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.
Resident dissident, rather than smearing me that I’m somehow blinded and can’t see something which is obvious to you, please simply state roughly whatever it is that Masha Gessen asserts. Specifically, does she assert that Wikileaks is some sort of collaborator with, specifically, Russia and/or Putin?
Thanks for the clarification; I knew that there were “Quite a lot of people in Russia”. Please read your comments before submission.
And have you ever seen Hassan Nasrallah interviewed by the Western corporate media?
Hmm, you’ve phrased this in a pejorative way, whether you’re aware of it or not. We’re talking about the leader of Hezbollah, and I certainly believe that people should get the chance to make a direct judgement.
Do I think that any random person should be given air-time for anti-Jewish ranting? No, I don’t.
And:
Supposedly non-terrorist military operations kill far vaster numbers of civilians.
Do you regard Hezbollah exclusively as a “terrorist” organisation?
Gessen’s book is more about the current State of Russia – and about what very brave journalists like herself are doing to point out what is going on, despite opposition from Putin and the state controlled media (which includes RT). It also gives pretty conclusive evidence that Gessen has compiled from brave whistleblowers. From what I can remember I don’t think she even refers to Wikileaks or Assange. Masha and her friends are in effect doing what Wikileaks should be doing in Russia – and should be helped rather than ignored.
No I haven’t seen Nasrallah interviewed by Western media corporate or otherwise. Why ask (rhetorical) questions you know the answer to and then insist on a response?
Do you regard Hezbollah exclusively as a “terrorist” organisation?
No – very few organisations only carry out a single activity. I do believe that there should be diplomatic engagement with Hezbollah (as there is) – and to be honest I don’t think media interviews by anyone, or wikileaks of the discussions for that matter, will actually aid the process.
Resident dissident, I didn’t know the answer to my question. I’m not a consumer of the corporate media’s product. But I also wanted you to ask that question of yourself.
Here’s my pejorative question in return. Do you think that denying air-time to the leader of the major Lebanese political party, Hezbollah, which can organise popular demonstrations in the hundreds of thousands, and supplies schools and hospitals, indicates a fairness and balance from the “western” corporate media?
Clark
I am not smearing you – I am disagreeing with your arguments.
Of course the Western media are not fair and balanced in not reporting Hezbollah – but I don’t thing it is desirable for media to be fair and balanced in everything. Does fairness and balance mean that the media should give time to racist, sexists, criminals, terrorists (however you wish to define them), bigots, lunatics etc.etc. – I think that some degree of judgement is required based on the specific circumstances. I very much doubt that media interviews of Nasrallah would actually contribute anything positive to the necessary diplomatic process for achieveing peace – and in fact could have negative consequence (although given that hardly anyone watches RT Assanges interview really is of very little consequence in the scheme of things – and really just says more about Assange than anything else)
Resident dissident, the thing is, if you went to a busy place in the UK, and asked people at random about Hezbollah, my guess is that most of them wouldn’t even know that Hexbollah is a political party. If you gave them boxes to tick: “Does Hezbollah build schools? Does Hezbollah build hospitals? Does Hezbollah perform bombings?”, I think you’d find the responses to be very biased. Just the simple question “What is Hezbollah?” would almost overwhelmingly produce the reply “terrorists”.
That indicates the effects of propaganda.
In the former USSR, they had two state-controlled newspapers. Their names translated into English were The Truth and The News. A common joke among Russian people was “Ah, but The Truth carries no news, and The News carries no truth”.
See? The Russian people knew that they were subject to propaganda. “Western”, corporate propaganda is far more dangerous and influential, because people don’t recognise it. That even extends to most of the people who help to produce it.
resident dissident, 8 Feb, 12:27 pm; so, you apparently think it is helpful that a representative of those hundreds of thousands of Lebanese people be denied a platform for expression.
Do you regard all those hundreds of thousands of people as some sort of “enemy”?
I don’t. I think that if they’re protesting, they’re probably unhappy about something, and fixing whatever that is would probably be far more helpful than trying to pretend that their concerns don’t exist.
So, who or what do you think should be in control of the selection process? You, perhaps? People you agree with like The Fabian Society? Big corporations with motives of their own?
Thank Physical Law that Hackers evolved and built the Internet.
How very unsurprising, a reply that is not really a reply; instead two standard tactics to avoid addressing the issue;
Firstly, smoking screening fake indignation & blatant hypocrisy over “ad hominems”, which really basically means that you don’t like being called an Islamophobe despite your frequent Islamophobic outbursts; yet apparently you can call me a “cretin” ! Projection is amusing psychological phenomena LOL !!
