Media Lies

Some People Can Derail A Bandwagon Just By Jumping Onto It

2009-09-04T13:05:00.001Z

The remnants of the Glorious Successor's cabinet, the Cuddly Club of twits, flits and shits which is Daveybloke's front bench, and the Liberal Democrat leader, Nick "Who?" Clegg, have all pledged to cut their personal greenhouse emissions by ten per cent in 2010. Tessa Jowell, the Minister for Bleached Quadrennial Pachyderms, has confessed to a sudden urge to replace her light bulbs at home, and says she will be "thinking very hard before booking more than one private international flight a year". Since Jowell is a New New Labour minister and sometime associate of David Mills, it would be rather surprising if she booked any private flights at all, as opposed to the kind for which expenses can be claimed; but her aspirations towards occasional cerebral activity are certainly to be welcomed. Meanwhile, the gorgeous Randy Burnham, perhaps as a result of a late-night, hand-wringing, heart-melting phone call to Tessa Jowell, enthused that "everyone who signs up can be part of a big national effort – all of us pulling together to prevent global warming", though not all of us have sufficient pull to get new runways built at airports or get a few thousand people killed for oil. Various celebrities and organisations have also signed up, including "major multinationals with many thousands of people", who will doubtless also be thinking very hard about light bulbs as they sit alone in their four-seater automobiles and wait out the traffic jam while their latest meal of processed plastic leaps playfully up to tickle their ulcerated duodena.

That's the stuff to give the troops

2005-04-28T17:36:00.000Z

I have received an email from something identifying itself as "John O'Farrell, Author and Broadcaster". Possibly this is the same John O'Farrell who, in his first email to eager Labour activists up and down the country, concluded his opening paragraph with a plug for his book. This is the third or fourth email I have received from a John O'Farrell during this dismal campaign. I was unable to write anything about the last couple. I am not lacking in uncharitableness, but I am old-fashioned enough to consider it unsporting to go after dairy cattle with a bazooka. Well, I used to be.

The author and broadcaster, John O'Farrell, has entitled his latest missive "Vote Labour or the hamster gets it", and commences it thus:

At this stage in the campaign I think it is very important that we avoid sinking to personal insults and name calling of the sort that we've been getting from those unprincipled scumbags in the Tory Party.

This is certainly amusing. It transpires that one of the biggest issues for John O'Farrell, author and broadcaster, is that "we can't have Michael Howard as Prime Minister." The author and broadcaster, John O'Farrell, then warns me that if anyone thinks it's "safe to abstain or vote against Labour", Michael Howard as Prime Minister is exactly what we shall get. The disadvantages of a Conservative government, according to author and broadcaster John O'Farrell, would be as follows:

1. Today's blame culture is all their fault.
2. When they abolish the Winter Fuel Allowance and free TV licences, pensioners will be expected to burn their tellies to keep warm.
3. Crime went up under the Tories (not surprising when you look at all the senior Tories like Archer and Aitken who ended up in prison).
4. When Michael Howard last faced a leadership election he came fifth. There were five candidates.

Points one and two are certainly amusing. Point three may well be true, but under the present circumstances a rather dangerous one to make. At least Archer and Aitken did end up in prison; and despite the former's substantial offences against literature, neither of them was guilty of war crimes or international aggression resulting in the deaths of tens of thousands of harmless civilians. Point four is certainly amusing.

"If it hadn't been for people who cared taking the trouble to vote," continues John O'Farrell, author and broadcaster, "we would never have had the minimum wage, would never have had the NHS and John McCririck might have won Celebrity Big Brother." This is certainly amusing, and certainly speaks volumes about the Labour party's estimate of its activists' intelligence. Messages like those of author and broadcaster John O'Farrell must certainly be useful to activists facing awkward questions from the ignorant and backsliding:

1. Why did Tony Blair follow George Bush into Iraq?
2. Why is the Labour party dismantling civil liberties?
3. Why is the Labour party giving the country away to private corporations?
4. Why should anyone in or out of the Labour party believe a word Tony Blair says?

Having received "Vote Labour or the hamster gets it", party activists up and down the country must be rubbing their hands with glee at the thought of facing those questions so that, utilising the sophisticated technique of intellectual and moral persuasion recommended by author and broadcaster John O'Farrell ("Pick one person you know and work on them non-stop from now until 5 May"), they may steer the erring voter gently back into Blair's benevolent fold.

The email includes a picture of a red pullover, neatly arranged below a weak chin and a wrinkly forehead. A hand is holding up a hamster. The caption is "Tories would bring back hamster hunting with dogs". This is certainly amusing. Presumably the contents of the red pullover are John O'Farrell, author and broadcaster. The photograph is well lit and composed, and it has nice sharp corners, but it shows too little of the pullover.

What have I done to deserve this?

2005-03-29T18:38:00.000Z

I am in receipt of an email from John O'Farrell, the rigorous avoidance of whose rigorously would-be-humorous Guardian articles constitutes one of the few effective methods for keeping cheerful while reading a newspaper. In his email, John O'Farrell states that he is emailing me as "a fellow supporter" of the Labour party; but he attempts to soften the blow by telling me I don't have to buy a copy of his book.

Where John O'Farrell, or anyone else, might have got the idea that I am a Labour supporter is a mystery to me. I have, it is true, contacted both my present Labour MP and my previous one (the previous one a Blairite zombie, the present one not); but I do not recall that any of those communications conveyed, or even implied, the message "I'll support you evermore". Mostly, I expressed disapproval of the war on Iraq and of the British government's (viz. the Labour party's) policy of amassing nuclear weapons to a degree never even attempted by that new friend and playmate so recently re-clasped unto Blair's holy bosom, the errant but now cleansed lamb, Colonel Gadafi.

Clearly, I need to be more careful about where I send my emails. You never know who might be watching, or what they might do with their ill-gotten information. If I hadn't gone and stuck my stupid nose into politics then, I might not now be getting spam from John O'Farrell.

"Everyone agrees the election, whenever that may come, is going to be the closest since 1992 and it is perfectly possible that the Tories could defy the polls to win power as they did in 1970," John O'Farrell informs me. I am a little young to remember 1970, but I have the distinct impression that Edward Heath's Conservatives could have managed a pissup in a brewery without drowning one another in the vats - something that can hardly be said of Michael Howard's fag-end rabble.

Be that as it may, John O'Farrell continues: "A major factor between now and polling day is how many Labour supporters we can mobilise." I think I can follow the logic here, but John O'Farrell brings out a very special guest to enlighten me with a pithy Enlightenment epigram: "As Voltaire said; 'All that is necessary for the Tories to triumph is that Labour Party supporters do nothing.'" John O'Farrell continues, parenthetically: "(Okay, it's a very loose translation.)" It must be ever so nice to be a real writer.

John O'Farrell admits that, like him, I may not agree with everything that has happened since 1997, but nevertheless: "we cannot risk throwing away all the fantastic achievements of the past eight years. If we sit back and do nothing now, we'll be turning our backs on all the millions who've had their lives radically improved by the minimum wage or Working Families Tax Credit not to mention the millions of people in the third world who've benefited from the massive increase in overseas aid."

I wish there were some prospect of throwing away some of the achievements of the last eight years: the widening prosperity gap, the dismal Private Finance Initiative and the hundred thousand corpses littering the Middle East, to name but three. As to those millions in the third world who've benefited by having their water privatised for the profit of British companies, or who've undergone the benefit of bombing and strafing from British-made jets and helicopters - perhaps I am being unduly self-centred, but I doubt that my lack of enthusiasm for these philanthropies will harm such people overmuch.

John O'Farrell then quotes, in bold type, the title of his email: "This isn't emotional blackmail." Then, in bold type, he contradicts it: "Oh all right, it is emotional blackmail, but what the hell?" This is certainly amusing. Then John O'Farrell says how vital it is that "we" (viz. the Labour party, with myself as its faithful supporter) get our leaflets through millions of letter boxes over the next few weeks. John O'Farrell concludes with a parable. He mentions rabid Dobermans on the other side of the doors. If I think those Dobermans are scary, says John O'Farrell, I should think of Michael Howard on the other side of that front door in Downing Street. It is always reassuring to have one's intelligence respected.

"Go on, click on the link now..." John O'Farrell cajoles. He provides a different link for my friends and family to click on, should I succeed in persuading them to join me in my leafleting.

Is Condoleezza Rice a liar?

2005-02-11T10:20:00.000Z

Condoleezza Rice said:

"No al-Qaeda threat was turned over to the new administration."
Washington Post, 22 March 2004.

However:

"Eight months before the September 11 attacks the White House's then counterterrorism adviser urged then national security adviser Condoleezza Rice to hold a high-level meeting on the al-Qaeda network, according to a memo made public today."
The Herald Sun, 11 February 2005

This is the memorandum. She ignored it.

Eight months later the planes struck the towers.

She either has a defective memory, poor administrative skills, or is lying.

Happy New Year From Ann Clwyd

2005-01-12T17:10:00.000Z

In keeping with the syncopated rhythm of our previous correspondence, the saintly Ms. Clwyd has finally got around to replying to my last email but one, in which I asked her when she'd be getting on her hind legs to protest about war crimes, which I detailed for her so she could ignore them while converting arms cashes (sic) into reconstruction budgets:

From: CLWYDA@parliament.uk
Subject: RE: your email
Date: January 12, 2005 14:53:13 GMT

Dear [Raoul],

Thank you for your email of 25 November 2004. I apologise for the delay in replying. I am, of course, concerned about the humanitarian situation in Fallujah and have repeatedly raised the issue with the appropriate authorities in the UK as well as with organisations such as the International Committee of the Red Cross, the World Health Organisation and the UN.

Nevertheless, the recent military action in Fallujah took place at the request of the Interim Iraqi Government (IIG) with the aim of restoring stability and security to the country before the national elections. I returned from my seventh visit to Iraq since the fall of the regime in December. I was told by many Iraqis that the terrorists and insurgents in Fallujah were using the population of that city as a 'human shield'.

When Barham Salih, the Deputy Prime Minister of Iraq visited the House of Commons in November, he told MPs that all political avenues had been tried before the decision was taken by the IIG to send in Iraqi troops, supported by Multi National Forces, to clear the city of the insurgents. Fallujah had become a command and control centre for the insurgents - as of the end of November, 203 arms cashes had been found and only 59 per cent of houses yet searched. Before the assault on Fallujah, there were around 80 insurgent attacks a day across Iraq and that had fallen to about 60 attacks. Sunni leaders in the city had come to the IIG to ask them to rid Fallujah of the foreign fighters and Saddamists.

It was the priority of the Iraqi Government, and that of the military forces supporting them, to keep the humanitarian impact of military action to an absolute minimum.

Essential services were disrupted during the course of military action. However, Iraqi and multi-national forces supplied Fallujah's civilian population with water supplies as they moved into the city. The Iraqi Government and the Multi-National Force had also stockpiled essential supplies in the city before operations began to provide for the immediate needs of Fallujah's civilians.

The IIG has established a cross-ministry Fallujah Core Coordination Group to plan and deliver its assistance to Fallujah's civilians. This assistance includes supplying food, water and medical supplies, restoring essential services, and refurbishing medical facilities.

Extensive medium and long-term reconstruction work is also planned for Fallujah. The Interim Iraqi Government (IIG) has set aside significant funds from the Iraqi government budget for reconstruction work. The IIG is being supported by the Multi-National Force-Iraq, which also has considerable resources for immediate post-conflict reconstruction work in Fallujah, including clearing rubble and the restoration of water, sewerage and electricity services. United States agencies have planned around 100 reconstruction projects in the Fallujah area totalling $84.1m, due to begin soon.

I hope this is helpful.

Yours sincerely,
Ann

Members of the reality-based community have questioned which planet she inhabits, noting a slight divergence between the account above and the situation on the ground:

"Fallujah, like your worst date, has been fucked and forgotten. There is no need to be comprehensive in our review of the facts, and there is certainly no sensible dispute about them."

Quoth Lenin.

"Well, they're dead, the city's destroyed, but at least we brought them water..."

Since we are all "human shields" in a way, it may come as a shock to learn that this status strips us of our human rights, as abrogated under the selective interpretation thereof by war Tone and his special envoy on nastiness in Mesopotamia.

Perhaps you'd care to bother her yourselves on the above address; I'm tied up for now, garrotting myself. It seems less painful that way.

Bhopal twenty years on

2004-12-09T03:04:00.000Z

Just after midnight on December 3, 1984, forty tons of methyl isocyanate leaked from the Union Carbide pesticide plant at Bhopal, in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh.

The disaster killed between 7,000 and 10,000 people in three days. 15,000 have died since. 100,000 have been or are suffering chronic diseases. A generation suffers infertility and birth defects.

Although Union Carbide paid the Indian government $470 million to settle all claims related to Bhopal, that figure was based on the now discredited estimate of 3,000 deaths due to the disaster. Much have the money has not yet reached the victims. No one has faced charges in court for the disaster. Instead those responsible abscond from the law.

In September 2004, three years after 9/11, the US State Dept refused, without explanation, an extradition request from India.

This was for top Union Carbide officials, including Warren Anderson, the chief executive at the time of the disaster.

The Bhopal disaster is several times the maginitude of 9/11, in terms of suffering and death.

