Less than two months after the arrest of journalist Julian Assange, and two weeks after his indictment under the Espionage Act, emboldened governments have sent the police after journalists who’ve challenged the state. Joe Lauria reports.
By Joe Lauria
in Sydney, Australia
Special to Consortium News
Following the arrest and Espionage Act indictment of Julian Assange a number of police actions against journalists for publishing classified information and other journalistic activity has heightened fears among mainstream journalists that they could be next.
Police in Sydney, Australia on Wednesday raided the offices of the taxpayer-funded Australian Broadcasting Corporation, copying thousands of files related to a 2017 ABC broadcast that revealed allegations of war crimes by Australian special forces in Afghanistan.
Three Australian Federal Police officers and three police technicians entered ABC’s Sydney headquarters with a search warrant that named two ABC investigative journalists and the network’s news director. The police demanded to look through the journalists’ emails, ABC reported.
David Anderson, the ABC managing director, said it was “highly unusual for the national broadcaster to be raided in this way”.
“This is a serious development and raises legitimate concerns over freedom of the press and proper public scrutiny of national security and Defence matters,” he said. “The ABC stands by its journalists, will protect its sources and continue to report without fear or favour on national security and intelligence issues when there is a clear public interest.” John Lyons, ABC’s executive editor and head of investigative journalism, tweeted:
Lyons said the federal police were going through dozens of emails with the authority to delete or even change their content. Protagonist Winston Smith’s job in Orwell’s 1984 was to rewrite news archives.
“I recall writing ages ago about Australian legislation giving the Australian govt power to ‘add, alter or delete’ targeted material,” Australian psychologist and social critic Lissa Johnson told Consortium News. “The msm barely batted an eyelid at the time. Now that power is being wielded against the ABC.”
Gaven Morris, ABC’s news director, said: “Journalism is not a crime.”
“Our journalists do a really difficult job, I’m proud of what they do, they do it in the public’s interest,” he said. “I’d say to all the journalists at the ABC and all the journalists across Australia, don’t be afraid of the job you do.”
Marcus Strom, president of Australia’s journalists’ union, the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance, called the raid “disturbing.”
“It should chill the public as well as journalists,” he said.”These raids are all about intimidating journalists and intimidating whistle blowers so that mistakes made by the Government, including potential crimes, by the military, remain covered up, remain secret, and don’t fall in to the public domain.”
Political Editor’s Home Raided
On Tuesday morning in an unrelated case, Canberra police entered the home of the political editor of the Murdoch-owned Daily Telegraph. “Journalist Annika Smethurst opened her front door to find seven AFP officers waiting for her. All because she dared to do her job and keep the nation informed on what its government was doing,” the Telegraph said in an editorial.
Ironically, the Smethhurst article in April 2018 that raised the ire of the government “revealed the departments of Defence and Home Affairs were considering new powers allowing Australians to be monitored for the first time,” The Telegraph reported. “Her original article included images of top secret letters between Home Affairs Secretary Mike Pezzullo and Defence Secretary Greg Moriarty.”
French Journalists Arrested
Assange was arrested in London on April 11. Police in Paris arrested two journalists who were covering Yellow Vest protests on April 20. One of the journalists, Alexis Kraland, said he was taken into custody after refusing to be searched and to turn his camera over to police at Gare du Nord train station. The largest journalism union in France demanded an explanation from police.
SF Police Raid Journalists’ Home
And on May 10 in San Francisco, police using sledgehammers to break down the door, raided the home of Bryan Carmody, a freelance journalist, to get him, while handcuffed, to reveal the source who leaked him a police report into the sudden death of the city’s elected public defender. Police took away computers, cameras, mobile phones and notes.
San Francisco Police Chief William Scott said initially that Carmody had “crossed a line” with his report. After a public outcry and demands that Scott resign, the police chief issued an apology.
Fears Justified
While there is no direct connection between Assange’s arrest and indictment for possessing and disseminating classified material and these subsequent police actions, a Western taboo on arresting or prosecuting the press for its work has clearly been weakened. One must ask why Australian police acted on a broadcast produced in 2017 and an article published in April only after Assange’s arrest and prosecution.
