Slavoj Ziek Julian Assange has had his rights stripped away

Julian Assange has had his rights stripped away in a case that should alarm millions, but too few people care because his character has been assassinated. He might have to go to prison before he gets the support he deserves.

There is an old joke from the time of World War I about an exchange of telegrams between the German Army headquarters and the Austrian-Hungarian HQ. From Berlin to Vienna, the message is “The situation on our part of the front is serious, but not catastrophic,” and the reply from Vienna is: “With us, the situation is catastrophic, but not serious.” 

The reply from Vienna seems to offer a model for how we react to crises today, from the Covid-19 pandemic to forest fires on the west coast of the US (and elsewhere): ‘Yeah, we know a catastrophe is pending, media warn us all the time, but somehow we are not ready to take the situation seriously…’ 

There is a similar case that has been dragging on for years: the fate of Julian Assange. It’s a legal and moral catastrophe – just consider how he is being treated in prison, unable to see his children and their mother, unable to communicate regularly with his lawyers, a victim of psychological torture so that his survival itself is under threat. They are killing him softly, as the song goes.

But Britain's arrogant and dismissive government refuses to get off its high horse.

They are holding a man against his will, who has committed no crime. He is only being held at the request of the US government, which has charged him with espionage and conspiracy to commit computer intrusion, better known as hacking.

The truth is, they are embarrassed and furious that the details of their murky dealings in places like Iraq, Afghanistan and Yemen were laid bare for the world to see.

At one point, Assange dumped a quarter of million American diplomatic cables online – making every news outlet on the planet aware of the type of dubious conduct the US military and its operatives had been indulging in.

How does this equate to being locked up on the same terms as killers, paedophiles and rapists?

If we close our eyes and change the names of those involved, we could be back in 1981.

Britain's establishment has failed to learn the lessons of criminalising those with opposing political views who make life uncomfortable for them.

US media schtum on Assange’s plight despite 3 years of ‘flamboyant devotion’ to protecting press freedom – Greenwald US media schtum on Assange’s plight despite 3 years of ‘flamboyant devotion’ to protecting press freedom – Greenwald

It's an atrocious state of affairs for a democracy like Britain to not have evolved and progressed.

Bobby Sands was no ordinary criminal – and neither is Julian Assange.

The irony is that the spineless politicians who took both of their freedoms have more to answer for.

In Sands' case, it was the occupation of another country, and discriminating between people based on religion – Catholic or Protestant.

In Assange's case, it's the money-hungry excuses for public servants who sell British arms to countries like Saudi Arabia, UAE and Bahrain to use in illegal foreign wars or against their own people, on top of the litany of unethical military incursions of our own.

Britain has now claimed second spot in the global Covid-19 death toll, and there's no sign of the line of corpses stopping any time soon.

Our prime minister and his cabinet are the ones who should be looking at the inside of a cell, because of the criminal way they've handled Britain's Covid-19 response.

Healthcare workers are being forced to use swimming goggles and paper aprons as protection, and the emergency 4,000-bed hospital (which has treated 54 patients in total) in London is closing due to there not being enough staff available to operate it.

Then there’s the botched order of 17.5 million faulty antibody tests, and the foolish plan to attempt to achieve herd immunity – before panicking and deciding to backtrack and go into lockdown, weeks too late to prevent so many deaths.

The litany of heinous misdemeanours is lengthy.

But what's also clear is how our political leaders bend with the wind; they have no backbone or spine.

How many of the British government have risen up above the parapet and called out what's going on? A shambles. A travesty. A complete failure.

None of them.

Sands and Assange were, and are, composed of better stuff. They stood up for something of importance; they drew a line and refused to back down due to the conviction of their beliefs. Britain should stop demonising them, and instead copy them.

Sands famously said: “Our revenge will be the laughter of our children.”  Thirty-nine years later, we're still waiting to hear it.