Julian Assange should be freed, and the Ukraine War should be ended right away. These are two views expressed by Jeremy Corbyn, the former Labour Party leader of Great Britain. These views are in sharp contrast with views typically expressed by prominent politicians of Corbyn’s nation that has imprisoned Assange for extradition to the United States as well as funded and armed Ukraine’s war against Russia.
Tag: Julian Assange
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Hands off Assange
Julian Assange of WikiLeaks continues to languish in horrid conditions in prison in Great Britain. And the gears of injustice continue to turn toward Assange being extradited to the United States because he practiced journalism that exposed sordid secrets of the US government’s violent foreign policy.
There was much speculation toward the end of Donald Trump’s term as president of the United States that Trump would pardon Edward Snowden, Julian Assange, or both of these men who were responsible for exposing vast amounts of wrongdoing by the US government. But, it did not come to pass. Why? Glenn Greenwald, who played a key role in helping Snowden expose information about the US government’s mass surveillance programs and who advocated in public and behind the scenes that Trump pardon both men, has some interesting thoughts about that.
Judge Vanessa Baraitser, who has been hearing arguments in London regarding whether Julian Assange of WikiLeaks should be extradited from Great Britain to the United States for prosecution related to Assange’s involvement in bringing about the publication of secret US government information, ruled today that Assange not be extradited.
Ron Paul has joined with other eminent political figures from around the world in endorsing a letter from Lawyers for Assange to several government officials of Great Britain. The letter makes the case for the immediate release of Julian Assange of WikiLeaks and the termination of the extradition proceedings against him.
Julian Assange of WikiLeaks has been silenced. Assange was prevented from communicating with the outside world in his final 13 months at the Ecuador embassy in London, where he had obtained sanctuary from extradition to the United States. The silencing has continued in a British prison where Assange has been detained pending extradition to the US since British police forcibly removed him from the embassy in April.
Similarly, communication by Chelsea Manning has been much curtailed after Manning reveled United States military secrets. First, Manning served seven years in United States military prison after being convicted for the leak. Released from prison in 2017, Manning has been condemned to jail for most of the time since March of this year for refusing to testify for a grand jury involved in the US government’s effort to prosecute Assange.
In a new video commentary at Fox News, Andrew Napolitano, a constitutional scholar and former New Jersey state judge, argues that instead of prosecuting Julian Assange of WikiLeaks for the exposure of United States military wrongdoing “we should be thanking him.” Pointing to the US Supreme Court backing the legality of media publishing the Pentagon Papers exposing US military secrets related to the Vietnam War, Napolitano further asserts that Assange, like publishers of the Pentagon Papers, is protected by the First Amendment to the US Constitution.
Yesterday, I wrote about Twitter restricting public access to the past Twitter posts of Christine Assange, the mother of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, as well as preventing her from making new posts at her Twitter account. Today, it appears Twitter has removed those limitations.
Christine Assange, the mother of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, has used her Twitter page to criticize the United States government effort to prosecute and imprison her son for making available leaked information exposing abusive government actions, as well as her son’s harsh treatment — including a prohibition on his communication with the outside world — over the last year at Ecuador’s London embassy where he obtained sanctuary in 2012. Now, Joe Lauria reports at Consortium News, public access to Christine Assange’s Twitter account has been restricted and she has been prevented from posting at her account.