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Of Hacktivism, Hackers and Leakers: Resetting the Bar of Real World Journalism.

by Brett Redmayne-Titley

whistleblowers
In a world of slanted journalism that pervades not only main stream media offerings but also the majority of “progressive” and “alternative” media, it is the hackers and leakers of vital information that are now providing a new and desperately needed return to real journalism. Recent examples of courage and risk in pursuit of full disclosure which counters media distortions of fact, must be followed. Hackers and leakers are- as shown this month- providing the public service mandate once enveloped within the vaunted parchment of the First Amendment- an obligation far too long forgotten.
America is the origin of media lies and a willfully ignorant public that believes them. Strangely, most US citizens wallow only in the proffered world of gray journalism- one that wraps the truth and the mind of the reader, instead, in the flag of nationalist colors. Thus stubbornly adhering only to their predisposed personal opinion, one belies demonstrative evidence to the contrary, this malady is shown, at least, in the irrational national adulation for two very flawed current presidential candidates. This opinion ignores an obviously controlled media that is promoting one candidate (using lies) while viciously attacking the other (using lies). This past month, repeatedly hackers and leakers across the globe have smashed America’s mindless and too regularly used false talisman: America is “exceptional” and therefore US democracy is functioning normally. Really?
The remaining free world should be holding up many hackers as strong examples of moral, social and geopolitical outrage, as once they did the forgotten journalists of a similar dedication. In a modern world dominated by a media establishment that universally propagates a false set of mistruths to their fawning audience, Americans happily exist in this realm of deliberately obfuscated gray. The willfully ignorant wrap themselves in this insular, flag-draped shelter of their singular and fraudulently produced opinion, hence it takes a cold, hard slap across the face, in repetition, before Americans suddenly emerge from the hard chrysalis of media control. This journalistic malignancy grows by the lies it tells or, more often, the truth deliberately edited out. In an apathetic and disaffected society, rarely does an American step outside their field of gray and investigate, via the very few but easily found news services that regularly fill-in this gap, the complete story. Today’s hackers and leakers aspire to the correct news reporting tenants; those of Mencken, Murrow, Cronkite, Halberstam, Greene, Thompson, Thomas…
This last month, thanks to a plethora of hacks and leaks, has been an epiphany for many Americans and a vindication for good journalists too easily minimized regardless of their careful presentation of fact. Like the bloody photographic reality of an Israeli murdered Palestinian child or video horror of dismembered US Afghan drone victims, this month’s hacks and leaks have torn to shreds volumes of previously authored gray media scat.
A partial review of this month’s myth busting by Hactivists is thus in order
George Soros made the list several times, solidifying his now-proven position as the worldwide public enemy #1. New leaks confirmed what good journalists have repeated for more than two years: that Soros was directly tied to the Ukrainian/ Maidan Square coup. Leaked documents prove the immense power and control Soros had over Ukraine’s government immediately following the illegal Maidan government overthrow. Soros’ pre-Maidan involvement is thus no longer deniable.
But Soros is not content with ruining only one foreign democracy. This new world order Zionist has also been using his billions to restrict internet access to information for those who do not meet his ongoing definition. Thanks to Obama’s allegiance to Soros, on Oct 1, 2016 internet control will pass from the federal US National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) to the private Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers [ICANN], whose true upcoming allegiance would seem equally as obvious. Can America become any more ignorant? If Soros has his way, the answer will be, “Yes!”
Thanks to the 2,500 documents recently released by DC Leaks, we now know that George Soros is funding the legal fees as part of his stated goal to “enlarge” the U.S. electorate by at least 10 million voters” by election 2018. The Open Society Justice Initiative (OSJI) is part of the agenda of Soros’ Open Society Foundations, his secretive network of political organizations.
It was also revealed that Soros and his Open Society Foundations continue to purchase American democracy for themselves by actively funding the election campaigns of state and federal judges. A new definition of Soros-brand “justice” is currently being unleashed on an already corrupt US judicial system.
Considering this month’s collective indictment of Soros, his plans now laid bare, it would seem high time for the anger and hatred, currently multi-directed and misguided across the nation, to be properly re-focused. Should Soros finally meet justice at the hands of a properly enlightened and thus outraged public, it will be due to a very small subset of the world’s reporters of news.
