Journalists From The United Kingdom

"[On the Shakespeare authorship question] This isn't mere whimsy: it's calumnious bilge. It derives not from documentary evidence (there is none) but from dismay that the greatest figure of English letters was a commoner. In his history of this perverse idea, Contested Will, [[w:James S. Shapiro|[James] Shapiro]] documents how it's rooted in an anti-democratic ethos. It’s also irrationalist. If you reject Shakespeare's authorship, you dispense with the methods of historical inquiry altogether. Not coincidentally, the prominent Oxfordian author Joseph Sobran was a Holocaust denier."

"There is no diplomatic way of saying it but, in his journalism, [[John Pilger|[John] Pilger]] was a charlatan and a fraudster. And I use those terms in the strict sense that he said things he knew to be untrue, and withheld things he knew to be true and material, and did it for decades, for ideological reasons. If you know where to look, you’ll uncover his inspiration."

"It is hardly surprising that Englishmen would exploit the situation and seek by every means to keep up, if not aggravate, the differences between the Hindus and Muslims. Sir Valentine Chirol’s book, Indian Unrest, published in 1910, serves as an example par excellence of this mentality. “It would be an evil day”, he says, “if the Muhammadans came to believe that they could only trust to their own right hand and no longer to the authority and sense of justice of the British Raj, to avert the dangers which they foresee in the future from the establishment of an overt or covert Hindu ascendancy.’"

"Racism is a worldwide phenomenon. In some countries it's met with disapproval, in others with denial. The A to Z of ethnic and religious groups in the Middle East embraces Alawites, Armenians, Assyrians, Baháʼís, Berbers, Copts, Druzes, Ibadis, Ismailis, Jews, Kurds, Maronites, Sahrawis, Tuareq, Turkmens, Yazidis and Zaidis and Nubians (by no means an exhaustive list), and yet serious discussion of ethnic/religious diversity and its place in society is a long-standing taboo. If the existence of non-Arab or non-Muslim groups is acknowledged at all, it is usually only to declare how wonderfully everyone gets along."

"If you can’t go vegan for the animals, why not go vegan for yourself? By switching to a plant-based diet, you won’t just help save animals’ lives, you might just save the planet. The meat and dairy industries kill 70bn animals every year – and a new report has found that they are on track to become the world’s biggest contributors to climate change. … Eventually, a tipping point will come, and the planet will turn into a gigantic slaughterhouse. It won’t be just calves and piglets these industries are killing – it will be you, your children and the children they could have gone on to raise. … So each time you eat bacon, or drink milk, you have not only invested in the slaughter of pigs or the abuse of cows, you’ve signed your own death warrant. For this is a problem that is predicted to escalate in the coming decades and emissions for agriculture are projected to increase 80% by 2050. In the 1980s, people started saying ‘meat is murder’, but it could become even worse than that – meat could mean Armageddon."

"Photographs of industrial rows of cramped pens, each imprisoning a solitary calf, will shock those who still believe in the fairytale of the pastoral dairy farm … In reality, the daily practices of most dairy farms are more distressing than those of meat production. A mother cow only produces milk when she gets pregnant. So, starting from the age of 15 months, she will usually be artificially inseminated. … When she gives birth, her calf will typically be removed within 36 hours … Following that callous separation, the mother will bellow and scream for days, wondering where her baby is. The answer depends on the gender of the calf. If male, he will probably either be shot and tossed into a bin, or sold to be raised for veal, which delays his death by just a matter of months. But if the calf is female, she will usually be prepared for her own entry into dairy production, where she will face the same cycle of hell that her mother is trapped in … Dairy is proving to be a vulnerable spot for the entire slaughter racket. The public is steadily waking up to the fact that the reality of milk production is not a matter of trivial imperfections, of concern only to idealist vegans, but in fact the most dark and wicked part of all farming."

"You have sat here too long for any good you are doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!"

"Speak for England, Arthur!"

