UPDATED: The “Secret Meetings” of Paul Manafort & Julian Assange
Kit Knightly
Luke Harding and Dan Collyns, writing in the Guardian, have claimed Paul Manafort (jailed former-campaign chief to Donald Trump) met with Julian Assange, the illegally detained founding editor of WikiLeaks, in the run-up to 2016 Presidential election.
You can read an archived version their article here, just in case The Guardian “amends” their claims in the future (Update – The Guardian has already edited their article to scale back their language. Called it).
Other “news” outlets have, rather predictably, jumped all over it.
WikiLeaks have categorically denied any such meetings took place:
Remember this day when the Guardian permitted a serial fabricator to totally destroy the paper's reputation. @WikiLeaks is willing to bet the Guardian a million dollars and its editor's head that Manafort never met Assange. https://t.co/R2Qn6rLQjn
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) November 27, 2018
What the article says
So, is there any truth to the claims? Well, certainly not on the weight of Harding’s article. There is no evidence cited, except for the testimony of anonymous “sources”.
Sources have said Manafort went to see Assange in 2013, 2015 and in spring 2016.
A well-placed source has told the Guardian that Manafort went to see Assange around March 2016.
Manafort’s first visit to the embassy took place a year after Assange sought asylum inside, two sources said.
…is the type of language that fills this article. The claims of these “sources” are never analysed, only accepted.
For example, it is never explained why these visits were never mentioned before. The article refers to the “previously unreported Manafort-Assange connection”, without ever endeavouring to explain WHY it was “previously unreported”.
The Ecuadorian embassy in London has been the most photographed and videoed embassy in the world for the past 8 years – we have footage and/or photographs of visits from Pamela Anderson to John Pilger, and dozens of others.
How did the collected British press, police and security agencies manage to miss not one but THREE separate visits from the campaign chief of a man running for President of the United States? We don’t know, they never say.
One particularly glaring problem with the narrative supplied by these anonymous “sources” is highlighted by the authors of the article (our emphasis)…
Visitors normally register with embassy security guards and show their passports. Sources in Ecuador, however, say Manafort was not logged.
…but even then the idea the “sources” could be misleading and/or mistaken is never floated. Indeed, rather than interrogating whether or not the claimed meetings happened at all, the authors endeavour to ask why they may have happened. This is not, traditionally, how journalism works.
What the article does not say
For all the claims of a Russia/Manafort/Assange connection, possibly the more shocking problem with the article is the near-constant lying by omission.
For example, it states:
WikiLeaks published tens of thousands of emails hacked by the GRU
Without mentioning that both Russia and WikiLeaks have emphatically denied this happened. Julian Assange, and every other representative of WikiLeaks, have always claimed the e-mails were leaked by DNC insiders, not hacked.
Later, the article says:
According to the dossier written by the former MI6 officer Christopher Steele, Manafort was at the centre of a “well-developed conspiracy of cooperation” between the Trump campaign and Russia’s leadership.
They don’t say that the Steele dossier was at least partly funded by Hillary Clinton’s Presidential campaign and the DNC, rendering all of its “findings” completely unreliable and possibly bogus.
This is classic dishonest journalism. Leaving out important information, whilst building its entire case on alleged anonymous “sources”. The tools of the hack with an axe to grind, or a Deep State-backed stenographer just doing what he’s told.
It’s all the Guardian does these days. And all Luke Harding has ever done.
Questions moving forward
- If all visitors to Assange need to sign-in and log their passports, why does Manafort’s name not appear in these logs?
- Why and/or how did the press and police, forever camped outside the Ecuadorian embassy, manage to miss a high-profile Trump aide visiting Assange 3 times?
- Why would Trump’s DOJ file charges against Assange if they were all part of the same Russian conspiracy?
- Is this connected to Manafort’s alleged “dishonesty” in his cooperation agreement?
- Is this a new part of the MSM effort to discredit Julian Assange, a pre-emptive defence of his deportation and show-trial?
- Will Luke Harding be sued?
We may be updating this piece as information is released. Feel free to discuss below.
UPDATE: 28/11/18
WikiLeaks have announced they are considering suing The Guardian for running a “totally fabricated” story:
WikiLeaks launches legal fund to sue the Guardian for publishing entirely fabricated story "Manafort held secret talks with Assange in Ecuadorian embassy" — which spread all over the world today. It is time the Guardian paid a price for fabricating news. https://t.co/VaoMESN5RO
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) November 27, 2018
They’ve opened a GoFundMe for it, which you can visit here.
On a totally unrelated note, this was brought to our attention by MarkGB on twitter. When you visit the twitter account of Hanna Jonasson, a member Julian Assange’s legal team, you are met with this screen:
Temporarily restricted accounts can still be followed, and still tweet, but they are banned from following other people and have their followers stripped. What “unusual activity” could and/or would Julian Assange’s legal representative be guilty of? Is it anything to do with possible legal action against a MSM outlet?
It may be totally unconnected, but it’s definitely worth notice.
2nd UPDATE 28/11/18:
The Guardian released this statement regarding the story:
This version of events has been refuted by both of the people accused in the article.