Hillary Clinton. Bill Clinton. The Clinton Foundation. Lighting these gray shadows came the leaked documentary evidence that shows her presidential campaign to be the fraudulent side-show distraction that many good journalists have analyzed it be. Reams of information was leaked this month and thanks to those who chose a higher authority than MSM, further criminality on the part of the democratic candidate is now absolutely clear. According to leading establishment nemesis, Julian Assange, recent releases are merely “teasers” with a treasure trove worthy of an FBI-or journalistic- indictment to be released in batches, “soon”. Considering the mounting pile of criminal allegations against DNC candidate Clinton, and her blatant lies in attempting to explain away same, it remains to be seen, soon, how much trust the voters will still have for her… on Nov.8.
We now know that US President Obama has been just as impotent with his foreign policy demands as with his eight year milquetoast methods used on the US population. In a previous article it was suggested that Obama lacked any traditional Political Capital, hence resorting to mere bribery. With regard to Iran, leaks show this to be true, as are the allegations that he sent $400 million in hard cold cash as “ransom” for several hostages. Such is Obama’s presidential power.
But the best came last, as “The Shadow Brokers” hacked and released legitimate hacking tools from the NSA’s own special-ops entity, the “Equation Group.” While it is debatable whether this was a hack or a leak by a new NSA whistleblower, regardless, when the NSA’s own elite top-of-the-line IT op is itself breached, that is one very stiff middle finger at Uncle Sam’s cyber arrogance. It is also an implicit promise of very good things to come.
Those who hack and those who leak documentary evidence of the world’s evil conspirators are helping rid the world of the endemic danger of invalid, mindless opinions. These backstage players must be now acknowledged for what they are: Journalists. Damn good reporters of vital news. In the current war against media lies and their fraudulent, manipulating effect on opinion, like the front-line, hard-nosed news men of old, the work of these anonymous cyber-heroes shows a dedication to the full truth in a world of half-truths of gray; a dedication to a higher moral standard in the face of an amoral world; and a dedication to both these two mandates despite little reward and serious risk to personal and family freedoms. Yes…journalists!
Before this month’s revelations, a higher moral ground was clearly defined by the hackers who leaked the names of millions of members of the Ashley Madison web-site. In July 2015, a group calling itself “The Impact Team” stole the user data of Ashley Madison, a commercial website billed as enabling extramarital affairs. The group copied personal information about the site’s user base and threatened to release users’ names and personal identifying information if Ashley Madison was not immediately shut down. When Ashley Madison called their bluff, on 18 and 20 August, the group leaked more than 25 gigabytes of company data, including the user details. These once anonymous web-site members were as guilty as Clinton or Soros, but this time of the charge of adultery. Ashley Madison members were also cheaters; cheaters on their husbands and wives. These members also lived-for a time- in the realm of the gray… hiding their sins from their spouses and therefore from themselves. Thanks to The Impact Team…their crimes, too, were brought to light. Did not the remaining moral world salute those who chose the reestablish a higher bar for the promise of fidelity?
Was this not also a great news story?
On today’s battlefield that is the fight against MSM created ignorance, these new cyber-war correspondents are also often wounded, killed or taken prisoner. This month Guccifer, Marcel Lazar Lehel, a forty-four year old former taxi driver and paint salesman who was arrested in Romania and extradited to the US in 2014, was sent to prison for providing the public with too much inconvenient truth. Guccifer is the man who leaked, among others, the documents proving Hillary Clinton’s national security crimes. [link] Given fifty-four months in prison, Marcel Lazar Lehel rightly joined other world journalist heroes- such as Assange , Chelsea Manning, Snowden, Mordechai Vanunu, W. Mark Felt , Daniel Ellsberg- who put the bar of truth above concerns for personal freedom.
Prison, however, is the least of concerns.
At 4:25 AM on June 18, 2013, journalist Michael Hastings, who had revealed US General, David Petraeus, as having provided top-secret military intelligence to his news reporter and personal biographer mistress, Paula Broadwell, never got to tell the whole story. Reportedly the key info. had been previously leaked to him by Jill Kelly who he was scheduled to meet with the next day. According to eye witnesses and CCTV footage first, Hasting’s Mercedes C250 ES accelerated to a speed of over 135 MPH on a quiet Hancock Park/ Los Angeles street, then the car exploded in flames as the car’s engine was ejected through the hood, the car’s body then separating from the chassis. This all happened before Hastings’ and his Mercedes ran full speed- no brake marks-into a very large palm tree. Two days after the crash, the Los Angeles Police Department declared that there were no signs of foul play. Really?
