VIPS on Julian Assange and Freedom of the Press

Today, May 3 is World Press Freedom Day. It is sadly ironic that on this day, the United States is exercising all of its political might to get its lapdog, the United Kingdom to extradite Julian Assange to the United States for the crime of journalism.

The United Nations recognizes May 3 as World Press Freedom Day, and this year’s theme is “Media for Democracy, Journalism, and Elections in Times of Disinformation” — a choice meant to encourage discussions of the challenges faced by the press today when it comes to reporting on elections.

Julian Assange has spent the last seven years of his life locked up in the Ecuadoran embassy due to his well founded fear that he would be sent to the United States and be disappeared for publishing embarrassing and criminal acts committed by the United States government. As a result of economic and political pressure by the United States, Ecuador rescinded the asylum it had granted to Assange, thus allowing the British police to enter and physically remove him from the embassy. Now the United States is pushing for his extradition.

Many pundits and commenters on the internet have failed to articulate the gravity of Assange being extradited to the United States and eventually being imprisoned or disappeared for committing the crime of journalism. Assange is a publisher, just as the New York Times or the Washington Post are publishers. The right of a publishing organization to publish documents provided by a source, regardless of how that source came into those documents, was settled with US Supreme Court ruling on the publication of the Pentagon Papers.

In the now-famous case of New York Times Co. v. United States, the Times and the Washington Post joined forces to fight for the right to publish, and on June 30 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that the government had failed to prove harm to national security, and that publication of the papers was justified under the First Amendment’s protection of freedom of the press.

In addition to publication in the Times, Post, Boston Globe and other newspapers, portions of the Pentagon Papers entered the public record when Senator Mike Gravel of Alaska, an outspoken critic of the Vietnam War, read them aloud in a Senate subcommittee hearing.

Now, the United States government, by requesting the extradition of Julian Assange in connection with Wikileaks' publication of information given to them by Chelsea Manning, is once again trying to shut down the freedom of the press as guaranteed by the First Amendment.

On April 30, 2019, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) has issued an excellent memorandum addressed to the governments and people of the United Kingdom and United States regarding the extradition and charging of Julian Assange. Consortium News has printed a copy of this memorandum which was signed by twenty eight members and affiliates, including such notables as Bill Binney, Mike Gravel, John Kiriakou, Ray McGovern, Craig Murray, and Larry Wilkerson.

Every word in this memorandum is meaty and it is very difficult to excerpt small portions of it without failing to honor the document as a whole. I encourage everyone to read the memorandum linked above, including the links within the memorandum which show just how unequal justice is in this country as well as providing excellent background information.

“These are not only legitimate but professionally advised journalistic practices for source protection,” notes POGO (Project on Government Oversight). It is worth noting that Manning had Top Secret clearance and did not need Assange’s assistance to gain access to databases, but only to hide her identity.

The indictment’s implied threat thus reaches beyond Assange and even beyond journalists. The threat to journalists and others does not vanish if they subsequently avoid practices identified in the government’s indictment. (my emphasis) The NSA’s big bag of past communications offers abundant material from which to spin an indictment years later, and even circumstantial evidence can produce a conviction. Moreover, the secret landscape—a recent and arbitrary development—continually expands, making ever more of government off limits to public view.

Reporters Without Borders has ranked 180 countries according to how free their press is. In 2019, the top five countries for having a free press are Norway, Finland, Sweden, Netherlands, and Denmark. The United States does not even make the top twenty five and barely makes the top fifty out of 180 countries, coming in at number forty eight (48). If Julian Assange is extradited and prosecuted for the crime of journalism, we can be sure that the United States' 2020 ranking is destined to fall even lower.

Among the unalienable rights protected by the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights are the rights to free speech and freedom of the press. While the First Amendment has not been subject of as much emotional debate as the Second Amendment, it is my personal belief that without the protections of the First Amendment from government intrusion into free speech and free press, all the other rights in the Bill of Rights are severely weakened. Without the public's right to know and to freely exchange information, we are not a free people.

We have already seen severe limitation on free speech placed by private corporations who are not bound by the First Amendment, but are often acting on behalf of or in coordination the government to limit the exchange of ideas on popular social platforms. The consolidation of media into six giant corporations has also created an atmosphere of censorship in which the exchange of ideas is often limited through shadow banning or the limitation on access to the information being published on their platforms.

This extension of a whistleblower reprisal regime onto a publisher of disclosures poses an existential threat to all journalists and to the right of all people to speak and hear important truths. The U.S. indictment of Julian Assange tests our ability to perceive a direct threat to free speech, and tests our will to oppose that threat.Without freedom of press and the right and willingness to publish, whistleblowers even disclosing issues of grave, life and death public safety, will be like a tree falling in the forest with no one to hear.

Only in the open areas of alternative media such as Wikileaks is there a wide range of information and ideas being exchanged. This is information that we have a right and need to know in order to make rational decisions as to what we want in the future of this country. This is exactly why the persecution of Julian Assange is so dangerous to our freedoms of speech and press in the United States.

Share
up
0 users have voted.

Comments

My offense was that I said "Americans are stupid." Not permitted.

up
0 users have voted.

"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon

vtcc73's picture

@dkmich Wear your ban with pride.

up
0 users have voted.

"Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now..."

