{"id":11961,"date":"2021-01-23T05:28:43","date_gmt":"2021-01-23T05:28:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiofree.org\/?p=153787"},"modified":"2021-01-23T05:28:43","modified_gmt":"2021-01-23T05:28:43","slug":"a-ghastly-future-israeli-apartheid-biden-starmer-assange-and-mass-extinction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/01\/23\/a-ghastly-future-israeli-apartheid-biden-starmer-assange-and-mass-extinction\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cA Ghastly Future\u201d? Israeli Apartheid, Biden, Starmer, Assange And Mass Extinction"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

Back in 2017, before WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange was silenced<\/a> by Twitter, he used the platform to highlight<\/a> an immutable truth:<\/p>\n

\n

\u2018The overwhelming majority of information is classified to protect political security not national security.\u2019<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Power hates being exposed. It hates having its inner machinations, its selfish priorities and ugly operations opened up to public scrutiny.<\/p>\n

The omission of inconvenient facts, and the silencing of inadmissible viewpoints, are core features of the so-called \u2018mainstream\u2019 news media. Thus, it should be obvious by now why we always put \u2018mainstream\u2019 in quotation marks. Because, as increasing numbers of the public surely now recognise, the major news media are not<\/em> impartial, or fair, or balanced. Nor do they truly represent and reflect the concerns and priorities of the vast majority of the population. Instead, the major newspapers and broadcasters represent, defend and project the interests of powerful state and corporate elites. The state-corporate media will not, and cannot<\/em>, undertake consistent and reliable public scrutiny of these elites. That would make no sense since the mass media is the propaganda operation of state-corporate power.<\/p>\n

Since we began Media Lens twenty years ago in 2001, we have amassed over 5,000 pages of media alerts detailing numerous examples of dangerous, power-friendly omissions, distortions and imbalances in UK state-corporate media. Rather than go for easy and obvious targets like the Sun, Express and Mail, we have focused on those media outlets the public is supposed to regard as the most fair, balanced, probing and challenging of governments and Big Business. \u2018Thus far and no further\u2019, as Noam Chomsky has described<\/a> the most open or most liberal end of the narrow spectrum of establishment media.<\/p>\n

BBC News deserves particular scrutiny, not least because it regularly declares<\/a> itself  \u2018the world\u2019s most trusted international news broadcaster\u2019. That is not much of an accolade given that public trust in the media is crumbling; particularly in a country which has some of the worst \u2018news\u2019 media anywhere on the planet. The UK has an overwhelmingly right-wing and establishment press dominated<\/a> by rich owners, and edited by compliant editors with the required ideologically-aligned views. As for the Guardian<\/em>, which has always been a \u2018liberal\u2019 gatekeeper<\/a> on behalf of power, investigative journalists Matt Kennard and Mark Curtis reported in 2019 that the paper has been:<\/p>\n

\n

\u2018successfully targeted by security agencies to neutralise its adversarial reporting of the \u201csecurity state\u201d, according to newly released documents and evidence from former and current Guardian<\/em> journalists.\u2019<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Moreover, other than a recent belated and mealy-mouthed defence<\/a>, for many years the Guardian<\/em> essentially abandoned and abused<\/a> Julian Assange, along with the rest of the \u2018mainstream\u2019 media, after exploiting<\/a> him and WikiLeaks.<\/p>\n

Couple all that with the fact that BBC News regularly follows the skewed, power-serving agenda set by UK press coverage, and it is no surprise that overall British public trust in the media is so low. As we noted<\/a> last year, the extensive annual Eurobarometer<\/a> survey across 33 countries revealed that the UK public\u2019s trust in the press is rock bottom. Indeed, 2020 was the ninth year out of the past ten that the UK had come last.<\/p>\n

BBC Silence Over Israel As An Apartheid State<\/strong><\/p>\n

One of the most egregious recent omissions by BBC News was last week\u2019s groundbreaking report<\/a> by leading Israeli human rights group B\u2019Tselem naming Israel as \u2018an apartheid state\u2019 and \u2018a regime of Jewish supremacy\u2019:<\/p>\n

