Date: Monday, 11 March 2024
https://theduran.com/american-justice/
American ‘Justice’
Eric Zuesse (blogs at https://theduran.com/author/eric-zuesse/)
American ‘justice’ isn’t to be judged merely by the U.S. having the world’s highest percentage of its population living behind bars inside prisons (which means either that the people are bad or that the Government is — or both), but, even more importantly, by the way it treats other nations and Governments, and the model that it sets for international law, and for the encouragement and pressures that it provides to other nations, to carry out justice within their borders, instead of to violate justice there. For example, when the U.S. Government farmed-out torture offshore in order to respond to the 9/11 attacks, that displayed the real character of the American Government. This is important for America because the main ‘justification’ that the U.S. Government gives for overthrowing foreign Governments is that those are ‘dictatorships’ instead of (like it claims to be itself) ‘democratic’ and a model for other Governments to follow. If it personifies what it condemns, then it is doubly bad. Examples will be given here concerning America and international justice. (The United States Government has been proven by scientific empirical studies to be a dictatorship by only its super-rich, and the method by which that has been achieved has even been documented and confirmed by a U.S. court; so, the focus in this article will instead be external — or international — American ‘justice’.)
A country’s justice system shows what its Government’s real political ideology is. Both the champion defender of whistleblowers, Julian Assange, and the champion of Pakistan’s public against Pakistan’s aristocracy, Pakistan’s recently U.S. coup-overthrown Prime Minister Imran Khan, are in prison and being held incommunicado unable to communicate to the public, because the U.S. Government demands these heroes to be imprisoned and hidden from the public — prohibits their public to have any direct access to the defendant’s legal case, and prohibits the defendant’s lawyers from knowing even what the charges against the defendant will be and what evidence will be alleged to back up those charges. Consequently, both for Assange and for Khan, the legal defense is effectively prohibited from challenging testimony that will be brought against the defendant, if and when a public trial comes. And, in both of these legal cases, the prosecution’s case gets well-publicised, but the defense’s case is hidden except for hostile summaries of it that are provided in the ‘news’-media.
The United States has used UK’s Government and its ‘news’-media as its proxy to have had Julian Assange imprisoned there for over a decade already, and has used Pakistan and its ‘news’-media as its proxy to have recently gotten its Prime Minister Imran Khan into prison there for potentially endless imprisonment on several different fraudulently constructed cases; and in each instance (both Assange and Khan) has prevented the defendant from being able to get his defense case presented to the public except in a courageous few still-independent blog-sites.
The Moon of Alabama blog headlined on 26 July 2018 “Pakistan's ‘Populist’ Wins The Election”, and reported:
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Imran Khan won yesterday's elections in Pakistan. He is an unusual politician and his political program is laudable. The task he is taking on is difficult and fraught with danger:
Imran Khan has claimed victory for his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party (PTI) in an historic election for Pakistan. The PTI represents a populist swing away from the legacy mainstream parties PML-N and PPP that both fared poorly during the election. Additionally, religious extremist parties fared particularly poorly compared to the previous two elections and also when contrasted with the expectations that many theocratic parties set for themselves prior to polling day. Lastly, the deeply controversial MQM ended up losing both seats and electoral momentum in its Karachi heartland, surrendering its erstwhile momentum to PTI.
Likewise, the incumbent PML-N not only fared poorly in the national vote in their traditional Punjab stronghold but even in the Punjab assembly election, Imran Khan’s PTI has proved formidable. Finally in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa which since 2013 has been governed by a PTI led provincial council, women were able to cast their votes for the first time. As was expected PTI heavily dominated throughout Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
Imran Khan is an interesting character. He was born in 1952 into an affluent Pashtun family with an anti-colonial tradition. He was educated in Britain. After graduating from Oxford he excelled as a professional cricket player. In 1992 he won the Cricket World Cup for Pakistan as captain of the team. That made him a national hero but the high life also gave him a reputation as womanizer and playboy.
