I watched Ross Kemp’s documentary on Paleastine yesterday and it was much better than I had expected. I have never watched any of his travel documentaries before – their advertising portrays them as “Our hard nut goes to see if other hard nuts are really as vicious as London East End gangsters”.
It is impossible, unless you are obscenely ill-motivated, to do a documentary in Gaza that does not leave you appalled at the plight of the Palestinian people there. But Kemp gave the Palestinians a much fairer and fuller hearing than I had expected, and while there was a great deal of editorial horror at the attitudes of Islamic terrorists and their supporters, it came over very strongly – and Kemp himself plainly “got”, that those attitudes were caused by the atrocities and indignities to which the Palestinians are subjected.
Which made Kemp’s documentary much more intelligent than Michael Portillo’s effort on Guantanamo. Portillo never for one moment questioned whether Islamic hatred of the West was in any sense caused or triggered. He seemed to accept that Guantanamo holds a core of “some 50” diehard terrorists who are intrinsically evil, and he agreed explicitly that they should be kept locked up forever even though there was no evidence against them that could stand up in court.
His glib “I am a politician and I know about tough decisions like abandoning legality” line was helped by two intellectual dishonesties. He never considered the causality of terrorism, and he did not mention the possibility that some of that “core” of fifty might be innocent. He described the moral dilemma as whether people you knew were guilty but could not prove it, should be locked up. Who says you know. they are guilty? I can tell you from first hand experience that a great deal of the War on Terror intelligence on individuals is woefully inaccurate and deliberatelly exagerrated.
Which Michael Portillo once seemed to understand:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/article495277.ece
Portillo reserved his compassion for the Uighurs, because they were anti-communist, and for the British ex-detainees who had been tortured. There was one particularly unsavoury piece of editing when showing a UK conference, at which an ex-detainee was making a very emotional and harrowing point; the director then cut away to a shot of Moazzam Begg grinning merrily and apparently completely inappropriately at the point.
The impression was given that cut-away was contemporaneous, and it made Moazzam look very bad. I don’t believe the cut-away was contemporaneous and think this was a deliberate bit of BBC demonisation. I don’t think it was genuine because of sound discontinuity, because BBC documentary crews nowadays almost never have two cameras, and because I know Moazzam.
Shoddy work.
Mae culpa also as per Ross Kemp – but as you say the advertising was woeful ‘ever wondered about Gaza – our man Kemp sorts aaawt the issues’. Ah, good lad.
As per Portillo – hmmm… he’s cruising for a job with Call Me Dave – pointless hackery.
Kemp’s documentary was better than I was expecting also. However, one disappointing aspect of the documentary which I fully expected, was the fact that it made NO effort whatsoever to contextualise the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. There was no mention of the Nakba or the occupation, in fact the ‘O’ word wasn’t even used apart from a fleeting subtitled comment by a Palestinian girl.
This lack of context in the mainstream is to blame for the masses’ incorrect understanding of the conflict as a fight between equals. The reality is very different – an occupying superpower vs a third world country.
There was one particularly unsavoury piece of editing when showing a UK conference, at which an ex-detainee was making a very emotional and harrowing point; the director then cut away to a shot of Moazzam Begg grinning merrily and apparently completely inappropriately at the point.
Maybe you could right a letter to the BBC asking if artistic license was used here….
“There was one particularly unsavoury piece of editing…”
Remember when they previewed that documentary about the Queen to suggest she stormed out of photo session? That provoked the mother of all rows, so expect a similar response again… not.
I saw Portillo’s piece on Guantanamo and it left a lot of questions as to the editing and portrayal of the lack of resolve.
The only time he mooted that something in Gunatanamo might be not quiet right was when he fleetingly mentuioned that the staged event involving the 911 relatives might have been staged. Now that China has seen the bermuda home of the Uighurs pawns in the great US vs. China game, it might be a good idea for Mr. Portillo to ask for them to get somewhere more safe to live.
His pathetic attempt at a documentary, and the Yemen part must have been shot not very long ago, will otherwise endanger the lives of those four men.
