Today's Must-Reads - 29 June 2024

Exposing the narrative with the latest news, studies, reports and articles!

Naked Emperor: Exposing the Narrative

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• Until Julian Assange Is Pardoned, Press Freedom Remains at Risk. Assange did not plead guilty to some heinous crime, but to “activities that journalists engage in every day, and that we absolutely need them to engage in,” said Jameel Jaffer, executive director of Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. “In this respect, the case establishes a terrible precedent, even if it’s not one the courts have fully endorsed.” “The case is a disgrace,” James C. Goodale, the former vice chairman and general counsel of The New York Times, who led a team of lawyers representing the Times in the historic Pentagon Papers case, told Truthdig. “The plea deal with Assange asks him to concede he was a part of a conspiracy to obtain national security information. The Justice Department has long sought to criminalize the newsgathering abilities of the press and to use this case as a precedent to criminalize the basic functions of the press, which in part includes publishing classified information.

• This is the real conspiracy of silence in the election. For over two years, the country was dominated by the consequences of its unprecedented and unadvised reaction to a respiratory pandemic that, while unforeseen, was highly foreseeable. One might think this issue should dominate the first general election since. Not so. Representative democracy only works if its representatives do their duty to scrutinise legislation and hold governments to account; and the ability to exercise democratic choice matters little if the public is unable to give its verdict on the sitting government’s most far-reaching decision. We can only hope that time and experience will teach us the lessons that will not be learned in this election about this catastrophic error.