Julian Assange is headed home to Australia after striking a plea deal with US authorities. Finally, justice prevails for this genuine hero. His persecutors — driven by revenge and fear — lost. They no longer get to threaten him with imprisonment for up to 175 years. They can’t keep him away from his family anymore.He was robbed of 13½ years of his life and his health simply because he embarrassed the US government by outing ugly secrets and lies.Assange, 52, walked out of Britain’s Belmarsh prison Monday after 1,901 days behind bars. He had spent 23 hours a day in solitary confinement for more than two years. The British High Court granted bail and he was released at Stansted Airport to board a plane.This triumph is so much greater than Assange reclaiming freedom stolen from him by morally bankrupt prosecutors led by corrupt politicians.Journalists hailed his release as a win for targeted truth-seekers and the public’s right to know.“Julian Assange is free. Victory for the right to inform and to be informed. Victory for journalists around the world,” said Dominique Pradalie, president of the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), in a statement.“The attempted prosecution of Julian Assange cast a dark shadow over journalists, particularly those who cover national security issues,” said IFJ general secretary Anthony Bellanger.“Had Assange gone to prison for the rest of his life, any reporter handed a classified document would fear facing a similar fate.”This comes at a time when governments — Canada’s Liberals lead the pack — operate behind a thick veil of arrogant secrecy, mocking accountability. If ever there was a time for truth-seekers to rise, it is now.What a price Assange paid for doing his job. Since he founded WikiLeaks in 2006, he has published 10 million embarrassing, restricted documents, outing government corruption and human rights abuses.But it was his exposure of US Afghanistan and Iraq dirty war secrets, that gave the politically motivated, incompetent, and guilty deceivers an excuse to go after him with a vengeance.Assange obtained 400,000 war-related activity reports and 250,000 State Department cables sent over several years and published many of them — unredacted — on WikiLeaks in 2010.He was called a hacker, not a legitimate journalist. It was said he damaged US national security and endangered the lives of sources, and that meant he could be charged under the Espionage Act.Assange outed the US government downplaying the number of civilians killed during the Iraq war. He published a July 2007 video from a US AH-64 Apache helicopter firing on and killing a group of civilians including two men working for Reuters — Saeed Chmagh and Namir Noor-Eldeen. Warning: this account from a Dean Yates, former Reuters Baghdad Bureau chief is disturbing to watch.Imagine, exposing the wrong was viewed as more serious than the wrong itself.Hacker, journalist, whatever — it would have been unconscionable to remain silent on the information fed to him by former convicted US intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning.Assange spent seven years in a small office in the Ecuadorian embassy in London to avoid being extradited to Sweden where he faced rape charges. He denied them vigorously. Funny, how often these types of accusations pop up when the gang wants to get a man. Then just like that, the matter was dropped by Swedish authorities.In 2019, London’s Metropolitan Police hauled him off to Belmarsh.Assange fought a five-year battle to avoid being extradited to the US where his lawyers argued he’d face “state retaliation.”He is set to plead guilty to a felony charge in the North Mariana Islands Monday — a far cry from the 18 charges he was indicted on in 2019. The plea deal, still to be approved by a judge, would allow him to go free because of time already served.No, he won’t be setting foot on US soil to do that. Wise move. These ‘justice’ seekers proved they can’t be trusted.Assange rattled cages on both sides of the political spectrum. Truth to him is truth no matter what party the guilty belong to.He shamed former Republican president George W Bush who launched a “shock and awe” bombing campaign to save the world from former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein’s stockpile of weapons of mass destruction — a stockpile that was never found.But Iraqi civilians and coalition soldiers suffered the consequences of the attack — death and dismemberment.Former Democrat US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton can’t shake her bitterness over losing the 2016 election to former president, and current leading presidential contender Donald Trump. And she doesn’t seem like the forgiving type.While Assange was holed up at the Ecuadoran embassy, WikiLeaks data dumps continued. In 2016, 20,000 unflattering hacked Democratic National Committee emails, and emails from Clinton’s campaign manager John Podesta, were released the night before the election.Assange defended the release.“No-one disputes the public importance of these publications. It would be unconscionable for WikiLeaks to withhold such an archive from the public during an election,” he said.Assange’s persecutors must be angrily gnashing their teeth about him going home.Too bad for them.The serene look on his face video and photos showed of him on that flight to Bangkok was an unforgettable sight to behold.“WikiLeaks published ground-breaking stories of government corruption and human rights abuses, holding the powerful accountable for their actions,” said WikiLeaks in a statement.“As editor-in-chief Julian paid severely for these principles, and for the people’s right to know.”One can’t help but wonder if Assange thinks it was worth it, considering the hell he’s been through.Some must be trembling a tad, wondering what else he knows. Will more whistleblowers find him? Did they destroy the fight in him? Or will we be hearing more from champion of truth Assange?
