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enough is enough — bring him home......
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Letter to the Prime Minister of Australia, The Honourable Anthony Albanese I accuse! First Published: NEW DAWN of yourdemocracy.net, 30 October 2022. By Gus Leonisky Sir, Would you allow me, grateful as I am for the kind reception you once extended to me, to show my concern about maintaining your well-deserved prestige and to point out that your star which, until now, has shone so brightly, risks being dimmed by the most shameful and indelible of stains? Unscathed by vile slander, you have won the hearts of all. You are radiant in the patriotic glory of what should be our country’s decent alliance with Russia and trade with China, you are about to preside over the solemn triumph of our Labor Revival, the jewel that crowns this new time of labour, truth, and freedom. But what filth this wretched Assange affair has cast on (y)our name — I wanted to say ‘rule’. A court of England, under orders, has just dared to condemn him to deportation, a supreme insult to all truth and justice. And now the image of Australia is sullied by this filth, and history shall record that it was under your Prime Ministership that this crime against society is continuing. You cannot wash your hands of his blood.... As they have dared, so shall I dare. Dare to tell the truth, as I have pledged to tell it, in full, since the normal channels of justice have failed to do so. My duty is to speak out; I do not wish to be an accomplice in this travesty. My nights would otherwise be haunted by the spectre of the innocent man, far away, suffering the most horrible of tortures for a crime he did not commit. And it is to you, Sir, that I shall proclaim this truth, with all the force born of the revulsion of an honest man. Knowing your integrity, I am convinced that you do not know the truth. But to whom if not to you, the first magistrate of the country, shall I reveal the vile baseness of the real guilty parties? The truth, first of all, about Assange’s trial and imprisonment: At the root of it all is one evil man, a US president, named Trump, Bush, Obama or Biden, who have been at the time major deceivers. They are the entire Assange case, and the entirety of it will only come to light when an honest enquiry firmly establishes their actions and irresponsibilities. They appear to be the shadiest and most complex of creatures, spinning outlandish intrigues, stooping to the deceits of cheap thriller novels, complete with fake documents, unscrupulous decrees, meetings in secret spots, mysterious women scurrying around at night, peddling fabricated evidence. These presidents were the ones who came up with the scheme of dictating the sexual charges in Sweden; they were the ones who had the idea of observing Assange in a camera-lined room. And they were the ones that decent people discovered to be plotting a CIA assassination of the accused man while he slept, hoping that, jolted by the sudden flash of knives and guns, Assange would die out his “guilt”. I need say no more but I will: let us seek and we shall find. I am stating simply that the Presidents of the USA, as the officers of justice employed with the duty to protect the truth and thus Assange, are the first and the most grievous offenders in the ghastly miscarriage of justice that is being committed. But what can we expect from ruthless Emperors? The indictment had already been for some time in the hands of Rumsfeld, Head of the Intelligence Office, who has since retired of a paralytic death. Information was ‘leaked’, papers were disappearing, then as they continue to do to this day; and, as the search for the author of the indictment progressed, little by little, an a priori assumption developed that it could only have come from an officer of the highest order, and furthermore, a US President(s). This interpretation, true on both counts, shows how superficially the indictment was analysed, for a logical examination shows that it could only have come from them. So an internal search was conducted. Handwriting samples were compared, as if this were some family affair, a traitor to be sniffed out and expelled from within the DoD. And, although I have no desire to dwell on a story that is only partly known, some Swedish women entered the scene as soon as the slightest suspicion fell upon Assange. From that moment on, they were the one who ‘invented’ Assange the sex maniac, the ones who orchestrated their rape/affair under US “intelligence” instruction. The women boasted that they would confuse him and make him confess all. Oh, yes, there was of course the Minister for War, Dick Cheney, a man of apparently mediocre but devious intellect; and there were also John C. Demers, Assistant Attorney General for National Security, G. Zachary Terwilliger, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, and James A. Dawson, Special Agent in Charge, Criminal Division, FBI Washington Field Office, who made the announcement. First Assistant U.S. Attorney Tracy Doherty-McCormick, Assistant U.S. Attorneys Kellen S. Dwyer, Thomas W. Traxler, Alexander P. Berrang, and Gordon D. Kromberg, and Trial Attorneys Adam L. Small and Nicholas O. Hunter of the Justice Department’s National Security Division are prosecuting the case. In