Omissions Accomplished
Autocrats, Assange and our Altruistic Angels in the Mainstream Press
“As a political prisoner, held at Your Majesty’s pleasure on behalf of an embarrassed foreign sovereign, I am honoured to reside within the walls of this world class institution. Truly, your kingdom knows no bounds.”
~ A Kingly Proposal: Letter from Julian Assange to King Charles III
Joel Bowman, with today’s Note From the End of the World...
Praise Hermes for our better angels in the Mainstream Press; without these saintly heralds, how ever would we know which lies to believe, which truths to discard... and what to ignore completely?
In a recent article for The Wall Street Journal, “Authoritarians Threaten Journalists Around the Globe,” it took the two authors (and three contributors) 2,217 words not to mention the name Julian Assange.
Apparently, of the more than 520 reporters imprisoned around the world, according to the column’s subhead, “reflecting rising pressure on independent media,” the Australian journalist, who awaits extradition from the United Kingdom to the United States, where he faces up to 175 years in prison, did not warrant comment, or even so much as a footnote.
That the Wikileaks founder spent seven years in self-imposed exile in the basement of the Ecuadorian embassy... followed by five years (and counting) incarcerated in the UK’s infamous Belmarsh Prison – without conviction – failed to stir the authors’ quivering pens to action. That even the lily-livered BBC summoned sufficient fortitude to dub His Majesty’s gaol “British Guantanamo Bay” gives you some idea as to conditions within the heavily-guarded stone walls.
Nor was Mr. Assange alone in escaping the notice of The Wall Street Journal’s topnotch noticers.
WrongThinkers
Pablo González Yagüe is an independent Spanish journalist, specializing in Eastern Europe and ex-Soviet countries, who covered the humanitarian crisis on the Polish-Ukrainian border at the outbreak of the Russo-Ukrainian war. This past February marked two years since Sr. González was arrested by Polish authorities, accused of being “an agent of Russian intelligence.” He has since been imprisoned without, according to the International and European Federations of Journalists (IFJ-EFJ), “any evidence of the allegations against him being made public and no trial in sight.”
The IFJ-EFJ has roundly condemned the internment of Sr. González, stating:
“It is unacceptable for an EU member state to detain a journalist in such an arbitrary manner. Not only are Pablo González's fundamental rights as a citizen and as a journalist being violated, but so is the freedom of the press and the public's right to know.”
As with Belmarsh in the UK, which Mr. Assange thoughtfully designated His Majesty’s “Kingdom within a Kingdom,” Poland has no maximum terms for pre-trial detention. To the surprise of none, multi-year, pre-trial detentions are, therefore, not at all uncommon.
On February 15, 2024, one fortnight prior to Sr. González’s two year prison anniversary, Polish authorities extended his pre-trial detention for another three months. It was the eighth consecutive extension, and unlikely to be the last.
Indefinite detention notwithstanding, like Mr. Assange, Sr. González also failed to meet the threshold for conspicuous “ragepathy” among his colleagues at the WSJ.
And yet, the authors appear acutely alert to the fact that many of the journalists being held in prison cells around the world are detained “for what appear to be geopolitical reasons.” From the WSJ article:
“The imprisoned journalists stand accused of a range of crimes—including espionage, incitement, spreading misinformation and terrorism—that press-freedom advocates say are designed to silence dissent or punish reporters who have exposed official wrongdoing.”
That this sentence could have been written (and elsewhere has been written) with Mr. Assange or Sr. González in mind only makes their absence from the article all the more remarkable. Why, then, the howling omissions?
Could it be that their particular geopolitical persuasions differ from those of the approved, establishment media in the west? Might their rivers of dissent flow in the “wrong” direction? Perhaps the “official wrongdoing” they exposed was perpetrated by the “home team”?
Is silencing dissent and punishing reporters always wrong, or only wrong when it’s carried out by the “other side”?
Death by Opinion
Consider the case of Gonzalo Lira, for whom even life imprisonment would have been a relatively happy outcome. The Chilean-American film-maker and war commentator perished in a Ukrainian prison in January of this year, recent enough even for the WSJ authors to have recalled. Only, they did not.
Mr. Lira’s death followed an eight-month imprisonment on charges of “production and dissemination of materials justifying Russia’s armed aggression against Ukraine,” sparking international controversy and raising questions about freedom of speech and human rights during wartime.
According to the Helsinki Times, whose journalists evidently thought the man worthy of a mention, “Gonzalo Lira gained notoriety in 2022 as a vocal critic of what he perceived as increasing authoritarianism in Ukraine. Lira saw the conflict as a proxy war waged by the US against Russia and criticized the loss of life for a futile and unwinnable war.”
