Targeting Free Expression

Stephen Lendman

Free expression in all forms is fundamental in democratic societies. Without it, all other freedoms are at risk. Included are free speech, a free press, freedom of thought, culture, and intellectual inquiry. It also includes the right to challenge government authority peacefully, especially in times of war and cases of injustice, lawlessness, official incompetence, and abusive government behavior. Denying it risks tyranny.

Voltaire defended it, saying "I may disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."

Howard Zinn called dissent "the highest form of patriotism." It includes the right to speak and write freely, assemble, protest publicly, and associate with anyone for any reason lawfully.

Democracy depends on it. Bill of Rights freedoms affirm it. Nonetheless, US history is strewn with abusive laws. The 1798 Sedition Act criminalized publishing "false, scandalous and malicious writing" against President John Adams or Congress, but allowed it against Vice President Thomas Jefferson.

The 1917 Espionage Act imprisoned anyone convicted of "insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, or (encouraging) refusal of duty in the military or naval forces of the United States."

It targeted First Amendment speech against WW I and American's participation in it. The 1918 Sedition Act went further. It criminalized "disloyal, scurrilous (or) abusive" anti-government speech.


Hillary Clinton and Middle East war crimes

Bill Van Auken

"Behind the crocodile tears shed by the war criminals in Washington, the demands for regime-change in Syria have no more to do with human rights than the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq had to do with protecting the American people from terrorism."

Testifying before a Senate committee Tuesday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stated that Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad could be branded a “war criminal.”

"Based on definitions of war criminal and crimes against humanity, there would be an argument to be made that he [Assad] would fit into that category,” Clinton told the Senate panel.

The ratcheting up of Washington’s rhetoric is aimed at winning public support for yet another imperialist intervention in the Middle East, with regime-change once again dressed up as a crusade for human rights. Clinton’s statement, however, begs a question. How precisely does she determine when armed violence against civilians constitutes a war crime?


Corruption and the Citizen, American-Style

Philip Giraldi

The American people must be prepared to defend to the death their rights against all comers, including their own government.

I have long nurtured this thoroughly depressing conviction that the United States, far from being a shining city on the hill, has become one of the most corrupt of nations. Why does America have more lawyers than the rest of the world combined? It is because the corruption has been institutionalized at every level of political life and is protected by laws and procedures created precisely to enable elites to maintain dominance over the rest of us.

I appreciate that my viewpoint may be regarded as somewhat simplistic as I am neither a judge nor a lawyer, and I do concede that many of those in the legal profession are both honest and dedicated to the Constitution. Still, the bad taste of the past 11 years continues to remind me that there is something seriously wrong with how our political system and rule of law operate.


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