One For Aficionados.

Some sage once remarked that it was both time consuming and intellectually tiring when you have to explain the nature of antisemitic myths, time after time.

The CST’s latest post American Nazi “Prophecy” and Dr Daud Abdullah: Deja Vu? reminded me of the “Franklin prophecy” which I ran across years and years back.

Like many other twisted pieces of antisemitism it sticks in the mind.

Why, I can’t say, as I tend to forget even elementary facts nowadays and I have a short-term memory that a Goldfish would be proud of, or supposedly so.

Yet along with all of the nonsense concerning the Federal Reserve, I do remember the “Franklin prophecy”, as a nasty fake, a piece of antisemitic propaganda. Peculiar how the mind works?

But what is surprising is that it still in usage nowadays, read more at the CST.

Why I Don’t Read The New Statesman.

I have already admitted that the New Statesman disappoints me, but as it reflects much of the Metropolitan Elite I can’t say it surprises me.

Dave Rich at the CST takes the trouble to read it carefully, and he doesn’t like what he finds:

“Hasan clearly understands the pitfalls of writing on this subject, and he has genuinely tried to avoid producing an antisemitic article. The problem is that his article is basically just another conspiracy theory. It offers a simplistic argument that completely ignores the hopes, fears, needs and goals of Israelis and Palestinians themselves, or of any other actors in the region, and imagines that the whole problem could be solved by a wave of America’s magic wand (or a shake of its big stick).”

Whilst we are at it we shouldn’t forget this one from 2010, The New Statesman Praises Iran’s President For Not Denying the Holocaust.

Bickering, Assange And Wikleaks.

I hadn’t realised it but apparently there is a lot of bickering behind the recent leaks on Gitmo:

“The fight over who had what when, and was supposed to use it how, is leading to some especially hard feelings, including between folks who once got along. The gist seemed to be, “Is there no decency anymore?” Over here we have Wikileaks (presumably Julian Assange), tweeting annoyance over former colleague Daniel Domscheit-Berg’s alleged sneakiness.
“Domschiet, NYT, Guardian, attempted Gitmo spoiler against our 8 group coalition,” tweeted the Wikileaks account. “We had intel on them and published first.” And over there we have Pentagon press secretary and former NBC correspondent Geoff Morrell complaining about the New York Times’ Easter offensive. “Thx to Wikileaks we spent Easter weekend dealing w/NYT & other news orgs publishing leaked classified GTMO docs,” Morrell tweeted earlier today.

That Wikileaks earns the sarcastic thanks in Morrell’s account, considering that Times executive editor Bill Keller says in Calderone’s piece that “WikiLeaks is not our source.” But I guess it’s still a bit easier and less relationship damaging for the Pentagon to go after Assange and company than Keller and his team. “

Michael Calderone at HuffPost covers it too.

TPM LiveWire seems to get to the nub of the issue:

“Wikileaks founder Julian Assange's reputation as a fighter for transparency and destroyer of secrets ought to be thoroughly demolished by today’s spectacle of the New York Times literally forcing him to give up the Guantanamo Bay files he’d been hoarding for months.

Assange has been sitting on the 700-plus Gitmo detainee files since at least May of last year, when accused Wikileaker Bradley Manning confessed in a chat session to passing them to Wikileaks along with a plethora of classified military reports and diplomatic cables. They were the final sizable arrow in Assange’s anti-government quiver, and for months we’ve been waiting, and waiting, and waiting for their inevitable release. But Assange kept holding back.

They were published last night, at long last, only because the New York Times finagled its own copy–presumably from Wikileaks defector Daniel Domscheit-Berg–and shared it with NPR and the Guardian. Wikileaks, which had been working with the Washington Post and other papers on the Gitmo papers but was still keeping the information embargoed, scrambled to get its own version up. “

Update 1: Lest I forget, the NY times a good piece, a History of the Detainee Population.

Julian Assange at Kensingston Town Hall.

The New Statesman failed to organise Live Streaming of their recent event with Julian Assange and couldn’t even get themselves organise to put it on YouTube.

Still, someone has done the job for them.

The clip below is just Assange, more might turn up later, but it is funny that the British media go on and on about ‘new media’ ‘Internet 2.0’, Twitter, and other buzz words they clearly don’t understand, yet they don’t have the wherewithal to upload a simple video to YouTube, how useless.

Update 1: Read more of the New Statesman’s self congratulatory guff at:

This house believes whistleblowers make the world a safer place: Part I

This house believes whistleblowers make the world a safer place: Part II

Julian Assange, Secrets And The Metropolitan Elite.

It is very hard in the Internet age to keep a secret, as Wikileaks have shown. Someone will normally release a document or better still an incriminating video, and then the whole world knows.

YouTube is replete with every form of embarrassing video clip known to humanity, and then some.

However, if you were to look for a video clip of Julian Assange’s latest outing at the Kensington Town Hall, you won’t find anything, yet.

Not only that, but if you weren’t part of the Metropolitan Elites, a New Statesman reader or an interested media type then you probably wouldn’t know it was actually going on, in the first place.

If you did make it, then entry would cost you £20, concessions costing £15.00, not cheap in the age of austerity.

Hunting around assiduously you might find a slightly incoherent page on the New Statesman which purports to be live blogging, but it is next to impossible to follow the debate between Julian Assange and Douglas Murray, etc

Certainly, from the photos it seems to be well attended, by the Metropolitan Elites, but that doesn’t help anyone outside of London wanting to follow the debate.

I would speculate that the New Statesman might have considered doing Live Streaming during the planning of this event, as it is cheap and easy to do, but could have been overruled by a paranoid Julian Assange?

I say that as Assange has a bit of a track record with this type of behaviour. When doing the rounds in Cambridge and sucking up to the would-be elites Assange forbade video recording when he spoke.

It is all rather peculiar, all rather 1950s, keeping discussions within a self selecting few and restricting information on the wider issues.

Readers might think that goes against the ethos of Wikileaks, but it’s hardly surprising, those who have power and control, however, small it is, will often abuse and use it for their own ends. Julian Assange and the Metropolitan Elites are no different in that respect.

Still, I am not sure that Julian Assange or his hosts have a sufficiently well developed sense of irony to see the problem with their own conduct!

Who knows, perhaps, someone will secretly release a bootleg video of the event?

Update 1: Esther Addley adds more:

“But the political commentator Douglas Murray, director of the centre for social cohesion, challenged Assange over the website’s sources of funding, its staffing and connections with the Holocaust denier Israel Shamir, who has worked with the site.

“What gives you the right to decide what should be known or not? Governments are elected. You, Mr Assange are not.”

Murray also challenged the WikiLeaks founder over an account in a book by Guardian writers David Leigh and Luke Harding, in which the authors quote him suggesting that if informants were to be killed following publication of the leaks, they “had it coming to them”.

Assange repeated an earlier assertion that the website “is in the process of suing the Guardian” over the assertion, and asked if Murray would like to “join the queue” of organisations he was suing.

The Guardian has not received any notification of such action from WikiLeaks or its lawyers.

Jason Cowley, the editor of the New Statesman and chair of the debate, interjected to ask: “How can the great champion of open society be using our libel laws to challenge the press?” “