The Australian government has an obligation to free Julian Assange, John Pilger told a rally in Sydney on June 16, marking Assange’s six years’ confinement in the Ecuadorean embassy in London.
By John Pilger
The persecution of Julian Assange must end. Or it will end in tragedy.
The Australian government and prime minister Malcolm Turnbull have an historic opportunity to decide which it will be.
They can remain silent, for which history will be unforgiving. Or they can act in the interests of justice and humanity and bring this remarkable Australian citizen home.
Assange does not ask for special treatment. The government has clear diplomatic and moral obligations to protect Australian citizens abroad from gross injustice: in Julian’s case, from a gross miscarriage of justice and the extreme danger that await him should he walk out of the Ecuadorean embassy in London unprotected.
We know from the Chelsea Manning case what he can expect if a U.S. extradition warrant is successful — a United Nations Special Rapporteur called it torture.
I know Julian Assange well; I regard him as a close friend, a person of extraordinary resilience and courage. I have watched a tsunami of lies and smear engulf him, endlessly, vindictively, perfidiously; and I know why they smear him.
In 2008, a plan to destroy both WikiLeaks and Assange was
Cyber Branch: Destroy WikiLeak’s “feeling of trust.”
laid out in a top secret document dated 8 March, 2008. The authors were the Cyber Counter-intelligence Assessments Branch of the U.S. Defence Department. They described in detail how important it was to destroy the “feeling of trust” that is WikiLeaks’ “centre of gravity”.
This would be achieved, they wrote, with threats of “exposure [and] criminal prosecution” and a unrelenting assault on reputation. The aim was to silence and criminalise WikiLeaks and its editor and publisher. It was as if they planned a war on a single human being and on the very principle of freedom of speech.
Vichy Media
Their main weapon would be personal smear. Their shock troops would be enlisted in the media — those who are meant to keep the record straight and tell us the truth.
The irony is that no one told these journalists what to do. I call them Vichy journalists — after the Vichy government that served and enabled the German occupation of wartime France.
Last October, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation journalist Sarah Ferguson interviewed Hillary Clinton, over whom she fawned as “the icon for your generation”.
This was the same Clinton who threatened to “obliterate totally” Iran and, who, as U.S. secretary of State in 2011, was one of the instigators of the invasion and destruction of Libya as a modern state, with the loss of 40,000 lives. Like the invasion of Iraq, it was based on lies.
When the Libyan President was murdered publicly and gruesomely with a knife, Clinton was filmed whooping and cheering. Thanks largely to her, Libya became a breeding ground for ISIS and other jihadists. Thanks largely to her, tens of thousands of refugees fled in peril across the Mediterranean, and many drowned.
WikiLeaks Exposed Clinton
Leaked emails published by WikiLeaks revealed that Hillary Clinton’s foundation – which she shares with her husband – received millions of dollars from Saudi Arabia and Qatar, the main backers of ISIS and terrorism across the Middle East.
As Secretary of State, Clinton approved the biggest arms sale ever — worth $80 billion — to Saudi Arabia, one of her foundation’s principal benefactors. Today, Saudi Arabia is using these weapons to crush starving and stricken people in a genocidal assault on Yemen.
Sarah Ferguson, a highly paid reporter, raised not a word of this with Hillary Clinton sitting in front of her.
Ferguson: Soft balls for Clinton. ABC Photo
Instead, she invited Clinton to describe the “damage” Julian Assange did “personally to you”. In response, Clinton defamed Assange, an Australian citizen, as “very clearly a tool of Russian intelligence” and “a nihilistic opportunist who does the bidding of a dictator”.
She offered no evidence — nor was asked for any — to back her grave allegations.
At no time was Assange offered the right of reply to this shocking interview, which Australia’s publicly-funded state broadcaster had a duty to give him.
As if that wasn’t enough, Ferguson’s executive producer, Sally Neighour, followed the interview with a vicious re-tweet: “Assange is Putin’s bitch. We all know it!”
