RosieBell

Hearsay, pure and simple

Here’s John Pilger really pissed off with the liberal press:-

On 3 March, the Guardian announced that Steven Spielberg's DreamWorks would be making "an investigative thriller in the mould of All the President's Men out of its book WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy. I asked David Leigh, who wrote the book with Luke Harding, how much DreamWorks had paid the Guardian for the screen rights and what he expected to make personally. "No idea," was the puzzling reply of the Guardian's "investigations editor". The paper paid WikiLeaks nothing for its treasure trove of leaks. Assange and WikiLeaks - not Leigh or Harding - were responsible for what the Guardian's editor, Alan Rusbridger, has called "one of the greatest journalistic scoops of the last 30 years".

[To do these parasites justice, they did have to read masses of fragmentary documentation and make some kind of sense of it.]

The Guardian has made it clear that it has no further use for Assange. He is a loose cannon who did not fit Guardianworld, who proved a tough, unclubbable negotiator. And brave. In the Guardian's self-regarding book, Assange's extraordinary bravery is excised. He becomes a figure of petty bemusement, an "unusual Australian" with a "frizzy-haired" mother; he is gratuitously abused as "callous" and a "damaged personality" who was "on the autistic spectrum". How will Spielberg deal with this childish character assassination?

[Actually, the book says a lot about Assange’s courage, brilliant brain and indifference to comfort and material possessions.  When I’d finished reading it I admired Assange more than I had before.]

On the BBC's Panorama, Leigh indulged hearsay that Assange did not care about the lives of those named in the leaks.

Assange‘s indifference to the lives of those named in the link turns up on p111 of the book.  The Afghan war logs in Wikileaks’ possession mentioned “names of informants or those who had collaborated with US troops. . ."

I [Declan Walsh, one of the Guardian team sifting through the leaks] told David Leigh I was worried about the repercussions of publishing these names, who could easily be killed by the Taliban or other militant groups if identified. David agreed it was a concern and said he’d raised the issue with Julian, but he didn’t seem concerned. That night, we went out to a Moorish restaurant, Moro, with the two German reporters. David broached the problem again with Julian. The response floored me. ‘Well, they’re informants,’ he said. ‘So, if they get killed, they’ve got it coming to them. They deserve it.’ There was, for a moment, silence around the table. I think everyone was struck by what a callous thing that was to say.

In the event the names were redacted.

As some commenters in the thread point out, Pilger misuses the word “hearsay“.  David Leigh heard these remarks of Assange with his own ears.   It wasn’t reported to him by someone else, which is what “hearsay” means.  There were three other witnesses there who heard this as well, and in the thread David Leigh names them.  However Pilger has been indulging in “hearsay” himself since he presumably is going by what Assange has told him what was said at this dinner. 

As always with Assange and Wikileaks, there is a lovely irony in this.   The creed of St Julian says “We believe in raw data, unmediated and unchannelled.  Cover us with data, oh Lord, so we can save our souls.”   In this instance Leigh is the man who holds the raw data bleeding and dripping in his hands, Pilger has had it cooked and processed.

Pilger also says:-

As for the claim that he had complained of a "Jewish conspiracy", which followed a torrent of internet nonsense that he was an evil agent of Mossad, Assange rejected this as "completely false, in spirit and word".

[Pilger, once a courageous reporter who would travel  to war zones, evidently hasn’t been around the internet much.  It’s perfectly possible that you will be attacked as an evil agent of Mossad because your leaks don’t deal much with the insanity-inducing obsession, Israel, while you agree with a view that has a fairly broad consensus, that the world is ruled by a Zionist entity via its partner, the USA.]

Pilger does not address the most damning charge against Asange’s political and moral judgement in the Panorama programme,  his dealings with the obsessive anti-semite and general loon, Israel Shamir.  A useful summary of this association can be found here by Nathalie Rothschild, though no doubt many will find her surname suspect.

The words “Julian Assange” are as reliable a nutter magnet as “Israel and Palestine“.  In the Liberal Conspiracy thread on Private Eye’s revelations about Assange’s belief in a Jewish media conspiracy people turn up to say that (a) Private Eye must have been hoaxed or is telling lies; (b) Assange was only saying what’s true anyway.  The same calibre of commenter turns up at John Pilger‘s thread saying (a) David Leigh was telling lies; (b) what’s wrong with killing informants anyway?  

Counting the Toads

This is very entertaining about the Gaddafi Groupies:-

To name and shame everyone who colluded with this nasty piece of work — and a few are still standing by him now — would take far too long. But this moment in world history should not pass without a shout out to the worst of the worst: the top ten Gaddafi enablers who gave gratuitous aid and comfort to this murderous nutjob.

