Ruling Assange Can’t Be Extradited Is an Indictment of US Prisons
The Nation | 6th January 2021
But the British court judgment, which is likely to be appealed, also delivers a body blow to freedom of speech. My junior year high school English teacher liked to tell a story about Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson to illustrate the differences between America’s two great transcendentalist writers. Thoreau was jailed in 1846 for withholding taxes that paid for the invasion of Mexico and protected slave owners. Emerson came to speak to Thoreau through the bars of his cell. My teacher, with theatrical flair and stentorian voice, recounted the conversation: ‘Emerson: “What are you doing in there, Henry David?” Thoreau: “The question is, what are you doing out there, Ralph Waldo?”’ We might ask ourselves what we are doing out here while Julian Assange remains “in there” at Belmarsh Maximum Security Prison in London… Read Julian Assange In His Own Words
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If Assange’s Fate Were Up To a Jury, He, Too, Might Have Walked Free
The Nation
Like William Penn and John Peter Zenger, the Wikileaks founder is fighting for our freedom. When the magistrate presiding last September at Julian Assange’s extradition hearing, Vanessa Baraitser, confined the defendant to a bullet-proof glass cage at the back of…
Biden’s Choice on Julian Assange and the First Amendment
The Intercept
Assange’s liberty represents that of all journalists and publishers whose job is to expose government and corporate criminality without fear of prosecution. When Joe Biden becomes president of the United States on January 20, a historic opportunity awaits him to…
The Unprecedented and Illegal Campaign to Eliminate Julian Assange
The Intercept
Assange would never receive a fair trial in the U.S., but he’s not receiving one in Britain either. Over the 17 days of Julian Assange’s extradition hearing in London, prosecutors succeeded in proving both crimes and conspiracy. The culprit, however,…
Charles Glass is a broadcaster, journalist and writer, who began his journalistic career in 1973 at the ABC News Beirut bureau with Peter Jennings. He covered the October Arab-Israeli War on the Egyptian and Syrian fronts. He also covered civil war in Lebanon, where artillery fire wounded him in 1976. He was ABC News Chief Middle East correspondent from 1983 to 1993. Since 1993, he has been a freelance writer in Paris, Tuscany, Venice and London, regularly covering the Middle East, the Balkans, southeast Asia and the Mediterranean region. He has also published books, short stories, essays and articles in the United States and Europe.