England, where Assange is kept away in torture conditions, District Judge Paul Goldspring issued the order in a brief hearing at Westminster Magistrates’ Court, as Assange watched by video link from Belmarsh Prison and Assange’s supporters rallied outside the courthouse, demanding he be freed. Priti Patel, a desperate devious UK Home Secretary eager to please the deceitful Americans, yielded to her own erroneous interpretation of the law. Let's also mention District Judge Vanessa Baraitser, whose crooked conscience allowed for many accommodations, after she had previously ruled that while US prosecutors had met the tests for Mr Assange to be extradited for trial, but showed the US was incapable of preventing him from attempting to take his own life, in their horrid prison system. But, at the end of the day, it all started with the US Presidents, who led wars, and hypnotised men like Blair and Howard, for, as adepts of spiritualism and the occult, and who, like Biden, conversed with Catholic spirits of a hypocritical god. Nobody would ever believe the experiments to which they subjected the unfortunate Assange, the traps they set for him, the wild investigations, the monstrous fantasies, the whole demented torture. Ah, that first trial! What a nightmare it is for all who know it in its true details. The English police had Assange arrested and placed in solitary confinement. They terrorised Mrs Assange, telling her that, protests or not, that they could not care less about Julian. Meanwhile, the unfortunate Assange was quietly proclaiming his innocence, despite not being allowed to defend himself. And this is how the case proceeded, like some fifteenth century chronicle, shrouded in mystery, swamped in all manner of nasty twists and turns, all stemming from trumped-up charges, including a stupid charge of being a spy. This was not only a bit of cheap trickery but also the most outrageous fraud imaginable, for all of the notorious revealed by Assange of the US Empire bad deeds, were facts. BAD DEEDS INDEED. I dwell on this, because this is the germ of it all, whence the true crime would emerge, that horrifying miscarriage of justice that has blighted Australia, the USA and the UK. I would like to point out how this travesty was made possible, how it sprang out of the machinations of the US “intelligence” agencies that fabricated falsehoods that they would later feel compelled to impose them as holy and indisputable truth. Having set it all in motion merely by carelessness and lack of intellect, they seem at worst to have given in to the political bias of their milieu and the prejudices of their exclusive class. In the end, they allowed stupidity to prevail. But now, Assange is still appealing the court judgements. Behind the closed doors, the utmost secrecy is demanded. Had a traitor opened the border to the enemy and driven Saddam Hussein straight to Washington the measures of secrecy and silence could not have been more stringent. The public was deceived; rumors flew of the most horrible acts, the most monstrous deceptions, lies that were an affront to our history. The public, naturally, was taken in. No punishment could be too harsh. The people clamoured for the traitor to be publicly stripped naked and demanded to see him writhing with remorse on his rock of infamy. Could these things be true, these unspeakable acts, these deeds so dangerous that they must be carefully hidden behind closed doors to keep Europe and the whole planet from going up in flames? No! They were nothing but the truth being shut up, in a cover-up of the most preposterous fantasies imaginable. To be convinced of this one need only read carefully the accusation as it was presented before the courts. How flimsy it is! The fact that someone could have been convicted on these charges is the ultimate iniquity. I defy decent men to read it without a stir of indignation in their hearts and a cry of revulsion, at the thought of the undeserved punishment being meted out there inside Belmarsh isolation. Assange spoke the truth: a crime! He exposed compromising papers of the Empire: a crime! He would occasionally have sex: a crime! He was hard-working, and strove to be well informed: a crime! He did not become confused: a crime! He sought asylum: a crime! And how childish the language is, how groundless the accusation! We also heard talk of umpteen charges but we found only one, the one about the fake indictment, and we learn that even the experts could not agree. Some faced military pressure when they dared to come to a conclusion other than the desired one. We were told also that CIA officers had testified against Assange. We still do not know what questions they were asked, but it is certain that not all of them implicated him. It should be noted, furthermore, that all of them came from the President(s)’s Office. The whole case had been handled as an internal affair, among insiders. And we must not forget this: members of the General Staff had sought this trial to begin with and had already passed judgment. And now they were passing judgment once again. So all that remained of the case were fake indictments. It is said that within the council chamber the judges should naturally be leaning toward acquittal. It becomes clear why, at that point, as justification for the verdict, it became vitally important to