BBC correspondent exposes ‘collapse of journalistic norms’ after 7 Oct
BBC presenters interviewing Israeli guests consistently failed to interject when unverified claims were made on air following the events of 7 October
News Desk. 22 July 24 https://thecradle.co/articles-id/26046
Leaked emails published by Jadaliyya on 18 July reveal grievances expressed by BBC staff over the UK broadcaster’s coverage of Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza since 7 October.
In a 1 May email, BBC correspondent in Beirut, Rami Ruhayem, wrote to the broadcaster’s Director General Tim Davie and several other departments of its news staff, detailing “evidence of a collapse in the application of basic standards and norms of journalism that seems aligned with Israel’s propaganda strategy.”
He highlights that BBC staff did not respond to “a mass of evidence-based critique of coverage” on 7 October and the days that followed.
“Instead of putting together mechanisms for a thorough examination of output, and for inclusive, respectful, and professional discussions guided by [BBC] standards and values, it appears management has opted to oversee a continuation of the editorial direction the BBC has taken since October,” Ruhayem’s email added. JUL 22, 2024
Jadaliyya has also obtained the content of all of Ruhayem’s email attachments. In the first attachment, the BBC correspondent analyzes interviews with Israeli guests on the British news channel between 10 October and 25 October.
In the second, he analyzes BBC content relating to Hamas’ Operation Al-Aqsa Flood.
“This paper is not about what happened on that day and the days that followed; rather, it is an inquiry into whether – and to what extent – the BBC applied, misapplied or simply cast aside journalistic standards in treating various claims about what happened on that day. I’ve found a sustained collapse in some of the most basic standards and values, one which seems to complement Israel’s propaganda purposes and strategy,” Ruhayem wrote.
“From the start, it was evident that unverified claims of the most atrocious acts by Hamas fighters against Israelis were being circulated and repeated at the highest levels. Even though it was not possible to rule them out, especially at an early stage, a set of basic measures should’ve been initiated; one of them would’ve been to make sure presenters inquire about evidence when such claims are made on air and clarify that the BBC had not verified them,” he added.
He then gives examples of such claims, including the claim that a Hamas fighter cut open the stomach of a pregnant Israeli woman and killed the fetus after pulling it out. Ruhayem highlights that this claim was made at least twice during BBC interviews without interjection from the presenters.
Ruhayem then discusses the claim made in a number of interviews that Hamas fighters “went street to street,” shooting babies, raping girls, beheading, and burning people alive.
“A few basic questions could’ve shed some light on these claims, and helped other teams put together a comprehensive picture of verified atrocities to inform audiences. But in all of the examples above and more, no such questions were asked, and the allegations passed with no comment, clarification, or interjection of any sort.”
Comment: Whereas they were, unsurprisingly, quick and consistent in applying these standards to anti-genocide representatives.
“Once again, the BBC was implying to its audiences that it had verified all these claims, although in these cases, it wasn’t clear what – exactly – it had supposedly verified,” he added.
Since Operation Al-Aqsa Flood and the start of the Israeli genocide in Gaza, claims of atrocities committed by the Palestinian resistance have yet to be verified.
Comment: They haven’t been verified, and investigations into them reveal that this is likely because they did not happen.
Israel’s Haaretz newspaper confirmed earlier this month that the Israeli army ordered troops to kill their own soldiers and civilians on 7 October, turning the Gaza border into an “extermination zone” under the Hannibal Directive.
This had been reported extensively prior to the Haaretz report and has cast significant doubt over claims that Hamas fighters carried out mass killing and mass destruction on 7 October.
Stories of the mass rapes allegedly committed by the Palestinian resistance also remain unproven, including by Israeli police, who were unable to verify accounts of sexual assault committed by Palestinian fighters that day, according to a Haaretz report in January.
New Book. The Scientists Who Alerted us to Radiation’s Dangers
March 29, 2024, https://www.ianfairlie.org/news/new-book-on-radiation-whistleblowers/
“The Scientists Who Alerted us to Radiation’s Dangers”, now published, contains the biographies of 23 radiation scientists who blew the whistle on radiation risks but were victimised by their governments and their nuclear establishments for doing so. Most of these scientists are no longer with us.
Recent epidemiology evidence clearly shows that the denials and obfuscations on radiation risks by successive governments and their nuclear establishment in the past on both sides of the Atlantic were and are wrong and the maligned scientists were right. Radiation is considerably more dangerous than official reports indicate, both in terms of the numerical magnitudes of cancer risks, but also in terms of the new types of diseases, apart from cancer, now shown to be radiogenic.
Written by a former UK government scientist Dr Ian Fairlie and a US anti-nuclear campaigner, Cindy Folkers, the book preserves the memories of the radiation scientists over the previous half-century or so, mostly from the US and UK.
They portray another 15 more recent radiation scientists who have followed in their footsteps but have managed to avoid being victimised. The book also lists over 150 activists in North America, Japan and Europe who have raised their voices against radiation risks and exposures over the past 30 to 40 years.
Radiation and radioactivity and their current risks are explained in easy-to-understand terms. All scientific statements are backed by evidence via hundreds of references, 14 Appendices, 6 Annexes, a glossary and an extensive bibliography.
This is an up-to-date reference book for all academics on the dangers and risks of radiation and radioactivity. The book also serves to help journalists and students counter the misrepresentations, incorrect assertions, wrong assumptions, and untruths about radiation risks often disseminated by the nuclear (power and weapons) establishments on both sides of the Atlantic.
With Media Enamored by US Presidential Race, Israeli Massacres in Gaza Get Even Deadlier
“We must not lose sight of what is happening in Gaza, where an unprecedented humanitarian crisis continues to get even worse,” said U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders.
By Jake Johnson / Common Dreams, https://www.commondreams.org/news/israel-gaza-massacres, 16 July 24
Israeli forces have massacred nearly 60 people in the Gaza Strip over just the past 24 hours, and the past week has been one of the deadliest since the war began more than nine months ago.
But you’d hardly know it by looking at the front pages of major newspapers in the United States, despite U.S. President Joe Biden fueling Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s assault with diplomatic support and billions of dollars worth of weaponry.
While outlets such as Al Jazeera and Reuters have kept Israel’s onslaught at or near the top of their pages, coverage of the relentless war on the Palestinian enclave has largely been supplanted in the U.S. by presidential politics, particularly in the wake of the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump on Saturday—the same day Israeli forces killed around 100 people in an attack on a southern Gaza town that was previously designated a “safe zone,” as Common Dreamsreported.
Fresh Israeli airstrikes across Gaza on Tuesday killed dozens of people—including children—but the massacres didn’t receive mention on the front pages of the web versions of The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, or USA Today, each of which heavily featured coverage of the high-stakes U.S. presidential contest between two candidates who have backed Israel’s war on Gaza.
As of Tuesday morning, Gaza was entirely absent from the website landing pages of the Journal and USA Today. The Post‘s home page buried a story about the potential for an all-out war between Israel and Hezbollah, while the Times‘ home page contained a piece about surging settler violence in the West Bank amid Israel’s ongoing atrocities in Gaza.
In recent weeks, U.S. corporate media coverage of developments in Gaza has not reflected the extent to which Israel has intensified its aerial and ground attacks, even as recent cease-fire talks have sparked some hope of a pause.
After a 20-year-old gunman attempted to assassinate Trump at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday, pictures of the former president’s bloodied ear and raised fist were plastered across the front pages of major newspapers in the U.S. and around the world while the far more numerous images of child victims of Israeli bombs—many of them supplied by the United States—faded from view.
Israel does not allow journalists with major U.S.-based media outlets to enter the Gaza Strip unless they are embedded with Israeli forces and agree to let the military vet their coverage.
Al Jazeera, a Qatari-funded outlet that Israel’s far-right government has repeatedly targeted, reported Monday that “Israeli forces have attacked five separate schools in Gaza in just eight days, killing dozens of people sheltering in them.”
One attack on Sunday, the outlet noted, “struck the United Nations-run Abu Oreiban school in the Nuseirat refugee camp, killing at least 17 people and injuring about 80. Most of the victims were women and children, said Palestinian Civil Defense.”
