Oct 4, 2018

In the land of fake news is the spin master king?

One MI6 shill selling the work of another just sums up the level of factual journalism at the Guardian.

Tutisicecream

Not only was Pippa Crerar one of the Guardian’s deputy editors called out for her pious tweet from the Labour conference writing:

“Corbyn criticises some parts of British media, claiming they “smear the powerless, not take on the powerful”. As a journalist, makes me very uncomfortable to hear him leading attack on our free press. Dangerous, Trumpian territory.”

Corbyn criticises some parts of British media, claiming they “smear the powerless, not take on the powerful”. As a journalist, makes me very uncomfortable to hear him leading attack on our free press. Dangerous, Trumpian territory.

— Pippa Crerar (@PippaCrerar) 26 September 2018

The comment got her loads of flack from the general twittering public for her attempted smear, but then today we get another implausible piece of spin from Luke Harding. The hubris at the Guardian is palpable.

The reason I am writing connecting these two points is to demonstrate just how bad the standards of journalism at that once esteemed organ have become. Okay you’re right the Guardian was perhaps never esteemed, but it was shall we say a contrarian platform to some extent, where various independent voices would and could express themselves. Not anymore.

What we have, at the heart of these two examples in journalism at its most contrived, is both authors are trying to create agenda driven stories. In the belief that the public views them as somehow true and they are the sole purveyors of truth. Crerar like Harding appears come from the school of journalism where they actually believe what they write is factual because, well because – they said it. Why should anyone else be so stupid or even dare to not agree with them? They also are renowned for their hapless arrogance which exaggerates their own true stupidity.

So to get down to the Harding piece, as you will see even by his standards it’s pretty poor and seems to serve as a vehicle for repeating the regular Skripal memes dished out ad-nauseam at the same time as cementing a few new perception managed bits. Perception managed ideas like Sergey Skripal has actually spoken out and being a true patriot didn’t believe the Russian Government had tried to kill him! The author of the book if you haven’t guessed already is Harding’s brother in arms at the BBC Mark Urban. No he’s no “Urban Warrior” but a shill of MI6 too who is using this publication to get out an “authorised” story about Skripal as if posthumously. A story which on the face of it is blatantly not true he hasn’t spoken out has he.

Imaginatively entitled “The Skripal Files” it clearly is an attempt at spinning tale into money; both at the same time – a marketing strategy which has worked lucratively for Harding. Take a largely invented narrative which has been in the headlines for months write some drivel about it, making out you’re some kind of expert with insider connections and wham, your trousers are bulging all the way to the bank!

Of course this is a money making scam which has been adopted by many an old would be spook to bolster their incomes, the most recent being Christopher Steele who blatantly has been selling his state intelligence connections to run his private company Orbis. As we know Steele had a contract with the DNC and it was Steele who produced the salacious dossier on Trump’s alleged activities and connections in Russia. It is understood that Orbis received some $160,000 for these services. Interestingly Harding alludes to Steele in his article as Skripal’s Moscow based handler who cannot be named:

In summer 1996, an unnamed MI6 intelligence officer recruited him.”

As he also mentions we can assume, Pablo Miller as his wife Lyudmila’s contact in Spain:

His wife, Lyudmila, travelled to Spain and delivered the book to Skripal’s MI6 case officer. The officer gave Skripal a gift – a model English cottage – which later sat on the shelf of his Salisbury home. Skripal was betrayed by a mole inside Spanish intelligence, Urban writes, and arrested in 2004.”

Probably not the same house he was provided with eventually in Salisbury we can assume. But a little touch to tell us Urban had been there. Perhaps he too could be considered a suspect?

We are told the book says, as if it were a fact that:

When Skripal woke five weeks later from a coma, he faced some “difficult psychological adjustments” – not least the fact that he was at first reluctant to recognise he had been the target of a Kremlin “murder plot”.

Quite how Urban or Harding can determine this is not clear as no one is known to have spoken to nor seen Sergey Skripal since his disappearance on March 4 2018. As you will find if following the link provided by Harding it merely leads to a report which appeared in the Guardian itself regarding the Skripals’ discharge from Salisbury hospital. This is a typical device used by Harding to amplify a supposition, an idea, as if it were a fact when the report mentions nothing of the sort. What the report entitled “Sergei Skripal discharged from Salisbury hospital” does say as its sub-heading is:

Russia demands access to poisoned former spy and daughter to ensure they do not want help”

So nowhere in the report does it mention anything about Sergey Skripal’s difficult psychological adjustments. It does say owever:

Yakovenko [Russian UK ambassador] said nobody actually knew if the pair were alive and suggested that, if they were, they may have already left the country. Scotland Yard made clear that no details of the security arrangements for the pair would be given.”

Now we can assume from this statement both Sergey and Yulia Skripal might be under severe psychological pressure if they have been kidnapped by the British state. But we simply don’t know and neither does Harding nor is he interested in this. What he is interested in is creating along with Urban a narrative where the casual reader will believe, as a fact, that someone has been privy to the views of Sergey Skripal. Instead what is happening is a storyline being created with no corroborative evidence. No old evidence is being produced and nothing new either.

That Sergei Skripal was initially reluctant to believe the Russian government had tried to kill him, according to Urban’s new book, and that’s a fact? We are expected to take Harding reporting Urban’s word for it, really are we expected to be so dumb? The search for the truth, it appears, is as deceptive as ever at the Guardian.

How this works. One MI6 shill promotes the book of another MI6 shill claiming he has new revelations about the Skripal case when he clearly does not. Harding writes:

Skripal struggled to come to terms with his situation following the novichok attack on him and his daughter, Yulia, the author and BBC journalist Mark Urban writes.”

Urban writes in the past tense as if he has spoken to Sergey Skripal, but if there is no evidence to back such a comment up it is merely a conjecture. If you follow Harding’s link to Urban’s twitter page hoping to find some confirmation of this bold statement [which is not a fact] you will find the usual circular echo chamber of comments about Skripal, the Russian tourists to Salisbury Boshirov and Petrov and the Bellingcat screed about Boshirov being Chepiga etc. Nothing related to the claimed revelations about Sergey Skripal. No confirming facts.

Quite how Urban is allowed to peddle such dross while being paid for by state broadcaster the BBC is not hard to see, clearly it indicates its role in enabling such fake journalism along with the Guardian.

So it appears that the Guardian would wish its readers to believe what they are told. And that is exactly it! If you dare to question these types of journalists like Urban, Harding and Crerar you will be most probably attacked for the temerity of challenging their privileged right to tell you what they’re paid to tell you without compunction. This is not how a “free press” should be. It is a state of affairs where media is speaking so called truth from the panopticon of power.