citizenry are not entitled to any degree of secrecy whatsoever.More quotes:
'Kafka's work is characterized by nightmarish settings in which characters are crushed by nonsensical, blind authority,' says Merriam-Webster. 'Thus, the word Kafkaesque is often applied to bizarre and impersonal administrative situations where the individual feels powerless to understand or control what is happening.'
Until yesterday I had always been quietly sceptical of those who claimed that Julian's treatment amounted to torture – even of Nils Melzer, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture – and sceptical of those who suggested he may be subject to debilitating drug treatments. But having attended the trials in Uzbekistan of several victims of extreme torture, and having worked with survivors from Sierra Leone and elsewhere, I can tell you that yesterday changed my mind entirely and Julian exhibited exactly the symptoms of a torture victim brought blinking into the light, particularly in terms of disorientation, confusion, and the real struggle to assert free will through the fog of learned helplessness.- the case management hearing at Westminster Magistrates Court on Monday, 21 October 2019. My comments:
While the US Government prosecutes Mr. Assange for publishing information about serious human rights violations, including torture and murder, the officials responsible for these crimes continue to enjoy impunity.
the founder and former editor of Wikileaks, the publishing organisation which since established in 2006 has removed the cloak of democracy from the face of an empire whose high crimes and war crimes would make Genghis Khan blush, has been placed on a metaphorical cross at in the name of nothing more ennobling than vengeance and retribution.
But I find myself wondering what exactly the difference is between his alleged crime of publishing leaked US diplomatic cables and the Mail on Sunday's offence of publishing leaked Foreign Office cables. Why is Assange treated by the bulk of the British media as a pariah? And the Mail on Sunday as a doughty defender of press freedom? After all, Julian Assange is responsible for breaking more stories than all the rest of us put together.
Viele prominente UnterzeichnerZu den Unterzeichnern gehören unter anderen die ehemaligen Bundesministerinnen und -minister Katarina Barley, Sigmar Gabriel, Herta Däubler-Gmelin, Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul (alle SPD) und Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger (FDP). Gerhart Baum, FDP-Bundesinnenminister von 1978 bis 1982, sagte bei einer Pressekonferenz, es gehe "nicht nur um das Menschenschicksal", sondern darum, "dass wir hier für die Pressefreiheit kämpfen". Sevim Dağdelen, Bundesabgeordnete der Partei Die Linke, nannte Assange einen Menschen, "der alles in Kauf genommen hat", um "Kriegsverbrechen von Mächtigen und von herrschenden Regierungen öffentlich zu machen". Deshalb sitze Assange in Haft. Auch Bundestagsvizepräsident Wolfgang Kubicki, der frühere Bundestagspräsident Wolfgang Thierse sowie Bundestagsabgeordnete wie Gregor Gysi (Linke) und Karl Lauterbach (SPD) haben sich dem Aufruf angeschlossen.Außerdem unterschrieben die Literaturnobelpreisträgerin Elfriede Jelinek, die Schriftsteller Navid Kermani und Martin Mosebach, der Journalist Günter Wallraff, aber auch Benediktinerpater und Autor Anselm Grün sowie viele weitere Persönlichkeiten aus Kabarett, Theater und Film und das PEN-Zentrum Deutschland.["Many prominent signatories"Among the signatories are former Federal Ministers Katarina Barley, Sigmar Gabriel, Herta Däubler-Gmelin, Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul (all SPD) and Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger (FDP). Gerhart Baum, FDP Federal Minister from 1978 to 1982, said that 'we're not just talking about the fate of a human being, we're fighting for freedom of the press.'" Sevim Dağdelen, a member of the Bundestag for the Left Party said that Assange was a person who had withstood everything to publish the war crimes of powerful people and of governments and that's why Assange is in prison. Also the vice-president of the Bundestag Wolfgang Kubicki, the former president of the Bundestag Wolfgang Thierse as well as Bundestag members such as Gregor Gysi (Left Party) and Karl Lauterbach (SPD) have signed."In addition, the Nobel Prize for Literature winner Elfriede Jelinek, the writers Navid Kermani and Martin Mosebach, the journalist Günter Wallraff, but also the Benedictine padre and author Anselm Grün as well as many other personalities from cabaret, theatre and film, and the PEN Centre of Germany.]
A panel of experts will confront the dangerous consequences of the US government prosecuting Julian Assange under the Espionage Act of 1917.
I am sometimes asked why I have championed Assange. For one thing, I like and I admire him. He is a friend with astonishing courage; and he has a finely honed, wicked sense of humour. He is the diametric opposite of the character invented and then assassinated by his enemies.Also available on johnpilger.com.
The indictment raises important questions about the protection of those that publish classified information in the public interest, including those that expose human rights violations. [...] Furthermore, any extradition to a situation in which the person involved would be at real risk of torture or inhuman or degrading treatment would be contrary to Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
Leigh — who allegedly "fawned all over" Assange in the bunker — would go on to coauthor 2011's WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy with the notorious Luke Harding. Underlining Guardian journalists' negligent approach to operational security, in that book the pair decided — contrary to Assange's explicit warnings — to use the confidential encryption password for the entire, uncensored 'Cablegate' archive as a chapter heading, which resulted in the dumping of hundreds of thousands of State Department cables on the web without the selective redactions Assange and other WikiLeaks staffers prepared for them over a period of eight months.
WikiLeaks severed future projects with the Guardian in December last year after it was discovered that the Guardian was engaged in a conspiracy to publish the cables without the knowledge of WikiLeaks, seriously compromising the security of our people in the United States and an alleged source who was in pre-trial detention. Leigh, without any basis, and in a flagrant violation of journalistic ethics, named Bradley Manning as the Cablegate source in his book. David Leigh secretly passed the entire archive to Bill Keller of the New York Times, in September 2011, or before, knowingly destroying WikiLeaks plans to publish instead with the Washington Post & McClatchy. David Leigh and the Guardian have subsequently and repeatedly violated WikiLeaks security conditions, including our requirements that the unpublished cables be kept safe from state intelligence services by keeping them only on computers not connected to the internet. Ian Katz, Deputy Editor of the Guardian admitted in December 2010 meeting that this condition was not being followed by the Guardian. [...] Two weeks ago, when it was discovered that information about the Leigh book had spread so much that it was about to be published in the German weekly Freitag, WikiLeaks took emergency action, asking the editor not allude to the Leigh book, and tasked its lawyers to demand those maliciously spreading its details about the Leigh book stop.