Bhopal was not deliberate. But unlike September 11th, those responsible are fully identified and within the grasp of the authorities. However, the US govt refuses to co-operate with the Indian authorities to get justice for the victims.

Mark Hertsgaard says:

"There are many shades of gray in life, but sometimes the truth is black and white: it is shameful for Dow/Union Carbide to keep ducking its obligations in Bhopal and shameful for the U.S. State Department to help it do so."

The International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal

Read about Yes Men and their original treatment of this issue, and wrong doers and media duplicity in general here.

And clueless as ever...

2004-11-25T21:56:00.000Z

It's that time of year again. Yes, the calendar points towards the advent of yet more hype to shift shoddy produce and in the political echo chamber this of course means a starring role for the angel of death; yes folks, it's she of the shredders: the Right Dishonourable Ann Clwyd, that familiar fixture on these pages who means ever so well, we're sure, although she never quite gets it together unless kicked up the arse.

So here she was on her hind legs a couple of weeks back, serving up a sitter for the Vicar to smash, straight outta Hansard:

Ann Clwyd (Cynon Valley) (Lab):
"May I ask my right hon. Friend to look urgently at reports that some civilians caught up in the fighting in Falluja are not able to access urgent medical treatment? May I ask him again to say that surely the main objective now must be to ensure that as much of Iraq as possible is made safe so that free and fair elections can take place next year and the people of Iraq can choose their own elected representatives?"

So whaddya make of that Mr. Smart Arse? It's the lady with the lamp in dark places and the sainted Annie Nightingale ain't afraid to scratch from the wrong hymn sheet, although she's turned her back on all that heavy metal of course. One has to fit in after all, isn't that right Mr. Principles? We don't take no shit from that Dorothy Perkins, now does we Schquealer McBliar? I simply say to you. Etcetera, etcetera...

The Prime Minister:
"The points that my hon. Friend makes are absolutely right. We are doing our best to get supplies, especially medical supplies, through to people in Falluja, but the current problem is that some of the terrorists and insurgents are trying to kill those who are bringing the supplies through. As Prime Minister Allawi made it clear, the Iraqi Government are going to redouble their efforts to achieve that. My hon. Friend's point is absolutely correct, because if the terrorism stopped, many things could happen in Iraq. The reconstruction could proceed more easily and investment in Iraq could be there. The elections - locally and nationally - could take place properly. That is why it is important that whatever the difficulties and people's views on the conflict in Iraq, we stand firm and see this through, because that is in the interests not only of the Iraqi people, but of the wider world."

Hmm. Now this isn't the sort of thing I care to heed normally, much as it irks me to have to watch The Other Side instead. But Ms. Clwyd did me the honour of replying to one of my letters this afternoon, albeit the best part of a month late. Here, in all its glory, is her devotion to the cause:

Dear [Raoul]

Thank you for your email of 30 October, which is receiving attention.

Yours sincerely,

Ann Clwyd MP

Cor blimey! An' I only asked 'er this:

Subject: The Lancet and the liberal conscience
Date: October 30, 2004 19:29:04 BST
To: clwyda@parliament.uk

Dear Ms. Clwyd,

Please read [this] and let me know how many Iraqis will have to die before you demand a withdrawal of British troops.

I find it increasingly difficult to comprehend the meaning of your job title; what is a special envoy on human rights in Iraq supposed to do if not uphold the right of Iraqi civilians not to be slaughtered?

Yours sincerely,

[Raoul]

Now, I ummed and I ahhed. The poor dear must have felt obliged or something and it was clearly going to be of marginal benefit to force her to admit what this meant, so I seized the opportunity, jawohl:

Dear Ann,

Thank you for your reply. Does this mean I can look forward to your public call for the investigation of war crimes committed by the Coalition of the Illegal in Falluja? You have thusfar been conspicuous in your silence regarding the

- deliberate severance of water and electricity supplies
- bombing and occupation of hospitals
- denial of access to aid workers
- use of force to prevent civilians from fleeing combat zones

although you asked Tony Blair on 10 November "to look urgently at reports that some civilians caught up in the fighting in Falluja are not able to access urgent medical treatment".

Perhaps you could point me to the Prime Minister's commitment to do something about it; his Parliamentary answer to your request blamed it all on "the terrorists", rather than the U.S. forces which killed at least 800 civilians, according to the Red Cross.

How many more cities will be destroyed to save Iraq for Western interests?

Yours sincerely,

[Raoul]

Now by my reckoning, it's only a month of shopping Sundays until we meet again. I'll be wearing a seasonal stocking mask: Merry Sisyphus, you spineless wretches.

Revenge of The News Tiger

2004-11-13T18:43:00.000Z

Another day at the office

The FT's John Lloyd, like Martin Kettle of The Guardian, thinks journalists have gone too far.

So let's unsheath our swords of truth and follow the fearless Mr. Lloyd through the square window of the media elite and into the lap of leadership, where style trumps substance whenever possible. All the better to deceive you with, my dears:

"Olivia's little description of Malvolio is a brilliant encapsulation of one of the deepest springs of journalistic action. 'I want bad': I want a disaster to happen near me, with no other journalists present; I want things to go spectacularly wrong, and for someone to tell me the inside story of it to me only; I want, at least, violent personality clashes which can be presented as explanations for public policy. And when I have this nugget, which no one else has or no one else has as fast, I wish it to be a cannon ball, blasting its way into the attention of a distracted audience."

Are journalists the new Shakespeares?

Posted by Philip Challinor on November 13, 2004, 6:53 pm, in reply to "Pontifications journalistic"

"Is Blair the new Thatcher? Is Howard the new Blair? Is Kennedy New Labour? Is style the new substance? Is Marr the new Dimblebooby? Is Media Guardian the new Pseuds Corner? Is Bush the new Bush? Is pro-war the new anti-war? Is ennit the new innit? Is "the new" the new "the new"?"

A swift perusal of these pages will soon disabuse the unconvinced of the notion that such a question could be answered. No sir, we stand for mutually antagonistic friendships everywhere and a firm balance of power with the powerless. In which case we have little use for Mr. Lloyd's homilies, since they neglect to address the elephant in the room: that news editors decide what to print. "The problem is you," he ought to have told his audience, in order that they might reveal its truth to him.

Change the record, I hear you say; very well, let us rewind to my days in the service of The Baron: the spiritual home of The Gurgling Ulcer, and even Mr Lloyd, although his literary pretensions guided him above the salami slicing at the news agency coalface:

"Reuters, which endows this lecture, has still the greatest concentration of foreign correspondents in the world: I know, from my years in Central Europe and the former Soviet Union, that they have some of the bravest. My present colleagues - indeed, my present editor - often served their time before one or other of Reuters' masts: it often took guts, and not the kind of guts you get from eating too many lunches."

¿Qué?

The News Tiger
Another day at the office

26 July, 2000

“Listen.
“He was just eight years old. He was the envy of his friends. All because of this holiday he was going on. He’d been looking forward to it for weeks. He was getting to ride on Concorde then taking this super deluxe cruise to go and watch whales in Ecuador…
“That’s the story – there were only three kids on this plane after all. Don’t let me down.”

Michael Kahle melted to death with his parents and 110 others yesterday when one of Air France’s mythical Concorde airliners plunged out of the Paris sky in a ball of fire.

How close can you get without getting burned?

Like the five other affluent couples from Moenchengladbach’s rural suburbia who’d been their companions on a string of similar trips, Kurt and Marion Kahle had opted for a special $1,500 flight to give their dream holiday added spice.

Apart from the post-World War Two arrival of a NATO base and Britain’s Rhineland army headquarters, the city’s concrete chimera hasn’t warranted too much international attention.

But its streets are now full of cameras; its phone lines jammed by preying hacks. And you have to swoop. Everyone is chasing a bite of the big story. But who can spray their scent most indelibly over its human roots?

You want to write a small section of tomorrow’s papers. Death was yesterday’s news. The only hope now is to out-trump it by diving through the one window of opportunity to personify the mutilation.

The staff who’ve loyally served local businessman Harald Ruch’s family firm for decades have been sworn to silence about their generous boss and his wife Silvia.

A starkly simple sign in Werner Tellmann’s furniture shop explaining its sudden shutdown has already been plastered across German TV screens.

And the deserted industrial-estate banality of the business school Kurt Kahle’s grandfather founded in 1947 is just the start of your search.

The phone book lists 10 Kahles. But it’s already 3:30 p.m. and the TV crews are no longer anywhere to be seen. Nor the British newspapermen who’ve flown in specially to camp outside the city-centre offices of the Rheinische Post, hoping to scrounge a few scraps from its regional editor with his superior local knowledge.

Hang on though. You’ve heard Wilhelm Kahle passed on the school to his son Albert Wilhelm before Kurt took over in 1983. And you know your slim hopes rest on the tortured memories of Albert Wilhelm’s eight-year-old grandson.

There’s only one A.W. in the directory. Granddad lives just around the corner.

Never mind the gnawing guilt; forget the chance of being wrong.

The squat semi-detached house with its row of satellite dishes has a wreath on its door to ward you off. But, like the war reporter heroes whose status you crave, you’re here to tell the world.

Aren’t you?

Squashing a fag butt with the boots you polished for an occasion just like this, you wonder how to be grave but receptive as you make your apologies in a foreign language. You really want to show you care. But you don’t – you wouldn’t be reaching for the door-bell if you did. News, you tell your wavering conviction. The shattered lives behind the gruesome statistics.

A cowering white-haired woman who can only be Michael’s grandmother peers round the door that seals off her mourning family, restraining a docile dog as she squints up at you with a look of tender hostility.

“How does it feel to have two generations of your closest descendants charred to death in a shimmering inferno en route to the Caribbean?” you stop yourself from asking.

Her broken features fight back the tears as she whispers: “I’m sorry. I can’t…”

And your charade collapses under the iron glares into which other family members mould their misery at your tentative efforts to intrude on the grief they’ve come to share. With each other, not some overdressed voyeur with hollow promises of redemption under his byline and the leering gaze of readers scattered across six continents.

“I want my five minutes of glory which might never even make the world’s press. So please unfurl your pain at half mast, preferably in golden-quote soundbites and without breaking down completely before I leave.”

That’s me. Trying frantically to re-heat your limp misery with The Sun’s tabloid rays piercing through my emotive magnifying glass. Offering the world a “there but for the grace of God…” tale it never believes anyway.

Tossing aside the comforting cape of the Emperor’s news agency of record as I trudge away to string together a few stale comments from the local paper, I want to know why I wanted to know what you already knew.

You is I is me. Innit.

Which is why I was there.

Observer and the Lancet study.

2004-11-07T10:08:00.000Z

A week late, the Observer has managed to finally cover the deaths of 100,000 Iraqi civilians . Unfortunately, they have managed to get it ruinously wrong, so I've written them a letter:

Sir,

Your report on the Lancet study contains the following peculiar sentence:

"The report's authors admit it drew heavily on the rebel stronghold of Falluja, which has been plagued by fierce fighting. Strip out Falluja, as the study itself acknowledged, and the mor tality rate is reduced dramatically."

In fact, Falluja was specifically excluded from the final figure of 98,000 as is explained both in the report itself and by Gilbert Burnham, one of the report's authors, speaking to The New Republic Online. It is surprising that a quality newspaper like the Observer should not only cover the story a week late, but should also miss one of the most glaringly apparent facts about it.

Yours...

Indeed, it is hard to see how this could have been missed, given that it was mentioned in countless media reports about the results, and not just in the report itself. Is it possible that the Jamie Doward somehow neglected to scan the material he was reporting on? If so, what does this say about the import that the Observer attaches to the lives of Iraqi civilians about whom they were so impassioned only 18 months ago?

Fallujah: the coming cataclysm.

2004-11-06T13:34:00.000Z

Some months before the bombing of Iraq became an invasion, Slavoj Zizek suggested that the bellicose and often extreme language of the hawks could have a secondary ideological function of disarming opposition. The idea was that the rhetoric would build up such a climate of apprehension about what destruction awaited Iraq that the world would breathe an immense sigh of relief, and even express gratitude in the event of relatively small casualties and a stable occupation. If that was the strategy, it certainly worked in the short term - until, that is, the occupation degenerated into so much of the 'stuff' that, as Donald Rumsfeld so laconically put it, 'happens'. The casualties mounted into the thousands, tens of thousands, and now - at a conservative estimate - 100,000. The power of nightmares in this case was their ability to irupt into reality.

Now, Fallujah is being pounded with 'preparatory' bombing in the build-up to an invasion by 10,000 US troops and a small contingent of trained Iraqi confederates. Of 285,000 residents, about 235,000 have fled to surrounding areas. They were urged to leave by US troops through loudspeakers, leaflets and a hard rain of artillery. 50,000 residents are said to remain, either because they have no choice or because they are readying themselves to fight the invaders. Only 1,200 of these are said to be hardcore insurgents. The fears of residents of Fallujah are justified; last time there was an attack on Fallujah a single day of bombing produced 400 deaths, and over a single week at least 600 were killed, mostly women and children. Iyad Allawi explains that this latest assault will 'liberate' the Fallujans, even though he blames the city for not handing over al-Zarqawi, who is alleged without evidence to be hiding there. A US soldier, appearing on BBC News 24 this morning, explained in his charmingly homespun way, that if he had a country house near Fallujah he wouldn't hang around. He might have added that anyone hooked up to a drip-feed in a hospital could clear off as well, since a hospital for women and children was precisely one of the targets bombed last night according to residents.

