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Lawsuit reveals vast censorship scheme by Big Tech and the federal …

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A little-noticed federal lawsuit, Missouri v. Biden, is uncovering astonishing evidence of an entrenched censorship scheme cooked up between the federal government and Big Tech that would make Communist China proud.

So far, 67 officials or agencies including the FBI have been accused in the lawsuit of violating the First Amendment by pressuring Facebook, Twitter and Google to censor users for alleged misinformation or disinformation.

Victims of the Biden-Big Tech censorship enterprise include The Post, whose Hunter Biden laptop expos was suppressed by Facebook and then Twitter in October 2020 after the FBI went to Facebook, warning it with great specificity to watch out for a dump of Russian disinformation, pertaining to Joe Biden, with an uncanny resemblance to our stories.

We allege that top-ranking Biden administration officials colluded with those social media companies to suppress speech about the Hunter Biden laptop story, the origins of COVID-19, the efficacy of masks, and election integrity, is how the lawsuit was summarized by intrepid Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, who is leading the action.

The censorship related to alleged misinformation about pandemic lockdowns, vaccines and COVID-19, and included material from the esteemed infectious disease epidemiologists and public health scientists associated with the Great Barrington Declaration, which proved over time to be correct and eventually much of which was adopted as official policy by the CDC.

Defendants include FBI special agents Elvis Chan and Laura Dehmlow, who gave Facebook that detailed disinformation briefing right before The Post was censored; White House press secretaries, current and former, Karine Jean-Pierre and Jen Psaki; Dr. Anthony Fauci, the presidents chief medical adviser, and former White House senior COVID-19 adviser Andrew Slavitt; counsel to President Biden Dana Remus; the DHS over the disbanded Disinformation Governance Board; the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency; the FDA; the State Department; and the US Election Assistance Commission.

Last month a federal judge ordered a reluctant Fauci and Jean-Pierre to hand over their records, so the case is progressing nicely.

This civil action by the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana, in partnership with such red-pilled lawyers as Jenin Younes at the New Civil Liberties Alliance, overlaps with a separate lawsuit by former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson, whose legal victories so far have forced Twitter to reinstate his account after he was banned (although the cat-and-mouse game continues as he is currently suspended again).

Berensons legal discovery unearthed internal Twitter documents and Slack conversations showing Biden administration officials instructed the social media company to de-platform him because he was dissenting from the official line on school lockdowns and the efficacy of vaccines.

He was viciously attacked for tweeting that schools should be opened: people called me a ghoul a lot. [But] Twitter and Facebook prevented a real debate and discussion about the value of school closures Is there anyone who thought we did the right thing in fall of 2020 and 2021 by allowing teacher unions and Democrats to keep schools closed?

His evidence-backed view that school lockdowns were being driven by teacher unions, not data, and would do long-term harm to children, has been proven correct. Similarly, his view was correct that vaccines were not stopping the transmission of COVID and thus mandates were pointless. Yet he was silenced, and no debate was allowed.

Whether Im right or wrong you have to have an open discussion. The First Amendment protects even lies. Thats how it should be on these platforms. The efforts to regulate speech and call something disinformation is demonizing folks and saying theyre un-American [for dissenting], he said. What I have is evidence that I was specifically targeted in private communications because I was being an ahole on Twitter.

In a White House meeting in April 2021, Twitter representatives were asked one really tough question about why Alex Berenson hasnt been kicked off from the platform, a Twitter employee wrote.

Slavitt, then with Bidens COVID response team, complained specifically about Berenson, even though Twitter said he had broken no rules.

They really wanted to know about Alex Berenson, the Twitter employee wrote on Slack.

Andy Slavitt suggested they had seen data [visualization] that had showed he was the epicenter of disinfo that radiated outwards to the persuadable public, the employee wrote. Ive taken a pretty close look at his account, and I dont think any of its violative.But over the next four months, as opposition to vaccine mandates grew, the Biden administration ratcheted up the pressure.

Berenson identifies as the final blow a public statement by Biden on July 16, 2021, that social media companies were killing people by encouraging vaccine hesitancy.

A few hours after Bidens comment, Twitter suspended my account for the first time. On August 28, 2021 Twitter banned me for a tweet that it has now acknowledged should not have led to my suspension, he said. My argument is that the White House turned these companies into extensions of the state. By putting explicit pressure on Twitter, they made it an extension of the state, whether willingly or not.

The Biden administration violated my First Amendment rights.

Last month, the federal Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Twitter and other social media platforms dont have an unlimited right to discriminate against speech they dont like.

The Platforms are not newspapers. Their censorship is not speech, the court said. The First Amendment protects speech: it generally prevents the government from interfering with peoples speech.

Berenson has another lawsuit afoot, against the Biden administration, vaccine manufacturer Pfizer, and Pfizer board member Scott Gottlieb, the former head of the FDA who was instrumental in getting him banned, as documents from his legal discovery show.

This month, Berenson published on his substack an email that Gottlieb wrote to Twitter in August 2021, complaining about his various tweets criticizing Fauci, and claiming, This is why Tony needs a security detail.

But nothing Berenson said about Fauci would create any need for extra security. He just called Fauci arrogant, a skilled courtier and mocked his claim that attacks on me, quite frankly, are attacks on science.

Berenson was hardly alone in criticizing Fauci. At least half the country felt the same way. In any case, he was entitled to voice his opinion, so hes suing Gottlieb.

Gottlieb has not denied Berensons claims in his frequent TV appearances. Just this Sunday he was interviewed on the CBS flagship program Face the Nation, to break down the false claims being spread online about COVID vaccine mandates for children.

But CBS never disclosed that Gottlieb is a member of Pfizers board, earning close to $400,000 for his trouble. That is more relevant than his past FDA employment. Of course, Pfizer is a big advertiser, so maybe CBS didnt want to draw attention to the fact that its favorite vaccine expert is compromised.

These lawsuits are the only obstacle between Americans and a frighteningly pervasive new federal censorship scheme on behalf of shadowy interests, using disinformation as a catchall excuse.

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Lawsuit reveals vast censorship scheme by Big Tech and the federal ...

Censorship – History of censorship | Britannica

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It should be instructive to consider how the problem of censorship has been dealt with in the ancient world, in premodern times, and in the modern world. Care must be taken here not to assume that the modern democratic regime, of a self-governing people, is the only legitimate regime. Rather, it is prudent to assume that most of those who have, in other times and places, thought about and acted upon such matters have been at least as humane and as sensible in their circumstances as modern democrats are apt to be in theirs.

