In 1961, the Private Eye Magazine (detective or secret police) mocked Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, a graduate from Eaton, the aristocratic British school. In its recent issue marking half a century since its inception, the magazine put the picture of Macmillan side by side with that of Prime Minister David Cameron, another Eaton graduate, and mocked him as well. I do not know whether Private Eye has published any issue without ending up in court because of it, for libel and slander, and it must have done. Nevertheless, this English satirical magazine has perhaps faced more cases before courts than the rest of the British printed press combined, in the same period of time. In fact, the magazine's opponents were not limited to the politicians and the wealthy. Rather, other journalists also took Private Eye to court, including publishers and so forth, such as Robert Maxwell, Editor of the Mirror, who in the end was proven to be an international swindler that stole the retirement pensions of the employees in his publications, and squandered them on gambling before he committed suicide or fell off his yacht. Many of those who took legal action against Private Eye hired the most famous libel and slander lawyer in the UK, Peter Carter-Ruck, who died in 2003 at the age of 89 years, after which many biographical books were published about him. Since Britain is a country of law and order, where the freedom of expression is guaranteed, the magazine stated its opinion on Carter-Ruck by changing a letter in his name to make it a rude word, and he could not do anything about it because opinion is a sacred right. I admit that I was quite afraid when I received a letter from Peter Carter-Ruck notifying me that he was hired to bring a case against me because of an article I had written. Although I won the case both in the High Court and then in Appeal, the whole experience was disturbing because I live in Britain and am therefore aware of Carter-Ruck's record of victories against some of the most prominent personalities in the country. Private Eye can claim to have an exceptional record of scoring scoops in half a century of its existence. In 1962, it was the first to suggest that Minister John Profumo was having an affair with Christine Keeler, a prostitute, and this led to his downfall in the end. The magazine also revealed in 1978 that the police was about to apprehend the leader of the Liberal Party Jeremy Thorpe, who was charged with conspiring to murder Norman Scott, against the backdrop of a homosexual affair. In 1983, the magazine revealed that Minister Cecil Parkinson was having an affair with his secretary Sarah Keays, which culminated with her pregnancy. And in 1988, Private Eye fought a battle with British intelligence after it exposed the latter's role in killing three IRA militants in Gibraltar. Even the press was not spared by Private Eye. In 2009, the magazine revealed that Lord Rothermere, owner of The Daily Mail, registered himself as a resident in Bermuda to evade taxes in England. Then Private Eye's most recent battle this year took place when the magazine revealed links between the founder of WikiLeaks Julian Assange and Israel Shamir, who is often accused of anti-Semitism. Assange responded by saying that he was the victim of a conspiracy by Jewish journalists and other ‘sort of Jewish' journalists in The Guardian. If Private Eye were published in an Arab country, the simplest thing that could happen to it would be for the government to order it closed, probably in conjunction with its publisher being murdered along with its editor, while its offices would be burnt down in a mysterious fire. However, Private Eye is published in their countries, not ours. As such, the entire British press marked its fiftieth anniversary, even when the press was always one of its victims, and published lengthy reports on the magazine with a selection of its covers from previous years. My favorite cover is the one showing George W. Bush with the words “Countdown to War”, with the U.S. President saying: 9.8, 6, 5.7, 9, 3.4... This cover reminded me of a front page news story published in The Onion, the American satirical magazine, back in the first month of 2001, with Bush starting his first term and the magazine showing him saying: 'Our Long National Nightmare Of Peace And Prosperity Is Finally Over'. This is exactly what happened later, and I do not know how The Onion managed to predict it even before 9/11 and Bush's lost wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and the war on terror. There is real democracy in their countries, so I advise the reader who expects the Arab uprisings to bring us real democracy to leave dreams aside and tuck himself well under the covers before he sleeps.
