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.
guano, I enjoyed your comment of 3 Feb, 11:39 pm. When problems are complex, the human mind has a regrettable tendency to simplify; often this takes the form of choosing one “side” or the other. The corporate media exploits this; I expect that this is partly propaganda, partly just whipping up emotional reactions to boost readership, and partly that media employees themselves suffer from the same urge to simplify and polarise. So to answer your question:
I sometimes feel myself “wavering”, too, though not between the poles that you specify, and when I do, I remind myself that my knowledge is probably inadequate. As to supporting one group or another, we all come with a conscience built-in, whereas which faiths we get exposed to is an accident of birth.
Regarding your 12:34 pm comment, I think it would be a mistake to assume that Islamists etc. know the original source of either their funding or their orders. And the US will happily kill them if changing circumstances make that convenient; military assets are ultimately expendable. Train the fathers in Afghanistan, then torture the sons in Guantanamo.
Now let’s see. It’s really windy here…
Anon, 4 Feb, 12:15 am; thanks, I’ve read through some of it, but it’s going to take me a while. It doesn’t look very hopeful so far; more LWRs, still hoping for safe fast-spectrum reactors, more “spent” fuel, and I’ve found no mention of molten salt reactors yet. The French interest in transmutation of transuranics gets a mention, but the AMSTER MSR component of that proposal doesn’t. But I’m still reading…
Uranium remains important, and the US should “discourage” other countries from doing their own enrichment – well, we’re certainly seeing that policy being applied to Iran.
Brendan – This coalition is bent of course and subtle, even sly in its attempts to claw back further credit into its coffers.
I present just two examples. There are many more:
There are some major changes relating to Pension Credit. At present where a couple has one partner over PC age and the other under PC age, the older partner can claim PC for both.
In future the younger partner will have to claim Universal Credit for both, which will be paid at a lower rate. The Welfare Reform Act also abolishes Housing Benefit, which is the means-tested benefit to help
people with rent payments. PC will include a housing credit to help with rent payments instead. Child Tax Credit will also be abolished and in future people with dependent children will receive financial support for children through additional payments on Universal Credit or Pension Credit. At the moment there is no capital (savings) limit for Pension Credit and the Government is considering whether to introduce one.
These changes are expected to save about £80M and destroy lives.
Have we not got aspirations to better ourselves.
Cameron was pulled up by The Guardian for his comments to an audience in Liberia of mostly children, when asked of their aspirations, doctors, lawyers, health workers were mentiined by the African children.
Cameron complained British Kids only aspire to be famous , footballers, singers etc.
With equality we are stuck in the perverbial mud.
If we could ever raise the bar somewhere of a civil society,
How then could we all aspire to better ourselves.
The Mail on Sunday harping on about
Waist sizes and alchohol consumption and big brother having our details of consuption.
So what, we are unhealthy over consuming fat heads.
I aspire to be healthier and cleverer.
Hard you may say. But that is how we should be.
Don’t you think the less fortunate see us and think yes they have all the privalages; so why do they use their potential.
This equal society is maling us apathetic.
Or at least some.
Ooops – link:
http://www.ageuk.org.uk/Documents/EN-GB/Factsheets/FS48_Pension_Credit_fcs.pdf?dtrk=true
“Well done, John Goss. You’re in good company. Max Keiser has recognised this young man, Laurent Louis, too”
Well, if Max has “recognised” him (what does that mean, by the way?) he must be good, musn’t he 🙂
Just as Max must be good because Davy’s recognised him 🙂 🙂
BTW Davy : that’s twice you’ve used “old fart” within a half hour. Is your objection to the “old” or to the “fart”? I think we should be told.
*********
PS – agree with you 100% re. the Belgian Congo (run for a long time not as a colony but as the personal domain of that old bastard Leopold II.
@ John Goss re. Laurent Louis:
Well, you probably don’t know much about him other than the praise you seen heaped on him by people on this blog; and since his “ideas” probably coincide with yours, you obviously find him the cat’s whiskers. It’s rather human, in fact.
Whereas I do happen to know a lot, not so much about M. Louis as about the general Belgian political scene.
