The most recent hit on Julian Assange by the Intercept

Sure, kick him again while he’s down, you fearless investigative Intercept reporters!  By now we can guess why, of course.  But not only did Italian journalist Stefania Maurizi discover through her FOIA request that emails show Swedish prosecutors were considering dropping the extradition proceedings against Julian Assange in 2013, but that the Crown Prosecution Service had pressured Sweden not to ‘not get cold feet’ as in: ‘don’t give up the case’.  And just after Judge Arbuthnot ruled against the second petition brought by Assange’s attorneys to find it in the public interest to quash the warrant, former Ambassador Craig Murray told the world that the Judge is in fact Lady Arbuthnot of Edrom, wife to Tory peer, former Tory junior Defence Minister & government whip Lord James Arbuthnot in his Feb. 14: ‘All Pretence is Over in Persecution of Assange’, part of which also references the CPS emails, and the ‘gallows humor’ of the Judge’s reasons for her ruling.

But RT read the recent report by the Intercept so you didn’t have to: ‘Sadistic
sociopath’: Leaked chats reveal Assange’s extreme disdain for Hillary Clinton’, Feb. 15, 2018

“WikiLeaks has never concealed its feelings about Hillary Clinton, but leaked chats obtained by The Intercept provide more insight into what its founder Julian Assange apparently thought about her during the run-up to the election.

The tweets are said to have been sent in a direct group message between Assange and around 10 of WikiLeaks’ most loyal supporters on Twitter. The group is described as a “low security channel for some very long term and reliable supporters,” according to the news outlet.

In the autumn of 2015, when the idea of Donald Trump becoming the next US president was still deemed highly unlikely by most political pundits, the iconic whistleblower spoke candidly about Clinton and his preference for a GOP victory. “We believe it would be much better for GOP to win,” he reportedly wrote. “Dems+Media+liberals woudl (sic) then form a block to reign in their worst qualities.” A couple minutes later, he apparently called the Democratic candidate a “bright, well connected, sadistic sociopath.”

Note that RT also follows Micah Lee, who’d begun by attributing those quotes to WikiLeaks, but in a Milwaukee minute changed to ‘Assange’, and of course he’ long known that the two aren’t conflatable.  But who is ‘hazelpress’ who’d started the WikiLeaks supporters who can Tweet in their name?

@JulianAssange Feb 14 – ‘the article changes the context of its quotes even compared to the clearly highly selective claimed excerpts Lee placed on Document Cloud: ‘Excerpts From Private WikiLeaks Twitter Group’

Not one is from @julianassange, but many are black boxes with the times redacted.  What’s up with that?

Moar: he apparently admitted that Republicans would “generate a lot oposition (sic), including through dumb moves.” ‘ Hillary “has greater freedom to start wars than the GOP and has the will to do so.” after the primary : “Perhaps Hillary will have a stroke.”

He also said that her “role in the war in Libya is what should bring her down, however, the GOP is too close to others who have benefited to exploit this, it seems. That Hillary helped to sew the foundation for ISIS against pentagon generals (sic) advice seems huge. But the GOP resolutely ignores it. Hillary has so muc hslime (sic) on her shirt it is now hard to make dirt stick.”

“The archive, which was obtained by The Intercept, spans from May 2015 to November 2017 and includes 11,000 messages. More than 10 percent of them were written from the WikiLeaks account.”

[Whose were the other 90%?]

“The Intercept has made the assumption that the WikiLeaks account was controlled by Assange, stating that such an assumption is “widely understood” and noting that he refers to himself “in the third person majestic plural, as he often does.”

Following the Intercept’s article, Assange took to Twitter to dismiss the claims, stating that the WikiLeaks Twitter account has always been run by rotating staff. Assange has also noted that while the Intercept used messages from late October 2016, he had no Internet access back then, a fact that is widely known.

The WikiLeaks co-founder also empathized [emphasized, I’d think] the long-time rivalry between his organization and the Intercept. Assange posted a link to an article, highlighting FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds’ allegations that the Intercept was formed by eBay owner Pierre Omidyar, as a way to drive WikiLeaks out of the secrets-revealing business, take “ownership” of Edward Snowden’s leaks and ultimately create a “honey trap” for whistleblowers.

