There stands President Trump. What Crime Has ANYONE Found?

Lavrentiy Beria, head of the NKVD under Josef Stalin (The Soviet Union's secret police and precursor to the infamous KGB), is often cited as having said "show me the man and I'll find you the crime."

We should be mindful of these words in regarding the broad authority granted Robert Mueller in his appointment as Special Counsel for the US Department of Justice, charged with investigating possible "collusion" between the campaign staffs of Donald Trump and Russia. We should be mindful for the simple reason that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, at the time of Mueller's appointment, explicitly discounted any presumption that any criminal offense had even taken place:

“In my capacity as acting Attorney General, I determined that it is in the public interest for me to exercise my authority and appoint a Special Counsel to assume responsibility for this matter,” said Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein. “My decision is not a finding that crimes have been committed or that any prosecution is warranted. I have made no such determination. What I have determined is that based upon the unique circumstances, the public interest requires me to place this investigation under the authority of a person who exercises a degree of independence from the normal chain of command.”

Mueller's appointment was never even an assertion that a crime had been committed, much less that President Trump had committed one.  This alone made Mueller's appointment something of a legal oddity, for the federal statute governing the appointments of Special Counsel, 28 CFR § 600.1, specifically references criminal investigations:

The Attorney General, or in cases in which the Attorney General is recused, the Acting Attorney General, will appoint a Special Counsel when he or she determines that criminal investigation of a person or matter is warranted....

Moreover, the investigation must be grounded in a specific crime (or at least the allegation of a crime), as 28 CFR § 600.4(a), requires some specificity as to the subject of investigation:

The jurisdiction of a Special Counsel shall be established by the Attorney General. The Special Counsel will be provided with a specific factual statement of the matter to be investigated....

Former US Attorney Andrew McCarthy highlighted these apparent defects of Mueller's appointment in a 2017 piece for the National Review, and I encourage those wanting a fuller understanding of the legal issues to read it.  I highlight these points merely to underscore the "Beria-esque" nature of Mueller's appointment: He was shown Donald Trump, and challenged to find the crime.

After a year (and an untold number of millions of dollars spent), the question now becomes: "What crime has Mueller found?"  What crime has anyone found? What credible accusation of criminal offense may now be laid at President Trump's feet?

The answer appears to be: none. There is no crime alleged. There is no accusation to be made.

Consider the tangible fruits of the Mueller probe to date:  

• George Papadopoulos, a foreign policy advisor to the Trump campaign, pleaded guilty in October 2017 to making false statements to the FBI.
• Michael Flynn, President Trump's one-time national security advisor, pleaded guilty in December of 2017 to making false statements to the FBI.
• Rick Gates, business partner and lieutenant to Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, plead guilty in February 2018 to one count of making false statements and one count of "conspiracy against the United States", both charges arising out of political consulting work Manafort and Gates provided to Ukrainian politicians several years ago--work wholly unrelated to either the Trump campaign or the 2016 election cycle as a whole.
• Richard Pinedo, someone with no known affiliation to either Donald Trump or the Trump campaign, pled guilty to a charge of identity theft, in connection with a series of indictments Mueller announced involving a number of Russian nationals and Russian-based companies.
• Alex van der Zwann, also with no known affiliation to Donald Trump or the Trump campaign, pled guilty to making false statements to the FBI.

These represent the sum total of prosecutorial "wins" Mueller has obtained as a result of his investigation.  Not one of these guilty pleas even hints at a larger crime or conspiracy having been perpetrated by President Trump or members of his campaign staff.  As regards President Trump, Mueller has failed to even allege any crime.

Mueller's investigation has also resulted in the following criminal indictments:

• One-time Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort was indicted in October of 2017 on a number of charges, including money laundering and making false statements, all in relation to work done long before his involvement with Donald Trump's Presidential campaign.
• Manafort associate Konstantin Kilimnik, was indicted in June of 2018 with obstruction of justice, purportedly by attempting to tamper with potential witnesses in the Manafort case.
• In February of 2018, Mueller indicted 13 Russian nationals and three Russian entities on charges of conspiring to interfere with “US political and electoral processes, including the presidential election of 2016.” However, it must be noted that, in announcing the indictments, the Department of Justice explicitly excluded any allegation of any American--including Trump campaign operatives--being a willing party to the criminal acts alleged: "There is no allegation in the indictment that any American was a knowing participant in the alleged unlawful activity. There is no allegation in the indictment that the charged conduct altered the outcome of the 2016 election. "
• In July of 2018, Rod Rosenstein announced indictments of 12 Russian GRU intelligence agents on charges surrounding the alleged hack of the DNC servers in the spring and early summer of 2016.  As with the February indictments, American involvement was specifically discounted: "There is no allegation in the indictment that any American was a knowing participant in the alleged unlawful activity or knew they were communicating with Russian intelligence officers."

