UPDATE One reason I was so stunned at the Guardian’s publication of these lies is that I had gone direct from the Ecuadorean Embassy to the Guardian building in Kings Cross to give an in-depth but off the record briefing to Euan MacAskill, perhaps their last journalist of real integrity, on the strategy for Julian. I told Euan that Russia was ruled out. I did not mention this yesterday as I greatly respect Euan and wanted to speak to him first. But on phoning the Guardian I find that Euan “retired” the day the lying article was published. That seems a very large coincidence.
I am just back from a family funeral – one of a succession – and a combination of circumstances had left me feeling pretty down lately, and not blogging much. But I have to drag myself to the keyboard to denounce a quite extraordinary set of deliberate lies published in the Guardian about a Russian plot to spring Julian Assange last December.
I was closely involved with Julian and with Fidel Narvaez of the Ecuadorean Embassy at the end of last year in discussing possible future destinations for Julian. It is not only the case that Russia did not figure in those plans, it is a fact that Julian directly ruled out the possibility of going to Russia as undesirable. Fidel Narvaez told the Guardian that there was no truth in their story, but the Guardian has instead chosen to run with “four anonymous sources” – about which sources it tells you no more than that.
I have no idea who the Guardian’s “anonymous sources” are, but I know 100% for certain that the entire story of a Russian plot to extract Julian from the Embassy last Christmas Eve is a complete and utter fabrication. I strongly suspect that, as usual, MI6 tool Luke Harding’s “anonymous sources” are in fact the UK security services, and this piece is entirely black propaganda produced by MI6.
It is very serious indeed when a newspaper like the Guardian prints a tissue of deliberate lies in order to spread fake news on behalf of the security services. I cannot find words eloquent enough to express the depth of my contempt for Harding and Katherine Viner, who have betrayed completely the values of journalism. The aim of the piece is evidently to add a further layer to the fake news of Wikileaks’ (non-existent) relationship to Russia as part of the “Hillary didn’t really lose” narrative. I am, frankly, rather shocked.
Have you been with Julian Assange Lately? Best Regards.
Sorry to hear about your losses Craig.Time is a great healer?
As for The Guardian printing MI6 lies, I guess they stated tgeir price and it was met? There was always something off about The Guardian being forced to smash their computers ans Rushbrigers resignation.It hasnt been the same since, which is why I read but dont subscribe.This I guess is another attempt to keep the Grand Jury for Julian alive and to re habilitate Clinton at the same time given tthe elections are coming up soon? Jill Stien seems to b the only sensible alternative?
For decades the Guardian was my newspaper of choice. Now I actively despise what it has become, and wish ill on it and the so-called journalists who fill its pages with whatever the intelligence services require.
Alongside the Trump and Russia obsessions, it looks like there’s a new story on the horizon. Over the past couple of weeks the G has been publishing a series of articles full of horror stories – as dramatic as they are unverifiable and therefore undisprovable – about the terrible plight of the Uyghurs of Xinjiang at the hands of their evil oppressors the Chinese.
I assume this is part of a softening-up process whereby several thousand Wahhabi-financed and inspired, CIA-armed and trained, extreme Islamist Uyghur jihadis are to be returned from Syria to Xinjiang and presented to us as heroic fighters for freedom against “Butcher Xi” and his barrel bombs and chemical weapons…
I think I’ve read the script.
I started reading the Guardian 7 years ago, it was the a reasonably credible newspaper. Boy have we taken a slide! It is totally useles , it is a MSM mouthpice unde Whiner (I did not misspell) she is a bitch , who you can pay for and she will do her services. Scum.
Scum attracts scum (chemistry) and Harding and Monbiot show up, even alligators would gulpat the prospect of eating them.
The proper place for them is an unmarked massgrave, as will happen if their calls for nuclear war ar granted. ( istill vouch for the mass grave option, without nuclear war, but I am a Barbarian, I am Danish)
Craig , if Julian did not wish to go to Russia why was he willing to be diplomat at the Ecuduarian embassy in Moscow
We know from. the leaked embassy CCTV that the guardian story had some legs
He was not willing to be a diplomat at the Ecuadorean Embassy in Russia. He was willing to be an Ecuadorean diplomat, but not in Russia. I have no idea what you think is shown by leaked CCTV, but it has nothing to do with Julian going to Russia. The Guardian story has no standing whatsoever.
