I watched the disgraceful Islamophobic rantings on the BBC and Sky News last night in mounting disbelief. Security correspondent and security expert vied with each other to tell us that the dreadful attacks in Norway were the work of al-Qaida. One extraordinary American, introduced as from a Centre for Combating Extremism, explained that these Norwegian jihadists had international links and plans to attack London and the New York subway. Norway was a target, we were repeatedly told, because of its NATO membership.
There was at least six solid hours of this poisonous bullshit. I did not pick up on one single person who said that this probably was not Islamic terrorism – despite the glaringly obvious fact that the atrocity had a Norwegian domestic political agenda, being an attack on the Prime Minister’s office, and on a youth camp of the governing party. The internet was buzzing for hours with the news that the attacker on Utoya Island was blonde, without the broadcast media mentioning it. The American security expert I mention above had that base covered – he had obviously seen those reports, but did not mention them. However he said that jihadist groups had probably recruited European looking operatives to carry out the attacks, because they were aware that security services “consciously or unconsciously operated racial profiling.”
This morning Al Jazeera and Russia Today were carrying the news that the attacker was Anders Breivik – and even a picture of him – while the BBC and Sky still were not, and while they had stopped the blatant Islamophobic ranting, had still not admitted it was not an Islamic militant attack.
I would love to believe that this incident would cause the media to reassess the value of the numerous “security experts” whose companies, institutes, funding, profile and standards of living have been spectacularly boosted by the “War on Terror”. But I doubt it.
All terrorism is terrible. Islamic extremist terrorism is terrible. But not all terrorism is Islamic extremist. To presume it is, is just as valid as to assume that any shooting in the UK is carried out by a black person. If the BBC reacted to the next news of a shooting or stabbing, by six hours about crime in the black community, when it turned out the perpetrators are white, there would rightly be outrage. This is no different.
UPDATE
The mainstream media and those “Security experts” are now struggling to cover up and justify their blatant Islamophobia. The New York Times was right at the forefront of the Islamophobic ranting, attributing the bombing to a non-existent Jihadist group and then being quoted all across the airwaves as the authority for that attribution. It has now published this amazing self-justificatory bullshit:
Norway has about 550 soldiers and three medevac helicopters in northern Afghanistan, a Norwegian defense official said. The government has indicated that it will continue to support the operations as long as the alliance needs partners on the ground.
Terrorism specialists said that even if the authorities ultimately ruled out Islamic terrorism as the cause of Friday’s assaults, other kinds of groups or individuals were mimicking Al Qaeda’s brutality and multiple attacks.
“If it does turn out to be someone with more political motivations, it shows these groups are learning from what they see from Al Qaeda,” said Brian Fishman, a counterterrorism researcher at the New America Foundation in Washington. “One lesson I take away from this is that attacks, especially in the West, are going to move to automatic weapons.”
All the mainstream media are rushing to take down their crazed Islamophobic rantings from their websites this morning – the BBC did it just twenty minutes ago, and had a short period in consequence when they had nothing up on Norway. I expect newspaper sites will be doing the same. Print editions, of course, do not have that ability.
Mainstream media – all the hate and lies they can peddle. What would really be an interesting public inquiry, would be the links between “security” and “defence” correspondents and the security services whose propaganda they spread. I should love to know what security service briefings were behind yesterday’s Islamophobic lies.
Yeah, Wendy, I agree that it’s all very concerning.
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Yes, the “shoulder to shoulder” thing is meant to make one think also of WW2 and the USA/UK alliance. How inappropriate. This is a declaration of war, it’s a criminal act. it ought to be expressions of condolence and then: “If Norway needs any help, we’d be very happy to provide it and to cooperate wrt policing activity, etc.” But no, we get this ludicrously inappropriate Churchillian war-speak. No-one indugled in this with Cumbria, Dunblane, Hungerford, the mass killings in the German town, Columbine, Alabama, or even Oklahoma. It seems almost to have become the reflexive response of the politician-celebrities who deign to rule over us.
The above ought to have read: ‘This is NOT a declaration of war’.
“No darling, our roots, those of christiandom, those of our mothers, our fathers, our blood, the christian faith that furnished Europe, our progress, our moral standards etc.
