Support Wikileaks; I am Yelling Fire in a Crowded Theater!
Len Hart
The Existentialist Cowboy
![](http://www.a-w-i-p.com/media/blogs/articles/Articles8/eugene-debs_77.jpg)
The U.S. will try to prosecute Julian Assange under laws that violate the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, laws that were absurd when the U.S. entered World War I and more so now. These are laws that prohibit you from telling the truth about the U.S. government; these are laws that make it a crime to exercise your conscience.
Let's put aside the myth that we are guaranteed 'Freedom of Speech' in the U.S. Certainly, the Bill of Rights to the U.S. Constitution makes such a guarantee but, in practice, we are often denied that right, most notably when it is the government that is sure to be embarrassed or exposed by the mere exercise of free speech. That is the case today! The U.S. Government has threatened to prosecute Julian Assange for violating the U.S. Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918, the law that progressive labor champion Eugene Debs was accused of violating when he dared to oppose U.S. entry into World War I. The world's biggest idiot --Sarah Palin --has irresponsibly called for the assassination of Assange.
The legislation enacted in 1918 is commonly called the Sedition Act, actually a set of amendments to the Espionage Act.
The Espionage Act made it a crime to interfere with the war effort or with military recruitment or to aid a nation at war with the U.S. The Sedition Act extended its provisions to cover a broader range of offenses, notably speech and the expression of opinion that cast the government or the war effort in a negative light or interfered with the sale of government bonds. One historian of American civil liberties has called it "the nation's most extreme antispeech legislation."[6] Those convicted under the act generally received sentences of imprisonment for 10 to 20 years.[7] ~ Sedition Act of 1918
The law prohibited MANY forms of speech.
...any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the... form of government of the United States...or the flag of the United States, or the uniform of the Army or Navy.