[D66] Free Julian Assange!

[A.O.]

Tariq Ali
11 April 2019
comments
Julian Assange Outside the Gate of Hell

Tariq Ali on the arrest of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange earlier today.
	
Julian Assange Outside the Gate of Hell

    By Authors, www.versobooks.com
    View Original
    April 11th, 2019

I've been to see Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian Embassy several times,
mainly when Rafael Correa was President and the Embassy felt like a
liberated space. A few weeks ago I met him again. By now Correa's
successor, Lenín Moreno, had capitulated on every level to the American
Empire. The Embassy became a prison and Assange's health deteriorated.
He was in no doubt that Moreno had been asked and had agreed to expel
him from the Embassy. The US demand for extradition was no longer a
secret. The Embassy handed him over to the British police earlier today.

If we lived in a world where laws were respected, then Assange would be
charged with jumping bail (a minor offense), fined or kept in prison for
a few weeks and then released to return to his native Australia. But
both the UK and Australia are, effectively, imperial satrapies and
likely to bow to US demands. The secret and not-so-secret state in both
countries work closely with (or under) its US masters. Why do they want
him so badly? To set an example. To incarcerate and isolate him as a
warning to others not to follow the Wikileaks path. Chelsea Manning has
been re-arrested because she refused to testify to a Grand Jury against
him. Since the Russian and Chinese intelligence agencies are pretty much
aware of what the US is up to in most parts of the world, the threat
posed by Wikileaks was that it made its information available to any
citizen, anywhere in the world, who possessed a computer. US/EU foreign
policy and its post 9/11 wars have been based on lies, promoted by
global TV and media networks and often accepted by a majority of North
American and European citizens. Information contradicting these lies
challenges the stated motives for war — human rights, democracy,
freedom, etc.

Wikileaks has been exposing all this by publishing classified documents
that shine a light on the real reasons. It is an astonishing record.
Till now WikiLeaks has published almost 3 million diplomatic cables and
other US State Department records, comprising some two billion plus
words. This stupendous and seemingly insurmountable body of internal
state literature, which if printed would amount to some 30,000 volumes,
represents something new in the world. This is where the Internet
becomes a subversive force, challenging the propaganda networks of the
existing order. Assange and his colleagues made no secret that their
principal target was the American Empire and its global operations. The
response of US institution has been hysterical and comical. The Library
of Congress, blocked Internet access to WikiLeaks. The US National
Archives even blocked searches of its own database for the phrase
“WikiLeaks.” So absurd did the taboo become that, like a dog snapping
mindlessly at everything, eventually it found its mark — its own tail.
As Julian Assange pointed out: "By March 2012, the Pentagon had gone so
far as to create an automatic filter to block any emails, including
inbound emails to the Pentagon, containing the word 'WikiLeaks.'" As a
result, Pentagon prosecutors preparing the case against US intelligence
analyst PFC Manning, the alleged source of the Cablegate cables, found
that they were not receiving important emails from either the judge or
the defense.

The British government is insisting that they will follow the law. We
shall see. The US Department of Justice has stated that Assange could
face five years in a US prison. Diane Abbot, a leading member of Jerremy
Corbyn's Shadow Cabinet, said in parliament today:


    "On this side of the house, we want to make the point that the
reason we are debating Julian Assange this afternoon – even though the
only charge he may face in this country is in relation to his bail
hearings – is entirely to do with the whistleblowing activities of
Julian Assange and Wikileaks. It is this whistleblowing activity into
illegal wars, mass murder, murder of civilians and corruption on a grand
scale that has put Julian Assange in the crosshairs of the US
administration. It is for this reason that they have once more issued an
extradition warrant against Julian Assange ... Julian Assange is not
being pursued to protect US national security, he is being pursued
because he has exposed wrongdoing by US administrations and their
military forces.”

We will learn more in the days and weeks ahead. In the meantime,
Wikileaks and its founder expect and deserve the solidarity of all those
of us who believe that citizens should not be treated like children and
that most politicians in the US/EU orbit are untrustworthy and hate
their lies and corruptions being exposed.


