Israel Shamir
Israel Shamir Net

"Since he will now be brought into Sweden against his will, Ny and Borgstrom will be able to lock Assange up for months until the trial, as Swedish law does not permit bail. Once in custody, Julian can be shipped to the US, or directly to Guantanamo without even returning to Sweden; as a detained foreigner he can be deported at the pleasure of the Swedish government."

The British magistrate court has decided to surrender Julian Assange to the Nordic Amazons who were hunting for his head – pending appeal. Thus the long Saga of the Broken Condom, or whatever name by which it will become known to posterity, took a definite turn for the worse. The judge decided to honor the European Arrest Warrant issued by man-eating Swedish prosecutor Marianne Ny. Julian has appealed to the High Court, ensuring that the saga will go on as a side divertissement to the main story, Cablegate.

We shall not delve again into what happened between Julian and the two women; this has already been covered in previous installments. Today we turn to the dramatic events that occurred immediately afterwards. We live in an age of leaks, and this story is no exception. The Swedish police papers pertaining to Assange case have surfaced on the web – and there are some shocking revelations. One revelation concerns the investigative editor of The Guardian, David Leigh and his accomplice Nick Davies. They were given the leaked police papers well before they were made public, and Davies constructed a story that revealed his special “unauthorised access”. Now the original documents (in Swedish) have been published on the site flashback.org, and the English version is now available on Rixstep.com with this touching foreword from the translator:

“The truth will out, the truth wins out. Let no journalist ever again speculate into what the protocols say. Six months of digging and the people at Flashback have the actual documents. The sleaze printed by rags such as the Daily Mail, Sweden's Aftonbladet and Expressen, and perhaps above all the toxic Nick Davies of The Guardian, can stand no more. Yet more: these documents are an indictment of the 'news organisations' who've printed deliberate inaccuracies all along or even worse: refused to print anything at all. Nick Davies' account of the protocols was maliciously skewed; both Aftonbladet and Expressen had copies early on and printed nothing. Bloggers had copies but arrogantly kept the information to their Smeagol selves.”

Once again we can compare the raw data with the official story, and once again we can confirm that Leigh and his partners are brazen, busy little cooks. They cooked the Embassy Cables, as we reported in CounterPunch, and now we can see exactly how they cooked the Assange police papers too. Leigh and his supporters have loudly proclaimed that his deletions and redactions were due to British libel laws. In this story, he proves how empty was his rhetoric. Every damaging accusation against Assange was given a place of prominence; the true and disturbing picture has remained buried until now.

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Ellen Brown
The Web of Debt

As states struggle to meet their budgets, public pensions are on the chopping block, but they needn’t be. States can keep their pension funds intact while leveraging them into many times their worth in loans, just as Wall Street banks do. They can do this by forming their own public banks, following the lead of North Dakota —a state that currently has a budget surplus.

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, whose recently proposed bill to gut benefits, wages, and bargaining rights for unionized public workers inspired weeks of protests in Madison, has justified the move as necessary for balancing the state's budget. But is it?

After three weeks of demonstrations in Wisconsin, protesters report no plans to back down. Fourteen Wisconsin Democratic lawmakers—who left the state so that a quorum to vote on the bill could not be reached—said Friday that they are not deterred by threats of possible arrest and of 1,500 layoffs if they don't return to work. President Obama has charged Wisconsin’s Governor Scott Walker with attempting to bust the unions. But Walker’s defense is:

“We're broke. Like nearly every state across the country, we don't have any more money."

Among other concessions, Governor Walker wants to require public employees to pay a portion of the cost of their own pensions. Bemoaning a budget deficit of $3.6 billion, he says the state is too broke to afford all these benefits.

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Stephen Lendman

[In this photograph of a sketch by courtroom artist Janet Hamlin, reviewed by the U.S. military censors, defendant Salim Hamdan, far left, sits with his defense team during testimony on day three of his trial inside the war crimes courthouse at Camp Justice, the legal complex of the U.S. Military Commissions, at Guantanamo Bay U.S. Naval Base, in Cuba, Wednesday, July 23, 2008. (AP Photo)]

On March 7, New York Times writers Scott Shane and Mark Landler headlined, "Obama Clears Way for Guantanamo Trials," saying:

By Executive Order (EO), Obama authorized their use "with revamped procedures but implicitly admitt(ed) the failure of his pledge to close the prison camp."

Since taking office, Obama broke every important pledge he made with regard to:

● war and peace;
● fixing the economy;
● helping beleaguered homeowners;
● supporting organized labor;
● helping working Americans, especially those most vulnerable, disadvantaged, and harmed by economic crisis;
● governing lawfully;
● ending illegal domestic spying;
● environmental protection;
● a public option included in health care reform;
● ending Wall Street shenanigans, corruption, and market manipulation;
● protecting whistleblowers, human rights, civil liberties, and public education;
● Net Neutrality;
● food safety;
● "ensur(ing) that the hopes and concerns of average Americans speak louder in Washington than the hallway whispers of high-priced lobbyists" - the same ones who own him; and
● ending torture, closing Guantanamo, and assuring due process and judicial fairness in civil courts for everyone brought to trial based on hard, not secret or bogus, evidence.

Instead, Obama's March 7 EO authorized indefinite detentions and military commissions in violation of the Constitution's Fifth Amendment, stating:

"No person....shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law...."

Indefinite detentions and military commissions are lawless, indefensible, unjustifiable practices that democratic civil societies don't tolerate. They're reminiscent of Nazi Germany and Stalinist show trials, assuring guilt by accusation.

The full text of Obama's EO can be accessed through this link.

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Stephen Lendman

Since WW II alone, America waged direct and proxy wars against Korea, Southeast Asia, Central and South American countries, African ones, Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, and now Egypt and Libya. One down, one to go, besides dozens of attempted and successful coups, as well as numerous other interventions to control world markets, resources and people. Imperial America doesn't sleep. It plots, deciding where next to strike.

Despite popular passion for democratic change, uprisings in Egypt and Libya were externally orchestrated, funded and armed by Washington to replace one despot with another. Democracy won't be tolerated. It's never been at home.

America's media go along, especially when Washington goes to war or plans one. In the lead: the New York Times, the nation's equivalent of an official information and propaganda ministry, posing as independent journalism.

It's February 28 editorial headlined, "Qaddafi's Crimes and Fantasies" made baseless accusations, then called on the International Criminal Court to investigate potential war crimes. Indeed it should - against America and Western co-conspirators, not Libya, for instigating regional aggression, a reality The Times ignored, besides previously against Afghanistan, Iraq, and other US targets.

On March 4, writer David Kirkpatrick headlined, "Qaddafi Brutalizes Foes, Armed or Defenseless," saying:

Gaddafi attacked "unarmed protesters....His militia's actions seemed likely to stir renewed debate over international intervention to limit his use of military power against his own citizens, possibly by imposing a no-flight zone."

If established, it's an act of war ahead of aggressive air attacks against a defenseless country, America's latest imperial target.

Kirkpatrick's article read more like bad fiction than real journalism, borrowing a page from now disgraced former Times writer Judith Miller, who functioned as a Pentagon press agent, promoting America's planned Iraq conquest and occupation. Now it's Libya, struggling to defend itself against naked aggression, covert so far but not for long, claiming "humanitarian intervention."

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