Sen. Martha McSally (R-AZ) refused to answer a question from CNN reporter Manu Raju. She blew past him, called him a liberal hack, and now everyone is aghast that someone could do such a thing to a reporter from one of the most anti-Trump networks in the country. Before CNN starts digging trenches and loading tear gas for their reporting staff who can do no wrong in their eyes, lets circle back to December of 2017, when Raju reported that Donald Trump, Jr. and other top campaign officials, including then-candidate Donald Trump, had super-secret access to the trove of emails that WikiLeaks had in their possession. Some donor named Michael Erickson emailed the access code. Gasp! Team Trump knew about the DNC emails before they were made public. Talk about a bombshell, except that it wasnt. CNN couldnt take two seconds to read the time stamp on the email. If they did, they would have seen that the emails from Wikileaks had already been made public when this donor email was sent. And for hours, the fake news story was blasted all over the network, but its okay folks. The anonymous source was determined that his or her intentions were not meant to deceive. What idiots do they have working there? Maybe the finest in liberal America.

Lets go to the story, which has now been corrected:

Candidate Donald Trump, his son Donald Trump Jr. and others in the Trump Organization received an email in September 2016 offering a decryption key and website address for hacked WikiLeaks documents, according to an email provided to congressional investigators.

The September 14 email was sent during the final stretch of the 2016 presidential race.

CNN originally reported the email was released September 4 -- 10 days earlier -- based on accounts from two sources who had seen the email. The new details appear to show that the sender was relying on publicly available information. The new information indicates that the communication is less significant than CNN initially reported.

Oh, the memories with this fake news story:

Yeah, but prior to this correction, it was The Washington Postcoming in and doing the clean-up work for this mess:

A 2016 email sent to candidate Donald Trump and top aides pointed the campaign to hacked documents from the Democratic National Committee that had already been made public by the group WikiLeaks a day earlier.

The email sent the afternoon of Sept. 14, 2016 noted that "Wikileaks has uploaded another (huge 678 mb) archive of files from the DNC" and included a link and a "decryption key," according to a copy obtained by The Washington Post.

The writer, who said his name was Michael J. Erickson and described himself as the president of an aviation management company, sent the message to the then-Republican nominee as well as his eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., and other top advisers.

The day before, WikiLeaks had tweeted links to what the group said was 678.4 megabytes of DNC documents.

Raju eventually admitted the whole story was garbage on-air. So, yeahCNNs reporter might have been at the receiving end of some harsh treatment today by a Republican Senator. Hell be fine. And yes, he has confronted Ilhan Omar and other clowns on the Left, but that doesnt negate the fact that he and this network were part of this epic fail. In fact, CNN, in general, is just a hot dumpster fire when it comes to covering this president. I will say so again: when you cant even cover the feeding of koi fisha simple photo opbetween Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe accurately, your operation has issues.

See the original post:
CNN Reporter Who Got Shredded by GOP Senator Today Peddled One of the Network's Biggest Trump-Russia Collusion Screw-Ups - Townhall

A brand-new telegram released on the WikiLeaks site, a global charitable site being experts in releasing personal files, disclosed the issues of the crown royal prince of Abu Dhabi, Mohammed Bin Zayed, over the judgment family in Saudi Arabia.

The telegram, additionally released by The New York Times, introduced in an extensive record that Bin Zayed had actually educated the United States ambassador, James Jeffrey, that he is afraid Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia and also intends to remove it.

The New York Times reported that the crown royal prince of Abu Dhabi: Considered the Saudi royal family during the reign of King Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz Al Saud as helpless; however, he was afraid that the alternative would be an authoritarian and Wahhabi state similar to ISIS. He additional specified: Anyone who replaces Al Saud will be a nightmare.

The telegram divulged that Bin Zayed quickly concentrated on the present crown royal prince, Mohammed Bin Salman: Who was impatient for introducing reforms in order to reduce Saudi Arabias attachment to radical Islam, and marketed his vision to the administration of US President Donald Trump.

In the very same prolonged record, qualified Mohammed Bin Zayeds Dark Vision of the Middle Easts Future, author Robert F. Worth incorporated talking to, profiling and also evaluating the crown royal prince of Abu Dhabi the de facto leader of the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

READ: Recording web links UAE crown royal prince to Malaysia PM corruption instances

The New York Times reported that Bin Zayed: Put much of his enormous resources into the counter-revolution, and he cracked down on the Muslim Brotherhood and built a hyper-modern security-based state, where everyone is monitored in search of the slightest whiff of Islamic inclinations.

The paper explained that the separation of the Egyptian head of state, Mohamed Morsi, was the very first wonderful success of the Bin Zayed project, including: It appears that he was very confident in what could be done without American restrictions, and soon turned his attention to Libya, where he began providing military support to the former general, Khalifa Haftar, a tyrant who shares Bin Zayeds feelings towards Islamists.

The writer, pricing quote a United States mediator, worried that the clog enforced on Qatar because June 2017 has actually come to be a personal revenge issue for Bin Zayed.

It deserves additionally keeping in mind that in 2009 Bin Zayed decided that would considerably boost his capacity to task power past the UAE boundaries, when he asked Mike Hindmarsh, previous leader of Australias Special Air Service program, for aid in reorganising the Emirati military, assigning him at some point to lead the military.

He suggested that it is unthinkable to select a non-Arab authorities in such high army message in any kind of various other nation in the Middle East.

