All posts tagged: luke harding

What Would Sherlock Holmes Have Made of the Government’s Explanation of the Case of Sergei and Yulia Skripal?

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by Rob Slane from The Blogmire In an article on 3rd May, the Guardian journalist, Luke Harding, made the following rather amusing observation: Since the Skripals were found stricken on a park bench, Downing Street has stuck to one version of events. Theresa May says it is ‘highly likely’ Moscow carried out the attack using a Soviet-made nerve agent. Only the Kremlin had the motive to kill its former officer, she argues.” The funny part, in case you didn’t spot it, was his claim that Downing Street has stuck to one version of events. He is of course correct, but what he doesn’t tell his readers is that this one version of events has had a plethora of sub-narratives attached to it, none of which have been able to remotely support the main thesis. Sticking to one version of events is reasonable only inasmuch as that version can be supported by facts. On the other hand, if the version of events being stuck to is not supported by the facts, or if the “facts” constantly …

“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 …

VIDEO: Aaron Maté asks Luke Harding “What collusion?”

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Everyone is now pretty familiar with Luke Harding’s devastating encounter with Aaron Maté of the Real News. But it can stand a lot of repeating. So we are airing it here. Luke was clearly not prepared for an interview with someone interested in establishing facts and questioning his assumptions. It quickly becomes apparent his facts are few and his assumptions unable to withstand even the slightest objective analysis. In fact he is revealed for what he is – a shallow pseudo-journalist with edges of paranoia and some genuine areas of insanity whose fantasies are routinely indulged by an establishment media that finds his extreme russophobia and ability to believe his own brazen lies very very useful. For interest compare this interview with the kind of easy ride Harding usually gets. The transcript was provided for us by ChrisG Aaron Maté: This is the real News, I’m Aaron Maté. 2017 is almost over, but Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation is not. In fact, the Washington Post reports that Mueller’s probe could last another year, through …

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 …

Crimea and Ukraine: Luke Harding goes off his meds

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by Kit Modern mass-media is replete with instances of cognitive dissonance. However none can so perfectly encapsulate the madness of the pretend world so many “journalists” now live in better, than these two offerings from the always entertaining Luke Harding. It has been reported that Russia has beefed up security on the Ukraine-Crimea border, in response to an apparent attack by SBU agents that resulted in the deaths of 2 Russian servicemen, there are also fears Kiev may try to disrupt the September 18th parliamentary elections. Luke’s reaction to this, on twitter, was as balanced and reasonable as anybody who reads his articles would expect (at least, the ones he hasn’t stolen from other people): #Russia now accusing #Ukraine of armed #Crimea incursion. Classic fakery – but to what end? https://t.co/lA4dlA9jUG — Luke Harding (@lukeharding1968) 10 August 2016 Yes, he declares the Ukrainian attacks are “classic fakery”, when asked he would not provide evidence for this assertion. But then evidence isn’t really Luke’s thing. The strange thing is that, in his other writings, such as …

“MH17 two years on”: Luke Harding’s cynical exploitation of one family’s pain

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Something of a tour de force of moral bankruptcy even for the team that brought you the Polonium story. We don’t just get racism, warmongering and towering falsehoods here. No – we can also experience the exploitation of 20 year old Richard Mayne’s short life and tragic death and his family’s pain! So sit back and enjoy as Harding rushes in where the sane and ethical might fear to tread, boldly turning one family’s unspeakable tragedy into grist for his own Putin-hate mill.

Deconstructing Russophobia

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Imagine that Vladimir Putin were not a murderous autocrat and kleptocrat who has spent his fourteen years in power living up to his KGB past and dragging Russia ever back towards Communist autocracy, illiberalism, and expansionism. Imagine that instead he were one of the greatest leaders that Russia has had, whose policies have helped produce a massive rise in living standards and life expectancy, recuperation of national pride, and enforcement of the rule of law….

Panama Papers: Revealing details live in the gaps between the lines

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Certain species of lizard – when threatened, cornered or in danger of being eaten – have the ability to “drop” their tail. This process, “Autotomy” (from the Greek, auto=self, tome=severing), enables the lizard to flee whilst the predator gets a brief distraction and small meal. The lizard survives. Tails grow back.

