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https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2023/04/16/us-moral-authority-is-dead-and-buried/

US Moral Authority Is Dead And Buried

Seven progressive Democrats from the House of Representatives have signed a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland calling for the Biden administration to drop the charges against Julian Assange and cease seeking his extradition.

It’s a good letter as far as these things go. It lists the major press freedom advocacy groups and human rights watchdogs who have called for Assange to be released, correctly identifies the threats this case poses to press freedoms around the world, and avoids sneaking in any of the classic smears against Assange that normally work their way into high-level mainstream objections to the persecution of the WikiLeaks founder. It’s an undeniably good thing that this letter happened.

That said, I’d like to bump this portion of the letter into the spotlight for a moment and highlight a some bits for emphasis:

The prosecution of Julian Assange for carrying out journalistic activities greatly diminishes America’s credibility as a defender of these values, undermining the United States’ moral standing on the world stage, and effectively granting cover to authoritarian governments who can (and do) point to Assange’s prosecution to reject evidence-based criticisms of their human rights records and as a precedent that justifies the criminalization of reporting on their activities. Leaders of democracies, major international bodies, and parliamentarians around the globe stand opposed to the prosecution of Assange. Former United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture Nils Melzer and the Council of Europe’s Commissioner for Human Rights Dunja Mijatović have both opposed the extradition. Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has called on the U.S. government to end its pursuit of Assange. Leaders of nearly every major Latin American nation, including Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and Argentinian President Alberto Fernández have called for the charges to be dropped. Parliamentarians from around the world, including the United Kingdom, Germany, and Australia, have all called for Assange not to be extradited to the U.S.

This global outcry against the U.S. government’s prosecution of Mr. Assange has highlighted conflicts between the America’s stated values of press freedom and its pursuit of Mr. Assange. The Guardian wrote “The US has this week proclaimed itself the beacon of democracy in an increasingly authoritarian world. If Mr. Biden is serious about protecting the ability of the media to hold governments accountable, he should begin by dropping the charges brought against Mr. Assange.” Similarly, the Sydney Morning Herald editorial board stated, “At a time when US President Joe Biden has just held a summit for democracy, it seems contradictory to go to such lengths to win a case that, if it succeeds, will limit freedom of speech.”

This to my mind is the most impactful part of the letter, in the sense that it’s the part that’s most likely to actually grab the attention of those responsible for Assange’s ongoing persecution. Indeed, it appears to have been deliberately crafted to do so.

Imprisoning Assange in Belmarsh while working toward the unprecedented step of trying a publisher under the Espionage Act does indeed undermine the United States’ moral standing on the world stage, and does indeed grant governments the US doesn’t like the ability to dismiss Washington’s hand-wringing about human rights as cynical performative hypocrisy. But while the authors of the letter to Biden’s attorney general frame this as something illegitimate that is done contrary to facts in evidence, in reality the moral authority of the United States to criticize the human rights records of foreign nations has been irreparably destroyed. Not just within the reality tunnels of foreign propagandists, but in actuality.

When people talk about “moral authority” it’s often in an abstract, philosophical way, like it’s a matter of logical coherence: “You’ve no moral authority on this subject because you are a hypocrite and your stated position contradicts your own actions.” Like it’s just an argument about whether the correct intellectual checkboxes have been ticked, and if they have not it means you get to wag your finger at them and declare a mental checkmate. But the question of moral authority boils down to something much more tangible than that.

Moral authority is a measure of one’s qualifications for leadership on moral matters. If I am known as a moral person who makes moral decisions, it makes sense for people to look to me for leadership on questions of morality. If I am known as an immoral person, then nobody’s coming to me for moral guidance, because they understand that I do not have the qualifications for that role.

So when people try to frame Assange’s persecution as a matter of public perception and fighting foreign narratives about the US, they are incorrect. The issue is not that Assange’s persecution makes the US look bad, the issue is that it proves the US is bad.

And of course we didn’t really need Assange’s persecution to figure that out for ourselves. The US is the only government on earth who has spent the 21st century killing people by the millions in wars for geostrategic dominance, who’s been strangling populations with starvation sanctions and blockades around the world, who is circling the planet with hundreds of military bases with the goal of global domination, and who’s been continually increasing the risk of nuclear armageddon with its rapidly escalating agendas geared toward securing unipolar hegemony. Assange’s case just makes its complete lack of moral standing much clearer.

