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Wiki Leaks founder Julian Assange speaks from the Ecuador Embassy after Sweden's director of public prosecutions. Vianney Le Caer/REX Shutterstock
By - Contributing Editor -
 

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, who has been inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London since the summer of 2012, is back in the news. Last week, word of a sealed federal indictment involving him leaked out.

The news came out in a strange way, via an unrelated case in Virginia. In arguing to seal a federal child endangerment charge (against someone with no connection to Wikileaks), the government, ironically, mentioned Assange as an example of why sealing is the only surefire way to keep an indictment under wraps.

“Due to the sophistication of the defendant and the publicity surrounding the case,” prosecutors wrote, “no other procedure is likely to keep confidential the fact that Assange has been charged.”

Assange’s lawyer Barry Pollack told Rolling Stone he had “not been informed that Mr. Assange has been charged, or the nature of any charges.”

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Trump Signs Bill to Further Protect Critical Infrastructure,

Including Pandemic Delivery System

Op-Ed by Janet Phelan (*) - ActivistPost - 17. November 2018

Where "Protection" and "Security" means Oppression and Tyranny

It’s a sad day when protection equals assault, and when events such as the President signing H.R. 3359, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Act of 2017, is heralded as protecting the nation when in fact this legislation further protects a system which will devastate the nation.

It has been a long standing modus operandi of the United States to disguise its most dangerous projects as protection. Following the events of September 11, 2001 and the subsequent anthrax attacks, the US Congress rushed to pass a massive piece of legislation which ended up putting us in exquisite danger. Embedded in the USA Patriot Act was Section 817, the Expansion of the Biological Weapons Statute, which gave the US government immunity from violating its own biological weapons laws.

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By ERIC MATARA - DN - November 16 2018
Members of the Ogiek community during a past function. The Ogiek community has accused the government of foot-dragging in putting into effect a landmark ruling by the African Court on Human and People's Rights in Arusha, Tanzania on their eviction from Mau Forest. PHOTO | FILE | NATION MEDIA GROUP

In Summary

  • They say despite the government on November 10, 2017 gazetting a task force to implement the judgment, nothing has been done.
  • The community threatened to go back to court for review if the ruling is not implemented by the end of the year.
  • The court said the Ogiek were not consulted on evictions from their ancestral lands in the Mau Forest.
 

The Ogiek community has accused the government of foot-dragging in putting into effect a landmark ruling by the African Court on Human and People's Rights in Arusha, Tanzania on their eviction from Mau Forest, one year after judgement was issued.

The community led by its council of elders chairman, Mr Joseph Towett, said on Wednesday that the government had failed to implement the judgment that was issued in May 2017.

The Ogiek say that, despite the government on November 10, 2017 gazetting a task force to implement the judgment, nothing has been done and the community continues to suffer in silence due to historical injustices.

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Julian Assange has been secretly charged in the USA,

prosecutors reveal inadvertently in court filing

Prosecutors inadvertently revealed that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been charged under seal, according to a recently unsealed court filing in an unrelated case.

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Planned expulsion may not go ahead as Rohingya go into hiding while aid agencies warn return is too dangerous.

 

Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya who fled Myanmar, citing rape, murder and arson, will not be forcibly repatriated, Bangladesh's Rohingya Relief and Repatriation Commissioner has said.

"No one will be forced back to Myanmar," Abul Kalam told Al Jazeera.

Bangladesh is scheduled to send back an initial group of 2,260 Rohingya from 485 families, in line with a bilateral plan agreed by the two governments in October.

But the move has been opposed by the United Nations' refugee agency and aid groups who say the long-persecuted minority cannot be forced back, causing confusion over whether the repatriations would go ahead.

"They survived atrocities so it's natural they fear to go back," Kalam said.

More than 700,000 Rohingya fled to Bangladesh last year to escape a brutal army crackdown in Myanmar's Rakhine state last year, accusing government soldiers and local Buddhists of massacring families, burning hundreds of villages and carrying out mass gang rape.

Myanmar denies the allegations, saying security forces were battling armed rebels.

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By Grace Carr / - DailyCaller (*) -

A drafted memo by the United Nations Human Rights Committee calls for abortion to be decriminalized everywhere. (Photo: mizoula/Getty Images)
The United Nations Human Rights Committee drafted a memo saying that abortion and physician-assisted suicide should be universal human rights.

The memo, or “general comment” on the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, calls for abortion to be decriminalized everywhere. Nations and states should “not introduce new barriers and should remove existing barriers [to abortion] … including barriers caused as a result of the exercise of conscientious objection by individual medical providers,” it said, Crux Now reported Thursday.

The committee that put forward the draft is headed by former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet, according to Crux. Aborting an unborn baby was illegal in Chile until August 2017 when the nation’s lawmakers ruled to decriminalize abortion in the cases of rape, fatal fetal abnormalities, and when the mother’s life is in danger.

