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.

———————————————

 
 
Forgive me for pointing out that my ability to provide this coverage is entirely dependent on your kind voluntary subscriptions which keep this blog going. This post is free for anybody to reproduce or republish, including in translation. You are still very welcome to read without subscribing.

Unlike our adversaries including the Integrity Initiative, the 77th Brigade, Bellingcat, the Atlantic Council and hundreds of other warmongering propaganda operations, this blog has no source of state, corporate or institutional finance whatsoever. It runs entirely on voluntary subscriptions from its readers – many of whom do not necessarily agree with the every article, but welcome the alternative voice, insider information and debate.

Subscriptions to keep this blog going are gratefully received.

Choose subscription amount from dropdown box:

Recurring Donations



 

Paypal address for one-off donations: [email protected]

Alternatively by bank transfer or standing order:

Account name
MURRAY CJ
Account number 3 2 1 5 0 9 6 2
Sort code 6 0 – 4 0 – 0 5
IBAN GB98NWBK60400532150962
BIC NWBKGB2L
Bank address Natwest, PO Box 414, 38 Strand, London, WC2H 5JB

Bitcoin: bc1q3sdm60rshynxtvfnkhhqjn83vk3e3nyw78cjx9
Ethereum/ERC-20: 0x764a6054783e86C321Cb8208442477d24834861a

Subscriptions are still preferred to donations as I can’t run the blog without some certainty of future income, but I understand why some people prefer not to commit to that.


Allowed HTML - you can use: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

182 thoughts on “Beware the Cult of Cadwalladr

1 2
  • Will Rowan

    “There was in fact no connection between Vote Leave or UKIP and the Brexit campaign and Cambridge Analytica”

    I’m sure that’s not correct Craig,

    In October / November 2016 I read an academic paper analysing Cambridge Analytica’s use of data in support of Vote Leave It set out clever but fairly straightforward work to acquire profile information from Facebook users’ networks, in breach of gdpr legislation.

    Vote Leave were subsequently found guilty of several data breaches for the work that they paid Cambridge Analytica to carry out.

    • Jen

      To think that over at Off-Guardian, I used to refer jokingly to Carole Cadwalladr as Carole Crapswallowerregurgitator. I never realised how close to the bone I was.

    • DunGroanin

      Of course that pantomime she and Fartage conducted where that malapropism was deployed to provide smoke to cover the actual fire. It should now make it obvious to everyone how intertwined they all are.

      Let alone the Murdoch /Fartage photo captured in a private garden. Within hours of the referendum.

  • frankywiggles

    ‘an utterly unprincipled and fraudulent tool of the security services’

    You are 100% wrong on this. Carol is actually among the most informed and conscientious journalists in the business. The only reason she finds herself working for Integrity Initiative is because they considered her work too big a threat to the establishment and so forced her to work for them in order to discredit and neutralise her in the eyes of her liberal Remainer fans. (A group notoriously suspicious of our security state). She is in effect being held hostage by Integrity Initiative.

    Clark graciously (although understandably wearily) explained it all to me back in October when I mistakenly labelled her a security-state propagandist.

    Clark
    October 10, 2021 at 18:23

    – “They’re a pair of security state-Integrity Initiative propagandists, peddling lies in order to poison international relations”

    Oh dear, here we go again.

    Cadwalladr’s work on Cambridge Analytica and SCL seemed informed and conscientious; maybe that is why the Integrity Initiative sucked her in; it would certainly discourage any further whistleblowers from contacting her, and encourage suspicion about her work – “There. Neutralised”

    https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2021/08/keeping-freedom-alive/comment-page-9/#comment-999942

    • craig Post author

      As I said above:

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

      It is you will recall shown in the court case, and not denied, that she published claims given her by a contractor for the security services.
      It is also woth pointing out she is NOT running the defence of verifiable truth.

      • Giyane

        Craig

        If political disinformation was manufactured snd distributed by the security services surely they are a disgrace , and journalists reproducing their disinformation will have to totally rethink using them as a source.

        If somebody lies to me and i believe them and act accordingly I don’t think I am responsible for the consequences of my actions. The liar is. This whole story, which is of very little interest to me because it stinks from top to bottom i, s about British state corruption and nothing else.

        • Giyane

          For example

          The professional body I pay to be registered with about a year ago started warning their members that they would not be able to sign off their work if they had not completed a certain course. That was a straight lie to encourage members to fork out for doing one of their courses.

          I checked this information last year before renewing my subscription in May . Same advice. So I signed off my current job before the previous annual subscription expired at the end of April.

          Big mistake , for which I was told off. But they later told me that the information they had given me was totally incorrect. I can’t help it if the top source of information is telling lies in order to drum up business. Quis custodet ipsos cxxts?

        • Blissex

          «If political disinformation was manufactured snd distributed by the security services surely they are a disgrace»

          That is one of the most heart-warming statements of innocent optimism I have read recently… That “security services” is a relatively recent euphemism for what used to be called the “political police” in most countries, and the job of the political police is to support their masters and undermine their opponents, using dirty and illegal means. That’s why they are secret: the police in theory has to respect the law and is subject to public supervision.

          «and journalists reproducing their disinformation will have to totally rethink using them as a source»

          The “journalists” that use without qualifications any material provided by the political police or their “contractors” understand very well what they are doing, they don’t need to “rethink”.

    • David W Ferguson

      Carol is actually among the most informed and conscientious journalists in the business…

      Cadwalladr’s defence in the Banks case is now “It’s in public interest that I should be allowed to tell lies about this person because me and my pals at the Guardian hate him…”

      Sheesh.

        • David W Ferguson

          Feel free to respond to my caricature with your own. Present her defence, that she should be allowed to tell lies because moral superiority, in the most generous terms you can find. I’m genuinely interested to see what you can come up with

  • Henry Smith

    Slightly off topic – but maybe related to Russia disinformation:

    “The Government is seeking an injunction against the BBC over a potentially explosive story about a spy working overseas, it was revealed late last night. Attorney General Suella Braverman is set to ask the High Court to gag the upcoming news broadcast, claiming it presents a ‘risk to people’s lives’, “

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10428969/New-Spycatcher-affair-BBC-Government-scrambles-gagging-order-stop-spy-story.html
    Question:
    The regime’s ‘news service’, the BBC, doesn’t do anti government stories and it’s MI6/CIA that provides the BBC with it’s political overseas content. So what is going on ?
    Theory: BBC story that ‘UK spy in Russia/Ukraine has inside knowledge that Russia is planning an invasion’. Result: Kudos for BBC, MI6 and Government and easing the way for UK actions ??

    • Giyane

      Henry Smith

      Maybe that explains why this week’s spin has been about the BBC not being worth government support. Rah rah endless fatuous discussion point.

      All the government wanted to achieve was to cover its embarrassment at publishing the lie that Russia’s intention was aggressive , when it was merely defensive , the West having reinforced Ukraine’ s weaponry and positioned 100,000 Ukranian troops on their side of the border.

