Regarding Carole Cadwalladr: After Stonehenge, Wales' Greatest imho

March 12, 2022 5:14 PM

Regarding Carole Cadwalladr:

This caught my eye last night:

Russian Misinformation is a "Military Assault" on the West | Amanpour and Company

See also

Facebook's Role in Brexit -- and the threat to democracy | Carole Cadwalladr

     Transcript

The Investigator | Some reporters mine data. Carole Cadwalladr mines people

Britain's Most Polarizing Journalist

Carole Cadwalladr is an icon to her supporters. But to her opponents, many of whom use sexist and ageist language to discredit her work, she is a conspiracy theorist.

Both the governing Conservatives and opposition Labour Party here in Britain, she says, “have got reasons not to want to excavate problematic connections to Russia.” Why? She claims the Conservatives have taken money from “Russian oligarchs.” A spokesman for the party rejected the allegation, noting, “It is illegal in this country to accept foreign donations,” and adding that “donations to the party are properly and transparently declared to the electoral commission according to the law.” Cadwalladr, for her part, says this does not rule out wealthy Russian donors, such as Alexander Temerko, who have a history of ties to Russian intelligence and who are also British citizens.

PEN America: Civil Charges Against British Journalist Cadwalladr Are An Effort to Silence Her

Social media turn on Putin, the past master | Carole Cadwalladr

Anything can and may happen. But having dominated the dark arts of disinformation for the last eight years, the Kremlin’s invincible mastery of the information space has been exposed as a sham, a fiction, another lie. Putin has put on the equivalent of a pair of bell-bottoms and is dad-dancing across the internet. Meanwhile Ukrainian president
Volodymyr Zelenskiy isn’t just commanding his armed forces: he’s commanding TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, Telegram. He’s simultaneously available across all social media platforms – hybrid warfare’s first hybrid leader.

If this sounds like wishful thinking, it is. Russia’s war on journalism and journalists, like its war on Ukraine, is unspeakably chilling. But it’s also like watching Stalin take on the TikTok kids. Meanwhile, Zelenskiy has not just put out a call for foreign fighters – anyone prepared to get on a train and pick up a gun – he’s also being assisted by a crack squad of armchair intelligence officers. Because one of the most remarkable aspects of the war so far is how anyone with a smartphone can play a role in the extraordinary Ukrainian resistance. “Osint” researchers – open source intelligence gatherers – are methodically scouring the internet for the latest photos and videos coming out of Ukraine and verifying and geolocating them in real time.

Praise for Carole Cadwalladr's 'mega thread' on Russian invasion & first Great Information War

UK: Abusive SLAPP case concludes against investigative journalist Carole Cadwalladr

Arron Banks vs Carole Cadwalladr shows how badly UK is failing press freedom

Did The Bad Boys of Brexit Break America?

Two years after Trump’s election and the Brexit referendum, a small, transatlantic faction of pinstripe-clad populists is under international scrutiny for its role in both votes—and for its shadowy ties to Russia.

And what an eye for detail:

This might have blown my mind more than anything else today. Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov is wearing what appears to be Prada combat boots

posted by y2karl (48 comments total)

Given the crowd sourced Ukrainian intel of which Cadwalladr writes, Ramzan Kodyrov is a very marked man.

tldr:

Bring me the Boots of Ramzan Kodyrov

Coming to a theater near you soon.
posted by y2karl at 5:26 PM on March 12, 2022 [6 favorites]

What would it take to force FB to disclose who paid for all the Brexit ads?
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 6:00 PM on March 12, 2022 [9 favorites]

What would it take to force FB to disclose who paid for all the Brexit ads?

What would it matter?

The reveal of rampant corruption and illegality throughout the whole brexit run-up and aftermath stopped nothing and cost no-one anything except a stubbed toe, in exchange for co-option of the entire UK to Rees-Mogg's 30 year plan.

Information - which we are drowning in - is necessary but NOT. SUFFICIENT. What is needed is POWER.
posted by lalochezia at 6:08 PM on March 12, 2022 [26 favorites]

What would it take to force FB to disclose who paid for all the Brexit ads?


