TOKYO MASTER BANNER

MINISTRY OF TOKYO
US-ANGLO CAPITALISMEU-NATO IMPERIALISM
Illegitimate Transfer of Inalienable European Rights via Convention(s) & Supranational Bodies
Establishment of Sovereignty-Usurping Supranational Body Dictatorships
Enduring Program of DEMOGRAPHICS WAR on Europeans
Enduring Program of PSYCHOLOGICAL WAR on Europeans
Enduring Program of European Displacement, Dismemberment, Dispossession, & Dissolution
No wars or conditions abroad (& no domestic or global economic pretexts) justify government policy facilitating the invasion of ancestral European homelands, the rape of European women, the destruction of European societies, & the genocide of Europeans.
U.S. RULING OLIGARCHY WAGES HYBRID WAR TO SALVAGE HEGEMONY
[LINK | Article]

*U.S. OLIGARCHY WAGES HYBRID WAR* | U.S. Empire's Casino Unsustainable | Destabilised U.S. Monetary & Financial System | U.S. Defaults Twice A Year | Causes for Global Financial Crisis of 2008 Remain | Financial Pyramids Composed of Derivatives & National Debt Are Growing | *U.S. OLIGARCHY WAGES HYBRID WAR* | U.S. Empire's Casino Unsustainable | Destabilised U.S. Monetary & Financial System | U.S. Defaults Twice A Year | Causes for Global Financial Crisis of 2008 Remain | Financial Pyramids Composed of Derivatives & National Debt Are Growing | *U.S. OLIGARCHY WAGES HYBRID WAR*

Who's preaching world democracy, democracy, democracy? —Who wants to make free people free?
[info from Craig Murray video appearance, follows]  US-Anglo Alliance DELIBERATELY STOKING ANTI-RUSSIAN FEELING & RAMPING UP TENSION BETWEEN EASTERN EUROPE & RUSSIA.  British military/government feeding media PROPAGANDA.  Media choosing to PUBLISH government PROPAGANDA.  US naval aggression against Russia:  Baltic Sea — US naval aggression against China:  South China Sea.  Continued NATO pressure on Russia:  US missile systems moving into Eastern Europe.     [info from John Pilger interview follows]  War Hawk:  Hillary Clinton — embodiment of seamless aggressive American imperialist post-WWII system.  USA in frenzy of preparation for a conflict.  Greatest US-led build-up of forces since WWII gathered in Eastern Europe and in Baltic states.  US expansion & military preparation HAS NOT BEEN REPORTED IN THE WEST.  Since US paid for & controlled US coup, UKRAINE has become an American preserve and CIA Theme Park, on Russia's borderland, through which Germans invaded in the 1940s, costing 27 million Russian lives.  Imagine equivalent occurring on US borders in Canada or Mexico.  US military preparations against RUSSIA and against CHINA have NOT been reported by MEDIA.  US has sent guided missile ships to diputed zone in South China Sea.  DANGER OF US PRE-EMPTIVE NUCLEAR STRIKES.  China is on HIGH NUCLEAR ALERT.  US spy plane intercepted by Chinese fighter jets.  Public is primed to accept so-called 'aggressive' moves by China, when these are in fact defensive moves:  US 400 major bases encircling China; Okinawa has 32 American military installations; Japan has 130 American military bases in all.  WARNING PENTAGON MILITARY THINKING DOMINATES WASHINGTON. ⟴  
Showing posts with label Daniel Ellsberg. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Daniel Ellsberg. Show all posts

September 26, 2016

CIA, Media, Communications Professor & CIA PsyOps




Planet Tokyo





Hanging to get into some interesting news, but I feel like I've been run over by a truck.  Face feels swollen; think I'm getting an ulcer; even my back hurts; and I can barely concentrate to read ... but I'm hoping to come good again after a couple of coffees or something.   LOL

Looked at the CIA and the media article by James F Tracy, but I can't really focus on all that detail.

Although the writer is referred to as a 'conspiracy theory professor' and 'the so-called nutty professor' [DailyMail], I'm pretty sure the material on the CIA is verifiable.

James F Tracy, tenured professor of media studies, was fired from Florida Atlantic University for his analysis of the Sandy Hook shootings.  In turn, Tracy has filed a claim against the university.

