All posts tagged: guardian

Open Thread: Trump-Putin Summit and Mounting Hysteria

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Yesterday, Trump and Putin met for a summit in Helsinki. The resulting hysteria, all throughout the mainstream media and in the minds of neocon and (self-described) “liberals” alike.

Just to be clear – it is not unusual for heads of state to meet. It is not unusual for leaders with different values or interests to discuss international politics. It’s the entire point of diplomacy.

The media at large appear to have forgotten this – giving thousands of column inches to insane ramblings employing words such as “traitor”, “treason”, “puppet” and “surrender”. Words which are rapidly losing their meaning.

What “community standards” did this comment breach? #16

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This comment – written and sent in by Jay-Q, one of our readers – was censored by the Guardian. Which of the well-publicised CiF “community standards” did it breach? Removed comment, posted under the opinion piece “The ruins I saw in Syria stand as a rebuke to western inaction”: The article was published at 6.00am this morning – May 1st – its comment section was closed by noon. Screen shot of where it used to be: Does it “misrepresent the Guardian and its journalists”? Is it “persistent trolling or mindless abuse”? Is it “spam-like”? Or “obviously commercial”? Is it “racism, sexism, homophobia or hate-speech”? Is it “extremely offensive of threatening?”? Is it “flame-wars based on ingrained partisanship or generalisations”? Is it not “relevant”? If none of the above – why was it taken down? see our archive of censored comments. And if you see any egregious examples of the Guardian censoring its “free” comment sections – email us at editor@off-guardian.org, and send us screen caps if possible

Douma: Part 1 — Deception in Plain Sight

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by Media Lens, April 25, 2018 UK corporate media are under a curious kind of military occupation. Almost all print and broadcast media now employ a number of reporters and commentators who are relentless and determined warmongers. Despite the long, unarguable history of US-UK lying on war, and the catastrophic results, these journalists instantly confirm the veracity of atrocity claims made against Official Enemies, while having little or nothing to say about the proven crimes of the US, UK, Israel and their allies. They shriek with a level of moral outrage from which their own government is forever spared. They laud even the most obviously biased, tinpot sources blaming the ‘Enemy’, while dismissing out of hand the best scientific researchers, investigative journalists and academic sceptics who disagree. Anyone who challenges this strange bias is branded a ‘denier’, ‘pro-Saddam’, ‘pro-Gaddafi, ‘pro-Assad’. Above all, one robotically repeated word is generated again and again: ‘Apologist… Apologist… Apologist’. Claims of a chemical weapons attack on Douma, Syria on April 7, offered yet another textbook example of this reflexive warmongering. …

“We hates Putin…we hates him forever…”: the Guardian’s fresh ravings on Russia reflects West’s tipping point into new levels of dangerous insanity

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There is ample evidence that the Guardian is now, following the re-shaping of its financing and management, reinvented as the paper of record for the UK/US intel agencies, which in turn currently harbour some of the most extreme anti-Russian pro-war ideologues in the business. As such its editorial policy gives us an insight into exactly who is currently getting most leverage in policy-making. When they go relatively soft on Russia you know the voices of sanity are making headway. When they begin ranting about Putin you know the lunatics have grabbed the steering wheel again and we’re heading back towards the cliff edge. Currently the Guardian’s editorial style isn’t so much ranting as it is writhing on the ground screaming “Putin…curse him…and crush him…we hates him forever…”. Since the still unexplained and increasingly odd Skripal “poisoning” hit the headlines, there has been at least one hysterical anti-Russian piece published every day over at Graun HQ. And if we thought previous bias and inaccuracy was deplorable, the journalistic standard displayed in these recent examples has become …

The authoritarians who silence Syria questions

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by Jonathan Cook I am loath to draw more attention to the kind of idiocy that passes for informed comment nowadays from academics and mainstream journalists. Recently I lambasted Prof Richard Carver for his arguments against BDS that should have gained him an F for logic in any high school exam. Now we have to endure Brian Whitaker, the Guardian’s former Middle East editor, using every ploy in the misdirection and circular logic playbook to discredit those who commit thought crimes on Syria, by raising questions both about what is really happening there and about whether we can trust the corporate media consensus banging the regime-change drum. Whitaker’s arguments and assumptions may be preposterous but sadly, like Carver’s, they are to be found everywhere in the mainstream – they have become so commonplace through repetition that they have gained a kind of implicit credibility. So let’s unpack what Whitaker and his ilk are claiming. Whitaker’s latest outburst is directed against the impudence of a handful of British academics, including experts in the study of propaganda, …

