Home News What Has Vanzetti To Do with Assange?

What Has Vanzetti To Do with Assange?

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(L) Bartolomeo Vanzetti, executed in 1927. (C) John Shipton receiving, for his son Julian, the Sacco and Vanzetti Award  (R) Bostonian/ Adelaidean Mary Maxwell inspects the award

by Mary W Maxwell, LLB

It was a pleasure to attend the small Community Church of Boston at 565 Boylston St, on June 9, 2021, where the Sacco and Vanzetti award was made to Australian citizen Julian Assange. The honoree wasn’t there – he’s a bit tied up in the UK — but the award was accepted by his father, John Shipton. John, along with Julian’s younger bro Gabriel, answered an interviewer’s questions in a most gentlemanly and erudite manner.

The ceremony began with Dean Stevens singing Die Gedanken sind frei – thoughts are free. I guess thoughts are still free.  Well, mostly. Anyway, the rendition was uplifting. (The next verse was in English: “I never will cater/to duke or Dictator”.)

There was also a purpose-built song by David Rovics, Behind These Prison Walls, and a speech on Zoom by Ray McGovern. Then, Jill Stein, who is a scholar on the Sacco and Vanzetti case, spoke encouragingly about the move to free Assange. All of us were asked to phone Merrick Garland and suggest that he drop the [stupid] espionage charges (1-202 353 1555).

I made the requisite phone call (after hours, it’s just a voice mailbox thing) but in my little constitutional heart I don’t really want the charges to be dropped.  Hey, this is America.  It’s safe for Julian here. Fact is, I wish Assange would ask the Brits to stop preventing his extradition and just hop a plane to Wash DC.

Just come marching thru the door, Julian, wearing the well-known buckle of truth — I’m sure (nearly sure) the “forces” won’t be able to stand up to you.

S&V

The connection to Sacco and Vanzetti is apparently that those two men, Italian immigrants in Boston, were convicted in 1921, in an unfair trial.  Their crime (besides being Italian, and immigrants, and anarchists) was to rob a paymaster who was carrying $15,000 in a box, and then kill him and his bodyguard.

That was a hundred years ago. At the time there were massive protests, claiming that the trial was unfair.  (I will show a video below, from the days of silent movies, black and white of course, but now colorized by the Smithsonian.)

In Massachusetts, a lousy judge named Thayer refused to allow a retrial even when one was clearly justified. Instead, he sent both men to “the chair” in 1927.

(Mary, are you actually calling a judge “lousy”? Yes. Lousy is as lousy does. As Confucius say, calling something by its right name is the beginning of wisdom. Besides it’s important to separate the man, Thayer, from The Law. The latter, not the former, deserves reverence.)

As explained at Gumshoe, Assange got unfair treatment by a court in Sweden, and during the hearing concerning extradition, he was given really embarrassing treatment by none other than our basically criminal DoJ. (See my treatise on William Barr.) British lawyer-observer Craig Murray caught the essence of it, as described here.

Sacco Was Probably the Shooter

It’s possible that the blame was put on S&V as a false flag – to make anarchists look bad. But I don’t think so, as the anarchists didn’t want to look good.  They openly urged bombings. Vanzetti proclaimed his approval for such. He even called on the public to do the needful on his behalf, during his six years in jail. After the execution, the home of a juror got bombed, anarchy being anarchy.

A recent article in American Heritage by Francis Russell concludes that Sacco was guilty but Vanzetti innocent, as regards the murder and robbery. Russell worked hard on the ballistics and conflicting info about the guns.

While reading about it (cursorily) I couldn’t help thinking it is nowadays IMPOSSIBLE to take seriously any evidence from the FBI or police regarding ballistics. (See my letter to Eric Holder.) Do you know that at Sandy Hook they said four of Adam Lanza’s guns were found in the school building?  Four.

The story about Sacco & Vanzetti’s guns and bullets changed so many times that the only way it could have been sorted out – in my opinion – would be to charge each of the expert witnesses with perjury and let their work get sorted out at their respective trials.

