First Amendment Under Attack: What You Need to Know about Big Tech’s Assault on Alex Jones

By Sander Hicks

Candidate for US Congress

Special Report for the New York Megaphone.

Around August 6, 2018 independent journalist Alex Jones was kicked off Facebook, YouTube, Google, Spotify and Apple, in a coordinated, late-night purge, due to Jones’ criticisms and “threats” against Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Jones has also taken unpopular, iconclastic positions on Jeffrey Epstein, 9/11, Sandy Hook, and President Trump, so mainstream public opinion was swift to condemn him. Even the ACLU has been silent on this case, refusing to consider a defense of the First Amendment. No one seems willing to consider the controversial content of Jones’ complaint against Mueller.

It’s true that Jones is beyond politically incorrect. This article is not a defense of his anti-Muslim, anti-gay, or anti-transgender statements. Those things should be roundly condemned. And CNN’s Olivery Darcy hands in a pretty good summary of those here.

The problem however, is that Jones sometimes gets things right. These things are never acknowledged by the CNN reporters, or the decision-makers who pulled the plug on him. Alex Jones has a valid claim: that Special Counsel Mueller is a do-nothing who is criminally negligent. Jones’ accusations deserve First Amendment protection, because while they may be unpopular now, they could lead to an indictment someday against Mueller. This whole situation shows clear media bias in favor of the powerful, against outsiders who know too much and speak facts too loud.

Robert Mueller is a textbook example of a “Deep State” operative, with a track record of multiple cover-ups. And even if you hate Alex Jones’ politics, they need to be separated from this question: how can we save our country, when we silence and censor a maverick journalist who points out the hypocrisy of Special Counsel Robert Mueller?

Robert Mueller presided as head of FBI for 12 years, where he stoically observed the carnage of 9/11 and the Anthrax attacks, neither of which Mueller managed to explain, or seriously investigate. In fact, he helped to cover up these two great crimes, and helped turn them into a justification for the Iraq War.

Time Magazine Person of the Year, the FBI’s own Coleen Rowley, named Mueller as an agent of the 9/11 “cover-up.” On May 21, 2002 she said that Mueller “and others at the highest levels of FBI management” were guilty of a “delicate and subtle shading/skewing of the facts” when it came to 9/11. When Senator Bob Graham wanted to subpoena the FBI about why an FBI informant lived in San Diego with two of the key 9/11 hijackers, the FBI agent fled the Senate office, rather than accept the subpoena. 9/11 widow and key member of the “Jersey Girls” Kristen Breitweiser said, “Mueller and other FBI officials had purposely tried to keep any incriminating information specifically surrounding the Saudis out of the Inquiry’s investigative hands.”

Speaking of the Saudis, earlier in his career, Mueller hid the crimes of their Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI). He stymied the US Senate investigation into this criminal, sleazy, narcotics and prostitution bank. Both Senator John Kerry and NY Attorney General Robert Morgenthau had their investigations into BCCI blocked, by Mueller, when he was head of the Criminal Division of the US DOJ. Morgenthau told the Wall Street Journal, regarding Mueller, “documents were withheld, and attempts were made to block other federal agencies from cooperating.” BCCI was controlled by the richest Saudis, and CIA/Deep State operatives, and operated to benefit Bush and Bin Laden Families, Wall Street Democrats, and the Iran/Contra cabal. Mueller helped protect them, while over 16 independent investigators and journalists were murdered.

This same Mueller is called a “demon” by Alex Jones. Perhaps the term “demon” sounds too Biblical for a cynical New York attitude. But this reporter recalls what attorney Bill Veale once said, in court, as he sued Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld for 9/11. “Evil exists. And it’s attracted to power.”

According to recently released FBI documents, available online, Billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein benefited greatly from Mueller’s FBI. Epstein ran a “sex slave island” on his own land in the Caribbean, and flew powerful celebrities and Democrats there on a private plane dubbed the “Lolita Express.” Just like BCCI, Epstein’s operation involved the rich and powerful, it included Bill Clinton, and numerous under-age girls for sale. Could it get any worse? Sure it can. This FBI document seems to indicate that Epstein was also some kind of FBI informant. Mueller’s FBI only gave him a slap on the wrist. And Epstein’s immunity from prosecution is what enraged Alex Jones.

