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  • Attorney: Plenty To Uncover On CIA-Backed Spying That Violated Privacy Of Assange Visitors

    This article was funded by paid subscribers of The Dissenter Newsletter. Become a monthly paid subscriber to help us continue our independent journalism.

    In August, a lawsuit against the CIA, former CIA director Mike Pompeo, UC Global, and UC Global director David Morales was filed that alleged Americans who visited WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange when he was living in the Ecuador embassy had their privacy rights violated.

    Attorney Richard Roth filed a complaint on behalf of two attorneys, Deborah Hrbek and Margaret Ratner-Kunstler, and two journalists, Charles Glass and John Goetz. They say they were spied upon by the CIA-backed operation when they met with Assange.

    The lawsuit will be deliberated over in a United States court in the Southern District of New York. It was assigned to Judge John Koeltl.

    Kevin Gosztola recently spoke with Richard about the status of the lawsuit and what happens next.

     

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    GOSZTOLA: What is the status of the case?

    ROTH: The current status is we have filed a complaint, which has received a tremendous amount of attention (for good reason). And we are in the process of serving the summons and complaint. We served it on Mike Pompeo. We served it on the CIA, which is the United States’ Attorney’s Office which represents the CIA. And we are in the middle of serving it on two Spanish—one entity and one individual—but the two defendants who live in Spain.

    Once we do that, we have a conference schedule. I think it’s January 17, and we will set a roadmap for discovery and ultimately the trial of this case.

    GOSZTOLA: I know one of the issues for this case when you are proving that people’s rights were systematically violated. Particularly, when you are involving the Central Intelligence Agency, you have to have standing. If you went into court tomorrow and you had to prove to the judge you had standing, what would you say to the judge?

    ROTH: So great question. I like how you artfully asked it. The bottom line is that I would say the following. I would say we have four US individuals, all of whom were on embassy soil. That is diplomacy soil. And each of them are protected by the Fourth Amendment. The Fourth Amendment provides protection from any search and seizure—whether you’re in the US or whether you’re in Bangladesh—for any US citizen.

    Here they happen to have been in London at the Ecuador embassy, and they because they’re US citizens have that right to not be violated, not be invaded by the CIA or any governmental entity. There’s a process, Your Honor, and the process essentially requires the CIA, or whoever it may be that wants to tape record conversations, to go and get a search warrant. They have to show probable cause. They have to go before a judge. They have to get an order.

    Only upon those events can they go and actually listen in on conversations or copy conversations. Without that, it gives us standing, and it’s a violation of the Fourth Amendment.

    GOSZTOLA: Just to make sure I cover all the bases, up to this point are there any responses from the lawyers or attorneys that will be representing the CIA? I know you issued a complaint to Mike Pompeo in his private capacity. Have you received any response?

    ROTH: We have not. They have been radio silent. One thing we know, which gives us tremendous confidence, is that there’s a lawsuit pending in Spain, and El País, which is the largest newspaper reports on it frequently. And we’ve amassed a series of information from that Spanish lawsuit. So we’re very comfortable in our position. We believe that we can prove what we need to prove, but to date, nobody has given a response.

    GOSZTOLA: Part of the lawsuit that you have filed is enabled by some of that journalism that has been done, as you’re saying. We have El País  who has investigated. We have the Yahoo! News from September 2021 that laid out some details; actually made Mike Pompeo a central figure. So a lot of evidence that you’re bringing into court, a lot of it’s public now. But by bringing this lawsuit, you believe that there will be an opportunity for a discovery phase in order to investigate and uncover even more detail on the violations of people’s privacy rights.

    ROTH: We believe there’s a tremendous amount of discovery. We believe that there are hundreds of communications by and between the defendants, which went into the New York and Washington offices of the CIA (at minimum). We believe we’re entitled to all those communications. We believe we’re also entitled to what they actually imaged.

    Remember, the allegations are that when you went to the embassy, you gave the embassy personnel every computer device you had, whether it be a phone, an iPad, a laptop. And they imaged everything while you were meeting Assange.

    So, we will be able to get a tremendous amount of information, and we are looking forward to the judge giving us an opportunity to get that.

    GOSZTOLA: You believe that this could have potentially affected over a thousand of people from the US, who you could consider US persons in one way or another. Put that in perspective. In terms of a case involving people’s privacy rights, what does that really mean? What does that number mean?

    ROTH: The number is for anyone that visited embassy. Remember, Julian Assange was in there for seven years. He had friends. He had family. He had doctors. He had journalists. He had people that he worked with visited him, and he had lawyers visit him. So that number is not all US citizens, meaning they can’t all be plaintiffs, but people have come forward since the filing of the complaint saying hey, I’m a US citizen. I want to be a plaintiff.

    It means a lot because not only did the CIA violate the Fourth Amendment by wrongfully taking information of everyone, but there’s a lot of other things they violated, like for example, every attorney has attorney-client privilege. If I represented you, any communications we would have either oral or in writing are privileged. By going in and listening to the conversations between Assange and either Ms. Hrbek or Ms. Kunstler, the CIA essentially violated the sanctity of attorney-client privilege.

    Not only that, but if they went in and imaged, as we alleged, the computers of these lawyers, then they have attorney-client privileged information of the lawyers, which doesn’t even relate to Assange. So Deborah Hrbek has a memo to a client, to her client in her computer, and the CIA actually imaged it. Then they have additional information, which has nothing to do with Assange.

    Add to that [Assange] saw doctors so they have doctor-patient information. So there’s a lot of information that we think they have, all illegally, which we want.

    GOSZTOLA: Then, of course, there’s the two journalists. You’ve got Charles Glass and John Goetz, and those two individuals as journalists—at least as far as the norms that are accepted within the society in the United States—is that you should not be explicitly targeting those individuals.

    And I suppose it’s worth pointing out while this lawsuit is unfolding that it’s now been codified by the Justice Department that they are not supposed to target journalists. That is to allow them to become collateral damage in prosecutions, whether those involve leaks or other criminal investigations. So there could not be a justification for targeting your two journalist clients.

    I suppose they could argue in retrospect they did have the justification if they think they were spying on them in the context of a criminal investigation. But by and large, we accept those people are entitled to their privacy.

    ROTH: Absolutely. So we have journalists that went in and interviewed Assange, and they went in and the CIA went and took that. Can you imagine what that does to investigative journalism, if an investigative journalist that he’s being tape recorded by the CIA?

    And on top of that even, the doctors, there are doctors that went to visit Julian Assange. There’s a doctor-patient privilege, which he has. If he is going to see a doctor for an ailment or illness, why in god’s name would the CIA be entitled to that information?

    Yes, the journalists, the doctors, the lawyers. It’s just really, really inappropriate. And it’s overreaching, and the irony is that the US has indicted Julian Assange for essentially wrongfully disclosing information. In the meantime, what is the CIA doing? They are worse than Assange because they are wrongfully taking information. So, yeah, it’s interesting how what’s good for the goose as they say is not necessarily good for the gander.

    GOSZTOLA: You mention there are people who have come to you who say they’ve been spied on too. Is there any likelihood that this gets certified as some kind of a class action because there are a number of people who have been targeted allegedly?

    ROTH: There are people who have come to us. Some of them we exclude because they are not US citizens. Tomorrow I’m meeting with somebody else. There is a chance that it goes to a class action lawsuit, although the goal is not to complicate the litigation. Class action lawsuits by definition complicates it because you got to certify the class, and there’s motions over that.

    Our goal here really is to essentially seek grievance for the four people who did come to us, and say listen, you just can’t do this. So right now, our only clients are these four, but there’s a likelihood it will expand.

    GOSZTOLA: It’s worth pointing out that what you’re doing is a valuable check on the power of the executive branch when in fact what we’ve seen is an incredible lack of interest and action on the part of the legislative branch in order to investigate. Which is to say that we know that the House intelligence committee, or the Senate intelligence committee, could find that this is very troubling that the CIA engaged in this activity against a diplomatic outpost or an embassy.

    I can’t imagine what would happen if we found out that a country was targeting explicitly [a United States] embassy while they were hosting somebody who was an asylum seeker, say a rival power was targeting people as they came in and out, and they investigated those visitors. That they violated their privacy. We know the outrage that we would hear from the US State Department, and yet there hasn’t been any public assessment or address when it comes to this issue.

    Your lawsuit is very important I think for forcing that out into the open. Because even if for some reason the CIA is able to stifle this lawsuit—or Pompeo is able to stifle your lawsuit, you’ve at least made this a public issue.

    ROTH: That’s correct. And let’s not forget, not only did they go in and image each of the plaintiffs’ computers, laptops, and phones while they left it with security. The CIA actually had recording devices, audio and video recording devices, in the conference room where they met Assange. So they have everything, and what we learn in the Spanish case, these individuals that worked for UC Global essentially were asking their bosses, why am I tape recording and sending these tapes back to Washington? I don’t understand what Washington had to do with it.

    There were individuals who were employees of this company that were stuck in the middle. They wanted to keep their job, and they couldn’t understand why information about Julian Assange would go to the CIA. So, we have some very, very damning information against the CIA and Pompeo, and we intend on pursuing it.

    GOSZTOLA: One of the final questions I have for you is to point out that, yes, people might be cynical. If they are following this Assange case closely and if they are following things related to this spying operation, they might have seen that the Spanish court has had some significant difficulties when it comes to getting information from the Justice Department, to get compliance. I know they want to know the IP addresses, who was making those connections, where were those computers, what were those computers that were receiving this data.

    But why don’t you take a moment just to point out what you’ll be able to do as somebody who is a US lawyer and in a US court in order to force the discovery of this information. It won’t be as easy to not comply and deny you information that the Spanish court is not able to get.

    ROTH: That’s absolutely right. What we’ve learned from the Trump era, four years, is that they are masterful at avoiding processes. They have avoided everything that the Spanish court has sought, even by subpoena. We know what they did with the January 6th committee, where they wouldn’t produce documents and testify. We know what happened with the impeachment proceedings and the entire presidential organization.

    So, they essentially are very good at either stonewalling or refusing to produce documents. Recently, when the tax documents were ordered to be produced, Trump appealed that again.

    To your point, [the Spanish court does] not have the federal authority of a federal court judge. A federal court judge was appointed to the case, a guy by the name of Judge Koeltl. As is true of all federal court judges, he was appointed by the President of the United States. They have tremendous power. They can compel Mike Pompeo and the CIA to produce documents. If they don’t, they could be held in contempt of court and could go to jail.

    When you have federal court judge, someone you don’t mess with, whoever it may be, you can’t play the games that they played in Spain with the Spanish court. They played with the January 6th committee. They played with other organizations. This is the judge, and the judge is going to say to them I want you to produce it and I want you to produce it now. That’s going to help us out much more than any other dispute before another foreign organization.

    GOSZTOLA: It’s important to mention that Judge Koeltl already had a case before him that  involved WikiLeaks and already came down on the side of protecting freedom of the press when the Democratic National Committee chair Tom Perez tried to lump WikiLeaks with alleged Russian agents and with the Trump campaign, when it came to their alleged examples of interference in the 2016 election. He said no, if you obtain hacked materials, which is what WikiLeaks did, then they have an absolute right to publish just as anybody in the United States does under the First Amendment.

    You must feel pretty good knowing that you’ve got somebody who is going to preside over this case, who has a history with WikiLeaks and isn’t going to see just see that this involves Julian Assange and have some kind of irrational response to your efforts.

    ROTH: I think we are very fortunate to get Judge Koeltl, not necessarily because of that prior decision but because of his experience. He’s a Harvard grad. He worked at a major law firm. He was involved with the Watergate prosecution team. He was appointed by President Bill Clinton in 1994. So, he’s been at the federal court bench almost thirty years.

    You don’t say no to a federal court judge that’s been there for a year. He’s been there for twenty-eight, I believe. Certainly, it’s a really great force that we have, and if the federal government wants to reckon with it, then Judge Koeltl will definitely be on our side.

    Listen, he’s very unbiased. He very professional. He’s unbelievably experienced. Nothing is going to slip past him. So, we’re lucky we have a judge with such experience and stamina.

    GOSZTOLA: The last thing I’ll ask, I think we have to make clear that you’re not on Julian Assange’s legal team. You’re representing these people that are coming before court or will come before the court and argue that their privacy rights were violated and present the evidence as best possible. But that extradition case and the potential for Julian Assange to be put on trial in the United States is going to be a backdrop and could potentially be happening at the same time that this moves through the court.

    Is there anything that you want to say about this dynamic and what it means for your lawsuit?

    ROTH: You hit it on the head. There’s not much more to say except that, think about this. If the CIA is in Assange’s conference room, listening in on conversations that he had with his lawyer for that case—Remember, years ago he brought a very experienced DC lawyer to help him defend against this indictment, which was released three years ago, but it was sealed initially.  

    Could you imagine if the CIA, the government prosecuting Assange already has conversations between Assange and his lawyer? And even documents? So, there really is a stink to it.

    In the other case, we don’t represent Assange in the other matter, but I have even as a lawyer and American, I have a problem with the government going in and actually taking information against if you will its adversary in that case.

    We’ll see how it plays out. I’m not sure what’s going to happen. He’s probably going to be extradited. He’ll probably be tried in Virginia. It is a very complicated case. It’s a difficult case. The First Amendment cries out in that case. So, we will see what happens in that case, and this is somewhat intertwined to the extent that the government, his adversary, went and took information from him—which is a subject matter of this case—for that case.

    GOSZTOLA: It’s kind of intertwined because your lawsuit is going to hopefully succeed in proving even more than we already know. That the CIA was connected to this private security company. I think it’s like a half dozen or so people. It’s a small outfit that was engaged in providing the security for the Ecuador embassy.

    But hopefully we’ll be able to actually, truly through your lawsuit connect that, and then I imagine even though that’s not the goal of your lawsuit immediately, it might open some doors for the Assange defense because they’ll be able to introduce that into their evidence.

    In fact, I imagine the cases move in the same way that the extradition proceedings have in some ways been affected and influenced periodically by what’s happening in Spain. Just because you cannot separate these issues. Like you’re saying, if the CIA is targeting the person who the US is trying to prosecute, it’s hard to believe that you could get fair justice.

    ROTH: That’s exactly right. And we will see how this plays out. They’re very important cases, both of them, in our country. They have tremendous significance. Listen, we all believe in the CIA and its powers, and we believe it’s a necessity to know what’s going on in Ukraine and Russia, to know what’s going on in the Middle East. But every federal government, every organization, every branch of government has to stay within its boundaries. And our lawsuit really tests those boundaries to see whether or not the government, the CIA in particular and Mike Pompeo, are really going way over the line.

    GOSZTOLA: You mentioned that your judge was involved in the Watergate prosecution, and it seems like we’re looking at similar excesses here. And so, it’s not unheard of. Americans are pretty familiar with the periods in history when their government agencies acted out of line, crossed into trampling on rights, and they know that it’s the job of people, whether it be attorneys, journalists, or elected representatives, judges and courts, to rein those people in.

    ROTH: That’s right. It’s interesting. It’s not going to be easy. We’re going to have a lot of obstacles. We’re going to have a lot of road blocks. But we will get there.

    The post Attorney: Plenty To Uncover On CIA-Backed Spying That Violated Privacy Of Assange Visitors appeared first on Shadowproof.

    This post was originally published on Shadowproof.

  • Protest Song Of The Week: ‘Waltzing Will Trilogy’ By Lavender Country

    Originally published at Ongoing History of Protest Music

    On October 31, 2022, trailblazing singer-songwriter and activist Patrick Haggerty died at the age of 78. A few weeks earlier he suffered a stroke. He fronted Lavender Country which is widely believed to be the first openly gay country band. In 1973, they released their self-titled debut often cited as the first gay-themed country album.

    Initially, there were only 1000 copies printed. The album later garnered interest from historians, music journalists, and record collectors. In 2014, the album was reissued by the Paradise of Bachelors label. Haggerty also embarked on a nationwide tour, which introduced a new generation to his music.

    Paying tribute to Haggerty, Paradise of Bachelors co-founder Brendan Greaves wrote: “He was more than a hero; he was also a friend, mentor, comrade, and fatherly figure for us and our families. He was hilarious too; it was always an adventure spending time with him.”

    In 2019, Lavender Country released their long-awaited sophomore album, Blackberry Rose. Three years later, the album received increased exposure when it was reissued by Don Giovanni Records.

    “Patrick Haggerty was one of the funniest, kindest, bravest, and smartest people I ever met,” Don Giovanni Records stated. “He never gave up fighting for what he believed in, and those around him who he loved and took care of will continue that fight.”

    As an openly gay artist in a conservative genre, simply creating music was a political statement, especially back in 1973 during the wake of Stonewall uprising. But Haggerty took it further by using his lyrics to address social issues.

    One notable example is “Waltzing Will Trilogy” off the 1973 self-titled album. Haggerty directly calls out the “pack of straight white honky quacks” who administer shock treatment to homosexuals (“they call it mental hygiene but I call it psychic rape”). The tune also addresses how young gay men were beaten to death by police and sodomized by prison guards.

    In the liner notes to Strong Love, a 2012 compilation of early gay artists, musician Richard Dworkin wrote: “One could argue that Patrick Haggerty … was as in-your-face shocking and transgressive as anything the [70s] would produce—up to and including the Sex Pistols and Dead Kennedys.”

    RIP Patrick Haggerty (September 27, 1944-October 31, 2022)

    The post Protest Song Of The Week: ‘Waltzing Will Trilogy’ By Lavender Country appeared first on Shadowproof.

    This post was originally published on Shadowproof.

  • NSA Whistleblower Unearthed ‘Project’ That Targeted US Communications

    This article was funded by paid subscribers of The Dissenter Newsletter. Become an annual paid subscriber to help us continue our coverage of whistleblowers.

    A National Security Agency whistleblower unearthed a hot-shot analyst’s unauthorized “project” that targeted the communications of citizens or persons in the United States, according to a top secret inspector general report from 2016.

    The project, or “experiment,” was not approved by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the attorney general, the NSA director, or the director for the division that handles signals intelligence. It was also not vetted by the analyst’s chain of command or any NSA officers responsible for oversight.

    Journalist Jason Leopold obtained a highly censored version of the 2016 report through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit and co-authored a paywalled article about what that report revealed for Bloomberg.

    On March 18, 2013, only a few months before NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden exposed several of the NSA’s mass surveillance programs, a whistleblower stumbled upon a colleague who was collecting or attempting to collect a “large volume of telephone numbers without any foreign intelligence purpose.”

    The whistleblower, or “source,” who was a “global network analyst,” complained to several offices tasked with oversight. They then shared what they found with the inspector general’s office in May, and on June 18, while the NSA reeled from the unprecedented scrutiny brought about by Snowden’s disclosures, they contacted the Office of General Counsel, which is the NSA’s legal office.

    A group of “management officials” at the NSA considered the whistleblower complaint in several meetings and email exchanges, but even with the fallout from Snowden, they largely maintained that the concerns were unfounded.

    The unauthorized project started collecting—or attempting to collect data—that included US persons’ communications as early as 2012.

