Is the Guardian worse than it used to be?

lovely fawning interview with war criminal and murderer marine a in today's edition

Headcam footage caught Blackman shooting the Taliban fighter, who had been seriously injured by an attack helicopter, at point-blank range. He was heard saying: “Shuffle off this mortal coil, you cunt. It’s nothing you wouldn’t do to us.”

Blackman insisted that at the time he thought the man was dead. “With hindsight I’m willing to accept he probably wasn’t,” he said. But if he had not shot him, the Taliban fighter would have died of his injuries, he said. “If he hadn’t been dead at the time, his injuries were so horrific that he was never going to survive.”

Asked whether he thought about the man very often, Blackman said: “Honestly, no. It might seem harsh. I don’t think his outcome was going to change. He was going to pass away.”

He said he had no idea where the Shakespeare reference in his imprecation came from. “I’m not a fan of Shakespeare,” he said. “Perhaps it’s a good indicator I wasn’t thinking well. I was plucking things out of thin air. It was one of the most bizarre things.”

Blackman said he had not felt hatred for the man. “It’s easy to develop a hatred of the enemy. I tried to get the lads to put it in perspective. The Taliban used IEDs [improvised explosive devices] and shoot-and-scoot and ambush tactics because that’s the best they’d got. We used attack helicopters and drones.”

but it's fine though cuz he was mentally ill and anyway did u know war is actually quite hard, even the blatantly illegal ones

A book he has written about the case – Marine A: My Toughest Battle – is now being published. It describes the terrible conditions Blackman and his colleagues operated in. Close friends were killed and dreadfully injured and the threat of attack by the Taliban was constant.

cluelessly signing up to a war in another country you have no understanding of and saying "shuffle off this mortal coil, you cunt" before you murder someone is the most real england thing of all time

Mortal coil quote more Parrot Sketch than Hamlet I'm willing to speculate.

asking a murderer whether they were consciously quoting shakespeare as they did their murdering is the most real guardian thing of all time

tom d otm

Looking forward to the similar treatment of a bestselling book by an ISIS executioner.

That "Allahu Akbar" quote, what made you think of that?

In frothier matters concerning veterans of the Afghan crisis, I was mildly annoyed by Arwa Mahdawi saying that Pete Buttigeig's choice of 10 books is "incredibly pretentious". (Mahdawi's article: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/apr/17/julian-assange-dominic-raab-literary-signalling-gore-vidal-arwa-mahdawi) (Buttigeig's here: http://onegrandbooks.com/shop/curators/pete-buttigieg/)

I meant to say "war" not "crisis".

That Guardian write-up is the usual libs getting pissy and insecure but I don't like the terms by which Pete Buttigeig praises it. I don't understand what it means for Ulysses to be democratic. Having said that I'm impressed by that list (Palace Walk) that you feel he has actually read it and it's def not fucking signalling.

Ulysses is democratic in that Joyce was the least "celebrating ubermenschen"y of all the Modernists who wrote in English maybe

i think the 'middle class guy' bit is weirder. I think ulysses-as-democratic-book is fairly well-established (eg it's John Carey's take - ie human or fleshy/social/demotic contra machine/elitism/intellectualism).

the sunny weather, day off, fact I've got to pop into the butcher's now, and prospect of booze this evening is making me want to dip into ulysses now so thread delivers.

fine tang of faintly scented urine for the win

^ kidneys on the way.

Liver on the way out.

People who say nobody has read Ulysses just because they didn't are very irritating. I'm going to read it again (again) just to spite them.

I mean fair enough I stopped at ineluctable modality of the visible first time through but you don't just give up goddamnit.

yes i never got very far every time i tried but that's mainly bcz stephen dedalus is such a dick, i am a very judgy gemini w/no cultural stamina and not finishing books is kind of my superpower, vote mark s

I'd like to think calling the Odyssey "not exactly a beach read" was a fun meta gag but I'm guessing it's just a smug pretence of incuriosity

I guess you can't fall back on "latte-sipping croissant muncher" when your job is brand strategising

It’s not even the incuriosity that mildly irritated me, it’s the smug dismissal of anything other than incuriosity.

"books are jerks" is a terrible pose to strike if you're over 13, yep

That's no way to talk about Socrates.

palace walk's a v good shout and ulysses is ulysses but the little gawd-help-us prince at #3 right above the odyssey is extremely offensive

guardian piece obv beneath contempt

Filing that piece under "Literary Criticism" is bold, for sure.

I don't think it was beneath contempt fwiw - my mild irritation was more to do with the fact that I think Mahdawi's right about Assange and Weinstein and I'd prefer the piece to have thought that through, rather than dissolve into slagging off other public figures who have the temerity to talk about books.

"lol books are for dorks...

Since you're here, we've got a favour to ask..."

(xp NB correct about Raab also)

I'd prefer the piece to have thought that through, rather than dissolve into slagging off other public figures who have the temerity to talk about books.

but it didn't, so here we are

Fair enough - I suppose my contempt runs deeper than yours :)

yes i never got very far every time i tried but that's mainly bcz stephen dedalus is such a dick, i am a very judgy gemini w/no cultural stamina and not finishing books is kind of my superpower, vote mark s

Tim is correct. This paragraph is disgusting:

Pete Buttigieg, the Democrat who launched his US presidential run on Monday, has also used books to build his brand. He recently shared his 10 desert-island titles, which made for incredibly pretentious reading. He claims two of his faves are The Odyssey by Homer (not exactly a beach read) and James Joyce’s Ulysses. The latter also happens to be a favourite of Jeremy Corbyn and the most insufferable person you knew at university.

the most insufferable person i knew that university used to write shit like this tbf

Lol I just read the piece and it reads as though it’s an oral transcript of the author ranting until she gets yanked off stage left by a cane

insufferable is one of those complaints where as soon as its levelled at someone you have the strong suspicion they are preferable to the complainer

The bit of the Ulysses appreciation I was struggling with was the "a story about what it is to be human", its a bit lazy to say this is a democratic notion (?), and thought he just emphasized democratic because he is a politician. Then again I shouldn't talk, I would only return to the odd chapter myself, and the last chapter always.

Bernie ftw.

if you were going to take 10 books to a desert-island i'd think you'd want complex dense works that repaid numerous readings bc you're abandoned on an island and you're not getting any new books.

like eg the fuck washing a hat thread

Mordy otm

Lead article on front page right now is basically an advert for change UK with no actual news content.

i bet it didn't cost that much either.

is marina hyde for real

The Guardian front page, Wednesday 15 May 2019: Mordaunt to give veterans amnesty for battle crimes pic.twitter.com/IIvuk3n8rk

— The Guardian (@guardian) May 14, 2019

wth is a battle crime

"battle crimes" indeed.

there was a program about the menace of US big pharma/the opioid epidemic on R4 last night and guess who ran one of them pseudo-articles with dangerous advertising bluster disguised as an opinion piece for Purdue Pharma. much much worse than they used to be.

tbh I'm presuming it was for Purdue Pharma cos that's mainly who they were talking about, but if it was some other US big pharma -quelle difference.

I also note that the piece says NI would be exempted - so the Guardian just casually betting that its readers won’t care about war crimes committed against Iraqis and Afghans then. Cool!

surely they can come up with some better euphemism than ‘battle crimes’ ffs, they’re getting a much lower class of spin doctor in whitehall nowadays

Lol battle crimes