Read the original here:
WikiLeaks reveals Bin Zayed's opinion on Saudi royal family Middle East Monitor - The Union Journal

Small donations to The Grayzone were delayed and reversed by PayPal because they mentioned the word Iran in messages praising our coverage of the US conflict. At the same time, Facebook censored a factual Grayzone video reporting on Hezbollah, Iran and Trump.By Ben Norton

Following the US governments assassination of top Iranian general Qassem Soleimani, PayPal has delayed and blocked small donations to The Grayzone that mentioned this websites news coverage of Iran.

At the same time, social media giant Facebook has censored a Grayzone video reporting on the US governments escalation against Iran and its ally Hezbollah.

In 2010, PayPal froze donations to WikiLeaks, the whistleblowing journalism organization whose publisher Julian Assange is currently being imprisoned and tortured. The online banking company also permanently suspended WikiLeaks account.

Now independent journalism websites like The Grayzone are suffering from blockages imposed by PayPal that appear directly linked to Washingtons aggressive actions in the Middle East.

On January 3, a reader tried to make a donation of $10 to The Grayzone through PayPal. The small donor, a US citizen who lives in California, wrote the following message to accompany the donation: Thanks for all your excellent work and especially the Gray Zones coverage of the murder of Soleimani and war with Iran. You fellows are so insightful and brilliant.

The Grayzone promptly received an email from the tech company stating that the donation was pending. The message noted, To comply with government regulations, PayPal is required to review certain transactions.

The next day, the small donor notified The Grayzone that she had gotten an email from the PayPal Compliance Department demanding that they provide the following information:

An explanation of the reference to Iran.

The purpose of this payment, including a complete and detailed explanation of what is intended to be paid for.

A sales receipt or other documentation pertaining to this transaction.

Full name, address, and current location of the Beneficiary of the payment.

Then, on January 6, PayPal notified The Grayzone that the donation has been reversed.

I was so impressed with your coverage of the U.S. murder of Soleimani that I made a $10 donation to you via PayPal and made laudatory remarks about your coverage of Iran in the comments section, the small donor wrote to The Grayzone. Today, I got the following message from PayPal wanting me to go to their site and explain why I made a reference to Iran.

The supporter added, Really? Am I now subject to surveillance because I used the word Iran? Why do you continue to use PayPal which long ago proved itself to be yet another corporate totalitarian?

The donor said they decided to close their PayPal account, adding, I do not owe PayPal an explanation of why I used the word Iran.'

The incident was strange. But it was not the only time The Grayzone faced difficulties when receiving donations.

On January 5, The Grayzone received another message from a reader. This supporter said they had tried to give $25 to the news website, but the tech company froze their donation as well.

The company sent both the donor and The Grayzone a message reading, To comply with government regulations, PayPal is required to review certain transactions. The payment you sent is currently being reviewed and we will complete this process within 72 hours.

The donor commented, I have never before had paypal delay a payment or donation. So this seems to be targeted at you guys. The ACLU should be looking into this. Good luck!

The Grayzone asked the supporter if they used the word Iran in the message accompanying their small donation. They replied that they had.

I was praising the very informed, very rational two-hour videocast you guys broadcast, the donor said, referring to a Grayzone discussion of US policy on Iran and President Trumps murder of top general Qassem Soleimani.

While PayPal has been blocking small donations to The Grayzone that mention its Iran coverage, another Big Tech corporation is censoring the news websites reporting on Iran and Hezbollah.

On January 9, this reporter received a notice on Facebook that the company had censored a factual, journalistic video that featured public speeches given by Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei and Lebanese Hezbollah secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah, showing how they had called for protecting civilians, while US President Donald Trump warned that he would attack cultural sites inside Iran.

The video did not contain commentary or opinion. It simply presented video of world leaders speaking. But without any explanation. Facebook asserted that our video violated its Community Standards on dangerous individuals and organizations.

The Grayzone contacted both PayPal and Facebook with requests for comment. The companies have not replied, as of publication.

It appears that PayPal automates the process of reviewing donations to make sure that they conform with US government sanctions, highlighting particular keywords like Iran. Apparently, the companys dragnet is so wide it is now cracking down on independent journalists who report on Middle East affairs and rely on donations to sustain their work.

The Grayzone faced similar difficulties this August in Venezuela, which is enduring a US government economic blockade that has led to the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians.

When a The Grayzone reporter tried to pay a Venezuelan national using the money transfer app Zelle, they received an email from their banks sanctions compliance department requesting more information about the transaction even though it was a payment to a private Venezuelan civilian who had no relationship at all to the government.

These tightening, seemingly arbitrary restrictions by large tech corporations show how aggressive US government sanctions on foreign nations are stifling speech and threatening independent journalism at home.

Ben Norton is a journalist, writer, and filmmaker. He is the assistant editor of The Grayzone, and the producer of the Moderate Rebels podcast, which he co-hosts with editor Max Blumenthal. His website is BenNorton.comand he tweets at @BenjaminNorton.

Read more from the original source:
PayPal blocks donations to The Grayzone that mention Iran - The Grayzone

2019 was an eventful year for news, and some of it was actually good news, too. There were some stories, however, that stood above the restthey may have attracted international headlines, profoundly affected the political landscape, or proved lively and resilient in the public discourse.

While this list is by no means definitive, these were the stories that, from the point of view of this news desk, truly stood out in 2019.

WOW Air goes bankruptNobody goes bankrupt overnight, as one would-be passenger who got her flight cancelled told us. Thats on observation that still resonates as were still feeling the effects of Icelands discount airline suddenly ceasing all operations last March. There was great uncertainty, as these cheap flights dropped off the map just as the tourist high season began, with worries about how this might affect the economy. Looking back now, the economy did just fine, even if much-lauded announcements of impending budget airlines have yet to materialise.

