Category: Julian Assange

Night Carnival for Assange

Woman dressed as the Statue of Liberty with intricate makeup

The Julian Assange case is currently sitting where the establishment wants, that is, where literally nothing is happening. The purpose of the persecution of Julian Assange is not so much to convict him of anything, but to keep him in prison as an example to everyone else not to reveal the government’s malfeasance.

The Don’t Extradite Assange campaign has taken the wise decision to organise events outside of the court calendar. The previous event – outside/around Parliament on the 8th October 2022 – showed that the Assange movement is able to attract more supporters than throughout the period of 2020 and 2021, where the only people who turned up outside court were mostly hard-core supporters.

Umbrellas decorated with free Assange messages

At first it did not look as if there was going to be a large turnout. Just before 4pm there were not a massive amount of people there.

Crowd milling about holding lanterns

It did grow to become a reasonably sized march.

There were some people with great costumes.

Men dressed up as pigs with suits on
Woman in a white suit with painted skull makeup
Woman holding insect with large complex wings above her head
Crowd of people with brightly dressed ukulele player in the background
Men in suits dressed as undertakers with a coffin

It took quite a while for the march to actually start, probably because they were waiting for it to get darker for the full effect. The event had hand made lanterns with ‘Free Assange’ messages for people to carry.

a collection of lanterns on the floor

When it did get started, it went through well known areas of London like Strand through to in front of Parliament.

In terms of optics, I would give this protest 10/10. A lot of people paid attention to it, it got more attention from passers by than any other protest I have been to whether it was an Assange event or another issue. It’s a bad quality image but this can be seen below on the right:

Crowd watching the Julian Assange carnival walk through London.

Footage is available on my Odysee channel.

Free Julian Assange Human Chain – 8 October 2022

Woman carrying cardboard cutout of Julian Assange with crowds of people looking out over the Thames in the background.

For the past several months, the Julian Assange campaign has been promoting a human chain event where people surround parliament for Assange’s freedom. This event has been promoted as a focal point for the Julian Assange movement and a way to get everyone together for a big event.

Flyer with cartoon stick figures around the Houses of Parliament saying Free Assange Human Chain: 1pm Sat 8th Oct

Unfortunately, the RMT, as part of their current strike campaign, declared a rail strike on the 8th October. This made it impossible for some people to attend who would otherwise have come.

The RMT must have known about this event as it was being heavily promoted for months. Calvin, during the London Enough is Enough protests, asked RMT boss Mick Lynch for his views on Assange, the video is embedded below.

https://twitter.com/lulinspector/status/1576312077513240578

Enough on Mick Lynch and the RMT’s (deliberate or otherwise) attempted sabotage of the event. I was able to get there via a Birmingham TUC coach. There were coaches organised from other areas on the country as well.

I was fearful for the turnout (due to the RMT), but it was brilliant. It was difficult to estimate the number of people who turned up because everyone was so spread out along the route. By the time we turned up (1pm), the chain was already all the way round Parliament.

Drawing showing stick figures surrounding parliament with the roads and river marked

I walked round and then stayed parallel with the Thames on the right-hand side as that is where the chain had the least people.

There was at least several thousand there, I would say. However, mainstream media have been downplaying the size of the event, saying that there were ‘hundreds’ there which is beyond pathetic.

The amount of coverage was also quite small from what I could tell from a search last night. So as per the course for the MSM, then.

Another notable feature of this protest was the amount of people from different places, not just in the UK but from other countries. In terms of the UK, not only Birmingham but Liverpool and Manchester were represented. One of the women on the Birmingham coach had driven down from Huddersfield to get on it.

The person next to me and his girlfriend were from Spain. Germany was also represented:

Man holding upside down United States flag with blood with the Houses of Parliament in the background
Flags with writing in the German language.
Multicoloured check flags
Decolonisation group with origins in a Spanish/Portuguese speaking country (not sure)

Even Graham Elwood was there. (I saw him walk past with Dimmack and was like ‘I swear that’s Graham Elwood’.)

Yes I have massive issues with Elwood. No I’m not going to criticise him in this case.

I even overheard someone saying that people from Australia were there!

Lastly the government chopper was in full attendance. It was hanging over our heads without moving very much for a long time.

A blue sky with a black dot in the middle
That black blur in the middle near the top is the chopper.