      The West is playing with fire by publishing untruths.
      The last staggering death throes of a collapsing capitalist system. Or , as Steve Bell depicted, Mrs Thatcher descending into the pit of hell, asking why this pit was still.open?

    • Blissex

      «The regime’s ‘news service’, the BBC, doesn’t do anti government stories and it’s MI6/CIA that provides the BBC with it’s political overseas content»

      It is not as simple as that: there are different factions among the governing elites (see the current Conservative campaign against Johnson), often it is the BBC that provides the SIS/CIA with stories, and also in several cases journalists at “aligned” media try to slip in real information, to salve their consciences or just out of frustration, and they get away with it as long as it does not become prominent/popular.

  • David W Ferguson

    I find myself strangely hoping that Cadwalladr – for whom I have fathomless wells of contempt – wins… 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…

    Craig there is a naivete about some of your views that is almost disarming. Cadwalladr isn’t some pub bore mouthing off down the local on a Saturday night. Or even (with genuine respect) an internet blogger whose reach is limited to a few thousand people. Her lies have traction among millions of people, and even if she stands up and publicly announces that she was lying (as in effect she has already done) most of the people who read and believed her lies will carry on believing them. Because it fits with the narrative they want and have been conditioned to believe.

    I hope she gets utterly crushed and bankrupted by Banks. But I have a very strong feeling that that isn’t going to be how it pans out.

  • M.J.

    According to wiki Carole Cadwalladr did not win the 2019 Pulitzer Prize, though she was a finalist; the winner was the Washington Post.
    Absence of evidence is not evidence of evidence. It would not surprise me at all that Russia would further Brexit as well as the election of Trump, nor that its agents of influence in the West would try and pooh-pooh the idea. I suspect that furthering divisions in Western society, both international (Brexit) and within nations (party divisions in the USA, Scottish nationalism in the UK) suit the Russians just fine. Divide and conquer – follow the playbook of the past rival in the Great Game! I remember something from a school history textbook long ago: “Clive’s strategy and Mir Jafar’s treachery decided the battle” (of Plassey, against the Nawab of Bengal, allied to the French).

    • Giyane

      M.J.

      The difference between Russia and the West is that when faced with collapse the Soviet Union collapsed , because of its incompetence and pressure from the West, it reformed itself. By contrast , the West has regularly crashed but never reforms, merely pumping the failed system.up with stolen oil and QE, 4th generation psyops warfare and locking opponents up or slandering them on fake charges like anti semitism.

      I am appalled that you think Putin and Lavrov who saved Syria from power intoxicated Islamists, would stoop so low as the US has, first torturing and raping Afghans they were supposed to be protecting and then handing power over to the butchery of the Taliban.

      When Western uppercrust arseholes say they are disappointed that Putin has not come on board with the West , they are projecting their refusal to reform themselves onto Putin. Projection being temporary madness , verging on complete loss of plot psychosis i.e.
      the stage that Biden and Starmer are now in.

      • Franc

        Could this be the same Carole Cadwalladr that started a campaign to ‘ clean ‘ up the Internet of what she deemed to be anti-Semitism, a few years ago
        One article she wrote, for the Guardian, on Sunday 15th January 2017, titled “Antisemite, Holocaust denier…yet David Irving claims fresh support…. “
        Her article ends with a quote by Irving, ” The labour party is tearing itself apart with these allegations about antisemitism, ” he says, ” but Corbyn seems like a very fine man …. ”
        which conveniently conflates Corbyn with that very nasty man, David Irving, who, prior to his infamous Court case v Deborah Lipstadt, was regarded highly and Internationally for his historical works!
        .

      • M.J.

        “I am appalled that you think Putin and Lavrov who saved Syria from power intoxicated Islamists, would stoop so low as the US has…”

        What Putin & Co did was prop up a tyranny like the Syrians which destroyed a library, an act symbolic of repressive and arrogant and hence UNDEMOCRATIC regimes. See Mike Thomson’s “Syria’s secret library” (ISBN 1474605923).
        What America did was free Afghanistan from Taleban rule that enslaved half the population. Too bad that their air-strikes weren’t more accurate and better planned, and that some of their soldiers violated the human rights of prisoners in their quest to get Bin Laden. Not to mention (and here I blame Biden) pulling out prematurely, something that I believe Hillary Clinton (or Kamala Harris) wouldn’t have allowed.

        • Giyane

          M.J.

          Putin did not prop up Assad, the West demanded and stills demands total capitulation to the West, including who rebuilds it before they decide who is going to run the country.

          Like now, all they are prepared to discuss is their absolute right to colonise Ukraine Kazakhstan and everything else in their way towards the Pacific Ocean.

          The best thing to do with megalomaniac is to unpick their stupid plans, even if that means Assad stays in power. Why would Russia want to create a vacuum ?

          Russia will only kick out the vile Western dictator puppet Assad , After, not before, the West gets its thieving hands off Syria and China is allowed in stabilise authority in the region. That’ll happen after the West gets another military kicking , inshallah.

        • laguerre

          So, to conclude from your comment: undemocratic jihadists supported by the US, fine and good. Undemocratic Muslims, if opposed to the US, bad.

          • M.J.

            Agree with the second bit. As for the first bit, supporting undemocratic people as a means to an end is hazardous. Iran, Chile, Indonesia and Afghanistan are all good examples. That said I have some sympathy for Kissinger. If MacArthur had armed the Nationalists in China after WWII we might not now have the far East dominated by Communist dictatorships. But what’s done is done.

          • David W Ferguson

            MJ:

            If MacArthur had armed the Nationalists in China after WWII we might not now have the far East dominated by Communist dictatorships.

            After he occupied it in the 1940s, Chiang Kai-shek ruled Taiwan as a military dictatorship under martial law for forty years, starting more or less with the 228 massacre in which somewhere between 18,000 and 28,000 civilians were slaughtered. What a shame that this great man was not enabled to do the same to the whole of China, to suit the whims of you and your pals.

          • Jen

            “… If MacArthur had armed the Nationalists in China after WWII we might not now have the far East dominated by Communist dictatorships. But what’s done is done.”

            That’s an appalling statement. The Nationalists under Jiang Jieshi (or Chiang Kaishek) were thugs who killed hundreds of thousands of Chinese civilians, many suspected to be Communist or supporters of Communism, over a period spanning more or less 20 years. There were even occasions where the Nationalists fought WITH the Japanese against Mao Zedong’s forces during the Japanese occupation of China. No wonder the majority of the Chinese public sided with the Communists during that 20-year period when the Nationalists were supposed to be the ruling government and Jiang the President of the Chinese republic.
            “Into the mist: the secret history of KMT-Japanese collaboration” (Taipei Times, April 2015)

            The United States under the Roosevelt administration threw enough money and weapons at Jiang’s Nationalists. Much if not most of the money ended up in the bank accounts of Jiang and his wife Meiling. Those in Washington DC who knew what Jiang was doing with the money did not call him “Chiang Cash-my-check” behind his back for nothing.

