Write Assange at Belmarsh

Write Assange at the following address:

Julian Assange
DOB 3rd July 1971
HMP Belmarsh Prison
Western Way
London, SE28 0EB

You must put your name and address on the back; otherwise authorities won’t let him have the letter. You cannot send postcards and he is not allowed newspapers or magazines. Remember that all incoming and outgoing mail is read and it may take some time for you to get a reply.

It's me

The pronoun I generally indicates that the self is the actor, whereas the pronoun me generally indicates that the self is being or will be acted upon. I tends to fit with subject, while me is regarded as object -- as in "I verb object" and "Subject verb me"?

So then, what of the supposedly proper response, "It is I" to the question "Who is there?" ? Doesn't that appear to break our little rule?

I daresay that we get that formality from "It is I who am at the door," where "I who" is the subject of a sentence-like clause. Yet, the clause cannot be used as a stand-alone sentence, thus making the analogy iffy.

On the other hand most of us would accept the abbreviated response "I am" for "I am the person at your door."

Now as for the reply, "It's me," note that the form of the sentence is correct. "Me" falls under object. Suppose one says, "The person in question is I." Definitely not! It should be, "The person in question is me." So why should there be any difference when we substitute it for the person in question?

It is plainly a mental space-holder, either used as an abbreviation of a subject recently expressed or as another word for a "something" that we wish not to define very clearly, as in "It is raining." (Though "Rain is falling" sounds better to my ear, many would think it sounds stilted or even foreign.)

In any case, if the question is "Who am I to expect?", would it be improper to reply, "It is me that you are to expect" or "It is me whom you are to expect"? Turn it around and see: "You are to expect me."

Now we come upon the nicety of the conjunction that versus who/whom. I won't discuss that one at length, but only note that if one, in response to "Who is there?", replies "It is me that is at the door," this doesn't sound bad, but the reply "It is me who is at the door" might sound uneducated.

Similarly, we have such forms as "It is I whom you seek," versus the snappier, "You seek me." Yet when one says, "It is me that you seek," I'll be go-to-heck if I know who is on top: I or me. I'd no doubt duck behind, "I am the one you seek."

Me, I vote for "I am."

Twitter muzzles Assange defenders

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The World Socialist Web Site reports today that Twitter has squelched a Julian Assange defense group, which has been an effective clearing house for the jailed Australian's defenders. This churlish move may be a sop to President Trump and the alt right, who complain of Big Tech censorship. "Well," says Twitter, "we also muzzle the left wing," which has been identified as backing Assange.

[All thinking Americans -- left, libertarian, alt right, or what have you -- should object to the dangerous attack on freedom of speech posed by the Assange prosecution.]

"And now we're gagging those who back Assange, whom your Justice Department is prosecuting for publishing secret information, much like The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Guardian have done. What do you say about that, Mr. Wise Guy. We caught you in a trap, didn't we, ha ha!"

And of course, the fate of the First Amendment and Julian Assange be go to hell, saith Twitter.

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By MIKE HEAD
World Socialist Web Site
13 July 2019

Last Thursday, without notice or explanation, Twitter arbitrarily suspended the account of @Unity4J, a platform dedicated to circulating information and advocacy for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. As of this writing, the account has been gone for two days.

The operators of the account reported that they were given no reason for its removal by Twitter staff, and received no response to their appeals for reinstatement. As this occurred, Assange, a journalist and publisher, remained incarcerated in London’s notorious Belmarsh Prison. He is facing extradition to the U.S., where he could be jailed for life, or executed, on unprecedented U.S. Espionage Act charges.

“About 8:45 a.m. CST on Thursday July 11, one of our Unity4J Twitter team members went to retweet on the account and noticed that the account was no longer accessible,” reported Christy Dopf, one of the operators of the account. “When each of us also attempted to access the account we all received the same message ‘Account Suspended’.

“Twitter did not send us a reason or violation for the suspension. So an appeal was submitted. We did receive correspondence that Twitter got our request and the case is currently open. Unfortunately we do not have a timeline on how long this could take.”

Unity4J has been prominent in campaigning against Assange’s persecution, arrest and extradition. Its online vigils have featured well-known Assange defenders, including Socialist Equality Party (SEP) representatives who have spoken about the SEP's global campaign to free Assange and whistleblower Chelsea Manning, currently imprisoned in a U.S. jail for refusing to testify against Assange.

Unity4J co-founder Elizabeth Vos tweeted: “I have no doubt that @Unity4J’s twitter account was suspended because it was a hub of useful information on solidarity events and actions in support of Assange, WikiLeaks, Chelsea Manning and more. Horrendous censorship to suspend the account, @TwitterSupport.”

Twitter’s move is part of a wider pattern. Vos told independent journalist Caitlin Johnstone: “It seems that Assange supporters have been targeted for suspension over the last few days and weeks, including the suspension of individuals (Yon Solitary, Monique Jolie) as well as accounts like Unity4J. All of these suspensions are unacceptable, but I find the Unity4J suspension especially egregious because it was an amplifier of events across the board, not only actions run by Unity4J. It never broke the Twitter rules and it was an activist account supporting a journalist who’s been silenced or ‘disappeared,’ so this suspension is an extension of that suppression.”

Many Assange supporters have protested to the Twitter Support account and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, objecting to the silencing of a legitimate activist account, to no avail thus far.

