Beware the Cult of Cadwalladr 182


The most important piece of information to come out of Carole Cadwalladr’s current libel trial is perhaps the least reported – that she received material alleging links between Arron Banks, Vote Leave and Russia from “a contractor to the UK security services”. The information came to light because under discovery rules she had to disclose a great deal of relevant material to Banks.

We know of course that Cadwalladr was an active participant in the Integrity Initiative, the covert MOD and FCO funded programme to place articles by journalists in the media setting out the security services narrative. The Institute for Statecraft, which runs the Integrity Initiative, is indeed a “contractor to the security services” and this is probably the source of Cadwalladr’s disinformation, though it might also be the charlatan Christopher Steele and his firm Orbis, with whom Cadwalladr, like Sergei Skripal’s MI6 handler Pablo Miller, is also connected.

Here is something else I am pretty confident you did not know about Cadwalladr. Her great story for which she won the Pullitzer Prize was simply a lie. There was in fact no connection between Vote Leave or UKIP and the Brexit campaign and Cambridge Analytica. This is what the official investigation by the UK Information Commissioner uncovered:

7. From my review of the materials recovered by the investigation I have found
no further evidence to change my earlier view that SCL/CA were not
involved in the EU referendum campaign in the UK – beyond some initial
enquiries made by SCL/CA in relation to UKIP data in the early stages of the
referendum process. This strand of work does not appear to have then been
taken forward by SCL/CA.
Investigation into the data practices of organisations on both sides of the EU
referendum campaign
8. I have concluded my wider investigations of several organisations on both
the remain and the leave side of the UK’s referendum about membership of
the EU. I identified no significant breaches of the privacy and electronic
marketing regulations and data protection legislation that met the threshold
for formal regulatory action. Where the organisation continued in operation,
I have provided advice and guidance to support better future compliance
with the rules.
9. During the investigation concerns about possible Russian interference in
elections globally came to the fore. As I explained to the sub-committee in
April 2019, I referred details of reported possible Russia-located activity to
access data linked to the investigation to the National Crime Agency. These
matters fall outside the remit of the ICO. We did not find any additional
evidence of Russian involvement in our analysis of material contained in the
SCL / CA servers we obtained.

The entire, glorious campaign of huge Guardian articles by Cadwalladr on how Cambridge Analytica, aided by Russia, won the Brexit vote, was in fact found to be entirely untrue. It is worth noting that the expressions of concern in para 9 about Russian interference were never supported by any evidence. The linked Mueller investigation in the United States on this point also drew a great big blank.

There was a genuine scandal around Cambridge Analytica, about Facebook’s willingness to sell the personal date of its users. The company who then got that data – SCL – was owned by a bunch of very major, behind the scenes, Tory figures, including Lord Ivar Mountbatten. The use had not been Brexit but a Tory parliamentary election campaign. That was in itself very much worth reporting, but Cadwalladr was being pointed by the security services away from the Tories and towards Russia.

Whether she was a naive dupe or an active enthusiast I really don’t care. She is a disgrace to journalism.

Cadwalladr became a hero to British liberals because she provided a comfortable explanation of Brexit. Cadwalladr told them the people of England and Wales had rejected the EU solely because they had been duped, by internet manipulation of their thoughts and by those pesky Russians.

This was a much easier explanation to swallow than the truth, which is that the massive disparity between rich and poor in our neo-liberal economic societies had left most people alienated and feeling powerless, and prey to the anti-immigrant propaganda the media had been relentlessly pumping out for decades.

This is of course the mirror of the fake Russiagate narrative that American liberals use to explain why the voters rejected Hillary Clinton, whereas the real reasons were very similar in both cases. It has recently emerged that the illegal foreign cash to influence the 2016 election was in fact received by Hillary.

I have been amused this last few months that the journalists who portray as lunatic those who believe Biden’s election was fraudulent, are precisely the same journalists who told us for years that Trump’s election was fraudulent and engineered by Vladimir Putin. For what it is worth, my own view is that both elections were valid.

The present libel trial between Arron Banks and Carole Cadwalladr is therefore a struggle between two deeply unpleasant people. I find myself strangely hoping that Cadwalladr – for whom I have fathomless wells of contempt – wins. The English libel laws are an utter disgrace, and I support Cadwalladr’s right to freedom of speech in making her claims against Banks, even though she did indeed make unfounded and untrue statements about him.

Cadwalladr’s lies, in my view, are political and still come within the realm of free speech. I support her right to say it, just as I support my right to denounce and expose her as an utterly unprincipled and fraudulent tool of the security services.

It is quite interesting to see what weighs heaviest with the judge; a desire to protect one of the Guardian’s security service assets, or a desire to protect the London legal profession’s ultra lucrative libel industry.

UPDATE 23.01 10:25am It is worth adding that Cadwalladr is not running the defence of truth. She is running the defence of fair comment in the public interest.

