Jimmy Carter on Wikileaks…
Tag: whistleblowers
UK judge denies US request to extradite Julian Assange
A British judge has rejected a US request to extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to America, ruling that such a move would be “oppressive” by reason of his mental health.The 49-year-old Australian has been charged in the US under the Espionage Act for his role in publishing classified military and diplomatic cables.”I have decided that extradition would be oppressive and I order his discharge,” judge Vanessa Baraitser said in her ruling Monday.Despite ruling that Assange would be afforded a “fair trial” in the event of extradition to the United States, the judge considered that the “special administrative measures” Assange would most likely be held in would have a severe, negative impact on his mental health.Baraitser said Assange had “remained either severely or moderately clinically depressed,” throughout his stay at London’s Belmarsh prison and that he was now considered a suicide risk.She also said that the increased isolation he would face in detention in the US would further increase that risk, adding that Assange had the intellect to circumvent anti-suicidal measures that would be put in place.In her full ruling, published online, Baraitser wrote: “I accept that oppression as a bar to extradition requires a high threshold … However, I am satisfied that, in these harsh conditions, Mr. Assange’s mental health would deteriorate causing him to commit suicide with the ‘single minded determination’ of his autism spectrum disorder.””I find that the mental condition of Mr. Assange is such that it would be oppressive to extradite him to the United States of America,” she added.
China lab leak is the ‘most credible’ source of the coronavirus outbreak, says top US government official, amid bombshell claims Wuhan scientist has turned whistleblower
One of America’s most senior government officials says the most ‘credible’ theory about the origin of coronavirus is that it escaped from a laboratory in China.
Matthew Pottinger, who is President Donald Trump‘s respected Deputy National Security Adviser, told politicians from around the world that even China’s leaders now openly admit their previous claims that the virus originated in a Wuhan market are false.
Mr Pottinger said that the latest intelligence points to the virus leaking from the top-secret Wuhan Institute of Virology, 11 miles from the market, saying: ‘There is a growing body of evidence that the lab is likely the most credible source of the virus.’
Zhang Zhan: China jails citizen journalist for Wuhan reports
In a video interview with an independent filmmaker before her arrest, Ms Zhang said she decided to travel to Wuhan in February after reading an online post by a resident about life in the city during the outbreak.
Once there, she began documenting what she saw on the streets and hospitals in livestreams and essays, despite threats by authorities, and her reports were widely shared on social media.
The rights group Network of Chinese Human Rights Defenders said her reports also covered the detention of other independent journalists and the harassment of families of victims who were seeking accountability.
She Noticed $200 Million Missing, Then She Was Fired
Earlier this year, the governing board of one of California’s most powerful regulatory agencies unleashed troubling accusations against its top employee.
Commissioners with the California Public Utilities Commission, or CPUC, accused Executive Director Alice Stebbins of violating state personnel rules by hiring former colleagues without proper qualifications. They said the agency chief misled the public by asserting that as much as $200 million was missing from accounts intended to fund programs for the state’s blind, deaf and poor. At a hearing in August, Commission President Marybel Batjer said that Stebbins had discredited the CPUC.
“You took a series of actions over the course of several years that calls into question your integrity,” Batjer told Stebbins, who joined the agency in 2018. Those actions, she said, “cause us to have to consider whether you can continue to serve as the leader of this agency.”
The five commissioners voted unanimously to terminate Stebbins, who had worked as an auditor and budget analyst for different state agencies for more than 30 years.
But an investigation by the Bay City News Foundation and ProPublica has found that Stebbins was right about the missing money.
Police Launch Investigation Into Death of Vaccine Safety Advocate Brandy Vaughn
The Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office Monday announced it is investigating the sudden death of Brandy Vaughn, a well-known Pharma whistleblower and advocate for vaccine safety, who died Dec. 7.
A spokesperson for the sheriff’s office said in a statement that investigators won’t determine the cause of Vaughn’s death until the completion of a pending toxicology screening, a process that normally takes 4 – 6 weeks.
Brandy’s death was originally reported as resulting from gallbladder complications. But many of her friends and co-activists in the vaccine safety movement suspect foul play. Those suspicions have gained traction due to a wave of mysterious deaths — many of them violent —among alternative and integrative medical doctors in recent years. In response to this trend, Brandy made a Facebook post almost exactly a year before her death in which she said, “If something were to happen to me, I have arranged for a close group of my friends … to hire a team of private investigators to figure out all the details …”
Pentagon Investigators Fired For Exposing Cover Up Of Military Sexual Assaults
Three Pentagon officials who were tasked with investigating sexual assault in the military say that they were either fired or suspended for reporting on cases of sexual assault and exposing attempts to cover up these crimes. They were essentially fired for doing what they were hired to do.
The three women spoke to CBS News this week, about their work with the Pentagon’s Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Program, and how they faced retaliation for properly investigating the crimes that were taking place within the military’s ranks, just as the victims themselves were facing retaliation.
Ashley Biden Diary Reveals Child Sex Trauma, Drug Abuse, Resentment For Joe – Whistleblower
National File’s whistleblower also has a recording of Ashley Biden admitting the diary is hers, and employed a handwriting expert who verified the pages were all written by Ashley. National File has in its possession a recording of this whistleblower detailing the work he did to verify its authenticity.
In the recording, the whistleblower also adds that his media organization chose not to release the documents after receiving pressure from a competing outlet.
National File has already reported several revelations from the diary, including the fact that the author believes she was sexually molested as a child and shared “probably not appropriate” showers with her father, the months of entries detailing the author’s struggle with drug abuse, the entries that detail the author’s crumbling marriage with multiple affairs, the entries showing the family’s fears of a potential scandal due to her brother’s new home, and those that show a deep resentment for her father due to his money, control, and emotional manipulation.
10 Years After Iraq War Logs Only People Jailed Are The Ones Who Exposed War Crimes
None of the Bush or Obama administration officials who planned or executed the illegal war, nor any of the field commanders or even rank-and-file troops connected with any of the crimes revealed in the logs, were ever seriously punished.
The whistleblowers, on the other hand, suffered tremendously for exposing the truth. Both Manning and Assange were charged under the 1917 Espionage Act. Manning was convicted in 2013 and sentenced to 35 years in prison, although her sentence was commuted by President Barack Obama just before he left office in January 2017.
Assange is today imprisoned in Britain’s notorious Belmarsh Prison as he awaits possible extradition to the United States, where he faces up to 175 years behind bars, most likely in a supermax facility a former warden described as a “fate worse than death.”
Both Assange and Manning have suffered abuse that prominent human rights advocates have called torture.
House resolutions clearing leakers Snowden and Assange gain third co-sponsor in sole Libertarian
Rep. Justin Amash threw his support Wednesday behind congressional resolutions calling for the U.S. government to abandon its cases against wanted leakers Edward J. Snowden and Julian Assange.
Mr. Amash, Michigan Libertarian, announced on Twitter that he signed on to become a co-sponsor of separate, similar resolutions urging the government to drop the charges facing the two secret-spillers.
Both resolutions were introduced by Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, Hawaii Democrat, and had already gained slight bipartisan support before Mr. Amash — the only registered Libertarian in Congress — joined in.
Hellbound and Down 
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