It was taken for granted in the Greek communities of antiquity, as well as in Rome, that citizens would be formed in accordance with the character and needs of the regime. This did not preclude the emergence of strong-minded men and women, as may be seen in the stories of Homer, of Plutarch, of Tacitus, and of the Greek playwrights. But it was evident, for example, that a citizen of Sparta was much more apt to be tough and unreflective (and certainly uncommunicative) than a citizen of Corinth (with its notorious openness to pleasure and luxury).

The scope of a city-states concern was exhibited in the provisions it made for the establishment and promotion of religious worship. That the gods of the city were to be respected by every citizen was usually taken for granted. Presiding over religious observances was generally regarded as a privilege of citizenship: thus, in some cities it was an office in which the elderly in good standing could be expected to serve. A refusal to conform, at least outwardly, to the recognized worship of the community subjected one to hardships. And there could be difficulties, backed up by legal sanctions, for those who spoke improperly about such matters. The force of religious opinions could be seen not only in prosecutions for refusals to acknowledge the gods of the city but perhaps even more in the frequent unwillingness of a city (no matter what its obvious political or military interests) to conduct public business at a time when the religious calendar, auspices, or other such signs forbade civic activities. Indicative of respect for the proprieties was the secrecy with which the religious mysteries, such as those into which many Greek and Roman men were initiated, were evidently practicedso much so that there does not seem to be any record from antiquity of precisely what constituted the various mysteries. Respect for the proprieties may be seen as well in the outrage provoked in Sparta by a poem by Archilochus (7th century bce) in which he celebrated his lifesaving cowardice.

Athens, it can be said, was much more liberal than the typical Greek city. This is not to suggest that the rulers of the other cities did not, among themselves, freely discuss the public business. But in Athens the rulers included much more of the population than in most cities of antiquityand freedom of speech (for political purposes) spilled over there into the private lives of citizens. This may be seen, perhaps best of all, in the famous funeral address given by Pericles in 431 bce. Athenians, he pointed out, did not consider public discussion merely something to be put up with; rather, they believed that the best interests of the city could not be served without a full discussion of the issues before the assembly. There may be seen in the plays of an Aristophanes the kind of uninhibited discussions of politics that the Athenians were evidently accustomed to, discussions that could (in the license accorded to comedy) be couched in licentious terms not permitted in everyday discourse.

The limits of Athenian openness may be seen, of course, in the trial, conviction, and execution of Socrates in 399 bce on charges that he corrupted the youth and that he did not acknowledge the gods that the city did but acknowledged other new divinities of his own. One may see as well, in the Republic of Plato, an account of a system of censorship, particularly of the arts, that is comprehensive. Not only are various opinions (particularly misconceptions about the gods and about the supposed terrors of death) to be discouraged, but various salutary opinions are to be encouraged and protected without having to be demonstrated to be true. Much of what is said in the Republic and elsewhere reflects the belief that the vital opinions of the community could be shaped by law and that men could be penalized for saying things that offended public sensibilities, undermined common morality, or subverted the institutions of the community.

The circumstances justifying the system of comprehensive thought control described in Platos Republic are obviously rarely to be found. Thus, Socrates himself is recorded in the same dialogue (and in Platos Apology) as recognizing that cities with bad regimes do not permit their misconduct to be questioned and corrected. Such regimes should be compared with those in the age of the good Roman emperors, the period from Nerva (c. 3098 ce) to Marcus Aurelius (121180)the golden times, said Tacitus, when everyone could hold and defend whatever opinions he wished.

Much of what can be said about ancient Greece and Rome could be applied, with appropriate adaptations, to ancient Israel. The stories of the difficulties encountered by Jesus, and the offenses he came to be accused of, indicate the kinds of restrictions to which the Jews were subjected with respect to religious observances and with respect to what could and could not be said about divine matters. (The inhibitions so established were later reflected in the manner in which Moses Maimonides [11351204] proceeded in his publications, often relying upon hints rather than upon explicit discussion of sensitive topics.) The prevailing watchfulness, lest someone say or do what he should not, can be said to be anticipated by the commandment You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain (Exodus 20:7). It may be seen as well in the ancient opinion that there is a name for God that must not be uttered.

It should be evident that this way of lifedirecting both opinions and actions and extending down to minute daily routinescould not help but shape a people for centuries, if not for millennia, to come. But it should also be evident that those in the position to know, and with a duty to act, were expected to speak out and were, in effect, licensed to do so, however cautiously they were obliged to proceed on occasion. Thus, the prophet Nathan dared to challenge King David himself for what he had done to secure Bathsheba as his wife (II Samuel 12:124). On an earlier, perhaps even more striking, occasion, the patriarch Abraham dared to question God about the terms on which Sodom and Gomorrah might be saved from destruction (Genesis 18:1633). God made concessions to Abraham, and David crumbled before Nathans authority. But such presumptuousness on the part of mere mortals is possible, and likely to bear fruit, only in communities that have been trained to share and to respect certain moral principles grounded in thoughtfulness.

The thoughtfulness to which the Old Testament aspires is suggested by the following counsel by Moses to the people of Israel (Deuteronomy 4:56):

Behold, I have taught you statutes and ordinances, as the Lord my God commanded me, that you should do them in the land which you are entering to take possession of it. Keep them and do them; for that will be your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples, who, when they hear all these statutes, will say, Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.

This approach can be considered to provide the foundation for the assurance that has been so critical to modern arguments against censorship (John 8:32): And you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free. Further biblical authority against censorship may be found in such free speech dramas as that described in Acts 4:1321.

It should be remembered that to say everything one thought or believed was regarded by pre-Christian writers as potentially irresponsible or licentious: social consequences dictated a need for restraint. Christian writers, however, called for just such saying of everything as the indispensable witness of faith: transitory social considerations were not to impede, to the extent that they formerly had, the exercise of such a liberty, indeed of such a duty, so intimately related to the eternal welfare of the soul. Thus, we see an encouragement of the privateof an individuality that turned eventually against organized religion itself and legitimated a radical self-indulgence.

