US launches strikes on IS in Libya

[uawchild]

20. STALINIST? Woah baby, its McCarthyism time! Seamus Milne is an accomplished journalist lol

Seumas Milne

Seumas Milne (born 1958) is a British journalist and political aide. In October 2015 he was appointed the Labour Party's Executive Director of Strategy and Communications, on leave from The Guardian.[1][2]

Milne joined the newspaper in 1984.[3] He was a columnist and associate editor at The Guardian at the time of his Labour Party appointment, and according to Peter Popham writing for The Independent in 1997, "is on the far left of the Labour Party".[4][5][6] He is the author of The Enemy Within: The Secret War Against the Miners, a book about the 1984–5 British miners' strike which focuses on the role of MI5 and Special Branch in the dispute.[7][8]

Career[edit]
Journalism[edit]
Milne then worked as a staff journalist on The Economist magazine from 1981 before joining The Guardian newspaper in 1984 on the recommendation of Andrew Knight, the magazine's editor at the time.[3][9] Milne's early responsibilities on The Guardian included posts as news reporter, Labour Correspondent (by 1994),[14] and Labour Editor. In 1994, Milne's colleague Richard Gott resigned from The Guardian over his connections to the KGB, and Milne defending Gott against allegations which "seemed absurd", claimed the journalists who had written the expose of his friend for The Spectator magazine were connected to MI5.[14][15]

Milne was Comment Editor (for six years from 2001 to 2007).[12] According to Peter Wilby in a New Statesman profile of Milne, his most controversial decision among Guardian staff, was a 2004 article by Osama bin Laden, assembled from recordings of one of his speeches. While almost all thought it should have been published, a small majority thought it should not have been run as a comment piece, although the readers' editor later defended this decision.[16]

Milne's period in this role was described by Naomi Klein in her book The Shock Doctrine as having turned the Guardian's comment section into a "truly global debating forum".[17] Conservative MEP Daniel Hannan claimed that Milne's greatest achievement "was to take full advantage of the expansion of The Guardian’s comment pages ... making them the most thought-provoking opinion section in Britain".[5] Hannan also praised him as "a sincere, eloquent and uncomplicated Marxist".[5] Following changes in staff responsibilities, he was succeeded in this last role by Georgina Henry,[18] with Toby Manhire as her deputy.[19] Milne was moved to his role as associate editor in 2007, according to Peter Wilby because he was building up too many writers in his own image, and devoting too much space to Palestine.[16]

Milne has reported for The Guardian from the Middle East, Latin America, Russia, Eastern Europe and South Asia,[20] and has also written for Le Monde Diplomatique[21] and the London Review of Books.[22] Milne is reported to have lobbied within The Guardian in 2015 for new editor Katharine Viner to succeed Alan Rusbridger in the post.[23]

Milne served on the executive committee of the National Union of Journalists for ten years,[4][20] and is a former chairman of the joint Guardian-Observer NUJ chapter. In the 1980s, he chaired the Hammersmith Constituency Labour Party when Clive Soley (now Lord Soley) was the constituency's MP.[24] "Resistance and the unity of the working class is what will progress our movement", Milne told a 2015 May Day rally in Glasgow.[24] Kate Godfrey, who has worked as an aid worker in conflict zones such as Libya and Syria,[25] wrote in The Daily Telegraph in October 2015: "I think Milne is an apologist for terror, and will always be an apologist for terror. I think that he never met a truth he didn’t dismiss as an orthodoxy and that nowhere in his far-Left polemic are actual people represented".[26]

Labour's Director of Communications[edit]
Appointment[edit]
It was announced on 20 October 2015 that Milne would become part of the team behind Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn as the Labour Party's Executive Director of Strategy and Communications. Reportedly on a one-year contract,[27] he is "on leave" from his post at The Guardian and assumed his new role on 26 October.[2][28] "Just what the doctor ordered", Milne's friend George Galloway tweeted in response to the news.[29][30] Guardian columnist Suzanne Moore, after expressing her dislike of leftists from Milne's background, speculated (in a soon deleted tweet[14]) that his appointment meant "Bye bye Labour".[31]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seumas_Milne