From Consortium News (20 Apr 2021)

Lawyer and partner of Julian Assange, Stella Moris, briefs the International Symposium of Parliamentarians on the latest developments in his case and the impact Julian's continued incarceration is having on their family.

There will be an international public symposium of parliamentarians and legislators who will discuss and examine the issues at stake in the Julian Assange case. The event will also be live-streamed by the Don’t Extradite Assange campaign on their YouTube, Twitter and Facebook channels.

All major Human Rights and Free Press Organizations have opposed Assange’s extradition including Amnesty International, Reporters Without Borders, Committee to Protect Journalists, Human Rights Watch and many more. Newspaper Editorial boards including The Guardian, New York Times, El, Pais, Der Speigel, Le Monde, as well as major Journalist Unions including the UK’s NUJ and Australia’s MEAA have voiced their strong opposition to the proceeding against Assange and the threat it posses to Journalism and the Free Press.

Saturday 17 April 12pm noon BST (UK time).

Programme:

• Session 1. Briefing on the Julian Assange case with UN Special Rapporteur on Torture Nils Melzer and Stella Moris, Julian Assange’s partner. Chaired by Richard Burgon MP. Followed by questions and contributions. 
• Session 2. Country Reports: A chance for attendees to discuss the situation in their countries.
• Session 3. How to take the campaign forward. With former Nobel prize winner Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, German Member of Parliament Sevim Dagdelen and UK MP Richard Burgon – with questions and contributions from attendees."

Video promo of the symposium : https://twitter.com/i/status/1381238089054625798

Source: https://dontextraditeassange.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=dc0b6933f34803bd7d8dd8280&id=31ee39749b&e=638a78e322

This article was from a Change.org petition, posted by Philip Adams of Brisbane, which you can find here: https://www.change.org/p/free-julian-assange-before-it-s-too-late-stop-usa-extradition/u/28886922?cs_tk=Ap_QvX0n5s8uAEfkfGAAAXicyyvNyQEABF8BvG_YpAHnW1P7RibK6BaV_UE%3D&utm_campaign=3c4985bb22d14b7bbe32d499c4573190&utm_content=initial_v0_4_0&utm_medium=email&utm_source=petition_update&utm_term=cs

Letter from Billy Field to Australian politicians

13 April, 2021

Dear Sir/Madam,

I am writing to inform you that over the past month, I have sent 3 letters to every MP and senator in the Australian Parliament regarding the importance of the Government urgently acting to protect Julian Assange who is currently in solitary confinement in Belmarsh Prison, UK.

He has been in solitary for 2 years, since 11 April, 2019 for exposing war crimes. Also, due to “misinformation” spread during smear campaigns, Assange has had his freedom curtailed and his rights infringed for nearly 11 years now.

Despite the fact that credible experts have reported that Julian has been subject to torture, I find it alarming that to date I have received only 2 letters in response to my 3 letters to all 226 highly paid parliamentarians/public officials. Otherwise, there has been silence & inaction.

Further enquiries today with MP Mark Dreyfus’ (shadow AG) office resulted in confirmation that the Labor party released the attached press release in support of Assange on Jan 5 but, to date, nothing substantive has been done to help Julian.

I also attach a copy of my last letter to all politicians dated April 8 2021 and another attachment, “Debunking Myths and Smears” about Julian Assange FYI.

I wish you would take this story up as a matter of urgency. Firstly, because Assange’s life is at stake and secondly because it’s imperative that journalists and citizens protect the right of freedom of expression. This includes the right not to be arbitrarily detained without sensible and tenable due process for doing the work of journalism. In addition to this, importantly, it is about our sovereignty and our rights as Australians.

As Assange has effectively been “incarcerated” for 11 years now due to various false accusations of sexual misconduct and absurd claims of “espionage”, I feel it would be appropriate for the media to raise this issue as a matter of importance for all of us.

Yours Faithfully,

Billy Field
Gosford, NSW. 2250

Billy Field
Gosford
NSW 2250

8 April 2021

Dear Member of Parliament,

Please find attached a list of the cross-party MPs and senators calling for the Govt to take
immediate action to “free Julian Assange” who is currently in solitary confinement in Belmarsh
prison in the UK.

I, and I am sure countless folk all over the world, are highly appreciative of these members and
senators. They are routinely thanked by groups of citizens meeting and demonstrating for Julian
Assange’s release every Friday afternoon outside Sydney Town Hall (photo attached).

Despite the fact that credible experts have deemed Assange to have been subject to torture, he
still remains in solitary confinement (& for 2yrs as of April 11th) under heavily restricted
conditions and as an Australian I, and I believe his supporters, find this untenable.

I have twice written to all MPs and senators noting details regarding this matter (which I hope
you are aware of by now) and the matter’s urgency. I note I have received only one letter in
response by a “Ministerial Correspondence Unit” (unsigned) and this letter I feel is entirely
unsatisfactory.

You must know that to sit and do nothing and not act for a person being tortured or harmed, as
I understand it, is not only a crime but also highly immoral.

Julian has made it his life’s work to help people in positions of vulnerability, including by helping
to publish evidence of war crimes and/or corruption from 2006 onwards. By revealing
wrongdoing by governments around the world, we stand a better chance of making them
accountable to their citizens and their victims.

At weekly demonstrations outside Sydney Town Hall for the past 70 weeks, it has been
heartening to see the support in the community as it reveals the ability of ordinary people to
remain objective in the face of relentless efforts by the media to demonise Julian.

Julian has first told us and then, by his own example, shown us that the powerful corporate and
political elements have an aversion to the truth and disregard for the sanctity of human life.

The future of freedom of speech rests on Julian’s shoulders, and more importantly, his very life
is at risk. To those who support Julian in the attached list, I convey my most sincere and
heartfelt thanks and appreciation.

I am writing to urge you to please join this group attached with all haste.

Please advise your position, or alternatively, if you feel there is something I am overlooking I
would be very pleased to hear that from you also.

Yours faithfully,

Billy Field

"April11, 2021, marks 2 years Julian Assange has been held without charge in Her Majesty’s Prison Belmarsh, London - a prison housing society's most violent individuals. Julian Assange published factual information about government and military wrongdoings, provoking a massive campaign to destroy his credibility and discourage other whistleblowers, journalists and publishers."The pdf file contains a document which is an edited version of original works of author Caitlin Johnstone, who has generously permitted the use and editing of her work for this brochure. https://caitlinjohnstone.com/ Published by Assange Town Hall Gatherings Inc, c/- [email protected] For comments contact Tony Wakeham 0427252726. (This document was sent to Australian politicians by Billy Field.)

This is a beautiful original song, beautifully performed, with well conceived lyrics describing the importance of Assange, his suffering, and encouraging people to work to have him released.

