Friday, September 02, 2016

New York Times on Assange

This article is such a piece of propaganda.  First the Times faults Assange for criticizing the West but not criticizing Russia: "Notably absent from Mr. Assange’s analysis, however, was criticism of another world power, Russia".  But doesn't that criticism apply to the Times itself? That it criticizes Russia but not the US/Israel?  And this independent newspaper yet again vomits the propaganda of the US government: "United States officials say they believe with a high degree of confidence that the Democratic Party material was hacked by the Russian government".  The US government provided no evidence to its "high confidence" but the Times obliges.  But the entire premise of the article is nullified by the painful admission of the Times: "Among United States officials, the emerging consensus is that Mr. Assange and WikiLeaks probably have no direct ties to Russian intelligence services. "  OK. Make sure you remember that. Of course, it took a professor in London to remind the Times that: "He noted that intelligence services had a long history of using news organizations to plant stories, and that Western news outlets often published “material that comes from the C.I.A. uncritically.”"  And the whole article relies on the theories and analysis of a pro-US Russian "investigative journalist" (in US media, an investigative journalist in the world is anyone who supports the US government--I recently discovered that in the Panama Papers release the International committee of investigative journalists include Arab writers in Saudi media as their representative of "Arab investigative journalists"--kid you not).  And the Times faults Assange because the release of Saudi documents was damaging to Western interests: "The Saudi documents, for instance, which highlighted efforts to manipulate world opinion about the kingdom, were published months after Mr. Putin accused the Saudis of holding down oil prices to harm the economies of Russia and its allies Iran and Venezuela."  So there should be no release of Saudi documents because Putin accused the Saudis of holding down oil prices? What a stretch of a conspiracy.  And this phrasing got my attention: "Russia Today, the Kremlin-controlled English-language propaganda channel".  Would the Times refer to Radio Liberty or Voice of America as "propaganda outlets for the US government", or the designation only fits enemies of US?