Home » Posts tagged 'guardian' (Page 2)

Tag Archives: guardian

Leonard Misonne Waterloo Place, London 1899

Let me start by saying I have nothing against the English newspaper The Guardian. They publish some good things, on a wide range of topics. But they also produce some real stinkers. And lately they seem to publish quite a few of those. On Wednesday there was an entire series of hit pieces on Julian Assange, which I wrote about in I Am Julian Assange.

And apparently they’re not done. As I said on Wednesday, the relationship between Assange and the paper has cooled considerably, after The Guardian’s initial cooperation with Wikileaks on files Assange had shared with them. But does that excuse hit pieces, personal attacks, innuendo, suggestive and tendentious writing, in bulk?

There was one more article in the hit pieces series on Wednesday:

Assange ‘Split’ Ecuador And Spain Over Catalan Independence

Julian Assange’s intervention on Catalan independence created a rift between the WikiLeaks founder and the Ecuadorian government, which has hosted Assange for nearly six years in its London embassy, the Guardian has learned. Sources who spoke on condition of anonymity said Assange’s support for the separatists, including a meeting in November, led to a backlash from Spain, which in turn caused deep concern within Ecuador’s government. While Assange’s role in the US presidential election has been an intense focus of US prosecutors, his involvement in Spanish politics appears to have caused Ecuador the most pain.

The Ecuadorians cut Assange’s internet connection and ended his access to visitors on 28 March, saying he had breached an agreement at the end of last year not to issue messages that might interfere with other states. Quito has been looking to find a solution to what it increasingly sees as an untenable situation: hosting one of the world’s most wanted men.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

I Am Julian Assange

May 17, 2018

I Am Julian Assange

Carl Spitzweg The raven 1845

Julian Assange appears to be painfully close to being unceremoniously thrown out of the Ecuadorian embassy in London. If that happens, the consequences for journalism, for freedom of speech, and for press freedom, will resound around the world for a very long time. It is very unwise for anyone who values truth and freedom to underestimate the repercussions of this.

In essence, Assange is not different from any journalist working for a major paper or news channel. The difference is he published what they will not because they want to stay in power. The Washington Post today would never do an investigation such as Watergate, and that’s where WikiLeaks came in.

It filled a void left by the media that betrayed their own history and their own field. Betrayed the countless journalists throughout history, and today, who risked their lives and limbs, and far too often lost them, to tell the truth about what powers that be do when they think nobody’s looking or listening.

Julian is not wanted because he’s a spy, or even because he published a number of documents whose publication was inconvenient for certain people. He is wanted because he is so damn smart, which makes him very good and terribly effective at what he does. He’s on a most wanted list not for what he’s already published, but for what he might yet publish in the future.

He built up WikiLeaks into an organization that acquired the ultimate trust of many people who had access to documents they felt should be made public. They knew he would never betray their trust. WikiLeaks has to date never published any documents that were later found out to be false. It never gave up a source. No documents were ever changed or manipulated for purposes other than protecting sources and other individuals.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Only Reason We’re Examining Facebook’s Sleazy Behavior Is Because Trump Won

March 23, 2018

The Only Reason We’re Examining Facebook’s Sleazy Behavior Is Because Trump Won

Trust me, there’s nobody more thrilled to see Facebook’s unethical and abusive practices finally getting the attention they deserve from mass media and members of the public who simply didn’t want to hear about it previously. I’ve written multiple articles over the years warning people about the platform (links at the end), but these mostly fell on deaf ears.

That’s just the way things go. All sorts of horrible behaviors can continue for a very long time before the corporate media and general public come around to caring. You typically need some sort of external event to change mass psychology. In this case, that event was Trump winning the election.

The more I read about the recent Facebook scandal, it’s clear this sort of thing’s been going on for a very long time. The major difference is this time the data mining was used by campaign consultants of the person who wasn’t supposed to win. Donald Trump.

