<img attachment="assange-poster-730x1024.jpg" align="right">The western world doesn't have a moral leg to stand on unless or until this happens. From the article, <a href="https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2023/04/16/us-moral-authority-is-dead-and-buried/" author="Caitlin Johnstone" source="">US Moral Authority Is Dead And Buried</a>, <bq>[...] when people try to frame Assange’s persecution as a matter of public perception and fighting foreign narratives about the US, they are incorrect. The issue is not that Assange’s persecution makes the US look bad, the issue is that it <b><i>proves</i></b> the US <b><i>is</i></b> bad. (Emphasis in original.)</bq> The <a href="https://d12t4t5x3vyizu.cloudfront.net/tlaib.house.gov/uploads/2023/04/Congressional-Letter-to-DOJ-on-Julian-Assange-Indictment_Final.pdf">letter</a><fn> writes, <bq>The prosecution of Julian Assange for carrying out journalistic activities greatly <b>diminishes America’s credibility as a defender of these values, undermining the United States’ moral standing on the world stage</b>, and <b>effectively granting cover to authoritarian governments</b> who can (and do) point to Assange’s prosecution to reject evidence-based criticisms of their human rights records and as a precedent that justifies the criminalization of reporting on their activities.</bq> To which Johnstone replies, <bq>[America's history of oppression and war] will all still be the case even if Assange is released. The US empire will still have spent years imprisoning a journalist for the crime of good journalism, will still be the world’s worst warmonger, and will still be the world’s most egregious violator of human rights. Its moral standing is dead and buried, and the world should stop following its lead in creating a just and ethical world. It simply does not have the qualifications to do so. In fact, no power structure on earth is less qualified.</bq> <hr> <ft>That's a direct link to a CloudFront cached document. I'm not sure that these buffoons in our Congress intended that this would be the canonical place to get this document. See the <a href="https://tlaib.house.gov/posts/tlaib-leads-letter-to-doj-to-drop-charges-against-julian-assange-defends-freedom-of-press" source="Tlaib House">original announcement</a> if that link fails. That URL might be a bit more stable. It's actually not surprising that the people running this official, government site don't have any good idea of canonical URLs: the letter itself---which is only 21/2 pages long---has at least one pretty glaring typo in it, one that would have been caught by a grammar-checker, should they have seen fit to use it. The sentence <iq>[...] has highlighted conflicts between the America’s [sic] stated values of press freedom and its pursuit of Mr. Assange.</iq> seems to have been changed from "the American" without removing the article when converting to the possessive.</ft>