———————————————

 
 
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182 thoughts on “Beware the Cult of Cadwalladr

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  • Deepgreenpuddock

    I have made a fair go of following the endlessly twisted movements, machinations and minuscule manoeuvres by the “russians”,the ‘British secret service’, Arron banks, Integrity initiative/bellingcat/guardian/Orbis, clark/craig/giyane
    I now have not the faintest idea what is going on other than the vague impression of bad actors acting badly. It is random misinformation piled on disinformation piled upon innuendo piled on prejudice. It is like trying to analyse our current lives by pulling apart the massive landfill mountains that now simply seep dangerous gases into the air and toxic chemical cocktails into our water courses. It seems to me like political porn – deeply corrosive effluent.
    I don’t know if Carol Cadwalladr is a hero, a villainess, a spook, or a subterranean dirt grubber or mole. Nothing is what it seems. Money has mutated into power, morality has morphed into anything that works or happens. Randomness is everywhere, legislation is legless or impotent, or simply empty words.
    Discourse has become like the mycorrhiza under the forest floor, infinitely connected but so fragile as to be near to nothingness. We now know everything and we now know nothing.
    I’d like to think that Tatyana is an authentic voice of Russia, but really who knows except Tatyana or her operators.
    I don’t think the current siuation can persist – it is too fragile, too tenuous, too variable to remain viable, too much the product of paramoia. Words are without meaning and people are detached from purpose, simply the victims of cryptic currents and wild winds.

    • DiggerUK

      I find eclectic story lines require me to do a lot of revision to get back up to speed and follow the plot/plots.
      In that regard, I’m appreciative of the links Mr. Murray included in the article for reference. It helps me overcome the difficulties when trying to knit with treacle.

      ‘Oh what a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to deceive’ is an oldie but a goodie. An art practiced to perfection by both fools and the wise……because it works…_

    • portside

      It’s a pretty straightforward story. Putin Done Brexit has been exposed as a hoax. Craig’s piece relays it all clearly and is well sourced. You should specify what it is you take issue with in his telling and why.

      • geff foster

        yeah right – Banks gave 8M – that’s quite a lot of money to have spare. You look at his businesses (out of Gibraltar) and there is no way he has that amount of spare cash. His insurance company had 250,000 people (apparently) – do a simple business model and add up the numbers to see what a ‘reasonable’ profit is and there is no way he is that rich. In addition he has multiple Russian connections.

        • portside

          Sounds open and shut. Our courts and information commissioner must have been bought off by the Russians too. Grrr.

    • Vivian O'Blivion

      If you wish to cut through the mists, I suppose the question to ask is who are the “serious” players.
      Putin and Lavrov are certainly serious. Years of demonstrable, thoughtful veracity as measured against developing events.
      Truss, Johnson and Blinken are lightweights by comparison. Of greater concern is, that they are the best that the system that created them has to offer.
      Former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating agrees. “Remarks by the British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss … are nothing short of demented. Not simply irrational, demented. …”, “Britain suffers delusions of grandeur and relevance deprivation.”

    • Tatyana

      Today, everything is not what it seems, but not the opposite either. Something different. A heap of ambiguities and lies.
      I want to stay real in the midst of it.
      Look, I’ve been sort of a public figure long before I discovered this site. As an entrepreneur, the very meaning of my presence on the Internet is exactly producing all kinds of identifying content. Moreover, as a business, I’m obliged to publish personal data. So, once I got here, I still had nothing to lose in terms of anonymity.
      And I didn’t hide my identity from the very beginning of being here. Everyone who wanted to be convinced of my reality is doing it. People write to me, phone me, get parcels from me, chat on WhatsApp, sometimes send couriers to my workshop 🙂 and schedule alco-party with me during their visits to Russia!
      And now, anyway, I’m not naked enough for you?
      I assure you, if I had a double bottom, your MI6 or Integrity Initiative would have known this long ago and they’d have used it against Mr. Murray.

    • DunGroanin

      “ I don’t think the current siuation can persist ”

      ‘ The centre won’t hold’ cry eh?

      Why did you have to sweep Tatyana into your cri de coeur dirt sweeping?

      I think she will hand that over extending back to you in spades !

      • deepgreenpuddock

        nothing against Tatyana. Indeed her comments make more sense and are more entertaining than a great deal of the paranoid babble that passes here for comment. I also have a great deal of respect for Craig for his one (or two) man mission to present a novel view of difficult matters. Many of his posts are informed, perceptive and helpful. but neither are they gospel.
        We seem too ready to condemn the Guardian here but some of their writers are also perceptive and informed. That old bete noir of the anti neo liberal liberation front, Nick Cohen, produces some interesting ideas and makes good points. his latest was about the abuse of our heinous legal system by insanely rich folk to bend matters to their corrupted purposes. George Monbiot has championed among other things-rewilding of our thoroughly degraded and poisoned environment. He is scholarly when he needs to be. There is a good piece by Sonia Sodha today about witch hunting social pile ons of people who dare to voice a not fully approved (by cliche possesed linear thinkers) script . Social media have devalued so much and we are witnessing the corruption of discourse and thought and the pandering to and support of the witless and deluded. To be honest there are at least half a dozen commenters here whose ideas revolve endlessly around the same partisan themes and hobby horses using the same repeated phrases. I don’t doubt that most of the followers here are well intentioned but need to find some new ideas and new expressive muscles.

        • DunGroanin

          Trust Cohen and Monbiot?

          Try the other one it’s got bells on it.

          Leopards. Spots. Etc.

          I bet even Goebbels had some “ some interesting ideas and made good points” – doesn’t mean I should suddenly change my opinion of that honest Joe. Does it? Not unless he had refuted all his crap and that of his fellow bed wetters.

          Which none of the Groaners have ever done.