Dr. Tracy, an award-winning American academic with expertise in communications, media, and conspiracy studies, was awarded lifetime tenure by Florida Atlantic University in 2008. He holds a Ph.D. in mass communications and taught courses at FAU in Communications, including a course entitled “Culture of Conspiracy”. Tracy won a Project Censored award in 2013 for the story, “Wireless Technology: A Looming Health Crisis,” which was featured in Censored 2013: Dispatches From the Media Revolution.

FAU school officials first threatened Tracy with disciplinary action after a defamatory local and national media attack concerning Tracy’s online postings in early 2013. However, the University’s administration withdrew its initial threats following intervention by Tracy’s union representatives at UFF and FEA.

In late 2015, Professor Tracy was again threatened with disciplinary action for requesting clarification on and questioning changes made to the University’s vague and confusing “Conflict of Interest/Outside Activities” policy. Instead of coming to his aid, Tracy’s faculty union representatives, including representatives and officials from UFF and FEA, conspired with and aided the University in terminating Tracy’s tenured employment—denying him meaningful representation and defense against the University’s threatened discipline.

globalresearch


Think it's weird of the media to refer to a tenured communications professor as being 'the so-called nutty professor' and 'conspiracy theory professor' (instead of communications professor, or whatever his official title was), and when he tough taught a 'the culture of conspiracy' course, which presumably examined ... conspiracy.  LOL
[can't type straight today]

Paul Craig Roberts

Why Was Professor James F. Tracy Fired?

If the official line on the Sandy Hook school shooting is correct, why would a tenured university professor be fired for examining the official story?

When people have to be fired for looking into things, it means what is being looked into cannot stand the light of day.

paulcraigroberts


I started looking at the CIA and the media, because I have trouble believing that the Pentagon Papers affair was genuine (versus some CIA op itself).

When the media is capitalist owned, CIA infiltrated, complicit, controlled etc, in oligarchy controlled USA (and has been for decades, and a press that was most likely capitalist controlled since the invention of the printing press ... which few peasants or non-shill working-class people would make use of / plus a film industry that is likewise in control of capitalists), why would a CIA collaborator such as The New York Times be actually publishing anything the CIA didn't want the public to know about?

"Pentagon Papers, CIA and the Lies of Daniel Ellsberg"

Ellsberg’s connections to the heroin trade’s principal players, the fact he’d been in liaison with the CIA covert war (separate to the regular military) bosses and was plugged into the highest levels of the Indochina covert operations scene, as his work assignment. Related to this, Ellsberg had taken on covert operations assignments in Saigon for the CIA chief of station. One of Ellsberg’s colleagues of that era then drops the bombshell he was the one who’d passed along instruction for Ellsberg to release the Pentagon Papers. This person is a contact Valentine had been sent to by former CIA Director and one time CIA Vietnam ‘dirty war’ (Phoenix Program) boss William Colby, who incidently (1996) almost certainly was murdered for having been too free with giving up the agency’s dirty laundry. Moreover, it is credibly alleged William Colby himself had sent on the instruction for the Pentagon Papers release. Finally, the question is raised, why is Ellsberg still associating with those very CIA people he worked with in Vietnam (he avoids talking about in his autobiography), decades after the fact?

Valentine’s research matches the entirely independent (and highly suppressed) material in the exposé of a former Pentagon liaison to the CIA, ‘The Secret Team‘, by Colonel L. Fletcher Prouty. The reasons given for the Pentagon Papers release, by both Valentine and Prouty, is to shift any scrutiny and public attention away from the CIA and its activities in Vietnam; inclusive of narcotics trafficking & dirty war assassinations (Valentine’s focus) and how clandestine CIA policies were implemented to the detriment of the USA national interest (Prouty’s focus.)

We have been saying that the release of the Pentagon Papers by the former CIA agent and long-time associate of Edward G. Lansdale, Daniel Ellsberg, may have been the opening attack by the CIA to cover its disengagement not only from the physical conflict in Indochina, but also from the historical record of that disastrous event. In this effort, the CIA appears to be trying to hide behind its own best cover story, that it is only an intelligence agency and that its fine intelligence work during the past twenty years on the subject of Southeast Asia is all that we should remember.

