Declassified UK September newsletter
Posted: 3rd October 2021
September 2021
Hi ,
It’s been a real whirlwind of a month – we launched our new website, held a special Ask Me Anything (AMA) event with Noam Chomsky, published several major new revelations, and secured a big increase in our supporters and followers. Thanks to everyone for backing us.
The full AMA with Chomsky can be viewed on our YouTube channel. Noam also endorsed Declassified and encouraged more people to support us. Now in his 90s, Noam remains a brilliant mind and analyst, and he covered various topics in the AMA, ranging from the US/UK special relationship, to China to climate wars to Israel/Palestine. I started corresponding with Noam in 1988, and am among the millions of people inspired by him. It was a real honour for me to host him for Declassified.
Our new website (which is here) will take us up a level in terms of reaching new readers. We already had over a million viewers on our previous site at the Daily Maverick – a great team of people and a unique media outlet who helped us greatly. Our new website is more easily navigable and searchable and is already a key resource of information on UK foreign policy.
But I feel that we’ve only just started – there is so much more to cover about the UK’s real role in the world. We’ve said on twitter that with only 3 journalists as staff members we’ve revealed more about UK foreign policy in the past two years than the establishment media combined. I don’t like blowing our own trumpet too much, but I’m sure our claim is true.
We published so many articles this month I just want to highlight Ilan Pappewriting for us about Israel/Palestine, Joe Glenton on the British veterans of the Afghan war, and Andrew Feinstein and Alexandra Smidman on how the UK’s “robust” arms export controls are a myth. Richard Norton-Taylor’s analysis of how UK defence journalists rarely tell the truth is a key, seminal article, I believe.
Our chief reporter Phil Miller continued his amazing series of revelations, on British army fires in Kenya, the costs to the British public of the Assange prosecution, and two important articles revealing the declassified files on how MI6 helped the mujahideen in 1980s Afghanistan.
Our chief investigator Matt Kennard, together with Phil, reported from inside the London arms fair, DSEI, about the range of military equipment being sold by arms corporations complicit in civilian deaths. The British establishment didn’t seem to notice or care.
We managed to question defence secretary Ben Wallace at the fair on why the UK still supports the Saudis after they murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi (see our video here on twitter or here on Youtube. It’s been viewed 87,000 times). Freelance journalist Moosa Mohammed filmed a short video of the protests ahead of the fair, which you can view here.
Join Declassified UK
I really want to make a plea this time to please become a member of Declassified. Hundreds of people have recently joined but we do need more people to support us. We run our work on a tiny fraction of the income of corporate media and rely on you and independent trusts and foundations to do what we do.
We’ve deliberately kept membership very low cost. It starts at just £20 a year or £2 a month and includes exclusive access to the AMA events, free access to our weekly DCUK-INTEL email brief, newly designed mugs and t-shirts starting from only £10 per month and a signed book authored by us if you join annually from only £100 per year! Plus more benefits at other levels.
To become a member, go to Enthuse here.
Watch out for…
… Our upcoming short film on how a UK arms factory fuels the war in Yemen – exclusive premiere and Q&A coming soon. You can get tickets to the event here.
Feedback
Please let me know what you’d like to see in these newsletters or in our investigations – email me at [email protected].
And please let friends and colleagues know of our newsletter and follow us on Twitter, on Facebook and on YouTube. All our investigations can be found on our website here.
Thank you again!
Mark Curtis
Editor, Declassified UK