The private Twitter group was set up in mid-2015 by a former supporter and volunteer at WikiLeaks, who goes by the name “Hazelpress.” That person – whose real name remains unknown – is the same person that leaked the messages [direct messaging] after news broke that WikiLeaks had secretly corresponded with Donald Trump Jr. during the election, reportedly urging his father to reject the results as “rigged” if he lost, and requesting that he use his connections to make Assange the Australian ambassador.

“At this point, considering the power exercised by WikiLeaks, [disclosing] literally anything Assange says is in the public interest,” Hazelpress told The Intercept. He added that Assange’s political position during the election is fair game, as WikiLeaks “purports to be a neutral transparency organization.”

Now of course Micah Lee began by attributing those quotes to WikiLeaks, but in a Milwaukee minute changed to ‘Assange’, and of course he’s long known that the two aren’t conflatable.  But who is ‘hazelpress’ who’d started the WikiLeaks supporters who can Tweet in their name?  Among the (now) 712 comments on the ‘exposé’, a high percentage called TI for it’s anti-Assange agitprop, not a few said they’d never give the place money again, and mentioned their earlier screeds against Assange.  Of the Assange detractors, all seemed to believe that it was he, not multiple WL contributors…was speaking.

One recent commenter linked to ‘Opinion: ‘Et Tu, The Intercept? Smear Of Assange Murderously Timed’, zerohedge via disobedient media.

“The timing of the article’s publication acted to brutally counter growing support for Assange that arose in the wake of a clearly unjust UK ruling. Essentially, the publication of the smear attempted to deflect attention from the revelation of corruption in the ongoing detention of Assange, and to assassinate his character in the process.

The Intercept’s decision to publish the article at such a time unfortunately serves to characterize the outlet as a servant of the same US deep state that The Intercept has gained a reputation for – at least in theory – opposing.”

One comment exchange contained this:

EH: ‘What makes this story even stranger is that one of the participants of the chat was Glenn Greenwald. Micah Lee is busy trashing Assange for the gross nature of this conversation, but doesn’t mention that his boss is part of it.’

C: ‘How do we know that Greenwald was a participant? Source?’

EH: ‘Look for a post from someone named Anderson Hale down below. He found a chat between WL and someone whose name was blanked out. The anonymous guy was saying he might have confused people whether a leak came from WL or the Panama Papers. On the very same day Greenwald commented in a tweet on a WL tweet with a leak from the Panama Papers.
Read it. I found it convincing.’

SP: ‘Glenn brings up a point about this coverage in his Tweets (highlighted in a comment below, as well): “the Intercept is responsible for what it publishes on its site, not what its employees say on social media (much as is true of WikiLeaks).”
Yet this article makes an unexplainable overreach in inferring that Assange authored all of these private chats on social media (not Wikileaks responsibility, or Assanges’ per Glenn’s comment) without suitable evidence for doing so.

And yet Micah, Cora, and the editors here feel it’s OK for The Intercept to malign someone because that someone (unproven) **may** have maligned others in private, and on social media?  Even if that’s true, that Assange said these things in the manner presented here, what’s the issue?
This is a smarmy, unnecessary, and disingenuous account provided by The Intercept, no matter the facts behind them.  “The Intercept’s decision to publish the article at such a time unfortunately serves to characterize the outlet as a servant of the same US deep state that The Intercept has gained a reputation for – at least in theory – opposing.”

Here’s the Sibel Edmonds’ assertions link by Whitney Webb at mintpressnews.com Assange had Tweeted.  She gives a lot of the same information that I had in my III-part series, but far more coherently, shall we say?  The Daily Beast smackdown, two other hits from the Intercept, etc. She includes the Freedom of the Press Foundation having voted WikiLeaks ‘off the island’ (accepting donations to be disbursed to WikiLeaks ‘anonymously’, which was one of the big benefits Assange and WikiLeaks had lamented after the fact.

“WikiLeaks, in recent tweets, has suggested that Omidyar’s influence was responsible not only for the FPF’s decision but also for the unusual attacks that some FPF members have launched against WikiLeaks, particularly Assange, in recent months. The most outspoken of these members has been FPF director Micah Lee, who is employed by the Omidyar-owned publication, The Intercept.

And yes, the author of the current hit piece in the self-same Micah Lee that authored the recent…screed.

