There are clearly some who are unhappy with Assange's release and believe he should have been either executed or incarcerated for life. The same day as the Notre Dame fire (which dominated the news) - the UK government arrested him in April 2019 at the Ecuadorian embassy where he had already been holed up since 2012. The reasons for his hiding in the embassy are rooted in bogus (and now dropped) charges of rape in Sweden. He suspected that as soon as he ended up in a UK court for an extradition hearing, the US would intervene and unwrap a sealed indictment against him. Its existence was an all but an open secret.
This led him to flee to the embassy as he was trying to get out of the UK. Between his stay in the embassy and Belmarsh, he would spend a total of twelve years in some form of arrest.
Why after all these years did the US effectively drop the issue and let him take a plea? Why did he take it? In his case, I'm sure he just wants it all to end and it was a way for the US to save face and for everyone to walk away. The risks of not taking the plea were too great.
Is Australian PM Albanese worthy of praise, or Biden? Some might think so. I think Assange owes a great deal of thanks to the persistent campaign that was waged by advocates of freedom and alternative media. Though it's been years, they kept the pressure on.
I think the real issue here is that the original charges against Assange related to Wikileaks, Manning, and so forth are questionable. Assange was a publisher or journalist - not the leaker or a hacker. The case for the prosecution was not airtight.
But what really turned the larger public and much of the Left against him was related to the 2016 US presidential election and the question as to whether or not he hacked the DNC or perhaps that Russia did it and he willingly collaborated with Moscow and published materials that were damaging to the Clinton campaign. This narrative (which he has always rejected) turned many against him and while the Trump people briefly praised him, they quickly turned on him once in power and plotted his death and some within the administration and the GOP called for it publicly.
Assange always contended that the materials were leaked to him and he insisted it wasn't a state actor. This gets into the whole question of Seth Rich and some other sordid issues surrounding the DNC. Sadly (and conveniently for some) this all went off the rails with discussions of Pizzagate, and a bunch of other nutty conspiracies that would later be associated with QAnon. After that any genuine questions concerning what happened with the DNC files that questioned the official anti-Russia narrative were dismissed as conspiracy theory. The issues connected to Rich, the DNC files, and Assange were all caught up in the Russia-interference narrative being put forward by the DNC and the media. The narrative would later collapse but even today it's still taken as a given.
In my opinion the Manning-related leaks case was unlikely to stand up in court. Assange's enemies wanted to see him punished for the DNC leaks and yet I think it's safe to say after this June 2024 deal - the US government has no case and they know it. And that's why (in the end) they dropped it. The Assange story is (at this point) part of another era and they'd like it to go away. If he's locked up, it's as if the government has something to hide or is threatened by him. Now that's he free - it's as if there's nothing to see here.
With all the scandals surrounding 9/11 and the Iraq War - the farcical introduction of the Patriot Act, the propaganda campaign in the lead-up to the Iraq invasion, the lack of WMD, the cooked intelligence, the Plame Affair, the failed Rumsfeld strategy, all the scandals and cover-ups regarding the insurgency, Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, and revelations of the US government spying on its citizens in 2005, the list just goes on and on.
It was a crazy time to be sure. And then it got crazier with the 2010 Wikileaks release of the Collateral Murder video, the State Department files and the Iraq War Logs. It was like the Pentagon Papers all over again - a revelation of Pentagon cover-ups and spin and lies to the public related to US policy and the bogus nature of the official narrative.
Everything simmered for a season. There was a lot of debate - a lot of it superficial and then in 2013 came the Snowden revelations and the fact that US attempts at espionage and information capture and analysis was beyond anything anyone had previously seen or imagined. The US worked with its allies, and spied on them as well - even heads of state. At this point it had been revealed that the US effectively gobbled up data on all communications in the world - phone calls, emails, and internet activity. It was tracking banking, and in many cases through collated data was able to track movement, it could turn on phones and spy through computers. It was stuff straight out of science fiction.
Within little more than a decade the US had effectively rescinded a good portion of the Bill of Rights. It was the scandal that wasn't.
It should have been like the 1970's and the societal shake-up that happened in the wake of Watergate and all the revelations about the White House, CIA, and FBI. In fact it was really much more severe and when viewed historically there should have been outrage and probably a great deal of protest in the streets and a real shake-up in government with serious investigations and criminal trials. But this really didn't happen. People largely didn't seem to care or pay attention. There was a brief buzz for a year and a day, a lot of phoney debates in the media, the US congress, and some parliaments - and then it all just started to fade away.
The period never quite captured the 1970's 'vibe' - the feeling of angst, powerlessness, treachery, and paranoia that was so evident in many of the movies of the period. And yet for a few years there was (at least in some quarters) a sense of real unease as to where all this was headed and a palpable fear for those who dared to challenge the Empire.