On April 23, 2015, Petraeus pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of mishandling classified materials. He was given a two-year probationary period and a fine of $100,000.
Re-enforcing this terminal risk that stalks the nether regions of the gray for all truth-tellers, last month a person unknown tried to scale the outside walls of the Ecuadorian embassy. Credence to an assassination attempt on Assange was given substantial credibility when it was revealed that the local police station, mere blocks away, failed to heed emergency embassy calls regarding this breach of Ecuadorian sovereign property. The cops showed up two hours later.
Today’s hackers and leakers share two other realizations peculiar to the life of a dedicated journalist. Similarly, they make almost no remuneration for their efforts, merely hopefully serving-up their hard work to editors. If accepted for publication, rarely is this due primarily to the quest for full disclosure of a story, but instead for the success of their publications and readership revenues.
Allegiance is not first to the truth, but to money. A recent example of this is the advent of “The Intercept,” Glenn Greenwald’s mast-head that exists on leaks and information from underground sources. Privileged to receive one of the very few complete copies of the 2013 Snowden revelations, Greenwald made these the long-winded opening salvo of news articles that supposedly legitimized the Intercept, as well as attracting a large new readership. While it is unknown if Greenwald has shared this windfall with its originator, Snowden, for Greenwald however there has been a book, book tour and a trip to the Oscars.
But if monetary gain was the goal of the real journalist all would be faced with the sad choice of fading away… or selling-out. Many have. When personal dedication prevails however, they, as with Hactivists heroes like Snowden, face this much more controlling obstacle to getting their work to the public. Here, the cyber-journalist has come full circle to the same harsh realization of his contemporary peers: that all information is subject exclusively to an editors willingness to publish it. Whether it be the properly maligned Main Stream Media (MSM) or the too often mislabeled Alternative Media, editors are the true Gate Keepers of all internet information.
Consider the unfortunate punch-line to Edward Snowden placing his faith- and the biggest NSA document dump in history- in the hands of, seemingly, just four editors; Greenwald [pre-The Intercept] , Alan Rusbridger [The Guardian], Wolfgang Buchner [Der Spiegel] and Frederick J. Ryan, Jr. [Washington Post].
One of the first revelations from the Snowden leaks was that the NSA was intercepting and storing for evaluation all- repeat all- phone calls and meta data from five US allied countries under a program called “MYSTIC.” Reveling in the attention of an upcoming book tour, Greenwald, on behalf of the Intercept, released the names of only four of the five nations. Pressed on the issue of full disclosure, Greenwald refused to budge. As this story gained traction worldwide, neither the Guardian nor Der Spiegel and the other two trustees of the documents honored their own mandate for the full truth of this story. Fortunately, and reportedly unbeknownst to all four editors, there was a fifth copy- an insurance policy as it turned out- and this copy was in the hands of the only man with the power and dedication to real journalism- and the sacrifices of real journalists- able to hold these four media gate keepers accountable for having, in reality, joined MSM. After a week of their excuses, without fanfare Julian Assange and Wiki Leaks suddenly revealed that they would not in turn prostitute themselves, by providing one simple, all powerful answer to the world: Afghanistan.
When a media source deliberately fails to reveal key facts to its readers it is effectively guilty of journalistic treason. It can no longer be completely trusted. These whore’s of the 4th Estate fight daily a war against the will, the power, the intuition of the free mind. This incredible evil seeks to blanket the collective rational mind of the world in the ever tightening wrappings of the gray shroud of ignorance. Judging from the state of the world, evil is winning. Yet, against this flood of disinformation the journalist fights back. The ebb tide is turning. Hackers and leakers, like all journalists, have chosen to fight back, for in some… there is a deep place that ever smolders, igniting to fire on those long sleepless nights when the mind churns, a passion burns and one’s conscience screams in unison. Flames that can only be calmed… by action!
So, hackers…beware. You have joined a fight so few grasp in earnest, even fewer follow with sincerity and almost none attack unfailingly with a passion, a vengeance, a conviction. A fight that will not surrender to a standard so clearly beneath us.
Welcome, Brothers! The gauntlet is now at your feet.
It is time!