That I know not but Ms. Cadwalladr can be tweeted to @ the Guardian.
posted by y2karl at 6:12 PM on March 12, 2022 [1 favorite]

What would it matter?

Read the links. Britain may be a putative democracy but their pathetic lack of libel laws leave individuals the target of the rich and powerful.

And its Parliament is the possession of Russian oligarchs.

Before last night I had no idea of how truly frightenly awful the situation is.
posted by y2karl at 6:19 PM on March 12, 2022 [5 favorites]

Also click on Social media turn on Putin, the past master | Carole Cadwalladr in the More Inside -- those with the skillz can actually help Ukraine out at home. It should beat merely doomscrolling at the very least.
posted by y2karl at 6:27 PM on March 12, 2022 [3 favorites]

Read the links. Britain may be a putative democracy but their pathetic lack of libel laws leave individuals the target of the rich and powerful.

My understanding (having not read the links yet) is that UK libel laws are precisely the thing that allows such people to target journalists, rather than their absence.
posted by pwnguin at 7:18 PM on March 12, 2022 [12 favorites]

Such was and is my suspicion. Hence the putative democracy part -- talk about a Potempkin charade. In the links you will find Ms. Cadwalladr speaking admiringly of -- and wistfully albeit fervently wishing for -- a British equivalent to the Mueller Report. But that Britannic has evidently sailed and sunk.
posted by y2karl at 7:50 PM on March 12, 2022

I’ll have to read more of these links. Bellingcat is truly remarkable. Their focus and precision with reporting on Russia the past couple of years is astonishing.
posted by Conrad-Casserole at 8:20 PM on March 12, 2022 [6 favorites]

"Putative democracy" coming from a Yank would almost be funny if it weren't for the tragedy of America's recent history and its impact on the world.
posted by Dysk at 4:22 AM on March 13, 2022 [10 favorites]

Brian Cox (lead actor of the hit HBO show “Succession”) did an interesting talk at the Cambridge Union back in February, he seems thoroughly fed up with UK politics and the distortions of our archaic FPTP voting system. Scottish independence may be the lever to enact some real political change even for people who don't support the (somewhat right wing) SNP.
posted by Lanark at 4:34 AM on March 13, 2022 [2 favorites]

Stonehenge is most certainly in England and not Wales.

The problem is not a 'shameful lack of libel laws.' Quite the opposite.

These are easily googleable things
posted by Ardnamurchan at 5:34 AM on March 13, 2022 [15 favorites]

I compose offline in Gmail because I'm one finger typing on a smartphone [ laptop is on the fritz ] -- if I hit the phone in the wrong place and pfft! -- it's gone.

Either way, it's like building a ship in the bottle. It takes forever. Especially as I have autocorrect turned off because grrr enemy of the people autocorrect.

I wrote a longer title there that read

Regarding Carole Cadwalladr: After Stonehenge's blue stones, Wales' Finest product imho

I improvised when I posted the title and found it didn't fit without thinking things through: I was tired. My apologies -- I will re-think things and ask for a revision via the Contact form. Thank you for pointing it out.
posted by y2karl at 6:02 AM on March 13, 2022 [4 favorites]

As for putative democracy, Cadwalladr posits that Putin's initial information war was random like throwing things at a spinning fan and seeing what stuck. Result: Brexit, Trump, weakened NATO and EU. And now he's playing for realz with a deep organized team.

Yet still, we had two impeachments and the Mueller report. It would be a hell of a lot harder to harrass Cadwalladr with a SLAPP suit here despite the fact we have a non-crypto flat out fascist party of rabid wolverines hellbent on establishing a permanent one party dictatorship. No doubt it takes oligarch money but Biden does not. I was for him from the git go because neither Sanders nor Warren could have beaten Trump. That Biden turned out trying to go FDR nationally.and internationally is the cherry on the Sundae for me.

And how about that Boris Johnson, hmm? Of course, Labor and the small parties are crammed with souls as clean as the driven snow, so there is that. Good times for us all either side of the Atlantic.

