shamanic artist - pleiadian gabrielian - michaelian - having faith in G-d above all else - sovereign - ethical - refuse RFID chipping / Uniting 144000, peaceful bodhisattva-buddha (nirmanakaya) mahatma- defender of freedom : physical, mental, spiritual - following my highest calling (Shamballah), ASHTAR “We all shape the world together, be wise and virtuous in your life loyal immortal legions visionary mystic Gabriel Sadhu turtles integral & bhakti, raja & siddha, maha yogi
Know Thyself - Welcome @ Kristo's blog
vrijdag 31 juli 2015
Baking Soda, Heavy Metal Detox and Immune System support
How To Rid Your Body Of Fluoride With Natural Remedies
Fluoride – almost everyone has heard the debates from both sides of the argument regarding it’s use and if it’s even needed. Most of the public water systems in North America have fluoride added to them, and it has been for years.
Fluoride is not a heavy metal, as is often mis-reported – it is, in fact, a a soluble salt. There are two basic types of fluoride. Calcium floride is natural and found in water. Too much of it will weaken bones. But the health concerns and toxicity of Calcium floride is nothing compared to the far more dangerous Sodium floride, which is commonly added to drinking water as a matter of fact.
Sodium Fluoride is synthetic – man made – and is a waste product of the nuclear, aluminum, and phosphate fertilizer industries.
Many are on a quest to rid their bodies of the toxic chemical, yet sometimes the information can feel overwhelming. Thankfully, Rise Earth has compiled a report that gives you the tools to start your detox from the chemical overload starting today, if you wish.
They report:
Advertisement
You can rid you body of most fluorides with some easy natural remedies. Fluorides have been linked to a variety of severe chronic, even acute health issues. First a quick review summary of fluoride.
Fluoride Toxicity
Fluoride is a soluble salt, not a heavy metal. There are two basic types of fluoride. Calcium fluoride appears naturally in underground water sources and even seawater. Enough of it can cause skeletal or dental fluorosis, which weakens bone and dental matter. But it is not nearly as toxic, nor does it negatively affect so many other health issues as sodium fluoride, which is added to many water supplies.
Sodium Fluoride is a synthetic waste product of the nuclear, aluminum, and phosphate fertilizer industries. This fluoride has an amazing capacity to combine and increase the potency of other toxic materials. The sodium fluoride obtained from industrial waste and added to water supplies is also already contaminated with lead, aluminum, and cadmium.
It damages the liver and kidneys, weakens the immune system, possibly leading to cancer, creates symptoms that mimic fibromyalgia, and performs as a Trojan Horse to carry aluminum across the blood brain barrier. The latter is recognized as a source of the notorious “dumbing down” with lower IQ’s and Alzheimer’s effects of fluoride.
Another not commonly known organ victim of fluorosis is the pineal gland, located in the middle of the brain. The pineal gland can become calcified from fluorides, inhibiting it’s function as a melatonin producer. Melatonin is needed for sound, deep sleep, and the lack of it also contributes to thyroid problems that affect the entire endocrine system. The pineal gland is also considered the physical link to the upper chakras or third eye for spiritual and intuitive openings.
Various permutations of Sodium Fluoride are also in many insecticides for homes and pesticides for crops. Sometimes it is even added to baby foods and bottled waters. If you live in a water fluoridated area, purchase commercially grown fruits, especially grapes, and vegetables that are chemically sprayed and grown areas irrigated by fluoridated water, you are getting a triple whammy! Better skip that fluoridated toothpaste!
Avoiding Fluoride Contamination
As always, the first step in detoxifying is to curb taking in toxins. Purifying water by reverse osmosis or distillation in fluoridated water communities is a good start to slowing down your fluoride contamination. Distillation comes with a bit of controversy, as all the minerals are removed. A great mineral supplement such as Fulvic Acid (not folic acid) or unsulfured blackstrap molasses is recommended if you distill your water.
Avoiding sprayed, commercially grown foods while consuming organic or locally grown foods is another big step. Watch out for processed foods such as instant tea, grape juice products, and soy milk for babies. They all contain high concentrations of sodium fluoride. So do many pharmaceutical “medicines”. By minimizing your sodium fluoride intake, your body can begin eliminating the fluorides in your system slowly.
