The UK High Court ruled Friday to overturn a lower court ruling that prevented Julian Assange from being extradited to the United States. The controversial founder of WikiLeaks will be brought stateside to face a litany of charges under the Espionage Act for publishing classified information showcasing possible war crimes committed by the U.S. military. If convicted, he faces a possible 175-year prison sentence.
While the Establishment — mostly driven from the Left — claims to hold journalism as both sacred and sacrosanct, that claim falls apart quickly when what is being discussed is real journalism that holds the feet of government to the fire. What is protected — by and large — by the powers-that-be is a poor counterfeit of journalism that acts as little more than the public relations arm of the Establishment.
And that is where Assange crossed into the danger zone.
WikiLeaks was not founded as a voice of government to the people; it was begun as a way for whistleblowers to safely and securely leak information about government wrongdoing. Since its founding in 2006, the organization has released scores of millions of documents and has never been found to have released anything that was later shown to be fraudulent.
What it has released has led to the peoples of the world having a far better understanding of government corruption, crime, and violation of the rights of the people. A prime example of that is the trove of documents and videos WikiLeaks published in 2010 and 2011. Those documents and videos include damning evidence of war crimes committed by the United States in the “War on Terror,” including the Collateral Murder video (April 2010) showing the July 2007 Apache helicopter attacks that killed two Reuters staffers among other innocent victims, the Afghanistan War Logs (July 2010), and the Iraq War Logs (October 2010). And in November 2010, WikiLeaks published CableGate, which included thousands of classified diplomatic cables that embarrassed then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and others.
Those leaks not only made WikiLeaks a household name, but also brought on the ire of the U.S. government owing to the explosive revelations they brought to light.
And Uncle Sam has been after Assange ever since.
Now, nearly a decade later, Assange — who took refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London for several years to avoid being brought to the United States and has fought one legal battle after another to avoid extradition — appears to have run out of chances. He will be brought stateside, and he will face charges stemming from some of the best journalism this world has ever seen.
Stella Morris, Julian Assange’s fiancée, said that he plans to appeal this decision “at the earliest possible moment.” She called the ruling by the High Court “dangerous and misguided” and asked, “How can it be fair, how can it be right, how can it be possible, to extradite Julian to the very country which plotted to kill him?”
Lest her claim that the United States “plotted to kill him” sounds like so much hyperbole, it should be noted that there is evidence that her claim is spot-on. In February 2020, Assange’s extradition hearing was told of the plot, which included plans for U.S. spies to “kidnap or even poison Julian Assange using shady Spanish private detectives after he leaked 250,000 top secret documents online.”
The idea that Assange could possibly get a fair trial in the United States is infantile and ridiculous. The UK lower court had denied extradition because of concerns that Assange would be mistreated. But Uncle Sam has promised — double pinky-swear promised with no crossies and no take backs, mind you — that he will be treated fairly. This, despite the fact that Plan A was to kill him without due process because the powers-that-be didn’t appreciate him telling the world about their crimes.
Americans who believe in due process need to contact their Representatives and Senators and demand that they take whatever measures they can to assure his safety and a fair trial. If Uncle Sam can silence real journalism, there will be precious little to stand in the way of tyranny’s juggernaut.
