Sunday, October 31, 2004
Kremlinology 101
Hot off the speakwrite...
Blair seeks to duck impeachment with Feb election
Andrew Porter, Deputy Political Editor
The Sunday Times
TONY BLAIR has ordered his closest aides to make urgent plans for a snap election. The move, aimed at wrong-footing his opponents, could see the country going to the polls as early as February.
Bliar backs Falluja onslaught to get himself re-elected
"Blair believes that the first elections in Iraq in January will be held successfully and so may provide some "bounce" to a British election campaign held shortly afterwards."
Journalist parts company with reality
"Party strategists are also keen to reclaim ground on what they call "the trust issue". A YouGov poll for The Sunday Times recently found that trust in the prime minister had fallen sharply.
"It showed that two out of three people would not trust Blair to take the country to war again and only 29% said they trusted him on public services. Blair has admitted that he has a problem with "trust" and his pollsters say there is little sign from the public that this is likely to change soon.
"However, the economy is one area where his advisers believe that the government maintains some credibility."
"Blair has admitted that he has a problem with 'trust'"
Posted by warszawa on October 31, 2004, 9:18 pm
...just as some people have a problem with acne or dandruff. Nothing a good image consultant or beautician can't deal with.
I hate to use pompous phrases like "a textbook example of the debasement of political discourse", but this is a textbook example of the debasement of political discourse.
JAN: There's a limit to debasement.
TOM: De floor?
Don't bomb Falluja
Not that The Observer had a word to say about the Lancet report's macabre milestone, regardless of whether the death toll of Iraqi innocents has already hit six figures.
Although they did have the Queen and a Dimbleby expressing concern about climate change, next to the adverts for cheap flights, and all without a mention of the Iraqi Expeditionary Force's quest for corporate freedom in the land of the world's second-largest oil reserves and other American obsessions.
Blair seeks to duck impeachment with Feb election
Andrew Porter, Deputy Political Editor
The Sunday Times
TONY BLAIR has ordered his closest aides to make urgent plans for a snap election. The move, aimed at wrong-footing his opponents, could see the country going to the polls as early as February.
Bliar backs Falluja onslaught to get himself re-elected
"Blair believes that the first elections in Iraq in January will be held successfully and so may provide some "bounce" to a British election campaign held shortly afterwards."
Journalist parts company with reality
"Party strategists are also keen to reclaim ground on what they call "the trust issue". A YouGov poll for The Sunday Times recently found that trust in the prime minister had fallen sharply.
"It showed that two out of three people would not trust Blair to take the country to war again and only 29% said they trusted him on public services. Blair has admitted that he has a problem with "trust" and his pollsters say there is little sign from the public that this is likely to change soon.
"However, the economy is one area where his advisers believe that the government maintains some credibility."
"Blair has admitted that he has a problem with 'trust'"
Posted by warszawa on October 31, 2004, 9:18 pm
...just as some people have a problem with acne or dandruff. Nothing a good image consultant or beautician can't deal with.
I hate to use pompous phrases like "a textbook example of the debasement of political discourse", but this is a textbook example of the debasement of political discourse.
JAN: There's a limit to debasement.
TOM: De floor?
Don't bomb Falluja
Not that The Observer had a word to say about the Lancet report's macabre milestone, regardless of whether the death toll of Iraqi innocents has already hit six figures.
Although they did have the Queen and a Dimbleby expressing concern about climate change, next to the adverts for cheap flights, and all without a mention of the Iraqi Expeditionary Force's quest for corporate freedom in the land of the world's second-largest oil reserves and other American obsessions.
Saturday, October 30, 2004
"We don't do body counts"
Thus spake General Tommy Franks, quarterback of the Iraq invasion, before his retirement from U.S. Central Command. Never mind what the Geneva Conventions say about an occupying power's duty to prevent civilian deaths, the USuk playmakers of Intcom Inc. had other ideas about their obligations.
Now that researchers from the U.S. and Iraq have published a survey in The Lancet suggesting that more than 100,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed since March, 2003, journalists, politicians and spin doctors have suddenly discovered the figures quoted by Iraq Body Count, whose findings they'd studiously ignored until now.
Of course, the fact that Iraq Body Count merely collates the death toll reported in the media is conveniently overlooked by said organs of information. Instead, the BBC appears to be devoting more time to rubbishing The Lancet's findings than it did to debunking the pre-war propaganda about Saddam's Weapons of Mass Non-Existence, despite all the evidence in the public domain at the time.
It is worth noting that the report's researchers - from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, the Department of Community Medicine at Al-Mustansiriya University, Baghdad and Columbia University's School of Nursing - warn that their estimate is a conservative figure; it would be much higher if it included the slaughter in Falluja, where civilians, more than half of them women and children, accounted for three-quarters of those killed in April.
As Dr. Gilbert Burnham, one of the authors of the new report, stressed in an interview, even the interpretations of the data are conservative:
IRAQ'D: "What do you think will be the ultimate effect of your study?"
BURNHAM: "I can tell you what I hope. ... My hope is that there will be some serious consideration about how you conduct warfare in densely populated urban areas to avoid civilian casualties. We've seen over the last century how, in conflict, the number of civilian casualties [has] risen dramatically in comparison to the number of military casualties.
"Before this latest event in Iraq, a general rule of thumb was that there would be ten to 15 civilian casualties for every military casualty. So we know that this number has been creeping up and that civilians have been increasingly bearing the brunt of conflicts. Certainly we've seen this in many developing countries, how civilians are intentionally targeted. I would never say that in the Iraq situation people are intentionally targeted at all. In fact, we have good evidence to show that the combat soldier on the ground in Iraq has not, at least in our sample, ever been engaged in inappropriate or improper activities. The deaths we were able to identify were predominantly from aerial attacks and not from individual soldiers.
"We did find three cases in which a person had been killed by a Coalition soldier. In one case it was a guard who had been caught up in some kind of crossfire and accidentally shot. In the second case it was someone shot approaching a checkpoint. The third one we didn't have a lot of details, so we don't really know. It might have been an insurgent, might not have been. In two out of the three cases, the Coalition soldier, which the Iraqis always identified as American, actually went to the house of the person killed and apologized."
This is not knee-jerk anti-imperialism; you don't get published in The Lancet without meeting rigorous tests of your methodology and science, especially not if the findings are this politically charged:
IRAQ'D: "Was this study peer reviewed?"
BURNHAM: "Oh, my goodness, was it ever. [Laughs] First off, nothing, nothing ever gets in the Lancet without a vigorous peer review. It's heavily peer-reviewed. And in the case of this article, it went through the full editorial review board several times and they sent it out for multiple reviews. I've written a few papers for the Lancet over the years and I've never had anything like the scrutiny that this one had."
The Lancet's editor, Dr Richard Horton, denied politics played any part in his decision to fast-track the publication of the study by releasing it online, rather than waiting to include it in the next print edition, which will hit newsstands after the American presidential election.
"The reason for publishing it quickly is to make the military planners stop and re-think their strategy."
The Coalition of the Illegal is meanwhile gearing up for another assault on Falluja, described yesterday by U.S Major-General Richard Natonski as "a cancer" and "a rats' nest". Leaving aside the whereabouts of America's new bogeyman, Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, who was briefly upstaged last night by a new Osama bin Laden video from an equally unknown location, most of the people (aka. Untermenschen in the U.S. military lexicon) left in Falluja to face a flattening will be those unable to flee.
As Walter's excellent pamphlet on the impending bloodbath stresses:
DON’T BOMB FALLUJA
"After the US presidential elections, US statements reveal that Falluja and other rebel-held cities in Iraq will come under all-out attack, the purpose of which is to force elections on the Iraqi people.
"The US has more than enough troops to attack Falluja, but as soon as they do the area will once more erupt, and it will take everything the Americans have to control the surrounding villages … even Mosul, home to three million Sunnis, may explode.
"It is obvious that the slaughter arising from these attacks could be dreadful. Britain will be complicit in these attacks, directly, by redeploying British troops to the centre of Iraq to free up US forces to take part in the planned assaults. There could even be particular danger for British troops, if Iraqi insurgents choose to attack them in order to undermine support for the coalition and the operations in Iraq.
"These elections are for the US and UK governments to claim they have liberated Iraq. Four out of five Iraqis want the troops to leave immediately. If Iraq wanted western-influenced elections there wouldn’t be an insurgency.
"Reporting of events in Iraq has been skewed by the dangerous situation there, pro-occupation bias and by the intimidation of journalists and news agencies both by the US and the interim government of its own creation."
Enough. Demonstrations outside Downing Street will demand a withdrawal of British troops when the attack begins; it is time to rip away the figleaf and express our disgust:
"It is outrageous that the soldiers of the Black Watch will be risking their lives, but what hardly seems to be mentioned is that their deployment will help put at risk thousands of Iraqi lives."
What to do? Make some noise. Thanks to Danny the well-read for the reminder that a man's a man for a' that:
"Then let us pray that come it may
(As come it will for a' that),
That Sense and Worth, o'er a' the earth,
Shall bear the gree an a' that.
For a' that, an a' that,
It's coming yet for a' that,
That man to man, the world o'er,
Shall brithers be for a' that."
As another Scottish literary genius noted in The Guardian this week, our complicity is so gentle. Great to be British, isn't it?
STOP PRESS:
Subject: The Lancet and the liberal conscience
Date: October 30, 2004 19:29:04 BST
To: clwyda@parliament.uk
Dear Ms. Clwyd,
Please read the [above] and let me know how many Iraqis will have to die before you demand a withdrawal of British troops. I find it increasingly difficult to comprehend the meaning of your job title; what is a special envoy on human rights in Iraq supposed to do if not uphold the right of Iraqi civilians not to be slaughtered?
Yours sincerely,
[gutrot]
Pace Nietzsche, the strong are weak when confronted by the organised instincts of the herd.
Now that researchers from the U.S. and Iraq have published a survey in The Lancet suggesting that more than 100,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed since March, 2003, journalists, politicians and spin doctors have suddenly discovered the figures quoted by Iraq Body Count, whose findings they'd studiously ignored until now.
Of course, the fact that Iraq Body Count merely collates the death toll reported in the media is conveniently overlooked by said organs of information. Instead, the BBC appears to be devoting more time to rubbishing The Lancet's findings than it did to debunking the pre-war propaganda about Saddam's Weapons of Mass Non-Existence, despite all the evidence in the public domain at the time.
It is worth noting that the report's researchers - from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, the Department of Community Medicine at Al-Mustansiriya University, Baghdad and Columbia University's School of Nursing - warn that their estimate is a conservative figure; it would be much higher if it included the slaughter in Falluja, where civilians, more than half of them women and children, accounted for three-quarters of those killed in April.
As Dr. Gilbert Burnham, one of the authors of the new report, stressed in an interview, even the interpretations of the data are conservative:
IRAQ'D: "What do you think will be the ultimate effect of your study?"
BURNHAM: "I can tell you what I hope. ... My hope is that there will be some serious consideration about how you conduct warfare in densely populated urban areas to avoid civilian casualties. We've seen over the last century how, in conflict, the number of civilian casualties [has] risen dramatically in comparison to the number of military casualties.
"Before this latest event in Iraq, a general rule of thumb was that there would be ten to 15 civilian casualties for every military casualty. So we know that this number has been creeping up and that civilians have been increasingly bearing the brunt of conflicts. Certainly we've seen this in many developing countries, how civilians are intentionally targeted. I would never say that in the Iraq situation people are intentionally targeted at all. In fact, we have good evidence to show that the combat soldier on the ground in Iraq has not, at least in our sample, ever been engaged in inappropriate or improper activities. The deaths we were able to identify were predominantly from aerial attacks and not from individual soldiers.
"We did find three cases in which a person had been killed by a Coalition soldier. In one case it was a guard who had been caught up in some kind of crossfire and accidentally shot. In the second case it was someone shot approaching a checkpoint. The third one we didn't have a lot of details, so we don't really know. It might have been an insurgent, might not have been. In two out of the three cases, the Coalition soldier, which the Iraqis always identified as American, actually went to the house of the person killed and apologized."
This is not knee-jerk anti-imperialism; you don't get published in The Lancet without meeting rigorous tests of your methodology and science, especially not if the findings are this politically charged:
IRAQ'D: "Was this study peer reviewed?"
BURNHAM: "Oh, my goodness, was it ever. [Laughs] First off, nothing, nothing ever gets in the Lancet without a vigorous peer review. It's heavily peer-reviewed. And in the case of this article, it went through the full editorial review board several times and they sent it out for multiple reviews. I've written a few papers for the Lancet over the years and I've never had anything like the scrutiny that this one had."
The Lancet's editor, Dr Richard Horton, denied politics played any part in his decision to fast-track the publication of the study by releasing it online, rather than waiting to include it in the next print edition, which will hit newsstands after the American presidential election.
"The reason for publishing it quickly is to make the military planners stop and re-think their strategy."
The Coalition of the Illegal is meanwhile gearing up for another assault on Falluja, described yesterday by U.S Major-General Richard Natonski as "a cancer" and "a rats' nest". Leaving aside the whereabouts of America's new bogeyman, Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, who was briefly upstaged last night by a new Osama bin Laden video from an equally unknown location, most of the people (aka. Untermenschen in the U.S. military lexicon) left in Falluja to face a flattening will be those unable to flee.
As Walter's excellent pamphlet on the impending bloodbath stresses:
DON’T BOMB FALLUJA
"After the US presidential elections, US statements reveal that Falluja and other rebel-held cities in Iraq will come under all-out attack, the purpose of which is to force elections on the Iraqi people.
"The US has more than enough troops to attack Falluja, but as soon as they do the area will once more erupt, and it will take everything the Americans have to control the surrounding villages … even Mosul, home to three million Sunnis, may explode.
"It is obvious that the slaughter arising from these attacks could be dreadful. Britain will be complicit in these attacks, directly, by redeploying British troops to the centre of Iraq to free up US forces to take part in the planned assaults. There could even be particular danger for British troops, if Iraqi insurgents choose to attack them in order to undermine support for the coalition and the operations in Iraq.
"These elections are for the US and UK governments to claim they have liberated Iraq. Four out of five Iraqis want the troops to leave immediately. If Iraq wanted western-influenced elections there wouldn’t be an insurgency.
"Reporting of events in Iraq has been skewed by the dangerous situation there, pro-occupation bias and by the intimidation of journalists and news agencies both by the US and the interim government of its own creation."
Enough. Demonstrations outside Downing Street will demand a withdrawal of British troops when the attack begins; it is time to rip away the figleaf and express our disgust:
"It is outrageous that the soldiers of the Black Watch will be risking their lives, but what hardly seems to be mentioned is that their deployment will help put at risk thousands of Iraqi lives."
What to do? Make some noise. Thanks to Danny the well-read for the reminder that a man's a man for a' that:
"Then let us pray that come it may
(As come it will for a' that),
That Sense and Worth, o'er a' the earth,
Shall bear the gree an a' that.
For a' that, an a' that,
It's coming yet for a' that,
That man to man, the world o'er,
Shall brithers be for a' that."
As another Scottish literary genius noted in The Guardian this week, our complicity is so gentle. Great to be British, isn't it?
STOP PRESS:
Subject: The Lancet and the liberal conscience
Date: October 30, 2004 19:29:04 BST
To: clwyda@parliament.uk
Dear Ms. Clwyd,
Please read the [above] and let me know how many Iraqis will have to die before you demand a withdrawal of British troops. I find it increasingly difficult to comprehend the meaning of your job title; what is a special envoy on human rights in Iraq supposed to do if not uphold the right of Iraqi civilians not to be slaughtered?
Yours sincerely,
[gutrot]
Pace Nietzsche, the strong are weak when confronted by the organised instincts of the herd.
Friday, October 29, 2004
What's Cooking?
From: gutrot
Subject: today's guardian column
Date: October 29, 2004 10:49:17 BST
To: mathesonjm@parliament.uk, cookr@parliament.uk
Dear Mr. Cook,
Your Guardian column today ("A strong Europe - or Bush's feral US capitalism") welcomes the European constitution as a commitment to "the same standards of human rights and democratic values". Moreover, in reference to next week's American election, you note that "if the US result goes wrong, it will be all the more important that we affirm our right to different European values."
As a British citizen, I wonder whether you share Clare Short's concerns (detailed in extracts from her book published in The Independent) about the undermining of "British constitutional arrangements and the democracy of the Labour Party" that enabled Tony Blair to mislead Parliament and the public to invade Iraq.
Since this was done in the name of standing "shoulder-to-shoulder" with George W. Bush, and against the counsel of Britain's principal European allies, it would seem incumbent upon British politicians to demand that the Prime Minister be held to account for his complicity in an illegal invasion which, according to a new report in the Lancet, has now killed more than 100,000 Iraqi civilians.
Do you concede, as does Ms. Short, that Blair willfully deceived? If so, why should he not be forced, as were Peter Mandelson and Beverley Hughes, to resign? Since he has refused to stand down, there remains the ultimate sanction of impeachment. The case against the Prime Minister is clear, but a Commons majority is required. When can I expect a public statement from you calling on Labour MPs to support the impeachment motion currently being drafted?
Thank you for your time. I look forward to hearing from you.
Subject: today's guardian column
Date: October 29, 2004 10:49:17 BST
To: mathesonjm@parliament.uk, cookr@parliament.uk
Dear Mr. Cook,
Your Guardian column today ("A strong Europe - or Bush's feral US capitalism") welcomes the European constitution as a commitment to "the same standards of human rights and democratic values". Moreover, in reference to next week's American election, you note that "if the US result goes wrong, it will be all the more important that we affirm our right to different European values."
As a British citizen, I wonder whether you share Clare Short's concerns (detailed in extracts from her book published in The Independent) about the undermining of "British constitutional arrangements and the democracy of the Labour Party" that enabled Tony Blair to mislead Parliament and the public to invade Iraq.
Since this was done in the name of standing "shoulder-to-shoulder" with George W. Bush, and against the counsel of Britain's principal European allies, it would seem incumbent upon British politicians to demand that the Prime Minister be held to account for his complicity in an illegal invasion which, according to a new report in the Lancet, has now killed more than 100,000 Iraqi civilians.
Do you concede, as does Ms. Short, that Blair willfully deceived? If so, why should he not be forced, as were Peter Mandelson and Beverley Hughes, to resign? Since he has refused to stand down, there remains the ultimate sanction of impeachment. The case against the Prime Minister is clear, but a Commons majority is required. When can I expect a public statement from you calling on Labour MPs to support the impeachment motion currently being drafted?
Thank you for your time. I look forward to hearing from you.
Thursday, October 28, 2004
Cartoon coverage
The Doctor of Journalism offers a simple remedy for the immediate symptoms of America's violent polarisation:
BULLETIN: KERRY WINS GONZO ENDORSEMENT; DR THOMPSON JOINS DEMOCRAT IN CALLING BUSH "THE SYPHILIS PRESIDENT".
"Four more years of George Bush will be like four more years of syphilis," the famed author said yesterday at a hastily called press conference near his home in Woody Creek, Colorado.
"Only a fool or a sucker would vote for a dangerous loser like Bush. He hates everything we stand for, and he knows we will vote against him in November." Thompson, well known for the eerie accuracy of his political instincts, went on to denounce Ralph Nader as "a worthless Judas goat with no moral compass."
"I endorsed John Kerry a long time ago," he said, "and I will do everything in my power, short of roaming the streets with a meat hammer, to help him be the next president of the United States."
The muppets' take from Manhattan is improving, but still no sign of a full-on gonzo columnist to sketch out the horrorshow like Hunter, although Maureen Dowd does her best:
"After 9/11, Mr. Cheney swirled his big black cape and hunkered down in his undisclosed dungeon, reading books about smallpox and plague and worst-case terrorist scenarios. His ghoulish imagination ran wild, and he dragged the untested president and jittery country into his house of horrors, painting a gory picture of how Iraq could let fearsome munitions fall into the hands of evildoers."
Back in Blighty the prospects look bleaker still, if the Guardian's Michael White means what he says about mean-spirited satirists. Gutrot decided to investigate:
Dear Mr. White,
Your brief article about cartoonists in today's Guardian confused me. On the one hand, cartoonists are "clever and funny"; on the other "they are, most of them, curmugeonly (sic) anarchists with the political sophistication of a football-mad 12-year-old".
Moreover, "what is striking about them ... is how much they seek to portray our prime minister as a conman, Bush poodle, victim or shabby opportunist."
Perhaps you could clear up my confusion by explaining to me whether or not you agree with this depiction. It would appear that you feel it lacks a certain nuance, yet your story implies that this is somehow justified. Do you have an opinion, regardless of whether you are permitted to express it clearly in your newspaper?
Yours sincerely,
[gutrot]
On Oct 28, 2004, at 10:48, michael.white@guardian.co.uk wrote:
thanks for the note, sorry for any confusion. Remember, I am not a critic, but a reporter in a hurry, doing several other things in a busy day, as you can see in the paper, part of it anyway. I think it's possible to be both clever and teenage, isn't it ? Cartoonists are usually blunt instruments, how can they be otherwise ? As to my own view, yes, I am free to express it, and yes I contrast the cartoonist view of Blair as dupe/idiot/crook etc with the fact that he is actually in favour of many of the policies for which he is most criticised, Iraq, foundation hospitals, to-ups etc and that - yes - he's still PM and still ahead in the polls 6% the Guardian said this week, after 7 years in power. HOWEVER - this point is important - do you get people thinking by hammering them or the head ? Or by gently poising a point as a question they may care to ponder ?
best wishes
Forget about calling a spade a spade, or even a Bliar; it sounds like we'll just have to Grin And Blair It. Wouldn't do to mess with the Apes of Wrath, now would it?
BULLETIN: KERRY WINS GONZO ENDORSEMENT; DR THOMPSON JOINS DEMOCRAT IN CALLING BUSH "THE SYPHILIS PRESIDENT".
"Four more years of George Bush will be like four more years of syphilis," the famed author said yesterday at a hastily called press conference near his home in Woody Creek, Colorado.
"Only a fool or a sucker would vote for a dangerous loser like Bush. He hates everything we stand for, and he knows we will vote against him in November." Thompson, well known for the eerie accuracy of his political instincts, went on to denounce Ralph Nader as "a worthless Judas goat with no moral compass."
"I endorsed John Kerry a long time ago," he said, "and I will do everything in my power, short of roaming the streets with a meat hammer, to help him be the next president of the United States."
The muppets' take from Manhattan is improving, but still no sign of a full-on gonzo columnist to sketch out the horrorshow like Hunter, although Maureen Dowd does her best:
"After 9/11, Mr. Cheney swirled his big black cape and hunkered down in his undisclosed dungeon, reading books about smallpox and plague and worst-case terrorist scenarios. His ghoulish imagination ran wild, and he dragged the untested president and jittery country into his house of horrors, painting a gory picture of how Iraq could let fearsome munitions fall into the hands of evildoers."
Back in Blighty the prospects look bleaker still, if the Guardian's Michael White means what he says about mean-spirited satirists. Gutrot decided to investigate:
Dear Mr. White,
Your brief article about cartoonists in today's Guardian confused me. On the one hand, cartoonists are "clever and funny"; on the other "they are, most of them, curmugeonly (sic) anarchists with the political sophistication of a football-mad 12-year-old".
Moreover, "what is striking about them ... is how much they seek to portray our prime minister as a conman, Bush poodle, victim or shabby opportunist."
Perhaps you could clear up my confusion by explaining to me whether or not you agree with this depiction. It would appear that you feel it lacks a certain nuance, yet your story implies that this is somehow justified. Do you have an opinion, regardless of whether you are permitted to express it clearly in your newspaper?
Yours sincerely,
[gutrot]
On Oct 28, 2004, at 10:48, michael.white@guardian.co.uk wrote:
thanks for the note, sorry for any confusion. Remember, I am not a critic, but a reporter in a hurry, doing several other things in a busy day, as you can see in the paper, part of it anyway. I think it's possible to be both clever and teenage, isn't it ? Cartoonists are usually blunt instruments, how can they be otherwise ? As to my own view, yes, I am free to express it, and yes I contrast the cartoonist view of Blair as dupe/idiot/crook etc with the fact that he is actually in favour of many of the policies for which he is most criticised, Iraq, foundation hospitals, to-ups etc and that - yes - he's still PM and still ahead in the polls 6% the Guardian said this week, after 7 years in power. HOWEVER - this point is important - do you get people thinking by hammering them or the head ? Or by gently poising a point as a question they may care to ponder ?
best wishes
Forget about calling a spade a spade, or even a Bliar; it sounds like we'll just have to Grin And Blair It. Wouldn't do to mess with the Apes of Wrath, now would it?
Wednesday, October 27, 2004
The one-fingered victory salute
Tuesday, October 26, 2004
Musical Youth
It’s official, kids. Slim Shady, the Eminem Antichrist, has spoken: "Bush is definitely not my homie." So there you have it:
Mosh against the Neoconz With Attitude:
Let me be the voice, and your strength, and your choice
Let me simplify the rhyme just to amplify the noise
Try to amplify it, times it, and multiply it
By sixteen million people, all equal at this high pitch
Maybe we can reach Al Qaeda through my speech
Let the president answer our anarchy
Strap him with an AK-47, let him go fight his own war
Let him impress daddy that way
No more blood for oil, we got our own battles to fight on our own soil
No more psychological warfare to trick us to thinkin' that we ain't loyal
If we don't serve our own country - we're patronizing our heroes
Look in his eyes, it's all lies
The stars and stripes, they've been swiped, washed out, and wiped
And replaced with his own face - mosh now or die
If I get snagged tonight, you'll know why - 'cause I told you to fight
Just like in Rolling Stone:
"The thirty-two-year-old rapper says he has registered to vote for the first time -- but stops short of endorsing a candidate. 'Whatever my decision is, I would like to see Bush out of office,' Eminem says. 'I don't wanna see my little brother get drafted -- he just turned eighteen. People think their votes don't count, but people need to get out and vote. Every motherfuckin' vote counts.'"
Aiyyo, word up. Check this out. Maybe he's been working on his Immortal Technique and overdosing on Peruvian Cocaine:
"Si, si. Let me show you a few of the other characters that are involved in this tragic comedy..."
Hip-hop on the frontline makes The Guardian's comment pages today, alerting those out of the loop to the existence of Subliminal propaganda for the Israeli right:
"Dubbed the Israeli Eminem, the former soldier's shock is not in suggesting Michael Jackson is a paedophile or swearing a great deal, it is in song titles such as Divide and Conquer or lyrics such as "the country is dangling like a cigarette in Arafat's mouth" or "to think that an olive branch symbolises peace / Sorry it doesn't live here anymore. It's been kidnapped or murdered / There was peace my friend / Handshakes, fake smile. Treaties signed in blood." Forget Eminem, this is more like hip-hop's Sharon."
Each to his own; let battle commence. The Israeli rap scene has its dissidents too, such as T.N., a wiry young fellow who spits bursts of Arabic from suburban Tel Aviv:
"My lyrics are with peace," he said in an interview. "The question is which peace. Before you reach peace, you've got to have equality. I'm with peace, but I'm against the Zionism."
Pass the dutchie on the left hand side, indeed.
But first, hail to the chief of the great soundsystem in the sky, which will henceforth forever play Teenage Kicks at the wrong speed in tribute to John Peel, who died today after turning on so many to tuning in to alternative sounds. Maximum respect and the rest in peace.
Mosh against the Neoconz With Attitude:
Let me be the voice, and your strength, and your choice
Let me simplify the rhyme just to amplify the noise
Try to amplify it, times it, and multiply it
By sixteen million people, all equal at this high pitch
Maybe we can reach Al Qaeda through my speech
Let the president answer our anarchy
Strap him with an AK-47, let him go fight his own war
Let him impress daddy that way
No more blood for oil, we got our own battles to fight on our own soil
No more psychological warfare to trick us to thinkin' that we ain't loyal
If we don't serve our own country - we're patronizing our heroes
Look in his eyes, it's all lies
The stars and stripes, they've been swiped, washed out, and wiped
And replaced with his own face - mosh now or die
If I get snagged tonight, you'll know why - 'cause I told you to fight
Just like in Rolling Stone:
"The thirty-two-year-old rapper says he has registered to vote for the first time -- but stops short of endorsing a candidate. 'Whatever my decision is, I would like to see Bush out of office,' Eminem says. 'I don't wanna see my little brother get drafted -- he just turned eighteen. People think their votes don't count, but people need to get out and vote. Every motherfuckin' vote counts.'"
Aiyyo, word up. Check this out. Maybe he's been working on his Immortal Technique and overdosing on Peruvian Cocaine:
"Si, si. Let me show you a few of the other characters that are involved in this tragic comedy..."
Hip-hop on the frontline makes The Guardian's comment pages today, alerting those out of the loop to the existence of Subliminal propaganda for the Israeli right:
"Dubbed the Israeli Eminem, the former soldier's shock is not in suggesting Michael Jackson is a paedophile or swearing a great deal, it is in song titles such as Divide and Conquer or lyrics such as "the country is dangling like a cigarette in Arafat's mouth" or "to think that an olive branch symbolises peace / Sorry it doesn't live here anymore. It's been kidnapped or murdered / There was peace my friend / Handshakes, fake smile. Treaties signed in blood." Forget Eminem, this is more like hip-hop's Sharon."
Each to his own; let battle commence. The Israeli rap scene has its dissidents too, such as T.N., a wiry young fellow who spits bursts of Arabic from suburban Tel Aviv:
"My lyrics are with peace," he said in an interview. "The question is which peace. Before you reach peace, you've got to have equality. I'm with peace, but I'm against the Zionism."
Pass the dutchie on the left hand side, indeed.
But first, hail to the chief of the great soundsystem in the sky, which will henceforth forever play Teenage Kicks at the wrong speed in tribute to John Peel, who died today after turning on so many to tuning in to alternative sounds. Maximum respect and the rest in peace.
The Short strawman
On Oct 26, 2004, at 13:28, Clare Short's office wrote:
Dear [gutrot],
Thank you for your message. I believe as I have said that the House of Commons should force Blair to stand down because he misled Parliament but as yet it has no wish to do so.
We do not need anything as complicated as impeachment, a no confidence motion would do.
Yours sincerely,
Clare Short
From the office of
The Rt Hon Clare Short MP
House of Commons
London SW1A 0AA
Unto which:
Dear Ms. Short,
Thank you for your reply. Since you argue that Parliament has "no wish" to force Blair to stand down, how do you envisage that he might be held to account?
As I understand it, a no-confidence motion would target the government, rather than the individual hiding behind a facade of collective responsibility, which, according to the extract from your book published yesterday ("At the court of King Tony", The Independent, 25 October, 2004), belies the truth of how this government functions in practice.
Impeachment is therefore, as far as I can determine, the only viable means of holding a debate of no confidence in the Prime Minister himself. Under what circumstances would you be prepared to lend this campaign your support?
Best wishes,
To say nothing of the fact that:
"A no confidence motion is only available to the leader of the opposition. Impeachment is the only way to get a debate on the PM's conduct."
The showmanship must go on...
Dear [gutrot],
Thank you for your message. I believe as I have said that the House of Commons should force Blair to stand down because he misled Parliament but as yet it has no wish to do so.
We do not need anything as complicated as impeachment, a no confidence motion would do.
Yours sincerely,
Clare Short
From the office of
The Rt Hon Clare Short MP
House of Commons
London SW1A 0AA
Unto which:
Dear Ms. Short,
Thank you for your reply. Since you argue that Parliament has "no wish" to force Blair to stand down, how do you envisage that he might be held to account?
As I understand it, a no-confidence motion would target the government, rather than the individual hiding behind a facade of collective responsibility, which, according to the extract from your book published yesterday ("At the court of King Tony", The Independent, 25 October, 2004), belies the truth of how this government functions in practice.
Impeachment is therefore, as far as I can determine, the only viable means of holding a debate of no confidence in the Prime Minister himself. Under what circumstances would you be prepared to lend this campaign your support?
Best wishes,
To say nothing of the fact that:
"A no confidence motion is only available to the leader of the opposition. Impeachment is the only way to get a debate on the PM's conduct."
The showmanship must go on...
Monday, October 25, 2004
Don't mess with Texas Tony
The chancer who staked Britain's national security on no-limits Texas hold 'em in Iraq continues his game of double or quits with the truth.
Given what we know beyond reasonable doubt about his high crimes and misdemeanours, it is staggering to note the lengths to which sympathetic columnists will go to avoid facing the full force of these facts.
The new trend is to rubbish the impeachment campaign because it won't amount to anything, as if it might somehow attract supporters without publicity. Instead we're treated to tributes; peering through the glory hole, a roving eye caught Peter Preston with his pants down:
Posted by Philip Challinor on October 25, 2004, 1:37 am
Dear Mr Preston
I find it remarkable that, in the face of more than 13,000 civilian casualties (according to the probably conservative estimate of www.iraqbodycount.net) and the admission by the UN Secretary General that the invasion of Iraq was illegal, you can expend a 700-word column on Tony Blair's career prospects and the pernicious whimsy of the British public.
I find it remarkably ironic that you should ask, regarding the kidnappers' video recordings of their victims, "Is it the job of newspapers and TV to be used for such sickening spin?" The sickening spin of the Bush/Blair camp, it appears, is so far beyond question that you can dismiss Blair's manipulation of evidence over the weapons of mass nonexistence by invoking public stupidity (quote: "Anger about his "lies" over WMD won't go away, even though much of it wallows far too simplistically in a past open to far too much interpretation") and shrug off demands for the end of an illegal war with the philosophical panache of an Arnold Schwarzenegger (quote: "we are the weak sisters he thinks may turn and quit").
Hostility toward Bush plans and Bush tactics has become "almost a way of British political life" because Bush plans and Bush tactics are illegal, destructive and dangerous. Like "al-Zarqawi and his chums", but on a rather greater scale, Bush and his cronies kill people. Blair helps them. Your claim that "Blair reaps the full harvest there" is rather strange in view of the fact that, as you yourself admit, his resignation "still seems only a remote possibility".
Even stranger is your implication that "those of us who've been against Iraqi intervention from the start" should abandon the idea of removing Blair because some groups in Iraq take hostages. Those of us who are against Iraqi intervention should now be against the occupation. If we are against the occupation, we should want it to end. Blair will not end it because Blair does not admit that it is wrong, thus ensuring that we are indeed "all foreign hostages" to the will of the United States. Therefore one of the more effective ways of hastening the end of the occupation might be to remove Blair from office.
Yours sincerely
Philip Challinor
When challenged as to why he objected to a ritual debagging, for democracy's sake if nothing else, another "left-leaning" columnist commented:
"Re: impeaching Blair - no, i don't think it's a good idea, if I'm honest, six months before an election. Practical result? Prime Minister Howard..."
Sounds like he's been reading Anatole Kaletsky's scaremongering in The Times:
"If the middle class decides that the Government has turned against them, it will not just mean the end of Mr Blair and his new Labour project. It will mean a US-style minimalist government and the end of every last vestige of a welfare state."
Hardly likely that the longstanding Blairite project of aping Conservative policies would fall with its mentor when New Lubyanka has already preened a new generation of ideologues to bolster its ranks in the next Parliament. Still, the clairvoyant vicar has spoken: this baby's not for turning off the idea of being as popular as Maggie Thatcher, who also won three successive elections despite alienating a majority of the population. Let's check the numbers:
Posted by walter on October 24, 2004, 1:48 am
A month ago I "recommended" to a betting friend an enterprising treble:
US election, Democrats 2/1
Brown to lead Labour at election (about 3/1 I think)
LibDems to win next general election (66/1, usually retails at 500/1 for the mugs)
The basis was that if Iraq rumbles on and if Blair falls as a result there must be a chance that the LibDems, striking the final Iraq-based blows, could just step over both Labour and the in-a-mess Tories on the same issues.
Interestingly, since Blair's assertion that he will lead into the next election and up to the next one, an assertion that worried his party no end, the "book" on who will lead the next election has vanished to be replaced with "When Will Blair Be Replaced" where 2004 or 2005 combined is 7/2 (eh?) and the favourite is ... 2006 at 6/4.
In other words the bookies took his words as gospel, like it was up to him. Must be right, then.
The impeachment campaign puts it all into context:
Dear supporter,
This week there is a buzz of activity at Westminster, but not much in the news. Labour MPs have been told that they will be kicked out of the party if they sign anything that even mentions impeachment. In contrast nothing happened to the dozens who wrote to Kofi Annan accusing the entire government of war crimes. Consequently, it appears that Downing Street is treating the impeachment campaign as a serious challenge to Blair. As you might expect many Labour MPs have indicated that they will give support at the right moment - and it is up to us to create that opportunity.
The drafting team of MPs are still hard at work drawing up an impeachment motion, and as soon as we can, we will get that to you.
In the meantime, keep up the pressure in the specific ways we have outlined in our previous emails, and if you can, please send us some cash and get your friends to! Many thanks to all those who have contributed so far.
Keep the postcards and emails going to your MPs.
Yours,
Dan Plesch
Everything's falling into place; all that's missing is the media support. The Independent's serialisation of Clare Short's new book studiously skirted the impeachment question, despite laying out the basic case against the Prime Minister. Ms. Short is not generally given to reticence these days, so gutrot decided to ask what was holding her back from joining the dots:
"Date: October 25, 2004 12:31:45 BST
To: shortc@parliament.uk
Dear Ms. Short,
Thank you for sharing your knowledge of proceedings in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq; the extracts from your book published in The Independent have made for fascinating reading.
The passage cited in Saturday's story ("Lies and consequences: Clare Short accuses Blair of misleading Britain over case for war") concluded as follows:
"The question we must all address is whether it is acceptable for the Prime Minister to deceive us in the making of war and the taking and sacrificing of human life because he personally believed it was the right thing to do. Do we want to live under a constitutional system that allows decisions to be made in this highly personalised way?"
In the absence of any other concerted effort to hold the Prime Minister to account, there remains the ultimate sanction of impeachment and a motion to debate this is currently being drafted, as I'm sure you are aware.
Commenting on the report which lays out the case for impeachment, its co-author, Dan Plesch, an Honourary Fellow of Birkbeck College at the University of London, said:
“It is unheard for a minister to knowingly deceive Parliament and the public and to refuse to resign. Beverley Hughes and Peter Mandelson were forced to resign for misleading Parliament. Can the Prime Minister honestly say that his actions were less serious than those of Ms Hughes and Mr Mandelson?
“Blair seriously misled and deceived the public over Iraq and there can be no greater offence for a Prime Minister. Impeachment is the only way to ensure that Tony Blair doesn't get away with this.”
Given that you concede that Blair knowingly deceived and that failure to hold him to account raises disturbing constitutional questions, can I conclude that you support the campaign for the Prime Minister's impeachment?"
Shh! We don't talk about that sort of thing. But it's quite alright to muse, as Short does today when recollecting her early days in power, that:
"[Blair] wished me luck and said he thought I could be a very good minister if I was able to come to terms with questions of expediency that I would have to face. I have occasionally pondered since what he had in mind, and wish I had asked him."
Reminds me of conversations with a newsdesk looking for excuses to kill a "controversial" story: even if it stinks, don't rock the boat.
Given what we know beyond reasonable doubt about his high crimes and misdemeanours, it is staggering to note the lengths to which sympathetic columnists will go to avoid facing the full force of these facts.
The new trend is to rubbish the impeachment campaign because it won't amount to anything, as if it might somehow attract supporters without publicity. Instead we're treated to tributes; peering through the glory hole, a roving eye caught Peter Preston with his pants down:
Posted by Philip Challinor on October 25, 2004, 1:37 am
Dear Mr Preston
I find it remarkable that, in the face of more than 13,000 civilian casualties (according to the probably conservative estimate of www.iraqbodycount.net) and the admission by the UN Secretary General that the invasion of Iraq was illegal, you can expend a 700-word column on Tony Blair's career prospects and the pernicious whimsy of the British public.
I find it remarkably ironic that you should ask, regarding the kidnappers' video recordings of their victims, "Is it the job of newspapers and TV to be used for such sickening spin?" The sickening spin of the Bush/Blair camp, it appears, is so far beyond question that you can dismiss Blair's manipulation of evidence over the weapons of mass nonexistence by invoking public stupidity (quote: "Anger about his "lies" over WMD won't go away, even though much of it wallows far too simplistically in a past open to far too much interpretation") and shrug off demands for the end of an illegal war with the philosophical panache of an Arnold Schwarzenegger (quote: "we are the weak sisters he thinks may turn and quit").
Hostility toward Bush plans and Bush tactics has become "almost a way of British political life" because Bush plans and Bush tactics are illegal, destructive and dangerous. Like "al-Zarqawi and his chums", but on a rather greater scale, Bush and his cronies kill people. Blair helps them. Your claim that "Blair reaps the full harvest there" is rather strange in view of the fact that, as you yourself admit, his resignation "still seems only a remote possibility".
Even stranger is your implication that "those of us who've been against Iraqi intervention from the start" should abandon the idea of removing Blair because some groups in Iraq take hostages. Those of us who are against Iraqi intervention should now be against the occupation. If we are against the occupation, we should want it to end. Blair will not end it because Blair does not admit that it is wrong, thus ensuring that we are indeed "all foreign hostages" to the will of the United States. Therefore one of the more effective ways of hastening the end of the occupation might be to remove Blair from office.
Yours sincerely
Philip Challinor
When challenged as to why he objected to a ritual debagging, for democracy's sake if nothing else, another "left-leaning" columnist commented:
"Re: impeaching Blair - no, i don't think it's a good idea, if I'm honest, six months before an election. Practical result? Prime Minister Howard..."
Sounds like he's been reading Anatole Kaletsky's scaremongering in The Times:
"If the middle class decides that the Government has turned against them, it will not just mean the end of Mr Blair and his new Labour project. It will mean a US-style minimalist government and the end of every last vestige of a welfare state."
Hardly likely that the longstanding Blairite project of aping Conservative policies would fall with its mentor when New Lubyanka has already preened a new generation of ideologues to bolster its ranks in the next Parliament. Still, the clairvoyant vicar has spoken: this baby's not for turning off the idea of being as popular as Maggie Thatcher, who also won three successive elections despite alienating a majority of the population. Let's check the numbers:
Posted by walter on October 24, 2004, 1:48 am
A month ago I "recommended" to a betting friend an enterprising treble:
US election, Democrats 2/1
Brown to lead Labour at election (about 3/1 I think)
LibDems to win next general election (66/1, usually retails at 500/1 for the mugs)
The basis was that if Iraq rumbles on and if Blair falls as a result there must be a chance that the LibDems, striking the final Iraq-based blows, could just step over both Labour and the in-a-mess Tories on the same issues.
Interestingly, since Blair's assertion that he will lead into the next election and up to the next one, an assertion that worried his party no end, the "book" on who will lead the next election has vanished to be replaced with "When Will Blair Be Replaced" where 2004 or 2005 combined is 7/2 (eh?) and the favourite is ... 2006 at 6/4.
In other words the bookies took his words as gospel, like it was up to him. Must be right, then.
The impeachment campaign puts it all into context:
Dear supporter,
This week there is a buzz of activity at Westminster, but not much in the news. Labour MPs have been told that they will be kicked out of the party if they sign anything that even mentions impeachment. In contrast nothing happened to the dozens who wrote to Kofi Annan accusing the entire government of war crimes. Consequently, it appears that Downing Street is treating the impeachment campaign as a serious challenge to Blair. As you might expect many Labour MPs have indicated that they will give support at the right moment - and it is up to us to create that opportunity.
The drafting team of MPs are still hard at work drawing up an impeachment motion, and as soon as we can, we will get that to you.
In the meantime, keep up the pressure in the specific ways we have outlined in our previous emails, and if you can, please send us some cash and get your friends to! Many thanks to all those who have contributed so far.
Keep the postcards and emails going to your MPs.
Yours,
Dan Plesch
Everything's falling into place; all that's missing is the media support. The Independent's serialisation of Clare Short's new book studiously skirted the impeachment question, despite laying out the basic case against the Prime Minister. Ms. Short is not generally given to reticence these days, so gutrot decided to ask what was holding her back from joining the dots:
"Date: October 25, 2004 12:31:45 BST
To: shortc@parliament.uk
Dear Ms. Short,
Thank you for sharing your knowledge of proceedings in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq; the extracts from your book published in The Independent have made for fascinating reading.
The passage cited in Saturday's story ("Lies and consequences: Clare Short accuses Blair of misleading Britain over case for war") concluded as follows:
"The question we must all address is whether it is acceptable for the Prime Minister to deceive us in the making of war and the taking and sacrificing of human life because he personally believed it was the right thing to do. Do we want to live under a constitutional system that allows decisions to be made in this highly personalised way?"
In the absence of any other concerted effort to hold the Prime Minister to account, there remains the ultimate sanction of impeachment and a motion to debate this is currently being drafted, as I'm sure you are aware.
Commenting on the report which lays out the case for impeachment, its co-author, Dan Plesch, an Honourary Fellow of Birkbeck College at the University of London, said:
“It is unheard for a minister to knowingly deceive Parliament and the public and to refuse to resign. Beverley Hughes and Peter Mandelson were forced to resign for misleading Parliament. Can the Prime Minister honestly say that his actions were less serious than those of Ms Hughes and Mr Mandelson?
“Blair seriously misled and deceived the public over Iraq and there can be no greater offence for a Prime Minister. Impeachment is the only way to ensure that Tony Blair doesn't get away with this.”
Given that you concede that Blair knowingly deceived and that failure to hold him to account raises disturbing constitutional questions, can I conclude that you support the campaign for the Prime Minister's impeachment?"
Shh! We don't talk about that sort of thing. But it's quite alright to muse, as Short does today when recollecting her early days in power, that:
"[Blair] wished me luck and said he thought I could be a very good minister if I was able to come to terms with questions of expediency that I would have to face. I have occasionally pondered since what he had in mind, and wish I had asked him."
Reminds me of conversations with a newsdesk looking for excuses to kill a "controversial" story: even if it stinks, don't rock the boat.
Sunday, October 24, 2004
The Moral Maze
On the psychotracist's couch with gutrot, session III
Mess with the bullshit and get the horns.
The orgy of Schadenfreude that greeted Bill O'Reilly's sexual harrassment suit, much as it did Rush Limbaugh's addiction to hillbilly heroin, gives Frank Rich cause to give thanks for his home in the three-ring circus that is modern America; it also reveals a calamity-in-waiting:
"Sooner or later this untenable level of hypocrisy is going to lead to a civil war within the Republican Party."
Stroking his chin for the answer, Rich's New York Times colleague Nicholas Kristof makes a characteristically earnest attempt to engage with the pseudo-religiosity of the unreality-based presidency on its own terms, concluding:
"So, if we're going to cherry-pick biblical phrases and ignore the central message of love, then perhaps we should just ban marriage altogether?"
The epitome of liberal confusion, Kristof appears to have shot off on a tangent and missed the point entirely: we're talking about psychos, not common-or-garden religious nutjobs, as Xmphora recognises:
"That is exactly how psychopaths think and act. 'Reality' is as much a quibble to them as is morality. Strong people do what they want, and weak people just get to watch. The unfortunate thing is that the United States is powerful enough now that it can act without paying any attention to the opinions of anybody else, or even to the apparent realities which would normally constrain it."
Reflecting on how to reverse this alarming trend, Alexander Cockburn argues that the Democrats have lost their way so badly that they've committed themselves to carry on regardless:
"And if, against most current indications, Kerry wins? He has proffered almost nothing to look forward to, aside from a pledge, which can easily be aborted by a "crisis," to leave Social Security alone. With the Congress against him, he'll be mostly hogtied domestically. On the foreign front he's eagerly hogtied himself. No more compliant serf to the imperatives of Empire and to the government of Israel than Kerry has been visible this season. A November 3 movement, to pressure Kerry if he wins, rebuild if he loses? Many on the left have argued that. But how will they know which way to march, when they started this year with all the wrong maps?"
The clarity of morality blinds another seeker, while common sense gets sidelined in cyberspace, even though the bible has a simple message for anyone tempted to preach from the lectern: "Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye, and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote in thy brother's eye."
While the likes of Christopher Hitchens drone on about how the rest of us have lost our moral compass, it is worth remembering that such people are moralising inaccurately without a map, as Paul Savoy notes:
"There is only one truly serious question about the morality of the war, and that is the question posed more than fifty years ago by French Nobel laureate Albert Camus, looking back on two world wars that had slaughtered more than 70 million people: When do we have the right to kill our fellow human beings or let them be killed? What is needed is a national debate in the presidential election campaign that addresses the most important moral issue of our time."
Fat chance. Instead we've watched the Bush Administration rip up its own road-map for peace in the Middle East, thereby uniting the occupations of Palestine and Iraq in the minds of 1.2 billion Muslims. This would amount to a spectacular own goal were it not for the lashings of imperial hubris guiding the decision makers of both the U.S. and Israel, the useful tool which now appears to wag the dog in Washington, although this is officially a non-topic:
"Before the war, Bush connected nonexistent dots between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida. Now he and his neoconservative brain trust are mapping the Iraq conflict onto the Likud Party agenda in Palestine. This time, however, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy - and one that will have devastating repercussions for U.S. interests in both Iraq and the entire Arab world."
What drives this fool's crusade? As usual, a flawed and fraudulent misreading of history and its implications for the present, as Anatol Lieven observes in his new book, "America: Right or Wrong".
"Lieven's provocative final chapter argues that much of U.S. support for Israel is rooted not in the "civic creed" (e.g., support for a fellow liberal democracy) but in a nationalism that sees the Israelis as heroic cowboys and the Palestinians as savages who must be driven from their land, as Jackson did the Cherokees. Throughout, Lieven takes to task the American liberal intelligentsia for abandoning universalist principles in favor of ethnic chauvinism and nationalist fervor."
This does not go down well, even though Lieven is at pains to point out that red-rag radicalism is not his bag:
"I have never opposed the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza strip as such. Like so many people – Israeli, American and European, Jewish and non–Jewish – what I oppose is the use of that occupation to confiscate Palestinian land and plant Jewish settlers. Legally, this is contrary to international law as presently recognised. Morally, it recalls the dark days of previous imperial settlements, and is linked to religious beliefs which make any settlement, negotiation or even discussion of this issue much more difficult. Practically, the settlements have played an absolutely disastrous role in undermining the Oslo peace process and in inflaming Palestinian radicalism."
This is the ugly truth: the occupation is really a process of colonisation and two wrongs do not make a right, no matter what the Likud would have us believe, whether in relation to the present, the days of the British Mandate or the catastrophic ethnic cleansing of Palestinian Arabs in 1948, which enshrined the current cycle of injustice:
"While the expulsions of 1948 may have been necessary for Israel’s survival, the lies which they have generated over the succeeding generations, and which continue to this day, have been extremely dangerous for both Israel and the US. It would have been far better if Israel, and partisans of Israel in the US, had – like David Ben Gurion in private - accepted the truth of what happened in 1948, and then used it as the basis for thinking seriously about compensation and laying the foundations for future peace. Instead, the pro-Israel camp committed itself to an interlocking set of moral and historical falsehoods.
"Over time, the intellectual consequences of these positions have spread like a forest of aquatic weeds until they have entangled and choked a significant part of the US national debate concerning relations not only with the Muslim world but with the outside world in general, and have thereby fed the worst strains of American nationalism."
Some argue, with considerable justification, that Zionism has proved to be a consistently racist ideology, although saying as much can cost you your job. But the right to self-determination need not carry that baggage, as the editor of a collection of Jewish writings on the subject attests:
"Jewish critics of Zionism and Israel have been treated by the Jewish establishment as, at best, innocent oddballs, naïve about the ever-present danger of another Holocaust, and too soft to inflict the brutalities necessary for the preservation of "Jewish democracy" in the Arab world - a "tough neighborhood," as Thomas Friedman constantly reminds us. At worst, such critics have stood accused of being irresponsible, crazy and "self-hating," if not downright disloyal.
"I prefer to see them, however, as heirs to a prophetic Jewish tradition of moral criticism, and to the secular, cosmopolitan ideals of the Enlightenment, grounded in a commitment to human equality and solidarity. By opposing the injustices committed in their name, they have shown that there is another way of honoring the memory of Jews who perished in the pogroms and concentration camps of Europe, and that a concern for the fate of the Jews need not come at the expense of the Palestinian people."
So where do we go from here? Should there be one state or two? How to rein in the new Stern Gang of settlers who would condemn the Palestinians to bantustans at best and Jordan at worst, even if the recent silence of the suicide bombers were to continue for the foreseeable future? How impossible is peace when a man like Ariel Sharon gets death threats for being too moderate?
The marginalised voices of non-violent protestors are struggling to be heard; exhortations across the apartheid barrier for solidarity stir deep misgivings, particularly when they come from an outspoken Rabbi:
"[Rabbi] Lerner argues that it is not fair to ask an oppressed group to take on the burden of convincing the oppressor that the oppressed continue to see the oppressors as human beings deserving of respect and deserving to not be subjected to the same indignities that they have visited on the oppressed. Not fair. But, it is smart. And it is one of the few ways that one can imagine from the vantage point of US and global politics in 2004 how the Palestinian people are ever going to get out from under the boot of Israeli occupation with its attendant forms of oppression."
Perhaps. To combat the injustice in which they appear to be trapped, Palestinians are certainly casting around for a new strategy. Even their sympathisers in the Western media consistently misrepresent reality; so sophisticated is the wall of propaganda they face from Israel, whose nuclear arsenal makes a mockery of the suggestion it could somehow be driven into the sea. For all the outrage about suicide bombings, Israelis have killed Palestinians at a rate of three to one over the past four years of the current intifada and Israeli brutality is rarely exposed with the same vigour that attends coverage of a bus bombing.
Has the well been so poisoned in the Middle East that future generations are condemned to suffer because of our inability to learn from the horrors of the past? It is hard to escape this conclusion, when so many appeals for help fall on deaf ears. The Israeli Foreign Ministry appears to be worried that the tide is turning, although they may just be flying a kite; don't expect to see sanctions slapped on the apartheid state any time soon. For now, it looks as unlikely as the prospect of unravelling the oxymoron of humanitarian intervention by dispatching 200,000 blue helmets to the West Bank.
Yet somehow something must be done. For journalists, the place to start is to say "not in my name" and certainly not under my byline. And stick to it.
Otherwise you're just another pawn on the grand chessboard of the Great War for Civilisation.
Mess with the bullshit and get the horns.
The orgy of Schadenfreude that greeted Bill O'Reilly's sexual harrassment suit, much as it did Rush Limbaugh's addiction to hillbilly heroin, gives Frank Rich cause to give thanks for his home in the three-ring circus that is modern America; it also reveals a calamity-in-waiting:
"Sooner or later this untenable level of hypocrisy is going to lead to a civil war within the Republican Party."
Stroking his chin for the answer, Rich's New York Times colleague Nicholas Kristof makes a characteristically earnest attempt to engage with the pseudo-religiosity of the unreality-based presidency on its own terms, concluding:
"So, if we're going to cherry-pick biblical phrases and ignore the central message of love, then perhaps we should just ban marriage altogether?"
The epitome of liberal confusion, Kristof appears to have shot off on a tangent and missed the point entirely: we're talking about psychos, not common-or-garden religious nutjobs, as Xmphora recognises:
"That is exactly how psychopaths think and act. 'Reality' is as much a quibble to them as is morality. Strong people do what they want, and weak people just get to watch. The unfortunate thing is that the United States is powerful enough now that it can act without paying any attention to the opinions of anybody else, or even to the apparent realities which would normally constrain it."
Reflecting on how to reverse this alarming trend, Alexander Cockburn argues that the Democrats have lost their way so badly that they've committed themselves to carry on regardless:
"And if, against most current indications, Kerry wins? He has proffered almost nothing to look forward to, aside from a pledge, which can easily be aborted by a "crisis," to leave Social Security alone. With the Congress against him, he'll be mostly hogtied domestically. On the foreign front he's eagerly hogtied himself. No more compliant serf to the imperatives of Empire and to the government of Israel than Kerry has been visible this season. A November 3 movement, to pressure Kerry if he wins, rebuild if he loses? Many on the left have argued that. But how will they know which way to march, when they started this year with all the wrong maps?"
The clarity of morality blinds another seeker, while common sense gets sidelined in cyberspace, even though the bible has a simple message for anyone tempted to preach from the lectern: "Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye, and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote in thy brother's eye."
While the likes of Christopher Hitchens drone on about how the rest of us have lost our moral compass, it is worth remembering that such people are moralising inaccurately without a map, as Paul Savoy notes:
"There is only one truly serious question about the morality of the war, and that is the question posed more than fifty years ago by French Nobel laureate Albert Camus, looking back on two world wars that had slaughtered more than 70 million people: When do we have the right to kill our fellow human beings or let them be killed? What is needed is a national debate in the presidential election campaign that addresses the most important moral issue of our time."
Fat chance. Instead we've watched the Bush Administration rip up its own road-map for peace in the Middle East, thereby uniting the occupations of Palestine and Iraq in the minds of 1.2 billion Muslims. This would amount to a spectacular own goal were it not for the lashings of imperial hubris guiding the decision makers of both the U.S. and Israel, the useful tool which now appears to wag the dog in Washington, although this is officially a non-topic:
"Before the war, Bush connected nonexistent dots between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida. Now he and his neoconservative brain trust are mapping the Iraq conflict onto the Likud Party agenda in Palestine. This time, however, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy - and one that will have devastating repercussions for U.S. interests in both Iraq and the entire Arab world."
What drives this fool's crusade? As usual, a flawed and fraudulent misreading of history and its implications for the present, as Anatol Lieven observes in his new book, "America: Right or Wrong".
"Lieven's provocative final chapter argues that much of U.S. support for Israel is rooted not in the "civic creed" (e.g., support for a fellow liberal democracy) but in a nationalism that sees the Israelis as heroic cowboys and the Palestinians as savages who must be driven from their land, as Jackson did the Cherokees. Throughout, Lieven takes to task the American liberal intelligentsia for abandoning universalist principles in favor of ethnic chauvinism and nationalist fervor."
This does not go down well, even though Lieven is at pains to point out that red-rag radicalism is not his bag:
"I have never opposed the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza strip as such. Like so many people – Israeli, American and European, Jewish and non–Jewish – what I oppose is the use of that occupation to confiscate Palestinian land and plant Jewish settlers. Legally, this is contrary to international law as presently recognised. Morally, it recalls the dark days of previous imperial settlements, and is linked to religious beliefs which make any settlement, negotiation or even discussion of this issue much more difficult. Practically, the settlements have played an absolutely disastrous role in undermining the Oslo peace process and in inflaming Palestinian radicalism."
This is the ugly truth: the occupation is really a process of colonisation and two wrongs do not make a right, no matter what the Likud would have us believe, whether in relation to the present, the days of the British Mandate or the catastrophic ethnic cleansing of Palestinian Arabs in 1948, which enshrined the current cycle of injustice:
"While the expulsions of 1948 may have been necessary for Israel’s survival, the lies which they have generated over the succeeding generations, and which continue to this day, have been extremely dangerous for both Israel and the US. It would have been far better if Israel, and partisans of Israel in the US, had – like David Ben Gurion in private - accepted the truth of what happened in 1948, and then used it as the basis for thinking seriously about compensation and laying the foundations for future peace. Instead, the pro-Israel camp committed itself to an interlocking set of moral and historical falsehoods.
"Over time, the intellectual consequences of these positions have spread like a forest of aquatic weeds until they have entangled and choked a significant part of the US national debate concerning relations not only with the Muslim world but with the outside world in general, and have thereby fed the worst strains of American nationalism."
Some argue, with considerable justification, that Zionism has proved to be a consistently racist ideology, although saying as much can cost you your job. But the right to self-determination need not carry that baggage, as the editor of a collection of Jewish writings on the subject attests:
"Jewish critics of Zionism and Israel have been treated by the Jewish establishment as, at best, innocent oddballs, naïve about the ever-present danger of another Holocaust, and too soft to inflict the brutalities necessary for the preservation of "Jewish democracy" in the Arab world - a "tough neighborhood," as Thomas Friedman constantly reminds us. At worst, such critics have stood accused of being irresponsible, crazy and "self-hating," if not downright disloyal.
"I prefer to see them, however, as heirs to a prophetic Jewish tradition of moral criticism, and to the secular, cosmopolitan ideals of the Enlightenment, grounded in a commitment to human equality and solidarity. By opposing the injustices committed in their name, they have shown that there is another way of honoring the memory of Jews who perished in the pogroms and concentration camps of Europe, and that a concern for the fate of the Jews need not come at the expense of the Palestinian people."
So where do we go from here? Should there be one state or two? How to rein in the new Stern Gang of settlers who would condemn the Palestinians to bantustans at best and Jordan at worst, even if the recent silence of the suicide bombers were to continue for the foreseeable future? How impossible is peace when a man like Ariel Sharon gets death threats for being too moderate?
The marginalised voices of non-violent protestors are struggling to be heard; exhortations across the apartheid barrier for solidarity stir deep misgivings, particularly when they come from an outspoken Rabbi:
"[Rabbi] Lerner argues that it is not fair to ask an oppressed group to take on the burden of convincing the oppressor that the oppressed continue to see the oppressors as human beings deserving of respect and deserving to not be subjected to the same indignities that they have visited on the oppressed. Not fair. But, it is smart. And it is one of the few ways that one can imagine from the vantage point of US and global politics in 2004 how the Palestinian people are ever going to get out from under the boot of Israeli occupation with its attendant forms of oppression."
Perhaps. To combat the injustice in which they appear to be trapped, Palestinians are certainly casting around for a new strategy. Even their sympathisers in the Western media consistently misrepresent reality; so sophisticated is the wall of propaganda they face from Israel, whose nuclear arsenal makes a mockery of the suggestion it could somehow be driven into the sea. For all the outrage about suicide bombings, Israelis have killed Palestinians at a rate of three to one over the past four years of the current intifada and Israeli brutality is rarely exposed with the same vigour that attends coverage of a bus bombing.
Has the well been so poisoned in the Middle East that future generations are condemned to suffer because of our inability to learn from the horrors of the past? It is hard to escape this conclusion, when so many appeals for help fall on deaf ears. The Israeli Foreign Ministry appears to be worried that the tide is turning, although they may just be flying a kite; don't expect to see sanctions slapped on the apartheid state any time soon. For now, it looks as unlikely as the prospect of unravelling the oxymoron of humanitarian intervention by dispatching 200,000 blue helmets to the West Bank.
Yet somehow something must be done. For journalists, the place to start is to say "not in my name" and certainly not under my byline. And stick to it.
Otherwise you're just another pawn on the grand chessboard of the Great War for Civilisation.
Saturday, October 23, 2004
That's infotainment
What's inside the onion?
U.S. finishes a "strong second" in Iraq war
BAGHDAD - After 19 months of struggle in Iraq, U.S. military officials conceded a loss to Iraqi insurgents Monday, but said America can be proud of finishing "a very strong second."
"We went out there, gave it our all, and fought a really good fight," said Gen. George W. Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq. "America's got nothing to be ashamed of. We outperformed Great Britain, Poland, and a lot of the other top-notch nations, but Iraq just wouldn't stay down for the count. It may have come down to them simply wanting it more."
American tanks and infantry surged out to an impressive early lead in March 2003, scoring major points by capturing Baghdad early in the faceoff. The stage seemed set for a second American victory in as many clashes with Iraq, with commentators and generals alike declaring the contest all but decided with the fall of Tikrit in April 2003.
"In spite of jumping out to an early lead and having the better-trained, better-equipped team, I'm afraid we still came up short in the end," Casey said. "Sometimes, the underdog just pulls one out on you. But there's no reason for the guys who were out in the field to feel any shame over this one. They played through pain and injury and never questioned the strategy, even when we started losing ground."
"The troops were great out there," Casey continued. "It's not their fault the guys with the clipboards just couldn't put this one away."
Casey said that, although the U.S. military did not win, it did set records for kills, yardage gained, palaces overrun, defensive stops, and military bases stolen.
U.S. finishes a "strong second" in Iraq war
BAGHDAD - After 19 months of struggle in Iraq, U.S. military officials conceded a loss to Iraqi insurgents Monday, but said America can be proud of finishing "a very strong second."
"We went out there, gave it our all, and fought a really good fight," said Gen. George W. Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq. "America's got nothing to be ashamed of. We outperformed Great Britain, Poland, and a lot of the other top-notch nations, but Iraq just wouldn't stay down for the count. It may have come down to them simply wanting it more."
American tanks and infantry surged out to an impressive early lead in March 2003, scoring major points by capturing Baghdad early in the faceoff. The stage seemed set for a second American victory in as many clashes with Iraq, with commentators and generals alike declaring the contest all but decided with the fall of Tikrit in April 2003.
"In spite of jumping out to an early lead and having the better-trained, better-equipped team, I'm afraid we still came up short in the end," Casey said. "Sometimes, the underdog just pulls one out on you. But there's no reason for the guys who were out in the field to feel any shame over this one. They played through pain and injury and never questioned the strategy, even when we started losing ground."
"The troops were great out there," Casey continued. "It's not their fault the guys with the clipboards just couldn't put this one away."
Casey said that, although the U.S. military did not win, it did set records for kills, yardage gained, palaces overrun, defensive stops, and military bases stolen.
Now they tell us...
Every sicko frantic hack deserves shooting with a candid camera. Unfortunately, there is an unwritten rule not to rat on the rimming ranks of your illustrious peers, except over drinks.
But once in a while some particularly twisted statesman-cum-war-criminal such as Henry Kissinger decides to call their bluff and reveal that the terriers in the hackpack are all bark and no bite:
"In thousands of telephone conversations between President Nixon's controversial foreign policy adviser and the journalists meant to cast an objective look at his actions, there emerges a litany of press sycophancy that would regularly win Private Eye's Order of the Brown Nose."
Just don't expect to read about Judith Miller in the same article. That's only news once it's too late, you see. Very important that. It simply wouldn't do to assert the primacy of reality among a faith-based community:
"Reporters assumed that the praise they lavished on Dr Kissinger, who held the unprecedentedly powerful dual roles of Secretary of State and National Security Adviser, would remain private.
"Instead, he got a secretary to listen in and take down every word, leaving many of those journalists, now in the autumn of their years, slightly crestfallen and sheepish yesterday when they were contacted by The New York Times.
