René Magritte Sixteenth of September 1956
We passed 30 million total global cases overnight. That is a lot of people. And at 300,000 new cases a day, 9 million will be added each month.
India hasn’t breached the 100,000 number in one day so far.
You can think what you want about performances like this one by CDC head Robert Redfield, but the problem with the CDC, as well as the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, headed by Fauci, should be obvious. The same will go for similar bureaus in other countries. That is, they basically go unchallenged for decades (I know, there was SARS), which inevitably makes them lazy and riddled with inertia.
This is best exemplified by the fact that Fauci has been heading his institute since 1984. Plenty of time to get all chummy with the Big Pharma people he sees on a regular basis, and one thing leads to another. And then when an emergeny occurs, we find out that they have no way left to deal with an emergency, because they’re all rusty and dusty. Which of course they will vehemently deny.
Meanwhile, Fauci has said may different, even contradictory things, and Redfield does no better. First, there is no vaccine, so this is pure hypothesis. And even then it will take another year?! Great message. Which the CDC itself walked back within hours to boot. And the way he’s flopping that piece of cloth around, saying it’s better than a vaccine, is just horrible. He’s had 9 months to drown the US in N95 masks, and be effective. So where are they?
• CDC: US Should Have Enough Vaccine To Return To Regular Life By Q3 2021 (CNBC)
The U.S. should have enough Covid-19 vaccine doses for Americans to return to “regular life” by the third quarter of next year, the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Wednesday. CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield told a Senate panel he expects vaccinations to begin in November or December, but in limited quantities with those most in need getting the first doses, such as health-care workers. He said it will take about “six to nine months” to get the entire American public vaccinated. “If you’re asking me when is it going to be generally available to the American public so we can begin to take advantage of vaccine to get back to our regular life, I think we’re probably looking at third … late second quarter, third quarter 2021,” he told the U.S. Senate Appropriations subcommittee on labor, health and human services, education, and related agencies.
The CDC later walked back Redfield’s testimony after President Donald Trump criticized him at a White House press conference. The CDC said Redfield’s timeline referred to when all Americans will complete their immunizations. “He was not referring to the time period when COVID-19 vaccine doses would be made available to all Americans,” CDC spokesman Paul Fulton Jr. said in an email to CNBC. At the hearing, Redfield said the Trump administration’s Covid-19 vaccine program Operation Warp Speed was unprecedented. He told lawmakers that a vaccine usually takes four to six years. There are no approved vaccines for the coronavirus. Three drugmakers are currently in late-stage testing for potential vaccines and expect to know if they work by the end of the year.
Public health experts have previously said that most Americans likely won’t get immunized with a coronavirus vaccine until the middle of next year. Whichever vaccine is authorized by the Food and Drug Administration, it will likely be in short supply once it’s cleared for public distribution, medical experts warn. The vaccine will likely require two doses at varying intervals, and states still face logistical challenges such as setting up distribution sites and acquiring enough needles, syringes and bottles needed for immunizations.
Redfield
NEW: CDC Director Redfield to US Senate cmte.:
“These facemasks are the important, powerful public health tool we have … I might even go so far as to say that this facemask is more guaranteed to protect me against COVID than when I take a COVID vaccine.” pic.twitter.com/7LJZ3U9xi1
— NBC News (@NBCNews) September 16, 2020
“..It’s unclear why the CDC proceeded with the training..”
• Trump Admin Shuts Down CDC Training Based On Critical Race Theory (Fox)
President Trump’s administration canceled another critical race theory training that was set to occur through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) despite the president’s recent executive order banning those types of events, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) said Tuesday. OMB Director Russ Vought announced the decision just a day after Discovery Institute researcher Chris Rufo reported on the training, underscoring the administration’s recent responsiveness to news on this issue. “Glad to report, per @POTUS’s directive, this training is being cancelled immediately,” Vought tweeted, alongside Rufo’s post about the issue. Rufo’s revelations appeared to prompt Trump’s executive order earlier this month.