And by lack of libel laws, I mean decent ones where Russian money does not yet rule. Cadwalladr would be safer with ours. No offense intended.
posted by y2karl at 6:30 AM on March 13, 2022 [5 favorites]

>Britain may be a putative democracy but their pathetic lack of libel laws ...
There are also injunctions to cover claimed damage to reputation ... of the people who are rich enough to have reputation and solicitors/barristers to claim they need protection. (I'd not checked, but 2009 and 2013 changes to UK law confirmed that the plaintiff doesn't need to prove falsehood, so it's not "corporate legislative capture" but "rich bastards silence the press.")

>"Putative democracy" coming from a Yank would almost be funny if it weren't for the tragedy of America's recent history ...
I think we're both swimming in the swill from news reporting that shapes political discourse. To say either is deeper in the shit isn't winning rhetoric.
posted by k3ninho at 6:33 AM on March 13, 2022 [2 favorites]

Derail but …

No doubt it takes oligarch money but Biden does not.

Uh… the Democratic Party tends not to take Russian oligarch money, at least not to nearly the same extend as the Republican Party, but have you looked at campaign financing in the US lately?

Also, the US is home to/originator of the term SLAPP. (See also: the United States subsection of the “Notable SLAPPs” section.)
posted by eviemath at 6:45 AM on March 13, 2022 [3 favorites]

Between online doomscrolling of and BBC World Service overnight listening to the war in Ukraine plus pandemic isolation insomnias, I am not getting any sleep. On a scale of 1 to 10, my cranky dial is at 11. Let us all be in this together. Like a deep warm bath. My apologies. *waves white flag*
posted by y2karl at 6:45 AM on March 13, 2022 [9 favorites]

> Stonehenge is most certainly in England and not Wales.

Much as Carole Cadwalladr was born in Wales and came to England, so to were the stones of Stonehenge quarried from Wales and brought to England.
posted by gwydapllew at 7:24 AM on March 13, 2022 [23 favorites]

↑ What he [ & I ] said. ;)
posted by y2karl at 7:33 AM on March 13, 2022 [4 favorites]

Some of them.
posted by ominous_paws at 7:34 AM on March 13, 2022

Yes, yes, some of them. Do we really need to derail the thread over how many of the stones used in Stonehenge came from WIltshire versus Wales, or can we acknowledge the poetic license in the title and move on?
posted by gwydapllew at 7:39 AM on March 13, 2022 [18 favorites]

y2karl, right there with you on this, I feel seen:

Between online doomscrolling of and BBC World Service overnight listening to the war in Ukraine plus pandemic isolation insomnias, I am not getting any sleep. On a scale of 1 to 10, my cranky dial is at 11. Let us all be in this together. Like a deep warm bath.
posted by kmartino at 9:00 AM on March 13, 2022 [3 favorites]

I got no comfort zone anymore with this shit.
posted by valkane at 10:48 AM on March 13, 2022

Much as Carole Cadwalladr was born in Wales and came to England, so to were the stones of Stonehenge quarried from Wales and brought to England.

And it was all Celtic back then anyways, right? Before all those Romans and Angles Saxons and Danes and Normans came in and took all the jobs etc. etc...
posted by Meatbomb at 12:33 PM on March 13, 2022 [7 favorites]

Bloody Anglo-Saxons
posted by flabdablet at 12:52 PM on March 13, 2022 [2 favorites]

Hey, now.
Metafilter: Three Continent query on ancient quarrying with minimum quarrel.

Tanks for the post Karl.
"The word of time lies on the chaptered bone,"
posted by clavdivs at 2:49 PM on March 13, 2022 [2 favorites]

It's spelled 'Labour'.

I've a tremendous amount of respect for Ms Cadwalladr, but this thread started as lazy, ignorant sneering and went south from there.

Fuck's sake.
posted by Grangousier at 3:02 PM on March 13, 2022 [7 favorites]

Thank you, y2karl, for your efforts. They are appreciated. (I'm sorry this thread isn't a better response.)

