My factual demolition of the anti-Snowden story has been read by hundreds of thousands of people, very probably millions, around the internet, 50,000 so far on this site alone, and tweeted by thousands of people. It has been tweeted at – repeatedly – every single mainstream media journalist who has been repeating the government propaganda.
The extraordinary thing is that no jurnalist, anywhere, has made any attempt to deny the facts I give. Not one journalist in the entire crowd of corporate media paid lackeys at the BBC, Sunday Times, Reuters or anywhere at all has addressed or tried to refute the facts which make it impossible that their Snowden story is true. They have not addressed it in their publications or even tried to defend themselves on social media. Not one journalist, not anywhere. (One or two have pointed out that the fifth point is an ad hominem, which is true. Not all ad hominems are invalid, but the first four facts destroy the argument anyway).
Neither has there been any response from the “safe” retired diplomats or security consultants the mainstream media can generally roll out on these occasions.
So here is a challenge to the Sunday Times, BBC and rest of the mainstream media. If your story is true, where exactly are my facts wrong? If you refuse to address this, why do you consider yourself a journalist?
To avoid you “journalists” having to do even a click of research, here is my article again:
Five Reasons the MI6 Story is a Lie
The Sunday Times has a story claiming that Snowden’s revelations have caused danger to MI6 and disrupted their operations. Here are five reasons it is a lie.
1) The alleged Downing Street source is quoted directly in italics. Yet the schoolboy mistake is made of confusing officers and agents. MI6 is staffed by officers. Their informants are agents. In real life, James Bond would not be a secret agent. He would be an MI6 officer. Those whose knowledge comes from fiction frequently confuse the two. Nobody really working with the intelligence services would do so, as the Sunday Times source does. The story is a lie.
2) The argument that MI6 officers are at danger of being killed by the Russians or Chinese is a nonsense. No MI6 officer has been killed by the Russians or Chinese for 50 years. The worst that could happen is they would be sent home. Agents’ – generally local people, as opposed to MI6 officers – identities would not be revealed in the Snowden documents. Rule No.1 in both the CIA and MI6 is that agents’ identities are never, ever written down, neither their names nor a description that would allow them to be identified. I once got very, very severely carpeted for adding an agents’ name to my copy of an intelligence report in handwriting, suggesting he was a useless gossip and MI6 should not be wasting their money on bribing him. And that was in post communist Poland, not a high risk situation.
3) MI6 officers work under diplomatic cover 99% of the time. Their alias is as members of the British Embassy, or other diplomatic status mission. A portion are declared to the host country. The truth is that Embassies of different powers very quickly identify who are the spies in other missions. MI6 have huge dossiers on the members of the Russian security services – I have seen and handled them. The Russians have the same. In past mass expulsions, the British government has expelled 20 or 30 spies from the Russian Embassy in London. The Russians retaliated by expelling the same number of British diplomats from Moscow, all of whom were not spies! As a third of our “diplomats” in Russia are spies, this was not coincidence. This was deliberate to send the message that they knew precisely who the spies were, and they did not fear them.
4) This anti Snowden non-story – even the Sunday Times admits there is no evidence anybody has been harmed – is timed precisely to coincide with the government’s new Snooper’s Charter act, enabling the security services to access all our internet activity. Remember that GCHQ already has an archive of 800,000 perfectly innocent British people engaged in sex chats online.
5) The paper publishing the story is owned by Rupert Murdoch. It is sourced to the people who brought you the dossier on Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction, every single “fact” in which proved to be a fabrication. Why would you believe the liars now?
There you have five reasons the story is a lie.
Please communicate this challenge to the “journalist” of your choice.
The gauntlet has been thrown into the court of Archant’s establishment paper of the year 2014, the EDP.
Well, perhaps not in the UK, but one of the liberal German media published this http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/netzpolitik/the-sunday-times-ueber-snowden-dokumente-ungereimtheiten-in-der-berichterstattung-a-1038871.html
not your points, but still.
Absolutely worth the reinforcement of repetition. One cannot reject, rebuff, refute or repulse truth. There is a war on ideologies; the tenets of terror override the principles of honesty, integrity and indeed reality. Thus anybody with ideas that challenge the agenda of the enigmatic establishment is a miscreant, an apostate.
This alternate reality is best judged here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IuwOfQI8YA8
I can’t agree that point 5 is ad hominem. It is simply a fact that the Sunday Times is a Murdoch paper and that it promoted lies about Iraq and quoted the same sources. It’s not ad hominem to say that someone already caught lying should not be trusted.
Its levanthal and aaron brown,stupid !
‘Not one journalist in the entire crowd of corporate media paid lackeys at the BBC, Sunday Times, Reuters or anywhere at all has addressed or tried to refute the facts which make it impossible that their Snowden story is true. They have not addressed it in their publications or even tried to defend themselves on social media. Not one journalist, not anywhere.’