Within hours of Assange’s Espionage Act indictment on May 23, major publications and media figures, who have harshly treated Assange, began lining up in his defense out of self-interested concern that the government could apply the same prosecutions to them for also routinely publishing classified information.
Their fears are beginning to be realized.
Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, Sunday Times of London and numerous other newspapers. He can be reached at [email protected] and followed on Twitter @unjoe .
The assertion here that the arrest and imprisonment of Julian Assange is not directly connected to the sudden escalation elsewhere of government raids on journalists and their media outlets, seems at-best quite naive. There’s plenty of evidence to suggest the wannabe rulers’ “war” on sources of unwanted information, already carceral and/or murderous in many places, is now being put into full effect in the supposedly last bastions of “freedom.”
When the official kidnapping and presently-torturous jailing of Assange not only failed to spark the required outrage among so-called (and generally “self”-styled) major media heavy-weights, but was actively cheered-on by so many of them, the police-statists knew they had a green light for the next stage of their operation….a very public crackdown on any-and-every source of any-and-every narrative not toeing the official line. The “legal framework” for suppressing all “speech” that might challenge the aims and methods of the pyramid-scheming owner/operators of the “global” gulag system is already on-the-books everywhere. The apparatus for effecting it is up-and-running.
It very definitely is all connected, too….despite the wishful-thinking-out-loud of such no-doubt well-meaning “HOPE!”-sters as Joe Lauria here. A rose-colored-glasses-free Leonard Cohen likely said it best: “I’ve seen the future, man. It’s murder!”
this will not stop .the journalist who may still be in main stream media [[if any]] will be shut down by their bosses .as the owners are the culprit/criminals who are part and parcel of this neocon agenda. once the genie of out of the lamp ,its all over for journalism and us.look too what is haopopening all over the globe war with iran n korea russia china venezuela honduras.haiti and in africa and the m e another 50 or so countries.and yes we have troops in africa in 54 counties.
These raids are so obvious they are looking for anything that looks like governments doing wrong. In the United Kingdom ,unitef states and Australia. They are s…t scared they will be. Found out. Of course they do things behind the scenes
They ate so scared anuthing is known they have leeked things and want to get rid of evidence.
“Police Move Against More Journalists for Publishing Classified Material”
Some perceive that a glass is half-empty, whilst others perceive that the glass is simultaneously half-empty and half-full.
Those perceiving that the glass is only half-empty also tend to conflate an answer with possible answers (plural) thereby limiting questioning why and deriving and implementing strategies contingent on whys – a useful foolery to encourage in rather simple attempts at “perception management”.
Journalists are vectors not sources of classified material.
However the spectacle of “Police Move Against More Journalists” seeks to address the vectors rather than the sources.
Why?
Perhaps the vectors are increasingly being fed by increasing sources ?
Why?
“Perhaps the vectors are increasingly being fed by increasing sources ?
Why?”
Sole cause and omniscience never exists, only changing amalga of different assay.
The opponents’ social relations in the land of make-believe “The United States of America” have always depended on some assay of mystification and salesmen to encourage mystification, including through slogans such as “We the people hold these truths to be self-evident”, “Its morning in America”, “Make America great again” etc.
However despite myriad attempts by the opponents to evangelise/impose notions that truths are self-evident not all agree; even some living in the land of make-believe “The United States of America” do not agree.
This lack of unity in agreement can be represented through the links below.
From Russian sources:
https://www.globalresearch.ca/roosevelts-world-war-ii-lend-lease-act-americas-war-economy-us-military-aid-to-the-soviet-union/5449160
https://www.globalresearch.ca/history-of-world-war-ii-americas-was-providing-military-aid-to-the-ussr-while-also-supporting-nazi-germany/5449378
From “Us” sources:
https://www.globalresearch.ca/boeing-obama-gold-watch-346-dead/5679898
Holding truths to be self-evident has myriad consequences; one of the consequences contingent on other consequences being that the vectors are increasingly being fed by increasing sources.