27 individuals and three companies indicted, and none of the indictments even hint at a crime committed by Donald Trump or his campaign staffs.  Moreover, in announcing both sets of Russian indictments, the Department of Justice specifically rejected the possibility that the alleged activities influenced the outcome of the election, stating outright that "there is no allegation in the indictment that the charged conduct altered the vote count or changed the outcome of the 2016 election." Even if every single indictment results in a conviction, not a single one points to any criminal conduct by President Trump or his associates.  A year after Mueller was shown Donald Trump, he has failed to find any crime.

Nor has anyone else managed to find an actual crime.  Outside of the Mueller investigation, the most notable potential source of wrongdoing is the allegation that President Trump had an affair with porn star Stormy Daniels in 2006, and possibly another with Playboy model Karen McDougal. Because of payments made to Daniels and McDougal, arranged by Trump lawyer and "fixer" Michael Cohen, during the fall of 2016, there has been some intimation of campaign finance violations, but even that becomes highly problematic given Cohen's revelation of recorded conversations with Donald Trump discussing such payments.  Even if the allegations themselves are true, adultery is not a crime.

It is disingenuous and facile to say that Donald Trump "may have" committed crimes, either in relation to Russian involvement in the 2016 election or with regards to his supposed mistresses.  Strictly as an hypothetical, that is always true, not just of Donald Trump but of anyone.  However, crime is not an hypothetical.  Crime is factual. Accusations of crime require there be a date, a place, a time, and a law that has been broken. Accusations of crime require there be facts.  So far, there have been no facts that even identify a crime that Donald Trump could plausibly have committed.

Lawyer after lawyer has been shown Donald Trump, and lawyer after lawyer has failed to find a crime. Maybe there is a crime lurking just out of sight, and maybe it will be soon brought to light.  Maybe.

For now, the reality is there are no crimes that can be alleged against Donald Trump.

Facebook Fact Checkers -- Just More Fake News

Apparently, I am now part of the "alt-right"/"alt-media" cadre.  Facebook has decreed the page I have to help publicize this blog as contributing to the spread of "fake news.":

First, some background.  I maintain a Facebook page of the same title as this blog, "A Voice Of Liberty", and in addition to using it to promote my various postings and pages here, I also post links to news stories that I consider to be interesting and relevant to the political discourse at large. I also share a substantial number of these postings to various Facebook groups.

On July 17, 2018, I posted an article from TruePundit which highlighted an alleged assertion by Lisa Page that Chinese hackers penetrated Hillary Clinton's email server:

The embattled Page tossed James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok and Bill Priestap among others under the Congressional bus, alleging the upper echelon of the FBI concealed intelligence confirming Chinese state-backed ‘assets’ had illegally acquired former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s 30,000+ “missing” emails, federal sources said.

As I have done countless times, I shared this article among several Facebook groups. Yesterday, on July 20, 2018, I received the notification in the graphic above, that Factcheck.org reviewed the TruePundit article and labeled it "false".

Unfortunately for Factcheck.org, what's "false" is its review and rating--that is provably false.

Factcheck's "rebuttal" is in reality a rather ham-handed red herring argument, centering on an assertion by Lisa Page's lawyer, Amy Jeffress:

“These stories are completely false,” Amy Jeffress said in a statement provided to FactCheck.org. “In nearly ten hours of testimony before the Committees, Lisa did not say a single word about China hacking the DNC server, and this conspiracy theory about the FBI instructing her to cover up such a story is nonsense. Her testimony was consistent with the intelligence community’s unanimous assessment: the evidence demonstrated Russian interference in the election.