Those are our roots. You got it now?” Libertad
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Thank you, Libertad, for providing such passionate, poetic and erudite illumination and elucidation of the concept of ‘root’. In what way, preisely, does the “BBC [suck] with ideological agenda against all our roots” and how might this be relevant to the killings in Norway? My impression, from scanning the various hysterical newspaper headlines, is that the MSM in general seems to have much more of an antipathy to Muslims than to ‘roots’ (though of course, in both the Iberian peninsula and the Balksn, the two were and remain somewhat synonymous or at least entwined to the point of syncretism). Oh, and what about Paganism, surely the original root? Is the BBC against Paganism, too? Or is it pro-Pagan, perhaps? Please would be so kind as to elaborate? Thank you.
“.. for the news orgs to have an almost off the shelf complete narrative at hand , from an unheard of islamist group to links to al qaeda in africa and possibly pakistan”.
Yes. It’s as though the press (and indeed Cameron) were primed for the bomb but not for the massacre.
To remind everyone, Christianity, of couse, is a Middle Eastern faith. Jesus was a brown man, with wavy, black hair. So were Peter, Paul and Mary (both Marys), Joseph, Didymus Thomas, John the Baptist… Oh yeah! Sing it, people…! Syrians, Egyptians and Ethiopians have been Christian longer than anyone. There were Christians in India before there were Christians in ‘Europe’ and there have remianed Christians India. Byzantium – ‘Rum’ – was a Hellenistic, Near Eastern Empire.
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If one is talking about the Enlightenment, or the Industrial revolution, these are somewhat different phenomena. I would argue that to conflate all of this is refelctive of muzzy thinking.
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So, what, then do we man by ‘roots’, by ‘Christiandom’ (new phrase, slightly clumsy, don’t you mean, ‘Christendom’)?
So, ‘Europe’ is a construct. It was, and never has been, some sort of hermetically-sealed, ‘pure’ blood and soil entity. It’s no even a geographical continent; unlike all other ‘continents’, it is not surrounded on all four sides by water, but is part of the landmass that constitutes ‘Eurasia’. Europe, therefore, might be said to be grossly incontinent. Porous, in other words. It’s the way it’s always been. Which is just as well, really.
‘It was not’, that ought to have read (line 1). God, my typos are legion this evening!
Same applies to ‘Asia’, of course. It doesn’t exist.
“…these groups are learning from what they see from Al Qaeda,”
As far as tactics go, perhaps they have long enough memories to have learned a thing or two from Baader Meinhof and the Red Army Faction. Simultaneous attacks in multiple locations. Even operations in Scandinavia. All nearly 30 years before Al Qeda.
Excellent point, Chris. To be pedantic, the RAF (Red Army Faction) was the ‘Baader Meinhof Gang’; the former was the offical title, the latter a pejorative applied by the media.
Duly noted, my misstatement.
I am from Pakistan and when I first heard the news, I was having discussion with colleagues in a software house and most of us felt good when our interior minister didn’t appear on television channel and confirmed that Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has accepted the responsibility of this attack.
… I hate this part of me…they have put us Muslims at a point where I don’t feel sad on the death of so many humans …
“Also by impersonating a crazed right winger they undermine the Islamophobia Israel relies on so much.”
No impersonation is necessary: crazed right wingers tend to be islamophobic, because islamophobia is promoted by zionists of the revisionist school. Who are fascists. The modern fascist is pro-Israel, islamophobic, overtly committed to capitalism. And inclined to get very sentimental about the “holocaust.”
It makes very little sense, but then fascism rarely does. The one thing that remains constant in the constantly evolving ideology of fascism, is the deep seated hatred of socialists. A hatred shared by the Revisionist founders of the modern Israel and by the neo-Nazis of Scandinavia. And expressed here, tragically, in the serial killing of these young Norwegian Socialists and Social Democrats.
As to the connection with muslims, it is this: they too are treated as enemies by a system which embraces loan assassins and the armies and security resources of the most powerful states. And whose spokesmen run the gamut from lone bloggers to massive media conglomerates to State Broadcasters.
In Iran today another nuclear physicist was assassinated at his home. We all know who is responsible for this crime and that, horrifying though it is, we are accomplices in it.
So too, by tolerating, to the point of encouragement, the common or garden variety islamophobia, evidenced in the attitudes of such people as the Observer journalist, are we accomplices in the killing of the young Norwegian socialists: punished for standing, unarmed, shoulder to shoulder with the wretched of Palestine.
Excellent article Craig.
The BBC has long since stopped trying to tell us it’s impartial and is now making no attempt to hide the fact that it is a Neoconservative Propaganda Machine. In fact the BBC regularly features a huge amount of commentators from Washington neocon NGOs.
