The Guardian hit a new low in Amelia Hill’s report on Julian Assange’s appearance at the Oxford Union. Hill moved beyond propaganda to downright lies.
This is easy to show. Read through Hill’s “report”. Then zip to 20 minutes and 55 seconds of the recording of Assange speaking at the event Hill misreports, and simply listen to the applause from the Oxford Union after Assange stops speaking.
Just that hearty applause is sufficient to show that the entire thrust and argument of Amelia Hill’s article moves beyong distortion or misreprentation – in themselves dreadful sins in a journalist – and into the field of outright lies. Her entire piece is intended to give the impression that the event was a failure and the audience were hostile to Assange. That is completely untrue.
Much of what Hill wrote is not journalism at all. What does this actually mean?
“His critics were reasoned, those who queued for over an hour in the snow to hear him speak were thoughtful. It was Julian Assange – the man at the centre of controversy – who refused to be gracious.”
Hill manages to quote five full sentences of the organiser of the anti-Assange demonstration (which I counted at 37 people) while giving us not one single sentence of Assange’s twenty minute address. Nor a single sentence of Tom Fingar, the senior US security official who was receiving the Sam Adams award. Even more remarkably, all three students Hill could find to interview were hostile to Assange. In a hall of 450 students who applauded Assange enthusiastically and many of whom crowded round to shake my hand after the event, Hill was apparently unable to find a single person who did not share the Rusbridger line on Julian Assange.
Hill is not a journalist – she is a pathetic grovelling lickspittle who should be deeply, deeply ashamed.
Here is the answer to the question about cyber-terrorism of which Amelia Hill writes:
“A question about cyber-terrorism was greeted with verbose warmth”
As you can see, Assange’s answer is serious, detailed, thoughtful and not patronising to the student. Hill’s characterisation – again without giving a word of Assange’s actual answer – is not one that could genuinely be maintained. Can anybody – and I mean this as a real question – can anybody look at that answer and believe that “Verbose warmth” is a fair and reasonable way to communicate what had been said to an audience who had not seen it? Or is it just an appalling piece of hostile propaganda by Hill?
The night before Assange’s contribution at the union, John Bolton had been there as guest speaker. John Bolton is a war criminal whose actions deliberately and directly contributed to the launching of an illegal war which killed hundreds of thousands of people. Yet there had not been one single Oxford student picketing the hosting of John Bolton, and Amelia Hill did not turn up to vilify him. My main contribution to the Sam Adams event was to point to this as an example of the way people are manipulated by the mainstream media into adopting seriously warped moral values.
Amelia Hill is one of the warpers, the distorters of reality. The Guardian calls her a “Special Investigative Correspondent.” She is actually a degraded purveyor of lies on behalf of the establishment. Sickening.
Poison Gove and his spads on Twitter.
Michael Gove advisers face claims of smear tactics against foes
Fears that official guidelines have been broken as it emerges that DfE duo were warned over Twitter attack in 2011
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/feb/02/gove-advisers-claims-smear-tactics
Brendan, 5.07am
“… the article is certainly a startling example of the smears, nastiness, and downright weirdness that some formerly-left writers seem unable to stop themselves from penning… And then it veers into … Nick Cohen world.”
… and veers into outright lies, just as Amelia Hill has done in her piece on the Sam Adams awards. Perhaps it’s something in the air-conditioning at Grauniad Towers, sick building syndrome or something?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/feb/03/far-left-no-place-feminists-rape
Always telling when they won’t open comments on an article, isn’t it?
“The far left cannot face up to rape and its ignorance is killing it. The willingness to excuse the humiliation of women has already destroyed the reputations of Julian Assange and George Galloway.”
Is Cohen actually stating here that to humiliate a woman is tantamount to raping her? Or is this a tacit admission that yes, perhaps – now he’s actually bothered to read about them – the allegations against Assange actually amount to no more than that: a woman who felt humiliated that it wasn’t the exclusive (and political career-advancing) relationship she desired and decided on revenge?