Rufo noted on Monday that the CDC was hosting a training focused on “systems of structured inequality,” blaming systemic racism for deaths from COVID-19 and at the hands of police. It admonishes the “myth of meritocracy” and “myth of american exceptionalism,” among other objectives that Rufo said represented “textbook critical race theory.” It’s unclear why the CDC proceeded with the training, which appeared to take place on Thursday. Rufo responded to Vought’s announcement by demanding accountability and threatening to release names of those involved if the CDC didn’t take action on its own.
A senior administration official told Fox News that all agencies are supposed to adhere to the president’s order, and that the president’s team is attempting to stop trainings that are continuing despite the cease and desist order. In Vought’s initial letter on the issue, he denounced the trainings as un-American. “According to press reports, in some cases these training have further claimed that there is racism embedded in the belief that America is the land of opportunity or the belief that the most qualified person should receive a job,” he said. “These types of ‘trainings’ not only run counter to the fundamental beliefs for which our nation has stood since its inception, but they also engender division and resentment within the federal workforce,” he said.
Vought also directed agencies to identify ways to sever government contracts that supported those trainings. Last week, Rufo flagged a training through an Education Department contractor, which purportedly pushed for radical changes to education and doing “away with prison,” among other things. One document stated that “schools are built to manage racism” and that “we all” seem to abide by a racial contract that says it’s ok for white people to kill [B]lacks with immunity.”
“Just as Marxism demonized capitalists, CRT vilifies white people..”
• President Trump’s Ban on Critical Race Theory, Explained (FEE)
Critical Race Theory is a branch of Critical Theory, which began as an academic movement in the 1930s. Critical Theory emphasizes the “critique of society and culture in order to reveal and challenge power structures,” as Wikipedia states. Critical Race Theory does the same, with a focus on racial power structures, especially white supremacy and the oppression of people of color. The “power structure” prism stems largely from Critical Theory’s own roots in Marxism—Critical Theory was developed by members of the Marxist “Frankfurt School.” Traditional Marxism emphasized economic power structures, especially the supremacy of capital over labor under capitalism. Marxism interpreted most of human history as a zero-sum class war for economic power.
“According to the Marxian view,” wrote the economist Ludwig von Mises, “human society is organized into classes whose interests stand in irreconcilable opposition.” Mises called this view a “conflict doctrine,” which opposed the “harmony doctrine” of classical liberalism. According to the classical liberals, in a free market economy, capitalists and workers were natural allies, not enemies. Indeed, in a free society all rights-respecting individuals were natural allies. Critical Race Theory arose as a distinct movement in law schools in the late 1980s. CRT inherited many of its premises and perspectives from its Marxist ancestry. The pre-CRT Civil Rights Movement had emphasized equal rights and treating people as individuals, as opposed to as members of a racial collective.
“I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character,” Martin Luther King famously said. In contrast, CRT dwells on inequalities of outcome, which it generally attributes to racial power structures. And, as we’ve seen from the government training curricula, modern CRT forthrightly judges white people by the color of their skin, prejudging them as racist by virtue of their race. This race-based “pre-trial guilty verdict” of racism is itself, by definition, racist. The classical liberal “harmony doctrine” was deeply influential in the movements to abolish all forms of inequality under the law: from feudal serfdom, to race-based slavery, to Jim Crow.
But, with the rise of Critical Race Theory, the cause of racial justice became more influenced by the fixations on conflict, discord, and domination that CRT inherited from Marxism. Social life was predominantly cast as a zero-sum struggle between collectives: capital vs. labor for Marxism, whites vs. people of color for CRT. A huge portion of society’s ills were attributed to one particular collective’s diabolical domination: capitalist hegemony for Marxism, white supremacy for CRT. Just as Marxism demonized capitalists, CRT vilifies white people. Both try to foment resentment, envy, and a victimhood complex among the oppressed class it claims to champion.
Critical Race Theory
https://twitter.com/i/status/1306000528757923848
The Senate Homeland Security Committee appears to be getting restless about the Durham probe.
