Assange's Arrest: It's Confirmation That We Live in a Tyranny - Analyst

Earlier, UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said that the country's government should not extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to the US for exposing evidence of atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan. On Thursday, Assange pleaded not guilty before the UK's Westminster Magistrates Court.

Julian Assange was arrested by UK's Metropolitan police after Ecuador terminated his asylum.

Sputnik discussed the case of Julian Assange with David Icke, a political commentator and media personality.

Sputnik: So what's your take on the latest developments surrounding Julian Assange and his arrest?

David Icke: Well it was the most predictable thing you could imagine; it's just been a matter of time and wearing away the new president of Ecuador until he agreed. Basically, this was a done deal from the time that Lenin Marino, the present president, replaced Rafael Correa, who, of course, gave asylum to Julian Assange; it's just been a process of wearing away and wearing away. Clearly, from what we saw and what came to light last November, when a federal prosecutor by accident in another case revealed the fact that there was a sealed indictment prepared and waiting for Assange.

And what we've seen is, we see all the time, is the coordination between apparently independent countries — what a joke that is — in this case the United States and Britain, to bring about a long-planned end. It's an extraordinarily symbolic moment, because it is the confirmation that we live in a tyranny. You know when you live in tyrannies when those who do the crimes get off scot-free and those that reveal the crimes get prosecuted.

READ MORE: Assange's Lawyer Blasts Ecuador's 'Faeces' Claims as PRETEXT to Force Him Out

We're seeing this again, again and again, and this is, of course, globally very high profile case which is confirming that; they want to make an example of him, because they want to say to anyone else thinking of exposing the way the WikiLeaks has, "this is what happens to you if you take us on". So it's not just about Assange, it's about a warning to anyone, who would take on the establishment, which, of course, we must do if we want freedom to survive.

Sputnik: Actually it was numerous other media statements, media outlets, that published some of the elite correspondence that WikiLeaks also published. Why do you think it is that, for instance, former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was so against and so vengeful towards Assange? Some of the things that were published by WikiLeaks were not only published on WikiLeaks.

David Icke: Before I come to Hillary Clinton, and I could talk for hours about her, I've been exposing the Clintons in my book since the mid-1990s and the phrase "you couldn't make it up" really does apply to them. But I was reading an article today in The New York Times by a lady called Michelle Goldberg and the headline is "Is Assange's Arrest a Threat to the Free Press?"-  well clearly we don't have free press, the press is the propaganda arm of the establishment overwhelmingly. But what she's saying is it's basically okay and he deserves his fate so long as he's only prosecuted for hacking offenses and not for publishing the information, because, of course, if they go down that road eventually, and they're trying to avoid it in the public arena at the moment, that, as you rightly point out, opens up the wider press that also published the same things.

The reaction of the media in America, particularly, has been utterly disgusting to this arrest. I mean, talk about turkeys voting for Christmas. They are supporting something and saying "it's okay as long as it don't affect us"; well actually this is the step-by-step, tick-tick-tick, what I call the totalitarian tip-toe, to the erosion of all media freedom, including theirs. In terms of Hillary Clinton well, of course, she's extraordinarily miffed, because some of the things that WikiLeaks revealed during the election campaign against Trump very, very much affected, I'm sure, a lot of people voting for her.

This is again, we come back to the same subject, the same theme: when you do something, if not illegal then despicable, and that's what the WikiLeaks revelations made clear, that you manipulate your fellow Democratic presidential candidate, in this case Bernie Sanders, to make sure that they can't win — you manipulate through the party engine that he can't win — well that is your choice to do that. But instead of taking responsibility for doing that when it's revealed, the villain becomes not the person who's done, it but that which is revealed you doing it.

READ MORE: Assange's Father Urges Australia to Bring Him Home Amid Potential US Extradition

So she's obviously miffed massively because she felt she had the right to be president of the United States and anyone who got in the way, in this Assange and WikiLeaks, in any way, shape, or form, obviously, is going to be a target of her wrath; and she's looking for, and has been since the election, for any excuse for why she didn't win. The reason she didn't win is great chunks and streams of the American public can't stand her; then she has to find an excuse and WikiLeaks is a convenient one.

Sputnik: The UK has officially arrested Julian Assange because of him skipping bail; what is your thought on the real reason — or is that the real reason for him being arrested? Shortly afterward, of course, we did find out that there was also a move, perhaps, by the Swedish government and the plaintiffs in that case that was brought against him on sexual misconduct to renew that case. And, of course, we found out that there is an extradition order from the US. What are your thoughts on how this all happened?

David Icke: I've been writing books for nearly 30 years about the fact that the people that appear to be running the world are not really running it, and actually, there is a web that operates through all countries basically — basically all countries — which is pulling the strings of the world and, in particular, you can identify this in the West. So to understand a situation like this is to understand that in the shadows, the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom, Sweden, at that deep government level are actually dictated to and controlled by the same basic web, and this is why they move as one unit.

So obviously someone's pushed a number of buttons here, whereby you have the arrest by the British government, you have the extradition demand by the United States government, suddenly the Swedish authorities are coming in through their legal system saying, "Maybe we want to get involved in this as well." So, for instance, if the United Kingdom, under pressure from some political sides anyway, and personalities, would not be able to extradite him, then maybe they can do it via Sweden; and then you've got Australia, of course, who reacted in a nonchalant, couldn't care less, basically, kind of way, and this is how it works, they're all moving as one unit.

