There is an article in the Sunday Times about yet more pressure being brought to bear on Wikileaks as they prepare to release another damning video of American massacre, this time in Afghanistan.
But what caught my eye was yet another example of the propaganda doublespeak with which our wars of occupation are justified.
American aircraft dropped 500lb and 1,000lb bombs on a suspected militant compound
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article7094234.ece
People in Central Asia live in traditional courtyard houses, with rooms opening onto a central yard and an enclosing wall. This is because of the extreme heat of summer, and livestock are sometimes brought in to the yard in winter. Their homes do not look like our homes. But they are not “Compounds”. They are HOUSES.
I have lost track of the number of times I have seen television footage of somebody’s home being sprayed with bullets that pierce the mud and straw walls as if they did not exist, or obliterated by a bomb, while that disgusting servile MI6 propagandist Frank Goebbels Gardner or another of his ilk tells us it was a “Militant compound”, with all the James Bond fantasies that evokes. It is not a compound you fascist bastard, I scream in rage at the TV. It is a family home.
Time for more of the great William Ewart Gladstone:
Remember the rights of the savage, as we call him. Remember that the happiness of his humble home, remember that the sanctity of life in the hill villages of Afghanistan, among the winter snows, is as inviolable in the eye of Almighty God as can be your own.
Those hill tribes had committed no real offence against us. We, in the pursuit of our political objects, chose to establish military positions in their country. If they resisted, would not you have done the same? … The meaning of the burning of the village is, that the women and the children were driven forth to perish in the snows of winter … Is that not a fact ?” for such, I fear, it must be reckoned to be ?” which does appeal to your hearts as women … which does rouse in you a sentiment of horror and grief, to think that the name of England, under no political necessity, but for a war as frivolous as ever was waged in the history of man, should be associated with consequences such as these?
For those of you who ask why I rejoined the Liberal Democrats, the answer is it is my political home. I stand in the tradition of Gladstone, John Bright and John Stuart Mill. It is my
earnest desire to remind the party of that great tradition.
Please let me know every time you see an incident of the “compound” propagande trick.
technicolor: “Except that [Hastings] supported the Newbury bypass protests, and a couple of years ago called for more young people to protest about civil liberties on the streets.”
What was he saying, “Down with civil liberties!”?
What he doesn’t realize is that it is only the civil liberties he has which allows him to denounce them in the streets.
Hastings claims to have liberated Port Stanley in the Falkland’s War. I think it only means he wandered into the town before it was officially recaptured.
“somewhat tubular and pompous, a sort of Uber-Englishman”
Hastings is certainly that. Which makes him a risible figure but not, in itself, a hateful one. Although plenty of people no doubt feel the bile start to rise as soon as someone exhibiting “Englishness” appears on TV. Just save your liver and switch it off.
Suhayl: “It has been alleged that apart from the systemic problems with the MSM, certain journalists in the MSM actively function as knowing conduits for disinformation peddled by the SIS.”
I don’t doubt this happens at all. I am sure that there are plenty of journalists who will grasp at a scoop of any kind and when someone approaches them with “inside” information it’s probably too good for them to resist.
This happens with all kinds of “leaks”, I am sure, when something can simply be denied.
But the same was true of journalists who worked for the Soviet Union and others who could be conduits of choice for any number of other governments.
I’m quite sure this happens. The trick is to be aware of the distinction between slanted or misrepresented news and outright fabrications. I am sure that there is plenty of slanted and misrepresented news which is that way for various reasons. Either because a journalist is pedalling a story that has been fed to them or because the newspaper or cable station is competing for an audience (and therefore will be encouraged to sensationalize).
BUT this doesn’t mean that the “Everything You Know is Wrong!” thesis is correct.
Glenn, I am pretty sure that McVeigh was no Republican as the movement he identified with believe that the Republicans and Democrats are two faces of the “New World Order”. (Sound familiar?)
He probably got the idea that Clinton was going to send the FBI round to take everyone’s guns because of a real life incident at Ruby Ridge (Look it up!)
But like every conspiracy theorist he extrapolated massively and thought that some great apocalytpic struggle was on its way very soon. (Sound familiar?)
