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Only SEVEN people BTL support Guardian’s fact-free White Helmets editorial

by BlackCatte

The Guardian’s revised CiF  slogan, as suggested by OffG

The Guardian’s revised CiF slogan, as suggested by OffG

The Guardian’s comments are the now standard disaster-zone. Open for less than an hour and with a full one-third (18 of the 55) comments censored. Of the 37 remaining, only 15 support the ATL position. And those fifteen comments are all made by the same seven people. This is less about propaganda and more about cultist reality-denial

October 4’s WaPo was casually discussing the possibilities of the US escalating the situation in Syria by directly attacking the Syrian army without a UN mandate. The fact that it inverts reality by claiming such illegality would be “humanitarian” while simultaneously accusing the Syrian governmnt and its ally Russia of “war crimes” is not that surprising. But its absolute refusal to recognise the fact that any such move by the US would be a likely introduction to WW3 is a deeper kind of madness.
It’s increasingly clear that the ineffectual John Kerry and his fellow (comparative) non-loons, are failing to rein in the incompetent Keystone Cops-crazies who think they can launch and win a conventional war against Russia. In fact Kerry is partaking of the same rhetoric much of the time, presumably in an attempt not to be sidelined. Neither he nor his friends have the brains, the organisation or the will to offer real opposition to the drive to war. The WaPo is presenting what is the current Washington “consensus”, viz adolescent “tough-talking” and heated declamations. The non-crazies may be hoping this war-talk will remain purely that – talk. But absent any diplomatic initiatives or any serious attempts to present alternative analysis, this hope is forlorn. If the “conventional war” is launched only the idiot-lunatics, the Nulands, Kagans and Carters, will be amazed when it goes nuclear and wipes them (and us) out of existence.
Right now, in the midst of the most dangerous Russian/US stand-off since the Crimea crisis in early 2014, maybe even since the Cuban Missile near-miss, where are the voices of reason in the West? We are on the brink of catastrophic war, and nothing but footling distraction headlines or schizophrenic reality-denial and occasional bouts of hysteria is coming out of the White House or the State Department, or their principal “papers of record.”
If you doubt this even slightly – look at yesterday’s Guardian, where we can find this stunning headline:
“The Guardian view on the Nobel peace prize: give it to Syria’s White Helmets”
What is there to say? The facts about the White Helmets are out there and freely available. It’s easy to find out what they are and what they do. It’s established they are a front for Al Nusra and other terrorist outlets, who have openly allied with terrorist groups and faked videos of their own heroism. It’s a fact beyond question that 85%+ of Aleppo is in Syrian government control and is being attacked by the “rebels”, not by the SAA, and that launching a war to “defend” the few pockets of remaining terrorist stronghold would be an act of pure insanity. Everyone with any remaining sanity knows that no one, however evil, could possibly find as many “hospitals” to bomb as Russia allegedly does, even if they went looking. But the WaPo and the Guardian simply behave as if these facts do not exist and are not widely publicised, and the Guardian in particular persists in publishing articles so risible so reality-denying they have destroyed its reputation beyond rescue.
It’s like reading articles by respected authorities claiming gravity no longer exists or that humans can now fly. The reaction we feel is now less anger and more baffled incomprehension.
In fact both the WaPo and the Guardian, and most of the MSM, are currently exhibiting a kind of psychological denial that goes way beyond propaganda and into something much more dangerous and strange. Propaganda is about convincing the masses to believe your lies. But look BTL in the comments under both these articles. Almost no one is believing.
The comments in the WaPo – normally much more pro-official agenda than in the Guardian – are, even with repeat input from a couple of busy warmongers, full of people saying “we don’t want WW3 over Aleppo” or calling out US hypocrisy in arming al Qaeda and al Nusra.

screen-shot-2016-10-06-at-13-07-58
screen-shot-2016-10-06-at-13-09-54
screen-shot-2016-10-06-at-12-20-27

The Guardian’s comments are the now standard disaster-zone. Open for less than an hour and with a full one-third (18 of the 55) comments censored.

screen-shot-2016-10-06-at-10-34-48
screen-shot-2016-10-06-at-10-35-16

Of the 37 remaining intact comments, only 15 support the ATL position. And those fifteen comments are all made by the same seven people (assuming none of the accounts are being run as duplicates, which we know is sometimes the case).
Seven people – max – posted BTL support for the Guardian editorial.
Seven people.
What we have here, and increasingly throughout the MSM’s output is less propaganda to convince the readership (who simply cannot be convinced) and much more a statement of a folie en masse. It’s a declaration of loyalty to a collective belief system. A public rejection of veridical reality in favour of cultist conviction.
We have wondered why the Guardian’s increasing, and now near-total failure to convince its readers seems to have zero impact on it editorial line – well, this is why. The aim has ceased to be about convincing the readers some time ago. It’s now just about asserting and enforcing internal adherence. Their line will not change, however much disgust and outrage and incomprehension is expressed BTL. In fact this only increases the sense of dislocation. The gap between their perceived reality and ours becomes the glue that binds them together.
Like the stumbling boobs in the Washington war-party, they “know” they are right with the perfect and fact-free conviction available only to fools and lunatics. They don’t see how close to the cliff-edge we all are. They won’t be calling out any warnings, or trying to put the brakes on the war-bus.
Currently the only serious hope of avoiding WW3 lies in Moscow, and the wholly sane adroitness of Lavrov, Putin, Churkin et al. They have to somehow talk down the lunatic in the room with the bomb strapped to his chest, screaming about his Manifest Destiny. We all have to wish them luck with that.


