Vervolging van drone klokkenluider Hale moet worden gestopt

Een 'veteraan' die meewerkte aan het drone moord programma, heeft zich tegen zijn voormalige werk en werkgever gekeerd en feiten over het drone programma aan de grote klok gehangen, vooral het enorme aantal slachtoffers die als 'collateral damage' (bijkomende schade) worden aangeduid, was voor Hale de reden om 'de klok te luiden'.

De VS overheid laat Daniel Hale vervolgen op grond van de meer dan belachelijke en inhumane Espionage Act, alleen omdat hij duidelijk maakte wat men eigenlijk doet met dit programma.... Duizenden mensen zouden al het slachtoffer zijn van drone-aanvallen, waarbij niet moet worden vergeten dat zoals gezegd het overgrote deel van de slachtoffers, meer dan 90% (!!), niet eens werd verdacht van enige misdaad (veelal vrouwen en kinderen...)....

Het gaat recht tegen internationale verdragen in om mensen zonder vorm van proces te vermoorden en je kan dan ook stellen dat deze moorden ingaan tegen de mensenrechten, het internationaal oorlogsrecht en kan zonder meer aangeduid worden als een misdaad tegen de menselijkheid!!

Hale loopt de kans te worden veroordeeld tot 50 jaar gevangenisstraf...... Het klokkenluiden door Hale is in het belang van de hele wereld, immers als de VS jouw land als ongehoorzaam aan haar doctrine acht, is de kans levensgroot dat de VS ook daar met drone aanvallen zelfs tegenstanders van de VS buitenlandpolitiek zal vermoorden........

Zet je in voor Hale, die volkomen terecht de klok luidde over deze barbaarse en schunnige moorden, lees en teken de petitie ajb en geeft het door!!

Stop the prosecution  of a drone whistleblower

RootsAction DIY info@rootsaction.org

The prosecution of drone whistleblower Daniel Hale is currently scheduled to proceed in March.

A former veteran of the drone assassination program who became an outspoken activist and critic of it, Hale is being prosecuted under the draconian Espionage Act because he dared shine a light into a very dark corner.

Hundreds of journalists, whistleblowers, and free press advocates have signed onto a demand that this prosecution be dropped. We hope you’ll stand with us and do the same.Click here to add your name to the petition.

Hale faces a sentence of up to 50 years in prison. As in other Espionage Act cases, Hale’s defense will have its hands significantly tied at trial -- he and his attorneys have been barred from even uttering the words “whistleblower” or “good motive” in the courtroom.

Please click here now to sign this petition to the U.S. Department of Justice:
Stop the selective and vindictive prosecution of Daniel Hale and bring an end to the abuse of the Espionage Act to silence whistleblowers and other truth tellers.

These prosecutions are unfair, unjust, and undemocratic. It is unconscionable to use a law, supposedly aimed at actual spies and saboteurs, against individuals who act in good faith to bring government misconduct to the attention of the public.

This petition was created by WHISPeR - Whistleblower & Source Protection Program. Create your own here.

After signing the petition, please use the tools on the next webpage to share it with your friends.

This work is only possible with your financial support. Please chip in $3 now.

The RootsAction.org Team

P.S. RootsAction is an independent online force endorsed by Jim Hightower, Barbara Ehrenreich, Cornel West, Daniel Ellsberg, Glenn Greenwald, Naomi Klein, Bill Fletcher Jr., Laura Flanders, former U.S. Senator James Abourezk, Frances Fox Piven, Lila Garrett, Phil Donahue, Sonali Kolhatkar, and many others.Background:
>> The Washington Post: "Former Intelligence Analyst Charged with Leaking Drone Details to News Outlet"

>> Reason: "He Helped Reveal How U.S. Drone Strikes Were Killing Innocents"

>> Defending Rights & Dissent: "Whistleblowers, Journalists, Condemn Espionage Act Charges"

>> The Intercept: "The Trump Administration Is Using the Full Power of the U.S. Surveillance State Against Whistleblowers"

www.RootsAction.org

==========================
Zie ook:
'Julian Assange het slachtoffer van de grootste persbreidel in deze eeuw'