LYRICS:

like a movie
flickering in blue and grey
like a movie
you can’t take your eyes away

1.
here's a man in the nose of a beast
a magic camera on his eye
they're not men he sees before him
just pixels floating by

his eyes narrow on the target
his finger is the boss
seven men go to the dust they came from
underneath his cross

like a movie

2.
and here's a man on an aeroplane
his eyes are warm, his eyes are closed
weary from too much seeing,
from 10 years on this road

they took his son, they took his freedom
took away his space to think
they took his walls and moved them closer
they pushed him to the brink

like a movie
flickering in blue and grey
like a movie
betrayal's only one frame away

3.
and here's a hawk, in front of an eagle
three colours tattooed on it's chest
his eyes are flint, his heart is granite
cos uncle knows what's best

there’s talk of a man who’s said too much
talk of a man who’s sealed his fate
talk of a bounty for the one who brings
his head upon a plate

like a movie

4.
and now here's a man in a tiny cell
his tired face is gaunt and pale
he walks ten thousand steps each day
the santiago trail

his hair is white, the spider’s eyes were black
the mighty web was a thing of awe
he went in deep, he couldn’t come back
but he showed us what he saw

like a movie
flickering in blue and grey
like a movie
dignity will hold no sway

and when the dawn breaks, and the mist clears
you can watch the final scene, if you dare
one man in front of an army, all alone

and his man, what’s he going to do now?
and what about you, what are you going to do now?
are you going to sit there, and keep on watching?
cos if we all got up we could stop this movie
don't you think it's time we stopped this movie?

like a movie
flickering in blue and grey
like a movie
we can’t let it end this way

From 6:30PM on Good Friday, last Friday 2 April 2021, Anita Brice, myself and other Melbourne supporters of Julian Assange held their weekly vigil in front of Flinders Street Station. This vigil is the central part of Anita Brice's (see Lorine Anita Brice's Twitter page @LorineBrice) campaign for Julian Assange which she has organised since April 2020.

Each Friday since then they have turned up with placards and printed literature to inform members of the public about Julian Assange.

Since February this year, when I finally learned of this desperately needed support work for Julian Assange in Melbourne, I began attending the vigils myself with my own additional flyers to give to interested members of the public. One flyer has been adapted to become the article Uphold the Rule of Law - demand that the Australian government act to end the illegal imprisonment and torture of Julian Assange (11/2/2019) [1]. My second flyer was, instead, in reverse, adapted from another article, Open Letter to Prime Minister Scott Morrison: Act now to end the illegal imprisonment and torture of Julian Assange! (11/3/2021) [2].

Also, at considerable trouble and expense, I created a large (4.8mx1.7m) banner which is pictured to the left. [3] This banner has attracted some interest from overseas supporters of Julian Assange, including from the Denver Free Assange group as well as from many members of the Melbourne public including passing motorists. [4]

At our vigil of 19 February, I made a speech through a megaphone to the public. This succeeded in arousing greater interest from members of the public and considerably raising the the profile of our vigil.  [5]

Other members of our group have also begun to give speeches, and have spoken well, as occurred on Friday 26 March when we marched to the Melbourne British to protest against that government's criminal treatment of Julian Assange.

At our Good Friday vigil, I spoke for 6:30 minutes. My speech was recorded and embedded below.

James Sinnamon demands the Australian government act to end the illegal imprisonment of Julian Assange

Your presence needed at next Friday's vigil for Julian Assange

If we are ever to succeed in our campaign to free Julian Assange, we need much larger crowds, here in Melbourne, other Australian cities and overseas. If you can make it to next Friday's vigil at 6:30pm, please be there. You can help us hold up our large banners, distribute leaflets, talk to passsers-by or make speeches.

Footnotes

[1] The PDF file for the double-sided A5 flyer is here.

[2] The PDF file which can be printed on two sides of an A4 sheet, is here, please be warned, printing in colour, rather than in back and white can cost a lot more.

[3] From an artist friend, Sheila Newman, who is also an editor of this site, candobetter.net, and an author of books as well as articles for this site, I received indispensable help in creating this banner.

[4] Unfortunately, because our numbers were fewer on the Good Friday public holiday, there was not a sufficient number people to put in the necessary effort hold up our large banner for the two hour vigil.

[5] Even on some subsequent occasions when my own presentation and delivery was not as good, I believe I still succeeded in arousing more interest and support from members of the public than we would have, had nobody spoken. I would like to aspire to speak as well as Mairéad Farrell, Irish member of the European Parliament as shown, below, in her speech of 5 March 2021:

Last Thursday 25 March, during the Senate Estimates Hearing, Greens Senator for Victoria, Janet Rice (pictured left), asked Foreign Minister Marise Payne (pictured right) to explain her failure to act to free Australian journalist Julian Assange from his imprisonment in Belmarsh Prison in London. Given the very short time allowed for Janet Rice to pursue this issue, she did remarkably well in cutting through Marise Payne's evasions and attempts to obfuscate the issue.

The 2:17 minute video from Twitter, is embedded below and the text of the exchange between Senators Janet Rice and Marise Payne is included below the video.

Exchange between Senator Janet Rice and Senator Marise Payne on Julian Assange

Janet Rice : So, on Julian Assange, Minister, have you personally requested to the Biden administration that they drop their appeal against the UK court finding to not extradite Julian Assange.

Marise Payne : Senator, I said in response to Senator Patrick, that I had not discussed this directly with the Biden administration at this stage, but I expect it to be discussed in meetings with the Secretary of State (the United States equivalent of Foreign Minister).

Janet Rice : OK, and when do you expect those meetings to occur?

Marise Payne : In the coming months.

Janet Rice : Months?

Marise Payne : Well, Senator, nothing is confirmed because we are making arrangements in relation to travel. If I am not able to do that in person, then I will be raising a number of issues in a virtual engagement that will be sooner.

Janet Rice : And this is despite the reporting that if you had actually raised the issue of Julian Assange with the Trump administration to drop the charges, that they were very likely to have done so?

Marise Payne : Well, I did raise the matter with the Trump administration, Senator. I raised the matter with the Secretary of State, myself directly at AUSMIN (Australia-United States Ministerial Consultations) in July 2020.

Janet Rice : Well, in the last month, the Trump administration - that secondary reporting - but I will move on. Were DFAT (Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade) officials told that Julian Assange is on suicide watch from the time that of his arrival at Belmarsh Prison on 11 April 2019?

Marise Payne : Senator, while the [DFAT] officer is going to brief, I would remind you, Senator, as I have in the Senate, that the Australian Government has endeavoured to offer consular assistance …

Janet Rice : My time is short, Minister and I am aware that you …

Marise Payne : And I have two things to say, Senator. The consular assistance on 22 occasions, from 2019 to 2021, DFAT - consent was withdrawn for DFAT to consult about Mr Assange's personal circumstances, his health and his welfare in prison on the 13th of June 2019 by Mr Assange. So, given consent was withdrawn, Senator …

Janet Rice : I am asking you about the time between his arrival on the 11th of April until the 13th of June when DFAT had his consent.

Stella Moris, Julian Assange's wife and mother of his two children, explains how the United States' 1917 Espionage Act threatens all journalism that is in any way critical of the U.S. government.

CORRECTION (10:20am, Friday): The march will be to the British Consulate at 90 Collins Street Melbourne and not to the State Library. - apologies

Join us at 3:30pm Friday 26 March (today) at Flinders Street Station, from which Melbourne For Wikileaks (@Melbourne4wiki) will be marching at 4:00pm from Flinders Street Station to the British Consulate at 90 Collins Street, Melbourne. This March is to show our support of Julian Assange.