“In February of last year, Lee called Assange a “rapist, liar & ally to fascists” in a tweet — despite the fact that Assange was never charged with rape, his alleged accusers have also claimed that Assange had not sexually assaulted them, and there is abundant evidence suggesting that the rape investigation was a means of ensnaring Assange to ensure his extradition to the United States. Based on Lee’s other tweets, the “ally to fascists” charge ostensibly refers to Lee’s belief that Wikileaks’ publications of emails from the DNC and Clinton campaign chair John Podesta was done explicitly, with Assange’s blessing, to aid the Trump campaign.

Despite the slander and demonstrably false claims, other FPF members who have historically defended WikiLeaks and Assange were silent regarding Lee’s accusations, including Glenn Greenwald, Daniel Ellsberg and Edward Snowden. Though FPF members have denied that Omidyar’s influence has had a role in these attacks, as well as in the board’s decision to cut ties with WikiLeaks, a closer examination of Omidyar and his ties to the U.S. political establishment — as well as his apparent influence on some of the FPF’s most prominent members — gives credibility to WikiLeaks’ concerns.”

But this is fascinating, and some of it’s new to me:

“Omidyar has a vested interest in advancing the interests of the U.S. political establishment for a variety of reasons. Sibel Edmonds, who was among the first to note Omidyar’s background upon The Intercept’s founding, noted that the PayPal executive “has been in bed with the CIA and NSA” and even the Department of Defense — further noting that the Snowden documents that The Intercept, and thus Omidyar, controls “contain information about PayPal’s direct partnership not only with the Treasury Department but also the CIA.”

Edmonds further stated that Greenwald had confirmed Omidyar’s long-running partnership with the CIA and other government agencies on Twitter during a heated exchange between the two in 2013.

Omidyar is also well-connected to Snowden’s former employer Booz Allen Hamilton, a major government contractor known as the “world’s most profitable spy organization,” whose former executives include James Clapper, former Director of National Intelligence, and Michael McConnell, former Director of the NSA. Omidyar’s Ulupono Initiative, a venture capital fund that operates in his home state of Hawaii, cosponsors one of the Pentagon’s most important contractor expos, in which Booz Allen Hamilton – and the Department of Defense – have a major stake. In addition, a former Booz Allen Hamilton vice president, Kyle Datta, is General Partner of Omidyar’s Ulupono Initiative.

Also striking was Omidyar’s decision to accept Snowden’s former boss at Booz Allen Hamilton, Robert Lietzke, into the Omidyar Fellows program in 2015 after personally interviewing Lietzke as part of the program’s application process. What was unusual in Lietzke’s case was that Omidyar also oversees The Intercept, which has exclusive publishing rights over the Snowden cache – which was taken from under Lietzke’s nose at Booz Allen Hamilton by his former employee, Edward Snowden. Snowden himself has remained silent on Omidyar’s decision, despite the mixed signals it sent and continues to serve as the president of the FPF — which, as mentioned, is also funded by Omidyar.”

Her section ‘The fine line between curation and censorship’ is quite on topic to the ‘good whistle-blower v. bad whistleblower’ trope , but I’dd add that has included the fact that Julian Assange is both anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist (anti-war), while the Intercept asks the DoD for permission to publish, and they then redact what might ‘harm the US war effort’ (or close).

Nice job, Intercept.  And thanks for outing Reality Winner as your source, then trying to make it all better raising money for her defense.

I’ll end with this quote from Sibel Edmonds:

“The Intercept is a continuation of that blockade [of WikiLeaks]. [It] was set up with that purpose. Specifically, it was set up to block true, real information and put forth narrative that has already gotten the approval of special interests including the U.S. government. It made perfect sense for him [Omidyar] to move from that to setting up a news organization and posing as an outlet for investigative reports depending on whistleblowers.”

How many ‘journalists’ are in the Intercept’s stable by now?  Scores and scores, but try to find the list now; I can’t.  The Omidyar Network online.  On Twitter.  Such investment philanthropy!  #What.a.Schmuck

A key addendum I’d just remembered  that I’d featured earlier in my own series:  ‘The Freedom of the Press organization had also created ‘Secure Drop’ aid to potential whistleblowers; as per the Daily Beast:

“Journalists are starting to recognize that sophisticated communications security is a key element in the newsgathering process,” Freedom of the Press Foundation’s Chief Technology Officer Micah Lee said. SecureDrop is the safest way we know for an anonymous source to send information to journalists while protecting their identity.”