Jonathan Paris, the BBC’s featured ‘Expert’ last night, from the International Centre for The American the Study of Radicalisation based in London made himself look a complete and utter propaganda parrot with his insistent rants that the Norway attacks were the work of Islamic Jihad, AL-Qaeda. He said: “It looks and feels like a Jihadi attack on the West. The first major attack by Al-Qaeda”
The BBC’s Tim Willcox, a well known neocon propaganda parrot was just as nauseous. Even after the BBC couldn’t hide the fact any longer that the culprit was blonde, white, Norwegian, Willcox still persisted in getting the ‘Anti-Islam mesasge across by saying ” it still can’t be ruled out that it was an Al-Qaeda attack. Ethnic nationals have converted to Islam”
And as for the “Helpers of Global Jihad” claiming responsibility? That was so obvious a fake group created by the neocon propaganda machine.
Yeah, the moment the channels began with the Islamist mantra, I began wondering how every Muslim is going to be given an extra-tough time in Norway and Europe at large. Disgusting!
Sunday 24th July. Craig I have just heard you speak on the BBC World Service which has prompted me to read your blog…. excellent observations. Keep it up.
Well said,Mr Murray, sir . . . I am with you all the way.
Usman, it’s relief that ‘Thank God it wasn’t a Muslim’, because we know the consequences. It’s not feeling good, I think, it’s simply relief that it wasn’t ‘us’ (as it were). When M.K Gandhi was assassinated, India held its breath. Muslims were so relived that it hadn’t been a Muslim who had killed him. It’s the same feeling, I think.
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Annie, I know, and thanks for your solidarity.
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Craig, please give us the link – if there is one – for your BBC World Service interview. Thanks.
What a feeble and weedy response from Beaumont. Gabriele has returned to Media Lens after a long absence. He did sterling work in holding the war criminals to account during the period when the Iraqi people were being killed and maimed, widowed and orphaned and made refugeea.
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email to Peter Beaumont on “suspicion falls on Islamist militants”
Posted by gabriele on July 24, 2011, 10:27 am
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Dear Peter,
On Friday you wrote:
“Oslo police have confirmed the source of the blast that damaged the prime minister’s offices in Oslo was a bomb. The question now is who is likely to be behind it.
The most obvious conclusion would be a jihadist group.” (Oslo bomb: suspicion falls on Islamist militants, Peter Beaumont, the Guardian, Friday 22 July 2011)
The Guardian website deleted that article but Google saved it for us http://tinyurl.com/3pype7e
The details of the man being a tall, blond, Norwegian looking were available almost immediately on the Internet. Yet, your “most obvious conclusion” was a “a jihadist group”.
Later on that same day you co-authored another article, together with Julian Borger http://tinyurl.com/3zbyfmj
This article read: “Counter-terrorist police flew to the island and it was reported that a man, described in reports as tall and blond, had been arrested.”
In spite of this, you and your colleague went on writing speculations linking that carnage to Islam.
Of course, you were not alone in this. The whole media circus and its experts “speculated” the same way and were very generous in letting us know about their “suspicions”. An expert on the BBC News channel that afternoon even went as far as to affirm that the tall-blond-Norwegian-looking element actually meant that now Islamist terrorists use locals for their terrorist attacks! (I can’t remember his name, but he teaches in a London university and the his expertise was broadcast by the public service news channel at about 8:10 pm on Friday)
Now, couldn’t it be the case that all those suspicions and speculations have actually their roots in our own prejudices and many years of propaganda we have succumbed in the west? Couldn’t it be that that propaganda helped/helps our governments to sell us endless wars, including the notorious “war on terror”? Couldn’t it be that this propaganda may actually have helped to arm the hand of Anders Behring Breivik, the tall, blond Norwegian who killed so many innocent lives last Friday in Norway? Can you see any connections?
Please, take this e-mail in a constructive way. I don’t want to single you out for something that’s very widespread and considered normal in the media and in our society. I just think it may be some food for thought.
Thank you for reading and please, I would be very interested in your thoughts on this.
Kind regards,
Gabriele Zamparini
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Dear G The first version of the article was initially written after bomb explosion and filed as first reports of shooting were coming in ie before any report of a blond man. The analysis piece and first news story were not deleted but updated as new information came in four times in case of analysis piece. Indeed it was david sketchley who drew attention to me of first reports of blond man. We changed tack as fast as possible and had continuous discussion oif whether the initial widespread speculation about it being a jihadi attack was correct.
