Filmmaker,
schrijver en journalist John Pilger, heeft een
artikel op The Canary geschreven waarin hij betoogt dat Julian Assange vrijgelaten moet worden en niet moet worden vervolgd (Pilger zegt: verraden >> met
gevangenisstraf in GB, uitlevering aan, en een levenslange
gevangenisstraf in de VS).
Pilger
(wat mij betreft een briljant schrijver) begint zijn relaas met het
kolonialisme in verband met Australië, en het Londen dat het begin van zijn loopbaan bepaalde. Het moederland van Pilger, Australië, heeft regelmatig
een heel misdadig beleid gevoerd, zo noemt hij het illegaal spioneren
van Australië in Oost-Timor, waar Australië later ook nog een
smerige rol heeft gespeeld in de race om winningsrechten te krijgen
voor olie en gas. Niet voor niets was Australië één van de weinige landen die de bezetting door Indonesië van Oost-Timor niet afkeurde….. Gevolg van die oorlog: minstens 200.000 doden…….
Het huidige hoofd van het Australia House in
Londen, is de oud-procureur generaal van Australië, George Brandis,
die in zijn vorige functie probeerde de Race Discrimination Act voor
te doen als niet ter zake doende…… Terwijl hij ervoor was om
racistische beledigingen en haatzaaien niet meer te bestraffen……
Ook het
feit dat Australië op grond van leugens mee heeft gedaan aan de
Vietnamoorlog, die aan 4 miljoen mensen het leven kostte, is deels onderwerp in Pilgers artikel….. Het is
als met de illegale oorlog van de VS tegen Irak, ook de Australische
premier John Howard stond achter die oorlog, stuurde militairen naar
Irak en gebruikte dezelfde leugen als de George W. Bush administratie, ofwel
dat Saddam Hoessein massavernietigingswapens had……
Juist
het WikiLeaks van Julian Assange liet zien hoe illegale oorlogen
werden georganiseerd, hoe regeringen omver worden geworpen en geweld
wordt gebruikt in naam van de burgers, hoe men wordt bespioneerd
middels telefoon, tv en computer…… Leugens en smerige spelletjes
van allerlei hoogwaardigheidsbekleders zijn te vinden op WikiLeaks,
zodat ze nu weten dat ze keizers zonder kleren zijn, aldus
Pilger……
De eerste documenten op WikiLeaks gingen over de moord op burgers in Irak door een helikopterbemanning van de VS, waarover deze bemanning in feeststemming sprak tijdens het gebeuren…. Voor het publiceren op WikiLeaks van gelekte documenten waaruit e.e.a. bleek, wil de VS hem veroordelen op de ‘Espionage Act’, terwijl elke normale democratie op de kop zou staan als men een journalist die e.e.a. publiceert gevangen zou willen zetten (zonder dat iemand in gevaar is gekomen door die publicatie)……
Iedere burger in een democratie heeft recht te weten waaraan haar/zijn belastinggeld wordt gespendeerd, al helemaal als het om oorlogsvoering gaat en dat nog tijdens een illegale oorlog zoals die van de VS en NAVO-partners tegen Irak!! (illegale oorlogsvoering behoort tot de zwaarste oorlogsmisdaden!) Ook al te zot voor woorden dat de burgers in een democratie niet mogen weten wat men uit haar/zijn naam flikt in het buitenland…..
Gezien het voorgaande is het dan ook van het grootste belang dat de Commissie Stiekem in Nederland als de donder wordt opgeheven! Neem het bombardement van Nederland op de Iraakse stad Hawija, waarbij 70 (vooral) burgers werden vermoord en meer dan 100 mensen meer of minder zwaargewond raakten….. Men is met openbaarmaking van alles wat gebeurt tijdens oorlogsvoering dan ook simpelweg bang dat het volk zich zal verzetten als Nederland zich weer in een nieuwe illegale oorlog van de VS laat meeslepen….
Pilger wijst verder op
de ellende met Hillary Clinton in 2016, dat in WikiLeaks uit de
doeken wordt gedaan…. (waarvoor Clinton het Russiagate sprookje
verzon) WikiLeaks zou volgens de reguliere westerse media en politiek
alleen het westen aan willen vallen, terwijl er een enorme berg
documenten (800.000) is te vinden die Rusland ‘in een wat minder mooi daglicht’
stellen (al is dat daglicht al een paar jaar fiks verduisterd, door
de razende Witte Huisgek Trump en zijn hielenlikkende vazallen in Europa, waaronder Nederland….)