His 2012 talk with Julian Assange (video) [I, Eric Zuesse, here provide several URLs and web-archived versions of each site posting that conversation, because this astounding and amazingly informative interview might become removed from the internet, given the U.S. regime’s determination to smear and defame them:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rw4KxdUMiL0
https://ghostarchive.org/varchive/rw4KxdUMiL0
https://web.archive.org/web/20221014232036/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rw4KxdUMiL0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQS707yZH4g
https://ghostarchive.org/varchive/TQS707yZH4g
https://web.archive.org/web/20221014224233/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQS707yZH4g
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/xsym9k
https://web.archive.org/web/20240205174024/https://www.dailymotion.com/video/xsym9k
demonstrates that Imran Khan is way more than that. In 1996 he founded his political party and slowly moved it into a winning position. The PTI rule in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the poor and war-torn Pashtun state next to Afghanistan, was surprisingly successful.
Pakistan was long ruled by the military and several rich clans which used their political parties to enrich themselves. There is no evidence that Imran is of such a type. ...
Imran campaigned on a social-democratic and anti-corruption platform. His victory speech (scroll down) emphasized his concern for the poor:
“Pakistan should have that kind of humanitarian state, where we take responsibility for our weaker classes.
“The weak are dying of hunger. I will try my best – all of my policies will be made to raise our weaker classes, for our labourers … for our poor farmers, who work all year and get no money … 45 percent of children have stunted growth, they don’t reach the right height, or their brains don’t develop. ...
“No country can prosper when there is a small island of rich people, and a sea of poor.”
Pakistan has long been a puppet state of the U.S. and its Saudi wallet. …
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As regards Assange’s legal case against his own British imprisonment-without-trial for now over ten years, no mainstream news-medium has presented his legal case in his defense, except in hostile summary-descriptions of a few details that it contains (and none of those ‘news’-media has even so much as linked to Assange’s case; all of them have instead hid it from the public — provided the public no access to it), and said nothing about tons of devastating evidence that it includes against the Governments of U.S., UK, and Sweden, and, so, for example, on 7 December 2016 the only two sites that did post Assange’s defense case were The Indicter, headlining “Assange / December 2016 issue”, and the Assange friend and whistleblowing former UK Ambassador Craig Murray headlining “Julian Assange’s Defence Statement”. Ambassador Murray briefly introduced Assange’s case by saying “I give it in full below. I do implore you to read it. This is the first time his defence has been made public, although the media have been delighted to report the leaked allegations against him in detail. His defence will not be given in the same detail in the media.” Sadly, that prediction by him turned out to be true. And the case that Assange provided there was crushingly devastating against not only the UK and US Governments but also against the Swedish Goverment that pumped what it knew were lies that Assange had committed rape. (The first Swedish prosecutor refused to prosecute him but then pressure from the U.S. regime under President Obama got a new Swedish prosecutor appointed who did cooperate with the frame-up until the Swedes, finally, years later, gave up and quit doing so, because both of the two women denied that they had been raped and neither of them were willing to continue the case that Sweden was pushing them to allege. But it was under those same fraudulent charges that Assange escaped prosecution only by his seeking and obtaining refuge inside the Ecuadoran Embassy in London for a few years, from which he then became yanked in 2019 by British police under pressure from the by-then Trump White House.
As regards Imran Khan, the story was esssentially the same — rigged cases by U.S. Government proxies in order to remove from access to the public a great international progressive leader: a globally prominent leader against imperialism (which both Assange and Khan were):
On 9 August 2023, Ryan Grim and Murtaza Hussain headlined “SECRET PAKISTAN CABLE DOCUMENTS U.S. PRESSURE TO REMOVE IMRAN KHAN”, and reported that:
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THE U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT encouraged the Pakistani government in a March 7, 2022, meeting to remove Imran Khan as prime minister over his neutrality on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, according to a classified Pakistani government document obtained by The Intercept. …
One month after the meeting with U.S. officials documented in the leaked Pakistani government document, a no-confidence vote was held in Parliament, leading to Khan’s removal from power. The vote is believed to have been organized with the backing of Pakistan’s powerful military. Since that time, Khan and his supporters have been engaged in a struggle with the military and its civilian allies, whom Khan claims engineered his removal from power at the request of the U.S.
