20 December 2023 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Julian Assange’s Final Appeal to be held in UK High Court 20 & 21 February 2024 The UK High Court has confirmed that a public hearing will take place on 20 and 21 February 2024. The two-day hearing may be the final chance for Julian Assange to prevent his extradition to the United States. If extradited, Julian faces a sentence of 175 years for exposing war crimes committed by the United States in the Afghan and Iraq wars.    The Australian publisher and WikiLeaks founder has been confined in London’s high-security Belmarsh Prison since he was arrested on a US extradition request on 11 April 2019 and forcibly removed from the Ecuadorian UK Embassy where Julian had sought asylum for 7 years. This will be his 13th Christmas in arbitrary detention and the fifth in Belmarsh Prison.   The upcoming public hearing will be held before a panel of two judges who will review an earlier UK High Court decision taken by a single judge on 6 June 2023 which refused Julian permission to appeal. It will determine whether Julian will have further opportunities to argue his case before the UK courts, or whether he will be extradited to the United States to face charges under the 1917 US Espionage Act.   Julian’s family have been joined by millions of supporters globally campaigning relentlessly for the US to drop the prosecution and release him.   Said Gabriel Shipton, brother of Julian Assange: “This hearing signals a crucial stage in Julian’s battle for justice and is the end of the line in the UK courts. This Christmas will be Julian’s 5th in a UK prison. He has gone through years of uncertainty, his mental and physical health getting worse and worse. He should be able to come home to Australia with his children and get the support he needs. I urge the Prime Minister to pull out all the stops in his efforts to end Julian’s suffering.  Bring Julian home.”   Stella Assange, Julian’s wife who he married while in prison said, “The last four and a half years have taken the most considerable toll on Julian and his family, including our two young sons. His mental health and physical state have deteriorated significantly. With the myriad of evidence that has come to light since the original hearing in 2019, such as the violation of legal privilege and reports that senior US officials were involved in formulating assassination plots against my husband, there is no denying that a fair trial, let alone Julian’s safety on US soil, is an impossibility were he to be extradited. The persecution of this innocent journalist and publisher must end.”   Immediately after the court date was announced, protestors responded by calling for a mass protest at the Court on the days of the hearing at 8:30am. They welcome all those who support press freedom to join them in London and around the world.   Julian's campaign for freedom is supported by Amnesty International, the National Union of Journalists, Reporters Without Borders and civil rights, press freedom and media organisations around the world, including the other five media outlets who simultaneously published the shocking ‘Collateral Murder’ video that changed the course of the US-led coalition invasion of Iraq in 2003. A war that is estimated to have cost the lives of more than 1.1 million people, most of whom were innocent civilians including women and children, with millions more injured and displaced,   More than 70 Australian Federal politicians have called on the US to drop the prosecution. In the United States, the number of Congressional representatives calling for the case to be dropped grows steadily; currently H. Res 934 sponsored by Paul Gosar is gathering signatures from all sides of the House in Washington DC. Media contact   Jodie Harrison    +61 425 754 370    [email protected] assangecampaign.org.au

Celebrate Julian Assange’s Birthday

 Banner Drop on the Brady Street Bridge overpass

 Monday July 3 at 4:30 pm

 Join us for this nationwide Banner Drop on Julian's birthday on the Brady Street Bridge over Lincoln Memorial Drive in Milwaukee. 

We will drop 20-foot banners for traffic going each way that say FREE JULIAN ASSANGE and Journalism is not a crime.

Ramp access is available from both sides, Prospect Avenue and Lincoln Memorial Drive.

Chris Hedges: The Imminent Extradition of Julian Assange & the Death of Journalism

JUNE 19, 2023

TRUTHDIG

The Case Against the Case Against Julian Assange

As the WikiLeaks founder faces a life sentence in American prison, a new book sheds additional light on the official campaign to silence him.

Guilty of Journalism: The Political Case Against Julian Assange

By Kevin Gosztola 

The Censored Press / Seven Stories Presshttps://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-case-against-the-case-against-julian-assange/

Chairman Jordan, ranking member Plaskett, members of the  Select Committee,

My name is Matt Taibbi. I’ve been a reporter for over 30 years, and an advocate for the First Amendment.  Much of that time was spent at Rolling Stone magazine. Over my career, I’ve had the good fortune to be recognized for the work I love.  I’ve won the National Magazine Award, the I.F. Stone Award for independent journalism, and written ten books, including four New York Times bestsellers. I’m now the editor of the online magazine Racket, on the independent platform Substack.

I’m here today because of a series of events that began late last year, when I received a note from a source online.

It read: “Are you interested in doing a deep dive into what censorship and manipulation… was going on at Twitter?”

A week later, the first of what became known as the “Twitter Files” reports came out. To say these attracted intense public interest would be an understatement. My computer looked like a slot machine as just the first tweet about the blockage of the Hunter Biden laptop story registered 143 million impressions and 30 million engagements.

But it wasn’t until a week after the first report, after Michael Shellenberger, Bari Weiss, and other researchers joined the search of the “Files,” that we started to grasp the significance of this story.

The original promise of the Internet was that it might democratize the exchange of information globally. A free internet would overwhelm all attempts to control information flow, its very existence a threat to anti-democratic forms of government everywhere.

What we found in the Files was a sweeping effort to reverse that promise, and use machine learning and other tools to turn the internet into an instrument of censorship and social control. Unfortunately, our own government appears to be playing a lead role.

Join Julian Assange's father (John Shipton) and brother (Gabriel Shipton) for a conversation at Oriental Theater, 2230 N. Farwell Avenue, Milwaukee April 8 at 6 pm.  The movie IHAKA, about Julian's family's search for justice, begins at 6 pm. Then John and Gabriel will field questions from those in the audience.  Get your tickets early for this historic event.  Tickets are on sale now.

If questions, please contact Ann Batiza at 414-238-3903.

Former National Lawyers Guild President, Marjorie Cohn says, "Prominent lawyers, journalists and human rights defenders say prosecuting Assange poses a grave threat to journalism." Her article highlights many of the speakers at the January 20 Belmarsh Tribunal, held at the Washington DC Press Club and chaired by Amy Goodman of Democracy NOW!.  The speakers included notables such as Ben Wizner of the ACLU, Jeremy Corbyn, Noam Chomsky, Daniel Ellsberg and others.  She begins:

Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg joined other leading journalists, attorneys and human rights defenders to call on the Biden administration to drop its extradition request and indictment against journalist and WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange, citing the grave threat Assange’s prosecution would pose to journalism worldwide.

“Every empire requires secrecy to cloak its acts of violence that maintain it as an empire,” Ellsberg testified during the Belmarsh Tribunal held on January 20 at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. The tribunal is named after London’s high-security Belmarsh Prison, where Assange has been held for nearly four years, fighting extradition to the United States. The Belmarsh Tribunal, inspired by the Russell-Sartre tribunal of the Vietnam War, was sponsored by Democracy Now!, Defending Rights & Dissent, Courage Foundation, DiEM25, The Intercept, The Nation and PEN International.

Assange is charged with violations of the Espionage Act for exposing evidence of U.S. war crimes and faces 175 years in prison if convicted.