UPDATED: A video has appeared showing activists flying a banner reading “#Free Assange” past the Statue of Liberty in New York harbor.
Editor’s Note: As the authenticity of this video has been questioned, Consortium News has tried to track down its creator, so far without success. In an age of technical wizardry, an irresponsible party make have created this montage and passed it on without qualification. The message of the video is clear however: the United States should free imprisoned WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange.
LAND OF THE FREE? FREE ASSANGE#Assange #DontExtraditeAssange #FreeAssange pic.twitter.com/mKGaZiCIbc
— ScotlandForAssange (@AssangeScotland) March 2, 2020
There was a time when reaching the east coast of America and seeing the statue of liberty was a moment of hope of a better life for many people. Without justice and equal rights there is not even a shadow of hope left.
Classic shot
You know, when many of us grew up, this would have felt like science fiction. Remember the ending scene in the old Planet of the Apes, when Charlton Heston finds the Statue of Liberty half sunken into the sands?
Justice For All ?
Anybody want another cup of Kool-Aid?
Another proof that democracy = DEAD as a DOORNAIL in USA & UK 2 countries claiming to be a DEMOCRACY!!
It’s dead here in Australia as well, has been for a while.
This canned state trial of Assange is making a mockery of anything that could remotely be called a legally constituted and conducted fair trial. It not only makes a mockery of the concept of a fair and open trial process but it is affront to the basic concept of humanity within us all. What continues to unveil is kind of kangaroo court one imagines has occurred in fascist, police states for centuries. Yet for those of us who care about truth, justice and transparency between governments and the people this is a horrifying nightmare to which we are being forced to bear witness. It would be at least a bit more honest if the American government and their lackey Brit’s just dispensed with the formalities of a “TRUMPED-UP show trial and take Julian out to the courtyard and just summarily executed him which they want to do and probably will do in the end unless something miraculously intervenes.
President Trump:
Plz preemptively pardon Julian Assange,
& Edward Snowden.
Both paved the path to your Presidency!
I cannot believe the American people are not standing up and fighting their corrupt empire. George Washington would have been disappointed.
Put her in a museum, lying down, covered from head to foot with a bloodstained, white cloth. Replace her with a statue of roughly the same size of Ted Nugent, guitar in one hand and an AR-15 in the other. Or another befitting symbol. This one just popped into my mind. I’m sure there are others that would be better, and would look forward to seeing other suggestions.
About liberty, according to Mike Pompeo and the Assange prosecutor, Australians are not entitled to freedom of speech and of the press.
However, on the alleged absence of rights for foreign nationals in the United States, e.g. through extradition, the U.S. Supreme Court disagrees:
“The fact that the Framers chose to limit to citizens only the rights to vote and to run for federal office is one indication that they did not intend other constitutional rights to be so limited.
“Accordingly, the Supreme Court has squarely stated that neither the First Amendment nor the Fifth Amendment ‘acknowledges any distinction between citizens and resident aliens.’
“For more than a century, the Court has recognized that the Equal Protec-tion Clause is ‘universal in [its] application, to all persons within the territorial jurisdiction, without regard to differences of … nationality.’
“The Court has repeatedly stated that ‘the Due Process Clause applies to all persons within the United States, including aliens, whether their presence here is lawful, unlawful, temporary, or permanent.’
“When noncitizens, no matter what their status, are tried for crimes, they are entitled to all of the rights that attach to the criminal process, without any distinction based on their nationality.”
(Are Foreign Nationals Entitled to the Same Constitutional Rights As Citizens? — Georgetown University Law Center)
“If freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.”
— George Washington, 1783
“First Amendment
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
— U.S. Constitution, Bill of Rights, First Amendment, December 15, 1791
“Universal Declaration of Human Rights
“Article 19.
“Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”
— United Nations General Assembly, December 10, 1948; voted by the United States
It would appear that the United States is trying to do to the First Amendment what they did to the Second Amendment. Which is twist it around to mean what we wanted to mean. Two totally disregard the true meaning of the amendment.
We might as well take down the Statue of Liberty since she has no meaning anymore…
So true!
The Statue of Liberty’s meaning quickly changed after Lady Liberty was donated by France to Celebrate the End of Slavery in America, and the 14th Amendment of the Constitution giving Citizenship to American Slaves and their descendants. When Emma Lazarus was asked to write a poem to this National Monument to the End of Slavery, to help fund the pedestal on which the Statue stands, she initially refused. Lazarus was from a wealthy Jewish family who had made their fortune on sugar plantations in the Caribbean, dependent on slave labor. She had no affinity for slaves or Blacks, nor did NYC which had been the site of the biggest race riots in America during the Civil War (NYC discussed seceding together with the Southern states). Instead she asked if she could write a poem more apropos to her pet project, settling Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe and Russia in NYC and America. That was the basis of the “New Colossus” and the cultural appropriation of the only National Monument celebrating the end of slavery to instead welcome immigrants.
What meaning should we give it next? Lady Liberty lifting the Light of Neoliberalism to the American Exceptional Empire?