Meme by me @richq11 via imgflip.com

For anyone that doesn't think the Brits are deliberately attempting to kill Julian Assange before his extradition to the US where he'll likely tell the truth about what he knows about a variety if issues- the murder of Seth Rich and the Russian hacking hoax being among them- think again. For one thing it has been a possibility to detain him in a more healthy environment all along, particularly in light of the fact that any sentence doled out by the UK court system has more than been served. His imprisonment in the harsh confines of Belmarsh is for one purpose only... to prevent him from coming to the US and telling what he knows and embarrassing the powers that shouldn't be. Assange's doctors, along with human rights activists around the world rightly fear that he is being drugged and tortured to death.

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange continues to be abused in prison in the United Kingdom. Meanwhile, the Trump administration continues to seek his extradition to the US to prosecute him even though he was the one who exposed the corruption of the US government. Yet, more than 10o doctors are urging the UK to stop the “psychological torture” of Julian Assange. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange may die in a UK prison, having “effectively been tortured to death,” claim Doctors for Assange, a group of 117 doctors from 18 countries, in a recent letter published in The Lancet, a leading medical journal. The letter says that Assange requires urgent medical care, and has been exposed to “prolonged psychological torture”. The group once again asks for him to be moved to a university teaching hospital for medical assessment and treatment.

This is no longer a question of his having been incarcerated for embarrassing a few highly placed people- this is about being murdered for exposing corruption in the Deep State- the governments of the US and UK collectively. It if it was about anything else, Assange could be comfortably housed in a low or medium security facility. What's the point of constantly drugging him if not to make his memory less acute... perhaps now his testimony can be questioned due to the effects of all the drugs he's being force-fed in the UK. If and when he goes on trial in the US, they'll have an excuse to discredit what he says... whoops, sorry about that.

Nils Melzer, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, visited Assange in prison in May 2019, and reported that the journalist showed “all the symptoms typical of prolonged exposure to psychological torture”. Soon after Melzer’s visit, the public saw Assange at his case management hearing on October 21, 2019. “Doctors for Assange” says that he appeared “pale, underweight, aged, and limping, and he had visibly struggled to recall basic information, focus on his thoughts, or articulate his words”. By the end of the proceedings, the journalist told the judge “he had not understood what had happened in court”.

This is inexcusable in any "civilized" society, it's reminiscent of the USSR or some third-world banana republic. It exceeds anything close to the Geneva Convention where even enemies are afforded basic dignity and human rights... this is what the civilized world has fought against for centuries. All because one man and his organizations dared pull the mask off the world's "good guys." Makes you proud to be an American doesn't it?

The hearing was held to decide whether the US can state its case to extradite Assange to the US. The WikiLeaks founder is wanted by Washington for “unlawfully obtaining and disclosing classified documents related to the national defense” with the help of former intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning. The Justice Department has indicted the journalist on 18 counts, which carry a maximum sentence of 175 years in prison.

Given that we have the power to nuke the world into oblivion several times over, our "national defense" is hardly at issue here. What's at issue is uncovering corruption, criminality and human rights abused at the highest levels of government... what's at issue here is covering up the truth.

Worried about the extradition proceedings and Assange’s medical needs, “Doctors for Assange” had previously written two open letters to the UK government in November 2019, to no reply. They had also asked the Australian government to intercede in the proceedings on his behalf, since he is an Australian citizen, but received no reply. Over and over, this administration and foreign powers have sought to silence Julian Assange. It’s time the American people demanded the Trump administration put their money where their mouths are and stop the extradition and the charges against Assange and push for a demand for his release and start prosecuting the real criminals instead of giving us the same tired ridiculous claims that they can’t bring justice against domestic terrorists in our government.

Similarly, fellow Australian journalist John Pilger has written about this travesty... in particular the hypocrisy of the Australian government- still a part of the British Commonwealth. A march has been planed from Australia House in London to Parliament. " People will carry pictures of the Australian publisher and journalist Julian Assange who, on 24 February, faces a court that will decide whether or not he is to be extradited to the United States and a living death." There's no way Assange can be allowed to testify in a US court- he simply knows too much. In reality many others know much of the same things- it's just that Assange can codify what others know, or at least suspect. According to Pilger:

Known as High Commissioner, the equivalent of an ambassador, the current beneficiary is George Brandis, who as Attorney General tried to water down Australia’s Race Discrimination Act and approved raids on whistleblowers who had revealed the truth about Australia’s illegal spying on East Timor during negotiations for the carve-up of that impoverished country’s oil and gas. This led to the prosecution of whistleblowers Bernard Collaery and “Witness K”, on bogus charges. Like Julian Assange, they are to be silenced in a Kafkaesque trial and put away. Australia House is the ideal starting point for Saturday’s march.

In addition to being Assange's birthplace, Australia is also a part of FVEY (five eyes) the intelligence sharing agreement that includes the US, Canada, the UK and New Zealand. Whatever one party is guilty of the others are at least aware of and therefore culpable. Australia is also complicit in the cover-up uncovered by Assange.

WikiLeaks has informed us how illegal wars are fabricated, how governments are overthrown and violence is used in our name, how we are spied upon through our phones and screens. The true lies of presidents, ambassadors, political candidates, generals, proxies, political fraudsters have been exposed. One by one, these would-be emperors have realised they have no clothes. It has been an unprecedented public service; above all, it is authentic journalism, whose value can be judged by the degree of apoplexy of the corrupt and their apologists.

