Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is all talk and no walk. The man isn’t worthy of shining Julian Assange’s shoes. From John Pilger at consortiumnews.com:
The day dream about Anthony Albanese doing the right thing has reached its limits. As prime minister he has not fought to bring home an Australian who is both the embodiment of courage and the victim of a great, vindictive injustice.
Official portrait of Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, February 2022. (Australian Government/CC-BY-4.0, Wikimedia Commons)
I have known Julian Assange since I first interviewed him in London in 2010. I immediately liked his dry, dark sense of humour, often dispensed with an infectious giggle. He is a proud outsider: sharp and thoughtful. We have become friends and I have sat in many courtrooms listening to the tribunes of the state try to silence him and his moral revolution in journalism.
My own high point was when a judge in the Royal Courts of Justice leaned across his bench and growled at me: “You are just a peripatetic Australian like Assange.” My name was on a list of volunteers to stand bail for Julian, and this judge spotted me as the one who had reported his role in the notorious case of the expelled Chagos Islanders. Unintentionally, he delivered me a compliment.
I saw Julian in Belmarsh prison not long ago. We talked about books and the oppressive idiocy of the prison: the happy-clappy slogans on the walls, the petty punishments; they still won’t let him use the gym. He must exercise alone in a cage-like area where there is sign that warns about keeping off the grass. But there is no grass. We laughed; for a brief moment, some things didn’t seem too bad.
The laughter is a shield, of course. When the prison guards began to jangle their keys, as they like to do, indicating our time was up, he fell quiet. As I left the room, he held his fist high and clenched as he always does. He is the embodiment of courage.
Those who are the antithesis of Julian: in whom courage is unheard of, along with principle and honour, stand between him and freedom. I am not referring to the Mafia regime in Washington whose pursuit of a good man is meant as a warning to us all, but rather to those who still claim to run a just democracy in Australia.
That’s the first I’ve heard of esteemed global soviet party member comrade commissar Albanese.
The name sounds like a strain of hashish and Jacinda says…hold my beer.
He doesn’t work for Australia or Australians just like Beijing Biden doesn’t work for the former USA and EBT world shopping bazaar minions.
This man isn’t worth shining J.A.’s shoes is EPIC greatness.
Free Julian Assange.