let them get away with it that's our global news update for this hour but don't forget you can always had to our website r.t. dot com for the details on all the stories and many more are. joining me every day on the alex salmond show and i'll be speaking to us of the world of politics sports business i'm showbusiness i'll see that. a low in welcome to cross talk more of all things considered i'm peter lavelle on

this edition of the program we discuss one in 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 cross-talk 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 not 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. manning on the snowden. never work for. intelligence 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 is. were not only for. fighting on the economic called point of view but even of fodder for the. fighting against freedom of speech it's a it's incredible but you know i'm quite disappointed again by by britain trump because i used to says that. because he told her against the clinton. gang you know you know it was really quite amazing when you're on weiqi 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 is a lone voice on the internet denouncing putin's corruption the image that is presented

developed center 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 fairytale 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 and 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 and so you know and 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 to. 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 any use actually nobody use it because in french as in england or in the united states or the information from reka because they are known by means and on by people like me who 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 want to help. you know it. before your 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 with our going.

after the previous stage of my career was over everyone wondered what i was going to do next bob the bach different clubs on one hand it is logical to go from fields where everything is familiar on the other they wanted a new challenge and a fresh perspective i'm used to surprising. or not to be. i'm going to talk about football not. going to go.

by the way what is that that's like here. the business model of facebook is to pressure people to continue communicating through facebook and getting facebook personal information this is what makes facebook a surveillance monster so facebook does not have users facebook has used its people that facebook uses. but the number. they matter to us is over one trillion dollars. more than ten white collar. eighty five percent of the loans to the. eight percent world market. are sent home with one hundred. first circuit per circuit and we rose to twenty thousand. china's building two

point one billion dollars a real park but don't let the numbers over. the only number you need to remember one one you know the one and only. 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 macarius 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 is a rest. particularly how roughly r t's a news agency picked it up first kudos for us and what does this lead to the

general reaction to all of this i know break hovers over everything but this is a very important story go ahead in london it's actually pushed the breaks the news to one song and it's been heavily cupboards this we don't know it's all of a little all and some jan is really guessing the pages in the british media are all frankly a bit jealous that. he got there 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 assange 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 that you know that if they're in if there's 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 to come to the next part of your question some embarrassment a lot of embarrassment about the way this whole thing has played 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 u.s. but we still statement julian assange is not a good person who has a lot to answer for so we can still criticize 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 at all and not to sweden which is no enthusiasm for replied the rape allegations which were dropped partly because he was you know in the in the ecuadorian embassy but also after a jury in a sound provided a very detailed statement in which he responded to the allegations which very few people seem to be aware of now as it's amazing to me to british wanky the swedes to open reopen one of their investigation to. because it's the one of the 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 all 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 him 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 fact 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 us 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 france was ashamed because we stopped the plane the president plane because we were sinking that is going to take to take us out with him so again there is as you say there is a u.s. umpire an employee of. we are all some country is supposed to follow this. not only for britain but for france not doing that see anything to try to protect

which is to push to be the ground of western civilization is the freedom of speech and the freedom of what we're seeing it is true it's absolutely right i mean the u.s. likes and its allies like to export their values but they don't live up to their own values at the same time here. it's you're a lawyer it seems to me that the d.o.j. is they're just saying how to create a legal strategy again it is a this is a high. style prosecution it is not based on facts that we know i mean talk about transparency and that is that synonymous with the we keep 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 attempt to get round the protections to journalists are provided by the law and i won what us thought the journalists putting aside whatever feelings they may have about a sound which would see that as a direct attack them the committee to protect journalists has made that very point by the way so have various people like glenn greenwald and every journalist should be concerned about this prosecution it is a very serious case is being brought out of time it alleges a conspiracy where the facts are incoherent and i'm all for those alan dershowitz his words not mine by the way and on top of everything else in order to prove that conspiracy. they have to do in c.

was relying heavily on the testimony of. who is not actually providing testimony and he's being kept in indefinite in detention until she does which i would have thought is also a very troubling thing and savage is absolutely right stay 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 be into moscow trials territory smears against the queues and pressure on our people to get them to testify on very bad very bad in every way but it's certainly sets a precedent here in a very bad example the only reason which was given us a new situation for prosecuting mr assad is that it's supposed to have help many

to find posts were to side so it's some seeing want to any one be any kind of evidence would be given for that as well as we've. given 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 want they want more because what julian assange was doing was not illegal it was illegal for their bradley manning he was you know. in uniform in the service yard and later 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 pat themselves on the back by giving clemency ok and now this. witch hunt against. whistleblowers continues and that's going to 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 nearer to 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. 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 talking about all these other things which are basically an attempt to discredit is just gravy weaker leaks and make

a visual merits use them beyond challenge you know i can't say 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 of psychology 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 release but what kind of bad company doing this i'm supposing we have i think the aim is to conceal a zoo with us and want to world the world because you know. before the meeting with we between the gold and kennedy in sixty one. the french intelligence service general that the cia is listening to him and so 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 or because ation against russia against the russia today against of course we can lease and as you know it will go on the courts are going to continue again to littering all the country in the world what to do to protect human rights wired to protect their fear a beach but for them big. shows and by i don't know who. but what is this is basically pentagon papers two point zero and and the supreme court ruled in favor of the maine washington post and specifically it 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 and that is this is crazy because fathers and their least in the world the example to follow is the watergate because it was a question of sending. the function of president but no 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 only the next bit have had their scenting an idea that's it that's all the time we have gentlemen many thanks mike here in moscow london and in france and thanks to our viewers for watching us here argue see you next time remember.

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in a world of big partisan. 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 smart we need to stop slamming the door. 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 we're watching closely watching the hawks. we came here where did you work before you came here when you live well. 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 some might 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. with julian the phones now in jail for an m.p.'s pulled a media conference outside show their support for a man they see as a hero we look at the media as a shock you turn over the whistleblower. also this hour. human rights organizations . to me an activist is denied entry to the u.s. we spoke to omar about his experience. with the u.s. administration has been mobilized to do israel's bidding trying to silence. and the belgian government security failed to find evidence of any threat.