Glenn Greenwald Should Ignore Tories

And still no staff from the deeply subversive Guardian have been hauled off to the Tower: this is clearly frustrating those, mainly in the Tory Party and its press allies, who dearly want it to happen but are unable to demonstrate that journalism is equal to terrorism. But still they try, and MEP Tim Kirkhope took his turn yesterday in an inquisition of Glenn Greenwald.

Sadly, Kirkhope saw a straight bat deployed to his attempt to get answers that he did not need to know. Greenwald was not about to tell him who got the materials from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, when they got them, and what may, or may not, have been moved from one source to another. We know this as the questioning was taped, and this answer has been transcribed.

A sundry idiot plays Let's Pretend ...

This did not detain terminally stupid Tory MP Julian Smith, who has, as I’ve previously observed, already come up short in a memorable Channel 4 News interview. “So @ggreenwald confirms to @timkirkhopemep that @guardian gave him files he didn’t originally have” he announced.

... and, talking of sundry idiots playing Let's Pretend

And right on cue came Smith’s remote controller Louise Mensch with “Greenwald confirming today that @arusbridger shipped him the GCHQ documents, he didn’t already have them. So Rusbridger lied to Parliament?” to which the answer was, as so often with Ms Mensch, no and no.

Greenwald was not happy: “Not that it’s unusual, but this is a case of a British Tory MP outright lying” he noted on Smith’s claim, while on the Mensch claim he asked “Why do people think the internet lets them fabricate claims that are blatantly false and spew them as fact?” to which the answer is, well, it works in The Little World Of Louise Mensch.

One commenter replied to Greenwald’s question with “Hardly fair to blame the internet for Louise Mensch”, and in this she is right, as can be seen from the welter of creative Tweets Ms Mensch generated around the same time, including the preposterous idea that David Miranda was carrying documents from the Guardian when he was detained at Heathrow Airport.

Me, me, me, it's all about ... ME!

This is complete crap: Miranda was in transit from Berlin to Rio de Janeiro, neither of which are the sites of Guardian offices. He had been visiting Laura Poitras, another journalist whom Ms Mensch has previously railed against. And, just in case anyone lost sight of what this is about, all this attention seeking from Smith and his Stateside pal has got them nowhere. No arrests. No charges. Nothing.

That’s because they are not credible, and the Police deal in real evidence, not the grandstanding of idiots. Glenn Greenwald should ignore them. End of story.