“The opponents’ social relations in the land of make-believe “The United States of America” have always depended on some assay of mystification and salesmen to encourage mystification, including through slogans such as “We the people hold these truths to be self-evident”, “Its morning in America”, “Make America great again” etc. “
Notions of convergence based upon projection and beliefs became of increased interest from the early 1960’s onwards in both the “West” and the “East” as did notions of systemic threats and their facilitation including but not restricted to:
EASTON, DAVID (1965) A System’s Analysis of Political Life (New York: Wiley).
These were components in facilitating “détente” which in turn was a component in facilitating “neo-liberalism”, and greater assay of fiat in implementation of various hopes and wishes misrepresented as strategies and tactics, which facilitated the continuing process of the transcendence of “The Soviet Union” by the Russian Federation which a lateral process which continues to exist in practice in developing forms.
The present opponents like some in “The Soviet Union” tend/tended to be immersed in beliefs and projections.
Not all in “The Soviet Union” were so immersed and reliant on beliefs that “The Soviet Union” could be “reformed” through exploring hypotheses including but not restricted to “What is the Soviet Union and how is it facilitated ?”, although many in “The Soviet Union” tended to rely on their own experience and the experiences of their associates including family – blat being multi-purpose.
From the late 1960’s onwards an increasing number in “The Soviet Union” illustrated their alienation from “The Soviet Union” in various forms as outlined in various contemporary studies including but not restricted to Mr. Robert’s book “Alienation and the Soviet Economy “ of 1971 which was reissued in 1990 :
https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/pages/books/alienation-and-the-soviet-economy-the-collapse-of-the-socialist-era/
The understanding that reliance on previous practices of alienation in themselves were not sufficient
to transcend or preclude transcendence of “The Soviet Union” was accelerated by various experiences including the war in Afghanistan and the events at Chernobyl with contingent practices.
Those who believed that “The Soviet Union” could be reformed sought to rely on glasnost and perestroika, whilst those analysing “What is the Soviet Union and how is it facilitated” engaged in different activities.
Reliance on belief and projection continues to be widespread including in hopes and wishes of some in the RAND corporation, in the hopes and wishes those who seek to “restore democracy in America” and apparently in
https://www.rt.com/op-ed/461500-chernobyl-lies-transparency-soviet-west/
all facilitating opportunities for others analysing “What is the United States and how is it facilitated?”
formulating and implementing strategies derived therefrom.
Perhaps for those of a religious disposition the above could be rendered as – Beware of golden calves.
See also in Northern Ireland:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-48510558/
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/may/31/northern-ireland-judge-rebukes-police-for-seizing-papers-from-journalist/
The questioned always begged is the classification system itself which has less to do with national security than protecting information about critical, embarrassing and illegal actions. Something for those in power to hide behind.
It reminds me what is going on in my home state on the first day of deer hunting season. Already before dawn more than a million hunters descends upon forests and the bulk of all deer trophies collected during 3 day season are bagged within hours (remaining creatures probably hide deeply not caring for thirst and hunger until the gunfire stops).
The French went after those sympathetic to Yellow Jackets, Australians had some beef with journalists for more than two years, SF police had their own preferred targets, but all waited obediently for the beginning of the Open Season that was so loudly proclaimed by the Trump Administration. (Actually I am not sure about the French, they could start the hunt before the Open Season for Journalists started officially, but after it was clear that it will be coming. Their trick is to show obedience and independence in the same time.)
If they want revolution, they just might get it, only this time no prisoners. Its much easier for the public to go underground than the government, and one has to wonder which way the wind will blow for the police troops on the ground? I say the governments might be surprised.
Let us hope that this happens. It will be interesting to see whether the US disease mechanism of greed, cowardice, hypocrisy, selfishness, and malice proves more or less stable than monarchy or dictatorship. Where no one expects reciprocation, everyone is willing to sell out confidantes, and no one can sustain a higher level social contract, it may be that reform movements cannot avoid internal betrayals, and will be permanently suppressed.
