Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, is expected to appear in a UK court tomorrow!

[Magda Hassan]

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[Peter Lemkin]

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Very good. True as it gets....! [we are all 'Julian Assange']

Martin Niemöller (1892-1984) was a prominent Protestant pastor who emerged as an outspoken public foe of Adolf Hitler and spent the last seven years of Nazi rule in concentration camps.

Niemöller is perhaps best remembered for the quotation:

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out--
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out--
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out--
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me--and there was no one left to speak for me.

[Peter Lemkin]

I know there are some who think Assange is a stooge of the CIA/NSA/MI5-6....et al. I don't. They have all tried to use him, as they always do to spin a story they don't like. I personally think Julian is pretty much 'what you see, is what you get'....and will go down in her/his-tory as a major figure to challenge AUTHORITY and OLIGARCHY. He is not a very dynamic speaker; however, his speech today spoke truth to power and said all the right things. I feel it was genuine and spoken from the heart. I think he'll eventually find a way out of London to Quito...but I fear assassination disguised as an accident or something else......If only every person had done as much as JA, we would not be in this situation we are...... He's no 'god' to worship, and has faults as all humans do, but he has passed, IMHO, the acid test [both kinds of acid!]. One need only look at his adversaries to know which side of 'things' he is on.......

[Peter Lemkin]

Text of Julian Assange's statement.

I am here because I cannot be closer to you.

Thank you for being here.

Thank you for your resolve, and your generosity of spirit.

On Wendsday night, after a threat was sent to this embassy, and the police descended on the building, you came out in the middle of the night to watch over it, and you brought the words's eyes with you.

Inside the embassy,after dark, I could hear teams of police swarming up into the building through the internal fire escape.

But I knew that there would be witnesses.

And that is because of you.

If the UK did not throw the Vienna Conventions the other night, that is because world is watching.

And the world was watching because you were watching.

The next time somebody tells you that it is pointless to defend those rights we hold dear, remind them of your vigil in the dark before the Embassy of Ecuador, and how in the morning the sun came up on a different world, and a courageous Latin America nations took a stand of justice.

And so, to those brave people.

I thank President Correa for the courage he has shown in considering and granting me political asylum.

And so I thank the government, and the Foreign Minister, Richard Patino, who have upheld the ecuatorian Constitution and its notion of universal rights, in their consideration of my case.

And to the ecuadorian people for supporting and defending this constitution.

And I have a debt of gratitude to the staff of this embassy, whose families live in London and who have me shown hospitality and kindness despite the threats that they received.

This Friday there will be an emergency meeting of the foreign ministers of Latin America in Washington DC, to address this situation.

And so I am grateful to the people and governments of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Brazil, Mexico, Agintina, Peru, Chile, Argintina, Venezuala, Colombia and to all the other Latina American countries who have come to defend the right to asylum.

To the people of the United States, the United Kingdom, Sweden and Australia, who have supported me in strength, even when their governments have not. And tho those wiser heads in government who are still fighting for justice. Your day will come.

To the staff, supporters and sources of WikiLeaks, whose courage and commitment and loyalty has seen no equal.

To my family and to my children who have been denied their father. Forgive me. We will be remitted soon.

As WikiLeaks stands under threat, so does the freedom of expression, and the health of our societies.

We must use this moment to articulate the choice that is before the government of the United States of America.

Will it return to and reaffirm the values it was founded on?

Or will it lurch off the precipice, dragging us all into a dangerous and oppressive wordl, in which journalists fall silent under the fear of prosecution, and citizens must whisper in the dark?

I say that it must turn back.

I ask President Obama to do the right thing.

The United States must renounce its wicho-hunt against Wikileaks.

Te United States must dissolve its FBI investigation.

The United States must vow that it will not seek to persecute our staff, or our supporters.

The United States must pledge before the world that it will not pursue journalists for shining a light on the secret crimes of the powerful.

There must be no more foolish talk about prosecuting any media organization, be it WikiLeaks or the New York Times.

The US administrations war on whistleblowers must end.

Thomas Drake, and William Binnery, and John Kirakou and the other heroic US whistleblower must they must be pardoned and compensated for the hardships they have endured as servants of the public record.

And the Army Private who remain in a military prison in Fort Leavenworh Kansas, who was found by the UN to have endured monte of torturous detention in Quantico Virginia, and who has yet after two years in prision to see a trial, must be released.

And if Bradley Manning really did as he is accused, he is a hero, an example to us all, and one of the word l's foremost political prisoners.

Bradley Manning must be released.

On Wednesday, Bradley Manning spent his 815th day of detention without trial. The legal maximum is 120 days.

On Thursday, my friend, Nabeel Rajab, was sentenced to 3 years for a tweet.

On Friday, a Russian band were sentenced to 2 years in jail for a political performance.

There is unity in the oppression.

There must be absolute unity and determination in the response.