Five comments (not including my own) and nothing posted yet about the justification of pre-emptive miltary action or the evils of terrorism? Nothing about how Palestinian civilian casualties are because of the evil Hamas “human shield” policy? Looks like the GIYUS megaphone isn’t working today.
Or maybe they’re all over at the BBC.
How many Brits WON’T realise or have noticed the editing? A damn large number I bet.
I saw Moazzam Begg in the flesh reinact the way the US torture dispensers (mis)handled him. After doing it he almost collapsed emotionally, as one may well expect. The same was true of his horrified audience. Sami Al-Hajj’s story was similar as were some of the Abu Graib victims stories.
If the media (BBC right?) did this cut it vile even by the BBC sewer standards. I don’t buy Portaloo’s “I’ve seen the light” greasy-spoon lobbox. What a weasel this guy is.
The BBC is preping you for YET MORE WAR, a war that will never end until you and time itself comes to an end.
Switch it off! Advise friends to do so likelwise and get you news from somewhere that isn’t (as) politically buggered as the BBC is.
BBC is the FOX News of Britian. Ditch this putrid Sunday Sport of a Newz organisation. Sorry for the insult SS.
Not being a pacifist I almost felt like strangling a another guest at a party I attended recently.
He was the editor of provincial newspaper and he was convinced that the “Terrorist/Muslim Threat” is real, and that the reason behind it is their hatred of our freedoms, culture, and way of life.
Even though the enemy repeatedly say they are attacking us because of what we have done to them, as they perceive it; and not because our ways are so “free” and ungodly. They don’t give a damn about what we do in our own countries, as long as we don’t do it in theirs.
Yet this journalist/editor wouldn’t have any of it. He agreed that the terrorists did express their opposition to western interference in their affairs, yet he thought they were lying. They are not attacking us for what we do, but because of who we are, and how we choose to live.
His attitude is widespread. It’s the official propaganda line of our glorious leaders. We have to fight them overthere, or we’ll have to fight them here.
It’s amazing that this fairytale version of the world can be taken seriously and repeated over and over again, despite not a shred of evidence that it contains any truth.
“We have to fight them over there, or we’ll have to fight them here.”
And if one accepts the fairytale as true, don’t we run into a logical paradox? It cannot legitimise the actions of British forces abroad without simultaneously legitimising the retaliatory efforts of terrorists here.
Could we know the name of the newspaper Writerman. I live in a town where the Surrey Advertiser is the local weekly with specific editions for each area.
There is no critical comment on the
war(s) but lots of ‘Our brave boys’ stuff and photo spreads of regimental homecomings through Surrey towns. Headley Court is in Surrey so there is a good deal about fund raising, Help for Heroes, parcels for the troops, visits by dignitaries inc the princes etc etc. The Surrey Ad is owned by the Guardian Media Group.
‘Oh What a Lovely War’ which was recently brilliantly staged by the Guildford School of Acting comes to mind.
For those looking for alternate sources of news than the BBC and Faux might I suggest:
1. http://www.democracynow.org
and
2. Al Jazeera. It’s a pity you can’t get it on FreeView in the U.K.; the standard of reporting now far surpasses the BBC, which seems to have been going downhill for years. (Note: Al Jazeera TV English language news is excellent – for some reason the English language version of the website doesn’t seem so good.)
“for some reason the English language version of the website doesn’t seem so good.” – Editors!
Portillo has intellectual dishonesty as the bedrock of his belief-system, though I don’t know how you can tell, in the general case, whether it is deliberate or not. Perhaps even the most intelligent people can be brainwashed! In July 2007, he wrote this in the Sunday Times of London, of anti-terror legislation (see url):
> We are shrugging off the political correctness that once
> hampered an effective response. We are getting over the
> idea that we are to blame for the terror threat. We are
> not. It does not arise from social disadvantage, globalisation,
> capitalism or foreign policy.