As per the Daily Beast: Under the foundation’s stewardship, SecureDrop today is running in dozens of newsrooms, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Associated Press, and Bloomberg.” 

How utterly fearless of them.

(cross-posted from café babylon; again: if i don't answer your comments in a timely fashion, please feel free to come knock on my door there.)

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Lookout's picture

Friend or foe? I have issues with Julian sometimes, but this sure seems like a hit job by a supposed friend.

Caity had a piece this week about it...
https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2018/02/15/the-intercept-is-transitioning-f...

That link and the Intercept articles are buried in the weekly as well. I'm glad you devoted an essay to the topic.

The other odd thing at the Intercept is the slow push of the Russiagate narrative from Risen, Grim and others. Makes you wonder.

Thanks again for the spotlight on the subject!

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

wendy davis's picture

@Lookout

i haven't always been a fan of johnstone, but i seriously like that she champions both assange and wikileaks. interesting what you're saying about risen, though, as a few of the commenters under this TI smear gave him a major thumb's down. assange had tweeted something about it, i'll go fetch it.

nope, he wasn't critiquing risen on russia gate. byt ryan grim used to be huffPo, no? says a lot. and spencer ackerman did some good stuff for the guardian on homan square dark prison in chi-town, now is 'a better fit with the daily beast', lol. but it does make me wonder why they need to corral so many 'journalists' if not to control the news.

thanks for reading it, lookout. i know it's kind of a war and peace length essay, but the Intercept's really starting to get my goat. i also liked that johnstone says she's not convinced that GG is part of it...but i'm sure not certain he ain't. he's attacked assange for years, memorably at the aukland town hall event with kim dotcom, et.al., assange on a screen behind them, absolutely glaring at him and snowden over a couple pieces of rubbish they'd thrown at him.

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wendy davis's picture

@Lookout

and his 'tumbler-fication' in only a few months at the intercept didn't signify in the text he'd featured, his hyperlink went to: ‘CIA espionage orders for the 2012 French presidential electionwikileaks.com

maybe it'll make sense to you, as you seem to have read risen?

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Lookout's picture

@wendy davis

won a couple of Pulitzers, but left when they wouldn't publish his CIA exposes. That makes you want to trust him, but you know how it is you can't trust anyone...not even yourself.

Here he is in an interview with Jeremy - includes a transcript if you have an interest....
https://theintercept.com/2018/01/03/all-the-news-unfit-to-print-james-ri...

The previous piece was his introduction to the intercept community. This week he goes on to describe what he has discovered about the NSA/CIA connection with T-rump and Russia. podcast with text
https://theintercept.com/2018/02/12/bonus-intercepted-podcast-jim-risen-...

If you make it through both of those you know about as much about Risen as I do. (It isn't to bad if you just skim the text)

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wendy davis's picture

@Lookout

but i really don't want to give the place the clicks. the only reason i ever enter their Hallowed (butt-ugly, imo) Halls is to look into a hit on assaange, or their glorifications of psyops like the White Helmets just to see how low they're willin' to go for the Imperium. and those i usually spot on my favorite accounts in the Twittersphere.

i did ping jeffrey st. clair and risen from a weeks ago, though, so i went bingling for it:

‘James Risen, the New York Times and the Sliming of Wen Ho Lee’ by Jeffrey St. Clair - Alexander Cockburn, jan. 5, 2018 (a piece at the intercept)

“Risen also offers a limited, modified mea culpa for his stories falsely fingering Wen Ho Lee, a Taiwanese-American scientist who worked at Los Alamos, as a spy. Risen’s dubious reports, which destroyed Lee’s career and nearly ruined his life, were largely based on false information fed to him by anonymous sources in the government. Risen describes his own experience as a “painful lesson” (though surely his suffering was nothing compared to the torments his reports inflicted on Lee), but he fails to name the government sources who led him astray and wrongly vilified Lee. What’s he waiting for?

peace to you, and thanks again.

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Lookout's picture

@wendy davis

in the interview. Hope you don't mind me posting it below...

