Many of you will recognise one of the faces in this photograph, Mark Regev. He is Israel’s new Ambassador to London and of course was the Israeli government spokesman who justified the massacre of more than 600 women and children in Gaza, and the murder of peace activists aboard the Mavi Marmara.
The other face of evil is Simon McDonald, head of the UK Diplomatic Service. You probably now think I am indulging in hyperbole. But no, I am not.
Simon McDonald was the Foreign Secretary Jack Straw’s Private Secretary at the time of the implementation of the British government’s extraordinary rendition and intelligence from torture programmes. When I became the only member of the UK’s senior civil service to make formal objection to these programmes, it was Simon McDonald who managed Jack Straw’s response in continuing to use torture.
I have indisputable documentary evidence of this, plain despite redactions by the British government censors (redactions which primarily remove all references to the CIA).
It is put to me frequently that people like McDonald, who were merely implementing a policy of torture, are not evil. That of course is the age old “only doing my job” defence. As somebody who was sacked for refusing to go along with torture, I think I have walked the walk and can describe him as evil. It is also worth noting that, while McDonald meets all new Ambassadors to London, he went far further with Regev than with anybody else. He tweeted out their photo with the message “Happy to see Mark Regev newly arrived Israeli Ambassador, an old friend from Tel Aviv ten years ago.”
Ten years ago, when they were friends in Tel Aviv, was of course the year in which Israel invaded Lebanon and Mark Regev was the chief Israeli spokesman justifying that attack, with its mass civilian casualties. Regev also defended the bombing by Israel of a United Nations observation post.
It is hardly surprising McDonald and Regev became friends at this time, as Gordon Brown’s government were doing everything possible behind the scenes to assist the Israeli invasion. As I wrote at that time
I have just watched on television sixty bodies being buried in a mass grave in Tyre, victims of Israeli bombing. At the same time I saw the odious Kim Howells, Foreign Office minister, arguing that a ceasefire would not solve the problem.
British diplomats at the UK Mission to the United Nations in New York – people I know personally – are putting massive effort into working against a ceasefire. They have the ultimate weapon that they and the US can veto any resolution at the Security Council, but are bending their backs into heading the subject off the agenda.
I hope they are proud of their succesful efforts. For every hour they prevent a ceasefire, on average two more Lebanese children are dying. Israel claims now to have killed 100 Hizbollah fighters. Even if true, that means they are killing two children to every fighter.
McDonald and Regev. Torture meets child-killing. Don’t they make a lovely couple?
“If you are curious about why the Labour Party has been groveling to the J**ish Lobby for the last few months, J**ish Donor Michael Foster provides the nitty gritty – – the numbers of kosher domination. ”
“In his commentary in The Daily Mail , Foster, who donated £400.000 to the party ahead of last May’s election, reveals “This year, no major J**ish donor has given a pound to the central Labour Party.”
“The numbers are shocking. “In the run-up to last May’s General Election, the J**ish community donated almost one-third of the £9.7 million that Labour received from private donors – and that despite recoiling from Labour’s parliamentary vote to recognise Palestine.”
An interesting opinion on why Jeremy Corbyn, might not be able to make the changes in Labour that he’d hoped for.
http://www.gilad.co.uk/writings/2016/4/11/jewish-money-and-the-labour-party-here-are-the-numbers
http://www.gilad.co.uk/writings/2016/2/15/4kwrnp76v5oyq4f5f81sz5zkh35i2o
“If you are curious about why the Labour Party has been groveling to the J**ish Lobby for the last few months, J**ish Donor Michael Foster provides the nitty gritty – – the numbers of kosher domination.”
Here is one of the reasons; some guy called Millipede:
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/david-miliband-says-brexit-means-britain-will-lose-its-relevance-doesn-t-he-realise-he-s-already-a6980766.html
“Miliband the Elder must be pinning his future hopes on flirting his way into the White House with Hillary Clinton, in a modern version of The Graduate”
Doesn’t that just make you want to throw up? 🙂
55 years ago today, the first man went into space. Sorry, not very relevant to Machiavellian power-seekers and arsche-bandits , but it would be even less relevant tomorrow.
It would appear that not all refugees are as innocent as the left portrays them to be.
“A Syrian refugee has admitted to setting fire to a German shelter where he was staying, spray-painting swastikas on the walls to make it look like a political crime. The asylum seeker said the arson attack was in response to poor conditions at the shelter.”
“During police questioning, the man admitted that he had set [a] fire in the cellar of the multi-use building,” police spokesman Achim Hansen told NBC News, adding that the refugee had also stated that he “had a lack of hope for the future.”
“The 26-year-old refugee sprayed three swastikas on the exterior in the building, located in the town of Bingen, in an effort to make it seem like the fire was started by far-right protesters.”
https://www.rt.com/news/339226-syrian-refugee-arson-germany/
I am amazed the 26-year-old ‘refugee’ was not described as a child.
As for the vandalism and graffiti, a poet and philosopher surely?
A child poet-philosopher. He should have been given a house and benefits immediately.
“the man admitted that he had set [a] fire in the cellar of the multi-use building”
Ah, a budding engineer…
Meth, crack, heroin?
If your neighbour’s house was on fire, would you call the fire brigade? Or sit back on your couch and relax, telling yourself he probably set the fire himself so he could at least get the “house contents” insurance, thereby renewing all his furniture and other gear?
cynical: distrusting or disparaging the motives of others; like or characteristic of a cynic. 2. showing contempt for accepted standards of honesty or morality by one’s actions, especially by actions that exploit the scruples of others. 3. bitterly or sneeringly distrustful, contemptuous, or pessimistic.
“t would appear that not all refugees are as innocent as the left portrays them to be.”
Where do you get the notion, that “the left” regards refugees as innocent, from?
You ought to start filtering the opinions that you instantly re-publish here: you appear to realise that where the SNP or Scots nationalism are concerned, talking heads and journalists spout propaganda. You should be aware that the “left” too is subject to lies and distortions by propagandists for the ruling class.
Further to my earlier reply to Trowbridge here is another piece on the situation in Brazil:
http://www.countercurrents.org/pcr120416.htm
Did you actually read that litany of insanity? He’s praising Pol Pot! So John Pilger’s incredible exposé on Year Zero that I watched as a kid is now also part of some secret skull and bones anti-Western agenda, and Pilger himself is a stooge of these occult forces?
Thanks, Jim, as I just saw this.
Roberts just shoots from the hip at any target, and there are other bastards besides CIA’s.
Just amazed at what he said about Pol Pot too since I just visited Cambodia, and was really heartened by the way everyone was trying to put the country back together.
Cheers, yep it’s nuts! Just realised I should’ve said ‘Imperialist Western agenda’ too, my mind is being bent by trying to decipher all the competing narratives! ?
Previously, Chris Hedges was the only high profile American intellectual who openly called for revolution.
Now Paul Craig Roberts is also saying the same thing…
http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2016/04/12/if-americans-elect-hillary-president-the-one-percents-control-will-be-complete-paul-craig-roberts/
And I will also add that sometime soon there’s going to be another ‘terror spectacular’, and it’s going to involve nuclear material, and it will bring in the full-blown police state.
