WolfeNotes.com

The Assange legal team and various alternative media outlets are creating the completely false and absurd impression that the Assange plea deal is a “vindication” and “huge win for free speech” (NY Times story:

His lawyers said that he was not subject to a gag order or to any other limitations as part of his deal. They added that he would also seek a pardon from President Biden, describing his release as long-sought vindication for acts of disclosure that they said had served the public interest.

“This is a huge win for Australia and for Australian democracy,” Jennifer Robinson, one of Mr. Assange’s lawyers, said. “This is a huge win for free speech.”

I call complete bullshit on that. This was a huge blow against the First Amendment, a free press, free speech and it chills and even criminalized investigative journalism.

Assange committed no crime – he was acting as both a publisher and journalist.

But he pled guilty under the Espionage Act to conspiracy to obtain confidential defense information. The alleged conspiracy involved advising his journalistic source, Bradley Manning, on how to cover his computer tracks and avoid detection. Manning had authorized access to the classified documents he leaked, Assange did not help with access.

Every investigative journalist works with sources – particularly whistleblowers – to advise them how to obtain information, convey information in confidence, and cover their tracks and avoid detection. I’ve done that myself and I am not a journalist.

Under the legal theory of the Assange plea deal, virtually every investigative reporter who obtains, is provided, handles, and/or publishes classified information could be prosecuted under the Espionage Act.

The Assange legal team threw the US First Amendment under the bus during the UK Court proceedings, where they argued that Assange was NOT protected by the First Amendment. They made this argument not based on any legal analysis or principled grounds, but to avoid extradition to the US.

It’s complicated, but basically the British Court set two conditions that could dismiss the extradition request: one of them was that if Assange was NOT protected by the First Amendment in US criminal court, then he could not be extradited. So Assange’s lawyers claimed the First Amendment did not apply. I wrote about that several weeks ago in this post:

• Assange Advocates Have Gone Off The Rails – Of Course Assange Has Constitutional Rights In A US Criminal Court Proceeding

Now, a few weeks later, Assange himself argues the exact opposite. In the federal Court plea hearing Assange claimed that he thought the First Amendment protected him, totally contradicting his UK extradition arguments just weeks before: (Consortium News) 

“Working as a journalist, I encouraged my source to provide information that was said to be classified,” Assange replied. “I believed the First Amendment protected that activity, but I accept that it was a violation of the espionage statute.”

Assange then significantly added: “The First Amendment was in contradiction with the Espionage Act, but I accept that it would be difficult to win such a case given all these circumstances.”

With a gun to his head, Assange cut a deal, period. He did not fight to defend the First Amendment, like Dan Ellsberg did.

Let’s not call that any kind of victory. The National Security State is emboldened and President Biden, who supported the Trump indictment and sought extradition is not held accountable. It is exactly the same legitimation of government crime as when President Obama’s “look forward not backward” approach normalized Bush war crimes, illegal war, GWOT and the Wall Street bailout.

Politically, this all happened when Biden is campaigning on threats to democracy and correctly accusing Trump of threats to the Constitution, vindictive abuse of the prosecutorial power, undermining the independence of the judiciary, and politicizing law enforcement – all of which is exactly what Biden’s DoJ is hypocritically doing to Assange (the Democratic Hillary fans and the CIA are ruthlessly vindictive. Just rad some of the reader comments on The NY Times stories. They HATE Assange. Hillary even wanted to drone him. CIA planned to assassinate him). Unreal that Biden gets a pass on this. That’s political malpractice by the Assange strategists.

Assange’s lawyers were either incompetent (which I strongly doubt) or they seek to obfuscate these strategic errors and legal issues with absurd statements, like this: (Consortium News)

Mr. Assange also said clearly he believes there should be First Amendment protection for that conduct, but the fact of the matter is, as written, the Espionage Act does not have a defense for the First Amendment.

Say what? A statute does not need to have a “defense for the First Amendment”.

That turns the First Amendment on its head! “Congress shall make no law…”

The First Amendment trumps acts of Congress! It has no exception for the Espionage Act.

