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the agent of truth is disliked by the agents of lies...

assange

Ever wonder why left wing trolls hate Julian Assange so much? And why maybe you’re more questioning? Ever tried to get to the bottom of a government-run propaganda campaign and found your synapses misfiring? The final in a five-part series by clinical psychologist Dr Lissa Johnson explains the science behind smear, and how and why it works.


Earlier this month, on March 10th, it came to widespread attention via the New York Times (NYT) that a recent explosive instalment in the Venezuela regime change narrative was false. Major news outlets had been reporting for over two weeks that forces loyal to Venezuelan President, Nicolas Maduro, had set an aid convoy ablaze, on February 23rd. 

US Senator Marco Rubio immediately spread the exciting regime-change news via Twitter, announcing that Maduro must pay “a high price”, amid emerging scenes of blazing food and medicine. Other US officials echoed Rubio’s sentiments on Twitter, including National Security Advisor John Bolton, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and the head of USAid Mark Green, calling Maduro a “sick tyrant” who uses “masked thugs” to commit “violent attacks against life saving aid”.

Clearly a little carried away, Vice President Mike Pence chimed in, gushing that Maduro “the tyrant danced as his henchmen… burned food and medicine.” 

“US news stars and think tank luminaries” got on board wrote Glenn Greenwald, branding the Venezuelan president “evil” and his military “animals and criminals”. Senator Diane Feinstein called for Maduro to step down. 

CNN even told its audiences that CNN reporters had witnessed the attack first hand.

The false story, reported Greenwald, “changed everything… politicians who had been…reluctant to support regime change began issuing statements now supportive of it”.

In reality, however, what occurred on February 23rd was that anti-Maduro protesters, on the same anti-Maduro side as the USA, had thrown Molotov cocktails at the aid convoy, setting it on fire. 

They didn’t mean to though, according to the NYT. The flaming rag just came loose and flew in the wrong direction. Because mixing up Molotov cocktails, setting them alight, standing beside an aid convoy and throwing them could happen to anyone. (Except Maduro’s guys. If they had done it, they would still be animals).

Significantly for those interested in accurate news, a detail omitted in the NYT report is that from the very day the official lie began making the rounds, independent journalists had broken the real story. 

Over two weeks before the NYT report, Max Blumenthal of the Grayzone Project posted an article, on February 24th, explaining that the “evidence pointed in the exact opposite direction” to the official narrative. The same day, journalist Dan Cohen posted a video showing an opposition protester, not Maduro’s forces, throwing a Molotov cocktail in the direction of the aid truck.

CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, PBS and the rest of the establishment media failed to run Cohen and Blumenthal’s reports. Another well-known news service did, however, giving its audiences the real scoop, from the start. 

And which news service was that? It was RT.

Glenn Greenwald wrote, “Please tell me: who was acting here as lying propagandists and agents of State TV, and who was acting like a journalist trying to understand and report the truth?”

He added, “Every major war of the last several decades has begun the same way: the US government fabricates an inflammatory, emotionally provocative lie which large US media outlets uncritically treat as truth while refusing to air questioning or dissent.”

Even after the NYT story ran, the corporate media barely blinked. Yet it was the first time in 20 years that the NYT had contradicted an official regime change lie according to Mark Weisbrot of the Centre for Economic and Policy Research. Which was newsworthy in itself. (In fairness to those behind the lie, which was ham-fisted, impulsive and slightly overdone, the liars were ad-libbing. It was a fortuitous Twitter opportunity, not a plan years in the making like WMDs.)

Meanwhile, as all of this unfolded, the world’s leading source of accurate information about war, Wikileaks, came under heightened pursuit by the US government. 

First, Chelsea Manning, responsible for some of the most explosive truths about recent Western wars, was sent to jail. Again. This time Manning had been imprisoned for refusing to take part in a Grand Jury investigation into Wikileaks, on the grounds that doing so violated her First, Fourth and Sixth Amendment rights. She said, “I will not participate in a secret process that I morally object to, particularly one that has been used to entrap and persecute activists for protected political speech.”

In response, 20 German members of the Bundestag stood publicly in support of Chelsea Manning, Julian Assange and Wikileaks. 

On her refusal to testify, Manning noted that she had already given all relevant evidence at her court martial in 2013, adding that she was concerned about being “forced to backtrack on the truth”. Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Elsberg said, “They want her to contradict her earlier sworn testimony… that she behaved in relation to WikiLeaks exactly as she would have to The New York Times or The Washington Post.”

The Grand Jury seeking to force Chelsea Manning to testify is investigating Julian Assange and Wikileaks, most likely for exposing lies about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, based in part on Chelsea Manning’s leaks.

As outlined in parts 2 and 3 of this series, if the Trump Department of Justice (DoJ) succeeds in prosecuting Julian Assange in this way, any journalists who seek to expose the official lies and secrets of US governments had better watch out. Such a prosecution would be the first time that a publisher has been criminalised for publishing classified information. The precedent that it would set risks criminalising journalism. So say leading legal minds left and right, including current and former counsel for the NYT.