Perhaps no people has ever been so thoroughly trained, on such a large scale and for so long, as the Chinese. Critical to that training was a system of education that culminated in a rigorous selection, by examination, of candidates for administrative posts. Particularly influential was the thought of Confucius (551479 bce), with its considerable emphasis upon deference to authority and to family elders and upon respect for ritual observances and propriety. Cautiousness in speech was encouraged; licentious expressions were discouraged; and long-established teachings were relied upon for shaping character. All in all, it was contrary to Chinese good taste to speak openly of the faults of ones government or of ones rulers. And so it could be counseled by Confucius, He who is not in any particular office has nothing to do with plans for the administration of its duties (Analects [Lunyu], 7:14). It has been suggested that such sentiments have operated to prevent the spread in China of opinions supportive of political liberty.

Still, it could be recognized by Confucius that oppressive government is fiercer than a tiger. He could counsel that if a rulers words are not good, and if people are discouraged from opposing them, the ruin of the country can be expected (Analects, 13:5). Blatant oppressiveness, and an attempt to stamp out the influence of Confucius and of other sages, could be seen in the wholesale destruction of books in China in 231 bce. But the Confucian mode was revived thereafter, to become the dominant influence for almost two millennia. Its pervasiveness may well be judged oppressive by contemporary Western standards, since so much depended, it seems, on mastering the orthodox texts and discipline.

Whether or not the typical Chinese government was indeed oppressive, effective control of information was lodged in the authorities, since access to the evidently vital public archives of earlier administrations was limited to a relative few. In addition, decisive control of what was thought, and how, depended in large part on a determination of what the authoritative texts weresomething that has been critical in the West, as well, in the establishment of useful canons, both sacred and secular. Thus, Richard McKeon has suggested, Censorship may be the enforcement of judgments based on power, passion, corruption, or prejudicepolitical, popular, elite, or sectarian. It may also be based on scholarship and the use of critical methods in the interest of advancing a taste for literature, art, learning, and science.

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Censorship - History of censorship | Britannica

Censorship History, Types & Examples – Study.com

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Censored

'Bleep, bleep, bleep.' What's going on? Is this a lesson on profanity? No - that right there is the sound of censorship, or the suppression of information. Censorship can take many forms, from burning books to restricting what information is available on the Internet for the citizens of an entire country. At its most basic, it's all about the control of information. Whoever owns the access to information can decide what people learn and what they do not. This can be governments, private companies, mass media - any group that in some way controls access to information.

But why? Well, a government or a private company may not want people finding out too much about their policies because the result could be a rebellion. Knowledge can be power. But can censorship be a good thing, too? Well, let's take a look, and then you can decide for yourself. We promise not to censor you.

In general, there are four major types of censorship: withholding information, destroying information, altering or using selective information and self-censorship.

Withholding information is a common form of censorship used by many governments throughout history. For many years, the United States government heavily censored information that came out of war zones because the government did not want citizens to turn against the war. The less citizens saw of the war, the more likely they were to believe it was a good thing.

Another common one is the destruction of information, like the book burnings used by the Nazis to physically eliminate information that went against their ideas. The act of trying to erase someone from history has a long precedent as well; ancient Egyptian pharaohs were known to destroy any records of rival pharaohs, even to the point of making their names illegal.

What else? Oh yeah, altering information is a good one. The former dictator of the USSR, Josef Stalin, was known to have photographs altered to remove images of people whom he had executed.

More commonly, altering information comes back to education, rewriting textbooks so that history only shows what you want it to. For many years, American history textbooks ignored the atrocities committed against Native American communities, and Japanese textbooks used to gloss over their brutal invasion of China during WWII.

And of course, there is also self-censorship, when people monitor themselves and stop themselves from giving the entire truth. There are many reasons for this. Perhaps you are afraid that the government will kidnap you for speaking against them, or perhaps you are afraid that you will be fired because a viewpoint is not supported by your employer. Encouraging self-censorship is one of the most effective ways for those in power to keep information quiet.

Regardless of how it's achieved, all censorship is seen as justified by somebody. Political censorship, for example, is used by governments to control the image of the state. For example, during the Cold War, the USSR needed the areas under their control to believe that they were winning and that life in communist Eastern Europe was better than life in the United States or capitalist Western Europe. So, the USSR carefully monitored writers, newspaper editors, television programs and other sources of information to ensure that only positive aspects of communism were depicted, along with the negative aspects of capitalism.

Another frequent source of censorship across history is religious censorship, where information is forbidden because it goes against religious ideas. One famous example of this was the trial and imprisonment of Galileo in 1633 for proposing that the Earth revolved around the Sun, which at the time was seen as heresy.

So, people in power who are afraid of the truth obviously like censorship. That means it must be pretty bad, right? Actually, many forms of censorship are not only accepted but embraced. For example, information regarding national security and military defense are often censored from the public. Many argue that if information on the movements of the United States military, for example, were made public, that an enemy would have an advantage and could launch brutal attacks.

And then there's moral censorship. The vast majority of TV networks are not permitted to show excessive violence or nudity, but it's not because somebody's trying to hide the truth from you, it's because somebody is trying to prevent kids from being exposed to things that kids shouldn't see. And then there are issues like child pornography, which we've decided is so immoral that it's actually illegal. Is it wrong of the government or mass media to censor child pornography? These are areas where censorship becomes a fine line where we, as a community, allow information to be suppressed for a sense of greater good.

Now, for some, the Internet is seen as something that should be unlimited, unrestrained and completely uncensored. It is the ultimate portal for sharing information, and we've seen how powerful that can be. The Arab Spring, a series of revolutions in the Arabic-speaking world that toppled entire governments, was sparked by social media. But again, where do we draw the line? Are racism, violence and hate suddenly acceptable just because they are on the Internet? Sometimes we decide that we need more access to information, and sometimes we decide that we need just a few more 'bleeps.'

Censorship is defined as the 'bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep.' Actually, that's just censorship in action. The suppression of information is something that has occurred throughout most of human history in some form or another. Censorship has been used to protect military secrets, hide truth from people to keep them oppressed, prevent ideas that contradicted accepted religious or scientific ideas or even preserve common morals. Censorship can be imposed by someone in power, or it can be a personal choice. A lot of censorship is seen as oppressive, but most societies agree on some level of censorship against immoral and illegal ideas. So, where's the line? 'Bleep.'