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Carnyx
Carnyx
Oct 9, 2016 1:29 PM

I had this comment of mine deleted by the Guardian, the stubb is currently near the bottom of page 4, posted by Carnyx, I haven’t posted here before so the copy might not come out right, the blockquotes are quotes from the article.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/sep/28/west-aleppo-syrians-bombardment-assad#comment-84208428

Not since the Nazis retook Warsaw in 1944 has the world seen an assault of such total ferocity as we are witnessing

Uhm what about Fallujah?

No one who remembers how Assad’s father, Hafez al-Assad, put down the revolt in Hama in 1982 can doubt the ruthlessness with which the Alawite regime acts against its opponents – up to 40,000 civilians were killed by ceaseless bombardment on that occasion.

Wait, I thought Aleppo was the worst since the Nazis, you keep changing your mind!
Also the fatalities in Hama are in dispute, the western MSM currently likes to borrow figures from the Muslim Brotherhood who have an interest in inflating them. Initial western reports estimated 1000, Robert Fisk in the city soon afterwards guessed 10 000 and later upped that to 20 000, HRW estimated 25 000 in 2006.

Nor can anyone who has followed Moscow’s actions in Chechnya or Ukraine believe that humanitarian considerations will trump pragmatic advantage

What humanitarian considerations did Russia ignore for advantage in the Ukraine, only 4 people died during the take over of Crimea and none of them directly at Russian forces hands and by the authors admission Grozny can’t have been as ferocious as Aleppo since only Aleppo is as bad as the Nazis.

Rebel groups still hold more than half the country, including sizable chunks held by Jabhat Fateh al-Sham.

You neglect to mention Assad holds the vast majority of the Syrian population and has done so throughout the war, while the likes of ISIS hold vast tracts of empty desert. 80% of the Aleppo population has been hiding from western backed headchopper shelling in govt controlled West Aleppo.

Part of the agreement between the US secretary of state, John Kerry, and Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, was that the two would cooperate against this and other extremist groups. Now the Moscow-Washington cooperation has collapsed, this no longer applies.

Is the author saying this is a good thing and oppertunity for more war?

If Assad wins in Aleppo, he will still want to portray himself as a leader of his countrymen, however obscene the gesture. But that can be used to get in aid convoys, as has happened in sites beyond Aleppo in the past few days.

So Assad is letting in aid convoys so the west should use that to trick him into letting in aid convoys! Also why shouldn’t Assad portray himself as the leader of his country men since most of them have been sheltering under his protection for the whole foreign backed war?

But ultimately, there is the problem of Assad. After all this he cannot remain in power.

Why, the majority of Syrians have been fighting and dying to preserve his govt, that’s why he didn’t fall, while 40% of opposition fighters killed are not even Syrian! As for attempting to play over the Syrians heads and pressurising the Russians to depose him, pure fantasy, the Russians have already been pressurised for 5 years. You look like you’re desperate for a face saving gesture, but you and the west in general deserves every iota of shame for supporting the sectarian headchoppers assualting Syria in the first place.

Laguerre
Laguerre
Oct 9, 2016 12:47 PM

There was another one of these completely insane articles last night from Chulov in the Graun: Amid Syrian chaos, Iran’s game plan emerges: a path to the Mediterranean. Some idea that Iran is looking for a continuous road to Syria and the Mediterranean. It is conspiracy theory stuff. Why would Iran have ambitions for a path to the Med? They already have most of it. But it is necessary to invent a path through the Syrian Kurds, who are after all Sunnis and not necessarily friends with the Shi’a. I suppose he’s trying to explain in his own mind the otherwise inexplicable (to him) fact that the Syrian Kurds are quite friendly with Asad. The reason for these good relations is of course that the Kurds know that they will have to live with Asad after the war, and therefore are not willing to go as far in attacking Asad as the Yanks want.

Alfred Nassim
Alfred Nassim
Oct 9, 2016 5:40 AM

Here is an interview with Vanessa Beeley, a journalist who just returned from Aleppo for the real story.
Why Everything You Hear About Aleppo Is Wrong

Brian Harry, Australia
Brian Harry, Australia
Oct 8, 2016 8:54 PM

Arrby………..I have awful trouble commenting, sometimes……It’s enough to make one ‘paranoid’…..almost….

Admin
Admin
Oct 9, 2016 12:32 AM

Is it happening more than it used to?
If anyone is having persistent problems with posting comments please let us know.

Brian Harry, Australia
Brian Harry, Australia
Oct 9, 2016 1:29 AM
Reply to  Admin

I sent an email to your “contact us”point describing the problem, but got no reply, however I don’t hold it against you. You’ve ‘got a lot on your plate’. It doesn’t happen every time, but when it does, it is really annoying…….maybe your system is ‘overloaded’? I have no idea really……..I’m SO…. ’20th Century’………

Admin
Admin
Oct 10, 2016 1:58 PM

I don’t think we received it Brian. If there’s any more problems email [email protected]

Yonatan
Yonatan
Oct 8, 2016 4:19 PM

During the Cuban Missile Crisis, the two leaders, Kennedy and Kruschev, had back channel discussions on how to defuse the MIC-induced confrontation. From Kennedy’s papers, we know that Kruschev allowed Kennedy to claim the Soviets ‘blinked’ in order to sate the lunatic US domestic politicians. This was in exchange for quietly removing the missile bases from Turkey. The Turkish missile bases were a significant driving force behind the Soviet’s action in Cuba.
Little good Kennedy’s appeasement did him. The deep state bastards had him murdered anyway.
The current situation is far worse than the Cuban Crisis, as only one side has competent leadership.