A couple of quotes from the articles:

What would it matter if Facebook disclosed more information. - "She may also be among the most consequential reporters of her age, changing the way we talk about Facebook with her revelations of how Cambridge Analytica was mass-harvesting data to influence elections, and supercharging a movement for electoral reform with stories about illegalities at a pro-Brexit campaign group. Her articles have triggered investigations, were partly responsible for hauling Mark Zuckerberg in front of Congress, and helped result in Facebook being fined several billion dollars."

UK vs. US libel laws - "Defamation laws are notoriously more generous to the accuser in the UK than in the US, and it’s a well-tested strategy for US companies to threaten to sue publications in the UK in order to stop publication of a story—which is what had happened to The Observer repeatedly with Cadwalladr’s pieces."

To sum up - "The most successful investigative journalists see connections and seek out hidden explanations that seem exaggerated—until it turns out they aren’t."
posted by blue shadows at 3:22 PM on March 13, 2022 [3 favorites]

Also, the US is home to/originator of the term SLAPP. (See also: the United States subsection of the “Notable SLAPPs” section.)

But it also anti-SLAPP laws in some 30+ states too. The US is complicated. But British libel law is unabashedly bad and clearly designed to protect wealthy wrongdoers.

I'm still stunned by just how obviously corrupted the Tory party and BoJo are. Hugely embarrassing peerages granted right as the ugly boil was coming to a head due to the heat of being on the wrong side of a European war no less! It incredible. BoJo is going to get so teased about this next time he is on HIGNFY!
posted by srboisvert at 3:39 PM on March 13, 2022 [4 favorites]

Grangousier, over here colour is color, Labour is Labor and Zelenskiy is Zelensky. I didn't make the rules, nor did you. I could tell Ms. Callawadr was Welsh by her last name but it was like she'd bought a vowel [it's an American TV game show reference, btw ] or something. So, please drop the microscalpel and the hair from a gnat's ass and dial the pedantry down. We just follow different spelling conventions -- two great countries separated by a common language and all that. I didn't make our rules, you didn't make yours. Great Britain is three mints in one, an island comprised of how many ancient nations with their own ancient languages? I lost track. Does anyone speak Pictish anymore? We are a young one with a lot more than that spoken at home. My brothers went to Chicago in the 1950s and my aunt and uncle bought a Chicago Tribune so they look at something printed not in Polish. Us kids had no idea. My dad was born near Katowice, Galicia in what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire and identified as Austrian when asked about our last name. All our lives are written on palimpsest on either side of the ocean.
posted by y2karl at 4:00 PM on March 13, 2022 [5 favorites]

I think grangousier's problem was that once again, Britain was being treated like an interesting novelty/horror show about which there was no awareness until someone came along and posted about it, rather than the unfolding mess of pigeons coming home to roost that we've been witnessing for the past 5+ years.
posted by ambrosen at 4:19 PM on March 13, 2022 [7 favorites]

I've been following Carole Cadwalladr on Twitter since Brexit. She is really intense and will not let things go, and she deserves to be taken seriously, and I wish we were getting a better discussion about her here.

She and John Harris are my two favorite journalists on UK politics.
posted by maggiemaggie at 4:24 PM on March 13, 2022 [13 favorites]

over here colour is color, Labour is Labor

It's a proper noun; it's called the Labour Party. The New York Times and Associated Press all spell it "Labour" when talking about the Labour Party. You should be able to, as well. Unless you don't mind being called "Carl" that is.
posted by Pseudonymous Cognomen at 5:10 PM on March 13, 2022 [11 favorites]

Thank you for this incisive and enlightening post. It really helped "the penny drop" for me.

Cadwalladr is an international treasure.
posted by riverlife at 10:02 PM on March 13, 2022 [3 favorites]

y2karl, I'm grateful that you took the initiative to post this, even if the thread itself has wandered. Cadwalladr is an absolute hero, who at the moment is waiting to see if she's been undone by a lawsuit brought by one of the people she's done so much to expose. It isn't stopping her from doing her job, though: this article from yesterday's Observer is another important contribution to opening our collective eyes:

The poisoning of Sergei Skripal may have played out in the British press as a “botched assassination attempt”, but that’s just half of a more terrifying story. Because Salisbury is not just a pretty, quintessentially English market town with a famous cathedral, which Skripal’s poisoners mocked us with when they claimed to have visited it. It’s also a home to the British military establishment, and some of its highest ranking officers, adjoining the biggest military training ground in Britain, Salisbury Plain.