It's the "authentic journalism" that the Deep State finds so threatening. How many alternative journalists have been silenced for merely telling uncomfortable truths? People are beginning to wake up, but hardly in time to help Julian Assange- he needs help now. Conversely, the Deep State actors feel the pressure to silence him. Here are just a few uncomfortable facts uncovered by Wikileaks:

For example, in 2016, WikiLeaks published the leaked emails of Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager John Podesta, which revealed a direct connection between Clinton, the foundation she shares with her husband and the funding of organised jihadism in the Middle East — terrorism.

One email disclosed that Islamic State (ISIS) was bankrolled by the governments of Saudi Arabia and Qatar, from which Clinton accepted huge “donations”. Moreover, as US Secretary of State, she approved the world’s biggest ever arms sale to her Saudi benefactors, worth more than $80 billion. Thanks to her, US arms sales to the world — for use in stricken countries like Yemen — doubled.

Revealed by WikiLeaks and published in The New York Times, the Podesta emails triggered a vituperative campaign against editor-in-chief Julian Assange, bereft of evidence. He was an “agent of Russia working to elect Trump”; the nonsensical “Russiagate” followed. That WikiLeaks had also published more than 800,000 frequently damning documents from Russia was ignored.

All the while the mainstream media has been working overtime to keep this covered up and out of the public eye. On an Australian Broadcasting Corporation programme, Four Corners, in 2017, Clinton was interviewed by Sarah Ferguson, who began: “No one could fail to be moved by the pain on your face at [the moment of Donald Trump’s inauguration] … Do you remember how visceral it was for you?” Having established Clinton’s visceral suffering, the fawning Ferguson described “Russia’s role” and the “damage done personally to you” by Julian Assange.

How much Clinton has contributed directly or otherwise to Julian Assange's suffering id difficult to know. What we do know from not too distant history is that anyone that crosses the Clinton Crime Cartel usually doesn't live to tell about it. We also know of the cozy relationship the Clintons have with the Rothschilds- one of the most powerful families in the UK outside of the Royals. It's entirely possible that they've placed undue pressure on the UK government to ensure that Assange suffer as much as possible- perhaps to the point of death.

In the same interview with Hillary Clinton: "Again, Clinton was allowed to defame Assange — a “nihilist” in the service of “dictators” — while Ferguson assured her interviewee she was “the icon of your generation”. " Once again from Pilger:

There was no mention of a leaked document, revealed by WikiLeaks, called Libya Tick Tock, prepared for Hillary Clinton, which described her as the central figure driving the destruction of the Libyan state in 2011. This resulted in 40,000 deaths, the arrival of ISIS in North Africa and the European refugee and migrant crisis. For me, this episode of Clinton’s interview — and there are many others – vividly illustrates the division between false and true journalism. On 24 February, when Julian Assange steps into Woolwich Crown Court, true journalism will be the only crime on trial.

This is bigger than just Julian Assange, but then again it isn't. Nobody deserves to be tortured or killed for telling the truth. The truth is never more important than the people that tell it. It took a lot of courage for Assange to expose the corruption, and he did so realizing what would likely result. Can we do any less?

When we speak about dictatorships, we call this brainwashing: the conquest of minds. It is a truth we rarely apply to our own societies, regardless of the trail of blood that leads back to us and which never dries. WikiLeaks has exposed this. That is why Assange is in a maximum security prison in London facing concocted political charges in America, and why he has shamed so many of those paid to keep the record straight. Watch these journalists now look for cover as it dawns on them that the American fascists who have come for Assange may come for them, not least those on the Guardian who collaborated with WikiLeaks and won prizes and secured lucrative book and Hollywood deals based on his work, before turning on him.

Pilger said of Assange: "I am sometimes asked why I have championed Assange. For one thing, I like and I admire him. He is a friend with astonishing courage; and he has a finely honed, wicked sense of humour. He is the diametric opposite of the character invented then assassinated by his enemies." What does that say about those of us who remain silent about what's happening to him? Are we any better than his persecutors, hiding in the shadows afraid to speak up? It's past time to start making some noise on Julian's behalf. It's time to start writing the White House a along with the corrupt DOJ. It may not do any good, but at least we'll have tried. One really troubling aspect of Assange's situation is this:

Whether or not his prison uniform will be an “orange jumpsuit”, US court files seen by Assange’s lawyers reveal that, once extradited, Assange will be subject to Special Administrative Measures, known as SAMS. A 2017 report by Yale University Law School and the Center for Constitutional Rights described SAMS as “the darkest corner of the US federal prison system” combining “the brutality and isolation of maximum security units with additional restrictions that deny individuals almost any connection to the human world … The net effect is to shield this form of torture from any real public scrutiny.”

This is the same fate that befell Schaeffer Cox- he's sequestered away in a hellhole in Indiana in solitary confinement. Cox also had the temerity to stand up to the almighty US government- the uber-corrupt FBI in particular. "Sunlight is the best disinfectant" and it's time for the American people to demand some sunlight. Assange's case proves that the 1st Amendment guarantee of freedom of the press has become meaningless unless you follow the government narrative. The purpose of that particular clause was intended to keep government honest- now it's been subverted to mask corruption and criminality... all in the name of "national security," a blanket term that means whatever the government wants it to. People like Julian Assange and Schaeffer Cox need out help- they need our voices and if we remain silent they will die... for the crime of telling the truth... and our own cowardice.

https://thewashingtonstandard.com/doctors-for-assange-concerned-he-may-die-in-prison-effectively-been-tortured-to-death/

https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/02/18/julian-assange-must-be-freed-not-betrayed/