turn up some damning evidence, secret document that, like God, could not be shown, but which explained everything, and was invisible, unknowable, and incontrovertible. I deny the existence of these "proofs". With all my strength, I deny it! Some trivial note, maybe, about some easy women, wherein a certain D... was becoming too insistent, no doubt some demanding pimp who felt he wasn’t getting a good enough price for the use of them. But a document concerning national defense could not be produced without sparking an immediate investigation in this fake deceitful declaration of war against Iraq? No! No! It is a lie, all the more odious and cynical in that its perpetrators are getting off free without even admitting it. They stirred up all the Western media, they hid behind the understandable commotion they had set off, they sealed their lips while troubling our hearts and perverting our spirit. I know of no greater crime against the state. These, Sir, are the facts that explain how this miscarriage of justice came about; The evidence of Assange’s character, his inffluence, the lack of motive and his continued affirmation of telling the truth combined to show that he is the victim of the lurid imagination of an American conspiracy, the delusive “intelligence” circles surrounding him, and the “dirty spy” obsession that is the scourge of our time. And now we come to the Ukraine case. Eight years have passed since the Minsk agreements, some consciences remain profoundly troubled, become anxious, investigate, and wind up convinced that Russia is innocent, and that Kiev, helped by the USA, is reviving its nazi past. Yes. YES! I shall not chronicle these points and the subsequent conclusion reached by French President Emmanuel Macron pointing to the 2015 Minsk Agreement between Kyiv and Moscow as the blueprint for a breakthrough in the Ukraine crisis. Following talks with his Russian and Ukrainian counterparts, Macron said that the Minsk II agreement – which was aimed at ending the war in eastern Ukraine – is the “only path on which peace can be built”. What is certain is that Kiev never once wished to adhere to the agreements — as explained by Poroshenko himself, former President of “Ukraine”, that he temporarily agreed to them in order to buy time to arm his country to the eyeballs, with the help of the US. NATO, the UK and of the EU… It's a miracle that Zelensky was not given nukes! Here, we need to explore the devious US Empire’s intent: It’s complicated. But people in Ukraine are dying and they blame Putin for being a thug by wagging war against their free country. He is a thug… Who can blame them — though so far, not that many people —compared to a full open warfare — have been killed, mostly Ukrainian soldiers. MORE WILL DIE SOON.
The Ukrainians don’t know that their sacrifice or plight, lies at the heart of a 1905 “commitment”… I am with them. Why should we care about old stuff that have no bearing on our enjoyment of life that Vladimir Putin is taking away now with his ruthless armies. A serious article in Pearls and Irritations asks the question: why did not Biden and Blinken sign a non-aggression pact with Russia. Why did they tell Putin to fuck off when he asked the US and NATO to respect decent red lines? Why? It would have been simple: sign an agreement that stops Ukraine dreaming of becoming a NATO member — as was agreed between Reagan and Gorbachev, when the Berlin wall fell. Sign an agreement that Ukraine will respect the Minsk agreements. End of story. Putin happy and Ukraine can live in peace. So why did the US not agree on Russia’s terms and did not want to even discuss these simple peace proposals anyway? No we had to invent the idea that putin wanted to conquer Europe! as if!!!! We had to demonise Putin, who to a great extend is the best pragmatic president the planet has had since General de Gaulle and PM Churchill (who was a racist misogynist by the way). Putin's clarity of mind IS FRIGHTENING US! BECAUSE WE ARE DEVIOUS, as he exposes our Western dirty schemes....
So, the USA started to become a world Empire and dreamt to divide the world in pie portions. They still do. See their Navycom... “The Western goal is to weaken, divide and ultimately destroy our nation. They are openly stating that, since they managed to break up the Soviet Union in 1991, now [they want] to split Russia into many separate regions that will be at each other’s throats.” Russian President Vladimir Putin “Cheney ‘wanted to see the dismantlement not only of the Soviet Union and the Russian empire but of Russia itself, so it could never again be a threat to the rest of the world.’...The West must complete the project that began in 1991 …. Until Moscow’s empire is toppled, though, the region—and the world—will not be safe…” (“Decolonize Russia”, The Atlantic) This has been done under the theory of Mackinder… I know, some people thought it was a bullshit theory… Mackinder was doing the theorising for the British Empire in 1905 and, though we can only find unreliable tidbits, one can assume that Mackinder and Cecil Rhodes worked together for the British Empire “to conquer the world”. By 1919, this “second" British Empire had crashed somewhat. WW1 and all that, you know… The Yanks were preparing to take over anyway. They already had "conquered" the Latin Americas with the Monroe Doctrine...
