Join Fidel Narváez, former consul at the Ecuador embassy in London, and John Kiriakou, former C.I.A. officer and CN columnist, discussing Julian Assange’s case. Produced by the First Unitarian Society of Milwaukee, WI. Watch the replay.
What really went down at the Ecuadorian Embassy that allegedly triggered the C.I.A. plot to kidnap or kill Julian Assange? Former consul general at the embassy for over 6 years Fidel Narváez, tells the inside story. John Kiriakou explains what it’s really like inside a U.S. prison.
The most dangerous, and under-discussed, development in corporate media is the spate of ex-security state agents now employed to deliver the “news.”
Twitter profile of former FBI Assistant Director Frank Figliuzzi, now of NBC News
Two of the television outlets on which American liberals rely most for their news — NBC News and CNN — have spent the last six years hiring a virtual army of former CIA operatives, FBI officials, NSA spies, Pentagon chiefs, and DOJ prosecutors to work in their newsrooms. The multiple ways in which journalism is fundamentally corrupted by this spectacle are all vividly illustrated by a new article from NBC Newsthat urges the prosecution and extradition of Julian Assange, claiming that the WikiLeaks founder, once on U.S. soil, will finally provide the long-elusive proof that Donald Trump criminally conspired with Russia.
The NBC article is written by former FBI Assistant Director and current NBC News employee Frank Figliuzzi, who played a central role during the Obama years in the FBI’s attempt to investigate and criminalize Assange: a rather relevant fact concealed by NBC when publishing this. But this is how U.S. security state agents now directly control corporate news outlets.
During the Cold War and then in the decades following it, the U.S. security state constantly used clandestine measures to infiltrate U.S. corporate media outlets and shape U.S. media coverage in order to propagandize the domestic population. Indeed, intelligence agencies have a long, documented record of violating their charter by interfering in domestic politics through formal programs to manipulate U.S. media coverage.
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William-Adolphe Bouguereau Whisperings of Love 1889
What’s the difference between Julian Assange being robbed of his freedom for 12 years and you being robbed of yours for two? From a legal point of view, very little. Because both are based on, “justified by”, no existing laws. They are based on people who happen to have grabbed power, interpreting existing law in their own favor, aided and abetted by their respective judicial branches.
Assange being told he can have no life, or freedom, today, despite never having been formally accused, let alone convicted, of a crime, is no different than someone in Austria threatened with being imprisoned because they don’t want to be vaxxed with an experimental substance. Neither will have broken an existing and valid law, still both will end up behind bars.
I support people who say it should be everyone’s own choice whether they want to be vaccinated with mRNA or not, but I doubt that more than 2% know even what that is, what it does, and what it still may do to them, and to their children. Informed consent is not just some abstract idea, even if it is treated as such.
The vast majority of people who are coerced into being jabbed, are undoubtedly the same ones who pay no attention to what is happening to Julian Assange. They just read and watch the media they always have, and their media tells them only what the owners and sponsors of the channels and papers want to let them know.
Nothing to do with what is important to their lives, or their freedoms, just a narrow passage way in which their lives are “allowed” to take place…
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
By this time, it should be sinking into everyone’s consciousness that the American people are never going to be permitted to see the rest of the CIA’s 60-year-old secret records relating to the JFK assassination.
Yes, I know, President Biden says that the new deadline for disclosure is December 22, 2022, which just happens to fall after the November 2022 congressional elections. But that’s just like the mechanical rabbit that is used in dog races — the dogs are never going to catch that rabbit. And the American people are never going to see those records.
Don’t forget, after all, that this isn’t the first deadline that has been set for disclosure. There was the 25-year deadline that was set back in the 1990s. That deadline came due during the Trump administration.
What happened when that deadline came? It got extended of course. Trump surrendered to the CIA’s demands for continued secrecy, just as Biden now has. Every president will do so. The CIA will demand it. National security depends on it!