CIA, FBI and NSA produce joint report, jointly prove nothing

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by Ricardo Vaz, originally published at Invesig’Action The recent hysteria surrounding Russia’s alleged interference with the November presidential elections saw another episode after an intelligence report, jointly elaborated by the CIA, FBI and NSA, was released on Friday, January 6th. After weeks of bombshell headlines based on statements from anonymous intelligence officials, western media finally had an official intelligence report to support their bombshell headlines. Unsurprisingly, all headlines look very similar, with the Guardian even changing the title of their main story after realising it was not menacing enough. The problem is that, much like the old stories, the new ones do not contain any evidence to support the claims, because the report itself does not have anything in that regard. The report says that the “evidence” remains highly classified. These outlets are just being fed the same (non-)information in a new package, and reporting it as “remarkably blunt” (WaPo) and “damning and surprisingly detailed” (NYT) does not change the fact that there are no facts to back this thesis that there was a campaign …

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 …

Guardian plays Robin to MI5’s Batman

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  Jonathan Cook, “an award-winning British journalist based in Nazareth, Israel”, writes in his eponymous blog: Today the Guardian offers decisive confirmation that it is only too willing to serve as an establishment mouthpiece. It proudly announces that it is the venue selected by Andrew Parker, the head of MI5, Britain’s FBI, to receive the agency’s first-ever newspaper interview [link]. If the Guardian were a proper independent newspaper, it would regard this interview as a stain. Instead it bills it as a front-page “exclusive”. Exclusively, the Guardian has been given the chance to regurgitate MI5’s propaganda – propaganda designed to help stoke a new Cold War with Russia. In fact, this is not an “interview” as the Guardian claims, for the simple reason that the paper’s two “interviewers” – one of them its deputy editor, Paul Johnson – have no basis on which to question the quality of the “classified” information they are being fed. Everything Parker tells them could have been guessed at without the interview: ● the Russians under Vladimir Putin are an …

Guardian cites terrorist leader saying there are no terrorists in Aleppo

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Ahrar al-Sham militants making a public statement in Syria. Darius Shahtahmasebi writes in The Anti-Media: On Wednesday [October 19], the Guardian released an article titled “U.S. and U.K. reject Russian offer of ‘pause’ in airstrikes on Syria.” Aside from the fact it’s riddled with the outlet’s usual pro-U.S.-U.K. and anti-Russian propaganda, the article sank to the lowest of possible lows in an attempt to present the Russian military as an aggressor in Aleppo in which there are allegedly no terrorist groups — only moderate fighting forces. How? By citing the leader of a terrorist group. Al-Farouk Abu Bakr, an Aleppo commander in the “powerful Islamist group” Ahrar al-Sham said, speaking from Aleppo: “‘When we took up arms at the start of the revolution to defend our abandoned people we promised God that we would not lay them down until the downfall of this criminal regime,’ he said, referring to President Bashar al-Assad’s government.” “There are no terrorists in Aleppo.” [emphasis added] There are many issues with the Guardian’s publication of this statement. First, in the Guardian’s latest …

Guardian wastes no time in turning tragedy into politcal capital

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Less than 24 hours after the violent death of the Labour MP Jo Cox, the Guardian has unleashed two editorials that seek to pin the blame, not on the suspect currently in custody, but on the people campaigning for Britain to leave the EU. The first, by Polly Toynbee, is closed for comments (for the author’s sake, you would think…but we’ll get to that later) – it is tasteless, evidenceless and manipulative: It’s wrong to view the killing of Jo Cox in isolation.” …she says, and having quickly and efficiently removed the need to talk about the specifics of the murder, or any of the tragic details, she proceeds to use the killing of a 42 year old mother as a platform for attacking her political opponents and ramming home some Guardianista agenda. This poor woman was not killed by the apparently mentally ill man, currently in police custody, but by the “mood of the country” in which we are “encouraged to mistrust elected officials”. In a sense, Polly Toynbee says, everyone who doesn’t like …

Luke Harding’s: A Very Heavily Discounted Book

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by TUTISICECREAM The unexceptional account of a discredited inquiry The Guardian’s Book of the Day [here today gone tomorrow?] masquerading as a “True Crime” story, is an attempt to give the Alexander Litvinenko inquiry further credence, thereby helping keep it in the Public eye. A crime it certainly is, in journalistic terms, taking the statements of the Owen inquiry [we cannot call them facts because they are all probabilities] and trying to get us to believe it all over again is like, well, trying to make money from old rope. This leads us to think, can we believe anything anymore written by Guardian hacks? The simple answer to this question regarding the Litvinenko murder inquiry and things Russian is most definitely no. But will this book or the so call findings of the Owen inquiry, to quote the Bard, “…last out a night in Russia, When nights are longest there*”? Probably not, to use the overworked Owenesque ad verbal. The review of the grandly entitled Luke Harding book, “A Very Expensive Poison” by Oliver Bullough …

Syria: The Guardian View on…Things they Just Made Up

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The Western MSM are all a flutter: Russia are pulling out of Syria (sort of). They can’t quite decide if it’s a victory, or a defeat. They don’t know if it’s because they ran out of money, are giving up, or it’s all a big lie – but they all agree on two things: 1) Russia have not achieved anything and 2) This is a massive asurprise.