Galloway’s remarks in defence of Assange that the likes of Nick Cohen alway trot out are well known – “only guilty of bad sexual etiquette… otherwise you debase the term rape of all meaning”. They come at around the 10-min mark of this podcast, a snippet of which (about 2 minutes-worth of a full half-hour podcast) has been widely disseminated by Cohen’s employers, the Guardian. But at 25 minutes into the podcast Galloway makes it clear his assessment is based on the SMS text messages between the two women, and between them and Assange, that he’s seen. Obviously, this section of the podcast is also known to these ‘journalists’, but for some reason it’s not used in their diatribes. I wonder why?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5B4I5F05jNg
“Before he scuttled into the Ecuadorian embassy to avoid facing sexual molestation charges, Assange handed secret police forces from Ethiopia to Belarus the names of dissidents who had spoken to the US State Department. Nothing should surprise you about a man who can sink so low.”
Again, the repetition of the tired old lie that Assange has been charged, when he is only wanted for questioning – something which the Swedish government refuses to do anywhere other than a Swedish prison cell and the UK government somehow thinks merits storming an embassy.
And the person responsible for handing cables over to “secret police forces [in] Belarus” is James Ball, an intern at Wikileaks for two months two years ago and now full-time employee at the Guardian:
A belated confession from James Ball (May 2012, a full 18 months after the Guardian started this particular smear against Assange):
https://twitter.com/#!/jamesrbuk/status/175644469855662084
“Nothing should surprise you about a man who can sink so low.” Agree with you there, Nick.
Ball’s perfidy is confirmed by Israel Shamir himself (and there’s no proof Shamir handed cables to Belarus either – see the detailed debunking in the Martha Mitchell Effect article posted earlier in this thread):
http://www.israelshamir.net/English/Ball.htm
If our High Streets are ‘medieval’ what is the most appropriate adjective we can apply to Tesco’s operations? Tesco was founded by Jack Cohen (pile ’em high and sell ’em cheap) and as far as I know his daughter Lady Porter, she the Thatcherite who jerrymandered in Westminster when she led the council, is still lingering on in Tel Aviv.
Mr Gore who is proselytizing his climate change views, has sold his TV channel to Al Jazeera, ie the Qataris, for $500m. He nets $70m. Odd that he blames carbon emissions for global warming yet does this deal with one of the rich oil producing countries.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/robertwood/2013/01/06/inconvenient-truth-al-gores-al-jazeera-current-tv-deal/
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/al-gore-sell-current-tv-al-jazeera-article-1.1231907
From Forbes
Yet money is money, and most Americans understand profit motive, especially given Mr. Gore’s makeover from politician to businessman. Mr. Gore is on the board of Apple, an adviser to Google and a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers with stakes in Amazon.com, eBay and Procter & Gamble. How will Mr. Gore’s net shake out?
And when you think that Bliar has/had a connection to JP Morgan’s climate change division, you wonder what lies behind the words and actions of these snake oil salesmen.
I must have been thinking of Tom and Jerry! It’s gerrymandering.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering
From our New York friends:
Statement of Support for Brooklyn College Students for Justice in Palestine:
We Condemn Attacks Against Advocates for BDS and Palestinian Rights!
We the undersigned deplore the efforts of politicians and others to bully student activists and faculty and to smear supporters of boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) against Israel as anti-Semites.
In recent days, opponents of an event on BDS to be held on campus February 7th have attacked the organizers and scheduled speakers, internationally renowned philosopher Judith Butler and Palestinian human rights activist Omar Barghouti, as well as the political science department and university administration for co-sponsoring the event. This is just the latest in a series of incidents involving attempts to silence criticism of Israel at Brooklyn College.
Opponents of the February 7 event have made deeply offensive and inflammatory accusations against supporters of BDS, with State Assemblyman Alan Maisel going so far as to warn of “the potential for a second Holocaust here.” Other prominent critics include lawyer Alan Dershowitz, who has openly called for the United States and Israel to use torture, and State Assemblyman Dov Hikind, a follower of the late Meir Kahane, an Israeli-American rabbi whose racist Kach movement has been outlawed by the US and Israel as a terrorist organization for advocating the expulsion of Palestinians from Israel and the occupied territories and for carrying out violent terrorist attacks against Palestinians and others.
It is outrageous and perverse to conflate BDS proponents and our stance in support of equal rights and freedom for Palestinians with anti-Semitism and Nazism. Contrary to the claims of these detractors, the BDS movement is an inclusive, nonviolent, civil society-led campaign whose goal is to pressure Israel into respecting Palestinian human rights and abiding by international law, in the absence of action on the part of the US government and international community to do so. It is comprised of people of all faiths and backgrounds, including many Israeli and American Jews.
