today’s global #FreeAssange! vigils

From wsws.org June 18: ‘Watch: Rally to Free Julian Assange held in Sydney; “We’re not asking Malcolm Turnbull to defend Assange, we are telling him!”

“Hundreds of people participated in Sunday’s demonstration in Sydney Town Hall Square to demand Julian Assange’s safe return to Australia. The rally, organised by the Socialist Equality Party, featured speeches from SEP Australia national secretary James Cogan and independent journalist and filmmaker John Pilger.”
(just over an hour)

(hope this next ane isn’t redundant; dinnae watch the long one above.))

from whitney webb in london:

There are so many vigils yet to come, but I need to stop now.  You can follow along on #Unity4J and  #FreeAssange

…and a good Juneteenth to all.

Crossposted from: café babylon

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wendy davis's picture

of most of the vigils, but blessings on all who stood in solidarity for the most important truth-telling journalist ever.

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CS in AZ's picture

@wendy davis
for bringing this to us and keeping him in a spotlight. I think the smear campaigns against him have been too effective, and he’s vilified by both democrats and republicans here, so not too many are ready to stand up like that. Yet. I’m heartened by Australia and the increasing calls to bring him home. It’s the only light I see for him right now.

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wendy davis's picture

@CS in AZ

detractors, especially those of a sexual nature. i lawsuit by the democrat party is truly beyond the pale and as jennifer robinson implies...hypocritical the the Nth degree. but it does show how as political party, they have nothing beyond russiagate and the #meToo movement to offer voters. oh, except: Not Trump bumper stickers.

that julian's former allies have turned on him so viciously as well would take a shrink to figure out to parse, fie on them all. hard to be optimistic at this point that may, turnbull, or moreno will give him the freedom he deserves.

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janis b's picture

@wendy davis

of free speech. Thanks for the post.

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janis b's picture

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wendy davis's picture

@janis b

foster's blank verse (?) was fantastic. loved: WikiLEEKs, the clever sods. if i'd known of Blue King Brown, i might have used one of their tunes for a lullaby. perhaps 'Rise Up'.

yes, i loved the monarch; we haven't had once visit here this year. and in Baah-ston, no less.

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wendy davis's picture

@janis b

New Zealand rally demands freedom for Julian Assange’, wsws.org today (the tom peters video is (arrrgh) from facebook, so i can’t bring it.

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janis b's picture

@wendy davis

as NZ's PM delivered her first child, a baby girl.

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wendy davis's picture

@janis b

and a Q: from where you sit, has jacinda's rule borne out what it had promised incipiently? for some reason my expat kiwi friend got vexxed w/ her after earlier glowing tributes. it wasn't about nikky hager, i just checked. ah, well, no matter, here's hoping their babby will be healthy, loved, and taught well.

but that's a far better jacinda smile in that photo (smile) (not so much gums as usual).

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janis b's picture

@wendy davis

regarding my estimation of Jacinda Ardern and this coalition government. I am reserving personal judgement due to the powerful forces of the long-standing influence of the US here, as everywhere. It’s difficult.

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wendy davis's picture

@janis b

and yes, after all, NZ is an NSA 'five eyes' nation. thanks, janisb.

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janis b's picture

@wendy davis

she has made two major and decisive moves. She has banned all new offshore oil exploration as part of a carbon-neutral future; and has banned all gov’t agencies from using the services of Thompson and Clark, NZ’s own Pinkertons.

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wendy davis's picture

@janis b

two bright spots are better than no bright spots. (a hobbitism?)

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janis b's picture

@wendy davis

One of a musical variety ...

[video:https://youtu.be/psJw8NEjLBI]

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janis b's picture

@wendy davis

One of a musical variety ...

[video:https://youtu.be/psJw8NEjLBI]

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Lookout's picture

(12 min)
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzpxJksHfEI]

TPTB are bound and determined to imprison Julian one way or another. I'm glad for the vigils.

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

wendy davis's picture

@Lookout

she's so smooth in the way she can answer chapter and verse the long history of his case, and now the notching up of it by ptui pompeo and beauregard sessions. she answered calmly, but with a bit of extra verve, i'd though that no, the personal biases (say against the Anointed One) of any of the wikileaks team don't matter one iota: it's a Free Speech issue altogether.