\n

\u2018In the entire area between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, the Israeli regime implements laws, practices and state violence designed to cement the supremacy of one group \u2013 Jews \u2013 over another \u2013 Palestinians.\u2019<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Apartheid in the Palestinian Territories has long been recognised. For example, in 2004, a prominent South African professor of international law, John Dugard, then UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, wrote<\/a> that there is \u2018an apartheid regime\u2019 in the territories \u2018worse than the one that existed in South Africa.\u2019<\/p>\n

Noam Chomsky concurred<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

\u2018In the Occupied Territories, what Israel is doing is much worse than apartheid. To call it apartheid is a gift to Israel, at least if by \u201capartheid\u201d you mean South African-style apartheid.<\/p>\n

\u2018What is happening in the Occupied Territories is much worse. There is a crucial difference. The South African Nationalists needed the black population. That was their workforce\u2026<\/p>\n

\u2018The Israeli relationship to the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories is totally different. They just do not want them. They want them out, or at least in prison.\u2019<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

All this was damning enough. But the publication of the new B\u2019Tselem report was the first time that Israeli human rights and legal experts had publicly stated that apartheid exists not just in the Occupied Territories, but throughout the whole region that Israel claims for itself.<\/p>\n

As the Israel-based British journalist Jonathan Cook observed:<\/p>\n

\n

\u2018By calling Israel an apartheid state and a \u201cregime of Jewish supremacy\u201d, B\u2019Tselem has given the lie to the Israel lobby\u2019s claim \u2013 bolstered<\/a> by a new definition promoted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance \u2013 that it is antisemitic to suggest Israel is a \u201cracist endeavour\u201d.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

\u2018B\u2019Tselem, a veteran Israeli Jewish organisation with deep expertise in human rights and international law, has now explicitly declared that Israel is a racist state. Israel\u2019s apologists will now face the much harder task of showing that B\u2019Tselem is antisemitic, along with the Palestinian solidarity activists who cite its work.\u2019<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

As far as we are aware, there was no mention of the report on any of the flagship BBC News at 6 or 10 television programmes. Nor was there anything to be found on the BBC News website. Presumably, the BBC deemed it unworthy of the public\u2019s attention. We challenged<\/a> BBC foreign editor Andrew Roy, BBC world affairs editor John Simpson, BBC chief international correspondent Lyse Doucet and BBC digital news editor Stuart Millar for a response. Not one of them replied. It is perhaps significant that Millar moved to the BBC from the Guardian<\/em> where, as deputy editor of Guardian US, he had scoffed<\/a> at Julian Assange:<\/p>\n

\n

\u2018I like to think that #Assange<\/a> chose the Ecuadorean embassy because it\u2019s so convenient for Harrods\u2019<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This is the archetypal sneering \u2018mainstream\u2019 journalist\u2019s view of anyone who seriously exposes the truth and challenges power.<\/p>\n

As for B\u2019Tselem\u2019s landmark report detailing the reality of the Israeli state as an apartheid regime, it is possible that there were sporadic brief mentions in some outlying parts of the BBC. Longtime readers will recall that the BBC infamously buried revelations by Scott Ritter<\/a>, a former chief UN weapons inspector, that Iraq had been fundamentally disarmed of any weapons of mass destruction, at 3am on the BBC World Service.<\/p>\n

In response to the B\u2019Tselem report, John Pilger pointed out<\/a> via Twitter:<\/p>\n

\n

\u2018Israel is top of the league for vaccinating its own people [against coronavirus]. The accolades say Israel is the \u201cexample\u201d. False. Israel is denying the vaccine to Palestinians whose land and lives it controls. WHO has pleaded with Israel: to no avail. Apartheid in action.\u2019<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Glossing Over Brutal Imperialism<\/strong><\/p>\n