We will be demanding that the Australian government act to stop the United States' attempts to illegally extradite, from the United Kingdom, Julian Assange, who is an Australian citizen and not a United States citizen. We will also be demanding that he Australian government act to end the United Kingdom's illegal imprisonment and torture of Julian Assange.

Come to help us carry our banner (pictured), help us distribute leaflets to fellow Melburnians and, listen to speeches for Julian Assange at the end of the march in front of the British Consulate.

[See videoed 10 min speech inside.] "The new administration in the USA needs to hear from us. I recently stood in the Australian Senate and made a plea to US President Joe Biden and newly appointed US Attorney General Merrick Garland to drop all charges against Julian Assange so we can bring him home to Australia. It was a lie and terrible deception that led us to war in Iraq - a manufactured deception about weapons of mass destruction by some of the most powerful people on this planet. It is terrifying that foreign nations like the US could extradite and charge journalists who have exposed their wrongdoings. If we don’t defend press freedoms and learn from the mistakes and lessons of history we are bound to repeat them. Without a value on truth, there is only one path left to tread, and it gets more dark and dangerous from here – we must continue the fight to free Julian Assange.

Joe Biden and Merrick Garland: please walk away from any decision to extradite Julian Assange now. It's in the interest of democracy and humanity for you to do so.

The illegal, unilateral invasion of Iraq was less than 20 years ago, but seems to be largely forgotten already.

I invite you [people in Australia] to rally for Julian Assange at this critical moment in the campaign to bring him home to Australia. For more info, visit: https://www.facebook.com/events/2757770894486415/#FreeJulianAssange"

Below is a link to Tasmanian Greens Senator Whish Wilson's speech asking President Biden and his new Attorney General to quit while they are strategically ahead and stop pursuing Assange, or they will be seen more and more as a despotic regime. The speech is ten minutes long and explores the problem from several other angles. Worth listening to. When you click on the link you will be taken away from this page, to facebook.

This article can be printed on two sides of an A4 sheet from this file (but, please be warned, it costs a lot more to print it as colour rather than as black and white).

Dear Prime Minister Scott Morrison, I am writing to you concerning the imprisonment, psychological and physical torture, in Britain, of an Australian citizen, Julian Assange, who has committed no crime. So far Julian Assange has endured more than eight and a half years of this, and if the United States' government has its way, this will continue for the rest of his life. On 11 April 2019, shortly after Julian Assange was taken from the London Ecuadorian Embassy and placed under arrest, Foreign Minister Marise Payne issued a statement:

"I am confident, as the United Kingdom Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt publicly confirmed in July 2018, that Mr Assange will receive due process in the legal proceedings he faces in the United Kingdom." [1]

If you, Prime Minister, or Marise Payne, have been able to closely follow the legal proceedings to which Julian Assange has been subjected for over one year now, in Woolwich Crown Court, you will be aware of the following:

• For breaching bail on 19 June 2012 to seek asylum at the Ecuadorian Embassy, which he is entitled to do under Article 14 of United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 [2], he was sentenced to 50 weeks imprisonment, [3] the absolute maximum sentence for this offence;

• On 13 September 2019, District Judge Vanessa Baraitser further extended Julian Assange's imprisonment when she ruled that Julian Assange would not be released on 22 September because of the United States prosecution's extradition request, the case for which, it had evidently not been able to fully prepare in the seven and a half years that Julian Assange had been imprisoned for at that point in time;

• On every day of the hearing, even before Judge Vanessa Baraitser had listened to any of the testimony or cross-examination, she came into court with her judgement for that day pre-written! [4]

• From the first day of the trial (25 February 2020) Julian Assange was brought in handcuffed, and "confined at the back of the court behind a bulletproof glass screen … from which it is very difficult for him to see and hear the proceedings." [5]

• Magistrate Vanessa Baraitser "refused repeated and persistent requests from the defence for Assange to be allowed to sit with his lawyers." [6]

• Reporting on these preceedings, on 22 October 2019, Craig Murray, who, until then, had been skeptical of claims that Julian Assange was being tortured, declared himself, "badly shocked by just how much weight my friend has lost, by the speed his hair has receded and by the appearance of premature and vastly accelerated ageing. He has a pronounced limp I have never seen before. Since his arrest he has lost over 15 kg in weight." [7]

• Craig Murray continued, "But his physical appearance was not as shocking as his mental deterioration. When asked to give his name and date of birth, he struggled visibly over several seconds to recall both. … his difficulty in making it was very evident; it was a real struggle for him to articulate the words and focus his train of thought." [8]

• On 21 February 2020, during that single day, "Julian had twice been stripped naked and searched, eleven times been handcuffed, and five times been locked up in different holding cells. In addition to this, all of his court documents had been taken from him by the prison authorities, including privileged communications between his lawyers and himself, and he had been left with no ability to prepare to participate in [that day's] proceedings." [9] Julian Assange was subject to this sort of treatment for the duration of the trial.

• "For months, he was denied [physical] exercise and held in solitary confinement [for 23 hours a day] … At first he was denied his reading glasses, left behind [on 25 February 2020 when he was arrested inside the Ecuadorian Embassy]. He was denied the legal documents with which to prepare his case, and access to the prison library and the use of a basic laptop." [10] [11]

How is this 'due process'? How could this be procedurally fair to Julian Assange?

What I have written above describes only a fraction of the abuse and torture to which Julian Assange has been subjected, just since the court hearings began on 25 February last year. This follows seven years asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy, whence he fled from injustice and in fear for his life. The constraints of asylum have been described as 'arbitrary confinement' by Nils Melzer, United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, after he visited Julian Assange in prison. [12]

In the last two decades alone, the United States, in a rampage of war-crimes leveraged on flagrant lies, has destroyed economies and caused the death of many hundreds of thousands in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria, Venezuela, Ukraine and elsewhere, apparently with impunity. In contrast, Julian Assange, who revealed many of these crimes to the world, and who himself has no history of violence, has been kept in solitary, stripped of his health, his clothing, his belongings, friends and family, and justice.

This is not 'due process' and certainly not procedurally fair. Unless this situation is rectified, Julian Assange, who is not a U.S. citizen, faces the prospect of being extradited to the United States, where he will face, in secret, a trial in the eastern district of Virginia, before a jury most likely to be made up from employees and the families of the U.S. intelligence agencies based in that area - in other words a rigged trial, hidden from public view.

Under such unfair trial conditions a guilty verdict is the expectation. Julian Assange stands to be sentenced for up to 175 years imprisonment in solitary confinement in the United States - a fate which he considers to be worse than the death penalty.

Like the many Australians who are well informed about Julian Assange, I consider this treatment of him by the British government an outrage. I would expect your government to act immediately to end this outrage:

If your government truly:

• cares for the welfare of each and every one of its citizens;
• believes in human rights;
• believes in the right to free speech;
• believes in the right of journalists to investigate matters of public concern and
• upholds the rule of law (Australian law, British law, International law and United States' law, including their constitutional right to free speech)

then I would expect of you the following:

To contact British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, advise him that an Australian citizen, Julian Assange, has been illegally imprisoned in Belmarsh prison and request that Julian Assange be released immediately, and assisted to return to Australia or to go to any place he chooses.

