journalism

The second day of extradition hearings against Julian Assange and by virtue of that, WikiLeaks, saw Mark Summers QC deliver a formidable serve for the defence at Woolwich Crown Court.  “It’s difficult to conceive of a clearer example of an extradition request that boldly and blatantly misstates the facts as they are known to be to the US government.”  The targets were, respectively, allegations by the US Department of Justice that Assange attempted to conceal Chelsea Manning’s identity for nefarious purposes and, second, that WikiLeaks was reckless as to the potential consequences of harm i

On Monday, WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange’s one-week extradition hearing began at Woolwich Crown Court in South East London. The judge heard the opening arguments for the prosecution and defense. The prosecution began, accusing the journalist, who exposed the US government’s war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, of espionage charges that would carry 175 years in jail.

If we are to believe it, Julian Assange of WikiLeaks, the man behind showing the ugliness of power, is the one responsible for having abused it.  It is a running theme in the US case against this Australian publisher, who has been given the coating of common criminality hiding the obvious point: that the mission is to make journalism on official secrets, notably those covering atrocity and abuse, a crime.

Deutsche Welle rarely gets in the news, least of all for breaking any stories. If you’re Muslim with a background in journalism or simply and attractive woman though, working there comes with a high price. But if it’s not a news organisation, then what exactly is DW?
“What do I do if I have a breaking news story here in Beirut?” I asked tentatively to my German co-worker in the infamous ‘Planning’ department of Germany’s state broadcaster Deutsche Welle, over the telephone from Beirut.
“Pitch it at the weekly meeting” she replied.

Australia has produced extraordinary journalists across three generations:  Wilfred Burchett (deceased in 1983), John Pilger (80 years old but still active) and Julian Assange (48 years old, currently in London’s Belmarsh prison).
Each of these journalists made unique contributions to our understanding of the world. Although Australia is part of the western world, each of these journalists exposed and criticized Western foreign policy.
Wilfred Burchett 

It is being increasingly larded with heavy twists and turns, a form of state oppression in slow motion, but the Julian Assange extradition case now looks like it may well move into the middle of the year, dragged out, ironically enough, by the prosecution. Curiously, this is a point that both the prosecutors, fronted by the US imperium, and the WikiLeaks defence team, seem to have found some inadvertent agreement with.

This will be exposing typical U.S.-regime propaganda. That’s propaganda favoring U.S. imperialism, which actually violates the intentions of America’s Founders, and the spirit of the U.S. Constitution.

Los Dias de los Muertos are highly stylized rituals grounded in Aztec mythology when those who had passed on during the year migrate to the darkness of Mictlan in the north – the 1st is reserved for the innocents, the children, and the 2nd for the rest of us poor sinners. Traditional altars, garnished with cempaxeutl (a kind of marigold), photographs of the “difuntos” (deceased ones), jugs of tequila and mezcal, the favorite cigarettes of the dead, steaming bowls of turkey mole, and spun sugar “cranios” (skulls) blanket the land from border to border.

Is the media suppressing evidence that the 2018 chemical ‘attack’ in Syria didn’t happen the way officials said it did?

Scott RITTER

It’s Manufacturing Consent meets Operation Mockingbird; in a long exposé essay that doubles as a goodbye to the profession, Newsweek journalist Tareq Haddad explained why he was very publicly qu