A Tale of Two Prisoners

Can Prince Andrew “toughen up” a British legal system historically subservient to the U.S.?

Mark Cramer (author of Old Man on a Green Bike and Urban Everesting)

Through the static of an old recording of Theodore Roosevelt speaking about American foreign policy, it’s difficult to discern whether he says, “Speak softly, carry a big stick,” or “…carry a big dick.” But one thing for sure, the British legal system has been servicing the big st/d/ick.

Two famous prisoners come to mind:

• Augusto Pinochet
• Julian Assange

The former Chilean dictator General Augusto Pinochet was indicted for human rights violations, including murder and torture, by Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón on October 10, 1998. He was arrested 10 days later in London, where he was held on house arrest for a year and a half before being inexplicably released by the British Labour government in March 2000.

No one would be protesting a pandemic stay-at-home order if they could be housed in Pinochet’s exclusive Surrey estate beside the Wentworth Golf Club, where he spent the duration of his arrest.

Compare this to the other famous foreign prisoner in London, Julian Assange.

No longer wanted for questioning by the Swedish government, Assange is held at the behest of the U.S. government. The indictment accuses Assange of trying to help Chelsea Manning log into Defense Department computers so that she could maintain her anonymity while downloading documents in the public interest and furnishing them to the information service called Wikileaks.

According to Glenn Greenwald:

“The factual allegations…boil down to encouraging a source to provide him information and taking efforts to protect the identity of that source. Journalists around the world should be deeply troubled by these unprecedented criminal charges.”

If our pandemic home were in Assange’s cell in Belmarsh Prison, we would all be supporting the gun-toting, anti-stay-at-home protesters.

Comparing the two prisoners

• We have Pinochet, guilty of mass murder during and after the 1973 CIA-supported coup d’état that ousted the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende.
• And we have Assange, guilty of mass information dumping, mainly related to American war crimes in Iraq, but also of divulging Democratic National Committee corruption in a 2016 conspiracy against Bernie Sanders.

The opposing symmetry between Pinochet and Assange is clear. The first guy tortured, killed and even had an opponent murdered in Washington, DC. The second guy aided and abetted journalists.

The historical connection between these two cases has been botched by the linear-thinking media. The CIA and other American “intelligence” agencies, comprising the Big Stick of American foreign policy, aided and abetted Pinochet but have been embarrassed and exposed by Assange. In both cases, the British legal system has been sucking the big stick.

FLASH. This may all change.

Now another potential extradition issue hits the Brits square in the royal groin: Prince Andrew has been asked to testify in the Jeffrey Epstein pedophile sex exploitation case, in particular regarding the Prince’s alleged relationship (captured in a famous photo) with then-teenager Virginia Giuffre and Epstein’s madam, Ghislaine Maxwell. Maxwell is now in custody, and an investigation that may depend on Andrew’s testimony is ongoing.

So here’s the proposition bet. Who is most likely to end up facing charges in an American courtroom?

• The purveyor of information about high-level corruption, Julian Assange.
• The alleged participant in high-level corruption, Prince Andrew.

To help tilt the balance a bit more in Assange’s favor, you can sign the petition at change.org.