… in light of yesterday’s news – which ought to have been emblazoned across your front page in three inch block letters but mysteriously wasn’t – that the war criminals have won, and the courageous man who brought us the truth about them has lost, would any of the following, all in your employ, care to comment?
James Ball
George Monbiot
Suzanne Moore
Marina Hyde
Hannah Jane Parkinson
Still vomiting, Hannah Jane? Here’s a more recent shot of the two with their mum, on a visit to see dad.
Owen Jones (moonlighting here for the Independent but undeniably one of your chaps)
I realise of course that you have many others on your payroll, columnists even more fulsome in their trashing of this man. It’s just that the views of those I single out – darlings of an identity politics obsessed ‘woke’ and/or, in the cases of George and Owen, the fuzzier end of socialism – carried greater weight with a credulous liberal intelligentsia which duly turned its collective and politically correct back on his merciless ordeal.
Do these six have what it takes, I wonder, to show a tiny fraction of the courage the man they so vilely traduced has shown, and come out with an unqualified mea culpa?
No? Well it was worth a shot, I guess … 1
* * *
- Postscript a few hours later. Saturday’s Graun posts an editorial condemnation of the ruling. (I’m being absurdly generous here. The piece, by the executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, houses a one-sentence reference to it. Tucked into the penultimate paragraph we learn that “… the ongoing extradition of Julian Assange sets a terrible global precedent, because Assange is being prosecuted for making public classified information, something journalists do routinely …” ) This, as discussed fifteen months ago – Julian, Guardian and the Law of Volitionality – is a textbook Guardian play: tricklets of tears over outcomes it so ably facilitated. My pal Bryan Gocke goes into some of this black comedy in his onthebrynk post today.
Thanks for this Phil. You put it so succinctly. I agree with every word you have written here.
Hi Geoff. Following an email bulletin I put out yesterday, on hearing the ruling via MintPress, three women – none of them cry-babies – wrote to say they’d burst into tears. Women, speaking broad brush, have less of the cerebral shield educated blokes have been wearing since boyhood.
Stiff upperlippedly, I replied to one of them:
When I first read about Friday’s decision (from Consortium) I did shed tears. My thoughts were of how he must feel having suffered so much for so long, but also the death, as I perceived it, of our utterly unworthy judiciary. Britain’s name is trash in so many parts of the world and our supposed democracy is now a long running joke among so many. I really do feel it is somewhat surreal, the politics, the corruption, the identity all pervasive nonsense and finally this disgraceful decision.
People cannot understand why I will not watch the news and I cannot understand why they do. I feel like I’m living in a topsy turvy world where the dimwits and those who think sticking one’s fingers in the ears singing lalalala is the correct response to facts, truth and evidence, rather than ear information available where veracity counts.
Either they are all sleep walking through life, cannot be arsed to find out what is going on or are to bigoted to care, or I’m living in a parallel universe.
At this rate the S**t heads and liars will be the majority and sane, thinking individuals will be a terrified minority. Oh…I know who the real turds are and can tell the difference unfortunately for the slimy creature calling herself Suzanne Moore.
In case you haven’t cottoned, I really am in a foul temper over this nightmarish countries behaviour.
All the best,
Susan:)
Spot on Susan x
PS – so many memorable phrases in your comment that it’s unfair to single just one out. But I especially loved this one:
Which perfectly sums up the yawning gulf – the parallel universes we inhabit – between me and those who still haven’t grasped that we are ruled by gangsters with PR firms known as ‘independent media’ – and folk in funny wigs known as an ‘independent judiciary’ – in their pockets.
Well said Philip. When The Guardian dies Julian’s name will be written on its heart.
Something about all this is bringing out – in you, me, Susan and others – our inner poet. I sense we’re reaching deep within for words to express our despair and anger and, yes, grief.