Sir Halford John Mackinder (15 February 1861 – 6 March 1947) was an English geographer, academic and politician, who is regarded as one of the founding fathers of both geopolitics and geostrategy. He was the first Principal of University Extension College, Reading (which became the University of Reading) from 1892 to 1903, and Director of the London School of Economics from 1903 to 1908. Critics of his theory argue that in modern days, it is outdated due to the evolution of technological warfare, as, at the time of publication, Mackinder only considered land and sea powers. In modern days there are possibilities of attacking a rival without the need for a direct invasion, of using “proxy wars”, cyber attacks, aircraft or even use of long range missile strikes. Other critics argue that "Mackinderian analysis is not rational because it assumes conflict in a system where there is none”. ALL These criticisms are not valid. One can start a conflict by proxy or under false pretences, like Saddam’s WMDs. If you still believe that there was “intelligence failures”, YOU’RE A DORK. There was no intelligence failures, but fabrication of evidence for war — AND WE SEE THE SAME DISTORTION OF TRUTH COMING FROM AMERICA IN REGARD TO RUSSIA AND UKRAINE. As well we (the “West”) poke China for no reason. We’ve seen this done time and time again by the USA in many countries. Meanwhile, the core values of the prizes have become incommensurable. So what is it all about:
According to Mackinder, the Earth's land surface was divisible into: • The World-Island, comprising the interlinked continents of Europe, Asia, and Africa (Afro-Eurasia). This was the largest, most populous, and richest of all possible land combinations. • The offshore islands, including the British Isles and the islands of Japan. • The outlying islands, including the continents of North America, South America, and Oceania. The Heartland lay at the centre of the world island, stretching from the Volga to the Yangtze and from the Himalayas to the Arctic. Mackinder's Heartland was the area then ruled by the Russian Empire and after that by the Soviet Union, minus the Kamchatka Peninsula region, which is located in the easternmost part of Russia, near the Aleutian Islands and Kurile islands. In modern days this is called Siberia. So why would Siberia attract envy from the West? (see map). Answer: RESOURCES. We are also told that Mackinder's theory was never fully proven as no singular power in history has had control of all three of the regions at the same time. Apparently, the closest this ever occurred was during the Crimean War (1853-1856) whereby Russia attempted to fight for control over the Crimean Peninsula, ultimately losing to the French and the British. Yet the Russians never threatened the outlying islands, though Sydney Harbour, Australia, still has old fortification built “to stop a Russian Invasion”. We should know what happened to Crimea since and why the West still does not recognise Crimea as Russian… The Russian ownership of Crimea goes against the deep desire of the Empire to control the Heartland. The "greatest prize” so far, which some US analyst called "Ukraine coming to the West” which is part of conquering the next: the Heartland. This would come after having defeated Russia, the Baltic states and half of China which in the times of Mackinder (1905) was a populous degenerate opium smoking lot. The rest of the "Rimlands" were to be easily controlled from the sea, including China, via Hong Kong. Is this Mackinder’s plan still alive? Yes. It has been modified though and improved by other “thinkers” of the US Empire, such as Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld and Brzezinski… The Heartland is still the big prize, but Putin (and Xi) is in the way. This is why Blinken and Biden did not want to sign anything that would prohibit the US from accessing the Heartland “legally”, by force or by cajole, eventually. Dear Anthony, are you still with me? Putin knows all this history, going back way before Catherine the Great. He knows about Armand-Emmanuel de Vignerot du Plessis, duc de Richelieu, who joined the counter-revolutionary émigré army of Louis XVI's cousin, the Prince de Condé, which was headquartered in the German frontier town of Coblenz. Putin knows that after Condé's forces suffered several defeats, Catherine the Great offered Richelieu position in her army, as well as other officers serving under Condé In the Russian army, Richelieu achieved the rank of Major General but later resigned his commission after what he considered an unwarranted reprimand by Catherine's successor, Czar Paul I. His prospects brightened, however, after Paul was murdered in 1801. The new Russian emperor, Czar Alexander I, was one of his friends. The erasure of Richelieu's name from the list of prohibited émigrés who could not legally return to France, which Richelieu on his own had previously been unable to secure from Napoleon Bonaparte, was accorded on the request of Alexander's new imperial government, and in 1803 Alexander appointed Armand-Emmanuel de Vignerot du Plessis, duc de Richelieu Governor of Odessa. Two years later, he became Governor-General of a large swathe of land recently conquered from the Ottoman Empire and called New Russia, which included the territories of Chersonese, Ekaterinoslav and the Crimea. Richelieu commanded a division in the Turkish War of 1806–1807, and was engaged in frequent expeditions to the Caucasus. Richelieu played a role during Ottoman plague epidemic which hit Odessa in autumn 1812. Dismissive of any attempt to forge a compromise between quarantine requirements and free trade, Prince Kuriakin (the Saint Petersburg-based High Commissioner for Sanitation) countermanded Richelieu's orders. In the eleven years of Richelieu’s administration, Odessa greatly increased in size and importance, eventually becoming the third largest city in the RUSSIAN empire by population. The grateful Odessites erected a bronze monument to him in 1828. These are the famous Odessa Steps, crowned by a statue of Richelieu.