Except the TruePundit article did not mention the DNC server, but Hillary Clinton's email server. Factcheck.org even quotes TruePundit and explicitly mentions that Lisa Page's assertion was in regard to Hillary Clinton's server, and not the DNC server, yet focuses on the alleged hack of the DNC server. The quoted statement from Lisa Page's attorney, Amy Jeffress, makes no mention of the Hillary Clinton server; it has no bearing on the TruePundit article.

Factcheck.org is disputing a claim TruePundit did not make. Factcheck.org is thus itself demonstrably guilty of producing "fake news". Facebook is guilty of disseminating "fake news" by attaching Factcheck.org's red-herring rebuttal to my sharing of the TruePundit article.

Additionally, the possibility--even probability--of China having hacked Hillary Clinton's email server has been reported upon by the legacy media, including the New York Times and Politico. The Washington Times reported in 2016 on indications that at least the US Secret Service was aware that Hillary Clinton's email server had been hacked.

The "revelation" in the TruePundit article is not Lisa Page's claim that China hacked Hillary Clinton's email server--which has been rather widely reported in the past--but that the FBI knew this and chose to cover it up. Even that assertion is not without some historical precedent thanks to the aforementioned Washington Times report.

Factcheck.org is demonstrably guilty of producing fake news. Facebook is guilty of disseminating fake news.

The facts prove it. The links prove it.

A few disclaimers and disclosures in the interests of transparency:

• I have no affiliation with TruePundit. I read their content from time to time, and share links to their content when I find it interesting and relevant to the larger political discourse in this country. The only way I can vet their content is by comparing it to other content from other sources--which is what all well-informed citizens should strive to do.
• I have no affiliation nor conflict with Factcheck.org. 
• I have no affiliation with Facebook other than I maintain a Facebook page.
• TruePundit's article may prove to be inaccurate or completely wrong. Until Lisa Page's congressional testimony is made public--or, preferably, that she give actual testimony in an open forum without redactions--we cannot know absolutely the accuracy of the article. However, this is the case with all news articles, and it is only when we have access to primary sources that we may plausibly hope to actually fact check any news article.  Skepticism and a focus on the facts are virtues to be cultivated, particularly in regards to political reporting.

Trump-Russia: Are There ANY Facts Out There?

The American political establishment has lost what little sanity it possessed.

After President Trump failed to publicly excoriate Russian President Vladimir Putin for the alleged meddling by Russia in the 2016 election, pundits on both the right and the left went into epic meltdown mode. Words like "treason" and "surrender" were thrown around with total abandon.

To add insult to injury, much of the media hyperbole was based on a complete misrepresentation of what Donald Trump actually said. While he did not accuse Putin outright of election meddling, neither did he exonerate him.  As Tom Trinko cogently observed afterwards:

Trump never said the Russians didn't meddle – only that he discussed the issue with Putin and Putin denied it. Putin appears to be ready to back his claim up by providing Robert Mueller access to the 12 supposed hackers.

Putin could be lying, but nothing Trump said boils down to "the Russians didn't meddle." Rather, Trump was being diplomatic and didn't directly call Putin a liar.

All of this brings to the fore a simple yet rarely asked question: "What are the facts?"  What is the actual empirical data that is actually known about Russia's presumed interventions in the 2016 elections?

Is there any such data?  Frighteningly, the answer may very well be "no":

• As I wrote when the Intelligence Community Assessment was first published in January of 2017, the report itself is contradictory and problematic, and fundamentally fact free.  It was and is an opinion piece, and nothing more.
• In September of 2017, Facebook came forward to announce that a Russian entity, the Internet Research Agency, had purchased a number of ad pages on the platform. Yet when the ads themselves were disclosed, their political impact seemed uncertain at best, and their impropriety seemed almost nonexistent. As evidence of improper "meddling", the ads are simply laughable.
• In Mueller's first round of Russian indictments, the cases almost immediately imploded, first when it was revealed one of the companies named did not exist during the time frame covered by the indictments, and then when it was discovered that Mueller's investigators never translated the proffered "evidence"--largely uncorroborated social media posts--from their original Russian.
• Mueller's second round of Russian indictments appears not to have been much better. In addition to be built essentially around apparently hearsay testimony, some of the particulars in the indictment may very well have been cribbed from other, unrelated investigations.

