Caitlin Johnstone compares the Brazilian case against Glenn Greenwald with the U.S. persecution of Julian Assange.
By Caitlin Johnstone
CaitlinJohnstone.com
Journalist Glenn Greenwald has been charged by the Bolsonaro government in Brazil with the same prosecutorial angle used by the U.S. to target WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
Per The New York Times:
“Citing intercepted messages between Mr. Greenwald and the hackers, prosecutors say the journalist played a “clear role in facilitating the commission of a crime.
For instance, prosecutors contend that Mr. Greenwald encouraged the hackers to delete archives that had already been shared with The Intercept Brasil, in order to cover their tracks.
Prosecutors also say that Mr. Greenwald was communicating with the hackers while they were actively monitoring private chats on Telegram, a messaging app. The complaint charged six other individuals, including four who were detained last year in connection with the cellphone hacking.”
This argument is essentially indistinguishable from the argument currently being used by the Trump administration in charging Julian Assange with 17 counts of violating the Espionage Act. The U.S. Department of Justice alleges that the WikiLeakspublisher attempted to provide Private Chelsea Manning with advice and assistance in covering her tracks while leaking documents to which she already had access, therefore making Assange party to a conspiracy against the United States.
It is not surprising that Brazil is advancing the same war on journalism we’ve been seeing in the U.S., U.K., Australia and France. With the election of the overtly fascist Jair Bolsonaro in October 2018 (an election whose corrupt foundations were exposed by Greenwald’s reporting with The Intercept Brasil), the Brazilian government moved into full alignment with the U.S.-centralized empire, which was why his inauguration was enthusiastically celebrated by characters such as Donald Trump, Mike Pompeo, John Bolton and Benjamin Netanyahu.
In exactly the same way we saw a coordination between the U.S., U.K., Sweden, Ecuador and Australia to immobilize, and then silence, and then imprison Julian Assange, we are seeing a uniform movement toward silencing oppositional journalism throughout the entire U.S.-centralized empire. This is because a rising China and the increasing coziness of the cluster of nations which have resisted absorption into the imperial blob greatly imperil the USA’s position as the unipolar global dominator, meaning that the empire needs to quickly shore up global control in order to avoid being surpassed and replaced by other power structures.
In order to accomplish this there’s going to have to be a lot of nefarious behavior. A lot of military escalations, a lot of CIA coups, a lot of bullying and subversion, and a whole lot of propaganda to grease the wheels of public consent. Such large, frantic, flailing movements can be easily exposed by a free press, which is precisely why the free press is being clamped down upon now. The empire is setting all these legal precedents against oppositional journalism because it fully intends to use those precedents in the future. It fully intends to use those legal precedents in the future because it knows it’s going to have to make things ugly.
Whenever a nation's government capitulates to the empire, it gets absorbed into the blob. The bigger the blob of empire gets, the stronger it gets. The stronger it gets, the more capable it becomes of absorbing other not-yet-absorbed nations. https://t.co/KIZboo3xwN
— Caitlin Johnstone ? (@caitoz) March 19, 2019
This is all being done to prevent the public from gaining a clear understanding of what’s really going on in their world, because if the public had a clear understanding of what’s going on in their world, the empire would forever lose its ability to control them and rule them.
Whoever controls the narrative controls the world. The imperialists understand this. The public, by and large, do not. And the imperialists intend to keep it that way.
Glenn Greenwald has spent the last three years being falsely smeared as a stooge of authoritarian governments while he was actually doing more damage to an authoritarian government than all of his critics combined. Public trust in oppressive institutions (such as the ones that empire loyalists have been trying to protect by smearing Greenwald as a Kremlin agent and a Putin puppet) can be severely weakened by the exposure of their dark underbellies to the light of truth.
The imperialists know this, and they are determined not to allow it to continue. Hence their persecution of Assange, and hence their persecution of Greenwald.
Caitlin Johnstone is a rogue journalist, poet, and utopia prepper who publishes regularly at Medium. Follow her work on Facebook, Twitter, or her website. She has a podcast and her book is “Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers.”
This article was re-published with permission.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
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Sound familiar?
War Profiteer Story
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Greenwald’s persecution is indeed further evidence that the war profiteers have vast financial resources, able to span countries and continents. Who controls enough financial resources to be at the control center for this octopus? Israel’s fundamental role in the Middle East cauldron is a big clue. The MSM’s complete silence about that role is a further clue. The Mossad’s Epstein blackmail operation is a further clue. Israel itself is a relatively small bunch of religious extremists, and not of much consequence. But the war profiteering, financial powerhouse behind Israel has its tentacles in American banking and industry. And as Senator Durbin said of the US Senate, “The banks own this place”. America needs to “follow the money” to its taproot, and root it out.
Bolsonaro is Opus Dei. They have Mafia money.
After reading American history, a person would hope that one McCarthy era was enough. Plus, it seems that America is intent on systematically dissing the Bill of Rights before it moves on to the rest of the Constitution. It also seems that to be a true American in politics, a person would probably have to be an independent–as the 2 parties seem to have merged into one blob of believers in military control of the world.
I am glad that CN is here, as journalism in many areas has turned its once real reporters into poodles who regurgitate corporate news instead of being able to investigate. America had this problem at its very beginnings , but a trial with John Peter Zenger set this nation on the right trail for truth with real journalists and publishers –I hope we can survive those same negative powers this time around—-but with Julian Assange, Glenn Greenwald , and sites like CN, we might just get lucky again.
No doubt we live in a contrived matrix of false narratives meant to distract us from ugly truths we are constantly subjected to. We are bamboozled into thinking our freedoms and rights are being protected by the authors of these phony dramas whilst they are actually being surreptitiously stripped from us. The mass media in all its forms is certainly central to this effort by the “Blob” as you call it, Caitlin. In fact, 99% of the media is a fully-owned subsidiary of that Blob.
I rage at the media for being remiss in its duties to the public, but deep down I know that it believes it has no responsibility to the masses, but only to its corporate owners. I rage at the politicians for the same reason when the reality there is exactly the same. Anyone who foolishly believes that the current “impeachment” fiasco in Washington is anything but a confected false flag operation, a carnival side show meant to distract us and lead us down the latest garden path to our collective doom was born yesterday and might well not live till tomorrow unless he or she wakes up (i.e., awakens, as opposed to the asinine state of being “woke,” which is just another media confabulation).
There ARE those who hate us for our (residual and ever-dwindling) freedoms, but they are not Muslims and they do not by and large inhabit the Middle East. We are not in the least threatened by any foreigners but rather by the mercenary agents of what was once our own government but now is the exclusive property of a small cadre of insider elites who despise riff-raff such as us.