Engrossing discussion of the arcane and unfair legal and political web entrapping Julian Assange: Lee Camp's excellent questions allow Stella Assange to use her legal and personal experience to comment in depth on the political relationships and laws and legal systems involved, such as the post 9-11 terrorism extradition laws; Britain's unequal status in US-British extradition laws; the incompatibility of how freedom of the press as conceived in the US is not possible in Britain
The original investigative report by Michael Issakov, on Yahoo!news: https://news.yahoo.com/kidnapping-assassination-and-a-london-shoot-out-inside-the-ci-as-secret-war-plans-against-wiki-leaks-090057786.html?fr=sycsrp_catchall. It has been republished worldwide in articles in all the mainstream press: Murdoch, Fairfax, Guardian, ABC Australia. (See links below). We also provide an interview with Michael Issakov on YouTube and an interview with WikiLeaks Editor-in-Chief, Kristinn Hrafnsson. These revelations should provoke huge questions in Australian parliament, which has abused procedure to avoid all debate of Assange's fate for more than a decade, limiting any discussion to solitary questions and short monologues by outlier members of parliament, despite an ostensible group of parliamentary supporters, one of whom - Barnaby Joyce - has twice been acting prime minister. How much longer can this callous and cowardly conspiracy of contempt for Assange's human rights persist, especially in the face of Prime Minister Scott Morrison's arcane new submarine association with US President Joe Biden?
Below is an interview by Afshin Rattansi of WikiLeaks Editor-in Chief, Kristinn Hrafnsson, on these revelations.
Afshin Rattansi, RT: The US govt contemplated assassinating Julian Assange with complicity from Britain (WikiLeaks’ Kristinn Hrafnsson) E1055
29 Sep, 2021 08:11 : On this episode of Going Underground, Afshin Rattansi speaks to WikiLeaks Editor-in-Chief Kristinn Hrafnsson about the shocking revelations that the Trump administration and CIA considered assassinating or kidnapping Julian Assange, with planned shootouts with Russian agents on Britain’s streets, a car crash kidnapping, and an assault on a passenger jet should Julian Assange decide to leave for Russia. Hrafnsson discusses the previous surveillance on Assange, the implications of these revelations on the US extradition case, the complicity of British authorities with the United States, the arguable slow death of Assange at the hands of British authorities happening now, and much more. Michael Issakof
CIA-Assange assassination plans also reported by The Guardian, The Murdoch Press, Australian ABC and other mainstream
ABC Podcast with Fran Kelly and reporter Matt Bevan, 28 September 2021:https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/breakfast/the-backstory-with-matt-bevan/13542832. This report, whilst giving good credence to the sources - interviews with 30 CIA agents by investigative journalist, Michael Issakov - still tries to muddy the waters and confuse the listener by referring to multiple contemporary CIA scandals and beat-ups in the Trump era. "A new Yahoo News report claims the CIA plotted to kidnap WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, with some in the Trump administration allegedly considering options for how to assassinate him in 2017. According to the report, then-CIA director Mike Pompeo was motivated to get even with the group following its publication of sensitive agency hacking tools."
The Guardian: (https://www.theguardian.com/media/2021/sep/27/senior-cia-officials-trump-discussed-assassinating-julian-assange).
The following article by Paul Craig Roberts, reprinted with the author's kind permission, has been previously published (23/7/18) on Russia Insider with the same title and on both The Unz Review (4/7/18) and the author's own web-site PaulCraigRoberts.org (4/7/18) as "Washington Moves Against Rafael Correa".
As President of Ecuador, Rafael Correa (pictured above) was a Godsend for the Ecuadorian people, for Latin American independence and for WikiLeaks' Julian Assange. By serving justice and truth instead of Washington, Correa earned Washington's hatred and determination to destroy him.
Correa was succeeded as president by Lenin Moreno, who Correa mistakenly believed to be an ally, but who has every appearance of being a Washington asset. The first thing that Moreno did was to make a deal with Washington, block Correa from being able to again stand for the presidency and turn on Julian Assange. Moreno wants to revoke the asylum granted to Assange and has prevented Assange from continuing his journalistic activity from the Ecuadorian embassy in London. In other words, Moreno has conspired with Washington and the UK to effectively imprison Assange in the embassy.
Now Moreno has taken another step that highlights his character as a blackguard. Correa, realizing that he and his family were in danger, moved to Belgium. An Ecuadorian court has now ordered the Belgians to detain Correa and extradite him to Ecuador on a fabricated kidnapping charge.
Correa thinks that Belgium will not comply with an absurd charge for which no evidence is presented and that the charge is intended to smear his name. If I were Correa, I would not be so sure. Look at the ease with which Washington was able to use its vassals—Sweden and the UK—to effectively nullify the political asylum that Ecuador gave Assange. Belgium is also Washington's vassal and will experience threats and bribes—whatever it takes—to deliver Correa into Moreno's hands, which is to say into Washington's hands. If I were Correa, I would get myself over to the Russian embassy and request asylum from Putin.
