Judging by his picture in today’s Guardian, Alan Rusbridger has invested in a new wig which plumbs new depths of unconvincingness, even by Rusbridger standards. He is moving past Donald Trump territory in the direction of Danny La Rue.
The great mortification of my own life is that Nadira insists upon dyeing my hair – there are evident cultural differences over the acceptability of the practice, to the extent that Nadir’s distress at a white-haired partner even exceeds my own shame and embarassment over the dyeing.
But what, you ask, does my or Rusbridger’s hair dishonesty have to do with our work or opinions? Nothing, really. But the Guardian seems to prize such pointless character assassination, like this from Polydor Airhead on Julian Assange:
But when Assange appears, he seems more like an in-patient than an interviewee, his opening words slow and hesitant, the voice so cracked as to be barely audible. If you have ever visited someone convalescing after a breakdown, his demeanour would be instantly recognisable. Admirers cast him as the new Jason Bourne, but in these first few minutes I worry he may be heading more towards Miss Havisham.
Which is an untrue description to the point of being an absolute lie. I have spent a lot more time, including insude the Ecuadorean Embassy, with Julian than Ms Airhead, and I can assure you that the most striking thing about Julian is he is very normal. Intelligent and interesting, but normal. These attempts to dehumanise him by portraying him as a weirdo are deeply sinister. It is also completely untrue that he does not meet many people in the Embassy. I am willing to bet he sees more visitors than Ms Airhead. And her speculation on who he is sleeping with is disgusting.
Rusbridger – a man more disgusting than his wig.
Kempe, you’ve rather spectacularly missed the whole point of Craig’s post, in that he has exactly mimicked the style of Decca Aitkinhead’s article about Assange.
BREAKING: Morsi’s decree cancelled, constitution referendum to take place on time
http://english.ahram.org.eg/News/60092.aspx
Jon,
Whenever you’re around, could you give my email address to Arsalan please?
Of course Assange seemed strange. He was trying not to burst out laughing. Do dogs bark at that thing?
As was also mentioned on CiF, the same journalist wouldn’t have the guts to make similar assertions about UK politicians. Can you any MSM journalist writing a similar article about Tony Bliar, a man who, it seems perfectly clear, has genuine and serious mental health issues? I’ve yet to see such an article, and Bliar is a far more sinister character than Julian Assange ever will be.
The article wasn’t quite at the level of a hatchet job, for me, but it seemed to seek the impression of balance rather than actual balance, and could be accused of a little slyness. Brecht was accused of being sly, of course, so this isn’t always a bad thing; but the writer is no Brecht, to say the least.
I do wish The Guardian would stop the unpleasantness towards Assange, but evidently the editors take their role as liberal gate-keeper seriously, and Assange is very much excluded. A spook in every newspaper they say, and I now believe it.
Go away Kempe.
You cant even get the basic point of Craig’s post.
boooh to the ugly sisters :o)
“Kempe, you’ve rather spectacularly missed the whole point of Craig’s post, in that he has exactly mimicked the style of Decca Aitkinhead’s article about Assange.”
Really? At what point does she mock Julian for having a silly haircut?
Kempe, why don’t you write to Mizz Dicky Airhead and ask her why she was more interested in asking already exhausted questions about unredacted war logs than about hardly questioned unprosecuted war crimes? Until you start addressing the salient issues surrounding Assange’s political persecution, you’re going to be treated here with the sort of special contempt we reserve for your kind – the anti-Assange, flunky-shill kind.
Grotesque Zionist propaganda in the Observer
“In its report on Hamas leader Khaled Meshal’s speech in Gaza on Saturday, The Observer, the Sunday sister paper of The Guardian, quoted him saying the following words:
We don’t kill Jews because they are Jews. We kill the Zionists because they are conquerors and we will continue to kill anyone who takes our land and our holy places … We will free Jerusalem inch by inch, stone by stone.
