Saturday 20th of April 2024
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hypocrisy of the media...

julian...julian...The very contrasting treatment of whistleblowers willing to testify against Facebook with that of the imprisoned WikiLeaks founder shows us that the Establishment’s support of those ‘spilling the beans’ is highly selective. 

All whistleblowers are equal, but some are more equal than others. Or, we could more specifically say, whistleblowers whose revelations aid ruling-class agendas are put in front of Congress and handed the mic, while those whose revelations expose ruling-class agendas are persecuted and end up in maximum-security jails.

This week we learnt that a second Facebook whistleblower, one Sophie Zhang, was willing to testify before Congress less than two weeks after we had Frances Haugen with her revelations.

 

By Neil Clark

 

“Facebook’s products harm children, stoke division and weaken our democracy,” Haugen told senators. The company put profits before “the common good.” Which is exactly what the faux-communitarian pro-censorship elites wanted to hear. There is a war going on against Facebook at the moment, in case you hadn’t noticed, but those who are waging it don’t have the same issues with Mark Zuckerberg’s social media giant that you and I might have. 

We are concerned that Facebook already censors too much in the political sphere, but the ruling elites are concerned that it doesn‘t censor enough. They want more government control over the internet. In fact, they want total government control over the internet, as in China, the country they routinely criticise on “human rights” grounds, but who they are doing their best to copy.

The elites don’t like the fact that Zuckerberg’s platform gives Joe Bloggs a voice – that Joe might use his voice to question hegemonic narratives, and post “non-approved” material. Joe Bloggs needs to be put in his place. As do those who produce the “non-approved” material he shares with his friends.  

 

Haugen’s testimony furthered that pro-censorship, pro-control agenda, which is why her words got such glowing coverage in the mainstream media.

It’ll be the same with Zhang. When she left Facebook last year, the former data scientist penned a lengthy memo alleging that the company was failing to tackle misinformation.  She wrote, “I know that I have blood on my hands by now.” Apparently, she is going to talk about “multiple fake accounts on Facebook” that have been “undermining elections and political affairs around the world.”

What’s the betting that ‘them darn Russkies’ (who of course stopped Saint Hillary Clinton from becoming president in 2016), will come into the spotlight again – and that the combined effect of Haugen and Zhang‘s testimony will be to strengthen Facebook censorship still further? 

Meanwhile, as Haugen and Zhang are feted because they are saying exactly what the political class wants to hear, (and, as Glenn Greenwald points out, have the potential to earn millions of dollars from the SEC whistleblower program) the world’s most famous ‘whistleblower’ is still languishing in Belmarsh Prison.

Julian Assange spilled the beans on what Western (and other governments) were doing in secret with our money – but instead of being lauded by the media for the service he was doing for democracy, he was eviscerated. There was no invitation for him to address Congress. And no prospect of him winning awards of millions of dollars from US state bodies.

Those attacking Assange will say he endangered national security, but in truth, it was the illegal wars which the WikiLeaks founder sought to shine a light on which did that.

One fears that Julian will never leave prison alive. His life these past 10 years has resembled a Kafkaesque nightmare. He is the ‘Josef K’ of our times – with his ‘Trial’ never-ending.

Assange has paid a terrible price for telling us what went on behind the curtain – things which we were never meant to find out, but which were our right to know. Which is what makes the current adulation of the Facebook “whistleblowers” by those who stay silent on Assange‘s treatment, or who actually support it, so nauseating.   

 

Read more: https://www.rt.com/op-ed/537466-facebook-whistleblowers-assange-jailed/

 

 

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

saving assange from the psychos in washington...

CIA vs Wikileaks (4/4): The silence of several major French media

It is really not common to have testimonies indicating that the US government considered the murder of a Western journalist [Julian Assange] who had exposed the crimes of the said American government.

One might even consider that it is very important for Democracy that the citizen is informed of this - at least as much as knowing that a 78th cleverly orchestrated leak of off-shore documents show that the former Prime Minister of Syldavia has 'an account in the Bahamas….

Alas, the media coverage was almost non-existent ...

 

Read more: https://www.les-crises.fr/cia-vs-wikileaks-4-4-la-non-reprise-de-l-info-par-les-medias-francais/

 

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Who Will Step Up in Biden’s DOJ to Save Julian Assange?

 

Last month Biden’s Haitian envoy resigned on principle. Is there someone in Biden’s Justice Department who would push the attorney general to drop the prosecution of Julian Assange? asks Joe Lauria.

 

By Joe Lauria


Special to Consortium News

 

 

Last month the U.S. special envoy to Haiti quit in protest over the Biden administration’s decision to repatriate thousands of Haitian migrants from the United States. In his  letter (pdf) of resignation to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Daniel Foote wrote, ““I will not be associated with the United States’ inhumane, counterproductive decision to deport thousands of Haitian refugees and illegal immigrants to Haiti, a country where American officials are confined to secure compounds because of the danger posed by armed gangs in control of daily life.”