Arrby
Arrby
Oct 8, 2016 8:04 PM
Reply to  Yonatan

Actually, The Jupiters (at this time obsolete but, apparently, quite operational as a political factor in NATO’s relations with Turkey and NATO’s credibility) were not at all a factor in Khrushchev’s decision to put missiles, and separately, the nuclear warheads for them, in Cuba. Simply, JFK’s bloody, illegal assassination program (which he wasn’t about to tell the people about), which had as it’s main target, Fidel Castro, as well as the very large, and therefore visible (to journalists, Castro and Khrushchev) military preparations to invade Cuba again (Bay of Pigs was the first effort) was the direct cause of the missile crisis. JFK worshippers, and those who suck up their propaganda, are those who ‘do not’ point out these un-hidden (or hidden in plain sight) facts. You aren’t a hero if you help to diffuse a super crisis that you alone are responsible. Had JFK and his supporters told the American people all of this, his chances at a ’64 re-election would have zero. Any number of (pro and not pro) JFK books will tell you these things. The best two, in my opinion, are Seymour Hersh’s “The Dark Side Of Camelot” and Noam Chomsky’s scrupulously ignored “Rethinking Camelot.” And for facts (tainted by the author’s affection for JFK) about the missile crisis, See Sheldon Stern’s “The Cuban Missile Crisis In American Memory.”

Arrby
Arrby
Oct 8, 2016 8:20 PM
Reply to  Arrby

Just to be clear, Fidel and Nikita both knew not only about the impossible to hide military preparations for invasion, but they also knew about the assassination program. Khrushchev wanted to defend the revolution in Cuba. JFK viewed Cuba through his father’s eyes, as Hersh explains. JFK used to vacation there when it was run by gangsters (of the conventional sort) and had fond memories of the prostitutes and other pleasures he availed himself of when in Batista’s Cuba. And he felt, like his pure gangster, and booze smuggling, father, that that was the state Cuba should be returned to.
From pages 342 & 343 of “The Dark Side Of Camelot,” the following:
====== == =
Over the next thirty-five years a vast assortment of evidence – including published memoirs, interviews, and documents released from Soviet archives – has revealed that much of what the Kennedy administration said about the crisis at the time, publicly and privately, was not true. The overriding deceit – one that still distorts the history of those thirteen days – was the absolute determination of Jack and Bobby Kennedy to conceal their campaign to assassinate Fidel Castro and destroy his regime. The American public was not told what the KGB and Nikita Khrushchev knew. Even more disturbing, many of the American government officials on the ad hoc crisis committee, known as Ex Comm, who served the president as councillors of war, had no knowledge – no “need to know” – of Edward Lansdale’s Operation Mongoose and Bill Harvey’s Task Force W. Kennedy did not dare tell the full story of the Soviet missiles in Cuba, because it was his policies that brought the weapons there.
= == ======
http://bit.ly/1mTMIF2

Janey
Janey
Oct 10, 2016 2:01 PM
Reply to  Arrby

I always suspect the motives behind the drive to discredit JFK – especially when one of the prime movers also denies the obvious fact, even acknowledged by Congress, that he was murdered as part of a conspiracy.

Ex Guardian reader.
Ex Guardian reader.
Oct 8, 2016 10:15 AM

The Gaurdian pro EU – anti Corbyn stance makes more sense when you see who’s on the board of directors. All day every day it prints articles that read like they were written by the EU PR dept, articles that describe the outcome of the referendum as illogical, irrational and possibly illegal, democracy is never mentioned. Now they are upping the anti by publishing threats from anti democratic crooks like Junker boasting he will make us suffer for leaving. Whats even more disgusting is they publish comments openly calling those who voted to leave racists xenophobic illerate scum filth etc etc, some calling for pension to be stopped and the NHS to be denied to the elderly. All of this is allowed and encouraged. Its the same with Israel, any criticism of the state and you’re branded anti semitic. Its disgusting that upper crust types like marina hyde and toynbee rant on about how the dispicable masses are lied to by Murdoch and then do exactly the same

Jen
Jen
Oct 7, 2016 12:53 AM

” … In fact both the WaPo and the Guardian, and most of the MSM, are currently exhibiting a kind of psychological denial that goes way beyond propaganda and into something much more dangerous and strange. Propaganda is about convincing the masses to believe your lies. But look BTL in the comments under both these articles. Almost no one is believing …”
It’s as if a siege mentality has developed among the WaPo and Guardian writers who without doubt have swallowed the propaganda more readily than the rest of us and who believe in it deeply. So deeply in fact that the more we resist it, the more they feel compelled to repeat themselves in the hope that someone will believe them. Look at the way they refer to their own articles and to one another’s articles in citing support for their positions.
Psychiatry has a name for the phenomenon described as “something much more dangerous and strange” – it’s called folie à plusieurs. There was actually a very recent case here in southeast Australia in which a family of five people fled their home in Melbourne, convinced the authorities were out to get them, and who got separated on their flight north towards the Jenolan Caves in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney.
http://www.news.com.au/national/is-the-tromp-family-suffering-from-a-rare-shared-psychotic-disorder-known-as-folie–deux/news-story/7b349973f3af4588002f9b21bce007d6
One might consider also if there is something equivalent to folie à plusieurs combined with Stockholm syndrome among the writers at the WaPo and the Guardian. Is there a culture peculiar to these media that was ready and vulnerable for manipulation and exploitation?

John
John
Oct 7, 2016 1:53 AM
Reply to  Jen

Journalists are today just job holders and they certainly rank among the membership of the precariat.
These days – and probably for at least the last 20 years – they write what they are told to write.
It is all, no doubt, done in the nicest of ways, with “suggested” editorial lines or slants or spins……
You don’t need to be a genius to work out what the owners and editors want you to write – do you?
That way you keep a well-remunerated job. The alternative is…………?

