bbb
00:02
did the cia under president trump plan
00:04
to kidnap and assassinate wikileaks
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founder julian assange's dream
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always maintained he was a journalist
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and that the united states is trying to
00:13
criminalize journalism
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hello i'm richard gisbert and you're at
00:22
the listening post where we don't cover
00:24
the news we cover the way the news is
00:26
covered here are some of the media
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angles we're examining this week
00:30
it's the kind of news story that
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wikileaks has been known to break only
00:35
it was about wikileaks julian assange
00:38
and how far the cia was willing to go to
00:40
put the organization out of commission
00:43
some senior trump administration
00:44
officials and cia executives even
00:46
discussed assassinating assange
00:49
facebook is under scrutiny yet again as
00:52
a new pr initiative backfires
00:55
translation is transformation how
00:58
literature changes as it moves from one
01:00
language to another
01:02
and after 16 years of leading the
01:05
country as its chancellor
01:09
germany is saying goodbye to angela
01:11
merkel
01:12
it was like something straight out of a
01:14
bond film not the one that premiered in
01:17
cinemas this week but a factual story
01:20
allegations of kidnapping and
01:22
assassination plots discussed by
01:24
american intelligence officials
01:26
targeting wikileaks founder julian
01:29
assange on september 26th yahoo news
01:32
dropped an explosive report based on
01:35
interviews with more than 30 unnamed
01:38
former u.s intelligence sources
01:40
detailing what it called the cia's war
01:43
on wikileaks a trump administration plan
01:46
to silence the man and organization that
01:49
unveiled some of the american
01:50
government's most guarded secrets the
01:53
expose rippled through the press freedom
01:56
community because of its implications
01:58
for more conventional journalists but
02:01
like so much of the assange story it has
02:03
received nothing like the media coverage
02:06
it deserves with assange's legal fate
02:08
being decided in a british extradition
02:11
hearing later this month yahoo's report
02:13
could end up before the judge in the
02:16
form of evidence our starting point this
02:18
week is washington
02:23
the trump era ended eight months ago
02:25
leaving the biden administration to deal
02:28
with some of the consequences
02:30
such as this investigation by yahoo news
02:33
some senior trump administration
02:35
officials and cia executives even
02:37
discussed assassinating assange
02:39
the three reporters involved say they
02:41
interviewed dozens of former u.s
02:43
intelligence officials all of them
02:45
anonymous who confirmed the cia and the
02:48
trump white house repeatedly discussed
02:51
the lengths they would go to to get to
02:54
the man julian assange and the
02:56
organization wikileaks that have plagued
02:59
the american government its defense and
03:01
military establishments sectors that do
03:04
so much of their work in secrets
03:07
they claim to have interviewed more than
03:09
30 former us government officials
03:11
including eight who spoke of scenarios
03:14
such as a possible abduction of julian
03:16
assange or even plots to kill him they
03:19
were concerned about possible plot for
03:21
the russians to break julian assange out
03:22
of the ecuadorian embassy and some of
03:24
the scenarios then did involve british
03:26
assistance as well and then also
03:28
discussing
03:29
a rendition operation against julian
03:32
assange something previously unknown
03:35
taking a plane and abducting him from
03:38
the ecuador embassy
03:40
bringing him back to the united states
03:42
potentially interrogating him in secret
03:45
and they redefined the organization
03:48
as a
03:49
hostile entity
03:51
language that mike pompeo used in his
03:55
first public remarks as cia director
03:57
wikileaks walks like a hostile
03:59
intelligence service and talks like a
04:01
hostile intelligence service
04:05
the yahoo team reported the cia stepped
04:08
up its pursuit of julian assange under
04:10
donald trump and was ordered to do so by
04:12
its director at the time mike pompeo
04:16
the u.s government's war on wikileaks
04:18
predated trump's time in office but the
04:21
obama administration had drawn a line it
04:24
faced what it called the new york times
04:26
problem
04:27
the perception that going after assange
04:30
and wikileaks amounted to an attack on
04:33
more conventional news outlets
04:35
yahoo reports that the vault 7 story
04:38
which wikileaks broke in early
04:40
2017 changed the thinking
04:43
because of what it revealed and because
04:45
pompeo and the intelligence operatives
04:48
at the cia's headquarters in langley
04:50
virginia took the vault 7 leak
04:52
personally
04:54
the vault 7 material uh contained the
04:57