Gaddafi Toad Number One: The “Human Rights Commission” of the “United Nations”

Anybody can suck up to a bloodspattered, psychotic dictator for money. This is presumably what happened to the clueless (and in many cases poor) traditional tribal rulers and elders of Africa who, presumably in exchange for oil money stolen from the Libyan people, pretended to confer the meaningless title of Africa’s “King of Kings” on the Exalted Loon.

But it takes a special kind of ugly to betray human rights on the scale of the UN’s infamous “Human Rights Commission,” a body whose members not only refused to resign en masse rather than see Libya seated on it, they went on to elect (by secret ballot, to protect the abjectly depraved from the just contempt of the civilized world) a representative of Gaddafi’s Libya to the chairmanship of this self-parodying collection of imbeciles and lickspittles.

 

(H/t Crooked Timber)

>

 

When David Heard

The Independent takes first prize with its headline “Massacre of innocents as UN school is shelled“. Those with a biblical eye may spot the reference in the article’s title to King Herod’s attempt to kill Jesus by murdering all young children in Bethlehem. Interesting that racial agitation, in the form of raising the myth of Jews as the killers of Christ, should slip so easily into a modern liberal newspaper.

That’s the ridiculous argument going over at Harry’s Place because some hypersensitive souls have decided the phrase “Massacre of the Innocents” used as a headline about deaths in Gaza is “antisemitic”.  Reaching for the lazy journalistic cliché, perhaps, but not antisemitic.

The Massacre of the Innocents comes from Matthew 2:16-18.

“Then Herod, when he saw that he was mocked of the wise men, was exceeding wroth, and sent forth, and slew all the children that were in Bethlehem, and in all the coasts thereof, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had diligently inquired of the wise men. Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremiah the prophet, saying,

In Rama was there a voice heard, lamentation, and weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not.”

It is one of those verses that the Christian propagandists wrote so as to bring the New Testament into line with prophecies in the Old Testament.

In the English speaking Protestant world the verse about Rachel weeping for her children was much quoted – Rachel, not as a Jew, or a victim of a bad Jewish king, but as the universal figure of the mother whose children have been killed.  The Protestant English speakers had a majestic translation of the Bible and up to about 1930 it is the book that most people would know, if only in fragments. They took bits of it and made it applicable to themselves. Its phrases and characters are part of our language.  Some figures, like Rachel weeping, became elemental and iconic – I have seen it quoted by Trollope and the atheist Somerset Maugham.

In Coming Up for Air, for instance, George Orwell talks about going to church in Edwardian times:-

“You took it for granted, just as you took the Bible, which you got in big doses in those days.  Even now my head’s stuffed full of bits out of the Bible.  And the children of Israel did evil again in the sight of the Lord.  And Asher abode in his breeches.  Followed them from Dan until thou come unto Beersheba.  Smote him under the fifth rib, so that he died.  You never understood it, you didn’t try or want to, it was just a kind of medicine, a queer-tasting stuff that you had to swallow and knew to be some way necessary.  An extraordinary rigmorale about people with names like Shimei and Nebuchadnezzar and Ahitophel and Hash-hadada; people with long stiff garments and Assyrian beards, riding up and down on camels among temples and cedar trees and doing extraordinary things.  Sacrificing burnt offerings, walking about in fiery furnaces, getting nailed on crosses, getting swallowed by whales.”

Last night I was watching that excellent series John Adams, and in a scene Adams curses his son as “Absalom,” that is, after the wayward son of King David who broke his father’s heart.  That curse would come naturally to an English speaking Protestant, and with no thoughts of King David being a Jew, simply as a universal father out of his mind with grief over a rebellious son.

Thomas Tomkins’s (1572 – 1656) beautiful motet When David Heard which sounds like all the grieving in the world.  Years ago I heard Richard Burton speaking the verses in an interview and it was overwhelming. 

Unsex me here

According to Gender Analyzer this website is written by a man (70%).  So artificial intelligence has decided – which says something about artificial intelligence v. simple common sense.

I often have the same experience with call centres.  I have a deep voice and I’m used to call centre workers addressing me as “Sir” while they discuss my bank account, energy bills or why my internet isn’t working properly.  After a while they’ll ask my name, I’ll say “Rosie”, and they’ll still call me “Sir”.  Not in the script, I suppose, or the training didn’t cover it.  I can accept it from people in India, but from people in Dublin or Dundee?

I think, though, women are less upset at being mistaken for blokes in certain circumstances (eg arguing on blogs), than men are at being mistaken as women. 

Hat tip – the Fat Man (who really is a woman, according to artificial intelligence, his nom de blog and the photo on his site being pathetic disguises).  He demonstrates the abject science and statistics worship of our times by internalising his own gender doubts rather than questioning the methodology and data of the Gender Analyzer.

