Feb. 20, 2024 - Last chance for Assange to escape extradition

Feb 20, 2024

Day X

Today and tomorrow are the last chance for Julian Assange to escape extradition from the U.K. to the U.S., where he was indicted on 18 charges, 17 of them violations of the Espionage Act. They’re calling it Day X because there are no appeals available after the U.K. judicial hearings today and tomorrow. Assange will go free, or go to the U.S.

The Justice Department argues that Assange put American lives at risk by releasing hundreds of thousands of U.S. intelligence documents after America put hundreds of thousands of lives at risk by releasing bombs and soldiers on Iraq and Afghanistan.

Assange was convicted of hacking long ago, when it was still cool. But then he founded WikiLeaks to publish the world’s dirty secrets after U.S. secrets were not hacked but leaked. And not by him. In other words, all that Assange did was publish information that others illegally obtained.

Most famously, Assange posted the video of two Army helicopters in Iraq firing on people on the ground with 30mm cannons, killing 11 civilians. Some of the dead were carrying weapons, which would have made them heroes in Texas, but in Iraq in 2007 meant that the U.S. military was allowed to shoot you, even if you were just near one of the people with a gun and even if your gun was the kind of gun also known as a camera.

The dead included two Reuters journalists. And now the U.S. government wants to imprison the man who exposed the U.S. killing of two journalists.

I haven’t been a big Assange guy. And I recall feeling stung when I got upbraided for that. But I was right in my defense: Not everyone can be an Assange expert and there are lots of journalists on this beat. But I was also wrong.

Because this isn’t just journos defending journos. This is about the culture of fear and national security and the 1% Doctrine of Liz Cheney’s father.

This is about Alice Jill Edwards imploring the U.K. to reject the U.S. extradition request. Edwards is the UN special rapporteur on torture and cites the risk of a “disproportionate” sentence for Assange. The world’s top moral authority on torture is warning that Assange isn’t safe here. Everyone got that?

Even if he were, it’s a moral obscenity to go after the man who revealed how the U.S. military conducted itself killing civilians. Laughing. Dismissing the slaughter of children. Firing on unarmed civilians who showed up to help.

None of those people were charged. None of the CIA torturers were charged. The politicians who weaponized 9/11, lied about it, targeted critics, and sent the U.S. military to conduct the first openly, admittedly baseless war in U.S. history…none of them were charged.

What Assange did was reveal to the world not just the brutality and dehumanization and indifference to human suffering, but also the willingness of the U.S. government to cover up its true nature in the name of national security.

Who died because Assange published those documents? Is the list longer than the fatality lists in Iraq and Afghanistan?

Hilariously, the helicopter attack isn’t even part of the indictment. Apparently that was okay. As The Guardian astutely pointed out, the U.S. didn’t want anyone looking now at an incident it wanted to keep secret then.

I respect what I believe to be Pres. Joe Biden’s apparently hands-off approach to the Justice Department. I do. But there’s nothing stopping Attorney General Merrick Garland from dropping the case and there’s nothing stopping Biden from issuing a pardon (presuming that, unlike the pardons of D4FRFP1 Donald Trump, it goes through proper channels).

But also it’s waaaaay past time that we got rid of the Espionage Act and started empowering the few remaining journalists seeking to uncover government secrets (hi, mom!).

FUN FACT In August 2017, then-Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) visited Assange while he was in custody. Rohrabacher told Assange that Trump would pardon Assange, if…

…Assange would falsely say that Russia had nothing to do with the Democratic National Committee (DNC) hacks that Russia did. And if Assange would correctly say the name “Rohrabacher.”

Assange refused to help Trump even though it would free him. He’s also been in some form of captivity for close to a decade. The U.S., in other words, has already punished a man whose integrity included refusing to lie for his freedom.

While Russian Pres. Vladimir Putin still has journalist Evan Gershkovich in custody on charges of being a spy, this would be an excellent time for the presidential candidate who’s running as the savior of democracy to free the journalist who’s facing charges of being a journalist.

If only Assange had done something the didn’t merit indictment, like lead an insurrection against the U.S. government.

U.S. Pushes Temporary Cease-Fire

Surrendering to a relentless onslaught of memes and online criticism, Pres. Joe Biden has U.S. diplomats at the UN today pushing a resolution that would call for Israel to stop using its weapons, including even American weapons, for at least six weeks. It’s the first U.S. proposal to mention any kind of cease-fire.

The U.S. resolution is an alternative to an Algerian resolution getting voted on today and backed by Arab nations. The Algerian resolution includes an immediate cease-fire, opposes Palestinian displacement, calls on both sides to observe international law, and calls for the immediate release by Hamas of its hostages.

The U.S. has rejected this resolution because, what, people are just supposed to never resume fighting again?