On 12-04-19 09:42, A.O. wrote:
> 
> Statement of the World Socialist Web Site Editorial Board
> 
> Free Julian Assange!
> 12 April 2019
> 
> The World Socialist Web Site emphatically condemns the forcible seizure
> and arrest of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. We call for an all-out
> campaign in the UK and internationally to defend Assange, oppose his
> extradition to the United States, and secure his freedom and return to
> Australia, with guarantees against any future prosecution.
> 
> Assange is in grave peril. The US Justice Department has issued a
> statement claiming that Assange only faces charges that could lead to a
> prison sentence of up to five years if he has been found guilty. This is
> a transparent lie, the purpose of which is to facilitate Assange’s
> extradition and provide the Ecuadorean and British governments with a
> pretext that they are not turning Assange over to a government that
> might subject him to torture and execution.
> 
> If he is transferred to the custody of the United States, anything is
> possible, including charges of treason that carry a death penalty or
> indefinite detention as an “enemy combatant.”
> 
> Assange has become a target because he did what journalists are supposed
> to do—expose the truth. Along with Chelsea Manning, who remains in
> prison for refusing to testify against the WikiLeaks publisher, Assange
> exposed the crimes that emerged out of wars launched on the basis of
> lies, which have led to the deaths of more than one million people.
> 
> New crimes are now being prepared. Even as the conspiracy against
> Assange was unfolding, Trump was meeting with Al-Sisi, the butcher of
> Cairo, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was issuing threats against Iran.
> 
> Everyone involved in this crime stands guilty of a monstrous attack on
> fundamental democratic rights, without even the pretense of due process.
> 
> Ecuadorian President Lenín Moreno, beset by a domestic crisis provoked
> by popular opposition to his corrupt administration, and desirous of
> economic aid offered by the White House, broke Ecuador’s own asylum laws
> to force Assange out. Its actions are a violation of the honor of
> Ecuadorean workers, who overwhelmingly support Assange.
> 
> The UK government, headed by Theresa May, is gloating over Assange’s
> arrest, issuing statements that are clearly prejudicial to any legal
> proceedings. When May, speaking to parliament, declared the “whole house
> will welcome the news this morning that the Metropolitan police have
> arrested Julian Assange,” Tory MPs and many Laborites cheered in approval.
> 
> Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn issued a pro-forma statement declaring
> that the extradition of Assange “should be opposed by the British
> government,” but he kept his mouth shut when May issued her denunciation
> before parliament and has maintained a silence on Assange during his
> forced asylum in the Ecuadorean embassy.
> 
> As for the United States, while the Trump administration is now leading
> the campaign against Assange, the Democratic Party is solidly behind his
> persecution, blaming Assange for contributing to the exposure of the
> crimes for which Hillary Clinton was justly and massively hated. One of
> the central aims of the Democrats’ anti-Russia campaign has been to
> justify the attack on WikiLeaks as part of a broader campaign for
> internet censorship.
> 
> Added to the list of those responsible is the pseudo-left, the
> organizations of the upper middle class in the US and internationally,
> which seized on the initial fraudulent and trumped-up rape allegations
> against Assange to justify his persecution and their own cowardly
> abandonment of Assange to American imperialism.
> 
> For its part, the establishment media, which functions as an arm of the
> state, has jumped in to support the attack on Assange.
> 
> On Thursday evening, the editorial boards of the New York Times and the
> Washington Post issued statements supporting Assange’s extradition. “The
> government charged Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, not with
> publishing classified government information, but with stealing it,”
> declared the New York Times, adding “The administration has begun well
> by charging Mr. Assange with an indisputable crime.”
> 
> The Washington Post was even more open in its support of the Trump
> administration’s campaign against Assange, declaring “Mr. Assange’s case
> could conclude as a victory for the rule of law, not the defeat for
> civil liberties of which his defenders mistakenly warn.”
> 
> “Mr. Assange is not a free-press hero,” declares the Post. “Unlike real
> journalists, WikiLeaks dumped material into the public domain.” By the
> Pos t ’s definition, the only “real journalists” are those that
> self-censor at the behest of the Pentagon.
> 
> These newspapers, which once published the Pentagon Papers, are nothing
> but apologists for US imperialism. One can only imagine the howls of
> outrage that would issue from the media if it was the Russian government
> that had carried out the forcible seizure and arrest of a journalist and
> critic of its foreign policy!
> 
> In the seven years of Assange’s confinement in the Ecuadorean embassy,
> much has changed. Most significant is the eruption of class struggle
> internationally. It is the fear of the emergence of the class struggle,
> combined with growing opposition to capitalism, that is compelling the
> ruling elites to destroy all democratic rights, including the freedom of
> expression, of which Assange's persecution is the most grotesque example.
> 
> In the working class there is overwhelming sympathy for Assange. A
> dividing line has opened up in social, economic, and political life. The
> ruling elites are shedding their democratic pretenses. Their media and
> the pseudo-socialist opposition—the representatives of the politics of
> the affluent upper-middle-class—function as defenders of the state and
> the dictatorship of the financial oligarchy.
> 
> It is the working class, the broad mass of the population, that must be
> mobilized to defend Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning and all class war
> prisoners. The demand for their freedom must be a rallying cry for the
> global working class.
> 
> The World Socialist Web Site calls on all workers and young people, and
> all those who uphold democratic rights, to come forward and take an
> unequivocal stand in defense of Julian Assange. Organize meetings,
> protests and demonstrations to demand his immediate release and his safe
> return to Australia!
> 
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