        • johnny conspiranoid

          MJ
          Assad won his recent election.
          The population of Afghanistan suffered under the corrupt and vicious rule of US supported war lords and prefer the Taliban.
          Pity about the air strikes.
          Clinton and Harris are barking mad.

    • Sarge

      “Absence of evidence is not evidence of evidence.”

      What happens when one does not have the exact liberal conspiracy-justification cliche to hand and try to reach independently beyond one’s intellectual limit.

      • Giyane

        Sarge

        SIS bots seed disinformation and in the absence of evidence this can only be unpicked by speculation.
        Yes but human intelligence thankfully encompasses both logic and emotions. The retention of evidence tells one that logical.intelligence is pointless. There is no reason to conceal evidence except for deception.

        Switch to emotional.intelligence why would the SIS want to blame Russia? Because anger eats intelligence. The feeling of betrayal makes one’s brain go.into overdrive, producing cortisol instead of answers.
        SIS psychopaths know how manipulate people. First introduce the unacceptable, like having drinks parties when all parties are banned, or accusing Russia of aggressive interference .Second, rationalise the unacceptable, ” putin is thinking about his legacy ” Swerve Tobiassed EllaneyewaterEllwood yesterday.

        You cannot criticise a journalist for working for the Guardian’s second role, of rationalising the unacceptable without criticising its first role which is to publish SIS false information. Better just use it for lighting the woodburner, or making papier mache Russian dolls, rolling spliffs or pasting out endpapers imho.

        • Piotr+Berman

          The thought process probably goes like that. We, (English, Americans, etc.) are good people, logical people, so on our own, without MALIGN INFLUENCE, we would not oppose Remain or Hillary. This shows that MALIGN INFLUENCE did happen. But whose? Of course, influence of MALIGN actors. And who is most malign of them all? Therefore, in the absence of any clear evidence, Putin is the most reliable conclusion,

          Analogously, God is just, abortion is bad, health is good, hence abortion is bad for health. For some reason, malign Russian influence was not implicated , perhaps it is liberal specialty.

    • Squeeth

      The Russians have bigger fish to fry to the east, Britain isn’t worth it. The state/boss class is becoming more autocratic by the day and the economy is becoming more fascistic by the day. The Russians don’t have to do anything to sow discord, far from it. It’s in their interest to not be blameworthy as an outside agitator and leave it to the overzealous junior officers.

    • Yuri K

      “Absence of evidence is not evidence of evidence.”

      I need to write this one down into my little black notebook.

      Seriously, I’ve seen this argument before in the reviews of Luke Harding’s book (haven’t read the book itself, though), but we can watch how the “divide and conquer” rule is applied by the collective West to the former USSR countries. So, if Putin plays this game, this is only fair.

  • gyges

    “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.”

    Re this and the Steele dossier … why aren’t ‘remainers’ (in the above case) and Democrats (re Steele dossier) hopping mad? A bedrock of their belief system has been shown to be a lie; they’ve been well and truly duped, and look utterly stupid. Yet if any of them were to read my comments I’ve no doubt that they’d turn on me, rather than on their poisoners.

    The other question it raises … how long can this situation continue? We’ve got substack (and blogs such as Craigs) to erode them but the attrition is quite slow.

  • Kit Klarenberg

    Hi Craig,

    It continues to be a source of immense joy that you are out of prison, regularly writing, and exposing inconvenient truths with your every column. Welcome back my friend.

    You suggest the source of Cadwalladr info could also be Orbis – Bellingcat has also been mooted – but The Guardian’s wording is very instructive here – “in her written evidence statement, she said she had obtained two intelligence files from an organisation contracted to undertake work countering Russian disinformation in Europe on behalf of a government agency.” This is an *exact description* of II. Combined with her appearance at their events, dishonest defences of the org in public, and history of smearing Julian Assange, Jeremy Corbyn and Seumas Milne as Kremlin agents – key targets for Two Temple Place and its assorted clusters – it seems all but certain they provided the files.

    The content is certainly interesting – “Katya Banks entered Britain on a passport sequentially numbered to the passport of Katia Zatuliveter, a woman MI5 had claimed was a Russian spy and who had had an affair with the Portsmouth MP, Mike Hancock. Katya Banks was also alleged to have had a relationship with Hancock.” The passport claim has never been aired publicly before and echoes allegations made about the purported Salisbury poisoners. Spooks can be breathtakingly inept on occasion but to have made the same weapons grade howler twice in such high profile circumstances? Pull the other one. There’s a good OpenDemocracy dissection of why the charges against Zatuliveter were meritless – https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/men-who-knew-too-little-reflections-on-zatuliveter-case/. Katya denies having an affair with Hancock too, and vice versa.

    Such conspiracy theorising is par for the course for II ‘intelligence files’. The documents related to alleged Russian meddling in the Catalan independence referendum are breathtaking in their stupidity – Putin referring to the vote in a public speech was framed by the Initiative as Russia having “conferred some legitimacy” upon it, and a “subtle” indication the Kremlin was “keeping a close eye on the crisis.” Never mind that Putin vociferously backed Madrid in that speech, declaring the crisis “an internal affair of the Kingdom of Spain”. Of course, the narrative of KGB interference has now been legitimised by Bellingcat, which characteristically claims based on unverifiable evidence only it has access to that GRU operatives were on the ground there at this time.

    Interestingly, Arron Banks is specifically named in II files related to the activities of likely MI5 operative Euan Grant, suggesting he too was a target. Grant discusses how he has been assisting the FT’s Tom Burgis in his reporting on “African activities of Russia”, which is said to “lead into things which are not unconnected to Arron Banks.” Burgis, the FT, and Harper Collins are now all being sued for libel by Eurasian Natural Resources Corporation for statements he made about the company’s African activities in articles, podcasts, and his book Kleptopia.

    I thought it very good work indeed and the author strikes me as a good faith actor, although one aspect that gave me pause was his suggestion three ENRC staffers were murdered as they were on the verge of blowing the whistle about the company’s corrupt, criminal activities. When anyone dies in mysterious circumstances and the Russian state – or Russian entities of some kind – are blamed, you can bet that this is likely a cover story for something else, also designed to discredit Moscow. Litvinenko – nuclear smuggling for British intelligence. From Russia With Blood – murders committed by British intelligence. Skripal – well, we can’t be sure on that one just yet, but I have my suspicions. Don’t forget too Cambridge Analytica staffer Dan Mursean’s untimely demise in Kenya – pathological liar Chris Wylie declared that he was poisoned. An aspect of the scandal rather forgotten, no doubt because the established narrative is so dependent on Wylie’s version of events – which is provably untrue on so many counts.