Magnesium is a very important mineral that many are lacking. Besides being so important in the metabolism and synthesis of nutrients within your cells, it also inhibits the absorption of fluoride into your cells! Along with magnesium, calcium seems to help attract the fluorides away from your bones and teeth, allowing your body to eliminate those toxins. So during any detox efforts with fluoride, it is essential that you include a healthy supplemental dose of absorbable calcium/magnesium as part of the protocol.
So Now Let’s Speed Up the Fluoride Detox
This author received a comment stating that an earlier article’s source reference to sunlight for decalcifying the pineal gland was inaccurate. He said that darkness, not light, is needed to stimulate the pineal gland into melatonin production, which should lead to breaking up the calcification of that gland. Besides being logical, further source research indicates the critic is correct!
Day time exercise, a healthful diet, not over eating, and meditation all contribute to higher melatonin production from the pineal gland. Though very helpful to many for getting a full night’s deep sleep, it appears inconclusive whether melatonin supplements will help decalcify the pineal gland. But it does seem logical that it might.
Iodine supplementation has been clinically demonstrated to increase the urine irrigation of sodium fluoride from the body as calcium fluoride. The calcium is robbed from your body, so make sure you are taking effective calcium and magnesium supplements. Lecithin is recommended as an adjunct to using iodine for excreting fluorides.
Iodine is another nutrient lacking in most diets and causing hypothyroid symptoms of lethargy or metabolic imbalances. Eating lots of seafood for iodine has it’s constantly rising mercury hazards. Seaweed foods and iodine supplements that combine iodine and potassium iodide are highly recommended over sea food by most.
Tamarind, originally indigenous to Africa but migrated into India and southeast Asia, has been used medicinally in Ayurvedic Medicine. The pulp, bark, and leaves from the tree can be converted to teas and strong tinctures, which have also shown the ability to eliminate fluorides through the urine.
Liver Cleanses are considered effective for eliminating fluorides and other toxins. There are two types of liver cleansing, both of which can be performed easily at home over a week or two of time. One of the protocols focuses on the liver itself , and the other cleanses the gall bladder, which is directly connected with liver functions. Simple instructions for both can be found on line with search engine inquiries.
Boron was studied in other parts of the world with pronounced success for fluoride detoxification. Borox, which contains boron, has a history of anecdotal success for detoxifying sodium fluoride. Yes, this is the borox you can find in the laundry aisles of some supermarkets. It needs to be taken in with pure water in small quantities.
As little as 1/32 of a teaspoon to 1/4 of a teaspoon in one liter of water consumed in small quantities throughout the day is what has been demonstrated as safe and effective. Around 1/8 of a teaspoon with a pinch of pure sea salt in a liter consumed in small quantities daily has been reported to have dramatic results. There is the possibility of a food grade version with sodium borate, if you can find it.
Dry Saunas combined with exercise releases sodium fluoride stored in fatty tissues. It can be intense enough to cause side effects or an occasional healing crisis. So keep the pure water intake high and drink some chickweed tea to protect the kidneys while using a highly absorbable cal/mag supplement. Lecithin is another useful adjunct to this protocol for fluoride detoxification.
Those Adjuncts to the Listed Remedies
Vitamin C in abundance was not mentioned as a helpful adjunct. It is now. But do not use ascorbic acid as your vitamin C source for an adjunct to any of the fluoride detox methods. Do take in as much other types of vitamin C as you can tolerate, along with a couple of tablespoons of lecithin daily. Add those to your absorbable calcium and magnesium supplements with plenty of pure water, get good sleep and rest, and the detox should be relatively smooth.
Chelation therapies are recommended primarily for heavy metal removals. Though fluorides are salts, the synthetic waste product variety, sodium fluoride, comes with a cargo of toxic heavy metals. And these pernicious salts have a way of combining more heavy metals. So including any one of several chelation therapies may be beneficial for overall health improvements while applying your chosen fluoride remedy or remedies.
Those include bentonite clay internally or externally, fulvic acid (NOT folic acid), cilantro pesto with chlorella, and even DMSA or any other chellation therapy with which you are familiar.