The official correspondence to legislators state different
This appears to be a retro-fitted deception:
– “Comes in a letter written apparently recently by the anti-Assange Moreno government”
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2018/09/extraordinary-and-deliberate-lies-from-the-guardian/comment-page-3/#comment-786937
some facts or documents to prove this?
Buck up, old boy! Just surviving is a win against the evil ones. And your words and rights are powerful.
Thanks for all the important work you do Craig, take time to rest and come back refreshed.
I am just back from a family funeral – one of a succession
The older you get the more mortal those around you appear……..it moves from being surreal to being exhausting. Sometimes it requires good poetry to achieve some sense of reflection
If Russia did not figure in the future destinations, why did Julian have to rule it out
Saying “I do not want to go to Russia” means it does not figure in future destinations, fuckwit.
And with that, Craig, you just entered my hall of fame…
Don’t let anyone ever tell you that swearing can’t be classy.
+1
Again why would he even mention it .
Maybe he did not want to discus at this meeting but Julian must have given it some thought to declare it unsuitable.
maybe it was mentioned by someone else because Russia doesn’t have an extradition treaty with the US or UK, and Julian discounted it
Why are you being so stubborn about this?
Certainly in 2010 not an issue.
Great Answer!
Lol Tony was it worth getting up early to get so easily pawned?
I think Craig’s answer speaks volumes. Why be so rude to someone for asking such a simple question?
Clearly, Russia was discussed at some point during this meeting. ‘Undesirable’ is not a word I associate with completely ruling something out. ‘Undesirable’ would be a word that implies ‘not ideal’ or ‘possibly second or third choice’.
Unfortunately, this particular blog may lend more credibility to the Guardian story.
Because the question was very obviously snide, ill-motivated and an attempt to undermine what I had written. To be even more clear. Russia was not discussed as an option. It was not number 3, 4, 5, 6 or 212 on a list of options. It was mentioned purely in eliminating places that were not desirable. Is that plain enough for you?
Made by Dom: I don’t know what linguistic universe you reside in, but in common parlance “undesirable” usually means something or someone extremely unpleasant, as in “we don’t want any undesirables in our movement”.
So if I said to you, “Tony, why not burn your house down and murder your kids?”
And you replied “no.”
I would be justified in saying “if burning his house down and murdering his kids did not figure in future plans, why did Tony have to tule it out?”?
The cover of Newsweek is a picture of Putin being squeezed by US sanctions, with the headline “the US declares economic war on Russia with the toughest sanctions to-date”
Which is fine, all countries are allowed to “play” as much as they feel they need to – means there might be some blow-back, and I don’t mean Novichuk, but did anyone else notice soon to be jail-bird Papadopolous tangentially naming David Cameron in relation to the Steele Dossier/Skripalgate? Twitter, I mentioned it in the last thread
There are a number of reasons for the anti-Russian narrative, including a tactic by Remain, to create a common enemy, to keep Britain in the EU for ‘security reasons’. I doubt its a winner because following Brexit, Russia is a natural ally, hence why most Leavers, not neo-cons, are pro-Russian, but its also evidence of the ‘secret services’ running wild, with fake news and attacks, which is no longer a secret.
It started when Brennan used CIA-MI6 contacts to create the Trump-Is-An-Agent narrative and feed it from “Reliable Sources” back to FBI.
Then it morphed into “France and Germany will be captured by Russia IF……” as UK up-anchored to leave.
It has gone haywire and now looks like a bad movie script
Sorry to hear of your losses and thanks for taking the rime to bring this piece of Guardian fuck-wittery to our attention.
Our contempt for Viner and Harding echoes yours completely, but then many Puff Pieces about “Cities of the World” now seem to be brought to us courtesy of the Rockefeller Foundation these days, the very source of all that is Neoliberal and Anti Democratic
Condolences Mr Murray – don’t worry, we are capable of amusing ourselves here until you are ready to return to the fray.
