As soon as Assange had landed in Canberra all those people eagerly awaiting his release began to assess the ramifications of the plea bargain…

So Assange is as free as one can be in a colony of the Empire of Lies. Did the Empire of Lies get what it wanted with this settlement?

The criminalization of journalism is certainly the most important element of this settlement. But as part of the settlement, the emails of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), for which Seth Rich was killed, and which decisively influenced the election result of Hillary Clinton against Donald Trump in 2016, had to be removed from WikiLeaks.

Robert Bridge summarized the whole story and its consequences in his article published on 'Russia Today' which you can see here: Why Assange’s plea deal is bad news for investigative journalism.

The next thing is the part of the agreement that was not written in the court documents. Julian Assange can hardly count on personal security in Australia like Edward Snowden can in Russia. This could mean the quiet elimination of WikiLeaks, or even its reorientation to Imperial propaganda. I hope I'm wrong, but we're unlikely to see material similar to what Assange exhibited before his persecution:

Assange is free, but you are not. You have been deprived of your freedom of speech, you have been deprived of your freedom to access true information, and most importantly: you have been deprived of your freedom to punish the criminals who did all this to you, and who Assange has exposed.

So the struggle is not over. Assange has done a large part of the work, but the most important thing – punishing the criminals – is completely up to us…