Article sources:
Boron Testing
http://www.liquidzeoliteplus.com/flouride_da…
http://www.liquidzeoliteplus.com/flouride_da…
List of foods with fluoride contamination
http://poisonfluoride.com/pfpc/html/f-_in_fo…
http://poisonfluoride.com/pfpc/html/f-_in_fo…
Website that offers a bibliography of other sources
http://www.slweb.org/ftrc.html
http://www.slweb.org/ftrc.html
Earth Clinic Folk Remedies
http://www.earthclinic.com/CURES/fluoride.ht…
http://www.earthclinic.com/CURES/fluoride.ht…
Great comprehensive overview of fluoride
http://www.tuberose.com/Fluoride.html
http://www.tuberose.com/Fluoride.html
Gaza, please invest in dialogue for Israel AND Palestine ... Hoping for the best.
Dialogue is the best now I guess, bring hidden emotions, feeling, problems and thoughts to the surface without the fear of being rejected for what you feel. So peace can emerge, through 100% honest dialogue. Don't fear to speak from your heart. Be brave, step forward.
Om namo bhagavate vasudevaya is known as a Mukti, or liberation, Mantra. It is a potent spiritual formula for attaining freedom. (For Humanity)
Om namo bhagavate vasudevaya is known as a Mukti, or liberation, Mantra. It is a potent spiritual formula for attaining freedom. Consistent use of this mantra will eventually, even if over many incarnations, free us from the cycles of rebirth. In this way it mitigates Karma so we are free to make true choices in our lives. True choices, not simply reacting to desire and aversion. Om is a seed sound for the sixth, or brow, chakra and is the name of the state of existence in which the Indweller (jiva, atman, or soul) has united with the spirit of the all-pervading consciousness. 'Om Namo Bhagavate Vasudevaya' is a mantra of Bhagavan Sri Krishna. It means literally: "Prostration to Bhagavan Vasudeva." 'Surrender to Sri Vasudeva' is implied therein. Now, the prostration, salutation, is an external symbol of the internal union. When we do namaskara to a deity in the temple, to a friend or any person, we join both the palms and bend ourselves low. This namaskara, and the joining of the palms are indicative of the feeling of union of oneself with the other. "I and you are one" -- that is prostration, that is namaskara. "Bhagavan Vasudeva, I am one with you" is a spirit of surrender, and here begins meditation on Bhagavan Vasudeva. When this mantra is chanted you have also created the requisite atmosphere in the mind for contemplation on Bhagavan Vasudeva, to begin meditation and to feel His presence. This rule applies to all other mantras, also.
Remote Amazonian Tribe’s Resistance To Antibiotics Worries Scientists
A remote tribe in Amazonas state, southern Venezuela, appear to be resistant to modern antibiotics.
Researchers have found that the Yanomami people, have antibiotic resistant genes, never known before to science. The Tribe is resistant to modern antibiotics, even though they have only recently had contact with the outside world.
This worries scientists who are in search of new antibiotics.
This worries scientists who are in search of new antibiotics.
It seems the Yanomami Indian tribe are healthy and have a rich diet, with an even richer gut flora.
The Asian Age reports:
The people, known as the Yanomami, were first spotted by air in 2008, and were visited a year later by a Venezuelan medical team that took samples from 34 of them, including skin and mouth swabs and stool samples. To protect their privacy, the name of their village was withheld from publication.
Scientists found that the tribespeople’s microbiome — the community of bacteria, fungi and viruses that live in and on the body — was far more diverse than seen in comparison communities of rural Venezuelans and Malawians. Their microbiome was twice as diverse as observed in a reference group of Americans.
The remote villagers are generally healthy, and that may be thanks to a microbiome that “contains perhaps the highest levels of bacterial diversity ever reported in a human group,” said the study in the journal Science Advances.
While the Yanomami had some T-shirts, machetes and metal cans, suggesting some limited contact with civilization, they have not been exposed to the many elements of contemporary life that can cut down on microbes, such as eating processed foods, taking antibiotics, hand sanitising and delivering babies by Caesarean section, scientists said. Some microbes seemed to have a protective effect on their health, such as preventing the formation of kidney stones.
The tribespeople live in small villages, in a remote area that is accessible only by helicopter or by traveling for days in a canoe.
