Guardian columnist and celebrated virtue signaller Owen Jones earns £500,000 a year for writing material which is, far too often, directly contradicted by facts. Here is his take on demonstrations in Iran which have left more than 20 dead.
@OwenJones84
Solidarity with any Iranian protestors who are fighting for democracy and freedom, both from a vicious regime and from US domination ✊
Hmmm.
Of course the demonstrators really should have nothing to fear since Iran sits on the UN Human Rights Council.
Jones is right that the Iranian regime is vicious. It is a bigoted theocratic and corrupt regime that has caused bloodshed across the Middle East. And I suspect that the US has learned its lesson from the blowback it suffered from its joint intervention with Britain in Iran in 1953.
If Owen Jones listened to the wise words of President Trump or the woman we right thinkers hope will succeed him in 2024, Nikki Haley, it is clear that the US has no desire to intervene in Iran. The days of the US wading into Mid East countries to stir up a hornets next ended when Trump whipped the warmonger, crooked Hillary, in 2016.
There is no evidence that the US wishes to intervene. That the wonderful Miss Haley and the leader of the free world have stated that folks should be allowed to protest without being shot dead is surely something that we can all agree on, can't we Owen?
However there absolutely no evidence at all that the Iranian protestors are out on the streets fighting for freedom from US domination as Jones asserts. Most of the - largely working class and poor - folks risking a beating from the National Guard are protesting against the lack of jobs and spiralling food prices. Some others want regime change in Iran. Only Jones imagines that the protests are somehow against the country which he and Iran's rulers jointly view as the Great Satan.
Just sometimes Jones gets it right. But his propensity to assert things which are patently wrong means that even when he is correct you just assume that he is making it up. I guess round at the fake news publication that is the Guardian that may not matter but perhaps such willingness to publish such easily demonstrable lies might, in some way, explain the ongoing decline in circulation?