And therefore I can share the following confidential info with you. M. Louis is trying hard to make a name for himself as the young(ish) iconoclast of Belgian politics, the man who dares to reach parts other politicians daren’t. Hence an accelerating series of fairly violent speeches on topics of the day.
Nothinjg to do with the fact that there will be a general election in Belgium next year, of course.
BTW – M. Louis makes great play of being the first ever and only independent (ie without party) representative in the Chamber of Representatives. Less impressive, however, once you realise that he became independent by simply abolishing the political party which he had himself founded a year previously and of which he was the only representative in the Belgian parliament for the reason I gave in a previous post.
Some very interesting archaeology and osteo-archaeology has taken place in Leicester. I was struck at how healthy the teeth were considering that the skeleton has been underground for near on 500 years.
Richard III dig: DNA confirms bones are king’s
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leicestershire-21063882#
Other wounds included slashes or stabs to the face and the side of the head. There was also evidence of “humiliation” injuries, including a pelvic wound likely to have been caused by an upward thrust of a weapon, through the buttock.
A horrible similarity to the brutal killing of Gaddafi there. Nothing changes.
Meet my NBF! David Cameron and Tony Blair become chums…
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/meet-my-nbf-david-cameron-and-tony-blair-become-chums-8478494.html
Tony ‘the advisor’ Blair takes refuge in ‘humility’ – another brazen, bare-faced lie – an arrogance, egotistic, pretentiousness, self-important human has no awareness of subjection.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2273039/Tony-Blair-giving-advice-Cameron-Miliband-understands-damned-difficult-jobs-are.html#axzz2Jld0e64h
No. Surely CanSpeccy wasn’t right after all, and they found the mass graves?
resident dissident
3 Feb, 2013 – 8:31 pm
“Absolutely – perhaps one condition of the UN being able to deal effectively with breaches of its Charter is consistency with how it deals with those breaches. Lets not pretend that the US/Israel/UK are the only offenders.”
No one is pretending that the US/Israel/UK are the only offenders it is you and your ilk that wants to pretend that critics of US/Israel/UK consider these states the only offenders. Which, as you know, is not true.
“We do arm them as I’m sure you really know.” Yes but with Syria – the main supplier of arms is Russia.
You seem to have a problem with Russia selling arms to Assad but no problem with the US/Israel/UK sending cash to allow known terrorist groups, who have no compunction about killing civilians, to buy arms from Qatar and Saudi Arabia.
So Hababak.
Seems l ike Mr Belgium no party mp has achieved alot b opy getting to where he is questioning the Parliament of his affiliated country.
Most of us hanging here are lifes losers.
What’s your excuse?
@Jay 2:53pm
“Cameron complained British Kids only aspire to be famous , footballers, singers etc.”
Cameron and his uber-Tory fascistic ilk, along with the SDP/Liberal Trojan-Tories are entirely responsible for the sorry state of affairs he bemoans, the hypocritical imbecilic lying bastards. I’m glad there are so few aspiring to be like the mass-killers who rule us.
The media pounds away with these TV programs which fan such idiotic beliefs, the print media fills pages with such related crap, as if it were actual news; it used to be football or boxing was a mythic route out of poverty, for the lucky and only truly rarely talented to find a way ‘out’. Combine that with clear lack of any real opportunity as wealth is all and taxation and laws assure that ill-gotten booty in whatever form it is held accumulates in the greedy hands of the few and is its own reward; cliques and sects, brotherhoods, old school-tie and the rest of the privileges through which a few live on the backs of the many’s toil, suffering and wastage, complete the decay and destruction of each successive generation that gives up, falls by the wayside, in this glorious meritocracy.
The media never tire of telling the people they are useless scum, it is only a short step from there to proposing euthanistic solutions to this too-fat, too-thin, too intelligent or whatever means can be used to belittle the masses and undermine self-esteem. Human diversity and variability alone guarantees most will never become willing wage-slaves.
