Guardian Censored, Can’t Identify the Reason Why
October 13th, 2009From Wikileaks, Trafigura Toxic dumping along the Ivory Coast:
Following press reportage about dumping off the coast of Africa, Waterson & Hicks, a UK law firm acting for Trafigura, a large London based oil and commodity trader, ordered and received this confidential report (the so-called “Minton report”) into toxic dumping practices by its client along and on the Ivory Coast. The report reveals a number of toxic dumping incidents and appears to be the report behind the extraordinary secret October 11, 2009 gagging of the Guardian newspaper. WikiLeaks believes the Guardian was gagged to prevent it reporting the following Parliamentry question:
Paul Farrelly (Newcastle-under-Lyme) – To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment he has made of the effectiveness of legislation to protect (a) whistleblowers and (b) press freedom following the injunctions obtained in the High Court by (i) Barclays and Freshfields solicitors on 19 March 2009 on the publication of internal Barclays reports documenting alleged tax avoidance schemes and (ii) Trafigura and Carter-Ruck solicitors on 11 September 2009 on the publication of the Minton report on the alleged dumping of toxic waste in the Ivory Coast, commissioned by Trafigura.[1]
Via: Guardian:
The Guardian has been prevented from reporting parliamentary proceedings on legal grounds which appear to call into question privileges guaranteeing free speech established under the 1688 Bill of Rights.
Today’s published Commons order papers contain a question to be answered by a minister later this week. The Guardian is prevented from identifying the MP who has asked the question, what the question is, which minister might answer it, or where the question is to be found.
The Guardian is also forbidden from telling its readers why the paper is prevented – for the first time in memory – from reporting parliament. Legal obstacles, which cannot be identified, involve proceedings, which cannot be mentioned, on behalf of a client who must remain secret.
The only fact the Guardian can report is that the case involves the London solicitors Carter-Ruck, who specialise in suing the media for clients, who include individuals or global corporations.
The Guardian has vowed urgently to go to court to overturn the gag on its reporting. The editor, Alan Rusbridger, said: “The media laws in this country increasingly place newspapers in a Kafkaesque world in which we cannot tell the public anything about information which is being suppressed, nor the proceedings which suppress it. It is doubly menacing when those restraints include the reporting of parliament itself.”
The media lawyer Geoffrey Robertson QC said Lord Denning ruled in the 1970s that “whatever comments are made in parliament” can be reported in newspapers without fear of contempt.
He said: “Four rebel MPs asked questions giving the identity of ‘Colonel B’, granted anonymity by a judge on grounds of ‘national security’. The DPP threatened the press might be prosecuted for contempt, but most published.”
The right to report parliament was the subject of many struggles in the 18th century, with the MP and journalist John Wilkes fighting every authority – up to the king – over the right to keep the public informed. After Wilkes’s battle, wrote the historian Robert Hargreaves, “it gradually became accepted that the public had a constitutional right to know what their elected representatives were up to”.
Trafigura threats to Norwegian press over Minton report exposing toxic dumping, Sep 2009
http://www.wikileaks.com/wiki/Trafigura_threats_to_Norwegian_press_over_Minton_report_exposing_toxic_dumping%2C_Sep_2009
The Independent: Toxic Shame: Thousands injured in African city, 17 Sep 2009
http://www.wikileaks.com/wiki/The_Independent:_Toxic_Shame:_Thousands_injured_in_African_city%2C_17_Sep_2009
HOly crap.
I guess my latest windows update doesn’t allow multiple windows to be open.
@ltcolonelnemo – yea verily.
Look at what K’nann has to say about all this. He is from Somalia – right there bro, on what is the Ivory Coast.
Who are the dumpers I wonder? And why gag the Guardian? Hah, the Guardian has probably uncovered the issue of nuclear dumping.
Surely the Brits, France, and US who no longer have their precious wet dream of “yucca Mountain.”
I had a hard time initially with this music but am now very into it:
K’naan’s music:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIhm94a-8SE
Interview with K’naan re nuclear waste dumping, pirates, and Somalia:
“There is a Reason Why This Started”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTxJLlQCe4U
Myself, I think K’naan is the Dog Poet. Has exposed a whole nother motive for war in Somalia.
Imagine, all the people,
being killed. Some kind of really bad animals think that they can still act under cloak and dagger under the guise of “ethnic wars.”
Has this war in Somalia really been about the
“right” to dump nuclear waste on “less advanced” nations on those that are “less advanced?”
Just so they can dump nuclear.
I don’t know what the rest of you think about this but I’m choking.
This is to me, some serious shit that needs to be given a bull horn re the Internet. Not like MSM gives a diarrhea.
The beauty of this is, I don’t think there’s anywhere that the crooks and liars can what they are doing to hide what they are doing anymore.
Peace y’all. All is unfolding.
a more interrupted version:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTxJLlQCe4U
K’naan is a very interesting persona to read about.
He is from Somalia – right there bro, on what is the Ivory Coast.
Somalia is on the opposite side of Africa to the Ivory Coast.
@eyelight
You are correct! Pointing out how geographically challenged I am is really not the point at issue.
That Africa in general, and in particular, is being used as a dumping ground for nuclear waste IS the point I guess I didn’t SPELL OUT correctly.
MEA CULPA.