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The D-Notice: A British Way of Censoring the Press

thedissenter.org

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Re: The D-Notice: A British Way of Censoring the Press

#51
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It says the Steele dossier is largely discredited - I wasn't aware of any discrediting, let alone total. I don't know why the author thought this spin was necessary for the article. This was a political football during the last US election, since then it's been more thoroughly investigated and the majority of the content has either been proven false, or has yet to be verified as true. There was some truthful inform…

> it was used as the basis of starting Congressional investigations This is false and a right-wing talking point. Papadopoulos's bragging launched the investigation.

The whole thing was completely fucking wild. Papa was ‘caught’ bragging to an Australian diplomat that was politically connected. The diplomat could have just been making the whole thing up because he either received instruction from Australian security services or because the diplomat in question has a bunch of strong incentives to ingratiate himself to the US permanent government. Have a read of Papa’s book to get an alternative view of what happened. In most realities he is going to deny the encounter so we should be suspicious of his narrative but there was a lot of suspect stuff going on.

After seeing how the US intelligence people acted with the Hunter Biden story I have zero faith they wouldn’t monkey around. To be fair I think a lot of the shade that was thrown on the story was from ex-intelligence people and not current US government employees. However, this whole thing looks like a vast conspiracy. You have ex-intelligence people, some who have plum media jobs signing up to this statement that seems to claim that Hunter Biden laptop is Russian disinformation. But if you carefully review the statement it doesn’t actually make this claim. And if someone produced irrefutable proof that the laptop was genuine then all these people who signed up to this claim could claim they were still right. The actually claim was the laptop had the hallmarks of Russian misinformation. But that is not a very useful claim if you as a voter are trying to assess the probability that the laptop is genuine or not. For example it could have the hallmarks but it could still be like a 95% probability that it is genuine. Of course this claim about hallmarks is not strong enough so when it was reported in the press it was often reported as X ex-intelligence people have confirmed it is Russian disinformation. So what the hell is going on here?

Re: The D-Notice: A British Way of Censoring the Press

#52
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And only for the charge of revealing war crimes (apart from some trumped up “hacking” charges that the key witness now admitted lying about? [2]). I've read the allegations. If the allegations are true, he's guilty of hacking. It does not seem to be a case of the law being perverted past its intent. I'm sure the extradition and prosecution is politically motivated, but the problem with doing something that's square…

> I've read the allegations. If the allegations are true, he's guilty of hacking. This is kind of interesting. To me, it seems convenient to the point of being totally unbelievable that the person who leaked evidence of US war crimes, who the US has been hounding for a decade now, is also dead-to-rights guilty of a charge that justifies the extradition they've been gunning for the whole time. Not being particularly e…

I don't know if the allegations are true. I just think that they are very serious, if they are.

Fortunately, we have a process, called a trial, that can determine whether or not they are.

Re: The D-Notice: A British Way of Censoring the Press

#53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

D-Notices aren't quite as obscure as the article makes out. I've known they existed for many years, I'm not quite sure why but there's no particular reason I'd know about them. I'm not a journalist and never was. The Official Secrets Act is probably bad law, it's one of the many places where the USA has superior laws that are much better at keeping bad government in check. The various attempts to expand censorship in…

> D-Notices aren't quite as obscure as the article makes out. I think that puts it very mildly. There was a gigantic public scandal as far back as 1967 about D-notices.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (the TV show) has a character complaining about them

Re: The D-Notice: A British Way of Censoring the Press

#54
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It says the Steele dossier is largely discredited - I wasn't aware of any discrediting, let alone total. I don't know why the author thought this spin was necessary for the article. This was a political football during the last US election, since then it's been more thoroughly investigated and the majority of the content has either been proven false, or has yet to be verified as true. There was some truthful inform…

Thanks for the context - I didn't really understand you though - why do you say the actual specifics were mostly false, while also saying the Congress investigation verified some parts and couldn't verify others?

According to Bellingcat[1], Igor Danchenko who was Steeler’s primary source was probably being fed information by the GRU.

[1] https://newrepublic.com/article/161913/we-are-bellingcat-spo...