    According to the whistleblower, multiple people in NSA oversight positions lacked the technical expertise to understand what the analyst was doing with their project. They did not understand why the analyst’s collection was in violation of clear procedures.

    The inspector general concluded, “Although [the analyst] was told by different supervisors, oversight officials, and attorneys that his activities were acceptable, he was told by others to stop immediately.”

    “[The analyst] acted with reckless disregard of the regulations, policies, and procedures that governed the use of the SIGINT system,” the inspector general added, which essentially means he abused his access to programs that enabled mass surveillance.

    It is unclear if the analyst who acted recklessly suffered any consequences. He obviously was not prosecuted for engaging in misconduct.

    “When I said in 2013 that while I was at the NSA I could pull the communications of anyone who passed through our net—including Americans—officials hotly contested the claim and a lot of folks believed them,” Snowden told Bloomberg. “But it was true, as the NSA itself secretly acknowledges.”

    Snowden continued, “Defenders of broad surveillance authorities always insist that Americans don’t have to worry because our intelligence agencies are tightly constrained by law and policy. But time and again we’ve seen that when laws are violated and powers are abused, no one is held legally accountable.”

    In fact, as Leopold highlighted, on April 21, 2014, a year into the investigation by the inspector general, the whistleblower contacted the office again to allege that the analyst was still targeting US communications.

    “I wasn’t sure whether to report it or wait till he actually gets collection (if any),” the whistleblower wrote. “Also wasn’t sure whether to send the information to you or file a new report with the IG hotline.”

    The NSA employee who abused his access was interviewed for the inspector general’s investigation and asserted that his “project” fell under Executive Order 12333, which is a toothless presidential order that US security agencies have invoked to justify the expansion of mass surveillance.

    Asked about the “foreign intelligence purpose” of the project, the analyst told the inspector general that it was to “make the collection system healthier, the analytic powers richer, and the system more efficient.” (Part of his response was censored in the declassified report.)

    One official claimed that the analyst had not asked for permission to pursue the project and had been told to “stop the project.” At least a few NSA employees saw it as an “experiment.”

    There was no audit mechanism for ensuring the project was compliant with NSA procedures. The inspector general’s report said, “He was the only person working on the project, and each day he did not know what he might try to do, what made sense, was easily sustainable, repeatable, and defensible.” He proceeded “[kind of] by the seat of his pants.”

    As Demand Progress, an advocacy organization which has challenged abuses of power that threaten civil liberties, noted, the investigation pointed to Title VII of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) that contains “Section 702,” which the US government has “abused for years to knowingly access Americans’ communications without a warrant.”

    “The congressional intelligence committees have claimed to be robust overseers of intelligence agencies. If accurate, this inspector general report should not only be known to them, but also the subject of serious investigation,” declared Sean Vitka, a senior policy council for Demand Progress. “We call on the House and Senate intelligence committees to release what they know, including how many people this illegal activity impacted, what punishments the people involved faced, and what the committees have done to ensure this never happens again.”

    “The government has abused its surveillance powers for too long and blatantly disregarded the privacy rights of the American people. Like the FBI’s recent wrongful spying on business, religious, civic, and community leaders, this adds to the mounting evidence that Title VII is simply too dangerous to reauthorize,” Vitka concluded.

    The post NSA Whistleblower Unearthed ‘Project’ That Targeted US Communications appeared first on Shadowproof.

    This post was originally published on Shadowproof.

  • Protest Song Of The Week: ‘Man With No Name’ By Fantastic Negrito

    Originally published at Ongoing History of Protest Music

    In Virginia, back in 1759, a white Scottish servant named Elizabeth Gallimore fell in love with a black slave whose name had been lost over time. Their great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandson, Xavier Amin Dphrepaulezz, who performs under the pseudonym Fantastic Negrito, has released a compelling concept album, “White Jesus Black Problems,” based on his recently discovered lineage.

    The ambitious multimedia project includes a companion film, and Fantastic Negrito says the project was produced to challenge a popular narrative around polarization.

    “There’s a feeling out there right now that we can’t get anything done because we’re so polarized, so
    entrenched in our ideologies and unmoved by facts or logic, but I wanted to share this story because I
    think it smashes that narrative to pieces,” Fantastic Negrito declared. “I stand on the shoulders of my ancestors, both Black and white, who showed me that anything is possible. There was a lot of ugliness in their story, but there was a lot of beauty, too, because in the end, perseverance overcame.”

    “Man with No Name,” which appears on the album, is a painful reminder that often the identity and experiences of the oppressed are erased.

    With the song (and album), the stories of the courageous forgotten are reclaimed and finally told. The message, “I keep moving on,” encourages perseverance even when it is difficult to be hopeful.

    The post Protest Song Of The Week: ‘Man With No Name’ By Fantastic Negrito appeared first on Shadowproof.

    This post was originally published on Shadowproof.

  • Chelsea Manning’s Book Further Complicates US Government’s Case Against Julian Assange

    This article was funded by paid subscribers of The Dissenter Newsletter and first published at TheDissenter.org. Become an annual paid subscriber to help us continue our independent journalism.

    In the United States government’s case against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, prosecutors claim that he communicated with US Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning through an encrypted chat client known as Jabber.

    Prosecutors highlight several alleged exchanges between Manning and a username, or handle, associated with Assange. Yet they have never been able to definitively prove that Manning was chatting with Assange, and Manning’s new book, README.txt, further complicates their case.

    Manning recalls in February 2010 that she told a chat room with individuals she believed to be associated with WikiLeaks that they could expect an “important submission.” She received a response from someone with the handle “office,” who changed their handle to “pressassociation.”

    At this time, Manning had prepared what became known as the “Collateral Murder” video for submission to WikiLeaks. The video showed an Apache helicopter attack in Baghdad by US soldiers that killed two Reuters journalists, Saeed Chmagh and Namir Noor-Eldeen, and Saleh Matasher Tomal, a good Samaritan who pulled up in a van and tried to help the wounded.

    “We eventually began to talk on another encrypted chat client, Jabber, and I saved the person in my contacts as ‘Nathaniel Frank,’ a decoy that was an homage to the author of a book I’d read the previous year (Unfriendly Fire: How the Gay Ban Undermines the Military and Weakens America),” Manning writes.

    Consistent with the statement she delivered during her court-martial in February 2013, she adds, “I never knew for sure who the real person was behind the ‘Nathaniel Frank’ handles. Over time, and from the role he played in the chat room, I came to understand this was an important person in the group.”

    “I guessed it was likely Julian Assange, or maybe Daniel Schmitt (now known as Daniel Domscheit-Berg), another central figure in WLO [WikiLeaks]. Or else it was someone representing them. To this day, I can’t say with absolute certainty who it was; that’s the point of having a handle online, of course. There are no driver’s licenses presented in the hacking world.”

    Manning mentions that she used a “random name generator” to get her handle: DawgNetwork.

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    ‘Without Reference To The Specific Moniker’

    In the indictment against Assange, prosecutors state, “No later than January 2010, Manning repeatedly used an online chat service, [Jabber], to chat with Assange, who used multiple monikers attributable to him.”

    “The grand jury will allege that the person using these monikers is Assange without reference to the specific moniker used,” according to the indictment.

    This illustrates the intent of US prosecutors to rely upon circumstantial evidence to tie Assange to the account, like they did during Manning’s court-martial. However, as was true during the court-martial, the government still cannot prove Assange was the WikiLeaks associate chatting with Manning under a “specific moniker.”

    During a four-week extradition hearing in September 2020, Assange’s legal team had Patrick Eller, a command digital forensic examiner responsible for a team of more than eighty examiners at US Army Criminal Investigation Command headquarters, provide testimony to the UK district court. He had access to the court-martial record.

    Eller said that he was unable to find any evidence that linked Assange to the “Nathaniel Frank” account.

    Now, in a government affidavit from 2019, assistant US attorney Kellen Dwyer claimed the US has a witness that the FBI interviewed in 2011, who will testify that Assange used the pressassociation account. The witness is a woman who was “romantically involved” with Assange and met him in Berlin in 2009.

    Dwyer also indicates that Siggi Thordarson, an FBI informant from Iceland who is a diagnosed sociopath and serial criminal, will testify that Assange used “pressassociation” as “one of his online nicknames.”

    None of this featured in the extradition proceedings, and Crown prosecutors did not contest Mark Summers QC, an Assange attorney, when he had Eller address the lack of proof that Assange used the account that chatted with Manning.

    Prosecutors subpoenaed Manning to testify before a grand jury in January 2019, and they likely hoped they could coerce her into answering questions about her chats with this particular account. But Manning was steadfast, maintained her grand jury resistance for nearly a year, and prosecutors were never able to elicit any testimony that could be used against Assange.

    Her book should help Assange’s legal team establish reasonable doubt that Assange used the name, especially if they can show that other WikiLeaks associates had access to the account for chatting with potential sources.

    Contesting The US Government’s Theory In The Assange Case

    The US government’s theory of the case against Assange depends upon a narrative that involves Assange recruiting Manning to leak documents to WikiLeaks. Facts of the case have always conflicted with this conspiracy theory, and Manning raises a few of these facts.

    “[Major Ashden] Fein tried to make it seem like I’d started hunting around explicitly on behalf of WikiLeaks as soon as I got to Iraq. He pointed to a list they posted of they ‘Most Wanted Leaks’ for 2009, and tried to claim that I’d been looking for the Garani video in November, just two weeks after I’d gotten to Iraq.”

    This backfired, according to Manning. “First of all, we has evidence that I hadn’t uploaded the Garani video until the spring of 2010. Second, the video wasn’t even on the ‘Most Wanted’ list. Third, the vast majority of things I’d posted weren’t on it either.”

    “In late March,” as Manning details, searching through the CENTCOM directory for information I needed for my job, I discovered a video of a 2009 air strike in Garani, Afghanistan. More than one hundred Afghani civilians, mostly women and children, were accidentally killed, and the air strike had been covered all over the world.”

    “It was chilling to see death on that scale, and the conclusions of the report that accompanied it were even more disturbing to me than the ones for the video that became known as ‘Collateral Murder.’”

    Manning adds, “What I was saw indelible and awful: graphic footage of women, children, and old people dying the most painful kind of death, a result of munitions containing white phosphorus hitting an extremely flammable structure.”

    She submitted the Garani video to WikiLeaks, but the video was never published. The US government’s report on what resulted in the deaths of so many innocent civilians remains “highly classified.”

    An exchange with “Nathaniel Frank” about the detainee assessment briefs, which were published as the “Gitmo Files,” is highlighted in the book. In the indictment against Assange, this exchange is the first alleged exchange between Manning and the person who prosecutors insist—without proof—was Assange.

    “I asked ‘Nathaniel Frank’—on March 7, the day of the Iraqi elections—what he thought. Were they worth publishing?” Manning shares. “He told me that it probably wouldn’t change much politically, but that perhaps they could be of use to the individual detainees in their legal battles, and that they seemed important for filling out the general historical record of the Guantanamo detainments.”

    What Manning writes aligns with the indictment, although the indictment is more vague. “Manning asked Assange how valuable the Guantanamo Bay detainee assessments would be,” and the account that prosecutors associate with Assange confirmed they had value.

    Manning engaged in chats with “Nathaniel Frank” because she yearned for a personal connection with anyone who would discuss topics that were of interest to her. They exchanged messages on politics and information technology.

    “Soon, we were talking almost every day, sometimes for almost an hour at a time, about a range of topics, not just whatever publications WikiLeaks was preparing,” Manning recounts. “I felt freer to be myself thanks to the cloak of anonymity the encrypted chat provided, and that was a lifeline to me then. It was an escape from the pressure and anxiety of the deployment.”

    “In retrospect, I realize that this meant more to me than it did to ‘Nathaniel Frank,’ and that our closeness was an artificial, circumstantial one. But I so badly needed an escape valve, and some semblance of friendship and trust.”

    This is the first in a series of articles at The Dissenter on Chelsea Manning’s new book.

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  • Biogen Whistleblower Lawsuit Against Massive Kickback Scheme Ends In Huge Settlement

    The following article was an exclusive for paid subscribers of The Dissenter. It was unlocked on September 27. Become a monthly subscriber and support independent journalism on whistleblowers.

    In one of the largest settlements ever secured by a whistleblower under the False Claims Act, the multinational pharmaceutical corporation Biogen agreed to pay $900 million in order to end a lawsuit related to an illegal kickback program.

    Attorney Thomas M. Greene, who represented the Biogen whistleblower, described the settlement as the “largest recovery in over 150 years of False Claims Act (FCA) cases to be secured by a whistleblower without the intervention or participation of the United States [government].”

    Michael Bawduniak started working for Biogen in 2004. He was the interim director of regional marketing for Biogen between 2009 and 2011. In February 2011, the corporation demoted him to “thought leader liaison” after he attempted to halt kickback payments to physicians.

    The False Claims Act empowers private citizens like Bawduniak to bring whistleblower lawsuits against companies that are involved in schemes to defraud taxpayers. US Justice Department (DOJ) prosecutors may intervene and pursue the lawsuit, or they may decline to intervene and allow a whistleblower to seek a settlement without their support.

    According to a press release from Greene’s law firm, Bawduniak informed the DOJ of Biogen’s kickback program. The DOJ and the FBI asked Bawduniak to “record conversations with Biogen employees that would substantiate his allegations.”

    “These recordings confirmed that Biogen deliberately provided substantial monetary and non-monetary compensation to some of its most important prescribers to influence their prescribing and to ensure that they remained loyal Biogen customers,” the release added.

    The “massive” kickback scheme resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars in “false and fraudulent Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement claims.”

    Specifically, the lawsuit filed in 2013 [PDF] alleged that Biogen provided “financial rewards” to physicians in order to ensure that they prescribed the corporation’s multiple sclerosis treatments, Avonex and later Tysabri.

    In early 2008, Teva’s multiple sclerosis drug Copaxone surpassed Avonex in sales in early 2008. To reclaim the position of market leader, Biogen allegedly took advantage of the multiple sclerosis market, which they recognized was limited to a “relatively small number of prescribers.”

    Over 90 percent of prescriptions for multiple sclerosis drugs were being written by just 6,000 doctors. Biogen developed a two-pronged strategy: retain physicians who were their top prescribers as “consultants” and hire the doctors as “speakers” to talk with other physicians about Avonex and Tysabri.

    The strategy was intended to evade an increase in government enforcement against kickback schemes by pharmaceutical corporations.

    “The scope of the kickback scheme was staggering,” according to the lawsuit. “In 2009 alone, Biogen paid 820 physicians a total of $8.8 million to speak or consult, $10,600 per physician. Faced with the market entry of the first oral treatment for MS, Gilenya, Biogen expanded these programs in 2010.”

    In 2010, Biogen paid $9.1 million to 1,200 physicians for “speaking” or “consulting.” The meetings were frequently redundant and trainings had an “excessive number of unnecessary speakers.”

    On September 2, 2010, while Bawduniak was interim regional director for marketing, he received a list of fifty doctors who were deemed “at risk” of adopting Gilenya.

    Bawduniak recognized that having a list of “completed and anticipated payments to major prescribers who the company had identified as priority accounts would constitute evidence of unlawful payments for the purpose of obtaining prescriptions.”

    A senior executive in Biogen’s compliance department confirmed to Bawduniak that requesting information about the physicians would constitute evidence that the corporation was trying to influence a doctor to prescribe Biogen products.

    Bawduniak informed two Biogen executives that if he compiled information on the doctors it would “make it clear that Biogen was making payments for prescriptions.” Still, one of the executives who had asked for the information pressed on with their requests and eventually obtained it from other sources.

    In February 2011, Bawduniak was demoted to “thought leader liaison” and no longer directly received reports on “at risk” doctors.

    The press release further details the staggering fraud. “Biogen inflated the amounts paid to most of its speakers and consultants by automatically adding three hours for travel time to their compensation, even when Biogen knew the customers whom it paid did not have to travel or only traveled a minimal distance.”

    “And many of Biogen’s events were held at sumptuous resorts and restaurants, where Biogen treated its speakers and consultants to lavish meals and free alcohol.”

    Twenty-five to thirty percent of the federal funds recovered through the settlement will be awarded to Bawduniak.

    Mary Inman, an attorney and partner at the law firm Constantine Cannon who has represented whistleblowers in False Claims Act cases for 25 years, said the massive settlement was a “testament to the strength” of the FCA. It is a “really important release valve.”

    “Increasingly what we’re seeing is that the government just doesn’t have the resources to intervene in all these cases because there’s been such an increase in the number of cases and the quality of them,” Inman added. “So oftentimes they will decline to intervene when they have faith that the whistleblower and their counsel have the wherewithal to continue with the case.”

    The DOJ does not always decline to intervene or take up a case because of political reasons, such as if the fraud exposed makes prosecutors look bad for missing the corruption. But of course, that happens.

    In the case of the Biogen whistleblower, Inman noted the government has pursued a lot of these types of cases involving kickback schemes defrauding Medicare or Medicaid in the past.

    The US Supreme Court agreed in June to hear a lawsuit that could determine whether the government has the authority to dismiss a lawsuit and effectively prevent a whistleblower from pursuing their case under the False Claims Act.

    If the Supreme Court were to rule that the government may decline to participate in cases and then turn around and stop a whistleblower from challenging fraud, it would be another example of the court catering to corporate power. It would fundamentally alter what has been settled law for over 30 years.

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  • Protest Song Of The Week: ‘The Money’ By Rain Perry

    Originally published at Ongoing History of Protest Music

    Singer-songwriter Rain Perry recently released “A White Album,” a concept piece that addresses white privilege. She is also working on producing a stage version of the album.

    One of the album’s highlights is “The Money,” which skillfully weaves the narrative of two GIs returning from war, one white and one black. It examines the inequality when it comes to home ownership and generational wealth.

    In an interview with Americana Highway, Perry said the song is about the real estate process of “redlining.”

    “I knew nothing about that, and then when I researched it, I realized why wealth inequality has persisted,” Perry added. “It caused problems then and continues to cause problems now. That made me look at the world in a different way, but the next step is: What can I do to mitigate it? Who can I vote for? What can I donate to?”

    “I’m hoping that the next step is tangible action that helps mitigate the problems that the record brings up, but I can’t control what people do.”

    Solutions to systemic ills will only come from awkward conversations. This includes white people acknowledging their privilege and the role that they play. Rain Perry is doing her best to add her voice to the discussion.

    The post Protest Song Of The Week: ‘The Money’ By Rain Perry appeared first on Shadowproof.

    This post was originally published on Shadowproof.

  • US House Of Representatives Finally Passes Whistleblower Protection Bill With Access To Jury Trials

    This article was funded by paid subscribers of The Dissenter Newsletter. Become an annual paid subscriber to help us continue our independent journalism.

    A whistleblower protection bill containing access to jury trials, which has long been a priority for advocates, passed in the United States House of Representatives on September 15.

    The legislation, the Whistleblower Protection Improvement Act (WPIA), was sponsored by Representative Carolyn Maloney, who is the chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform.

