America’s Lapdog Britain Moves to Extradite Julian Assange | The Nation


If President Biden really cared about press freedom, he would have canceled the extradition request months ago.

Every investigative journalist rightly reveres Daniel Ellsberg, the former US Marine officer who exposed so many of the lies told by the US government about the Vietnam War.

By leaking the Pentagon Papers to The New York Times, Ellsberg revealed the illegal US bombing of Laos and Cambodia—and helped to end the war itself.

When Wikileaks founder Julian Assange fought his desperate battle in London’s Central Criminal Court to avoid extradition to the United States, Ellsberg tried to come to his rescue.

As well he might. Because the story of Julian Assange is an action replay of Ellsberg half a century later.

Ellsberg, like Assange, was put on trial for spying. Ellsberg, like Assange faced a lifetime in prison, only for the charges to be dismissed because of government misconduct against him.

He told the London Court that he felt an immense fellow feeling with the Wikileaks founder.

In an important statement, Ellsberg—the doyen of whistleblowers—explained that while he was serving in Vietnam, detailed knowledge of US war crimes remained confined to a tiny circle.

By contrast, he pointed out that more than 100,000 people had access to the Iraq and Afghan war logs leaked by Chelsea Manning.

This meant, said Ellsberg, “torture and assassination have been normalised.”

And it is certainly true that the Wikileaks revelations has shone a horrifying light on crimes casually committed by the US during the so called “War on Terrorism.”

Wikileaks published a video of US helicopter gunmenlaughing as they shot at and killed unarmed civilians in Iraq. Fifteen individuals were killed in the attack, including a Reuters photographer and his assistant.

The US military refused to discipline the perpetrators of this grotesque crime, who remain unpunished. But the US government has thrown the book at the man who revealed their crimes.

Wikileaks revealed that the total number of civilian casualties in Iraq was far greaterthan previously admitted by the US government. It disclosed the abuse meted out to the inmates at Guantanamo Bay, as well as the fact that 150 innocent inmates were held for years without charge.

Clive Stafford Smith, who has represented 87 prisoners from Guantánamo Bay, paid tribute to the importance of the Wikileaksrevelations in enabling him to prove that the charges against his clients had been false.

Many other revelations, though less horrifying, were almost as embarrassing for the US and its allies. I was in the Beirut ten years ago when Wikileaks revealed that the Lebanese defense minister had conspired with the United States to facilitate an Israeli invasion of his country in 2008.

Wikileaks cables revealed how, over a two and a half hour lunch with American diplomats, Elias Murr spelled out which parts of country areas that Israeli jets should hit. They also revealed that he had ordered the Lebanese army “not to get involved in any fighting and to fulfil a civil defence role.” This is just one example and thousands, and mercifully the 2008 assault never happened.

It’s not hard to imagine the fury and embarrassment within the United States defense and military establishment at disclosures like these. And it makes the US determination to prosecute and convict Assange totally rational. They have the strongest possible incentive to make an example of him in order to warn others of the consequences of doing the same.

Any story which depends on obtaining documents from US government sources will become impossibly dangerous. Any journalists concerned could find themselves subject to an extradition request.

The more serious the story, the greater the danger of extradition and prosecution.

A simple mental experiment demonstrates the damage the extradition of Julian Assange to the United States will do.

Let’s imagine that a foreign dissident was being prosecuted by Russian President Vladimir Putin on espionage charges.

Let’s further suppose that his true offense was bring to light war crimes committed by the Russian armed forces, including video footage of the slaughter of unarmed civilians and two Reuters journalists.

And that the UN special rapporteur on torture, after a long and scrupulous inspection of the evidence, had statedthat this dissident displayed “all the symptoms typical for prolonged exposure to psychological torture.”

Now let’s stretch credulity beyond breaking point. Let’s suppose that President Putin was pressuring the United Kingdom to extradite the dissident to Russia to face trial on charges that could condemn that dissident to spend the rest of his life in a Russian maximum security prison.

There would be outrage in Britain. Prime Minister Boris Johnson would make a statement on the floor of the House of Commons declaring that he would never bow to Russian pressure. Powerful editorials in every British paper would denounce Putin, while setting out Britain’s respect for international law.

Yet Julian Assange in virtually in every respect faces identical circumstances to the fictitious Russian dissident I described above.

With one crucial difference: namely that it’s Joe Biden’s United States rather than Vladimir Putin’s Russian which demands his extradition.

With the natural result that British Home Secretary Priti Patel has timidly given in to the US demand.

Patel is a notoriously authoritarian home secretary, but in truth I can’t believe any of her predecessors—Labour or Conservative—would have reached a different decision. This is because Britain values beyond measure her security relationship with the United States.

Yet Britain and the United States love to boast about their commitment to media freedom. Patel’s judgement shows that this claim is fraudulent.

If President Biden truly cared about media freedom he would have cancelled the extradition request months ago.

Such deep hypocrisy is a propaganda gift to Vladimir Putin. The Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Maria Zakharova used Assange’s arrest three years ago to mock the double standards of the west. “The hand of ‘democracy’” she noted, “squeezes the throat of freedom.”

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Assange was stripped and placed in “suicide watch” isolation cell after British extradition announcement

Immediately after British Home Secretary Priti Patel announced on Friday last week that she had approved Julian Assange’s extradition to the United States, the publisher and journalist was stripped naked and placed in a bare cell of London’s maximum-security Belmarsh Prison

Oscar Grenfell@Oscar_Grenfell

WSWS.ORG
23 June 202

A supporter of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange holds a placard after the first hearing in the Julian Assange extradition appeal, at the High Court in London, Wednesday, Aug. 11, 2021.

(AP Photo/Matt Dunham)

This latest abuse of Assange’s democratic and human rights was reported by his father John Shipton to a rally in Berlin last Tuesday and at other speaking engagements in Europe. The brutal treatment was meted out on the grounds of preventing Assange from taking his own life.

In reality, it is a continuation of what outgoing United Nations Rapporteur Nils Melzer has branded as the state torture of Assange by the British and US authorities.