Here in the UK, the Tory government\u2019s criminally incompetent response to the coronavirus pandemic has led to an appalling death toll \u2013 now the highest death rate<\/a> of any country in the world \u2013 while ministers robotically repeat the mantra of \u2018following the science\u2019<\/a>, with one U-turn<\/a> after another<\/a>. Meanwhile, many people are suffering tremendous hardship, losing their jobs<\/a> or struggling to earn a living, or even unable to feed their children adequately<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As Phil Miller, a staff writer for the excellent investigative journalism website Declassified UK<\/a>, noted<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

\u2018The UK now has over 100,000 covid deaths. That\u2019s a result of government failure on a grand scale. The lack of calls for Johnson and ministers to resign is extraordinary\u2019<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

It is<\/em> extraordinary. But, tragically, it is a natural consequence of how the state-corporate media represents and defends elite power, of which it is a key component. Any real dissent is smeared, swept to the margins or simply blanked. With the power of corporate media manifest in the demolition of Jeremy Corbyn\u2019s prospects of becoming Prime Minister in 2019, it is entirely predictable that there is now no substantive political opposition to a destructive, elite-serving Tory government.<\/p>\n

Sir Keir Starmer, Labour\u2019s lame Blairite successor, is a stalwart establishment figure who, at best, would only ever paper over a few cracks in the edifice of neoliberal economics. This is the corporate- and finance-driven system that is crushing the vast majority of the world\u2019s population, destroying the natural environment and species at an alarming rate, and driving us all towards the precipice of climate breakdown. As we have noted before<\/a>, and as we will see again below, no world leader anywhere is doing anything remotely sufficient to address this disaster.<\/p>\n

Starmer has actually called<\/a> for the Labour party to emulate incoming US President Joe Biden\u2019s \u2018broad coalition\u2019 to \u2018see progressive values triumph over the forces of division and despair\u2019. The stone-cold reality that Biden, set to be inaugurated today (20 January), represents huge financial interests and corporate power, and has an appalling record<\/a> in supporting US imperialism and wars, appears to have escaped Starmer\u2019s attention. But then, Starmer is also seemingly oblivious to the UK\u2019s own imperial past and blood-soaked complicity in war crimes. How else could a Labour leader write:<\/p>\n

\n

\u2018We are at our best when the world knows we have the courage of our convictions and a clear moral purpose.\u2019<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Wiping away the blood of countless US\/UK atrocities across the globe, he continued:<\/p>\n

\n

\u2018For the United States of America and for Britain, this is the time to return to the world stage. This is the time for us to lead.\u2019<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

To gloss over Britain\u2019s brutal past<\/a> and present<\/a> \u2013 to ignore the grievous crimes committed against Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, to name a few \u2013 is an insult to the UK\u2019s many victims. For a supposed \u2018progressive\u2019 to do so is surely absurd. It can only result from being blind to the propaganda system<\/a> so cogently explained by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky in \u2018Manufacturing Consent\u2019<\/a> (Vintage, 1988). In this system, we are immersed in a brainwashing<\/a> environment of mass media in which even the more \u2018reputable\u2019 news outlets such as Associated Press regurgitate<\/a> doctrinal statements such as:<\/p>\n

\n

\u2018For decades, the U.S. has been an advocate for democracy abroad, using diplomatic pressure and even direct military intervention in the name of spreading the principles of a pluralistic system with a free and fair vote for political leaders. These tactics have generated both allies and enemies, and this year\u2019s presidential vote perhaps more than any other is testing the strength of the values it promotes around the world.\u2019<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

A safe pair of hands like Sir Keir would never recognise, far less, criticise such assertions for the dangerous, ideological and ahistorical nonsense that they are. Instead, Starmer is locked into an elite-friendly mindset apparent whenever he proclaims his establishment credentials, as here via Twitter<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

\u2018This is also an important moment for the world. It is a chance to reassert America\u2019s place as a force for good on the world stage. A nation that will work with Britain and other allies to defeat this pandemic and fight climate change.\u2019<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The reply<\/a> from Media Lens reader Ryan Moon was apt:<\/p>\n

