More Government Cover-ups Plus The Fifth Estate: The Military Industrial Complex Does Julian Assange

America has become the nation of cover-ups from lying us into wars to crimes against humanity to nuclear cover-ups to gag orders silencing crime victims.  A public tired of lies, stays home as The Fifth Estate flops.

History is told by the victors, the film makers and the media propagandists. But the American people are not ready to let their government silence the truth.  Normally, when a film-maker presents the story of a public figure, he at least interviews that public figure to  make a pretense at getting his point of view.  This helps to presents a neutral – rather than a one-sided biased – portrayal of the public figure’s life.  In making The Fifth Estate, Bill Condon made no effort to get the viewpoint of Julian Assange, the subject of his film.  Instead of fact-checking, Condon turned the movie into a propaganda piece glorifying the silencing of truth and the prolongation of war and lies.  The public responded through not responding.  On a Saturday night on opening weekend, the theater was mostly empty.  The one person waiting to see the next showing said he was aware that it was a propaganda piece but, unlike Condon, he wanted to look at alternate viewpoints of events.  The Huffington Post reported, “‘The Fifth Estate’ Flops With Year’s Worst Opening Weekend”

Not only is Julian Assange thrown under the bus but Condon throws Bradley Manning under it with him and backs it up a few times to make sure that he wipes out any alternate memory of the facts.  Condon seems more interested in making a cartoon than a real movie, focusing considerable movie time on speculation about Assange’s hair and portraying Assange as ranting and friendless.  After watching the movie, one is left convinced that the whole Sweden broken-condom incident had to have been a set up as few women (other than CIA agents) would be attracted to the movie’s Assange.

Julian Assange has called the movie  a “massive propaganda attack on WikiLeaks and the character of my staff.”  In a letter to  Benedict Cumberbatch, who portrayed him in the movie, Assange stated.

“I do not believe that this film is a good film … DreamWorks has based its entire production on the two most discredited books on the market … [The film] does not seek to simplify, clarify or distill the truth, but rather it seeks to bury it … It is distorted truth about living people doing battle with titanic opponents. It is a work of political opportunism, influence, revenge and, above all, cowardice … It seeks … to cut principle with hypocrisy … to cut the truth with lies … to create a work, not of fiction, but of debased truth.”

After or before watching the movie, you might want to get a more rounded viewpoint by reading this alternate account of Daniel Domsheit-Berg’s heroism or lack thereof from Darkhorse.com which seems to be more consistent with historical events surrounding the demise of Wikileaks than much of what was presented in the movie.

Before leaving WikiLeaks, he stole 3,500 unpublished files, leaked to WikiLeaks by sources, including the complete U.S. no-fly list, five gigabytes of Bank of America documents and detailed information about twenty neo-Nazi groups.  Along with these files, Domscheit-Berg also stole the entire WikiLeaks encrypted submission system to use in his rival site ‘Openleaks’.  The bitchy reason he provided for stealing the files and submission system was that “children shouldn’t play with guns”.  This theft resulted in WikiLeaks being unable to receive on-line leaked document submissions for a year, with the site instead being forced to resort to using a Post Office Box in Australia.

WikiLeaks were forced to waste many months trying to negotiate the return of the stolen unpublished leaks and internal communications.  Domscheit-Berg then tried to blackmail WikiLeaks by threatening to make available, to forces that oppose WikiLeaks, these communications, should WikiLeaks move to charge him with sabotage or theft.  Attempts were made, to negotiate the return of the items, but were terminated by a mediator who had “doubts” about Domscheit-Berg’s “integrity”.

Both Julian Assange and Bradley Manning were nominated for the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize.  Only a tiny fraction of the number of Americans supporting those nominations are likely to see The Fifth Estate in the near empty theaters with projectors playing to unfilled chairs.  If you are one of that fraction,  you might want to think about Operation Mockingbird as you watch this attack on those who dared to tell the truth in spite of the risks to themselves.