Brett Redmayne-Titley has been reporting on-scene for a decade in an effort to provide better quality reporting from current events of geo-political, environmental and moral importance. Having visited over fifty countries he is a world citizen and life-long activist and political commentator. He has published over one hundred in-depth articles, many of them multi-part exposes, which have been re-published and translated internationally. He can be reached at: [email protected]

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eileenflemingbooks
eileenflemingbooks
Sep 15, 2016 1:47 PM

Mordechai Vanunu, Israel’s nuclear whistle blower was released from 18 yrs. behind bars in 2004, to open air-captivity and an ongoing struggle to end the ludicrous restrictions that deny his right to leave the state.
I was always a writer but I became a reporter because Vanunu told me:
“The French were responsible for the actual building of the Dimona. The Germans gave the money; they were feeling guilty for the Holocaust, and tried to pay their way out. Everything inside was written in French, when I was there, almost twenty years ago. Back then, the Dimona descended seven floors underground.
“In 1955, Perez and Guirion met with the French to agree they would get a nuclear reactor if they fought against Egypt to control the Sinai and Suez Canal. That was the war of 1956. Eisenhower demanded that Israel leave the Sinai, but the reactor plant deal continued on.
“Did you know that President Kennedy tried to stop Israel from building atomic weapons? In 1963, he forced Prime Minister Ben Guirion to admit the Dimona was not a textile plant, as the sign outside proclaimed, but a nuclear plant. The Prime Minister said, ‘The nuclear reactor is only for peace.’
“Kennedy insisted on an open internal inspection. He wrote letters demanding that Ben Guirion open up the Dimona for inspection.
“When Johnson became president, he made an agreement with Israel that two senators would come every year to inspect. Before the senators would visit, the Israelis would build a wall to block the underground elevators and stairways. From 1963 to ’69, the senators came, but they never knew about the wall that hid the rest of the Dimona from them.
“Nixon stopped the inspections and agreed to ignore the situation. As a result, Israel increased production. In 1986, there were over two hundred bombs. Today, they may have enough plutonium for ten bombs a year.”- excerpted from “Beyond Nuclear: Mordechai Vanunu’s FREEDOM of SPEECH Trial and My Life as a Muckraker”
https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B00IZA7460

eileenflemingbooks
eileenflemingbooks
Sep 15, 2016 1:40 PM

The events of September 11, 2001 coupled with The Media’s FAILURE to ask my questions led to my 8 investigative trips to both sides of Israel’s Wall and to 10 years of interviews with Israel’s nuclear whistle blower, Mordechai Vanunu.
In this excerpt from the UNCENSORED “30 Minutes with Vanunu” he notes the USA Media “is under occupation” and sends “Hillary Clinton and all the Christians” an invitation to “come and see the real wailing wall- the apartheid wall”:

louisproyect
louisproyect
Sep 15, 2016 12:54 AM

http://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Politics-And-Diplomacy/Hacked-Soros-e-mails-reveal-plans-to-fight-Israels-racist-policies-464149
The Open Society Foundations, led by George Soros, has as an objective “challenging Israel’s racist and anti-democratic policies” in international forums, in part by questioning Israel’s reputation as a democracy.
The documents are available on a website, reportedly backed by Russia, that uses anti-Semitic stereotypes to attack Soros.
They reveal that Open Society, which was founded and is chaired by the hedge fund billionaire and philanthropist, gave close to $10 million since 2001 to groups advancing the rights of Arab Israelis, with an emphasis in recent years on countering what one document says are Israel’s “restrictive measures” against minorities.
“In recent years the radicalization of public opinion and consecutive Israeli right wing governments have resulted in more restrictive measures against Palestinians within Israel,” a Sept. 1, 2015 review of Open Society’s Arab Regional Office’s work said.
It cites as an example the Jewish Nation State bill, advanced by its sponsors to entrench Israel’s Jewish status, but decried by some Arab Israelis as further marginalizing non-Jewish minorities. The bill has yet to pass.
Among achievements listed in the Sept. 1 document, the Arab Regional Office includes increased advocacy by “Palestinian citizens of Israel,” or PCI, in international forums, challenging Israel’s “racist” policies in the face of its reputation as a democracy.
The document advocates the “development of a more organized and efficient PCI advocacy and presence in international forums (UN, EU, US) especially in light of the increasingly limited domestic avenues available for seeking justice.”
“In shifting to international advocacy, PCI’s [sic] are up against Israel and its image as a democratic state before the international community, therefore Palestinian civil society organizations in Israel feel the pressure of filling this gap by strengthening their relations with international actors and systems such as the European Union and United Nations to put their issue on the international agenda,” it says.
“There have been a number of successes in challenging Israel’s racist and anti-democratic policies in the international arena and influencing EU-Israel bilateral negotiations,” the document says.
The emails were posted in recent weeks by DC Leaks, a group Bloomberg News, in an Aug. 11 report, quoted security experts as saying is likely backed by Russia’s intelligence agencies.