To communicate to Boris Johnson that if Mr Assange's detention were to continue, Australia would be raising the matter at the United Nations and, if neccessary, at the International Criminal Court.

Yours sincerely,

James Sinnamon

Footnotes

[1] Although this statement can be found on Senator Marise Payne's web page through the link I have given above and on Facebook, I could not find this statement on what is currently Page 19 of the "Latest News" section of your web page, which currently contains news items dated from until 15 April 2019.

The above media statement continued: "We have made 19 offers of consular assistance to Mr Assange since 2019 that have gone unanswered. We will continue to offer consular support." As I have not seen the messages containing the offers of support that Senator Marise Payne said she made to Julian Assange, I cannot comment. I will endeavour to contact Julian Assange's support team for their response.

[2] "Convention and Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees" (1951) United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) at https://www.unhcr.org/3b66c2aa10

[3] The 50 weeks imprisonment to which Julian Assange was sentenced on Wednesday 1 May 2019 would have lasted until Wednesday 15 April 2020 (if the day on which Julian Assange was sentenced is included). Both the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) and the BBC also reported on 1 May 2019 that Julian Assange was sentenced to 50 weeks imprisonment (see WikiLeaks' Julian Assange sentenced to 50 weeks' jail over bail breach at https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-05-01/julian-assange-sentenced-in-london-over-bail-breach-wikileaks/11064356 and Julian Assange: Wikileaks co-founder jailed over bail breach at https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-48118908). See Sunday 22 September 2019, the day Julian Assange was supposed to be released, according to other cited reports is 'only' 24 weeks and 4 days from Wednesday 1 May 2019 - still an outrageous and wholly unjustifiable sentence. I have not been able to find an explanation for this apparent discrepency.

[4] "Beyond Words" (8/4/2020) by Craig Murray at https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2020/04/beyond-words/

[5] "Your Man in the Public Gallery – Assange Hearing Day 1" (25/2/20) at https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2020/02/your-man-in-the-public-gallery-assange-hearing-day-1/

[6] Ibid.

[7] "Assange in Court" (22/10/2019) by Craig Murray at https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2019/10/assange-in-court/

[8] Ibid.

[9] "Your Man in the Public Gallery – Assange Hearing Day 2" (26/2/20) by Craig Murray at https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2020/02/your-man-in-the-public-gallery-assange-hearing-day-2/

[10] "Eyewitness to the Trial and Agony of Julian Assange" (2/10/2020) by John Pilger at http://johnpilger.com/articles/eyewitness-to-the-trial-and-agony-of-julian-assange

[11] "Assange in Court" (22/10/2019) by Craig Murray at https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2019/10/assange-in-court/

[12] "@njmelzer/state-responsibility-for-the-torture-of-julian-assange-40935ea5d7c3">State Responsibility for the Torture of Julian Assange" (16/12/2019) speech by Nils Melzer, UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, at the German Bundestag in Berlin, 27 November 2019 (English translation) at https://medium.com/@njmelzer/state-responsibility-for-the-torture-of-julian-assange-40935ea5d7c3

In this video, on Friday 26 February 2021, John Shipton, Julian Assange's father, launches the Julian Assange road-show, with an interesting and moving speech on human rights, history, and current trends. The bus you can see behind Mr Shipton, will travel from Melbourne to Canberra, via Broadford, Castlemaine, Bendigo, Albury, Wogga - and other country towns, reaching Canberra within a few weeks, in time for opening of the second session of Parliament. There the road-show members will work with the Australian Parliamentary Friends of Julian Assange, to try to convince the Scott Morrison Australian government to bring Julian home.

Transcript of John Shipton's speech 26 Feb 2021

"This week, Anthony Albanese, the leader of the opposition, made a declaration that ten years is enough. Enough's enough, bring him home. He got it a bit wrong. It's eleven years going on twelve. But it's a great movement in the Australian body-politic when the leader of the opposition makes his position known.

We now have 24 strong members in the cross-party group in the Australian parliament. [Bring Julian Assange Home Parliamentary Group"] in the Australian parliament. (Parliamentary Julian Assange Group formally established)].

In the Bundestag, the parliament of Germany, we have a cross-party group. In the French parliament, we have a cross-party group. In the Spanish parliament, we have over 40 Podemas members supporting. In the UK parliament, we have a cross-party group. The Italian parliament is the first in the European parliaments - the Five Star group - to put before the Council of Europe, a declaration, which the Council of Europe adopted, that Julian was a protected journalist and should be let go.

The chair of the European Rights Council of the Council of Europe, declared that Julian was protected. Nils Melzer, as you know, the [UN Special] Rapporteur on torture, declared that Julian was a victim of torture. The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention declared that Julian was being arbitrarily detained. Every single Western and Russian journalist association have declared Julian a member, and that he ought to be free, and that this persecution must stop.

And, just briefly, a little bit of history: After the horror of the 1945 war, where many many people lost their lives, and many countries were destroyed, the people of the world - that's us - gathered together and established the United Nations. The first president of the United Nations was an Australian - one of us! [1] In 1948, that president organised the Declaration of Human Rights. The Chair of that was Eleanor Roosevelt. In 1958, the Conventions of Asylum were adopted by the United Nations. In 1973, Australia brought before the General Assembly of the United Nations, the conventions of Human Rights and the conventions of Asylum, which were passed by a huge majority. Then, the Council of Europe, which is solely a human rights organisation ... forty-seven nations - I think forty-two, sorry - forty-two nations adopted into their national legislation, the human rights legislation, integrated into the national legislation.

Now, these are the great achievements of the 20th century. I wish to remind you of that. These are the epoch-making achievements of the people of the world of the 20th century. That's us. When you read the phrase, "crimes against humanity," it's not them, over there, it's us, here, our children, mothers, fathers, uncles, grandfathers, brothers, sisters. The crime against us.

When you read the phrase, "war-crime," equally, that's a crime against us. A war-crime is the murder of a village - like Mỹ Lai, in Vietnam. Five hundred people slaughtered, before the gunner of the helicopter courageously said, "If you keep shooting these people, we'll shoot you." That brought an end to the slaughter. Five hundred people. So, crimes against humanity, and war-crimes, are crimes against us.

Julian's persecution for revealing those crimes is the collapse into barbarity of those nations, those western nations, that were instrumental in putting together the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and adopting it into, and embracing it in their national legislation.

So, it benefits us, as an emblem, of this decline into barbarity, to support Julian. And the benefits then come to us. It's clear. This is our duty. Our noble task is to free Julian. And, consequently, the political bodies that rule us, that supposedly are sovereign, and supposedly obey us, will understand that they cannot pursue, any longer, the crimes against humanity, the war-crimes, and to obey the legislation which is embraced in their national legislation.

Sorry to go on a little bit. It's a heavy subject. But - if I could just ... one more thing: I've travelled the world now - last was in America. And the support for Julian - from "us" - is a winner. The tide is flowing towards "us". And lifts us up, and lifts our needs up, and our needs are that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights be obeyed, and our governments stop sneaking around the place, murdering farmers in Afghanistan.

So, thank you, and God bless."