"Just after President Ford had dismissed Dr Kissinger as his National Security Adviser in 1975, Marvin Kalb, a CBS correspondent, called to say: 'The only reason for this call was to tell you that despite all appearances to the contrary in this city you still have some friends.'
"Dr Kissinger replied: 'I cannot tell you how much I appreciate that.'
"A year later, in the last days of Dr Kissinger's White House tenure, Ted Koppel, then the diplomatic correspondent for ABC News, told him: 'It has been an extraordinary three years for me, and I have enjoyed it immensely. You are an intriguing man, and if I had a teacher like you earlier I might not have been so cynical.'
"Dr Kissinger replied: 'You have been a good friend.' Mr Koppel ended the conversation by saying: 'We are lucky to have had you.'"
Self-abuse that's fit to print.
But once in a while some particularly twisted statesman-cum-war-criminal such as Henry Kissinger decides to call their bluff and reveal that the terriers in the hackpack are all bark and no bite:
"In thousands of telephone conversations between President Nixon's controversial foreign policy adviser and the journalists meant to cast an objective look at his actions, there emerges a litany of press sycophancy that would regularly win Private Eye's Order of the Brown Nose."
Just don't expect to read about Judith Miller in the same article. That's only news once it's too late, you see. Very important that. It simply wouldn't do to assert the primacy of reality among a faith-based community:
"Reporters assumed that the praise they lavished on Dr Kissinger, who held the unprecedentedly powerful dual roles of Secretary of State and National Security Adviser, would remain private.
"Instead, he got a secretary to listen in and take down every word, leaving many of those journalists, now in the autumn of their years, slightly crestfallen and sheepish yesterday when they were contacted by The New York Times.
"Just after President Ford had dismissed Dr Kissinger as his National Security Adviser in 1975, Marvin Kalb, a CBS correspondent, called to say: 'The only reason for this call was to tell you that despite all appearances to the contrary in this city you still have some friends.'
"Dr Kissinger replied: 'I cannot tell you how much I appreciate that.'
"A year later, in the last days of Dr Kissinger's White House tenure, Ted Koppel, then the diplomatic correspondent for ABC News, told him: 'It has been an extraordinary three years for me, and I have enjoyed it immensely. You are an intriguing man, and if I had a teacher like you earlier I might not have been so cynical.'
"Dr Kissinger replied: 'You have been a good friend.' Mr Koppel ended the conversation by saying: 'We are lucky to have had you.'"
Self-abuse that's fit to print.
Friday, October 22, 2004
Cognitive dissonance
On the psychotracist's couch with gutrot, session II
"We must raise journalism's game," urged John Lloyd at today's Reuters memorial lecture. "Serious political journalism, whatever its opinions, should be independent":
"Lloyd, whose book What the Media Are Doing To Our Politics says journalists are responsible for the public cynicism about the political scene, said Britain's media should take its cue from the US where a strong relationship with universities provided an "intellectual rigour" lacking in the British press."
What? Take our cues from the land of Democracy Inaction? The rigour does not extend to revealing abuses of power unless the mood music's right. What Lloyd means to say is simple: We must expose the truth; we must be independent; we mustn't offend anyone important unless quoting somebody else important. Er...
So the sliding scale of importance is the greasy pole of power. And they don't like it up 'em, do they Mr. Mainwaring?
How confusing. Unless he meant Paul Krugman, who at least has the guts to speak of the memory hole rather than backslapping his elitist chums at the New York Times:
"We must not repeat the mistake of 2000 by refusing to acknowledge the possibility that a narrow Bush win, especially if it depends on Florida, rests on the systematic disenfranchisement of minority voters. And the media must not treat such a suspect win as a validation of skewed reporting that has consistently overstated Mr. Bush's popular support."
"We must raise journalism's game," urged John Lloyd at today's Reuters memorial lecture. "Serious political journalism, whatever its opinions, should be independent":
"Lloyd, whose book What the Media Are Doing To Our Politics says journalists are responsible for the public cynicism about the political scene, said Britain's media should take its cue from the US where a strong relationship with universities provided an "intellectual rigour" lacking in the British press."
What? Take our cues from the land of Democracy Inaction? The rigour does not extend to revealing abuses of power unless the mood music's right. What Lloyd means to say is simple: We must expose the truth; we must be independent; we mustn't offend anyone important unless quoting somebody else important. Er...
So the sliding scale of importance is the greasy pole of power. And they don't like it up 'em, do they Mr. Mainwaring?
How confusing. Unless he meant Paul Krugman, who at least has the guts to speak of the memory hole rather than backslapping his elitist chums at the New York Times:
"We must not repeat the mistake of 2000 by refusing to acknowledge the possibility that a narrow Bush win, especially if it depends on Florida, rests on the systematic disenfranchisement of minority voters. And the media must not treat such a suspect win as a validation of skewed reporting that has consistently overstated Mr. Bush's popular support."
In denial
On the psychotracist's couch with gutrot, session I
The truth will out somehow, and it often ain't pretty. This month's Harper's has issues with the official account of September 11, 2001, despite its recent nomination for a major non-fiction award:
"The ideal readers of the 9/11 Commission Report are those who resemble the Commission itself in believing that a strong inclination to trust the word of highly placed others is evidence of personal moral distinction."
Right on.
"There's little mystery about why the Commission is tongue-tied. It can't call a liar a liar."
And I was like, no way dude.
"What the Commissioners had to supply amounted to an alibi, both for the President and for themselves."
Dr. Djukanovic's diagnosis:
"Their motivations appear to be the promotion of themselves and whomever they can speak for to further this goal. This requires an acute addiction to the mindset of the powerful, which one internalizes when joining their ranks, the better to be able to influence them when it comes to employment prospects.
"After a few years of thinking like this, it becomes a no-brainer. Whether they believe what they say or not is almost irrelevant; they believe above all else in the importance of believing in the national myths which their egos pretend to serve. Immediate sedation required."
Mindful of the coverup commissions on this side of the pond, Britain's Green Party concurs.
"Tony Blair has committed the gravest error that a Prime Minister can. And so if he won't resign, then he must be impeached.
"Because if this war is allowed to pass with impunity, the consequences will be enormous and far-reaching - not just for Britain, but for the world: Pre-emptive wars will be deemed acceptable, even against countries that pose no risk. International law will have become irrelevant and meaningless, to be broken by powerful states at will.
"And in Britain, a precedent will have been established. From now on, a prime minister will be able to mislead Parliament and the public on the gravest matter - and pay no price."
Goodness gracious me, a plain-speaking politician. Although the words sound familiar, except for the first paragraph, which was missing from the original.
Does Jonathan Freedland moonlight as a Green Party speechwriter to vent his spleen, or is this a textbook example of the boundaries of the expressible among the Guardians of our liberal thought police? This far but no further and all that. We'll let a little bit through but it just wouldn't do to spell it out day in, day out. Quoth the Greens:
"There were no weapons of mass destruction. There was no serious or current threat to Britain. And establishing this truth has taken a bloody, illegal, unnecessary and immoral war in which over 20,000 people have already died in Iraq, with tens, if not hundreds, of thousands have been injured.
"Many people have focused on demanding an apology from Mr. Blair. I don't think we want his apology - who would believe him if he gave it anyway? An apology is nowhere near enough. What the Greens are demanding is his immediate and unconditional resignation."
Don't expect to read that on the front page of The Guardian or The Independent any time soon. What's up with the circular thought processes? Today's Guardian comment pages feature the revelation that Bliar's Britain is goose-stepping towards an elective dictatorship:
"If a collective cabinet system no longer functions well, and parliament is docile or impotent, we may be nearer to "elective dictatorship" than when Lord Hailsham coined the phrase a quarter of a century ago. Perhaps the country is content that the media should be the prime constraint upon highly centralised power."
What a terrifying prospect. Might the penny be starting to drop at last? Or must we, the people, make do with Michael Quinlan's hand-wringing while we await a knight in shining armour to resurrect the round table? I thought the pen-chewing paper-pushers were supposed to be mightier than the sword. Hahaha.
What more do journalists want? The establishment lackey who gave Tony and his chief spook a clean bill of health is happy to go on record about what a farce it all was:
"The proper place where governments should survive or fall is in Parliament or in the electorate. It would have been a heavy responsibility and I think one that it would have been improper for us to say we think the Government should resign on this matter."
The banality of evil jobsworths strikes again. Is there some kind of unwritten rule against speaking out? Are journalists truly doomed to be mouthpieces for officialdom? Fear of the unknown must really be crippling. You only live once, so best play it safe, eh? Stick to plastic chicks with hicks:
"Go back to bed Britannia, your government has figured out how it all transpired. Go back to bed Britannia, your goverment is in control again. Here, here's American Gladiators. Watch this, shut up, go back to bed Britannia, here is American Gladiators, here is 256KB channels of it! Watch these pituitary retards fuck their banging skulls together and congratulate you on living in the land of freedom. Here you go Britannia - you are free to do what we tell you! You are free to do what we tell you!"
Land of hope and glory? Yo, ho, ho and a throttle from Rummy.
The truth will out somehow, and it often ain't pretty. This month's Harper's has issues with the official account of September 11, 2001, despite its recent nomination for a major non-fiction award:
"The ideal readers of the 9/11 Commission Report are those who resemble the Commission itself in believing that a strong inclination to trust the word of highly placed others is evidence of personal moral distinction."
Right on.
"There's little mystery about why the Commission is tongue-tied. It can't call a liar a liar."
And I was like, no way dude.
"What the Commissioners had to supply amounted to an alibi, both for the President and for themselves."
Dr. Djukanovic's diagnosis:
"Their motivations appear to be the promotion of themselves and whomever they can speak for to further this goal. This requires an acute addiction to the mindset of the powerful, which one internalizes when joining their ranks, the better to be able to influence them when it comes to employment prospects.
"After a few years of thinking like this, it becomes a no-brainer. Whether they believe what they say or not is almost irrelevant; they believe above all else in the importance of believing in the national myths which their egos pretend to serve. Immediate sedation required."
Mindful of the coverup commissions on this side of the pond, Britain's Green Party concurs.
"Tony Blair has committed the gravest error that a Prime Minister can. And so if he won't resign, then he must be impeached.
"Because if this war is allowed to pass with impunity, the consequences will be enormous and far-reaching - not just for Britain, but for the world: Pre-emptive wars will be deemed acceptable, even against countries that pose no risk. International law will have become irrelevant and meaningless, to be broken by powerful states at will.
"And in Britain, a precedent will have been established. From now on, a prime minister will be able to mislead Parliament and the public on the gravest matter - and pay no price."
Goodness gracious me, a plain-speaking politician. Although the words sound familiar, except for the first paragraph, which was missing from the original.
Does Jonathan Freedland moonlight as a Green Party speechwriter to vent his spleen, or is this a textbook example of the boundaries of the expressible among the Guardians of our liberal thought police? This far but no further and all that. We'll let a little bit through but it just wouldn't do to spell it out day in, day out. Quoth the Greens:
"There were no weapons of mass destruction. There was no serious or current threat to Britain. And establishing this truth has taken a bloody, illegal, unnecessary and immoral war in which over 20,000 people have already died in Iraq, with tens, if not hundreds, of thousands have been injured.
"Many people have focused on demanding an apology from Mr. Blair. I don't think we want his apology - who would believe him if he gave it anyway? An apology is nowhere near enough. What the Greens are demanding is his immediate and unconditional resignation."
Don't expect to read that on the front page of The Guardian or The Independent any time soon. What's up with the circular thought processes? Today's Guardian comment pages feature the revelation that Bliar's Britain is goose-stepping towards an elective dictatorship:
"If a collective cabinet system no longer functions well, and parliament is docile or impotent, we may be nearer to "elective dictatorship" than when Lord Hailsham coined the phrase a quarter of a century ago. Perhaps the country is content that the media should be the prime constraint upon highly centralised power."
What a terrifying prospect. Might the penny be starting to drop at last? Or must we, the people, make do with Michael Quinlan's hand-wringing while we await a knight in shining armour to resurrect the round table? I thought the pen-chewing paper-pushers were supposed to be mightier than the sword. Hahaha.
What more do journalists want? The establishment lackey who gave Tony and his chief spook a clean bill of health is happy to go on record about what a farce it all was:
"The proper place where governments should survive or fall is in Parliament or in the electorate. It would have been a heavy responsibility and I think one that it would have been improper for us to say we think the Government should resign on this matter."
The banality of evil jobsworths strikes again. Is there some kind of unwritten rule against speaking out? Are journalists truly doomed to be mouthpieces for officialdom? Fear of the unknown must really be crippling. You only live once, so best play it safe, eh? Stick to plastic chicks with hicks:
"Go back to bed Britannia, your government has figured out how it all transpired. Go back to bed Britannia, your goverment is in control again. Here, here's American Gladiators. Watch this, shut up, go back to bed Britannia, here is American Gladiators, here is 256KB channels of it! Watch these pituitary retards fuck their banging skulls together and congratulate you on living in the land of freedom. Here you go Britannia - you are free to do what we tell you! You are free to do what we tell you!"
Land of hope and glory? Yo, ho, ho and a throttle from Rummy.
Crystalline balls
Never mind the 20:20 hindsight, check out the 2020 foresight of the bludgeoning Curmudgeon. All the news that will be news, reproduced in full without permission:
Futures traders wishing to profit unfairly from the revelations contained herein are invited to apply to the reporter with appropriate incentives
The former Prime Minister, Lord Blair of Belmarsh, today paid a heartfelt tribute to his valued colleague-in-arms, George W Bush, who died on Monday after six years as President of the United States and thirteen years as Emergency Commander-in-Chief under the Homeland Constitution. Speaking from his private bunker, Lord Blair referred to Mr Bush as "a valued colleague-in-arms" who deserved his "heartfelt tribute".
With the oil reserves in the Middle East beginning to sputter, the markets were volatile today, settling down towards evening with the Prime Minister's announcement that restrictions on air traffic over Britain will be re-downrevised again later this year to allow up to three times more commercial flights. A sixth London airport will be built to help accommodate the extra traffic, resulting in the creation of twelve thousand new jobs for Cambodian refugees under the Cheaper Compassion Act.
The leader of the opposition, Boris Johnson, criticised the plan, claiming that the environmental impact of the new airport could be detrimental to the countryside. "I trust the Government's contractors will ensure that the Cambodians are properly screened for cleanliness," he said. The Prime Minister said that all workers permitted to benefit from the Cheaper Compassion Act were rigorously trained in enviro-scrupulosity, and that further Government interference in contractors' practices would be an unacceptable violation of free market principles.
The BBC has apologised to Israel for anti-semitic bias in its broadcasting. The use of the word "invasion" to describe Israel's pre-emptive police action against the United Arab Emirates has been sharply criticised by the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as by the Knesset, the White House, the Pentagon, the B'nai Brith Anti-Defamation League, the Eastern Democrat mayor of Baghdad, and the Home Secretary. The BBC says it has reprimanded the reporter who used the offending term and will be handing him over to Mossad if there is any repetition of the incident.
In other news, a landslide in Bangladesh has killed about ten thousand people and made half a million homeless. Aid workers said the problems were caused by a lack of topsoil. The world shortage of topsoil is especially acute in Bangladesh because of the country's inefficient environmental policies, it was stated. No Britons were hurt.
Don't spin out. Do something. Anything. Before it's too late.
Futures traders wishing to profit unfairly from the revelations contained herein are invited to apply to the reporter with appropriate incentives
The former Prime Minister, Lord Blair of Belmarsh, today paid a heartfelt tribute to his valued colleague-in-arms, George W Bush, who died on Monday after six years as President of the United States and thirteen years as Emergency Commander-in-Chief under the Homeland Constitution. Speaking from his private bunker, Lord Blair referred to Mr Bush as "a valued colleague-in-arms" who deserved his "heartfelt tribute".
With the oil reserves in the Middle East beginning to sputter, the markets were volatile today, settling down towards evening with the Prime Minister's announcement that restrictions on air traffic over Britain will be re-downrevised again later this year to allow up to three times more commercial flights. A sixth London airport will be built to help accommodate the extra traffic, resulting in the creation of twelve thousand new jobs for Cambodian refugees under the Cheaper Compassion Act.
The leader of the opposition, Boris Johnson, criticised the plan, claiming that the environmental impact of the new airport could be detrimental to the countryside. "I trust the Government's contractors will ensure that the Cambodians are properly screened for cleanliness," he said. The Prime Minister said that all workers permitted to benefit from the Cheaper Compassion Act were rigorously trained in enviro-scrupulosity, and that further Government interference in contractors' practices would be an unacceptable violation of free market principles.
The BBC has apologised to Israel for anti-semitic bias in its broadcasting. The use of the word "invasion" to describe Israel's pre-emptive police action against the United Arab Emirates has been sharply criticised by the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as by the Knesset, the White House, the Pentagon, the B'nai Brith Anti-Defamation League, the Eastern Democrat mayor of Baghdad, and the Home Secretary. The BBC says it has reprimanded the reporter who used the offending term and will be handing him over to Mossad if there is any repetition of the incident.
In other news, a landslide in Bangladesh has killed about ten thousand people and made half a million homeless. Aid workers said the problems were caused by a lack of topsoil. The world shortage of topsoil is especially acute in Bangladesh because of the country's inefficient environmental policies, it was stated. No Britons were hurt.
Don't spin out. Do something. Anything. Before it's too late.
Thursday, October 21, 2004
Regime change begins at home
It's tough choices time in Banana Republic: the suit or the brute? Thanks to the wonders of off-balance sheet accounting in Freedom Inc., your vote don't mean shit unless you live in Florida or Ohio.
To guard against the confusion of last time around, when pregnant chads hit the headlines instead of leck-shun fraahd, the Sunshine State has started vote-rigging early. Which means that democracy's last stand will be staged in the beautifully named Buckeye State, although some nostalgia buffs refuse to rule out Pennsylvania.
Worrying about the implications of another electile dysfunction, concerned liberals at The Guardian decided to wade into the Anyone But Bush campaign with the slogan: America, let us love you again. The jury is still out:
"A quick Google search as I write this produces the Washington Post wondering, "Can the Brits swing Ohio?", and the New York Times reporting, in unusually demotic voice, "British Two Cents Draws, in Sum, a Two-Word Reply: Butt Out". Elsewhere, detailing the robust response to our campaign, the Arab News in Saudi Arabia asks gravely: "Can the 'special' US-UK relationship survive?"."
Others were more forthright:
"Have you not noticed that Americans don't give two shits what Europeans think of us? Each email someone gets from some arrogant Brit telling us why to NOT vote for George Bush is going to backfire, you stupid, yellow-toothed pansies ... I don't give a rat's ass if our election is going to have an effect on your worthless little life. I really don't. If you want to have a meaningful election in your crappy little island full of shitty food and yellow teeth, then maybe you should try not to sell your sovereignty out to Brussels and Berlin, dipshit. Oh, yeah - and brush your goddamned teeth, you filthy animals.
Wading River, NY"
At last, a grain of truth about the special relationship. Tempting as it is to remind such people of the American habit of meddling with the electoral processes and fundamental structures of other countries, there are more immediate issues to attend to. Back to the dilemma:
"Naturally, the main thing we're thinking about these days is the election. Just as naturally, we're militantly anti-Bush. But actually, I'm not entirely all that certain that a Kerry win would be the best thing in the long run. Iraq is a mess (-o-potamia), and I don't have any real hope that it's going to magically "get better" in some way or another... So maybe this means I'm mildly pro-Bush (even though I'll vote for Kerry). Hell, I don't know. I hate this shit."
Stumbling out of the fog of war to reveal some basic truths, The New York Times quoted an adviser to the chimp, although not his brain, as saying the Bush Administration was officially no longer part of the "reality-based community". For this, and other transgressions, the paper which brought you the invasion of Iraq has fallen out of favour with the apes of wrath.
So what about the October surprise? I'm still waiting for mine, but it looks like it won't be coming from the Guardian, if the intelligence behind Operation Clark County is any guide:
"Guardian readers are a reassuringly engaged, resourceful and largely charming bunch; parts of America have become so isolationist that even the idea of individuals receiving letters from foreigners is enough to give politicians the collywobbles and, perhaps, in the digital age little acorns can turn into big trees very, very quickly."
Heart-warming stuff no doubt, although Guardian journalists tend to be alarmingly disengaged, remorseless and largely preoccupied with what people might think, which is possibly why Ian Katz overlooks the elephant on his lawn:
Could another four years of Bush turn the tide against the madness of Tony Blair? Are there no limits to the willingness of mainstream journalists to abandon their duty to hold the powerful to account? It would appear not, judging by Johann Hari's sneering in yesterday's Independent, which overlooked the fact that the motion to impeach Tony Blair is being drawn up by a senior Tory barrister, not an anarchist mob.
So what's holding back the commissars of the commentariat? Simple, says a prominent impeachment campaigner: "They're too fucking chicken." In any case, it's always much easier to hurl abuse at foreigners.
To guard against the confusion of last time around, when pregnant chads hit the headlines instead of leck-shun fraahd, the Sunshine State has started vote-rigging early. Which means that democracy's last stand will be staged in the beautifully named Buckeye State, although some nostalgia buffs refuse to rule out Pennsylvania.
Worrying about the implications of another electile dysfunction, concerned liberals at The Guardian decided to wade into the Anyone But Bush campaign with the slogan: America, let us love you again. The jury is still out:
"A quick Google search as I write this produces the Washington Post wondering, "Can the Brits swing Ohio?", and the New York Times reporting, in unusually demotic voice, "British Two Cents Draws, in Sum, a Two-Word Reply: Butt Out". Elsewhere, detailing the robust response to our campaign, the Arab News in Saudi Arabia asks gravely: "Can the 'special' US-UK relationship survive?"."
Others were more forthright:
"Have you not noticed that Americans don't give two shits what Europeans think of us? Each email someone gets from some arrogant Brit telling us why to NOT vote for George Bush is going to backfire, you stupid, yellow-toothed pansies ... I don't give a rat's ass if our election is going to have an effect on your worthless little life. I really don't. If you want to have a meaningful election in your crappy little island full of shitty food and yellow teeth, then maybe you should try not to sell your sovereignty out to Brussels and Berlin, dipshit. Oh, yeah - and brush your goddamned teeth, you filthy animals.
Wading River, NY"
At last, a grain of truth about the special relationship. Tempting as it is to remind such people of the American habit of meddling with the electoral processes and fundamental structures of other countries, there are more immediate issues to attend to. Back to the dilemma:
"Naturally, the main thing we're thinking about these days is the election. Just as naturally, we're militantly anti-Bush. But actually, I'm not entirely all that certain that a Kerry win would be the best thing in the long run. Iraq is a mess (-o-potamia), and I don't have any real hope that it's going to magically "get better" in some way or another... So maybe this means I'm mildly pro-Bush (even though I'll vote for Kerry). Hell, I don't know. I hate this shit."
Stumbling out of the fog of war to reveal some basic truths, The New York Times quoted an adviser to the chimp, although not his brain, as saying the Bush Administration was officially no longer part of the "reality-based community". For this, and other transgressions, the paper which brought you the invasion of Iraq has fallen out of favour with the apes of wrath.
So what about the October surprise? I'm still waiting for mine, but it looks like it won't be coming from the Guardian, if the intelligence behind Operation Clark County is any guide:
"Guardian readers are a reassuringly engaged, resourceful and largely charming bunch; parts of America have become so isolationist that even the idea of individuals receiving letters from foreigners is enough to give politicians the collywobbles and, perhaps, in the digital age little acorns can turn into big trees very, very quickly."
Heart-warming stuff no doubt, although Guardian journalists tend to be alarmingly disengaged, remorseless and largely preoccupied with what people might think, which is possibly why Ian Katz overlooks the elephant on his lawn:
Could another four years of Bush turn the tide against the madness of Tony Blair? Are there no limits to the willingness of mainstream journalists to abandon their duty to hold the powerful to account? It would appear not, judging by Johann Hari's sneering in yesterday's Independent, which overlooked the fact that the motion to impeach Tony Blair is being drawn up by a senior Tory barrister, not an anarchist mob.
So what's holding back the commissars of the commentariat? Simple, says a prominent impeachment campaigner: "They're too fucking chicken." In any case, it's always much easier to hurl abuse at foreigners.
Wednesday, October 20, 2004
Islamo-farce-ism
If we are to take such people at face value, as they appear to do themselves when writing about their favourite politicians, the cheerleaders of the Cruise Missile Left - a.k.a. Liberal Hawks in Statesidespeak - believe ever so passionately in the importance of being tough on terrorism.
The causes of terrorism, to say nothing of the terrorist undertakings of Western governments, are generally the preserve of their opponents, whose critique of the recourse to bellicosity is, according to the punditocracy's jargon du jour, better known as appeasement.
As Anatol Lieven notes, the irrational exuberance of the new crusaders exposes everything you never wanted to know about Empire because you were too ashamed to ask. Like the 19th Century missionaries they resemble most closely, the "bomb 'em to save 'em" lobby are not only singing from the wrong hymn sheet; they're worshipping a false god: war.
"[T]hey represent a form of liberal imperialism, of a kind that characterized much of the liberal scene in America and Europe a century ago. In the meantime, however, the historical circumstances have changed utterly. The liberal imperialists were explicitly antidemocratic. They believed that, at best, it would take generations of Western authoritarian rule before the "lesser breeds" they conquered could develop a capacity for constitutional self-government. They would have regarded as utterly ludicrous the idea that rapid "freedom and democracy" could be introduced by Western military force."
Hysterical doomsday scenarios abound to justify the flawed logic of the "no surrender" brigades, not least in their inconsistent mischaracterisations of the intentions of Islamic fundamentalists:
"Given the threat posed by Al Qaeda and its Sunni extremist allies to virtually every state and elite in the Muslim world, and given the savage divisions between these forces, the Shiite tradition and secular Arab nationalists like the Baath, there was a cornucopia of opportunities after September 11 to seek Muslim allies in the war on terrorism. From this point of view, for the Bush Administration to have succeeded in uniting Shiite radicals, Baath die-hards and Sunni extremists in Iraq; to have invaded Afghanistan and Iraq while simultaneously threatening Iran and Syria; and to have alienated both Turkey and Saudi Arabia--this almost defies description. It is a kind of baroque apotheosis of geopolitical cretinism."
Writing in the Boston Review, Sadik J. Al-Azm debunks received wisdom about the clash of civilisations. Spectacular atrocities are a mark of the desperation that portends marginalisation, Al-Azm argues, for all our assumptions otherwise:
"Despite current predictions of a protracted global war between the West and the Islamic world, I believe that war is over. There may be intermittent battles in the decades to come, with many innocent victims. But the number of supporters of armed Islamism is unlikely to grow, its support throughout the Arab Muslim world will likely decline, and the opposition by other Muslim groups will surely grow. 9/11 signaled the last gasp of Islamism rather than the beginnings of its global challenge."
In short, Arab nationalism does not a terrorist make, even if he wears a beard and a headdress, although it suits the priorities of the Bush Administration, and its faithful servant in 10 Downing Street, to conflate the two.
Ignorance is indeed strength, they appear to have proved, much to the satisfaction of the Likudnik lobby seeking to cast enemies of Israel as an implacable monolith called international terrorism, with which there can of course be no negotiation. With "our values" being perverted daily, it is hardly surprising that the fog of war blinds us to the truth:
"As one literary metaphor says: If a stone falls on an egg the egg breaks, and if an egg falls on a stone the egg breaks too. From the Arab Muslim side of the divide, the West seems so powerful, so efficient, so successful, so unstoppable, that the very idea of an ultimate 'clash' is fanciful. As for the current tensions, suspicions, confrontations, and enmities that characterize the relationship of Islam to the West, they are certainly not purely affairs of the spirit, or simply clashes of religious ideas or theological interpretations, or merely matters of beliefs, values, images, and perceptions. They are the normal affairs of history, power politics, international relations, and the pursuit of vital interests."
Enter Global McJihad, the many-headed hydra of Muslims lusting for blood. Although it is clear that Osama and his cohorts holed up in Afghanistan during the 1990's, and that their example served to inspire legions of wannabes, everything else we hear about Al Qaeda in the mainstream media is at best a distortion of government propaganda.
Tonight, the BBC, whose take on terrorism would routinely be laughed off the screens of the Islamic world, will air the first part of a documentary series peeling away the layers of hype justifying the Global War on Terrorism™. In "The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear", Adam Curtis advances a compelling thesis:
"In an age when all the grand ideas have lost credibility, fear of a phantom enemy is all the politicians have left to maintain their power."
Balderdash, scream the war whores in the press corps, egged on by "columnist of the year" David Aaronovitch, whose latest diatribe against pure reason is singularly lacking in evidence for its hyperbole, beyond his distaste for suicide bombings. One might ask whether cluster bombs are any more humane, but that would confront the morality play churning around his internal DVD player which holds that "we" are eternally justified in our pursuit of collateral damage, while "they" in turn are out to get us, or simply ungrateful bastards. After all, we're helping. Aren't we?
In any case, the facts about Iraq do not generally much concern a man who, in April 2003, came over all funny about war fever and pronounced on the subject of Saddam's Weapons of Mass Nonexistence:
"If nothing is eventually found, I - as a supporter of the war - will never believe another thing that I am told by our government, or that of the US ever again."
No such damascene conversion has been forthcoming. Indeed, instead of demanding an end to the madness of Tony Blair, Aaronovitch prefers to cast aspersions about the sanity of Adam Curtis, lampooning his film as:
"...a one-stop conspiracy theory to stand alongside those fingering the Illuminati, the Bilderberg group and (vide the Da Vinci Code) Opus Dei."
Would that be the same sort of conspiracy that facilitated the invasion of Iraq, David? Or was that one just a colossally coincidental cock-up?
Once again, messianic fervour for "democracy" blinds the liberal hawks to the erosion of their own freedoms in the name of the contempt in which they hold the views of others. Belt up chaps; never mind the turbulence, it's all just a little bit of history repeating. Although before we waltz on through the Age of Kali, it might just be prudent to listen to Lieven:
"The missionaries, and their democratizing descendants of today, would have done better to remember a certain Christian adage about the man who dines with the devil needing a long spoon. The liberal hawks in particular have failed to bring such a spoon to their relationship with the policies of the Bush Administration and the neoconservatives, and in consequence they are in the process of becoming dinner themselves. At present, the liberal hawks' legs are still sticking out of the neoconservatives' collective mouth, kicking faintly, but in a few years, at this rate, only a pathetic, muffled squeaking will remain, protesting that if only they had been in charge, all the disasters of the coming years would not have happened."
Read Tony's lips - he does try ever so hard you know.
The causes of terrorism, to say nothing of the terrorist undertakings of Western governments, are generally the preserve of their opponents, whose critique of the recourse to bellicosity is, according to the punditocracy's jargon du jour, better known as appeasement.
As Anatol Lieven notes, the irrational exuberance of the new crusaders exposes everything you never wanted to know about Empire because you were too ashamed to ask. Like the 19th Century missionaries they resemble most closely, the "bomb 'em to save 'em" lobby are not only singing from the wrong hymn sheet; they're worshipping a false god: war.
"[T]hey represent a form of liberal imperialism, of a kind that characterized much of the liberal scene in America and Europe a century ago. In the meantime, however, the historical circumstances have changed utterly. The liberal imperialists were explicitly antidemocratic. They believed that, at best, it would take generations of Western authoritarian rule before the "lesser breeds" they conquered could develop a capacity for constitutional self-government. They would have regarded as utterly ludicrous the idea that rapid "freedom and democracy" could be introduced by Western military force."
Hysterical doomsday scenarios abound to justify the flawed logic of the "no surrender" brigades, not least in their inconsistent mischaracterisations of the intentions of Islamic fundamentalists:
"Given the threat posed by Al Qaeda and its Sunni extremist allies to virtually every state and elite in the Muslim world, and given the savage divisions between these forces, the Shiite tradition and secular Arab nationalists like the Baath, there was a cornucopia of opportunities after September 11 to seek Muslim allies in the war on terrorism. From this point of view, for the Bush Administration to have succeeded in uniting Shiite radicals, Baath die-hards and Sunni extremists in Iraq; to have invaded Afghanistan and Iraq while simultaneously threatening Iran and Syria; and to have alienated both Turkey and Saudi Arabia--this almost defies description. It is a kind of baroque apotheosis of geopolitical cretinism."
Writing in the Boston Review, Sadik J. Al-Azm debunks received wisdom about the clash of civilisations. Spectacular atrocities are a mark of the desperation that portends marginalisation, Al-Azm argues, for all our assumptions otherwise:
"Despite current predictions of a protracted global war between the West and the Islamic world, I believe that war is over. There may be intermittent battles in the decades to come, with many innocent victims. But the number of supporters of armed Islamism is unlikely to grow, its support throughout the Arab Muslim world will likely decline, and the opposition by other Muslim groups will surely grow. 9/11 signaled the last gasp of Islamism rather than the beginnings of its global challenge."
In short, Arab nationalism does not a terrorist make, even if he wears a beard and a headdress, although it suits the priorities of the Bush Administration, and its faithful servant in 10 Downing Street, to conflate the two.