He read all kinds of conspiracy literature (the Turner Diaries was written by William Pierce who was a full-on neo-Nazi) such as the Spotlight, which was edited by Willis Carto of the “Liberty Lobby” – neo-Nazis and white supremacists, which has now become the American Free Press, etc…etc…
They go on and on about the Bilderberg group, the ZOG (Zionist-Occupied Government), the ensuing New WOrld Order (sound familiar?) the Federal Reserve, etc… etc…
Here, have a read of this if you like (skip the stuff about al-Muhajiroun):
http://angrysoba.blogspot.com/2010/04/them-adventures-with-extremists.html
“BUT this doesn’t mean that the “Everything You Know is Wrong!” thesis is correct.”
*grin*
Everything You Know is Wrong, Including This !
Wow! Just as I had posted that I started reading this review of Aaronovitch’s book, “Voodoo Histories” in which Stephen Walt writes:
“Conspiracy theories take many forms, but they generally have several common features. First, they often claim to expose the secret machinations of a small group of individuals, acting to accomplish some nefarious but largely-hidden purpose. Second, they attribute to the designated group vast and far-reaching powers, including a mysterious ability to control (rather than simply influence) a wide array of institutions. Yet a conspiracy theory (as opposed to a careful institutional analysis) never identifies the precise mechanisms by which this alleged control is achieved and normally fails to provide concrete evidence to justify its far-reaching claims. Alternatively, conspiracy theorists sometimes suggest that “the government” is engaged in some enormously-important but covert activity, like hiding captured alien spacecraft at “Area 51″ or arranging to bring down the World Trade Center while getting it blamed on al Qaeda. In virtually all cases, a good conspiracy theory implies that what you think you know about the world is dead wrong, usually because the people responsible for the conspiracy have managed to convince you that up is down and black is white.”
http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/03/26/on_conspiracy_theories
As you probably know, Stephen Walt was one of the authors of the Israel Lobby, which is sometimes thought of as pretty conspiratorial itself.
“I sometimes wonder if this over centralization of power in London will not in time prove to be the leaver that breaks this country up.”
It is certainly loosening the bonds. Devolution had to be invented to derail Scottish separatism, and it hasn’t worked. It had to be patched by the Calman proposals. These are not yet implemented, perhaps never will be, and even if they are seem likely to create more tension rather than less.
Tempting as it is to believe that the British State will be destroyed by its own corruption, real life is never so poetic.
The precise mechanisms of the Israeli lobby are fairly straightforward.
Carrot and stick.
Money and funding if you please them or smearing and career demolition if you don’t.
‘BUT this doesn’t mean that the “Everything You Know is Wrong!” thesis is correct.’ Angrysoba
I agree entirely. It just calls for utmost discrimination and very broad and deep ‘reading’ of events and information flows and probably an underlying stance (minus knee-jerks) of skepticism.
I know, I go OTT about Max, don’t I? I just see him as a glove-puppet. Anyone remember ‘Lord Charles’? You’re right, thanks, I shall look after my liver!
Max Hastings:
“Today, I feel a respect for the 60s protesters (if not for the decade’s violent extremists) that at the time I lacked the imagination to muster…they were right that the Vietnam war was a barbaric American folly. It was good that they shouted slogans and asked questions, because somebody had to.
It seems bizarre to be promoting the cause of student activism. Yet surely anyone who cares about British democracy should be bothered about our culture of acquiescence, not least in the re-election of a British prime minister who committed the nation to war on the basis of massive falsehoods, some of George Bush’s making but most of his own. Where are the Peter Hains, Jack Straws, Tariq Alis? Where is the fierce, intolerant conviction that old men and women are getting it wrong, that it is time for a new generation to seize the levers?”
Guardian, 2005: full link here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2005/apr/27/studentpolitics.highereducation
Yes, thanks, Technicolour, this demonstrates just how far beyond even the Establishment’s post-WWII norms this current lot of rulers went. Good on Max, what!
Post-Suez, I mean. East of Suez. Whatever. East of Eden. Good band, that.
Yes, I think it was good on Max. And the Newbury bypass protestors have a good word for him too. I remember the Earl of Cardigan being interviewed on an anniversary of the Battle of the Beanfield (when the police launched an all out attack on people who were peacefully on their way to Stonehenge). He was horrified by what he saw, tried to protect them, and spoke out about it. At which point, he said, the Establishment shut him down completely. He said he shouldn’t have been surprised, but he was.
I think Roderick Russell’s made a very good point – we tend to forget how decentralised Britain used to be. We have many to thank for that decentralisation, including some conservatives actually, for their own reasons no doubt, but nonetheless, like Joseph Chamberlain – Neville’s dad, of course.