Today’s Conspiracy Theory

From The Times

The death of Michael Crichton deprives us of a hugely entertaining and elegant writer, who infuriated people who should have loved him by becoming a prominent nay-sayer of global warming. Crichton's 2004 best-selling novel, State of Fear, portrayed climate change as a hoax. His eco-terrorist villains blew up Antarctica to convince the public that the glaciers were melting; then claimed that global warming could be averted only by writing fat cheques - to them. It is a testament to the power of his plot - and his copious footnotes - that many people read this as science, not science fiction.

(Or a testimony to the idle stupidity of the green-haters, showing the same kind of mentality that used to  believe that CND was financed by Moscow and that now believes that all terrorist attacks are carried out by Mossad.)

Michael Crichton supported the magazine Spiked “spiritually and financially”.   Spiked takes the offbeat view that global warming is a con and regards it as a plot by the self-righteous to deprive everyone in the world of access to 4x4s and long haul flights.

Some exercises for conspiracy theory beginners:-

Exercise 1 Follow the money

Why would a writer of AIRPORT novels make up absurd conspiracy theories about environmentalists who want to reduce the number of long haul flights?

Exercise 2 Cui bono

Why would a writer of AIRPORT novels support a group of media hacks who want to increase the number of long haul flights?

Self Harm

Harry’s Place has been shut down by the service provider evidently because of a post that was put up about a UCU (University and College Union) activist (Jenna Delich) linking to a David Duke site, which she thought was a good place to find factual material on Israel and Jews. She sent this useful information round via the official UCU mailing list.  Some of the UCU activists took exception to, well, not to Jenna Delich's ideas of research but that Harry's Place had pointed this out, and now a complaint has been made to the service provider (presumably about defamation) and the site has been shut down.

The material on this affair has been put up on a temporary site here:-

Note to self and others:- if you do inadvertently link to a neo-Nazi site or any other dodgy site for information and this is pointed out to you, apologise and say that you are totally mortified.  In fact, it would be excellent if you felt totally mortified.  Then the whole business will go away.  But don’t sound huffy and annoyed like Jenna Delich – how were you supposed to know what a neo-Nazi site looks like?  (Same thing applies if you produce leaflets talking about the Holocaust and omit to mention its main and best known victims.  See comments to post here).

Also, if you have been found out, don’t resort to defamation laws or apply pressure through service providers.  Many bloggers might dislike the site you are attacking, but there is some solidarity among bloggers – first of all they came for Harry’s Place, next they came for me – and they will flash this story around the blogosphere.  From there it may be taken up by the mainstream media and you will look very bad trying to shut up critics, and especially bad if you are a union for academics. 

More information on how to detect a neo-Nazi site here.

Excessive Attention Seeking Syndrome

In the latest issue of Prospect:

Forget X-Factor or Pop Idol: the quickest route to instant celebrity is now the glitzy, straight-to-YouTube suicide bomber video, writes Jamie Bartlett.

The videos made by 7/7 bombers Mohammad Sidique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer were widely circulated and viewed. But while they took care to quote Koranic verses and authenticated hadiths to justify their acts, the "new wave" is emphatically less concerned with ideology. The copycat videos made by six of the eight young hopefuls currently on trial for planning to blow up passenger jets are inspired more by gangster movies than by religious fanaticism. Egged on by an impromptu cameraman urging him to "give it some!", Abdul Ahmed Ali, from Walthamstow, says he will "decorate" streets with body parts; Tanvir Hussain hopes his attack will "make people realise, you know, don't mess with the Muslims."

Across Europe, violent Islamic extremists are getting younger and showing less interest in theology. What motivates them is not injustice in Palestine or religious fervour—it's James Bond-style adventure and notoriety. The young men found guilty last year of plotting to blow up Bluewater went to an al Qaeda training camp, but were disappointed because it didn't have an assault course, "like I'd seen on TV," as one put it. (Things improved when they were given a rocket launcher. "It was wicked," one said.).

I recently saw a documentary on the kid (I won’t write his name, as that’s what he would have liked) who did the latest big shooting at Virginia Tech.  The documentary indicated he was the frustrated artist type, the one who knows his writing is brilliant but has not received proper recognition.  I’ve posted on the attention seeking of both suicide bombers and mass shooters here.

Wanna be someone, well do it with a gun
Wanna be someone, well do it with a gun,
Then they’ll have to show
My picture and video
Wanna be someone, well do it with a gun,

Journalists report how victims of some horror like a concentration camp will beg that their story will at least be heard and their existence will not be sponged off the board.  Other people know I exist therefore I am.  This feature of our species, the need for some kind of acknowledgement, takes a dark form in the testaments of suicide bombers and mass shooters.