Ignorance is indeed strength, they appear to have proved, much to the satisfaction of the Likudnik lobby seeking to cast enemies of Israel as an implacable monolith called international terrorism, with which there can of course be no negotiation. With "our values" being perverted daily, it is hardly surprising that the fog of war blinds us to the truth:
"As one literary metaphor says: If a stone falls on an egg the egg breaks, and if an egg falls on a stone the egg breaks too. From the Arab Muslim side of the divide, the West seems so powerful, so efficient, so successful, so unstoppable, that the very idea of an ultimate 'clash' is fanciful. As for the current tensions, suspicions, confrontations, and enmities that characterize the relationship of Islam to the West, they are certainly not purely affairs of the spirit, or simply clashes of religious ideas or theological interpretations, or merely matters of beliefs, values, images, and perceptions. They are the normal affairs of history, power politics, international relations, and the pursuit of vital interests."
Enter Global McJihad, the many-headed hydra of Muslims lusting for blood. Although it is clear that Osama and his cohorts holed up in Afghanistan during the 1990's, and that their example served to inspire legions of wannabes, everything else we hear about Al Qaeda in the mainstream media is at best a distortion of government propaganda.
Tonight, the BBC, whose take on terrorism would routinely be laughed off the screens of the Islamic world, will air the first part of a documentary series peeling away the layers of hype justifying the Global War on Terrorism™. In "The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear", Adam Curtis advances a compelling thesis:
"In an age when all the grand ideas have lost credibility, fear of a phantom enemy is all the politicians have left to maintain their power."
Balderdash, scream the war whores in the press corps, egged on by "columnist of the year" David Aaronovitch, whose latest diatribe against pure reason is singularly lacking in evidence for its hyperbole, beyond his distaste for suicide bombings. One might ask whether cluster bombs are any more humane, but that would confront the morality play churning around his internal DVD player which holds that "we" are eternally justified in our pursuit of collateral damage, while "they" in turn are out to get us, or simply ungrateful bastards. After all, we're helping. Aren't we?
In any case, the facts about Iraq do not generally much concern a man who, in April 2003, came over all funny about war fever and pronounced on the subject of Saddam's Weapons of Mass Nonexistence:
"If nothing is eventually found, I - as a supporter of the war - will never believe another thing that I am told by our government, or that of the US ever again."
No such damascene conversion has been forthcoming. Indeed, instead of demanding an end to the madness of Tony Blair, Aaronovitch prefers to cast aspersions about the sanity of Adam Curtis, lampooning his film as:
"...a one-stop conspiracy theory to stand alongside those fingering the Illuminati, the Bilderberg group and (vide the Da Vinci Code) Opus Dei."
Would that be the same sort of conspiracy that facilitated the invasion of Iraq, David? Or was that one just a colossally coincidental cock-up?
Once again, messianic fervour for "democracy" blinds the liberal hawks to the erosion of their own freedoms in the name of the contempt in which they hold the views of others. Belt up chaps; never mind the turbulence, it's all just a little bit of history repeating. Although before we waltz on through the Age of Kali, it might just be prudent to listen to Lieven:
"The missionaries, and their democratizing descendants of today, would have done better to remember a certain Christian adage about the man who dines with the devil needing a long spoon. The liberal hawks in particular have failed to bring such a spoon to their relationship with the policies of the Bush Administration and the neoconservatives, and in consequence they are in the process of becoming dinner themselves. At present, the liberal hawks' legs are still sticking out of the neoconservatives' collective mouth, kicking faintly, but in a few years, at this rate, only a pathetic, muffled squeaking will remain, protesting that if only they had been in charge, all the disasters of the coming years would not have happened."
Read Tony's lips - he does try ever so hard you know.
Tuesday, October 19, 2004
Their Satanic Majesties request...
An audience with Jon Stewart, the closest thing to a deity in the pantheon of graven images spewing forth from the bowels of unreality TV. Our hero kneels prostrated before them, benighted for services to the Fifth Column in the Fourth Estate when caught in the Crossfire on CNN.
This clip is the epitome of must-watch for anyone who flirts with the dark arts of advertorial infotainment. Check how dear Jon rips a new one for Tucker Carlson, a pencil-sucking dweeb straight outta central casting, and Paul Begala, the archetypal stressed-out liberal who lost his third way:
STEWART: It's not honest. What you do is not honest. What you do is partisan hackery. And I will tell you why I know it.
CARLSON: You had John Kerry on your show and you sniff his throne and you're accusing us of partisan hackery?
STEWART: Absolutely.
CARLSON: You've got to be kidding me. He comes on and you...
STEWART: You're on CNN. The show that leads into me is puppets making crank phone calls. What is wrong with you?
[...]
STEWART: You know, the interesting thing I have is, you have a responsibility to the public discourse, and you fail miserably.
CARLSON: You need to get a job at a journalism school, I think.
STEWART: You need to go to one. The thing that I want to say is, when you have people on for just knee-jerk, reactionary talk...
CARLSON: Wait. I thought you were going to be funny. Come on. Be funny.
STEWART: No. No. I'm not going to be your monkey.
What an indictment of the backslapping spinelessness propping up the American media establishment: the most incisive news anchor in the U.S. is a comedian. While the jokers in the hackpack hall of shame roll out their all-star red carpet for yet another parade of the Emperor's new clothes, Stewart calls a spade a spade, which is rarely a passport to popularity:
CARLSON: What's it like to have dinner with you? It must be excruciating. Do you like lecture people like this or do you come over to their house and sit and lecture them; they're not doing the right thing, that they're missing their opportunities, evading their responsibilities?
STEWART: If I think they are.
CARLSON: I wouldn't want to eat with you, man. That's horrible.
STEWART: I know. And you won't.
A fraudulent slip from frère Tucker, no doubt, but therein lies the rub 'n' tug: heavyweight journalists like nothing better than to wine and dine the great and the good in search of a reacharound reward, whether as a scoop or an award.
Sometimes you hit the jackpot, like CNN's leading lady, Christiane Amanpour, whose husband span her the bombing of Serbia for Bill Clinton before enlisting himself in John Kerry's campaign to serve - whatever it is he thinks he serves.
Lest we forget, the un-Americans among us will recognise that it's really no less painful on the pillow-biting end of the special relationship here in Blighty. The valiant vulgarians of our own democracy are just as addicted to the uncommon nonsense littering public discourse.
As Andrew Marr, the BBC's political editor, observed when taking up his new job as court stenographer to his family friends in number 10, his "organs of opinion were formally removed", leaving him defenceless against the onslaught of flak from his most trusted sources.
Bollocks. His neurochemistry is clearly undergoing a violent reaction to poststructuralism. Never mind the truth that's all relative, why waste your time on deconstruction in the first place? Well, it simply wouldn't do, now would it. I mean come on; we're supposed to be objective and all that. Which of course means reporting faithfully what we believe our dear leaders believe and, even better, what we think they feel, before running to the other corner of the pro-wrestling ring for some more comedy soundbites from the opposition. To hell with what they do, or even what they don't say.
After all, familiarity breeds contempt for reason, and above all the reasons behind the rhetoric. But without a named quote, it's not a story, you see. And it's seriously unsexy unless someone's emoting, which is, of course, great television, as the newspapers have discovered. Me, me, me; columnists never had it so good, as the Observer's Andrew Rawnsley obviously appreciated while sucking his nibs before spawning this latest fig-leaf for Tony Blair, who clearly really means it, whatever that means:
"An apology would not assuage the opponents of the war. They would not reward self-abasement by the Prime Minister with praise for his honesty. They would seize on it as the final admission from the man himself that he took Britain into a terribly misjudged conflict on a false prospectus. They would be refuelled in their demands for his head."
Heaven forbid. I mean, let's face it, who are journalists to enforce democratic accountability? Rawnsley the war pimp gives not a thought to international law, nor the suffering inflicted on tens of thousands of dead natives and their families. No, what matters is cheerleading the greater good to be served by his partisan pals. Or he'll be blackballed from all the party cocktail parties, and then we'd all be worse off. Or something. In the words of one irate writer of letters to the editor:
"Surely in a democracy the interest of the people and the country should come +before+ the interest of the prime minister? The prime minister is supposed to be the servant of the people. So why are you arguing for what is in +his+ interest? Shouldn't you argue for what is in the interest of the people?" (Email to Andrew Rawnsley, 17 October, 2004)
Surely shome mishtake. That would be biased, of course, which was why The Observer's fellow Guardian of the Ministries of Truth and Stealth continued to pump it out on Monday morning, seemingly oblivious to what these words betrayed about the reporting standards of Richard Norton-Taylor, Jamie Wilson and Patrick Wintour:
"In Falluja yesterday US troops continued their siege of the rebel stronghold in an effort to keep suspected militants from fleeing before the start of a long expected full-scale ground offensive."
Mindreaders to a man, they appear to have a hotline to the Pentagon pentagram, or certainly an intuitive sense of how it thinks, or at the very least a clear idea of how they think it thinks about how to justify its actions. How clever. Obviously, the alternative explanations for another display of shock and awe were simply too implausible to contemplate:
Posted by walter on October 18, 2004, 6:37 pm
REASONS FOR STRAIGHTFORWARD USES OF EXCESSIVE FORCE
1) to crush resistance
2) to limit US casualties at whatever Iraqi cost
3) to force Iraqis to accept US postwar plans
4) to destroy Iraq's infrastructure
5) to administer collective punishment
6) to restrict and intimidate independent reporting
POSSIBLE TACTICAL USES OF EXCESSIVE FORCE
1) to bring about a situation of apparent chaos
2) to provide cover of war emergency to implement plans
3) to suspend accountability
4) to provoke violent or terrorist responses
5) to portray all resistance as terrorism
6) to legitimize further tactical use of violence
7) to ensure the reliance of the interim government on US support
8) to increase the political bargaining power of reconstruction
9) to give the invasion apparent legitimacy under the War on Terror
10) to extend the WOT
11) to restrict future democratic opposition
12) to deflect future democratic opposition along a militant direction or
drive it out of the democratic picture
13) to justify increased militarisation and military spending
Hold the front page! Coming soon to a scandal sheet near you, the apocryphal arse-cover of objective journalism: if it bleeds it leads, but we're heavily in denial so read it and weep. In other words, time to dust off the trusty refrain:
PM REFUTES CRITICS WITH BARNSTORMING BARRAGE OF BULLSHIT
Or words to that effect.
This clip is the epitome of must-watch for anyone who flirts with the dark arts of advertorial infotainment. Check how dear Jon rips a new one for Tucker Carlson, a pencil-sucking dweeb straight outta central casting, and Paul Begala, the archetypal stressed-out liberal who lost his third way:
STEWART: It's not honest. What you do is not honest. What you do is partisan hackery. And I will tell you why I know it.
CARLSON: You had John Kerry on your show and you sniff his throne and you're accusing us of partisan hackery?
STEWART: Absolutely.
CARLSON: You've got to be kidding me. He comes on and you...
STEWART: You're on CNN. The show that leads into me is puppets making crank phone calls. What is wrong with you?
[...]
STEWART: You know, the interesting thing I have is, you have a responsibility to the public discourse, and you fail miserably.
CARLSON: You need to get a job at a journalism school, I think.
STEWART: You need to go to one. The thing that I want to say is, when you have people on for just knee-jerk, reactionary talk...
CARLSON: Wait. I thought you were going to be funny. Come on. Be funny.
STEWART: No. No. I'm not going to be your monkey.
What an indictment of the backslapping spinelessness propping up the American media establishment: the most incisive news anchor in the U.S. is a comedian. While the jokers in the hackpack hall of shame roll out their all-star red carpet for yet another parade of the Emperor's new clothes, Stewart calls a spade a spade, which is rarely a passport to popularity:
CARLSON: What's it like to have dinner with you? It must be excruciating. Do you like lecture people like this or do you come over to their house and sit and lecture them; they're not doing the right thing, that they're missing their opportunities, evading their responsibilities?
STEWART: If I think they are.
CARLSON: I wouldn't want to eat with you, man. That's horrible.
STEWART: I know. And you won't.
A fraudulent slip from frère Tucker, no doubt, but therein lies the rub 'n' tug: heavyweight journalists like nothing better than to wine and dine the great and the good in search of a reacharound reward, whether as a scoop or an award.
Sometimes you hit the jackpot, like CNN's leading lady, Christiane Amanpour, whose husband span her the bombing of Serbia for Bill Clinton before enlisting himself in John Kerry's campaign to serve - whatever it is he thinks he serves.
Lest we forget, the un-Americans among us will recognise that it's really no less painful on the pillow-biting end of the special relationship here in Blighty. The valiant vulgarians of our own democracy are just as addicted to the uncommon nonsense littering public discourse.
As Andrew Marr, the BBC's political editor, observed when taking up his new job as court stenographer to his family friends in number 10, his "organs of opinion were formally removed", leaving him defenceless against the onslaught of flak from his most trusted sources.
Bollocks. His neurochemistry is clearly undergoing a violent reaction to poststructuralism. Never mind the truth that's all relative, why waste your time on deconstruction in the first place? Well, it simply wouldn't do, now would it. I mean come on; we're supposed to be objective and all that. Which of course means reporting faithfully what we believe our dear leaders believe and, even better, what we think they feel, before running to the other corner of the pro-wrestling ring for some more comedy soundbites from the opposition. To hell with what they do, or even what they don't say.
After all, familiarity breeds contempt for reason, and above all the reasons behind the rhetoric. But without a named quote, it's not a story, you see. And it's seriously unsexy unless someone's emoting, which is, of course, great television, as the newspapers have discovered. Me, me, me; columnists never had it so good, as the Observer's Andrew Rawnsley obviously appreciated while sucking his nibs before spawning this latest fig-leaf for Tony Blair, who clearly really means it, whatever that means:
"An apology would not assuage the opponents of the war. They would not reward self-abasement by the Prime Minister with praise for his honesty. They would seize on it as the final admission from the man himself that he took Britain into a terribly misjudged conflict on a false prospectus. They would be refuelled in their demands for his head."
Heaven forbid. I mean, let's face it, who are journalists to enforce democratic accountability? Rawnsley the war pimp gives not a thought to international law, nor the suffering inflicted on tens of thousands of dead natives and their families. No, what matters is cheerleading the greater good to be served by his partisan pals. Or he'll be blackballed from all the party cocktail parties, and then we'd all be worse off. Or something. In the words of one irate writer of letters to the editor:
"Surely in a democracy the interest of the people and the country should come +before+ the interest of the prime minister? The prime minister is supposed to be the servant of the people. So why are you arguing for what is in +his+ interest? Shouldn't you argue for what is in the interest of the people?" (Email to Andrew Rawnsley, 17 October, 2004)
Surely shome mishtake. That would be biased, of course, which was why The Observer's fellow Guardian of the Ministries of Truth and Stealth continued to pump it out on Monday morning, seemingly oblivious to what these words betrayed about the reporting standards of Richard Norton-Taylor, Jamie Wilson and Patrick Wintour:
"In Falluja yesterday US troops continued their siege of the rebel stronghold in an effort to keep suspected militants from fleeing before the start of a long expected full-scale ground offensive."
Mindreaders to a man, they appear to have a hotline to the Pentagon pentagram, or certainly an intuitive sense of how it thinks, or at the very least a clear idea of how they think it thinks about how to justify its actions. How clever. Obviously, the alternative explanations for another display of shock and awe were simply too implausible to contemplate:
Posted by walter on October 18, 2004, 6:37 pm
REASONS FOR STRAIGHTFORWARD USES OF EXCESSIVE FORCE
1) to crush resistance
2) to limit US casualties at whatever Iraqi cost
3) to force Iraqis to accept US postwar plans
4) to destroy Iraq's infrastructure
5) to administer collective punishment
6) to restrict and intimidate independent reporting
POSSIBLE TACTICAL USES OF EXCESSIVE FORCE
1) to bring about a situation of apparent chaos
2) to provide cover of war emergency to implement plans
3) to suspend accountability
4) to provoke violent or terrorist responses
5) to portray all resistance as terrorism
6) to legitimize further tactical use of violence
7) to ensure the reliance of the interim government on US support
8) to increase the political bargaining power of reconstruction
9) to give the invasion apparent legitimacy under the War on Terror
10) to extend the WOT
11) to restrict future democratic opposition
12) to deflect future democratic opposition along a militant direction or
drive it out of the democratic picture
13) to justify increased militarisation and military spending
Hold the front page! Coming soon to a scandal sheet near you, the apocryphal arse-cover of objective journalism: if it bleeds it leads, but we're heavily in denial so read it and weep. In other words, time to dust off the trusty refrain:
PM REFUTES CRITICS WITH BARNSTORMING BARRAGE OF BULLSHIT
Or words to that effect.
Monday, October 18, 2004
Update on unfrocking the vicar
Impeach Blair, you say?
I say, did someone just fart in church through their private eye? This week's parish news has more:
THE VICAR OF ST. ALBION:
"I'd like to end with an apology. I'm sorry, but I haven't got anything to apologise for! I may have been misled by other people, who told me all sorts of things that turned out not to be entirely true.
"And I'm genuinely sorry for those people, because misleading the vicar is just about the most serious offence I can think of! But am I sorry for playing such a leading role in the great crusade against the Evil One?
"'Am I fock' as father Bob might put it, in his colourful Gaelic patois!"
A friend well learned in the law, and the moral bankruptcy of the Prime Minister's serial sermonising, to say nothing of its significations to psychiatrists, offers the following opinion of The Reverend Anthony Bliar, Queer Customer:
"In my view Blair and Bush are bloody war criminals, with all the ethical and legal consequences that this implies. An apology would be totally inadequate. Would Blair accept an apology from Saddam as exoneration?
"The psychology of Blair is interesting. The dichotomy of fool or liar seems inadequate: I believe the truth is a mixture of the two. To me any faith-based epistemology, encouraging bigotry and messianic fervour, necessarily cripples intelligence.
"I don't believe that Blair is inherently stupid but his conviction-needs, operating in a compartmentalised way, are deeply and dangerously hostile to logic and data in crucial areas. As manifested, this is both a psychological and a psychiatric matter.
"Self-delusion plays an important part - but I cannot believe that this has reached such a pitch that Blair does not realise he is going beyond or against the evidence and conveying falsehoods."
According to another learned friend who saw some of the documents flying around back in the day of Attorney General Goldsmith's magical disappearing advice, many were prefaced with a general "yes, we know, but..." from the strawmen of the ministerial classes.
If everything hadn't stunk so bad at the time that one could "almost hear the collective raspberry going up around Whitehall" (John Morrison, former deputy chief of Britain's Defence Intelligence Staff), we could pretend it was all coming out of the woodwork, not that you'd even know that much from Patrick Wintour's take on freedom of information in today's Guardian:
"It says something about the longevity of the demand for open government that the first shadow home secretary to make a serious fuss over statutory rights to government information was Roy Hattersley back in the mid-80s."
Like what? That your reporting has lost its bearings? Are journalists so supine in the face of power that they need the leader of the opposition to tell them what to write?
Chin up chaps, people with quotable titles exist. Perhaps you'd like to give them a call instead of waiting for the establishment to investigate itself and pronounce itself rotten to the core. Got any ideas how to have an impact instead of wasting wordsmithery on the political hot air that stops you coming in from the cold?
"Dear impeachBlair campaign supporter,
First of all, congratulations to everyone. The idea of impeachment has now become a normal part of the language. This in itself is a sign of the country's deep unease over the Prime Minister's conduct before, during and after the Iraq war. The mere use of the word "Impeachment" after 150 years shows the severity of the constitutional crisis created by the Prime Minister's abuse of trust and refusal to "do the decent thing" and resign.
This Wednesday, the impeachBlair group announced that Douglas Hogg QC MP is leading the team of MPs drawing up the Motion of Impeachment along with Elfyn Llwyd MP, Edward Garnier QC MP and Alex Salmond MP. The intention is to maximise recruitment of MPs, and other public figures so that when the motion is put to the Commons there will be no question that it must be debated promptly. We expect that the motion will be published this autumn and put before the Commons in January. When we have the Motion of Impeachment it will be the basis of a petition, and we will let you know as soon as possible when we can start this campaign.
There is one activity we want all supporters of the campaign to undertake. We would like you to get as many people as possible to send postcards to their MP saying simply; "Impeach Blair" signed with their name and address. Add a sentence of your own if you like, focusing on the Prime Minister's misleading statements to the Commons and the Country. Buy some postcards and stamps and get people you know to send them either at work, in the pub or over coffee. MPs do notice and will respond. We are not producing a printed version as these tend to be discounted. It's vital that we get as many cards in the post now as we can. The impeachBlair MPs are working to get their colleagues to sign up to the campaign so any pressure from their constituents is essential to tip sympathetic MPs from all the parties into supporting the impeachment. This is really where your input is a huge help.
Finally, apologies, some of you may not have got an email before and we are sorry for any hiccups as we build the impeachBlair campaign. Copies of former emails will be posted on the website in the near future, at www.impeachblair.org.
Yours,
Dan Plesch"
Don't hold your breath; the papers won't have much to say about it until they think it's all over. But some people are on the pitch already, so expect more quibbling over the PM's machinations of messianic metaphor for the sake of balance.
Meanwhile our freedom is being eroded.
I say, did someone just fart in church through their private eye? This week's parish news has more:
THE VICAR OF ST. ALBION:
"I'd like to end with an apology. I'm sorry, but I haven't got anything to apologise for! I may have been misled by other people, who told me all sorts of things that turned out not to be entirely true.
"And I'm genuinely sorry for those people, because misleading the vicar is just about the most serious offence I can think of! But am I sorry for playing such a leading role in the great crusade against the Evil One?
"'Am I fock' as father Bob might put it, in his colourful Gaelic patois!"
A friend well learned in the law, and the moral bankruptcy of the Prime Minister's serial sermonising, to say nothing of its significations to psychiatrists, offers the following opinion of The Reverend Anthony Bliar, Queer Customer:
"In my view Blair and Bush are bloody war criminals, with all the ethical and legal consequences that this implies. An apology would be totally inadequate. Would Blair accept an apology from Saddam as exoneration?
"The psychology of Blair is interesting. The dichotomy of fool or liar seems inadequate: I believe the truth is a mixture of the two. To me any faith-based epistemology, encouraging bigotry and messianic fervour, necessarily cripples intelligence.
"I don't believe that Blair is inherently stupid but his conviction-needs, operating in a compartmentalised way, are deeply and dangerously hostile to logic and data in crucial areas. As manifested, this is both a psychological and a psychiatric matter.
"Self-delusion plays an important part - but I cannot believe that this has reached such a pitch that Blair does not realise he is going beyond or against the evidence and conveying falsehoods."
According to another learned friend who saw some of the documents flying around back in the day of Attorney General Goldsmith's magical disappearing advice, many were prefaced with a general "yes, we know, but..." from the strawmen of the ministerial classes.
If everything hadn't stunk so bad at the time that one could "almost hear the collective raspberry going up around Whitehall" (John Morrison, former deputy chief of Britain's Defence Intelligence Staff), we could pretend it was all coming out of the woodwork, not that you'd even know that much from Patrick Wintour's take on freedom of information in today's Guardian:
"It says something about the longevity of the demand for open government that the first shadow home secretary to make a serious fuss over statutory rights to government information was Roy Hattersley back in the mid-80s."
Like what? That your reporting has lost its bearings? Are journalists so supine in the face of power that they need the leader of the opposition to tell them what to write?
Chin up chaps, people with quotable titles exist. Perhaps you'd like to give them a call instead of waiting for the establishment to investigate itself and pronounce itself rotten to the core. Got any ideas how to have an impact instead of wasting wordsmithery on the political hot air that stops you coming in from the cold?
"Dear impeachBlair campaign supporter,
First of all, congratulations to everyone. The idea of impeachment has now become a normal part of the language. This in itself is a sign of the country's deep unease over the Prime Minister's conduct before, during and after the Iraq war. The mere use of the word "Impeachment" after 150 years shows the severity of the constitutional crisis created by the Prime Minister's abuse of trust and refusal to "do the decent thing" and resign.
This Wednesday, the impeachBlair group announced that Douglas Hogg QC MP is leading the team of MPs drawing up the Motion of Impeachment along with Elfyn Llwyd MP, Edward Garnier QC MP and Alex Salmond MP. The intention is to maximise recruitment of MPs, and other public figures so that when the motion is put to the Commons there will be no question that it must be debated promptly. We expect that the motion will be published this autumn and put before the Commons in January. When we have the Motion of Impeachment it will be the basis of a petition, and we will let you know as soon as possible when we can start this campaign.
There is one activity we want all supporters of the campaign to undertake. We would like you to get as many people as possible to send postcards to their MP saying simply; "Impeach Blair" signed with their name and address. Add a sentence of your own if you like, focusing on the Prime Minister's misleading statements to the Commons and the Country. Buy some postcards and stamps and get people you know to send them either at work, in the pub or over coffee. MPs do notice and will respond. We are not producing a printed version as these tend to be discounted. It's vital that we get as many cards in the post now as we can. The impeachBlair MPs are working to get their colleagues to sign up to the campaign so any pressure from their constituents is essential to tip sympathetic MPs from all the parties into supporting the impeachment. This is really where your input is a huge help.
Finally, apologies, some of you may not have got an email before and we are sorry for any hiccups as we build the impeachBlair campaign. Copies of former emails will be posted on the website in the near future, at www.impeachblair.org.
Yours,
Dan Plesch"
Don't hold your breath; the papers won't have much to say about it until they think it's all over. But some people are on the pitch already, so expect more quibbling over the PM's machinations of messianic metaphor for the sake of balance.
Meanwhile our freedom is being eroded.
Saturday, October 16, 2004
Chaos theory
Tonight the world of a small terraced house will be subjected to the devious spin-doctoring of Raoul Djukanovic and his pseud's corner of pitch control disaster areas.
Yes, da Rebel MC be selectin' choons for da people and wreckin' das FX when they blend into the next with scratches. Heaven help the blessings playing to your heart's content while the mafia raid the party and rinse the kitchen sink from beneath your eyes:
Criminal charges over hit'n'run festival | 17:11 | B92
Belgrade police said today that they have laid criminal charges against a partner in the Echo Music company, Sasa Stamenkovic, has been charged with embezzlement.
Charges have also been laid against two of his associates, Jovica Begovic and Goran Jovicic, who are believed to have fled the country.
The company mounted the Echo Festival on Belgrade's Big War Island in summer, 2003.
Police say that the company, which was registered at a fictitious address, was closed down immediately after the festival finished. Stamenkovic was arrested at Belgrade airport, while his associates have not been located.
The company owes 22.5 million dinars (about 320,000 euros) to creditors including the Intercontinental and Yugoslavia hotels, Zepter Insurance, the Zemun Municipality, the Serbia-Montenegro Army, the Sava Centre and a number of bands.
Some might say what's the difference between the Emperor and the tyrant with a thousand faces in Belgrade, and never mind that moral equivalence nonsense. But it was way more fun any which way despite the chaos and they loved it in Bosnia, let's be frank:
"Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid."
Cool Britannia? No thanks. Jebem vam boga!
Friday, October 15, 2004
So macho
Move over Geraldo, the new Lord Flashheart of the press corps is Mark "2 Tuf 4 Torygraf" Steyn, who has the following advice for journalists afraid of losing their heads in Iraq:
"If you don't want to wind up in that situation, you need to pack heat and be prepared to resist at the point of abduction. I didn't give much thought to decapitation when I was mooching round the Sunni Triangle last year, but my one rule was that I was determined not to get into a car with any of the locals and I was willing to shoot anyone who tried to force me. If you're not, you shouldn't be there."
Just what we need - another reason to shoot up the hackpack on sight, as Robert Fisk worried in the wake of Daniel Pearl's beheading a couple of years ago:
"Can we do better? I think so. It's not that reporters in military costume - [CNN's Walt] Rodgers in his silly Marine helmet, Rivera clowning around with a gun, or even me in my gas cape a decade ago - helped to kill Daniel Pearl. He was murdered by vicious men. But we are all - dressing up in combatant's clothes or adopting the national dress of people - helping to erode the shield of neutrality and decency, which saved our lives in the past. If we don't stop now, how can we protest when next our colleagues are seized by ruthless men who claim we are spies?"
In Iraq, there are other hazards to worry about. "Friendly fire" from the U.S. military wipes out journalists as indiscriminately as attacks by forces hostile to the American occupation. These days, reporters are largely confined to barracks. If there's talk of giving them guns, how long before they're back in uniform?
Is this really the time for fondling your piece and feeling mighty hard?
Thursday, October 14, 2004
Pleading the First
Before free speech vanishes completely, Frank Rich spells out the threat from “increasingly craven media combines” in today’s New York Times:
"The fundamental right of Americans, through our free press, to penetrate and criticize the workings of our government is under attack as never before," wrote William Safire last month. When an alumnus of the Nixon White House says our free press is being attacked as "never before", you listen. What alarms him now are the efforts of Patrick Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor in the Valerie Plame-Robert Novak affair, to threaten reporters at The Times and Time magazine with jail if they don't reveal their sources. Given that the Times reporter in question (Judith Miller again) didn't even write an article on the subject under investigation, Mr. Fitzgerald overreaches so far that he's created a sci-fi plot twist out of Steven Spielberg's "Minority Report."
Even Xmphora is shocked by this affront to the First Amendment, and the general media disinterest:
“I never thought I'd ever write anything in support of that bitch Judith Miller, but here goes…”
Eat your heart out Spiro Agnew.
Wednesday, October 13, 2004
Fly me to the moon...
Leavin’ on a jet plane just keeps getting cheaper. Today, Ryanair is touting trips from London to Glasgow for all of 69 pence, plus tax. How do those numbers add up?
In the long run they can’t: oil industry analysts have spotted a 50 percent price rise in the pipeline. Meanwhile, facing up to the global energy crisis remains a political taboo. Heard any governments promising to downsize their economies recently? Er…
So why is Britain planning to triple the numbers of people travelling by air – the most environmentally damaging form of transport – by 2030, while pretending to give a toss about climate change?
Beats me, but it might just have something to do with the democratic deficit being outsourced to Amalgamated Conglomerates Incorporated.
Weaponised cosmos anyone?
Who you gonna call?
Our Man in Tashkent may be losing his job for telling the truth about a bogus war on terrorism.
Big Brother’s verdict on Craig Murray’s revelations? Don’t rock the boat, old boy:
“Mr Murray faced 18 disciplinary charges in July 2003 - ranging from his being drunk at work to having sex with women in his office for visas - all of which were dropped.”
Speaking out won’t do wonders for your career, or your mental health, but it’s never been more important, argues the man who leaked the documents which eroded public support for the Vietnam war:
“Technology may make it easier to tell your story, but the decision to do so will be no less difficult. The personal risks of making disclosures embarrassing to your superiors are real. If you are identified as the source, your career will be over; friendships will be lost; you may even be prosecuted. But some 140,000 Americans are risking their lives every day in Iraq. Our nation is in urgent need of comparable moral courage from its public officials.” (Daniel Ellsberg, New York Times, 28 September, 2004)
He’s certainly not alone: 11 former government employees signed his recent “Call to Patriotic Whistleblowing”, including Ray McGovern, who served the CIA for 27 years, retired USAF Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski and Sibel Edmonds, an FBI translator who has exposed how her bosses closed down terrorism investigations before the attacks of 11 September, 2001.
Once you’ve decided to go public, why hold back? Catherine Austin Fitts, a former Assistant Secretary of Housing, had this to say in an open letter to Condoleezza Rice back in April:
“The richest and most powerful people in the world pay for performance. They pay you to make the US governmental apparatus look legitimate while they use it to centralize economic and political power. That means they need liars who are better at lying than you.”
Take that, Voodoo Queen.
Whistleblowers in Britain risk prosecution for breaking the Official Secrets Act, as the translator Katharine Gun discovered when she exposed how the U.S. and UK governments bugged other U.N. Security Council members in the weeks before they invaded Iraq. But the case against her was dropped when her lawyer demanded the government publish the classified legal advice that took Britain into an illegal war. Heartened by this victory against the system, her message to public employees everywhere is simple: the truth must out.
“I am not a natural activist, I am not a political animal, I do not enjoy confrontation, and I do not delight in high-octane political debate. I did not make my disclosure about the deceitful manipulation of the UN before the invasion of Iraq began in order to garner fame or fortune. I am just a very ordinary, concerned individual who could not sit back in silence while the leaders of the UK and the US plotted about 'shock and awe', about wiping out their former ally and client Saddam Hussein.” (Katharine Gun, The Observer, 19 September, 2004)
Big Brother’s verdict on Craig Murray’s revelations? Don’t rock the boat, old boy:
“Mr Murray faced 18 disciplinary charges in July 2003 - ranging from his being drunk at work to having sex with women in his office for visas - all of which were dropped.”
Speaking out won’t do wonders for your career, or your mental health, but it’s never been more important, argues the man who leaked the documents which eroded public support for the Vietnam war:
“Technology may make it easier to tell your story, but the decision to do so will be no less difficult. The personal risks of making disclosures embarrassing to your superiors are real. If you are identified as the source, your career will be over; friendships will be lost; you may even be prosecuted. But some 140,000 Americans are risking their lives every day in Iraq. Our nation is in urgent need of comparable moral courage from its public officials.” (Daniel Ellsberg, New York Times, 28 September, 2004)
He’s certainly not alone: 11 former government employees signed his recent “Call to Patriotic Whistleblowing”, including Ray McGovern, who served the CIA for 27 years, retired USAF Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski and Sibel Edmonds, an FBI translator who has exposed how her bosses closed down terrorism investigations before the attacks of 11 September, 2001.