    It allows whistleblowers to have their claims heard by a jury in a US district court if the Merits Systems Protection Board (MSPB), an administrative body largely unknown to most Americans, does not rule on their case within 180 days (or 240 days if the MSPB certifies that a case is “complex”).

    The MSPB has a backlog of at least 3,000 cases as of June 2022, according to the Federal News Network. If this bill were to pass in the US Senate and be signed by President Joe Biden, it would break a major logjam that has blocked whistleblowers from obtaining a review of their claims.

    Furthermore, the bill grants “any employee or applicant for employment adversely affected or aggrieved by a final order or decision of the Merit Systems Protection Board may obtain judicial review of the order or decision.”

    Research by the Government Accountability Project (GAP) showed [PDF] in the first six months of 2021 that MSPB judges “ruled against whistleblowers in fifty of the past fifty-one retaliation cases.”

    “Federal employees are the only major labor group of whistleblowers in the country who don’t have access to a jury trial to challenge retaliation against their free speech rights,” GAP legal director Tom Devine declared. “Instead of being able to seek justice from a jury of the citizens who they are reporting to defend when they risk their careers, their day in court is limited to administrative judges who rule against whistleblowers in 96 percent of cases and are extremely vulnerable to political pressure.”

    Devine also said, “It is ironic and indefensible that federal employees, whose whistleblower disclosures are the highest stakes for our country, have the weakest due process rights to defend themselves.”

    Significantly, the bill recognizes the impotency of the MSPB by making whistleblower access to a jury trial “retroactive for claims filed to MSPB for up to five years prior to the date of enactment.”

    This means whistleblower complaints from as early as the first year of Donald Trump’s presidency, which are still pending before the MSPB, could be submitted to a federal court.

    Whistleblower complaints in a US district court, particularly those involving discrimination, would fall under the Civil Rights Act (1964), the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (1967), or the Fair Labor Standards Act (1938).

    Congress was urged in 2012 to include access to jury trials in the Whistleblower Protection Act (WPA). The Justice Department aggressively fought the provision. President Barack Obama ultimately caved.

    According to Devine, Jeff Sessions, who was a US senator and later became attorney general under Trump, also threatened to put a hold on the legislation if it included court access. Staff for Senator Susan Collins suggested the bill may not pass at all if whistleblower advocates did not back down.

    Stephen Kohn of the National Whistleblower Center previously stated, “Federal employees need the same access to US courts as corporate employees, government contractors, truck drivers, food service workers, state and local government employees, Dodd-Frank Act whistleblowers, False Claims Act whistleblowers, whistleblowers who file state common law claims, and the vast majority of all other whistleblowers.”

    Only two House Republicans voted for the bill. GAP noted Republicans claimed “whistleblowers already have more rights than they need,” and the legislation would “make it impossible to fire incompetents and wrongdoers.”

    “However, whistleblowers routinely wait three to five years to lose over 95 percent of decisions on the merits,” GAP responded. “Rather than creating an insurance policy, the legislation transforms fraudulent rights into genuine ones.”

    The bill does not cover intelligence agency employees, contrary to what several Republicans suggested in their attacks on the bill.

    It does not appear that similar legislation has been introduced in the Senate, but Republican Senator Chuck Grassley, a longtime supporter of whistleblowers, previously introduced legislation that would establish basic protections for FBI whistleblowers.

    Yet the expanded protection for FBI whistleblowers would not include access to a jury trial.

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  • Interview With National Security Journalist William Arkin: FBI Faces Brewing Political Disaster After Mar-a-Lago Raid

    Originally published at The Dissenter, a Shadowproof newsletter

    In 2019, longtime national security journalist William Arkin appeared on “Democracy Now!” and spoke out against liberals in the United States who believed the FBI (and CIA) could save the country from President Donald Trump.

    “The FBI, in particular, has a deplorable record in American society, from Martin Luther King and the peace movements of the 1960s all the way up through Wen Ho Lee and others who have been persecuted by the FBI,” Arkin stated. “And there’s no real evidence that the FBI is that competent of an institution to begin with in terms of even pursuing the prosecutions that it’s pursuing.”

    “But yet we lionize them. We hold them up on a pedestal, that somehow they are the truth-tellers, that they’re the ones who are getting to the bottom of things, when there’s just no evidence that that’s the case,” Arkin added.

    Arkin has a proven record of speaking out against perpetual war and challenging the immense power of the national security state. He co-authored the 2011 book, Top Secret America: The Rise of the American Security State and also wrote the book American Coup, which he describes as documenting the “creeping fascism of homeland security.”

    When Arkin appeared on “Democracy Now!”, he had just left NBC News and circulated a letter that criticized the media organization for “emulating” the national security state in the era of Trump.

    I’d argue that under Trump, the national security establishment not only hasn’t missed a beat but indeed has gained dangerous strength. Now it is ever more autonomous and practically impervious to criticism. I’d also argue, ever so gingerly, that NBC has become somewhat lost in its own verve, proxies of boring moderation and conventional wisdom, defender of the government against Trump, cheerleader for open and subtle threat mongering, in love with procedure and protocol over all else (including results). I accept that there’s a lot to report here, but I’m more worried about how much we are missing. Hence my desire to take a step back and think why so little changes with regard to America’s wars.

    I recount all of the above to show you why I setup an interview with Arkin about the Justice Department and FBI’s handling of the investigation into Trump and his possession of documents at Mar-a-Lago. He has the credibility to offer important insights into what pursuing an Espionage Act prosecution against a former US president may mean for the United States.

    Arkin is currently the senior editor for intelligence at Newsweek. He has written multiple reports related to the Justice Department’s investigation into former President Donald Trump’s mishandling of classified information. His reporting revealed that the FBI had an informant, who had knowledge of what documents Trump had in his possession and where they were located. He later reported more details on Trump’s “private stash” of documents.

    In the 30-minute interview, which was recorded on August 19, Arkin outlines the timeline of events, what the DOJ investigation may mean for Trump’s potential 2024 presidential campaign, and why he believes the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago has sparked one of the biggest political disasters in the history of the bureau.

    *Below is a transcript of the interview with minor edits to improve clarity.

    WILLIAM ARKIN: It’s important to just talk about the background of what happened at Mar-a-Lago because this has been going on since Trump left office. So even though most people were not aware, there’s been a battle between the Trump camp and the National Archives since January 2021 about this whole question of what records the Trump administration had taken with them from the White House.

    If you talk to Trump people, they’ll tell you, oh, we had such a rushed departure—and of course the reason is because Donald Trump did not accept the terms of the election—that we by mistake took boxes to Mar-a-Lago. Indeed, in January of this year the Trump camp delivered 15 boxes of presidential records to the National Archives, and it was in the course of that delivery that I think the National Archives came to see that these were not complete sets of records, that there were a lot of presidential records which were still being held by the Trump camp, and they requested additional records.

    And basically this has been going on now since January 2022 this year and that culminated by a grand jury subpoena, which was delivered to the Trump camp in the end of May, and that subpoena basically said here are specific documents and types of documents that we would like you to return and the next step essentially was that three FBI agents and a Justice Department official visited Mar-a-Lago on June 3, and they retrieved some documents. But they also in the process of that inspected the storage room at Mar-a-Lago, where Trump was keeping his presidential materials and recognized that there were additional materials with additional classified information.

    Now the FBI knew that there were additional materials. They asked the Trump [camp] to put better locks on the door of the storage room. They knew that they were there. So when the search occurred on August 8, it was a surprise to most people. Maybe not so much to the people who had been following this back and forth. But it does raise the question as to whether or not what Merrick Garland, the attorney general says, is true, which is did they in fact exhaust all the possibilities for getting the additional documents.

    Now we know that they took 27 boxes of documents from Mar-a-Lago last week. So that’s a total of 42 boxes of documents, and the 27 boxes of documents that they took under this search warrant included 11 sets of classified documents and an additional leather box that they had retrieved that contained top secret sensitive compartmented information.

    Mar-a-Lago (Photo: Government Accountability Office)

    I reported earlier last week that the FBI had a confidential human source inside the Trump camp that essentially let them on to the fact that Donald Trump was secreting additional documents away. And at this point based upon my reporting, it looks like the FBI had two targets in their raid on Mar-a-Lago. One was to retrieve the additional boxes that they knew were in the storage room, and two was to find this stash of documents that Donald Trump was evidently segregating from those 27 boxes, which the FBI concluded as part of their investigation that Donald Trump had no intention of returning.

    I wouldn’t say that the search at Mar-a-Lago was a cover for the fact that they knew that Donald Trump had additional material, but Donald Trump himself has given us clues to the fact that there were two separate searches. Because we know that the storage room was entered. We know that they entered the bedroom in the presidential office. Donald Trump is the one who said that they broke into his personal safe. And in fact when the FBI returned Donald Trump’s passports earlier this week, it was evident that they had gotten them from somewhere that wasn’t the storage room. It pretty much confirmed what Donald Trump had claimed—that his personal safe had been broken into.

    It’s kind of a game of chicken between the FBI and the Trump camp. Right, Donald Trump can’t say, oh, I was secreting away particular documents, and that’s what the FBI is really going after. He’s just going to go on this straight I’ve-been-politically-persecuted line, and that’s what he’s going to stick with. And of course once the Trump camp gets their act together and figures out what they’re actually going to say, the reality is they’re probably going to argue, why did [the FBI] execute the search warrant at all because we were cooperating with the National Archives? And if they had asked us for additional boxes, we would have returned them.

    So, yes, it’s true that Trump has kind of argued they were my private papers. They weren’t belonging to the National Archives. But it’s sort of irrelevant because if you don’t consider what it was that the FBI really going after, you wouldn’t understand why they would have thought it necessary to execute this extraordinary and unprecedented of a personal residence of a former president, which has never been done in our history.

    If you understand that the FBI obviously felt that Donald Trump was not planning to return everything, that they knew from their confidential human source and their investigation that it existed (and more or less where it existed), and that they were concerned that Donald Trump would weaponize that material. And that could be using it for monetary gain or using it as part of his election efforts. We don’t really know the answer there.

    But if you consider all of those, then the search begins to make some sense, even though I think politically it’s been a disaster for the FBI, and as much as the mainstream might be rallying around the FBI and saying, oh, poor FBI, the truth of the matter is that it seems like this is another naive investigation on the part of the FBI and Justice Department that thinks that because we have all of the paperwork in order that it makes sense to execute this but I think in fact it’s probably strengthened Donald Trump’s hand within the Republican Party and also within the electorate, who feel like in fact after six years of investigations if they haven’t indicted him yet that it is persecution.

    And there’s some validity to that. Let’s just imagine for a moment that Bernie Sanders was president, and that the FBI was going after him for six years. I mean people would be screaming bloody murder. Either indict him or stop it. And so I imagine in the coming weeks we are either going to see Donald Trump indicted finally for a peripheral question, which is possession of these documents. Not the content of the documents, but possession of them.

    Or we’re going to see a political disaster in the making, which is that everyone is going to rally behind Donald Trump within the Republican camp and basically say this is an outrageous act on the part of the Biden administration, even though I believe that it didn’t have political overtones to it or undertones to it. That they inadvertently stepped into something like the Mueller investigation or like Comey talking about Hillary Clinton’s emails, where they just didn’t understand what the political fallout of their actions were going to be.

    FBI Director Christopher Wray (Photo: Federal Bureau of Investigation)

    KEVIN GOSZTOLA: What is your assessment of the divisions or factions or the nature of the FBI or Justice Department—not necessarily just right now but in the FBI or Justice Department up to this moment—and their relationship to Donald Trump?

    Because I think it’s so important for people to know the deeper context, and since you’ve done this reporting on administrations for so long, how extraordinary it was that they had such a different posture to the president than some of the more recent previous presidents in history. Because this relationship is completely unlike Obama. It’s completely unlike George W. Bush. It’s completely unlike what we have with Joe Biden. There’s no reason for antagonism to exist between those prior presidents.

    ARKIN: Well, we’ve never had a Donald Trump before. That’s the most important ingredient here. The FBI has always been a political organization, though it would like to portray itself as not one. During the civil rights era or during the communist scare of the 1950s or doing the period of time where it was basically persecuting those who were against the war in Vietnam, etc, the FBI has always hewed in the direction of being a right-wing institution with an antagonism towards the left.

    With Donald Trump, the shift began to be apparent that the FBI, in fact, had a lot of people within its ranks who were anti-Trump. In fact, the long bipartisan era of the FBI was over. We live in a topsy-turvy world where the Rachel Maddows of the world are cheering the FBI on and the right-wing hates them. That’s unprecedented in modern history, that the left somehow thinks that the CIA and FBI are going to protect us from Donald Trump rather than the right [supporting these agencies]. Even like the left is quasi-cheerleaders for perpetual war and for the continuation of the war in Syria and for the war in Ukraine, etc. Whereas the right is much more of a traditional American isolationist entity.

    Look, Donald Trump isn’t smart enough to articulate and/or represent the actual currents, which exist within American society, but there are currents that exist within American society. It’s Washington DC, and the New York bubble and the LA bubble versus the rest of the country, or urban versus rural. Whatever way you want to describe it. Donald Trump was elected because of that divide. Because of that increasing divide between officialdom and the rest of the American population.

    So the FBI, which has always been seen in the mainstream’s eyes as being a neutral party, became a very political party. They just did. They became a political party. And at the same time that Barack Obama was being criticized during the 2016 presidential election cycle for not doing about the accusations vis a vis Russian collusion and Russian intervention—Obama said, well, I’m not going to do more because I don’t want to put my finger on the scale of the election. It’s up to the American people to decide who is the next president.

    But they wanted the FBI to put their finger on the scale, and that was what happened when Comey had a press conference right prior to the election and stated Hillary [Clinton] broke the law but we’re not going to indict her. That just pissed everybody off on both sides, but most importantly, what it did was introduce the idea that Hillary Clinton was a lawbreaker and hadn’t been held accountable whereas Donald Trump was being accused of being lawbreaker and people were assuming that he was guilty.

    I’m sorry. I live in a country where I still believe innocent until proven guilty. Donald Trump is innocent. He’s innocent of claims of collusion. He’s innocent of claims of cooperation. He’s innocent of all these claims until he is proven guilty. So while we might be comfortable in the mainstream saying Donald Trump’s lies about the election—I mean, listen to NPR. They say it in that way, and it should be Donald Trump’s claims about the election. By saying the word lies, you are already declaring what your political position is. That’s not impartial journalism as I understand it to be.

    So Donald Trump is innocent until proven guilty, and now this search warrant has been executed. I hope as a citizen that either the Justice Department brings charges against Donald Trump or it starts to reevaluate whether it continues to spend its resources and our money in going after this guy.

    GOSZTOLA:     Let me ask you a few specific questions. Do you actually believe that this is a mistake on Donald Trump’s part that he has these boxes? I seem to get from the way you are setting up the timeline that that seems like a very convenient excuse at this hour. Have you seen any evidence that they really made this mistake with this many boxes of documents?

    ARKIN: I mean, Melania’s shoes might have taken 42 boxes themselves. We don’t know how many boxes were actually removed from the White House in that six-hour period on January 20.  But I think it’s important that you think because Donald Trump screwed up and didn’t have a normal transition and boxes ended up going to Mar-a-Lago that shouldn’t have gone to Mar-a-Lago, it doesn’t mean it wasn’t Donald Trump’s fault. I mean, this is his trick, right? They were sent by mistake, but if it had been a normal transition, they wouldn’t have been sent by mistake.

    You have to ultimately say that this falls on Donald Trump in terms of what direction was given to the White House staff and his subordinates in terms of preparing the White House for the Biden administration to come into the office. So, yes, I can see that the documents might have ended up in Mar-a-Lago by mistake, but the mistake is that Donald Trump didn’t accept the results of the election and didn’t facilitate an ordinary transition.

    Why it’s so important then to see the decision-making on the part of the FBI and the Justice Department about this extraordinary search is that it obviously has to be about something bigger than just run-of-the-mill secrets. And I know that some people will think, well wait a minute? Top secret documents are documents that could cause exceptionally grave damage to the United States. But I’ve been in this business a long time, and I also am a former intelligence officer in the US military, and I can tell you there’s a heckuva lot of top secret documents that have no meaning outside of just the source of information that is just describing what we know.

    A lot of this [information] is classified because of the possibility that its release would divulge intelligence sources and methods, and some of those intelligence sources and methods, such as our satellite capabilities, are well-known anyhow. But I understand that people have this idea that somehow Donald Trump stole secrets, when I’m kind of doubtful that there was really much material that was in there that was intentional or detrimental to US national security in a specific way.

    However, we know that Donald Trump during his entire presidency took documents to his residence, asked for copies of documents, ripped pages out of documents that were delivered to him, squirreled away documents that were interesting to him, and those documents dealt with everything from Russiagate and the political travails of Donald Trump to nuclear capabilities of Iran and North Korea and possibly even Russia and China. So we know that it’s a wide variety of documents—things that Donald Trump found interesting. That’s basically this leather box or this separate stash of documents that were in his personal safe, and that was really the focus.

    I think in the end people will be surprised that it’s not really an argument about the sensitivity of the documents per se. It’s just about the documents. It’s just about the documents. They don’t need to argue that the documents are highly classified or whatever. That’s terminology that we use in the news media. And it’s kind of bullshit.

    If Donald Trump just had a bunch of personal letters that belonged to the National Archives under the Presidential Records Act, they would still be making the same arguments as to why we need to retrieve those letters from the Trump camp. So I think it was really only in the case of documents that they thought that Donald Trump had personally segregated—and might use in the future, that were the ones that they were concerned about.

    Photo: Trump White House Archives

    GOSZTOLA: That’s the problem, right? We get this from your reporting. It does a good job of communicating this. It doesn’t seem like the FBI is moved to conduct the search just because Donald Trump has [these boxes]. Because we see the ongoing conversations with representatives over returning the boxes. But there’s something about the stash. There’s some kind of fear that they have that he’s going to do something with the documents that he has privately, and obviously, we’re at an important point in time.

    There’s a Trump circus, but there’s also an election circus. We are dominated from 2023 to November 2024 will be primaries and general electon, wall-to-wall media. And you know this better than anyone having survived alongside it—how much elections dominate and overshadow important national security journalism and other stories that should be given attention rather than this horse race coverage.

    It’s hard not to think based upon what you’ve been reporting that there is some motivation that, okay, we have a small window of time to do this before Donald Trump might start his campaign. And also these documents, as your sources told you, [Trump] is going to weaponize this information.

    So I think it’s worth asking you what your assessment is of the Russiagate counter-investigation. That is the investigation into the people who were investigating Donald Trump and the abuses of power that they were alleged to have committed by people who were empowered, like Durham, to investigate these people and what was happening. There have been some things related to Carter Page, and there’s been some isolated examples. [The Trump camp has] tried to craft a narrative that people within these institutions were trying to, as they would put it, take down Donald Trump. That’s how they present it to the American people.