Footnote[s]

[1] In fact, Herbert Vere ('Doc') Evatt, was the third President of the United Nations and not the first President, However, "Australian politician ‘Doc’ Evatt was an important contributor in the early days of the UN’s existence. He helped to make sure that smaller nations like Australia had a say in the organisation, and was the President of the UN General Assembly from 1948 to 1949." See "Australia on the world stage -1945: Australia plays a leading role in founding the United Nations" | National Museum of Australia Digital Classroom. 'Doc' Evatt (1894-1965) was also Foreign Minister in the Labor Governments of John Curtin and Ben Chifley from 1941 until 1949.

In the two federal elections of 1949 and 1951, he faced Australian wartime heroine Nancy Wake, standing for the Liberal Party, and just narrowly defeated her on each occasion, the second time by only 243 votes out of 41,600 (0.6%). In 1951 'Doc' Evatt successfully campaigned against the Liberal Menzies government's referendum proposal to ban the Communist Party of Australia. 'Doc' Evatt remained Leader of the Labor Opposition from 1951 until 1960.

On Friday 26 February, Julian Assange's father John Shipton (pictured), is to embark on his #HomeRun4Julian tour. He will be touring regional Victorian and New South Wales towns on his way to Sydney and Canberra to demand justice for his son, Julian Assange.

The rally will be addressed by John Shipton, amongst others. From there, John Shipton will be embarking on his #HomeRun4Julian tour of regional Victorian and New South Wales towns on his way to Sydney and Canberra to demand justice for his son, Julian Assange.

Indigenous activists and 3CR Radical Radio show hosts Robbie Thorpe and Viv Malo will open the send off with Jacob Grech as MC. Introducing John Shipton, father of Julian Assange and Jerome Small, long time Human Rights Campaigner and supporter of WikiLeaks and Assange.

At 6:30pm Following the send-off of John Shipton, there will be the regular weekly "Melbourne for Wikileaks" (@melbourne4wiki) Vigil for Julian Assange outside Flinders Street Railway station, also on Swanston street, 1 kilometer south of the State Library.

Foreign Minister Marise Payne's double standards

In contrast to her loudly intervening on behalf of journalist Cheng Lei, and writer Yang Hengjun, who are both currently detained on criminal charges in China, Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne, in concert with this and former Australian governments, has ruthlessly turned her back on journalist and publisher, Julian Assange. Julian Assange, arguably of greater stature than any other journalist in the world, remains in the dungeons of the corrupt UK government, which is in league with the United States and its war machine. Assange's 'crime' was to expose United States war crimes (and those of other states) to the world. It is indicative of America's despotism that its allies will do its bidding against their own citizens, helping the US to try to destroy Assange as a warning to any journalist who might try to write the truth about war and corruption when it involves powerful people. It is shocking that President Trump pardoned the perpetrators of what came to be called 'Collateral Murder', but backed the continued persecution of Assange. Behind his saccharinely benign grandpa mask, Biden takes a similar stance. [Candobetter Editor: Title change on 10 Feb 2021]

If Assange had exposed sadistic Nazi crimes, he would be called a hero. By exposing sadistic United States war crimes, he is falsely and despicably branded as a criminal. Critics of the Nazi war and torture machine, when they were in power, were unlikely to survive. We know that critics of the American war and torture machine have similar poor life expectancy. What does that tell us about the US-NATO alliance and its most faithful supporter - Australia?

Some Australian journalists are more equal than others

The Australian government's efforts to free Cheng Lei from prison in China receive front page publicity.

"Payne said officials had visited Cheng six times during her detention, most recently at the end of January. In the days after Cheng’s August detention was made public, two Australian foreign correspondents were flown out of China, helped by Australian consular officials after the pair were questioned by China’s state security ministry." (Kirsty Needham, "Australian journalist formally arrested in China on suspicion of leaking secrets," Reuters, 8 Feb 2021.)

We saw similar grandstanding in efforts to rescue corporate media Al Jazeera journalist, Peter Greste who, along with Mohamed Fahmy and Baher Mohamed, on 29 December 2013, was arrested by Egyptian authorities, who complained of journalistic misrepresentation. The three journalists were accused of helping Egypt’s banned Muslim Brotherhood, and of doctoring news items in a manner that endangered the Egyptian state. Suzette Dreyfus later criticised Greste, for his repetition of opinions used to slur Julian's credentials as a journalist and publisher. Greste has written two such articles, "Julian Assange is no journalist: don’t confuse his arrest with press freedom," published by the so-called Alliance for Journalists' Freedom (AJF), April 16, 2019, and "Peter Greste on Julian Assange," also published by the AJF, Feb 25, 2020. With friends like this in the AJF, you might say, who needs enemies? Greste really throws the courageous Assange under a bus. Interesting, then, that Greste was released without explanation after an international outcry from the same western block that is either persecuting Assange or leaving him to rot.

ABC journalist, Bill Bertles and Financial Review journalist, Michael Smith, probably escaped China just before being arrested. Arriving in Australia, they were feted by their colleagues and the government. Appropriately, the Foreign Correspondents' Club of China:

“[...] denounced what it called the use of “foreign journalists as pawns in wider diplomatic disputes.” (Miriam Berger, "Two Australian journalists flee China after tense standoff,"Washington Post, Sept. 9, 2020.)

Meanwhile Julian is checkmated in England by foreign powers egregiously manipulating the judiciary.

Australia turns a blind eye to utter corruption in the British judicial system against Julian Assange, time and time again:

In 2010 Assange voluntarily answered questions from the Swedish police about a very strange story of an alleged rape claimed by a female journalist. The police found there was not enough evidence, closed the case, and told Assange he was free to continue on to England. The United States subsequently leaned on Sweden to reopen the case, and England arrested Assange, where he went through three hearings about extraditing him to Sweden. His lawyers warned him that such extradition and the charges were a ploy to get him extradited from Sweden to the United States, where he had as much chance of a fair trial as anyone would in Nazi Germany, who reported on the concentration camps. Assange jumped bail and sensibly applied for and received asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. After this the British continuously tried to extract him from the embassy.

During this time, unbeknownst to the world public, the Swedish prosecutor Marianne Ny contacted the English Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) in 2013 to let it know that she was going to withdraw the charges and an international warrant for Assange's arrest, (on the cooked up charges of 'rape'), because they were plainly excessive relative to the alleged crime. In an action demonstrating political influence on the justice system, biased against Assange, in favour of the United States, the British Prosecution Service tried to convince her not to drop the case for extradition. These communications were only revealed in 2018, although it was obvious to many that something like this must be going on. (See Bowcott, Owen; MacAskill, Ewen, "Sweden tried to drop Assange extradition in 2013, CPS emails show," The Guardian, 11 February 2018.)

Apparently, the Crown Prosecution Service succeeded in getting Prosecutor Ny to keep up the persecutory processes against Assange, despite public disapproval from within the Swedish legal fraternity. However, in March 2015, Sweden allowed Assange to respond to questions from the embassy in London. Most of the charges had expired under the Swedish statute of limitations by then but, to this day, many people in the world think that Assange was found guilty of rape. This is because of the eagerness of the corporate media to report and support the United States narrative, in preference to reporting the facts to a public that needs to be properly educated in this matter.