Leaders of the BDS movement have always rejected and condemned any and all forms of racism and bigotry, including anti-Semitism. As SJP-BC’s mission statement says, we “reject any form of hatred or discrimination against any religious or ethnic group.”
As supporters of Palestinian rights and of academic freedom and free speech on campus, we commend Brooklyn College President Karen Gould for showing leadership and not succumbing to pressure from bullies like Dershowitz and Hikind, who seek to suppress criticism of Israel by smearing advocates of Palestinian freedom and equality as bigots.
For nearly 65 years, Palestinians have been dispossessed, colonized, and denied the most basic of human rights and freedoms by Israel. For more than 45 years, they have endured a brutal and illegal Israeli military occupation that becomes more entrenched each day. More than 11 million Palestinian refugees, the survivors and descendants of the approximately 750,000 Palestinians who were ethnically-cleansed during Israel’s creation in 1948, are prevented from exercising their internationally-recognized right of return to the land and homes they were expelled from simply because they are not Jewish, while those Palestinians who remained inside Israel after 1948, who make up about 20% of the population today, face widespread institutionalized discrimination and are treated as second- or third-class citizens.
As the international community looks on and does nothing to hold Israel accountable for its actions, global civil society is taking the lead with BDS.
In light of the attacks, we pledge our continued support to SJP’s efforts to educate the public about Israel’s grave and systematic abuses of Palestinian human rights and the racist, apartheid regime Israel has instituted in the territories it controls between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
For more information, visit SJP Brooklyn College’s website at http://www.brooklynsjp.com/ or email us at [email protected].
Brendan and Arbed link to a different Cohen, of Guardian infamy. So do the Medialens editors.
http://members5.boardhost.com/medialens/thread/1359883840.html
“And when you think that Bliar has/had a connection to JP Morgan’s climate change division, you wonder what lies behind the words and actions of these snake oil salesmen.”
That’s easy, wealth creation.
Put up a wind mill and it generates carbon credits, pieces of paper which represent no concrete thing of value in the real world but which can be sold on the open market to coal fired power stations who can then pretend they aren’t emitting nearly as much co2 as they are.
I’m not a climate denier, it’s happening and happening fast but all this lot are doing is making a fast buck out of it.
Significant international and local developments are happening.
Israel attacked Syria in violations of the UN charter and this seems intended to provoke a war.
Israel also did not show up at a mandatory review of its human rights record in front of the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC). All
193 U.N.-member nations are required to submit to such a review every four years, and council diplomats said they worried that if nation were let off the hook that could undermine the process.
Israel was the first country to do so in the history of the council setting a precedent that is very dangerous.
http://popular-resistance.blogspot.com/2013/01/unhrc-condemns-israel.html
The full UNHCR report is here
http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/HRBodies/HRCouncil/RegularSession/Session19/FFM/FFMSettlements.pdf
see also
http://mondoweiss.net/2013/01/settlements-international-governments.html
and
Israeli TV admits: No rockets were ever fired from UNRWA schools in Gaza during “Cast Lead”
http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/israeli-tv-admits-no-rockets-were-ever-fired-unrwa-schools-gaza-during-cast-lead
Thanks for that link, Mary. Within it there was a link to another – another – article smearing Galloway and Assange in the Observer today:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/feb/03/mps-pay-give-them-more-if-they-turn-up
Comments open this time, so I’ve been able to post this.
Anyone who wants the full details behind this smear:
Wonder how long it will last until the moderators swoop?
As if Assange and Galloway need smearing, they have done a fantastic job of destroying their own reputations.
I’m afraid I can’t see the link between the guardian article and the inflamed OTT response by Craig and some of the usual suspects on here.
Maybe what really stings is the protest against JA and his conniving methods of avoiding rape charges. Not everyone has been as gullible as most of the far-left in falling for his shtick.
Doug Scorcie
Funny I didn’t hear your thoughts on the few thousand violations of the UN Charter already carried out by Assad and his thugs.
What’s that thing sitting under a bridge two comments up? Nasty smell emanating from it, whatever it is. Best ignored and not fed, methinks.