cia's most sensitive
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hacking tools how the cia
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penetrated computer networks around the
05:06
world how it penetrated iphones how it
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tracked the communications and
05:11
activities of perceived adversaries this
05:15
was a huge sensitive matter for the cia
05:19
mike pompeo had been somewhat dismissive
05:22
of
05:23
wikileaks role in the 2016 election but
05:26
when he comes into langley in early 2017
05:29
and the vault 7 leak happens on his
05:32
watch now it's his agency
05:35
he's the one responsible and pompeo was
05:38
embarrassed by this he didn't want to go
05:41
see president donald trump and face him
05:44
and have a discussion about what went
05:46
wrong with the cia and in fact the cia
05:49
had laughed at the pentagon as they saw
05:52
that those files from the pentagon
05:54
exposing the iraq and afghanistan wars
05:56
were published by wikileaks
05:59
and they laughed at the state department
06:01
because
06:02
250 000 plus diplomatic cables were
06:05
published from chelsea manning by
06:07
wikileaks and so
06:09
this was an embarrassment and he decided
06:12
that he was going to be out for blood
06:14
and seek vengeance against wikileaks i
06:17
can say we never we never conducted
06:19
planning to violate u.s law pompeo is
06:22
unapologetic he's tried to discredit
06:24
yahoo's sources but has stopped well
06:27
short of denying the story
06:30
beyond the vault 7 angle the more than
06:32
30 sources yahoo had the detailed quotes
06:36
from senior trump administration
06:38
officials the story was not entirely new
06:41
reports of cia plots to target julian
06:44
assange had already made the rounds but
06:47
it took yahoo rather than legacy news
06:50
outlets like the washington post or the
06:52
new york times to put it all together
06:55
mainstream outlets including the times
06:58
which happily published the news
06:59
wikileaks revealed and benefited from
07:02
all those clicks have been suspiciously
07:04
silent on these latest revelations which
07:07
is consistent with their lack of
07:09
interest and coverage of assange's
07:11
ongoing extradition case in the uk
07:15
this particular story has gotten pretty
07:17
wide pick up in the uk now by uh most of
07:19
the major newspapers here although
07:21
notably not yet the bbc um in the us it
07:24
seems to be getting less coverage that
07:26
maybe fits into a bit of a pattern with
07:28
julian assange's case there is a public
07:31
perception of him that is very unhelpful
07:33
at times and i think that has turned
07:36
many people off there has been a growing
07:38
amount of coverage since the extradition
07:40
proceeding started and i think there is
07:42
now growing consensus that there needs
07:44
to be solidarity on the principles of
07:46
this case whether or not uh individuals
07:48
decide that they feel assange himself is
07:51
worth defending the extent of the cia's
07:53
efforts to silence assange
07:56
must send a chill down any national
07:57
security reporter's spine the reason
08:00
that the cia targeted julian assange and
08:02
the justice department later indicted
08:04
him
08:05
is that he solicited and obtained and
08:08
published truthful information on
08:10
matters of clear public concern
08:12
dating back to 2010 to war crimes
08:14
effectively and many of these charges
08:17
could have been brought against and
08:18
could be brought against national
08:20
security and investigative journalists
08:22
for doing their jobs
08:25
unlike his predecessor president biden
08:28
talks a good game on the importance of
08:30
the fourth estate
08:31
on world press freedom day he said
08:34
journalists uncover the truth and are
08:36
indispensable to the functioning of
08:38
democracy okay let's go to al jazeera
08:40
first which landed his press secretary
08:43
in a tough spot when asked by al jazeera
08:46
to explain the disconnect between
08:48
biden's rhetoric on press freedom and
08:51
his administration's continued pursuit
08:53
of julian assange i don't have anything
08:55
new to say on the uh on julian assange
08:58
you see silence you see dodging you see
09:02
evasion from
09:04
the biden administration
09:06
see this as a freedom of press issue
09:07
with respect to assange again i have
09:10
nothing i have nothing to just speak to
09:12
on julian
09:13
and
09:14
every day that the biden administration
09:15
continues this prosecution they are
09:18
emboldening authoritarians or tyrants
09:21
giving them a way to deflect
09:24
any questions about how they treat
09:27
journalists within their own country and
09:30
i'm not saying this hypothetically you
09:32
could cut to a clip right now of the
09:35
leaders of countries
09:37
like azerbaijan
09:39
say
09:40
that they are not going to take
09:42
questions from the bbc
09:44
and address their own press freedom how
09:47
do you
09:48
assess what happened to mr assange is it
09:51
the reflection of free media in your
09:53
country because julian assange is in a
09:56
