Israel’s ‘Flour Massacre’ – When A Crime Becomes A ‘Tragedy’

Media Lens

(...) Far from jumping through hoops ‘to be balanced and impartial,’ the BBC seems embarrassed even to associate Israel with its own crimes. A typical BBC headline read:

‘World Food Programme says northern Gaza aid convoy blocked’

Was there a landslide? Was Hamas playing politics with food aid? The headline should have read:

‘Israel blocks northern Gaza aid convoy’

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Or consider the damning words of the Director-General of The World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who reported this month:

‘Grim findings during @WHO visits to Al-Awda and Kamal Adwan hospitals in northern #Gaza: severe levels of malnutrition, children dying of starvation, serious shortages of fuel, food and medical supplies, hospital buildings destroyed…

‘The situation at Al-Awda Hospital is particularly appalling, as one of the buildings is destroyed.

‘Kamal Adwan Hospital is the only paediatrics hospital in the north of Gaza, and is overwhelmed with patients. The lack of food resulted in the deaths of 10 children.’

The BBC headline reporting this story read:

‘Children starving to death in northern Gaza – WHO’

Did the crops fail? If Russia had caused child starvation in Ukraine, we can be confident the words ‘Putin’ and ‘Russia’ would have appeared front and centre in BBC reporting. (...)

On 29 February, a New York Times comment piece was titled:

‘Starvation Is Stalking Gaza’s Children’

Former Guardian journalist Jonathan Cook commented:

‘Israel is choosing to starve Gaza’s children by blocking aid.’

On 5 March, a Reuters headline read:

‘As Gaza’s hunger crisis worsens, emaciated children seen at hospitals’

Author Assal Rad responded:

‘Gaza’s “hunger crisis” is not a natural phenomenon. Israel is deliberately starving Palestinians in Gaza as a weapon of war, which is an act of collective punishment and a war crime.’ (...)

At least 118 Palestinian civilians were killed and at least 760 were injured after Israeli tanks opened fire on civilians seeking food from aid trucks on al-Rashid street to the west of Gaza City. The BBC’s immediate headline reactions were full of mystery:

‘Israel-Gaza war latest: More than 100 reported killed as crowd waits for Gaza aid’ (...)

Clearly, then, it was a massacre; so why the lack of clarity? Why was the word ‘massacre’ not used to describe a textbook example of a massacre in a report supposed to verify and clarify the truth?

As we noted recently, the Glasgow Media Group examined four weeks (7 October – 4 November, 2023) of BBC One daytime coverage of Gaza to identify which terms were used by journalists themselves – i.e. not in direct or reported statements – to describe Israeli and Palestinian deaths. They found that ‘murder’, ‘murderous’, ‘mass murder’, ‘brutal murder’ and ‘merciless murder’ were used a total of 52 times by journalists to refer to Israelis’ deaths but never in relation to Palestinian deaths. The group noted that:

‘The same pattern could be seen in relation to “massacre”, “brutal massacre” and “horrific massacre” (35 times for Israeli deaths, not once for Palestinian deaths); “atrocity”, “horrific atrocity” and “appalling atrocity” (22 times for Israeli deaths, once for Palestinian deaths); and “slaughter” (five times for Israeli deaths, not once for Palestinian deaths).’ (...)

Complete article

Tags: #media #media_bias #news #journalism #journalist #bbc #the_guardian #reuters #new_york_times #israel #gaza #palestine #palestinians #war #war_crimes #starvation #massacre #aid #humanitarian_aid #weapons

Gaza – A Brutal Demonstration Of ‘Western Values’

Media Lens

‘I find Westerners in general, and Europeans in particular, extremely indoctrinated and obsessed with perceptions of their own uniqueness. Many see themselves as chosen people, after going through a one-sided education and after relying on their media outlets, without studying alternative sources.’
André Vltchek, Soviet-born US political writer, 1963-2020.

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Displaced children having their faces painted ahead of New Year celebrations at an UNRWA school in Deir al-Balah, Gaza, 28 December, 2023. (Omar Ashtawy APA images)

On 20 March 2006, on the third anniversary of the illegal invasion of Iraq, BBC diplomatic correspondent Bridget Kendall declared on the Six O’Clock News:

‘There’s still bitter disagreement over invading Iraq. Was it justified or a disastrous miscalculation?’

The supposed ‘justification’ claimed by Prime Minister Tony Blair was the ‘serious and current threat’ posed by Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction. The BBC’s false notion of ‘balance’ was to present ‘disastrous miscalculation’ as the counterargument. In fact, as we detailed at the time in media alerts and in our books, the invasion was considered by many legal experts to be a ‘war of aggression’, the ‘supreme international crime’ as judged by the standards of the post-WW2 Nuremberg trials. (...)

But such narrative control is an endemic feature of state-corporate media, wrongly labelled ‘mainstream’. It is a fundamental requirement of political journalists and editors that they magically transform the crimes of ‘our’ governments into ‘miscalculations’, ‘mistakes’ or ‘misguided’ attempts to do good. (...)

Noam Chomsky succinctly explained the ideological underpinning of ‘mainstream’ news coverage:

‘In discussion of international relations, the fundamental principle is that “we are good” – “we” being the government, on the totalitarian principle that state and people are one. “We” are benevolent, seeking peace and justice, though there may be errors in practice. “We” are foiled by villains who can’t rise to our exalted level.’
(Chomsky, ‘Interventions’, Penguin Books, London, 2007, p.101). (...)

[J]ournalists can be relied upon to perform the necessary whitewashing: the Gulf War in 1990-91, Nato’s bombing of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, Iraq sanctions from 1990-2003, the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003, the destruction of Libya in 2011, the US-sponsored toppling of the Ukrainian government in 2014, US-Nato air strikes against Syria, participation in the Saudi-led bombing of Yemen, and now the attacks on ‘Iran-backed’ Houthi rebels. (Of course, convention decrees that the Houthi are always described as ‘Iran-backed’, whereas Israeli forces are not routinely labelled ‘US-backed’.) (...)

In several powerful books, based on careful research of formerly secret UK government documents, historian Mark Curtis, co-founder of Declassified UK, has laid bare the motivations and reality of British foreign policy. Ethical concerns and morality are notable in these internal state records by their absence. (...)

[T]he major source of international terrorism is the West, notably the United States, supported by its ‘special relationship’ ally, the UK. Curtis wrote:

(...) Yet state-sponsored terrorism is by far the most serious category of terrorism in the world today, responsible for far more deaths in many more countries than the “private” terrorism of groups like Al Qaida.
(Curtis, ‘Web of Deceit: Britain’s Real Role in the World’, Vintage, London, 2003, p. 94.)

The Financial Times reported last October:

‘Western support for Israel’s assault on Gaza has poisoned efforts to build consensus with significant developing countries on condemning Russia’s war against Ukraine, officials and diplomats have warned.’ (...)

The senior G7 diplomat added:

‘What we said about Ukraine has to apply to Gaza. Otherwise we lose all our credibility. The Brazilians, the South Africans, the Indonesians: why should they ever believe what we say about human rights?’

Why indeed. (...)

Last week, South Africa presented a detailed 84-page submission to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) – essentially the UN’s global law court – arguing that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. (...)

The South African legal team showed ample evidence of Israeli genocidal acts in Gaza, as well as the stated intention to commit genocide, indicated in public statements by numerous senior Israeli political and military leaders. (...)

Around 24,000 people have been killed in Gaza since 7 October last year, including over 10,300 children and 7,100 women. There may be another 7,000 buried under the rubble. (...)

According to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, by the end of 2023, 1.9 million people – nearly 85 per cent of the total population of Gaza – had been internally displaced under Israel’s attacks. (...)

