ExposeFacts: For Whistleblowing, Journalism and Democracy

Ruling Assange Can’t Be Extradited Is an Indictment of US Prisons

Charles Glass | 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:

If Assange’s Fate Were Up To a Jury, He, Too, Might Have Walked Free

Charles Glass | The Nation | 21st December 2020

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 the court, she had precedent on her side. All who entered her courtroom at London’s Central Criminal Court, the Old Bailey, had to pass a plaque memorializing a case against another defender of free speech and thought. The finely wrought marble plaque reads:

Biden’s Choice on Julian Assange and the First Amendment

Charles Glass, 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 demonstrate America’s commitment to the First Amendment. He can, in a stroke, reverse four years of White House persecution of journalism by withdrawing the application to extradite Julian Assange from Britain to the U.S. This would be in line with the departures from Trump policies Biden is proposing on health care, environmental protection, and tax fairness. Assange’s liberty represents the liberty of all journalists and publishers whose job is to expose government and corporate criminality without fear of prosecution. We need and deserve to be protected against government control of the press.

Whistleblowing, Injustice and the Espionage Act

By Jeffrey Sterling

I was astonished to read recently that President Donald Trump acknowledged that many believe Edward Snowden has been treated unfairly and he is looking into the matter, mulling over pardoning him. After the shock of that revelation wore off, reality set in. Mr. Trump’s administration has to date taken the reprehensible position of continuing, if not increasingly empowering the Obama administration’s unprecedented vendetta against whistleblowers by using the Espionage Act, and now we are to believe Mr. Trump’s assertion that how Snowden has been treated is something he “could” look into. What is incredible about what Mr. Trump said are his previous comments about Snowden, whom he called a “terrible traitor” and suggested that he should be executed. Now we are to believe that Mr. Trump is actually considering pardoning Snowden?