When Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump in 2020, there was a great deal of rhetoric from the incoming administration about America’s return to the “rules-based international order,” as reported by the The Nation. Four years later, nearly 500,000 are dead in the killing fields of Ukraine, the torture gulag at Guantánamo Bay remains open, the southern border is in a state of chaos, and Biden continues to persist with Trump’s prosecution of Julian Assange, the most innovative and consequential journalist of the 21st century. Far from a “rules-based international order,” America, under Biden, has become viewed as hypocritical in the human rights community, according to The New Republic. Ending the prosecution of Assange, however, could signal a return to core American principles like freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and the outlawing of torture.
Biden’s Department of Justice is prosecuting Assange on eighteen charges under the authority of the infamous 1917 Espionage Act. On February 20, the High Court of the United Kingdom will hear Assange’s final appeal of America’s extradition request. Julia Hall is an Amnesty International expert on counter-terrorism and criminal justice in Europe who, just this week, wrote, “The U.S. must drop the charges under the espionage act against Assange and bring an end to his arbitrary detention in the UK.”
Like Nils Melzer, the former UN special rapporteur on torture (who argues Assange’s prosecution is a political persecution), Hall does not view America’s case as a return to the “rules-based international order,” but a departure from bedrock tenets. Furthermore, as Melzer outlines in his recently published book, The Trial of Julian Assange, back in 2010, “then US vice-president Joe Biden even acknowledged during a session of the UN Security Council that WikiLeaks’ publications had caused ‘no substantive damage’ other than being ‘embarrassing’ for the US government.”
Will Biden stake the credibility of his country and his presidential legacy on a vendetta he inherited from Trump?
To speak of a “rules-based international order” is to look at America in contrast to the rest of the international community. The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism analyzes the media credibility of the major nations of the world. Setting aside the issues of torture and genocide, the 2022 Reuters report simply focuses on America’s trust in the fourth estate: The report claims, “Today the US media has the lowest credibility—26 percent—among forty-six nations.” In other words, no other country in the world has less faith in its journalists than the leader of the “rules-based international order.”
There is no easy fix for this systemic crisis that spans decades of wars, technological change, propaganda, and media consolidation. But the censorship and criminalization of true journalism is a component of the problem. Rather than continue to head in the Orwellian direction of more censorship, more hypocrisy, more torture, and more doublespeak, the Biden administration should send a blistering rebuke to its predecessors in the Trump administration.
Before it’s too late, Biden should stand with journalists, politicians, and human rights organizations like Amnesty International, as well as the Australian Parliament which, this week, voted to support Andrew Wilkie’s motion to end America’s mission to extradite this Australian citizen. Journalism is not a crime or an act of espionage or treason. Dissent is patriotic and a healthy practice in a functioning democracy, whether that’s a democracy in Australia or ours here at home in the U.S. It’s time to end the prosecution of Julian Assange.
To shine a final light on the Assange case in the context of the “rules-based international order,” consider this: America’s Extradition Treaty with England would permit the U.S. to revise or add charges which could expose Assange to the death penalty, as explained by the BBC. In Europe, ground zero of the “rules-based international order,” only Belarus still uses capital punishment, according to Amnesty International. To the north and south of the U.S., Mexico and Canada have outlawed the death penalty. Only the U.S. still practices capital punishment in North America.
And if Biden and Kennedy lose the upcoming election, there is even reason to believe that Trump could seek to have Assange executed. Trump, whose CIA plotted the assassination of Assange, as reported by Yahoo, has gone on the record threatening the founder of WikiLeaks. In 2010, the same year Biden argued that Assange’s organization had done “no substantive damage” to the U.S. Trump described WikiLeaks’s actions as “disgraceful” and deserving of the “death penalty or something,” as reported by CNN.
With Biden’s poll numbers dropping precipitously in recent months, the release of Assange would send a loud message to the “rules-based international order.” Biden is the president of the country prosecuting Assange and, therefore, possesses every lever necessary to end this cruel charade.
For more information on this case, read Honest Media’s previous piece by Armstrong:
I Am Julian Assange
French translation of “I Am Julian Assange” letter posted on February 1
You can also follow the activism and journalism of Julian’s wife, Stella Assange:
https://substack.com/@stellaassangesubstack
http://www.StellaAssange.com
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