hello and welcome to crossfire or all things considered i'm peter lavelle on this edition of the program we discuss one and one issue only the fate of julian assange and the fate of journalism itself. talking astonishing i'm joined by my guests here in moscow is a very moreau he's the founder of the center of political strategic analysis trap

well and in france we cross with john laughlin he is a lecturer in political philosophy at i says the catholic university are gentlemen crosstalk rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want and i always appreciate let me go first to france a job and i was reading an excellent article by chris hedges which was a republican consortium news title chris hedges the moderate martyr room of julian assange is julian assange a martyr a martyr for journalism a martyr for the law maybe a martyr for justice go ahead. i think there's absolutely no doubt about that i mean we know from the moment that he left the ecuadorian embassy in london that his original claim made seven years ago that he was trying to escape extradition to the united states was true even though all his enemies denied this the extradition demand was produced immediately he was released from ecuadorian asylum and they you also know peter better than anyone the video of that moment when he came

out of the embassy door came of course from rockley from r.t. because they put a life feed on watching i think for about a week and they made a lot of money from being able to sell this this short video clip the fact that r.t. got that scoop if you like got those images is itself deeply symbolic because i hard to say that not only was it profitable for r.t. but it was such an immense propaganda coup for russia or counter propaganda coup to see someone who is a journalist who has published true information not fake news it was published information about war crimes about political shit gannon incans being a bundled into a police car and effectively bundled on the way to the united states of america exercising extra torah terril extraterritorial jurisdiction in another country is

so deeply shocking i think to anyone has any sense of. media freedom that it only makes it even the more disgusting when we see newspapers like the guardian or the daily mail yet dunst on a stand sandra's legal grave and saying what a horrible person he is because the issue here obviously is not whether he is a horrible person or whether you agree with him it is a matter of media freedom and in previous. programs. peter we've discussed the legislative framework that's being put in x. in europe right to resist but to restrict media freedom here we see what i talked about a week or two ago the use of the criminal law the glass of information and this is what we call dictatorship you know exactly it. is an australian citizen his own government didn't lift a finger no surprise there we can weeks is an operation that is now based in the united states. the department of justice now is making

a claim and then it has its reach is global if if the department of justice determines that you have committed some kind of crime s. be nice for example against the united states you could be prosecuted anywhere in the world. and i to underline that on the contrary on manning on the snowden. never work for. us services. is not a twitter of anything and listening to. that is a member of the known state intelligence agency it's completely crazy and. of course i couldn't agree more that using it is. not only for. fighting on the economic called point of view but even of fodder for the. fighting against of freedom of speech it's. it's incredible but you know i'm quite

disappointed again by by britain trump because it used to says. leaks because he told her against the clinton. gang you know you know it was really quite amazing when you're a week you weeks to i know nothing about we always a very coward as disappointed variables as you want to go back to john in france the interesting thing is here too is that the i see that. the united states because it no longer is able to control the global narrative it is lashing out at the institutions that can challenge that narrative and that is weak i want to reiterate over and over again not one thing that we keep leaks ever released was everything was our fantic unlike the major news outlets that dominate the western world they have become stenographers of power and join us arjun people like julian aside

and said no there is something to see behind the curtain they want to put the curtain back in place john. well can you imagine what the reaction would be in the west if alexei navalny were bundled from his hiding place into a russian police car and prosecuted and sent to prison for his so-called blogging against corruption as we know we've had this narrative now for years that novell me as a lone voice on the internet denouncing putin's corruption the image that is presented develops in our violently in the west is precisely what julian assange has in fact been doing in the west in a much more important way because he's been as you say peter publishing information which is true he's been publishing documents he's been publishing secret documents but he hasn't been publishing some narrative he's just been publishing documents and we've been treated now as i say for decades into this topic and are about

bloggers standing up to power this fairy tale about people like never knew but there are people you know in similar fairytale positions all over the world presented as great freedom fighters by the united states and its western allies you know when we say that you're here just for a second i think it's very interesting to people don't know about it because if they're not told but then bradley manning did approach major western news. outlets about the information that he had at that time and they all said no then he went to we kulaks because the major news outlets no longer perform a journalistic purpose their purpose is to maintain in further official narratives john well we knew that we saw that when the guardian which of course originally published some of the wiki leaks documents then agreed to sit down with the secret intelligence services of britain otherwise known as m i six and to destroy together

in front of the officials of m i six their hard drives containing this information that act confirmed that the guardian is an m i six newspaper it's an m i six outlet a number of its journalists work for m i six and produced narratives concocted by the british government one of them writes a lot about russia i'm sure you know who i mean yeah. so it's that is the that is the truth about these newspapers and that is the reader or other media outlets and that is the reason why as you say then bradley manning did not have any success with them so you know we are in a situation of the most breathtaking hypocrisy yeah you know you know i guess what's most disappointing for me being a journalist myself is that so few journalists actually stand up with a profession and for say you know if we if you have a long enough memory and if you want to remember we can weeks was considered