Reporting from the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah, Al Jazeera‘s Hani Mahmoud said he witnessed children “crying out in pain and agony” at the facility, which—like all of Gaza’s remaining hospitals—is under-resourced and only partially functioning.
“This is the result of incinerating bombs,” Mahmoud added.
The death toll from Israel’s war on Gaza is nearing 40,000—likely a dramatic undercount, given how many bodies are missing under the rubble that now dominates the landscape of the enclave and could take 15 years to clear.
Those who have survived Israel’s onslaught are now living amid sewage, decomposing bodies, and the ruins of their homes, shops, schools, and hospitals, with nowhere safe to flee. Famine and disease are spreading rapidly across the territory as the Israeli government continues to restrict the flow of humanitarian aid.
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who has urged the Biden administration to cut off all offensive weapons assistance to Israel, said in a statement late last week that “while much of the media is focused on the drama of the U.S. presidential election, we must not lose sight of what is happening in Gaza, where an unprecedented humanitarian crisis continues to get even worse.”
“We must end our support for Netanyahu’s war,” said Sanders. “Not another nickel to make this horrific situation even worse. I intend to do everything I can to block further arms transfers to Israel, including through joint resolutions of disapproval of any arms sales. The United States must not help a right-wing extremist and war criminal continue this atrocity.”
For 75 Years, NATO Has Been Terrorizing the Globe
Ukraine Breathes New Life into NATO
Most recently, NATO has performed its familiar war-mongering role in Ukraine, where it has trained Ukrainian troops, including members of the neo-Nazi-led Azov Battalion.
The latter began attacking the people of eastern Ukraine after the 2014 U.S.-backed coup that triggered the devastating ongoing conflict.
This conflict was provoked in part by U.S. efforts to extend NATO membership to Ukraine, which CIA Director William Burns had warned was a red line that should not be crossed.[14]
In late March 2022, thanks to peace talks mediated by Turkey, Russia was ready to withdraw from all the territory it had captured if Ukraine agreed to give up any commitment to join NATO or allow NATO military bases or missiles to be stationed on its territory.
The deal was scuttled when British Prime Minister Boris Johnson flew to Kyiv to tell Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Zelensky that the “collective West” would not support it.
By Jeremy Kuzmarov, July 13, 2024, https://covertactionmagazine.com/2024/07/13/for-75-years-nato-has-been-terrorizing-the-globe/
Will a formidable peace movement ever emerge that can succeed in stopping it?
This past week, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) celebrated its 75th anniversary by hosting a summit in Washington, D.C., where its founding treaty was signed.
A declaration issued at the summit made clear NATO’s intent to continuously confront Russia in Ukraine, and to further expand its operations in Southeast Asia and the Middle East.[1]
The Biden administration announced that: a) they are going to start stationing long-range nuclear and other missiles (including hypersonic missiles, that the U.S. doesn’t even have yet) in Germany, within easy striking-distance of Moscow; b) nuclear-capable F-16 fighter jets will be arriving in Ukraine any day now, and will go into service “during the summer”; and that c) Ukraine is on an “irreversible path” to join NATO.
A commemorative documentary featured now on NATO’s website celebrates NATO’s role in facilitating the Western victory in the Cold War and in allegedly ending ethnic cleansing and genocide in the Balkans in the 1990s, curtailing terrorism from Afghanistan after 9/11, and helping to protect the world from Russian aggression.
NATO’s formation in April 1949 is depicted as being vital in preventing the U.S. from having fallen into dreaded isolationism as it had after World War I, and in protecting European security in the face of the Soviet threat.
Colonel Richard Williams, Deputy Director of NATO’s Defense Investment Division, 1997-2011, states that “NATO is the only organization that offers hope that peace can become a real possibility.”
George Orwell would surely be proud of these latter comments in light of NATO’s long record of war-making. The true, venal history is exposed in a short book by peace activists Medea Benjamin and David Swanson, NATO: What You Need to Know, whose publication was timed to encourage protests at the 75th NATO anniversary summit.
Danger to World Peace
In the preface, Columbia University Professor Jeffrey Sachs wrote that “NATO is a clear and present danger to world peace, a war machine run amok that operates beyond the democratic control of the citizenry of the NATO countries.” Sachs continued: “The war machine lines the pockets of the arms contractors at the core of NATO, U.S. companies like Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman and Europe’s arms manufacturers…NATO also sucks one nation after another into the vortex of war, instability, displacement, and poverty. During the past 30 years, NATO has fomented a vast arc of violence stretching from Libya to Afghanistan and with many victims in between.”[2]
Benjamin and Swanson emphasize in their introduction that NATO has repeatedly violated the UN Charter outlawing military aggression and the UN’s 1970 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons because of the placement of U.S. nuclear weapons in five European NATO nations.
NATO’s formation in 1949 as a military defense alliance against the Soviet Union was predicated on rampant propaganda that grossly exaggerated the Soviet threat, and on the ouster of peace-oriented politicians such as Henry Wallace, Franklin Roosevelt’s Vice President.
Wallace had proposed a continuation of Roosevelt’s policy of cooperation with the Soviets and was consequently removed in a coup d’état at the Democratic Party convention in Chicago in 1944 and then fired by Harry S. Truman as Commerce Secretary.
Under the direction of Truman’s advisers, including Joe Biden’s political mentor W. Averell Harriman, NATO established private clandestine armies among fascist elements throughout Western Europe who carried out black-flag terrorist activities as part of a strategy to inculcate fear in local populations and to discredit the political left.
In Italy, NATO operatives bombed a Bologna rail station and then planted evidence in the home of a left-wing journalist to make it look like he was the culprit.[3]
Rather than supporting democracy in Western Europe, NATO has a record of empowering reactionary forces. After World War II, it helped destroy popular movements of the left that had led the fight against fascism and were intent on redistributing wealth.
Greece was accepted as a NATO member only after its “ruthless Western-backed government killed or jailed the last of the partisans who had liberated it from the Nazis.”[4]
Turkey’s membership in NATO gave NATO military control of the Bosporus Strait—the only navigational waterway between the Mediterranean and Black Seas and a choke point for the Soviet ports of Odessa and Sevastapol.[5]
Within a decade of joining the Alliance, both Turkey and Greece were toppled in right-wing coups, which did not affect NATO membership. NATO further accepted Portugal as a member when it was ruled by a fascist dictator, Antonio Salazar, who provided the U.S. with a military base in the Azores.
NATO backed Portugal’s brutal suppression of anti-colonial movements in its African colonies (i.e., Angola and Mozambique), supported France’s colonial war in Algeria and the U.S. aggression in Korea, which resulted in the killing of 20% of North Korea’s population.
At an Asian-African conference in Bandung in 1955, Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru called NATO “the most powerful protector of colonialism” and said that Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia “would probably have been independent if it had not been for NATO.”[6]
Upholding Unipolar U.S. Power
The U.S. has long been a driving force behind NATO because NATO “provides a vehicle for imposing U.S. leadership over Western nations,” according to Benjamin and Swanson. It has “tied Europe to U.S. military, geopolitical, and economic interests, made Europeans dependent on U.S. military power, and helped fortify U.S. global economic interests.”[7]
After the end of the Cold War, U.S. weapons companies helped lobby for NATO’s expansion. A lobby group called U.S. Committee to Expand NATO was run by the Vice President of Lockheed Martin.[8]
The father of the Cold War containment strategy, George F. Kennan, warned that NATO expansion in the 1990s would be a disastrous folly that would antagonize the Russians and trigger a new Cold War, but to no avail.
Beholden in part to the Polish-American and other Eastern European lobbies alongside the weapons lobbyists, the Clinton administration expanded NATO to three Eastern European countries (Poland, Hungary and Czech Republic)—in violation of a pledge made by the George H.W. Bush administration to the Russians that NATO would not be expanded “one inch to the East.”
George W. Bush followed Clinton by expanding NATO to seven additional countries—Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia. Later, NATO was expanded to Montenegro and to Sweden and Finland.
Sowing Methodical Devastation
In 1994, NATO launched its first-ever combat operations in Bosnia, conducting hundreds of air strikes, which contributed to the dismemberment of the former Yugoslavia and transformed Bosnia into what Swanson and Benjamin call a “dysfunctional ward of NATO and the West.”[9]
In 1999, NATO carried out an illegal bombing campaign that dropped 23,000 bombs on Serbia, which killed thousands of civilians. This was followed by the U.S.-NATO invasion and occupation of the Serbian province of Kosovo, resulting in the empowerment of the terrorist Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), which established Kosovo as a mafia state.