Researchers found no evidence of obesity or malnutrition among the people they saw, who lived on a diet that included fish, frogs, insects, plantains and a fermented cassava drink, said Maria Gloria Dominguez-Bello of the New York University School of Medicine.
However, she said no samples were taken of the tribe’s food and drink, which could reveal more about how they achieved their diverse gut flora.
“I would love to go back to the community, now that we know what we know,” she said.
Alarming antibiotic resistance
Scientists expected to find some resistance to antibiotics in the population, because these resistance genes have existed in soil bacteria for millions of years or more, so it makes sense that they would migrate into people, too, even without antibiotic use. What really surprised the team was the discovery that the tribespeople had nearly 30 antibiotic resistant genes that were never before known to science.
Even more, these genes were resistant to some of the world’s most recently developed synthetic antibiotics. “It was alarming to us to find genes that would inactivate these modern synthetic drugs in the Yanomami population,” said co-author Gautam Dantas from the Washington University School of Medicine.
“We see this as one more piece of clear evidence that antibiotic resistance is indeed a natural feature of the human microbiota but that it’s primed to be activated and amplified for greater resistance after antibiotic use,” he told reporters. The modern era of antibiotics began in the 1940s when penicillin quickly became a popular drug. Many more types of antibiotics were discovered and marketed from the 1950s to 1970s. Most originated in soil.
But widespread use of antibiotics in people and livestock has raised concern about an approaching era when antibiotics may not work at all, heralding the return of stubborn infections that turn fatal instead of treatable.
Already, drug-resistant superbugs are on the rise, particularly in hospitals, where they kill tens of thousands of people in the West each year.
The latest research “emphasises the need to ramp up our research for new antibiotics because otherwise we’re going to lose this battle against infectious diseases,” said Dantas.
Nonviolent Communication Part 1 Marshall Rosenberg
België (Hou rekening met het hitteplan aub - voldoende water voor iedereen) [Dutch]
Na het herfstige weer van de afgelopen dagen kunnen we vandaag al weer wat genieten van de zon. Maar het belooft nog beter te worden: “Morgen gaan we naar de 24 graden, zondag loopt het op tot 25 graden of meer en maandag krijgen we zelfs dertig graden”, zegt VTM-weerman David Dehenauw.
Maandagnacht is er een vergrote kans op onweer, maar ook daarna blijft de zomer in het land, met temperaturen die rond de 23 graden schommelen.
Please Help Julian Assange - Justice for Julian Assange!
This is an updated version of John Pilger’s 2014 investigation which tells the unreported story of an unrelenting campaign, in Sweden and the US, to deny Julian Assange justice and silence WikiLeaks: a campaign now reaching a dangerous stage.
The siege of Knightsbridge is both an emblem of gross injustice and a gruelling farce. For three years, a police cordon around the Ecuadorean embassy in London has served no purpose other than to flaunt the power of the state. It has cost £12 million. The quarry is an Australian charged with no crime, a refugee whose only security is the room given him by a brave South American country. His “crime” is to have initiated a wave of truth-telling in an era of lies, cynicism and war.
The persecution of Julian Assange is about to flare again as it enters a dangerous stage. From August 20, three quarters of the Swedish prosecutor’s case against Assange regarding sexual misconduct in 2010 will disappear as the statute of limitations expires. At the same time Washington’s obsession with Assange and WikiLeaks has intensified. Indeed, it is vindictive American power that offers the greatest threat – as Chelsea Manning and those still held in Guantanamo can attest.
The Americans are pursuing Assange because WikiLeaks exposed their epic crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq: the wholesale killing of tens of thousands of civilians, which they covered up, and their contempt for sovereignty and international law, as demonstrated vividly in their leaked diplomatic cables. WikiLeaks continues to expose criminal activity by the US, having just published top secret US intercepts – US spies’ reports detailing private phone calls of the presidents of France and Germany, and other senior officials, relating to internal European political and economic affairs.
None of this is illegal under the US Constiution. As a presidential candidate in 2008, Barack Obama, a professor of constitutional law, lauded whistleblowers as “part of a healthy democracy [and they] must be protected from reprisal”. In 2012, the campaign to re-elect President Barack Obama boasted on its website that he had prosecuted more whistleblowers in his first term than all other US presidents combined. Before Chelsea Manning had even received a trial, Obama had pronounced the whisletblower guilty. He was subsequently sentenced to 35 years in prison, having been tortured during his long pre-trial detention.