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By Chris Hedges (*) - Truthdig - November 12, 2018

DISINTEGRATION POLICY / Credit: Cartoonist Mr. Fish / Truthdig

“Julian has been detained nearly eight years without charge. That’s right. Without charge. For the past six years, the U.K. government has refused his request for access to basic health needs, fresh air, exercise, sunshine for vitamin D and access to proper dental and medical care. As a result, his health has seriously deteriorated….”

Julian Assange’s sanctuary in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London has been transformed into a little shop of horrors. He has been largely cut off from communicating with the outside world for the last seven months. His Ecuadorian citizenship, granted to him as an asylum seeker, is in the process of being revoked. His health is failing. He is being denied medical care. His efforts for legal redress have been crippled by the gag rules, including Ecuadorian orders that he cannot make public his conditions inside the embassy in fighting revocation of his Ecuadorian citizenship.

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Judge Blocks Keystone XL Pipeline Construction Over Environmental Concerns

in a 'Landmark' Ruling

By Eli Meixler - TIME - 09. November 2018
Opponents of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines hold a rally protesting President Donald Trump's executive orders advancing the projects next to the White House in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 24, 2017. Saul Loeb—AFP/Getty Images

A federal judge in Montana issued a “landmark” ruling temporarily blocking construction on the controversial Keystone XL Pipeline Thursday in a decision welcomed by environmental groups. The order came as a Canadian energy company prepared to assemble initial stages of the 1,200-mile long, cross-border project.

U.S. District Judge Brian Morris said the Trump administration’s projections for the pipeline’s contribution to greenhouse gas emissions, potential for oil spills and impact on the local Native American community fell short, the Montana-based Great Falls Tribune reports.

“The [State] Department must supplement new and relevant information regarding the risk of spills,” Morris wrote.

The $8 billion pipeline would convey up to 830,000 barrels crude oil per day from Alberta, Canada and the Bakken Shale Formation in Montana to facilities in Nebraska and Oklahoma. The State Department initially denied the pipeline a permit in 2015, under the Obama administration. A presidential permit is required for infrastructure projects that cross international borders.

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Study finds that Congo Basin rainforest may be gone by 2100

by on 7 November 2018
 
  • Satellite data indicate the Congo Basin lost an area of forest larger than Bangladesh between 2000 and 2014.
  • Researchers found that small-scale farming was the biggest driver, contributing to around 84 percent of deforestation.
  • This kind of farming is primarily done for subsistence by families that have no other livelihood options.
  • The study finds that at current trends, all primary rainforest in the Congo Basin could be cleared by the end of the century.
Primary Forest in DR Congo

Africa’s Congo Basin is home to the second-largest rainforest on the planet. But according to a new study, this may soon not be the case. It finds that at current rates of deforestation, all primary forest will be gone by the end of the century.

The study was conducted by researchers at the University of Maryland (UMD) in the U.S. who analyzed satellite data collected between 2000 and 2014. Their results were published today in Science Advances. It reveals that the Congo Basin lost around 165,000 square kilometers of forest during their study period.

In other words, one of the world’s largest rainforests lost an area of forest bigger than Bangladesh in the span of 15 years.

But why? Is it due to industrial pressure like in South America and Southeast Asia where the majority of deforestation has been done for soy, palm oil, and other commodity crops? Or commercial logging, which is razing forests on the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea?

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Another Saudi journalist tortured to death in prison

By MEM - November 5, 2018
 
Saudi journalist and writer Turki Bin Abdul Aziz Al-Jasser was tortured to death while in detention in Saudi Arabia [Prisoners of Conscie/Twitter]

Saudi journalist and writer Turki Bin Abdul Aziz Al-Jasser has died after being tortured while in detention, the New Khaleej reported yesterday.

Reporting human rights sources, the news site said that Al-Jasser was arrested and tortured to death after Saudi authorities claimed he administered the Twitter account Kashkool, which disclosed rights violations committed by the Saudi authorities and royal family.

The sources said that the authorities identified Al-Jasser as the admin using moles in Twitter’s regional office located in Dubai. He was arrested in March.

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Held 8 Years Without Charge by the UK Government

By Mairead Maguire - Global Research - November 09, 2018
Under intense pressure to silence Wikileaks then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton proposed a Drone Strike on Julian Assange

On 4th November, 2018, Christine Assange, mother of Julian Assange, made a deeply moving public Audio Appeal to  save the life of her son Julian.  

Julian Assange is Editor in Chief of Wikileaks. Because of Wikileaks reporting of acts during US/NATO’s illegal wars against Afghanistan, Iraq, etc., and the highlighting of corruption by USA/CIA and Corporate powers, and continuing his fight in disclosing the links between the private corporations and government agencies, Julian Assange has been threatened by high profile USA citizens, and a Grand Jury has been set up in America to try Julian Assange and Wikileaks, for their publications.  For this he is being persecuted and deprived of his right to liberty, basic human rights etc., Six years ago Julian Assange, aware of these extradition plans of America, sought asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy, in London, where he remains.  Julian Assange is now six years within the Ecuadorian Embassy, and has now been detained WITHOUT CHARGES for eight years.

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