This however is a blatant mistranslation. What Meshal actually said is:
We do not fight the Jews because they are Jews. We fight the Zionist occupiers and aggressors. And we will fight anyone who tries to occupy our lands or attacks us. We fight those who fight us, who attack us, who besiege us, who attack our holy places and our land.
Can you see the massive difference? To an untrained ear the Arabic verbs for “kill” and “fight” could sound the same because قتل – to kill – and قاتل – to fight or combat – come from the same root. But to any Arabic speaker there is no ambiguity at all in what Meshal said”
http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/uks-observer-adds-kill-jews-hamas-leader-khaled-meshals-gaza-speech-when-he-did
On {http://members5.boardhost.com/medialens/msg/1355034704.html} plus follow up comments.
Would this garbage have appeared in the old New Statesman? Hugh Bayley is a Labour MP for York Central. From his website gallery, I see he has been to Afghanistan twice in the last two years. He is on the International Development committee.
Afghanistan is not a hopeless quagmire
The choice now is to risk abandoning a decade of military and civilian investment, or to capitalise on it.
http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2012/12/afghanistan-not-hopeless-quagmire
From his voting record on TheyWorkForYou
Voted strongly for Labour’s anti-terrorism laws.
Voted very strongly for the Iraq war.
Voted strongly against an investigation into the Iraq war.
I also see that he has been to Ghana.
Overseas visits
24-27 July 2005, to Accra, Ghana, to evaluate and report on the World Bank’s programme in Ghana. The Parliamentary Network on the World Bank and the World Bank jointly funded my air fare and accommodation. (Registered 21 November 2005
Any man troubled by the signs of ageing and considering doing something about it should first take a look at Silvio Berlusconi. The sad truth is, the more you try to hide it the more attention you draw to it. The only option I’m afraid is to give in to the inevitable and age gracefully.
John Pilger on Leveson.
http://dissidentvoice.org/2012/12/levesons-punch-and-judy-show-on-the-press-masks-hacking-on-an-unimaginable-scale/
December 8th, 2012
He concludes:
The iniquity of Rupert Murdoch was not his “influence” over the Tweedledees and Tweedledums in Downing Street, nor the thuggery of his eavesdroppers, but the augmented barbarism of his media empire in promoting the killing, suffering and dispossession of countless men, women and children in the US’s and Britain’s illegal wars.
Murdoch has plenty of respectable accomplices. The liberal Observer was as rabid a devotee of the Iraq invasion.
When Tony Blair gave evidence to the Leveson inquiry, bleating about the media’s harassment of his wife, he was interrupted by a filmmaker, David Lawley-Wakelin, who described him as a war criminal. At that, Lord Leveson leapt to his feet and ordered the truth-teller thrown out and apologised to the war criminal.
Such an exquisite display of irony is contemptuous of all of us.
Dave, that’s just not true. Some people say things like “what’s Al Jazeera?” and “John Pilger? I’ve heard the name…” and often, you have more info than they do on the stories they’re trying to talk about. It’s the same world and the same stories, it’s just that if you cruise around for who has the best info on each story, you are BETTER able to talk about it.
While I still have the greatest complaints about The Guardian, my assessments of editor Alan Rusbridger, and publisher Julian Assange are more muted.
The worst ´things The Guardian does are still directed by David Leigh, the publisher of leaks going all the way back to John Stalker.
Leigh infiltrated his inquiry about Britain’s Shoot-to-Kill campaign in Northern Ireland, determining that the GMP Deputy Superintendent was serious about getting to its bottom, the assassination of Sweden’s statsminister Olof Palme, and, as a result, Stalker was sidelined, and ultimately forced to resign from the police.
Leigh managed the leaks from Assange, and failed to protect the identification of covert sources in the publication of the Afghan Log – what led to the murders, it seeems, of MI6’s Gareth Williams, GCHQ’s Gudrun Loftus, and Oxford astrophsicist Steve Rawlings.
Assange’s responsibility in all this still remains to be determined, but the diversions he has engaged in to avoid scrutiny for alleged sex crimes here in Sweden does not help his cause.