Kofi Annan has protested the bombing on the grounds that it will alienate the Iraqis and reinforce the perception that there is an occupation under way. He is right. There is nothing quite like tanks, airjets and armed troops blasting into a nearby city to induce suspicions that one is indeed under occupation.

Ironies abound at the expense of 'coalition' rhetoric. Fallujah is, we are told, beholden to Ba'athist remnants, foreign fighters and extremists. The residents, so we hear, are nostalgic for the old regime. If so, we have to wonder what the occupiers can have done to change so many hearts and minds. Consider: when Hussein's regime fell, Fallujah was one of the most peaceful areas of Iraq. The leader chosen by local tribes, Taha Bidaywi, was staunchly pro-US. Looting was, unlike elsewhere in Iraq, minimal. In fact, one of the first things the US did to offend local residents was to enter set themselves up in local Ba'ath party headquarters. A Fallujah Protection Force was set up by the Coalition and issued US-style camo fatigues.

However, when in April 2003 a small crowd of demonstrators decided to congregate outside the government building to protest the presence of troops, the crowd was fired upon and fifteen civilians killed. US troops alleged that gunmen had opened fire from the crowd, a tale which would be much more convincing if there were any corroborative evidence and if any of those killed or wounded had been dressed in US military fatigues. "[N]umerous patrols and raids on houses", the Scotsman reports , contributed to widespread dissatisfaction with the occupation. Resistance cells developed and, so we are told, foreign fighters crossed the Syrian border to join the fun. The lynching and mutilating of four 'security contractors' working on behalf of the occupation was notorious not just for its extremity, but for the fact that approximately 1,000 insurgents and residents took part in it. US forces took this as their cue to launch the calamitously named Operation Vigilant Resolve, a month long assault on the city that claimed anything between 600 and 800 lives. At the start of the assault, a power plant was bombed so that households, workplaces and hospitals were deprived of electricity for long spells. Civilians were bombed indiscriminately . Snipers shot at civilians indiscriminately, although as Rahul Mahajan notes, "One thing that snipers were very discriminating about - every single ambulance I saw had bullet holes in it". Sunnis and Shi'ites united from across Iraq to bring assistance to the beseiged Fallujans. On May 1st, 2004, the US gave up and handed control to Major General Muhammad Latif and a brigade including many of the insurgents who had been fighting the US. Banners appeared all over the city, celebrating the ouster of the troops.

They might have won that battle, but there was no way the ceasefire was permanent. Nir Rosen writes in Socialist Review :

Referring to Iraq's Highway 10, a former US Marine currently working very closely in a civilian capacity with the Marine commanders in Fallujah explained to me, 'Fallujah sits on a major artery between Baghdad and the rest of the world. There is no fucking way we will let them stand in our path. We're trying to rebuild the country. Fallujah is in the way. We will be moving massive amounts of people and material in the region. We would have been using the western route a lot more if it was safe.'

So, unsurprisingly, a narrative has been constructed in which Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, responsible for a fraction of attacks in Iraq (six out of three thousand), has been elevated to the status of terrorist mastermind, evildoer, Bond villain and much else besides. If he is in Iraq, he remains the petty anti-Shi'ite thug he was when he was working in Afghanistan. Nevertheless, the occupiers are certain that he is at the centre of the resistance and firmly ensconced in Fallujah, and it doesn't do to request evidence. There have been sporadic air attacks on Fallujah since the truce, in which approximately 60 people have died according to US military sources. In the last few weeks, although resistance activities ceased because negotiations were ongoing over the status of Fallujah, the city has been repeatedly bombed. There have as yet been no estimates as to what the cost of the latest campaign has been.

Speaking to the Fallujan Chief of Police, Nir Rosen asked what it was the insurgents wanted:

[H]is answer was typical of what I have been hearing in Iraq for the past 13 months. 'We want a national government that represents the Iraqi people,' he said.

A letter to Kofi Annan , signed by the shura council, tribal leaders and trade unions, says:

Many times the people of Fallujah have asked that if anyone sees al-Zarqawi they should kill him. We know now that he is nothing but a phantom created by the US.

Our representatives have repeatedly denounced kidnapping and killing of civilians. We have nothing to do with any group that acts in an inhumane manner.

We call on you and the leaders of the world to exert the greatest pressure on the Bush administration to end its crimes against Fallujah and pull its army back from the city.

When they left a while ago, the city had peace and tranquillity. There was no disorder in the city. The civil administration here functioned well, despite the lack of resources.

Our “offence” is simply that we did not welcome the forces of occupation.

This is our right according to UN Charter, according to international law and according to the norms of humanity.

It is very urgent that you, along with other world leaders, intervene immediately to prevent another massacre.

Annan, begged to roar, has squeaked. He is ignored or dismissed. Iyad Allawi has described Annan's pleas as 'confused'. The only interventionist force left is the antiwar movement . Only immediate and jarring protest has any hope of preventing this planned atrocity. Fallujah in need of defending from a double injury, then: they shouldn't have to bear the brunt of the US's desire to expand its geopolitical hegemony, and they certainly shouldn't have to hear that it is all their own fault, or it is being done for their own good.

Through the glory hole

2004-11-06T10:53:00.000Z

The money shot

Zero-tolerance policing may have cleaned up Times Square but the tawdry peep-show around the corner on West 43rd Street still likes to treat freedom to a daily golden shower.

[Pictures by Smacked Face]

Mind you they’re so pissed off this morning in Manhattan that the shame was enough to make a shy bald Yogi reflect and scream:

"Contemplating (seriously) moving to Canada. I hate the bastard. And I will never forget the half of the country that put the son of a bitch back in office. Sad sad times here..."

Even the editorial typesetters of The New York Times were moved to remember that Dick is a killer.

"In his speech yesterday, Mr. Cheney stressed the president's mandate. Given the way Mr. Cheney behaved during the first term, it's unnerving to imagine what he may have in mind now."

Ms. Liberties, Maureen Dowd, is terrified by the split cleaving the left down the same moral axis as the rest of the country: sadomasochistic fetishism versus anything goes.

"W. doesn't see division as a danger. He sees it as a wingman.

"The president got re-elected by dividing the country along fault lines of fear, intolerance, ignorance and religious rule. He doesn't want to heal rifts; he wants to bring any riffraff who disagree to heel. ...with this crowd, it's hard to imagine what would constitute overreaching. Invading France?"

Gazing at his navel, Gary Hart swears off self-abuse with the fantasy that if we all pull together all the icky stuff will just come and go. British public schoolboys are still stuck on that one, which is how they manage to disguise their paternalistic proclivities when preaching to the downtrodden. Hence the Independent column by a lonely Hart.

"When the American people recover their egalitarian impulses and their sense that we are all in this together, the Democrats will be there. When they become secure enough to embrace cultural diversity and difference, we will also be there. And when our people look for leadership and genuine strength based on mature thought and experienced wisdom, we will once more be there."

Thomas Friedman, the High Priest of bombing and anti-Islamofascism, suddenly admitted that his chickenhawks had dicks:

"We don't just disagree on what America should be doing; we disagree on what America is."

Even an alumnus of the Nixon White House was worried:

"The atrophy of the usual checks and balances requires a certain internal restraint."

What? From the media? Ah, well, perhaps that explains the conclusion of today’s Times editorial:

"[Bush] could be the uniter he promised to be, then failed to become, four years ago. He could put an end to a period in national history when too many people go to the polls on Election Day convinced that victory for the other side would mean disaster for the nation. A lot of voters felt that way on Tuesday, and now Mr. Bush has the chance to show them they were wrong.

Hello? Houston, we have a problem. Earth to the liberal conscience, do you read me? The vaporization of Falluja beckons. Are we allowed an opinion, or are there limits to free speech between the Bloomingdales adverts?

I wonder why poor people vote Republican.

"They have come to the conclusion that they are going to be screwed regardless of which party is in power, and they prefer to be screwed by a group that doesn't appear to hold them in contempt. Indeed, you get the impression that their hatred is so great that they are taunting the liberal attempts at policy solutions to their problems, almost saying we hate your contempt for us so much we'll prove it by voting against our own interests."

Others are less charitable.

"At the moment - as an expat who fled what I see as intolerable stupidity in American pop culture - I'm not inclined to be so generous to Archie Bunker and Friends. At least not any more generous to them than most Germans are toward their grandparents on the issue of how they voted in 1932. Bush isn't Hitler, but that's about the best thing I can say at the moment for America's 'silent majority'."

Here on the sub side of the special relationship's dominatrix, it's just as bad, with a cleavage like you haven't seen since the days of the miners' strike. The wolf in sheep’s clothing act only works if there’s something to whip out at the right moment.

Unfortunately for democracy, Bliarism is all mouth and no trousers when it counts. The figleaf might be endearing, but it’s not very liberating, especially not with tribal wars blinding us to our common humanity:

"Cristina Odone, the departing deputy editor of the New Statesman, has accused 'neo-left' plotters of subjecting her to a campaign of 'very personal vitriol' during her time at the weekly political magazine."

"I was never on the left. I was very much taken by Tony Blair's Christian socialist credentials, but I soon became disillusioned. What really got to me is how vicious this neo-left division could be. Because it's a very tribalist group they suspected me of being an interloper and a foreigner."

Has the left lost its voice? At each others throats and not a lovebite in sight.

"I hope those who supported a mealy-mouthed kowtowing to the Democrat machine have seen the error of their ways. The lesser evilism will always cause a drift to the right. Once agreed on economic policy, and the Republicrats are, you give up rational choices for the electorate. Then you are only left with appeals to voter prejudice, the Gagg tactic.

So, shout from the hip and outfox the bastards. Don’t blame those fooled by the three-card trick, stop pulling it and stand up for what you believe in. Lay off the intellectual masturbation and have a good poke more often. Preferably unspun and above the fold.

Maybe then there really might be a third-way alternative to Anyone But Bush and his theosophic Republicrats. For British voyeurs, this translates into PR polling and some honest P.R., instead of the Torygraf’s take on current affairs. Or are you waiting for the Return of the King too?

Got issues? Tell us about 'em, before it's too late.

Iraqi National Foundation Congress statement

2004-11-05T13:07:00.000Z

James at Dead Men Left carries a statement from the Iraqi National Foundation Congress on the upcoming elections in Iraq, which Bush has probably already won (maybe Greg Palast has some news on this):

Here is a condensed translation of the statement entitled “Free and fair elections with impartial supervision by international, Arab and Islamic reputable bodies is what the people demand.” It is dated 27 October2004, and published as pictures of a hand-signed leaflet on thawabt.com on 3d November 04.

Political developments have validated the INFC stance of refusing to take part in the Iraqi Governing Council, the current Interim Government and the National Assembly. All these proved to be mere instruments of foreign occupation.
We have always demanded free and fair elections with impartial international supervision so that an elected government can be formed by the popular will, rather than by the occupiers. This stance was consistent with those of many other patriotic forces and religious authorities.

And now that the occupation and its Interim government are claiming they are preparing for elections in January next year, the question arises as to the requirements for it to be free and fair. Our consultations within the Congress and sister groups lead us to formulate these requirements as follows...

Read more about the INFC here . I somehow expect that this will escape the attention of Harry's Place, Johann Hari, Christopher Hitchens, Norman Geras and all the other charming exponents of occupation.

Crude Cartoonists

2004-10-29T04:38:00.000Z

Although much of the Guardian these days seems written by fair to middling reasons for bringing back hanging, there are occasional bright spots. A L Kennedy’s far too occasional column is one. Seumas Milne and, now and again, Richard Norton-Taylor are others. But the brightest of them all, the most pungent commentator, the most accurate political portraitist and the wielder of the some of the sharpest metaphors since it was discovered that the pen is not only mightier than the sword but a more efficient deflater of the self-esteem, is of course Michael White.

I was going to say Steve Bell, but there’s a problem. Like most cartoonists, apparently, Bell lacks political sophistication. Most cartoonists, according to that sparkling fountain Michael White, are "curmudgeonly anarchists with the political sophistication of a football-mad twelve-year-old" (Guardian, 28 October, "Cartoonists exhibit their comic savagery"). They are unfair and they draw "awful" things, says Michael White.

Certainly, some of Bell’s drawings are horrendous. Bell it was who portrayed George W Bush as a diarrhoeic chimp in a turd-splattered shithouse, mustering just enough co-ordination to wipe his arse with the flag of the United Nations. That was certainly an awful thing to draw. It was pretty awful to see, as well. My sides still hurt when I recall it. I think it appeared round about the time leading columns in the Guardian were referring to George W Bush’s régime as being a trifle unsympathetic. Political sophistication at work, you see.

The Chambers dictionary defines "sophisticated" as "very refined and subtle; devoid or deprived of natural simplicity; complex; with qualities produced by special knowledge and skill; accustomed to an elegant, cultured way of life; with the most up-to-date devices; worldly-wise". Political sophistication presumably includes much of this. It is certainly more refined and subtle to speak of Dubya as "unsympathetic" than to refer to him as an inadequately toilet-trained specimen of Pan troglodytes. Doubtless those worldly-wise culturati accustomed to an elegant way of life, like Michael White, dislike having images of such specimens leap out at them from the pages of the Guardian just when they’re trying out their most up-to-date devices. Why, it must be worse than having one’s breakfast interrupted by a football-mad twelve-year-old.

Like many sophisticates, White is happiest straddling. Despite most cartoonists’ undesirable personalities, "What a joy," he proclaims like an indulgent father, "to look forward to their work in the papers every day. And what a joy to see it at an exhibition in central London, Grin and Blair It, which focuses the trade's savagery towards Tony Blair since he became Labour leader." But the note of disapproval is not long in reappearing:

"No equivalent of Vicky's 1950s portrayal of Harold Macmillan as "SuperMac" here, though Blair has arguably been a much more dominant leader, more successful."

It appears that Michael White is a domination fetishist – a trait he has in common with many sophisticates, though not always political ones. To the politically sophisticated, it appears, success as prime minister does not mean compromise, negotiation, discretion or humanity. To the politically sophisticated, as represented by Michael White, the successful prime minister must trample, crush, tear and merrily dominate his way along the paths of power. And, of course, to the politically sophisticated, the fact that, as a result of all this dominating, "there is little affection" is a cause for mild consternation.

Instead of the affection Blair’s domination act merits, Michael White is struck by the way in which Bell and his fellow cartoonists "seek to portray our prime minister as a conman, Bush poodle, victim or shabby opportunist." Well, of all the awful, unfair, politically unsophisticated ways to portray our prime minister, that truly takes the cake.

Blair of the top-up fees, Blair the parliamentary reformer, Blair the dossier collector? A conman and shabby opportunist? Blair of the agreement to "git Saddam", Blair of the agreement to install Son of Star Wars in Britain, Blair of the agreement to send hundreds of British troops into the hellhole the Americans have made around Falluja? A Bush poodle? A flag-waving toy doggie poking out of George Bush’s red-and-white-striped arse? A mad-eyed assistant-vice-sub-emperor and sometime pork pie salesman clothed only in whitewash? Say it isn’t so, Michael!

Damn, I nearly forgot one. Another meaning of "sophisticated", according to my Chambers, is "adulterated; falsified".

Those Tricky Foreign Types

2004-10-14T19:21:00.000Z

This is a small matter, but seemingly a persistent one. I first read of it months ago, in a Guardian report by Duncan Campbell and Patrick Wintour (“New WMD blow for Blair”, 24 January 2004). Somebody (David Kay, I think) was asserting that Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction, as usual. According to Campbell and Wintour, this meant that “Saddam was involved in a gigantic bluff to shore up his international prestige”.

Now, foreigners are a tricky bunch, as everyone knows. Only a few days ago, Ewen MacAskill’s illusions about the gallant humanitarianism of Vladimir Putin and Jacques Chirac were cruelly shattered by the revelation that they might have been bribed by Saddam Hussein (Guardian, 7 October, “Saddam ‘used oil revenues to buy influence at UN’”). Apparently France and Russia may have opposed the Iraq assault not out of any concern for human life or international law, but because they stood to make a profit out of the country’s oil. What conduct could be baser? MacAskill was so indignant about it that he described the issue as “the freshest and most politically combustible part” of the Iraq Survey Group’s report. Perhaps he was right. The only other revelation of note was that Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass nonexistence were indeed nonexistent: a fact which many of us have known for years.

It gets worse. The French and the Russians are bad enough, but it seems that the further east you go, the more sinister and treacherous it gets. Eventually you come upon the Chinese, who on top of all their other sins have had the bad grace to start a rush to industrialisation just as the world’s oil production is peaking. This means that as the planet’s supply of oil declines, Chinese demand will be rising; and since we in the west are not going to do anything to avert the catastrophe, our demand will obviously continue rising too. Well, of all the low-down tricks to play.

Somewhere between the French and the Chinese, and somewhat south of a few of the Russians, there is, as some of you may know, the Middle East. Here, evil and treachery have been rife for generations: ever since the Crusades, when the Muslims had the diabolical temerity to eject some rather noisy friends of George W Bush’s notable compatriot, God. After that, nothing much happened until 1948, when the Arab hordes conspired to try and get rid of some self-proclaimed asylum seekers who had turned up illegally in Palestine; but after 1967 all hell broke loose and, as you may possibly be aware, they’re still at it.

All this by way of background. I don’t follow the news much these days, for much the same reasons as I don’t follow my nose into brick walls; but I wouldn’t want you to think I was completely ignorant of the world around me. I understand that Saddam Hussein was a Bad Thing. I really do. I’d love to be glad that he’s gone, except (a) I’m not sure we’ve managed to replace him with anything better, and (b) even the Guardian now admits that during his baddest days he was a friend of ours (see Rory McCarthy, “Hundreds of Kurds found buried in Iraq mass graves”, 14 October 2004. It’s a long way down, but it’s there).

I am curious about this bluff on Saddam’s part, however. Pretending you have weapons of mass destruction when in fact you don’t, and when the consequence of having them is that you get catastrophically attacked for the second time in fifteen years, seems rather an unorthodox way of maintaining international prestige. Campbell and Wintour mentioned the matter in January, and I’ve heard nothing more until recently; so I assumed it was merely the accidental by-product of some spin doctor, one of the few but probably quite varied absurdities which even Bush and Blair found it hard to use as a casus belli while keeping an approximately straight face.

But then the Iraq Survey Group findings came out, with those shocking revelations about Chirac the Haitians’ friend and Putin the saviour of Chechnya; and then on 12 October another illusion was suddenly and painfully laid bare. The Government’s claim that Saddam Hussein could use his weapons of mass ethereality at forty-five minutes’ notice was – who could have imagined it? – untrue. That was when the issue of Saddam’s great weapons bluff arose once more.

The findings of the Iraq Survey Group were reported in the Guardian on 7 October. It took MI6 and Jack Straw five more days to announce that the weapons which hadn’t existed probably couldn’t have been deployed; at least, not in the time previously claimed. That’s the Bush-Blair cabal all over – so well-intentioned, so protective, so careful, and yet just that little bit slow on the uptake.

The reason for the delay, it transpires, was that Saddam Hussein, as so often before, had been running rings around us all. Straw lamented:

“Even after reading all the evidence detailed by the ISG, it is still hard to believe that any regime could behave in so self-destructive a manner as to pretend it had forbidden weaponry when in fact it hadn’t.” (“Straw:45-minute claim withdrawn”, Guardian 12 October 2004)

So let’s get this straight. Saddam Hussein’s regime was pretending that the weapons of mass nonexistence did in fact exist, i.e. that Bush and Blair were telling the truth all along. Which means that Saddam Hussein’s regime was pretending it was lying to the weapons inspectors; but the weapons inspectors saw through the pretence and reported to the United Nations that, contrary to the claims of Bush and Blair, Iraq was telling the truth. The Bush-Blair cabal ignored the weapons inspectors and persisted in the belief that Iraq was lying, although despite the fact that Iraq wanted the world to believe that it was lying, in fact Iraq was not. Pretty dashed convoluted of them, I should say.

However, this devious attempt to maintain Iraq’s international prestige had, from Saddam Hussein’s warped viewpoint, one significant drawback. It provided Bush and Blair with the perfect pretext to attack Iraq, depose Saddam Hussein and liberate a hundred billion barrels of oil from an imminent future threat by the Chinese, the North Koreans or whoever the hell they might feel like fighting next. On realising this, Saddam Hussein’s regime, knowing of the Bush-Blair cabal’s unquestioning respect for international law, bribed the French and Russians to vote against a new UN resolution authorising an attack. Fortunately for the world, and especially for Iraq, the Bush-Blair cabal’s unquestioning respect for international law enabled Lord Goldsmith to discover that no new resolution was needed. Then came the bust-up, followed by the occupation and the sovereign interim government supported by 130,000 non-occupying US troops. And here we are.

Well, I’m glad we've cleared that up. But honestly, these foreigners – how do they manage to outsmart themselves on such a calamitous scale? Maybe it’s a cultural thing?

Dozens Dead – Dramatic Pictures

2004-09-03T19:21:00.000Z

The most effective lies are the ones that don’t get told. If a lie is implicit, an underlying assumption rather than an express assertion, it becomes that much more difficult to acknowledge, deconstruct and refute. Accordingly, spotting such lies in the mainstream media can be a rewarding and entertaining sport. Indeed, I might suggest a website called “Media Assumptions”, were it not for the fact that it sounds like something to do with the first televised ascension into heaven.

The most notorious of these silent lies, at least among the mainstream media, is that those in power always mean well. Doubts may arise as to the efficacy of their methods, but their motives are never questioned; not even after the official pretexts for their actions have exploded in series like dynamited ducks.

For example, now that the case for invading Iraq has fallen so thoroughly and bloodily apart, it might be expected that a genuinely open, non-partisan and liberal media would start asking questions about the last few times humanitarianism was invoked as a good reason for blowing things up. There might, for example, be a worry or two about Kosovo, where a calamitous but largely mythical genocide and refugee crisis was used as an excuse to provoke a real one. But our knights of truth are too busy with future wars to worry about past ones. What about Sudan?

Well, to start with, a genuinely open and non-partisan media might possibly have a worry or two about the myth of our non-intervention in Rwanda, which is still frequently used as an example of the perils of leaving dusky foreigners to sort matters out for themselves. The Independent on Sunday tried that one on 15 August:

Ten years ago this summer, the Rwandan genocide went unpunished by Western governments - and largely unremarked by Western newsdesks - as the world's gaze fixed on the handover to democracy in South Africa. (Leader, “There is no excuse for ignoring Sudan's tragedy”)

As a matter of fact, the Rwandan genocide went unpunished by the West in much the same way as robbery goes unpunished by fences. It was the British ambassador who proposed, as the slaughter was getting under way, that the UN cut down its presence in Rwanda to a token force. In May 1994, a proposal for an international force was derailed by the United States with British help. A UN security council resolution which rejected use of the word "genocide" to describe what was happening in Rwanda (and thus absolved the “international community” of its obligation to intervene under the Geneve Convention), was drafted by Britain. Given this context, it seems a little premature to credit the British government with its usual sublime good intentions in Sudan; but our knights of truth have no difficulty there.

That quote from the Independent on Sunday includes another favourite: the comforting media myth that we, not they, are responsible for what the knights of truth choose to report. Notice that it was “the world’s gaze” which fixed itself on the doings in South Africa, thus obliging Western newsdesks to divert their compassionate gaze from the unfolding tragedy. This particular assumption is a very popular one among liberal editors and commentators, particularly when it begins to look as if perhaps they should have noticed something a bit earlier. Sudan, for example:

On any rational index of human suffering, the conflict in Darfur should now be attracting as much international attention as military conflict and terrorist attacks in the Middle East. (Leader “A catastrophe too far”, Guardian, 1 June 2004)

Very likely true. The same leader noted with righteous indignation that “Yesterday's major news wires carried exactly five brief references to Darfur”, although it conceded the mitigating fact that in one of them the British international development secretary, Hilary Benn, had promised “to do more”. Unfortunately, the Guardian gave no indication as to how Benn intended to differ so radically from previous international development secretaries that some difference might be made. Nor was there any expression of contrition by the Guardian for having failed to report more on the conflict in Darfur, and thus to play its own small part in drawing international attention to the human suffering involved.

It also apparently didn’t occur to the Guardian to ask why the news agencies might feel that the market for stories about scared or peckish Africans might be a bit limited. An archive search of Guardian Online on the day that leader appeared scored 113 hits for Sudan during 2004. Chad scored 83 hits. Iran scored 474, terrorism 1400, Iraq over 3000. Given this record, presumably those who run the major news wires could be forgiven for thinking that the Guardian does not operate according to a "rational index of human suffering", but has slightly different priorities. I may add that "climate change" scored 227 hits – nearly half the number (478) scored by the words David Beckham.

The public’s deficient sense of priority is also noticeable in the matter of the Bangladesh floods. A Guardian report by Tash Shifrin on 28 August (“Bangladesh aid appeal falls short of target”) noted the lack of response to a UN appeal for £117 million to help mitigate the disaster, in which five hundred people have died and millions been made homeless. During August 2004, the Guardian ran thirty-eight articles mentioning Bangladesh. Boscastle, in which nobody died but which suffered considerable property damage, merited fifty-one. “Bangladesh,” it was noted sagely, “has slipped down the political and media agenda”. Well, if the poor bastards can’t even stay on top of an agenda, whose fault is that?

It may be couched in more anodyne language; it may be less crude, blatant and crass in its sales-talk; but the underlying myth is precisely the same as that which inspired the Evening Standard to sell itself today with words to the effect of “Siege School Stormed – Dramatic Pictures”. Assuming this is not the kind of media coverage we deserve, I think it’s about time this particular lie was dragged out into the open and pounded out of existence once and for all.

And Again, Ann Clwyd

2004-08-23T20:04:00.000Z

The mills of God grind slow, but they do grind on. Thus Saviour Blair’s humble cogwheel, Ann Clwyd, has been in touch with me again after a gap of only three months, quoting herself in Hansard. It will be remembered (or then again, quite possibly, it won’t be remembered) that a few days after the Abu Ghraib scandal broke in the British press, the Blessed Annie hastened to ask some stern questions of the Defence Secretary in the Commons. Well, one stern question, anyway.

