“We know that journalists around the world are increasingly under siege,”[i]– Antony Blinken
“Mr. Assange was charged with very serious criminal conduct in the United States in connection with his alleged role in one of the largest compromises of classified information in the history of our country,”[ii]– Antony Blinken
“I’d like to ask a simple question: Why isn’t Julian Assange dead?”[iii]– Jonah Goldberg
On April 9th, Joe Biden responded to a question about Australia’s request that America’s charges against Julian Assange be dropped by saying, “We’re considering it.”[iv] Despite this statement, which Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese found “certainly encouraging”, days later the team of lawyers representing the US in the extradition case against Assange responded to the request by two of the High Court’s justice’s that Assange be given a set of assurances if he is extradited.[v] These assurances are that “Assange would be permitted to rely on the US Constitution’s first amendment (which protects free speech)”, that “Assange would not be prejudiced at trial or sentence because of his nationality.”, and finally, that “The death penalty would not imposed should he be convicted.”[vi] The US responded by noting that although Assange can “seek to rely” upon the provisions in the US Constitution, “a decision as to the applicability of the first amendment is exclusively within the purview of the US courts.”[vii]
All three of these assurances are absurd. Firstly, if Assange is subject to US law, which he should not be, but if he is, then why would he not be granted the guarantees outlined in US law and the Constitution, like the first, fourth, and fifth amendments. Also, how can he be subject to law and sentencing but not guarantees of a free and fair trial, an unbiased jury, and a right to free speech and expression.
Although it is an argument laden with contradictions, Assistant U.S. Attorney Gordon Kromberg from the Eastern District of Virginia argued in an affidavit that he sent to the British High Court that though Assange is allowed to proclaim protection under the first amendment, “Concerning any First Amendment challenge, the United States could argue that foreign nationals are not entitled to protections under the First Amendment, at least as it concerns national defense information.”, and in 2017, when then CIA Director Mike Pompeo declared Wikileaks a “non-state hostile intelligence service”, he also remarked that Assange is not protected by the first amendment.[viii]
So, according to venal imps like Kromberg and Pompeo, who bragged in his memoir that he ruthlessly persecuted Assange, referring to him as a “scoundrel”, Assange, who they admit in their arguments relating to the first amendment and whether Assange is granted protection under it that he is a foreign national, is subject to extradition to the US and to trial, but that he is not subject to the first amendment.[ix] Pompeo captures this position when he remarks that “Julian Assange has no First Amendment freedoms. He’s sitting in an embassy in London. He’s not a U.S. citizen.”[x] He and others, like Kromberg, John Bolton, and the various other cretins who obfuscate to justify extraditing and trying Assange, make no effort to apply the logic of Assange’s status as a foreign national nullifying any right to claim protections under the first amendment to the entire case. It does not occur to them that the very logic they are using to deny Assange protections under the first amendment also means that US law, including the Espionage Act and hacking charges, as detailed in the Trump regime’s 2019 indictment of Assange, does not apply to him.
Kromberg’s argument, reiterated by the US legal team in Assange’s appeals trial in late February, also contradicts the second assurance requested by the British High Court, that if extradited, Assange would not be prejudiced as a foreign national. If he is denied certain rights in the US Constitution because he is a foreign national, then that is an obvious example of blatant prejudice on the basis that he is not a US citizen. The assurance that he will not be given the death penalty if charged in the US following extradition is a moot point, as his killing began long ago and at one point, his literal killing was considered by the Pompeo led CIA.[xi]
Presently, Assange is a shell of his former self, and if convicted, which is inevitable since he will be tried in the Eastern District Court of Virginia, a court notable for trying and convicting whistleblowers like Daniel Hale and more recently, Joshua Schulte, he will likely be placed in a communications management unit (CMU). In a CMU, which is essentially a containment zone in US federal prisons, the contact prisoners have with the outside world is extremely limited and monitored. CMUs were created in the aftermath of the War on Terror under the Bush regime. Hale, who leaked The Drone Papers to Jeremy Scahill at The Intercept, was convicted on Espionage charges and was placed in a CMU by the Bureau of Prisons.[xii] As noted by the investigative journalist Kevin Gosztola, who has reported extensively on the plights of various whistleblowers throughout his career, recently publishing a book on the case of Assange, anyone who Hale spoke to had to be first approved by the Bureau of Prisons, and all his communications, by phone and letter, were monitored by the FBI. Gosztola writes “I wrote a couple letters to Hale. A copy of my first letter, which I mailed in November 2021, was not shared with him until nearly a year later. I received a reply from Hale before the end of 2022.”, and he is unsure whether Hale even received the second letter he sent to him.[xiii] Assange will almost certainly be placed in a CMU, and this is a death sentence, by isolation, not injection. Thus, the assurance by the US that he will not be put to death if convicted is meaningless and is a distraction from the grave injustice of his imminent extradition and imprisonment.
