Julian Assange Update August 2020; and Open Letter To The Anti-Defamation League

Julian Assange Update August 2020

President Obama prosecuted and imprisoned more whistleblowers than any other president. But President Trump did one thing that Obama did not do. He indicted Julian Assange for conspiracy under the Espionage Act charging that in 2010 Assange and his publishing organization WikiLeaks released truthful information about American war crimes.

Obama held off making such a charge because the US government has never before gone after a publisher; not even the New York Times for publishing the Pentagon papers.

Assange sits in solitary confinement in the notorious Belmarsh prison in London. He awaits the outcome of the USAs extradition request.

His partner, Stella Moris, the mother of their two young children said: Julian is being targeted by the United States administration for the crime of journalism. He helped expose the war crimes and human rights abuses which the US would have preferred to keep hidden from public view. He revealed the killing of unarmed civilians and the torture of innocent people. No one has been held responsible for the serious crimes Julian has exposed. This extradition aims to entomb and silence in forever.

He is in bad shape mentally and physically. Nels Melzer, The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture visited Julian and reported that he was being tortured by the months on end of solitary confinement. He hasnt seen his lawyer in five months nor his companion and their two children. He cant prepare his defense. He was finally given a computer but the keys were glued down. When he last appear in court he could barely pronounce his name. Defend.wikileaks.org

What is at stake is the future of free journalism. Journalists have a right to publish and we, their audience, have a right to learn. This is what the US government is attempting to take away.

Guest – Nathan Fuller, the American head of the London-based Courage Foundation and the director of the newly formed Committee to Defend Julian Assange and Civil Liberties.

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Open Letter To The Anti-Defamation League

The Anti-Defamation League pretends to be a civil rights organization, but the ADL is not an ally. It has a legacy of supporting racist policing, surveillance, colonialism and the silencing of social justice activism. It has branded itself as a civil rights organization in ways that conceal and legitimatize is right wing activities, undermined the rights of Black, immigrant, queer, Muslim, and Arabs.

In August 2020, 100 organizations signed an open letter exposing the ADL. Among the signatory organizations whose work Law And Disorder has covered on this radio program include the Center for Constitutional Rights, the National Lawyers Guild and Palestine Legal.

These 100 organizations signed an open letter announcing the publication of a pamphlet written by a working group with contributions from the American Friends Service Committee, Jewish Voice for Peace, and Palestine Legal.

Guest – Lesley Williams, member of the coordinating committee for Jewish Voice for Peace in Chicago, the advisory board of speakers bureau for Jews Against Anti-Muslim Racism, and a founding member of the Tzedek Chicago, a non-Zionist pro social justice synagogue in Chicago. She is the author of The Anti-Defamation League Kills the Black Jewish Alliance and We Cant Fight Anti-Semitism and anti-Black Racism in Isolaton. She works with a local coalition of teachers and activists to bring Palestinian history into school curricula.

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