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DESCRIPTION:Join us July 31st at the British Consulate General in San Francisco to 
 rally against the U.S. government’s attempt to extradite Julian Assange. 
 \n\nPlease bring any signs and bull horns you have. \n\nAlso, contact the 
 media that people will be protesting this outrageous attack on Julian 
 Assange.\n\nThe attack and International law-breaking arrest by the British 
 government and police on Julian Assange, with the direct support of the 
 US-controlled Ecuadoran government and the US government itself, is an 
 attack on ALL journalists, whistleblowers, and democracy. It is aimed at 
 closing down all alternative media. There are multiple other examples of 
 attempts at this happening daily.  While there is no prosecution of the war 
 criminals exposed by WikiLeaks, Assange, Chelsea Manning, and other 
 journalists, journalists and whistleblowers are under attack and 
 imprisoned, or even killed. \n\nBay Area Action Committee To Free Julian 
 Assange BAACFJA \n\n-------------------------------------------------- 
 \n\nHistorical Background:\nPacifica Foundation Announces Support for 
 Julian Assange \nPacifica National Board Asks for Freedom for Whistleblower 
 \nhttps://pacifica.org/documents/Press%20Release-Pacifica%20supports%20Julian%20Assange%202018-10-07%20(1).htm 
 \n\nOct. 11, 2018 \nFor Immediate Release \nNancy Sorden Email: nsordenPFW 
 [at] gmail.com \nAlex Steinberg Email: pnbalex [at] gmail.com 
 \n\n(Berkeley) - The National Board of the Pacifica Foundation passed a 
 resolution supporting the journalist and whistle blower Julian Assange at 
 its October 4 meeting. The resolution said, “The Pacifica National Board 
 calls for the freedom of Julian Assange and an end to the harassment of 
 Assange at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.” \n\nThe resolution noted 
 that Assange has been deprived of access to the outside world, including 
 the use of the Internet, in the past few months. It called for the end of 
 efforts to imprison Assange by the governments of the United States and the 
 United Kingdom and an end to the attacks on journalists and whistle blowers 
 by these governments. \n\nAssange, the founder of the WikiLeaks, has been 
 residing in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London since 2012 when he was first 
 given asylum. Ecuadorian President Lenín Moreno has been under pressure 
 from the United States to hand Assange over to the British authorities. 
 That pressure intensified after a meeting between Moreno and U.S. 
 Vice-President Mike Pence in June of this year. \n\nBritish authorities 
 have repeatedly stated that if Assange steps one foot out of the Ecuadorian 
 Embassy he will be immediately arrested and would then very likely be 
 extradited to the United States, where he faces criminal charges that could 
 put him in jail for the rest of his life. Assange continues to face a 
 secret grand jury trial in Virginia, home of the Pentagon and CIA, on 
 multiple charges under the 1917 Espionage Act. The charges against Assange 
 are linked to special prosecutor Robert Mueller’s investigation into 
 collusion of Trump’s campaign with Russia to influence the 2016 
 elections. WikiLeaks has been accused of knowingly accepting hacked emails 
 from Russian espionage agents stolen from the Clinton campaign. Assange has 
 denied these charges. \n\nThe moves against Assange are aimed at denying 
 free speech to Assange and WikiLeaks, who over the last decade have exposed 
 the war crimes, coup plots and the mass surveillance carried out by the US 
 government and its allies. \n\nOver the years WikiLeaks has published reams 
 of documents supplied by whistleblowers that chronicle the secret 
 machinations of the U.S. and other governments behind the backs of its 
 people. These included documentation of equipment expenditures and holdings 
 in the Afghanistan war and a report informing a corruption investigation in 
 Kenya. In April 2010, WikiLeaks released the so-called Collateral Murder 
 footage [https://youtu.be/5rXPrfnU3G0] from the 12 July 2007 Baghdad 
 airstrike in which Iraqi journalists were among those killed. Other 
 releases in 2010 included the Afghan War Diary and the "Iraq War Logs". The 
 latter allowed the mapping of 109,032 deaths in "significant" attacks by 
 insurgents in Iraq that had been reported to Multi-National Force – Iraq, 
 including about 15,000 that had not been previously published. In 2010, 
 WikiLeaks also released the US State Department diplomatic "cables", 
 classified cables that had been sent to the US State Department. In April 
 2011, WikiLeaks began publishing 779 secret files relating to prisoners 
 detained in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. WikiLeaks received much of 
 this material from whistleblower Chelsea Manning. \n\nIn addition to 
 publishing the hacked emails from the Democratic Presidential campaign of 
 Hillary Clinton in 2016, WikiLeaks published a trove of material from the 
 CIA in 2017 exposing the cyber tools used by that agency to compromise the 
 privacy of data on iPhones and other personal communications devices. 
