Julian Assange is a hero, not a criminal

Assange is a hero, not a crimina| Helsinki Times  | Thomas L. Knapp:

April 12, 2019 - "On April 11, the ongoing saga of journalist and transparency activist Julian Assange took a dangerous turn.  Ecuador's president, Lenin Moreno, revoked his asylum in that country's London embassy. British police immediately arrested him -- supposedly pursuant to his 'crime' of jumping bail on an invalid arrest warrant in an investigation since dropped without charges but, as they admitted shortly thereafter,  actually with the intent of turning him over to US prosecutors on bogus 'hacking' allegations.

"The US political class has been after Assange for nearly a decade.

"In 2010 WikiLeaks, the journalism/transparency service he founded, released information revealing US war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as State Department cables exposing -- among other things -- Hillary Clinton's attempts to have American diplomats plant bugs in the offices of their UN counterparts (Clinton, at one point, tried to raise the possibility of having him murdered for embarrassing her so).

"In 2016, WikiLeaks released Democratic National Committee emails -- provided by an as yet unidentified whistleblower -- exposing the DNC's attempts to rig the Democratic presidential primaries in Clinton's favor.

"At no point has Assange been credibly accused of a crime. He's a journalist. People provide him with information. He publishes that information. That's an activity clearly and unambiguously protected by the First Amendment. Even if Assange was a US citizen, and even if his activities had taken place in territory under US jurisdiction, there's simply no criminal case to be made against him.

"So they're manufacturing one out of whole cloth, accusing him of 'hacking' by asserting that he assisted Chelsea Manning with the technical process of getting the 2010 information to WikiLeaks.

"But once again: Assange is not a US citizen, nor at the time of his alleged actions was he anywhere that would have placed him under the jurisdiction of the United States....

"There are certainly criminal charges worth pursuing here. The US Department of Justice should appoint a special counsel to probe the Assange affair with an eye toward firing, seeking the disbarment of, and prosecuting (for violations of US Code Title 18, Sections 241, Conspiracy Against Rights, and 242, Violation of Rights Under Color of Law) the DoJ bureaucrats who hatched this malicious prosecution.

"The first step in the process, though, is for US president Donald Trump to pardon Julian Assange for all alleged violations of US law on or prior to April 11, 2019.

"Assange is a hero. Time to stop treating him like a criminal."

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

Read more: http://www.helsinkitimes.fi/columns/columns/viewpoint/16341-assange-is-a-hero-not-a-criminal.html
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Libertarians request pardon for Ross Ulbricht

Libertarian Party Urges Trump to Pardon Silk Road Founder Ross Ulbricht - CCN:

July 10,2017 - "The Libertarian Party has requested [that] President Trump grant a full pardon to Ross Ulbricht, who is serving a [double] life sentence with no parole possibility for his role in launching and operating the Silk Road website, which facilitated illegal drug trading. The party passed a resolution urging the pardon at its annual convention on July 3.

"On June 28, the U.S. Supreme Court ... denied Ulbricht’s petition for writ of certiorari, which prevents him from appealing his sentence before the court.

"'We’re opposed to the drug war in all of its forms,' Richard Fields, the press secretary of the party’s national committee, told CCN.com. 'Ultimately, that’s what Ulbricht was convicted for'.... Ulbricht’s attorneys indicated the prosecution withheld evidence that DEA agents involved in Ulbricht’s apprehension were convicted of malfeasance, Fields further noted.

"Just recently, the Supreme Court ruled in Carpenter v. United States setting a precedent that warrantless search of Ulbricht’s Internet traffic would not have been allowed had the case been decided prior to his trial, he added. That alone should be grounds for a pardon.

"Darryl Perry, chair of the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire, presented the pardon resolution at the party’s recent convention. An attendee noted that because Ulbricht’s appeal to the Supreme Court was denied the previous week, his only hope of walking out of prison a free man is via a pardon.