Biden’s pathetic statement that he is considering dropping the charges against Assange should not instill any hope in anyone. If the Australian government were serious about pressuring the Biden regime to drop their unjust pursuit of Assange, they would do more than ask repeatedly, and the Australian Parliament would do more than pass a motion asking that Assange be freed and be allowed to return to Australia. After the death of Alexei Navalny in a Russian prison, the Australian foreign office, without hesitation, implemented additional sanctions on Russia and seven officials connected to the Arctic prison where Navalny died.[xiv] They remarked that Navalny was mistreated and detained on bogus charges, and that ultimately Vladmir Putin is responsible for his death.[xv] If Assange is extradited to the US, is tried and convicted in a sham court by a jury stacked with louts servile to or at best, sympathetic to, the security state, and is sent to a CMU in a US federal prison, it is unlikely that the Australian foreign office will be as harsh in its condemnation as it was in defense of Navalny, or that it will even issue any condemnation. The mistreatment of one of their own citizens does not evoke any ire, but without hesitation, they will sanction Russia further and would do so if it was any other ‘bad country’, like China, Iran, or North Korea.
The case against Assange is a judicial farce. It is not just the Biden regime and the US who should be ashamed, the Australian government should be ashamed as well, as they would evidently rather sit by and watch one of their own make his journey across the River Styx to be doomed to a hellish existence in a draconian prison no better than the prisons we decry in other countries like Russia and China, rather than risk harm to the US-Australia alliance and partnerships like AUKUS. Albanese and his government are no one’s moral betters. They, like American officials, mouth soothing platitudes defending global press freedom and journalism. However, actions speak louder than words, and their actions show them to be at best, massive hypocrites, and at worst, to be the very brutish, thuggish, oppressive, draconian authoritarians they claim to be fighting.
Journalists at outlets like CNN and MSNBC who cry about the sacredness of press freedoms in liberal democracies have nothing to say about Assange. They instead worship Biden and the permanent regime, making their news coverage look like a North Korea News Segment, expressing adoration and undying love for their dear leader and savior. These are the same cretins who tell us that Trump is a cult leader, and that his followers represent a dangerous cult akin to Jim Jones or Scientology. Their obscene display of loyalty to Biden and his ilk of fiendish louts was on grotesque display at the White House Correspondents Dinner on April 27th, which featured a segment calling for the release of US journalists detained overseas. Biden himself remarked that he thanks the free press, and that “There are some who call you the “enemy of the people.” That’s wrong, and it’s dangerous. You literally risk your lives doing your job. You do.”[xvi] Aside from the obvious reference to Trump’s sloganeering, Biden should know about the risk that journalists take, as it’s him and his regime who are trying to take the life of Assange for doing the job of the free press. His most heinous remark, however, was his quip that “Journalism is clearly not a crime. Not here, not there, not anywhere in the world.”[xvii] This not only co-opts the Free Assange campaigns slogan, but it is blatantly false. Biden does not believe this. If he did, he would pardon Assange, Edward Snowden, and the countless others who have been imprisoned in the past or who are currently rotting for doing the job of the free press.
That there was no one at the dinner to call Biden out for his contradictions and lies, and that his speech was met with thunderous applause, is proof that there is no ‘free press’ in the US, there is a controlled press kept on a leash, never allowed to stray from the permanent regime’s narrative. The mass of supposed journalists present at the White House Correspondents Dinner do not represent courage or a commitment to truth telling, they are lapdogs to power and symbols of slavish loyalty. All the points they make about Trump being a cult leader, his constant lying and deception, and his rash nature are truer of them. They argue that Trump spews propaganda because they do the same. They are subdued by the very propaganda they spew, and that Trump has entranced millions of Americans with a different reality of the US is not a threat to truth or journalism, but it is a threat to the unreality that they have devoted their lives to. As Hannah Arendt notes, mass propaganda is so effective because masses “do not believe in anything visible, in the reality of their own experience; they do not trust their eyes and ears but only their imaginations, which may be caught by anything that is at once universal and consistent in itself. What convinces masses are not facts, and not even invented facts, but only the consistency of the system of which they are presumably part.”[xviii] In the imaginations of journalists loyal to Biden and his backers, the permanent regime, not ‘the left’, as conservative media likes to proclaim, Trump is a central villain and existential threat to all that is good, and anyone who helps him or is seen to have assisted him in anyway is guilty of aiding villainy. Assange is seen by many alleged journalists to have helped Trump win in 2016 by publishing the hacked emails of Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager John Podesta. Thus, to them he is complicit in villainy, and he is not a journalist, he is a political operative working on behalf of the Kremlin. Clinton’s 2016 Campaign and the DNC constantly accused Assange and Wikileaks of being a front for Russia.[xix] To defend Assange, for many in the corporate media, is to step out of line and the only journalist who ever advocated for Assange’s pardon was Tucker Carlson when he was on FOX News.
