Julian who?

 Julian Assange’s extradition hearing resumes today. The result is a forgone conclusion. Assange will be packed off to the US where he will spend the rest of his life in the most solitary of solitary confinement in the most maximum of maximum security prisons. 

Given what’s at stake for journalism, you’d think that our top journos would be all over the story. Instead, there’s a virtual news black-out. Not a peep about it in today’s Globe and Mail. The CBC is marginally better, with a single anonymous AP story which helpfully informs us “Assange’s legal troubles began in 2010, when he was arrested in London at the request of Sweden, which wanted to question him on allegations of rape and sexual assault…”

No, I’m afraid that’s fake news. Assange’s legal troubles began when WikiLeaks released the infamous “collateral murder” video. That’s when the world got to see US war crimes up close as a couple of America’s Top Guns yukked it up while machine-gunning unarmed Iraqi civilians from their Apache helicopter.

That was Assange’s crime; exposing US war crimes. It’s not that Canada’s corporate journalists aren’t aware of this. Their silence is due to the fact that they like their corporate paycheques and wish to keep them coming.

That’s how “press freedom” works!