The persecution of the journalist is proceeding along two tracks. On the one hand, there is the pseudo-legal extradition process, aimed at dispatching Assange to the US where he would face 18 Espionage Act charges and 175 years imprisonment for publishing true documents which exposed American war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan.

On the other is the ongoing brutalisation of Assange, who has been subjected to different forms of arbitrary detention for more than a decade. This includes over three years imprisonment in Belmarsh Prison, a facility dubbed “Britain’s Guantanamo Bay,” the vast majority of that time without conviction.

On Twitter, Assange’s wife Stella Moris also reported that Assange had been denied visitors the entire weekend after Patel’s announcement. The extradition order will be subject to a further appeal through the British courts. But under conditions of a momentous decision, which has vast and potentially dire consequences for his life, Assange was deliberately isolated and left entirely alone.

The clear aim of the British authorities was not to prevent Assange’s suicide, but to intensify his suffering as much as possible. The implications of such treatment being meted out to a man with intense psychological issues, stemming from the protracted US-led persecution, are clear. The British state wants Assange dead.

A similar abuse was inflicted on Assange during the initial British court hearings for his extradition in January, 2020. After the first day of proceedings, he was inexplicably handcuffed eleven times and stripped twice, while guards confiscated his legal papers without justification.

In other words, there is a clear pattern of the Belmarsh authorities seeking to humiliate and degrade Assange, and to heighten his feelings of powerlessness, at key moments of the US-British extradition operation.

The report that Assange was placed on suicide watch is also a damning indictment of the court rulings allowing his extradition to the US. After the initial District Court proceedings, Judge Vanessa Baraitser blocked extradition, on the narrow grounds that Assange’s poor health and the brutal conditions in American prisons meant he would die if sent to the US.

That ruling was overturned by the High Court last December, on the basis of bogus and self-contradictory assurances from the US government that Assange’s treatment would not be as bad as claimed by his defence lawyers. The assurances were accepted, despite a Yahoo! News report in September alleging that the Trump administration and the CIA had discussed kidnapping or assassinating Assange In 2017.

But while the High Court has ruled that Assange’s extradition would not be oppressive, or a risk to his life, Belmarsh Prison, if its actions are taken on face value, acknowledges that there is an imminent risk of Assange’s death.

The British authorities will make no attempt to square the contradiction. They have ignored warnings from hundreds of doctors of Assange’s deteriorating health and the need for his immediate release, for the past three years.

Meanwhile, Patel’s announcement has been met with a massive wave of opposition, from press freedom groups, legal experts and prominent public figures. These condemnations of the US-led pursuit of Assange reflect a groundswell of support for the WikiLeaks founder among workers and young people, millions of whom regard him as an heroic figure whose only “crime” is to have exposed the illegal wars and diplomatic conspiracies of American imperialism.

On Wednesday, fifteen journalists’ and publishers’ associations from six different countries met in Geneva, Switzerland. They condemned Patel’s decision and demanded Assange’s immediate freedom.

Dominique Pradalie, president of the International Federation of Journalists, which represents 600,000 media workers in 140 countries, said: “Julian Assange is a journalist, a political prisoner who is facing a death sentence. We are demanding that Julian Assange be freed, he returned to his family, and finally permitted to live a normal life.”

Pierre Ruetschi, head of the Swiss Press Club, pointed to the broader implications of the US attempt to prosecute a journalist for his publishing activities. Ruetschi warned that “democracy is being taken hostage. This attempt at criminalizing journalism is a serious threat.”

Patel’s announcement has also been denounced by several governments. On Tuesday, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador convened a press conference, where he played excerpts from the Collateral Murder video released by Assange and WikiLeaks in 2010. It shows US soldiers in an Apache helicopter gunning down unarmed civilians and two Reuters journalists in Baghdad.

“He is the best journalist of our time in the world and has been very unfairly treated, worse than a criminal,” López Obrador stated, branding the persecution of Assange as “an embarrassment to the world.” The Mexican president said he would demand that Biden end the attempted prosecution, when they meet next Tuesday, and said that his country would “open its doors” to the WikiLeaks publisher.

López Obrador is a capitalist politician, whose government has imposed austerity measures and other right-wing policies. His statements nevertheless provide a glimpse of the real public opinion concerning the US persecution of Assange, which is persistently buried by the corporate media. It is widely viewed as an illegitimate operation, aimed at covering up war crimes and attacking fundamental democratic rights.

The Mexican statements are also an indictment of Australia’s new Labor government. It has rejected calls, including from his family, to intervene in defence of Assange, who is an Australian citizen. Labor Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has refused to demand that Biden end the prosecution.

Senior Labor ministers have stated that they will not exercise their legal and diplomatic powers to free the WikiLeaks founder, as Australian governments have when citizens have been subjected to persecution in other countries.

The most significant development of the past week has been the outpouring of support for Assange from working people, expressed in hundreds of thousands or even millions of posts on social media.

This is occurring under conditions of a major upsurge of the class struggle, directed against austerity, the soaring cost of living and wage suppression. In Britain, some 50,000 rail workers have taken powerful strike action this week, against the very government that holds the key to Assange’s cell door. There is also widespread hostility to the eruption of militarism, expressed most sharply in the US-led proxy war against Russia in Ukraine.

As the World Socialist Web Site has explained, the working class is the constituency for the fight to free Assange, defend democratic rights and end imperialist war. We urge workers and young people to take up this struggle, including by sharing information on Assange’s persecution and passing resolutions at your schools and workplaces opposing it and calling for a mass fight for his freedom

Residents ‘living in the shadow’ of Grenfell Tower on fifth anniversary of fire

Dozens died in block of flats in west London in 2017

Over 70 people died after a fire broke out in Grenfell Tower in west London in 2017. PA.

Neil Murphy

Residents have described what it has been like “living in the shadow” of Grenfell Tower, five years after the blaze that claimed 72 lives.

Members of the community in North Kensington, west London, spoke of how the fire “seems like it was last night”, with the tower a constant reminder of the trauma they have suffered.

