I learn the interesting news that David Aaronovitch tweeted to Joan Smith and Jenny Jones that I am:
“an angry and dangerous man who could as easily be on the far right as the far left”.
I had no idea I was on the far left, though I suppose it is a matter of perspective, and from where Mr Aaronovitch stands I, and a great many others, look awfully far away to the left. I don’t believe you should bomb people for their own good, I don’t believe the people of Palestine should be crushed, I don’t believe the profit motive should dominate the NHS, I think utilities and railways were better in public ownership, I think education should be free. I guess that makes me Joseph Stalin.
But actually I am very flattered. Apparently I am not just angry – since the invasion of Iraq and the banker bailouts everybody should be angry – but “dangerous”. If I can be a danger to the interests represented by a Rupert Murdoch employee like Aaronovitch, I must have done something right in my life. I fear he sadly overrates me; but it does make me feel a little bit warmer, and hold my head that little bit higher.
For shame, Fedup. The BBC had that very thought this evening at 10. Plagiarist. And did you know the pensioners had benefited from the noble and selfless transfer of taxpayers’ money to the banks whose actions devalued their pension funds?
David Aaronovitch wrote for Marxism Today as recently as 1998: ‘hilarious’ assault on Blair-Murdoch relations here:
http://www.unz.org/Pub/MarxismToday-1998nov-00033?View=PDF
Not terribly pro-Blair then. Then, I stress. But see (sorry, but the devil has some good tunes)
{http://order-order.com/2008/04/29/aaronovitch-reveals-something/}
Guido (2008) quotes a prescient friend –Aaronovitch (like many ex-communists) admires raw power and is a trailing edge indicator. So in three years time he will probably be a booster for Cameron…
(Emphasis mine)
And working for Murdoch.
Could be far left or far right, eh?
‘No parallel with Ms Ar**n or Ms Kr**z there, obviously…’
The Beeb clearly thinks so, Komodo. Jim Naughtie of Naughtie chuckled on Today this morning, apropos the Harry Windsor pics, that it was a fuss about nothing, as anyone could find them ‘with a few clicks of the mouse’
Unlike the name of Assange’s chief accuser over the ‘sexual assault allegations’, apparently.
I demand a topless shot of Ms Ar**n,
This all goes back to Greenwald’s article. The bile and vitriol poured on Assange, and his supporters, is just odd. I’m not even sure the insults qualify as ad hominems. They are just low, scurrilous, politically-motivated pieces of dishonesty. Mr Murray, as an example, often talks about JS Mill, hardly a communist, as being one of his literary heroes; perhaps Aaranovich might want to read Craig’s blog before arguing a silly point? Unless Craig is lying about his love of JS Mill. This would be a curious lie indeed.
And it’s not just a one-off, it’s continuous. There is an air of witch-hunt, and sinister elitism in many of the articles spouting from the MSM. One doesn’t like to mention the Nazi’s too often, but the poisonous dishonesty, intellectual vacuity, and subservience to power does remind one of the flacks and hacks who would lionize Hitler\Stalin and pick a handy enemy as an easy tactic. Today the enemy is Craig, who said something a little controversial that They Didn’t Like.
In passing, did anyone see Gillard accuse her accusers of ‘mysoginy’? Using the sex-card is a pathetic piece of non-leadership. There seems to be a lot of it about …
quiet confidence Craig. you and all of the regular contributors to this blog are awesome, I do not use those words lightly, keep up the good work.
I contribute little, I read more and I think even more than that. This blog allows me to listen and learn, and the more regular columns this blog has, the more it comes alive!
A few of the places I also frequent
cryptome – occasionally, not that relevant but interesting
al jazeera – good news site but maybe too middle east centric
indymedia – less than occasional but I really like the independent feel
wikispooks – awesome site, wish it was bigger and updated more often
medialens – very interesting and topical
I am interested in more, if anyone can suggest ideas?
my comments about the sites are extremely subjective and probably subject to a degree of error
Komodo: “I demand a topless shot of Ms Ar**n”
The Sun editor says that publishing nude photos of Prince Harry is in the “public interest” and that overrides Harry’s right to privacy. “We are publishing the photos because we think Sun readers have a right to see them.”
Do the same criteria to Ms **di*? Remember we’re talking about Sun “readers” here, not the ‘general’ public. Can the Sun please arrange a poll to gauge which photos their readers would be more interested in seeing, and abide by the result?
“If there was a Soviet Union today, we would not be having this conversation about plunging into a new war in the Middle East, and the US would not be rampaging around the globe” – I agree. Must remember the USSR of the 60s – 70s – 80s was a very different place from Stalin’s USSR. I know – I grew up there. My parents agree, too.
.
What did George Galloway say about Orwell?
Completely off topic although I am angry.
Looking at the IMF Voting Power:
http://www.imf.org/external/np/sec/memdir/eds.aspx#1
I note a group of islands called Vanuatu has 91,302 Total Votes which entitles the Republic of Vanuatu to a loan equivalent to 3.62 of the Total Fund.
America 421,961 – 16.75% Britain 108,122 – 4.29% Iran – 15,709 0%
– So why has a small group of islands which a GDP Max of $1.204 billion max and a corrupt Prime-minister (def. looks dodgy):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sato_Kilman
allowed such a big loan – or am I going senile? -Response really appreciated here – Thanks
Hello Mark, I just approved that. I received three e-mails from you, and I’ve just sent you two, but I must get to sleep.
I’ve always despised David Aaronovitch. He’s a traitor to his Jewishness by being a rampant Zionist. Hundreds of thousands of innocent Iranians are goign to be slaughtered by the political mandate of these scumbags in the next year or so, to add to the millions that have already succumbed to Zionist massacres and genocides.
Alaric, Al-Jazeera is a Zionist-CIA controlled media outlet that is designed to pump propaganda to the people and make it look like it’s the Arab view.
Why do you think the fake Bin laden video and all those fake Bin Laden cassette tapes always seemed to come through Al-Jazeera?
It’s close behind the BBC and SKY News in the propaganda tables
Komodo: “Aaronovitch, schmaaronovitch already. His owners should pat his head and give him a bagel, may it choke him. Enough Aaronovitch.”
well said. Zionist twat!!
“Prinz Harrrrrry” above refers to Aaronovitch, and his “whining on Twitter about Ecuador allegedly putting journalists in jail.”
What a terrible thing to do, indeed. The Amerikans would never seek to put a journalist (which is in effect what Assange is) in jail, would they?
Such double-standards.
http://www.economist.com/node/21560881
“A potentially damning accusation that Mr Correa applies double standards involves Alexander Barankov, a former investigator from Belarus. Mr Barankov fled in 2009 after being charged with fraud and extortion. He says the charges were trumped up after he uncovered oil smuggling by senior officials. In 2010 he was granted refugee status in Ecuador. But after Belarus’s autocratic ruler, Alexander Lukashenko, visited Ecuador last month, signing several co-operation agreements, Mr Barankov was arrested and jailed. Ecuador is considering a request from Belarus to extradite him. Mr Lukashenko is said to have guaranteed that Mr Barankov would not face the death penalty.
Mr Barankov may or may not be a criminal. But in deciding whether to extradite him, Mr Correa will reveal whether he places more faith in Sweden or Belarus, which is not known for fair trials. If or when Ecuador’s oil boom ends, its citizens may start to care more about their president’s choice of friends.”
warmongering and scaremongering. October is close, darn it, i hate elections in western countries or in america, they always do a new war or plot smth in order to get new votes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuEhhPbAAdA
Alan: This sort of “Ecuador bad. Therefore Assange bad. His supporters bad.” drip-drip commentary has been running for weeks now, so the objective observer is presumably to conclude that Ecuador is a rotten, suspect place and anyone associated with them is too, invoking the famous ‘poisoning the well’ fallacy.
The problem for people like you, trying to dredge up anything to pin on Ecuador to further some guilt-by-association on Assange, is that it’s so easy to find grossly worse abuses, violations, war crimes, corruption – you name it – by ourselves and our good friends the Americans.
America wants to reach across the world and pick up some journalist they find inconvenient, such as Assange, and make him dead. They already do it with supposed “militants” with their drone attacks, even though there is a 75% rate of innocents killed by their own figures. A flagrant and vastly more significant violation of International Law.
But people like you, Alan, don’t care about any of that. The establishment wants Assange, and you will be their stooge, being a miniscule part of that apparatus, and put effort into promoting their propaganda. Not sure whether you think that being a stooge is for the greater good, or just for personal gain. Perhaps you could enlighten us.
Alan,
I don’t think Barankov should be extradited to Belarus. But I am sitting in a country which, to this day, deports people to Uzbekistan. Power in every country corrupts, including Ecuador. That isn’t the point.
Wars are fermented.
It can be seen the articulate process of medling.
The more he comes to mind the clearer it becomes.
Jesus is the man.
Blair bush etc if they only knew?
