Julian Assange, the very definition of a modern internet journalist, is out of jail.\u00a0\u00a0He flew to the North Mariana Islands.\u00a0\u00a0Why there, a single spec of dry land in the vast Pacific north of Guam called Saipan, infamous from World War II?\u00a0Saipan has the one thing that Assange needed . It has a US Court. (The US has judicial jurisdiction left over from their World War II occupation).\u00a0\u00a0He made a deal with the US Department of Justice.\u00a0\u00a0Assange pled guilty to charges of aiding an American soldier (Chelsea Manning) to reveal classified documents and received a five year sentence.\u00a0\u00a0And since he\u2019s already served five years in jail in Great Britain, awaiting extradition to the US, he\u00a0\u00a0is now \u201cfree\u201d in his native Australia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Julian Assange, may be responsible for the death of men and women who helped the United States as informants, revealed in his \u201cjournalism\u201d. He published the Russian hacked Democratic Committee computer information in 2016. So, if nothing else, Assange has some responsibility for the Presidency of Donald Trump. Assange definitely put US secrets out in public. Not just a few, but millions of pages of documents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Assange is a \u201chero\u201d to those who are against the United States, to Republicans who wanted to embarrass the Democrats, and to Russians who used his material to advance their cause worldwide. He\u2019s a \u201cmaverick\u201d, a man convinced that nothing should be kept secret. Sunlight cleanses all (or bleaches everything white). In our conspiratorial world, his view appeals to many. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And in his five years in British prison, plus seven years in self-imposed imprisonment in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, he has been a foreign policy thorn in the side of President Obama, Trump and Biden. This plea deal \u201crips off the bandage\u201d, furthering US relations with Assange\u2019s native Australia, and lets the British breathe easier (Assange was popular in the UK). <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Here\u2019s my \u201cdream\u201d. He lands in Saipan, and is \u201cadjudicated\u201d by the Court. He then gets on a private plane, free to fly home to Australia. Somewhere over the Pacific, maybe near Howland Island (where Amelia Earhart disappeared in 1937) his plane just\u2026disappears\u2026along with Assange. But dreams are just wishes: Assange is a free man walking in Canberra, Australia today.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n I believe in the freedom of the press, and the power of journalism. And I remember the \u201cPentagon Papers\u201d, stolen from the Department of Defense and given to the Washington Post <\/em>to prove that the Pentagon and the President knowingly lied to the American people about Vietnam. But those papers didn\u2019t get anyone killed. They embarrassed the government, and furthered public opinion against the war. Chelsea Manning is no Daniel Ellsberg, and Julian Assange and Wikileaks <\/em>ain\u2019t Ben Bradlee and the Washington Post, <\/em>either.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\nAnti-Hero<\/h3>\n\n\n\n