SharkgateTwo fishermen start a Facebook Live video of them on the job.At one point, they caught what was obviously a juvenile shark and cut its tail off before dropping back into the sea with a mocking try and swim now you little bastard! Unfortunately for them, someone was recording the stream, and the subsequent video went viral. The backlash against them spread across international headlines, the fishermen lost their jobs, and then public discourse raised questions about proportionality of response.

Gender determination lawIn a major step for the rights of trans and nonbinary Icelanders, Iceland passed a law that was years in the making. It granted people the freedom to register their actual gender; not just the one they were assigned at birth. It also eschewed the tedious gatekeeping of having to endure half a dozen interviews over months or longer just to get access to hormone replacement therapy and other medical care that some trans people want. It was a major step forward for Iceland, even if some people got left behind: intersex children are still not protected from unnecessary cosmetic surgery on their genitals, and nonbinary folks will have to wait at least a year before they can register as X in the gender field at the National Registry.

The Fishrot FilesThis bombshell dropped in the last month of 2019 but still proved one of the most important stories of the year out of Iceland. A whistleblower who used to work for the Icelandic fishing giant Samherji handed over 30,000 documents to Wikileaks, detailing how the company bribed Namibian officials to get access to massive fishing quotas, and then subsequently squirreled the money into tax havens. In Namibia, this led to immediate sackings of the officials involved and the arrest of half a dozen people facing corruption charges. In Iceland, no such response has been forthcoming, but it re-ignited the debate about the importance of a new constitution, and shone a spotlight on the corruption within our own ranks.

Cyclone hits IcelandAnother December story, this story became very important for primarily two reasons. A literal cyclone touched down on Iceland, delivering snow and wind speeds unprecedented in this country. While Reykjavk escaped relatively unscathed, the countryside did not fare as wellpower outages, disrupted phone service, blocked roads, missing livestock and at least one death were reported across North Iceland. It was a sobering reminder of how the climate crisis is sparing nobody, no matter how remote. Also, as even the President of Iceland pointed out, it was a reminder that rural Icelanders often do not have access to the same resources that we Reykjavkings take for granted, and we need to do better.

Related

Original post:
The Top Five News Stories In Iceland Of 2019 - Reykjavk Grapevine

In the meantime, Facebook has been used again and again to spread mass disinformation, from hate speech that fueled the massacre of Rohingya muslims in Myanmar to WhatsApp propaganda that helped elected far-right Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, to troll armies tasked with attacking the enemies of Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte and Donald Trump. In almost every instance, Zuckerberg has been slow to react, or even initially dismissive of concerns. The result has been a decade of disastrous effects, for both privacy and politics, across the globe. As Facebook has claimed a near-monopoly on social media, there's little sign that Zuckerberg is willing to slow his company's rapacious growth to prevent the next catastrophe.

Julian Assange

Julian Assange first came on the general public's radar in a 2010 WikiLeaks video called Collateral Murder. It represented a radical new model of secret-spilling that empowered whistleblowers by offering them a digital dead drop, one that protected with their anonymity with strong encryption. WikiLeaks would follow up with one blockbuster leak after another, with hundreds of thousands of classified files from the war in Afghanistan and then Iraq, followed by a quarter million secret cables from the State Department. With those megaleaks from his tiny group, Assange successfully upended parts of the global order, hastening the US pullout from Iraq and helping to touch off the Arab Spring with its revelations about the Tunisian dictator Ben Alieven as WikiLeaks was accused of also endangering innocents like State Department sources whose names were included in the files. But Assange would have another, unexpected second act in 2016, when Russian agents would exploit WikiLeaks to launder documents stolen from the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign. After all, Assange never cared much for distinctions between whistleblowers and hackers. Throughout those years, Assange always maintained that the US intended to imprison himthat US hegemony considered him too dangerous to be left free. When Assange was pulled out of the Ecuadorean embassy in April and put in a British prison awaiting extradition to face US hacking and espionage charges, he was proven right.

ISIS

Violent Islamist group ISIS integrated terrorism with the internet like no one else in history. From its initial takeover of Mosul in 2014, ISIS both horrified the world with its acts of barbarism and also carried out a deeply effective online recruiting campaign. With grisly propaganda videos and lies about the Islamist paradise it sought to create posted to YouTube and other social media, it convinced many young Muslims across the globe to rally to its cause, turning Iraq and Syria into magnets for juvenile, misguided bloodletting and forcing every tech company to consider how the most violent humans in the world might misuse their services. But ISIS also successfully turned the internet into a means of distributing its violence physically, persuading lone wolves to carry out unspeakable attacks from Paris to Nice to London to New York. Even as ISIS's caliphate has been dismantled and its founder killed by US forces, that placeless call to violence still rings out across the internet, and may yet pull more troubled young men under its sway.

Lazarus

North Korea may have largely cut off its populace from the internet. But it makes a few very notable exceptions, including for the North Korean hackers broadly known as Lazarus, which has carried out some of the most aggressive hacking operations ever seen online. Lazarus first shocked the world with its attack on Sony Pictures in retaliation for its Kim Jong-un assassination comedy, The Interview. Under the cover story of a hacktivist group known as "Guardians of Peace," they breached the company, spilled thousands of its emails online, extorted the it for cash, and destroyed hundreds of its computers. Since then, Lazarus has shifted its tactics in part to purely profit-motivated cybercrime, stealing billions of dollars around the world in bank fraud operations and cryptocurrency thefts. Those cybercriminal operations hit a new low in May of 2017, when Lazarus released WannaCry, a ransomware worm that exploited the leaked NSA hacking tool EternalBlue to automatically spread to as many computers as possible before encrypting them and demanding a ransom. Thanks to errors in its code, WannaCry didn't make much money for its creators. But it had a far larger effect on its victims: It cost somewhere between $4 and $8 billion globally to repair the damage.