Perhaps the ‘Royal Family’ will take Harry in hand and in an attempt to lessen his libido will have his gonads subjected to a stream of X rays as they did to his great grandmother, the Lizard’s mother, Alice Princess Andrew of Greece.
‘The medical chapters are perhaps the most dramatic part of the story: facing a mid-life crisis, Alice was first put in the care of Ernst Simmel, an associate of Sigmund Freud. Because Alice believed she was “married to Christ” at this point, Simmel diagnosed a “neurotic-pre-psychotic libidinous condition”, for which Freud, in full quack mode, suggested “an exposure of the gonads to X-rays, in order to accelerate the menopause”. Alice was then passed – against her will – to Ludwig Binswanger, who had studied with Carl Jung and dealt with various novelists and artistic types. Vickers points out that she could very easily have spent the rest of her life institutionalised, but instead she made a recovery and during the war was living in occupied Greece and able to protect a Jewish family.’
From Richard’s comment on http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/816295.Alice
PS She was buried at the Mount of Olives. ‘The book includes an interesting appendix on how the Dean of Windsor, Michael Mann, undertook years of negotiations with Orthodox clerics to arrange for Alice’s body to be laid to rest in the Russian Orthodox cemetery on the Mount of Olives.’
Statement on U.K. intentions and pressures prior to Ecuadorian embassy siege
Thursday 24th August, 01:00 BST
http://wikileaks.org/Statement-on-U-K-intentions-and.html
Formal statement by Craig Murray former U.K. Ambassador and career diplomat, August 23, 2012, on the Ecuadorian embassy siege in London.
My name is Craig John Murray. I am a retired British diplomat. I was a member of Her Majesty’s Diplomatic Service for over 20 years, and a member of the Senior Management Structure of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office for over six years.
As anybody who works a long time in any one organisation, I have a great many friends there, some of whom are now very senior officials. And as is natural, they sometimes discuss matters with their old colleague.
I arrived in the UK from a trip abroad on 15 August 2012 and was immediately contacted by a very senior official within the Foreign and Commonwealth Office who was very concerned. He had knowledge that an attempt by the British authorities to force entry to the Embassy of Ecuador was possibly imminent. I suggested that this must be impossible, and he said that unfortunately it was not. He said that he had been party to formal discussions over a three week period between different British government departments on the legality of such a move. It had concluded that the provisions of the Diplomatic Premises Act of 1987 gave the authorities the domestic power to do this, in spite of the Vienna Convention of 1961.
My ex-colleague went on to say that he understood the government intended to act quickly to pre-empt any grant of political asylum to Mr Assange by the government of Ecuador. If there were any formal international recognition of Mr Assange as a political refugee, it might complicate matters.
He also said there was tremendous discomfort at this development within the British diplomatic service because of the potential exposure of British embassies and diplomats abroad to similar action.
I asked how on earth such an illegal decision could have been reached. My ex-colleague said that political pressure exerted by the administration of the United States of America on Mr William Hague and Mr David Cameron had outweighed the views of British diplomats.
I published a brief account of this conversation on my blog the following morning, in an effort to add to the pressures which might avert the government from such an illegal act.
Cross posting this from the MLMB as the above from Wikileaks.
The Swedish media war on Assange – ”Australian pig”, ”retard”, ”white-haired crackpot”, ”scumbag”
http://www.friatider.se/the-swedish-media-war-on-assange
STOCKHOLM (FRIA TIDER). Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has claimed that the media climate in Sweden has become so “hostile” against him that it may now jeopardize his right to a fair trial. These allegations have been strongly rejected by several Swedish officials, but a brief glance at recent Swedish media coverage on Assange seems to show that they are not entirely without ground.
/…
From where David Aaronovitch is standing you are probably as easily on the far right as the far left on his compass. If you are standing at the North Pole a compass is not a lot of use for obvious reasons, and Aaronovitch’s opinions in such matters mean nothing to me.
Please don’t lose sleep weeping into the pillow over this comment. It indicates that you have drawn some blood with your rationale, as does the way you were stitched up on Newsnight. Congratulations on your confirmed full membership of the Awkward Squad, which is a fine club of which to be a member. It is likely to preclude you from ever becoming Prime Minister, but I doubt if that is a job you ever sought.
Hague’s daft short-sighted arrogance in threatening to storm the Ecuador Embassy will find its way into the same blooper catalogue as Cornish pastie tax and all the other misjudgments and follies of this lousy government.