Sam F
I suppose it is always a worry that we will come to a point where totalitarianism will become bullet proof. If it can be imagined, it can be possible.
Such reaction would spawn a bigger response bringing on more repressive measure justified by the ‘secret underground’ attacks on police, who are just pawns for the powerful. The thing to do is keep seeking and revealing the truth of things.
The governments are criminalizing publishing factual information about war crimes and state sponsored murder. That’s the focus. It follows that these governments have the intention to kill people, and those who carry out the killings are going to be protected by anonymity and will be immune from prosecution. Journalists, or anyone else who does not agree with state sponsored terror, murder, torture, disappearances will be punished severely, disappeared, or killed. That’s the meaning. It has been obvious since the beginning of the prosecution of Assange and Manning for revealing US war crimes, and the signing by Obama of the 2012 NDAA.
The MSM have reneged in their duty to stand up to authoritarianism and as a result have acquiesced to the curtailment of free speech and privacy. The have assisted and applauded the most egregious war crimes. They have become the enemies of democracy. Raul Hilberg stated how the process changed during the years in Nazi Germany, “first there were laws and then they were decrees implementing laws and then there were laws made saying there shall be no laws and then there were orders and directives written down but still published in Ministerial gazettes and there was government by announcement, as appeared in newspapers and then they were the quiet orders, the orders that were not published within the bureaucracy. They were oral orders and finally they were no orders at all. Everyone knew what he had to do”. The road to perdition is mapped by the neocons, plutocrats and oligarchs but there is still time to change course and for the MSM to reveal the truth and expose the lies. That is their duty according to the first Amendment. If they fail, we have all failed. It is the likes of Consortium News, other similar news media outlets and whistleblowers that have helped stem the tide and have, hopefully, given us sufficient time to reverse course.
I would add the “duty” that you mention is not a legal duty, but the “mission” that validates the worth of their franchises. In particular, an important sector of the public, especially those with at least average income and education and thus coveted by advertisers believes that they listen or subscribe to “serious reliable new sources”. Plutocrat owners used to appreciate the needs to follow that mission or at least give such impression.
However, “seriousness” had also other requirement, like “keen understanding of the needs of the national security”, something that they share with the bulk of judiciary. OTOH, a little wave of persecution, preferably toothless, may add some shine to their “serious” patina.
The material linked here, which contains codes blueprinting the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, among other things, is unclassified, published in 1997 in the full light of day in Lanham, Maryland … https://sites.google.com/site/doculeaks/executive-docs. Read the letters first. Feel free to download and distribute.
Separating the journalists from the propagandists should be easy.
Just look who’s getting hassled.
One of our foremost journalists wrote this to me re Assange, when I urged her to use her name recognition to speak out publicly in defense of Assange’s human, civil, and First Amendment rights:
“You and I are going to have to agree to disagree on this – but I’ll just say that Assange is an adult, and he knew that what he was doing would have consequences, and now he doesn’t want to face them. I respect civil disobedience but this isn’t that. Peace, [name]”
Needless to say, I was appalled at the vapidity and cluelessness of this response. I wonder what this person is now thinking, if she is thinking at all.
And now it may be too late to save freedom of the press and freedom to dissent.
Note the origin of these attacks on journalism is the NATO powers’ military sector. Nobody else. And the reason they are so obsessed with secrecy of their military campaign against Asia, Africa and Latin America is because their existence in hundreds of military bases on other people’s lands cannot possibly continue if all the truth be known. Their war against everybody on earth can only be waged as a covert war of assassinations, bribery, attacks on journalism, and every kind of dirty trick to harm and manipulate, divide and deceive the people of the world.
That Marcus Strom, president of the Australian Journalist’s Union should refer to government’s making “mistakes” when policy and approved behaviors are revealed, suggests he hopes he might lessen official anger levels.
Generally, when policies are determined to be “mistakes”, it is from, shall we say, an “historic” perspective, only AFTER those policies have been implemented.