You will recall Mal Hughes’ unsuccessful, expensive attempts to get some simple answers about the guns, pellets, and what-have-you that led to the 2014 deaths of Tori Johnson and Katrina Dawson in the Lindt Café, in Sydney.

You may also recall Jahar Tsarnaev being identified by his cap at the 2013 Marathon.  In the Sacco and Vanzetti trial, the matter of a cap having been found one street away, a day after the event, became quite the point of ridicule.

Wrongful Imprisonments and Executions

Reading about Sacco and Vanzetti made me sad to contemplate again the way lives are tossed around in this Land of the Free, Mother of Justice, etc. During the award ceremony for Julian, mention was made of Leonard Pelter, now into his 44th year of wrongful imprisonment.  Could Trump have pardoned him?  Of course. So why didn’t he? Because Trump’s boss told him not to.  After all, keeping the lid on Native Americans is important, isn’t it?

In 1932, the Scottsboro boys of Alabama were condemned to death for, well, let’s say, for Riding While Black, on a train. Numerous appeals led to their getting less than a death sentence, and in 1976, Governor Wallace pardoned the last surviving Scottsboro man.

In Massachusetts, in 1977 — 50 years after the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti — Governor Dukakis expressed regret for the bad S&V trial.

And how about that champion of Human Rights — Australia — keeping in prison for 25 years (so far) the clearly innocent Martin Bryant?  Huh?  What a bunch.

What about John Ray, brother of James Earl Ray, who was sentenced to 20 years for a robbery which the court knew was a game being played on him?  Not to mention his brother Jimmy having to take the nation’s hate for the 1968 assassination of MLK when it was “someone else” what done it. Jimmy was shanked in the prison yard in 1997 and died a year later from the injury to his liver. It could happen to you. Nobody is protected from false propaganda.

The execution of troy Davis in Georgia on September 21, 2011 was done in the face of 600,000 signatures asking for a pardon or at least for commutation of the death sentence. In my opinion, the 2020 killing by lethal injection of Nathan Wood in Alabama was outrageous. I can’t even talk about it. And I can’t stand what happened to Albert DeSalvo, the falsely accused “Boston Strangler,” – a client of attorney F Lee Bailey who died last week.

Let’s change the subject.

Stink-making Has Its Place

Here are some cities where, according to Wikipedia (not to be confused with Wikileaks!)  there was a big protest in 1927  to get Sacco and Vanzetti released: “every major city in North America and Europe, as well as in Tokyo, Sydney, Melbourne, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, Dubai, Montevideo, Johannesburg, and Auckland.”

And, good news, the fuss over S&V ended up with the Massachusetts legislature making it compulsory, in death row cases to be given a full review by the top state court. (Hello? Jahar?)

And here’s a greeting for Assange from the Brandenburg Gate type thing:

 

Solidarity is not yet dead.   Isn’t that nice.  Oh, wait a minute, Scomo and Marise want a word:

 

Finally, to that colorized scene from the ‘Twenties in Bostoniensis:

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29 COMMENTS

  1. So far the pm’s boss, is making sure Julian and Martin are under Serco indefinite detention, behind bars for no reason at all. Justice in the not so lucky country run by war criminals.

  2. Anarchists Amok in The Era of Normalcy
    by Greg Maybury | Dec 18, 2015 |

    If the purpose of the US judicial system…is to ensure that all factual evidence surrounding an alleged crime or crimes be accurately and fairly presented so that the jurors can properly assess the best semblance of the truth…this trial was a complete travesty of justice…. [I]f a basic tenet of the justice system… holds that a defendant is considered innocent until proven guilty, then again this verdict outcome is an obscene farce and a shameful joke exposing America’s justice system for its gross injustice.’ – Joachim Hagopian,

    https://poxamerikana.com/2015/12/18/anarchists-amok-in-the-era-of-normalcy/

  3. ant56, I have a different opinion in regard to Martin. He is behind bars to cover the criminal activity of politicians and Intelligence Community during the mid nineties.

