CN Editor Joe Lauria speaking outside the Canberra courthouse Wednesday before David McBride would have his appeals denied by the Supreme Court.
This morning we are going to learn whether loyalty to the King in a democracy is more important than loyalty to the nation.
Whether someone in a democracy fulfilling his duty under the Nuremberg Principle will continue to be incarcerated.
Whether democracy in Australia means the federal police can enter the public broadcaster and go through sensitive news files, seizing and even making changes to them, to pursue those who revealed the gravest of crimes.
This is what three people in the role of judges will decide this morning.
We are told to respect judges and to follow the law and obey their rulings. But that doesn’t always make them right.
Like other members of society, judges grow up conditioned to see the world through eyes that set agendas and they live and succeed within a system that benefits the powerful.
We saw in the travesty in court of the extradition process against John Shipton’s son [Julian Assange] how a judiciary will go to absurd and great lengths to punish someone who challenges power.
Rare is the judge who breaks free from the common ground the judiciary shares with the military and the government and establishment media to instead assert democratic values rather than a warped rules-based order, where the rules benefit those who set the order.
Rare is the judge who dares find their own government and military — partners in preserving this order — guilty of crimes against humanity and guilty of silencing those who speak out against them.
Rare too is the journalist or politician who puts the public before the military or the King, or a lawyer who risked what David McBride risked.
These would be rare judges indeed who would set him free this morning to come out here to address this gathering.
[See: McBride’s Appeals Rejected]
[POSTSCRIPT: Judges should not always have the last word when judging facts. The International Court of Justice has been sitting for more than one year on their judgment of whether Israel is committing genocide or not after finding probable cause. This has allowed Israel and its apologists to deny the genocide, as well as more neutral voices like the U.N. Secretary General to do the same.
But every major human rights organizations, several U.N. officials, many academics and journalists (some Israeli) with eyes to see have unequivocally named it genocide, leaving the ICJ judges woefully out of step. And yet their words carry so much, often mistaken weight — they have the power of states (incarceration and sometimes death) behind them.]
Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former U.N. correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and other newspapers, including The Montreal Gazette, the London Daily Mail and The Star of Johannesburg. He was an investigative reporter for the Sunday Times of London, a financial reporter for Bloomberg News and began his professional work as a 19-year old stringer for The New York Times. He is the author of two books, A Political Odyssey, with Sen. Mike Gravel, foreword by Daniel Ellsberg; and How I Lost By Hillary Clinton, foreword by Julian Assange. He can be reached at joelauria@consortiumnews.com and followed on X @unjoe.
Yes it was a Day of Judgment. It was a Day of Judgment, not really for David McBride, but for three judges. The three judges showed their true character.
Just like it was a Day of Judgment, for Pontius Pilate and not for Jesus Christ, when Pontius Pilate let himself be persuaded to hand over Jesus to be crucified. Pilate showed his true character.
(Disclaimer: I am not a Christian, for which I have my reasons; however I think this comparison is very apt and appropriate.)
Rules based world order is a self serving western civilization hypocrisy while entire countries and their people get slam dunked or weaponized for strategic and economic interests. The extensive use of covert agencies dedicated to breaking the rules is obvious.
A brave and critically important statement of the abject corruption of the judiciary.
In the US recently, FBI/DOJ refused to investigate large-scale graft by political operatives in Florida, and were taken to the DC district court in Barth v. DOJ, where judge Boasberg gave away judicial checks and balances by claiming that FBI/DOJ have Discretion and Immunity to collude in political racketeering (!). So DOJ promptly kicked his butt, claiming that he now cannot prevent them from expelling immigrants without a hearing. The judicial branch make war against the U.S. in subverting its Constitution.