Btw, I think Walt’s also a conservative, isn’t he? That was one of the things which made his and M’s analysis so powerful. He’s right about the dynamics of extrapolation.
Paleo-conservatives have a lot to commend them. Peter Hitchens, for example.
What’s a paleo-conservative?(will look it up) As for the Hitchens, don’t know much about them either, except that Christopher wrote one of the earliest & best pieces about the US voting machines scandal:
http://makethemaccountable.com/articles/Ohio_s_Odd_Numbers.htm
People can surprise you, whatever their labels, I think.
Paleo-conservatives are distinct from Neo-conservatives. The British and US versions of paleoconservative are also somewhat different from each other.
http://www.conservapedia.com/Paleoconservative
Peter Hitchens, I think, describes himself – or at least is described – as a Paleo-Conservative. Among many other things, they tend not to favour statism, corporatism or wars of aggression.
Peter Hitchens is also very different from his brother. Christopher H used to be very left-wing and then, like so many prominent figures of his ilk, did an abrupt about-turn on most things, most notably wars of aggression. Peter, on the other hand, has remained consistent. I’ve heard through the grapevine – I don’t know him – that on a personal level too Peter Hitchens is a very honourable man.
I see though that Peter H too was a Trot, once on a day. Wasn’t everyone though? (!) I guess that even Trotsky was ‘once a Trot’.
Man you Brits sure don’t have you heads up your arses (a lot of the time).
How pathetic it is to hear you debate the “merits” of voting in more of the same. Why have the displays intelligence which I grew fond of here suddenly melted away ‘cos a stupid ‘n (lets be honest) meaningless election has been called? When are you going to frigging well learn? Jeez you guys sure are cheap. Throw the monkeys some peanuts see them frenzy. No Vote is far more principles than ‘a’ vote, and if you believe the BNP will get in because you don’t vote, then geez, your colon tract’s were far longer than I thought.
As for “Greats” of British Politics, are ANY of them free from involvement in Imperialistic/quazi-Imperialism; that in its machinations is likely to have created a mountain of (predominantly dark skinned) corpses somewhere? And even if that is true, e.g. Gladstone was Great, I echo previous sentiments here in that this bunch of poo-heads are an utter disgrace to politics ->> which should ONLY involve PUBLIC DUTY! both at home – and abroad by the fact Foreign Policy is IMO a greater role of contemporary Govt than Home Office affairs.
Craig, You may be a Liberal, but get yourself away from supporting these plebs. They are a contemptuous bunch of ragamuffins, That Cable chappie’s not too bad but like the miserable England team, one or two star make a world cup winning team.
P.S. Handy Iraq War checker. not.http://www.arabmediawatch.com/amw/MediaLobbying/IraqWarVote/tabid/142/Default.aspx
one or two stars maketh not a world cup winning team.
Hey all, I posted a comment here last night, a reply to Glenn about McVeigh and Gore Vidal and Rachel Maddow, and now it has disappeared. Is this site self-censoring or… ? I could reconstruct what I said, I guess, but if there’s a moderator at hand I would appreciate knowing why my comment has been taken down. Possibilities: An American cannot call their government insane and hideous when the topic is Tim McVeigh. Or, perhaps you can’t link to primary source testimony about FOAI’d proof of CIA involvement, as I did when I linked to Jesse Trentadue’s interview on antiwar radio: http://antiwar.com/radio/2010/03/31/jesse-trentadue-2/
??? Guidance appreciated, thanks.
Like Glenn, I read it this morning, meinus. It was interesting, I meant to post a message saying that, actually. I thought that was what angrysoba was responding to as well. Is it not there, above, at 850pm? Or was there a second post by you?
Anything with more than one link in doesn’t get posted, btw, I think that’s been a common experience, meinus. Try posting one link per post, even if it means having to break-up your paragraphs, etc. Let’s see what happens this time…
Hi Glenn and Suhayl — I see different time stamps than you do, I think — I’m in California. I think I only put the one link in the dropped comment, and since it did post and was read for a while at least… I dunno. I’ll try rewriting what I said last night and post it without links.