          I was being slightly tongue in cheek about your original comment, but not so much about the above. I have also posted good journalism by decent journalists still in the Guardian but they aren’t the old guards mostly. You may see one below which is very curious.
          There are many Indy bloggers talking very specific subjects.
          Social Media as a news or analytical source is just same old poison in a new pill. Why even bother with it?
          I was a very loyal and long term daily reader and supporter of the paper – 40 years. It was a hard truth to face its treachery.
          And yup I’m mighty pissed off with it.
          Shame that many other long term readers can’t face the truth of complacent acquiescence of it’s reactionary role in the countries propaganda. Just count their war drumming stories right now.

        • T

          Deepggreenpuddock

          Why after reading this article are you claiming not to have the faintest idea what is going on? You seem to have no problems with the streams of consciousness of Nick Cohen, Sonia Sodha and other bete noirs of “the anti neo liberal liberation front”. What is it about this piece that has you suggesting it is disinformation?

    • M.J.

      “I now have not the faintest idea what is going on …”

      I’m sure that’s just what enemies of democracy would like to happen. Pondering that one may bring some light. You could google e.g. “dealing with disinformation” as well.

      • M.J.

        Richard Stengel’s book “Information Wars”, subtitled “How We Lost the Global Battle Against Disinformation and What We Can Do about It” might help as well, but I haven’t been able to find it in a used paperback version in the UK. Unscrupulous politicians (especially populists) within democracies may well use disinformation, or be encouraged by other agents who would like them to do this.

      • SA

        M. J .
        As one with knowledge of disinformation, who is now producing disinformation about the situation in Ukraine? Is it Putin, Lavrov or is it the foreign office, Johnson and Blinken?

        • M.J.

          I wouldn’t call warning of the danger of wars with troops massing on the border disinformation. The important thing right now may be keep US-Russia dialogue at the highest level going.

          • Johnny Conspiranoid

            “I wouldn’t call warning of the danger of wars with troops massing on the border disinformation”

            It is if its not true.

          • M.J.

            So far as I know, no-one doubts the massing of Russian troops on Ukraine’s borders (Belarus as well apparently). The warning of war, given what happened to Crimea and Georgia, is a rational one, though I hope that invasion does not happen.

          • David W Ferguson

            I wouldn’t call warning of the danger of wars with troops massing on the border disinformation…

            Yes you would, if it was the Russians complaining about the massing of NATO troops on their borders.

          • Yuri K

            “So far as I know, no-one doubts the massing of Russian troops on Ukraine’s borders…”

            Well, I do. I have 2 arguments about this so called Russian troops massing.

            1. The size of the Russian army is about 900K men. Considering modern geopolitical realities (the NATO menace; Russia’s friendly relations with China and Mongolia; the lack of any real military threats from the Central Asia and Iran) and the fact that more than 70% of Russia’s population lives to the west of the Urals, I’d expect at least about 600K of the troops to be found to the east of Volga river. And considering the lack of threats from Finland and Belarus, and taking into account the climate factor, I’d expect at least half of this number in the south and south-west of Russia’s European part, stretched from Astrakhan to Smolensk. And considering also that the claimed “massing” of 100K included even the troops camped as far as Yelnya, which is located some 200 km away from the Ukrainian border, I’d say there is nothing unusual in finding 100K Russian troops in the 200 km zone along the Ukrainian border. Which, BTW, is about 7K km long, more than twice longer than US-Mexican border.
            2. Ukraine today and Iraq in 2003 are countries comparable in their size, population, and military might. So, if in the 2003 invasion of Iraq the coalition forces lead by US numbered 309K, why would someone in his right mind suggest that 100K is enough to invade Ukraine? Such force of 100K men can fulfill only one task, the destruction of the Ukrainian army if it invades Lugansk and Donetsk separatist’s regions.
  • Cynicus

    O/T (or is it?)

    BBC News reports that Julian Assange has been given leave to appeal to the UK Supreme Court again extradition to the USA.

  • Gordon Hastie

    She simply doesn’t answer queries about Integrity Initiative on Twitter. And she rather gave the game away on Marr when, at the end of the interview, she remembered she was also supposed to remind the viewers of Labour’s “antisemitism crisis”, and blurted something out about it as Marr was thanking her. But whenever she pops up, as she has with this case, I think “Integrity Initiative”.

    • portside

      Her exposure as an Integrity Initiative operative has not given any pause to her supporters or employers, any more than it did with David Aaronovitch and the rest. At worst it is viewed as irrelevant but many of them consider it a hallmark of trustworthiness.

  • uwontbegrinningsoon

    Another outstanding article. Not been around to read the blog so much recently, so probably posting what has already been recommended, but Jonathan Cook’s most recent couple of articles are, imho, very very good.

    Have just been listening to LBC’s James O’Brien. I had given up on him as being little different from the likes of Lammy and Pierce et al. However he started this morning’s Ukraine chat with a refreshing and more nuanced take on what is happening over in Eastern Europe.

    Then he selects (and it is O’Brien who selects) some guy in France to point out that morally we have to intervene, primarily with economic sanctions (supporters of intervention all seem to mention SWIFT) and if Russia retaliates with reducing gas transfer and our poor suffer as they balance eat vs heat then that is the short term pain that some of our citizens have to take: freeze or go hungry.

