Picket of Guardian Calls for their Yellow Journalists and Luke Harding to Start Telling the Truth About Julian Assange Rather Than Being a Conduit for the Security State

 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.

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.

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.

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