“Follow justice and justice alone, so that you may live and possess the land the Lord your God is giving you.” — Deuteronomy 16:20 (New International Version of the Bible translation)
It seems sort of sad that one has to begin an article about justice by quoting from the Bible about the commandment to pursue justice.
Nevertheless we seem to have reached a fairly low point in American history when even an objective statement of the facts has become a partisan exercise.
I have been following the Seth Rich case for a few months now. I’ll admit I have a bias here, in that I am outraged about the flagrant lack of justice (and that is putting it very mildly) in matters related to the Clintons and their colleagues at the Democratic National Committee.
(As of today, you can actually take bets on whether they’ll file federal criminal charges against Hillary Clinton this year; right now the odds are against it.)
At the same time, even a cursory comparison of the reported facts in this case as versus the results of independent research show that we are not getting a true critical investigative review of the facts from the mainstream media.
One could argue, in fact, that the mainstream media’s bias against President Trump and for Hillary Clinton, Democrats, and extreme leftism in general is part of the reason why they so stubbornly refuse to cover this case in full. And why they insist that anyone who does do so, is being (take your pick): partisan, cruel to the family, insane, or stupid.
So, since we don’t have all day to do this, let’s be simple about it and compare two articles:
Mainstream
The first was written by Benjamin Freed and appears in the August 2, 2017 edition of Washingtonian.com, which is about as mainstream as it gets in DC. In it, he lays out the also-very-mainstream Washington Post version of fact: “I Watched a Lobbyist Reenact Seth Rich’s Death. It Was a Live Production of Fake News.”
It seems important to note that Mr. Freed is as mainstream as the publication he works for; his credentials include serving as editor of DCist and writing for “BuzzFeed, Slate, Washington City Paper, the New Republic, and T: The New York Times Style Magazine.”
A Note Regarding The Washington Post As A Potential Source Of Fake News
Any article that refers to the Washington Post as a source is problematic, of course, and this point must be made in any article referring to any such article.
The problem is that Jeff Bezos, who owns the paper, is also the CEO and major stakeholder of Amazon, which has the CIA as a significant client.
In a January 3, 2014 article for The Huffington Post, “Why the Washington Post’s New Ties to the CIA Are So Ominous,” Norman Solomon put it well:
“American journalism has entered highly dangerous terrain. A tip-off is that the Washington Post refuses to face up to a conflict of interest involving Jeff Bezos — who’s now the sole owner of the powerful newspaper at the same time he remains Amazon’s CEO and main stakeholder. The Post is supposed to expose CIA secrets. But Amazon is under contract to keep them. Amazon has a new $600 million ‘cloud’ computing deal with the CIA. The situation is unprecedented. But in an email exchange early this month, Washington Post executive editor Martin Baron told me that the newspaper doesn’t need to routinely inform readers of the CIA-Amazon-Bezos ties when reporting on the CIA. He wrote that such in-story acknowledgment would be ‘far outside the norm of disclosures about potential conflicts of interest at media organizations.’”
Independent
In any case, the other article that will be mentioned here is from an independent researcher, Andrew Joseph, who posted it at the independent platform Steemit on June 10, 2017. The title of the article is: “Yes, The DNC Had Seth Rich Murdered. Here Is How I Know.”
Mr. Joseph is so non-mainstream that I can’t find any other articles he’s written.
But he has assembled an array of facts that in my view significantly challenge the sheep-like repetition of so-called “known facts” offered by Mr. Freed.
Let’s contrast the mainstream version with the independent version, as exemplified by these two articles.
What Happened?
The mainstream version of the story, in brief, is that Seth Rich was a relatively unimportant DNC staffer who took a job with the Clinton campaign.
He stayed late at a bar — very late, till 1:30 — and walked around the streets late at night making phone calls. What should have been a 40 minute walk turned into a nearly 3 hour one, and he got shot at 4:19 a.m.; he was almost home.
The street was relatively dark, anyway, but even darker than normal because of a flooding-related project that caused the existing lights to go out frequently. Rich lived in an area where armed robberies were on the rise; he had bruises when the police got there. The police view his death as the result of an armed robbery, and say there are no witnesses.
Why The Mainstream Calls The Seth Rich Investigation A Conspiracy Theory
It’s obvious, they say: The Russians were the Wikileaks source, not this low-level staffer who just happened to work for the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and who was preparing to move to New York and work for the Clinton campaign.
With not un-subtle glee, the mainstream media furthers the narrative that President Trump himself “pushed” Fox News to publish a “now-discredited story claiming evidence of communication between Rich and WikiLeaks.”
The Mainstream Media’s View Of Independent Investigators
The Washingtonian article, again citing the (riddled-with-conflict-of-interest) Washington Post, relates that Rich’s family “has pleaded with Hannity, Gingrich, and others to stop their theorizing.” Regarding a recent attempt to reenact the crime, the article quotes Rich’s brother, Aaron: “I can’t come up with the right words but gross and disgusting.”
Key Points From The Alternative Version, Which You Should ReallyRead In Full, So I Won’t Quote Too Liberally From It
(Of course, the fact that I cite this one article should not in any way be construed as indicative that a limited number of people have been involved in this independent investigation. The most notable among them is Matt Crouch at America First Media.)
- The DNC did not give their server to the FBI.
- The independent company the DNC hired said that the Russians did it.
- The government based its assessment on this company’s report.
- Evidence can be falsified.
- Nothing was taken from Rich.
- If Rich was the leaker, the DNC had motive to have him killed in retaliation for what he did.
- Multiple sources have suggested it was Rich: “Assange, Guccifer 2.0, (Craig) Murray, and (Kim) Dotcom.”
- John Podesta’s email of February 22, 2015, published by Wikileaks, has him saying: “I’m definitely for making an example of a suspected leaker.”
- Why didn’t the police speak to the bar staff?
- Where is the camera footage, as there are many cameras in the area?
- Why wasn’t the police officers’ body camera footage released?
- Where is the DNA evidence if there was a struggle with the attackers?
- Why was the autopsy withheld from investigators?
- Why was the Freedom of Information Act request denied?
- Why is there “a report from an alleged hospital staff member (who) claims Rich was stable and expected to recover?”
- Why did the DNC hire a crisis management consultant to represent the family? Why did the family need representing?
- Why did the head of the DC police quit her job shortly after his murder, and make this statement: “The city’s justice system is broken beyond repair.”?
Reading all of this — what do you think?
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Posted August 5, 2017 by Dannielle Blumenthal, Ph.D. All opinions are the author’s own. The author hereby releases this post into the public domain.
2017 Diary - Dannielle Blumenthal 
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