Corres FILLETTED Naughtie on Radio 4 this morning. And it was fairly obvious Naughtie hadn’t a clue what he was about to ask until he read it out….
Very roughly, from memory:
Naughtie. Is granting asylum to Assange part of your campaign for re-election?
Correa (easily) Yes, of course it is. I set up Wikileaks, organised the Swedish charges….
http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/how_to_listen_to_today/default.stm
Some time around 7.15. This section is not promoted on the website.
Smeggypants Thanks for that about Al Jazeera.
‘The Qatari channel has been a central participant in the current covert war waged by NATO agencies and their clients against the Republic of Syria. Al Jazeera’s incessant disinformation against Libya and Syria resulted in the resignation of several prominent journalists such as Beirut station chief Ghassan Bin Jeddo and senior Al Jazeera executive Wadah Khanfar who was forced to resign after a Wikileaks cable revealed he was a co-operating with the Central Intelligence Agency.’
http://dissidentvoice.org/2011/11/unknown-snipers-and-western-backed-regime-change-a-short-history/
From the Wikipedia page –
Al Jazeera Satellite Channel was launched on 1 November 1996 following the closure of the BBC’s Arabic language television station, a joint venture with Orbit Communications Company, owned by Saudi King Fahd’s cousin, Khalid bin Faisal Al Saud. It had fallen apart after a year and a half when the Saudi government attempted to kill a documentary on executions under sharia law.
The Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa, provided a loan of QAR 500 million ($137 million) to sustain Al Jazeera through its first five years, as Hugh Miles detailed in his book Al Jazeera The Inside Story of the Arab News Channel That Is Challenging the West. Shares were held by private investors as well as the Qatar government.
http://members5.boardhost.com/medialens/msg/1345791258.html
When the crowd at the embassy were told that it was they who’d forestalled an invasion, I thought it was hyperbole but now I wonder. The thing that rang truest in Craig’s piece was that the opponents of the invasion were being selfish – it wasn’t the principle they opposed, it was the precedent. I expect that’s why they’re still there and Craig Murray isn’t.
@Alaric – “I am interested in more, if anyone can suggest ideas?”
Here’s my 2 penny’s worth. Hope you find something interesting.
News:
TBOIJ – http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com
George Monbiot – http://www.monbiot.com
John Pilger – http://www.johnpilger.com
Ex establishment insiders who have seen the light are rare and invaluable:
Craig Murray (of course) – http://www.craigmurray.org.uk
Annie Machon – http://www.anniemachon.ch
Financial analysis (US based)
Matt Taibbi – http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog
For day to day UK media analysis:
Yes, Media Lens is the place – http://www.medialens.org
It can be revealing to compare the output of Al Jazeera, BBC, Russia Today but the reality is that they are all establishment propaganda machines. As is every newspaper in the land. There are individuals who abide in these places worth reading.
If you want to understand how the world works, listen to this man:
Noam Chomsky – http://www.chomsky.info
For remarkable UK cultural/political analysis watch/read anything by the BBC’s very own:
Adam Curtis – http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/
You can find Curtis’s documentaries on:
Archive.org – http://archive.org/search.php?query=adam%20curtis%20AND%20mediatype%3Amovies
http://www.uznews.net/news_single.php?lng=en&sub=top&cid=31&nid=20647
If you want double standard as you can see the US appears to have guaranteed not to question the deposits of Karimov’s daughter lodged with Western Banks provided Uzbekistan can be used to move hardware out of Afganistan.
It was a few weeks ago that they were saying Standard Chartered was laundering money for Iran.
There seems to be somewhat of a tradition among British pseudo-communists (the pseudo variety are exposed as having selected communism because they think that it is a good platform to broadcast their “oh-so-fascinating iconoclasm”. George Orwell was the most famous, followed by Christopher Hitchens and now David Aaronovitch. Orwell’s biographers agree that he didnt know the first thing about socialist theory…he was a poseur.
They all land up on the far right, which is where they belonged in the first place: Orwell working for Foreign Office of the 1948 Labour government to expose dangerous “communists” like Michael Redgrave, A.J.P. Taylor, J B Priestly, Katherine Hepburn, and Charlie Chaplin; Hitchens and Aaronovitch embracing George Bush, Tony Blair and their Iraq Holocaust. This type also seems quite prone to fruit-loopiness. There are many personal observations regarding Orwell’s mental illness. I met Hitchens a few times in the US and can testify that his marbles were not in line. Maybe someone can fill us in on the repulsive Aaronovitch’s state of mental health. I dont watch him on the grounds of not wishing to vomit in my dinner.