jail cell we saw this with china's
09:58
foreign ministry who has said that they
10:00
do not have to address concerns about
10:02
how they treat journalists because the
10:04
u.s is continuing the case against
10:06
julian assange
10:09
earlier this year a british judge denied
10:12
washington's extradition request ruling
10:14
julian assange would be a suicide risk
10:17
if put in a u.s prison
10:22
the american authorities have appealed
10:24
that hearing is set for later this month
10:27
assange's lawyers will have poured over
10:30
the yahoo report which may have
10:32
bolstered the case against extradition
10:35
the grounds that the british judge used
10:38
to block the u.s government's request
10:40
for extradition were pretty narrow they
10:42
were about
10:44
the risk of suicide that assange would
10:46
face where he to serve time in a u.s
10:48
prison the british court case doesn't go
10:50
to these larger issues of press freedom
10:53
and potential government misconduct that
10:55
we laid out in the piece now
10:57
there's talk among assange's legal team
11:00
of possibly trying to broaden the
11:01
parameters of that british
11:04
extradition case to include some of
11:06
these allegations the journalists at
11:07
yahoo
11:09
have likely strengthened the case
11:11
against extraditing julian assange to
11:13
the united states through the reporting
11:14
that they've done here the yahoo news
11:17
reporting reveals that u.s officials
11:19
seriously considered taking
11:20
extrajudicial and frankly illegal action
11:24
to silence julian assange and i expect
11:26
that his lawyers will make a strong case
11:28
in defense of the magistrate court's
11:31
decision to deny the united states
11:33
request to extradite him
11:37
that would be poetic american
11:39
journalists through their reporting
11:42
potentially having an impact on a court
11:44
case that has such significant
11:46
implications
11:48
for the future of journalism
11:53
a project that was given the green light
11:56
by facebook ceo mark zuckerberg to push
11:59
positive stories about the company on
12:01
its own news feed has backfired mean
12:04
akshay ravi's been on this meena this
12:06
looks like a pr campaign gone bad
12:09
exactly richard according to the new
12:11
york times project amplify was signed
12:13
off by zuckerberg in august and it's
12:15
been trialled in three american cities
12:18
it pushes stories like this to the top
12:20
of news feeds facebook's latest
12:22
innovations for 2021 on achieving quote
12:25
100 renewable energy for its global
12:28
operations
12:29
the news feed is central to the facebook
12:31
experience it's where users see what's
12:32
being shared it was never sold as a
12:35
stage for facebook's own pr material and
12:37
this is happening when outlets like the
12:39
wall street journal are doing stories on
12:41
facebook that appear to be slightly more
12:44
news feed worthy yeah last week the
12:47
journal published an investigation in
12:49
which it showed that according to
12:50
facebook's own internal research
12:52
problems have repeatedly been flagged up
12:54
with how the site is used for example by
12:56
human traffickers or even disturbing
12:59
data on how the platform affects the
13:01
mental health of teenage girls despite
13:03
knowing the extent of these issues
13:05
facebook has never done enough to fix
13:07
them project amplify was all about
13:09
enhancing facebook's public image and
13:12
then there are the problems that social
13:13
media sites like facebook like instagram
13:16
keep running into down under in
13:18
australia yeah cnn has now decided to
13:21
disable its facebook page in australia
13:23
and this is after a high court there
13:25
ruled that publishers are legally liable
13:27
for defamatory comments under the posts
13:30
of news organizations or any media sites
13:33
cnn asked facebook for help to disable
13:35
the comments function in australia but
13:37
the company says it cannot do location
13:39
specific comment disabling if you switch
13:41
off comments on a facebook page in one
13:43
location or in one country you
13:45
essentially disable it for users around
13:47
the world who come to that page
13:49
this high court ruling has significant
13:51
impact on australian media companies
13:53
many of them just don't allow comments
13:55
on their posts any longer because
13:57
moderating or policing a comment section
13:59
takes too much time takes too many
14:01
moderators and just too much money okay
14:04
thanks mina
14:05
it's something you see in news coverage
14:07
all the time or hear the voice of
14:09
translator and they don't always get it
14:12
right
14:13
the translation of literature from one
14:15
language to another is an even trickier
14:17
business
14:18
literature is much more subtle than
14:20
journalism it's less direct and
14:22
languages come with particularities
14:24
audiences with their own cultures and
14:26
expectations
14:28
the language most frequently translated
14:31
into english by american publishers is
14:33
french followed by spanish
14:35
when it comes to arabic and persian
14:37
