“Let us look at ourselves," - Sartre

Photograph Source: Newtown grafitti – CC BY 2.0

“Let us look at ourselves, if we have the courage, to see what is happening to us”

– Jean-Paul Sartre

Sartre's powerful quote goes unheeded in the land of the brave and home of the free when it comes to the definition of journalism vs espionage and what it means for Julian Assange, soon to be extradited to the US for crimes of treason thanks to the CIA and significant others.

Sartre’s words should echo in all our minds following the grotesque decision of Britain’s High Court to extradite Julian Assange to the United States where he faces “a living death”. This is his punishment for the crime of authentic, accurate, courageous, vital journalism.

On 11 April 2019, Assange's asylum was withdrawn following a series of disputes with the Ecuadorian authorities.[15] The police were invited into the embassy and he was arrested.[16] He was found guilty of breaching the Bail Act and sentenced to 50 weeks in prison.[17] The United States government unsealed an indictment against Assange, related to the leaks provided by Manning. On 23 May 2019, the United States government further charged Assange with violating the Espionage Act of 1917. Editors from newspapers, including The Washington Post and The New York Times, as well as press freedom organisations, criticised the government's decision to charge Assange under the Espionage Act, characterising it as an attack on the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, which guarantees freedom of the press.[18][19] On 4 January 2021, District Judge Vanessa Baraitser ruled against the United States' request to extradite him and stated that doing so would be "oppressive" given his mental health.[20] On 6 January 2021, Assange was denied bail, pending an appeal by the United States.[21] On 10 December 2021 Britain’s Court of Appeal ruled that Assange can be extradited to the US to face the charges.[22][23]

The fix was in ...

Miscarriage of justice is an inadequate term in these circumstances. It took the bewigged courtiers of Britain’s ancien regime just nine minutes last Friday to uphold an American appeal against a District Court judge’s acceptance in January of a cataract of evidence that hell on earth awaited Assange across the Atlantic: a hell in which, it was expertly predicted, he would find a way to take his own life.

Volumes of witness by people of distinction, who examined and studied Julian and diagnosed his autism and his Asperger’s Syndrome and revealed that he had already come within an ace of killing himself at Belmarsh prison, Britain’s very own hell, were ignored.

It's irrelevant , right?

The recent confession of a crucial FBI informant and prosecution stooge, a fraudster and serial liar, that he had fabricated his evidence against Julian was ignored. The revelation that the Spanish-run security firm at the Ecuadorean embassy in London, where Julian had been granted political refuge, was a CIA front that spied on Julian’s lawyers and doctors and confidants (myself included) – that, too. was ignored.

The recent journalistic disclosure, repeated graphically by defence counsel before the High Court in October, that the CIA had planned to murder Julian in London – even that was ignored.

Think if this crap happened during Nam regarding Michael Herr/Dispatches or Seymour Hirsch/ Mi Lai. They too would have been jailed without question. Chilling says it all.