Snowden was in exile, Assange holed up in the embassy and other whistleblowers were in prison and blacklisted.
But why did it just fade away? Why wasn't there more outrage?
I think the media played a role in this. I also think the rise of the Tea Party and then the Trump movement muddied the waters considerably. Everything got run through a political filter and it became difficult to have an objective non-aligned or non-partisan discussion.
But more than any of this it was the other changes taking place in society. The Smartphone was coming on to the scene and with it there was growth in things like online banking. Soon this was tied in with the phone and there was a rise in not only GPS technology being used in cars but suddenly everyone had a phone that tracked your location via all the apps being downloaded.
Snowden revealed that the US government was capturing this data and using it - effectively compiling dossiers on everyone and their habits. Data mining and algorithms can analyze movements, purchases, email texts, visited websites - and everything about you and your network of people to determine if you are a potential threat. This makes the Stasi look like an amateur organisation, a bunch of Keystone Cops.
But between the phones, and the apps, and the new online lifestyle that was emerging people just didn't want to give it up, regardless of who was watching and listening - as indeed our televisions and phones are in fact listening - as many people note with the ads that are offered. But that data being used for targeted ads is also available to the US government.
And then there's the other huge cultural shift with social media. It had already been on the scene a few years but it was completely transformed by the Smartphone and with these new interfaces came a huge shift in values. Older generations (and even some Gen Xers like me) cannot fathom this desire to plaster pictures of yourself, your family, and your activities all over the public internet. A new exhibitionist ethos emerged (under the scam-marketing of 'authenticity') and it has been so transformative that barely a decade later people can't seem to remember what life was like before it.
The bottom line was that the new ethos created a culture that was not going to live without these things - a point emphasized among the younger generation. Few people are willing to be like me. I like computers and use a Linux operating system (because I dislike Windows) and yet I don't own a Smartphone, I don't have any social media accounts, and to this day I still have never owned or used a GPS. It's not because I'm inordinately paranoid - though I've read enough history to make me a bit of a cynic. For me, it's the ethics associated with these technologies that I don't like. I don't want to live that way and more than a decade into it I'm start to feel rather vindicated as more and more people are now seeing the problems with it all and how its destroying their lives and the lives of their children. For the record some of my children now have Smartphones but they didn't get them until they were nineteen, twenty, and older. Consequently they use them with restraint - as tools not toys.
So while people could be told about all the disturbing surveillance, when weighed against either having and using all these technologies or giving them up - they'd rather just keep them and they figure if you're not doing anything wrong, then you have nothing to worry about.
And now that we're a decade-plus into this new world, I find young adults (say running a cash register) that cannot even understand why you don't want to give your phone number, or let them scan your driver's license, or have them take your picture at a doctor's office.
And since I mentioned history above, it's worth noting that general historical knowledge must be at some kind of all time low. People (generally speaking) just don't seem to know much and have no grid in which to 'plug in' this knowledge and concern. It was no coincidence that German society was the most upset by these revelations. The UK which has turned into a near-Orwellian society seems the least troubled. With wars and other upheavals on the horizon, I think a lot of people are going to be in for a shock when this technology starts to oppress them and states are in crisis. Western society is much closer to a Chinese-style 'social credit score' than most realize.
The angst of that period has now passed. The War on Terror was all but over in 2011 with the Arab Spring and the death of bin Laden. It was narrowly revived with the rise of ISIS and the dramatic beheading videos, along with the subsequent caliphate, and the sudden territorial expansion into Iraq. The 2013-2017 war followed along with the media cover-up of the US destruction of Raqqa and Mosul and the dark part the US played in the Syrian War. After all the kerfuffle surrounding Wikileaks, Assange, and 2016 campaign, the book was all but closed on that period. It was now the period of Trump, Russia, China, and other issues. The world had moved on and all the revelations, jailed journalists, and other mysteries were yesterday's news.
I don't think the US Establishment really wants to revisit that period. It's been long enough now that a younger generation is coming to adulthood that doesn't even know who Assange is. The Wikileaks heyday is now more than a decade ago. With no real case, and no desire to see a lot of uncomfortable things brought out in court, the Biden administration is just shutting the door. His GOP opponents will make some noise about this in order to score political points but it's disingenuous as always.
What about Assange? He's only fifty-two years old. What will he do? I honestly cannot say and yet I would think he's going to tread lightly. He's been given a second chance at life. I would think the most discouraging thing for someone like him or Snowden is the realization that for all their efforts and suffering - the bulk of the public just doesn't care and they're already on the cusp of being forgotten. The empire won, at least as far as they are concerned.
See also:
https://pilgrimunderground.blogspot.com/2016/12/real-world-elements-in-jason-bourne-2016.html