Julian Assange’s legal options have nearly run out. He could be extradited to the U.S. this week. Should he be convicted, reporting on the inner workings of power will become a crime.
STOP THIS – by Mr. Fish
High Court Judge Jonathan Swift — who previously worked for a variety of British government agencies as a barrister and said his favorite clients are “security and intelligence agencies” — rejected two applications by Julian Assange’s lawyers to appeal his extradition last week.
The extradition order was signed last June by Home Secretary Priti Patel. Assange’s legal team have filed a final application for appeal, the last option available in the British courts. If accepted, the case could proceed to a public hearing in front of two new High Court judges.
If rejected, Assange could be immediately extradited to the United States where he will stand trial for 18 counts of violating the Espionage Act, charges that could see him receive a 175-year sentence, as early as this week.
The only chance to block an extradition, if the final appeal is rejected, as I expect it will be, would come from the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR).
The parliamentary arm of the Council of Europe, which created the ECHR, along with their Commissioner for Human Rights, oppose Julian Assange’s “detention, extradition and prosecution” because it represents “a dangerous precedent for journalists.”
It is unclear if the British government would abide by the court’s decision — even though it is obligated to do so — if it ruled against extradition, or if the U.K. would extradite Assange before an appeal to the European court can be heard.
Once shipped to the U.S., he would be put on trial in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia where most espionage cases have been won by the U.S. government.
Judge Vanessa Baraitser at Westminster Magistrates’ Court refused to authorize the U.S. government’s extradition request in Jan. 2021 because of the severity of the conditions he would endure in the U.S. prison system.
“Faced with the conditions of near total isolation without the protective factors which limited his risk at [Her Majesty’s Prison] Belmarsh, I am satisfied the procedures described by the U.S. will not prevent Mr. Assange from finding a way to commit suicide,” said Baraitser when handing down her 132-page ruling, “and for this reason I have decided extradition would be oppressive by reason of mental harm and I order his discharge.”
Baraitser’s decision was overturned after an appeal by U.S. authorities. The High Court accepted the conclusions of the lower court about increased risk of suicide and inhumane prison conditions.
The Assurances
Court where extradition hearing took place. (Joe Lauria)
But it also accepted four assurances in U.S. Diplomatic Note no. 74, given to the court in February 2021, which promised Assange would be well treated. The U.S. government claimed that its assurances “entirely answer the concerns which caused the judge [in the lower court] to discharge Mr. Assange.”
The “assurances” state that he will not be subject to Special Administrative Measures (SAMs). They promise that the Australian citizen can serve his sentence in Australia if the Australian government requests his extradition.
They promise he will receive adequate clinical and psychological care. They promise that, pre-trial and post-trial, Julian will not be held in the Administrative Maximum Facility (ADX) in Florence, Colorado. No one is held pre-trial in ADX Florence. But it sounds reassuring.
ADX Florence is not the only supermax prison in the U.S. Assange can be placed in one of America’s other Guantanamo-like facilities in a Communications Management Unit (CMU). CMUs are highly restrictive units that replicate the near total isolation imposed by SAMs.
None of these “assurances” are worth the paper they are written on. All come with escape clauses. None are legally binding.
Should Assange do “something subsequent to the offering of these assurances that meets the tests for the imposition of SAMs or designation to ADX” he will, the court conceded, be subject to these harsher forms of control.
If Australia does not request a transfer it “cannot be a cause for criticism of the USA, or a reason for regarding the assurances as inadequate to meet the judge’s concerns,” the ruling read.
And even if that were not the case, it would take Julian Assange 10 to 15 years to appeal his sentence up to the U.S. Supreme Court, which would be more than enough time to destroy him psychologically and physically.
No doubt the plane waiting to take him to the U.S. will be well stocked with blindfolds, sedatives, shackles, enemas, diapers and jumpsuits used to facilitate “extraordinary renditions” conducted by the C.I.A..
The extradition of Julian Assange will be the next step in the slow-motion execution of the publisher and founder of WikiLeaks and one of the most important journalists of our generation.
It will ensure that he spends the rest of his life in a U.S. prison. It will create legal precedents that will criminalize any investigation into the inner workings of power, even by citizens from another country.
It will be a body blow to America’s anemic democracy, which is rapidly metamorphosing into corporate totalitarianism.
I am as stunned by this full frontal assault on journalism as I am by the lack of public outrage, especially by the media.
