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Nov. 29, 2022 - Lionel Nation
08:14
Julian Assange and the Crime of Publishing
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Since the beginning, I have said repeatedly, without any hesitation, without any variation, without any trepidation, that Julian Assange must be released.
From all United States criminal sanctions, criminal prosecutions, and the like.
I don't know about the rest of the world.
I can't speak for others.
But as far as this country goes, what he did, and what WikiLeaks is, is journalism.
Classic First Amendment freedom of the press.
Here it is in its simplest form.
If you yourself Violate the law.
You.
Let's say you're the New York Times.
Let's say you're the Washington Post.
Whatever.
Or maybe drudge.
Doesn't matter.
And you violate the law.
You trespass into someone's world.
Take information and then publish it.
That's no good.
Because you were trespassory, trespassorial.
You broke the law to get this information.
Once you did this, all bets are off.
It's that simple.
But if somebody comes to you, as in the case of Bartnicki against Vopper, 2001, the Supreme Court dealt with this.
If someone comes to you like they did with...
The Pentagon Papers and Ellsberg.
Somebody comes to you and says, here, I've got information that I have provided, that I'm providing to you, that I stole or I took against the law.
Because invariably, invariably, you know and I know that somebody who presents this information did not get it with the consent of the particular party they took it from.
Ellsberg took it from the Rand Corporation or whatever.
Nobody okays this.
When you're a whistleblower, we love whistleblowers.
By virtue of who you are, you have violated some type of rule.
You have.
And what's important in Ottawa, we have to recognize very, very specifically, is that in order for the First Amendment to still work, In order for it to apply, it has to protect information that is presented to it from people who might have broken the law.
Remember, Snowden, different issue.
He took the information.
He did it.
If Snowden himself tries to publish something on his own, he would have a difficult time taking advantage of this particular provision because he broke the law.
He stole it.
Fruits of the crime.
That's it.
And the fact that he's...
Providing this as a means of publication is a different issue, but that's not the case here with Julian Assange.
He wasn't participating in this.
And they're going to claim sometimes that maybe he might have cajoled or wheedled or participated or encouraged someone, you know, Chelsea Manning or whatever, to use a particular...
type of methodology to break in or something.
Those are very interesting issues which may later on be addressed by the courts.
But for purposes of this, for purposes of Julian Assange, and within the strict framework of his particular case, what he did was to publish, as a publisher, something that is newsworthy.
Newsworthy.
And if you say, if you eliminate this, if you say that, no, Julian Assange can be prosecuted, you will never have another Pentagon Papers.
You'll never have anything worthwhile.
You will have editors and small newspapers say, I'm not going to be involved in this.
I'm not going to be involved in this.
No way!
But they stole it.
I'm not going to be the next Assange.
And that's not to say there's not a chilling effect right now.
That's not to say that despite everything, people may still say, I don't want to hear this.
Imagine this.
Imagine having newspapers, having a press, having journalism, where individuals who are involved in this say to you, don't bring me this information.
Hell no, I'm not interested in this.
No way!
Oh, that's terrific!
Oh, yes, we will thrive in the commercial exchange of new and interesting ideas.
No, no.
Listen, I don't know what you think about Julian Assange.
I don't know if you like him, or his looks, or his attitude, or these other extraneous charges, which turned out to be specious.
I don't know about that.
I don't know if you think that journalism is the New York Times or whether people should wear pork pie hats with little cards and the brim that says press.
I don't know what you think journalism is or what a journalist is.
But now, the zeitgeist, the particular epoch that we are living in right now, all the rules are different.
All the rules are over with.
All the rules that you thought As far as what newspapers were before, throw them away.
It's a brave new world and a new frontier.
And Julian Assange absolutely, positively, is a journalist.
And there is no excuse.
There's no way around it.
Ellsberg is a hero.
Julian Assange is locked up.
Explain this one to me.
No, you can't.
Remember one thing.
If ever this country loses its First Amendment rights, or any rights for that particular matter, it won't be because some invading, you know, visagoth came over the horizon.
It will be because people like you and me just looked the other way, or didn't care, or kind of sighed a meh.
That's how we lose it.
That's how we lose our rights.
Julian Assange.
I'll go one step further.
Aside from being not guilty of this, is a hero.
That's right.
Is a hero.
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