"... the WikiLeaks team has racked up numerous awards for journalism over the years, including the Walkley Award for Most Outstanding Contribution to Journalism (2011), the Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism (2011), the International Piero Passetti Journalism Prize of the National Union of Italian Journalists (2011), the Jose Couso Press Freedom Award (2011), the Brazillian Press Association Human Rights Award (2013), and the Kazakstan Union of Journalists Top Prize (2014).
The claim that Assange is “not a journalist” is both an irrelevant red herring and a self-evident falsehood. It is made not by people with an interest in maintaining a small and specific linguistic understanding of what the word journalism means, but by people who want to see Julian Assange imprisoned by the same government which tortured Chelsea Manning because he made them feel emotionally upset. It’s a fact-free argument made entirely in bad faith for inexcusable motives: the desire to see a journalist imprisoned for telling the truth.
When someone says “Assange isn’t a journalist”, they aren’t telling you what Assange is. They’re showing you what they are. "
* I suspect the difference between 51°N and 56°N (ie, Scotland) in such a study would be much larger than most would think.
* From the authors: "It is important to note that this should be undertaken in the middle of the day, with exposure of lower arms and lower legs to maximise benefit."
>It has no bearing on anything as far as I can tell.
...It says a lot that all of your examples are from your own life. There are counter examples abounding that just aren't affecting you (to your knowledge), such as those stated in TFA, or CA, or Brexit etc.
Do you think these data brokers are selling our info for billions to rubes? Are insurance companies known for their gullibility? Are sale of lists of rape victims to 'whoever has money' A-OK, because you are not being personally affected?
... These trends are worsening. People aren't spending more and more on data that has "no bearing on anything". That it's invisible to you makes it worse.
I'm told by my blue friends that I'm naive. Reds call me a socialist.
This is by design. It is intentional. Billions of dollars are spent giving people these 'views'.
Sanders gave people an opportunity to vote for "those things", and he was the clear favorite to take out Trump - until Democrats pulled every dirty trick to scupper his campaign. Again.
So people really do want to vote for these things, but massive effort is put into not giving them the option. Sanders is the most popular politician in America, every year - and instead of helping him, instead of boosting him, the Blue team stabbed him in the front, in the back, in the eye balls, etc.
Zero articles in the past two weeks. If you've been following the case at all, there's been a Hell of a lot to report, from Amnesty and EU ministers despairing at having their monitor access revoked at the last minute, to Khaled El Masri's absolutely jaw-dropping testimony [1].
They have a front page post right now about "concern" over a "fan invasion" of the pitch in a GAA game (Gaelic Athletics Association). And another about some celeb confirmed to be on the next "Dancing with the Stars".
If anyone reading this is the type to blame people for being uninformed, please take this into account.
I'm not seeing where your link makes any such claim.
It quotes Assange as saying ‘forget the Jewish thing’, after he allegedly pointed out that a number of people :shown to have lied about him: were Jewish.
BTW, 'The JC' were very big on the claim that Corbyn is an anti-semite, while effusive in their praise for Boris Johnson... Sorry but that's proper batty.
I had a look at their US news page, and while they had a front-page story about a BUDDHIST swastika necklace, the :forced sterilisation: scandal seems to have passed them by.
And if there's anything in their news about this trial and it's irregularities, and the significance to journalism, I haven't found it.
... And that picture is based completely on Assange being "autistic", "on the spectrum", "paranoid" and "narcissistic" - because he thinks his voice is important, that left wing media have been derelict in their duty and stabbed him in the back, and that powerful people are spying on him and want him assassinated.
That all of those things :are true: just doesn't factor in to O'Hagan's assessment, at all. He doesn't even begin to explore the possibility.
This speaks much more to O'Hagan's deep flaws than Assange's.
Wooow - that essay aged like milk. Not that it was much good to begin with - the majority of his criticism is based on calling Assange "paranoid" and "narcissistic" - because he thought there were people trying to spy on him and assassinate him.
Which there very much were.
I was curious if O'Hagan is at all apologetic, now that Assange's "paranoia" has been conclusively justified, but at least on his Twitter he shows no interest in the topic whatsoever.
Thanks for saving me any money I might ever have spent on his writing.
Before people engage with this gent I would point them to his recent conversations here. Many people, at length, have tried to engage and explain to him the import of these proceedings in good faith.
He was provided reputable links many times, which he deemed "conspiracy theories", refusing to engage in the facts within.
A significant portion of his recent history, in fact, is people begging him to read the facts; his replies come in the form "you Assange conspiracists ..."
I don't want to break HN rules on calling people out, but the above are straight facts that people really ought to be aware of before trying with this guy again.
It astounds me that people are putting Chomsky, Hersh, Pilger, Ellsberg, etc, who have all made dire warnings about this extraordinary case, in the box of "Assange conspiracists" - and getting away with it.
Some people do - though likely not as many as discuss Love Island.
I think the tech community in particular (with both the awareness and the means) has a duty to the public to make clear what is going on to those less tuned in.
So far, it has failed in that to a rather astonishing degree. Probably for exactly the reasons yourself and the OP describe.
In case anyone is taken in by this, here is the relevant part of the link:
"Jaron Lanier, a pioneer in the field of virtual reality, told the Times that at a dinner at Epstein’s townhouse, a NASA scientist mentioned that Epstein’s goal was to impregnate 20 women at a time, having “based his idea for a baby ranch on accounts of the Repository for Germinal Choice, which was to be stocked with the sperm of Nobel laureates who wanted to strengthen the human gene pool.” Lanier said that he got the impression that Epstein used his dinner parties, where guests included “attractive women with impressive academic credentials,” to screen potential candidates to knock up, like the sociopath he is."
Not exactly something an Epstein friend would point out to media. A grand total of one anecdata. And, that was in 2006, before Epstein's predilections were known.
I once saw Scott Locklin smear a guy by associating him with Epstein before Lanier could possibly have known his character, even though it's clear they weren't friends. And that's how I'll always remember him.
It's deception to an utter randomer, as well as to yourself.
You really need to be careful with lying to yourself like that. Being a whole integrated person who doesn't have to remember who he is and what lies he's told comes in handy.
The claim that Assange is “not a journalist” is both an irrelevant red herring and a self-evident falsehood. It is made not by people with an interest in maintaining a small and specific linguistic understanding of what the word journalism means, but by people who want to see Julian Assange imprisoned by the same government which tortured Chelsea Manning because he made them feel emotionally upset. It’s a fact-free argument made entirely in bad faith for inexcusable motives: the desire to see a journalist imprisoned for telling the truth.
When someone says “Assange isn’t a journalist”, they aren’t telling you what Assange is. They’re showing you what they are. "
- from https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2019/04/07/assange-is-not-a-jou...