Now we find in Cooper another CIA apologist using the Foreign Affairs review to follow up and to praise Ellsberg. In fact, Cooper’s exhilaration in his task gets the better of him when he says, “Thanks to Daniel Ellsberg …” he means it! This near-endorsement of Ellsberg by a CIA writer in the publication of the Council on Foreign Relations is all the more significant when one learns that this Council is supported by foundations which are in turn directed by men from the Bechtel Corporation, Chase Manhattan Bank, Cummins Engine, Corning Glass, Kimberly-Clark, Monsanto Chemical, and dozens of others. Not long ago, the political scientist Lester Milbraith noted that “the Council on Foreign Relations, while not financed by government, works so closely with it that it is difficult to distinguish Council actions stimulated by government from autonomous actions.” ...

ronaldthomaswest


archive.is


It looks like this article by Ronald Thomas West might be part of an eight-part series.

Not sure I can even get through this single article.  I'll try to wade through it after another cigarette.

I'm wrecked.

O.M.G.  this Ronald Thomas West guy is interesting.  Not sure what's going on here.  LOL

I can't keep up with all of this.


A S S A S S I N A T E D?

Former CIA Director William Colby
in brief:
1996 - solo canoe trip, Rock Point, Maryland
Colby's body found
marshy riverbank
lying face-down 30-40 meters from location of canoe
EXTRACTS

Why Was Former CIA Director William Colby Assassinated?

Now, what's interesting about the death of Bill Colby was that, even his wife got on CNN and said "Oh, this is very unlike Bill Colby." Because he was a very safe canoer. He left the house opened, he left the computer on, the coffee maker on, and all this. This was actually publicly and very briefly stated, but then, of course, it was written off as an "accidental" drowning while he was out canoeing on the Potomac River.

SG: Now, in reality, it's very much like what's being portrayed where art now is imitating life in "The Manchurian Candidate", where there is a Senator who was going to blow the whistle on this transnational group that was running all this and he is murdered by this manchurian candidate in the Chesapeake Bay when he's out kayaking and it's made to look like a drowning accident and is reported out through the media shills (of course, most of the Big Media are shills for these kind of guys, or just extremely naïve), as an accidental drowning.

source


ART IMITATING LIFE ...

CIA Ties to Hollywood on Verge of Being Exposed

June 27, 2016

By Clarice Palmer

An amendment added to Congress’ annual intelligence spending bill may help the public gain a better idea of the U.S. government’s relationship with Hollywood.

According to VICE News, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), and committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-NC), included an amendment to S. 3017 that would require the Director of National Intelligence to submit reports detailing the relationship between the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) agencies and Hollywood. It would also require 15 other agencies to disclose the nature of their relationships with the film industry. These reports would have to be presented annually to congressional oversight committees.

Between 2006 and 2011, VICE reported, the CIA’s Office of Public Affairs (OPA) had a role in at least 22 of the U.S. entertainment industry’s projects. Some of the productions listed by VICE included the films Argo and Zero Dark Thirty, television shows like Top Chef and Covert Affairs, and documentaries such as the History channel’s Air America and the BBC’s The Secret War on Terror. The book, The Devil’s Light, also had the help of the CIA.

Some of the most controversial findings regarding the relationship between OPA officials and Hollywood insiders were tied to the blockbuster, Zero Dark Thirty.

According to the redacted and previously classified December 2012 CIA report released by Judicial Watch, the CIA granted “‘secret level’ access to the makers of the movie Zero Dark Thirty.” According to VICE, “filmmakers Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal showered CIA officers involved in the operation with gifts and received unprecedented access, which included the disclosure of classified information to Bigelow and Boal by CIA director Leon Panetta.”

While these revealing facts shocked the world at the time of their release, the relationship between the CIA and the entertainment industry actually dates back to the 1950s.

According to an interview with Public Radio International, Tricia Jenkins, author of The CIA in Hollywood, says that the CIA “developed a think tank to fight communist ideology, which negotiated the rights to George Orwell’s ‘Animal Farm’ – getting a talking pig on the screen 20 years before ‘Charlotte’s Web.’” The agency pressed for “line changes in 1950s scripts to make black characters more dignified, and white characters more tolerant” in order to promote “an attractive image of America to a world picking sides in the Cold War.”

