This is a case brought by 4 US citizens against the CIA. They are attorneys Margaret Ratner Kunstler and Deborah Hrbek, and journalists John Goetz and Charles Glass. They all visited Julian Assange in the Ecuadorian Embassy in the relevant time period ~2017 and claim their 4th amendment rights have been violated. I can’t wait to see this trial unfold! The evidence that will come out of this could well mean the end of the DOJ’s pursuit of Assange.
This is a case brought by 4 US citizens against the CIA. They are attorneys Margaret Ratner Kunstler and Deborah Hrbek, and journalists John Goetz and Charles Glass. They all visited Julian Assange in the Ecuadorian Embassy in the relevant time period ~2017 and claim their 4th amendment rights have been violated. I can’t wait to see this trial unfold! The evidence that will come out of this could well mean the end of the DOJ’s pursuit of Assange.
It’s because they operate in secrecy.
Masha Gessen erspart der Böll-Stiftung, vertreten durch den Vorstand Imme Scholz und Jan Philipp Albrecht, an diesem Abend nichts. Dieses öffentliche Gespräch sei nicht auf Einladung der Böll-Stiftung zustande gekommen, enthüllt Gessen. Imme Scholz habe nach dem Eklat um den Preis eine private Einladung ausgesprochen. „Die habe ich abgelehnt“, so Gessen. „Ich habe ein öffentliches Gespräch vorgeschlagen, sie haben sich darauf eingelassen und das weiß ich zu schätzen.“ Doch um auch das gleich zu sagen: Ein wirkliches Gespräch kam nicht zustande. Nie fragte einer auf dem Podium: „Verstehst du, Masha …?“ Und auf die Frage der Verlegerin Katharina Raabe, die im Publikum saß, warum die Böll-Stiftung es in Kauf genommen habe, eine Autorin zu beschädigen, gab es keine Antwort. Imme Scholz und Jan Philipp Albrecht fühlten sich sichtlich unwohl, auch schon vor dem an sie gerichteten Einwurf des langjährigen Aufsichtsratsmitglieds der Böll-Stiftung Hartmut Bäumer, er habe sich noch nie so geschämt.
I think that’s debatable. I don’t get the impression that Gessen would have won the award if she had written her Gaza article before her winning it was decided by the jury. The fact that the original ceremony was cancelled from political pressure speaks to that fact. Credit to the Berlin crew to throw host another ceremony event albeit a small one.
Masha Gessen in Berlin: Der Versuch, mich mundtot zu machen, ist misslungen https://web.archive.org/web/20231218235218/https://www.berliner-zeitung.de/kultur-vergnuegen/debatte/masha-gessen-in-berlin-der-versuch-mich-mundtot-zu-machen-ist-misslungen-li.2169713 Masha themselve said at the event that
Dieses öffentliche Gespräch sei nicht auf Einladung der Böll-Stiftung zustande gekommen
transl.: This public forum today is not on invitation of the Böll-Foundation.
So I don’t think it’s at all obvious that Hannah Arendt would today qualify for the ‘Hannah Arendt prize’ in Germany, given her body of work that is critical of the creation of the State of Israel.
Reading the article in Nachdenkseiten, it is my understanding that the local council cancelled the venue and wrote an open letter, followed by the local branch of the foundation pulling support. The Berlin branch of the foundation then took it upon themselves to still host an award-ceremony for Gessen in a secretive location for a small crowd. Hence the headline referring to a back-alley.
What are you on about?
El Pais is Spain’s biggest daily newspaper.
The controversial Gessen quote is featured in Nachdenkseiten -> https://www.nachdenkseiten.de/?p=108755
Masha Gessen schreibt [transl. writes]:
"For the last seventeen years, Gaza has been a hyperdensely populated, impoverished, walled-in compound where only a small fraction of the population had the right to leave for even a short amount of time – in other words, a ghetto. Not like the Jewish ghetto in Venice or an inner-city ghetto in America, but like a Jewish ghetto in an Eastern European country occupied by Nazi Germany. In the two months since Hamas attacked Israel, all Gazans have suffered from the barely interrupted onslaught of Israeli forces. Thousands have died. On average, a child is killed in Gaza every ten minutes. Israeli bombs have struck hospitals, maternity wards, and ambulances. Eight out of ten Gazans are now homeless, moving from one place to another, never able to get to safety.
The term ‚open-air prison‘ seems to have been coined in 2010 by David Cameron, the British Foreign Secretary who was then Prime Minister. Many human rights organizations that document conditions in Gaza have adopted the description. But as in the Jewish ghettoes of occupied Europe, there are no prison guards – Gaza is policed not by the occupiers but by a local force. Presumably, the more fitting term ‚ghetto’ would have drawn fire for comparing the predicament of besieged Gazans to that of ghettoized Jews. It also would have given us the language to describe what is happening in Gaza now. The ghetto is being liquidated.”
‘backed by mountains of bodies’
is what I read initially…