The poisoning of Sergei Skripal looks less like a “botched assassination attempt” and more like a botched terror attack. At the very least it was a stark, unmistakable message from Russia to Nato, the very definition of hybrid warfare: a combined military and information operation.

We have to finally understand what has happened here. Russia’s attack on our democracy has been covered up. It’s what the parliamentary intelligence and security committee’s Russia report revealed beyond all doubt. And all available evidence suggests this cover-up leads back to Johnson. It was Johnson who claimed there was “not a sausage” of evidence. It was Johnson who suppressed the report’s publication. And it was Johnson who had direct oversight of MI6 as foreign secretary when, as the report said, it “actively avoided” investigating.

When I say "our collective eyes", I mean in general, because UK Mefites who spent 2016-21 knee-deep in the Brexit threads have been following Cadwalladr's reporting for years—searching the site for her surname will turn up numerous links in those threads.
posted by rory at 7:04 AM on March 14, 2022 [10 favorites]

take what you want from other mefites' posts, but I for one am grateful for the information re: Cadwalladr (and more importantly, the state of England's libel laws.. is this consistent across Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland?). I suppose my first awareness about the growing Russian influence in the UK came from reading John le Carre novels.
posted by elkevelvet at 7:12 AM on March 14, 2022 [1 favorite]

And by lack of libel laws, I mean decent ones where Russian money does not yet rule. Cadwalladr would be safer with ours. No offense intended.

Unless you're talking about bygone relations between the British Crown and some former Tsar, the divergence between US and UK law on speech has everything to do with the mutual history of those nations and little to do with Russian corruption of British law (as significant as that influence may be today). It also interacts with the default "American" vs. "British Rule" on the recovery of fees and costs by prevailing parties -- yes in the UK, no in the US (without a specific provision, intended to prevent chilling of suits by liability for defense costs; notably Anti-SLAPP statutes do tend to contain fee-shifting provisions).

You can look to Oscar Wilde for a famous example of the hazards of the British system. Or to Trump for an example of someone who would like the US to have UK libel law (but presumably not loser pays, which would make his lifelong litigation strategy untenable).

The whole point of the US system (in this area) is that there's less exposure for speech here, Constitutionally.
posted by snuffleupagus at 9:44 AM on March 14, 2022

The praise of her epic February 27, 2022, twitter thread link above contains said thread, and it is there where she truly puts the pieces together in a manner that shows us that this war has been waged against all of the West since 2014, and that Putin has been decisively winning by having us not understand that there was a war on. Brexit, Trump, Ukraine, Facebook/Cambridge A., these are all intimately connected pieces of the same attack.

The manner in which she draws together the threads restores sense and sanity to what has been an otherwise very disjointed, almost unconscious set of events and attacks. For that I am so grateful, for actually seeing and knowing one's enemy is half the battle.
posted by riverlife at 9:58 AM on March 14, 2022 [5 favorites]

And all available evidence suggests this cover-up leads back to Johnson. It was Johnson who claimed there was “not a sausage” of evidence. It was Johnson who suppressed the report’s publication. And it was Johnson who had direct oversight of MI6 as foreign secretary when, as the report said, it “actively avoided” investigating.

And it was Johnson who rammed through Evgeny Lebedev's peerage after being persuaded to get behind Brexit.
posted by flabdablet at 10:12 AM on March 14, 2022 [1 favorite]

Thank you very much for your post y2karl - I've always really enjoyed your posts and comments, going back waaaaay too many years. Its impossible to put into words how impressive M. Cadwalladr truly is - what a real badass as well.
posted by WatTylerJr at 10:15 AM on March 14, 2022 [1 favorite]

I was unaware of Callawadr until she was on Amanpour and Company. I was so impressed. As for the kerfuffle, it was a derail and I tried to say as much but my comment kept getting deleted. And only mine. Now I must screenshot this comment so I can remember what I wrote before it too disappears. Sometimes I feel like I have my own personal hall monitor but c'est la vie.

