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.
When you read about Chapman Pincer and his expose of GCHQ in the Express back in 1967 it just seems like a different world, yet I had always assumed that in the past 40 years we had been travelling towards more openness; sadly it seems to be the other way round.
Craig, please accept 3 big Kurdish kisses on both cheeks for this piece. Not sure if the Scots do manly kisses of respect.
“The Guardian never stands up to the security services or the establishment”
Moral of the story being don’t send your scoops to the Guardian. You’d probably do better with the DM. Or better still avoid the MSM altogether.
What? The corporate media represents corporate state interests?!*?
Bloody hell.
Very well said, and written Craig.
~~
In the last session of the HoC, I noticed that in debates there were complimentary references to the man of Straw on many occasions. Just wait for him to bow out before the next election and they will be down on their knees kissing him in unmentionable places. It is quite dreadful that he still has the chutzpah to occupy a place on the green benches. One on the red benches next for him I suppose. He should be on a rope from a lamp post.
~~
X from me too!
You’re a wordy tosser, Crag. Warsi was given the job because she’s a “nigger”, to quote you know who. And just like the rest of the corrupt twats, she was no good. Don’t you remember cosying up to “Lord” Taylor? Memory slippage? Alzheimers?
You forgot to mention global warming! And Zionists! And Mr Blair! Why don’t you bang on about underage sex in faraway countries, or infidelity paid for by the taxpayer?
You filthy beast.
Governments have to understand that they represent us and if they wander so far from the values and opinions of ordinary people that they have to spy on us and lie to us using the instruments of excessive deceit, at excessive cost, they have ceased to represent us and we are not responsible for our actions in restoring our legal and human rights.
The reason that the Zionist lobby has taken such a toe-hold in world politics is that they are masters of deception. Our politicians are playing a game which is well above their own comfort level as human beings. They await instructions like the staff of Saddam Hussein awaited instructions, and whoever politely suggests another option to the Zionist game is taken outside and shot.
Islam is the only alternative, because it embodies the values of truthfulness, justice and peace which neither Communism, Capitalism nor Church have left. Needless to say the leaders of Islam are already so far up ingratiated to the establishment that they no longer represent the values of Islam. Muslim leaders do not send ignorant young men to shoot up our fellow Muslims.
If salt loses its flavour, with what will you salt it? Muslim leaders collude with Zionism to create typhoons of missiles rained down on the Palestinians because of Hamas, or bomb-proof humvees of militia charging round the Middle-East shooting up innocent women and children, invited by Muslim presidents and leaders like Barzani and Mulla Krekar.
Muslim should be helping the West to fight off the grip of Zionism, not colluding with them. None of these leaders have put one word of the Qur’an into practise. They are total munafiqs/ hypocrites.
The sole purpose of torture is that if you combine torture with mind-changing drugs, you can burn out the moral education of even a pious or normal human being. Torture is used by the Zionist Gestapo to change Muslims into monsters. The psychotropic drugs remove the parts of the brain that become hyper-active under torture, the parts which deal with respect for others.
The sole purpose of rendition is to change Muslims through MK ultra mind control techniques. Nothing whatsoever to do with gathering information. So I personally apologise for all those who have had their personalities modified by Zionist torture and psychotropic drugs. They were once human beings but they have been converted in to Frankensteins by the Zionist Nazis.
The leaders of Islam are either Frankensteined already or absolutely terified that they are going to be the next on the Stazi Zombie list.
So you tried to arselick your way back into the Guardian’s good books and one of their resident twats got the drop on you (at least according to you).
Stop moaning about everything, these articles are what makes your blogs worth reading.
Are Enoch, Bunt and Ed L Garudian employees with a little time on their hands in the lunch hour?
Mary, if I didn’t say anything that is obviously true please let me know.
What MJ said. And if Cobain’s sanitising stuff before it gets to Rusbridger, probably better to address that as the real issue. Certainly don’t expect any acknowledgement or followup from the current generation of MSM hacks – with the occasional exception of the DM, as MJ said. Private Eye will lend a sympathetic ear, too, and that’s where the hacks often go with material they can’t break in-house. Looks like one for ‘Street of Shame’, especially if you can tie in some interesting political/commercial relationships.
Also is it not possible that, in being unable to identify your source to Cobain, and/or your source being unwilling to go on the record, the journalist would have been bound to treat the story as interesting but unprintable?
Cobain has a decent record. The Paul Foot Prize is not given lightly, and not given by the government.
“Islam is the only alternative, because it embodies the values of truthfulness, justice and peace which neither Communism, Capitalism nor Church have left. Needless to say the leaders of Islam are already so far up ingratiated to the establishment that they no longer represent the values of Islam. Muslim leaders do not send ignorant young men to shoot up our fellow Muslims.”
Guano indeed.