Secondly, typical dishonest misrepresentation, as it was yourself that compared US prisons to Russian gulags in your desperate attempt at whatabouterie deflection; you manically pounced on the commonly used practice of referring to the US prison system as a “Gulag system”; this being because of world record-high prison population, & the ever increasing criminalization of political activism; try entering “us gulag prison system” as a search term to use how widespread & mainstream this usage is. There’s even a pertinent Wiki entry:
“Historically, the current US incarceration rate is comparable to the record-high Soviet Union’s levels before World War II when the USSR’s population reached 168 million, and 1.2 to 1.5 million people were in the Gulag system’s prison camps and colonies (i.e. about 800 people imprisoned per 100,000 residents, according to numbers from Anne Applebaum and Steven Rosefielde).[38][39] The Soviet Union’s incarceration rates from 1934 to 1953 were historically the world’s highest for a modern age country, according to The Gulag Archipelago book by Nobel Prize winner Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.[40] However, the US total population incarcerated is 2,266,800 as of 2010. That amounts to over 719 citizens per 100,000.[7]”
As to your purported “answer” of “already made it clear that if falsely accused of rape I would want to use the opportunity provided to clear my name”, please clarify that this is indeed a “yes”, in that you would risk life imprisonment, mostly in extreme isolation, on obviously trumped up & farcical accusations of sexual molestation, which are not even consider crimes in any country apart from Sweden, and in light of being official declared an “enemy” by a cruelly vindictive & lawless Superpower, bent on making examples of whistleblowers in order to terrorise others from leaking.
Whilst you consider honestly answering the question, try not to indulge in further strawmen fudging, as a simple “yes” or “no” is all that is required.
Above post directed @ Resident Dissident of course!
Macky, please go easy on resident dissident. Please remember just how insidious corporate propaganda really is. Hardly anyone notices even its existence, let alone the direction of its structural bias. People really do take such positions with the best of intentions. This is what makes countering it so difficult; it’s just too easy to identify “opponents” as an “enemy”, and then the barriers go up. We need to bring the barriers down. There will not be peace until we can advance in this supremely difficult task.
Resident dissident, I have to go off-line to go shopping etc. I’ll return later.
Macky, there’s a good saying in scientific circles: “Whoever asks the right questions contributes the most to solving the problem”.
” I very much doubt that media interviews of Nasrallah would actually contribute anything positive to the necessary diplomatic process for achieveing peace ”
You might very much doubt that a general public, allowed to make their own mind up, which they are not, as editorial rooms stacked with propagandist operate in every newsroom, would have an different view of what they observe in an interview, than what they hear from their embellishing Governments tit bits.
Cameramen are not in charge of editing their own footage yet, so any interview is somewhat skewed, contributing parties briefed beforehand.
Still an interview says a lot about people’s manners and phraseology used, indeed a focused viewer can get a lot of messages not coming form the mouth, whether a person is open in their demeanour or not.
To say that it does not contribute anything to peace, when it clearly gives away many psychological hints and ideas to anyone who is a diplomat, shows that Clark has been debating a serious issue with someone who, at best is a blithering amateur.
Clark
And if you were to go to Southern Lebanon and ask people at random about the UK LibDems my guess is that you might well receive similarly informative. But what it actually signifies is not the effects of propaganda but the a lack of interest and relevance to most peoples lives. Those who are interested can find out should they wish – and in the West they almost certainly have access to a wider range of viewpoints.
In general, I think you should credit people with rather more intelligence to understand matters when they have a need to do so.
The argument that Russians were better informed (than we are now in the West) because they knew they were subject to propaganda is I’m afraid garbage – why do you think so many in Russia and Eastern Europe listed to the Western radion and TV stations? What about Samizdat? Why did people want to move from East to West rather than vice versa – so that they could be less informed. It is also ridiculous to make such generalisations – there were many Russians who read the papers and listened to the TV news who believed what they are told – one anectdote which is probably repeated more in the West than Russia (especially given that it is based on the wholly false premise that there were only two state controlled newspapers) is a rather flimsy basis for your theory. Perhaps you shoudl ask the question as to why Stalin was so popular, and even to this day still remains a large level of popularity, despite the enormity of what he did. Granted Russian nationalism and WW2 played a significant role – but so did propaganda and ignorance.