NSO Group

At the beginning of this decade, hacking contractor firms and sellers of techniques known as "exploits" were barely heard of. The few known cybermercenaries were subjects of scandal and accused of digital arms dealing. Today, the Israeli firm NSO Group has made them all look tame by comparison. The company has sold techniques for remotely breaking into iPhones and Android phones with little or no interaction from the victim. In some cases, the company and its customers were able to plant malware on a target phone simply by calling it on WhatsApp. And despite the company's repeated insistence that it doesn't sell its hacking services to human rights abusers, the targets of its hacking have shown otherwise: Activist Ahmed Mansour, one of the first high-profile victims of NSO's exploits, is now serving a 10-year prison sentence in the United Arab Emirates. NSO malware targets in Mexico have included activists who have lobbied for a soda tax and the wife of a slain journalist. When WhatsApp sued NSO in October, it accused the firm of helping to hack 1,400 victims across the globe, including dissidents, diplomats, lawyers, and government officials. All of that makes NSO's spying-for-hire operation just as dangerous as many of the world's most brazen state-sponsored hackers.

Xenotime

In August of 2017, a piece of malware known as Triton or Trisis shut down an oil refinery owned by petrochemical firm Petro Rabigh, on the Red Sea coast of Saudi Arabia. That was, in fact, a lucky outcome. The malware had actually been intended not to stop the plant's operations, but to disable so-called safety-instrumented systems in the plant designed to prevent dangerous conditions like leaks and explosions. The malware, planted by a mysterious hacker group known as Xenotime, could have easily been the first cyberattack to have cost a human life. Xenotime's motivations aren't clear, nor are its origins. Though the usual suspect for any attack on Saudi Arabia is Iran, FireEye in 2018 found links between its Triton/Trisis malware and a Russian university. Since the Petro Rabigh incident, Xenotime's target list has grown to include North American oil and gas operations, and even the US power grid. By all appearances, the group has only displayed a fraction of its destructive potential.

Cody Wilson

Over the last 10 years, Cody Wilson has developed a talent for incubating nightmares in the space between new technologies and the laws that control their most dangerous applications. In 2013, he released blueprints online for the world's first fully 3-D printable gun, allowing anyone with a 3-D printer to create a deadly, unregulated weapon in the privacy of their home. But Wilson soon traded the sci-fi shock value of that idea for practical lethality: He sold thousands of Ghost Gunner machines capable of carving away aluminum to finish fully metal AR-15s and Glocks from fully unregulated parts. In the meantime, Wilson's side projects have been just as controversial. He founded Hatreon, a Patreon-type donations site that funded extremists and white nationalists, as well as a bitcoin wallet designed for perfectly untraceable transactions, unlocking powerful new forms of money laundering. (That cryptocurrency project was halted only when his partner, Amir Taaki, unexpectedly smuggled himself into Syria to fight ISIS alongside the Kurds.)

Last year, Wilson was arrested and charged with sexual assault of a minor. But by September 2019, he was already released on probation. Given how Wilson has thrived on controversy and negative press, don't expect his bomb-throwing career to be over just yet.

Peter Thiel

Once, Peter Thiel was simply a rich libertarian eccentric, dreaming of seasteading, advocating against college education, and watching the fortune he made cofounding PayPal multiply as a major investment in Facebook. This decade, however, it's the politics of his businesses, not their profit-making, that has raised the most eyebrows. Palantir, another company he cofounded, has become the world's most active embodiment of Silicon Valley's partnership with surveillance agencies, controversially offering up its data-mining software and services for undocumented immigrant-hunting at ICE, and reportedly stepping in for the Pentagon's controversial Project Maven after Google bowed out under employee pressure. Anduril, founded by Palmer Luckey with an investment from Thiel, sells surveillance technologies designed for the southern border to Customs and Border Protection. Even earlier, starting in 2012, Thiel notoriously bankrolled a series of lawsuits designed to destroy Gawker as an apparent act of vengeance, although Thiel himself described it as "deterrence." Regardless, his libertarian ideals seem to find their limits at press freedom, surveillance, and rights for US immigrants.

Anonymous

The faceless hacker collective known as Anonymous came into being in the late 2000s. But it hit its peak in the first years of the 2010s, with hacking operations that hit Visa, Mastercard, and Paypal with waves of junk traffic as vengeance for their financial blockade of WikiLeaks, as well as waves of hacking that tormented Sony for suing George Hotz for reverse engineering the Playstation. Anonymous' anarchistic hacktivism peaked in the summer of 2011, when an offshoot of the group known as LulzSec went on a months-long rampage, hacking security firms, defense contractors, media, government, and police organizations. It turns out, however, that young hackers without the backing of a government nor a comfortable geographic remove from their victims isn't exactly a sustainable form of protest. Virtually all of the most active Anonymous hackers were arrested. Some, like Jeremy Hammond, received lengthy prison sentences, while others like Hector Monsegur became informants against their former colleagues. Since then, Anonymous has largely petered out as a movement, and hacktivism has faded from the headlines, more often used as a cover story for state-sponsored hackers than a tool for idealistic agents of chaos.

More Great WIRED Stories

Read more:
The Most Dangerous People on the Internet This Decade - WIRED

A top UN official has accused the British and US governments of torture over their detention of whistleblowers Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange, who between them embarrassed the West over its military operations in Iraq.

Nils Melzer, the UN Special Rapporteur on torture, said Ms Manning, who is being held in a jail in Virginia after refusing to testify about Mr Assange, was being being subjected to an open-ended, progressively severe measure of coercion fulfilling all the constitutive elements of torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

He added: The practice of coercive detention appears to be incompatible with the international human rights obligations of the United States.