As a spoil of victory, the U.S. acquired the 955-acre Camp Bondsteel in southeastern Kosovo, which became a secret CIA black site for illegal detention and torture. (Europe’s Human Rights Commissioner Álvaro Gil-Robles called Camp Bondsteel a “smaller version of Guantanamo.”[10])
NATO caused more mayhem and bloodshed in the catastrophic 20-year military occupation of Afghanistan. During that time, U.S. and NATO forces dropped 85,000 bombs and missiles and conducted tens of thousands of “kill or capture” night raids, largely targeting innocent civilians, in a futile attempt to destroy the Taliban.
In Iraq, NATO soldiers from Canada, Hungary, Italy, Norway and the Netherlands trained senior military officers who carried out massive human rights crimes in sustaining the illegal U.S. military occupation.[11]
NATO played a further instrumental role in the 2011 regime-change operation targeting Libyan ruler Muammar Gaddafi who had given Libya the fifth-highest GDP per capita in Africa and the highest human development rating there.
Before the start of bombing operations, NATO secretly deployed CIA officers and British, French, Canadian and Qatari Special Forces to organize and lead Libyan jihadist forces intent on toppling the secular nationalist Qaddafi.[12]
NATO took full command of all aspects of the Libyan air war, with warships from 12 NATO countries sent to enforce a critical naval blockade.
Benjamin and Swanson wrote that, “after taking the capital, Tripoli, NATO and its allies cut off food, water, and electricity to the people of Sirte and Bani Walid as they bombarded them for weeks. The combination of aerial, naval, and artillery bombardment, starvation and rebel atrocities on these civilian populations made a final, savage mockery of the UN Security Council’s mandate to protect civilians.”[13]
Ukraine Breathes New Life into NATO
Most recently, NATO has performed its familiar war-mongering role in Ukraine, where it has trained Ukrainian troops, including members of the neo-Nazi-led Azov Battalion.
The latter began attacking the people of eastern Ukraine after the 2014 U.S.-backed coup that triggered the devastating ongoing conflict.
This conflict was provoked in part by U.S. efforts to extend NATO membership to Ukraine, which CIA Director William Burns had warned was a red line that should not be crossed.[14]
In late March 2022, thanks to peace talks mediated by Turkey, Russia was ready to withdraw from all the territory it had captured if Ukraine agreed to give up any commitment to join NATO or allow NATO military bases or missiles to be stationed on its territory. The deal was scuttled when British Prime Minister Boris Johnson flew to Kyiv to tell Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Zelensky that the “collective West” would not support it.
This ensured that the war would go on—at the cost of the flower of Ukraine’s youth who have been sacrificed in another unwinnable war.
Hope for the Future?
NATO’s dubious role in triggering the ongoing bloodbath in Ukraine is sadly characteristic of a 75-year history of provoking warfare and terrorizing civilians—in the service of U.S. and Western global hegemony.
At the end of their book, Swanson and Benjamin note that people around the world increasingly see the U.S. as the greatest threat to world peace.
Americans themselves remain divided about NATO: 47% want to see the U.S. keep its current commitment, and 28% want to either decrease it or withdraw entirely.
In a reflection of the rising hawkishness of the Democratic Party base and its susceptibility to government propaganda, only 14% of Democrats want no or less participation in NATO compared to 42% of Republicans.[15]
These data, while potentially discouraging, do reflect the fact that a significant percentage of Americans—including many living in the conservative heartland—are weary of foreign military intervention and NATO and represent a significant potential organizing base.
Given the high percentage of support for NATO among liberal Democrats, an urgent task should be for peace activists to embark on a vigorous campaign of public education targeting liberals that focuses on NATO’s horrifying history.
Benjamin and Swanson’s book is a perfect resource for that campaign and should be widely distributed to better inform the U.S. public about the evil ways their tax dollars are being spent.
References…………………………
The Corporate News Media at Work
Oh dear. It seems that free WordPress blog sites now no longer permit me to put Youtube videos into my blogs.
As I run this website on no funding at all, I will now just have to supply the links to Youtube and other videos.
Jonathan Cook – New Media Talk – Festival of Whistleblowing, Dissent & Accountability – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOfLsj_qh4w&t=107s
JULY 14, 2024, By Jonathan Cook
Large numbers of Palestinians and Ukrainians were killed in missile strikes days apart, writes Jonathan Cook. The differing coverage of these comparable events is the clue to the media’s true function.
When all we have to rely on in understanding our relationship to the news media is the media’s self-proclaimed assessment of its own role, maybe it is no surprise that most of us assume the West’s “free press” is a force for good: the bedrock of democracy, the touchstone of a superior western civilisation.
The more idealistic among us think of the news media as something akin to a public service. The more cynical of us think of it as a competitive marketplace in information and commentary, one in which ugly agendas are often in evidence but truth ultimately prevails.
Both views are fanciful. The reality is far, far darker – and I speak as someone who worked for many years in The Guardian and Observer newsrooms, widely seen as the West’s most progressive newspapers.
As readers, we don’t, as we imagine, “consume” news. Rather, the news consumes us. Or put another way, the media uses the news to groom us, its audience. Properly understood, the relationship is one of abuser and abused.
Sounds like a paranoid conspiracy theory?
In fact, just such an argument was set out many years ago — in more academic fashion — in Noam Chomsky and Ed Herman’s book Manufacturing Consent.
If you have never heard of the book, there may be a reason. The media don’t want you reading it.
When I worked at The Guardian, there was no figure more reviled in the newsroom by senior editors than Noam Chomsky. As young journalists, we were warned off reading him. How might we react were we to start thinking more deeply about the role of the media, or begin testing the limits of what we were allowed to report and say?
Chomsky and Herman’s Propaganda Model explains in detail how Western publics are “brainwashed under freedom” by a media driven by hidden corporate and state interests. Those interests can be concealed only because the media decides what counts as news and frames how we understand events.
Its chief tools are misdirection and omission — and, in extremis, outright deception.
Tribal Camps
The Propaganda Model acknowledges that competition is permitted in the news media. But only of a narrow, superficial kind, meant to divide us more usefully into tribal, ideological camps – defined as the left and the right………………………………………………….
To survive, the Western power establishment has to engineer two related kinds of popular endorsement.
First, we must consent to the idea that the West has an inalienable right to control the Earth’s resources, even at the cost of committing terrible crimes both against the rest of humanity, such as the current genocide in Gaza, and against other species, as we wreck the natural world in our pursuit of impossible, endless economic growth on a finite planet.
And second, we must consent to the idea that the richest and most powerful elites in the West have an inalienable right to cream off most of the profits from this industrialised rape of our only home.
The media rarely identifies this wasteful, greed system, so normalised has it become. But when given a name, it is called capitalism. It emerges from the shadows only when the media need to confront and ridicule a bogeyman caricature of its main ideological rival, socialism.
Immersed in Propaganda
The news media have been fantastically successful at making a system of suicidal resource extraction designed to enrich a tiny number of billionaires seem entirely normal to their audiences.
Which is why those same billionaires are as keen to own the news media as they are to own politicians. In fact, gain ownership of the media, and you own the political class too. It is the ultimate two-for-one offer.
No politician can afford to take on key state-corporate interests, or the media that veils those interests — as Jeremy Corbyn soon found out in the U.K. a few years back……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
Different Narratives
But rarely do we have examples of propaganda so flagrant from our “free press” that it is hard for readers not to notice them. The state-corporate media just made my job a little easier.
Earlier this month, it reported on two closely comparable events that it framed in entirely different ways. Ways that all too clearly serve state-corporate interests.
The first such event was an Israeli air strike on July 6 on a school in Gaza, where Palestinian civilians, including children, had been sheltering from months of a rampaging Israeli military that has slaughtered many tens of thousands of Palestinians and destroyed most of the enclave’s homes and infrastructure……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
The pattern to this skewing of news priorities, the constant distorted framing of events is the clue to how we should decipher what the media is trying to achieve, what it is there to do.