Few doubt that should the US get their hands on Assange, a similar fate awaits him. Threats of the capture and assassination of Assange became the currency of the political extremes in the US following Vice-President Joe Biden’s preposterous slur that the WikiLeaks founder was a “cyber-terrorist”. Those doubting the degree of ruthlessness Assange can expect should remember the forcing down of the Bolivian president’s plane in 2013 – wrongly believed to be carrying Edward Snowden.
According to documents released by Snowden, Assange is on a “Manhunt target list”. Washington’s bid to get him, say Australian diplomatic cables, is “unprecedented in scale and nature”. In Alexandria, Virginia, a secret grand jury has spent five years attempting to contrive a crime for which Assange can be prosecuted. This is not easy. The First Amendment to the US Constitution protects publishers, journalists and whistleblowers.
Faced with this constitutional hurdle, the US Justice Department has contrived charges of “espionage”, “conspiracy to commit espionage”, “conversion” (theft of government property), “computer fraud and abuse” (computer hacking) and general “conspiracy”. The Espionage Act has life in prison and death penalty provisions. .
Assange’s ability to defend himself in this Kafkaesque world has been handicapped by the US declaring his case a state secret. In March, a federal court in Washington blocked the release of all information about the “national security” investigation against WikiLeaks, because it was “active and ongoing” and would harm the “pending prosecution” of Assange. The judge, Barbara J. Rosthstein, said it was necessary to show “appropriate deference to the executive in matters of national security”. Such is the “justice” of a kangaroo court. The supporting act in this grim farce is Sweden, played by the Swedish prosecutor Marianne Ny. Until recently, Ny refused to comply with a routine European procedure routine that required her to travel to London to question Assange and so advance the case. For four and a half years, Ny has never properly explained why she has refused to come to London, just as the Swedish authorities have never explained why they refuse to give Assange a guarantee that they will not extradite him on to the US under a secret arrangement agreed between Stockholm and Washington. In December 2010, The Independent revealed that the two governments had discussed his onward extradition to the US.
Contrary to its 1960s reputation as a liberal bastion, Sweden has drawn so close to Washington that it has allowed secret CIA “renditions” – including the illegal deportation of refugees. The rendition and subsequent torture of two Egyptian political refugees in 2001 was condemned by the UN Committee against Torture, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch; the complicity and duplicity of the Swedish state are documented in successful civil litigation and in WikiLeaks cables. In the summer of 2010, Assange had flown to Sweden to talk about WikiLeaks revelations of the war in Afghanistan – in which Sweden had forces under US command.
Documents released by WikiLeaks since Assange moved to England,” wrote Al Burke, editor of the online Nordic News Network, an authority on the multiple twists and dangers facing Assange, “clearly indicate that Sweden has consistently submitted to pressure from the United States in matters relating to civil rights. There is every reason for concern that if Assange were to be taken into custody by Swedish authorities, he could be turned over to the United States without due consideration of his legal rights.
Why hasn’t the Swedish prosecutor resolved the Assange case? Many in the legal community in Sweden believe her behaviour inexplicable. Once implacably hostile to Assange, the Swedish press has published headlines such as: “Go to London, for God’s sake.”
Why hasn’t she? More to the point, why won’t she allow the Swedish court access to hundreds of SMS messages that the police extracted from the phone of one of the two women involved in the misconduct allegations? Why won’t she hand them over to Assange’s Swedish lawyers? She says she is not legally required to do so until a formal charge is laid and she has questioned him. Then, why doesn’t she question him? And if she did question him, the conditions she would demand of him and his lawyers – that they could not challenge her – would make injustice a near certainty.
On a point of law, the Swedish Supreme Court has decided Ny can continue to obstruct on the vital issue of the SMS messages. This will now go to the European Court of Human Rights. What Ny fears is that the SMS messages will destroy her case against Assange. One of the messages makes clear that one of the women did not want any charges brought against Assange, “but the police were keen on getting a hold on him”. She was “shocked” when they arrested him because she only “wanted him to take [an HIV] test”. She “did not want to accuse JA of anything” and “it was the police who made up the charges”. (In a witness statement, she is quoted as saying that she had been “railroaded by police and others around her”.)