Sharing the full story, not just the headlines

In regard to Britains treatment of Mr Assange, who is being held in Londons Belmarsh prison, where supporters say his health is fading, he said: Mr Assanges continued exposure to severe mental and emotional suffering which, in light of the circumstances, clearly amounts to psychological torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

The condemnation of the governments treatment of the two prisonerswas made in separate letters, that Mr Melzer, 49, made public after he said he received no response to concerns he raised with US and British authorities.

REUTERS

REUTERS

The continued detention of Ms Manning is not a lawful sanction.and should be discontinued and abolished without delay, he said on Twitter.

Of the letter released about Mr Assanges treatment, he said: My official findings, supported by medical experts, unquestionably provide reasonable ground to believe UK officials contributed to Assanges psychological torture or ill-treatment.

Though they have never met, the lives of Ms Manning, 32, and 48-year-old Mr Assange, became inextricably linked after the one-time army intelligence analyst provided a wealth of materials about the US-led invasion and military operation in Iraq to Wikileaks, the whistleblower organisation Mr Assange founded in 2006.

Among the most damning material was video footage that showed two USAH-64 Apache helicopters attacking buildings in Baghdad in 2007, and then closing in a group of people. Among the people were children and journalists.

Chelsea Manning: Jailed US analyst walks free after refusing to testify to WikiLeaks grand jury

Oh, yeah, look at those dead bastards, one US airman can be heard to say. The attack killed at least a dozen people.

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Ms Manning served seven years for leaking the video, much of that time spent in solitary confinement. She was detained again in the spring of 2019 after refusing to testify against Mr Assange at a grand jury that was established in Virginia to support a prosecution of him.

I will not participate in a secret process that I morally object to, particularly one that has been used to entrap and persecute activists for protected political speech, she said.

Mr Assange was arrested on April 11 at the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, after US prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia unsealed a criminal case against him, alleging he conspired with Ms Manning to commit computer intrusion.

Mr Assange, whose organisation also published information about Guantanamo Bay, the US state department and Democratic Party emails allegedly obtained by Russian hackers, is preparing to fight his case at an extradition hearing, due to begin in February.

The US has charged him with 17 offences, most of the them under the Espionage Act. The US alleges he helped Ms Manning hack a Pentagon computer network, something his supporters have denied is true.

After he was arrested, a lawyer for Mr Assange, Barry Pollack, said: These unprecedented charges demonstrate the gravity of the threat the criminal prosecution of Julian Assange poses to all journalists in their endeavour to inform the public about actions that have been taken by the US government.

Mr Assange, whose health is said to be worsening according to friends and supporters who have visited him in jail, faces up to 175 years in jail if convicted.

An arrest warrant from Sweden, relating to allegations of sexual assault, has since been dropped.

The US state department did not immediately respond to inquiries from The Independent. A spokesperson for the British foreign office said: We strongly disagree with any suggestion that Mr Assange has experienced improper treatment in the UK. The allegation Mr Assange was subjected to torture is unfounded and wholly false.

The rest is here:
WikiLeaks: UN official accuses UK and US of torture over treatment of Assange and Manning - The Independent

This appeared at CaitlinJohnston.com on December 28, 2019.

This is getting really, really, really weird.

WikiLeaks haspublished yet another set of leaked internal documentsfrom within the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) adding even more material tothe mountain of evidencethat weve been lied to about an alleged chemical weapons attack in Douma, Syria last year which resulted in airstrikes upon that nation from the US, UK and France.

This new WikiLeaks drop includes an email from the OPCW Chief of CabinetSebastien Braha (who isreportedly so detestedby organisation inspectors that they code named him Voldemort) throwing a fit over theIan Henderson Engineering Assessmentwhich found that the Douma incident was likely a staged event. Braha is seen ordering OPCW staff to remove all traces, if any, of its delivery/storage/whatever from the organisations (sic) secure registry.

The drop also includes theminutes from an OPCW toxicology meetingwiththree Toxicologists/Clinical pharmacologists, one bioanalytical and toxicological chemist, all four of whom are specialists in chemical weapons analysis.

With respect to the consistency of the observed and reported symptoms of the alleged victims with possible exposure to chlorine gas or similar, the experts were conclusive in their statements that there was no correlation between symptoms and chlorine exposure, the document reads.

According to the leaked minutes from the toxicology meeting, the chief expert offered the possibility of the event being a propaganda exercise as one potential explanation for the Douma incident. The other OPCW experts agreed thatthe key take-away message from the meeting wasthat the symptoms observed were inconsistent with exposure to chlorine and no other obvious candidate chemical causing the symptoms could be identified.

Like all the othermany,many,many,many different leakswhich have beenhemorrhaging from the OPCWaboutthe Douma incident, none of the important information contained in these publications was included in any of the OPCWs public reports on the matter. According to theOPCWs Final Reportpublished in March 2019, the investigative team found reasonable grounds that the use of a toxic chemical as a weapon took place. This toxic chemical contained reactive chlorine. The toxic chemical was likely molecular chlorine.

We now know that these reasonable grounds contain more holes than a spaghetti strainer executed by firing squad. This is extremely important information about an unsolved war crime which resulted in dozens of civilian deaths and led to an act of war whichcost taxpayers tens of millions of dollarsand had many far-reaching geopolitical consequences.

Yet the mass media, freakishly, has had absolutely nothing to say about this extremely newsworthy story.

As of this writing, a Google News search for this story brings up an article by RT, another byAl-Masdar News, and some entries by alternative outlets youve almost certainly never heard of likeUrduPoint NewsandPeoples Pundit Daily.

