Criticize Israel? You’re Fired.

The Intercept / Global Research

A climate of fear is gripping U.S. newsrooms as a growing list of journalists have been fired, suspended, or otherwise sidelined after refusing to abide by the pro-Israel bias across the U.S. news media.

The New York Times, Associated Press, BBC, and Los Angeles Times are just a handful of the more prominent news outlets where journalists say they were sidelined after criticizing Israel or expressing sympathy for Palestinians.

Meanwhile, the death toll in the Gaza Strip now exceeds 18,000, and more than 80 percent of Palestinians there have been displaced by the war.

Since October 7, there have been numerous incidents reported in which journalists were fired, demoted, suspended, or otherwise silenced after voicing criticism of Israel, including:

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See also:  "Israel’s Genocide Has Killed More Journalists Than WWI and WWII Combined" - "As of late March [2025] at least 232 journalists have been killed in the Gaza genocide, with the vast majority being Palestinians, according to a new paper by the Costs of War project in Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs. Nearly 380 journalists have been wounded in the violence as of January, per the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate". 

The head of the Committee to Protect Journalists stated in 2024, "Israel's war on Gaza is more deadly to journalists than any previous war"

IDF Mysterious ‘Legitimization Cell’: Unveiling Israel’s Controversial Tactics Against Journalists

Activist Post  

As reported in a post on X by Yuval Abraham, a journalist and filmmaker from Jerusalem who writes for +972 Magazine, in the aftermath of the Oct 7 attack, a faction called the “Legitimisation Cell” was established within AMAN, the Israeli Military Intelligence Directorate, The role of the Agents working within this shadowy faction is to gather evidence to validate the military’s actions in Gaza, which includes unsuccessful Hamas missile launches, the use of human shields, and the exploitation of civilians. According to Yuval, one of the primary goals of the ‘Legitimisation Cell’ is to pinpoint Gazan journalists who could be portrayed in the media as Hamas operatives in disguise. The ‘Cell’ painstakingly examined the profiles of journalists and carried out extensive searches, Yuval explains. Although this cell invested countless hours in this endeavour, they ultimately found nothing, noted Yuval.

From his perspective, the Jerusalem-based journalist argues that this approach is intended to provide media ‘legitimisation’ for the ongoing killings of journalists, which suggests that Israel’s strategy of sowing doubt is a way to justify atrocities. In other words, labelling a journalist as a ‘Hamas’ operative in disguise effectively distracts from the murder of countless other journalists,” Yuval concludes.

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The Guardian apologizes for saying Sputnik posted ‘fake’ Notre Dame PHOTO vilifying Muslims

Comment: Hoisted by their own petard. This shows how the Guardian is feverishly looking for racism that isn't there and reveals how ideologially possessed they really are. 

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RT

The Guardian has issued a mealy-mouthed apology for accusing Russian news agency Sputnik of doctoring images in the immediate aftermath of the Notre Dame fire to perpetuate an anti-Muslim narrative online – four months later.

“In an episode of Fake or for real? published on 19 April, we suggested that a photo that went viral during the Notre Dame fire had been doctored,” the Guardian wrote in an Instagram story Monday. Instagram stories only have a shelf-life of 24 hours, but thankfully screenshots of the story exist.

“We have been contacted by the copyright owner of the photo, Sputnik France, and accept that it had not been doctored; we apologise for suggesting otherwise.”

The four-months late apology refers to the Guardian’s coverage of a photo from Sputnik France’s Facebook live coverage of the April 15 Notre Dame fire. 

The Guardian’s ‘Fake or for Real’ Instagram series suggested the photo was altered to depict ‘Muslims’ celebrating the fire at the world-famous cathedral. 

This particular angle appeared in various locations online, there was just one problem: Sputnik did not make any reference or speculation as to the men's background or religious beliefs. 

Sputnik France even released the full metadata relating to the image, allowing any and all ‘fact-checkers’ to see for themselves. 

This photo has been shared tens of thousands of times on Facebook in the past 24 hours. It shows "Muslims laughing" walking away from #NotreDame. But the image is doctored. https://t.co/FYzZPhGdsz pic.twitter.com/M5Dr9Nio91

— PolitiFact (@PolitiFact) April 16, 2019

At the time, the ‘fact-checking’ community went into overdrive, including bastion of virtue, Politifact, which was forced to issue a multi-tiered retraction over the course of several weeks.

