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On the Extradition of Julian Assange

The fiends who wield the power here on earth
(The ones who gag our speech to gain control)
Are shouting out just what the truth is worth
By extraditing this heroic soul.
For outing scarlet hand and darkest deed,
The honest will be made to bow and bleed.

This man exposed the wrong our rulers knew—
The damning stains of crimes our czars denied.
He aired the proof for you and me to view—
The proof that those who stole our trust had lied.
He’s bound to dwell in hell beneath the stars—
Tyrants lock the truth behind cold bars.

This brave, emboldened soul should be set free.
He risked his all—his liberty and life
To warn us of the wiles of tyranny
Before his tongue was sliced by evil’s knife.
This journalist has made the world aware
That slaughterers of truth are never fair.

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Susan Jarvis Bryant has poetry published on Lighten Up Online, Snakeskin, Light, Sparks of Calliope, and Expansive Poetry Online. She also has poetry published in TRINACRIA, Beth Houston’s Extreme Formal Poems anthology, and in Openings (anthologies of poems by Open University Poets in the UK). Susan is the winner of the 2020 International SCP Poetry Competition, and has been nominated for the 2022 Pushcart Prize.

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24 Responses

  1. Wayne

    To say you are a ‘word smith’ would be an insult, but it’s the best descriptive phrase I know. Lovely piece.

    Reply
    • Susan Jarvis Bryant

      Thank you very much, Wayne. I appreciate your encouraging comment.

      Reply
  2. Cheryl Corey

    And where are all the so-called journalists to stand up for his right to expose the truth?

    Reply
    • Susan Jarvis Bryant

      Sadly, Cheryl, I think real journalists are close to extinction in the Western world. One has to be honest and brave to be in this profession, traits sadly lacking in many.

      Reply
  3. Jack Dashiell

    I love this poem, Susan. I consider Assange a hero and brave man. He provided what is kept hidden and gave us a deep enlightenment. I was mostly intrigued about his revelation of UFO aliens. I was one of the few to watch an interview with with an alien that now has been longed deleted. It was fascinating. It certainly seemed genuine enough that unfortunately is now likely gone forever.

    Reply
    • Susan Jarvis Bryant

      Thank you, Jack. I too consider Julian Assange brave and heroic. I am sure he has his failings (as we all do) but he is a journalist, a journalist held up as an example to all real journalists out there – the truth doesn’t set real journalists free! It may however set us free… if only we’d listen.

      Reply
      • Jack Dashiell

        Though this interview I watched seemed honest I recognize that a UFO alien coming down to earth would need appropriate air and even food if he was to stay a while. It’d also put him in a dangerous predicament because those human people with him would want to know everything he knew about his planet, technology and universe he traveled. They even might not let him free to return to his own spaceship and home thus he’d remain a captive.

      • Jack Dashiell

        Another outstanding question I ask if this UFO alien interview was an elaborate fake what was its purpose? Why was it seriously kept secret and who was the intended audience? Why was it deleted from You Tube when Assange revealed it?

  4. Joseph S. Salemi

    Assange is being crucified not simply because he told the truth (lots of us here do that), but because he did it in a very public and spectacular manner, by releasing for world-wide viewing the actual e-mails and documents that proved the political establishment was lying through its teeth. And to put the icing on the cake, he did it with open and undisguised contempt for that establishment.

    Assange’s enemies have never bothered to deny that what he released was genuine data. The charges against him are solely about violations of security procedures and protocols, not about “disinformation.” He is being made a monitory example of what will happen from now on with anyone who dares to show insufficient respect for those who now control the planet.

    Reply
    • Susan Jarvis Bryant

      Joe, I agree with you. I think Assange thought the world would listen, open their eyes, and do something about the corruption exposed before we all sunk under the weight of the wayward global governance… a big mistake, mainly for us.

      Reply
  6. Shaun C. Duncan

    Outstanding work as usual, Susan.

    It’s interesting that Manning was given a free sex change and a pardon for leaking the material, but Assange is facing 175 years for running the site it was hosted on. Of course the media couldn’t care less that this is an attack on PUBLISHING because, as they’ve shown repeatedly the past few years, they wouldn’t dream of printing anything that might raise questions about the regime’s increasingly preposterous narratives.

    Reply
    • Susan Jarvis Bryant

      Thank you very much, Shaun. This whole debacle is shameful and stinks of the wicked hypocrisy and twisted mindset of our global overlords. His extradition from the U.K. is oppressive and unjust and should Julian Assange spend the rest of his life behind bars, the first amendment is effectively dead – a dreadful day for all… although, the appalling behavior of the MSM tells me we’re well on the road to a post-truth-era apocalypse on the publication front.

      Reply
  7. Mike Bryant

    On Julian Assange…
    Julian Assange created a platform on which the whistleblowers of this world (the seekers of truth, those disgusted with the shenanigans of the powerful) could stand and have their voices, the truth, amplified for all to hear.
    In other words, Mr. Assange filled the vacuum, that space, abandoned by journalism. “Journalism” today is on the side of the authoritarians, NOT “We, The People” …

    If real journalism was alive before the onset of Covidism perhaps our world would not have been turned upside down.
    (The timing of his arrest is quite suspicious.)
    Could real journalism make people more powerful?
    Or should the real journalists be thrown in prison while tyrants crush us all?

