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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Not sure I’m comfortable GG is lending credibility to that fascist rag. Has he read their news “reporting”? Ugh!
Nevermind – and see el caso de Luis Yáñez, portavoz socialista de la Asamblea Parlamentaria Eurolatinoamericana y presidente de la Asociación Cuba-Europa en Progreso, que se ha manifestado crítico en varias ocasiones con el régimen cubano, al que se le ha impedido entrar Cuba junto a su mujer, la europarlamentaria Carmele Hermosín.
Denied entry to Cuba, and member of la Asociación Cuba-Europa en Progreso…for which Ardin worked. In Cuba.
Just an innocent lady spook, doing what lady spooks do….
Sorry – link here for post awaiting moderation
http://diegoarmario.wordpress.com/category/internacional/page/3/
It was indeed a terrific article, laced with, I thought, a certain anger. He won’t be getting invited to The Gruan xmas party, for sure. And his point about the personal, creepy attacks was nailed on perfect. I too have been wondering about the character assassinations and vitriol from supposedly progressive journalists, and have found it rather troubling how swiftly intelligent people descend into mob irrationality. They can’t all be CIA, surely?
Please help me understand liberalism.
With national socialism, communism, zionism, and conservatism, has liberalism got something that can unite and find common understanding and work as a system.
What is the spark of liberalism that can do all good and deny bad.
In a liberal new tomorrow can we affect people to the good side or is being liberal and liking drugs, abuse, violence, pleasure, pain, tardimess, vulgarness, selfishness, e.tc.
How can we ever meet altruism for the common good.
@kingfelix – indeed, but I feel that good journalism should be paid for… so long as the principles of the organ itself are sound. Paradoxically I’m not in favour of paywalls – perhaps more of an honesty-box policy?
Super article.
Back to the Telegraph and now Dan Hodges has Craig as a disciple of Julian Christ:
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danhodges/100177730/in-their-worship-of-julian-assange-the-standard-bearers-of-the-left-are-destroying-everything-they-once-held-dear/
“But wherever he writes, Greenwald is one of the few journalists really worth following.”
As are you Craig….
Interesting that within minutes of that article (about the demonising of Assange by people and press)being published some reader comments below it were already comparing Assange to Hitler and describing him as a monster, thereby confirming the thrust of Greenwald’s piece!
After nearly a decade of the liberal media expressing total mistrust of many western governments’ military and political policies, courts, police and legal process, suddenly everyone is telling us that those in power within the US, UK, Sweden and Australia are somehow respectful of fundamental rights and only Assange is in contempt of them.
What a turnaround. This obsession with rape is all predicated on some facts that almost all the media studiously ignore or manipulate, those facts being:
1. Assange was initally CLEARED of rape or misconduct and was free to go.
2. The case was re-opened in an unprecedented way in circumstances that are extremely likely to have been based not on the alleged victim’s wishes, but the wishes of the Swedish prosecutors.
3. The alleged victim published her own story and name to the press and the Swedish police leaked the case to the press; yet we are told by the BBC that revealing her name violates her rights.
4. The alleged victim freely continued the relationship with Assange for SEVERAL DAYS after the alleged sexual misconduct happened. To say that some victims take time for things to “sink in” is, in this case, entirely implausible.
5. Assange has not been charged formally with rape, but almost the entire media proceeds as though he had been.
6. The USA has against all established international law already kidnapped or extradited many people, none of whom are US citizens, to its shores, claiming treason (you cannot commit treason against a country you do not reside in), and both Sweden and the UK are compliant with that abuse of international law.
7. Therefore Assange has a legitimate concern that his rights to fairness and legal process is genuine. This could have been averted in one stroke by Sweden giving assurances that extradition will not result in another extradition to the US. That simple statement would defuse the whole situation but has not been offered.
8. The so-called liberal media has caved into to its own principles by becoming entirely complicit in a case that stinks from top to bottom of duplicity and dishonesty, by refusing to report the proper facts and by encouraging the demonisation of a person who has done nothing more than expose war crimes and torture through wikileaks. Everything else he is accused of is hearsay, assumption, trial by media, and untested by any legal process.
9. The Assange case is yet another example of whistleblowers being treated as though they, not those about whom they told the truth, are the guilty ones, and that habit is epidemic in this country, whether it involves diplomats, NHS professionals, or staff in local councils. THAT is what the press should be campaigning about. The BBC is at the top of the list of this appalling complacency.
Dan Hodges is Glenda Jackson’s son. No doubt it is a heavy load to blair.
Here’s someone who knows Hodges.
http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/mehdi-hasan/2011/10/dan-hodges-labour-miliband
Lest we forget, here is a man who describes himself as a “neo-Blairite” and as the “Blairite cuckoo in the Miliband nest” but who has also written:
As no one in the Labour Party appears willing to admit their part in the plot to bring down Tony Blair, I’ll cough. I was up to my neck in it.
I briefed and span. Placed stories. Sowed seeds of confusion and dissent….
A right little Judas then, Komodo.
Excellent article. I particularly liked his dissection of the fip-flopping opinions of ‘legal expert’ David Allen Green.
Glad also he bought to my attention Joan Smith’s review of Assange’s RT interview with Ecuador’s Correa , and her remarks about Assange’s unwholesome appearance thereon. People in glass houses…
Hypocrisy grates me intensely enough to pull these paragraphs from the NewStatesman:
On Equador media regulation attacks:
“More discerning researchers will have already determined that the so-called “media crackdown” in Ecuador is the result of the introduction of a strong UK-style media regulation regime in Ecuador – where regulatory decisions on the use of spectrum have remained unenforced for years. In the UK, pirate radio stations are routinely raided by the police, and shut down. There it is called “regulation.” When a now twice reelected, popular-by-supermajority Latin American socialist government does it, it is “starkly dreadful and illiberal.” OFCOM’s banishment of Press TV – at a time when the US-UK axis is stoking hostility towards Iran – has been quickly forgotten.”
On Equador human rights record Greenwald is strong:
“Apparently, activists should only seek asylum from countries with pristine human rights records, whichever countries those might be: a newly concocted standard that was conspicuously missing during the saga of blind Chinese human rights activist Chen Guangcheng at the US embassy; I don’t recall any western media outlets accusing Guangcheng of hypocrisy for seeking refuge from a country that indefinitely imprisons people with no charges, attacked Iraq, assassinates its own citizens with no due process on the secret orders of the president, bombs funerals and rescuers in Pakistan, uses extreme force and mass arrests to try to obliterate the peaceful Occupy protest movement, wages an unprecedented war on whistleblowers, prosecutes its Muslim citizens for posting YouTube videos critical of US foreign policy, embraces and arms the world’s most oppressive regimes, and imprisoned Muslim journalists for years at Guantánamo and elsewhere with no charges of any kind.”
I think the thirty pieces of silver are key, Giles.
It’s actually Glenn’s third piece since formally joining the Guardian – his articles on Monday and Tuesday are just as well worth a read, but the Assange asylum bid is right in his specialty as a first amendment lawyer, and it really shows how undermatched the likes of David Allen Green are.
Separately, the Glenn isn’t the only American they recently hired, they also signed up Josh Trevino. This little dose of satire sums up what a piece of work he is (worth also following the first link to get the extra background):
http://tbogg.firedoglake.com/2012/08/22/editor-admits-that-josh-trevino-just-hired-to-fill-tasteless-fascist-void/
(in a hurry, have read only the last comment and jumped in yeeeehhhhhhaaaaa)
Komodo
You bastard Judas so openly state your price too, shame on you, have Lizards come to be infected with the banksters greed too, after biting one of them on the ass??????
However on the subject of the price, what price Dr Freddy Patel was getting for all the years that he absolved the murdering bastards form their crimes?
PS Yea Olde Lizardness, you know I was just joshing.