Translation: Mr. Lira held unpopular (in the west) opinions... and wasn’t afraid of voicing them. His punishment: torture, extortion and eventual death in solitary confinement.
Leaving aside for a moment the lamentable fact that, in some parts of the world, “wrongthink” can still get you killed... was Mr. Lira’s perception of “increasing authoritarianism in Ukraine” really so far outside the media’s own Overton window?
In December 2022, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky signed a law effectively consolidating all media under rigid state control, a move that the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine (NUJU) itself called “a step back from the standards of freedom of speech.” They (the NUJU, that is, not Mr. Lira) warned that passing the law could “cast the shadow of a dictator” on Zelensky.
If that sounds dangerously hyperbolic, consider that this past Sunday (March 31, 2024) was election day in the Ukraine. Only, no votes were cast. No elections were held. And none are planned. Not that one would be of any consequence anyway, as most of the opposition parties – including those on the right and the left – are banned.
Indeed, the situation in Zelensky’s Ukraine is so overtly non-democratic, even middle-of-the-road Newsweek felt obliged to point it out:
“The catalogue of authoritarian abuses is growing in Ukraine and shows little sign of slowing. Under the guidance of the West's favorite autocrat—Zelensky—it has created a state-controlled church, taken control of all television news, and banned major opposition parties. This far exceeds anything that occurred in recent American or British history. Both of those nations remained fundamentally democratic during war, even a civil war. This latest cancellation of presidential elections in Ukraine destroys any pretense that we are supporting a functioning democracy.”
~ From “Ukraine Sure Doesn't Look Like a Democracy Anymore” - Newsweek, Nov. 2023
The Truth About Peace
The article’s authors – Ambassador Michael Gfoeller and author David H. Rundell – may wish to strike Kyiv from their to-visit list for the foreseeable future, lest they find themselves awarded the Lira treatment upon arrival.
At this point, a reasonable reader might think that, given the Zelensky administration’s appalling record of non-democracy, including enacting and enforcing a law which the Ukraine's own National Union of Journalists calls the “the biggest threat to free speech in (Ukraine's) independent history,” the authors of an article about “rising pressure on independent media” might be moved to mention the fact.
Alas, when the authors of the WSJ article complained that, “new censorship laws restrict how journalists can cover topics deemed off-limits, such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine,” they were not evidently not referring to Mr. Lira... or even their colleagues over at Newsweek, just down the street.
Of course, it would be remiss of your editor – who actively eschews the term “journalist” in favor of “failed novelist,” and not solely for reasons of occupational health and safety – not to stand with all our brave colleagues, especially those held at the behest of authoritarian regimes...whether in Putin’s Russia or Zelensky’s Ukraine, His Majesty’s United Kingdom or Joseph Biden’s United States.
As card-carrying anarcho-capitalists, we trust no government to secure and defend that mythological creature known as “freedom of the press.” On the contrary; just as “war is the health of the state” (per Randolph Bourne), the corollary holds that truth is its hemlock. As the object of the WSJ’s selective amnesia himself observed...
“If wars can be started by lies, peace can be started by truth.” ~ Julian Assange
As for truth itself, here’s to all those who seek, speak and defend it.
Stay tuned for more Notes From the End of the World...
Cheers,
Joel Bowman
P.S. That independent journalism remains under attack around the world is as indisputable as it is lamentable. The sworn enemies of a free and open press – including state governments and, often times, establishment media itself – are powerful and well-funded.
Notes From the End of the World, on the other hand, is an independent, 100% reader-supported publication. As such, we are ever grateful to our small (but rapidly growing!) community of deep readers, critical thinkers and committed skeptics. In times like these, your support is especially appreciated.
If you’re enjoying our work and would like to become a member, please consider joining us here, today. Cheers ~ JB
Excellent Joel. These careful journalists might want to put eyes on this piece of wisdom below... when might they come for them... tyrants accept no boundaries.
"First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me."
—Martin Niemöller
I would really like to be a fly on the wall listening to the authors of this article as they planned and wrote it, in order to better discern if they are truly aware of their hypocrisy or if they have sunk to such a level of non-self-reflection that they simply take assignments such as this one and run with the approved narrative, without any thought of Assange et al.
I find it hard to believe that they could be aware of their duplicity and still look in the mirror or sleep at night, but it is even harder to believe that they are really that un-self-reflective. I guess a third possibility is that this was really written by an AI programmed by those deep in the Western narrative, and they simply allowed their names to be placed as the authors. It all boggles my mind.