This is the seventy-first Friday since the weekly Julian Assange Town Hall Gatherings began.
This coming Monday the fifth of April will be the eleventh anniversary of the release of the Collateral Murder video by Julian Assange and Wikileaks. The video depicts the gunning down of innocent Iraqi people on the streets of Baghdad, as seen from a US Apache helicopter gunship. In the video many innocent people are fired on and killed and a clear war crime occurs. The war crime occurs when one of the men, a Reuters journalist, injured earlier in the video, is seen crawling, as a small van arrives. Four men attempt to rescue the injured journalist before the helicopter opens fire and murders them all. Two young children seated in the vehicle on their way to school, we also badly injured.
Since the attack, Reuters had unsuccessfully attempted to obtain the video, through the Freedom of Information Act. Thanks to Julian Assange and Wikileaks, we now have the salient war crime on public record, serving us as a reminder of the evils of modern warfare.
People, almost universally want to avoid unnecessary wars and the war crimes that inevitably go with them. People want to live in a free and open democratic society, in peace and with justice for all. If we want to live in this kind of world, we must involve ourselves in the demographic process and exercise our right to free speech. Only through exercising our right to free speech, can we have a reasonable expectation of putting our agenda on the political table. Imprisoning a journalist, as has occurred in the case of Julian Assange, disastrously takes the agenda of decent people off the political table and is a direct attack on the rights of all of us. We must therefore take a stand to free Julian Assange.
Those who assume illegitimate power know they need to supress the truth. They understand well, that the people, knowing the truth, their illegitimate power becomes weak. We must all know the truth. We need journalists to tell us the truth and we must work to spread the truth when we know it.
Julian Assange is completely innocent, but has been smeared in the mainstream media, through propaganda, seeking to hide the truth. If sources of propaganda can lie about a truthful journalist like Julian and still maintain influence, we have a difficult task in asking people to question authority and to work to uphold our rights of freedom of speech and democracy.
People fear being labelled conspiracy theorists, so they go along with the propaganda. Our task is to wake people up.
We must move forward on the basis of verified evidence. We must not be dependent of receiving permission from the sources of propaganda for our actions. We must build a culture of truth, independent of those who seek to dominate and enslave us.
Please try to have greater awareness about speaking the words you may have heard others speak. If you repeat the words of others, without thinking more deeply about them, you may be unwittingly increasing the power of tyrants. Please try not to be manipulated. Find out the truth and speak from your heart. Be a human being, in-touch with the truth.
Sincere human speech is what we have to bring about knowledge of the truth, bring about justice and bring about moral decency.
Attacking those who speak the truth goes against humanity. We must stay with the truth. We must use our voices to help free Julian Assange. Ultimately, we are all Assange.
Free Free Julian Assange.
Free free Julian Assange.
Free Free Julian Assange.