Christine Assange, the journalist’s mother, tweeted: “HELP!! Twitter suspended @Unity4J The global #FreeAssange supporters account. Its a central point for updates, interviews and actions re my son politically persecuted journalist JULIAN ASSANGE! Please demand @TwitterSupport and @Jack re-instate it. Many thanks #Unity4J.” Musician Roger Waters, co-founder of the famous rock band Pink Floyd, broadcast a video denouncing the suspension. He accused Twitter of seeking to silence supporters of Assange, whom he described as a “great hero of freedom of the press and freedom of any kind.” Waters said Unity4J was a cogent, intelligent and powerful voice of opposition to the persecution of Assange. “Twitter, you are Big Brother!” he said. “You are an arm of the thought police.”

Twitter has acted as a corporate judge, jury and executioner, providing no explanation, let alone justification. Even if the account is eventually restored, the removal serves to undercut the international struggle underway to defend Assange and Manning.

On June 20, the World Socialist Web Site and the Socialist Equality Parties affiliated with the International Committee of the Fourth International called for a global campaign to stop Assange’s extradition to the United States, and to secure both his and Manning’s freedom.

This Sunday, at 2 p.m., Australian Eastern Time, the SEP in Australia will conduct a live-streamed rally in Melbourne, following rallies in Sydney and Brisbane, to take forward this campaign. Readers can watch the rally on Facebook at SEP Australia.

Twitter has joined Facebook and Google in what has become mounting censorship directed against progressive and left-wing political speech on online media platforms. Last year, the WSWS urged the formation of an international coalition to fight the censorship of socialist, anti-war, left-wing and progressive websites, organizations and activists. Google’s manipulation of search results, beginning in April 2017, limited traffic to left-wing sites, particularly the WSWS, which reported a nearly 70 percent decline in readers resulting from Google searches.

Darkness over noon

Doors will open at 12 a.m. and close at 12 p.m. Huh? Exactly when is 12 a.m.? Ain't no such animal. Neither is there a 12 p.m. Correctly, there are noon and midnight (12 noon and 12 midnight are redundancies).

Well, what if there is confusion as to which midnight is meant, as in, "The strike is set to begin at midnight"? That shouldn't confuse, but it can be a hassle if you are writing for a morning newspaper. One solution is to fake it slightly and write, "The strike is to begin at 12:01 a.m.," so that you can get the "a.m." in. The proper solution, of course, is to write, "The strike is to begin at midnight (of Wednesday/Thursday)," though editors dislike such formations. When you see "12 a.m." and "12 p.m.", you know you are dealing with a not very logical, if not semi-literate, writer.

Any editor who lets such a barbarism pass should be taken behind the woodshed and forced to reread a book on American usage (which I haven't read fully and very rarely consult).

Report: Mueller let Dems blind his probers

Robert Mueller's investigation into the potential of Russian election meddling
accepted the censoring of records by a Democratic Party contractor,
CrowdStrike, along with redactions imposed by the Democratic Party's
legal counsel -- meaning CrowdStrike and not the special counsel decided what
could be revealed or not regarding evidence of hacking.

This, according to RealClear Investigations,

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2019/07/05/crowdstrikeout_muellers_own_report_undercuts_its_core_russia-meddling_claims.html

which found a litany of oddities in Mueller's report, including these points:

The report uses qualified and vague language to describe key events, indicating that Mueller and his investigators do not actually know for certain whether Russian intelligence officers stole Democratic Party emails, or how those emails were transferred to WikiLeaks.

The report's timeline of events appears to defy logic. According to its narrative, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange announced the publication of Democratic Party emails not only before he received the documents but before he even communicated with the source that provided them.

There is strong reason to doubt Mueller’s suggestion that an alleged Russian cutout called Guccifer 2.0 supplied the stolen emails to Assange.

Mueller’s decision not to interview Assange – a central figure who claims Russia was not behind the hack – suggests an unwillingness to explore avenues of evidence on fundamental questions.

U.S. intelligence officials cannot make definitive conclusions about the hacking of the Democratic National Committee computer servers because they did not analyze those servers themselves. Instead, they relied on the forensics of CrowdStrike, a private contractor for the DNC that was not a neutral party, much as “Russian dossier” compiler Christopher Steele, also a DNC contractor, was not a neutral party. This puts two Democrat-hired contractors squarely behind underlying allegations in the affair – a key circumstance that Mueller ignores.

Further, the government allowed CrowdStrike and the Democratic Party's legal counsel to submit redacted records, meaning CrowdStrike and not the government decided what could be revealed or not regarding evidence of hacking. Mueller’s report conspicuously does not allege that the Russian government carried out the social media campaign. Instead it blames, as Mueller said in his closing remarks, "a private Russian entity" known as the Internet Research Agency (IRA).

Mueller also falls far short of proving that the Russian social campaign was sophisticated, or even more than minimally related to the 2016 election. As with the collusion and Russian hacking allegations, Democratic officials had a central and overlooked hand in generating the alarm about Russian social media activity.

John Brennan, then director of the CIA, played a seminal and overlooked role in all facets of what became Mueller’s investigation: the suspicions that triggered the initial collusion probe; the allegations of Russian interference; and the intelligence assessment that purported to validate the interference allegations that Brennan himself helped generate. Yet Brennan has since revealed himself to be, like CrowdStrike and Steele, hardly a neutral party -- in fact a partisan with a deep animus toward Trump.