Lessons learned for Amnesty's statement. AI, which is HQ'd in UK had been bizarrely silent compared to rivals @HRW, etc Supporters made many complaints and moved to protest at regional offices e.g Australia. Bolder new Amnesty leadership @kuminaidoo appointed August 1.
Since March 31 Assange's legal team had made an explicit effort to encourage supporters to make 'human rights'' groups (specifically Amnesty) live up to their claimed principles (rather than their government funding). Many did, including #Unity4J.
A change in leadership can further open the window to a change in policy but the pressure must be there. Note that Amnesty's statement, while very welcome, was quietly slipped out on a Friday shortly after supporters moved to picket its offices.
Pressure for Amnesty to live up to its claimed principles should be maintained until it is placing such statements on its web site and its leadership is tweething them out, as @HRW are doing.
Human rights groups, as they claim to support the right to protest, freedom of speech have few political defences against being picketed when they break their espoused principles. Regional offices also create numerous points of engagement that may have fewer spin masters.
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Amazing series of libels in the Daily Mail and others (seemingly coming from bad journalism at AP and the Guardian, some the mail's own invention) . We go through them as a lesson in why people detest the press (thread) 1/ @Geordie_Greig@geordiegreig
Here is the article. First of note what is missing. That the UN has twice ruled that the UK is in violation of international law and must free and compensate Assange. Human Rights Watch, Amnesty, etc. also. 2/ justice4assange.comdailymail.co.uk/news/article-6….
That the CIA has vowed to "take down" WikiLeaks, that the US AG has confirmed that Assange's arrest is "a priority" and that the moves against WikiLeaks, even during Obama were admitted to be the largest ever against a publisher, of "unprecedented scale and nature" 3/
Here's NBC fake news reporter Ken Delanian pushing claimed Mueller innuendo about WikiLeaks. Delanian launched the fake news story about WikiLeaks and Donald Trump Jr. Previously disowned by LA Times after he was caught letting CIA approve his drafts
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The failure to discipline Delanian for proven cases of fake news after his previous outing as a CIA collaborator is effectively Operation Mocking Everyone, NBC. carlbernstein.com/magazine_cia_a…
Buried in the Mueller astro-turfing indictment is something that we have long suspected. The Internet Research Agency's "troll farm" is geared to develop audience in socially active communities (e.g through aligned memes), in order to spam them on behalf of anyone willing to pay:
Before advertising networks can advertise they must build audience. How much of IRA's activities were simply trying to build audience by gaining followers using tweets and memes likely to be shared in those communities?
IRA allegedly also ran kitten appreciation groups. Are we also to believe that these kittens were also a plot to divide America? To not distinguish between audience building and customer advertising payload is sketchy.
In relation to the Intercept's article today (see thread):
- the editorial propriety of letting Micah F Lee, of all people, instrumentalize the Intercept to further his obsessive, obscenity laden campaign against WikiLeaks must be questioned. Lee was formally behind cutting off WikiLeaks' US tax deductible donations.
- after I wrote to the FPF board last year on that serious subject, Lee has become hysterical. The conflict of interest is obvious. Such a story should have been given to someone else. By failing to do so the story's credibility has been marred.