Neither woman claimed she had been raped. Indeed, both have denied they were raped and one of them has since tweeted, “I have not been raped.” That they were manipulated by police and their wishes ignored is evident – whatever their lawyers might say now. Certainly, they are victims of a saga which blights the reputation of Sweden itself.
For Assange, his only trial has been trial by media. On August 20, 2010, the Swedish police opened a “rape investigation” and immediately – and unlawfully – told the Stockholm tabloids that there was a warrant for Assange’s arrest for the “rape of two women”. This was the news that went round the world.
In Washington, a smiling US Defence Secretary Robert Gates told reporters that the arrest “sounds like good news to me”. Twitter accounts associated with the Pentagon described Assange as a “rapist” and a “fugitive”.
Less than 24 hours later, the Stockholm Chief Prosecutor, Eva Finne, took over the investigation. She wasted no time in cancelling the arrest warrant, saying, “I don’t believe there is any reason to suspect that he has committed rape.” Four days later, she dismissed the rape investigation altogether, saying, “There is no suspicion of any crime whatsoever.” The file was closed.
Enter Claes Borgstrom, a high profile politician in the Social Democratic Party then standing as a candidate in Sweden’s imminent general election. Within days of the chief prosecutor’s dismissal of the case, Borgstrom, a lawyer, announced to the media that he was representing the two women and had sought a different prosecutor in the city of Gothenberg. This was Marianne Ny, whom Borgstrom knew well, personally and politically.On 30 August, Assange attended a police station in Stockholm voluntarily and answered all the questions put to him. He understood that was the end of the matter. Two days later, Ny announced she was re-opening the case. Borgstrom was asked by a Swedish reporter why the case was proceeding when it had already been dismissed, citing one of the women as saying she had not been raped. He replied, “Ah, but she is not a lawyer.” Assange’s Australian barrister, James Catlin, responded, “This is a laughing stock… it’s as if they make it up as they go along.”
On the day Marianne Ny reactivated the case, the head of Sweden’s military intelligence service – which has the acronym MUST — publicly denounced WikiLeaks in an article entitled “WikiLeaks [is] a threat to our soldiers.” Assange was warned that the Swedish intelligence service, SAPO, had been told by its US counterparts that US-Sweden intelligence-sharing arrangements would be “cut off” if Sweden sheltered him.
For five weeks, Assange waited in Sweden for the new investigation to take its course. The Guardian was then on the brink of publishing the Iraq “War Logs”, based on WikiLeaks’ disclosures, which Assange was to oversee. His lawyer in Stockholm asked Ny if she had any objection to his leaving the country. She said he was free to leave.
Inexplicably, as soon as he left Sweden – at the height of media and public interest in the WikiLeaks disclosures – Ny issued a European Arrest Warrant and an Interpol “red alert” normally used for terrorists and dangerous criminals. Put out in five languages around the world, it ensured a media frenzy.
Assange attended a police station in London, was arrested and spent ten days in Wandsworth Prison, in solitary confinement. Released on £340,000 bail, he was electronically tagged, required to report to police daily and placed under virtual house arrest while his case began its long journey to the Supreme Court. He still had not been charged with any offence. His lawyers repeated his offer to be questioned by Ny in London, pointing out that she had given him permission to leave Sweden. They suggested a special facility at Scotland Yard commonly used for that purpose. She refused.
Katrin Axelsson and Lisa Longstaff of Women Against Rape wrote: “The allegations against [Assange] are a smokescreen behind which a number of governments are trying to clamp down on WikiLeaks for having audaciously revealed to the public their secret planning of wars and occupations with their attendant rape, murder and destruction… The authorities care so little about violence against women that they manipulate rape allegations at will. [Assange] has made it clear he is available for questioning by the Swedish authorities, in Britain or via Skype. Why are they refusing this essential step in their investigation? What are they afraid of?”