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Three journalists killed in Mexico in less than a week

Al-Jazeera

Three journalists have been killed in Mexico in less than a week, including two on Friday, bringing to ten the total number of journalists killed in the Central American country this year.

Edgar Alberto Nava, who published news stories about the coastal city of Zihuatanejo on a Facebook page, was shot dead in Guerrero state, officials said on Saturday.

Nava also worked as Zihuatanejo's regulations director. It was not clear if the attack in a local restaurant was related to his journalism work.

Also on Friday, Jorge Ruiz, who worked for the newspaper El Grafico de Xalapa, was killed in the violence-plagued state of Veracruz, the local mayor told AFP news agency.

Ruiz's house and vehicle were previously shot at to "intimidate him", according to officials. He had stopped putting his name to his articles to keep a low profile, the reporter's colleagues said.

Mexico is considered one of the most dangerous countries in the world to be a journalist. According to Reporters Without Borders, more than 100 media workers have been killed in the country since 2000.

Most of those crimes remain unsolved.

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What the hell is going on here, anyway?

Caitlin Johnstone
caitlinjohnstone.com

Over the course of my young career here I've amassed a very eclectic group of readers from all across the political spectrum, which I quite enjoy. Sometimes I read the comments sections just to watch what happens when you bring people together from wildly different worldviews who wouldn't normally interact with each other very much and see how those reality tunnels dance together in a conversation or debate.

I can't rightly call my whole audience left-wing or right-wing, conspiracy theorists or anarchists, activists or intellectuals, or almost any other label I can think of. There's only one attribute that comes to mind which unites pretty much all of my readers and social media followers, and that's a drive to know what's really going on in the world. Their curiosity about what's going on in what specific field may differ from person to person, as do the conclusions they reach, but basically I think we're all united by a desire, perhaps often an obsessive one, to come to some understanding of what's really happening in the world.

If schools, news media and politicians told people what's really going on in the world, this curiosity wouldn't exist. There'd be no need to do deep investigations into what's really happening, because it would be public knowledge, right there in our faces every day, and I'd be out of a job. The only reason people like me get to make a living trying to expose what's really happening in the world to as many people as possible is because the teachers, news reporters and politicians don't do that job for us, and instead dedicate themselves to the craft of filling public consciousness with power-authorized lies. So people gather in little fringe communities like this one in an attempt to help each other slice through the fog of propaganda and disinfo.
We are truth seekers. We seek in different ways and we find different answers, but we are united by a burning desire for truth. By the question, "What the hell is going on here, anyway?"

And this is why I don't make any distinction between the quest to punch through the veil of establishment narrative management and the quest to come to a deep understanding of our own true nature. Some readers complain about the way I'll be writing about Russiagate or Venezuela one minute and then suddenly pivot to the illusory nature of the ego or processing early childhood trauma the next, but to me they're all exactly the same thing: it's all an attempt to describe the truth about what's really going on. 

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Political indoctrination: UK govt unveils plan to teach school kids about 'fake news'

RT

The British government is planning a new initiative which will aim to help schoolchildren distinguish real information from 'fake news' — in an eyebrow-raising move which could be described as a little bit Orwellian.

British Secretary of State for Education Damian Hinds unveiled the new plan, warning that teachers need to better prepare students for the risks posed by "fake news" online, the Independent reported.

From 2020, British kids in both primary and secondary schools will learn about "confirmation bias" and "online risks" as part of a compulsory section of the curriculum. As part of the plan, teachers will help children identify techniques used for "persuasion" and be told "when to seek support." They will also learn about the reasons why someone might wish to "bend the truth" in the first place.

A concerned Hinds warned that the internet makes it easier for both state actors and individuals to "spread falsehoods." One area in particular which the government is looking at is "misleading content" regarding vaccinations. Without "firm action," the proliferation of allegedly misleading information online will "get a lot worse," he said.

Hinds recalled that propagandists have sought to "manipulate the truth" since "ancient times." Indeed, this is something any British government official should be well aware of, since it's well-known that the British mainstream media — including the BBC and British newspapers — have historically been infiltrated by intelligence agents from MI5 and MI6. One could probably safely assume that such inconvenient information will be left off the agenda, however, with the British program more likely to focus on the evils of propaganda emanating from Britain's geopolitical adversaries.

Aside from the obvious question of whether governments are best placed to create a curriculum on fake vs. real news, there's also the added dilemma of whether teachers should be responsible for imparting wisdom on media manipulation to children, when so much of the task of deciphering the news these days comes down to pure opinion. What one teacher might regard as real, another might view as fake.