Norman Pilon
Norman Pilon
Oct 7, 2016 3:26 AM
Reply to  Jen

Actually, I don’t think it’s ‘idiosyncratic’ or psychologically aberrant at all, I mean the propensity to believe as our peers or cohorts do.
We are social creatures. I think that it was Marx who once put it that “language is practical consciousness,” meaning that consciousness is always and from the very outset “social.”
Consequently, the surprise is not so much that sometimes people — even entire nations — partake of “une folie à plusieurs,” but that anyone (or even a group itself) ever manages to transcend and defeat any of these group delusions.
The important thins is, I think, to recognize that ‘fact’ about ourselves, that we really are all heard-like in our thinking and in our ways, and if we are to evolve in a more progressive direction collectively, we need to be attuned to the notion that orthodoxies dwell unapparent in our own minds, and not to be afraid of either interrogating ourselves or of being interrogated by others in our most steadfast convictions. We can’t live without our dogmas, but neither can we evolve without challenging them.
But having said that, what is published by for-profit media aims to serve the political interests of the ruling classes, because after all it is they, and not the publics they address, who own the media and whom the media actually serve.
The media therefore aim to impose on the masses those perceptions they deem favorable to an easy acceptance of the intentions and designs of the classes they serve. What gets printed or produced is intended to have you acquiesce to conditions beneficial to oligarchical rule. It may be subtle or it may be gauche, depending on the sophistication of the audience, but that is the governing intention. It is crazy to believe otherwise, and indeed, to believe that the for profit media exist to serve the public good and not private interests is to leave oneself unduly vulnerable to their machinations.
But here, too, however, there is another “folie à plusieurs” that should be taken into account and that dominates the managerial ranks of the corporate press: it is the belief that money, its concentration in the hands of the rich, is all that ultimately matters and that ultimately must be served.
If lies are the only means that can be thought of by which to garner the consent of the many, then lies it is, in exactly the same way that if entire societies are thought to be standing in the way of corporate profits, they must be destroyed and are thus warred upon. It is insanity, to be sure, but unfortunately not bereft of method.

Brian Harry, Australia
Brian Harry, Australia
Oct 7, 2016 8:32 AM
Reply to  Jen

“folie a plusieurs”… roughly translated ‘a shared delusion’…….But I suppose in this case(at the Guardian) it is an ‘imposed delusion’……..kind of like what happens to ‘journalists’ who work for Rupert Murdoch, who some decades ago famously said something along the lines of “My editors know exactly what I want to say”…..

Sav
Sav
Oct 6, 2016 10:52 PM

There are various elements to how the mainstream media tow the line. Fundamentally there is a high degree of narcissism amongst them. So this is easily exploited. Career is everything. They follow the carrot. There are so many press awards that it’s pretty much Hollywood. Make the report, get the ‘exclusive’, get the plaudits and sit pretty in your cosy world desperate to get the edge on your peers. Rub shoulders with others who are influential and look down on peasants in the peanut gallery who are getting disruptive.
These people are chameleons who put on a good face. They act out all the concerned and wanting to listen. But it is one big act.

Brian Harry, Australia
Brian Harry, Australia
Oct 6, 2016 9:23 PM

The Guardian has gone SO FAR down market, you could be forgiven for thinking that Rupert Murdoch has added it to his stable.

John
John
Oct 7, 2016 2:02 AM

See Frank’s list of members of the Guardian’s Board of Directors below.
That tells you all you need to know about the changed character of The Guardian.
The one person I am surprised to see there is Katherine Viner, Editor of The Guardian.
She co-wrote with Alan Rickman a play about the death of Rachel Corrie around 2004.
I can only assume she has been bought-in with large amounts of USD & Israel shekels.
Her eventual biography – if truthful and honest – and if ever published – could be revealing.

Seamus Padraig
Seamus Padraig
Oct 7, 2016 3:41 PM
Reply to  John

I’ve that Viner, in fact, is the only one on The Graun’s board that is even a journalist by trade.

Amer Hudson
Amer Hudson
Oct 6, 2016 8:30 PM

A very astute article. My first thoughts were, and still are, wtf? I simply can’t explain the level of cognitive dissonance displayed by the Guardian in nearly all of it’s views on international politics.
There are some good posts on here that might help to explain the reasoning behind such articles but I’m still left with a sense of bafflement. Who actually edits the Guardian?

Amer Hudson
Amer Hudson
Oct 6, 2016 8:32 PM
Reply to  Amer Hudson

its not it’s!

Seamus Padraig
Seamus Padraig
Oct 7, 2016 3:42 PM
Reply to  Amer Hudson

A self-loathing grammar nazi? 😉

Amer Hudson
Amer Hudson
Oct 7, 2016 4:09 PM
Reply to  Seamus Padraig

In one 😉

Willem
Willem
Oct 6, 2016 7:10 PM

‘where are the voices of reason in the West?’
Well, they are not here (petition made- and signed by academics). http://www.aleppo-appeal.org
But the good thing of this petition is that you can write to these academics, and explain to them why the r2p and humanitarian war prediction models (about which they preach in their petition and even more so in their Universities… I had my share) do not lead to peace in Syria and elsewhere.
Ask them for instance how they know that: ‘European and U.S. governments have invested political and military resources in their campaign against ISIS, [while] the Syrian government is the prime perpetrator of international crimes on the Syrian territory.’ Come with counter examples, eye-witness reports or simply ask them if they can tell the difference between East vs West Aleppo.
That is what I did because I do not like to let it come to hoping alone that Lavrov et al will save the world.
Just a thought…

Norman Pilon
Norman Pilon
Oct 7, 2016 6:59 PM
Reply to  Willem

The world completely upside-down . . . Jen did mention something about “une folie à plusieurs.” There you have it in spades . . .

elenits
elenits
Oct 8, 2016 6:57 AM
Reply to  Willem

No they are just arse-licking to keep tenure…..now that tenure has become ‘temporary’ and 100% dependent on supporting the Israelis.

mohandeer
mohandeer
Oct 6, 2016 6:24 PM

Reblogged this on Worldtruth.

John
John
Oct 6, 2016 6:15 PM

This leaves only one sensible question to ask: “Who are the people that The Guardian is targeting for its output?”
It is some time since I last checked out the financial situation of The Guardian – perhaps offGuardian could get someone to check it out now? – but the impression I gained previously was that US financial interests had gained significant control over The Guardian.
There is an old saying “Those who pay the piper call the tune.”
Put simply, The Guardian has now become simply a mouthpiece for US interests.
It is the US power elite who – among other things – are dictating the propaganda about the White Helmets.
As a result, The Guardian has no other option than to parrot the same propaganda.
The Guardian’s real audience is no longer a British audience but a the US power elite. They call the tune now.
On the wider concern over a possible nuclear conflagration between the US and Russia, there is one regime that might welcome it as they are located in a part of the world which would not be directly impacted by it.
Destruction of large parts of North America, Europe and Russia would leave much of the Middle East unscathed.
This would then leave Israel in a position to pursue their Eretz (Greater) Yisrael project without opposition.
The only remaining super power – China – would almost certainly come to an accommodation with Israel.
It is unlikely that The Guardian or Washington Post will survive to report the aftermath of these events.
That shows just how short-term and stupid their outlook actually is.

Frank
Frank
Oct 6, 2016 10:47 PM
Reply to  John

”The Guardian’s real audience is no longer a British audience but a the US power elite.”
Yep, about right. Interesting to look at the Guardian’s Board of Directors. As follows:
Neil Berkitt – a former banker (Lloyds, St George Bank) who then helped vulture capitalist Richard Branson with Virgin Media.
David Pemsel – Former head of marketing at ITV.
Nick Backhouse – On the board of the bank of Queensland, formerly with Barings Bank.
Ronan Dunne – On the Telefónica Europe plc board, Chairman of Tesco Mobile. He has also worked at Banque Nationale de Paris plc.
Judy Gibbons – Judy is currently a non-executive director of retail property kings Hammerson, previously with O2, Microsoft, Accel Partners (venture capital), Apple and Hewlett Packard.
Jennifer Duvalier – Previously in management consultancy and banking.
Brent Hoberman – Old Etonian with fingers in various venture capital pies including car rental firm EasyCar.
Nigel Morris – chairman of network digital marketing giants Aegis Media.
John Paton – CEO of Digital First Media – a very large media conglomerate which was sued successfully in the U.S. for rigging advertising rates.
Katherine Viner – Startlingly not a banker, in marketing or venture capital. She is I gather (gulp) a journalist.
Darren Singer – formerly with BSkyB, the BBC and Price Waterhouse Coopers.
the only remaining guy is the secretary Philip Tranter – but don’t worry, he is a proper sort from some posh law firms in London.
If any of the members of the Guardian Media Group get bored they can surely get a slot with the BBC Trust which is also stuffed full of bankers and establishment big wigs.
Pretty much establishment types with an establishment worldview.

Brian Harry, Australia
Brian Harry, Australia
Oct 7, 2016 6:12 AM
Reply to  Frank

It’s a terrible shame. I used to regard the Guardian as a shining example of what a paper should be, and a lot of the credit went to the commenters…………….Now it’s a ‘rag’. They’ve even removed the “Facts are sacred but, Comment is Free”, and so many contributors whose comments were most enlightening have either been censored out, or have simply ‘walked away. It’s shameful.

Istvan solihull
Istvan solihull
Oct 16, 2016 7:42 PM
Reply to  Frank

I think John ( and so , Frank;s contribution is specifically appropriate . ) The analogy that comes to mind ,trying to understand the utter weirdness of the once liberal media , is of ,in relation to Washington’s apparent take-over , the parasitic wasp , which buries eggs in the host’s brain ,eggs which then hatch to slowly redirect its victims towards its own ends . Something like that.

JJA
JJA
Oct 6, 2016 6:10 PM

I was gobsmacked when I read that editorial. Beyond parody. The Independent is also pushing for the Nobel Prize for the White Helmets.
Sadly the subjective Nobel Prizes, ie Literature, Peace and Economics (the latter not a real Nobel but ‘in honour of’), have all been hijacked by the neocons. It’s also only a matter of time before Sweden and Finland are sucked into Nato, even though the majority of Swedes and Finns are opposed to membership. Norway and Denmark are good little Natoists, both countries already placing orders for the hideously expensive but cant fly F35.

Seamus Padraig
Seamus Padraig
Oct 7, 2016 3:47 PM
Reply to  JJA

Some day soon, maybe Switzerland–and perhaps even Vatican City!–will be in NATO, too. It’s like the blob.

Arrby
Arrby
Oct 8, 2016 3:08 AM
Reply to  JJA

Canada’s once socialist New Democratic Party has also jumped on the bandwagon (http://bit.ly/2e0rHsT).

binra
binra
Oct 6, 2016 5:32 PM

“No one understood better than Stalin that the true object of propaganda is neither to convince nor even to persuade, but to produce a uniform pattern of public utterance in which the first trace of unorthodox thought immediately reveals itself as a jarring dissonance.”
~ Alan Bullock, in Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives
Another possibility is that of luring out dissenters to reveal themselves. In the event of a coup or imposition of marshal law etc – suspects can be rounded up and ‘educated’ or even disappeared. This happens a lot in regimes where people are without a voice.
It would be extremely unlikely that such data analysis did not go on as normal, and get stored somewhere contingent on being called up to be acted on at some level or further filtered.
While I choose to align in a willingness of communication because it serves my own awareness of being – it is also consciously choosing not to be baited into hate agenda in self righteous reaction. That doesn’t mean I am protected against hateful acts by others – but it does mean I can rest in my self as to who I am and others can make what they will of it.
Britain is being moved toward a lack of any but token representation as part of a predation upon a captured – and generally unwatched mind that has little sense of its back-door wish to stay unconsciousness being hacked into.
Mainstream Media operate a signal with token variations and glimpses that are not followed through to connect the dots – so to speak.
http://wanttoknow.info/
gathers such articles within themes of deceit or non-disclosure – to a willingness to know what is being hidden – often in plain sight.

