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Dear Progressive Reader,

On Friday a court in the United Kingdom reversed an earlier decision and ruled ([link removed]) that WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange could be extradited to the United States for trial for publishing secret documents about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and other classified material in 2010 and 2011. The case is viewed by many as a huge threat to press freedom in the United States and around the world. Last summer I spoke with Julian Assange’s father and half-brother John and Gabriel Shipton. I asked them about the importance of this case:

John Shipton: “The first one to recognize [the case’s] vitality globally was James Goodale ([link removed]) , who was the lawyer for the New York Times back in the Pentagon Papers day, he made the observation that it's of global importance [because] the intimidation and oppression of journalists [and] publishers in commenting upon national security matters is a profound deficit to the quality of understanding and conversation in the polity of the Western world.”

Gabriel Shipton: “I think what we’re seeing is this renewed call for press freedoms around the world. So one way for [U.S. President Joe] Biden to signal that we're serious about press freedoms is to drop what has been called ([link removed]) by the Freedom of the Press Foundation, the biggest press freedom case in 50 years. I think the State Department is facing what I'm starting to call the ‘Assange problem.’ They're calling for press freedoms in these authoritarian states and then the foreign affairs spokesperson comes back and says, ‘Well, you're telling us we need to have a free press, what about Assange?’ ”

At the same time the Assange decision was being handed down, President Biden was holding a much-touted virtual “Summit for Democracy ([link removed]) ” with eighty other world leaders. In response the government of China (which was not invited to participate) released a blistering white paper on “The State of Democracy in the United States ([link removed]) .”

Also on Friday, two journalists were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Maria Ressa of the Philippines, and Dmitry Andreyevich Muratov from Russia. The Nobel Committee stated ([link removed]) the award was “for their efforts to safeguard freedom of expression, which is a precondition for democracy and lasting peace.” Maria Ressa’s efforts were chronicled in the 2020 film A Thousand Cuts ([link removed]) . Film reviewer Ed Rampell spoke with ([link removed]) Ressa for our website last August.

“We are journalists, and our mission is clear – to distinguish between facts and fiction,” said ([link removed]) Muratov in his remarks on receiving the award. Ressa took that notion one step further, noting ([link removed]) “there are so many more journalists persecuted in the shadows with neither exposure nor support, and governments are doubling down with impunity. The accelerant is technology . . . . What happens on social media doesn’t stay on social media. Online violence is real-world violence. Social media is a deadly game for power and money . . . . Facebook is the world’s largest distributor of news, and yet studies have shown that lies laced with anger and hate spread faster and further than facts.” And now, former president Donald Trump has started his own social media company to go even beyond Facebook in the promotion of hate and fake news. However, as cartoonist Mark Fiore
illustrates ([link removed]) , this project, like so many other Trump enterprises, may really just be smoke and mirrors.

Maria Ressa, in her acceptance speech, also pointed out that the last time a working journalist received ([link removed]) the Nobel Peace Prize, it was Carl von Ossietzky in 1935, who could not attend the 1936 ceremony since he was in ([link removed]) a Nazi concentration camp for his journalistic work. He died two years later. History is important.

This week on our website, Paul Von Blum looks at ([link removed]) the body of work of historian Paul Buhle who has, for more than fifteen years, been producing a series of graphic non-fiction biographies of progressive and radical figures and movements that are often left out of the standard curriculum of history in the United States. Also, Ed Rampell reviews the new film version of Westside Story, taken on by Steven Spielberg to put that history in a modern context of xenophobia and hate. As Spielberg tells him ([link removed]) , “Robert Wise’s 1961 version was a classic for all time. But I made our film for this time.” And Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies look at the lessons of Dwight Eisenhower’s 1961 caution against the “Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex” and how our modern day military funding system has borne out those concerns. “Maintaining a war
machine makes us less safe,” they write ([link removed]) , “as each new administration inherits the delusion that U.S. military power can, and therefore should, be used to confront any perceived challenge to U.S. interests.”

Today also marks the seventy-third anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, created in a time of hope and possibility following the defeat of fascism in Europe. “Drafted in response to the extreme violence of World War II,” I wrote ([link removed]) in 2018, “the United Nations vowed that the international community would never ‘allow atrocities like those of that conflict to happen again.’ ” The promise of that document, including its principles of press freedom and “communication as a human right ([link removed]) ” have a long way to go to be fully realized.

Please keep reading, and we will keep bringing you important articles on these and other issues of our time.

Sincerely,
Norman Stockwell
Publisher

P.S. –If you are looking for some holiday reading, please check out the offerings in our online shop ([link removed]) , where your donations will also help support progressive journalism!

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