    How can all of the LBC presenters that I listen to, and The Guardian and Telegraph etc., all have essentially the same line? Russia bad, the flawed West good. Sanctions needed. It’s a bit weird.

    • Goose

      The sad thing is how articles in the guardian plus other media outlets, along with reports on the BBC tell nothing of the background and merely basically beat the war drums and call Russia the irrational aggressor.

      You have to read the BTL comments to understand the more complex, nuanced picture. And the guardian and Independent are deleting such comments: ‘In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth really is a revolutionary act’.

      Take this informative comment that favours neither side:

      The Minsk Protocol of 2014, upgraded to ‘Minsk II’ in 2015, had these two mutually reinforcing obstacles:

      – article 4 provided for elections in the Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts, on the question of local self-governance;

      – article 9 allowed Kyiv to retake full control of its borders, especially the one between Donbas and Russia.

      The separatists insist the vote on self-governance must come before ceding control of the border; Kyiv, on the other hand, wants to regain control of the border before any election in the DPR and LPR oblasts.

      Non-ethnic Russian Ukrainians (for want of a better term) are of course completely opposed to the present situation, where the Donbas sector clings to Russia, with a completely porous border WRT movement of men and arms. Many Ukrainians are understandably willing to take arms to retake control of Donbas.

      The separatists on the other hand fear a border controlled by Kyiv would put an end to supplies they receive from Russia, and create an encirclement of Donbas by Ukrainian forces.

      And this:

      Eight million ethnic Russians in Ukraine. How does a country with such demographics join NATO?

      US/UK + NATO allied to ultra-nationalist extremists’ Svoboda, Pravy Sektor(Right Sector) and the Azov Battalion?

      —–

      MPs are dangerously ignorant and stumbling into a war where we are on the wrong side, helping the wrong people for the wrong reasons.

      • Tatyana

        Please add here that since 2014, an economic blockade of Donbass has been introduced by decree of Poroshenko. Completely illegal and anti-constitutional.
        The government has stopped paying all social benefits and pensions there, banks do not serve the population and enterprises, all transport links with Donetsk and Lughansk have been stopped.

        They also passed a law that excludes Russians from the indigenous population of Ukraine.
        These are the flyers that are pasted on the windows of Russian-speaking stores in Lviv. Check out this post, it’s directly compared to the Nazi stickers on Jewish shops urging you not to buy from Jews.

        https://pikabu.ru/story/vo_lvove_bortsyi_za_movu_po_donosu_aktivista_atakovali_magazin_izza_russkogovoryashchego_turka_8782465

        Donbass and Lughansk are held hostage by Ukraine, while it negotiates new money for itself from the US and the EU. And you support this state.

        • Kaiama

          I was going to say exactly what you have just said. But I will add a little. A friend with a Ukrainian passport could not even get to see her mother who died in Donetsk or go to the funeral. Of course, she could not exchange her passport for a DNR passport and then for a Russian one as her UK residency stamps are in the Ukrainian passport and the time required to deal with the bureaucracy was not available. I’ve simplified this, but the misery handed out to the locals is atrocious.

          • Tatyana

            While Russia is being criticized for granting citizenship with all the ensuing benefits for these people!
            While the whole West supports the Ukrainian current government in its desire to starve and bomb the Russian population of these regions!
            Right now, you all witnesses that Kiev, supported by the US, prevent international human rights activists from entering the Donbass. Has anyone seen the reports from that side? No. You’re happy to rely on that comedy guy Zelensky and those Mi6 people in British media. They have their own atmosphere, their own own fictional world, and their own greedy unprincipled inhuman goals.

            Listen to what I tell you, in 3 days it’ll be the anniversary of Auschwitz liberation. If you see someone in your media who praises the US Army for this, please put them on your ‘liers list’. Add there everyone who will write about it without mentioning the role of the USSR. Check your version of the history book ahead of time, and make sure that it was the Red Army that liberated Auschwitz.

          • Goose

            Tatyana –

            Yes, and most of these gung-ho, ‘groupthink’ prone, metropolitan elite media types, will claim they were against it all along when the coffins start coming home.

            Just as they did when the Iraq occupation got messy. None of them like to advertise their support for NATO’s Operation Unified Protector’, – a Libyan ‘regime change’ operation in all but name. Bombing Gaddafi’s regime out into the open, where a lynch mob was waiting to inflict a bloody, brutal end,.. much to Hillary Clinton’s uncontainable ‘We came, we saw, he died! ‘ glee. That operation left Libya ungovernable; a terror training hotbed, and the main source of EU-bound refugees thanks to the people-traffickers who’ve set up shop there. Guessing Libya isn’t NATO’s proudest achievement?

            Zelensky made a statement today saying this is the start of “offensive” operations. What the hell have this ragtag crew been encouraged to do? A full assault on the Donbas? Surely Russia won’t even allow them to get within firing range after their Geneva convention flouting antics last time, recklessly firing tank shells into civilian areas?

          • Goose

            cont.

            Zelensky also talked about it being time to “take back our territory” as if the people in the East are expendable in pursuit of that aim. No mention of the Minsk agreement promised right to self-governance.

            I raised Libya, and I recall how the main justification for intervention back then, presented by the then PM Cameron and France’s President Sarkozy et al. Was to prevent Gaddafi’s forces going ‘door-to-door’ in search of rebels in the Benghazi, which is to the east of the Libyan capital Tripoli.

