The right does not have a monopoly on paranoia, as the conspiratorial fantasies of supporters of Julian Assange show. Glenn Greenwald, Glenn Beck's namesake and mirror image on the American left, made it embarrassingly obvious in the Guardian last week that a paranoid "leftist" defence of an alleged rapist was the order of the day. Greenwald argued that Assange was not a coward who dare not face his Swedish accusers but a true dissident, who was camping out in the Ecuadorean embassy because he had a genuine fear of persecution. America "would be able to coerce Sweden into handing him over far more easily than if he were in Britain", he explained.

It was a small country "generally more susceptible to American pressure and bullying". The poor man did not know that Britain has a notoriously lax extradition treaty with the United States, which the liberal-minded have condemned for almost a decade. Nor did he blink at what must be the crankiest request for refugee status ever. Assange is the first asylum seeker to claim persecution at three removes. He wants to renounce his Australian citizenship and become an Ecuadorean because (and you may have to bear with me) the Australian government failed to help him fight an attempt by the British government to extradite to him to Sweden, whose government may, at some undefined point, extradite him to the United States – or maybe not, because there is no extradition request.


More pertinently, Greenwald and the rest of Assange's supporters do not tell us how the Americans could prosecute the incontinent leaker. American democracy is guilty of many crimes and corruptions. But the First Amendment to the US constitution is the finest defence of freedom of speech yet written. The American Civil Liberties Union thinks it would be unconstitutional for a judge to punish Assange.

The authorities can threaten the wretched Bradley Manning and hold him in solitary confinement because he was a serving soldier when he passed information to Assange. But WikiLeaks was in effect a newspaper. From the 1970s, when the New York Times printed the Pentagon Papers, to today's accounts of secret prisons and the bugging of US citizens, the American courts "have made clear that the First Amendment protects independent third parties who publish classified information". Maybe the authorities could prosecute Assange for alleged links with hackers. I don't know – unlike Assange, I cannot see the future. But why would they bother to imprison him when he is making such a good job of discrediting himself?

Diluted Dante wrote:

How does demanding he not be extradited to the US over Wikileaks support sexual assault?

LivDiv wrote:

I think there is a middle ground where he could have acknowledged the sexual assault accusations and separated them from the espionage accusations.

That is the smarts that I want from Corbyn, to start to pre-empt the media attack.

Yossarian wrote:

Armitage_Shankburn wrote:

Yossarian wrote:

I can’t claim to be entirely across all of this, but my understanding is that the charge against Assange from the States is entirely relating to hacking as Assange is said to have offered Manning help breaking a password. Nothing to do with espionage, treason or publishing anything.

I’m not saying that more serious charges won’t be brought once he reaches the States, and clearly the fact of the US pursuing this for so long is because of what he revealed, but as long as we’re separating things out, I do think it’s worth separating that out too (unless I’ve missed something and there have been other charges).

Sorry, what does "separating out" mean, what is the object of your post?

Just accuracy.

The extradition of Julian Assange to the US for exposing evidence of atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan should be opposed by the British government.

Anyone able to explain the Corbyn stance on Assamge without my ear leaking my brain. How does this benefit him or not support sexual assault