Once you’ve decided to go public, why hold back? Catherine Austin Fitts, a former Assistant Secretary of Housing, had this to say in an open letter to Condoleezza Rice back in April:
“The richest and most powerful people in the world pay for performance. They pay you to make the US governmental apparatus look legitimate while they use it to centralize economic and political power. That means they need liars who are better at lying than you.”
Take that, Voodoo Queen.
Whistleblowers in Britain risk prosecution for breaking the Official Secrets Act, as the translator Katharine Gun discovered when she exposed how the U.S. and UK governments bugged other U.N. Security Council members in the weeks before they invaded Iraq. But the case against her was dropped when her lawyer demanded the government publish the classified legal advice that took Britain into an illegal war. Heartened by this victory against the system, her message to public employees everywhere is simple: the truth must out.
“I am not a natural activist, I am not a political animal, I do not enjoy confrontation, and I do not delight in high-octane political debate. I did not make my disclosure about the deceitful manipulation of the UN before the invasion of Iraq began in order to garner fame or fortune. I am just a very ordinary, concerned individual who could not sit back in silence while the leaders of the UK and the US plotted about 'shock and awe', about wiping out their former ally and client Saddam Hussein.” (Katharine Gun, The Observer, 19 September, 2004)
Tuesday, October 12, 2004
Follow the yellow trick road
In the beginning was the word and the word was lost.
I only decided to write everything down after it stopped making sense; it was already too late to ask why. The only clear question was what to do about it and nobody seemed to have the answer, perhaps because there wasn’t one.
Strip away the monomyth and all that remains is a circus at the end of the world; never mind the colonies of bats in the bowels, welcome to the American dream: the poorest county in the U.S. has staked the farm on Dubya Money's empty rhetoric.
"People getting their fundamental interests wrong is what American political life is all about," writes Thomas Frank in What's The Matter With Kansas?, a journey to the heartland of something rotten in the United States of Amnesia. Why stop there, wonders the New York Review of Books:
"He might have gone further and implicated humanity in general, with its primordial fear of exile, abandonment, and death in a terrifying environment, and its corresponding submission to factitious gods and the deadly schemes of mad rulers, unvarying from before the Pharaohs to the present."
Quite. But somewhere over the rainbow lies a pot of goldie lookin' chains, while they who have put out the people's eyes reproach them of their blindness, on the rare occasions that they're nominally held to account, that is.
"The trick never ages: the illusion never wears off. Vote to stop abortion; receive a rollback in capital gains taxes. Vote to make our country strong again; receive deindustrialization. Vote to screw those politically correct college professors; receive electricity deregulation... Vote to stand tall against terrorists; receive Social Security privatization..."
Yes, no, whatever. That’s the beauty of Utopian populism: it’s never too late to get it back and you can swallow anything if your salary depends on it. Especially when you're scared.
"For Frank, America today is a painting by Bosch, 'a panorama of madness and delusion...of sturdy blue-collar patriots reciting the Pledge while they strangle their own life chances; of small farmers proudly voting themselves off the land; of devoted family men carefully seeing to it that their children will never be able to afford college or proper health care; of working-class guys ...deliver[ing] up a landslide for a candidate whose policies will end their way of life [and] transform their region into a "rustbelt," [and] strike people like them blows from which they will never recover.'"
Steady on now, mustn't grumble; one day I might be able to afford things I don't need. Excuse me while I stick a pitchfork through my eyeballs and cut up my credit cards.
I only decided to write everything down after it stopped making sense; it was already too late to ask why. The only clear question was what to do about it and nobody seemed to have the answer, perhaps because there wasn’t one.
Strip away the monomyth and all that remains is a circus at the end of the world; never mind the colonies of bats in the bowels, welcome to the American dream: the poorest county in the U.S. has staked the farm on Dubya Money's empty rhetoric.
"People getting their fundamental interests wrong is what American political life is all about," writes Thomas Frank in What's The Matter With Kansas?, a journey to the heartland of something rotten in the United States of Amnesia. Why stop there, wonders the New York Review of Books:
"He might have gone further and implicated humanity in general, with its primordial fear of exile, abandonment, and death in a terrifying environment, and its corresponding submission to factitious gods and the deadly schemes of mad rulers, unvarying from before the Pharaohs to the present."
Quite. But somewhere over the rainbow lies a pot of goldie lookin' chains, while they who have put out the people's eyes reproach them of their blindness, on the rare occasions that they're nominally held to account, that is.
"The trick never ages: the illusion never wears off. Vote to stop abortion; receive a rollback in capital gains taxes. Vote to make our country strong again; receive deindustrialization. Vote to screw those politically correct college professors; receive electricity deregulation... Vote to stand tall against terrorists; receive Social Security privatization..."
Yes, no, whatever. That’s the beauty of Utopian populism: it’s never too late to get it back and you can swallow anything if your salary depends on it. Especially when you're scared.
"For Frank, America today is a painting by Bosch, 'a panorama of madness and delusion...of sturdy blue-collar patriots reciting the Pledge while they strangle their own life chances; of small farmers proudly voting themselves off the land; of devoted family men carefully seeing to it that their children will never be able to afford college or proper health care; of working-class guys ...deliver[ing] up a landslide for a candidate whose policies will end their way of life [and] transform their region into a "rustbelt," [and] strike people like them blows from which they will never recover.'"
Steady on now, mustn't grumble; one day I might be able to afford things I don't need. Excuse me while I stick a pitchfork through my eyeballs and cut up my credit cards.
Sunday, October 10, 2004
Imperial Hubris
Enough of your cant, Mr. Kagan. Get back in your house of cards if you want to throw stones. The European imperialists spawned the United States as a breakaway experiment which, like Dr. Frankenstein's monster, promptly took over the laboratory of the Great Game and ran away with the asylum. Yet still you won't talk about the Goebbels Institute in your own looking glass? To remix the old music hall refrain about Gladstone:
"When Dubya dies and goes to hell, he will ride in a flaming chariot, seated in state on a red-hot plate twixt Bliar and Judas Iscariot." (The Grand Old Man turns Murderer of Gordon, as The Guardian failed to break out of the beltway inside baseball)
Now the G.O.P.'s gone phull-on gory, what's the story? Morning glory: don't mess with MC Rummy's quarterback jock or you'll get a slap in the showers and electrodes on your nuts while we find a car-bomber to install as your prime minister. Oh, and he may have shot six men since taking office. But you won't find out about that if you get too hung up on named quotes from the Imperial bureaucracy:
"As we know, there are known knowns. There are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns. That is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns, the ones we don't know we don't know." (Donald Rumsfeld, Department of Defence news briefing, Feb. 12, 2002)
What? Like the whereabouts of Osama bin Forgotten? Or the apparent fact that the man who wired $100,000 to Mohammed Atta was the head of the Pakistani intelligence services, eating breakfast in Washington on September 11, only to be fired shortly thereafter? While his dining partner Porter Goss got a kick upstairs to the top of the CIA, having admitted on camera he was totally unqualified for the job? War on terrorism? Back to basics, surely: cause and effect. Karma, innit?
Rather like John Scarlett, the man who claimed "ownership" of Tony Blair's dodgy dossier about Iraq, only be to be promoted before the whitewash report that cleared his passage to the top job in British spookery. The mind boggles, while Iraq remains locked in a horrorshow rerun of 1920, back in the day when Winston Churchill demanded the use of chemical weapons against the "recalcitrant Arabs" kicking up a fuss in Mesopotamia. It's got so bad now that the FCO timeservers are getting worried about where it's all headed:
"Bush is al-Qaeda's best recruiting sergeant." (British Ambassador to Rome, Ivor Roberts, at a meeting of British and Italian politicians, bankers, academics and journalists in Tuscany)
Meanwhile back in the Balkans, where Mr Roberts used to push paper, imperialism never died. Although it's certainly rather "lite" these days: low on carbs and leaving a nasty aftertaste, not unlike Thomas Friedman's words to the Serbs in the spring of 1999:
"Every week you ravage Kosovo is another decade we will set your country back by pulverizing you. You want 1950? We can do 1950. You want 1389? We can do 1389." (Stop the Music, New York Times, April 23, 1999)
Press, P.R. and advertising. The revolving doors of the liberal conscience. Who said military-industrial complex? Shh! It's a tough business, as Friedman recognises:
"The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist. McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the designer of the U.S. Air Force F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley's technologies to flourish is called the U.S. Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps." (From "The Lexus and the Olive Tree", 1999)
In the style of Dan Senor, formerly the Coalition Provisional Authority's paranoid android in Baghdad, who coached "Prime Minister" Allawi on the speech his U.S. puppetmasters wrote for him, the information warriors of Intcom Inc., the neoliberal U.S./UK conglomerate better known as the international community, are also at work in the former republics of Yugoslavia.
Down there, this sort of thing is standard practice. Mark Laity, the last NATO Secretary General’s spokesman, was dispatched to Macedonia in the spring of 2001 to write speeches for the President, Boris Trajkovski, as he fumbled his chance to crush a guerrilla rebellion.
Before long Laity was trying to influence the whole government, which took no heed of the president whatsoever, but quickly found himself barricaded into the ineffectual head of state's office plotting TV campaigns. Whereupon NATO decided to change tack from backing the Macedonian government, against the Kosovo Liberation Army remnants it had already pretended to disarm, to demanding that these bands of “murderous thugs”, as Laity’s boss George Robertson had memorably called them, be invited to peace talks.
Since Macedonia’s brief stab at counter-insurgency had proved hopeless, hapless and helpless, and NATO remained disinterested in doing anything that might endanger its soldiers, Laity went begging the Macedonian military to keep its powder dry, while at the same time cavorting about the hillside with a mobile phone, trying to keep track of all the spooks going up to ask the KLA (aka. NLA, aka. ANA, aka. UCK) what would make them go away for a bit.
His crowning glory was to arrange for the evacuation of KLA fighters, who included some bearded Arab types, from the village of Aracinovo in buses, after the Macedonian army had spectacularly failed to unseat them by assaulting their positions with rockets from afar. Asked to explain what had happened, Laity described the event as "a score draw" and asked for this to be attributed to Western diplomatic sources.
Oh, I almost forgot to mention that Mark Laity was previously the BBC’s defence correspondent; he was promoted to the NATO job following an impeccably credulous performance at the press conferences in Brussels from which he covered the bombing of Serbia in 1999. Gatekeeper turned poacher, what?
Anyway, enough about the hacks; back to nation-building.
The powers vested in the Office of the High Representative of the international community in Bosnia are immense, allowing the West, aka. Intcom Inc., to impose its will by decree.
“The more you reform, the less I will have to,” the current High Representative, Paddy Ashdown, told Bosnian members of parliament last year. “The less you reform, the more I will have to.”
Under pressure to create the conditions for the abolition of his office, Ashdown has, like his predecessor Wolfgang Petritsch, resorted to government by personal fiat. This autocratic approach to democratisation has begun to alienate international officials from the people they were sent to serve, exposing them to constant carping from a political class that included 68 parties at the last election, as well as three presidents, all of them ultimately powerless:
A recent report published by the European Stability Initiative, a non-profit research and policy institute which likes to bend ears in Brussels, dubbed Bosnia’s cumbersome constitutional arrangement “The European Raj”.
“Vast ambitions, the fervent belief in progress, the assumption that outsiders can best interpret the true interest of a subject people — all these are hallmarks that the international administration in Bosnia shares with the British East India Company and the Utilitarian philosophers who staffed it in the early nineteenth century,” note the report’s authors, Gerald Knaus and Felix Martin. “The international mission [in Sarajevo] has arrived at this paradoxical conclusion: What Bosnia and Herzegovina needs is not democratic domestic politics, but government by international experts.”
And here's another something I spat out earlier:
Anxiety about the stability of the Bosnian project conditioned Western responses to the breakdown of law and order in Kosovo between 1998 and 1999. The likely outcome of a battle for Kosovo would be partition into Serb and Albanian cantons and politicians on both sides have long debated where the line would run.
This affront to the principle of multi-ethnicity, which Western powers have sought to uphold since they intervened in Bosnia to glue it back together, was regarded as unthinkable. Were the taboo on redrawing borders to be shattered, policymakers fear, a domino effect would be set in motion throughout the region.
The concern that Serbs would renew their quest to annex the Bosnian Serb Republic to Serbia proper is well founded, as are suspicions that Albanians might seek to join north-western Macedonia, which is predominantly Albanian, to neighbouring Kosovo. This would legitimise the creation of new international boundaries at gunpoint, but might yet prove the only workable solution, assuming it could be negotiated successfully.
The omens are not auspicious for what happens when everyone sits down and pulls out their maps. The best-known example is the Congress of Berlin in 1878, where, among other arbitrary territorial carve-ups, Europe’s Great Powers agreed to dismantle the ailing Ottoman Empire. This decision effectively created the Balkans of today, ensuring that mouth-watering swathes of territory would henceforth be disputed by the rival ethnic groups scattered across them. The outcome of every subsequent crisis in the region has been dictated by the same Great Powers, which have been alternately meddling and troubleshooting in Balkan countries for much of the intervening period, barring half a century of peace during the cold war.
For now, another border conference is not on the agenda. Instead, the guessing games continue about what will happen when the international protectorates in Bosnia and Kosovo are eventually dismantled, keeping alive the twin nationalist dreams of a Greater Serbia and a Greater Albania.
The status quo in Kosovo is patently unsustainable; sitting on the problem has only inflamed it. Now, having promoted the quite incompatible doctrines of ethnic nationalism and human rights, the international community must decide what to do next. (From: Fear and loathing in the Balkans, by Raoul Djukanovic, Why Do They Hate Us Correspondent)
I cabled it off to HMG's old our man in Belgrade, who replied thus:
Fascinating! Good luck with Version 2...
Charles
Charles Crawford
HM Ambassador Warsaw
He may have a point. It's certainly very dry and ranting. Sundowners at the club anyone, before we bully on down for the final chukka of White Mischief? Just don't wait up for Jolly Miss Hockey Sticks with the notebook to rat on her A-list pals and old school ties.
Fortiter defendit triumphans: triumphing by bold defence. The motto of my alma mater and the birthplace of preemptive war.
What a Carry On... Just like the Jocks we sent over the Khyber Pass, way back when there was still a Jewel in the Crown of the Empress of India; I always knew that Tony’s looney Toon Army would turn out to be the shock troops of the Counter-Reformation. So that’s the source of the British obsession with the Eastern question, what with those recent run-ins with crusading down in Constantinople. Which of course brings us back to Gladstone’s bag and baggage and the perpetual dawn of Imperial History in the post-colonial era. Blah blah caliphate, have you got a clue? I blame the playing fields of Fetid Colleges myself.
"When Dubya dies and goes to hell, he will ride in a flaming chariot, seated in state on a red-hot plate twixt Bliar and Judas Iscariot." (The Grand Old Man turns Murderer of Gordon, as The Guardian failed to break out of the beltway inside baseball)
Now the G.O.P.'s gone phull-on gory, what's the story? Morning glory: don't mess with MC Rummy's quarterback jock or you'll get a slap in the showers and electrodes on your nuts while we find a car-bomber to install as your prime minister. Oh, and he may have shot six men since taking office. But you won't find out about that if you get too hung up on named quotes from the Imperial bureaucracy:
"As we know, there are known knowns. There are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns. That is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns, the ones we don't know we don't know." (Donald Rumsfeld, Department of Defence news briefing, Feb. 12, 2002)
What? Like the whereabouts of Osama bin Forgotten? Or the apparent fact that the man who wired $100,000 to Mohammed Atta was the head of the Pakistani intelligence services, eating breakfast in Washington on September 11, only to be fired shortly thereafter? While his dining partner Porter Goss got a kick upstairs to the top of the CIA, having admitted on camera he was totally unqualified for the job? War on terrorism? Back to basics, surely: cause and effect. Karma, innit?
Rather like John Scarlett, the man who claimed "ownership" of Tony Blair's dodgy dossier about Iraq, only be to be promoted before the whitewash report that cleared his passage to the top job in British spookery. The mind boggles, while Iraq remains locked in a horrorshow rerun of 1920, back in the day when Winston Churchill demanded the use of chemical weapons against the "recalcitrant Arabs" kicking up a fuss in Mesopotamia. It's got so bad now that the FCO timeservers are getting worried about where it's all headed:
"Bush is al-Qaeda's best recruiting sergeant." (British Ambassador to Rome, Ivor Roberts, at a meeting of British and Italian politicians, bankers, academics and journalists in Tuscany)
Meanwhile back in the Balkans, where Mr Roberts used to push paper, imperialism never died. Although it's certainly rather "lite" these days: low on carbs and leaving a nasty aftertaste, not unlike Thomas Friedman's words to the Serbs in the spring of 1999:
"Every week you ravage Kosovo is another decade we will set your country back by pulverizing you. You want 1950? We can do 1950. You want 1389? We can do 1389." (Stop the Music, New York Times, April 23, 1999)
Press, P.R. and advertising. The revolving doors of the liberal conscience. Who said military-industrial complex? Shh! It's a tough business, as Friedman recognises:
"The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist. McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the designer of the U.S. Air Force F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley's technologies to flourish is called the U.S. Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps." (From "The Lexus and the Olive Tree", 1999)
In the style of Dan Senor, formerly the Coalition Provisional Authority's paranoid android in Baghdad, who coached "Prime Minister" Allawi on the speech his U.S. puppetmasters wrote for him, the information warriors of Intcom Inc., the neoliberal U.S./UK conglomerate better known as the international community, are also at work in the former republics of Yugoslavia.
Down there, this sort of thing is standard practice. Mark Laity, the last NATO Secretary General’s spokesman, was dispatched to Macedonia in the spring of 2001 to write speeches for the President, Boris Trajkovski, as he fumbled his chance to crush a guerrilla rebellion.
Before long Laity was trying to influence the whole government, which took no heed of the president whatsoever, but quickly found himself barricaded into the ineffectual head of state's office plotting TV campaigns. Whereupon NATO decided to change tack from backing the Macedonian government, against the Kosovo Liberation Army remnants it had already pretended to disarm, to demanding that these bands of “murderous thugs”, as Laity’s boss George Robertson had memorably called them, be invited to peace talks.
Since Macedonia’s brief stab at counter-insurgency had proved hopeless, hapless and helpless, and NATO remained disinterested in doing anything that might endanger its soldiers, Laity went begging the Macedonian military to keep its powder dry, while at the same time cavorting about the hillside with a mobile phone, trying to keep track of all the spooks going up to ask the KLA (aka. NLA, aka. ANA, aka. UCK) what would make them go away for a bit.
His crowning glory was to arrange for the evacuation of KLA fighters, who included some bearded Arab types, from the village of Aracinovo in buses, after the Macedonian army had spectacularly failed to unseat them by assaulting their positions with rockets from afar. Asked to explain what had happened, Laity described the event as "a score draw" and asked for this to be attributed to Western diplomatic sources.
Oh, I almost forgot to mention that Mark Laity was previously the BBC’s defence correspondent; he was promoted to the NATO job following an impeccably credulous performance at the press conferences in Brussels from which he covered the bombing of Serbia in 1999. Gatekeeper turned poacher, what?
Anyway, enough about the hacks; back to nation-building.
The powers vested in the Office of the High Representative of the international community in Bosnia are immense, allowing the West, aka. Intcom Inc., to impose its will by decree.
“The more you reform, the less I will have to,” the current High Representative, Paddy Ashdown, told Bosnian members of parliament last year. “The less you reform, the more I will have to.”
Under pressure to create the conditions for the abolition of his office, Ashdown has, like his predecessor Wolfgang Petritsch, resorted to government by personal fiat. This autocratic approach to democratisation has begun to alienate international officials from the people they were sent to serve, exposing them to constant carping from a political class that included 68 parties at the last election, as well as three presidents, all of them ultimately powerless:
A recent report published by the European Stability Initiative, a non-profit research and policy institute which likes to bend ears in Brussels, dubbed Bosnia’s cumbersome constitutional arrangement “The European Raj”.
“Vast ambitions, the fervent belief in progress, the assumption that outsiders can best interpret the true interest of a subject people — all these are hallmarks that the international administration in Bosnia shares with the British East India Company and the Utilitarian philosophers who staffed it in the early nineteenth century,” note the report’s authors, Gerald Knaus and Felix Martin. “The international mission [in Sarajevo] has arrived at this paradoxical conclusion: What Bosnia and Herzegovina needs is not democratic domestic politics, but government by international experts.”
And here's another something I spat out earlier:
Anxiety about the stability of the Bosnian project conditioned Western responses to the breakdown of law and order in Kosovo between 1998 and 1999. The likely outcome of a battle for Kosovo would be partition into Serb and Albanian cantons and politicians on both sides have long debated where the line would run.
This affront to the principle of multi-ethnicity, which Western powers have sought to uphold since they intervened in Bosnia to glue it back together, was regarded as unthinkable. Were the taboo on redrawing borders to be shattered, policymakers fear, a domino effect would be set in motion throughout the region.
The concern that Serbs would renew their quest to annex the Bosnian Serb Republic to Serbia proper is well founded, as are suspicions that Albanians might seek to join north-western Macedonia, which is predominantly Albanian, to neighbouring Kosovo. This would legitimise the creation of new international boundaries at gunpoint, but might yet prove the only workable solution, assuming it could be negotiated successfully.
The omens are not auspicious for what happens when everyone sits down and pulls out their maps. The best-known example is the Congress of Berlin in 1878, where, among other arbitrary territorial carve-ups, Europe’s Great Powers agreed to dismantle the ailing Ottoman Empire. This decision effectively created the Balkans of today, ensuring that mouth-watering swathes of territory would henceforth be disputed by the rival ethnic groups scattered across them. The outcome of every subsequent crisis in the region has been dictated by the same Great Powers, which have been alternately meddling and troubleshooting in Balkan countries for much of the intervening period, barring half a century of peace during the cold war.
For now, another border conference is not on the agenda. Instead, the guessing games continue about what will happen when the international protectorates in Bosnia and Kosovo are eventually dismantled, keeping alive the twin nationalist dreams of a Greater Serbia and a Greater Albania.
The status quo in Kosovo is patently unsustainable; sitting on the problem has only inflamed it. Now, having promoted the quite incompatible doctrines of ethnic nationalism and human rights, the international community must decide what to do next. (From: Fear and loathing in the Balkans, by Raoul Djukanovic, Why Do They Hate Us Correspondent)
I cabled it off to HMG's old our man in Belgrade, who replied thus:
Fascinating! Good luck with Version 2...
Charles
Charles Crawford
HM Ambassador Warsaw
He may have a point. It's certainly very dry and ranting. Sundowners at the club anyone, before we bully on down for the final chukka of White Mischief? Just don't wait up for Jolly Miss Hockey Sticks with the notebook to rat on her A-list pals and old school ties.
Fortiter defendit triumphans: triumphing by bold defence. The motto of my alma mater and the birthplace of preemptive war.
What a Carry On... Just like the Jocks we sent over the Khyber Pass, way back when there was still a Jewel in the Crown of the Empress of India; I always knew that Tony’s looney Toon Army would turn out to be the shock troops of the Counter-Reformation. So that’s the source of the British obsession with the Eastern question, what with those recent run-ins with crusading down in Constantinople. Which of course brings us back to Gladstone’s bag and baggage and the perpetual dawn of Imperial History in the post-colonial era. Blah blah caliphate, have you got a clue? I blame the playing fields of Fetid Colleges myself.
War reporting
From Lenin's Tomb:
Although it goes without saying that the right-wing press will malevolently spin and weave to make every piece of information emerging about the Iraq war look like a cruel indictment of its opponents, there has been an increasing attempt to gauge the quality of reporting and analysis emerging from the antiwar media. In that regard, a few snippets from the latest issue of the media journal Mediactive might prove useful. First of all because it features a transcript of a “Reporting the World” panel discussion with London based journalists affiliated either to ‘neutral’ television news programmes or to antiwar newspapers. I want to first draw your attention to Ed Pilkington of The Guardian, confessing to his paper’s inadequate pre-war coverage:
“[H]ow did we allow Tony Blair to get away with telling us that he had his own special intelligence and we must trust him? And he knew the truth? And we now know that in fact he didn’t have his own special intelligence and in fact virtually the entire lot of it was at least four years old and pre-1998, and we let him get away with that.”
Quite how this sits with that paper’s reluctance to describe Blair as a liar or a fantasist, I leave to your judgment...
Meanwhile, it's almost time to dig out those cliches for the War against Iran. There's a Global McJihad situation to exacerbate, don't you know:
Yikes! Ana raicha Al Qaeda! [translation: I'm going to the toilet (colloquial)]
Although it goes without saying that the right-wing press will malevolently spin and weave to make every piece of information emerging about the Iraq war look like a cruel indictment of its opponents, there has been an increasing attempt to gauge the quality of reporting and analysis emerging from the antiwar media. In that regard, a few snippets from the latest issue of the media journal Mediactive might prove useful. First of all because it features a transcript of a “Reporting the World” panel discussion with London based journalists affiliated either to ‘neutral’ television news programmes or to antiwar newspapers. I want to first draw your attention to Ed Pilkington of The Guardian, confessing to his paper’s inadequate pre-war coverage:
“[H]ow did we allow Tony Blair to get away with telling us that he had his own special intelligence and we must trust him? And he knew the truth? And we now know that in fact he didn’t have his own special intelligence and in fact virtually the entire lot of it was at least four years old and pre-1998, and we let him get away with that.”
Quite how this sits with that paper’s reluctance to describe Blair as a liar or a fantasist, I leave to your judgment...
Meanwhile, it's almost time to dig out those cliches for the War against Iran. There's a Global McJihad situation to exacerbate, don't you know:
Yikes! Ana raicha Al Qaeda! [translation: I'm going to the toilet (colloquial)]
Conventional coverage
This video clip is shot through with darts and moral outrage; you give us a bad name. All it needed was The Cars on the soundtrack to underscore how tragic this comedy of errors has become. Multimedia infotainment anyone? Beware the idiot's lantern:
Who's gonna tell you when
It's too late
Who's gonna tell you things
Aren't so great
You can't go on
Thinking nothing's wrong
Who's gonna drive you home tonight?
Were you watching The Day Today, or was it just another day at The Office for Alan Partridge? Never mind the Borats, welcome to Brass Eye and damn the Corporation, sir:
"Brass Eye should put an end to the recent spate of feeble, under-realised
faux-prankster drivel," Morris says. "It won't of course. It will just spawn
another host of second-rate imitators. So top this you quisling fucks."
With apologies to Gore Vidal, gutrot presents The American Presidency Redux:
ANNOUNCER
The cars are lined up and under starters’ orders -- and now here they are! The most daredevil group of daffy drivers to ever whirl their wheels in the Wacky Races. Competing for the title of world’s whackiest racer.
The cars are approaching the starting line. First, it’s the SUV Turbo Terrific driven by F.D.R. Freedom. Next, Truman Tuffnut and Buzzcut in the Warwagon.
Manoeuvring for position is the Jack Ruby Special -- and right behind it’s the McCarthy Mob in their Bullet-Proof Bomb. Then there's ingenious inventor L.B.J. Tonkin in his Convert-A-Car.
Oh! Here's the lovely Dick Trickster and his Watergate warriors. Next we have the Bumblemobile with the Skag Brothers, 38 & 39.
Lurching along is the Creepy Coupe with the Gruesome Twosome and their Nicaraguan death squads.
Then there's the Arkansas Chug-A-Bug with Hill & Billary Hillbilly.
And sneaking along last is that Mean Machine with those double-dealing do-badders Dick Dastardly and his sidekick Dubya, aka. Da Mutt.
SCENARIO
DUBYA MONEY is American Idol 43, a gangsta rapper fronting
for the Neoconz With Attitude. Behind the scenes at Skull &
Bones Records, the chimp dances to the spin from his organ
grinder, DR. CHE. Unhindered, their mean machine will stop
at nothing to grab back-to-back endorsements from the
judges. Having hijacked America, they’re now playing for
high stakes in God’s Casino, better known as the Middle
East.
EXT. NEVER-NEVERLAND RANCH, TEXAS
CAPTION: “TEXAS, 2004”.
Oil magnates from around the world are relaxing beside the
pool at Dubya’s crib in Crawford, beneath a huge BANNER
adorned with a lone star and the slogan: “PNAC PEAK OIL
PANIC”. Some are smoking cigars. Others sip cocktails
as they cavort with lapdancers. Lines of oil derricks are
pumping in unison in the background. Limousines are parked
on a vast drive patrolled by special forces. The assembled
crowd of global oligarchs and dictators also contains a few
common gangsters. Everyone is staring at an anthropoid
standing behind a lectern next to the poolside barbecue.
CLOSEUP on Dubya, a chimp-like figure in a suit. He has
draped his arms over the front of the pulpit, which is
decorated with a presidential seal bearing the motto: “A
NEW ORDER OF THE AGES”. An ANNOUNCER’s voice
booms out of speakers the size of wardrobes behind him.
ANNOUNCER (V.O.)
Ladies and Gentlemen, your
attention please. This is another
public service announcement
brought to you in part by Dubya
Money. Dubya does not give a fuck
what you think. If you don’t like
it, you can suck his fucking
cock. Little did you know, upon
goofing at your screen you have
just kissed his ass. Dubya Money
is fed up with your shit and he’s
going to kill you.
(pause)
Er, anything else?
After strutting around throughout this introduction, Dubya
leaps on top of the lectern and drops his trousers to
reveal the words: “YOUR VALUES” tattooed on his backside in
magic marker. He jumps to the ground and turns to the
camera.
DUBYA
(nonchalant)
Yeah. Sue me.
FADE TO BLACK
Who's gonna tell you when
It's too late
Who's gonna tell you things
Aren't so great
You can't go on
Thinking nothing's wrong
Who's gonna drive you home tonight?
Were you watching The Day Today, or was it just another day at The Office for Alan Partridge? Never mind the Borats, welcome to Brass Eye and damn the Corporation, sir:
"Brass Eye should put an end to the recent spate of feeble, under-realised
faux-prankster drivel," Morris says. "It won't of course. It will just spawn
another host of second-rate imitators. So top this you quisling fucks."
With apologies to Gore Vidal, gutrot presents The American Presidency Redux:
ANNOUNCER
The cars are lined up and under starters’ orders -- and now here they are! The most daredevil group of daffy drivers to ever whirl their wheels in the Wacky Races. Competing for the title of world’s whackiest racer.
The cars are approaching the starting line. First, it’s the SUV Turbo Terrific driven by F.D.R. Freedom. Next, Truman Tuffnut and Buzzcut in the Warwagon.
Manoeuvring for position is the Jack Ruby Special -- and right behind it’s the McCarthy Mob in their Bullet-Proof Bomb. Then there's ingenious inventor L.B.J. Tonkin in his Convert-A-Car.
Oh! Here's the lovely Dick Trickster and his Watergate warriors. Next we have the Bumblemobile with the Skag Brothers, 38 & 39.
Lurching along is the Creepy Coupe with the Gruesome Twosome and their Nicaraguan death squads.
Then there's the Arkansas Chug-A-Bug with Hill & Billary Hillbilly.
And sneaking along last is that Mean Machine with those double-dealing do-badders Dick Dastardly and his sidekick Dubya, aka. Da Mutt.
SCENARIO
DUBYA MONEY is American Idol 43, a gangsta rapper fronting
for the Neoconz With Attitude. Behind the scenes at Skull &
Bones Records, the chimp dances to the spin from his organ
grinder, DR. CHE. Unhindered, their mean machine will stop
at nothing to grab back-to-back endorsements from the
judges. Having hijacked America, they’re now playing for
high stakes in God’s Casino, better known as the Middle
East.
EXT. NEVER-NEVERLAND RANCH, TEXAS
CAPTION: “TEXAS, 2004”.
Oil magnates from around the world are relaxing beside the
pool at Dubya’s crib in Crawford, beneath a huge BANNER
adorned with a lone star and the slogan: “PNAC PEAK OIL
PANIC”. Some are smoking cigars. Others sip cocktails
as they cavort with lapdancers. Lines of oil derricks are
pumping in unison in the background. Limousines are parked
on a vast drive patrolled by special forces. The assembled
crowd of global oligarchs and dictators also contains a few
common gangsters. Everyone is staring at an anthropoid
standing behind a lectern next to the poolside barbecue.
CLOSEUP on Dubya, a chimp-like figure in a suit. He has
draped his arms over the front of the pulpit, which is
decorated with a presidential seal bearing the motto: “A
NEW ORDER OF THE AGES”. An ANNOUNCER’s voice
booms out of speakers the size of wardrobes behind him.
ANNOUNCER (V.O.)
Ladies and Gentlemen, your
attention please. This is another
public service announcement
brought to you in part by Dubya
Money. Dubya does not give a fuck
what you think. If you don’t like
it, you can suck his fucking
cock. Little did you know, upon
goofing at your screen you have
just kissed his ass. Dubya Money
is fed up with your shit and he’s
going to kill you.
(pause)
Er, anything else?