The Groan has lost ALL it’s relevance aside from a barely handful of writers
Chakrabortty, Collinson, Ronay, Bell …
( not heard much from Steve B recently or Barney, since his WC reports of how Russians aren’t the vodka sodden racist anti europeans as Harding has spent his whole career selling)
Their wholesale abuse of their mythical mission is daily more obvious as they can’t even be bothered to keep that mask in place. They use passive aggressive coverage of the Labour conference and sly promotion of the AS trope, to try and disrupt party membership unity, while keeping the unemployed Blairites in the limelight, ready to promote the great ‘split’ SDP2. I suppose they are more and more desperate because of bloggers like Craig and their burgeoning readership ready to rapidly rebutt the neocon war drum thumping and rush to complete the privatisation and deregulation hard brexit master plan (while pretending to be antibrexit)
I wonder whether McAskill was a sell out or was sold out? Will he speak out? Any opinions?
“Chakrabortty, Collinson, Ronay, Bell …
I’ve had no time for Bell since he published a cartoon calling Scottish nationalists Nazis. I object to being described as a Nazi by some bloated establishment smugturd for daring to want to see Article 1 Part 2 of the United Nations Charter implemented in my country.
Yes, Steve Bell became a foaming mouthed British nationalist, marching in lockstep with Cameron, Osborne and the BBC, during the indyref campaign.
And you think that one failure in your eyes means his whole output can be ignored?
He is a cartoonist. A caricaturist. And he is a speaker of truth to power. He is regularly censored or disenfranchised by his own newspaper! You have missed many important opinions since the indyref that you may benefit from. Go see for yourself at his belltoons site.
I don’t expect to change your mind or that everyone should agree about everything. In my opinion he is one of the good guys.
I should have added John Crace to that little list.
I hope they all get time to read the bloggers such as Craig to see they are not alone in the fight.
“And you think that one failure in your eyes means his whole output can be ignored?”
It wasn’t one. It was dozens of cartoons. Crass boorish rubbish that the Daily Mail would have rejected. Gratuitously and deliberately offensive, seemingly actually designed to be unfunny as another way to shove a fat metropolitan finger in our faces.
“I would like Scotland to go fuck itself”. Wow. What searing, rapier-like wit.
“In my opinion he is one of the good guys.”
Good guys don’t call people Nazis for aspiring to self-determination. Obese smug greasy sweaty Guardianista wankers do though.
One issue – that he had a personal opinion on. Is he not allowed that? I don’t recall these cartoons but will look them up this afternoon.
I personally believe that Scotland should be independent btw and the media monstering and marshalling of opinion by the DS was risible – the pop crooner Bowie living many years in the USA begging ‘don’t leave us’ was particularly grating. As was Camerons fist pumping and claiming Betty would be chuffed or whatever.
Mackaskill just retired , his parting piece was a nice reminder of the old Graun
https://www.theguardian.com/membership/2018/sep/22/snowden-guardian-reporter-trump-mackaskill-interview
In the run-up to the war in Iraq in 2003, I was writing the splash. Blair and Bush had met in the Azores for a final mini-summit ahead of the invasion. I can’t remember the intro now but it something like UK and US on verge of war. Alastair Campbell phoned and asked what I was doing. So I told him. He said that is not the story: it should be Blair secures Bush pledge on Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I told him I was not writing that. Ten minutes later, the deputy editor Paul Johnson came to see me and said Campbell had phoned the editor to complain I had the wrong intro and it should be Israel-Palestine. Paul asked where the reference was Israel-Palestine was. It said paragraph four. He said: “Make it paragraph 18.” That is the attitude I liked.
I think the realisation that MSM is nothing more than a government/secret service propaganda machine is initially a shock.
Although when you start to comprehend how “the state” works nothing now comes as a surprise.
The truth is out there but if it ever gets an airing is questionable, believe nothing question everything.
Perhaps Luke Harding et al just find it difficult to believe that our chaps would lie to them.
Rubbish. People like Harding are filth and they know they are.