Mark my words.
Paul Craig Roberts thinks the CIA planned and executed the Charlie Hebdo massacre and 9/11. He’s not an intellectual, he’s a lunatic.
Love it.
You obviously have no questions about 9/11 and accept the official version.
So here’s to the next war in the Middle East.
When is this nonsense going to stop?
Neo-con propaganda loons infesting comment boards.
Feck off you bar stewards.
John Pilger is hardly a neo-con lackey is he? Pol pot as a hero-figure for Roberts? How does that sit with you?
Roberts happens to understand from personal experience how the U.S. government and Wall Street work.
Mike Lofgren writes from much more extensive and recent experience with the government as a high-ranking congressional staffer in The Deep State: The Fall of the Constitution and the Rise of a Shadow Government and comes to similar conclusions.
I’m not talking about Wall Street Lysias, I’m interested in how seriously you can take the veracity of someone who praises a mass murderer like Pol Pot. And thinks the CIA plotted and executed 9/11 and Charlie Hebdo. I’d like to see how seriously say Chomsky or Pilger take him.
Roberts’s words about Pol Pot aren’t exactly praise. What he is saying is that, in order to defeat Western imperialism’s attempts to reverse reforms in countries, you have to be as ruthless as Lenin and Pol Pot were. http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2016/04/11/washington-continues-to-destroy-latin-american-reformers-paul-craig-roberts/
That doesn’t strike me as praise. But it does strike me as realistic.
If you happen to think, as I do, that the sorts of things that Lenin and Pol Pot did are so immoral that, even if it’s the only way to maintain independence, you shouldn’t do them, you can still agree with everything Paul Craig Roberts says in that passage.
Er, no Lysias, it’s a terrifying thing to read. It’s advocating mass murder without a blush. Truly insane. I’m lost for words really, so I won’t even try to rebut it if you can’t see the obvious.
Yes, Lysias, I get that. I think calling for a new Pol Pot in Latin America, or writing such a piece in a way that strongly suggests Pol Pot acted in a wise manner, is astonishingly ill-judged, nonetheless. It’ll haunt him to his grave, I’m afraid – although he doesn’t strike me as the kind of writer who’ll care.
I note that Roberts is careful not to speak of killing or massacring the elites, just removing them. That unfortunately does not remove the ugly connotations of his comparisons.
As a matter of interest, I wonder if anyone would be as shocked if some right-wing writer said what Latin America needed was a new Suharto. I doubt it: yet he was at least as blood-soaked as Pol Pot.
Chomsky is a good deal less hostile to Pol Pot than Pilger. His “After the Cataclysm: Post-War Indochina And The Reconstruction Of Imperial Ideology” (1979), co-written with Edward S. Herman, got him into a lot of trouble on those grounds. I think he would have a lot of time for Roberts.
To John Spencer Davies: Chomsky acknowledges the enormity of the scale of the genocide by Pol Pot, he would have absolutely no truck with Roberts’ insane ideas. His recantation of his previous ideas happened in 1993 and are on the record in ‘Manufacturing Consent’. That’s 23 years ago. Roberts is a total disgrace.
Herman and Chomsky recanted nothing in “Manufacturing Consent” – in fact, they explicitly reaffirmed everything they had written in “After the Cataclysm” (pages 281-282).
You’re not wrong to say that Chomsky (and Herman) acknowledge the enormity of the scale of the genocide, but it depends what you mean. They completely reject the two or three million that has become the standard historical estimate, basing themselves on the US State Department, among other sources. They point out that deaths under Pol Pot are pretty comparable to deaths under Nixon, but very few people recoil in almost religious horror from the name of Nixon, or Suharto, as I have already affirmed. Pol Pot was a dreadful blood-soaked despot, but his virtual uniqueness, shared only with Hitler, is partially a construct of Western propaganda, there is no question about that.
Herman and Chomsky also make the obvious point that Pol Pot had support from a considerable body of the Cambodian population, whether that is palatable or not. (Considerable support from the United States and ourselves too, somewhat later. Roberts only supports Pol Pot verbally, if he does at all. Britain did so using considerable material means. How do you like that? Did that make Thatcher and the British establishment worse lunatics than Roberts?) You can’t kill half a million to a million people by yourself. You need others to do it for you. Herman and Chomsky recognise this grim reality.
Roberts is saying that you can’t put out a powerful old guard and set up something new without having measures in place to deal with opposition from the old establishment. You can hardly say he is mistaken about that, and I am certain Chomsky would fully agree with him. He has chosen a very shocking way to say it – and it is clear that he did so entirely deliberately, knowing full well what effect his words would produce: the way he has structured his article makes that obvious – but the idea itself is not mistaken, although I think he was quite wrong to write it as he has.
I certainly recoil from the name Kissinger, as do many of the people I know. Hitchens’ brilliant polemic is extremely well known. Didn’t the recent shocking documentary looking at the CIA sponsored and planned genocide in Indonesia win an Oscar? This stuff is incredibly well known now. You’re trying (I’ve no idea why) to put some gloss on Roberts’ plainly expressed enthusiasm for the ‘measures’ you (rightly) describe as being necessary for full success of the revolution, to encompass mass murder. You are completely right about Western complicity in any number of gross human rights violations, but for Roberts to gratuitously write this pernicious drivel is indefensible, I’m amazed you are defending it really. The guy is an idiot.
And regarding the notion that Pol Pots notoriety is due to Western propaganda, as I’ve already said it was John Pilger’s seminal documentary that brought this to the worlds attention. I remember it vividly from my youth. Pilger is hardly a Western stooge.
What I am doing is testing your statements as they arrive, and I am afraid you are not showing up too well. You see, a statement like “it was John Pilger’s seminal documentary that brought this to the worlds attention” is so obviously rubbish, that it leads me not to trust you. Pilger’s documentary came out in 1979. Pol Pot came to power in 1975. Are you seriously suggesting that the world’s attention was not focused on Pol Pot before 1979? You’ve quoted “Manufacturing Consent” yourself. Have you read it? Pilger’s documentary is not even mentioned in it, and it gives a short history of Western propagandistic treatment of the Khmer Rouge, with press documentation, from 1975 onwards (pp. 280-285) which is treated in much greater depth in “After the Cataclysm”. You have no idea what you are talking about.
As I have had to point out on many occasions, Roberts’s personal experience consisted of a short 14 month spell – decades ago – as an Assistant Secretaries of the US Treasury. I say “an” because there are several at any given moment..
The man is a nutter and failed prophet . I invite anyone who is genuinely interested in forming an opinion about him to look up a selection of his posts over the years (eg, on “Counterpunch”).
Having just read Roberts article, I’ve arrived late to the discussion, I have to say I agree with his point on the USA’s unwanted interference in Latin America, over at least the last hundred years.
However as for South American nations requiring a “Pol Pot/Lenin” type character to somehow rescue them from American aggressive capitalism, I remain unconvinced.
