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.
I found that Res Diss arrived on page 2 of this thread sounding so like Habb and commenting on a silly ‘conversation’ about the weather forecast. Note it’s me, again, and my age!
resident dissident
2 Feb, 2013 – 8:14 pm
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.
Are they one and the same just like those old music hall acts? It is all so stupid. The trick would be to see if they ever did the impossible and posted separately at identical times although I suppose that could be achieved using two separate computers and pressing ‘submit comment’ at the same moment.
Did you notice that Clark, who is so nice, was being commended earlier just as Glenn UK, I think it was, previously. The old troll trick of causing division.
btw the weather forecast was from the Met Office site as I said in a reply to ResDiss.
You could well be right, Mary.
Wasn’t there an occasion in the past when habby was talking to oniel and then Jon pointed out that both were one and the same.
It’s sad really, I know, but oughtn’t we be advising him/her to seek professional help rather than attempting remedial therapy ourselves.
Just a thought. I know Clark and the others mean well, but still.
I am more than happy to condemn abuses by fascists wherever they occur – Germany, Italy and Spain being the most obvious cases, although we have our own nasty virus in the UK largely represented by the BNP as do most West European countries.
“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.”
I hope you do not consider any of these behaviours – or those who abuse Islam to promote a fascist agenda – as being defining features or requirements of Islam as that really would be Islamophobia in my book. None of these things are requirements of Islam by any stretch of the information and if you thing they are it is you who has the problem.
I can think of plenty vomit inducing speeches by Netanyahu and Cameron – being a social democrat by political leaning I tend to have less problems with the others you name. I would have thought that many of Nasrallah’s quotes about the Jews have a certain familarity to another well known fascist.
My point has always been that it is not possible to compare the US Prison system with the GULAG – a point that you continue to ignore and misrepresent.
Mary, very astute observations especially the remark re the weather forecasts. What a way to announce yourself.
The change in the avatars, apparently, if you believe Res Diss were also arranged by a ghost. That’s right David, and lets also recall how the Babbler arrived on the scene on an earlier thread as O’NEIL asking his ‘namesake’ the Oneil Samuel how he was. Curious entries by such great intellectuals, eh?
Paraphrasing Ann Widecombe, something of the night about them?
Mary
It was a joke – the link was to the BBC website. You would have to admit that you do not often except the reliability of the BBC.
As for being Habbakkuk I’msure that the mods can check to confirm that I’m not a scok puppet and fro that matter neither is he. Just get used to the idea that we belong to the 99% who disagree with the prevailing line here.
As for avatars – another example of paranoia – I wouldn’t know how to set one even if I knew how – anything that happens is driven from elsewhere. My Mossad minders most likely.
And so what does the GULAG have to do with Assange? Except that gulag-behaviours in GITMO need to be exposed.
Res diss lets test your credibility. Please produce Mary’s link to the bbc weather….
We are all Resident Dissident now!:mrgreen: Lol@ the paranoia on here.
What’s that Karl? You’re shoes aren’t shiny enough, let me get that for you.
Sorry guys, busy now, must dash.
Lastbluebell, let not your insightful gem of a post go buried in the sands of bickering. Key words as i understood from you were ‘consciously aware”
and
‘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.’
These are things we understand intuitively, but its great you added labels and modern research for the people here who claim to hold 90%, sorry 99% of the ground!
Which is probably why, one of the most touching human songs i have heard has such relatively few hits. Linked earlier but bears repetition:
Here Comes That Rainbow Again: Kris Kristofferson
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCXK3-Hw4bo
—-
Mary thanks for your comment this morning on Johnny Cash–i will look up closer. What i do feel is that every human being suffers–it is not your suffering, my suffering or his/hers–it is human suffering. And since we don’t come with a ready made manual on operating life, it is incumbent to go into this very deeply in order to understand ourselves. Links up well with what Lastbluebell’s saying.
May you stay forever young!
—-
And you too Lastbluebell, may your freshness always re-create itself. Thank you again.
“I am more than happy to condemn etc, etc”
Yet but the point is that you never seem to have done or want to do without being prompted, unlike your frequent condemning of “Isamofascism”; all rather strange & rather telling, no ?
“My point has always been that it is not possible to compare the US Prison system with the GULAG – a point that you continue to ignore and misrepresent.”
Now you are faking stupidity to the point of imbecility; I repeat nice & slow, yes I original made the statement “American gulag prison system” in reference to the dire fate that possibly awaits Assange, so you chose to ignore the point I was making, and still are avoiding by refusing to answer my simple straight forward question, and instead you make a song a dance distraction about YOUR initiated comparisons with the Russian gulags;
“I’m not a scok puppet and fro that matter neither is he”
Well it’s a matter of factual record that Jon (the Moderator here), has caught Habbakkuk sock-puppeting at least twice here.
