Talking Julian Assange im joined by my guest in london joe lauria he is the editor in chief of Consortium News dot com we also have taylor she is an independent journalist and cofounder of action for us and were joined by alexander make your us he is a writer on Legal Affairs as well as editor in chief of the duran dot com all right crosstalk rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want and i always appreciate it lets go to the the legal part of this story here well go to alexander me curious alex i mean the Mainstream Media when it does report the trial it seems to me theres an enormous amount of omission being played out here. In europe you have a legal mind you have a legal legal experience is he getting a fair trial go ahead ill. Have to say there are certain aspects of the trial which do cause me a great deal of money on just one. You go into the. Details too far but firstly are i have to have genuine concerns about the physical layout of the courtroom the fact that he is care behind a glass beriah hes been complaining that this is limited hes contacts with his lawyers there is incidentally case law which says the physical layout of the court room can have bearing on whether a trial is fair or not so for our all or his protests about that have been disregarded but beyond this i am becoming worried by the trend of some of the legal arguments in the very interesting really the prosecution seems to have accepted i should say the crown seems have accepted that the things that he has been charged with are political offenses but the argument now seems to be that that isnt relevant at all in extraditing him because the u. K. Extradition act of 2003 doesnt say that people cant be extradited on police for political offenses even though there has always been well understood well how even though the extradition treaty with the United States seems appropriate. And that does worry me that worries me a great deal well it should worry us all because Julian Assange is a journalist ok i mean the way hes being treated me or taylor here are so in line and the way hes being treated here is if he said terrorists i mean the the layout is theres alexander macarius just told us i mean this is treating him as if hes a danger to society in themselves there is no evidence in his past to to prove that they have this justified whatsoever he is being treated like a terrorist because hes a political prisoner and theres no 2 ways about it go ahead taylor. Yes youre exactly right peter in fact we know that Julian Assange has been in london belmarsh prison which is often referred to as the u. K. s Guantanamo Bay and we also learned earlier that in fact Julian Assange has been placed in 5 Holding Cells hes been handcuffed frequently and i believe that his case files have been confiscated at the end of the day and his attorney Edward Fitzgerald has argued that in fact that impairs his right to a fair trial we also have learned that while he was staying in the Ecuadorian Embassy in london that this Spanish Security firm you see global was actually spying on him in spying on his visitors in particular journalists especially those who were russian or american so that even infringes on his rights to Attorney Client privilege as well you know joe i mean considering how hes being treated during this trial and of course the the the information that has come out that he was spied on when he was in the Ecuadorian Embassy i mean he really must really scare the daylights out of the stuff. The way hes being treated proves that i mean it is sense he is probably the most dangerous man in the world and they want to punish him for this go ahead joe. It was certainly not dangerous in a violent sense and thats the way hes being treated you have to wonder why theyre doing this to him why hes in that cage why the day on monday this week he was strip searched twice and he was in 11 different times were handcuffed why are they doing this and its just who bursts its power its almost a sadistic to show that theyre in charge they can do whatever they want with him and thats a stream we disturbing as particularly the what tila just mentioned about the lawyers i mean you have the prosecuting government has eavesdropped on the defense preparations for this case by that by that Spanish Company of selling to the cia all of this that are so that would be thrown out of any case a mediately does not in any case the arguments i was in the court the arguments by the government by the u. S. Government and their british lawyer are just theyre ridiculous in some respects its as if they didnt feel like they needed to make any kind of serious argument i mean on the on the on the day to on tuesday. A sunday as lawyers demolish this idea that tried to help Chelsea Manning hack into a government computer 1st chelsea had legal access to that a top secret 2nd the she didnt even need a password what he was doing was trying to help it download video games and movies and music videos because its forbidden on army computers its a they demolished that and what did the government lawyers say james lewis he said that that was a straw man argument i mean its not a strawman argument because it wasnt a false argument its the problem is the judge is being clearly biased against assad we expected that going in weve seen many signs about that as well and the issue about whether its political or not is key and you get as Alexander Point out the actors are going to be the actor the treaty thats going to be followed thats a key question right now yeah you know i think you know a lot of us that have a lot followed this this tragic story here is that it