• Subpoenas Coming For Comey, Brennan, Clapper, Halper Et Al (ZH)
The Senate Homeland Security Committee voted on Wednesday to authorize subpoenas for dozens of Obama-era officials involved in ‘spygate,’ including former FBI Director James Comey, former CIA Director John Brennan, former DNI James Clapper — and longtime US intelligence operative Stephen Halper, who the Obama administration paid nearly half-a-million dollars to help the FBI spy on the 2016 Trump campaign. The committee authorized chairman Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) to issue notices for taking depositions, subpoenas, records requests, and testimony related to the “Crossfire Hurricane” investigation – along with the DOJ Inspector General’s review of said investigation, as well as the “unmasking” of individuals connected to the Trump campaign, transition team, and administration, according to Fox News.
“The committee also authorized subpoenas for Sidney Blumenthal, former Obama chief of staff Denis McDonough, former FBI counsel Lisa Page, former FBI agent Joe Pientka, former ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power, former FBI director of counterintelligence Bill Priestap, former White House national security adviser Susan Rice, former FBI agent Peter Strzok, former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith – who pleaded guilty to making a false statement in the first criminal case arising from U.S. Attorney John Durham’s review of the investigation into links between Russia and the 2016 Trump campaign – among others.”
As part of the authorization, Johnson may subpoena “the production of all records” related to the FBI’s initial Russia probe, as well as unmasking requests for “James Baker, former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, DOJ official Bruce Ohr, FBI case agent Steven Somma, former U.S. Ambassador to Russia John Teftt, former deputy assistant attorney general Tashina Gauhar.” Halper, meanwhile, is a former government official and longtime spook for the CIA and FBI, who was outed as the FBI informant who infiltrated the Trump campaign after the Washington Post and the New York Times ran reports that corroborated a March report by the Daily Caller detailing Halper’s outreach to several low-level aides to the Trump campaign, including Carter Page and George Papadopoulos.
These contacts are notable, as Halper’s infiltration of the Trump campaign corresponds with the two of the four targets of the FBI’s Operation Crossfire Hurricane – in which the agency sent counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok and others to a London meeting in the Summer of 2016 with former Australian diplomat Alexander Downer – who says Papadopoulos drunkenly admitted to knowing that the Russians had Hillary Clinton’s emails. The 74-year-old Halper who split his time between his Virginia farm and teaching at Cambridge, approached several Trump campaign aides during the 2016 US election for purposes of espionage – on behalf of the FBI, headed at the time by the recently very quiet James Comey. Halper continued to spy on Trump campaign aide Carter Page well after the election, and now we find that he was trying to infiltrate the Trump administration.
Does anyone except the principals actors think these things should NOT be investigated?
• Mueller Team Had Lisa Page’s Phone It Claimed Was Lost (ET)
An official who worked on special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation wrote in a recently released email that he or she was in possession of an iPhone belonging to Lisa Page three days after the former FBI lawyer’s last day on the job and at a time when the device was thought to have been lost. The special counsel’s office (SCO) and the Justice Department previously claimed to have no documents to show who handled Page’s iPhone after she turned it in on July 14, 2017, or who improperly wiped it two weeks later, before it could be checked for records, in violation of SCO policy. But documents released by the Department of Justice (DOJ) on Sept. 11 tell a different story, with three officials certifying that Page turned over her phone and one claiming to have been in possession of it.
“I have her phone and laptop,” an administrative officer with the initials LFW wrote in a July 17, 2017, email to Christopher Greer, an assistant director at the DOJ Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO). Beth McGarry, the executive officer at the special counsel’s office, told Greer in an email sent earlier in the day that Page “returned her mobile phone and laptop.” On the same day, a property custodian officer, whose name is redacted in the documents, signed a form on which Page certified that she turned in her phone and the officer certified that “all government property has been returned or otherwise properly accounted for.” The July 17 timing of the two statements and the signature is significant. The DOJ Office of Inspector General (OIG) previously concluded that there were no records of who had the phone after July 14. The records about Page’s phone are part of a DOJ disclosure that revealed that members of the Mueller team improperly wiped at least 22 iPhones before they could be checked for records.