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Newspeak at the Media Freedom Conference

Kit Knightly  
Off Guardian

Joint UK-Canada Event Littered With Insidious Undertones

 

OffGuardian already covered the Global Media Freedom Conference, our article Hypocrisy Taints UK’s Media Freedom Conference, was meant to be all there was to say. A quick note on the obvious hypocrisy of this event. But, in the writing, I started to see more than that. This event is actually…creepy.

Let’s just look back at one of the four “main themes” of this conference:

"building trust in media and countering disinformation"

“Countering disinformation”? Well,that’s just another word for censorship.
This is proven by their refusal to allow Sputnik or RT accreditation. They claim RT “spreads disinformation” and they “countered” that by barring them from attending. 

“Building trust”? In the post-Blair world of PR newspeak, “building trust” is just another way of saying “making people believe us” (the word usage is actually interesting, building trust not earning trust).

The whole conference is shot through with this language that just feels…off.
Here is CNN’s Christiane Amanpour:

Our job is to be truthful, not neutral…we need to take a stand for the truth, and never to create a false moral or factual equivalence.”

Being “truthful not neutral” is one of Amanpour’s personal sayings, she obviously thinks it’s clever. 

Of course, what it is is NewSpeak for “bias”. 

Refusing to cover evidence of The White Helmets staging rescues, Israel arming ISIS or other inconvenient facts will be defended using this phrase – they will literally claim to only publish “the truth”, to get around impartiality…and then set about making up whatever “truth” is convenient. 

Oh, and if you don’t know what “creating a false moral quivalence is”, here I’ll demonstrate:

MSM: Putin is bad for shutting down critical media. OffG: But you’re supporting RT being banned and Wikileaks being shut down. BBC: No. That’s not the same. OffG: It seems the same. BBC: It’s not. You’re creating a false moral equivalence.
Understand now? You “create a false moral equivalence” by pointing out mainstream media’s double standards.

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Demand for DHS to disclose surveillance program that tracks, monitors and mines social media influencers

The RutherFord Institute

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Pushing back against the expansion of secret government surveillance programs and the chilling impact they have on lawful First Amendment activities, The Rutherford Institute is demanding the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) disclose the details of a government program proposed by DHS in April 2018 that aims to track, monitor, catalogue and mine content posted by social media “influencers.”

In filing a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, Rutherford Institute attorneys are asking for all records relating to a “Media Monitoring Services” surveillance program that would create a “media influencer database” for content created and posted by journalists, editors, social media influencers, and bloggers.  The Institute is asking for records and information on the program because of the chilling effect it will have on the First Amendment activities of the citizens targeted by the program.

“Government surveillance stifles dissent. The impact of this far-reaching surveillance is reduced trust, increased conformity, diminished civic participation and a populace cowed by fear,” said constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute and author of Battlefield America: The War on the American People. “The Department of Homeland Security’s secret surveillance of social media influencers is not only antithetical to the principles of a free society, but will also have a chilling and deleterious effect on the ability of all Americans to exercise their First Amendment right to free speech.” 

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London police official warns journalists not to publish gov. leaks with threats of imprisonment

Boing Boing

After a leak revealed that the British Ambassador to the USA had called Trump "inept, insecure and incompetent" (leading to the ambassador’s resignation and a round of Twitter insults between Trump and senior Tory officials), London’s Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu publicly warned journalists not to publish government leaks, threatening to imprison them if they do: "The publication of leaked communications, knowing the damage they have caused or are likely to cause may also be a criminal matter. I would advise all owners, editors and publishers of social and mainstream media not to publish leaked government documents that may already be in their possession, or which may be offered to them, and to turn them over to the police or give them back to their rightful owner, Her Majesty’s Government."

The comments drew sharp criticism from the British press. The Sunday Times political editor Tim Shipman called it a "sinister, absurd, anti-democratic statement" and tweeted, "Do you have any comprehension of a free society? This isn’t Russia." The US managing editor of the Financial Times, Peter Spiegel, called the remarks "rather chilling from a major police force in a western democracy."

The Tory leaders jockeying to be Prime Minister staked out opposing positions. Boris Johnson demanded that the leaker be "hunted down and prosecuted" (while not calling for any journalists to be targeted by police) while his rival Jeremy Hunt said he defended publishing leaks "in the public interest...to the hilt."

