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    The Barefaced Silences of Katherine Viner Archived Message

    Posted by George Brennan on July 27, 2019, 1:08 pm

    I wrote most of this weeks ago but put it aside to procrastinate a search for typos and factual errors.

    In Wikipedia Katherine Viner is billed as a “playwright” who has written no plays, at least none I can find. The actor Alan Rickman espied dramatic potential in Rachel Corrie’s journal and called on Viner help him edit it into a found play. Its success may be why progressives were so hopeful when Viner succeeded Rusbridger as editor in chief in April 2015. Seumas Milne lobbied to save us from a frightful alternative in human form, Newsnight commissar Ian Katz. Some even hoped that she might defang Jonathan Freedland. Things could only get better. Suddenly Corbyn happened and things got worse.


    Suppression by silence is nothing new. Long ago Alistair Hetherington refused to accept a report (by Michael Adama) of a major Israeli atrocity, the demolition of three villages near Jerusalem, saying that it could not have happened because no proper journalist had reported it. Palestinians have always regarded the Guardian as a Zionist paper which can be expect to downplay crimes against them. On the other hand Guardian news pages have always been quick to report allegations of anti-Semitism and slow to question them. Just month before she took power the Guardian reported “A group of men tried to break into a synagogue overnight in north London in an anti-semitic incident, police have said.” Missing from this article is the statement of Rabbi Maurice Davis who described the incident and told the Jewish Chronicle. “We want people to know it wasn’t an anti-semitic incident.” This was quoted by the BBC, the Daily Telegraph, the Evening Standard. But not the Guardian. It is by Omission and Understatement that editors practice to deceive, both themselves and others. But my impression is that under Viner reticence has become Brazen


    Drawing on the researches of better men I find it useful to catalogue some barefaced silences from Viner’s own reign. There will be additions:



    1 THE APRIL 2018 CHLORINE BOMB


    Viner must have decreed that any mention of Ian Henderson’s minority OPCW could not serve the public interest. It had been condemned by George Monbiot, no less, as “contentious.” So it could only serve the interest of Assad Apologists.

    Those helicoptered chlorine bombs, remember, were a pretext for an act of war. Atrocity propaganda serves to prepare the population for acts of war.


    Simon Tisdall - he is the same Guardian columnist by whom George Monbiot was so easily persuaded that Jeremy Corbyn in his heart actually believes that even those Jews who were born and bred here can never hope to appreciate English Irony - wrote:

    “Calls to wait for yet another UN investigation amount to irresponsible obfuscation. Only the Syrian regime and its Russian backers have the assets and the motivation to launch such merciless attacks on civilian targets. Or did all those writhing children imagine the gas? “ [Simon Tisdall 7 April.]


    The airstrikes came on April 14, two days after General Mattis admitted he was still short on evidence. Having noisily endorsed the pretext, Monbiot quietly disowned the act. The self-deception is hard if the pretext is false, so he and Viner must maintain it as true, if only by vituperative tweets and stony silences. Viner must say to herself, though not out loud, that the evasive official OPCW report counts as unquestionable and irrefutable proof that US intelligence already had irrefutable before they bombed. “Irrefutable proof” of atrocity being what the pariah Chris Williamson, amid general scorn, had demanded as a necessary (if not sufficient) condition for an act of war


    Viner must also persuade to herself, silently, that Prof Ted Postol is an Assad Apologist baying for blood, from whose writings her readers must be protected. Since it can only be found in the online underworld, it cannot be true, and it stay confined tot that underworld if the Guardian does not report it


    Postol June 6 http://accuracy.org/release/postol-on-syrian-attacks-opcw-guilty-of-deception/


    Notice that Postol holds fire on the question of Motive. Western “red lines” gave Assad a strong motive not to use chemical weapons in a war he was already winning by cruel and usual methods. By the same token it gave some of the “rebels” a strong motive to find evidence he had done so. There are times, as in the case of the Ruby/Oswald killing, the police have no need to find the motive to find the culprit. But when evidence is inconclusive, motive is the first thing they have to look for. The first suspect is he who has most to gain. When we have to decide between contending experts, motive becomes decisive.


