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.
@Arbed, 1:35 pm. Some very sinister developments in Chile. Mery’s police source obliged to seek protection from Ecuadorian embassy in Santiago after receiving multiple death threats from Chilean government agents.
http://wlcentral.org/node/2811
Is there an Ecuador solidarity organisation in the UK? I did a web search for one but there doesn’t appear to be anything. I see that there is the Australia-Ecuador Solidarity Network.
Are there any plans to send international observers sympathetic to Correa to monitor the elections and expose right wing-CIA dirty tricks?
I must say I find it rather quaint that Mary is asking us to rely on the BBC for weather forecasts – must be getting soft in her old age.
Troll
Dimbleby recently presented his programme from the Ahmadiyya project in Wimbledon – a building which isn’t a mosque because it’s religion isn’t Islam. If he understands how to promote falsehood, he certainly knows how to hide truth.
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.
What a silly remark from ResDiss. The forecast was from the Met Office’s website for London and the South East. The actual readings for Tel Aviv and Brussels were from MSN, whose weather widget is on my desktop.
Guilty of fascination with the weather as it’s different every day.
vtw Not softer in my old age but much harder from having to survive and to remain sane in this country with its rotten government(s).
Good one Mary at 8.40 vtw. Go girl.
@Guano –
“Troll
Dimbleby recently presented his programme from the Ahmadiyya project in Wimbledon – a building which isn’t a mosque because it’s religion isn’t Islam. If he understands how to promote falsehood, he certainly knows how to hide truth.”
Maybe some readers aren’t yet well-informed on this stuff…so I will just note that the Ahmadiyya people call themselves Ahmadiyya Muslims, view themselves as Muslims, and call their places of worship mosques, although many or most other people who view themselves as Muslims view the Ahmadiyya people as not being Muslims.
And the Ahmadiyya building to which you refer, which the Ahmadiyya community view as the biggest mosque in western Europe, is in Lower Morden, not Wimbledon! 🙂
What’s the relationship between the Ahmadiyya community and Benjamin Creme these days?
“people call themselves Ahmadiyya Muslims”
Are they like ‘Cafeteria Christians’? Or, are they like the Mountain Druze of Lebanon, who have what seems an odd mix of christian/muslim practice?
Ben 4.55pm
Assange has some very interesting things to say about the sea change brought by the internet that you’re talking about in this interview with TV Estadão (Brazil, I think) released today. It’s in English with Spanish subtitles.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txmZMO007gM (5.57m)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gtOCrBO54I (4.37m)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqCXWQyMyoQ (3.51m)
@Guano – if the Prophet of Islam is known to have said there would be 73 faith divisions after him, is your recent Islam convert beard longer than his,to have the temerity to say otherwise? Or are you suffering from something akin to ex-smoker syndrome where every smoker then appears to be a devil! Uneducated illiterate fools are very very easily overwhelmed by the power of the Quran, thats how they end up blowing themselves up, Ankara is a very good topical example.
Cameron in Libya. Hollande in Mali.
Why am I thinking of the infamous “mission accomplished” lie here? Why was I also reminded of Hamid Karzai, the President of a Few Streets in Kabul?
I’m sure France will rebuild Mali, after it bombs the fuck out of it first.
@ Mary. Norfolk’s Conservatives are in free fall and must now look for a new leader for their political group, they hold 63 of the 89 county seats and are thoroughly split with western twin hatters who are worried they will loose their seats next May.
And they will, because more than 60.000 people have said NO to the Kings Lynn incinerator which does nothing but burn modern jobs in a recycling industry this country has not got yet.
Germany derives some 13 % of its raw material from recycling, even rare earth metals, we are merely scared of fines for increasing landfill, so councils are planning for Incinerators, fast.
Nobody in this country has ever heard of ELM, enhanced landfill mining, in Germany they are reclaiming dumps for the vital resources within.