For those who have abandoned the Guardian and have a gap to fill in their daily reading list, I recommend Off Guardian which keeps a close eye on the G’s lies and distortions and publishes a lot of other good stuff as well. Always worth a look at
https://off-guardian.org/
Yes, couldn’t agree more with you and Grafter below. Unfortunately, like the rest of us, it is under constant attack. I for one have gone back to creative writing because I have no idea who can see what I write since the proven shadow-banning on various platforms. Right now my computer is under attack, and I suspect my provider, Virgin, is complicit in the attacks.
Sounds like a complete tar-baby.
I recommend an occasional look out of the window. For example, almost every webpage in the world reports to Google when a person browses there, and tells Google that person’s IP and which page they’ve browsed to, and when. This is done because the fonts are called from a Google server. They don’t have to be. They just are. Look in the code of a webpage and you’ll see how. And 99.9% of web programmers will tell you it has to be like that. That’s how mental submissiveness works. Do they write about that in “Off Guardian”? The hell with the idea of good clean proper journalism.
Well clutch my handbag in faux outrage. “Tar baby” has joined the list of verboten terms (across the water) in the ever expanding effort to shut down debate and restrict discourse strictly to Identity Politics. Where the septics lead we will inevitably follow.
The real Guardian…………….https://off-guardian.org/
The saddest and most disturbing aspect of all this is that the Guardian now seems to GENUINELY believe it was Assange and Putin who denied the War Queen victory in 2016. How frightening is that? This was supposed to be the most thoughtful British newspaper. We are in more trouble than we know.
Careful Brian – Hillary Clinton and her evil army of “neo” something or others is coming to get you. Donald Trump is just a sideshow. (Out of interest, where did she spend her gap year and post-university “travelling” time? Does anybody know?)
Oh and nobody ever ran Wikileaks from behind the scenes. It was as clean as the driven snow, and not at all “connected”. Sarah Harrison is the messiah.
Them and Greenpeace are two of a kind. Their spectacle of substititionist “heroism” disempowers.
What kind of moron thought that they best way to blow a whistle was to send the info to a single anonymous mailbox, and to deal with people who deal with the f***ing Guardian, New York Times, Cambridge Analytica, several governments, etc.? You can get info out to many thousands of servers within a few minutes if you use Usenet.
Sorry – my question abut gap year and travelling time was meant to be about Sarah Harrison, not Hillary Clinton.
I am asking where Sarah Harrison spent her gap year and post-university travelling time. I may get called names for this.
Clinton didnt lose because some obscure outfit blew a whistle. She was endorsed 24/7 for months on end by the entire respectable media and political class of the western world, who have since been feeding you fairy tale reasons for her defeat.
It’s not the ‘respectable media’ that’s of concern, though, is it.
The most popular cable ‘news’ network is Fox, which broadcasts 24×7 on behalf of the Republican party. Right-wing hate-radio broadcasts coast to coast, every hour of the year, peddling racist lies and disinformation. Nearly all the newspapers are owned by the ultra rich and promote their interests.
Then there are hysterics, liars and lunatics on the Internet(s), such as Alex Jones, who manages to fill all three categories at once. Again, exclusively for the benefit of the Republicans.
Perhaps you simply didn’t you know about any of this.
Why are they of concern? Trump received fewer votes in 2016 than Romney got in 2012.
The decisive factor was not millions more coming out to vote for Trump. It was the millions of former Democrats who stayed home in the decisive states, despite having been bombarded with pro-Hillary propaganda from the respectable media.
Did you miss the bit about the rest of the media which isn’t supposedly ‘respectable’?
Besides, Hillary did get more votes that Trump. If you call that a ‘defeat’, that’s another of the fairy tales you complained about.
No, didnt miss that. If you read my reply you’ll see I asked why you think the conservative media was a factor or ‘concern’, given Trump got fewer votes than Romney.
On the second point, yeah Hillary won. Just not in any of the key states that she and the rest of the world knew were going to decide the election. Or were all the commentators saying beforehand that she should forego the swing states and just make sure she got millions more votes than Trump in California?
Thanks for the effort to counter fake with true news, Craig. Hope Assange will be set free soon.
“I cannot find words eloquent enough to express the depth of my contempt for Harding and Katherine Viner, who have betrayed completely the values of journalism.”
