#drilling contractor in london

[techtired]

Step-by-Step Guide to Conducting a Fire Risk Assessment for Your Business

Conducting a fire risk assessment in London is crucial for every business to ensure the safety of employees, customers, and property. Fires can cause significant damage, not only to physical assets but also to a company's reputation and financial stability. Following a structured approach to fire risk assessment, businesses can identify potential hazards and take preventive measures to reduce the fire risk. This guide will walk you through the essential steps to conduct a thorough fire risk assessment. Understanding the Importance of Fire Risk Assessment Before diving into the steps, it’s important to understand why a fire risk assessment is necessary. Fire safety regulations in many regions require businesses to conduct regular inspections to comply with the law. More importantly, a fire risk assessment helps to protect lives and assets. It identifies potential fire hazards and evaluates the effectiveness of existing fire safety measures. By conducting a thorough evaluation, businesses can take appropriate actions to minimize the fire risk, ensuring a safer environment for everyone involved. Step 1: Identify Fire Hazards The first step in conducting a fire risk assessment is identifying potential workplace fire hazards. Fire hazards can cause a fire to start, such as flammable materials, faulty electrical equipment, or heat sources. Walk through your business premises and make a note of anything that could potentially ignite a fire. Pay special attention to storage areas, electrical systems, and places with high temperatures or open flames. Understanding where the fire hazards are located is crucial for the next steps in the assessment process. Step 2: Identify People at Risk Once you have identified the fire hazards, the next step is determining who might be at risk if a fire occurs. This includes employees, customers, contractors, and anyone else on the premises. Consider people with specific needs, such as those with disabilities, elderly individuals, or anyone who might have difficulty evacuating the building quickly. It’s essential to think about how different areas of your business might affect different groups of people during an emergency. Understanding who is at risk will help you develop an effective evacuation plan and take necessary precautions. Step 3: Evaluate, Remove, and Reduce Risks After identifying the hazards and people at risk, the next step is to evaluate the level of risk and take action to reduce or remove it. Assess the likelihood of each hazard causing a fire and its potential impact. For high-risk areas, consider whether the hazard can be removed entirely. For example, you could replace flammable materials with safer alternatives or ensure that electrical equipment is regularly maintained to prevent faults. Where hazards cannot be eliminated, focus on reducing the risk by implementing fire safety measures, such as installing fire alarms, sprinklers, or fire-resistant materials. The goal is to make the workplace as safe as possible by mitigating the identified risks. Step 4: Record Findings and Implement an Emergency Plan Recording your findings is a critical part of the fire risk assessment process. Document the hazards you’ve identified, the people at risk, and the measures you’ve taken to reduce or remove risks. This record should also include an emergency plan outlining the actions to be taken during a fire. The emergency plan should detail evacuation routes, assembly points, and the responsibilities of designated fire wardens. It’s essential that this plan is communicated clearly to all employees and that regular fire drills are conducted to ensure everyone knows what to do in an emergency. Keeping a record of your fire risk assessment helps ensure compliance with fire safety regulations and provides a reference for future evaluations. Step 5: Review and Update the Fire Risk Assessment Regularly Fire risk assessment is not a one-time task. Businesses must regularly review and update their assessments to account for changes in the workplace, such as new equipment, renovations, or changes in staff. Regular reviews ensure that fire safety measures remain effective and that any new risks are identified and addressed promptly. Reviewing your fire risk assessment at least once a year or whenever significant changes occur in the business is recommended. Staying proactive in updating your fire risk assessment helps maintain a safe work environment and ensures ongoing compliance with fire safety regulations. Step 6: Ensure Employee Training and Awareness A critical component of fire safety is ensuring that all employees know fire risks and how to respond in the event of a fire. This involves regular training sessions where employees learn about the fire hazards present in the workplace, how to use fire safety equipment, and what to do during an evacuation. Fire safety training should be ongoing, with refreshers conducted regularly to keep the information fresh in everyone’s minds. Employees should also be encouraged to report any potential fire hazards they notice so that they can be addressed promptly. Step 7: Maintain Fire Safety Equipment Proper maintenance of fire safety equipment is essential to ensure that it functions correctly in an emergency. This includes regular checks and servicing of fire alarms, extinguishers, sprinklers, and emergency lighting. Ensure that fire exits are marked and free from obstructions. It’s also important to have a routine to ensure all fire safety equipment is up to date and in working order. Maintaining your fire safety equipment ensures that your business is prepared to respond effectively during a fire. Step 8: Conduct Regular Fire Drills Fire drills are an essential part of fire safety preparation. Conducting regular fire drills helps to ensure that all employees know the evacuation procedures and can act quickly in the event of a fire. These drills should simulate different scenarios, such as blocked exits or fires in other building parts, to prepare everyone for various possibilities. After each drill, it’s important to review the process to identify any areas for improvement. Regular fire drills reinforce fire safety's importance and help create a culture of preparedness within the workplace. Conclusion Conducting a fire risk assessment is vital to ensuring the safety of your business, employees, and customers. Following a structured approach, you can identify potential fire hazards, assess the risks, and take appropriate measures to reduce or eliminate them. Regular reviews and updates, along with employee training and regular fire drills, help maintain a high fire safety awareness and preparedness level. Investing time and effort into conducting a thorough fire risk assessment helps comply with legal requirements and provides peace of mind that your business is well-protected against the threat of fire. For a comprehensive review, you might consider reaching out to experts like London Property Inspections, who offer tailored services to ensure your safety measures are up to standard; if you want to stay updated with posts like this, please follow us on TECH TIRED. Read the full article

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"THE NEW AND THE OLD," Winnipeg Tribune. March 14, 1913. Page 1. ---- CAPT. JOHN C. PONSFORD St. Thomas, who becomes warden of Stony Mountain penitentiary

LT.COL. A. G. IRVINE Former warden of Stony Mountain, who goes to Kingston penitentiary as warden. ///

"NEW WARDEN OF PENITENTIARY AT STONY MOUNTAIN," Winnipeg Tribune. March 14, 1913. Page 3. --- Captain John C. Ponsford Once Owned a Baseball Team in Ontario City. ---- Speaking of Captain John C. Ponsford, recently appointed to succeed Col. Irvine as warden of the Stony Mountain penitentiary, the St. Thomas Times in a recent issue says:

Captain Ponsford has been prominently identified with the business and military life of St. Thomas and Elgin county for a great many years. He was born in St. Thomas on Dec. 2, 183, being a son of the late George Ponsford, and was until the time of his appointment to the position of city tax collector, in 1894, identified with the firm of Ponsford Bros., contractors. He continued as tax collector until Sept. 1. 1306, resigning to go to El Paso, Texas, where until last year he was engaged in the building and real estate business with his brother, H. T.. Ponsford. In all his industrial enterprises Capt. Ponsford was eminently successful, and as tax collector he was one of the most efficient officials and set a record of never having had occasion to call on the law to assist him in enforcing the collection of tax- ea from backward ratepayers.

Was a Militiaman. The captain was identified with the 25th Eigin infantry for over twelve years. He entered the ranks as a private in the early eighties and rapidly advanced to a captaincy, being placed in charge of No. 6 company, located at St. Thomas. To quality for this rank he took a course at the Military school in London, Ont. Military men are unanimous in saying that Capt. Ponsford was one of the best disciplinarians and drill instructors the 25th ever had.

Capt. Ponsford has also taken keen interest in sporting affairs, specially baseball. He is was who was responsible for the formation of the Western Ontario Baseball league, an organization which was conducted successfully for a number of years. He was president of the league, and also was the sole owner and manager of the St. Thomas team, which succeeded in winning the championship, and the large Bailey cup in 1904. The league was not reorganized in 1904, but the St. Thomas team was continued that year as a semi-pro. organization, with Captain Ponsford at the head.

[ailtrahq]

Schlumberger NV is also popularly known as SLB and Schlumberger Limited. It is an oilfield services company. It is one of the largest offshore drilling and offshore contractor companies by revenue. Schlumberger is incorporated in the Netherlands, Antilles. The company’s stock trades in various trading exchanges such as the New York Stock Exchange, the London Stock Exchange, and the SIX Swiss Exchange. In 2022, the company was ranked 349th largest company in the world among the Forbes Global 2000. The dividend yield by Schlumberger for the year 2022 is 1.22% and the company has an EPS of 2.77 USD which means that the SLB makes $2.77 on each share. The SLB share follows a beta of 1.17 which means that Schlumberger’s stock relatively moves equal to or higher than the whole market and its returns may vary with the same frequency. The current ROE of the Schlumberger NV is 21.64 following a neutral ROA of 8.79% and the current PE ratio of the company is 20.29. The following ratios represent that the company is at a strong position and the investors are ready to pay higher prices for the stock. Also, the current market cap of the company is $78.734B trading with an average volume of 9.18M followed by the last 3 months. Schlumberger N.V. Stock Performance Analysis Following the previous year, Schlumberger has shown a good advance in the revenue of the company resulting in $28.18B. The net income of the company has also advanced from $1.88B in the year 2021 to $3.44B in the year ending 2022. SLB has a profit margin of 12.21% for the same year. Schlumberger also has managed to reduce its debt over the years. It has reported a debt of $11.34B in Q2 2023 following a decline of -12.4% year-on-year. Price Targets for SLB Stock Source: Tradingview Based upon Tradingview’s experts, 30 analysts have given a stock rating of buy for SLB stock. This is followed up with reliable fundamentals and the meeting estimates of revenue and EPS of the company. Experts are aiming for a maximum target of $77.00 in SLB share and the minimum expected target is $62.00. SLB Stock Technical Analysis Source : SLB: 1W: NYSE The SLB share price has been trading in an uptrend for a long time. This is because the SLB stock is following a rising wedge pattern on the weekly timeframe. Currently, the share is making bearish candlesticks in the same timeframe witnessing the presence of sellers.  As the share price of the stock was consistently advancing to a higher level, the EMAs were trading in a golden cross. SLB stock price is also currently trading above the 50-day and the 200-day EMA. The RSI for the SLB share is following a bullish cycle. It is currently trading above the 50 level. Following the bullish cycle, the RSI has declined below the 14-day SMA. This indicates mild bearishness in the stock price. Conclusion Schlumberger N.V. is a relaible company. It has stable finances and also gives dividends to its shareholders. Despite good fundamentals, the company’s stock price is trading negatively. It is following bearish price action making declining candlesticks. The RSI and the EMA are still indicating bullishness. As the SLB share price is trading inside a rising wedge pattern, it can decline up to the lower band of the channel. If the stock price further breaks below the channel pattern, SLB can witness further decline or it may continue to advance again. Technical Levels Support levels- $30.00 and $44.00 Resistance levels- $62.00 and $75.00 The information provided in this article, including the views and opinions expressed by the author or any individuals mentioned, is intended for informational purposes only. It is important to note that the article does not provide financial or investment advice. Investing or trading in cryptocurrency assets carries inherent risks and can result in financial loss.