The very belated call from The New York Times, The Guardian, Le Monde, Der Spiegel and El País — all of whom published material provided by WikiLeaks — to drop the extradition charges is too little too late.
All of the public protests I have attended in defense of Julian Assange in the U.S. are sparsely attended. Our passivity makes us complicit in our own enslavement.
Farce
Protest in front of No. 10 Downing Street, February 2020. (Joe Lauria)
Julian’s case, from the start, has been a judicial farce.
Former Ecuadorian President Lenin Moreno terminated his rights of asylum as a political refugee, in violation of international law. He then authorized London Metropolitan Police to enter the Ecuadorian Embassy — diplomatically sanctioned sovereign territory — to arrest a naturalized citizen of Ecuador.
Moreno’s government, which revoked Assange’s citizenship, was granted a large loan by the International Monetary Fund for its assistance. Donald Trump, by demanding the publisher’s extradition under the Espionage Act, criminalized journalism, in much the same way Woodrow Wilson did when he shut down socialist publications such as The Masses.
The hearings, some of which I attended in London and others of which I sat through online, mocked basic legal protocols.
They included the decision to ignore the C.I.A.’s surveillance and recording of meetings between Assange and his attorneys during his time as a political refugee in the embassy, eviscerating attorney-client-privilege.
This alone should have seen the case thrown out of court. They included validating the decision to charge him, although he is not a U.S. citizen, under the Espionage Act.
They included Kafkaesque contortions to convince the courts that Julian is not a journalist. They ignored Article 4 of the U.K.-U.S. extradition treaty that prohibits extradition for political offenses.
I watched as the prosecutor James Lewis, representing the U.S., gave legal directives to Judge Baraitser, who promptly adopted them as her legal decision.
The judicial lynching of Julian Assange has far more in common with the dark days of Lubyanka than the ideals of British jurisprudence.
The debate over arcane legal nuances distracts us from the fact that Assange has not committed a crime in Britain, other than an old charge of breaching bail conditions when he sought asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy.
Normally this would entail a fine. He was instead sentenced to a year in Belmarsh prison and has been held there since April 2019.
The decision to seek his extradition, contemplated by Barack Obama’s administration, was pursued by the Trump administration following WikiLeaks’ publication of the documents known as Vault 7, which exposed the C.I.A.’s cyberwarfare programs designed to monitor and take control of cars, smart TVs, web browsers and the operating systems of most smart phones, as well as Microsoft Windows, MacOS and Linux.
Targeted
Aerial view of CIA headquarters.in Langley, Virginia. (Carol M. Highsmith, Wikimedia Commons)
Assange, as I noted in a column filed from London last year, is targeted because of the Iraq War Logs, released in Oct. 2010, which document numerous U.S. war crimes, including images seen in the Collateral Murder video, of the gunning down of two Reuters journalists and 10 other civilians and severely injuring two children.
He is targeted because he made public the killing of nearly 700 civilians who had approached too closely to U.S. convoys and checkpoints, including pregnant women, the blind and deaf, and at least 30 children.
He is targeted because he exposed more than 15,000 unreported deaths of Iraqi civilians and the torture and abuse of some 800 men and boys, aged between 14 to 89, at Guantánamo Bay detention camp.
He is targeted because he showed us that Hillary Clinton, as secretary of state in 2009, ordered U.S. diplomats to spy on U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and other U.N. representatives from China, France, Russia, and the U.K., spying that included obtaining DNA, iris scans, fingerprints, and personal passwords, all part of the long pattern of illegal surveillance that included eavesdropping on U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan in the weeks before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.
He is targeted because he exposed that Obama, Hillary Clinton and the C.I.A. backed the June 2009 military coup in Honduras that overthrew the democratically-elected president Manuel Zelaya, replacing him with a murderous and corrupt military regime.
He is targeted because he released documents that revealed the United States secretly launched missile, bomb and drone attacks on Yemen, killing scores of civilians.
He is targeted because he made public the off-the-record talks Hillary Clinton gave to Goldman Sachs, talks for which she was paid $657,000, a sum so large it can only be considered a bribe, as well as her private assurances to Wall Street that she would do their bidding while promising the public financial regulation and reform.
For revealing these truths alone he is guilty.