Ann Clwyd (Cynon Valley) (Lab): As my right hon. Friend knows, I have supported action to topple the regime of Saddam Hussein since the 1990s. As he also knows, I was appointed as special envoy to the Prime Minister on human rights in Iraq in May 2003. Can my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State explain why his officials failed to show me the ICRC reports when they arrived?
Mr. Hoon: I am in exactly the same position in answering my hon. Friend's question as I was in answering questions from the Opposition. As far as officials were concerned, the interim report contained material about the United Kingdom that had already been resolved. Therefore, there was no need, as far as the interim report was concerned, for Ministers to be involved. (Hansard, 10 May 2004; quoted in email, Ann Clwyd to Philip Challinor, 23 August 2004)

This is certainly interesting. It confirms that the Blessed Annie’s zeal to depose Saddam Hussein dated from the 1990s, as did that of everyone else who matters. Presumably that clears up the vexed question of where the Blessed Annie stood on Saddam’s regime while he was doing his repulsive worst in the 1980s.

As I mentioned about three months ago, in my previous instalment on this thrilling correspondence (“Glory Be”), I found it a little strange that the Blessed Annie should be asking Geoff Hoon about the Red Cross report, rather than finding out about conditions herself. I replied to her email today:

Thanks for your message. Of course I was aware that, once the Abu Ghraib scandal broke, you had asked the Defence Secretary why his officials failed to give you the ICRC report. I'm afraid I still don't understand why, as Human Rights Envoy, you failed to find the time to look into the matter any earlier. The ICRC report, as I mentioned before, was merely a summary of briefings given to the US authorities over a period of months before the scandal reached the British press. As a representative of the Bush Administration's main ally, and as an Envoy with, presumably, some small professional interest in whether people were being tortured or not, why didn't you ask the Red Cross their opinion of Abu Ghraib in May 2003, rather than Geoff Hoon in May 2004? (Email, Philip Challinor to Ann Clwyd, 23 August 2004)

I sent the above at 6:37pm. At 6:42pm, I received the following:

Dear Mr. Challinor,

Ms. Clwyd did raise this issue with the Red Cross on a number of occasions, in her capacity as Special Envoy. You may find it useful to access their website for an explanation of how their confidentiality and reporting guidelines work - to summarise, however, working papers and reports on conditions in detention facilities in Iraq were only given to the US authorities.

Yours sincerely,
Sarah Montgomery (Email, Office of Ann Clwyd MP to Philip Challinor, 23 August 2004)

So there. It is indeed true that Pierre Kraehenbuehl, the Red Cross director of operations, mentioned at a press conference that the report was confidential and that the ICRC was somewhat chagrined that it had been leaked.

So let’s see where that leaves us. As we all know, because Tony’s friends in the Press have told us, things would be much worse in Iraq if it weren’t for the British presence. If it weren’t for our tact and restraint, the Americans might have slaughtered four million Iraqis instead of forty thousand, and the West might be looking a little unpopular out there. The reason we can exercise our tact and restraint so effectively is because we are the United States’ number one ally. Tony stands shoulder to shoulder with the Bush administration, and hence, by anatomical necessity, he has privileged access to the chimp’s ear. That is why things in Iraq are not worse than they are, and we ought all to be rejoicing at the fact.

But it appears, from the testimony of the Blessed Annie and her disciples, that Tony’s very own special envoy on human rights has access neither to the US authorities, our intimate allies, whose better nature she is supposed to be bringing gently to the surface; nor to the reports by human rights organisations which expose their dismal record. (Our own dismal record, as reported in the Daily Mirror, has of course disappeared from the media consciousness nearly as rapidly as Piers Morgan from the Mirror building.) The Blessed Annie has to wait for the abuses at Abu Ghraib to be splashed all over the Press, and then go cap in hand to Bomber Hoon for an excuse as to why she wasn’t informed about them. Which brings us to your homework question, a nice easy one this week: As a Human Rights Envoy who can find out nothing about human rights abuses except from the government which employs her and which doesn’t really give a damn – what earthly good is she?

A Convenient Myth

2004-07-30T08:21:00.000Z

All intelligence services thought that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and was a threat, prior to the war. This is untrue. Here is some evidence:

1. Do you believe that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction; for instance, chemical or biological weapons?

President Chirac: Well, I don’t know. I have no evidence to support that… It seems that there are no nuclear weapons - no nuclear weapons program. That is something that the inspectors seem to be sure of. As for weapons of mass destruction, bacteriological, biological, chemical, we don’t know. And that is precisely what the inspectors’ mandate is all about. But rushing into war, rushing into battle today is clearly a disproportionate response.
Interview with CBS 16th March 2003

2. A British intelligence source said the best intelligence on Saddam was held by the French who had agents in Iraq. 'French intelligence was telling us that there was effectively no real evidence of a WMD program. That's why France wanted a longer extension on the weapons inspections. The French, the Germans and the Russians all knew there were no weapons there -- and so did Blair and Bush as that's what the French told them directly. Blair ignored what the French told us and instead listened to the Americans.'
Published on Sunday, June 1, 2003 by The Sunday Herald

3. French intelligence services did not come up with the same alarming assessment of Iraq and WMD as did the Britain and the United States. "According to secret agents at the DGSE, Saddam's Iraq does not represent any kind of nuclear threat at this time…It [the French assessment] contradicts the CIA's analysis…" French spies said that the Iraqi nuclear threat claimed by the United States was a "phony threat."
Institute for Science and International Security

4. Russia was not convinced by either the September 24, 2002 British dossier or the October 4, 2002 CIA report. Lacking sufficient evidence, Russia dismissed the claims as a part of a "propaganda furor." Specifically targeting the CIA report, Putin said, "Fears are one thing, hard facts are another." He goes on to say, "Russia does not have in its possession any trustworthy data that supports the existence of nuclear weapons or any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and we have not received any such information from our partners yet. This fact has also been supported by the information sent by the CIA to the US Congress." However, Putin was apprehensive about the possibility that Iraq may have WMDs and he therefore supported inspections. The Russian ambassador to London thought that the dossier was a document of concern. "It is impressive, but not always…convincing."
Institute for Science and International Security

Watching the Democratic Convention

2004-07-30T08:00:00.000Z

I was watching that the Democratic Convention on cable, early in the morning.

Using any sort of serious analysis - it is utter banal drivel. But of course that's not the point. Its simply there to create images for television. I thought the Labour Party conference was bad - but it makes that gathering seem like a meeting of the great intellectuals of our time.

This is the scene I saw last night. A grand hall full of bunting, balloons, cheesy placards distributed by the party machine, cuddly toys, people milling around, cheering, waving, grinning inanely.

Okay, its a sports events, right? A rock concert? No, its something far more boring.

There's a huge wide screen, high above the throng, that occasionally springs into life to spew broadcasts of syrupy party propaganda (bit Orwellian, we won't dwell...)

A live band plays too, and people dance. Yes, all about the hall they dance, and wave their flags about. Its fun!

Then, an announcement. This is the serious part, apparently. A disembodied voice rumbles around the hall, a female presenter, with a nice soft radio voice announcing the next party apparatchik, or ex-great leader, to extoll the virtues (real or imagined) of John Kerry and John Edwards. The same cliches are recycled each time. As each speaker approaches the podium, the band plays a musical intro.

There's that great re-occuring theme of American politics too - Affordable Healthcare. This issue, ironically, is often debated exclusively by people who can easily afford it anyway. And like Restoring Hope to the American People, it crops up every four years. Nice to know it never goes away.

And don't miss the obligatory Hollywood Celebrity Limousine Liberal, last night in the shape of Glenn Close, resplendent in a sort of strange yellowy white colour, not dissimilar to the colour of dental plaque, and about as attractive. She makes a short, suitably awful speech, and on troop all the female Democratic senators, in those neat telegenic one colour suits that women politicians often wear. Each gets a big cheer, like in football game, and Hillary comes on last, in a yellow suit, which kinda sticks out a bit. (Tip to the networks: Ditch the close ups - Senator Clinton's make-up is beginning to look rather too obvious.)

Then on, relentlessly, to a children's choir of kids all dressed in crisp white, singing some sentimental ditty (mercifully short) and all the senators grin and clap. Thankfully they didn't end up walking down to embrace the unfortunate kids, which presumably would have made even the most stauch of the party faithful throw up.

Mind you, I blame myself. I should have thrown up at least ten minutes before that and switched off the TV.

Clwyd in The Guardian

2004-07-05T12:59:00.000Z

Ann Clwyd is manning the barricades on behalf of the occupation forces again today, puffing up the puppet government and its various quislings. Note first of all that Ann finds the use of the words "puppet" and "quisling" in relation to the new unelected, US-appointed regime of unrepresentative Iraqis offensive:

Having known and worked with the opposition to Saddam for over two decades, I find the description of brave individuals as "puppets" deeply offensive. Allawi was nearly killed in 1978 in the UK when he was attacked by a Ba'athist assassin with an axe. The deputy prime minister, Barham Salih, was imprisoned at the age of 16 for his political activities. The deputy foreign minister, Hamid al-Bayati, was imprisoned in Abu Ghraib and had five members of his family killed by Saddam's regime. Eight thousand members of foreign minister Hoshyar Zebari's family clan disappeared in 1983 and have never been seen since.

Every day, these individuals and others face the knowledge that they are targets for assassination. But they continue to work, just as the policemen return to their jobs every day, despite the suicide bombs targeted at them. As one told the Guardian at the beginning of the week: "Our job is to protect the Iraqi people ... There are bombings but we are not scared of these terrorists. These people are cowards who are damaging our country."

Allawi, the former Ba'athist and recent asset to 14 seperate intelligence outfits, including MI6 and the CIA? Salih, of the PUK, which allowed the Iranian military to enter their controlled section of Northern Iraq and kill Iranian Kurds? What bravery, what democrats! Still, brave or not, that hardly endows the government with any particular democratic legitimacy. Citing recent favourable opinion polls won't help either - as a regular visitor to the Tomb insists, the trouble with citing polls to buttress your argument is that you must also accept those which don't go your way. And previous polls have indicated that Allawi has very little support. But note also the attempted conflation between the resistance and those carrying out suicide bombings - for although Clwyd proffers her argument as a commentary on Seumus Milne's pro-resistance article last week, she forgets or deliberately ignores his distinction between the legitimate resistance and the followers of al-Zarqawi who only wish to create civil war in Iraq. That distinction could not have been more manifest as when Sadr and countless other resistance leaders denounced the wave of suicide attacks as death-dealing both to and to the resistance.

Clwyd tries again:

Those who champion the "resistance" as the real voice of Iraq do not offer an alternative political programme, merely an opposition to an existing strategy. They are silent about what they want for Iraq apart from getting the Americans out.

They are opposed by the emerging civil society of Iraq. On June 21, Abdullah Mushin, of the Iraqi Federation of Workers' Trade Unions (IFTU) addressed Unison's national conference. The IFTU had opposed the war. Last December its Baghdad offices were raided by coalition forces. Despite this, he was clear that what was required now was "solidarity" to defeat those who would deny Iraqis democracy.

"It is only a few days before the handover of power on June 30 and IFTU and Iraqis need your support and solidarity to make this happen and stop attempts by terrorists and Saddam's supporters to derail the transfer of power to Iraqis. This is a crucial step forward to end the occupation, regain full sovereignty and enable the Iraqi people to determine their own political future through democratic elections."

One can respect the IFTU's particular anti-occupation stance while noting that it is precisely the resistance - in Fallujah, in Najaf and elsewhere - which has forced American withdrawal. There is no sovereignty or independence in the new interim government - but there is in Fallujah. US troops still bust into houses and shoot up families in most of Iraq. But not in Fallujah. Incidentally, those forces which have wiped out the occupation in Fallujah cannot be conflated with "Saddam's supporters" - for it is they who have only recently prevented a rally by pro-Saddam loyalists, with a show of force. Clwyd does not bother mentioning that even as the IFTU opposes the resistance, they also oppose the occupation, and demand its end as the condition for achieving a real democracy in Iraq. They also opposed the war: "it might have been easy to support the war but I and the majority of Iraqis didn’t because we feared the bloodshed and the destruction of our country that would result". They believed that "Saddam’s dictatorship could have been overthrown, through reliance on the people and their patrioitic forces, and with effective international solidarity, to bring about democratic change." (See link). Ann suggests that those supporting the resistance do not have an alternative strategy for Iraq to the current one being imposed by the US. To which the obvious reply is that if there isn't genuine Iraqi sovereignty with full US troop withdrawal then no alternative strategy could even be considered. At any rate, it would be down to Iraqis to decide what kind of society they wanted to live in. The first condition for allowing that to happen is for US troops to be forced out. And, as Jeremy notes, the resistance does not require a common agenda - the French resistance united forces of various political shades who were united on one goal. Only a genuine apologist like Clwyd would attempt the assertion that those who support the anti-occupation resistance also oppose the emerging civil society in Iraq. It is because that civil society is being repressed by the occupation that we want to see the back of it.

And what kind of regime is it that Clwyd is seeking to defend? Well :

American military police yesterday raided a building belonging to the Iraqi ministry of the interior where prisoners were allegedly being physically abused by Iraqi interrogators.
The raid appeared to be a violation of the country's new sovereignty, leading to angry scenes inside the ministry between Iraqi policemen and US soldiers.

The military police, who had been told of abuse, seized an area known as the Guesthouse just outside the ministry's main building. They disarmed the Iraqi policemen and at one stage threatened to set free prisoners whose handcuffs they removed, according to Iraqi officials.