Panama Papers cause Guardian to collapse into self-parody

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You’d be forgiven for thinking, given the above picture, that the Panama Papers had something to do with Vladimir Putin. Maybe he was a kingpin of the whole thing. Maybe he was, at least, among the 12 world leaders implicated in various shady financial practices – including Petro Poroshenko, the saviour of Ukrainian democracy, and the King of Saudi Arabia.

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 …

Ruffled Petals at the Guardian

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by Bryan Hemming In another principled stand against information it doesn’t like very much the Guardian has made it quite clear that anyone linking to the renegade Off-Guardian site will be banned from commenting. Serve them right, too! According to Britain’s most inventive news outlet, OffG — an alternative ‘blog’ site set up by a bunch of disgruntled, good-for-nothing, rebel-rousers with nothing better to do— has the temerity to publish “statements of fact regarding our [The Guardian’s] journalists’ credibility”. Many will see the ban as a yet another priceless example of the superior newspaper’s brave struggle against an increasingly non-compliant readership. Some people don’t like hearing the truth even when it pokes them in the eye. They know very well who they are. Bearing such admirable pluck in mind we can fully expect to see the ban extended to include another media outlet that has seen fit to show similar disrespect towards one of the UK’s most imaginative news organs, following the unearthing of a brazen assault on the credibility of one of its most …

Now we are One…

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One year ago today five (as we then were) longtime Guardian readers who were being repeatedly censored in and banished from the ironically titled “Comment is Free” sections, got together to create an outlet where they could express themselves freely.

Guardian makes “error” reading MH17 report, accuses rebels of cover up – UPDATED

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In an article compiled by Luke Harding, Shaun Walker and Julian Borger, entitled “MH17 report suggests efforts were made to cover up causes of disaster”, and published October 13, the Guardian claimed the Dutch report on the downing of MH17 alleged there was evidence of a “bungled autopsy” and attempt to “remove foreign objects” from the body of the first officer. The implication was that this had been done in order to conceal the cause of the crash, and the further implication was of course that Russia and the rebels had been involved. The report by the Dutch safety board said that more than 120 objects, “mostly metal fragments”, were found in the body of the first officer, who had sustained “multiple fractures”.. When Dutch experts identified the captain’s body they found it had already “undergone an external and internal examination to remove foreign objects”. Despite apparent attempts to remove shrapnel, “hundreds of metal objects were found”, the report said, as well as bone fractures and other injuries. After this appeared a rebuttal was posted …

Luke Harding : the hack who came in from the cold

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by BlackCatte Luke Daniel Harding (born 1968) studied English at University College, Oxford. While there he edited the student newspaper Cherwell. He worked for The Sunday Correspondent, the Evening Argus in Brighton and then the Daily Mail before joining The Guardian in 1996. He was the Guardian’s Russia correspondent from 2007-11. Aside from his more publicly known achievements, it’s worth noting Harding was accused of plagiarism by Mark Ames and Yasha Levine of the eXile for publishing an article under his own name that lifted large passages almost verbatim from their work. The Guardian allegedly redacted portions of Harding’s article in response to these accusations. According to his own testimony, Luke Harding is the guy who realised he was in the siloviki cross hairs one day when, during his stay in Moscow as the Guardian’s bureau chief, he came home and found one of his bedroom windows open. A less situationally-aware person would have made the fatal mistake of thinking one of his kids or his wife had done it, or he’d done it himself …

Assange in ‘Newsweek’: How ‘The Guardian’ Milked Edward Snowden’s Story

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The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the World’s Most Wanted Man (Guardian/Faber & Faber, 2014) by Luke Harding is a hack job in the purest sense of the term. Pieced together from secondary sources and written with minimal additional research to be the first to market, the book’s thrifty origins are hard to miss. The Guardian is a curiously inward-looking beast. If any other institution tried to market its own experience of its own work nearly as persistently as The Guardian, it would surely be called out for institutional narcissism. But because The Guardian is an embarrassingly central institution within the moribund “left-of-center” wing of the U.K. establishment, everyone holds their tongue. […] Notoriously, as the Moscow bureau chief for The Guardian, Harding used to ply his trade ripping off work by other Moscow-based journalists before his plagiarism was pointed out by The eXile‘s Mark Ames and Yasha Levine, from whom he had misappropriated entire paragraphs without alteration. For this he was awarded “plagiarist of the year” by Private Eye in 2007. But—disciplined by experience—he covers his …