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.
Ben, 10.19pm
“What is the basis of this week-old epiphany taking the scales off Khan’s eyes?”
No, of course it’s got nothing to do with the bail money – that’s pocket change to Jemima Khan. But I have a couple of theories about what’s brought on this week’s epiphany, in order:
1) He dissed her film – and on the basis of the title alone, the cheeky geek! Perhaps she feels her reputation to some extent rides on the success of the project to which she has lent her name as Executive Producer: We Steal Secrets: The Story of Wikileaks? And he’s gone and squished its chances by pointing out very, very publicly that, for a film which purports to be a documentary, its highly prejudicial title belies that claim.
2) She’s been influenced by New Statesman (Associate Editor: Jemima Khan) contributor David Allen Green and his half-cocked Legal Myths of the Assange Case. Indeed, he is currently using twitter to take credit for ‘turning’ Jemima. (Don’t quote me on this as I haven’t fully researched it yet, but there are rumours coming out of Sweden that DAG was commissioned to write his Legal Myths article from within Sweden. More on this as soon as I have any further news.)
3) She’s been fed misinformation about the Swedish allegations during the course of filming the Swedish section of We Steal Secrets. The film apparently contains an interview with one of the women complainants. I can only assume this is Anna Ardin as Sophie Wilen has disappeared. How Jemima Khan can possibly see her film as “a balanced and fair account of Wikileaks” when Ardin, not being associated with Wikileaks in any way, can only contribute her views about her own allegations beats me. Giving these a worldwide hearing when Assange is legally barred from publicly discussing the allegations against him and he hasn’t even been questioned yet, let alone charged – I mean, c’mon Jemima, how that “fair”?
But, if that’s not enough, look what I found:
Villager, 7.03pm
“I haven’t addressed CE here as a dolt for nothing. I observed him close up through all the Assange threads and he stubbornly comes up short on his grasp of elementary issues. So, don’t let him get under your skin. But, from my heart i’d say please do choose your battles.”
Thank you, you have a kind heart, but please don’t worry about me – once I have said I will no longer engage, that’s it. Finito. Problem solved. 🙂
Welcome Arbed, keep up that energy.
—
Macky, Roger wlll do though trying to progress my sleep times to sync with Nature. Yes with The Three Stoogies away, it feels the angels are passing over head.
Assange is not a political refugee. Not by any definition of the phrase.
Mary Whitehouse and her ilk were widely ridiculed for condeming films without having seen them and rightly so. There’s no reason why Assange shouldn’t get the same treatment. I can’t see why failure to get the St Julian Seal of Approval should seriously affect the film’s success, there ought to be enough people intelligent enough to want to watch the film before making up their own minds. Personally I think it’s arrived two years too late. Wikileaks and Assange are old news.
Thank God i have no idea what you’re going on about….
Arbed; Goran is an enigma for me. Note these two links and the commensurate dates.
http://www.aolnews.com/2011/02/07/julian-assanges-lawyer-says-key-evidence-is-being-kept-under-wr/
http://samtycke.nu/eng/the-assange-case/why-did-julian-assange-come-to-sweden/
CE is your generic troll, but Goran has been percolating his meme since 2010.
A commentator seems to suggest he is a former taxi-driver gone legal consultant and watchdog
But the dates on these two links seem counterintuitive.
I concur on Jemima’s turnaround vis-a-vis the Wikileaks movie. Hadn’t thought about her indignation at being criticised by Julian indirectly for her attempt at objective movie-making,
Is objective movie-making even possible, when your title sets the tone?
The UK gave political asylum to a fugitive of Indonesian justice, who had escaped custody during a trial for a serious crime. The fugitive is West Papua independence activist, Benny Wenda, a leader of the self-determination campaign for West Papua, which is under Indonesian control.
“An Australian, Miss Robinson is based in London and works for several human rights groups. She took part in Mr Wenda’s 2002 trial for masterminding a fatal attack on a police station. During the case, Mr Wenda escaped from custody and eventually reached Britain, where he was granted political asylum. He is now a British citizen.”