The U.S. court system is even more draconian than the British court system. It can use SAMs, anti-terrorism laws and the Espionage Act to block Julian Assange from speaking to the public, being released on bail, or seeing the “secret” evidence used to convict him.
The C.I.A. was created to carry out assassinations, coups, torture, kidnapping, blackmail, character assassination and illegal spying. It has targeted U.S. citizens, in violation of its charter. These activities were exposed in 1975 by the Church Committee hearings in the Senate and the Pike Committee hearings in the House.
Working with UC Global, the Spanish security firm in the embassy, the C.I.A. put Assange under 24-hour video and digital surveillance. It discussed kidnapping and assassinating him while he was in the embassy, which included plans of a shoot-out on the streets with involvement by London Metropolitan Police.
The U.S. allocates a secret black budget of $52 billion a year to hide multiple types of clandestine projects carried out by the National Security Agency, the C.I.A., and other intelligence agencies, usually beyond the scrutiny of Congress. All these clandestine activities, especially after the attacks of 9/11, have massively expanded.
Senator Frank Church, after examining the heavily redacted C.I.A. documents released to his committee, defined the C.I.A.’s covert activity as “a semantic disguise for murder, coercion, blackmail, bribery, the spreading of lies.”
The C.I.A. and intelligence agencies, along with the military, all of which operate without effective Congressional oversight, are the engines behind Assange’s extradition.
He inflicted, by exposing their crimes and lies, a grievous wound. They demand vengeance. The control these forces seek abroad is the control they seek at home.
Julian Assange may soon be imprisoned for life in the U.S. for journalism, but he won’t be the only one.
Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for 15 years for The New York Times, where he served as the Middle East bureau chief and Balkan bureau chief for the paper. He previously worked overseas for The Dallas Morning News, The Christian Science Monitor and NPR. He is the host of show “The Chris Hedges Report.”
Author’s Note to Readers: There is now no way left for me to continue to write a weekly column for ScheerPost and produce my weekly television show without your help. The walls are closing in, with startling rapidity, on independent journalism, with the elites, including the Democratic Party elites, clamoring for more and more censorship. Bob Scheer, who runs ScheerPost on a shoestring budget, and I will not waiver in our commitment to independent and honest journalism, and we will never put ScheerPost behind a paywall, charge a subscription for it, sell your data or accept advertising. Please, if you can, sign up at chrishedges.substack.com so I can continue to post my Monday column on ScheerPost and produce my weekly television show, “The Chris Hedges Report.”
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He’s not even a U.S. citizen. If we belonged to a world court that was truly just and independent, I’m sure extraditing him would be seen for what it is: a crime against humanity, a crime against the free press and an insult to what should be free and democratic societies that are increasingly becoming fascist.
Assange said in 2016-a vote for Hillary or Trump is like choosing syphilis or gonorrhea. His treatment by the British and Americans in the last 8 years is now proof positive.
It sure is, sadly. Unbelievable that the West lectures other countries about human rights while persecuting Mr. Assange. As a former community newspaper reporter, photojournalist, editor and publisher, it’s a sad, sad, sad, very sad day for journalism. I cannot believe the lethargic reactions from major news organizations. It shows the Fascist oligarchy is finally showing its true colors. Be prepared for more censorship as independent journalistic websites lose their ability to publish; people lose their bank accounts; are banned from Internet payment providers; etc. Oh, wait. That’s already happened. Haven’t heard of people losing insurance for their political views, but I’m sure that will come, too.
I am considering suing the US for racketeering (RICO) consisting of subversion of the Constitution, perjury, abuse of public office, denial of honest services, etc. in the Assange case and several other matters. I have the legal knowledge to do that but an experienced lawyer would have better credibility and should take the Assange case. Volunteers?
Don’t consider. Do it. If i was in the US i would volunteer to assist. I am not a lawyer, but if you need boots on the ground in southern Europe, here i am. Also, do a search for “pro bono” lawyers in your area.
A good example of MSM actors are Brooks & Capehart on the Friday night PBS Newshour. Shamefully, they have not covered the persecution of Julian Assange at all. When they do cover a story, they typically leave out fully half the story, if not more. They subtly deny there is a Deep State, while “reporting” its cover stories.
Any alternative analysis is dismissed with a scoff. And that is where their talent as actors shines. The audience must believe that scoff. It dodges all discussion of half the facts in one quick move. So it’s essential that this move be impeccable. That’s where Brooks & Capehart earn their lunch. They act impeccably trustworthy.