A moral response would be to investigate Jones’ claims, not kill the messenger. Jones can seem histrionic at times, yes, but his sense of mission inflames him. Alex Jones, discussing Epstein, child-sex, and Mueller, called Mueller a “a demon I will take down, or I’ll die trying…we’re going to walk out in the square, politically, at high noon….” Jones said this as he mimed a gunfight with a pistol in his hand. Sure, the cowboy routine is a bit much, but remember, Jones did qualify the shoot-out vision as something that he was imagining could happen “politically.”

BIG MEDIA MYTH: Censorship is Necessary because There Is No Alternative.

For a look at the kind of censorship that Jones got in response, take a look at this article by

VOX’s Zack Beauchamp. It’s over the top. When Twitter was the only major online platform not to censor Alex Jones, Beauchamp attacked Twitter. His approach is similar to CNN’s Oliver Darcy who reports that he persistently pestered Twitter and showed them reasons to remove Alex Jones. Twitter declined to do so.

Beauchamp doesn’t even think to look at the content of Jones’ claims, about Epstein or Mueller. His arch tone is arrogant, nasty, biased, and smug. And he gets his facts wrong, to boot.

“Conspiracy theories, once they spread, create hermetically sealed communities that are impervious to correction,” he claims. It’s a false claim, and it’s not a justification for censorship. When you take on something as enormous as BCCI, or the 9/11 cover-up, you kind of have to be humble, and be open to correction. It takes years to get a sense of the big picture. Even the brash Alex Jones has amended his earlier claims about Sandy Hook.

Beauchamp is wrong, because even though some truthers are a passionate lot, the ones in it for the long haul do change. Look at how alternative historians of the 9/11 event have evolved. Using collaborative tools like conferences, internet and social media, the 9/11 truth movement has developed, and improved over 17 years. It has grown from marginal conspiracy theorists, into a serious intellectual force with organized opposition. Over 3,000 licensed architects and engineers reject the theory that two planes could have brought down three steel skyscrapers. And in 2018, the Lawyers Committee for 9/11 Inquiry filed a petition for a Special Grand Jury, regarding the buildings’ collapses. The movement effectively helped to create the term “Deep State” which is now used in mainstream media to describe a level of federal government corruption which is alarming, almost beyond reform, and out of control. A recent ABC poll showed that half of the USA believes there is a “Deep State” and of that half, 58% call it a “serious problem.”

The same Senator Bob Graham who attempted to subpoena Mueller’s FBI was on 60 Minutes a couple years ago, advocating for the release of the 28 Pages (documents Bush censored from Congress’s 9/11 report). Once these were released by Congress, the world changed. Despite Obama’s veto, Congress passed legislation that acted on what we all saw in the 28 Pages (those of us who read them, despite Big Media falsely claiming there was nothing there.) The 28 Pages make it plain: the US Deep State, Prince Bandar, and Saudis clearly were backing the key 9/11 hijackers. This is the story of the century. The Zack Beauchamps of the world don’t dare to comment. They avert their eyes. But Alex Jones has done 17 years of investigating, interviews, and commentary. His work has millions of followers. Our “free” society is grossly guilty of hypocrisy and censorship. We can’t even find a way to talk to each other. Censorship only makes everyone angrier.

Zack Beauchamp wants Alex Jones’ media platforms to be strangled and asphyxiated:  “Jones was spreading dangerous lies, and….journalists simply couldn’t debunk them. The only way to stop these ideas was to deprive them of oxygen, to prevent people from being exposed to them in the first place.”

No, Zack. The media should not get to decide what people can “be exposed to.” The spirit of First Amendment says that they should be allowed to a diversity of information, and that the powers that be should not restrain freedom of the press. And no, don’t tell me that Facebook is not subject to the First Amendment. Recent case law says that even privately owned corporations can create spaces that can be termed a “public forum” that are thus subject to First Amendment protection.

At the end of the day, Authoritarian denunciations from government or media beg the question: What are you afraid of? Why can’t these topics be discussed? And who are you working for?

