This brings me to the quotation at the top of this article: ‘Let us look at ourselves, if we can bear to, and see what is becoming of us.’ Jean-Paul Sartre wrote this in his preface to Frantz Fanon’s ‘The Wretched of the Earth’, the classic study of how colonised and seduced and coerced and, yes, craven peoples do the bidding of the powerful. Who among us is prepared to stand up rather than remain mere bystanders to an epic travesty such as the judicial kidnapping of Julian Assange? What is at stake is both a courageous man’s life and, if we remain silent, the conquest of our intellects and sense of right and wrong: indeed our very humanity.

Source: JOHN PILGER: U.S. wins extradition appeal against Julian Assange