    Been my conviction since the CA story broke that Cadwalladr was specifically deployed/exploited to fudge it, and in service of this fed a mixture of half-truths and disinformation to exculpate the British state, ensuring readers kept looking the wrong way – eastwards, to Moscow. A prepackaged narrative served up on a plate to her by the very elements who would be exposed if SCL/CA was properly investigated. Alex Kogan’s DCMS appearance is worth watching in full – he quietly and politely runs absolute rings around the parliamentarians, particularly Damian Collins (who attended II events). At one point, Collins says he’s not aware of any UK government agencies interfering in foreign elections. Which of course SCL/CA was a key example.

    I too hope Cadwalladr wins, not least because if she lost she’d just be bailed out by average members of the public of less means than her anyway (perhaps with a little help from a shady tech bro), and it would transform a particularly nasty, duplicitous, grifter into even more of a martyr. It may also prompt disclosure of revealing documents and communications.

    If I’m right and the source of the Banks documents was Integrity Initiative, then we have an extraordinary situation in which the org has helped land at least two journalists in major legal trouble. Catherine Belton – a close friend and associate of Christopher Steele – may be another. As such, three major court tussles all hailed by rights groups and NGOs as attacks on freedom of the press and speech may result from Whitehall-funded information warfare activities. Intriguing.

    • Scott

      Kit,

      Great post, I appreciate your comments. I enjoyed Wylie’s book “Mindf*ck” (detailing the Cambridge Analytica affair) greatly. I recommend it to anyone as a primer on how microtargetting of small groups of people using social media to “nudge” people in a particular direction, can trigger larger changes. The material on psychological manipulation and his insights on human motivation are eloquently expressed.

      His access to individuals documented in the book was remarkable. As a data scientist / social researcher to be present at the party where Obama danced with Michelle shortly after winning the presidency seems remarkably fortuitous. His navigation of Canadian/ US/ British political data science, and extricating him from Cambridge Analytica with an unscathed reputation, seems even more fortuitous.

      Perhaps where he came unstuck was at the point where he needed protection from the Cambridge Analytica fallout. I suspect if he had not already aligned with the security services at this point, his instincts for self-preservation would have made the decision for him. And who could blame him. He would certainly have been aware of *II* independently and through Cadwalladr. Maybe this was the only time he courted that kind of protection, believing the ends justified the means. Maybe he has since distanced himself from the security services. It’s difficult for observers to tell.

      By the end of the book I was left with the uncomfortable impression that the book’s title was Wylie’s sly acknowledgement that he was conducting a psyop on the reader: the whole book was a Mindf*ck on the reader.

      Kind regards,
      Scott

      • Kit Klarenberg

        Interesting perspective Scott, and thank you for your kind words. Wylie seems to be highly intelligent, and extremely gifted in the art of manipulation, and that’s the problem – he knows exactly what he’s doing, and what to say to produce particular reactions in his target audiences. It wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if the book’s title was a sly pun. It takes extraordinary brass neck to pitch to Leave campaign groups and the Trump campaign, then claim to have had a change of heart about what he was doing because Trump won. I suspect he well understood that once the initial narrative was minted according to his interests, it wouldn’t matter if facts and evidence raising doubts about him and his story filtered out later. That’s precisely why he went public – to get his story in first. It’s truly one of the most extraordinary con jobs in modern history, and that’s saying something – you spend a not insignificant portion of your career enriching yourself by engaging in completely deplorable activities, then when a scandal breaks seize the opportunity to reinvent yourself as a courageous whistleblower, and make a mint in the process from consultancy, book and film deals. Amazing stuff.

    • DunGroanin

      Hail KK – bringing us pure gold btl, that’s doubled the value of CM’s article.

      Your work is also indispensable too against the daily tsunami of shit spewing out of the MSM and its controlled stenographers.

      I don’t do Twitter so a hearty thanks here.

      I should have read it before posting my paltry tuppence earlier. Lol.

      • Kit Klarenberg

        [ Mod: Released from spam filter. ]

        My pleasure, thank you so much! You can also follow my work via subscribing to my Substack (kitklarenberg.substack.com), if you’re so inclined.

        There are other interesting, interconnected aspects to all this I forgot to mention. For one, the appearance of Steve Tatham, a key SCL defence advisor, in the Integrity Initiative’s UK cluster. Cadwalladr was apprised of this and his rather interesting background by both David Miller and I but he was left almost entirely untouched in her reporting, save for a very brief mention in this article from May 2017, one of her first on the scandal, which quotes Miller – https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/07/the-great-british-brexit-robbery-hijacked-democracy. This is about the closest Cadwalladr ever got to the truth on Cambridge Analytica, with a company source telling her the company was effectively “MI6 for hire.”

        “What’s been lost in the US coverage of this “data analytics” firm is the understanding of where the firm came from: deep within the military-industrial complex. A weird British corner of it populated, as the military establishment in Britain is, by old-school Tories…SCL/Cambridge Analytica was not some startup created by a couple of guys with a Mac PowerBook. It’s effectively part of the British defence establishment. And, now, too, the American defence establishment.”

        Even then, Cadwalladr manages to spend an inordinate amount of time focusing on SCL/CA’s purported links to Russia, “including trips to the country, meetings with executives from Russian state-owned companies, and references by SCL employees to working for Russian entities.” No evidence of any of this has ever emerged of course, beyond some exploratory chats with Lukoil that didn’t go anywhere. Wylie is extremely careful in his DCMS appearance not to directly charge that Kogan was working for Russian intelligence, instead suggesting the FSB *could* have accessed his datasets without him knowing – “just put a key logger on Kogan’s computer in Russia and you have everything.” Kogan’s absolutely incinerates this proposition in his own appearance, yet to this day it’s axiomatically asserted in some quarters that the Kremlin likely if not definitely accessed the data this way.

        Collins: Russia has been the subject of our investigation as well, and there continue to be questions around that. Is it possible at all that, because you travelled with a laptop that contained data and information, people in Russia could have gained access to or benefited from the work you were doing for SCL?

        Kogan: You don’t travel with the dataset on your laptop. It is too much data. It lived in a server in Portland. That just doesn’t make sense.

        Collins: There is no way for that to be remotely accessed?

        Kogan: If somebody wants to hack Amazon, go for it, but then just hack Facebook. I think that is mostly a ridiculous idea.

        Tatham isn’t the only SCL luminary named in II files. So too is Gaby van den Berg, who set up the company EMIC Consulting a week prior to CA’s liquidation. A document from June 2018 records how she was approached and asked to join the Netherlands cluster, scheduled to meet for the first time in September that year, about which she was reportedly “very interested”. When the II files leaked two months later, the cluster’s leader Maria de Goeij conducted an extensive cleanup of her web footprint, purging any and all reference to having worked for the Institute for Statecraft or attended any events in her capacity as a ‘fellow’ at the organization. Cadwalladr has never mentioned van den Berg publicly.

        Anyway, EMIC has provided training in SCL’s psychological warfare techniques to 77th Brigade, and Canadian and Dutch military intelligence. It is no coincidence, surely, that throughout the pandemic the former has been embroiled in numerous high-profile scandals, having repeatedly overstepped the mark with elaborate spying and psyops campaigns targeting the domestic population, often launching these efforts without the apparent knowledge or approval of government officials.