Craig- in this instance it is the MSM, led by the Sunday Times, that is spinning a line and theorising about the ‘damage done’ by Edward Snowden. Consequently to dismiss you as a ‘conspiracy theorist’ would be counter productive, as in this case you are puncturing a ‘conspiracy theory’ that your opponents are postulating. You have instead been unjustly awarded the mantle of an Unperson, whose opinions deserve only to be ignored or ridiculed.
There is no way that the ‘stenographers to power’, as they are referred to, will respond, especially not the ZBC cohort.
Good one, Old Mark.
Stay forever young!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtFEzhaNrT4
I wonder why journalists don’t make the point that during WWII the British government fed lies to the enemy, but that to its own people, the policy was to tell the truth, nothing but the truth, and as far as possible, the whole truth.
If this principle is being applied, and the circumstances are easier than during WWII, then indeed Snowden is a traitor whom no-one should be defending.
Craig, did you see the CNN interview with the Sunday Times ‘reporter’ of this story. Truly a classic:
http://edition.cnn.com/videos/us/2015/06/14/tom-harper-nsa-files-snowden-howell-intv-nr.cnn
I wonder why journalists don’t make the point that during WWII the British government fed lies to the enemy, but that to its own people, the policy was to tell the truth, nothing but the truth, and as far as possible, the whole truth.
Good question. Possibly because this is no longer the case? *Thinks:* Iraq.
In any event, the policy was not to tell obvious lies at home, but to spare no effort in suppressing and discrediting the more inconvenient facts. Which tradition seems to be maintained today, and into which methodology Craig’s complaint fits rather neatly.
And, BBC propaganda to German-occupied Europe seems to have been consciously and intentionally factual except when misleading the enemy as to our intentions for military reasons. Those deceptions were, obviously, mirrored at home.
Brilliant CNN interview… ‘How do you know what you say is true?’ ‘Err… We don’t know’ – pretty much sums it up. I especially liked the apparently unironically intended concluding remark about being unable to verify government claims without leaked documents.
Thanks for that reliably, so it was a ‘well placed informant in the home office’.
The interview is telling, Toms ayes are darting around trying to find something of substance to say, especially in the last few minutes, he’s grasping at so many straws, what a bad show for the Sunday Times and what a bloody nose for the warmonger Murdoch.
Old Mark; “as in this case you are puncturing a ‘conspiracy theory’ that your opponents are postulating.”
And yet Craig is fully in bed with the “corporate media paid lackeys” as he’s fully signed-up on the Ukraine conspiracy theory;
https://consortiumnews.com/2015/06/15/samantha-power-liberal-war-hawk/
Classic indeed ‘Reliably’ -that particular set of air-brushed circumstances by unseen, unnamed officials laundered by, as Mary wrote, ‘stenographers to power’ can be construed in reality to be a parody constructed to illustrate the core sickness of Western main-stream journalism.
Stephen Colbert captured this exact pathology in a report that outlined the rules of journalism in the US which I have anglicized here:
But, listen, let’s review the rules. Here’s how it works.The Prime Minister makes decisions. He’s the decider. The Downing street press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Just put ’em through a spell check and go home. Get to know your family again. Make love to your wife. Write that novel you got kicking around in your head. You know, the one about the intrepid British reporter with the courage to stand up to the establishment? You know, fiction!
If I were Tom Harper, I wouldn’t be looking for a job as a spin doctor when Murdoch ejects him. Poor sod. Still, maybe that will be an object lesson in substantiating what his sources say – if there’s a next time… That interview’s almost an en clair admission that the Times is the uncritical mouthpiece of the government. Case closed.
Very true Mark Golding, well said there. The abrogation of responsibility promoted by the echo chamber provided in the oligarch owned media, have effectively destroyed any notion of oversight and scrutiny in the affairs of Evil Doers in the “political leadership” hierarchy. This has been the direct result of the relentless war on all our liberties and cherished human values by a certain group of ideologically insane operatives.
Snowden has placed intelligence-community officials in grave jeopardy. If it weren’t for Snowden, NSA could have destroyed Tom Drake, but with Snowden’s detailed documentary evidence, NSA officials are exposed as corrupt felons obstructing justice to conceal their crimes.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2015/06/15/269866/possible-pentagon-destruction.html
Good thing there are no independent courts in the US, or our brave NSA heroes might face decades of imprisonment in the brutal US penal camps.
This is an uber classic by Murdochs Faux.This is an uber classic by Murdochs Faux.
I also saw the CNN interview with the ST journalist. It was straight, ‘we published what the UK Government told us’, and his attempts at justification were so feeble it was clear he didn’t believe himself.
Glenn Greenwald ripped Kirsty Wark to bits when being interviewed by pointing out it was not the job of journalists to present the Government’s stance as fact and then ask him to defend himself against it.
They haven’t learned from that, seemingly indifferent to the fact that their reputations and sales are going down the plughole.