Armand-Emmanuel de Vignerot du Plessis, duc de Richelieu had a somewhat busy but West-forgotten "extraordinary" life in helping shape history that still reverberate today in Odessa…
As the Kiev nazis, supported by the USA, were dishonouring the Minsk agreements that had been designed to protect the mostly RUSSIAN population in the Donbass region, and as Kiev nazis were about to invade it, Putin had one alternative: Pack up and give the Heartland to the Empire or fight back, preventing “prizes” such as Ukraine fall in the hand of the US Empire… It sounds a bit far fetched, but we're dealing with the US deep State (the Swamp) the people of which have no qualms and no morals, except conquer. I ask you, does the US Empire want to destroy Russia.? Your guess could be better than mine which is YES… My other guess is that Putin hates war as much as anybody else in the streets of Kyiv or Moscow protesting against him. But history in evolution is not a kind mistress. The West has been lying to Russia since 1917 and is still lying with renewed vigour. My dear friend Anthony, Prime Minister of Australia, you should read “The US Grand Strategy and the Eurasian Heartland in the Twenty-First Century” Pages 26-46 — Published online: 21 Feb 2009 — and written by professor Emre İşeri From an offensive realist theoretical approach, this paper assumes that great powers are always looking for opportunities to attain more power in order to feel more secure. This outlook has led me to assert that the main objective of the US grand strategy in the twenty-first century is primacy or global hegemony. I have considered the US grand strategy as a combination of wartime and peacetime strategies and argued that the Caspian region and its hinterland, where I call the Eurasian Heartland, to use the term of Sir Halford Mackinder, has several geo-strategic dimensions beyond its wide-rich non-OPEC untapped hydro-carbon reserves, particularly in Kazakhstan. For my purposes, I have relied on both wartime strategy (US-led Iraq war) and peacetime strategy of supporting costly Baku-Tbilis-Ceyhan (BTC) to integrate regional untapped oil reserves, in particular Kazakh, into the US-controlled energy market to a great extent. This pipeline's contribution to the US grand strategy is assessed in relation to potential Eurasian challengers, Russia and China. The article concludes with an evaluation of the prospects of the US grand strategy in the twenty-first century. Please, read the rest…. Yes! We have before us the ignoble spectacle of men who are sunken in debts and crimes being hailed as innocent, whereas the honour of a man, Assange whose life may be far from spotless but has been vilely imprisoned: A society that sinks to that level has fallen into decay. Truth and justice, so ardently longed for! How terrible it is to see them trampled, unrecognized and ignored! I can feel senile President Biden’s soul withering and I hope that one day he will even feel sorry for having been a warmonger, when questioned by the truth-seeking people, to spill all and lay out the whole mess. But this letter is long, Sir, and it is time to conclude it. I accuse ALL THE US “INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES” led by various conspirators, being the diabolical creators of this miscarriage of justice — unfortunately wittingly — and of defending this sorry deed, over the last one hundred years, by all manner of ludricrous and evil machinations. I accuse the GENERAL MEDIA of complicity, at least by mental weakness, in one of the greatest inequities of the century. I accuse Tony Blair and subsequent British PMs, including Boris Johnson and Truss, of having absolute proof of Assange’s innocence and covering it up, and making themselves guilty of this crime against mankind and justice, as political expediency and a way to save face for their own compromised spying agencies. I accuse the Pope of complicity in the same crime, the former, no doubt, out of religious prejudice, the latter perhaps out of that esprit de corps that has transformed the Vatican into an unassailable holy ark. I accuse The Guardian, the Murdoch and Soros media of conducting villainous propagandas — one against Assange, one against Russia, one against China, by which I mean monstrously biased “opinions”, as attested by the truth exposed by John Menadue. I accuse the politicians who have become blind to reality in order to satisfy a horrible desire of destroying Russia and China, via fake “information” leading to conflicts, including the now very close to midnight NUCLEAR WAR, which was never mentioned by Putin, but despicably and hypocritically was accused of by “nuke-obsessed” Joe Biden (who is senile, thus you