"I saw those hunted woman, the blood flowing as the whip struck and struck again, the savage soldiers and their burning villages, casement told me to be amazed that i 5000 miles away had come to conclusions identical with his in every respect, an immense weight passed from me."

"Congo reformers like Morel, much to the annoyance of Hochschild, advocated either German or British colonization of the area (Congo). Morel’s view, according to Hochschild, speaking ex cathedra from the hallowed seat of modern California, “seems surprising to us today” and was among his “faults” and “political limitations.” Quite the opposite. The moment the Belgians colonized the Congo in 1908, a miraculous improvement was noted on all fronts. Seeking to debunk colonialism, Hochschild’s book demonstrates the opposite. This is the first and biggest lie at the heart of King Leopold’s Ghost."

"In any inclusive study of the roots of modern British socialism and internationalism, Casement’s collaboration with E.D. Morel should be cited as a critical conjuncture in a tradition of English radicalism and the struggle for the fairer distribution of land."

"A cry for mercy and Justice rises from the Congo."

"I was filled with determination, to do my best to expose and destroy what i then knew to be a legalized infamy, responsible for a vast destruction of human life."

"It is agreed by all that the fires never burned hot enough to melt the steel columns. Whether or not the steel was hot enough to buckle, the official account fails to explain the deposits of molten metal found after the collapses. If not the fires, what could have caused the steel to melt?"

"On reflection and on a rereading of his "book," I would change my original article and remove the word "risible." A more apposite term for both the author and his illiterate pages would be "contemptible.""

"[N]obody has yet been fool enough to accept his argument that the attacks on New York and Washington were part of a pre-arrangement involving the United States government."

"Professor Jones didn’t write his paper to support a prior ideological-conspiratorial agenda -- he wrote it to point out that to date, conventional scientific explanations of the WTC collapses remain flawed and inadequate. The molten deposits found at Ground Zero, and the failure of the official narrative to account for them, represent an anomaly that should be investigated impartially, not dismissed for reasons of political convenience -- or arbitrary standards of the boundaries of sanity."

"Five years on, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that we still don’t know what really happened on 9/11. And this dismal, pathetic state of affairs should not continue."

"There are fundamental issues here about how policy gets made and in whose name. It's not an issue of whether Labour or Conservative is in power since both obviously defend and propagate the elitist system. Jeremy Corbyn himself represents a real break with this but the most likely outcome, tragically, is that the Labour extremists (called "moderates" in the mainstream) and the rest of the conservative/liberal system which believes in militarism, neo-liberalism and the defence of privilege, will prevail if and when Corbyn becomes Prime Minister."

"The revelation that the likely had contacts with the (LIFG) and the 17 February Martyrs Brigade during the 2011 war in Libya – groups for which the 2017 Manchester bomber and his father reportedly fought at that time – raises fundamental questions about the UK’s links to terrorism. Indeed, a strong case can be made for a devastating conclusion: that the UK is itself a de facto part of the terrorist infrastructure that poses a threat to the British public."

"I've tried to document in the updated version of Secret Affairs a chronology of Britain’s covert operations in Syria to overthrow the Assad regime. These began with the deployment of MI6 and other British covert forces in 2011, within a few months after demonstrations in Syria began challenging the regime, to which the Syrian regime responded with brute force and terrible violence."

"What is happening now in Yemen is simply a repeat: ministers are also escaping accountability for their involvement in consistent Saudi attacks on civilian targets such as schools and hospitals – using similar rockets to those supplied to Iraq in the 1960s."

"March 20th marks the 15th anniversary of the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq which plunged the country into a brutal occupation leading to sectarian civil war, terrorism and a death toll of hundreds of thousands. Yet in Britain the anniversary marks another year of impunity for the ministers who authorised the invasion. This lack of accountability for crimes committed abroad is a British disease with a very long history."

"London helps keep them all in power by providing training and equipment for "internal security", supporting Saudi forays to end democratisation in the region, as in Bahrain in 2011, and backing Riyadh's domination of Arabia, as now in Yemen. This British support for Gulf dictators pushes the emergence of democracy further away and encourages extremism."