Couldn’t agree more, Craig. I has been going downhill for years… was disgusted in its support for war from Kosovo onwards. If I have a choice of newspaper I go for The Telegraph. It is right-wing but you can red between the lines.
I really can’t believe that The Guardian would allow an advert like that to appear (on business reasons if nothing else…) Have to wonder how much they were bribed to put it in… and how much their circulation will now go down…
Baal
Don’t be stupid. The Paul Foot award is given jointly by Private Eye and … The Guardian!
I believe this was Paul Foot’s very last column, published shortly before his untimely death:
Tony Blair’s latest musing about Iraq shows how far he has come since the glory days of weapons of mass destruction. He now has only one justification for the invasion of Iraq. It “rid the world” of the dictator Saddam Hussein.
This justification has serious consequences for British foreign policy. For if it is Britain’s aim to rid the world of dictators, where do we go next? Here’s a suggestion. Twenty-six million people live in beleaguered Uzbekistan, almost exactly the same number of people who live in Iraq. President Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan is a dictator who has perfected many of the techniques of repression developed by Saddam. There are at least 5,000 people unjustly imprisoned in Uzbekistan, many of them for their political or religious views. They are systematically tortured and murdered. There is in Uzbekistan nothing remotely resembling a free press or free speech.
Obviously Uzbekistan should be next in line for liberation by Tony Blair and his armed forces. A sure sign of the impending British invasion of Uzbekistan is the attitude of the British ambassador there, a feisty Scotsman called Craig Murray. He shocked the Uzbeks last year with a series of speeches complaining about, among other things, the rather un-British habit of boiling dissidents to death. He even incited the Uzbek people to “fight for democracy”. That is how you would expect a representative of Tony Blair’s government to behave.
But wait. Mr Murray has been recalled and scolded by the Foreign Office, who reminded him (as if he didn’t know) that the Uzbek dictator provided airfields and bases from which the US air force could carry out their bombing raids on Afghanistan. Surely Mr Murray could understand that this generosity put Mr Karimov’s dictatorship firmly on the side of the good guys, the democrats and the freedom fighters, and that Murray’s speeches had caused nothing but embarrassment in the lands of the free.
Dictators, in other words, can have their uses, and Mr Murray should shut up. To his credit, he didn’t. He went back to Tashkent and continued to denounce the government there. Indeed, he committed the shocking sin of comparing the treatment of prisoners in Uzbekistan to what happened in Iraq under Saddam (and is still happening under the auspices of the country’s liberators). Before long, I predict, Mr Murray will be packed off somewhere safer.
But where? What about another country with roughly the same population: Saudi Arabia? If Mr Murray goes there he might be asked about the terrorist atrocities that continue to plague that country. He would have to pay respectful attention to the views of Crown Prince Abdullah, the country’s de facto (and unelected) ruler.
Responding to the latest terrorist attack in the oil city of Khobar last week, the crown prince went public. He made a solemn vow “to crush this corrupt and deviant group” which had carried out the terrorism. Corrupt and deviant group! That is the most accurate definition I have yet come across of the feudal monarchy that governs Saudi Arabia. Nowhere on Earth is the gap between the quite disgustingly rich and the even more disgustingly poor more flagrantly flaunted than in Saudi Arabia. Nowhere is dissent or divergence more ruthlessly punished. No more appropriate target exists for the grand democratic crusade of New Labour.
But wait. What is this statement slithering out of the Foreign Office and its secretary of Straw? In its hour of need, he assures us, Britain stands solidly behind the corrupt and deviant group that rules Saudi Arabia. Crown Prince Abdullah, in other words, is as secure from British invasion as is Karimov and scores of other dictators across the world who, by providing air bases or cheap oil or helpful UN votes, have proved themselves true friends of the west.
· Almost exactly 10 years ago, I wrote this column in some dismay at the eulogies for the dead former US president (and crook), Richard Nixon. Instead of the day of mourning called for by President Clinton, I suggested a day of rejoicing. I feel very much the same about the oceans of drivel pouring out in honour of the dead former president, Ronald Reagan.
Reagan was as corrupt as Nixon, if not more so. The Iran-Contra scandal, which he and his gang orchestrated from the White House, was far worse than Watergate. It caused chaos in Central America, as Nixon’s war did in south-east Asia. Reagan specialised in folksy rightwing jokes. He (or his speech writer) once cracked that the difference between democracy and people’s democracy was the difference between a jacket and a straitjacket. He loved democracy, in other words, provided it has nothing to do with people.
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2004/jun/09/foreignpolicy.politicalcolumnists
The Guardian is just as much a part of the British nationalist establishment as the Daily Mail. The founders of the Guardian must be looking down with tears in their eyes. Boycott all newspapers – except the Sunday Herald.
Dan Hull
“…except the Sunday Herald.”
Their unambiguous position on Serengeti wildebeast is indeed not too offensive.
“Governments have to understand that they represent us”
Why?