The arrival of a second group of US military police and a more senior officer led to an argument between the two groups of military policemen over who had command authority for the raid.

Iraqi ministry of interior officials admitted that around 150 prisoners taken during a raid four days before in the Betawain district of Baghdad had been physically abused during their arrest and subsequent questioning.

The men were captured in the first big Iraqi-led anti-crime and anti-terrorism operation, which took place a few days before the transfer of power, with US military police in support and using US satellite images.

Senior Iraqi officers described those captured as "first class murderers, kidnappers and terrorists with links to al-Ansar" - a militant group in the former Kurdish no-fly zone - who had all admitted to "at least 20 crimes while being questioned".

According to an al-Jazeera television crew, who had been filming the prisoners when the US military police conducted their raid, most of the detainees were blindfolded, with their hands cuffed behind their backs. One prisoner was so weak, from dehydration, that the US military policemen fitted an intravenous drip to rehydrate him.

Although none of the American officers involved in the raid would talk to the Guardian, one of the soldiers involved in the raid said that it had been launched after claims that prisoners were being abused.

US military spokesmen would not comment. "We can't confirm that this took place," a spokesman said.

One of the prisoners bared his back after his initial arrest to reveal open welts allegedly caused by baton and rubber hoses.

A bodyguard for the head of criminal intelligence, Hussein Kamal, admitted that the beatings had taken place.

Nashwan Ali - who said his nickname was Big Man - said: "A US MP asked me this morning what police division I was in. I said I was in criminal intelligence.

"The American asked me why we had beaten the prisoners. I said we beat the prisoners because they are all bad people. But I told him we didn't strip them naked, photograph them or fuck them like you did."

So, the interim government beats its prisoners but doesn't fuck them. This then, is approximately the new division of labour: the coalition fucks Iraq, the interim government beats the shit out of it. Unsurprisingly, the new administration has announced that it may introduce martial law, and they have the support of Bush and Blair . They have also reintroduced the death penalty , and a series of "emergency laws" .

Still, if Ann Clwyd must insist on puffing up the new administration, she could at least have the courtesy to note that Prime Minister Iyad Allawi has admitted that resistance attacks on US troops were legitimate . Not that Sadr will reciprocate. He has just called the new interim government "illegitimate" , because as he rightly notes "the occupation has not ended" . Watch those opinion polls swing, baby.

The Liberal Reaction to New Labour's Drubbing at the Polls...

2004-06-16T21:00:00.000Z

A disastrous result for Labour in the polls has prompted a series of analytical turns by top liberal commentators, which, rather conveniently, evacuates the ills of Labour policy from the picture. Today, two pieces have appeared in The Guardian with this effect, from arch-Blairites Polly Toynbee and David Aaronovitch . Aaronovitch begins his piece by recounting a conversation he may or may not have had with a rather cartoonish, stereotypical cabby. The bloody taxi driver is seething from his gut about everything, from immigrants to Iraq to that old classic, Europe. This prompts a journey through the small party vote from Right to Left, in which the thesis emerges that they are all populist parties. That’s right – The Greens, Respect, UKIP, the BNP – we’re all in the same boat, all descendants of that petit-bourgeois grumpster, Pierre Poujade.

Now, as far as UKIP is concerned, his case is impeccable. And he expends a number of paragraphs reviewing much of their dishonest, xenophobic drivel. Not merely anti-European, they are also poisonously anti-immigrant, holding them responsible for the lack of available care homes for the elderly and so on. On the BNP, he can’t be far away. Fascism has always manifested itself in populist ways, expressing both the petit-bourgeois resentment of the upper class and of the ‘cosmopolitan’ elements who you can be sure are either stealing our welfare money or perverting our kids, or both. But where he begins to falter is precisely where he thinks he is making his case most forceful. He describes Respect and the Greens as populist – the former, because we appealed to Muslims "on a similar emotional basis to the anti-EU campaign of UKIP". Did we? Yes, you see, we went round suggesting that Muslims were uniquely "victimised, targeted, oppressed" not realising that the Nato bombing of the Balkans proved that this could not be so. And the government, after all, have made many efforts to "build links" with the "community". (That odious little word, "community" – everyone uses it, even Respect. The "Jewish community", "the divided communities of Northern Ireland", "the elderly community". No wonder ‘community’ is the master-concept of the Third Way. It is unctuous, patronising, homogenising… never mind.)

Suppose we assume that it is possible that the bombing of Yugoslavia had something to do with defending Muslims from Serb atrocities fuelled by Islamophobic racism. I know it's a stretch of the imagination, but just suppose, for arguments' sake. This would have nothing whatever to do with how Muslims are treated in Britain. As I have already noted, it just so happens that the increase in Islamophobia in recent years is not merely an elevation in street prejudice, but is actually institutionalised in key government policies and behaviour. The Labour government would never have had to worry about building links with Muslims if it had not been so piteously pro-Israel, so adamantly up Bush’s ring, so hostile to asylum seekers and so willing to play with the language of racism. Muslims were overwhelmingly Labour, and would have remained so were it not for such policies.

But why are the Greens populist? Because they articulate a populist message that “they” (the corporations) are poisoning “us”. The Greens talk of GM foods as if they were a health-hazard but, Aaronovitch avers, there is no evidence that genetically modified foods are dangerous for one’s health. True enough, but I heard tell that GM cauliflowers were apt to deform into David Aaronovitch look-a-likes. At any rate, this is an unfair criticism of the Greens. The trouble with GM crops is that, like Thalidomide, unsatisfactory testing can easily produce results that invite complacency. The driving force behind the production of GM crops is the desire of companies like Monsanto to make a profit out of them – there is nothing controversial in that, and it follows that there can be nothing paranoiac in wanting to rein in the beast a little. Let’s just see if it really is all it is cracked up to be. At any rate, as Aaronovitch acknowledges, there is a potential threat to biodiversity – although, strangely, he thinks that isn’t ‘scary enough’. I’d say that the prospect of uncontrollable changes to our biosphere caused by minute mutations in crop genes is a terrifying one, and not one to be taken lightly.

And the Greens, too, blame the government for being in hock to the food lobby, and therefore making large numbers of Britons obese. Well, suppose that the government is in fact doing things which assist the food companies and simultaneously encourage the consumption of fatty foods? Like, say, the Sports Minister trumpeting the virtues of a chocolate bar scheme which will gain a basketball for every school that has one or two plump kids prepared to chow their way through several hundred Snickers? Would that add any force to the suggestion?

At any rate, this all seems rather bizarre and outlandish - until you realise where the bodies are buried. To explain - one of the things I have been taught about how to read a text including any kind of argument is to treat it like a murder case. In any murder case, much of the evidence only begins to make sense once you have located the body. The “body”, in this case, is the thesis. Aaronovitch’s thesis is that things aren’t really as bad as everyone makes out, that there is too much axe-grinding in the media which makes it appear that Britain is basically dysfunctional when its actually a-okay and getting better. “We in the media,” he says, have been telling people that it’s all to cock, and “when it’s all to cock you need a strong hand to fix things”. This last sentence brings us back to the fascist end of the political spectrum, unless Aaronovitch is suggesting that Caroline Lucas is about to form street gangs to go out and smash up supermarkets that sell GM food. And indeed, there is a sense in which the more apocalyptic tones of the hard right press are conducive to the agenda of fascism and reactionary populism.

The trouble, however, is this: why should people suddenly be so susceptible to this kind of carping? If everything is okay, and getting better, why are people so inclined to believe those parties who assert that the state of the country – indeed, the world – is fundamentally wrong? The question-begging suggestion that it is all because of the way the media paints things only pushes us back to the same question – why should people believe them? Could it be, David, that people are responding to the real crises in society in various ways? For example, perhaps the trains and hospitals and schools really are as bad as people say they are. Certainly, Aaronovitch would argue that piles of “dosh”, as he prefers to call it, has been deposited into all of the public services – but the sad reality is that much of it is plugging a gap created by New Labour’s first term. At any rate, a vast amount of it is being wasted on PFI schemes, which are in fact many, many times more costly than usual hospital building or renovation programmes. And this points to another problem. PFI schemes and the PPP on the tube are deeply unpopular. Not just unpopular in the sense that Noel Edmonds is unpopular – actually, factually disdained by a whopping majority of the electorate. When Blair announced that his big policy initiative in the 2001 election would be the acceleration of PFI schemes, polls showed that 81% of the public disapproved of this. But no one listened, and no one is listening now when people say they don’t want a failing, Thatcherite Central Bank to control interest rates, or an unelected European commission to make decisions about the economy, or some stability pact signed without public consultation to tell governments how much they may spend on public services. The fact that immigration suddenly became a hot political potato again around 1999 isn’t just a matter of press hysteria – it is also partially the attitude of people who feel there isn’t enough to go around, that things are tight enough as it is and getting worse. It is also to do with racism, of course – but racism does not arise ex nihilo. The cuts in social security, declining job security, increasing inequality , poverty , a perceptible rise in the rate of British military interventions, more privatisation , housing sell-offs which cost the public purse millions, the degradation of national politics into slanging matches between two indistinguishable main parties – these are the things which are driving up the vote for parties which are not of the mainstream. But there is a crucial difference between parties of the radical Left and those of the far right – the latter exhort you merely to follow, while the former exhort you to lead.

Polly Toynbee’s contribution is a variation on an increasingly standard line on the Blairite front. First of all, no one wants "regime change", merely a "wind change". Or, as Martin Kettle argued so unpersuasively yesterday, a "different kind of Blair" . ("It requires a subtle and unpartisan brain to make sense of many of the contours of last week's elections," he told us. The self-congratulation of liberals is rarely this pronounced). "More of the same will not do", Toynbee sternly lectures, before offering her suggestion as to what the Prime Minister must do, and what he must never do ever again. First, he’s got to stop talking about "radical reform" of the public services – not because the reforms in question are crackpot schemes inherited from the Tories, much derided by New Labour in opposition, but because it gives the impression that there is something radically wrong, in need of reform: "The truth is good and getting better by the month. So why can’t Blair get it out there?" Because you’re talking bollocks, Polly.

Blair, says Polly, should cease talking about ‘choice’ and ‘personalisation’ as if the NHS and schools were consumerist institutions. Instead, the message should be reiterated – Labour is for public services, the Tories are for privatisation, outsourcing etc. This would be a more impressive point if Labour was actually opposed to privatisation, outsourcing etc., but it no longer is. Toynbee’s next recommendation is that the feud between No 10 and No 11 end forthwith. No more briefing and backstabbing, no more Mandelson hovering about in the dank corridors of Millbank and Whitehall. Stop pissing off core voters and big up the respect to all the schools and hospitals for the improving results that we are seeing. Make some kind of visionary promise to wet the electoral palate. Something distinctly juicy and red-blooded and Labour.

And that exhausts her analysis. The problem for the liberal critics, as so often, is with the presentation and not the substance. Criticism which transcends these boundaries is immoderate, redolent of awkward squad mischief. Why, if only the Prime Minister would stop under-selling his achievements! But Toynbee would have to be slightly adrift from reality not to realise that every piece of election literature, and every announcement from New Labour about hospitals and schools has some enormous puff about the latest figures from Ofsted or whomever. It isn’t that the Prime Minister is under-selling himself, it is that no one will buy. Why? Because, once again, we want public services and he wants PFI schemes and he just doesn’t listen. We want a publicly owned railway and tube system, and he doesn’t. We want better union rights, and he doesn’t. We want a more meliorative foreign policy, and he doesn’t. We want redistribution of wealth, pensions linked to earnings, less indirect tax on the poor and more direct tax on the rich – and he doesn’t. The values of Tony Blair are not those of the electorate, a reality he has been spared by the absence of a reasonable alternative. He thought he had us over a barrel; he thought that we would have to vote for him or else the Tories would return. Tough lesson from these elections? People are no longer accepting this kind of emotional blackmail. The Labour Party has surrendered its quiddity, so the unions are beginning to reclaim their quids. And we are reclaiming our votes.

The liberals mewling about language and presentation are merely preserving face as the body politic decomposes.

Johann Hari on George Galloway

2004-05-27T19:59:00.000Z

In a recent review of George Galloway's new book, Johann Hari has resorted to dissembling, distortion and extreme Zionist propaganda to produce an incoherent, childish rant. How come?

There could hardly be a more fair-minded commentator on Harry's Place than Johann Hari. Not to damn him with faint praise, then, I'll also add that he is one of the more intelligent supporters of the war - and, let's be honest, the pro-war camp desperately needs intelligent support. However, having read his venomous review of George Galloway's book I'm Not the Only One, I remember that everyone's political honesty has limits. Wish fulfillment abounds in most political analysis, and you could hardly find a more compelling example of this than in Johann's review. Having peremptorily dismissed 90% of the book's content as "unconvincing", "hazy Lennonist idealism" etc., Hari gets to the business of his review. Galloway is guilty of "Ba'athist propaganda", the extent of which is "staggering":

All those who, in the past, have denied that Galloway has mutated into a Saddamist will simply have to recant when they read this book. For example, Galloway actually refers to the Shi'ites Saddam murdered in the 1980s as "a fifth column" who actively undermined the Iraqi war effort in the interests of their countryís enemy." Nobody outside Saddamís squalid regime used this terminology; it was purely a justification for the mass slaughter of the dictator's enemies. It has been extensively documented that very few Iraqis supported Iran. They were killed because they opposed Saddam, not because they backed Iran, and Galloway must know it.