Weak evidence, false evidence, no evidence--objective scrutiny of Russia's alleged malfeasance is for the moment impossible because there is no publicly available objective data--no factual evidence--to scrutinize.  Two years of investigation and endless hyperbole from hyperventilating pundits and politicians, and we have no facts.

By way of comparison, I submit a memorandum published on Counterpunch by a group called "Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity" (VIPS), suggesting that the alleged hack of the Democratic National Committee's servers might have been an inside job and not an outside hack.  I do not know if their assessment is more or less accurate than the ICA from January of 2017.  I do know the assessment is factually grounded, where the ICA is not.

How is the VIPS memo factually grounded?

• Links and citations are provided to primary source materials.  We are not obliged to take the VIPS team at their word, but are allowed and even invited to scrutinize the primary source data for ourselves.
• The primary source data is a forensic study of an archive of DNC material, part of a hack of the DNC network performed on July 5, 2016.  The forensic analysis includes a link to the archive itself.
• The forensic study provides an explanation of the examinations and computations conducted on the archive, thus providing a clear logical basis for the conclusions reached.

Even if the VIPS memorandum should prove inaccurate, it is still a superior treatment of these issues because it makes repeated reference to objective data that can be independently verified and scrutinized.  Nothing from Mueller's prosecutorial efforts provides this level of comfort.  The ICA does not provide this level of comfort.  We are being asked to take these agencies at their word, while VIPS all but requests independent scrutiny.

Two years of investigation and endless hyperbole from hyperventilating pundits and politicians, and we have no facts. We have no objective data which we may independently verify and analyze. We have only opinion and allegation.  This is the objective reality of the multiple investigations into the alleged malfeasances of Russia.

Absence of proof is not necessarily proof of absence.  We cannot automatically infer from this lack of objective data that Russia is innocent of any wrong doing with regard to the 2016 election.  However, the longer we are faced with an absence of proof, the less likely the claim of Russia malfeasance becomes, and the more likely that the truth of the 2016 election is something far different than the current hysterical and histrionic narratives of the media.

Justice Kennedy's Retirement Is A Reminder That Every Day Is A Time For Choosing

A great deal of speculation, pontification, and blatant posturing followed Justice Anthony Kennedy's June 27th announcement of his retirement from the Supreme Court. Predictions of a coming reversal of newly-won (some would say newly-created) civil rights abound. Celebrations of the first decidedly conservative Supreme Court in seventy years flow with equal abandon.

As is common when politics intersects the law, both sides are missing the point.

Justice Kennedy's retirement--as is the case with all outgoing Supreme Court justices--is a moment that calls each citizen to remember the role the Court plays not only in our government but in our society.  It is a reminder that our elected officials, our Presidents and Senators, are empowered to impact both government and society not only for this generation, but for all subsequent generations. If our elected officials typify the society we are today, justices illuminate what manner of society we will be tomorrow. The composition of the Supreme Court is not a "liberal" or "conservative" question, nor even a purely political question, but is an "American" question.

Justice Kennedy's retirement is an invitation to reread what the Constitution says about the Supreme Court, and understand what role it plays in Constitutional government.

The Supreme Court is the only court in the United States mandated by the Constitution (Article 3, Section 1):

The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish. The Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their Offices during good Behavior, and shall, at stated Times, receive for their Services a Compensation which shall not be diminished during their Continuance in Office.

The Supreme Court is an appellate court for almost all cases within Federal jurisdiction (Article 3, Section 2), " both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make." Appellate jurisdiction empowers the Court to review both the verdicts of lower courts within the Federal judiciary and their interpretations of Federal law, which includes assessment of the Constitutionality of Federal law.

Under the Constitution, the Supreme Court is the highest judicial authority. Its interpretations of Federal law are binding upon all Federal courts, and its rulings are applicable to the whole of the Federal government--as Chief Justice John Marshall wrote so powerfully in Marbury v Madison, "It is emphatically the duty of the Judicial Department to say what the law is." Yet it does not possess unlimited power or unlimited authority. The 11th Amendment sharply limits its jurisdictions where disputes involve a single state, and by inference John Marshall's own assessment of the role of the Court does not extend to saying what the law should be--that duty is reserved to the Congress.