Don't mention the role of war in climate change and economic devastation. Why we shouldn't believe that the US military establishment is sincere on its warning to Trump (and the rest of us) on climate change. I would once have swallowed this whole. A bunch of military men from prior US administration proselytise about climate change on this 4Corners program. Of course they totally ignore the role of war in carbon emissions which is probably the greatest contributor to carbon emissions. This is my reaction to the Australian 4Corners program of 20 March 2017.
They talk about a three year drought in Syria as a major cause of the 'unrest', population movement and the 'civil war' in Syria. They don't mention how Israel and Turkey annexed parts of a major river from Syria. They talk about how the consequent 'unravelling of Syrian society' opened up an opportunity for ISIS which. they say, had been born itself from the 'civil war' in Iraq.
They don't mention the US/NATO funding of the so-called rebellion/rebels in Syria, in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Libya. They don't mention their role in war and climate change.
This story serves as a cover for current and future wars in the Middle East, for the destruction of the Middle East. It also serves as an excuse for mass immigration and creates a perceived need for more military defense.
By occasionally mentioning war as having other causes alongside climate change the film attempt to sound even-handed. But the whole thing comes from the CIA, is politically biased against the current US administration, is politically rather than scientifically founded. With regard to the science of climate change, it is just used here as a cover for war-propaganda.
The major message of this 'documentary' is that 'you need the US military to protect you from mass immigration and terrorism due to climate change provoking civil wars in the Middle East.
The film also gets in some anti-Russian propaganda, blaming Russia for blocking wheat to Egypt on one occasion, presumably to designate the Enemy for future wars.
The film tells us how Africans need more land but points out that Africa has lots of potential agricultural land, but China is grabbing that land. Doesn't mention that there is global investment in those Chinese agribusinesses nor that US and European investors are in competition for that land. Africans themselves continue to be turfed off their traditional land and disorganised, driven to seek their fortunes in megacities where child labor laws are either non-existent or not enforced, making children a source of income for families which have lost their traditional land and incomes.
Overpopulation accompanies urbanisation and 'development'. In third world countries it is not a consequence of better medical care lowering the death rate, since, by definition, these 'improvements' are lacking in such countries, which suffer from untreated Acquired Immunity Deficiency, associated turberculosis, and various delocalised viruses like ebola and parasitic infestations, such as schistosomiasis.
The film calls for greater international cooperation on climate change, but gives little power to people over their local situations, which is the first base to fight climate change or any other environmental ill. It is probably the only base, since the power-elite base that controls armies has no intention of resiling from weapons and war industry and has forced exception from climate change protocol for the military.
So, it's all rhetoric and propaganda: PR for the industrial-military-media machine. Repackaged for Australians in their most trusted investigative program.
The publication of this film by 4Corners shows how the people who select for this show are either incapable of analysing pure propaganda or unable to avoid showing it.
Who is choosing these propaganda programs for the ABC?
Western media are reporting headline claims that “new evidence supports claims about Syrian state detention deaths”, saying that “a leading rights group has released new evidence that up to 7,000 Syrians who died in state detention centres were tortured, mistreated, or executed”, noting that this information is a moral wakeup call and demanding that officials being held to account should be “central to peace efforts.”
The Caesar Photos and Impunity in Syria
[Editor's comment: 'Caesar' is allegedly the code name of a forensic photographer who smuggled the pictures out.]
However, as is usually so, not everything is quite as it seems.So let’s take a look at the
facts.
First the timing.
As has been commonplace the timing of the reports like these have almost always coincided with important diplomatic meetings or just after important UN resolutions are passed.
For example, beginning in mid-March claims began to pour in that Assad had been using chlorine bombs against his opponents.Media reports would cite the fact that only 2 months later the government had already been accused of using chlorine 35 times.What they failed to mention however was that no claims were made for an
entire 7 months before this.So what changed after these 7 months?
Well, a UN resolution was passed condemning the use of chlorine, that’s what.
The governments alleged chlorine campaign “began just over a week after the UN security council passed a resolution under chapter 7 of the UN charter condemning its use,” the Guardian would report. For more than half of a year no claims are made and then a week after a UN resolution is passed, all of a sudden a total of 35 are made in just under 2 months.
If Assad was really using chlorine, why would he wait a full 7 months only to use it at the exact time that it would prove to be the most disastrous for him?
This, coupled with the fact that former OPCW (Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons) inspectors admit that there was insufficient
evidence to prove the use of chlorine, let alone assign blame for who did it.
Notorious White Helmets civil defense group
And further troubling still is that the claims came from the “White Helmets” “civil defense group”, who have been notorious for producing false claims against the Syrian government.In actuality the White Helmets are part of a slick propaganda campaign aimed at mobilizing
support for foreign intervention and calling for a “no-fly zone” to oust the president. They have financial links to Western-backed NGOs who relentlessly work towards furthering the US agenda in the region, and are themselves embedded with al-Qaeda and ISIS.Their primary function is to demonize the
Syrian government while acting as al-Qaeda’s clean-up crew, both literally and in terms of propaganda, as one video shows them waiting to clean up dead bodies moments after al-Qaeda commits summary executions against unarmed civilians.They have produced numerous fake videos, fake photos, and fake narratives in order to manipulate public opinion towards their bias.[1]
Needless to say, their words aren’t credible.