To get a sense of what I mean, let’s take a look at some excerpts from a deeply troubling article recently published at the Guardian, ‘Utterly Horrifying’: Ex-Facebook Insider Says Covert Data Harvesting Was Routine:

Hundreds of millions of Facebook users are likely to have had their private information harvested by companies that exploited the same terms as the firm that collected data and passed it on to Cambridge Analytica, according to a new whistleblower.

Sandy Parakilas, the platform operations manager at Facebook responsible for policing data breaches by third-party software developers between 2011 and 2012, told the Guardian he warned senior executives at the company that its lax approach to data protection risked a major breach…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

1984 Is Not The Future

March 17, 2018

1984 Is Not The Future

Jacobello Alberegno The Beast of the Apocalypse 1360-90

The Guardian ran an article yesterday by one of its editors, David Shariatmadari, that both proves and disproves its own theme at the same time: “An Information Apocalypse Is Coming”. Now, I don’t fancy the term apocalypse in a setting like this, it feels too much like going for a cheap thrill, but since he used it, why not.

My first reaction to the headline, and the article, is: what do you mean it’s ‘coming’? Don’t you think we have such an apocalypse already, that we’re living it, we’re smack in the middle of such a thing? If you don’t think so, would that have anything to do with you working at a major newspaper? Or with your views of the world, political and other, that shape how you experience ‘information’?

Shariatmadari starts out convincingly and honestly enough with a description of a speech that JFK was supposed to give in Dallas right after he was murdered, a speech that has been ‘resurrected’ using technology that enables one to make it seem like he did deliver it.

An Information Apocalypse Is Coming. How Can We Protect Ourselves?

“In a world of complex and continuing problems, in a world full of frustrations and irritations, America’s leadership must be guided by the lights of learning and reason, or else those who confuse rhetoric with reality, and the plausible with the possible will gain the popular ascendancy with their seemingly swift and simple solutions to every world problem.”

John F Kennedy’s last speech reads like a warning from history, as relevant today as it was when it was delivered in 1963 at the Dallas Trade Mart. His rich, Boston Brahmin accent reassures us even as he delivers the uncomfortable message. The contrast between his eloquence and the swagger of Donald Trump is almost painful to hear.

Yes, Kennedy’s words are lofty ones, and they do possess at least some predictive qualities. But history does play a part too. Would we have read the same in them that we do now, had Kennedy not been shot right before he could deliver them? Hard to tell.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Facebook Cracks Down On Independent Media, Under Guise Of ‘Enhancing Relationships’

January 30, 2018

January 30, 2018

Nothing could have more perfectly exemplified the establishment’s use of Orwellian Newspeak than Facebook’s latest move to censor independent thought under the pretense of caring about the emotional wellbeing of the masses. The media giant has been documented live-streaming murders, suicides, rapes, and abuse. Despite this, The New York Post reported that Facebook officially stated they were ‘unable to stop live-streaming suicides.’ But, trust them, they care about your mental health, and that’s why they don’t want you to read certain news stories.

A recent press report on the matter stated: “Facebook said it’s changing the formula that determines users’ news feeds by decreasing business and media posts and focusing more on personal connections.” However, in reality, the changes seem to have been used to specifically target anti-establishment news sources.

Though Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg enthused regarding the changes, the company’s shareholders appeared less impressed with the news. According to CNBC, Facebook shares fell by four percent at market the morning after Zuckerberg’s announcement of the new policy. Stocks fell during the first day by following the announcement by 6.1% which was reported to have amounted to a $3.3 billion loss.

Despite this, Zuckerberg appeared totally unfazed by the stock price drop, and openly admitted that the changes would lead to an overall decline in user engagement.

