Tag: julian assange

Glenn Greenwald Exposes Deep State Effort To Stop Trump Pardoning Edward Snowden And Julian Assange

The reason Trump failed to issue a pardon for either Snowden or Assange centers on the deep state trying to protect itself by placing Trump in jeopardy, suggested Greenwald last week in an episode of his System Update show.

In a written introduction for the episode, Greenwald notes that Trump, while president, had both “raised the possibility that he might pardon Snowden” and was “actively considering a pardon for Assange.”

Greenwald, in the introduction, zeros in on a recent interview of Trump by Candace Owens. In the interview, Trump stated he came “very close” to pardoning one of them but did not ultimately do so. Why? Trump said the reason was because Trump “was too nice” to issue the pardon.

Greenwald isn’t buying that explanation. He writes:

The question that obviously emerges from that answer: too nice to whom? To the U.S. security services — the CIA, NSA and FBI — which had spent four years doing everything possible to sabotage and undermine Trump and his presidency with their concoction of Russiagate and other leaks of false accusations to their corporate media allies? Too nice to the war-mongering servants of the military-industrial complex in the establishment wings of both parties who were the allies of those security services in attempting to derail Trump’s America First foreign policy agenda? Too nice to John Brennan, James Clapper and Susan Rice, the Obama-era security officials most eager to see both Assange and Snowden rot in prison for life because they exposed Obama’s spying crimes and the Democrats’ corruption in 2016? Trump’s “I’m too nice” explanation is, shall we say, less than persuasive.

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NBC News Uses Ex-FBI Official Frank Figliuzzi to Urge Assange’s Extradition, Hiding His Key Role

Two of the television outlets on which American liberals rely most for their news — NBC News and CNN — have spent the last six years hiring a virtual army of former CIA operatives, FBI officials, NSA spies, Pentagon chiefs, and DOJ prosecutors to work in their newsrooms. The multiple ways in which journalism is fundamentally corrupted by this spectacle are all vividly illustrated by a new article from NBC News that urges the prosecution and extradition of Julian Assange, claiming that the WikiLeaks founder, once on U.S. soil, will finally provide the long-elusive proof that Trump criminally conspired with Russia.

The NBC article is written by former FBI Assistant Director and current NBC News employee Frank Figliuzzi, who played a central role during the Obama years in the FBI’s attempt to investigate and criminalize Assange: a rather relevant fact concealed by NBC when publishing this. But this is how U.S. security state agents now directly control corporate news outlets.

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The Assange Case Explained Simply

One of the most common reasons I hear from people on their reluctance to wade into the Assange debate is that they don’t understand it. It looks like a complicated issue to them, so they leave it to the experts.

In reality, the complexity of this case is a complete illusion. It’s very, very simple. It only looks complicated because many years of media distortion have made it appear so.

The US government is trying to extradite a journalist and prosecute him under the Espionage Act for exposing its war crimes, with the long-term goal of normalizing this practice.

That’s it. That’s the whole entire thing. So simple you can sum it up in a single sentence. In a single breath. The most powerful government on earth setting a legal precedent which would allow it to extradite any journalist anywhere in the world for exposing its malfeasance would unquestionably have a massive chilling effect on journalism everywhere in precisely the area where press scrutiny is most sorely needed. It’s not any more complex or nuanced than that.

The Assange issue is simple. What makes it seem complicated is the lies people have been fed by the media class whose job is to manipulate the public into consenting to the agendas of the US power alliance and its war machine.

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The Real Disinformation Agents: Watch as NBC News Tells Four Blatant Lies in a Two-Minute Clip

The war on “disinformation” is now one of the highest priorities of the political and media establishment. It has become the foundational justification for imposing a regime of online censorship. Around the world, new laws are being enacted in its name to empower the state to regulate discourse. Exploiting this cause, a small handful of billionaires are working in unison with Western security state agencies — under the guise of neutral-sounding names like The Atlantic Council — to set the limits of permissible thought and decree what is true and false. Corporate media outlets are attempting to rehabilitate their shattered image by depicting themselves as the bulwark against the rising tide of disinformation.

