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Why Donald Trump Must Pardon Julian Assange
By Vember
Global Research, July 29, 2018

Url of this article:
https://www.globalresearch.ca/why-donald-trump-must-pardon-julian-assange/5648325

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The case of Julian Assange’s asylum has reached a critical breaking point. After being arbitrarily detained in the Ecuadorian embassy for over six years despite two official rulings by the United Nations Human Rights Council that he should be released, and having had his communications cut off over two months ago, Glen Greenwald of The Intercept and RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan both confirm from an anonymous source close to the campaign that Ecuador’s president Lenin Moreno is in close talks with UK government to evict him from the embassy despite his legal asylum claim. This comes not long after the recent ruling by the Inter-American Human Rights Court that clarified that those granted political asylum have the right by the governments that granted it to them to safe passage outside of the country, which in this case could apply to Julian either back to his home country of Australia, or anywhere else that has or will grant him asylum.

A doctor that has evaluated Julian’s health has reported it to be in ‘dangerous’ condition. It was also revealed on the #Unity4J livestream vigil that he is suffering from a bad root canal infection from a broken tooth caused by a piece of metal someone slipped into his food. The online vigils have served as a live public emergency meeting of journalists, activists, politicians, whistleblowers, and celebrities all joining in with their support for his freedom and release. They also have discussed ideas for solutions like writing the Nobel Peace committee in support of Julian, and using a mass movement of protesters to surround the embassy, bringing mass awareness to the campaign, and perhaps even being used to secure his safe transport into a more suitable location. After all, who could forget how the police in Iran walked away from the protesters putting flowers in their guns in 1979?

The torture of Julian Assange must end and it must end in his immediate freedom. The vilification of a publisher with an impeccable track record of never needing to retract anything legally leaked to his organization is the vilification of the free press itself. Prosecuting him would set a dangerous and insane precedent never before seen in America and would extend to even the likes of The New York Times & The Washington Post. Those who refuse to speak out against this are the ones who may ironically find themselves targeted next down this treacherously slippery slope of the erosion of freedoms and human rights we are seeing here and all over the world today. As we all know cutting the head off of the hydra does nothing to weaken it’s function. It goes on thriving as if nothing ever even happened. Wikileaks has and will continue to live on as an inspiring symbol of truth and integrity and as a viable channel for all those with classified information that reveals illegal activity and other forms of unjust atrocities.

Persecuting it’s editor has only seemed to strengthen the communities behind independent media publishing while it’s the main stream media who remains deafeningly silent in comparison and compliance. They think they can stop people from wanting and spreading the truth non-violently but as we have seen throughout history all those who have tried have failed. What Nelson Mandela, a political prisoner for over thirty years, was to the previous generation, Julian Assange is to ours. You can not exterminate the truth without exterminating yourself in the process. This is the fortune the United States intelligence agencies—who are justifiably neither—are unraveling for themselves as we speak. They’re angry and lashing out like a child or elder with dementia, making up vapid phrases like Secretary of the State Mike Pompeo’s “non-state hostile intelligence service” which serve as nothing but a smokescreen for their grand jury deliberately set up to indict Julian if the UK does indeed give him up for extradition.[1] Donald Trump spoke out in favor of Wikileaks multiple times during the 2016 presidential elections and it was only the day after this statement was made, when asked if Julian Assange should be issued an arrest warrant, he responded by saying it would be “OK by me.” Let’s look at some statistics:

“In the more than 162,500 cases prosecuted by U.S. attorneys from 2009 to 2010, grand juries voted not to return an indictment in only 11, according to data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics equivalent to one in 14,759 cases, or 0.0068 percent.” [2]

This is not justice. This is a last ditch effort by two compartmentalized and internally dichotomic governments in collapse to save their already scarred and tarnished faces. It’s a tragic and terrible masquerade that must end immediately.