Operation Mockingbird was a secret campaign by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to influence media. Begun in the 1950s, it was initially organized by Cord Meyer and Allen W. Dulles, it was later led by Frank Wisner after Dulles became the head of the CIA. The organization recruited leading American journalists into a network to help present the CIA’s views, and funded some student and cultural organizations, and magazines as fronts. As it developed, it also worked to influence foreign media and political campaigns, in addition to activities by other operating units of the CIA.

Today, we have mega-pictures, that mesmerize the public, allowing them to forget facts and believe what the big screen tells them to believe.  It is important to get both sides of a story.  If you want the viewpoint of the Military Industrial Complex and that of Daniel Domscheit-Berg, check out The Fifth Estate. The slant/bias is so obvious that it can’t be missed. 

California in danger of extinction

Another nuclear cover-up?  No surprise to people living in Orange County, California ( the home of political and nuclear cover-ups.) From the 1959 Los Angeles meltdown at Santa Susana and all the incidents/accidents at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station over the last forty some years, learning about cover-ups involving  the NRC and government are almost  as common for Orange County residents as going out to dinner.  

It seems that, unbeknownst to the public until now, Southern California Edison was using a very dangerous hot fuel at San Onofre that will continue to create a  danger decades into the future.  Dr. Arjun Makhijana, President of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research and expert on hardened on-site storage of nuclear waste and long-term management of high-level waste, stated that a fire in one of those tanks could contaminate  an area of thousands of miles.  This would include all of California, and various other states.    He noted that the left over fuel from just one reactor at the decommissioned Connecticut Yankee plant is the equivalent of the fuel at all four of Fukushima reactors, put together.  And just when Americans thought they were safer than people in Japan, Southern Californians learn they could be subjected for decades to the life-threatening toxicity from the remaining hot fuel from these two dangerous decommissioned San Onofre reactors, possibly as dangerous as two Fukushimas.  It’s worse.  The NRC does not have an evacuation plan.

At the symposium, Dr. Donald Mosier (expert on the public health effects of radiation from Scripts Research Institute) spoke of the dangers from the radioactivity and also spoke of the covered-up risks from CT scans and mammograms.  Also speaking on the dangers of nuclear contamination was Dr. Marvin Resnikoff, government advisor and Senior Associate at Radioactive Waste Management Associates.

Gag Orders and Silencing the Truth

In recent articles, there was a discussion of Cindy Lou, a crime victim who may or may not exist and who may have been silenced by a gag order to prevent her from even saying she exists or that she had a cup of coffee.  Cindy Lou, if she exists, was never even accused of any illegal conduct and no evidence of any misconduct or wrongdoing was ever entered into evidence against her.  If Cindy Lou is real and gagged, she is being silenced, prevented from telling the truth about crimes of which she has knowledge. Who benefits from silencing crime victims?

So, have cover-ups and gagging crime victims become the American way of life?  Julian Assange is held up in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.  Informed experts on U.S. policy widely believe that the U. S. Government would likely try to execute Assange if our government got its hands on him, and would do so under the Espionage Act of 1917, one of the Palmer Acts that was used to terrorize labor leaders during the Woodrow Wilson Administration.   The Obama Administration has already taken steps in that direction.  The U.S. Government tortured it’s own soldier Bradley Manning for informing the American public about America’s crimes against humanity.  Manning reportedly leaked the video, Collateral Murder, the slaughter of innocent newmen and civilians by the military..  For his heroism and service to the American people, Bradley Manning was tortured by our government and could spend 33 years in prison.  Edward Snowden is in Russia, also likely to be executed if he were to return to the United States. What was Snowden’s crime?  He let the world know that the U.S. was monitoring our phone calls and emails.  Didn’t the American people have a right to know this?  Who are the real traitors: those who serve the public by exposing lies, corruption and crimes or those who gag and cover up the crimes and corruption about which others are not allowed to speak?

America has become a strange world but to allow the Mannings, the Assanges, the Snowdens, and the Cindy Lous to be silenced is to give up the last vestige of our humanity.

  
Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.

                                   —  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.