Free Julian Assange

To me the basic tenant of democracy is Laws are made to be broken...if following them does great harm to society. Consider Martin Luther King, Jr  Should he have spent years in jail for using peaceful civil disobedience to break racist Southern laws? Of course not. He deserved the Nobel Peace Prize and a national holiday which he received for doing precisely that. Consider PFC Chelsea Manning. Did she deserve 7 years of prison including two of torture in solitary confinement for revealing classified info on US war crimes? Of course not. Had we a Manning and her conduit journalist Julian Assange in 2002, we might have avoided criminal Iraq war that needlessly killed hundreds of thousands, including 4,400 Americans. 

Then there is Australian journalist Julian Assange who published the classified information on US war crimes provided by PFC Manning. Assange has been languishing under extra judicial detention in the Ecuador embassy in London for 8 years now, deprived of proper health care, exercise and contact with the outside world, including legal representation. The UK and US governments would be thrilled if Assange dies there, riding them of an inconvenient journalist exposing monstrous polices they wage thru secrecy, fear and intimidation. Assange must be destroyed to deter others from practicing the profession that restrains governments from waging war around the globe.

Some believe Assange is rightly being punished for possibly colluding with Russia and the Trump campaign to influence the 2016 election. They feel these alleged new actions justify six previous years of persecution for revealing the truth about criminal war. To hold that position violates every shred of reverence for a just legal system and the unfettered right of a free press to disseminate the truth about our leaders.

US presidents hand out hero medals like candy to proven criminal war enablers like George W. Bush, George Tenant and Dick Cheney. It's time to recognize those working at their peril to expose the crimes of these medal holders, starting with Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange.