Assange's threat to the Corporatocracy's MSM PR machinery is something they can't allow. The corporate controlled politician power dynamic is playing for keeps and for their outlets to be expected to let reporting the truth bring them down is pure fantasy. It would be like allowing a mob journal to leave their hands.
Hear what Hedges has to say about the surveillance state hobbling the ability of (real) journalists to hold the corrupt and powerful accountable. Assange and Wikileaks is pretty much the last line of defense.
Ted Rall was vilified by supporters of corporate Democrats early on in the Obama administration for telling a little too much truth. Still he persisted. And this is a sad and revealing example of what that gets you these days.
"What these august guardians of the Fourth Estate are not as eager to talk about is how, when it comes to a little-known law with a massive effect on libel and defamation law, respectable print institutions like the New York Times are on the same side as such exemplars of yellow journalism as the National Enquirer."
Speaking of instances of specifically working against truth and transparency, this report is particularly galling.
“Freedom of the press in the world will cease to exist if a judge in one country is allowed to bar publication of information anywhere in the world.”
– Martin Baron, Executive Editor, The Washington Post, Dec 13, 2018
It's troubling to see so little regard for potentially constraining the ability of journalists to report the facts. "For The People" my ass.
"Assange started a leak outlet on the premise that corrupt and unaccountable power is a problem in our world, and that the problem can be fought with the light of truth. Corrupt and unaccountable power has responded by detaining, silencing and smearing him. The persecution of Assange has proved his thesis about the world absolutely correct."
"The Guardian’s latest story provides a supposedly stronger foundation for an existing narrative: that Assange and Wikileaks knowingly published emails hacked by Russia from the Democratic party’s servers. In truth, there is no public evidence that the emails were hacked, or that Russia was involved."
A couple of pieces that are worth the read.
And the Taibbi piece referenced.
Unfortunately, the Americans do not want the TRUTH, they would rather naively believe that their government is defending their "Freedom", whatever the hell that is . . . . . While the government wants to know practically everything about its citizens, monitoring their every move (somewhat like the old Soviet Union they constantly criticized) they do not want their citizens to know shit about their government. Fascism complete.
assange is not challenging corporate america. assange works for russia, which loves corporate america, especially american oil. just because no one wants him to print his stolen and altered secrets that doesn't make him a journalist. he doesn't report the truth. he reports what russia tells him to report, and it is altered material at that. it is possible to hate someone AND have that person also be a criminal creep, which is what assange is.
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The DNC made that claim about the emails being doctored, yet offered no copies of originals to establish that, nor did they even bother to specify what exactly was altered. They also claim their servers were hacked by Russians, but chose not to turn them over to the FBI for forensic examination.
@WilliamCharles i do not remember where i read the originals but i did read them at the time (not ALL of them lol) so i know that someone turned something over and they WERE doctored. i saw the examples myself. so your statement, while probably well meant, isn't accurate. but i can't back it up, alas, except with my own memory. i have wondered for the past couple years why no one has been mentioning it.
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Found this.
@genessa Snopes is not the be all, end all as far as verification goes, but they're often fairly good in deconstructing claims.
@WilliamCharles zerohedge i don't know. snopes is often good, more often good than otherwise. bu i remember reading the actual texts, not reading ABOUT them but reading them. i didn't memorize them lol. i remember one that might not have been altered and it was a couple of clinton employees discussing whether or not to sabotage bernie in the south about his possibly being an atheist. it was just a plan to make sure someone asked him about it during a town hall or debate or some such thing. they never did it. that was the worst thing i read that was said in the emails. but as i say that is not necessarily one of the ones i read where i saw the original and then the altered version.
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@genessa - zerohedge is just a convenient place to retrieve information that often gets neglected by the MSM. Any site/individual should be continually evaluated for credibility and veracity.
As far as those supporting Assange, I consider John Pilger and Chris Hedges as a couple of the most trustworthy journalists alive. Their arguments for seeing the war waged against Assange for what it is, a push to prevent, demonize, and marginalize transparency, and dissuade any who might dare to do so as well... is well reasoned and supported by the facts.
Just a reminder that far too many credible alternative news, information, and opinion sites on Facebook and Twitter were scrubbed in their campaigns against so-called "fake news." It proved what many were saying when they defended Alex Jones. It wasn't defending Jones for his credibility, but that a top down sanctioning of that which us deemed reliable is problematic in itself. Notice that the mainstream news outlets, virtually all of corporate media, were the ones that echoed the Bush administration's drive for war. Yet, they're not only not blacklisted as unreliable, they themselves have published lists of the ones they consider fake news. Again, reliable sites were lumped in with the others. If you don't see a problem with this, I don't know what to tell you.
@genessa - in the case of my zerohedge link, they posted it from here.
@WilliamCharles lol just as unfamiliar. but i stand by what i remember because it made a big impression on me at the time.
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@genessa - well, far be it from me to challenge such convincing assertions then.
(is a snark tag needed?)
