How the UK Security Services neutralised The Guardian
dailymaverick.co.za
dailymaverick.co.za
This made the intelligence services particularly dischuffed.
Post-Snowden the status-quo was re-established.
It remains to be seen whether the Guardian would ignore D-notices again, if something else of the magnitude of Snowden came along - I hope it would use its judgement and do so, if necessary. I'm not necessarily against newspapers considering requests from the intelligence service not to publish something for good reason - it can end up with people dying. It's a tough decision an editor has to make.
Or just never ask authorities of the possible conflict with national security in the first place, and just publish unasked. Obviously that's not always possible, but what happened for the first Snowden story. The rest had to go through D notice as everyone now knew they were there...
Edit: Here's a Guardian piece on D notices and renaming, confirming the first Snowden story simply side-stepped them: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/jul/31/d-notice-syste...
Fascinating to see the first major incident being Chapman Pincher, Daily Express defence correspondent. Ah, the days when the Express was an investigative broadsheet with pretty good (right of centre) reputation. How far they have fallen to today's comic...
Surely "nonchuffed"? "Dischuffed" suggests that they had been previously chuffed with the Guardian.
But can't I be disappointed by a particular movie, without being previously ... appointed ... by another from the same fim maker?
"Dis" always suggests to me some sort of removal, rather than just the absence of.
So many exceptions, I sometimes wonder how others ever end up learning good English. :)
If this situation would not be the responsibility of agencies breaking the law in the first place, it is no excuse for the state to break fundamental rights of citizens.
Didn't happen from the leaks that did show executive overreach and abuse, so it would always make sense to make this protective claim and therefore it looses any credibility.
There were no repercussions for the agencies to employ mass surveillance. This is a danger that is magnitudes greater than leaks being dangerous for spies, who know about the dangers of their profession.
>Didn't happen from the leaks that did show executive overreach and abuse, so it would always make sense to make this protective claim and therefore it looses any credibility.
It doesn't need to have credibility if it's obviously true. If the Guardian has information on things such as sensitive military information or CIA operative locations and identities, revealing it could obviously result in loss of life and may not directly involve private US citizens in any capacity.
The idea that the pre-existing dangers of a profession are a justification to put people's lives in danger is just so ridiculous. If you put a bullet in the head of an enlisted man, just because he knew signing up his life might be at risk one day doesn't absolve you of being responsible for their death.
until of course it is the government itself who discloses the sensitive info - in such cases even that weak argument is just thrown out the window like in the cases of Scooter Libby/Valerie Plame or Trump/Oleg Smolenkov.
The big exceptions are major Brexit stories, but that’s about it.
George Monbiot [0] would disagree with you.
EDIT: removed "Did you even read the article?" per the site guidelines
An "independent inquiry" that they commissioned has all the weight of every other "independent inquiry" that has ever been commission, ie none.
That few members of party have been investigated (by the party) is one of the problems that people are complaining about.
And yes, I checked the references, and they are not wholly convincing. A statement that only 0.06% of the Labour membership have been investigated for anti-semitism (which firstly still seems kind of high to me, and secondly obviously not being investigated for anti-semitism does not mean one is not anti-semitic) and an independent inquiry by the person who was subsequently made Labour's shadow attorney general?
I'm not saying Labour is overrun by anti-semitism but let's try not to just believe the last thing we read, ok?
There has been absolutely no evidence provided by any source to prove institutional anti-semitism.
There is really no evidence at all that stands up to even the most basic common sense assessment.
For example - if Corbyn is an anti-Semite, he's been remarkably quiet about it. In fact he has somehow managed to stay friends with various Jewish individuals and organisations in spite of his alleged burning hatred for them. Perhaps someone should let them know?
If you compare Labour's record of "anti-semitism" with the many easy-to-find examples of outright unapologetic racism of the British (and US) Right, there's no comparison.
There have however been public statements by Israeli diplomats explaining that "anti-semitism" is used in a calculated and cynical way to undermine politicians who do not support Israeli nationalism. And also evidence of Israeli influencers working to "take down" - their words - British MPs.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jan/08/israeli-diplom...
Meanwhile the Labour MPs making the most noise about anti-semitism also happen to be the old Blairites who were horrified when Corbyn was elected leader.
As you say - let's try not to just believe everything we read on this topic, ok?
And just as a tip, claiming that accusations of anti-semitism are a Zionist conspiracy is somewhat self-defeating.