The whole story –
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10864818
Let’s ask the trolls and shills who peddle their mock outrage regarding evasion of justice to comment here on Mr Wenda’s receiving of asylum in the UK.
Apparently, the US govt is prepared to give legal guarantees to people without consulting the courts – but not without some risk of betrayal.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2013/feb/11/icelandic-mp-wikileaks-us-birgitta-jonsdottir
Last paragraph –
“In 2011 the US ambassador to Iceland gave verbal assurances that Jónsdóttir could travel freely to the US without fear of arrest or prosecution. But she has been advised by senior Icelandic government officials not to do so on the grounds that a verbal assurance is not binding and could be overruled by the US at any time.”
This is the sort of impact i was referring to last night on Brand Sweden:
“Most recently, it was when Sweden lost with lowest number of country-votes their bid for a post in the United Nations body for Human Rights. While the event was reported abroad, it was almost completely ignored by the Swedish press. I believe the only exception was an article in SvD, which instead commented (after it was known on the catastrophic election results) how despicable and inefficient such UN Human Rights organizations are. Aesop in Swedish: surt sa räven om rönnbären (The Fox And The Grapes).
Would these “foreign-policy” or “Swedish international prestige” factors be enough to explain the astonishingly, consistent consensus of the Swedish political parties in categorizing both the Assange “process” and Julian Assange as a person? The characterizations of Assange by both functionaries of the Ministry of Defence and the Swedish National Television as an enemy of Sweden (“Assange blackmailing the entire Nation of Sweden” and “Assange, Sweden’s Number One enemy”, respectively) are of course echoed by several political personalities, from Prime Minister Reinfeldt himself to the Christian Democratic Party leader (see list of utterances in the letter by Senator Scott Ludlam to Foreign Minister Bob Carr [See doc. Carr prejudicial statements] of the 24 of January 2013, recently translated into Swedish in Professorsblogg)
Or there is other idiosyncratic factors that would also contribute in explaining this very peculiar phenomena of “national” consensus of denial in front of obvious anomalies about the “Affair Assange”, that have strongly and objectively been denounced in the international arena – the most aggravating of all being the indications that Swedish authorities are in this case – but also in others – infringing Sweden’s own legal order, procedures and regulations in order to comply with their vassal self-commitment to a foreign power [see in Professors blogg Swedish/U.S. Intelligence co-operation in the Bodström Society. THIS, and the spectacle provided by the complicity of known Swedish journalists in defaming or concealing truth, is what is definitely discrediting Sweden internationally.”
Please read the whole article:
Why are Swedish political parties and MSM altogether hostile against WikiLeaks and Assange?
http://professorsblogg.com/2013/02/08/swedish-legal-4-us-political/
And the next part…
What could end Sweden’s prestige-bound deadlock of the case Assange? Analysing important developments in Latin-America
By Marcello Ferrada de Noli
http://professorsblogg.com/2013/02/11/swe-prestige-bound-deadlock/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcello_Ferrada-Noli
Ben, 1.00am
Forgive me because I don’t have all the details on Goran Rudling to hand, but the Flashback forum in Sweden thinks he’s very much more than just an opinionated troll, on the basis of:
1) His “Consent Now” website – contrary to his claims to be a longrunning campaign and his life’s work – was set up shortly before the incident to which the Swedish allegations against Assange occurred. They don’t think there’s any conspiracy nonsense behind this but knowing the background of Swedish politics – the radical feminist movement to change the sex laws, Sweden’s participation in Afghanistan, etc – puts Goran’s activities in a wholly different light, ie. they think he’s a paid political campaigner. There are systems in Sweden whereby this type of political campaign website receives per-hit financial compensation from the government, as are other political publications, such as feminist newsletters, etc.
2) His ex was a Swedish government department official. Goran’s credibility as a ‘freelance investigator’ and ‘defence witness’ in the Assange matter rests on his having uncovered Anna Ardin’s deleting of tweets and blog posts that were exculpatory evidence in favour of Assange but he swiped this from Flashback. I believe he also had access to a very early 37 page version of the police protocol, which he kept to himself rather than sharing with the world, but via who?
