The way that Julian Assange has
been and is being treated, is filthy. With what anger and shame must we read of
the extradition proceedings that make British justice stink like an unburied
corpse – see the account Craig Murray, former UK Ambassador to Uzbekistan and
himself a whistleblower, gave last
October https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2019/10/assange-in-court/
:
‘The charge against Julian is very specific;
conspiring with Chelsea Manning to publish the Iraq War logs, the Afghanistan
war logs and the State Department cables. The charges are nothing to do with
Sweden, nothing to do with sex, and nothing to do with the 2016 US election; a
simple clarification the mainstream media appears incapable of understanding.’
Even the Swedish authorities
wanted to drop the rape allegations, only for the UK’s Crown Prosecution
Service to email them with ‘Don’t you dare get cold feet!!!’ (The triple
exclamation marks, sic. https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/feb/11/sweden-tried-to-drop-assange-extradition-in-2013-cps-emails-show
)
The Australian Embassy refused to
assist their citizen https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-18546082
, so Assange went to the Ecuadorian Embassy, disguised as a courier, and had to
stay there on the first floor overlooking Harrods, for seven years, effectively
in solitary confinement, while our Government, playing Pussy, waited for him
outside his hole, blowing £11 million in police costs in the first three years https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3131882/Arrogant-Julian-Assange-condemned-refusing-leave-Ecuador-s-embassy-face-justice-rape-allegations-Met-Police-reveal-cost-11million.html
.
When Ecuador’s President, the
anti-globalist Rafael Correa, ended his third term of office he continued to
support the cause of the ‘Maus’ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maus
but last April the new incumbent, Correa’s former deputy Lenín Moreno invited Scotland
Yard into his diplomatically immune territory to take Assange by force. Correa
tweeted: ‘Moreno is a corrupt man, but what he has done is a crime that
humanity will never forget.’ https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/apr/11/rafael-correa-ex-ecuadorian-president-slams-succes/
Some may think I have failed under
Godwin’s Law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law
by drawing a comparison with the totalitarianism of the Thirties and after; but
my mother was there at the time, in high school. She loved to read in the
school’s library but one day she went in and the shelves were full of big gaps:
the socialist and Jewish writers and philosophers had been removed. All the
teachers had joined the Party; and her classmates, too, but Opa (our granddad)
wouldn’t let her – a gentleman farmer, he considered the movement full of scum.
Mum had to fight boys in the playground but being sporty and thickset, won her
battles. For the rest of her life she opposed all forms of what she called
‘fanatism.’
The conduct of the proceedings has
to be read to be believed – Murray is reporting regularly https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2020/03/the-armoured-glass-box-is-an-instrument-of-torture/
. They are now taking place in Woolwich Crown Court, almost a granny annexe for
the top-security Belmarsh Prison that was designed to hold the country’s most
dangerous terrorists. Bearing in mind the fact that Assange attends court in a
bulletproof glass cubicle where he finds it hard to follow what is said and
cannot communicate freely with his lawyers, the prison management’s behaviour
is also scarcely credible https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/feb/25/julian-assange-handcuffed-stripped-naked-claim-lawyers
:
‘Julian Assange was handcuffed 11 times, stripped
naked twice and had his case files confiscated after the first day of his
extradition hearing, according to his lawyers, who complained of interference
in his ability to take part.’
When did you last hear of counsel
for the prosecution having to support the defence https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2020/02/your-man-in-the-public-gallery-assange-hearing-day-2/
in their attempts to persuade the magistrate that ‘it was common practice for
magistrates and judges to pass on comments and requests to the prison service
where the conduct of the trial was affected, and that jails normally listened
to magistrates sympathetically’?
The Guardian is something of a
repentant sinner: having made liberal use of Assange’s outfit’s information,
they published a crucial password https://www.theguardian.com/media/2011/sep/01/wikileaks-prepares-unredacted-us-cables
in their book on Wikileaks that could be used to crack open the encrypted
documents that have so embarrassed the United States and some of its allies.
In 2010 the Guardian wanted him to
go back to Sweden to face charges (with the risk of being seized and taken to
the US) https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/dec/19/julian-assange-wikileaks-sex-offences
; they said his fight against authoritarianism was ‘simplistic, hypocritical, as
much an authoritarian conspiracy as the United States government is; we should
disavow Assange's perspective entirely; the ends do not justify the means’ https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/dec/05/wikileaks-julian-assange
.
Well, as William Randolph Hearst
said, ‘News is something somebody doesn't want printed; all else is
advertising.’ https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/77244-news-is-something-somebody-doesn-t-want-printed-all-else-is
The Guardian’s staff have finally realised comment is not free: that if they
support what is beginning to seem like a show trial of a fellow journalist, the
cats may come for them too, one day. So their line is now, ‘Don’t do it.’ https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/nov/20/the-guardian-view-on-extraditing-julian-assange-dont-do-it
Assange does not have to be Simon-pure
for us to support him (the terms ‘journalist’ and ‘ascetic’ are rarely found
together). In fact, it’s not him alone we are or should be championing: it is
justice, the unbiased independence of the judiciary – independence even against
a powerful foreign ally - and our blood-bought, centuries-old culture of
freedom. Welcome back, prodigal sons of the Manchester Guardian: we shall
fatten the calf for you.
2 comments:
Not all of Mum's teachers were gone. Her history teacher was replaced by the janitor, a Party loyalist.
I didn't say they were gone, just the books! I wonder how much the janitor knew; enough, he would doubtless have said.
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