Craig, if you are serious about speaking out against ‘warped moral values’. I suggest you look no further that the comments section of your blog. Still waiting for JA’s brave stand against Iran and Russia’s grave record on freedom. Oh yeah, I forgot he’s on the payroll, so they can’t be criticised, only the nasty imperialist West.
The level of devotion to demagoguery, hysteria, illogical argument and a somewhat admirable sense of indefatigability in the sense of reason would make even David Koresh
proud.
I suggest you look no further that the comments section of your blog. Still waiting for JA’s brave stand against Iran and Russia’s grave record on freedom. Oh yeah, I forgot he’s on the payroll, so they can’t be criticised, only the nasty imperialist West.
@ Guano
“Des Res
Talk about the weather is what Brits do when they are lying. It’s a joke – ever heard of irony – dry humour? Sigh”
I think you may have a problem in recognising irony when you see it – just to spell it out Mary is not one for usually accepting the accuracy of anything on the BBC website whatever its claimed source.
BTW Brits talk about the weather regardless of whether they are lying or not.
Note the cosying up at the No 10 dinner parties and I guess SamCam and Dave have been round to Belgrave Square.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/meet-my-nbf-david-cameron-and-tony-blair-become-chums-8478494.html
Were Rebekah and Charlie Brooks also at the No 10 table as Rebekah is a mutual friend of Dave and Bliar but maybe the PM’s and the ex PM’s wives would not tolerate that.
Ahh, I see what you did there Mary!
Changed the letters of Blair’s name to become Bliar. That is so amazingly intelligent and innovative, go and pat yourself on the back.
He has been referred to as that for yonks, ever since David Gentleman drew this for the STWC. Rather good isn’t, especially the red splatter marks to represent the blood the war criminal spilt.
http://www.eyemagazine.com/blog/post/power-of-the-ruling-pen
Perhaps Assange should join the SWP and then the comrades in true Leninist tradition could clear him of rape
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/ranks-of-the-socialist-workers-party-are-split-over-handling-of-rape-allegation-8448429.html
It is noticeable the arguments from the “comrades” here as to why their own views on Assange should take preference to the legal processes in a progressive and decent country such as Sweden (or at least considerably more progressive and decent than the regimes which most of them defend) bear a marked similarity to those of their SWP friends – and all of them really just demonstrate the ends justify the means mentality that the likes of Orwell and Koestler warned us about.
@Fred – “I’m not a climate denier, it’s happening and happening fast”
Please be very careful here.
Statement 1 is that the climate is changing. That is obviously true.
Statement 2 is that the change in the climate is caused by human activity. That is a completely different statement. It is being purveyed using enormous propaganda, with the message that ‘we’ve all got to tighten our belts’, enabling huge cost-cutting by the boss class.
Those who disagree with Statement 2 are widely portrayed as if they disagree with Statement 1, the truth of which is obvious. In other words, we are portrayed as nutcases who deny the obvious. That is, of course, a dishonest way of arguing.
The ‘truth’ of statement 1 (which, incidentally, morphed from a different statement about ‘global warming’) is not at all ‘obvious’, for people who’ve got enough sense to look at things for themselves rather than regurgitate ‘opinion’ from paid personnel who stand above them in the opinion chain.
Consider the following very simple and true fact: there used to be ice fairs on the Thames, which stopped because the Thames stopped freezing over, shortly before the Industrial Revolution.
The climate has always changed. It always will change. This is natural. This does not depend on industry.
What is completely unnatural, what is reminiscent of the Nazis’ call for a 1000-year Reich, is the monstrous and fantastic idea that ‘we’ can stop the climate changing, and keep it like it is, forever. ‘We’ can’t, any more than ‘we’ can stop the earth revolving on its axis.
The whole discourse here is not one of being in tune with nature; it’s one of enslaving nature. It is a treacherous discourse.
Nature won’t actually be enslaved, of course, because it can’t be. The real meaning of the discourse is clamping down on us, making the vast majority of people in the world ever more impoverished, and, where useful, ever more subservient and servile, until the real god of the ruling class (could this ever be more obviously so than it is in England?), Thomas Malthus, is invoked, and, to put it bluntly, they cut off the food supply.
Aargh! Apologies for the typo! I meant to type:
“The ‘truth’ of statement 2 (which, incidentally, morphed from a different statement about ‘global warming’) is not at all ‘obvious’ (…)”
Arbed, agreed uggggh what a stench.