To remind everyone of what was at stake here, let’s revisit the Pentagon Papers Supreme Court decision, upholding real press freedom and the First Amendment (1971) – a precedent that the Assange lawyers were too timid to assert:

In the First Amendment the Founding Fathers gave the free press the protection it must have to fulfill its essential role in our democracy. The press was to serve the governed, not the governors. The Government’s power to censor the press was abolished so that the press would remain forever free to censure the Government. The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government. And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell. In my view, far from deserving condemnation for their courageous reporting, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and other newspapers should be commended for serving the purpose that the Founding Fathers saw so clearly. In revealing the workings of government.

[…]

The word ‘security’ is a broad, vague generality whose contours should not be invoked to abrogate the fundamental law embodied in the First Amendment. The guarding of military and diplomatic secrets at the expense of informed representative government provides no real security for our Republic. The Framers of the First Amendment, fully aware of both the need to defend a new nation and the abuses of the English and Colonial Governments, sought to give this new society strength and security by providing that freedom of speech, press, religion, and assembly should not be abridged. This thought was eloquently expressed in 1937 by Mr. Chief Justice Hughes—great man and great Chief Justice that he was when the Court held a man could not be punished for attending a meeting run by Communists.

A concurring opinion was even more specific and compelling in addressing the Espionage Act:

While I join the opinion of the Court I believe it necessary to express my views more fully.

It should be noted at the outset that the First Amendment provides that ‘Congress shall make no law * * * abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.’ That leaves, in my view, no room for governmental restraint on the press.1

There is, moreover, no statute barring the publication by the press of the material which the Times and the Post seek to use. Title 18 U.S.C. § 793(e) provides that ‘(w)hoever having unauthorized possession of, access to, or control over any document, writing * * * or information relating to the national defense which information the possessor has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation, willfully communicates * * * the same to any person not entitled to receive it * * * (s)hall be fined not more than $10,000 or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.’

The Government suggests that the word ‘communicates’ is broad enough to encompass publication.

There are eight sections in the chapter on espionage and censorship, §§ 792—799. In three of those eight ‘publish’ is specifically mentioned: § 794(b) applies to ‘Whoever, in time of war, with intent that the same shall be communicated to the enemy, collects, records, publishes, or communicates * * * (the disposition of armed forces).’

Section 797 applies to whoever ‘reproduces, publishes, sells, or gives away’ photographs of defense installations.

Section 798 relating to cryptography applies to whoever: ‘communicates, furnishes, transmits, or otherwise makes available * * * or publishes’ the described materials.2 (Emphasis added.)

Thus it is apparent that Congress was capable of and did distinguish between publishing and communication in the various sections of the Espionage Act.

[…] Moreover, the Act of September 23, 1950, in amending 18 U.S.C. § 793 states in § 1(b) that:

‘Nothing in this Act shall be construed to authorize, require, or establish military or civilian censorship or in any way to limit or infringe upon freedom of the press or of speech as guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States and no regulation shall be promulgated hereunder having that effect.’ 64 Stat. 987.

Thus Congress has been faithful to the command of the First Amendment in this area.

Huge Opportunity To Lead On A Bold Progressive Agenda

But Don’t Expect The Current Crop Of Lame NJ Hacks To Draft That Agenda

[Update – 6/24/24 – Wow. My timing was eerily prescient – the Fulop campaign released this reform plan today. It addresses some of the government reform items I mentioned, but didn’t go so far as to include whistleblower protections, adequate OPRA reforms, or corporate capture and revolving door, see:

• Meaningful Government Reform In New Jersey ~~~ end update]

The algorithm just sent me a Tweet from 2025 NJ Gubernatorial candidate Steve Fulop regarding transportation infrastructure.

I was impressed by Fulop’s call for reallocation of $10 billion slated for NJ Turnpike expansion funds to mass transit. Fulop Tweeted:

Re-Allocation of the $10B NJ Turnpike widening project into mass transit investment instead is the next step towards correcting our mass transit issues.