"'We need to send a clear message now, and in two years, and in two more years we need to keep sending this message that we have a political prisoner who is serving two life sentences plus 40 years for the crime of running a website, being a libertarian and being unapologetic about doing those two things,' an attendee commented prior to the vote on the resolution, according to a YouTube video of the proceedings. The convention unanimously passed the resolution....

"Ulbricht claimed his Fourth and Sixth Amendment rights were violated during both the investigation and the sentencing. He also claimed law enforcement officials gathered Internet traffic information without a required warrant during the investigation. He further claimed the judge issued an unreasonable sentence that was partly based on allegations he tried to hire a hit man, for which he was never even charged.

"Amicus curia briefs were filed by 20 organizations supporting Ulbricht’s petition. Supporters included the Reason Foundation, a libertarian organization, as well as the National Lawyers Guild and the Gun Owners of America.

"Thomas Knapp, director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism, noted on the organization’s website that Ulbricht’s trial was unfair since the defense was not provided information on the government’s investigative methods nor allowed to provide an alternative view about the identity of the Silk Road operator known as 'Dread Pirate Roberts.' Nor could the defense bring up the fact that two government agents investigating Silk Road were imprisoned for their corrupt activities."

Read more: https://www.ccn.com/libertarian-party-urges-trump-to-pardon-silk-board-founder-ross-ulbricht/
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Libertarian ideas get co-opted, and that's good

Forum: The Libertarian Party: Bringing good ideas to America since 1971 - New Haven Register - Thomas L. Knapp:

June 25, 2018 - "‘"Abolish ICE!" [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] is the new rallying cry for progressive Democrats,' reports NBC News’s Alex Seitz-Wald. It’s 'a radical idea and one that was confined to the fringes just months ago,' but one that 'left-wing insurgents can use to differentiate themselves from more established rivals in Democratic primaries.”

"Good idea. So good, in fact, that I wrote a column advocating exactly that three months ago. Welcome to the right side, Democrats.

"Like most Libertarians, I’m amused when our ideological opponents see a parade forming around one of our ideas and try to hustle their way to the front to 'lead' it. Unlike some Libertarians, I don’t follow up amusement with getting down in the mouth about being 'co-opted.' I’m just happy to see good ideas gain steam from any source.

"The Libertarian Party has supported same-sex marriage rights since its founding in 1971. Hillary Clinton finally joined us on that one in 2013.....

"We began calling for elimination of the federal income tax decades before the (even worse) 'Fair Tax' idea embedded itself in the Republican Party....

"Marijuana legalization? That was us too, fighting both old party establishments to get medical, then recreational, cannabis off the list of victimless 'crimes' from the early 1970s on....

"We beat the Democrats to putting abolition of the death penalty in our platform by mere weeks in 2016. It should have been there since 1971.

"The perceived gold standard for a political party’s success is winning elections, and I wish Libertarians won more of them. But a better standard is successfully pushing our values, ideas, and proposals into the public conversation and seeing them adopted. I’d like to see that happen more often as well, but I’m glad when it happens at least occasionally."

Read more: https://www.nhregister.com/opinion/article/Forum-The-Libertarian-Party-Bringing-good-ideas-13024456.php
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Asking the wrong questions about Syria

We’re Asking the Wrong Questions About Syria -- Antiwar.com - Thomas Knapp:

April 7,  2017 - "As I write this, two key questions remain unanswered, and a third mostly unasked, about a deadly daybreak attack on Khan Sheikhoun, a northwest Syrian city of (pre-war) 50,000. Hundreds were wounded and as many as 100 killed, apparently chemical weaponry (Turkey’s health ministry believes the agent in question was the nerve gas sarin), on the morning of April 4.

"The two most obvious questions are who did this, and why?

"The US government (and unfortunately most American media, acting as stenographers rather than journalists as is too often the case in matters of war and foreign policy) have settled on the regime of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad as the culprit. That claim seems very questionable, if for no other reason than that there’s no plausible 'why' attached to it.