Jonathan Cook noted that the West is now standing in the dock alongside Israel at the ICJ:

‘Israel expects support from western capitals because they have nearly as much to fear from a verdict against Israel as Israel itself. They have staunchly backed the killing spree, with the US and UK, in particular, sending weapons that are being used against the people of Gaza, making both potentially complicit.’ (...)

Israel’s most brutal assault in Gaza’s history is a continuation of its long war of oppression against the Palestinians. (...)

[The political writer Caitlin Johnstone] explained:

‘The demolition of Gaza is indeed being perpetrated in defense of western values, and is itself a perfect embodiment of western values. Not the western values they teach you about in school, but the hidden ones they don’t want you to look at.’ (...)

‘What we are seeing in Gaza is a much better representation of what western civilization is really about than all the gibberish about freedom and democracy we learned about in school.’

True to form, Washington is doing its utmost to protect Israel. During a press briefing, US national security spokesman John Kirby told reporters:

‘South Africa’s lawsuit against Israel is “meritless, counterproductive and completely without any basis in fact whatsoever”.’

Interviewed by Andrew Napolitano, a former judge and law professor, Jeffrey Sachs, Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University responded to Kirby’s dismissive remark:

‘I just wish there were grown-ups in power. Grown-ups who are responsible, who are honest, who are decent, who would read an 84-page detailed complaint and give a serious answer, rather than a one-sentence smack-off like that.’

He added:

‘I wish, at the same time, that the White House press corps would follow up more seriously. (...)

‘Why don’t the journalists do their job, rather than feeding us the propaganda from the White House? They should be questioning the propaganda. (...)

Media academics have analysed Israel-Palestine coverage and found that Palestinian perspectives are given ‘far less time and legitimacy’ than Israeli views in the British media. (...)

‘The Palestinian perspective is effectively absent from the coverage, in how they understand the reasons for the conflict and the nature of the occupation under which they are living.’ (...)

We should all reject the output of ‘the powerful opinion-forming corporations’ and look elsewhere, to those internet oases of real journalism, in order to understand the world and to radically change it for the better.

Complete article

Tags: #human_rights #russia #ukraine #iraq #invasion #sovereignty #gaza #palestine #palestinians #israel #occupied_teritories #genocide #war_of_agression #media #journalism #journalist #media_bias #news #press #corporate_media #mainstream_media #msm #bbc #the_guardian

‘Is That Orwellian Or Kafkaesque Enough For You?’ The Guardian Removes Bin Laden’s ‘Letter To America’

Media Lens

(...) On 15 November, [The Guardian] removed Osama bin Laden’s ‘Letter to America’ which it had hosted on its website for almost 21 years. What was suddenly so problematic about the letter that it had to be abruptly removed by the Guardian after being on its website for so long (an archived version can be seen here)?

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'Removed: document'. The Guardian removes Osama bin Laden's 'Letter to America'. Screenshot taken the day after it was the most viewed link on the Guardian website (image by Glenn Greenwald).

The letter has been ‘rediscovered’ during Israel’s current genocidal assault against Palestinians in Gaza, with people around the world discussing relevant issues online. The Guardian link to the letter went viral, particularly among young people on TikTok, with 14 million views of videos tagged with #lettertoamerica. Many of these videos were posted by young Americans, shocked to find that people around the world hate their country because of strong grievances rooted in real issues. (...)

‘And yet, after 9/11, the US government instructed the television networks – ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, Fox – do not show any speeches or interviews with Osama bin Laden, because they didn’t want the American population hearing from him what their actual grievances were. They didn’t want Americans to think that maybe we had done things in that part of the world that caused it to happen, that causes “blowback”, to use the CIA’s term.’

As with any statement from an influential or powerful figure, bin Laden’s letter needs to be read critically. There is much to revile in the letter, not least its antisemitism and homophobia. But consider some of the grievances he detailed against the US government, summarised below:

• Palestine was ethnically cleansed to allow the state of Israel to be set up in 1948. Since then, the Palestinians have been subjected to an Israeli military occupation, suffering for decades as a result of massacres, imprisonment, torture, shootings, bombs, destruction of homes and livelihoods: all backed with massive military, economic and diplomatic support from the US.
• Sanctions against Iraq, pushed heavily by the US, led to the deaths of 1.5 million Iraqis, 0.5 million of them children under 5.
• US attacks in Somalia, support for Russian atrocities in Chechnya, and support for Israeli aggression against Lebanon.
• Oppression of the populations of US client states in the Middle East, ruled by authoritarian monarchs, or where democratically elected leaders were removed and replaced by US-friendly dictators.
• The exploitation of the Middle East’s natural resources, especially oil, by Western corporations at paltry prices secured through economic and military threats.
• US military bases spread across the region, protecting what the US sees as its own assets.
• The leading US role in destroying climate stability – in particular, its refusal to sign the Kyoto agreement made at the 1997 UN Climate Summit – in order to preserve the profits of US fossil fuel giants.
• US power and influence has been used, not to defend universal humanitarian principles and values, but to secure US geostrategic interests and profits.
• The dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, even though Japan was ready to negotiate an end to the war. (...)

So why did the Guardian, which proclaims its credentials in supposedly enabling readers to understand the world, remove bin Laden’s letter from its website? (...)

As Greenwald observed, US ‘Big Tech’ companies – Facebook, Instagram, X (formerly Twitter) – are already subjected to censorship in accordance with the dictates of the US security state, as the ‘Twitter files’, a cache of leaked documents, showed. TikTok, a Chinese company, was the only major platform outside the reach of the US. But, noted Greenwald, they were told that, as a condition of being able to continue to operate in the US, they would have to agree to the censorship demands of the US government. Hence, TikTok’s determination to ban TikTok clips discussing #lettertoamerica.

In other words, the censorship actions taken by both TikTok and the Guardian align with the requirements of the US government. This should come as no surprise to anyone who is familiar with the long history of the Guardian acting as a liberal gatekeeper for establishment power. Moreover, the paper’s ever-closer relationship with UK state security services, themselves subservient to US state power, is abundantly clear. (...)

As Greenwald noted:

‘Is that Orwellian enough, or Kafkaesque enough, for you? The article in which most people had an interest in reading was the [letter hosted by the] Guardian [which], precisely because too many people were interested in it, [the editors] decided to remove, so that people couldn’t read it any longer. It’s a document by a major historical figure. The person we’re told was responsible for the 9/11 attack explaining to Americans why people in that part of the world were angry enough with America to do that.

‘And the Guardian decided, even though it had been up on their website for 21 years, that now that people were discussing it in connection with the war in Gaza from Israel, and US support for it, you can no longer read it.’ (...)

Complete article

Tags: #journalist #journalism #media #news #guardian #the_guardian #censorship #osama_bin_laden #lettertoamerica #israel #gaza #palestine #palestinians #occupied_territories

The Mass-Media Memory Hole – Blair, Ukraine and Libya

Media Lens

A key function of state-corporate media is to keep the public pacified, ignorant and ill-equipped to disrupt establishment power.

Knowledge that sheds light on how the world operates politically and economically is kept to a minimum by the ‘mainstream’ media. George Orwell’s famous ‘memory hole’ from ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ signifies the phenomenon brilliantly. Winston Smith’s work for the Ministry of Truth requires that he destroys documents that contradict state propaganda. (...)

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In today’s fictional ‘democracies’, the workings of propaganda are more subtle. Notably, there is a yawning chasm between the rhetoric of leaders’ professed concern for human rights, peace and democracy, and the realpolitik of empire, exploitation and control. (...)

If we broaden the scope to British military interventions around the world since 1945, there are as many as 83 examples. (...)

The criminal history of the US in terms of overthrowing foreign governments, or attempting to do so, was thoroughly documented by William Blum, author of ‘Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions since World War II’ and ‘Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower’. (...)