And you know what? I think the power behind his [ Melzer's] testimony comes from the fact that he realized that he had been duped, and if he, a very intelligent, well read, worldly, informed and educated person could be duped, then anyone can be. No one is immune. Human minds are hackable. We're all very busy with our lives. We're all kept busy by capitalism, and very few of us have the time to do what he did and sit down and take a look at the facts and assess them. And even if they did that, even fewer of them have had the courage of their convictions to put up with the social consequences of changing course. Being manipulated isn't immoral, being a manipulator is. People feel ashamed when they've been conned, but it's not their fault; it's always the fault of the con man. That's why fraud is the crime, and being defrauded is being a victim of that crime.
Dr. Gill: 'The reports from Nils Melzer are deeply concerning but come as no surprise. Deprivation of liberty, lack of due process, character assassination, threat of extradition and solitary confinement are grossly disproportionate consequences for the allegations made against Julian Assange. The effects of such treatment have devastating effects on mental health and functioning. Chronic stress, poor living conditions, lack of sunlight and human companionship have serious negative physical effects on the body ranging from accelerated cardiovascular disease and neurological deterioration. Given these obvious impacts on Julian Assange's health, it is remarkable that his authorised medical personnel have failed to identify the harms his continued detention are having. The prison regime have consciously decided to continue with Assange's torture by not supporting his immediate release from Belmarsh. The NHS and prison management should be held to account for their actions but there seems little chance of this given all normal processes have been ignored in the treatment of Assange for political reasons.'
The defense for Assange provided a background that led to this prosecution of his client. He noted that 'President Trump came into power with a new approach to freedom of speech …. effectively declaring war on investigative journalists.' He said that 'President Trump met with FBI Director James Comey and agreed that they should be "putting a head on a pike" as a message to journalists over leaks, and "putting journalists in jail."' Edward Fitzgerald QC indicated Assange has become a target of Trump's 'war on leakers and journalists.' He stated that his client was 'the obvious symbol of all that Trump condemned. He had brought American war crimes to the attention of the world.'
In yesterday's proceedings in court, the prosecution adopted arguments so stark and apparently unreasonable I have been fretting on how to write them up in a way that does not seem like caricature or unfair exaggeration on my part. What has been happening in this court has long moved beyond caricature. All I can do is given you my personal assurance that what I recount actually is what happened.Day 3 (Wednesday 26 February) at the kangaroo court
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Stefania Maurizi, Investigative journalist;
James Ball, global editor at the
Bureau of Investigative Journalism;
Rebecca Vincent, UK bureau director,
Reporters Without Borders;
Nils Melzer, UN special rapporteur on tortureBritain likes to cultivate the image of a country which plays by the rules, but as the WikiLeaks' founder's extradition proceeding enters a crucial phase, the UK authorities are treating a journalist who revealed war crimes and torture as if he were a dangerous criminal. And yet revealing war crimes is the quintessential role of journalism in a democratic society.
Doctors4Assange further notes that the U.K.'s psychological torture of Julian Assange, also called out by Nils Melzer in letters to the U.K. last year, and by our letter to the Lancet in February of this year, continues unabated. We repeat our demand for the immediate release of Assange to an academic hospital for relief from the conditions causing his torture, and for treatment of its effects. In addition, we join leading legal and human rights authorities in calling for the denial of the U.S. extradition request, with its prospect of further psychological torture, including under so-called Special Administrative Measures. Crucially, we repeat that as an untreated victim of ongoing psychological torture Julian Assange is, by definition, unfit for trial.
It is not just our family who suffers from the infringement of Julian's rights. If our family and Julian's lawyers are not off-limits, then nothing is. The person responsible for allegedly ordering the theft of Gabriel's DNA is Mike Pompeo, who last month threatened the family members of lawyers working at the International Criminal Court. Why? Because the court had had the temerity to investigate alleged US war crimes in Afghanistan. The same crimes that Julian exposed through WikiLeaks, and which the US wants to imprison him over.
If there was an ounce of sincerity in the foreign secretary's claim that he is a supporter of media freedom, he would be resisting the US attempt to get its hands on Assange with every bone in his body. There's not the slightest suggestion that he's doing that. As Human Rights Watch has pointed out, the British authorities have the power to prevent any US prosecution from eroding media freedom. Britain has so far - at least - shown no appetite to exercise that power. Unfortunately for Raab, Assange's real crime is doing journalism. I've never met Assange. Some people that I know and respect say that he is vain and difficult. I believe them. There's no denying, however, that Assange has done more than every other journalist in Britain put together to shed light on the way the world truly works. For example, thanks to Assange that we now know about many violations including: British vote-trading with Saudi Arabia to ensure that both states were elected onto the United Nations human rights council in 2013; the links between the fascist British National Party and members of the police and army; the horrifying details of civilians killed by the US army in Afghanistan.
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The extradition process in March 2020 prolonged this legal farce, with the British prosecutor briefing the media in advance of the hearing on what they should report for the evening deadline. US representatives bizarrely argued to Baraitser that Assange was subject to the US Espionage Act but was not entitled to the protection of the US Constitution, and that the UK Treaties Act applied to him but not the US/UK Extradition Treaty. Whatever produces the desired outcome is what the Americans and their British sycophants will predictably continue to say is legal.
In themselves they [Wikileaks' revelations] don't explain the degree of rage WikiLeaks provoked in the US government and its allies. This was a response to Assange's assault on their monopoly control of sensitive state information, which they saw as an essential prop to their authority. [...] if disclosures of this kind went unpunished and became the norm, it would radically shift the balance of power between government and society – and especially the media – in favour of the latter. It is the US government's determination to defend its ongoing monopoly, rather than the supposed damage done by the release of the secrets themselves, that has motivated it to pursue Assange and to seek to discredit both him and WikiLeaks. This campaign has been unrelenting and has had a fair measure of success, despite the fact that most of the charges made against Assange are demonstrably untrue.[...]It was a sign of desperation on the part of the counterintelligence officers that in seeking evidence against WikiLeaks they were reduced to citing the Taliban as a source. And, as Carr admitted during the defence cross-examination, the Taliban turned out to be lying: 'The name of the individual killed was not in the [WikiLeaks] disclosures.' Despite all this, the lawyer representing the US government at Assange's extradition hearings in London earlier this year still argued that Assange had put the lives of US sources in Iraq and Afghanistan at risk.[...]Given the gravity of the issues at stake, the silence of journalists about Assange's detention in Belmarsh following Ecuador's revoking of his asylum status is striking. Here was evidence of a radical shift in US security policy, towards the position taken by countries like Turkey and Egypt, which have sought to criminalise criticism of the state and to conflate the publication of news it doesn't want the public to hear with terrorism or espionage. The creeping suppression of press freedom in Hungary and India is frequently criticised by the Western commentariat. But, as Glenn Greenwald has pointed out in the Intercept, Western media have 'largely ignored what is, by far, the single greatest attack on press freedoms by the US government in the last decade at least: the prosecution and attempted extradition of Julian Assange for alleged crimes arising out of WikiLeaks's ... publication – in conjunction with the world's largest newspapers – of the Iraq and Afghanistan war logs and US diplomatic cables'. They couldn't jail the editor of the New York Times so they pursued Assange instead.