JS: ...I want you to tell the story of Wen Ho Lee, and for people who don’t know who Wen Ho Lee is, what was the story and what was the criticism of your reporting and how do you view it now?

JR: In 1999, I think it was, we had heard that there was an espionage case underway at Los Alamos National Laboratory. And so, we investigated and found out that there was a Chinese-American scientist at Los Alamos named Wen Ho Lee who was considered the main suspect in an espionage investigation at the time. And so, we reported that in a series of stories in 1999.

He was later arrested, and ultimately pled guilty to mishandling of classified information, but the larger espionage case against him collapsed. And the government’s espionage case basically turned out to be incredibly weak and the judge in his case said that the government should be apologizing to him for the way the case was handled.

A lot of media critics and outside critics thought that we had been way too zealous in our coverage of the case and taken up too pro-government view and too prosecutorial view of the case. And The Times, I think it was in 2000, wrote an editor’s note basically saying that we had, in some cases, been too trusting of government sources...

That puts it mildly. However like us all there is good and bad in trying to see and report truth. He also has done some good reporting ...

JS: I mean, it’s interesting that this big story that you did fairly early on in your life as national security reporter involved Iran and secret weapons flow, given that the Reagan administration had existed at this time of Iran-Contra where the White House had made secret deals with Iran, was using the proceeds from weapon sales to go to the contras in Nicaragua.

I have sites I refuse to visit and promote. Hope you don't mind this info posted in your essay.

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wendy davis's picture

@Lookout

especially since you allwed me 'not to click in', smile. some have said that risen did do some excellent journalism in the past, and that aging ha taken its toll on him. i'm agnostic on that, but if memory serves (usually not), i used to red him.

now i'd been compiling a list of authors and sites i visit, and came toward thoward the end to b at Moon of alabama, who writes diligently on the fukkery of us/nato foreign misadventures, esp. in syria just now. of course he's biased, as are most bloggers/journalists, but this in his twittir stream seemed worth looking into sometime:

"‘Ludwig asks: "Is James Risen a CIA Mouthpiece?" It is hard to prove that he isn't one. So there ... https://ludwitt.wordpress.com/2018/02/17/is-james-risen-a-cia-mouthpiece...

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Lookout's picture

@wendy davis

Thanks for the link. I appreciate your trusted sources list lower in the essay. Seems my list gets shorter every day...and I don't insist on purity like some. Like us all there is good and bad in every source...and more bad spin than good in most.

I noticed you didn't include The Real News, which I often use.

All the best!

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wendy davis's picture

@Lookout

but that it all depended on the interviewer and interviewee, and when it's all about 'making a better D party', ish, and other couterproductive (imo) stuff, not so much.

but as i tried to indicate in the list, it all depends...

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Citizen Of Earth's picture

@Lookout
thanks to its billionaire owner. Now Shilling for the oligarchs. Caitlin Johnstone piece is convincing.

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Donnie The #ShitHole Douchebag. Fake Friend to the Working Class. Real Asshole.

Amanda Matthews's picture

Barry Dilller’s The Daily Beast

Hollywood's High-Dollar "Hillblazers": 10 Biggest Donors to Clinton's Campaign

8. $816K — Barry Diller ($427K) and Diane von Furstenberg ($389K)

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/hollywoods-high-dollar-hillblazer...

And guess who’s on the parent company’s (IAC) Board.of Directors

IAC’s family of websites is one of the largest in the world, comprised of more than 150 brands and products.
LeadershipLEADERSHIPBOARD OF DIRECTORS CHELSEA CLINTON
Chelsea Clinton
Director

http://iac.com/about/leadership/board-directors/chelsea-clinton

And the head honcho at IAC?

http://iac.com/about/leadership

Barry Diller
Chairman & Senior Executive

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I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa

wendy davis's picture

@Amanda Matthews

i'd known about miz chelsea bein' on the Beast's board, but not about diller as a major 'hillblazer'; what a term! bless your ♥, amanda mathews. and of course clinton is a sociopathic sadist (whoever'd said it); sorry micha and cora.

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wendy davis's picture

@Amanda Matthews

miz chelsea's quite the brand herownelf, isn't she? lord luv a duck.

