by
John Wight
Julian
Assange’s latest attempt to have his outstanding UK arrest warrant
dropped has failed in what stands as one of the most blatant and
cruel examples of the British legal system being wielded as an
instrument of persecution against a man whose only crime is speaking
truth to power.
The
judge presiding over his case, and who summarily dismissed it, was
‘Lady Arbuthnot of Edrom’. Yes, you read that right. In the
second decade of the 21st century the UK legal system is still
dominated by the kind of people whose morning workout consists of
flogging the butler. Lady Arbuthnot also happens to be the wife of
Tory peer and former junior Defence Minister Lord James Arbuthnot,
whose father was Major Sir John Sinclair Wemyss Arbuthnot.
By now
you should be getting the idea. These ridiculous products of
privilege and the British public school system (private education for
those unfamiliar with the quixotic and arcane code of the British
ruling elite) are the guardians of a status quo of class oppression
at home and imperialism abroad. In daring to rip off the mask of
civility and moral rectitude behind which they and their masters in
the US have long carried out their acts of brutality and barbarity at
home and around the world, Assange is on the receiving end of their
considerable wrath.
If
Julian Assange had been confined to a foreign embassy in Moscow or
Beijing for five years, on the same grounds on which he has been
confined to the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, his plight would have
been a cause celebre, sparking calls for boycotts, sanctions, and
action at the UN on the part of free speech and prisoner of
conscience liberals in the West who are never done excoriating Russia
and China.
As it is
the UN has already intervened in the matter of the plight of the
Wikileaks founder. In February 2016 the United Nations Working Group
on Arbitrary Detention determined that the “arbitrary detention of
Julian Assange should be brought to an end, that his physical
integrity and freedom of movement be respected, and that he should be
entitled to an enforceable right to compensation.”
Given
that the Swedish authorities dropped their investigation into the
original charges of rape and sexual molestation – made against
Assange in 2010 and which he has always denied and claims were
politically motivated – the outstanding UK arrest warrant for
breaching bail conditions in 2012 which relates to those charges is
surely now moot. Julian Assange, you may recall, sought refuge in the
Ecuadorian Embassy in London fearing not extradition to Sweden but to
the US over his role as founder and public face of Wikileaks.
In 2018
not only does the threat of extradition to the US continue to hang
over him with this outstanding UK arrest warrant, if anything the
threat is even greater, what with the part Wikileaks played in
disseminating damning facts about Hillary Clinton, the Clinton
Foundation, and the leadership of the DNC in the run up to the 2016
US presidential election. The ensuing Washington liberal
establishment rage that has ensued as a result of Clinton losing the
election to Donald Trump has been positively volcanic.
Clinton,
her supporters, and elements of the Washington establishment claim
that the information Wikileaks published came by way of Russian
hacking, while Assange and groups such as Veterans Intelligence
Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), made up of former US intelligence
operatives and officials, maintain that the information came by way
of a leak within Washington itself. Meanwhile, up to this point, the
investigation into alleged Russian hacking, Russiagate, is yet to
produce one scintilla of concrete evidence that any such hacking on
the part of Moscow took place.
Again,
the real crime Julian Assange committed was not breaching his bail
conditions but daring to speak truth to power. Wikileaks under his
stewardship has become the bête noire of governments, particularly
Western governments, revealing the ugly truth of crimes committed by
US forces in Iraq, the West’s role in the destabilization of
Ukraine in 2014, the destruction of Libya – and this is without the
part the whistleblowing outfit played in exposing Hillary Clinton as
a politician whose record is a monument to mendacity.
Wikileaks
is and continues to be a thorn in their side and must be destroyed.
Which means that Julian Assange must be destroyed, a man who teaches
us that believing you live in a free society and actually behaving as
if you do is not the same thing. The former allows you to exist in a
bubble of soporific comfort, while the latter is liable to get you
confined to a foreign embassy for five years and counting.
The
personal toll on Assange’s physical and psychological well being as
a result of his confinement should not be overlooked. Indeed the toll
it is having was recently confirmed by the medical opinion of two
clinicians, who upon examining Assange at the embassy in October 2017
renewed calls for him to be granted safe passage to a London hospital
for treatment. In an article for the Guardian, the clinicians write:
“While the results of the evaluation are protected by
doctor-patient confidentiality, it is our professional opinion that
his continued confinement is dangerous physically and mentally to him
and a clear infringement of his human right to healthcare.”
It bears
repeating: Julian Assange, as was Chelsea Manning, as will be Edward
Snowden if he dares set foot outside Russia, is being punished for
removing the veil of freedom, human rights, and civil liberties from
the face of an empire of hypocrisy and lies. They lied about Iraq,
they lied about Libya, they lied about Syria, and they lie every day
about the murky relationships between governments, corporations, and
the rich that negates their oft made claims to be governing in the
interests of the people.
Until
Julian Assange is free none of us are.
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