[Reuters' Baghdad bureau chief Dale] Yates, [...] held the Baghdad post in 2007 when an Apache helicopter airstrike killed two of his staff members, Saeed Chmagh and Noor-Eldeen. Yates wasn't allowed to report on what two U.S. Generals had shown Reuters at the time. What we learn now is what Reuters wasn't able to report, in particular how the death of one Reuters employee strongly appears to be a war crime. Yates reels at the deception and says Reuters was cheated by the U.S. brass. Sami Ramadani speaks of the Iraqi reaction to the 'Collateral Murder' release and the evidence WikiLeaks published of torture at Abu Ghraib prison. The second Guardian article points out that in Assange's indictment there is no mention of the Baghdad air strike footage, even though 40 of the 175 years in prison Assange faces relates to "Collateral Murder." Robinson explains that the charges are in fact about the publication of the Rules of Engagement, which Manning leaked to show that the Baghdad air strike had violated them.
Mr Assange is at grave risk from contracting COVID-19. As he is non-violent, being held on remand, and arbitrarily detained according to the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, he meets internationally recommended criteria for prisoner release during COVID-19. A bail application with a plan for monitored home detention was refused, however, and Mr Assange is held in solitary confinement for 23 hours each day. Isolation and under-stimulation are key psychological torture tactics, capable of inducing severe despair, disorientation, destabilisation, and disintegration of crucial mental functions. Given recent attacks against journalists, the psychological torture of a publisher and journalist sets a precedent of international concern. We reiterate our demand to end the torture and medical neglect of Julian Assange. IBAHRI states that, in view of Mr Assange being a victim of psychological torture, his extradition to the USA would be illegal under international human rights law. The World Psychiatric Association emphasises that withholding appropriate medical treatment can itself amount to torture, and under the Convention Against Torture, those acting in official capacities can be held complicit and accountable not only for perpetration of torture, but for their silent acquiescence and consent. As physicians, we have a professional and ethical duty to speak out against, report, and stop torture. Silence on Mr Assange's torture might well facilitate his death.
The kangaroo court resumed on 7 September 2020, this time at the Old Bailey.
The following sources were published in the period leading up to the main hearing at the Old Bailey.
GOSZTOLA: That raises an important question in my mind, which is, how can someone who is not from the U.S. be expected to submit to these U.S. secrecy laws and regulations, especially when he never signed a non-disclosure agreement?A key part of these Espionage Act prosecutions are that they are brought forward as strict liability offenses, that he signed something. It seems that there is no evidence whatsoever in favor of the U.S. government that he signed anything to agree to not disclose information. POLLACK: That's correct. In the cases that have been brought to date, the charges have been against an employee of the government, a government contractor, a former employee of the government, all people who entered into an agreement with the government that they would not disclose classified information. Journalists don't enter into that type of agreement, and every day the New York Times and the Washington Post publish classified information. The Department of Justice has never charged a domestic reporter under the Espionage Act. Up until the current administration, I think it was widely understood that doing so would be inconsistent with the First Amendment. Publishers do not have those kinds of non-disclosure agreements. They report what is newsworthy, and that includes classified information that comes into their possession.
Present-day analysis of Wikileaks often centres around political influence, Russia, Trump, Clinton and the 2016 US Presidential election. Articles about Julian typically centre around the Swedish allegations now cancelled, the geopolitics of his incarceration, the substance of the US Grand Jury indictments, or the legality of UK extradition. But seldom do they focus on Julian's idea behind Wikileaks — not just the leaks themselves and the changes they have swept before them, but the formidable concept of surveillance being applied to structural power. This article aims to help address this imbalance, providing some personal perspectives on Julian as a thinker, his motivation for harnessing the tools of cryptography for the strength of the fourth estate, and his profound achievements in shining light on structural influence in the 21st Century. If the analysis of the possible UK extradition is what you're after, the Open Letter from Lawyers for Assange is an excellent start: https://www.lawyersforassange.org/en/open-letter.html [...]Julian argued that the greatest achievement of Wikileaks isn't the exposure of 15,000 unreported civilian deaths in Iraq. Nor the corruption in Kenya, India, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Yemen, and countless countries around the world. Nor the exposure of the Church of Scientology, or the British National Party, or Stephen Conroy's Internet filter, or the behaviour of Barclays, Kaupthing and the Julius Baer Bank. Nor the documentation of generations of global political fealty to the US State Department. Nor the exposure of vast privatised surveillance across continents. Instead, the greatest achievement of Wikileaks is to shine the spotlight of surveillance on those who wield structural power. To help make a world where people who do wrong in the public's name, get found out. To make governments of the future pause before they commit to the unethical, illegal or unconstitutional. To make those who would commit acts of atrocity consider the possibility of future exposure.
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Mark Feldstein is a Professor of Broadcast Journalism at the University of Maryland. He has twenty years' experience as an investigative journalist. Professor Feldstein's evidence sets out Julian Assange's place in the history of national security journalism in the United States and assesses the First Amendment ramifications of his prosecution. Professor Feldstein testified in the extradition proceedings on Monday 7 September 2020.
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The following sources report, or comment on, the main hearing at the Old Bailey.