[grantgoddard]

One small step for radio, one giant leap for black music radio in London : 1990 : KISS 100 FM launch day

The final few days before KISS FM’s official launch were a blur of frenetic activity and outright panic. It was only at this late date that construction of the three studios was completed by the contractors. Now, at last, they were ready for the engineers from the Independent Broadcasting Authority [IBA] to test and inspect. Much to my relief, their report required only a few minor alterations to the air conditioning system, after which the IBA issued KISS FM with a certificate of technical competence. I affixed it to my office wall, alongside the poster of Betty Boo [I had pinned as my memento of DJ Tim Westwood’s ‘reason’ for reneging last-minute on his scheduled daily daytime show].

With only days to go, I held two long, evening meetings with all the part-time DJs to explain what they could and could not do legally on-air. As former pirate DJs, they were unfamiliar with the conventions of libel, slander and other legal niceties which legitimate radio DJs have to learn. It was important for me to emphasise how essential it was for KISS FM to protect itself against prosecution or rebuke by the commercial radio regulator, the IBA. I went through their employment contracts, page by page, explaining what the jargon meant and what implications the clauses had for their radio shows. Also, I had to stress the importance of playing the right advertisements at the right time. This was a contractual requirement that had been relatively relaxed on pirate stations.

The night before the station’s launch, I was still busy putting the finishing touches to the inside of the studio until the early hours of the morning. Although two on-air studios had been built, there was only time to bring one of them up to scratch with all the accessories required for live broadcasts. With only hours to go, the engineers and I were frantically drilling holes in the studio walls to hang the storage racks for audio cartridges used to play advertisements, as well as wiring up the studio lights on the ceiling. I handwrote several large posters in thick felt pen to remind the presenters of the station’s address, its phone number for requests, and what to say about the station’s launch. Then, I had to spend several hours making labels with a Dymo and sticking them onto each piece of equipment in the studio for the presenters to know precisely which button performed which task. Finally, when everything was ready, I drove home and collapsed into bed.

The next morning, Saturday 1 September 1990, was the biggest day of our lives. Some weeks earlier, [managing director] Gordon McNamee had hung a handwritten sign on his office wall that read “X DAYS TO GO” with the number being changed daily. That number was now down to zero and the sign had finally become redundant. The day had arrived at last, whether we were ready for it or not. McNamee and I met at the station in the morning and locked ourselves away inside the production studio. McNamee wanted to perform a countdown to the station’s launch at midday but, in order to ensure that it went perfectly smoothly, he wanted to pre-record it. I set the timer on my digital wristwatch to five minutes and recorded McNamee’s voice, counting down at one-minute intervals from five minutes to one minute, and then counting down the seconds during the final minute until the alarm sounded. It took two attempts to get it right.

After that, we moved to the main on-air studio, taking the tape of the countdown with us. We had decided not to allow anyone other than essential station personnel into the studio for the launch. It was not a big enough room to comfortably accommodate more than a few people, and the presence of journalists would only have made us even more nervous. McNamee had arranged for Mentorn Films, which was making the television documentary about the station, to erect a tripod camera in the corner of the studio to record the whole event. A video link had also been booked to relay the picture live to a large screen in Dingwalls nightclub, where the official KISS FM launch party was being held that day.

With all the tension that surrounded that historic day, we quickly forgot that we were being watched by a video camera from the corner of the room. I spooled McNamee’s countdown recording onto a tape machine and started it at precisely five minutes to midday. McNamee’s countdown was now automatically being superimposed over the music from the test transmission VHS cassette that had been playing continuously for the last ten days. Over the beats of the Kid Frost hip hop track ‘La Raza,’ McNamee’s voice coolly counted down the minutes. At the one-minute point, McNamee counted “59, 58, 57, 56….” and I slowly faded out the music to increase the suspense of the moment. Accompanied by the pre-recorded sound of my digital watch alarm, McNamee said the magic words “twelve o’clock.”

I turned up the microphone in the studio for McNamee to make KISS FM’s live opening speech:

“This is Gordon Mac. There are no words to express the way I feel at this moment. So, with your permission, I’d just like to get something out of my system. Altogether – we’re on air – hooray!”

Everyone in the studio joined in a loud cheer, before McNamee continued:

“Welcome, London. Do you realise it’s taken us fifty-nine months, four hundred and sixty-five thousand, seven hundred and twenty working hours, plus three and a half million pounds, as well as all of your support over the last five years, to reach this moment? As from today, London and everywhere around the M25, within and without, will have their own twenty-four-hour dance music radio station. I’m talking to you from our new studios in KISS House, which is completely different from the dodgy old studios we used to have in the past [laughter in the studio]. The odds were against us. None of the establishment fancied our chances but, with the force of public opinion and our determination, the authorities had to sit up and listen and take notice. Today, I’m being helped by Rufaro Hove, the winner of ‘The Evening Standard’ KISS 100 FM competition. Rufaro was chosen from thousands of people who entered and she will press the button for the first record. But before that, the first jingle.”

McNamee pushed the cartridge button to play a lo-fi jingle from KISS FM’s pirate days. The sound of a telephone answering machine tone was followed by McNamee’s personal assistant, Rosee Laurence, saying:

“It’s me again. I forgot to say – hooray, we’re on. Bye-bye.”

The jingle ended with the sound of a phone being put down. McNamee continued:

“There we go, Rufaro, now you can press the first one. Go!”

The first record played on the new KISS FM was the reggae song ‘Pirates’ Anthem’ by Home T, Cocoa Tea & Shabba Ranks. The song was a tribute to London’s pirate radio stations. The rallying call of the chorus was:

“Them a call us pirates

Them a call us illegal broadcasters

Just because we play what the people want

DTI tries [to] stop us, but they can’t"

One of the song’s verses narrated the story of pirate radio in the UK: "Down in England we’ve got lots of radio stations

Playing the peoples’ music night and day

Reggae, calypso, hip hop or disco

The latest sound today is what we play……..

They’re passing laws. They’re planning legislation

Trying their best to keep the music down

DTI, why don’t you leave us alone?

We only play the music others want”

These lyrics were the perfect choice for the station’s first record. KISS FM’s pirate history may have been behind it now, but the station had proven that pirate broadcasting had been necessary to open up the British airwaves to new musical sounds and fresh ideas for the 1990s. ‘Pirates’ Anthem’ was followed by the personal choice of the Evening Standard competition winner, ‘Facts of Life’ by Danny Madden. In the studio, the atmosphere was electric. It was difficult to believe that the few of us crowded into that little room were making broadcasting history. This was the creation of the dream that some of us thought we might never witness – a legal black music radio station in London, at last. It was difficult to believe we were really on the air.

Next, McNamee thanked “all the original disc jockeys, all the backers, all the new staff and last, but not by any means least, all of the listeners that have supported us over the five years.”

He introduced the record that he had adopted as KISS FM’s theme tune – ‘Our Day Will Come’ by Fontella Bass. The station’s first advertisement followed, booked by the Rhythm King record label to publicise its latest releases. Soon, McNamee’s stint as the station’s first DJ came to an end and his place was taken by Norman Jay, whose croaky voice betrayed the emotion of the day. Jay told listeners over his instrumental ‘Windy City’ theme tune:

“After nearly two very long years, all the good times, all the bad times we shared on radio … Thanks to all of you. Without your help, this day could not have been possible. On a cold and wet October day in 1985, KISS FM was born. Gordon Mac, George Power and a long-time friend of mine, Tosca, got together to put together a station which meant so much to so many. And thanks to those guys, Norman Jay is now on-air.”

Once Jay was on the air, McNamee said farewell to the rest of us in the studio and left to attend the station’s official launch party at Dingwalls. We stayed in the studio, still thrilled to be part of the celebration of that historic moment and enjoying the music that Jay played. Throughout the rest of the weekend, each KISS FM DJ presented their first show on the newly legal station. Many of them reminisced about the pirate days of KISS FM and played music from that era, when they had last graced the airwaves of London. To the majority of the station’s audience, who might never have heard of KISS FM until now, the weekend’s broadcasts must have sounded rather indulgent. Far from most of the records played that weekend reflecting the cutting edge of new dance music that the new KISS FM had promised, the songs mostly reeked of nostalgia and the station’s former glory days as a pirate station. This brief moment of indulgence was a healing process that was necessary for the station’s staff.