Your second link is also interesting. There’s been a few Flashback discussions on who might have first implanted the idea that Wikileaks – already well-protected legally by its server distribution across countries with strong press/source protection laws (including within Sweden) – required the additional protection afforded by Assange’s residency application. This was actually unnecessary but helpful politically, ie Wikileaks’ solid legal position would be more visible. The whole idea first arose, apparently, in the very early days of August 2010 and Assange acted on it quickly, setting up the trip to Sweden, the Pirate Party’s hosting of Wikileaks, the residency application and the invitation to speak at the Christian Brotherhood seminar (one of Assange’s techniques to travel safely was always to have an ‘official’ invitation so questions would be asked if he failed to appear). The rest is history, as they say.
CE, there is still nothing in my Inbox from you. Can you say when you’re available yet? It would help me to plan my afternoon.
Utmost respect to Birgitta Jónsdóttir. I feel very worried for her.
Jemand, 12 Feb, 8:13 am; Thank you for this link:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2013/feb/11/icelandic-mp-wikileaks-us-birgitta-jonsdottir
Jemand, 8.13pm
I’m sorry to say this but I think Birgitta Jonsdottir’s motives for travelling to the US are a bit suspect. I read somewhere that she had made overtures to be taken back into the fold of Wikileaks (she’s contributed to several smear documentaries alongside Daniel Domscheit-Berg over the last two years, so she had grouped herself in with the ‘detractors’ pretty much), but I haven’t seen anything further on this so it’s not clear whether Wikileaks welcomed her back.
Then there’s her twitter reaction to Jemima Khan’s article last week:
https://twitter.com/birgittaj/status/299285475724754944
which Glenn Greenwald responded to with:
http://www.twitlonger.com/show/kv97s0
Then there’s her involvement as a consultant on Dreamworks’ film about Wikileaks. When Assange first criticised this movie and said it had a scene set in an Iranian nuclear facility (this was before he read a section of the script out to the Oxford Union audience) she first claimed on twitter the scene had been changed to refer to Stuxnet, then two days later after Assange read out the scene, she claimed on Twitter the scene had been cut entirely. On the face of it, this doesn’t seem truthful behaviour.
On the matter of her trip to the US, last week I posted this as a comment to her blog post about the Wikileaks movie:
http://joyb.blogspot.com.au/2013/01/statement-dreamworking-wikileaks.html?spref=tw
Long and the short of it? I think she may have cut a deal with the US Grand Jury prosecution team to give her testimony to the Grand Jury and have her identity concealed as a “protected witness”.
Clark, 11.12am
“CE, there is still nothing in my Inbox from you. Can you say when you’re available yet? It would help me to plan my afternoon.”
I’m sure this doesn’t really need saying, but may I ask that your discussions with CE don’t cover my recent run-in with him – or, at least, if they do they are structured in only the most general of terms and don’t discuss me personally with him at all please? I don’t trust him enough for that, I’m afraid.
Criticising JA is an extremely brave thing to do, especially when we see the furious wave of anger and smear tactics unleashed on anyone who does so.
I salute the courage of Ms Khan and others who do so despite knowing the reaction they well get. Commendable.
*will* 🙁
Clark, I have done.
Hello CE. I have your e-mail now. I’m just composing my thoughts.
CE, firstly, I’d like to ask you your opinions about Wikileaks and its activities, and what events first stimulated your interest and apparent hostility towards Assange personally.
While awaiting your reply, I’ll post some background of my own. I first heard of Wikileaks some years back. At that time, I was excited by this new project. I hadn’t heard of Assange, and it wasn’t until later that he emerged as its “public representative”.
I don’t like to be described as a “disciple” etc., as my allegiance is more towards Wikileaks than towards Assange as a person. So that is one thing that I find provocative about your comments ; everyone being lumped together as some “cult”, and your apparent lack of appreciation for Wikileaks supporters.
CE, I’ve only just now noticed that you have been posting contact details, linked from your screen-name. I apologise for not noticing this sooner.
@Arbed – I’m sorry to say this but I think Birgitta Jonsdottir’s motives for travelling to the US are a bit suspect.”
