Glenn Greenwald has joined the Guardian from Salon. His first article is an absolute corker. I don’t think this means he has moved to London, (though I may be wrong) as it is part of the Guardian’s drive to get more online US readers. I expect it won’t be too long before Greenwald, like Seumas Milne, becomes the target of dreadful in-house backstabbing and Blairite attempts to oust him.
But wherever he writes, Greenwald is one of the few journalists really worth following.
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“I see Nick Cohen,”
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nick cohen is interesting to read if you want to be forewarned of government / neo con strategy and political moves.
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he pretty much went for the jugular out of the blue prior to presstv being banned.
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as for unions setting up a paper .. tell me what good have they been over the last 30 or so years?
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as for esler … the uk doesnt have independent presenters .. and very few (that is almost none) are willing as with celebs etc to stand up for justice and truth.
“Why don’t the Unions start their own newspaper? the guardian and their kind will soon be out of business…”
They did Larry, it was called the Daily Herald and for many years it was among the best selling tabloids. The TUC sold its shares to, as I recollect, the Mirror Group which turned in into a competitor of the Daily Express and the Daily Mail, a broadsheet which lasted a few years.
They renamed it The Sun. And then Cecil King sold it to Murdoch. And that is what happened to the Trade Unions’ (and socialist movement’s) daily paper.
Now would be a perfect time to start a new one, shaped, from the beginning to the exigencies and opportunities of the internet, and innocent of any of the burden of the old style printing operation.
First there was Fleet Street, then there was Wapping and now there is the very real opportunity for an efficient, principled paper, not tied to advertisers, run by a new generation of libertarian communists. Such a title would offer honest news coverage as well as thoroughgoing criticism of the state, its imperial boss and all its evildoing.
Clark – I think you could say he’s a hacker in the true sense of the word – though as he was convicted for his (ethical) incursions into several systems in 1995 – fined A$2,100 and lucky to get away with that- the media’s debasement of the term could also be justified. See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Assange
There’s another bit of Nacht und Nebel here: the consular assistance issue. Tomorrow (it’s now tomorrow Down Under) ABC reports that Australian Foreign Affairs Minister Bob Carr has “released a list” of the contacts his consular officials have had with Assange, on 62 claimed occasions.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-08-23/carr-reveals-timetable-of-consular-contact-with-assange/4218448
On the other hand,today (23rd)
“At no point in time have consular authorities visited Mr Assange and I understand that to be an obligation for citizens, for men and women in Australia, have the right to consular assistance and they should not have to request it,” Mr Garzon said.
Clarification welcome.
Second quote above from The Australian, btw.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/in-depth/wikileaks/assange-lawyer-baltasar-garzon-declares-australia-has-failed-in-its-obligations/story-fn775xjq-1226456771346
Komodo, thanks for that interesting AFP link, my imaginings are running riot, but I think I ought to keep my speculations to myself.
Perhaps, Assange was not quite as reckless in his relationships as the authorities would want or expect him to be. After all, he was never ignorant of the underhand methods that could be used against him and Wikileaks.
His appearance on the balcony was not that of a fearful man, on his own against the might of the world’s power players, and may suggest hidden trump cards.
These comments have apparently been moved to a new thread entitled “On Being Angry and Dangerous”, and Craig’s old posting about the Glenn Greenwald piece appears to have disappeared, unless I am mistaken.
Hopefully that is just a technical glitch that will be corrected.
yes, cock-up by me – can’t work out how to fix it yet
Journalists who criticise Assange for poor personal hygiene as if, even if true, that had any bearing on the merits of his fight against extradition should remember there was another man who was renowned for being smelly, yet later became the coolest man on the planet.
Steve Jobs
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/10/24/steve_jobs_biography/
Whoops. I posted the last comment on the wrong thread.
Let me provide the URL for Glenn Greenwald’s piece today on Assange, so that people can access it in the interim before the old thread here on the piece is restored: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/aug/22/julian-assange-media-contempt?commentpage=last#end-of-comments
@ Leonard Young, what you say is how I think but you have articulated better than I could. Why is ths happening, the upside down, turning good into bad and vice versa? I am truly confused and it horrifies me. Do you know?
This is funny ”George Galloway spanks Aaronovitch and the Arse with Three Cheeks”
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1:35 minutes in.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-Wx7OC-Wo4&feature=related
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Galloway says when he first meet Aaronovitch ”he was a was a communist… licking the backside of Stalin, he then worked for Tony Blair and now he works for Rupert Murdoch… ”
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Greenwald makes a good general point about governments overruling judicial decisions to extradite.
This was exactly the case in Argentina not so long ago when Cristina Kirchner decided to block the extradition of Galvarino Apablaza who is wanted in Chile for the murder of a senator in 1991.
Something to remember the next time someone tells you that these sorts of things just don’t happen in today’s world.
Unlike you, makes only opaque references to CIA involvement in fake Swedish rape allegations. You, on this other hand, came out and said the obvious and even named these Swedish stooges.