Verder haalt Pilger het feit aan dat Hillary Clinton via de Clinton Foundation jihadisme in het Midden-Oosten steunde…..
Volkomen terecht merkt
Pilger op dat Assange alleen zijn plicht heeft gedaan als journalist
en daar valt niets tegen in te brengen, de reguliere westerse media
moeten zich dan ook de oren van de kop schamen dat ze Assange
demoniseren, Assange NB een collega van voortreffelijke klasse in de (onderzoeks-) journalistiek……..
Als Assange wordt uitgeleverd zal hij op zeker tot levenslange gevangenisstraf worden veroordeeld, waarna hij in een speciale gevangenis zal worden vastgezet, een gevangenis waar de gevangenen totaal geen vrijheden hebben, amper of geen bezoek mogen ontvangen en worden geïsoleerd (en dat is zoals je wellicht weet een vreselijke marteling….)…..
JULIAN
ASSANGE MOET ONMIDDELLIJK VRIJGELATEN WORDEN!! ASSANGE VERDIENT EEN
PRIJS VOOR ZIJN WERK EN GEEN GEVANGENISSTRAF EN AL HELEMAAL GEEN UITLEVERNG AAN DE
VS!!!
Julian
Assange must be freed, not betrayed | John Pilger
John
Pilger
18th February 2020
On Saturday, there
will be a march from Australia House in London to Parliament Square,
the centre of British democracy. People will carry pictures of the
Australian publisher and journalist Julian Assange who, on 24
February, faces a court that will decide whether or not he is to be
extradited to the United States and a living death.
Some
Australian history
I know Australia House
well. As an Australian myself, I used to go there in my early days in
London to read the newspapers from home. Opened by King George V over
a century ago, its vastness of marble and stone, chandeliers and
solemn portraits, imported from Australia when Australian soldiers
were dying in the slaughter of the First World War, has ensured its
landmark as an imperial pile of monumental servility.
As one of the oldest
“diplomatic missions” in the United Kingdom, this relic of empire
provides a pleasurable sinecure for Antipodean politicians: a “mate”
rewarded or a troublemaker exiled.
Known as High
Commissioner, the equivalent of an ambassador, the current
beneficiary is George Brandis, who as Attorney General tried to water
down Australia’s Race Discrimination Act and approved raids on
whistleblowers who had revealed the truth about Australia’s illegal
spying on East Timor during negotiations for the carve-up of that
impoverished country’s oil and gas.
This led to the
prosecution of whistleblowers Bernard Collaery and “Witness K”,
on bogus charges. Like Julian Assange, they are to be silenced in a
Kafkaesque trial and put away.
Australia House is the
ideal starting point for Saturday’s march.
“I confess,” wrote
Lord Curzon, Viceroy of India, in 1898, “that countries are pieces
on a chessboard upon which is being played out a great game for the
domination of the world.”
We Australians have
been in the service of the Great Game for a very long time. Having
devastated our Indigenous people in an invasion and a war of
attrition that continues to this day, we have spilt blood for our
imperial masters in China, Africa, Russia, the Middle East, Europe
and Asia. No imperial adventure against those with whom we have no
quarrel has escaped our dedication.
Deception has been a
feature. When Prime Minister Robert Menzies sent Australian soldiers
to Vietnam in the 1960s, he described them as a training team,
requested by a beleaguered government in Saigon. It was a lie. A
senior official of the Department of External Affairs wrote secretly
that “although we have stressed the fact publicly that our
assistance was given in response to an invitation by the government
of South Vietnam”, the order came from Washington.”
Two versions. The lie
for us, the truth for them. As many as four million people died in
the Vietnam war.
When Indonesia invaded
East Timor in 1975, the Australian Ambassador, Richard Woolcott,
secretly urged the government in Canberra to “act in a way which
would be designed to minimise the public impact in Australia and show
private understanding to Indonesia.” In other words, to
lie. He alluded to the beckoning spoils of oil and gas in the Timor
Sea which, boasted Foreign Minister Gareth Evans, were worth
“zillions”.
In the genocide that
followed, at least 200,000 East Timorese died. Australia recognised,
almost alone, the legitimacy of the occupation.