I remained in the studio the rest of the day, helping the DJs to grapple with the unfamiliar equipment and showing them the new systems with which they had to contend. Despite the intensive training they had been given in the last ten days, it had been twenty months since any of them had spoken a word on the radio, let alone presented a professional show. Nearly all the DJs looked incredibly nervous, and several seemed gripped with terror at the prospect of having to present a show from a fully equipped radio studio for the first time in their lives. I stayed there until the early hours of Sunday morning, with only an occasional break for a takeaway pizza.

Everybody involved in KISS FM, apart from the small group of us left in the studio – the DJ on the air, me, [head of talks] Lyn Champion and programme assistants Colin Faver and Hannah Brack – were at Dingwalls, enjoying the party celebrations. It felt strange, during the station’s first day on-air, that the rest of the huge KISS FM building was entirely empty. In the evening, the only lights visible from outside were in the tiny studio on the first floor. By two o’clock in the morning, I was absolutely exhausted. It had been an incredibly exciting day and everything had run much more smoothly than I had expected. I drove home, having left Champion and Brack to ‘babysit’ the studio overnight to ensure that the rest of the presenters could cope with the equipment.

[Excerpt from ‘KISS FM: From Radical Radio To Big Business: The Inside Story Of A London Pirate Radio Station’s Path To Success’ by Grant Goddard, Radio Books, 2011, 528 pages]

[carollasmith-blog]

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[bcdiamonddrilling]

Diamond Drilling Contractor | Concrete Cutting Companies in London

[earthstellar]

Transformers Analysis: Folklore and Folk Magic in the Mines of Kaon

thinking about Miner Megatron again, as always. here we goooo 

So I've been doing some folk magic, as I usually do, and it got me thinking:

Surely, the lower class/caste bots wouldn’t feel welcomed into the more organised Cybertronian temples etc., or might even be outright banned from joining in shared spiritual spaces or rituals. 

So it’s time to teach y’all some working class magic history and how we can apply that to Cybertronian spirituality: 

Working Class History: Casting Spells on the Job (Just Call it Prayer so the Boss Doesn't Find Out)

Here's a quick history of rural Appalachian folk magic, for some context:

1) The Christian Bible has been used for spellcasting all up and down the rural East Coast in the USA from day one of colonisation.

In Pennsylvania you have Hexenmeisters and the Pennsylvania Dutch practices, for a well-documented example.

2) The working class has done spellcasting with the Bible from the very first day shitty bosses started

This is for several reasons, but primarily because Bibles were common and cheap, you didn't have to know how to read in order to follow along with or change the lyrics of popular hymns and prayers to fit your own needs, and it was very easy to sneak what is essentially localised witchcraft under the radar when it just looks like you're reading the Bible to everyone else.

Catholic materials were used a lot for this, because they were often provided for free by any local churches, and a lot of working class people in Appalachia were Italian (Roman Catholic) or Eastern European (Eastern Orthodox Catholic), which meant there was no shortage of all sorts of votive candles and the like to utilise for what we would now identify as spellcasting.

It's important to note that it wasn't called spellcasting outright by anybody; Sometimes it was called "hexing" or "sweet talking", among other terms, but if you called it spellcasting it was heavily frowned upon.

A lot of people were uncomfortable (and are still uncomfortable) with verbalising it or identifying it as such due to stigma from the more mainstream religious communities or their own religious backgrounds, and of course, historically if the boss found out that all the workers hated their jobs so much they were doing fucking witchcraft about it, it would not have ended well for the workers.

So, stealth it is. And that's why there are so many specific folk practices in a lot of historically working class rural regions/communities-- Not just in Appalachia, but similar things happen in similar communities around the world.

What does this have to do with Megatron?

Everything we know about the lower classes on Cybertron, the lower caste members, and the mines/industrial regions in Tarn and Kaon suggest that a similar folklore likely existed within these working communities.

And any local folk practices likely developed for the exact same reasons that this type of folk practice developed in the real world:

Workers are fucking miserable, "mainstream" religion isn't satisfying their spiritual/emotional/social/material needs or concerns, and close-knit people in small communities spending most of their time together naturally start to sort of do their own thing based on their collective situation.

People get desperate, there's nowhere to turn and nothing to do, so spirituality becomes a lifeline in that it builds solidarity and creates a more appropriate sort of support system.

For example: If we aren't allowed time off work to mourn our friend who was killed by heavy machinery, and we aren't allowed any time to process that or deal with it or take care of each other, then we will invent a ritual that allows us to grieve on the job.

This was, and still is, a common thing.

Which brings us to...

St. Barbara and the Mines + Solus Prime

St. Barbara's backstory can be summarised, roughly, as such (based on the version of this story that I know; keep in mind the details can vary):

She was kept isolated from others by her father, who became furious that she refused an arranged marriage. When she fled, he chased her; She ran into two people working in a field, the first who helped her, and the second who gave her path away to her father.

She was captured, and brought to a prominent local figure (the title varies based on different versions of this story), who had her tortured for escaping and disobeying her father.

However, when imprisoned, they tried to kill her again and again, and every morning she was healed. Fire intended to be used to burn her would cool the second it got near her skin, and daggers used to cut her would go dull when brought near her.

Snakes thrown into her room intended to bite her would then die the instant they went to approach her, and ropes intended to be used to bind and choke her would spontaneously fray and snap before they could be tied.

Eventually, she was condemned to beheading, and a special sword was used to cut her head off, which finally killed her.

Her father is the one who beheaded her, and as divine punishment, he was hit by lightning-- A single bolt that lasted so long that his entire body went up into flames, and his ashes disappeared.

Her gravesite became a place of veneration, where people prayed for protection and safety.

She became known as the patron saint of all people with dangerous jobs or jobs where the bosses don't care about the worker's wellbeing or safety, for obvious reasons: Nothing but the hands of her own father could ever harm her.  

(The imagery of St. Barbara being slain only by a special sword is very reminiscent of Solus Prime being slain only by a special sword...)

Workers, especially those with particularly dangerous or shitty jobs but also just anyone working class in general, can interpret this story in several ways which can make it additionally relatable:

Her father = A controlling and aggressive boss who abuses or neglects their workers to death.

The field workers = A pro-union worker (a helper) and an anti-union worker or scab (a betrayer).

So you can see how St. Barbara became immediately adopted as a common worker's saint, and was used in a lot of regional working class folk magic practices (where such folk magic developed within local working communities).

And this is still going strong as a tradition; Crossrail tunnel borers in London consecrated the drilling site in the name of St. Barbara in 2013:

"Several hundred contractors and senior management attended the St Barbara's Day ceremony at the Thames Tunnel (pictured) which will link Plumstead and North Woolwich when completed. The site was so large, that sound engineers put in place an amplification system for the ceremony." - Article here. 

"As a long-standing tradition, one of the first tasks for each new tunnelling projects is to establish a small shrine to Santa Barbara at the tunnel portal or at the underground junction into long tunnel headings. This is often followed with a dedication and an invocation to Santa Barbara for protection of all who work on the project during the construction period." - Article here. 

And here's a related example of a worker's prayer for St. Barbara, from here: 

So this is very much a tradition that is still going strong, and it isn't just Catholic workers who engage with these types of things!

To accommodate more diverse groups and communities of workers, folk practices (including what eventually becomes folk magic) increasingly develop even further away from any one specific religious origin, in order to become more inclusive for the majority of people who can be from all kinds of different spiritual or cultural backgrounds.

Hence, more folk magic is made-- And I believe something like this could absolutely have evolved in a similar way in working communities on Cybertron.

Cybertronian Spirituality: The Primes, The Knights, The Titans

My personal theory/headcanon, and there is not much in canon to support this particularly so please keep that in mind, is that given the average type of manual labour working environment in Tarn and Kaon (dangerous, dark, and deep), it would make sense for the legendary Titans to become worked into some kind of folk practice.

We have this concept of the Titans as these giant and very particular beings, which reminds me somewhat of the Jewish Golem of Prague, in that the Titans are made from raw materials in some kind of mystical or cosmically spiritual manner, then eventually ally themselves to at least one respective Prime who then acts as a director of their actions to achieve victory over cosmic evil(s).

The Titans then go forward and act as guardians of Cybertronian life by combating the origins of these cosmic evil(s) as protectors of their respective polities and regions and eventually colony worlds, called into action by what is essentially a metaphysical and possibly outright spiritual pull of the need of their Prime(s) and later on the needs of the Cybertronian and colony world populations in times of threat or desperation.

These details are peppered throughout canon and vary based on media/franchise, but most recently Titan lore was covered again in IDW’s Optimus Prime series, issue 10, literally titled Origin Myths. 

What is interesting is that while the Golem association could be reasonably made, you could also reasonably say that the Three Original Titans (Metroplex, Chela, and Metrotitan) could be associated just as easily with the Catholic concept of the Holy Trinity. 

Lots of different interpretations could be applied to this stuff!

Class Stratification Within Cybertronian Religious Institutions

No matter how you may interpret it, we know that the Titans have a similar mystical presence in Cybertronian history and cultural lore to that of the Primes and Knights, and it would make sense for those spurned and disparaged by "mainstream" spiritual practices (which were likely just as stratified by class and caste as everything else was on Cybertron during Megatron's youth) to go ahead and create a folk practice based more around Titans.

