Julian Assange's Extradition To The US Blocked By UK Judge
In a moment of provisional redress for advocates of the free press, the founder of Wikileaks, indicted by the US Dept. of "Justice" under the controversial Espionage Act, had his extradition to the US blocked by a UK judge on Monday. Assange's extradition and subsequent incarceration would mark an unprecedented milestone in the US's departure from the very bedrock of open democracy - the freedom of the press.
While it is easier and more convenient to see the move as a victory for unmitigated truth-telling amidst a media ecosystem of propaganda and cowardice, the more nuanced (and accurate) depiction of this series of events is one of a temporal sigh of relief in an ongoing battle for press freedom, with Wikileaks, and the fate of Julian Assange, at its epicenter. While Assange's freedom hangs in the balance in this case, The "Freedom of The Press Foundation" has reported a record number of journalists, "at least 117 verified cases of journalists being arrested or detained on the job in 2020", marking an unprecedented 1200% increase from the previous year, according to that report. The case against Julian Assange, however, lies in stark contrast; Verified documents containing true information were published, exposing a military industrial complex and exposing and embarrassing a plethora of powerful people complacent in, ironically, targeting journalists. For the United States to respond by seeking to target the journalist who made that known is such a level of unfathomable irony that one would assume it could only expose the authoritarianism of US government itself, but some, ridiculously enough journalists themselves, are not convinced. "The Heritage Foundation" (we're all shocked, right?) published an article condemning Assange as a criminal, The Boston Herald published a hit piece claiming that "Assange is a spy, not a journalist", and one of the "papers of note", The Associated Press themselves, included a litany of disputed attacks against him in a smear entitled "Julian Assange Is Not A Journalist", despite the fact that his actions are almost identical to those taken by news outlets of the past in publishing what has become known as "The Pentagon Papers", also a vast release of classified government secrets in the name of public interest.
Despite the fact that this particular attempt to extradite Assange has not favored the DOJ, the US government has been given 14 days to appeal the decision, which it vows it will do. Furthermore, the block on the government's extradition request was not even at the behest of a free press, but rather over concerns expressed by the judge regarding his mental health, and conditions within places of incarceration in the US, placing Assange's temporal reprieve on shaky ground going into the next hearing, assuming there is one.
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"Cryptome", another outlet known for seeking out and publishing leaked information, has acquired and made publicly available documents pertaining to Julian Assange's extradition hearing, which may be downloaded on this page. Among those defending Assange were Freedom of The Press Foundation's executive director Trevor Timm, Daniel Ellsberg (who worked on the aforementioned "Pentagon Papers" leak), journalist Cassandra Fairbanks, and activist/professor/world-renowned dissident voice Noam Chomsky.
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