Paul Manafort released this statement:
This story is totally false and deliberately libelous. I have never met Julian Assange or anyone connected to him. I have never been contacted by anyone connected to Wikileaks, either directly or indirectly. I have never reached out to Assange or Wikileaks on any matter. We are considering all legal options against the Guardian who proceeded with this story even after being notified by my representatives that it was false.”
Whilst WikiLeaks are still stenuously defending themselves on social media:
The "Guardian" issues statement on fabricated Assange-Manafort story. Makes no attempt to stand by the story. Instead, makes an instantly provably false claim that WikiLeaks didn't deny the story before publication. WikiLeaks did. Literally, to millions. https://t.co/HwSmgwIvpM pic.twitter.com/sl4mSTNAjd
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) November 28, 2018
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This is how the State and its tools roll. Chomsky nailed it years ago in the Intro to his book “For Reasons Of State.” Consider:
(o
The first B-52 raid on Haiphong took place at night with no ground control and no spotter planes to guide the selection of targets. Eyewitness reports confirmed what any sane person knew must be true:
== =
There is much evidence of the extremely heavy bombing Haiphong has sustained over the last month. A visitor sees areas flattened like German cities in World War II. …A large series of apartment blocks…is almost completely smashed. …The three buildings that make up the [Thai Phien] school are now a total wreck. …The school and the workers’ housing are perhaps a mile from the port. A hospital hit by the recent bombing is not near any visible military target. …Hundreds of acres are virtually flat with just a wall standing here or there.
= ==
A senior American officer informed newsmen in Saigon that the targets in Haiphong are “all logistical in nature – oil storage areas, some transshipment points, railroad marshaling yards, all large targets and far away from populated areas.” The vice-president, in a television newcast the same day, stated that the strikes against “communications and logistical systems” in the North have improved Souther morale. What a pity that Goebbels could not have lived to see his final triumph over his enemies…
One might think that it is self-defeating for official spokesmen to insist that only military targets are struck, when observers on the scene can prove the opposite. What could the Pentagon hope to gain by flatly denying that American bombers had attacked the remote village of Phuc Loc, when Anthony Lewis could visit a few days later and see that this “small island in a sea of rice fields” had been devastated? …Reporters are challenged to prove that the planes they witnessed bombing dikes were not aiming at some hidden oil pipeline – and of course, they cannot.
The government does not really hope to convince anyone by its arguments and claims, but only to sow confusion, relying on the natural tendency [by many] to trust authority and to avoid complicated and disturbing issues. How can we be sure of the truth? The confused citizen turns to other pursuits, and gradually, as government lies are reiterated day after day, year after year, falsehood becomes truth.
o)
That’s my [by many] in the above quote.
The Guardian. Only Fake News.
My, the Guardian is a bit tetchy this morning.
Just made a semi-humerous remark to the effect that a claim made in one of their articles was about as likely as Paul Manafort conspiring with Juian Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy.
The comment must have lasted all of 2 seconds before being engulfed by flames from the memory-hole.
Instead of acting like a spoiled child, caught with its fingers in the cookie jar, wouldn’t it be easier if the Guardian just admitted here is no substance to their snide insinuations while belatedly acknowledge that they have been conducting a vilification campaign against Julian Assange?
from the thread under the WL tweet at the end of the article:
“Guardian must feed on Bolton’s moustache dandruff.”
Zero Hedge has reported on the latest faking the the fake news bonanza!
“After The Guardian attempted to shovel what appears to be a wholly fabricated story down our throats that Trump campaign manager met with Julian Assange at the London Embassy – Politico allowed an ex-CIA agent to use their platform to come up with a [the most] ham-handed cover story ever; Russia tricked The Guardian into publishing the Manafort-Assange propaganda.”
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-11-28/greenwald-goes-ballistic-politico-theory-guardians-assange-manafort-story-was
Harding is some kind of Russian double agent.. and Russia tricked the Graun into publishing??! You have to laugh at the totally dumb chutzpah… Or is the CIA trying to ghost an MI6 media asset for the Steele debacle?
And this just in: https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/nov/28/feds-control-manafort-passports-would-bolster-deni/
#awkward
#Flakednews
The fight for media credibility just got owned. Well done Luke! It couldn’t happen to a more deserving shill.
‘The liberal Guardian newspaper..’
Nice to see the yanks have got the message about its politics – not leftist, or socialist – but LIBERAL.
And Glenn Greenwald is controlled opposition:
https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2018-11-28/guardian-vilification-julian-assange/
“Glenn Greenwald, who once had an influential column in the Guardian until an apparent, though unacknowledged, falling out with his employer over the Edward Snowden revelations, wrote a series of baffling observations about the Guardian’s latest story.
First, he suggested it was simply evidence of the Guardian’s long-standing (and well-documented) hostility towards Assange.
“The Guardian, an otherwise solid and reliable paper, has such a pervasive and unprofessionally personal hatred for Julian Assange that it has frequently dispensed with all journalistic standards in order to malign him.”
