I am making this post for a couple of reasons: One to remind us of what this great man did for the world and to two, remind people that he still exists and we mustn't forget that. The Biden Administration, like the administrations before him are still seeking extradition of this man back to the United States to face trial for "computer hacking."
We all know what they really want him for though, and that is because he gave the USA a real black eye by exposing the rather horrible nature of a lot of what goes on inside of their intelligence networks.
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I think that most people that fear government overreach and celebrate freedom (the actual kind, not the kind the US talks about) was extremely pleased to find out that Ecuador of all countries granted Assange political asylum and allowed him to remain in their London embassy not that long ago.
The year was 2012
There's been plenty of scandal around the world since then, but Julian Assange's case is one that makes me fear quite a lot for the world. When the person who exposes atrocities done by the world's only remaining super-power becomes enemy number one, it makes a lot of us who have some sense of though capacity afraid for how we would be man handled by the governments that we have to interact with.
One of the main reasons that I moved overseas back in 2004 was because after years of working for the US Federal government, one of which was a semi-clandestine agency, I was disgusted by what my "career" had become and determined that I wanted nothing to do with it anymore. The level of the government being all up in your business no matter what it is that you are doing was something that I was actually a part of the problem in, and I couldn't live with myself doing that for a job.
I admire Assange and was extremely proud of Ecuador for stepping up to offer him asylum when everyone could see that doing this would almost certainly have massive ramifications for that country. I don't know what sort of problems the USA made for Ecuador, but I am sure they didn't take this snub lightly.
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He would occasionally make appearances on the balcony for the press but for the most part he was simply trapped inside a building and since that is what I am going through right now for what is meant to be a week (covid shite) I can't even imagine how taxing that must have been on a person. Regardless of how luxury a place is, the inability to go anywhere out of fear of being arrested must be pretty awful.
For some reason people had some hopes that Donald Trump was going to pardon Assange but I never thought that would be the case. Trump is very hawkish when it comes to military affairs and that was never a thought that crossed my mind. If anything, I thought that Trump would ramp up the aggression as far as obtaining Julian was concerned. As late as 2017, Attorney General Jeff Sessions stated that acquiring Assange was a "top priority" for the United State government.
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Something kind of funny happened in 2018 when Assange sued Ecuador for trying to charge him rent and for cleaning up after his cat.
Shortly thereafter, his asylum status was dropped as was his Ecuadorian citizenship, and it was only a matter of a few days before he was arrested in the embassy and taken into custody for skipping bail stemming back to charges against him in 2012.
The original reason why he was given asylum is because he was being sought by Sweden over sexual assault charges of some sort that have since been dropped.
I find it all very suspect that his relationship with Ecuador all kind of fell apart in a short amount of time and I think that it probably was a case of the US meddling in other nation's affairs.
At the moment, Assange is still fighting extradition to the United States and initially it looked like the UK government was going to deny said extradition to the USA. It should come as no surprise that the initial denial of extradition to the USA was appealed. The giant always gets what it wants and sadly I think they will eventually get him.
At the moment he is still in prison in the UK serving a 50 month sentence for violation of the "Bail Act."
For a while, it looked like Ecuador were the only "good guys" on the planet and their move to protect him shocked me and I think most other people in the world. Sadly, he is now mostly broke, seems to have a diminished mental state, and unfortunately will likely be extradited and then probably suicided in prison in the USA.
There was a time when I had faith that there was some goodness in the world... and it all happened today a mere 9 years ago.