US extradition would also flout international and human rights law, including the rules of asylum. To emphasise this, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights recently issued a statement in which it “forcefully declared to Ecuador… [that]Ecuador has the international obligation not to surrender Assange” to the United States.

No doubt aware of the legal obligations and dangers, however, when he was Attorney General in 2017 Jeff Sessions declared Assange’s arrest a “priority”. On the implications for journalism in general Sessions declined to rule out prosecuting other media outlets in Wikileaks’ wake.

As CIA director, Mike Pompeo similarly confirmed that the CIA was “working to take down” Wikileaks. Pompeo added that along with Wikileaks his administration would pursue “with great vigour” other “small” media organisations.

In the latest instalment of this pursuit, Trump’s nominee for Ambassador to Ecuador, Michael J. Fitzpatrick said during his confirmation hearings that Julian Assange’s “hostile activity” was “a problem, and letting it drag on much longer would continue to harm our interests, and I believe harm Ecuador’s interests as well”.

 

Read more:

https://newmatilda.com/2019/03/25/the-psychology-of-getting-julian-assange-part-5-war-propaganda-101/

 

 

war propaganda...

READ THE WHOLE ASSANGE SERIES
PART 1: The Psychology Of Getting Julian Assange: What’s Torture Got To Do With It?
PART 2: The Psychology Of Getting Julian Assange: The Court Of Public Opinion And The Blood-Curdling Untold Story
PART 3: The Psychology of Getting Julian Assange – Wikileaks and Russiagate: Trust Us, We’re The CIA
PART 4: The Psychology Of Getting Julian Assange: Why Even Some Lefties Want To See Him Hang
PART 5: The Psychology Of Getting Julian Assange: War Propaganda 101

 

propaganda

from fellow travellers...

 

coldtype

 

http://www.coldtype.net/Assets19/pdf/ColdType187.July2019.pdf

 

I suspect Cold Type is a word play on "hot Metal" which was the way newspapers used to be composed. We then had "hot from the press" and cold type became the norm in the 1980s with phototype composition. Now "Cold Type" represents the electronic transfer of information in typographical pdf format. ColdType magazine is a mine of articles and subjects we're fond of and have been harping about since 2005 on this site. Gus used to do a lot of graphics and layouts for magazines from the late 1960s to the 1990s. I was a bit more professional than my lazy efforts of today... but I'm old and enjoy off-the-cuff non-polished spur-of-the-moment stuff herein...

when whistleblowers are useful for the democrats...

Pelosi announces impeachment inquiry into Trump after whistleblower complaint.

US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi has announced a formal investigation that could lead to impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump.

Key points: 
  • The allegations centre on a July phone call between the US President and his Ukrainian counterpart
  • Ms Pelosi called Mr Trump's actions "a betrayal of national security"
  • Mr Trump tweeted "PRESIDENTIAL HARASSMENT!" in response

 

The inquiry centres on whether Mr Trump abused his presidential powers and sought help from a foreign government for his re-election.

Ms Pelosi, the most senior elected Democrat, had previously been reluctant to back moves towards impeachment, but there had been mounting pressure from her colleagues.

"The President must be held accountable. No-one is above the law," she said after meeting with her Democratic colleagues.

"The actions taken to date by the President have seriously violated the Constitution, especially when the President says, 'Article 2 says I can do whatever I want'.

 

Read more:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-09-25/formal-impeachment-inquiry-agains...

the guardian stinks...

The Guardian newspaper has come under fire for its role in pushing narratives about WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange that his supporters say distort the truth and has contributed to his current plight.

Around two dozen supporters of Julian Assange formed a picket outside of the headquarters of The Guardian newspaper on 17 December 2020.

The demonstrators attended to call out what they described as “lies” and “false stories” printed by The Guardian regarding the WikiLeaks founder, who is currently fighting an extradition request to face espionage related charges in the United States.

“Perhaps of the wider layers of the British population took their democratic rights seriously there would be tens and hundreds of thousands on the streets to defend Julian Assange and get him out of Belmarsh”, Maxine Walker from the Committee to Defend Julian Assange (JADC) told the crowd.

Ms Walker attributed a substantial “degree of blame” attached to The Guardian editors and journalists for their role in constructing what she described as a false narrative around the WikiLeaks co-founder.

 

Read more

https://sputniknews.com/uk/202012171081493960-assange-supporters-denounce-lies-smears-and-fabrications-outside-the-guardian-headquarters/

 

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Julian Assange reaching out to the State Department before someone else published unredacted cables in 2011 proves that US charges against him are baseless, WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson told RT.

“I can confirm that this is authentic,” Hrafnsson told RT from Reykjavik on Thursday, referring to the recording of Assange’s conversation with State Department lawyer Cliff Johnson, released by the conservative outlet Project Veritas earlier this week. 

“This should have tremendous weight” when it comes to Assange’s extradition, the Icelandic investigative journalist added, as it amounts to “absolutely overwhelming evidence against the US case in its entirety.”


