The West's Assault on a Free Press and Peace
As the world is slowly being shoved towards expanded conflict—some could even say World War III or nuclear war—the prosecution of Assange and the media's propaganda is exacerbating the issue.
As the discourse within the United States and the west descends further into absurdity, the train has already reached the stop where things no longer carry the understood definition it once did. It's the place where if one advocates for peace and dialogue, they are cast—quite successfully, horrifyingly enough—as treasonous propagators of Russian disinformation who are actors of sabotage regarding the status of democracy on the planet. In other words, advocates for peace here in the west are now ironically seen as senseless supporters of imperialistic aggression.
This is not an understatement. Things are backwards. The simplest way to confirm that is the zombie-like zeal for everything Ukraine and Zelensky, for the implementation of a no-fly zone, for continual arming of neo-nazi forces, for the continued creep towards world war and destruction.
Over the last couple of weeks, things have been beyond crazy, and it's all part of the information war being waged right now.
For one, D.C. is still packed with those cheerleading for aggression and furthering conflict, shamelessly saluting the fake Marvel superhero Volodymyr Zelensky, who's address to Congress last week crassly invoked Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have A Dream" speech in order to appeal for a no-fly zone— a strategy he and his lobbyist speech writers curiously saw no issue with.
Additionally, the corporate media apparatus, the so-called disseminators of "truth", has done nothing but advocate for war, putting to good use the propaganda narratives and Hollywood-styled reduction of the issue into a dumbed-down mischaracterization.
Last week, Ryan Grim posted a video of just how warped the press is regarding this whole conflict. It features the White House press briefing room's front rows firing question after question asking why the U.S. doesn't ramp up their lethal support for Ukraine, rather than diplomatic efforts, as if the West's stance has been too weak. And the demeanor of each question clearly illustrates the blindness from each reporter in terms of how each thing they seem to champion actually risks pushing the world closer and closer to larger conflict.
Grim, a lone exception in the press room clip, directs his question towards what the U.S. is doing to push "negotiations forward." Press Secretary Jen Psaki gives the trademark mumbo-jumbo, say-nothing response given to any poignant line of questioning, which prompts Grim to ask if, in the interest of negotiating peace, "Zelensky would be empowered by the United States to reach an agreement with Russia and have U.S. sanctions released as a result."
Psaki's answer to the follow-up question was even less insightful, saying the president of Ukraine is "empowered" to negotiate with Russia along with U.S. support, nudging Grim to ask: "Is that a 'yes?'" Psaki then waved off the notion, saying she's not willing to get into the specifics of the negotiations.
The video showcased just how narrow the acceptable line of discourse is in this country at this moment. And speaking of narrowing space for free speech and freedom to information, last week also bore witness to the from-the-hip use of the term "treasonous lies" and the unfazed desire to set up a Department of Justice task force to go after those treasonous enough to verge from the authoritative narrative.
Senator Mitt Romney and The View Host and Bush Dynasty-stan Ana Navarro were the one's with the bright idea here to try and vilify a few voices who have been outspoken in challenging the status quo narrative of a war that is highly misunderstood, highly mischaracterized, and highly dangerous in terms of its implications.
Tucker Carlson is deserving of plenty of ire and scorn for various things he's said and for several of his beliefs, but damn, his isolationist philosophy has been probably the best cable news voice at approaching an anti-war (though, it would be foolish to go so far as to call the guy who seemingly agrees that young American men should "sit on a throne of Chinese skulls" anti-war).
As much of a pain in the ear Carlson, like all talking heads, is, his coverage of the war in Ukraine has been the most sober and in touch with the important context around it— which is, in itself, a horrible sign for the state of the media, when Tucker Carlson is the most reasonable one.
It's videos like this, featuring guests who tear apart the current propagandized narrative, that have Carlson in hot water among the establishment media:
However much Carlson may say something outlandishly stupid, he shouldn't have his voice taken away, least of all for highlighting the holes and falsities of the pro-war, pro-instigation propaganda of the Kiev-Europe-U.S. pipeline of news.
And on a more anti-war note (though, again, she's not really anti-war either) Tulsi Gabbard has been the target of the musings of censorship and legal crackdowns on dissenters. After Gabbard posted a video highlighting the dangers of the U.S.-funded bio labs in Ukraine so as to point out the dangerous possibilities that could arise were something to go wrong, she was cast as the miscreant.
