Urgent message to Bernie and Jeremy: the time has come to support Julian Assange clearly and openly!
As Julie
Hyland, the assistant national secretary of the Socialist Equality
Party (UK), mentioned in her recent
speech outside the Ecuadorian embassy in London:
It is
shameful that Jeremy Corbyn has not made a public statement in
Julian’s defence since he was elected party leader, almost three
years ago. There is no question that if he used his considerable
support to pledge Labour’s defence of Assange and WikiLeaks, there
would be thousands here today and those plotting against him would
have to think twice.
The next
weeks are critical. We call on workers and youth in Britain and
across the world to break this wall of silence by renewing the fight
for Assange’s freedom as vital to the defence of free speech and a
critical and independent media.
And she
is right.
The new
Ecuadorian administration under Lenín Moreno tightens
noose around Julian Assange and now Ecuador
methodically pushes him into the hands of the US empire.
In a
parallel action for the support of Julian Assange in Sydney, John
Pilger described perfectly the true nature of the neoliberal regime,
masked with a fake progressiveness:
In 2008,
a plan to destroy both WikiLeaks and Julian was laid out in a top
secret document dated 8 March, 2008. The authors were the Cyber
Counter-intelligence Assessment Branch of the US 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 with threats of “exposure and criminal prosecution”
and an 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.
Last
October, the ABC 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 US 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 whooped and cheered. 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 of them drowned. In
leaked emails published by WikiLeaks, we know that Hillary Clinton's
foundation 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 deal ever, $80
billion worth. Today, Saudi Arabia is using these weapons to crush
starving and stricken people in a genocidal assault on Yemen.
Sarah
Ferguson, a highly paid ABC reporter, raised not a word of this with
Hillary Clinton sitting in front of her. Instead, she allowed Clinton
to attack and smear Julian Assange as “a tool of Russian
intelligence” and “a nihilistic opportunist who does the bidding
of a dictator.” Julian was offered no right of reply to this
shocking interview, this orgy of deformation broadcast by Australia's
publicly-funded state broadcaster. 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, has conducted a vendetta against
Julian Assange. Like a spurned lover, the Guardian aimed its
personal, petty, inhuman and cowardly attacks at a man whose work it
once published and profited from. The former editor of the Guardian
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. 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 US embassy cables.
With Julian trapped in the Ecuadorean embassy, Luke Harding of the
Guardian, who had made big bucks on the back of Julian and Edward
Snowden, stood among the police outside the embassy and gloated on
his blog that “Scotland Yard may get the last laugh.”
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 and their attendant rape, murder and
destruction. The authorities care so little about violence against
women that they manipulate rape allegations at will.”
Most of
this truth was lost, or buried in a media witch-hunt that
disgracefully associated Julian with rape and misogyny. The
witch-hunt included voices who described themselves as on the Left
and as feminist. Shame on them.
Documents
released by Edward Snowden, showed Julian to be on what is called a
“Manhunt target list.” One leaked official memo reads as follows:
“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 Julian Assange
can be prosecuted.
The
moments are very critical. It is time for the forces of the Left
inside the motherlands of neoliberalism, to declare an open war
against this ruthless regime.
They
must start with an open and clear support declaration of Julian
Assange.
So, we
call Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn to abandon useless tactics and
take a clear position. It will be the final signal to the
progressives who still have doubts about their real intentions. We
call them not to be afraid anymore. Societies and especially the
youth is ready to get rid the global neoliberal tyranny.
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