@WilliamCharles okay, so you think i remember wrong or that i am lying. fine. whatever. no, i got the snarkiness. i didn't get WHY. i didn't say anything wrong, untrue or rude. i told you the truth, and my memory, while as i say i didn't memorize it, is in general quite good. so there was absolutely no need for snarkiness. we could have disagreed civilly. i guess now we can't.
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@genessa - I'm sorry for being so dismissive. My point is that in the give and take of trying to establish the facts of any given issue, there has to be a mutually agreed upon manner to determine what is factual. What you offered, is essentially hearsay. You remember seeing it, the source and the information you considered reliable and worth passing along to support your position, but with no other corroboration.
Usually there's an article, or an opinion piece detailing the salient points, or a quote, or something... referencing the type of assertion you are making. I found a couple at least in line with my understanding of what arguments are out there for or against. If you look at some of your responses, they're rather dismissive themselves. There's a difference between writing "it's bullshit" and writing "it's bullshit because..." and offering a counterpoint. If that counterpoint is challenged, it's worth supplying a citation. I welcome corrections as needed regardless as I always want to fine-tune my own arguments in order that they are considered credible and up to date when I'm trying to persuade others. There's much in these type of discussions that is subjective, particularly when attempting to piece together a narrative from limited information, but we should at least be able to agree somewhat on what has already been revealed. I find it especially troubling personally when I hear/read mainstream media sources present something as fact that I know has not been established. They have a much greater budget and resources in their respective organizations to get the facts right, and when they don't you have to ask yourself, "Qui bono?"
A simple rock solid example of this is Amazon's Jeff Bezos. He also owns the Washington Post and has a $600m contract with the CIA (though claimed not to be anything nefarious). He sent a memo to the WP staff indicating no negative stories were to be run about Amazon or its employees. I consider omitting or shading the truth not much better than lying, and not at all the mission of a widely circulated news organization.
@WilliamCharles wrong. i did not read ABOUT altered emails. i read altered emails, myself. not hearsay to me. hearsay to you because i am telling you about it, but this is not a court of law. you can choose to believe me or you can choose to disbelieve me, but it is MY experience you are choosing to believe or disbelieve, not something i read about somewhere that someone else had something to say about. no, i don't have a link to that. oh WELL. but i know what i saw.
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@genessa - again, short of details, I'm not sure what establishes that you saw originals.
@WilliamCharles well since i cannot produce what i saw, i guess i can tell you no more.
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Ok, this is what I don't understand. I was an admirer of Assange. I like whistleblowers exposing the sins of governments, the military, corporations and other structures of power. But someone explain to me how Assange helping the Republicans, Trump puppets, and undermining H Clinton and so on, was in any way good for the world or for him personally. I get the US establishment is out to get Assange. What I don't get is Assange and Wikileaks' intrusion into the 2016 election.
HRC got sabotaged by her acts and that of Team DNC. That they came to light is not the problem. Also there is indication it was a leak and not a hack. Not Russia. The Russia spin was concocted by Mook and Podesta immediately following the loss.
@Mortal yes, I think at some point Assange crossed over from whistleblower and spanner in the works thrower, to revenge seeker, and his judgement was impaired, his goals compromised, and his role negative and not helpful to transparency. He got lost. As an Australian I dislike seeing him abandoned by our US grovelling governments -- all types. But I can't feel support for his actions as I once did. Perhaps in the end he's an anarchist.
he's not a whistleblower. he is a russian stooge.
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@genessa yeah, that's right, but I don't think he started out like that. So, I come back to my question about what happened, to him and WikL. I think his emotions corrupted his thinking, and now he's hopelessly compromised, politically, I mean, apart from the sexual allegations, which are a different matter.
@Jolanta what did he reveal that I didn't want to know? Whistleblowers can reveal corruption, lies, deception, cover ups, disinformation, etc to their heart's content, even if it affects those we thought better of, as long as the goal is the greater good, telling the rest of us, and getting the history right. It's whistleblowing from those who are pawns of even worse figures that I disapprove of, playing us in some bigger game than is worse than the whistle blown information.
I think that now it is just revenge trying to get Assange. There is always going to be an Assange, thank god or thank someone els.
Planting fear into others, and trying to normalize such gross infringements of journalistic freedom is part of plugging the dike. In a world of alternatives to the MSM, the drive to marginalize and dismiss the alternative press, particularly by lumping them in with those sites bordering on demented and/or enemies of the state essentially, permits them to designate "approved" sources for news and information. Some truths are too destructive to the official official narrative.
yes there will always be criminal traitors. thank no one.
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On the Jimmy Dore Show Solid Chst Saturday, he and guests including Abby Martin deconstructed MSM reports using misrepresentations geared towards promoting the corporate narrative. They also critiqued the Democratic party's approach to coopting their new progressive members, while unveiling a "strategy" devoid of much beyond "not Trump" and platitudes ignoring urgent concerns of that portion of the nation essentially ignored. Not a wise path in the least.
yes that's a good story. it's bullshit but it sounds good, doesn't it?
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