This blinkered rubbbish stuck in my craw so much that I wrote to the editor, specifically marking the letter as not for publishing, and said he should have struck this out given that it is so patently false that most people of any political stripe would disagree with it. To his credit the editor, John Witherow, wrote back with a half-hearted defence of his editing, plus some dire warnings about Islamism – but Portillo, who was copied in, did not respond at all.
Such is the dilemma, I suppose, with interacting with the worst excesses of propaganda: the media was always intended to be a one-way conversation, and if inconvenient facts get in the way of an article, the author rarely has to answer their critics.
quote: “Islamic hatred of the West”.
Blair claimed this as well and It is sad to read this line here. it is absolutely wrong. I’ve never heard anyone talking about Sweden, Norway, Finland.. or any country who mind it’s own business….
Even when talking about the US or Britain, people mention the US/UK government, not people.
Do you thin Bush administration or Blair gangsters can be balled THE WEST?
Craig, you are wrong.
Do we have a new moderator system or is it just me?
US DoD report on the causes of terror from 2004 (Rumsfeld era):
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/10/20/terrorism/
Robert Pape (Political Science Prof Uni of Chicago who catalogued every suicide bombing from 1980 to 2003 in his book Dying to Win) on Afghanistan policy, and how the occupation is self-defeating:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/15/opinion/15pape.html
“What motivates suicide attackers, however, is not the existence of a terrorist sanctuary, but the presence of foreign forces on territory they prize”
In his book Pape also concludes that religion does play a role in suicide terrorism, but only through the social dynamics between religions and not the nature of any particular religions (e.g. most Hizbullah suicide bombers were secular and some Christian).
Some more Pape links:
Wikipedia on Dying to Win:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dying_to_Win:_The_Strategic_Logic_of_Suicide_Terrorism
Chicago Project on Security and Terrorism, from which one can search Pape’s suicide terrorist database:
http://cpost.uchicago.edu/
As I say in ‘intelluctual’ bar conversations, why can’t britain (not great!) be more like The Netherlands or Spain or Norway, Sweden, Finland and Ireland. They don’t pretend to be a world player and the GDPs of these countries are similar to Britain.
After reading the brilliant book “Lions, Donkeys and Dinosaurs” I am convinced that the UK forces are there to keep BAe in business and therefore Britains place on the security council.
Can anyone please tell me any other business wherein if the supplier makes a crap product, SA80 rifle for one example, and the receiver i.e. the taxpayer has to pay for it to be fixed?
‘War’ is wrong, after all, how would YOU like it if it happened to YOU?
Happy new year Craig and similar minded readers.
Mary.
I’m in a slightly difficult position, in that the people I meet professionally, and the circles I move around in, “tolerate” me and my “liberal” “anarchist” views, because I make them money. I’m like highly paid court jester, or maybe that should be courtisan?
So I feel the need to hide details of the conversations I have with people “of the record.” I don’t want to get into Craig’s position of being pushed out of the golden circle. It interests me to wander in and out, observe, and provide “entertainment” for a price. Whereas Craig took the swine on face to face, I just watch and listen, and take their money.
I value my anonymity and not revealing too much, though these days it’s becoming harder and harder to cling to ones illusions as one observes a world going to hell in a bucket.
I quite understand Writerman. I am so sorry to have intruded into your privacy.
I have just been looking at this terrible litany of names of the prisoners at Guantanamo produced by Andy Worthington. http://tinyurl.com/ykckztm
Whatever will future generations think of us and will they ask why we allowed these things to happen? We now look back at what happened in Germany. Have you ever read They Thought They Were Free by Milton Mayer. V good.
