Short thread on how a journalist saved my life. "This morning I woke up to an email that put a lump in my throat. My former editor Tina Brown wrote that her husband Harry Evans had died.. " bylinetimes.com/2020/09/24/sir…
"And at that moment, instead of breaking with sadness and a sense of misfortune, another feeling entirely overwhelmed me. Joy. Celebration. We were so lucky to have ever had him." bylinetimes.com/2020/09/24/sir…
Whenever you met him, you felt a little miracle could be in the making. But he never forgot how lucky he was and how unfair his home country still is. Unlike others who have ascended the rungs of the British class system, he always pulled the ladder back down to help others
Among the closed courtyards and fenced-off defensiveness of British journalism, he was a rare thing: not a gatekeeper but a gate-opener.
During his 14 years editing the Sunday Times, Harry opened the gates for so many people who probably will never even know his name. I think particularly of one 14-year-old boy down on his luck in the 1970s....
That boy was me. I still bear the scars on my left wrist of those dark days living in the grounds of the psychiatric hospital, but the torch Harry passed over outshines them by megawatts.
“The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good” goes the famous maxim, and from my personal experience of meeting Harry four decades later, he was a giant.
“The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good” goes the famous maxim, and from my personal experience of meeting Harry four decades later, he was a giant.
He showed us a different way, an example even more vivid in his absence, to be remembered long after the time servers, sycophants and stenographers have gone to their well-furnished oblivion.
Like that hushed moment in a theatre when the curtain falls on some tremendous, life-affirming drama, even though there are tears in your eyes because there will be no encore, you just have to stand and applaud until your hands hurt.
Bravo, Harry. Bravo. And farewell.
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🧵This is what, according to the FBI indictment, Kiryenko, the First Deputy Chief of Staff of the Presidential Office” and reportedly “Putin’s domestic policy curator” aimed to achieve with paid for US disinformation
The group planned in 2022 “first and foremost, we need to discredit the USA, Great Britain and NATO, and secondly, we need to convey the truth about the war in Ukraine”
‘Zakharova instructed the creation of “websites to tell the Germans the truth!” Another participant suggested using “real facts to complement fake facts.” One suggestion included trying to “make a fake on an American soldier that raped a German woman. That would be great!”’
So Farage (and his funder Arron Banks) are dismissing their multiple Kremlin connections as a hoax. However, looking at the Russian-backed Facebook accounts i the Reform Party, Xenophobia and GB News are exactly what they boost.
Two of the Facebook accounts identified as part of this pro-Kremlin network were called Common Sense Britain and UK Patriots. The first bigs up Farage and Lee Anderson and demonises Muslims 2/9
Though, beyond creating division and boosting Farage, these Russian backed networks can't help going direct from time to time 3/9
Since Nigel Farage is seeking high office as a leader of Reform, and the media is happy to give him a platform but rarely challenges his track record, let me put in a 🧵
The Five Questions Nigel Farage is Never Asked About Brexit, Trump and Russia 1/6 ⤵️
1. Why Did Farage Lie About Meeting the Russian Ambassador?
UKIP was targeted by a spy, Alexander Udod, who set up meetings with Farage's campaign and Ambassador Yakovenko,
So why did Farage protest in June 2018 that “I’ve never met the Russian Ambassador”? 2/6
2. How Could Farage Not Have Known About Arron Banks’ Multiple Visits to the Russian Embassy During the Brexit Campaign?
Banks donated £8m to Leave EU and provide Farage with a £4.4 million rented home, luxury car, bodyguard, private office, and trips to the United States 3/6
I was still ill from an early dose of COVID-19, vitiated by a fever, strange dreams and a constant popping sound in my head when I was interviewed by @PoliticsJOE_UK in mid-April 2020 about a speech Boris Johnson had made two months earlier. 2/23
These remarks were ‘a smoking gun’ to my eyes because they revealed that Johnson’s ‘take it on the chin’ comments 5 March 2020 were not casual. Though dismissed by organisations like @FullFact as just speculation, they were indeed the real strategy 3/23fullfact.org/health/boris-j…
Lebedev was more than just a hotel owner after the annexation of Crimea - he was initiated this event and is described as chair of the Board of Directors of the National Reserve Corporation, aswell as publisher of The Independent and The London Evening Standard Alexander Lebedev.
During that event, which he organised, the Russian Foreign Ministry's spokeswoman Maria Zakharova denied all the documented abuses of the Crimean Tartars. Pure Putin propaganda - six years ago sputnikglobe.com/20170611/crime…