Overall, this event was a success for the Julian Assange movement. There were a few celebrities there, such as Jeremy Corbyn, John McDonnell and Russell Brand. This is the angle being focused on by the mainstream media to the extent that they are discussing this at all (which is very limited). More important is the mass of ordinary people that turned out for Julian Assange. The Julian Assange campaign needs to build on the momentum from this event to continue to put the establishment under pressure.

Video footage from the event will be uploaded next week.

Assange Wedding Footage

Protesters outside Belmarsh Prison. Yellow ribbons are tied to the fence and trees.

I was able to attend the Assange wedding celebration/protest outside Belmarsh prison on the 23rd March. I have some footage which I will post samples of below.

About 150 people turned up outside the prison.

The independent media people present (that I saw) were Craig Murray, Gordon Dimmack, Mohammad Elmaazi, and Resistance GB. Chris Hedges was also there which I wasn’t expecting.

Craig Murray spoke to some of the media (primarily Gordon Dimmack, see below) regarding his exclusion from being a witness at the wedding. Apparently, he was considered a threat to the prison by the British state:

Murray also talked about the meaning of the Assange wedding.

You can see the crowd in the video below:

The microphone was set up next to the tent. Julian Assange activist Truman read out some messages from worldwide Assange supporters.

After that there were more formal speeches. Chris Hedges gave a 13 minute speech that can be seen in this video where he talks about the collapse of the rule of law and the power of the ruling elite, as well as the need for mass civil disobedience:

Gordon Dimmack and Daniel Fooks were also invited up to give short speeches.

The police were mostly standing around looking bored and preventing anyone from getting too close to the prison. They would shoo people out of the road but that was about it. However, when ‘Lean on Me’ started playing through the stereo at around 3.40pm, the police decided to be extremely petty and turn of the music, claiming that it violated Greenwich by-laws.

After that the police started standing in the road and being more in your face about their presence. So that there was a line of 3-4 police keeping people on the street and not the road and generally trying to look more intimidating. I am not sure what the point was since before they turned the music off there hadn’t been any issues with the crowd but it seemed to me to be an exercise in willy waving from the officers.

Further footage is available on my channel.

The ‘Case’ Against Julian Assange is Still a Fraud

Yellow ribbons tied to bars near Royal Courts of Justice, Aldwych, London.

In the midst of all the insanity we are seeing with the Covid narrative, it is easy to neglect other aspects of the current authoritarian push. The persecution of Julian Assange is continuing with the US appeal to have him extradited having taken place on the 27th and 28th October at the Royal Courts of Justice.

Security State Terror

The official narrative of the incidents that happened on 9/11 was used to usher in a full scale American security state and to ramp up the military industrial complex. A new rationale was needed for military spending after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and that same collapse also gave America a free hand acting in the world as there was no major power to support anti-imperialist governments in the South. Enter the 9/11 narrative of Islamic terrorists – which justified military campaigns for profit in the name of ‘preventing terrorism’.

This led to the destruction of large parts of the Middle East and the murder of millions of people along with millions more displaced. This destruction is still going on with the US and Israel expanding warfare into Syria.

The persecution of Julian Assange is a crucial part of the continuation of this imperialist project, which is still ongoing despite the alleged ‘withdrawal’ from Afghanistan. The conflicts – including the Israeli targeting of Syria and the continuing starvation of people in Yemen – have continued despite the new narrative being pushed on the world – that we are ‘in the middle of a deadly pandemic’.

The persecution of Assange is also essential to prevent any journalists in the future coming forward. Any actual journalist could expose the Covid narrative or any other future official narrative that may emerge as we head further into biosecurity state transhumanism – a parallel of the 9/11 security state except now the elites have declared war on our biology itself.

The ‘Case’ for Extradition

Due to the ruling made by District Judge Vanessa Baraitser in January 2021, which stated that Julian Assange could not be extradited to the US because of his poor health, the US ‘case’ consisted of arguing that Assange is a malingerer and that he won’t be treated badly in the US.

The idea that a torture victim that looked severely ill in court (via videolink) is a malingerer is self evidently absurd, and this is just another in a long list of lies stated by the prosecution (including using a convicted pedophile to commit perjury).