Lenin murdered directly or indirectly millions of Russians, Pol Pot, committed a similar act, neither men made their nations, a better or safer place to live in, like capitalism, on occasion, Marxism often starts with bloodshed.
I’m afraid it’s you who doesn’t know what you are talking about! Pilger’s documentary did bring this to the general attention of the world in 1979. Nobody outside leftist circles had a clue who he was before it’s airing in 1979, who do you think you’re kidding? You think the general public were reading obscure Chomsky articles on western representations of Cambodia from 1975? I read Manufacturing Consent probably 15 years ago if you’re interested. Why should it give much attention to Pilger’s film? Who said it did?
That’s for John Soencer Davies! ?
“Nobody had a clue who he was before 1979”. ‘He’ is Pol Pot, for clarification. I await your scholarly and masterful rebuttal from on high. ?
“Pilger’s documentary did bring this to the general attention of the world in 1979. Nobody outside leftist circles had a clue who he [Pol Pot] was before it’s airing in 1979, who do you think you’re kidding?”
I don’t even have to go outside Pilger himself to show that this assertion is nonsense. Pilger’s documentary was first shown on 30 October 1979. On 12 and 13 September 1979, nearly two months earlier, Pilger wrote about Cambodia in two issues of the Daily Mirror. Both issues sold out. Average readership of the Daily Mirror at that time was 3.5 million, so it is reasonable to assume that 5 million readers saw it at least, probably many more.
So your idea that nobody knew who Pol Pot was before that documentary aired is clearly rubbish, isn’t it? You might want to try thinking and doing some work before you open your mouth.
The Daily Mirror did not have a worldwide readership, and the fact that it was Pilger himself ( the voice of the Western MSM, manufacturing our consent? In the fascist Daily Mirror?) a mere few weeks earlier, and that you had to look this up, unlike the groundbreaking effect the airing of his documentary had weeks later on television, hardly strengthens your case. The fact is Pilger is no lackey of the ‘Western agenda’, and he is the person who brought this to the worlds attention. The film had a far greater impact worldwide, only weeks later, it’s the thing everyone remembers, don’t try and play games, it just makes your argument look feeble.
And where does this startling revelation leave your earlier assertion that this story was well known worldwide from 1975?
And for that matter why would you even make such an absurd claim ( that the Pol Pot genocide was well known from ’75) when the whole point of Chomsky’s (accurate) thesis is that the truth is being hidden from us, consent being manufactured? What I described earlier as his ‘rebuttal’ of his earlier ideas by ’93, would more accurately be described as an admission that his earlier estimates of the scale of the carnage were vastly underestimated. You tried to use my use of the word rebuttal as implying I disagreed with his take on the whole backstory to the sorry mess. I resent the implication yourself and others are giving that I’m some sort of apologist for Western crimes. I’m actually ‘on your side’, just gobsmacked at the likes of Bevin giving succour to Morons like Roberts, who is a dangerous deluded fool. Even you admit he was ‘ill -advised’ in his piece. The victims of Pol Pot would have another description for him I’m sure.
Oh, I’ll be quite comfortable showing that Pol Pot was notorious worldwide before Pilger’s documentary. But let’s hear something from you first, instead of watching you tap dance. Your assertion that nobody outside leftist circles had a clue who Pol Pot was before Pilger’s documentary aired was rubbish. Yes? Or no?
The tap dancing analogies are wearing thin. I’ve conceded that Pilger’s Mirror pieces weeks before were a high profile build-up to the World-changingly influential Year Zero documentary. It made Pilger’s name, went to over 60 countries, he became a legend. Now you provide the evidence that anything comparable had been effected by the Western media from 1975.
One thing at a time. You nervous, or something?
Weeks Davis, weeks. Pilger the arch stooge himself. Your need for research. Now address the serious point that your claim this genocide was receiving mass Worldwide media attention of a ‘front-page’ nature a la Pilger from 1975. And how this assertion ties in with your other contention that the Western media in this period are responsible for the blackening of Pol Pot’s reputation to a Hitlerian level.
Later, Jim, later. I’ll happily address the rest of your postings, including this morning’s efforts, as and when the forum has seen an acknowledgement from you that your assertion, and I’ll quote it again, that “Nobody outside leftist circles had a clue who he [Pol Pot] was before it’s airing in 1979” was rubbish. Yes or no? Tap dance all you like, but there will be no further contribution from me until that’s acknowledged. Please yourself whether you do so or not. It’s nothing to me.
Splendid, so you now acknowledge, contrary to your previous assertion, that a large number of people outside left-wing circles knew who Pol Pot was before Pilger’s documentary aired in October 1979. It took a lot of effort to get that out of you, didn’t it? I don’t think the tap dancing analogy is wearing thin at all. Anyway, we are getting on, although, in order to save your face, you have now deliberately raised a number of straw men which will need to be cleared out of the way. Watch this space.
I await the page five debates or contributions from letters pages in newspapers worldwide with bated breath.
Still waiting Davis. Still looking for your legendary Pilger-like figure from 1975?Or ’76-’77-’78? The instant worldwide exposé to the worlds astonished gaze, simultaneously, of a case of staggering western hypocrisy and complicity in mass murder? How Pol Pot was overnight on everybody’s lips, together with this the name of this mysteriously now vanished figure? Funny that eh, Davis? Any luck with finding the evidence that a scrupulously honest Chomsky didn’t revise upwards his earlier estimates of the numbers involved in the genocide? Funny that, eh?
Patience, please, Jim. You’ve asked for further and better particulars: I can’t provide them instantaneously, nor am I going to hurry over demolishing your army of straw men. I haven’t forgotten you, I can assure you. It’s easy to write one-sentence assertions that you can’t be bothered to justify, then jeer at others from the sidelines.
Oh, you are still there then. While you’re engaged in your research you might be able to provide some evidence for the seriousness Chomsky ascribes to the 9/11 ‘truther’ theories espoused by Roberts. Or the similar ones regarding Charlie Hebdo.
Despite the unassailable logic of some disembodied village idiot Jim who calls Paul Craig Roberts names, some doubters remain. So Jim, use the enormous credibility you’ve amassed here to rebut the facts below and silence your nemesis Roberts for all time.
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/09/saudi-ties-to-911.html
http://www.consensus911.org
Unless of course you’re full of shit.
Just a whole lot of cutting and pasting of points, signifying hardly anything.
The 9/11 attacks were carried out by mostly rebel Saudis who were suspected of being hijackers, quite likely with false Saudi intelligence, and when they turned out to be suicide bombers, the shit really hit the fan for those Saudis in its elite who were still in the USA, especially Washington.
Not very believable that everybody let the hijackers through and assisted their mission because it was thought all they were going to do was a hijacking. What purpose would that have served?
Whereas what actually happened on 9/11 achieved quite a lot: it revivified the warfare state and eased the transition to something very close to a police state.
It was, in other words, our Reichstag Fire.
No, I wouldn’t call it our Reichstag fire.