‘The people of Haiti, mired in poverty, hostage to the terror, kidnappings, robberies and massacres of armed gangs and suffering under a corrupt government with gang alliances, simply cannot support the forced infusion of thousands of returned migrants lacking food, shelter, and money without additional, avoidable human tragedy. The collapsed state is unable to provide security or basic services, and more refugees will fuel further desperation and crime. Surging migration to our borders will only grow as we add to Haiti’s unacceptable misery.”

Foote’s letter went on to an extraordinary critique of the long history U.S. imperial meddling in Haiti’s internal affairs.

“But what our Haitian friends really want, and need, is the opportunity to chart their own course, without international puppeteering and favored candidates but with genuine support for that course. … The hubris that makes us believe we should pick the winner – again – is impressive. This cycle of international political interventions in Haiti has consistently produced catastrophic results. More negative impacts to Haiti will have calamitous consequences not only in Haiti, but in the U.S. and our neighbors in the hemisphere.”

To be an American government official and to write such a missive to the secretary of state takes an uncommon courage.

It is the kind of courage that will be needed to get Julian Assange out of Belmarsh prison, back to his family, and back to work.

 Who Will Stand for Justice at Justice?

 

After the revelations two weeks ago by Yahoo! News confirming and fleshing out previously reported news that the Central Intelligence Agency had seriously discussed assassinating or kidnapping Assange, the Biden Justice Department is faced with the dilemma of whether to proceed with an extradition proceeding against Assange. It would send him to a country whose most powerful intelligence service planned to kill him. 

Pressure has begun to mount on the Biden White House to drop the appeal initiated by the Trump administration. The Biden DOJ is still seeking to reverse a London court’s decision not to extradite Assange to the United States on the grounds of Assange’s high risk of suicide and the condition of U.S. prisons.  The appeal hearing is set for Oct. 27 and 28 at the High Court in London.

The Columbia Journalism Review noted the pressure on the White House after the Yahoo! revelations. 

“The American Civil Liberties Union shared the article and reiterated its past call for the US to drop the charges against Assange on press-freedom grounds. The Freedom of the Press Foundation described the story as ‘shocking’ and ‘disturbing,’ and the CIA as ‘a disgrace’; Jameel Jaffer, the director of Columbia’s Knight First Amendment Institute said that the story was ‘mind-boggling,’ adding, “the over-the-top headline actually manages to capture only a small fraction of the lunacy reported here.” Many media-watchers shared the story on Twitter, and numerous major news outlets, at home and abroad, covered or at least noted it.”

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki was asked about the Yahoo! report and deflected the question to the Justice Department.  It is from there that the decision on Assange’s fate will emanate.  Before Biden’s inauguration, the outgoing U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, Zachary Terwilliger, who was leading the prosecution of Assange, raised hopes for Assange supporters when he told National Public Radio in January that he wasn’t sure the prosecution would continue. 

It is difficult to read Attorney General Merrick Garland on this. He has said nothing about Assange. In July, Garland issued new press guidelines for the DOJ. “The Garland guidelines ban the use of subpoenas against journalists even when they have ‘possessed or published’ classified information,” wrote Jim Risen in The Washington Post. “But those are precisely the grounds upon which the Justice Department is seeking to prosecute Assange.”

Pressure From Within

While outside pressure may fall short, dropping the Assange case might instead require pressure from within Garland’s office, from someone like a Daniel Foote. That someone could be U.S. Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta, the third most powerful person in the Justice Department. 

 

Gupta was confirmed by the Senate in that post on April 21. Among her duties are to advise and assist the attorney general. Gupta served in the Obama administration as the U.S. assistant attorney general for civil rights under Attorney General Loretta Lynch, running the DOJ’s civil rights division.  But before her time in government, Gupta was a leading  civil rights lawyer and the deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which called for the charges against Assange to be dropped after the Yahoo! report. 

 

The ACLU was founded in 1920 in New York to fight for Americans’ constitutional rights, including the First Amendment. For 101 years the ACLU has championed freedom of expression. Gupta worked at the ACLU from 2007 to 2014. 

Before that, Gupta was assistant counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.  She became involved in the 1999-2003 case of 10 percent of the African-American population of Tulia, Texas being arrested in phony drug stings by a corrupt cop.  Gupta brought together pro bono lawyers to represent the victims. All 46 of the people who were falsely accused and many imprisoned to long sentences eventually won their freedom.  Gupta won national recognition for her work in Tulia.

She is now in a unique position as the No. 3 at the Department of Justice to still fight for justice — this time for Julian Assange. 

 

Read more:

https://consortiumnews.com/2021/10/11/who-will-step-up-in-bidens-doj-to-save-julian-assange/

 

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