a profoundly professional excellent publisher now now he's not even a journalist he is just as you've pompei or as words you know it is an extension of someone else's foreign intelligence it's amazing how people have flipped i guess it's because of their material interest not because they have any integrity in the worse in my opinion you will see london and washington continue to lead. the rest of the world to the rest of the world it won't turn to anything. unfortunately i remember when the killings published very interesting information on the on the us . foreign department. especially the influence on the under french policy. point of view you know the the to encourage the policy to encourage immigration policy and it doesn't it didn't was

it did it didn't to have any in use actually nobody use it because in french as in england or in the united states or the information from reconnects if they are known by me and on by people like me you want to know where to really happened but it's useful actually said the big problem in my opinion and again scandal treatment of of mr assad the one to help. you know it. before you're the break here i mean we keep the leaks came into being it filled the nice that was absolutely necessary is to hold power to work out and that is why his greatest crime is holding power to account because that's exactly what journalists were supposed to do that's what the fourth estate was supposed to do they don't do it anymore it was left to him to do it and now the state wants to

destroy that go ahead john you know what i mean we all remember don't we those are religious images of iraqi civilians being shot dead from a helicopter which were part of that wiki leaks revelations in the early years i mean genuinely shocking evidence of war crimes but i want to make a point that develop a point made just now about extra territoriality because as we know from this case and from other cases in. commercial law for example when the american justice department imposed a multi-billion dollar fine on a french bank and as we know from the way that the american government uses international criminal justice to further its foreign policy ends but of course never allows international tribunals like the international criminal court to exact indeed forbids them to have any say over america we can see that this extraterritoriality is a one way street is it is the american empire without i'm not trying to be

polemical it literally is the use of american law in this case through by means of an extradition treaty but with an ally which will inevitably unfortunately comply with it it's the use of american law to further american policy including american security policy in clear violation ok joe and i got to jump in here thank you for joining us here now we're going to go to a short break now and after that short break we'll continue our discussion on a science day with art and. the business model of facebook is to pressure people to continue communicating through facebook and giving facebook personal information and this is what makes

a surveillance monster the sole facebook does not have users facebook has used people their facebook users. we came here where did you work before you came here when you live well death row in many us states capital punishment is still practiced convicted prisoners can spend years waiting for execution but most of the time the victims' families they are very much in favor the death penalty there are some people because of what they did have given up the right to live among us somebody even proven innocent years on death row and how many more exonerations is it going to take before we as a society realize that this is not working and we actually do something about. you know world of big partisan movies a lot and conspiracy it's time to wake up to dig deeper to hit the stories that

mainstream media refuses to tell more than ever we need to be smarter we need to stop slamming the door on the bath and shouting past each other it's time for critical thinking it's time to fight for the middle for the truth the time is now for watching closely watching the hawks. welcome back to cross talk we're all things considered i'm peter lavelle reminder we're discussing. right now we're joined by alexander me curious in london he is

a writer on legal affairs as well as the editor in chief of the duran dot com welcome to the program alex how how is the press reacting to this story about julian assange as a rest. particularly how roughly are. agency picked that up first though kudos for us and what is this the general reaction to all of this i know break hovers over everything but this is a very important story go ahead in london if it's actually push the brakes even use to one side it's been heavily covered there's been a lot of all or and some jealousy corruptly getting the pictures of them in the british media or are frankly big jealous that are roughly in our city got their first well done now as to the media coverage it's been heavily covered very very great criticism some of it actually i think rather vicious criticism of julian a sound and

a lot of car bridge of the teds which are coming through britain to get the swedes to revive the rape allegations you've got an outing. of the there's even seventy m.p.'s that written a letter about this basically to say they know that if they were in if those rape allegations are revived which they haven't been of course they should be given cry all rootie and it was the reason that that is you come to the next part of your question some embarrassment a lot of embarrassment about the way this whole thing has laid out i think a negative reaction from many many people so by reviving the rape allegations people are able to say well you know we're not very keen on this extradition to the us but we still stick with julian a sound is not a good person who has a lot to answer for so we can still criticise him so i see it personally as an

attempt to basically damage julian assange and his reputation and i have no doubt that it will be to the united states. that he will be extradited if he's extradited all and not to sweden would you say no enthusiasm for repining the rape allegations which would draw out. he was in the in the jordan embassy but also our jury in a. very detailed statement in which you responded to the allegations which very few people seem to be aware of noise it's amazing the british want the swedes to open reopen one of their investigations. trials because it's only a question of putting him in jail of or executive it's about destroying is whole

and he made. his decision politics through smear i mean all of these people that are criticizing him on both sides of the atlantic they refused to comment on what he actually did reveal war crimes and corruption they don't want to talk about what he did they want to talk about his character i don't give a i don't care one way or another about his character and this is a perfect media ploy to destroy someone and to ignore what. is actually happening if you look at the french media it's more neutral i can say because it's not so important because for for but actually it's wrong because the french media the french journalist should have defended assad from the beginning but they don't do it because in don't remember that we was ashamed because we stopped the plane the president plane because we were sinking that is going to take to take assad with