In 1996, PRI reports, the CIA employed a Hollywood liaison. Chase Brandon was the cousin of actor Tommy Lee Jones, a relationship that lent the agency a great number of valuable Hollywood connections. After Brandon was brought on, Jenkins explains, the portrayal of the CIA changed:

    Before the 1990s, in films like ‘Three Days of the Condor’, the CIA was portrayed as evil, amoral assassins, or sometimes buffoons, like Max on the TV show ‘Get Smart’.

“Now,” Jenkins told PRI, “it’s a much more favorable presentation. Frequently being depicted as a moral organization that is highly efficient. It rarely makes mistakes, it’s needed more than ever.”

PRI reports that some of the productions that had received support from the CIA since the 1990s included The Sum of All Fears. Television productions such as 24, Homeland, and Alias, which ran in the 2000s, also received CIA guidance and input. Uglier Hollywood portraits have also been produced without the CIA consent, such as Syriana, which was developed with the help of former agents.

Once Feinstein’s and Burr’s amendment, along the Intelligence Authorization bill, is voted on by the Senate, we may know more about the relationship between Hollywood and the CIA. However, a review date is yet to be scheduled.

This article (CIA Ties to Hollywood on Verge of Being Exposed) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Clarice Palmer and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11 pm Eastern/8 pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, please email the error and name of the article at edits@theantimedia.org.

http://www.activistpost.com/2016/06/cia-ties-to-hollywood-on-verge-of-being-exposed.html


CIA Involvement in Entertainment

- George Orwell:  'Animal Farm'
- rights negotiated by CIA

- The Sum of All Fears, film
- 24, TV
- Homeland, TV
- Alias, TV

- Agro, film
- Zero Dark Thirty, film
- Top Chef, TV
- Covert Affairs, TV
- Air America, History Channel, documentary
- The Secret Ar on Terror, BBC
- 'The Devil's Light', book

source (as above)

http://www.activistpost.com/2016/06/cia-ties-to-hollywood-on-verge-of-being-exposed.html

archive.is


PsyOps
Murdoch's Vice News Rolls Over for MI6 in Litvinenko Farce
Ronald Thomas West

LINK | post




I like this version best

Wow, I feel better already ...

#AUDIO |  #1.0
 #AUDIO | #2.0
#AUDIO |  #3.0
#AUDIO | #4.0

Can't decide on a version I prefer.
Electro version is crap.  LOL


August 23, 2015

AUDIO TRANSCRIPT - 'John Pilger on WikiLeaks, Julian Assange & Jeremy Corbyn' - Radio NZ National


AUDIO TRANSCRIPT 
[For quotation purposes, confirm audio]
Title:  John Pilger on WikiLeaks, Julian Assange & Jeremy Corbyn
"John Pilger is an Australian born journalist and film-maker who has twice won Britain's Journalist of the Year award."
Originally aired on Sunday Morning, Sunday 23 August 2015

PROGRAM LINK |
http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/sunday/audio/201767629/john-pilger-on-wikileaks,-julian-assange-and-jeremy-corbyn

DIRECT LINK AUDIO |
http://www.radionz.co.nz/audio/player/201767629

---------------------- ꕤ  ----------------------


Wallace Chapman
Presenter, Radio NZ National

For 3 years, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, has sought asylum within the Ecuadorian embassy, London, at a cost of millions of pounds. He has been facing sexual assault allegations, which actually expired this past week, although he can still face charges on a rape allegation for a further 5 years.

John Pilger is an Australian-born journalist & film-maker. He's twice won Britain's Journalist of the Year Award. And he says it's been an unrelenting campaign by Sweden and the US to deny Julian Assange justice and, of course, his freedom. John Pilger is in no doubt about the impact that Julian Assange and WikiLeaks has on society.

John Pilger
Investigative Journalist

I think it's had a huge impact on both society and on journalism. I mean, the best of journalism, in my experience, always relied on what we called 'whistleblowers.' People from inside who can tell us the things that vested interests and governments don't want us to know; and I think they've done that with such a dimension that we now have quite a different standard of investigative journalism, now, to reach.

And as far as society is concerned, I think they've told people what so many people — millions of people — suspected anyway: that their governments weren't telling them the truth; and that vested interests weren't telling them the truth; that they were being deceived; that democracy wasn't working properly; that there wasn't the kind of accountability that they suspected.