When you are finished, you should be able to:

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Censorship – Definition, Examples, Cases – Legal Dictionary

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The term censorship refers to the suppression, banning, or deletion of speech, writing, or images that are considered to be indecent, obscene, or otherwise objectionable. Censorship becomes a civil rights issue when a government or other entity with authority, suppresses ideas, or the expression of ideas, information, and self. In the U.S., censorship has been debated for decades, as some seek to protect the public from offensive materials, and others seek to protect the publics rights to free speech and expression. To explore this concept, consider the following censorship definition.

Noun

Origin

380 B.C. Greek Philosopher Plato

The word censorship is from the Latin censere, which is to give as ones opinion, to assess. In Roman times, censors were public officials who took census counts, as well as evaluating public principles and moralities. Societies throughout history have taken on the belief that the government is responsible for shaping the characters of individuals, many engaging in censorship to that end.

In his text The Republic, ancient Greek philosopher Plato makes a systematic case for the need for censorship in the arts. Information in the ancient Chinese society was tightly controlled, a practice that persists in some form today. Finally, many churches, including the Roman Catholic Church, have historically banned literature felt to be contrary to the teachings of the church.

Many of Americas laws have their origins in English law. In the 1700s, both countries made it their business to censor speech and writings concerning sedition, which are actions promoting the overthrowing of the government, and blasphemy, which is sacrilege or irreverence toward God. The idea that obscenity should be censored didnt gain serious favor until the mid-1800s. The courts in both countries, throughout history, have worked to suppress speech, writings, and images on these issues.

As time went on, contention arose over just what should be considered obscene. Early English law defined obscenity as anything that tended to deprave and corrupt those whose minds are open to such immoral influences, and anything that might suggest to the minds of the young of either sex, and even to persons of more advanced years, thoughts of a most impure and libidinous character. This essentially meant anything that might lead one to have impure thoughts. This definition carried over into early American law as well.

However, that definition was vague enough to raise more questions than it answered in many circumstances. These included:

Censorship in America took a turn in 1957, when the U.S. Supreme Court declared that adults cannot be reduced to reading only what is fit for children, ruling that it must be considered whether the work was originally meant for children or adults. Still, the Court acknowledged that works that are utterly without redeeming social importance can be censored or banned. This left another vague standard for the courts to deal with.

Censorship in America is most commonly a question in the entertainment industry, which is widely influential on the young and old alike. Public entertainment in the form of movies, television, music, and electronic gaming are considered to have a substantial effect on public interest. Because of this, it is subject to certain governmental regulations.

The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibits suppression of an individuals right to free speech, stating Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press This is a principle held dear by those protesting censorship in any form. In the U.S., censorship of obscene materials in entertainment is allowed, in order to protect children from pornography and other offensive things. The problem with government sanctioned censorship is the risk of violating the civil rights of either those producing the materials, or those wishing to view them.

The issue of censorship in the film industry has, at times, been quite contentious. In an effort to avoid the censorship issue, while striving to protect children and conform to federal laws, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) instituted a self-regulating, voluntary rating system in 1968. In the 1990s, the MPAA updated its rating system, making it easier for parents to determine what is appropriate for their children, based on the childrens ages.

The MPAA rating system has a number of ratings:

Rather than censoring movies or their content by exclusion of content, MCAA ratings are assigned by a board of people who view the movies, who consider such factors as violence, sex, drug use, and language when assigning ratings. The board strives to assign a rating that a majority of parents in the U.S. would give, considering their needs to protect their children.

An X rating was part of the MCAAs original rating system, and signified that no one under the age of 16 would be allowed, regardless of parental accompaniment. The X rating was replaced by the NC-17 rating in 1990.

Internet censorship refers to the suppression of information that can be published to, or viewed on, the internet. While many people enjoy unfettered access to the broad spectrum of information racing across the information highway, others are denied access, or allowed access only to government approved information. Rationales for internet censorship range from a desire to protect children from content that is offensive or inappropriate, to a governments objective to control its peoples access to world news, opinions, and other information.

In the United States, the First Amendment affords the people some protection of their right to freely access the internet, and of the things they post to the web. Because of this, there is very little government-mandated filtering of information that originates in the U.S. The issue of censorship of certain content, especially content that may further terrorism, is constantly debated at the federal government level.

As an example of censorship, the following countries are known for censoring their peoples internet content:

In the mid-1960s, Sam Ginsberg, who owned Sams Stationery and Luncheonette on Long Island, was charged with selling girlie magazines to a 16-year old boy, which was in violation of New York state law. Ginsberg was tried in the Nassau County District Court, without a jury, and found guilty. The judge found that the magazines contained pictures which, by failing to cover the female buttocks and breasts with an opaque covering, were harmful to minors. He stated that the photos appealed to the prurient, shameful or morbid interest of minors, and that the images were patently offensive to standards held by the adult community regarding what was suitable for minors.

Ginsberg was denied the right to appeal his convictions to the New York Court of Appeals, at which time he took his case to the U.S. Supreme Court, on the basis that the state of New York had no authority to define two separate classes of people (minors and adults), with respect to what is harmful. In addition, Ginsberg argued that it was easy to mistake a young persons age, and the law makes no requirement for how much effort a shop owner must put into determining age before selling magazines intended for adult viewing. The Court did not agree, holding that Ginsberg might be acquitted on the grounds of an honest mistake, only if he had made a reasonable bonafide attempt to ascertain the true age of such a minor. The conviction was upheld.

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Censorship - Definition, Examples, Cases - Legal Dictionary

Shadow Definition & Meaning – Merriam-Webster

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1

: the dark figure cast upon a surface by a body intercepting the rays from a source of light

2

: partial darkness or obscurity within a part of space from which rays from a source of light are cut off by an interposed opaque body

3

4

: an attenuated form or a vestigial remnant

5

: an inseparable companion or follower

6

: pervasive and dominant influence

7

9

: shelter from danger or observation

10

: an imperfect and faint representation

13

: a source of gloom or unhappiness

14

: a state of ignominy or obscurity

transitive verb

1

2

: to accompany and observe especially in a professional setting

3

6

obsolete : to shelter from the sun

1

2

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Shadow Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster

Those Schools Banning Access To Generative AI ChatGPT Are Not Going To Move The Needle And Are Missing The Boat, Says AI Ethics And AI Law – Forbes

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Those Schools Banning Access To Generative AI ChatGPT Are Not Going To Move The Needle And Are Missing The Boat, Says AI Ethics And AI Law  Forbes

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Those Schools Banning Access To Generative AI ChatGPT Are Not Going To Move The Needle And Are Missing The Boat, Says AI Ethics And AI Law - Forbes

Julian Assange and the US governments war on whistleblowers

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Thirteen years ago, WikiLeaks published extensive leaked US government documents detailing a range of criminal and unethical acts, from the slaughter of civilians in the War on Terror to acts of espionage against foreign heads of state. Since then, the persecution of Julian Assange has not ceased. This year, Assange is expected to stand trial in the US for violations of the Espionage Act. Journalist Kevin Gosztola joinsThe Chris Hedges Reportto review the cases of Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning, and discuss Washingtons wider war against whistleblowers and the truth itself.