The text of the Pakistani cable, produced from the meeting by the [Pakistani] ambassador [to the U.S., in Washington, after his meeting there with two State Department officials] and transmitted to Pakistan, has not previously been published. The cable, known internally as a “cypher,” reveals both the carrots and the sticks that the State Department deployed in its push against Khan, promising warmer relations if Khan was removed, and isolation if he was not.
The document, labeled “Secret,” includes an account of the meeting between State Department officials, including Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs Donald Lu, and Asad Majeed Khan, who at the time was Pakistan’s ambassador to the U.S. ...
The cable reveals both the carrots and the sticks that the State Department deployed in its push against Prime Minister Imran Khan. … In the cable, the U.S. objects to Khan’s foreign policy on the Ukraine war. Those positions were quickly reversed after his removal, which was followed, as promised in the meeting, by a warming between the U.S. and Pakistan. …
The day before the meeting [that the cable describes], Khan addressed a rally and responded directly to European calls that Pakistan rally behind Ukraine. “Are we your slaves?” Khan thundered to the crowd. “What do you think of us? That we are your slaves and that we will do whatever you ask of us?” he asked. “We are friends of Russia, and we are also friends of the United States. We are friends of China and Europe. We are not part of any alliance.” … The day after the meeting, on March 8, Khan’s opponents in Parliament moved forward with a key procedural step toward the no-confidence vote.
[HERE ARE EXCERPTS FROM THE CABLE:]
March 7, 2022 Pakistani Diplomatic Cypher (Transcription)
The Intercept is publishing the body of the cable (by Asad Majeed Khan, Pakistan’s ambassador to the U.S.) below: …
I had a luncheon meeting today with Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia, Donald Lu. He was accompanied by Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Les Viguerie. DCM, DA and Counsellor Qasim joined me.
At the outset, Don referred to Pakistan’s position on the Ukraine crisis and said that “people here and in Europe are quite concerned about why Pakistan is taking such an aggressively neutral position (on Ukraine), if such a position is even possible. It does not seem such a neutral stand to us.” He shared that in his discussions with the NSC, “it seems quite clear that this is the Prime Minister’s policy.” He continued that he was of the view that this was “tied to the current political dramas in Islamabad that he (Prime Minister) needs and is trying to show a public face.” I replied that this was not a correct reading of the situation as Pakistan’s position on Ukraine was a result of intense interagency consultations. Pakistan had never resorted to conducting diplomacy in public sphere. The Prime Minister’s remarks during a political rally were in reaction to the public letter by European Ambassadors in Islamabad which was against diplomatic etiquette and protocol. Any political leader, whether in Pakistan or the U.S., would be constrained to give a public reply in such a situation.
I asked Don if the reason for a strong U.S. reaction was Pakistan’s abstention in the voting in the UNGA. He categorically replied in the negative and said that it was due to the Prime Minister’s visit to Moscow. He said that “I think if the no-confidence vote against the Prime Minister succeeds, all will be forgiven in Washington because the Russia visit is being looked at as a decision by the Prime Minister. Otherwise, I think it will be tough going ahead.” He paused and then said “I cannot tell how this will be seen by Europe but I suspect their reaction will be similar.” He then said that “honestly I think isolation of the Prime Minister will become very strong from Europe and the United States.” …
I told Don that this was a completely misinformed and wrong perception. The visit to Moscow had been in the works for at least few years and was the result of a deliberative institutional process. I stressed that when the Prime Minister was flying to Moscow, Russian invasion of Ukraine had not started and there was still hope for a peaceful resolution. I also pointed out that leaders of European countries were also traveling to Moscow around the same time. Don interjected that “those visits were specifically for seeking resolution of the Ukraine standoff while the Prime Minister’s visit was for bilateral economic reasons.” I drew his attention to the fact that the Prime Minister clearly regretted the situation while being in Moscow and had hoped for diplomacy to work. The Prime Minister’s visit, I stressed, was purely in the bilateral context and should not be seen either as a condonation or endorsement of Russia’s action against Ukraine. … I said that over the past one year, we had been consistently sensing reluctance on the part of the U.S. leadership to engage with our leadership. This reluctance had created a perception in Pakistan that we were being ignored and even taken for granted. There was also a feeling that while the U.S. expected Pakistan’s support on all issues that were important to the U.S., it did not reciprocate and we do not see much U.S. support on issues of concern for Pakistan. … I reiterated our position that countries should not be made to choose sides in a complex situation like the Ukraine crisis. …