The Guardian’s coverage of the news not only chided Zuckerberg for not having made the move earlier, while also directly identifying the core of the real impetus behind the changes, which had nothing to do with bringing you closer to your family. The Guardian’s writing on the issue reveals that the real reason for the changes is in order to actively censor what the legacy press outlet deems to be “fake news” that “interfered” in the outcome of the 2016 US Presidential election.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

How Facebook and Google threaten public health – and democracy

November 11, 2017

How Facebook and Google threaten public health – and democracy

The sad truth is that Facebook and Google have behaved irresponsibly in the pursuit of massive profits. And this has come at a cost to our health

woman holds smartphone — ‘Substance cannot compete with sensation, which must be amplified constantly, lest consumers get distracted and move on.’ Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

In an interview this week with Axios, Facebook’s original president, Sean Parker, admitted that the company intentionally sought to addict users and expressed regret at the damage being inflicted on children.

This admission, by one of the architects of Facebook, comes on the heels of last week’s hearings by Congressional committees about Russian interference in the 2016 election, where the general counsels of Facebook, Alphabet (parent of Google and YouTube), and Twitter attempted to deflect responsibility for manipulation of their platforms.

The term “addiction” is no exaggeration. The average consumer checks his or her smartphone 150 times a day, making more than 2,000 swipes and touches. The applications they use most frequently are owned by Facebook and Alphabet, and the usage of those products is still increasing.

In terms of scale, Facebook and YouTube are similar to Christianity and Islam respectively. More than 2 billion people use Facebook every month, 1.3 billion check in every day. More than 1.5 billion people use YouTube. Other services owned by these companies also have user populations of 1 billion or more.

Facebook and Alphabet are huge because users are willing to trade privacy and openness for “convenient and free.” Content creators resisted at first, but user demand forced them to surrender control and profits to Facebook and Alphabet.

The sad truth is that Facebook and Alphabet have behaved irresponsibly in the pursuit of massive profits. They have consciously combined persuasive techniques developed by propagandists and the gambling industry with technology in ways that threaten public health and democracy.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The real strike price of offshore wind

September 20, 2017

The real strike price of offshore wind

Hinkley still scores on reliability and low carbon ….. but the extent to which its costs are obscene is now plainer than ever. In Monday’s capacity auction, two big offshore wind farms came in at £57.50 per megawatt hour and a third at £74.75. These “strike prices” ….. are expressed in 2012 figures, as is Hinkley’s £92.50 so the comparison is fair. As for the argument that we must pay up for reliable baseload supplies, there ought to be limits to how far it can be pushed. A nuclear premium of some level might be justified, but Hinkley lives in a financial world of its own, even before battery technology (possibly) shifts the economics further in favour of renewables …..

Thus spake the Guardian in a recent article entitled Hinkley nuclear power is being priced out by renewables.

What the Guardian says is, of course, nonsense. Comparing non-dispatchable wind directly with dispatchable baseload nuclear is not in the least “fair”. Barring Acts of God baseload nuclear is there all the time; wind is there only when the wind blows. We can level the playing field only by comparing baseload nuclear generation with baseload wind generation, and the only way of converting wind into baseload is to store the surpluses generated when the wind is blowing for re-use when it isn’t. To compare offshore wind strike prices directly with nuclear strike prices we therefore have to factor in the storage costs necessary to convert the wind into baseload, and this post shows what happens to wind strike prices when we do this using the “battery technology” favored by the Guardian. It finds that battery technology does not “(shift) the economics further in favor of renewables”. It prices wind totally out of the market instead.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Guardian view on censoring the internet: necessary, but not easy

August 24, 2017

The Guardian view on censoring the internet: necessary, but not easy

Who should protect us online? And who will guard us from these guards?

A person using a laptop — Personal abuse, when it is not accompanied by threats of violence or worse, should not be the domain of the government Photograph: Dominic Lipinski/PA

Among the more absurd things ever said about the internet was that the network “interprets censorship as damage, and routes around it”. The epigram was half true, but the half that was false gets more important every year.

The internet can be a vile place, and the instinct to enforce some standards there is not misplaced. The director of public prosecutions, Alison Saunders, is quite right to say that crime online is as serious as crime offline. Even the Guardian, wedded to the idea of free speech, does not imagine that this is an unrestrained freedom – only that the limits that the law should set are minimal and largely concerned with public order. But some limits must exist, and they must be enforced.