It was also apparently evidence of the paper’s clickbait tendencies:
“They [Guardian editors] knew that publishing this story would cause partisan warriors to excitedly spread the story, and that cable news outlets would hyperventilate over it, and that they’d reap the rewards regardless of whether the story turned out to be true or false.”
And finally, in a bizarre tweet, Greenwald opined, “I hope the story [maligning Assange] turns out true” – apparently because maintenance of the Guardian’s reputation is more important than Assange’s fate and the right of journalists to dig up embarrassing secrets without fear of being imprisoned.
I think the Guardian is an important paper with great journalists. I hope the story turns out true. But the skepticism over this story is very widespread, including among Assange’s most devoted haters, because it’s so sketchy. If Manafort went there, there’s video. Let’s see it.
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) November 28, 2018
Earlier I posted that there were two explanations for this pack of lies. Someone on Intercept – almost in passing – has just suggested a third and very unpleasant possibility – that this pack of lies is just the precursor to something bigger.
In effect, this pack of lies is just a shot across the bows. It’s of no great consequence, and neither is any fallout, as it’s about to be superseded by an all-out barrage of much bigger and more important packs of lies.
As the situation over there escalates/deteriorates, we are all going to have to be whipped into line behind the West’s support for the Ukraine in a hot war with Russia. We are going to have to made to understand that Russia is relentlessly and irredeemably evil; that there is literally no evil that Russia would not rejoice in.
I wish I could convince myself that this is a step too far even for the venal scum who run the show in our countries. But I can’t.
Assange-Manafort fabricated story is a plot to extradite WikiLeaks founder – Max Blumenthal
https://www.rt.com/news/445069-assange-manafort-guardian-russiagate/
why is it that certain posters never allowed on this site – thoght this was free speech?????
there are no posters “never allowed” on this site. Stop trolling.
What I find strange is that nobody working at the Guardian seems to have the guts to stand up and speak out about the terrible way they’ve treated Julian Assange. Betrayal and a deliberate campaign to blacken his name and achievements, when he can’t defend himself, is so cowardly and disgraceful. The people working at the Guardian really do seem like the members of a dreadful cult, where a few central figures, like Harding, tower over everyone else and nobody dares to call them charlatans.
Harding is obviously a channel for MI6, a gigantic, raving, Russo-phobe and soaked in propaganda about the primacy of the West and our values. I suppose Assange’s real crime was to pull the curtain aside and reveal the rotten hypocrisy and criminality at the heart of ‘our way of life’ our institutions and our…. ‘democracy’, and that is simply not allowed. The treatment of Assange shows just how fragile and undermined our fundamental freedoms and basic human rights really are, and that in many ways we now live in form of liberal totalitarian state that’s preparing for even more wars and even greater crimes that mustn’t be questioned or opposed, and that people who do, must be crushed and destroyed.
“What I find strange is that nobody working at the Guardian seems to have the guts to stand up and speak out about the terrible way they’ve treated Julian Assange” – at first I assumed antipathy toward Assange was because he had transgressed one of the central tenets of identity politics: allegations of sex crimes made by women should trump the long standing legal principle of the presumption of innocence until proven guilty.
Recently, for example, the Guardian called for the abandonment of juries in rape trials: the only surprise is they didn’t call for the complete abandonment of due process and just have done with it.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/nov/21/juries-rape-trials-myths-justice
But this vendetta (because that’s what it is) goes far deeper than that, it goes right to the heart of the moral collapse of this outlet given their willingness to punish Assange rather compromise their support of corrupt figures like Hillary (even though her role in Libya not to mention arming the Saudis was exposed by Wiki.)
In the Guardian’s moral universe the fact Hillary committed electoral fraud in the leadership contest and pockets huge sums of money from her corporate sponsers is neither here nor there compared to historical allegations made against Assange even when such claims are subverted at every turn by known facts (deleted tweets, lack of forensic evidence on a soiled condom, deviation from standard procedure when Assange was interviewed by a female police office known to be friends with one of the accusers, etc).
Hyde is the main anti-Asssange cheer leader but as mentioned on previous threads there are several other columnists who all seem to have lost a sense of decency or basic fairness.
And just to think, the Guardian keeps running articles warning everybody about ‘fake news’ – how ironic is that, eh?
No-one in the Australian government has had the guts to stand up for Julian Assange and bring back home where he belongs. That is even more shameful that what The guardian has done.
I am noticing the word GRU appear all over the place now – ever since the Skripal saga. Repeat until believed!
The allegation that Assange met with Manafort is another desperate effort to implicate WikiLeaks in the lurid claims of the Democratic Party, US intelligence agencies and much of the media that the Russian government “interfered” in the 2016 US presidential election to promote the victory of Donald Trump…
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/11/28/mana-n28.html
It’s a blatant attempt to deflect from the upcoming declassification of documents implicating SIS in the illegal interception of Trump’s campaign comms by means of plants and illegal intercepts, and the subsequent attempts to “overthrow” a sitting POTUS by means of collusion with a foreign power, with the irony being that the collusion with a foreign power was all done by the dems! Breathtaking hubris and stupidity imo.