    If the FBI is going in there to take this stash of documents, and it is proven out that there are documents related to the Russia investigation that Donald Trump was keeping because he thought they exonerated him or whatever, that seems pretty bad as far as the FBI and the idea that it’s supposed to be a neutral institution. I mean, obviously, historically it’s always acted politically. But if the FBI is going above and beyond to seem like it’s not a political organization, how do you green light a search when it is going to be so patently obvious later that you are taking this step?

    ARKIN: Let’s talk about it in the context of 2024. First of all, we have to understand that what was been revealed as result of the 2016 election and Russiagate is that there was FBI wrongdoing. Whether you consider minor or not, the truth of the matter is that we’ve had FBI agents go to jail already for falsifying FISA applications, for using official email and text to campaign against Donald Trump as a candidate, and even people who were involved in the investigations who are supposed to be neutral parties essentially declaring that they are anti-Trump.

    I don’t take from that that it’s big or little. I don’t want to quibble about whether or not the FBI is or isn’t pro- anti-Trump, but what we see is they make mistakes. Tons of them. This is not a perfect institution. We should stop seeing it as a perfect institution.

    If you understand that this is a flawed institution, where the lawyers are saying, well, you can do this, you can do that, and you can do this and you can do that, and now the FBI has to decide are we publicly going to be able to do this, that the reality in the end is the FBI seems to operate on the idea that if the paperwork is immaculate that the political consequences are going to be neutral. That’s where the FBI has gotten it wrong over and over again. The paperwork can be immaculate, and yet they can be doing exactly wrong thing politically.

    If I’m a smart Justice Department official, I’m going to say we got to let the chips fall where they may. If the raid on Mar-a-Lago helps Donald Trump, we still have to do what’s legally correct to do. Now you might ask, well, did they exhaust all the possibilities in talking to the Trump camp? Did they absolutely have to do this? What evidence did they have that Donald Trump was going to weaponize the information? Was there some imminent reason for them to have to do it now? Etc etc.

    In the end, if I’m a Justice Department official appearing before the news media, I might answer every question that I understand that you are arguing the political consequences, but our job is to enforce the law. And Donald Trump was breaking the law, and we needed to enforce the law and it took us this long to get to the place where it was obvious that Donald Trump was not going to return the material that he had in his possession.

    All of this is going to come out in the coming weeks or months, but whether or not it is going to benefit Donald Trump in this election cycle, and then specifically, in 2024, we’ll have to see. I’m fearful that the effect of this is going to be that more people will lose respect for the government. More people will see Washington as persecuting Donald Trump, and that the Biden administration and the Biden Justice Department are not going to be able to get off that merry-go-round and that’s going to add to the Trump camp’s constituency.

    We already see that prominent Republicans from all walks of life except for two people on the planet (Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger) have all rallied behind Donald Trump on this issue. I would say that this is perhaps one of the largest crises in the FBI’s history. They may not understand it themselves. They may have made mistakes here in what they did, and they may have been legally justified to do what they did. But politically I believe it will be seen as a disaster.

    GOSZTOLA: Finally I want to put to you the issue of the Espionage Act being part of the conversation. A lot of my work has been watching and monitoring and covering the developments in individual Espionage Act prosecutions over the last decade-plus. Those individuals and their attorneys would also say that they were charged for materials that would not cause exceptionally grave damage, and yet the book was thrown thrown at them and they had their lives ruined and their careers ended. So why shouldn’t the same be true for Donald Trump?

    I think it presents a crisis. I think it’s part of this crisis of the liberals and the Democratic Party establishment really feeling strongly about pushing forward with whatever the Justice Department is about to do. What’s your sense of the risk if Donald Trump were to be charged with violating the Espionage Act?

    You’re talking to people about the potential charges that could be brought. Is this even a distinct possibility? You said unlawful possession, which can be within that law. But there are other laws. Do you think it would be a more minor law to keep the Espionage Act out of the conversation?

    ARKIN: We now know that the Espionage Act was only being referenced because of section 793(d) of the Espionage Act, which is an area of the Espionage Act that deals with if you are in possession of classified documents and the federal government asks you to return them, and you don’t return them, you’re in violation of 793(d) of the Espionage Act.

    It’s called the Espionage Act, what it’s been called since 1917, but it also happens to be just one of a handful of laws that deal with security classification. The rest of the security classification system exists under executive order. That’s why Donald Trump and his people are arguing that he declassified everything. But it’s not altogether true. Some elements of classified information do fall under statute, such as atomic energy information or information about the identities of CIA sources, etc. Those fall under statute.

    So it’s unfortunate that the Espionage Act is the place where this is contained, this provision about returning classified material in your possession, because it’s abused in a way because we don’t have modern legislation. Perhaps one of the solutions will be that we will finally have a law passed, which will specify what is classified and unclassified information and what is the modern security classification system and where are the authorities and what’s against the law and what’s not against the law.

    That does influence Julian Assange’s problems in the courts. It influences other whistleblowers who have been charged with the Espionage Act, and even if they were not guilty of espionage, as we think of it, they are charged under the Espionage Act. So we need to clean this up because I don’t think that we have a law in a proper way that really specifies what the true state of play is here.

    If I support Julian Assange, I want Donald Trump to spur along a better articulation of what is the actual purpose of the Espionage Act. To have say for instance Julian Assange, a foreign national charged under the Espionage Act—espionage against who? If he committed espionage against Australia, then he should be charged in his own country of his nationality.

    In some ways, if I’m a supporter of Julian Assange, I want to see that Donald Trump helps to clarify what is this law and what it can really be used for. Because in the cases of [Chelsea] Manning, in the cases of Tom Drake, in the case of Julian Assange, I think it’s been misapplied. And in the case of journalism, there have been attempts at various times within our recent past going back to the Reagan administration, where the federal government has sought to use the Espionage Act as a way of suppressing a free press.

    Again, if I’m really interested in the future, I would want to see Congress step in finally and establish an omnibus law that deals with security classification in this country. That’s more important than Donald Trump.

    The post Interview With National Security Journalist William Arkin: FBI Faces Brewing Political Disaster After Mar-a-Lago Raid appeared first on Shadowproof.

    This post was originally published on Shadowproof.

  • CIA, Pompeo Sued For Allegedly Spying On US Attorneys And Journalists Who Met With Assange

    This article was originally published at our reader-supported newsletter, The Dissenter. Become an annual paid subscriber to help us continue our independent journalism.

    A group of journalists and lawyers, who visited WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange while he was living under political asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy, sued the CIA and former CIA director Mike Pompeo. They allege that the agency under Pompeo spied on them in violation of their privacy rights.

    Undercover Global S.L., a private security company in Spain, and the company’s director David Morales are also named as defendants. UC Global ramped up surveillance against Assange and shared audio and video footage from the embassy with “American intelligence.”

    “The United States Constitution shields American citizens from US government overreach even when the activities take place in a foreign embassy in a foreign country. Visitors who are lawyers, journalists and doctors frequently carry confidential information in their devices,” declared Richard Roth, who is the lead attorney representing the plaintiffs.

    “They had a reasonable expectation that the security guards at the Ecuadorian embassy in London would not be US government spies charged with delivering copies of their electronics to the CIA,” Roth added.

    Two of the plaintiffs are attorneys who have represented Assange—Margaret Rather Kunstler, a civil rights activist and human rights attorney, and Deborah Hrbek, a media lawyer.

    The other two plaintiffs are journalists Charles Glass and John Goetz, who worked for Der Spiegel when the German media organization first partnered with WikiLeaks to publish documents on the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.

    The lawsuit comes around two months after United Kingdom Home Secretary Priti Patel approved the US extradition request against Assange. His legal team has submitted two separate appeals in the UK courts, yet it is increasingly evident that Assange could be flown to the US to face Espionage Act charges that civil liberties, human rights, and press freedom organizations around the world have condemned.

    According to the complaint [PDF] filed in a US court in the Southern District of New York, Glass, Goetz, Hrbek, and Kunstler, like all visitors, were required to “surrender” their electronic devices to UC Global employees hired by Ecuador to provide security for the embassy. What they did not know is that UC Global “copied the information stored on the devices” and allegedly shared the information with the CIA. Pompeo allegedly authorized and approved the action.

    Security required plaintiffs to leave their devices with them, which contained “confidential and privileged information about their sources or clients. This information was copied and allegedly shared with the CIA.

    It is estimated that “well over 100 American citizens who visited Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy” had their privacy rights violated. This includes attorneys who were there to represent Assange, journalists who traveled to interview him, and even doctors who came to the embassy to assess and treat his deteriorating health. Their privileged communications stored on electronic devices were compromised.

    The CIA-backed spying operation began around January 2017 and lasted until UC Global’s contract was terminated around April 2018. By that time, the Justice Department under President Donald Trump already had a sealed indictment against Assange.

    Pompeo allegedly approved the placement of hidden microphones in new cameras at the embassy. He allegedly approved bugging the embassy with hidden microphones. He allegedly signed off on a plan to allow the CIA to “observe and listen to Assange’s daily activities at the embassy.”

    Also, the complaint claims Pompeo approved the copying of visitors’ passports, “including pages with stamps and visas.” He ensured that all “computers, laptops, mobile phones, recording devices, and other electronics brought into the embassy,” were “seized, dismantled, imaged, photographed, and digitized.” This included the collection of IMEI and SIM codes from visitors’ phones.

    Morales did not speak very good English, yet as further evidence that UC Global was working for the CIA, the complaint notes that UC Global employees were given “written technology instructions” for live streaming and audio associated with the surveillance” that were in “perfect English.”

    There was an “external streaming access point” for “American intelligence” sent from the “Venetian Hotel,” or the Las Vegas Sands, the complaint asserts.

    Around January 2017, Morales traveled to the Shooting, Hunting, and Outdoor (SHOT) convention at Las Vegas Sands. The convention was an expo for the private security industry. Security personnel for Las Vegas Sands spoke with Morales and reportedly recruited Morales to spy on Assange for the CIA.

    When Morales returned to Spain, at least one whistleblower from UC Global has said Morales told employees the company was now “in the big league,” and they would be working for the “dark side.” He indicated “the Americans” would help UC Global secure major contracts throughout the world.

    The complaint says former UC Global employees believe the “deal included selling information obtained through the illegal surveillance of Assange to the CIA.”

    Additionally, the complaint claims that CIA handlers in the US were collecting recordings from Morales either through delivery to Las Vegas, Washington, DC, or New York or through transfers on an FTP server at UC Global offices that gave CIA personnel external access to the material.Tip Jar

    Reporting from the Spanish newspaper El País previously corroborated many of the claims in the complaint. Their journalism was based upon primary source materials shared with them by whistleblowing UC Global employees.

    Some of these revelations were part of Assange’s challenge to the US extradition request, but a UK magistrates’ court dismissed the allegations as irrelevant to the indictment from the US Justice Department.

    In September 2021, Yahoo! News published a bombshell report on “secret war plans” against Assange that involved proposals for kidnapping and assassinating Assange after Pompeo became obsessed with the WikiLeaks founder following the media organization’s publication of CIA hacking materials that became known as the “Vault 7” materials.

    Pompeo labeled the organization a “non-state hostile intelligence agency,” and in April 2017, he made it the focus of his first speech as CIA director. “The one thing [current] whistleblowers don’t need is a publisher,” since the internet already enables enough sharing of information.

    During the speech, Pompeo called Assange a “coward,” a “fraud,” and a “narcissist.” He pledged to pursue a “long term” campaign to neutralize WikiLeaks.

    “Assange remained in the embassy in London for 7 years, believing he would face extradition to the US if he left the building,” stated Deborah Hrbek. “He was pilloried as a paranoid narcissist for this belief. As it turns out, he was right.”

    The lawsuit is a Bivens action, which stems from a precedent-setting case that established the ability of US citizens to sue US government officials.

    US courts have been historically reluctant to allow plaintiffs to pursue damages, especially if it involves sensitive national security or foreign policy matters.

    The post CIA, Pompeo Sued For Allegedly Spying On US Attorneys And Journalists Who Met With Assange appeared first on Shadowproof.

    This post was originally published on Shadowproof.

  • Justice Department Unlikely To Charge Trump With Violating The Espionage Act

    This article was funded by paid subscribers of The Dissenter Newsletter. Become an annual paid subscriber to help us continue our independent journalism.

    Mary McCord, who was the chief of the United States Justice Department’s national security division under President Barack Obama, said that former President Donald Trump may have violated the Espionage Act.

    On the “Skullduggery” podcast from Yahoo! News, McCord contended that provisions in the World War 1-era law, which has been applied to the mishandling of classified information, potentially covers what Trump allegedly did—”removing documents from their proper place,” losing or stealing information, and other acts of “gross negligence.”

    But the Espionage Act is part of the two-tiered US justice system. Only lower-level federal government employees or contractors are punished with Espionage Act charges. High-ranking officials are able to use their status to avoid charges that would turn them into convicted felons.

    It is, however, possible that the FBI invoked provisions of the Espionage Act to secure a warrant to search Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home and reclaim control of classified documents.

    A grand jury subpoena for “sensitive documents” was issued to Trump in the spring, according to NBC News. The subpoena related to documents that Trump’s legal team discussed with Justice Department officials around that same time.

    The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) coordinated with Trump representatives in 2021, and in January 2022, 15 boxes were transferred to the National Archives. Some of the records contained classified information so NARA contacted the Justice Department [PDF].

    FBI agents raided Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home on August 8, and they reportedly retrieved at least 10 boxes of documents. Some of those files allegedly contain classified information. The fact that those boxes were not turned over when Trump representatives coordinated with NARA likely factored into the FBI’s decision to deploy agents to reclaim the documents.

    The Justice Department routinely investigates and prosecutes US government employees and contractors who take classified information and try to keep the records in their home. Such individuals are typically charged with “unauthorized possession” or the “willful retention” of “national defense information.”

    On May 18, 2021, Kendra Kingsbury, a 48 year-old FBI intelligence analyst who had a top secret security clearance, was charged [PDF] with willfully retaining national defense information in violation of the Espionage Act. Between June 2004 and December 2017, she allegedly took documents on FBI counterterrorism operations as well as CIA documents on al Qaida in Africa, which she kept at her home in Dodge City, Kansas.

    CIA contractor Reynaldo Regis pled guilty to retaining classified information on May 11, 2018. He was accused of copying classified information into personal notebooks. FBI agents found “approximately 60 notebooks containing classified information” when they searched his Maryland home.

    Harold Martin was a Defense Department contractor, who was similarly charged with violating the Espionage Act on February 8, 2017 [PDF]. During the span of two decades, Martin took digital and hard copies of NSA documents, US Cyber Command documents, and a CIA document on foreign intelligence collection. They were kept in his Maryland home and his vehicle.

    Mohan Nirala pled guilty on September 16, 2016, to willfully retaining national defense information and violating the Espionage Act. He was an imagery scientist at the US National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA). FBI agents found more than 20 secret and top secret documents at his home in Maryland.

    Working as a computer systems administrator at Soto Cano Air Base in Honduras, Chris Glenn faced Espionage Act charges in 2014 after the FBI found that he had encrypted files from the Defense Department and US Southern Command, which he kept on an “internet-accessible network storage device located in his residence in Honduras.”

    Mark Unkenholz was an NSA employee in Maryland, who was part of an office that worked with industry partners. On March 29, 2022, he was accused of willfully retaining national defense information and violating the Espionage Act in his personal email account.

    As an NSA employee, Unkenholz did not have physical copies of the records in his home. He possessed the files by having the documents in his personal email, and the FBI learned of the retention because he sent the documents to a person at a company who was not authorized to receive the information. (Note: Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had classified information on her private email server that created an “increased risk of unauthorized disclosure.”)

    Then there is the case of the “collector of rare documents.” In 2012, Secrecy News reported that James Hitselberger, a Navy contract linguist in Bahrain, was charged with violating the Espionage Act because he had a habit of taking classified documents to his “living quarters” to read. The Hoover Institution at Stanford University had a Hitselberger collection that contained “political posters and leaflets that he gathered in pre-revolutionary Iran.”

    FBI agents uncovered classified documents in Hitselberger’s possession as well as his collection at the Hoover Institution.

    In a rare event, David Petraeus, who was a CIA director and Pentagon chief, faced accusations of unlawfully retaining national defense information when he kept eight “Black Books” in his home [PDF]. The books contained highly classified information with the “identities of covert officers, war strategy, intelligence capabilities and mechanisms, diplomatic discussions, quotes and deliberative discussions from high-level National Security Council meetings,” and notes from discussions with President Barack Obama.

    Petraeus later shared the Black Books with Paula Broadwell, who he had an affair with while she was writing a biography, All In: The Education of General David Petraeus.

    Because Petraeus was a former high-ranking official and a revered US military general in Washington, his attorneys were able to convince the Justice Department to not charge him with violating the Espionage Act.

    Petraeus was charged in 2015 with the misdemeanor offense of “unauthorized removal and retention of classified material,” which is part of the criminal code for public officers and employees.

    None of the individuals charged with retaining or possessing information unlawfully had the same influence or power as Petraeus or Trump. They were lower class people that were unable to stop the Justice Department from treating them like spies.

    Trump’s legal team should be able to learn from Petraeus’ legal team and negotiate with Justice Department behind closed doors so he is not charged with violating the Espionage Act (if the Justice Department under Attorney General Merrick Garland is even prepared to charge him with a crime).

    Therefore, it will be stunning if the Justice Department pursues an Espionage Act prosecution. No matter what the FBI uncovers and accuses Trump of doing with classified documents, he is still a former US president.

    And regardless of the ultimate outcome, the documents that were at Mar-a-Lago belong to the public, not Donald Trump.

    The post Justice Department Unlikely To Charge Trump With Violating The Espionage Act appeared first on Shadowproof.

    This post was originally published on Shadowproof.

  • Protest Song Of The Week: ‘No More Wars’ By Mádé Kuti

    Originally published at Ongoing History of Protest Music

    In 2021, Mádé Kuti built upon the legacy of his father Femi and legendary grandfather Fela with
    the release of his debut album “For(e)ward.”

    The album was released alongside Femi’s eleventh full-length album “Stop The Hate” as part of the aptly titled double album “Legacy +.”

    After completion of a United States tour with his father, Mádé released his latest single “No More Wars,” featuring powerhouse vocals and expert backing from his newly formed band The Movement.

    The tune promotes the need to re-evaluate values and to make a conscious effort to pursue peace, and the stirring Afrobeat anthem works on both a personal and political level.

    “‘No More Wars’ is entirely about temper, control, and focus,” Mádé said. “It’s about experiences I’ve had that taught me to reflect intentionally before I resort to violent acts.”

    “The lyrics are inspired by my father’s consistency in following his path despite dealing with an overwhelming amount of harsh, untrue, and deliberately cruel people inside and outside of his circle,” Mádé added.

    We live in a world that demands righteous indignation, but there is a danger that we may be consumed by anger. When that danger arises, we can remind ourselves of the lyrical refrain that recommends we how to deal with negative energy.

    “So when dem come with dem trouble
    All the negativity dem sabi [they know]
    So when dem come with dem energy
    Close your ears and sing.”

