Multiple United States Officials Confronted About U.S. Assange Hypocrisy On World Press Freedom Day by Ms Caitlin Johnstone!
(2023-05-04 at 20:21:38 )

Multiple United States Officials Confronted About U.S. Assange Hypocrisy On World Press Freedom Day by Ms Caitlin Johnstone!

Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):

Wednesday was World Press Freedom Day, and it saw United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, and Deputy State Department Spokesman Vedant Patel confronted about the glaring hypocrisy of the Biden administrations persecution of Julian Assange for the crime of good journalism.

During an appearance at a World Press Freedom event hosted by The Washington Posts David Ignatius on Wednesday morning, Mr. Blinken was confronted by Code Pink activists Medea Benjamin and Tighe Barry demanding justice for Mr. Julian Assange before being swiftly dragged off stage.

"Excuse us, we can not use this day without calling for the freedom o" Julian Assange," said Benjamin, holding a sign saying "FREE JULIAN ASSANGE”.

The two were immediately rushed by many security staffers, and the audio from the stage was temporarily cut.

"Stop the extradition request of Julian Assange," Benjamin can be heard saying.

"Two hours and not one word about journalist Shireen Abu-Akleh, who was murdered by the Israeli occupation forces in Palestine, not one word about Julian Assange," said Barry.

"We are here to celebrate freedom of expression, and we just experienced it," said Ignatius without a trace of irony once the dissent had been silenced. He then returned to the subject of how bad and awful the Russian government is for imprisoning American journalist Evan Gershkovich.

Then during a White House press briefing on Wednesday afternoon, Karine Jean-Pierre was asked a question by CBS News Steven Portnoy that was so inconvenient the press secretary flat-out said she would not answer it.

"Advocates on Twitter today have been talking a great deal about how the United States has engaged in hypocrisy by talking about how Evan Gershkovich is held in Russia on espionage charges but the United States has Espionage Act charges pending against Julian Assange. Can you respond to that criticism?" asked Portnoy.

"What is the criticism?" asked Jean-Pierre.

"Well, the criticism is that - the argument is that Julian Assange is a journalist who engaged in the publication of government documents," Portnoy replied. "The United States is accusing him of a crime under the Espionage Act, and that, therefore, the United States is losing the moral high ground when it comes to the question of whether a reporter engages in espionage as a function of his work. So can you respond to that?"

"Look, I am not going to speak to Julian Assange and that case from here," said Jean-Pierre.

And then she did not. She just dismissed Portnoys question without explanation, then babbled for a while about things Biden has said that are supportive of press freedoms, then again said "I am not going to weigh in on comments about Julian Assange."

This type of "I am not answering that, screw you" dodge is a rare move for a White House press secretary. They do not normally just come right out and say they refuse to answer the highly relevant and easily answerable question a reporter just asked; typically when the question is too inconvenient they will either word-salad a bewildering non-response, say the answer is the jurisdiction of another department, or say they will get back to them when they have more information. It is not the norm for them to just wave away the question without even pretending to provide a reason for doing so.

But really, what choice did she have??

As Wall Street Journal White House correspondent Sabrina Siddiqi recently acknowledged on MSNBC, the job of the White House press secretary is not to tell the truth, but to "stay on message and control the narrative."

There is nothing about the Julian Assange case that is on-message with the White House narrative; just the other day President Biden said at the White House Correspondents Dinner that "journalism is not a crime," yet his persecution of Mr. Julian Assange is deliberately designed to criminalize journalism.

There is simply no way to reconcile the United States governments story about itself with its efforts to normalize the extradition and persecution of journalists around the world under the Espionage Act. If your job is to make the White House look good, the only way to respond to questions of United States hypocrisy regarding the Julian Assange case is not to respond at all.

Later in the press conference, Jean-Pierre responded to another reporters questions about press freedoms in China with an assurance that the Biden administration will "hold accountable the autocrats and their enablers who continue to repress a free, independent media."

Also on Wednesday afternoon, APs Matt Lee cited the aforementioned Code Pink protest earlier that day to question Deputy State Department Spokesman Vedant Patel about Assange, and was met with a similar amount of evasiveness.

"So then can I ask you, as was raised perhaps a bit abruptly at the very beginning of his comments this morning, whether or not the State Department regards Julian Assange as a journalist who would be covered by the ideas embodied in World Press Freedom Day?" asked Lee.

"The State Department thinks that Mr. Assange has been charged with serious criminal conduct in the United States, in connection with his alleged role in one of the largest compromises of classified information in our nations history," Patel replied. "His actions risked serious harm to United States national security to the benefit of our adversaries. It put named human sources to grave and imminent risk and risk of serious physical harm and arbitrary detention. So, it does not matter how we categorize any person, but this is - we view this as a - as something he has been charged with serious criminal conduct."

"Well, but it does matter actually, and that is my question. Do you believe that he is a journalist or not?" asked Lee.

"Our view on Mr. Assange is that he has been charged with serious criminal conduct in the United States," said Patel.

"Yeah, but anyone can be charged with anything," Lee replied. "Evan Gershkovich has been charged with a serious criminal offense in Russia, and you say that he is a journalist, and he is obviously. And I just want to know whether or not you, the State Department - regardless of any charges that he faces - believe that he is a journalist, or he is something else."

"The United States does not go around arbitrarily detaining people, and the judicial oversight and checks and balances that we have in our system versus the Russian system are a little bit different," said Patel, before again repeating his line that Assange has been charged with a very serious crime.

"Okay. So, basically, the bottom line is that you do not have an answer. You will not say whether you think he is a journalist or not," Lee replied.

Again, Patel was left with no safe answers to Lees questions, because of course Mr. Julian Assange is indisputably a journalist. Publishing information and reporting that is in the public interest is precisely the thing that journalism is; that is why Mr. Assange has won so many awards for journalism. Trying to contend that Mr. Assange is not a journalist is an unwinnable argument.

Later in that same press conference Patel was challenged on his claim that Assange damaged United States national security by Accuracy.orgs Sam Husseini.

"You refer to WikiLeaks allegedly damaging United States national security," said Husseini. "People might remember that WikiLeaks came to prominence because they released the Collateral Murder video. And what that showed was United States military mowing down Reuters reporters - workers in Iraq.

Reuters repeatedly asked the United States Government to disclose such information about those killings, and the United States government repeatedly refused to do so. Only then did we know what happened, that the United States helicopter gunship mowed down these Reuters workers, through the Collateral Murder video? Are you saying that disclosure of such criminality by the United States government impinges United States national security?"

"I am not going to parse or get into specifics," Patel said, before again repeating his line that Mr. Assange stands accused of serious crimes in a way that harmed United States national security.

Journalist Max Blumenthal tweeted about Patels remarks, "According to this State Dept flack, Julian Assanges jailing is justified because he "harmed United States national security." But Mr, Assange is not an American citizen. By this logic, the United States can kidnap and indefinitely detain any foreign journalist who offends the United States national security state."

It is good that activists and journalists have been doing so much to highlight the United States empires hypocrisy as it crows self-righteously about its love of press freedoms while persecuting the worlds most famous journalist for doing great journalism.

Highlighting this hypocrisy shows that the United States empire does not in fact care about press freedoms at all, save only to the extent that it can pretend to care about them to wag its finger at governments it does not like.

Mr. Julian Assange exposed many things about our rulers during his work with WikiLeaks, but none of those revelations have been as significant as what he has forced them to reveal about themselves in the lengths that they will go to to silence a journalist who tells inconvenient truths!!!

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