    • Mal,
      This place has many good people with origins from all ends of the globe, unfortunately very few are in positions of influence. Obelisks and the secret handshakes by the masonic brotherhood have delivered the innocent mass into their beast system. We have been deceived and enslaved by really sick and twisted bloodsucking pretenders.
      My late father called them movie stars, some say they are traitors, with Covid we see their true colours – serpents addicted to andrenochrome.
      These types lead us to elections with pencils, as we’re ushered by ccp at the booths, now gone AI digital with the beastly injections. We outnumber them 10 to 1, the tide can change if sleepers awaken and realise that vaxxxes are made in bio weapons labs. Has there been a PM that wasn’t a Freemason here? I doubt it, if there was they didn’t last long.

      • My thoughts on Freemasonry and politicians, is that nobody will get through the pre-selection process of the political parties if not a Freemason. Therefore without that pre-requirement they will never become a politician.

        • I doubt that very much, Oz.

          At one time or another, I have been asked to stand by the ALP, the CLP, the Greens, and One Nation. Yet I am not a Freemason.

          I think the belief that masons figure in politics is based on the same logic adopted by most old school politicians, that if one does his time in service organisations, one engenders and galvanises support.

          Being known in sport, music, or popular commerce works just as well.

          Or, as one veteran put it to me, it all comes down to your name being well known. Voters tick all the names they know, then think about the others.

          I grant you that a mason candidate would get support from his co-members, but these are insufficient to be significant.

          I am convinced the veteral polician was right.

  5. No draft can become law until the law Society approves its prerequisite ambiguity, which is the source of all lawyer’s wealth. Also, no draft can become law until the Law Society hierarchy is satisfied this is no threat to the reigning elite.

    And, finally, when fools insist we must respect the law, other than common law, all laws are put together by hopelessly corrupt politicians. Why the hell would any sane man respect such a system.

  6. Orf Topic

    As there was no beef on the menu at my local restaurant today, I asked the manager if there is a national supply problem with beef.

    He said “There’s a supply problem with everything. My frying oils usually cost me $18. This week they cost me $38.

    There must also be a local tax shortage. Bus rides on my city bus have been free since April 2020, “because of Covid.” How are they able to pay the petrol and the driver’s salary?

  9. When I phoned the Merrick Garland number, I got a menu-type voice. You know, a guy said “Welcome to the DoJ, blah blah. For Spanish, press 1; for a directory, press 4; to followup on an FBI investigation …etc.” But the funny thing is, the guy had a voice very like the real Merrick Garland. If it really was him, I give him credit. That was much nicer than a robotic chat.

  10. ………….What undercutting Assange would mean for all Aussies

    Thus, if Australia reneges on its obligations to protect Assange and fight for his rights, the implications such actions would hold for every other citizen of the country are as vast as they are chilling. It would set the legal precedent for Australia to allow any of its citizens to be detained, imprisoned and/or silenced by another government without charges, greatly weakening the rights of any Australian national living or traveling abroad. Essentially, it would mean that many of the rights granted to an Australian by right of one’s citizenship would evaporate the second he or she set foot on foreign soil.

    Were Assange anyone else, the Australian government would be forced to act – at the very least – to maintain the appearance that it is committed to the rights of citizens and its own national sovereignty. However, Assange is no “normal” individual in this sense – his arrest is a “priority” to the U.S. government, which is now seeking to maximize pressure to extradite Assange while his protected status is at its weakest.

    https://www.mintpressnews.com/australian-ecuadorian-decisions-on-assange-could-set-dangerous-legal-precedent/243797/

  11. https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2013/07/23/role-reversal-how-the-us-became-the-ussr-paul-craig-roberts/

    The Australian government, also in deference to Washington, has done nothing to help Assange. Australia, like every other vassal state, puts Washington’s interest ahead of both law and the interest of citizens.