    For all I know the OPCW are in secret possession of technical arguments which so conclusively refuted Postol as to leave no room for doubt as to whodunnit. As far as I can find the OPCW has maintained silence about this, and Katherine has maintained silence about their silence. Until there is there is a published scientific consensus against Postol the rest of is will find Cui Bono a valid question. I predict that Viner will never specify the “motivation” that Tisdall says only the Syrian regime and its Russian Allies would have had for producing those writhing children, images that on on the 7th April sufficiently proved to him there had been a chlorine gas attack for which General Mattis was still publicly seeking evidence on the 12th of April




    2 THE MANAFORT WHO WAS NOT THERE

    The Guardian has not yet as far as I can find retracted a big story it told on 27 November 2018. Trump henchman Paul Manafort had secretly plotted with Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy on three occasions. The article was co-authored by Luke Harding who wrote:

    “A well-placed source has told the Guardian that Manafort went to see Assange around March 2016. Months later WikiLeaks. released a stash of Democratic emails stolen by Russian intelligence officers”

    Wrong on more than one level, the article was heralded by deputy editor Paul Johnson.


    https://twitter.com/paul__johnson/status/1067424431390318592?lang=en

    Thanks to Matt Kennard we know that this same Paul Johnson (they are legion) was praised on 18 December 2018 by the MoD D-notice committee for “re-establishing links” with the Ministry of Defence. Perhaps he and Viner thought that in return for the Guardian’s proven loyalty to the state, Intelligence Services had rewarded Luke Harding with a solid scoop.


    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/nov/27/manafort-held-secret-talks-with-assange-in-ecuadorian-embassy


    That is a slightly revised version. Viner had quickly sensed the scoop was not so solid. Within a week Fair Magazine (3 December 2018) reported

    “The Guardian immediately started to walk back its claims, editing the article a number of times, changing its headline from “Manafort Held Secret Talks With Assange in Ecuadorian Embassy” to “Manafort Held Secret Talks With Assange in Ecuadorian Embassy, Sources Say.” It inserted qualifiers, denials and words like “hoax” into the text, quietly changing much of the tense of the report to the conditional. Thus, the passage “It is unclear why Manafort wanted to see Assange and what was discussed. But the last meeting is likely to come under scrutiny” was changed to (emphasis added) “It is unclear why Manafort would have wanted to see Assange and what was discussed. But the last apparent meeting is likely to come under scrutiny.” Thus a piece that started as a factual news report was transformed into an allegation—after it went viral and was picked up across international media.”


    The big scoop was dropped; other media loyally joined the chorus of silence. Search interest for terms such as “Manafort” and “Assange” dropping by around 90 percent in one day


    Weeks later Glenn Greenwald plunged the knife deeper:


    “The Guardian’s typically public and outspoken editor-in-chief Kath Viner has all but disappeared since the story was published on November 27.”


    https://theintercept.com/2019/01/02/five-weeks-after-the-guardians-viral-blockbuster-assangemanafort-scoop-no-evidence-has-emerged-just-stonewalling/



    A year earlier Luke Harding had made a packet from a bestseller called COLLUSION. But the Trump-Kremlin collusion conspiracy theory was a slow puncture that finally collapsed with the Mueller report. Harding had shamelessly refused to flee the country in disguise on the morrow of his You-tubed interview with Aaron Mate. [find it].


    With Trump-Kremlin collusion deflated, Viner has had to stick with Assange-Trump collusion and Assange-Kremlin collusion. She had “walked back” a bit on Assange-Trump collusion because she realised the Manafort story was based on the mistake of trusting Harding’s Well Placed Source. A mistake becomes a lie when you stubbornly refuse to own it.