WikiLeaks' contribution to that, I think, has been quite extraordinary.

Wallace Chapman
Presenter, Radio NZ National

It's been compared, hasn't it, to Daniel Ellsberg's revelation of the Pentagon Papers (US war related secrets of 1971). Do you think that's a fair or valid comparison?

John Pilger
Investigative Journalist

Yes, it is. Absolutely.

I know Dan Ellsberg and I've talked to him about it and he makes that comparison. That he's very much a supporter of WikiLeaks now. And Ellsberg — what Ellsberg released (and this was a whistleblower from within the system), he — the Pentagon Papers actually told the truth about the Vietnam war. It told the truth — the kind of official truth that people didn't know. They were official documents, and they really had an extraordinary impact then on public opinion. They supported that all-truth that information is power. People then had information. Now, what people do with information is up to them. But to be able to get it — as they got it through Ellsberg, and they got it through WikiLeaks, and they got it through Chelsea Manning, and they got it through numerous other very courageous whistleblowers. That's very important, and it's a lesson for us journalists.

Wallace Chapman
Presenter, Radio NZ National

The nature of the whilsteblower. Let me ask you this, then, John. Daniel Ellsberg over 40 years ago, Julian Assange now — to some, you know, to many he's a hereo (people like Yoko Ono & Ken Loach have visited him at the Ecuadorian embassy) — but what was the - what did people think of Daniel Ellsberg at the time, because there's been quite a level of vitriol to Julian Assange. How was Daniel Ellsberg treated by the public and by the establishment.

John Pilger
Investigative Journalist

I think Ellsberg was also, really, was subjected to a certain level of vitriol. Usually, whistleblowers are. I remember Ellsberg actually being called a traitor.

Wallace Chapman
Presenter, Radio NZ National

[Interjects] Really?

John Pilger
Investigative Journalist

— and, indeed, he won his court actions, which were really based on that broad allegation that he'd committed some form of treason. So, you know, his character was called into question and so on, in a different way from the attacks on Julian Assange.

Another great whistleblower — long forgotten — who's now the subject of a movie called, interestingly, 'Shoot the Messenger,' whose name is Gary Webb:   Gary Webb disclosed, in the United States, that — how the CIA was involved in drug trafficking into the United States. Now, Gary Webb's greatest enemies were the rest of media, who hadn't got the story and attacked him.
Something similar has happened with Julian Assange. It's certainly muddied by the fact that he was caught in a situation in Sweden, which those who were his enemies, anyway, were able to exploit. And — but, my understanding (and I've known Assange for quite some time and I followed this case very quickly) is, that the amount of vitriol comes down to the degree of truth-telling: truth-telling about great power.

There is — and I've found this in my career — there is a real ruthlessness in great power:   be it in governments, big corporations, vested interests — particularly in very, very powerful governments.  There is a ruthlessness in their response, if you expose what they are doing, and if it's something they don't want the public to know about.

Wallace Chapman
Presenter, Radio NZ National

And you've experienced it yourself?

John Pilger
Investigative Journalist

Yes, I have, most certainly, in a lot of the work I've done right throughout south-east Asia and in investigative work in the UK. For example, I had a lot to do with revealing the thalidomide — the extent that thalidomide, the drug, was was damaging children. I found myself subjected to all kinds of abuse and smear. Smear. Smear is probably an investigative journalist's greatest enemy.

There was a very interesting document that WikiLeaks got hold of in 2008 which foretold everything — [laughs] almost everything - that has happened to Julian Assange. It said that (and I paraphrase it) - that if - that, because WikiLeaks was revealing so many of these truths, the only way to deal with it was to discredit it, and to discredit Assange. To smear, in other words.

I mean, it really spells it out, in very plain English, that there's going to be a campaign of discrediting against anyone like Assange who dares to tell the public the kinds of secrets that it needs to know, that it's prevented from knowing.

Wallace Chapman
Presenter, Radio NZ National

Well, in fact, you say on Julian Assange — you write that in Alexandria, Virginia, a secret grand jury spent 5 years attempting to contrive a crime for which Assange can be prosecuted. Can you explain a little bit for us, what do you mean by that?

John Pilger
Investigative Journalist

Well, yes.