I’ll try and help you with the words. Alan Rusbridger was bad enough, but I remember an interview Peter Oborne did with him in which Rusbridger had the integrity to state that he was not allowed by the owners to put the other side to the Israeli massacre of Lebanon in 2006. On the other hand Katherine Viner has embraced her owners with open legs. They leave their wallets on her bedside table. They slip in and out at will. She fulfills their every desire. She is the epitome of the modern-day high-class pressitute.
As to hack Harding you’ve pretty well summed him up. He does the same for MI6. And what he can’t invent himself he steals from others.
Well said, John.
I’m surprised at your shock Mr Murray. The Guardian and every other main stream media outlet has been lying, war mongering and schilling for it’s masters for a long time now. You personally have been a victim of it more than most. Agreed it is getting worse by the day with internet giants banning and manipulating information as well as simply lying but the Guardian’s story is just business as usual. As long as enough people are so stupid and gullible as to support the status quo we will continue to see presstitutes instead of journalists.
I haven’t touched the Guardian since they threw Sarah Tisdall to the wolves to keep the cowardly editor Peter Preston out of jail.
It took me a little longer. I still have friends who think it is a servant to the left. In truth it is just like the BBC. The BBC usually gets the weather right, and from time to time produces good drama, so people think its news reporting is credible too! That’s a big problem.
I’m shocked that you’re shocked, Craig. The Grauniad went the way of the dodo *years* ago. Russbridger was a fraud as much as Viner is. The Graun is the mouthpiece of the neo-trotskyite Globalist faction of SiS and HMG. It’s the same as the risible Times, but for “lefties”.
Same face, different side.
Sounds like somebody’s been mainlining infowars
“Neo-Trotskyite” 🙂 It’s interesting that you use such language. Why? Because much of the rhetoric of the crazed anti-Hillary Clinton tendency on the left reminds me of the Stalinist “social fascist” line of the early 1930s. It is not anti-capitalist. Generally speaking, these people do not have a background in criticising “both sides of the coin”. They do not relate to any recent revolutionary movement. They couldn’t, because in the advanced countries there haven’t been any. They are not in the line of the good people whom Lenin threw rocks at in his vile book Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder. The anti-Hillary types may have the word “fake” on their lips all the time but they don’t understand fakery and pseudo-opposition and how the capitalist political spectacle works.
Anybody who has had a proper socialist education should have the Stalinist “social fascist” line come to their mind right away when they hear some of the anti-Hillary stuff.
For the avoidance of doubt: I absolutely would NOT have supported the “21 conditions” of 1920 or the “united front” policy of 1922 in Germany.
The most famous British radical who got it right throughout that period was Sylvia Pankhurst.
“Anybody who has had a proper socialist education should have the Stalinist ‘social fascist’ line come to their mind right away when they hear some of the anti-Hillary stuff.”
I’ll tell you another meme (in the intelligent person’s sense of that word) that should also come to mind: FIFTH COLUMN.
As world fascism looms, that’s what the anti-Hillary nuts are. Here’s your guy.
You’re constant allegations and accusations angainst The Guardian and other British mainstream media outlets is tiring and detracts from the usual high quality of the majority of your posts. A high amount of skepticism towards them is definetly appropriate but calling them out for deliberate lies makes you sound like a shrill conspiracy theorist, damaging you’re laudable cause(s). You simply can not know for sure whether they are lying or not, even if you have been closely involved with Assange and Narvaez like you claim. I have no reason to doubt that, but I also have no reason to believe they would involve you in any and all of their plans.
In my view, toning down you’re wording when attacking the msm would greatly improve the believeability in posts like these.
Reading Craig Murray calling out lying liars for their lies is one of the reasons I come here. Why do you?
But you’re not tired by the MSM’s ludicrous allegations against Russia, Assange, Corbyn or anybody else who challenges liberal orthodoxy?
I don’t know how you come to this conclusion, maybe you’ve overlooked the second sentence in my post?
maybe you missed the part in which he described their deliberate lies? should he cover the deliberate lies up out of some sense of journalistic collegiality, in your opinion?
Nicely done, you couldn’t have missed the point more completely.
Alex
Mr Murray shows up as an honest investigative reporter. Which is most likely why many people read and contribute to his blog – it encourages people to investigate and analyse.