The truth of the Supreme Court is that its Constitutionally-defined construction and jurisdiction are distinctly non-partisan and non-ideological. Political ideologies are the foundations of advocacy for what laws we should have, and what laws we should discard, but no advocacy can alter the text of the laws as they are written. The role of the Court is to apply the law--apply the letter of the law--to cases brought before it, and the law is neither liberal nor conservative; rather, the law merely is.

Naturally, both liberals and conservatives desire judges and justices who will interpret the law in ways that favor their political aims.  This has always been true, and it will always be true. It is also true there have been judges and justices who have contorted and distorted the law (including the Constitution), to arrogantly impose their views on society--such cases are etched permanently in our judicial comprehension: Dredd Scott v Sanford, Roe v Wade, Obergfell v Hodges. Yet the Constitution calls for a Court that rises above both partisan and personal ideology, that dispassionately reads the law as it is written and just as dispassionately applies it to the cases brought before it.

The Supreme Court is not merely the balancing third branch of the Federal government, acting as a brake upon the predations of both the legislative and executive branches against the rights of the people. By its explicit charter within the Constitution, it is the guarantor that the rule of law shall remain the foundation of this Republic. John Marshall was not the first to conceive the idea that no act of Congress could contravene the Constitution--the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions argued that exact idea in much the same language as Marshall some five years prior to Marbury--but it was the Court's finding in Marbury that put the matter beyond all dispute, "...an act of the Legislature repugnant to the Constitution is void." The Court is this nation's assurance that not even the Congress can contradict the Constitution.

Thus it is that the promise of the Court, if not always its legacy, is that, under our Constitution, within the limits of the Constitution, the rights of all people shall always prevail.  The Court thus becomes the embodiment of the Constitutional ideal, that this Republic be governed by laws rather than men.  This is the Court we can have, so long as sober and serious justices occupy its bench.

Yet justices are but men, and they are appointed by men, who are in turn elected by men. So it is that Justice Kennedy's retirement is a reminder to us all that Constitutional government only works when We The People are prepared to do the work of governance.  We will only have the Court the Constitution promises us if we elect Presidents and Senators who understand, appreciate, and esteem that promise, and who are serious in their oath of office to ensure they appoint justices who will give us that Court.

Justice Kennedy's retirement, as is the retirement of every justice, is the periodic reminder that, in a republic, every day is a time for choosing. Every election is a matter of consequence, and every vote is of significance. Justice Kennedy's retirement is our periodic invitation to engage with our government, with both the President and the Senate, to petition that we might get the justices and the Court the Constitution has promised to us.

The Court may say what the law is, but ultimately it is We The People who will say what the law should be, and it is We The People who will say how the Court shall be. As Justice Kennedy closes his long and distinguished tenure on the bench, the best honor we could show him would be to remember this simple truth, and to put this simple truth into action, today, and every day.

Tommy Robinson Exposes The Dark Underbelly Of The GDPR: Censorship

Well, that didn't take long.

On Friday, 25 May 2018, the European Union's sweeping privacy-oriented General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) went into effect. On that day, faced with sudden exposure to steep, even crippling fines for potential "breaches" of user privacy, many Internet and social media sites ceased or suspended their European operations, and "went dark" across the continent.

That same day, British activist and citizen journalist Tommy Robinson was arrested, and--in the space of less than six hours--sentenced to 13 months in prison for "breaching the peace", the charge brought on by his online reporting of the trial proceedings of a rape gang trial in the the UK city of Leeds. In the same proceeding that whisked Tommy Robinson off to prison, the court declared a media ban on all reporting surrounding Tommy Robinson, his detention, trial, and 13-month sentence. So emphatic was the ban that regular British media outlets such as The Independent have actually scrubbed their websites of news articles published immediately following his arrest. 

Note: The media ban was lifted a few days later, thanks to the efforts of the Rebel Media and others, although mainstream media coverage of Tommy Robinson's arrest and incarceration remains virtually nonexistent.

I am not going to comment on the propriety of his arrest other than to say that a number of notable citizen journalist, members of the so-called "alternative media", or "alt-media", have expressed a fair amount of horror and dismay, believing the charge to be essentially a manufactured one, one used with the specific and sinister intent of silencing a dissenting voice and critic of UK government policy. I am not in the UK, I am hardly an expert on UK law, so I leave the legal particulars of the matter to those more qualified in that subject than I.