There is obviously no way professional reporters would be so ignorant of all the information they omit. So they are omitting it intentionally. In my view they are a textbook case of a con artists disguised as news analysts. They know they are working for criminals, enemies engaged in a mass disinformation attack on the American people.
The corporate media is not the only institution conducting a disinformation attack on Americans. Anthony Blinken, in his briefing after his meetings in China, said, “I also specifically raised wrongfully detained US citizens.” This is the top US official who has presided over a steady stream of lies to Russia, Ukraine, the American people, and the world. And is arguable overseeing the persecution of the most courageous and consequential journalist of our era.
America’s democracy is clearly under serious attack. Fortunately journalism still lives at Consortium News. And on comedian Jimmy Dore’s show, where he interviewed Chris Hedges.
Assange’s Last Chance At Freedom
hxxps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXhw0SlSJ-w
PBS almost always seems to rely first on some commenter from some government agency, whatever the topic at issue.
No wonder its nickname is “National Propaganda System.”
I think it safe to say now that democracy in the UK and the collective west, such as it ever was, is now dead. All that is left are the trappings, the smoke and mirror effects to make people believe they still have a say, and still matter. Apart from a handful of individual MPs who try to help their constituents, there is no direct representation of voters wishes.
Along with its demise have gone basic freedoms, civil and human rights – and justice. We are not innocent until proven guilty anymore. There is no longer the need for conclusive ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ evidence, and no onus on the prosecutor to prove guilt. The presiding judges and magistrates are not impartial anymore, they can & do influence the judgements and verdicts.
In justice, the presiding judges or magistrates usually have honorifics, such as ‘Your Honour’, but these should be removed because there is nothing honourable about their roles anymore.
Julian Assange will not get a fair trial, anywhere. He will be mistreated, and will in all probability not survive for long in any US prison.
This is so profoundly depressing that I can hardly believe that the ‘ordinary’ press will let it go on so long? -surely there are some of them around who could/would not take up the challenge and free us all from the nightmare of the MSM
There are very few news and information systems that are credible. It almost seems that finding the truth entails opposite thinking where Good is Bad and Enough is Never enough. We the sad and forsaken people of the United States have NO concept of “a more perfect union.”
No perfection at all with the death of true journalism—–and where do we go from here? Crap news from Ukraine and from America. I’m sorry you are wasting all that money on Ukraine while so many of your own citizens are both hungary and homeless——–and no doubt toothless too as they are so often forgotten and forsaken. People are laid off , even on Wall St. –so I guess We the People find ourselves in a very sad way. Money does seem to rise to the occasion of greed. But Honesty——where is that? And how do we make HONESTY rise in the government?
Too put a truth teller into prison for telling the TRUTH—-America is slip sliding away—-but perhaps that will make for a safer world in the long run—but trading Juian Assange as a criminal and as a less than person—where torture awaits Truth Tellers–tellsus all what we need to know—our own nation has failed us all.: (
I am wondering who Chris Hedges was referring to with his final sentence: “Julian Assange may soon be imprisoned for life in the U.S. for journalism, but he won’t be the only one.”
I would guess Mumia abu Jamal
He means the precedence is set and won’t stop there. If Assange is extradited and imprisoned, or even continues to be imprisoned where he is now, no one reporting the truth will be safe. We will only be allowed to “imagine” the truth, not declare it as fact. You have to realize that, rather than deal with facts or a shared resemblance of reality, the powers that be prefer that lies become the final declarations of truth. Our entire western civilization becomes nothing less than Caligula on the cross, the only allowable savior on the tree of life. The final truth becomes not transcendence, but capitulation to a concept much baser than that which even Caesarism once hoped to achieve: a rational way forward into a shared subsistence. Assange really is the straw which will break the camel’s back – they just don’t realize it yet. His freedom is the only way we can return to a shared civilization, and the freedom of personalized conceptualization.
Hi firstpersoninfinite:
I agree with you completely. if Julian’s freedom is lost—-it is lost for all of us. : (
Perhaps the US is where the battle needs to come. If Americans don’t demand journalism, then integrity is lost.
The closed system of empire keeps Julian locked inside. But the world is bigger and more beautiful than that. Reality and truth can’t be locked out and sooner or later will appear. If there is a USA future there’ll be a liberator who’ll pardon him immediately. It could be as soon as RFK Jr. A larger system is in control.