The June 2017 disaster left the 67 metre-tall building dilapidated and charred.

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Heaviness 'hangs over' London’s Grenfell community ahead of jubilee celebrations

Authorities took four months to cover the block in a protective wrap with green hearts and the message: “Forever in our hearts.”

Five years on, no decision has been made about the future of the building. But the Grenfell Tower Memorial Commission said a garden was “by far” the most popular idea from a survey of survivors, bereaved relatives and local residents.

Eman Yosry, a resident of Markland House tower block near Grenfell Tower, said the flats are “in front of us all the time”.

In an interview ahead of the anniversary on Tuesday, Ms Yosry spoke about losing many people she knew in the fire, saying: “I feel I can’t describe how sad and how difficult and painful it was.”

Growing tearful, she added: “I don’t know what to say.”

Ms Yosry said: “You can’t get away or forget what happened. It’s there, it’s in front of us all the time.

“Everywhere you go – you see Grenfell Tower. You go to anywhere near the area, you see the tower.”

Nahid Ashby, a resident of the Frinstead House tower block on the Silchester estate near the tower, said: “We’re still living in the shadow.”

Eman Yosry during an interview at the Grenfell Recovery Centre, west London, ahead of the fifth anniversary of the Grenfell Tower fire. PA.

Ms Ashby described what it was like waiting for months for authorities to cover the burnt-out tower.

She said: “A lot of people were saying from the very beginning: ‘Are you going to cover it so we don’t have to look at it?’

“But by the time they covered it, it felt even worse because, I don’t know, they’re just covering it all up because that fire shouldn’t have happened.”

Mohammad Tehrani, 66, who lives in Bramley House next to the tower, said the disaster was always on his mind.

Mr Tehrani, who was at the foot of the tower on the night five years ago, said he saw body bags being carried out of the building and watched debris falling from it.

Showing a video he took of the debris surrounding Bramley House in the morning, Mr Tehrani said he cleared it up as children walked past on the way to school.

The 66-year-old said the ordeal “seems like it was last night” for the community while authorities try to “brush it under the carpet”.

He said: “I mean for us it hasn’t aged.

“It just seems it was last night so five years (on) and they try to ignore, they try to brush it under the carpet.”

Mr Tehrani said he is now able to talk about the disaster without crying but it is still “inside me”.

He also said he still gets flashbacks at night, seeing people “behind the windows begging for their lives”.

“This is something that we’ve seen that we will never forget – no matter what you do, it’s in your mind.

“For four years I used to cry every time you asked me a question, I couldn’t control myself.

“I’m trying my best but it’s inside me still. You can’t help it.”

Mr Tehrani said the way the disaster has cast a long shadow on the lives of children in the community is “so bad”.

He added: “I feel so sorry for my grandchildren, I feel so sorry when I see the young people, because I don’t think they will have a good future because of the things happening.

“They don’t speak but it’s at the back of their mind – if I’m 66 years old and I cannot forget that night, just imagine.

“I mean even my granddaughter lost some friends in her school.

“They don’t say anything but obviously it’s internally affected them – all of them.

“Some of the children, I’ve heard from our community, they don’t even go to the gas fire, they don’t like to see their mother cooking on the gas fire.

“You see it’s so bad.”

Elizabeth Campbell, leader of Kensington and Chelsea Council, said: “On the fifth anniversary of the Grenfell tragedy, and always, our first and last thoughts are with those who lost their lives, their families and their friends.

“The bereaved and survivors continue to show incredible strength, courage, and solidarity, as they search for truth and justice.

“They have set us the challenge of being the best council – something I intend to strive towards."

A representative of the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities said: “The Grenfell Tower tragedy must never be allowed to happen again and our thoughts are with the bereaved families, survivors and residents.”

 

Empty table laid for 72 victims of the Grenfell Tower fire

Empty table with 72 seats laid out for Jubilee street party nobody will attend

Harrison Jones

Monday 30 May 2022

Empty places were set around the table (Picture: PA/Jeff Moore)

Grenfell campaigners have held an emotional Jubilee street party attended by nobody.

Poignant images show a table set with 72 empty seats, for each of the victims in the 2017 fire.

Special plates were also laid out alongside name cards at the event in west London today, overlooked by the remains of the tower.

They read: ’72 dead. And still no arrests? How come?’


Justice 4 Grenfell put on the gathering as Brits prepare to attend street parties in celebration of the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee this week.

The community activism group, which campaigns for justice for the victims of the tragedy, put out bunting, paper plates, cups and Grenfell flags, with a green theme associated with the disaster.

Following the tragedy on June 14, 2017, the Queen visited the area to meet locals affected by the blaze in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea.

Campaigners are calling for arrests over the disaster (Picture: PA)

The tower overlooks the ‘party’ (Picture: Jeff Moore)

Nabil Choucair, who lost six family members, to the fire, sits at the otherwise empty table (Picture: PA)

Located in foot of the tower on Grenfell Road, organisers say the table will never be sat upon ‘as a chilling reminder that the 72 dead are still without justice, despite a public inquiry’.

Nabil Choucair, who lost six family members, said: ‘I miss my family so much; we enjoyed many good times together, but they were taken from us in the worst of circumstances.

‘I can almost picture them seated at the table today, joining in the celebration.

‘But they are not with us today.

Grenfell flags with a heart also adorned the party (Picture: Jeff Moore)

The tragedy happened in 2017 in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (Picture: PA)

Campaigners branded the public inquiry ‘toothless’ (Picture: Jeff Moore)

‘The pain is indescribable, but they are always with us in our hearts.’

Justice 4 Grenfell group organiser Yvette Williams added: ‘Five years on, a toothless public inquiry and millions still trapped in their homes by flammable cladding – and still no justice.

‘There have been no lessons learned and little action taken.

‘As people up and down the country enjoy street parties – as they quite rightly should, we want to let the powers that be know that our community will always remember the 72 who died needlessly here that night.’