Our campaign was the first to float the idea of the CBT dedication to NJT last year that will now be law and now we must continue being proactive with the next reasonable decision towards mass transit improvement.

Longer term beyond those we have outlined our detailed transportation plans at http://stevenfulop.com – we are the only campaign putting our policy bc that is what NJ deserves

I was so impressed by a politician actually proposing a sound public policy I support, that the Fulop Tweet sparked somewhat of a Twitter storm in my brain in posting comments on it.

I strongly doubt that the current crop of so called NJ environmental and climate leaders have the vision, competence, and integrity to be reaching out to his campaign with bold demands, so maybe I can shame them into at least something of serious substance:

So, I here cut and paste them into an informal strategic & policy Memo To The Fulop Campaign.

1. I just checked your website for “policies”. You don’t have climate, energy, land use, environmental quality, parks, green cities, environment justice, or public health policies posted. Do NOT rely on the usual suspects to draft these policies. HUGE OPPORTUNITY HERE if done right (in policy substance, not just message and narrative).

2. Don’t expect any of the lame “environmental and climate leaders” to help. They have no vision, no competence, courage, and integrity. You will need your Staff to put the policy plans out, create public review process, and embarrass them into support, like Gov. McGreevey did on Highlands.

3. Land use is back on the agenda. Don’t go for the single issue (e.g. warehouse) incremental crap. Adopt a moratorium on destruction of what’s left of NJ forests and farmlands. Go big on reforestation and urban forestry and urban parks. Put regulatory teeth in the State Plan. Time for bold leadership and big plans.

4. Your next regional and infrastructure policy plan should focus on bicycles, restoring riverfronts, and urban parks. Duck Island is Trenton could be the first example. Tremendous opportunity here with vision and leadership.

5. Climate & energy policy agenda needs to put regulatory teeth and real investment in Murphy administration’s rhetoric, press releases, & unenforceable Executive Orders. Moratorium on new fossil, phase out of existing. Retrofit existing development, residential solar, public power. Terminate NJ role in PJM regional corporate grid. Mandates for accelerated electrification. Guarantee jobs (just transition).

7. There also needs to be a coastal “strategic retreat” plan to address resettlement of displaced residents and businesses and the natural recovery of highly vulnerable coastal lands. Shift beach replenishment funding to that. Built Bike & shuttle/light rail to beaches along coast.

8. No more infrastructure or development in the coastal zone – it will be inundated in 20 years or so. Time to start planning for “strategic retreat”.

8. Expand the Riverline – light rail in the medians of Rt 1. to Newark and Rt. 31 to at least Flemington.

9. The Environmental justice agenda needs to close loopholes in current law; ratchet down on air pollution, particularly on mobile sources and hazardous air pollutants from industry; mandate advanced drinking water treatment; address food deserts; huge public housing program; community gardening, urban forestry, pocket parks, & schools. Green cities. New CCC.

10. Take a fresh look at ways to truly implement NJ’s Hazard Mitigation Plan, particularly on public health/pandemic issues. Repeal liability relief for senior care COVID. Strengthen port infrastructure, rail, river and chemical safety – catastrophic risk management programs, which have been privatized and deregulated by DEP over the years.

11. We’ll need dramatic new forms of revenue generation – wealth tax; high income tax; corporate taxes on Big Pharma and Big Tech; financial transaction fees, et al – to fund these projects. Again, time is ripe to go big & progressive.

12. No more corporate subsidies, even for off shore wind.

13. Claw back the $1 billion in PSE&G nuclear subsidies. Reallocate to a new urban riverfront park that includes PSE&G retired coal power plant property on Duck Island in Trenton.

14. Adopt a Major anti-corruption – transparency – citizen participation – and good government accountability platform.

Include strengthening the OPRA law, repealing the corrupt Murphy rollback. Put teeth in the State Ethics Commission and appoint people with integrity and courage. Open up State government planning and policy development. Enhanced sunshine and whistleblower protections. Take on corporate capture and the revolving door.

