Monbiot after years of good work
has joined the sneering elite.
No.
Monbiot has not switched sides.
The great thing is, these shills, sleepers, traitors in our midst are FORCED to come out in support of the government on 911, no matter what ingratiating (to the 'left' usually) claptrap they have previously espoused.
It's an ill wind... _________________ Belief is the Enemy of Truth www.dissential.com
Those representing the 9/11 Truth Community have maintained an appropriate level of decorum against much provocation! Many apparently neutral contributors have commented at the difference between civil approach adopted by the Truthers, versus the persistent vitriol and ad hominem attacks dished out by defenders of the OCT. Thanks to Dr. Hemp, Justin, Spiv, Alkmyst, Numeral, Mark Gobell, Ian Henshall and a host of others, for your efforts in presenting the case for 9/11 Truth with such educated & informed aplomb.
I think I'm going to call it a day now, so the following will probably be my last post on this particular Guardian thread:
Quote:
Greg Norton:
"And my wager still stands -- 100/1 in your favour, I say no concrete proof of this so-called conspiracy will emerge in the next 20 years. Not a jot."
Rather unfair odds ... against yourself! A discerning review of the posts on this thread, assuming a modicum of objevtivity, would reveal that the evidence is already in plain site ... for those that have the eyes to see!
To ignore the plethora of evidence negating the OCT might be described by some as a symptom of severe cognitive dissonance. However, I would be more charitable and simply acknowledge that those maintaining an existential commitment to the OCT are products of an education system, intent on shutting down the development of independent thought.
The exponential growth of the 9/11 Truth Campaign and even the publication of George Monbiot's essay in the mainstream media, are indicators that this issue is taking a very real hold in the wider consciousness.
How long can the National Media continue to ignore the growing interest in William Rodriguez' UK tour? Local Radio Stations(incl. BBC), local & regional newspapers are clamouring for interviews with him. If there were truly a 'free' press in the UK, it would be reasonable to assume that Rodriguez' presence and his message would at least be reported upon; regardless of the implications and/or potential ramifications.
It is not a case of 'if' the falsehoods of 9/11 become accepted wisdom, it is 'when' ... and that might just be sooner than you think!
Ian R. Crane
Chair - 9/11 Truth Campaign(GB & Ireland)
Yes perhaps George did have a Devil's Advocate agenda in getting such a badly researched and poorly presented article such as might get under the editorial censor
Though his articles mostly back up the Rockefeller agenda they are usually well researched and introduce titbits of knowledge not too well known
He usually reserves his vitriol for the powerful
And he's jerked innumerable fans of his to look at Loose Change as well as riling a considerable percentage of the Guardian readership
Well done George, conscious or not _________________ http://www.exopolitics-leeds.co.uk/introduction
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 1959 Location: South London
Posted: Fri Feb 09, 2007 3:04 pm Post subject:
scubadiver wrote:
Comment near to the bottom of the page. This person sides with the movement but remains quite objective and balanced:
Quote:
ps: Having followed some of what Moby's written over the past few years, I'd like to think this hit piece is actually a cunningly subversive attempt to stimulate debate without committing professional suicide by (gasp!) admitting that there may be some very startling realities swilling around at the bottom of the Truth Movement's big barrel of wild claims.
What did it for me was the last para - Moby's claim that the 'only possible explanation' for why the US Government doesn't go around capping everyone who accuses them of complicity is that these claims are pure fantasy: which is the sort of facile nonsense that I wouldn't expect him to be capable of. Ergo, he's having us all on. And it's worked, too. Sort of. Smart chap, eh?
My heart sank at the publication of Monbiot's article. Keith Mothersson and I had met him at the G8 alternative summit gathering near Gleneagles in July 2005 and chatted briefly with him about 9/11. At that time he seemed open-minded about the topic, so I felt surprise and disappointment at the content of his article.
But the public response to it has been heartwarming. I have written to thank Elias Davidsson for his excellent letter in the Guardian. I think George Monbiot has done us a favour, whether intentionally: I wouldn't like to speculate.
I agree with Snowy Grouch's:
"Dont be too hard on Mobiot; I suspect he's been fed some 'rotten fish' if you know what I mean."
Yes, I am sure there is a dirty tricks programme being carried out against this campaign. Various of our opponents have claimed they have been sent abusive e-mails and even death threats from us. The powers of darkness may well be sending them death threats purporting to come from us, in order to set them up against us.
Also we know that some of our staunch supporters are capable of saying and writing counterproductive things: anti-semitic, Islamophobic, fascistic etc. I have just been shown a nasty angry letter someone has sent to George Monbiot, which in my view will be counterproductive. But in a loose network such as ours it is inevitable that some people will write ill-judged things.
Despite that, we are making steady progress and correspondence in the Guardian is a break-through.
Well done all who have contributed to achieving this.
Posted: Fri Feb 09, 2007 3:48 pm Post subject: Monbiot Thread
Posted on Monbiot Guardian thread:
Quote:
What is necessary to awaken a sleeping man? A good shock is necessary. But when a man is fast asleep one shock is not enough. A long period of continual shocks is needed. Consequently, there must be somebody to administer these shocks.
There is also the possibility of being awakened by an alarm clock. But the trouble is that one gets accustomed to the alarm clock far too quickly, he ceases to hear it. Many alarm clocks are necessary and always new ones. Otherwise a man must surround himself with alarm clocks to prevent him sleeping. But here there are certain difficulties. Alarm clocks must be wound up, in order to wind them up one must remember about them; in order to remember one must wake up often. But what is still worse, a man gets used to all alarm clocks and after a certain time he actually sleeps better because of them.
Therefore alarm clocks must be constantly changed, new ones must be continually invented. In the course of time this may help a man to awaken. But there is very little chance of a man doing all the winding up, inventing, and changing clocks all by himself, without outside help.