All this is not to deny that there are lies and distortion in Western media (which would be entirely stupid given the antics of the Murdoch press)- but to say that the “propaganda” is all pervading and worse than what occurs elsewhere really is standing logic on its head.
@Clark; “Macky, please go easy on resident dissident.”
It doesn’t come any easier than asking for a straight answer to a simple question !
“Macky, there’s a good saying..”
There’s also the saying, “more than one way to skin a cat”; you do it your way, I prefer mine, as sometimes what is most needed is to forcefully make people confront their irrationalities, a case of being cruel to be kind, saves a lot of needless time-wasting.
[email protected]
I don’t believe that Hezbollah are denied a platform for expressing their views. I don’t regard many of their followers as the enemy – just their leaders and many of the obnoxious views that they express. Hitler represented many millions of Germans, Stalin represented millions of Russians etc. etc. – and although I have already acknowledged that you need diplomatic engagement with such people – that is not the same as saying that they should have been given freedom of speech to rant their obnoxious views in the Western Press and TV (and I pretty sure that they did not offer a reciprocal arrangement).
“So, who or what do you think should be in control of the selection process?”
This is why you have editors with commonsense – and freedom of the press so that different people viewpoints can act as editors. Only in extremis should the state resort to using legislation. I agree that the internet is a good thing in this regard.
@Macky
Firstly, smoking screening fake indignation & blatant hypocrisy over “ad hominems”, which really basically means that you don’t like being called an Islamophobe despite your frequent Islamophobic outbursts; yet apparently you can call me a “cretin” !
As you give so shall you receive.
You first used the word GULAG – and your numerical comparison is with all due respects complete and utter bullshit – I think you forget about what happened to people in the Gulag at the end of their period of incarceration – lets compare the numbers of deaths in custody, the treatment while in custody, those consigned to permanent exile after custody, the treatment of relatives of those accused, the supposed crimes of those sent to the GULAG, the torture used, the millions who starved etc. I’m afraid you are just compounding your stupidity and my assessment of your mental faculties was obviously rather overstated (yes that last part is an ad hominem). Please point out where my outbursts have been directed against Islam in general rather than certain people who happen to be Moslem and their behaviour.
Brilliant Clark, hats off to you. You are in great form. To keep that up hope you get to enjoy a good walk too.
Very telling that you got this extraction from Res Diss:
“but I don’t thing it is desirable for media to be fair and balanced in everything.”
Admire your patience!
@Nevermind
To be honest, I would credit Nasrallah as being more than intelligent enough to get across a message to Western governments without resorting to public media, and he certainly wouldn’t be as daft to use an interview with Assange on RT which is available to all and sundry as a means of doing so.
The idea of using Assange as a channel for diplomatic communications is you must admit somewhat comical.
Macky, thank you for highlighting the state of affairs in the US prisons “system”. Res Diss is a wonderful example of a fuddy-duddy stuck in history without the growth that accompanies learning from our (humanity’s) mistakes. They pretend to be open-minded but have this superiority complex and thinly-veiled sense of nationalism ingrained.
As Mary rightly pointed out look at the considered choice of a black box as his avatar. Darkness reveals phobic darkness.
Villager – of course you quote out of context without reading the qualification that I gave. Very classy – it is very to have a debate with any degree of nuance when your like butt in with such stupid comments.
Of course I could play your game “Brilliant ….. Res Diss….. fair and balanced in everything.”
As Mary rightly pointed out look at the considered choice of a black box as his avatar. Darkness reveals phobic darkness.
Your avatar is just the same as mine – on my screen at least! I never chose an avatar
“without the growth that accompanies learning from our (humanity’s) mistakes.”
Do you mean the one about that the best way to manage Russian leaders who seek to reduce the freedom of the press and the expression of opinion is to be a fellow traveller or useful idiot?
I love the Macky / Villager duo comic act as played out above. It’s Dumb and Dumber, isn’t it, the only difficulty being to work out which of the two is dumber and which dumber.
Clark has more class in his little finger than the two of them in their entire carcass.
The ONLY terrorists are the seed of the Irgun,Haganah and Stern gangs that run the rogue state of shitsreal. But the “nuyowk” dershowitzian logic of the trolls would like to have us dumb goyim think otherwise. In the meantime the two state solution – Israel & Ehretz Israel, continues inch by inch on the ground (since 1948). But so does their Cause n Effect advance towards the front of the cattle cars.