Encyclopedia Britannica

phagocytosis, a process by which certain living cells called phagocytes ingest or engulf other cells or particles. The phagocyte may be a free-living one-celled organism, such as an amoeba, or one of the body cells, such as a white blood cell. In some forms of animal life, such as amoebas and sponges, phagocytosis is a means of feeding. In higher animals phagocytosis is chiefly a defensive reaction against infection and invasion of the body by foreign substances (antigens).

I was a Sierra Club staffer for almost 8 years (1995 – 2002), so am disgusted by the fact that the NJ Chapter of the Sierra Club has become a wholly owned project of the NJ LCV and the Murphy DEP.

You want just one egregious example? (of the NJ LCV corruption that has absorbed NJ Sierra)

Read this NJ LCV corrupt cheerleading for former Gov. Whitman and my devastating, detailed take down, backed up by receipts:

(L-R): Ed Potosnak, NJ LCV; Anjuli Ramos, NJ Sierra; former corporate lawyer Shawn LaTourette, Commissioner NJ DEP celebrate “wind day” at Liberty State Park (6/15/24)

A New Take On Keepin’ Up With the Jones’

I got this data off the PECO website for my electric bill. I use less than half the electricity of the most efficient 20% of my neighbors! And 5 times less than all my neighbors.

Just think if we could turn around the “Keepin’ Up With the Jones'” competitive, jealous, acquisitive neighborly force into something more benevolent!

In the Philadelphia neighborhood where I now live, something kind of like that is happening with streetscape gardening and flowering window boxes popping up everywhere! They are proliferating and are quite beautiful.

There’s a local subscription service company called “Enliven” that does a nice job and it seems that as each neighbor acquires their services, then a nearby neighbor follows along. The result is a more pleasant streetscape. The motivation is NOT coming from a “broken windows” negative crime prevention perspective, but from the joy of creating and enjoying beauty.

While I loathe “incentives” and market forces, maybe PECO could provide an incentive for energy conservation by creating a competitive program where the most efficient 3 houses on a block got their electric free or at a deep discount and the homeowner could display something attractive, like the Enliven flower boxes do.

During the New Deal, there was something similar where local shopkeepers were encouraged to display the “Blue Eagle” emblem in their windows. Maybe make it a Green Eagle!

There needs to be more focus on creating ways to encourage solidarity, mutual support, and civic engagement.

Maybe we can tap into some of the less desirable aspects of our human nature to promote the public good and collective objectives, instead of selfish individual and invidious ends.

Wildfires Caused By The “Prescribed Burns” DEP Supports

DEP Emphasizes Climate Change And Environmental Justice In Press Releases, But Downplays For Regulatory Compliance Purposes

Source: NJ DEP SIP. Image courtesy of rileycountyks.gov

The Murphy DEP just submitted to EPA for review and approval a proposed State Implementation Plan (SIP) Revision for the Attainment and Maintenance of the Ozone National Ambient Air Quality Standards.

Ozone causes health problems because it damages lung tissue, reduces lung function, and sensitizes the lungs to other irritants. Ozone has long been known to increase the incidence of asthma attacks in susceptible individuals. Ozone exposure also makes the lungs more vulnerable to lung diseases such as pneumonia and bronchitis. Ozone not only affects people withs impaired respiratory systems, such as asthmatics, but healthy adults and children as well. Exposure to ozone for several hours at relatively low concentrations significantly reduces lung function and induces respiratory inflammation in normal, healthy people during exercise. This decrease in lung function is generally accompanied by symptoms such as chest pain, coughing, sneezing, and pulmonary congestion. Recent research in southern California strongly suggests that, in addition to exacerbating existing asthma, ozone also causes asthma in children.39 Longer-term exposure to ozone can also lead to scarring of the lung tissue and permanent reductions in lung capacity.40 Long-term exposure to ozone can eventually lead to premature death.41

The Murphy DEP touts their commitment to Environmental Justice, but the facts belie that commitment. Check this out: NO air quality monitoring in Newark!

