Assange also faces a Conservative government that could not be more open regarding its determination to deliver him to the US. Britain's Foreign Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, is denounced in today's World Socialist Web Site -- perspective for his statement, made on the day of Assange's arrest, that he was "no hero." The arrest, Hunt boasted, was proof that the rule of law operating in the UK was for everyone.
Yet this same man declared Thursday that the British press had a "right" to report leaks from the UK's National Security Council because, "That is what happens in a free press" By helping truth to prevail, a free media ultimately helps us all to flourish."
Hunt was speaking while in Ethiopia, marking World Press Freedom Day. Almost at the same time, Assange was telling Westminster Magistrates Court, "I do not wish to surrender myself for extradition for doing journalism which has won many, many awards and protected many, many people."
For Hunt, revealing the sordid infighting within the Conservative Party is legitimate, even helpful for his career. Exposing war crimes is not.
More important for Britain's ruling class than even the exercise of state power is the collusion of the media, of the Labour Party, the trade unions and the pseudo-left groups in what is the first great political crime of the 21st century.
It is not necessary to remind anyone listening tonight of the venal role played by the media, liberal newspapers like the Guardian, above all, who have spent years denigrating Assange.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has done nothing, other than issuing a 21-word tweet opposing Assange's extradition to the US on the day of his arrest. Within 48 hours, he had joined his party's right-wing in declaring support for Assange being sent to Sweden.
This is despite no charges having ever been brought in Sweden and with no extradition warrant existing. The Labourites hope is that this will change, so they can assume the role of Pontius Pilate and claim to have washed their hands of Assange's fate.
For the record, it took the Socialist Party and the Socialist Workers Party even less time than Corbyn to fall into line behind this demand!
I want to speak briefly on one incident that illustrates how these forces facilitate the state persecution of Julian Assange.
On Friday night, the National Union of Journalists held its own event to mark World Press Freedom Day in London. No one on the panel so much as mentioned Julian Assange, locked in a cell just an hour's distance away.
Corbyn sent a filmed message in which he praised "journalists prepared to go more than an extra mile to find out the truth so the rest of us might know," but also maintained silence on Assange.
When challenged by angry members of the audience, NUJ General Secretary Michelle Stanistreet replied that to focus on Assange would be "offensive to the memory" of the journalists who have been killed all over the world.
She should explain to us, all of us, how it is offensive to anyone's memory to demand action to prevent Assange himself possibly being executed!
For his part, former NUJ president Tim Dawson offered the caveat that "there are journalists who have some issues with Julian Assange..."
Indeed, there are many such despicable journalists!
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