Rusbridger’s Guardian has become an unrepentant unionist, zionist, and neo-con New Labour propaganda vehicle. Particularly deceitful is their attitude to the security services and the “war on terror”, where Rusbridger stands revealed as a handmaiden to power. He was, a very senior Guardian source told me, particularly upset when I described him as “Tony Blair’s catamite”. Let me say it again.
Let me give you a specific case to illustrate my point.
On 2 August the Guardian published a piece by Jamie Doward and Ian Cobain which, on the face of it, exposed the British Foreign Office for lobbying against the publication of the US Senate report on extraordinary rendition, lest details of British complicity become public.
On the face of it, a worthy piece of journalism exposing deeply shady government behaviour.
Except that I had published precisely the same story a full 15 weeks earlier, on April 14 2014, having been urgently contacted by a whistleblower.
What is more, immediately I heard from the whistleblower I made several urgent phone calls to Ian Cobain. He neither took nor returned my calls. I therefore left detailed messages, referring to the story which I had now published on my website.
In fact, the Guardian only published this story after William Hague had written to Reprieve to confirm that this lobbying had happened. In other words the Guardian published only after disclosure had been authorised by Government.
Furthermore, in publishing the government authorised story, the Guardian omitted the absolutely key point – that the purpose of the UK lobbying was to affect court cases under way and in prospect in the UK. Both in civil cases of compensation for victims, and in potential criminal cases for complicity in torture against Blair, Straw et al, British judges have (disgracefully) accepted the argument that evidence of the torture cannot be used because the American do not want it revealed, and may curtail future intelligence sharing. Obviously, if the Americans publish the material themselves, this defence falls.
As this defence is the major factor keeping Blair, Straw and numerous still senior civil servants out of the dock, this sparked the crucial British lobbying to suppress the Feinstein report – which has indeed succeeded in causing a huge amount of redaction by the White House.
My mole was absolutely adamant this was what was happening, and it is what I published. Yet Cobain in publishing the government authorised version does not refer to the impact on trials at all – despite the fact that this was 100% the subject of the letter from Reprieve to which Hague was replying, and that the letter from Reprieve mentioned me and my blog by name.
Instead of giving the true story, the government authorised version published by Cobain misdirects the entire subject towards Diego Garcia. The truth is that Diego Garcia is pretty incidental in the whole rendition story. On UK soil there was actually a great deal more done at Wick airport (yes, I do mean Wick, not Prestwick). That is something the government is still keeping tight closed, so don’t expect a mention from Cobain.
I was fooled by Cobain for a long time. What I now realise is that his role is to codify and render safe information which had already leaked. He packages it and sends it off in a useless direction – away from Blair and Straw in this instance. He rigorously excludes material which is too hot for the establishment to handle. The great trick is, that the Guardian persuades its loyal readers that it is keeping tabs on the security services when in fact it is sweeping up after them.
Which is a precise description of why the Guardian fell out with Assange and WikiLeaks.
I suppose I should expect no better of the newspaper which happily sent the extremely noble Sara Tisdall to prison, but we should have learnt a lot from Rusbridger’s agreement with the security services to smash the Snowden hard drives. The Guardian argues that other copies of the drives existed. That is scarcely the point. Would you participate in a book-burning because other copies of books exist? The Guardian never stands up to the security services or the establishment. It just wants you to believe that it does.
Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Ukraine, Iran.
All pressure points on Russia/China, and all pressed with varying degrees of success over the last 15 years.
The US has upped the stakes with Ukraine, though. That’s a different level of existential threat to Russia, so the risks of it turning hot are that bit higher.
I guess the global hegemon is serious about this one. Fogh of War would love to get NATO involved.
This business with the aid convoy might be the spark.
Meet the British doctors treating Gaza’s wounded
Veteran surgeons John Beavis and Sir Terence English should be enjoying their retirements; instead they’re among the dust and rubble of a medical frontline, where the battle against overcrowding, poor sanitation and disease is just beginning
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/13/gaza-british-doctors-treat-wounded-israel-john-beavis-terence-english
‘For now, at least, the worst seems to be over. But for the injured, the long haul to recovery is just beginning. “We’re seeing typical war wounds: multiple sites of injury, tissue blasted apart and bones shattered,” says Beavis. There have been countless amputations, open fractures, spinal injuries, facial trauma, head and chest wounds, severe burns and crush injuries.