    This week there were protests in Australia in support of Assange. However, Western governments are now so far removed from citizens who are today little more than subjects that it is unlikely that anything short of revolution can restore accountability to governments in the West.

    “Western democracy” has become an oxymoron. This article by Mike Head shows the disdain that the Western elites have for free speech, freedom of the press, truth, and the rights of citizens:

    http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49687.htm

    https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2018/06/23/persecution-julian-assange-proves-western-values-no-longer-exist/

  12. Roger Waters’s Defence of Julian Assange Constitutes a Moment of Genuine Activism in an Age of Celebrity Grandstanding

    https://uprootedpalestinians.wordpress.com/2018/11/22/roger-waterss-defence-of-julian-assange-constitutes-a-moment-of-genuine-activism-in-an-age-of-celebrity-grandstanding/

    ……………Roger Water’s long time advocacy for Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is a further testament to Waters’s genuine belief in justice and humanity that was shaped by the loss of both his grandfather and father in each of the World Wars. Waters is in many ways the last of the anti-war musicians whose embrace of peace stands head and shoulders above advocacy for less profound and immediate causes. After all, what could be a more necessary and objectively immediate cause than preventing man from waging war on other men?
    As Julian Assange was the publisher of some of the most important information relating to American and allied war criminality in theatres of illegal war like Iraq, it is only natural that Waters should defend the de-facto imprisoned anti-war activist, journalist and publisher.
    During a stop in Ecuador as part of his Us + Them tour, Waters gave an open address to the country’s President Lenin Moreno who unlike his predecessor, has made Julian Assange’s life more difficult even as he remains in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.
    At a press conference in Quito, Waters said,
    “He (Assange) needs to be protected, we can not let the United States, the United Kingdom and all the other acolytes of the evil empire incarcerate this great man and kill him which is what they will do. I would say (to President Lenin Moreno) that he has to keep the promise made by the previous president (Rafael Correa) to Julian Assange six years ago, when he gave him asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in London”.
    Waters described Assange as “one of the most important men on earth” and “a true journalist” before urging Ecuador to live up to the promise of former President Correa to protect Assange from persecution. This comes after it was revealed that US authorities have already secretly charged Assange with criminal acts after documents intended to be classified were discovered in the public domain………………

  13. Gumshoe readers may be interested in this extract from from ‘Forbidden Knowledge’ Fri 11/6/2021 of comments made by former Trump Campaign advisor and author of “Deep State Target”, George Papadopoulos,
    Please note the reference to Alexander Downer.

    “It all goes back to people like Soros, who was actually funding and supporting many of these governments; in Italy, the United Kingdom, Australia, at that point; people like Alexander Downer, who is this infamous Australian diplomat, who lied about me, essentially, to try to cover up for the FBI. He was a Clinton Foundation donor! He donated $25 million to the Clinton Foundation and was a personal friend of Bill and Hillary Clinton. And this random individual was used to lie about the Trump Campaign to “launch”…a spying attempt against us that we all knew was bogus…

    • Peter, that is interesting indeed. If you are able, please say more about why Papadopoulos would say that Downer was “trying to cover up for the FBI.” What has the FBI to do with this?

      On June 8, 2018 at GumshoeNews.com, a writer with the code name G5 said that DFAT had, by 2016, paid AUD $100 million to the Clinton Foundation and similar frauds. He said:

      “In the example of the Clinton Managed Haitian Hurricane Relief Fund, ex-President Clinton went onto American TV with Appeal Telethons raising money from public donations.

      “The amounts raised were irrelevant. Clinton was selling the legitimacy of the behind-the-scenes frauds. Some minimal percentage of funds was paid to the victims in Haiti. After the many filtrations, a negligible and meaningless 2-3% reached the ground.”

      Note: a search for the name “Downer” at this website will bring up other articles.

      • Mary, just a bit of context, the Haiti disaster cause oil to bubble up through one of the main beaches, exposing a well-kept US secret: the Haiti is sitting on top of a vast lake of light sweet crude, just as good as that of Venezuela.

