{"id":224895,"date":"2022-12-05T12:00:55","date_gmt":"2022-12-05T12:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=224895"},"modified":"2022-12-05T13:10:33","modified_gmt":"2022-12-05T13:10:33","slug":"the-guardian-could-help-assange-by-retracting-all-the-lies-it-published-about-him","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2022\/12\/the-guardian-could-help-assange-by-retracting-all-the-lies-it-published-about-him\/","title":{"rendered":"The Guardian Could Help Assange by Retracting All the Lies It Published about Him"},"content":{"rendered":"

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30 Nov 2022 – <\/em>The Guardian<\/em> has joined<\/a> The New York Times,\u00a0Le Monde, Der Spiegel <\/em>and El Pa\u00eds<\/em> in signing a letter from the five papers<\/a> which collaborated with WikiLeaks<\/em> twelve years ago in the publication of the Chelsea Manning leaks to call for the Biden administration to drop all charges against Julian Assange. This sudden jolt of mainstream support comes as news breaks<\/a> that Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has been personally pushing the US government to bring the Assange case to a close.<\/p>\n

The Guardian<\/em>\u2019s participation in this letter is particularly noteworthy, given the leading role that publication has played in manufacturing public support for his persecution in the first place. If The Guardian<\/em> really wants to help end the persecution of the heroic WikiLeaks<\/em> founder, the best way to do that would be to retract those many smears, spin jobs and outright lies, and to formally apologize for publishing them.<\/p>\n

This is after all the same\u00a0Guardian\u00a0which published the\u00a0transparently ridiculous<\/a> and completely invalidated<\/a>\u00a02018 report that Trump lackey Paul Manafort had met secretly with Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy, not once but multiple times. Not one shred of evidence has ever been produced to substantiate this claim despite the embassy being one of the most heavily surveilled buildings on the planet at the time, and the Robert Mueller investigation, whose expansive scope would obviously have included such meetings, reported absolutely nothing to corroborate it. It was a bogus story which all accused\u00a0parties<\/a>\u00a0have\u00a0forcefully denied<\/a>\u00a0and no serious person believes is true, yet to this day it still sits on The Guardian\u2019s website<\/a> without retraction of any kind.<\/p>\n

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If @guardian<\/a> truly wants the charges dropped against Julian Assange, a good way to facilitate that would be to retract and apologize for all the many smears and outright lies they've published about him to help manufacture consent for those charges.https:\/\/t.co\/kUE6vlmbLl<\/a><\/p>\n

— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) November 29, 2022<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n