Another update: Apparently WL is suing the Graun. Please can they pass it on to Stinky Harding
apologies, didn’t see the update to the update from Kit regarding WL suing the Graun..Just donated..I hope this is a huge rowback..they seem to have removed the story from their leaders and published links..hehe
I wonder if he needs crowd funding?
if by “he” you mean Wikileaks, then please remember that Paypal have cut them off; VISA, and by extension, SWIFT, have cut them off, then i would think crowdfunding is probably the only game in town. Why should “he” fund it himself? Wikileaks, not JA, are suing the Graun.
Why does it bother you?
No, I was thinking of PB’s libel case
oh him..The corwdfunding isn’t for for him, it’s so WL can sue the Graun themselves, becaise why not. Manafort’s a nasty piece of work and should be thrown in jail for a long time, but they’re using him to smear WL by association. If you think about it, it’s quite clever, as they are getting people who ordinarily would jump to WL’s defence, to think twice because Manafort is mates with orange man, and orange man bad, to coin a phrase.
We are witnessing full spectrum 4GW
Two articles by Glenn Greenwald very relevant to this story:
https://theintercept.com/2018/11/27/it-is-possible-paul-manafort-visited-julian-assange-if-true-there-should-be-ample-video-and-other-evidence-showing-this/
https://theintercept.com/2016/12/29/the-guardians-summary-of-julian-assanges-interview-went-viral-and-was-completely-false/
Why would Viner let Harding write anything more about Wikileaks and Assange? Harding’s book on the ‘Snowden files’ was a major part of the ferocious feud that has been running – mainly on Harding’s side, it has to be said – for years. The book itself was a steaming turd and Harding has followed up (you can’t fault his consistency) with equally dismal nonsense about Assange all the way up to yesterday.
So, the question is, why do they let him do it?
Perhaps Viner is in no position to stop LDH or to get rid of him.
Because she works for mi5 – This wasn’t published by “mistake”. Its why the guardian and other msm exist.
Its a physop, they exist to manufacture the believes of the masses and they have being doing this for probably a hundred years. In the past some slightly critical articles were allowed in the guardian to give the paper fake “Credibility”. The guardian is a rag, it always has been.
When Orwell wrote 1984 he meant 1948 when when UK wartime propaganda was made permanent. Big brother referred BB, Brendan Bracken who was Churchill’s personal secretary and who effectively controlled Churchill on behalf of the empire.
Its all fake, fake history, fake news, fake wars – its all a lie
Pamela Anderson paid a visit to Julian Assange?
THE Pamela Anderson?
Lucky guy!
.
Wrong.
Lucky JA. A fairy tale, of course.
.
He had 2 visits from Pamela. But the first one was really Manafort in drag. The second one was Vlad himself in drag. Really pulled the wool over people’s eyes.
Let’s hope Wikileaks win their court case and take the Graun for everything they;ve got.
Or will Deep State bail them out?!
Mind you UK courts are part of the Depp State!
They will be bailed out. They are too pig to fail.
One line at the beginning of the forth paragraph caught my eye: “It is unclear why Manafort would have wanted to see Assange and what was discussed.”
If this is the case [and it appears to be] then the rest of the article is pretty much a confection of Harding’s. As there is nothing else produced here other than hearsay. Anyone who is familiar with Harding’s reporting will realise that shilling is the name of the game. But even a shill has to start somewhere…
Harding repeats the lie of the Russian “hack” which has been proved not to have been possible by William Binney, whose credentials are somewhat more impressive than Harding’s. He developed the NSA’s data-monitoring program codenamed “ThinThread” and resigned when he realised how it was being used. Binney said clearly it was an internal leak – that the data must have been loaded onto a thumb drive as determined by the speed of the transfer. This was also confirmed by others in the know such as Craig Murray.
But hey why let some significant [inconvenient] facts get in the way of a decent pay cheque Luke?
Bill Binney didn’t just develop and run most of the NSA’s digital eavesdropping, he was their technical director. He’s a full-on legend in that world. Luke Harding is, at best, a rampant fantasist, and a (very shoddy) conduit for SIS. As with Higgins, it’s often his overactive imagination that gets the better of him.
There are two possible explanations here:
1. Its lunatic obsessive hatred for Donald Trump and his defeat of Saint Hillary of Vagina has driven the Guardian full-spectrum insane. There are no longer any editorial standards at all in operation at the newspaper. There is literally nothing that they will not publish if they believe that it serves in some way their lunatic anti-Trump agenda.
2. The Guardian is being used by the authorities as some kind of bizarre ‘stalking horse’ type of thing. Following the success of the Skripal story and the wider anti-Russian agenda, they want to see just how far they can go in publishing outrageous, palpable and ludicrous lies before there is any kind of pushback from the wider public. The Guardian is happy to play along.
.
Viner’s job spec (for the elite) is to put the Gurn out of business. . . . . one, hire a bunch of patsies and liars. Two, collect golden handshake.
K is far removed from reality, only turns up for bucket of cash. Why should she care?
