All posts filed under: Guardian Watch

The Guardian’s propaganda on Venezuela: all you need to know

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With the Constituent Assembly elections due to take place on July 30th, the Guardian published a piece titled “Venezuela elections: all you need to know”. But instead of breaking through the fog of falsehood and misinformation that is typical of the mainstream media’s coverage of Venezuela, the Guardian comes up with another propaganda piece laden with lies, distortions and omissions. In this article we go through the Guardian’s piece, clarifying the falsehoods, adding the conveniently omitted information and questioning the whole narrative that is presented.

“Is free-speech really worth all this hassle?” – Gaby Hinsliff

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by Kit I’ve never written a response to a Gaby Hinsliff column before. I’ve never felt the need. In much the same way that I’ve never written an online review of sliced bread or an essay about cardboard. It’s…there, I suppose, and it does a job, but it’s hardly worth getting excited about. First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. Mahatma Gandhi The Manchester bombing was “let happen” by MI5 because of the Conservative party’s disastrous dip in the polls. That was the theory tweeted by Rufus Hound, a comedian. As theories go, and it is still just a theory at this early stage, it’s not at all outlandish. History is full of precedents of power structures making people believe they are under threat in order to secure their position. As Hound succinctly put it, #Reichstagfire. The bombing, whether real or staged or allowed to happen or planned by MI5, will allow May to talk about strength and stability some more, allow the Tory’s to attack …

The Guardian Takes Aim at Venezuela’s Democracy

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by Joe Emersberger from TeleSUR The British newspaper recently published an editorial saying that President Nicolas Maduro’s government must be threatened with “pariah status.” From 2006 to 2012, The Guardian’s output on Venezuela was dominated by its Caracas-based reporter, Rory Carroll, who tirelessly demonized, ridiculed and lied about the government of former president Hugo Chavez as it made rapid progress on reducing poverty. The Guardian recently published an editorial saying that President Nicolas Maduro’s government must be threatened with “pariah status” by the “international community“ if it does not hold presidential elections by the end of 2018. This comes from a newspaper that continually attempts to rehabilitate former British prime minister Tony Blair, a man who played a key role in launching a war of aggression that killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. But no pariah status for him. The imperial hypocrisy on display is stunning. The Guardian editors cited the New York Times editorial board to back up their stance on Venezuela. In 2002, the New York Times editorial applauded a U.S.-backed military coup …

Graun celebrates Macron’s avowal to despoil working people, wreck infrastructure & enrich banking class

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by Catte Macron is more Obama than Obama. More Blair than Blair. A creation, groomed and glossed for this “spontaneous” bid for power by the banking class he unashamedly represents. The Guardian unsurprisingly has numerous pieces (comments-disallowed) pushing this glibly smiling drone as the Saviour of France. Here’s an example to give you a flavour. All predictable and barely worth discussion. But one of the pieces has a little blue sidebar summarising their darling’s policies and position, which so completely encapsulates the destruction of meaning in political language we are currently witnessing that it should be noted. Here is a screen cap: You see, the Guardian defines itself as a “centrist/liberal Left” outlet, so, of course it supports “liberal Left” polices. How does it do this and still be the paper of record for Wall Street and the neocons? Easy. It just plays Humpty Dumpty and redefines what words actually mean. Here is what “centrist/liberal Left”, as encapsulated by Macron’s policies, now means for the Graun and the class it represents: 1) ”REMAKE THE FAILED …

Guardian’s new low of journalistic abdication

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The world stands on the brink of global conflict. Nuclear war is currently a serious possibility. The US launched an attack on a Russian ally state based on completely unproven claims that it had used chemical weapons on its own people. No investigation to verify these claims has yet been undertaken. Responsible journalism needs to play an urgent part in pulling the situation back from the brink. It needs to point out the lack of data and the requirement for cool heads and rational thinking. But today, of all days, this is the Guardian’s headline. “Again.” Could there be a more complete abdication of journalistic responsibility to question and inform? Do the Guardian editorial staff who sanctioned this offence realise they are not simply advertising their own lack of moral fibre but may also be propagandising for the end of the world, themselves and their loved ones? Or does some innate hubris make them feel immortal and invulnerable? If so, by the time they realise they were wrong it will be very much too late …

Global Laundromat update: “Bank did bank things with famous person”

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Perhaps this is the beginning of a new series for the Guardian? Maybe in the future we can expect stories entitled “Man who voted Brexit regularly beats wife” and “Angela Merkel lives in the same city Adolf Hitler called home”. I think the “Global Laundromat” scandal might not be having the massive impact that The Guardian expected it to (personally, I blame the rather silly name). When it was launched yesterday it was meant to be a splash, but it has landed more like a ripple, so far failing to even repeat the short-lived intensity of the Panama Papers. Todays article is simply a readjustment of all same talking points mentioned several times each yesterday, only chopped up into a different order. Like that episode of the Simpsons where Marge keeps chopping up one Chanel suit into a variety of different outfits. You can tell they are desperate to get people clicking, because they’ve tried to tie it into an actual talking point: Donald Trump’s “Russia connections”. The entirety of this “new information” is contained …

