Reporting and opinion by Mathew Carr
May 20, 2024 — Today, Julian Assange, the most famous whistleblower on earth, might be freed, or he might be extradited to the USA.
Most likely, he’ll be given leave to make a further appeal against his extradition on potential hacking and espionage-related charges after the High Court hearing, assuming it happens 10:30am London time as planned.
While I believe he should be freed immediately (even if on bail with geographical restrictions), the world is still run too much by corporations rather than by real representatives of the people … so his persecution and incarceration will probably continue.
After all, the UK judiciary has shown itself to be firmly part of the corporation-led establishment, while pretending to be independent of it.
I hope I’m proven wrong, but the reason why I’m probably not is that Assange’s message was always too subversive, too compelling, too clear and too important for the “powers that be” to let stand. Even if he was right, he was deemed not tolerable.
That message can be summed up in part as: People not corporations should be in charge of society and the economy; warmongering is bad; technology and corporations need to be regulated tightly; human rights need to be respected; the climate and nature need to be saved; speech should be free.
My calculation is that these clear messages will still be deemed too dangerous to allow him to be set free ahead of elections in countries this year including India, the US and the UK. Of course, the judges will not say this out loud.
Assange’s simple ideas are too worrying to those clinging to power — they are catching on like wildfire spreads in storm-force winds.
Influential right-leaning US commentator Tucker Carlson is an Assange fan, labelling the whistleblower “one of the greatest journalists of our age.”
“He spent his entire adult life bringing previously concealed facts to the public about what our leaders are doing,” Carlson said. “That is the very definition of journalism” (December 2023).
Carlson was allowed to visit Assange in prison last year, but not interview him…though there was one comment from Assange from that meeting that Carlson made public …that it “was fun” to publish Hillary Clinton’s emails in 2016, potentially costing her the US presidency.
Assange’s publishing also changed elections in Kenya, for instance. See this TED:
And that’s why US President Joe Biden and UK PM Rishi Sunak (and his apparently pliable judiciary) probably won’t free Assange today — because they fear him and his simple, logical messages. They are cowards.
Again, I hope I’m proven wrong.
It’s sort of understandable that the current crop of flawed leaders fear those messages because young people, especially, are realising the modern world is full of political deception and badly regulated capitalism — the system is deeply flawed because it rewards only about 0.1% of the people — many of whom are billionaires.
Plus, capitalism creates wars because the military-industrial-intelligence complex is the powerful beast that must be fed. And, apparently, it must be fed first – before saving the climate and nature … before addressing inequality … even before offering basic human rights protections to the generations that follow those currently in charge.
I visited the pro-Gaza-ceasefire encampment at Queen Mary University London last week and the anger was palpable.
Some invited guests (not students that I spoke to) were calling for the end of capitalism, something I’m pretty sure Assange never did.
‘Georgina’ from the Revolutionary Communist Party
See this too
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C7HY2OuqaCj/?igsh=MTU2eGdtZjFqNDZzdg==
Another representative of the communist party mentioned above told me the world missed an opportunity in 1917, when the Russian revolution showed a better way to share power between companies, governments and the people.
A series of workers’ councils could be given more power over corporations, she said.
I pressed her for more details about how this new capitalism might work, and it would not necessarily involve splitting giant companies like Unilever into tiny pieces.
“Not break them up, but use them in a more planned way,” she said. She offered the example of toothpaste, where much of the duplication, marketing and packaging is wasteful and environmentally damaging.
“There are a million types of toothpaste. Why do we need that much?”
The economy could be structured to deliver what “people actually need, rather than what’s profitable? We don’t need all that. We can think more logically about what does humanity actually need?”
So corporate regulation would become much stronger.
There would be good food rather than processed food, sustainable housing, high-quality universities that focussed on science and history. Universities should give teaching staff and students a say over where fees are invested instead of holding all the power within the administration and paying themselves huge salaries. Weapons makers could be required/prodded to make clean tech.
Ultimately, if change does not come much quicker, workers “will give them [employers] notice that we will not go to work.”
The bottom line for this person was that people already understand there is a type of class warfare going on as inequality worsens. Assange realised this too. Drastic action is required rather than incremental action …and only action that boosts awareness about the flaws in the current system.
The military industrial complex is one of the most powerful forces behind the resistance to change, the communist said.
And Assange and Carlson seem to agree with some of this framing of global problems.
As part of the “lawfare” against Assange, the UK judiciary requested the USA give assurances that the whistleblower will receive protection under the US constitution’s first amendment on free speech and that he won’t be sentenced to death…if he is extradited to the US to face charges.
The assurances provided simply didn’t offer the assurance requested.
The provided assurances (apparently …I’ve not verified but they match the words contained in various reports)
https://x.com/CraigMurrayOrg/status/1792167147562561818
So the extradition should be denied today.
Like Assange, I’m Australian. I also have British citizenship.
On April 9, my family and I went to the Australian Embassy to the Holy See near the Vatican in Rome, Italy — to try to get some help as I feel I’m being harassed, suffering detriments because I’m a climate whistleblower (see link below).
After travelling up a lovely old lift to the embassy, I also mentioned to the man answering the intercom that Australia had not adequately helped Assange.
I’m not saying it’s necessarily related … but the next day — April 10 — U.S. President Joe Biden said he was considering a request from Australia to drop the prosecution, which Assange’s U.S. lawyer described as “encouraging” (Reuters).
Releasing Assange makes sense. It will be a popular decision.
That’s probably why it will only be made — if it is at all — close to the US and UK elections later this year (Britain’s election could be called for January 2025, to be sure) … so Biden and Sunak can cynically win themselves an electoral advantage from their successive governments’ years of Assange cruelty…by “solving” a problem that they — their predecessors at least — created.
That’s their playbook — create a crisis then get kudos for solving it.
Hence, there probably will likely be further twists in the Assange saga over the next few months, as people seek a fairer world and less warmongering like he did … perhaps hearings in the European Court of Human Rights …perhaps a push to get everyone in the world access to first amendment / free speech protections … as long as you use an American-owned social-media account? Is that why the US is trying to force the sale of TikTok?
These twists can still take place … with Assange out of prison and with his voice back.
Put him on police bail, like I am. Mild human rights abuse is better than acute human rights abuse.