There are many other examples of Vichy journalism. The Guardian, reputedly once a great liberal newspaper, conducted a vendetta against Julian Assange. Like a spurned lover, the Guardian aimed its personal, petty, inhuman and craven attacks at a man whose work it once published and profited from.
The former editor of the Guardian, Alan Rusbridger, called the WikiLeaks disclosures, which his newspaper published in 2010, “one of the greatest journalistic scoops of the last 30 years”. Awards were lavished and celebrated as if Julian Assange did not exist.
Maligning and Profiting off Assange
WikiLeaks’ revelations became part of the Guardian’s marketing plan to raise the paper’s cover price. They made money, often big money, while WikiLeaks and Assange struggled to survive. With not a penny going to WikiLeaks, a hyped Guardian book led to a lucrative Hollywood movie deal. The book’s authors, Luke Harding and David Leigh, gratuitously abused Assange as a “damaged personality” and “callous”.
They also revealed the secret password Julian had given the Guardian in confidence and which was designed to protect a digital file containing the U.S. embassy cables.
With Assange now trapped in the Ecuadorean embassy, Harding, who had enriched himself on the backs of both Julian Assange and Edward Snowden, stood among the police outside the embassy and gloated on his blog that “Scotland Yard may get the last laugh”.
The question is why.
Julian Assange has committed no crime. He has never been charged with a crime. The Swedish episode was bogus and farcical and he has been vindicated.
Katrin Axelsson and Lisa Longstaff of Women Against Rape summed it up when they wrote, “The allegations against [Assange] are a smokescreen behind which a number of governments are trying to clamp down on WikiLeaks for having audaciously revealed to the public their secret planning of wars and occupations with their attendant rape, murder and destruction… The authorities care so little about violence against women that they manipulate rape allegations at will.”
This truth was lost or buried in a media witch-hunt that disgracefully associated Assange with rape and misogyny. The witch-hunt included voices who described themselves as on the left and as feminist. They willfully ignored the evidence of extreme danger should Assange be extradited to the United States.
Snowden: Assange is on Man-Hunt List (Photo: Screenshot on WikiLeaks)
According to a document released by Edward Snowden, Assange is on a “Manhunt target list”. One leaked official memo says: “Assange is going to make a nice bride in prison. Screw the terrorist. He’ll be eating cat food forever.”
In Alexandra, Virginia – the suburban home of America’s war-making elite — a secret grand jury, a throwback to the middle ages — has spent seven years trying to concoct a crime for which Assange can be prosecuted.
This is not easy; the U.S. Constitution protects publishers, journalists and whistleblowers. Assange’s crime is to have broken a silence.
They Never Happened
No investigative journalism in my lifetime can equal the importance of what WikiLeaks has done in calling rapacious power to account. It is as if a one-way moral screen has been pushed back to expose the imperialism of liberal democracies: the commitment to endless warfare and the division and degradation of “unworthy” lives: from Grenfell Tower to Gaza.
When Harold Pinter accepted the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2005, he referred to “a vast tapestry of lies up on which we feed”. He asked why “the systematic brutality, the widespread atrocities, the ruthless suppression of independent thought” of the Soviet Union were well known in the West while America’s imperial crimes “never happened … even while [they] were happening, they never happened.”
In its revelations of fraudulent wars (Afghanistan, Iraq) and the bald-faced lies of governments (the Chagos Islands), WikiLeaks has allowed us to glimpse how the imperial game is played in the 21st century. That is why Assange is in mortal danger.
Seven years ago, in Sydney, I arranged to meet a prominent Liberal Member of the Federal Parliament, Malcolm Turnbull.
I wanted to ask him to deliver a letter from Gareth Peirce, Assange’s lawyer, to the government. We talked about his famous victory — in the 1980s when, as a young barrister, he had fought the British Government’s attempts to suppress free speech and prevent the publication of the book Spycatcher — in its way, a WikiLeaks of the time, for it revealed the crimes of state power.
The prime minister of Australia was then Julia Gillard, a Labor Party politician who had
Gillard: Tried to cancel Assange’s passport.
declared WikiLeaks “illegal” and wanted to cancel Assange’s passport — until she was told she could not do this: that Assange had committed no crime: that WikiLeaks was a publisher, whose work was protected under Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to which Australia was one of the original signatories.