I mean, that's, that's — they've admitted that now. There is, in Virginia, which — the grand jury in the United States—
The grand juries draw from the area in which they sit. Now this area [laughs] has in it the US Defence Department, the Pentagon, the CIA, and all the great institutions of American power, so that determines, really, the character of the grand jury. And the grand jury can then issue indictments.
Now, this grand jury has been sitting in secret, now, for several years, and the problem it faces in trying to bring a charge against Assange and WikiLeaks is that the constitution (the US constitution), says very clearly that whistleblowers — truth-tellers — are protected it (by the Constitution) and, ironically, it was President Obama (a professor of constitutional law) who said, very early in his presidency, that whilstleblowers had the protection of the constitution. Now, I say 'ironically,' because more whistleblowers have been prosecuted under Obama than during all the presidents of the past.

So, this grand jury has an uphill task, and the one charge it seems that it might be able to come up with is a First World War espionage charge, which was really directed at conscientious objectors during the First World War, all those years ago: a century ago.

That's all it can find. The problem there is that Julian Assange isn't an American. That never seams to bother American courts that people — there are some people in the world who are not Americans. So, it's a difficult thing.

But there's no question that what the documents show — the FBI has something like a 50,000 page file on him — what all these documents that have come out have shown, and what they've virtually admitted: that the moment Assange sets out the door of the Ecuadorian embassy in London, in some way — in some way — the United States (with help from its so-called allies) will get its hands on Julian Assange.

Wallace Chapman
Presenter, Radio NZ National

And is that why the 24 hour around the clock police cordon? There are police appearing —

John Pilger
Investigative Journalist

Well, no because [laughs] — they don't prevent people going in, but Assange isn't going anywhere.

All that is, this 24-hour cordon, it's theatrical. It's a show of force by the state. It's the British government saying — and the Metropolitan Police in London — saying: Well, we're not having this. How dare this man go and seek political refuge and be granted it by another government. It's pointless —

Wallace Chapman
Presenter, Radio NZ National

[Interjects] John —

John Pilger
Investigative Journalist

— one policeman outside the door is more than enough because, as everybody knows, Assange isn't going anywhere.

Wallace Chapman
Presenter, Radio NZ National

I'm speaking with Julian As— John Pilger.

And there are those who listen to this, too, who will say that there — these, you know, these charges — these allegations — they—

John Pilger
Investigative Journalist

[Interjects]

You've got to be careful with that. That's a very common slip. And I understand you make it.  There— Assange has been —
The disgrace about all of this is this man has not been charged with anything.  What's more, that the original prosecutor in this case in Sweden, threw it out — threw allegations out — and the second prosecutor, who has perused him, allowed him to leave Sweden, and said that's fine.

The second prosecutor has been offered every facility to question Julian Assange over 5 years. The British government has pleaded with her, virtually, to come to London. It's a normal procedure. At the same time, Sweden has (in London) interviewed something like 44 other people connected with allegations in Sweden, but not Assange.

Wallace Chapman
Presenter, Radio NZ National

So what's going on here — why?

John Pilger
Investigative Journalist

Why?

Well, I think it's a combination of reasons, here.
There's no evidence — that's number one.

I've seen the evidence; there's no evidence. Both these women have said they were not raped. They've both said it's consensual — it was consensual sex. Their SMS messages — one says the police have tried to railroad them into this. The pressures on these two women have been extraordinary. One can only have — one can only have sympathy for them.

It's a combination of whys.

There's an obsession about this prosecutor, and my sense is that the Swedish authorities haven't quite known what to do about it. The Swedish High Court has reprimanded her for not getting on with the case.

Wallace Chapman
Presenter, Radio NZ National

Is this Marianne Ny?

John Pilger
Investigative Journalist

Yes, Marianne Ny.

Wallace Chapman
Presenter, Radio NZ National

What's the relationship, John, between Swe— Washington and Stockholm?  Is, because Sweden is, you know, meant to be something of a liberal bastion, isn't it? So what is—

John Pilger
Investigative Journalist
[Interjects]

Well—

Wallace Chapman
Presenter, Radio NZ National

—what sort of relationship do they have?

John Pilger
Investigative Journalist

Well, Sweden is not a liberal bastion.