Mayasra Abu Madi, 24, lies in a bed at al-Shifa hospital. She was pregnant when her home was hit. Photograph: Sean Smith for the Guardian
There is also a growing risk of infection and disease, exacerbated by overcrowding, water shortages and poor sanitation. Medical experts have raised fears of a meningitis epidemic. Supplies, already at around two-thirds of routine needs before the current conflict, are at dangerously low levels. Disposables – syringes, needles, dressings, gloves – are running out, and key equipment is beginning to break down through intensive use.
Medical staff are exhausted. Dr Atef Yout, director of al-Nasser hospital in Khan Yunis, split his staff of 60 doctors into two teams that worked alternating 24-hour shifts. As well as dealing with around 2,000 patients brought directly to al-Nasser, the hospital absorbed patients evacuated under shelling from three other hospitals. Dr Yout’s counterpart at al-Shifa, Dr Nasser Tatar, says many of its staff did not leave the hospital for 30 days. He left on only one occasion during the fighting, when his home was destroyed in an air strike.
The grounds of al-Shifa hospital complex – which Israel claims stands over a secret Hamas bunker – have become an ad hoc refugee camp, with makeshift shelters housing the relatives of the injured, the homeless and those seeking protection from the bombing. Many of the patients need urgent transfer to better-resourced hospitals outside Gaza – in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and elsewhere in the region, or in Europe. According to Dr Tatar, about 400 patients have already been evacuated from al-Shifa, but another 800 are awaiting permission from Israel or Egypt to cross the borders. “We are grateful for foreign doctors coming to help, but it’s better to get patients out than doctors in,” he says.’
You note that the very severely injured young woman had been waiting 12 days for ‘permission’. Probably because the data base records that her brother is an adherent of Hamas. Most peoples would show contrition over this massacre/shoah and mass maiming. I could tell you more about the ‘permission’ system as applied to people who are very ill, say with cancer or renal failure.
In case you didn’t hear it on the news: “Jewish Chronicle apologises after running Gaza appeal advert”
DEC Gaza appeal
Stephen Pollard
http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/121492/dec-gaza-appeal
16 August 2014
Jewish Chronicle apologises after running Gaza appeal advert
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-28812983
On Thursday we heard Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis make multiple assertions on “Today” that British Jews have the same big bleeding hearts:
“We are filled with pain for the suffering of innocent civilians…. , suffering civilians…. in Israel and Gaza.”
“I think I speak for all of my community in expressing the pain and anguish that we feel.”
“We are very much pained by what has been going on.”
“I mentioned earlier that the loss of life of civilians causes us deep pain.”
He sounded credible.
But now we hear The Jewish Chronicle has been swamped with criticism and threats of boycott because it ran the DEC appeal for Gaza! Criticism and threats from whom? Well, the same British Jews, one imagines. The ones who, we are led to believe, represent the whole of British Jewry?
We never hear from Jews for Justice for Palestinians or Neturei Karta on the BBC (ZBC).
‘Witch hunt’ against Israel’s war critics.
‘After Haaretz commentator Gideon Levy accused air force pilots of perpetrating “the cruelest (and) most despicable deeds” against Gaza’s weakest and most helpless,” his employer hired him bodyguards.
Readers cancelled their subscriptions, people stopped in the street to insult him and government whip Yariv Levin denounced him as a liar, a “mouthpiece of the enemy” who should be put on trial for treason.
“I have never faced such aggressive reaction, never,” Levy told AFP in his cramped office at Haaretz in Tel Aviv, away from the coffee shops where he fears being insulted.
“Nobody cares here about the suffering of Gaza. More than this, if you dare to express empathy you are a traitor,” he said.’
http://news.yahoo.com/witch-hunt-against-israels-war-critics-134302477.html
Jamie Doward again on the subject of US rendition to Diego Garcia and UK assistance. Westmacott is named as the actor in the attempted cover up.
UK ambassador ‘lobbied senators to hide Diego Garcia role in rendition’
Rights groups claim that top-level talks were part of bid to redact link to Diego Garcia from report
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/16/uk-ambassador-senators-hide-diego-garcia-rendition-cia
16 August 2014
I was going to link this article of Craig’s but strangely comments are not enabled below the piece.