.
This is the total mind f***k. The Gruan runs total rubbish -patently so, which discredits the Graun. Meaning that anything they publish in future (especially Brexit, poverty, creeping fascism) is discredited. As a (possibly) the only left orientated media left of the MSM (outside of the morningstar, the canary and blog sites) is now ‘fake news’. Who is exercising editorial control here?
It’s 1 and 2 and more.
The Guardian has become, like most other “newspapers” an opinion machine that churns out bias and propaganda, article after article after article, ad nauseum. It’s a production line of opinions. It’s hard to spot any real news at all.
It’s the mouthpiece of the international interventionists, the mouthpiece of the rampant regime change and war machine. They publish some societal and environmental pieces to trick readers into thinking that they care and represent their left wing views, but it’s a complete smokescreen for their deception and propaganda on behalf of the International Western Elite. That’s why we are all here rather than there.
“The Guardian has become, like most other “newspapers” an opinion machine that churns out bias and propaganda”
This. Every single piece is littered with uninformed opinion. Even “respectable” journos like Tisdall, who is just another SIS stooge are filling their press releases with unbridled vitriol and just plain lies. Such as today’s pice re the Sea of Azov:
“In fact, Russia has stationed three S-400 missile battalions in Crimea since 2014, when it seized and illegally annexed the peninsula.”
No, Simon. Back to school for you. Your paymasters’ illegal and blatant coup wasn’t greeted so well by the residents of the Donbass and Crimea, so they elected to have a referendum and became part of the RF (again). Over 90% turned out and over 95% of them VOTED to become Russian, so away with your lies and propaganda, you useless tool.
There’s nothing wrong with obsessively hating the oranguturd who occupies the WHITE House. What’s wrong is attacking him from the right, and slandering leftists and other opponents of Russophobia in the process.
There’s nothing wrong with obsessively hating the oranguturd…
Actually there is something quite seriously wrong with obsessively hating the orangeturd to the point that you abandon all pretence to any standards of honest journalism and happily print whatever lies you think will most inconvenience him.
You might be OK with the Guardian doing its part to enable war between Ukraine and Russia as part of its myopic anti-Trump vendetta. I’m not.
Being obsessive about anything rarely ends well
No point in hating Trump, Obama, Clinton. They are just figureheads who read from autocues like news readers. They don’t matter.
Ummm, I’ve got some “secret sources” too! They told me about a variety of salacious behaviors that one – “Luke Harding” – quite salaciously engaged in – that involve a large vat of lime jello, a yellow inflatable rubber duckie, and a healthy hunk of frozen Polish sausage a-fixed with duct-tape to the end of an industrial strength jack-hammer. Needless to say I’m reluctant to say anymore about any of what my “sources” have revealed without first clearing it with my attorney. I share the above simply as a public service.
Polish Sausage? No, it has to be a banana as evidenced by all the banana skins he slips on continually. It’s hard to believe that SIS, allegedly, might employ someone amateurish like that.
It’s not that much of a stretch. Look at every single “terror” attack in the last ten years. Every single operative was “known to security services” prior to the attack. It’s not just here, either. Throughout the world, every time there’s an attack, it transpires they were known to the local spooks/LEAs. This is not a coincidence.. From what I hear and read, SIS (MI*) is effectively two services with different masters. Really is good vs bad. Spy vs Spy.. Bizarrely the last Bond film, Spectre, portrays a realistic enough facsimile of what’s going on at Millbank, Vauxhall and Cheltenham. You couldn’t make it up
Excellent catch at shortleg there Kit!
The version change is slippery work.
I recommend my post and links below about how the eminent independent journalist Jonathan Cook had the Guardian sussed on their plan for Assange in 2011.
It may be worth a reprint on Off-G?
Yes, Cook’s piece is also good, and should be read as complementary to Kit’s. Here’s a more direct link
Aside from making up news, why meeting Assange is portrayed as doing something evil?
At election times, or at other times, one may visit Le Monde, Der Spiegel, Fox News, New York Times, The Guardian, India Times or Wikileaks. Why is it evil to visit one of them but not the others?
The service rendered by Wikileaks to humanity is unmatched by other press organisations.
The establishment is doing everything they could possibly in order do to divert attention from the crimes the government(s) is continually committing.
The best countermeasure to adopt is to publish and REPUBLISH and spread far and wide Wikileaks revelations as well as findings from other organisations.
” Visitors normally register with embassy security guards and show their passports. Sources in Ecuador, however, say Manafort was not logged. ”
What a staggeringly convenient lapse in security …. not only in 2013 … then in 2015 .. and again in 2016.
The normally astute security at the embassy fell asleep three times over a three year period and each time Paul Manafort snuck in and snuck out.
Presumably Luke will debunk this by publishing a photo of Manafort ghosting his way down the steps in his chinos and cardigan.
Bellingcat will provide the cardigan and chino photograph based on extensive online research and similar bollox.
Is it ‘Trump’s campaign chief vs. Intelligence Services’ or
‘Trump’s campaign chief vs. The Guardian’ ??
