Guardian Refuses to Print Letter Signed by over 1,600 people criticising their lying, dishonest coverage as tame leftists Owen Jones & George Monbiot Steer Clear of Assange
It must have been a shock
to the Guardian’s ‘journalists’ on Thursday when 50 of us turned up, complete with
whistles, banners and musical instruments, to say nothing of a sound system and
loud hailer, to picket their offices in York Way, next to Kings Cross railway station.
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| The Guardian is now a scab paper |
The reception from the
public was phenomenal with motorists, lorry and bus drivers and even white van
man hooting. It can’t have been a peaceful time for the Guardian’s journalists
cowering away in their offices preparing their latest bile.
What amazed me about their
all glass offices was that there was no sign or other indication that it housed
the Guardian and Observer. Clearly those inside are so ashamed of what they
produce that they don’t want to advertise their presence to the outside world.
The
Guardian and its assorted collection of misfits going by the name of ‘journalist’
profited enormously from Wikileaks. The Guardian had a series of front page
headlines, see here
and here,
especially regarding the attack by a US helicopter that murdered 16 people
including 2 Reuters journalists. Even this past June Paul Daley ran a large
feature 'All
lies': how
the US military covered up gunning down two journalists in Iraq
The
Guardian in the form of its execrable courtier come MI5 journalist, Luke
Harding, put out a book Inside
Julian Assange's War on Secrecy. In comparison to Harding Judas is a model
of loyalty. It is clear from his book ‘Collusion’ that Harding has strong links
to the Intelligence Services, including the CIA. They used to call such
creatures company journalists, writing what they were paid to tell.
Harding published a password to the cache of
Wikileaks documents that he had promised Assange to keep confidential and then
lied about how Assange said that he couldn’t care less if named informants were
killed. Other journalists present at the time deny that any such thing was
said.
Luke Harding and his conspiracy theories about the
Russians having got Trump elected got their comeback when he was interviewed by Aaron
Mate of Real News. Harding thought that it would be a normal BBC style
interview where he is fed soft ball questions. When Mate challenged Harding
over his assertions that Trump was in effect a Moscow agent, Harding became so pissed
off that he simply left the interview at the end!
Harding co-authored
with Dan Collyns a fake news article on how Julian Assange met with Trump’s
campaign manager Paul Manaforte, not once but three times at the Ecuadorian
Embassy. The story was clearly a piece of black propaganda fed to him by MI5 or
a similar intelligence agency. Given that the Embassy was under close surveillance
at the time, the CIA had suborned
the security company inside the Embassy into spying on Assange and his lawyers,
you might have thought that there would be some evidence from security cameras,
the signing in book and passing strangers if Manafort had paid Assange a
visit. In fact not a scrap of evidence has
ever been produced yet the Guardian, like the media pimp that it is, did not
have the courage or honesty to own up and apologise. Subsequently Glenn
Greenwald comprehensively rubbished
Harding/Collyn’s article in the Intercept.
As I made clear when I spoke to the assembled masses,
the Guardian has now got
into bed with the security services under its overpaid editor (£350K+ a
year) Kath Viner. The Guardian is now on the D-Notice Committee which MI5/MI6
use to pre-warn newspapers to steer clear of certain topics. Under Viner and Freedland the Guardian has
abandoned any critical overview of the security services.
There was a time when the Guardian refused to collaborate with the D-Notice system. Yet today it makes a pathetic attempt to explain away its collaboration as a ‘collaborative spirit (that) works’. Apparently the ‘rebranded system balances national security and freedom of the press’ This nonsense was demolished by Mark Curtis and Matt Kennard in How the UK Security Services neutralised the country’s leading liberal newspaper
It wasn’t Guardian journalists but dissident Tory ones, such as Peter
Oborne and even Peter
Hitchens, the self-styed ‘Jabotinsky Zionist’ who have come out in support
of Assange. The Guardian’s tame ‘left’ journalists – Owen Jones and George
Monbiot – have kept their silence and behaved like prostitutes on a leash.
Monbiot, according
to Jonathan Cook, a former Guardian journalist and winner of the Martha
Gellhorn Special Prize for journalism, said that the reason he hadn’t mentioned
Assange is that he has nothing to say or add on the subject. This in itself is a searing indictment. He
could start by dissecting the Guardian’s behaviour!
Rather than go through the list of vituperative articles
by the Guardian’s miserable presstitutes
I refer people to 5 Filters article The Guardian's war on Assange - Dump the
Guardian! where they list 44 articles attacking Assange including James Ball’s
classic doppelganger The
only barrier to Julian Assange leaving Ecuador’s embassy is pride. Ball
confidently predicted that
‘The WikiLeaks founder is unlikely to face
prosecution in the US, charges in Sweden have been dropped – and for the
embassy, he’s lost his value as an icon.’
If anyone is suffering
from a surfeit of pride it is James Ball who refuses to apologise or explain
this and similar articles.
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| This is the level of 'humour' from the Guardian's snide Hyde - what I ask myself is Marina Hyde for? |
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| Unfortunately one bad thing that hasn't gone away is Marina Hyde and her tedious 'jokes' |
Possibly the most
vitriolic and poisonous of the presstitutes is Marina Hyde, whose wit and
wisdom is to call
Assange ‘possibly
even the biggest arsehole in Knightsbridge.’ That is what passes for humour
at the Guardian these days. I’ve often wondered what Marina Hyde is for. She is neither humorous nor does she possess
any visible signs of intelligence, which probably means that she is over
qualified to work at the Guardian these days.