        Academic Emma Briant – an associate of Cadwalladr – exposed EMIC’s connection to SCL/CA in October 2020, not long after a new batch of leaked files related to Syria was dumped on the web, which named Gaby van den Berg as a trainer for Global Strategy Network, an information warfare purveyor founded by Richard Barrett, former MI6 counter-terror chief (and heavily implicated in extraordinary rendition). I wrote about the company here – https://thecradle.co/Article/investigations/2713 – although there’s much, much more that I’ll reveal in due course. As a taster though, Global Strategy markets a number of social listening and big data tools to theoretically assist CVE professionals predict behaviours of particular target audiences and monitor their communications in order to track conversations and tailor future messaging accordingly. Another Global Strategy staffer receives funding and support from Facebook, the Home Office and the Department of Homeland Security to research extremist propaganda online – perchance he’s granted sensitive private Facebook data? Big data and social listening are key interests of van den Berg’s – https://eng.lsm.lv/article/society/defense/nato-stratcomcoe-tackles-audience-analysis.a397621/.

        In any event, I was in contact with Briant about these files, and also repeatedly emailed van den Berg, Global Strategy and Facebook with a number of questions. I was stonewalled on every count. Without warning or explanation too, Briant blocked me on Twitter and ignored my emails. Her most recent article on EMIC (https://ottawacitizen.com/news/national/defence-watch/canadian-militarys-bungled-propaganda-campaigns-should-be-a-lesson-across-nato) is at seeming pains to avoid mentioning van den Berg by name, to the extent of clunkily recording how a NATO StratCom Center of Excellence event “hosted a panel with the Director of Emic, a former SCL employee, on ‘Audience Analysis’.” I would submit that someone has had words with Briant.

        • DunGroanin

          Wowser Kit! Thank you again.

          I’ll defo be subscribing to your sub stack. I am thoroughly fed up with these gits who are holding back Humanity’s progress to preserve their undeserved born entitlements.

          The name and shame list must grow and they should face ultimate censure even if it is as historical footnotes. They will be forgotten otherwise and get away with it again. Like their forebears.

    • Giyane

      Kit Klarenberg

      Could it help these ” journalists ” spewing Mi6 drivel if they act out the fantasy drama of having to go to court and risk losing cash? Suspension of reality in real situations might only be possible if the fantasy is pursued existentialiaed by a real life setting like a court.
      Oh what ticky webs we weave when first we practice to deceive. Os something like that.

  • Jim Sinclare

    In the last 24 hours of the EU referendum, millions were spent on Facebook targeted ads, enough to tip the result. Why would Facebook care? The beneficiaries of Brexit – hedge funds, Russia – could easily contribute and cover their tracks.
    Cadwalladr’s story is that Cambridge Analytica sold their Facebook data via Canadian company AIQ, outside the scope of the ICO. How else could Vote Leave get their targeting data? Obviously the Vote Leave government never wanted an investigation.

    • Deb O'Nair

      Can you please explain why Brexit is a plus for Russia, or more specifically why would the Russian government prefer the UK outside of the EU?

      • Jim Sinclare

        Britain has always been a cheerleader for Nato, but is now distanced from Europe.
        Only yesterday, the Germans had to sack an admiral for speaking out against the Nato line on Ukraine, and France is semi-independent, so EU dependence on America is becoming questionable.
        And Scotland could leave the UK, taking Faslane with it.
        If Putin didn’t donate a few million pounds to Vote Leave, he missed a trick.

      • DunGroanin

        So Deb, it seems Jim CAN’T answer your simple query and resorts to a word salad which ends with if Putin didn’t do as accused and traduced by Jim – he should have!

        They are thick as mince the Cult Of CodsWallop.

        • Jim Sinclare

          I have answered it – Brexit weakens Nato in Europe, makes Scottish independence more likely, leaving Little Britain without a submarine base

          • DunGroanin

            How does BrexShit weaken nato in Europe exactly?

            What it actually weakens is the European joint defence and response force formed of all EU countries – which if allowed to grow would certainly threaten the pointless nato bases under only US controlled weapons and cost postings for the connected and Mr 2% Fire Insurance MIC gangsters by telling them ‘Yankee Go Home’ .

            Submarines are old tech – easily seen in shallow seas by satellites and drones and now easily spotted by submerged drones and countered by ‘moving mountains’ – storing weapons in space is their next idiocy. Ever seen a re-entry to Earth from Space? Pretty innit?

            So Jim why are you saying the exact opposite?

        • Jim Sinclare

          A european defence force is now more likely, Britain was always against it, and pro-Nato.

  • Pnyx

    An excellent commentary. Following through all its ramifications it exposes the monumental mendacity of the West in general and Britain in particular.

  • Crispa

    Thank you for diverting my attention to an event that I had taken little heed of. I enjoyed reading the transcript of Ms Cadwalladr’s cross-examination which does not seem to be reflected in the Guardian’s final day reporting of the hearing.
    https://order-order.com/people/carole-cadwalladr/

    “Q. I’m sorry, Ms Cadwalladr, the question I asked you was: did you feel there were any changes that needed to be made to your witness statement? I think that requires a yes or a no, followed by whatever explanation you might want to give. But I have asked the question now three times, so can you please answer it with a yes or no and then any qualification.

    A. Yes sorry. Sorry, yes, I ’m obviously satisfied at the point that I submitted in my witness statement. There are .. I think there are other things which could have been included.

    Q. But what’s included in your witness statement, are you content that those are entirely accurate?

    A. I think there are some minor inaccuracies in the statement that .. I think there are potentially some 20 minor inaccuracies in the statement. It was true to the best of my knowledge at the time that I submitted it.

    Q. But not when you simply swore to say that it was true to the best of your knowledge and belief a few moments ago, because by that stage you had realised there were some minor inaccuracies in it ?”

    Just a little matter of 20 “minor inaccuracies”!

    • Shatnersrug

      Even reading through Paul Staines’s one sided bullshit, this is incredible. She even uses the “he’s attacking me because I’m female” line at the end, she’s so used to throwing that out as a red herring.

      I saw Craig getting into it with Peter Jukes earlier, sad about him, the work he did on Daniel Morgan is absolutely incredible. I don’t know why he’s so keen on believing every Russia smear the secret services throw up. He does admit though when he wrote the Bill he thought all police were genuine upstanding members of society doing a difficult job, until Alastair Morgan told him the true horror of it all and burst that bubble. Maybe he lives in the same bubble regarding the security services.

      These privately educated liberals have a very narrow understanding of the world and often react angrily where they’re faced with cognitive dissonance.

      It’s such a shame because Byline could be so good. But the last thing we need is another newspaper filling the world with untruths.