Greg Bacon
Greg Bacon
Oct 6, 2016 5:21 PM

If there were any doubts that 9/11 was an Inside Job, set off by certain actors, like the CIA, Israel and traitors in the WH and FBI, the news that the USA is providing air support and political cover to Fatah al Sham, which was al Nusra, which had been al Qaeda in Syria, should remove all doubts.
How can the USA support the same thugs that Americans have been told six million times attacked us on 9/11?
Israel has the SAMSON option, which entails that entity using its nuclear weapons on Europe if the world finally tires of giving aid and cover to that Apartheid nightmare. So, does the USA have a similar option, to be used in case 9/11 truth gets too much exposure?

binra
binra
Oct 6, 2016 5:45 PM
Reply to  Greg Bacon
Brian Harry, Australia
Brian Harry, Australia
Oct 6, 2016 9:18 PM
Reply to  binra

“Ten parasites that control minds”………..Eeeuuke. There’s probably a Hollywood block buster in that article..

Arrby
Arrby
Oct 8, 2016 3:13 AM

It’s also a tv show called Brain Dead, in which alien bugs that come out of a crashed meteor in the States infect people by eating half their brains, making them extreme. This attack hits Washington and you have all these Democrats and Republicans running around taking extreme positions against each other, making them, paradoxically, of the same mind. And this mind is controlled by the bugs, which, collectively, are intelligent and seek to eradicate humankind. It was good until (for me) it wasn’t.

Brian Harry, Australia
Brian Harry, Australia
Oct 8, 2016 3:53 AM
Reply to  Arrby

Sounds like ‘Hollywood’ is trying to “pre-condition” Americans to yet another one of their radical ideas about how people should think, behave, and respond. Just like they did in the movie “Wall St” whereby Americans(and the rest of us)were told that “Greed is good, greed is right, greed works”, which then led to the massive criminal behaviour, by Wall St Banksters in the years that followed……

Arrby
Arrby
Oct 8, 2016 1:36 PM

You mean Hollywood/CIA/Pentagon? People have no idea how thoroughly the state’s ‘security’ apparatuses have intertwined with Hollywood. I was first alerted to it when I read a Salon article about it by former Senator, and former husband of Jane Fonda, Tom Hayden. I then picked up the book he was reviewing, by Tricia Jenkins, titled “The CIA In Hollywood – How The Agency Shapes Film And Television.” That was an eye opener. Here’s an interesting report out of the book:
“The Office of Policy Coordination, a think tank housed at CIA, also worked to discredit Soviet ideologies and counter communists’ attacks on the West through film. In the early 1950s, two members of the OPC’s pschological warfare team who had dabbled in radio and film began negotiating with George Orwell’s widow for the film rights to Animal Farm, his allegorical novella that painted an unflattering image of Stalin and the communist policies before World War II. According to Tony Shaw’s Hollywood’s Cold War, the novel was selected by the OPC because it could be turned into an animated film, which could be easily consumed by the illiterate in developing countries yet also be understood by industrial workers in more developed nations, where motion pictures played a larger cultural role. That Orwell was a democratic socialist also distanced the film from right-leaning capitalists and could help disguise American backing of the project.
“Orwell’s widow, Sonia Blair, eventually agreed to sell the rights to Louis de Rochment’s production company, RD-DR, with Carleton Alsop of the OPC likely acting as a go-between to finance and broker the deal. De Rochement eventually contracted with a British animation company to produce the film since it would reduce costs, but also because “the lighter the American hand in the film, the greater its propaganda potential became.” While the film was never hugely successful, it did generate significant media attention and manipulated the ending of Orwell’s book to drive home its anti-Soviet message, thereby helping the CIA circulate pro-capitalist ideologies through film without the public ever knowing of its involvement. In fact, Daniel Leab, author of Orwell Subverted, points out that it took decades for the rumors about CIA involvement in Animal Farm to be properly documented, which “speaks volumes” about the Agency’s abilities to keep its activities covert.” -pages 7 & 8
Note the references to other books talking about this stuff.

johnny
johnny
Oct 7, 2016 8:20 PM
Reply to  binra

I am surprised that they included Toxoplasma gondii.
I have been wondering for a while whether this parasite which is hosted by 30-60% of the human population (and has known effects on the “mind” of the rat) is “what’s wrong with everybody” (okay, everybody else!). Society seems to be going nuts all around me, and the obsession with cats is everywhere – social media, advertising, neighbours spending vast amounts on them (a vets near me is spending 600k on enlarging its clinic and opening a “pet hospital with beds” all the while we have an NHS “in crisis”), and like the US they always shit in other peoples gardens

Kathleen Lowrey
Kathleen Lowrey
Oct 6, 2016 4:33 PM

At The Intercept, there was a similar reaction to a puffy White Helmets piece: 600 some comments at this point. Overwhelmingly critical or exactly what you describe here: bafflement of the “what the hell is this doing on The Intercept?” variety.
https://theintercept.com/2016/10/01/syrias-white-helmets-risk-everything-to-save-the-victims-of-airstrikes/

Catte
Catte
Oct 6, 2016 5:30 PM

If the Intercept is running fan pieces for the White Helmets then it’s either staffed by idiots who have no business putting their pitifully uninformed thoughts out there for others to read, or it’s a controlled opposition site. No other choices available.

