massive fire is extinguished at the cathedral in paris off the raging for more than nine hours causing extensive damage blazes believed to start of the accident during renovation work messages of condolence and support from around the world as france reels from a shock a little while. julian assange is now in jail for and politicians hold a media conference outside to show their support for a man they see as a hero look at the media's shock over the whistleblower. human rights organizations cry foul and offer a palestinian activists denied entry to the u.s. he spoke about his experience but the u.s. administration has been mobilized now to do israel's bidding and trying to silence

palestinian israeli and international human rights defenders latest on those stories head to our stay with us now for cross talk looking into the rest of judy if you're watching us in the u.k. political talk show renegades is on the way to do it today will be with you here moscow time for the latest global headlines. hello and welcome to crossfire all things considered i'm peter lavelle on this edition of the program we discuss one in one issue only the feet of julian a song and the fate of journalism itself.

ross talking a stylish i'm joined by my guests here in moscow is a very morrow he's the founder of the center of political strategic analysis travel and in france we cross with john luckily 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 marja 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 danced on a sand sanjay'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. 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 you know that's the 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. 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 he used to. because he told her against the clinton. gang you know you know it was really quite an amazing one year and i weiqi weeks to i know nothing about week that was a very coward as disappointed variables as the one 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 authentic unlike the major news outlets that dominate the western world

they have becomes to knock refers of power and join us on people like julian assange have 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 alex a novelle me 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 neverland the 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 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 me 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 it's an m i six outlets a number of its journalists work for m i six and produce narratives concocted by a british government one of them writes a lot about russia i'm sure you know who i mean yeah. that is the that is the truth about these newspapers and that is the read all other media outlets and that is the reason why as you say then bradley manning did not have any success with that so you know we are in a situation of the most breathtaking hypocrisy yeah you know exactly 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 you know. 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 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 interests not because they have any integrity or 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 u.s. . foreign department. especially the influence on the under french policy. point of view you know the encouraged the

policy to encourage immigration policy and it doesn't it didn't was it did it didn't. have any any use actually nobody use it be. as in french as in england or in the united states or the information from rican eggs they are known by means and on by people like me you want to know where to where you haven't but it's useful actually said the big problem in my opinion and again this is a scandal whose treatment of of mr assad the one to help. you know it. before you're the break here i mean we keep 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 i think 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 well i mean we all remember don't we those horrendous 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 that serbia made just now about extraterritoriality 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 the international criminal court that 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 a clear violation ok john i got it i did 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 song stay with our.

bests drugs were at her cocaine as were four bucks for dia under thirty so the everybody use cocaine crack cocaine you can smoke it this is worth fifty thirty. twenty. two this is about a fifteen people smoke this one figures. you go for these drugs any city in the united states that you walk along as you want to get to. make money. and that's what i do every day. seemed wrong. just don't. get to see a pallet these days. and engage with. the trail.

find themselves worlds apart we choose to look for common ground. welcome back to crossfire where are all things considered i'm peter lavelle reminder we're discussing julian assange. 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 turan dot com welcome to the program alex how how is the press reacting to the story about julian

asyut as a rest. particularly how roughly r t's a news agency picked that up first kudos for us and what is 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 pushed the breaks the news to one side it's been heavily covered there's been a lot of all and some jealousy corruptly getting the pictures the british media are frankly be jealous that. you 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 well the vicious criticism of julian assange and a lot of carbery each other ted's which are coming through brits so you get the

swedes to room for leave the rape allegations you've got to. go to the economy there's even seventy m.p.'s that written a letter about this basically to say that you know that if they were in if those rape allegations are regarded which they haven't been of course. they should be given cry all rootie and it was the reason that that is you can't do the next part of your question some embarrassment a lot of embarrassment about the way this whole thing is 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 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 to all and not to sweden would you say no enthusiasm for repining the rape allegations which would drop out. 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 noise it's amazing to british wanky the swedes to open up on one of their investigation to. trials because it's only a question of putting him in jail of or executive him but it's a vote 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

refuse to comment on what he actually did reveal war crimes in 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. someone in to ignore what. is actually happening if you look at the french media it's more neutral i can see because it's not so important because for for but. really 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 assad with him saw again there is as you say there is a u.s. umpire and payoff. we are all some countries supposed to follow this.

not only for britain but for france not doing anything to try to protect which is to push to be the graunt of western civilization is the freedom of speech and the freedom to work with it's 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 video jay is just radicalizing how to create a legal strategy again it is a this is a hostile prosecution it is not based on facts that we know i mean talk about transparency 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 he did exactly and one of the things that absolutely astonished me is that you see so many

journalists around the world cheering this prosecution on because their hostility to a sandwich and yet of course what they see is at least as i read it is in an attempt to get round the protections to journalists provided by the law. 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 on 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 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 do it c. was relying 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 houston and pressure on our people to get them to testify very bad very bad in every way but it's certainly sets a precedent here in a very bad example going to lead to a the only reason which was given us

a new situation for prosecuting mr assad is that is supposed to have help many to find a post who has word of you or your side so it's something toward to any one be any poor. any kind of evidence would be given for that and so on but as long as we in the united states that we give them in a jail for maybe twenty twenty five years or well 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 when i 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 official narrative use pull them beyond challenge you know alexander and so because what i thought is 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 russian coax ok the connection between 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 a nice wish and want to world the world because you know. before the meeting which we between the good and kennedy in sixty one. french intelligence service the

general that the cia is listening to him and so he said good for them. but the problem no is the u.s. administration as many so many things so many murders so many must murder 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 littering all of the country in the world what to do to protect human rights try to put their feet in a speech but for them because our shows and by i don't know who. 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. ok and in this case they're uniformly against the last ten seconds and that is this is it because fathers and that is that we are in the world the good example to follow is the watergate because it was a question of sending in. the function of president and but no example is no more phony about anybody you know this is much much bigger because its impact is immense and it is setting a precedent that is in danger then have wars have their scenting an idea that's it that's all the time we have gentlemen many thanks my guests here in moscow london and in france and thanks to our viewers for watching us here arche see you next

time remember. what politicians do something. they put themselves on the line they get accepted or rejected. so when you want to be president. some want to. let you go right to the press this is what the three of them can't be good. interested always in the water. they sit. 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. this jugglery her cocaine those were four bucks for the under fifty if the

jug everybody used cocaine crack cocaine you can smoke it this is worth fifty thirty. twenty. score came to this is about a fifteen dollar bad people smoke this one got bigger second sweetie you can find these drugs in any city in the united states that you walk along as you want to get about the. i make money. and that's what i do every day. basically a lot of drugs come in from south america or mexico or any other country see i think i'm fond of them are in there and every time it's sold it step.