translations have been known to come up
14:39
short leading to cultural
14:41
misunderstandings the kind that reading
14:43
the texts of the other are supposed to
14:46
correct
14:47
in many cases foreign language novels
14:49
are selected for translation by
14:51
publishers because they can help explain
14:53
a country's politics or its current
14:55
affairs
14:56
and when translators or editors fail in
14:59
their jobs context can be sacrificed and
15:02
stereotypes can get reinforced the
15:05
listening posts tarakanaphan now with a
15:07
look at what gets lost in translation
15:18
the most important part of literary
15:20
translation for me is to capture the
15:23
voice of the text that you're working
15:24
with you're not just translating them
15:26
across languages and across cultures
15:27
you're translating them across time
15:32
nuance of course will be lost but also
15:35
nuances can be rediscovered that's part
15:38
of the alchemy that is literary
15:40
translation
15:42
one thing that's poorly understood about
15:44
translation is that when a text moves
15:46
from one language to another it is
15:49
transformed
15:50
it is almost never word for word so
15:53
translators become cultural mediators
15:56
balancing faithfulness to the original
15:58
with the needs of a new audience
16:04
there's this old world
16:06
notion of translation as a kind of
16:09
sterile
16:10
mechanical process
16:12
that involves a direct
16:15
reproduction of a text into a target
16:17
language that is more or less
16:19
faithful to the letter or spirit of the
16:22
original
16:23
but that's not the case and it's almost
16:26
never the case i don't think there can
16:28
ever ever ever be a totally faithful
16:31
translation
16:32
because any translator coming across
16:34
anything has to read the text and then
16:38
decode it and
16:40
put it back into another language and
16:42
all languages are different
16:44
translation is
16:46
the manipulation of a text into not only
16:49
a target language
16:51
but a target culture a target
16:53
consumption environment
16:56
and
16:57
consequently this process
17:00
will be impacted
17:02
by
17:03
power imbalances by ideologies
17:07
by perceptions preconceptions
17:10
misconceptions
17:13
in the 19th century an era of european
17:16
imperialist expansion
17:18
a group of western scholars painters and
17:21
translators known as orientalists took
17:24
an interest in the middle east but their
17:26
reimaginings of arab and persian culture
17:29
were often detached from the realities
17:32
of the people that fascinated and
17:34
beguiled them
17:35
richard francis burton was an archetypal
17:38
orientedist an explorer soldier scholar
17:41
and spy who once smuggled himself into
17:44
mecca disguised as an arab
17:46
burton is also responsible for the
17:48
translation of one thousand and one
17:50
nights and the kama sutra
17:53
another englishman edward fitzgerald
17:55
took the poetry of persian polymath
17:57
umarkhayam and transformed it beyond
18:00
recognition on its way into the
18:02
anglosphere
18:04
so you have this power dynamic where the
18:06
the westerner basically feels as if they
18:08
own us and in a way they they really did
18:10
own us and our countries kind of became
18:13
a playground for
18:14
these
18:15
westerners to kind of run around in and
18:17
find manuscripts and find tax and they
18:19
don't feel a responsibility to treat
18:22
them fairly or they don't see the
18:23
culture that they're coming from as
18:25
equal to them and this is especially the
18:26
case with fitzgerald who translated
18:28
haiyan he did say it amuses me to take
18:31
what liberties i like with these
18:32
persians who really do need a little art
18:35
to shape them
18:37
and that has been seen as one of the
18:40
in a sense most offensive of the old
18:42
colonial statements about translation
18:46
but what fitzgerald does with omar
18:49
is
18:50
he he turns it into
18:53
we must be honest and say an
18:54
extraordinarily beautiful poem
18:57
so successful
18:59
that it's generally regarded as as one
19:01
of the very very few cases where a
19:03
translation entered into the canon of
19:06
english literature
19:08
the world of translation has moved on
19:10
since fitzgerald he wouldn't be given
19:12
such license today
19:14
however more subtle distortions continue
19:17
publishers can play a role here by
19:20
selecting or editing translated
19:22
literature in a way that reinforces old
19:25
stereotypes
19:26
so
19:28
the the passive victimized
19:30
veiled muslim woman
19:33
the barbaric violent arab male you know
19:36
these are these are the stereotypes that
19:37
we're talking about so if the novel
19:39
already has these themes in it
19:42
then it's certainly easier for it to
19:44
land a translation deal in the
19:46
english-speaking world nowales
19:49
this very iconic feminist activist from
19:53
egypt when her texts move from arabic to
19:55
english what essentially happens is that
19:58
she becomes simplified and she becomes
20:01
reduced
20:03
to
20:04
only caring about quote-unquote women's
20:07
issues
20:08
but she had a wide-ranging remit of
