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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.
Ian Dale and others speculate that the underlying story is a 2006 toxic oil waste dump near Abidjan, the capital of Côte d’Ivoire. British oil trader Trafigura had publicly claimed the waste was harmless, but recently offered to pay £100m damages.
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Well doesn’t that take the cake. The gag order has been lifted.
In related news, the speculation on which story was subject to the gag order was correct.
“What the Commons’ gag order is all about is the mentioning of Trafigura and Minton in the same context. The Minton report was released by WikiLeaks on September 14, 2009. Despite that, and some rock solid work by Guardian investigations editor David Leigh and other journalists, the Minton report released by WikiLeaks was not named in the UK press. Why? Because of the earlier 11 September 2009 media injuction, as referred to by Paul Farrelly MP. To-date the UK public has been kept in the dark. Paul Farrelly’s question is an attempt to take on the suppression issue. In the process it connected the Minton report on WikiLeaks to Trafigura, something the UK media could not, or would not do. ”
http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Ivory_Coast_toxic_dumping_report_behind_secret_Guardian_gag
Well, that attempt backfired all over the place.
Carter-Ruck is the oil company, Trafigura is the law firm.
Trafigura gag unites the house in protest
From Der Speigel (English).
I recall reading about this in several sources, and believe this is extremely important long term. Here’s a link to a NYT article, although I don’t see the photos showing up here (they may be at a Photo Gallery link at NYT); the photos of rashes and the descriptions of the symptoms were hair-raising. Here’s a brief excerpt from that article:
If you take a large view of the phrase ‘national security’, you can’t let people pull shit like this; those chemicals are not going to stay where they were dumped.
The morons who pulled this need to be hauled into international criminal courts; this is dangerous for all of us.
This is like living in a world run by the toxic waste Mafia; expect long term genetic and health problems from this level of stupidity. The dinosaurs merely died out; they didn’t create cancers to do in their offspring. In that sense, the dinosaurs with their teeny brains were ‘smarter’ than some humans.
MrWhy, this single story reveals a great deal about what’s dangerous and stupid about globalized capitalism, and the challenges it raises for governing bodies — and what it reveals about thinking of ‘national security’ as only guns and helicopters.