I couldn’t follow the rest of your argument, care to clarify somewhat. Are you one of the ‘privileged’ performing chavs, can you kick a ball, mime with accompanying insincere and over the top grimaces, is life one endless whirl of Range Rovers crunching on white gravel? Are you having difficulties with your cook, maid or housekeeper? Do tell, here you’ll find many a cold shoulder to cry on. If you can do so without calling for the Syrian Shishakly (or maybe it’s Assad, the plan hasn’t changed since the fifites) to topple, to be replaced by a pro-Israeli Muslim Brothers Israeli hireling puppet, or can cause grievous offence to the mighty JBoD, well let’s just say you won’t be The Lucky One tonight (or tomorrow …)
“Richard III dig: DNA confirms bones are king’s”
They thought it would turn out to be him.
They had a hunch.
” well, we’re certainly seeing that policy being applied to Iran.”
Clark;
When Hagel was being grilled as SecDef nominee, he said the goal is to ‘contain’ Iran. It’s was long the suspicion of Obama’s political rivals, here, that this has been Obama’s objective all along. Some also think the Hagel nomination was a big FY to Bibi. Hagel is no angel, but he has the chutzpah to pare down DARPA and Pentagon gluttony.
The only way to be sure at this point, is to watch and see if Obama goes to the mat for his nominee. I really don’t know what his actual convictions are.
Holy Shite. Is this true? Yowza ! The Airwaves really belong to the People?
“The federal government wants to create super WiFi networks across the nation, so powerful and broad in reach that consumers could use them to make calls or surf the Internet without paying a cellphone bill every month.
The proposal from the Federal Communications Commission has rattled the $178 billion wireless industry, which has launched a fierce lobbying effort to persuade policymakers to reconsider the idea, analysts say. That has been countered by an equally intense campaign from Google, Microsoft and other tech giants who say a free-for-all WiFi service would spark an explosion of innovations and devices that would benefit most Americans, especially the poor.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/…..story.html
@BenF
If Microsoft and Google back it, it deserves oblivion. I’d run a mile, screaming.
The solution to mobile phone mast radiation IS – a hacksaw.
http://www.bioinitiative.org
“Habbabkuk
4 Feb, 2013 – 11:00 am
It just occurred to me : we have seen Assad the Father, we are now experiencing Assad the Son….and Allah willing, we might soon welcome Assad the Unholy Ghost.”
Bye bye Bashir!, Hello Habbabkuk!
Glad to see you back. I was a little worried about you being lost in parts where weather reports cannot reach. I want to be in such a space too but i’m f*****g stuck on this, as it would appear, God-forsaken planet. And Lucy can’t beckon me into her Sky with Diamonds.
Anyhow, some Allah or God if these are our choices! Lets not blame it on him. What a bloody world WE have made. Why can’t we change?
Human beings have been killing each other since time memorial. Over 5,000 wars have been fought in history. Wars are rooted in Man’s violent behaviour which in turn is inherited from the animal world. Even dogs have evolved to not be violent. But, despite our larger brain we have not been able to overcome our primeval nature. The content of man’s consciousness therefore includes fear, insecurity, aggression, conflict, greed so on and so forth.
The answer to me is simple and obvious. Each one of us can understand this reality deeply and turn away from it, resulting in a transformation of mankind. But it isn’t happening, despite the terrible wars even within our living memory. I wonder if there is a critical mass tipping point at which _% of humans were able to ‘see’ this and the consequential effect on the aggregate of human consciousness, which is after all, an aggregate. This is the ‘balance sheet’ i am more interested in than the balance sheet of murderous scoundrels. What does it matter if X dictator killed more people than Y terrorist? In reality they are all the same; they all have blood on their hands.
Hope is another dangerous thing. Look at all the hope people had in Obama. Did it change anything on the international frontiers? Has he been any better than GWB in this regard? I’m not talking US domestic politics, which i am not interested in. The Nobel Committee ran to rush him the Peace award. What utter and total fools we are. How do we break out of this vicious circle? Thats what i want to know.
Will it take a nuclear holocaust for us to awaken? We are tempting that price. Why can’t we awaken?
All genuine/sincere questions.
