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Assange’s Persecution Highlights Dangers to the Freedom of Speech and Free Media

Thursday November 22, 2018

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If you are a journalist and you discover something that is clearly unethical, and possibly even illegal, and you choose to report it what happens next? Well, you could win a Pulitzer Prize or, on the other hand, you might wind up hiding in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London for six years.

Julian Assange is the founder and editor in chief of the controversial news and information site WikiLeaks. As the name implies, since 2006 the site has become famous, or perhaps notorious, for its publication of materials that have been leaked to it by government officials and other sources who consider the information to be of value to the public but unlikely to be accepted by the mainstream media, which has become increasingly corporatized and timid.

WikiLeaks became known to a global audience back in 2010 when it obtained from US Army enlisted soldier Bradley Manning a large quantity of classified documents relating to the various wars that the United States was fighting in Asia. Some of the material included what might be regarded as war crimes. Manning’s motives for sharing the information can perhaps be debated but he subsequently regarded himself as a whistleblower, a claim that was ignored, and was sentenced to 35 years in military prison for his mishandling of classified information.
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Trump's Saudi Statement: Missing The Real Message

Wednesday November 21, 2018

Members of the #Resistance are trashing President Trump's statement of unwavering friendship with Saudi Arabia despite his own CIA reportedly concluding that the Saudi prince was directly involved in the killing of a dissident journalist. But they are missing the point in demanding that the US "punish" Saudi Arabia. The solution is not to "punish" the Saudis. The solution is to cease providing the the weapons to kill Yemen and to re-assess the US relationship with Iran. In a special Ron Paul Liberty Report we discuss how all of Washington gets the Khoshoggi case totally wrong...
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Julian Assange Deserves a Medal of Freedom, Not a Secret Indictment

Wednesday November 21, 2018

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Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has been secretly indicted by the Trump administration’s Justice Department, “a drastic escalation” of the feds’ efforts against him, the New York Times reported. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has denounced Wikileaks as a “non-state hostile intelligence service” and labeled Assange a “fraud,” “coward,” and “enemy.” But rather than a federal indictment, Assange deserves a tweaked version of one of Washington’s hottest honorifics.
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Assange Under Siege... Where is Justice? With Lew Rockwell

Wednesday November 21, 2018

What kind of justice system do we have in the US when publishers of the truth that government does not want you to know are threatened with imprisonment and even the death penalty? Ron Paul and Lew Rockwell discuss the terrible and shameful treatment of publisher, journalist, and truth-teller Julian Assange...
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The Reason for Killing Iranians

Tuesday November 20, 2018

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While US sanctions technically permit Iran to import medicines, it is actually just a ruse to make it look like US officials are kind, compassionate, and benevolent. In actuality, the way the sanctions work will mean that the Iranian people will inevitably be deprived of much-needed medicines. That’s because the US extends its sanctions system to banks that process payments to Iran, which is likely to inhibit the importation of medicines into Iran.

But that’s the point behind the sanctions: to kill as many Iranians as possible in the hope that they will rise up in a violent revolution, oust Iran’s anti-US regime from power, and install another pro-US regime, like that of the Shah of Iran, who the CIA installed into power in its 1953 coup that destroyed Iran’s experiment with democracy.

Never mind that the Iranians, who live in a country that has strict gun control, lack the means to violently overthrow their government. And never mind that hundreds of thousands of Iranians would likely die in such a revolution, just like what has happened in the US-supported revolution in Syria.


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The Only Regime Change that Is Needed Is in Washington

Monday November 19, 2018

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One of the things to look forward to in the upcoming holiday season is the special treats that one is allowed to sample. Fruitcake and nuts are Thanksgiving and Christmas favorites. They usually come in tins or special packages but it seems that this season some of the nuts have escaped and have fled to obtain sanctuary from the Trump Administration.

Currently, there is certainly a wide range of nuts available on display in the West Wing. There is the delicate but hairy Bolton, which has recently received the coveted “Defender of Israel” award, and also the robust Pompeo, courageously bucking the trend to overeat during the holidays by telling the Iranian people that they should either surrender or starve to death. And then there is the always popular Haley, voting audaciously to give part of Syria to Israel as a holiday treat.

But my vote for the most magnificent nut in an Administration that is overflowing with such talent would be the esteemed United States Special Representative for Syria Engagement James Jeffrey. The accolade is in part due to the fact that Jeffrey started out relatively sane as a career diplomat with the State Department, holding ambassadorships in Iraq, Turkey, and Albania. He had to work hard to become as demented as he now is but was helped along the way by signing on as a visiting fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), which is a spin-off of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
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Pentagon Fails First Audit, Neocons Demand More Spending!

Monday November 19, 2018

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The Pentagon has finally completed its first ever audit and the results are as many of us expected. After spending nearly a billion dollars to find out what has happened to trillions in unaccounted-for spending, the long look through the books has concluded that only ten percent of all Pentagon agencies pass muster. I am surprised any of them did.
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Progress or Failure in North Korea?

Saturday November 17, 2018

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In this same week the New York Times asserted North Korea is engaged in a “great deception” over its nuclear forces, South Korean unification minister Cho Myoung Gyon is visiting the United States with plans to meet Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, a Member of Congress, and to address several forums.
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A White House Press Pass Has Nothing to do with the First Amendment

Saturday November 17, 2018

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A federal judge this week ruled the White House must temporarily re-instate the press pass of CNN reporter Jim Acosta's, who had been barred after an argument with Donald Trump in the press room. The judge ruled the White House had violated due process by banning Acosta.

CNN, however, had requested a ruling saying that Acosta more or less had a constitutional right to a press pass, and that the First Amendment guaranteed CNN and its reporters access to the White House press conference room.

Judge Timothy Kelly disagreed. According to the Washington Post:
In explaining his decision, Kelly said he agreed with the government’s argument that there was no First Amendment right to come onto the White House grounds. But, he said, once the White House opened up the grounds to reporters, the First Amendment applied.
On the due process issue, Kelly is mostly right on this one. But Kelly gets it wrong when he says that the First Amendment potentially applies wherever the White House has opened up access to reporters overall.
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Amnesty Strips Aung San Suu Kyi of its Highest Honor; Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize Should be Next

Saturday November 17, 2018

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Amnesty International announced it would strip Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi of its top award, saying it was “profoundly dismayed” at her failure to acknowledge the full scale of atrocities against the Rohingya people.

Before you are tempted to view this as some kind of principled, honorable move on Amnesty’s part, stop yourself and check out its dubious government and corporate funding sources, its selective support for the concept of free speech and the fact that it spends quite a bit of time soft-pedaling Western imperialism and its atrocities while magnifying the wrongdoings of the West’s adversaries.

Amnesty’s attempt to win plaudits for its decision to revoke Suu Kyi’s award has come after mounting calls for the controversial figure’s 1991 Nobel Peace Prize to be stripped from her. Nearly half a million people have signed a Change.org petition calling for the Nobel Committee to take back the award.

Given that the committee has been, shall we say, less than picky, about who it bestows the honor on, we can probably assume Suu Kyi will remain on the recipients list. Not to mention, the committee has already confirmed that worrying about what recipients do after the award ceremony isn’t part of the job. You see, the rules regulating the Nobel Prize, apparently, do not allow for the award to be withdrawn, which is fairly convenient.

I say convenient, because if they started taking Nobel Prizes back from all the people who (oops!) didn’t actually deserve them, the list of remaining recipients would shrink very quickly indeed.
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