The US - Irredeemable but Containable: Julian Assange’s fate shows why the US must be forced to go home

As the world teeters on the verge of a massive war in the Middle East that could turn into World War Three, it is hard to even notice other important events.

What seems to overshadow everything else is the hideous spectacle of Israel and the collective West co-perpetrating a genocide in Gaza while also producing multiple attacks and massacres in the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, and Iran, as well as issuing ceaseless threats to do even worse if the victims dare fight back. When Gaza is being exterminated and Beirut is burning, why would people turn to look, for instance, at sleepy Strasbourg?

And yet, on October 1, that’s where a quietly historic event took place, namely the first major public appearance of Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, publisher, and outstanding investigative journalist, after his release in June from some 14 years of vicious American-British persecution and incarceration, some of which, according to UN special rapporteur Nils Melzer and the prestigious medical journal The Lancet, amounted to torture.