Part 14: GaslightingAssange UK Judge is essentially calling Assange a hypchondriac despite Lancet Doctor’s Note

If you are an employee who is sick and unable to attend work, your employer may request a doctor’s note to confirm your illness. You may have an employer who allows a certain number of sick days without documentation from a doctor. In Canada, during the time of Covid19, employers realize that if a person suspected they may have Covid, it would be best NOT to go to his/her doctor’s office to “get a note” as it may spread the deadly virus. It has been stressed emphatically that is is best to stay home, self-quarantine and take extra precautions.

Assange has been detained on remand (unconvicted, awaiting trial in the U.S.) in filthy, understaffed, Belmarsh prison (isolated 23.5 hrs/day), where there is an outbreak of Covid 19 and two prisoners have resulted. He has not been able to meet his lawyers, therapist, chaplain, doctors or even the U.S. medical doctor who requires access in order to evaluate him psychiatrically prior to the September US extradition hearing.

A group of international medical professionals and doctors have issued a public article, published in the esteemed British medical journal, the Lancet, outlining Assange’s numerous medical challenges and vulnerabilities which preclude him from attending hearings in a shared teleconferencing video booth which is not disinfected in between uses. Instead, the UK is ignoring a published “doctors’ note” signed by almost 220 medical professionals, demanding a new doctor’s note to challenge Assange’s decision to self-quarantine. Discounting authorities when they hold opinions which negate the UK’s agenda is a solid pattern in the Assange case. Stonewalling is a favourite tactic in gaslighting operations.

Today, the British judge conducting the extradition hearing demanded that Assange attend the next scheduled hearing on July 27th, 2020 which will require that he expose himself to the killer virus Covid19. How?

Step 1: Assange’s cell is opened. He is handcuffed and escorted by one or two prison guards. Then he is flanked by these guards, without physical distancing observed, down hallways, through metal detectors, elevators and past other guards and prisoners. We do not know if the prison is adequately supplied with fresh sanitised PPEquipment.

Step 2: Security pat downs, possibly a strip search which involves guards probing his mouth, throat, anus and genitals. Droplets are a risk. One can only hope that all Belmarsh staff and prisoners avoid “speaking moistly”.

Step 3: Assange then he has to walk or be put in a wheelchair to be transported to a video booth that was previously used by any number of other prisoners, not sanitised, lacks appropriate air exchange / ventilation/ air exhaust from the previous prisoners, and sit in a confined booth with stale / possibly Covid-contaminated air. No Judge Baraistser, this is not a drill.

Assange would probably not have anything to contribute to a predetermined, one-sided, staged hearing and then return to his cell via more security screenings, prolonged interaction with guards, passing through hallways, elevators, security locks/ metal detectors, getting sniffed by security dogs only to be deposited back into solitary confinement for the remainder of the 23 hrs of the day, more worried than ever that he put himself at risk of contracting Covid for absolutely no reason. He knows in advance that the medical advice of his doctors to self-quarantine, not attend the video conferences and guard himself against unnecessary exposure to Covid 19 is the most prudent and productive decision he can make.

If an article in a prestigious British medical journal is not good enough for Judge Baraitser, if she is oblivious to the fact that the UK is experiencing the beginnings of a second wave of Covid19, prison staff are infected or quarantining, the US psychiatrist is barred from examining Assange in prison and that Assange has a right to self-quarantine in his cell, then she should not be a UK judge. She is unfit for the role. She lacks common sense, let alone the ability to make any reasonable legal judgment in the case.

She is a few cards short of a full deck. She has lost the plot.

The gaslighting element of today’s warning or threat from Baraitser to Assange, his doctors and his legal team is this:

Baraitser is painting Assange out to be a discipline problem, a hypochondriac, paranoid about Covid19, or conflating his documented medical issues which are substantial and life-threatening. She is the liar but she is projecting that onto Assange, painting him out to be a liar or non-compliant /oppositional rather than a vulnerable inmate.

The truth is that Assange wants to cooperate and participate in the hearings on his case. The problem is: no access to his lawyers, ongoing chronic lung condition, depression, PTSD, pain, and the legitimate fear of contracting a killer virus in a filthy jail.

“Assange himself was again absent from Monday’s hearing and unable to appear by videolink from prison because of medical reasons, [Assange defence lawyer], Summers said.

Baraitser said the prison had said Assange was not unwell but was choosing not to attend. She said his legal team needed to provide up-to-date medical information for the next hearing.” (link)

Assange is being denied his freedom, bail, access to his wife and kids, lawyers, useable computer, medical intervention and psychological therapies while he is being unjustly detained on remand in filthy Belmarsh maximum security prison.

Today, the judge just demanded that he be denied his right to self-quarantine.

Let that sink in.

I do not receive payment for my work. If you would like to thank me for this series, please make a donation to this GoFundMe effort. (In support of Julian Assange’s household where he will hopefully be bailed on house arrest, his father John Shipton, fiancee Stella Moris and their young sons Gabriel and Max). Be generous, please.

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