[..] Mueller’s team used a total of 92 iPhones, according to the documents. Four of the phones appear in the inventory logs, but not on the records officer’s log, suggesting they were either recorded without their unique asset tag or evaded the officer entirely. One of the four phones belonged to deputy special counsel Aaron Zebley. Another belonged to Zainab Ahmad, a special counsel attorney. One phone was partially wiped. Four phones were improperly handed over to the OCIO and wiped before the records officer’s review. As many as seven phones with no asset tags noted by the records officer were either reassigned or wiped before the officer could assess the device for records.
The pattern of questionable deletions has drawn the attention of lawmakers. Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), the chairmen of the finance and oversight committees, respectively, sent a letter to the DOJ and the FBI last week asking for more information about what happened with the phones. “It appears that Special Counsel Mueller’s team may have deleted federal records that could be key to better understanding their decision-making process as they pursued their investigation and wrote their report,” Grassley wrote. “Indeed, many officials apparently deleted the records after the DOJ Inspector General began his inquiry into how the Department mishandled Crossfire Hurricane.”
His dad is running for president. Which is when in America the family is dragged in. But where is Hunter? Too much of a liability? The press can’t ask Joe, because all questions are pre-scripted.
• Treasury Flagged Foreign Money Flowing To Hunter Biden-Tied Firms (JTN)
A Treasury Department agency that polices financial threats such as money laundering flagged several foreign transactions to Hunter Biden-connected businesses as “suspicious” during the end of the Obama administration and the beginning of the Trump administration. The concerns from the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) were highlighted in Suspicious Activity Reports turned over to Senate committees over the last year in conjunction with investigations into the Russia and Ukraine scandals, according to several officials familiar with the evidence. As those Senate investigations wind toward the issuance of their first official report later this month, an essential question has emerged:
Did U.S. law enforcement or intelligence agencies do anything to determine if the money flowing to Vice President Joe Biden’s son posed any criminal or intelligence threats? [..] Senate Democrats first called attention to the existence of the SARs in a little-noticed letter late last year and are now bracing for the flagged financial transactions to be a major revelation in a joint report they expect to be published by the GOP-led Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs and the Senate Finance Committees as early as next week. “The Republicans have had this in their back pocket for some time to make headlines as the election drew closer,” one Democratic source told Just the News.
[..] The SAR reports were requested as Senate investigators dug into a labyrinth of global businesses that Hunter Biden and his business partners became involved with in Russia, China, Ukraine and elsewhere while his father Joe Biden served as the vice president and Obama administration foreign policy point person. That includes Hunter Biden’s controversial addition in spring 2014 to the board of Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian gas firm with a long record of corruption allegations. SARs are one of the law enforcement community’s most powerful and secretive tools in the war against money laundering, drug cartels and terrorist threats, providing real-time warnings from financial institutions to FinCEN that certain transactions have characteristics that make them suspicious.
Treasury typically receives or generates one million to two million Suspicious Activity Reports a year. So a SAR report in and of itself is not evidence of wrongdoing, but it is usually a starting point for investigation, experts say. The question that remains is whether FBI or ODNI did anything to investigate these suspicious reports after they were alerted by FinCEN. [..] Hunter Biden’s globe-trotting business activities have long generated controversy because they often occurred in the shadows of his father’s foreign policy portfolio. Hunter Biden, for instance, traveled aboard Air Force Two in December 2013 with the vice president to Beijing, walking away soon after with a stake in an investment fund that received funding from the state-owned Bank of China. As his father’s administration took several actions favorable to Beijing, such as opening U.S. capital markets to Chinese companies, Hunter Biden closed deals in China.
“Senator Schumer and Speaker Pelosi aren’t going to agree to anything until we agree to spend a trillion dollars bailing out New York and California and that’s not going to happen in your or my natural life..”