Now, before I proceed to deconstruct this breathtaking misrepresentation, I'll give you Galloway's quote in full:

"Iraqi society remained remarkably solid during the eight long years of war with Iran. The Shi'ite majority in Iraq proved that they were Arabs and Iraqis first and co-religionists of Khomeini second. But there was a fifth column, Shi'ite elements who actively undermined the Iraqi war effort in the interests of the country's enemy. As in all authoritarian regmes, this fifth column was ruthlessly annihilated wherever it was found." (Page 114).

So, before we're even off the ground, Hari's penultimate sentence is confirmed. Galloway is indeed aware that "very few Iraqis supported Iran" because he specifically says so. And what of the "fifth column"? Galloway nowhere denies that many Iraqis were killed simply for opposing the regime. In fact, he specifically says so:

"Saddam was a ruthless and cruel man who thought little about signing death warrants of even close comrades, and still less about ordering the merciless crushing of potential threats to his regime." (Page 126).

Hari is fully aware of this, since he later (mis)quotes precisely this passage. Nevertheless, in describing those in sympathy with Iran as a "fifth column", you might think Galloway was trying to impugn their motives or imply that they deserved what they got. In fact, Galloway both opposed Saddam's brutal assault on Iran, and supported an Iraqi overthrow of their regime:

"Saddam could have had no legitimate complaint if living by the sword - ruthlessly cutting down any and all opposition - he had died by the sword (or rope) at the hands of the Iraqis." (Page 103).

Galloway is accused, then, of saying something he hasn't said. He has not said that all the Shi'tes Saddam murdered in the 1980s were a fifth column - merely that such a faction existed. And he notes it was a minority. And, given his hostility to the regime and to its war with Iran, he cannot even be accused of opposing this "fifth column". But Hari has more:

How about the passage where Galloway defends Saddam's claim to Kuwait, describing the province as "clearly a part of the greater Iraqi whole stolen from the motherland by perfidious Albion"?

This is a blatant - and I must conclude intentional - misrepresentation. Here is Galloway's actual quote:

"For Iraqis of all political persuasions, Kuwait had been stolen from the motherland by perfidious Albion - Great Britain, the former colonial power." (Page 42).

He does not describe "the province" thus - he describes Iraqis as having that perception. Galloway could be wrong in this assessment, but that is immaterial since he did not say what Hari says he did. In fact, Hari seems to be the one in doubt of Kuwait's legitimacy as a nation, since he is the one who describes it as a "province". (Province: "A territory governed as an administrative or political unit of a country or empire." ) What can Johann mean?

Additionally, Galloway specifically rejects Saddam's right to invade Kuwait:

"In 1990 I was an enemy of the Iraqi regime and had, purposely, never visited the country. The sympathy I had for former colonies undoing the fake boundaries of colonialism could not support the naked aggression committed against Kuwait. That action copied elsewhere in the developing world would be a recipe for endless chaos and bloodshed." (Page 45).

You could make excuses for Hari. Perhaps he didn't see this passage, perhaps he read the book in a hurry, racing toward the salacious Saddamism he hoped to find. But such a conclusion is annihilated by Hari's next move:

For example, he says that in the First Gulf War, "I made my stand with Iraq." No you didn't, George. You stood with Saddam; conscript Iraqis - most in their teens - were being sent to be slaughtered in the name of an invasion they did not support.

That quote is the sentence immediately following the cited passage on Page 45. It is even in the same paragraph. Hari even uses the statement to imply that George Galloway "stood with Saddam" in his invasion of Kuwait while "conscript Iraqis" were being forced to die in an invasion they didn't support. I don't know about you, but I would think that - since it is logically impossible that George both supported and opposed the invasion of Kuwait - he was referring to his opposition to US planes pounding Iraqi cities and killing as many as 200,000 people. Hari continues:

Or how about Galloway's claim that Saddam's mass murder of democrats, Kurds and other anti-Saddam forces in 1991 was a "civil war" that "involved massive violence on both sides"? Again, only Ba'athists have ever used this language or narrative. The reality is very different. In 1991, a vicious tyranny exterminated its enemies. For Galloway to claim that two morally equivalent sides were simply fighting it out is staggering: he is equidistant between a poisoner and the medical crew waving an antidote.

I see no reason to revisit Galloway's position on the ouster of Saddam by Iraqis. Just scroll up if your mind has gone blank all of a sudden. But to describe the 1991 uprising as a "civil war" is no more apologetic than it is to describe the Nepalese uprising as a civil war, or the Kosovar uprising as a civil war. And did the Iraqi uprising not involve "massive violence on both sides"? Of course, describing facts is rarely neutral - context is all. But as I have already indicated, the context in which Galloway is writing is one in which he considers an Iraqi uprising just. Galloway nevertheless stands accused or "relativising" Saddam's crimes:

The most bizarre example of Galloway's moral relativism is when he says, "Saddam was a ruthless and cruel man who thought little of signing the death warrants of even close comrades. In this regard he was little different to the leaders of most regimes: we just don't know it in our own countries yet." As if Tony Blair is about to start gassing the SWP and the Tories. As if George Bush is going to start building mass graves in California.

Do you know, I don't think George Galloway is actually saying that? It may in fact be that Hari has mis-quoted Galloway again:

"In this regard he is little different to the leaders of most regimes; regime survival is the ultimate priority of most systems - we just don't know it in our own countries, yet." (Page 126).

Okay, so Hari has left out a subclause and a comma. No big deal. I'm not saying he is a sloppy reviewer, because the phrase "sloppy reviewer" is a tautology when it comes to the press. However, the misrepresentation is so comically obvious that I merely wish to point it out, then move on - Galloway is saying that most regimes in the world, if threatened with revolution, will react with extreme violence. He is not justifying such actions, but rather using broadening the net of his critique to include nations beyond a relatively small corner of the Arab world. Everyone clear? Need I underline it any further?

Galloway dares to criticise Christopher Hitchens as an "apostate", when in fact he has consistently been opposed to Saddam and in favour of getting rid of him.

But that is precisely what Galloway cannot stand. There are even large slabs of praise for Saddam in this rancid book. "Just as Stalin industrialized the Soviet Union, so on a different scale Saddam plotted Iraqís own Great Leap Forward," he says, and amazingly, this isn't a criticism. "He managed to keep his country together until 1991. Indeed, he is likely to have been the leader in history who came closest to creating a truly Iraqi national identity, and he developed Iraq and the living, health, social and education standards of his own people."

Hari would be well-advised to consult Hitchens' 1991 writings if he thinks the latter has been "consistently" in favour of regime-change. He adamantly, and eloquently, opposed the first Gulf War, and was even vague on the most recent Gulf War until late 2002, telling Salon that he did not support an invasion of Iraq, although he did support a "confrontation". But when Hari claims that Galloway's comparison of Hussein with Stalin "isn't a criticism", I feel bound to inform you that once again he s mangling his quotes. Saddam, says Galloway, resembles Stalin inasmuchas

"Both were determined to industrialize their countries, whatever the cost. Both had chips on ther shoulders. Both built police states believing the ends justified the means. Both ruthlessly suppressed all tendencies toward the break-up of their country, believing in a strong central authority (themselves) ... And, of course, both could be murderous in pursuit of their goals". (Page 111).

The next part of Hari's quote comes on Page 128, where Galloway notes that Saddam:

"[D]eveloped Iraq and the living, health, social and educational standards of his people. But the brutality of his regime and the sheer lack of democracy meant tha he could in the end be isolated and defeated."

Hari, suffice to say, does not include the last sentence. Nor does he note the sentence, "Stalin gave his factional opponents a show-trial and then killed them. Saddam just killed them." (Page 111). What an apologist! Hari proceeds:

Perhaps the most obscene statement of all come when Galloway libels the Arabs he claims to love. "A majority of Arabs and Muslims [believe] the good Saddam did was more important than the many debits."

That's from Page 129. I better add that Galloway's final sentence on that subject is "For them, in the land of the blind the one-eyed mand is king". This is not an unusual judgment. Take this , for example:

Hussein is also one of the few Arab leaders to have been able to stand up to the West on a regular basis, asserting Iraqi and Arab independence from Western interests and power. This, rather than the brutal repression of his own people, has become the point upon which many Arabs and Muslims have focused the most. In a region which has had few powerful leaders to whom people could point with pride, Saddam Hussein has become something of a folk hero. As poor of a hero as he is, the lack of any better candidates has assured him a position of respect and honor for Arabs and Muslims for generations to come.

Or consider the fact that most Arabs told pollsters , before the assault on Iraq, that a US invasion would bring less democracy. I am not endorsing such views, any more than Galloway is, but it is a simple matter of fact that most of the Arab world feels this way.

"Not odd of God, the goyim annoy 'im."

Hari is also incensed at Galloway's attitude to Israel. Unsurprisingly, the views he adduces are not those to be located in the book. For instance:

Galloway is too cowardly to explicitly oppose a two-state solution, but his wild rhetoric suggests he seeks the very opposite of peace - the destruction of Israel itself, an impossible, loathsome aspiration that is condemning both Palestinians and Israelis to eternal war. For example, he describes the whole of Israel - not just the illegal outposts on the Occupied Territories - as "the West's settler-state sentinel"; how could such a state ever be acceptable? How could it ever deserve to exist? He never mentions the ideal of two states in this book - not once.

Galloway won't say he opposes the two-state solution, but he must mean it. And why? Because he describes Israel, accurately, as "the West's settler-state sentinel". He could have done better than this, actually. One propagandist for British imperialism described Israel as "a loyal little Jewish Ulster" . (Coming from Northern Ireland, I can only say that this rings a bell or two.) How could such a state be acceptable? Hari seems oblivious to the fact that most Palestinians also think of Israel in such terms, yet support a two-state solution. Still, since I'm not "cowardly", I'd just like to affirm my opposition to a two-state solution and indicate that Israel is emphatically not acceptable in its present form. And I will just note in passing that Galloway does, in fact, mention "the ideal of two states" in his book (Page 34) - once.

Hari continues that Galloway "even skirts very close to praising the tactic of suicide bombing". How close? He says that

"Saddam's endless protestations of fidelity to the Palestinian cause were sincere and, as the families of the martyred and wounded know, he put Iraq's money where his mouth was."

How this syllogism is supposed to work, I have no idea. Hari continues:

Galloway pointedly evades the main reasons why the state of Israel was created - or the 800,000 Jews ethnically cleansed from Arab countries in the years that followed.

Hari combines two outlandish assertions in a single sentence, then. Galloway, in fact, does discuss why Zionists set out to create Israel. On Page 31, he specifically tags European anti-Semitism as the culprit. He also notes that anti-Semites like Arthur Balfour had reasons to do with imperial prerogatives in supporting the existence of a "Jewish Homeland". (Hari presumably wants Galloway to say that the Holocaust is the reason why Israel was created. It may in fact be the reason why Israel gained the support of Jews worldwide, but it is not the reason Israel was created. The movement to create a Jewish state in Palestine was up and running long before the 1930s, and in fact the Zionist Federation of Germany sought to take advantage of Hitler's anti-Semitism, entreating him to help them build the Jewish state outside Europe). The second outlandish assertion is that 800,000 Jews were "ethnically cleansed" from Arab countries after 1948. Only the most ardent Zionists actually proclaim this to be the case. The Sephardic Jews of Arab countries migrated to Israel in waves , doubtless because of Arab repression and discrimination in many cases. (Click here for instance.)

Further, and more importantly, why does this count as "the other side"? Are Palestinians responsible for this? Is Galloway obliged to stipulate, every time he expresses support for the Palestinians or denounces Israel's actions, that he also has enormous sympathy for the plight of Sephardic Jews and the hardships they endured in the Arab world? Could we not take this axiomatic and move on?

Hari issues, suffice to say, a profusion of inaccurate and incredible charges against Galloway. He accuses him of wanting to see global capitalism replaced by "a proliferation of neo-Stalinist dictators". Unsurprisingly, Hari keeps the evidence on that one to himself. He avers:

Lawrence stood with Arab tyrants too, arguing that Arabs were too stupid and culturally backward to govern themselves, and were temperamentally suited to "strong men". So does Galloway.

Strange to relate, Galloway spends much of his book attacking racist notions about the Arabs, arguing that they are perfectly capable of governing themselves without the help of Western bombs, and attacking the Arab regimes, including Saddam Hussein's. But in Hari's world... and the sad thing is, he's not the only one.

Glory Be

2004-05-22T16:51:00.000Z

I have recently had the pleasure of corresponding with Tony Blair’s special envoy on human rights in Iraq, Ann Clwyd. The cynical may claim that Blair’s little Magdalene is simply trying to drum up a bit of support in anticipation of the electoral mauling on 10 June; and they may well be right, as the cynical frequently are. But I think the correspondence is of interest nonetheless, since it gives some indication of just how seriously Ann Clwyd takes human rights in Iraq. Less importantly but more amusingly, it may also indicate how seriously Tony Blair takes Ann Clwyd.