It was a tremendous cockup, hoping to capture the alleged 19 hijackers red-handed, starting with covering up the murder of Yale student Suzanne Jovin here in New Haven whose senior thesis was predicting suicide bombers, and culminated with the sidelining of the FBI’s John O’Neill because of Robert Hanssen’s spying, leading the Agency to play the role of stopping the hijackers with 15 unarmed agents on the last three planes.
Washington, though, instead of admitting that had gotten it all wrong, claimed it was the new Pearl Harbor, and got the country behind it by claiming that Iraq’s Saddam Hussein was involved too.
It was a kind of improvised Reichstag fire after the WTC had collapsed, and the envelops filled apparently with poison started arriving.
Ah, the tremendous-cockup ploy, One of my favorites! My compliments on how you got NORAD to pitch in with an extra-tremendous cockup that should have got them all court-martialled – sat on their thumbs and didn’t even intercept the sqawks. Oh-ho-ho-ho! And putting that dumbstruck cub scout in charge of the NMCC, what a hoot!
Wrong. They were protected under sources and methods exceptions persuant to classified international agreements with foreign intelligence agencies. Sounds like you’ve never read Disconnecting the Dots. Or noticed Brennan obstructing investigation as chief of station in Riyadh.
Ever had a compartmented clearance?
I have indeed read Disconnecting the Dots, and I don’t remember it supporting your suggestion that all the mistakes were due merely to a desire to protect sources and methods.
That wasn’t for you but for Trowbridge. Sources and methods were just the pretext for infiltrating foreign-intelligence cutouts into the US. That became apparent when US officials continued source protection even after specific, credible warning of imminent attack.
I very much welcome Jim’s series of posts, which have won the argument hands down.
I hope Jim will intervene more frequently as one of the few voices of balance and sanity on this blog.
Only an idiot calls out a winner when the discussion is not over.
And as for pronouncing on “balance and sanity” don’t make me laugh …
You’re being silly now.
Can anyone tell me why MI5 and MI6, et al, exist? They are basically criminal organisations, beyond the law, and serving only the rich and powerful.
It really is not like James Bond movies, as Craig points out so eloquently here.
I will point out that MI6, and all the rest of these psychos, created ISIS.
These people are total criminals, and they have to be held to justice.
(cue the trolls from the security services, all poncing off tax payer’s money)
They exist to help get rid of troublemakers like Dr. David Kelly, Gareth Williams, and Mike Todd, and sensible counter terrorists just doing their jobs like the victims of the Chinook helicopter crash at the Mull of Kintyre in June 1994.
So, they kill people.
A very good point.
Craig has been diagnosed with “antisemitosis”. The cure is to refrain from criticising the policies of the Zionist colonial-settler state.
On that Point Daniel – Jon Stewart –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrlUzkd8Z8g
Another Evil Face.. Clinton Tries to make cheap political gain by attacking sanders For reffering to Israeli Crimes
On top of blaming Palestinians for Israel’s deadly violence, Clinton called into question the innocence of dead Palestinian civilians, arguing, “They often pretend to have people in civilian garb, acting as though they are civilians, who are Hamas fighters.”
Maybe Clinton was referring to the 551 children Israel killed in Gaza, 68 percent of whom were under the age of 12. Or maybe she was talking about the 844 Palestinians that the Associated Press determined were killed in Israeli airstrikes on residential homes, including 19 babies and 108 preschoolers between the ages of 1 and 5.
Or perhaps she meant the 140 Palestinian families that had three or more members killed by Israel that summer.
?????????
I did notice this article, Craig: Israel’s ‘Bible Trail’: Demolishing Palestinian homes to make national parks
http://truepublica.org.uk/global/israels-bible-trail-demolishing-palestinian-homes-make-national-parks/
How evil is that?
“Er, no Lysias, it’s a terrifying thing to read. It’s advocating mass murder without a blush. Truly insane. I’m lost for words really, so I won’t even try to rebut it if you can’t see the obvious.”
Thus sprak Jim.
You can’t make this sort of mock, shock, horror shit up.
If people aren’t grown up enough to read columnists like Roberts they might at least pretend to be: “A terrifying thing to read” indeed.
Big genocide fan then are we Bevin? Nice. How very grown up of you.
So far as Pol Pot was concerned, both the UK and US governments used their UNSC positions to defend his regime against the “aggression” of victimised Cambodians returning under the protection of the Vietnamese armed forces.
The US/UK then armed Pol Pot’s forces and installed them in camps on the Thai border protected by the full force of the Empire. These must have been proud days for fans such as yourself and Anon1.
In the United Nations General assembly Pol Pot’s spokesman defended his regime against charges of genocide with all the diplomatic support that the Tory government and the US could muster.
I’m no fan of genocide which is why I am among those who insist on drawing attention to the genocidal activities of the Zionists who, employing a variety of criminal tactics have emptied large parts of Palestine of its indigenous people and replacing them with colonists of European origin.
As to Malcolm Caldwell, he was a most impressive person and a great loss to humanity. Were he still with us he would have been scandalised at the nefarious uses to which neo-fascists attempt to put his memory.
Feeble Bevin, feeble. Pol Pot was a mass murdering swine supported by other Western swine covertly. The crux of our little spat is that you’re defending him, or Roberts’ extolling of his virtues, see any contradiction there? I’m the one having to point out to you that Mr Pot was a rather nasty person. And please quit this shovelling of ‘Zionists’ into everything, it makes you sound like a raving Nazi. Get a clue man.
Here is a terrifying thing to read, Bevin.
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2010/jan/10/malcolm-caldwell-pol-pot-murder
Be sure to read it all.
Regev is Cameron’s counterinsurgency advisor. He’s the Camerón junta’s Mitrione. Of course McDonald’s going to treat him like royalty.
https://richardfalk.wordpress.com/2016/04/07/reading-jeff-halpers-war-against-the-people-israel-the-palestinians-and-global-pacification/
“Don’t they make a lovely couple?”
The Zionists invented feminism, homophobia and anti-Semitism and Islamism to create multiple shades of grey in otherwise clear moral issues. Here you break 2 taboos in one sentence. Let me break the other two. Hillary Clinton playing the victim, abandoned wife card and David Cameron playing the victim, Look I don’t have any millions card.
These 2 reptiles destroyed Libya which was one of Jack Straw’s rendition epicentres, The purpose of rendition is to create Islamism, blind rage and lust for revenge. Clinton and Cameron released their hatch of reptile chicks in Libya and proceeded to their next hatch in the torture capital of Syria.
As the US withdraws its military and civilians from Turkey, and exposes the Syrian refugees to the very real possibility of Turkish genocide, we have to take a cool look at who creates terror. Is it the Qur’an and the Muslims ? No. Is it the West and Israel?
Rendition programs people for extremism. So politicians can play the victim card.
Western Power. My normal 06.00 a.m. rants on this topic are on topic. I remember seeing the TV footage of civilian apartment blocks in Lebanon that had been obliterated by the Lebanese government under the control of Israel.