The U.S. resolution calls on Israel not to invade Rafah, to end all restrictions on humanitarian aid, Hamas to release its hostages, and Israel to implement a temporary cease-fire “as soon as practicable,” because you don’t wanna rush a cease-fire. That’s how people get hurt!

MEANWHILE Hearings continue at the International Court of Justice as more than 50 nations make presentations in The Case of the Dueling Massacres.

Palestinians yesterday argued that Israel’s occupation of Gaza and the West Bank is bad. Israel maintains that the court doesn’t even have a say in the matter.

Trump Allies Map Out “Christian Nationalism” Agenda

There’s never a good time to panic, but if there were it would’ve been at about 5am eastern time this morning, when Politico reported on a list of priorities for a second term of D4FRFP Donald Trump as prepared by his allies. And the reason for panicking would be that it’s never a good sign when “Christian nationalism” is an actual bullet point.

Politico obtained several documents mapping out a second Trump term, as envisioned by former Trump Office of Management and Budget Chief Russell Vought, who reportedly remains close to Trump despite having worked in his administration. Vought is president of the Center for Renewing America, a think tank that prioritizes actual tanks over actual thinking.

Specifically, the documents call for deploying the U.S. military against protesters. Why would there be protesters? Well, that’s what happens when you implement an overt theocracy!

Especially if it involves banning abortion nationally and going after contraception and no-fault divorce. Wait til the dudes find out that these people wanna make men start paying for their kids the second sperm hits egg.

The documents also call for this hypothetical second President Trump to simply ignore federal law that mandates federal spending if he doesn’t wanna do it. Y’know, like he did with Ukraine during his first hypothetical presidency.

Who’s In Your Wallet?

The number of credit-card companies is about to get smaller, as remaining companies get bigger.

Right now, the handful of dominant consumer-credit lenders, technically known as velociraptors, include Visa, Mastercard, and far behind in the pack, American Express and Discover.

Unlike Capitol One, those four have their own credit-card networks — the digital ecosystems in which their cards work. Capitol One currently issues its own credit cards using the Visa and Mastercard networks.

Which is why now Capitol One wants to gobble up Discover — for about $35.3 billion in stock — so Capitol One can have its own network and make money off that as well as off you.

Legally, a deal like this is only supposed to be approved by regulators (ha!) if it benefits the public (ha!) Typically, the companies merging argue that the public will benefit because of vague results of “improved efficiencies,” which really just means they can lay off the accountants and other folks who worked in the back office of whichever company just got bought.

Will regulators in the Biden administration approve this deal? “It is very difficult to imagine how federal regulators could allow Capital One to buy Discover given the requirement that mergers benefit the public as well as insiders,” said Jesse Van Tol of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition.

The public would, however, expect to benefit from the deal in that borrowers could expect to be preyed upon more efficiently.

Three Quickies

On Sunday’s Last Week Tonight, which personally hurt my brain to write, host John Oliver offered right-wing Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas one million dollars a year for the rest of his life if he retires within the next 30 days. Oliver said he’ll even throw in a $2.4 million.
Former New Hampshire Republican Senate candidate Don Bolduc, a retired general, is explaining why he dropped his claim that Joe Biden stole the 2020 presidential election from Donald Trump: He never believed it. Bolduc had a good explanation for why he lied to voters: He thought lying would help him. “I played a political game, right? So then I decided no more political games. I’m going to say what I honestly believe, and that is the election wasn’t stolen.”
Alabama’s Supreme Court ruled on Friday that frozen embryos are people, with the same rights and IQs as anyone else. The ruling, if it stands the way embryos cannot, could effectively outlaw in vitro fertilization by barring any harm to embryos other than through legally approved methods such as shooting them in self defense..

TCB

FLASHBACK If you missed it, I put out a whole goshdarned article this weekend, chock full of original reporting. It’s about the least famous Jewish person to get the most antisemitism of just about anyone, what he thinks we’re getting wrong about antisemitism, and why that’s a danger to us all.

Please check it out and share it with folks who might appreciate it, if you haven’t already.

I should’ve given better notice that there’d be no TFN on Presidents Day, so I’m sorry about that. If it’s any consolation, I worked all weekend on the story I just mentioned and on another one I hope to drop early next week. If you’re able to help support my original reporting, please consider becoming a paid subscriber so I don’t have to resort to getting acquired by a credit-card company.

(Everyone seems to be going for the yearly subscriptions over the monthly plan, which suggests I’ve got the pricing out of whack, so I’m thinking about upping the annual plan, so if you’re on the fence about it, now would be the time. Thanks for your support!)

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Go get ‘em, kids…!

D4FRFP = Disgraced, quadicted, fraudster, rapist, former President.