It's frankly quite disgusting the level of Islamophobia some of these people are endorsing simply because they consider it politically expedient to throw their support behind a foreign government.
It's not that anti semitism doesn't exist at all in the Labour party. It's just vanishingly rare and literally nobody - NEVER MIND a leader - has said anything close to as disgusting as what Isaac Herzog or Boris Johnson has said.
When your first resort upon hearing people complaining about a particular form of racism is to search for dirt on some of the more prominent members of that minority, I don't think you're in any position to lecture others on endorsing disgusting levels of racism...
like I said: it's not like anti semitism doesn't exist in the labour party. it's just that the boy cried wolf countless times, and they cried wolf to protect racists.
this is quite apart from the time members of this community decided that they spoke for all Jews when they attacked a Holocaust survivor.
[1]https://www.thejc.com/image/policy:1.461236:1521729565/.jpg?...
Nothing demonstrates the nature of racism problem the Labour Party has quite as much as arguments such as yours that objecting to stuff like this is "reinterpretation" as part of a shadowy Israeli conspiracy to protect Islamophobes
"Israel is a country that lobbies loudly for its own benefit, as many countries do." is pretty far from a conspiracy theory. And they use the most effective tools available.
I beg you, do not conflate the existence of Israel with the current government of Israel.
It is more an issue of crony-ism and paralysis.
When corbyn's facebook profile was first linked to some AS post, a party that was functioning would have gone through all the groups he's a member of, and all past comments and removed anything that would ahve potentially been a problem.
They did not. After the first incident where he was tagged in a some post raving on about the "banking elite" or some other trope, there was at least a 6month time lapse before the press discovered his comment on the famous banking mural.
Add that to the backdrop of Livingston being a total tool, and not being censured at any speed, you begin to form a narrative.
mix in the total lack of press control, planning or indeed engagement, you get this mess. Thats without the total perversion of the discipline system (where you can be Richard Burgon, caught lying on national TV about what you said about Zionism, and not be disciplined, but admit you voted for another party and you are instantly expelled.)
All of this could have been managed, if the corbyn "brain trust" had actually bothered to think about the outside world.
Now, Let us not for a moment think that labour are alone in having a *ism problem. The conservative can't stand islam, anyone with an accent, or someone with a "whiff of the colonies". The Libdems can't abide gay marriage (which is deeply ironic)
Look, I voted corbyn the first time, because I thought he was actually competent. He however is not, has shrank back from the press, surrounded himself with posh boys who think they are working class, or dinosaurs from the 80s.
To blame this AS stuff on Isreal is just peak bullshit. If they had simply audited Corbyn's facebook pages, and kicked out the noisy unhinged twats banging on about the jews, we'd never have got here.
tbf even their former leader holding the infamously illiberal positions on "sin" backed gay marriage
Corbyn himself liked a couple of suspect images on Facebook and has been critical of Israel. While still keeping the support of leftwing Jewish organisations (Marx was a Jew after all).
Obviously racism should be called out and dealt with when it is found. To me, over the ~4 years this has been a storey in the press the Labour Party have sufficiently answered all questions.
When you get popular enough with a political movement that threatens the rich elite of any race or religion, the attacks start. It just happened that Corbyn was pretty boring in his personal life, attacking his views on Israel was the only option.
One of the charges against Corbyn is that he co-hosted a talk in 2010 in which a Jewish holocaust survivor compared Israel's practices with those of Nazi Germany. I mean, can it get more ridiculous than that? You're accused of being an anti-semite because you allowed a Jewish holocaust survivor to criticise Israel?
1. Pro-Israeli groups and politicians who want to force Labour back in line on the Israeli-Palestinian issue.
2. The Tories, to smear their opposition.
3. People within Labour who want to just the more left-wing Corbyn.
The more you read about these "antisemitic incidents," the more ridiculous it gets. One perfect example was the Jewish Labour member who was accused of antisemitism because she said Holocaust memorial day should be used to remember all genocides. There was a concentrated effort to smear her as an antisemite, despite the fact that she's Jewish, and that there's nothing remotely antisemitic in what she proposed.
I can always spot a political extremist when they claim that something clearly left-wing is actually (secretly!) right wing, or vice versa. It shows their sense of perspective has clearly left them.
It still has the shimmer of a left-leaning paper on soft social issues, but on many matters of significance it's clearly being used to influence left-leaning voters towards an acceptance of a right-wing, authoritarian, security-state worldview (the irony being it keeps up a pretence of the reverse when covering Trump etc).