Make no mistake about it: this is insane. The fact that an extremely important news story of immense geopolitical consequence is not gettinganymainstream news media coverage,at all, is absolutely stark raving insane.

Up until the OPCW leaks, WikiLeaks drops always made mainstream news headlines. Everyone remembers how the 2016 news cycle was largely dominated by leaked Democratic Party emails emerging from the outlet. Even the relatively minor ICE agents publication by WikiLeaks last year, containing information thatwas already public,garnered headlines from top US outlets likeThe Washington Post,Newsweek, andUSA Today. Now, on this exponentially more important story, zero coverage.

The mass medias stone-dead silence on the OPCW scandal is becoming its own scandal, of equal or perhaps even greater significance than the OPCW scandal itself. It opens up a whole litany of questions which have tremendous importance for every citizen of the western world; questions like, how are people supposed to participate in democracy if all the outlets they normally turn to to make informed voting decisions adamantly refuse to tell them about the existence of massive news stories like the OPCW scandal? How are people meant to address such conspiracies of silence when there is no mechanism in place to hold the entire mass media to account for its complicity in it? And by what mechanism are all these outlets unifying in that conspiracy of silence?

We can at least gain some insight into that last question with the internalNewsweekemails which werepublished by journalist Tareq Haddadtwo weeks ago. The emails feature multipleNewsweekeditors telling Haddad that they would not publish a word about the OPCW leaksfor two reasons: (1) because no other outlets were reporting on them, and (2) because the US government-funded narrative management firm Bellingcat hadpublished a laughably bogus articleexplaining why the leaks werent newsworthy. Haddad has since resigned fromNewsweek.

We may be certain that this story is being killed in news rooms all around the world in similar fashion, and possibly using those very same excuses. As long as no other respectable (i.e. establishment) outlets are covering this story, it can be treated as a non-story, using a deceitful US government-funded narrative management operation as justification as needed. If one journalist threw his life into chaos and uncertainty by resigning and blowing the whistle on this conspiracy of silence, we may be certain that the same is happening to countless others who dont have to courage and/or ability to do the same.

Many alternative media commentators are highlighting this news media blackout on social media today.

Our fearless media watchdogs still maintaining complete blackout on OPCW whistleblower leaks debunking WMD attack in Douma. The leaks show that Trumplike Dubya used fake WMDs to bomb Arab countrythen strong-armed OPCW to cover up the lies,tweetedjournalist Mark Ames.

The US attacked Syria for a chemical attack by Assad last year. But official OPCWscientists who investigated the event didnt find evidence the Syrian military used chemical weapons. The media has chosen to ignore this story and fire its own journalists who try to report on it,tweetedauthor and analyst Max Abrahms.

This is the FOURTH leak showing how theOPCWfabricated a report on a supposed Syrian chemical attack,tweetedjournalist Ben Norton. And mainstream Western corporate media outlets are still silent, showing how authoritarian these democracies are and how tightly they control info.

Media silence on this story is its own scandal,tweetedjournalist Aaron Mat.

But this spin machine is twirling off its axis trying to normalize this silence.

Bellingcat narrative jockeys such as senior investigator Nick Waters are already scrambling to perception manage everyone into believing their own eyes are lying to them. Watershas a thread on Twitterthats being shared around by all the usual Syria spinmeisters claiming, based on no evidence whatsoever, that WikiLeaks is selectively publishing the documents it has to create a false impression of events in the OPCW. Waters falsely claims that an email by Sebastien Voldemort Brahathe guy at the center of the scandalproves that Ian Henderson was not a part of the Fact-Finding Mission (FFM) in Douma, in contradiction to the claims made by the anonymous second OPCW whistleblower who goes by the pseudonym of Alex.

As Waters is one hundred percent aware, Henderson absolutelywaspart of the Douma Fact-Finding Mission, and one of the FFM members who actually went to Douma no less. Ive put together a Twitter thread refuting Waters ridiculous claims whichyou can read by clicking here, but in short an arbitrary distinction seems to have been made between the FFM and the FFM core team, or what is labeled the FFM Alpha team in a newly leaked email trying to marginalize Hendersons assessment. Henderson actually went to Douma as part of the FFM, unlike almost all members of the so-called core team who except for one paramedicoperated solely in another nation(probably Turkey).

Of course, the distinction of whether Henderson was or was not in the FFM is also itself irrelevant and arbitrary, since we know for a fact that he is a longtime OPCW inspector who went to Douma and contributed an assessment which was hidden from the public by the OPCW.

So this narrative being spun by the US government-funded propagandists at Bellingcat is bogus from top to bottom, but whats infuriating is that we already know who editors in news rooms are going to listen to.

Its absolutely amazing how tightly interlaced Bellingcat is with the upper echelons of mainstream news media and the public framing of whats going on in Syria. Mere hours after the latest WikiLeaks drop,CNN pundit Brian Steltershared an articleabout Bellingcat founder and former Atlantic Council Senior Fellow Eliot Higgins, who warns of the dangers posed by alternative media reporters who cover underreported stories like the OPCW scandal.

We have this alternative media ecosystem that is driving a lot of disinformation. It is not understood by journalists or anyone really beyond a very small group of people who are really engaged with it, reads the ironic Higgins quote in the excerpt shared by Stelter.

Weve been seeing a mad rush from mass media pundits to give this US government-funded narrative management operation unearned and undeserved legitimacy, churning out tweets like Stelters and fawning puff pieces byThe New York Times,The GuardianandThe New Yorker.This unearned and undeserved legitimacy is then used by editors to justify looking to Bellingcat for instructions on how to think about important information on Syria rather than doing their own basic investigation and analysis. Its a self-validating feedback loop which just so happens to work out very conveniently for the government which funds Bellingcat.