The NJDEP currently measures ozone concentrations at 16 sites in New Jersey. Seventeen sites were running prior to September 2022. The Newark Firehouse site was closed in September 2022 and NJDEP is currently working on re-establishing a new monitor in Newark City. (@ page 2-1)

The proposed SIP seeks delay in EPA enforcement of NJ’s failure to attain the 70 ppb 8 hour ozone NAAQS by exploiting a loophole in the Clean Air Act. Amazingly, the Murphy DEP is blaming wildfires for NJ’s failure to meet the NAAQS. (17 days in 2023. Only 4 days due to wildfire smoke. Violations will increase as a result of global warming, again, something DEP highlights in press releases, but downplays for regulatory purposes):

The SIP is another example of a jumble of DEP conflicting policies that work at cross purposes and harm public health and the environment. Let me drill down, but not too deep in the weeds.

The DEP aggressively supports “prescribed burns” as a key method of forest management and wildfire prevention. The prescribed burns are purportedly designed to reduce “fuel” in the forest that DEP falsely claims drives wildfires.

DEP exempts “prescribed burns” from clean air regulatory requirements, e.g. air pollution permits are not required and the air pollution created by these fires is not counted in DEP’s air pollution inventory.

DEP never talks about the serious air pollution and public health impacts created by prescribed burns.

The DEP never mentions the fact that prescribed burns can get out of control and cause wildfires.

The Legislature even passed and Gov. Murphy signed a law that eliminates liability for damages caused if a prescribed burn gets out of control.

Similarly, the DEP constantly talks about climate change and extreme weather, yet rarely if ever talks about the fact that climate change is the key factor in causing more frequent and intense wildfires.

DEP prescribed burns have comparatively little or no impact on preventing wildfires, because the causes are related to climate change and factors like high wind, low humidity, and drought, not fuel buildup in the forest. That’s right: DEP is polluting the air, harming human health and damaging forest ecosystems for little if any benefit).

With that context in mind, it is a stunning contradiction that the Murphy DEP is now blaming wildfires for the State’s failure to attain the federal Clean Air Act ground level ozone standards.

The DEP just submitted NJ’s State Implementation Plan (SIP) revision to meet the 70 ppm 8 hour ozone standard.

NJ is not in attainment with that ozone standard and as a could face EPA sanctions, like polluters having to reduce pollution and buy expensive pollution offsets, or losing federal highway construction money: (SIP, p. 1-2)

CAA Section 179 (or 42 U.S.C. §7509) requires sanctions when a State fails to submit a timely and approvable plan or fails to fully implement its commitments. First, the State could face serious economic development constraints. Specifically, the USEPA could order that any proposed new air pollution source in the State secure double the offset of the emissions it might produce before it can be permitted. Second, the State could be subjected to sanctions that could result in the loss of New Jersey’s Federal transportation funds.

Buried in the fine print of the DEP proposed SIP is an effort to exploit a loophole in the Clean Air Act, which allows States to argue that “exceptional events” beyond their control caused the State to fail to meet ozone standards, known as “National Ambient Air Quality Standards”

Remarkably, one of the wildfires that DEP blames for NJ air pollution violations was caused by a prescribed burn that got out of control: (DEP “Exceptional Event Demonstration” (@ page 4)

3. Wildfire Description
In spring 2023, numerous fires burned across the grassy Flint Hills region of eastern Kansas. Evidence from satellite imagery shows fire activity started to accelerate in late March and early April due to widespread drought conditions across the plains.6 Strong winds, unseasonably warm air temperatures, and extremely dry prairie grasses created a favorable environment for large and small wildfires to spread in Kansas between late March and early April 2023. Some fires were spread due to escaped fires that were ignited to manage land.7 According to the Riley County government website, multiple major fires in Riley County between April 6-10, were prescribed burns that got out of control.

That’s right: The DEP is blaming out of State wildfires, caused by the damaging and ineffective prescribed burns they promote in-state, while ignoring the primary cause of wildfires, which is climate change, DEP’s highest priority.

You can’t make this stuff up.