It’s unclear what the exact outcome is going to be of the high level talks Moreno will have during his scheduled visit this week to the Global Disability Summit hosted by the UK government. A statement was released on Sunday July 22nd from Qutio stating: “The Ecuadorian State will only talk and promote understandings about Mr. Assange’s asylum, within the framework of international law, with the interested party’s lawyers and with the British government. At the moment, due to the complexity of the topic, a short or long term solution is not in sight.”  A sofa was seen this morning being removed from the embassy into a white van which lead some to speculate as to why. What is clear, however, is Donald Trump now has a history of pardoning people who have gone against the FBI and other government agencies. Take for example the recent pardons of Dwight and Steven Hammond, the Oregon ranchers who have been in standoffs with BLM and the FBI for decades and were imprisoned for arson on federal land.[3] Their story is not without controversy, in some ways like Julian Assange’s case has become over the years, and he just may be Donald Trump’s only hope for finally resolving the “Russiagate” narrative that has still yet to release any real evidence to support their slanderous and unsubstantiated scapegoating propaganda once and for all.

Host Sean Hannity [Fox News]: “Can you say to the American people unequivocally that you did not get this information about the DNC, John Podesta’s emails — can you tell the American people 1,000 percent you did not get it from Russia . . . “

Julian Assange: “Yes.”

Hannity: “. . . or anybody associated with Russia?”

Assange: “We — we can say and we have said repeatedly . . . “

Hannity: “Right.”

Assange: “. . . over the last two months, that our source is not the Russian government and it is not a state party.”

— exchange on “Hannity” on Fox News, Jan. 3, 2017 [4]

On the #Unity4J emergency public meeting that was broadcasted live last night the ex-CIA whistleblower Ray McGovern referred to what is known as ‘Russiagate’ as “FBI-Gate” and also mentioned his opinion that if Julian Assange and Wikileaks were active before 9/11—it never would have happened at all—citing frustrations from the FBI in Minnesota about one of the eventual hijackers attempting to learn how to fly planes without a care for how they took off or landed just days prior to the attack. “Before you know it they’re going to take another crack at the twin towers.” A supervisor said on 9/9. Ray went back and asked the supervisor and an agent responsible for leading the red team testing airports by bringing “bomb-like” substances onto planes and succeeded 9 times out of 10 and whose superiors in Washington were also not listening to: “If Wikileaks had been available back then, would you have gone to Julian Assange, to get this word out so Americans could know how dangerous this situation was? And they said yeah, yeah, it was that bad we could see it coming.”

Robert Mueller has alleged that Guccifer 2.0, who claims to have hacked the Democratic National Committee’s and leaked the e-mails, not only did it but is also a Russian operative, which directly contradicts Julian Assange’s and Kim Dotdom’s statements that the source of the DNC emails was neither Russian nor any state party.

So who are we going to believe here?

The FBI who routinely lies and covers up their own negligence in regards to following due diligence and has yet to release a single shred of evidence pertaining any of this to be true? Or the one man whose organization has never been wrong, and who many in our corrupt government intelligence asylums have voiced their murderous intentions for?

Donald Trump, as controversial as he may be, still tries to do the right thing he says. That is ultimately, if taking his words at face value of course, why he pardoned the Hammonds: “I was just trying to do the right thing.”  He said. Giving Julian Assange a full pardon from any of the false charges brought upon by the secretive Patriot Act trainwreck known as the FISA court and the rigged grand jury indictment is not only doing the right thing, but could end this entire charade once and for all. If this could be settled entirely within the UK courts without fear of extradition over the minor allegations he skipped bail to claim asylum—a potential three months maximum charge—or contempt of court which can be two years maximum which he has already served almost four times over—it could finally lead to immediately treating his ailing health and securing his much-deserved freedom once and for all.

*

Vember is a pen name.

Notes

[1] https://www.justice4assange.com/US-Extradition.html

[2] https://www.yahoo.com/news/ferguson-federal-grand-jury-indictment-statistics-history-134942645.html

[3] https://www.oregonlive.com/oregon-standoff/2018/07/oregon_ranchers_pardoned_by_tr.html

[4] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2017/01/05/julian-assanges-claim-that-there-was-no-russian-involvement-in-wikileaks-emails/?utm_term=.60a0e8c464f1

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