Apart from a brief period post-war, when they were fattening us up, they haven’t done before or since.
“Needless to say the leaders of Islam are already so far up ingratiated to the establishment that they no longer represent the values of Islam.”
Yup. It’s a universal problem.
The sooner people understand that govt or media or church are merely a means of managing a population the sooner people can identify the real problem with which they’re faced.
With all the recent talk of oligarchs re Russia and Ukraine you’d think people would be well clued up and well down the road to enlightenment.
But no.
I mean, doesn’t the West have oligarchs, and our govts, media and churches only vehicles through which their miracles are performed?
I think peeps ought to get a bit more local with whom the gods of our era really are.
Utilizing Herman and Chomsky’s ‘propaganda model’, the guys at medialens nailed the Guardian for the pro-establishment rag it is, years ago.
CM-So are you with Putin or against us then, because he is the only man left standing against the false flaggers & Reagan type devils (BTW he just gave Snowden 3 years refuge from the Beast). Obama and Cameron have suddenly gone quiet on MH17. Putin is playing a long game – his men were first on the ground and they have the definitive video evidence and pieces of canon shrapnel, he just waits for the devils to dig themselves into a deep enough hole (even to the extent of doctoring the black box recordings, but novorussia already took copies) for him to claim Eastern Russia as a prize, with the blackmail that he will expose them. Poor Rusbridger knows all about blackmail-they probably have enough on him to turn his jet black wig grey !
They ain’t making Jews like Jesus anymore
*riffles through old job references*
No, haven’t got a Paul Foot. Well done you.
What I was trying to say was that there are limits to the amount of unsupportable testimony you can include in a piece for any reputable paper, if it is to stay reputable. A second hand leak…it’s been through two sets of kidneys… and even when I was briefly working for a disreputable paper, I’d have thought twice about it – my editor wouldn’t have, but nil nisi bonum.
What I would have done would have been to research it myself. And I could easily have missed the killer point without meaning to, while still unearthing something interesting. In this case, I might have already got a lead on Diego Garcia which appeared to fit.
That said, he should have got back to you. I do agree with that.
Just Squwking
“So are you with Putin or against us then”
Against. Personally I am not so fucking stupid to have a favourite mass murderer.
The Guardian has banned me from the day we dared to link to your ‘where is werrity story’. Rusbridger does not like it up him and his moderators are shit scared about their jobs.
least to say there are still enough masochists frequenting this excuse of a paper. Thanks for rewminding us of the Guardians help in deflecting torture allegations, Craig, we know who their paymasters are and why they bought a controling share in this rag.
@ mary, off course they have been told to spit at Craig, the usual MI ire.
BTW, Wick is interesting. And civvy-looking Gulfstreams (plural) were often in evidence at Leuchars. You could see them from the bus.
And civvy-looking Gulfstreams (plural) were often in evidence at Leuchars
Typical St Andrews students arriving for start of term!
LOL. (Or golfers…) God, what a boring bunch of business wannabees they were too.
Jesus if he ever existed and wasn’t made-up, was another charlatan shyster. Miracles -water into wine? Loaves and fishes? Get a grip, Jesus was in the pay of the Romans and his ‘father’ a humble carpenter my arse, he was no doubt turning out wooden weapons of mass destruction in his shop, and Mary too (not that one) was no doubt in on the game, if not on the game, with her false-flag ‘virgin’ birth. How is it then that Jesus spoke with a sonorous Northumberland brogue? The Romans never before or since held their census at Easter. I cannot agree however that mock crucifixion was any sort of ethical treatment for his son-of-god delusions, but he was only playing dead afterwards, so the ‘cure’ might have been well intentioned cross-therapy, though clearly it was ineffectual.
If Hamas is an Israeli puppet organisation, why’d the Palestinians vote for them in numbers, it should have been glaringly obvious on the street what they were and did the international monitoring of the election, infact instead rig the election? If legitimately elected I despair they’re as much under the cosh of religions and a malign press as the rest of us.
Schools in Donetsk and Lugansk are supposed to be going back soon, what chance of that?
Phil “Against (Putin). Personally I am not so fucking stupid to have a favourite mass murderer.”
There is only one mistake Putin made of late – when Bandar flew into Moscow to bribe him out of the Syrian conflict, he should have got the Chechen Government to issue a summons. The saud/wahabi bagman who financed(with the CIAs best advice) 40,000 Chechen wahabi extremists to their death by Putin, needed to be hanged in a public square in Grozny. BTW-Assad is also a “mass murderer” who is having to deal with, yes, you guessed it, the SAME Chechens whom Putin chased out of Russia, and yes once more, also financed by the saud/wahab cult.
what about rusbridgers conduct in relation to the hacking issue, gordon brown mentioned his failings in a speech in parliament. his conduct allowed cameron to keep his hands clean.
who the hell reads the gaurdian, 95% mainstream media is garbage.