Or it’s all the same thing?
Thanks for giving eloquent voice to the “what the…” I let out upon seeing the hysterical, copy/paste headline on the Huffington Post this morning.
More than ever (and especially after having watched Chris Hedges’ recent interview with Joe Lauria on RT), Benjamin Franklin’s quote (paraphrased), “Those who would trade liberty for temporary security, deserve neither and will eventually lose both” has been coming to mind.
And they are getting no security anyway.
For a very long time now every time I read the Guardian website I feel quite nauseous afterwards, as though I’ve done something very sordid. I think it’s all the lying and their compulsion to spew hatred. Hatred of all things Russian, hatred of Assad, hatred of Assange, hatred of Corbyn, hatred of ordinary working people, hatred of anyone that questions the narratives, and so on, ad nauseam. Why do I open this hate site? I don’t know. I really don’t. Mind you, the BBC and Indy are barely any better.
every time I read the Guardian website I feel quite nauseous afterwards … Why do I open this hate site? I don’t know. I really don’t. Mind you, the BBC and Indy are barely any better.
Stop poisoning yourself with this garbage. Don’t look at it. The fact that many other people are much more seriously poisoned by it, doesn’t constitute a reason for you to consume it.
We need healthy people, like yourself, to fight against these ruling class scum. Don’t compromise your health, even slightly, even temporarily, by ingesting their disinfo poison.
Do you watch Hollywood slasher movies? Of course not. Why? Because they’re poisonous garbage. But so are the BBC and the Garbagian. Don’t look at them. If the ruling class succeeds in demoralizing you with their putrid sh**, then they’re winning. Don’t let them.
I always check them out. I start with the BBC then onto Guardian, Telegraph, Mail, Reuters and AP as well as RT. You get wide coverage of the ME in al-monitor.com. You soon get to see what the narrative is, it’s repeated ad nauseam, often using the same words. You do then get to see what a crock of shit the Guardian has became.
To take one small example; a relatively lengthy report on the ‘alleged gas attack in Aleppo’ tip toed over the fact, reported all round the world that the jihadis did it in preparation for the Final Battle. But instead there was a good bit for a Jihadi Leader who said the allegation was false etc. It was what they avoided saying (like ‘30,000 nut cases looking for blood, Yes, our nut cases, sorry about that”) that gave the game away (“Don’t Mention Nut Cases”).
Well, you’ve got a higher tolerance for shit-crocks than I do, then.
And obviously a lot more time.
Retirement helps! Many times you are just looking at headlines that tell you all you need to know – currently the ones proclaiming Britain Backs May are becoming more common. ‘Estonia fears Russian invasion is imminent’ will be the same story everywhere. Otherwise I read; at the moment I’ve hit on the Common Market kerfuffle back in 1971 in Wedgewood Benns diary. He was arguing for a Referendum on the issue and was convinced it had the potential to split both parties and the country. 50 years later… At the same time I was reading the pig’s head book about Cameron and his Referundum and the aristocratic hauteur he displayed within hours of losing it he sauntered away humming ‘I’m in the money now’. Benn’s diaries are close to unreadable now as he never explains Who is Who or What is What. Well, you don’t in a diary. ‘Went to Glasgow with Peter and Jim about UCS for which I am being pilloried by the press” isn’t very helpful.
If I get fed up I go to the Times of India where EVERYTHING is different, another World.
You’re better off reading wsws.org and a few alternative sites.
Just to add, Kit is white-hot at the moment – please keep them coming.
It’s a PR job to diminish any remaining liberal sympathy or defence of JS.
Link him to Trump. Job done.
My well placed sources tell me that Harding invents his sources.
It’s interesting that the two year Russiagate witch hunt has produced precisely zilch, apart from “highly likely” allegations from spooks with an axe to grind to credulous tame media hacks like Harding. If they had anything more than third and fourth hand gossip and smears it would have been leaked long ago to their media mouthpieces.
All the charges against Manafort and Co. that Harding, CNN, Rachel Madcow and all the rest have been hyperventilating over for the past two years don’t amount to a hill of beans. You could appoint a special prosecutor against Mother Theresa and he would come up with charges like tax evasion and lying to the FBI. The tax system is so complex that virtually everyone and his dog are tax offenders. Manafort, like Stone and all the rest just belong to the tens of thousands of political slime balls, grifters, lobbyists and influence pedlars who infest Foggy Bottom. You could take any politician or hanger on of any stripe, subject them to similar scrutiny and come up with the same result. It’s just a political persecution fishing expedition to come up with some dirt, any dirt. If the Clintons were subject to a similar process, there would be enough dirt to keep the courts and the lawyers happy for the next 100 years. Biased and selective enforcement of the law in this way is a feature of banana republics and totalitarian regimes.