\n

\u2018When, specifically, has the US (& UK) been a \u201cforce for good in the world\u201d? Supporting Suharto & Pinochet maybe? In Yemen & Libya? In the Chagos Islands? Nicaragua might have a few choice words about that description, too. Grow a spine.\u2019<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Biologist and science writer Richard Dawkins, like so many other prominent members of the liberal commentariat, once again revealed<\/a> his deep ignorance of history and world affairs:<\/p>\n

\n

\u2018With few exceptions like Putin & Farage, the entire world welcomes President Biden and Vice-President Harris. After four years of lies, venal hypocrisy and vicious hostility to decency and humane values, America has taken a major step towards making America great again.\u2019<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Historian Mark Curtis<\/a>, co-founder of Declassified UK, responded<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

\u2018The thing is, @RichardDawkins<\/a>, while you\u2019re right to welcome the demise of the contemptible Trump, as I do, the \u201clies, venal hypocrisy and vicious hostility to decency and humane values\u201d are just routine features of every US presidency, especially in foreign policy.\u2019<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Meanwhile, it was no surprise to see a senior Guardian<\/em> journalist unleashing purple prose in praise of Biden. David Smith, the Guardian\u2019s<\/em> Washington DC bureau chief, declared<\/a> that \u2018with empathy and humility, Biden sets out to make America sane again\u2019. The ideological rhetoric continued to gush out across Guardian<\/em> column inches:<\/p>\n

\n

\u2018After the mental and moral exhaustion of the past four years, Biden made America sane again in 15 minutes. It was an exorcism of sorts, from American carnage to American renewal.\u2019<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Readers with long memories will recall similar Guardian<\/em> effusions of liberal ordure when Barack Obama was elected in 2008 to \u2018rebrand America\u2019<\/a> and serve as the eloquent \u2018cool\u2019 figurehead of US corporate and imperial might. That is the Guardian<\/em> worldview in a nutshell.<\/p>\n

The harsh truth is that the corporate media, including BBC News and the Guardian<\/em>, has a stranglehold on any prospect for changing society. The transfer of US power from Trump to Biden provided the briefest permissible glimpse of mild scepticism being broadcast from corporate newsrooms. This was most notable with Trump vociferously contesting the US presidential elections results, claiming election fraud on a grand scale. The repeated buzz phrase from journalists reporting Trump\u2019s claims was \u2018without offering evidence\u2019. Thus, BBC news presenter Mishal Husain told the nation\u2019s television audience on 8 November last year:<\/p>\n

\n

\u2018President Trump has been out on the golf course and made further claims of election fraud without offering evidence.\u2019<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The point was emphasised in a news piece by BBC North America correspondent Nick Bryant:<\/p>\n

\n

\u2018the president took to the golf course this morning continuing to make unsubstantiated claims that the election was rigged.\u2019<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This narrative was repeated across the \u2018mainstream\u2019 media.<\/p>\n

But those important caveats \u2013 \u2018without further evidence\u2019 and \u2018unsubstantiated claims\u2019 \u2013 are routinely missing when propaganda declarations are, or were, made by the US\/UK about Iraq\u2019s mythical \u2018WMD\u2019; or when the public is told that the West\u2019s \u2018security\u2019 and military forces need to counter the \u2018threat\u2019 from Russia, China, Iran, North Korea or whoever the latest \u2018enemy\u2019 happens to be;  or that \u2018we\u2019 need to keep Saudi Arabia as an \u2018ally\u2019; that Israel only ever \u2018retaliates\u2019 in the face of Palestinian \u2018provocation\u2019, that the US is a neutral \u2018peace broker\u2019 in the Middle East; or that the US\/UK defend freedom and human rights around the world. On and on flow the propaganda assertions, without serious challenge from a compliant media. Suddenly, when it really matters, the media\u2019s supposed enthusiasm for \u2018fact checking\u2019 dries up.<\/p>\n