Times Throws Toys From Pram:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/06/15/times_snowden_greenwald/
Sensitive little animals, ain’t they?
And Greenwald really goes to town on the shitty-journalism aspect:
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/06/14/sunday-times-report-snowden-files-journalism-worst-also-filled-falsehoods/
(In case you thought it was just Craig going off on one)
As you say, and have said for a long time, and as many others who comment here especially regarding Ukraine and Israel, the news is not the news, and the are ‘mainstream media liars’. However, if you watch Russia Today for balance, as I do, you will have seen this morning that the Times article was questioned quite strongly. Glenn Greenwald questioned the article for a different lie and that was that David Miranda had taken the files to Moscow. A sixth lie.
So ‘Not one journalist, not anywhere’ is not quite true. I expected to see you on Russia Today. I was only half-watching but I think they very briefly interviewed the author of the article.
This was published yesterday.
http://rt.com/news/267382-snowden-smear-sunday-times/
It would have been so much better if the powers that be hadn’t handed pure gold propaganda to the likes of RT, and instead told the simple truth. Which is:
“TO ALL EDITORS: We haven’t a clue where the files have ended up, and for that reason we have to assume that some at least are in the wrong hands, and may even be decryptable, and take precautions accordingly. Please do not embroider this press release – you know sod-all too.”
This has been so sloppily handled, that it looks more like a case of:
“TO RUSSIA AND CHINA: We know you’ve got our files, and decrypted them. We would like to instil the maximum doubt about their authenticity and usefulness since you now know that we know. PS, Mr Putin, please kick Snowden out.”
Which the addressees may choose to believe or not.
What I have noticed is the mainstream media are leading with ISIS stories on the news and in the papers,pushing the defcon 1 threat.
It could be a counter tactic to social media who are no savvy to the “Bogus terrorist” threat.
Yes the lack of coverage,of your claim regarding MI5/MI6 officers in peril appears to vindicate your position.
I still say that these less than truthful stories are aimed at infringing our freedoms.
“It would have been so much better if the powers that be hadn’t handed pure gold propaganda to the likes of RT”
Exactly Ba’al. The US is throwing away billions of dollars to fight the propaganda war which Hilary Clinton says Russia Today and PressTV are winning. What the stupid woman does not seem to grasp is that Russia Today and PressTV are winning, not because they have billions behind them but because they strive for accurate journalism. Likewise on here with people like Resident Dissident. The reason he looks so stupid is not because he is stupid so much as the links he chooses to make his points, nearly all of which are questionable, like the Lebedev press articles he loves so much about poisonings by Russia and the shooting down of MH17 by Russia.
With RD it is laughable, with the mainstream media it is unpardonable.
Also pushed by the media today,is Michelle Obama and her quest for education for women.
I almost choked on my caviar when I heard her say women need equal rights for education.
Her husbands administration are in bed with one of the most female repressive nations in the world,namely Saudi Arabia.
Infact according to the tv producer Michael Moore,Saudi Arabia owns 7% of the USA,and if the Saudi’s were to remove their cash investments from the US,the American economy would collapse.
I can only suggest that Michelle Obama and her husband,are playing the good cop bad cop routine.
Almost certainly the fuss ia distraction, with a side order of cockup. The Times piece came from that well-known alcoholic pederast Mr. A. Sourceinthehomeoffice, and masqueraded as a leak. To a single compliant newspaper. It’s completely deniable by anyone actually likely to be involved.
What is intriguing is the level of deception intended. Perhaps the impression to be conveyed is that our spooks are now in a tailspin and it’s safe for someone hostile to do something we know he’s planning? Perhaps Snowden was working for the CIA, but we wish to gold-plate the perception that he wasn’t? Or are we just showing the population what dangerous times we live in, what scum Snowden is, and how much SIS needs a budget increase? Conspiracy theorists can have a whale of a time here.
As for British journalist with few exceptions,Humber Wolfe’s old rhyme seem more appropriate now than ever.
You cannot hope
to bribe or twist,
thank God! the
British journalist.
But, seeing what
the man will do
unbribed, there’s
no occasion to.
(Over the Fire 1930).
Russia Today and PressTV are winning, not because they have billions behind them but because they strive for accurate journalism.
Sure, John. Like Pravda did. We know.
Likewise on here with people like Resident Dissident. The reason he looks so stupid…
Doesn’t look stupid to me, John. RD’s got a head on his shoulders and realises that one of the main functions of RT/PTV is to amplify negative perceptions of the West, while minimising negative perceptions of Russia/Iran. Fair enough, we do it too, and by the same means. We play up the opposition’s disasters, and play down our own. And we play little fugues on the truth, which make them attractive to the converted.
Getting too personal for a moment, I make a clear distinction between RD and some of the people some (only) of whose views he shares. I think he’s sincere, and I’d have a pint with him. I really don’t think there was any need to lug him into it, but since you did, that adds to my perception of you as a mere propagandist.