Now to my annuals -- I got flats of honeywort, night scented stock and heirloom sweet peas. It's raining now so I am putting them out. And no doubt getting harangued by five hangry crows and three hangry hummingbirds: my entourage. I appreciate your comments. Peace out.
posted by y2karl at 11:07 AM on March 14, 2022 [3 favorites]

Also one hangry Steller's Jay as I tossed out unsalted peanuts in the shell the other day. Must stock up next time I visit QFC.

(Crows prefer cheese cubes, the jays do not. Nature has not provided them the industrial strength beakage necessary, methinks.)

I do love Steller's Jays -- they love to troll crows by sneaking up behind them and ripping out crow distress caws.
posted by y2karl at 5:46 PM on March 14, 2022 [1 favorite]

Cadwalladr asks the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee if she can appear before their evidence session on SLAPPs tomorrow (Tuesday 15 March).

It is the nature of a libel suit, that you only get to defend yourself against the specific charge. The ‘SLAPP’ features of the case play no part in the proceedings. They are not entered into evidence. They are not set down on the public record.

The entire weight of the British legal system was brought to bear on me over 2.5 years during which time I was effectively silenced. I now would like to be heard & would appreciate the opportunity to give evidence.
posted by rory at 5:51 PM on March 14, 2022 [4 favorites]

Opinion | Putin Isn’t Just an Autocrat. He’s Something Worse
posted by y2karl at 8:14 PM on March 14, 2022 [1 favorite]

We are due to have a federal election here in Australia in the next few months. Given the pre-occupations of the Russian/Facebook bots - this could be one of the "cleanest" elections had since the advent of social media.

I would imagine that BoJo is thankful that he does not need to face up to a focused electorate for a few years yet.

As an amateur "bot" watcher - I try and keep track of where the bots appear, as a gauge of their priorities. Very few lately on UK sites - two months ago US political sites were completely infested, but much quieter now. English language finance sites are consistent targets.
posted by Barbara Spitzer at 11:14 PM on March 14, 2022 [2 favorites]

I try and keep track of where the bots appear, as a gauge of their priorities.

What reliable online tools exist for doing that in some semi-automated fashion?
posted by flabdablet at 11:32 PM on March 14, 2022 [1 favorite]

Just to try and bring this thread back on course.
Arron Banks who has a SLAPP suit against Carole Cadwalladr because she said, in a 2019 TED talk and a subsequent tweet that the Brexit donor had lied about his “covert” relationship with the Russian government, has just been named in Parliament as "an agent of influence for the Russian state".
Cadwalladr who began investigating Brexit-Trump-Russia 5 years ago was asked about this for the first time ever in broadcast interview.
Meanwhile Andrew Neil, a has been hack, ex chairman and ex presenter for the failing GB News is blocking all who who ask him to apologize to Carole for his now deleted misogynistic tweet in 2018 calling her a crazy cat lady.
Around this time Leave.EU was fined £70,000 and the campaign chief referred to police over EU referendum spend.
According to Arron Banks, Andrew Neil offered to provide Leave EU funding for his high net worth individuals Addison Club meetings.
From 2016 ''Who Funded Brexit'' - Arron Banks, the previously little-known insurance entrepreneur who bankrolled Leave.EU
posted by adamvasco at 9:06 AM on March 16, 2022 [10 favorites]

However things drifted from the why I posted about Ms. Callawadr, I do appreciate Pseudonymous Cognomen's objection to my misspelling of Labour. On that he was entirely right and I am grateful for the correction. As for Russian influence on this side of the Atlantic, it did delay for us the election of our first woman President and instead gave us Donald Trump aka Putin's pound puppy. The damage done by that event to democracy world wide is far larger, deeper, and will be far longer lasting. Alas.
posted by y2karl at 6:04 PM on March 18, 2022 [1 favorite]