Why yes, it turns out, although not clear at the time, very apparently, that implementing “The Final Solution” was a “mistake”, for several reasons even beyond the horror, little acknowledged at the time, in the “heat” or thrill of the moment.
When the U$ engaged in the use of torture, as POLICY, not the unauthorized and aberrant behavior of “a few bad apples”, as was the claim at the time when information about it could no longer be suppressed, a “mistake” was made. Even though, to this very day, too many still applaud the euphemistic “enhanced interrogation”, which Obama refused to prosecute as his administration determined that torture was merely a “policy disagreement” which he would not “criminalize”.
Of course, Obama had no qualms, Constitutional Scholar that he is, pronouncing Chelsea (then Bradley) Manning “guilty” even before Manning went to trial.
Doubtless, about so very many “mistakes”, books entitled, “Duh …
We Meant Well”, will find ready audiences in many nations.
In most cases, crimes such as lying a nation into war, of government regarding “the people” as the enemy, spying upon them, propagandizing them, intimidating those who question or dissent, will not even need explanation. For, so long as sufficient numbers of the many may happily believe their national mythology, their betters can continue to convince these many that the public should be aware of as few “security measures” as possible, so that the perceived, the described, enemy or enemies of the particular moment will not be given clues as to what is going on.
Are lowly commenters at as much risk as journalists, either those deemed “official” and “legitimate” or those deemed “dangerous” or disruptive dupes, as Skip Scott wonders?
Will those friends and family members who do not wish to know anything of real depth, who will not even listen to Noam Chomsky because, they claim, “he is too pessimistic”, who firmly believe that reading Comey’s book has provided them deep insights into the bowels of honest and upright governance, be proved the most safe and secure?
After all, first “they” will come for (…….)
(fill in the blank with your favorite scapegoat or patsy) and, because “we” are good, loyal, and patriotic to the yellow ribbons and “thank you for your service”, how could this, ever, turn out badly, or even uncomfortably, for us?
We follow all the rules. And duty as we are told.
We remain shallow in our grasp, superficial in our understandings, and fully attentive to sports statistics and the delightful antics of royal famblies, as well as the latest Facebook, Google, and YouTube trends.
We reverently close our ears and our minds, and patiently await the political savior who our most exceptional and indispensable democracy assured us will save us from the evil monsters who hate us for our freedoms.
There are so many of them.
But we are the Invincible Homeland,
Just Biden our time.
If necessary, we will take on and take out the whole world.
Who do they think THEY are?
Gawd’s gift to the world?
My very favorite U$ian cliche: “We have muddled through much worse before, no doubt we shall triumph yet again.”
Who wants to bet!
What are the odds?
Oh wait! The odds are those who must be muzzled …
Ain’t ours the best of all possible nations?
Got any questions!
That’s odd.
Ours not to question …
You have been warned.
Are commenters at risk?
Who wants to know?
Too many questions.
Why even ask?
? More …
Or not.
At ALL.
@ “Obama had no qualms, Constitutional Scholar that he is …”
Let’s not give the man more credit than he is due. He was a lecturer in a single Constitutional Law class during one semester, not a professor, not even an adjunct professor. Constitutional Law is a class taught in virtually/all (?) U.S. law schools. It’s a class that comes with a teacher’s guide to accompany the students’ text books. One can teach Constitutional Law with scarcely any knowledge of constitutional law.
Constitutional Law is largely the study of key court cases interpreting the Commerce Clause. It does not involve a study of civil or human rights.
Obama may be many things, but constitutional scholar he is not.
Thanks, Paul, good to know that Constitutional Law courses study court cases interpreting the Commerce Clause rather than civil or human rights. Why should the US judiciary, let alone lawyers, bother with learning of the human and constitutional rights that they work so hard to subvert? I’m quite sure that there is not a patriot or a humanitarian on the US judiciary.