It remains unknown exactly whats transpiring in news rooms around the world to maintain the conspiracy of silence on the OPCW scandal, but what is known is that by itself this scandalous silence is enough to fully discredit the mass media forever. WikiLeaks has exposed these outlets for the monolithic propaganda engine that they really are, and they did it just by publishing extremely newsworthy leak after extremely newsworthy leak.

In order to perception manage us any harder, these freaks are going to have to go around literally confiscating our ears and eyeballs.

Caitlin Johnstone

_______________________________

Link:
Media's deafening silence on latest WikiLeaks drop is its own scandal - Personal Liberty Digest

In the manner of WikiLeaks and the Pentagon Papers, The Irish Times has obtained copies of Irish political leaders letters to Santa, which we now publish in the public interest. Any embarrassment to Santa is regretted

Dear Santa,

I know this may be stretching things a bit, but what I want for Christmas is to know the best date to have the election on. This is, like, the biggest decision ever for me, after what top to wear to the Kylie gig. Most of the guys think I should go in February, right after Brexit, but half of me thinks, Hmmm, February election, dont like the sound of that.

Also, yknow, a February election not as easy for me to swan around the country with my sleeves rolled up in the old young-leader-for-a-young-country pose, which the guys reckon will be a surefire winner with our target voters. Instead Ill be stuck in TV studios with that OK Boomer Michel Martin, debating waiting lists and homeless figures and all that stuff he keeps droning on about, the saddo.

On the other hand, Brexit is about the only thing voters think the Government has got right, so theres a strong argument for opening the polls about 20 minutes after the UK leaves the EU. And you know what voters are like, Santa. Memory of a goldfish. Theyll have forgotten completely I saved them from a no-deal Brexit by May.

Sorry for going on about this, but it has my head wrecked. Obvs would like to win the election too, if you could manage that. Its a big ask, I know, but imagine the look on Harriss face when I keep him as Minister for Health. Lol.

Ill leave a smoothie and some avocado toast out for you and Rudolph.

Your friend,Leo

Dear Santy,

this is a big request, but, as you know, I have been very, very good again this year. I would like a new front bench and parliamentary party. Ive just about had it with the current crowd and dont think I can put up with them going forward, and so on and so forth. I mean, what are my chances of beating that pup Varadkar and then leading a government of national renewal with this shower?

Even Lisa Chambers, who was my star pupil, turns out to be up to her neck in the dodgy-voting controversy, much to the amusement of the corner boys. As for their complaints that I never listen to them anyway, thats not true, Santa. I listen to them closely, so I can relate all the details to my staff to laugh at.

Most of the TDs seem more interested in having a laugh and shoring up their own seats than getting ready for the election or developing policies. Their knowledge of politics is not up to scratch, either many dont realise how successful I was as minister for health, or that I was the greatest minister for foreign affairs of the late 2000s. Also, Santa, their diets are atrocious far too meat-heavy, and not enough pulses and grains. Dont even start me on the fried breakfasts. No, theres only one thing for it: I need a whole new set of TDs.

I will leave out some fruit juice and quinoa for yourself and Rudolph. To be honest, I think you could possibly look at your own diet and exercise regime.

Happy Christmas,Michel

Santa, a chara,

So this is a little unusual, but I am going to ask to not have something next year as my present. As in an election. The whole election thing is a little tricky for me at the mo, and Id be so, so grateful, Santa, if we could just avoid one next year. I really couldnt handle another election campaign right now. We just finished one in the North, and, honestly, the stress of not being sure whether its an audience youre supposed to shout Tiocfaidh r l! at or intone solemnly, We must listen to and understand the concerns of unionists it would give you hives, Santa, it would. Also, the results were not exactly Gerrytastic, and more of the same in the South would have Pearse furrowing his brow at the rest of the party in that I-told-you-so way of his, so if you could deliver no election it would be thas-an-domhain time. Trying to work on the old Irish there, Santa.

Also, could you stop Eoin Broin looking so smug? As, like, an extra surprise.

Ill leave out a selection box as usual for yourself and Rudolph.

Le mr mheas (Irish again there), Mary Lou

Hi Santa

Can I just say that although we do appreciate you calling at our house again this year, it does seems to be a little unsustainable to travel to every house in the world on Christmas night. So maybe you should think about just going to the constituencies that the Greens have a chance to win seats in. Anyway, just a thought.

I have just two things on my list this year. The first is Id like loads of new TDs dont want to seem greedy, Santa, but the more the better. The second request is related: that they accept my judgment that the right thing to do is enter government and for me to be a minister, along with some other people that I choose. The last thing I want, Santa, is to bring in a bunch of new TDs and have them make up their own minds on this. I dont think that would be helpful at all, if you dont mind me pointing that out. Yes, I know some of them will say that the last period in government was rather challenging, but I think we can all agree: this time will be different.

Ill leave out some carrot cake.