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Amanda Matthews's picture

@wendy davis

exactly who’s behind most of the places that I ‘visit’. Particularly the ones that I know are yanking my chain. In this case it paid off ‘bigly’.

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I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa

wendy davis's picture

@Amanda Matthews

rule of thumb to go by. which year will miz chelsea be runnin' for prez? 2020? she dinnae get that rhinoplasty fer nuttin', lol.

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k9disc's picture

read the ownership of large stocks, particularly media parent company stocks.

Wish I saved my searches...

Found it interesting that tracking down the parent company and looking at stock owners led me to 22million shares by Vanguard, 14M for Goldman Sachs... the first human on the list was way down the list at 11000 shares.

I saw this phenomena in a few places, throwing the very idea of influencing a BIG company at the stockholder level is a joke.

Take a look at GE for instance:
Vanguard - 209,684,769
Vanguard 500 Index Inv 150,937,375
Franklin Income A 105,000,000
SPDR® S&P 500 ETF 101,896,915
Vanguard Institutional Index I 86,421,844
VA CollegeAmerica Invmt Co of Amer 529E 67,760,201
Fidelity Spartan® 500 Index Inv 52,631,730
VA CollegeAmerica Inc Fund of Amer 529E 43,542,843
Vanguard Value Index Inv 44,766,013
VA CollegeAmerica Cap Inc Bldr 529E 38,275,950 12/31/2017
Vanguard Windsor™ II Inv 35,635,415
VA CollegeAmerica WA Mutual 529B 30,011,800
Industrial Select Sector SPDR® ETF 33,599,839

Wonder where the first human comes in... I think you get the picture.

Look at all the BIG companies and you'll see a very similar list of MASSIVE economic entities dominating the owners list. Makes a mockery of stakeholding and stockholding at the individual, affective level.
@Amanda Matthews

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“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ~ Sun Tzu

Big Al's picture

except those of us who pointed out Omidyar's ties before the Intercept even started. I've refused to read the Intercept since it began because it was clear from the beginning it was just another billionaire owned propaganda center. Always felt their, and Greenwald's, handling of the cables was fishy and haven't read Greenwald since.
Somehow I've made it this far without them.
I wonder what Glenn's net worth is about now?

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wendy davis's picture

@Big Al

at my.fdl it was tantamount to heresy to question 'pierre's' motives, GG's, and all three's obfuscations and dissembling. well, at the café for a time, as well. (these are approximations>) scahill: 'wot? you think we have to ask 'pierre' for permission to write on (whatever)?' GG: of course i wasn't curious enough to look into the source of 'pierre's' wealth. and no, he didn't own paypal when they blocked donations to wikileaks!' and the commentariat: 'but USAID and NED are helpful NGO's!' 'you should see what things 'pierre' supports at hawaiian civil beat! and he opposes GMOs!'

Pffffttt.

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Anja Geitz's picture

slithered their way around the throat of our "Fourth Estate" and choked it to death, what's next? Another coup d'état in some else's country? May they all suffer from an unfortunate accident of birth in their next lifetime. Preferably in the middle of one of those countries they ravaged in their previous life. I hear living in a favela can be very character building.

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There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier

wendy davis's picture

@Anja Geitz

duly elected leaders...everywhere, but most certainly the US is gunnin' to either use war by other means against VZ in hopes the military will oust him as rubio, reXXon, and trump have...'advised', but they all note that the military option is still on the table. and of course any of the mineral-rich nations in africa: AFRICOM saves nations from chaos!' (and create some, just in case).

the nuclear nations are a bit dicier, of course, aren't they, zoebear? but nah, not a favela just now...under the Imperium's friend temer. i know a lot of folks don't care for the zapatistas in chiapas, but i do. a true fledgling horizontal democracy. shucks, i ust looked to see if i'd made a category for Zapatismo at the café, but sadly not.

on edit: and the proxy wars in yemen and syria won't be over...until the fat lady sings, and mebbe not even then.

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wendy davis's picture

@Anja Geitz

this just came in via popular resistance from the black alliance for peace (ajamu baraka and allies):

“Friends,
The Black Alliance for Peace has received troubling news of an impending military assault on the sovereign nation of Venezuela by states and forces allied with the United States.