Kevin Gosztola is the managing editor ofShadowproof, where he writesThe Dissenter.He is the author ofGuilty of Journalism: The Political Case Against Julian Assange.

Chris Hedges: The long persecution of Julian Assange, the publisher of WikiLeaks, is set to culminate in its final act: a trial in the United States, probably this year. Kevin Gosztola has spent the last decade reporting on Assange, WikiLeaks, and the wider war on whistleblowers. His new book, Guilty of Journalism: The Political Case against Julian Assange, methodically lays out the complex issues surrounding the case, the gross distortions to the legal system used to facilitate the extradition of Julian, now in a high security prison in London, the abuses of power by the FBI and the CIA, including spying on Julians meetings when he sought refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London with his family, doctors, and attorneys, and the dire consequences, should Julian be convicted, for the press.

Joining me to discuss his new book is Kevin Gosztola. So Kevin, you do a very I think your book and Nils Melzer are the two books I would recommend for people who dont understand the case. I use this show in this interview to really lay out for people who are unfamiliar with the long persecution of Julian and the legal anomalies that have been used against him. You know, what those are. So lets just start with what are the charges, what are the allegations, which is where you begin your book.

Kevin Gosztola: Yeah. And the intention was to look ahead and say, Julian Assange is likely to be brought to the US by the end of 2023, maybe 2024. We need something out there for the general public so they can wrap their head around the unprecedented nature of whats unfolding. And so the charges against Julian Assange, he was first indicted back in April of 2019. Or sorry, that was when it was unveiled. He was charged first with a computer crime offense. They alleged, essentially, a password cracking conspiracy. And that was of intrusion, of essentially agreeing to help Chelsea Manning anonymously access military computers.

And then the other charges were 17 espionage act offenses. And of course, those have gotten the most attention and theyve been the ones met with the most outrage and unanimous disgust from press freedom, civil Liberties, and human rights organizations around the world. And those are the ones, really, that are the most damaging and cause the greatest amount of alarm when you look at what the US Justice Department is alleging.

And then in 2020, its important to note that this flew under the radar, but I go into this in great detail in the book, is there are these allegations, this narrative that gets grafted on in the summer of 2020, right before we have the major extradition hearing in September of 2020. It is a whole bunch of facts or claims that are put forward about what Assange did or didnt do to promote hacking to align himself with LulzSec or members of Anonymous. They criminalize him for providing source protection to Edward Snowden, NSA whistleblower. And it has all these other details to basically fatten up the indictment and make it easier to win extradition in the British court.

Chris Hedges: I want to go back to the charges. First of all, didnt Chelsea Manning, at the Army, already have all the passwords?

Kevin Gosztola: So this is an important point. There is no reason, and it is actually illogical what the US Justice Department is claiming, because she had access to these military computers. She never wouldve had to go through the databases anonymously in order to access the materials. And in fact, the Assange legal team was able to get the services of Patrick Eller, who was an Army criminal investigator, who actually looked at the court martial record and went through all of this and found that there is no substantial basis at all for what the US government is claiming when it comes to this password cracking conspiracy.

Technically speaking, it was not possible for any cracking of a password to happen, because Julian Assange was never given all the information needed to do that or to help her, Manning never had all that information to do it. But beyond that, she just wouldnt have needed to do it because she had access. She had the security clearance.

Chris Hedges: Also, the charge of hacking into a computer is important because they use that to distinguish Julian Assange from publications like The New York Times or Der Spiegel, or The Guardian that published the same information and without that hacking charge, legally one would think theyre also liable.

Kevin Gosztola: And this is part of opening up that to a debate. That is why you hear so much about, oh, is he or is he not a journalist? And by making it seem like he engaged in hacking when he was editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks, just as you say, theyre able to create this animosity towards him and treat him hes somebody that hes not. At some point he ceased to be a journalist because he was for breaking into government computer systems.

Chris Hedges: So you covered Chelsea Mannings court martial, and I wanted you to explain what happened and why the role of her court martial was such an important moment in this whole saga.

Kevin Gosztola: So Chelsea Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison. That was in 2013. And she was convicted of all the offenses that she was charged with committing under the Espionage Act for the release of documents, which are at issue in this case. And these are the major sets of documents that have given WikiLeaks the acclaim. These are the Afghan and Iraq war logs, the Afghanistan war logs and Iraq war logs. Then the US State Embassy cables, the Guantanamo files that were published, these detainee assessment reports. And then there are some files here and there that are notable but dont get a lot of coverage like rules of engagement files. And then theres a collateral murder video, of course, from Chelsea.

She was sentenced for these. But she was crucially acquitted of the aiding the enemy offense, which was this charge that was one of the most disturbing and troubling aspects of the court martial against Chelsea Manning. All of it was really troubling to see unfold against her, but this idea that because she had transmitted information to WikiLeaks and made it publicly available to the whole world, that she was somehow aiding Al-Qaeda terrorists as the military prosecutor said, that was something that caught the attention of the ACLU, Amnesty International. All these groups said that that was something that had to be protested and it should not go forward. The judge should not convict her. So she escaped that charge. She also was acquitted of one charge that they didnt prove the facts around because they never were able to prove that she had leaked this or had this Granai massacre video from Afghanistan, this horrific massacre that is well known in Afghanistan, obviously.

So the reason why the court martial is something that people should keep fresh in their minds, even though it may seem like its decade-old history, is the fact that when I followed this, the military prosecutors never brought up any sort of thing like, oh, there was a conspiracy between Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning.