    Listen to Mádé Kuti’s “No More Wars”:

    The post Protest Song Of The Week: ‘No More Wars’ By Mádé Kuti appeared first on Shadowproof.

    This post was originally published on Shadowproof.

  • FBI Targets Black Liberation Activists, Claims Russia Used Them As Pawns To Spread Propaganda 

    The Federal Bureau of Investigation in the United States raided the offices and homes of members of the African People’s Socialist Party (APSP) and the International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement.

    At 5 am in the morning on July 29, FBI agents in St. Louis, Missouri, targeted the Uhuru Solidarity Center and the homes of 80 year-old APSP founder Omali Yeshitela and the African People’s Solidarity Committee chair Penny Hess. FBI agents simultaneously busted into the Uhuru House and the group’s radio station Black Power 96.3 LFM in St. Petersburg, Florida.

    FBI agents told Yeshitela, the founder of the APSP, that they raided his home in north St. Louis because they had indicted a Russian national named Aleksandr Ionov.

    Ionov is a Moscow resident who the U.S. Justice Department claims engaged in a campaign to “influence” U.S. political groups and “interfere” in US elections. He founded a group called the Anti-Globalization Movement of Russia that hosted international solidarity conferences, which Yeshitela attended.

    No one allegedly connected to Ionov was charged with a crime nor were they issued a grand jury subpoena.

    Members of the Uhuru Movement and various leaders of other solidarity groups condemned the FBI raids as a continuation of the history of attacks on Black activists, like Fred Hampton, Mark Clark, and Marcus Garvey, as part of COINTELPRO under FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover.

    Armed FBI Agents Deploy A Drone And Flash-Bang Grenades

    Uhuru is the Swahili word for freedom or independence, and the Uhuru Movement was founded 50 years ago to complete the Black revolution of the 1960s. Its organizers are involved in the global struggle against white colonialism in the US that goes back centuries. They engage in campaigns for reparations for slavery and education and community development in areas impacted by structural racism. 

    As Yeshitela recalled, he was in his home with his wife and organizer Ona Yeshitela, when FBI agents alerted them to their presence with a loudspeaker. They were instructed to come out of their home with their hands up and nothing in their hands.

    While talking through the loudspeaker, FBI agents set off flash-bang grenades in the neighborhood. They broke a window to the basement.

    Omari led the way down the stairs with his wife following him, and as Ona shared, “This big ol’ drone met me coming down the stairs, like it’s going to attack me.”

    “When I get outside, what I see is that there was an armored vehicle in front of the house. There are combat-clad FBI agents all over the place carrying automatic weapons. They not only are in front of the house. They are occupying the porch and the yard of the neighbors next door. And this is a really poor and economically depressed community what we live in,” Omari said.

    FBI agents handcuffed and detained Omari and Ona. Both were instructed to sit on a curb, but they refused.

    Omari was then told that they apparently had a search warrant related to the indictment of a Russian national and somehow his name and his wife’s name were linked to this person. But FBI agents would not show him a search warrant.

    It became clear to Omari that the FBI agents did not intend to arrest him, and this was all a “big show” for those in the community who were watching.

    Ransacking The Uhuru House And The Group’s Solidarity Center

    Omari told the press the FBI agents seized their cellphones and took all of their devices, computers, and other electronics in their home. They also put tape over a doorbell security camera so his neighbors would not have footage of the raid. 

    FBI agents used a battering ram to bust down the door of the Uhuru House, which is the movement’s office in St. Petersburg, and Omari claimed a 40-year archive on the movement was seized by agents.

    A report from the Associated Press indicated, “Akile Anai, who describes herself as director of agitation and propaganda for the African People’s Socialist Party, said agents searched her car and took her cellphone and laptop computer on Friday in addition to raiding the Uhuru House.”

    The African People’s Solidarity Committee operates out of the solidarity center in south St. Louis. It is the white arm of the Uhuru Movement that goes “behind enemy lines” to enlist support for black liberation in white communities. They have organized for decades.

    “[The FBI] took a battering ram. They also had drones,” when they raided the solidarity center and an apartment above the center, according to Penny Hess, the white chair of the African People’s Solidarity Committee.

    Jesse Nevelsky is the white national chair of the Uhuru Movement, and he lives with his partner in the apartment above the solidarity center. He said local and county police helped the FBI conduct the raid. 

    The FBI put Nevelsky and his partner, who also works for the organization, in handcuffs and moved them out of the building while six or seven FBI agents pointed assault rifles at them.

    “Then they took five and a half to six hours to ransack both the solidarity center and the apartment upstairs and took computers, cellphones, hard drives, files, notebooks, and a whole long list of things,” Nevelsky shared. 

    ‘All The Makings Of A Witch Hunt’

    On September 24, 2010, the FBI raided the homes of 23 antiwar, labor, and international solidarity activists in Chicago, Minneapolis, and other parts of the Midwest. They were issued grand jury subpoenas and informed they were under investigation for “materially supporting” foreign terrorist organizations.

    The FBI targeted the activists for their solidarity work with organizers in Colombia and Palestine. They later learned an undercover FBI agent infiltrated their group and attempted to entrap them. None were ever charged with any crimes.

    Like the raids against the Uhuru Movement, FBI agents seized notebooks, family photos, membership lists for antiwar groups, and other political documents.

    The activists formed the Committee to Stop FBI Repression, and along with the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression in Chicago, they put out a statement condemning the latest FBI raids.

    “We oppose all efforts by the U.S. government to target activists in any progressive movement in this country. We call for an end to investigations, political harassment, and threats against activists and our movements,” the groups declared. 

    “The DOJ is alleging that those raided collaborated with a ‘Russian asset’ to spread ‘Russian propaganda.’ At a time when the US is engaged in an imperialist proxy war with Russia in the Ukraine, these raids have all the makings of a witch hunt.”

    The Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) also put out a statement against the FBI’s “repression and intimidation tactics.”

    “BAP believes that these raids continue the history of state repression directed against Black people in the U.S.,” the group asserted. “This repression now occurs under the guise of opposing ‘adversary’ nations but regardless of how these actions are characterized, Black people still bear the brunt of surveillance and police violence.”

    “The APSP has the right to freely associate with people around the world, to hold any political beliefs it may choose, and to express them without fear of intimidation, persecution, or prosecution,” BAP proclaimed.

    US Justice Department Alleges Russian National ‘Directed’ Uhuru Movement

    APSP founder Omari Yeshitela attended a conference hosted by Aleksandr Ionov’s organization on September 20, 2015, that was called “A Dialogue of Nations: the Right to Self-Determination and the Construction of a Multipolar World.”

    Yeshitela and other Uhuru Movement members are labeled as “unindicted co-conspirators” in the indictment against Ionov. Particularly, it accuses Yeshitela of entering into a partnership with Ionov while knowing he was an agent of the Russian government.

    One of the other “unindicted co-conspirators” in the indictment is Louis J. Marinelli, who was the founder of CalExit, a right-wing campaign in the style of Brexit that called for California to secede from the United States.

    Marinelli, who is white, was previously linked to the Russian government in US news media reports, but the FBI did not raid Marinelli’s home or the homes of any individuals linked to the secession campaign.

    The indictment maintains that Ionov worked with FSB or Russian intelligence officers to “use members of U.S. political groups as foreign agents of Russia within the United States.” He allegedly “recruited members of various political groups within the United States and other countries, including Ukraine, Spain, the United Kingdom, and Ireland, to attend conferences in Russia.” 

    “The purpose of the conferences was to encourage the participating groups to advocate for separating from their home countries,” the indictment further contends. “At these conferences, Ionov entered into partnership with some of the U.S. separatist groups, including groups from Florida and California.”

    “Thereafter, Ionov exercised direction or control over these groups on behalf of the FSB. Ionov also monitored and regularly reported on their activities to the FSB.”

    But Yeshitela repeatedly stated that he had not received any Russian money, and Ionov never “influenced” the agenda of the Uhuru Movement. “We’re 50 years old. The Russians didn’t create us.”

    Kalambayi Andenet, who is the international president of the International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement, was even more pointed in her statement. “Don’t insult our intelligence by saying Russia, China, or anyone will lead the African working class to liberation. The African working class will lead our own struggle.” 

    Earlier this year, after Russia deployed its military forces and launched attacks in Ukraine, Yeshitela said he participated in a webinar with Ionov that was titled, “Ain’t No Russian Ever Called Me A Ni**er.”

    The post FBI Targets Black Liberation Activists, Claims Russia Used Them As Pawns To Spread Propaganda  appeared first on Shadowproof.

    This post was originally published on Shadowproof.

  • Protest Song Of The Week: ‘Soon’ By Steven Keene

    Originally published at Ongoing History of Protest Music

    The veteran New York-based singer-songwriter and folk artist Steven Keene has established a
    reputation for composing timely social critiques.

    Keene’s 2020 album featured the galvanizing title track “Them and Us” as well as the stirring tune “Save Yourself.”

    He recently released his latest single “Soon”, which is his first release since “Them and Us.” With “Soon,” Keene confronts a numb world sleepwalking toward the third World War and climate
    extinction.

    Like many of the best protest tunes, he successfully balances a sense of mourning with a feeling
    of hopefulness.

    “There’s so much hate going on right now. There’s so much discrimination and so much discord,” Keene stated. “It’s just insane the way the world has become. This song confronts that hate. It talks about
    getting back to Earth and protecting the planet.”

    “It talks about bringing up children to be fair, equal, and inclusive. It talks about initiating that ripple of change that will lead to the inevitability of a better world…someday soon,” he added.

    Keene continued, “Everybody can interpret the song in their own way. But I think it’s a pretty easy read because it’s really just about hope. I believe strongly that it’s going to happen; it’s just not happening
    right now.”

    “It may not be tomorrow, but it’s gonna happen, so look what we have to look forward to on this planet. Everybody’s gonna align one day and feel the same way about helping, about not discriminating against race, religion, or sexual preference. One day we’re gonna get there.”

    That message of optimism is summed up well in the following lyrics: “Soon, I will return to you. That day is close. That day is soon.”

    Watch or listen to Steven Keene’s “Soon”:

    The post Protest Song Of The Week: ‘Soon’ By Steven Keene appeared first on Shadowproof.

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  • Jury Finds Former CIA Programmer Guilty Of Leaking CIA Hacking Materials To WikiLeaks

    The following article originally appeared as part of The Dissenter Newsletter. Support independent journalism and become a monthly subscriber.

    A federal jury in New York convicted former CIA employee Joshua Schulte of violating the Espionage Act when he allegedly released materials on the CIA’s hacking capabilities to WikiLeaks.

    This was the second trial against Schulte. In March 2020, his first trial ended in a mistrial on several Espionage Act charges, but he was found guilty of contempt of court and lying to the FBI.

    Unlike the first trial, Schulte represented himself and argued his case. He again maintained he was not the source of the leaks published by WikiLeaks.

    The jury deliberated for nearly three days before announcing a verdict. Judge Jesse M. Furman in the Southern District of New York did not schedule a sentencing date because there are other charges pending against Schulte.

    Known as the “Vault 7” materials, WikiLeaks began releasing documents on March 7, 2017. They came from what WikiLeaks described as an “isolated, high-security network situated inside the CIA’s Center for Cyber Intelligence.”

    Documents revealed how the CIA could target iPhones, Androids, and Samsung TVs and convert the devices’ microphones into bugs used to spy on targeted persons. Malware was also developed to infect Microsoft Windows users, and the CIA was “hoarding” security vulnerabilities in software and hardware that they could use for their covert operations instead of notifying companies that users were at risk of being hacked.

    It was one of the largest leaks of information in the history of CIA and a huge embarrassment for then-CIA Director Mike Pompeo, who responded by labeling WikiLeaks a “non-state hostile intelligence agency” and developing “secret war plans” against the media organization that included kidnapping or even killing WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

    The US government has charged Assange with violating the Espionage Act, and the UK government authorized his extradition in June.

    Assistant US Attorney Michael D. Lockard asserted that on April 20, 2016, Schulte “stole the entirety of the CIA’s highly sensitive cyber intelligence capabilities.” This occurred just days after the CIA “locked the defendant out of the secure restricted vault-like location on the network.”

    “Shortly after stealing this extraordinarily sensitive intelligence information, the defendant transmitted those backups to WikiLeaks, knowing full well that WikiLeaks would put it up on the internet,” Lockard argued. “In the weeks following this break-in, the defendant took every step he would need to take in order to transmit those files to WikiLeaks. He downloaded a program that WikiLeaks itself recommends to leakers to use to send stolen data.”

    The program Schulte downloaded was Tor, and it is a widely used privacy tool that was supported through funds from the US State Department. He also downloaded Tails, which can be used to make a computer forget websites, files, passwords, and devices and Wi-Fi networks.

    Lockard said, “[WikiLeaks] tell[s] you to use Tails as an operating system that allows you to hide all of your activity.”

    But like Tor, Tails can be used by anyone who cares about their privacy in an age of digital surveillance.

    Lockard cast Schulte as a disgruntled employee and insisted he was known at the CIA for filing “false complaints,” bragging about his access to the classified computer network, and defying his supervisors.

    “The defendant would like to think of himself as a bad ass, but in fact, he is a ticking time bomb, a nuclear bomb, one that was ready to explode at any perceived provocation or disrespect,” Lockard declared. “And in April and May of 2016, the defendant, the so-called nuclear option, set out to lay waste to the CIA’s cyber program, to prove his superiority, and to punish the people who he believed had wronged him. In carrying out that revenge, he caused enormous damage to this country’s national security.”

    But US prosecutors never presented any forensic evidence to specifically tie Schulte to the publication of the CIA hacking materials on WikiLeaks.

    Schulte acted very confident during his closing argument. He insisted that Lockard was “worried about the lack of evidence” because he had told the jury the “lack of evidence is not evidence of innocence.”

    “He’s worried there was no forensic artifact of a log-in to the Confluence server [the server that allowed employees to share information],” Schulte stated. “He’s worried there was no forensic artifact of a copy command. And he’s worried there was no forensic artifact of the transmission to WikiLeaks. And finally, he’s worried there was no forensic artifact of any communication at all between me and WikiLeaks.  He should be worried ‘because that is reasonable doubt.’”

    As Schulte put it, the CIA “had no idea that its crown jewels” were stolen until the material appeared on WikiLeaks. “The CIA was under pressure—I will say tremendous pressure—to find out what was leaked, how it was leaked, and who leaked it. They wanted to hold someone responsible for the leak, and so they began immediately an investigation, an investigation that focused on me.”

    Schulte left the CIA on “bad terms” in November 2016. According to Schulte, “The lead FBI agent admitted that they had not even interviewed a single CIA witness. They had not even finished seizing the DevLAN network [which stored all the source code for hacking tools], let alone actually reviewed it. They had not conducted any investigation at all, and yet I was already the target of their investigation.”

    “Then, within a week, the FBI concocted an impossible theory that the WikiLeaks crime occurred on March 7, 2016, because it was precisely a year before the leaks. That was a day when many other people were at a manager offsite, and I was left alone in the office with no one to see what I was doing. And so the FBI argued I must have stolen the CIA’s files,” Schulte added.

    Frank Stedman, who worked with Schulte, described why he was known as the “nuclear option.” It had nothing to do with someone prone to leaking classified information. He said Schulte did not care about the process for raising complaints. He would not play nice.

    “If there was, like, a project or something that we didn’t want to do or we thought was a bad idea, the joke was that we could bring him into the meeting and he would tell the customer to their face that they were stupid, that their idea was stupid, that we weren’t going to do it,” Stedman testified.

    It came out in testimony during both trials that at one point Schulte expressed views against leaking and suggested that NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden was a traitor who deserved to be executed.

    Prosecutors attempted to stop Schulte from insisting that there was information from the “Vault 7” materials, which was already publicly available. So the government had not taken steps to protect it, and he could not be guilty of violating the Espionage Act. Judge Furman allowed the argument.

    There was scant coverage of both trials from the US news media. Matthew Russell Lee, who publishes to an independent site called Inner City Press, covered the trials—and all hearings in between.

    Schulte was designated for special administrative measures, or SAMs, by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and Lee successfully won the unsealing of records related to Schulte’s civil complaint against the US government for cruel and inhuman treatment in Metropolitan Correctional Center New York. (The prison shut down as a result of deteriorating conditions in August 2021.)

    Attorney General Merrick Garland has continued to impose the restrictive conditions against Schulte, which prohibit any communications with journalists, require an FBI agent to monitor limited communications with immediate family, and ban him from talking with any inmates.

    While at MCC New York, Schulte complained, “SAMs inmates are locked in concrete boxes the size of parking spaces with purposefully obstructed views of outside. The cages are filthy and infested with rodents, rodent droppings, cockroaches, and mold.”

    “There is no heating or air conditioning in the cages. There is no functioning plumbing. The lights burn brightly 24 hours per day, and the inmates are denied outside recreation, normal commissary, normal visitation, access to books and legal material, medical care, and dental care.”

    Schulte is now confined at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn. He has several child pornography charges pending against him that stem from the FBI raid on his Manhattan apartment on March 15, 2017.

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  • Post-Roe Organizing For Abortion Decriminalization: Interview With Andrea Ritchie

    On the latest episode of the “Unauthorized Disclosure” weekly podcast, Andrea Ritchie joins Rania Khalek and Kevin Gosztola for a conversation about organizing for abortion decriminalization in a post-Roe United States.

    Andrea is a Black lesbian immigrant, and the author of the book Invisible No More: Police Violence Against Black Women and Women of Color. She is the co-author of the forthcoming book No More Police: A Case For Abolition, as well as the book Queer (In)Justice. And Andrea is the co-founder of Interrupting Criminalization.

    First, Andrea assesses the terrain for abortion decriminalization as it exists now that the US Supreme Court abolished federal rights to reproductive health care. She comments on the brewing threat of prosecutions against women and medical providers.

    Planned Parenthood in Montana announced they would no longer provide abortion medication to out-of-state patients. Andrea expresses her disgust and frustration with this decision.

    Later in the show, Andrea describes what people can do. Many of the ideas outlined stem from recognizing the connections between struggles for gender justice, migrant justice, economic and racial justice, sex workers’ rights, disability justice, etc.

    Voting harder in November for Democrats is not a priority. Giving to abortion access funds is what people should do. That can be done by donating directly, or Mariame Kaba has this store where you can purchase the shirt Kevin was wearing. Funds support the West Alabama Women’s Center.

    ***RESOURCES***

    —Abortion Decriminalization Is Part Of The Larger Struggle Against Policing And Criminalization

    —We Must Fight In Solidarity With Trans Youth 

    —July 17 event by the Abortion Access Fund: Operation Save Abortion

    The post Post-Roe Organizing For Abortion Decriminalization: Interview With Andrea Ritchie appeared first on Shadowproof.

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  • US Supreme Court May Take Aim At Whistleblower Protection Law

    This article was funded by paid subscribers of The Dissenter Newsletter, a project of Shadowproof. Become a monthly subscriber to help us continue our independent journalism.