“Global Laundromat” has the Guardian in a Spin

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by Kit The latest “breaking” story from the Guardian and Luke Harding is hitting the headlines. Almost exactly 1 year after the explosive anti-climax that was “The Panama Papers”, Harding and the coterie of NGOs for which he acts as de-facto spokesperson have a big announcement to make: Banks launder money, and some of it is Russian. We are nearing the anniversary of the release of the Panama Papers, a “big story” involving years of work, hundreds of leaked documents, a team of exceptional journalists (and Luke Harding) and a dramatic reveal: “Sometimes, very rich people use legal loopholes to avoid paying their taxes.” The list of implicated parties included heads of state, celebrities, athletes, David Cameron’s dad and a cellist that knows Vladimir Putin. We all remember who the Guardian decided to focus on, and we all know why. Today the same crack-team (and Luke Harding) are releasing the long-awaited sequel to their original hit. “The global Laundromat”, it’s called. It’s a product of a years-long investigation into money laundering in ex-Soviet states, using …

Google employs army of censors “quality raters” to combat horrid things on the web

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It seems the unofficial Minitrue we predicted in yesterday’s piece is already here. Google’s “Quality raters” will, from Tuesday, be combing the net with fresh vigour looking for “upsetting-offensive” things and making sure we never get to see them. The article in the Guardian covering this new development highlights its use against the usual suspect – “Holocaust denial”, which is of course the thinnest and most entirely acceptable end of the wedge. The one they always use as a poster child for censorship of any kind. But we would have to be cosmically naive to believe Google’s anonymous and entirely unaccountable “10,000-strong army of independent contractors” will stop there. We should also remain a little sceptical about Google’s vaguely worded claim that these new guidelines will not effectively remove certain opinions from the web. The only way the quality control can work is through promoting some sites while suppressing others. We might not be concerned when white supremacists sites are being targeted for such suppression, but what about alternative health sites? Truther sites? Or indeed …

Guardian promoting GCHQ demand for more internet censorship

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In the past year the Guardian has been overtly promoting internet censorship. A while back they uncritically coordinated with Yvette Cooper’s insinuating “take back the internet” programme to make sure we all get “the web we they want”. Last week they uncritically published an opinion piece from Tim Berners-Lee, where he claims we should: …push back against misinformation by encouraging gatekeepers such as Google and Facebook to continue their efforts to combat the problem… While, of course…. …avoiding the creation of any central bodies to decide what is “true” or not. Hmmm…tough thing to achieve you may think. Which is possibly why Tim doesn’t bother to tell us how he thinks it should be done. In fact we can be pretty sure, being a bit of a genius allegedly, Tim knows pretty well that Governments and corporations are so irreversibly intertwined, their policies and goals so similar, that by instructing Facebook to “take measures” you are, in effect, privatising Orwell’s Minitrue, and creating precisely the “central bod[y] to decide what is true or not” that …

Guardian flagrantly lying about Western policy in ME, trashing its own comments to silence dissent

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For five years the US and other western powers worked to unite Syria’s disparate rebel factions, combat Islamic State and broker a peace deal with Bashar al-Assad’s regime. Prospects of such a deal have all but evaporated after Russian air power crushed rebels in their stronghold of Aleppo. Above is the Graun’s debased re-writing of recent history in its latest piece of Pentagon/Langley/GCHQ propaganda. The article itself tries to whip some sort of moral outrage out of Russia “doing a Syria” in Libya – viz Russian companies daring to make deals with Libyan oil companies, and possibly even funding the “anti-Western” forces currently battling for control of the oil fields. The tone is, of course, that Russia has no business trying to protect its own interests in the ME or anywhere, since only Western colonialists are empowered to do that. Capturing the glittering prize of the Oil Crescent has become the focus of a bitter civil war now in its third year and US officials fear that Russia has now entered the conflict, with Haftar …

Guardian now fan-worshipping Bush Jr? Oh, the humanity

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We have a theory there is a mole somewhere in the Scott Trust (Ltd). A deep infiltration agent from the Old Left, who remembers the days when the Graun at least pretended to have a moral compass, and who is exacting a terrible revenge for the paper’s slide into neoliberalism by forcing it to become its own parody account. How else, really, to explain much of its recent output, culminating in this editorial from today? Yes, it’s real. The Guardian is – really – going out there on that limb, suggesting Dubya is now pretty fine, just because he isn’t Trump: His defence today of a free press (“indispensable”), his call for a “lawful, welcoming” immigration policy and his preference for “answers” in the scandal engulfing Donald Trump’s team over Moscow’s meddling in the presidential election may mark a turning point for Republicans We have to wonder, who else is going to get rehabilitated now on the basis of not being Trump? Maybe this will be next week’s “Guardian View”?