Human Rights Watch admits only 27 of Caesar photos significantly documented; not 7000
In terms of the the Caesar photos, they too are published days before an important Syrian peace conference between the US and Russia, further raising questions as to whether the timing has anything to do with helping Syrian detainees or everything to do with political impact.
As noted by Human Rights Investigations, a previous report of the photos was done by
Carter-Ruck and Co. Solicitors of London and published through CNN and the Guardian in January of 2014.The Carter-Ruck report claims that the 55,000 images available show 11,000 dead detainees.However, according to the recent HRW report only 28,707 of the photos are ones that they have “understood to have died in government custody” while the remaining 24,568 are of dead soldiers killed in battle.That is, half of the alleged “torture victims” are actually dead soldiers.
Of the remaining half (6,786), HRW maintains that they “understand” the photos are of dead detainees, this is where the media is getting the “7,000” figure from, yet they themselves admit later on that they were only “able to verify 27 cases of detainees whose family members’ statements regarding their arrest and physical characteristics matched the
photographic evidence.”
So, in other words, half of the original batch of photos aren’t torture victims, while of the other half only 27 can be verified by HRW.
Doubts about the 27 'documented' photos
There is also reason to doubt the reliability of these 27 cases.
Previous reports of the photos also coincided with important diplomatic events like the 2014 Geneva II conferences.However, at that time, UN Human Rights Chief Navi Pillay admitted that the reports were unverified: “the report… if verified, is truly horrifying.”While it was admitted by outlets like Reuters that they were unable “to determine the authenticity of Caesar’s photographs or to contact Caesar”
while Amnesty International notes that they too “cannot authenticate the images.”
One wonders what happened during this time that allowed HRW to do what these others could not just a year prior.
Leaving that aside however, let’s say that they are true, that they do prove that the Syrian government tortured 27
individuals, and that holding the officials “to account should be central to any peace efforts.”
It follows then that the major offenders should be held to account.Namely the United
States.
United States contracts out torture program to foreign aid recipients
Of the top 10 recipients of US foreign aid programs in 2014, all of them practice torture while at least half of them are reportedly doing so on a massive scale, according to leading human rights organizations.
In terms of Israel, by far the leading recipient with $3.1 billion, the Public Committee against Torture in Israel accused the government of torturing and sexually assaulting Palestinian children suspected of minor crimes, while also keeping detainees in cages outside during winter.“The majority of Palestinian child detainees are charged with throwing stones, and 74 per cent experience physical violence during arrest, transfer or interrogation.”
United States
Not to mention our own [meaning the US; The writer lives in the United States - Candobetter.net] widely publicized torture program.
Yet as leading international security scholar Dr. Nafeez Ahmed found in a recent and thorough investigation “Obama did not ban torture in 2009, and has not rescinded it now. He instead rehabilitated torture with a carefully crafted Executive Order that has received little scrutiny.”
It demanded interrogation techniques be brought in line with the US Army Field Manual, which is in compliance with the Geneva Convention.However, the manual was revised in 2006 to include 19 forms of interrogation and the practice of extraordinary rendition.“A new UN Committee Against Torture (UNCAT) review of the manual shows that a wide-range of torture techniques continue to be deployed by the US government,” Ahmed notes, “including isolation, sensory deprivation, stress positions, chemically-induced psychosis, adjustments of environmental and dietary rules, among others.”
In his book “Torture and Impunity: The U.S. Doctrine of Coercive Interrogation” the highly renowned Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Alfred McCoy shows that from the 1950s onward the CIA spent billions “improving” interrogation techniques.
At the start, the emphasis was on electroshock, hypnosis, psychosurgery, and drugs, including the infamous use of LSD on unsuspecting soldiers, yet they proved ineffective.It was later found that sensory disorientation and "self-inflicted pain", such as forcing a subject to stand for many hours with arms outstretched, were far more effective means of breaking individuals; the exact torture techniques it has been shown the US still
employs to this day.[3]
The CIA found that by using only the deprivation of the senses, a state akin to psychosis can be induced in just 48 hours.
They found that the KGB’s most devastating torture technique of all was not crude physical beatings, but simply forcing victims to stand for days on end.“The legs swelled, the skin erupted spreading lesions, the kidneys shut down, and hallucinations began” explains McCoy, “all incredibly painful.”
Refined through decades of practice, “the CIA’s use of sensory deprivation relies on seemingly banal procedures: heat and cold, light and dark, noise and silence, feast and famine,” yet this combines to form “a systematic attack on the sensory pathways of the human mind” for devastating effect.
These are not “aberrations”, but instead the fruition of over half a century’s work in the experimentation of the science of cracking the code of the human mind, of the perfection of psychological torture into its most sophisticated forms.
“With the election and re-election of President Barak Obama, the problem of torture has not, as many of us have once hoped, simply disappeared, wiped away by sweeping executive orders,” McCoy explains, “Instead it is now well into a particularly sordid second phase, called impunity.”