In abandoning Assange, an Australian citizen, and colluding in his persecution, Prime Minister Gillard’s outrageous behaviour forced the issue of his recognition, under international law, as a political refugee whose life was at risk. Ecuador invoked the 1951 Convention and granted Assange refuge in its embassy in London.
Gillard has recently been appearing in a gig with Hillary Clinton; they are billed as pioneering feminists.
If there is anything to remember Gillard by, it a warmongering, sycophantic, embarrassing speech she made to the US Congress soon after she demanded the illegal cancellation of Julian’s passport.
Malcolm Turnbull is now the Prime Minister of Australia. Julian Assange’s father has written to Turnbull. It is a moving letter, in which he has appealed to the prime minister to bring his son home. He refers to the real possibility of a tragedy.
I have watched Assange’s health deteriorate in his years of confinement without sunlight. He has had a relentless cough, but is not even allowed safe passage to and from a hospital for an X-ray.
Malcolm Turnbull can remain silent. Or he can seize this opportunity and use his government’s diplomatic influence to defend the life of an Australian citizen, whose courageous public service is recognised by countless people across the world. He can bring Julian Assange home.
John Pilger is an Australian-British journalist based in London. Pilger’s Web site is: www.johnpilger.com. His new film, “The Coming War on China,” is available in the U.S. from www.bullfrogfilms.com
Yes, I also call on the Australian Prime Minister to do what ever is needed to bring Julian Assange home now. Assange deserves the greatest respect and gratitude for exposing how power works and needs to be removed from harms way.
Thank you John Pilger for your efforts, reporting, and honesty. You’re one of the very few that I’ve learned to trust for accurate reporting. We are in a very sad state of affairs in the United States with biased media reporting on the Assange debacle. A true hero for reporting the truth, Assange has been vilified by the American media and the US government, which continues to act in a lawless, immoral fashion.
I also had the misfortune of viewing the fawning, vomitous Sarah Ferguson’s Hillary Clinton interview. Appalling!
She recently presented a Four Corners programme about the alleged Trump/Russia connection, giving oxygen to, amongst others, the self confessed liar to Congress, James Clapper.It was an embarrassment.Her dramatic voiceovers were puerile.Unsubstantiated allegations against Vladimir Putin mere yellow journalism. Sally Neighbour’s comment remains a disgrace.
As for Julia Gillard one is hard pressed to entertain any suggestion that she is/was a lawyer. No idea about natural justice or procedural fairness.
Don’t expect anything better from our spineless PM either.
Julian Assange’s torture––yes, torture! He is no longer allowed to have visitors, use a computer or even get some sunlight–– something every prisoner in the U.S. is granted––is a clear example of what happened when you mess with the 5 eyes cabal. The U.S.––and it matters little if the president’s name is Obama or Trump––U.K., Canada, New Zealand, and Australia are all working together to dominate the world. Assange, whose Wikileaks publishes the truth about them, and other countries of course, is a thorn in their sides. Look at Hillary Clinton, she’s out there every day complaining about how Julian Assange, Trump, and Russia stole her “right” to be the next president. She never mentions that all Assange did was publish the lies, corruption, and criminal behavior of her and the DNC proven by her own e-mails. No mention of Seth Rich––murdered, assassination style, on the streets of D.C. shortly after the email scandal broke. Assange offered a reward for the arrest of his killers! Guess why? Did anyone ever confiscate Rich’s DNC computer? Of course not! The FBI saw no reason to do that even though “former NSA experts say it wasn’t a hack at all, but a leak—an inside job by someone with access to the DNC’s system.” https://www.thenation.com/article/a-new-report-raises-big-questions-about-last-years-dnc-hack/
Julian Assange must be immediately granted his unconditional freedom, and safe passage to his native Australia to take up residence and work surrounded by family and friends.