            Fast forward to today, and we’re being asked to support a Kyiv threatening to do something similar to its rebellious East. The irony eh?

          • Tatyana

            Thanks for remembering the date, DunGroanin, and for bringing the link here.
            Interesting, that I clicked on the author’s name on the Guardian page and it brought me here:

            https://web.archive.org/web/20220114053705/https://www.theguardian.com/profile/shaun-walker

            Shaun Walker looks like an expert at inflating negative emotions, right?
            Look at the titles of all his articles:
            Russian-led military… Kazakhstan unrest, Putin…164 people were killed… future remains murky… destroy ‘bandits and terrorists’… Putin may hope for reward… order to open fire with lethal force… dozens of protesters and police dead… Russian paratroopers… Moscow-led alliance… poverty, unequality and corruption

            Mister Walker aims to become a Holywood screenwriter for apocalypse horror films, highly likely 🙂

            Meanwhile Russian media have published a long interview with Abliazov, who says he had been working on creating ‘cells’ in the country, from abroad (Abliazov lives in France and has sort of headquarters in Kiev, Ukraine) for about 4 years and also had an agreement with the neighbouring Kyrgizstan’s president on this sort of activities.

    • SA

      The media do not put anything into context. Trevor Philips of Sky yesterday started off with Russia the Crimea and aiding separatists in Minsk as his story and the current Russian or Putin aggression. No context whatsoever, no mention of the coup of 2014 or of the atrocities against ethnic Russians and other minorities and the banning and hounding of opposition politicians. No mention of Minsk whatsoever. It is as if the Russians started the whole thing. No context just propaganda which he regurgitates unquestioningly.

  • DunGroanin

    Thank you for stating the truth about this head stenographer hiding behind her liberal woke personality of the Obsessive Groaniad.

    She is the head mare in that filthy stinking stable at Kings Place.
    Harding is an acolyte, Jones an amateur compared to her.

    Her ‘career’ started with being sent to Russia as the vanguard, post the Gorbachev capitulation. Her whole career has been about Russia as far as I can see.

    The rest of the grandee tub thumpers old boys and girls are the Great Betrayers of their readers’ Socialist Democratic Labour voting hearts and minds – the soft-minded who slurp up the kool-aid psychotropic words of their ‘heroes’ and BELIEVE that Assange is some escaped rapist and his disgraceful Incarceration without trial is wholly justified! And that we English are yet again persecuting and have the biggest political prisoner of this century in a high security prison in London this century. Not since Ghandhi in India and later Mandela and Biko and others in South Africa.

    Just as they are currently busy with covering up the Nazi Banderists of Ukraine; and the never-ending anti-Russia role they play in the great game as they have always done since crawling out of the slave-owning proto-Zionist mills of Manchester. To restrict Labour and promote Liberal politics.

    In that anti-working class strategy, they have not only traduced the whole Brexit Narrative – while actually slyly promoting it – they also have defamed Jeremy Corbyn as an antisemite and racist – a truly Orwellian inversion – along with many Jewish Labour MPs and supporters for the benefit of the unelected self-picked Board of Deputies and the whole Apartheid Zionist regime that has direct placemen and women in our government and Establishment as much as the US’s. NHS in the bin? Bring it on.

    Even the free lunch eating hypocrite, Jay Rayner, casually indulges an attack on JC, in his absurd story of some German Nazi provocateur he briefly met decades ago as a lily white employee of the now scurrilous rag.

    I personally believe that the social media dark arts were deployed during the BrexShit campaign and even more so during the subsequent general elections.
    I believe it was by Cummings’ crew.
    I also believe that it was done to create a miasma of ‘populism’ so that these polls could be more easily manipulated by postal vote fraud.
    Provided cover by a voting system made opaque by the privatisation of the Electoral Commision, by the Bromance Tory/LibDem coalition government of 2010 – who also inflicted the Austerity and then arranged the referendum to push through the BrexShit we have a hard version of.

    There is no doubt that the worse excesses and State and deepstate are covered up, Narrative pushed and opinions-nudged, by the MSM acting in concert whilst its tribal readership/viewers believe that they are people with sense and all others are scum or pc depending on which floating MSM turd they are settled on.

    I will repeat what I said about this case, just like any trial without a jury there will be very little truth and justice that will escape out of just a judge-led pantomime.
    The odious Banks and his call centres operating illegally will not be jailed and that criminality appears to have disappeared under the carpet…

    All will come out smelling of fragrant roses and all blame will reside with Putin as usual. Maybe Xi will be added within a week or two as the nwo is signed into existence.

  • Jon Cloke

    At the root of which, it would still be very interesting to know where the money given to the DUP to promote Brexit came from, and Darren Grimes’ insidious involvement in the whole..

  • SleepingDog

    My impression, which is tentative and could easily be mistaken, is that the Brexit referendum result was largely due to many people’s frustrations at the inability to democratically change British foreign policy being released for one decisive day. British imperial foreign policy remains largely under the royal prerogatives and a two/three-party consensus, and there is little or no prospect for the British electorate to influence this in general elections (albeit new single-issue parties have a chance, and occasionally small kingmaker parties gain disproportionate influence). Only the parts of the British Empire expected to vote the ‘right’ way are given degrees of self-governance.