You’re absolutely right: once in Swedish hands, Assange will be fitted for an orange jumpsuit and set to Gitmo.
Why is Glenn dancing around this obvious fact?
@Komodo “ABC reports that Australian Foreign Affairs Minister Bob Carr has “released a list” of the contacts his consular officials have had with Assange, on 62 claimed occasions.”
My goodness, are they pulling out all the propaganda stops against Assange and anyone who dares support him and the admirable Ecuadorean action, or what?
Here is a copy of correspondence between Julian Assange’s solicitor Gareth Peirce and the Australian Consul-General in London, Ken Pascoe. On 29 May 2012, Peirce makes requests for assistance on 16 different counts. In reply, on 19 July 2012, Pascoe refuses each and every one of them, in what amounts to a ‘declaration of abandonment’:
http://justice4assange.com/Declaration-of-Abandonment.html
Now who can click their fingers and get the Australian government to be so ridiculously (and easily verifiably) dishonest; the Swedish government to insist on extradition before questioning, even though Assange is perfectly willing to talk to them in London; and the British government to issue a threat to enter a foreign embassy by force?
Are we supposed to believe that official circles in each of these three supposedly sovereign countries have chosen – whoopsadaisy! – on their own behalf, completely independently, to make utter fools of themselves in the opinion of anyone who’s remotely able actually to form an opinion?
Interestingly on the Ecuador free press issues. Most of the well known UK offshore pirate ships/transmitters of the 1960s were CIA funded. Through fronts such as “Radio Church of God” and more directly from Monsanto and the Bush family (oil) firm Zapata Corporation (itself backed by Bin Ladens). The US covertly built and ran a fleet of these fervently anti-communist and more subtle propaganda ships; many more built for such use – e.g. the USS Liberty – found alternate uses as listening stations instead, as country after country outlawed the pirates or made their resupply and operation difficult.
Sources are the editions 58 and 59 of The Lobster.
http://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/free/lobster58/lobster58.pdf
http://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/free/lobster59/lobster59.pdf
I’m not surprised Ecuador is having media troubles, the neighbours they have, perhaps they’ve a meddling El Murdoch on their turf too.
thee is an excellent website called http://www.guardianlies.com
I just refreshed the page after reading the comments to the bottom – and all the fantastic links everyone here has supplied – before making a comment of my own.
Spookily, one more post popped up – from Larry Levin praising Jonathan Boyd Hunt’s http://www.guardianlies.com.
That is EXACTLY what my proposed comment was going to say!
Yes, to other comments on this issue. One remarkably constant feature of the consular-assistance side of this has been that Assange and his lawyers deny having had the help Carr claims to have given them. They also claim that they specifically asked for consular assistance and were refused.
Here’s Gillard with the authorised version:
{http://www.dayandnightnews.com/2012/06/aus-continue-to-provide-consular-support-for-assange-gillard/}
And here’s an account of a claimed “contact” in the course of which Assange allegedly refused assistance…
http://www.radioaustralia.net.au/international/2012-08-18/assange-refused-offer-of-assistance-from-australia/1001616
Curiouser and curiouser.
I have yet to discover to whom the list of contact events (I am picking my words here) was released. Poste restante, Hobart?
Anyone?
Senator BOB CARR: …… To date there have been 62 representations made by the Australian government about the consulate contact with Mr Assange or his legal representatives since legal proceedings commenced in 2010. According to advice I have from the department, no Australian has received more attention in a comparable space of time in terms of consulate representation than Mr Assange. This includes representations on his behalf to the government of the United Kingdom and the government of Sweden to obtain assurances of due process in current and future legal proceedings.
http://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;db=CHAMBER;id=chamber%2Fhansards%2F9d41be79-6ff2-4592-b996-63607e4a71cd%2F0092;query=Id%3A%22chamber%2Fhansards%2F9d41be79-6ff2-4592-b996-63607e4a71cd%2F0000%22
Where’s the list?
Lucky Guardian for capturing Glen Greenwald. It’s a long time since they had a genuinely informed investigative journalist writing factual pieces on the subject of press freedom, human rights and overseas wars. Now they have this highly respected journalist and lawyer gracing their pages, he might restore some credibility to the once great Manchester Guardian.
His coverage of the Assange case is brilliant and full of hard facts and a pleasant change from the previous childish spiteful biased articles published by Wikileaks ex-partner.
Please correct me if I’m wrong but:
Assange “is nothing but a ‘monstrous narcissist’, a bail-jumping ‘sex pest’ and an exhibitionist maniac” – venom spewed at someone “who has yet to be charged, let alone convicted, of anything.”
Isn’t it that in Sweden you cannot be “charged” until you are interviewed?
Agree.
Is this THE G Greenwald? http://patterico.com/2006/07/27/annotated-wuzzadem-the-facts-behind-the-greenwald-sock-puppetry/
If so, great coup to get him. Furious competition with the Indy and J Hari!
Fragment found on Patterico’s site:
the great Mark Steyn, who graces these pages as well,
Uh huh.