Legalising torture
Simply put, impunity is the political process of legalizing illegal acts.
“In this case, torture.”[4])
Instead of ending, US torture “continues to be deployed by the US government” in its most destructive forms.
It has been re-packaged and rehabilitated, codifying into law, and vanished from the general public consciousness.
Furthermore, not only does the US engage in torture on a mass scale, it and its allies as well “outsource” their torture to various regimes, utilizing their intelligence and security services to do their dirty work for them.
UK and Libya
It was recently reported by numerous Libyan dissidents that the UK government had entangled itself in a deep and sordid relationship with Muammar Gaddafi that amounted to “a
criminal conspiracy”, as heard before the UK high court.
A conspiracy where the UK had become “enmeshed in illegality” and involved in “rendition, unlawful detention and torture.”
The victims claim that British intelligence routinely blackmailed them, threatened their families with unlawful
imprisonment and abuse if they did not cooperate.Information was extracted through torture in
prisons in Tripoli and fed into the British court systems as secret evidence that could not be challenged.
Yet this merely represents a wider trend whereby Western governments commit horrendous crimes in collusion with foreign states, and then use those same acts as justification for aggression against them.
Iraq
The United States attempted to justify the invasion of Iraq on non-existent WMD’s after it had supplied the same weapons to the country decades prior to wage war on Iran.
As well it was Gaddafi's alleged brutality and use of torture that was invoked to justify the devastating attack on Libya that has left the country in shambles and overrun with suffering and terrorism.
And so too with Syria.
Not only is the United States by degrees of magnitude more culpable for the crime of torture, it also was intimately involved in offshoring its crimes to Syrian jails.
So while torture in Syria was all too real, what is commonly left out is 3 little words: “with our support.”
First we utilize, exploit, and propagate the atrocities, and then proceed to bask in our own moral righteousness as we
denounce others for the crimes that we helped commit, utilizing them to justify further atrocities and aggressions for shortsighted geopolitical aims.
If “officials being held to account” are really “central to any peace effort” in regards to torture, we know exactly where to find them: right here at home in Washington and London.
This article was originally entitled, "The Caesar Photos and Impunity in Syria". Author Steven Chovanec is an independent geopolitical analyst and writer based in Chicago, Illinois. He is a student of International Studies and Sociology at Roosevelt University and conducts independent, open-source research into geopolitics and social issues. His writings can be found at undergroundreports.blogspot.com. You may find him on Twitter @stevechovanec.
EDITOR'S NOTES
[2] What is 'extraordinary rendition'? From Wikipedia: Extraordinary rendition, also called irregular rendition, is the government-sponsored abduction and extrajudicial transfer of a person from one country to another.#cite_note-54_countries-1">[1]
In the United States, the first well-known rendition case was that of an airline hijacker abducted in Italy and brought to the U.S. for trial, authorized by PresidentRonald Reagan.#cite_note-Naftali-2">[2] President Bill Clinton authorized extraordinary rendition to nations known to practice torture, called torture by proxy.#cite_note-3">[3] The administration of President George W. Bush "renditioned" hundreds of so-called "illegal combatants" (often never charged with any crime) for torture by proxy, and to US controlled sites for an extensive, advanced interrogation operation program under the euphemism enhanced interrogation.#cite_note-4">[4] Extraordinary rendition continued with reduced frequency in the Obama administration: instead of subjecting them to advanced interrogation methods, most of those abducted have been conventionally interrogated and subsequently taken to the US for trial.#cite_note-5">[5]
Extraordinary rendition remains a clear violation of international law.#cite_note-MyUser_The_Economist_February_24_2015c-6">[6] The United Nations considers one nation abducting the citizens of another a crime against humanity.#cite_note-MyUser_The_Washington_Post_July_26_2015c-7">[7] Abduction has also been a recognized casus belli (justification for war) in the Western tradition since Helen of Troy. In July 2014 the European Court of Human Rights condemned the government of Poland for participating in CIA extraordinary rendition, ordering Poland to pay restitution to men who had been abducted, taken to a CIA black site in Poland, and tortured.#cite_note-European_Court_of_Human_Rights-8">[8]#cite_note-9">[9]#cite_note-MyUser_Reuters.com_February_24_2015c-10">[10] Overall, 54 countries are known to have been involved with US extraordinary renditions.#cite_note-54_countries-1">[1]
Speaking via videolink at a Paris conference organised by pressure group Amnesty International, Edward Snowden, who famously exposed the United States' National Security Agency's (NSA) dragnet PRISM surveillance program in June 2013, said he was "deeply saddened and to a great extent angered' by what he read.
The shocking revelations of CIA torture techniques give France a reason to exit NATO, French National Front party leader Marine Le Pen said on Saturday. Le Pen's plain policy advice here exposes the ever-less defensible position of nations that continue to dance to NATO policy. Australia should also distance itself from NATO and the US. At the moment Australia is supporting all manner of war-crimes internationally by maintaining close association with the United States and NATO. The recent revelations about the United States's secret program of torture and maltreatment of prisoners, and failure to observe Geneva conventions on torture add to a chilling picture of a rogue United States similar to Nazi Germany on the brink of WW2 - but much bigger. The following article is adapted from CIA torture is reason for France to exit NATO – Le Pen (13/12/14) from RT.