The article itself was an outstanding deep dive into the history of The Guardian investigative reporting, appeared to reveal behind-the-scenes information I wasn't aware of, such as the effective disbanding The Guardian's veteran investigate reporting team.
For those unfamiliar with British political discourse, the term "Tankie" is often used in British left-wing circles to refer to supporters of Stalin (including his approach to political change through violence), and is usually used in contradistinction from "Trots" (= follower of Leon Trotsky's -- who disagreed with Stalin on several things, but not on the use of violence). Whatever one might think of Corbyn and his supporters, "Tankie" is probably not as exact as might be desirable.
[1] https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/staggers/2016/08/what-...
A tankie is the sort that sells the papers with editorials praising Assad for crushing the counterrevolutiony scum beneath the wheels of tanks.
I think the "tankie" description is pretty fair when applied to likes of Seamus Milne and Andrew Murray, though of course Milne stopped being the Guardian's comment editor to work for Corbyn and Murray hasn't written for them since 2013.
It certainly says that - I'm not sure that it manages to demonstrate it, though. The Guardian has always been soft-left. If you compare its coverage of (the let's face it, ineffective) Corbyn to say Michael Foot, you'll not find much difference.
They don't seem that much moved, if anything they are more "of the left" today than they've ever been, just not necessarily Corbyn's left. Being so negative on Corbyn in the run up to 2015 may well have damaged many folk's views of them.
I used to read a rotating selection of the guardian, the independent and the telegraph when I still bought a newspaper in the 2000s. I now mainly read the guardian and occasionally scan the BBC, telegraph, ft, fox news and CNN.
Putting aside opinion pieces, the guardian has moved from hard left, to left of the centre, in its reporting. You just don't get the sort of bombastic, hard left, 'news' articles some of their old reporters used to write in the print version.
I would say they often had pretty biased reporting back in the print days, but not now.
The telegraph website has moved from centre right to hard right. The independent website hurts my eyes last I checked with ads, ads, ads, videos, videos, videos, which is a shame as I loved that paper.
Personally I'm nervous of the guardian having so much power now (and some semi-stable funding from a trust), but they're being pretty responsible with it.
>Owner(s)
>Sultan Muhammad Abuljadayel
>Alexander Lebedev
>Evgeny Lebedev
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Independent
Related articles:
https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-40762906
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/oct/19/independent-de...
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/exclusive-uk-...
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/23/uk-gov...
Whatever money it made for them, it made me associate that with their work, which I don’t think was that great to begin with.
Honestly, if you think the Telegraph is hard-right, then you're much harder left than you're letting on.
At the moment, compare the headlines, lead stories on the Telegraph to the Guardian. Here's the Telegraph:
Backlash as No 10 questions impartiality of Scottish judges
The Scottish court prorogation ruling shows the anti-Brexit Establishment is hard at work
Remainers are confirming Leave voters' worst fears by trying to litigate Brexit to death
None of that is impartial, it's all highly emotive and extremely biased. The Telegraph is sounding more and more like a hard-right red top.
Compare that to the Guardian right now:
No 10 resists demands to recall parliament after Scottish prorogation ruling
Scottish court ruling: what happens next in prorogation dispute
Nigel Farage 'won't be allowed anywhere near government', say Tories
All unbiased, fact based, impartial.
And anyway, my point was that you get a greater range of opinion in the Telegraph than the Guardian. Plus, just because you disagree with something - i.e. Brexit in this case - doesn't mean that the people you disagree with are hard-right or hard anything.
Opinion has varied widely, depending on who, which at times has been most frustrating. It's been possible to read two opinion slots, from different authors, on the same front page with opposite Brexit hopes. :)
The Guardian is the only remaining newspaper I trust to be unaffected by UK government agenda.
The FT was sometimes surprisingly soft-left, but firmly economic in outlook. Telegraph firmly Tory, of all variants, until the Barclays bought them in the early or mid 00s. Downhill aiming to get below the Mail ever since. Dishonest, biased and populist, but no longer Tory. Populist, disingenuous Boris was well suited for writing his columns on made-up EU outrages.
You know where I think the Guardian sat, where the Liberals once were. Sure, there were some strident leftist pieces, but it was uncommon, just as the current incarnation has some strident (and often particularly naive) leftist pieces from Owen Jones. They don't have the couple of leftist heavyweight characters they once had though, and Owen isn't in the same league...