Ben Franklin:
Pure guesswork here, but check the small-print. Anything on stallman.org or eff about it? Who controls the encryption? Corporations, perhaps? The governments give away a fairly cheap resource (before the people wise-up and do it for themselves), but the corporations get to read everyone’s communication? I’ll put £10 on it…
@Arbed
Thank you, likewise, your work is impressive, but I have not had the time to read through the thread yet, but I will put it on the list…
@John Goss
My pleasure. I can very well imagine that, and not only due to the language and cultural divide, since it is in many ways difficult even for ordinary Swedes to grasp, since much of this data does not reach the majority of the general population, you often have to actively dig into official records and reports to expose it.
Another aspect is that internationally, the Nordic countries are often grouped together and viewed as one more or less homogeneous unit, and aspects of one country is generalized to all. In some aspects this works, but along other dimensions, it fails miserably.
Another curious fact (slightly related to the previous) is that the Swedish police force only solves around 4% of all break ins compared to 25% in for example Finland, and the number of solved crimes has continued to decrease in Sweden over the last decade even as the police force during the same period has been increased with 3000 new officers, which equals an increase of roughly 15%
This I believe also slowly eats away at the trust for the judicial system, which in the end transforms (or is at risk to feed) itselfs into a general decrease in trust and respect for the whole political system.
Mary
4 Feb, 2013 – 3:39 pm ” Nothing changes”
Precisely my point in my post to Habbabkuk above. Any ideas?
Like if everyone turned off wireless encryption on their routers, there’d be wifi everywhere with a population.
Habby
Larent Louis is “good” because what he says is true and he’s prepared to say it, when so many young people today in his position are gaming the system. Max is good because he knows the financial system well and can communicate that complexity to a wide audience. “Recogition” is just awareness.
“Old fart” is a compound noun describing someone who lives in the past. It’s a mentality rather than a physicality. So, you can get young “old farts” like Niall Ferguson or the Rees Mogg boy.
If you can appreciate the plunder and pillage of Belgian colonialism, as against the “we’re bringing them civilisation” nonsense that used to be preached, then you’re improving. When you understand that the current version of the “civilising” argument is “liberal intervention” then you’ll be well on your way.
Hope that helps.
Clark; The Telcoms are already giving them everything they want, but that could change (?), so maybe they just want to get rid of the middleman.
Clark; EFF did link to this article….
“If a government wants to peek into your Web-based e-mail account, it is surprisingly easy, most of the time not even requiring a judge’s approval.
That is a problem, according to Google, which said it had received 21,389 requests for information about 33,634 of its users in the second half of last year, an increase of 70 percent in three years. Google handed over some personal data in two-thirds of those cases.”
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/28/google-says-electronic-snooping-by-governments-should-be-more-difficult/
Sounds like they are passing the ball off…..
Lastbluebell, thank you for your insights. very revealing.
What beats me is that Sweden is a whole country of 9.5 million people?! And they can’t get their act together. I think they deserve to be sold to the Chinese. Or is that they are already in America’s change pocket.
With respect, no personal affront meant. On the contrary, wish you well in sorting out this (enigma is too good a word), puddle of a puzzle.The trolls from Trollhattan are taking over.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Saabtrollsticker.png
@ Villager :
Yes, Villager, you posed some fair (and good) questions – in itself an achievement, although fonding the correct answers will be even more of one.
I have a question (to myself as much as to you, I guess) about the “mass tipping point” you mention at roughly the middle of your post.
You know that in the world of business, when Firm A takes over Firm B by acquiring a certain percentage of the shares, the so-called minority shareholders who resisted the takeover by refusing Firm A’s offer for their shares can be compulsorily bought out.
Well, supposing there is a “mass tipping point” – given that we’re taking about attitudes and not shares – what happens to those not in the tipping mass? Will there really be a “consequential effect on the aggregate of human consciousness”, by which I think you mean that their attitudes will automatically switch to the new atttitude of the tipping mass. Or will there have to be compulsion as in the business example I offered above – if this is so, then I think we’re looking at violence again.
But this is perhaps over my head, after all I’m just a simple troll.
Today, as the main contractor pulls out of the substantial Sizewell C contract to build more PWR in this country, France, England, Germany Switzerland and Sweden should form a new consortium with the aim to recycle the existing nuclear waste.