The Clinton emails in 2016 exposed her corruption and hypocrisy, however, for the corporate media, this does not compute with the system they operate in and are submissive to. Thus, the notion that Assange was in on the Russian efforts to meddle in US elections was posited to erase any contradictions or lies revealed in the Clinton emails. The fantastical perception of a perfect system unscathed by corruption or criminality continues and figures like Trump and Assange are turned into caricatures, real life cartoons lifted from the pages of newspapers. Most do not even understand the or even know about the Assange case, let alone its importance. This is a triumph of the narrative warpers in the corporate media who attended the White House Correspondents Dinner to tuck into filet mignon and deliver self-aggrandizing speeches about their bravery and brilliance. They have convinced themselves and others of their phony heroism, patting each other on the back, awarding each other for lackluster achievements that pale in comparison to the accomplishments of Assange. There is no reason to hope Biden pardons Assange, even by accident, as he is a mere puppet, just as those in his regime are, and so it goes- the judicial farce continues.
[i] Scott, Liam. “Press Freedom down but Hardly Out, Journalists Say at World Press Freedom Day Event.” Voice of America, May 3, 2023. https://www.voanews.com/a/press-freedom-down-but-hardly-out-journalists-say-at-world-press-freedom-day-event/7077547.html.
[ii] Mcguirk, Rod. “Blinken Tells Australia That WikiLeaks Founder Is Accused of ‘Very Serious’ Crime.” AP News, July 29, 2023. https://apnews.com/article/bllinken-australia-assange-extradition-559b75e6aaf2220301e0f478b0958ca6.
[iii] Goldberg, Jonah. “All Quiet on the Black-Ops Front.” American Enterprise Institute – AEI, October 29, 2010. https://www.aei.org/articles/all-quiet-on-the-black-ops-front/.
[iv] Pilkington, Ed. “Biden Says He Is ‘Considering’ Australian Call to Drop Julian Assange Charges.” The Guardian, April 11, 2024, sec. Media. https://www.theguardian.com/media/2024/apr/10/biden-assange-espionage-charges.
[v] Pilkington. “Biden Says He Is ‘Considering’ Australian Call to Drop Julian Assange Charges.”
[vi] Stuart, Riley. “Assange’s Family in ‘Extreme Distress’ as US Responds to UK Court’s Extradition Demands.” ABC News, April 16, 2024. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-04-17/julian-assange-extradition-edges-closer-after-us-assurances/103732454.
[vii] Stuart. “Assange’s Family in ‘Extreme Distress’ as US Responds to UK Court’s Extradition Demands.”
[viii] Gosztola, Kevin. “UK Appeal Hearing: No First Amendment Rights for Assange?” The Dissenter, February 16, 2024. https://thedissenter.org/countdown-to-day-x-us-assange-no-first-amendment-rights/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email.
[ix] Pompeo, Mike. Never Give an Inch. HarperCollins, 2023.
[x] Windrem, Robert. “CIA Director Pompeo Calls WikiLeaks a ‘Hostile Intelligence Service.’” NBC News, April 13, 2017. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/cia-director-pompeo-calls-wikileaks-hostile-intelligence-service-n746311.
[xi] Borger, Julian. “CIA Officials under Trump Discussed Assassinating Julian Assange – Report.” the Guardian, September 27, 2021. https://www.theguardian.com/media/2021/sep/27/senior-cia-officials-trump-discussed-assassinating-julian-assange.
[xii] Devereaux, Ryan, and Murtaza Hussain. “Daniel Hale Sentenced to 45 Months in Prison for Drone Leak.” The Intercept, July 27, 2021. https://theintercept.com/2021/07/27/daniel-hale-drone-leak-sentencing/.
[xiii] Gosztola, Kevin. “Drone Whistleblower Finally Released from Prison.” The Dissenter, March 5, 2024. https://thedissenter.org/drone-whistleblower-cmu-finally-released-from-prison/.
[xiv] Watts, Tim. “Targeted Sanctions in Response to Alexei Navalny’s Mistreatment in Prison.” Ministers and Assistant Ministers for the Australian Government Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, February 25, 2024. https://ministers.dfat.gov.au/minister/tim-watts/media-release/targeted-sanctions-response-alexei-navalnys-mistreatment-prison.
