Lara Logan is a South African-born journalist and war correspondent known for her extensive work in conflict zones. She gained significant recognition while working for CBS News, particularly for her coverage of the Iraq War and the Arab Spring.
Logan's career includes notable moments such as her 2002 Peabody Award for her report on the abduction of Daniel Pearl.
However, her career has also been marked by controversy, including a high-profile assault in Egypt in 2011, and later, scrutiny over her reporting methods and political views as she started to shed light on the 'not mainstream' narratives that are the hidden realities of our time.
She, better than most, can attest to the powers of the Deep State and the weaponization of establishment-based entities in the age of information warfare.
"We are once again watching the lights of freedom going out all over the world. And it is up to us to determine if they will be lit again, ever."
Watch Logan's impassioned speech below:
Full Transcript (emphasis ours)...
"We live in the age of information warfare, where propaganda is not simply a weapon, it is the entire field of battle. This is a war for our minds that is aided by advanced technology, and we have never been here, not in all of human history."
"It is a moment when we as journalists should stand together, united, and regardless of politics, we should fight for the truth and we should fight for freedom. Yet, not very long ago, we allowed one of our own, Tucker Carlson, to be branded as a traitor simply for doing his job. In fact, there were many so-called journalists who were leading the charge against Tucker, accusing him of treason for the simple fact of interviewing the president of Russia, Vladimir Putin."
"And to my knowledge, there was not a single legacy media institution that spoke up. This was more than a politically motivated attack on one man. It was a betrayal of the most sacred principles of a free press. And my media colleagues know this to be true, no matter what they say. My fear is that they either no longer care or that they lack the moral courage to be honest, including with themselves."
"I have worked at the highest levels of the media as a full-time correspondent for 60 Minutes, chief foreign correspondent for CBS News, chief foreign affairs correspondent for CBS News. That was my home for 16 years. And as a journalist, I have sat down with world leaders, mass murderers, and terrorists. And I have held people on both sides of the aisle accountable. I have seen suffering and I have faced evil and I have walked through the fires of hell on distant battlefields."
"I faced my own death at the hands of a mob of some 200 men in Egypt when I was gang raped and sodomized and beaten almost to death while on assignment for 60 minutes. And yet for almost a decade I have been targeted and falsely branded and accused of many things. that I did not do. They have attacked my work, my character, my sanity, and my marriage. And I am not alone. We are many."
"And we will not give up, and we will not give in. To those who wish to sense of the idea of free speech in America and all over the world, media companies. Institutions and journalism schools have failed all of us."
"And for too long we have allowed nonprofit organizations to masquerade as nonpartisan media watchdogs, when in fact they are little more than highly paid political propagandists and assassins whose entire reason for being is to crush anyone who stands in their way and along with them the long held and cherished ideas of free speech, free thinking, and free minds."
"This is a blood sport for them. their political allies and their puppet masters. They know how to kill a journalist without murdering them. We call it cancel culture. In truth, it is a death sentence. And they get away with it because they have information dominance. Some are strong enough to survive, but only a few, like Glenn Greenwald, Tucker Carlson, Matt Taibbi."
"Only a few like them are able to reach greater heights and thrive. These nonprofits that I'm talking about are part of a vast censorship network that includes government agencies. They use deception to mask their actions with lofty goals like preventing the spread of misinformation, disinformation, hate speech. They use phrases like protecting democracy and make no mistake, words matter."
"The media is collaborating with government agencies and operatives to censor and shape the information battlefield, to justify certain actions. For example, when the President of the United States threatens the unvaccinated, saying, our patience is wearing thin, and accuses them of putting communities at risk, his words are designed to justify hatred, censorship, and intimidation."
"And when the Vice President compares January 6th to 9-11 and Pearl Harbor, it is a predicate to silence the opposition and justify the weaponization. of the justice system. We are already witnessing another shaping operation to influence the outcome of the 2024 election. This time with the false claim that if one side wins, it will be the end of democracy."
"This lie contrived to ensure a particular outcome and to sabotage free speech yet again. Overseas taxpayer funds from hardworking Americans are being doled out by contractors under the Office of Transition Initiatives at USAID, or the State Department Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor."
"These contractors, many of them ideological zealots, who are not even US government officials, often make over a quarter million dollars a year, and are outside the reach, Senator, of yourself and committees like this. They hand out taxpayer dollars to programs that are shaped by highly partisan NGOs, who hide behind terms like interreligious dialogue, when in fact they are funding Muslim schools that train Islamic terrorists, like they did in Malaysia."
"Another example is Humanist International. Through them, the State Department is funding atheism grants that actively cultivate an atheist advocacy network in Nepal. This is not just to attack religion and manipulate foreign politics. It is an attack on free speech, faith, and God. While propaganda and censorship are not new, technology means unprecedented power and reach in the hands of a few."
"Companies like Facebook, Instagram, and Google, as you have heard many times today, have been allowed to amass monopoly power. And as a result, they not only reach billions of people across the world, every second of the day, they have absolute control over what we see and what we hear. Imagine those tools in the hands of Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Hitler."
"When the Founding Fathers put freedom of speech first, it was not by chance, it was by design. The rights that followed were in part created. to protect the First Amendment. Without it, they knew that freedom itself would perish. I am reminded today of the words spoken by the British Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Gray, in 1914, at the beginning of the First World War."
"He said, the lamps are going out all over Europe. We shall not see them lit again in our lifetime. We are once again watching the lights of freedom. They're going out here and all over the world. And it is up to us to determine if they will be lit again, ever."
h/t Camus
