Julian,
I am ashamed to say that you have completely slipped my mind until now.
Good God! What has become of you, I wonder?!
I know were imprisoned on April 11, 2019 in Britain’s maximum-security Belmarsh prison ‘established in 1991 for those accused of violent crimes including murder, rape, and terror offences’(wsws.org).
A UK judge has ruled that you be allowed to be extradited to the US to stand on charges that you violated the Espionage Act of 1919. Either life in prison or the death penalty is the likely outcome.
On January 22, 2022 The Guardian reported that you won a chance to appeal the extradition decision in the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom.
Since then it has been like you never existed.
Complete silence. In the Mainstream Press.
If it weren’t for real journalists like John Pilger’s re-publish:
http://johnpilger.com/articles/getting-julian-assange-the-untold-story
And Chris Hedge’s piece: Hedges: Assange Affirms the Existence of Another Kind of Human Nature – scheerpost.com
There would be nary a word written about how you have been made to suffer like the most heinous rapist and murderer.
Mr. Pilger tells us that you are gaunt and your eyes a giant void. You could barely remember your own name when asked at your last hearing. The prison psychiatrist says that your once brilliant mind is now performing ‘below average’.
You went as far as planning to kill yourself.
Julian, listen to me: I have also been in solitary confinement.
I wanted to die after 30 days of starvation, torture and loneliness.
It makes a person completely mad.
Believe me, I too was screaming at the top of my lungs and banging on the bars.
I lost so much weight that my knee bones rubbed painfully against one another when I put my legs together.
But remember who you are! Remember your children!
When you came on the scene with WikiLeaks: Collateral Murder (Iraq, 2007) - YouTube you were absolutely blinding in your intelligence and your bravery.
I thought to myself ‘this man is single handedly taking on the US military and the Industrial Complex’. I was scared for you.
You, however, stood on the podium asking for the next slide sounding calmer and more rational than anyone I have ever heard.
Julian, you shone a light on the maneuverings of the military, the politicians and the security state for all of us to see.
It was brutally ugly. And real.
Now they have turned their guns at you. When they couldn’t drone you, they ripped up The First Amendment to get at you.
To lock you up and throw away the key. To silence you.
But guess what? You have a chance in your next hearing to defend yourself from this cruel persecution.
We have something called freedom of the press and it protects The New York Times, The Guardian, Der Spiegel and WIKILEAKS from being prosecuted for having published those cables.
I implore all journalists to give a moment to think about Julian in his dirty, little cell.
Touch the mask on your face and look at the news from the Ukraine on your screen.
Ask yourself: What is at stake in the verdict of Julian Assange?