[xv] Watts. “Targeted Sanctions in Response to Alexei Navalny’s Mistreatment in Prison.”
[xvi] The White House. “Remarks by President Biden at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.” The White House, April 28, 2024. https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2024/04/27/remarks-by-president-biden-at-the-white-house-correspondents-dinner-2/.
[xvii] The White House. “Remarks by President Biden at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.”
[xviii] Arendt, Hannah. The Origins of Totalitarianism. San Diego, New York, London: Harcourt Brace, 1985.
[xix] Siddiqui, Sabrina. “Clinton Campaign Dubs WikiLeaks ‘Russian Propaganda’ after Latest Hack.” The Guardian, October 12, 2016, sec. US news. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/oct/11/clinton-campaign-wikileaks-hack-russia-donald-trump.
References
Arendt, Hannah. The Origins of Totalitarianism. San Diego, New York, London: Harcourt Brace, 1985.
Borger, Julian. “CIA Officials under Trump Discussed Assassinating Julian Assange – Report.” the Guardian, September 27, 2021. https://www.theguardian.com/media/2021/sep/27/senior-cia-officials-trump-discussed-assassinating-julian-assange.
Devereaux, Ryan, and Murtaza Hussain. “Daniel Hale Sentenced to 45 Months in Prison for Drone Leak.” The Intercept, July 27, 2021. https://theintercept.com/2021/07/27/daniel-hale-drone-leak-sentencing/.
Goldberg, Jonah. “All Quiet on the Black-Ops Front.” American Enterprise Institute – AEI, October 29, 2010. https://www.aei.org/articles/all-quiet-on-the-black-ops-front/.
Gosztola, Kevin. “Drone Whistleblower Finally Released from Prison.” The Dissenter, March 5, 2024. https://thedissenter.org/drone-whistleblower-cmu-finally-released-from-prison/.
Gosztola, Kevin. “UK Appeal Hearing: No First Amendment Rights for Assange?” The Dissenter, February 16, 2024. https://thedissenter.org/countdown-to-day-x-us-assange-no-first-amendment-rights/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email.
Mcguirk, Rod. “Blinken Tells Australia That WikiLeaks Founder Is Accused of ‘Very Serious’ Crime.” AP News, July 29, 2023. https://apnews.com/article/bllinken-australia-assange-extradition-559b75e6aaf2220301e0f478b0958ca6.
Pilkington, Ed. “Biden Says He Is ‘Considering’ Australian Call to Drop Julian Assange Charges.” The Guardian, April 11, 2024, sec. Media. https://www.theguardian.com/media/2024/apr/10/biden-assange-espionage-charges.
Pompeo, Mike. Never Give an Inch. HarperCollins, 2023.
Scott, Liam. “Press Freedom down but Hardly Out, Journalists Say at World Press Freedom Day Event.” Voice of America, May 3, 2023. https://www.voanews.com/a/press-freedom-down-but-hardly-out-journalists-say-at-world-press-freedom-day-event/7077547.html.
Siddiqui, Sabrina. “Clinton Campaign Dubs WikiLeaks ‘Russian Propaganda’ after Latest Hack.” The Guardian, October 12, 2016, sec. US news. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/oct/11/clinton-campaign-wikileaks-hack-russia-donald-trump.
Stuart, Riley. “Assange’s Family in ‘Extreme Distress’ as US Responds to UK Court’s Extradition Demands.” ABC News, April 16, 2024. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-04-17/julian-assange-extradition-edges-closer-after-us-assurances/103732454.
The White House. “Remarks by President Biden at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.” The White House, April 28, 2024. https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2024/04/27/remarks-by-president-biden-at-the-white-house-correspondents-dinner-2/.
Watkins, Eli. “WikiLeaks Slams CIA Director for Trying to ‘Stifle Speech’ | CNN Politics.” CNN, April 13, 2017. https://edition.cnn.com/2017/04/13/politics/mike-pompeo-wikileaks-csis/index.html.
Watts, Tim. “Targeted Sanctions in Response to Alexei Navalny’s Mistreatment in Prison.” Ministers and Assistant Ministers for the Australian Government Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, February 25, 2024. https://ministers.dfat.gov.au/minister/tim-watts/media-release/targeted-sanctions-response-alexei-navalnys-mistreatment-prison.
Windrem, Robert. “CIA Director Pompeo Calls WikiLeaks a ‘Hostile Intelligence Service.’” NBC News, April 13, 2017. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/cia-director-pompeo-calls-wikileaks-hostile-intelligence-service-n746311.
Not Without Incident: Questioning Big Brother's Platitudes 
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