seems to me. From people that are knowledgeable or knowledgeable about the american legal system that it seems almost impossible Julian Assange could get a fair trial in the United States even to the point where it would actually be a secret trial because it would have to do with National Security in espionage i mean how in the world can you call that justice go ahead alex wellen well you cant and im pretty sure that this is going to be something that is going to be discussed extensively over the course of the of the hearing we havent reached those points yet about whether Julian Assange can expect a fair trial in the United States the disproportionate sentence he would face or risk if he was sent there and i think this is absolutely central to this whole issue because it makes the whole thing to me looking stream really vindictive given that as i have said already the crown has accepted the these are political charges we should been brought against him are im very disturbed about this argument by the way that the fact that his political charges somehow isnt important because the act doesnt mention political charges the extradition treaty yes we britain and the United States expressively prohibits 3 extraditing people who are on facing political charges and it seems to me that to disregard that is to say that the court can go beyond what the British Government but to britain to do in a treaty an International Treaty integrate with the United States that doesnt make any kind of logical sense you know me at all you know taylor that not only is this a travesty of justice in the case of Julian Assange but it is it is going to severely damage the opinion people have of the british legal system because just as joe has pointed out and ive been read. Accounts of people that have been in the court it looks like this is all pro forma i mean everyones yawning i mean can we get this over with because it is susan has already been made and theyre doing this for public consumption for those that will even reported go ahead. Yessir exactly right it seems that this judge in particular has been siding in favor of the prosecution we saw that with previous hearings that took place last year at the end of last year in particular now you do bring up a good point about julian potentially receiving a fair trial in the United States unfortunately that is not at all the case because he will be tried in the u. S. District Eastern District court of virginia which is known as the Espionage Court and i believe that anybody who has been tried in that court for a similar offenses join asuncion National Security case they have all been tried and convicted in this particular court and much of the evidence in this case the jury would not even be able to hear and if you have jury members seeing and hearing that they cannot even be provided with evidence thats really prejudicial to the defendant so i think that all rule of law in this case has been really disregarded but i am hopeful that the judge will side on the facts of this case and the facts so far i believe have been overwhelmingly in favor of the defense you know joe in a broader picture if we look at what happening to julian and and then we have roger stone it seems like the establishment and elements of the state want to prove they want to the rush hoax because theyll say look we got this conviction we got this conviction. And they reinvented the hoax the hoax is back in vogue again here i mean you know its as if the report didnt matter doesnt matter push it aside were going to prove to you that this conspiracy actually exists when there is not. The evidence to prove it whatsoever go ahead joe. You know ironically the prosecution argued on thursday that assad would have had to try to change the government in the us for it to have been a political offense and thats of course what thats of course what the most the us assigns critics say that he truly brought trump in he tried to stop who recruited rather than he published what he got and cant publish what he didnt get on trump that this was a journalistic decision and that he was necessarily so and so youre right they are trying to mix in 2016 they want to get a song for that theyre blaming him for that theyre blaming everyone except Hillary Clinton for a loss of course and to try to suck that into sanjian to that russia gate story at this point when hes not been charged on anything other than what happened in 2010 under the espionage act and simply for possessing and then disseminating classified material which no one of the journals has ever been prosecuted for under the espionage act and us the Obama Administration wouldnt do it to trumpet ministration as they crossed that red line thats what this is about but its going to be construed us as having something to do with the 2016 election you know thats part of the done the descent from Mission Campaign that was launched in march of 2008 by the pentagon and cyber counter chaldeans program and they said in a 32 page report that ironically was leaked to rekey leaks that destroying the trust look around we can weeks is the aim and to have reputational damage inflicted on a son so that for 12 years now there been lies and smears and thats one reason this case cannot be a tried fairly why the government is being very cavalier about their case they not really making anything because they think theyve got it in the bag very cavalier i wouldnt let it go to a hard break here were going to go to a short break and out for that short break well continue our discussion on Julian Assange and stayed with already. Wall street cant win every single time eventually some workers have to participate in the American Economy the American Economy is not just buying for kleptocrats its not buying for terrorists like jamie diamond theres labor involved people who work with people who have families or values or the American History that like a state that has to be respected at some point you simply cant throw the keys to group of wall street charlatans and give them 67 89. 