Julian Assange is headed home to Australia after striking a plea deal with US authorities. Finally, justice prevails for this genuine hero. His persecutors — driven by revenge and fear — lost. They no longer get to threaten him with imprisonment for up to 175 years. They can’t keep him away from his family anymore.He was robbed of 13½ years of his life and his health simply because he embarrassed the US government by outing ugly secrets and lies.Assange, 52, walked out of Britain’s Belmarsh prison Monday after 1,901 days behind bars. He had spent 23 hours a day in solitary confinement for more than two years. The British High Court granted bail and he was released at Stansted Airport to board a plane.This triumph is so much greater than Assange reclaiming freedom stolen from him by morally bankrupt prosecutors led by corrupt politicians.Journalists hailed his release as a win for targeted truth-seekers and the public’s right to know.“Julian Assange is free. Victory for the right to inform and to be informed. Victory for journalists around the world,” said Dominique Pradalie, president of the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), in a statement.“The attempted prosecution of Julian Assange cast a dark shadow over journalists, particularly those who cover national security issues,” said IFJ general secretary Anthony Bellanger.“Had Assange gone to prison for the rest of his life, any reporter handed a classified document would fear facing a similar fate.”This comes at a time when governments — Canada’s Liberals lead the pack — operate behind a thick veil of arrogant secrecy, mocking accountability. If ever there was a time for truth-seekers to rise, it is now.What a price Assange paid for doing his job. Since he founded WikiLeaks in 2006, he has published 10 million embarrassing, restricted documents, outing government corruption and human rights abuses.But it was his exposure of US Afghanistan and Iraq dirty war secrets, that gave the politically motivated, incompetent, and guilty deceivers an excuse to go after him with a vengeance.Assange obtained 400,000 war-related activity reports and 250,000 State Department cables sent over several years and published many of them — unredacted — on WikiLeaks in 2010.He was called a hacker, not a legitimate journalist. It was said he damaged US national security and endangered the lives of sources, and that meant he could be charged under the Espionage Act.Assange outed the US government downplaying the number of civilians killed during the Iraq war. He published a July 2007 video from a US AH-64 Apache helicopter firing on and killing a group of civilians including two men working for Reuters — Saeed Chmagh and Namir Noor-Eldeen. Warning: this account from a Dean Yates, former Reuters Baghdad Bureau chief is disturbing to watch.Imagine, exposing the wrong was viewed as more serious than the wrong itself.Hacker, journalist, whatever — it would have been unconscionable to remain silent on the information fed to him by former convicted US intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning.Assange spent seven years in a small office in the Ecuadorian embassy in London to avoid being extradited to Sweden where he faced rape charges. He denied them vigorously. Funny, how often these types of accusations pop up when the gang wants to get a man. Then just like that, the matter was dropped by Swedish authorities.In 2019, London’s Metropolitan Police hauled him off to Belmarsh.Assange fought a five-year battle to avoid being extradited to the US where his lawyers argued he’d face “state retaliation.”He is set to plead guilty to a felony charge in the North Mariana Islands Monday — a far cry from the 18 charges he was indicted on in 2019. The plea deal, still to be approved by a judge, would allow him to go free because of time already served.No, he won’t be setting foot on US soil to do that. Wise move. These ‘justice’ seekers proved they can’t be trusted.Assange rattled cages on both sides of the political spectrum. Truth to him is truth no matter what party the guilty belong to.He shamed former Republican president George W Bush who launched a “shock and awe” bombing campaign to save the world from former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein’s stockpile of weapons of mass destruction — a stockpile that was never found.But Iraqi civilians and coalition soldiers suffered the consequences of the attack — death and dismemberment.Former Democrat US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton can’t shake her bitterness over losing the 2016 election to former president, and current leading presidential contender Donald Trump. And she doesn’t seem like the forgiving type.While Assange was holed up at the Ecuadoran embassy, WikiLeaks data dumps continued. In 2016, 20,000 unflattering hacked Democratic National Committee emails, and emails from Clinton’s campaign manager John Podesta, were released the night before the election.Assange defended the release.“No-one disputes the public importance of these publications. It would be unconscionable for WikiLeaks to withhold such an archive from the public during an election,” he said.Assange’s persecutors must be angrily gnashing their teeth about him going home.Too bad for them.The serene look on his face video and photos showed of him on that flight to Bangkok was an unforgettable sight to behold.“WikiLeaks published ground-breaking stories of government corruption and human rights abuses, holding the powerful accountable for their actions,” said WikiLeaks in a statement.“As editor-in-chief Julian paid severely for these principles, and for the people’s right to know.”One can’t help but wonder if Assange thinks it was worth it, considering the hell he’s been through.Some must be trembling a tad, wondering what else he knows. Will more whistleblowers find him? Did they destroy the fight in him? Or will we be hearing more from champion of truth Assange?