On 17 May Prosecutor Nye officially suspended their investigations and revoked the warrant to arrest Assange. The option of resuming the process was kept open in case Assange came to Sweden before August 2020.

On 11 April 2019, Assange was arrested and dragged out of the embassy by English police, in an aggressive display of naked contempt for his refugee status by the English state. Ecuadorian President Rafael Correra had been openly sympathetic to Assange, but could not serve a third term. He had refused to allow police into the embassy, according to his diplomatic rights under the Vienna Convention. The new president, Lenin Morero, quickly demonstrated hostility towards Assange and is thought to have been responding to inducements from the United States to breach the embassy refugee obligations to Assange. (See "Julian Assange Arrest Part of Lenin Moreno's Deal with IMF: Ex-Foreign Minister Patiño Under Morero," Telesur, 14 April 2019.)

Undercover Global, a Spanish defense and security firm, conducted multiple invasive surveillance activities on behalf of the United States CIA, involving filming and recording all Assange’s activities in the embassy, including conversations with his legal team, even when Assange tried to talk to them privately in the toilet area. Later British courts would unaccountably allow the United States to use this illegally gathered information, which should have been inadmissible, in their case for extraditing Assange. This conduct alone should utterly discredit their mission in the eyes of the world public but, sadly, the mass media has failed to alert and educate the public adequately.

Does anyone remember how the middle classes all over the world marched down their main streets, calling, "We are all Charlie!" when Islamic fundamentalists killed journalists at Charlie Hebdo in Paris? Yet, when a man who, arguably, will be the last journalist and publisher to be able to reach the world on issues of global surveillance, the military industrial complex, and mass media corruption, is thrown into a maximum security prison, silenced and maddened, there is an abject failure among the same classes who thought the Charlie Hebdo cause so chic, to shout, "We are all Julian Assange!" and demand that the Australian government intervene to stop his censorship, suppression, and imprisonment.

Federal Labour Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese ('Albo' - pictured right), on Australia Day, tweeted in praise of local Australian heroes, with the glaring exception of Julian Assange, the most widely-recognised Australian anywhere, whose suffering is unfathomable, and whose services to the anti-war movement are immeasurable. Why wasn't Julian Assange included and why does the Australian Government allow the UK and the US to continue their illegal persecution, imprisonment, and torture, of this Australian citizen?

 

Anthony Albanese's Australia Day tweet about Australian local heroes fails to mention another Australian who is at least as heroic of any one of the four people featured in that image, and far more famous: Julian Assange

In response to the following Tweet Anthony Albanese (@AlboMP) the Leader of the Labor Party Opposition in the Australian Federal Parliament:

"These are the true heroes of Australia. They put themselves on the line every day of this pandemic – to keep us safe, to keep us healthy, and to keep Australia moving forward. On this Australia Day, on behalf of the nation, we say thank you."

… I posted:

"Thanks to @julianAssange_">@julianAssange_ https://wikileaks.org and @SaveManning">@SaveManning we now know the truth about Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay, US Political corruption, … Surely, Julian Assange is no less an Australian hero? Why won't our Parliament demand Julian's freedom?"

Julian Assange is an Australian citizen who has committed no crime. Julian's only 'crime' is to set up the Wikleaks news service from which we have learned a great deal about the United States' wars, proxy wars, and economic sanctions, impacting extensively on humankind through recent decades. These malign actions by the U.S. government have cost the lives of many hundreds of thousands in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Lebanon, Palestine, Ukraine, Russia, Bolivia, Haiti, Venezuela, and elsewhere, as well as causing economic devastation. Were it not for Wikileaks revealing to us much of what the U.S. government would prefer to have kept hidden from us, we can only guess what further amount of carnage and devastation would have ensued.

As has been found by Nils Melzer, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture [1], Julian Assange has been effectively imprisoned and tortured for 9 years now. Following the initial 8 years Julian spent confined to the Ecuadorian Embassy, in order to avoid being extradited to the U.S., he was outrageously locked up for an additional 50 weeks in a maximum security prison, mostly in solitary confinement, by the disgraceful London magistrate Vanessa Barraitser, for skipping bail in 2012. He had skipped bail only in order to legitimately seek asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy. Fifty weeks is the absolute maximum that anyone can be sentenced to for skipping bail, and the length of Assange's sentence was unheard of. When this outrageous sentence expired, Barraitser further extended it, giving the U.S. government lawyers' more time to prepare their 'case' for Julian's extradition.

Should the United States government succeed in having Julian Assange extradited, he stands to be tried in secret [2] before a jury selected from the Eastern District of Virginia, a community which consists almost entirely of U.S. spy agency employees and their spouses. It is highly unlikely that any one of these jurors would pay the least regard to any evidence put forward in Julian Assange's defence. Almost certainly, he stands certain to be found guilty and thence to be sentenced to 175 years in solitary confinement. Once Julian Assange's sentence commences, he would only be allowed to leave his cell for 1 hour each day for exercise - this is effectively a death sentence, if not worse,

Even the extradition hearings have been a cruel medieval travesty of justice. Julian was deprived of sufficient preparation for his defense. He was subsequently brought into the courtroom in handcuffs, held inside a glass cage from which he could not hear clearly, and denied the right to speak in private to his lawyers. Public seating at the court was severely limited, so coverage of the event was grossly inadequate. The mainstream press avoided covering this crucial international matter and, when it did, it tended simply to publish press releases from the US legal team, ignoring Julian's defense. The trial was not publicly filmed and the alternative press had virtually no access to what was going on. Although disallowing Julian's extradition on medical grounds, the judge threw out matters relating to the political nature of the United State's pursuit of Julian because he had exposed its war-crimes and corruption, with US officials urging his assassination, and the public right to know about these crimes and anything else that governments do. Two Australian parliamentarians have visited Julian and have tried to stick up for him, but the Australian Government ignored their reports. Unfortunately the United States has been allowed to appeal even the judge's denial of extradition on medical grounds, and Julian continues to be held in prison whilst his massive team of persecutors prepare more ersatz legal arguments whereby they claim the right to cover up their own grotesque crimes.

Surely the Australian government has a duty of care to any Australian citizen, but particularly to a citizen who has contributed so much to humanity and who has committed no crime. Even skipping bail was deemed justified by the United Nations, which has tried to intervene on Julian's behalf, but which the UK government has persistently and shamelessly ignored.

It is long past the time in which the Australian government should have intervened against the U.S. government's efforts to kidnap Julian Assange from London. The Australian government should act now to demand that the U.K. immediately free Julian Assange from his illegal detention and send him on a flight back home to Australia, with a guarantee of immunity from United States pursuit when he gets here. Were the Australian government not to do this, the matter certainly should be raised on the floor of Parliament by Anthony Albanese and debated. But Albanese is missing in action so far.

Footnote[s]

[1] Nils Melzer's full title is "United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment"

[2] Were Julian Assange to be tried in public, the United States 'case' against him would fall in a heap. The whole world would see the real United States' government for the outlaw rogue regime that it really is. Although I have, so far, not viewed the documentary evidence for this, I think it is safe for me to assume that the United States' government intends to conduct its 'trial' of Julian Assange in secret, hidden away from public view. In retrospect, I don't know if this was ever raised by Julian's defence team, but had the U.S. prosecution refused to give an undertaking to try Julian public, it's 'case' would have been shown to be even more of a joke than it already was.

