JULIAN ASSANGE : WIKILEAKS

Julian Assange has been in the news almost on a daily basis, ever since top secret US military reports and innumerable diplomatic cables were leaked by him two years ago.

This move was courageous if not daring, and the general public ought to be grateful that so many secret documents within the US government machine have been made public, showing terrible evidence about the war in Iraq, treachery, wide-spread corruption, illegal spying. Yet there are more, many more compromising documents and scenarios waiting to see the light of day and the US government is making tremendous efforts to get Mr. Assange under their control.

Mr. Assange is to be extradited to Sweden where dubious allegations over sexual assaults were made against him. The obvious and devious spin behind the allegations is to get him back to Sweden and whisk him from there to the USA and throw away the key.

He has fought this extradition in the British courts and after 18 months of legal battle, the British Supreme Court surprisingly rejected Mr. Assange’s argument against extradition. After a court hearing of barely ten minutes, the decision was delivered by the 74 year-old president of the court, Nicholas Phillips, in one of his last major decisions before retirement this fall.

Mr. Assange is currently under the protection of the Ecuadorean embassy. The Ecuadorean government has found that Mr. Assange’s application for asylum is justified; additional material he submitted shows that he has a well-founded fear of political persecution, and risks torture or the death penalty in the United States in connection with the publication of truthful information of matters of interest to the public through his work with WikiLeaks.

Ever since Tony Blair and George W. Bush became best cousins and went to war against Iraq together, it appears British authorities are still in a lingering embrace with American authorities. Otherwise why would the British government make such a dim decision as to threaten Ecuador to suspend their embassy’s diplomatic status if they continue to shelter Mr. Assange, and moreover, threaten to have the British police enter the embassy building by force. The latter threat was later denied, denied, denied...

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