The objective is to remove the elected government of Venezuela and turn over the country to the right-wing oligarchy. This move is in line with the strategic objective of the last two U.S. administrations that identified Venezuela as a threat to U.S. national interests, which means the Venezuelan process is seen as a threat to the interest of the Euro-American colonial/capitalist project.

We are calling on folks to closely monitor this situation. We will provide as much information on this as possible. Please alert the forces you work with about the situation as you receive it from us or acquire it for yourself, and let’s assist in raising the level of awareness on this situation. We are all part of the “Americas” and as our BAP principles reflect, we stand in solidarity with the struggling peoples of the global South who are resisting U.S. imperialism.

The Coalition Against U.S. Foreign Military Bases—which BAP helped found—is organizing actions Feb. 16-23 for the 115th anniversary of the United States occupying Guantanamo. We demand the United States return Guantanamo to Cuba."

and i spied one copy/paste diary on the left sidebar at the café re: the zapatistas just for a taste...

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So where do you go for your "reliable" information?

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"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon

Amanda Matthews's picture

@dkmich

what this country is up to in the foreign press.

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I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa

wendy davis's picture

@dkmich

but i believe in some ways amanda matthews has it correct: foreign news, RT, for instance, hosts dissident journalists who can't get read in the MSM. and of course you have to check the sources they're quoting, as w/ their report in this OP. but for instance, they host 'putin apologist' prof stephen cohen, and i find his analyses valuable as all giddy-up.

consortium news before robert parry's stroke i also liked, although some serious analysts show up there still. again: buyer beware. the eliason fellow there and a few others were simply shills for profit, empire, or the D party (norman solomon, for instance). same for TRNN: great stuff, depending on the issue and interviewer/interviewee. i'm quite uninterested in 'saving the Ds' for instance (smile).

but here's a bit of a list, and as pepe escobar doesn't tweet (sometimes at asia times, sometime counterpunch, which is in general great for opinions, sometimes linked news), and always wsws.org for me, not that i agree with all journalists on all subjects, but they do have reporters around the world..

but as per wsws.org:

"Bezos has transformed his corporation into a semi-official organ of the US military-intelligence apparatus. Just this month, Amazon and the CIA announced the launching of a new “Secret Region” cloud system where the company will host data for the CIA, NSA, Defense Department, and other military-intelligence agencies.

A CIA spokesmen recently called the 2013 $600 million deal between Amazon and the government “the best decision we ever made.” Earlier in November, the Senate approved a $700 billion defense spending bill that included an “e-commerce portal” amendment guaranteeing that Amazon will supply the military-intelligence apparatus with computers, chairs and other office supplies.

The $100 billion man has wielded his wealth to curry tremendous influence in the halls of power. Amazon has spent over $9.6 million lobbying the federal government this year. Bezos has used the pages of the Washington Post, which he bought in 2013, to advance the Democratic Party’s agenda. The Post, under Bezos’ direction, has been a foremost advocate of the campaign against Russia, publishing in November 2016 the “PropOrNot” list, a false compilation of alleged “Russian propaganda” news agencies that included left-wing news web sites.", and so on. same is true for the NYT mouthpiece for the imperium, imo.

but i made a list of authors i usually like rather than the sites where they're published, if it helps. i especially like journalism that comes from the ground: eva bartlett (iirc, is that vanessa beeley?)) in gaza, andre vltckek roaming reporter for half of forever,
jonathan cook writes from nazareth...

anyhoo:

https://twitter.com/johnpilger
https://twitter.com/EvaKBartlett
https://twitter.com/VanessaBeeley
https://twitter.com/JournalNEO
https://twitter.com/Jonathan_K_Cook
https://twitter.com/teleSURenglish
https://twitter.com/AbbyMartin
https://twitter.com/AndreVltchek
https://twitter.com/blkagendareport
https://twitter.com/MoonofA (including the following):
‘Ludwig asks: "Is James Risen a CIA Mouthpiece?" It is hard to prove that he isn't one. So there ... https://ludwitt.wordpress.com/2018/02/17/is-james-risen-a-cia-mouthpiece...

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@wendy davis Thanks for the list.

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

wendy davis's picture

@on the cusp

you may or may not care for any of them, of course, but the list might act as a starting point to see if any fit with what you might find useful news and opinion. where NOT to read or at lest trust, is a whole 'nother discussion, isn't it?

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