Why? …
1.) Because his sole “crime” is conveyance of the secreted, brutal truth – the essential 1st step in the building of a better world … followed by associated awareness-fueled actions creating good quality-of-life consequences today, and for future generations inheriting this Earth..
2.) Because it is the right thing to do.
Stand up for your citizen-defy the bully-soon we all will!
As is documented here, the actions of the Australian yankee client regime have been a disgrace from the beginning. Indeed, the efforts by the yankee regime and its various satellites in this case have been deplorable and expose the true nature of their regimes. Pilger, a hero, is to be commended for lending his support and actions to this major issue, and his honour and integrity backs up this story.
Video for Julian in the style of INXS’s “Mediate” https://youtu.be/JfLdNERa2dI
In Russia JulianAssange is an MI6 agent;
In the US, a Russian agent;
In Iran, a Mossad agent;
In Saudi, an Iranian agent;
In Libya, a CIA agent.
World wide establishments accuse those who expose them of being the enemy of the people.
We ALL owe this man a huge debt of gratitude and the Nobel prize. Westerners, Easterners, Muslims, Christians, Conservatives, Socialists alike. He is the only Westerner that laid down his life and his freedom to show allied/western war crimes against Muslims in the Middle East; and at the same time laying down his life and freedom to show huge breeches of freedom and privacy of citizens in the West. He is the antibiotic, the chemotherapy – to the infection or cancer of corruption, stagnation, polarization and evil in the world right now.
Mark my words that whatever humanity does with this hero will determine what humanity deserves to happen to it.
Is he a perfect human being – no. Is he a flawed hero – yes.
Karly-
Good comment. However, I don’t think humanity as a whole deserves to suffer for the sins of the few. Most people are basically good, and they only desire to raise their kids in a safe and healthy environment. That we have become powerless to stop the forces of evil due to wealth inequality, endless propaganda, and other forms of manipulation is a sad tale. The majority is not to blame. I think we can only hope for some sudden increase in human consciousness that will make that manipulation impossible. Then the empire will become powerless, and we can work for peace in a multi-polar world. Sites like this one provide an excellent forum to counter the MSM propaganda. We can only hope that they continue to gain in popularity.
I couldn’t have said it better. Very well put.
Not one mention of the biggest threat to humanity…..The American Republican Party.
Must be because Assange is part of a vast Trump-Russia conspiracy to overthrow the Western liberal rules-based world order, no?
https://theintercept.com/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipulation/
Really? You keep falling for the old “bait and switch”. Which Democratic president has presided over peaceful times, and refused to do the war machine’s bidding?
Good question. Not Bill Clinton and not Obama. Maybe Carter. He claims ‘not to have ever fired a shot in anger’ during his presidency. That was in the midst of the cold war. He did, however, establish the “Carter Doctrine”, which was a stated policy to defend Mideast oil militarily, from any unfriendly military which sought to control it. Bush I implemented this policy to justify the original Gulf War, where Iraq supposedly threatened to seize the reserves of Saudi Arabia. And, Carter’s SOS Brezinski was proud to have baited the Soviet Union into its own Vietnam – the occupation of Afghanistan. One could say that Carter’s policies did not directly do the war machine’s bidding,and were intended to end the cold war, or at least to deter a war over Mideast oil.
I thought of Carter, and he is probably the lone standout, at least within my lifetime. It’s probably also one of the main reasons he was a one term president.
As repugnant as this may sound, on a political level, the only possible leader who might have sufficient courage and ability to act against these sinister forces may be Trump! – He’s done stranger unexpected things!
Beyond that, I agree that “the people” is the next best bet.
I appeal to anyone with potential ability and connections to try both ways.
The truth is sacrosanct and we are blessed to have the likes of John Pilger, Robert Parry,Julian Assange and others, journalists who are uncompromising when it comes to such matters. They chose the more difficult path in life, a path that demands both courage and integrity and we are all they better for it. The powers that be don’t like being exposed for their corruption and ineptitude and will Demand the maximum penalty for those who expose them in such a way. But in the end, one hopes, truth will prevail.
“Have Garrote Will Travel.”
