Assange displaces bin Laden as America's most hated person in the world

I'm dismayed but not surprised at the outpouring of vitriol and hatred directed at Julian Assange upon his arrest in London by the Brits after seven years holed up in the Ecuador embassy. Some anti war progressives completely forget or disparage his efforts back in 2010 to assist Pvt. Chelsea Manning in revealing US war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. US officials, horrified their crimes against humanity were being exposed, embarked on a relentless assault on Assange, calling for his indictment, imprisonment, even his death for possible technical violations of US security laws. 

The campaign worked brilliantly as those who should know better swallow the accusations without a thought to the depth of the US propaganda campaign against Assange and the larger issue of the real criminality at work; US perpetual war throughout the Middle East and Africa and the need to end it. Assange's prickly, unrepentant persona and possible collusion with the Trump campaign hasn't helped his cause in getting Americans to consider his contributions that have made him a hero to the antiwar movement, garnered him Nobel Peace Prize nominations and made him a symbol of unfettered journalism in the digital age to inform the public, regardless of personal peccadilloes.  To his US critics he's a rat, a rapist, a traitor (tho not a US citizen), a narcissist, a thug, a con man, a Trumper, a Russian agent, a non-journalist, or descriptions too profane to repeat. 

That's a shame. But hat's off to America's disinformation campaign, deflecting the public from peeking into murderous US military policy by turning Julian Assange into the most hated person in the world.