    But surely in the case of a Pulitzer Prize article, redress via retraction is through the USAmerican courts? Perhaps we should await that court case?

  • Feral Finster

    Once upon a time, not so long ago, any development that the Establishment of the day did not like was automatically blamed on Jews. No evidence needed. Because Jews.

    Today, things are different. Any development that today’s establishment does not like is automatically blamed on Russia. No evidence needed. Because Russia.

  • Antiwar7

    I hope Cadwalladr loses, so that there is a very public mark showing that her reporting was false.

  • Tatyana

    @Deepgreenpuddock
    you are perplexed because they are trying to sell you a big lie.
    It is called a revision of historical events.

    Too many are dissatisfied with the results of WW2 today.
    Japan claims the Kuril Islands, the Jews are considered the only victims of the war, the huge sacrifice of the USSR is hushed up, the Nazis in Ukraine and the Baltic states turn out to be not such bad guys, the Yalta agreements are simply rejected by the NATO countries.
    In demonizing Russia, they go so far in conditioning the population that many young Japanese today honestly believe it was the USSR that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki!

    Media in the service of big money.

    • nevermind

      They killed returning German Pows in the fields of Flanders, emaciated and hungrys they dug their own holes to live in and were put on starvation rations.

      300.000 soldiers killed by the follow on NAZIS in the west, and all related evidence shredded, bar the Red Cross in Genf holding the evidence to it.

      Fascist all over the world are dancing their last dance as their pathologically divided societies are at loggerheads and collapsing.
      This talking up of war has their survival in mind.

      • DunGroanin

        NM – sounds crazy. Got any links to that?

        Returning Nazis killed ? Why ?
        Thought they got shipped to CANADA and South America/Africa and various other hidey holes of Oz … the northeast and various secluded counties of the U.K….to form the next generations of proxy Nazis wholly anglicised – Brezinsky. Vindman , Nuland. Various connotations of freedman – a large amount of American growth post war is probably down to their efforts… certainly the missiles, rockets, aviation etc.
        If you gonna lie make it big and stick to it like us perfidious Anglos.

        • nevermind

          hi Dungroanin, the only evidence of it is in the Red Cross archive in Genf and many historians and learned people tried to get access to the records, but they all have been rebutted.
          Allied records were all ‘lost/shredded/burned as they did not like to be known as revenge killers.
          sorry no links

    • BrianFujisan

      Hi Tatyana..A few weeks ago I checked in on your Page…very creative Craft Artworks.

      Anyhoo… Check this out ..( everyone should ) It’s top class stuff

      Pushback with Aaron Maté, is with Richard Sakwa. Professor of Russian and European politics at the University of Kent.

      The Grayzone
      US and UK escalate Russia war fever, but NATO splits over Ukraine emerge – 45 mins.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBMKhhdg4jk

    • deepgreenpuddock

      Anyone who has troubled to read some history knows that the USSR suffered hugely in ww2. The jewish issue is distinguished from other atrocities by the scale of it and way the German state was committed to genocide and the methodical /industrialised/systematic methods they adopted.
      The siege of Leningrad was an atrocity for sure but it was an act of war not a systematic extermination. Of course these distinctions are iniquitous and may not ultimately be helpful. Who can weigh suffering and set such events against another?.
      As for the big lie. my sense of it is that it is made up of countless smaller lies all compounded to create the impression that we are now immersed in an ocean of falsehood .Messrs putin, biden Johnson operate within a wold of falsity. Truth would cause the pillars of their respective establishments to tumble.
      Carole Cadwalladr is not an outright liar (too easily identified) but a person who shapes facts and narrative to her satisfaction or that of her paymasters. All liars know that they must attach their lies to a groundwork of some reality. Craig (here and especially in relation to his reporting of court cases) exaggerates the impression of a fair reporter by making verbatim or factual accounts and lots of quotations. It’s all part of the rhetoric of any discourse. Now before anyone jumps down my throat, this is not a criticism of Craig but an attempt to explain the invidious position I think we all find ourselves in with a huge interplay of quasi-facts, factoids and opinions meshed inextricably.

      • Tatyana

        I feel very much the same. Moreover, what you describe ‘quasi-facts, factoids and opinions meshed inextricably’ was exactly the reason for me to start participating in comments under political blogs.

        I was never engaged in the discussions like that. It has always been a sort of ‘normal weather’ that the West do not like Russia.
        Let the dogs bark while caravan moves on – that was my attitude, pretty common among most Russians.
        I only decided to give my opinions after the Skripal case, that was one outrageous lie!

  • Glasshopper

    She is a revolting Remoaner and slippery Brussels shoeshiner. Good to see Mr Murray giving her both barrels.

  • M.J.

    War can be a useful means of distracting the masses. Imaginary conversation in the Ministry of Truth:

    Journalist: PM, we have reports that you had a birthday party with M&S food during the lockdown.
    PM Piffle: M&S?! M&S?! What do you think I am, cheap? We alway buy from Fortnum and Mason, Selfridges at the very least. Clearly it’s so woke proletarians who came up with this!
    J: But PM, we have reports of a suitcase full of wine from the local off-license..
    PM: Off license? Off license? You think I would touch cheap plonk like Liebfrauwotsit? Its the best clarets and white wines from the new world for me. Off license! Honestly!
    Assistant: PM, Sue wants to speak to you.
    PM Er, please tell her I’m terribly busy, I have to warn the world about the consequences of the Russians invading Kiev. Terribly serious, you know. Maybe I’ll drop her a line next week.
    Asst: But PM, her enquiry will be finished by then. You’ll miss it altogether.
    PM: I will? Splendid! I mean, how great that she’s going to deliver us the report on time. I’m sure we’ll find time to decide what to do with it.
    Asst: (aside, low voice) NFA, right?
    PM: (also low voice) Ri-i-ght! (Smile)

      • M.J.