Julian Assange And Guardian<\/em> Hypocrisy<\/strong><\/p>\n

We have seen the ugly truth in the brutal, inhumane treatment of Julian Assange, arguably the most important Western dissident, journalist and publisher in recent years, by western \u2018democracies\u2019, the major news media, and a cruel system of court \u2018justice\u2019 operating in London. During a recent online conversation, acclaimed film director Ken Loach nailed<\/a> the despicable role of the Guardian, in particular, in persecuting and undermining Assange:<\/p>\n

\n

\u2018It\u2019s one of those cases that clarifies the role of the media [\u2026] there\u2019s a collusion of silence. There doesn\u2019t need to be an active conspiracy; they all understand the steps of the dance. \u201cWe\u2019re going to keep quiet about this\u201d. The Guardian did publish some [WikiLeaks] material, but then turned on Julian. And typical with the liberal press, there\u2019s a degree of hypocrisy. They want to have a foot in both camps. They want to be both seen as part of the responsible establishment; they also want to speak truth to power. But they\u2019re compromised on both fronts. And their attacks on Julian Assange were critical in undermining his presence as a journalist, and being seen as a journalist. And the scurrilous attacks on him, for year after year; [and their] failure to really campaign against the torture for ten years.\u2019<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

He added<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

\u2018There could not be a clearer case of shoot the messenger, and let the scoundrel go free. I mean, here you have people \u2013 Bush, Blair, propagandists like Alastair Campbell \u2013 wheeled out on the BBC, like Newsnight. They have season tickets to the current affairs programmes that tell us what to think. They are responsible for \u2013 what \u2013 up to a million deaths<\/a>, four, five, million people made homeless, destruction of Iraq; the most atrocious war crimes, in an illegal war \u2013 an illegal<\/em><\/strong> war, so every activity is illegal on account of that, war crimes \u2013 they should be indicted. The man who told us about those crimes is condemned to rot, at the very least, and is in danger of never seeing the light of day again, or of being executed, and we know some politicians in the States have called for precisely that. There could not be a more outrageous, a more egregious example of the messenger being crucified and the scoundrels, the villains, the criminals getting away with this.\u2019<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

As musician Brian Eno said<\/a> during the discussion:<\/p>\n

\n

\u2018Julian is a threat [to power] because he exposes an illusion that we are generally being told to support. And that illusion is that we live in a democracy. So, the fundamental concept of democracy is that people make decisions about their future, and about the state they live in. And the fundamental assumption of democracy is that people have the information on which to make those decisions. So, clearly, for democracy to work we have to have good information, otherwise we\u2019ll make bad decisions.\u2019<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u2018The Gravity Of The Situation Requires Fundamental Changes To Global Capitalism\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

The most compelling evidence that there is no functioning democracy in capitalist societies is all around us: global environmental collapse and climate breakdown.<\/p>\n

A new scientific report this month warns that the planet is facing a \u2018ghastly future of mass extinction, declining health and climate-disruption upheavals\u2019 that threaten human survival. The study<\/a>, published in \u2018Frontiers in Conservation Science\u2019 by a group of 17 experts, observes that:<\/p>\n

\n

\u2018The scale of the threats to the biosphere and all its lifeforms \u2013 including humanity \u2013 is in fact so great that it is difficult to grasp for even well-informed experts.\u2019<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Somewhat couched in academic language, the urgency and starkness of the warning are nevertheless clear:<\/p>\n

\n

\u2018The gravity of the situation requires fundamental changes to global capitalism, education, and equality, which include inter alia<\/em> the abolition of perpetual economic growth, properly pricing externalities, a rapid exit from fossil-fuel use, strict regulation of markets and property acquisition, reigning in corporate lobbying, and the empowerment of women.\u2019<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

They added:<\/p>\n

\n

\u2018the mainstream [sic] is having difficulty grasping the magnitude of this loss, despite the steady erosion of the fabric of human civilization.\u2019<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Meanwhile, the climate crisis has been worsening, with 2020 declared<\/a> by scientists as the joint hottest year ever recorded, despite the pandemic lockdowns. There were record Arctic wildfires and Atlantic tropical storms.<\/p>\n

