Appeal to Australians: it’s now up to us to free Assange

On 20 April, a magistrate at the Westminster Magistrate’s Court in London will issue the order to extradite Julian Assange to the United States.

The order will then go to UK Home Secretary Priti Patel for approval.

Priti Patel’s decision will be political, not judicial; she has the power to decide not to extradite Assange, but perhaps the only way she could be persuaded to exercise this power would be a request from the Australian government.

This is an opportunity for Australians to intervene by targeting the key decision makers with thousands of phone calls that create a shock wave!

Starting today, make seven phone calls: five to the Australian politicians below to demand they communicate to Priti Patel that she must not extradite Assange, but must free him.

On top of that, make two international calls—one to the UK Home Secretary Patel herself, and one to US President Joe Biden at the White House—to deliver the message that you as an Australian citizen are demanding that they stop persecuting Julian Assange and let him go!

Please, start calling today! Keep the calls simple: tell the Australian politicians they MUST demand Priti Patel release Assange. Leave messages for Priti Patel and US President Joe Biden that you are an Australian, like Assange, and you are calling to demand they stop persecuting him and let him go.

What’s at stake?

If Priti Patel approves his extradition, Assange will be put on trial in the USA for espionage. This is a deliberately false charge: Chelsea Manning accessed and leaked a trove of documents and video and other evidence to Assange, who was the publisher.

The US government’s sole witness for its espionage charge that Assange is not just a publisher, but that he hacked US government computers, is convicted serial paedophile and financial fraudster Sigurdur Ingi Thordarson, who admitted in a June 2021 interview with Icelandic newspaper Stundin that his “evidence” is a lie.

Assange responsibly vetted the material before he published it on WikiLeaks, and the biggest mainstream media outlets in the world rushed to publish the same material.

The leak included the infamous “Collateral Murder” video showing US helicopter gunships gunning down unarmed civilians, including two Reuters journalists, in Baghdad, which the US military had covered up.

Today is the anniversary of the publication of the Collateral Murder video.

One thing is certain: Assange will NOT receive a fair trial—for more than a decade, mainstream American politicians have called for his assassination or execution.

Also, the original US indictment of Assange in 2012 was handed down by the US Eastern District of Virginia, where Assange is likely to stand trial.

Notorious as the “rocket docket”, because it functions as a speedy and well-oiled machine to dispense with politically sensitive cases, the Eastern District of Virginia in Alexandria draws on a jury pool that is dominated by Federal government workers, and the District Court’s judges generally have ties to the “deep state” structures within the US intelligence community; the Court is notorious for flagrant bias in favour of prosecutors.

The USA and UK are persecuting Assange to make an example of him as a message to anyone who exposes their war crimes and lies.

Australian politicians must finally act!

Julian Assange is in his horrible predicament for one reason: the Australian government is spineless and does not have an independent foreign policy.

When Assange first leaked the information in 2011, it severely embarrassed the US sycophants in the Australian government, including then-Prime Minister Julia Gillard, who condemned him savagely.

Before he became PM, Malcolm Turnbull gave a speech acknowledging that Assange had broken no Australian laws, but he too bowed to the USA and UK when he was PM, and didn’t demand they stop their persecution of this Walkley Award-winning Australian journalist.

Over time, however, the tone of Australian politicians has increasingly changed.

Led by Independent MP Andrew Wilkie and National Party MP George Christensen, the Bring Julian Assange Home Parliamentary Group has attracted significant cross-party support, and succeeded in raising awareness of the issue.

In 2019 former PM Kevin Rudd came out opposing his extradition; in February 2021 Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese declared his support for Assange’s release, saying “enough is enough”, and Labor adopted a position in its 2021 national policy platform that “it is now time for this long drawn-out case against Julian Assange to be brought to an end”; and in December 2021 current Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce asserted forcefully in a written opinion in the Nine newspapers that Assange should either be tried in the UK for any crime he has committed on British soil, or returned to Australia, where he has committed no crime.

The question is: now that Assange is on the verge of extradition to the baying wolves of the US security apparatus who want him dead, what are they going to do?

They know what is right—will they actually stand up to the USA and UK for this Australian citizen, and firmly insist they release him?

This is what we must demand they do, by unleashing a shock wave of calls over the next two weeks before the UK Home Secretary seals Assange’s fate.

Act now and spread the word! Share on all social media to encourage everyone to get involved, and hit the phones—today!

Useful links

Movie trailer for Ithaka: a father. a family. a fight for justice. The film is about Julian Assange’s father John Shipton’s fight for his son’s life.
https://youtu.be/tKOu8ej0ewQ

Ithaka website
https://ithaka.movie/

Ithaka on Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/IthakaMovie

Ithaka on Twitter
https://twitter.com/IthakaMovie

VIDEO: John Shipton, Julian Assange’s father, speaks about Julian
https://youtu.be/M2RPw9MtMAw?t=1868

VIDEO: Gabriel Shipton, Julian Assange’s brother speaks about Ithaka and Julian
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcGvBx4uzRs&t=336s

Alexis Garnaut-Miller & Robbie Barwick - Australian Citizens Party, Julian Assange - 4 April 2022
https://youtu.be/WonguP0V13k

ARTICLE by Stella Moris, Julian’s wife, about the recent court decision refusing to hear Julian’s appeal:
A system that allows this is a system that has lost its way
UK Supreme Court refuses to hear Assange extradition appeal arguments
https://stellamoris.substack.com/p/a-system-that-allows-this-is-a-system

VIDEO: Julian Assange’s lawyer reveals how the WikiLeaks founder is coping in prison | 60 Minutes Australia
https://youtu.be/ZB04WZwH0Sk

VIDEO: Politician calls on Australia’s Prime Minister to free Julian Assange | 60 Minutes Australia
https://youtu.be/V8zYQp3rrG8

VIDEO: Foreign Press Association: Nils Melzer The Trial of Assange
https://youtu.be/CYEKb488PEk