30/06/2021 4 articles strategic-culture.org  6 min 🇬🇧 #191546

Key witness in Assange case admits to lies in indictment

The Weird, Creepy Media Blackout on Recent Assange Revelations

🇫🇷

By Caitlin JOHNSTONE

As of this writing, it has been three days since the Icelandic newspaper Stundin  broke the story that a key witness in the US government's case against Julian Assange had fabricated allegations against the WikiLeaks founder. And yet, somehow, Assange is still in prison.

Weirder still, not one major western media outlet outside of Iceland has reported on this massive and entirely legitimate news story. A search brings up coverage by  Icelandic media, by  Russian media, and by smaller western outlets like  Democracy Now,  World Socialist Website,  Consortium News,  Zero Hedge and some others, but as of this writing this story has been completely ignored by all major outlets who are ostensibly responsible for informing the public in the western world.

It's not that those outlets have been ignoring Assange altogether these last few days either. Reuters recently  published an interview with Assange's fiance Stella Moris. Evening Standard has  a recent article out on Assange's plans to marry Moris in Belmarsh,  as does Deutsche Welle. It's just this one story in particular that they've been blacking out completely.

I don't think one US or UK newspaper has reported this. The free press is incredible.

BREAKING: Lead witness in US case against Julian Assange admits to fabricating evidence against him in exchange for a deal with the FBI #Assange
Key witness in Assange case admits to lies in indictment
A major witness in the United States’ Department of Justice case against Julian Assange has admitted to fabricating key accusations in the indictment against the Wikileaks founder. The witness, who has a documented history with sociopathy and has received several convictions for sexual abuse of minors and wide-ranging financial fraud, made the admission in a newly published interview in Stundin wh...
 voir

And it's not that the mainstream press are unaware of this story. Mainstream western reporters spend a lot of time on Twitter, and Assange's name was  trending in the United States after the Stundin story broke. Tweets about the article by high-profile accounts like  WikiLeaks and  Edward Snowden have many thousands of shares each. They've all seen the article. They all know it's newsworthy. They're just choosing not to report on it.

It reminds me of the  blanket media blackout that occurred while the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons was  hemorrhaging leaks revealing a US government-tied coverup in the alleged chlorine gas incident in Douma, Syria. Immensely newsworthy stories were breaking every few days on a major international scandal, yet not a peep was made about it by the mainstream press.

We got some insight into what happens in mainstream newsrooms during such bizarre circumstances when journalist Tareq Haddad  leaked the emails from his editors at Newsweek refusing him permission to write about the unfolding OPCW scandal. Haddad's pitch was rejected by editor Dimi Reider on the basis that other bigger outlets hadn't written about it.

"Leak has been out since weekend," Reider wrote. "It's certainly no scoop. Yet despite the days that passed, not a single respected media outlet - many of whom boast far greater regional expertise, resources on the ground and in newsroom than Newsweek does - have taken the leak remotely seriously. Which already yesterday made my wonder how we could or why we should."

Reider was supported by Newsweek's digital director Laura Davis, who told Haddad his pitch was being rejected because "the leak found zero to no traction among publications which are highly resourced and experienced on Syria."

And that's just pretty darn convenient for the powerful, is it not? Assuming other mainstream news outlets feel the same, this means they're all generally following the lead of just a handful of top-tier publications like The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and The Guardian. If just those few outlets decide to ignore a major news story that's inconvenient for the powerful (either by persuasion, infiltration or by their own initiative), then no one else will either. As far as the media-consuming public is concerned, it's like the major news story never happened at all.

And that's really, really creepy.