If you asked me to sum up today in a word, that word would undoubtedly be "railroaded". it was all about pushing through the hearing as quickly as possible and with as little public exposure as possible to what is happening. Access denied, adjournment denied, exposition of defence evidence denied, removal of superseding indictment charges denied. The prosecution was plainly failing in that week back in Woolwich in February, which seems like an age ago. It has now been given a new boost. How the defence will deal with the new charges we shall see. It seems impossible that they can do this without calling new witnesses to address the new facts. But the witness lists had already been finalised on the basis of the old charges. That the defence should be forced to proceed with the wrong witnesses seems crazy, but frankly, I am well past being surprised by anything in this fake process.(Day 6 = Monday 7 Septermber 2020)
Today we had two expert witnesses, who had both submitted lengthy written testimony relating to one indictment, which was now being examined in relation to a new superseding indictment, exchanged at the last minute, and which neither of them had ever seen. Both specifically stated they had not seen the new indictment. Furthermore this new superseding indictment had been specifically prepared by the prosecution with the benefit of having heard the defence arguments and seen much of the defence evidence, in order to get round the fact that the indictment on which the hearing started was obviously failing. On top of which the defence had been refused an adjournment to prepare their defence against the new indictment, which would have enabled these and other witnesses to see the superseding indictment, adjust their evidence accordingly and be prepared to be cross-examined in relation to it. Clive Stafford Smith testified today that in 2001 he would not have believed the outrageous crimes that were to be perpetrated by the US government. I am obliged to say that I simply cannot believe the blatant abuse of process that is unfolding before my eyes in this courtroom.(Day 7 = Tuesday 8 Septermber 2020)
The great question after yesterday's hearing was whether prosecution counsel James Lewis QC would continue to charge at defence witnesses like a deranged berserker (spoiler – he would), and more importantly, why? QC's representing governments usually seek to radiate calm control, and treat defence arguments as almost beneath their notice, certainly as no conceivable threat to the majestic thinking of the state. Lewis instead resembled a starving terrier kept away from a prime sausage by a steel fence whose manufacture and appearance was far beyond his comprehension.(Day 8 = Wednesday 9 Septermber 2020)
The mainstream media are turning a blind eye. There were three reporters in the press gallery, one of them an intern and one representing the NUJ. Public access continues to be restricted and major NGOs, including Amnesty, PEN and Reporters Without Borders, continue to be excluded both physically and from watching online. It has taken me literally all night to write this up – it is now 8.54am – and I have to finish off and get back into court. The six of us allowed in the public gallery, incidentally, have to climb 132 steps to get there, several times a day. As you know, I have a very dodgy ticker; I am with Julian's dad John who is 78; and another of us has a pacemaker. I do not in the least discount the gallant efforts of others when I explain that I feel obliged to write this up, and in this detail, because otherwise the vital basic facts of the most important trial this century, and how it is being conducted, would pass almost completely unknown to the public. If it were a genuine process, they would want people to see it, not completely minimise attendance both physically and online. [CORRECTED from the Day 10 (Tuesday) report: 'In conclusion I need to correct something I published yesterday, that there were only three journalists in the video gallery to cover the trial. James Doleman led me to another hidden nest of them and there are about ten in total. The main titles are inexcusably unrepresented, but press agencies are, even if their feed is being little used.'](Day 9 = Monday 14 Septermber 2020)
The court heard a great deal more truth than it could handle today, and great effort was put into excluding more truth. The US Government succeeded in preventing John Goetz eyewitness contradicting their promulgation of Luke Harding's lie about what Assange said at El Moro. The US Government also objected, successfully so far, to Khaled el-Masri's giving evidence on the grounds that he will allege he was tortured in the USA. Given that the European Court of Human Rights and the German courts had both found el-Masri's story to be true, only in the wacky world of Lewis and Baraitser could it be considered wrong for him to tell the truth in court.(Day 11 = Wednesday 16 Septermber 2020)
I have two main points to make. The first is that Shenkman was sent a 180 page evidence bundle from the prosecution on the morning of his testimony, at 3am his time, before giving evidence at 9am. A proportion of this was entirely new material to him. He is then questioned on it. This keeps happening to every witness. On top of which, like almost every witness, his submitted statement addressed the first superseding indictment not the last minute second superseding indictment which introduces some entirely new offences. This is a ridiculous procedure. My second is that, having been very critical of Judge Baraitser, it would be churlish of me not to note that there seems to be some definite change in her attitude to the case as the prosecution makes a complete horlicks of it. Whether this makes any long term difference I doubt. But it is pleasant to witness.(Day 12 = Thursday 17 Septermber 2020)
I should start by saying that the government of the United States had objected to almost all of the defence evidence. They want the defence witnesses ruled as either not expert (hence the sustained rudeness and attacks) or not relevant. Judge Baraitser had ruled that she will hear all the evidence, and decide only when she comes to judgement, what is and is not admissible. Against that we then have her decision that the witnesses can only have half an hour of going through their statements before cross-examination. That is against a US government request that witness statements should not be heard before cross-examination at all. Theoretically Baraitser agreed to this, but she let in half an hour to "orient the witness", which gets the basic facts out there. Baraitser rejected the defence arguments that statements should be read or explained at length by the witness in court, for the benefit of the public, on the basis that the statements are published. But they are not published. The Court does not publish them. It gives copies to journalists registered to cover the trial, but those journalists have no interest in publishing them. [...]The fact is that the USA wants to avoid the political embarrassment and media publicity of el-Masri's torture and the events of the Collateral Murder video being detailed in court. Why an English court is complying in this censorship is beyond me. I am deeply suspicious of the "breakdown" of the videolink making el-Masri's evidence in person "technically impossible" after days in which the US government tried to block that evidence. I am also deeply suspicious of the strange fact that unlike other witnesses with video problems, there was no rescheduling. Video and sound quality has been deplorable for several defence witnesses. In a world where we have all got used to videocalls this last few months, the extraordinary failure of the court to operate everyday technology is a level of incompetence it is difficult quite to believe in.(Day 13 = Friday 18 Septermber 2020)
Monday was a frustrating day as the Assange Hearing drifted deep into a fantasy land where nobody knows or is allowed to say that people were tortured in Guantanamo Bay and under extraordinary rendition. The willingness of Judge Baraitser to accept American red lines on what witnesses can and cannot say has combined with a joint and openly stated desire by both judge and prosecution to close this case down quickly by limiting the number of witnesses, the length of their evidence, and the time allowed for closing arguments. For the first time, I am openly critical of the defence legal team who seem to be missing the moment to stop being railroaded and say no, this is wrong, forcing Baraitser to make rulings against them. Instead most of the day was lost to negotiations between prosecution and defence as to what defence evidence could be edited out or omitted.(Day 14 = Monday 21 Septermber 2020)