“If indeed everyone is outraged by the tortures used by the US then, let’s leave NATO,” Le Pen said during an interview with Europe 1 radio channel. She wrote the same statement on her Twitter account: Marine Le Pen@MLP_officiel
"Si vraiment il y a une indignation générale sur la torture utilisée par les Etats-Unis, sortons de l'#OTAN !" #Mediapolis
The US Senate Intelligence Committee's CIA “torture report,” which details the CIA’s use of torture on prisoners in the wake of 9/11, was released by the Senate on Tuesday.
After four years of research at a cost of over $40 million, the findings unveiled the “enhanced interrogation techniques,” or EITs, used within the walls of covert, overseas prisons by the CIA.
The report raised serious questions over controversial tactics which included sleep deprivation, waterboarding, rectal feeding, and others. Dianne Feinstein, the committee chair, admitted that the techniques were “torture,” though the word was never used in the report.
The findings also revealed that the CIA’s treatment breached the body's legal mandate, as investigators said they found evidence of the intelligence agency’s systematic deception of Congress. Despite the methods used, the agency failed to gather information that foiled subsequent threats to US national security, the report found.
Since the report's release, prominent human rights groups have demanded to prosecute the responsible US officials listed in the document.
Despite widespread criticism and a wave of outrage sparked by the results of the Senate investigation, the Department of Justice (DOJ) said on Wednesday that it will not be pursuing charges against those involved in the interrogations.
UN special rapporteur for torture Juan Mendez told RT that the report will likely create momentum that will lead to justice. He insisted that countries complicit in the CIA torture need to carry out their own investigations.
“We have lived without prosecutions now for several years, but the experience shows that when truth telling is done honestly and sincerely, it generates a debate and the debate then generates a momentum towards justice,” he said in an interview on Thursday.
Le Pen has previously criticized French President Francois Hollande’s close ties with the US and called on France to leave NATO.
Speaking to RT's Sophie Shevardnadze in June, Le Pen said that NATO is an opportunity for the United States to extend its influence.
In this explosive interview, meet Christopher Boyce, who was jailed in the 1970s for selling classified US information to the KGB in the Soviet Union.
"I just wanted to gouge CIA and do the most damaging thing to them that I could". And Chris Boyce did just that. Boyce recounts his time working for a CIA subsidiary, and makes claims that during the time of Gough Whitlam's troubled government, the CIA was interfering in Australian politics, and its trade unions. Now living in virtual anonymity with this wife, Boyce finds solace in flying his pet falcon, no matter how pessimistic his outlook remains.
The Age article, Murdoch editors told to 'kill Whitlam' in 1975"(27/6/14), excerpts of which appear below, confirms my own recollection of the Whitlam years, as an early teen. Back then, I had naively regarded Rupert Murdoch's Australian newspaper as progressive and on the side of justice and truth. As I recall, the Australian and Bruce Petty, whose cartoons it published at the time, had opposed the Vietnam War and had supported Gough Whitlam and the Labor Party in 1972 and 1974. So I read the Australian almost every day and believed what I read.
Suddenly, some time after the 1974 mid-term election, the Australian's editor 'informed' me and other readers that supporting the Whitlam government had all been a "terrible mistake" on their part. He apologised and promised to rectify the mistake. I was disheartened, but continued to read the Australian and trust its judgement.
Day after day the tone against Whitlam and Labor grew louder, more high pitched and more hysterical.
Little did I realise that this sudden turnaround was a direct result of Rupert Murdoch instructing his editors to "kill Whitlam". The recently released secret US diplomatic document indicating that the then US government was aware of Murdoch's covert instruction to his staff when Australians had no idea of it is shocking (see #app1">Appendix). One cannot help but wonder whether this media subversion of our democracy was a component of the CIA's campaign to overthrow a government of which it disapproved, a campaign to which Christopher Boyce and others have attested.#fnEgw1" id="txtEgw1"> 1#fnEgw2" id="txtEgw2"> 2
However, by the time of the October constitutional crisis with the help of more knowledgeable adults including my father, I had seen through the lies and had stopped reading and buying the Australian.
A feature of the campaign of destabilisation is that it included industrial action, by the ostensibly more left wing components of the Trade Union movement with the support of then ACTU President Bob Hawke. This is strikingly similar to the campaign of destabiliation from 1953 until 1964 against the government of the then British colony of British Guiana led by Dr Cheddi Jagan, which included an 80 day general strike against the government's budget, beginning in April 1963:
"The CIA arranged as it had on many similar occasions, for North American and Latin American labor organisations, with which it had close ties, to support the strikers with messages of solidarity and food, thus enhancing the appearance of a genuine labor struggle."#fnEgw4" id="txtEgw4"> 4
The 'left-wing' ideological cover for this destabilisation of both the Jagan and Whitlam governments is the circular, supposedly Marxist, argument that every worker who works for a capitalist in a capitalist society is exploited because the employer pays the worker less than the full value of his work and keeps the 'surplus value'. As no financially viable business could not be extracting 'surplus value', then, by definition, every worker is exploited. If by ending 'exploitation' businesses can no longer operate, then socialism would surely be the consequence of capitalist economic collapse.