These multiple invasions, coups and wars are routinely sold to the public as ‘humanitarian interventions’ by Western leaders and their propaganda allies of the ‘mainstream’ media. (...)

Ukraine
The mass-media memory hole is proving invaluable in protecting the public from uncomfortable truths about Ukraine. Western leaders’ expression of concern for Ukraine is cover for their desire to see Russian leader Vladimir Putin removed from power and Russia ‘weakened’, as US Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin admitted earlier this year. (...)

Australian political analyst Caitlin Johnstone noted recently that:

‘Arguably the single most egregious display of war propaganda in the 21st century occurred last year, when the entire western political/media class began uniformly bleating the word “unprovoked” in reference to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.’

Pointing out that the West ‘provoked’ Russia is not the same as saying that the Russian invasion of Ukraine was justified. In fact, we were clear in our first media alert following the invasion:

‘Russia’s attack is a textbook example of “the supreme crime”, the waging of a war of aggression.’ (...)

‘We know that western actions provoked the war in Ukraine because many western foreign policy experts spent years warning that western actions would provoke a war in Ukraine.’

But, ultimately, the US blocked the peace efforts. Sachs paraphrased Bennett’s explanation as to why:

‘They [the US] wanted to look tough to China. They were worried that this could look weak to China.’

Incredible! The US’s primary concern is to look strong to China, its chief rival in world affairs. This recalls the motivation behind the US dropping atomic bombs on Japan at the end of the Second World War as a show of might to the Soviet Union. (...)

Libya
The memory-hole phenomenon is a huge factor in media coverage of Libya which, as we wrote last week, has suffered terribly in recent flooding and the collapse of two dams. The city of Derna was washed into the sea after 40cm of rain fell in twenty-four hours, leaving 20,000 people dead.

But vital recent history has been almost wholly buried by state-corporate media. In 2011, NATO’s attack on Libya essentially destroyed the state and killed an estimated 40,000 people. The nation, once one of Africa’s most advanced countries for health care and education, became a failed state, with the collapse of essential services, the re-emergence of slave markets and raging civil war. (...)

More on this, and the propaganda blitz that enabled NATO’s attack on Libya, can be found in our 2016 media alert, ‘The Great Libya War Fraud’. (...)

Very little of the above vital history and context to the recent catastrophic flooding in Libya is included in current ‘mainstream’ news reporting. At best, there is token mention. At worst, there is deeply deceitful and cynical rewriting of history. (...)

Complete article

Tags: #media #news_media #bbc #propaganda #govrenment_propaganda #the_guardian #regime_change #red_line #nato #humanitarian_interventions #military_interventions #ukraine #libia #blair #starmer #us #united_states #iraq

Souls For Sale – The Times Interviews Noam Chomsky

Media Lens

(...) Recall the context in which news and commentary appear: the tsunami of 24/7 corporate advertising that is subject to no discussion whatever regarding its bias. Unless we accept that these adverts should be balanced by a counter-tsunami of anti-corporate advertising, there is no question of media impartiality for this reason alone.

But this is still just scratching the surface. In our corporate society, the greatest triumph of the corporate monoculture is not the filtered content of the daily newspaper or nightly newscast; it is us, our conception of who we are, of what it means to be human. We may mock the Sun and lament the Mail, but look in the mirror – we are the ultimate product of propaganda. (...)

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if millions of corporate men and women fundamentally perceive themselves as products to be sold on the job market, the question of non-conformity, of challenging corporate society, does not even arise. (...)

When Fromm says ‘nothing is too serious’, he means that we are fundamentally indifferent.

Can we point to evidence? Last week, it was reported that the highest April temperature ever recorded in Spain – the kind of record that might, historically, have been broken by a fraction of a degree – had been blown away by a rise of 5C.

This latest sign of impending climate catastrophe was reported briefly and then forgotten. It received a tiny fraction of the merited attention and concern – not just from the press but also from the public. It was just one more example of how ‘modern man exhibits an amazing lack of realism for all that matters. For the meaning of life and death, for happiness and suffering, for feeling and serious thought’. (Fromm, p.166) (...)

We learn a lot when the likes of Chorley encounter Chomsky and other dissidents whose souls are not for sale; not because the Chorleys have much to say, but because we are witness, not just to a clash of ideas and values, but of ways of being. It is a clash between sincerity and fakery, clarity and obfuscation, engagement and indifference, compassion and egotism. (...)

‘We’re racing towards a precipice of environmental destruction. We’ve got a couple of decades in which we could mitigate or control it, but we’re racing in the opposite direction – nothing could be more dangerous than that. That means reaching irreversible tipping points, at which stage, just steady decline to the destruction of human life on Earth. We’ve never faced that before. Actually, we’ve been facing it in a way since August 6th, 1945, but never at this level of danger.’

Typically for this kind of disengaged journalism, Chorley responded to this awful assertion as if he hadn’t truly heard what had been said, responding: ‘It’s interesting that; I was going to ask you…’. ‘It’s interesting’ was not a serious response to the gravity of what Chomsky had said. Chorley blandly recognised that politicians didn’t seem very interested in responding to the climate crisis. As for the rest of us, he said, ‘we spend our time talking about trivial things’. (...)

Chomsky mentioned some non-trivial crises that are discussed: the Ukraine war, the Yemen war, ‘the total destruction of Iraq, going on still; these are all very serious issues’.

He noted, further, that, last year, fossil fuel production had increased. (...)

Chorley then raised the issue of Ukraine:

‘Certainly, in the UK, the left – actually under people like Jeremy Corbyn – argued that it wasn’t Russia that was the enemy, it was the US that was destabilising the world. (...)

Chomsky responded:

‘Well, the invasion of Ukraine is plainly a war crime. You can’t put it in the same category as greater war crimes, but it’s a major one.’

Which crimes did Chomsky have in mind? He noted that the UN and Pentagon estimate that about 8,000 civilians have been killed in Ukraine:

‘That’s a lot of people, what the United States and Britain do overnight.’

Of course, the 8,000 figure is ‘presumably an underestimate’, Chomsky added, before offering a series of thought experiments:

‘Let’s say it’s twice as much – that would put it at the level of the [1982] US-backed, Israeli invasion of Lebanon, which killed about 20,000 people. Let’s say it’s off by a factor of ten… that would put it in the category of Reagan’s terrorist atrocities in El Salvador, roughly on the order of 80,000. Of course, Iraq is just another dimension.

‘So, it’s serious, a terrible crime. But you can understand why the Global South does not take very seriously the eloquent protestations of Western countries about this “unique episode in history”. They’ve been victims of far more. (...)

These, indeed, are simply facts – the approximate death tolls are well-known, highly credible. The killers are known. There is no ideological bias in these observations. There is ideological bias in the notion that these facts are somehow ‘leftist’. (...)

Chorley again fell back on the ‘equivalence’ theme:

‘But you’re then drawing comparisons between Nato and China and Russia; you see an equivalence between…’

Again, Chomsky rejected the claim:

‘No, I don’t; Nato is a much more aggressive alliance. Nato has invaded Yugoslavia, invaded Libya, invaded Ukraine – backed up the invasion of Ukraine – backed up the invasion of Afghanistan. It’s an aggressive military alliance. Everybody outside the West can see it. In the West, we’re not allowed to think it because we’re deeply controlled by adherence to the party line. But everybody else can see it.’ (...)

In a final, remarkable question indicating just how disengaged and indifferent he had been throughout the interview, Chorley asked:

‘Finally, then, let’s round this off; let’s try and be a bit more optimistic… Will the next century be better than the last?’