@dkmich

What a potty mouth! (-;

up
0 users have voted.
gulfgal98's picture

@dkmich of the subtle political censorship we are experiencing when the government has merged with private corporations to do their banning for them.

up
0 users have voted.

Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

travelerxxx's picture

@gulfgal98

... when the government has merged with private corporations to do their banning for them.

Ah, a public/private partnership! As I recall, there's word for that and it starts with "f."

Were I King, any corporation with any government contract whatsoever would be required to follow certain guidelines. A good place to start would be the original Bill of Rights. Can't do that? No contracts for you. Not one.

up
0 users have voted.

@gulfgal98

If our freedom of speech has been curtailed to such a degree that I can't even say Americans are stupid, we have no freedom of speech..and it proves there is no protection for a free press. I keep hoping against hope that England wont get around to sending Assange here, or if they do, England and the US will have new leadership with a big pardon stick eager to sweep back the last 40 years.

up
0 users have voted.

"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon

I guess I should not have the temerity to paraphrase Assange on Assange, but I cannot help myself: Assange did not commit journalism, which covers a lot of bs, slanting, mind manipulation, etc., as well as truth-telling. Wikileaks published unvarnished, unslanted raw data. The crime is revealing unaltered documents, be they emails or whatever.

As for allegedly helping Manning with a password or whatever, as Snowden pointed out, no one has yet proven that.

And let's not forget Manning's bravery. She knows exactly what she is putting herself in for, too. That poor soul was forced to be naked without so much as a blanket. That is humiliating by the standards of anyone but an textbook case exhibitionist. For a trans person, it's torture.

Oh, and the correct name of the Treaty Against Torture is The Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. If you recall those horrid photos, we kept Abu Ghraib prisoners--those imprisoned by Saddam Hussein--naked as well. We signed that convention and we've repeatedly violated it. Rule of law? And we want to punish revealers of truth like Snowden and Assange as lawbreakers?

up
0 users have voted.
Roy Blakeley's picture

@HenryAWallace It is, essentially, conspiring to hack a government computer, which distills down to discussing, in a general way, how to crack passwords in a Windows OS and offering to put Manning in touch with someone more expert.

up
0 users have voted.
wendy davis's picture

indeed tragically ironic, and thank you for bringing all this to our attention. i swore i woul not weep, and haven't yet, but i may yet. i was curious about any number of things in the VIPS' letter, but they hadn't sourced this at all:

"Reportedly, British and U.S. intelligence are interrogating Assange, possibly employing torture tactics, without access to legal counsel at a prison reserved for terrorists.

yes, even 23 hours a day of solitary is torture, but i'd meant the 'reportedly' portion. so i hopped onto a few related twitter accounts, and finally found this on stefania maurizi's account: 'Everything Was Done To Make Julian Assange's Life Miserable'
In his first interview since Julian Assange's arrest, WikiLeaks Editor-in-Chief Kristinn Hrafnsson discusses the "disgraceful" detention of the platform's founder, criticism of its links to Russia and what he describes as the "appalling" treatment of Chelsea Manning', speigel.de ...and i may weep again when i read it.

up
0 users have voted.
Anja Geitz's picture

and start passing out pamphlets about what our war mongering overlords are really doing with our tax money? We could call it Ben Franklin's Renegades circa 2019.

up
0 users have voted.

There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier

travelerxxx's picture

@Anja Geitz

... start passing out pamphlets

I've liked this idea, or a variation thereof, for some time. It's one way to short-circuit the propaganda. It's so low-tech that it's almost guaranteed to get attention.

You don't even need to personally hand them out. Just surreptitiously posting them in public spaces would work. Leave them laying on grocery shelves. Tape them to gas pumps. Stick them in chain-link fences at the park. Best not to have rain in the forecast if you do the fence thingy...

up
0 users have voted.
skod's picture

@travelerxxx We’re getting there in a hurry.

up
0 users have voted.
travelerxxx's picture

@skod

Yes, we do seem to be accelerating. I'm considering some practice runs. Can't hurt.

Time to start pinning down the locations of the omnipresent video cams in particular locales that I might consider using. Not to mention, form and content.

up
0 users have voted.

When it's the would be queen/empress calling supporters of other candidates insulting names they think it is okay.

Pointing out ignorance and/or stupidity of those who attack a whistle blower publisher it is unacceptable.

up
0 users have voted.

is doublespeak for hiding crimes against humanity. Censoring information is not in the public interest. It is similar to 'intelligence' agencies, secret budgets, black ops and other forms of protecting state secrets. Somehow, despite much evidence to the contrary, people cling to the belief that big brother is protecting us from the bogeyman.
Sheesh.

up
0 users have voted.
Lookout's picture

...and twitter too. Remember when twitter shut down pro bernie threads? And stifled the Arab spring? The CEO is a buddy of the $hill.

Corporate platforms are not trustworthy. Stand alone websites and communities like this are where it is at. Even medium where Caitlin publishes took down veganmark's essays for critiquing russiagate.

Here's a nice summary with many perspectives on Julian from VIPS to Hedges to ...
http://medialens.org/index.php/alerts/alert-archive/2019/900-assange-arr...
http://medialens.org/index.php/alerts/alert-archive/2019/901-assange-arr...

The consortium piece was good thanks for the link and the essay gg.

up
0 users have voted.

“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”