  • Flyinginn

    Lovely to see you back and firing on all cylinders, Craig, and thank you for an illuminating look at Cadwalladr’s Guardian coverage. She is clearly a great asset to the Guardian stable. I also agree absolutely that English libel law is a fetid swamp of injustice and cash bias. The enormous cost of litigation, often with one side using insurance-backed no-win, no-fee legal fee arrangements, positively encourages SLAPP cases without even the minimal protection of a First Amendment or anti-SLAPP legislation. Put simply, the cost of free speech in England and Wales is about $50k and up. Let’s hope Cadwalladr v Banks turns into another Jarndyce v Jarndyce.

  • Thomas Pfanne

    Dear Craig,
    myself, serving my country in New York, ahead of the early Bundestag elections in 2005, that became necessary because Chancellor Schröder didn’t to go to war against Iraq, became a victim of the “German Chair Affaire” (https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB111896628596062122) after speaking the truth on Guantanamo, have great admiration for your work.
    Have you noted that a superb colleague of mine, had to quit the army (where he served as the both of the German marine) after speaking the truth in India: See my last post here (you have to scroll down).
    https://www.facebook.com/tpfanne/posts/10158998200338509
    Good luck!
    Thomas

  • Tatyana

    oh disappointment!
    It was a strange but, I must admit, pleasantly flattering feeling to be a citizen of the greatest ever country in the world, whose leader can appoint the next US president, or, can force Britain to leave the EU.
    It’s a pity. Sadness. I don’t know how we will survive this.

    Leave us at least an invasion of Ukraine! We’ve gotten pretty used to it, in 8 years!
    After all, you won’t say that this is just a media hoax, spinned to reduce the price of shares of Ukrainian companies so that someone can buy property for a penny, or, to dispose of their outdated military equipment with some profit?

    • TonyT12

      Do you know if the Biden family still has financial “interests” in Ukraine?

      This is a farce. Your crocodile saying is relevant. Nuland and Blinken make all this fuss to try to make an invasion happen – but it will not. Then they can say that the invasion didn’t happen because Washington was firm. B.S.. Neither the USA nor Russia nor the EU wants to take on Kiev’s debts, corruption and mess. Maybe in ten years’ time if they get their act together … maybe not. If Ukraine had massive oilfields it might be a different story – but it doesn’t.

      Why did the US not invite Ukraine to the existential discussions with Russia? Because they do not care what happens to Ukraine nor to Ukrainians. It is all a game. A game played from thousands of miles away on the equivalent of Playstations. Only six months after the previous game in Afghanistan which leaves millions of Afghans starving – many of whom worked for the US and UK. They care nothing.

      Moscow’s deals with Cuba and Haiti may focus the minds in Washington, because they are a lot closer to home.

      Putin plays chess, Blinken and Nuland play checkers. Putin is several moves ahead.

      • Tatyana

        Biden Junior’s adventures in Burisma have not been proven. And it would be strange, after all his father is President. And, the young team also included the son of Nancy Pelosi and John Kerry.
        https://ukraina.ru/news/20201021/1029339235.html
        But the older generation certainly has its own financial interest. Nuland is obsessively persistent, she is even ready to f*ck the EU!

      • Tatyana

        The most popular joke here for several years already:

        – Moishe, what’s going on there?
        – Ukraine is at war with Russia, a little…
        – And what are the losses?
        – Well, Ukraine lost Crimea, a couple of regions, several planes and tanks, quite a lot of people…
        – And what did the Russians lose?
        – Abraham, you won’t believe me! The Russians have not yet arrived at the war!

        • Piotr+Berman

          I read this joke by a Russo-phone Ukrainian commenter about Russian (and allied) “intervention” in Kazakhstan:

          “And here we are standing, like morons, with bread and salt.” [bread and salt is a Slavic ceremonial welcome, but damn Russians went to Kazakhstan instead]

    • DunGroanin

      Ah Tatyana I’m sorry but our cartoonists are already busy drawing tiny Putin in the pocket of Xi – we can’t allow you even a little win in Ukraine.
      Dry your tears my friend.

  • Squeeth

    “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.”

    I think you put that rather well.

  • Fairness

    An informative article. Thank you.
    The worst thing about the libel laws is that the very rich have a big advantage in court: they can afford the best barristers and research. A strong legal team isn’t a 100% guarantee of winning, but it is a bigger advantage than most people realise. The law isn’t “black and white”, there are usually shades of grey in its application to a particular case, and the result often depends on advocacy.
    It should be exactly the opposite. Rich people are less impacted by libel (they don’t need to apply for a job) and they have other ways to defend their reputation. Making the rich plaintiff pay a large part of the defendant’s costs – even if the plaintiff wins the case – might be one way to level the playing field.

  • Goose

    She’s appalling and one of the big purveyors of the pernicious, wholly unsubstantiated claims anyone who deviates from the official narrative must somehow be connected to the Kremlin. I swear, If the Suffragette movement emerged today, they’d probably smeared as tools of the Kremlin.

    They are trying to make our long tradition of dissent and policy criticism, impossible. Since dissent is by its very nature divisive, and as we all know, the Kremlin wants to divide us, right? Therefore dissent = Kremlin. Cadwalladr, Harding and others of their ilk are playing a very harmful role in our free western societies. And the worse thing is, they aren’t discredited fringe figures; they are taken seriously by policy makers throughout Europe and in the US. Whole cottage industries have emerged and budgets are being devoted to countering social media Russian misinformation, disinformation, because of Steele’s now discredited ‘Russiagate’ dossier, Harding’s fibs and Cadwalladr’s suspicions. They’ve plunged us into a 21st Century digital version of paranoid McCarthyism.

  • The Philosophical Inventor

    “much easier explanation to swallow than the truth”

    I’m not sure that growing disparities in wealth explains Brexit or Trump either. America and Britain have always had poverty-related disparity problems to a greater or lesser extent.

    The difference today is that ordinary people don’t feel they have political representation. Those parties and institutions that ordinary people would normally look to for support (Labour, Democrats, Unions, etc.) have essentially abandoned them, creating and unleashing all sorts of unpredictable dynamics in the process.

    Just about everything that’s happening today, from party-gate to Qanon, can be explained in this context. For example, one of the reasons Boris is still in the job is because the polls haven’t swung as they normally would towards Labour — a good percentage of ordinary people in the UK feel they’ve been betrayed by Labour and will probably never vote for them again.

    This one-party system, with everything oriented to suit the interests of business and wealthier people, is the “pig in a poke” that the MSM, most academics, and the chattering middle classes, foisted on us when they sold us New Labour in the 1990s. They’ve done very well out of it, with lower taxes, “workforce discipline”, and the predictable rise in poverty-related crime providing all sorts of opportunities and stories for their newspapers.

    And, of course, with so many lost and confused poor people around, those that can afford to heat and eat get to act and feel superior. Scathing snobbery in the US hand UK is off the scale right now. I don’t think poor people have ever been so openly despised.

    • Goose

      Devoid of evidence, one of the lines the UK’s new online ‘thought police’ have been told to look out for is, like yours, comments suggesting both big parties are now the same. ” They’re all the same” is the new Cui bono?