Jen
Jen
Oct 6, 2016 11:46 PM
Reply to  Catte

The Intercept is owned by (and was originally set up by) Pierre Omidyar who made his fortune as founder of eBay.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Intercept
Omidyar is now known to have funded groups in Ukraine committed to overthrowing Viktor Yanukovych’s government there over 2013 and 2014, in concert with the US government.
https://pando.com/2014/02/28/pierre-omidyar-co-funded-ukraine-revolution-groups-with-us-government-documents-show/
If you want any more proof that the Intercept is a controlled opposition site that has captured so-called “independent” journalists like Glenn Greenwald, Jeremy Scahill and Laura Poitras, let me know and I can find more but you may find my examples and the links they cite and connect to proof enough.

Catte
Catte
Oct 7, 2016 12:12 AM
Reply to  Jen

Yes, dodgy character. I”ve been pretty sure about the Intercept’s fake credentials for some time. Their White Helmets piece puts the question beyond doubt.

Seamus Padraig
Seamus Padraig
Oct 7, 2016 3:50 PM
Reply to  Catte

For now at least, Greenwald’s still OK. But I share everyone’s doubts about Omidhyar.

elenits
elenits
Oct 8, 2016 7:09 AM
Reply to  Seamus Padraig

Seamus, really now, HOW is GG “still okay”? Intercept’s management makes sure his image is kept seemingly clean to maintain his “progressive” readership and the Intercept’s fake “integrity”. And he is playing along with that for VERY big bucks.

Arrby
Arrby
Oct 8, 2016 4:37 PM
Reply to  Catte

I haven’t seen it, but will be sure to. What a disturbing thing. Reminds me of Avaaz. They are on the right side – until, suddenly, they are not. But how does that happen? It happens because they are actually the enemy and they take to heart the ploy of keeping your enemies closer even than your friends.
What blows me away is how stellar (in my opinion) investigative journalists like Greenwald, Scahill, Maas and Poitras could miss that their billionaire boss is a frequent (reportedly) White House visitor. Just having a billionaire boss should cause you to be ultra careful. (And what do they say about all this? The only thing discussion of the issue, by those journos, that I am aware of is that which I present below.
I see a number of people slagging on GG. Even Sibel Edmonds, who I have a great deal of respect for, slams him. And she dumps on Snowden. I think she’s being overly harsh. I look at Glenn’s reports, not who his boss is – although that’s of concern me. And Glenn’s reports are not even close to pro establishment. If someone can show me how, then I’d be interested. But that doesn’t mean that he isn’t avoiding talking about certain things.
Sarah Lazare points out, in connection with her report on Arianna Huffington’s collaboration with billionaire’s, Pierre Omidyar’s participation:
“The editorial board includes a roster of billionaires, such as Eric Schmidt, the executive chairman of Google; Pierre Omidyar, the founder and chairman of eBay; and Walter Isaacson, the chief executive of the Aspen Institute. Former British prime minister Tony Blair and Microsoft’s Bill Gates, as well as advisers to the billionaire’s think tank — the Berggruen Institute—will be numbered among the publication’s contributors, The Guardian reports.” (http://bit.ly/2dN3FAe)
And here’s Paul Bradley Carr on Pierre Omidyar:
===== == =
Speaking to the Daily Beast, documentary maker Jeremy Scahill mentioned his boss explicitly when comparing the cozy relationship between other news organizations and the White House. First Look, he insisted, would be different…
I think that the White House, whether it is under Republican or Democrat, they pretty much now [sic] who they are dealing with. There are outlets like The Daily Beast, or The Huffington Post that have risen up in the past decade, but they are very quickly just becoming part of the broader mainstream media, and with people that have spent their careers working for magazines or newspapers or what have you, and the White House believes they all speak the language on these things. With us, because we want to be adversarial, they won’t know what bat phone to call. They know who to call at The Times, they know who to call at The Post. With us, who are they going to call? Pierre? Glenn?”
Scahill’s question is a good one — and it’s also very easy to answer: If the White House has a problem with First Look, it’s a pretty safe bet they’ll pick up the phone and call Pierre Omidyar.
After all, according to records made available under Obama’s 2009 transparency commitment, Omidyar has visited the Obama White House at least half a dozen times since 2009. During the same period, his wife, Pamela Omidyar, who heads Omidyar Network, has visited 1600 Pennsylvania Ave at least four times, while Omidyar Network’s managing partner, Matthew Bannick, has visited a further three. In all, senior Omidyar Network officials made at least 13 visits to the White House between 2009-2013. (In fact the logs indicate that, on several occasions, Omidyar visited the White House more than once in the same day. To avoid unfairly inflating the numbers, I’ve removed same-day duplicates from all the totals cited in this article.)
= == ========

thomas hahn-thomsen
thomas hahn-thomsen
Oct 7, 2016 2:24 PM
Reply to  Catte

I read the piece about the al-Nusra front “white helmets” by Murtaza Hussain on the Intercept. It was “free run” for Raed al-Saleh!! I t would have the same value for me, if it had been a Coca-Cola adverb!! This was, you know, INTERCEPT, Glen Greenwald, Snowdon etc. you know; good company-safe information!! I was so disappointed, and thought that maybe it was me, who had misunderstood something!! I really admired and trusted Intercept!!??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

elenits
elenits
Oct 8, 2016 7:04 AM
Reply to  Catte

Controlled opposition without question.
Ask yourself why Glenn Greenwald, entrusted with all Snowden’s info, is releasing them at the pace of rock formation (turtles are way too speedy for this comparison) – and now, apparently, not at all – and why NOT ONE has any info whatsoever about 911.
Furthermore why would Greenwald chose to place all the purported Snowden info into oligarch Omidyar’s (private) hands?