Kafkaesque, Orwellian and tragic. The persecution of Julian Assange is indicative of general developments.
Americas “anemic democracy” is already a dictatorship of the oligarchy. After SCOTUS (Citizens United) formalized and institutionalized unlimited political bribery (money = “free speech”) , how can anyone describe the US as a “democracy’?
The US govt. murders journalists, persecutes journalists and publishers, commits massive crimes at home and abroad. As Chris points out: the CIA murders, tortures, bribes, etc. they run guns and drugs for off the books income (so-called Black Ops) This has all been documented. Instead of dismissing this offhand as “conspiracy theory”, folks should look at the record (Church Comittee, stacks of research, primary documentation etc.)
My sarcastic quip for those who don’t believe the CIA could ever do such a thing: “Oh yaaah, the CIA bake cupcakes for charity, doncha know!”
Wow, another dynamite by Chris. This is almost a nakedly obscene expos? of the Western establishments’ assembly line of international and national crimes and politically empowered criminals. At least the earlier Madame Justice and the ECHR display some degree of moral conscience in comparison to the rest of the highly upsetting British legal setups. Somehow I get the feeling that the entire Assange episode is being used to de facto usher in the long overdue holistic death of MSM especially in the developed world !
I had no idea that Julian could be Extradited as soon as This Week and I didn’t know that his subsequent appeal could be DENIED. All this means he could be Extradited Immediately and “In Secret”.
“Without a Free Press, there can be No Democracy”
Thomas Jefferson
How Ironic.
I imagine it will be a landmark decision if the UK chooses to ignore the European Court of Human Rights. Chris Hedges would most likely have cited any precedent for that if there were one.
If you feel the need to throw up sometime, check out pictures of the WH Correspondents Dinner … powerful “reporters” yakking it up and laughing the night away with the politicos they are supposed to watch. Do we wonder why there hasn’t been a bigger hue and cry?
As for the extradition, in a way I feel it’s better to get it over with. He’s in solitary confinement over in the UK anyway, so his condition wont change here. And I really want to see whether the system is really going to prosecute a foreign journalist for speech violations in the US and have it make any kind of legal sense. It will be a watershed and clarifying moment, either way.
And Assange needs this to end … his health, both physical and mental, is suffering.
Testimony in his extradition hearing established that his conditions in the US would be far worse than Belmarsh, which led to the district judge initially “releasing” him, a decision that the US got overturned on appeal after “assurances” they would treat him nicely.
Hmmm, and US “assurances” are worth … best left unsaid.
So it could get worse … on the other hand, he could also be found not guilty by a jury of his peers, no? After all, this will not end until there’s a trial, so sooner the better?
Btw, it’s interesting thinking about Julian’s “peers” for his trial. Thinking about peers professionally, who would rate, a jury of the late Robert Parry, with perhaps Joe Lauria and Chris Hedges to round it out? Perhaps they would be found to be “prejudiced” and the court would need to get some Times and Post stenographers to act like peers.
“After all, this will not end until there’s a trial, so sooner the better?”
If indeed it gets to that point. We the people who stand by justice, strive for justice.
How can the international community allow a journalist to be turned over to the same government that planned to assassinate the journalist?
The US and the UN need to clean houses since neither one demonstrates a house of justice. We need Chris Hedges to ride in the plane with Assange from London to the USA to ensure Julian doesn’t trip and fall out of the plane while traveling over the Atlantic Ocean.
This is truly a travesty. It is a shout-out to our abandonment of decency worldwide. I guess this puts an exclamation point on our species demise alongside the demise of our planet with climate change.
Don’t expect Americans to come to the aid of Julian the truth teller, we are too busy standing up for the biggest liar to ever get into power. Just sickening.
The US is a criminal syndicate. There can be no denying it. Yet, the propagandists in the corporate media have the majority thinking that their only enemy is the other color corporate party cult. This is how empires go down in flames. Julian tried to warn the public before things got to this point. Unfortunately, the public has lost its collective ability to reason. Many don’t even know who Assange is. Bless Julian for his heroic efforts to save us all from what’s coming. He doesn’t deserve the suffering he is enduring. Neither does his family or any of us. How can we wake people up?