After strutting around throughout this introduction, Dubya
leaps on top of the lectern and drops his trousers to
reveal the words: “YOUR VALUES” tattooed on his backside in
magic marker. He jumps to the ground and turns to the
camera.
DUBYA
(nonchalant)
Yeah. Sue me.
FADE TO BLACK
My Times: a mea culpa of sorts
The harder they come...
Howell Raines likes to think he doesn't mince words. The 20,000 or so on display here suggest otherwise. To his credit, the former New York Times editor finds the space to say "Iraq" twice: once in connection with the Jayson Blair brouhaha that cost him his job; and finally in this gem of insight into the power of the press to shape events:
"In the wake of 9/11 our reporters and editors continued to roll through a series of stories that amounted to a nearly two-year blizzard of news: the Afghan war, the search for Osama bin Laden, anthrax attacks, intelligence failures, corporate scandals, the war in Iraq."
Reads like a government whitewash doesn't it? No one's to blame. Perhaps that's because Raines liked to "flood the zone" first and ask questions afterwards. A lifetime of newspapering can do that to you, especially at the home of the triumph of style over substance. To be fair, Raines acknowledges that The Times is the mouthpiece of the American establishment:
"It misses the point to say that the Times is an "elite" publication. It is the indispensable newsletter of the United States' political, diplomatic, governmental, academic, and professional communities, and the main link between those communities and their counterparts around the world. And yet a harsh reality of our era is that if the Times ever ceased to exist, it would not be reinvented by any media company now in operation, in this country or in the world."
Chance would be a fine thing. Still, the Judith Miller scandal couldn't be covered up forever, and Raines' successor Bill Keller bit the bullet a few months back, although he sure didn't swallow:
"We have found a number of instances of coverage that was not as rigorous as it should have been. In some cases, information that was controversial then, and seems questionable now, was insufficiently qualified or allowed to stand unchallenged. Looking back, we wish we had been more aggressive in re-examining the claims as new evidence emerged - or failed to emerge."
Ah, 20:20 hindsight, the perennial defence of the workaday hack. So what would Raines do differently if he could have his time again? Apparently, The Times needs to get down with the sounds on the street. You know, the words of the prophets are written on subway walls, and other alchemical insights:
"To explore every aspect of American and global experience does not mean pandering. It does mean that the serial ups and downs of a Britney Spears are a sociological and economic phenomenon that is, as a reflection of contemporary American culture, worthy of serious reporting. It means being astute enough about American society to understand that the deadly rap wars have nothing to do with what Snoop Dogg said about Suge Knight. The real story behind the rap wars is one of huge corporations like Sony and EMI trying to save a multibillion-dollar industry in economic collapse. The rap shootings may not be 'a Times story' by the traditional definition, but the fact that international media companies are dependent for product on performers and moguls who carry guns and like to whack one another is a story as relevant today as the whiskey wars of Prohibition were in their time."
Go Howell! Never mind the fact that Snoop and Suge were on the same team and the rap wars were just another East-West showdown between Death Row and Bad Boy, i.e. Tupac and Biggie. Elitist crusties. I once wrote a story about DJs and had to argue for 20 minutes with an earnest sub-editor on 43rd Street to prevent her from rewriting the expression as "disc jockey" throughout. The notion that younger readers might be put off didn't register on her radar.
Mind you, the bored jobsworths on the editing desk don't even read their own paper's columnists, or if they do it all sails straight through the gaps between their ears. Paul Krugman is one of the few mainstream pundits taking the Bush Administration to pieces, but it's a wonder he still bothers given the lack of back-up from his footsoldiers:
Krugman is that rare bird among political pundits - a Washington outsider. He teaches at Princeton and lives in New Jersey. This, he says, meant he was never "part of the gang" and so could not be "bullied" or "seduced" into seeing things the administration's way. With characteristic immodesty he states that he was doing a first-rate job of exposing Bushian flimflam while his colleagues were letting the public down. Thus: When the first Bush budget appeared, "it was obvious to me that...he and his people were simply lying about all the important numbers." (Russell Baker, The Awful Truth, New York Review of Books)
By the time I resigned I was on the verge of interviewing myself in search of something relevant to report, but Jayson Blair beat me to it. Guess I'll have to make do with my snotty retired colonel act instead. That got into print faster than most of my stories.
So, in tribute to Howell Raines, and with a nod to Eric Idle, I've concocted the following little ditty about the story he missed on the Neoconz With Attitude. Songs in the key of life indeed. Maybe he'd like to sing for us suckers in Times Square:
SKULL AND BONES RECORDS present:
DUBYA MONEY IN GOD'S CASINO
DR. CHE
Y'all know me, still the same ol'
G., but I been low key. Hated on
by most these liberals wit' no
schemes, no petrol task force
teams, no Likudnik dreams wit'
marines and my legions of two-bit
mercenaries. Mad at me cuz I can
finally afford to provide my
backers here wit' lower fees. Got
it fixed wit' the studios and
they all full of hacks who wanna
kick ass in Iraq for the
oligarchs skulkin' in back of my
House like cronies. Did y'all
think I'ma let my dough freeze?
Oh please, you better bow down on
both knees. Who'd you think
tortured the whole team? Who'd
you think sold this ol' country
fallacies, lies, spoofs and
forgeries from that crook Ahmad
Chalabi and my scribes at the
Times on Street West 43?
Creatin' a nation of dope fiends
to be sure they jus' hangin' in
your hood. And when yo' armament
sales weren't doin' too good,
who's the Doctor they told you to
go see? Y'all better listen up closely,
all you traitors who said that my
firm flopped, or I turned soft,
y'all know the reason Enron's Lay
stayed home free. So fuck y'all,
all o' y'all; I'm the Patriot
Act, yo blow me! If y'all wanna
keep fuckin' around wit' me I'ma
nuke us back to a cold freeze.
DUBYA
(singing)
Nowadays everybody wanna talk
like they got somethin' to say,
but nothin' comes out when they
move their lips; just a bunch of
gibberish and motherfuckers act
like they forgot about Che.
Nowadays everybody wanna talk
like they got somethin' to say,
but nothin' comes out when they
move their lips; just a bunch of
gibberish and motherfuckers act
like they forgot about Che. So
whaddya say to somebody you hate?
CHEERLEADER
(brandishing notebook)
What?
DUBYA
Or anyone tryin' to keep trouble
at bay? Wanna resolve things in a
bloodier way?
CHEERLEADER
(wielding camera)
Yup!
DUBYA
Just study a tape of N.W.A.! One
day, I'm patrollin' by, with a
squadron armed when an Iraqi guy
give me an awkward eye so I
rocket him off with some cluster
bombs and his pop and mom. I
don't give a fuck if it's them or
not, I'm harder than truths that
I'm tryin' to dodge like I'm
drunk as fuck, light-headed and a
wreck from a pretzel and a
cyclin' flop. Crackin' up without
a sip, try'na cool my fears. Fuck
you Blix, you're on my list, I'ma
blow all you smart-ass
motherfuckin' Europeans.
And when the facts came through,
me and Che's stood next to some
burned down towers wit' a tissue
of lies and a fistful of memos
and still weren't kicked out.
CHEERLEADER
(feigning gravitas)
Right here.
DUBYA
So from here on out we worked out
how to keep you numb, we pumpin'
the Dow and I'm still loco enough
to choke you to death wit'
Apocalypse Now. Dubya Money --
hotter then his set of twin
honies -- in Kerry's S.U.V. wit'
the windows up in a three-way
hump with Lady Bunny. Callin' men
ladies; Skull 'n' Bones bent us
both crazy, there's no way that
you can save me, it's okay, go
invade Cheney.
CHEERLEADER
Da-da?
DUBYA
Nowadays everybody wanna talk
like they got somethin' to say,
but nothin' comes out when they
move their lips; just a bunch of
gibberish and motherfuckers act
like they forgot about Che.
Nowadays everybody wanna talk
like they got somethin' to say,
but nothin' comes out when they
move their lips; just a bunch of
gibberish and motherfuckers act
like they forgot about Che.
DR. CHE
If it was up to me, you
muh'fuckers'd stop comin' up to
me wit' your hands out lookin' up
to me, like you want somethin'
free, when my last sorties went
out, you wa'n't fundin' me. But
now I stole me a whole country,
see, everybody wanna come to me
like it was some disease, but you
won't get a crumb from me cuz I'm
from the seats of --
CHEERLEADER
(fawning)
Boardrooms.
DR. CHE
I told 'em all -- all them phoney
liberals, who you think controls
'em all? Now you wanna run around
talkin' 'bout fun like we don't
need guns -- how'd you think we
sold 'em all? Cuz I play offense?
Now all I get is hate mail all
day 'bout my violence? What? Cuz
I been in the lab wit' a pen and
a pad tryna cook the damn'
evidence? I ain't havin' that;
this is the millennium of
aftermath, it ain't gon' be
nothin' after that so give me one
more crack at Iraq and fuck rap,
you can have it back. Yo, where's
all the mad rappers at? It's like
a jungle in this habitat, but all
you bitchin' Hitchens learned I
got fixed wit' tricks since yo'
whimperin' at Richard Nixon.
Howell Raines likes to think he doesn't mince words. The 20,000 or so on display here suggest otherwise. To his credit, the former New York Times editor finds the space to say "Iraq" twice: once in connection with the Jayson Blair brouhaha that cost him his job; and finally in this gem of insight into the power of the press to shape events:
"In the wake of 9/11 our reporters and editors continued to roll through a series of stories that amounted to a nearly two-year blizzard of news: the Afghan war, the search for Osama bin Laden, anthrax attacks, intelligence failures, corporate scandals, the war in Iraq."
Reads like a government whitewash doesn't it? No one's to blame. Perhaps that's because Raines liked to "flood the zone" first and ask questions afterwards. A lifetime of newspapering can do that to you, especially at the home of the triumph of style over substance. To be fair, Raines acknowledges that The Times is the mouthpiece of the American establishment:
"It misses the point to say that the Times is an "elite" publication. It is the indispensable newsletter of the United States' political, diplomatic, governmental, academic, and professional communities, and the main link between those communities and their counterparts around the world. And yet a harsh reality of our era is that if the Times ever ceased to exist, it would not be reinvented by any media company now in operation, in this country or in the world."
Chance would be a fine thing. Still, the Judith Miller scandal couldn't be covered up forever, and Raines' successor Bill Keller bit the bullet a few months back, although he sure didn't swallow:
"We have found a number of instances of coverage that was not as rigorous as it should have been. In some cases, information that was controversial then, and seems questionable now, was insufficiently qualified or allowed to stand unchallenged. Looking back, we wish we had been more aggressive in re-examining the claims as new evidence emerged - or failed to emerge."
Ah, 20:20 hindsight, the perennial defence of the workaday hack. So what would Raines do differently if he could have his time again? Apparently, The Times needs to get down with the sounds on the street. You know, the words of the prophets are written on subway walls, and other alchemical insights:
"To explore every aspect of American and global experience does not mean pandering. It does mean that the serial ups and downs of a Britney Spears are a sociological and economic phenomenon that is, as a reflection of contemporary American culture, worthy of serious reporting. It means being astute enough about American society to understand that the deadly rap wars have nothing to do with what Snoop Dogg said about Suge Knight. The real story behind the rap wars is one of huge corporations like Sony and EMI trying to save a multibillion-dollar industry in economic collapse. The rap shootings may not be 'a Times story' by the traditional definition, but the fact that international media companies are dependent for product on performers and moguls who carry guns and like to whack one another is a story as relevant today as the whiskey wars of Prohibition were in their time."
Go Howell! Never mind the fact that Snoop and Suge were on the same team and the rap wars were just another East-West showdown between Death Row and Bad Boy, i.e. Tupac and Biggie. Elitist crusties. I once wrote a story about DJs and had to argue for 20 minutes with an earnest sub-editor on 43rd Street to prevent her from rewriting the expression as "disc jockey" throughout. The notion that younger readers might be put off didn't register on her radar.
Mind you, the bored jobsworths on the editing desk don't even read their own paper's columnists, or if they do it all sails straight through the gaps between their ears. Paul Krugman is one of the few mainstream pundits taking the Bush Administration to pieces, but it's a wonder he still bothers given the lack of back-up from his footsoldiers:
Krugman is that rare bird among political pundits - a Washington outsider. He teaches at Princeton and lives in New Jersey. This, he says, meant he was never "part of the gang" and so could not be "bullied" or "seduced" into seeing things the administration's way. With characteristic immodesty he states that he was doing a first-rate job of exposing Bushian flimflam while his colleagues were letting the public down. Thus: When the first Bush budget appeared, "it was obvious to me that...he and his people were simply lying about all the important numbers." (Russell Baker, The Awful Truth, New York Review of Books)
By the time I resigned I was on the verge of interviewing myself in search of something relevant to report, but Jayson Blair beat me to it. Guess I'll have to make do with my snotty retired colonel act instead. That got into print faster than most of my stories.
So, in tribute to Howell Raines, and with a nod to Eric Idle, I've concocted the following little ditty about the story he missed on the Neoconz With Attitude. Songs in the key of life indeed. Maybe he'd like to sing for us suckers in Times Square:
SKULL AND BONES RECORDS present:
DUBYA MONEY IN GOD'S CASINO
DR. CHE
Y'all know me, still the same ol'
G., but I been low key. Hated on
by most these liberals wit' no
schemes, no petrol task force
teams, no Likudnik dreams wit'
marines and my legions of two-bit
mercenaries. Mad at me cuz I can
finally afford to provide my
backers here wit' lower fees. Got
it fixed wit' the studios and
they all full of hacks who wanna
kick ass in Iraq for the
oligarchs skulkin' in back of my
House like cronies. Did y'all
think I'ma let my dough freeze?
Oh please, you better bow down on
both knees. Who'd you think
tortured the whole team? Who'd
you think sold this ol' country
fallacies, lies, spoofs and
forgeries from that crook Ahmad
Chalabi and my scribes at the
Times on Street West 43?
Creatin' a nation of dope fiends
to be sure they jus' hangin' in
your hood. And when yo' armament
sales weren't doin' too good,
who's the Doctor they told you to
go see? Y'all better listen up closely,
all you traitors who said that my
firm flopped, or I turned soft,
y'all know the reason Enron's Lay
stayed home free. So fuck y'all,
all o' y'all; I'm the Patriot
Act, yo blow me! If y'all wanna
keep fuckin' around wit' me I'ma
nuke us back to a cold freeze.
DUBYA
(singing)
Nowadays everybody wanna talk
like they got somethin' to say,
but nothin' comes out when they
move their lips; just a bunch of
gibberish and motherfuckers act
like they forgot about Che.
Nowadays everybody wanna talk
like they got somethin' to say,
but nothin' comes out when they
move their lips; just a bunch of
gibberish and motherfuckers act
like they forgot about Che. So
whaddya say to somebody you hate?
CHEERLEADER
(brandishing notebook)
What?
DUBYA
Or anyone tryin' to keep trouble
at bay? Wanna resolve things in a
bloodier way?
CHEERLEADER
(wielding camera)
Yup!
DUBYA
Just study a tape of N.W.A.! One
day, I'm patrollin' by, with a
squadron armed when an Iraqi guy
give me an awkward eye so I
rocket him off with some cluster
bombs and his pop and mom. I
don't give a fuck if it's them or
not, I'm harder than truths that
I'm tryin' to dodge like I'm
drunk as fuck, light-headed and a
wreck from a pretzel and a
cyclin' flop. Crackin' up without
a sip, try'na cool my fears. Fuck
you Blix, you're on my list, I'ma
blow all you smart-ass
motherfuckin' Europeans.
And when the facts came through,
me and Che's stood next to some
burned down towers wit' a tissue
of lies and a fistful of memos
and still weren't kicked out.
CHEERLEADER
(feigning gravitas)
Right here.
DUBYA
So from here on out we worked out
how to keep you numb, we pumpin'
the Dow and I'm still loco enough
to choke you to death wit'
Apocalypse Now. Dubya Money --
hotter then his set of twin
honies -- in Kerry's S.U.V. wit'
the windows up in a three-way
hump with Lady Bunny. Callin' men
ladies; Skull 'n' Bones bent us
both crazy, there's no way that
you can save me, it's okay, go
invade Cheney.
CHEERLEADER
Da-da?
DUBYA
Nowadays everybody wanna talk
like they got somethin' to say,
but nothin' comes out when they
move their lips; just a bunch of
gibberish and motherfuckers act
like they forgot about Che.
Nowadays everybody wanna talk
like they got somethin' to say,
but nothin' comes out when they
move their lips; just a bunch of
gibberish and motherfuckers act
like they forgot about Che.
DR. CHE
If it was up to me, you
muh'fuckers'd stop comin' up to
me wit' your hands out lookin' up
to me, like you want somethin'
free, when my last sorties went
out, you wa'n't fundin' me. But
now I stole me a whole country,
see, everybody wanna come to me
like it was some disease, but you
won't get a crumb from me cuz I'm
from the seats of --
CHEERLEADER
(fawning)
Boardrooms.
DR. CHE
I told 'em all -- all them phoney
liberals, who you think controls
'em all? Now you wanna run around
talkin' 'bout fun like we don't
need guns -- how'd you think we
sold 'em all? Cuz I play offense?
Now all I get is hate mail all
day 'bout my violence? What? Cuz
I been in the lab wit' a pen and
a pad tryna cook the damn'
evidence? I ain't havin' that;
this is the millennium of
aftermath, it ain't gon' be
nothin' after that so give me one
more crack at Iraq and fuck rap,
you can have it back. Yo, where's
all the mad rappers at? It's like
a jungle in this habitat, but all
you bitchin' Hitchens learned I
got fixed wit' tricks since yo'
whimperin' at Richard Nixon.
Saturday, October 09, 2004
Judith Miller update: Hacks Americana
Oh what a tangled web she weaves:
A federal judge today [7 October] held New York Times reporter Judith Miller in contempt for refusing to divulge confidential sources to prosecutors investigating the leak of an undercover CIA officer's identity.
As Ron F comments at Media Lens, it's amazing that Novak and the official who leaked him the story haven't been shopped too, what with all that patriotic action pervading the judiciary. After all, Richard Perle calls Seymour Hersh the closest thing to a terrorist in American journalism and visting hacks get cuffed in LAX.
In case you missed it below, 9/11 scepticism goes mainstream in this month's Harpers - sign up for their Weekly Review while you're at it. All the news that's fit to read:
Senator John Kerry defeated President George W. Bush in their first debate. Bush was criticized by experts for giving simplistic answers, smirking, slouching, and repeating himself. He said eleven times that his job is "hard work," and referring to Missy Johnson, whose husband was killed in Iraq, the president said that "it's hard work to try to love her as best I can." Squirrel season opened in Louisiana. In Baghdad, suicide bombs killed dozens of children who were gathering to receive candy from U.S. soldiers. Iraqi schoolchildren were still waiting to start school, which has remained closed because of the ongoing civil war. Condoleezza Rice was still trying to use the discredited story of Iraq's aluminum tubes to justify the invasion of Iraq. The oxygen generator failed on the international space station, and the Army lowered its standards in an attempt to attract more recruits. Election officials across the country were reporting record numbers of new registrations, and Republican state officials in Ohio and Florida were doing their best to invalidate them on technicalities. A federal judge ordered the government to notify Indian land owners before it sells their property; the ruling was part of a lawsuit in which Indians claim that the U.S. government has cheated them out of $137 billion in royalties from the use of their lands. Fistfights broke out among Christians from different sects at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, which is said to be the site of Golgotha, where Jesus was crucified, and the site of his tomb. "There was a lot of hitting going on," said a witness. "Police were hit, monks were hit, there were people with bloodied faces." There was more rioting in Haiti. A suicide bomber killed 23 people at a Shiite mosque in Sialkot, Pakistan. Scientists were waiting for Mount St. Helens to blow up.
Especially now you have to send an open letter to the Washington Post to remind its hackpack of their Watergatelust delusions. Of course, the conspiracy theory thought-stopper soon scuppers those:
"If Cheney says Saddam Hussein backed the 9/11 attacks, as the vice-president did on many occasions despite his recent protestations to the contrary, this is not called a conspiracy theory, although it obviously involves a theoretical conspiracy. Yet this is the most important 9/11 conspiracy theory to date, because it was used to justify the invasion of Iraq." (Nicholas Levis, 911Truth.org)
Hang on? Did you hear a journalist say that? Check Wolf Blitzer. He actually says "mistakes were made". Miles away, most of them, because one of the consolations of mainstream journalism is the self-serving illusion that you've got powerful people on the run. Well, sometimes, though only when other powerful people are doing the chasing. But most reporters can't spot the difference:
ANDREW MARR, BBC POLITICAL EDITOR
Okay - let's look at one of the other key examples, which you've looked at too, which would appear to go against your idea, which is the Watergate affair...
NOAM CHOMSKY, WORTH LISTENING TO
Watergate is a perfect example - we've discussed it at length in our book in fact, and elsewhere - it's a perfect example of the way the press was subordinated to power. In fact...
MARR
But this brought down a President!
CHOMSKY
Just a minute - let's take a look. What happened there... here it's kind of interesting, 'cause you can't do experiments on history, but here history was kind enough to set one up for us. The Watergate exposures happened to take place at exactly the same time as another set of exposures; they were the exposures of COINTELPRO.
MARR
Sorry - you'll have to explain that to us.
CHOMSKY
It's interesting that I have to explain it, because it's vastly more significant than Watergate - that already makes my point. COINTELPRO was a program of subversion carried out, not by a couple of petty crooks, but by the national political police - the FBI - under four administrations. It began in the late Eisenhower administration, ran up until...
MARR
This is the end of the Socialist Workers Party in America?
CHOMSKY
The Socialist Workers Party was one tiny fragment of it. It began... by the time it got through (I won't run through the whole story), it was aimed at the entire New Left, at the Women's movement, at the whole Black movement; it was extremely broad - it's actions went as far as political assassination. Now what's the difference between the two? Very clear. In Watergate, Richard Nixon went after half of US private power, namely the Democratic Party, and power can defend itself. So therefore, that's a scandal. He didn't do anything... nothing happened - look, I was on Nixon's enemies list. I didn't even know, nothing ever happened. But...
MARR
Nonetheless, you wouldn't say it was an insignificant event, to bring down a President...
CHOMSKY
No, it was a case where half of US power defended itself against a person who had obviously stepped out of line. And the fact that the press thought that was important shows that they think powerful people ought to be able to defend themselves. Now, whether there was a question of principle involved happens to be easily checked in this case. One tiny part of the COINTELPRO program was itself far more significant in principle than all of Watergate; and if you look at the whole program, I mean, it's not even a discussion. But you have to ask me what COINTELPRO is. You know what Watergate is. There couldn't be a more dramatic example of the subordination of educated opinion to Power, here in England, as well as the United States.
Oh well, little wonder then that Miller sucked up Rummy's crock of shit. Another day, another victory for the Fourth Estate:
"I am not a National Security strategist or a military tactician," says John W. Rendon, Jr., whose DC-based PR firm was recently hired by the Pentagon to win over the hearts and minds of Arabs and Muslims worldwide.
"I am a politician," Rendon said in a 1998 speech to the National Security Conference (NSC), "and a person who uses communication to meet public policy or corporate policy objectives. In fact, I am an information warrior, and a perception manager. This is probably best described in the words of Hunter S. Thompson, when he wrote 'When things turn weird, the weird turn pro.'"
The Pentagon's Information Warrior: Rendon to the Rescue
If any budding journalists are reading this, let Monbiot give you a good going over first:
"This career path, in other words, is counter-educational. It teaches you to do what you don’t want to do, to be what you don’t want to be. It is an exceptional person who emerges from this process with her aims and ideals intact. Indeed it is an exceptional person who emerges from this process at all. What the corporate or institutional world wants you to do is the complete opposite of what you want to do. It wants a reliable tool, someone who can think, but not for herself: who can think instead for the institution. You can do what you believe only if that belief happens to coincide with the aims of the corporation, not just once, but consistently, across the years (it is a source of wonder to me how many people’s beliefs just happen to match the demands of institutional power, however those demands may twist and turn, after they’ve been in the company for a year or two)."
Truth brethren.
A federal judge today [7 October] held New York Times reporter Judith Miller in contempt for refusing to divulge confidential sources to prosecutors investigating the leak of an undercover CIA officer's identity.
As Ron F comments at Media Lens, it's amazing that Novak and the official who leaked him the story haven't been shopped too, what with all that patriotic action pervading the judiciary. After all, Richard Perle calls Seymour Hersh the closest thing to a terrorist in American journalism and visting hacks get cuffed in LAX.
In case you missed it below, 9/11 scepticism goes mainstream in this month's Harpers - sign up for their Weekly Review while you're at it. All the news that's fit to read:
Senator John Kerry defeated President George W. Bush in their first debate. Bush was criticized by experts for giving simplistic answers, smirking, slouching, and repeating himself. He said eleven times that his job is "hard work," and referring to Missy Johnson, whose husband was killed in Iraq, the president said that "it's hard work to try to love her as best I can." Squirrel season opened in Louisiana. In Baghdad, suicide bombs killed dozens of children who were gathering to receive candy from U.S. soldiers. Iraqi schoolchildren were still waiting to start school, which has remained closed because of the ongoing civil war. Condoleezza Rice was still trying to use the discredited story of Iraq's aluminum tubes to justify the invasion of Iraq. The oxygen generator failed on the international space station, and the Army lowered its standards in an attempt to attract more recruits. Election officials across the country were reporting record numbers of new registrations, and Republican state officials in Ohio and Florida were doing their best to invalidate them on technicalities. A federal judge ordered the government to notify Indian land owners before it sells their property; the ruling was part of a lawsuit in which Indians claim that the U.S. government has cheated them out of $137 billion in royalties from the use of their lands. Fistfights broke out among Christians from different sects at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, which is said to be the site of Golgotha, where Jesus was crucified, and the site of his tomb. "There was a lot of hitting going on," said a witness. "Police were hit, monks were hit, there were people with bloodied faces." There was more rioting in Haiti. A suicide bomber killed 23 people at a Shiite mosque in Sialkot, Pakistan. Scientists were waiting for Mount St. Helens to blow up.
Especially now you have to send an open letter to the Washington Post to remind its hackpack of their Watergatelust delusions. Of course, the conspiracy theory thought-stopper soon scuppers those:
"If Cheney says Saddam Hussein backed the 9/11 attacks, as the vice-president did on many occasions despite his recent protestations to the contrary, this is not called a conspiracy theory, although it obviously involves a theoretical conspiracy. Yet this is the most important 9/11 conspiracy theory to date, because it was used to justify the invasion of Iraq." (Nicholas Levis, 911Truth.org)
Hang on? Did you hear a journalist say that? Check Wolf Blitzer. He actually says "mistakes were made". Miles away, most of them, because one of the consolations of mainstream journalism is the self-serving illusion that you've got powerful people on the run. Well, sometimes, though only when other powerful people are doing the chasing. But most reporters can't spot the difference:
ANDREW MARR, BBC POLITICAL EDITOR
Okay - let's look at one of the other key examples, which you've looked at too, which would appear to go against your idea, which is the Watergate affair...
NOAM CHOMSKY, WORTH LISTENING TO
Watergate is a perfect example - we've discussed it at length in our book in fact, and elsewhere - it's a perfect example of the way the press was subordinated to power. In fact...
MARR
But this brought down a President!
CHOMSKY
Just a minute - let's take a look. What happened there... here it's kind of interesting, 'cause you can't do experiments on history, but here history was kind enough to set one up for us. The Watergate exposures happened to take place at exactly the same time as another set of exposures; they were the exposures of COINTELPRO.
MARR
Sorry - you'll have to explain that to us.
CHOMSKY
It's interesting that I have to explain it, because it's vastly more significant than Watergate - that already makes my point. COINTELPRO was a program of subversion carried out, not by a couple of petty crooks, but by the national political police - the FBI - under four administrations. It began in the late Eisenhower administration, ran up until...
MARR
This is the end of the Socialist Workers Party in America?
CHOMSKY
The Socialist Workers Party was one tiny fragment of it. It began... by the time it got through (I won't run through the whole story), it was aimed at the entire New Left, at the Women's movement, at the whole Black movement; it was extremely broad - it's actions went as far as political assassination. Now what's the difference between the two? Very clear. In Watergate, Richard Nixon went after half of US private power, namely the Democratic Party, and power can defend itself. So therefore, that's a scandal. He didn't do anything... nothing happened - look, I was on Nixon's enemies list. I didn't even know, nothing ever happened. But...
MARR
Nonetheless, you wouldn't say it was an insignificant event, to bring down a President...
CHOMSKY
No, it was a case where half of US power defended itself against a person who had obviously stepped out of line. And the fact that the press thought that was important shows that they think powerful people ought to be able to defend themselves. Now, whether there was a question of principle involved happens to be easily checked in this case. One tiny part of the COINTELPRO program was itself far more significant in principle than all of Watergate; and if you look at the whole program, I mean, it's not even a discussion. But you have to ask me what COINTELPRO is. You know what Watergate is. There couldn't be a more dramatic example of the subordination of educated opinion to Power, here in England, as well as the United States.
Oh well, little wonder then that Miller sucked up Rummy's crock of shit. Another day, another victory for the Fourth Estate:
"I am not a National Security strategist or a military tactician," says John W. Rendon, Jr., whose DC-based PR firm was recently hired by the Pentagon to win over the hearts and minds of Arabs and Muslims worldwide.
"I am a politician," Rendon said in a 1998 speech to the National Security Conference (NSC), "and a person who uses communication to meet public policy or corporate policy objectives. In fact, I am an information warrior, and a perception manager. This is probably best described in the words of Hunter S. Thompson, when he wrote 'When things turn weird, the weird turn pro.'"
The Pentagon's Information Warrior: Rendon to the Rescue
If any budding journalists are reading this, let Monbiot give you a good going over first:
"This career path, in other words, is counter-educational. It teaches you to do what you don’t want to do, to be what you don’t want to be. It is an exceptional person who emerges from this process with her aims and ideals intact. Indeed it is an exceptional person who emerges from this process at all. What the corporate or institutional world wants you to do is the complete opposite of what you want to do. It wants a reliable tool, someone who can think, but not for herself: who can think instead for the institution. You can do what you believe only if that belief happens to coincide with the aims of the corporation, not just once, but consistently, across the years (it is a source of wonder to me how many people’s beliefs just happen to match the demands of institutional power, however those demands may twist and turn, after they’ve been in the company for a year or two)."
Truth brethren.
Yet another email to the editor of The Guardian
Date: October 9, 2004 15:12:11 BST
To: alan.rusbridger@guardian.co.uk
Cc: martin.kettle@guardian.co.uk, jonathan.freedland@guardian.co.uk, seumas.milne@guardian.co.uk
Subject: Whither The Guardian?
Dear Mr Rusbridger,
Words fail me, just as they do you, by the looks of today's Guardian. Thank you, however, for printing Scott Ritter's excellent column, "The source Duelfer didn't quote", which concludes:
"During this critical time in both our nations' histories, with the war in Iraq playing such a central role in the selection of America's next president as well as the political future of Britain's prime minister, the American and British people deserve to know the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, about the casus belli that collectively got us into the ongoing quagmire that is Iraq today."
Your decision to publish Ritter's words begs the question: do you agree with him? The answer is no, if the silence of your leader column and investigative reporters is any indication. Ritter stresses that the most comprehensive survey of WMD remains the 12,000-page document submitted by Iraq in December 2002, two-thirds of which was "redacted" by the United States.
Have you made no attempt to unearth the contents of these censored sections? Perhaps you might refer one of your correspondents to Andreas Zumach of Die Tageszeitung, who appears to have been leaked a copy in Geneva. I won't waste typing time on citing the distortions you have already published on the subject, noted in previous correspondence.
The Guardian's comment pages baffle me. Do they exist merely to provide the illusion of a liberal agenda driving your news-editing decisions? An outlet for hand-wringing that saves you from having to grasp the nettle? Yesterday, Jonathan Freedland's mild-mannered outrage about the Prime Minister's persistent lying - never referred to as such, I might add - reminded us of the need to "keep banging on about it"; indeed his column was preceded by the following strapline:
"The ISG report should prompt fury about the war, not yawns"
As my letters to you on Thursday and Friday noted, there was not only no fury emanating from your desktop publishing system; you actually saw fit to recycle yet more self-serving propaganda from our government with no attempt to deconstruct the spin. Are your reporters really supposed to be a mouthpiece for their powerful contacts or do you require them, as did Harold Evans, to wonder, at all times, "Why is this bastard lying to me?" Shouldn't Jonathan Freedland's appeal for action be directed at your journalists as much as the politicians they write about?
Apparently not, if Martin Kettle's homilies on the need for more deference to our dear leaders are any guide to your editorial policy. In other words: keep all this sensitive stuff off the front page and bury it in obscure columns by tortured liberals. Is your objective to offend as few people as possible, no matter how blatant their offences?
To compound the agony, you take the tragic murder of Ken Bigley, to which your Saturday front page is devoted, as an opportunity to state in today's leader:
"In light of the efforts made to secure his release, few would agree that Tony Blair and the government have blood on their hands."