Again, it was as if Chorley hadn’t heard what Chomsky had said. Heroically, Chomsky retained his patience for a few seconds longer:

‘There won’t be organised human life a century from now, unless we reverse the course the leadership is now taking towards racing over the precipice on climate destruction.’

By way of a final little joke, Chomsky added:

‘You read the latest IPCC report, I’m sure.’

Complete article

Tags: #media #news_media #censorship #propaganda #coporate_media #bbc #the_guardian #advertising #fromm #erich_fromm #new_statesman #Mehdi_Hasan #jonathan_freedland #times_radio #noam_chomsky #chomsky #murdoch #rupert_murdoch #chorley #climate #climate_change #climate_crisis #climate_destruction #global_warming #ipcc #extinction

and again the #Guardian rewriting history thanks to their prestigious German journalist Philip #Oltermann
like already cited https://despora.de/posts/1426958062cd013b60c0543d7eeced27
he must have learned journalism by these approx 100 spin doctors who surrounded #Merkel and made her the climate chancellor in words while in deeds 180 ° the opposite - not 360° as Baerbock would say
first von der Leyen - now #Baerbock
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/mar/11/annalena-baerbocks-feminist-foreign-policy-focuses-minds-in-iraq
just look in wikipedia for Sinjar massacre, the Barzani clan, (Masoud_Barzani) the „peshmerga who ran“
https://theworld.org/dispatch/news/regions/middle-east/140827/if-it-wasn-t-the-kurdish-fighters-we-would-have-died-there
no YPG , YPJ HPG, PKK who did the rescue job , nothing... by the way they land in jail in Germany for being a terrorist group and Iraqi Kurdistan is being supplied with German weapons to combat these „terrorist“ together with Erdogan...
search for elke dangeleit 2014 on heise.de in German
https://www.telepolis.de/features/Nordirak-Christen-und-Eziden-fordern-autonome-Provinzen-3340898.html?seite=all

wtf: he is making politics instead of journalism !
in :
https://www.linkedin.com/signup/cold-join?
..._i-am-proud-to-have-been-asked-to-take-the-lead on one of Foreign Miniter Baerbock's priorities: conceptualizing and implementing a German feminist...activity-

#The_Guardian cannot afford any more serious journalists ? has always been completely ignorant as to European and German politics - no wonder the Brexit happened LOL

really fed up of this newspaper - any alternatives in UK ?

Caitlin Johnstone: How The Guardian Can Help Assange

Counterpunch

The most effective way for the paper to help end the publisher’s persecution is to publicly acknowledge the many bogus stories they published about him and correct the record. (...)

This is after all the same Guardian that published the transparently ridiculous and completely invalidated 2018 report that former President Donald Trump’s lackey Paul Manafort had met secretly with Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy, not once but multiple times.

Not one shred of evidence has ever been produced to substantiate this claim despite the embassy being one of the most heavily surveilled buildings on the planet at the time. (...)

This is the same Guardian that ran an article in 2018 titled, “The only barrier to Julian Assange leaving Ecuador’s embassy is pride,” arguing that Assange looked ridiculous for continuing his political asylum in the embassy because “the WikiLeaks founder is unlikely to face prosecution in the US.” (...)

This is the same Guardian that published an article titled “Definition of paranoia: supporters of Julian Assange,” arguing that Assange defenders are crazy conspiracy theorists for believing the U.S. would try to extradite Assange because, “Britain has a notoriously lax extradition treaty with the United States … why would they bother to imprison him when he is making such a good job of discrediting himself?” The paper added: “there is no extradition request.” (...)

The same Guardian that has flushed standard journalistic protocol down the toilet by reporting on Assange’s “ties to the Kremlin” (not a thing) without even bothering to use the word “alleged” on more than one occasion. (...)

As we’ve discussed previously, the narrative that Assange recklessly published unredacted documents in 2011 is another smear.

The unredacted files were actually published elsewhere as the result of a real password being recklessly published in a book by Guardian journalists David Leigh and Luke Harding (the same Luke Harding who co-authored the bogus Manafort-Assange story). (...)

Complete article

> See also: Don’t Extradite Assange (Media Lens)

The Guardian building in London, 2012. (Bryantbob, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons)

Tags: #assange #julian_assange #wikileaks #journalism #journalist #news #guardian #the_guardian #smear_campaign #manning #news #extradition #us #united_states #julianassange #uk #propaganda #truth #justice #freeassange #weareallassange #censorship #chelsea_manning #press #freedom_of_the_press #bbc #dissidents #witch_hunt #JournalistsSpeakUpForAssange #Nils_Melzer #Melzer #whistle_blower #corporate_media #mainstream_media #double_down_news

Oproep NYT, Guardian, Le Monde, Der Spiegel, El Pais: stop vervolging Assange

De Wereld Morgen

Vijf internationale media verzoeken de VS-regering de vervolging van Julian Assange, oprichter van WikiLeaks, stop te zetten. Na hem jarenlang mee verdacht te maken komen ze nu tot het inzicht dat zijn vervolging een gevaar is voor de persvrijheid. Hun oproep is halfslachtig en neemt het gevaar voor Assange nauwelijks weg.

(Tekst loopt door onder de afbeelding.)

In een Open Brief van 28 november 2022, exact twaalf jaar nadat ze een hele reeks revelaties van WikiLeaks op hun eigen pagina’s hadden gepubliceerd, richten The New York Times, de Guardian, Le Monde, El Pais en Der Spiegel een oproep aan de regering van de VS om de vervolging van Julian Assange stop te zetten. (...)

Zij blijven echter bij hun stelling dat ze zich volgens henzelf terecht van Julian Assange hebben gedistantieerd in 2011, omdat hij toen een groot aantal niet redactioneel goedgekeurde documenten zou hebben vrijgegeven en maken zich ‘ongerust’ dat Assange zou hebben geholpen bij hacking van computers voor toegang tot geclassificeerde gegevens.

Beide beweringen zijn echter op drijfzand gebouwd. (...)

Eerder dan mea culpa te slaan over hun 11 jaar lange medewerking aan de moddercampagne tegen Assange kiezen ze er voor te doen alsof ze niets verkeerds hebben gedaan. (...)

Door echter te volharden in de twee valse beschuldigingen – vrijgeven van niet-redactioneel geverifieerde data en hacking – aan het adres van Julian Assange, geven zij echter munitie aan de VS-regering om toch met de vervolging door te gaan. (...)

Een echte oproep zou erkennen dat uit het proces in Londen is gebleken dat Julian Assange niet schuldig is aan hacking en dat de massale publicatie van documenten in 2011 het gevolg was van een fout bij de redactie van de Guardian.

Zoveel journalistieke eerlijkheid is blijkbaar nog iets te veel gevraagd van deze vijf grote media.

Deze oproep is een stap in de goede richting, maar verre van voldoende.

Hele artikel

Zie ook: Uitlevering Assange is een dreigement aan alle journalisten (NRC)

Tags: #nederlands #media #nieuws #censuur #journalist #journalistiek #assange #wikileaks #manning #julian_assange #chelsea_manning #pers #journalist #persvrijheid #the_guardian #bbc #dissidenten #heksenjacht #JournalistsSpeakUpForAssange #Nils_Melzer #Melzer #chelsea_manning #klokkenluider

Wicked Leaks – Part 1: How The Media Quarantined Evidence On Nord Stream Sabotage

Media Lens

(...) In our media alert of 26 July 2002, we wrote:

‘This does not mean that there is no dissent in the mainstream; on the contrary the system strongly requires the appearance of openness. In an ostensibly democratic society, a propaganda system must incorporate occasional instances of dissent. Like vaccines, these small doses of truth inoculate the public against awareness of the rigid limits of media freedom.’

