The Julian Assange extradition farce is now proceeding apace in Great Britain, where the English poodles are going through the motions before they comply with U.S. dictates to transfer Assange to trial in the United States.
The charge? Some supposed violation of some ridiculous espionage statute dating back to World War I, the foreign war in which tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers were sacrificed by the U.S. government for absolutely nothing. You would think interventionists would hang their heads in shame over a war that sacrificed U.S. soldiers for nothing. Instead, to get Assange they are relying on a ludicrous law enacted during that war for no other reason than to suppress dissent against the war.
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
Assange’s real crime? Disclosing the truth about evil and immoral actions of the U.S. national-security establishment — i.e., the Pentagon and the CIA. That’s why they have been going after him with a vengeance for the past 10 years. That’s why the British have been treating him as a common convicted criminal as a prelude to the farce of the extradition hearing.
With the British government’s horrific mistreatment of Assange, one can easily understand the reason for the periodic resistance to British tyranny on the part of the British people over the centuries, stretching all the way back to Magna Carta in 1215. Keep in mind that the anti-tyranny principles found in the Bill of Rights were carved out by British citizens in resistance to the tyranny of their own government, a tyranny that is, once again, being reflected in the horrific abuse of Julian Assange.
One of the most ridiculous arguments that the Pentagon and the CIA, through their agents in the Justice Department and at the extradition hearing, is that Wikileaks doesn’t count as a real journalistic outlet and, therefore, Assange isn’t entitled to the protections of the First Amendment.
What difference does that make? Under basic principles of freedom, everyone in the world, journalist or not, has the right to disclose the evil and immoral actions of governments, including their own government. The fact that so many mainstream journalists have bought into this ridiculous argument of the Pentagon and the CIA reflects how deeply the national-security mindset has pervaded America.
There is another reason why the U.S. national-security establishment is targeting Assange for retribution. They want to send a message to everyone else, a message that says: Don’t even think about disclosing our evil and immoral actions because this is what will happen to you.
As I have written in the past, the worst mistake the American people have ever made was in permitting the federal government to be converted from a limited-government republic to a national-security state. A national-security state is a totalitarian form of governmental structure. North Korea, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Cuba, and China are national-security states. And there is no doubt that they treat people who disclose their dark-side and sordid secrets just like the U.S. government and its British poodle are treating Assange.
Assange, like Edward Snowden, is a hero. The best way for Americans to honor him — and do themselves a favor in the process — would be to dismantle our national-security state form of government and restore our founding governmental system of a limited-government republic to our land.