"Britain sided with the Saudis and other Gulf regimes defining themselves as Islamic, to counter and overthrow secular nationalist regimes, principally in Egypt and Syria. The demise of "" left a vacuum that was eventually filled by jihadists."

"Another major Blair ally is Russian President Vladimir Putin. It is instructive that the Foreign Office claims this close official and personal relationship as a great success since it implicates Britain in some of the worst horrors of our time. The invasion of Chechnya in September 1999 was followed by Russia's flattening of Grozny, killing thousands. British leaders offered the mildest of protests, while defence minister Geoff Hoon spoke of "engaging Russia in a constructive bilateral defence relationship". Human rights atrocities in Chechnya are increasing again, with thousands of "disappearances"."

"All journalism is investigative to a greater or lesser extent, but investigative journalism – though it is a bit of a tautology – is that because it requires more, it's where the investigative element is more pronounced."

"These days, the editor of The Guardian is a journalistic “global celebrity,” as put it to me—' dubbed him “the of phone hacking.” It was under his leadership that the paper broke the WikiLeaks story, then the News of the World phone-hacking scandal, then the efforts at Rupert Murdoch’s company to cover it up. Guardian reporting triggered investigations that have so far led to arrests of more than 40 Murdoch journalists and executives. “Something happened last year,” says Rusbridger, slipping into a sweet reminiscence about the halfway downfall of Britain’s media king, who seems never far from his mind. “It was quite extraordinary if you lived through this period to see … the bursting of the bubble.”"

"Journalists have never before been able to tell stories so effectively, bouncing off each other, linking to each other (as the most generous and open-minded do), linking out, citing sources, allowing response – harnessing the best qualities of text, print, data, sound and visual media. If ever there was a route to building audience, trust and relevance, it is by embracing all the capabilities of this new world, not walling yourself away from them."

"The BBC is almost certainly the best news organisation in the world – the most serious, comprehensive, ethical, accurate, international, wide-ranging, fair and impartial."

"Ask any British journalist who were their editor-heroes over the last 30 or 40 years and two names keep recurring. One is Harry Evans. The other is . Why were they so admired? Because they seemed to represent the best of journalistic virtues – courage, campaigning, toughness, compassion, humour, irreverence; a serious engagement with serious things; a sense of fairness; an eye for injustice; a passion for explaining; knowing how to achieve impact; a connection with readers. Even if you missed their editorships – as I did with Hugh Cudlipp – both men wrote inspiring books about journalism: about how to do it, but, more importantly, about why it mattered."

"Unnoticed by most of the world, Julian Assange was developing into a most interesting and unusual pioneer in using digital technologies to challenge corrupt and authoritarian states."

"There are plenty who think that, as our libel laws are cleaned up, smart lawyers are switching horses to privacy."

"It's a highly effective way of spreading ideas, information and content. Don't be distracted by the 140-character limit. A lot of the best tweets are links. It's instantaneous. Its reach can be immensely far and wide.Why does this matter? Because we do distribution too. We're now competing with a medium that can do many things incomparably faster than we can. It's back to the battle between scribes and movable type. That matters in journalistic terms. And, if you're trying to charge for content, it matters in business terms. The life expectancy of much exclusive information can now be measured in minutes, if not in seconds."

"It took one tweet on Monday evening as I left the office to light the virtual touchpaper. At five past nine I tapped: "Now Guardian prevented from reporting parliament for unreportable reasons. Did John Wilkes live in vain?"… By the time I got home, after stopping off for a meal with friends, the Twittersphere had gone into meltdown. Twitterers had sleuthed down Farrelly's question, published the relevant links and were now seriously on the case. By midday on Tuesday "Trafigura" was one of the most searched terms in Europe, helped along by re-tweets by Stephen Fry and his 830,000-odd followers. ... One or two legal experts uncovered the Parliamentary Papers Act 1840, wondering if that would help? Common #hashtags were quickly developed, making the material easily discoverable. By lunchtime – an hour before we were due in court – Trafigura threw in the towel. The textbook stuff – elaborate carrot, expensive stick – had been blown away by a newspaper together with the mass collaboration of total strangers on the web. Trafigura thought it was buying silence. A combination of old media – the Guardian – and new – Twitter – turned attempted obscurity into mass notoriety."