On Sunday 13 December, the day after Whitlam was defeated at the elections, I watched, in bewilderment, on the early evening television news Bob Hawke, then leader of the ACTU meeting talking cordially with Prime-Minister-elect, Malcolm Fraser and promising him the full cooperation of the trade union movement that was never given to Gough Whitlam.#fnEgw5" id="txtEgw5"> 5
This cooperation set the stage for timidity in the trade union movement's opposition to the Fraser government and the emasculation of trade union power in 1980 when Malcolm Fraser amended Sections 45D and 45E of the Trades Practices Act.#fnEgw6" id="txtEgw6"> 6
News Corporation chief Rupert Murdoch directed his editors to "kill Whitlam" some 10 months before the downfall of Gough Whitlam's Labor government, according to a newly released United States diplomatic report.
The US National Archives has just declassified a secret diplomatic telegram dated January 20, 1975 that sheds new light on Murdoch's involvement in the tumultuous events of Australia's 1975 constitutional crisis.
Entitled "Australian publisher privately turns on Prime Minister," the telegram from US Consul-General in Melbourne, Robert Brand, reported to the State Department that "Rupert Murdoch has issued [a] confidential instruction to editors of newspapers he controls to 'Kill Whitlam'".
...
News Limited newspapers savaged Whitlam and strongly backed opposition leader Malcolm Fraser, so much so that journalists at The Australian took industrial action in protest (my emphasis).
The Labor Party was crushed at the polls and did not return to power until 1983.
Mr Fraser#fnEgw3" id="txtEgw3">3 acknowledged Murdoch's support but said the newspaper proprietor's political role is easily overstated given the collapse in public support for the scandal-ridden Whitlam government.
"Rupert had influential newspapers, certainly, but I don't think it affected the election outcome," Mr Fraser said.
...
News Corporation did not respond to questions about Mr Murdoch's role in the political events of 1975. ...
#fnEgw3" id="fnEgw3">3. #txtEgw3"> ↑ With all due respect for former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser, who has courageously spoken up for the people of Syria, East Ukraine and Russia, including Crimea, against the bloody meddling of the United States and its allies, in 1975, Malcolm Fraser participated, perhaps unwittingly, in the CIA coup against Australia in 1975 and continues to defend his role in that episode as shown in the Age article cited #app1">above.
Dr Cheddi Jagan's treatment by the otherwise laudable President John F. Kennedy (JFK), who on 22 November fell to bullets of an assassin hired by the CIA, does not seem to reflect well on JFK:
"[In September 1961], Jagan was received at the White House in Washington. He had come to talk abut assistance for his development programme. President Kennedy and his afvisers, however, were only interested in determining where Jagan stood on the plitical spectrum before granting any aid. oddly, the "interview", as described by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr who was present, seemed to be conducted as if Kennedy was totally unaware of American destabilisation activities in British Guiana.
"To Jagan's expressed esteem for the politics of British Labour leader Aneurin Bevan, those in the room 'all responded agreeably'.
"But, when Jagan, perhaps naively, mentioned his admiration for the scholarly, leftist journal, Monthly Review, he crossed an ideological line which silently and effectively sealed his country's fate.
"No economic aid was given to British Guiana, while Jagan remained in power, and the Kennedy administration pressured the British to delay graning the country independence, which had been scheduled to occur within the next year or two."
#fnEgw5" id="fnEgw5">5.#txtEgw5"> ↑ It was on Sunday 13 December 1975, the day after Gough Whitlam's defeat at the elections. On that day, when I was still a high-school student, I had worked in some of my spare time for my Uncle Arnold Sinnamon's exploratory drilling company Geoprobe. I was with my then foreman, the late Dick Nilon, having dinner at his home before television. Dick expressed his disgust with Bob Hawke for cosying up to Malcolm Fraser#fnEgw3">3 so quickly after the tragedy we had witnessed.
#fnEgw6" id="fnEgw6">6.#txtEgw6"> ↑ The amended Sections 45D and 45E of the Trades Practices Act outlawed industrial action by one group of trade unionists in solidarity with another group. One disatrous consequnce was the defeat of the Australian Meat Industry Employees Union (AMIEU) in the Mudginberri dispute from 1983 until 1985.
In 1998, Prime Minister John Howard almost destroyed the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) when other unionists were legally prevented from taking action in support of employees of Patrick Stevedores who had been sacked and replaced by mercenary strikebreakers. Only a broad community campaign of solidarity and secondary boycotts by the New Zealand Seafarers' Union prevented defeat.
Update, 19 Feb 2014: You can watch the program on-line here. Apologies for this late notice, but after serving his prison sentence of 24 years for spying on the United States Government, Christopher Boyce will reveal all in a program to be broadcast tonight at 9.30 tonight on Dateline on the free-to-air SBS One television station.