Gabbard's views have remained consistent on the war in Ukraine, condemning Putin's invasion while also calling for the U.S. and NATO to take accountability for their own roles in the crisis and to stop pushing the world closer to larger ruin. The former congresswoman has not been shy about calling the status quo into question.
Even as Carlson and Gabbard's dissenting views come with plenty of receipts to back them up, sadly, that is not enough to dissuade the self-righteous purveyors of the government narrative from flaunting their blind commitment to imperial patriotism.
In the same day, Romeny and Navarro made their authoritarian desires known. In a tweet, Romney said Gabbard was spreading Russian propaganda and "treasonous lies." And on her show, The View, Navarro expressed how good of an idea it would be for the "DOJ, in the same way that it is setting up a task force to investigate Russian oligarchs, should look into people who are Russian propagandists and shilling for Putin," referring to Carlson and Gabbard.
The idea even got some support— of course, from the same ilk. Full-time clown and one-time sports journalist Keith Olbermann agreed and even rehashed the good old "Russian assets" term that is about as hollow as a chocolate Easter bunny.
Though, perhaps worst of the whole lot from last week and certainly the biggest elicitation of despondency was the UK Supreme Court's ruling not to hear the appeal from Julian Assange's defense. The news meant that the extradition order for the WikiLeaks founder is to be sent to Home Secretary Priti Patel's desk to be signed.
In a time when information wars are in full swing, when dissent is treated as blasphemy, and when truth may be the only alternative to catastrophe, people across the west should be gravely crushed to know that a journalist who published countless documents and evidence of U.S. malfeasance of power is being punished—killed slowly through a never-ending process—for trying to get the truth out. Hope and trust in the U.S. power establishment would crumble to know that those same powerful institutions are actively working to undermine a free press in order to further entrench themselves in that power. However, hardly anyone knows.
Hardly anyone has been subjected to the reality surrounding this horrific demise of a journalist as imposed by the United States government in order to make a lesson out of him:
That's what is crushing. To see the grip of power successfully drown out the matters that have everything to do with ordinary people— foreign wars that kill millions and rob insane sums of tax dollars, intrusions on privacy, and institutional overreach that has no place in a democracy.
In the face of the lies propagated by the western order, it's almost an understatement to say that ordinary people are screwed, or at the very least, put in a severely disadvantageous position where the fog that accompanies war remains permanent and where the ordeal of deciding what is true and what is not is an impossible task.
This risks any chance for peace as the stranglehold on information prevents the truth from emerging to the masses, only allowing the war drum to be beaten even harder and leading this country down a disturbing path.
Already, we have seen the complete shift on neo-nazis. As Aaron Mate pointed out, The New York Times went from calling the Azov Battalion "openly neo-nazi" in 2015 to simply calling them "far-right" in 2022.
Not to mention the fact that in this apparent "fight for democracy" being waged in Ukraine the media has failed to cover the fact that Zelensky banned eleven opposition parties in his country, nationalizing the media.
Then there's the fact that plenty of people are left scratching their heads finding out that the Hunter Biden laptop that prompted a Twitter crackdown on the story as misinformation (Russian, to be precise, as 50-plus former intelligence spooks claimed) was confirmed to be legitimate by The New York TImes. That means that Twitter—one of the most sought sources of news—deliberately prevented a newspaper from reporting something that is true, using the vague guise of misinformation as a rationale. . . Talk about information wars.
And things can always get worse. Back in 2003, as a result of the neoconservative narrative, recall that 70% of Americans believed Saddam Hussein and Iraq played a role in the 9/11 attacks.
Of course, that was not in the least bit true, and only led to useless bloodshed and death. It was a clear and shameful example of how the public is lead into war. . . which is uncannily reminiscent of something Julian Assange once said. . .
Level heads will prevail in this dark time, if level heads can manage not to get thrown in prison or anything like that.
Any way one cuts it, the need for truth, the need for a full-fledged commitment to a free press, the need for an alternative to the west's propagandized narrative is absolutely imperative as the world teeters on the brink of disaster.
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