Labour leader and PM-in-waiting Jeremy Corbyn defended the right of journalists to publish leaks, calling it "vital" and applauding the law’s "considerable protections" for a free press.

However, former defence secretary Sir Michael Fallon said the leak was a clear breach of the Official Secrets Act and the police were entitled to try to prevent further disclosures.
"If they [the press] are receiving stolen material they should give it back to their rightful owner," he told the Today programme.
"They should also be aware of the huge damage that has already been done, and the potentially even greater damage to be done by further breaches of the Official Secrets Act."

Ambassador row: Met Police criticised for warning off press [BBC]

When the Journalists Ganged Up on Assange They Ganged Up on Themselves

Paul Craig Roberts

Journalists did not appreciate the implications for themselves of the contrived and false indictment of Julian Assange by a corrupt US government.  It was obvious to a few of us that the indictment by the US government, a government constrained by the First Amendment, of a foreign national for publishing leaked material, an action never before regarded as espionage or a crime, was the beginning of the end of any Western government ever again being held accountable by a free press.

Not that the Western World has a free press.  It has a collection of presstitutes that serve as a Ministry of Propaganda for the ruling oligarchies.

Still, in principle it was possible that governments could be held accountable.  But that possibility ended with Assange’s false indictment.

First of all, no honest government would have spent years trying to invent a way to indict a journalist for practicing journalism.

Second, no intelligent grand jurors with an ounce of integrity would have been putty in the hands of a corrupt US prosecutor and enable a prosecution that ensures the destruction of accountable government.

Third, it was obvious that once America led the way in shutting down the principle of a free press, governments of other “Western democracies” would follow as soon as they could.

And follow they did.  Assange’s indictment led to raids by the “Australian Gestapo” on the home of News Corp Australia journalist Annika Smethurst and on the headquarters of the Australian Broadcasting Corp. See this.

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Police raids escalate as the war on journalism goes worldwide

Caitlin Johnstone
Medium

The Australian Federal Police have conducted two raids on journalists and seized documents in purportedly unrelated incidents in the span of just two days.

Yesterday the AFP raided the home of News Corp Australia journalist Annika Smethurst, seeking information related to her investigative report last year which exposed the fact that the Australian government has been discussing the possibility of giving itself unprecedented powers to spy on its own citizens. Today they raided the Sydney headquarters of the Australian Broadcasting Corp, seizing information related to a 2017 investigative report on possible war crimes committed by Australian forces in Afghanistan.

In a third, also ostensibly unrelated incident, another Australian reporter disclosed yesterday that the Department of Home Affairs has initiated an investigation of his reporting on a story about asylum seeker boats which could lead to an AFP criminal case, saying he's being pressured to disclose his source. 


"Why has AFP suddenly decided to carry out these two raids after the election?" tweeted Australian Sky News political editor David Speers during the Sydney raid. "Did new evidence really just emerge in both the Annika Smethurst and ABC stories?!"

Why indeed?

"If these raids unconnected, as AFP reportedly said, it's an extraordinary coincidence," tweeted The Conversation chief political correspondent Michelle Grattan. "AFP needs to explain ASAP the timing so long after the stories. It can't be that inefficient! Must be some explanation - which makes the 'unconnected' claim even more odd."

Odd indeed.

It is true that the AFP has formally denied that there was any connection between the two raids, and it is in fact difficult to imagine how the two could be connected apart from their sharing a common theme of exposing malfeasance that the government wanted kept secret. If it is true that they are unconnected, then what changed? What in the world could have changed to spark this sudden escalation of the Australian government's assault on the free press?

Well, if as I suggested recently you don't think in terms of separate, individual nations, it's not hard to think of at least one thing that's changed. "The criminalization and crack down on national security journalism is spreading like a virus," WikiLeaks tweeted today in response to the ABC raid. "The Assange precedent is already having effect. Journalists must unite and remember that courage is also contagious." 

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Sweden to reopen rape case against WikiLeaks' Assange

Comment: They are intent on making Assange an example, one way or another. 

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Associated Press

STOCKHOLM (AP) — Swedish prosecutors said Monday they are reopening a rape case against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, a month after he was removed from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. They said they will seek his extradition after he has served his 50-week prison term in Britain for jumping bail.

va-Marie Persson, Sweden's deputy director of public prosecutions, told a news conference in Stockholm that "there is still a probable cause to suspect that Assange committed a rape." She added: "It is my assessment that a new questioning of Assange is required."

