Irish Examiner view: ​Ireland should speak out for Julian Assange 

Over two years ago, we said that to deliver up Assange would be a disaster for investigative journalism, for free speech, and a fillip for repressive regimes — we haven’t changed our mind

The Government has been depressingly silent over Julian Assange while it is happy to make plenty of other proclamations.

People may not care much about what happens to Julian Assange. Until recently he had been a long time out of the headlines.

Yet last week’s key hearings in the High Court in London remind us that it is not relevant whether we like, or approve, of someone at the centre of a legal action. It is important that they are treated with justice.

These thoughts arise in the case of Assange, just as they did with the hearing of Shamima Begum. Both were fighting appeals. Assange against a decision to extradite him to America, Begum against the revocation of her British citizenship for her part in joining — trafficked into it, according to her supporters — Islamic State.

More than two years ago, during a crucial moment in this interminable process, we said that to deliver up Assange, an Australian national, would be a disaster for investigative journalism, for free speech, and a fillip for repressive regimes. We haven’t changed our mind.

Assange’s lawyers say he will die in jail if he is transferred to the US. America’s lawyers say he may serve a mere 40 years. Either tariff sends an unmistakable signal that obtaining and publishing information from US classified sources can have potentially lethal consequences.

Before he died last year at 92, Daniel Ellsberg, who was prosecuted for his role in publishing the Pentagon Papers, which helped to end the Vietnam War, was a strong Assange supporter. Ellsberg was unsuccessfully pursued under the same US law.

American hypocrisy is an easy target for columnists with Al Jazeera. One wrote: “The world’s self-appointed greatest democracy has long made it clear that basic rights and freedoms are things that only its enemies must abide by.” Assange’s crime, the columnist added, was to utilise WikiLeaks to expose US military excesses, as in the notorious Collateral Murder video that was released in 2010.

“The video footage, which dates from 2007, shows a massacre of a dozen people in Baghdad by upbeat helicopter-borne US military personnel, who did not find it necessary to conceal the extent to which they were getting off on the slaughter. Among the murdered Iraqis were two staffers for the Reuters news agency. Talk about assaults on media freedom.”

Alan Rusbridger, the former Guardian editor, collaborated with Assange who he describes as one of a hybrid breed: “Part activist, part journalist, part publisher, part hacker.” He says: “The security state — for all that it does good and necessary work — needs to be monitored and held to account.

“The world of near-total surveillance, merely sketched by Orwell in Nineteen Eighty-Four, is now rather frighteningly real. We need brave defenders of our liberties. They won’t all be Hollywood hero material, any more than Orwell’s Winston Smith was.”

Veteran investigative journalist Duncan Campbell wrote: “At the high court, lawyers posed the pivotal question: how can exposing crime and torture be worse than committing them?”

The Irish Government has been depressingly silent over Assange while it is happy to make plenty of other proclamations. It should join the Australian leader Anthony Albanese to tell Joe Biden to move on. It might even use its much-vaunted influence as St Patrick’s Day approaches.

Farewell, Hairy Biker

For two decades, Dave Myers, and his lifetime chum Si King, took their BMW and Triumph motorbikes across Europe, Asia, and the US celebrating the work of artisan cooks and producers.

Certain demographics are felt no longer to be in fashion among the TikTok and Instagram generation, and others with particular axes to bear.

In politics, media, arts, and entertainment the contribution of what’s loosely described as “old white men” does not find favour with everyone.

But with the passing, from a particularly pernicious cancer, of Dave Myers, one half of the Hairy Bikers road trip cooking duo, it’s possible to note that generalisations should always be ignored. For two decades, Myers, and his lifetime chum Si King, took their BMW and Triumph motorbikes across Europe, Asia, and the US celebrating the work of artisan cooks and producers. And doing so with wit, good manners, and courtesy, in contrast to the lairy behaviour of other celebrity chefs and the likes of Jeremy Clarkson.

They demonstrated that masculinity doesn’t all have to be about “the bantz”. There can be few people, if any, who watched their Coming Home for Christmas TV special without shedding a tear. Myers’ chemotherapy meant he could no longer be hairy, nor a biker. But he could prepare a meal for the health service staff who had kept him alive. “Shall we do it again next year? I hope so” were his concluding words. Sadly, as we now know, not. TV has lost a treasure.

Turning back the throwaway society

When you visit the world’s most highly populated countries, such as China and India, and witness their giant economies at work you would be forgiven for concluding that ambitions for global net zero are fanciful, at best, and doomed at worst.

India’s population is 1.42bn. China’s is 1.4bn. Citizens of these behemoth nations crave everything that we have in terms of consumerism and lifestyle. And many are making progress. In India, there are already 323m cars. Fewer than 10% of people of driving age possess a vehicle.

Against sobering statistics, many people will ask what difference the contribution of 5m of us can make in the global scheme of things.

But we don’t get a free pass because we are small. The short answer is that we cannot afford to miss any trick in adopting a smarter, cleaner economy. And as quickly as possible.

A Government report concludes that we urgently need a new approach to waste management and it provides some eye-popping data in support. Two tonnes of waste were generated for every person in the country, the equivalent weight of two motor vehicles. The average EU citizen generates 530kg.

The new plan sets out targets for repair, re-use, recycling, and composting and comes on the back of the recently introduced deposit return scheme, a small enough measure but moving in the right direction.

Our indiscipline in segregating used materials efficiently was described as an “ongoing problem across the country” by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

A majority of Irish householders incorrectly dispose of their waste with two-thirds of the items in the general, black bin being wrongly placed.

The EPA has called on local authorities to carry out more 'target enforcement' which is bureaucrat-speak for wielding a bigger stick, possibly financial, with recalcitrant residents.

These protocols are particularly important in developments with higher densities and more communal living. In other words, apartments, which is the type of new home the Government is hoping will solve the housing crisis.

We don’t suppose we will match the standards of Japan where blocks of flats have “recycling monitors” whose job it is to double-check that tenants are fulfilling their civic responsibilities by neatly isolating up to 13 different kinds of refuse.

The European leaders are, as you might expect, the Germans. One city, Kiel on the Baltic coast, even has one of those snappy slogans beloved of evangelists. Kiel, say the district elders, wants to become “Europe’s first zero waste city”.

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Ireland also has to confront its over-reliance on incineration, which accounts for nearly 40% of waste management. Ireland’s two waste incinerators — Indaver in Co Meath and Covanta in Dublin — are already running at or close to capacity. Expansion plans are divisive.

An Bord Pleanála has reactivated and will consider anew a planning application for an incinerator — or “waste to energy facility” — in Cork Harbour, reigniting a controversy dating back decades.

It is going to require a major change in public attitudes and an acceptance that every individual must fulfil responsibilities, to turn back the throwaway society.