But read it over again. Two sentences are exact duplicates!! LOL and ROFL! He’s got a script and is paid by the line.
Never seen anything like it.
Resident Dissident, are you aware that Sweden is owned by one family, the Wallenberg family? Ask any Swedish person.
“especially the red splatter marks to represent the blood the war criminal spilt.”
Of course what needs to be appreciated is that the red splatter marks were a representaion – unlike in the regimes which Mary and many others here favour which prefer to use the real thing on any protestors’ posters.
N = not only do I know a few Swedes but I have also read Fishing in Utopia by Andrew Brown (about his experience of living in Swededn for a number of years) which received an Orwell Prize a few years backs – so with all due respects what you are talking about is garbage.
“Consider the following very simple and true fact: there used to be ice fairs on the Thames, which stopped because the Thames stopped freezing over, shortly before the Industrial Revolution.”
The last frost fair was 1814 well into the Industrial Revolution.
But thank you for pointing out that the climate was colder before we started pumping vast amounts of co2 into it.
@Blegburnduddoo – I stand corrected, and am a bit embarrassed, because I know the area well. The Ahmadiyya mosque is on the site of the old dairy, in very close proximity to Morden South railway station, which for some reason I wrongly got into my head was called Lower Morden, even if the core of Lower Morden is further out from Morden. Indeed, the mosque is not even in the Lower Morden ward, because it’s in your old ward, St Helier! 🙂 Thanks for the correction!
@Fred
““Consider the following very simple and true fact: there used to be ice fairs on the Thames, which stopped because the Thames stopped freezing over, shortly before the Industrial Revolution.”
The last frost fair was 1814 well into the Industrial Revolution.”
Yes but the frequency with which the Thames froze over had started to decline decades before. The freeze of 1814 was by then an unusual thing, and only lasted for 4 days. The previous one was 19 years before. Between 1649 and 1695, it froze 7 times. In one winter in the 1680s, it froze for 2 months. The first recorded frost fair on the Thames was in 1608. Basically you had two centuries of frequent frost fairs, although it did occasionally freeze prior to 1400. The climate got colder, then it got warmer. Nothing to do with industry whatsoever.
I haven’t heard anyone claim the Little Ice Age ended because of industry, although it wouldn’t surprise me if the climate propagandists soon get round to it. They will probably pretend that it has ‘always’ been known to have ended because of industry. Oceania has similarly ‘always’ been at war with Eurasia.
They are already telling lies with statistics as usual, by calculating an ‘average’ temperature in a deliberately misleading way so as to pretend that the recent rising trend is completely unprecedented in its scale from anything that has happened before.
The numbers of years in which the Thames is recorded to have frozen in London in each century between the 15th and the 19th are as follows: 2, 5, 10, 6 (plus 2 where it did a bit).
“But thank you for pointing out that the climate was colder before we started pumping vast amounts of co2 into it.
You seem to be conveying a thought using sarcasm instead of a direct statement – a thought which illustrates the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy.
It is an obvious fact that the Little Ice Age did not end because of industry. It is also a fact that the climate has always changed and always will.
I meant to type: “The numbers of years in which the Thames is recorded to have frozen in London in each century between the 15th and the 19th are as follows: 2, 5, 10, 6 (plus 2 where it did a bit), 0”
Clearly there is a hump there and it is nothing to do with industry.
“I haven’t heard anyone claim the Little Ice Age ended because of industry”
No you wouldn’t because it isn’t true.
Just as the fact there are cycles in our weather isn’t an argument against anthropomorphic climate change.
N
Of course it is possible that climate changes because of both natural and man made factors. The scientific evidence for the former is pretty much established and incontrovertible – and there are pretty well established scientific/statistical methods for separating the impact of different causal factors for particular effects: and the vast majority of scientists who have done this for climate change believe that C02 emissions are also a cause of global warming as well as natural cycles. My guess, however, based upon your comment about Sweden is that you are not a great one for scientific method or for challenging the underlying science.
Of course where any effect has more than one potential cause it is possible for anyone to argue which effect predominates based on their political views – and this is of course the favoured technique of conspiracy theorists – but please lets not pretend that it has anything to do with science or the scientific method.