The questions are: who should set these limits and who then should police them? Both governments and private companies have a part to play, even if government action often takes the form of demanding that private companies execute government policies. It is here that Ms Saunders may have gone too far in her zeal to keep the web clean. The justification for government censorship is that some hate speech is an incitement to violence or a dangerous ratcheting of community tensions, whereas some – no matter how offensive – should be permitted by law, even if we are happy for private companies to act against it. Personal abuse, when it is not accompanied by threats of violence or worse, should not be the domain of the government. Courtesy and respect are vital but best enforced by the owners of web spaces.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Here’s How Facebook Decides What You Can And Can’t See

May 22, 2017

Here’s How Facebook Decides What You Can And Can’t See

One of Facebook’s overwhelmed content moderators – who reportedly sometimes have just 10 seconds to decide whether or not a piece of content is appropriate for the site’s immense user base or not – appears to have leaked a slideshow outlining the company’s complex rules for governing what Facebook’s 2 billion users can and cannot see to the Guardian.

The Guardian published the presentation in a series of slideshows divided into different topics: Sadism, violence, child abuse…

One of the slides outlining how the company handles depictions of graphic violence appeared with the following editor’s note:

“Some use language we would not usually publish, but to understand Facebook’s content policies, we decided to include it. See for yourself how Facebook’s polices what users post.”

It’s important to remember that Facebook’s moderators remove content “on report only,” meaning that millions of Facebook users could see a graphic image or video – such as a beheading – before it’s removed.

As one report notes, the guidelines “may also alarm free speech advocates concerned about Facebook’s de facto role as the world’s largest censor. Both sides are likely to demand greater transparency.”

Facebook employs about 4,500 “content moderators” but recently announced plans to hire another 3,000, the Guardian reported.

Here are some notable excerpts highlighted by the Guardian:

Remarks such as “Someone shoot Trump” should be deleted, because as a head of state he is in a protected category. But it can be permissible to say: “To snap a bitch’s neck, make sure to apply all your pressure to the middle of her throat”, or “fuck off and die” because they are not regarded as credible threats.
Videos of violent deaths, while marked as disturbing, do not always have to be deleted because they can help create awareness of issues such as mental illness.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

On WikiLeaks, Journalism, and Privacy: Reporting on the Podesta Archive Is an Easy Call

October 16, 2016

On WikiLeaks, Journalism, and Privacy: Reporting on the Podesta Archive Is an Easy Call

FOR YEARS, WIKILEAKS has been publishing massive troves of documents online — usually taken without authorization from powerful institutions and then given to the group to publish — while news outlets report on their relevant content. In some instances, these news outlets work in direct partnership with WikiLeaks — as the New York Times and The Guardian, among others, did when jointly publishing the Iraq and Afghanistan war logs and U.S. diplomatic cables — while other times media outlets simply review the archives published by WikiLeaks and then report on what they deem newsworthy.

WikiLeaks has always been somewhat controversial, but reaction has greatly intensified this year because many of its most significant leaks have had an impact on the U.S. presidential election and, in particular, have focused on Democrats. As a result, Republicans who long vilified the group as a grave national security threat have become its biggest fans (“I love WikiLeaks,” Donald Trump gushed last night, even though he previously called for Edward Snowden to be executed), while Democrats who cheered the group for its mass leaks about Bush-era war crimes now scorn it as an evil espionage tool of the Kremlin.

The group’s recent publication of the emails of Clinton campaign chair John Podesta has been particularly controversial because it comes less than a month before the election; it included all sorts of private and purely personal exchanges along with substantive, newsworthy material; and it was obtained through actions that were likely criminal (hacking). Compounding the intensity of the debate is the now standard Democratic campaign tactic of reflexively accusing adversaries of being tools or agents of Moscow.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

European Union’s Imperial Overreach

June 26, 2016

European Union’s Imperial Overreach

Exclusive: The European Union’s haughty and hasty expansion into low-wage Eastern Europe may be its undoing, as the Brexit vote shows popular resistance to the westward migration of workers that followed, writes Jonathan Marshall.