Until you are man enough to answer the Assange question, you really have zero credibility & are not worth anybody’s time in engaging with you.
CE its your shoes not you’re shoes. And we should trust you to interpret complex extradition treaties?! Jokerman!
Dedicated to you and Babbler
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XSvsFgvWr0
Clark, 11.07am
Here you go, link to transcripts and videos for the whole The World Tomorrow series. Produced by Journeyman Films for RT, with Julian Assange having full editorial independence.
https://www.cabledrum.net/worldtomorrow
So, not that different from Channel 4 commissioning a series from an independent production company then.
It’s revealing, isn’t it, that Saint Mary (and surely others) should suspect that Resident Dissident and I are the same person.
They simply can’t get it into their thick skulls that more than one person on this blog might actually disagree with their common line.
Well, Saint Mary and Company, be sure that there are a lot more of us out there in the real world. 99% in fact.
Oh yes, I nearly forgot!
Who was that imbercile who suggested a kind of test by which Resident Dissident and I should prove that we weren’t the same person? Solething about us posting simultaneously?
How pathetic! They set themselves up as the Inspector Plods of this blog. The next thing will be that they will ask us to undergo a “loyalty oath” to the fraternity under pain of excommunication. LOL
This shower – the Eminences – should get down on their knees and express grateful thanks that we keep them in touch with the real world.
Resident Dissident, 1.32pm
“why do you think so many in Russia and Eastern Europe listed to the Western radion and TV stations?”
The same is true in reverse, of course – RT has huge viewing figures in the US, where many people feel it’s one of the few channels giving them a more accurate picture of events than their own mainstream press. RT’s global reach is around 650 million – apparently the reason Assange chose them for his World Tomorrow series. The other contender was Al-Jazeera, apparently, but Assange opted for RT instead because they had the greater reach into the United States.
I have to agree with the content of LastBlueBells post having provided evidence of this – I believed that Mary had posted weather from the BBC website with a link – because that is where most people get there weather from and because Mary does post a lot of links. And Mary believed that I had just appeared (I hadn’t I have been an intermitted poster for quite a long time) because she wanted to believe that I was Habba’s sock puppet.
Given the Met Office’s past association with the MOD I’m glad that she is now able to place reliance on its forecasts.
Thanks to John Goss for posting this:
http://www.themonthly.com.au/julian-assange-sex-crime-and-feminism-crayfish-summer-guy-rundle-3184
I think the most valuable thing in this article is that Guy Rundle, who speaks Swedish, got hold of the police protocols shortly after Nick Davies got his leaked version translated and can therefore point out not only Davies’ deliberate distortions – such as completely eliminating the element of mens rea in his description of Ardin’s testimony – but also mistranslations which turned a complaint of “annoyance” into one of rape.
Davy at 15h34 :
“Wasn’t there an occasion in the past when habby was talking to oniel and then Jon pointed out that both were one and the same”
Actually no, there wasn’t. Are you getting forgetful, O Eminent One, memory failing under the strain?
Habbabkuk posted once as “O’Neil” and took the piss out of oniel with a slightly off-colour joke (O’Neil to oniel, geddit?).
And now, a Captain Mainwaring salutation to you and bye bye.
Grief, what a mess. I had a fairly well-focussed discussion in progress with resident dissident, and now I can barely find the points I wanted to pick up on without my eye’s rolling like Frazer in Dad’s Army from all the scrolling I’m having to do. No drinking this Friday night, or I might fall out of my armchair…
My reply to ResDiss’s dig was:
Mary
2 Feb, 2013 – 8:40 pm
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).
:::
Getting sillier by the hour. Why don’t the troll(s) quit while the going is good. They no longer have anh credibility and as I have said before, there is something pathological about them.
@Villager, “These are things we understand intuitively…”
Absolutely, many do, some I think are forced to reevaluate their views and are pushed over the edge by professional training, and many learn from personal tragedies or experiences and reflections upon a long life.
But the scientific data seems to indicate that many do not.
I do wonder if not one of the downsides of living in such material abundance, and personally very secure and safe western societies, prevents many people from ever gaining that insight.
They are simply never truly faced with the stark consequences of their own ignorance.
“… but its great you added labels and modern research for the people here who claim to hold 90%, sorry 99% of the ground!”
I believe that one of the more important insight that comes with an expanding experience and intellectual maturity, is that the number of people who share an opinion is in itself not a good measure of its level of truth.
“Here Comes That Rainbow Again: Kris Kristofferson”
That brought a big smile, thank you!
The War on Terror – They’re really getting serious about it now
For disseminating classified materials that exposed war crimes, Julian Assange is now honored as an official terrorist as only America can honor. We Shall Never Forget 9/11, Vol. II: The True Faces of Evil – Terror, a graphic coloring novel for children, which comes with several pages of perforated, detachable “terrorist trading cards”. Published by Really Big Coloring Books Inc. in St. Louis, the cards include Assange, Timothy McVeigh, Jared Lee Loughner, Ted Kaczynski, Maj. Nidal Hasan, Bill Ayers, and others.