  

 

Torngat Mountains MHA says she won't accept residential schools apology from provincial government

 

Newfoundland and Labrador's minister of Indigenous affairs and reconciliation says the provincial government's long-awaited apology for its role in residential schools is coming soon, but an Inuk MHA says she's not interested.


© Mark Quinn/CBC

Lela Evans, MHA for Torngat Mountains, says she wants to see the government do more to improve health care and services in northern Labrador.

In an interview with CBC News, Lela Evans, the MHA for Torngat Mountains, said she won't accept an apology from the provincial government until there are significant improvements to health care, communications, transportation and other infrastructure in northern Labrador.

"When you look at the Inuit of northern Labrador, we never, ever got equal access to services and infrastructure. We've been neglected year after year after year," she said.

Evan's said she didn't see enough targeting health care and the cost of living for people living in Labrador in the 2022 provincial budget, which she called "disappointing on every level." Evans said she won't accept an apology from the provincial government until she sees more progress on those issues.

"There's no reconciliation. I won't accept it. I will not accept it. And I don't think any Indigenous groups can until there's real reconciliation.
A long time coming

Thousands of Indigenous children in Newfoundland and Labrador were taken from their communities to attend five residential schools run by the International Grenfell Association or the Moravian church.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau delivered an apology on behalf of the federal government in November 2017, and then-premier Dwight Ball promised to deliver one on behalf of the provincial government too. More than five years later, that apology has yet to materialize.


© CBCJustin Trudeau apologized to residential school survivors in Labrador in November 2017.

The delay has been criticized by Indigenous groups and residential school survivors, but the government has repeatedly reiterated its intention to give the apology — it has pointed to COVID-19 and scheduling as two main reasons behind the extended delay.

While speaking with reporters on Thursday, Cartwright-L'Anse au Clair MHA Lisa Dempster — the minister responsible for Labrador Affairs, Indigenous Affairs and Reconciliation - said the apology is coming "in the not too distant future," but declined to give a timeline.

"We are well on our way. As a government we made a commitment to carry out the apologies and, like many things, the pandemic hit in March 2020 and there was a pause. What I can tell you is recently the draft texts have gone out into the hands of the various Indigenous groups in this province," she said.

But Evans said the apology isn't enough — and she isn't impressed by the government's decision to rename the Colonial Building and Discovery Day either.

"What good is that when people still struggle to feed their children, heat their homes, to provide a house?" she asked.

Concerns about province-wide health authority

Evans said she's particularly concerned about the decision in the budget to amalgamate the four regional health authorities into one, province-wide health authority — a move she believes will put Labrador at a disadvantage, especially if the headquarters are far away.

"It's not that they don't really want to help us," she said. "They don't know how to help us because they're so far removed from Labrador that [they] just can't fathom the issues."


© Danny Arsenault/CBC

Lisa Dempster, Minister Responsible for Indigenous Affairs and Reconciliation and the Minister Responsible for Labrador Affairs, said communities will still have input in decisions made by the new provincial health authority.

While speaking about the decision to amalgamate the health authorities, Health Minister John Haggie told reporters that the new provincial health authority will have local input on decisions that will impact individual communities.

Dempster said she supports the decision to amalgamate the health authorities.

"It's my understanding as we move forward to one health authority there will still be direct links through the administrative chain."

Dempster also pointed to the money earmarked for air ambulances, an especially important service for Labrador communities far away from medical centres or not accessible by road.

Support is available for anyone affected by their experience at residential schools or by the latest reports.

A national Indian Residential School Crisis Line has been set up to provide support for former students and those affected. People can access emotional and crisis referral services by calling the 24-hour national crisis line: 1-866-925-4419.

Lothian Pension Fund invests in US firm behind Grenfell cladding panels

Billy Briggs
February 13, 2022

Scotland’s second largest council pension fund has shares worth £847,000 in a firm that made the cladding panels found to be the main cause of the Grenfell Tower fire that killed 72 people.

Lothian Pension Fund (LPF) – which has 79,000 members and £7.5bn in assets – invests in a US engineering corporation called Arconic based in the city of Pittsburgh.

Arconic manufactured the cladding panels for London’s Grenfell Tower in France and its product was never put through the standard test widely used in the UK construction industry.

A campaign group established after Grenfell – End Our Cladding Scandal – said it was “shocked” to learn that LPF has shares in the American firm and called on the fund to review its investment.

The Ferret can also reveal that LPF invested in five major housebuilders accused of failing to resolve fire safety risks at other tower blocks across the UK, in the wake of the devastating fire.

The fund holds shares in Barratt, Bellway, Berkeley, Crest Nicholson and Persimmon. These firms have been under mounting pressure recently to address urgent safety problems.

Will LPF ensure it lives up to its stated approach of responsible investment and ensure those developers in which it is invested, such as Barratt, Bellway, Berkeley, Crest Nicholson and Persimmon, cease playing games with our lives and now, finally act to do the right thing?Spokesperson for End Our Cladding Scandal

In response LPF said it had engaged with housebuilders post-Grenfell to “ensure that problematic cladding is removed/replaced and lessons learned for the future”.

The aftermath of the tower block fire in 2017, due to flammable cladding, led to the discovery of safety defects in buildings across the country, leaving leaseholders facing thousands of pounds worth of fire safety costs. Many people cannot afford the massive bills they now face.

Removing cladding can cost millions of pounds per block. The cost has often been passed on to flat owners under the leasehold system in England and Wales.

Many leaseholders have also seen sharply increasing service charges, and some have had to pay for so-called “waking watch” fire wardens.

In Scotland, it emerged last year that almost 400 buildings, including tower blocks, have a potentially deadly type of cladding. But the Scottish Government has not made public the sites of those buildings, arguing it was not in the public interest to reveal them.

The End Our Cladding Scandal campaign, set up to support people affected by the crisis, has been calling on the UK Government to lead an urgent, national effort to fix building safety issues.

A spokesperson for the campaign questioned LPF’s investments, pointing out it emerged during phase one of the Grenfell Tower inquiry that Arconic’s cladding panels were found to be the “primary cause” of the fire.