More importantly, it seems (as I suspected in January, though perhaps did not articulate in the best way) that the original ruling was a ploy. A ploy forced by opposition to Assange’s extradition, perhaps, but a ploy nevertheless. It set up the appeal to be about the issue of mistreatment in the US. The US can always deny that it will torture Julian Assange, giving the British authorities an excuse to take them at their word and send him over there to die.

There has been no verdict in this case yet and I would guess that there will not be until after Christmas. Meanwhile Assange continues to endure hellish torture in Belmarsh. We must not forget that it doesn’t matter to the establishment where he suffers and dies, just so long as he does.

Julian Assange Activism: What Now?

Cartoon of Judge with a question mark for a face. Text underneath reads 'Vanessa Baraitser'. Text on left reads: Extradition decision. Quote bubble: "It would be wrong on health grounds to extradite Mr. Assange to face solitary confinement in the US." Text on right: Bail decision. Quote bubble: "But leaving Mr. Assange in solitary confinement in a British prison is a completely different matter."

A post discussing Baraitser’s decisions in a little more detail as well as the message that I believe is most important to convey to the public at this moment.

Hosted at Shaziety.

Assange Extradition Ruling: What Does It Mean?

Old Bailey in London, Central Criminal Court

Yesterday District Judge Vanessa Baraitser announced the ruling in the Julian Assange US extradition hearing. Shockingly, she ruled against the extradition to the United States of WikiLeaks founder Assange, citing health reasons and a high chance that Mr. Assange would kill himself in prison should he be extradited. Despite the overall ruling she agreed with every other point raised by the US prosecution, including that Assange would get a fair trial in the US, that the UC Global scandal (where the CIA was spying on Assange in the embassy including privileged communications with his lawyers) was irrelevant, that Assange endangered lives by releasing the information provided by former US Army Intelligence officer Chelsea Manning, and that the US-UK Extradition Treaty 2007 banning extradition for political offenses is irrelevant because the Extradition Act 2003 does not ban extradition on political grounds.

Is this a victory? The answer to this question is ‘Yes, but.’

The sense in which this qualifies as a victory is this. Without scrutiny on this decision by ordinary citizens, the few journalists that bothered to their jobs, and individuals such as the UN Rapporteur on Torture Nils Melzer, I fully believe that Baraitser would have rubber stamped US extradition. In fact, I was shocked that she announced she would not be sending Assange to the US even with these factors. I think this decision does show that putting scrutiny on the establishment can work, and what’s more, its the only thing that does work.

Here’s the ‘but’. Many people, including Jonathan Cook and Rebecca Vincent, have pointed out that the fact that Baraitser agrees with everything the US prosecution said aside from the argument about prison conditions and suicide risk means that the ruling still sets a horrible precedent and does not protect journalism. This is of course a perfectly reasonable point.

Focusing simply on the implications for Assange however, there are two points which limit this victory. The first is that for now (pending a bail appeal tomorrow, 6th January) Assange remains incarcerated in Belmarsh prison. Due to his weak health and the effects of psychological torture, Assange will remain at risk of death in Belmarsh if he does not receive bail. If he has to remain in Belmarsh throughout the course of any appeal that will limit the victory in this case.

The second point to make is that we need to be aware of the possibility of establishment mind games. Having realised that they may not have been able to get away with having Baraitser rule against Assange, they may hope to induce complacency among supporters by giving them a victory and then overturn the decision on appeal. They may hope to get the idea across to the more uninformed public that “Assange has won so there is no need to pay any attention” while they plot a plane to the US.

Assange supporters must not let that happen. By all means, celebrate an unexpected gain yesterday. But as for today, it’s back to work.

ETA: Julian Assange was denied bail, meaning that he has to remain in prison throughout any US appeal. It is now looking as though the decision on Monday – though gained by public scrutiny on the case – was a ploy by the establishment. The establishment obviously thinks that rejecting the extradition and denying bail and hoping Assange dies in Belmarsh is a better option than granting extradition. If he dies in Belmarsh from the effects of psychological torture that serves their purposes just as much as if he was extradited to the US. Of course they may also have a plan to ensure that Assange is extradited on appeal, perhaps by hoping to inculcate complacency and hoping the public gets the misleading impression that ‘Assange has won’. Either way Assange loses more years of his life to horrific torture even if he does not die in Belmarsh and the appeal does not succeed.

It’s important that we don’t fall for the establishment’s lies and maneuvers and that we never give upon Julian Assange despite everything that they will try.