20:11
critiques she was an anti-imperialist an
20:14
anti-capitalist
20:17
translation can be a murky process but
20:19
ultimately the publisher gets the last
20:21
word larry price was confronted with
20:24
this after working on in praise of
20:25
hatred by syrian author khalid khalifa
20:29
she later discovered that the final
20:30
chapter she had translated wouldn't be
20:33
included in the novel it charts the
20:36
progression of the narrator who was a
20:38
young girl
20:40
into a very
20:42
intolerant version of islam
20:45
and it's narrated in the context of
20:49
increasing crackdowns against
20:52
any kind of descent within syrian
20:54
society they decided that they preferred
20:58
the book to end after chapter three they
21:00
felt that it was a stronger ending
21:02
in this chapter
21:04
marwa has left syria and she's now
21:06
living and working in london but even
21:09
though she's ostensibly free
21:12
and unveiled she's haunted by the events
21:15
in her homeland and they have not left
21:16
her
21:17
and so
21:18
that ending was excised the way that it
21:22
reframes the story is consequential
21:24
because
21:25
marwah the title character does become
21:29
this kind of stereotypical
21:31
veiled secluded oppressed
21:35
female
21:36
and and it's an image that is reinforced
21:39
on on the cover as well and so
21:42
the text is made to cater to that rather
21:45
than
21:46
disrupt those ideas or those
21:48
expectations
21:50
increasingly translators are becoming
21:52
more outspoken about their work
21:55
persian poetics is the brainchild of
21:57
translator muhammad ali mujarati it's
22:00
where he calls out the world famous but
22:02
mistranslated quotes of persian sufi
22:05
poet rumi
22:07
one of rumi's most popular translated
22:09
verses reads out beyond ideas of
22:12
wrongdoing and right doing there is a
22:15
field i'll meet you there
22:18
the original according to moderati is
22:20
closer to
22:21
beyond heresy and faith there's another
22:24
place we yearn for what's in the midst
22:27
of that desert plain
22:29
they kind of stripped away the islam
22:30
again stripped away the the archaism and
22:33
they took out the rumi and they blended
22:35
in this milieu that was existent in the
22:38
60s and 70s it's kind of vaguely eastern
22:40
buddhism hinduism islam kind of all
22:43
mixed together with words like guru and
22:45
mentor and things like that these books
22:47
have huge impacts on the way that things
22:50
are perceived when islamophobes would
22:51
say oh islam is this it's barbaric it's
22:54
evil it's devoid of any deeper meaning
22:56
deeper truth there's a beauty in islam
22:59
when i would pull up people like rumi a
23:01
lot of times they would say well rumi
23:03
doesn't count because he's not a muslim
23:06
translation has always been somewhat of
23:08
an underappreciated art with translators
23:11
often consigned to the margins or
23:13
remaining totally invisible that's not
23:16
the case anymore the translator's voice
23:18
is being heard and recognized and
23:21
readers are better off when they
23:22
understand how the mechanics of
23:24
translations work and how that
23:26
influences which books you see in your
23:28
local bookshop
23:30
translation is
23:32
a dynamic process and it's a process
23:35
that is never neutral and it is always
23:39
impacted by
23:40
power imbalances
23:42
it holds within it
23:44
all of these different contextual ideas
23:47
and biases and prejudices and being made
23:50
aware of these factors will enhance your
23:54
understanding and your appreciation
23:56
of the text itself and of the culture
23:59
that it comes from
24:00
and how it has come to your culture
24:03
[Music]
24:10
and finally after 16 years in the job
24:12
germany's first female chancellor angela
24:15
merkel is leaving politics merkel worked
24:18
with four american presidents five
24:21
british prime ministers eight italian
24:23
heads of government scored higher
24:25
approval ratings than just about any of
24:26
them and eventually came to be seen as
24:29
the de facto head of the european union
24:32
this next video by puppet regime a
24:34
comedy series by g zero media not to be
24:37
confused with al jazeera includes some
24:40
of the policies merkel will be
24:41
remembered for like opening germany's
24:44
borders to a million syrian refugees at
24:47
a time when other countries were
24:48
shutting theirs you may recognize the
24:50
music it's a remix of a classic from
24:53
another german powerhouse craftwork
24:56
we'll see you next time here at the
24:58
listening post
25:05
i'm moving on to the
25:09
next series
25:15
[Music]
25:27
loved me for it well except for greece
25:30
then a million syrians came i said yeah
25:33
this room
25:34
even though it had to push the neo-nazi
25:37
loans now all the cause i hope as they
25:40
know my name yes i guess i could have
25:43
done a little more to help you cream
25:46
still with me around you were all a
25:48
little spoiled if things go wrong once
25:51
i'm gone i'll feel some shading fire
26:08
leaving
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