Unfortunately for Assange, he's found out the hard way how wrongly placed ignorant Leftist idealism is !

It's all BS, and if Australia was an independent country he'd be working FOR our own intelligence agencies and nations OWN interests.
- And I fail to see how he's not STILL a somewhat valuable asset.

He's not a US citizen, he's not party to their laws or feelings.
He doesn't owe any allegiance to the US secrecy act any more than a North Korean national.

The rape charges are bogus.
The hacking charges are bogus.
Bradley Manning wasn't Assange's friend he was there to entrap Assange, and he failed, Assange did not try to hack into SIPRnet

All of this stuff came about in part because the US goverernment deliberately put backdoors into all whistle blowing platforms.

Eventually getting Assange tied in with taking down Trump, because it was all done by the same people.

You've been a bit weak on this issue Binoy, but I thank you for highlighting the issue nonetheless.

The US doesn't care about journalists, it cares about keeping the finer details of its covert wars and wars for profit under the radar.
- So it can keep doing that stuff -

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/apr/05/wikileaks-us-army-iraq-attack

Breach of Privilege can destroy a case as per Victoria's Lawyer X.
Also why is the New York Times not being prosecuted ?
They published the same documents.

Revealing US military secrets is NOT "freedom of speech".

Difficult one.

Need for public to know, yet loyalty to the political system you live in.

leaders of any political system, obviously, don't take kindly to intelligence being revealed

It seems to me that the only persons who can be extradited to America for either spying and/or treason are American citizens or those who have committed acts of espionage while living in America.

But even in the latter case the American authorities have not always done so. In a recent essay by Paul Monk he pointed out an described at least two cases (and possibly more) where known Chinese spies got off scot-free laughing-all-the-way-to-the-bank.

Otherwise the USA has no legal right to even pretend that they can extradite Assange - zero,zilch!

Meanwhile, as far as I know as per the usual precedent of governments having the obligation and even legal right to assist and protect their citizens in foreign countries, the Australian government is obliged to assist Assange.