Therefore, in order to awaken, a combination of effort is required. To obtain results a certain number of people must work together.
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Mon May 26, 2008 6:41 pm Post subject:
George Monbiot now as much as talking about voting for his father's Tory party?!?!
Has he done a Nick Cohen?
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2008/05/20/nothing-left-to-fight-for/ Nothing Left to Fight For
The most rightwing government Britain has had since the Second World War does not deserve to be re-elected.
By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 20th May 2008.
You can hear the wringing of hands and tearing of cloth all the way down Farringdon Road. Dismayed by the results of the local elections, convinced that Labour will be crushed in the byelection on Thursday, afraid that this will presage disaster in the next general election, my fellow columnists are predicting the end of the civilised world. But I can’t understand why we should care.
Yes, I worry about what the Tories might do when they get in. I also worry about what Labour might do if it wins another term. Why should anyone on the left seek the re-election of the most rightwing government Britain has had since the second world war?
New Labour’s apologists keep reminding us of the redistributive policies it has introduced: Sure Start children’s centres, reductions in child poverty, raising the school leaving age, the national minimum wage, flexible hours for parents and carers, better conditions for part-time workers, the Decent Homes programme, free museums, more foreign aid. All these are real achievements and deserve to be celebrated. But the catalogue of failures, backsliding and outright destruction is much longer and more consequential.
One fact alone should disqualify this government from office: we have a cabinet of war criminals. The Nuremberg Tribunal characterised a war of aggression as “the supreme international crime.” It is not just that Britain’s Labour government launched and has sustained an unprovoked war, it also sabotaged all means of achieving a peaceful resolution. In April 2002 it helped the Bush administration to sack Jose Bustani, the head of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, in order to prevent him from settling the dispute over Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction. In two separate offers before the invasion began, Saddam Hussein agreed to meet the terms the US and Britain were demanding. But they slapped him down and concealed his offers from their electorates.................. _________________ www.lawyerscommitteefor9-11inquiry.org www.rethink911.org www.patriotsquestion911.com www.actorsandartistsfor911truth.org www.mediafor911truth.org www.pilotsfor911truth.org www.mp911truth.org www.ae911truth.org www.rl911truth.org www.stj911.org www.v911t.org www.thisweek.org.uk www.abolishwar.org.uk www.elementary.org.uk www.radio4all.net/index.php/contributor/2149 http://utangente.free.fr/2003/media2003.pdf
"The maintenance of secrets acts like a psychic poison which alienates the possessor from the community" Carl Jung
https://37.220.108.147/members/www.bilderberg.org/phpBB2/
In two separate offers before the invasion began, Saddam Hussein agreed to meet the terms the US and Britain were demanding. But they slapped him down and concealed his offers from their electorates
Can this be verified? Sounds like political dynamite to me.
In two separate offers before the invasion began, Saddam Hussein agreed to meet the terms the US and Britain were demanding. But they slapped him down and concealed his offers from their electorates
Can this be verified? Sounds like political dynamite to me.
Personally i think this is a PR stunt.
Nobody is the least bit interested in buying Bolton's book anyway. Monboit is working for a pro war pro Labour spinsheet so it is Brown and Blair and others close to home he should be aiming for.
I bet Monboit does not show up but some anti war people might which might help to publicise the book.
Monboit is probably doing John Bolton a favour.
You can guess i am not nor ever have been a Monboit fan.
Anyway George Bush is coming to London very soon he is the real one to arrest and send to the Hague. _________________
'....A good example of this kind of wilful misrepresentation is by Brian Whitaker, the Guardian’s former Middle East editor. In a recent blog post, he has accused me and Media Lens, among others, of being “loyal supporters of Hersh” – and by insinuation, of Syrian leader Bashar Assad – of being “sarin denialists”, and of demonstrating blatant hypocrisy in approving Hersh’s use of anonymous sources when we oppose reliance on such sources by other journalists.
Before I address these criticisms, let’s briefly recap on what Hersh’s investigation found.
His sources in the US intelligence establishment have countered an official narrative – spread by western governments and the corporate media – that assumes Assad was behind a chemical weapons attack on the town of Khan Sheikhoun on April 4. Hersh’s account suggests that Syria used a conventional bomb to hit a jihadist meeting in the town, triggering secondary explosions in a storage depot containing pesticides, fertilisers and chlorine-based decontaminants. A toxic cloud was created that caused symptoms similar to sarin for those nearby.
Trump was so convinced that Assad had used sarin in Khan Sheikhoun that he violated international law and fired 59 Tomahawk missiles at a Syrian airbase as punishment, even though, according to Hersh, his own intelligence community disputed that this is what had happened. Given that Vladimir Putin is closely allied with Assad, the move had the potential to drag Russia into a dangerous confrontation with the US.
Loyal only to fair debate
So let me address Whitaker’s allegations.
1. Neither I nor Media Lens are “loyal supporters” of Hersh – or Assad. Whitaker is projecting. He has chosen a side in Syria – that of what he simplistically terms the “rebels”, now dominated by Al-Qaeda affiliates and ISIS, backed by an unholy alliance of Saudi Arabia, the US, Europe, Israel and Turkey. But not everyone who opposes the Islamic extremists, or Whitaker’s group of western interventionists, has therefore chosen Assad’s side.
One can choose the side of international law and respect for the sovereignty of nation-states, and object to states fomenting proxy wars to destabilise and destroy other regimes.
More than that, one can choose to maintain a critical distance and, based on experience, remain extremely wary of official and self-serving narratives promoted by the world’s most powerful states. Some of us think there are lessons to be learnt from the lies we were told about WMD in Iraq, or a supposedly imminent massacre by Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi in Benghazi.
These examples of deception should be remembered when we try to assess how probable is the story that Assad wanted to invite yet more destructive interference in his country from foreign powers by gassing his own people – and to no obvious strategic or military advantage. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me three times, I should just admit I am a gullible fool.