I
write with a certain amount of anguish, as I took the Guardian every day for
nearly 40 years. Even when I was
scraping by on income support I always ensured that I could afford a copy and
when I went abroad I usually hunted down a copy. No longer.
These
were the days of journalists like the path-breaking Michael Adams, who
personally had a major impact on me when I saw him speak as a schoolboy in
Liverpool. People like David Hirst,
their brilliant Middle East correspondent, John Palmer their socialist European
Editor, Jonathan Steele, Victor Zorza who alone among the press predicted the Soviet
invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, Victoria Brittan and Richard Gott. Serious and committed journalists who had
integrity and ethics.
Today
what is there now that Gary Younge has gone?
What I don’t understand are the pathetic insipid creatures who actually
contribute money to the Guardian on the web as if it were a charity! We need to
remind them of the massive salaries of Viner, Freedland and co. The Guardian is
a massive media company not a charity and we should Boycott the Guardian,
The
only decent journalist on the Guardian is their cartoonist Steve Bell and Kath
Viner has terminated his contract.
Not
one Guardian ‘journalist’ felt brave enough to come down and meet us leaving it
to 2 security guards as they hid away. A message was read out from Jonathan
Cook and another solidarity message from Chris Williamson, the former MP for
Derby North. Jonathan’s speech was based on a recent blistering article.
Here’s
what John Pilger said
about the Guardian’s behaviour:
‘The Guardian
has exploited the work of Assange and WikiLeaks in what its previous editor
called "the greatest scoop of the last 30 years". The paper creamed
off WikiLeaks' revelations and claimed the accolades and riches that came with
them.
With not a penny going to
Julian Assange or to WikiLeaks, a hyped Guardian book led to a lucrative
Hollywood movie. The book's authors, Luke Harding and David Leigh, turned on
their source, abused him and disclosed the secret password Assange had given
the paper in confidence, which was designed to protect a digital file
containing leaked US embassy cables.
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| When I first saw this I wondered what flattened guinea pigs meant but then I realised it was probably when the oversized Moore sat on one. More schoolgirl 'humour' |
Glenn Greenwald, who used to work at the
Guardian described
Luke Harding’s method:
The Guardian’s happy to be
used ...if you publish something like a totally fake story, there are so many
benefits to it and almost no consequences. ...If you look at Luke Harding’s
traffic metrics, they went through the roof. That’s an incentive scheme to
continue to do shitty journalism. ...
...I've come to peace with the fact that this story
will never be retracted even though everyone - including at the @Guardian, I am
sure - knows it is utter bullshit - a joke - but it's still worth noting
because it shows how unmoored the media is to any notions of accountability
Media Lens said
of Harding’s fake Manafort article that
No shred of evidence has
ever been produced for this claim, which WikiLeaks and Manafort have both vehemently
denied, and the story has been widely regarded as fake from virtually the hour
of its publication. Luke Harding, the lead journalist on the story, and his
editors Paul Johnson and Katharine Viner, have never apologised or retracted
the story; nor have they responded to the many challenges about it. As we have
previously noted, the Guardian has a disreputable record in publishing nasty,
abusive and derogatory pieces about Assange.
Matt Kennard tweeted (@KennardMatt)
The treatment of Julian Assange by the Guardian
has been so disgusting its beyond words. He took all the risk. Will probably
never experience freedom again. And they just collected their awards and turned
the newspaper into one big attack sheet. No campaign to free him. Nothing.
Thursday was the
first picket of The Guardian. We intend to do a monthly picket of this rag as
and until it faces up to its responsibility.
I should add that I
tried to contact Guardian Letters on at least 5 occasions and left voicemails.
It seems that the new Letters Editor Rory Foster has decided to use voicemail
as a shield against readers.
Meanwhile many thanks
to the Morning Star for printing the letter in its Thursday edition last week.
Unfortunately despite promises to the contrary, Canary failed to do so. The
full letter can be seen here
Tony Greenstein
Latest News from the Defend Assange Campaign
Ten years ago today, WikiLeaks
released the largest classified military leak in history:
the
Iraq War Logs.
The Assange Defense Committee will
release a video tomorrow to commemorate this anniversary. The video explores
the background of the leaks, what
was revealed, and their impact.
Today, we want to give you a sneak preview of our video!
What
Happened?
In early 2010, U.S. Army
intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning was alarmed by
the abuses she saw on the ground in Iraq. Her superior officers showed little
concern, so she eventually decided to share evidence with the media.
When national
news outlets weren’t interested, she contacted WikiLeaks and
later sent them the files. WikiLeaks reviewed them, redacted
sensitive information, and released 391,832
documents online several months later.
What Was Revealed?
The three biggest categories of
revelations are:
1.
Civilian
Casualties. At least 15,000 unreported civilian casualties, which
had been concealed by coalition forces, were verified as a result of the
release.
2.
War
Crimes: The Iraq War Logs
showed how coalition forces had killed journalists and other innocent civilians,
often dishonoring their memories by labelling them “enemy killed in
action” in order to cover up the
events.
3.
Human
Rights Abuses: The
documents revealed that U.S. forces knew prisoners they turned over to allies
were subjected to abuse, torture, rape, and murder,
but that they had a “formal
policy of ignoring such allegations.”
The Iraq War Logs were a major
factor in helping to public opinion about the war. We hope you
will watch and share our video on social media (check us
out on Twitter
and Facebook),
or visit our blog
at AssangeDefense.org.
Solidarity,
Assange Defense Committee
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