This minority coalition, just as the past Labour Government, party politicians, want to pollute us and burn vital resources in incinerators, in the case of Kings Lynn, by a company that has not built any since 1995, has a past record for pollution as long as my arm and outstanding cases for polluting.
I’m bringing a third party case to the inquiry starting on Feb. 26th. and don’t want to mention it here, but its easy enough to find out.
The Tories, despite the great examples on the Continent, rather shagged up with this dubious US outfit and most of west Norfolk used to vote Tory. The whole implosion started with an email to Radio Norfolk and yesterday, after members of the public complained, not cllrs., the leader of the Tory group, who was taped by his own Chief Executive, himself leaving in April, lied and used his political assistant to take the rap, until a FoI request put the cat amongst the pigeons.
It took a whole year before this came to the standards committee and an hour after their verdict, Derrick Murphy resigned form the group and as leader of it, but not as a cllr. and not from the cabinet. He has been replaced two weks ago by Cllr. Borrett, whose name also runs through the 80 page inquiry by a QC, Jenni Richrads.
A new beginning.
If you read some of the comments you get the drift how people feel about this bun fight and the rejection of local democracy they were subjected to by this Tory group.
http://www.edp24.co.uk/news/politics/former_norfolk_county_council_leader_derrick_murphy_quits_as_chairman_and_leader_of_the_conservative_group_1_1856668
If the company does not get the incinerator, this lot has signed an agreement, they are liable to get 20 million from the Norfolk Taxpayer.
Now this ‘hunt’ is trying to sue the Chief exec. for taping him, which will cost us some more.
Arbed; Massive genius with a big-picture pov as well as perspective on the microcosm. When Assange discusses the internet using the metaphor of ‘nervous system’, while highlighting how ‘all boats rose’ in terms of information access, the government’s watercraft get a bigger lift because of surveillance.
It’s as though the ‘Information Age’ versus the defunct ‘Industrial age’ has given rise to a competition. Governments have, from their perspective, a right to control their citizens. Laws are often crafted with the ostensible goal of protecting the population, but it really has more to do with keeping the status quo, while feathering their nest, and they seek that control through whatever means they deem necessary. Life, is most always a matter of survival, and that survival is dependent on exercising power in order to preserve the values most treasured. Hunter S. Thompson said ‘politics is the art of controlling ones’ environment’, and that quote, 40 years hence, has just as much validity today, as it did when first written; perhaps more so. Although ‘Anonymous’ is a loose affiliation with some commonality, it does a pretty good job of countering authoritarian dominance over the information pool we depend upon.
The interviewer asked ‘Do you think Wikileaks attacks the Media?’ His reply ‘They should be attacked’. Again, the so-called Fourth Estate has failed it’s ethical and moral directive. Provide the best information, warts and all. Damn the torpedoes, we are going to tell the truth. That sort of courage can be found in isolated enclaves, but it is by no means the norm. Assange also addresses the few individuals or families who control the media. We used to have rules (FCC the airwaves belong to the People) about how many outlets can be owned and operated by individuals and Corps within given geographics. Not so much anymore. I sense the imminent death of Hegemonistic Corporatism, just as the Soviet model of Communism reached a point of no-return. But, that’s more of my pie-in-the-sky optimism versus my strident pessimism in a rather constant Hegelian ‘pendulum’ swinging wildly according to my mood.
We have ways of making you the way we want you to be – emotional blackmail with the threat of losing your job if you do not comply or meet the requirements. Minimum wage too.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2272400/Revealed-Pret-Mangers-bizarre-emotional-labour-rules-workers-told-happy-touch-NEVER-act-moody.html#axzz2JmWUirER
Another Bridgepoint Capital asset.
http://www.altassets.net/private-equity-news/by-news-type/deal-news/bridgepoint-buys-pret-a-manger-stake-from-goldman-sachs.html
Just one of Lord Patten’s many interests, apart from the BBC Chairmanship that is!
http://www.bridgepoint.eu/en/about-us/european-advisory-board/
Norfolk is (or at least was) known as the Sleepy County and, by God, Nevermind’s long and detailed posts about the state of politics in Norfolk certainly put me to…..zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Thanks Rose and well done Nevermind. Keep up the good fight and the best of luck.
“Children of Men’?
“For more than three decades, Chinese women have been subjected to their country’s brutal one-child policy. Those who try to have more children have been subjected to fines and forced abortions. Their houses have been razed and their husbands fired from their jobs. As a result, Chinese women have a fertility rate of 1.54. Here in America, white, college-educated women—a good proxy for the middle class—have a fertility rate of 1.6. America has its very own one-child policy. And we have chosen it for ourselves.
Forget the debt ceiling. Forget the fiscal cliff, the sequestration cliff and the entitlement cliff. Those are all just symptoms. What America really faces is a demographic cliff: The root cause of most of our problems is our declining fertility rate.
The fertility rate is the number of children an average woman bears over the course of her life. The replacement rate is 2.1. If the average woman has more children than that, population grows. Fewer, and it contracts. Today, America’s total fertility rate is 1.93, according to the latest figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; it hasn’t been above the replacement rate in a sustained way since the early 1970s.
The nation’s falling fertility rate underlies many of our most difficult problems. Once a country’s fertility rate falls consistently below replacement, its age profile begins to shift. You get more old people than young people. And eventually, as the bloated cohort of old people dies off, population begins to contract. This dual problem—a population that is disproportionately old and shrinking overall—has enormous economic, political and cultural consequences.”
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323375204578270053387770718.html
Guess what Mary, tried hard to get you the link to the latest BBC Look East news of today, 12noon, or 6 pm, they are not available on I player, they’ve been told or I’m too tired.
Habbabkuk, you are the SON of a ME wandering magician, a jester who happened to get lucky, you know about as much of Norfolk as a meercat knows of space flight.
but you like to get recognised for your interference, there there now butt out and take those blue pills.
It’s a kind of truism that local politics are now boring, petty, unsophisticated and not worth bothering about, but I watched the Chuck Hagel senate confirmation hearings and was mightily impressed by how local, personal, petty and unsophisticated even this grand political arena could be.
It was quite an eye-opener, because we’ve deluded ourselves, or been deluded, that big state stuff is of a totally different order.
All politics is local and personal and we forget that at our peril.
Many thanks to those who grind away.
David; Don’t get too excited about Hagel. He voted for the wars in Irag/Afghanistan, Patriot Act, Surge. It’s a Kabuki show for the Israelis.
He may not be the worst potato in the bunch, but he is clearly onboard with the agendas.
Sure, Ben. I understand.
But my point about all politics being rather petty and local and personal etc. That’s kinda what I was pointing out in this instance.
We’re too often fooled by big books and academe, great ideas, complexity etc.
Politics is pretty basic stuff that anyone can understand, if they’re not distracted by the aura that elites create for themselves.
This may well be a bigger problem for UK and Europe than for the US and that would have been my thinking prior to watching Chuck and his friends, but now I see that his nomination put the Israeli Lobby on trial, and I really do believe that these hearings may well be a seminal moment in the production of a much more outright criticism of that lobby.
We had the Mearscheimer/Walt book in 2007. Now we have the movie…
The whole of the US Military and Intel communities want an end to the Lobby.
This may well be the beginning of that process.
Glenn Greenwald opined
‘Perfect, succinct @DaveWeigel summary of yesterday’s Hagel debacle:
“Lindsey Graham had wanted to know who had ever been spooked by The Lobby and what stupid things they’d done out of panic. The answer was right in front of him, at the witness table.”
http://is.gd/SwkMLV
https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/297320108177620994
Craig,
what is all the fuss about that woman Hill? The first time I heard of her existence was from your post. Not suprising, really. I stopped buying Guardian long time ago. She is obviously paid to spread lies and to stupify the occasional reader. If we ever found out who really owns the rag, it could then become somewhat clearer why she does what she does. But perhaps not all is lost with Guardian as documented by the recently-leaked cartoon drawn by Steve Bell. There is something prophetic about it. It depicts the fate awaiting all of us if Bibis of this world get their way. An interesting article and an amusing discussion betweeen Bell and Pollard can be found on Gilad Atzmon site – http://www.gilad.co.uk/writings/holocaust-day-backfires.html#entry32711183
w
N_ 9.33p.m. “…the Ahmadiyya . . . mosque is in Lower Morden . . .”