'Julian Assange moet onmiddellijk vrijgelaten worden!' (zie ook de links in dat bericht, o.a. naar berichten over Assange en censuur)

'Snowden vindt het ongelofelijk dat de media VS politici niet aanspreken op totaal verschillende reacties n.a.v. 'klokkenluiden''

'Trump administratie klaagt weer een klokkenluider aan voor spionage'

Westerse massamedia lopen aan de leiband van plutocraten, de neoliberale politiek en geheime diensten

Caitlin Johnstone heeft zich over de berichtgeving van de massamedia gebogen en zet een aantal feiten wat betreft de reguliere (massa-) media op een rij, waarbij ze tot verrassende inzichten komt. 

Als eerste buigt Johnstone zich over de vraag waarom journalisten van de reguliere media in 'vrije democratieën' ('een beetje dubbelop') zich gedragen als hun collega's van staatsmedia propagandisten. Waarom gedragen ze zich als betrouwbare vertegenwoordigers van de gevestigde orde en waarom wordt elk idee gemarginaliseerd dat niet past in wat op een bepaald moment als een correcte gedachte wordt gezien? (en dat kan op zeer grove manier gebeuren, zie de smerige en uiterst valse berichtgeving over de Britse Labour leider Jeremy Corbyn door de reguliere media waar ook de BBC deel van uitmaakt, al kan je die 'onafhankelijke zendgemachtigde' als staatsomroep onder een dictatuur zien) 

Waarom worden mensen die de gevestigde orde bekritiseren altijd door de media veroordeeld? Waarom worden 'fouten' in een land dat buiten de invloedssfeer en de macht van de gecentraliseerde VS-alliantie valt, zo kritisch becommentarieerd door de reguliere (westerse) media, terwijl fouten binnen die alliantie worden vergeven, of veelal zelfs niet worden genoemd?

Volgens Johnstone zijn er maar twee verklaringen voor die unanieme instemming van de reguliere media op die onderwerpen:

Die instemming bestaat omdat die media altijd de waarheid zouden vertellen, of die instemming bestaat omdat er een systeem is ontstaan, waarin de journalisten van de reguliere media ons voorliegen en een vals beeld schetsen van wat er gebeurt in de wereld.

Volgens Johnstone zijn dit de enige mogelijkheden, waarbij ze de eerste uiteraard afwijst, immers als deze media altijd de waarheid vertellen, zouden deze media niet de leugens herhalen over bijvoorbeeld de oorlogen in Vietnam en Irak, ofwel dan zou het afslachten van miljoenen op grond van leugens niet zijn verdedigd in die media......... 

Eén en ander betekent overigens niet dat de grote reguliere media alleen maar liegen, immers dan zou men de klanten snel verliezen, nee men brengt natuurlijk ook echt nieuws, naast halve waarheden, verdraaide feiten en de al genoemde leugens. 

Lees het artikel van Johnstone, zij legt deze zaak duidelijk uit, waarna de conclusie wordt getrokken dat de media inderdaad aan de leiband lopen van plutocraten of fondsen van aandeelhouders (oké dat was al bekend, maar Johnstone geeft het geheel handen en voeten). Voorts meldt Johnstone ten overvloede nog eens dat de CIA al sinds de 50er jaren van de vorige eeuw bemoeienis heeft met de reguliere (massa-) media in de VS.......

Nogmaals lees het artikel en oordeel zelf:

AUTHOR: CAITLIN JOHNSTONE DECEMBER 10, 2018

How Plutocratic Media Keeps Staff Aligned With Establishment Agendas

Why do mainstream media reporters within ostensibly free democracies act just like state media propagandists? Why are they so reliably pro-establishment, all throughout every mainstream outlet? Why do they so consistently marginalize any idea that doesn’t fit within the extremely narrow Overton window of acceptable opinion? Why does anyone who inconveniences western establishment power always find themselves on the losing end of a trial by media? Why are they so dependably adversarial toward anything that could be perceived as a flaw in any nation outside the US-centralized power alliance, and so dependably forgiving of the flaws of the nations within it?

