The Lifeboat News
[ Message Archive | The Lifeboat News ]

    Re: anyone else heard of "lawfare" Archived Message

    Posted by margo on September 13, 2019, 10:30 am, in reply to "anyone else heard of "lawfare""

    "Lawfare" is the legal warfare being done to Assange.

    It's being done very deliberately, it looks like, with the US leaning on its vassals UK and Sweden and their compromised judiciaries, because the US security state wants the photograph of Assange in manacles, stepping into a closed no-cameras-no-lawyers courtroom in eastern Virginia.

    It really is a David and Goliath struggle: Nils Melzer points out that the legal guns of three states are aimed at one man - and he's denied calls to his American lawyer and delivered a faulty pair of reader spectacles by HMP Belmarsh - which compromise his ability to read documents and prepare himself for the day he has to appear alone to defend himself in a Virginia courtroom.

    The US wants to see him jailed there for 175 years pour encourager les autres: four to five million people in the USA have security clearances and they all could be potential "Snowdens" or "Mannings" -so a strong message needs to be sent. Italian journalist Stephania Maurizi, who's studied this case intensively, makes this point.

    Her point is bolstered when you read the type of comments put out by influential establishment fellows: eg
    The Assange Indictment: overdue protection of security secrets
    https://www.fpri.org/article/2019/05/the-new-assange-indictment-persecuting-the-press-or-the-overdue-protection-of-national-security-secrets/

    Reading between the lines, he feels it fine that Assange should stand as the scapegoat and the symbolic case to serve as the public drawing of 'a line in the sand' ...
    Previous Message


    Quote: "[...] this long overdue stand, but in finally drawing a line on unauthorized disclosures and the conduct that fosters them, the message is far more important than the messenger.

    I lack the prescience to predict where the Assange indictment will now lead, or whether the Justice Department’s actions in charging Assange represent an anomaly or a precedent with respect to the media’s news gathering activities. But, I do believe the time for taking a stand on unauthorized disclosures is long past

    Message Thread: