George Monbiot may be a self-confessed hard-hearted bastard, but along with David Leigh, Simon Jenkins and Marina Hyde he prevents the Guardian from being only a NuLab propaganda machine.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cif-green/2010/jun/22/british-institutional-investors-sue-bp
You must have missed Hyde’s use of a football column, of all things, to decry a ban on Israeli player Yossi Benayoun going to a particular Middle East country as the worst type of anti-semitism, etc, when the ban applies to *all* citizens of Israel.
Maybe not NuLab propaganda, but a water carrier nevertheless
kingfelix
I would certainly oppose a ban on all citizens of Israel going anywhere – I quite agree with Hyde. Would you have supported a ban on Mbeki and Slovo travelling during apartheid? Bloody stupid.
Bloody stupid reading a blog to find out what some resident twat on the Guardian thinks.
What a waste of the internet!
What a surprise someone on the paper thinks someone else is anti-semitic!
How transgressive in the extreme!
Now wonder comment-boarders here are so full of shit!
Monbiot?
Read Monbiot?
You cannot be serious!
Is there anywhere we can read Larry..I mean apart from in the Cathouse reception suite!
Now that would really relax me..I’d be well up for it after reading Larry.
Now call me anti-semitic if you like-shit I hate it really-but there is no way my fee is going to Larry Silverstein Inc!
VAT @20%, benefit cuts, yes-FALSE-FLAG TERROR,no way!
Can’t you get no better on dissa site dan a lode ol’ spiricist piss-takers,Massa Craig?
Iz just gon’ check out da Gardrin,sho’nuff.
I mean I wanna be rite up da widda big time comment boys likka angri,Larry and dem all.
Gotta keepaheda dem spiracists!
There’s good monbiot. I used to think it was all good, then I thought there was a lot of rubbish. There still is rubbish (his stuff against solar panels recently, and his book a few years ago saying Hey! let’s solve all the world’s problems by giving all power to a World Parliament, elected democratically etc.) But this is the good stuff. If brings many threads together. It’s point is solid; mainly negative, but that’s what he’s good at, perhaps for sound reasons.
he’s not against solar panels per se, as far as I’m aware, just against putting solar panels somewhere like the UK where the amount of electricity being generated is severely limited by the weather. You wouldn’t put a wind turbine where the wind never blows. Agree with you about the book Age of Consent. It seemed the wrong way round to me – the analysis in the second half was more interesting than the solutions offered at the beginning.
Sorry Richard, I didn’t look at your post properly before sending that comment so didn’t realise we share the same name!
But where, pray tell, is Richard III?
Yeah. Monbiot is a deeply questionable authority. Check out this piece:
http://www.swans.com/library/art15/barker34.html
Simon Jenkins also is deeply flawed, a typical safe pair of hands, a gatekeeper of dissent:
“Simon Jenkins in The Times sneeringly referred to Kelman as an ‘illiterate savage’…”
http://www.booksfromscotland.com/Authors/James-Kelman
Remember, this is not to say that people like Monbiot and Jenkins never write or do good things. It is simply to suggest that we subject their assumed roles to scrutiny, to see whether in fact they measure-up.
he has not been successful, the guardian -atleast on net-is full of british propaganda and dream of empire buliding which is both NUlab and conservative dream.
only have to look at the guardian on net during first 6 months after Iraq war the the proapganda in favour of occupation of a foreign land. The msot galling is that the same fguardian is again trying to pose as liberal after the iraqi resitance thwarted the british dream.
Nonetheless, David Leigh has done some good investigative work on the intelligence services, etc. An example:
http://www.cambridgeclarion.org/press_cuttings/mi5.bbc.page9_obs_18aug1985.html
But… see next post, please.
Hmn… still a safe pair of hands. A ‘Tom Hayden’, a ‘Bob Woodward’.
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/mark-steel/mark-steel-how-the-guardian-sacks-its-writers-shy-by-one-who-knows-681634.html
I’m afraid that I basically agree with apostate (and also avatar) on this. I don’t think you get to be a journalist on a big national newspaper unless you accept certain limits and basically at some level buy the imperial package. If you don’t buy the package and yet get onto – or manage to stay on – such an organ, it’s likely nowadays that you’re there as a fig-leaf. John Pilger is a great – and I mean, great – journalist but in the UK press, is a fig-leaf for the pathetically metropolitan New Statesman. Same with Robert Fisk and the Independent.
You might say, well then, according to that analysis, the MSM can’t win! Perhaps, but it’s about news management, the de-fanging of oppositional forces and the manipulation of truth. It’s good these honourable journalists are getting their stories out widely, but let’s not be fooled.
As an industry, the MSM does not exist to convey truth. It exists to make a profit and to serve the interests of the ruling elites.