That was true two decades ago when we started Media Lens. But, now, the state-corporate media system relies less on inoculation and more on quarantine: inconvenient facts, indeed whole issues, are simply kept from public awareness. We have moved far closer to a totalitarian system depending on outright censorship. (...)

(Text continues under the photo.)

US media watch site, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), made the key point:

‘Any serious coverage of the Nord Stream attack should acknowledge that opposition to the pipeline has been a centerpiece of the US grand strategy in Europe. The long-term goal has been to keep Russia isolated and disjointed from Europe, and to keep the countries of Europe tied to US markets. Ever since German and Russian energy companies signed a deal to begin development on Nord Stream 2, the entire machinery of Washington has been working overtime to scuttle it.’

The evidence for this is simply overwhelming. For example, FAIR noted that during his confirmation hearings in 2021, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken told Congress he was ‘determined to do whatever I can to prevent’ Nord Stream 2 from being completed. Months later, the US State Department reiterated that ‘any entity involved in the Nord Stream 2 pipeline risks US sanctions and should immediately abandon work on the pipeline’.

If that doesn’t make US hostility to the pipelines clear enough, President Joe Biden told reporters in February:

‘If Russia invades…then there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.’

Asked by a reporter how the US intended to end a project that was, after all, under German control, Biden responded:

‘I promise you, we will be able to do that.’

No surprise, then, that, following the attack, Blinken described the destruction of the pipelines as a ‘tremendous opportunity to once and for all remove the dependence on Russian energy,’ adding that this ‘offers tremendous strategic opportunity for years to come’.

Former UN weapons inspector and political analyst Scott Ritter commented:

‘Intent, motive and means: People serving life sentences in U.S. prisons have been convicted on weaker grounds than the circumstantial evidence against Washington for the attack on the Nord Stream pipelines.’ (...)

Despite all of this, FAIR reported of US corporate media coverage:

‘Much of the media cast their suspicions towards Russia, including Bloomberg (9/27/22), Vox (9/29/22), Associated Press (9/30/22) and much of cable news. With few exceptions, speculation on US involvement has seemingly been deemed an intellectual no-fly-zone.’

Thus, the possibility of US involvement has been intellectually quarantined. Instead, US media have been tying themselves in knots trying to find alternative explanations. (...)

In Britain, the Guardian affected similar confusion. (...)

FAIR discussed a tweet from a Polish member of the European Parliament, Radek Sikorski – a one-time Polish defence minister as well as a former American Enterprise Institute fellow, who was named one of the ‘Top 100 Global Thinkers’ in 2012 by Foreign Policy. FAIR reported:

‘Sikorski tweeted a picture of the methane leak in the ocean, along with the caption, “As we say in Polish, a small thing, but so much joy.” He later tweeted, “Thank you, USA,” with the same picture.’ (...)

Curiously, non-corporate journalists like Jonathan Cook, Caitlin Johnstone, Glenn Greenwald, Aaron Maté, Bryce Green, even hippy Russell Brand, were able to find all the evidence and arguments omitted by ‘mainstream’ journalists supported by far greater resources.

And this makes the point with which we began this alert: there is now so much high-quality journalism exposing the establishment outside the state-corporate ‘mainstream’, that the task of the ‘mainstream’ now is to protect the establishment by acting as a buffer blocking citizen journalism from public awareness. (...)

Complete article

Tags: #media #mass_media #journalist #journalism #the_guardian #mainstream_media #msm #propaganda #censorship #putin #biden #blinken #nord_stream #sabotage #russia #ukraine #bloomberg #associated_press #ap #cable_news #the_telegraph #fair #sikorski #mail_on_sunday #observer

Mass Media Omertà: Burying Al Jazeera’s ‘The Labour Files’

Media Lens

The damaging revelations about the Labour Party in the recent four-part Al Jazeera series, ‘The Labour Files’, and the almost totalitarian silence in response by British news media, should ram home the illusory nature of ‘democracy’ in the UK.

Based on the largest leak in British political history, Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit has exposed how Labour party officials smeared and intimidated rivals on the left of the party. The leaked data comprises 500 gigabytes of documents, emails, video and audio files from the Labour Party, dating from 1998 to 2021. They reveal:

• The weaponisation of antisemitism by the right-wing of the Labour Party to hinder Jeremy Corbyn’s chances of becoming Prime Minister.
• A ‘hierarchy of racism’ within the Labour Party disciplinary process which prioritises the investigation of alleged antisemitism cases over other forms of racism.
• Shocking examples of Islamophobia and anti-Black racism within Labour.
• The crushing of dissent within Labour under Sir Keir Starmer’s leadership. (...)

(Text continues under the photo)

Keir Starmer

The Al Jazeera (AJ) investigation showed that false accusations of abusive behaviour were hurled at Corbyn supporters in order to have them suspended or expelled from the party. At Labour HQ, party officials were tasked with trawling through members’ social media posts to find anything incriminating, particularly any material that could be deemed ‘antisemitic’.

Whistleblower Halima Khan, who worked as a Labour Party investigations officer, told AJ that ‘Palestine’ was one of the search terms used to find incriminating evidence. (...)

Starmer’s support of Israel, and rejection of it being labelled an ‘apartheid state’ by human rights groups including Amnesty, Human Rights Watch and Israel’s own B’Tselem, is well-documented; as is the strength of the Israel lobby within Labour. (...)

Andrew Feinstein, a veteran anti-racist campaigner originally from South Africa who has written and lectured on genocide prevention, is shown in one AJ programme examining Labour’s confidential disciplinary files. Hundreds of party activists had been suspended on the basis of these files. Feinstein pointed to clear examples of real antisemitism. But there were also many examples of cases where ‘there was no antisemitism whatsoever’. These were typically people criticising Israel for its crimes. (...)

After 2018, once Corbyn was in control of the party bureaucracy, the disciplinary process improved dramatically. (...)

Feinstein emphasised that:

‘The key finding, backed up by the evidence, which we can see represented graphically here, is that the key failings of the Labour party on antisemitism took place in the period before April 2018 – before Jeremy Corbyn had control of the party bureaucracy [our emphasis].’

As the AJ narrator noted:

‘Yet Jeremy Corbyn has taken all the blame and his factional opponents within the party none at all.’

This rational honesty was notably lacking when BBC Panorama broadcast a hatchet job in July 2019, pitched as an ‘impartial’ investigation asking the loaded question, ‘Is Labour Anti-Semitic?’ The programme was presented by BBC journalist John Ware who had previously made clear his antagonism towards Corbyn’s politics, not least in an earlier edition of Panorama. (...)

As we noted in a media alert shortly afterwards, Panorama was immediately followed by the flagship BBC News at Ten programme which gave it extensive coverage, pumping up the propaganda value of the fake ‘investigation’. (...)

By contrast, Peter Oborne told AJ in ‘The Labour Files’:

‘The BBC produced a documentary bearing directly on the character and fitness for office of the leader of the Labour Party, the leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition, in a moment of intense constitutional crisis [over Brexit]. Now, that’s a momentous intervention in British politics. So, I do think the BBC have to look really carefully at their record here.’ (...)

One of the most disturbing aspects of the AJ investigation into the Labour Party is further evidence supporting one of the conclusions of the Forde report that:

‘The Labour Party is not a welcoming place for people of colour’.

This was an understatement, as we will see. (...)

In our media alert at the time, we noted that the leaked internal report revealed that senior Labour figures on the right of the party had actively tried to stop Labour winning the general election in order to oust Corbyn as party leader. (...)

Starmer essentially suppressed Labour discussion of the damning leaked document, attempting to defuse the situation by commissioning an independent inquiry. However, the Forde report would have made uncomfortable reading for Starmer and the current Labour management.