should read “warmonger advisors”). I accuse the DoD of using the media, particularly the Guardian, the Washington Post, the New York Times and others, to conduct an abominable campaign to mislead the general public and cover up their own wrongdoing and false pretences , which could lead to the destruction of life on earth . Finally, I accuse the British courts of violating the law by convicting the accused on the basis of ignorance of the Magna Carta, and I accuse the said courts of covering up this illegality, on orders, thus committing the judicial crime of knowingly condemning an innocent man and now fabricating more warmongering rattles. In making these accusations I am aware that I am making myself liable to the laws of secrecy, NewsGuard and other fascist decrees that prevent telling the truth, which make libel a punishable offence. I expose myself to that risk voluntarily. As for the people I am accusing, I do not know them, I have never seen them, but I bear them ill will and hatred, because they are vile and dangerous. To me they are evil entities, agents of harm to society. The action I am taking is no more than a radical measure to hasten the explosion of truth and justice. I have but one passion left: to enlighten those who have been kept in the dark, in the name of humanity which has suffered so much and is entitled to happiness. My fiery protest is simply the cry of my very thoughts. Let them dare, then, to challenge me and let the painful truth take place in broad daylight! I know I will be ignored, but I cannot refrain from exposing the US Empire rascals. With my deepest respect, Sir.
Gus Leonisky, 30 October 2022 Cartooning since 1951
FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW...................
SEE ALSO: an illegal operation by the ecuadorian government, by the USA and by the UK — and by Australia...
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsun8e4E4Gk
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BY JOHN PILGER
I have known Julian Assange since I first interviewed him in London in 2010. I immediately liked his dry, dark sense of humour, often dispensed with an infectious giggle. He is a proud outsider: sharp and thoughtful. We have become friends, and I have sat in many courtrooms listening to the tribunes of the state try to silence him and his moral revolution in journalism.
My own high point was when a judge in the Royal Courts of Justice leaned across his bench and growled at me: ‘You are just a peripatetic Australian like Assange.’ My name was on a list of volunteers to stand bail for Julian, and this judge spotted me as the one who had reported his role in the notorious case of the expelled Chagos Islanders. Unintentionally, he delivered me a compliment.
I saw Julian in Belmarsh not long ago. We talked about books and the oppressive idiocy of the prison: the happy-clappy slogans on the walls, the petty punishments; they still won’t let him use the gym. He must exercise alone in a cage-like area where there is a sign that warns about keeping off the grass. But there is no grass. We laughed; for a brief moment, some things didn’t seem too bad.
The laughter is a shield, of course. When the prison guards began to jangle their keys, as they like to do, indicating our time was up, he fell quiet. As I left the room he held his fist high and clenched as he always does. He is the embodiment of courage.
Those who are the antithesis of Julian: in whom courage is unheard of, along with principle and honour, stand between him and freedom. I am not referring to the Mafia regime in Washington whose pursuit of a good man is meant as a warning to us all, but rather to those who still claim to run a just democracy in Australia.
Anthony Albanese was mouthing his favourite platitude, ‘enough is enough’ long before he was elected prime minister of Australia last year. He gave many of us precious hope, including Julian’s family. As prime minister he added weasel words about ‘not sympathising’ with what Julian had done. Apparently we had to understand his need to cover his appropriated posteria in case Washington called him to order.
We knew it would take exceptional political if not moral courage for Albanese to stand up in the Australian Parliament — the same Parliament that will disport itself before Joe Biden in May — and say:
‘As prime minister, it is my government’s responsibility to bring home an Australian citizen who is clearly the victim of a great, vindictive injustice: a man who has been persecuted for the kind of journalism that is a true public service, a man who has not lied, or deceived — like so many of his counterfeit in the media, but has told people the truth about how the world is run.’
