Monday 25th of November 2024
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enough is enough!!!! time to put the undiplomatic boxing gloves on!!!!!!!!!!!!

The decision by the UK Government overnight to approve the extradition of Julian Assange to the US, to face trumped up espionage and other charges, is an outrageous betrayal of the rule of law, media freedom and human rights.

This matter is so deeply wrong on so many levels. Mr Assange is a Walkley Award winning Australian journalist who revealed hard evidence of US war crimes and other misconduct. This outraged Washington and the Americans are desperate to get even, with the UK and Australian governments tripping over themselves in the rush to please the US and go along for the ride.

Good grief the US doesn’t even have global legal extraterritoriality, and nor does the UK/US extradition agreement include the charges levelled at Mr Assange.

Like many Australians I’ve given the new Federal Government plenty of time to sort this matter out. Well times up for the new Federal Government hinting at caring and then doing nothing. The new Australian Government is now to be condemned for abandoning an Australian hero journalist facing the very real prospect of spending the rest of his life rotting in a US prison.

 

READ MORE:

https://andrewwilkie.org/new-australian-government-abandons-julian-assange/

 

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW......

pussyfooting has not worked…...

The Albanese government insists it will not conduct “diplomacy by megaphone” as it faces calls to do more to prevent the extradition of WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange to the US.

On Saturday, the British home secretary, Priti Patel, approved the extradition of Assange to the US, where he is charged with breaching the US Espionage Act and faces up to 175 years in jail if convicted. He has 14 days to appeal the decision.

 

Supporters of the Australian citizen, including on Labor’s backbench, have urged the new prime minister, Anthony Albanese, to do more to pressure the United States to drop the case, which has been running since 2010, when WikiLeaks published a trove of leaked documents about the Afghanistan and Iraq wars along with diplomatic cables.

 

The minister for employment and workplace relations, Tony Burke, said the government’s view was that the case had gone on too long and that conversations were happening.

“We’re not going to conduct diplomacy by megaphone. This case has gone on for far too long. We said that in opposition, we’ve repeated that in government,” Burke told Sky News on Sunday.

“The issue needs to be brought to a close. Australia is not a party to the prosecution that’s happening here [and] each country has its own legal system.

“The days of diplomacy being conducted and conversations with government being conducted by megaphone, text messages being exposed – that was the way the previous government behaved. We’ve been building constructive relationships again with our allies and they’re conversations that happen government to government.”

 

Labor MP Julian Hill, who has been a vocal advocate for Assange, described Patel’s decision to approve the extradition as “appalling”, and compared his plight with army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, who was the source of the leak.

“Manning, who leaked classified material exposing US war crimes, has been pardoned, yet Assange who published it (a journalistic activity), is facing an effective death sentence,” he said on Twitter on Saturday.

“There can never be a legal solution to this case. It is inherently political. Political cases should never be the subject of extradition. We should speak up for our fellow Australian and request these charges be dropped and he not be extradited.”

Manning was released in 2017 after Barack Obama commuted her 35-year military prison sentence in one of his final acts as president.

Independent MP Andrew Wilkie called on Albanese to make an immediate and direct appeal to the US president, Joe Biden, and the UK prime minister, Boris Johnson, on behalf of Assange.

“I have no doubt that Anthony Albanese has enough influence over the British prime minister to bring this to an end if he picks up the phone and says, ‘end this madness’,” Wilkie said on Saturday. READ MORE:https://www.theguardian.com/media/2022/jun/19/australia-wont-conduct-megaphone-diplomacy-on-julian-assange-amid-calls-to-intervene  READ FROM TOP.  FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!