BBC news coverage all too often looks like it is exploiting any opportunity to highlight violence by Russia, in strict accordance with British foreign policy objectives. Equally, it all too often looks like the BBC is engineering pretexts to ignore or downplay violence by Israel, again in strict accordance with British foreign policy objectives.
Ukraine is a key battleground for the West in its battle for global “full-spectrum dominance”, Washington’s central foreign policy strategy in which it positions itself so that no other great power, such as Russia and China, can challenge its control over the planet’s resources. The U.S. and its Western allies are ready to risk an entirely unnecessary nuclear war, it seems, to win that battle……………………………………………….
The truth is the BBC, The Guardian and the rest are nothing more than conduits of state-corporate propaganda, masquerading as news outlets.
Until we grasp that, they will continue grooming us. https://consortiumnews.com/2024/07/13/the-corporate-news-media-at-work/
NATO member to fight ‘pro-war propaganda’ – official
https://www.rt.com/news/600664-hungary-fight-war-propaganda/ 10 July 24
Budapest wants media financing. to be “transparent” as part of its “anti-war action plan,” said Gergely Gulyas
Hungary is set to introduce a new “anti-war action plan” which will include measures aimed at countering “war propaganda,” Gergely Gulyas, the head of the Hungarian Prime Minister’s Office, announced at a press conference on Monday.
Under the plan, any political forces or media outlets accused of promoting belligerent policies would be required to reveal their funding sources. The goal is “full transparency,” Gulyas said. The measure is primarily aimed at the media, the nation’s news outlets reported, noting that political parties in Hungary are already legally barred from receiving funds from abroad.
The government would also reserve the right to block any foreign funding and send the money back to whoever provided it, if it is used to bankroll “war propaganda,” Gulyas said.
The official provided few details as to how the government would decide what exactly constitutes “war propaganda.” He said that the Justice Ministry would develop a mechanism to determine whether a media outlet is involved in the practice.
When asked if “foreign funding” included money coming from within the EU, Gulyas said that the measure would be focused on financing coming from outside the bloc. He argued, however, that the EU itself is dominated by “war propaganda” focused on the ongoing conflict between Kiev and Moscow.
Gulyas said Budapest is facing “political, legal and financial blackmail” which aims to force it to join the ranks of Kiev’s Western war backers, but that it has so far resisted the pressure. “There is no blackmail that [can force] Hungary to change its conviction that every political step must serve the end of war,” he said.
His words came as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban embarked on what he called a peace mission that included visits to Kiev and Moscow within the span of several days. In the Ukrainian capital, he called for a ceasefire, describing it as a first step towards conflict resolution. The idea was rejected by Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky.
Orban called his Moscow trip the first step to restoring dialogue. The move drew criticism from the EU, which said the Hungarian prime minister, whose nation currently holds the bloc’s rotating presidency, had no mandate to speak on behalf of Brussels.
On Monday, Gulyas addressed the issue by saying that peace cannot be achieved without direct dialogue with all the warring parties. “Hungary would like to be in contact with any country that can contribute to peace,” he added.
COMMENT. From outside the bloc could be countries like the US, and the UK.
The move from Hungary comes after the visits of Victor Orban.
“Nuked” on Aukus ‘fiasco’ says decision to embrace pact will ‘haunt’ Australia’sLabor for years
“undermines any argument that the new submarines – whether nuclear or not – would be used primarily to defend Australia or to protect the nation’s shipping lanes”.
“at least one new cabinet minister wondered if it was possible to stop Aukus, but the suggestion went no further”.
Fowler said he did not believe there had been adequate public debate in Australia about the merits of Aukus,
Andrew Fowler’s book reveals one of Australia’s most important requirements for its submarines was the ability to work alongside the US in South China Sea
Daniel Hurst , 7 July 24, https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jul/07/book-on-aukus-fiasco-says-decision-to-embrace-pact-will-haunt-labor-for-years
One of Australia’s most important requirements for its new submarines is the ability to work alongside the United States in the South China Sea, a new book discloses.
The book by Andrew Fowler, a former investigative journalist for the ABC’s Four Corners and Foreign Correspondent programs, also predicts that Labor’s rush to embrace the Aukus pact “will haunt them for years to come”.
Fowler examines the Morrison government’s cancellation of the French submarine contract and its pursuit of a nuclear-powered alternative in the book Nuked: The Submarine Fiasco that Sank Australia’s Sovereignty.
The book makes the case that Aukus is a “deeply flawed” scheme that, when combined with a parallel effort to deepen military integration with the US, effectively ties Australia’s future “to whoever is in the White House”.
It includes an interview with David Gould, a former UK undersecretary for defence, who was headhunted by the then Gillard Labor government in 2012 as a consultant on a replacement for Australia’s ageing Collins-class submarines.
“As we sat talking, Gould revealed for the first time what has long been suspected: one of the submarine’s most important requirements would be to work with the Americans in the South China Sea,” Fowler writes.
“He explained that the submarine would need ‘to get through the archipelago to the north of Australia and into the South China Sea and operate in the South China Sea for a reasonable period of time and then come back again, without docking, or refuelling or anything. That’s what it needs to do.’”
The book quotes Gould as saying that the submarine would work alongside the US and Japan in an “integrated system”, which had become “even more pertinent with China”.
Fowler writes that the statement “undermines any argument that the new submarines – whether nuclear or not – would be used primarily to defend Australia or to protect the nation’s shipping lanes”.
Fowler contends that the focus is “to contain China and threaten its trade routes and food and energy supplies in a crisis”.
The Australian government has repeatedly said that its strategic motivation for acquiring nuclear-powered submarines is to “contribute to the collective security of our region” and maintain the global rules-based order.
The Labor defence minister, Richard Marles, has argued that the defence of Australia “doesn’t mean that much unless we have the collective security of our region” and that the nuclear-powered submarines would put a “question mark in any adversary’s mind”.
Fowler contends that the focus is “to contain China and threaten its trade routes and food and energy supplies in a crisis”.
The Australian government has repeatedly said that its strategic motivation for acquiring nuclear-powered submarines is to “contribute to the collective security of our region” and maintain the global rules-based order.
The Labor defence minister, Richard Marles, has argued that the defence of Australia “doesn’t mean that much unless we have the collective security of our region” and that the nuclear-powered submarines would put a “question mark in any adversary’s mind”.
The book reveals that after Labor won the 2022 election, “at least one new cabinet minister wondered if it was possible to stop Aukus, but the suggestion went no further”.
In an interview with Guardian Australia, Fowler said he began researching the book after becoming fascinated with “the overuse of executive power of government in the Morrison government, particularly the exposure of his five secret ministries”.
“I thought that the arrival of a $368bn secret deal that was done and then sprung on the public and the opposition party at the last moment would require an investigation,” he said.
Fowler said he did not believe there had been adequate public debate in Australia about the merits of Aukus, the security partnership with the US and the UK that involves the nuclear-powered submarine project but also collaboration on other advanced defence technologies.
“I think we debate the dollar-and-dime arguments, as the Americans might say, but we don’t debate the really big issues,” Fowler said.
“I don’t give advice to government but I think the Australian people have a right to know what the submarines are being bought for. They’re being bought to run with the Americans and Japan to contain the rise of China.”
Fowler said the then Labor opposition was put “in a diabolical position” when forced by Scott Morrison to make a quick decision on whether to support Aukus in 2021.
“This was a calculated attempt to wedge Labor on this issue and Labor only had 24 hours to make a decision,” he said. “It was obscene and absurd, and yet they made the decision fearing that if they opposed it they would be accused of being anti-American and weak on national security.
“I do understand why they went with it, but I think they also had some time to do some backtracking.”
Fowler called for an inquiry focused on “a failure of due process” in the cancellation of the French contract and the decision to pursue the Aukus arrangement, which officials admitted during Senate estimates hearings had not gone through the normal two-gate process for defence acquisitions.
Instead, the Morrison government announced Australia, the US and the UK would carry out an 18-month joint study to work out how to deliver the project. That led to the Albanese government’s March 2023 announcement of more detailed plans.
The book argues the French submarines would have given Australia “greater independence”, noting the president, Emmanuel Macron, had described Australia, India and France as being at the heart of a “new Indo-Pacific alliance and axis”.