00 trillion dollars and expect them to whip up something thats not an outright 2nd act of wall terrorism. Your government and our government and all the other major governments of the world know whats going to them when its gone. But they havent told you and they havent told me they havent announced. Imagine something as big as the earth is going to cause tidal waves earthquakes volcanoes erupt and its going to chill. So very for a while right. My great grandfathers. Nobody would care about the law or prison so youd have wallace though should have. A terrible life between the and the. Welcome to cross talk where all things are considered im Peter Lavelle to remind you were discussing. Oks go back to our. Alexander in london you know alex its really interesting what joe had to say before we went to the break because the establishment and establishment journalists that are actually not journalists theyre just client pawns for power its a disgrace what theyve done to journalism but you know you know we can make has always been seen as trying to undermine the establishment because he exposed as their corruption in their lives and but you know the interesting thing by the by. Prosecuting Julian Assange and wiki leaks as an extension theyre actually undermining themselves i mean its actually they are the ones that are undermining the public faith in their institutions in the in the political elite here and they do they have complete disregard for for the rule of law in my opinion and they dont care what the publics perception of them are because they dont really have much respect for the electorate and people in general i mean they can get away with anything go ahead alex well they did and i have to say i completely agree with what you say about the media in this situation the media collectively all looks to be extremely concerned about this trial because it it goes directly to the heart of what investigative reporters are supposed to do theyre supposed to you know get information from sources and if its in the Public Interest publish it and thats what you do in the central to be very clear about this and he was doing it in cooperation with a major new space exactly what old and yet its been saying well previous you know you have a few mumbled words of support for him from a few journalists in the Mainstream Media but theres been nothing nothing that remotely is proportionate to the gravity of the situation that we see in the courtroom and if youre talking about the proceedings themselves theres been an almost a. To sign and soon bring in even reporting that little im discussing them so eat a storm issues me this animus against. Coming from establishment media seems to go beyond that you know seems to trump if you lot their own self interests they seem to be willing to sacrifice their own profession to the standards of their own profession in order to basically punish this man and obviously one has to ask why and it does seem to me increasingly its becoming clear that establishment media and the political establishment are now become so intertwined theyre one thing they are essentially the one thing yeah they are the ones an extension of the other thats really quite obvious on so many Different Levels on so many different topics you know taylor i remember during the 2016 president ial election in the United States everybody was captivated by week you exhibit donald trump that i love wiki leaks ok i mean its amazing how theyve abandoned him because you know what what he did they dont do anymore and i think that you know they do know that theyre being shamed here because from what ive read and ive been following week you think since its inception its never released anything that wasnt authentic ok i mean how many new cable stations newspapers magazines web sites put out fake news all the time now one scheme you pin it on do we want all right so i mean it seems to me the way they do they see that. By the way they attack him is that somehow they can redeem themselves as being real journalist but thats childs play doesnt make any sense go ahead taylor. Yes youre exactly right in fact a wiki leaks has a 100 percent accuracy rate in its reporting i cannot think of any other Corporate Media outlet that can say that and have that. Record it seems to me that many people many journalists in the Corporate Media and the Mainstream Media do not want to associate themselves with joining a size they do not view him as a journalist for some reason and i think we could really say that the reason for that is because of a very effective dissin for mation campaign attacking his character at tacking wiki leaks and its Staff Members but its always important to remember as well that wiki leaks has done a lot to protect sources and political dissidents and whistleblowers and an extension of wiki leaks of course is the Courage Foundation which helps those who are in some legal trouble who have the courage to actually blow the whistle on their corrupt governments and blow the whistle on these intelligence agencies which abuse their power and joined us on his attorney were not a who knows him personally of course and considers him a friend said that this is someone of a high moral integrity and it is very much