And, in fact, when the prosecutors were asked by the judge, if you substituted WikiLeaks with New York Times, would you still prosecute this case in the same manner? Meaning, would you accuse Chelsea Manning of aiding the enemy? They said, without hesitation, yes. So it wouldnt make a difference. WikiLeaks or New York Times, they wouldve charged Manning the same. They wouldve criminalized her for being a media source and hit her as hard as they did. What that tells you is that, at that time, theyre not viewing WikiLeaks as a hostile entity. Theyre not treating WikiLeaks as anything other than this new media organization that is doing something that is different from what the standard establishment media or prestige media organizations had tended to do with classified documents.

There is this report that Chelsea Manning released from this Army Intelligence Center, that was one of the reports that she was charged with releasing, that indicated that the military actually had analyzed WikiLeaks and come to the conclusion that Assange was like a foreign correspondent or staff writer, that they had gone to the trouble of authenticating documents that WikiLeaks was a website where they uploaded documents on military equipment, and that they had journalistic responsibility to the newsworthiness of the information that they were uploading to their website.

Which tells you that they understood that this was not what Mike Pompeo was telling people WikiLeaks was in 2017. No, this was a news media organization that was publishing US documents on wars in the Middle East.

Chris Hedges: They had to create new charges, in essence, to create distance between WikiLeaks and mainstream traditional media, didnt they?

Kevin Gosztola: Yeah. Thats essentially what youre seeing. As well get to, when you see the CIA enter and play their role, what theyre basically doing is making it clear that they see WikiLeaks as something different than The New York Times or The Washington Post or The Guardian. And then in doing so, thats why they feel they have the authority to take these extralegal, extra judicial counterintelligence measures to go after and target and destroy an organization like WikiLeaks.

Chris Hedges: Can you address the charge that WikiLeaks released information that endangered the lives of informants or collaborators that was used, again, to tar WikiLeaks?

Kevin Gosztola: Off the top of my head, I cannot remember the name of the individual at this moment, but I think his name was Robert Carr. Anyways, there was an official who took the stand during this military court martial who was asked by the prosecutors to speak to this idea that the Taliban had gone forward and executed an individual because they were named in documents that WikiLeaks had published. At that point, David Coombs stopped the court and told the judge that

Chris Hedges: David Coombs was Mannings lawyer.

Kevin Gosztola: David Coombs was Chelsea Mannings attorney. He stopped the court and he got the judge to recognize that the prosecutors were lying to her, or that this witness was now deliberately misleading the court about what happened, because the Taliban had not actually executed any individual because of the fact that they were named in a WikiLeaks document. This witness was forced to recant that testimony. In fact, the judge actually scolded the prosecutors and said she was putting it down in her record that nobody had been killed by the Taliban as a result of WikiLeaks documents.

So during this whole court martial, there was not a single person put into the public record who US officials were able to claim were killed because WikiLeaks exposed them to this harm. So this was a canard. And in fact, to the credit of the establishment media there, I remember that the Associated Press actually did do a little bit of reporting and analyzed this claim.

They even came back with WikiLeaks did not have blood on their hands, because they could not find any evidence. There was one individual, I think, in Ethiopia who was known to flee, said that they were in fear for their lives because they were named in, I think, a US State Embassy cable. What you have to remember is that these cables were detailing great repression and authoritarianism and things of that nature that were going on in these countries.

So its just as true that if they were named in the cables that they might face some repercussions. It was just as true that the State Department, by aligning themselves with these activists, might be exposing them to harm from their government because those governments could see them, could see the US government as meddling and trying to get those activists to do something on behalf of the United States that maybe the governments didnt want to allow the US government to do.

Chris Hedges: The unredacted documents were made public, not because of Julian, but because Luke Harding, in his book on WikiLeaks, released the key that allowed those documents to be opened.

Kevin Gosztola: Yeah. And thats one of the biggest media mishaps that has played into the prosecution. I say that that is something that has aided and abetted the prosecution by the US Justice Department.

Chris Hedges: I have a chapter called, How does the US government view WikiLeaks? Not as journalism, although, I used to work for The New York Times and every time we made an error, it got into the error box at the end of the year. In our year end review, we were given a list of errors, and you did not want a very long list. I dont believe WikiLeaks has ever had to retract anything theyve published.

Kevin Gosztola: No. I put this forward because I think we have to think of it in different ways. So there is what the US government says today, and if you ask the US government what WikiLeaks is, you probably will get them to respond to you. Any official will probably say something like, they are a hostile entity. In the 2020 military budget that was passed, or the defense budget. Its not really a defense budget. But that actually singled out and made it that it was the sense of Congress that WikiLeaks is a non-state hostile intelligence service, essentially.

Chris Hedges: Well, thats how Biden has described it.

Kevin Gosztola: But thats what Mike Pompeo as CIA director had it labeled when he was CIA director. But whats crucial, I think, in my view, because were talking about events that happened back in 2010 and 2011, Julians lawyers will probably argue it this way. This is the way I would go forward in order to defend Julian Assange, is to say, that doesnt matter. What did the US government think of WikiLeaks in 2010 or 2011? And the evidence is that back then they did not see it as a hostile organization.

There werent allegations that cutouts from Russia were passing information to WikiLeaks. They saw it unequivocally as this organization that presented a threat to the US government because, as Geoff Morrell, when he was Pentagon Secretary said, this is an organization that was beholden to nobody and they did not think that they would be able to negotiate it with them the way that they would be able to negotiate with The New York Times or The Washington Post in order to get them to sit on documents and not reveal things like we know has happened in the history of The New York Times and The Washington Post, whether it involved secret drone bases or warrantless wiretapping, to name a few examples.

Chris Hedges: Well, in that case, theyre right. Lets talk about the Espionage Act. Obama uses the Espionage Act to go after all sorts of whistleblowers, Kiriakou, Drake and others. Then Trump uses the Espionage Act against Julian. So you have the first step against whistleblowers, the second step by the Trump administration to use the Espionage Act against a journalist. Then it raises the whole question of the fact that Julian is not a US citizen. WikiLeaks is not a US-based publication. You addressed this in the book, but talk about the Espionage Act.

Kevin Gosztola: So the Espionage Act is over 100 years old. You have to go back to 1917 under President Woodrow Wilson. And this was drafted in order to suppress anti-war descent. This was to go after people who did not want to see the US take a greater role and be involved in World War I, to join World War I. And they went after people who were anti-war activists, socialists, communists particularly, and had a mechanism now in which they were able to go after people who were leafleting, spreading pamphlets.