The book says this “more independent thinking” caused “consternation in Washington”.
Book. Nuclear is Not the Solution. The Folly of Atomic Power in the Age of Climate Change.
New book by MV Ramana.
Nuclear power will slow our response
to climate change and increase the risk of weapons proliferation and
catastrophe. The climate crisis has propelled nuclear energy back into
fashion. Its proponents argue we already have the technology of the future
and that it only needs perfection and deployment.
Nuclear Is Not the Solution demonstrates why this sort of thinking is not only naïve but
dangerous. Even beyond the horrific implications of meltdown and the
intractable problem of waste disposal, nuclear is not practicable on such a
large scale.
Any appraisal of future energy technology depends on two
important parameters: cost and time. Nuclear fails on both counts. It is
more costly than its renewable competitors wind and solar. And, importantly
given the need for rapid transformation, it is slow. A plant takes a decade
to come online. If you include permits and fundraising, this adds another
decade.
And we should not forget the deep roots it has in the defense
industry. M. V. Ramana’s powerful book destroys any illusion that nuclear
is our answer to climate change, untangling technical arguments into simple
and sensible language.
Importantly, Nuclear Is Not the Solution also
unmasks the powerful groups with vested interests in the maintenance of the
status quo, currently working hard to greenwash a spectacularly dirty
industry. It’s why we believe that, as recommended by the Skidmore Net
Zero Review, there should be an Office for Net Zero Deployment, holding the
government to account against sustainability and Net Zero targets.
Penguin – Random House 5th July 2024
The Release of Julian Assange: Plea Deals and Dark Legacies
It ultimately goes to the brutal exercise of US extraterritorial power against any publisher, irrespective of outlet and irrespective of nationality…………….. the measure extracts a pound of flesh from the fourth estate. It signals that the United States can and will seek out those who obtain and publish national security information that they would rather keep under wraps under spurious notions of “harm”.
June 27, 2024, by: Dr Binoy Kampmark https://theaimn.com/the-release-of-julian-assange-plea-deals-and-dark-legacies-2/
One of the longest sagas of political persecution is coming to its terminus. That is, if you believe in final chapters. Nothing about the fate of Julian Assange seems determinative. His accusers and inquisitors will draw some delight at the plea deal reached between the WikiLeaks founder’s legal team and the US Department of Justice. Others, such as former US Vice President, Mike Pence, thought it unjustifiably lenient.
Alleged to have committed 18 offences, 17 novelly linked to the odious Espionage Act, the June 2020 superseding indictment against Assange was a frontal assault on the freedoms of publishing and discussing classified government information. At this writing, Assange has arrived in Saipan, located in the US commonwealth territory of Northern Mariana Islands in the Western Pacific, to face a fresh indictment. It was one of Assange’s conditions that he would not present himself in any court in the United States proper, where, with understandable suspicion, he might legally vanish.
As correspondence between the US Department of Justice and US District Court Chief Judge Ramona V. Manglona reveals, the “proximity of this federal US District Court to the defendant’s country of citizenship, Australia, to which we expect he will return at the conclusion of proceedings” was also a factor.
Before the US District Court for the Northern Mariana Islands, he will plead guilty to one count of conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defence information under the Espionage Act of 1917, or section 793(g) (Title 18, USC). The felony carries a fine up to $10,000 and/or up to 10 years in prison, though Assange’s time in Belmarsh Prison, spent on remand for some 62 months, will meet the bar.
The felony charge sheet alleges that Assange knowingly and unlawfully conspired with US Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, then based at Operating Base Hammer in Iraq, to receive and obtain documents, writings and notes, including those of a secret nature, relating to national defence, wilfully communicated those documents from persons with lawful possession of or access to them to those not entitled to receive them, and do the same from persons unauthorised to possess such documents.
Before turning to the grave implications of this single count and the plea deal, supporters of Assange, including his immediate family, associates and those who had worked with him and drunk from the same well of publishing, had every reason to feel a surreal sense of intoxication. WikiLeaks announced Assange’s departure from London’s Belmarsh Prison on the morning of June 24 after a 1,901 day stint, his grant of bail by the High Court in London, and his release at Stansted Airport. Wife Stella regularly updated followers about the course of flight VJ199. In coverage posted of his arrival at the federal court house in Saipan, she pondered “how overloaded his senses must be, walking through the press scrum after years of sensory depravation and the four walls” of his Belmarsh cell.
As for the plea deal itself, it is hard to fault it from the emotional and personal perspective of Assange and his family. He was ailing and being subjected to a slow execution by judicial process. It was also the one hook upon which the DOJ, and the Biden administration, might move on. This being an election year in the US, the last thing President Biden wanted was a haunting reminder of this nasty saga of political persecution hovering over freedom land’s virtues.
There was another, rather more sordid angle, and one that the DOJ had to have kept in mind in thinning the charge sheet: a proper Assange trial would have seen the murderous fantasies of the CIA regarding the publisher subject to scrutiny. These included various possible measures: abduction, rendition, even assassination, points thoroughly explored in a Yahoo News contribution in September 2021.
One of the authors of the piece, Zach Dorfman, posted a salient reminder as news of the plea deal filtered through that many officials during the Trump administration, even harsh critics of Assange, “thought [CIA Director Mike] Pompeo’s extraordinary rendition plots foolhardy in the extreme, and probably illegal. They also – critically – thought it might harm Assange’s prosecution.” Were Pompeo’s stratagems to come to light, “it would make the discovery process nightmarish for the prosecution, should Assange ever see trial.”
From the perspective of publishers, journalists and scribblers keen to keep the powerful accountable, the plea must be seen as enormously troubling. It ultimately goes to the brutal exercise of US extraterritorial power against any publisher, irrespective of outlet and irrespective of nationality. While the legal freight and prosecutorial heaviness of the charges was reduced dramatically (62 months seems sweetly less imposing than 175 years), the measure extracts a pound of flesh from the fourth estate. It signals that the United States can and will seek out those who obtain and publish national security information that they would rather keep under wraps under spurious notions of “harm”.
Assange’s conviction also shores up the crude narrative adopted from the moment WikiLeaks began publishing US national security and diplomatic files: such activities could not be seen as journalistic, despite their role in informing press commentary or exposing the venal side of power through leaks.
From the lead prosecuting attorney Gordon Kromberg to such British judges as Vanessa Baraitser; from the national security commentariat lodged in the media stable to any number of politicians, including the late California Democrat Dianne Feinstein to the current President Joe Biden, Assange was not of the fourth estate and deserved his mobbing. He gave the game away. He pilfered and stole the secrets of empire.
To that end, the plea deal makes a mockery of arguments and effusive declarations that the arrangement is somehow a victory for press freedom. It suggests the opposite: that anyone publishing US national security information by a leaker or whistleblower is imperilled. While the point was never tested in court, non-US publishers may be unable to avail themselves of the free speech protections of the First Amendment. The Espionage Act, for the first time in history, has been given a global, tentacular reach, made a weapon against publishers outside the United States, paving the way for future prosecutions.
Julian Assange: Free at last, but guilty of practicing journalism
Pepe Escobar, Strategic Culture Foundation, Wed, 26 Jun 2024, https://www.sott.net/article/492585-Julian-Assange-Free-at-last-but-guilty-of-practicing-journalism
The United States Government (USG) – under the “rules-based international order” – has de facto ruled that Julian Assange is guilty of practicing journalism.
Edward Snowden had already noted that “when exposing a crime is treated as committing a crime, you are being ruled by criminals.”
Criminals such as Mike “We Lie, We Cheat, We Steal” Pompeo, former Trump Secretary of State, who had planned to kidnap and kill Julian when he was head of the CIA.
The indomitable Jennifer Robinson and Julian’s U.S. lawyer Barry Pollack sum it all up: the United States has “pursued journalism as a crime”.
Julian was forced to suffer an unspeakably vicious Via Crucis because he dared to expose USG war crimes; the inner workings of the U.S. military in their rolling thunder War Of Terror (italics mine) in Afghanistan and Iraq; and – Holy of Holies – he dared to release emails showing the Democratic National Committee (DNC) colluded with the notorious warmongering Harpy Hillary Clinton.