As Jonathan Cook summarised:

‘Despite its careful wording and bogus even-handedness, the Forde Inquiry conceded that the Labour right had indeed waged a dirty factional war against Corbyn and the left of the party, weaponizing antisemitism to tar them.’

Moreover, as the Forde report concluded, the leaked WhatsApp messages revealed:

‘overt and underlying racism and sexism’. (...)

The Forde Report even identified a ‘hierarchy of racism’ in which investigations of alleged antisemitism in the Labour Party took precedence over Islamophobia and anti-Black racism. (...)

‘The Labour Files’ revealed the particularly egregious case of Labour HQ targeting Muslim Labour activists in Newham in east London. A dossier on Labour Party Muslim members and their families in Newham, containing private information about their lives and activities, was sent to Labour Party HQ in London. (...)

Oborne, who has recently published a new book, ‘The Fate of Abraham: Why the West is Wrong About Islam’, told AJ:

‘I found this dossier completely unbelievable. Reading this is like reading some far-right tract by some demented American right-winger. And this is published or done inside the Labour Party. It’s terrifying.’ (...)

In March 2021, Newham’s two party branches were suspended. More than 5,000 party members, mostly Muslim**, were thus denied a voice in Labour Party democracy. (...)

And what has the ‘mainstream’ media response been to the damning findings of AJ’s careful, in-depth investigation? An almost complete blanket of silence. It really is a remarkable demonstration of the near-totalitarian behaviour of British ‘journalism’. (...)

In an article titled, ‘Al Jazeera’s Labour Files has blown a hole in the British media’s Corbyn narrative’, for the Middle East Eye website, Oborne observed:

‘The papers that banged on day after day, and month after month, on allegations that Corbyn was a racist have all but ignored the Al Jazeera reports. The same applies to the BBC, which played a major role in framing the understanding of Corbyn and antisemitism in the run-up to the 2019 election.’

He added:

‘it is impossible to justify the media omerta around the Al Jazeera films. It reminds me of the long refusal of the mainstream British media to engage with the phone hacking scandal involving criminality across large sections of the British media more than a decade ago.’ (...)

In our 2018 book, ‘Propaganda Blitz’, we detailed at length the cynical demolition of the prospects for socialism under a Corbyn-led government. There were the usual suspects at the far-right of the media ‘spectrum’ – the Sun, Daily Mail, The Times and Telegraph among them. But, perhaps more insidious – because of their supposed reputation for reliable, even challenging, reporting – BBC News and, especially, the Guardian, were in the vanguard of the attack. It is obvious that they would be reluctant in the extreme to revisit the scene of their crimes – which are ongoing. (...)

Cook summed up the media’s callous behaviour and suppression of any reporting or discussion of the Al Jazeera series:

‘Which BBC program will acknowledge Al Jazeera’s revelations, let alone pursue them further, when the BBC’s flagship news investigation program, Panorama, is deeply implicated in the very smears Al Jazeera exposed. The BBC would in effect be investigating its own malpractice.’

He added:

‘And similarly for the Guardian. To investigate the leaked documents would convict the paper – traditionally seen by many Labour voters as their house journal – of colluding in a bogus antisemitism narrative against the Labour left that it played a central role in building. The Guardian would expose itself not as it wishes to be seen – as a fearless, independent newspaper confronting the British establishment with uncomfortable truths – but as a key pillar of that very establishment.’ (...)

Concluding Note

Al Jazeera’s ‘The Labour Files’ is a must-watch series. For the state-corporate media, it’s a ‘must-ignore’ series.

All four episodes are available on YouTube:

Part 1: The Purge

Part 2: The Crisis

Part 3: The Hierarchy

Part 4: The Spying Game

Complete article

Tags: #media #mass_media #labour #labour_party #corbyn #jeremy_corbyn #starmer #keir_starmer #journalist #journalism #antisemitism #racism #al_jazeera #panorama #bbc #news_at_ten #forde_report #the_guardian #Kuenssberg #mainstream_media #msm #propaganda #censorship #defamation

Free Assange now!

IFJ

> See also: Don’t Extradite Assange (Media Lens)

Tags: #media #news #censorship #journalist #journalism #assange #wikileaks #manning #julian_assange #chelsea_manning #press #freedom_of_the_press #the_guardian #bbc #dissidents #witch_hunt #JournalistsSpeakUpForAssange #Nils_Melzer #Melzer #whistle_blower #corporate_media #mainstream_media #double_down_news #freeassangenow

Uitlevering Assange is een dreigement aan alle journalisten

NRC

Persvrijheid - De Britten willen WikiLeaks-voorman uitleveren aan de VS. Daar kan hij worden vervolgd wegens spionage. Chris Onrust waarschuwt.

Recent keurde de Britse minister van Binnenlandse Zaken Priti Patel een verzoek van de Verenigde Staten goed om WikiLeaks-oprichter Julian Assange uit te leveren. (...)

[Het is] belangrijk om scherp in beeld te houden dat deze uitlevering een gevaarlijk precedent zou scheppen voor hoe de persvrijheid wereldwijd ondermijnd kan worden. Ook die van Nederlandse journalisten.

De VS klaagt Assange aan voor samenzwering tot het plegen van computerfraude en -misbruik en voor zeventien overtredingen van de Spionagewet. Alle vermeende daden betreffen Assanges journalistieke werk: het publiceren van informatie die onder meer oorlogsmisdaden in Afghanistan en Irak blootlegde. (...)

Volgens de aanklacht zou Assange voor WikiLeaks om geclassificeerd (dus: vertrouwelijk) materiaal hebben gevraagd en zulk materiaal hebben gepubliceerd. Maar dit is precies de journalistieke taak van Assange. (...)

Het vervolgen van mensen die gevoelig materiaal lekten, kwam onder de toenmalige Amerikaanse president Donald Trump in een stroomversnelling (de trend begon al onder president Obama). Maar met Assange gaan de VS nu een stap verder. Hier gaat het namelijk niet om een klokkenluider, maar om een journalist en nieuwsuitgever die gelekt materiaal durfde te publiceren. (...)

Een goede verdediging lijkt op voorhand uitgesloten, want Assange wordt aangeklaagd voor spionage. De Spionagewet in de VS laat namelijk geen verdediging op grond van algemeen belang toe. En laat het dienen van het algemeen belang nu juist de kerntaak van serieuze journalistiek zijn. (...)

Straks kan dit iedere andere journalist of uitgever raken die vergelijkbaar materiaal openbaar maakt.

Dit geldt ook voor de journalistiek in Nederland. Assange is geen inwoner van de VS. Assange is Australisch staatsburger en woont al meer dan tien jaar in Europa. Het uitleveringsverzoek maakt bovendien duidelijk dat de VS Assange aanklaagt voor handelingen die plaatsvonden buiten de VS. Kortom: de VS vervolgen een buitenlandse journalist voor vermeende vergrijpen die niet eens op hun eigen grondgebied plaatsvonden.

De VS staan slechts op plaats 42 van de Wereldpersvrijheidsindex van Verslaggevers Zonder Grenzen. (...)

Al meer dan tien jaar wordt Assange vastgehouden in verschillende vormen van opsluiting. Nilz Melzer, speciaal rapporteur op het gebied van marteling voor de Verenigde Naties, concludeerde dat hier mensenrechten ernstig zijn geschonden. Recente rapporten onthullen dat, tijdens Assanges toevlucht in de Ecuadoriaanse ambassade, inlichtingendiensten in de VS plannen ontwikkelden om Assange te vergiftigen, te ontvoeren of te vermoorden. (...)

Elke dag dat Assange langer gevangen wordt gehouden voor diens uitgeverswerk, is een zwarte dag voor de journalistiek.

