Tag: julian-assange

Julian Assange should be set free – now!

Tony StauntonLeave a comment

My weekly Comment in the daily Plymouth herald (21.5.24). Individuals can rarely claim responsibility for changing the course of history, and those that can are usually tyrants to be deposed. But some individuals symbolise a political cause or movement or call-to-action that makes them headline news, perhaps despite themselves and in any case for political demands far more important than themselves. so to champion Assange’s case is not to glorify the individual, although his tenacity and then his own suffering should deserve empathy and concern from us all. This is about the freedom of press versus censorship, the public “right to know”, the public interest, the continuation of war crimes in the name of western imperialism that is now ramping-up again towards a third world war. So the demand for freedom for Assange is of critical importance, even more so for our own futures than for his.

The meme screamed out, “if I were lying, no-one would be trying to silence me!” And so his Appeal continues. But he should be set free, now!

The treatment of Julian Assange, Australian journalist, has certainly been aimed at ensuring his silence. Alleged, under US law more than a century old, of being a spy, he has been incarcerated in Belmarsh prison, London, coined as “Hellmarsh” by Jeffrey Archer who spent four years there. Human Rights activists are routinely imprisoned there, making Bellmarsh the symbol for Britain’s political prisoners.

As with Guantanamo Bay, Bellmarsh is globally notorious for detention of suspects without charge, with a brutal regime without any element of comfort or congregation. Assange has no criminal charges under UK law, yet faces charges if extradited to the USA. The most powerful nation in human history has stretched out the long arm of it’s internal laws across the Atlantic as if UK, and indeed Australian, citizens are all subjugated under the dictates of the evil empire.

Assange’s “crime” was exposing atrocities committed by the US in the Afghan and Iraq wars. Information provided by US Army Intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to Wikileaks from 2010 and 2011 included around 750,00 documents.

They revealed how the US military killed hundreds of civilians in unreported incidents during the war in Afghanistan, alongside military videos from the Iraq war showing a total of 66,000 civilians being killed. Assange, as an investigative journalist, thought the public should know.

Were Assange to be ultimately found guilty in the USA, the most vital journalistic freedoms would also be criminalised, including the requirement to divulge sources of information, ending all rights to confidentiality or protection of identity. 

This importance of journalistic search for and exposure of the Truth in war is as pertinent as ever amid today’s deepening military tensions. We all know that the protection of “state secrets” is used as the excuse for a constant propaganda streaming of untruths by every government on earth, including our own. 

In the absence of substantiated facts we are at the predatory mercies of conspiracy theorists. Citizens are the last to know what’s actually taken place. What’s the real story behind the death of President and Foreign Minister of Iran at the weekend? How many children have actually been killed in Gaza. Is the figure higher or lower than the United Nations estimates of 37,000 civilian non-combatants so far? 

How do we decide whether to trust the statements from the UN or the UK? If we choose to believe war propaganda, are we also choosing to believe lies told us about “the enemy within” – the daily government-sponsored stream of false threats to our welfare at the hands of refugees, welfare benefit claimants and trade unionists?

This is not only a question of whether we, the ordinary working class masses, have a “right to know” or not. It is about the consequences for us of allowing governments to perpetrate and act upon flagrant lies in their own interests, not ours. The Iraq war happened because of lies, the mass murders of civilians condoned because of lies, and the subsequent destabilisation of Arab states only continuing because of our State’s lies.

Assange’s only true crime was his own naivety. Of course “they” would seek to shut him down by any means necessary. It’s what they do. It is only when we stand hand-in-hand and shoulder-to-shoulder in our millions that “they” feel threatened enough to back-off from their own imperial ambitions. That’s why all of us who care about the rights of citizenry, the pursuit of democracy and freedom, should care about Assange. And more, we should demand the facts, not the spin. Investigative journalism, however much in short supply, is not a crime.

Free Julian Assange!

Tony Staunton1 Comment

My weekly Comment in the daily Plymouth Herald newspaper (20.2.24). I note they chose a title not including the name of Julian Assange, the subject of the piece, nor acknowledging the piece as exposing the general distrust of all politicians by Britain’s electorate. The issue is really about the death of investigative journalism, the Assange case being just one part of the long-term drive to shut-down all opposition to capitalism and imperialism.