Julian was subjected to relentless psychological torture, and nearly crucified for publishing facts that should always remain invisible to public opinion. That’s what top-notch journalism is all about.
The whole drama teaches the whole planet everything one needs to know about the absolute control of the Hegemon over pathetic UK and EU.
And that bring us to the kabuki that may – and the operative word is “may” – be closing the case. Title of the twisted morality play: ‘Plead Guilty or Die in Jail’.
The final twist in the plot line of the morality play runs like this: the combo behind the cadaver in the White House realized that torturing an Australian journalist and publisher in a maximum security U.S. prison in an electoral year was not exactly good for business.
At the same time the British establishment was begging to be excluded from the plot – as its “justice” system was forced by the Hegemon to keep an innocent man and family father hostage for 5 years, in abysmal conditions, in the name of protecting a basket of Anglo-American intel secrets.
In the end, the British establishment quietly applied all the pressure it could muster to run towards the exit – in full knowledge of what the Americans were planning for Julian.
Life in prison was “fair and reasonable”
Cue to the kabuki this Wednesday in Saipan, the largest of the Northern Mariana Islands, unincorporated Pacific land administered by the Hegemon.
Free at last – maybe, but with conditionalities that remain quite murky.
Julian was ordered by this U.S. Court in the Pacific to instruct WikiLeaks to destroy information as a condition of the deal.
Julian had to tell U.S. judge Ramona Manglona that he was not bribed or coerced to plead guilty to the crucial charge of “conspiring to unlawfully obtain and disseminate classified information relating to the national defense of the United States”.
Well, his lawyers told him he had to follow the ‘Plead Guilty or Die in Jail’ script. Otherwise, no deal.
Judge Manglona – in an astonishing brush aside of those 5 years of psychological torture – said, “it appears that your 62 months in prison was fair and reasonable and proportionate.”
So now the – oh, so benign and “fair” – USG will take the necessary steps to immediately erase remaining charges against Julian in the notoriously harsh Eastern District of Virginia.
Julian was always adamant: he stressed over and over again that he would never plead guilty to an espionage charge. He didn’t; he pleaded guilty to a hazy felony/conspiracy charge; was given time served; was set free; and that’s a wrap.
Or is it?
Australia is a Hegemon vassal state, intel included, and with less than zero capability to protect its civilian population.
Moving from the UK to Australia may not be exactly an upgrade – even with freedom included. A real upgrade would be a move to a True Sovereign. Like Russia. Yet Julian will need U.S. authorization to travel and leave Australia.Moscow inevitably will be a sanctioned, off-limits destination.
There’s hardly any question Julian will be back at the helm of WikiLeaks. Whistleblowers may be even lining up as we speak to tell their stories – supported by official documents.
Yet the stark, ominous message remains fully imprinted in the collective unconscious: the ruthless, all-powerful U.S. Intel Apparatus will go no holds barred and take no prisoners to punish anyone, anywhere, who dares to expose imperial crimes. A new global epic starts now: The Fight against Criminalized Journalism.
Assange Is Free, But US Spite Will Chill Reporting for Years
ARI PAUL, 26 June 24 https://fair.org/home/assange-is-free-but-us-spite-will-chill-reporting-for-years/
In some ways, the nightmare for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is coming to an end. After taking refuge at the Ecuadorian embassy in London in 2012, he was arrested in 2019 by Britain, who have since been trying to extradite him to the United States on charges that by publishing official secrets he violated the Espionage Act (FAIR.org, 12/13/20; BBC, 6/25/24). Once he enters a guilty plea, he will be sentenced to time served and walk away a free man (CBS, 6/25/24).
Assange’s case has attracted the attention of critics of US foreign policy, and those who value free speech and a free press. His family has rightly contended that his treatment in prison was atrocious (France24, 11/1/19; Independent, 2/20/24). A group of doctors said he was a victim of “torture” tactics (Lancet, 6/25/20). In 2017, Yahoo! News (9/26/21) reported that the “CIA plotted to kidnap the WikiLeaks founder, spurring heated debate among Trump administration officials over the legality and practicality of such an operation” and that CIA and Trump administration insiders “even discussed killing Assange, going so far as to request ‘sketches’ or ‘options’ for how to assassinate him.”
His supporters noted that the charges against him came after he harmed the US imperial project, particularly by leaking a video showing US troops killing Reuters journalists in Iraq (New York Times, 4/5/10). Under his watch, WikiLeaks also leaked a trove of diplomatic cables that the New York Times (11/28/10) described as an “unprecedented look at back-room bargaining by embassies around the world, brutally candid views of foreign leaders, and frank assessments of nuclear and terrorist threats.”
Press freedom and human rights groups like the International Federation of Journalists and Amnesty International had long called for his release. Several major news outlets from the US and Europe—the New York Times, Guardian, Le Monde, Der Spiegel and El País—signed a letter calling for his release (New York Times, 11/28/22). They said his “indictment sets a dangerous precedent and threatens to undermine America’s First Amendment and the freedom of the press.
Hostility toward press freedom
Assange’s loved ones and supporters are certainly glad to see him come home (Guardian, 6/25/24). But let’s be perfectly clear-eyed: The entire ordeal and his plea deal are proof of a hostile climate toward a free press in the United States and the wider world, and its chilling effect on investigative journalism could substantially worsen.
Assange’s deal has echoes of the end of the West Memphis Three case, where three Arkansas men were wrongfully convicted as teenagers of a heinous triple homicide in 1993 (Innocence Project, 8/19/11). The three re-entered guilty pleas in exchange for time served. They won their freedom, but their names were still attached to a terrible crime, and the state of Arkansas was able to close the case, ensuring the real killer or killers would never be held accountable. It was an imperfect resolution, but no one could blame the victims of a gross injustice for taking the freedom grudgingly offered.
Something similar is happening with Assange. It compounds the persecution already inflicted on him to force him to declare that exposing US government misdeeds was itself a high crime.
“On a human level, we’re thrilled that he’s out of prison, including the time in the embassy,” said Chuck Zlatkin, a founding member of NYC Free Assange, a group that has held regular protests calling for his release. “We’re thrilled for him personally.”
But the deal shows how eager the US government is to both save face and remain a threatening force against investigative reporters.
‘Criminalization of routine journalistic conduct’
As Seth Stern, the director of advocacy at the Freedom of the Press Foundation (6/24/24), said in a statement:
It’s good news that the DoJ is putting an end to this embarrassing saga. But it’s alarming that the Biden administration felt the need to extract a guilty plea for the purported crime of obtaining and publishing government secrets. That’s what investigative journalists do every day.
The plea deal won’t have the precedential effect of a court ruling, but it will still hang over the heads of national security reporters for years to come. The deal doesn’t add any more prison time or punishment for Assange. It’s purely symbolic. The administration could’ve easily just dropped the case, but chose to instead legitimize the criminalization of routine journalistic conduct and encourage future administrations to follow suit. And they made that choice knowing that Donald Trump would love nothing more than to find a way to throw journalists in jail.
And that is all happening while threats against leakers and journalists remain. Edward Snowden, the source in the Guardian’s investigation (6/11/13) into National Security Agency surveillance, still resides in Russia in order to evade arrest. I recently wrote about the excessive sentencing of the man who leaked tax documents to ProPublica and the New York Times showing how lopsided the tax system is in favor of the rich (FAIR.org, 2/2/24). NSA contractor Reality Winner was sentenced to five years in prison for leaking documents to the Intercept on the issue of Russian interference in the 2016 US election (Vanity Fair, 10/12/23)
Laura Poitras, one of the journalists who brought Snowden’s revelations about NSA surveillance to light, said that Assange’s conviction could silence reporters doing investigative reporting on the US government (New York Times, 12/21/20). Chelsea Manning, Assange’s source for these investigations, spent only seven years in prison out of the 35 years of her sentence thanks to presidential clemency, but that is still a harrowing experience (NPR, 5/17/17).
‘Not transparency’ but ‘sabotage’
Worse, some in the so-called free press have rallied behind the government. The Wall Street Journal editorial board (4/11/19) cheered the legal crusade against Assange, arguing that the leaks harmed national security. “Assange has never been a hero of transparency or democratic accountability,” the Murdoch-owned broadsheet proclaimed.