• Senator Kennedy: There Are Times When I Think Pelosi Has Eaten Tide Pods (ZH)
GOP Senator John Kennedy used a startling cultural reference to portray his belief that believes Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is crazy, saying that he often thinks she has ‘is one of those people who tried Tide Pods’ laundry detergent. Appearing with Sean Hannity, Kennedy was addressing Pelosi’s obsession with the $3.4 trillion coronavirus bill. “Sean, with respect, there are times, particularly recently, when I think Speaker Pelosi is one of those people who tried Tide pods,” Kennedy hilariously stated. “I want you to think about what she proposed today, this is what the speaker is threatening to do,” he continued, adding “She is threatening to keep the House Democrats in session and prevent them from going home and running for reelection unless the Senate Republicans agree to the speaker’s $3.4 trillion coronavirus bill.”
“On the one hand we can vote for Pelosi’s $3.4 trillion bill or we can agree to allow her to put the House Democratic majority into jeopardy. That’s just bone deep down to the marrow foolish,” Kennedy urged. Kennedy further emphasised that Nothing is going to get done while the Democrats refuse to back down over something that is never going to come to fruition. “Senator Schumer and Speaker Pelosi aren’t going to agree to anything until we agree to spend a trillion dollars bailing out New York and California and that’s not going to happen in your or my natural life,” Kennedy added.
PCR worked at the Reagan White House.
• The Democrat Ticket Is Puzzling (Paul Craig Roberts)
Those of you old enough to remember President Reagan will remember all the presstitute insinuations about Reagan being senile and falling asleep at cabinet meetings. Of course, the presstitutes were never at cabinet meetings. Reagan successfully confronted the two major problems of his time—stagflation and the nuclear armageddon that could result from misunderstood intentions or a warning system error. Reagan’s supply-side policy deep-sixed stagflation—the simultaneous rise of inflation and unemployment—and his negotiations with Soviet President Gorbachev ended the Cold War.
The Establishment has buried both achievements, and today Reagan is understood as the president who made Americans feel good while he cut taxes for the rich and poured money into the Pentagon and defense contractors. Reagan’s “star wars” was more illusion than real. It’s purpose was to convince the Soviets to end the Cold War. This was also the purpose of his military interventions against leftish takeovers in the US “sphere of influence.” The reason for these interventions was to give the message to Moscow that there would be no further territorial gains for communism. Americans today, especially the youth, know nothing about how the Reagan administration gave us two decades of economic growth without having to pay for it with rising inflation, and they do not know that Reagan ended the Cold War.
Today the rightwing and Russians themselves believe that Reagan won the Cold War. That was not Reagan’s goal. President Reagan told those of us involved that the purpose was “to end, not win, the Cold War,” and that we must never act or speak in any way that implied that we had prevailed over the Soviets. Wikipedia, a disinformation website, opens its account of Reagan’s foreign policy with a blatant lie: “The foreign policy of the Ronald Reagan administration was the foreign policy of the United States from 1981 to 1989. The main goal was winning the Cold War.” The ignorance of whoever wrote this is extraordinary.
The Soviets never would have agreed to losing the Cold War. President Reagan understood this, which is why he emphasized that our purpose was to end, not win, the Cold War.
And counting.
• 60% of US Business Closures Due To The Pandemic Are Now Permanent (CNBC)
Yelp on Wednesday released its latest Economic Impact Report, revealing business closures across the U.S. are increasing as a result of the coronavirus pandemic’s economic toll. As of Aug, 31, 163,735 businesses have indicated on Yelp that they have closed. That’s down from the 180,000 that closed at the very beginning of the pandemic. However, it actually shows a 23% increase in the number of closures since mid-July. In addition to monitoring closed businesses, Yelp also takes into account the businesses whose closures have become permanent. That number has steadily increased throughout the past six months, now reaching 97,966, representing 60% of closed businesses that won’t be reopening.