      I.e. Expressing an opinion that’s demonstrably the truth; namely, the idea Starmer’s centre-right Labour are overlapping the Tories on economic, social and foreign policy, in ways Corbyn-led Labour weren’t, This is apparently an indicator of Russian bot activity.

      We’re truly heading down the rabbit hole into a new reality of western paranoia.

      • The Philosophical Inventor

        If they’re looking for those sorts of comments, Goose, they’re the only ones. The subject is rarely approached, except in terms so narrow that they serve to obfuscate rather than explain.

        It’s a hugely costly and immoral state of affairs. And since “the poor” now understand they’ve been robbed by the likes of New Labour, it isn’t likely to go away.

        Scotland’s SNP under Sturgeon is in the process of making the same right turn. They aren’t even pretending they’re “progressive” any more and it’s just a matter of time before the electorate sees through the deception.

  • Ron Soak

    “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.”

    As Patrick Armstrong observes, there are official conspiracy theories – which are promoted and enforced by Establishments as official narratives – and unofficial conspiracy theories – which are attacked and dismissed by those same Establishments.

    https://patrickarmstrong.ca/2021/12/18/3914/

  • Lysias

    Striking how similar the names of the Integrity Initiative and of the Trusted News Initiative are. Both creations of arms of the British state.

  • Blissex

    «For what it is worth, my own view is that both elections were valid.»

    That “valid” is a bit of a strange word, as both elections were *formally* done according to procedure: the issue is whether there was material cheating. As to that I have a bit of an uncommon view:

    • Probably the 2015 election did not have more cheating than is quite common in USA elections. My guess is that there was quite a bit of Democratic cheating (usually letting vote people who don’t have the right to, or ballot-box stuffing), and some Republican cheating (usually preventing the vote of people who have the right to, or throwing away ballots), but the outcome was not materially influenced by it. The actual vote margin in the swing states was however very small, so it was largely a “random” result.
    • Most likely the 2019 election had colossal amounts of both Democratic and Republican cheating: quite incredibly during an epidemic year the vote for Biden was 22% higher than for “President” Clinton-Rodham, and that for “Usurper” Trump also rose by 18%; and those were national averages, in some Democratic areas Biden got 60% (sixty percent) more votes than “President” Rodham-Clinton won in 2015. That likely did change the outcome, but again the margin of victory in swing states was so small that the outcome is mostly noise.

    Part of the cheating issue is that most USA electoral cheating however gross does not change the outcome: even federal elections are controlled locally, and are mostly FPTP or “winner takes all”, so massive cheating in favour of each party happens in localities already controlled by that party, and simply increases the majority that the locally dominant party would have got anyhow.
    In areas where no party has long term local control both parties watch each other’s cheating rather more carefully.

    • Goose

      Let’s face it, ‘winner take all (FPTP) is wide open to press/media manipulation. See their previous ‘golden boy’ Johnson’s rapid fall from grace as they turned the ‘hostile coverage’ taps on. Around 10-15% of any electorate is probably vulnerable to media coercion, in a two-party system.

      If you wanted to minimise manipulation, domestic or foreign, the first thing you’d due is introduce proportional representation.

      • Jay

        The only real ‘difference’ PR and coalition governments would bring would be to ensure all the shots were called by the Lib Dems. That is, a party well to the right of the Conservatves on public spending.

        At the last election Sir Ed Davey slammed the Tories for making ‘Santa Claus seem like Scrooge” and promised a permanent surplus in government spending. Ordinary Lib Dems liked that idea of permanent austerity so much they subsequently chose him to be party leader.

        • Goose

          Depends on the type of proportionate system employed: STV vs Mixed-member, and at what % you set the seat threshold at. Manipulation is hard under PR because the pieces go up in an election, and no one can predict prior how they’ll reassemble when they come down in coalition talks. Anyway, an arcane discussion about the merits of various PR systems is moving off-topic.

          My main point really, was we should be far more concerned about the Murdochs, Rothermeres and Barclay brothers, and the BBC’s role in shaping election / referendum outcomes. Murdoch, through his publications attacked the EU for at least 30 years; due to fears EU tax harmonisation and new EU-wide media-ownership rules.

          And silly Cadwalladr and her Guardian colleagues blamed Brexit on Russia! Talk about not seeing the woods for the trees.

          • Jay

            For centrist remainer, media political nirvana is embodied in figures like Sir Keir Starmer, Rachel Reeves and Sir Ed Davey. There is no other media.

          • nevermind

            Thanks for pullIng up Ms. C for her propaganda Craig, firing on all 12 cylinders, much appreciated.

            The lack of evidence in her case and that of the II fellows and NATO and their heavenly unevidenced fighting brigades, some grainy pictures which show little and a collosal bad mouthing of Russia, suppositions and made up scenarios by ex military/intelligence goons on radio tv and just about every tabloid rag.

            Meanwhile society is crumbling, local Government is spending billions on roads and in their county offices, despite over 40% of staff not planning to return into petri dishes.
            I hope she loses her case and is being crabwalked into another equally shady position so she can pay off the court costs.

    • Piotr+Berman

      For the sake of accuracy, elections for federal offices in USA happen in the autumn of even-numbered years, and the winners start serving in January that follows, this calendar was designed back when the roads were crappy, carriages were driven by horses, so collecting results from Georgia to Maine was taking many weeks.

  • SA

    The problem is, my enemy’s enemy is not necessarily my friend. Remember that whatever Banks did, he spent his money more or less within the law whilst Cadwalladr, like Steele, confected a story which had nothing to back it.

  • Clark

    Craig, thanks for this; concise and well referenced.

    I had indeed given Cadwalladr undue credit. Not that I really read her stuff. I had quickly read a couple of her early Observer articles about Cambridge Analytica when the story was fairly new, probably I followed some links or looked up SCL, and I remember being surprised that such an establishment company with such close links to the military and security services had been exposed. I remember someone secretly recorded a conversation with a representative of SCL offering to arrange compromat. Looking back, I can’t remember which bits I learned from Cadwalladr’s articles and which elsewhere, and I think I credited her with more than she had earned. So I was perplexed when I saw her name on the Integrity Initiative list.

    The Liam O Hare article linked from Craig’s 2018 article about SCL is worth reposting.

    SCL – a Very British Coup:
    https://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2018/03/20/scl-a-very-british-coup/

  • Bayard

    “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.”

    Not only that, but the feelings of alienation and powerlessness generated a massive anti-government vote in the Brexit referendum and, since the government had aligned itself with Remain, that anti-government vote went to Leave. It was that which got the Leave vote over the line. Neither side want to acknowledge this, neither Remain, because they would prefer to believe in anti-Russian propaganda rather than the fact that their own side, in the shape of David Cameron and his Tory government, got their campaign so wrong, nor Leave, because they want to go on believing that the British people actually wanted to leave the EU, not that the vote was swung by voters who didn’t give a stuff about the EU, or immigrants, but just hated the Tory government who were telling them to vote remain.