AFP news agency

✔@AFP

Replying to @AFP

#UPDATE A total of 1,723 people are arrested across France with 1,220 ordered held in custody, during the latest round of "yellow vest" protests, the interior ministry says

2,837

6:26 PM - Dec 9, 2018

The way I see it there are only two possible explanations for the unanimous consensus in mass media on these issues:

Explanation 1: The consensus exists because the mass media reporters are all telling the truth all the time.

OR

Explanation 2: The consensus exists because there is some kind of system in place which keeps all mass media reporters lying to us and painting a false picture about what’s going on in the world.

Those are the only two possibilities, and only one can be true, since any mixture of the two would result in the loss of consensus.

Most mainstream westerners harbor an unquestioned assumption that Explanation 1 is the only possibility. The things they see on CNN, the BBC and the ABC are all accurate descriptions of what’s really going on in the world, and the consensus in their descriptions exists because they’re all describing the same objective reality.

But what would that mean exactly? Well, for starters if the mainstream media reporters are telling us the truth all the time it would mean that the same power institutions which slaughtered millions in Vietnam and Iraq for no good reason are actually virtuous and honest. It would mean the positive, uncritical picture that is consistently painted of those same institutions which wage nonstop campaigns of bloodshed and oppression to ensure the profit of economic manipulators and war profiteers is due to those institutions possessing merits which are overall so positive that no criticism of them is needed. It would mean that the status quo of climate destruction, steadily growing wealth inequality, an increasingly Orwellian surveillance system, an increasingly militarized police force, increasing internet censorship, and crushing neoliberal austerity measures are all things people voted for using the excellent democratic political system the mainstream media defends, based on the accurate information the mainstream media gave them about what’s in their best interests.

Explanation 1 sounds improbable in that light. We know that the system is spectacularly screwed up, and we know that the political establishment which these mainstream outlets always defend does unforgivably evil things, so we should expect to see a lot more critical reporting and a lot less protecting of the status quo. But we don’t. We see war crimes ignored, oppression justified, the two-headed one-party system normalized, dissident narratives smeared as fake news conspiracy theories, and unproven assertions by government agencies with a known history of lying reported as unquestionable fact.

But that leaves only Explanation 2. How could that be right?

This part of a 1996 interview between Noam Chomsky and the BBC’s Andrew Marr describes a foundational element of Explanation 2: that there is a system in place which ensures that all the reporters in positions of influence are there not to report factually on the news of the day, but to sell a particular narrative that is friendly to the state and the status quo.  Chomsky describes a “filtering system” which ensures that only those loyal to power rise to the top within the plutocrat-owned media, to which Marr objects and insists that his peers are brave truth-tellers who hold power to account. Subsequently, the following exchange takes place:

”Chomsky: Well, I know some of the best, and best known investigative reporters in the United States, I won’t mention names, whose attitude towards the media is much more cynical than mine. In fact, they regard the media as a sham. And they know, and they consciously talk about how they try to play it like a violin. If they see a little opening, they’ll try to squeeze something in that ordinarily wouldn’t make it through. And it’s perfectly true that the majority – I’m sure you’re speaking for the majority of journalists who are trained, have it driven into their heads, that this is a crusading profession, adversarial, we stand up against power. A very self-serving view. On the other hand, in my opinion, I hate to make a value judgement but, the better journalists and in fact the ones who are often regarded as the best journalists have quite a different picture. And I think a very realistic one. 

Marr: How can you know that I’m self-censoring? How can you know that journalists are.. 

Chomsky: I’m not saying your self censoring. I’m sure you believe everything you’re saying. But what I’m saying is that if you believed something different, you wouldn’t be sitting where you’re sitting”.

“If you believed something different, you wouldn’t be sitting where you’re sitting.”

It is an obvious fact that mainstream media outlets are owned by the extremely wealthy, as has been the case for a very long time. Owning media is in and of itself a profitable investment, “like having a license to print your own money” as Canadian television magnate Roy Thomson once put it. So when it comes to the news media outlets which form people’s perceptions of the world, what incentive would a powerful plutocrat have to platform anti-establishment voices on those outlets and help sow ideas which upset the status quo upon which said plutocrat has built his empire? It certainly wouldn’t make him any more money, and if anti-establishment ideas like socialism, anarchism, non-interventionism or skepticism of government agencies gained popular footing in public consciousness, it could upset the foundation of the plutocrat’s dynasty and cause him to lose everything.