(thirdreich.net/Thought_They_Were_Free.html)
I know someone very like Ross Kemp, who does similar stuff, but much of it is without a film crew – well at least initially – and he does do some positive stuff too – like organising and raising funds – to actually improve the lives of some of the poorest, most desperate people in the World…
But when he got back from Afghanistan, and I wanted to hear more of his experiences, the animosity he got from others in the pub was so overwhelming that he had to leave
I don’t believe the first article in the following link by David Swanson (No one is that evil) – but read the second
by Joe Quinn
http://www.sott.net/
Tony
The situation in Gaza is so appalling, so grotesque, so obscene, that one would literally have to blind, deaf, and dumb, not to regard the situation of the Palestinians, as an affront to decency and morality. Yet most people in the west know next to nothing about what’s happening in Gaza; but if they did their reaction would be the same as all beings, disgust and anger, that we allow such crimes to continue year after year.
Our glorious leaders rely on a climate of ignorance to maintain their positions of power and a false picture of the reality of the world around us. The reason we are living in form of police state and chains are tightening, is because it’s becoming increasingly difficult to hide the brutal realities hidden beneath the shiny veneer of “liberal democracy.” It’s becoming increasingly difficult to “buy us off”, as business as usual collapses.
This end of consumerism, which killed-off the concept of the citizen, will lead us towards a far more authoritarian form of state, where “order”, or slavery, will require “robust” measures applied across the board.
The New Imperialism we are engaged in, to grab what’s left of the world’s dwindling reserves of oil and gas, and other vital raw materials, requires a plausible “cover story”, and that’s the role the war on terror fulfills.
But, as the Romans discovered, blatant imperialism, and wars of conquest and subjugation, are incompatible with “democracy” even on a limited scale, before the rule of the emperors, and the long decline as the empire undermined itself from within. Yet, the Roman aristocracy had a ball, as long as it lasted; and we are on the same tragectory, which seems to apply to many empires. The ruling elite are so protected, and live lives so detached from the reality of ordinary people, that they don’t give a damn about the suffering and destruction they create, because it simply won’t affect them as they are protected by their castle walls, their army, wealth, their laws, and their state.
The present ruling elite’s grip on power is so strong that “reform” of the system is virtually impossible to envisage. Our system reminds one of the other empires before they collapsed from within. Yet this process of rotting from the centre can take a long time, and is often ghastly and very bloody. But maybe a miracle will happen and people will rise up and overthrow the old order.
Perhaps the elite’s efforts to paper over the huge cracks in the financial system will fail miserably, and the markets will collapse leading to open revolt as reality tears a gaping hole in the manufactured “reality” we live in?
Mary,
I don’t feel that you have intruded on my privacy at all, so you don’t need to feel sorry about a thing.
I’m not sure that we have much choice about how much we “allow” our rulers to get away with anymore. They do, more or less, what they want, and what we think doesn’t really matter much either way.
Yet, the effort and expense they put into propaganda and lies, suggest that they are accutely aware of just how dangerous their positions would be, if people became aware of what they were really up to. And keeping people fooled is going to become increasingly difficult as the Iraq model, is repeated again and again, but with subtle variations, much like the colour-coded, people’s “revoltions” that have become so popular.
I think the slow strangulation of Gaza, which reminds one of the blockade of Iraq, with many of the same consequences for the civilian population, is just the beginning of process designed to rid “Israel” of all the Palestinians.
This “final solution” to the Palestinian question, problem, threat, is uppermost in the minds of the most extreme, nationalist, elements in Israel, who, unfortunately are gaining ground. They want to find a way of getting rid of the Palestinians, one way or another, because they represent a demographic timebomb under the “Zionist” state. Already the Palestinians are in a majority inside the borders of Israel/Palestine. In a few decades they will almost certainly form a majority inside present day Israel, given their high birthrate.
Israel cannot exist as a state for real Israelis exclusively, with a huge and growing Palestinian minority, heading for a majority in twenty or thirty years. So a way to remove this threat to the Zionist and “Jewish” character of Israel has to be found. At least seen from the Israeli nationalist perspective.
Recently Israeli extremists have begun to talk about a “biblical solution” to the Palestinian/Arab problem. This would appear to be code for ethnic cleansing on a “biblical” scale.