Similarly, I am not going to comment on Tommy Robinson's activism. My opinion on his activism can best be summarized by Clark Gable's classic closing line from Gone With The Wind: "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn." Tommy Robinson is a man with a point of view and a political agenda, no more but certainly no less. His views can and should be investigated, critiqued, even criticized. That he should be heard is certain; more than that is a choice each of us should make in the privacy of our own conscience.

However, I am not going to comment on the propriety of the media ban and the efforts of the UK government to muzzle any and all mention of Tommy Robinson, his arrest, detention, and incarceration. Rather, I point out the complete lack of propriety, of respect for the principles of free speech and a free press that are essential to sustain any level of freedom in any society. It may very well be within the scope of UK law for the courts to declare Tommy Robinson a non-person; it is not within the scope of decency, of ethics, or of any respect for fundamental civil liberty. Whether or not Tommy Robinson is guilty of a crime, whether or not Tommy Robinson's political views or agendas are in keeping with the aims of either the British government or the British people, he is still retains the basic human right to be heard, as do those who would advocate on his behalf. That right has been summarily eradicated by the British courts.

Coincidentally--or perhaps intentionally--the Brussels diktat known as the GDPR is aiding and abetting this deplorable deprivation of civil liberty. British media sites of course are complying with the media ban decreed by the courts--and the stifling confines of the GDPR's "privacy" protections have ensured that few other media sites, mainstream or alternative, are available to give Tommy Robinson or his supporters the voice that is their due. The platforms that would otherwise be the natural vehicles for those voices are suddenly less available. Fear of the GDPR's onerous penalties and the fascistic EU bureaucracies charged with levying them is creating a great silence where the voices of dissent otherwise would be. Regulation enacted to "protect" Internet users has almost immediately been turned into a tool with which to silence them. The price of privacy, at least in Europe, is the cessation of free speech--indeed, the cessation of civil liberty itself.

To the avowed libertarian such as myself, this comes as no surprise. In all of human history, there are no examples where an expansion of government power produces an expansion of human freedom, and there are far too many examples where the expansion of government power produces an expansion of human misery. The regulatory power of government, being coercive rather than persuasive, flowing solely from the barrel of a gun, is by its very nature antithetical to individual liberty. Regulation which inhibits or controls speech is by its very nature a diminution of the free speech that is essential to the preservation of individual liberty in any society. As Thomas Jefferson is oft quoted as having said: "When government fears the people, there is liberty. When people fear the government, there is tyranny." The GDPR is tyranny.

Free speech matters more than the technical proceedings of a court. Free speech matters more than the particulars of any law in any one nation. Ultimately, free speech must matter more than technical concerns regarding privacy. Free speech is the essence of free society. It is the basis by which we have free markets. It is the cornerstone of free enterprise. When free speech is attacked, freedom and all the blessings thereof are diminished. When free speech is attacked, we are all diminished. Without free speech, personal privacy is rendered meaningless.

Giving up essential liberty for the preservation of privacy is too high a price to pay. No matter how noble the intentions used to justify the GDPR, the silencing of dissidents such as Tommy Robinson is too high a cost. And there is no denying that the GDPR is helping to silence Tommy Robinson's dissent, merely by making alternative platforms by which his dissent might be heard too risky and expensive a proposition to sustain. When news sharing sites such as Instapaper block European viewers, when online advertising firms suspend their European operations, the availability of platforms for dissenting voices--for those contrarian views essential for a thriving marketplace of ideas--is immediately reduced. The draconian fines and byzantine compliance structures imposed by the GDPR have the inescapable--and I dare say intentional--effect of winnowing and reducing platforms by which dissent of all kinds can be heard.

For the sake of free speech, for the sake of us all, Tommy Robinson's dissenting voice must not be silenced. Shame to the British courts for silencing that voice, and double shame to the Brussels bureaucrats who authored the GDPR for aiding and abetting that silencing. The Internet was created as a tool for communications, for the free exchange of ideas; the GDPR is the expressed intent of too-powerful bureaucrats to bring that exchange to an end, and for proof of that evil intent we need look no further than the silencing of Tommy Robinson. That is reason enough to denounce the GDPR. That is reason enough to call for its immediate and permanent revocation.