[Carsten Wiethoff]

Craig Murray, the former British Ambassador to Uzbekhistan, whom I quoted before in this thread, has also made a speech just before Assange.
It can be seen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pla...lt_IiQvjNo

His history is also interesting, from wikipedia:

Discipline charges In July 2003 some of the embassy staff were sacked while Murray was away on holiday. They were reinstated after he expressed his outrage to the FCO. Later during the same holiday he was recalled to London for disciplinary reasons. On 21 August 2003 he was confronted with 18 charges. These included "hiring dolly birds [pretty young women] for above the usual rate" for the visa department, though he claims that the department had an all-male staff, and granting UK visas in exchange for sex. Most of the charges were not supported by any evidence and others were petty. The FCO gave him a week to resign and told him that discussing the charges would be a violation of the Official Secrets Act 1989.[SUP][11][/SUP]
He collapsed during a medical check in Tashkent on 2 September 2003 and was airlifted to St Thomas Hospital in London. After an FCO internal inquiry conducted by Tony Crombie, Head of the FCO's Overseas Territories Department, all but two of the charges (being drunk at work and misusing the embassy's Range Rover) were dropped. The charges were leaked to the press in October 2003.[SUP][17][/SUP] Immediately upon his return to work in November 2003, he suffered a near-fatal pulmonary embolism and was again flown back to London for medical treatment. The FCO exonerated him of all 18 charges in January 2004 after a four month investigation but reprimanded him for speaking about them.

He also has a history with the Guardian, also read his article here (after listening to his speech):
http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2...t-is-free/

[Peter Lemkin]

The complete talks of yesterday by several persons before the Ecuadorian Embassy HERE.

[Jan Klimkowski]

Craig Murray, the former British Ambassador to Uzbekhistan, whom I quoted before in this thread, has also made a speech just before Assange.

Carsten - Craig Murray was British Ambassador to Uzbekistan and decided, rather naively, that a President who considers it normal to boil to death political opponents should be, ahem, spoken to about human rights abuses.

He then went further:

Murray was removed from his post in October 2004, shortly after a leaked report in the Financial Times quoted him as claiming that MI6 used intelligence provided by Uzbek authorities through torture.[18] The FCO denied there was any direct connection and stated that Murray had been removed for "operational" reasons. It claimed that he had lost the confidence of senior officials and colleagues. The following day, in an interview on the Today Programme, the BBC's flagship political radio show, Murray countered that he was a "victim of conscience", and in this and other interviews was critical of the FCO.[19] A few days later he was charged with "gross misconduct" by the FCO for making these media appearances.[20] Murray agreed to resign from the FCO in February 2005.

In his 2007 book Murder in Samarkand, Murray speculates that his anti-torture memos caused two problems for the US & UK governments. First, the CIA's extraordinary rendition program was secretly using Uzbekistan as a country to which to fly people to be tortured. Second, the transcripts of the torture sessions were then shared with Britain's MI6 because of the UK-US intelligence sharing agreements of WWII. By objecting to the UK's acceptance of CIA torture-obtained information, he was interfering with the secret rendition program as well as threatening the MI6's relationship with the CIA.

As for then Prime Minister Blair, the now global consultant:

"is paid in the region of £3 million a year to advise both JP Morgan, the US investment bank, and also Zurich International, the global insurer based in Switzerland. On top of that he runs his own consultancy firm - Tony Blair Associates - which advises the oil and gas rich governments of Kuwait and Kazakhstan."

[Carsten Wiethoff]

Jan, by coincidence I just finished listening to http://soundcloud.com/craig-murray/murder-in-samarkand
which is the Version of the book aired on the BBC4 radio in 2010.
It is this kind of experience which at one time is colourful and funny and on the other hand at the same time makes you choke.

[Jan Klimkowski]

Jan, by coincidence I just finished listening to http://soundcloud.com/craig-murray/murder-in-samarkand
which is the Version of the book aired on the BBC4 radio in 2010.
It is this kind of experience which at one time is colourful and funny and on the other hand at the same time makes you choke.

Yup.

Ambassador Murray was naive.

He failed to imbibe and absorb the mantra of the British civil service and apparatchik politicians which is:

If the Uzbeki President is someone wth whom We Can Do Business, then he can boil to death anyone he likes...

[Peter Lemkin]

Massacre in Uzbekistan

by craig on July 24, 2012 4:16 pm in Uncategorized

This is a trailer for an extremely important documentary by Michael Andersen. The complicity of NATO and EU governments with the Karimov regime is one of the clearest glimpses of the evil motives that lurk behind the reasonable image that western politicians strive to portray. The complicity of the mainstream media in ignoring these facts is terrifying.

As NATO intensifies its logistical transit through Uzbekistan, as Britain increases training for the Uzbek military and secret services and looks to further arms sales, please bring this documentary to the attention of everyone you can, in any way that you can.



The appearance in the trailer of Pierre Morel, EU Special Representative for Central Asia, is noteworthy. He really is one of the nastiest men in Europe, with not even the slightest pretence of any concern for human rights except as a bureaucratic box to be ticked. What is the real interest of this arch European powercrat? You will hardly be surprised to hear it is Central Asia's oil and gas.

One of the most important diplomatic developments in the last year not mentioned anywhere in the lamestream media has been the westward shift of the Government of Azerbaijan. Under hereditary President Aliev, son of Putin's ex boss and mentor in the KGB, they had seemed the closest of Russia's allies. But I noted a few months ago that remarkably on Syria they were voting with the U.S. and against Russia at the UN Security Council. Now they have agreed that an EU hydrocarbon pipeline can pass through their waters in the Caspian thus negating Putin's blocking move when he effectively annexed part of Georgia.

Germany now sees the eventual transit of Turkmenistan's and Uzbekistan's gas through Ukraine and Poland and into the Nordstream project, while bypassing Russia, as a tantalisingly close prospect. The furious courting of Central Asian dictators is therefore viewed as an unbounded success, and mangled corpses and tortured women an irrelevancy along with the probable extinction of the sturgeon and other inconveniences. No wonder Morel looks self-satisfied.

I do hope the Central Asians who suffer grinding poverty and terrible repression will one day understand all this, and once they have their freedom will not forgive.