This will all still be the case even if Assange is released. The US empire will still have spent years imprisoning a journalist for the crime of good journalism, will still be the world’s worst warmonger, and will still be the world’s most egregious violator of human rights. Its moral standing is dead and buried, and the world should stop following its lead in creating a just and ethical world. It simply does not have the qualifications to do so. In fact, no power structure on earth is less qualified.

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https://scheerpost.com/2023/04/14/matt-taibbi-the-crackdown-cometh/

The Crackdown Cometh

On a flight, reading about the FBI’s arrest of Jack Texiera, already dubbed the “Pentagon Leaker.” A quick review reveals multiple media portraits already out depicting him as a dangerous incel who shared his wares on Discord, a social media app where “racist memes” and “offensive jokes” flourish. Writes the New York Times:

Dark humor about race or ideology can eventually shape the beliefs of impressionable young people, and innocuous memes can be co-opted into symbols of hatred, researchers say.

Well, clearly we can’t have dark humor or innocuous memes! Gitmo cages for all!

The Washington Post went with “charismatic gun enthusiast”:

The New York Times summarized key points in the secret defense documents, which among other things suggested “Ukrainian forces are in more dire straits than their government has acknowledged publicly.” Reading what’s out there, it’s not easy to parse what’s a legitimate intelligence concern in reaction to these leaks and what’s mere embarrassment at having been caught lying, to the public, to would-be U.S. allies the documents show we’ve been spying on, etc.

You’ll read a lot in the coming days about the dangers of apps like Discord, or of online gaming groups, which counterintelligence officials told the Washington Post today are a “magnet for spies.” The Leaker tale will also surely be framed as reason to pass the RESTRICT Act, the wet dream of creepazoid Virginia Senator Mark Warner, which would give government wide latitude to crack down on “communication technology” creating “undue or unacceptable risk” to national security.

The intelligence community has itself been massively interfering in domestic news using illegal leaks for years. Remember the “Why Did Obama Dawdle on Russia’s Hacking?” story by David Ignatius of the Washington Post in January of 2017, outing would-be Trump National Security Advisor Michael Flynn as having been captured in intercepts speaking with a Russian ambassador? That was just the first in a string of leak- or intercept-based news stories that dominated news cycles in the Trump years, involving everything from conclusions of the FISA court to supposedly secret meetings in the Seychelles.

When civilians or whistleblowers like Edward Snowden, Julian Assange (in jail for an incredible four years now), Reality Winner and now the “Discord Leaker” bring leaked information to the public, the immediate threat is Espionage Act charges and decades of jail time. When a CIA head or a top FBI official does it, it’s just news. In fact, officials talk openly about using “strategic leaks” as a P.R. staple. In a world where media currency is becoming the ultimate power, these people want a monopoly. It’s infuriating.

Watch how this thing will be spun. It’s going to get ugly fast.

Comments to article:

" Thank you, Matt, I love your succinct summary of the government propagandists and warmongers who want to claim exclusive rights to the truth! Unfortunately, these stupid people actually believe they can hide the truth from the masses. This is why they seek to arrest and silence people like Snowden and Assange because they know they are morally bankrupt and dead in the water if real journalism succeeds in unmasking their crimes. They also have all the resources of corrupt law enforcement to further their agendas and harass the truth-tellers and prophets among us. "

" The whole “fact-checking-disnformation” industrial complex, launched by political elites of the Dem Party, is meant to control the national discourse. ……… . “Russian disinformation!!” —–> the tag given to any material that doesn’t conform to empire orthodoxy.

This poor “Pentagon Leaker” is gonna get the full ‘Assange’ treatment. And, the corporate media, true to form, ignore the revelations contained in the leaks and make the story about “how did this leak happen??!!”. ……..This episode thoroughly exposes the MSM role in facilitating gov’t. lies AND covering up those lies. "

" The national security state must throw up a massive diversionary smoke screen because this story is really a mini-Pentagon Papers 2.0, in that it reveals that the Government is lying about starting (or at least provoking and welcoming) the war; that the war is lost (after $113 billion taxpayer money); and that the government has been lying about it all along. 

The media will go right along with the smokescreen, because they’ve gone along all along on the war lies. "

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https://www.blacklistednews.com/article/84546/robert-f-kennedy-jr-cbdcs-are-the-ultimate-mechanisms-for-social-surveillance-and.html

“CBDCs are the ultimate mechanisms for social surveillance and control”

Since announcing his presidential campaign, Democratic candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has made it clear that he's pro-digital and financial freedom by opposing central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), calling out debanking, and slamming Digital IDs.