Swedish prosecutors filed preliminary charges — a step short of formal charges — against Assange after he visited the country in 2010, following complaints from two Swedish women who said they were the victims of sex crimes committed by Assange.

A case of alleged sexual misconduct was dropped in 2017 when the statute of limitations expired. That left a rape allegation, but officials couldn't pursue it because Assange was living at the embassy and there was no prospect of bringing him to Sweden.

The statute of limitations on that case expires in August 2020. Assange has denied wrongdoing, asserting that they were politically motivated and that the sex was consensual. Persson said a European arrest warrant will be issued for Assange. The Swedish move would leave British authorities to decide whether to extradite Assange to Sweden or to the United States, where he is wanted separately for allegedly hacking into a Pentagon computer.

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Media Bias/Fact Check: Part of a Larger Operation to Destroy Alternative Media

Kurt Nimmo

While doing research for a Newsbud video, I came across the Media Bias/Fact Check (MBFC) website. This is one of a growing number of “fact checking” websites designed to discredit news websites not following official narratives closely enough. 

Here’s what the site has to say about Newsbud and my participation:

Newsbud (NB) is a right wing, conspiracy and anti-government site founded by, among others, Kurt Nimmo, the former lead editor and writer for Infowars. What sets NB apart from other sites of this type is that the stories are, for the most part, well written and contain numerous sources. The bias of the writing is also more subtle than sites such as Infowars, but just as prevalent. Both as an overtone to all the stories as well as the sometimes questionable sources and / or the conclusions drawn from the source material. Additionally, many of their sources are other NB stories, or work the author and editors have done elsewhere.

MBFC imparts misinformation in the first sentence. If it had done appropriate research, its ideologically driven checkers would have discovered Newsbud was established by Sibel Edmonds. I was invited to participate after the website was established and I am not a founder, as MBFC claims. 

This error—more accurately described as shoddy and careless research—reveals the liberal bias of the site and its proprietor, Dave Van Zandt. 

MBFC’s methodology is admittedly “subjective,” but this is not an issue for those working to destroy alternative media. In fact, it appears such subjectivity and bias are considered a plus in the effort the block sites deemed “dangerous,” as the performance artist Alex Jones and his website Infowars (which I indeed edited for eight years, almost exclusively focusing on geopolitics, neocon wars, and the surveillance-police state). 

From Wikipedia, which MBFC has elevated as a fount of truth and unbiased information (see Wikipedia Is More Biased Than Britannica, but Don’t Blame the Crowd), we discover Dave Van Zandt’s project serves as a touchstone for AI “solutions” to “disinformation,” that is information that does not conform to the various mythologies and half-truths put out by the propaganda media at the behest of a corporate state.

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Julian Assange sentenced to 50 weeks in jail for jumping bail in UK

RT

 

A British court sentenced WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange to 50 weeks for skipping bail. The activist also faces a court hearing on extradition to Washington where he is wanted for “conspiracy to commit computer intrusion.”

The Southwark Crown Court in London on Wednesday sentenced Assange to almost a year for “violating bail conditions.”Last month, he was formally convicted of skipping bail in the UK in 2012 when he was wanted over a rape allegation in Sweden (the case was later dropped).

Judge Deborah Taylor told the journalist that he had used bail to escape the law and expressed disdain for British justice.

In a letter read to the court, Assange explained that he was “struggling with circumstances” when he did so.

I did what I thought at the time was the best or perhaps the only thing that I could have done.

The whistleblower also apologized to all who “consider I’ve disrespected them.”

WikiLeaks slammed the sentence as “shocking” and “vindictive,” adding that they have “grave concerns” as to whether Assange will get a fair extradition hearing, scheduled for Thursday. 

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The Buried Maidan Massacre and Its Misrepresentation by the West

Ivan Katchanovski
Consortium News

The new Ukrainian government is faced with reopening an inquiry into evidence of an organized mass killing in Kiev that Poroshenko stonewalled. Ivan Katchanovski investigates.

Five years ago, the Maidan massacre in Kiev, Ukraine, of Feb. 18-20, 2014, was a watershed event, not only for the politics and history of Ukraine but also for world politics generally. This mass killing in downtown Kyiv set the stage for the violent overthrow of the pro-Russian government in Ukraine and a new Cold War between Washington and Moscow.