    I imagine living in a world where truth is shouted from every rooftop.

    Reply
    • Joseph S. Salemi

      Mike, the Left now controls the following august institutions: mainstream media, social media, academia, the judiciary, corporate boards, K-12 education, print publishing, most of the churches, labor unions, the police and the military, governmental bureaucracy at all levels, and nearly all forms of journalism. And all of this is separate from the death-grip that they have on most governments, world-wide.

      This kind of totalist hegemony is unprecedented in human history. It goes beyond anything that was true in the French or the Russian revolutions. Robespierre and Lenin would have salivated at the prospect of such influence and control.

      And yet we have stupid people all around us (some of them come here to comment every so often) about how everything is OK and fine and normal and unproblematic and perfectly acceptable. They’re the ones who are always saying “Move along… there’s nothing to see here,” or who are spouting drivel about friendship and brotherhood.

      Assange will be crucified, just as the January 6th patriots will be crucified. We are in a dangerous pre-revolutionary period, with mass murder just ahead on the horizon. And a vast number of persons among our friends, families, neighbors, and colleagues think that everything is just peachy. I have a bunch of relatives to whom I will not even speak, and I refuse to have anything to do with any member of the clergy.

      Could real journalism help? Yes, of course. But we won’t get that, or anything else of a curative nature, as long as millions of brain-dead persons in the West are blind to what is happening, or — even more frightening — are convinced that what is happening is good.

      Reply
      • Patricia Redfern

        Hello, Joseph! Your summation is solidly on firm ground! I find myself disheartened with
        the weak-kneed, shoulder shrugs to all you said, if I dare mention, any of it.
        And no, people do not know enough history of
        the takeover of countries, media by madmen.

        They think we have inalienable rights? As these slide across the ice faster than a hockey puck.
        Their mindset is Hitler was the last evil leader?
        I see no reason why we won’t end up like China.
        Even listing a poem at a Leftist poetry site?
        Bring legions of poets who suddenly stop reading you. OR..With the admonition..”Poetry in not to be political.” Unless of course, it’s leftist. Other attitudes are.., there is nothing we can do, or politicians are all inherently evil.or the
        Outright dismissal of valid news as false.
        I appreciated your bright input.

  8. Joseph S. Salemi

    Many sincere thanks, Patricia. I am so glad to hear someone say that our rights are not “inalienable.” We only have those rights that we can protect with our guns and our guts, in the face of those who want to cancel them.

    We don’t even have to become like Red China. All that needs to happen for our freedoms to evaporate is for us to become like Great Britain, Canada, Australia, or most of the E.U. And we have millions of stupid people who want that to happen, or are willing to compromise when it happens.

    The problem with most self-styled “conservatives” and RINOs is that they are comfortably middle-class, and like the bourgeoisie throughout history, they are fixated on never taking any real risks and never offending anyone in authority. And they think that talking politely and preaching pietistic sermons are the way to win wars.

    Reply
  9. Richard Craven

    Viewpoint diversity is permissible in poetry. Here is my Assange sonnet.

    From the Sonnets, Mostly Bristolian, by Richard Craven

    Sonnet 151
    He’s to be scoped, the rapey narcissist,
    athwart on camp-bed with a cigarette,
    recalling ruefully his Swedish tryst.
    It’s pretty gamey in that oubliette,
    and latterly his visitors are few
    and low status: just junior attachés
    and interns. No more television crews
    now camp beneath his balcony; that craze
    of troubadour paying court to caytiff king
    has passed. Now Julian’s the apostate,
    there’ll be an end of virtue-signalling.
    Let Cumberbatch and Gaga find new mates;
    the creep will linger like a nasty smell
    inside his Ecuadorian hotel.

    Reply
    • Susan Jarvis Bryant

      Thank you for your sonnet, Richard. Diversity is certainly permissible in poetry… though, I think you’ll find it all depends what site you’re on. I don’t agree with your message, but I admire the poem. It’s striking, engaging, and inspirational. It inspired me to respond with a sonnet of my own printed below. And, thank you for the word ‘rapey’… rape was a crime Assange was only found guilty of by the mainstream media – not to be trusted these days.

      Reply
      • Richard Craven

        How very refreshing Susan! And I think your sonnet in response matches my effort in every respect.

      • Susan Jarvis Bryant

        Richard, thank you very much for your lovely response. Your words are thoroughly appreciated, and it’s great to know that in spite of different viewpoints, we have the wonder of sonnets in common… the power of poetry never ceases to amaze me.

  10. Susan Jarvis Bryant

    SILENCED

    Today our sour world has gone astray.
    The sleazy scoffers skulk in lawless street.
    Blokes in feather boas wind their way
    To ladies’ loos as bobbies on the beat
    Attired in rainbow chiffon turn a blind
    Blue eye to gamey, rapey pervs in skirts.
    Seeds spilled in fertile Machiavellian minds
    Are reaped by those of snowy-collared shirts,
    Feasting from the public-funded troughs.
    These ministers of sinister misdeeds,
    These greedy, seedy, fat despotic toffs,
    Are paid to torture truth until it bleeds…

    When tyranny’s an ever-spreading blight,
    No honest journalist will see the light.

    Reply

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