Plutocrats have put a lot of energy into influencing government policy in order to create legislation which ensures the continued growth of their wealth and power. A whole lot of maneuvering has had to happen over the course of many years to create a political system wherein government bribery is legal in the form of campaign finance and corporate lobbying, wherein deregulation of corporations is the norm, wherein tax loopholes are abundant and tax burdens are shifted to the middle class, wherein money hemorrhages upward to the wealthiest of the wealthy while ordinary people grow poorer and poorer. What incentive would these powerful oligarchs have to risk upsetting that delicate balancing act by helping to circulate ideas which challenge the very governmental system they’ve worked so hard to manipulate to their extreme advantage? And how many incentives would they have to keep everyone supporting the status quo?

How hard would it be to simply decline to give anti-establishment voices a platform, and platform establishment loyalists instead? How easy would it be for a wealthy media owner or influential investor to ensure that only establishment loyalists are given the job of hiring and promoting editors and reporters in a mainstream media outlet?

Caitlin Johnstone @caitoz

Every blue-checkmark MSM journo on Twitter is auditioning for a job. All they're actually tweeting is "Look at me, current or future employer! I will smear Julian Assange! I will help sell the Russia narrative! I'll say Corbyn is an antisemite!" And the MSM bosses pay attention.

531

12:53 AM - Dec 10, 2018

If you’ve ever wondered what motivates all those blue-checkmarked corporate media journalists to spend so much time on Twitter defending the powerful and attacking the disempowered, this is your answer. They spend their own free time smearing Jill Stein, calling Jeremy Corbyn an antisemite, attacking Julian Assange, supporting longtime neoconservative war agendas against Russia, Syria and Iran and uncritically reporting intelligence agency assertions as fact not because there’s a CIA officer hovering over their shoulder at all times telling them exactly what to tweet, but because they’re auditioning for a job. They’re creating a public record of their establishment loyalism which current and future employers will look at when weighing hiring and promotion decisions, which is why both journalism schools and journalism employers now encourage journalists to cultivate a social media presence to “build their brand”, i.e. their public resume.

So it’s very easy to fill mass media jobs with minds which are not predisposed toward rocking the boat. A pro-establishment consensus is artificially built, and now you’ve got an environment where someone who stands up and says “Uh, hey, so we still haven’t seen any actual hard evidence that Russia interfered in the US election in any meaningful way” or whatever is instantly greeted by a wall of shunning and shaming (observe Aaron Maté‘s interactions with other journalists on social media for a good example of this), which can be psychologically difficult to deal with.

Caitlin Johnstone @caitoz

Every blue-checkmark MSM journo on Twitter is auditioning for a job. All they're actually tweeting is "Look at me, current or future employer! I will smear Julian Assange! I will help sell the Russia narrative! I'll say Corbyn is an antisemite!" And the MSM bosses pay attention.

531

12:53 AM - Dec 10, 2018

Anyone who’s ever gone to high school can understand how powerful the social pressures to seek peer approval and fit in can be, and anyone who’s ever worked a normal job anywhere can understand the natural incentives that are in place to behave in a way that is pleasing to one’s bosses. In any job with any kind of hierarchy, you quickly learn the written rules, and you pay close attention to social cues to learn the unwritten ones as well. You do this in order to learn how to avoid getting in trouble and how to win the approval of your superiors, to learn which sorts of behaviors can lead to raises and promotions, and which behaviors will lead to a career dead-end. You learn what will earn you a pat on the back from a leader, which can be extremely egoically gratifying and incentivizing in and of itself.