 \n\nThe defense of Julian Assange has received the support of a number of 
 journalists and prominent individuals. Among those who have spoken up in 
 defense of Assange has been the journalist Chris Hedges, the film maker Ken 
 Loach as well as the film maker Oliver Stone. Oliver Stone sent a letter to 
 the Pacifica National Board in the days leading up to its Oct. 4 meeting 
 asking that the organization go on record defending Assange. \n\nThe motion 
 was brought forth by Pacifica Board member Alex Steinberg who represents 
 radio station WBAI in New York. Steinberg stated that, \n\n“The Julian 
 Assange case is a key case for freedom of the press. Assange has been 
 hunted by the U.S. government and the government of the UK..." The 
 government of Ecuador then handed him over to the UK where he resides in 
 Belmarsh Prison, the Guentanemo of the UK as the U.S. Justice Department 
 attempts to extradite him and persecute him in a kangaroo court known for 
 unjust prosection. His “crime” is very simple - he exposed the secret 
 machinations of the U.S. government through the whistle-blowing activities 
 of WikiLeaks. Mainstream news organizations like the New York Times and the 
 Washington Post have not only refused to defend Assange but instead have 
 echoed some of the accusations against him. This is in sharp contrast to 
 their defense of another whistleblower decades ago, Daniel Ellsberg, when 
 they published the Pentagon Papers. ” \n\nIn standing up for the freedom 
 of Julian Assange and of all whistleblowers, the Pacifica Foundation 
 reiterates its commitment to the principle of freedom of the press and the 
 right of the public to know what its governments are doing no matter who is 
 embarrassed by the release of this information. In doing so Pacifica is 
 following in the traditions of its founder, Lew Hill, who as a pacifist, 
 stood up to the U.S. government during World War II. \n\nPacifica calls on 
 other media organizations and individuals to join us in defending Julian 
 Assange and WikiLeaks and the principle of Freedom of the Press. \n\n### 
 \n\nStarted in 1946 by conscientious objector Lew Hill, Pacifica’s 
 storied history includes impounded program tapes for a 1954 on-air 
 discussion of marijuana, broadcasting the Seymour Hersh revelations of the 
 My Lai massacre, bombings by the Ku Klux Klan, going to jail rather than 
 turning over the Patty Hearst tapes to the FBI, and Supreme Court cases. 
 Those cases include the 1984 decision that noncommercial broadcasters have 
 the constitutional right to editorialize, and the Seven Dirty Words ruling 
 following George Carlin’s incendiary performances on WBAI. \n\nThe 
 Pacifica Foundation operates noncommercial radio stations in five major 
 metropolitan areas, operates the Pacifica Radio Archives with decades of 
 historical audio, and syndicates content to over 250 affiliate stations. It 
 invented listener-sponsored radio. \n\nKPFA - Northern California, KPFK - 
 Southern California, WPFW - Washington DC, \nKPFT-Houston, WBAI-New York, 
 Pacifica Radio Archives, Pacifica.org Pacificanetwork.org\n\nFor more event 
 information: http://bayaction2freeassange.org\n 
 https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2019/07/09/18824564.php
SUMMARY:Defend Media Freedom NO U.S.Extradition of Julian Assange
LOCATION:British Consulate General San Francisco, 1 Sansome Street, San Francisco, 
 CA
URL:https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2019/07/09/18824564.php
DTSTART:20190731T230000Z
DTEND:20190801T010000Z
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