Hele artikel

> Zie ook: Zwijgende journalisten, medeplichtig aan uitlevering Julian Assange aan VS (De Wereld Morgen)

> Zie ook: Hoe klokkenluider Julian Assange lange tijd voor velen een idool was maar nu wegkwijnt in een Britse cel (Amnesty)

Zie ook: Don’t Extradite Assange (Media Lens)

Julian Assange in 2017 voor de ambassade van Ecuador waar hijtoen asiel had. Foto Frank Augstein / AP.

Tags: #nederlands #media #nieuws #censuur #journalist #journalistiek #assange #wikileaks #manning #julian_assange #chelsea_manning #pers #journalist #persvrijheid #the_guardian #bbc #dissidenten #heksenjacht #JournalistsSpeakUpForAssange #Nils_Melzer #Melzer #chelsea_manning #klokkenluider

Don’t Extradite Assange

Media Lens

Last Friday’s decision by UK Home Secretary Priti Patel to authorise the extradition of Julian Assange to the United States is both deeply shameful and unsurprising. Her action paves the way for Assange to be tried under the 1917 Espionage Act, introduced by the US government shortly after entering World War I, with a sentence of 175 years if found guilty. In essence, the US wishes to set a legal precedent for the prosecution of any publisher or journalist, anywhere in the world, who reports the truth about the US.

Despite all the warnings from human rights groups, advocates of press freedom, Nils Melzer (then UN Special Rapporteur on Torture), doctors, lawyers and many other people around the world, it has long been clear that Washington is determined to punish Assange and make an example of him as a warning to others. As always, US allies will go along with what the Mafia Godfather wants. (...)

Peter Oborne, an all-too-rare example of a journalist speaking out on behalf of Assange, called Patel’s decision a ‘catastrophic blow’ to press freedom. But, he said, it was a blow that had been carried out with:

‘the silent assent of much of the mainstream press. Too many British newspapers and broadcasters have treated the Assange case as a dirty family secret. They have failed to grasp that the Assange hearing leading up to the Patel decision is the most important case involving free speech this century.’

Not only was there ‘silent assent’, but much of the media actually cheered and applauded Assange’s arrest in the Ecuadorian Embassy in April 2019 ‘with undisguised glee’, as Alan MacLeod wrote at the time. (...)

As Nils Melzer packed up and moved on from his term as the UN Special Prosecutor on Torture, on the day that Patel announced Assange’s extradition, he said:

‘How far have we sunk if we prosecute people who expose war crimes for exposing war crimes?

‘How far have we sunk when we no longer prosecute our own war criminals because we identify more with them than we identify with the people that actually exposed these crimes?

‘What does that tell about us and about our governments?

‘How far have we sunk when telling the truth becomes a crime?’

(...) The Guardian is a prime stoker of revitalised Cold War rhetoric about the ‘threat’ of Russia and China, mirroring what is prevalent across the whole ‘spectrum’ of ‘mainstream’ news. Indeed, as revealed by Declassified UK, an independent investigative news website, the UK’s leading liberal newspaper has essentially been ‘neutralised’ by the UK security services. Mark Curtis, editor and co-founder of Declassified UK, observed that the paper’s:

‘limited coverage of British foreign and security policies gives a misleading picture of what the UK does in the world. The paper is in reality a defender of Anglo-American power and a key ideological pillar of the British establishment.’

(...) In a brave and eloquent interview, Stella Assange, Julian’s wife and mother of their two young children, declared that:

(...) ‘And then you have the actual case. He’s charged under the Espionage Act. He faces 175 years. There is no public interest defence under the Espionage Act. It’s the first time it’s being repurposed; it’s being used against a publisher. It’s an Act that’s been repurposed in order to criminalise journalism, basically. And, of course, if you say that publishing information is a crime, then Julian’s guilty. He published information and he faces a lifetime in prison for it.’

(...) We can take a significant step towards a saner society by shouting loudly for Julian Assange to be freed immediately. A good start would be to share widely this video from Double Down News in which Stella Assange describes the importance of the case and how we can all help.

Please also visit the Don’t Extradite Assange website to see what actions you can take now.

Complete article

Tags: #media #news #censorship #journalist #journalism #assange #wikileaks #manning #julian_assange #chelsea_manning #press #freedom_of_the_press #the_guardian #bbc #dissidents #witch_hunt #JournalistsSpeakUpForAssange #Nils_Melzer #Melzer #whistle_blower #corporate_media #mainstream_media #double_down_news

Zwijgende journalisten, medeplichtig aan uitlevering Julian Assange aan VS

De Wereld Morgen

Brits minister van Binnenlandse Zaken Priti Patel heeft de uitlevering van Julian Assange aan de VS goedgekeurd. Van een beroepsprocedure voor het Brits gerecht valt niets te verwachten. Alle journalisten en redacties die vandaag nog steeds niet degelijk op de hoogte zijn van het belang van zijn zaak en deze uitlevering niet veroordelen en aanklagen dragen mee schuld voor deze aanslag tegen de persvrijheid.

Het is hier al genoeg gezegd. Als Julian Assange wordt uitgeleverd aan de VS wacht hem geen schijn van een eerlijk proces en een vreselijk levenslange opsluiting in de goelags van het Amerikaanse penitentiaire systeem, in het land met zowel proportioneel in verhouding tot de bevolking als in absolute totaalcijfers het hoogste aantal gevangenen ter wereld.

Ik ga hier niet langer alle argumenten opsommen. Elke journalist die naam waardig kent ze. Ze worden de voorbije jaren voortdurend toegelicht op tientallen artikels in ons Dossier over Julian Assange en WikiLeaks. (...)

Ook nu is de rechtsgang zelf de doelstelling tegen Assange. Door hem jarenlang te verlammen met elke mogelijke arbitraire truc van het rechtssysteem is het doel al grotendeels bereikt. Assange is een gebroken man en WikiLeaks is zijn slagkracht kwijt. (...)

Dit alles kan uiteindelijk maar gebeuren omdat Groot-Brittannië geen onafhankelijke pers heeft. Het zijn niet de vulgaire tabloidkranten die de hetze tegen Assange hebben geleid, het waren de openbare zender BBC en de topkrant The Guardian.

Dat buitenlandse journalisten deze beide media nog steeds als leidinggevend aanvaarden, zegt alles over de toestand waarin de mainstream media vandaag zijn vergleden.

Onafhankelijke, kritische onderzoeksjournalistiek is alleen nog mogelijk als het over de officiële vijanden gaat, zoals Rusland of China. Dat er in deze landen heel wat verkeerd loopt met de burgerlijke vrijheden is een open deur. (...)

Julian Assange heeft oorlogsmisdaden van de VS ontmaskerd. Not done. Daarom, en daarom alleen moet hij boeten met zijn uitlevering aan de VS.

Door hier niet massaal tegen te protesteren bezegelen zijn collega’s mainstream journalisten het lot van onafhankelijke onderzoeksjournalistiek. Het onderzoeken en berichten over oorlogsmisdaden (en over zoveel meer) van de VS wordt taboe. (...)