This is because the Primes would like be associated directly with their oppressive rulers and upper classes, and the Knights, who are said to be the first Cybertronians to come from the Well, thusly represent a very high class onto their own which may have repelled working class bots who were very likely sick of essentially worshipping those venerated in their class stratified society solely due to the conditions of their creation; The Knights were "born with silver spoons", essentially, and it's hard to sell that to people who suffered due to the conditions of their own creation.

Therefore, the Titans are the other most likely Cybertronian figures of historical lore that could reasonably be adapted into a sort of folk religion for the working classes and lower social caste bots.

The imagery is strong, and relatable: In Megatron's case, the manual labourers and miners all have large frames compared to the average Cybertronian, they all toil invisibly and in relative silence, and they are kept away from the end products of their labour and yet without them, Cybertron planet wide would instantly struggle to sustain their raw material demands. 

They are critical workers, yet many of them have no names/designations; It is noted at least once in canon that some Titans are so old or so little known that their designations are not recorded. Yet without these unseen/unknown Titans, it could be the case that cosmic evil could have achieved victory.

While the Titans are critical, they are largely a mystery and unknown in any real detail. They do not normally engage with average Cybertronians, and when they do, it is usually indirectly-- Even though their actions actively impact the lives of nearly everyone.

And though the Primes and Knights are generally never physically present, at least not within living memory, there is real and physical proof of Titans. I feel like that aspect alone may well appeal more to people who are very physically oriented; We also see a stark realist mentality from many of the lower class/caste bots, who are sometimes realistic to the point of nihilism (which is part of why Megatron's writings were so revolutionary, in that they re-introduced hope to people who had previously concluded that there was no realistic possibility of ever rising up).

The Titans being a known, tangible physical reality may well have endeared them as a more interesting folkloric or spiritual focus to this particular cohort of bots.

Just like with St. Barbara in real life, you can see how the Titans may have been interpreted in certain ways by the lower class/caste working bots which may have made them more appealing or more easy to structure into a framework of sorts for their own practices within their local cultures.

A Little Meta: There's a Lot of Various Religious Imagery in Transformers

Like with all media, especially Western media, inevitably some Jesus sneaks in there.

Which usually sucks, because it can be alienating for literally anyone who isn't familiar with Christianity in some way (as some references or parallels are inevitably not going to be as obvious or even detectable at all to people who didn't grow up with all this sometimes very specific shit, resulting in missed thematic elements and so on due to no fault of the viewers but rather the tendency for Western shows to overwhelmingly be written and designed by primarily Western white middle aged cis straight men who tend to throw some Jesus in there when there should not necessarily be any Jesus in there, but I could yell about this all night).

Transformers as a franchise altogether is not immune to this; As with all media, it is made by people, and people are influenced by their social/cultural upbringing, and that includes religious influences.

We could read some of this into the TFP/Aligned Continuity, in regards to the idea of the Thirteen Primes and how that concept is interpreted in TFP.

Transformers Prime: Alpha Trion is Essentially Paul the Apostle

The TFP Primes resemble both the Apostles as well as various Saints, and especially the Fourteen Holy Helpers; These fourteen Saints in particular are elevated above the others in many cases and contexts-- Similar to how the Primes are held up as elevated over other Cybertronians and other figures in Cybertronian history and presumably within certain Cybertronian spiritual practices as well. 

For example, Alpha Trion is strongly reminiscent of the Christian figure Paul the Apostle, who was a writer/scribe known for documenting early Christian concerns of faith in his letters, which became extremely important to theological historians in regards to determining early Christian discourse and attempting to create a timeline of early Christianity.

His letters are included the New Testament in thirteen (!) sections called epistles, which are archived forever in various iterations within the Christian Bible. 

Now, let’s take a look at the symbolism, using the TFP main illustration of Alpha Trion as featured in the Covenant, and a popular Icon image of Paul the Apostle: 

Beard, cloak, book-- Even the pose they are in here is very similar, look at the feet and the way they are both standing. Even the halo of Cybertronian glyphs around Alpha Trion’s head resembles the gold filament of Paul’s halo. 

And much like Alpha Trion's questionable ability to write/re-write history and determine events through some kind of cosmically divine power of foresight, the timeline of Paul's letters will likely never be fully verifiable, and of course, there are so many translations and interpretations of these letters along with the rest of the New Testament that while key points remain fairly consistent, there is still no "true" version or exact outline of events or discussions as recorded by Paul-- Primarily because in at least a few cases, Paul's letters are the only allusion to certain events or conversations.

This is extremely similar to how Alpha Trion states outright in the Covenant that he himself doesn't know if what he writes is actually factual anymore, or if he has changed things so many times to try to construct a more favourable narrative of actions and events that reality itself may have been warped by his Quill, either forwards or backwards in time...

You could also argue that Alpha Trion is presented as a God-like figure in TFP (especially when he appears to Optimus in the form of an echoing voice and shimmering spectral figure in a vision caused by what is essentially the equivalent of a holy relic), and Orion Pax would then be comparable to Jesus pre-Crucifixion, with his reformatting into Optimus Prime post-Matrix heavily resembling Jesus in the eyes of his followers post-Resurrection.

The main cast of Autobots in this comparison would then roughly correspond to the Apostles, of whom there were twelve, with Optimus then making Thirteen... And of course, canonically, Optimus is the resurrection of the Thirteenth Prime. 

You can also see visual similarities in the depiction of Thirteen in the Covenant; It reminds me heavily of the Divine Mercy image of Jesus: 

Both have their right hands raised, their chests emitting a holy/cosmic light. 

I'm just saying, it is totally possible to make connections between fictional lore/spiritual figures and real world ones, and TF is loaded with content that can be re-contextualised in this way. 

(I also want to point out at this time that it is not my intention to offend anyone with any of this analysis; I am writing from the point of view of someone who grew up with folk spirituality, and I am also a Quaker Attender, just so you are aware of my own personal background. I would love to hear any other interpretations of any spiritual imagery in Transformers media, because there’s a ton of possible ways to read into this stuff!) 

In Conclusion: Cast a Hex on Your Boss by Calling Upon the Titans

Just for fun, as someone who has actually done folk magic for my entire life, I've adapted a hex against bad bosses to fit this headcanon. I think this is something that lower class/caste bots would absolutely engage in; It's common in real life as well.

The original I'm basing this off of was actually something I found in one of our old family Bibles before I moved out, and was written in Girard, Pennsylvania sometime between 1920-1930. I believe it was written by a relative of mine who worked either on the farm or on the railways.

Remember that folk magic like this is for and by working class people, so there are no fancy supplies needed; Don't ever buy shit to do magic, you can do it with anything laying around you. No need to spend money.

If you have a shitty boss, please let me know if you hex your boss with this. I always encourage witchcraft, fictional or otherwise.

Here's what you do, if you want to actually try this:

1) Using any old paper that you have lying around, cut it roughly into a square (doesn't need to be perfect.) It doesn't matter what type of paper it is.

2) Grab any pen you like, it can be any type of pen, any type of ink.

3) Draw a square outline on the paper, making a border on the page. This can be big or small as you like, and you can decorate it if you want; Just leave enough space to write inside the square.

4) Fold this paper into a square, any way you'd like as long as it's a square, and take this paper while it's still blank to work in your pocket.

Carry the paper with you for at least one full day at work. If you can, place it in a chest pocket or a pocket where the paper will be fairly close to your body.

It doesn't matter if the paper gets dirty or smudged or torn; In fact, that's even better.

(Some people who do variations of this spell in real life even use the paper to wipe dirt off their hands etc. throughout the day, to really get the energy of a work day settled into the paper. As long as it can still be written on, you can do this if you'd like.)

5) At the end of the work day, take the paper out, and write the following:

Where I have put [X], the word "Lord" was in the original version of this hex which was in my family Bible, but to contextualise it within the fictional headcanon lore here, you can replace this with the word "Titan". (Or you can replace it with anything else that may be appropriate as well, if you would like to actually use this hex!)

"Give us pay for our work, or the poor will plea to the [X] against you, and you will be struck down, cast down.  

If you do not give to those who give to you, you will be cursed coming in, and going out.

Just as the [X] can raise you up and lead you to prosper, so too can the [X] turn away from you, and you will be left to have your walls destroyed, your fortress ruined.

Us servants will rejoice, but you will cry out in anguish, you will be put to shame.

Without the toilers, the land is made desolate, the haunt of jackals.

[X], turn your gaze to us, we labourers of all kinds, see our tears and our sweat.

Lay curses upon those who use their hands to hold us down; Kept below water, our tears lost in the flood.

Raise the waters, and surge the shores of their ill-owned kingdom; Bring forth to their memory that the [X] stewards the land, and that all among the land are equal in spirit.

The [X] will cast fury upon the unrighteous and conniving, cast rage and stand among us mightily, each motion casting winds against the oppressor who weakens like fractured stone under the onslaught of rain.

The [X] will make a storm from our anguish, which brings us higher, raises us from desolation. Our tears, become the rain that withers the false tower looming high above us.

Our hands will raise from our tools and duties, and offer high praise to the [X], who guards the disparaged and lowly, who enacts justice against those who have done wrong against us.

Let us be brought high, and those who revel in our struggle, may they be cast down."

6) You may flip the paper over once the ink is dry, and on the back, put three Xs in the upper corners of the paper. You may also add three more XXXs to the centre of the paper, where the crease in the paper is from folding it.

7) Re-fold the paper, and put it in the bottom of your right shoe. If this is too uncomfortable, carry it in any pocket on your right side.

You can also place it in your wallet for safe keeping, as your wallet contains money and possibly a work ID or something similar, which are all tied to work and working.