Ever since Kennedy was assassinated, there has been a segment of society that has fallen for the official story — that a lone nut communist former U.S. Marine shot and killed the president. This segment has also bought into what has become known as the magic-bullet theory, which holds that a bullet hit Kennedy in the back of the neck, exited his throat, broke ribs and a wrist bone in Governor Connally, lodged in Connally’s thigh, and ended up in virtually pristine, never-been-shot condition.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Here is that interview people have asked about where Chuck Schumer confirms that no politician will EVER investigate the intelligence branch — NSA, CIA, FBI, or DOJ. They hold unbridled power to do as they like when they like.
The probability that the CIA took out John F. Kennedy has long been suspected, and the CIA has refused to release documents that Congress had sealed for 50 years. They claim it is a national security issue, and if it were Russia, they would be flouting that documentation all over the press. The ONLY reason to refuse to release documents is that they will lead to the intelligence community who wanted to start the war with Vietnam, which Kennedy opposed.
There is the declassified proposal that Kennedy also rejected. The CIA wanted to kill Americans and then blame it on Castro to justify invading Cuba. And people wonder about 9/11? The Russian hack that they boast was discovered by the intelligence community never took place. Russians never hacked the Democratic Party servers.
Welcome to the land of the free, where our claimed elected officials are afraid to investigate the intelligence community. Schumer calls Trump stupid, for he should have known how powerful they really were. They wanted Biden so they could do as they liked whenever. Calling Trump stupid for criticizing the intelligence community confirms that neither he nor anyone else in Washington would dare to shake up or stir the intelligence community.
A bombshell Yahoo News investigation published Sunday is being called the most important deep-dive exposé in years detailing the lengths the CIA and US national security state went to nab WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange while he was holed up at the Ecuadoran embassy. US officials were even having meetings discussing possible assassination of the man who exposed so many secrets of American military and clandestine actions abroad.
Dozens of US intelligence officials, including many who had served under the Trump administration, are now confirming the CIA considered “options” for kidnapping and/or assassinating Assange and that plans were mulled over at the highest levels of CIA leadership. “More than 30 former U.S. officials — eight of whom described details of the CIA’s proposals to abduct Assange,” are sourced in the report, which further reveals the CIA targeted journalists who worked closely with WikiLeaks, including Glenn Greenwald.
Among the many key new revelations in the report includes that then CIA chief Mike Pompeo was itching for revenge against WikiLeaks and Assange after the “Vault 7” leaks, considered a massive embarrassment to the agency almost without parallel. This began years-running US intelligence “war” on the whistleblower organization publisher of leaked and classified materials, which had the end goal of destroying it and Assange.
WikiLeaks itself had publicized on multiple occasions reports of its legal and media team being victims of “professional operations” by CIA assets, and even provided surveillance footage of a “grab team” at various points camped outside the Ecuadorian embassy in London. We also learn that attempts to tie WikiLeaks to the Russian government was part of a CIA propaganda campaign tied to its ‘dirty war’ on the media entity.
A stark reminder that carrying a tracking device with a Google login, even with the SIM card removed, can mean the difference between freedom and an orange jump suit in the Great Reset era.
But Google also operates its own internal intelligence agency – complete with foreign regime change operations that are now being applied domestically.
And they’ve been doing so without repercussion for over a decade.
From Google Ideas to Google Regime Change
In 2010, Google CEO Eric Schmidt created Google Ideas. In typical Silicon Valley newspeak, Ideas was marketed as a “think/do tank to research issues at the intersection of technology and geopolitics.“
Astute readers know this “think/do” formula well – entities like the Council on Foreign Relations or World Economic Forum draft policy papers (think) and three-letter agencies carry them out (do).
And again, in typical Silicon Valley fashion, Google wanted to streamline this process – bring everything in-house and remake the world in their own image.
To head up Google Ideas, Schmidt tapped a man named Jared Cohen.
He couldn’t have selected a better goon for the job – as a card-carrying member of the Council on Foreign Relations and Rhodes Scholar, Cohen is a textbook Globalist spook. The State Department doubtlessly approved of his sordid credentials, as both Condoleeza Rice and Hillary Clinton enrolled Cohen to knock over foreign governments they disapproved of.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
How government and media use the phrase to suppress opposition.by
Biden’s “National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism” report last week declared that “enhancing faith in American democracy” requires “finding ways to counter the influence and impact of dangerous conspiracy theories.” In recent decades, conspiracy theories have multiplied almost as fast as government lies and cover-ups. While many allegations have been ludicrously far-fetched, the political establishment and media routinely attach the “conspiracy theory” label to any challenge to their dominance.