I had my doubts about her when she was interviewed by the ABC for the Assange doco – something she said. But my main point was that the US has given legal assurances (verbal) despite protestations by the anti-Assange cult that they could/should/would not do so.
My previous comment revealed the hypocrisy of the UK granting asylum to a fugitive while arguing that they are prevented from allowing the same thing for Assange.
CE? Hello? Have you got Internet connection problems? Should we arrange a different time for this?
Hi Clark,
I would guess I an not as politically active as some on this blog. So I only first heard of Wikileaks a few years ago. I immediately thought, and still do, that it could be a tremendous force for good in the world if it could stick to it’s high ideals.
However the more the I learned and read about JA himself it seemed to me this was a difficult, obtuse man who was more full of himself than he had reason to be. Once the Swedish incident had ‘kicked-off’ and I researched it more, it became clearer than ever that this was a prime case of ‘do as I say, not as I do’ which I found to be extremely distasteful given wikileaks high morals. If JA had a shred of decency and actually cared about others, he would have resigned his post at wikileaks to save the organisation, but JA prefers to use it as a shield to help guard him against his sexual offences.
Once he had skipped bail and the smearing of his alleged victims was stepped up, I became extremely angry, who does this guy think he is? How can anyone of sane and rational mind possibly defend him. So after seeing Mr Murray(someone I respected) on Newsnight, I came on here to see why\how people defended him and was incredulous at some of the myopia on display.
CE, 11:53 am:
Are not many such smears anonymous? I feel that anonymous smears require considerable scepticism. Many, even the majority, could be coming from corporate, government or secret service sources, intended to discredit pro-Wikileaks / Assange supporters. Had you considered this possibility?
There is also the matter of increasing polarisation in the debate (now an argument) over Assange. To me, this seems to be responsible for much of the hostility.
Then we have the likes of Goran Rudling. I can’t think of anyone with an approach more likely to polarise a debate.
I don’t think we should lay all the blame for hostilities on Julian Assange and his supporters. Look at the Naomi Wolf incident. You had a right go about her, but it wasn’t her fault. She had made the mistake of trusting the corporate media.
How suspicious of corporate media are you? I’m very suspicious. Whipping up emotion and argument is their speciality. It sells papers, gains readership, makes money through increasing advertising revenue, and concentrates power upon themselves.
Again, did you gain this impression from the corporate media? Personally, I haven’t met Assange, so I don’t make assumptions. There have been problems within Wikileaks, but I think, given the highly charged atmosphere, that this is unsurprising.
Please be more specific; I may have a reply to this, depending upon exactly what you mean.
Clark,
For someone such as Ms Woolf to launch such a scathing attack on the basis of a Daily Mail leader was unforgivable.
Not overly suspicious I’m afraid to see. I take everything with a large dose of Salt. I am aware of medialens , but often find it to be just as biased and myopic as the MSM.
Indeed. But despite Goran’s many flaws, if you take his work in isolation, most of it is extremely accurate and I make no apology for referencing him sometimes.
You are not a saint Clark, surely you make some assumptions about people depending on other people views on them.
Yes Clarke I based most of initial dislike of JA on the views of people such as DD-B, luke harding and others who have attempted to work with him and came away with a proverbial bloody nose. The long line of people falling out with JA is surely a testament to his, to put it mildly, difficult personality. The Final confirmation was his apparent belief that he is above the law, and I was not surprised in the slightest to learn that he refers to himself in 3rd person.
I believe Wikileaks and JA’s alleged victims would be served best by JA resigning and returning to Sweden immediately.
This seems unfair towards Assange. His resignation could maybe have helped Wikileaks, but would have done nothing to protect him, personally. Given the corporate-government reactions, particularly in the US, I feel that any fear Assange is experiencing is entirely understandable. So I feel that it is unfair of you to attribute all of his fear to the sexual allegations in Sweden.
How do you think you would feel, in Assange’s position? Obviously, there are a range of possible reactions; Assange knows better than us what occurred in the privacy of bedrooms. Please consider that entire range, rather than proceeding upon assumptions. But can the US threat really be ignored? I can’t see how.