    The False Claims Act in the United States allows individuals with evidence of fraud against government agencies to bring lawsuits as qui tam whistleblowers. They can bring a case even if the US Justice Department has no interest in fighting the alleged corruption.

    But on June 21, Courthouse News reported that the US Supreme Court will determine whether the government has the authority to dismiss a whistleblower lawsuit brought under the False Claims Act when the government has declined to intervene in the case. In other words, the Supreme Court could help corporations shut down independent whistleblower lawsuits that the Justice Department does not want to pursue.

    Health care and pharmaceutical corporations, along with their lobbying networks, have ramped up pressure in recent years to stifle the effectiveness of the False Claims Act in holding their industry accountable and prevent the law’s expansion.

    Under President Donald Trump, the National Whistleblower Center reported in 2018 that US government recoveries under the law hit a “ten-year low.” Nearly $2.9 billion was recovered, but only $767 million of that money was a result of lawsuits by the government. Whistleblower lawsuits, however, yielded over $2.1 billion.

    A network of dark money has transformed the Supreme Court into an illegitimate and partisan institution. The same court that overturned Roe v. Wade—ending nearly 50 years of abortion rights—could gut one of the few laws available to private citizens to challenge corporate corruption.

    Pushing Complicit Government Agencies To Act

    President Abraham Lincoln signed the first False Claims Act in 1863 during the US Civil War. It became known as the “Lincoln law.” According to Tom Mueller, author of Crisis of Conscience: Whistleblowing In An Age of Fraud, the law was intended to “stop army and navy contractors from stealing taxpayer dollars but also to push complacent or complicit government agencies to act.”

    The US did not have a Justice Department, Mueller noted. What the “Lincoln law” did was empower individuals to “prosecute fraud with or without the government’s participation.” Offending contractors could be fined $2,000 for each misrepresentation or false claims they made when requesting payment from the government.

    The law was gutted by Congress in 1943 because the Justice Department claimed it did not need the assistance of whistleblowers when prosecutors already knew about the fraud. As Republican Senator Chuck Grassley recalled, this led to “absurd results that only hurt the taxpayer.”Grassley, an advocate for the law, said it “basically meant that all whistleblower cases were blocked, even cases where the government only knew about the fraud because of the whistleblower.”

    In 1986, Grassley helped to ensure that amendments to the False Claims Act were passed to restore power to private citizens to bring whistleblower lawsuits. It ensured that whistleblowers would receive a reward in return for risking their career or legal jeopardy. However, in order to convince President Ronald Reagan to sign the amendments into law, Grassley and other senators had to overcome institutional opposition within the Justice Department.

    Jay Stephens and Stuart Schiffer, two senior DOJ officials, opposed restoring the False Claims Act. Stephens contended the Justice Department was doing a good enough job against defense contractor fraud and a stronger law would hamper their work, according to Mueller.

    “The law,” Stephens said, “was an anachronism from a time when the United States had no central investigative force; now that the DOJ and the FBI existed, most qui tam whistleblowers were parasitic ‘bounty hunters’ who interfered with legitimate law enforcers and ultimately provided little useful evidence of wrongdoing.”

    The counter to Justice Department officials was that the restoration of the False Claims Act was necessary to protect whistleblowers from retaliation. The amendments were needed to prevent a complacent and complicit Justice Department from entering into “sweetheart deals with powerful contractors.”

    ‘Devastating Threat To The Executive’s Constitutional Authority’

    Justice Department officials remained opposed, even though Reagan declined to veto the amendments. In 1989, they argued to the US Supreme Court that the law was unconstitutional.

    Bill Barr, who later became attorney general under Trump, was the assistant attorney general. He contended the False Claims Act represented a “devastating threat to the executive’s constitutional authority and to the doctrine of separation of powers.” He objected to how Congress empowered citizens to help stimulate government action against fraud.

    “There has been a massive upsurge in qui tam actions—over 150 suits have been filed,” Barr cried. “These actions have disrupted the civil and criminal enforcement activities of the Department.”

    “They have also undermined the executive’s ability to administer complex procurement contracts and, in some cases, have caused serious national security concerns. The 1986 Amendments have also spawned the formation of full-time ‘bounty hunting’ groups—ersatz departments of justice—that go about prosecuting civil fraud actions in the name of the United States.”

    Barr was worried about groups representing whistleblowers, who could collect up to thirty percent of any recovery, because their effectiveness put the Justice Department to shame. He was ultimately unsuccessful in persuading the Supreme Court to neuter the False Claims Act.

    However, three decades later, Barr was at it again in his position as Trump’s attorney general. The Justice Department dismissed an increased number of false claims cases for reasons that Grassley believed had nothing to do with the merits of the cases. It seemed prosecutors were intent to discourage whistleblowers and undermine efforts to root out serious fraud.  

    Bloomberg Law reported that the Justice Department moved to dismiss “at least 14 cases involving pharmaceuticals.” Eleven of the cases were brought by the National HealthCare Analysis Group, which alleged “violations of anti-kickback laws that prohibit improper marketing of drugs to medical professionals.” They were viewed as a “bounty hunting” group.

    The National Whistleblower Center called attention to the fact that the Justice Department was attempting to dismiss a case against the pharmaceutical corporation known as Gilead Sciences. A whistleblower accused the corporation of “manufacturing drugs with contaminated ingredients from China” and unusually the Justice Department maintained it would be too costly to pursue the lawsuit.

    Grassley and a bipartisan group of senators tried in 2021 to correct the issue of dismissals by the Justice Department by creating a test. Prosecutors would be required to “identify a valid government purpose and a rational relation between dismissal and accomplishment of that purpose.”

    A whistleblower would then have the ability to challenge a dismissal by “demonstrating that the dismissal is fraudulent, arbitrary and capricious, or illegal.” But Big Pharma succeeded in blocking the amendments from inclusion in the 2021 infrastructure bill that passed. It was a major loss for whistleblowers.

    “By raising false flags about these amendments and locking progress through complex and endless court cases,” the National Whistleblower Center warned, an “anti-whistleblower victory—which could open the floodgates for future attacks on these highly successful whistleblower protections”—was secured by lobbyists.

    Record Settlements And Rewards Under The False Claims Act

    During the past five years, lawsuits against the False Claims Act that are backed by corporate interests have sought to amplify uncertainty around the Supreme Court and lower courts’ interpretation of provisions in the law. Each million spent on these efforts is intended to stall the progress of whistleblowers courageous enough to take a stand against corporate influence and power.

    GlaxoSmithKline, a major pharmaceutical corporation, was hit with a record $3 billion fine in 2012 after marketing their drugs for “unauthorized uses” and cheating the US government’s Medicaid program. The result was a whistleblower reward of $250 million, which four individuals split.

    Faced with “allegations it sold toxic mortgage-backed securities and other financial products” in the run-up to the 2008 economic crash, Bank of America agreed to a record settlement with the US government of $16.65 billion in 2014. Three whistleblowers and one firm shared a $170 million reward.

    Pharmaceutical corporation Johnson & Johnson entered into a $2.2 billion settlement with the US government in 2012 to end a lawsuit involving allegations related to fraud and kickback schemes perpetrated to sell three drugs: Risperdal, Natrecor, and Invega. A whistleblower received a $167 million reward.

    These are just three examples of how private individuals with evidence and knowledge of fraud can pursue a modest level of accountability against corporations, whether Justice Department officials have the political appetite for such action or not.

    The Justice Department’s history of opposition to the False Claims Act does not exactly inspire confidence that the corporate-captured Supreme Court will leave the law alone. If the Supreme Court yet again prioritizes corporations and upends a settled law, their ruling may greatly diminish a tool that whistleblowers have wielded for decades.

    The post US Supreme Court May Take Aim At Whistleblower Protection Law appeared first on Shadowproof.

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  • State Of World Press Freedom Darkens As UK Government Approves Assange’s Extradition

    This article was funded by paid subscribers of The Dissenter Newsletter. Become a monthly subscriber to help us continue our independent journalism.

    United Kingdom Home Secretary Priti Patel approved the extradition of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to the United States.

    Patel’s decision to hand over a journalist to the US government for prosecution was immediately condemned by human rights and press freedom organizations. The Assange legal team planned to submit an appeal in the High Court of Justice challenging the political nature of the case and how extradition law was interpreted.

    Describing it as “shameful,” Reporters Without Borders international campaigns director Rebecca Vincent said the decision represented “another failure by the UK to protect journalism and press freedom, bringing Julian Assange a step closure to extradition.”

    The global human rights organization Amnesty International renewed their opposition. “Allowing Julian Assange to be extradited to the US would put him at great risk and sends a chilling message to journalists the world over.”

    Don’t Extradite Assange, a campaign which mobilized opposition to the case in the UK, stated, “This is a dark day for press freedom and for British democracy. Anyone in this country who cares about freedom of expression should be deeply ashamed that the Home Secretary has approved the extradition of Julian Assange to the United States, the country that plotted his assassination.”

    Assange faces 18 charges brought against him by the US Justice Department, 17 of which fall under the Espionage Act. All the charges relate to documents WikiLeaks released in 2010 and 2011, which were provided by US Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning.

    Over 300 doctors, psychiatrists, and psychologists organized under the banner of “Doctors for Assange” sent a letter to Patel on June 10 that reminded Patel of “serious concerns” related to the WikiLeaks founder’s “deteriorating health,” which has worsened while in UK custody.

    “Under conditions in which the UK legal system has failed to take Mr Assange’s current health status into account,” the doctors declared, “no valid decision to approve his extradition may be made by you or anyone else.”The doctors made it clear that extraditing a person with such compromised health was “medically and ethically unacceptable.”

    They added, “Should he come to harm in the US under these circumstances, it is you, Home Secretary, who will be left holding the responsibility for that negligent outcome.”Nineteen organizations committed to freedom of expression and press freedom wrote a letter to Patel on April 22, right after the district court ordered Assange’s extradition and sent it to the Home Office for review.

    “[Assange] highly likely to be detained [in the US] in conditions of isolation or solitary confinement despite the US government’s assurances, which would severely exacerbate his risk of suicide,” the organizations warned. “[He] would be unable to adequately defend himself in the US courts, as the Espionage Act lacks a public interest defense. His prosecution would set a dangerous precedent that could be applied to any media outlet that published stories based on leaked information, or indeed any journalist, publisher, or source anywhere in the world.”

    “We ask you, Home Secretary, to honor the UK government’s commitment to protecting and promoting media freedom and reject the US extradition request. We ask you to release Mr Assange from Belmarsh prison and allow him to return to his young family after many years of isolation. Finally, we ask you to publicly commit to ensuring that no publisher, journalist or source ever again faces detention in the UK for publishing information in the public interest.”

    The organizations demanded a meeting with Patel, but it does not appear a meeting was ever granted so advocates could further convey their concerns.

    On May 10, Dunja Mijatović, the commissioner for the Council of Europe appealed to Patel. “It is my view that the indictment by the United States against Mr. Assange raises important questions about the protection of those that publish classified information in the public interest, including information that exposes human rights violations.”

    “The broad and vague nature of the allegations against Mr. Assange, and of the offenses listed in the indictment, are troubling as many of them concern activities at the core of investigative journalism in Europe and beyond,” Mijatović argued.

    “Consequently, allowing Mr.Assange’s extradition on this basis would have a chilling effect on media freedom, and could ultimately hamper the press in performing its task as purveyor of information and public watchdog in democratic societies.”

    All of the above overtures to Patel were apparently brushed aside. There is no evidence that any complaints about the Assange case were ever considered by Patel.

    The news of the decision did not even come from Patel herself. An unnamed Home Office spokesperson provided remarks that were circulated by UK media.

    “Under the Extradition Act 2003, the secretary of state must sign an extradition order if there are no grounds to prohibit the order being made. Extradition requests are only sent to the home secretary once a judge decides it can proceed after considering various aspects of the case.”

    “On June 17, following consideration by both the magistrates court and high court, the extradition of Mr. Julian Assange to the US was ordered. Mr. Assange retains the normal 14-day right to appeal.”

    “In this case, the UK courts have not found that it would be oppressive, unjust, or an abuse of process to extradite Mr Assange,” the unnamed spokesperson claimed. “Nor have they found that extradition would be incompatible with his human rights, including his right to a fair trial and to freedom of expression.” They further claimed in the US his health would be treated appropriately.

    But this was not a fresh statement from a department willing to take public responsibility for approving the request. It was a kind of vulgar paraphrasing of the legal criteria used as a cover to avoid defending or justifying the Home Office’s action.

    The spokesperson faithfully parroted the “assurances” that were put forward in diplomatic notes to the UK Foreign Office by the US State Department, which intervened after the Crown Prosecution Service and the US government lost their case at the district court level on January 4, 2021.

    The US State Department’s intervention played a critical role in saving the extradition request. The High Court of Justice relied on the assurances when overturning the district court decision in December 2021.

    In the end, Patel and the UK government put the UK’s role as a client state of the US government ahead of challenging the case. This is a role the UK has performed consistently and dutifully since supporting the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

    The US and UK agreed to an alarming and unprecedented extradition request that criminalizes someone for engaging in standard newsgathering activities not only because they share the US government’s disgust for Assange but also because UK officials value the US-UK partnership more than human rights.

    Patel and the Home Office supported an expansion of the Official Secrets Laws in the UK while the US extradition request moved through the UK courts. As Mohamed Elmaazi reported for The Dissenter, the proposed expansion would make it possible for the UK government to imprison “leakers, recipients of leaks, and secondary publishers–including journalists—from the current maximum of two years to as high as 14 years in prison.”

    The Home Office contended there was no longer much of a difference between “espionage and the most serious unauthorized disclosures.” The department regarded journalism as an act capable of “far more serious damage” than traditional espionage.

    Operation Pelican, the name for the pressure campaign to force Assange out of the Ecuador embassy in London, was supported by the Home Office.Declassified UK’s chief investigator Matt Kennard reported that Patel was on the advisory council for a right-wing group linked to the CIA called the Henry Jackson Society, which has attacked Assange several times since 2010.

    Without any meaningful objections from within the UK government, if Assange is eventually put on a plane and brought to the US for trial, they, along with the US government, will bear responsibility for any tragedy that occurs while in a US jail or prison.

    The post State Of World Press Freedom Darkens As UK Government Approves Assange’s Extradition appeared first on Shadowproof.

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  • Protest Song Of The Week: ‘Spitting Off the Edge of the World’ By Yeah Yeah Yeahs

    Originally appeared at Ongoing History of Protest Music

    The influential indie rock band Yeah Yeah Yeahs released their first tune in close to a decade, “Spitting Off the Edge of the World.” It’s on their upcoming album, “Cool It Down,” out September 30.

    “Spitting” is a collaboration with indie-pop artist Perfume Genius, whose voice nicely complements
    front women Karen O.

    The band produced a music video for the song that stars Karen O and Perfume Genius. It was directed by frequent Yeah Yeah Yeahs collaborator Cody Critcheloe, and the visuals suit the song’s message of defiance in the face of adversity quite well.

    In a statement, Karen O mentioned that the song’s inspiration stemmed from pending climate catastrophes.

    “I see the younger generations staring down this threat, and they’re standing on the edge of a
    precipice, confronting what’s coming with anger and defiance,” Karen O said. “It’s galvanizing, and
    there’s hope there.” 

    The song’s chorus pays particular attention to the younger generation:

    “And the kids cry out
    We’re spitting off the edge of the world
    Out in the night
    Never had no chance
    Nowhere to hide
    spitting off the edge of the world
    Out comes the sun
    Never had no chance
    Nowhere to run”

    The tune ends with the optimistic declaration that the world will watch the kids rise.

    Watch/listen to “Spitting On The Edge Of The World” by Yeah Yeah Yeahs featuring Perfume Genius:

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  • Protest Song Of The Week: ‘Rise Above’ By Ibeyi (Featuring Berwyn)

    Originally published at Ongoing History of Protest Music.

    The second anniversary of the murder of George Floyd was May 25, and sadly nothing has really changed. Racially motivated killings and cops murdering black people still occur frequently.

    To comment on this issue, twin sisters Naomi and Lisa Diaz of the Cuban-Venezuelan duo Ibeyi reworked Black Flag’s 1981 classic hardcore punk anthem “Rise Above.”

    It appeared on their recent album, “Spell 31,” and Trinidad rapper Berwyn added a verse that pays tribute to Floyd.

    “Berwyn is on this track,” Naomi shared. “He listened to it, and he did his verse really fast. For him, listening to this song made him think of George Floyd, and it’s beautiful.”

    “I think the thing is, with this song, you can think about everything. It could be for women. It could be for minorities. It’s a song for the oppressed. It could be something small or something really big, but I think this song is just empowering,” Naomi added.

    The song is empowering. The lyrics, “We are tired of your abuse. Try to stop us; but it’s no use,” still hold as much impact as they did when Black Flag recorded them. And Ibeyi’s reworking delivers a galvanizing message to stand against oppression.

    The post Protest Song Of The Week: ‘Rise Above’ By Ibeyi (Featuring Berwyn) appeared first on Shadowproof.

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  • Protest Song Of The Week: ‘GDP’ By Bob Vylan

    The post was originally published at Ongoing History Of Protest Music.

    Bob Vylan is a grime punk duo that recently released their second album “Bob Vylan Present The
    Price Of Life.”

    Just like their 2020 debut album, “We Live Here,” the album features incisive political commentary addressing issues such as systemic racism and poverty. Their songs feature radical and potent lyrics like, “Wage war against the state,” “England’s fucking dead, let it burn,” and “Alexa, take me to prison.”

    One of the album’s best tracks is the song “GDP,” which is a poignant statement on economic policies which benefits the rich but screws over the poor. It points out the lunacy of countries that base their economic growth on gross domestic products, especially when those figures can be bolstered by negative factors, such as Russia’s war on Ukraine.

    “Yeah, the BBC are talking ’bout the GDP. That means fuck all to me. I gotta eat. You know I gotta eat, right?” the duo raps. They add, “Cash rules everything around me that matters. So the purse strings are tighter than Thatcher’s.”

    Pulling no punches, they declare, ““Let me make it clear: This wretched system isn’t playing fair,” and “I couldn’t give a fuck if this country hates me here. They stole our people, displaced and placed us here.”

    Singer Bobby Vylan (not to be confused with the drummer Bobbie Vylan) said of the album: “Money is a tool. It’s neither good nor bad. Unfortunately, there are some people that are using it for evil and to keep other people down.”

    Listen to and or watch Bob Vylan’s “GDP”:

    The post Protest Song Of The Week: ‘GDP’ By Bob Vylan appeared first on Shadowproof.

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  • Protest Song Of The Week: ‘Clara Fraser, Clara Fraser’ By Lavender Country

    Originally published at Ongoing History of Protest Music

    Back in 1973, Seattle singer-songwriter Patrick Haggerty released what is widely considered to
    be the first gay-themed country album under the moniker Lavender Country.

    At the time only 1000 copies of the self-titled album were printed. In later years, the album generated interest among music journalists, historians, and record collectors. The resulted in a reissue of the album in 2014 by the Paradise of Bachelors label.