I and Media Lens (if I may presume to speak on their behalf as a longtime follower) are not arguing that Hersh’s account must be right. Just that it deserves attention, and that it should be part of the media / public discourse. What concerns us is the inadmissibility of relevant information to the public realm, and concerted efforts to stifle debate. Manufactured groupthink, it has been repeatedly shown, works to the benefit of the powerful, those promoting the destructive interests of a now-global military-industrial complex......'
'....Like Whitaker, George Monbiot, also of the Guardian, has been policing debates about Syria in an attempt to intimidate and silence anyone who questions the official narrative.
Today, on Twitter, he accused me, Media Lens and Prof Ted Postol of “whitewashing mass murder”. Why? Presumably in my case, because I have tried to publicise credible alternative narratives, like the one above, that have been blacked out by the corporate media, and because, in keeping with my views on Herman and Chomsky’s Propaganda Model, I have highlighted Syria as a prominent test case of whether the corporate media is willing to give a platform to such counter-narratives.....'
The whole article is well worth reading. _________________ 'And he (the devil) said to him: To thee will I give all this power, and the glory of them; for to me they are delivered, and to whom I will, I give them'. Luke IV 5-7.
This page is to establish that Monbiot comes from an extremely privilged background and is a member of an extreme right wing, Conservative Party family at the very heart of the British establishment. That is why he has a public profile as a Guardian journalist . The old school tie. Fighting the class war from the top down, not the bottom up. There is no personal animosity in the following, just an attempt to understand the source of Monbiot's extremely negative world view.
Like many of the leaders of the Green movement, Monbiot is descended from aristocracy.
His own ancestors lost their land over 200 years ago. Descended from the French Ducs de Coutard, they fled their estates outside Tours in the Loire Valley in 1789, when the local peasants, stirred by news of Revolution in Paris, began redistributing fields and occupying chateaux. The family slipped across to England and changed their name from Beaumont to Monbiot to evade revolutionary spies.
Conservative Party family
Raymond Monbiot, George's father, is a businessman and heads the Conservative Party's trade and industry forum. He was Michael Heseltine's constituency chairman until they fell out over his leadership challenge to Margaret Thatcher. Rosalie Monbiot, George's mother, Tory leader of South Oxford district council for nine years, now serves on various local quangos and committees.
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/enter-the-cleanshaven-adventur er-hero-1618791.html
Good at work, bad at sport, with heterodox opinions and a crippling stammer, I would have been bullied at any school, but at boarding school the bullying was remorseless and inescapable. Sometimes it lasted through much of the night. To have “sneaked” would only have made it worse, so from the age of eight I was thrown upon my own puny resources. It is hard to believe that the teachers didn’t know what was happening: perhaps they thought it was “character building”.
Less visible, but just as prevalent, was sexual abuse: new boys were routinely groped and occasionally sodomised by the prefects. Sexual assault was and possibly still is a feature of prep school life as innate as fried bread and British bulldogs.
I had an unhappy time at university, and I now regret having gone to Oxford, even though the zoology course I took was excellent. The culture did not suit me, and when I tried to join in I fell flat on my face, sometimes in a drunken stupor.
On May morning, I was distressed to see that the police had erected metal barriers along the parapet of Magdalen Bridge. Since time immemorial, Oxford students have demonstrated the principles of natural selection by jumping off the bridge and impaling themselves on old shopping trolleys. Now that this tradition has been brought to an end, it surely behoves the police to find some other means by which Nature might be permitted to run her course.
http://www.monbiot.com/2003/06/27/diary/
Monbiot's father
The father of George Monbiot, Britain's leading anti-globalisation campaigner, is Sir Raymond Monbiot CBE, the deputy chairman of the Conservative party and an executive who made the family's fortune working for Campbell's global canned-soup empire
In the final days of IDS, Peter Oborne pointed out Ray has wider responsibilities than drawing up reform plans:
'It should be borne in mind that Monbiot is one of the men in grey suits whose heavy duty might be to hand the party leader a bottle of whisky and a revolver in certain circumstances.'
Sir Crispin (Tickell) was President of the Royal Geographical Society from 1990 to 1993 and Warden of Green College, Oxford between 1990 and 1997, where he appointed George Monbiot and Norman Myers as Visiting Fellows.
Sir Crispin Tickell, member of the eugenics Huxley clan.
He is also a patron of population concern charity Population Matters, (formerly known as the Optimum Population Trust), and told Radio 4's Today programme that the ideal population for Britain could be around 20 million. As a member of Lord Rogers' Urban Task Force, Tickell counselled against spreading cities saying that we need denser living, that young adults should not expect to leave home straight away, and that older relatives could live in 'granny flats'
“This book is rightly attracting attention, and raises issues that have long been neglected or deliberately buried … It should make people think; and as the author well says, if we do not like his ideas, then think of better ones. He believes that leaving things as they are is not a serious option. He makes his case.” Sir Crispin Tickell, Financial Times
Ecofascism Revisited
http://skepteco.wordpress.com/2012/02/04/ecofascism-revisited/ _________________ --
'Suppression of truth, human spirit and the holy chord of justice never works long-term. Something the suppressors never get.' David Southwell
http://aangirfan.blogspot.com http://aanirfan.blogspot.com
Martin Van Creveld: Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
Martin Van Creveld: I'll quote Henry Kissinger: "In campaigns like this the antiterror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing."
This page is to establish that Monbiot comes from an extremely privilged background and is a member of an extreme right wing, Conservative Party family at the very heart of the British establishment. That is why he has a public profile as a Guardian journalist . The old school tie. Fighting the class war from the top down, not the bottom up. There is no personal animosity in the following, just an attempt to understand the source of Monbiot's extremely negative world view.
Like many of the leaders of the Green movement, Monbiot is descended from aristocracy.