Beauchamp in his Vox article often quotes Harvard professors Cass Sunstein and Adrian Vermeule, regarding their article about the 9/11 truth movement. But a deeper look at that article shows that there’s a sinister violation of Constitutional Rights there. Those authors urge that, “government operatives, whether anonymous or otherwise, should infiltrate and disrupt” the 9/11 truth movement. They wrote, “Government agents (and their allies) might enter chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups and attempt to undermine percolating conspiracy theories by raising doubts about their factual premises, causal logic or implications for political action.”

As author Kevin Ryan wrote on his blog, “In retrospect, it is comforting to know that so much effort at disruption was needed to prevent 9/11 questions from taking over the national discussion. It means that many people were informed to some degree and that citizen groups working for the truth were seen as a threat to a corrupt system.”

 

IN SUM

The election of President Trump showed a desperate decision to break with status quo corruption and career politicians like Hillary Clinton. The people just don’t trust the system.  With the murder of Seth Rich, the uninvestigated pedophilic crimes exposed by the DNC emails, the major revelations about the 9/11 cover-up going unprosecuted, it’s no surprise the that corporate media has such low approval ratings in public opinion polls.

But the bottom line is that, with Alex Jones, cooler heads will prevail. The truth about Epstein and 9/11 will eventually win out. That’s what the soul of the First Amendment says. If you allow for a diversity of opinion, eventually the truth will prevail.

A group of over 70 attorneys has taken action recently, based on the 17 years of independent research into 9/11. The Lawyers Committee for 9/11 Inquiry in April filed a petition for a Special Grand Jury into the collapse of the World Trade Towers, in US Federal Court. Of course, US Attorney Geoffrey Berman ignored the petition, and ignored his legal duty to convene a Grand Jury, despite the 57 categories of evidence. So, on the 10th of September this year, the Lawyers will escalate and file a Mandamus suit.

Alex Jones’ work on 9/11 Truth, is probably the most important of all his work on controversial topics. In some ways, the national 9/11 Truth movement has received a great gift here. Nothing unites a movement like the feeling of being attacked, especially on the verge of the 17th Anniversary of 9/11, in an eventful year for work against the Deep State. The censorship of Alex Jones shows that our work is relevant, and that the struggle is escalating. We have hard facts. If they can’t debate us, they will try to silence us. It won’t work. The First Amendment is on our side.

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Sander Hicks is an independent progressive candidate for US Congress, in NYC’s 12th Congressional District. He has been a guest on Alex Jones’ show, and has debated CNN’s Oliver Darcy on the Comedy Central video podcast. He is author of two books about the War on Terror. Please learn more about his campaign, and consider a donation, at www.hicksforcongress.com

Saturday Matinee: Horns and Halos

Review by Underground Film Journal

Horns and Halos, which opened the 9th New York Underground Film Festival, is a documentary by married filmmakers Suki Hawley and Michael Galinsky about the intrigue surrounding the publication of the controversial book Fortunate Son, a biography of George W. Bush. The book was originally published by St. Martin’s Press in 1999, subsequently pulled off the bookstore shelves by them after controversy arose over a passage accusing Bush of being a convicted drug user and then re-published by a little artsy boutique outfit in New York City called Soft Skull Press.

What makes Horns and Halos a successful documentary is that the filmmakers did an excellent job of remaining amazingly unbiased towards the subject matter. While watching the movie, I got the impression that Bush supporters would dismiss everyone involved in the book’s publication as a complete wacko and reject any criticisms made against the president in the film; and that anti-Bush activists would find the issues brought up by the book to be damning evidence against him. Personally, I think the truth lies, as the saying goes, somewhere in-between.

The author of Fortunate Son is Arkansas author J.H. Hatfield who, despite appearing slightly off-kilter, seems like an intensely earnest man who just wanted to be taken as a serious author. Previous to his infamous work, Hatfield was the writer of unauthorized biographies of Ewan McGregor and Patrick Stewart, as well as guides to TV shows like Star Trek, Lost in Space and The X-Files.

The main focus of the film, however, is Sander Hicks, the garrulous and determined CEO of Soft Skull Press and re-publisher of “Fortunate Son.” It makes sense that Horns and Halos would spotlight Sander over Hatfield, though, since the movie seems like a very low-budget affair and Hawley, Galinsky and Hicks are all NYC residents while Hatfield lived all the way in Arkansas.