"After more than six years of civil war, the Syrian government has (with Russian assistance) turned the tide. Assad is well on his way to defeating both the Islamic State and the 'moderate rebels' (read: al Qaeda) backed by the US, restoring his control over the country.

"A chemical attack on Khan Sheikhoun doesn’t seem to fit into that scenario. Not only does it serve no obvious military objective, but it’s precisely the kind of atrocity that American hawks will latch onto and use as an excuse to continue and escalate the US military intervention in Syria at Assad’s expense....

"But who and why are the wrong questions. The third question – the right question – is: Why is the US involved in this war?

"The Assad regime has not attacked the US, nor has Congress declared war on Syria. There’s simply no defensive – or for that matter even legal – rationale for a US military presence in Syria. Whatever horrors the civil war there may entail, American military adventurism makes them worse, not better. It perpetuates instability rather than bringing peace.

"Donald Trump ran for president on a platform of reducing US military meddling in other countries’ affairs. It’s time for him to follow through and order a US withdrawal from Syria."

Read more: http://original.antiwar.com/thomas-knapp/2017/04/06/were-asking-the-wrong-questions-about-syria/
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With Vault 7 revelations, paranoia is justified

Vault 7: What it Means for You - The Libertarian Institute - Thomas Knapp:

March 9, 2017 - "On March 7, the transparency/disclosure activists at Wikileaks began releasing a series of documents titled 'Vault 7.' According to the New York Times, Vault 7 consists of 'thousands of pages describing sophisticated software tools and techniques used by the [U.S. Central Intelligence Agency] to break into smartphones, computers and even Internet-connected televisions.'

"If the documents are authentic — and WikiLeaks has a sterling reputation when it comes to document authenticity — every paranoid thriller you’ve ever watched or read was too timid in describing a hypothetical surveillance state. Even the telescreens and random audio bugs of George Orwell’s 1984 don’t come close to the reality of the CIA’s surveillance operations.

"In theory, the CIA doesn’t spy on Americans in America. In fact, digital traffic pays no heed to national borders, and the tools and tactics described have almost certainly been made available to, or independently developed by, other US surveillance agencies, not to mention foreign governments and non-government actors.

"Bottom line: You should accept the possibility that for the last several years anything you’ve done on, or in the presence of, a device that can connect to the Internet was observed, monitored, and archived as accessible data.

"Paranoid? Yes. But the paranoia is justified....

"If you’ve got nothing to hide you’ve got nothing to fear? Everyone has something to hide. Somewhere, some time, you’ve said or done something you regret or wouldn’t want the world to know. And you probably said or did it within a few feet of your smartphone, your laptop, or your Internet-connected television. Maybe nobody was listening or watching. Or maybe someone was. The only plausible conclusion from the Vault 7 disclosures is that you should assume the latter.

"Vault 7 confirms that as a state entity, the CIA answers to philosopher Anthony de Jasay’s description of the state as such. Just as a firm acts to maximize profits, the state and its arms act to maximize their own discretionary power. Even if it doesn’t do some particular thing, it requires the option, the ability to do that thing. It seeks omnipotence."

Read more: https://www.libertarianinstitute.org/blog/vault-7-means/
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Gary Johnson and the Aleppo ambush

Election 2016: It’s a Presidential Campaign, Not a Geography Quiz | The William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism - Thomas L. Knapp:

September 9, 2016 - "On September 8, Libertarian Party presidential candidate Gary Johnson appeared on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, where panelist Mike Barnicle hit him with the question:

Barnicle: “What would you do if you were elected about Aleppo?”
Johnson: “About?”
Barnicle: “Aleppo.”
Johnson: “And what is ALEPPO?”
Barnicle: “You’re kidding.”
Johnson: “No.”

"Maybe you’ve heard about this exchange. Maybe you know (or maybe you Googled and found out) that Aleppo is the largest city in Syria and a focal point of the war between Syria’s government and Islamic State rebels.

"Be warned: If you listened to MSNBC’s 'expert' on Syria, or read the New York Times account of Johnson’s 'faux pas,' you got bad scoop. They didn’t know much about Aleppo either, inaccurately describing the city as the Islamic State’s 'capital' (that’s Raqqa, not Aleppo).