I expressed the hope that the issue of the Prime Minister’s visit to Russia will not impact our bilateral ties. Don replied that “I would argue that it has already created a dent in the relationship from our perspective. Let us wait for a few days to see whether the political situation changes, which would mean that we would not have a big disagreement about this issue and the dent would go away very quickly. Otherwise, we will have to confront this issue head on and decide how to manage it.” …
Don could not have conveyed such a strong demarche without the express approval of the White House, to which he referred repeatedly. Clearly, Don spoke out of turn on Pakistan’s internal political process. …
[END OF CABLE]
Related
In Secret Meeting, Pakistani Military Ordered Press to Stop Covering Imran Khan
In addition to the worsening situation for ordinary citizens, a regime of extreme censorship has also been put in place at the direction of the Pakistani military, with news outlets effectively barred from even mentioning Khan’s name, as The Intercept previously reported. …
His imprisonment has been widely viewed within Pakistan, including among many critics of his government, as an attempt by the military to stop his party from contesting upcoming elections. Polls show that were he allowed to participate in the vote, Khan would likely win.
“Khan was convicted on flimsy charges following a trial where his defense was not even allowed to produce witnesses. He had previously survived an assassination attempt, had a journalist aligned with him murdered, and has seen thousands of his supporters imprisoned. While the Biden administration has said that human rights will be at the forefront of their foreign policy, they are now looking away as Pakistan moves toward becoming a full-fledged military dictatorship,” said Rafiq, the Middle East Institute scholar. …
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On 7 August 2023, the whistleblowing former UK Ambassador Craig Murray, who was an associate and friend of Julian Assange and provided the best news-reporting on his legal case, headlined “Imran Khan”, and reported that,
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Given the large population in the UK of Pakistani origin, the lack of serious media coverage of the overthrow and incarceration of Imran Khan, and the mass imprisonment of his supporters, is truly extraordinary.
Imran Khan was last week sentenced to three years in prison – and a five year ban from politics – for alleged embezzlement of official gifts. This follows his removal as Prime Minister in a CIA engineered coup, and a vicious campaign of violence and imprisonment against Khan and his supporters.
It is currently illegal in Pakistan to publish or broadcast about Khan or the thousands of new political prisoners incarcerated in appalling conditions. There have been no protests from the UK or US governments.
Imran Khan is almost certainly the least corrupt senior politician in Pakistan’s history – I admit that is not a high bar. Pakistan’s politics are, to an extent not sufficiently understood in the west, literally feudal. Two dynasties, the Sharifs and the Bhuttos, have alternated in power, in a sometimes deadly rivalry, punctuated by periods of more open military rule.
There is no genuine ideological or policy gap between the Sharifs and Bhuttos, though the latter have more intellectual pretension. It is purely about control of state resource. The arbiter of power has in reality been the military, not the electorate. They have now put the Sharifs back in power. ,,,
It is difficult to think of a country, besides Pakistan, where thousands of largely middle class people could suddenly become political prisoners, while drawing almost no condemnation. It is of course because the UK supports the coup against Khan.
But I feel confident it also reflects in part the racism and contempt shown by the British political class towards the Pakistani immigrant community, which contrasts starkly with British ministerial enthusiasm for Modi’s India. ...