While the world public has only now heard the full recording, Hrafnsson revealed that it had been made available to the British courts in September, and should figure into the decision on whether to extradite Assange to the US.

The tape clearly shows that Assange warned Hillary Clinton’s State Department that a former WikiLeaks employee was preparing to release the unredacted US diplomatic cables, and offered to help them mitigate the potential fallout, but “that offer was ignored,” Hrafnsson told RT. The State Department never followed through on the conversation.

Even though WikiLeaks published the cables only after they were leaked on the US-based site Cryptome and a Pirate Bay torrent, Washington has blamed Assange for their release.

The WikiLeaks co-founder sought refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London in 2012, believing – correctly, as it would turn out – that vague Swedish allegations of sexual assault were a pretext to have him sent to the US. 

After his asylum was revoked in April 2019, Assange was arrested and locked up in Belmarsh, a maximum-security prison in south London, where he is now facing a Covid-19 outbreak and freezing winter conditions. The US is seeking his extradition on charges of “conspiring to commit computer intrusion” with US Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning in 2010. If convicted, he faces up to 175 years in prison.

Attempts to “get clarity” on how the incoming Biden administration regarded Assange’s case have “not delivered anything,” Hrafnsson told RT. Assange’s lawyers have officially sought a pardon from US President Donald Trump.

 

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/news/510033-assange-recording-hrafnsson-wikileaks/

 

Read from top.

 

 

See also:

one wonders how they sleep at night while treating justice with such contempt...

 

the guardian skirts the issue...

 

Australia’s FoI system worst of any country involved in Julian Assange case

Italian journalist Stefania Maurizi, who has reported extensively on Wikileaks, says delay made her want to ‘unearth what the Australian authorities want to hide’

An international journalist has faced a three-year delay when attempting to secure Australian government documents about Julian Assange, prompting accusations that the country’s freedom of information system is the least transparent of any nation involved in the case.

Stefania Maurizi, an Italian investigative journalist who has reported on Assange and WikiLeaks extensively, has spent the past five years attempting to secure documents about Assange’s case using FoI laws in Sweden, the US, the United Kingdom, and Australia.

 

In the United Kingdom, her FoI battle led to explosive revelations, including that prosecutors had destroyed sensitive and revealing emails relating to Assange.

Maurizi says Australia is by far the worst jurisdiction when it comes to accessing documents through FoI.

Maurizi lodged an FoI application with the department of foreign affairs and trade in January 2018. In response, it released heavily redacted documents that obscured much of the content and left only a “skeleton” of the original remaining.

She applied for a review of the government’s decision, first internally, and then later externally in June 2018 with Australia’s information watchdog, the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, assisted by lawyers Peter Bolam and Greg Barns. Almost two-and-half years later, the review still has not been resolved.

“No jurisdiction has behaved as Australia,” she said.

“In Australia, I have experienced a real paralysis and I wonder why. Compared to other jurisdictions at the very centre of the Assange case, this paralysis is highly unusual and it drives me to go ahead to unearth what the Australian authorities want to hide.”

Maurizi is seeking any correspondence between Dfat, the UK Foreign Office, the US state department, or the US department of justice concerning Assange between 2016 and January 2018.

The department found 23 folios of documents within the scope of the request, but proposed extensive redactions, either because the material was irrelevant, would affect international relations, contained information communicated in confidence by a foreign government, or because it “affected certain operations” of government agencies.

It redacted some material on the grounds that it would damage Australia’s standing because it would call into question the country’s ability to protect material on Assange that had been given to it by foreign counterparts.

This would “have an adverse impact on the willingness of foreign counterparts to communicate openly with Australia on issues of mutual concern”, the department said.

The department also redacted material that would have affected Assange’s privacy, despite Maurizi saying she had his consent for its release. The redactions meant only a “skeleton of the former document remains and none of its content or substance is conveyed”, the Italian journalist said.


Her application for OAIC review has taken more than two years to even reach a preliminary view. In August, the OAIC notified Maurizi that it intended to uphold the department’s decision.

When she made submissions in reply, the Australian government said it needed more time to conduct further “bilateral” consultation in the UK and US.

“I have been litigating FOIAs all around the world, I can assure you there is not a single government that has ever required three years for an internal review,” Maurizi told the OAIC by email.

The OAIC has made a concerted effort in recent years to reduce the number of reviews taking longer than 12 months. Despite its effort, it is still failing to meet its targets.

In the past financial year, it finalised 72% of its information commissioner reviews within 12 months, short of its 80% target. The OAIC continues to face significant resource constraints in its FoI area but is managing to improve its responsiveness.

A spokesman said the OAIC does not comment on specific reviews, but pointed to its significant workload.

“As noted in the annual report, the OAIC received 1,066 IC review applications last financial year,” he said. “We remain committed to finalising all IC reviews as quickly as possible. In doing so, we have been focused on resolving the oldest matters first.”

 

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/dec/18/australias-foi-system-worst-of-any-country-involved-in-julian-assange-case

 

Read from top...

 

OK Guardian, how about it: DEMAND JULIAN ASSANGE FREEDOM, PLEASE!