        As I read it, Clinton was charged with helping the effort to hide this from the tourist public.

        To paraphrase the ancient Romans, “when you want to identify the perpetrators, just follow the money/oil trail”.

      • Mary,
        In the article entitled “Papadopoulos – Nothing Can Stop What is Coming” he claims;
        regarding the investigations carried out by John Durham saying;

        “I think this went directly to Obama. I think it’s a very sensitive issue because Obama was directly involved, here. He was running the show, directly in coordination with these other governments abroad, like the UK, like Australia, that had interests in a Clinton Presidency. She lost. It’s now being exposed and the reason Durham’s probe, in my opinion is taking so long is because look at what we’re talking about, here

        “We’re talking about a Western government conspiracy against the rival presidential campaign and an attack on American democracy…The reason this is taking so long is because there are no Russians in this story. There are no Chinese, there are no Iranians, there are no Pakistanis. There’s no Hamas.

        “There are a lot of Italians, there are some Israelis, there are a lot of British and a lot of Australians and that’s what the Deep State wants to cover up. They don’t want to highlight how the Deep State uses these foreign governments as part of the 5 Eyes Intelligence agreement to circumvent the US Constitution, to effectively spy on American citizens and in just this case, what they were not only doing was they were spying on an American citizen, like myself and Donald Trump and General Flynn; they were trying to re-write history, upend the 2016 election and effectively destroy Donald Trump’s presidency.”

        So the Australia part is where Alexander Downer fits in.

        • Mary, also regarding the FBI Papadapoulos states

          “”If you use junk disinformation to get a FISA warrant during a campaign, that’s one thing. If you use it to get it during the Trump Presidency, like we now know there was a second Steele Dossier and the FBI continued to use him [Steele], when they knew he was working for Clinton, you can’t overcome that burden of probability that the FBI did not know what they were doing and I think that’s where John Durham is really investigating people like Jim Comey, now, others in the FBI and he’s going to be focusing on where a lot of this fake information was really coming from. Was it coming from the British, the Australians, the Italians? People like Christopher Steele? Who was feeding this information? Why was the FBI using this information to get warrants? And why did they continue into Trump’s presidency?”

  15. COMPLETELY OFF TOPIC except that history repeats itself – see if you can detect some of the parallels from between the lines.

    I just took this book off my tsundoku list:

    “The Forsaken: An American Tragedy in Stalin’s Russia” by Tim Tzouliadis

    From the back cover:

    “A remarkable piece of forgotten history – the never-before-told story of Americans lured to Soviet Russia by the promise of jobs and better lives, only to meet a tragic end.

    “The Forsaken begins with the photograph of a baseball team. The year is 1934, and these two rows of young men look like any group of American ballplayers, except perhaps for the Russian lettering on their jerseys. The players have left their homeland and the Great Depression in search of a better life in Stalinist Russia. They will meet tragic, and until now forgotten, fates. Within four years, most of them will be arrested alongside untold numbers of other Americans. Some will be executed immediately. Others will be sent to “corrective labour” camps where they will be starved and worked to death. This book is the story of the forsaken who died and those who survived.”

    Setting the scene in Chapter 1. “The Joads of Russia”

    “On this occasion we can tell from their uniforms that the Foreign Workers’ Club of Moscow is playing against the Autoworkers’ Club from the nearby city of Gorky. But perhaps such details are unimportant, since many of the American baseball players in the photograph will soon be dead. They will not die in an accident, in a train, or in a plane crash. They will be witnesses to, and victims of, the most sustained campaign of state terror in modern history.

    The few baseball players who survive will be inordinately lucky. But they will come so close to death and they will endure such terrible circumstances that they too, at times, may wish they had lost their lives with the rest of their team. Only at that moment, as the camera shutter clicks in the warm summer air of Gorky Park, none of the American baseball players has any idea of their likely fate. Their smiles betray not the slightest inkling.”

