{"id":365928,"date":"2018-06-19T08:19:40","date_gmt":"2018-06-19T07:19:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/bringing-julian-assange-home-world-socialist-web-site\/"},"modified":"2018-06-19T08:19:40","modified_gmt":"2018-06-19T07:19:40","slug":"bringing-julian-assange-home-world-socialist-web-site","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/bringing-julian-assange-home-world-socialist-web-site\/","title":{"rendered":"Bringing Julian Assange Home &#8211; World Socialist Web Site"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"content\">\n<h3 class=\"nomargin\">\u00a0<\/h3>\n<h2>Bringing Julian Assange Home<\/h2>\n<h5>\n<p>    By<br \/>\n    John Pilger<br \/>\n    <br \/>19 June 2018<\/p>\n<\/h5>\n<p>The persecution of Julian Assange must end. Or it will end in tragedy.<\/p>\n<p>The Australian government and Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull have an historic opportunity to decide which it will be. They can remain silent, for which history will be unforgiving. Or they can act in the interests of justice and humanity and bring this remarkable Australian citizen home.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"480\" height=\"270\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/7GUuVlt2Ixc?rel=0&amp;hd=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><span style=\"background-color:#FFFFFF; padding-top:10px;\">John Pilger&#8217;s speech to the SEP rally in defence of Julian Assange<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Assange does not ask for special treatment. The government has clear diplomatic and moral obligations to protect Australian citizens abroad from gross injustice: in Julian&#8217;s case, from a gross miscarriage of justice and the extreme danger that awaits him should he walk out of the Ecuadorean embassy in London unprotected.<\/p>\n<p>We know from the Chelsea Manning case what he can expect if a US extradition warrant is successful\u2014a United Nations Special Rapporteur called it torture.<\/p>\n<p>I know Julian Assange well; I regard him as a close friend, a person of extraordinary resilience and courage. I have watched a tsunami of lies and smear engulf him, endlessly, vindictively, perfidiously; and I know why they smear him.<\/p>\n<p>In 2008, a plan to destroy both WikiLeaks and Assange was laid out in a top secret document dated 8 March, 2008. The authors were the Cyber Counter-intelligence Assessments Branch of the US Defence Department. They described in detail how important it was to destroy the \u201cfeeling of trust\u201d that is WikiLeaks\u2019 \u201ccentre of gravity.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>This would be achieved, they wrote, with threats of \u201cexposure [and] criminal prosecution\u201d and an unrelenting assault on reputation. The aim was to silence and criminalise WikiLeaks and its editor and publisher. It was as if they planned a war on a single&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.wsws.org\/en\/articles\/2018\/06\/19\/john-j19.html\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0 Bringing Julian Assange Home By John Pilger 19 June 2018 The persecution of Julian Assange must end. Or it will end in tragedy. The Australian government and Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull have an historic opportunity to decide which it will be. They can remain silent, for which history will be unforgiving. Or they can [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2526,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-365928","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365928","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2526"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=365928"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365928\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=365928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=365928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=365928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}