‘I call on the United States,’ a courageous and moral Prime Minister Albanese might say, ‘to withdraw its extradition application: to end the malign farce that has stained Britain’s once admired courts of justice and to allow the release of Julian Assange unconditionally to his family. For Julian to remain in his cell at Belmarsh is an act of torture, as the United Nations Raporteur has called it. It is how a dictatorship behaves.’
Alas, my daydream about Australia doing right by Julian has reached its limits. The teasing of hope by Albanese is now close to a betrayal for which the historical memory will not forget him, and many will not forgive him. What, then, is he waiting for?
Remember that Julian was granted political asylum by the Ecuadorean government in 2013 largely because his own government had abandoned him. That alone ought to bring shame on those responsible: namely the Labor government of Julia Gillard.
So eager was Gillard to collude with the Americans in shutting down WikiLeaks for its truth telling that she wanted the Australian Federal Police to arrest Assange and take away his passport for what she called his ‘illegal’ publishing. The AFP pointed out that they had no such powers: Assange had committed no crime.
It is as if you can measure Australia’s extraordinary surrender of sovereignty by the way it treats Julian Assange. Gillard’s pantomime grovelling to both houses of the US Congress is cringing theatre on YouTube. Australia, she repeated, was America’s ‘great mate’. Or was it ‘little mate’?
Her foreign minister was Bob Carr, another Labor machine politician whom WikiLeaks exposed as an American informant, one of Washington’s useful boys in Australia. In his published diaries, Carr boasted knowing Henry Kissinger; indeed the Great Warmonger invited the foreign minister to go camping in the California woods, we learn.
Australian governments have repeatedly claimed that Julian has received full consular support, which is his right. When his lawyer Gareth Peirce and I met the Australian consul general in London, Ken Pascoe, I asked him, ‘What do you know of the Assange case.’
‘Just what I read in the papers,’ he replied with a laugh.
Today, Prime Minister Albanese is preparing this country for a ridiculous American-led war with China. Billions of dollars are to be spent on a war machine of submarines, fighter jets and missiles that can reach China. Salivating war mongering by ‘experts’ on the country’s oldest newspaper, the Sydney Morning Herald, and the Melbourne Age is a national embarrassment, or ought to be. Australia is a country with no enemies and China is its biggest trading partner.
This deranged servility to aggression is laid out in an extraordinary document called the US-Australia Force Posture Agreement. This states that American troops have ‘exclusive control over the access to [and] use of’ armaments and material that can be used in Australia in an aggressive war.
This almost certainly includes nuclear weapons. Albanese’s foreign minister, Penny Wong, ‘respects’ America on this, but clearly has no respect for Australians’ right to know.
Such obseiquiousness was always there — not untypical of a settler nation that still has not made peace with the Indigenous origins and owners of where they live — but now it is dangerous.
China as the Yellow Peril fits Australia’s history of racism like a glove. However, there is another enemy they don’t talk about. It is us, the public. It is our right to know. And our right to say no.
Since 2001, some 82 laws have been enacted in Australia to take away tenuous rights of expression and dissent and protect the cold war paranoia of an increasingly secret state, in which the head of the main intelligence agency, ASIO, lectures on the disciplines of ‘Australian values’. There are secret courts and secret evidence, and secret miscarriages of justice. Australia is said to be an inspiration for the master across the Pacific.
Bernard Collaery, David McBride and Julian Assange — deeply moral men who told the truth — are the enemies and victims of this paranoia. They, not Edwardian soldiers who marched for the King, are our true national heroes.
On Julian Assange, the Prime Minister has two faces. One face teases us with hope of his intervention with Biden that will lead to Julian’s freedom. The other face ingratiates itself with ‘POTUS’ and allows the Americans to do what they want with its vassal: to lay down targets that could result in catastrophe for all of us.
Will Albanese back Australia or Washington on Julian Assange? If he is ‘sincere’, as the more doe-eyed Labor Party supporters say, what is he waiting for? If he fails to secure Julian’s release, Australia will cease to be sovereign. We will be little Americans. Official.
This is not about the survival of a free press. There is no longer a free press. There are refuges in the samizdat, such as this site. The paramount issue is justice and our most precious human right: to be free.
This is an abridged version of an address by John Pilger in Sydney on 10 March to mark the launch in Australia of Davide Dormino’s sculpture of Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden, ‘figures of courage’.
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