Nice poster here based on Craig’s speech outside the embassy
http://somersetbean.blogspot.com.au/2012/08/the-framing-of-dissidents-poster.html
Trevino. And the Guardian. And honesty. Uncomfortable neighbours.
http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/dishonesty-deepens-guardian-demotes-joshua-trevino-hopes-we-wont-notice
A reasonably balanced view of the issues regarding Assange from two activists from Women Against Rape in today’s Grauniad.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/aug/23/women-against-rape-julian-assange?fb=native&CMP=FBCNETTXT9038
The comments on it are mixed (as you might expect) but there is a strong current of support for the article against those attacking it from the right.
@komodo
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Thanks for that. Love the Electronic Intifada.
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Totally shabby episode from The Guardian, compounding the fact they should never have touched that guy.
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Okay, I’m going to clean out the litter trays of seven cats, and it still won’t smell as bad as a Guardian editorial on Julian Assange.
Good news time;
the position of the government of South Africa is that it recognizes the borders of Israel as they were outlined by the United Nations in 1948, and does not recognize any changes made to the borders after that date.
Here;
-ttp://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/159185#.UDYuGyO1mBs
For first time, U.S. State Department defines settler violence as terrorism
In annual report on terrorism in foreign countries, U.S. government report defines so-called ‘price-tag’ attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank as acts of terror.
http://www.haaretz.com/blogs/diplomania/for-first-time-u-s-state-department-defines-settler-violence-as-terrorism.premium-1.459087
Assange: something’s stirring. AFP report, doesn’t seem to have been sufficiently anti-Assange for the Fourth Estate to have copied it into the pagesetter yet:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gkRh8IhO7qWjjUQ61SqpmbqwdS1A?docId=CNG.392d5578e0e2c7d8a0f7efa54d2c061b.6c1
@Komodo “Trevino. And the Guardian. And honesty. Uncomfortable neighbours.
http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/dishonesty-deepens-guardian-demotes-joshua-trevino-hopes-we-wont-notice ”
They’re bonkers to think we won’t notice. What kind of mentality does an editor have who thinks they can get away with such lies?
In its style guide, the Guardian used to advise writers to avoid using the word “goy”, describing it as racist and comparing it (if I recall correctly) to “Paki” and “nigger”. Then all of a sudden they dropped all mention of the word in their style guide. The way they sometimes wring their hands in respect of Israel is just fake.
The report was updated to acknowledge that the Grauniad had responded by saying that a mistake had occurred in the earlier press release, which had then been corrected. There had been no change in Trevino’s contract, it claimed. But if the “corrected” version described Trevino’s “downgraded” freelance status…he didn’t have a contract. Did he?
I see Nick Cohen, is attacking Assange as well now. He really is follwoing in the insane footsteps of Mad Melanie Phillips.
Fact, we support Julian Assange because he is a do gooder in the liberal do gooder sense?
Its a term to be wholly proud of.
I prefer censorship in society to protect the weak and the vulnerable.
Now what?
Filth and depravation
Freedom and peace.
You cant have both?
Bert: It’s perfectly OK to say ‘goy’ (if you’re not one). I daresay CiFwatch cleared it with Rusbridger, and it came off the style guide blacklist…
http://cifwatch.com/2011/08/25/the-goy-is-back-in-town-the-wonderful-return-of-chas-newkey-burden/
CiFwatch; the Grauniad’s stylesetters.
Here’s a REAL infringement of civil liberties:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2192257/A-masked-man-motorbike-chilling-brush-Surveillance-Britain.html
WAAAAAAH! I double-parked, blocking a motorcycle bay, and got fined! They took a picture! Imagine!
With journalists paid to write this kind of tosh is it any wonder the trade has been hopelessly debased?
Komodo, intriguing AFP link. We watch and wait…
That link refers to Assange as a “former hacker”. Part of the whole corporate media distortion is that hacking is nothing but breaking into computer systems. Hacking is about learning, particularly learning to program, and finding challenges fun, so I’m not sure how anyone would stop being a hacker, short of brainwashing or amnesia:
http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#what_is