It’s virtually impossible to avoid being charged with lying to the FBI. All it means is that they don’t like some answer that you’ve given them. It’s always advisable to say nothing at all. Maybe they ask you where you were last Tuesday afternoon. You rack your brains and tell them that you went to Tesco and bought a bottle of milk. They check and find out it was a bottle of orange juice, so they charge you with lying, and threaten you with 500 years imprisonment unless you agree to lie and implicate someone else they’re more interested in. That’s the way the system works. Add to that the proven FBI perjurers like Strzok, Page, Clapper and Brennan, anti Trump/ pro Clinton fanatics one and all, and you can assess the credibility of the entire process.
The Democrats/ Guardian and the rest of the Faux Left think this is okay because it’s Trump. Anything goes. But what is done to their enemies today will be done to them tomorrow. It’s the same with Assange and the alternative media. The MSM is shilling for censorship without realising they will be targeted next. They will learn this to their cost.
Biased and selective enforcement of the law in this way is a feature of banana republics and totalitarian regimes.
Sums up what the US has sadly become.
Unfortunately (or fortunately perhaps) it’s behind a paywall but last weekend’s Sunday Times magazine contained a hatchet-job profile of Seumas Milne, Jeremy Corbyn’s director of strategy. It’s garbage journalism as would be expected but there’s a passage where Luke Harding accuses Milne of being a Kremlin stooge when they both worked at the Guardian, after which, according to this account, Milne never mentioned the name Harding again without prefacing it with the adjective “hated.” “The hated Harding:” nice to know it’s not just me that feels like that.
worth watching, worth watching
Royal Babylon The Criminal Record of the British Monarchy HD
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3EASRDvhlA
Royal Babylon The Criminal Record of the British Monarchy HD
Criminal Record of the British Monarchy”: RB opening – The Sex Pistols argument, Killing an Ibis, Mad Monar…
worth watching
Royal Babylon The Criminal Record of the British Monarchy HD
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3EASRDvhlA
Royal Babylon The Criminal Record of the British Monarchy HD
Criminal Record of the British Monarchy”: RB opening – The Sex Pistols argument, Killing an Ibis, Mad Monar…
worth watching
Royal Babylon The Criminal Record of the British Monarchy HD
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3EASRDvhlA
Royal Babylon The Criminal Record of the British Monarchy HD
Criminal Record of the British Monarchy”: RB opening – The Sex Pistols argument, Killing an Ibis, Mad Monar…
Update: the Guardian is now claiming Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin visited the Ecuadorian embassy disguised as Pamela Anderson where he/she was subject to a coercive sex act while Julian Assange sang ‘tie me kangeroo down sport’.
A well placed source claims US judges have draw up new secrets indictments only known about by most of the worlds media meaning Assange could face a lifetime in solitary once Britain delivers him to America’s specially convened kangaroo court.
The Guardian is also planning an in-depth series on do-gooders who fail to grasp America’s role in keeping ‘bad guys’ in check even if it means laying half the world to waste.
I’ve never been a reader of the Guardian. So I’m interested to know if the Guardian was ever a paper that had balanced foreign affairs reporting or was anti-war.
It seems that perhaps it wasn’t half bad at some point. I spoke to a friend recently (a highly intelligent Guardian individual) who was visibly shocked when I said that the Guardian was renowned for promoting a distorted, lying narrative on Syria on par with Channel 4..
What has actually changed from peoples perception of this paper a few years ago to now?
I could scroll back through all the history but if someone can summarise things in a few sentences, I’d be grateful.
I read the Graun for years. It once was one of my go-to sources. It used to have first-rate columnists like Seamus Milne, John Pilger, Tariq Ali and Glen Greenwald. No more.
The change came about 5 years ago, shortly after Ed Snowden supposedly gave his files to Glen Greenwald. Greenwald was promptly fired from the Graun and had to flee to S. America. Over the next two years, the paper lost all their worthwhile people; only shit-heads like Luke Harding and fakers like Owen Jones are left now.
So sad what happened to the Graun. But at least we got the Off-Guardian as compensation!
Thank you so much.
John Pilger is a legend. I didn’t realise he wrote tor the Guardian. I went to an event last year where he was due to speak but sadly he was ill.
I guess probably he ended up a bit like Robert Fisk, still writing for the Independent. A lone voice of common sense but who was graduallly being pushed out by the new brand of Middle East journalist ‘Beirut babes’ who just take Al Qaeda’s word for things.
I really do wonder about Owen Jones. He seems intelligent, so how can he be so wrong? Or Is he a dishonest opportunist and spin merchant like the others?
Agreed Off G is a great site. Essential reading!
Most of these so-called journalists are kept i a statsis kind of state. They are supposed/allowed to write credible (but harmless) stories until their services as full-blooded stooges are required.
The Guardian was well beyond the S-bend of the proverbial toilet even before Edward Snowden contacted Glen Greenwald. At the same time Greenwald was head-hunted for Guardian America in 2012, Joshua Treviño was also contracted to write for them on US politics.
https://www.theguardian.com/gnm-press-office/9
Not long afterwards, Electronic Intifada called attention to a Tweet made by Treviño in 2011 in which he opined that if Israeli Defense Forces were to shoot Americans sailing in a flotilla from Greece to Gaza (after a first flotilla from Turkey to Gaza ended in tragedy with nine civilians including a 19-year-old Turkish-American man being killed by Israeli soldiers), he would be very happy.
https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/new-guardian-team-member-openly-incited-israel-murder-alice-walker-and-others
The Guardian was obliged to dump Treviño after that revelation and others that revealed his innate bloodthirsty proclivities.
