This article was originally published by Caitlin Johnstone at Activist Post.
Journalist Glenn Greenwald has been charged by the Bolsonaro government in Brazil with the same prosecutorial angle used by the US to target WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
Per The New York Times:
Citing intercepted messages between Mr. Greenwald and the hackers, prosecutors say the journalist played a “clear role in facilitating the commission of a crime.”
For instance, prosecutors contend that Mr. Greenwald encouraged the hackers to delete archives that had already been shared with The Intercept Brasil, in order to cover their tracks.
Prosecutors also say that Mr. Greenwald was communicating with the hackers while they were actively monitoring private chats on Telegram, a messaging app. The complaint charged six other individuals, including four who were detained last year in connection with the cellphone hacking.
This argument is essentially indistinguishable from the argument currently being used by the Trump administration in charging Assange with 17 counts of violating the Espionage Act. The US Department of Justice alleges that Assange attempted to provide Private Manning with advice and assistance in covering her tracks while leaking documents she already had access to, therefore making Assange party to a conspiracy against the United States.
It is not surprising that Brazil is advancing the same war on journalism we’ve been seeing in the US, UK, Australia, and France. With the election of the overtly fascist Jair Bolsonaro in October 2018 (an election whose corrupt foundations were exposed by Greenwald’s reporting with The Intercept Brasil), the Brazilian government moved into full alignment with the US-centralized empire, which was why his inauguration was enthusiastically celebrated by characters like Donald Trump, Mike Pompeo, John Bolton, and Benjamin Netanyahu.
In exactly the same way we saw coordination between the US, UK, Sweden, Ecuador and Australia to immobilize, and then silence, and then imprison Julian Assange, we are seeing a uniform movement toward silencing oppositional journalism throughout the entire US-centralized empire. This is because a rising China and the increasing coziness of the cluster of nations which have resisted absorption into the imperial blob greatly imperil the USA’s position as the unipolar global dominator, meaning that the empire needs to quickly shore up global control in order to avoid being surpassed and replaced by other power structures.
In order to accomplish this, there’s going to have to be a lot of nefarious behavior. A lot of military escalations, a lot of CIA coups, a lot of bullying and subversion, and a whole lot of propaganda to grease the wheels of public consent. Such large, frantic, flailing movements can be easily exposed by a free press, which is precisely why the free press is being clamped down upon now. The empire is setting all these legal precedents against oppositional journalism because it fully intends to use those precedents in the future. It fully intends to use those legal precedents in the future because it knows it’s going to have to make things ugly.
This is all being done to prevent the public from gaining a clear understanding of what’s really going on in their world because if the public had a clear understanding of what’s going on in their world, the empire would forever lose its ability to control them and rule them.
Whoever controls the narrative controls the world. The imperialists understand this. The public, by and large, do not. And the imperialists intend to keep it that way.
Glenn Greenwald has spent the last three years being falsely smeared as a stooge of authoritarian governments while he was actually doing more damage to an authoritarian government than all of his critics combined. Public trust in oppressive institutions (like the oppressive institutions that empire loyalists have been protecting by smearing Greenwald as a Kremlin agent and a Putin puppet) can be severely weakened by the exposure of their dark underbellies to the light of truth.
The imperialists know this, and they are determined not to allow it to continue. Hence their persecution of Assange, and hence their persecution of Greenwald.
I have a problem with being told ‘secrets’ of no practical importance, by a celebrity, whose name everyone knows.
What sacrifice was required of you, as a result of these revelations, or how has it changed your daily routine.
Then, what was one nameable social change which occurred, because you have acted on Greenwald’s information.
Was it actually that empowering?
All true. And the test case for this media crackdown? Canada. Canada had a dynamic free press up until the 1990s. Then the country had a massive financial crisis. The free press was imploded and rubbed out.
Canada has always been the beta testing ground for the global control system. From the “diversity” agenda, to proclaiming the country has no culture, Canada was handed over to global finance.
Canadians are deeply ill informed about what their government does, especially what it does in its overseas resource extraction “colonies” in Africa etc.
Just watch Canadian TV and feel the thinking part of your brain melt away.
But, hey, just shut up, watch hockey and eat.
Greenwald is a supporter of the communists in Brazil. Bolsonaro is not a fascist. Brazil was rescued from the same fate as Venezuela by electing Bolsonaro. He is getting the same treatment as The Trumpster is getting in the USA.
A penpal sends me a news item in Portuguese, about the fascist Bolsonaro showing up in-person, to lynch the opposition with his own bare hands.
I lol at how fascists and communists think their own fascism and communism are cuss words, as though speech controls make their fascist and communist methods so subtle and so discrete.
Fascist, Fascism, Fasces. See how the sky didn’t fall? (Just don’t let Bolsonaro hear.) I’ll refrain from linking videos to their conservative street justice, the mere sight of which would give our brave, American rightists ptsd.