Kennedy's criticism of CBDCs has been geared around FedNow — an instant payment infrastructure developed by the Federal Reserve that's set to launch in July.

Kennedy initially described FedNow as a CBDC before later clarifying that he fears it's “the first step toward a CBDC.”

114 countries, which represent more than 95% of the world's global domestic product (GDP), are exploring a CBDC. The Biden administration has said CBDCs “have the potential to offer significant benefits.” And the heads of major central banks have confirmed that CBDCs will be identity-verified lack the privacy of cash, and be programmable. This programmability means that central bankers or governments can make your CBDCs expire impose spending limits, or control what you're allowed to spend your CBDCs on

Kennedy has recognized that these powers “grease the slippery slope to financial slavery and political tyranny.”

In a tweet, the presidential candidate warned:

“While cash transactions are anonymous, a #CBDC will allow the government to surveil all our private financial affairs. The central bank will have the power to enforce dollar limits on our transactions restricting where you can send money, where you can spend it, and when money expires.”

Kennedy has also noted that the surveillance and control will likely not be limited to financial data because CBDC users have to verify their identity. This link to identity means that governments or central banks can bring in lots of additional data linked to your identity, combine this with the financial data they extract from your CBDC use, and create an expansive social credit score that dictates how or if you can spend your money.

The presidential candidate has suggested that such a score could be tied to compliance with arbitrary government decrees such as being vaccinated.

Kennedy believes that COVID-19 and the banking crisis will be used by governments as an excuse to usher in CBDCs and has predicted that as governments introduce CBDCs, they'll start to crack down on cryptocurrencies and other assets that serve as an “escape route” from government control of the financial system.

He recently forecast that:

“The Fed will initially limit its CBDC to interbank transactions but we should not be blind to the obvious danger that this is the first step in banning and seizing bitcoin as the Treasury did with gold 90 years ago today in 1933.”

Kennedy, like many in the cryptocurrency industry, believes that this crackdown has already begun. In a recent tweet, he claimed that the Biden White House has “organized bankers to participate in a sophisticated, widespread crackdown to destroy the crypto industry.”

The presidential candidate's comments are describing Operation Chokepoint 2.0 — an alleged Biden administration effort to discourage banks from providing their services to cryptocurrency firms.

Kennedy added:

“The recent crackdown on crypto blocks exit ramps, removes alternative rails, and strengthens government control over both the financial and political systems.

We should be wary since CBDCs are the ultimate mechanisms for social surveillance and control.”

Related: Central Bank Digital Currencies make authoritarianism, censorship, and surveillance easy

Kennedy's pro-digital and financial freedom stance is in stark contrast to several other prominent figures in the Democratic Party who have embraced CBDCs and attacked cryptocurrencies.

Democratic President Joe Biden's administration loves CBDCs and financial surveillance. And the Biden regime recently signaled that it plans to go after decentralized cryptocurrency markets by forcing them to identify their customers.

These decentralized markets allow users to buy, sell, and exchange cryptocurrency without relying on a centralized intermediary and usually don't require identity verification. This makes it harder for governments to link transactions to a person's identity, surveil transactions, block transactions, and financially blacklist people.

If the Biden administration is effective at forcing these decentralized cryptocurrency markets to implement identity verification, they'll become part of the same centralized financial dragnet that banks and CBDCs currently operate in — a dragnet where every transaction is surveilled and where governments control who gets to participate.

Senator Elizabeth Warren, a former presidential candidate, is another well-known Democrat that has declared war on cryptocurrencies and welcomed CBDCs.

She recently launched an “anti-crypto” Senate re-election campaign and has previously called for surveillance of cryptocurrency wallets

In a 2022 interview with NBC, she expressed her disdain for bitcoin and said “it's time” for CBDCs 

Warren's call for the introduction of CBDCs came just one month after President Biden signed an executive order that instructed federal agencies to explore a digital dollar and develop a cryptocurrency regulation strategy.

Despite the clear efforts of the Biden administration and Warren to push a CBDC, the Federal Reserve is downplaying Kennedy's concerns that FedNow is the first step towards a CBDC. The central bank claims that FedNow is not a “step toward eliminating any form of payment” and that it has “made no decision on issuing a central bank digital currency.”

But actions speak louder than words. Kennedy is sounding the alarm about a trend that's clear for everyone to see.