Julian is profoundly worried that his medical history will be used to discredit him and all that he has worked for, to paint the achievements of Wikileaks in promoting open government and citizen knowledge as the fantasy of a deranged mind. I have no doubt this will be tried, but fortunately there has been a real change in public understanding and acknowledgement of mental illness. I do not think Julian's periodic and infrequent episodes of very serious depression will be successfully portrayed in a bad light, despite the incredibly crass and insensitive attitude displayed today in court by the US Government, who have apparently been bypassed by the change in attitudes of the last few decades. I discuss this before coming to Tuesday's evidence because for once my account will be less detailed than others, because I have decided to censor much of what was said. I do this on the grounds that, when it comes to his medical history, Julian's right to privacy ought not to be abolished by these proceedings. I have discussed this in some detail with Stella Moris. I have of course weighed this against my duty as a journalist to you the reader, and have decided the right to medical privacy is greater, irrespective of what others are publishing. I have therefore given as full an account as I can while omitting all mention of behaviours, of symptoms, and of more personal detail.(Day 15 = Tuesday 22 Septermber 2020)
I fear that all over London a very hard rain is now falling on those who for a lifetime have worked within institutions of liberal democracy that at least broadly and usually used to operate within the governance of their own professed principles. It has been clear to me from Day 1 that I am watching a charade unfold. It is not in the least a shock to me that Baraitser does not think anything beyond the written opening arguments has any effect. I have again and again reported to you that, where rulings have to be made, she has brought them into court pre-written, before hearing the arguments before her. I strongly expect the final decision was made in this case even before opening arguments were received. The plan of the US Government throughout has been to limit the information available to the public and limit the effective access to a wider public of what information is available. Thus we have seen the extreme restrictions on both physical and video access. A complicit mainstream media has ensured those of us who know what is happening are very few in the wider population. Even my blog has never been so systematically subject to shadowbanning from Twitter and Facebook as now. Normally about 50% of my blog readers arrive from Twitter and 40% from Facebook. During the trial it has been 3% from Twitter and 9% from Facebook. That is a fall from 90% to 12%. In the February hearings Facebook and Twitter were between them sending me over 200,000 readers a day. Now they are between them sending me 3,000 readers a day. [...] It is the insidious nature of this censorship that is especially sinister – people believe they have successfully shared my articles on Twitter and Facebook, while those corporations hide from them that in fact it went into nobody's timeline. My own family have not been getting their notifications of my posts on either platform.(Day 16 = Wednesday 23 Septermber 2020)
During the hearing of medical evidence the last three days, the British government has been caught twice directly telling important lies about events in Belmarsh prison, each lie proven by documentary evidence. The common factor has been the medical records kept by Dr Daly, head of the jail's medical services.(Day 17 = Thursday 24 Septermber 2020)
There's a great deal of evil in that place [The Old Bailey].[...] There are things the media have printed about him [Assange] which are simply completely untrue, for example that his personal hygiene is bad and that kind of thing, you know, ... in fact there is an article here from the Mail ... yesterday, which was attacking Julian Assange, and one of the things it said was 'it is a well known fact that his personal hygiene is bad', well that's just complete nonsense, just absolutely untrue, his personal hygiene is good, just like any other person ... it astonishes me that from the small things like that to the huge things like these ridiculous allegations he was facing in Sweden ... governments have done so much to vilify and calumnise him, and of course the media has joined in, and it's simply not true. When you know him, these things are simply untrue.
But this entire hearing has been conducted in effective secrecy, a comprehensive secrecy that gives sharp insight into the politico-economic structures of current western society. Physical access to the courtroom has been extremely limited, with the public gallery cut to five people. Video link access has similarly been extremely limited, with 40 NGOs having their access cut by the judge from day 1 at the Old Bailey, including Amnesty International, PEN, Reporters without Borders and observers from the European Parliament, among many others. The state and corporate media have virtually blacked out this hearing, with a truly worrying unanimity, and despite the implications of the case for media freedom. Finally, the corporations that act as internet gatekeepers have heavily suppressed social media posts about Assange, and traffic to those few websites which are reporting.(Day 18 = Friday 25 Septermber 2020)
Today was the worst day for the defence since the start of the trial, as their expert witnesses failed to cope with the sheer aggression of cross-examination by the US Government and found themselves backing away from maintaining propositions they knew to be true. It was uncomfortable viewing.[...] You will note that none of this has anything to do with the truth of the actual evidence, and to date almost all witnesses have easily, sometimes contemptuously, seen off this intellectually shallow method of attack. But today was another story. The irony was that, when it came to the real subject matter of the evidence, it was obvious to any reasonable person that the prosecution claims of the good conditions in the American Prison service for high profile national security prisoners are just nonsense. But it was a day when the divorce between truth and court process was still plainer than usual. Given the horrific reality this process was disguising, it was a hard day to sit through.[...] [junior prosecuting barrister Clair] Dobbin is officious beyond the point of offensive; she comes over as properly obnoxious as a person. The unpleasant irony in all this is that both Sickler and Ellis [defence witnesses] were mocked and scorned for their lack of personal knowledge of ADX Colorado, when prosecution and judge had combined just on Friday to bar two witnesses who the defence both wished to testify, who had expert personal experience of ADX Florence. That is yet another striking example of the fact that this process is divorced from any genuine attempt to find truth or justice.(Day 19 = Monday 28 Septermber 2020)
The totality of defence witnesses and the sheer extent of mutual corroboration they provided could not simply be dismissed by the prosecution attempting to characterise all of them as uninformed on a particular detail, still less as all acting in bad faith. To portray one witness as weak may appear justified if they can be shaken, but to attack a succession of patently well-qualified witnesses, on no basis but aggression and unreasoning hostility, becomes quickly unconvincing. [...] The cross-examinations by the US government of the last four defence witnesses have all relied on precisely the same passages from [US Assistant Attorney Gordon] Kromberg and [Board of Prisons psychiatrist Dr Alison] Leukefeld, and every single one of the defence witnesses has said Leukefeld and Kromberg are wrong as to fact. Yet under US/UK extradition agreements the US government witnesses may not be called and cross-examined. When the defence witnesses are attacked so strongly in cross-examination on the points of disagreement with Kromberg and Leukefeld, it becomes glaringly wrong that Kromberg and Leukefeld may not be similarly cross-examined by the defence on the same points.(Day 20 = Tuesday 29 Septermber 2020)
Twenty minutes sufficed for the reading of the "gist" of the astonishing testimony of two witnesses, their identity protected as their lives may be in danger, who stated that the CIA, operating through Sheldon Adelson, planned to kidnap or poison Assange, bugged not only him but his lawyers, and burgled the offices of his Spanish lawyers Baltazar Garzon. This evidence went unchallenged and untested. [...] I have noted before, and I hope you have marked my disapproval, that some of the evidence is being edited to remove elements which the US government wish to challenge, and then entered into the court record as uncontested, with just a "gist" read out in court. The witness then does not appear in person. This reduces the process from one of evidence testing in public view to something very different.(Day 21 = Wednesday 30 Septermber 2020)
But in that courtroom, you were in the presence of evil. With a civilised veneer, a pretence at process, and even displays of bonhommie, the entire destruction of a human being was in process. Julian was being destroyed as a person before my eyes. For the crime of publishing the truth. He had to sit there listening to days of calm discussion as to the incredible torture that would await him in a US supermax prison, deprived of all meaningful human contact for years on end, in solitary in a cell just fifty square feet.Fifty square feet. Mark that out yourself now. Three paces by two. Of all the terrible things I heard, Warden Baird explaining that the single hour a day allowed out of the cell is alone in another, absolutely identical cell called the "recreation cell" was perhaps the most chilling. That and the foul government "expert" Dr Blackwood describing how Julian might be sufficiently medicated and physically deprived of the means of suicide to keep him alive for years of this.