The problem is how to get away with it without losing the support of the west and causing the entire Muslim world to explode resulting in the destruction of their pro-western regimes? War would seem to be the obvious solution, yet after the recent failed onslaught on Gaza, this tried and tested method seems not to work anymore on the Palestinians. They have learnt that whaterver they do they musn’t leave their homes, because they will never be allowed to return. Better to die where you stand, than die in miserable refugee camp somewhere.
Therefore the Right in Israel are in a predicament. They know they have to drive the Palestinians out somehow, that decision has been made, the difficult question is exactly how does one do it without threatening the Israeli state itself?
Of course Israel’s nuclear arsenal would come in useful here, as the ultimate weapon to crush any Arab uprising and threat, an outcome that hardly bears thinking about. The very idea of Jews resorting to the use of nuclear weapons against cities is an abomination, yet if they’ve never thought of using them, in the last resort, why have them when their neighbours don’t have them? And the tragedy is that the policies pursued by the Right inside Israel and leading them, seemingly inexorably, towards precisely such a disasterous future. It’s surely time that we stepped in to save Israel from itself, before it’s too late.
@writerman
“Recently Israeli extremists have begun to talk about a “biblical solution” to the Palestinian/Arab problem. This would appear to be code for ethnic cleansing on a “biblical” scale.”
I find that really hard to believe. I don’t suppose you could link to something could you?
Cheers
PS – My £0.02 on Israel’s nuclear arsenal – it’s bigger than the UK’s, and it’s not there to deal with a Middle Eastern threat – how could it be? Probably more to do with winning leverage in global politics. Perhaps there’s some secret strategic link between the US and Israel’s nuclear strategy. Just speculation though.
“Recently Israeli extremists have begun to talk about a “biblical solution” to the Palestinian/Arab problem. This would appear to be code for ethnic cleansing on a “biblical” scale.”
I find that really hard to believe. I don’t suppose you could link to something could you?”
I’ll do it for him:
http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam/2010/01/04/rabbis-for-peace-urge-going-biblical-to-solve-israeli-palestinian-conflict/
The Book of Joshua details the Biblical version of the establishment of ancient Israel. It described a series of unprovoked divinely enabled and commanded genocides, starting with Jericho.
amk wrote:
—start quote
“In his book Pape also concludes that religion does play a role in suicide terrorism, but only through the social dynamics between religions and not the nature of any particular religions (e.g. most Hizbullah suicide bombers were secular and some Christian).”
—end quote
It’s hard to see why suicide-bombing is religious in its basis at all. Surely it’s a weapon of last resort by the weak against the powerful. An American friend angrily put to me, “Do Americans do suicide bombing? No. Do Israelis? No.” Of course, the response is obvious – they don’t have to, when they can sit in aircraft or even offices pushing buttons to do the same job.
But the Japanese did plenty of suicide bombing as things got more desperate, and so did the Tamil Tigers and the Viet-Cong, without any religious imperative whatsoever. So it appears more to do with the imbalance of power, and the desperation of the people, than religion. I think Pape is not looking at the full picture. Americans tend to think that suicide-bombing was invented by Arabs, as if being Arab/Muslim predisposed one to the practice, because they forget even their own history so quickly, and have such a conveniently selective memory.
Various Zionist trolls around the websites keep referring to Purim and giving a date of 27th February 2010. There is an implied menace in their comments. Does anyone know what it’s about?
“It’s hard to see why suicide-bombing is religious in its basis at all. Surely it’s a weapon of last resort by the weak against the powerful.”
Sure, Glenn! Let’s sympathize with those who strike back against the evil powers who watch volleyball tournaments.
“At least 88 people have been killed by a suicide bomb attack at a volleyball court in the troubled north-west of Pakistan, local police say.
Police chief Ayub Khan said the bomber drove towards a field where people were watching a match, before detonating a load of high-intensity explosives.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8437114.stm
Mark,
“Do we have a new moderator system or is it just me?”
Well, is it Chomsky ?” or ?” just Chomsky and me..
A distorted morality thinking that an exclusive “democracy” claims high moral ground:-
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=676452061991429040#docid=4054523048548733881