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On 21 August 2023, Grim and Murtaza headlined “IMRAN KHAN BOOKED UNDER PAKISTAN STATE SECRETS LAW FOR ALLEGEDLY MISHANDLING SECRET CABLE IN 2022”, and reported that, “Last week, the Pakistani authorities moved to charge Khan under Pakistan’s Official Secrets Act for his alleged mishandling of a classified diplomatic cable, known internally as a cipher. The March 7, 2022, cable had been at the center of a controversy in Pakistan, with Khan and his supporters claiming for a year and a half that it showed U.S. pressure to remove the prime minister. Khan publicly revealed the existence of the document in a late March 2022 rally.”
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On 30 January 2024, Peoples Dispatch headlined “Former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan sentenced to 10 years in prison: Imran Khan has been sentenced by a special court for allegedly disclosing a diplomatic cable. The former PM has maintained that the document contains proof of a conspiracy involving the military and the US that led to his ouster from office in 2022”. They reported:
A special court in Pakistan has sentenced former Prime Minister Imran Khan and former Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi to 10 years in prison. …
Tuesday’s verdict comes just days before Pakistan is set to hold general elections on February 8. At present, both Khan and Qureshi stand barred from holding public office for a period of five years.
In August 2023, a special court was formed under the Official Secrets Act to hear the cipher case. Khan was imprisoned at the time, after he was convicted under the Toshakhana corruption case, and sentenced to three years in prison. Though his sentence was suspended, he was placed under judicial remand under the cipher case. Khan and Qureshi are being held at the Adiala jail in Rawalpindi. ...
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On 4 February 2024, CNN headlined “Jailed Pakistani former Prime Minister Imran Khan and wife convicted for ‘fraudulent marriage’”, and Sophia Saifi and Azaz Syed reported that,
This latest conviction adds to a myriad of recent legal woes for Khan.
His political party said Tuesday [30 Jan.] that he had been sentenced, along with former Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi, to 10 years in prison for leaking state secrets.
Then, the following day [31 Jan.], PTI said the former prime minister and his wife were each sentenced to 14 years in prison for corruption relating to the unlawful sale of state gifts during his tenure as prime minister from 2018 to 2022.
It is unclear whether the sentences will be served consecutively or concurrently. [And now 4. Fab. came this 7-year local prison sentence against him and his wife.]
The judgements comes before Pakistan’s General Election on Thursday [Feb. 8].
Khan is barred from contesting and cannot hold office for a decade, according to PTI.
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On 5 February 2024, TIME magazine headlined “Pakistan’s Elections Are Being Brazenly Rigged. Why Doesn’t the U.S. Seem to Care?”, and pretended that this regime-change operation had not been done in order to satisfy the U.S. regime, and that the U.S. regime had had nothing to do with it, and reported that the U.S. Government verbally condemned it:
In truth, American reticence is both personality-driven and structural. Khan retained an oddly chummy relationship with the overtly Islamophobic Donald Trump, but he proved no friend to Joe Biden, fuming over the President’s failure to call him following his 2020 election victory and ranting about a U.S.-sponsored plot to oust him. (The case regarding leaking state secrets relates to allegations Khan released a confidential diplomatic cypher that he tenuously claims proves Washington pulled the strings of his ouster in an April 2022 no-confidence vote.)
American engagement in Pakistan boils down to wanting the South Asian nation to keep a lid on Islamic terrorism and stabilize relations with its historic nemesis India — and Khan’s record is poor on both. …
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But what I think is the most revealing thing in all of this is that interview of Imran Khan by Julian Assange — both of whom have been placed into prisons by proxy Governments (American colonies: UK and Pakistan) for being courageous enough to serve the public interest instead of the aristocracies’ interests. Furthermore: that Kahn-and-Assange discussion showed Khan believing that the U.S. regime’s main concern was authentically against, and to conquer, Islamic terrorism, instead of being actually aimed at conquering Russia (and China) (which it was, and has been, ever since 1945). And not only did Khan in 2012 get fooled by the U.S. regime’s line in this regard, but his Ambassador in Washington on 7 March 2022 was likewise fooled to believe that. The lesson to be learned from this, by progressives, is to recognize that the U.S. regime isn’t really interested in protecting the American people, but instead, in expanding the American empire until it includes every nation.
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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.