It is an understatement to say that this righteous cause is a scam. That its motive is power and control over speech and thought — to eliminate dissent and discredit competition — rather than a noble quest for truth is almost too self-evident to require explanation. No human institutions should be trusted with the inherently tyrannical power they seek to arrogate unto themselves: to decree truth and falsity with such authoritative power that views they have decreed “false” become prohibited, off-limits, even worthy of punishment.

A foundational view of the Enlightenment was that truth and falsity are best discovered by humans engaging in free inquiry and appealing to reason and persuasion, rather than being captive to the whimsical decrees of centralized authority dictating to citizens what they are and are not permitted to believe. That is why I believe, as I wrote at length in a 2013 Guardian article, that at the heart of every censor lies hubris: the belief that they are so evolved, enlightened and superior that they have risen above the eternal human propensity to err, enabling them to ascertain universal truth whose validity is so unassailable that nobody should be permitted to question it let alone dissent from it.

All that said, there is a core truth — an unintentional one — that lies at the crux of this elite war on “disinformation.” It is absolutely true that U.S. political discourse is drowning in deliberate disinformation campaigns and lies. It is also true that this disinformation epidemic is a serious menace, a toxic plague on our democracy and society. That part they have right.

Where they have gone wrong — very, very wrong — is how they have identified the most harmful sources of this disinformation. It does not emanate primarily from Trump boomers on Facebook or dark web QAnon groups or mischievous and transgressive teenagers on 4Chan. Ordinary citizens are obviously as capable as anyone of believing and spreading false assertions. But the far more damaging, destructive, organized and coordinated disinformation campaigns come from major corporate media outlets themselves and their security-state partners — particularly the corporate outlets that most vocally and flamboyantly claim to be so profoundly concerned about disinformation that they want to censor the internet in the name of stopping it. They are the ones who spent the last five years flooding the country with demented CIA-constructed conspiracies about a Kremlin takeover of the U.S. using clandestine sexual blackmail over the president and hallucinating Russian agents hiding under every bed; so many fabrications were disseminated under the rubric of that fairy tale that it is genuinely hard to choose the worst.

Arguably the most pernicious and prolific disseminator of organized disinformation campaigns is NBC News, which includes its cable unit MSNBC. We have spent the last several months working on a mini-documentary demonstrating how most of the coordinated lies from the U.S. security state were spread by a tiny handful of pundits, three of whom — Rachel Maddow, all-but-official CIA spokesman Ken Dilanian, and former Bush/Cheney spokesperson Nicolle Wallace — work for NBC News. That report will be published shortly.

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Julian Assange Suffers From Stroke While Fighting Extradition in Brutal Belmarsh Prison

Wikileaks publisher and journalist Julian Assange has suffered from a stroke while incarcerated in Britain’s notorious HMP Belmarsh prison, according to his fiancé, Stella Moris. Moris revealed that Assange had suffered the stroke on Friday night, with the event in question occurring around a video court appearance in October.

Moris fears for Assange’s health as legal proceedings involving his extradition continue, with the United States government winning a case to extradite him on appeal in the British legal system this week.

“Julian is struggling and I fear this mini-stroke could be the precursor to a more major attack. It compounds our fears about his ability to survive the longer this long legal battle goes on.” The mini-stroke has left Assange with a drooping left eye, memory problems, and signs of neurological damage.

“It urgently needs to be resolved. Look at animals trapped in cages in a zoo. It cuts their life short. That’s what’s happening to Julian. The never-ending court cases are extremely stressful mentally.”

Years of incarceration without any criminal conviction have taken a toll on Mr. Assange’s health, with the WIkileaks publisher concerned that he may die unless he’s released from the notorious Belmarsh prison.

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