Agree with Suhayl on Jenkins and Monbiot. Don’t know about the link given by Suhayl though – what is eco-feminism? Science is genderless, despite the postmodern poseurs.
Monbiot is so often ‘right-on’ that it comes as a shock when he strays into a topic where you happen to know he is talking twaddle. He had a piece in praise of wind ‘farms’ a couple of years ago – I was so astonished at the innacuracies that I wrote to him. Didn’t do any good, of course. David Miller’s take on him is probably not entirely unfair.
From the Wiki to the Wicca:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecofeminism
Yes, how many richards are there here ? I started using my full name when I saw someone else posting as ‘richard’
I don’t mean to be rude old chap but Richard as in Richard III is cockney rhyming-slang for “turd”.
When you ask about the number of richards are you saying we need a plumber?
Everyone needs plumbers, man. Even plumbers need plumbers.
Simon Jenkins is a ghastly old fraud.
If I have doubts about what I think about an issue, I always wait until Simon Jenkins has pronounced on it, and then all suddenly becomes clear. The diametric opposite of whatever position Jenkins has taken is always the place to be.
Say what you want about Monbiot (and believe me, I don’t agree with alot of his more recent work), but I still hold ‘Captive State’ to be an absolutely unimpeachable tank of a book. It’s certainly one of the most sustainedly well-argued and damning pieces of investigative journalism on PFI from the period.
However, I can’t believe that any of you honestly expect mainstream journalists to respond that well to criticism based on scrutiny rather than differing opinion – Medialens has been fairly consistent in highlighting their reactions to engagements from outside their own professional class. Which I suppose in part accounts for phenomena like Jenkins on Kelman – his pronouncements actually gave away more than he reckoned for. Given that Kelman is the last writer in the UK you could ever expect to write literary fiction accepting of the standards and sympathetic of the concerns of the southern media & publishing class, it’s hardly surprising – but very telling – that Jenkins calls him ‘an illiterate savage’.
And speaking of which
http://www.medialens.org/alerts/08/081002_intellectual_cleansing_part1.php
I remember feeling that this had a particular kind of resonance when I read it at the time, in relation to the above.
—————— A History of Impunity ——————
1953 ?” Qibya
1956 ?” Kufr Qasem
1967 ?” The USS Liberty
1976 ?” ‘Land Day’ Shootings
1978 ?” Operation Litani
1996 ?” Qana
2000 ?” October Murders
2002 ?” Jenin
2008-09 ?” Operation Cast Lead
2010 – Memorial Day flotilla raid
Mark Golding and Apostate, why do you have to turn this into a Jew-hating site?
And Apostate – Larry Silverstein lost friends on 911. Fuck off.
I’m sure you could express yourself better and at much greater length in the freedom of your own website, Larry. Why don’t you write your excellent thoughts there?
http://blamebush.typepad.com/
“Larry Silverstein lost friends on 911, Fuck off.” would make a great satirical post and allow for many comments by the educated and informed right wing there. You could even write JOOOOOOS periodically.
“Is there anywhere we can read Larry..I mean apart from in the Cathouse reception suite!”
Sure, all of his “satire” is available here – it appears to start in February 2003 with Iraqis wheeling anthrax cannisters into his hotel room:
http://blamebush.typepad.com/blamebush/2003/02/index.html
“with Iraqis wheeling anthrax cannisters into his hotel room”
and such-like
Here we have an example of one of Larry’s posts – Larry who yells about anti-semitism here at every opportunity (or non-opportunity as the case may be):
“Health Crisis in Iraq
“According to statistics, over 13,500 Iraqis suffer from spontaneous decapitation each year. Iraqi scientists suspect that the phenomenon may a result of stress from the U.S imposed sanctions, but they aren’t certain.”
McIntyre, remind me – have you concluded that I am the proprietor of that website because my name is Larry and I was in the Seattle area earlier this month on vacation?
Do you understand that the U.S. is a really big place?
Do you practise law in St Louis, Larry? Why do you seem unable to answer this simple question? “It’s more complicated than that”, you wrote. Well, okay. But ignoring the complications, it seems to me that either you practise law in St Louis, or you don’t. That is not particularly complicated.
Thanks, Sean, that was an excellent post and link.
Larry a lawyer?
Is it getting a little too hot up there Suhayl?
you cannot be serious, it is impossible for a horse to make a decent espresso, so how can Larry be a loiyer?
we know larry worked in a law frim in Washington, and that this firm was Karimov’s primary paid US lobbyist and also the lawyers for Gulnara Karimova’s business empire. We know that because he told us so.
Of course doesn’t mean he is a lawyer. Could be a cleaner. But it is an interesting coincidence that he was professionally employed by the Karimov’s lawyers and lobbyists, and now spends so much time on this site.
That could be entirely coincidence. But I am inclined to doubt it.