"My gut feeling is that the average American will come down on Johnson’s side of this teapot tempest, for two reasons.

"First, most Americans likely know little if anything about Aleppo and don’t care to, so they can probably sympathize. Johnson’s foreign policy focus as a presidential candidate is 'big picture.' He wants the US to stop militarily intervening everywhere around the world at the drop of a hat. He doesn’t have to know the name of every city in the world to know that he doesn’t want to bomb them.

"Secondly, the question was transparently framed as an ambush. Barnicle’s obvious intent was to try and get a Dan Quayle or George W. Bush type howler or malapropism out of Johnson.

"Any TV talking head who queried Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump on the subject would do so roughly as follows:

Moving on to Syria: If elected, what is your plan to address the civil war there, destroy ISIS and bring peace to the region? And what do you think of reports of new chemical attacks in the country’s largest city, Aleppo, where fighting between regime forces and ISIS has flared up again?

"Not: “What would you do if you were elected about Aleppo?'

"To Johnson’s credit, he quickly owned up to and apologized for his knowledge gap in the area of Syrian geography. But he shouldn’t have had to, because he shouldn’t have been asked that question in that exceedingly unprofessional manner.

"Running for president is not a geography quiz.

"And Morning Joe isn’t — or at least shouldn’t be — an arm of Hillary Clinton’s campaign, charged with helping her regain traction among voters who have abandoned her for third party candidates because of her demonstrated personal corruption and incompetence, not to mention her dangerous foreign policy belligerence."

Read more: http://thegarrisoncenter.org/archives/7522
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Public domain: To the extent possible under law, Thomas L. Knapp has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to The William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism. This work is published from: United States.

Why is Evan McMullin running for President?

#NeverNeverTrump: What’s Evan McMullin Really After? - Thomas Knapp, Counterpunch:

August 10, 2016 - "For months, voices from the #NeverTrump movement have confidently promised Americans a fifth credible presidential candidate.... Echoing those promises, a shadowy group calling itself 'Better For America,' funded by Mitt Romney associate John Kingston III, has been doing prep work for that unnamed candidate.

"On August 8 the suspense, such as it was, came to an end. The candidate is David Evan McMullin, a name unfamiliar to voters but well-known on Capitol Hill. Starting as an adviser to congressional Republicans on national security issues, he rose to the position of GOP House policy chief. Now he’s running for president.....

"The conventional wisdom says that he’s there to keep Trump out of the White House – even at the cost of a Hillary Clinton presidency – by giving anti-Trump Republican voters somewhere else to go.

"I think the conventional wisdom is wrong. When we look at what McMullin and Better For America are up to, and where, two far more likely reasons leap into focus. Those reasons are:

"First, to help Trump get elected, but with plausible deniability so that the GOP wins the White House without #NeverTrump leaders having to lose face by kissing the ring ('we did our best but he won anyway, guess we have to live with it').

"Secondly, to ensure that Libertarian Gary Johnson doesn’t become the first independent or third party presidential candidate to carry a state since ... 1968.

"McMullin is custom-made for Utah – a native, a Mormon and a graduate of Brigham Young. Better for America seems focused on promoting him there. The organization [has] also made a seemingly unsuccessful ballot access attempt in New Mexico.

"Johnson is the former two-term Republican governor of blue New Mexico. He’s going toe-to-toe with Trump and Clinton in Utah’s polls and endorsements contest. If he’s going to win anywhere, it will be in New Mexico or Utah.

"The most likely purpose of the McMullin campaign is to fragment the anti-Trump vote in New Mexico, Utah and perhaps other states, allowing Trump to win those states with smaller pluralities than he’d need in a race with fewer significant opponents – and to contain the threat of a third party breakout that might carry over into, and expand in, future elections."