Re: The D-Notice: A British Way of Censoring the Press

#56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

D-Notices aren't quite as obscure as the article makes out. I've known they existed for many years, I'm not quite sure why but there's no particular reason I'd know about them. I'm not a journalist and never was. The Official Secrets Act is probably bad law, it's one of the many places where the USA has superior laws that are much better at keeping bad government in check. The various attempts to expand censorship in…

Yes there's a lot of looseness. Considering the history of the D-notice in wartime (1914-18 and 1938-45), when the stakes were high, it's a typical British implementation of "strong flexibility". The problem may actually be over-compliance. The days of Woodward and Bernstein have given way to journalists whose idea of ambitiously advancing their careers involves not offending anyone and running to mummy to ask permis…

Kit klarenberg the author of this sneaky article that draws readers in with somewhat reasonable start then descends into nonsense about Russian government operations like trump and skripal, works or worked for the Russian government’s self declared “information weapon” (rt)

Re: The D-Notice: A British Way of Censoring the Press

#57
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've read the allegations. If the allegations are true, he's guilty of hacking. This is kind of interesting. To me, it seems convenient to the point of being totally unbelievable that the person who leaked evidence of US war crimes, who the US has been hounding for a decade now, is also dead-to-rights guilty of a charge that justifies the extradition they've been gunning for the whole time. Not being particularly e…

I don't know if the allegations are true. I just think that they are very serious, if they are. Fortunately, we have a process, called a trial, that can determine whether or not they are.

Sometimes. I personally (personal opinion) feel he would have a hard time getting a fair trial.

Re: The D-Notice: A British Way of Censoring the Press

#58

I wanted to get behind this more but there were a few sections that had me doubting. 1. It says the UK media largely ignored the Snowden leaks due to a D-Notice - the source supplied didn't really back that up and it didn't sound right to me. Maybe someone can share examples of Snowden-leak-related stories which would have been in UK public interest but were only covered abroad? 2. It says the Steele dossier is large…

No post body was provided.

Re: The D-Notice: A British Way of Censoring the Press

#59
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It says the Steele dossier is largely discredited - I wasn't aware of any discrediting, let alone total. I don't know why the author thought this spin was necessary for the article. This was a political football during the last US election, since then it's been more thoroughly investigated and the majority of the content has either been proven false, or has yet to be verified as true. There was some truthful inform…

Thanks for the context - I didn't really understand you though - why do you say the actual specifics were mostly false, while also saying the Congress investigation verified some parts and couldn't verify others?

It is hard to take unverifiable claims seriously when the verifiable ones turn out to be false.

Re: The D-Notice: A British Way of Censoring the Press

#60
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe, but I am not including it in any of my articles, so it's not really on me to know everything about it. Another user provided an NYT link which suggested it was real , but only indicative and not necessarily factual. https://archive.ph/2fHH5

It’s a real dossier full of hearsay, lies, calumny, etc. Steele was paid to assemble it, by a lawyer working for Hillary Clinton no less, for the express purpose of smearing Trump in the hopes that something would stick.

https://archive.ph/2fHH5#selection-519.0-523.134

> Mr. Trump and his supporters have long sought to use the flaws of the dossier to discredit the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election — and the nature of numerous links between Russia and the Trump campaign — as a “hoax." But the available evidence indicates that the dossier was largely tangential to the Russia investigation. Here is a look at the facts.

> The F.B.I. launched the investigation in July 2016, and a special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, eventually took over. His March 2019 report detailed “numerous links between the Russian government and the Trump campaign” and established that “the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome, and that the campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts.”

> Beyond its narrow role in facilitating the F.B.I.’s wiretap of Mr. Page, the dossier’s publication had the broader consequence of amplifying an atmosphere of suspicion about Mr. Trump.

> Still, the dossier did not create this atmosphere of suspicion. Mr. Trump’s relationship with Russia had been a topic of significant discussion dating back to the campaign, including before the first report that Russia had hacked Democrats and before Mr. Steele drafted his reports and gave some to reporters.

> Among the reasons: Mr. Trump had said flattering things about Russian President Vladimir V. Putin, kept bringing on advisers with ties to Russia, had financial ties to Russia, publicly encouraged Russia to hack Mrs. Clinton, and at his nominating convention, the party dropped a plank that called for arming Ukraine against Russian-backed rebels. In March 2017, the F.B.I. publicly acknowledged that it was investigating links between Russia and Trump campaign associates.

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