In an interview on the 4 Corners program, The Battle For Syria, on 4 October 2012, Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr said to Kerry O'Brien, "... perhaps an assassination ... is what is required ... ."
Carr's support for the assassination of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is consistent with allegations that for 40 years he was an agent of the United States Government within the Australian Labor Party. His relationship with the CIA is the subject of Bob Carr: Washington's man in Australia in the Melbourne Age of 8 April 2013 and the article, by Murray Hunter, Is Bob Carr a spy? of 11 April 2013 in the Independent Australian, which cites evidence from the Age article and which we republish below. The US, which Carr uncritically supports, has used assassins, and worse, against the people of Korea, Vietnam, Chile, Argentina, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and now Syria. A number of its own Presidents including JFK and a number of popular Americanpolitical leaders have also fallen to the bullets of assassins.
How Australian governments helped kill 3.3 million Iraqis
Since 1990, Australia has participated in two illegal wars against Iraq.#fn1">1 The Hawke Labor Government led Australia into the first war of 1991 whilst the Liberal/National Coalition Government of John Howard led Australia into the second war of 2003. In addition, Australia participated in the imposition of sanctions which have prevented vitally needed food and medicine from reaching the people of that devastated country. It is now well known that the pretexts used to launch these wars, including the Kuwaiti Incubator babies story and the claim that Iraq had Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs) were lies.
Accordingto oneestimate, 3.3 million Iraqis, including 750,000 children consequently died. To escape death through war, disease or starvation, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis fled. According to Wikipedia, 1,300,000 fled to Syria.
Syria, which gave refuge to Iraqis fleeing Australian aggression, now bullied by Australia
Prior to that on 4 October 2012, in an interview on the 4 Corners program, The Battle For Syria, Bob Carr said to Kerry O'Brien, "... perhaps an assassination ... is what is required ... ."
Carr's support for the assassination of the Syrian President seems consistent with his alleged 40 year record of being an agent of the United States Government within the Australian Labor Party . The US, which Carr uncritically supports, has used assassins against the people of Korea, Vietnam, Chile, Argentina, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and now Syria. One of its own Presidents and a number of popular Americanpolitical leaders have also fallen to the bullets of assassins.
The Age exposes the Australian foreign minister as an "agent" under US influence; Murray Hunter asks -- is U.S. influence in Australian politics destroying policy objectivity?
Foreign Minister Bob Carr (image courtesy ABC).
JUST AROUND a week ago in Beijing, Australia's Foreign Minister Bob Carr entered the US-Korea conflict by trying to persuade the Chinese State Councilor Yang Jiechi to adopt sanctions against North Korea.
On Monday (8 April), an investigative journalist from The Age, after going through 11,000 cables from the U.S. embassy in Canberra and consulates in Sydney and Melbourne, leaked by US Army Private Bradley Manning and published by WikiLeaks, found that the current Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr had been briefing the US embassy since the 1970s on both the internal decision making of the Australian Government during the Whitlam Labor Government (1972-75) and internal workings of the Australian Labor Party (ALP).
Bob Carr has been Australia's foreign minister for 12 months, replacing Kevin Rudd, who resigned after challenging Julia Gillard for the prime ministership. Carr has been involved in the Australian Labor Party for more than 40 years and was New South Wales premier from 1995-2005.
Carr began his relationship with US embassy officials in the mid 1970s, when he was president of Young Labor and education officer of the NSW Labor Council. According to The Age investigative report Philip Dorling he would regularly brief the US Consul General over labour issues and the prospects of the Labor Government in Canberra. From the information gathered from Carr and also NSW Labor President John Ducker, intelligence reports on Australian politics and labour issues would be sent onto Washington. Leaked US cables to WikiLeaks also indicated that the former Labor Senator Mark Arbib was also a "protected" US embassy source passing on information and commentary on Australian politics.
Bob Carr is very well known for his staunch support for the Australian-US alliance as an non-negotiable pillar of Australian foreign policy and often dismisses critics as being in "emotional silly expression lacking in any substance and characteristic of the silly leftwing fringe of the ALP".
With such rigid advice to the prime minister and cabinet at a time where many academics and commentators like Professor Hugh White of the Australian National University are calling for a re-appraisal of this alliance and much more strategic engagement with China, it is very difficult to see how the Australian Government's pending 2013 Defense White Paper will signal any major shifts in policy on this matter.
At the very least, hanging on to the Australian-US alliance without any objective appraisal and redefinition may not serve the country's strategy interests in the Asia-Pacific Region well if the U.S. continues a competitive stance against China.
These revelations add to past suspicions by many in the labour movement about members of the party and government (when Labor was in power) who have been involved in close relationships with U.S. officials.
Labor suspicion of U.S. intelligence operating in Australia mainly stems from the election of the reformist and nationalistic Whitlam Labor Government in 1972, after 23 years in opposition. Whitlam immediately pulled Australia out of the Vietnam conflict, recognized the Peoples' Republic of China, campaigned for a nuclear free Indian Ocean, spoke up for Palestinian rights in the United Nations, and opposed French nuclear testing in the Pacific.