“Overall, Yelp’s data shows that business closures have continued to rise with a 34% increase in permanent closures since our last report in mid-July,” Justin Norman, vice president of data science at Yelp, told CNBC. Yelp’s September report marks six months since March 1, the date that the company considers to be the beginning of the business crisis. In order to gather closure data, Yelp monitors changes in business hours or descriptions on its app, offering an immediate, localized view of the impact the pandemic has had on small businesses. “Despite the hard hit small businesses have certainly taken, we’ve seen that home, local, professional and automotive services have been able to withstand the effects of the pandemic better than other industries,” Norman noted.
The data supports the trend that most consumers are choosing to stay home over patronizing establishments physically, as home and professional services such as landscapers, contractors and lawyers, see a much lower closure rate than clothing stores and even home decor businesses. Auto and towing services also reported a relatively low closure rate. “Consumers still need these services,” Norman said. “Through the rise of virtual consultations, and contactless or socially distanced services, these businesses have been particularly resilient during this time.” Throughout the past six months, restaurants, bars and nightlife venues have been hit the hardest by the restrictions brought by the pandemic: 32,109 restaurants have closed, as of Aug. 31. The number of restaurants forced to permanently close is slightly above Yelp’s total average, at 61%.
New Zealand has spin doctors too: “Robertson said economic analysts were predicting the September quarter to show “a record jump back to growth in the economy..”
• New Zealand In Recession After Worst Quarterly GDP Fall On Record (G.)
New Zealand has entered a recession with the economy contracting 12.2% in the June quarter – the largest drop since such records began in 1987. Paul Pascoe at Stats NZ said the GDP fall was “by far the largest on record in New Zealand” and reflected months spent in lockdown. Industries such as retail, accommodation, restaurants and transport saw significant declines; as did construction and manufacturing at 25.8% and 13% respectively. Household domestic spending dropped by 12%. Annually, GDP fell by 2% – the first annual decline since the March 2010 quarter. New Zealand’s economic retraction is higher than Australia’s 7% and Canada at 11.5%, but much less than in India, Singapore and the UK.
The prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, placed New Zealand in a strict one-month lockdown on 26 March. No one was allowed to leave their home unless buying groceries, medicines, or taking an hour of exercise in their neighbourhood. At the time Ardern said the lockdown was necessary to control the spread of the virus and her priority was saving lives at any cost. Fewer than 2,000 people have become infected with the virus in New Zealand while 25 have died. The country’s efforts at containing the disease have been widely praised by epidemiologists around the world. The finance minister, Grant Robertson, said Thursday’s figures were “expected” and the result of the government’s “go hard, go early” response to the pandemic.
“This result was better than the treasury forecast of 16% and at the lower end of other commentators’ expectations,” Robertson said. “The June quarter includes almost the entire time New Zealand was in alert level 4 which we moved into on March 26 so this result is not surprising.” Robertson said economic analysts were predicting the September quarter to show “a record jump back to growth in the economy”.
“This must be corrected. “The damage to me will be irreparable if the media reports that I harmed people, when it is not true,” he said.”
• Julian Assange Interrupts Extradition Hearing Again (SMH)
Julian Assange has again interrupted his extradition hearing, claiming that he never put informants lives at risk, when he published hundreds of thousands of State Department documents on his WikiLeaks website. The 49-year-old intervened in his extradition hearing for the second time since it’s resumption at the Old Bailey in London last week, earning him another stern reprimand from the judge hearing his case. Assange cried out from the dock after lunchtime during evidence being given by former military analyst Daniel Ellsberg who leaked the classified Pentagon Papers that revealed the US government knew it would not win the Vietnam War based on existing resources.
Ellsberg was pursed under the Espionage Act as is Assange. All charges against him were eventually dropped and he has become a vocal supporter of Assange as well as Chelsea Manning, who leaked to Assange the hacked files. Ellsberg also supports Edward Snowden who leaked classified documents he had access to as a CIA subcontractor. The United States government has asked Britain to extradite Assange to face 18 counts of violating the Espionage Act with most charges relating to computer hacking. However, the US government is pursuing Assange over the publication of unredacted documents which exposed the names of informants. The distinction the US government is repeatedly trying to make separates Assange from the press which also published information revealed by WikiLeaks but without naming journalists, human rights advocates and dissidents who were informing on their governments and repressive regimes.