But please spare a thought for Western Power Distribution. when it comes to de-energising properties for us electricians to work on the switchgear they do not have a monopoly but their competitors, the Energy Supply companies, don’t know anything about Electrical work so it takes a couple of months for them to delegate the work to someone who does, which often turns out to be Western Power.
As an electrician I’m not allowed to remove the cut-out fuses myself. If I do the law-abiding thing, I have to call Western Power. They switch off the supply, snip the wire seals and remove the fuses. 15 minutes journey time, 15 minutes snipping time and 15 minutes going to their next job. 45 minutes x 2 ( for switching on again) = 1.5 hours @ £54.00 per hour = £81.00 plus vat.
I don’t whether to call it old fashioned old labour restrictive practises or thatcherite corporate greed, but for this simple procedure western Power charge 2 hours journey time and 2 hours labour £216.00 plus vat in central Birmingham.
For 10 minutes actual work.
Giyane
Cannot you just call the Western Power wizards to snip the wires attached to the brain stems of Hasbabarabcus, Jim and other resident scholars. It could be expensive but the patients would feel liberated after this mind boggling operation.
Karel, you old drunkard, how good to hear from you again!
How was Carnival this year?
Glad that you are overjoyed by my suggestions. Sometimes I feel ashamed to poke fun of you as you are such a friendly little chumie. This uneasy feeling is a fault of my mother who taught me not to ridicule invalids with perceptible disabilties. But it is so tempting in your case and you will certainly excuse me for being unable to control my deepest desires. May I also ask you to tell the other members of your team not to display their mental disabilities too openly. It exposes them only to vicious attacks of all the “eminencies”. Are there any cardinals among these eminencies? I would love to know.
They were chemically snipped many moons ago mate. Grafted onto the brain stem terminals was Vectra driving yamyam programmed to drool at Tel Aviv bikinis an hate intelligent women. That’s why the alternative name for Habbabkuk is Stuckone.
10 May at 10am Westminster magistrates Court will witness the doom of whistle-blowers who encrypt their data.
Activist Lauri Love faces an order to disclose encryption keys ultimately to the British intelligence agency.
The British Government is attempting to force the hacktivist Lauri Love to hand over his encryption keys to access data stored in his seized laptop.
Lauri Love is the hacktivist accused of breaking into Government networks, now the UK NCA wants to oblige him to hand over encryption keys to equipment seized from his home.
Lauri Love is a computer scientist from Stradishall in the UK who has a long history of political activism. He played a prominent role in the student and Occupy movements in Glasgow during 2011-12.
Lauri is facing potential extradition to the United States for his alleged involvement in #OpLastResort, the series of online protests that followed the persecution and untimely death of Aaron Swartz. Effectively, he is being pursued by the US criminal justice system for allegedly protesting abuses of that same system, with prosecutors in three US court districts accusing Lauri of hacking into various government websites.
Love was first arrested on 28 October 2013 for alleged offences under the UK’s Computer Misuse Act. The National Crime Agency (NCA) seized Lauri’s computers and tried to force him to turn over his encryption keys, but Lauri refused to cooperate and was ultimately released on bail. Nine months later, Lauri’s police bail was allowed to expire and the UK investigation against him appeared to be closed, although the NCA refused to return six devices that they could not decrypt.
Then on 15 July 2015, Love was arrested again by UK officials, this time at the behest of the US government, who had issued several indictments and corresponding extradition warrants. The FBI and Department of Justice allege that Love has been involved in hacking into various governmental agencies, including the US Army, NASA, the Federal Reserve and the Environmental Protection Agency.
Lauri Love’s extradition hearing will be held on 28 and 29 June 2016. He is also fighting the NCA for the return of his property, in a case which should shed light on what happened during the initial British investigation.
I can tell you Lauri has provided a great deal of useful non-profit inside information now backed-up on alternate sources.
http://www.computerweekly.com/news/450280985/Activist-faces-order-to-disclose-encryption-keys
Life imitates art or was Night Manager a documentary in disguise?
Has anyone noticed that the dastardly Mark Regev and F. Murray Abraham have never been seen in the same room? I suspect that they are one and the same, and that Regev is the bloke who really killed Mo.
Regev is the most robotic liar on the airwaves.
Response to Jim’s postings (13/04/16 17:46 to 15/04/16 09:43)
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I have replied to some of Jim’s postings already, but given the way this exchange has developed, I wanted to give a more comprehensive response for the benefit of the forum. I will refer back to earlier exchanges, but will begin as referenced above.
This is a response to postings, and not an academic study, so I will provide sourcing informally to avoid undue tedium for the reader. If anyone wants more accurate details they are most welcome to post and request them. I’ve used a number of sources, but PEHR 2 refers to Herman, E. and Chomsky, N., After the Cataclysm: Postwar Indochina & the Reconstruction of Imperial Ideology (The Political Economy of Human Rights: Volume II) (1979). MC refers to Herman, E. and Chomsky, N., Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (1988). Other sources will be identified as and when I use them.
Jim 1 (13/04/16 17:46)
I’m afraid it’s you who doesn’t know what you are talking about!
JSD 1
We’ll see if the forum agrees with you after I have responded fully.
Jim 1
Pilger’s documentary did bring this to the general attention of the world in 1979.
JSD 1
It certainly did, and undeniably to a wider audience than had attended to Pol Pot previously, but that is not the same thing as saying that the world’s attention had not been focused on Pol Pot before. It had, as I will demonstrate below.
Jim 1
Nobody outside leftist circles had a clue who he [Pol Pot] was before it’s airing in 1979, who do you think you’re kidding?
JSD 1
We’ve now thrashed this particular piece of nonsense out thoroughly. It didn’t turn out too well for you, did it?
Jim 1
You think the general public were reading obscure Chomsky articles on western representations of Cambodia from 1975?
JSD 1
Let’s term the assumptions behind this question, straw man argument number one. No, of course I don’t think the public was, and I never said I did. You are obviously responding to my previous statement (13/04/16 15:40) that MC gives a history of Western treatment of the Khmer Rouge from 1975, and you obviously have serious reading and comprehension problems, as is apparent throughout your postings on this matter. Let’s try again. I will repost what I actually said, with italics this time.
[JSD]: “You’ve quoted “Manufacturing Consent” yourself. Have you read it? Pilger’s documentary is not even mentioned in it, and it gives a short history of Western propagandistic treatment of the Khmer Rouge, with press documentation, from 1975 onwards (pp. 280-285) which is treated in much greater depth in “After the Cataclysm”.”
Er, Jim, that passage doesn’t mean I’m saying everyone read obscure articles by Chomsky then. It means that MC gives a (very partial) history of how the Western press, meaning the world and US press, had dealt with the matter of Cambodia since 1975, with examples. I would have thought that that was plain enough, but not to you, apparently. Do you understand now?
Jim 1
I read Manufacturing Consent probably 15 years ago if you’re interested.
JSD 1
And it certainly shows, if you have in fact read it at all, which I beg leave to doubt. Someone who has read and comprehended MC, not an easy book to be sure, would find it difficult to turn out the rubbish you have turned out over the past few days. I suggest that you should have read it again, or read it, before opening your mouth: it would have given you valuable insight into matters you obviously don’t understand.
