ACTIVISTS & HEROES

ALEXANDER RUBINSTEIN—After former Ecuadorian President Rafel Correa, who originally granted Assange his asylum, tweeted a picture of a document showing that Moreno’s government was “auditing” Assange’s asylum and his naturalization in Ecuador — which prevents him from being extradited — WikiLeaks (which has never gotten a story wrong) asserted that a bailout for the country from the International Monetary Fund was conditioned on its “handing over Assange and dropping environmental claims against Chevron” for its pollution of the Amazon.

Kristinn Hrafnsson, WikiLeaks editor, said: “Through WikiLeaks Julian Assange’s vision of transparency has revolutionalised journalism.”His imprisonment and threatened extradition to the United States has drawn a sharp line in the sand. You are either encouraging the crackdown on media freedom or you are standing with Julian Assange.”Last year the Galizia prize was jointly awarded to murdered Slovak journalist Jan Kuciak and LuxLeaks whistleblower Raphael Halet.

ED CURTIN—Assange has suffered mightily for American sins. The Anglo-American torturers know how to squeeze their victims to make old men out of the young. Abu Ghraib was no aberration. The overt is often covert; just a thin skin separates the sadists’ varied methods, but their message is obvious. No one who saw Assange dragged to prison could fail to see what the war-mongers, who hate freedom of the press when it exposes their criminal activities, can do to a man. Nor, however, could one fail to see the spirit of defiance that animates Assange, a man of courageous conscience cowards can’t begin to comprehend.

PHILIP A. FARRUGGIO—This writer’s favorite film of all time, right ahead of Seven Days In May and JFK is of course Casablanca. The film had it all, from WW2 suspense to old fashioned romance… with a good dose of twists and turns. In the film Paul Henreid plays Victor Laszlo, the Czech resistance leader, who has already escaped and eluded the Gestapo a few times. Laszlo has  been tortured on more than one occasion, yet told them nothing important. He comes to Casablanca in search of a way to leave North Africa and go to the USA to continue his important work. In a powerful scene near the end of the film Laszlo and Humphrey Bogart’s lead character Richard Blaine( AKA Rick of Rick’s Cafe Americain )discuss Laszlo’s work:

Rick:  Did you ever wonder if all of this is worth it?

Victor: You might as well question why we breathe. If we stop breathing we will die. We stop fighting our enemies and the world will die!