IMO the rot set in when The Guardian decided to risk a new marketing strategy targeting a younger, supposedly more “liberal” and “progressive” audience and expand into the US and Australia, at the expense of keeping its traditional audience.
Why would their current editorial policy attract a “leberal” and “progressive” audiance?
Others will correct me if I’m wrong but one of the catalysts for Off-G was the Guardian’s infuriating habit of censoring dissenting views so that nowadays (BTL) the memoryhole is more or less in full time use.
The fault lines have been there for ages which has led to the Guardian being on the wrong side of history for some important stories despite good evidence to the contrary: evidence which is usually shut down BTL if it contradicts the Guardians favoured narrative (such as antisemitism accusations made against Corbyn, the Skripal psych-op, or Syria and the White Helmets).
Having said that from trom time to time some valuable articles still appear (such as the one linked to below) yet the Guardian censors seem oblivious to the volte face required for such views to be heard in one forum yet completely forbidden in others. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/nov/27/chimamanda-ngozi-adichie-hillary-clinton-liberal-literati-coddling-powerful#comments
It always was just a lying piece of Zionist toilet paper, going back to the days of the old Manchester Guardian. It was shilling for Israel even before Israel existed.
It was shilling for Israel even before Israel existed.
Be careful saying things like that, or somebody will accuse you of promoting anti-semitic conspiracy theories.
The old Manchester Guardian?1
Wow you must be ancient…
Seamus Padraig is absolutely accurate about when this change occurred. The paper allowed the US/UK intelligence service to destroy the hard drives of its computers, which contained Snowden’s files. The butterfly that emerged from this broken chrysalis was a distinctly different species to the caterpillar that begat it. Ever since then it has been the chief UK mouthpiece of the CIA and Clintonite/EU faction of the imperialists and the cheerleader for attacks on Russia. Another great former Graun journalist, Jonathan Cook, who has written recently for Off-Guardian, had this to say: https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2018-03-28/guardian-pravda/
Also never forget the Mossack – Fonseca exclusive that went off like a rocket and fell to earth as a damp squib.
Some people warned them and the BBC off and they both acceded to the threat.
Absolutely correct. The fallout from the Snowden leaks was The Guardian became house organ of the intelligence services. What happened? Spooks showed up with enough dirt to severely damage/destroy the paper, along with an offer that couldn’t be refused?
Perhaps the MSM is mostly kept afloat financially by the state in a hidden way these days. How often do you see anyone reading a newspaper?
Have a read of Jonathan Cook another ex Guardian writer – banished because of his experience and knowledge of the ME and Israeli regime. They don’t like that kind of investigative journalism on their site anymore.
https://www.jonathan-cook.net/
Do a search on his site for ‘Guardian’ and you will see the list of articles he wrote going back many years – all are worthy – most detail how “comments are NOT free” and ‘Facts are sacriligious” at that ‘news’paper.
This one from 2011 is particularly relevant as it explains exactly todays odious dung dropping and describes the nauseous stable it emamates from.
https://www.jonathan-cook.net/2011-09-28/the-dangerous-cult-of-the-guardian/
In fact I urge everyone to read them all and give thanks for independent journalism by unpaid individuals who are the most knowledgeable about their subjects.
I’m looking forward to Jonathan’s take on this latest – he knows these fuckwits better than most.
The Guardian also used to be owned by an independent trust. That was replaced by a company, whose board is a who’s who of bankers and similar establishment figures. Off-G did post a list of directors at some point, it is eye-opening, especially as many people still think the Guardian Trust is an independent trust.
As the idiotic Harding admitted in his embarrassing interview with Aaron Mate of the Real News, he is a ‘storyteller’ not a journalist.
One thing I find really sickening is the Old Vic theatre is putting on a play next spring based on his nonsensical sensationalism about the death of Litvinenko. The theatre whose artistic director for many years was the cant keep his hands off young boys but let’s all look the other way Kevin Spacey.
That’s a wonderful little exposure! When these ‘journalists’ fret over their plummenting credibility I wonder if they ever stop and think that making it up gets quite complicated. What a bunch of tossers!
The Guardian Beobachters very own Julius Streicher is again spewing hate. This vile excuse for a human being is a habitual liar at best and and known war monger. I cant wait to read his obituary…
I know that President Donald J Trump reads Off-guardian.org so I respectfully ask him to give Julian Assange a ‘Full Pardon’ for this coming Christmas.
More lies and propaganda. Why is this even an article here?
Because it is OffGuardian’s mandate to monitor the excesses of The Guardian
. So, when they publish particularly graphic examples of the ‘more lies and propaganda’of which you complain, Off Guardian, properly publishes an analysis thereof.
More lies and propaganda. Why is this even an article here?
Erm, I wonder why you are here? Do tell us.