And there you have it! Fuck shitty bosses, both fictional ones and real ones. Join a union, do some witchcraft. 

This post was long as always, but I hope it's interesting to someone out there! <3 Thank you to anyone who actually reads through all of this! <3

[tragicsbled]

     ⸻　⅋   *   live   life   with   𝙽𝙾   𝙵𝙴𝙰𝚁   [  . . .  ]  except   for   the   𝑰𝑫𝑬𝑨 .

◜          *          :          dominic     fike     .     cis    male     &     he/him     .    life     on     mars?     by     david     bowie     .          ━━          the     legend     surrounding     london’s     l’academiae     furorum     would     not     be     complete     without     VINICO     ‘ NICO ’     BISHOP     .     the     academy's     TWENTY    FIVE     year     old     SET         DESIGNER          has     been     with     furore     for     THREE     YEARS     ,     oft     described     as     BLITHE     ,     ESTHETIC     ,     DISORGANISED     ,     IDIOSYNCRATIC     &          has     proved     utterly     indispensable     to     the     company.     in     passing     ,     they’ve     come     to     be     associated     with     PALMED     HERBAL     CIGARETTES,     BLENDED     WITH     SMOKY     WOODS     AND     CHEST,     A     SENSE     OF     EASE     WELCOMES     YOU         &          growing     up     listening     to     rock     for     as     long     as     you     can     remember;     teenhbood     is     bled     red     ,     there’s     an     artistic     maddening     to     your     ideas;     dreams;     aspirations   ——  is     it     true     that     an     artist’s     purpose     is     to     suffer?     a     nihilist     walking     through     a     sea     of     optimists     but     hold     so     much     admiration     for     the     beauty     in     the     world     ,     how     you     ended     up     where     you     are     is     one     of     the     world’s     own     mysteries;     it’s     hard     to     say     you     don’t     stand     out     amongst     others

◜          *          :      PROFILE

full  name.  vinico  bishop. nicknames.  only  goes  by  nico,  vinico  was  used  by  his  grandmother.   date  of  birth.  first  of  june,  1997. place  of  birth.  naples , florida. sexuality.  open,  doesn’t  label  it. occupation.  l’academiae  furorum  set  designer. height.  five  foot,  eleven  inches. eyes.  hazy  dark  brown,  often  with  a  tinge  of  high  (  high  on  life,  of  course  !  ). hair.  bleach  blonde  with  natural  inherited  curls,  sometimes  shaves  and  dyes  it  bright  colours  depending  on  the  mood. tattoos.  a  small  apple  tattoo  under  his  eye,  a  few  on  his  arm  and  a  portrait  of  his  favourite  artist  on  his  hand  (  see  here  ) piercings.   ears. parents.   roberto  bishop  (  father  )  ,  maria  bishop  (  mother  )  significant  others.  none. pets.  none.

◜          *          :      BIOGRAPHY

triggers:  death ,  cancer , parental abandonment , drinking / smoking benders 

A  SIGN  FROM  HELL  BELOW,  nico  was  born  to  be  something  of  a  problematic  child.  the  day  of  his  birth,  a  hurricane  had  begun  to  take  form  on  the  coast  as  he  bellowed  in  his  mother’s  frail  arms.  a  matrimony  between  an  optimist  and  a  pessimist,  both  took  it  as  a  sign  of  what  was  yet  to  come.

NOT  MUCH  IS  PROMISED  in  florida  for  nico;  he’s  loud,  reckless  and  so  eager  to  question  everything,  the  kid  is  anything  but  easy  to  handle.  it  was  rare  to  see  the  two  together  at  home,  both  of  nico’s  parents  working  overtime  to  handle  their  finanical  failures  from  a  life  before.  his  father  spent  early  mornings  and  late  afternoons  out  in  the  florida  sun,  working  as  a  contractor  for  a  company  that  leapt  through  loopholes  to  underpay  workers.  while  nico’s  mother  worked  as  a  waitress,  spending  nights  on  the  graveyard  shift  and  mornings  painting  to  distract  both  herself  and  her  child. 

IT  ISN’T  UNTIL  MIDDLE  SCHOOL  where  things  take  a  bitter  turn.  nico  is  found  with  a  rough  crowd  —  minor  stealing  and  early  age  smoking  to  prove  he  wasn’t  some  kind  of  coward  (  god  forbid,  how  temperamental  a  growing  male’s  ego  is  ).  parents  were  late  to  meetings  with  teachers  and  counselling,  absent  from  nights  brought  home  by  the  local  officer  —  too  busy  with  work  and  bills  to  properly  reprimand  his  reckless  soul.

NICO  IS  DECLARED  AS  A  BURDEN,  a  johnny  rotten  that  needed  guidance.  a  reluctant  plea,  the  teen  was  sent  packing  to  london  to  live  with  his  grandmother  (  an  act  of  betrayal  by  his  father,  like  saturn  refusing  to  devour  his  son  )  with  the  hopes  of  some  kind  of  miracle.  his  grandmother  was  no  saint,  like  anyone  in  his  family  could  truthfully  qualify,  the  first  time  he  meets  the  elusive  figure  is  with  a  hug   and  a  sharp  smack  in  the  back  of  the  head.

LONDON  WAS  SUPERBLY  DIFFERENT  TO  FLORIDA,  nico  found  himself  floating  between  friend  crowds  and  spending  time  in  his  room  filling  the  void  with  weed,  and  stolen  alcohol.  but  at  such  a  young  age,  tough  love  from  his  grandmother  slowly  swallowed  him  whole.  nights  were  spent  less  running  away  from  police  and  more  with  his  grandmother  at  work  —  banging  hammers  and  drilling  nails  into  set  pieces.  she  had  a  feeling  the  same  kind  of  cynicism  that  ran  through  her  son’s  blood  ran  through  nico’s,  and  she  could’ve  been  more  right.

LATE  INTO  THE  NIGHTS,  his  grandmother  often  snuck  him  into  her  workplace  and  helped  finish  set  pieces  that  she  couldn’t  do  by  herself  (  there  was  very  little  she  could  do,  really  ).  a  single  cigarette  dangling  from  her  lips,  nico  watched  with  an  unfamiliar  kind  of  admiration  for  the  woman — a  feeling  he  rarely  held  for  authoritative  figures,  but  as  he  grew  older  the  two  grew  closer.  if  only  she  stayed  for  longer.

A  PART  OF  NICO  DIED  THE  SAME  DAY  SHE  DID.  lowered  into  the  ground  with  rain  spilling  from  the  sky,  cancer,  they  said.  some  kind  of  complicated  medical  term  married  with  the  label  terminal.  she  hadn’t  had  much  longer  to  live,  the  same  kind  of  kick  nico  had  was  dying  in  her.  a  few  unfamiliar  faces  showed  up  to  the  funeral,  the  entire  attendance  wearing  suits  and  dresses  that  hung  with  skeletons  in  closets.  nico  had  never  so  alone,  and  had  never  felt  so  angry  towards  his  own  absent  parents. 

BEING  RECOGNISED  AS  AN  ADULT,  there  was  very  little  that  he  could  besides  live.  nico  couldn’t  keep  up  with  the  mortgage  payments  of  his  grandmother’s  home  and  watched  the  bank  claim  it  all.  his  parents  hardly  spoke  back  to  him  whenever  he  tried  to  call,  blaming  timezones  and  work  being  unbearable.  for  a  few  months,  nico  went  on  benders  to  numb  the  feelings  that  strangled  him  —  working  jobs  as  a  bartender  as  a  quick  way  to  alcohol  and  drugs,  becoming  close  friends  with  the  dealer  on  the  corner,  couch  surfing  until  he  was  more  of  a  parasite  than  a  friend. 

AT  TWENTY  ONE,  realisation  hits  on  the  first  anniversary  of  her  death. sitting  alone  with  a  bottle  in  one  hand  a  pack  of  her  favourites  in  the  other.  it’s  something  of  a  mix  between  liquid  courage,  a  little  misery  and  desperation  for  something  more  —  an  echo  of  her  voice  reminding  him  there  is  beauty  in  nihilism.  it  certainly  helps  to  have  connections  and  the  ability  to  lie,  but  like  the  principal  dancers  and  corps,  nico  pulls  his  finest  performance  and  earns  a  job  as  a  set  designer  at  l’academiae  furorum.

[misartrading]

Features of Dewalt Power Tools

Who is Dewalt owned by?

Well, it's a long story!

DeWalt was founded in 1924 by Raymond E. DeWalt and his wife, Harriet. They made their first drill in their garage. In 1928, they moved their company to New Britain, Connecticut. In 1929, they started making electric drills and saws for the construction industry. In 1933, they expanded into Europe with offices in Paris and London. Then, during World War II, they were forced to move to Pennsylvania due to a lack of space at their New Britain facility. Their headquarters remain there today.

In 2002, Black & Decker acquired DeWalt as part of its merger with Stanley Works; this was also when DeWalt became a registered trademark of Black & Decker (U.S.) Inc., a subsidiary of Stanley Black & Decker.

Features of Dewalt Power Tools?

DeWalt, the leading brand in high-quality power tools, has always been the choice of professionals who expect more performance. The performance, in this case, should be considered in terms of time: interventions with Dewalt power tools, such as a drill hole, require less time and therefore reduce the overall working time, which has a significant impact on processes and the working economy.

To take one step back: The DeWalt brand is synonymous with high quality. This is reflected not only in their machines but also in their accessories, such as drill bits and accessories for drilling holes.

The DeWalt brand is synonymous with high quality. This is reflected not only in their machines but also in their accessories, such as drill bits and accessories for drilling holes.