Therefore, it is remarkable that five years after this massacre shook the world, no one has been sentenced for any of the Maidan killings. This was the best documented case of mass killing in history, broadcast live on TV and the internet, in presence of thousands of eyewitnesses. It was filmed by hundreds of journalists from major media in the West, Ukraine, Russia, and many other countries as well as by numerous social media users. Yet, to this day, no one has been brought to justice for this major and consequential crime.

From the start, the dominant narrative promoted by the Ukrainian and Western governments and mainstream media has placed the blame for this tragedy firmly on the Yanukovych government. It contends that forces loyal to former President Victor Yanukovych— either snipers and/or the Berkut, a special anti-riot police— massacred peaceful Maidan protesters on the direct orders of Yanukovych himself. Such charges against Yanukovych, his ministers and commanders and a special Berkut unit—whose five ex-members were tried for the murder of 48 Maidan protesters on Feb. 20, 2014 — are generally taken at face value. With some limited exceptions, challenges to this narrative are treated dismissively.

For the most part, mainstream news media in the U.S. and other Western countries ignored trial evidence, public statements by officials and politicians and scholarly studies that put the standard narrative under question. This includes non-reporting about my own academic studies of the Maidan massacre.

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The Prosecution Of Julian Assange Is Infinitely Bigger Than Assange

Caitlin Johnstone
Medium.com

Julian Assange’s mother reported yesterday that the WikiLeaks founder has not been permitted any visitors during his detention in Belmarsh Prison, including from doctors and his lawyers. Doctors who visited Assange in the Ecuadorian Embassy have attested that he urgently needs medical care. Belmarsh is a maximum security prison sometimes referred to as “the UK’s Guantanamo Bay”.

And yet we’re asked to believe that this has something to do with an alleged bail violation and a US extradition request for alleged computer crimes carrying a maximum sentence of five years. If you zoom out and listen to the less-informed chatter of the overt propagandists and the brainwashed rank-and-file western mass media consumers, you will also see that people believe this has something to do with Russia and rape allegations as well. 

Actually, none of these things are true.

Assange is being imprisoned under draconian conditions for journalism, and for journalism only. The Obama administration declined to prosecute him after WikiLeaks’ publication of the Manning leaks out of concern that doing so would endanger press freedoms, and the Obama administration didn’t have any more evidence at its disposal than the Trump administration has now. The “crime” Assange is accused of consists of nothing other than standard journalistic practices that investigative journalists engage in all the time, including source protection and encouraging the source to obtain more material. The only thing that has changed is an increased willingness in the White House to prosecute journalists for practicing journalism, and there are an abundance of reasonsto believe that he will be hit with far more serious charges once extradited to US soil. They’re not going to all this trouble for a bail violation and a five-year maximum sentence.

But if you zoom out even further, in the grand scheme of things this barely even has anything to do with Assange. Sure, he has of course been a thorn in the side of those who operate the transnational western power alliance, and given the choice they would of course prefer him to be locked up or dead than free and alive. But that’s not what the corrupt influencers who are strangling our world are shooting for here. They are making a grab for something much, much bigger. Assange just happens to be a stepping stone along the way. 

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Journalist Killed By 'New IRA' During Riots In Northern Ireland

Zero Hedge

Twenty-one years after the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, a resurgent 'New IRA', which has taken responsibility for a car bombing and a series of parcel bombs discovered at landmarks in London and Glasgow, was blamed on Thursday for the killing of a journalist during riots in the city of Londonderry, Northern Ireland's second-largest city. 

Reporter Lyra McKee, 29, was shot and killed during rioting that broke out in the Creggan neighborhood of the city Thursday night. Unrest erupted after police tried to raid the homes of several suspected militants in search of weapons and ammunition, fearing violence over the Easter weekend. Mark Hamilton, PSNI assistant chief constable, said 50 petrol bombs were thrown and two cars hijacked during the rioting, while McKee's death was the only fatality. She was killed after being caught in the crossfire between dissidents and police sent to quell the riots.

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John Pilger: Assange Arrest A Warning From History

John Pilger
Consortium News

The glimpse of Julian Assange being dragged from the Ecuadorean embassy in London is an emblem of the times. Might against right. Muscle against the law. Indecency against courage. Six policemen manhandled a sick journalist, his eyes wincing against his first natural light in almost seven years.

