Chris Hedges and John Shipton: Julian Assange’s Looming Extradition and the Imperative of Mass Resistance

Image by Alisdare Hickson via Flickr

Dandelion Salad

with Chris Hedges

TheRealNews on Sep 23, 2022

A society that prohibits the capacity to speak in truth extinguishes the capacity to live in justice.

Tyrannies invert the rule of law. They turn the law into an instrument of injustice. They cloak their crimes in a faux legality. They use the decorum of the courts and trials, to mask their criminality. Those, such as Julian Assange, who expose that criminality to the public are dangerous, for without the pretext of legitimacy the tyranny loses credibility and has nothing left in its arsenal but fear, coercion and violence.

The long campaign against Julian and WikiLeaks is a window into the collapse of the rule of law, the rise of what the political philosopher Sheldon Wolin calls our system of inverted totalitarianism, a form of totalitarianism that maintains the fictions of the old capitalist democracy, including its institutions, iconography, patriotic symbols and rhetoric, but internally has surrendered total control to the dictates of global corporations.

I was in the London courtroom when Julian was being tried by Judge Vanessa Baraitser, an updated version of the Queen of Hearts in Alice-in Wonderland demanding the sentence before pronouncing the verdict. It was judicial farce. There was no legal basis to hold Julian in prison.

There was no legal basis to try him, an Australian citizen, under the U.S. Espionage Act. The CIA spied on Julian in the embassy through a Spanish company, UC Global, contracted to provide embassy security. This spying included recording the privileged conversations between Julian and his lawyers as they discussed his defense. This fact alone invalidated the trial. Julian is being held in a high security prison so the state can, as Nils Melzer, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture, has testified, continue the degrading abuse and torture it hopes will lead to his psychological if not physical disintegration.

The U.S. government directed the London prosecutor James Lewis. Lewis presented these directives to Baraitser. Baraitser adopted them as her legal decision. It was judicial pantomime. Lewis and the judge insisted they were not attempting to criminalize journalists and muzzle the press while they busily set up the legal framework to criminalize journalists and muzzle the press. And that is why the court worked so hard to mask the proceedings from the public, limiting access to the courtroom to a handful of observers and making it hard and at times impossible for us to access the trial online. It was a tawdry show trial, not an example of the best of English jurisprudence but the Lubyanka.

It is imperative that those of us who care about a free press and the persecution of an innocent man, for Julian has not committed a crime, make our presence felt in the streets. I will be in Washington on October 8 with, I hope, thousands of others to ring the capital to call for Julian’s release, an act that will be replicated by protesters surrounding the British parliament the same day.

Joining me from Mexico, where Mexican president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has defended Julian’s innocence and offered asylum to the WikiLeaks founder, is Julian’s father John Shipton.

Transcript

From the archives:

Silencing the Lambs: How Propaganda Works, by John Pilger + John Pilger: The Coming War on China is Here

John Pilger: This is a War of Propaganda

UK Home Secretary’s Certification of Assange Extradition puts Him at Risk + UK Home Secretary Approves Extradition of Julian Assange

Noam Chomsky, John Pilger, George Galloway, et al: If Wars Can Be Started By Lies, Peace Can Be Started By Truth

Certifying Julian Assange’s Extradition Puts Him at Great Risk + The Assange Family Struggle

John Pilger: The Supreme Court Refusal to Hear Julian Assange’s Appeal

Chris Hedges: Wedding Speech for Julian Assange + Craig Murray Barred From Attending the Wedding

Sheldon Wolin: Can Capitalism and Democracy Coexist? Parts 1-8, interviewed by Chris Hedges