Julian Assange has been labeled a criminal, a terrorist, and a threat to the world but the reality is he is neither a criminal nor a terrorist but a freedom fighter seeking to expose the dark crimes of powerful states that represent the real threat to the world.
Julian Assange should be supported by anyone who values freedom, democracy, and restrictions on the use of power by the rich and powerful. His cause today is the collective cause of freedom, of granting vision to the people deliberately blinded by powerful states in order that despicable crimes can be committed in their name. Defending Julian Assange is defending freedom, accountability, and democracy itself.
In November 2010, the then United States Secretary of State Hilary Clinton led a vigorous attack on the WikiLeaks website and accused it of mounting an “attack” on the world. One month later the then Vice-President of America and current Democratic Presidential candidate, Joe Biden, labeled the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange as a “hi-tech terrorist”.
Ten years later and Julian Assange finds himself detained in Belmarsh prison in harsh conditions which have been described as “psychological torture” by Nils Melzer, the UN’s special rapporteur on torture.
WikiLeaks Exposes War Crimes and Dirty State Deeds
Using leaked documents and classified cables sourced from whistle-blowers appalled at abuses of power and the breach of international laws and other reliable sources WikiLeaks committed the most cardinal crime of crimes in the eyes of the powerful. They exposed the deceit, lies, and heinous war crimes committed by the United States, United Kingdom, and other governments during their bombing sorties, invasions, and occupations of Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, and other sovereign nations.
They exposed the systematic torture of prisoners often detained without just cause, illegal renditions of individuals from one country to another on the basis of unreliable testimonies extracted from torture victims, and the callous targeting of innocent civilians leading to tragic, unnecessary, unjustified, and illegal loss of lives.
Julian Assange is not a criminal or terrorist, he is a man who has dedicated much of his life to exposing state criminals and state terrorists, and today there is simply no room for neutrality in connection with him and his persecution. You are either with Assange or you are with the rich and powerful liars and war criminals who are desperate to punish him and silence him lest they are ever properly held to account for their multiple lies and crimes.
Assange Subjected to Coordinated Tirade of Lies and Slurs
Over the last decade, Assange was subjected to one of the most coordinated, consistent, and comprehensive campaigns of disinformation, downright lies, and caustic critiques designed to lower him in the eyes of international citizens. Shamefully former allies who benefited so much from his work joined in the dishonourable campaign of vilification in cowardly attempts to save their own skins and avoid potential prosecutions.
The influential New York Times and Guardian newspapers linked with the German publication Der Spiegel to publish WikiLeaks dossiers of emails and communications which exposed dirty, dark, and illegal deeds by the US government and other governments across the world, particularly in the Middle East. They initially bathed in the spotlight of broadcast media coverage and the renewed sales which followed but when the powerful began to bite back and threaten criminal investigations using tools like the Espionage Act of over 100 years ago, introduced by the US in 1917, former allies became foes and accusations of irresponsible publication and scant regard for journalistic norms surfaced. It was Assange who was irresponsible. ‘All we did was report on and re-publish what WikiLeaks had already published’ was the retort from the Guardian sources.
The reality was far from those untruths. Watch and read the impeccable accounts of Australian investigative journalist Mark Davis as he interviews Assange from 2011 and we find it was Assange, not the newspapers, who was insisting on redactions to protect named individuals within the documents.
And then the detailed Davis presentation from last year which categorically proves the publication of the leaked classified documents was a joint collaborative effort involving the Guardian, New York Times, and Der Spiegel. As soon as these publications got a whiff from government sources that collaboration to tell the truth to the world could be interpreted as a conspiracy to commit a crime under the 1917 Espionage Act the decision to cut Assange loose was taken and he was to become the fall guy.
Assange and WikiLeaks Do Not Work Alone
Yet the evidence of Davis above proves categorically that the printing of the raw details of America’s dirty war in the Afghanistan war logs happened before WikiLeaks went public, and the liberal newspapers therefore collectively lied as they were not merely reporting on somebody else’s publication, they were in fact publishing material for the first time and it was they who were wholly irresponsible and printed secure access codes which allowed unfettered access to the unredacted documents and endangered the lives of those mentioned within them.