    • Goose

      The tabloids did the heavy lifting.
      Day after day, over decades, the UK public had been systematically conditioned to despise the EU. Lost count of how many negative headlines there were, explaining how we were all somehow victims of that tabloid bête noire – ‘Brussels bureaucrats’ and their latest plot against plucky Brits and the threat to our way of life. And thus, the result wasn’t all that surprising when the vote finally came. Murdoch’s influence alone was enormous. This is before you add in Dacre’s hateful Daily Mail and the Telegraph.

      • Bayard

        “The tabloids did the heavy lifting.”

        Indeed, I don’t doubt that, but it was the anti-government vote that got them over the line. That’s why the turnout was so high, all those voters who never normally bothered to vote because they just saw the rich people getting into power whichever way they voted (and by “rich”, here, I mean, “not poor”), saw their chance to give the posh boys a bloody nose and took it with both hands. Project Fear was aimed at the middle classes. Its basic message was, “vote leave and you will suffer”. The anti-government voters read it as “vote leave and the middle classes will suffer”. They wanted the middle classes to suffer, so they voted leave.

        • DunGroanin

          “That’s why the turnout was so high,”

          In nine areas it was TOO HIGH – impossibly HiGH.

          And these areas pushed the vote for leave over the line for the whole country.

          When it looks and quacks like a duck guess what it is?

          In this instance it is postal vote fraud. Quite simply.

      • Squeeth

        @Goose, don’t you remember the EU being fairly popular in the early 90s because the Tory government was against the EU? Liarbour was (and is) throwing elections to keep the poison chalice in Tory hands.

        • Goose

          I wasn’t old enough to vote, but I remember the Maastricht Treaty being hugely controversial, because it was viewed as creating a ‘political union’. If we were going to have a referendum, we should have had one back then.

    • SA

      Short memory leads to faulty analyses. Big factors that led many to vote leave are Greece and Turkey. I am sure these played a big part in tipping the balance, and were hot topics at the time.
      Also vote leave was not really an anti-tory vote as some will have us believe; it may have been an anti-establishment vote or a vote against the despicable Cameron, but ultimately short memory and media and establishment lies led to the ‘landslide’ election of the more despicable Johnson.

  • TJ

    Still pushing the propaganda-

    “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.”

    I voted to leave because a foreign power making our laws is the very definition of treason, and so did everyone I know who voted to leave. But then you are a traitor, and you wish to cover up your crimes against your countrymen in the pursuit of your own personal power.

    • Pigeon English

      Tj

      Uk was integral part in making those laws and once adopted they become law all over the Union. Few laws went against UK wishes and number of cases in ECJ against UK were even smaller.

    • Squeeth

      “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.”

      The working class didn’t vote “Outez!” because the boss class wasn’t racist enough, it did it to stuff the boss class, same reason that Remain Liarbour was deserted in 2019.

    • DunGroanin

      “foreign power making our laws is the very definition of treason “

      Israel?

      USA/CIA/Atlantic Council?

      Cfr/Chatham House/ WEF?

        • DunGroanin

          They ARE in government.
          They get appointed as special advisers and technocrats.
          They write the new policies.
          Just look at that dull witted Hancock – how the hell do you suppose he survived and got to where he is?
          What if I is is that massive amounts of access to personal data and future of NHS went straight through Israeli/Mossad controlled data centres.

          If you ask nicely about may even give you more dots to join.

    • Bayard

      “I voted to leave because a foreign power making our laws is the very definition of treason,”

      What, then, do you call a foreign power keeping a permanent military force in our country? With a permanent military force, you can have a lot of say in how “we” make “our” laws.

  • Allan Howard

    The right-wing press were churning out lies and falsehoods and distortions about the EU for several decades prior to the referendum, and I have little doubt that if someone did a survey, they would find that the vast majority of those who voted to leave were readers of one or other of them – ie the Sun, Mail, Express etc.

    • Jay

      The rightwing press did churn out lies and falsehoods. It’s just as important to see equally clearly the other side of the coin: the I❤EU brigade are devoted to a stable of proven liars at the centrist Guardian.

      • Bayard

        Yes, it’s amazingly how selectively gullible the average British voter is, such that they believe one set of lies, but not the other.

    • Goose

      ‘Taking back Control,’ was nothing more than a dog-whistle reference to taking back control of our borders.

      Article 21 of the Treaty on the functioning of the European Union sets out how all EU citizens and their family members have the right to move and reside freely within the EU.

      The great tabloid lie, amplified by lying politicians, was that excessive immigration was the thing ailing our society: low wages, employment insecurity; lack of council house provision, NHS waiting lists … they were all due to the EU and the obligation on member states to guarantee free movement. The reality was that non-EU immigration was by far outstripping EU – UK migration and the UK always had full sovereign control of non-EU, but pretended it didn’t, in order to electorally profit from populist tabloid, anti-EU baiting.

  • Andrew Peter Nichols

    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.

    If you go by the despicable Rachel Riley verdict, she’s screwed…except she’s Establishment like Rile so she will unlike the poor Labour Partry activist actually win with it.

  • Nicola Avery

    I don’t hope she wins. Someone who regularly mocks Russian language and culture. The racist posters in Hackney and Waterloo were testament to her continuous assault on the Russian community in the UK, academics and anyone else who wants to share culture, business, sport etc with Russia.

    She regularly incites mob hatred, like Banks, using social media to amplify her personal opinions. Except instead of hatred of EU and anyone attempting migration here, she mocks Russian language in her tweets, abusing Cyrillic letters, appending parts of Russian surnames to anyone on her Russophobic list. So she can live in a nice house and buy nice things. That is not fair comment in the public interest.

    The most suitable outcome would be to ban both of them from being able to publish anything on any form of media.

    • Tatyana

      I’m boiling over it! How is this allowed?
      If she played with African names or Hebrew letters like that, how many people would be outraged? Why is the Russian community in the UK not raising its voice?

      • Nicola Avery

        Leaving any wealthy oligarchs and their friendsaside maybe because in London where there are smaller communities not all in one area, they probably don’t feel as one Russian community. Integration is one of London’s more complicated issues because members of smaller communities find it hard to get together, other communities find it easier to get funding for community projects (I have worked with someone who researches part if this in London). There are groups online in London, probably elsewhere. Interest in Russian / Ukrainian culture is growing, beyond stereotypes. Our Russian teacher brings newspapers like Англиа but I am not sure they would find this a story of interest to report, because too controversial. I am living quite near London again now and depending on covid / new variants, hope to get there again soon.

  • fonso

    As bad as UK libel laws are, a victory for Cadwalladr would be taken as validation of the whole alternate reality of Liberal World — Putin as fat controller, leftists as antisemitic cranks, etc. It would embolden them to push further and faster. Any site like this, challenging liberal Truth from the left, would be in the crosshairs.

1 2

Comments are closed.