And, of course, The Guardian’s interest in these murders is on a par with its inquiries into who and why William Hershkovitz and Nick Mockford were murdered recently.
The Guardian has adopted for CIF instead of still engaging in serious research about important crimes, covert operators, and ‘false flag’ missions.
Mary lying in translation is nothing new. I have seen it in many TV programs. I remember once when they were interviewing Palestinian children kidnapped by Zionists and the little boy said “I miss my parents”, and they translated it as “I miss my friends”. That wasn’t a mistake in translation, it was a lie to change the whole message which the viewer will take from it.
Come on, Arsalan, not entirely an original idea!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0KK0msnLhw
I suggest Assange, all the Embassy staff and a few hundred volunteers wear some of those Guy Fawkes masks and walk him out that way, before dispersing all over London.
You know what we should do,, all wear masks and walk out of the embassy,, assange can stay in there, You know how much it will cost them to chase as all if we keep doing it again and again?
I reckon if we make guarding him in the embassy so expensive they would find an excuse to make a deal to allow him to leave to save face.
“You know what we should do,, all wear masks and walk out of the embassy,, assange can stay in there, You know how much it will cost them to chase as all if we keep doing it again and again?”
LOL
I suggest any really good ideas are kept OFF this site. It must be one of the most public place in the UK!
*places
As Mary already asked …
How is the rubbish from the likes of “beats by dr dre cheap” getting through the captcha?
“How is the rubbish from the likes of “beats by dr dre cheap” getting through the captcha?”
Marketing companies employ programmers to write code that circuvents such obstacles. It’s big business.
[Mod/Jon: deleted three items, this appears to be Giles posting as “DrDre”]
A couple of fun blog posts on the topic of Decca Aitkenhead’s hatchet job:
There Are A Lot of Assholes Out There:
http://threads2.scripting.com/2012/december/thereAreALotOfAssholesOutThere
and
What Is Wrong With The Guardian?:
http://threads2.scripting.com/2012/december/whatIsWrongWithTheGuardian
Trowbridge, 9.38am
“Assange’s responsibility in all this still remains to be determined, but the diversions he has engaged in to avoid scrutiny for alleged sex crimes here in Sweden does not help his cause.”
Not true – he’s asked many, many times to be interviewed by the Swedish authorities, both before he left Sweden, and ever since. He just doesn’t want to have to do it from solitary confinement in a Swedish prison cell, which is the venue they insist on, for some reason… They’ve refused, every time, all sensible – and legally routine – suggestions for how it could be done otherwise.
Oh, and the allegations themselves are bunkum. Good, accurate animation giving the basics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=PZ0UgJRPhxw#t=0s
You are dead right about David Leigh, though. His behaviour during the Guardian’s Cash For Questions story and his contempt of court over the Trafigura injunction (which was only a 10-dayer anyway) left a lot to be desired too.
He wants to be interviewed in the Embassy where the Swedish police have no jurisdiction and where he will not be questioned under caution which is legally meaningless as far as their investigation of the case goes. His argument that he will be arrested and deported to the US if he goes back to Sweden is, I’m afraid to say, simply nonsense.
Similarly, the Medialens editors take the Guardian and Aitkenhead to task.
http://members5.boardhost.com/medialens/thread/1355056811.html
Heretic, 2.22pm
“He wants to be interviewed in the Embassy where the Swedish police have no jurisdiction and where he will not be questioned under caution which is legally meaningless as far as their investigation of the case goes”
Are you not aware that, under Swedish law, it is illegal for the prosecutor to take the decision to prosecute until the preliminary investigation is over?
Assange has been questioned on only one (out of four) – the only one (non-sexual molestation) surviving after the first prosecutor through out the ‘rape’ allegation on 21 August 2010 and before the case was revived and expanded to four allegations on 1 September 2010.
And besides, what kind of prosecutor would decide that the investigation had reached the stage where formal charges are immiment before even hearing one side’s story – their version of events – in a case involving allegations of a sexual nature in what amounts to a he said/she said scenario?