The neoconservative journal Commentary (4/12/19) dismissed the free press defenders of Assange, saying of Wikileaks’ investigations into US power: “This was not transparency. It was sabotage.”
And the British Economist (4/17/19) said, in support of Assange’s extradition to the US:
WikiLeaks did some good in its early years, exposing political corruption, financial malfeasance and military wrongdoing. But the decision to publish over 250,000 diplomatic cables in 2010 was malicious. The vast majority of messages revealed no illegality or misdeeds. Mr. Assange’s reckless publication of the unredacted versions of those cables the following year harmed America’s interests by putting its diplomatic sources at risk of reprisals, persecution or worse.
Unsurprisingly, Murdoch outlets gave the plea deal a thumbs down. “Don’t fall for the idea that Mr. Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, is a persecuted ‘publisher,’” the Wall Street Journal editorial board (6/25/24) warned.
The New York Post editorial board (6/25/24) disparaged Assange’s motives, saying he “wasn’t interested in justice or exposing true abuse; he simply relished obtaining and releasing any secret government or political material, particularly if US-based.” Alleging that the documents he published were sensitive, the paper argued in favor of government secrecy: “Uncle Sam needs to keep some critical secrets, especially when lives are on the line.”
In reality, US intelligence and military officials have never been able to trace any deaths to WikiLeaks‘ revelations (BBC, 12/1/10; Guardian, 7/31/13; NPR, 4/12/19)—and certainly have never identified any damage anywhere nearly as serious as the very real harms it exposed. (NPR did quote a former State Department lawyer who complained that WikiLeaks‘ exposes “can really chill the ability of those American personnel to build those sorts of relationships and have frank conversations with their contacts.”) Alas, some publications side with state power even if journalistic freedom is at stake (FAIR.org, 4/18/19).
‘Punished for telling the truth’
Assange’s case is over, but he walks away a battered man as a result of the legal struggle. And that serves as a warning to other journalists who rely on brave people in high levels of power to disclose injustices. Stern is right: Another Trump administration would be horrendous for journalists. But the current situation with the Democratic administration is already chilling.
“All he was being punished for was telling the truth about war crimes committed by this country,” Zlatkin told FAIR.
And without a real change in how the Espionage Act is used against journalists, the ability to tell the truth to the rest of the world is at risk.
“We’re still not in a situation where we as a general population are getting the truth of what’s being done in our name,” Zlatkin said. “So the struggle continues.”
TODAY. UK and other mainstream media -oblivious of the suicidal danger of attacking Russia
Once again, I am grateful to the extraordinary Dominic Cummings, for expressing this so eloquently:
“If you want to see the rot of the old system consider this.
A week ago (5/6/24), Putin called in the international media. He told them: NATO has given Ukraine long range missiles to strike deep in Russia, why don’t we have the right to give weapons to other regimes to do the same to NATO, we are considering such options…
And what media coverage do you see?
The old UK media almost entirely censored the event. Although widely discussed globally, it is a non-event in the UK. I’d bet >95% of MPs don’t know it happened.
Not only is our Idiocracy escalating a disastrous war they’ve blundered into they’re censoring statements from the world’s biggest nuclear power directly threatening us with reprisals for our actions, shoving celebrity gossip onto the BBC website rather than translating Putin’s words (then they claim ‘trust the BBC not disinformation’!). And funding Ukraine which is drone-striking Russian early-warning radars for nuclear weapons, of no relevance to the UKR war.
The gap between the self-perception of our elite media and the reality has not been starker since I started watching them.”
Strange – in 1963 U.S. President John F Kennedy gave a similar warning his American University speech:
“Above all, while defending our own vital interests, nuclear powers must avert those confrontations which bring an adversary to a choice of either a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war. To adopt that kind of course in the nuclear age would be evidence only of the bankruptcy of our policy–or of a collective death-wish for the world.”
The day the West defined ‘success’ as a massacre of 270 Palestinians
Jake Sullivan, President Joe Biden’s national security adviser, was keen to take credit for the mass carnage – or what he termed a “daring operation”.
Israelis dance in the streets, the White House hails a ‘daring’ operation, Rishi Sunak expresses relief. How carnage in Gaza has become the new normal
JONATHAN COOK, JUN 12, 2024
Israel hasn’t just crossed the Biden administration’s pretend “red lines” in Gaza. With its massacre at Nuseirat refugee camp at the weekend, Israel drove a bulldozer through them.
On Saturday, an Israeli military operation to free four Israelis held captive by Hamas since its 7 October attack on Israel resulted in the killing of more than 270 Palestinians, many of them women and children.
The true death toll may never be known. Untold numbers of men, women and children are still under rubble from the bombardment, crushed to death, or trapped and suffocating, or expiring slowly from dehydration if they cannot be dug out in time.
Many hundreds more are suffering agonising injuries – should their wounds not kill them – in a situation where there are almost no medical facilities left after Israel’s destruction of hospitals and its mass kidnap of Palestinian medical personnel. Further, there are no drugs to treat the victims, given Israel’s months-long imposition of an aid blockade.
Israelis and American Jewish organisations – so ready to judge Palestinians for cheering attacks on Israel – celebrated the carnage caused in freeing the Israeli captives, who could have returned home months ago had Israel been ready to agree on a ceasefire.
Videos even show Israelis dancing in the street.
According to reports, the bloody Israeli operation in central Gaza may have killed three other captives, one of them possibly an American citizen.
In comments to the Haaretz newspaper published on Sunday, Louis Har, a hostage freed back in February, observed of his own captivity: “Our greatest fear was the IDF’s planes and the concern that they would bomb the building we were in.”
He added: “We weren’t worried that they’d [referring to Hamas] do something to us all of a sudden. We didn’t object to anything. So I wasn’t afraid they’d kill me.”
The Israeli media reported Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant describing Saturday’s operation as “one of the most heroic and extraordinary operations I have witnessed over the course of 47 years serving in Israel’s defence establishment”.
The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court is currently seeking an arrest warrant for Gallant, as well as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, for war crimes and crimes against humanity. The charges include efforts to exterminate the people of Gaza through planned starvation.
State terrorism
Israel has been wrecking the established laws of war with abandon for more than eight months.
At least 37,000 Palestinians are known to have been killed so far in Gaza, though Palestinian officials lost the ability to properly count the dead many weeks ago following Israel’s relentless destruction of the enclave’s institutions and infrastructure.
Israel has additionally engineered a famine that, mostly out of view, is gradually starving Gaza’s population to death.
The International Court of Justice put Israel on trial for genocide back in January. Last month, it ordered an immediate halt to Israel’s attack on Gaza’s southern city of Rafah. Israel has responded to both judgments by intensifying its killing spree.
In a further indication of Israel’s sense of impunity, the rescue operation on Saturday involved yet another flagrant war crime.
Israel used a humanitarian aid truck – supposedly bringing relief to Gaza’s desperate population – as cover for its military operation. In international law, that is known as the crime of perfidy.
For months, Israel has been blocking aid to Gaza – part of its efforts to starve the population. It has also targeted aid workers, killing more than 250 of them since October.
But more specifically, Israel is waging a war on Unrwa, claiming without evidence that the UN’s main aid agency in Gaza is implicated in Hamas “terror” operations. It wants the UN, the international community’s last lifeline in Gaza against Israel’s wanton savagery, permanently gone.
By hiding its own soldiers in an aid truck, Israel made a mockery of its supposed “terrorism concerns” by doing exactly what it accuses Hamas of.
But Israel’s military action also dragged the aid effort – the only way to end Gaza’s famine – into the centre of the battlefield. Now Hamas has every reason to fear that aid workers are not what they seem; that they are really instruments of Israeli state terrorism.
Nefarious motive
In the circumstances, one might have assumed the Biden administration would be quick to condemn Israel’s actions and distance itself from the massacre.
Instead, Jake Sullivan, President Joe Biden’s national security adviser, was keen to take credit for the mass carnage – or what he termed a “daring operation”.
He admitted in an interview on Sunday that the US had offered assistance in the rescue operation, though he refused to clarify how. Other reports noted a supporting British role, too.