Read more: http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/08/10/nevernevertrump-whats-evan-mcmullin-really-after/

What the U.S. Libertarian Party 'pledge' means

"To validate my membership, I certify that I oppose the initiation of force to achieve political or social goals." – Libertarian Party membership pledge

I pledge allegiance ... to what? | KN@PPSTER - Tom Knapp:

February 25, 2006 - "Often, when debating the meaning of 'the pledge,' Libertarians cite David F. Nolan, the 'founder' (with a few others, but generally recognized as the prime mover in the founding) of the Libertarian Party, to the effect that 'the pledge' was simply intended to let the FBI know that the members of this new political party weren't bomb-throwing revolutionists who would shortly be assaulting the Nixon White House with molotov cocktails.... [see video below - editor]....

"I've stated the content of the pledge. In every form I've seen, it includes the very specific phrase 'initiation of force.' That's important. That phrase has a history which pre-dates the formation of the LP by at least a decade-and-a-half and possibly longer. It is a phrase which carried great weight among the adherents of two particular schools of libertarian thought throughout the 1960s: The Objectivists and the Misesian "anarcho-capitalists" (i.e. the disciples/compatriots, respectively, of Ayn Rand and of Murray N. Rothbard).

"Nolan – or at least those who cite him – expect the rest of us to believe that the occurrence of the phrase in the LP's membership pledge was a mere coincidence: That it did not arise from the ubiquitous use of that phrase within the movement from which the party emerged. Even at first blush, that assertion looks pretty untenable.... In the very first paragraph of the article which he wrote in 1971, promoting the formation of the Libertarian Party ... Nolan describes the movement to which he belongs, and which he hopes to form into a party, as a coalition of 'Randists, Miseists (sic), and elements of the old "radical right"'....

"Nolan's biography at the Advocates for Self-Government site specifically lists Ayn Rand as a writer who 'cemented his innate libertarianism.' Is it possible that someone who regarded Rand in such terms, and whose libertarianism took the form of political action, would entirely miss the core principle of the political branch of her philosophy?

'Whatever may be open to disagreement, there is one act of evil that may not, the act that no man may commit against others and no man may sanction or forgive. So long as men desire to live together, no man may initiate -- do you hear me? No man may start -- the use of physical force against others.' -- from Galt's Speech in Atlas Shrugged (1957), and For the New Intellectual (1961), by Ayn Rand....

"Next let's look at Rothbard -- leader of the second faction which Nolan wanted to form a party around....

'The fundamental axiom of libertarian theory is that no one may threaten or commit violence ("aggress") against another man's person or property. Violence may be employed only against the man who commits such violence; that is, only defensively against the aggressive violence of another. In short, no violence may be employed against a nonaggressor. Here is the fundamental rule from which can be deduced the entire corpus of libertarian theory.' --- from "War, Peace and the State" (1963), by Murray N. Rothbard

"The actual phrase 'initiation of force' seems to have crept into Rothbard's personal vocabulary later rather than sooner....

'The libertarian creed rests upon one central axiom: that no man or group of men may aggress against the person or property of anyone else. This may be called the 'nonaggression axiom.' 'Aggression' is defined as the initiation of the use or threat of physical violence against the person or property of anyone else.' – from For A New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto (1973), by Murray N. Rothbard....

"Taken in its obvious historical context, the pledge clearly derives from a Randian and/or Rothbardian worldview and therefore – at a bare minimum – clearly and indisputably binds its takers to a no-coercive-taxes approach (which even the 'Randian minarchists' held to), and less clearly and less indisputably (but still arguably) to Rothbardian anarchism.

"The only way to get around that conclusion is to assert that the framers of the pledge were a bunch of drooling morons who in some strange trance state spontaneously and collectively forgot the entire content of the ideas they stood for, while simultaneously functioning efficiently enough to put together an organization to politically support said ideas ... and who just happened to randomly pick words out of the dictionary which were identical to nearly two decades of predominant phraseology relating to those ideas, for the purpose of saying something entirely different."

Read more: http://knappster.blogspot.com/2006/02/i-pledge-allegiance-to-what.html  'via Blog this'
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