Earlier this evening The Guardian was served with a gagging order forbidding it from reporting parliamentary business. To quote the article in the paper itself:
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.
Full article over at The Third Estate (via Charlie B)
"
Wikileaks article with more info here : http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Minton_report:_Trafigura_Toxic_dumping_along_the_Ivory_Coast_broke_EU_regulations,_14_Sep_2006
curious…
OH GOD THE SITE’S DOWN THIS IS REALLY CONCERNING
I hope it’s just from everyone accessing it and not from them being made to take it down. Can someone get a mirror up soon?
That makes me scared.
The server’s returning a 501, but the story is hardly “a-third–estate-exclusive” as the URL claims.
Follow any of the links under the trending topics #trafigura or #carterruck on twitter for more details.
I read about this yesterday though a part of me is screaming rupert murdoch very loudly in connection with this given that this *descriptive word* man has control over a large majority of the global media outlets be it news channels, newspapers, social media site and has connections with alot of politicians
Hmm…interesting and disturbing.
“You don’t have permission to access /2009/10/what-the-guardians-banned-from-telling-you…”
fantastic irony indeed!
- it’s very slow since we linked to it – try the other links in the comments – sorry about that. – Phillis
… the hell?
Aaannnd…. the ban has been lifted.
38 Degrees are currently running a campaign on this. Take action now by emailing your MP and asking them to take a stand to stop this happening again in the future. Take action now, it only takes 2 mins. Go to:
http://www.38degrees.org.uk/stop-the-gag
Hmm… one of my friends wrote that article, and now it’s on here, how very surreal… And as to the actual story itself, it really depresses me what large corporations with lots of lawyers try to (and often do) get away with…
Old news; here’s the latest:
http://thethirdestate.net/2009/10/update-on-the-guardian-trafigura-we-win/
Pays to dig a bit
shot themselves in the foot with this one eh? – it’s a bit like banning a single which then goes straight to no1.
Sorry that our site crashed earlier today, it was due to the sheer volume of traffic with tens of thousands of people searching for this story. We had to upgrade our server, so hopefully that won’t happen again. Thank you all for your patience. At the time of writing last night, it was a Third Estate exclusive, Owen worked it out and then tweeted it all over the place. I think Guido Fawkes may have worked it out independently. Either way, the blogosphere won the day and it’s great news! Thanks Derren for highlighting the piece.
Good it got aired and it needed to be posted.
Sorry about the way I put across my earlier post…re-reading it it sounds bad…wasn’t the intention.
Guardian’s stance on the story today…twitter gets a mention:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/oct/13/trafigura-drops-gag-guardian-oil
I have knowledge of a situation back in 2005 when The Guardian was not quite so interested in opposing press self-censorship as it is today. It is described on a wiki whose URL is:
http://zerzetzen.wikispaces.com
You only have to look at what happened when my wife and I visited The Guardian’s offices in Manchester back in 2005 to complain about the government cover-up and human rights abuse that we write about (years of defamation, intimidation, death threats by MI5/6 being covered-up by government).
2 hours after we left The Guardian’s office, my wife and I were threatened in the name of HRH. The following weekend my eldest son, then living in Birmingham, received a number of telephone death threats which he recorded and a vehicle was smashed into my apartment then in Didsbury, Manchester. The Guardian subsequently “lost” all the correspondence I had handed them as evidence (it alleges then Minister Hazel Blears’ involvement with the cover-up – and copies of some of it are on the wiki – including a confirmatory letter to me from The Guardian’s Editor). A month later in the middle of the night my son was woken up by a helicopter that was hovering right beside his bedroom window, and a year later shots were fired at him in front of witnesses. You can imagine what having her children threatened for 10 years has done to his mother. Now The Guardian had every right not to publish my story, but it seems to me that The Guardian was on the side of the abusers since these little threatening incidents were clearly meant to punish us for going to the Guardian. I had booked my appointment at The Guardian in person, and unless we were followed to The Guardian’s offices, nobody except the paper’s staff new we had met with them. It has been suggested that MI5 / MI6 have penetrated the UK press, and everything I have experienced would suggest that this is true. Roderick Russell