Although the decision to go to Iraq was Mr Bigley's, your leader column's attempt to absolve the political leaders of Britain, and their American masters, of any responsibility whatsoever is farcical. I quote:
"In reality, there was little the [British] government could do - the hostagetakers' demand that Iraqi women prisoners held by the coalition be released could not be met."
This is a bare-faced lie, as proved by Seumas Milne's column on 23 September of this year, which spoke of:
"...the quisling prime minister Ayad Allawi - whose real authority can be measured by the US veto of any release of the Iraqi women prisoners demanded by Kenneth Bigley's kidnappers..."
I repeat my question of yesterday: do you feel obliged to assist Tony Blair's government in its efforts to provide a fig-leaf for U.S. imperialism?
As for Mr Blair having no blood on his hands, you clearly haven't studied logic. How can you publish Mr Milne's excellent column, which concludes that an immediate withdrawal of troops is the only logical policy in the face of the carnage they have wrought, and then distort reality so blatantly two weeks later? Are such columns supposed to atone for your abysmal reporting standards, news judgment and disregard for accuracy?
And what of the escalation in U.S./UK bombardment of Iraq that followed Mr Blair's collusion in the withdrawal of weapons inspectors in 1998, the year the United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator in Baghdad resigned rather than play any further part in administering a sanctions regime he described as genocidal?
Has all of this vanished down the Guardian memory hole? Yes, judging by your apparent credulity in the face of the Prime Minister's sermonising about Africa this week. Have you seriously been seduced by the missionary position of cruise missile leftism? Perhaps you should ask the Iraqi people how it feels to be on the receiving end after 12 years of bombing and sanctions, which liberated hundreds of thousands of innocent infants from the struggle of staying alive.
Mr Freedland's column on Friday concluded as follows:
"If this war is allowed to pass with impunity, these will be the consequences. First, "pre-emptive" wars will be deemed acceptable, even against countries that palpably pose no threat. Second, international law will become a dead letter, to be broken by powerful states at will.
"And third, in Britain, a precedent will be established. From now on, a prime minister will be able to mislead parliament and public on the gravest matter - and pay no price. He will be able to say something is "beyond doubt" when underlying intelligence for his assertion is packed with doubt - and get away with it."
Does the Guardian, with acres of newsprint at its disposal, intend to remain complicit in this process? Or will you give me a straight response to my previous request:
"Please advise me when I can look forward to a front page and leader column devoted to a call for the Prime Minister's impeachment, supported by an analysis of why your newspaper has taken so long to apprise its readers in plain English of the gravity of his high crimes and misdemeanours." (email to the Guardian, 7 October, 2004)
As the editor, I presume you are the man who takes the decisions. Perhaps if you aspired to set the news agenda rather than to follow it - as defined by your newsdesk diary, the incoming flurry of faxes and phone calls and the output of your competitors - you might find that your newspaper attracted more readers instead of betraying them daily.
What stops you from speaking out with the full force at your disposal? If you are merely riding the waves rather than making them, what exactly does your job consist of? For what are you being so handsomely remunerated? Running a tight ship?
Do you have any ambition higher than wealth and status? Or are you content to fawn at the feet of whoever runs the country, abdicating your considerable power and responsibility to tell the truth as clearly as possible?
I await your answers with interest.
Yours sincerely,
[Raoul]
Comments on this letter are archived here.
To: alan.rusbridger@guardian.co.uk
Cc: martin.kettle@guardian.co.uk, jonathan.freedland@guardian.co.uk, seumas.milne@guardian.co.uk
Subject: Whither The Guardian?
Dear Mr Rusbridger,
Words fail me, just as they do you, by the looks of today's Guardian. Thank you, however, for printing Scott Ritter's excellent column, "The source Duelfer didn't quote", which concludes:
"During this critical time in both our nations' histories, with the war in Iraq playing such a central role in the selection of America's next president as well as the political future of Britain's prime minister, the American and British people deserve to know the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, about the casus belli that collectively got us into the ongoing quagmire that is Iraq today."
Your decision to publish Ritter's words begs the question: do you agree with him? The answer is no, if the silence of your leader column and investigative reporters is any indication. Ritter stresses that the most comprehensive survey of WMD remains the 12,000-page document submitted by Iraq in December 2002, two-thirds of which was "redacted" by the United States.
Have you made no attempt to unearth the contents of these censored sections? Perhaps you might refer one of your correspondents to Andreas Zumach of Die Tageszeitung, who appears to have been leaked a copy in Geneva. I won't waste typing time on citing the distortions you have already published on the subject, noted in previous correspondence.
The Guardian's comment pages baffle me. Do they exist merely to provide the illusion of a liberal agenda driving your news-editing decisions? An outlet for hand-wringing that saves you from having to grasp the nettle? Yesterday, Jonathan Freedland's mild-mannered outrage about the Prime Minister's persistent lying - never referred to as such, I might add - reminded us of the need to "keep banging on about it"; indeed his column was preceded by the following strapline:
"The ISG report should prompt fury about the war, not yawns"
As my letters to you on Thursday and Friday noted, there was not only no fury emanating from your desktop publishing system; you actually saw fit to recycle yet more self-serving propaganda from our government with no attempt to deconstruct the spin. Are your reporters really supposed to be a mouthpiece for their powerful contacts or do you require them, as did Harold Evans, to wonder, at all times, "Why is this bastard lying to me?" Shouldn't Jonathan Freedland's appeal for action be directed at your journalists as much as the politicians they write about?
Apparently not, if Martin Kettle's homilies on the need for more deference to our dear leaders are any guide to your editorial policy. In other words: keep all this sensitive stuff off the front page and bury it in obscure columns by tortured liberals. Is your objective to offend as few people as possible, no matter how blatant their offences?
To compound the agony, you take the tragic murder of Ken Bigley, to which your Saturday front page is devoted, as an opportunity to state in today's leader:
"In light of the efforts made to secure his release, few would agree that Tony Blair and the government have blood on their hands."
Although the decision to go to Iraq was Mr Bigley's, your leader column's attempt to absolve the political leaders of Britain, and their American masters, of any responsibility whatsoever is farcical. I quote:
"In reality, there was little the [British] government could do - the hostagetakers' demand that Iraqi women prisoners held by the coalition be released could not be met."
This is a bare-faced lie, as proved by Seumas Milne's column on 23 September of this year, which spoke of:
"...the quisling prime minister Ayad Allawi - whose real authority can be measured by the US veto of any release of the Iraqi women prisoners demanded by Kenneth Bigley's kidnappers..."
I repeat my question of yesterday: do you feel obliged to assist Tony Blair's government in its efforts to provide a fig-leaf for U.S. imperialism?
As for Mr Blair having no blood on his hands, you clearly haven't studied logic. How can you publish Mr Milne's excellent column, which concludes that an immediate withdrawal of troops is the only logical policy in the face of the carnage they have wrought, and then distort reality so blatantly two weeks later? Are such columns supposed to atone for your abysmal reporting standards, news judgment and disregard for accuracy?
And what of the escalation in U.S./UK bombardment of Iraq that followed Mr Blair's collusion in the withdrawal of weapons inspectors in 1998, the year the United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator in Baghdad resigned rather than play any further part in administering a sanctions regime he described as genocidal?
Has all of this vanished down the Guardian memory hole? Yes, judging by your apparent credulity in the face of the Prime Minister's sermonising about Africa this week. Have you seriously been seduced by the missionary position of cruise missile leftism? Perhaps you should ask the Iraqi people how it feels to be on the receiving end after 12 years of bombing and sanctions, which liberated hundreds of thousands of innocent infants from the struggle of staying alive.
Mr Freedland's column on Friday concluded as follows:
"If this war is allowed to pass with impunity, these will be the consequences. First, "pre-emptive" wars will be deemed acceptable, even against countries that palpably pose no threat. Second, international law will become a dead letter, to be broken by powerful states at will.
"And third, in Britain, a precedent will be established. From now on, a prime minister will be able to mislead parliament and public on the gravest matter - and pay no price. He will be able to say something is "beyond doubt" when underlying intelligence for his assertion is packed with doubt - and get away with it."
Does the Guardian, with acres of newsprint at its disposal, intend to remain complicit in this process? Or will you give me a straight response to my previous request:
"Please advise me when I can look forward to a front page and leader column devoted to a call for the Prime Minister's impeachment, supported by an analysis of why your newspaper has taken so long to apprise its readers in plain English of the gravity of his high crimes and misdemeanours." (email to the Guardian, 7 October, 2004)
As the editor, I presume you are the man who takes the decisions. Perhaps if you aspired to set the news agenda rather than to follow it - as defined by your newsdesk diary, the incoming flurry of faxes and phone calls and the output of your competitors - you might find that your newspaper attracted more readers instead of betraying them daily.
What stops you from speaking out with the full force at your disposal? If you are merely riding the waves rather than making them, what exactly does your job consist of? For what are you being so handsomely remunerated? Running a tight ship?
Do you have any ambition higher than wealth and status? Or are you content to fawn at the feet of whoever runs the country, abdicating your considerable power and responsibility to tell the truth as clearly as possible?
I await your answers with interest.
Yours sincerely,
[Raoul]
Comments on this letter are archived here.
Friday, October 08, 2004
Another email to the editor of The Guardian
Sent: 08 October 2004 10:07
To: 'alan.rusbridger@guardian.co.uk'
Subject: Your front page - again
Dear Mr. Rusbridger,
Here you go again. This time your front page basks under the headline "Blair's mission for Africa", treating us to the news of our Prime Minister's proposal for "a 15,000-strong European Union battle force".
Let us be charitable. As a national daily newspaper, it would be difficult for the Guardian to ignore such an announcement. Indeed, the lead paragraph of Patrick Wintour's story does a passable job of answering the "w" questions to inform us of what is being proposed, by whom, where, when and even, to a certain extent, why and how.
As usual, however, it is your second paragraph that exposes your newspaper's divorce from reality. I quote:
"Mr Blair made the bold proposal just 24 hours after the Iraq Survey Group reported that no weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq. The talk of battle plans underlined the fact that despite the controversy over Iraq, Mr Blair has not lost his fervour for human rights-driven military interventions."
I beg your pardon? Let us quickly gloss over your abject failure to hold Mr Blair to account for his serial mendacity on the subject of Iraqi weapons which, as the ISG showed, have been so multiply misrepresented that we were asked to believe that 12 years of bombing and sanctions were conducted in the name of Iraqi human rights and global security. After all, as Madeleine Albright said in 1996 when questioned about the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent infants, "We think the price is worth it."
Returning to Wintour's second paragraph, which ought, according to the most basic tenets of journalism, to answer the burning "so what?" question, perhaps you could enlighten me as to the evidence supporting your assertion that "Mr Blair has not lost his fervour for human-rights driven military interventions."
Tens of thousands of dead Iraqis, to say nothing of the more than 1,000 dead soldiers from the United States and allied nations - and the torture in which their colleagues have engaged, ought to make you wary of such distortions, surely. If not, perhaps you might like to reread the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee report on the bombing of Serbia in 1999, which was predicated on similarly manufactured evidence and also greatly exacerbated the problem it purported to solve.
In which case, I look forward to your explanation as to why Mr Blair's rhetoric is taken at face value, rather than balanced by a consideration of the evidence as to his actions and their consequences. Are your staff required to wear virtual reality headsets? Or merely to forget what happened yesterday? Did you consult the evidence I brought to your attention regarding the Bush Administration's pre-war interest in Iraqi oilfields?
Are you unaware that Mr Blair promised his support to the Bush Administration for an invasion of Iraq in September 2002, come what may, as Bob Woodward recounts? I find it impossible to believe that this fact escaped your attention, so I can only conclude that your newspaper feels obliged to assist the Prime Minister in his sales operation for the American empire and to defend him from his critics, who number a majority of the British population. Please correct me if I am wrong.
Yours sincerely,
To: 'alan.rusbridger@guardian.co.uk'
Subject: Your front page - again
Dear Mr. Rusbridger,
Here you go again. This time your front page basks under the headline "Blair's mission for Africa", treating us to the news of our Prime Minister's proposal for "a 15,000-strong European Union battle force".
Let us be charitable. As a national daily newspaper, it would be difficult for the Guardian to ignore such an announcement. Indeed, the lead paragraph of Patrick Wintour's story does a passable job of answering the "w" questions to inform us of what is being proposed, by whom, where, when and even, to a certain extent, why and how.
As usual, however, it is your second paragraph that exposes your newspaper's divorce from reality. I quote:
"Mr Blair made the bold proposal just 24 hours after the Iraq Survey Group reported that no weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq. The talk of battle plans underlined the fact that despite the controversy over Iraq, Mr Blair has not lost his fervour for human rights-driven military interventions."
I beg your pardon? Let us quickly gloss over your abject failure to hold Mr Blair to account for his serial mendacity on the subject of Iraqi weapons which, as the ISG showed, have been so multiply misrepresented that we were asked to believe that 12 years of bombing and sanctions were conducted in the name of Iraqi human rights and global security. After all, as Madeleine Albright said in 1996 when questioned about the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent infants, "We think the price is worth it."
Returning to Wintour's second paragraph, which ought, according to the most basic tenets of journalism, to answer the burning "so what?" question, perhaps you could enlighten me as to the evidence supporting your assertion that "Mr Blair has not lost his fervour for human-rights driven military interventions."
Tens of thousands of dead Iraqis, to say nothing of the more than 1,000 dead soldiers from the United States and allied nations - and the torture in which their colleagues have engaged, ought to make you wary of such distortions, surely. If not, perhaps you might like to reread the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee report on the bombing of Serbia in 1999, which was predicated on similarly manufactured evidence and also greatly exacerbated the problem it purported to solve.
In which case, I look forward to your explanation as to why Mr Blair's rhetoric is taken at face value, rather than balanced by a consideration of the evidence as to his actions and their consequences. Are your staff required to wear virtual reality headsets? Or merely to forget what happened yesterday? Did you consult the evidence I brought to your attention regarding the Bush Administration's pre-war interest in Iraqi oilfields?
Are you unaware that Mr Blair promised his support to the Bush Administration for an invasion of Iraq in September 2002, come what may, as Bob Woodward recounts? I find it impossible to believe that this fact escaped your attention, so I can only conclude that your newspaper feels obliged to assist the Prime Minister in his sales operation for the American empire and to defend him from his critics, who number a majority of the British population. Please correct me if I am wrong.
Yours sincerely,
Thursday, October 07, 2004
Email to the editor of The Guardian
Subject: Your front page
Date: October 7, 2004 20:08:25 BST
To: alan.rusbridger@guardian.co.uk
Cc: seumas.milne@guardian.co.uk
Dear Mr Rusbridger,
Your paper's news-editing judgment upon the release of the Iraq Survey Group's final report was perplexing to say the least, if not plain wrongheaded.
I appreciate that to Ewen MacAskill, Jamie Wilson and David Pallister, and most probably the newsdesk, the only question worth asking when skim-reading the report is: "Where are the golden quotes?" Since these are usually provided in press release format, it is little wonder that most journalists stick to the script, provided these lines haven't been aired already and they tally with the prevailing political mood music.
Even so, and also taking account of your no-WMD-whatsoever banner-headline-sentence above this sidebar, the revelation that "French and Russians 'took cash from Iraq'" did not strike me as "the freshest and politically most combustible part", as Mr. MacAskill's longer piece on page four contends. Or is our own Prime Minister's well documented mendacity not newsworthy?
Please consult the work of Glen Rangwala and Dan Plesch (http://www.impeachblair.org/A_Case_To_Answer.pdf) and tell me precisely where you take issue with their evidence and argument. While you're at it you might explain to me why this angle is kissed off with a few perfunctory soundbites from the Prime Minister's quivering lips in Julian Borger's story, rather than a bullet-point summary of how damning this report is, unless you forgot about his tissue of lies about his economy with the truth when pronouncing: "I know what I believe". Or is that just old news? If so, why?
Returning to MacAskill's story, I'm staggered to learn in paragraph two that "the U.S. state department and the Foreign Office have long hinted that the two countries [France and Russia] were motivated by financial gain", not because this is a surprise, but because your staff regarded it as such. Is there an official Guardian policy against referring to the well-documented preparations by the Bush Administration for the division of Iraqi oil contracts following an invasion? Do you think there is no expectation of a return on their $140 billion investment?
Perhaps you are simply unaware that these plans existed? After all, Tony Blair did denounce them as a conspiracy theory. Among other evidence of this conspiracy, the papers referred to by Paul O'Neill are available online. Is this not the missing "nut 'graph" to put your lead paragraph into context? The version you served up failed to serve your readers in any meaningful way.
I sense that you are well aware of these facts but for some reason chose not to give them more prominence. Could you please explain why? Or must I engage a Kremlinologist to deconstruct the Guardian for me in order to divine hidden meanings rescued from the memory hole in such casual asides as "the U.S. held back some of the names in the report"?
Has the Guardian no backbone or is it simply out of touch with its readership as regards what constitutes political combustibility?
Please advise me when I can look forward to a front page and leader column devoted to a call for the Prime Minister's impeachment, supported by an analysis of why your newspaper has taken so long to apprise its readers in plain English of the gravity of his high crimes and misdemeanours.
Yours sincerely,
Date: October 7, 2004 20:08:25 BST
To: alan.rusbridger@guardian.co.uk
Cc: seumas.milne@guardian.co.uk
Dear Mr Rusbridger,
Your paper's news-editing judgment upon the release of the Iraq Survey Group's final report was perplexing to say the least, if not plain wrongheaded.
I appreciate that to Ewen MacAskill, Jamie Wilson and David Pallister, and most probably the newsdesk, the only question worth asking when skim-reading the report is: "Where are the golden quotes?" Since these are usually provided in press release format, it is little wonder that most journalists stick to the script, provided these lines haven't been aired already and they tally with the prevailing political mood music.
Even so, and also taking account of your no-WMD-whatsoever banner-headline-sentence above this sidebar, the revelation that "French and Russians 'took cash from Iraq'" did not strike me as "the freshest and politically most combustible part", as Mr. MacAskill's longer piece on page four contends. Or is our own Prime Minister's well documented mendacity not newsworthy?
Please consult the work of Glen Rangwala and Dan Plesch (http://www.impeachblair.org/A_Case_To_Answer.pdf) and tell me precisely where you take issue with their evidence and argument. While you're at it you might explain to me why this angle is kissed off with a few perfunctory soundbites from the Prime Minister's quivering lips in Julian Borger's story, rather than a bullet-point summary of how damning this report is, unless you forgot about his tissue of lies about his economy with the truth when pronouncing: "I know what I believe". Or is that just old news? If so, why?
Returning to MacAskill's story, I'm staggered to learn in paragraph two that "the U.S. state department and the Foreign Office have long hinted that the two countries [France and Russia] were motivated by financial gain", not because this is a surprise, but because your staff regarded it as such. Is there an official Guardian policy against referring to the well-documented preparations by the Bush Administration for the division of Iraqi oil contracts following an invasion? Do you think there is no expectation of a return on their $140 billion investment?
Perhaps you are simply unaware that these plans existed? After all, Tony Blair did denounce them as a conspiracy theory. Among other evidence of this conspiracy, the papers referred to by Paul O'Neill are available online. Is this not the missing "nut 'graph" to put your lead paragraph into context? The version you served up failed to serve your readers in any meaningful way.
I sense that you are well aware of these facts but for some reason chose not to give them more prominence. Could you please explain why? Or must I engage a Kremlinologist to deconstruct the Guardian for me in order to divine hidden meanings rescued from the memory hole in such casual asides as "the U.S. held back some of the names in the report"?
Has the Guardian no backbone or is it simply out of touch with its readership as regards what constitutes political combustibility?
Please advise me when I can look forward to a front page and leader column devoted to a call for the Prime Minister's impeachment, supported by an analysis of why your newspaper has taken so long to apprise its readers in plain English of the gravity of his high crimes and misdemeanours.
Yours sincerely,
Wednesday, October 06, 2004
Nader Crusader
Ralph talks a lot of sense. Where else will alternatives come from?
"How many times do they have to be betrayed? You can forgive them if they're under 30. They have not been betrayed enough, but people -- my peer group going like that? There's no end to the lowering of their expectation level. The least-worsters have no end logic to their attitude. Because every four years until the end of kingdom come, there will be a least-worst party in America. They have no end, in 2008, 2012. And every four years, both parties get worse and they make no demands. If you are going to go for least worst, at least pull the least of the worst in your direction. They don't even have the courage of their convictions to stand tall, and to say they have wimped out is truly an understatement. And it's a tragedy because they're very bright, and they fought a lot of good fights in the old days. They have either run out of gas, or they have lost their self-respect."
Maybe someone ought to tell Michael Moore that he's backing the "we do war too" branch of the Big Business Democrats.
"How many times do they have to be betrayed? You can forgive them if they're under 30. They have not been betrayed enough, but people -- my peer group going like that? There's no end to the lowering of their expectation level. The least-worsters have no end logic to their attitude. Because every four years until the end of kingdom come, there will be a least-worst party in America. They have no end, in 2008, 2012. And every four years, both parties get worse and they make no demands. If you are going to go for least worst, at least pull the least of the worst in your direction. They don't even have the courage of their convictions to stand tall, and to say they have wimped out is truly an understatement. And it's a tragedy because they're very bright, and they fought a lot of good fights in the old days. They have either run out of gas, or they have lost their self-respect."
Maybe someone ought to tell Michael Moore that he's backing the "we do war too" branch of the Big Business Democrats.
All The News That's Fit To Print
Who knows for sure what happened on September 11, 2001? Not I, nor the FBI, nor the 9/11 omissioners, judging by their report. But Reuters seems to be pretty damn' certain:
Subject: STYLE CHANGE - Al Qaeda and the Sept 11 attacks
Header: Internal Use Only
As agreed on today's call, please would you circulate this to all desks (including financial desks) and bureaus in your regions:
AL QAEDA AND THE SEPTEMBER 11 ATTACKS
The Political & General News Editors
In stories about al Qaeda and the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, we need not write that the group has been blamed for carrying them out.
There is sufficient factual evidence, including several statements from Osama bin Laden asserting responsibility, for us to write that al Qaeda carried out the attacks or for us to use similar formulations.
Tell that to the Feds:
Usama Bin Laden is wanted in connection with the August 7, 1998, bombings of the United States Embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya. These attacks killed over 200 people. In addition, Bin Laden is a suspect in other terrorist attacks throughout the world. (FBI Most Wanted Terrorist website)
For the Foreign Editor of The New York Times, meanwhile, the 911 national emergency is just another opportunity to wax lyrical. Never read the anniversary stories, warns the BBC's political editor Andrew Marr. But what would he know? He thinks Tony Blair "stands a larger man" for having invaded Iraq. Over to Globalist:
New York, September 11, 2002
Friends,
On this solemn date, a year on, I want to thank you all for extraordinary work that has contributed in no small measure to some of the finest newspapers ever published by The New York Times. It has been an exhausting, sometimes painful year for everyone, but also an uplifting one.
Every day, from every corner of the world, you have filed the stories that ensure that our report sets the standard in international reporting. Here on the desk, I am in awe of the commitment and dedication of everyone to ensuring and sharpening our excellence.
The pressures of the last year have been enormous. We all need a break from such pressures from time to time. I want to appeal to you all to take time off when needed to be with your families and friends. There is life beyond newspapering.
My greatest regret of the past year is that, having started on September 11, I found myself with little opportunity to get out of here and visit you. I intend to try to rectify that over the next year, starting with Mexico some time in the next month. To judge by the President's plans, the first half of next year may be busy. But whatever happens, I will make a serious effort to spend more time on the road with all of you.
Al Siegal today mentioned Reston's limpid lede the day after the Kennedy assassination: ``America wept tonight, not alone for its dead young President, but for itself.'' From the horror of a year ago, and from every expression of the mystery of the human heart, you also have crafted journalism of riveting power.
It's my daughter's birthday today. She's five. So tonight, beyond the suffering indelibly associated with this day, I will celebrate life. Thank you all for doing so day after day by chronicling its every nuance and its every possibility.
Roger
No danger of them checking out the evidence provided by Michael C. Ruppert in his latest claim to have it all figured out then:
"As it turns out, on September 11th, various agencies including NORAD, the FAA, the Canadian Air Force, the National Reconnaissance Office, and possibly the Pentagon were conducting as many as five wargame drills – in some cases involving hijacked airliners; in some cases also involving blips deliberately inserted onto FAA and military radar screens which were present during (at least) the first attacks; and which in some cases had pulled significant fighter resources away from the northeast US on September 11th. In addition, a close reading of key news stories published in the spring of 2004 revealed for the first time that some of these drills were “live-fly” exercises where actual aircraft were simulating the behavior of hijacked airliners in real life: all of this as the real attacks began. The fact that these exercises had never been systematically and thoroughly explored in the mainstream press, or publicly by Congress, or at least publicly in any detail by the so-called Independent 9/11 Commission made me think that they might be the Grail. That’s exactly what they turned out to be."
We'll see. In the meantime, there's always David Ray Griffin's "The New Pearl Harbor", endorsed by Howard Zinn and now available online:
"I have argued that our Fourth Estate needs to carry out a thorough investigation of the kind of information summarized in this book. It is usually only when the press leads the way that an official investigation is undertaken. But finally it will be the official investigation that is decisive. In considering the kind of investigation that is now needed, it will be helpful to review the official investigations that have been authorized thus far and the obstacles they have faced from the Bush administration."
Subject: STYLE CHANGE - Al Qaeda and the Sept 11 attacks
Header: Internal Use Only
As agreed on today's call, please would you circulate this to all desks (including financial desks) and bureaus in your regions:
AL QAEDA AND THE SEPTEMBER 11 ATTACKS
The Political & General News Editors
In stories about al Qaeda and the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, we need not write that the group has been blamed for carrying them out.
There is sufficient factual evidence, including several statements from Osama bin Laden asserting responsibility, for us to write that al Qaeda carried out the attacks or for us to use similar formulations.
Tell that to the Feds:
Usama Bin Laden is wanted in connection with the August 7, 1998, bombings of the United States Embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya. These attacks killed over 200 people. In addition, Bin Laden is a suspect in other terrorist attacks throughout the world. (FBI Most Wanted Terrorist website)
For the Foreign Editor of The New York Times, meanwhile, the 911 national emergency is just another opportunity to wax lyrical. Never read the anniversary stories, warns the BBC's political editor Andrew Marr. But what would he know? He thinks Tony Blair "stands a larger man" for having invaded Iraq. Over to Globalist:
New York, September 11, 2002
Friends,
On this solemn date, a year on, I want to thank you all for extraordinary work that has contributed in no small measure to some of the finest newspapers ever published by The New York Times. It has been an exhausting, sometimes painful year for everyone, but also an uplifting one.
Every day, from every corner of the world, you have filed the stories that ensure that our report sets the standard in international reporting. Here on the desk, I am in awe of the commitment and dedication of everyone to ensuring and sharpening our excellence.
The pressures of the last year have been enormous. We all need a break from such pressures from time to time. I want to appeal to you all to take time off when needed to be with your families and friends. There is life beyond newspapering.
My greatest regret of the past year is that, having started on September 11, I found myself with little opportunity to get out of here and visit you. I intend to try to rectify that over the next year, starting with Mexico some time in the next month. To judge by the President's plans, the first half of next year may be busy. But whatever happens, I will make a serious effort to spend more time on the road with all of you.
Al Siegal today mentioned Reston's limpid lede the day after the Kennedy assassination: ``America wept tonight, not alone for its dead young President, but for itself.'' From the horror of a year ago, and from every expression of the mystery of the human heart, you also have crafted journalism of riveting power.
It's my daughter's birthday today. She's five. So tonight, beyond the suffering indelibly associated with this day, I will celebrate life. Thank you all for doing so day after day by chronicling its every nuance and its every possibility.
Roger
No danger of them checking out the evidence provided by Michael C. Ruppert in his latest claim to have it all figured out then:
"As it turns out, on September 11th, various agencies including NORAD, the FAA, the Canadian Air Force, the National Reconnaissance Office, and possibly the Pentagon were conducting as many as five wargame drills – in some cases involving hijacked airliners; in some cases also involving blips deliberately inserted onto FAA and military radar screens which were present during (at least) the first attacks; and which in some cases had pulled significant fighter resources away from the northeast US on September 11th. In addition, a close reading of key news stories published in the spring of 2004 revealed for the first time that some of these drills were “live-fly” exercises where actual aircraft were simulating the behavior of hijacked airliners in real life: all of this as the real attacks began. The fact that these exercises had never been systematically and thoroughly explored in the mainstream press, or publicly by Congress, or at least publicly in any detail by the so-called Independent 9/11 Commission made me think that they might be the Grail. That’s exactly what they turned out to be."
We'll see. In the meantime, there's always David Ray Griffin's "The New Pearl Harbor", endorsed by Howard Zinn and now available online:
"I have argued that our Fourth Estate needs to carry out a thorough investigation of the kind of information summarized in this book. It is usually only when the press leads the way that an official investigation is undertaken. But finally it will be the official investigation that is decisive. In considering the kind of investigation that is now needed, it will be helpful to review the official investigations that have been authorized thus far and the obstacles they have faced from the Bush administration."
Gde si bre, jebo te?
Compare and contrast:
Slobodan Milosevic's speech at Kosovo Polje in 1989.
George W. Bush's State of the Union address in 2003.
Pre-emptive war anyone? Yes, I'm in lostandfoundland too. Hello?
Sometimes journalists get caught out cranking out the hate speech. In Rwanda, they get sent to jail. But Judith Miller of the New York Times still has her job despite inventing the pretext for war, although they sure dealt with that minor plagiarist and fabricator, Jayson Blair. I guess it pays not to piss off the people behind Private Jessica Lynch's claims to fame.
Slobodan Milosevic's speech at Kosovo Polje in 1989.
George W. Bush's State of the Union address in 2003.
Pre-emptive war anyone? Yes, I'm in lostandfoundland too. Hello?
Sometimes journalists get caught out cranking out the hate speech. In Rwanda, they get sent to jail. But Judith Miller of the New York Times still has her job despite inventing the pretext for war, although they sure dealt with that minor plagiarist and fabricator, Jayson Blair. I guess it pays not to piss off the people behind Private Jessica Lynch's claims to fame.
Bliar! Bliar! Pants on Fire!
From: gutrot
Subject: Bliar! Bliar! Pants on fire! Gunpowder, treason and plot!
To: office@stopwar.org.uk
Hi,
According to the "1066 and all that" version of history I remember being taught at school, our noble ancestors' feats of ingenuity included the clever idea of lighting fires on cliff-tops to act as an early-warning system against the invading hordes of the Spanish Armada.
Leaving aside the fact that this was hardly a novel conception back in 1588, and even less so now, I think it might be an interesting strategy to revive, perhaps on the 5th of November - that date we are forever being exhorted to remember, remember? After all, in the words of the popular rhyme, this orgy of pyromania is to draw our attention to the dastardly combination of "gunpowder, treason and plot."
In which case, how about a succession of cliff-top beacons, consisting largely of dirty laundry (preferably underwear), to mark this year's bonfire night as an occasion for the anti-war movement to demand an end to the madness of Tony Blair? Might have some publicity stunt potential if nothing else, assuming it could be properly coordinated.
Best wishes,
Raoul
Fiendish attempt to destroy Government
Posted by Philip Challinor on October 2, 2004, 2:48 pm
Jihad comes to Britain
Agencies
6 November 2004
Tony Blair's new town house came within ten miles of destruction last night as suspected Islamic terrorists lit fires up and down the country.
In what police called "a highly coordinated and thoroughly planned act of destructiveness", piles of dirty laundry and other detritus were brought to key points and set alight.
At least two of the fires were within ten miles of the Blairs' £3.6 million Georgian house in Connaught Square, London.
The Prime Minister was not in the house at the time, as he and his wife Cherie are on holiday in Uzbekistan as guests of the president, Islam Karimov.
A copy of the Koran and a passport in the name of Ruholla al-Dhuk were found at the scene of one of the holocausts by an American diplomat who happened to be passing at the time. Both documents were undamaged by the flames.
Subject: Bliar! Bliar! Pants on fire! Gunpowder, treason and plot!
To: office@stopwar.org.uk
Hi,
According to the "1066 and all that" version of history I remember being taught at school, our noble ancestors' feats of ingenuity included the clever idea of lighting fires on cliff-tops to act as an early-warning system against the invading hordes of the Spanish Armada.
Leaving aside the fact that this was hardly a novel conception back in 1588, and even less so now, I think it might be an interesting strategy to revive, perhaps on the 5th of November - that date we are forever being exhorted to remember, remember? After all, in the words of the popular rhyme, this orgy of pyromania is to draw our attention to the dastardly combination of "gunpowder, treason and plot."
In which case, how about a succession of cliff-top beacons, consisting largely of dirty laundry (preferably underwear), to mark this year's bonfire night as an occasion for the anti-war movement to demand an end to the madness of Tony Blair? Might have some publicity stunt potential if nothing else, assuming it could be properly coordinated.
Best wishes,
Raoul
Fiendish attempt to destroy Government
Posted by Philip Challinor on October 2, 2004, 2:48 pm
Jihad comes to Britain
Agencies
6 November 2004
Tony Blair's new town house came within ten miles of destruction last night as suspected Islamic terrorists lit fires up and down the country.