They could go after publications that were promoting anti-war sentiment. And they used the Espionage Act, essentially, to challenge these people and prosecute them. There were thousands of cases in the 1920s under the Espionage Act. And then there was one of various sedition laws that were brought against people on the left.

So the law says that you are not allowed to give national defense information or information related to the national defense to anyone who is not entitled to receive it. It also says that you arent allowed to do it with intent to harm or injure the United States, or if you know that it would advantage a foreign power, essentially.

So it presumes that you have some knowledge of the information. And typically what we saw with these Espionage Act prosecutions is that you would sign a non-disclosure agreement when you are given your security clearance. So all these people who are essentially media sources or whistleblowers who are being prosecuted under the Espionage Act when President Obama was in office, they signed non-disclosure agreements, which gave them a little bit of liability. Thats what the Justice Department would claim. That doesnt take away from their courageousness or conscientiousness in exposing what they see as abuses and corruption.

But thats something then, when you go forward, you get to a journalist like Julian Assange, and he never signed any non-disclosure agreement. He has no responsibility to these documents that the government is claiming now hes a criminal for exposing, and hes not somebody who the US government has any claim over, cant hold anything over his head. And yet they are pushing this and basically saying that, you and me, if we get secret documents that come from the US government and they dont want them published, they could come after us with a prosecution because those documents were still deemed sensitive by the US government.

This was just a natural progression. There are people who spoke out against the war on whistleblowers under Obama as he charged and went forward with cases that he inherited like Thomas Drakes case, John Kiriakous case, a CIA whistleblower, as he targeted these people and brought them through court, that the next stage was going to be to not just go after the sources, but to now go after journalists for being engaged in exposing things that were detrimental to the warfare state.

So as Obama is perfecting the assassination complex and the ability of kill lists to be used, and for drones to go and execute people abroad, as hes perfecting indefinite military detention regimes, and as hes pursuing more wars of occupation or allowing those to go on and on and on, they say, well, its important for us to make an example out of someone.

One of the Obama officials, Dennis Blair, actually says that they recognized that there were so many leaks happening that they needed to make an example out of somebody in order so people would know that there were consequences if you leaked to the press.

Chris Hedges: Was it eight people they made an example, eight or nine?

Kevin Gosztola: Yeah. I think by the time Obama was done, it was up there around 11 or 12. And then under Trump, we only had a small number of cases that were well known, and those were And one of them actually inherited the Daniel Hale case against him. Its important to mention him because hes in a communications management unit in the state where I live, and hes in one of the harshest conditions that anyone prosecuted under the Espionage Act has ever been in. Hes basically been confined as if hes a terrorist.

Chris Hedges: He exposed the drone program and the widespread killing of civilians. Lets talk about Vault 7. This seemed to change the game for Julian. Many people argue that you have to explain what Vault 7 was, but that exposure of CIA hacking tools into our phones, computers, et cetera, really sealed the fate of Julian. So talk about Vault 7 and the role it played in the extradition request.

Kevin Gosztola: And just to be clear so that Im not inadvertently suggesting that Julian Assange did something that he didnt do, they did not publish the actual readouts of these tools so people could actually use them and engage in their own hacking, but they published the details of this hacking arsenal that the CIA had at their fingertips. And having exposed these highly, highly sensitive programs that the CIA was engaged in offensively, of which we didnt have a debate about.

We never talked about whether this was something that we thought should be going on globally with the CIA hacking into all manner of systems. There were things related to malware and ways they could embed eavesdropping devices in Samsung TVs and encrypted messaging apps like Signal and WhatsApp that people use in order to communicate with some modicum of privacy. We found that those were being compromised by the CIA.

This was something that was a big deal, but it so upset Mike Pompeo that, according to Yahoo News reporting, which Ill delve into some more detail with another question, but to this point, we know that Mike Pompeo was hugely embarrassed and did not want to go face Donald Trump and tell him that he had lost control of these files. And that plays into the vengeful spirit in which the CIA decided to go after and destroy WikiLeaks further, to go after Assange, to force him out of the embassy.

So this reporting from Yahoo News, which is really one of the only establishment news media outlets, an online news media outlet, that has put any effort into trying to uncover what the CIA has done to WikiLeaks, put this report out on secret war plans that were sketched and put together by Pompeo and officials at the CIA.

It essentially said that they were planning to kidnap, or you could read that as rendition, or even poison Julian Assange, which would amount to an assassination attempt. And that also by labeling WikiLeaks as a hostile entity, they were able to get around any oversight that they wouldve had to do. I mean, what is oversight, anyways? I mean, the Congress doesnt really do oversight. But they wouldnt have to let Congress or the White House know what the CIA was doing, because they could claim that WikiLeaks was a rival spy service. And as they went after WikiLeaks, they could try to disrupt the digital architecture of the WikiLeaks website. They could try to steal electronic devices from people who were staff or associates of WikiLeaks. They could plant damaging or false information against people within WikiLeaks and try to turn people against each other and create internal battles. I mean, a classic COINTELPRO tactic that was used against the left in the 60s and early 70s. And so this was something in which, when the Vault 7 files came out, they now got this permission within their organization to go in and really neutralize WikiLeaks and also get their hands on Julian Assange,

Chris Hedges: Which is exactly what happened at UC Global. This is the Spanish security firm that worked for the Ecuadorian embassy in London. It spied on Julian on behalf of the CIA, including filming his meetings with his attorneys, eviscerating attorney-client privilege. We only have about five minutes left. I want you to talk, I mean the FBIs role, but talk about the grand jury. Because he faces 17 violations, supposedly, of the Espionage Act. Each one carries a 10-year sentence, five years for supposedly hacking into a government computer. Thats 175 years.

Talk about where he would be sent in the Eastern District of Virginia, because this is terrorism central for the US judiciary. Theres a horrible lynching of all sorts of people, Samuel Erian and others, they hauled. Of course, Chelsea Manning in there as well. But talk about what will happen if he is extradited.

Kevin Gosztola: Yeah. Let me just give a quick, quick few points here. So if hes put on trial in the Eastern District of Virginia, its highly unlikely that he will have a fair trial because he either has the option of a jury, which theyll pull from people who are working from, all of these people are going to come from, lets call it Top Secret America, which is what Bill Arkin and Dana Priest dubbed it over a decade ago. These people who work for military contractors, national security contractors, whether they might work for military agencies or they might work for parts of the US government, or they may not work for these agencies, but have family or relatives that work for these agencies.