    Haggerty also went on a nationwide tour, introducing a new generation to music that was previously buried in the dust bin of obscurity.

    In 2019, Haggerty finally released his sophomore album, “Blackberry Rose.” The album received even wider recognition after Don Giovanni Records reissued it.

    As an openly gay artist in a genre associated with conservativism, the simple act of making music was already a political statement, and even more so in the 1970s. But Haggerty took it further by not shying away from including bold messages in his lyrics.

    Considering his role as a groundbreaker, it is appropriate that his latest album pays tribute to radical feminist Clara Fraser. Like Haggerty, Fraser was a staunch Marxist who spoke out on behalf of the oppressed.

    In “Clara Fraser, Clara Fraser” he takes on the role of a villainous strike breaker who opposes fair labor practices and gender equality.

    Listen to “Clara Fraser, Clara Fraser” by Lavender Country:

    The post Protest Song Of The Week: ‘Clara Fraser, Clara Fraser’ By Lavender Country appeared first on Shadowproof.

    This post was originally published on Shadowproof.

  • Dark Day For Press Freedom As British Court Orders Assange Extradition

    This article was funded by paid subscribers of The Dissenter Newsletter. Become a monthly subscriber to help us continue our independent journalism.

    A British magistrates court ordered the extradition of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to the United States and sent the request for his extradition to Home Office Secretary Priti Patel for approval.

    The order came a little more than a month after the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom refused to hear Assange’s appeal.

    In December, the UK High Court of Justice granted the US government’s appeal and overturned a district court decision that spared Assange. Chief Magistrate Senior District Judge Paul Goldspring contended he was “duty-bound” to send the extradition request to Patel. Goldspring also told Assange he had a right to appeal if the Home Office approved the extradition before issuing the order.

    Mark Summers QC, an attorney for Assange, asserted there were “fresh developments” in the case and bemoaned the fact that the defense was not permitted at this stage to raise this evidence, according to Computer Weekly’s Bill Goodwin.

    Assange’s legal team has until May 18 to submit evidence to the Home Office and argue why the department should block the extradition request. In two months, Patel is expected to make a decision.If approved by Patel, attorneys for Assange may request permission to appeal to the British High Court of Justice.

    His attorneys may appeal the decision of the district judge to send the case to the Home Office for approval and may also appeal the Home Office secretary’s order.

    While the defense for Assange objected to District Judge Vanessa Baraitser’s ruling on January 4, 2021, particularly as it related to issues of press freedom, they never had an appropriate opportunity to raise their objections. She denied the extradition request after determining it would be “oppressive” for mental health reasons.

    His attorneys would likely challenge many of Baraitser’s conclusions about Assange if Patel allowed the request. (Note: Baraitser is no longer a district judge at the Westminster Magistrates Court.)

    Assange is detained at Her Majesty’s Prison Belmarsh. He faces 18 charges brought against him by the US Justice Department, 17 of which are under the Espionage Act. All the charges relate to documents WikiLeaks released in 2010 and 2011, which were provided by US Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning.

    The prosecution makes Assange the first publisher to be charged under the 1917 law, and globally the case has been condemned by virtually all reputable civil liberties, human rights, and press freedom organizations.

    Patel and the Home Office support an expansion of the Official Secrets Laws in the UK, which Elmaazi reported “would expand possible imprisonment for leakers, recipients of leaks and secondary publishers–including journalists–from the current maximum of two years to as high as 14 years in prison.”

    The Home Office contends there is no longer much of a difference between “espionage and the most serious unauthorized disclosures.” That includes what Patel would call “onward disclosure.” The department treats journalism as an act capable of “far more serious damage” than traditional espionage.

    In the UK, the Office for Security and Counterterrorism is a part of the Home Office. The division is responsible for MI5 (Britain’s FBI) and anti-terrorism police operations.

    Operation Pelican, the name for the pressure campaign to force Assange out of the Ecuador embassy in London, was supported by the Home Office. But as Declassified UK chief investigator Matt Kennard noted, the Home Office claims it does not “hold” any records containing details related to the operation, even though eight officials from the department were involved.

    Kennard also reported that Patel was on the advisory council for a right-wing group linked to the CIA called the Henry Jackson Society, which has attacked Assange in the press for over a decade.

    “[Prime Minister] Boris Johnson and Priti Patel, don’t extradite Julian to the country that conspired to murder him,” Stella Assange declared. “They can stop this nightmare today and return to Julian to his family. They can do the right thing and enforce Article 4 of the US/UK extradition treaty, which prohibits extradition for political offenses.”

    “This is a political case, and with the signature of the magistrate, this now passes squarely into the political domain,” Stella added.

    “The next four weeks will prove crucial in the fight to block extradition and secure the release of Julian Assange,” stated Rebecca Vincent, the director of operations and campaigns for Reporters Without Borders (RSF). “The Home Secretary must act now to protect journalism and adhere to the UK’s commitment to media freedom by rejecting the extradition order and releasing Assange.”

    RSF, a global press freedom organization, launched a “Free Assange” petition urging supporters to sign on before May 18, the last day Assange can make any submissions to the Home Office.

    The National Union for Journalists (NUJ) in the UK renewed their call for his release from Belmarsh prison and charges to be dropped.

    Assange defense groups and a coalition of civil liberties, human rights, and press freedom organizations will build on prior work and use the next several weeks to ramp up their campaigning. Their intent will be to make the extradition request a political issue in the UK and throughout Europe.

    The WikiLeaks founder will remain in detention at Belmarsh until Patel’s decision and during any appeal.

    The post Dark Day For Press Freedom As British Court Orders Assange Extradition appeared first on Shadowproof.

    This post was originally published on Shadowproof.

  • Protest Song Of The Week: ‘Fucked Up If True’ By Soul Glo

    The following was originally published at Ongoing History Of Protest Music.

    For Soul Glo, being a black hardcore band already made the simple act of making music a political statement. Add to that their radical rhetoric, and you have a group capable of producing fierce protest songs.

    The group recently released the stunning new album “Diaspora Problems.” It marks their debut on the well-known punk label Epitaph.

    One of the album’s many highlights is the incisive “Fucked Up If True.” It is the perfect synopsis of 2016-2020, where there seemed to be an increase in political awareness and activism but much of that was focused on anti-Trump sentiment and a left vs. right mentality.

    “Fuck I look like wearing emotions like an ankle-weight or ball-and-chain and wading in the four-year blue tide just to have a side?” Soul Glo laments. “So we just gon always vote in false elections and accept each result and it’s effects as though people were powerless.”

    “Do you feel supportive care? How do you wake up everyday? What enforced your belief that you can vote their power away?” they add.

    Even though the collective relief of voting President Donald Trump out of office is understandable, how much has really changed in the two-plus years since?

    Soul Glo recognizes lasting change won’t come by only voting for the supposed lesser than two evils on the ballot. It will take much more concrete action.

    Listen to Soul Glo’s “Fucked Up If True”:

    The post Protest Song Of The Week: ‘Fucked Up If True’ By Soul Glo appeared first on Shadowproof.

    This post was originally published on Shadowproof.

  • Protest Song Of The Week: ‘Gotterdämmerung’ By Zeal & Ardor

    The article originally appeared at Ongoing History of Protest Music.

    Zeal & Ardor is the brainchild of Swedish musician Manuel Gagneux. It started as an online project,
    where Gagneux sought feedback on blending two musical genres that don’t traditionally go
    together. He ultimately paired black metal with spirituals and that led to three studio albums, including a recently released self-titled album.

    “Lyrically, it’s a continuation of the alternate history narrative we have going on—what if American slaves had turned to Satan instead of God?” Gagneux said. “‘Where ‘Devil Is Fine’ was about life in captivity and ‘Stranger Fruit’ was about the escape, this record is about the many things that come after—being on the run, clandestine ruminations, and grand plan.”

    As in his previous efforts, the lyrics touch upon themes of religious hypocrisy and race relations. Even
    though it might be written from the perspective of the African American experience, as a black man in a
    predominately white country and music genre, racism is something that Gagneux has routinely dealt with.

    One of the album’s more aggressive tracks is “Götterdämmerung.” “This is the title of a movement in a Wagner opera, and Wagner was heavily used by not-so-great people in the ’30s and ’40s in Germany. So I wanted to re-appropriate and reclaim Wagner, even though he himself was a huge dick, too—but dude wrote brilliant music,” Gagneux shared.

    Politicians co-opting music for their agenda is a trend. For example, back in the 1980s, Bruce Springsteen spoke up when politicians such as Ronald Reagan tried to adopt “Born in the USA” as a campaign theme (missing the point of the lyrics). During Donald Trump’s presidency, many opposed his use of their music at his rallies. Neil Young in particular composed an open letter voicing his displeasure over Trump using his political protest anthem, “Rockin’ in the Free World.”

    Listen to Zeal & Ardor’s “Gotterdämmerung”:

    The post Protest Song Of The Week: ‘Gotterdämmerung’ By Zeal & Ardor appeared first on Shadowproof.

    This post was originally published on Shadowproof.

  • UK Supreme Court Slams Door On Assange Appeal, Extradition May Be Authorized

    This article was funded by paid subscribers of The Dissenter Newsletter. Become a monthly subscriber to help us continue our independent journalism.

    Without any explanation, the British Supreme Court denied WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange “permission to appeal” a decision by the British High Court.

    The Supreme Court maintained the appeal did not “raise an arguable point of law” and sent the case back to the Westminster Magistrates’ Court, the district court which initially blocked the United States government’s extradition request on January 4, 2021.

    By refusing to grant Assange a hearing, the U.S. government effectively won their appeal. Prosecutors convinced the British courts to disregard concerns that he may be subject to treatment in a U.S. jail or prison that would be oppressive to his mental health.

    “Whether Julian is extradited or not, which is the same as saying whether he lives or dies, is decided through a process of legal avoidance—avoiding to hear arguments that challenge the U.K. courts’ deference to unenforceable and caveated claims regarding his treatment made by the United States, the country that plotted to murder him,” declared Stella Moris, his partner.

    Moris continued, “Julian is the key witness, the principle indicter, and the cause of enormous embarrassment to successive U.S. governments.” He brought the country’s “atrocities” into the “public domain.”

    The Westminster Magistrates’ Court may now refer the extradition to the British Home Office for Home Secretary Priti Patel to review.

    According to Birnberg Peirce, the law firm representing Assange, they are entitled to make submissions to the Home Secretary for consideration before the extradition request is approved.

    If Patel approves the extradition, Assange’s defense may submit an appeal on the issues of freedom of the press that were not addressed before the High Court yet. That would likely prevent Assange from extradition. However, if the High Court and Supreme Court refused to hear the appeal because they did not believe it raised “arguable points of law,” he could potentially be transferred to the U.S. before the year is over.

    Assange is detained at Her Majesty’s Prison Belmarsh in London, a high-security prison where he has been held since he was expelled from the Ecuador Embassy on April 11, 2019. He faces 18 charges—17 of which are charges under the Espionage Act.

    The Espionage Act is a law in the United States passed in 1917 that the Justice Department has increasingly wielded against media sources who share “classified” documents or talk about sensitive information with journalists.

    On December 10, 2021, the High Court, the same court which was asked to certify points of law for an appeal, granted the U.S. government’s appeal and overturned a district court decision that previously blocked Assange’s extradition. The High Court did not grant permission for an appeal but certified one issue as a “matter of public importance,” which cracked the door open for an appeal before it was slammed shut on March 14.

    Beyond Normal Or Acceptable ‘Criminal Justice Objectives’

    The district court heard evidence during a month-long hearing in September 2020 that U.S. prison conditions would likely drive Assange to commit suicide, particularly as a result of his mental health issues.

    One of the U.S. agencies that provides input into whether to designate a detainee or prisoner for SAMs is the CIA, which designated WikiLeaks as a “non-state hostile intelligence agency” and reportedly considered plans to kidnap or poison Assange while he was in the Ecuador Embassy.Attorneys for Assange showed the CIA’s interest in Assange goes beyond the “pursuit of normal or acceptable criminal justice objectives.”

    Assange’s legal team asked the Supreme Court to consider what circumstances an appeals court could receive “assurances” from a requesting state, which were not initially before the “court of first instance in extradition proceedings.” (In this case, that was the Westminster Magistrates’ Court.)

    Following District Judge Vanessa Baraitser’s decision to block the extradition request, the U.S. State Department put forward assurances to save their case.Officials told the British government they would not impose special administrative measures (SAMs) on Assange before trial or after he was convicted. They also insisted they would not incarcerate Assange in ADX Florence, a supermax prison.

    Additionally, the U.S. State Department claimed Assange, an Australian citizen, could apply for a prisoner transfer under the Council of Europe Convention on the Transfer of Sentenced Persons to Australia to serve any prison sentence in his home country. He would also receive “clinical and psychological treatment” as recommended by a “qualified treating clinician employed or retained” while in U.S. custody.

    Each of the conditional assurances offered by the U.S. State Department contained glaring loopholes that were highlighted by Assange’s attorneys during an appeal hearing at the end of October 2021. Yet the High Court found those loopholes to be insignificant, and the court granted the U.S. government’s appeal.

    ‘Regressive Measures’ Which Have No Place In A Democracy

    An application for appeal released by Assange’s legal team reflects the arguments they were blocked from presenting to the Supreme Court.

    “The manner in which assurances were permitted to be introduced in this case for the first time on appeal totally undermines the primacy of the extradition hearing and deprives the defendant of an opportunity to test them and their implications before the district judge,” attorneys argued.

    “It is generally regarded as unfair, wrong, and abusive for a party to elect—for a perceived or actual tactical advantage—to conduct litigation in one way and then, when met with an adverse judicial decision on that, to attempt to re-litigate or appeal on a new and different basis.”

    The High Court asserted the assurances were not evidence, and as such, there was no unfairness on the part of the U.S. government. In response, Assange’s attorneys raised the fact that there lengthy proceedings on alleged confinement conditions in U.S. prisons, which gave the U.S. plenty of opportunity to neutralize concerns about inhuman treatment. Officials never offered an assurance related to SAMs or ADX Florence.

    Evidence presented by Assange’s defense clearly resonated with Baraitser. Only then did U.S. officials accept that the state of U.S. jails and prisons may require them to make some assurances to secure the WikiLeaks founder’s extradition.

    According to Assange’s attorneys, withholding assurances from the district judge meant that there was no opportunity for the judge to hear or test evidence. There was also no chance for the judge to take into account the assurances when “reaching her overall value judgments.”

    “Assange was, of course, in custody throughout the entire proceedings below, and parachuting this issue into these proceedings, at this remove of time, was fundamentally unfair,” his attorneys added.

    Julia Hall, Amnesty International’s deputy research director for Europe, called the Supreme Court decision a “blow to Julian Assange and to justice.”

    “Prolonged solitary confinement is a key feature of life for many people in U.S. maximum security prisons and amounts to torture or other ill treatment under international law. The ban on torture and other ill-treatment is absolute and empty promises of fair treatment, such as those offered by the U.S.A. in the Assange case threaten to profoundly undermine that international prohibition.”

    Hall also contended the refusal left “intact the nefarious route the U.S. has employed to attempt to prosecute publishers for espionage. Demanding that states like the UK extradite people for publishing classified information that is in the public interest sets a dangerous precedent and must be rejected.”

    Reporters Without Borders (RSF) expressed deep disappointment in response to the Supreme Court’s decision. “Assange’s case is overwhelmingly in the public interest, and it deserved review by the highest court in the U.K. After two full years of extradition proceedings, once again Assange’s fate has become a political decision,” stated Rebecca Vincent, RSF’s Director of Operations and Campaigns.

    “We call on the Home Office to act in the interest of journalism and press freedom by refusing extradition and releasing Assange from prison without further delay,” Vincent added.

    While press freedom issues in the Assange case have not been litigated since the district court decision, the first major changes to the U.K.’s Official Secrets Acts since 1989 were proposed by Patel, who supports expanding the law to prosecute and jail whistleblowers and journalists who publish state secrets.

    “Although the Official Secrets Acts are indeed long overdue for reform, what the Home Office is proposing is alarming,” Vincent previously declared. “The failure to include a public interest defense would increase risks for journalists, sources, and others who could face the threat of up to 14 years in prison simply for doing their jobs—regressive measures that have no place in any modern democracy.”

    The post UK Supreme Court Slams Door On Assange Appeal, Extradition May Be Authorized appeared first on Shadowproof.

    This post was originally published on Shadowproof.

  • Arms Flood Into Ukraine As US, NATO Pursue Proxy War Over Peace

    This article was funded by paid subscribers of The Dissenter Newsletter. Become a monthly subscriber to help us continue our independent journalism.

    In the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the country has been flooded with weapons and military hardware from Europe and North America.

    An exclusive report published on March 5 by the Washington Post quoted anonymous sources, who claimed the U.S. and its overseas allies were “quietly” prepared to support a Ukrainian government-in-exile. This expatriated administration would “direct guerrilla operations against Russian occupiers” over the course of a “long insurgency” following Moscow’s takeover of Kiev.

    As Russia presses on with their military operation, Western countries are increasingly determined to fuel a counter-offensive in Kiev. There is little consideration or concern for the potentially catastrophic blowback that may result for Ukrainians and the world.

    While opposed to the establishment of a no-fly zone, the U.S. increasingly appears to be directly involved in the conflict against nuclear-armed Russia, which would make U.S. forces legitimate military targets or “co-combatants.”

    The U.S. and its allies could urge Ukraine to enter ceasefire negotiations with Moscow and accept the likelihood that the country cannot become a member of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) without permanently threatening peace in the region. This would stabilize the global economy to avert a full-blown collapse and prevent the outbreak of another refugee crisis on Europe’s periphery.

    Instead, the U.S. and NATO have chosen Ukraine as a staging ground for a proxy war with Russia, creating an environment that has the terrifying potential to result in nuclear catastrophe. Ukrainians, as well as Russians collectively punished by sanctions against their economy, will bear the long-term impacts of this belligerent brinkmanship.But the strategy will significantly expand the growth prospects for military companies like Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman.

    All-In For Ukraine

    Although the European Union has never supplied lethal aid to any country, Brussels is now providing arms to Kiev worth around $489 million.

    Germany will dispatch 1,000 rocket launchers, 500 stinger surface-to-air missiles, numerous howitzers and armored vehicles, and 10,000 tons of fuel, in contravention of Berlin’s longstanding policy of not exporting lethal weapons to war zones.

    Sweden has also broken with their two-century-long commitment to neutrality, by sending missile systems to Kiev. Neighboring Finland, long-averse to foreign entanglements of any kind, also pledged to provide thousands of assault rifles, rocket launchers, and vast quantities of ammunition.

    Over 20 countries, including Belgium, Canada, Croatia, Czechia, Estonia, France, Italy, Latvia, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal and Romania, have shipped arms packages. On top of sending weapons to Ukraine, Denmark officially permitted their population to travel to Kiev and deploy as foreign fighters.

    Ukrainian officials claimed “around 20,000” foreign volunteers, “mostly” from European countries, are now active in the conflict, as of March 6. President Volodomyr Zelenskyy encouraged more to join them.