As some of you know PWR’s only use a small amount, they are, by design, very insufficient reactors which are inherently dangerous, but, produce plutonium.
If the EU’s major countries decide to develop a modern evolutionary design to the AMSTER project, Thorium reactors that run on the existing stockpiles of waste we have accrued, by conservative estimates, some 1000 years of it.
These plants are not hooked on water, don’t have water intakes that can be clogged up by fish who love warm water, and they don’t run under pressure, bar the steam produced.
Further, these type of reactors can also be used, if I understand the principles right, to recycle some rare earth metals.
This problem, according to insurance companies who sometimes think these scenario’s up, is negligible when compared to the risk factors of rising sea levels, should the current trend become norm.
It should also occupy the minds of those who might want to plan/ contemplate striking each others first strike capabilities and add a multinational thermonuclear exchange into the equation.
We must reduce and keep safe all plutonium and start reducing these long term liabilities which are only getting bigger.
Thorium rectors still end with a product that is dangerous, but far less of it and much easier controlled.
That said, we have not even started to scratch the surface of alternative capabilities open to us, people have not realised that they have the powers to generate their own, bar some Island community projects.
Here we are subjected to NFFO subsidy hunters who cover the 24.6 odd acres under solar panels for the tax subsidies, not MP’s, no, its their parents/family who are doing it, rights next to the Waveney valley destined as a major electricity corridor, pylons or underground, it will come through from the North sea companies, the Royal Estate and the Norwegian Kings companies, all of who benefit from this NFFO and from the taxpayers for the power of their wind farms.
These subsidies are mostly for the landed gentry and the few, rather than large communities doing it for themselves and to finance further energy saving schemes, as it was envisaged by this EU law.
So there, today is a great chance for advancing a new agenda.
@ David (16h42) :
Yes Davy, it most certainly did help and I’m most grateful to you.
To show my appreciation, I’d like to engage with just a couple of comments:
1/. Is it possible that M. Louis and Max Keiser are “good” because you hold similar views to theirs, or are yoiu measuring them against some fixed, absolute ethical, moral or technical standard?
2/. I hold no brief for Jacob Rees-Mogg, but you must be fair; he’s more generally condisered to be an Old Fogey, not anj Old Fart.
3/. Re Belgian colonialism, I probably knew a lot about that when you were still doing it into your diapers. But that, of course, must be because I’m an Old Fart (emphasis on the Old, of course).
Message from Mr Regev and Ms Avital Leibovitz. Note the word ‘militant’ always used in conjunction with the word ‘Hamas’.
Israeli forces arrest Hamas members in the West Bank
Israel launches regular operations in Palestinian run areas of the West Bank
Israeli forces in the West Bank have arrested at least 20 members of the Palestinian militant group Hamas.
Those arrested, in overnight raids all over the West Bank, included three members of the Palestinian parliament.
Israel regards Hamas as a terrorist organisation, but has not said why the arrests were carried out.
Palestinian human rights groups condemned the arrests, saying they aimed to undermine the reconciliation talks between Palestinian factions.
Israel holds more than 4,500 Palestinians in its jails, 12 of them members of the Palestinian parliament, according to Palestinian reports.
Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967, settling more than 450,000 people in the territory.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-21322063
~~~
Elsewhere, the BBC make an admission of lying.
In a report last month on Israel’s racist “Judaization” policies in the Negev, BBC reporter Tim Whewell wrote that “Jewish and Arab citizens of Israel are guaranteed full equality by law.” Responding to my complaint, the BBC’s Middle East desk has acknowledged that this is not the case, and “agree the wording of the sentence in question is inaccurate.”
The article has now been changed to say that “Israel says its Arab and Jewish citizens have equal rights under the law,” a claim followed up by testimony from a Negev Coexistence Forum activist that “in practice land policy in the Negev gives Bedouin fewer opportunities than Jews.”
In my complaint, I pointed out that there is in fact no such guarantee [of full equality for Jewish and Palestinian citizens] by law, and I shared the following:
http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ben-white/bbc-acknowledges-palestinian-citizens-israel-are-not-guaranteed-equality-law