That would be the jury that would be deciding whether Julian Assange was guilty of these political crimes. And then if he said no to a jury but wanted the judge to decide, well, that judge is going to be somebody who probably has historically shown deference to the national security state. So he is going to be in trouble either way. The grand jury investigation is a story that has not really been focused on as broadly as it should, but the way it was used going back to 2011 was a fishing expedition, much like fishing expeditions that have been launched against left-wing activists.

I think Chelsea Manning has been the most clear example of what this grand jury was trying to do in order to destroy a person for standing up on their moral or political principles. And she was put in this position where they wanted her to basically recant her statement from the US court martial that she had given so that they could try and make her seem like she was part of some conspiracy, that she was put up to leak the documents, that WikiLeaks solicited her to release documents to Julian Assange. She refused, and she went to jail for a year.

And then I also just have to say quickly that, on the FBI rule, Siggi Thordarson is named in this 2020 indictment that they added these new allegations to. And this is a person who the FBI flew to Iceland to interview, who is someone who has been accused of many, many crimes including sex with minors, embezzlement schemes. He stole over $50,000 from the WikiLeaks store. He was put in jail in 2021 because he was committing so much criminal activity that Iceland needed to invoke a provision in their law to stop him by jailing him. And he is working with the FBI, or he is cited in the indictment. Its where they get a lot of these lies about Julian Assange being involved in hacking, which he later recanted in an interview for Icelands Stundin newspaper. And Icelands minister of interior actually kicked the FBI out of Iceland when they found out that they were there, because Iceland knew that they were trying to use Siggi as bait to get to Julian Assange.

Chris Hedges: Great. Were going to have to stop there. That was Kevin Gosztola on his book Guilty of Journalism: The Political Case Against Julian Assange. I want to thank the Real News Network and its production team: Cameron Granadino, Adam Coley, David Hebden, and Kayla Rivara. You can find me at chrishedges.substack.com

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Julian Assange and the US governments war on whistleblowers

Killing the messenger: Joe Biden’s disturbing hypocrisy on Julian Assange

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It is time for President Biden to live up to his rhetoric on press freedom.

As a candidate in 2020, Biden released a powerful statement on the importance of press freedom, writing:

Reporters Without Borders tells us that at least 360 people worldwide are currently imprisoned for their work in journalism. We all stand in solidarity with these journalists for, as Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1786, "Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost."

Biden left out the fact that one of those imprisoned people is WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange, and that he is languishing in solitary confinement in a maximum-security prison in London because the U.S. government wants to make an example of him.

Assange was indicted by the Trump administration in an aggressive, precedent-shattering move that was widely condemned by journalists and human rights groups. President Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland have had almost two years to do the right thing and drop this dangerous prosecution.

They have failed to deliver.

Instead, the Biden administration continues to lecture the world about press freedom and disinformation. Biden and his allies rightly chastise authoritarian regimes for censoring the press, cracking down on dissent and even criminalizing publishing the truth. Reporters Without Borders condemns violations of press freedom in places like Iran, China and Myanmar. But they also note that press freedom violations are not unique to such regimes. They condemn the persecution of Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Ressa in the Philippines, and they lead a coalition of 16 journalism advocacy groups calling on the British government to free Assange.

These reports underscore the importance of a free and independent press that can expose wrongdoing, inform the public of uncomfortable realities and push back on government propaganda. In other words, a free press protects our access to the truth when the government deceives us.

Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course.

I am proud to know Julian Assange. When I met with him at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, I was most impressed by his intelligence, compassion, and his belief in truth as an antidote to the poison of lies and war propaganda. As Assange said, "if wars can be started by lies, peace can be started by truth."

For more than three years, Assange has been held in solitary confinement in a maximum-security prison known as "England's Guantnamo" much of that during a COVID outbreak at the jail that posed a threat to his life. As I write this, he is in 24-hour isolation with COVID. Last year, he suffered a mini-stroke. UN Special Rapporteur Nils Melzer has determined that the conditions of Assange's confinement constitute torture.

Prior to being held in a maximum-security prison with murderers, Assange spent years confined in the Ecuadorian embassy, without access to adequate medical care. During that time, the U.S. government spied on his lawyers, his visitors (including me), his family and his doctors. They even seized his files and legal notes when he was arrested. Why? Because Assange's work with WikiLeaks had embarrassed the government on the world stage

Barack Obama refused to indict Assange because of the "New York Times problem": If Obama were to indict Assange for publishing truthful information, he'd have to indict the New York Times as well. But Biden has now affirmed Trump's contention that publishing the truth is a crime. Assange is being charged under the Espionage Act of 1917. That law is controversial enough when prosecutors use it to target whistleblowers, but it has never been used successfully against a publisher. What Biden is really saying by indicting Assange is that the U.S. government can lie to the public, conceal its criminal behavior and then destroy those who would dare seek the truth.

The Justice Department has charged Assange for receiving and publishing truthful, newsworthy information leaked by whistleblower Chelsea Manning, but has never charged any of the military or government officials whose wrongdoing was exposed.

It is the 21st-century version of killing the messenger.

No one was harmed by Assange's reporting, unless you count the bruised reputations of politicians who were caught breaking the law, lying or concealing misconduct. Experts testified in British court proceedings that Assange went to extreme lengths to help protect both his sources and people who might be harmed by the disclosure of sensitive information. Instead of investigating the wrongdoing that WikiLeaks exposed and punishing those who broke the law or covered it up, the government has focused on attacking whistleblowers and the journalists who work with them.

Why? Because it sends a message to others who might be tempted to inform the public about government misconduct: We can destroy your life.

Thomas Jefferson was right, and as a candidate Joe Biden was right to cite his words. There is no democracy without a free press to hold the government accountable. And Reporters Without Borders is right to be concerned about press freedom in the United States. Its fact sheet begins with the ominous line: "In the United States, once considered a model for press freedom and free speech, press freedom violations are increasing at a troubling rate."

There is no free press without a free Julian Assange. As long as the government can prosecute Assange for publishing truthful information in the public interest, the Biden administration's pontifications about human rights, "fake news" and propaganda are the epitome of hypocrisy.

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Killing the messenger: Joe Biden's disturbing hypocrisy on Julian Assange