“We are shocked that Lothian Pension Fund has chosen to invest in Arconic,” the spokerson added.

Part of the top floors of the Grenfell Tower block of council flats in which at least 80 people are thought to have been killed following a fire in Kensington, West London. Photo Credit: iStock/Amanda Lewis

Pointing to LPF’s website, which states the fund has a responsibility to take environmental, social and governance issues seriously, the spokesperson questioned how this “noble statement sits alongside the disgraceful behaviour of Arconic” They also questioned whether LPF has “pursued its policy of ‘constructive engagement’ with Arconic?”

Arconic initially refused to hand over documentation to the Grenfell Tower Inquiry, and only did so after a European Investigation Order was served by the Metropolitan Police, the spokesman pointed out.

Regarding firms under pressure to resolve fire safety risks in the UK, End Our Cladding Scandal accused them of “PR spin” and continuing to “hide behind vague statements of meeting regulations at time of construction or saying they are doing the right thing”.

The spokesperson continued: “Will LPF ensure it lives up to its stated approach of responsible investment and ensure those developers in which it is invested, such as Barratt, Bellway, Berkeley, Crest Nicholson and Persimmon, cease playing games with our lives and now, finally act to do the right thing?”

“The time for passing the buck is over – this was a collective state and industry failure and both must play their part in ensuring this living nightmare is finally brought to an end.”

In reply LPF said its policy on responsible investment is “informed by a fiduciary duty owed to members and employers”, set out in law, to invest for the best returns and to ensure pension benefits can be paid when they fall due.

The fund added it has a “transparent approach” and publishes all investments on its website along with information on how it invests. This includes information on how its investment team integrates environmental, social and governance into its decision-making to “ensure that both the financial and non-financial factors are taken into account”.

LPF’s spokesperson added: “We are as horrified by the Grenfell Tower tragedy as everyone else, and we fully support the view that individuals and companies should be held to account for wrongdoing.

“Responsible investment is about assessing the future prospects of companies and influencing positive change, and we focus our efforts on working with our investee companies to improve business practices.

“Over the past 12 months, we and our engagement provider have engaged directly on this issue with companies we hold within the UK housebuilder and construction industry to ensure that problematic cladding is removed/replaced and lessons learned for the future.”

Last month Michael Gove MP, secretary of state for housing, sent a letter to the development community urging them to work with him to deliver a lasting solution to this crisis. He asked companies to make financial contributions to a fund to “cover the full outstanding cost to remediate unsafe cladding on 11-18 metre buildings, currently estimated to be £4bn”.

Arconic did not reply to our requests for a comment, but a statement on its website details the firm’s policy on social responsibility.

It says: “We value human life above all else and are committed to operating worldwide in a safe, responsible manner which respects the environment and the health of our employees, our customers and the communities where we operate.


“Our focus on safety also includes an ongoing commitment to maintaining a secure work environment that respects the dignity and worth of every employee, which drives our continuous improvement approach in our robust safety programs.”

A spokesperson for Barratt said: “We do not believe that leaseholders should have to pay for necessary remediation work at their developments and we are working with managing agents and building owners to find suitable solutions to support leaseholders and residents in buildings we built.”

A spokesperson for Bellway said: “Bellway takes fire safety of our developments extremely seriously, and we have invested significant resources into tackling fire and building safety issues head on.

“We fully appreciate at the heart of the issue is the need to ensure leaseholders and residents feel safe in their homes, which is why since 2017, Bellway has committed £164.7m to make fire safety improvements where we are responsible, or to put in place interim fire safety measures at no cost to leaseholders.”

Crest Nicholson did not reply to our requests for a comment but a statement on its website details its policy on “community engagement”. It says: “We always aim to deliver positive impacts in the communities in which we operate. We engage with local communities to listen and understand any concerns they may have over new development.

“We are committed to bilding (sic) the right infrastructure and community spaces for the benefit of new and existing residents. We are proud to deliver many initiatives which provide increased social value and deliver a positive outcome for all those involved.”

Berkeley did not reply to our requests for a comment but its website states: “Berkeley has always been driven by a clear purpose – to build quality homes, strengthen communities and improve people’s lives. We have established a unique culture, and strong values that shape the way we work, and haven’t changed since our inception.

Persimmon declined to comment but its website says: “Building homes our customers love and happily live in for many years is at the heart of our entire business.

“Customer care is fully embedded into our ethos, with growing customer satisfaction ratings reflecting the hard work and effort that our colleagues put in every day. Our work continues to ensure every customer has an excellent experience of engaging with our business.”

Norway’s state investment fund, NBIM, has also been asked to pressure cladding firms and builders to fix fire safety issues, by the campaign. NBIM is an investor in three companies that were involved in producing materials used on Grenfell Tower including Arconic.

Last month End Our Cladding Scandal called on Norges Bank to pull £5.7bn of funds from companies if they fail to do so.

Photo Credit: iStock/Amanda Lewis

UK
Developers 'must foot £4bn cladding bill or face exclusion from government schemes'

Harry Yorke
Sun, January 9, 2022

Government proposals come more than four years after the Grenfell Tower fire which killed 72 people - TOLGA AKMEN

Michael Gove will tell developers they must cover £4 billion worth of new cladding costs or face being excluded from Government-backed property schemes.

The threat will include blocking firms from the Help to Buy scheme for first-time buyers, with ministers also understood to be looking at a new levy on profits.

The Levelling Up Secretary will issue the ultimatum to the sector at a crunch meeting in the coming weeks, having decided to offer greater protection to flat owners who need to remove dangerous cladding from their buildings in the wake of the Grenfell Tower fire.


In a statement in Parliament on Sunday, Mr Gove will also confirm that he is shelving plans for a loan scheme which would have forced leaseholders in flats between 11 and 18 metres tall to shoulder the costs themselves.

Michael Gove, the Levelling Up Secretary, will tell developers they must foot a £4 billion bill for new cladding - Leon Neal

Instead, the costs of the major remedial works on thousands of flats across the country will be met by developers and firms responsible for the scandal.