I conclude that the people such as yourself who join in the ‘establishment’ narrative of accusing anyone with an investigative streak of being a ‘conspiracy theorist’ are afraid of being proved wrong.
I do not see how the term ‘conspiracy theorist’ can be pejorative; the definition is two or more people, meeting in secret, to plan an unlawful act against a third party.
Judges and police deal with these matters every day – all criminal investigations into conspiracies are theories, until the evidence proves them to be fact. At this point, the authorities charge the suspects with the crime.
“Mr Murray shows up as an honest investigative reporter. Which is most likely why many people read and contribute to his blog – it encourages people to investigate and analyse.”
Exactly, I’ve been reading his blog for 10 years give or take and will continue to so. I don’t post often because there are enough people on here saying “Great post Craig, I agree entirely” already. Sadly when you take the time and are critical of Craig – which he regularly encourages – you get bashed by his fans.
Your conclusion is baseless and wrong, you’re provided definitions are beside the point and useless. There is a difference between saying “makes you sound like a…” and “you are a…”. It’s plainly obvious, that I like coming here to read Craigs thoughts, my post was aimed at improving his posts to convince a wider audience of his arguments. It might surpise you but not everyone thinks like you or the others who have repiled to my post.
?
Clearly you have not slept well, sir.
I have in fact, but upon re-reading I stand by my post. I guess we’ll agree to disagree? 😉
5 years of smears against Corbyn, and far beyond measured criticism, should be enough to convince any intelligent person that the Gruaniad is a neo-con paper. People have short memories. The Guardian gleefully supported Assange as the messenger of misdeeds by the US state and milltary through wikileaks.But in a fit of childish anger, the it turned against Assange when he quite rightly refused to give it exclusive rights to the above. In a fit of childish corporate narcissism the Guardian tried to take revenge, and did the same on Corbyn. It ran literally hundreds of petulant articles against both and still does. It also ran a long and laughable campaign of support for the White Helmets, who any half-witted person can work out are not who they say they are.
Unfortunately a good proportion of Guardian readers elect to read the printed version without bothering to investigate compelling evidence online that its journalism is dishonest. You can easily confirm this in a few minutes, but at least a third of Guardian’s readership never bother to go online to learn about the trash it publishes.The New Statesman has gone the same way. There is now not a single printed newspaper or magazine that doesn’t have a neo-con agenda.
The Guardian is a LIFESTYLE magazine with occasional news items that are poorly researched and festooned with agenda-based lies.
Oh, and Hardingf isn’t a journalist. He re-writes SIS press-releases and joins them together to write “books”
Goodness me. I have been a Guardian reader since the early 1970s and thought I was the only one who had noticed a sharp decline in editorial standards since the departure of Alan Rusbridger. The comments here have been a relief to me, to find that others have noticed the same.
I believe that after the ‘destruction of the computers’ episode, some kind of security services deal was done which allows the paper to receive certain “exclusives” tailored for consumption of the left-leaning readership. I never thought it would come to printing downright lies.
I thought it was rather strange that the paper had not delved into the inconsistencies surrounding the Skripals, and now I am beginning to understand why.
@ Wild Boar: The “destruction of the computers” episode was faked from start to finish. The “parts” displayed on Twitter etc were from an assortment of computers, none of which were the computers said to have been destroyed. When I challenged Russbridger on Twatter, my tweets were deleted. The whole Snowden thing was a fraud imo..I think we were “allowed” to see that information. For what reason, who can guess, but the whole think stank.
@Yarkob: I also think Snowden is a fraud. More exactly, I think his excursion into the insides of the NSA was tacitly permitted. The NSA were not such fools as not to see what he was doing. But the whole thing was an exercise sponsored and protected by the CIA, in order to cut the NSA down to size. Hence Greenwald’s involvement . Like Snowden, I think he is a CIA left cover operative.
Everyone is entitled to an option.
However it became clear that Ed Snowden was a real insider leak , just look at the recent confirmation of his allegations by still annoyed Belgacom, and all the other reactions (my favourite was the digging up of the pavement)
I was randomly in a meeting at the Home Office on the actual day and moment that Snowden came out, and the ringing of phones that went on was impressive!