That this outrage happened in the heart of London, in the land of Magna Carta, ought to shame and anger all who fear for “democratic” societies. Assange is a political refugee protected by international law, the recipient of asylum under a strict covenant to which Britain is a signatory. The United Nations made this clear in the legal ruling of its Working Party on Arbitrary Detention.

But to hell with that. Let the thugs go in. Directed by the quasi-fascists in Trump’s Washington, in league with Ecuador’s Lenin Moreno, a Latin American Judas and liar seeking to disguise his rancid regime, the British elite abandoned its last imperial myth: that of fairness and justice.

Imagine Tony Blair dragged from his multi-million pound Georgian home in Connaught Square, London, in handcuffs, for onward dispatch to the dock in The Hague. By the standard of Nuremberg, Blair’s “paramount crime” is the deaths of a million Iraqis. Assange’s crime is journalism: holding the rapacious to account, exposing their lies and empowering people all over the world with truth.

The shocking arrest of Assange carries a warning for all who, as Oscar Wilde wrote, “sew the seeds of discontent [without which] there would be no advance towards civilization.” The warning is explicit towards journalists. What happened to the founder and editor of WikiLeaks can happen to you on a newspaper, you in a TV studio, you on radio, you running a podcast.

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Wikileaks Founder Assange Dragged Out of London Embassy in Handcuffs After Ecuador Tears up Asylum Deal

RT

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been evicted from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London where he has spent the last six years. Ecuador's president has announced that the country has withdrawn asylum from Assange.

The eviction follows reports that the Australian founder of the WikiLeaks whistleblowing portal would be handed over to British authorities. Ecuador denied the reports and said it had no intention of stripping him of his protected status, but apparently another decision was made by Quito.

That's only a day after WikiLeaks Editor-in-Chief Kristinn Hrafnsson claimed that an extensive spying operation was conducted against Assange in the Ecuadorian Embassy. During an explosive media conference Hrafnsson alleged that the operation was designed to get Assange extradited.

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See also: George Galloway: 'Julian Assange exposed great crimes & now a great crime is committed against him'

Silencing the Whistle - The Intercept Shutters Snowden Archive, Citing Cost

Comment: Confirming the limited hangout/psyops nonsense that is Edward Snowjob. Glenn Greenwald would sell his grandmother if he could.

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Mint Press News

The closing of The Intercept’s Snowden archive will likely mean the end of any future publications, unless Glenn Greenwald’s rather absurd promise of finding “the right partner … that has the funds to robustly publish” is fulfilled.

 

NEW YORK — On March 13, a report in the Daily Beast revealed that the New York-based outlet The Intercept would be shutting down its archive of the trove of government documents entrusted to a handful of journalists, including Intercept co-founders Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras, by whistleblower Edward Snowden. However, that account did not include the role of Greenwald, as well as Jeremy Scahill — another Intercept co-founder, in the controversial decision to shutter the archive.

 

According to a timeline of events written by Poitras that was shared and published by journalist and former Intercept columnist Barrett Brown, both Scahill and Greenwald were intimately involved in the decision to close the Snowden archive. 

While other outlets — such as the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post and the New York Times — also possess much (though not all) of the archive, the Intercept was the only outlet with the (full) archive that had continued to publish documents, albeit at a remarkably slow pace, in recent years. In total, fewer than 10 percent of the Snowden documents have been published since 2013. Thus, the closing of the publication’s Snowden archive will likely mean the end of any future publications, unless Greenwald’s promise of finding “the right partner … that has the funds to robustly publish” is fulfilled.

Poitras told Brown that she first caught wind of the coming end of the Snowden archive on March 6, when Scahill and Intercept editor-in-chief Betsy Reed asked to meet with her “to explain how we’ve assessed our priorities in the course of the budget process, and made some restructuring decisions.” During the resulting two-hour meeting, which Poitras described as “tense,” she realized that they had “decided to eliminate the research department. I object to this on the grounds Field of Vision [Intercept sister company where Poitras works] is dependent [on the] research department, and the Snowden archive security protocols are overseen by them.”

Poitras later sent two emails opposing the research department’s elimination and, in one of those emails, argued that the research department should stay, as it represented “only 1.5% of the total budget” of First Look Media, The Intercept’s parent company, which is wholly owned by billionaire Pierre Omidyar. The last of those emails was sent on March 10 and Poitras told Brown:

Throughout these conversations and email exchanges, there was no mention of shutting down the archive. That was not on the table. That decision was made on either Monday March 11 or Tuesday March 12, again without my involvement or consent.”

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