Not quite. It is in Morden. Least it was when I was a Councillor for St Helier.
Correction,
It a state of early morning dementia I confused Guardian for Sunday Times. The cartoonist was actually Gerald Scarf not Bell. So, Guardian is a lost case after all.
On a related noted, there is a fabulous rant by Nick Cohen in The Obs today. I normally avoid Cohen, but couldn’t resist this time. Left apologises for rape and Islmofacism, and yup Assange is mentioned.
I say ‘fabulous’, perhaps that’s not the right word, but 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. As usual, on the surface it appears reasonable … well no it doesn’t appear reasonable, but certainly it begins by raising a troubling issue within the SWP, that deserve to be taken seriously. And then it veers into … Nick Cohen world.
There is something to be said for a good old polemic, and this blog has a few, too. But the Nick Cohen’s of the world belong on the fringes of the internet, whilst Craig Murray should have a regular column in the Obs. Such is life. Still, check out the article, if you can bear it. Interesting, in it’s own fashion …
Hababkuk
Firstly, your name comes from 2 semitic roots , 1/ like Arabic habeebi = beloved and 2/ Ku = Hu – the last part of the Arabic word Allahu. Many Eastern European countries’ Muslims pronounce the word Allachu. The Pakistanis still say Hudhafis meaning God protect you and the Kurds who are the geographical descendants of the Babylonians still say Chwoihafis meaning the same.
Hababkuk therefore means God-Beloved or something like that. The Jews had a dislike of saying God’s name in full. Hababkuk was there in Babylon in the time of the Captivity. This was at the time that the Jewish religion of God’s Oneness was taken with them in slavery to Kurdistan in 500 BC. In return the Hebrews took the local language Aramaic which was still Jesus’ pbuh language when he came along.
Kurdistan has therefore had a continuous Islamic tradition of 2500 years consisting of the original Jewish witness with their prophets of the time like Daniel, the Christian unitarian witness and then current Islam. That’s double the time of the witness of Islam in India /Pakistan.
The Jews translated literally the name Muhammad in their scriptures as ‘the highly praised one’ in order to deny his name, May Allah’s blessings and peace be upon him. But the Gospels still retain a linguistic mistranslation based on his name. The Gospels talk of an advocate who will follow Jesus pbuh. Muhammi is the Kurdish name for an advocate so I presume that this is another attempt to conceal the prophecy of his name SAW.
Secondly,
Blegburnduddoo
I don’t care if it’s in Lower Mordor; it isn’t a mosque and people who follow the imposter Ahmad who denied the teachings of Islam are definitely not Muslims.
Important. CIA were sent packing from Iceland for trying to get information on the Wikileaks operation there.
http://rixstep.com/1/20130131,00.shtml
Meant to say Nevermind that Surrey County Council attempted to foist an incinerator here before the days of better recycling management. We fought and they backed off and plans for several others in other areas came to naught.
However last year they succeeded in getting permission for this even though the residents in the area resisted it strongly. I don’t know what its environmental implications are for them.
http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/s/2104462_county_council_can_build_shepperton_ecopark
I expect you know of this organisation. http://ukwin.org.uk/
~~~
I looked to see who the state broadcaster were having on this morning in the continued absence of Marr. I was dismayed to see it is Bliar and Al Gore with Sian Williams.
Did you spot that the Bliars have added another London four-storeyed house to their property portfolio, the latest being for their second son Nicky? His sports agency plans have come to naught. I have always felt sorry for the Blair children having such parents.
Sorry FBI not CIA.