On June 17, UK Home Secretary Priti Patel approved the extradition of Julian Assange to the United States to face 18 criminal charges: One count of conspiracy to commit computer intrusion, and 17 counts of violating the Espionage Act of 1917. If convicted on all charges, Assange faces up to 175 years in prison.

His final recourse is an appeal to the High Court of Justice where, if the history of his case is any indication, he’ll be told that they’re all out of justice and have none for him.

If justice had anything to do with it, previous courts would have thrown out the US extradition request on grounds of both jurisdiction and treaty language. The “crimes” of which Assange is accused were not committed on US soil. And Article 4 of the US-UK extradition treaty forbids extradition for political offenses.

Be clear on this: Assange is a political prisoner, held for and charged with committing … journalism.

He exposed war crimes committed by US government forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as other illegal schemes such as then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s attempts to have UN diplomats’ offices bugged.

The US government hates having its crimes exposed and, First Amendment be damned, tries to make examples out of those who dare display its dirty laundry.

While Assange obviously has more skin in the game than anyone else in this particular case, he’s not the real target. The real target is the NEXT journalist who catches the US government acting illegally. The goal is to make that journalist think twice before telling you about it.

For that reason, stopping the extradition of Julian Assange isn’t enough. Nor should we settle for an acquittal in court or a presidential pardon.

Crimes HAVE been committed, and examples DO need to made of the criminals who committed them.

The US Attorneys who filed the indictment — Tracy Dogerty-McCormick, Kellen S. Dwyer, and Thomas W. Traxler — must be charged with violating 18 US Code Titles 241 (Conspiracy Against Rights) and 242 (Deprivation of Rights Under Color of Law).  In addition to any prison sentences, they must permanently lose their licenses to practice law and be disqualified for life from further employment by the US government.

The same goes for their assorted co-conspirators, up to and including sitting and former presidents of the United States.

The US Department of Justice must dismiss the indictment, withdraw the extradition request, publicly apologize for its crimes against Assange, and compensate him richly for years of confinement and torture at its behest.

That’s the absolute bare minimum. Just as Assange was not their real target, they’re not ours. Our target is all the government officials who might, in the future, consider committing this kind of crime again.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

“A new national survey of gig workers in the United States,” Alex N. Press complains at Jacobin, “finds that around one in seven make less than the federal minimum wage.  … On a range of measures, gig workers report greater economic hardship than W-2 employees in low-wage retail and food-service work.”

Why? Well, the reasons should be obvious, right? The gig workers, Press notes, are “[d]eprived of labor standards that come with employee status, such as wage and hour protections, antidiscrimination laws, workers’ compensation, health and safety protections, unemployment benefits, and the right to organize and collectively bargain.”

But is that really the problem?

In fact, is there really a “problem” at all?

I can think of two reasons why gig workers might earn less than “employees” that don’t have anything to do with insufficient government intervention on their behalves.

The first reason is, in a word, choice.

Gig workers decide when they work and who they work with. They’re not required to punch a 40-hour clock, put in overtime if they’re tired or have a date, deal on a minute-by-minute basis with management, etc.

In an economy with rock-bottom unemployment, with employers almost literally begging on street corners for people to take those “low-wage retail and food-service” jobs that Press characterizes as better, gig workers CHOOSE to control the means of production themselves instead of knuckling under to wage slavery (I’m  sure I’ve heard those phrases associated with Jacobin‘s preferred approach to political economy). They’d rather have more personal freedom of choice than make more money.

The second reason is opportunity differentials.

While it’s not true of all gig workers, it’s probably true of some: Even in the current low-unemployment environment, those “low-wage retail and food-service” jobs are unavailable or unattractive to them for some reason — they just can’t do the job in the way demanded, or perhaps they face prospective wage garnishment (for child support, court judgments, tax claims, etc.) that would eat up most of their earnings.

If I can’t flip burgers but can deliver them on my bicycle, I’ll do the latter rather than the former.

If I can earn $5 an hour as a gig worker (perhaps completely “under the table” — there are ways), or $7.25 in a “low-wage retail and food-service” job, but some creditor can, and surely will, seize $4 an hour of those latter wages, guess which way I’m going to go?

In attacking the gig economy, “progressives” aren’t supporting workers and trying to protect them from exploitation. They’re attacking workers and trying to force those workers back onto what amounts to an exploitative, state-operated plantation where they’ll do as they’re told and gratefully accept whatever crumbs their “progressive” masters deign to graciously feed them.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

“Elections have consequences,” then-president Barack Obama reminded House Minority Whip Eric Cantor in 2009. Obama was correct. Elections do have consequences.

On the other hand, those consequences aren’t necessarily predictable.  As an old saw concerning the 1964 presidential election went, “I was told that if I voted for Goldwater we’d end up in a war in Vietnam. And I did vote for Goldwater. And we did end up in a war in Vietnam.”

As the 2022 midterm campaigns heat up, we’ll no doubt find ourselves subjected to the usual “MOST IMPORTANT ELECTION IN HISTORY! GET OUT AND VOTE!” campaigns. Not to mention the “dirty hands” counter-argument from some radicals that voting is immoral because it props up a bad system: If you vote you have no grounds for complaint; since you willingly participated in that system, the outcomes are on you, not on non-voters.

Yes, elections have consequences. Your vote, on the other hand, mostly doesn’t.

First of all, the chance that your vote will materially affect the outcome of any election of significant size — for example, that your vote will be the one vote that puts your presidential candidate over the top in Florida, or that Florida will then cast the decisive electoral votes, let alone both —  is almost nil. You’re more likely to buy the single winning Powerball ticket for a record-high jackpot.

Secondly, even were that to happen, it’s unlikely that you’d get the results you expected from the victory of the candidate you chose.

Voting is a weird variant of the “Trolley Problem,” an ethical thought experiment: An evildoer has tied three people to one set of trolley tracks, and one person to another set. You’re at the lever controlling which set of tracks the trolley goes down. If you throw the lever, the trolley kills the one person. If you don’t, it kills the three people.

In the voting version of the “Trolley Problem,” your options are:

To throw the lever to the left (vote Democratic).

To throw the lever to the right (vote Republican).

To put a sticky note on the lever (bearing the name of a third party or independent candidate).

Or to do nothing.

As to outcomes, you have no idea how many people are tied to which set of tracks, or how many of them will be killed or injured, or in what ways.

And you also know that there are millions of other voters/levers and that what you do with YOUR lever is unlikely to have any real effect on the outcome.

There’s no particularly compelling argument for or against voting. We should just treat voting as what it actually is.

So, what is voting?

Voting is speech.

It’s a statement of your beliefs.

Ditto non-voting, if done with intent to express unwillingness to affirm the system’s legitimacy.

Voting is neither a moral duty nor a moral crime.

Don’t let anyone tell you that you must, or mustn’t, vote. That decision is, and should be recognized as, a matter of personal preference.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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