His own ancestors lost their land over 200 years ago. Descended from the French Ducs de Coutard, they fled their estates outside Tours in the Loire Valley in 1789, when the local peasants, stirred by news of Revolution in Paris, began redistributing fields and occupying chateaux. The family slipped across to England and changed their name from Beaumont to Monbiot to evade revolutionary spies.
Conservative Party family
Raymond Monbiot, George's father, is a businessman and heads the Conservative Party's trade and industry forum. He was Michael Heseltine's constituency chairman until they fell out over his leadership challenge to Margaret Thatcher. Rosalie Monbiot, George's mother, Tory leader of South Oxford district council for nine years, now serves on various local quangos and committees.
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/enter-the-cleanshaven-adventur er-hero-1618791.html
Good at work, bad at sport, with heterodox opinions and a crippling stammer, I would have been bullied at any school, but at boarding school the bullying was remorseless and inescapable. Sometimes it lasted through much of the night. To have “sneaked” would only have made it worse, so from the age of eight I was thrown upon my own puny resources. It is hard to believe that the teachers didn’t know what was happening: perhaps they thought it was “character building”.
Less visible, but just as prevalent, was sexual abuse: new boys were routinely groped and occasionally sodomised by the prefects. Sexual assault was and possibly still is a feature of prep school life as innate as fried bread and British bulldogs.
I had an unhappy time at university, and I now regret having gone to Oxford, even though the zoology course I took was excellent. The culture did not suit me, and when I tried to join in I fell flat on my face, sometimes in a drunken stupor.
On May morning, I was distressed to see that the police had erected metal barriers along the parapet of Magdalen Bridge. Since time immemorial, Oxford students have demonstrated the principles of natural selection by jumping off the bridge and impaling themselves on old shopping trolleys. Now that this tradition has been brought to an end, it surely behoves the police to find some other means by which Nature might be permitted to run her course.
http://www.monbiot.com/2003/06/27/diary/
Monbiot's father
The father of George Monbiot, Britain's leading anti-globalisation campaigner, is Sir Raymond Monbiot CBE, the deputy chairman of the Conservative party and an executive who made the family's fortune working for Campbell's global canned-soup empire
In the final days of IDS, Peter Oborne pointed out Ray has wider responsibilities than drawing up reform plans:
'It should be borne in mind that Monbiot is one of the men in grey suits whose heavy duty might be to hand the party leader a bottle of whisky and a revolver in certain circumstances.'
Sir Crispin (Tickell) was President of the Royal Geographical Society from 1990 to 1993 and Warden of Green College, Oxford between 1990 and 1997, where he appointed George Monbiot and Norman Myers as Visiting Fellows.
Sir Crispin Tickell, member of the eugenics Huxley clan.
He is also a patron of population concern charity Population Matters, (formerly known as the Optimum Population Trust), and told Radio 4's Today programme that the ideal population for Britain could be around 20 million. As a member of Lord Rogers' Urban Task Force, Tickell counselled against spreading cities saying that we need denser living, that young adults should not expect to leave home straight away, and that older relatives could live in 'granny flats'
“This book is rightly attracting attention, and raises issues that have long been neglected or deliberately buried … It should make people think; and as the author well says, if we do not like his ideas, then think of better ones. He believes that leaving things as they are is not a serious option. He makes his case.” Sir Crispin Tickell, Financial Times
Ecofascism Revisited
http://skepteco.wordpress.com/2012/02/04/ecofascism-revisited/ _________________ --
'Suppression of truth, human spirit and the holy chord of justice never works long-term. Something the suppressors never get.' David Southwell
http://aangirfan.blogspot.com http://aanirfan.blogspot.com
Martin Van Creveld: Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
Martin Van Creveld: I'll quote Henry Kissinger: "In campaigns like this the antiterror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing."
_________________ --
'Suppression of truth, human spirit and the holy chord of justice never works long-term. Something the suppressors never get.' David Southwell
http://aangirfan.blogspot.com http://aanirfan.blogspot.com
Martin Van Creveld: Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
Martin Van Creveld: I'll quote Henry Kissinger: "In campaigns like this the antiterror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing."
'...A true environmentalist has to look as critically at western policies in Iraq, Libya, Syria, Ukraine, Venezuela and many other areas of the globe as he does at UK policy in the Welsh hills and the Lake District.
All indications are that Monbiot lacks the experience, knowledge and skills to unravel the deceptions being perpetrated in the west’s proxy and not-so-proxy wars overseas. That is fair enough. What is not reasonable is that he should use his platforms to smear precisely those who can speak with a degree of authority and independence – and then conspire in denying them a platform to respond. That is the behaviour not only of a hypocrite, but of a bully too.' _________________ 'And he (the devil) said to him: To thee will I give all this power, and the glory of them; for to me they are delivered, and to whom I will, I give them'. Luke IV 5-7.
And for a comprehensive analysis, listen to the following - Tony's Bristol Community Radio Friday Drivetime Politics Show broadcast on 11th November 2016 featuring a recording of a talk by freelance journalist Vanessa Beeley, from 36 mins 44 secs onwards
http://www.radio4all.net/files/tony@cultureshop.org.uk/2149-1-20161111 180002.mp3
Monbiot is not only a hypocrite, but a bully too https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2018-01-12/monbiot-bully-hypocrite/
12 January 2018
It is time for George Monbiot’s legion of supporters to call him out. Not only is he a hypocrite, but he is becoming an increasingly dangerous one.
Turning a blind eye to his behaviour, or worse excusing it, as too often happens, has only encouraged him to intensify his attacks on dissident writers, those who – whether right or wrong on any specific issue – are slowly helping us all to develop more critical perspectives on western foreign policy goals than has ever been possible before.