This household had a moment of great joy last night, to hear that Judge Vanessa Baraitser, presiding at the Magistrate's court, has disallowed Julian Assange's extradition on medical grounds. She found there was a high risk of his suiciding if confined in a US prison. However, she apparently threw out the grounds of public interest (protection of journalists); political persecution, and oppression. She also seems to have upheld the honouring of the UK treaty obligations to the United States, as the only public interest matter. For some of us, her decision on medical grounds, that Assange would probably suicide in US prison conditions, is equivalent to preventing the extradition of a prisoner to Nazi Germany, on grounds that they would probably not survive the concentration camps. The US prison system actually allows major corporations to benefit from slave labour of prisoners; it conducts secret trials; and it holds prisoners indefinitely without trial - as in Guantanamo Bay prison. The war crimes and international surveillance of governments and private individuals that Julian Assange exposed show the United States as a totally rogue state. It is not even a party to the International Criminal Court. Julian Assange's defense team called the UK treaty obligations with this rogue state into question. We need an international media and state denunciation of state alliances with the United States, but that would, ironically, require journalists to run the danger of being pursued by this rogue state, just as Julian Assange has been. One hopes that a defense of Julian Assange against the US appeal would benefit from a higher court looking again at the points of law disallowed by Judge Baraitser.

Taylor Hudak's YouTube Channel is acTVism. There you will find the latest Julian Assange case updates.

	Taylor Hudak	Mrs. Christine Assange	Julian Assange

The continued detention and torture of Julian Assange by the U.K. government has required tyranny and violations of International asylum Law, British Law, and the law of the United States. Ironically, while the Australian Government has recently apologised for shocking Australian military crimes in Afghanistan, it continues to allow a perverted legal system to punish Assange for exposing many similar crimes by the United States. In the mean time, by scrapping virtually all the nuclear weapons control treaties with Russia as well as the Open skies Treaty, Trump has made global war more likely.

The embedded 5:22 minute video, below, is of Taylor Hudak's 27 November update in the latest developments In Julian Assange's case. The full transcript, adapted from the YouTube text, is included below. In it there is a call for President Trump to salvage something of his reputation by issuing a pre-emptive pardon to Assange. Unfortunately Joe Biden is even less likely to want his own acts on policy in Iran to be exposed.

Transcript of Taylor Hudak's talk

On Thursday November 26th a mandatory 28-day hearing was scheduled at Westminster Magistrates' Court before Deputy Chief Magistrate, Tan Ikram. Like other remand prisoners, Assange must be presented before a court every 28 days so the judge can choose to either expand or terminate his detention. However, a Covid-19 outbreak in Belmarsh Prison, where Assange is being held, prevented him from attending the hearing.

It was reported that Edward Fitzgerald, speaking on behalf of the Defence, told the court that Assange has waived his right to attend the hearing in fear of contracting Covid-19. A week earlier, on November 18, a spokesperson for Her Majesty's Prison Service announced that Belmarsh Prison would implement stricter Coronavirus measures, after three inmates tested positive for the virus.

Assange and other prisoners are confined to their cell for 24 hours a day. Additionally, showers are no longer open and meals must be provided directly to the prisoners in their cell.

Days prior to the recent hearing, 56 people tested positive for Covid on Assange's house block, which holds 168 people and several were sent to the hospital, and while Covid-19 has a high survival rate for a healthy individual, Assange's chronic respiratory issues, combined with the ongoing psychological torture and years of medical neglect, put him at a greater risk of being impacted negatively by the effects of the virus.

On November 22, Doctors For Assange (https://doctorsassange.org/) issued another letter. The letter calls for the immediate end of the torture and medical neglect of Julian Assange. Additionally the letter states:

He is at a high medical risk from Covid-19 given a chronic lung condition and likely immunosuppression due to prolonged psychological torture. He meets internationally agreed criteria for release of vulnerable prisoners in light of Covid-19.

Assange's mother Christine Assange went to Twitter to state, "If my son dies from #Covid19 it will be murder!" She
cites that the UK government, the court, and the prison, have all been warned that Assange is vulnerable to the virus, that that the U.K. and U.S. government opposed emergency bail, and that Belmarsh Prison is placing all Covid-positive prisoners in Assange's wing. Because of the recent increase in Covid-positive prisoners, Reporters Without Borders, or RSF, has called for Assange's immediate release from prison.

The statement from RSF not only reflects on the potential impacts of the virus, but how new Covid safety measures in a prison including isolation could have seriously damaging effects on Assange's mental health.

With Assange's decision to not attend the hearing in fear of contracting the virus, the Defence, the Prosecution, and the Court, have scheduled for another hearing to take place on December 11th.

Meanwhile, outside the courthouse, Assange's supporters gathered for a peaceful protest ,demanding his freedom and for no U.S. extradition.

In other news, President Trump pardoned his former National Security Adviser General Michael Flynn. This prompted free press advocates and Assange supporters to amp up the pressure on the President to issue a pre-emptive pardon to Julian Assange.

His fiance and mother of his two children, Stella Morris, posted a heartfelt appeal to President Trump on Twitter asking for a pardon, including a picture with her two young children.

Morris wrote, "These are Julian's sons Max and Gabriel. They need their father. Our family needs to be whole again. I beg you, please bring him home for Christmas." And what better way for President Trump to stand up to what he calls the Deep State and the intelligence community, who have been actively working to undermine his Presidency, than to Pardon the man who exposed their corruption, Julian Assange. And, while it is the Trump Administration that has charged the Wikileaks founder, it is never too late to get on the right side of history, prevent further damage and uphold human rights.

If President Trump were to pardon Assange, it would not only be a historic move, but it would leave a lasting and positive impact on his legacy. Trump would not only be remembered favorably for preventing the destruction of the First Amendment and press freedom worldwide, he would be saving the life of Julian Assange.

Both the defense and prosecution have submitted closing arguments earlier this month and the judge (Vanessa Baraitser) is expected to make her ruling on January 4th 2010.

Demonstrations in support of Assange will be held on the 4th in London, (Washington) DC and other locations. To stay up to date on this case please, make sure that you subscribe to our YouTube channel (acTVism) and if you've missed any of our reports, go to our Julian Assange case updates playlist to get all caught up.

I'm Taylor Hudak. As always, thanks for tuning in and I'll see you in my next report

Previously published as First they came for Julian (2/11/20) | RT, Renegade Inc.

Attacks on human rights and freedom of speech are at the center of the Julian Assange extradition case, so why has the press coverage been so minimal?

The case may split opinion, but punishing Assange and others for bringing to public attention serious violations by our governments is averting our attention away from the bigger picture.

In the embedded video, below, journalist Richard Medhurst joins host Ross Ashcroft to discuss.