The Government estimates the funds required to do so will total £4 billion, on top of the £5 billion already provided in grants to strip unsafe cladding from buildings over 18 metres tall.

A Whitehall source confirmed on Sunday that Mr Gove would tell developers that they will initially be given the opportunity to propose their own solutions for meeting the additional costs.

However, should they fail to do so, he will warn that the Government will be forced to legislate to raise the funds, either through new levies or taxes on the industry.

Alongside this, officials pointed out that they had a range of “tools” available to force concessions from the developers, including the ability to freeze them out of Government-backed property and finance schemes.

This includes the Help to Buy scheme, which provides first-time buyers with the opportunity to secure a 20 per cent low-interest equity loan - rising to 40 per cent in London - meaning they only need a five per cent deposit.

The Government has already announced that developer Rydon Homes will be excluded from the scheme due to its sister company being the lead contractor of the Grenfell Tower refurbishment.

Workmen remove the cladding from a building in Paddington, north London - Aaron Chown /PA

Making clear that others could soon join the developer, an ally of Mr Gove told The Telegraph: “We don’t claim to have all the answers to this crisis yet but this is an important step. We will be guided by three principles - the polluter must pay, leaseholders must be protected and common sense and proportionality must be restored.

“Developers now have the chance to come forward and do the right thing. If not, we will impose a solution in law.”

The proposals to alleviate the scandal that has trapped leaseholders in unsafe and unsellable homes come more than four years after the Grenfell Tower fire in June 2017, in which 72 people were killed.

According to a draft of Mr Gove's Commons statement, he will warn developers: "I am putting them on notice. If you mis-sold dangerous products like cladding or insulation, if you cut corners to save cash as you developed or refurbished homes, we are coming for you."

While the move is likely to trigger a backlash from the industry, officials have pointed out that Britain’s biggest developers have amassed huge profits since the blaze.

Whitehall sources highlighted that the chief executives of the country’s four biggest building companies have received at least £50 million in pay, bonuses, shares and dividends since 2017.

Meanwhile, Barratt, Persimmon, Taylor Wimpey, Berkeley, Bellway, Redrow and Vistry have made £16 billion in profits over three years.

Mexican president says his request to Trump to pardon Julian Assange was ignored


Jan 4, 2022 

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said he had sought a pardon for Julian Assange from former U.S. President Donald Trump before he left office last year and repeated his offer of asylum for the Wikileaks founder on Monday.

Julian Assange on the balcony of the Ecuadorian embassy in London in 2017.

Last month, the Australian-born Assange moved closer to facing criminal charges in the United States for one of the biggest leaks of classified information after Washington won an appeal over his extradition in an English court.

U.S. authorities accuse Assange of 18 counts relating to WikiLeaks’ release of confidential U.S. military records and diplomatic cables which they said had put lives in danger.

Lopez Obrador reiterated the asylum offer he had made for Assange a year ago, and said that before Trump was replaced as U.S. president by Joe Biden last January, he had written him a letter recommending that Assange be pardoned.

Mexico did not receive a reply to the letter, Lopez Obrador told a regular government news conference. In an early December interview, Trump said he “very seriously” considered pardoning Assange but ultimately decided against it.

“It would be a sign of solidarity, of fraternity to allow him asylum in the country that Assange decides to live in, including Mexico,” Lopez Obrador said.

If granted asylum in Mexico, Assange would not be able to interfere in the affairs of other countries, and would not represent any sort of threat, Lopez Obrador added.

More hurdles remain before Assange could be sent to the United States after an odyssey which has taken him from teenage hacker in Melbourne to years holed up in the Ecuadorean embassy in London and then incarcerated in a maximum-security prison.

Supporters of the 50-year-old Assange cast him as an anti-establishment hero who has been persecuted by the United States for exposing U.S. wrongdoing and double-dealing across the world from Afghanistan and Iraq to Washington.

Julian Assange passes one thousand days in Belmarsh Prison, dubbed “Britain’s Guantanamo Bay”

Oscar Grenfell
WSWS.ORG

4/01/2022

Wednesday marks the grim milestone of a thousand days of Julian Assange’s continuous incarceration in Britain’s maximum-security Belmarsh Prison. In that time, the WikiLeaks publisher and journalist has only left the foreboding prison walls, located on a windswept plain on the bleak outskirts of London, to be brought before British courts that have trampled on his democratic and legal rights.

For 50 weeks, or 350 days, Assange was held on the basis of trumped-up bail offences, dating back to 2012. The charges were completely illegitimate, given that Assange’s application for political asylum had been approved and upheld by the United Nations after they were laid. Since the bail sentence elapsed, the WikiLeaks publisher has been held on remand, convicted of no crime.

His ongoing and indefinite detention serves only to facilitate a US extradition request, aimed at prosecuting Assange for exposing American war crimes, with the charges carrying a maximum-sentence of 175-years imprisonment.

Julian Assange in Belmarsh Prison in 2019

The extradition request is the pseudo-legal figleaf for a US government plot to destroy Assange and WikiLeaks. This has included illegal spying on his communications with lawyers, and, as was revealed late last year, plots to kidnap or assassinate the journalist while he was a political refugee in Ecuador’s London embassy. The US case has been condemned by innumerable civil liberties and human rights organisations as a frontal assault on press freedom and a transparent political prosecution.

Despite all this, the extradition request was allowed by a complicit British High Court last November. Assange faces the prospect of continued indefinite detention in Belmarsh or being put on a plane to be handed over to the US government agencies that plotted his murder. The dire predicament underscores the urgency of building an international movement of the working class to demand Assange’s immediate freedom and the denial of extradition.

Belmarsh was established in 1991, to hold “category A” prisoners accused of violent crimes, including murder, rape and terror offences. The facility was first dubbed Britain’s Guantanamo Bay in the early 2000s, because it was used to detain inmates without charge, indefinitely and in almost total isolation, on the basis of extraordinary anti-terror laws passed after 9/11.

