L’Affaire Assange

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A very disquieting report from a reliable friend, who is well plugged into the British Foreign Office, former UK Ambassador Craig Murray. Craig has learned that the UK is under immense pressure from the Obama administration to enter the Ecuadorian embassy in London and seize Julian Assange.

From Murray’s Blog: http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2012/08/americas-vassal-acts-decisively-and-illegally/

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For those scratching their heads for a reason why Official Washington is out for Julian Assange’s head, please take just 12 minutes to view this video

Whistleblower Jailed, Shooters Walk Free

Some may be familiar with “Panorama,” the oldest and most respected “60 Minutes”-type program on German TV. Panorama did an excellent 16-min special, featuring Ethan McCord, er al. and key footage from the “collateral murder” original tape. It aired in Germany (with dubbing into German) on Feb. 10, 2011.

The program had unusually broad and intense resonance in Germany. Ray asked Panorama if it could possibly undub the dubbing, and one of the producers did just that. So now it’s available to all who understand English. It is VERY good, and Ray has been using it to good effect during lectures. Videos are truly worth a thousand words, so we decided to post this again here: 
http://daserste.ndr.de/panorama/media/panor165.html

For those who understand German, the full-length program is equally compelling. The URL for the GERMAN original is:

http://daserste.ndr.de/panorama/archiv/2011/manning101.html

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Ray interviewed by Robert Knight on “Five O’Clock Shadow,” WBAI Radio in NYC on the latest developments re Julian Assange, August 16, 2012
 http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/program/62234

Ecuador’s political asylum for WikiLeaks publisher JULIAN ASSANGE may yet be rendered moot by: (1) A British arrest and extradition to Sweden for questioning, and then “rendering” to the tender mercies of the United States; or (2) UK “decertification” of the diplomatic status of the Ecuadoran Embassy in London in order to invade it and arrest Assange.

Ray details diplomatic and intelligence machinations against Assange, and recalls the surrealistic plight of Jozsef Mindszenty, the Hungarian also granted asylum, but was confined to the U.S. embassy in Budapest for 15 years.

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The Assange Witch Hunt
By Annie Machon, former MI6 (UK’s FBI) officer, August 17, 2012
Best wrap-up on the Assange Affair (by a friend of Ray)
 http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/annie-machon/the-assange-witch-hunt_b_1790851.html


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Perfidious Albion on Steroids — Julian Assange and the Bizarre US/UK/Swedish campaign against him: Ray interview, August 16

In an apparent effort to relive past glory, the untrustworthy Brits have attached themselves, without apparent shame, to the sole remaining (for the nonce) world Empire — one that used to abide, for the most part, by the rule of law. (I know, I know; sorry if all that sounds so 20th Century!)

Aware that gutsy little Ecuador was about to honor Julian Assange’s request for well deserved political asylum, the UK threatened, in writing, to use force to enter the Ecuadorian embassy in London and arrest Assange. Never mind the sanctity of embassies. (It’s only wrong to violate it when the Iranians do it, or so it seems.)

First thing I thought of this morning, when I heard the news, was what my Irish grandfather Philip McGovern used to say about the British. (Full disclosure: It cannot be said that he was perfectly objective, since so many of his family starved to death in the great famine.)

“Do you know why they say that the sun never sets on the British Empire? I’ll tell you why. It’s because the good Lord would never trust the British in the dark.”

Ray was interviewed on RT early this morning (August 16)

http://rt.com/news/assange-asylum-cold-war-883/

 

The Enigma of Yasser Arafat


VIPS MemCon on Meeting With Arafat, March 19, 2003
Kathleen and Bill Christison

http://consortiumnews.com/2012/07/08/the-enigma-of-yasser-arafat/

With the new evidence that Arafat was assassinated, perhaps by exposure to polonium, we thought there would be interest in the Christisons’ account of their hour with Arafat in March 2003 — a very historic time, two days after the murder of Rachel Corrie in Gaza; just hours before the U.S. launched “shock and awe” on Iraq; and just a year and a half before Arafat died. So we pulled the Christisons’ memorandum of conversation out of the VIPS archive (see URL immediately above).

(In the process, we updated the listing of VIPS issuances, which now number 21 — from the same-day assessment of Powell’s UN speech on February 5, 2003 to the latest [on Iran] on January 4, 2012. The listing and links to the memos, etc., can be accessed at warisacrime.org/vips. It has been suggested we publish them in a booklet. Would welcome any thought that any of your readers might have on this —   raylmcgovern@gmail.com)

Back to Arafat, the circumstances of his death were/remain highly suspicious. He was, of course, bête noire for Sharon, Bush, and Cheney. A few months before Arafat’s death, George W. Bush arbitrarily withdrew U.S. recognition of Arafat and the PLO as the “sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people.”

On July 18, 2004, in an interview in Le Figaro, Bush dismissed Arafat as a negotiating partner, saying, “The real problem is that there is no leadership that is able to say ‘help us establish a state and we will fight terror and answer the needs of the Palestinians.'” That departure by Bush was criticized by the European Union and Russia, who were part of the quartet leading negotiations between Israel and the PLO. Sharon had already said what Bush said.

On October 14, 2004, the usually taciturn Brent Scowcroft, former national security adviser to George H. W. Bush (and, up till that time, chair of the George W. Bush’s President’s Foreign Intelligence and Advisory Board), told the Financial Times: “Sharon just has him wrapped around his little finger; I think the president is mesmerized.” It was well known that Bush agreed with Sharon that Arafat had to be replaced. How much the Bush White House was aware of the circumstances of his demise is not known — yet.

On October 25, 2004, Arafat fell seriously ill from as yet unknown causes. He died on November 11, 2004 of (the identical! unknown causes). Shortly thereafter, Arafat’s nephew — and countless others — speculated that he died an “unnatural” death. It is well known that Israel’s Mossad has a section of experts in lethal poisons, etc. (shades of the Soviet KGB’s “mokryie dela” [wet affairs] department).

On January 11, 2012, Israeli armed forces chief Benny Gantz warned Parliament that “2012 is expected to be a critical year for Iran. Mentioning the nuclear issue and “continued international pressure” on Iran, Gantz added “things that happen to it unnaturally.”

Less than a day after Gantz’s warning, a 32 year-old Iranian scientist, father of two, was killed by motorcycle-riding bombers, an attack that the Associated Press called “almost certainly the work of Israel.”

As for Iranian Revolutionary Guards General Hassan Moghadam, one of the driving forces behind Iran’s advanced ballistic missile program, killed in a large explosion on November 12, 2011, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said the next day that he would like to see more such explosions in Iran.

Time magazine cited a Western intelligence source as saying Israel’s Mossad was behind the explosion at the Iranian military base. “Don’t believe the Iranians that it was an accident,” the official said. The source added that additional acts of sabotage were in the works as part of an effort to stop Iran’s nuclear program. “There are more bullets in the magazine,” he added.

Bullets, polonium, Hellfire missiles — whatever. Some life, apparently, is cheap. And assassinations are us.