…………………………………………………………. ‘Successful’ massacre
As ever, for western media and politicians – who have stood firmly against a ceasefire that could have brought the suffering of the Israeli captives and their families to an end months ago – Palestinian lives are quite literally worthless.
The German Chancellor Olaf Scholz thought it appropriate to describe the killing of 270-plus Palestinians in the freeing of the four Israelis as an “important sign of hope”, while the British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak expressed his “huge relief”. The appalling death toll went unmentioned.
………………………………………..Media outlets uniformly hailed the operation as a “success” and “daring”, as though the killing and maiming of around 1,000 Palestinians – and the serial war crimes Israel committed in the process – need not be factored in.
BBC News’ main report on Saturday night breathlessly focused on the celebrations of the families of the freed captives, treating the massacre of Palestinians as an afterthought. The programme stressed that the death toll was “disputed” – though not mentioning that, as ever, it was Israel doing the disputing.
……………………………………….. The focus on Israeli politicking – rather than US complicity in the Nuseirat massacre – will doubtless provide a welcome distraction, too, as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken tours the region. He will once again wish to be seen rallying support for a ceasefire plan that is supposed to see the Israeli captives released – a plan Netanyahu will be determined, once again, to stymie.
Blinken’s efforts are likely to be even more hopeless in the immediate wake of the Biden administration’s all-too-visible involvement in the killing of hundreds of Palestinians
…………………………………………Israel needs to finish pulverising Gaza, making it permanently uninhabitable, so that the population will be faced with a stark dilemma: remain and die, or leave by any means possible.
The same US “humanitarian pier” that was pressed into service for Saturday’s massacre may soon be the “humanitarian pier” that serves as the exit through which Gaza’s Palestinians are ethnically cleansed, shipped out of a death zone engineered by Israel.
CNN’s Israel bias has been laid bare. But CNN is the norm, not the exception
Middle East Eye, By Jonathan Cook, 9 February 2024
Western media can never truly report the extent of Israel’s criminality because to do so would be to expose their long-running complicity in those crimes
eaks from within CNN reveal that for months its executives have been actively imposing an editorial line designed to reinforce Israel’s framing of events in Gaza, to the point of obscuring atrocities by the Israeli military.
The dictates, say insiders, have resulted in senior staff refusing to accept assignments to the region “because they do not believe they will be free to tell the whole story”. Others suspect they are being kept away by editors who fear they will fight the restrictions.
Internal memos insist that stories be approved by the station’s Jerusalem bureau, where staff are widely seen as partisans who slant reports in Israel’s favour. Palestinian perspectives are tightly restricted.
“Ultimately, CNN’s coverage of the Israel-Gaza war amounts to journalistic malpractice,” one staffer told an investigation by the Guardian newspaper.
According to staff accounts, CNN’s pro-Israel directives come from the very top – Mark Thompson, a TV executive who was hired from the BBC. Thompson, the Guardian article notes, was remembered by BBC staff for “bowing to Israeli government pressure on a number of occasions” – presumably one of the qualifications that won him the job heading CNN.
It was he who notoriously championed in 2009 the BBC’s controversial decision for the first time not to air the annual fundraising appeal of the Disasters Emergency Committee, which is a group of major British charities, because the monies were going to Gaza after Israeli bombing had devastated it.
Alongside the unhappiness at CNN, there is reported to be disquiet at the BBC. Staff, including senior presenters, held a meeting last month with Director General Tim Davie, one of Thompson’s successors, to accuse the corporation of anti-Palestinian bias.
They expressed concerns about the “dehumanising” language used to describe Palestinians killed in Gaza and the BBC’s failure to cover important stories reported by Al Jazeera and other networks.
A source told the Deadline website that the group of dissenters was surprised by Davie’s candour. He is said to have admitted that the pro-Israel lobby “was more organised than Palestinian supporters in its dealings with the BBC”.
Skewed agendas
None of this should come as a surprise.
Middle East Eye has highlighted the clearly skewed priorities of western news agendas since Hamas broke out of Gaza on 7 October – some 17 years after Israel began imposing a military siege that had already left the enclave barely habitable.
In the carnage that day caused by Hamas’ attack – as well as Israel’s indiscriminate violent response – some 1,139 people in Israel were killed.
As MEE has noted previously, the entire western press corps, not just CNN and the BBC, has failed in its basic duty to present a balanced picture of what has been going on over the past four months.
It has also failed to treat Israeli claims with the scepticism they deserve, especially since Israel has a long track record of being caught out in lies and deceptions.
Paradoxically, given its exposure of concerns at CNN, many of the accusations of journalistic failure levelled at CNN and the BBC could be directed at the Guardian newspaper too – or any other establishment media organisation.
Following Hamas’ 7 October break-out, Israel unleashed a devastating assault on Gaza’s population – so far leaving tens of thousands of Palestinians dead or missing under rubble.
Yet all western media misleadingly continue to frame Israel’s rampage in Gaza – including the collective punishment inflicted on civilians by denying them food and water – variously as “retaliation”, “a war with Hamas”, and “an operation to eliminate Hamas”.
Western media have also largely avoided characterising as “ethnic cleansing” the Israeli military’s order for Palestinians to leave their homes. As a result, 1.7 million have been trapped in a small area in southern Gaza where they face relentless bombing.
Similarly, there has been almost no mention of a long-held plan by Israel – which it now appears close to realising – to drive Gaza’s population into the Sinai desert, in neighbouring Egypt.
And the same media outlets have refused to connect the all-too-obvious dots that Israel – in destroying most of Gaza’s homes, forcibly shutting almost all of its medical facilities and cutting off food and water, while also demanding international defunding of Unrwa, the United Nations’ main aid agency to Gaza – is pursuing an openly genocidal policy.
Israel is making Gaza unlivable, just as Giora Eiland, adviser to the Israeli defence minister, vowed Israel would do at the outset of its assault: “Gaza will become an area where people cannot live.”
When the media do refer to genocide, it is strictly in the context of the International Court of Justice’s decision to put Israel on trial for the “crime of crimes”. Even then, the establishment media have largely minimised the significance of the World Court’s ruling, or even spun it as a victory for Israel.
Astonishingly, the ICJ’s panel of 17 justices has proven to be far more courageous than western media journalists. ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
Career suicide
The problem is not just that the western media have acted as one in blanking out persuasive evidence of the crimes Israel committed on 7 October. They have also, again as one, been credulously ascribing particularly barbarous crimes to Hamas on the most tenuous of evidence – unsubstantiated claims that Israel has then been using to justify its genocidal rampage.
That started in the immediate wake of 7 October with allegations that Hamas had variously beheaded babies, hung them from washing lines and roasted them in ovens. These claims were even echoed by the White House.
There is still zero evidence for any of them.
CNN staff are upset that Hadas Gold, one of its reporters in Jerusalem – part of the unit vetting all copy about Gaza – uncritically recycled lies from the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
The real pressures
The Guardian offers various explanations for why CNN has failed so dismally to cover properly the slaughter in Gaza. All have an element of truth about them.
CNN is indeed afraid of antagonising the US government and challenging a critical part of its foreign policy agenda.
There are undoubted commercial pressures from advertisers. The Israel lobby can be confident its threats will be taken seriously when journalists face being accused of antisemitism for stepping out of line. And all of these pressures are compounded by the difficulties its journalists face in accessing Gaza.
But what the Guardian does not want its readers to notice is that all of these pressures apply not just to CNN but to every other corporate media outfit, including the Guardian itself. Which is why the failures are across the board, not confined to one or two broadcasters. …………………………………………………………….
The large corporations and billionaires that own the media are heavily invested in the arms and fossil fuel industries that require the West’s continuing colonial-style, military dominance of the planet and its resources……………………………… more https://www.middleeasteye.net/big-story/cnn-israel-bias-laid-bare-norm-not-exception
1 This Month
petition to oppose the rapid increase of space-military industry threatening Jeju Island and the region.
[Petition by April 19th (KST)] Stop the joint military-Hanwha Systems-Jeju Provincial Government Sea Launch!
Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes – A good documentary on Chernobyl on SBS available On Demand for the next 3 weeks– https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/tv-program/chernobyl-the-lost-tapes/2352741955560
of the week–London Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
Tell the Ukrainian Government to Drop Prosecution of Peace Activist Yurii Sheliazhenko
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
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