What is wrong with the British people? If I lived in London, I’d be out in front of the Parliament buildings or, better still, protesting in the middle of the night below the Queen’s bedroom window. Well, maybe I wouldn’t do that because I’d probably be arrested, but why aren’t people shutting down that city until he is released? What a bunch of nambies. Stop all the traffic, don’t go to work. Do something.
I’m not buying anything made in England, and I certainly won’t step foot back on that island until he’s let go.
If Julian called their bluff and walked right out of there and they arrested him, sent him to the United States, do you think there’d be a roar heard around the world? I think there’s a real good chance there would be.
Dream on —– No they will lock him away & throw away the key.
The behaviour of Australians ,Swedish & British is no worse than the Americans all shameful .
Hi B.E.-
I’d hope there’d be an uproar if the US took Assange, but if Chelsea Manning is an example, I suspect they wouldn’t. Bob Parry’s “Mighty Wurlitzer” would go into high gear. The propagandists have honed their craft since the ’60’s. Most people are too exhausted from trying to keep their heads above water, and keep their kids fed, to go demonstrate. Many are also “amusing themselves to death” with endless, mindless entertainment when they aren’t working their asses off. Even if there were large demonstrations, the MSM wouldn’t cover them, or they’d spin it somehow to make the demonstrators into a “lawless mob”. I wish I were more hopeful, but my rose- colored glasses broke years ago.
I would like to believe there would be, but the current administration seems to have a way of turning (at least American’s attention) to whatever they choose. It’s as if this country has turned into a land of puppets with the administration the puppet master. It’s sick, sad, and realistically, I don’t see it changing. After all, the president has made it clear that he alone is in control. Land of the free? That’s definitely a thing of the past. It’s crazy how just putting one person in power has really changed the world. It’s not good.
And yet Assange’s predicament can be directly traced back to Obama and crooked Hillary and the 5 eyes cabal.
I think your hatred for Trump blinds you to the real power that is amassed against Assange. After all, Trump said during the campaign “I love Wikileaks”. Why do you think he hasn’t given Assange his freedom and thanked him for his service in bringing the truth to the world? Very simply, it isn’t within his power to do so. The real rulers have been telling presidents what they can and can’t do since they killed JFK in 1963. You are right that we are no longer the “land of the free”, but singling out Trump as the cause is misplaced.
Thanks and praise to JP for his efforts in support of Julian’s Rights as a Human Being, and a very noble one, at that!
The contrast between Truth and Open Dialogue (personified by Julian, John Pilger, and many other worthy contributors to websites -the only places where Truth and Opennesss still can be found-such as CN) and Lies and Obfuscation, is becoming so marked now, that something has to give, and it will take a leader with severe ruthlessness and experience swimming in a shark tank to counter the built-up infrastructure of the-oh, why not say it- Deep State. S(he) might be in front of us now, or will be brought into the struggle soon. But, just as likely, if not more so, is that we are just in the sort of long, slow decline that Rome fell into. It’s chilling to consider that we, being such clever little monkeys, will just use the present conundrums to perfect the process of – what’s the phrase I’ve been hearing lately,- oh, yeah, “Full-Spectrum Dominance.” The thought of that techno-Totalitarian phraseology is what sends a chill down my spine, and makes me very sad for coming generations, shpuld Humanity lose to AI.
I feel so sad for
julian and his family .
This the world we live in .
greed ,violence of the small minded people ,fearfull of their own shadow .
wish you a lot of courage and love ,may you be free and happy Julian
I originally wrote this as a reply to an excellent comment posted by Realist. Now his post is missing…what’s going on with that???? Get rid of that annoying algorithm and I will make a donation.
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………
As usual Realist you get right down to it, and I say bravo to you for doing so.
One of the things which bothers me to no end, is that my grandchildren haven’t yet experienced an America without it’s heavy atmosphere of it being a police state. My oldest grandchild is 23, as my youngest is 6 months, and neither will have known to how an American society ever moved around within itself without inspecting each bag or pair of shoes, as our freedoms have been knocked down to in half of what they once were. My hope is that if this situation should ever change that our offspring will be able to read, or find out, to how our society once really did work without the weight of a gestapo style government.