DeWalt is a brand that's all about one thing: making tools for professionals who work in harsh conditions. DeWalt products are designed and engineered to withstand the toughest tests of durability, made from the best materials and using cutting-edge technologies. And DeWalt isn't just about making tools that are tough—it's also about making them smart.

For example, if you're a contractor or construction worker, you probably know how handy it would be to be able to program your impact wrench from your smartphone. You could adjust its speed and power directly from your phone and locate it in the environment—all without having to set it down or stop what you're doing. Or how about if you're an electrician? Wouldn't it be nice if you could program your flashlight so that it would automatically turn on when there was a sudden drop in light levels?

DeWalt's commitment to innovation means that they're always working on new ways to improve their products so they can help us do our jobs even better.

Which company makes Dewalt power tools?

Are you a tool-lover? If so, you may be familiar with the names Stanley Black & Decker and DeWalt. These two companies are owned by the same company, Stanley Black & Decker.

Stanley Black & Decker (SBD) turned heads when it bought Craftsman Tools in 2017 after Sears closed 235 stores in 2015. The company owns many brands, however. Dating back to 1843 with a man named Frederick Stanley, the company quickly formed its roots. In 2010, it merged with another company that started in 1910—Black and Decker. As of 2017, the company maintains a $7.5 billion business in tools & storage alone. SBD brands include:

Dewalt has been around since 1908 when it was founded by Raymond E. DeWalt as DeWalt Electric Tool Company in Milwakee, Wisconsin—and they've been making power tools ever since! Today they're one of the most well-known brands in the world for power tools and continue to innovate new technologies like their cordless drills and impact drivers, which are popular among homeowners who use them for DIY projects around the house or small businesses that need portable power tools for their employees to use on-site during construction or repair jobs.

[lizajameslove-blog]

It is always recommended to hire only the professional concrete cutting services who got the latest equipment to perform the task in ease, as well have the experience of many years to deal with this criterion in hand.

[laresearchette]

Sunday, May 16, 2021 Canadian TV Listings (Times Eastern)

WHERE CAN I FIND THOSE PREMIERES?: 2021 MTV MOVIE & TV AWARDS (MTV Canada) 9:00pm GOOD WITCH (W Network) 9:00pm RUN THE WORLD (Starz Canada) 9:00pm

WHAT IS NOT PREMIERING IN CANADA TONIGHT     SORORITY SISTER KILLER  (TBD - Lifetime Canada)

NEW TO AMAZON PRIME/CRAVE/NETFLIX CANADA/CBC GEM:

AMAZON PRIME BALI RUN THE WORLD SHIVA 143

CRAVE TV RUN THE WORLD (Season 1, Episode 1)

NETFLIX CANADA LITTLE

NHL HOCKEY (SN) 12:00pm: Islanders vs. Penguins (SN/SN360) 3:00pm: Wild vs. Knights - Game #1 (SN) 7:30pm: Lightning vs. Panthers  - Game #1 (SN360/SN1) 10:30pm: Flames vs. Canucks

MLB BASEBALL (SN1) 1:00pm: Phillies vs. Jays   (TSN2/TSN3/TSN5) 7:00pm: Cardinals vs. Padres

NBA BASKETBALL (SNNOW+) 1:00pm: Hornets vs. Wizards (TSN3) 1:00pm: Pacers vs. Raptors (TSN2) 3:30pm: Celtics vs. Knicks (TSN3) 3:30pm: Grizzlies vs. Warriors (TSN4) 10:00pm: Lakers vs. Pelicans

MLS SOCCER (TSN/TSN4) 2:00pm: Sporting KC vs. Whitecaps FC (TSN) 4:00pm: Cincinatti vs. Miami (TSN) 9:30pm: Seattlle vs. LAFC

THE WRONG ISLAND REAL ESTATE AGENT  (Lifetime Canada) 8:00pm: A single working mother and her teenage daughter rent a beautiful house on several acres of land from a friendly real estate agent who they know well and lives nearby.

MYSTIC (Super Channel Heart & Home) 8:00pm (SERIES PREMIERE): After moving from London to New Zealand, a girl uncovers a series of secrets surrounding a mysterious injured horse.

MASTERCHEF CANADA (CTV) 9:00pm (SEASON PREMIERE):  In this penultimate episode, the remaining competitors face a three-round skills test, and one final cook to determine who will earn a spot in the finale.

JUNIOR CHEF SHOWDOWN (Food Network Canada) 9:00pm: Chef Jordan Andino gives a demo in flavour building by creating a classic Caesar salad with a balance of salty, crunchy, savoury and umami components.

SCOTT 'S VACATION HOUSE RULES (HGTV Canada) 9:00pm (SEASON PREMIERE): Real estate expert and contractor Scott McGillivray shows homeowners how to take their vacation property purchase and unlock its full rental potential.

THE CURSE OF OAK ISLAND: DRILLING DOWN (History Canada) 9:00pm/10:00pm:  Rick, Marty and the team allow viewers behind the scenes to see how every moment on Oak Island is captured. In Episode Two, Matty travels to Travers City, Mich., and meets with Rick, Marty, Craig, Alex, and Jack to review the incredible discoveries made in Season 8, and hear what might be in store for Season 9.

CORAL GHOSTS (Documentary) 9:00pm: An impassioned marine biologist uses his family's extensive archive as the catalyst to save the world's reefs.

ISLAND OF BRYAN (HGTV Canada) 10:00pm: Bryan and Sarah focus on the guest experience, while the Baeumler kids navigate living at the hotel with guests on site.

[jobvacancyhut-blog]

How to Seek Out Writing Work

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[mattkennard]

How the UK Security Services neutralised the country’s leading liberal newspaper

Published: Daily Maverick (10 October 2019) w/ Mark Curtis

The Guardian, Britain’s leading liberal newspaper with a global reputation for independent and critical journalism, has been successfully targeted by security agencies to neutralise its adversarial reporting of the ‘security state’, according to newly released documents and evidence from former and current Guardian journalists.

The UK security services targeted The Guardian after the newspaper started publishing the contents of secret US government documents leaked by National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden in June 2013.

Snowden’s bombshell revelations continued for months and were the largest-ever leak of classified material covering the NSA and its UK equivalent, the Government Communications Headquarters. They revealed programmes of mass surveillance operated by both agencies.

According to minutes of meetings of the UK’s Defence and Security Media Advisory Committee, the revelations caused alarm in the British security services and Ministry of Defence.

“This event was very concerning because at the outset The Guardian avoided engaging with the [committee] before publishing the first tranche of information,” state minutes of a 7 November 2013 meeting at the MOD.

The DSMA Committee, more commonly known as the D-Notice Committee, is run by the MOD, where it meets every six months. A small number of journalists are also invited to sit on the committee. Its stated purpose is to “prevent inadvertent public disclosure of information that would compromise UK military and intelligence operations”. It can issue “notices” to the media to encourage them not to publish certain information.

The committee is currently chaired by the MOD’s director-general of security policy Dominic Wilson, who was previously director of security and intelligence in the British Cabinet Office. Its secretary is Brigadier Geoffrey Dodds OBE, who describes himself as an “accomplished, senior ex-military commander with extensive experience of operational level leadership”.

The D-Notice system describes itself as voluntary, placing no obligations on the media to comply with any notice issued. This means there should have been no need for the Guardian to consult the MOD before publishing the Snowden documents.

Yet committee minutes note the secretary saying: “The Guardian was obliged to seek … advice under the terms of the DA notice code.” The minutes add: “This failure to seek advice was a key source of concern and considerable efforts had been made to address it.”

‘Considerable efforts’

These “considerable efforts” included a D-Notice sent out by the committee on 7 June 2013 – the day after The Guardian published the first documents – to all major UK media editors, saying they should refrain from publishing information that would “jeopardise both national security and possibly UK personnel”. It was marked “private and confidential: not for publication, broadcast or use on social media”.

Clearly the committee did not want its issuing of the notice to be publicised, and it was nearly successful. Only the right-wing blog Guido Fawkes made it public.

At the time, according to the committee minutes, the “intelligence agencies in particular had continued to ask for more advisories [i.e. D-Notices] to be sent out”. Such D-Notices were clearly seen by the intelligence services not so much as a tool to advise the media but rather a way to threaten it not to publish further Snowden revelations.

One night, amidst the first Snowden stories being published, the D-Notice Committee’s then-secretary Air Vice-Marshal Andrew Vallance personally called Alan Rusbridger, then editor of The Guardian. Vallance “made clear his concern that The Guardian had failed to consult him in advance before telling the world”, according to a Guardian journalist who interviewed Rusbridger.

Later in the year, Prime Minister David Cameron again used the D-Notice system as a threat to the media.

“I don’t want to have to use injunctions or D-Notices or the other tougher measures,” he said in a statement to MPs. “I think it’s much better to appeal to newspapers’ sense of social responsibility. But if they don’t demonstrate some social responsibility it would be very difficult for government to stand back and not to act.”

The threats worked. The Press Gazette reported at the time that “The FT [Financial Times] and The Times did not mention it [the initial Snowden revelations] … and the Telegraph published only a short”. It continued by noting that only The Independent “followed up the substantive allegations”. It added, “The BBC has also chosen to largely ignore the story.”

The Guardian, however, remained uncowed.

According to the committee minutes, the fact The Guardian would not stop publishing “undoubtedly raised questions in some minds about the system’s future usefulness”. If the D-Notice system could not prevent The Guardian publishing GCHQ’s most sensitive secrets, what was it good for?

It was time to rein in The Guardian and make sure this never happened again.