Jim 1
Why should it give much attention to Pilger’s film? Who said it did?
JSD 1
Well, duh, Jim, I have just told you that MC gives a history of how the Western media have treated Cambodia since 1975. If Pilger’s film had been the only significant Western media presentation of the subject to the world, as you are currently asserting, don’t you think that a book which gave a significant amount of focus to this topic would at least mention his film? But it doesn’t. Does that not tell you that there are other significant media treatments of Cambodia, which they do discuss? I’m trying to be patient with you.
Jim 2 (14/04/16 00:39)
The Daily Mirror did not have a worldwide readership,
JSD 2
Let’s call this straw man argument number two. We are currently addressing your assertion that nobody outside leftist circles had a clue who Pol Pot was before Piger’s documentary was broadcast. Well, at the very lowest, assuming a few million readers bought or read the paper and paid no attention to Pilger’s reports, two million or so Daily Mirror readers did. So your point is irrelevant to disproving that assertion.
Response to Jim’s postings (13/04/16 17:46 to 15/04/16 09:43)
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Jim 2
And the fact that it was Pilger himself ( the voice of the Western MSM, manufacturing our consent? In the fascist Daily Mirror?)
JSD 2
Straw man argument number three. I made no such statements about Pilger or the Daily Mirror, and they are irrelevant to your assertion that nobody knew about Pol Pot prior to the broadcast of his documentary.
Jim 2
a mere few weeks earlier, and you had to look this up,
JSD 2
You, of course, Jim, never have to look anything up. You did not have to look up the fact that Pilger’s documentary went to over 60 countries, did you?
I certainly had to look up the dates, naturally. I knew, without having to look it up, having read Hidden Agendas (Pilger), that Pilger had written about Cambodia in the Daily Mirror, and I was pretty sure that that was prior to his film coming out. I also knew, without having to look it up, because I had read PEHR 2 and MC, among other sources, that there had been voluminous Western coverage of Pol Pot and Cambodia prior to Pilger, as I will show below. Your trouble, Jim, is that you think everybody is as lazy and ignorant as you are yourself.
Jim 2
unlike the groundbreaking effect the airing of his documentary had weeks later on television, hardly strengthens your case.
JSD 2
Straw man argument number four. I never said that it did strengthen my general “case”, and it doesn’t. It doesn’t matter. I am using Pilger’s earlier work to point out that one of your assertions is nonsense – it considerably strengthens that case – and you are tap dancing furiously around this obvious truth to avoid having to concede the point to me. Do you think the forum can’t see that?
As for the groundbreaking effect of Pilger’s documentary: the obvious fact that his documentary was enormously influential and gave a fantastic amount of publicity to the travails of Cambodia, in no way invalidates the contention that Pol Pot and the travails of Cambodia had been brought to the attention of the world prior to Pilger.
Jim 2
The fact is Pilger is no lackey of the ‘Western agenda’,
JSD 2
You’re quite right there. He’s anything but. However, his documentary is not above criticism, including, for example, for its assertion that Cambodia was a hidden story before the documentary came out. That is not correct, and can perhaps be attributed to an understandable desire on the part of Pilger and Munro to “big up” the documentary so that it will be seen by as wide an audience as possible. Professor Michael Vickery, an expert on the region and the period from the University of Malaysia, calls Pilger’s work “sensationalist” (Vickery, Cambodia: 1975-1982 (1984), p. 309).
This is straw man #3 again, incidentally. I never said Pilger was such a lackey.
Jim 2
and he is the person who brought this to the worlds attention.
JSD 2
Undoubtedly he did, but I’m not arguing that he did not: I am saying that it had also been brought to the world’s attention by the Western media before him.
Jim 2
The film had a far greater impact worldwide, only weeks later, it’s the thing everyone remembers, don’t try and play games, it just makes your argument look feeble.
JSD 2
You are the one playing games, as your marshalling of at least nine straw man arguments and your continual tap dancing illustrates. My intention was not to strengthen the whole of my argument, but to point out the most obvious and effortless place where you did not know what you were talking about, and it was successful, as you have now conceded the point.
Jim 3 (14/04/16 01:03)
And where does this startling revelation leave your earlier assertion that this story was well known worldwide from 1975?
JSD 3
Straw man argument number five. I never said that the story was well known “from 1975” – although I can make a reasonable argument that it was, since editorials and articles in major US newspapers condemning the Khmer Rouge takeover as genocidal began to appear right after it, and continued to do so (for example, Washington Post 04 Jun 1975; New York Times 09 Jul 1975 [MC] ). You need to pay attention, and read more carefully. What I asked you was, if you were seriously suggesting that the world’s attention was not focused on Pol Pot “before 1979”. Any of the years 1975/6/7/8 would do for an answer to that. I also said that “Manufacturing Consent” gives a history from 1975 onwards, which it does, but that is not the same thing as saying it was “well known”. Learn to read.
As to where it leaves me? Exactly where I was before, except that I have disproved one of your nonsensical assertions for everyone to see. It doesn’t matter.
Response to Jim’s postings (13/04/16 17:46 to 15/04/16 09:43)
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Jim 4 (14/04/16 01:27)
And for that matter why would you even make such an absurd claim ( that the Pol Pot genocide was well known from ’75) when the whole point of Chomsky’s (accurate) thesis is that the truth is being hidden from us, consent being manufactured
JSD 4
Against pretty stiff competition, this is the stupidest thing I have seen you write yet.
First of all, here’s straw man #5 again. I made no such claim: see my response JSD 3 above. Next, this is the clearest possible evidence that, contrary to your claim, you have not read MC, or, at the least, have completely failed to understand it. The major contention of Herman and Chomsky, and also Vickery, regarding this matter, is entirely in agreement with my position, not yours. Chomsky’s thesis is accurate, you say? Then I invite you to agree that this part of his (and Herman’s) thesis is accurate:
“We will not document here the flood of rage and anger directed against the Khmer Rouge from the outset and the evidence on which it was based, having done so elsewhere in detail. Several facts documented there bear emphasis: (i) the outrage, which was instant and overwhelming, peaked in early 1977 and, until the overthrow of Pol Pot, was based almost exclusively on evidence through 1977, primarily 1975-76” (Herman and Chomsky, MC, pp.280-281). (My italics.)
Or would you perhaps agree that this is accurate, from Chomsky alone:
“The right to lie in the service of power is guarded with considerable vigor and passion. This becomes evident whenever anyone takes the trouble to demonstrate that charges against some official enemy are inaccurate or, sometimes, pure invention. The immediate reaction among the commissars is that the person is an apologist for the real crimes of official enemies. The case of Cambodia is a striking example. That the Khmer Rouge were guilty of gruesome atrocities was doubted by no one, apart from a few marginal Maoist sects. It is also true, and easily documented, that Western propaganda seized upon these crimes with great relish, exploiting them to provide a retrospective justification for Western atrocities, and since standards are nonexistent in such a noble cause, they also produced a record of fabrication and deceit that is quite remarkable.” (Interview with James Peck, The Chomsky Reader [1987] ) (My italics.)