It works exactly the same way in news media. Reporters might not always be consciously aware of all the pro-establishment guidelines they’re expected to follow in order to advance their careers, but they know how the reporters who’ve ascended to the top of the media ladder conduct themselves, and they see how the journalists who win the accolades behave. With the help of editors and peers you quickly learn where all the third rails and sacred cows are, and when to shut your mouth about the elephant in the room. And for those rare times that all these filtration devices fail to adequately filter out dissident ideas, you see the example that gets made of those few who slip between the cracks, like CNN contributor Marc Lamont Hill for his defense of Palestinian human rights or Phil Donahue for his opposition to the Iraq invasion.

Mail & Guardian

✔@mailandguardian

Last week, CNN contributor Marc Lamont Hill delivered a speech at the United Nations in support of Palestinian self-determination and equal rights. Less than 24 hours later, CNN was done with him. http://bit.ly/2RTa4La 

21

10:45 AM - Dec 10, 2018

The six words that got Marc Lamont Hill fired from CNN

Hill's dismissal highlights how pro-Israel lobbying groups control the US discourse on Palestine and Israel

mg.co.za

So plutocrats own the mass media and platform status quo-friendly voices, which creates an environment full of peer pressure to conform and workplace pressure to advance establishment-friendly narratives. Add to this the phenomenon of access journalism, wherein journalists are incentivized to cozy up to power and pitch softball questions to officials in order to gain access to them, and things get even more slanted. It’s easy to understand how all this can create an environment of consensus which has nothing to do with facts or reality, but rather with what narratives favor the US-centralized empire and the plutocrats who control it. But all those dynamics aren’t the only factors going into making sure a consensus worldview is maintained. Remember that hypothetical CIA officer I mentioned earlier who isn’t actively leaning over every journalist’s shoulder and dictating what they tweet? Well, just because he’s not dictating every word produced by the mass media machine doesn’t mean he’s not involved.

Secretive and unaccountable government agencies have an extensive and well-documented record of involving themselves with news media outlets. It is a known and undisputed fact that the Central Intelligence Agency has been intimately involved in America’s news media since the 1950s, and it remains so to this day. In 2014 it was a scandal when reporter Ken Dilanian was caught collaborating with the CIA in his publications, but now veterans of the US intelligence community like John Brennan and James Clapper openly fill out the line-up of talking heads on MSNBC and CNN. Just recently the Guardian published a lie-filled smear piece on Julian Assange which was almost certainly the resultof the outlet’s collaboration with one or more intelligence and/or defense agencies, and when that article caused an outcry it was defended as the likely result of Russian disinformation in an evidence-free article by a CIA veteran who was permitted to publish anonymously in Politico. The Washington Post is solely owned by Jeff Bezos, who is a CIA contractor, and who we may be certain did not purchase the Post under the illusion that newspapers were about to make a lucrative comeback. Secretive government agencies are deeply involved in the workings of western news media, in many ways we know about, and in far more ways we don’t know about.

Taking all of these factors into consideration and revisiting Explanation 1 and Explanation 2 from the beginning of this article, it should be obvious to you that the most logical explanation for the uniform consensus of support for pro-establishment narratives in the mass media exists because there is indeed a system in place which keeps all mass media reporters lying to us and painting a false picture about what’s going on in the world.

This doesn’t mean that these news media outlets lie about everything all the time, it means they mostly provide half-truths, distortions and lies by omission whenever it benefits the agendas of the powerful, which is functionally the same as lying all the time. I sometimes get people telling me “Caitlin! The MSM lies all the time, and they say global warming is real! That means it’s false!” But it doesn’t work that way; if the TV tells you a celebrity has died then it’s probably true, and if they say it’s about to rain you should probably roll up your car windows. If they lied about everything all the time they would instantly lose all credibility, and their ability to propagandize effectively would be lost. Instead, they advance evidence-free narratives asserted by opaque government agencies, they avoid highlighting inconvenient truths, they ignore third parties and dissident ideas except to dismiss them, they harshly criticize the misdeeds of governments which oppose the US-centralized empire while sweeping the misdeeds of imperial members under the rug, and when there’s an opportunity to sabotage peace or support war, they seize it. They distort only when they have to, and only as much as they need to.

In this way the powerful have succeeded in controlling the people’s narratives about what’s happening in their country and their world. This is the system of narrative manipulation we are up against when we try to sow dissident ideas into public consciousness, and as the old adage goes, it is easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.