According to Cass Sunstein, Harvard Law professor and Obama’s regulatory czar, a conspiracy theory is “an effort to explain some event or practice by reference to the machinations of powerful people, who have also managed to conceal their role.” Reasonable citizens are supposed to presume that government creates trillions of pages of new secrets each year for their own good, not to hide anything from the public.
In the early 1960s, conspiracy theories were practically a non-issue because 75 percent of Americans trusted the federal government. Such credulity did not survive the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Seven days after Kennedy was shot on November 22, 1963, President Lyndon Johnson created a commission (later known as the Warren Commission) to suppress controversy about the killing. Johnson and FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover browbeat the commission members into speedily issuing a report rubberstamping the “crazed lone gunman” version of the assassination. House Minority Leader Gerald Ford, a member of the commission, revised the final staff report to change the location of where the bullet entered Kennedy’s body, thereby salvaging Hoover’s so-called “magic bullet” theory. After the Warren Commission findings were ridiculed as a whitewash, Johnson ordered the FBI to conduct wiretaps on the report’s critics. To protect the official story, the commission sealed key records for 75 years. Truth would out only after all the people involved in any coverup had gotten their pensions and died.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
News companies are pioneering a new brand of vigilante reporting, partnering with spy agencies they once oversaw
Former CIA director John Brennan was a media villain, now he’s media himself.
What a difference a decade makes.
Just over ten years ago, on July 25, 2010, Wikileaks released 75,000 secret U.S. military reports involving the war in Afghanistan. The New York Times, The Guardian, and Der Spiegel helped release the documents, which were devastating to America’s intelligence community and military, revealing systemic abuses that included civilian massacres and an assassination squad, TF 373, whose existence the United States kept “protected” even from its allies.
The Afghan War logs came out at the beginning of a historic stretch of true oppositional journalism, when outlets like Le Monde, El Pais, Der Spiegel, The Guardian, The New York Times, and others partnered with sites like Wikileaks. Official secrets were exposed on a scale not seen since the Church Committee hearings of the seventies, as reporters pored through 250,000 American diplomatic cables, secret files about every detainee at Guantanamo Bay, and hundreds of thousands of additional documents about everything from the Iraq war to coverups of environmental catastrophes, among other things helping trigger the “Arab Spring.”
There was an attempt at a response — companies like Amazon, Master Card, Visa, and Paypal shut Wikileaks off, and the Pentagon flooded the site with a “denial of service” attack — but leaks continued. One person inspired by the revelations was former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, who came forward to unveil an illegal domestic surveillance program, a story that won an Oscar and a Pulitzer Prize for documentarian Laura Poitras and reporters Glenn Greenwald and Jeremy Scahill. By 2014, members of Congress in both parties were calling for the resignations of CIA chief John Brennan and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, both of whom had been caught lying to congress.
The culmination of this period came when billionaire eBay founder Pierre Omidyar launched The Intercept in February 2014. The outlet was devoted to sifting through Snowden’s archive of leaked secrets, and its first story described how the NSA and CIA frequently made errors using geolocation to identify and assassinate drone targets. A few months later, former CIA and NSA director Michael Hayden admitted, “We kill people based on metadata.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Do you remember how there was global outrage after the Panama Papers exposed a massive international tax evasion scheme involving many high-profile wealthy elites, leading to mass incarcerations and sweeping overhauls to the world’s taxation and legal systems?
No?
How about the huge scandal when it was revealed that the CIA unilaterally funds its own clandestine operations via secret drug trafficking programs to circumvent the oversight of elected bodies, leading to the dismantling and disbanding of the entire CIA? Or the time WikiLeaks exposed war crimes leading to tribunals at The Hague and a complete restructuring of the US military? Or all the criminal investigations and paradigm-shattering arrests after we learned that powerful intelligence agencies have been using child sex slaves to manipulate our society via blackmail?
You don’t? Hmm. That’s weird.