Free Julian Assange!

It is always a turning point, an historic watershed, when the majority of the people of a country no longer believe or trust their Government. Yet here we are.

The general lack of support for Britain’s Political Class was best exemplified by last week’s by-elections where only a small minority bothered to vote at all, and those that did overwhelmingly trounced Sunak’s Government.

It goes far deeper than that. In such a polarised, class-based society it is hard to find any majority agreement. After all, social being determines social consciousness: those with wherewithal live in a completely different and separate Britain from those without, resulting in conflicting interests and beliefs.

Nevertheless, most people don’t believe government promises on future economic growth, the official statistics on wage increases, Britain’s social security, or, for that matter, much else. We don’t believe Them.

Most of us inside the bottom 80% of the nation’s income levels are too busy surviving to do much about our political thoughts and aspirations. But the working classes do keep one eye on the Big Picture. 

Most of us know that the Government has diverted most of our taxes into the private sector, the very businesses they have personal shares in – the corporations that lobby them and buy their allegiance. We know they make wars for money, the global military-industrial complex wedded to to fossil fuelled economies caring nothing for the lives of ordinary people. We have a sense of the depth of corruption inside our current system.

But to recognise that the State is not only acting against our interests but is destroying our right to dissent raises more fundamental questions of Freedom, Justice and Democracy. Have we lost all our rights and any element of agency? In response, the government seeks constantly to change and influence the popular narrative in their favour, by controlling the propaganda and information in the public domain.

Today heralds Julian Assange’s court hearing against extradition from the UK’s high-security Belmarsh prison to the USA on grounds of espionage. This relates to the leaked  publication of military information released in the USA by a serving soldier, Chelsea Manning, which the Australian journalist Julian Assange published as part of the Wikileaks papers in 2010.

The 391,000 secret State papers exposed government lies alongside illegal and inhuman military conduct, including assassinations, extradition, detention and torture throughout the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan between 2003-8. The Iraq War was an illegal invasion for oil and corporate control.

Assange is suffering the effects of psychological torture after 14 years of incarceration. He should be released forthwith. It is the case, as a matter of human rights law, that no-one can be extradited to another country for political offences. This is because one country’s laws will differ from another – one nation’s rules for “media coverage” is another nation’s censorship. 

Espionage is therefore a political offence – one country’s freedom fighter is another country’s terrorist. For example, Britain’s anti-Nazi Underground guerrilla fighters in France during WW2 were defenders of democracy, not terrorists.

There has always been propaganda and censorship. It took years for the proof to emerge that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, because the only journalists allowed into the war zone were government-approved and “embedded” within US/UK forces. Those “unauthorised” were “disappeared”.

Governments had learnt the hard way from the Vietnam War, when freelance journalists and photographers effectively exposed the most horrific massacres of civilians, children and women, on the orders of government officials. A relatively Free Press had huge influence over the ending of that war, the TV images raising huge protests and an international movement for Peace.

Now we see the majority of journalists in Gaza being systematically killed – more than 170 in 110 days. This also kills access to facts of Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians, and the many day-to-day truths of illegal invasion and occupation.

For public knowledge and agency to be assured, investigative journalists need protection from threats and censorship.

Censorship is also a tool of “free” trade. Apart from war, more journalists are killed for investigating illegal environmental destruction than any other single issue. Publication of the Truth can be a threat to corporate profits. 

Of course, for decades, the UK has had a more back-room approach to such censorship. Journalists and publications have been issued “D” notices to prevent publication, not only of “State Secrets” but also of facts that may embarrass Ministers or Princes. At the same time, with fewer than 8 billionaire media moguls controlling more the 80% of all public information, their editorial control suppresses most of any news that might hold them to account.

The indictment of Assange, if successful, will further criminalise journalistic activities, scaring journalists into subservience and restricting free speech to ensure the dominant politics of our national government will decide what can be published and what cannot. Such control represents dictatorship.

Anyone who wants to know the facts and cares for human suffrage needs to challenge censorship and support Assange.