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wendy davis's picture

“Yesterday, Jennifer Robinson, a lawyer for Assange, was permitted to make a brief statement to the current UN Human Rights Council meeting in Geneva. She urged the UN to send a special rapporteur to visit Assange to see the “severe impact” on his physical and mental health of his confinement inside the embassy for the past six years, denied sunlight or outdoor access.

Robinson told the meeting the British authorities had made it clear that if Assange leaves the embassy to seek medical treatment he will be arrested. “He cannot leave the embassy because the UK will not provide assurances against extradition to the US,” she said.
“The UK is showing deliberate disregard for his medical needs by asking him to choose between his human right to asylum and his human right to medical treatment. No-one should have to make that choice.”
Robinson reminded the council that in 2016 the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention ruled that Assange was being arbitrarily detained. The UN agency called on the Swedish and British authorities to end his “deprivation of liberty, respect his physical integrity and freedom of movement, and afford him the right to compensation.” wsws.org

bless her heart. assange's allies are staunch as all giddy-up. his parents make me cry when they say how much they admire and support him; they must have taught him well, eh?

so many years since he's seen his wife or chirren, yes, small wonder that he's psycho-spiritually strained.

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grows stronger as the years go by. He also had the fortitude to call out Israel for what it has become despite the criticism he received and the resignations of some of his employees at the Carter Center. And he called it way before we got to the current horrors of the Gaza protests.

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"Without the right to offend, freedom of speech does not exist." Taslima Nasrin

wendy davis's picture

@Fishtroller 02

system to be the most fair and transparent he'd ever seen. (we'll skip by his 'blood drenched presidency, okay?) OTOH, as tevya would say, he has a lot to his credit.

on wikileaks, he's all over the map depending on the year...

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wendy davis's picture

@Fishtroller 02

on wikileaks: 'Jimmy Carter: WikiLeaks "Helps No One, But Hurts Diplomatically"', cbsnews

his reasoning at the time...reminded me of the 'good whistle blower (snowden
/greenwald) v. bad whistle blower (wikileaks, assange) dichotomy that's been at play for years.

but he's become more enlightened over the intervening years. good on him.

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wendy davis's picture

i think i must have seen in on john pilger's twitter account: ‘Bringing Julian Assange Home, John Pilger, June 18, newmatilda.com

“I know Julian Assange well; I regard him as a close friend, a person of extraordinary resilience and courage. I have watched a tsunami of lies and smear engulf him, endlessly, vindictively, perfidiously; and I know why they smear him.

In 2008, a plan to destroy both WikiLeaks and Assange was laid out in a top secret document dated 8 March, 2008. The authors were the Cyber Counter-intelligence Assessments 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, they wrote, 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.
Their main weapon would be personal smear. Their shock troops would be enlisted in the media – those who are meant to keep the record straight and tell us the truth.
The irony is that no-one told these journalists what to do. I call them Vichy journalists – after the Vichy government that served and enabled the German occupation of wartime France.” [snip]

“No investigative journalism in my lifetime can equal the importance of what WikiLeaks has done in calling rapacious power to account. It is as if a one-way moral screen has been pushed back to expose the imperialism of liberal democracies: the commitment to endless warfare and the division and degradation of “unworthy” lives: from Grenfell Tower to Gaza.
When Harold Pinter accepted the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2005, he referred to “a vast tapestry of lies up on which we feed”. He asked why “the systematic brutality, the widespread atrocities, the ruthless suppression of independent thought” of the Soviet Union were well known in the West while America’s imperial crimes “never happened… even while [they]were happening, they never happened”.

In its revelations of fraudulent wars (Afghanistan, Iraq) and the bald-faced lies of governments (the Chagos Islands), WikiLeaks has allowed us to glimpse how the imperial game is played in the 21st century. That is why Assange is in mortal danger."

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wendy davis's picture

account, here she is speaking to the UNHRC (brief video):

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKJIf2iDlTE&feature=youtu.be]

aaand...HRW got another thing right? shiver me timbers...

retweeted by my favorite tankie on the twit machine:

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wendy davis's picture

lord luv a duck.

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