But what’s interesting about all four participants — the filmmakers and their subjects — is that they all seem to be people who have stumbled onto a subject that’s bigger than themselves. There’s a lot of information presented in and lurking around the fringes of Horns and Halos that I really think would have been better served by someone with a bigger budget, for example Michael Moore who can afford a team of researchers; travel freely around the country and also possibly have the balls to charge the White House and demand interviews with Bush and Karl Rove, whose name figures prominently in Hatfield’s research but whom the filmmakers don’t go into much detail on.

But that doesn’t mean that this film shouldn’t be seen and that Galinsky and Hawley’s approach isn’t entirely successful. The real winner of the movie, even though he isn’t in the film as much as I would have liked, is Hatfield. I think the film, at the very least, redeems his character, which got so maligned in the public forum that it eventually led him to commit suicide in 2001.

It is true that Hatfield was an ex-felon. He served five years in prison after being convicted of conspiracy to murder in 1988. But he also may have been a victim of a greedy publisher who forced him to include in his book the unsubstantiated rumor that Bush was convicted of cocaine possession in 1972.

The drug charge story is a complicated one and rather than me recount it here, a good overview of it is included in a new preface by Sander Hicks in Fortunate Son, which is also available to read on Soft Skull Press’s website. While the preface is interesting, it does make one or two slips, especially in not footnoting key passages, e.g. the statement, “[Bush] blurted out at a press conference that he hadn’t done drugs since 1974.” Little details like that can bug me and prevent me from agreeing with a story 100%. (Alas, since the writing of this review, Hicks’ preface is no longer available, but there is a new forward by Mark Crispin Miller.)

The same goes for all of Horns and Halos. I do think having a little bit more of Hatfield in the flick would have made things a lot more clearer, especially considering the scope of the subject. After the NYUFF screening of the film, Hicks and Galinsky did a brief Q&A session together (Hawley was absent as she had just given birth to a daughter) and I thought it really sad that Hatfield couldn’t be there to see the finished film and accept the applause from the audience that would have greeted him. I think he would have been the hit of the festival.

Most library system members can watch the full film on Kanopy.

Getting Out of the Matrix

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The “government shutdown” may have a silver lining for average citizens after all, it could potentially introduce to the minds of many the possibility that governments can shut down and to get people thinking about what to do if or when it happens for real. Even if you don’t believe it can happen, there’s plenty of reasons to expect a worsening financial crisis,  environmental chaos due to natural and man-made disasters, energy shortages, etc. In short, now is a good time to start seeking alternatives to the current system, finding ways to live off the grid (or at least be less in the grid), and taking basic steps for preparedness.

As important as it is to be aware of the myriad problems affecting our lives, it’s just as important to seek solutions and inspiration to help each other in personal and collective journeys towards a better path. Two podcasts I’ve heard recently may do just that through interviews with creative and iconoclastic individuals who are well on their way on a better path and are encouraging others to join along.

The first is from Kevin Barrett’s Truth Jihad Radio program with author/activist Sander Hicks:

You can read about Hicks’ interests and writings here.

The second was on the latest episode of Greg Carlwood’s The Higherside Chats podcast with author Wendy Tremayne, who gave up a high paying position in New York for a more frugal, sustainable and fulfilling existence in New Mexico:

Both shows cover an interesting mix of information and views on politics, spirituality economics and lifestyle.

Even if one is not ready or able to immediately attempt such a leap, don’t assume it’s not possible. It’s difficult by design to survive within much less escape a system so dominated by corporations and power-mad political bureaucracy without some sacrifice or compromise. However, everyone can take big or small actions everyday to offset compromises, contribute towards positive change and improve one’s situation, whether it’s conscious consumer and lifestyle choices, inner work, learning, communicating, supporting, creating, organizing, resisting and whistleblowing as just a few examples. As Gil Scott-Heron said in his song “Work For Peace”, nobody can do everything but everyone can do something. What one does might depend on personality, passion, skills, knowledge, creativity, and life situation. You might not see immediate results but sometimes change can occur through long-term cumulative efforts.