This question remained unanswered as Ny deployed the European Arrest Warrant, a draconian and now discredited product of the “war on terror” supposedly designed to catch terrorists and organised criminals. The EAW had abolished the obligation on a petitioning state to provide any evidence of a crime. More than a thousand EAWs are issued each month; only a few have anything to do with potential “terror” charges. Most are issued for trivial offences, such as overdue bank charges and fines. Many of those extradited face months in prison without charge. There have been a number of shocking miscarriages of justice, of which British judges have been highly critical.
The Assange case finally reached the UK Supreme Court in May 2012. In a judgement that upheld the EAW – whose rigid demands had left the courts almost no room for manoeuvre – the judges found that European prosecutors could issue extradition warrants in the UK without any judicial oversight, even though Parliament intended otherwise. They made clear that Parliament had been “misled” by the Blair government. The court was split, 5-2, and consequently found against Assange.
However, the Chief Justice, Lord Phillips, made one mistake. He applied the Vienna Convention on treaty interpretation, allowing for state practice to override the letter of the law. As Assange’s barrister, Dinah Rose QC, pointed out, this did not apply to the EAW.
The Supreme Court only recognised this crucial error when it dealt with another appeal against the EAW in November 2013. The Assange decision had been wrong, but it was too late to go back. With extradition imminent, the Swedish prosecutor told Assange’s lawyers that Assange, once in Sweden, would be immediately placed in one of Sweden’s infamous remand prisons..
Assange’s choice was stark: extradition to a country that had refused to say whether or not it would send him on to the US, or to seek what seemed his last opportunity for refuge and safety. Supported by most of Latin America, the courageous government of Ecuador granted him refugee status on the basis of documented evidence and legal advice that he faced the prospect of cruel and unusual punishment in the US; that this threat violated his basic human rights; and that his own government in Australia had abandoned him and colluded with Washington. The Labor government of prime minister Julia Gillard had even threatened to take away his passport.
Gareth Peirce, the renowned human rights lawyer who represents Assange in London, wrote to the then Australian foreign minister, Kevin Rudd: “Given the extent of the public discussion, frequently on the basis of entirely false assumptions… it is very hard to attempt to preserve for him any presumption of innocence. Mr. Assange has now hanging over him not one but two Damocles swords, of potential extradition to two different jurisdictions in turn for two different alleged crimes, neither of which are crimes in his own country, and that his personal safety has become at risk in circumstances that are highly politically charged.”
It was not until she contacted the Australian High Commission in London that Peirce received a response, which answered none of the pressing points she raised. In a meeting I attended with her, the Australian Consul-General, Ken Pascoe, made the astonishing claim that he knew “only what I read in the newspapers” about the details of the case.
Meanwhile, the prospect of a grotesque miscarriage of justice was drowned in a vituperative campaign against the WikiLeaks founder. Deeply personal, petty, vicious and inhuman attacks were aimed at a man not charged with any crime yet subjected to treatment not even meted out to a defendant facing extradition on a charge of murdering his wife. That the US threat to Assange was a threat to all journalists, to freedom of speech, was lost in the sordid and the ambitious.
Books were published, movie deals struck and media careers launched or kick-started on the back of WikiLeaks and an assumption that attacking Assange was fair game and he was too poor to sue. People have made money, often big money, while WikiLeaks has struggled to survive. The editor of the Guardian, Alan Rusbridger, called the WikiLeaks disclosures, which his newspaper published, “one of the greatest journalistic scoops of the last 30 years”. It became part of his marketing plan to raise the newspaper’s cover price.
With not a penny going to Assange or to WikiLeaks, a hyped Guardian book led to a lucrative Hollywood movie. The book’s authors, Luke Harding and David Leigh, gratuitously described Assange as a “damaged personality” and “callous”. They also revealed the secret password he had given the paper in confidence, which was designed to protect a digital file containing the US embassy cables. With Assange now trapped in the Ecuadorean embassy, Harding, standing among the police outside, gloated on his blog that “Scotland Yard may get the last laugh”.
The injustice meted out to Assange is one of the reasons Parliament reformed the Extradition Act to prevent the misuse of the EAW. The draconian catch-all used against him could not happen now; charges would have to be brought and “questioning” would be insufficient grounds for extradition. “His case has been won lock, stock and barrel,” Gareth Peirce told me, “these changes in the law mean that the UK now recognises as correct everything that was argued in his case. Yet he does not benefit.” In other words, the change in the UK law in 2014 mean that Assange would have won his case and he would not have been forced to take refuge.
