Daily archives: October 19, 2016


How to Really Really Upset the Foreign Office and Security Services

1) Go into the Foreign Office and read ten Top Secret documents about UK collaboration with torture to refresh my memory. Hand back documents and my notes in a double sealed envelope (have just done this bit).
2) Immediately after reading Top Secret documents, go to see Julian Assange for a whisky in the Ecuador Embassy (am on my way).
3) Tomorrow morning, arrive at Parliament Intelligence and Security Committee to give evidence in secret session. Get handed hopefully still double sealed envelope with my notes to use during evidence. Hand back notes for destruction when finished.
4) Immediately after very secret evidence session, go for (hopefully boozy) lunch with Peter Oborne.

Sometimes I quite enjoy my life. If you can’t annoy the arrogant bastards who run the world for the 1%, what point is there in living?

UPDATE

I left Julian after midnight. He is fit, well, sharp and in good spirits. WikiLeaks never reveals or comments upon its sources, but as I published before a fortnight ago, I can tell you with 100% certainty that it is not any Russian state actor or proxy that gave the Democratic National Committee and Podesta material to WikiLeaks. The claim is nonsense. Journalists are also publishing that these were obtained by “hacking” with no evidence that this was the method used to obtain them.

The control of the Democratic party machinery deliberately to unfairly ensure Clinton’s victory over Bernie Sanders is a matter of great public interest. The attempt by the establishment from Obama down to divert attention from this by a completely spurious claim against Russia, repeated without investigation by a servile media, is a disgrace.

The over-close relationship between the probable future President and Wall Street is also very important. WikiLeaks has done a great public service by making this plain.

The attempts by the mainstream media to portray WikiLeaks as supporters of Trump and Putin because they publish some of Clinton’s darker secrets is completely illogical and untrue in fact. The idea we must pretend Clinton is a saint is emetic.

But the key point is that WikiLeaks is a publisher. It is a vehicle for publishing leaks, and is much more of a vehicle for whistleblowers than for hackers. It does not originate the material. I have often seen comments such as “Why has WikiLeaks not published material on Israel/Putin/Trump?” The answer is that they have not been given any. They publish good, verifiable material that they are given by whistleblowers. They are not protecting Israel, Putin, or Trump. Nobody has given them viable material.

Ecuador is keen to make plain that they are not interfering in the US election and wish to make plain material on the Presidential candidates is not being published from their facilities. Julian has no problem with the statement put out by Ecuador yesterday. It is worth noting that WikiLeaks is established in several countries and nothing has ever been published by WikiLeaks from any facility situated in the Ecuadorean Embassy.

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The Ugliest Face of Unionism

It is very hard to understand why The Spectator would wish to pay Nick Cohen substantial money to write a column defending Brian Spanner and Stephen Daisley, and claiming the SNP has destroyed free media in Scotland.

To start with the most astonishing, Nick Cohen vociferously denies that “Brian Spanner” is a misogynist. Yet his own article contains a series of appalling tweets from Spanner, sent to Cohen by John Nicolson MP in an effort to make Cohen see sense. They include these tweets:

Margaret Curran: is she a victim of FGM? She is a torn faced cunt.

Mhairi Black is a nasty little fuck.

Poor Roseanna Cunningham. The change really has made her a bitter shovelled old cunt.

Plainly Cohen’s repeated assertion that Spanner is not misogynist is simply a lie. Cohen’s argument – that Spanner could not be misogynist as he is a friend of J K Rowling – is nonsensical. For those who were not already aware of her appalling neo-con politics, Rowling’s friendship with whoever “Spanner” really is might give some worrying indication of Rowling’s character. But it can in no way be said to prove Spanner is not misogynist. I am not sure it is possible to imagine more misogynist material than the above.

Long term readers of this blog will know that Daisley and Cohen are old comrades in arms. Daisley, Cohen, Murdoch attack dog Oliver Kamm and the Guardian’s Hadley Freeman indulged together in a mainstream media anti-Craig Murray hate fest on twitter.

A year ago I published about Daisley:

It is amazing to me that a supposed “journalist” working for a broadcaster would be so completely open about their anti-SNP, unionist, anti-Corbyn and far right agenda. Daisley is only very small beer, a stinking, sweating foot-soldier of the forces of reaction. But if you can stand it, the way the unionist establishment interacts and thinks is revealed very clearly from a study of his twitter feed. Messages are exchanged with Aaronovitch of Murdoch, Nick Cohen of the Guardian, with John McTernan of the Blairites and with J K Rowling of the 1%, and a great many others. The SNP and Corbyn are smugly derided by all. These well-paid state supporters live in a cosy Panglossian paradise and have contempt for anyone who is not “in”.

Cohen’s fury that a member of his neo-con clique should be denigrated, leads him to deny the existence of the most extreme misogyny imaginable. It also leads him to make the laughable assertion that the SNP control the media in Scotland. In Scotland the BBC, STV and 80% of the newspapers are viciously anti-SNP. Plainly that is not enough for Cohen. He hates the SNP for providing an alternative to unionism, he hates Corbyn for providing an alternative to neo-liberalism, and he hates the idea of anybody criticising the neo-con cheerleaders. His pathology is simple enough. But why does the Spectator pay him for it?

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