Hele artikel

> Zie ook: Hoe klokkenluider Julian Assange lange tijd voor velen een idool was maar nu wegkwijnt in een Britse cel (Amnesty)

> Zie ook: ‘A Ghastly Future’? Israeli Apartheid, Biden, Starmer, Assange And Mass Extinction (Media Lens)

Tags: #nederlands #media #nieuws #censuur #journalist #journalistiek #assange #wikileaks #manning #julian_assange #chelsea_manning #pers #journalist #persvrijheid #the_guardian #bbc #dissidenten #heksenjacht #JournalistsSpeakUpForAssange #Nils_Melzer #Melzer #chelsea_manning

The Media Lens Book Of Obituaries – Deleting Tutu’s Criticism Of Israel

Media Lens

(...) Following his death in 2004, we described how Ronald Reagan’s eight years as US President (1981-89) had resulted in a vast bloodbath as Washington poured money and weapons into client dictatorships and right-wing death squads across Central America. The death toll: more than 70,000 political killings in El Salvador, more than 100,000 in Guatemala, and 30,000 killed in the US Contra war waged against Nicaragua. Journalist Allan Nairn described the latter as ‘One of the most intensive campaigns of mass murder in recent history.’ (Democracy Now, 8 June 2004)

On the BBC’s flagship Newsnight programme, Gavin Esler said of Reagan:

‘Many people believe that he restored faith in American military action after Vietnam through his willingness to use force, if necessary, in defence of American interests.’ (Newsnight, 9 June 2004) (...)

The basic rule: Official Friends of State are greeted by ostensibly independent corporate media with a wry, knowing, ultimately approving smile. Official Enemies of State are greeted with a sneer or a snarl.

In the immediate aftermath of Margaret Thatcher’s death on 8 April 2013, we found 461 UK national newspaper articles mentioning the word ‘Thatcher’. Of these, 29 articles mentioned ‘Thatcher’ and ‘Saddam’. None mentioned that Thatcher had armed and financed the Iraqi dictator. Links to torture and mass murder that would have been front and centre in reviewing the life of any Official Enemy were airbrushed from history. (...)

Also in 2013, following the death of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez (...)

The corporate media version of events was nutshelled by an editorial in the Independent titled:

‘Hugo Chávez – an era of grand political illusion comes to an end’

This of a leader who had reduced poverty by half, having sparked a regional move towards greater independence from the ruthless superpower to the North. The editorial continued:

‘Mr Chávez was no run-of-the-mill dictator. His offences were far from the excesses of a Colonel Gaddafi, say. What he was, more than anything, was an illusionist – a showman who used his prodigious powers of persuasion to present a corrupt autocracy fuelled by petrodollars as a socialist utopia in the making. The show now over, he leaves a hollowed-out country crippled by poverty, violence and crime. So much for the revolution.’

For the oligarch-owned Independent, then, Chávez – who had won 15 democratic elections, including four presidential elections – was a ‘dictator’. (...)

A further example of five-scythe filtering was provided by recent media coverage following the death of Desmond Tutu, the former Archbishop of Cape Town and chairman of South Africa’s truth and reconciliation commission. Tutu was one of the great leaders of the anti-apartheid movement, but he protested many other forms of oppression. In 2002, the Guardian published an opinion piece in which Tutu commented:

‘I’ve been very deeply distressed in my visit to the Holy Land; it reminded me so much of what happened to us black people in South Africa. I have seen the humiliation of the Palestinians at checkpoints and roadblocks, suffering like us when young white police officers prevented us from moving about.’ (...)

Tutu even drew attention to the power of the pro-Israel lobby in smearing criticism of Israel as ‘anti-semitism’:

‘to criticise it is to be immediately dubbed anti-semitic, as if the Palestinians were not semitic. I am not even anti-white, despite the madness of that group. And how did it come about that Israel was collaborating with the apartheid government on security measures?’ (...)

Elsewhere, Tutu wrote:

‘The withdrawal of trade with South Africa… was ultimately one of the key levers that brought the apartheid state – bloodlessly – to its knees… Those who continue to do business with Israel, who contribute to a sense of “normalcy” in Israeli society, are doing the people of Israel and Palestine a disservice.’

In December 2020, Tutu added:

‘Apartheid was horrible in South Africa and it’s horrible when Israel practises its own form of apartheid against the Palestinians, with checkpoints and a system of oppressive policies. Indeed another US statute, the Leahy law, prohibits US military aid to governments that systematically violate human rights.’

In a stirring example of just how low the Guardian has sunk under the editorship of Katharine Viner, the same newspaper that published Tutu’s comments made no mention whatever of Palestinians or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in its obituary on 6 December 2021.

In response, a Change.org petition, signed by more than 3,250 people, sent a searing open letter to Viner:

‘Tutu’s repeated criticism of Israeli apartheid policies, and his commitment to the cause of the Palestinian people, are all simply omitted.’ (...)

The BBC made no mention of the issue here, here and here. (...)

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer responded to the death of Tutu:

‘Desmond Tutu was a tower of a man, and a leader of moral activism. He dedicated his life to tackling injustice and standing up for the oppressed. His impact on the world crosses borders and echoes through generations. May he rest in peace.’

As the website Skwawkbox noted accurately in response:

‘But if Tutu had been a Labour member, Starmer would probably have expelled him, at least if he had the spine to do it, for comments in support of Palestinians and of boycotts and sanctions against Israel…’

Clearly, our media guardians of power were keen to say as little as possible about Tutu’s criticism of Israel without exposing themselves as outright totalitarians by blanking the issue 100% – 99% is a much better look, especially when reviewing the life of a courageous anti-fascist. (...)

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Tags: #obituary #desmond_tutu #tutu #reagan #ronald_reagan #central_america #el_salvador #guatemala #nicaragua #contra #thatcher #margareth_thatcher #media #journalism #journalist #news #interational_politics #fireign_relations #power #bbc #the_guardian #inependent #newspapers #news_media #venezuela #chaves #hugo_chaves #israel #anti-semitism #apartheid #pro-israel_lobby #labour #keir_starmer

A Remarkable Silence: Media Blackout After Key Witness Against Assange Admits Lying

Media Lens

As we have pointed out since Media Lens began in 2001, a fundamental feature of corporate media is propaganda by omission. Over the past week, a stunning example has highlighted this core property once again.

A major witness in the US case against Julian Assange has just admitted fabricat­ing key accusati­ons in the indictment against the Wikileaks founder. These dramatic revelations emerged in an extensive article published on 26 June in Stundin, an Icelandic newspaper. The paper interviewed the witness, Sigurdur Ingi Thordarson, a former WikiLeaks volunteer, who admitted that he had made false allegations against Assange after being recruited by US authorities. (...)

Under President Obama, the US Department of Justice had decided against indicting Assange, despite devoting huge resources to building a case against him. The stumbling block was ‘The New York Times Problem’: the difficulty in distinguishing between WikiLeaks publications and NYT publications of the same material. In other words, prosecuting WikiLeaks would pose grave First Amendment risks for even ‘respectable’ media such as the NYT. (...)

Even before the Stundin article was published five days ago, Thordarson’s testimony should have already been recognised as suspect, to say the least. (...)

But all of this is seemingly of no interest to the ‘mainstream’ media. We have not found a single report by any ‘serious’ UK broadcaster or newspaper. (...)

[I]n a sane world, Stundin’s revelations about a key Assange witness – that Thordarson lied in exchange for immunity from prosecution – would have been headline news everywhere, with extensive media coverage on BBC News at Six and Ten, ITV News, Channel 4 News, front-page stories in the Times, Telegraph, the Guardian and more. The silence is quite extraordinary; and disturbing. Caitlin Johnstone described it as a ‘weird, creepy media blackout’. (...)

As we have often observed, the establishment media relentlessly warn of the insidious nature of ‘fake news’: a claim that does have a seed of validity. But it is the state-corporate media themselves who are the primary purveyors of fake news. (...)

In fact, the most dangerous component of ‘MSM’ fake news is arguably propaganda by omission. In ostensible ‘democracies’, the public cannot make informed decisions, and take appropriate action, when the crimes of ruling elites are kept hidden by a complicit media.

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Tags: #media #newspaper #journalism #journalist #editor #news #the_guardian #bbc #assange #julian_assange #wikileaks #propaganda #msm #mainstream_media #fake_news #corporate_media #government_propaganda #press_freedom #freedom_of_the_press