Ellsberg confirmed that when he leaked his cache of documents, he withheld four volumes of documents. But he said that the only withheld these because they related to negotiations which he did not want to jeopardise. Assange’s outburst came as the QC representing the US government, James Lewis, was cross-examining Ellsberg. Lewis cited an Ethiopian journalist who fled the country after being interrogated and threatened once he was outed as having been a source for the United States. Lewis also read out media reporting of a Chinese national named in the WikiLeaks cables reported being harrassed by non-state groups. The Chinese national fled to the United States.
Ellsberg claimed to have never seen evidence that an informant exposed by WikiLeaks was harmed or killed in retaliation. “I find the government highly cynical … am I right in believing not one of them who was subject to threats or interrogation by these brutal and ruthless regimes actually suffered physical harm? “Were any of the threats carried out? Even one? Isn’t the answer no?” Ellsberg said. “The rules are you don’t get to ask questions, I do,” said Lewis. Assange also rejected the claims that he put lives at risk. “Through his rhetorical sleight of hand he is suggesting that I put lives at risk,” Assange said from the dock. “This must be corrected. “The damage to me will be irreparable if the media reports that I harmed people, when it is not true,” he said. District Judge Vanessa Baraitser reprimanded Assange, for the second time in as many weeks. “I have warned you about this before, you are not entitled to interfere like this,” she said.
We all know this. Why does the US base its entire case now on this nonsense?
• Claims Assange ‘Endangered Lives’ Rubbished In Extradition Hearing (Haddad)
A senior investigative journalist who worked on the release of thousands of military and diplomatic cables with WikiLeaks has rubbished prosecution claims that Julian Assange and his organisation put the lives of U.S. service members and informants at risk. John Goetz, an investigations editor with the German public broadcaster NDR, had been a reporter with Der Spiegel at the time of the releases between 2010 and 2011. That included the Afghan and Iraq war diaries, in addition to the release of U.S. diplomatic cables that came to be known as Cablegate. James Lewis QC, on behalf of the U.S. government, told the Old Bailey last week that Assange is not being prosecuted for receiving the documents, but because he risked lives with “reckless publication”.
Goetz told the court on Wednesday (September 16) that Assange and WikiLeaks in fact had a “very rigorous redaction process” – on occasion more censorious than the Pentagon when the same documents were released by Freedom of Information Act requests. As the lead investigative journalist for Der Spiegel, Goetz was among a handful of journalists to be invited to the Guardian’s “bunker” in London where they, alongside WikiLeaks and New York Times staff, worked on removing sensitive names from documents. Goetz said that redaction and what Assange called the “harm-minimisation process” was central from the very beginning of his involvement in June 2010 and how Eric Schmitt of The New York Times was tasked with contacting the White House prior to publication due to the newspaper’s location and existing relationship.
As a result of that early communication, WikiLeaks and the partner publications withheld 15,000 documents from the Afghan War Logs “to protect innocents being harmed,” he said. “It was communicated to the White House that 15,000 documents would not be published because of the harm minimisation process and that is what happened.” While media partners worked on redacting specific documents, Assange was concerned with a technological solution that could aid the process due to the high volume of documents that were being evaluated, it was added. The same redaction process continued during the later publication of the Iraq War Diary and the U.S. State Department cables, Goetz said, but that communication with the State Department was later ceased when the department realised they were in fact helping journalists find the most damaging stories by requesting which files were to be redacted.
Goetz said: “There was a conference call with State Department officials such as PJ Crowley and others and they expressed in the phone call the numbers of the documents they were concerned about. “We were writing the document numbers down and it was easy to look at the documents where there were sensitive names to see if there was any significant names that had to be redacted. “We were very happy to receive these names and in many ways it was quite interesting to know which documents they were concerned about, but there was a pause in the conversation and then they – [the State Department] – stopped talking to us because it was clear that they were giving us an index of the most interesting stories.”
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