    [So how did there come to be a Foreign Workers’ Club of Moscow and an Autoworkers’ Club from Gorky playing baseball in Moscow? And how and why were these Americans in Russia in 1934? … ]
    Chapter 4: “Fordizatsia”

    “No other firm in the United States, or even the world, conducted as much business with Joseph Stalin as the Ford Motor Company between 1929 and 1936. For above all men, Henry Ford – “the Sage of Dearborn” – understood very well that the power and the allure of the automobile transcended ideology. The whole of mankind was in love with speed and, in that respect at least, the Bolsheviks were no different.“

    [Back up a few sentences – Henry Ford had sold and transplanted an entire automobile factory from Detroit to Russia … ]

    “Henry Ford had been only too delighted to sell the necessary industrial blueprints and machinery, together with seventy-five thousand “knocked down” Ford Model A’s from the River Rouge plant. It was a deal sweetened by the guarantee of five years of technical assistance and the promise of American labour and know-how.” [Emphasis added]

    “The Soviet contract was worth a staggering forty million dollars, and lest we forget, these were 1930s millions paid for in gold at the height of the Depression.”

    [How ironic that] “many of the Americans travelled to Russia only to find themselves working in brand new Soviet factories built by the old capitalist titans of American industry.“

    [which somehow could not sustain employment for these very same works back in America …]

    [So how did they manage to convince these American to travel to Russia? …]

    [Comment: as you read this, it lends weight to the ’conspiracy theory’ that the Great Depression was a contrived and controlled demolition of the western economy, just as the GEC of 2008 was and the looming Great COVID Reset.]

    [At the height of the Depression the mainstream press (and government), [Tzouliadis cites articles from the New York Times in particular] orchestrated a propaganda campaign to paint Soviet Russia as a land of hope, opportunity, freedom and fairness.]

    Central to this propaganda campaign – remember Ford’s “promise of American labour and know-how” – was the English translation of New Russia’s Primer: The Story of the Five-Year Plan

    https://www.marxists.org/subject/art/literature/children/texts/ilin/new/

    which [picking up Tzouliadis again]

    “had become the unlikely publishing phenomenon of 1931, and American bestseller for seven months and one of the highest selling nonfiction titles of the past decade. Its simple explanations, written originally for Russian schoolchildren [it is published under the group section “Children’s Literature Texts”], were read and reread by an American public searching for answers beyond the deadened reach of another decade of “rugged individualism”. In the midst of Depression misery who could not be attracted to the book’s shared vision of future happiness and social progress?”

    [How convenient that the Ford automobile factories had already been shipped across to Russia! The vehemently anti-worker and anti-trade union [Ford] had been “paid forty million dollars for the old Model A plant he had only been planning to scrap”! Of course this didn’t deter the hypocritical “workers of the world unite” Soviets under Stalin!]

    Incidentally (and even more ironically), Tzouliadis goes on …

    ”Lenin himself had been a passionate advocate of [the anti-worker] Ford’s methods of mass production, and Ford’s autobiography, “My Life and Work” , had long been a Soviet bestseller, going through four printings by 1925 alone.“

    […]

    “The construction of a “Soviet Detroit”, therefore, was deemed essential to the Bolshevik cause.“

  16. Julian will never be released, as long as our girls and boys are defending Oz in overseas wars of occupation. The Zionists that did 911, and rule here with impunity, are hailed as philantrophists.
    They do not pay any tax (while imposing it on people that earn $350 a week) being billionaires.
    Usury and taxation has fleeced the commons dry and on our knees, delivered us to the CCP oligarchs who are now the new kids on the block forming the crown kabal communist triumverate one world chaos dystopia. The obelisks have replaced the cross as a guide for truth and individual prosperity. To succeed now comes with a catch, ID vaxxx for trancehuman 2.0, living in their beastly system where every word spoken is the opposite of the intention. Perpetual war is peace for some, ignorance stronger everyday, and freedom enslaving all to the iPhone.
    At least Julian had the balls to call a spade a spade, something we are all lacking.

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