After a loss in UK courts, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is facing the possibility of extradition to the United States. It’s a worrying development for the founder of the transparency organization, which has made enemies by exposing the secrets of the world’s elites.
Wikipedia gained the US government’s ire over a decade ago when it published files from the State Department and Department of Defense that embarrassed the agencies and exposed their behavior. The material originated from US Army soldier Bradley Manning, and included numerous diplomatic cables, as well as video of US troops killing innocent civilians whom they mistook for insurgents.
The US government has waged war on Wikileaks ever since, trying to shut down the organization’s activities and classifying it as a non-state hostile intelligence service. In reality, the US government just doesn’t want any more of its nefarious activities to be publicized by Wikileaks.
Assange himself has been stuck in the UK for years, attempting to stymie attempts to extradite him, first to Sweden for trumped up criminal charges, and now to the US. His health has suffered while in prison in the UK, and it’s clear that Western governments are doing everything they can to kill Assange slowly.
In fact, US intelligence agencies even floated the idea in the past of assassinating Assange, so dangerous was he deemed to be to the continued ability of the US intelligence community to continue killing people with impunity. So the fact that he’s facing extradition to the US, a country that wants to kill him, is highly unusual.
The attempted prosecution of Assange, something started by the Trump administration, is one of the black marks on Trump’s legacy. In pursuing Assange’s extradition, Trump was doing the bidding of the very same intelligence establishment that sought to undermine his presidency. And now Biden is carrying on that vendetta against Assange. If we want to have any hope of getting out from under the thumbs of the intelligence community, we have to hope that the United States’ extradition request does not succeed.
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