The U.K. extradition hearing for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is now in its third week, but you would hardly realize it if you read only mainstream news outlets. Despite the fact that most of the major newspapers in the United States vehemently condemned the Trump administration's charges against Assange as a threat to press freedom, there has been a worrying lack of coverage of the case. [...] But if the precedent the Trump administration is seeking in the Assange case existed at the start of Woodward's career, he certainly wouldn't be reporting on what the president secretly told him about Covid-19 or the many other revelations in his new book. In fact, Woodward's legendary investigation into Watergate, which made him the household name he is today, likely never would have gotten off the ground.
Publishing evidence furnished by whistleblowers is at the heart of any journalism that aspires to hold power to account and in check. Whistleblowers typically emerge in reaction to parts of the executive turning rogue, when the state itself starts breaking its own laws. That is why journalism is protected in the U.S. by the First Amendment. Jettison that and one can no longer claim to live in a free society. Aware that journalists might understand this threat and rally in solidarity with Assange, U.S. officials initially pretended that they were not seeking to prosecute the WikiLeaks founder for journalism — in fact, they denied he was a journalist. That was why they preferred to charge him under the arcane, highly repressive Espionage Act of 1917. The goal was to isolate Assange and persuade other journalists that they would not share his fate.
That the true purpose of the U.S. government's relentless pursuit of Assange is to prevent him from exposing more of its crimes, and to punish him for exposing those of its crimes which he did expose, if only so as to deter others from doing the same thing, is perfectly obvious to any unbiased and realistic observer. However, the hearing in London is being conducted as if this were not the case.[...] I am aware of the many criticisms which have been made of Vanessa Baraitser, the judge who is hearing Assange's case. I don't disagree with any of them. However, I do get the impression that Baraitser's patience has been sorely tried by the U.S. government's repeated and dizzying changes of position. I also get the impression that she was particularly annoyed when the U.S. government, on the virtual eve of the hearing, presented to the court and the defence its second superseding indictment, which in effect made a nonsense of the first.
58min documentary on ARD1 (might be by NRD?)
Absolute And ArbitrAry power 'How the media is helping to kill Extinction Rebellion and Julian Assange
The US and British establishments do not care where Assange is imprisoned – be it Sweden, the UK or the US. What has been most important to them is that he continues to be locked out of sight in a cell somewhere, where his physical and mental fortitude can be destroyed and where he is effectively silenced, encouraging others to draw the lesson that there is too high a price to pay for dissent. The personal battle for Assange will not be over till he is properly free. And even then he will be lucky if the last decade of various forms of incarceration and torture he has been subjected to do not leave him permanently traumatised, emotionally and mentally damaged, a pale shadow of the unapologetic, vigorous transparency champion he was before his ordeal began.
The arrest eviscerates all pretense of the rule of law and the rights of a free press. The illegalities, embraced by the Ecuadorian, British and US governments, in the seizure of Assange were ominous. They presaged a world where the internal workings, abuses, corruption, lies and crimes — especially war crimes — carried out by corporate states and the global ruling elite will be masked from the public. They presaged a world where those with the courage and integrity to expose the misuse of power will be hunted down, tortured, subjected to sham trials and given lifetime prison terms in solitary confinement. They presaged an Orwellian dystopia where news is replaced with propaganda, trivia and entertainment.
We held what was called the Belmarsh Tribunal, inspired by ? where we gathered for precisely the purpose you are articulating, to turn the tables: instead of constantly defending Julian, to start prosecuting the war criminals that are killing him as we speak. And that is a process that we are continuing. You've given me a great pass for discussing the assassination that precedes the actual murder, that's the character assassination - what you mentioned regarding Jeremy is precisely what I experienced in 2015 - I was actually warned ... - precisely 10 days later every major newspaper, FT, WSJ, Times of London (sic) El País, all of them, unleashed a torrent of abuse against me, just complete fake news about me ... I experienced that, why? Because that was a moment when the will of the Greek people had to be bent ... so they created essentially a narrative that made it impossible for any of my arguments or facts to emerge, because suddenly it became something about me. This is exactly what they did with Jeremy [Corbyn] and this is exactly what they did with Julian - and you know, the Deep State, call it whatever you want, they've become much, much better at it than they used to be ... but now what they do is something that is far worse, they accuse you of something that really hurts you, calling somebody like us a racist, a bigot, an anti-Semite, you know, a rapist, this is what really hurts, because if anybody calls me a rapist, today, right, even if it's complete baloney, right, I feel as a feminist I have the need to give the woman implied the opportunity to speak against me, because this is what we left-wingers do, so this is what they do, the character assassination is what, that he elected Trump single-handedly, right, and that he was a rapist ... Allow me to do some reporting, right? ... I'm going to finish off with an account of a discussion I had with Julian in the Ecuadorian embassy in November 2017. It's no secret to the US authorities, because - as I found out recently, I actually watched the video that they taped of me, ... as part of the court case the Spanish judge started against the company employed to videotape me and Julian having this conversation, so I'm only telling you that which the NSA already knows ... so he had actually sent me a message, I was in Athens, and he said, I need to speak with you, can you get on a plane and come to London, which I did a number of times, but this is of interest to all of us especially in the context of the character assassination, of calling him a Trumpist, ... he said to me, one of the Republcan senators came to visit me recently - I thought OMG, a senator, that's big news, a senator going into the Ecuadorian embassy, along with sombody else, and they offered me a pardon, a presidential pardon from Trump. I said, OK on condition of? - that I reveal that the Hillary Clinton emails ... did not come from the Russians, and I said, Julian, from what you've told me in the past, you don't know where your information comes from, Wikileaks is structured in such a way that it's double-blind, nobody knows anything, even Julian does not know who is sending the stuff, this is the whole point of the design of the software. He said, yes that's true, but this person actually made himself known to me - himself or herself, I'm not sure, and I said, so what, can you confirm it was not the Russians? He said, absolutely, I said well, why don't you then? Because that goes against the whole principle of Wikileaks, non-disclosure of sources. I said well, what if your source says that he/she is OK with the idea of it being disclosed? He said, well, look, firstly, it's very dangerous, because if I get in touch with this person, ... he may be found out, ... so I don't want to jeopardise the person, but even if they gave me the OK to disclose the that I got the emails from them, it would be against the principles of Wikileaks to do this, so I said, what did you do, what did you say to the Trump representatives? He said, I told them to fuck off. Now this is the man we're talking about - I find Julian infuriating many times ... but he's a man of principle, he had a chance of being pardoned by telling the truth, but because that would mean disclosing his sources, he didn't do it. ... I said, you may end up in a supermax prison, he said, yeah, I know, ... because I turned the Trump people down, thay may be even more determined to bring me down. That was in November 2017, I have the video.