I mean, it is weird, right? It’s really, really weird how any time there’s a major scandalous revelation about the powerful, there’s a lot of noise about it for a few days, and then essentially nothing happens. Mainstream news media might report on it for a bit (though sometimes if it’s really inconvenient for the empire they won’t even touch it), they trot out the pundits to manage the narrative in such a way that ensures nobody in power will ever face any consequences, and then it is quietly memory-holed.
It’s weird. But we can’t deny that it’s real.
There are many people who understand that we are ruled by sociopaths who manipulate our society into alignment with their greedy and power-grabbing agendas, and that most of our world’s problems arise from this fact…
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
In the U.S. corporate media, the surest way to advance is to loyally spread lies and deceit from the U.S. security state. Bertrand is just the latest example.
CNN’s new national security reporter Natasha Bertrand, then of Politico and NBC News, with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, Sept. 19, 2019
The most important axiom for understanding how the U.S. corporate media functions is that there is never accountability for those who serve as propagandists for the U.S. security state. The opposite is true: the more aggressively and recklessly you spread CIA narratives or pro-war manipulation, the more rewarded you will be in that world.
The classic case is Jeffrey Goldberg, who wrote one of the most deceitful and destructive articles of his generation: a lengthy New Yorker article in May, 2002 — right as the propagandistic groundwork for the invasion of Iraq was being laid — that claimed Saddam Hussein had formed an alliance with Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. In February, 2003, on the eve of the invasion of Iraq, NPR host Robert Siegel devoted a long segment to this claim. When he asked Goldberg about “a man named Abu Musab al-Zarqawi,” Goldberg replied: “He is one of several men who might personify a link between Iraq and al-Qaeda.”
Needless to say, nothing could generate hatred for someone among the American population — just nine months away from the 9/11 attack — more than associating them with bin Laden. Five months after Goldberg’s New Yorker article, the U.S. Congress authorized the use of military force to impose regime change on Iraq; ten months later, the U.S. invaded Iraq; and by September, 2003, close to 70% of Americans believed the lie that Saddam had personally participated in the 9/11 attack.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Joe Biden declares a “national emergency”, calls Putin a killer, slaps more sanctions on Russia, for which he has his Foreign Secretary Antony Blinken declare that “Today, we announced actions to hold the Russian Government to account for the SolarWinds intrusion, reports of bounties on U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan, and attempts to interfere in the 2020 U.S. elections,” … and then “invites” Putin for a summit.
For the SolarWinds “intrusion”, the US has never provided any evidence at all, the Russian bounties story was -finally- fully debunked well before Blinken made his statement -which makes him look very incompetent-, and the election interference narrative is by now just too dumb to even get into. No evidence for it whatsoever after 2 years of the Mueller investigation, but now Putin’s at it again? Who did he want to win, then? Trump again, after apparently not even trying in 2016?
Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky states that his country should urgently be made a full member of both NATO and the EU, and has his own proxy, Ukraine’s ambassador to Germany, Andriy Melnyk, solemnly claim that not just “The only possibility for this [to prevent alleged invasion plans] is for Ukraine to finally become a NATO member”, but also that “Ukraine has no other choice: either we are part of an alliance such as NATO and are doing our part to make this Europe stronger, or we have the only option – to arm by ourselves, and maybe think about nuclear status again”.… And then Zelensky invites Putin for a summit. In the Donbass, no less.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The most significant Trump-era alliance is between corporate outlets and security state agencies, whose evidence-free claims they unquestioningly disseminate.
A US soldier in Afghanistan CREDIT: GETTY IMAGES
That Russia placed “bounties” on the heads of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan was one of the most-discussed and consequential news stories of 2020. It was also, as it turns out, one of the most baseless — as the intelligence agencies who spread it through their media spokespeople now admit, largely because the tale has fulfilled and outlived its purpose.
The saga began on July 29, 2020, when The New York Timesannounced that unnamed “American intelligence officials” have concluded that “a Russian military intelligence unit secretly offered bounties to Taliban-linked militants for killing coalition forces in Afghanistan — including targeting American troops.” The paper called it “a significant and provocative escalation” by Russia. Though no evidence was ever presented to support the CIA’s claims — neither in that original story nor in any reporting since — most U.S. media outlets blindly believed it and spent weeks if not longer treating it as proven, highly significant truth. Leading politicians from both parties similarly used this emotional storyline to advance multiple agendas.
The story appeared — coincidentally or otherwise — just weeks after President Trump announced his plan to withdraw all troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2020. Pro-war members of Congress from both parties and liberal hawks in corporate media spent weeks weaponizing this story to accuse Trump of appeasing Putin by leaving Afghanistan and being too scared to punish the Kremlin. Cable outlets and the op-ed pages of The New York Times and Washington Post endlessly discussed the grave implications of this Russian treachery and debated which severe retaliation was needed…
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Demonstrators march through Santiago de Chile in 2018 to commemorate the 45th anniversary of the coup that overthrew Chile’s left-wing President Salvador Allende. (Photo: EPA / Alberto Valdés) Less
Declassified Foreign Office files show that Britain conducted a covert propaganda offensive to stop Chilean leader Salvador Allende winning two democratic presidential elections – and helped prepare the ground for General Augusto Pinochet’s brutal military regime.
Almost 50 years after the September 1973 coup that overthrew the democratically-elected president of Chile, Salvador Allende, declassified Foreign Office documents reveal Britain’s role in destabilising the country.
Under the Labour government of Harold Wilson (1964-1970), a secret Foreign Office unit initiated a propaganda offensive in Chile aiming to prevent Allende, Chile’s leading socialist figure, winning power in two presidential elections, in 1964 and 1970.
The unit – the Information Research Department (IRD) – gathered information designed to damage Allende and lend legitimacy to his political opponents, and distributed material to influential figures within Chilean society.
The IRD also shared intelligence about left-wing activity in the country with the US government. British officials in Santiago assisted a CIA-funded media organisation which was part of extensive US covert action to overthrow Allende, culminating in the 1973 coup.
Anyone but Allende
A Foreign Office planning document written in 1964 had noted that Latin America was “a vital area in the Cold War and checking a Communist takeover here is at least as important a British national interest as negotiating trading and stepping up exports”.
The report added that the US was “anxious for the United Kingdom to do as much as possible in the propaganda field” in Latin America.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
John McEvoy, chile, united kingdom, political interference, britain, cia, united states, central intelligence agency, uk foreign office
The danger posed by the Deep State is that it wields immense power but is unelected and unaccountable, Phil Giraldi writes.
As a former intelligence officer, I find it amusing to read articles in the mainstream media that blithely report how the latest international outrages are undoubtedly the work of CIA and the rest of the U.S. government’s national security alphabet soup. The recurring claim that the CIA is somehow running the world by virtue of a vast conspiracy that includes the secret intelligence agencies of a number of countries, using blackmail and other inducements to corrupt vulnerable politicians and opinion makers, has entered into the DNA of journalists worldwide, frequently without any evidence that the current crop of spies is capable to doing anything more complicated than getting out of bed in the morning.
One problem with the theory about total global dominance through espionage is the sheer logistics of it all. Directing political and economic developments in two hundred nations simultaneously must require a lot of space and a large staff. Is there a huge office hidden in Langley? Or the Pentagon? Or in the White House West Wing itself? Or is it in one of the secure facilities that have been popping up like mushrooms just off of the Dulles Toll Road in Herndon Virginia?
To provide evidence that intelligence agencies extend their tentacles just about everywhere, the other claim that is nearly always made is that all former spooks are part of the conspiracy, as once you learn the secret handshake to join CIA, NSA or the FBI you never stop being “one of them.” Well, that might be true in some cases but the majority of former spooks are quite happy to be “former,” and one might also observe that many voices in the anti-war movement, such as it is, come from intelligence, law enforcement or military backgrounds…
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Philip Giraldi, strategic culture foundation, deep state, united states, cia, central intelligence agency, fbi, federal bureau of investigation, nsa, national security agency, government, journalism,
What’s the difference between Julian Assange being robbed of his freedom for 12 years and you being robbed of yours for two? From a legal point of view, very little. Because both are based on, “justified by”, no existing laws. They are based on people who happen to have grabbed power, interpreting existing law in their own favor, aided and abetted by their respective judicial branches.
It’s no secret that Google regularly collaborates with intelligence agencies.