Prompted by your claim “One can teach Constitutional Law with scarcely any knowledge of constitutional law.” I search “constitutional law syllabus”. The first hit that was from a law school in USA was a syllabus from UC Berkeley. Seems that preparing 26 lectures according to this syllabus should improve the knowledge on most important topics, including commerce clause that was the subject in 3 of them.
Obama deserves credit for being sufficiently knowledgable about laws and the Constitution that he knew what he was violating and the skill to do it with some circumspection and misdirection. Commutation of Manning sentence may be viewed as a misdirection.
Yes, lawyers and future judges learn something of constitutional rights. What they learn are the now-common cases whereby the federal judiciary have subverted those rights with tricks and traps. They use every scam, inventing interpretations that have no legal basis at all.
As one of hundreds of examples, I’ll cite the fraudulent quote by the US Court of Federal Claims (CoFC) of the Tucker Act that created that court and in the same single sentence listed its four areas of jurisdiction, limiting the last clause to non-tort claims. Seeking to subvert the financial responsibilities of the US for damages it has done, their judges since 2004 simply misquote the Act, leaving out the first three and one half classes of tort (damages) claims so as to tack on the final phrase “not sounding in tort” to the first part of the sentence, to create the obviously falsified illusion that the COFC was created only to handle claims that do not involve damages. That is a blatant and puerile fraud, which they conceal by citing a list of their own cases since then that cite their own obvious misquote, not including the case with the misquote, so that readers must do a day’s work to find it, and are deceived that many cautious judges agreed, rather than a few scoundrels.
That is one of hundreds of examples of the complete, consistent, and energetic betrayal of the People of the United States, of direct and deliberate subversion of our rights under the Constitution, by the federal judiciary. The state judiciaries are exactly the same, although usually taking fewer pains to hide their radical opposition to the rights of the people. They just state it outright, as in “states cannot violate the civil rights act, because they are not people” which directly and deliberately contradicts the Civil Rights Act, which specifically prohibits such violations by the states.
How is that old quote being repeated now?
‘First they came for the journalist but I said nothing because I was not a journalist. After that no one knew who they came for or what they did because there were no journalists left.’
Interesting – in a dark way – that none of this have I heard on either the BBC World Service or NPR. Now had any of these arrests, raids, acts of police intimidation happened to journalists in, say, Iran, China or Russia (our side of the world’s Fave nasties), it would be non-stop reportage and condemnation.
Nor has there been a whisper about Mr Assange’s condition, about his solitary confinement, about the appalling length of his sentence (let alone its excessive punitiveness for a minor infraction), about the Swedish court’s denial of extradition. Again had *any* of this taken place against a journalist in any of the above-mentioned nations, the outcry in the media (and especially on the BBC and NPR) would have been prolonged and vociferous. Nary a peep – that I have heard, anyway.
AnneR, I hope you won’t mind me adding this here by way of keeping us all informed, a link to Craig Murray. With Craig’s blog it is always important to read the commentary too…
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2019/06/a-swedish-court-injects-some-sense/#tc-comment-title
What the UN Rapporteur on Torture said —that he manifested signs of sustained psychological torture—was reported by the corporate press. Which is not to defend them, just for the sake of accuracy.
Thank you for standing up for journalism. At first it might seem to be a bit of self preservation based in self interest for someone like Joe Lauria to report these attacks on journalists by the state. No doubt this has something to do with it…
However, when we look at the big picture, it is clear what is going on is a worldwide move towards authoritarianism. Hence, it isn’t just the journalists we should be concerned about. They’ve come for us all, “all” meaning anyone and everyone who questions the veracity or flavor of the bullshit we are fed by the authorities.
https://opensociet.org/2019/06/05/authoritarianism-post-truth-politics/
It is good that Joe Lauria indicates (link to article about the arrest of two French journalists April 20) that the attack on journalism is not confined exclusively to the English speaking world.
Another student journalist was arrested the same day, just being in the way of a police charge from behind him. He spent 83 hours in custody under brutal conditions (like pretty much everybody these days in France), described in
https://www.les-crises.fr/comment-intimider-un-journaliste-recit-de-83-heures-de-procedure-par-brice-i/ .