Heck, they supported Thatcher and the first Gulf war, albeit with some doubts.
There's plenty of reasons to be critical of the intelligence and security apparatus regardless of which way you vote.
The Assange and anti-semitism parts are evidence light re-heats of Canary-level reports with added "it's the spooks". Like almost all his partners Assange fell out with the Guardian pretty badly. If MI5 operatives were being paid to do this, well I hope they enjoyed the free holiday.
I especially enjoyed the statistic that "0.06% of the Labour membership has been investigated for anti-Semitic comments or posts."
I respected The Guardian before, nowadays it just seems to be the left equivilent of Breitbart - at least as far left as Breitbart is far right.
It is true that this situation comes at a cost, every government leans somewhat on its news desk (particularly on political issues), but in many ways that's actually easy to discount.
- The Guardian is more Blairite than Corbynite. This one is not a surprise.
- Relations between MI6 and The Guardian got worse with Snowden, and then got better again. This isn't shocking.
The UK is running out of top-tier independent media platforms. This is concerning. But the dominance of millionaire-owned right-wing tabloids, and the failure to implement any of the recommendations of the Leveson report is far more concerning.
I don't like much of Guardian's reporting, but it is difficult to evaluate how much credence to give to an article that is also problematic.
Now if the charges were true, you'd think it would continue to be a problem, especially now that a general election is getting so much closer. As Media Lens pointed out recently, it seems the media has lost interest in that particular attack: https://twitter.com/medialens/status/1169157686300217345 - which would suggest there wasn't much to it in the first place.
The rest of the press is still mostly at it, though.
"So, @georgegalloway was right" is one of nature's warning signs.
For example, a journalist could verify a leak came from a real FBI agent by checking their badge, and assure their readers of that, but keep the agent's name secret.
Or a journalist given a list of secret base addresses could report the number and countries without revealing the precise addresses.
Also, newspapers might be happier to make a big splash reporting an exclusive, but be less motivated if every other newspaper got the same stuff at the same time :)
Number of pages mentioning "white men" as indexed by Google:
Guardian: 7840 / 3,680,000 (0.21%) BBC: 623 / 4,720,000 (0.01%)
Some headlines of the Guardian that come to mind are "All landlords are scum" and "Maybe white men should just disappear for a while". In the case of the latter it was an interview with the USA's female national soccer captain and that line was something she just joked at the very end and the editor decided to make that the title of the article (if I'd have been her I'd have been furious).
Another rage inducing article was one that nailed David Attenborough to the cross for daring to suggest climate change activism could benefit from separating it from left/right politics.
This is all not directly related to politics, but it's pretty telling. The website / usability is great but the spin they (are pressured to?) put on the content is nauseating.
It seems that you are saying that they use sensationalized titles and publish contentious opinion pieces. I hate these tendencies on news orgs as well. But the Guardian isn't nearly as bad as HuffPost or Vox and the like in this regard.
The idea of white men "disappearing for a while" is new to me and it sounds like an amazing idea. How better to shake up entrenched power structures? Spread around the leadership roles and experience, and then once that settles combine everyone back and you can end up with a much better mix at all levels.
Clearly flounder is a hot social justice topic (if I follow your logic).
PS: flounder was just the first nonsense word I tried.
The question "Can you write an article about Snowden and The Guardian without mentioning Glenn Greenwald" has been answered.
It's basic due diligence to speak to both sides of a story. However, it can tip off organizations and folks that they are about to be a headline...
In Firefox 69...
Then comes the weird stuff. It may not actually be all my passwords, but it sure is a lot of them, the long list ominously beginning with my bank and a mobile payment solutions.
It's probably a bug of some kind. But sure looks scary.
On my way to work, and on phone only for next many hours, so not able to look further into.
Then they wonder why everyone blocks ads and they can't make money.
"Let me try to peddle some malware to you, you don't want me to go hungry, do you?"
You can either :
- Buy a no-ads pass.
- Disable your AdBlocker
- Click on "Naaah...journalists should go hungry."
- Context Menu->Delete Element
> Daily Maverick will formally launch Declassified – a new UK-focused investigation and analysis organisation run by the authors of this article – in November 2019.
This would give them a strong motivation to write a biased or even non-factual article to a) generate attention and b) paint themselves as more credible, or at least a direct competitor as less credible.
How can you test so little on Firefox that it doesn't even connect? (FF Nightly, Linux)