{"id":35529,"date":"2018-06-27T06:03:05","date_gmt":"2018-06-27T11:03:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=35529"},"modified":"2018-06-27T06:03:05","modified_gmt":"2018-06-27T11:03:05","slug":"free-assange","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=35529","title":{"rendered":"Free Assange"},"content":{"rendered":"

Free Assange<\/a><\/h3>\n
\n

Last week, rallies in support of Julian Assange were held around the world. We participated in two #AssangeUnity events seeking to #FreeAssange in Washington, DC.<\/p>\n

This is the beginning of a new phase of the campaign to stop the persecution of Julian Assange and allow him to leave the Ecuadorian Embassy in London without the threat of being arrested in the UK or facing prosecution by the United States.<\/p>\n

The Assange Case is a Linchpin For Freedom of the Press and Freedom of Information in the 21st Century<\/strong><\/p>\n

The threat of prosecution against Julian Assange for his work as editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks will be a key to defining what Freedom of the Press means in the 21st Century. Should people be allowed to know the truth if their government is corrupt, violating the law or committing war crimes? Democracy cannot exist when people are misled by a concentrated corporate media that puts forth a narrative on behalf of the government and big business.<\/p>\n

This is not the first time that prosecution of a journalist will define Freedom of the Press. Indeed, the roots of Freedom of the Press in the United States go back to\u00a0the prosecution of John Peter Zenger,<\/a>\u00a0a publisher who\u00a0was accused of libel\u00a0in 1734 for publishing articles critical of\u00a0the British royal governor, William Cosby. Zenger was held in prison for eight months awaiting trial. In the trial, his defense took its case directly to the jury.<\/p>\n

For five hundred years,\u00a0Britan had made it illegal to publish \u201cany slanderous News\u201d<\/a>\u00a0that may cause \u201cdiscord\u201d between the king and his people.\u00a0Zenger\u2019s defense argued that he had published the truth about Cosby and therefore did not commit a crime. His lawyer \u201cargued that telling the truth did not cause governments to fall. Rather, he argued, \u2018abuse of power\u2019 caused governments to fall.\u201d The jury\u00a0heard the argument, recessed and in ten minutes returned with a not guilty verdict.<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Free Assange Last week, rallies in support of Julian Assange were held around the world. We participated in two #AssangeUnity events seeking to #FreeAssange in Washington, DC. This is the beginning of a new phase of the campaign to stop the persecution of Julian Assange and allow him to leave the Ecuadorian Embassy in London […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[5493,204,2239,2001,17009,17010,938,2080,827,880],"class_list":["post-35529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-counterpunch","tag-democracy","tag-freedom-of-the-press","tag-julian-assange","tag-kevin-zeese","tag-margaret-flowers","tag-press-freedom","tag-united-kingdom","tag-united-states","tag-wikileaks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35529","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35529"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35529\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35530,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35529\/revisions\/35530"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}