When Prime Minister
John Howard sent Australian special forces to invade Iraq with
America and Britain in 2003, he – like George W Bush and Tony Blair
– lied that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. More
than a million people died in Iraq.
Wikileaks
WikiLeaks
was not the first to call out the pattern of criminal lying in
democracies that remain every bit as rapacious as in Lord Curzon’s
day. The achievement of the remarkable publishing organisation
founded by Julian Assange has been to provide the proof.
WikiLeaks
has informed us how illegal wars are fabricated, how governments are
overthrown and violence is used in our name, how we are spied upon
through our phones and screens. The true lies of presidents,
ambassadors, political candidates, generals, proxies, political
fraudsters have been exposed. One by one, these would-be emperors
have realised they have no clothes.
It has been an
unprecedented public service; above all, it is authentic journalism,
whose value can be judged by the degree of apoplexy of the corrupt
and their apologists.
For example, in 2016,
WikiLeaks
published the leaked emails of Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager
John Podesta, which revealed a direct connection between Clinton, the
foundation she shares with her husband and the funding of organised
jihadism in the Middle East – terrorism.
One email disclosed
that Islamic State [Daesh (ISIS/Isil)] was bankrolled by the
governments of Saudi Arabia and Qatar, from which Clinton accepted
huge “donations”. Moreover, as US Secretary of State, she
approved the world’s biggest ever arms sale to her Saudi
benefactors, worth more than $80 billion. Thanks to her, US arms
sales to the world – for use in stricken countries like Yemen –
doubled.
Revealed by WikiLeaks
and published in the New
York Times,
the Podesta emails triggered a vituperative campaign against
editor-in-chief Julian Assange, bereft of evidence. He was an “agent
of Russia working to elect Trump”; the nonsensical “Russiagate”
followed. That WikiLeaks
had also published more than 800,000 frequently damning documents
from Russia was ignored.
On an Australian
Broadcasting Corporation
programme, Four
Corners,
in 2017, Clinton was interviewed by Sarah Ferguson, who began: “No
one could fail to be moved by the pain on your face at [the moment of
Donald Trump’s inauguration] … Do you remember how visceral it
was for you?”
Having established
Clinton’s visceral suffering, the fawning Ferguson described
“Russia’s role” and the “damage done personally to you” by
Julian Assange.
Clinton replied, “He
[Assange] is very clearly a tool of Russian intelligence. And he has
done their bidding.”
Ferguson said to
Clinton: “Lots of people, including in Australia, think that
Assange is a martyr of free speech and freedom of information. How
would you describe him?”
Again, Clinton was
allowed to defame Assange – a “nihilist” in the service of
“dictators” – while Ferguson assured her interviewee she was
“the icon of your generation”.
There was no mention
of a leaked document, revealed by WikiLeaks,
called Libya
Tick Tock,
prepared for Hillary Clinton, which described her as the central
figure driving the destruction of the Libyan state in 2011. This
resulted in 40,000 deaths, the arrival of [Daesh] in North Africa and
the European refugee and migrant crisis.
False
and true journalism
For me, this episode
of Clinton’s interview – and there are many others – vividly
illustrates the division between false and true journalism. On 24
February, when Julian Assange steps into Woolwich Crown Court, true
journalism will be the only crime on trial.
I am sometimes asked
why I have championed Assange. For one thing, I like and I admire
him. He is a friend with astonishing courage; and he has a finely
honed, wicked sense of humour. He is the diametric opposite of the
character invented then assassinated by his enemies.
As a reporter in
places of upheaval all over the world, I have learned to compare the
evidence I have witnessed with the words and actions of those with
power. In this way, it is possible to get a sense of how our world is
controlled and divided and manipulated, how language and debate are
distorted to produce the propaganda of false consciousness.
When we speak about
dictatorships, we call this brainwashing: the conquest of minds. It
is a truth we rarely apply to our own societies, regardless of the
trail of blood that leads back to us and which never dries.
WikiLeaks
has exposed this. That is why Assange is in a maximum security prison
in London facing concocted political charges in America, and why he
has shamed so many of those paid to keep the record straight. Watch
these journalists now look for cover as it dawns on them that the
American fascists who have come for Assange may come for them, not
least those on the Guardian who
collaborated with WikiLeaks
and won prizes and secured lucrative book and Hollywood deals based
on his work, before turning on him.