"When I look back over some of the most high-profile things we’ve done recently at The Guardian I see an interesting pattern emerging – a form of collaborative journalism that I can best describe as a mutualised newspaper."

"In the days when we could take it for granted that journalism mattered, we could only share assumptions about what it was, how it was delivered and funded, but this is not the case any more."

"The greater the speed required of us in the digital world – and speed does matter, but never at the expense of accuracy or fairness or anything which would imperil trust – the more we should be honest about the tentative nature of what is possible."

"The papers should promote minority views as well as mainstream argument and should encourage dissent."

"We're no longer a once-a-day text medium for a predominantly domestic audience. Increasingly - around the clock - we use a combination of media in telling stories, and in commentary, to millions of users around the globe."

"[There is a] widespread feeling that newspapers are failing in their duty of truly representing the complexity of some of the most important issues in society."

"It would be difficult to devise a process more inclined to throw up errors than the production of a newspaper."

"You can't possibly care about debt relief and the Simpsons. If you listen to Ligeti and James Macmillan then why would you want to know who won the United game last night or which Cabernet Sauvignon to drink with your meal tonight? Get back into your box. Something else missing from the Times of 1968 was anything to do with the home or emotional life. There is nothing about marriage, divorce, children, schools, au pairs, depression, drinking, health, drugs, teenagers, affairs, fashion, sex, successful relationships, failing relationships, interior decor, cancer, infertility, faith, grandparents - or any of the other things that make up the texture of our non-working lives."

"We will encourage reporters to be as specific as possible about the source of any anonymous quotation."

"The joy, the tension, the exhilaration and the happiness those Sundays brought into our lives served as a cushion, I am sure, for the sterner life which was ahead for all of us."

"In future editions many of those who may die in the meantime will, of course, be added. All the same, it is hoped that this announcement will not start an immediate wave of suicide among singers and players."

"Crooning. A reprehensible form of singing that established itself in light entertainment music in about the 1930s. It recommended itself at first to would-be singers without voices who were unable to acquire an adequate technique and later to a large public because anything, however inartistic, is likely to become popular if only it is done often enough by a large enough number of people."

"Blues. An American dance stemming from the Foxtrot, the speed of which it reduced and into which it brought a deliberately contrived dismal atmosphere. When Blues are sung their words seem to aim at attaining to the utmost depths of gloom and inanity."

"I am very pleased to see Blair leaving 10 Downing Street. Really, this man caused the greatest humiliation to the Arabs and Muslims, besides George Bush – and maybe even more than him. He is the only one in the Western world who supported Bush's wars in the Arab region. It was Tony Blair who encouraged the Americans to invade Iraq, and to wage the current war in it. This man employed lies, deceit, and deception. He discovered the British people and the entire world.[...]How can you reward this man by appointing him envoy to the Middle East? It is like a criminal who returns to the scene of the crime. You are sending Blair back to the scene of his crime. This is a problem. He should be pelted with rotten eggs and tomatoes, rather than receive this honor, because he destroyed us, and he hates us, as Arabs and Muslims."

"As a Macedonian [Philip] was looked down upon by the more refined Athenians, but they shared the same Hellenistic culture. How deep this went is evident in aesthetically the least spectacular, but politically the most explosive, of the finds in Vergina. In the Great Tumulus above Philip's tombs, which was raised by the invading Galatians in 274 BC, the archaeologists found fragments of no fewer than seventy-five funeral monuments, or stelai. The names on these were entirely Greek, save two which appeared to be Hellenised versions of Thracian and Phoenician names. The implication is that Philip's Macedonia was thoroughly Hellenised, an outpost of classical Greek culture."