Since then, official and independent reports have documented high levels of violence at the prison, including on the part of staff, and frequent denials of prisoners’ basic rights.

The most recent report based on “unannounced visits” to Belmarsh by the Chief Inspector of Prisons last July and August found a deterioration in conditions on a number of fronts.

Its introduction stated: “The prison had not paid sufficient attention to the growing levels of self-harm and there was not enough oversight or care taken of prisoners at risk of suicide. Urgent action needed to be taken in this area to make sure that these prisoners were kept safe.”

The comment is particularly significant, given Assange’s documented history of medical issues, including suicidal depression, stemming from his decade-long persecution. At least four prisoners had taken their own lives since the previous “unannounced visits” in 2018.

“The 52% of prisoners who were not working were spending 23 hours a day locked in their cells while the education block, gym and library had sat empty and unused for more than a year,” the report stated, in reference to the situation facing the majority of prisoners, including Assange.

In 2018, the Chief Inspector deemed that prisoner safety was “reasonably good,” despite independent reports to the contrary. Even that official judgement has been downgraded in the 2021 report, with “outcomes for prisoners” deemed “not sufficiently good.”

A quarter of prisoners said they felt unsafe. The Inspector found: “The use of force had increased since our last inspection. Staff did not routinely activate body-worn video cameras during incidents. Due to the lack of video footage to support staff statements, we could not be assured that the use of force was necessary in all cases.”

The report goes on to document other abysmal conditions, including rusted shower blocks and cells and a lack of cleaning products provided to most inmates.

The conditions were graphically documented by Assange’s fiance Stella Moris in a Twitter post on new year’s eve. It included a minute and a half of audio recorded inside Assange’s cell, with a continuous cacophony of agitated shouting and barking dogs, presumably those of the prison guards. Moris captioned the post: “What does New Year's Eve sound like from Julian #Assange's cell in Belmarsh prison? Just like it sounded on Christmas Day and every day since he was imprisoned on 11 April 2019.”

Assange’s imprisonment has continued unabated, even as United Nations official Nils Melzer found in June 2019 that it constituted a new form of the protracted, state inflicted psychological torture to which he had been subjected over the past decade. For more than two years hundreds of doctors have repeatedly demanded that Assange be released to a university teaching hospital or freed, warning that otherwise he may die in prison. Moris has confirmed that Assange suffered a minor stroke last October. And Belmarsh authorities have repeatedly found Assange to be at risk of self-harm or suicide.

In January 2020, a British Magistrates Court blocked Assange’s extradition on narrow medical grounds, finding that it would be oppressive because his health issues, together with the draconian conditions in American prisons, would likely claim his life. It nevertheless denied a bail application, leaving Assange in the appalling conditions of Belmarsh.

At hearings on a US appeal to that verdict, the High Court similarly accepted the medical evidence provided by Assange’s defence.

The High Court, however, not only sanctioned Assange’s ongoing detention, but upheld the US appeal, allowing extradition, on the basis of fraudulent and self-contradicting “assurances” from the American authorities that the conditions of Assange’s imprisonment would not be so bad as claimed by the defence.

Late last month, Assange’s lawyers filed an application to appeal that ruling.

In a public statement, Moris explained: “On December 10th, the High Court upheld the Magistrates’ Court’s assessment, based on the evidence before her, that there was a real risk that, should Julian Assange be extradited to the United States, he would be subjected to near total isolation, including under the regimes of SAMs (Special Administrative Measures) and/or ADX, (administrative maximum prison) and that such isolation would cause his mental condition to deteriorate to such a degree that there was a high risk of suicide. These findings led the lower court to block the extradition under s. 91 of the Extradition Act, which bans “oppressive” extraditions.

“However, the High Court overturned the lower court’s decision to block the extradition, based solely on the fact that after the US lost the extradition case on January 4th 2021, the US State Department sent a letter to the UK Foreign Office containing conditional assurances in relation to Julian Assange’s placement under SAMs and ADX. The assurances letter explicitly states in points one and four that ‘the United States retains the power’ to ‘impose SAMs’ on Mr. Assange and to ‘designate Mr. Assange to ADX’ should he say or do anything since January 4, 2021 that would cause the US government to determine, in its subjective assessment, that Julian Assange should be placed under SAMs conditions and/or in ADX Florence. These conditional assurances alone were considered sufficient by the High Court to overturn the lower court’s decision.”

Not only were the assurances conditional, they were also issued by the government that has been exposed to have spied on Assange and plotted his extrajudicial kidnapping or murder. By rights, this evidence alone should have resulted in the extradition application being summarily dismissed.

Assange’s persecution, however, is supported by the British authorities, and other US allies, including the Australian government, because it is the spearhead of a broader campaign to suppress widespread anti-war sentiment and to create a precedent for political frame-ups and persecution.

Moris and other prominent Assange supporters have pointed to this broader context in recent days. They have noted the contrast between the knighthood of former British Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair, whose government participated in the invasion of Iraq, claiming at least a million lives, and the imprisonment of Assange, who exposed so many of the crimes of that illegal war.

Assange’s ongoing detention and the High Court ruling again demonstrate that his freedom can only be won through a political struggle against the entire capitalist establishment. Such a fight must be based in the working class, which is entering into struggle against the very governments spearheading Assange’s persecution.

What Julian Assange Told Us about Central America

 December 18, 2021

While under house arrest in England in 2011, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange granted an exclusive interview to El Faro’s founding director Carlos Dada and expressed hope that the leaked cables would help set a higher bar for global journalism. The organization then offloaded hundreds of thousands of U.S. government documents to local outlets around the world, including El Faro.

By El Faro

HAVANA TIMES – A decade ago, the controversial WikiLeaks offered an unprecedented window into the workings of the U.S. government in Central America. Now the possible extradition and trial of founder Julian Assange may set a dangerous precedent for the criminalization of commonplace news-gathering activities, press advocates say, and contradict moves by Biden to punish those seeking to harm journalists around the world.