While few analysts are putting it this way, the European Union suffers from a self-inflicted crisis of overexpansion — a form of “imperial overstretch,” if you will. The Brexit vote was just the latest symptom of this policy disaster, which also includes escalating confrontations with Russia and the ongoing crisis in Ukraine.

Public opinion polls in the United Kingdom established that widespread concern over immigration was the single most important factor driving voters to support an E.U. exit. Pro-Brexit campaigners made much of the statistics released just last month that net annual migration into the U.K. reached a third of a million people in 2015, double the rate just three years earlier.

Flag of the European Union.

Such numbers fed public concerns over the impact of immigrants on the country’s National Health System and other social services, as well as jobs. They also fed deep suspicions about government credibility.

As the Guardian reported after the stunning election victory for the Brexit camp, “David Cameron’s failure to give a convincing response to the publication of near-record net migration figures in the first week of the EU referendum campaign has proved to be its decisive moment.

“The figure of 333,000 not only underlined beyond any doubt that Britain had become a country of mass migration but also meant politicians who claimed they could make deep cuts in the numbers while Britain remained in the European Union were simply not believed.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

George Soros: “Brexit Makes EU Disintegration Irreversible”

June 25, 2016

George Soros: “Brexit Makes EU Disintegration Irreversible”

Just four days ago, the “big guns” when George Soros wrote a Guardian op-ed titled “The Brexit crash will make all of you poorer – be warned” in which he said that “as opinion polls on the referendum result fluctuate, I want to offer a clear set of facts, based on my six decades of experience in financial markets, to help voters understand the very real consequences of a vote to leave the EU.” We promptly countered that Soros’ set of “facts” may be clouded by his far greater equity stake in interests around Europe, and the globe, which would be drastically impacted by not only a Brexit, but by a European Union which is suddenly on the rocks. That’s precisely what happened when, as we wrote earlier, the world’s 400 richest people lost $127.4 billion Friday following the Brexit vote.

Soros was among them.

However, seemingly unhappy that his generously altruistic warning was so roundly ignored by the peasants, not to mention his sudden concern about the future of the European Union whose collapse would also destroy the premise behind Soros’ Open Society globalization initiative, the 85-year-old billionaire has decided to follow up with a case of sour grapes and go all in, making another forecast – since his first one was so clearly rejected – and in what may end up roiling markets even more, moments ago Soros said in his second op-ed of the week that the “catastrophic scenario that many feared has materialized, making the disintegration of the EU practically irreversible. Britain eventually may or may not be relatively better off than other countries by leaving the EU, but its economy and people stand to suffer significantly in the short to medium term.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Mafia Expert Calls Great Britain the “Most Corrupt Place on Earth”

June 4, 2016

Mafia Expert Calls Great Britain the “Most Corrupt Place on Earth”

The City is a semi-offshore state, a bit like the UK’s crown dependencies and overseas territories, tax havens legitimized by the Privy Council. Britain’s financial secrecy undermines the tax base while providing a conduit into the legal economy for gangsters, kleptocrats and drug barons.

Even the more orthodox financial institutions deploy a succession of scandalous practices: pension mis-selling, endowment mortgage fraud, the payment protection insurance con, Libor rigging. A former minister in the last government, Lord Green, ran HSBC while it engaged in money laundering for drug gangs, systematic tax evasion and the provision of services to Saudi and Bangladeshi banks linked to the financing of terrorists. Sometimes the UK looks to me like an ever so civilised mafia state.

– From last year’s post: Guardian Op-Ed – The City of London Has Turned Britain Into a “Civilized Mafia State”

This shouldn’t come as any surprise to Liberty Blitzkrieg readers, but it’s a provocative statement nonetheless.

From The Independent:

Britain is the most corrupt country in the world, according to journalist Roberto Saviano, who spent more than a decade exposing the criminal dealings of the Italian Mafia.