In 2011, David
Leigh, the Guardian‘s
“investigations editor”, told journalism students at City
University in London that Assange was “quite deranged”. When a
puzzled student asked why, Leigh replied: “Because he doesn’t
understand the parameters of conventional journalism”.
But it’s precisely
because he did understand that the “parameters” of the media
often shielded vested and political interests and had nothing to do
with transparency that the idea of WikiLeaks
was so appealing to many people, especially the young, rightly
cynical about the so-called “mainstream”.
Leigh mocked the very
idea that, once extradited, Assange would end up “wearing an orange
jumpsuit”. These were things, he said, “that he and his lawyer
are saying in order to feed his paranoia”.
US
plans for Assange
The current US charges
against Assange centre on the Afghan
Logs
and Iraq
Logs,
which the Guardian published
and Leigh worked on, and on the Collateral Murder video showing an
American helicopter crew gunning down civilians and celebrating the
crime. For this journalism, Assange faces 17 charges of “espionage”
which carry prison sentences totalling 175 years.
Whether or not his
prison uniform will be an “orange jumpsuit”, US court files seen
by Assange’s lawyers reveal that, once extradited, Assange will be
subject to Special Administrative Measures, known as SAMS. A 2017
report by Yale University Law School and the Center for
Constitutional Rights described SAMS as “the darkest corner of the
US federal prison system” combining “the brutality and isolation
of maximum security units with additional restrictions that deny
individuals almost any connection to the human world… The net
effect is to shield this form of torture from any real public
scrutiny.”
That Assange has been
right all along, and getting him to Sweden was a fraud to cover an
American plan to “render” him, is finally becoming clear to many
who swallowed the incessant scuttlebutt of character assassination.
“I speak fluent Swedish and was able to read all the original
documents,” Nils Melzer, the United Nations Rapporteur on Torture,
said recently. “I could hardly believe my eyes. According to the
testimony of the woman in question, a rape had never taken place at
all. And not only that: the woman’s testimony was later changed by
the Stockholm Police without her involvement in order to somehow make
it sound like a possible rape. I have all the documents in my
possession, the emails, the text messages.”
Keir Starmer is
currently running for election as leader of the Labour Party in
Britain. Between 2008 and 2013, he was Director of Public
Prosecutions and responsible for the Crown Prosecution Service.
According to Freedom of Information searches by the Italian
journalist Stefania Maurizi, Sweden tried to drop the Assange case in
2011, but a CPS official in London told the Swedish prosecutor not to
treat it as “just another extradition”.
In 2012, she received
an email from the CPS: “Don’t you dare get cold feet!!!” Other
CPS emails were either deleted or redacted. Why? Keir Starmer needs
to say why.
Australia’s
role
At the forefront of
Saturday’s march will be John Shipton, Julian’s father, whose
indefatigable support for his son is the antithesis of the collusion
and cruelty of the governments of Australia, our homeland.
The roll call of shame
begins with Julia Gillard, the Australian Labor prime minister who,
in 2010, wanted to criminalise WikiLeaks,
arrest Assange and cancel his passport – until the Australian
Federal Police pointed out that no law allowed this and that Assange
had committed no crime.
While falsely claiming
to give him consular assistance in London, it was the Gillard
government’s shocking abandonment of its citizen that led to
Ecuador granting political asylum to Assange in its London embassy.
In a subsequent speech
before the US Congress, Gillard, a favourite of the US embassy in
Canberra, broke records for sycophancy (according to the website
Honest
History)
as she declared, over and again, the fidelity of America’s “mates
Down Under”.
Today, while Assange
waits in his cell, Gillard travels the world, promoting herself as a
feminist concerned about “human rights”, often in tandem with
that other right-on feminist Hillary Clinton.
The truth is that
Australia could have rescued Julian Assange and can still rescue him.
In 2010, I arranged to
meet a prominent Liberal (Conservative) Member of Parliament, Malcolm
Turnbull. As a young barrister in the 1980s, Turnbull had
successfully fought the British government’s attempts to prevent
the publication of the book, Spycatcher,
whose author Peter Wright, a spy, had exposed Britain’s ‘deep
state’.
We talked about his
famous victory for free speech and publishing and I described the
miscarriage of justice awaiting Assange – the fraud of his arrest
in Sweden and its connection with an American indictment that tore up
the US Constitution and the rule of international law.