Also, if the new wannabe suicide bombers are like those hopefuls that audition for Pop Idol, your old authentic types must be growling like old rockers who had to sleep in the van when doing toilet tours for three years before they were signed.  Instant fame!  Don't even learn their instruments!  Don't write their own songs!  Jumped up brats with pretty faces.

In at the deep end

David T over in Harry’s Place has successfully taken issue with his local Council run leisure centre for having a “Muslim males only” time for swimming. 

When I read at Harry’s Place that there was such a policy my first thought was, how ridiculous, and the second was, who ever thought of that bright idea has evidently not kept up with the news.  Don’t they realise how that will piss off a lot of people, including Muslims who don’t want to be, or seen to be, exclusive.

I was inspired to turn out some verses:-

No Sikhs in breeks, no Jews in trews,
No Quakers, Catholics or Hindus
No fellow cultists of Tom Cruise,
All the above we will refuse
Entry to the swimming pool,
Although it’s only one third full.

Empowerment in diversity
Is our latest policy
And from such actions there will be
Multicultural harmony.

So keep out, like unruly drunks
Vicars, rabbis, Buddhist monks,
Confucians wearing knee-length trunks,
And popes and brothers, friars and abbots,
Rope belts round their sweeping habits,
Keep out  Eastern Orthodox
Rastas with dreds in giant socks,
And Pagans hiding balls and cocks,
Yes treat as if they had the pox.

Query, question, ask or probe,
You, Sir are Islamophobe.

Moi je regrette loads

Eg taking a later appointment at the hair dresser’s, which meant arriving at the music club Out of the Bedroom where I was to compere without having time for any food, which meant drinking a couple of pints and a whisky on an empty stomach except for crisps (every pub in the land should be compelled to sell toasted sandwiches or some other beer mopper up), which meant waking feeling rather unpleasant on Friday morning, remembering that the Virginmedia techy was to arrive “between 8 and 12”  (the judge puts on his black cap “you will be taken hence to the prison in which you were last confined and from there to a place of execution and between 25 and 28 March, when the executioner can make it, you will be hanged by the neck until you are dead “) then with a fuzzy brain  look at the broadband cable and realise that it is under a tin trunk in the window recess; and on top of that trunk is a backless bookcase, where all my seeds are sprouting, and that all this has to be moved; so move 35 pots and a seed tray, then wrestling with the shelves, knock over another seed tray on the window sill, which spills multi-purpose compost all over the bed and floor, not to mention scattering newly planted seeds, so scoop it all up and fetch the vacuum cleaner for the residue; then the techy arrives, not in a nice mood, or perhaps this is his nice mood and in his nasty ones he would actually hit Virginmedia customers instead of just being surly to them.  He checks the broadband cable, but only at the modem end, from which he removes some metal surrounds, but does not even look at the wall end, and leaves, with the internet connection working.  So I have to put everything back, including some of the contents of the tin trunk, which I have had to half empty to move.  My flatmate, now awake, moves the shelves back.  This is a precious day off, but goes by in a blur until the evening when I meet my friends K and H.   We have come through a freezing north wind and snow showers to get to the pub on the other side of town and K entertains us with his prospective trip to Thailand, where he will snorkel in water as warm as a bath.

K (male) is at the bar, H and I (female) are sitting, and a noisy party get up to go.  “We’ll leave you guys to get a bit of peace,” says one of the blokes (late middle-aged) in the party to H and me.  “You guys” will one day be the formal plural of “you” – English needs a formal plural – it’s “y’all” in the Southern States of the USA and “yiz” in Scottish and “youse” in New Zealand (thought vulgar) but “you guys” probably shortened to “y’guys” will one day be in books of English grammar. 

Don't Do That

The late great Joyce Grenfell did a series of nursery school sketches.  In bright jollying along tones she encouraged and discouraged her little charges.  Her most famous line was:- "George - Don't do that."

So listen to her high genteel lady's voice and try and imagine it:-

Now little ones today we are going to do something exciting.  Do you see what I have here?

No, Sharif, it is not a lion. 

No, Fatima, it is not my mummy.  No, my mummy does not look like that. 

No, it's not the queen of England. 

Do you know what kind of animal this is?  Does anyone know?  All those hands up?  That's right, Omar it's a bear.  It's a teddy bear.

Now pass it round the class.  No, don't smack the bear, Sharif, that's not nice.  How would you like it if the bear smacked you? 

No, Fatima, you don't hold bears upside down.  They don't like it. 

Mohammad - Don't do that. 

Now children, this bear is called a teddy bear.  But it hasn't got its own name.  What shall we call it, children?

No, not Fatface, Sharif.  That's not nice. 

Miss Gibbons?  That's a very sweet idea Fatima but it's a boy teddy.  We should give it a boy's name.

Mohammad - Don't do that.

(and so on).