I just had a couple of friends return from a trip to Berlin. Our friends were shocked where on one tour in Berlin the tour guide explained to how Hitler came to power, and our friends seriously said it sounded like they were describing modern day America in the 21st Century. The comparison is striking, and most concerning, but this shouldn’t be leveled only at Trump since Trump is just accepting the past as prelude to his own policies. Who knows, maybe he will surprise us, but I wouldn’t get my hopes up too much, because that would be another stupid naïve mindset we would again have to live with.
Go get him Realist. Joe
Evil & depravity & domination of people can never survive for long Joe, that’s a proven historical fact despite the appearance of it’s seeming longevity now! Good will always prevail over evil! Hitler boasted that the German Reich would last a thousand years & we all know what happened to him & his Nazi Regime, he put a bullet in his brain & his Nazi Germany was destroyed in less than 5 yrs! And although you & your friends see the US as heading the same way, I think there’s hope for your grandchildren as Tyrants & tyrannical Govts have a shelf life because at the end of day they are only men with limited, mortal lifespans. The US & it’s Deepstate are living on borrowed time, believe me, & what your seeing & experiencing in the US are the death throes of this lot, they know the gigs up, Assange & Snowden have let the cat out of the bag & that information can’t be put back in the bag & hidden again despite their attempts? Rome, which was a World Empire like the US, fell in a similar fashion to what’s happening in America today, a hegemon collapsing under the weight of its own economic hubris, arrogance & immorality & MIC overreach & now its just a waiting game on when & how this collapse occurs! Russia & China know this & Assange has exposed this immoral US Empire as a corrupt Empire with no clothes on!
KiwiAntz I can’t thank you enough for your uplifting post. Who said your always talking the negative? Anyway, I like you do want to believe that good always wins out over evil. In fact I’d like to think that most of America’s current appearance to Nazism is a stepping stone to a fair and just society right around the bend, bore out from the disgust over a current embattled situation.
I like the idea of a multipolar sovereign nation world order. A world where visas and passports are still required, but a free enough world one could move around in, if they were to wish to. Imagine a world where the U.S. would ally with such nations as Russia, and China, who would blend together into one big armada to fight any real terrorism the world may wish to put aground.
But first we must do the dance of the warmonger, and with that we continually cross the threshold of more war, on top of even more war, to create a cascade of destruction like the world has never seen. This dilemma must be met with an end to all nations of the world making their defense departments profit centers for the heartless greedy MIC serpent who squeezes the life out of evey economy it slithers into, and who by their evil nature cleverly hides behind the mask of a Pax Nationalist patriotism to the slight of hand they do so well, to blind their public at every turn.
Thanks again KiwiAntz. Joe
Free him. He has committed no crime only exposed those of the governments and world elite who want to keep us in the dark.
I believe evil is in control, otherwise Edward Snowden and Julian Assange would be hailed as heroes for exposing the corruption that rules over us. Instead they are vilified and attacked by the powerful in positions of power that need to be arrested.
http://graysinfo.blogspot.com/2015/09/arrest-them.html
If there is a God in Heaven then Julian Assange must be freed. Thank you
Just freeing Julian would not be enough. He would badly need the equivalence of a witness protection program. He is a big target. Look at what they did to Michael Hastings, and he was small potatoes compared to Julian.
Thank you for mentioning Michael Hastings Skip; that auto accident seemed way too convenient, especially given that he was working on a book about the NSA at the time.
ditto what robjira said to ya Skip.
Does Malcolm Turnbull recognise John Pilger as a great Australian journalist and film maker?
The Deep State really got its money’s worth for staging 9-11 because it changed absolutely everything. No longer would the American people, its federal government, its media or its collection of satellite vassal states question anything which that clique of warmongering thugs commanded be done in the name of “national security.” With the stroke of Dubya’s pen this country’s citizens lost their privacy, their constitutional guarantees and their vaunted universal human rights that the entire West still glibly pontificates upon and pretends to still be real. The people weren’t consulted, offered any redress and have been treated like traitors if they object to their own pacification by the people elected and sworn to protect their rights and well-being. Rather they’ve been incessantly lied to, bilked, pauperized, threatened, manipulated by the media, defrauded at the ballot box and had their children used as both canon fodder and mass executioners of unfortunates from other lands who present the slightest obstacle to managing the Deep State’s global empire.