No 'flight risk" – There were reasons, however, to be suspicious of what Baraitser was really up to even as she made her ruling in Assange's favour.... During the hearings back in September, Baraitser had endlessly indulged lawyers representing the US while showing absolute disdain for Assange's legal team, obstructing them at every turn. Her contempt for Assange and his political and moral worldview was on show throughout the proceedings. She often arrived in court with a prepared script she read from, barely feigning a pretence that she had listened to the legal arguments presented in court. She ignored the facts, the expert testimony presented in court and the legal arguments – all of which favoured Assange – and backed instead what amounted to a purely political [emphasis in original] case made by the US."No flight risk" In fact, the judge was up to something else entirely in delaying the bail hearing till Wednesday, two days later. She wanted – as presumably did those who have been supervising her behind the scenes – to refashion the image of her court, which for months has given every appearance of being entirely beholden to the US administration.As the corporate media briefly raised its head from its slumber to meaningfully acknowledge for the first time the Assange hearings, she wanted to ensure those reports noted how independent her court was. For two days, commentators could crow about British legal sovereignty and humanitarian values, even as most tacitly accepted her dangerous premise that the US has a justified claim to extradite Assange. When Baraitser slammed the cell door shut once again on Assange, leaving him exactly where he was before she discharged him, her decision was presented as little more than a technical ruling based on a reasonable assessment of Assange's "flight risk". In fact, Assange is no flight risk, and never was. He didn't "jump bail" in 2012 by heading into the Ecuadorean embassy. He sought political asylum there to escape the very real threat of being extradited to the US for his journalism. He was accepted by the Ecuadorean authorities because they believed his fears were genuine. Back then, a Swedish prosecutor had revived demands Assange return to Sweden for questioning over flimsy sexual assault allegations – allegations that had been dismissed by a previous prosecutor. That investigation, we now know, was kept alive at British insistence. Nonetheless, Sweden refused to give assurances that they would not extradite Assange on to the US, where a grand jury was drawing up charges against him.
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help)Julian is a wonderful and complex person, but like all of us, he is also a flawed and fallible man. He has a brilliant mind, a generosity of spirit, intense focus, a strong sense of justice, and a passion and drive to improve the world for his fellow human beings. Likewise, Julian is beautifully flawed: he can be aloof, stubborn, and, at times, impetuous; he can be socially awkward, is a terrible dancer, always late, and very messy. Julian also has his quirks. His favourite film is the Dr Strangelove, he can go days without sleep, he can drink more milk in a day than most people I know, and, above all, he thinks outside the box in ways I haven't seen before. At the same time, he's surprisingly ordinary: he loves Pink Floyd, board games, and Japanese food; he's an avid reader, and he isn't above a bit of harmless gossip about people in our social circle.
If I had written an article in a major publication claiming there was "no real reason" to believe Assange would face extradition proceedings if he left the Ecuadorian embassy, and then that claim had proved horrifyingly wrong, I personally would have done what any normal person would do and shut the entire fuck up about Julian Assange for the rest of my life. Not James Ball though. There's a certain type of personality that guarantees it will always fail upward because it possesses a remarkable combination of power-worshipping obsequiousness, a total lack of shame, and a complete lack of scruples. It's the same type of personality that still gets lucrative punditry work after pushing for the Iraq invasion. ... I'm pretty good with words, but I've never succeeded in finding any which adequately articulate the absolute depravity of the mass media smearmeisters who've spent years getting paid to churn out deceitful hit pieces about Assange while he's silenced and unable to defend himself. There's simply no one lower. There's shit, there's the shit that would come out of shit if shit could shit, and then there's people like James Ball. ... People like James Ball are directly responsible for the empire's ability to make an example of what happens to a journalist who exposes US war crimes, and they must never be forgiven for it.
A disclosure at the end of Ball's latest WikiLeaks smear reads: "James Ball, one of the authors of this article, worked for WikiLeaks for a short period between late 2010 and early 2011." (The disclosure does not appear on earlier articles on the same topic. Such as this one.) What the disclosure fails to mention is that James Ball was in fact fired from WikiLeaks in early 2011.
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Half a year after Assange was placed in pre-extradition detention in Britain, Sweden quietly abandoned the case against him in November 2019, after nine long years. Why then? The Swedish state spent almost a decade intentionally presenting Julian Assange to the public as a sex offender. Then, they suddenly abandoned the case against him on the strength of the same argument that the first Stockholm prosecutor used in 2010, when she initially suspended the investigation after just five days: While the woman's statement was credible, there was no proof that a crime had been committed. It is an unbelievable scandal. But the timing was no accident. On Nov. 11, an official document that I had sent to the Swedish government two months before was made public. In the document, I made a request to the Swedish government to provide explanations for around 50 points pertaining to the human rights implications of the way they were handling the case. How is it possible that the press was immediately informed despite the prohibition against doing so? How is it possible that a suspicion was made public even though the questioning hadn't yet taken place? How is it possible for you to say that a rape occurred even though the woman involved contests that version of events? On the day the document was made public, I received a paltry response from Sweden: The government has no further comment on this case. What does that answer mean? It is an admission of guilt.
The conditions [in Belmarsh Prison] are oppressive and dire.[Recorded before the verdict was given.]
The Guardian has profited a lot from Julian Assange's work, but over the years has become increasingly hostile towards him.
The list above can be daunting; there is far too much to read in one session. I recommend starting with Melzer 2020 – well written, by an expert who knows what he's talking about, and who covers all the main points. Still quite substantial, but possible to read in one sitting. A top-quality, impeccable source.
