The US government has no right to tell its citizens what the truth is, the senator says
Due to its long track record of disinformation, the US government has no right to tell the American people what the truth is, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul has stated.
During a Senate hearing on Wednesday, Paul grilled Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas over the ‘Disinformation Governance Board’ his agency is setting up to help social media platforms filter out ‘fake news.’
“Here’s the problem: we can’t even agree what disinformation is,” the Republican Senator pointed out. “You can’t even agree if it was disinformation that the Russians fed information to the Steele dossier.”
He was referring to the controversial and largely dismissed report that relied on info from anonymous sources to allege collusion between the Donald Trump campaign and Moscow ahead of the 2016 presidential election in the US.
“If you can’t agree to that, how are we ever going to come to an agreement on what is disinformation, so that you can police it on social media?” Paul wondered.
“Do you know who the greatest propagator of disinformation in the history of the world is? The US government!” he insisted.
In order to back his claim, the Senator mentioned several examples of false information being deliberately spread by Washington over the past decades.
Among them were the so-called Pentagon Papers, which revealed that the US government had been misinforming the public about the scale of its military operations during the Vietnam War. The documents were officially declassified in 2011, but the media had been reporting on them since 1971.
Paul also mentioned “George W. Bush and the weapons of mass destruction,” referring to American claims that Saddam Hussein’s regime had been in possession of WMD, claims that were used by the US to justify the invasion of Iraq in 2003, but were never confirmed by findings on the grounds.
His other example was the Iran–Contra affair, which saw top US officials secretly organizing the sale of weapons to Iran in violation of an arms embargo between 1981 and 1986 in order to obtain money to fund the Contras insurgent group in Nicaragua.
“I mean, think over all the debates and disputes we’ve had over the last 50 years in our country. We work them out by debating them. We don’t work them out by the government being the arbiter,” the Senator said.
“I want you to have nothing to do with speech… You think the American people are so stupid they need you to tell them what the truth is?” Paul added.
The creation of the Disinformation Governance Board was announced in late April. According to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the new body would help counter disinformation, which is being spread by “foreign states such as Russia, China and Iran,” and by human traffickers operating on the US-Mexico border, among others.
The DHS gave assurances that it won’t be targeting US citizens. But critics were quick to nickname the board ‘The Ministry of Truth,’ after a fictional organization from George Orwell’s iconic dystopian novel ‘1984’.
KYIV, Ukraine, May 05 (IPS) – Before the war, Ukraine’s dream to become part of the EU was exactly that – a dream. But the new political reality could make it come true.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine changed and to some extent even destroyed the familiar international political reality. Up until 24 February, Russia had been integrated into the global economy, had excellent growth prospects, and the construction of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline was almost finished.
The war in Ukraine is having a disproportionate impact on women and minorities, who are facing immense hardship when it comes to health, safety, and access to food, according to a UN-backed report focused on the changing gender dynamics of the conflict.Â
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Judge accepts plea deal in federal civil-rights case against Derek Chauvin, who was convicted of murder in state court
Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer who was convicted of killing George Floyd in an incident that triggered race riots across the US in 2020, has been spared the death penalty on federal civil-rights charges after a judge accepted his plea agreement.
US District Court Judge Paul Magnuson approved Chauvin’s December plea deal on Wednesday, confirming that the ex-officer will be sentenced to 20-25 years in prison. Chauvin could have faced a life sentence or even the death penalty – though the latter was considered unlikely – if he had been convicted at trial.
Magnuson hasn’t set a sentencing date for Chauvin, who infamously kneeled on the back of Floyd’s neck for more than eight minutes. The 19-year veteran of the Minneapolis Police Department was convicted of murder and manslaughter charges last year in state court and was sentenced to 22 ½ years in prison.
In the federal case against him, Chauvin pleaded guilty in December to deprivation of civil rights under color of law. He reportedly entered his plea, foregoing a trial, under the condition that he will serve his time in federal prison, rather than a state penitentiary, even though that will likely mean a longer time behind bars. Federal prisons tend to be less crowded and safer than state prisons in the US.
Chauvin will serve his state and federal sentences concurrently, meaning he won’t have to start over on one after finishing the other. The 46-year-old could have been paroled in Minnesota after less than 15 years, assuming maximum credits for good behavior, while his federal plea deal reportedly dictates that he be incarcerated for at least 17 years.
Ben Crump, a lawyer representing Floyd’s family, had called for Chauvin to get the maximum sentence in his federal civil rights case.
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