@Resident Dissident:
“Please point out where my outbursts have been directed against Islam in general rather than certain people who happen to be Moslem and their behaviour.”
The standard classic Islamophobe response, betrayed by a glaring lack of consistency that keeps them posting comments like;
“the abuses conducted by Islamofacists”,
but never expressing concern for abuses conducted by “Western Fascists” or “Israeli Fascists
“I just hate those like who like to blow up bombs among civilians by promising gullible idiots virgins in heaven (when the proper translation is wsweet raisins), fly airplanes into skyscapers, want an all encompassing Caliphate, issue fatwas against writers who use their freedom of speech and just show a general intolerance of anyone who disagrees with them.”
But nothing about the hundreds of thousands innocent men, women & children incinerated by the West since 911.
“And if you really want to induce vomit just look at his interview of Nasrallah”
But no vomit inducing comments about interviews with Netanyahu, Obama, Cameron, Hollande, Blair, etc, etc
“As you give so shall you receive.”
Please give examples of my Islamophobia, or even, shock horror, any anti-Semitism, otherwise it will be plain that you are yet again indulging in troll-like smearing.
“You first used the word GULAG”
A very point that I already repeated, but funny how you cannot admit that in your desperate whatabouterie, it was YOU that made INITIAL comparison between the Russian gulags & the American prison system, and so distracting from the question you keep avoiding.
That you are a dishonest debater was clear to me even before I engaged with you, but now to keep having it repeatdly confimed, is the only positive to be had in engaging with you.
Let me know if & when you summon enough courage & integrity to answer my very simple question.
I like the way you’ve ground down the Eminences over time by using reasoned argument and always remaining polite. Except for Clark, they’ve all fallen by the wayside : some have retreated into pseudo-disdainful silence, others can bring nothing other than sterile repetition and schoolboy insults to the discussion.
Just to let you know I’m cheering you on from the sidelines; am not intervening because you certainly don’t need any help from me!
“Your avatar is just the same as mine – on my screen at least! I never chose an avatar”
Check it out here res diss
http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2013/01/amelia-hill-is-a-dirty-liar/comment-page-4/#comment-392665
Perhaps its a good omen that its changed. I hope my fellow cult-humans have not been wasting time in shedding light altogether.
Sorry if i butted in and no actually i don’t read your comments in great detail. My brain has a natural way to ferret out any original thinking as distinct from parroting boring establishment speak. But please carry on, don’t let me distract you any further and bear in mind that my comments, to which you refer, were not addressed to you in the first place.
Just some ruminations in regard to blog commenting…
I think it is now well known within psychology and cognitive neuroscience, that a wast amount of what a human being believe he knows, is erroneous, and that our ability to judge our knowledge and personal capabilities, are severly distorted.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases
This is not something you can shield youself from, but is in all probability in many cases the results of innate structures and the basic design of the functional human brain, as well as a direct consequence of our common human nature.
What we can do, is to be consciously aware about our inabilities, and personally as well as a society, act to minimise their effects.
One curious fact is that when you do investigate this, and bring the full power and rigor of scientific investigations to bear on the matter, and for example ask individuals to rank themselves in regard to capabilities in different categories, almost everyone believs they are above avarage.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downing_effect
This can be quite hillarious, not to mention confirming many deeply held suspicions…
“For driving skill, 93% of the US sample and 69% of the Swedish sample put themselves in the top 50% (above the median). For safety, 88% of the US group and 77% of the Swedish sample put themselves in the top 50%.”
or,
“87% of MBA students at Stanford University rated their academic performance as above the median.”
Another important bias is the Dunning–Kruger effect, which basicly states that the less knowledge and skill a person has within a subject, the more he will overestimate his own abilities. Basicly, he simply does not have enough knowledge to personally comprehend his own ignorance.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning-Kruger_effect
The reverse side of this is that the more knowledgeble a persons is, the less self-confident he will be.
I think one important dimension according to which humanity can be divided, is those who have gained a personal insight into their minds fragility and fallibility, and those who still live in the illusion of their personal superiority.
One way you can safeguard yourself from this, (as for example scientist have learned by trial and error over the past 500 years), is to always be open to the possibility that your opinions are wrong, question your own conclusions, and always try to objectively verify against nature/society through observations and empirical data or, if nothing else is possible, the opinions of knowledgeable people.
And, that always stay intellectually humble, and listen to what other people say. Maybe you have missed something or overestimated your ability, and they are right and you are wrong…