Notably, Santilli is the only journalist among those covering the occupation to be charged with conspiracy, despite the fact that he did not participate in the takeover of the refuge, nor did he ever spend a night on the grounds of the refuge, nor did he ever represent himself as anything but a journalist covering the occupation.
Of course, the government doesn't actually believe that 50-year-old Santilli is an accomplice to any criminal activity.
Read between the lines and you'll find that what the government is really accusing Santilli of is employing dangerous speech. As court documents indicate, the government is prosecuting Santilli solely as a reporter of information. In other words, they're making an example of him, which is consistent with the government's ongoing efforts to intimidate members of the media who portray the government in a less than favorable light.
This is not a new tactic.
During the protests in Ferguson, Missouri, and Baltimore, Maryland, numerous journalists were arrested while covering the regions' civil unrest and the conditions that spawned it. These attempts to muzzle the press were concerted, top-down efforts to restrict the fundamental First Amendment rights of the public and the press.
The message is clear: whether a journalist is acting alone or is affiliated with an established news source, the government has no qualms about subjecting him to harassment, arrest, jail time and trumped up charges if doing so will discourage others from openly opposing or exposing the government.
You see, the powers-that-be understand that if the government can control speech, it controls thought and, in turn it can control the minds of the citizenry.
This is how freedom rises or falls.
There have always been those willing to speak their minds despite the consequences. Where freedom hangs in the balance is when "we the people" are called on to stand with or against individuals who actually exercise their rights and, in the process, push the envelope far enough to get called out on the carpet for it.
Do we negotiate the Constitution, or do we embrace it, no matter how uncomfortable it makes us feel, no matter how hateful or ugly it gets, and no matter how much we may dislike its flag-bearers?
What we're dealing with today is a government that wants to suppress dangerous words--words about its warring empire, words about its land grabs, words about its militarized police, words about its killing, its poisoning and its corruption--in order to keep its lies going.
As I document in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, what we are witnessing is a nation undergoing a nervous breakdown over this growing tension between our increasingly untenable reality and the lies being perpetrated by a government that has grown too power-hungry, egotistical, militaristic and disconnected from its revolutionary birthright.
The only therapy is the truth and nothing but the truth.
Otherwise, there will be no more First Amendment. There will be no more Bill of Rights. And there will be no more freedom in America as we have known it.
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