From Bill Blum’s Anti Empire Report No 113
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2013/02/07/william-blum-the-anti-empire-report-113/
http://www.coloringbook.com/about-us.aspx
Lethal propaganda and extremist anti Muslim
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Really_Big_Coloring_Books
OK, thanks go to Arbed for finding the facts about Assange’s editorial independence and the viewing figures for Russia Today; I know plenty of people who watch both Russia Today and Al Jazera, precisely because they are attempting to create balance by sampling various sources. Those claiming 99% consensus within the population; this contradicts you, as does the fact that the worst tabloids are the most popular papers. Do you really want to claim consensus with such a readership, or are you just celebrating that so many sheep have been misled in a direction that you approve of?
Thanks also to LastBlueBell. Regarding this bit:
Precisely. I consciously attempt to apply this to my own thinking, and I believe that we need to apply similar scrutiny when we interpret the contents of the corporate media. So I was very pleased to see this from resident dissident,8 Feb, 6:39 pm:
“Habbabkuk posted once as “O’Neil” and took the piss out of oniel with a slightly off-colour joke (O’Neil to oniel, geddit?).”
Oh look Habby is being a little more than economical with the truth !
So does Habbabkuk employ shill tactics ?
Well let these three posts from our Moderator, speaks for themselves;
[Jon/Mod: Posted as O’Neil, in fact this is Habbabkuk – sock-puppetting is discouraged here]
[Jon/Mod: Habbabkuk, I’ve not been “charmed”, but I’ve had more disruption and sock-puppetting coming from your computer than from Oniel’s.]
[Jon/Mod: Habbabkuk – we’re in favour of free speech on this blog, but not at the cost of civility. A couple of your comments – to Ben and Mary in particular – appear to be deliberate attempts to start an argument.]
And these are only the three that I, as a very infrequent visitor here have noticed; and then there’s the strange appearance & sudden disappearance of “oniel”, who come into life shortly after Habbabkuk first started posting here, they had a bit of a good cop/bad cop involving a little bit of token Israel bashing, to initially established Habby credibility, then “oniel” vanished, but ever since then it’s all pro-israel from Habby; exactly the same scenario with a couple of initial posts against Melanie Phillips’ rabid Islamophobia, but since then all other Habby posts iro of Muslims/Islam have been totally negative. Now how strange is that, or maybe not so strange for a bona fide Troll.
Mary:
Thanks for finding that, disgusting though it is.
Resident dissident, I’d like to point out that I don’t have any trouble distinguishing you from Habbabkuk. I’m sorry that I inadvertently set off the “islamophobia” thing. Just to clarify to all and sundry, I think that if you attributed malware arriving at your computer as the result of “islamofascists” disliking your comments on forums, then that is (others please note) slightly over-suspicious. It gets nowhere near the level of islamophobia seen daily in shoddier sections, and occasionally in respectable parts, of the corporate media.
Note that Habbabkuk, when sock-puppeting as “O’Neil”, posted a comment deliberately designed to be offensive to Jews. My guess is that resident dissident would do no such thing.
Visitor Oneil did not do any sock-puppeting.
Clark: “So I was very pleased to see this from resident dissident,8 Feb, 6:39 pm:
“I have to agree with the content of LastBlueBells post having provided evidence of this – […]“
Good of Res Diss to agree with Lastbluebell, but the shoe doesn’t fit. He is being intellectually dishonest by hiding behind L’s msg. The fact is (a) he didn’t read Mary’s post carefully in the first place and (b) its not a question of whether he thinks he knows more than Mary or not. He entered the thread by having a go at Mary, unsolicited ad hom attack, and was obviously baiting her. These tactics have nothing to do with Lastbluebell’s insights and therefore his current cognition is an intellectual lie.
I agree with Mary his credibility is in shreds. He is not a reliable witness to life. The best he can do is to respect Lastbluebells research and go into it deeply and see if he can come back honest, balanced and respectful.
Macky, Habbabkuk is a troll.
If resident dissident is being paid for his/her efforts, s/he’s a shill.
Trolls disrupt. Shills argue some other party’s point. There is rarely any point in accusing anyone of being a shill, because it is usually impossible to prove.
Some “contributors” are both troll and shill. In Larry from St Louis’ case, he was obviously a troll, and Craig proved he was a shill when he discovered that Larry worked on Karimov’s (or was it Usmanov’s) legal team.
Anyway, this gets us nowhere. Focus on facts and assertions, argument and logic.
And now Res Diss apologise to Mary forthwith.
All that saintly crap you’ve been going on about re ad hominem attacks where you actually walked into the room with one. Cheeky fella!