Just thought I'd re-visit this thread and throw in my tuppence worth about the Daily Mail & it's latest shenanigans.
For those not following the UK news, the British Labor leader Ed Miliband (he whose parliamentary tactics ended British participation in what was to
be the western intervention in Syria) is having to endure the sight of the Daily Mail crucifying the reputation of his late Father, Ralph.
Ralph Miliband, a Jew, was born in Belgium & he fled to England in 1940 to avoid Nazi persecution. He served in the British Royal Navy during the war
years. After the war he gained British citizenship & became a prominent Marxist theorist. In a distinguished academic career, Ralph Miliband taught at
the London School of Economics, Roosevelt University in Chicago, New York City University, York University & Brandeis University. He seems to have
been well respected by his students, his contemporaries and politicians right across the political spectrum who recognized his many qualities of
decency, probity, fairness.
Yet aged 16, in his own personal diary and as a boy who had just arrived in England as a Jewish refugee, this confused and totally mixed up kid wrote
the following about his new hosts and their country ...
When you hear the English talk of this war you sometimes almost want them to lose it to show them how things are ... To lose their empire would be
the worst possible humiliation.
And it is for those comments which the Daily Mail this week branded that boy a traitor and as someone who hated Britain. Not content with that,
they've sent reporters into a private memorial service for Ed Miliband's uncle this week, asking those attending what they thought of the Labor
leaders Father & legacy.
What this newspaper has done is disgusting. The Labor leader's father died 20 years ago and his reputation is being impugned simply to noise his son
up.
I can't believe that this dreadful newspaper & it's online content drives so much of what passes for political discourse in the United Kingdom. It &
other sites such as Drudge all seem to thrive & live off each other's content, sometimes not even bothering to amend the articles at all. These sites
have become one big mid-Atlantic maelstrom of the purest, undiluted vitriol.
Everyone they hate they define as anti-British or anti-American, be it single parents, gays, left wingers/democrats or a million others. Seems they
think only the Mail & Drudge are the decent ones, the real patriots. But as the British Deputy PM Clegg succinctly stated today, ""When I heard the
Daily Mail accusing someone of saying that they didn't like Britain... I'm not a regular reader of this newspaper but every time I do open it, it
just seems to be overflowing with bile about modern Britain," he said. They [Daily Mail] don't like working mothers, they don't like the BBC, they
don't like members of the royal family, they don't like teachers, they don't like the English football team - the list goes on. Talk about kettles
and pots."
I know it isn't popular with some here. But I still maintain we need to think twice before using that godawful newspaper as a reliable source.
Impartial it assuredly is not.