Deleted Article by The Guardian | Hacker News Reader

Deleted Article by The Guardian

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158 pointsharrisonpowers17 comments

This is from the Observer (Sunday Paper), not the Guardian as the headline states, though I think they published it on the Guardian website - the two papers have separate editorial teams though they share the same online space. You can see the printed edition of the Observer article reproduced here:

http://guardian.newspaperdirect.com/epaper/viewer.aspx

It'd be nice to see some verification of the claims, so I'd be interested to see the article if it is ever republished after checking (I think they took it down as the source - Madsen - is seen as particularly unreliable).

The source, Wayne Madsen, apparently has a history of unsubstantiated claims, including that Obama is secretly a homosexual[1].

[1]: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-guardian-wayne-madsen-nsa...

Can't see much value in posting this. If they deleted it it's probably factually incorrect or inaccurate and will probably return with corrections.

There's an other issue: one can question the quality of judgment of the paper's editorial office.

Their primary source apparently is not the most reliable, and figuring that out is not hard. They either did not know that, which would be bad, or they knew and ignored it, which would be bad, too. The third option 'they knew, but had a secondary source confirm it' seems highly unlikely as the article doesn't mention it. Also, if they had conformation, why would they have to retract it?

And yes, one can read a conspiracy theory behind the phrase "Madsen, who has been attacked for holding controversial views on espionage issues". I don't think that is enough for a respected paper to justify publication of this article.

That third option could be that they had a second source confirming things while the article was in process but that source was ruled out (either reversed themselves or was found to be making stuff up) and the editors made a bad last minute call to continue but then were overruled a few minutes after initial publication.

I don't know about what has happened here, but this story does ring true with what has historically happened after 9/11. We know that EU countries bent over backwards to accommodate US demands with respect to information sharing with regards to travel. This is just what I would expect to be a sort of secret extension of that rational. Don't up set the "Yanks", and betray the citizens, then complain like hell when it turns out the US spies on EU governments and institutions.

UK wise, we are just turn all we have over to the US with out question. I would assume that this has always been the case. Dunno why we dont change our name to USK, and adopt the dollar.

Yes, PRISM is probably an extension of the existing ECHELON program. It's weird that the correlation hasn't been made already. Fun fact, I remember Australia stepping out of ECHELON because they hadn't the capabilities to keep up with US surveillance meaning the spying was essentially one-sided [ref needed]. http://whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/POLITICS/ECHELON/echelo...

It's also worth noting that this was the headline on early morning print editions of The Observer but later editions had it replaced.

Here's the link to archive.org version: http://web.archive.org/web/20130630002034/http://www.guardia...

It states "This article has been taken down pending an investigation."

Here's the 404 from the next day: http://web.archive.org/web/20130629225229/http://www.guardia...

The deleted article is almost entirely sourced to Wayne Madsen, who has made disclosures and claims far more shocking than these in the OP:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayne_Madsen

So are these disclosures new? Whether they're a scoop or not doesnt have much to do with their actual validity, but if he's made these claims well before Snowden, then it's likely they've been debated in the past, too.

Instead of a timid "disclosures and claims", I think you should have gone for the throat and said "conspiracy theories that are unsupported by any evidence". I mean, 9/11 as a false flag operation is somewhat passé now, but Obama being a gay (!) Kenyan citizen... H1N1 as an experiment by the US military... Israel portraited as criminal conspirators, Elders of Zion-style, and the Taliban as just innocent victims of USG-directed false flag operations... I can see a pattern emerge from that. And of course, everything "corroborated" by Anonymous Sources (tm), the best of sources.

Even given my strong Democratic sympathies, I wouldn't trust Madsen to give me the time of the day correctly. Time is probably a Zionist conspiracy, anyway.

> Obama being a gay (!) Kenyan citizen.

I don't know about his sexual proclivities but Obama was born a dual American/Kenyan citizen. He was also born a British subject by virtue of his father's status.

Here are the diffs between the various versions:

http://www.newssniffer.co.uk/articles/658994/diff/0/1

Here's Wayne Madsen's comments:

http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/articles/20130630

Nicer-formatted version: http://meowc.at/message/204

This seems to be the original story (HT Fefes Blog):

http://www.privacysurgeon.org/blog/incision/former-nsa-contr...

Worth mentioning that the author smeared WikiLeaks in the past:

https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/351121777742716928

If Wayne Madsen isn't dead or in jail, he's not releasing anything dangerous to the NSA.

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