I do not lightly use such strong language against Monbiot, someone I once admired. But his column this week drips with hypocrisy as he accuses the rightwing media of being the real villains when it comes to “no-platforming”. Monbiot writes:
But perhaps the real discomfort is that the worst no-platforming of all takes place within our newspapers. In the publications most obsessed with student silliness, there is no platform for socialism, no platform for environmentalism, no platform for those who might offend the interests of the proprietors. …
I believe that a healthy media organisation, like a healthy university, should admit a diversity of opinion. I want the other newspapers to keep publishing views with which I fiercely disagree. But they – and we – should also seek opposing views and publish them too, however uncomfortable this might be.
What free speech advocate would disagree with that. Except it is Monbiot himself who has been using his prominent platforms, at the Guardian and on social media, to discredit critical thinkers on the left – not with reasoned arguments, but by impugning their integrity.
Denied a platform
It started with his unsubstantiated claim that scholars like Noam Chomsky and the late Ed Herman, as well as the acclaimed journalist John Pilger, were “genocide deniers and belittlers”. It now focuses on childish insinuations that those who question the corporate media’s simplistic narrative on Syria are Assad apologists or in Vladimir Putin’s pay.
But worse than this, Monbiot is also conspiring – either actively or through his silence – to deny critics of his and the Guardian’s position on Syria the chance to set out their evidence in its pages.
The Guardian’s anti-democratic stance does not surprise me, as someone who worked there for many years. I found myself repeatedly no-platformed by the paper – even while on its staff – after I started taking an interest in the Israel-Palestine conflict and writing about the discomforting issue of what a Jewish state entails. My treatment is far from unique.
Now the paper is denying a platform to those who question simplistic and self-serving western narratives on Syria. And Monbiot is backing his employer to the hilt, even as he professes his commitment to the publication of views he fiercely disagrees with. That’s the dictionary definition of hypocrisy.
‘Selfless’ White Helmets?
The latest instalment of the Guardian and Monbiot’s long-running battle to silence Syria dissidents arrived last month when Olivia Solon, the paper’s technology writer living in San Francisco, developed a sudden and unexpected expertise in a controversial Syrian group called the White Helmets.
In the western corporate media narrative, the White Helmets are a group of dedicated and selfless rescue workers. They are supposedly the humanitarians on whose behalf a western intervention in Syria would have been justified – before, that is, Syrian leader Bashar Assad queered their pitch by inviting in Russia.
However, there are problems with the White Helmets. They operate only in rebel – read: mainly al-Qaeda and ISIS-held – areas of Syria, and plenty of evidence shows that they are funded by the UK and US to advance both countries’ far-from-humanitarian policy objectives in Syria.
There are also strong indications that members of the White Helmets have been involved in war crimes, and that they have staged rescue operations as a part of a propaganda offensive designed to assist Islamic extremists trying to oust Assad. (Solon discounts this last claim. In doing so, she ignores several examples of such behaviour, concentrating instead on an improbable “mannequin challenge”, when the White Helmets supposedly froze their emergency operations, in the midst of rescue efforts, apparently as part of a peculiar publicity campaign.)
Guardian hatchet job
Whatever side one takes in this debate, one would imagine that Monbiot should have a clear agenda in support of hearing evidence from all sides. One might also imagine that he would want to distance himself from Solon’s efforts to tie criticism of the White Helmets to a supposed “fake news” crisis and paint those critical of the group as Putin-bots. According to Solon:
The way the Russian propaganda machine has targeted the White Helmets is a neat case study in the prevailing information wars. It exposes just how rumours, conspiracy theories and half-truths bubble to the top of YouTube, Google and Twitter search algorithms.
Those are the same algorithms that have been changed in recent months to make sure that prominent leftist websites are increasingly difficult to find on internet searches and their writers’ views effectively disappeared.
Yet Monbiot has been using social media to promote Solon’s cheerleading of the White Helmets and her hatchet job against on-the-ground journalists who have taken a far more critical view of the group.
As set out by Prof Tim Hayward, the Guardian’s response to criticism of Solon’s piece has been typical. The comments section below the article was hastily closed after many criticisms were voiced by readers. The journalists who were singled out for attack by Solon were denied a right of reply. A group of concerned academics led by Hayward who submitted their own article, which detailed publicly available evidence to counter Solon’s simplistic account of the White Helmets, were ignored. Meanwhile, the Guardian’s editors and the reader’s editor have ignored all efforts by these parties to contact them.
Given his claim to be an uncompromising defender of free speech and a fierce advocate of providing platforms to those who can back up their arguments with evidence, however discomforting, one might have assumed that Monbiot would at the very least have lobbied on behalf of Hayward and his fellow scholars. But not a bit of it. Yet again he has joined the dogs of the corporate media baying for blood. Instead he turned to Twitter to claim Hayward and Piers Robinson, an expert on propaganda, had “disgraced” themselves.
Undermining climate concerns
The many tens of thousands of leftists who defend Monbiot, or turn a blind eye to his hypocrisy, largely do so because of his record on the environment. But in practice they are enabling not only his increasingly overt incitement against critical thinkers, but also undermining the very cause his supporters believe he champions.
Climate breakdown is a global concern. Rewilding, bike-riding, protecting bees and polar bears, and developing new sustainable technologies are all vitally important. But such actions will amount to little if we fail to turn a highly sceptical eye on the activities of a western military-industrial complex ravaging the planet’s poorest regions.
These war industries fill their coffers by using weapons indiscriminately on “enemy” populations, spawning new and fiercer enemies – while often propping them up too – to generate endless wars. The consequences include massive displacements of these populations who then destabilise other regions, spreading the effect and creating new opportunities for the arms manufacturers, homeland security industries, and the financial industries that feed off them.
A true environmentalist has to look as critically at western policies in Iraq, Libya, Syria, Ukraine, Venezuela and many other areas of the globe as he does at UK policy in the Welsh hills and the Lake District.
Jeremy Corbyn lost because he failed to convince his party that leaving the European Union was both a vote-winner and a good idea.