You’re right. As a U.S. citizen I have been outraged for many years by the explosion of U.S. empire hubris that is used not only around the world but here on U.S. citizens. The persecution and torture of Julian Assange in plain sight, the lack of any mainstream media reporting on his condition, and on the fact that he has not been convicted of any crime, deliberate acts of an empire run amok. The U.S. government and its capitalist corporate criminals are a cancer on planet Earth. Only recently has the growth of this cancer metastasized to the extent that the people of the world cannot any longer fail to notice it and the corporate liars are starting to panic over this loss of control. This loss of control, however, has enraged its instigators. What we are seeing is the thrashings of a dying empire growing in violence and irrationality.
By crying wolf all these years about how the Soviets & then Russians are bent on overtaking the whole world unless stopped, our ruling elites project what they themselves desire to do.
And now prove their willingness to use the same underhanded tactics they once decried as evil incarnate that must be stamped out. Perhaps they’ll find a way to stomp their own asses?
It’s as if the world’s Belligerent, bristling with armor, rules, as if a simpleton, by an old schoolyard dictum: I’m rubber & you’re glue, whatever you say bounces off me & sticks to you.
And expect people to believe it. And they do! For mercy’s sake, how much longer?
Good question. How long? Time is running out. Events are speeding up.
From the article:
“The very belated call from The New York Times, The Guardian, Le Monde, Der Spiegel and El País — all of whom published material provided by WikiLeaks — to drop the extradition charges is too little too late.”
A token “outcry” for which they must hang their collective heads in shame and disgrace, as fellow publishers.
No, they have no shame.
“I am as stunned by this full frontal assault on journalism as I am by the lack of public outrage, especially by the media…”
Exactly right. This sentence really stands out for me. It is because of our so called ‘Free’ Press, that there is so little apparent public outrage, especially from the young, who most probably, will not have heard of Julian Assange. His name for them will just be
something that crops up from time to time on the so called ‘news’. This is nothing short of tragic.
The rubbish that we get here in the UK on our front pages: blanket coverage for days about TV ‘celebrities ‘ having affairs, for example. Keeping the important stories away. Editors decide the headlines. They make a decision on what to keep OFF the front pages. It is what they do NOT tell us and for what reasons, that we should know more about. One of the most perplexing thing about the whole Assange affair for me, is this total lack of interest from the mainstream media throughout. What are the so afraid of? Who is telling them what to do? The usual statements about “We are independent” and ” We do not print what our proprietors tell us” (or words to that effect), no longer wash anymore, for me anyway. The broadcast media are just as guilty.
Long live CN, long live independent media, FREE JULIAN ASSANGE.
I too Jon am amazed at how many people have never heard of Julian Assange. Which takes us back to your comment on the “rubbish” reporting and who decides the headlines. What are they afraid of? Who is telling them what to do? I believe it is the UK government. They fawn before the US and bend to their dictates. They do not want an informed public on many subjects, not just Julian Assange. (Keep the masses distracted with drivel about TV presenter’s affairs – who gives a monkey’s uncle?)
Valerie, it’s not the UK gov’t alone. They’re playing by the same playbook as the USA with a shallow pretext of national concern. imo it’s a global agenda, a single octopus behind the various tentacles.
The octopus plays God. The good news is that beyond the octopus IS God.
And in your not at all humble opinion, the ‘octopus’s’ tentacles are not too, of your god???
For lucidities sake: The correct word order of my question should have read, “And in your not at all humble opinion, are the ‘octopus’s’ tentacles not too, of one god???
From Valerie’s excellent comment:
“I believe it is the UK government. They fawn before the US.”
You’re right, Valerie.
But it’s not just the UK. The Australian government (of whatever stripe) cringes before the US and the UK.
Australia’s Treachery Toward
Julian Assange
So Albanese failed this man,
Who is a proud Australian,
Far more than Albanese is.
The vile US, UK are his
Paymasters, bosses—“Just shut up,
Colonial cur, tame lapdog pup.”
And why is lying Penny Wong
Still Foreign Secretary? So wrong
In everything that she has said
About Assange. She has no cred.
This pair should now vacate the deal
That makes their land a nuclear power.
That’s surely how peace lovers feel
At this most dark and sickening hour.
Wonderful George. Thankyou. I don’t know how accurate it is, but somewhere in the back of my mind i think i read that if Julian is convicted in the US then Australia can request he serves his sentence in Australia. Can that Albanese be up to that request i wonder. (If it comes about.)