It can happen any day now. After another short, failed trial, a column of vans and police cars roars out of London’s Belmarsh Prison and rushes to Heathrow, where a handcuffed, bowed, and blinking prisoner is handed over to US officials and boarded a plane bound for Washington. bundled. DC.
There he will face the great possibility of being buried alive for decades in some federal dungeon, the kind of place meant for mass murderers or terrorists. But the man involved is neither.
This will be an irrevocable and shameful event against which all patriotic, freedom-loving people in this country must stand.
But by the time most of us realize what happened, it will be over. So now is the time to act.
I must beg you to join me in protesting the imminent extradition of Julian Assange to the US as soon as possible.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange greets supporters outside the Ecuadorian embassy in London in 2017
I’m sorry to say I don’t believe he will get justice when he gets there. I just don’t understand why our supposedly independent courts have allowed this so far when the extradition is so blatantly political – something clearly prohibited under the UK-US extradition treaty.
I am surprised how few people in Parliament or the media have spoken out against this grave injustice.
I am amazed that it happened to me – someone who has no great love for Mr Assange or his politics – to speak for him. The only time we ever met, in a debate, we clashed angrily. But his extradition would be a disgrace.
He faces absurd charges of espionage, even though he has never spied. His crime was to embarrass the US government by selectively releasing information that Washington had tried and failed to keep secret. I don’t think this is a crime here or there.
Allegations are being made against him by rendition supporters, which I believe are untrue.
He took great care not to release any material that would endanger or compromise individuals, and if he were a US citizen, he would certainly be protected by the First Amendment to the US Constitution, which prohibits journalists – as Mr. Assange is – safe from the wrath of the state.
It’s been almost three years since I asked here, “Do we really want the hand of a foreign power to be able to reach our national territory at will and pick out anyone it wants to punish?”
Are we still an independent country if we allow this? The Americans certainly wouldn’t allow us to treat them this way.”
The question is perhaps more pressing now that we’ve seen the dismissive way President Biden has treated our prime minister twice.
Do we think the Biden White House will be nicer to us if we do their bidding on Julian Assange? Or just even more contemptuous than they already are?
As the mighty Charles de Gaulle of France proved long ago, Americans treat independent nations much better when they oppose them than when they cling to them.
I also explained exactly why this is a political rendition, a matter I’ve never seen answered: for starters, several US administrations have taken opposing positions, clear evidence that it’s mostly about politics.
Prosecutors who worked for the Obama White House (2009-2017) decided against prosecuting Assange nearly a decade ago for legal reasons.
They concluded that indicting him would have meant they would then have to prosecute any journalist who published information that would endanger national security. That would be against the US Constitution.
Protesters hold large letters reading ‘Free Assange’, referring to Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, who is currently trying to avoid extradition to the US
Under the administration of Donald Trump, American policy changed enormously. In April 2017, US Attorney General Jeff Sessions stated that Mr Assange’s arrest was now a “priority”.
But at one point, Donald Trump himself had said, “I love WikiLeaks,” and rejoiced that the source was “like a treasure trove.”
Mike Pompeo, Trump’s director of the Central Intelligence Agency, later promoted to the even higher office of secretary of state, said of Mr. Assange and his WikiLeaks colleagues on April 13, 2017: “They have pretended that America’s First Amendment freedoms protect against justice. They may have believed that, but they are wrong.’ He added, “Julian Assange has no First Amendment freedoms… he is not a US citizen.”
He also made a lengthy and horrific personal indictment against Assange and WikiLeaks.
If a British official or minister of comparable stature had made these statements about a person charged with a crime in a British court, the trial would have had to be stopped as it was hopelessly biased.
Yet our courts are apparently willing to hand Mr. Assange over to a justice system, in my opinion, gravely inferior to ours, where acceptable.
Only one person stands in the corner between Mr. Assange and this handover. The Secretary of the Interior, Suella Braverman, can – if she chooses – refuse to extradite him.
There is a precedent for this. One of her forerunners, Theresa May, did so in the case of Gary McKinnon, who had hacked US defense computers, saying: “Mr. McKinnon’s extradition would carry such a high risk of ending his life that a decision to extradition would be incompatible with Mr. McKinnon’s human rights.’
Great Britain had no adverse consequences as a result.
I think Lady May deserves great credit. I think Ms. Braverman would likewise deserve much credit for her courage and compassion – and justice – if she stopped the extradition and allowed Mr. Assange to go home to his wife and two small children.
If you agree with me, please write politely and briefly and promptly to The Rt Hon Suella Braverman MP, Home Secretary, Home Office, 2 Marsham Street, London SW1P 4DF.
Jesus is back… after Porsche made a U-turn
To me, flashy cars look like objects of pagan worship. Seen from the front, they almost have (ugly, crabby) faces.
They squat on the driveways of the wealthy, lovingly polished by their devotees. They don’t exactly embody Christian virtues, do they?
So I’m not surprised by the news that Porsche edited one of its video ads to remove a fleeting rendering of a statue (90 feet tall, on a 270-foot plinth) of Jesus Christ, next to a bridge in Lisbon.
After some protests, Porsche has now put the image back in the film, but I think we get it.
Someone very important saw it and decided it should be removed. Why would that ever be? Then there was an unexpected outcry on social media.
So Jesus is back, thanks to the platform formerly known as Twitter. God moves in mysterious ways.
In the original video, the image of Jesus Christ with arms outstretched seems to have been omitted
Lek proves that there is no peace
This was another bad week for the “If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear” lobby.
The voter roll leak shows that you can’t trust the state with all the private information you give it. Blaming the Russians (laughably in my opinion) doesn’t take the authorities off this hook.
There has also been a small blow to the misguided ‘There is peace in Northern Ireland’ couple. If things are going so well, why are the county police officers so concerned about releasing their personal information?
The reality is that the terrorists are not gone, there is no real peace and there are miles of hell to go before the IRA achieves its final triumph.