A beginner’s guide to the Guardian

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by Darren Allen The Guardian newspaper is a limited company and has been since 2008 when the Scott Trust was wound up and replaced by The Scott Trust Ltd, which appoints a board comprised of bankers, management consultants, venture capitalists and other classic left-wingers. The paper itself is written nearly exclusively by elite-educated members of the upper middle class. The viewpoint you would expect to come from this privileged set-up is what you do get. Murray McDonald, in his Hidden History of the Guardian, explains that The Guardian was launched to undermine working-class leaders of the early 19th century reform movement (whose members were massacred at Peterloo), and during its 150 year history has denounced Ireland’s freedom fighters, Women Suffragettes, Abraham Lincoln’s campaign to end slavery, third world nationalism and pretty much any kind of genuine independence from the system. It supported Tony Blair, even when the worst of his crimes were known and continues to give him uncritical space, it regularly presents official pronouncements as news, regularly disguises adverts for its corporate sponsors as …

Libyan Labels: a journey through the Guardian’s coverage of the Libyan disaster

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In this analysis we examine Libya’s recent history looking through the eyes of the Guardian, the flagship of liberal western outlets, and its reporting. As with most other western media, the Guardian was an enthusiastic supporter of the NATO intervention that overthrew Gaddafi and threw the country into the disaster that we are about to describe. Faithful to western interests then, the Guardian remains faithful afterwards as well. But imperial designs are laden with contradictions and sometimes drastically change course, but the Guardian dutifully follows.

Russian Spies Behind Every Christmas Tree

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by David William Pear The main stream propaganda media has been on an anti-Putin, anti-Russian propaganda binge for years, and the Guardian is one of the leaders of the pack. One has to wonder if it has anything to do with the Guardian’s shady dealings with George Soros’ secretive Open Society Foundation. Soros makes a fortune from U.S. sponsored regime changes and financial disasters. A regime change in Russia could make him Billions of dollars. For years the Guardian was a captain of journalism in a sea of corporate monopoly media. No longer and many of its renowned journalists have abandoned ship or been thrown overboard. Their alleged crimes were mutiny against the establishment? The first storm at the Guardian came when award winning editor in chief Janine Gibson was forced to walk the plank (May 2015). Gibson was widely expected to become the Guardian’s Senior Editor. Instead Gibson was deep sixed after she navigated the Guardian through the treacherous course of revealing the Edward Snowden leaks. The Guardian was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for …

Greenwald: Guardian engaged in ‘journalistic fraud’ in Assange interview rewrite

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Photo Oli Scarff/Getty Images RT reports: Journalist Glenn Greenwald has accused his former employer, The Guardian, of falsifying the words of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in a report about the interview he gave to La Repubblica. Assange spoke to the Italian newspaper’s correspondent Stefania Maurizi last week when she visited him in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. The interview was in English and a transcript of it is available on La Repubblica’s website. The Guardian’s report on the interview was published Saturday and contains two false statements about what Assange told the Italian newspaper, Greenwald says in a damning piece on The Intercept. The headline said Assange “gives guarded praise” to Donald Trump, while inside the article itself The Guardian cited the WikiLeaks founder as claiming that “there was no need for WikiLeaks to undertake a whistleblowing role in Russia because of the open and competitive debate.” Neither statement accurately represented what Assange actually said in the interview, Greenwald says. His comment on Trump said that the US president-elect was no “DC insider” and was bringing in …

The CIA’s Absence of Conviction

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by Craig Murray I have watched incredulous as the CIA’s blatant lie has grown and grown as a media story – blatant because the CIA has made no attempt whatsoever to substantiate it. There is no Russian involvement in the leaks of emails showing Clinton’s corruption. Yes this rubbish has been the lead today in the Washington Post in the US and the Guardian here, and was the lead item on the BBC main news. I suspect it is leading the American broadcasts also. A little simple logic demolishes the CIA’s claims. The CIA claim they “know the individuals” involved. Yet under Obama the USA has been absolutely ruthless in its persecution of whistleblowers, and its pursuit of foreign hackers through extradition. We are supposed to believe that in the most vital instance imaginable, an attempt by a foreign power to destabilise a US election, even though the CIA knows who the individuals are, nobody is going to be arrested or extradited, or (if in Russia) made subject to yet more banking and other restrictions …

Why should cyclists and homeowners have to pay the price for ‘safety’ on a daily basis?

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New research says up to 70% of British cyclists have taken steps in their everyday lives to guard against bike theft. From chains and padlocks to D-locks and even removing handlebars as a precaution – the idea that the onus is on us is writ large. Part of our new “Bad things shouldn’t happen, so why should I act like they do?” season, inspired by the Guardian.