First, I said I had read Gore Vidal’s long Vanity Fair article, “The Meaning of Timothy McVeigh,” which was published in September 2001 (and which probably got lost in other September 2001 events. It was something I came across years later, not anything I read at the time.) So I knew that Vidal and McVeigh corresponded, that Vidal had sympathy/empathy for what he believed McVeigh’s motive was, which was kicking back at an out-of-control federal government that used tanks on its own people. McVeigh went to Waco in person during the standoff and watched Waco on TV when the tanks attacked and the compound burned. That set him off. I have heard or read Vidal call McVeigh “a noble boy.” McVeigh wanted Vidal to be at his execution. Vidal was trying to explain McVeigh’s reasoning once on TV and he got cut off–not allowed. Vidal’s article was about the federal coverup of bombing evidence that local people knew very well about. McVeigh’s trial was ludicrous.
Then I wondered that these clumps of McVeigh authorities never seem to integrate. It’s all churned up right now because of Rachel Maddow’s upcoming special next Monday on The McVeigh Tapes, which are interview tapes with McVeigh in prison made by Michel and Herbeck when they were writing their authorized biography of McVeigh, American Terrorist. There’s the clump of Rachel-Michel/Herbeck and wikipedia that seems to be primarily sourced to Michel/Herbeck. Then Vidal is another lonely clump of his own, an afterthought extra reference link at the bottom of the wikipedia entry. Then there’s the clump of Scott Horton (not the Harper’s Scott Horton, a different one) and his guests of witnesses and investigators (including Jesse Trentadue) and sound clip library at antiwar radio, which seem to belie some at least of what Michel and Herbeck reported. And then McVeigh himself even seems like he might be playing each confidant differently. He tells Michel and Herbeck “I did it all myself, there was no John Doe No. 2” and then also sends a message to Jesse Trentadue (paraphrasing) “Your brother was killed in a federal prison interrogation because he looked like Richard Guthrie”–who is, supposedly, who else, John Doe No. 2. Jesse Trentadue has been FOIAing and litigating for years now to get information on Oklahoma City and FBI, ATF and CIA involvement, and he’s got piles of redacted papers that he tries to get the news media here to break but they won’t. Will Rachel? It doesn’t look like she even knows about him. Rachel’s liberal and Scott Horton is libertarian and they don’t mix well. She makes fun of Ron Paul people and he is a Ron Paul person. It’s curious that I haven’t heard Horton make comments about the upcoming special when he’s made several digs at Rachel’s demonizing coverage of militias and gun-rights people recently. Also Rachel has as a regular anti-militia guest a guy from the Southern Poverty Law Center, while Scott says the SPLC had infiltrated the Elohim City Neo-Nazi ring that was responsible for the Oklahoma bombing and was in some sense responsible itself, that it was working undercover with the FBI or the CIA. A mess!
If this is Rashomon, you’d like them at least to put all the scenes in the same movie.
The other point I made was about the strange disconnect between the promo ads for Rachel’s upcoming McVeigh tapes special, and the excerpts from the special that she’s been playing on her show. Case in point: “Children are fair game.” The ad is ominous and McVeigh is a monster: Sound bite: McVeigh saying “Children are fair game,” with that subtitle, followed by him saying something like he’s not ashamed of what he did, has no regrets…something like that. Since Rachel has made a cottage industry out of jeering at rightwing scare ads that use O Fortuna as the soundtrack, it’s weird to see her turn around and make one of her own.
But then on Monday’s (I think) show, she played that excerpt with that comment in context. And McVeigh was talking about the US GOVERNMENT’S rules of engagement. “Children are fair game?” That’s how the subtitle reads there. Question mark. I’m not sure if he was refering to Gulf War US rules of engagement (he was a decorated vet there) or to Waco, where “Seventy-six people (24 of them British nationals) died in the fire, including more than 20 children, two pregnant women, and Koresh himself.” (wikipedia)
In the ads he’s a monster, in the interviews he’s rational and human. I don’t know how to stop a “hideous, insane” government — but it looks like that’s what he was trying to do.
— me in us
Oh yeah! One more detail, from Jesse Trentadue? Who was the [assistant attorney general?] in the Clinton administration who was charged with covering up what happened to Kenney Trentadue? That information is among the FOIA responses: Obama’s attorney general, Eric Holder.
It’ll take awhile to digest the intriguing info, meinus, yet one of your comments reminds me of something I read somewhere which related to the inlfitration of political organisations (I think it may have been relating to the UK Miners’ Strike of 1984-85) which went something like this:
Eventually, the organisation in question had become so heavily infiltrated that the spies didn’t realise that they were in fact spying mainly on other spies; there were so many of them being run by different state outfits, they no longer knew one another for what they were.
Kafka…?!
