JOHN PILGER ATTACKS THE GUARDIAN BUT STILL TRUSTS IT

I have respect for John Pilger. His documentary The War on Democracy is a classic and should be shown in schools across the world.

However, there are times when I suspect (but only slightly) that he might be a bit of a gatekeeper. And in a recent article he shows this by attacking The Guardian but then defending it.

Guardian played a critical role in conditioning readers to accept a new and dangerous cold war http://t.co/duODeXMvYu pic.twitter.com/Kts4ZRsOta

— Robin Monotti (@robinmonotti) February 2, 2015

One of the attacks is this over Iraq:

In 2003, I filmed an interview in Washington with Charles Lewis, the distinguished American investigative journalist. We discussed the invasion of Iraq a few months earlier. I asked him, "What if the freest media in the world had seriously challenged George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld and investigated their claims, instead of channeling what turned out to be crude propaganda?"

He replied that if we journalists had done our job "there is a very, very good chance we would have not gone to war in Iraq."

That's a shocking statement, and one supported by other famous journalists to whom I put the same question. Dan Rather, formerly of CBS, gave me the same answer. David Rose of the Observer and senior journalists and producers in the BBC, who wished to remain anonymous, gave me the same answer.

Another is this over Ukraine:

The most effective propaganda is found not in the Sun or on Fox News - but beneath a liberal halo. When the New York Times published claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, its fake evidence was believed, because it wasn't Fox News; it was the New York Times.

The same is true of the Washington Post and the Guardian, both of which have played a critical role in conditioning their readers to accept a new and dangerous cold war. All three liberal newspapers have misrepresented events in Ukraine as a malign act by Russia - when, in fact, the fascist led coup in Ukraine was the work of the United States, aided by Germany and Nato.

So Pilger is accusing newspapers like The Washington Post and The Guardian of bending over to the establishment and not questioning their pro-war propaganda and publishing it with little or no examination, thus sending nations to war.

But what does Pilger say about Julian Assange and Ed Snowden, who rose to fame through...(drum roll)...The Guardian and The Washington Post?

None of this is necessary today. I doubt that anyone paid the Washington Post and many other media outlets to accuse Edward Snowden of aiding terrorism. I doubt that anyone pays those who routinely smear Julian Assange - though other rewards can be plentiful.

It's clear to me that the main reason Assange has attracted such venom, spite and jealously is that WikiLeaks tore down the facade of a corrupt political elite held aloft by journalists. In heralding an extraordinary era of disclosure, Assange made enemies by illuminating and shaming the media's gatekeepers, not least on the newspaper that published and appropriated his great scoop. He became not only a target, but a golden goose.

Lucrative book and Hollywood movie deals were struck and media careers launched or kick-started on the back of WikiLeaks and its founder. People have made big money, while WikiLeaks has struggled to survive.

None of this was mentioned in Stockholm on 1 December when the editor of the Guardian, Alan Rusbridger, shared with Edward Snowden the Right Livelihood Award, known as the alternative Nobel Peace Prize. What was shocking about this event was that Assange and WikiLeaks were airbrushed. They didn't exist. They were unpeople. No one spoke up for the man who pioneered digital whistleblowing and handed the Guardian one of the greatest scoops in history. Moreover, it was Assange and his WikiLeaks team who effectively - and brilliantly - rescued Edward Snowden in Hong Kong and sped him to safety. Not a word.

It was The Washington Post and The Guardian who brought us the war files on Afghanistan and Iraq. Tens if not hundreds of thousands of files of information were dumped onto Wikileaks. But they were dumped anonymously, i.e. they could have been dumped by a genuine whistleblower, or dumped by someone in Langley. I suspect the latter because the vast majority was information against enemies of the establishment while there was very little against the USA or UK.

The same goes for Ed Snowden. The Guardian and The Washington Post published The Snowden Revelations on their front pages for weeks if not months. And those front page stories were reported by the majority of the other NATO media. So by August 2013 everybody knew they were being spied on.

So why would The Guardian and The Washington Post send us to war but also tell us that we were being spied on by our own intelligence agencies?

I would suggest it is because virtually every media outlet in the NATOsphere is owned and/or controlled by NATO.

Here is what Snowden's pal Glenn Greenwald said about a year ago:

A human being who lives in a world where he thinks he is always being watched is a human being who makes choices not as a free individual but as someone who is trying to conform to what is expected and demanded of them. And you lose a huge part of your individual freedom when you lose your private realm. Politically that is why tyranny loves surveillance, because it breeds conformity. It means people will only do that which they want other people to know they’re doing — in other words, nothing that is deviant or dissenting or disruptive. It breeds orthodoxy.

[source : “Surveillance breeds conformity”: Salon’s Glenn Greenwald interview, Salon, http://www.salon.com/2014/01/03/the_salon_glenn_greenwald_interview_surveillance_breeds_conformity/, 3rd January 2014]

So now we all know that we are being spied on. Did the public rise up, march on the streets of London, Taunton, Lincoln, Preston and Sunderland? Er no.

So why would Pilger think the major newspapers would be serving the agenda over war but not over total surveillance, particularly now that the spying agencies have two boogeymen to blame for wanting more spying powers and technology:
1. British Jihadis returning from Syria and Iraq after unwittingly serving British foreign policy in ousting Assad;
2. Ed Snowden for revealing how the state spies on us all.

It is this kind of article from Pilger that just, I don't know, bothers me a bit.

Why would the newspapers send our boys off to die in foreign fields but also tell us that we are being spied upon?

I think that quote from Greenwald goes some way:

A human being who lives in a world where he thinks he is always being watched is a human being who makes choices not as a free individual but as someone who is trying to conform to what is expected and demanded of them. And you lose a huge part of your individual freedom when you lose your private realm. Politically that is why tyranny loves surveillance, because it breeds conformity. It means people will only do that which they want other people to know they’re doing — in other words, nothing that is deviant or dissenting or disruptive. It breeds orthodoxy.