GCHQ and laptops

The security services ratcheted up their “considerable efforts” to deal with the exposures.

On 20 July 2013, GCHQ officials entered The Guardian’s offices at King’s Cross in London, six weeks after the first Snowden-related article had been published.

At the request of the government and security services, Guardian deputy editor Paul Johnson, along with two others, spent three hours destroying the laptops containing the Snowden documents.

The Guardian staffers, according to one of the newspaper’s reporters, brought “angle-grinders, dremels – drills with revolving bits – and masks”. The reporter added, “The spy agency provided one piece of hi-tech equipment, a ‘degausser’, which destroys magnetic fields and erases data.”

Johnson claims that the destruction of the computers was “purely a symbolic act”, adding that “the government and GCHQ knew, because we had told them, that the material had been taken to the US to be shared with the New York Times. The reporting would go on. The episode hadn’t changed anything.”

Yet the episode did change something. As the D-Notice Committee minutes for November 2013 outlined: “Towards the end of July [as the computers were being destroyed], The Guardian had begun to seek and accept D-Notice advice not to publish certain highly sensitive details and since then the dialogue [with the committee] had been reasonable and improving.”

The British security services had carried out more than a “symbolic act”. It was both a show of strength and a clear threat. The Guardian was then the only major newspaper that could be relied upon by whistleblowers in the US and British security bodies to receive and cover their exposures, a situation which posed a challenge to security agencies.

The increasingly aggressive overtures made to The Guardian worked. The committee chair noted that after GCHQ had overseen the smashing up of the newspaper’s laptops “engagement … with The Guardian had continued to strengthen”.

Moreover, he added, there were now “regular dialogues between the secretary and deputy secretaries and Guardian journalists”. Rusbridger later testified to the Home Affairs Committee that Air Vice-Marshal Vallance of the D-Notice committee and himself “collaborated” in the aftermath of the Snowden affair and that Vallance had even “been at The Guardian offices to talk to all our reporters”.

But the most important part of this charm and threat offensive was getting The Guardian to agree to take a seat on the D-Notice Committee itself. The committee minutes are explicit on this, noting that “the process had culminated by [sic] the appointment of Paul Johnson (deputy editor Guardian News and Media) as a DPBAC [i.e. D-Notice Committee] member”.

At some point in 2013 or early 2014, Johnson – the same deputy editor who had smashed up his newspaper’s computers under the watchful gaze of British intelligence agents – was approached to take up a seat on the committee. Johnson attended his first meeting in May 2014 and was to remain on it until October 2018.

The Guardian’s deputy editor went directly from the corporation’s basement with an angle-grinder to sitting on the D-Notice Committee alongside the security service officials who had tried to stop his paper publishing.

A new editor

Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger withstood intense pressure not to publish some of the Snowden revelations but agreed to Johnson taking a seat on the D-Notice Committee as a tactical sop to the security services. Throughout his tenure, The Guardian continued to publish some stories critical of the security services.

But in March 2015, the situation changed when the Guardian appointed a new editor, Katharine Viner, who had less experience than Rusbridger of dealing with the security services. Viner had started out on fashion and entertainment magazine Cosmopolitan and had no history in national security reporting. According to insiders, she showed much less leadership during the Snowden affair than Janine Gibson in the US (Gibson was another candidate to be Rusbridger’s successor).

Viner was then editor-in-chief of Guardian Australia, which was launched just two weeks before the first Snowden revelations were published. Australia and New Zealand comprise two-fifths of the so-called “Five Eyes” surveillance alliance exposed by Snowden.

This was an opportunity for the security services. It appears that their seduction began the following year.

In November 2016, The Guardian published an unprecedented “exclusive” with Andrew Parker, the head of MI5, Britain’s domestic security service. The article noted that this was the “first newspaper interview given by an incumbent MI5 chief in the service’s 107-year history”. It was co-written by deputy editor Paul Johnson, who had never written about the security services before and who was still sitting on the D-Notice Committee. This was not mentioned in the article.

The MI5 chief was given copious space to make claims about the national security threat posed by an “increasingly aggressive” Russia. Johnson and his co-author noted, “Parker said he was talking to The Guardian rather than any other newspaper despite the publication of the Snowden files.”

Parker told the two reporters, “We recognise that in a changing world we have to change too. We have a responsibility to talk about our work and explain it.”

Four months after the MI5 interview, in March 2017, the Guardian published another unprecedented “exclusive”, this time with Alex Younger, the sitting chief of MI6, Britain’s external intelligence agency. This exclusive was awarded by the Secret Intelligence Service to The Guardian’s investigations editor, Nick Hopkins, who had been appointed 14 months previously.

The interview was the first Younger had given to a national newspaper and was again softball. Titled “MI6 returns to ‘tapping up’ in an effort to recruit black and Asian officers”, it focused almost entirely on the intelligence service’s stated desire to recruit from ethnic minority communities.

“Simply, we have to attract the best of modern Britain,” Younger told Hopkins. “Every community from every part of Britain should feel they have what it takes, no matter what their background or status.”

Just two weeks before the interview with MI6’s chief was published, The Guardian itself reported on the high court stating that it would “hear an application for a judicial review of the Crown Prosecution Service’s decision not to charge MI6’s former counterterrorism director, Sir Mark Allen, over the abduction of Abdel Hakim Belhaj and his pregnant wife who were transferred to Libya in a joint CIA-MI6 operation in 2004”.

None of this featured in The Guardian article, which did, however, cover discussions of whether the James Bond actor Daniel Craig would qualify for the intelligence service. “He would not get into MI6,” Younger told Hopkins.

More recently, in August 2019, The Guardian was awarded yet another exclusive, this time with Metropolitan police assistant commissioner Neil Basu, Britain’s most senior counter-terrorism officer. This was Basu’s “first major interview since taking up his post” the previous year and resulted in a three-part series of articles, one of which was entitled “Met police examine Vladimir Putin’s role in Salisbury attack”.

The security services were probably feeding The Guardian these “exclusives” as part of the process of bringing it onside and neutralising the only independent newspaper with the resources to receive and cover a leak such as Snowden’s. They were possibly acting to prevent any revelations of this kind happening again.

What, if any, private conversations have taken place between Viner and the security services during her tenure as editor are not known. But in 2018, when Paul Johnson eventually left the D-Notice Committee, its chair, the MOD’s Dominic Wilson, praised Johnson who, he said, had been “instrumental in re-establishing links with The Guardian”.

Decline in critical reporting

Amidst these spoon-fed intelligence exclusives, Viner also oversaw the breakup of The Guardian’s celebrated investigative team, whose muck-racking journalists were told to apply for other jobs outside of investigations.

One well-placed source told the Press Gazette at the time that journalists on the investigations team “have not felt backed by senior editors over the last year”, and that “some also feel the company has become more risk-averse in the same period”.

In the period since Snowden, The Guardian has lost many of its top investigative reporters who had covered national security issues, notably Shiv Malik, Nick Davies, David Leigh, Richard Norton-Taylor, Ewen MacAskill and Ian Cobain. The few journalists who were replaced were succeeded by less experienced reporters with apparently less commitment to exposing the security state. The current defence and security editor, Dan Sabbagh, started at The Guardian as head of media and technology and has no history of covering national security.

“It seems they’ve got rid of everyone who seemed to cover the security services and military in an adversarial way,” one current Guardian journalist told us.

Indeed, during the last two years of Rusbridger’s editorship, The Guardian published about 110 articles per year tagged as MI6 on its website. Since Viner took over, the average per year has halved and is decreasing year by year.

“Effective scrutiny of the security and intelligence agencies — epitomised by the Snowden scoops but also many other stories — appears to have been abandoned,” a former Guardian journalist told us. The former reporter added that, in recent years, it “sometimes seems The Guardian is worried about upsetting the spooks.”

A second former Guardian journalist added: “The Guardian no longer seems to have such a challenging relationship with the intelligence services, and is perhaps seeking to mend fences since Snowden. This is concerning, because spooks are always manipulative and not always to be trusted.”

While some articles critical of the security services still do appear in the paper, its “scoops” increasingly focus on issues more acceptable to them. Since the Snowden affair, The Guardian does not appear to have published any articles based on an intelligence or security services source that was not officially sanctioned to speak.

The Guardian has, by contrast, published a steady stream of exclusives on the major official enemy of the security services, Russia, exposing Putin, his friends and the work of its intelligence services and military.

In the Panama Papers leak in April 2016, which revealed how companies and individuals around the world were using an offshore law firm to avoid paying tax, The Guardian’s front-page launch scoop was authored by Luke Harding, who has received many security service tips focused on the “Russia threat”, and was titled “Revealed: the $2bn offshore trail that leads to Vladimir Putin”.

Three sentences into the piece, however, Harding notes that “the president’s name does not appear in any of the records” although he insists that “the data reveals a pattern – his friends have earned millions from deals that seemingly could not have been secured without his patronage”.

There was a much bigger story in the Panama Papers which The Guardian chose to downplay by leaving it to the following day. This concerned the father of the then Prime Minister, David Cameron, who “ran an offshore fund that avoided ever having to pay tax in Britain by hiring a small army of Bahamas residents – including a part-time bishop – to sign its paperwork”.

We understand there was some argument between journalists about not leading with the Cameron story as the launch splash. Putin’s friends were eventually deemed more important than the Prime Minister of the country where the paper published.

Getting Julian Assange

The Guardian also appears to have been engaged in a campaign against the WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange, who had been a collaborator during the early WikiLeaks revelations in 2010.