The European Commission\u2019s Matthias Petschke said<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

\u2018The extraordinary climate events of 2020 [\u2026] show us that we have no time to lose. We must come together as a global community, to ensure a just transition to a net zero future. It will be difficult, but the cost of inaction is too great\u2026\u2019<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

In the wake of the US presidential election last November, the BBC\u2019s John Simpson had tweeted<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

\u2018According to the New York Times, exit polls showed that 84% of people who voted for Trump thought that global warming wasn\u2019t an important issue.\u2019<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

But, of course, if political leaders everywhere believed that climate breakdown is an important issue \u2013 the<\/em> overriding issue facing humanity \u2013 they would be tackling it with the urgency that it requires now.<\/p>\n

As climate campaigner Greta Thunberg pointed out<\/a> last week:<\/p>\n

\n

\u2018In 2010 our leaders signed \u201cambitious goals to protect wildlife and ecosystems\u201d. By 2021 they\u2019d failed on every single one. Each day they choose not to act. Instead they sign more \u201cambitious\u201d non-binding future goals while passing policy locking in destructive business as usual.\u2019<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This was her acerbic summary<\/a> of political discussions at the One Planet Summit in Paris on 11 January:<\/p>\n

\n

LIVE from #OnePlanetSummit in Paris:<\/p>\n

Bla bla nature<\/p>\n

Bla bla important<\/p>\n

Bla bla ambitious<\/p>\n

Bla bla green investments<\/p>\n

Bla bla great opportunity<\/p>\n

Bla bla green growth<\/p>\n

Bla bla net zero<\/p>\n

Bla bla step up our game<\/p>\n

Bla bla hope<\/p>\n

Bla bla bla\u2026*<\/p>\n

*locking in decades of further destruction<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

We have arrived at this terminal stage of capitalism because we are being held in a death-grip by a system of economics and exploitation that is coated with a veneer of \u2018democracy\u2019, \u2018freedom\u2019, \u2018progress\u2019 and other convenient ideological myths. The corporate media has sold the public those myths, perpetuating and deepening the various interlocking crises that threaten to wipe out homo sapiens<\/em>, along with countless other species.<\/p>\n

We can still escape the worst if we face up to reality. As Gail Bradbrook and Jem Bendell, co-founder of Extinction Rebellion<\/a> and founder of Deep Adaptation<\/a> respectively, explain<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

\u2018Our power comes from acting without escape from our pain.\u2019<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

They continue:<\/p>\n

\n

\u2018Paying attention fully to what is around us and in front of us, even though it hurts, is to be fully alive. [\u2026] Once we accept that anxiety and grief will be constant companions in this struggle, we can stay fully present to what is happening and respond accordingly. It means we do not grasp desperately at the latest idea of what might fix the climate and ecological emergency. Instead, we can help each other stay fully present to the difficult mess, so that we can try to reduce harm, save what we can and plant some seeds for what might come next.\u2019<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

A good start would be to reject the corporate media.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

This article was posted on Friday, January 22nd, 2021 at 9:28pm and is filed under Apartheid<\/a>, Boris Johnson<\/a>, Climate Change<\/a>, COVID-19<\/a>, Democrats<\/a>, Disinformation<\/a>, Donald Trump<\/a>, Extinction<\/a>, Israel<\/a>, Joe Biden<\/a>, Julian Assange<\/a>, Militarism<\/a>, Propaganda<\/a>, UK Labour Party<\/a>, UK Media<\/a>, UK Politics<\/a>, WikiLeaks<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

This post was originally published on Radio Free<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Back in 2017, before WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange was silenced by Twitter, he used the platform to highlight an immutable truth: \u2018The overwhelming majority of information is classified\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":170,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[284,189,478,304,133,827,49,3024,82,51,117,165,4,583,197,275,916,205],"tags":[584,353,486,317,149,987,61,3025,88,63,570,170,592,3026,494,1124,576],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11961"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/170"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11961"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11961\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11962,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11961\/revisions\/11962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}