In what police called "a highly coordinated and thoroughly planned act of destructiveness", piles of dirty laundry and other detritus were brought to key points and set alight.
At least two of the fires were within ten miles of the Blairs' £3.6 million Georgian house in Connaught Square, London.
The Prime Minister was not in the house at the time, as he and his wife Cherie are on holiday in Uzbekistan as guests of the president, Islam Karimov.
A copy of the Koran and a passport in the name of Ruholla al-Dhuk were found at the scene of one of the holocausts by an American diplomat who happened to be passing at the time. Both documents were undamaged by the flames.
Forgot about Che?
Not the one on the t-shirts; the Dick is a Killer. Vice, as Dubya calls him, is the puppetmaster behind the screen. Here's a summary of his run-in with the hotshot lawyer with a Southern twang. What is this? Groundhog Day?
Thanks to Stephen Birmingham at the Medialens message board for the stenography. Sure beats CNN's emotional Bliarisms and the usual warmed-over distortions that pass for news.
Vice Presidential Debate
Posted by Stephen Birmingham on October 6, 2004, 2:51 am
Cheney: We will kill more terrorists than you.
Edwards: No you won’t. We’ll kill more than you.
Cheney: Dead wrong. You most certainly will not.
Edwards: Yes we will. We’ll hunt ‘em down and kill every one of ‘em.
Cheney: You voted against giving our troops the support they need.
Edwards: Not so. We’ll not only research and design more weapons than you are currently doing, but we’ll also ensure that our boys are well equipped in the field.
Cheney: Preposterous. We would not have the impressive armoury we have today if you guys had your way. Your mixed messages are demoralising our boys.
Edwards: Kerry was clear: he’ll invest in weapons and he’ll kill the terrorists. Stone dead.
Cheney: You don’t have any experience in killing people.
Edwards: We’ll be able to build new bridges and kill the terrorists with our European friends. We’ll continue our proud tradition of leading the world in killing people. We need a fresh start. Nations will be at our side.
Edwards: Further, you’ve let Iran advance its WMD program. We need stronger sanctions. Iran is a danger to the entire planet.
Cheney: Have not. Libya has disarmed. They know better. Iran knows better. Our policies are working.
Edwards: We’ll protect li'l ol' Israel. We’ll protect them from Iran. Did I tell you that Iran is building nukes?
Cheney: Saddam spawned suicide bombers. He was an enemy of Israel. We removed Saddam.
Edwards: We’ll protect Israel from Iran. Pow. Bang bang.
Cheney: We’ll kill more people than you.
Edwards: No you won’t.
Cheney: Yes we will.
Edwards: We’ll kill way more people than you.
This is why I gave up on hackery and switched to turntablism. Ratchet up your quadrophonic cognitive dissonance with Dick Slick's Godfather soundtrack backing up the Neoconz With Attitude. General Smedley Butler has seen it all before. But that was before they went gangsta on his ass:
War is just a racket. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses.
You betcha motherfucker! Kick it Karl with your roving scoop dog godsquad. Dubya Money is only a soundbite after all:
SCOOP DOGG
Yeah sheeple, I'm still fuckin’
wit’ ya. Still that responsiveness.
Still Scoop Dogg
and C-H-E, '04 sheeple.
DR. CHE
Guess who's back.
SCOOP DOGG
Still, still runnin’ tha show, eh
Che?
DR. CHE
Oh fo’ sho'. Yeah, check me out.
It's still Che Day, yes, A.A.
stress. You think he passed the
test, but still he takin’ 12
steps. So when I frequent the spots
where I learned to rock, you hear
the bass from my guns now we run
Iraq. Israelis, they pay homage,
but haters say Che’s fucked up.
How wigga? My last bypass wasn’t
chronic.
CHEERLEADER
Wigga.
DR. CHE
They want to know that I still
got it. I said regime change,
that’s how Chalabi felt about it.
SCOOP DOGG
If you ain't up on thangs --
DR. DRE
Dr. Che be the name, I'm ahead of
my game. Still rustlin’ up
schemes, still fuck tha Middle
East, still love playin’ police,
uh huh, still shock Iraqis with
my love for the crude.
CHEERLEADER
Fo’ sho’.
DR CHE
Still got guns in their hood,
repping Brown & Root.
CHEERLEADER
Fo’ life.
DR CHE
Still the tanks bang, still
whackin’ my thang, since I left,
ain't too much changed, still --
SCOOP DOGG
I'm representing for them
gangstas all across the world.
DR. CHE
Still --
SCOOP DOGG
Hittin’ them countries with ma
coverts, hell.
DR. CHE
Still chasin’ my spies to perfect
the cheat and I still got guns on
the streets. It's the C-H-E.
SCOOP DOGG
I'm representing for them
gangstas all across the world.
DR. CHE
Still --
SCOOP DOGG
Hittin’ them countries with ma
coverts, hell.
DR. CHE
Still chasin’ my spies to perfect
the cheat and I still got guns on
the streets. It's the C-H-E.
Since the last time you heard
from me I lost some friends,
well, hell, check the scoop, I’m
runnin’ again. Kept my ear to the
streets since I signed Dubya M,
scored 20 million, Halliburton
again. Still, I stay close to the
heat and even when I was close to
defeat, I rose to my feet. My
life's like a soundtrack I wrote
to the beat, Iraq’s like Cali
weed, it smokes till I sleep.
Worse than Tricky Dicky when it
comes to cheats, I bring the fire
till you're soaking in your seat.
It's not a fluke, it's been
tried, I'm the truth, it's turn
out the lights from the worldclass
wreckin' crew. I'm still at
it, Qabala mathematics in the
home of suiciders and ak-matics.
fuck laws, U.N. charter and mass
anger, I dip through then I get
skin, C-H-E.
SCOOP DOGG
I'm representing for them
gangstas all across the world.
DR. CHE
Still --
SCOOP DOGG
Hittin’ them countries with ma
coverts, hell.
DR. CHE
Still chasin’ my spies to perfect
the cheat and I still got guns on
the streets. It's the C-H-E.
SCOOP DOGG
I'm representing for them
gangstas all across the world.
DR. CHE
Still --
SCOOP DOGG
Hittin’ them countries with ma
coverts, hell.
DR. CHE
Still chasin’ my spies to perfect
the cheat and I still got guns on
the streets. It's the C-H-E.
It ain't nothing but
more hot shit, another
massive tax cut for the rich to
vibe with while we buildin’ a
police state fun-filled hybrid,
aimin’ at your back with the
Patriot Act. I'm representing for
the gangstas all across the
world, still --
SCOOP DOGG
Hittin’ them countries with ma
coverts, hell.
DR. CHE
I'll break your neck, then I’ll
serve your head on a plate. Y’all
wanna be the king but I’m the ace
of spades.
SCOOP DOGG
So if you ain't up on thangs --
DR. CHE
Dr. Che be the name still running
the game, still got it wrapped
like a mummy. Still ain't
trippin’ love to see white men
make money. Buildin’ bases round
the world, keepin’ business friends
served, hit my boys off with jobs, no
more living hard, barbecues every
day, drivin’ fancy cars. Still
gon' get my oil regardless.
Thanks to Stephen Birmingham at the Medialens message board for the stenography. Sure beats CNN's emotional Bliarisms and the usual warmed-over distortions that pass for news.
Vice Presidential Debate
Posted by Stephen Birmingham on October 6, 2004, 2:51 am
Cheney: We will kill more terrorists than you.
Edwards: No you won’t. We’ll kill more than you.
Cheney: Dead wrong. You most certainly will not.
Edwards: Yes we will. We’ll hunt ‘em down and kill every one of ‘em.
Cheney: You voted against giving our troops the support they need.
Edwards: Not so. We’ll not only research and design more weapons than you are currently doing, but we’ll also ensure that our boys are well equipped in the field.
Cheney: Preposterous. We would not have the impressive armoury we have today if you guys had your way. Your mixed messages are demoralising our boys.
Edwards: Kerry was clear: he’ll invest in weapons and he’ll kill the terrorists. Stone dead.
Cheney: You don’t have any experience in killing people.
Edwards: We’ll be able to build new bridges and kill the terrorists with our European friends. We’ll continue our proud tradition of leading the world in killing people. We need a fresh start. Nations will be at our side.
Edwards: Further, you’ve let Iran advance its WMD program. We need stronger sanctions. Iran is a danger to the entire planet.
Cheney: Have not. Libya has disarmed. They know better. Iran knows better. Our policies are working.
Edwards: We’ll protect li'l ol' Israel. We’ll protect them from Iran. Did I tell you that Iran is building nukes?
Cheney: Saddam spawned suicide bombers. He was an enemy of Israel. We removed Saddam.
Edwards: We’ll protect Israel from Iran. Pow. Bang bang.
Cheney: We’ll kill more people than you.
Edwards: No you won’t.
Cheney: Yes we will.
Edwards: We’ll kill way more people than you.
This is why I gave up on hackery and switched to turntablism. Ratchet up your quadrophonic cognitive dissonance with Dick Slick's Godfather soundtrack backing up the Neoconz With Attitude. General Smedley Butler has seen it all before. But that was before they went gangsta on his ass:
War is just a racket. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses.
You betcha motherfucker! Kick it Karl with your roving scoop dog godsquad. Dubya Money is only a soundbite after all:
SCOOP DOGG
Yeah sheeple, I'm still fuckin’
wit’ ya. Still that responsiveness.
Still Scoop Dogg
and C-H-E, '04 sheeple.
DR. CHE
Guess who's back.
SCOOP DOGG
Still, still runnin’ tha show, eh
Che?
DR. CHE
Oh fo’ sho'. Yeah, check me out.
It's still Che Day, yes, A.A.
stress. You think he passed the
test, but still he takin’ 12
steps. So when I frequent the spots
where I learned to rock, you hear
the bass from my guns now we run
Iraq. Israelis, they pay homage,
but haters say Che’s fucked up.
How wigga? My last bypass wasn’t
chronic.
CHEERLEADER
Wigga.
DR. CHE
They want to know that I still
got it. I said regime change,
that’s how Chalabi felt about it.
SCOOP DOGG
If you ain't up on thangs --
DR. DRE
Dr. Che be the name, I'm ahead of
my game. Still rustlin’ up
schemes, still fuck tha Middle
East, still love playin’ police,
uh huh, still shock Iraqis with
my love for the crude.
CHEERLEADER
Fo’ sho’.
DR CHE
Still got guns in their hood,
repping Brown & Root.
CHEERLEADER
Fo’ life.
DR CHE
Still the tanks bang, still
whackin’ my thang, since I left,
ain't too much changed, still --
SCOOP DOGG
I'm representing for them
gangstas all across the world.
DR. CHE
Still --
SCOOP DOGG
Hittin’ them countries with ma
coverts, hell.
DR. CHE
Still chasin’ my spies to perfect
the cheat and I still got guns on
the streets. It's the C-H-E.
SCOOP DOGG
I'm representing for them
gangstas all across the world.
DR. CHE
Still --
SCOOP DOGG
Hittin’ them countries with ma
coverts, hell.
DR. CHE
Still chasin’ my spies to perfect
the cheat and I still got guns on
the streets. It's the C-H-E.
Since the last time you heard
from me I lost some friends,
well, hell, check the scoop, I’m
runnin’ again. Kept my ear to the
streets since I signed Dubya M,
scored 20 million, Halliburton
again. Still, I stay close to the
heat and even when I was close to
defeat, I rose to my feet. My
life's like a soundtrack I wrote
to the beat, Iraq’s like Cali
weed, it smokes till I sleep.
Worse than Tricky Dicky when it
comes to cheats, I bring the fire
till you're soaking in your seat.
It's not a fluke, it's been
tried, I'm the truth, it's turn
out the lights from the worldclass
wreckin' crew. I'm still at
it, Qabala mathematics in the
home of suiciders and ak-matics.
fuck laws, U.N. charter and mass
anger, I dip through then I get
skin, C-H-E.
SCOOP DOGG
I'm representing for them
gangstas all across the world.
DR. CHE
Still --
SCOOP DOGG
Hittin’ them countries with ma
coverts, hell.
DR. CHE
Still chasin’ my spies to perfect
the cheat and I still got guns on
the streets. It's the C-H-E.
SCOOP DOGG
I'm representing for them
gangstas all across the world.
DR. CHE
Still --
SCOOP DOGG
Hittin’ them countries with ma
coverts, hell.
DR. CHE
Still chasin’ my spies to perfect
the cheat and I still got guns on
the streets. It's the C-H-E.
It ain't nothing but
more hot shit, another
massive tax cut for the rich to
vibe with while we buildin’ a
police state fun-filled hybrid,
aimin’ at your back with the
Patriot Act. I'm representing for
the gangstas all across the
world, still --
SCOOP DOGG
Hittin’ them countries with ma
coverts, hell.
DR. CHE
I'll break your neck, then I’ll
serve your head on a plate. Y’all
wanna be the king but I’m the ace
of spades.
SCOOP DOGG
So if you ain't up on thangs --
DR. CHE
Dr. Che be the name still running
the game, still got it wrapped
like a mummy. Still ain't
trippin’ love to see white men
make money. Buildin’ bases round
the world, keepin’ business friends
served, hit my boys off with jobs, no
more living hard, barbecues every
day, drivin’ fancy cars. Still
gon' get my oil regardless.
Tuesday, October 05, 2004
Like flies...
Journalists are trapped in a web of deceit spun by their own fantasy factories; they are well regarded for preserving the illusions of propriety and decency cloaking their ignorance, especially when they're being fed hot scoops. A reporter who dares to challenge the credulity of his colleagues in the pub is himself branded a cynic. These stories never have legs, but the truth will out somehow. It might cost you your job but at least you regain your self-respect. Big up yourself Farnaz Fassihi, until recently of the Wall Street Journal but currently on extended leave for having the gall to say what she saw.
Dear friends of uncensored journalism in Iraq, why should a reporter suffer for telling the truth? Now the internet can expose our private correspondence to the audience it deserves, what comes first: the chicken or the golden egg? Or both? Answers on a post-it note, preferably to all the senior editors of the Wall Street Journal. Failing that, send them to me.
Just in case you missed the dispatch from the hip, here it is:
Posted by antony on September 30, 2004, 9:11 pm
From: "Farnaz Fassihi"
Subject: From Baghdad
Being a foreign correspondent in Baghdad these days is like being under virtual house arrest. Forget about the reasons that lured me to this job: a chance to see the world, explore the exotic, meet new people in far away lands, discover their ways and tell stories that could make a difference.
Little by little, day-by-day, being based in Iraq has defied all those reasons. I am house bound. I leave when I have a very good reason to and a scheduled interview. I avoid going to people’s homes and never walk in the streets. I can’t go grocery shopping any more, can’t eat in restaurants, can’t strike a conversation with strangers, can’t look for stories, can’t drive in any thing but a full armored car, can’t go to scenes of breaking news stories, can’t be stuck in traffic, can’t speak English outside, can’t take a road trip, can’t say I’m an American, can’t linger at checkpoints, can’t be curious about what people are saying, doing, feeling. And can’t and can’t….
There has been one too many close calls, including a car bomb so near our house that it blew out all the windows. So now my most pressing concern every day is not to write a kick-ass story but to stay alive and make sure our Iraqi employees stay alive. In Baghdad I am a security personnel first, a reporter second.
It’s hard to pinpoint when the ‘turning point’ exactly began. Was it April when the Fallujah fell out of the grasp of the Americans? Was it when Moqtada and Jish Mahdi declared war on the U.S. military? Was it when Sadr City, home to ten percent of Iraq’s population, became a nightly battlefield for the Americans? Or was it when the insurgency began spreading from isolated pockets in the Sunni triangle to include most of Iraq? Despite President Bush’s rosy assessments, Iraq remains a disaster. If under Saddam it was a ‘potential’ threat, under the Americans it has been transformed to ‘imminent and active threat,’ a foreign policy failure bound to haunt the United States for decades to come.
Iraqis like to call this mess ‘the situation.’ When asked ‘how are things?’ they reply: ‘the situation is very bad.”
What they mean by situation is this: the Iraqi government doesn’t control most Iraqi cities, there are several car bombs going off each day around the country killing and injuring scores of innocent people, the country’s roads are becoming impassable and littered by hundreds of landmines and explosive devices aimed to kill American soldiers, there are assassinations, kidnappings and beheadings. The situation, basically, means a raging barbaric guerilla war.
In four days, 110 people died and over 300 got injured in Baghdad alone. The numbers are so shocking that the ministry of health— which was attempting an exercise of public transparency by releasing the numbers-- has now stopped disclosing them.
Insurgents now attack Americans 87 times a day.
A friend drove thru the Shiite slum of Sadr City yesterday. He said young men were openly placing improvised explosive devices into the ground. They melt a shallow hole into the asphalt, dig the explosive, cover it with dirt and put an old tire or plastic can over it to signal to the locals this is booby-trapped. He said on the main roads of Sadr City, there were a dozen landmines per every ten yards. His car snaked and swirled to avoid driving over them. Behind the walls sits an angry Iraqi ready to detonate them as soon as an American convoy gets near. This is in Shiite land, the population that was supposed to love America for liberating Iraq.
For journalists the significant turning point came with the wave of abduction and kidnappings. Only two weeks ago we felt safe around Baghdad because foreigners were being abducted on the roads and highways between towns. Then came a frantic phone call from a journalist female friend at 11 p.m. telling me two Italian women had been abducted from their homes in broad daylight. Then the two Americans, who got beheaded this week and the Brit, were abducted from their homes in a residential neighborhood. They were supplying the entire block with round the clock electricity from their generator to win friends. The abductors grabbed one of them at 6 a.m. when he came out to switch on the generator; his beheaded body was thrown back near the neighborhoods.
The insurgency, we are told, is rampant with no signs of calming down. If any thing, it is growing stronger, organized and more sophisticated every day. The various elements within it—baathists, criminals, nationalists and Al Qaeda—are cooperating and coordinating.
I went to an emergency meeting for foreign correspondents with the military and embassy to discuss the kidnappings. We were somberly told our fate would largely depend on where we were in the kidnapping chain once it was determined we were missing. Here is how it goes: criminal gangs grab you and sell you up to Baathists in Fallujah, who will in turn sell you to Al Qaeda. In turn, cash and weapons flow the other way from Al Qaeda to the Baathists to the criminals. My friend Georges, the French journalist snatched on the road to Najaf, has been missing for a month with no word on release or whether he is still alive.
America’s last hope for a quick exit? The Iraqi police and National Guard units we are spending billions of dollars to train. The cops are being murdered by the dozens every day—over 700 to date-- and the insurgents are infiltrating their ranks. The problem is so serious that the U.S. military has allocated $6 million dollars to buy out 30,000 cops they just trained to get rid of them quietly.
As for reconstruction: firstly it’s so unsafe for foreigners to operate that almost all projects have come to a halt. After two years, of the $18 billion Congress appropriated for Iraq reconstruction only about $1 billion or so has been spent and a chuck has now been reallocated for improving security, a sign of just how bad things are going here.
Oil dreams? Insurgents disrupt oil flow routinely as a result of sabotage and oil prices have hit record high of $49 a barrel.
Who did this war exactly benefit? Was it worth it? Are we safer because Saddam is holed up and Al Qaeda is running around in Iraq?
Iraqis say that thanks to America they got freedom in exchange for insecurity. Guess what? They say they’d take security over freedom any day, even if it means having a dictator ruler.
I heard an educated Iraqi say today that if Saddam Hussein were allowed to run for elections he would get the majority of the vote. This is truly sad.
Then I went to see an Iraqi scholar this week to talk to him about elections here. He has been trying to educate the public on the importance of voting. He said, “President Bush wanted to turn Iraq into a democracy that would be an example for the Middle East. Forget about democracy, forget about being a model for the region, we have to salvage Iraq before all is lost.”
One could argue that Iraq is already lost beyond salvation. For those of us on the ground it’s hard to imagine what if any thing could salvage it from its violent downward spiral.
The genie of terrorism, chaos and mayhem has been unleashed onto this country as a result of American mistakes and it can’t be put back into a bottle.
The Iraqi government is talking about having elections in three months while half of the country remains a ‘no go zone’—out of the hands of the government and the Americans and out of reach of journalists. In the other half, the disenchanted population is too terrified to show up at polling stations. The Sunnis have already said they’d boycott elections, leaving the stage open for polarized government of Kurds and Shiites that will not be deemed as legitimate and will most certainly lead to civil war.
I asked a 28-year-old engineer if he and his family would participate in the Iraqi elections since it was the first time Iraqis could to some degree elect a leadership. His response summed it all: “Go and vote and risk being blown into pieces or followed by the insurgents and murdered for cooperating with the Americans? For what? To practice democracy? Are you joking?”
- Farnaz
Editor & Publisher sums up the controversy.
Dear friends of uncensored journalism in Iraq, why should a reporter suffer for telling the truth? Now the internet can expose our private correspondence to the audience it deserves, what comes first: the chicken or the golden egg? Or both? Answers on a post-it note, preferably to all the senior editors of the Wall Street Journal. Failing that, send them to me.
Just in case you missed the dispatch from the hip, here it is:
Posted by antony on September 30, 2004, 9:11 pm
From: "Farnaz Fassihi"
Subject: From Baghdad
Being a foreign correspondent in Baghdad these days is like being under virtual house arrest. Forget about the reasons that lured me to this job: a chance to see the world, explore the exotic, meet new people in far away lands, discover their ways and tell stories that could make a difference.
Little by little, day-by-day, being based in Iraq has defied all those reasons. I am house bound. I leave when I have a very good reason to and a scheduled interview. I avoid going to people’s homes and never walk in the streets. I can’t go grocery shopping any more, can’t eat in restaurants, can’t strike a conversation with strangers, can’t look for stories, can’t drive in any thing but a full armored car, can’t go to scenes of breaking news stories, can’t be stuck in traffic, can’t speak English outside, can’t take a road trip, can’t say I’m an American, can’t linger at checkpoints, can’t be curious about what people are saying, doing, feeling. And can’t and can’t….
There has been one too many close calls, including a car bomb so near our house that it blew out all the windows. So now my most pressing concern every day is not to write a kick-ass story but to stay alive and make sure our Iraqi employees stay alive. In Baghdad I am a security personnel first, a reporter second.
It’s hard to pinpoint when the ‘turning point’ exactly began. Was it April when the Fallujah fell out of the grasp of the Americans? Was it when Moqtada and Jish Mahdi declared war on the U.S. military? Was it when Sadr City, home to ten percent of Iraq’s population, became a nightly battlefield for the Americans? Or was it when the insurgency began spreading from isolated pockets in the Sunni triangle to include most of Iraq? Despite President Bush’s rosy assessments, Iraq remains a disaster. If under Saddam it was a ‘potential’ threat, under the Americans it has been transformed to ‘imminent and active threat,’ a foreign policy failure bound to haunt the United States for decades to come.
Iraqis like to call this mess ‘the situation.’ When asked ‘how are things?’ they reply: ‘the situation is very bad.”
What they mean by situation is this: the Iraqi government doesn’t control most Iraqi cities, there are several car bombs going off each day around the country killing and injuring scores of innocent people, the country’s roads are becoming impassable and littered by hundreds of landmines and explosive devices aimed to kill American soldiers, there are assassinations, kidnappings and beheadings. The situation, basically, means a raging barbaric guerilla war.
In four days, 110 people died and over 300 got injured in Baghdad alone. The numbers are so shocking that the ministry of health— which was attempting an exercise of public transparency by releasing the numbers-- has now stopped disclosing them.
Insurgents now attack Americans 87 times a day.
A friend drove thru the Shiite slum of Sadr City yesterday. He said young men were openly placing improvised explosive devices into the ground. They melt a shallow hole into the asphalt, dig the explosive, cover it with dirt and put an old tire or plastic can over it to signal to the locals this is booby-trapped. He said on the main roads of Sadr City, there were a dozen landmines per every ten yards. His car snaked and swirled to avoid driving over them. Behind the walls sits an angry Iraqi ready to detonate them as soon as an American convoy gets near. This is in Shiite land, the population that was supposed to love America for liberating Iraq.
For journalists the significant turning point came with the wave of abduction and kidnappings. Only two weeks ago we felt safe around Baghdad because foreigners were being abducted on the roads and highways between towns. Then came a frantic phone call from a journalist female friend at 11 p.m. telling me two Italian women had been abducted from their homes in broad daylight. Then the two Americans, who got beheaded this week and the Brit, were abducted from their homes in a residential neighborhood. They were supplying the entire block with round the clock electricity from their generator to win friends. The abductors grabbed one of them at 6 a.m. when he came out to switch on the generator; his beheaded body was thrown back near the neighborhoods.
The insurgency, we are told, is rampant with no signs of calming down. If any thing, it is growing stronger, organized and more sophisticated every day. The various elements within it—baathists, criminals, nationalists and Al Qaeda—are cooperating and coordinating.
I went to an emergency meeting for foreign correspondents with the military and embassy to discuss the kidnappings. We were somberly told our fate would largely depend on where we were in the kidnapping chain once it was determined we were missing. Here is how it goes: criminal gangs grab you and sell you up to Baathists in Fallujah, who will in turn sell you to Al Qaeda. In turn, cash and weapons flow the other way from Al Qaeda to the Baathists to the criminals. My friend Georges, the French journalist snatched on the road to Najaf, has been missing for a month with no word on release or whether he is still alive.
America’s last hope for a quick exit? The Iraqi police and National Guard units we are spending billions of dollars to train. The cops are being murdered by the dozens every day—over 700 to date-- and the insurgents are infiltrating their ranks. The problem is so serious that the U.S. military has allocated $6 million dollars to buy out 30,000 cops they just trained to get rid of them quietly.
As for reconstruction: firstly it’s so unsafe for foreigners to operate that almost all projects have come to a halt. After two years, of the $18 billion Congress appropriated for Iraq reconstruction only about $1 billion or so has been spent and a chuck has now been reallocated for improving security, a sign of just how bad things are going here.
Oil dreams? Insurgents disrupt oil flow routinely as a result of sabotage and oil prices have hit record high of $49 a barrel.
Who did this war exactly benefit? Was it worth it? Are we safer because Saddam is holed up and Al Qaeda is running around in Iraq?
Iraqis say that thanks to America they got freedom in exchange for insecurity. Guess what? They say they’d take security over freedom any day, even if it means having a dictator ruler.
I heard an educated Iraqi say today that if Saddam Hussein were allowed to run for elections he would get the majority of the vote. This is truly sad.
Then I went to see an Iraqi scholar this week to talk to him about elections here. He has been trying to educate the public on the importance of voting. He said, “President Bush wanted to turn Iraq into a democracy that would be an example for the Middle East. Forget about democracy, forget about being a model for the region, we have to salvage Iraq before all is lost.”
One could argue that Iraq is already lost beyond salvation. For those of us on the ground it’s hard to imagine what if any thing could salvage it from its violent downward spiral.
The genie of terrorism, chaos and mayhem has been unleashed onto this country as a result of American mistakes and it can’t be put back into a bottle.
The Iraqi government is talking about having elections in three months while half of the country remains a ‘no go zone’—out of the hands of the government and the Americans and out of reach of journalists. In the other half, the disenchanted population is too terrified to show up at polling stations. The Sunnis have already said they’d boycott elections, leaving the stage open for polarized government of Kurds and Shiites that will not be deemed as legitimate and will most certainly lead to civil war.
I asked a 28-year-old engineer if he and his family would participate in the Iraqi elections since it was the first time Iraqis could to some degree elect a leadership. His response summed it all: “Go and vote and risk being blown into pieces or followed by the insurgents and murdered for cooperating with the Americans? For what? To practice democracy? Are you joking?”
- Farnaz
Editor & Publisher sums up the controversy.
Saturday, October 02, 2004
The News Tiger
It's rare to meet a journalist who thinks independently about what ought to be newsworthy. For sanity's sake, the vast majority just serve up lowest-common-denominator bilge and swallow their opinions while regurgitating whatever garbage someone feels like thrusting down their throats. No wonder they've all got gurgling ulcers. Mine's been giving me less gyp since I started laughing, but Evelyn Waugh spat out the hype flying circus far more eloquently than most of what the papers say, so it's over to William Boot and the ongoing Ishmaelia crisis:
Corker looked at him sadly. "You know, you've got a lot to learn about journalism. Look at it this way. News is what a chap who doesn't care much about anything wants to read. And it's only news until he's read it. After that it's dead. We're paid to supply news. If someone else has sent a story before us, our story isn't news. Of course there's colour. Colour's just a lot of bull's-eyes about nothing. It's easy to write and easy to read, but it costs too much in cabling, so we have to go slow on that. See?"
That afternoon Corker told William a great deal about the craft of journalism. The Francmason weighed anchor, swung about, and steamed into the ochre hills, through the straits and out into the open sea while Corker recounted the heroic legends of Fleet Street; he told of the classic scoops and hoaxes; of the confessions wrung from hysterical suspects; of the innuendo and intricate misrepresentations, the luscious, detailed inventions that composed contemporary history; of the positive, daring lies that got a chap a rise of screw; how Wenlock Jakes, highest paid journalist of the United States, scooped the world with an eye-witness story of the sinking of the Lusitania four hours before she was hit; how [Sir Jocelyn] Hitchcock, the English Jakes, straddling over his desk in London, had chronicled day by day the horrors of the Messina earthquake; how Corker himself, not three months back, had had the good fortune to encounter a knight's widow trapped by the foot between lift and landing. "It was through that story that I got sent here," said Corker. "The boss promised me the first big chance that turned up. I little thought it would be this."
Many of Corker's anecdotes dealt with the fabulous Wenlock Jakes. "...Syndicated all over America. Gets a thousand dollars a week. When he turns up in a place you can bet your life that as long as he's there it'll be the news centre of the world.
"Why, once Jakes went out to cover a revolution in one of the Balkan capitals. He overslept in his carriage, woke up at the wrong station, didn't know any different, got out, went straight to a hotel, and cabled off a thousand-word story about barricades in the streets, flaming churches, machine-guns answering the rattle of his typewriter as he wrote, a dead child, like a broken doll, spreadeagled in the deserted roadway below his window - you know.
"Well, they were pretty surprised at his office, getting a story like that from the wrong country, but they trusted Jakes and splashed it in six national newspapers. That day every special in Europe got orders to rush to the new revolution. Everything seemed quiet enough, but it was as much as their jobs were worth to say so, with Jakes filing a thousand words of blood and thunder a day. So they chimed in too. Government stocks dropped, financial panic, state of emergency declared, army mobilized, famine, mutiny and in less than a week there was an honest to God revolution under way, just as Jakes had said. There's the power of the press for you.
"They gave Jakes the Nobel Peace Prize for his harrowing descriptions of the carnage - but that was colour stuff."
Corker looked at him sadly. "You know, you've got a lot to learn about journalism. Look at it this way. News is what a chap who doesn't care much about anything wants to read. And it's only news until he's read it. After that it's dead. We're paid to supply news. If someone else has sent a story before us, our story isn't news. Of course there's colour. Colour's just a lot of bull's-eyes about nothing. It's easy to write and easy to read, but it costs too much in cabling, so we have to go slow on that. See?"
That afternoon Corker told William a great deal about the craft of journalism. The Francmason weighed anchor, swung about, and steamed into the ochre hills, through the straits and out into the open sea while Corker recounted the heroic legends of Fleet Street; he told of the classic scoops and hoaxes; of the confessions wrung from hysterical suspects; of the innuendo and intricate misrepresentations, the luscious, detailed inventions that composed contemporary history; of the positive, daring lies that got a chap a rise of screw; how Wenlock Jakes, highest paid journalist of the United States, scooped the world with an eye-witness story of the sinking of the Lusitania four hours before she was hit; how [Sir Jocelyn] Hitchcock, the English Jakes, straddling over his desk in London, had chronicled day by day the horrors of the Messina earthquake; how Corker himself, not three months back, had had the good fortune to encounter a knight's widow trapped by the foot between lift and landing. "It was through that story that I got sent here," said Corker. "The boss promised me the first big chance that turned up. I little thought it would be this."
Many of Corker's anecdotes dealt with the fabulous Wenlock Jakes. "...Syndicated all over America. Gets a thousand dollars a week. When he turns up in a place you can bet your life that as long as he's there it'll be the news centre of the world.
"Why, once Jakes went out to cover a revolution in one of the Balkan capitals. He overslept in his carriage, woke up at the wrong station, didn't know any different, got out, went straight to a hotel, and cabled off a thousand-word story about barricades in the streets, flaming churches, machine-guns answering the rattle of his typewriter as he wrote, a dead child, like a broken doll, spreadeagled in the deserted roadway below his window - you know.
"Well, they were pretty surprised at his office, getting a story like that from the wrong country, but they trusted Jakes and splashed it in six national newspapers. That day every special in Europe got orders to rush to the new revolution. Everything seemed quiet enough, but it was as much as their jobs were worth to say so, with Jakes filing a thousand words of blood and thunder a day. So they chimed in too. Government stocks dropped, financial panic, state of emergency declared, army mobilized, famine, mutiny and in less than a week there was an honest to God revolution under way, just as Jakes had said. There's the power of the press for you.
"They gave Jakes the Nobel Peace Prize for his harrowing descriptions of the carnage - but that was colour stuff."