    About the third collusion, Assange-Kremlin collusion, for which there is scant evidence, something has not been sufficiently said. Surely there are two and only two questions which “Real Journalists” should ask about any Wikileaks revelation. First, is it accurate? Second, does it serve the public interest? For accuracy Wikileaks has no rival. Admittedly it did not serve the Guardian’s political interest to expose Hilary Clinton as a political scoundrelt, and may have suited Donald Trump. But the Public Interest has to be wider than that. Let us ignore the formidable technical testimony of William Binney, suggesting the first DNC stuff was leaked not hacked. Let us believe “Guccifer” really was a trained Russian intelligence agent who from complex motives chose to leave Russian finger prints. Let us choose to believe that Assange actually believed that the Kremlin was his source. Well, so what? Would he not still have a general duty to publish any verified facts that the public had a right to know? The public surely had a right to know that Hilary Clinton was an even bigger scoundrel than Guardian G2 feature writers would like us to suspect. As for a third question, there is no third question - except for gossip columnists whose key objective is to diminish Assange. Back in 2016, by the way, nobody, not Putin, not Assange, not even team Trump, believed there was any chance that the all too obvious scoundrel Trump would be president. Hilary seemed unstoppable.



    3 SILENCES that perpetuate the NEVER ENDING STORY

    A Viner editorial did concede in passing that anti-Semitism is “not rife” in the Labour Party.” But she gives most of her house room to the universal misperception that Rife it is. It is the Labour Friends of Israel who are allowed to run rife. Before Corbyn came along there had been no work for The LFI to do. The Conservative Friends of Israel were busy keeping Cameron in line by threatening to cut off big party donations. But Labour Friends had no need to keep Blair and Brown in line because New Labour’s contempt for the Palestinian resistance was as keen as their own. But Corbyn looked like someone not so easily bought.


    The first rule of the Israel lobby is that there is no Israel lobby. Since January 2017, when the Al Jezeera video was released, the name of Shai Masot has not been mentioned by the Guardian or anyone else


    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/jan/07/israeli-diplomat-shai-masot-caught-on-camera-plotting-to-take-down-uk-mps

    Here we read that Masot plotted with a Tory person on how to take down a major Tory politician. Both believed the undercover reporter was a Labour Friend of Israel. This is what angered shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry


    “Strizzolo, discussing with Masot how to discredit MPs, said: “Well, you know, if you look hard enough, I’m sure that there is something that they’re trying to hide.” Later she added: “A little scandal, maybe.”


    “The conversation then turned to the foreign secretary, Boris Johnson. Strizzolo said he was solid on Israel. Masot agreed, adding that Johnson just did not care. “You know he is an idiot …” Masot said.



    Next day Ewan Macaskell and Cobain were more interesting. 



    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jan/08/israeli-diplomat-shai-masot-plotted-against-mps-set-up-political-groups-labour


    This article quoted opinions such as Labour party member are now frightened to whisper.


    “ Sir William Patey, a former British ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Afghanistan and Sudan, said: “The idea that he would be operating on his own I find fanciful. We know there is a lobby in this country that seeks to portray in the best possible light and seeks to isolate and denigrate critics of Israeli policy.”

    “A senior Conservative said: “No MP who has taken an active interest in the affairs of the Middle East, not least the central issue of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, will be unaware of the strength of the Israeli lobby. Like Israel itself they are powerful and effective and sail pretty close to the line of what is normally acceptable.”


    “The former [Cameron] minister said there needed to be a full inquiry into the Israeli embassy’s links with CFI and LFI, and that while political parties should welcome funding from the UK’s Jewish community, they should not accept any engagement linked to Israel until it ceases new developments on Palestinian land.

    “This opaque funding and underhand conduct is a national disgrace and humiliation and must be stamped out,” he wrote.”


    So far so good. The Guardian article covers episodes of the Al Jazeera videos that lead up to the September Labour conference. But as far as I can see, please correct me if I am wrong, not the conference episode itself. Iain Cobain is a very good reporter. I am surprised that he did not mention Joan Ryan in his copy. The Chairperson of LFI must have believed the undercover reporter was one of her own members trying to set up a Young Labour Friends of Israel. On the face of it it looks as if she is indulging “opaque funding and underhand conduct”. Allowed by the Guardian reticence to ignore this episode shadow Foreign SecretaryEmily Thornberry could thus protest to the Israeli embassy for its presumption in interfering with important politicians. She could do no less. She did not have to protest to her own ChairpersonJoan Ryan about her conduct in letting the Israel Embassy try to interfere with the minds of Labour Party minors.