Ecuador’s decision to protect Assange in 2012 bloomed into a major international affair. Even though the granting of asylum is a humanitarian act, and the power to do so is enjoyed by all states under international law, both Sweden and the United Kingdom refused to recognize the legitimacy of Ecuador’s decision. Ignoring international law, the Cameron government refused to grant Assange safe passage to Ecuador. Instead, Ecuador’s embassy was placed under siege and its government abused with a series of ultimatums. When William Hague’s Foreign Office threatened to violate the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, warning that it would remove the diplomatic inviolability of the embassy and send the police in to get Assange, outrage across the world forced the government to back down. During one night, police appeared at the windows of the embassy in an obvious attempt to intimidate Assange and his protectors.
Since then, Julian Assange has been confined to a small room under Ecuador’s protection, without sunlight or space to exercise, surrounded by police under orders to arrest him on sight. For three years, Ecuador has made clear to the Swedish prosecutor that Assange is available to be questioned in the London embassy, and for three years she has remained intransigent. In the same period Sweden has questioned forty-four people in the UK in connection with police investigations. Her role, and that of the Swedish state, is demonstrably political; and for Ny, facing retirement in two years, she must “win”.
In despair, Assange has challenged the arrest warrant in the Swedish courts. His lawyers have cited rulings by the European Court of Human Rights that he has been under arbitrary, indefinite detention and that he had been a virtual prisoner for longer than any actual prison sentence he might face. The Court of Appeal judge agreed with Assange’s lawyers: the prosecutor had indeed breached her duty by keeping the case suspended for years. Another judge issued a rebuke to the prosecutor. And yet she defied the court.
Last December, Assange took his case to the Swedish Supreme Court, which ordered Marianne Ny’s boss – the Prosecutor General of Sweden Anders Perklev – to explain. The next day, Ny announced, without explanation, that she had changed her mind and would now question Assange in London.
In his submission to the Supreme Court, the Prosecutor General made some important concessions: he argued that the coercion of Assange had been “intrusive” and that that the period in the embassy has been a “great strain” on him. He even conceded that if the matter had ever come to prosecution, trial, conviction and serving a sentence in Sweden, Julian Assange would have left Sweden long ago.
In a split decision, one Supreme Court judge argued that the arrest warrant should have been revoked. The majority of the judges ruled that, since the prosecutor had now said she would go to London, Assange’s arguments had become “moot”. But the Court ruled that it would have found against the prosecutor if she had not suddenly changed her mind. Justice by caprice. Writing in the Swedish press, a former Swedish prosecutor, Rolf Hillegren, accused Ny of losing all impartiality. He described her personal investment in the case as“abnormal” and demanded that she be replaced.
Having said she would go to London in June, Ny did not go, but sent a deputy, knowing that the questioning would not be legal under these circumstances, especially as Sweden had not bothered to get Ecuador’s approval for the meeting. At the same time, her office tipped off the Swedish tabloid newspaper Expressen, which sent its London correspondent to wait outside Ecuador’s embassy for “news”. The news was that Ny was cancelling the appointment and blaming Ecuador for the confusion and by implication an “unco-operative” Assange – when the opposite was true.
As the statute of limitations date approaches – August 20 – another chapter in this hideous story will doubtless unfold, with Marianne Ny pulling yet another rabbit out of her hat and the commissars and prosecutors in Washington the beneficiaries. Perhaps none of this is surprising. In 2008, a war on WikiLeaks and on Julian Assange was foretold in a secret Pentagon document prepared by the “Cyber Counterintelligence Assessments Branch”. It described a detailed plan to destroy the feeling of “trust” which is WikiLeaks’ “centre of gravity”. This would be achieved with threats of “exposure [and] criminal prosecution”. Silencing and criminalising such a rare source of truth-telling was the aim, smear the method. While this scandal continues the very notion of justice is diminished, along with the reputation of Sweden, and the shadow of America’s menace touches us all.
For important additional information, click on the following links:
Abonneren op:
Posts (Atom)