[Note alternative video URL is https://youtu.be/ZtwpzqAJMBo.]Chris Hedges discusses with Craig Murray, a former British Ambassador, the hearing underway in London to extradite Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, to the United States. Murray’s exhaustive reporting, which can be found at https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/, has become one of the few sources of reliable information about a hearing that has become notoriously difficult to cover because of court restrictions imposed on the alternative press, and which is being ignored for political reasons by most mainstream news organizations. If you wonder why there is no video-coverage available of the Assange mistrial, it is because (a) Human Rights NGOs, which were promised video-access, had this cut off after the first day and (b) despite access being available to most corporate and government media, mysteriously, none has availed themself of it. That is the reason that you and I are not able to monitor this mistrial, and that is possibly the reason it has been able to continue. The public gallery is virtually empty. This is really a secret trial. Only five family members of Assange have been allowed, with Craig Murray having the title of uncle, to Assange. Craig Murray's coverage of the trial is apparently under a shadow ban from the major internet platforms; his readership has dwindled to something like 10 per cent, despite his coverage providing a unique and valuable public window, where almost none exist, into this dark political tower that the Old Bailey has become.

Excerpt from Craig Murray's report for Hearing Day 21

Your Man in the Public Gallery: Assange Hearing Day 21
October 1, 2020

I really do not know how to report Wednesday’s events. Stunning evidence, of extreme quality and interest, was banged out in precis by the lawyers as unnoticed as bags of frozen chips coming off a production line.

The court that had listened to Clair Dobbin spend four hours cross-examining Carey Shenkman on individual phrases of first instance court decisions in tangentially relevant cases, spent four minutes as Noam Chomsky’s brilliant exegesis of the political import of this extradition case was rapidly fired into the court record, without examination, question or placing into the context of the legal arguments about political extradition.

Twenty minutes sufficed for the reading of the “gist” of the astonishing testimony of two witnesses, their identity protected as their lives may be in danger, who stated that the CIA, operating through Sheldon Adelson, planned to kidnap or poison Assange, bugged not only him but his lawyers, and burgled the offices of his Spanish lawyers Baltazar Garzon. This evidence went unchallenged and untested.

The rich and detailed evidence of Patrick Cockburn on Iraq and of Andy Worthington on Afghanistan was, in each case, well worthy of a full day of exposition. I should love at least to have seen both of them in the witness box explaining what to them were the salient points, and adding their personal insights. Instead we got perhaps a sixth of their words read rapidly into the court record. There was much more.

I have noted before, and I hope you have marked my disapproval, that some of the evidence is being edited to remove elements which the US government wish to challenge, and then entered into the court record as uncontested, with just a “gist” read out in court. The witness then does not appear in person. This reduces the process from one of evidence testing in public view to something very different. Wednesday confirmed the acceptance that this “Hearing” is now devolved to an entirely paper exercise. [...] Read more at https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2020/10/your-man-in-the-public-gallery-assange-hearing-day-21/.

Daily, lively and dedicated coverage at https://defend.wikileaks.org/liveblog/ from what is closest to the horse's mouth, from https://defend.wikileaks.org/. There is plenty to read about, including a defense whereby Julian Assange is located on the autism spectrum and strong precedents where England refused US request for extradition in very similar cases, which took into consideration the harshness of US prison conditions and the likelihood of suicide.

In the cases of Lauri Love and Gary McKinnon, the U.S. government was blocked from extraditing them because the United Kingdom High Court of Justice (Love) and the British Home Secretary (McKinnon) recognized their Asperger’s syndrome would result in degrading or inhuman treatment that violated human rights. Source: https://shadowproof.com/2020/09/23/doctor-assange-aspergers-prison-extradition-trial/.

The video below is of an international peoples' forum on Assange's predicament, dated 21 September 2020.

The Australian ABC has repeatedly reported on the expulsion of two Australian journalists from China this week, and the torture and disappearance of Chinese journalists. Yet it has said nothing about our own Julian Assange, who currently faces a rigged trial, accused of breaking the laws of a country he has never entered, whilst held in prison in a country which has ignored his refugee status and tolerates US use of information obtained illegally through spying. British journalist, Afshin Rattansi, is an exception in the anglosphere media world in his continued efforts (see video below) to show the world how Britain, Australia, and the United States, are treating the man who exposed US war-crimes.

This episode of Going Underground, begins with a montage of some of its most prominent guests who have come out in support of Wikileaks Founder Julian Assange, who now faces his US extradition trial, including Noam Chomsky, John Pilger, Oliver Stone, Roger Waters, Slavoj Zizek, Benjamin Zephaniah and many more. Next, Going Underground’s Social Media Producer Farhaan Ahmed heads down to the Old Bailey where Julian Assange is facing his US extradition trial and speaks to Wikileaks Editor-in-Chief Kristinn Hrafnsson, legendary journalist and filmmaker John Pilger and fashion icon Vivienne Westwood who all attended the pro-Assange protests outside the court. Finally, Going Underground speaks to Dr. Yusef Salaam, one of the Central Park 5, who were wrongfully convicted of the rape and assault of a white female jogger in Manhattan’s Central Park. He discusses what it was like to serve out his sentence in a supermax prison, despite knowing he was innocent, the racist overtones of the media and criminal justice system that wrongfully prosecuted him and 4 others, the intervention of Donald Trump and Pat Buchanan in the case calling for their deaths, the Black Lives Matter (BLM) uprising in the United States and what this means for the police, criminal justice system and the racist history of the United States and much more!

Previously published as Re: Assange (28/2/20) | RT CrossTalk, Podcast: https://soundcloud.com/rttv/re-assange?in=rttv/sets/crosstalk-1.

In London, Julian Assange is in court to decide whether he will be extradited to the US to face espionage charges. The stakes could not be higher. Assange's liberty, even life, is on the line. Freedom of speech is also on trial – though you wouldn't know that from the mainstream media. This is a Crosstalking debate featuring Joe Lauria, Taylor Hudak, and Alexander Mercouris, who have all been attending protests outside the courts where a kangaroo trial is being staged for Julian Assange.

Day four of Julian Assange’s extradition hearing saw lawyers discussing whether international law supersedes English law and a dramatic rejection by the judge of a simple request for Assange to be allowed to sit with his lawyers. [This article first published at https://www.rt.com/uk/481823-assange-judge-denies-bench-lawyers/ on 27 February 2020 at 8pm.].

This video is from the 26 February episode of Afshin Rattansi's show, Going Underground. On this episode of Going Underground, Afshin Rattansi speaks to CIA Whistle-blower Jeffrey Sterling, who was convicted for revealing details about Operation Merlin. He discusses the extradition trial and persecution Julian Assange is facing, his own experience of being prosecuted for whistleblowing on circumstantial evidence, whether the Wikileaks founder will face a fair trial in Virginia, his experiences of racism with the CIA, his advice for other potential whistle-blowers and more!

English language version link below, but now appears to be broken:

Another protest has been organised for today outside the Melbourne State Library to demand that the British government refuse the United States' illegal request to have Australian journalist extradited to the United States. (See Rallies in Australia and NZ to demand freedom for Assange and Manning. No to US extradition! (28/1/20). See also Protest Melbourne Friday 6:30pm to stop extradition of Julian Assange by outlaw Trump regime> (6/2/20) advertising the rally for Julian Assange held on Friday also outside the State Library). In the United States Julian Assange would face a kangaroo court and be jailed for up to 150 years for revealing to the world U.S. war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan.