Behind the dystopian show trial of Julian Assange, an assault on journalism - with Kevin Gosztola
Moderate Rebels
Moderate Rebels
4.7 • 673 Ratings
🗓️ 13 September 2020
⏱️ 89 minutes
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Summary
Max Blumenthal and Ben Norton speak about the dystopian show trial going on against political prisoner Julian Assange with journalist Kevin Gosztola, who is covering the UK court hearings to potentially extradite the WikiLeaks publisher to the US.
We discuss the major threat this case poses to the freedom of the press -- yet how it is being criminally under-reported and whitewashed in the corporate media.
LINKS:
Read Kevin's reporting at shadowproof.com
Follow Kevin on Twitter at twitter.com/kgosztola
Max's report "'The American friends': New court files expose Sheldon Adelson’s security team in US spy operation against Julian Assange": thegrayzone.com/2020/05/14/american-sheldon-adelsons-us-spy-julian-assange
Max's report "Exclusive images from inside British court expose Assange’s un-democratic treatment, physical deterioration": thegrayzone.com/2020/05/29/british-court-assanges-physical-deterioration
(Episode recorded on September 11, 2020)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | We're watching the concept of free speech and press freedom being reshaped and distorted before our eyes |
| 0:07.4 | against a backdrop of a information war that is one component of the hybrid war that the U.S. is waging |
| 0:16.5 | against what it calls its near-peer competitors, Russia and China. And I think we've seen |
| 0:24.3 | throughout the past week, this for several weeks, an escalating attack on alternative media |
| 0:31.5 | and on counter-hegemonic media from states that are designated enemies. And, you know, I think this is all, we have to see it all |
| 0:42.7 | as one part. We have to see the attack on Assange and WikiLeaks as part of the U.S. |
| 0:48.3 | government's effort to limit the public's access to inconvenient facts. It's what I would call free speech with |
| 0:57.9 | American characteristics where information is limited. The information flow is limited by the |
| 1:06.3 | U.S. government, but the U.S. public is unable to see the censor's hand. It's a new, I would say, |
| 1:14.3 | a more crude repackaging or iteration of the Ed Herman model of propaganda of manufacturing consent. |
| 1:25.3 | It's actually enforcing consent. And Julian Assange, why is he in the |
| 1:29.5 | glass box? Why is he in, why has he been in solitary confinement during COVID, during a |
| 1:36.1 | pandemic? Why is he in a maximum security prison instead of being under house arrest? Why was he |
| 1:41.8 | confined for years in an embassy for jumping bail? Why has he been so |
| 1:46.8 | roundly demonized by the stenographers of power? It is to make an example of him in medieval |
| 1:54.2 | fashion as Joan of Arc was burned at the stake, as so many figures who led rebellions were publicly tortured. |
| 2:06.0 | This is what's going on here. |
| 2:08.7 | And the point of it all, the point of it all is to just say, you could be next. |
| 2:14.3 | And I think for many opportunists and careerists, they've shut up. They understand the message. |
| 2:22.7 | They're taking it. The question is, who's going to take that risk? Who's going to run up against |
| 2:28.3 | this constantly shifting government red line on speech and take that risk to do real national security reporting, |
| 2:37.4 | which could include publishing classified information or publishing information about covert |
... |
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