Another piece of sly BBC propaganda is the use of qualifiers such as “appears to” in particular contexts. When mobile phone videos were shown of a plane making an emergency landing in the Hudson, we were treated to various views which we were told, “show the plane coming down on the water.” Yet when a policeman was caught violently shoving Ian Tomlinson to the ground, or backhanding a woman in the face before striking her legs with his baton, we’re told that the images merely “appear to show” the policeman shoving, or striking etc. Because the images in both examples were taken by ordinary members of the public, it cannot even be excused as a caveat applied to footage taken by non-professional news cameramen/women. I complained to the BBC, pointing out that the images did not “appear” to show Mr Tomlinson being violently shoved from behind, they DO show him being violently shoved, (and without them the usual police fabrication would have remained unchallenged). No such equivocation was used to describe the scenes of demonstrators appearing to break the windows of a bank in the same street that day. Despite supposedly having taken my complaint into consideration, of course the BBC continues to use this form of bias on a regular basis.
Yes, if the phrase ‘appears to’ is employed for legal reasons, then it, or an equivalent set of phrases, ought to be applied across the board, as you suggest. Otherwise it’s bias.
Suhayl, yes, that was one of the points I think I made in the comment that’s gone missing. That there were so many informants/infiltrators — and maybe even instigators, as guests on antiwar radio believe they were actually running a sting on Elohim City — that Scott Horton wondered whether there were any real terrorists at all at Elohim City. The ATF (Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms) had an informant who rode in a scouting car with the German (apparently working with the CIA and perhaps working as well with the private organization Southern Poverty Law Center, which was perhaps contracted by the FBI to do the infiltration because the FBI itself couldn’t do it because of separation of church and state reasons) past the Murrah Building and later identified that building to her ATF handler–four months prior to the bombing. Everybody knew. A judge after the bombing knew all that because that was testified to, what the ATF handler knew, and immediately the prosecution moved to have that sealed, and it was. It made convicting McVeigh so much “cleaner.” The CIA profoundly helped build the DOJ’s case–something that is outside the CIA’s purview, they’re not supposed to do that. And after the bombing Eric Holder went around tamping down Congress to not hold hearings on Oklahoma City or Kenney Trentadue. That’s in e-mails the Jesse Trentadue recovered through FOIA.
It’s not clean, it’s dirty.
At the end of the antiwar radio show that I linked to in comments above, Scott Horton says,
— snip —
SCOTT HORTON: You still don’t know who killed your brother, do you?
JESSE TRENTADUE: No, no I don’t. But I think I’m closer now than I’ve ever been. This ruling puts this out there too. People are not paying attention to this, but this judge made it clear that there was a foreign element involved in that attack, and one the government has worked pretty hard to keep secret.
SCOTT HORTON: Well I noticed, well I guess you sent me this, Homeland Security Today, HS Today dot US, I guess, you know this is basically read by cops throughout our country: “CIA aided DOJ prosecutors in 1995 Oklahoma bombing case. Secret CIA documents withheld in FOIA suit raise more questions than they answer,” is this headline, so let’s, come on Washington Post and Associated Press, yeah, right, let’s see. We’ll wait and see.
JESSE TRENTADUE: Don’t hold your breath.”
— snip —
I can find that website and two entries, one from March 30 and one from April 1, which because of the linking issue I’ll post in separate comments.
— me in us
— snip —
http://www.hstoday.us/content/view/12726/149/
FOIAs Reveal More on CIA Assist to OKC Bombing Probe
by Anthony L. Kimery
Thursday, 01 April 2010
‘CIA provided pre- and post-blast imagery to facilitate forensic examination’
A Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed with the CIA by Salt Lake City attorney Jesse Trentadue ?” who has been seeking heretofore unknown government documents pertaining to the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City – shows Intelligence Community (IC) imagery assets were used in the investigation.
— snip —
opening paragraph
— snip —
http://www.hstoday.us/content/view/12707/149/
CIA Aided DOJ Prosecutors in 1995 OKC Bombing Case
by Anthony L. Kimery
Tuesday, 30 March 2010
‘Secret’ CIA documents withheld in FOIA suit raise more questions than they answer
Questions about foreign complicity in the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah federal building in downtown Oklahoma City for which Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols were convicted, were disclosed Friday in a ruling by US District court judge Clark Waddoups on a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the CIA for the CIA’s refusal to completely declassify records it has acknowledged it possesses that pertain to the case.
— snip —
opening paragraph