    From the outset, the Brtish government has taken a leading role in underwriting Ukraine’s war effort. Zelenskyy purportedly views Prime Minister Boris Johnson as his “closest ally,” and the pair have daily phone conversations to coordinate war efforts.

    In the lead-up to Russia’s invasion, Johnson met with Lithuanian and Polish leaders to discuss battle plans, deployed specialist British troops to the region, and provided a welter of anti-tank missiles. London also trained 20,000 Ukrainian snipers.British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss voiced her support for citizens who wish to fight in Ukraine. (Note: The same support has not been shown for Britons, who battled ISIS in Iraq and Syria – several have been prosecuted.)

    Support from Britain pales in comparison to the military investment by Washington. Two days after the invasion, President Joe Biden’s administration approved a $350 million “lethal aid” package for Kiev. Congressional oversight was bypassed to expedite delivery to Kiev. Even prior to the Maidan coup in 2014, Ukraine was a leading recipient of U.S. military aid in Europe and Eurasia.

    Funds provided to Ukraine over the past year surpassed $1 billion, and the White House has since asked Congress for an additional $10 billion, with just under half assigned to the Pentagon to ensure U.S. troops in NATO countries can continue to replenish weapons supplies for the Ukrainian military and volunteer forces.

    As reported in the New York Times, “the U.S. and NATO have pushed more than 17,000 antitank weapons, including Javelin missiles, over the borders of Poland and Romania, unloading them from giant military cargo planes so they can make the trip by land to Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, and other major cities.”Stinger missiles largely came from U.S. stockpiles in Germany, and one Pentagon official described the shipment as the “largest single authorized transfer of arms from U.S. military warehouses to another country.”

    Though Ukraine has a right to self-defense, Responsible Statecraft warned, “Flooding weapons into what the Global Organized Crime Index describes as ‘one of the largest arms trafficking markets in Europe’ is a recipe for disaster.” The index called attention to “Ukraine’s role as a key link in the global arms trade,” which has “grown since conflicts intensified in eastern Ukraine in recent years.”

    The dimensions of U.S. intelligence sharing with Ukraine are indistinct. Officials have consistently refused to share precise details of what is being shared, when, and with whom. Reporting has suggested some sensitive information, which could facilitate decisive strikes on the Russian military, is being withheld due to Washington’s unwillingness to be seen as a direct participant in the conflict. But Moscow has already declared that any country supplying Kiev with equipment such as fighter jets is considered an active participant.

    ‘Supporting An Insurgency Is In the CIA’s DNA’

    While official permission for Americans to volunteer in Ukraine hasn’t been granted, the New York Times along with U.S. state-funded media outlet Voice of America, have reported approvingly on how scores of veterans of U.S. conflicts, such as Iraq, are flocking to Kiev, often bringing with them military equipment.

    Under normal circumstances, passengers would not be able to carry such items as baggage.

    It seems likely upon arrival at least some veterans will make contact with the large number of “stay-behind” paramilitary units the CIA has since 2015 covertly trained at a secret facility in the southern United States. The facility has taught Ukrainians about the use of “firearms, camouflage techniques, land navigation, tactics like ‘cover and move,’ intelligence, and other areas.” A former agency official spelled out the purpose of this program bluntly: “the US is training an insurgency” to “kill Russians.”

    This program has palpable parallels with “Operation Gladio’,” a clandestine pan-European nexus of NATO, CIA, and MI6-supported fascist guerrilla units, which throughout the Cold War carried out false flag terror attacks, assassinations, and other heinous crimes with impunity for over four decades, as part of a “strategy of tension” to discredit the left, and justify ever-greater security measures.

    Among other atrocities, Gladio operatives were responsible for the August 1980 bombing of Bologna train station, which killed 85 people, including a three-year-old child, and wounded over 200. Members of Gladio’s Italian unit were trained on British soil, and the CIA and MI6 provided the explosives used in the massacre.

    It also bears similarities to U.S. assistance to the mujahideen before and during the Soviet–Afghan War. In fact, such a comparison was drawn by U.S. lawmaker Adam Smith, chair of the House Armed Services Committee, after legislation to establish a “Ukraine Resistance Fund” was drafted.

    Writing in Foreign Affairs the day after the war began, four-decade CIA veteran Douglas London prophesized a “coming” insurrection, very much along Soviet-Afghan lines. (Note: Foreign Affairs is published by the Council on Foreign Relations, a think tank headquartered in New York.)

    Acknowledging the far more powerful Russia “can likely seize as much of Ukraine’s territory as it chooses,” it conversely argues a well-financed and armed insurgency with “reliable supply lines, ample reserves of fighters, and sanctuary over the border can sustain itself indefinitely,” and in the process “sap an occupying army’s will to fight, and exhaust political support for the occupation at home.”

    “Supporting an insurgency is in the CIA’s DNA,” London wrote. “The CIA’s recent experience in supporting and fighting insurgencies in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria prepares it well for opposing Russia’s modern conventional forces,” London added. “The U.S. can help Ukrainian insurgents in hitting targets with the greatest military value and psychological impact.”

    A Veritable Tinderbox

    Backing the mujahideen is widely venerated by U.S. foreign policy apparatchiks and nostalgically hailed as the decisive blow that destroyed the Soviet Union. Speaking to MSNBC  on February 28, twice-failed Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton stated this was “the model that people are now looking toward” in respect to Ukraine, as “armed insurgency basically drove the Russians out of Afghanistan.”

    “The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter: We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war,” the strategy’s architect Zbigniew Brzezinski bragged in 1998. “For almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.”

    However, the Afghan fighters’ role in the USSR’s disintegration is considered by many historians—and Melvin Goodman, chief of the CIA’s Office of Soviet Affairs during this period—to be hugely overrated, if not an outright fantasy. What the policy primarily achieved was a wantonly protracted and bloody quagmire, in which thousands of people died needlessly.

    The very same horror is likely to play out in Ukraine too. Zelenskyy has armed Ukrainian citizens and circulated instructions for making Molotov cocktails, urging the public to hurl improvised explosives at the invading Russians—potentially putting civilians’ lives at risk by making them military targets.

    In one instance, this encouragement purportedly resulted in a battery of BM21 Grad MLRS inadvertently detonating and devastating the surrounding area. In another, a Ukrainian woman who flung a Molotov cocktail at a Russian army vehicle from a moving car set herself on fire in the process.

    Add to this incendiary mix an influx of foreign fighters, one of whom told NPR of their desire to “hang from lamps as many Muscovites as I can,” and Ukrainian authorities releasing inmates with military experience from prison to fight invasion forces.

    In sum, the country has been transformed into a veritable tinderbox, primed to explode in a gruesome manner.

    When civil war erupted in Tripoli in 2011, London offered an “open door” to Libyan exiles residing in the country – including members of MI6-connected Al Qaeda-affiliate Libyan Islamic Fighting Group. These fighters proved pivotal in the brutal overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi, and remained in Libya for years thereafter. In 2014, several were rescued by a Royal Navy vessel due to a “deteriorating security situation.”

    Among the evacuees was Salman Abedi, who in May 2017 perpetrated a suicide bombing in Manchester Arena, killing 22, injuring over a thousand, and leaving hundreds suffering from psychological trauma.

    The EU estimates that up to seven million refugees will be created by the war in Ukraine. That number likely does not account for a future where an insurgency turns the war into a “ten year event.”The world can expect some who flee and take up refuge in Western countries will be battle-hardened and embittered former guerrilla fighters, like Abedi.

    Clearly, Western countries are averse to learning the lessons that should be learned from previous protracted wars. No matter the global consequences, London and Washington will fight to the last Ukrainian.

    The post Arms Flood Into Ukraine As US, NATO Pursue Proxy War Over Peace appeared first on Shadowproof.

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  • Protest Song Of The Week: ‘Precious Cargo’ By Hurray For The Riff Raff

    This post was originally published at Ongoing History of Protest Songs.

    Hurray For The Riff Raff is the project of Puerto Rican singer-songwriter Alynda Segarra. Segarra explained the motivation behind the name in a 2017 PBS News Hour interview: “The people who have gotten me through my life are the weirdoes and the poets, the rebellious women, and the activists. They were considered the riffraff by people in power, and they’re the ones that make history.”

    Their new album “Life On Earth” is a powerful follow-up to their exceptional 2017 album “The Navigator.” Described by the project as “nature punk,” the tunes confront environmental issues as well as other social ills.

    The song “Precious Cargo” speaks to anti-immigrant and anti-refugee policies. Segarra sings, “We made it to the border. I jumped, and I was detained. Split me from my family. Now the light begins to fade.”

    “They took me to the cold room, where I sat down on the floor. Just a foil for a blanket. For 17 days or more.”

    Segarra continues, “I don’t know why he would lie on me. The man from the I.C.E. And I don’t know why he hate on me. The man from the I.C.E.”

    It humanizes what the downtrodden experience at the hands border security and immigration officials.


    The post Protest Song Of The Week: ‘Precious Cargo’ By Hurray For The Riff Raff appeared first on Shadowproof.

    This post was originally published on Shadowproof.

  • Amid Nuclear Crisis, US Officials Reluctant To Pursue Ceasefire In Russia-Ukraine War

    This article was funded by paid subscribers of The Dissenter Newsletter. Become a monthly subscriber to help us continue our independent journalism.

    The world is in a nuclear crisis, and instead of strongly supporting ceasefire talks to end the Russia-Ukraine war, Western countries are pouring gasoline on the fire.

    On February 24, delegations from Ukraine and Russia met on the Ukraine-Belarus border near the Pripyat river. It was the first round of negotiations since Russian military forces invaded Ukraine.

    No breakthrough occurred during the meeting, which lasted nearly five hours. Yet the two delegations agreed to meet again on March 2 near the border between Poland and Belarus.

    According to Al Jazeera English, Vladimir Medinsky, the head of the Russian delegation, said there were “certain points on which common positions could be foreseen.” Ukraine’s delegation was not as optimistic.

    “The talks were taking place against the backdrop of bombing and shelling of our territory, our cities. Synchronizing of the shelling with the negotiating process was obvious. I believe Russia is trying to put pressure [on Ukraine] with this simple method,” Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy declared in his evening address on February 28.

    Prior to the talks, French President Emmanuel Macron was urged by Ukraine to speak to Russia President Vladimir Putin. The Guardian reported that he asked “Putin to ensure that for the duration of the negotiations all strikes and attacks on civilians and their homes would be halted, civilian infrastructure would be preserved, and all main roads—particularly the road south out of Kiev—would remain safe to use.” Putin reportedly agreed.

    Videos of Russia attacking Kharkiv with “short- to medium-range, truck-mounted multiple-rocket launchers” known as “Grads” were posted to Telegram the day of talks, leading numerous media outlets to report on the shelling as a violation of Putin’s pledge to Macron. Yet it was unclear if Russian military forces “synchronized” the attack with negotiations.

    Putin told Macron a ceasefire would be possible if there was “unconditional consideration of Russia’s legitimate security interests,” such as: Ukraine staying out of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the demilitarization and “de-Nazification” of Ukraine, and “recognition of Russian sovereignty over Crimea.” He was open to negotiate with Ukraine’s representatives on these terms.

    While there are armed neo-Nazi groups in Ukraine, perceived as a problem in recent years, Putin has exaggerated their influence over Ukraine’s government. Zelenskyy’s election diminished the mobilization of the far right (though generally they have enjoyed a resurgence during the war). Of course, Ukraine’s delegation demands Russia withdraw all of their military forces and respect Ukraine’s sovereignty.

    ‘Diplomacy At The Barrel Of A Gun’

    State Department spokesperson Ned Price told reporters at a briefing that Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba consulted with G7 ministers ahead of the negotiations. Zelenskyy spoke to President Joe Biden, and Biden talked with Kuleba. U.S. officials compared notes and coordinated closely.

    This may explain the U.S. State Department’s skepticism. It does not appear the U.S. has advised Ukraine to offer Russia an offramp, even though Putin ordered his nuclear forces into “special combat readiness.”

    “You would be right to color us skeptical of what it is that Moscow intends. What we’ve said before, including last week, applies equally today. Diplomacy at the barrel of a gun, diplomacy at the turret of a tank – that is not real diplomacy,” Price stated.

    In fact, the U.S. is a hegemon that uses its vast military power to advance a worldwide agenda. Alexander L. George, who was globally renowned for his work on international relations, argued, “The proposition that force and threats of force are a necessary instrument of diplomacy and have a role to play in foreign policy is part of the conventional wisdom of statecraft.”

    “Diplomacy is not an alternative to military force; it is the use of all elements of U.S. force in a coordinated, cumulative way to achieve our results in other countries,” former U.S. ambassador to Iraq James Jeffrey told Defense One in 2014. Jeffrey was a diplomat in Iraq after President George W. Bush preemptively invaded Iraq in 2003.

    Cheering President Richard Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, Jeffrey said, “I saw them do major groundbreaking diplomatic initiatives that were revolutionary, but those guys were kicking ass and deploying military forces as an integral part of their diplomacy.” “That is why they were successful in their diplomacy, and I don’t see any difference between the two—negotiating agreements and threatening force, and when necessary delivering on the threat,” Jeffrey added.

    Elementary school children in the United States are taught the concept of “Big Stick Diplomacy,” which was promoted by President Theodore Roosevelt. He relied on the military strength of the U.S. to seize land and build the Panama Canal. He had the Great White Fleet travel from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean in a show of force to deter Japan from expanding their dominance in Asia.

    The reality is the U.S. may pursue peace by flaunting its monopoly on violence, but any adversarial power will be condemned for acting similarly.

    “We are ready and willing, just as our Ukrainian partners are, just as our European allies are, to engage in real, in substantive, in genuine diplomacy in order to see if we can find a way out of what is a needless, brutal conflict,” Price said. “But that diplomacy is highly unlikely to bear fruit, to prove effective, in the midst of not only confrontation but escalation.”

    It is absurd to spell this out, but ceasefires are only necessary during conflicts that involve confrontations and escalations of violence. Diplomats negotiate to establish a stoppage in warfare so that a political agreement or peace treaty may be established.

    An Offramp For Russia

    Diplomats may pursue a ceasefire to prevent catastrophic events that could result in a substantial amount of death. Preventing further death does not necessarily equal appeasement.

    Nevertheless, British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss parroted the U.S. State Department’s talking point the day before the talks. “[Ukraine] cannot negotiate with a gun to the head of Ukrainians…So frankly, I don’t trust these so-called efforts of negotiations.”

    The same day Truss expressed absolute support for Britons, who would like to travel to Ukraine and become foreign fighters.

    Russia’s act of aggression has been met with economic warfare in the form of harsh sanctions from the U.S. and European countries, including the removal from the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), a messaging system that allows for international banking; barring Russian financial institutions from transactions with currencies other than the ruble; export “restrictions on semiconductors, telecommunication, encryption security, lasers, sensors, navigation, avionics, and maritime technologies”; asset freezes; and cutting off 13 state-owned companies from “raising money” in the United States.

    British Prime Minister Boris Johnson proclaimed, “We will continue on a remorseless mission to squeeze Russia, from the global economy, piece by piece. Day by day, and week by week.”In this context, supporting a ceasefire would not be capitulating to Russia’s invasion.

    The Western world is inflicting lasting damage on Russia that will make it a pariah state for the foreseeable future—and collectively punish Russia’s population of 144 million.

    Sanctions could be wielded to force Putin to negotiate a ceasefire and withdraw forces, however, there is no indication that leaders from any NATO country are leveraging them by offering to rescind certain sanctions if Russia reverses course.

    Norman Eisen, the former U.S. ambassador to the Czech Republic, appeared on CNN and was asked about the talks. He said it was too early for Ukraine and the West to give Russia a “diplomatic way” out of the nuclear crisis.

    “I’m extremely dubious, like President Zelensky, about the negotiations that have started. But I do think over time, particularly as—remember, we’re only five days into the conflict. I think as the situation on the ground evolves there will be opportunities over time for offramps, things like discussing a Ukrainian pledge never to be a part of NATO,” Eisen answered.

    Retired military general David Petraeus played a key role in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that destroyed the two countries. But stunningly, in his appearance on CNN, he showed more humanity than Eisen and contemplated why the U.S. should not merely accept that the war may drag on.

    “We have to start thinking through how do we provide Russia an out. You never want to put a guy who has nuclear weapons truly in a corner, where he feels that he has nothing left to lose,” Petraeus said.

    “So as the weight of the world is coming down on [Putin], on his economy, on his financial institutions, and the forces in the field,” Petraeus suggested we need to think about how he gets out of this but not capitulate to demands that he has placed on Ukraine or on NATO and the European Union.

    China, India, Pakistan, and Turkey all seem to recognize the extraordinary threat posed by the crisis, and they encouraged Russia to engage in ceasefire talks. They were even willing to mediate.

    Meanwhile, the interests of the U.S. military industrial-complex, which profits off NATO’s alignment against Russia, has surged. The U.S. approved $350 million in additional weapons for Ukraine, and other European countries, particularly Germany, followed suit.

    With Russia’s advance on Kiev momentarily stalled, the west has had ample opportunity to recognize the devastation that could come with a nuclear war and make a deal. It will not be long before Russian air strikes pummel targets in Kiev and drive more Ukrainians to flee their country.

    The State Department claims de-confliction channels remain open with Moscow, but funneling weapons to Ukraine won’t save Ukrainians. It will only increase the chance that Ukraine becomes a quagmire.

    The post Amid Nuclear Crisis, US Officials Reluctant To Pursue Ceasefire In Russia-Ukraine War appeared first on Shadowproof.

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  • Protest Song Of The Week: ‘Five Years (Cover)’ By Cowboy Junkies

    The Cowboy Junkies are a Canadian alt-country band, who released their first album back in 1986. They are most known for their 1988 album “The Trinity Session,” which featured their cover of The
    Velvet Underground’s “Sweet Jane.”

    The lo-fi classic album was recorded in a church for under $250, and it ended up selling over a million copies.

    While the Cowboy Junkies aren’t necessarily a political band, they have delved into socially conscious material on several occasions. For example, in 2005 they released the anti-war protest album “21st Century Blues,” which features mostly covers, along with a couple of originals. Their 2018 album All That Reckoning” also explored political themes.

    The band recently released their version of David Bowie’s “Five Years,” which appears on their
    upcoming covers album “Songs of the Recollection.” It is due out on March 25.

    Bowie’s version appeared on his 1972 album “The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from
    Mars.” The song depicts an impending apocalyptic disaster that will destroy the earth within five years.
    For example, the lyric, “News guy wept and told us. Earth was really dying,” may be even more relevant today.

    The Cowboy Junkies produced a video, complete with visuals that contemplate the band’s mournful rendering.

    Earth may not literally have five years left, but their rendition is a reminder that if climate change and other social ills continue to go unchecked, time will eventually run out.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njL25EHAtXg




    The post Protest Song Of The Week: ‘Five Years (Cover)’ By Cowboy Junkies appeared first on Shadowproof.

    This post was originally published on Shadowproof.