Happy Christmas, Eamon

View post:
Revealed: What Leo, Michel, Mary Lou and Eamon asked Santa for - The Irish Times

Kim Dotcom, founder of the Internet Party and founder of Megaupload Ltd., right, looks on as ... [+] investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald, second right, addresses a question to Edward Snowden, former contractor at the U.S. National Security Agency, projected on the screen at left while speaking from a remote location, during an event titled and quot;Moment of Truth and quot; at the Auckland Townhall in Auckland, New Zealand, on Monday, Sept. 15, 2014. New Zealand Prime Minister John Key said he'll declassify intelligence service documents to disprove claims his government engaged in mass surveillance of its citizens after Greenwald, who published Snowden's leaked U.S. National Security Agency documents last year, said he'll release more NSA files showing New Zealand's complicity in mass surveillance with its partners in the Five Eyes network. Photographer: Brendon O'Hagan/Bloomberg *** Local Caption *** Kim Dotcom; Glenn Greenwald; Edward Snowden

In an age where opinions abound (including from yours truly), there is a premium for hard-hitting adversarial journalism that digs at facts that can unnerve powerful incumbent classes. In many ways, the roots of journalism and cryptocurrency come from the same spiritual places: a relentless drive to hold the powerful accountable, an unending desire to question the truth and, with the evolution of journalism from curated, edited papers to a larger audience of decentralized voices, the same ethos as cryptocurrency, if not in spirit, than in practice.

So it makes sense that journalists and investigative outlets are increasingly looking to experiment with cryptocurrencies. Here are some prominent examples of hard-hitting investigative journalism supported by cryptocurrency users and donors that you can contribute to.

1- Hong Kong Free Press

Hong Kong Free Press is a non-for-profit team of journalists based in Hong Kong that relies entirely on donors and readers to maintain their work. At the forefront of covering the Hong Kong protests and the Umbrella Movement, theyve broken such stories such as the denial of visa renewal for the foreign press clubs Vice President, Victor Mallet and maintained constant coverage through months of protest in the city. They accept Bitcoin through BTCPay.

2- Caracas Chronicles

Caracas Chronicles features English-language stories and insight on Venezuela. Fueled by contributions from readers, there are now contributors from across Venezuela, filling an important void in the media ecosystem especially in the context of a state that will sometimes shut down the Internet in order to keep information from coming out from its borders.

Started as a blog in 2002, Caracas Chronicles has now evolved to a media outfit with a newsroom in Caracas and correspondents in eight Venezuelan cities. The site takes cryptocurrency donations through a Coinbase integration, accepting Litecoin, Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Bitcoin Cash.

3- Freedom of the Press Foundation

The Freedom of the Press Foundation was founded in 2012 as a non-profit organization dedicated to "promoting and funding aggressive, public-interest journalism focused on exposing mismanagement, corruption, and law-breaking in government". Journalists and whistleblowers such as Daniel Ellsberg (who leaked the Pentagon Papers), Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras have served on its board. Edward Snowden has served as the president for the Foundation since 2016.

The organization drew its roots from the financial blockade of Wikileaks with payment processors refusing to serve Wikileaks directly, Freedom of the Press Foundation served as an intermediary. Perhaps for this reason, and its affiliation with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, it is one of a few media-based organizations that does accept cryptocurrency donations everything from Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Stellar, ZCash, Litecoin and Ethereum. You can donate directly to wallets that are managed by the Foundation it has received about 9 BTC in donations by the time of publication.

4- Wikimedia Foundation

While not traditionally associated with investigative journalism, the Wikimedia Foundation, through its work with Wikipedia and Wikiquote, help reinforce a curated history and legacy of investigative work, accessible and contextualized for all. This includes the Wikipedia pages of murdered investigative journalists and compiled reports on the product and outcome of investigative reports such as the Panama Papers. The Foundation takes donations with Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash and Ether through Bitpay.

5- Forbes Crypto

This very section of Forbes now has accepted the ability for payments in Ethereum through the Unlock Protocol in order to read content without ads at the equivalent of $1 a week. Payments can only be made in Ethereum for now but this already gives Forbes a more international and cross-border reach than transactions in any domestic currency.

In a world with more interpretations of the truth, there is a need for hard-hitting investigative journalism that is not afraid of being adversarial and dogged in questioning the truth at every turn. It is a sentiment many in the cryptocurrency community might share and which they can tangibly support through the outlets above.

The rest is here:
Hard-Hitting Investigative Journalism You Can Support With Cryptocurrencies - Forbes

Critical Linking, a daily roundup of the most interesting bookish links from around the web, is sponsored by the Read Harder Journal, a reading log for tracking your books and reading outside your comfort zone!

It wasnt easy narrowing down next years list of buzzy titles to just 50, so trust that this is going to be a great reading year. Here are the books were most excited for, from major novels to fascinating memoirs to a Jim Carrey book were struggling to explain. And click the release dates on each slide to make all the pre-orders your heart desires.

New year, new books!

It is all therelife, not just in the American South but this American life, periodwaiting for you to take the ride, the heartbreaking and brave journey that is Marguerite Johnsons young life. Ahead of its publication, James Baldwin said Caged Bird liberates the reader into life simply because Maya Angelou confronts her own life with such a moving wonder, such a luminous dignity. I have no words for this achievement, but I know that not since the days of my childhood, when the people in books were more real than the people one saw every day, have I found myself so moved.Her portrait is a biblical study in life in the midst of death.'

How I Know Why the Caged Bird Singssparked a literary revolution.

A lot has changed over the course of the last 10 years, yall. The 2010s kicked off with the WikiLeaks scandal, and ended with the arrest of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange earlier this year. Netflix and Hulu had only just begun to stream in 2010, and now we live in a world in which premium cable networks have their own, separate streaming services. The U.S. Supreme Court struck down DOMA in 2013, paving the way for the Court to legalize marriages for similar-gender couples midway through the decade. All thats just a brief sampling of all the ways our lives have changed this decade.

The best books of the decade according to debut authors, and I still cant believe its almost 2020.

Sign up to Today In Books to receivedaily news and miscellany from the world of books.

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Read more:
50 of the Most Anticipated Books of 2020: Critical Linking, December 22, 2019 - Book Riot