Arrby
Arrby
Oct 10, 2016 12:10 PM
Reply to  elenits

Well, That’s all covered in the back and forth between Pando (Mark Ames, Paul Carr) and Glenn Greenwald. It’s a fair bit of reading, but it’s well worth it. I just finished updating my own blog post about Murtaza’s pro USAID, pro White Helmets article. I now know much more about Pierre and Glenn than I did. And I’m saddened.
In my estimation, Paul Carr takes Greenwald’s measure, accurately. But, as I point out in my post (Intercepting The People’s Champions – http://bit.ly/2dFC821), No progressive investigative journalist could ‘not’ know that USAID is essentially an imperial regime change operation. It’s an arm of the CIA, not officially but in fact. Greenwald, in his dismissive, condescending response to the Pando revelations (not including the one about Pierre’s many White House visits), writes “Anyone who thinks that The Intercept is or will be some sort of mouthpiece for U.S. foreign policy goals is invited to review the journalism we’ve produced in the 20 days we’ve existed.” -my bolding. So Glenn, Do you or don’t you support your colleagues pathetic propaganda piece? You challenged readers with the above comment. You should step up.
[edited for formatting – admin]

Arrby
Arrby
Oct 10, 2016 9:39 PM
Reply to  Arrby

I’m curious about the edit. What was the editing that was needed? Did I do something to bugger up the software?

Admin
Admin
Oct 11, 2016 11:05 AM
Reply to  Arrby

You added an addendum that you used italics when you meant to use bold. So, we changed it and removed your addendum.
It’s not a rebuke, it’s just that our comment system is not great and quickly gets overwhelmed, so these days we have to try to keep things on-topic and as streamlined as possible.
We’ll probably remove this in a while also if that’s ok with you.

john watwood
john watwood
Oct 6, 2016 4:14 PM

I went to the Guardian web site and checked out the comments section. Your article is right on cue. It was laughable at how many comments were deleted for not being ‘pro’..agenda I will say. CBS News is bout about it as well. Is MSM still at 6% approval rating? I would think it would be much lower by now. What are the OffGuardian’s views on handing over our policing of the internet( the U.S.) over to the U.N.? Or, privatizing IP addresses? 

Skip Patel
Skip Patel
Oct 6, 2016 3:48 PM

“BTL”, “ATL”? Ol’ Winston Smith was quite an innovator wasn’t he!
So then, if I wish to decipher the jargon, acronymic American inner-City patois or nouveau-slango contained in your article…which “app” should I purchase?

Admin
Admin
Oct 6, 2016 4:13 PM
Reply to  Skip Patel

“BTL” = “below the line”, non-author comments
“ATL” = “above the line”, anything in the actual article.

Skip Patel
Skip Patel
Oct 6, 2016 7:49 PM
Reply to  Admin

Thank you Admin!
Let’s put an end to our childish games where we imagine the [Post-Thatcher] U.K. is now the 51st State of the U.S.A. (complete with privatised NHS, Post Office, Water supplies, television programmes and murderous foreign policy.
Let’s quit the “America’s poodle” panto, and make an escape from America’s World Ghetto………. and return to our [British] senses. We can begin by prosecuting Blair for his war crimes and demanding justice for those lives extinguished or destroyed by America and her handmaidens.

Moscow Exile
Moscow Exile
Oct 7, 2016 5:16 AM
Reply to  Admin

Thanks for that explanation. I had been searching for one and found a load of marketing gobbledygook about “widespread brand-building advertising” (ATL) and “highly targeted direct marketing focused on conversions” (BTL) and how Proctor and Gamble first used the terms in 1954 etc., etc….
TTFN!

Arrby
Arrby
Oct 8, 2016 4:40 PM
Reply to  Admin

Thanks. I needed an answer to that question also.

Sav
Sav
Oct 6, 2016 3:19 PM

In this latest report about ‘rebels’ Channel 4 news fail to spot (or purposefully blind to) that these are the same guys who cut off a child’s head back in July. It doesn’t take a genius to spot them.
Also at 2:27 you’ll just about see, again, good ole white helmet hanging with his boys.

Jen
Jen
Oct 7, 2016 12:34 AM
Reply to  Sav

You can also see about 4:20 where a jihadi starts gesturing towards some children, there is a small boy in a red T-shirt who looks like a dead ringer for Omar Daqneesh, the kid in the ambulance in the fake rescue video made by the so-called Aleppo Media Centre.

Jen
Jen
Oct 7, 2016 10:10 PM
Reply to  Jen

Sorry, my mistake, that child’s name should be Omran Daqneesh.

Admin
Admin
Oct 8, 2016 4:47 PM
Reply to  Sav

Looks as if this video has been disappeared.

Arrby
Arrby
Oct 8, 2016 4:48 PM
Reply to  Sav

That ‘that’ YouTube vid has disappeared doesn’t surprise me at all.

Norman Pilon
Norman Pilon
Oct 8, 2016 6:41 PM
Reply to  Arrby

Funny how that happens . . .

Arrby
Arrby
Oct 8, 2016 8:27 PM
Reply to  Norman Pilon

I tried liking your comment. It was no go. I also still have to go through hoops just to post to this site.

Norman Pilon
Norman Pilon
Oct 8, 2016 8:52 PM
Reply to  Arrby

Yes, WP can certainly be wonky at times.
BTW: further above, you mention the NDP of Canada and their embrace of establishment politics and chauvinism. It reminded me, of course, of my once childlike naiveté towards party and electoral politics, and I smiled at the thought of my then foolishness. But then quite involuntarily, I was also reminded of all the hard earned coin I contributed to the NDP for decades from meager earnings before waking up to their fraud, and my smile was exchanged for furrowed brows. To think that others might have made far better use of my contributions . . .

Arrby
Arrby
Oct 8, 2016 10:05 PM
Reply to  Norman Pilon

Indeed. Such as life. It’s like when you toss a pan handler a buck or something, because you don’t want to never give anything, and soon as you do, they do something to make you regret it. I don’t regret caring, but it’s never thrilling to be rewarded for it with uncaring.