    Where the the Guardian was silent, the the Electronic Intifada reported

    Electronic Intifada 7 Jan 2017:

    “The video also shows Masot telling Labour Friends of Israel chair Joan Ryan that he had “more than 1 million pounds” approved in Israeli government funding to bring UK lawmakers on junkets to Israel.”

    It is in here. [Cannot find a separate clip]
    https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/01/lobby-episode-2-training-session-170112085805744.html


    As far as I have found, the Guardian did not break silence even when it would have been timely to do so, when the Pete Willsman story broke in 2019.


    See:

    https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2019/06/the-incredible-disappearance-of-shai-masot/





    SOTTO VOCE.

    Sometimes the Guardian puts a large dose of Witchhunters’ Brew in pages everyone reads and then – sometimes – a small dose of antidote in the letters column.

    https://twitter.com/medialens/status/1113730068096987137



    Or sometimes not. In March a report gave fee rein to Hodge in a demented pursuit of Chris Williamson, calling for mass expulsions and closures of those who supported him. If the Morning Star is correct. Viner refused to print a letter from 200 Jewish women of the wrong sort.

    https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/jewish-women-ask-complaints-guardian-over-refusal-publish-anti-semitism-letter


    Viner’s excuse was truly comic. It was that on 21 February the Guardian had had already printed a pro-Corbyn letter from 200 Jewish Labour members and supporters, including many brilliant names, in support of Corbyn. So the the quota for Jews of the wrong sort had already been used up. But on 25 February the Guardian had already nullified that letter with 561 signatures from Jews of the right sort, apparently drawn from the “vast majority’ of the UK Jewish community. Our list is bigger than yours. An inspection of these names will confirm something it would be racist to deny: you don’t have to be brilliant to be Jewish:


    https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/feb/25/labour-is-no-longer-a-force-for-good-in-promoting-anti-racism


    Another large dose of stewed barrel scrapings came from Jonathan Freedland when it was unearthed that Corbyn once wrote a preface to Hobson’s 1902 classic 400 page “tome” on imperialism, failing to notice and rebuke anti-semitic remarks. Not a bad preface either, admitted Michael White, the Guardian’s resident wit. By calling it a “tome” Corbyn tacitly confessed he had not read every word of it. Nobody has.

    Freedland, 1May:

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/may/01/jeremy-corbyn-blind-antisemitism-hobson

    A day later.:
    Sassoon, 2 May:

    https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/may/02/jeremy-corbyn-hobsons-imperialism-and-antisemitism

    Many imbibed the poison, few read the letter, although Sassoon’s crashing intellectual superiority must have had effect.


    --------Recently [get chapter verse]Viner stood complicitly mute when Tory Jeremy Hunt monstrously declared that Jeremy Corbyn had opened the doors to Auschwitz. One decently indignant noise from the Guardian would have lit up the silences of other media barons. But “Dog does not eat dog” was an old Fleet Street adage.


    Only the Social Media underworld gave the story its due:


    https://twitter.com/medialens/status/1146318671691821056

    Katherine at editorial meetings is fortified by the presence her allies and underlings. But rather than be alone with an argument she goes into hiding:



    Steve Bell to Kathy Viner, Guardian editor, June 2018: Forgive me for suspecting that the reason that you did not get in touch was because you did not really have an argument. The cartoon is sensitive, not tasteless, not disrespectful, and certainly contains no anti-Semitic tropes.


    https://prruk.org/the-guardian-censors-cartoon-in-memory-of-razan-al-najjar-cartoonist-steve-bell-responds/


    That episode must have taught Bell that the hunt for witches as a hunt for tropes. But disbelief in witches is itself the sure mark of a witch, and his witchunting cartoon has only confirmed it.

    “Steve Bell just doesn’t get it”, John Harris said next day in the canteen queue to George Monbiot. (There must be a secret recording somewhere). George raised despairing eyes to the Heavens, being a man who can spot a trope anywhere. “And that just proves he is part of the problem” interjected Billy Bragg. All three are good men doing good work for the Labour Party. “And there is time for Steve to show contrition” added conciliatory Owen Jones. “I shall not say a word against him. I shall maintain a bold silence in his defence”

    gb

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