Corbyn was also smeared as an antisemite daily while Jewish journalists like George played along, accusing Corbyn of being a racist. Supporting Labour but distancing himself from Jeremy Corbyn....
Why Labour Lost: Oligarchs are Gaming Democracy 💰🗳 | George Monbiot
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6I_ZhGHxnHQ _________________ --
'Suppression of truth, human spirit and the holy chord of justice never works long-term. Something the suppressors never get.' David Southwell
http://aangirfan.blogspot.com http://aanirfan.blogspot.com
Martin Van Creveld: Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
Martin Van Creveld: I'll quote Henry Kissinger: "In campaigns like this the antiterror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing."
Faced with a barrage of criticism from some of his followers, George Monbiot, the Guardian’s supposedly fearless, leftwing columnist, offered up two extraordinarily feeble excuses this week for failing to provide more than cursory support for Julian Assange over the past month, as the Wikileaks founder has endured extradition hearings in a London courtroom.
The Trump administration wants Assange brought to the United States to face espionage charges that could see him locked away in a super-max prison on “special administrative measures”, unable to have meaningful contact with any other human being for the rest of his life. And that fate awaits him only because he embarrassed the US by exposing its war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq in the pages of newspapers like the New York Times and Guardian – and because Washington fears that Assange, if left free, would publish more disturbing truths about US actions around the globe.
But there is much more at stake than simply Assange’s rights being trampled on. He is not simply the western equivalent of Ai Weiwei, the Chinese artist and dissident who notably offered his own support to Assange during the hearings. Weiwei covered his mouth outside the Old Bailey courtroom in protest at the media’s blanket silence over the crimes being perpetrated against Assange.
Assange faces a terrifying new kind of extraordinary rendition – one conducted not covertly by US security services but in the full glare of publicity and, if the London court approves, with the consent of the British judiciary. If extradition is authorised, a precedent will be set that allows the US to seize and jail any journalist who exposes its crimes. Inevitably, that will have a severe chilling effect on all journalists investigating the world’s only super-power. It will not only be the death of journalism’s already enfeebled role as a watchdog on power but a death blow against our societies’ commitment to the principles of freedom and openness.
The barest minimum
This should be reason enough for anyone to be deeply concerned about Assange’s extradition hearing, most especially journalists. And even more so a journalist like Monbiot, whose work’s lifeblood is the investigation of unaccountable power and its corrosive effects. If any British journalist ought to be shouting from the rooftops against Assange’s extradition, it is Monbiot.
And yet, he has failed to write a single column in the Guardian on Assange, and in response to mounting criticism from followers pointed to three retweets backing Assange during the past four weeks of extradition hearings. All three, we should note, were of articles published in his own newspaper, the Guardian, that broke with its hostile coverage and could be considered vaguely sympathetic to Assange.
This was the barest minimum that Monbiot could afford to be seen doing. After all, positioned as the Guardian’s leftwing conscience, it would have been strange indeed had he not retweeted the rare instances, in a sea of Guardian articles ridiculing and vilifying Assange, of the paper making a nod to its more leftwing readers.
But notably, Monbiot failed to retweet any of the daily articles posted by former UK ambassador Craig Murray that detailed the horrifying abuses of legal process against Assange during the extradition hearings as well as evidence from expert witness after expert witness that demolished the central claims of the US case. Monbiot did not retweet any of the articles or comments by the renowned investigative journalist John Pilger, who has been a stalwart defender of Assange.
He did not retweet the testimony of Noam Chomsky, the celebrated linguist and political analyst, that the US charges against Assange are entirely political in nature and therefore void the US extradition request. Monbiot has similarly ignored the comments of Nils Melzer, the United Nations’ expert on torture, that Assange is already being psychologically tortured by the combined actions of the UK and US to keep him locked up in extreme isolation and in a prolonged state of chronic fear for his future.
Monbiot also did not retweet the astounding evidence last week from a former employee of the Spanish company that provided security at the Ecuadorian embassy, where Assange spent seven years in political asylum. The whistleblower testified that under CIA direction the company broke the law by surveilling Assange, even in the toilet block, and listened in to his privileged conversations with his lawyers. This fact alone should have been enough to force the presiding judge, Vanessa Baraitser, to rule against the US extradition request.
Cowardly excuses
No, Monbiot told his followers about none of these developments or about much more that has emerged over the past four weeks. Instead he offered two cowardly excuses for why he has remained so mealymouthed at the worst assault on press freedom in living memory.
The first was that the Assange extradition hearing apparently isn’t important enough. It is simply “one of hundreds of crucial issues” and “compared to say, soil loss, it’s way down my list”.
No one can doubt that Monbiot rightly takes environmental issues extremely seriously. But he doesn’t just tweet and write about the environment. There are many others issues, entirely unconnected to the environment and of which he appears to know almost nothing, that he regularly writes about.
One will suffice as illustrative. For the past two years Monbiot has dedicated a great deal of time and energy – time and energy he has refused to expend on defending Assange and press freedom – to attack those who have questioned claims by the US and UK intelligence services that the Syrian government under Bashar Assad carried out a chemical weapons attack in Douma in April 2018. The supposed attack provided the pretext for the US to launch a bombing attack on Syria – an example of a supreme international crime, according to the Nuremberg principles.
Monbiot has tried to intimidate into silence those, including whistleblowers from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), who have suggested that in fact the evidence points to jihadist groups being responsible for what happened in Douma. Those jihadists – labelled “terrorists” by the western media in all countries other than Syria – have been explicitly financed by western allies like Saudi Arabia, and more covertly by the west itself. Nonetheless, Monbiot has smeared anyone sceptical of the official western narrative about Douma as an “Assad apologist”, including by implication the distinguished Middle East reporter Robert Fisk, who, unlike Monbiot, actually visited Douma.