        I was thinking about a scene from National Lampoon’s Animal House where Bluto says to D-Day after handing a gun to Flounder ‘Just blanks, right?’ D-Day replies, ‘Ri-i-ight!’ So that was the inspiration, and I was smiling as I wrote it!

    • M.J.

      An imaginary continuation to the imaginary conversation above, and just as fictional.

      PM Piffle: I’ve a great idea of how to get us all off the hook. In my regular meeting with the Minister of Justice, I mention my concern about suspects being helped to spin yarns by being primed by details being published before they are interrogated. The Minister of Justice, in his regular meeting with the Met does the same. All off the record, of course. Then the Met politely requests Sue Jay that she leave out such details from her report, so as not to help anyone escape justice. Being a good citizen concerned to further the course of Justice, of course, she does as requested.
      Asst: But PM, what about the police investigation itself?
      PM: No problem. I have a chat with all the staff beforehand, exhorting them to be good team players and do the right thing for the good of the country.
      Asst: You mean, close ranks and clam up.
      PM: Hush, walls have ears. Anyway, no-one can prove a thing, and a few days later the police (or CPS) announce that there is insufficient evidence to prosecute. We’re scot-free!
      Asst: PM, you’re a genius!
      PM: How true. Anyway, next time, assuming it’s before the pandemic’s over, be sure tell organisers to read the latest rules first.
      Asst: Of course, PM.

  • DunGroanin

    Goood morning soldiers of Empire.

    I see some Chindits work round the clock ! Probably due to the great reach and readership of this great journalism blog site. The 5+1 eyes like to still pretend the sun still never sets on their rancid Empire. There are plenty of absurd antipodeans trumpeting for boots on the ground against the poor Russians. Forgetting that they were the allies without whom every one would have been speaking fluent German across these parts.

    There are real murdering SoB mercenaries and neo-Banderists that are trained, armed and paid by us (the nato/Atlantic alliance dregs of Empire) – that you propagandists in your huts sell as ‘freedom fighters’ – all they have done is watch porn and play poker and turn the populace into their camp prostitutes since their failure in 2014 to burn all of the Russians of Ukraine.

    I’ll repeat my message to you 77th types -what you are engaged in by lying to the general public, stirring up murder & mayhem is a crime against humanity.
    You will not be able to claim ‘following orders’ as an excuse; you will never be able to wear your ribbons and medals proudly in public; you will never be able to look yourselves and your grandkids in the eye and tell them of your great soldiering without honour.

    You will be tried and punished.

    As you do your bit in sending these sacrificial thugs to their doom. By false flag chemical attacks and get fried by the heavenly fire that will rain hard upon their ready made graves for half an hour…

    Apparently their English is now fluent as the goblin of lies , Luke Harding wrote gushingly about the Banderists – that means they are fooled into believing that the Englishand Yankee trainers will have their backs and their boots on the ground next to them as they go over the top. The Spanish and other odds and sods of Nato hiding miles away or at sea with useless aircraft carriers to . I expect they all , we all, in the crumbling Empires last grasp , are about to witness the C21st version of total war – the asymmetric version , where the generals and war profiteers who hide far from the frontlines and are untouched by the reality of destruction and death finally get a early and lethal visit by drone or missile and the other ‘weapons’ of modern war.

    The p5 having explicitly agreed they wont use nukes a few weeks ago.

    So good morning trenchers with your fluent English – many of you will understand that you are only there to die and these civilians you target are protected like they weren’t able to be in 2014.

    And goodbye ,as you head to hell. Dumb mofo’s.

  • Rhys Jaggar

    By far the best approach to MSM employees nowadays is to assume that they are all unprincipled prostitutes disseminating the propaganda of those that pay their publishers (Governments, Bill Gates etc).

    There may be honorable exceptions, but I can’t think of a single MSM journalist right now that tells the truth about Russia and Ukraine. Not one. Oh, there are a few who have rebelled on vaccinations and lockdowns (like Allison Pearson at the Telegraph), but where is the ‘This B***s*IT being disseminated by Washington is utterly evil, total lies and aimed at murdering large numbers of entirely innocent ordinary people whilst not endangering the lives of the paid soldiers of the countries ramping up the warmongering’.

    The same is true about the Security Services. Anyone who has been pursued by them know that they act like unaccountable dictators, thinking it is for them to determine what the National Interest is, in effect saying that they exist above parliamentary democracy. They absolutely do not.

    Anyone who has known members of those services knows that they are not superior people, they are almost certainly either a narcissist or a psychopath. They have delusions about their own superiority, whilst sponging incessantly from those they claim do not have the right to the levels of affluence which they personally enjoy. They were read into the BBB mantras twenty years ago and were quite calm about the prospects of reintroducing nazi-style concepts by stealth. Many of them have either smoked or drank heavily during their careers and often they are obese, hardly representing an icon of healthy vigour to role model to the nation. They have no capability of questioning the evil of the USA nor countenancing the possibility that Russians can be decent people (a few objectionable oligarchs exist in both the USA and in Russia/London after all).