Or this, from Herman and Chomsky again:
“Three features of the propaganda campaign with regard to Cambodia deserve special notice. The first is its vast and unprecedented scope. Editorial condemnation of Cambodian “genocide” in the mainstream media dates from mid-1975, immediately following the victory of the so-called “Khmer Rouge”. After that time the Western media were deluged with condemnations of Cambodia, including not only regular reporting in the press and news weeklies but also articles in such mass circulation journals as the Readers Digest (with tens of millions of readers in the United States and abroad), TV Guide, and for the intellectual elite, the New York Review, the New Republic, etc.” (Herman and Chomsky, The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism (The Political Economy of Human Rights: Volume I) (1979). (My italics.)
Or this, from Chomsky alone:
“In the case of Cambodia, stories of atrocities and repression have not only been eagerly seized upon by the Western media and offered massive international publicity, but also embellished by substantial fabrication” (RESIST Newsletter, no. 128, Jan-Feb 1979, reprinted in Radical Priorities, ed. C.P. Otero, 1981). (My italics.)
Now I am well aware that this won’t do for many readers, as they won’t accept Chomsky’s bare word about the Western media and will want to see direct evidence. So I have more to do, and that’s fair enough. But how about it for you, Jim? You’re the Chomsky fan, or so you say, when you characterise his thesis as “accurate”. You are the one describing him as “scrupulously honest” (Jim 15/04/16 09:43). So if you won’t take my word that Pol Pot was brought to the world’s attention before Pilger, perhaps you’ll take Chomsky’s. How about it, Jim? Eh?
Jim 4
What I described earlier as his ‘rebuttal’ of his earlier ideas by ’93,
JSD 4
You are unable even to quote your own previous postings accurately. You did not describe it as a “rebuttal”. You described it as a “recantation” (Jim 13/04/16 01:25). The objective difference is pretty important, but “rebuttal”, in the context, would be a marginally more acceptable word than “recantation”, although neither would be accurate. You are too lazy and stupid even to get your own words right.
Response to Jim’s postings (13/04/16 17:46 to 15/04/16 09:43)
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Jim 4
would more accurately be described as an admission that his earlier estimates of the scale of the carnage were vastly underestimated.
JSD 4
No, it would not. Neither would be accurate. You don’t know what you are talking about. You’re picking this rubbish up from the Wikipedia Cambodia genocide denial page. They weren’t “his” earlier estimates. They were other people’s estimates, such as the US State Department. Herman and Chomsky were working with figures from 1977 or early to mid 1978. There were a lot more killings between then and Pol Pot’s overthrow in 1979, and a lot more information came out. He didn’t “admit” anything.
Jim 4
You tried to use my use of the word rebuttal
JSD 4
Recantation, not rebuttal, idiot. Do you actually expect me to take you seriously?
Jim 4
as implying I disagreed with his take on the whole backstory to the sorry mess.
JSD 4
You don’t even know what his “take” is.
Jim 4
I resent the implication yourself and others are giving that I’m some sort of apologist for Western crimes.
JSD 4
You haven’t answered me yet as to whether you consider Margaret Thatcher a worse lunatic that Paul Craig Roberts due to her diplomatic and material support for the Khmer Rouge. Aside from that, if you are too ignorant to realize that denying that “Western propaganda seized upon these crimes with great relish, exploiting them to provide a retrospective justification for Western atrocities” (Chomsky) is apologetics par excellence, that isn’t my fault.
Jim 4
I’m actually ‘on your side’,
JSD 4
I don’t particularly want someone as idle and ignorant as you on my “side”, whatever that means. You’ll give my “side” a bad name, unless you smarten yourself up a bit.
Jim 4
just gobsmacked at the likes of Bevin giving succour to Morons like Roberts, who is a dangerous deluded fool. Even you admit he was ‘ill -advised’ in his piece. The victims of Pol Pot would have another description for him I’m sure.
JSD 4
Quite true, but then you could say the same about anybody similar. How do you think the bereaved families and victims of Nixon’s “secret” Cambodia bombing felt, watching him eulogized at his funeral on television?
And yes, my criticisms of Roberts stand, and I disagree with Bevin about things he has said about Roberts.
Jim 5 (14/04/16 06:51)
Weeks Davis, weeks.
JSD 5
Dance, Jim, dance.
Jim 5
Pilger the arch stooge himself.
JSD 5
Here’s straw man #3 again. I never said he was a stooge. Your words, not mine.
Jim 5
Your need for research.
JSD 5
You are the one who needs to do some research, but you won’t bother, because you’re too lazy, and would rather make ridiculous assertions that you can’t support. So I’m having to do it for you. Not that I mind. It’s excellent practice.
Jim 5
Now address the serious point that your claim this genocide was receiving mass Worldwide media attention of a ‘front-page’ nature a la Pilger from 1975.
JSD 5
You do not get to decide unilaterally what is a serious point and what is not, because otherwise, naturally, everything that was advantageous to you would become serious and whatever discomfited you would be trivial. If you think I am going to allow you to dance around what you don’t happen to like the idea of answering, on the grounds that it isn’t “serious”, you can think again. Do you think I have never debated the likes of you before?
Anyway, this is straw man argument number six, with straw man #5 tossed in at the end. I didn’t claim that “this genocide was receiving mass Worldwide media attention of a ‘front-page’ nature a la Pilger from 1975”, nor do I have to show that it was.
(Incidentally, let’s see you do a bit of work for a change. Which newspapers put Cambodia on the front page after Pilger’s documentary, Jim? List them, and show that Pilger’s documentary was the cause. Get going.)
What I have to show, is that there was enough media and/or political attention, to Cambodia before Pilger’s documentary in 1979, to justify the assertion that the world’s attention had been focused on Pol Pot before 1979, which is what I actually said. It’s quite clear that Pilger’s documentary was the most popular and influential presentation of the travails of Cambodia up to the end of 1979, but it does not follow that the world had paid no attention to Cambodia before that documentary.
So, who’s to decide if Cambodia had come to the world’s attention before Pilger in 1979? Well, I’ll be happy to leave that up to the forum, after I have presented evidence, but there’s no harm in using your own criteria, which you usefully presented to us on 13/04/16 at 23:30:
[Jim]: “Hitchens’ brilliant polemic [critiquing Kissinger] is extremely well known. Didn’t the recent shocking documentary looking at the CIA sponsored and planned genocide in Indonesia win an Oscar? This stuff is incredibly well known now.”
Response to Jim’s postings (13/04/16 17:46 to 15/04/16 09:43)
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(JSD)
Fine, I am going to assume that “extremely well known” is an acceptable synonym for ”brought to the world’s attention”. So my burden is to show that work on Pol Pot, prior to Pilger in 1979, was at least as well known then as Christopher Hitchens’s book and articles critiquing Henry Kissinger are now. And an Oscar nomination (I do not believe The Look of Silence has won an Oscar) is a good indicator of something being brought to the attention of the world.