him so again there is as you say there is a u.s. umpire and payoff. we are all some countries supposed to follow this. it's a big not only for britain but. as with our friends in the doing of see anything to try to protect which is supposed to be the ground of western civilization is the freedom of speech and the freedom to what we're seeing it is true it's absolutely right i mean the us likes and its allies like to export their values but they don't live up to their own values at the same time here alex it's you're a lawyer it seems to me that video jay is they're just saying how to create a legal strategy again there it is this is a hostile prosecution it is not based on facts that we know i mean talk about transparency and that is that synonymous with the we t.v. leaks transparency i don't see the same kind of transparency from the prosecution

go ahead what i did exactly and one of the things that absolutely astonishes me is that you see so many journalists around the world cheering this prosecution on because of their hostility to a sound and yet of course what this is at least as i read it is in an attempt to get round the protections to journalists provided by the law and one would just thought the journalists putting aside whatever feelings they may have about a sound which would see that as a direct attack on them the committee to protect journalists has made that very point by the way so they have various people like glenn greenwald and every journalist should be concerned about this prosecution it is a very serious case it's been brought out of time it alleges a conspiracy where the facts are incoherent and i'm all for those

alan dershowitz is words not mine by the way and on top of everything else in order to prove that conspiracy. they have to see rely heavily on the testimony of. who is not actually providing testimony and he's being kept in indefinite detention until she does which i would have thought is also a very troubling thing and savage is absolutely right when he talks about the collapse of western values since when in the west how we've been keeping people in indefinite detention until they just testify against someone else i mean we are slowly slipping it seems to me into moscow trials territory smears against the queues and pressure on our people to get them to testify on you know very bad

very bad in every way but it's certainly sets a precedent here in a very bad example going to the only reason which was given us a new situation for prosecuting mr a soldier is that is supposed to have help many to find a post who has words to you or your side so it's something want to any one be any kind of evidence would be given for that and so but as long as we in the united states that we give him in a jail for maybe twenty twenty five years or so i mean it's this is the standard if this is the standard then indictments should be made against the washington post the guardian c.n.n. all the rest of them ok because that's when publishers what they want more because of what julian assange was doing was not illegal it was illegal for them bradley manning he was you know. in uniform in the service our waiter chelsea paid

a very high price for that ok and it was all under the obama administration i mean ministration that was had a war against whistleblowers put chelsea manning into. confinement even under conditions of torture and then they all pout themselves on the back by giving clemency ok and now this. witch hunt against. whistleblowers continues and that's because when you go back to that's the whole point isn't it really though it is a chilling effect there to make sure that no one ever does it no one challenges the empire and gets near it was the next well. we can't exactly to the point that you may grant the beginning peter which is exactly that this is exactly what the purpose is. to people who don't want to discuss the things the julian assange and wiki leaks have exposed crimes in iraq the reading of the democratic

primary process all of those things are no longer being talked about what we've been talked about and all these other things which are basically an attempt to discredit his discredit weaker leaks and make a visual narrative use pull them beyond challenge you know alexander and so because what i thought was really interesting when i watched all of the american cable with the exception of tucker carlson on fox news all of them almost without exception are trying to reignite the rush it get it to coax ok the connection between a silence of the russians there is no one scintilla of evidence that that ever happened let me go to exactly i mean they're trying to again change the subject not what he report that would be leaks released but what kind of bad company doing this i'm supposing we have i think the aim is to conceal with us and one toward the

world because you know. before the meeting with we between the board and kennedy in sixty one. intelligence service that the cia is listening to him and. he said good for them. but the problem though is the u.s. administration has many so many things so many murders so many mass murders so many bad deed to conceal that they have no choice but finding any kind of had you know a new appreciation against russia against the russia today against of course we killings and as you know it will go on the courts are going to continue again to lecturing all the country in the world what to do to protect human rights try to protect their freedom of speech but for them because our shows and by i don't know who he is this is basically pentagon papers two point zero. and the supreme court ruled in favor of the maine and

washington post and specifically is not trafficking and in stolen government material it was it was in the public interest that the people learn this is no different but the difference is the difference is back in one nine hundred seventy one your journalists uniformly stood beside her ok and in this case they were uniformly against the last ten seconds you know that is this is crazy because fathers when there is in the world the example to follow is the watergate because it was a question of sending nixon out of the. function of president but no this example is no more for anybody this is much much bigger because its impact is immense and it is setting a precedent that is in danger of the next will have would have no scenting idea

that it has all the time we have gentlemen many thanks my guest here in moscow london and in france and thanks to our viewers for watching us here arche see you next time remember. limit. lead. lives. best's drugs were her cocaine as were four bucks for the under fifty to everybody use cocaine crack cocaine you can smoke it this is worth fifteen thirty.

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there's nothing. the words. i'm not. the stories that shaped the week wiki leaks founder julian assange was arrested off a spending almost seven years holed up in the ecuadorian embassy in london his arrest grabbed the global attention and sparked concerns over a song just possible extradition to the united states. this hour with us republican senator roger is military help for venezuela to prevent what he calls genocide by president maduro outside claims an invasion is being discussed behind closed doors . fighting in libya continues.