In other words, it is not Julian Assange who should be on trial for exposing war crimes of the US Government but the liberal media establishment in the West who were keen to take the praise of exposure of war crimes at the time but are unwilling to stand their ground against the powerful in America and Britain today.
As for the litany of personal attacks on Assange including the evidence-free but mass circulated and repeated rape allegations there really is no excuse for swallowing such tripe against a man who is so clearly an American security organization target, particularly when even cursory examination of the multiple slurs on his character results in such slurs being exposed as the concocted tissue of lies they are.
For anyone with niggling doubts, I invite you to read the blow by blow rebuttal and detailed analysis of such falsehoods compiled by investigative journalist Caitlin Johnstone.
Compare and Contrast Treatment of Assange and Anne Sacoolas
Last morning (on 14 September) I watched an impassioned plea from Charlotte Charles, the mother of nineteen-year-old Harry Dunn killed last August by an American citizen driving on the wrong side of the road outside RAF Croughton in Northamptonshire. She was interviewed on Good Morning Britain and appealed for justice in the face of a very real crime that resulted in her young son’s life being extinguished so tragically. Almost exactly one year ago, 17th September 2019, she buried her beautiful son. Yet due to collusion between the American State Department and the UK Home Office the woman who was responsible for the death of Harry while he rode his motorbike innocently was allowed to leave the UK and avoid a criminal court hearing. That woman, Anne Sacoolas, was formally charged in her absence with causing death by dangerous driving in December last year and an extradition request to have her face justice in a UK court was submitted in January this year. The US State Department turned down that request and has stated that its decision on the matter is final.
I invite you to contrast and compare the case of Anne Sacoolas and Julian Assange and in so doing uncover the reality of the poodle-like relationship the UK is now reduced to in relation to the US. The once-mighty imperial nation and occupier of the US is now a mere lapdog of the US, a 51st State which responds to a ‘jump’ instruction from Washington with the retort ‘how high’?
Over Sixty Doctors Plea for Torture of Assange to End
Julian Assange has committed no crime. He is an Australian citizen whose legal and human rights should be upheld by the UK not ignored and trampled upon. Read the impassioned plea from over sixty doctors to free Julian Assange and end the torture and medical neglect he is suffering from, featured in the highly respected and esteemed medical journal The Lancet:
“We drafted a letter to the UK Home Secretary, which quickly gathered more than 60 signatures from medical doctors from Australia, Austria, Germany, Italy, Norway, Poland, Sri Lanka, Sweden, the UK, and the US, concluding: “It is our opinion that Mr. Assange requires an urgent expert medical assessment of both his physical and psychological state of health. Any medical treatment indicated should be administered in a properly equipped and expertly staffed university teaching hospital (tertiary care). Were such urgent assessment and treatment not to take place, we have real concerns, on the evidence currently available, that Mr. Assange could die in prison. The medical situation is thereby urgent. There is no time to lose”.
“On 31 May 2019, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Nils Melzer, reported on his 9 May 2019 visit to Assange in Belmarsh, accompanied by two medical experts: “Mr. Assange showed all symptoms typical for prolonged exposure to psychological torture, including extreme stress, chronic anxiety, and intense psychological trauma”.
On 1 November 2019, Melzer warned, “Mr. Assange's continued exposure to arbitrariness and abuse may soon end up costing his life”.
The trial to decide Julian Assange’s extradition fate is underway but displays every day the features of a show trial farce. Not only is Assange denied proper access to his defence team, but he is also even denied the proper time to access the charges and present his defence properly. The biased judge will do her sniveling duty and grant the extradition of Assange to an already decided fate of life imprisonment in America. It is shameful and disgusting.
Meanwhile, a woman who actually did commit a crime and killed a young man in the prime of his life on a UK road is protected and kept safe by the US Government. Such cruel double-standards and rank hypocrisy in the highest echelons of power is what makes our world so rotten and corrupt to the core.
Fight the power, raise the case of Julian Assange in your place of study, work, and household. At the very least sign one of the many necessary and just petitions online which call for the immediate release of Julian Assange like the Reporters Without Borders one which has already attracted well in excess of half a million signatures.