Readers who know French will be impressed by this account.
In the context of Macron’s new anti Fake News law, even journalists with the main stream media are targets. Eight journalists for ‘Le Monde” were recently questions by the French equvalent of the FBI who were looking for the sources of their information. The offices of the well-known on-line news site were recently raided, I think for the same reason.
The context is the same wherever the financial interests decide everything. It indicates that the big financial interests are more afraid than ever of what the general public thinks.
Oops, the “well known on-line news site” is “Mediapart.”
Well, it has begun. The MSM lackeys and empire enforcers should be ashamed of themselves. The last vestige of the illusion of living in a free society is gone. The mask is off, and the evil empire is showing its true face. How long before they come after journalists like Joe Lauria, Caitlin Johnstone, John Pilger, et al? How long before they even start coming for us lowly commenters?
The face you see is not the face that the seeming majority of Americans see. News sources such as this are considered fringe and do not garner the respect they deserve amongst those who would rather conform than care. To think that the government is what’s coming for us commenters is naïve; to think that it’s something that will happen in the future is ignorant.
Reality is more bland than some shadowy secret skull and bones deep state nonsense. Instead, we have alienation and associated economic/social struggles, incarceration, re-education (involuntary psychiatry is quite literally an echo of various things we publicly attribute to dictators, albeit with new packaging), and other methods in place to deal with us pesky fringe weirdos that don’t believe life is flying puppies and unicorns.
Vandenberg and Truman really did a hell of a thing when they came up with this idea of ‘the Free World.’ Amazing how when people in power say ‘You’re Free,’ The slaves all believe it.
People believe for the sake of their safety as those who do not are outcast. The only amazing thing about classical conditioning is what it says about humanity as a whole, on both sides of the coin…
Very frightening. With Australia already being poodle-like in its support for the USA regardless of the truth, this attack on ABC journalists can only be the beginning of more repression. If even the Murdoch papers are also interfered with, the situation is dire.
It can’t happen here, I’m telling you my dear, it can’t happen here…. Frank Zappa
There’s another Zappa lyric that is appropriate here: Call any vegetable, call it by name, when you get off the train… Call any vegetable and the chances are good…. that the vegetable will respond to you!
Unfortunately, I can’t reproduce Frank’s music that goes along with these. But welcome to the wonderful “liberal, rules based order” that we’ve inflicted on the rest of the world, brought to your town.
Rutabehaeaga – Rutabeheaga – Rutabaheaga – Rutabaga!
Who are the Brain Police
Plastic People
I am the Slime
and so much more to come from him within the following decades.
Mr. Frank Zappa was one of our Best Visionary’s.
Thanks for jogging my memory with regard to Zappa. Here is an old quotation:
“The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it’s profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater.” – Frank Zappa (circa 1977)
“The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it’s profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater.“ Frank Zappa
Jinx!
Thank you Joe, If we had a free press this would be Headline News! Here is The Missing AV Interview from MSM.
Note: The audio on this is not good and I don’t know anything about the interviewer. The important aspect of this interview is Bill Binney outlining his experience, speaking truth to power (The IC) and why it matters… The irony is: that this is the interview that is missing from the vaunted MSM.
And, of course, Bill Binney May be the most significant source for clearing all of the Russiagate disinformation up. Mr. Binney quite simply explains how to clean up digital surveillance and how to make collection safe and legal. Thank you Robert Steele for linking this piece.
https://phibetaiota.net/2019/06/bill-binney-with-dustin-nemos-on-everything-blockbuster/
Thanks for the informative link.
Mr. Van Noy – I appreciate your mentioning the audio is not good, although William comes through clearly and that is what matters. So many of these interviews on the net are excruciating to sit through ’cause of the sound. One really wants to hear what’s said to sit through approximately 85% of them. William let it flow on this one and mentioned a couple of items that I had not heard prior to this. He is someone very special and I pray for him to succeed.
Thanks to All of you. The very best, informed commentary on the Web…