Part 12: GaslightingAssange Would you Take a Parking Ticket to the Queen? Disproportionate Punishment is Abuse
A man and a woman wake up and have breakfast together. By noon she’s in the Emergency department of the local hospital. Why? She didn’t put enough jam on her boyfriend’s toast. She knows how he likes it. Last week she didn’t toast it enough. Yesterday it was too much. He was cross it was dry. She’s taken to scientific methods for balancing the coffee to cream ratio for him. She wasn’t paying attention. He eventually could no longer control his frustration over her service in the kitchen. She understands. It’s her fault. But when she gets triaged at the hospital, she tells a different story.
She is the victim of years of gaslighting, blame, neglect, psychological torture and violence. It’s patently obvious to the nurses and doctors that she’s been disproportionately punished for her perceived incompetencies in the kitchen. A cursory perusal of her medical record indicates that she’s suffered for her perceived failings numerous times.
It’s also true for Assange who has been charged with no crime, is non-violent, medically fragile and who has been deemed a victim of multi-state torture by the United Nations Rapporteur on Torture, Nils Melzer. The punishment he has endured does not fit his “crime”. Bail infraction led to immediate detention in Belmarsh. US Extradition proceedings could lead to his death.
Interrogating the British parliament as to the reasons for Assange’s ongoing detention in an isolation cage, in a prison with a killer virus (COVID19), away from his infant sons and wife-to-be, without access to lawyers, is like interrogating the abusive boyfriend described above. It just gives him a platform to further abuse his girlfriend who is, in essence, his property. Interrogating UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, or MP’s Dominic Raab, Hugo Swire, Priti Patel, Philip Hammond, Javid, Jeremy Hunt, or any other so-called representative of the British public, is to give an audience to the abusive party in the dynamic and silence the victim.
The average British citizen would not want to hear a single syllable from the mouth of the abusive boyfriend, let alone allow him to represent their own thoughts. The same applies to the Assange case. The problem is that UK media are handing the microphone, video camera and print sections over to the abuser. They are giving the torturers the audience and attention required to justify the ongoing abuse, arbitrary detention, pummelling and persecution of an innocent man who is on the side of the average global citizen. If he dies, it will be manslaughter or homicide. Assange’s body bag is at the ready in Belmarsh.
I am sick of it. I don’t want to hear from the abusive boyfriend. I want that man incarcerated, investigated and prevented from doing it ever again to another woman or child.
I’m sick of UK media giving airtime to the GaslightingAssange British abusers. I’ve called for their investigation in the past. I’ve called for resignations. I reiterate my disgust at how British media “run cover” and enable the abuse to continue. That is not the noble purpose of journalism. That is the expedient coward’s way. An accurate recap of some facts by UK and US media would be welcome.
Assange skipped bail in June 2012 because he was being pursued by the United States. On April 11, 2019 when he was hauled into court, still in capture shock (described in Russian psychological abuse manuals), he was required to do two things: a. respond to a bail infraction charge, which is the equivalent of a parking ticket in downtown London; and b. respond to an unsealed US indictment for an unfair trial.
The entire court dynamic was approximately 15 min. and Assange could barely get a word in edgewise. He had no time to prepare a defence regarding the bail infraction because he was in custody from approximately 10:15 am, shuttled in police vans to local police stations, then to court and his lawyers had to cancel all of their appointments, drop everything and show up to the court hearing that afternoon. There literally was no time to prepare. They were blindsided with a double-whammy.
And, (stating the obvious), the reason he discontinued his almost religious dedication to bail conditions up and until June 19, 2012, was he feared the pursuit by the United States for his journalistic work. It is like Judge Michael Snow had a lobotomy — stating that Assange’s bail breach had no reasonable excuse and his defence was laughable, then going on to present the very US indictment which caused Assange to seek and obtain asylum. Snow dismissed Assange’s defence for the bail breach in the same breath that he justified it. That’s GaslightingAssange talent. Britain’s Got Talent, indeed.
The only way to reconcile this disconnected, irrational, circular logic coming from a judge with considerable power in a UK court is to insert it into the paradigm of GaslightingAssange. Judge Michael Snow exploited his position on the bench to insult, cast aspersions and humiliate an already shocked victim of a string of abuse that morning: Ecuador revoked his citizenship illegally, then revoked his asylum, both without due process, then UK police arrested him on an extremely minor infraction (breaching bail) with the full force of an army operative, then pulled the ace out from under its sleeve which was the US indictment. He was then provisionally arrested for extradition to the country he feared, in Britain’s Guantanamo Bay for terrorists and murderers. Subsequent hearings, debates in the House of Commons and legal measures have propelled the extradition forward.
If we apply the domestic assault case above: Were the girlfriend in the kitchen provisionally arrested for her clumsy domestic skills by the abusive boyfriend, she would certainly be arbitrarily detained in the women’s version of Belmarsh maximum security prison. If a woman’s place is in the kitchen and she displeases her master, send her to Belmarsh. Who cares if she catches COVID. She deserves it, right? It is inconsequential to the abusive boyfriend that “the punishment does not fit the crime”.
It is reminiscent of police in the US who over-react to driving infractions: the driver gets pulled over by bored cops whose adrenaline is running a little low… then end up murdering the driver. Next thing you know, the driver is doxed by media and every fashion faux-pas, failed relationship, school grade and gossip about them is national news. And the driver is dead.
The punishment does not fit the “crime”. It is disproportionate.
Putting Assange into Belmarsh is like murdering the driver who forgot to signal when changing lanes. It’s like taking a parking ticket to the Queen and then the Queen beheads you. It’s like jailing the woman for the jam infraction.
Read this @Reuters report from April 11, 2019 when Assange was arrested with the lens of GaslightingAssange. Now read this thread by a BBC reporter.
Now read a more sane version of reality by @caitoz where she tackles all of the Assange Smears.
I am disgusted by media coverage that enables the upper-caste British abusers to continue its slow assassination of Julian Assange. He is our brother. We want him back. FreeAssange. Failing that, grant him bail.
For the keeners: WATCH World Press Freedom Day 2020 discussion via Courage Foundation. Worthy of your 58 min.