Norman Pilon
Norman Pilon
Sep 15, 2016 1:20 AM
Reply to  louisproyect

So Soros is all about making Israel more democratic or egalitarian from a ‘racial’ standpoint?

Jen
Jen
Sep 16, 2016 1:18 PM
Reply to  louisproyect

We’d have to be very suspicious of Louis Proyect’s source for this news: the Jerusalem Post is not known to be a, er, “progressive” newspaper in the sense that Ha’aretz is usually considered. The Jerusalem Post would probably rate about the same as The Daily Mail or the London Daily Telegraph on the political spectrum, that is, right of centre.
We’d also have to be suspicious as to why Open Society funds Arab Israeli groups. One suspects that this funding is done so as to gain influence over what these groups can say and advocate for on behalf of Arab Israeli people or of Palestinians. Similar could be said for Open Society’s favouring of civil rights groups in Israel run by Israeli people themselves: is the funding for these groups linked to an agenda aimed at weakening them?
Louis, I’m sorry you went to a lot of trouble to troll us again, only to fail.
Better luck next time! 🙂

joekano76
joekano76
Sep 15, 2016 12:37 AM

Reblogged this on TheFlippinTruth.

muffet13
muffet13
Sep 14, 2016 4:11 PM

It’s a very sad commentary on the American people who will continue to swallow the propagandized-version of the news. We seem to always be the last to wake up! Where would many be now, if it hadn’t been for the whistleblowers and hackers??? The MSM { corporatized-media}, would completely control the content where people would be making serious decisions about their lives and the lives of their children.

rtj1211
rtj1211
Sep 14, 2016 4:10 PM

I’m really, really sorry: there is NOTHING moral about releasing the names of thousands of strangers who are looking for extramarital sex.
How do you know what their situation is? What if their partner refused to have sex any more? Had simply lost interest in it? Had found out during life that in fact they were gay?
Are you saying it is MORAL for you to tell those unfortunate people that they must live sexless lives for no good reason, when discrete means of satisfying their sexual drives without harming anyone is blown into public life?
I consider that an absolute invasion of privacy and absolutely nothing to do with journalism. More to the point, if any of those hackers have extramarital sex, even before marriage,I expect them to pay a price far higher than any would be willing to pay…………
If you have done detailed analysis of the private lives of individuals and can prove, conclusively, that they are self-serving, shameless, unempathic philanderers of the worst kind, by all means consider telling their partners. If you can find them. It’s the business of their partner that they are having extramarital sex.
It’s not my business, your business or anyone else’s business. It is the responsibility of their partner to deal with such a situation privately, however they wish to do so. It is not a reason for salivating voyeurs in the media to be involved in any way whatsoever……..

Willem
Willem
Sep 14, 2016 9:10 PM
Reply to  rtj1211

I agree completely. Maybe good to stress a bit more on the difference between the Ashley Madison leak and, for instance, the DC leaks. The former concerns private business that is none of someone else’s business. The latter involves official business, which is all of our business. The essay on enlightenment from Kant is in this aspect interesting. The way I understand Kant’s essay (disclosure: the essay is ambigous..) is that one has total freedom to do and think what he or she wants to in private, but when one is an official, one is bound to some rules while doing his or her job. And one should be held accountable to those rules by people (all people, not only journalists). People who speak for the officials, or on behalf of the officials, like most MSM journalists do, aren’t journalists. They are more like the mouthpieces of the officials or PR managers than anything else.
To be complete: Kants essay on enlightenment, http://www.columbia.edu/acis/ets/CCREAD/etscc/kant.html

headrush69
headrush69
Sep 15, 2016 9:08 AM
Reply to  rtj1211

Ah, so one subgroup of liars and cheats are reprehensible but another group are not.
There is 100% crossover between the two groups as all owners, employees and members of the MSM are human.
Would you consider a financial accountant who steals from their family suitable to manage your finances?
If not, how can you support the lying to partners of people who have made a deep commitment?
Privacy is a weak argument when these characters chose to register with the web site. What about the losses suffered by the partners? Cheating with impunity is to be welcomed now?
The article used the word “moral”. Perhaps this demonstrated lack of morals is indicative of all modern societies ills. And this is not a religious rant BTW, as religion simply codifies existing moral standards.
Hypocrisy abounds.

Jen
Jen
Sep 16, 2016 1:21 PM
Reply to  rtj1211

Well at least it was fun to discover that US Vice-President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden was an avid client of Ashley Madison and that he often shaved 10 years off his age to chat up young women on that database.

muffet13
muffet13
Sep 14, 2016 4:05 PM

I agree with this, completely!