Bellingcat: the Dead Cat Factory

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There have been two new developments in the long-awaited criminal investigation report into MH17 over the last couple of weeks. Though you might’ve read about one, you’re far less likely to have heard about the other — more important — one.

BTL Censorship at the Guardian…again

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by Kit It seems this blog is now officially totally banned from the comment section of The Guardian. That’s what user Dell3330 found when he posted this link: The comment, left under the latest toxic offering from the Guardian’s network of NGOs and government employees, was to this article. A simple, fact checked, point by point breakdown of the various members of the New East Network. It’s unclear, at least to us, exactly how this comment could be against any “community guidelines”, and yet… Oh well. Many thanks to the hawk-eyed reader who brought this to our attention

Guardian Watch 17/12/2015

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from Seemorerocks It’s an old habit that is difficult to throw off. I have been accustomed, during my life (or at least for the last quarter-centrury) to rely on that solid, reliable representative of serious journalism, the Guardian. So as part of this ritual I checked the Guardian for signs of the stories that interest me, or concern me: The invasion of Iraq by Turkey and the further developments The alleged bombing by NATO/US of Syrian army forces The emergency meeting of Kerry with Lavrov and Putin in Moscow Revelations by a Turkish MP of sarin gas being supplied to al-Qaeda through Turkey from Europe and the threats of arrest of the MP I might expect a different slant on this from the Russian, Middle Eastern and alternative media. But my search was in vain. On looking through the Guardian’s website this is what I found today: First there was this very serious piece from Barnaul in western Siberia (which they managed to misspell in the sub -headline) And that other august British institution, the …

Readers’ Letters: Goodbye, Guardian

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In the first post of a new section, we publish the letter of an (ex-)Guardian reader, detailing the reasons he bid goodbye to his former paper of choice. As yet the Guardian has not printed this letter, nor replied to the writer. If you have had similar experiences, or have written any letters that you have sent, or wish to send, to the Guardian – feel free to submit them to us at submissions@offguardian.org. Dear Guardian First off, I want to thank you for being the main source of my news for the past 20 plus years. Now 31, I have been an avid reader of the newspaper since I was a wee boy. Admittedly I no longer buy a copy everyday (along with the observer) as I rarely have the time to sit down and read the entire thing, but I still do on average three times a week and the Guardian website is the first website I go to on my laptop and I Phone. Thank you for breaking the best stories, having …

Media Rundown: Mainstream Narrative Fractures Under Tension

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by Kit The mandated, acceptable opinions that we’re all currently being told we should hold are becoming more and confused, contradictory and insane. As a writer, one hates to keep going back to the 1984 well…but papers like The Guardian leave you very little choice. What are the following if not direct, pure examples of doublethink? The Guardian, in one of their annonymous editorials the “Guardian View” on Putin’s speech yesterday, claim: In the eyes of many Russians, the Syrian adventure has also brought tragedy for their own civilians, in the shape of the bombing of a plane full of holidaymakers. Rightly or wrongly, such a shock is seen as proof that there is a price to pay for intervention abroad… And yet, in the weeks leading up to the all-too-predictable decision by the British parliament to drop some more bombs on Syria, the MSM printed – without contradiction, examination, or even a splash of irony – various claims of Cameron and Fallon et al. that the UK will be safer from terrorism as a …

Red Neoliberals: How Corbyn’s Victory Unmasked Britain’s Guardian

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by Jonathan Cook via The Blog from Nazareth In autumn 2002 Ed Vulliamy, a correspondent for Britain’s Sunday Observer newspaper, stumbled on a terrible truth that many of us already suspected. In a world-exclusive, he persuaded Mel Goodman, a former senior Central Intelligence Agency official who still had security clearance, to go on record that the CIA knew there were no WMD in Iraq. Everything the US and British governments were telling us to justify the coming attack on Iraq were lies. Then something even more extraordinary happened. The Observer failed to print the story. In his book Flat Earth News, Nick Davies recounts that Vulliamy, one of the Observer’s most trusted reporters, submitted the piece another six times in different guises over the next half year. Each time the Observer spiked the story. Vulliamy never went public with this monumental crime against real journalism (should there not be a section for media war crimes at the Hague?). The supposedly liberal-left Observer was never held accountable for the grave betrayal of its readership and the …

Guardian journalists can read minds

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In the daily media march to war with Syria, as Tony Abbott, Andrew Mitchell and the former arch-bishop of Canterbury all start tooting their war horns – it’s important to savour the little things. Like complete and utter dishonesty in the media. For example The Guardian’s article on Ban Ki Moon says this in the subhead: But then neatly side-steps the fact he never actually said this: I don’t think anymore need be said. Keep up the good work guys!