    No-one in the MSM can question the narrative that the Security Services operate on behalf of the nation, when anyone with brains know that they operate solely on behalf of unaccountable elites and have contempt for the ordinary taxpayers. They are constantly fomenting war, murder and misery the world over, be that via the White Helmets in Syria, the neo-nazis in Ukraine, Al Qaida in Afghanistan during the 1980s and 1990s, the genocides in Indonesia in the 1960s. The lists go on and on and on.

    What these people are are psychopaths and genocidal murderers. Oh, they are too cowardly to do all the killing themselves, but they never stop funding mass murder and fomenting killing wherever democracy threatens to rise above their contemptibly evil levels of primitive claptrap.

    But the MSM can’t report that. Ever.

    Just ignore the MSM, keep safe and use independent sources to educate yourselves.

    The MSM is a tool for disinformation, so is not only a waste of time for truth seekers, it is almost a bellwether of where NOT to seek truth.

    And more to the point, it is constantly finding ways to divert the public from matters which are a global disgrace, would lead to the Establishment’s hold on power collapsing. And it does so through killing innocent people far too often…..

  • RedStarTrout

    Back in 2017 someone set up a Facebook group called ‘Britain’s Future’. It argued for the hardest possible ‘No Deal’ Brexit and for Britain to trade on WTO terms with Europe and the rest of the world. When I found it, it was being run by a 30 year old bloke called Tim Dawson, who had written a radio sitcom and some stuff for the Telegraph.
    So a little ‘one man band’ Facebook group then? There was no website, no company, no staff, no mention of funding, so quite possibly it was just Tim, his laptop, and his spare time.
    Or at least that was what we were meant to think.
    Tim hadn’t set the group up, he’d only taken it over from someone else. There were lots of people writing content for it, including prospective Tory candidates and Americans, so it clearly wasn’t just Tim behind this.
    The group argued for the hardest ‘No Deal’ Brexit, but based on easily checked lies. For example, ‘Britain – not the European Court of Justice – must make British laws’, except the ECJ has never had any say in British law, only in EU law, and even then it couldn’t ‘make’ any laws. Another was ‘Leaving the Customs Union would enable us to trade freely with the rest of the world’, so, just like we could before we left, but now with no trade deals.
    This group was also putting out adverts telling people to write to their MP demanding a ‘No Deal’ Brexit. They put out lots of adverts, to lots of people. Carefully targeted adverts. And those adverts cost over £340,000 altogether.
    That’s quite a lot of money, more than all the political parties were spending put together, but where did it come from? Nobody knows.
    There was no company, so no company accounts.
    It wasn’t a political party, and it wasn’t campaigning in an election, so the Electoral Commission wasn’t involved.
    Dawson said the money came from friends and supporters. It must be nice to have such rich and generous friends, but whoever they were must have been expecting some return on their money. Were they hedge fund managers? Vulture capitalists, looking to wreck the economy then pick up the good bits, like the NHS, on the cheap? Were they British, Russian, American?
    Tim is a fan of Jacob Rees Mogg and the Tory ERG group of MPs, so perhaps the money came from them. Or from one of Rees Mogg’s investment partners – his company has a lot of money invested in Russia, as well as other places.
    We will probably never know who funded the biggest political advertising spend on Facebook in British history (so far), but should we be allowed to even try to find out? Should anyone investigate where the money came from? Perhaps it came from Russia, or Russian investments, or Americans, or maybe Rees Mogg found it down the back of one of his many sofas. Whatever the source, no rules were broken, but all that tells us is that we need better rules.

    The Britain’s Future group stopped posting, and advertising, in April 2019, just as May and the EU agreed an extension of Article 50 to October. Did the people behind it get their money’s worth, or did they lose their bets when we didn’t leave at the end of March?
    Dark money like this destroys democracy. We have to have transparency and honesty, otherwise our country and government, Scotland as well as the UK, belongs to the highest bidder.
    Cadwalladr, whatever her sources and whatever her faults, was right to investigate the murky dealings around the Brexit referendum. We need more like her, and we need to stop attacking the people who are trying to defend our democracy.

      • Goose

        fonso-

        From Craig’s piece above :

        “….but Cadwalladr was being pointed by the security services away from the Tories and towards Russia.”

        That’s the real problem with journalists and editors having chummy relations with ‘sources’ in the intel services. At best journos will be manipulated, whether knowingly or unknowingly; steered in directions they want them to go in and away from areas they don’t.

        Can only imagine if Snowden 2 approached a journalist at today’s guardian, he or she would probably be betrayed, and picked up within hours, never to be seen or heard from again. There’s no Glenn Greenwald to approach, or editor Alan Rusbridger to run with stuff like that now that is for sure.

    • Jim Sinclare

      “Cadwalladr was right to investigate the murky dealings” absolutely. She was very helpful when the DCMS investigated Facebook dark advertising. The Electoral Commission refused to get involved until Jo Maugham took them to court. Many months later, Vote Leave were fined £61,000 but the result stood. There is no public body able to defend the integrity of elections, and the government want to keep it that way

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