The following article has been adapted from the attached leaflet (modified, 29/9/23 - previous version here), which Melbourne supporters of Julian Assange will hand out at this week's Friday afternoon vigil for Julian Assange, starting 5pm outside Flinders Street Station. If you are free, please come along, this week and (until Julian is free) on following Fridays, to hear speeches, hold up banners or hand out leaflets to passersby.
With 1,200 people employed by the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, it is hard to believe that Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is unaware of the facts:>
- Julian Assange, who has won 23 prestigious media awards for his groundbreaking Wikileaks news service, has broken no British law;
- not one of Wikileaks’ revelations has ever been shown to be untrue; and
- not one life, whether in the US millitary or elsewhere, has ever been endangered by any of Wikileaks’ reporting.
Yet, since 11 April 2019, four-and-a-half years ago, when Julian Assange was illegally arrested inside the London Ecuadorian Embassy, he has been locked away in solitary confinement for more than 23 hours per day.
What jury would have locked Assange away even for one day?
No way could a fairly-selected jury or a judge with integrity have kept Assange behind bars even for one night. But Assange was tried before the corrupt judge, Vannessa Barraitser, who was under the direct British government orders. She made Julian Assange, who has never been accused of violence, face court from inside a glass box, from which he could not hear properly, was unable to speak privately with his own barristers, and could be overheard by the prosecution barristers when he tried. Astoundingly, he was not allowed to cross-examine the chief prosecution witness, Sigurdur Thordarsson. Thordarsson later admitted his claims - including that Assange had asked him to commit computer intrusion to illegally record conversations amongst members of parliament and NATO officials - were lies.
Had Assange even once been permitted due legal process he would, a long time ago, have been free to live wherever he chose, with his wife Stella and their two children.
Even during the recent Talisman-Sabre joint military exercises from late July on the central coast of Queensland, both Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Foreign Minister Penny Wong failed to refute lies put to them about Julian Assange by US Secretary-of-State Antony Blinken. Blinken claimed that Assange’s journalism had endangered thousands of US lives, although the US Government had already admitted that this was not true.
Had Julian’s lawyer, Jennifer Robinson, been there with Albanese and Wong, as she should have been, since they were supposedly advocating for Assange, Robinson would have shown Blinken for the liar he is, with the evidence that no US servicemen had ever been endangered by Wikileaks’ reporting. Blinken could not then have claimed any plausible excuse for his government’s monstrous treatment of Assange.
How you can help: Attend protests for Julian Assange, the weekly Friday night vigil at 5pm at Flinders Street Station, listen to speakers, make speeches, and hand out leaflets.
See Melbourne Supporters for Julian Facebook page and https://candobetter.net
Comments
James Sinnamon
Sun, 2023-10-01 03:06
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Leaflets make protests for Julian Assange much more effective
I posted the following beneath an Adelaide for Assange Facebook post which announced that they protested every Tuesday outside of the Adelaide of of the Foreign Minister Penny Wong :
In my experience, our Friday evening vigils for Julian Assange, outside of Melbourne's Flinders Street Station are a lot more effective when we hand out leaflets.
Last Friday evening, we handed out approximately 250 copies of the double-sided A5 leaflet entitled "Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, end the illegal torture and imprisonment of Julian Assange or step aside". The PDF file from which the leaflet was printed is at https://candobetter.net/files/endTheIllegalImprisonmentOrStepAside_29sep23.pdf . It is embedded within the article of the same name, which has been adapted from the leaflet. The article is at https://candobetter.net/geoffrey-taylor/blog/6711/prime-minister-anthony-albanese-end-illegal-torture-and-imprisonment.
If you would like to hand out copies of that leaflet next Tuesday, please feel encouraged to download that file. I got those leaflets printed at Officeworks. I print them in black and white (colour costs quite a bit more ) for 10c per side. I then get charged $1 to have the printed A4 pages guillotined into twice as many A5 leaflets. So, to print out 300 double-sided A5 leaflets, I pay $31 .
James Sinnamon
Sat, 2023-10-28 00:53
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The only fair outcome for Assange is to have his day in court
The following was posted as a comment beneath ‘Enough is enough’: Albanese talks to Biden about Assange (23/11/2023) | The Age :
The fairytale is expecting that private requests should overturn due process and openness in court - the things Julian campaigned for, instead of trying to avoid openness and do things secretly - as here.
Having his day in court is the only fair outcome - avoiding it is enough is enough.
My comment : For Julian Assange to '[Have] his day in court' would require that, unlike all previous court hearings, the case would be decided by a fairly selected jury, rather than, as was previously the case, by a succession of crooked judges each of which was under direct orders from the British government. In such a trial, Assange, or his barrister would have the right to effectively cross-examine each of the hostile witnesses and have heard testimony from a large number of sympathetic witness. No court, which had tried Julian Assange in this way, would have been capable of keeping him behind bars at the conclusion of the trial.
James Sinnamon
Mon, 2023-11-27 09:35
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After Labor's abandonment of Assange, primary vote has hit 31%
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