Turnbull appeared to
show genuine interest and an aide took extensive notes. I asked him
to deliver a letter to the Australian government from Gareth Peirce,
the renowned British human rights lawyer who represents Assange.
In the letter, Peirce
wrote: “Given the extent of the public discussion, frequently on
the basis of entirely false assumptions… it is very hard to attempt
to preserve for [Julian Assange] any presumption of innocence. Mr
Assange has now hanging over him not one but two Damocles swords, of
potential extradition to two different jurisdictions in turn for two
different alleged crimes, neither of which are crimes in his own
country, and that his personal safety has become at risk in
circumstances that are highly politically charged.”
Turnbull promised to
deliver the letter, follow it through and let me know. I subsequently
wrote to him several times, waited and heard nothing.
In 2018, John Shipton
wrote a deeply moving letter to the then prime minister of Australia
asking him to exercise the diplomatic power at his government’s
disposal and bring Julian home. He wrote that he feared that if
Julian was not rescued, there would be a tragedy and his son would
die in prison. He received no reply. The prime minister was Malcolm
Turnbull.
Last year, when the
current prime minister, Scott Morrison, a former public relations
man, was asked about Assange, he replied in his customary way: “He
should face the music!”
When Saturday’s
march reaches the Houses of Parliament, said to be “the Mother of
Parliaments”, Morrison and Gillard and Turnbull and all those who
have betrayed Julian Assange should be called out; history and
decency will not forget them or those who remain silent now.
And if there is any
sense of justice left in the land of Magna
Carta,
the travesty that is the case against this heroic Australian must be
thrown out. Or beware, all of us.
The march on Saturday
22 February begins at Australia House in Aldwych, London WC2B 4LA, at
12.30pm: assemble at 11.30am.
Published by
agreement with John Pilger. A version of this article can be found at
johnpilger.com
Featured image via
YouTube – CBS
News / YouTube
– Dartmouth Films
===================================
Zie ook:
‘Het meest gecensureerde nieuws van deze eeuw: het proces tegen journalist Julian Assange‘
‘Julian Assange het slachtoffer van de grootste persbreidel in deze eeuw‘
‘Assange: geen uitlevering maar directe invrijheidstelling!‘
‘Julian Assange moet onmiddellijk vrijgelaten worden!‘
‘Assange in de gevangenis: Zweden laat voor de derde keer de aanklacht wegens verkrachting vallen‘
‘Julian Assange blijft in de gevangenis na uitzitten straf en dat voor het doen van zijn werk‘
‘Vervolging van drone klokkenluider Hale moet worden gestopt‘
‘Trump administratie klaagt weer een klokkenluider aan voor spionage‘
‘Sweden drops investigation into bogus sexual misconduct allegations against Julian Assange‘
‘Stop de isolatie van Julian Assange!’
‘Julian Assange: Speciaal VN rapporteur martelen heeft grote twijfels bij onafhankelijkheid rechter‘
‘VN rapport: Assange is gedemoniseerd en psychisch gemarteld‘
‘1984 het boek van George Orwell: niet langer fictie…….‘
‘Het westen vervolgt journalist Assange, Rusland laat journalist vrij na onrust over diens gevangenschap‘ (en nog hadden de reguliere media een grote bek over Rusland, media die niet anders hebben gedaan dan collega Assange besmeuren…..)
‘CNN met nog smeriger lastercampagne tegen Julian Assange‘
‘Belangrijk account voor de verdediging Julian Assange geblokkeerd door Twitter‘
‘Julian Assange: Speciaal VN rapporteur martelen heeft grote twijfels bij onafhankelijkheid rechter‘
‘VN rapport: Assange is gedemoniseerd en psychisch gemarteld‘
‘Media wakker geschrokken en ontwaken in Assange nachtmerrie‘
‘Dag van Persvrijheid: Assange wordt zoveel mogelijk uitermate hypocriet gemeden door de pers‘
‘Julian Assange (brekend nieuws) veroordeeld tot 50 weken gevangenisstraf……‘
‘Chelsea Manning blijft voor onbepaalde tijd in de gevangenis‘
‘Julian Assanges vervolging is de genadeklap voor klokkenluiders en (echte) journalisten‘ (zie ook de iets oudere links in dat bericht)
‘WhiteHouse: US, Ecuador Coordinating About Future Of Assange Asylum‘
‘De prijs op het hoofd van Julian Assange: 1 miljard dollar…..‘
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