2020-06-25: News Headlines

Kevin Gosztola (2020-06-25). US Government Expands Assange Indictment to Criminalize Assistance Provided to Edward Snowden. globalresearch.ca The United States government expanded their indictment against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to criminalize the assistance WikiLeaks provided to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden when staff helped him leave Hong Kong. | Sarah Harrison, who was a section editor for WikiLeaks, …

Peoples Dispatch (2020-06-25). Assange faces second indictment by US on charges of recruiting hacktivists. peoplesdispatch.org Wikileaks founder Julian Assange will face a fresh indictment on charges of having "hired" and "conspired" with hacktivist groups, including Anonymous, LulzSec, and "a famous teenage hacker in Australia"

_____ (2020-06-25). Massive Uprisings Confront White Supremacy. popularresistance.org On May 25, a Minneapolis police officer tortured George Floyd to death in what his brother, Philonise Floyd, called "a modern-day lynching in broad daylight." Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets in all 50 states and Washington D.C.; the anti-racist uprisings continue. | Why do a majority of people in this country now support the Movement for Black Lives? Why have calls to defund and abolish the police entered the mainstream discourse? Why are people risking the deadly coronavirus to join the protests? And why are we seeing what may be the broadest popular movement in the history of the United Stat…

RT (2020-06-24). New US indictment of Assange accuses WikiLeaks founder of 'conspiring with Anonymous' hackers… in FBI sting op? rt.com A superseding US indictment of Julian Assange broadens the charges against the WikiLeaks founder by accusing him of conspiring with a hacker affiliated with the groups Anonymous and LulzSec — who turned out to be an FBI informant. | The US Department of Justice revealed the

Jeffrey Sterling (2020-06-24). Whistleblowing, the Pandemic and a 'Law and Order' System of Injustice. counterpunch.org It is hard to find many positives as the death toll from the novel coronavirus continues to climb, but as we have seen before with situations of crisis, truth does find a way to make itself known. In the sense of whistleblowing, we saw it with the crisis involving the president, which demonstrated the worth and power of whistleblowers to bring accountability to power (though of course, the end result had more to do with denial than truth). Now we see the revealing nature of whistleblowing once again as so many have been coming forward to reveal how we have had no preparedness nor plan with regard to combatting th…

_____ (2020-06-23). Assange Extradition: '60 Minutes' Gives Assange Fair Shake. popularresistance.org Australia's 60 Minutes newsmagazine Sunday night aired an extensive interview with Stella Morris, Julian Assange's partner, and featured the two boys the couple have had together. While the promos for the segment during the week indicated it would focus on salacious questions such as, "How does one get pregnant in an embassy?" and "Did Pamela Anderson give your relationship cover?," the 24-minute spot ditched the usual smears against the imprisoned WikiLeaks publisher and instead humanized him to a large national audience. | The segment made clear Assange was never charged with rape in Sweden, was only wanted for…

yenisafak (2020-06-23). 'France's hypocritical, ill-conceived strategy jeopardizing Libya's political stability'. yenisafak.com Recently, France, an ally of warlord Haftar, accused [1] Turkey of thwarting cease-fire efforts by breaking a UN arms embargo.Until December last year, Haftar maintained a military edge over the legitimate government of Libya thanks to significant support from a number of countries, including Egypt, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Russia and France. Turkey signed a military pact with the UN-backed Government of National Accord (GNA) in November 2019, and since then it has provided significant military support, first and foremost armed drones and air defense systems, which have shifted the balance on the ground i…

WSWS (2020-06-22). Julian Assange's fiancé calls on the Australian government to secure his freedom. wsws.org The "60 Minutes" program was the first substantive examination of Assange's plight by the Australian media since the coronavirus pandemic began.

RT (2020-06-22). Immunity for US diplomat's wife involved in teen's death branded 'absurd,' critics blast UK double standards over Assange. rt.com A former British ambassador has called US and UK claims that Anne Sacoolas — the wife of a US intelligence officer — had immunity, as "a palpable absurdity." Sacoolas is accused of killing Harry Dunn last year in a car crash.

yenisafak (2020-06-22). Syrians confirm death of missing relatives by photos. yenisafak.com Hundreds of thousands of Syrians searching for their relatives have stepped up their efforts after the US adopted the Caesar Act, a law which imposes sanctions on the Syrian regime for war crimes.Families, who have long given up on ever finding their relatives, click on web links where photos of people killed in regime prisons are posted, in a desperate attempt to confirm the death of their loved ones.Imaduddin Rasit, the founding member of a France-based association monitoring Syrian casualties of war and prisoners, said more than 6,000 photos of people tortured to death were shared on the internet.The photos we…

Binoy Kampmark (2020-06-22). Secret Trials Down Under: Witness J, Witness K and Bernard Collaery. dissidentvoice.org There are few more spiteful things in political life than a security establishment attempting to punish a leaker or whistleblower for having exposed an impropriety. Such a tendency has no ideological stripe or colouring: it is common to all political systems. In Australia, it has become clear that secret trials are all the rage. The …

Kit O'Connell (2020-06-22). School of the Americas: Training Torturers & Secret Police for US-Backed Dictators Since 1946. globalresearch.ca This article was originally published in December 2015. | For the past 69 years, many of the most notorious U.S.-backed South American dictators, along with their secret police and torturers, have learned their dark arts from a secretive American training facility….

yenisafak (2020-06-22). Germany arrests suspected Assad regime torturer. yenisafak.com German police arrested a Syrian former secret service employee on suspicion of crimes against humanity, officials said on Monday. | Alaa M., who arrived in Germany as a refugee in 2015, was arrested in the central state of Hesse on Friday, the Federal Public Prosecutor's Office said in a statement. | The suspect worked for the military intelligence as a doctor, and he was strongly suspected of torturing inmates in 2011 at an Assad regime prison in the city of Homs. | The prosecutors accused the Assad regime of using brutal force to suppress the political opposition, torturing and murdering many of them in prisons…