The next on the list should be Caitlin Johnstone's superb compilation at Johnstone 2019. I've put it at the top of my list because it is so good. Probably too long for most people to read in one go; I recommend reading the introduction, then skimming through the rest, but do come back to it from time to time until you've read it all.
Finally, it is not possible to understand the attacks against Assange (both the physical (especially the torture), and the verbal attacks (the propaganda)) without understanding how propaganda operates in nominally democratic countries:
I suggest writers call the growing number of Western democracies who are going back to the third world model 'hamburger republics'. 'Ham' as in ham actor,etc. Best wishes for the new, even if probably more digusting, year. Nishidani ( talk) 13:18, 31 December 2019 (UTC)
Well, it looks like this country (England at any rate, but possibly not Scotland) is doomed (Friday 13 Dec 2019).
In the 1930s in Germany it was anti-Jewish racism (=antisemitism); today in England it's anti-immigrant racism.
Given the extraordinary vicious, unprincipled campaign of lying, smears, deceit and deception against Corbyn and the Labour Party, it would not be surprising to find these liars using every dirty trick in the book. Hard to imagine that they would have any scruples about rigging the vote-counting process, probably focussing on the postal votes in about 50 to 100 marginal constituencies. Unfortunately it takes time and effort to dig up the evidence to prove it, but some people are working on it. Watch this space.
Quite a good analysis from The New York Review of Books [b] [c] [d] by David Graeber.
In summary, the evidence suggests that the current regulatory framework for political advertising and campaigning during elections is not fit for purpose and wholly inadequate for the digital terrain on which elections are increasingly fought. There is no greater threat to democracy than disinformation, especially when it is produced and disseminated by an incumbent government and reinforced by the bulk of the mainstream press. As well as fact checking claims in real-time, broadcasters should provide viewers with regular updates and data on the scale of falsehoods put out by rival parties. As for online advertising, it seems clear that the current policies and enforcement operated by the platforms is nothing more than minimal and feeble given the scale of the problem. Unless and until the major platforms are able to implement a robust fact checking approval system before publication, there is an unanswerable case to ban all political advertising online during election periods ( Schlosberg 2021).
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it is also undeniable that the election was affected by a political smear campaign that was entirely unprecedented in scale and vitriol in the history of western democracy. This smear campaign was driven by billionaire-controlled media outlets, along with intelligence and military agencies, as well as state media like the BBC.
I have voted Tory all my life. But I have become so repelled by Johnson's endless lying that I will be voting for Jeremy Corbyn when I enter the polling booth this morning.
What was particularly striking about the Conservatives' false or misleading ad campaigns was the degree to which they were concentrated on the last week before polling day. On Google, the party ran nearly 50% of all their false advertising during this single crucial week. Given that the average time lag for Google to remove ads deemed in breach of its policies was 7 days, this strategy ensured that any such removals would have a negligible impact on the campaign. Indeed, five of the ads that were banned by Google were only removed on polling day itself.
I strongly recommend this book:
This book is the definitive work on the bogus-antisemitism smear campaign that destroyed Corbyn. Winstanley has had the help of dozens of people, and they have gone to great lengths to ensure that everything has been accurately sourced and verified. I used to think that I knew everything about the smear campaign, having watched, with horror, its progress, but this book is an eye-opener. Everything about the smears has been based on lies, from top to bottom and beginning to end. To a much greater extent than I had imagined. One point surprised me, and that was the extent of Corbyn's capitulation, towards the end of the campaign, under the intense military-Zionist pressure. At first sight I had thought this was a good thing (it's always good, in peace-making, to look for compromise), but he started apologising for telling the truth. It's fine to apologise for making a mistake, but never, ever apologise for telling the truth. Once you start on that path, the military-Zionists will never stop. Just like blackmailers, they will come back again and again, asking for more and more. You absolutely cannot, and should not, appease them. An important lesson for the future. -- 11:06 (UTC), Friday 13 October 2023.
Hello :) I am writing my MA dissertation on Wikipedia Wars and the Israel-Palestine conflict, and I noticed that you have contributed to those pages. My dissertation will look at the process of collaborative knowledge production on the Israel-Palestine conflict, and the effect it has on bias in the articles. This will involve understanding the profiles and motivations of editors, contention/controversy and dispute resolution in the talk pages, and bias in the final article.
For more information, you can check out my meta-wiki research page or my user page, where I will be posting my findings when I am done.
I would greatly appreciate if you could take 5 minutes to fill out this quick survey before 8 August 2021.
Participation in this survey is entirely voluntary and anonymous. There are no foreseeable risks nor benefits to you associated with this project.
Thanks so much,
Sarah Sanbar
Sarabnas I'm researching Wikipedia Questions? 20:51, 20 July 2021 (UTC)
Can you work it on Israeli occupation of the West Bank? Copied some refs from another article and made a mess I think. nableezy - 14:59, 6 September 2023 (UTC)
Ten years ago, you were found precious. That's what you are, always. -- Gerda Arendt ( talk) 08:10, 29 September 2023 (UTC)
A category or categories you have created have been nominated for possible deletion, merging, or renaming. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2023 October 1 § Category:WikiProject X members on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. Qwerfjkl talk 09:34, 2 October 2023 (UTC)
“ | Defenders of Israel’s bombing and invasion of Gaza have challenged me to offer a ‘chapter-and-verse’ list of war crimes that Israel has committed since the Hamas Offensive of 7th October. Here is an indicative, but not exhaustive, list. There is no doubt: Israel is investing in war crimes to effect its recapture and ethnic cleansing of Gaza while, at the same time, practising similar tactics in the West Bank and East Jerusalem | ” |
Those html comments will stop CB from editing those parameters? Or are you expecting humans who run the bot to read them? If the former, cool! I didn't know that. If the latter, I don't think it'll work because the whole problem (in my view) is editors run the bot on articles without ever checking to see if the bot made any mistakes afterwards. Either way, I hope your solution works -- if it does, I'll probably adopt it in the future, so thanks either way. Levivich ( talk) 16:55, 2 November 2023 (UTC)
The Wikipedia Library: Books & Bytes
Issue 61, January – February 2024
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --16:32, 5 March 2024 (UTC)
I consider WP:REFVAR to include the headings and organization of the references. I have put them back to the way they were before you started editing the article Tell (archaeology). If you want to change them, get consensus on the talk page, do not continue to edit war over it. Skyerise ( talk) 21:54, 22 April 2024 (UTC)
The Wikipedia Library: Books & Bytes
Issue 62, March – April 2024
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --11:02, 23 April 2024 (UTC)