Mr Saviano, who wrote the best-selling exposés Gomorrah and ZeroZeroZero, made the comments at the Hay Literary Festival. The 36-year-old has been living under police protection since publishing revelations about members of the Camorra, a powerful Neapolitan branch of the mafia, in 2006.

He told an audience at Hay-on-Wye: “If I asked you what is the most corrupt place on Earth you might tell me well it’s Afghanistan, maybe Greece, Nigeria, the South of Italy and I will tell you it’s the UK.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Washington Launches Its Attack Against BRICS

April 22, 2016

Washington Launches Its Attack Against BRICS

Having removed the reformist President of Argentina, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, Washington is now disposing of the reformist President of Brazil, Dilma Rousseff.

Washington used a federal judge to order Argentina to sacrifice its debt restructuring program in order to pay US vulture funds the full value of defaulted Argentine bonds that the vulture funds had bought for a few pennies on the dollar. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/27/us-vulture-funds-argentina-bankruptcy These vultures were called “creditors” who had made “loans” regardless of the fact that they were not creditors and had made no loans. They were opportunists after easy money and were used by Washington to get rid of a reformist government.

President Kirchner resisted and, thus, she had to go. Washington concocted a story that Kirchner covered up an alleged Iranian bombing in Buenos Aires in 1994. This implausible fantasy, for which there is no evidence of Iranian involvement, was fed to one of Washington’s agents in the state prosecutor’s office, and a dubious event of 22 years ago was used to clear Kirchner out of the way of the American looting of Argentina.

In Brazil, Washington has used corruption insinuations to get President Rousseff impeached by the lower house. Evidence is not necessary, just allegations. It is no different from “Iranian nukes,” Saddam Hussein’s “weapons of mass destruction,” Assad’s “use of chemical weapons,” or in Rousseff’s case merely insinuations. The Secretary General of the Organization of American States, Luis Almagro, notes that Rousseff “hasn’t been accused of anything.” The American-backed elites are simply using impeachment to remove a president who they cannot defeat electorally.

In short, this is Washington’s move against the BRICS. Washington is moving to put into political power a rightwing party that Washington controls in order to terminate Brazil’s growing relationships with China and Russia.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

‘Corruption’ as a Propaganda Weapon

April 5, 2016

‘Corruption’ as a Propaganda Weapon

Exclusive: Mainstream U.S. journalism and propaganda are getting hard to tell apart, as with the flurry of “corruption” stories aimed at Russia’s Putin and other demonized foreign leaders, writes Robert Parry.

Sadly, some important duties of journalism, such as applying evenhanded standards on human rights abuses and financial corruption, have been so corrupted by the demands of government propaganda – and the careerism of too many writers – that I now become suspicious whenever the mainstream media trumpets some sensational story aimed at some “designated villain.”

Far too often, this sort of “journalism” is just a forerunner to the next “regime change” scheme, dirtying up or delegitimizing a foreign leader before the inevitable advent of a “color revolution” organized by “democracy-promoting” NGOs often with money from the U.S. government’s National Endowment for Democracy or some neoliberal financier like George Soros.

Russian President Vladimir Putin delivering a speech on the Ukraine crisis in Moscow on March 18, 2014. (Russian government photo)

We are now seeing what looks like a new preparatory phase for the next round of “regime changes” with corruption allegations aimed at former Brazilian President Luiz Ignacio Lula da Silva and Russian President Vladimir Putin. The new anti-Putin allegations – ballyhooed by the UK Guardian and other outlets – are particularly noteworthy because the so-called “Panama Papers” that supposedly implicate him in offshore financial dealings never mention his name.

Or as the Guardian writes: “Though the president’s name does not appear in any of the records, the data reveals a pattern – his friends have earned millions from deals that seemingly could not have been secured without his patronage. The documents suggest Putin’s family has benefited from this money – his friends’ fortunes appear his to spend.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Tag Archives: guardian

Content

Post categories

Economic Links

Energy/Resource Links

Environmental Links

Geopolitical Links

Liberty Links

News Links

Other Links

Survival Skills

Post Archives by Category

Post navigation

Latest Posts