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my reply
Posted by gabriele on July 24, 2011, 11:21 am, in reply to “Peter Beaumont replies ”
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Thanks Peter, I appreciate your kind reply. It’s good to know that David Sketchley’s activism helped you. My point, if I may take some more of your time, is why all that “initial widespread speculation”? As I wrote in my first e-mail, couldn’t it be the case that all those suspicions and speculations have actually their roots in our own prejudices and many years of propaganda we have succumbed (to) in the west? Do you think there may be some truth in it?
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Best wishes,
Gabriele
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http://members5.boardhost.com/medialens/thread/1311499671.html
“…couldn’t it be the case that all those suspicions and speculations have actually their roots in our own prejudices and many years of propaganda we have succumbed (to) in the west?” Gabriele Zamparini (via Mary).
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Answer: Yes.
The march of the extreme right wing is very worrying, I think it has it roots in the financial decay we have been brought into by far right politicians that govern the world.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-14232768
It all deflects blame from those who are responsible for the way the world is, and deflects it onto the innocent.
Absolutely, Guest, that’s a good way of putting it. I agree that this may be one of the contributory factors; there are others, though (and some of the other posters have alluded to some of these). Hence my reference to “capitalist fundamentalists in the White House” and, I think, Ingo’s reference to “radical capitalist fundamentalists”.
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We’ve seen this kind of dynamic before. The 1929 debacle was one of the major factors which led directly to the ascendancy of Hitler in Germany. Of course, it’s not an exact parallel – thank goodness – and there were many other particularities in Germany at the time, but in essence, one doesn’t have to be Marxist to come to the simple conclusion – the truism – that in some or other way, economics is often/usually at the root of politics and violence in society.
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War as solution is a necessary driver of such fundamentalist capitalism. War on the outside becomes war on the inside. That, too is what we may be witnessing in this, and some other, ‘domestic’ massacres.
Suhayl Saadi, you are correct. It means the far/extreme right wing end up as the rulers, and we the people end up as the losers.
Suhayl, as Pacino said in the Godfather 3 ‘the higher I go the crookeder it becomes.’ And again from the Godfather 3 when a ‘high up’ said ‘finance is the gun and politics is knowing when to fire it.’
OH F**K OFF!!!
The BBC have obviously been ordered to keep mentioning Islamic Extremism regarding the Norway attacks. They have just this minute interviewed a Norwegian Palestinian in Oslo asking him about Islamic extremism and how he might have initially thought the attacks were from Muslim Terrorists. The BBC’s Jon Sopel is the propaganda parrot this time.
FFS!!!!
Yes true Suhayl. I am waiting for something big on this Obama v Congress thing on the debt ceiling. Another crash on the cards to take us right down to the bare bones? Fascism which is waiting in the wings then takes the stage.
Great quotes, Jaded! So true. Thanks, Mary, Guest.
“Fascism which is waiting in the wings then takes the stage.”
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It was planned to be this way, it was put into operation in 1979, it is finally coming to fruition!. Those nasty socialist labour party people will be blamed for it all. The Tories will say only they can be trusted with the governance of britain, and will say this must never happen again. When will be the next free election ???, long time, if ever, methinks!!!. Listen to the Tories for the the tell-tale signs`s of what is to come, I don`t think we will have long to wait.
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Time will tell.
Gabriele is watching them like a hawk.
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e-mail to Simon Tisdall on Norway’s tragedy: “he adopted the language of Muslim jihadists”
Posted by gabriele on July 24, 2011, 4:57 pm
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Dear Simon Tisdall,
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I am appalled by your words: “Although an apparent racial supremacist and Islamophobe, he adopted the language of Muslim jihadists.” http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jul/24/norway-attacks-unaswered-questions
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Do you really believe that Muslims invented or have monopoly over violence? Why not the language of Christian crusaders or Jewish fundamentalists? Or maybe the language of Western imperialists? I won’t offend your intelligence by listing the many examples that come to mind.
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Just when one would have thought the media could not fall lower, after all the “suspicions” and “speculations” we heard and read on the responsibility over the Norway’s tragedy. As I was writing this morning to your colleague, Peter Beaumont:
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Now, couldn’t it be the case that all those suspicions and speculations have actually their roots in our own prejudices and many years of propaganda we have succumbed in the west? Couldn’t it be that that propaganda helped/helps our governments to sell us endless wars, including the notorious “war on terror”? Couldn’t it be that this propaganda may actually have helped to arm the hand of Anders Behring Breivik, the tall, blond Norwegian who killed so many innocent lives last Friday in Norway? Can you see any connections? {http://tinyurl.com/3r9kjhq}
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Can you understand why your words are – at best – irresponsible?
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Kind regards,
Gabriele Zamparini
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