Monbiot has no expertise on the Middle East, and presumably has drawn his conclusions from reading the Syria coverage of the Guardian, whose positions he precisely echoes. It is bad enough that he has used his platform to go on the offensive against those taking a critical position on the events in Douma. But worse still, he has swept up in his smear campaign whistleblowers from the OPCW, the United Nations’ chemical weapons watchdog body, who have been warning that the OPCW is no longer independent but has become a deeply politicised body that tampered with the inspectors’ findings in the Douma case to bolster Washington’s self-serving agenda in Syria.
The whistleblowers’ claims are hardly out of line with the wider picture of the OPCW. The organisation has been falling under Washington’s thumb for nearly two decades. The previous head of the OPCW, Jose Bustani, was forced out by the Bush administration after he sought to negotiate further weapons inspections of Iraq to deprive the US of a pretext to launch its illegal invasion in 2003. Angry that US plans for regime change might be disrupted, John Bolton, the warmongering US ambassador to the UN, even threatened Bustani: “We know where your kids live.”
At least three members of the OPCW team that investigated the Douma events have tried to warn that the evidence blaming Assad was doctored by the organisation’s officials and that their own research showed that the most likely culprit were jihadist groups – who presumably hoped to engineer a pretext for more direct western intervention in Syria to help them bring down the Syrian government.
Misinformation around the Douma events has grown so dire that Bustani himself recently tried to intervene on behalf of the whistleblowers at the Security Council. He noted in testimony blocked by the US and UK: “At great risk to themselves, they [the whistleblowers] have dared to speak out against possible irregular behaviour in your Organisation [the OPCW].” He added: “Hearing what your own inspectors have to say would be an important first step in mending the Organisation’s damaged reputation.”
Absurd argument
There are plenty of reasons, therefore, to criticise Monbiot for his smearing of the Douma sceptics and the OPCW whistleblowers. But I am not interested here in revisiting the Douma episode. The point I am making relates to Assange.
In asserting that he doesn’t have time to defend Assange, Monbiot is implicitly arguing that opposing the current all-out war by the US on journalism is a lower priority than his smearing of the OPCW whistleblowers; that bullying and silencing Douma sceptics is one of those “hundreds of crucial issues” more important than preventing Assange from spending the rest of his life in jail, and more important than saving investigative journalism from this gravest of assaults by the US.
To understand how absurd Monbiot’s argument is, let us note that the only way we can ever properly settle the Douma case – without regurgitating claims by the US and UK intelligence services, as Monbiot has been doing – is if someone manages to leak the classified communications on Douma between the US administration and the OPCW leadership. That would let us know whether it is the OPCW whistleblowers telling the truth or the suits in head office. The whistleblowers have already stated that US officials turned up at an OPCW meeting unannounced and in violation of the body’s independent status in a bid to lean on staff.
The only way we will learn the truth with any certainty is if there is a leak of documents – to an organisation like Assange’s group Wikileaks.
The war on Assange has not only been a war on journalism. It is also a war on the whistleblowers who have assisted journalists and Wikileaks in arriving at the truth. Hanging on the outcome of Assange’s case is not only his personal fate, but journalism’s very ability to tap into sources close to the centres of power. In abandoning Assange, we abandon any hope of finding out the truth on a whole range of the most pressing issues facing us.
If Monbiot hopes to be able to campaign more effectively on “hundreds of crucial issues” like soil loss and other environmental concerns, he needs Assange and Wikileaks as vigorous as possible, not Assange locked away in a dark cell and Wikileaks a shadow of the organisation it once was.
Monbiot, of course, does not need me to tell him all this. He understands it already. Which is why his behaviour needs explaining – a matter we will get to in a minute.
All too ready to tick boxes
But before that, let us turn our attention to his second, extraordinary excuse for failing to raise his voice above a whisper on Assange’s plight.
Monbiot claims he cannot add anything “original” to what has been said already about the Assange case and that “It’s not about ticking boxes” but about “expanding the field”.
Let us set aside the obvious lacuna in this argument: that Monbiot has been ticking every box imaginable on the Douma incident. He added precisely nothing to the debate apart from his own smears of the whistleblowers. All he did was echo the intelligence services’ talking points, which had already been given an extensive and uncritical airing in the Guardian.
So Monbiot is quite clearly capable of being highly unoriginal when he chooses to be.
But there are, of course, lots of original things Monbiot could contribute to the coverage of the Assange case in his own newspaper, the Guardian, given that the only people speaking up for Assange – apart from one article by Patrick Cockburn in the Independent – have been outside the “mainstream”, without a platform in the corporate media.
Monbiot could have served as a counterweight to the relentless maligning of Assange in the Guardian’s pages by pointing out how these smears were unfounded. Instead he has either echoed those smears, or equivocated on them, or remained silent. He could have, for example, observed that there were very good grounds for Assange to seek political asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy, as the extradition hearings have confirmed, in contrast to the constant claims in the Guardian that Assange was “fleeing rape charges” – charges that existed only in the imagination of newspaper editors – or that he was paranoid and arrogant.
Or Monbiot could have pointed out that the Guardian fabricated an easily disproved smear story that a Trump aide, Paul Manafort, and unnamed “Russians” had supposedly visited Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy in secret three times – without leaving any evidence, even though the embassy was the most heavily surveilled building in London, both inside and out.
The story, presumably provided to the Guardian on an unattributable basis by one of the security services involved, was published to ensnare Assange in evidence-free Russiagate claims and thereby alienate liberals so that they would not oppose the US extradition case. Monbiot could have added that the Guardian was wrong not to apologise for the deceitful, malicious report and retract it.
Or Monbiot could tell his readers that the Guardian is not declaring a glaring conflict of interest in its coverage of the Assange hearings. Rather than being a neutral observer of developments, the paper is in fact deeply implicated in the very charges levelled by the US against Assange. Its former investigations editor David Leigh was the one who recklessly published the password to a critically important trove of secret documents held by Wikileaks, giving every security service in the world access to them. Eventually, in a damage limitation operation, Wikileaks was forced to publish the files unredacted to let anyone named know they were in danger.