Julian Assange is “guilty” only of revealing the truth about these usurpers of human rights, mockers of human dignity and extinguishers of human life. They want to crucify him for revealing their sins to the world. They feel both entitled and compelled to perpetrate this travesty because in a fair and moral world, the forces of institutional justice would be coming after them. To them, Assange is just one more nuisance that needs to be swept aside if they are to keep the power they have been wresting from the people since the founding of the republic.
Want to better understand their treacherous tactics? Pay close attention to everything they accuse Russia, China, Iran and their other acclaimed “enemies” of doing to violate human rights and run roughshod over the planet. If you think any politician, loud-mouthed pundit or constitutional rights lawyer with hopes to survive in this lock-step American state will deign to defend Assange once the Deep State has him in their clutches, you are living in an imaginary past while your present has been stolen and your future fearfully twisted. If you see nothing wrong with the prevailing picture, congratulations, as Winston Smith would eventually acknowledge, your mind is “clean.” You’ve been reamed, steamed and dry cleaned by the “best of the best of the best.”
The American “deep State” that nobody knows about ?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vUJSvynuxw
Realist my comment above was to yours here made earlier. For some odd unexplained reason while I was replying to your original posting your comment disappeared. Shame since I thought my comment was compatible with yours. Goofy algorithms. Joe
Short of a massive call from the people of Australia to bring Assange home, it’s hard to imagine their poodle government defying the will of its masters in Washington and London.
Is it a coincidence that Libya was named as a target for invasion prior to Obama and Hillary getting elected by the people? Would Obama have been elected had Paul Wellstone not perished in a plane crash? It’s fair to say that Obama’s anti Iraq war vote won him the presidency, and by that measure Wellstone would have walked away with it. But in another coincidence, he passed away.
What “anti Iraq war vote” would that be? Obama felt compelled to stake out an ever so careful position just on the other side of Bush’s drive to invade Iraq while running for re-election to his state senate seat – a temporary concession in order to stay on track to joining the war mongers in Washington two years later.
And Wellstone? He voted for war in Afghanistan in 2001 and against it in Iraq in 2002 – just like most other Dems in the U.S. senate. Big deal.
Good. points.
One would like to think that at least some non-US individuals would retain the concept of honor – a concept largely lost in the US today. Sadly, they are very few and the world is poorer for their paucity.
I do not think that Turnbull will act in favor of Assange because this would be similar to stir up a hornets’ nest.
Remember FVEY?
I had to look up FVEY. Always glad to learn a new milac!
But do you remember Gough Whitlam?
No leader of any weight will act in Assange’s favour.
It is thoroughly up to us – the voice of the people – to demand that Assange be released from the chokehold of criminality that has sequestered truth in the name of “justice”.
To think all of this in order to make life miserable for a person who revealed the truth.
So depressing that truth and those who reveal it are reviled by the powerful the world over. I’m terrified for the future of humanity. The big-brained species has proved to be truly evil–present company excluded of course!
Do not fear Nancy, because there are more of us truth orientated out here, than not. Eventually the truth will win out, but my frustrated question is, exactly when? Although we can get down and out with a long wait, we have the company of others to share our angst with in the meantime, and to me the more the merrier.
Actually what all of this concerning Assange means to me, is that Julian must have struck a nerve within the corrupted lying establishment, and for that we owe Assange a great thanks. Now, we must do all of what we can do to tell our nations representatives of how we want Assange to be set free. I might add we should inform our fellow neighbor as well, since our MSM never will. The struggle for the truth must never die.
Have faith Nancy, all good things take time, Joe
Thanks for the encouraging words Joe.