One 2017 story came from investigative reporter Carole Cadwalladr, who writes for The Guardian’s sister paper The Observer, titled “When Nigel Farage met Julian Assange”. This concerned the visit of former UKIP leader Nigel Farage to the Ecuadorian embassy in March 2017, organised by the radio station LBC, for whom Farage worked as a presenter. Farage’s producer at LBC accompanied Farage at the meeting, but this was not mentioned by Cadwalladr.

Rather, she posited that this meeting was “potentially … a channel of communication” between WikiLeaks, Farage and Donald Trump, who were all said to be closely linked to Russia, adding that these actors were in a “political alignment” and that “WikiLeaks is, in many ways, the swirling vortex at the centre of everything”.

Yet Cadwalladr’s one official on-the-record source for this speculation was a “highly placed contact with links to US intelligence”, who told her, “When the heat is turned up and all electronic communication, you have to assume, is being intensely monitored, then those are the times when intelligence communication falls back on human couriers. Where you have individuals passing information in ways and places that cannot be monitored.”

It seems likely this was innuendo being fed to The Observer by an intelligence-linked individual to promote disinformation to undermine Assange.

In 2018, however, The Guardian’s attempted vilification of Assange was significantly stepped up. A new string of articles began on 18 May 2018 with one alleging Assange’s “long-standing relationship with RT”, the Russian state broadcaster. The series, which has been closely documented elsewhere, lasted for several months, consistently alleging with little or the most minimal circumstantial evidence that Assange had ties to Russia or the Kremlin.

One story, co-authored again by Luke Harding, claimed that “Russian diplomats held secret talks in London … with people close to Julian Assange to assess whether they could help him flee the UK, The Guardian has learned”. The former consul in the Ecuadorian embassy in London at this time, Fidel Narvaez, vigorously denies the existence of any such “escape plot” involving Russia and is involved in a complaint process with The Guardian for insinuating he coordinated such a plot.

This apparent mini-campaign ran until November 2018, culminating in a front-page splash, based on anonymous sources, claiming that Assange had three secret meetings at the Ecuadorian embassy with Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort.

This “scoop” failed all tests of journalistic credibility since it would have been impossible for anyone to have entered the highly secured Ecuadorian embassy three times with no proof. WikiLeaks and others have strongly argued that the story was manufactured and it is telling that The Guardian has since failed to refer to it in its subsequent articles on the Assange case. The Guardian, however, has still not retracted or apologised for the story which remains on its website.

The “exclusive” appeared just two weeks after Paul Johnson had been congratulated for “re-establishing links” between The Guardian and the security services.

The string of Guardian articles, along with the vilification and smear stories about Assange elsewhere in the British media, helped create the conditions for a deal between Ecuador, the UK and the US to expel Assange from the embassy in April. Assange now sits in Belmarsh maximum-security prison where he faces extradition to the US, and life in prison there, on charges under the Espionage Act.

Acting for the establishment

Another major focus of The Guardian’s energies under Viner’s editorship has been to attack the leader of the UK Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn.

The context is that Corbyn appears to have recently been a target of the security services. In 2015, soon after he was elected Labour leader, the Sunday Times reported a serving general warning that “there would be a direct challenge from the army and mass resignations if Corbyn became prime minister”. The source told the newspaper: “The Army just wouldn’t stand for it. The general staff would not allow a prime minister to jeopardise the security of this country and I think people would use whatever means possible, fair or foul, to prevent that.”

On 20 May 2017, a little over two weeks before the 2017 General Election, the Daily Telegraph was fed the story that “MI5 opened a file on Jeremy Corbyn amid concerns over his links to the IRA”. It formed part of a Telegraph investigation claiming to reveal “Mr Corbyn’s full links to the IRA” and was sourced to an individual “close to” the MI5 investigation, who said “a file had been opened on him by the early nineties”.

The Metropolitan Police Special Branch was also said to be monitoring Corbyn in the same period.

Then, on the very eve of the General Election, the Telegraph gave space to an article from Sir Richard Dearlove, the former director of MI6, under a headline: “Jeremy Corbyn is a danger to this nation. At MI6, which I once led, he wouldn’t clear the security vetting.”

Further, in September 2018, two anonymous senior government sources told The Times that Corbyn had been “summoned” for a “‘facts of life’ talk on terror” by MI5 chief Andrew Parker.

Just two weeks after news of this private meeting was leaked by the government, the Daily Mail reported another leak, this time revealing that “Jeremy Corbyn’s most influential House of Commons adviser has been barred from entering Ukraine on the grounds that he is a national security threat because of his alleged links to Vladimir Putin’s ‘global propaganda network’.”

The article concerned Andrew Murray, who had been working in Corbyn’s office for a year but had still not received a security pass to enter the UK parliament. The Mail reported, based on what it called “a senior parliamentary source”, that Murray’s application had encountered “vetting problems”.

Murray later heavily suggested that the security services had leaked the story to the Mail. “Call me sceptical if you must, but I do not see journalistic enterprise behind the Mail’s sudden capacity to tease obscure information out of the [Ukrainian security service],” he wrote in the New Statesman. He added, “Someone else is doing the hard work – possibly someone being paid by the taxpayer. I doubt if their job description is preventing the election of a Corbyn government, but who knows?”

Murray told us he was approached by the New Statesman after the story about him being banned from Ukraine was leaked. “However,” he added, “I wouldn’t dream of suggesting anything like that to The Guardian, since I do not know any journalists still working there who I could trust.”

The Guardian itself has run a remarkable number of news and comment articles criticising Corbyn since he was elected in 2015 and the paper’s clearly hostile stance has been widely noted.

Given its appeal to traditional Labour supporters, the paper has probably done more to undermine Corbyn than any other. In particular, its massive coverage of alleged widespread anti-Semitism in the Labour Party has helped to disparage Corbyn more than other smears carried in the media.

The Guardian and The Observer have published hundreds of articles on “Labour anti-Semitism” and, since the beginning of this year, carried over 50 such articles with headlines clearly negative to Corbyn. Typical headlines have included “The Observer view: Labour leadership is complicit in anti-Semitism”, “Jeremy Corbyn is either blind to anti-Semitism – or he just doesn’t care”, and “Labour‘s anti-Semitism problem is institutional. It needs investigation”.

The Guardian’s coverage of anti-Semitism in Labour has been suspiciously extensive, compared to the known extent of the problem in the party, and its focus on Corbyn personally suggests that the issue is being used politically.

While anti-Semitism does exist in the Labour Party, evidence suggests it is at relatively low levels. Since September 2015, when Corbyn became Labour leader, 0.06% of the Labour membership has been investigated for anti-Semitic comments or posts.

In 2016, an independent inquiry commissioned by Labour concluded that the party “is not overrun by anti-Semitism, Islamophobia or other forms of racism. Further, it is the party that initiated every single United Kingdom race equality law.”

Analysis of two YouGov surveys, conducted in 2015 and 2017, shows that anti-Semitic views held by Labour voters declined substantially in the first two years of Corbyn’s tenure and that such views were significantly more common among Conservative voters.

Despite this, since January 2016, The Guardian has published 1,215 stories mentioning Labour and anti-Semitism, an average of around one per day, according to a search on Factiva, the database of newspaper articles. In the same period, The Guardian published just 194 articles mentioning the Conservative Party’s much more serious problem with Islamophobia. A YouGov poll in 2019, for example, found that nearly half of the Tory Party membership would prefer not to have a Muslim prime minister.

At the same time, some stories which paint Corbyn’s critics in a negative light have been suppressed by The Guardian. According to someone with knowledge of the matter, The Guardian declined to publish the results of a months-long critical investigation by one of its reporters into a prominent anti-Corbyn Labour MP, citing only vague legal issues.

In July 2016, one of this article’s authors emailed a Guardian editor asking if he could pitch an investigation about the first attempt by the right-wing of the Labour Party to remove Corbyn, informing The Guardian of very good inside sources on those behind the attempt and their real plans. The approach was rejected as being of no interest before a pitch was even sent.

A reliable publication?

On 20 May 2019, The Times newspaper reported on a Freedom of Information request made by the Rendition Project, a group of academic experts working on torture and rendition issues, which showed that the MOD had been “developing a secret policy on torture that allows ministers to sign off intelligence-sharing that could lead to the abuse of detainees”.

This might traditionally have been a Guardian story, not something for the Rupert Murdoch-owned Times. According to one civil society source, however, many groups working in this field no longer trust The Guardian.

A former Guardian journalist similarly told us: “It is significant that exclusive stories recently about British collusion in torture and policy towards the interrogation of terror suspects and other detainees have been passed to other papers including The Times rather than The Guardian.”

The Times published its scoop under a strong headline, “Torture: Britain breaks law in Ministry of Defence secret policy”. However, before the article was published, the MOD fed The Guardian the same documents The Times were about to splash with, believing it could soften the impact of the revelations by telling its side of the story.

The Guardian posted its own article just before The Times, with a headline that would have pleased the government: “MoD says revised torture guidance does not lower standards”.

Its lead paragraph was a simple summary of the MOD’s position: “The Ministry of Defence has insisted that newly emerged departmental guidance on the sharing of intelligence derived from torture with allies, remains in line with practices agreed in the aftermath of a series of scandals following the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.” However, an inspection of the documents showed this was clearly disinformation.

The Guardian had gone in six short years from being the natural outlet to place stories exposing wrongdoing by the security state to a platform trusted by the security state to amplify its information operations. A once relatively independent media platform has been largely neutralised by UK security services fearful of being exposed further. Which begs the question: where does the next Snowden go?

[carollasmith-blog]

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