WIKILEAKS founder Julian Assange was arrested in London yesterday and is now in jail, awaiting hearings to extradite him to Sweden where he will face frame-up charges, and if convicted, being handed over to the US administration, that already has the blood of Guantanamo Bay prisoners on its hands.
Everybody on the planet knows what Assange’s ‘crime’ is.
It is that he has released, and continues to release, hundreds of thousands of US secret cables that expose the brutality, the blood lust, the barbarity, hypocrisy and cynicism of US imperialism and its allies, in a way that has not been done since the Bolsheviks published the secret treaties and diplomatic correspondence of the imperialist powers, in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution in 1917.
The publication of the secret treaties in 1917 helped to cement the Bolshevik government and won it the unswerving support of the workers and the oppressed of the world.
Julian Assange is a hero, and his ‘leaks’ of imperialist secrets, and revelations about the gangster world of imperialist diplomacy, have already convinced tens of millions of young people that the only way to treat the imperialist powers is to organise socialist revolutions to overthrow them.
The leaks which showed US Secretaries of State, Rice and Clinton, instructing US diplomats to spy on the leading officials of the UN, shed new light on the imperialist slaughter in Afghanistan and Iraq, and showed the cynicism of the UK and US as far as the continuing oppression of small nations is concerned.
This was perfectly illustrated by the cables that showed the determination of the US and the UK to prevent the return of the people of the Chagos Islands to their homes, from which they were evicted by British Labour and Tory governments, to make way for a massive imperialist nuclear war base.
There have already been calls from the US for Assange to be executed, and it is clear that his courageous actions have put his life in danger.
The Australian government has already declared that if he falls into their hands they will hand him over to the US, despite the fact that he is an Australian citizen.
If he is extradited to Sweden it will be a question of next stop the USA, where former US vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin has described him as ‘an anti-American operative with blood on his hands’, and where former Arkansas governor and contender to be the Republican presidential candidate Huckabee has called for Assange to be executed or assassinated.
Workers and trade unions in the UK and worldwide must now take action to defend Assange and to make sure that the frame-up charges are dropped, and he is freed, and not extradited to Sweden and then to the US.
Julian Assange is due to appear at an extradition hearing on December 14.
There must be a mass picket and a massive march to the court on that day to demand that he be freed and be allowed to remain in the UK.
Furthermore, the trade unions must call a national demonstration to insist that he be freed and a campaign of political strikes to add force to their demands.
WikiLeaks is set to continue and release a further 250,000 documents incriminating the imperialist powers in theft, war crimes and mass murder.
This brave movement and its leader must be given our full support for their courageous actions.
In fact, while Assange must be freed, the US and UK leaders responsible for war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan must be dispatched to The Hague to stand trial for their deeds.
They and the ruling classes that they represent are the criminals. Assange and WikiLeaks are anti-imperialist heroes.
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