Julian Assange. Edward Snowden. Funny how the patriots are in exile, while evil (Hillary Clinton, all these un-elected rogue billionaires like George Soros, the DNC, the FBI, the Seventeen (17) Intelligence Agencies, the DHS, the Military Industrial Complex MIC), walks the Earth free and RICH, RICH, RICH, RICH.
I see noone mention Republicans. Are you people all bullshitted?
If you can’t see that it’s BOTH parties that are the servants of the evil empire, you’re the one who is bullshitted. Here’s your Hillary on Assange – “Can’t we just drone this guy?”.
Many thanks to all involved in bringing this article to CN this morning. Thanks especially to you Joe Lauria for demonstrating nearly “perfect pitch” with respect to the timing and selection of articles.
One can feel the background aggression emanating from government bureaucratic sources out into the propaganda distribution centers. Thank goodness for brave Journalists like John Pilger and sites like Consortiumnews!
Amen Bob. Joe has been doing a great job.
Excellent comment Bob. Journalists like John Pilger, Julian Assange, and all of the contributors to this real news website do a fantastic job and my admiration goes out to them in revealing the truth most in the MSM are too frightened to even discuss, either because they are bought, embedded or just plain non journalists. The problem will always be breaking down that wall of disinformation and lies. You guys are getting there. More and more people are beginning to understand that we are being lied to wholesale. While the lies persist and believed millions of people will be murdered and their homes ripped apart by the greedy backers of our mainly corrupt political systems. Keep the pressure on guys.
Bargaining with the British/American government (Empire) is like making a deal with the Devil (the folk representation of the essence of evil). The junior devils (bureaucrats) within the Devil’s network will carry out their assignments (little Eichmanns!) lying, corrupting, torturing, murdering – while all the while pretending to be angels of mercy and justice. The brainwashed public will celebrate Assange’s torture and death, just as they did the fate of Socrates or Jesus. The more things change, the more it is the same sad old story that is told once more – about truth murdered by it’s enemies.
Another excellent article by Mr Pilger? A true, blue, Aussie Journalist who’s prepared to stand up for Assange. And unfortunately, Australia & its current Leader John Turnbull has been MIA over this issue & Australia’s silence on this shameful episode, has been deafening? The Aussie PM won’t do a damn thing to help out Julian just as the sycophant Julia Gillard did nothing? Gillard was a unpopular Leader who stabbed another Aussie PM, in the back, in a Leadership coup & took over the reins, so she was a real peach of a woman! Maybe the god awful & corrupt war criminal, Hillary Clinton was her role model? Australia has long been a Sth Pacific vassal of the US & that’s not going too change, anytime soon so I’m not holding my breath that the Aussie’s will come through for Assange. A pack of cowards are what the Australian Govt is with no conscience or concern for one of their own citizens who is a hero of press freedom to expose the wicked agendas of evil people & nations!
DOH! Sorry I meant Aussie PM Malcolm Turnbull not John Turnbull? Corrected first name but his second names all BULL!
All western governments and Israel have all fallen into the hands of the Nazis of this century. No crime against morality or humanity is beneath them. The treatment of Assange is the visible point of an iceberg of hatred and lies that can and may kill us all, along with our planet. If you love this planet and what is left of our freedom, join the demonstrations around the world to force the freedom of Julian Assange..
We are all Julian Assange!
Julian Assange is the very reason that young or seasoned reporters and journalists don’t report the truth any more. If they attempt to do so, they lose their jobs and have their careers ruined. in more extreme cases they end up in prison on some trumped up charge. The MSM have become the voice of the state, loud, in your face and smug. The only alternative voices you will hear are the mouse like cries of despair like those of the great John Pilger and one or two others. Wikileaks, Snowden, Manning etc managed to get under the fence and cause havoc with their revelations and sent the “almighty state” into a panic. Since then the ‘state’ has been busy making sure that no one else can get the alternative message out there. The internet and RT etc, is still however, able to put forward and alternative view (the truth as apposed to MSM lies) but we can see that forces are being ranged against us so we should be on our guard.
May The Force Be With You, Julian.
“No pasaran”!