Sweden has basked in its—   It is in some areas, yes.  It has enlightened social policies towards the vulnerable and the elderly, and so on, although these have been much broken down over the years. But, in a cultural sense, that image of Sweden going back to the 1960s, as a great libertarian country, no longer exists.

Sweden has rather a dark side. It's not a member of NATO, but it's almost a much more committed associate of the United States in that part of the world, and the last government in Sweden had very close links with the extreme right in the Republican party, and it has various associations in the arms business, and so on.
So Sweden has a— Swe— Swe— I suppose Sweden plays the same games that countries within a certain sphere of do these days. It is no different from that. But what it does have, as I mentioned, is a very close relationship with the US, and The Independent newspaper, here, revealed that there had been discussions between the Swedish authorities and the US on Assange.
I don't think that anyone really has any serious doubts that should Assange go to Sweden (where there is no bail —therefore he goes— would go straight into prison regardless of having not been charged with anything) — that once confined — that something similar would happen to him, as has happened to other people who have been subjected to rendition to the United States from Sweden.
This is all guess work, of course, but the assumption has a great deal of credibility.

Wallace Chapman
Presenter, Radio NZ National

John Pilger, how do you think, then, this will all play out? He's been, what, 3 years inside the Ecuadorian embassy. As I understand it — you might have gone and visited him — but, as I understand it, no sunlight, small room. Ken Loach, the film director, he gave him a walker, I think, one of those exerciser machines, didn't he?

John Pilger
Investigative Journalist

Yes.

Wallace Chapman
Presenter, Radio NZ National

So, what's going to happen, is my question?

John Pilger
Investigative Journalist

I see Julian Assange regularly, and I've been to the embassy many times.  And, it's really — inside, it's like your living room and my living room.  Yes, sunlight comes in through the windows, but with the police pretty well outside, you have to keep the curtains closed, otherwise you have a member of the constabulary looking in on you and, so, it's a very confined space. And it's the kind of thing that no human being should have to go through. It's the sort of detention that, really, is against all the post war covenants of human rights and so on. But it is a place of refuge, and that's why he's there.

Wallace Chapman
Presenter, Radio NZ National

Finally, John Pilger, I just — before you go, I just wonder if you've got a couple of thoughts on the Labour leadership in the UK — Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader contender - he continues to do well in the polls. In fact, the press has dubbed it 'Corbyn Mania.' His views are very much to the left of the Labour mainstream: he wants to, you know, withdraw from NATO; abolish the UK's nuclear arsenal.

So, where, can I ask you, where is he drawing his support, and why do you think it's happening?

John Pilger
Investigative Journalist

It says something about the mainstream [laughs] when you describe it that way.

Jeremy Corbyn is actually the mainstream. And who these people are - it's such fun to watch them so hysterical over somebody who might be democratically elected by ordinary people. What a terrible thing to happen. They used to call this democracy. But because they've stitched up the system for such a long time; especially, since the rise of Tony Blair and his evangelical followers, who dominate the Labour party, still; because this man who has rather moderate views and old fashioned views (the kind of old fashioned views that most people subscribe to), and because people are so frustrated all over the world — I'm sure it's true in New Zealand, as well (it certainly is in Australia) — are frustrated that there isn't a functioning democracy; that the views of people - the frustrations of people — are not reflected by their politicians.

Suddenly, out comes a man who, first of all, he's completely incorruptible; he's decent; he doesn't abuse people; he doesn't play all their games; he doesn't want to go to war with countries; he doesn't want to bomb countries; he doesn't want to see people impoverished; and he doesn't want to see extremely rich interests make off with billions of pounds.

So having these outrageous views — thoroughly 'outrageous,' 'extremist' views - Jeremy Corbyn has attracted an enormous support from people.

I was in Edinburgh recently and I gave a talk, and I would have thought that, probably, most of the people in the audience had voted for the SNP — voted for Independent — gee, were they interested in Corbyn, even up there.

So, don't know. I think it's very likely the elected leader of the Labour party whether he can get through and keep that rather corrupted organisation in a shape that it might win the election, I have no idea. But he's certainly given people — he's cheered people up. He's given them a sense that maybe some things are possible.

Wallace Chapman
Presenter, Radio NZ National

Journalist and film-maker, John Pilger, thank you very much for your time.

John Pilger
Investigative Journalist

You're very welcome. Bye, Bye.

——— end audio ———

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