The reason is they are totally unforgiving of anyone or any organisation that reveals the truth about them, because what they're doing is so disgustingly unspeakable, then they have to have the secrecy to survive. So anyone that threatens that secrecy and threatens to reveal what's really going on, which of course, WikiLeaks did via, not least, the videos involving the invasion of Iraq and what happened in Afghanistan, they have to be punished because they can't be allowed to A) do it themselves or B) give confidence to anyone else to start doing it. So this is what it's about; it's about destroying him. I've been tracking these people in the shadows for 30 years, they have no forgiveness, they are ruthless people and now they're being ruthless about him.

READ MORE: Assange Put Excrement on Walls in Sign of Protest, Ecuador's UK Envoy Claims

I've just been banned, by the way, from Australia, from speaking in Australia four hours before my plane left, so I know that Australia is absolutely not a free society and they're going to do him no favours whatsoever. But the one good thing today has been that Jeremy Corbyn, the opposition Labour leader in Britain, has come out and said he must not be extradited to the United States, and this does have the potential, the situation with Assange, negative as it is in so many ways, to actually be a focus of attention for people to actually see the fact that this world's freedom and freedom of expression, freedom of communication, freedom of opinion is being systematically deleted and so there could be some good things to coming out of this from that point of view as well.

Sputnik: I was about to ask you about what your thoughts are about Corbyn's statement. Prior to that, though, there was a very quick reaction by one of the MPs; she got up and spoke to the fact that Julian Assange should not be under any circumstances extradited and she had to reckon with a very quick denouncement from the speaker of the House, saying pretty much that she has no business meddling in this. Do you think that we're going to see more support for not extraditing Assange at the request of the United States?

David Icke: Yes, I think so, especially when it starts to dawn on people what a massive symbol of freedom dilution that this is. John Bercow, the speaker of the House of Commons, is a classic member of the political class and I think you might've been talking about an MP called Diane Abbott, I saw that she was coming out against it today. But what you've had, you see, if you recall from yesterday, is that when Assange was taken from the Ecuadorian Embassy, he was immediately taken to court to be basically charged with and dealt with at the first stage of the legal process by a judge over skipping bail.

Now that judge should just have administrated the case and then everyone goes away and comes back on another day. Instead of that, this judge made a personal attack on Julian Assange at the start of the legal process; it was breath-taking! And what it does, of course, is show you the bias that he's going to face in the legal system and in the legal process, and what it requires is a very large number of voices coming out in defence of freedom.

You know, whether it's Julie Assange or anyone else is not really the point; the situation is the point, the deletion of freedom is the point. Therefore it's not about defending even Julian Assange, who is the personality in this case, it is defending basic freedom and human rights, and if you don't defend them now, then a bit longer and along road, there's going to be even less and less freedom to defend; so we need to make a stand here now and say here and no further.

Sputnik: As you mentioned briefly, Australia acted very indifferently to his arrest. Actually this was no surprise, because they haven't really gotten involved in his situation over these past seven years, so that's what I would expect pretty much from Australia going forward. But what do you think is going to happen to Assange now; what are the possible scenarios for the further development of his situation?

David Icke: If we start off from what they want to happen — and what they want to happen is his extradition to the United States, where the United States probably has other charges to add to the ones its currently claiming. Failing that, they might try to get him to Sweden, because Sweden will probably do the same.

The chance is here now, because it's all out in the public arena for those in politics who still, and it's very few, have any idea that freedom is disappearing and that we should defend it and for the public, in general, to give the government a problem; because if the government thinks it is going to get away with this without any consequences at the ballot box or in public opinion, it will do it, because it's desperate to do it, because in the end, if you look at this network that I'm talking about, this web where they all work as one unit, on one level the real power in that web is, at a deeper level it is somewhere else, but at the level we're talking about it is in the United States and what they say goes, and if it doesn't go, then there's going to be a problem for whoever is denying it.

READ MORE: UK MPs Urge Home Secretary to Extradite Assange to Sweden Instead of US

So the British government will push this, but it's whether they can get away with it, because they only have the power that we give them, and if we give them a hard enough time — especially on the basis of the abuse of basic freedoms — then this maybe this could be headed off. B but what do they want? They want him in America for a long time. This is not really about what he knows; this is about the precedent set of revealing enormous numbers of documents that were devastating for the credibility of the United States government and the United States military.

This is worth pointing out, actually, and it again shows you what an excuse for journalism that we have in places like the United States and further afield, that despite what WikiLeaks revealed, despite those videos of civilians being shot from helicopter gunships just for no other reason than "let's do it" — who has faced consequences for that? Nobody's faced consequences for that at all; the person who reveals, it or the organisation that revealed it, led by Assange, he's now getting the consequences — in fact seven years of consequences, he's been basically imprisoned for seven years in the Ecuadorian Embassy. This is the topsy-turvy inverted world that we live in.

People better get their heads around this, because if they don't, and we don't stand up to it, then it's not going to stop here; this is only where we are now in the deletion of freedom, where they want to go would make your hair curl.

Views and opinions expressed in this article are those of David Icke and do not necessarily reflect those of Sputnik.