Friday, 7 October 2011

:)

_struct David Johnson

That's a fucking big balaclava. RT @VictoriaPolice : Pedestrian struck by car in Balaclava bit.ly/rnYtn1

John Pilger: The smearing of a revolution

The high court in London will soon decide whether Julian Assange is to be extradited to Sweden to face allegations of sexual misconduct. At the appeal hearing in July, Ben Emmerson QC, counsel for the defence, described the whole saga as "crazy". Sweden's chief prosecutor had dismissed the original arrest warrant, saying there was no case for Assange to answer. Both women involved said they had consented to have sex. On the facts alleged, no crime would have been committed in Britain.
However, it is not the Swedish judicial system that presents a "grave danger" to Assange, say his lawyers, but a legal device known as a temporary surrender, under which he can be sent on from Sweden to the United States secretly and quickly. The founder and editor-in-chief
of WikiLeaks, who published the greatest leak of official documents in history, providing a unique insight into rapacious wars and the lies told by governments, is likely to find himself in a hell hole not dissimilar to the "torturous" dungeon that held Private Bradley Manning, the alleged whistleblower. Manning has not been tried, let alone convicted, yet on 21 April President Barack Obama declared him guilty with a dismissive "He broke the law".
This Kafka-style justice awaits Assange whether or not Sweden decides to prosecute him. Last December, the Independent disclosed that the US and Sweden had already started talks on his extradition. At the same time, a secret grand jury - a relic of the 18th century long abandoned in this country - has convened just across the river from Washington, in a corner of Virginia that is home to the CIA and most of America's national security establishment. The grand jury is a "fix", a leading legal expert told me: reminiscent of the all-white juries in the South that convicted black people by rote. A sealed indictment is believed to exist.
Under the US constitution, which guarantees free speech, Assange should be protected, in theory. When he was running for president, Obama said that "whistleblowers are part of a healthy democracy and must be protected from reprisal". His embrace of George W Bush's "war on terror" has changed all that. Obama has pursued more whistleblowers than any of his predecessors. The problem for his administration in "getting" Assange is that military investigators have found no collusion or contact between him and Manning. There is no crime, so one has to be concocted, probably in line with Vice-President Joe Biden's absurd description of Assange as a "hi-tech terrorist".

Petty and perfidious

Should Assange win his high court appeal, he could face extradition directly to the US. In the past, US officials have synchronised extradition warrants with the conclusion of a pending case. Like their predatory military, US jurisdiction recognises few boundaries. As Manning's suffering demonstrates, together with the recently executed Troy Davis and the forgotten inmates of Guantanamo, much of the US criminal justice system is corrupt.
In a letter addressed to the Australian government, Britain's most distinguished human rights lawyer, Gareth Peirce, who now acts for Assange, wrote:

Given the extent of the public discussion, frequently on the basis of entirely false assumptions . . . it is very hard to attempt to preserve for him any presumption of innocence. Mr Assange has now hanging over him not one but two Damocles swords, of potential extradition to two different jurisdictions in turn for two different alleged crimes, neither of which are crimes in his own country, and . . . his personal safety has become at risk in circumstances that are highly politically charged.

These facts, and the prospect of a grotesque miscarriage of justice, have been drowned in a vituperative campaign against the WikiLeaks founder. Deeply personal, petty, perfidious and inhuman attacks have been aimed at a man not charged with any crime, yet held isolated and under house arrest - conditions not even meted out to a defendant who is facing extradition on a charge of murdering his wife...

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@'New Statesman'

prodnose Danny Baker

David Cameron wants everyone to pay up their credit cards. Well can't the banks do that for us? I mean, we bailed them out...

Bianca Chang - Recent Works, June 2011

Stop-motion builds and photos of recent works created for Sydney's A4 Paper Festival 31st May - 5th June presented by the Paper Convention. All photos by Jacob Ring.

abditum Griffin Boyce

Sealed court dockets concerning Birgitta Jonsdottir in the #WikiLeaks Grand Jury scribd.com/doc/67742787 #twitter

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(Thanx HerrB!)

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Steve Schapiro: Taxi Driver

As analogue lovers, there’s no telling in how much we adore film photographs. Seeing one’s shots on actual prints and compiled in a book brings visual elation and self-gratification. ‘Photos on Pages’ is a new series that features photo-books by great photographers. In this first volume, the spotlight is on Steve Schapiro and his exclusive photography for Taxi Driver...

A 31-year-old white supremacist once associated with a neo-Nazi gang known as the “Aryan Death Squad” and his female companion are in custody in northern California as suspects in two murders and the disappearance of a disabled veteran.
David Joseph Pedersen, convicted of threatening to murder federal Judge Edward Lodge of Idaho in 2001, was arrested Wednesday near Marysville, Calif., in a stolen car with his companion, 24-year-old Holly Ann Grigsby, of Portland.
They both have been identified by authorities in Washington state as suspects in the brutal Sept. 28 slaying in Everett, Wash., of Pedersen’s stepmother, 69-year-old Leslie Mae Pederson.
A bloody pillow covered her head and her hands were tied with duct tape, according to police who found a sword near the victim. A medical examiner determined she died from “incised wounds of the neck” and ruled her death a homicide.
Her husband, David Jones “Red” Pedersen, a 56-year-old disabled veteran, remains missing from the home, according to authorities who say in court documents they aren’t sure if he is a suspect or another victim. Family friends say he had difficulty traveling in a car because of his medical problems.
David “Joey” Pedersen and Grigsby had been visiting his father and stepmother just prior to the killing and disappearance. Grigsby’s father, Fred Grigsby, of Portland, Ore., told The Associated Press that his daughter has a history of drug addiction and has associated with white supremacists...