Okay, then. Let’s start with the Pulitzer Prizes. In April 1976, Sydney Schanberg, Southeast Asia correspondent for the New York Times (circulation well over one million now, and probably a good deal higher before the Internet), was awarded a Pulitzer Prize, specifically “For his coverage of the Communist takeover in Cambodia, carried out at great risk when he elected to stay at his post after the fall of Pnom Penh” (see Pulitzer Prizes online). I haven’t been able to discover if this merited front-page news in the New York Times, but I hardly think that it will have been relegated to page five debates or contributions from letters pages. Similarly, Henry Kamm, also a distinguished New York Times correspondent, received a Pulitzer Prize in 1978 for his coverage of refugees from Indochina, including hundreds of thousands of those fleeing Cambodia: again, I hardly think that that will have escaped world attention.
Pulitzer Prize winner Kamm contributed at least twenty articles specifically on Cambodia to the New York Times between 1976 and 1979, several focusing on the misery and suffering endured by the population under the Pol Pot regime, and several on the plight of refugees fleeing the regime (for example: “The Agony of Cambodia”, major article, with photographs, 19/11/78). Schanberg contributed at least four during the same period. You can see them by Googling topics.nytimes.com. An online search of the New York Times for articles on Cambodia between Jun 1, 1975 and Aug 31, 1979 produced some 1,700 results, many of which focus on the grim realities of life under Pol Pot, as I have personally checked and verified.
Now let’s look at some exposés before Pilger. The Reader’s Digest was for many years “the best-selling consumer magazine in the United States” (Wikipedia). In 1962, there were “40 editions, in 13 languages and Braille, and the best-selling publication in Canada, Mexico, Spain, Sweden, Peru — and on and on. Total worldwide circulation was 23 million.” (David Segal, New York Times, 2009). In 1993, US circulation was 16.5 million and 28 million worldwide (Patrick McGuire, Baltimore Sun. It is therefore reasonable to assume that Herman and Chomsky are accurate in saying that “tens of millions” of readers in the US and worldwide will in February 1977 have received the condensed version of Murder of a Gentle Land: The Untold Story of a Communist Genocide in Cambodia, by journalists John Barron and Anthony Paul. The summary was advertised on the front page and with a bold and colourful title page on the inside (it can be seen on the Wintonick and Achbar film, approx 1:17:00). The book gives estimates of 1.2 million deaths and upwards and makes copious reference to Pol Pot and Khieu Samphan, alleging that Samphan boasted of a million killings or more (PEHR 2). The book itself was also published in 1977, and Herman and Chomsky describe it as a best-seller (MC), but give no figures.
That’s a bit different from page five debates or contributions from letters pages in newspapers worldwide, is it not, Jim? So let’s put a question to you directly on this case specifically. Is communication of the Cambodian genocide to tens of millions of worldwide readers, plus however many thousands or upwards purchased the book, in 1977, bringing the matter to the attention of the world, or is it not? Yes or no?
Let’s take another case. On March 31, 1977, the New York Review of Books published a translated review by Jean Lacouture of Cambodia, Year Zero, Francois Ponchaud’s book on the Khmer Rouge takeover. The New York Review of Books circulation is not large – currently 130,000 or so – but it was then a magazine for the US intellectual elite, and this review had a huge impact on reporting in the United States and elsewhere: it is where the famous two million figure for Khmer Rouge killings comes from. William Shawcross, Cambodia author and journalist, and no friend of Chomsky, reported that it had “enormous impact particularly because it was written by a former supporter of the Khmer Rouge (he issued a mea culpa) for a paper which had consistently opposed the war. It was taken up by dozens of papers…” (PEHR 2) (My italics.) I cannot, of course, verify the dozens of papers, but I can verify that it was used for reviews in the following: the Economist, the New York Times, the Boston Globe, the Washington Post (PEHR 2, MC). The dozens of papers is, however, highly likely to be correct due to the two million figure “remaining the standard” even after it was withdrawn by Lacouture, and due to the separate affirmations of Shawcross, Herman and Chomsky, and Vickery (p.47).
Do you have any comment on that, Jim? You said you would like page one. How about the front page of the Wall Street Journal, 30 April 1977? How about the front page of the Boston Globe, or the Philadelphia Inquirer, both 19 November 1978? (PEHR 2)
I should stress that these are samples only. The idea that Pol Pot was not reported on worldwide before Pilger’s work is hilarious, as I trust can be seen from the foregoing. There are influential articles in large-circulation publications that I have not listed. I refer anyone interested, to the sources I have cited so far, or they can post and ask for more details if desired.
Response to Jim’s postings (13/04/16 17:46 to 15/04/16 09:43)
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Jim 5
And how this assertion ties in with your other contention that the Western media in this period are responsible for the blackening of Pol Pot’s reputation to a Hitlerian level.
JSD 5
This is straw man argument number seven. I said no such thing. Learn to read. What I said, if you had troubled to read it, was that his “virtual uniqueness” is “partially a construct of Western propaganda”. Of course, if I were unable to show that anyone other than Pilger had been responsible for Pol Pot’s notoriety before 1979, my contention would be problematic. The forum can see from my previous answer that I can show that. I don’t want to get into this question at the moment, although I will happily address it in another posting, because it is not relevant to the main question of whether or not Pol Pot was brought to the attention of the world before Pilger.
Jim 6 (14/04/16 11:31)
The tap dancing analogies are wearing thin. I’ve conceded that Pilger’s Mirror pieces weeks before were a high profile build-up to the World-changingly influential Year Zero documentary. It made Pilger’s name, went to over 60 countries, he became a legend. Now you provide the evidence that anything comparable had been effected by the Western media from 1975.
JSD 6
Straw man argument number eight. I don’t have to provide evidence that anything made anyone a legend. I have to provide evidence that Pol Pot was brought to the attention of the world before Pilger’s work in 1979. And I have now done that.
Jim 7 (14/04/16 12:22)
I await the page five debates or contributions from letters pages in newspapers worldwide with bated breath.
JSD 7
What have you to say now?
Jim 8 (15/04/16 09:43)
Still waiting Davis. Still looking for your legendary Pilger-like figure from 1975?Or ’76-’77-’78? The instant worldwide exposé to the worlds astonished gaze, simultaneously, of a case of staggering western hypocrisy and complicity in mass murder? How Pol Pot was overnight on everybody’s lips, together with this the name of this mysteriously now vanished figure? Funny that eh, Davis?
JSD 8
Well, you aren’t waiting any more: you’ve now had your answer to this small-minded, sneering, jeering posting. Hope you like it.
Jim 8
Any luck with finding the evidence that a scrupulously honest Chomsky didn’t revise upwards his earlier estimates of the numbers involved in the genocide? Funny that, eh?
JSD 8
Straw man argument number nine. I did not say that he did not revise upwards. I said he recanted nothing. They were not “his” estimates. And he revised them according to new massacres, and new information available to him. Happy to post more about this later, but I am out of time.