And yet we are gaining ground. The manipulators have been losing control of the narrative, which is why the mass media have been acting so weird and desperate since 2016. The unelected power establishment failed to manufacture support for its would-be Syria invasion, it failed to get the publicto buy into the Russia hysteria, trust in the mass media is at an all-time low, and it’s continuing to plummet. More and more people are waking up to the fact that they are being lied to, which is good, because the only thing keeping them from pushing for real change is the fact that there are all these screens in everyone’s lives telling them that real change isn’t needed.

The liars are against the ropes, and they’re starting to look winded. A populist information revolutionis looking more winnable than ever.

Thanks for reading! The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for my website, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. My articles are entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following my antics on Twitter, throwing some money into my hat on Patreon or Paypal, buying my new book Rogue Nation: Psychonautical Adventures With Caitlin Johnstone, or my previous book Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers.

Bitcoin donations:1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

Zie ook:
'VS Navy SEALs werden gewaarschuwd geen oorlogsmisdaden te melden'

'Jan Kuitenbrouwer ('journalist'): Assange is een charlatan en WikiLeaks heeft beelden van de moord op 2 journalisten gemanipuleerd'

'Julian Assanges vervolging is de genadeklap voor klokkenluiders en (echte) journalisten' 

'Chelsea Manning blijft voor onbepaalde tijd in de gevangenis'

'VN heeft eerder de 'detentie' van Assange al als onwettig verklaard'

'Julian Assange gearresteerd, een flagrante schending van de persvrijheid!'

'Arrestatie Julian Assange: een aanfluiting voor internationale regels en een enorme aanval op onafhankelijke journalistiek'

Assange’s ‘Conspiracy’ to Expose War Crimes Has Already Been Punished

Assange Held at “Britain’s Guantanamo Bay” as UN Urges Fair Trial

The Arrest of Julian Assange is an Existential Threat to Journalism

'Julian Assange, valse beschuldigingen, Big Brother en VS steun voor terrorisme'

'Russiagate en Assange: The Guardian wordt nu zelfs door collega's voor zot uitgemaakt'

'The Guardian: ondanks een enorme misser (fake news) gaat men door met de valse beschuldigingen t.a.v. Assange......'

'WikiLeaks belooft The Guardian 1 miljoen dollar als het haar leugens i.z. Assange en Russiagate kan bewijzen.......'

'Julian Assange gedemoniseerd door media die hem zouden moeten steunen, waren ze bevolkt geweest door echte journalisten........'

'WikiLeaks toont aan dat VS en GB een gezamenlijke gewelddadige en bedrieglijke buitenlandpolitiek voeren'

'De prijs op het hoofd van Julian Assange: 1 miljard dollar.....'

'Assange kan niet voor spionage worden vervolgd, immers hij is journalist >> aldus Daniel Ellsberg (Pentagon Papers) in een video'

'Westerse bevolkingen worden bespeeld door regeringen, massamedia, grote bedrijven, financiële instellingen en geheime diensten......'

'Media tonen ware gezicht door weigering Julian Assange te verdedigen'

'Assange is journalist en zou alleen daarom al niet mogen worden vervolgd, een artikel o.a. voor de huidige 'journalisten' van de reguliere media en de gebruikers van die media'

'WhiteHouse: US, Ecuador Coordinating About Future Of Assange Asylum' 

'Stop de isolatie van Julian Assange!'

'JulianAssange (Wikileaks) haalt hypocriete Britse regering onderuit voorwijzen op belang van vrije en onafhankelijke media'

'Volkskrant en Nieuwsuur Fake News over 'Russische hacks.....''

'VS waarschuwde regering van Zweden voor Wikileaks in aanloop verkiezingen, Assange 'moest en zou hangen', ofwel de zoveelste VS manipulatie van verkiezingen elders......'

Facebook Removes Page of Ecuador’s Former President on Same Day as Assange’s Arrest

While US Media Play Along, Critics Warn Assange Indictment an ‘Obvious’ Ploy With Deeper Dangers