In 1973, the then Attorney General of Australia Lionel Murphy led a raid on the Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO), the equivalent to the U.S. CIA, over concern with the organisation's involvement with the training of fascist Croatian groups, and the launching of terrorist operations from Australian soil. According to the Hope Commission back in 1977, ASIO was handing over to the CIA information on Australian opposition politicians and kept files on all ALP members.
The Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS) was assisting the CIA in undertaking clandestine operations in Cambodia and Chile, even though Australia was officially neutral in Cambodia and supported the Government of Salvador Allende in Chile, without the knowledge of the Australian Government.
Many felt that when the Whitlam Government took measures to control the operations of the US Naval Communications Station on the North-West Cape of Western Australia, the Defence Signals Directorate in Melbourne, the Joint Defense research facility at Pine Gap and Nurrunger in South Australia, that the U.S. became vitally concerned.
After Whitlam discovered that ASIO and ASIS had secretly assisted the Indonesian invasion of East Timor in 1975, he dismissed the heads of both organizations. Whitlam then hinted that he may not renew the Pine Gap agreement with the U.S. due for signing on 9th December 1975, which would have severely dented U.S. intelligence gathering ability. Labor mythology believes that the U.S. ambassador to Australia at the time, Marshall Green, had a hand in the dismissal of the Whitlam Government in November 1975 by the then Governor General Sir John Kerr. Of course, Kerr's time working for a closely aligned Australian intelligence organization to the U.S. OSS, the forerunner of the CIA, has always added spice to such conspiracy theories.
After Whitlam discovered that ASIO and ASIS had secretly assisted the Indonesian invasion of East Timor in 1975, he dismissed the heads of both organizations. Whitlam then hinted that he may not renew the Pine Gap agreement with the U.S. due for signing on 9th December 1975, which would have severely dented U.S. intelligence gathering ability. Labor mythology believes that the U.S. ambassador to Australia at the time, Marshall Green, had a hand in the dismissal of the Whitlam Government in November 1975 by the then Governor General Sir John Kerr. Of course, Kerr's time working for a closely aligned Australian intelligence organization to the U.S. OSS, the forerunner of the CIA, has always added spice to such conspiracy theories.
During the first week after the dismissal of the Labor Government, the army was on stand-by at their barracks in case there were mass demonstrations. However, it was the Australian Council of Trade Unions then president Bob Hawke who summoned the labour movement to be calm. US diplomatic cables also implicate the former prime minister, saying he regularly conferred with the U.S. Consulate in Melbourne during his ACTU years. It was generally believed that the Labor Attaché at the U.S. embassy in Canberra was in reality the CIA station chief (McKnight, D., "Labor and the Quiet Americans", The Age, February 20, 2003, p15). The future Hawke Government, elected in 1984, went on to implement many pro-U.S. initiatives, and prevented public disclosure of documents relating to the Nugan Hand Bank during his term as Prime Minister, which were believed to implicate the CIA with drug trafficking and organized crime.
This is the first time that leaked U.S. documents have confirmed what many believe to be the truth surrounding U.S. infiltration within the Australian Labor Party. The issue is likely to be very quickly dismissed in Australia by the argument that the U.S. is an ally. However, within these documents there is some proof and support that the U.S. has meddled in the affairs of the Australian union movement and political parties for many years. What is even more astounding is that some Labor politicians showed disloyalty to their party to a foreign power during the Whitlam years.
Bob Carr has been forthright in exposing past politicians as members of the Communist Party of Australia, so should take the accusations against him seriously, either stepping aside for the duration of an inquiry or resigning outright. David Combe's relationship with a Soviet diplomat Valery Ivanov back in 1984 led to swift action on the part of the Hawke Government at the time. In the interests of transparency and sovereignty, the Australian Federal Police and ASIO should conduct an inquiry.
The FBI. and CIA are supposed to protect US citizens from terrorism. They have, instead, been working with the two Chechens accused of the Boston Marathon bombing of 15 April. In this embedded Youtube Broadcast from the Corbett Report, James Corbett interviews FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds on the Boston bombing. She explains how past attempts by the US to ignite a sectarian terrorist war against Russsia in Chechnya has created people who have been willing to commit acts of terror against America, evidently with the collusion of the CIA and the FBI. See also The Boston Bombing Web of Lies of 26 April 2013 by Julie Lévesque, Syria in Boston of 25 April by Thierry Meyssan.
The original investigative report by Michael Issakov, on Yahoo!news: 
Western media are reporting 
“If indeed everyone is outraged by the tortures used by the US then, let’s leave NATO,” Le Pen said during an interview with Europe 1 radio channel. She wrote the same statement on her Twitter account: Marine Le Pen@MLP_officiel
Engrossing discussion of the arcane and unfair legal and political web entrapping Julian Assange: Lee Camp's excellent questions allow Stella Assange to use her legal and personal experience to comment in depth on the political relationships and laws and legal systems involved, such as the post 9-11 terrorism extradition laws; Britain's unequal status in US-British extradition laws; the incompatibility of how freedom of the press as conceived in the US is not possible in Britain 
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