If anyone should be on trial for endangering US informants – no one should be, and no informants were harmed – it is not Assange but Leigh and other senior Guardian editors.
All of these would be highly “original” things for Monbiot to write about that would undoubtedly “expand the field”. But I am not really suggesting that he go so far as to be honest about the vile role played by his employer in selling out Assange. I am worldly enough to know how things work. He has a good, mainstream platform that weekly publishes his articles – and he does not want to jeopardise that by criticising his own newspaper.
But of course Monbiot does not need to criticise the Guardian to support Assange. There are plenty of other, important things to write about if he chooses to. The point is he chooses not to. The real question, once his pathetic excuses are stripped away, is why.
Mopped up by the Guardian
And that, sadly, is because Monbiot is not the free thinker, the fearless investigator of difficult truths, the leftwing conscience he claims to be. It is not really his fault. It is in the nature of the function he serves at the Guardian – and with which I am only too familiar myself from my years working there.
The Guardian is the main outlet of the Guardian Media Group, which depends on advertising to survive. It is a corporate venture premised on exploiting the Guardian’s market share to the greatest extent possible, just as the Daily Mail, the Sun and the Times do with their own markets. In this regard, newspapers are no different from supermarkets. If they fail to corner their section of the market, another corporation better suited to do so will step in and seize it from them.
Assange understood this only too well, as he explained in an interview back in 2011 after learning that the Guardian had been breaking its agreements with Wikileaks and sharing confidential files with others. He observed:
“What drives a paper like the Guardian or New York Times is not their inner moral values. It is simply that they have a market. In the UK, there is a market called ‘educated liberals’. Educated liberals want to buy a newspaper like the Guardian and therefore an institution arises to fulfil that market.”
Most of the Guardian’s writers pander squarely to the general “educated liberals” market. But some, like Monbiot, are there with a more specific purpose: to mop up sections of the population that might otherwise stray from the Guardian fold.
Owen Jones is there to mop up leftwing supporters of the Labour party to persuade them that the Guardian is their friend, as he continued to do even while the paper was helping to destroy the party’s elected leader, Jeremy Corbyn. Jonathan Freedland is there, in part, to reassure liberal Jews that the Guardian is on their side, which he did by playing up the evidence-free smears that Labour had an especial antisemitism problem under Corbyn. Hadley Freeman is there, as are others like Suzanne Moore, to represent liberal women deeply invested in identity politics and to make sure they keep them away from class politics.
The point is that the Guardian is a corporate endeavour that makes sure its columnists cover as many liberal-left bases as possible without allowing any really subversive voices a platform from which they can challenge or disrupt the neoliberal status quo.
Monbiot, therefore, treads the finest line of all the Guardian’s columnists. His position is the most absurd, the one plagued with the biggest internal contradiction: he must sell extreme environmental concern from within a newspaper that is entirely embedded in the economic logic of the very neoliberal system that is destroying the planet.
The Guardian understands its own urgent need to greenwash too. Its market, educated liberals, are increasingly frightened by the multiple environmental threats we face, which is why very belatedly – decades late, in fact – the paper has been prioritising this issue above all others.
But of course, given the logic of its corporate, money-making, advertiser-driven agenda, the Guardian is not just highlighting the threat to the environment to win over more educated liberals. It is also monetising this threat for itself as aggressively as it can. It did so again this week as its editor, Kath Viner, appealed to educated liberals to make a subscription donation to the paper based on the claim that it will campaign to protect the environment better than any other UK newspaper. That, of course, is a remarkably low bar it has set for itself.
Treading a fine line
Monbiot is trapped in this same logic: campaigning for the environment from within an organisation whose economic imperatives are designed to trash the planet.
He treads this very fine line by deviating as little as necessary from the Guardian’s own narrow, status quo-hugging agenda. He enjoys the freedom to speak out loudly on the dangers of environmental destruction, but that freedom comes at a price – that he closely adhere to the technocratic, liberal consensus on other issues. The paradox is that on foreign policy matters we have Monbiot effectively colluding in the propaganda of the west’s war industries – the most polluting on the planet – as he professes his environmental credentials to the Guardian’s liberal readers.
This stance is not imposed on him. He does not receive orders from Guardian editors to smear OPCW whistleblowers or to restrain himself from tweeting forthright support for Assange. Instead he has imbibed the corporate culture of the Guardian – as I once did, as most of us do in our daily lives – as a sanity survival strategy, as way to placate the cognitive dissonance that would overwhelm him if he did not.
Paradoxically, the two excuses he offered justifying his lack of support for Assange followed a tweet in which he had just castigated the left – as he is wont to do when confronted with evidence he would rather not hear – for preferring conformity over solidarity.
I’m no psychologist, but this sounds suspiciously like projection to me. Monbiot was immediately and rightly pulled up by followers who pointed out that, in his abandonment of Assange, he had once again shown a high degree of conformity to official, intelligence agency-serving narratives, as well as to those of his employer, the Guardian. He had also shown a very low degree of solidarity with a man who has almost single-handedly taken on the western power establishment in the hope of helping us finally to hold it to account.
Ultimately, the problem lies not with Monbiot. He is just serving the market, attracting socially responsible liberals to the Guardian, rationalising the paper’s reformist agenda within a suicidal, global, neoliberal economy, and preventing leftwingers from straying too far, to the point where they might contemplate a more revolutionary form of politics.
The problem lies not with Monbiot. It lies with us. We continue to ignore the fact that we are being played by the system, that we are being placated by pale offerings like Monbiot, that our consent is needed and that we keep finding reasons to give it rather than withdraw it. Neither Monbiot nor the Guardian is going to liberate our minds. Only we can do that.
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Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His books include “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jonathan-cook.net. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
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