“A Wounded Titan”

Over a decade after WikiLeaks shook the world by releasing hundreds of thousands of secret U.S. military documents and diplomatic cables, the U.K. is on the brink of extraditing the nonprofit’s embattled and enigmatic Australian founder, Julian Assange, into the hands of the U.S. justice system.

The Justice Dept., which in 2020 called the hacks “one of the largest compromises of classified information in the history of the United States,” is pressing charges including conspiracy to hack U.S. government servers and the publication of national defense information received from third parties and whistleblowers including then-U.S. soldier Chelsea Manning.

Assange has staved off extradition for over two years in a U.K. prison since the Ecuadorian Embassy in London revoked his asylum protections. As world leaders convened at Biden’s Summit for Democracy on Dec. 10, a London judge ruled to extradite Assange, dismissing his attorneys’s argument that his removal to the U.S. and conditions of confinement would push him to suicide. Barring a successful last-minute legal challenge to the extradition, and if convicted under the 1917 Espionage Act, he faces up to 175 years in prison.

“The insistent requests to extradite Assange are a negative message to the sources that have filtered confidential information” essential to the work of investigative journalists around the world, argues Jennifer Ávila, co-founder and director of independent Honduran outlet Contracorriente. “It’s a message of fear to sources.”

“The attitude of the United States is that of a wounded titan,” says El Faro director Carlos Dada of the Biden administration’s push for extradition. “It’s that of an emperor that feels humiliated and thus reacts in a damaging way.”

The leaks exposed to the world the internal communications of U.S. embassies, messages containing at times withering assessments of the politics of host countries and delicate private talks with host governments. The leaks, often cited as a catalyst of the Arab Spring, also revealed evidence of U.S. war crimes during the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq.

“We’re changing what people accept as truth,” Assange told El Faro in 2011. Assange called the leaked diplomatic cables “a resource that everyone in the world can refer to, a sort of scaffold to make decisions on, to look at how international relations work, and to look at how the influence of big business on government works.”

While under house arrest in England in 2011, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange granted an exclusive interview to El Faro’s founding director Carlos Dada.

WikiLeaks released thousands of U.S. cables to Central American newsrooms documenting the nation’s footprint and outlook on the isthmus. El Faro revealed, for example, left-wing former Salvadoran president Mauricio Funes’ 2009 pledge to send Salvadoran troops to Afghanistan — the troops deployed in 2013 — and the U.S. ambassador in Honduras’ fleeting efforts to prevent the 2009 military coup.

“These cables revealed the discussions held about the coup d’état and the role that the U.S. played in this historic event that unleashed an institutional crisis, one that still engulfs us today,” says Ávila.

Nicaragua’s Confidencial revealed, among dozens of other stories, failed U.S. bargaining with the newly-formed Ortega administration in 2008 for the destruction of USSR-made surface-to-air missiles.

“The cables made us see the two different faces of the United States in our countries,” says Dada of WikiLeaks’ impact in Central America. “Obviously, behind its foreign policy were its own interests,” he argues. “They consistently measured their counterparts in our countries based on how much they kept in line with those interests.”

“On the other hand,” he adds, “this will sound paradoxical, but they revealed to us a United States that was genuinely interested in human rights.”

The leaks were just the beginning of WikiLeaks’ skirmishes with the U.S. government. In the run-up to the 2016 U.S. elections, WikiLeaks filtered the communications of presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. A year later, the organization exposed a score of CIA hacking tools, leading Trump Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, the agency’s former director, to brand WikiLeaks a “non-state hostile foreign intelligence service.” In 2017, senior CIA and Trump administration officials allegedly floated options to kidnap or assassinate Assange.

A grand jury indicted Assange in 2019 in absentia for allegedly conspiring with Chelsea Manning to break into a Dept. of Defense computer. Last year U.S. prosecutors broadened the accusations to charge Assange, acting as a publisher, with espionage, “an assertive, unprecedented legal crackdown on the traditional rights and protections for publishers,” commented MSNBC’s chief legal correspondent.

“The new Trump DOJ indictment treats activities most top newspapers engage in — gathering and publishing classified material — as criminal plotting,” he added.

The New York Times editorial board concurred at the time. “The Trump administration has chosen to go well beyond the question of hacking to directly challenge the boundaries of the First Amendment,” it wrote in response to the second indictment, arguing that the Assange case “could have a chilling effect on American journalism as it has been practiced for generations.”

The top editors at The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, USA Today, The Guardian, and Le Monde urged the Trump administration to drop the affair, though of the papers only The Guardian has weighed in on the London court’s decision in favor of extradition.

“The U.S. has this week proclaimed itself the beacon of democracy in an increasingly authoritarian world,” wrote the British paper on the day of the ruling. President Biden has regularly argued in favor of a free press and condemned the stances of the Trump administration, and has even specifically created new sanctions to punish governments hostile to journalists, including the murderers of Jamaal Khashoggi. In Central America, the Biden White House has frequently condemned attacks against the press by regional governments.

“If Mr. Biden is serious about protecting the ability of the media to hold governments accountable,” The Guardian continued, “he should begin by dropping the charges brought against Mr. Assange.”

Press freedom advocates argue that the extradition and prosecution of a non-citizen under the 1917 U.S. Espionage Act could set a dangerous precedent. “Every regime now can point to us and say, ‘We want to extradite these journalists.’” said ACLU attorney Ben Wizner.

El Faro has also weighed in. “If Assange is extradited and convicted in the United States for making these documents public, we journalists and newsrooms are all exposed,” wrote the editorial board in 2019 following his arrest.

The Biden administration has refrained from openly commenting on the Assange case since taking office. In February, a coalition of two-dozen U.S.-based press freedom, civil liberties, and human rights organizations signed a joint letter to the Dept. of Justice calling on Biden to back down from extraditing and prosecuting Assange and arguing that the indictment “poses a grave threat to press freedom both in the United States and abroad.”

“Much of the conduct described in the indictment is conduct that journalists engage in routinely,” wrote the coalition. “The Biden administration’s Dept. of Justice now has an opportunity and an obligation to end this dangerous charade.”