As far as we can tell from searches, not a single 'mainstream' UK newspaper has covered this major development in the #Assange case. Nor has BBC News.
The discipline, or blindness, to ignore awkward facts is a reliable feature of corporate 'journalism'.
Key Witness in US Case Against Assange Changes His Story
An FBI informant on Julian Assange upon whose information the U.S. based a key part of its computer intrusion charge against Assange has now admitted that he lied.
By Joe Lauria
Special to Consortium News

An FBI informant upon whose information the United States based aspects of an indictment against imprisoned WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange has now admitted that he fabricated the evidence. 
...

 voir

Western mass media outlets are propaganda . They are owned and controlled by wealthy people in  coordination with the secretive government agencies tasked with preserving the world order upon which the media-owning plutocrats have built their kingdoms, and their purpose is to manipulate the way the mainstream public thinks, acts and votes into alignment with the agendas of the ruling class.

You see this propaganda in the way things are reported, but you also see it in the way things are not reported. Entire news stories can be completely redacted from mainstream attention if they are sufficiently inconvenient for the mechanisms of empire, or only allowed in via platforms like Tucker Carlson Tonight and thereby tainted and  spun as ridiculous right-wing conspiracy theories.

If newsworthiness and significance were what governed mainstream news media reporting, instead of the agendas of profit and power, we'd constantly be hearing about the people dying in Yemen and the brutal income inequality in the United States. And the fact that the most powerful government in the world is  persecuting a journalist for telling the truth would be at the forefront of everyone's awareness, instead of the  mountain of smears they have heaped upon Julian Assange.

I worry sometimes, who will explain this stuff with this level of detail, if they put me in jail?
Worth noting that the Thordarson saga has never been reported by mainstream media outside Iceland.
FBI Fabrication Against Assange Falls Apart - Craig Murray
On the final day of the Assange extradition hearing, magistrate Vanessa Baraitser refused to accept an affidavit from Assange's solicitor Gareth Peirce, on the grounds it was out of time. The affidavi
 voir

I sometimes get people telling me that some news stories are meant to "distract" us from other, bigger news stories, like this is something the imperial narrative managers do especially on some occasions but not all the time. In reality, distraction is never not happening, because every single day the plutocratic media pull people's attention away from the pressing issues of the moment like ecocide, poverty, oppression and mass military slaughter to get them talking about Cardi B's baby bump and Marjorie Taylor Greene's latest doofy publicity stunt.

We are being lied to. Constantly, and in more ways than we realize. By omission, by distortion, by half-truths and by outright deception. Our minds are being actively messed with by powerful people with limitless resources to ensure their continued domination of the planet at any cost. Our very perception of reality is being assaulted on myriad fronts. Until humanity finds a way to wake itself up from its propaganda-induced coma, the abuses of the powerful will continue.

 caityjohnstone.medium.com

 strategic-culture.org

 Commenter

Articles enfants plus récents en premier
09/07/2021 strategic-culture.org  5 min 🇬🇧 #191925

The Weird, Creepy Media Blackout on Recent Assange Revelations

The Assange Case Isn't About National Security, It's About Narrative Control

By Caitlin JOHNSTONE

Julian Assange once said, "The overwhelming majority of information is classified to protect political security, not national security."

As someone whose life's work before his imprisonment was combing through documents of an often classified nature, he'd have been in a prime position to know. He'd have seen time and time again how a nation's citizenry are not under the slightest threat from the secret information in the documents that had been leaked to him from around the world, but that it could damage the reputation of a politician or a government or its military.

03/07/2021 strategic-culture.org  6 min 🇬🇧 #191656

The Weird, Creepy Media Blackout on Recent Assange Revelations

Key Witness Admits Lying About Julian Assange, a Major Blow to Us. Extradition Case, Yet Western Media Ignores This Development

Ron Ridenour

Former WikiLeaks volunteer, who became an FBI informant for $5,000, says he fabricated important parts of the accusations in the U.S. indictment.

Conclusive evidence: Julian Assange committed no crime of hacking or seeking access to telephone recordings of Icelandic MPs. This revelation comes from the witness who lied about that, in order to please the United States prosecution against the publisher in the extradition trial, in London, last summer.

02/07/2021 medialens.org  14 min 🇬🇧 #191612

The Weird, Creepy Media Blackout on Recent Assange Revelations

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

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.