It didn’t seem planned, and tho’ I agree with you that the central agency is very good at lying, there’s enough hard Snowden related facts to believe in his actions being in favourite of freedom (as he saw it) and not simply a deeper fraud.
More info at https://nsa.gov1.info/
Canonical all leaked docs here:-https://nsa.gov1.info/dni/2018/index.html
It’s simple – what is the point in having an intensive spying operation, part of which is designed to control, if no-one knows about it? We all have an in-built hunch that we are being watched, but the revelations confirmed all of our worst fears. Job done – paranoid people everywhere suddenly become very twitchy about what they do and don’t write/look at online. It’s like them saying “yeah, we’re watching all of you – we have the power to do that, the kind of power you imagine in your worst nightmares”. They want us to know that, they are playing on our fears, which is how they control us
@Moocho: I feel the same way about Vanunu’s photographic grand tour of the six sub-levels at Dimona. It’s much too good to be true. He was allowed to commit espionage, so that the world would know what Israel had, without Israel being forced to declare it and join the NNPT. Talking of which, here is a brilliant computer animation of the six sub-levels and the whole underground complex, with subtitles, which was on Israeli TV:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5x_wItbScM
You absolutely are not the only one. Off-Guardian.org only exists because of the decline of this newspaper. If you read the Guardian you at very least have to also read OG
The original ‘Manchester Guardian’ that was run by the Scott Trust, I think, had a number worked on it, not long after the March 2003 invasion of Iraq.
I do not know what happened but, from buying and reading it everyday for some 30-odd years, I had to say ‘no more’.
The very idea that the Guardian should find anything wrong with Assange going to Russia, had he been offered that choice, is incredible. He is not a British citizen and is not wanted on any charges in Britain apart from jumping bail. As jumping bail is not considered treasonous in the UK there is no reason why he should not be free to go to any country of his choosing, should he confident to leave the Ecuadorian Embassy without facing the possibility of being extradited to the US on trumped up charges of treason. The shocking thing here is that he should have to fear being extradited for doing something that isn’t considered a crime worth charging him for in the UK.
It must be remembered that the British government experienced great difficulty in having IRA members accused of violent terrorist acts being extradited from the US to the UK throughout the 1970s and 80s. Though I haven’t checked, I believe no IRA member, wanted in the UK on terrorist charges, was extradited until the 1990s, at the very least.
And it must not be forgotten that The Guardian’s very own Luke Harding worked with Julian Assange directly to help get Wikileaks reach a much wider audience through, you’ve guessed it, the pages of The Guardian. The man gives hypocrisy a bad name.
With reference to Craig’s update, my source for Julian being assigned as diplomat to Russian embassy comes from. Ecuador , not the Guardian
Comes in a letter written apparently recently by the anti-Assange Moreno government. If it is true that in December Ecuador had arranged with Russia for Julian to be appointed to the Embassy staff there, it was done without the knowledge or consent of Julian and without the knowledge of Fidel Narvaez, who had handled his request for diplomatic accreditation in the UK. I think it is more probably simply untrue. It is a fascinating coincidence that Harding publishes his story I know to be untrue, and the next day the Moreno government produce to Reuters this letter, without any original documentation from December to back it up.
Thanks for that clarification Craig. It has saved me a lot of web-searching.
The UK have confirmed that they refused to accept the diplomatic status .
The letter is from the former foreign. Minister.
However you will be in a better position than myself to state if Julian did withdraw his assyum request and took up Ecuadorean citizenship , and if the UK non diplomatic recognition is being g legally challenged through the ICJ
“It is very serious indeed when a newspaper like the Guardian prints a tissue of deliberate lies in order to spread fake news on behalf of the security services”
They do it for Big Pharma practically every week.
The idea of an “independent press” has always been cock.
I always treat with great suspicion anything written by Luke Harding or Patrick Wintour. I certainly do not regard them as serious journalists at all.
Alan Travis was a good journalist on the Guardian but he has recently left.
Here is one of his stories which I strongly recommend:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2011/dec/30/thatcher-cabinet-opposed-trident-purchase
dont panic, remember the old maxim; dont believe anything you read in the papers.
At last a word of sense here!