The correspondence was initiated by me on 30 March, although that first email was sent not to Clwyd but to Alan Rusbridger, the editor of the Guardian. I did copy the email to Clwyd, however, just in case Rusbridger forgot to tell her about it. In it I took issue with a few points Clwyd had made in a Guardian article published on 30 March. Exulting in the title “Iraq is free at last” and self-promoting in the subtitle “The evidence of Saddam's atrocities I collected was enough to vindicate invasion, but it wasn't taken seriously”, Clwyd’s piece did its best to point up the vast improvement in Iraqi human rights since the illegal assault. By coincidence, this was just after the first anniversary of the invasion, when people were starting to scratch their heads a bit about the weapons of mass nonexistence.

Saint Ann lamented in her article that Saddam’s regime “cost the lives of at least 2 million people through its wars and internal oppression, and 4 million Iraqis were forced to become refugees”, and that “torture and execution of political opponents and the hunting down of dissident elements were … a consistent feature” for over twenty years. That was why we were morally compelled to invade, you see. “There are basic human rights that must be defended.”

In my email, I made the elementary observations that the worst period of Saddam Hussein's tyranny was during the 1980s, when he exerted full power over the Iraqi people and pursued his war of aggression with Iran; and that during this time, he was also a favoured ally and trading partner of, among others, the United Kingdom. Since the Blessed Annie was elected to Parliament as an opposition Labour MP in 1984, I thought she must surely have made her concerns about Saddam’s crimes known to the Conservative government which was condoning them. Certainly the sainted Clwyd must have objected to the DTI's doubling of export credits shortly after Halabja, I said; I wondered why she hadn’t mentioned it.

Naturally, when one addresses the saints, even through so efficient a medium as Alan Rusbridger, one does not expect an immediate or direct reply. Several weeks elapsed before the Magdalene of the Middle East graced my mailbox (on 21 May) with a message thanking me for sharing my views, stating that my comments had been read and noted, and referring me to another article, this one published in the Times of 15 May. All agog, I hastened thence.

“On the streets of Iraq, truth and football are winning”, exulted the title, this time. There was an amusing bit about guns being fired in the air when Iraq’s national team beat Saudi Arabia’s at soccer; “This was party-time Baghdad-style”. Luckily no American bombers arrived to take out any foreign fighters who might have infiltrated the happy crowd – which, as we now know, can happen if one is injudicious enough to get married in certain other parts of the country. “Civic society is flourishing,” Clwyd declared; there was “little nostalgia for Saddam”, which presumably explains that small matter of the doubling export credits and why Saint Ann, as an opposition MP, didn’t oppose them.

Some Iraqis are flourishing not only civically, but archaeologically too: “Thousands of displaced Marsh Arabs are returning to the area to resume a way of life and culture that was 5,000 years old.” Perhaps we are to conclude that getting bombed back into the Neolithic isn’t half as bad as it sounds. Clwyd asked the new Defence Minister what Britain could do now. “His answer was swift: ‘Just stay the course’”. She tactfully declined to mention by how many democratically-cast Iraqi votes the new Defence Minister had gained his position.

Still, there are some startling revelations in all this grinning Blairite vacuity, so I am grateful to Clwyd for drawing her work to my attention. She mentions that she first visited Abu Ghraib in June last year: “I wanted to see it because for 25 years I had known and publicised the awful history of the place.” So it seems the Blessed Annie has been quietly campaigning against Abu Ghraib since 1978. In all that time, and especially later on, in her capacity as Saviour Blair’s special envoy, she must have built up a close relationship with other agencies concerned with human rights. The Red Cross, for example, whose recent report on US abuse and torture of prisoners was, according to director of operations Pierre Kraehenbuehl, little more than a summary of the organisation’s verbal and written briefings to the American authorities between March and November 2003. It would surely be sensible to assume that, after a quarter of a century campaigning against Abu Ghraib, Iraq’s own Elizabeth Fry might have a fairly pro-active interest in what the Red Cross was saying about it.

Well … no. As late as March this year, Clwyd writes, she “knew nothing … about the shocking accusations of abuse which were to follow eight weeks later”. On 10 May, she had a whinge in the House of Commons: “Can my Right Honourable Friend the Secretary of State explain why his officials failed to show me the ICRC reports when they arrived?” Perhaps it’s the simplicity of sainthood, but the Blessed Annie’s concept of campaigning seems a little too laid-back for comfort. If one is interested in human rights, one does not ask the Secretary of State for information. One asks the human rights organisations which tend to make more of a point of collecting it.

I have written back to the Blessed Annie of Baghdad asking her about this: “As the Human Rights Envoy to Iraq, in the employ of a Prime Minister who stands shoulder to shoulder with the Bush administration, why were you ignorant of the content of these verbal and written briefings? As Human Rights Envoy, was it not your duty to ask agencies such as the Red Cross their judgement of places like Abu Ghraib, and to investigate and challenge precisely such abuses as were detailed in this report?” Going by present form, I should get an answer when a new scandal prompts the next of Saint Ann’s little tracts upon the blessings of occupation. It shouldn’t take long. According to her Times article, the new man at Abu Ghraib, promising a new regime, is “General Geoffrey Miller, freshly arrived from Guatánamo Bay”.

Guardian or Dick?

2004-05-18T21:10:00.000Z

Most of us who read or watch the news with a brain cell or two in operation are used to those Philip K Dick moments when a chasm seems to open up in reality, to let a still tattier, more sordid, more malignant reality bulge through into our universe. I still recall the moment before the Iraq invasion when Andrew Marr, on BBC Television, informed his audience that unless the United Nations agreed to sanction military action, there might very soon be a war. Blink. I don’t know if I’m becoming more attentive in between the bouts of nausea, or if the Guardian is becoming more desperate as the government it sort of likes flounders in the occupation it sort of doesn’t like; but lately these moments seem ever more frequent.

We can pass lightly over such routine hilarities as Polly Toynbee’s assertion on 7 May (“Only the UN can save us”) that a reversion on our part to “the laws of the jungle” would be “a self-defeating way to bring civilised values to those whose hearts and minds are the real battleground of ‘the war on terror’”. These sighs of regret about the benighted and barbaric status of our victims are common enough after insurgents have blown up a few dozen people. Similar sighs can also be heard after the occupation forces have blown up a few hundred: that we, in our nobility, should have been reduced to this! So self-defeating! And what, after all, (and most importantly) could we possibly hope to gain from it?

Rather similarly, on 12 May in the catchily titled “Blair’s perversity does him harm and Iraq no good”, Toynbee lamented “12 years of corruptly administered sanctions” which, apparently, have distracted the Iraqis from the benefits of Halliburton and depleted uranium and turned quite a few of them against us. The corruption to which Toynbee refers is a matter of ten thousand million dollars (ten billion, in Newspeak) supposedly swindled from the oil-for-food programme. Divided between fourteen million Iraqis over seven years, this would have come to the princely sum of 15p a day. I suppose it is possible that this bounty might have done something to mitigate the million or so deaths caused by US and British abuse of the sanctions regime; but I doubt that it would have been much, and I harbour an evil suspicion that this wasn’t the point Toynbee was trying to make anyway.

As always, the crimes of those powerful enough to hit back hard are an irrelevance among the independent observer-guardians of free speech. The prospect of the occupation lasting till 2006 is a “dreadful” one for Toynbee, but only because it might be dreadful for Tony, the troops and their owners in Washington. It’s all so self-defeating; it won’t do Labour’s election prospects a bit of good; it’s all very familiar and we all know the script.

We may also dismiss, with a blithe binward toss of the newspaper, the Guardian’s leader of 10 May (“Outside the law”), which notes that the systems and techniques for interrogating people under torture have “been developed by US intelligence agencies and taught to security services the world over, including [the UK]”, and then concludes that “we need to have a sign from President Bush that he understands his mistake”. War crimes for which the US government is responsible are, by definition, mistakes. I know it and you know it. Still in this universe; no problem there.

But then we come to the Guardian’s leader of 13 May (“Taking rights seriously”), which opens with the assertion that the present British government has “in many important respects, a very good record on human rights”. You see, it talks about them all the time, especially when dropping bombs on people, and you can’t really argue with that. Also, it passed the Human Rights Act of 1998, and then “removed essential protections in some of the cases where they are particularly important”. Blink. So that’s all you need to do in order to have a satisfactory human rights record in the Guardian’s eyes: pass a law, then abrogate the bits that don’t suit you. One recognises the attitude, of course, but it is rare to see it expressed so baldly, particularly in the liberal media.

As if that brief glint of malignant truth were not enough, the same leader also manages to include the statement, “the US desperately needs a strategy which returns [sic] respect for human rights to the centre of its purposes in Iraq”. I did write and ask Alan Rusbridger when respect for human rights had ever been demonstrably near the centre of US purposes in Iraq, but to date I have received no reply. Apparently the portal between our separate universes is a temperamental creature.

That was it for a while, as I had to go and lie down for five days or so; but today I had two more such moments – both from one single issue of the Guardian. One, by the ever-reliable David Aaronovitch (“Why do they hate Blair so much?”) is a largely routine dissection of the dark Freudian motives which may possibly underlie certain people’s wish to get Tony out of Downing Street. It’s surreal because, while Aaronovitch admits as fact that 46% of the electorate think Blair should go, he also states that his analysis applies only to “certain small sections of society” who aren’t “really about ideology”. Blink. The dark, Freudian motives which animate the substantial remainder of Blair’s enemies, some of whom may possibly have some interest in politics, are apparently unworthy of analysis, unless “Of course, there’s the war” counts as such.

My other, and major, blink for today was courtesy of Martin Kettle, who launched into a diatribe against his own profession that makes Peter Preston’s occasional bilious attacks against his readers seem a pale, thin green by comparison. Kettle’s opening salvo was directed, predictably enough, at recently-sacked Mirror editor Piers Morgan’s back. Morgan, we read, “told a very big and an extremely prominently displayed lie in his newspaper and, as his [sic] lie unravelled, continued to defend it” (Guardian, 18 May, “Journalists’ self-righteous arrogance has gone too far”). Blink. Apparently if one is the victim of a hoax, one becomes complicit with the hoaxer. The logical conclusion of that reasoning would seem to be that, if Blair was deceived by his intelligence services about those weapons of mass nonexistence, Blair is still the bare-faced sanctimonious liar 45.9999% of the population know him to be.

Kettle goes on to draw parallels between the Mirror’s exposure of playtime in Iraq and the Sun’s attempt to expose Maxine Carr’s new identity, implying that the motives in each case were merely “reflexive resentment of the law and the desire to make mischief”. The fact that real abuses have taken place and presumably still are, and that the Mirror dragged this necessary truth into the public gaze, is not mentioned in Kettle’s article. Perhaps, in his opinion, it aggravates rather than mitigates Morgan’s sins.

Kettle finds no room, in the twelve hundred words of his article, for the unquestioning acceptance by lesser journalists than himself of the Government’s claims about Saddam Hussein’s WMD; or their acceptance of the claim that Saddam Hussein could do horrid things to us with only forty-five minutes’ warning; or their acceptance of the claim that the war was to liberate the Iraqi people. In his righteous calls for genuine freedom of the press, there is not a single mention of the Murdoch monopoly – a right-wing stranglehold by a foreign citizen over more than half the British press. Kettle, instead, castigates the robber barons of the past. This at least is rational enough. They’re dead.

But it’s Kettle’s proposed solution to the problem that is the true surrealist gem in this article. Having quoted Walter Lippmann to the effect that “the crisis of democracy is a crisis in journalism” and claimed that “Today it is the other way around”, what does Kettle think should be done? What is the way to settle things in a democracy? Obviously, the Government needs to step in: “For a start, the government should set up a royal commission on the press.” The Government must do this so that people can “set the framework of the kinds of media they require, and to set them in accordance with the needs of civil society for good media, as well as in the material interests of the media owners for big profits.”

Blink. Evidently there is no conflict between the needs of civil society and the needs of media owners pursuing big profits, just as there is no conflict when the Government steps in to safeguard democracy. Blink. Reality splits apart before our eyes, and the Gnostic nightmare of modern journalism pokes through the gap, lecturing. Shut your eyes tight and scream if it helps. Philip K Dick, thou shouldst be living at this hour.

DoD DoA: Lessons in Media Revisionism

2004-05-10T16:56:00.000Z

The Road to Surfdom has discovered that:

The Department of Defense mailing list has gone to the trouble of sending around the following message:

Please disregard earlier AFPS story, "Rumsfeld Apologizes to Iraqi Victims of Prison Abuse," datelined May 5, 2004, and issued on this listserv.
Please use the revised text, which follows:

And then follows the full story which you can find here. The link to the previous story is no longer operative, in fact, it takes you to the new story.

The two articles are virtually identical except for the opening and the title. The orginal went like this:

Rumsfeld Apologizes to Iraqi Victims of Prison Abuse
By Jim Garamone
American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, May 5, 2004 – Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld apologized today to Iraqis abused by American prison guards in Abu Ghraib.

"Any American who sees the photographs that we've seen has to feel apologetic to the Iraqi people who were abused and recognize that that is something that is unacceptable and certainly un-American," Rumsfeld said on ABC's "Good Morning America."

The secretary left open the door that compensation could be paid to the abuse victims.

The updated article reads as follows:

Prison Abuse 'Unacceptable, Un-American', Rumsfeld Says
By Jim Garamone
American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, May 5, 2004 – "Any American who sees the photographs that we've seen has to feel apologetic to the Iraqi people who were abused and recognize that that is something that is unacceptable and certainly un-American," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said today.

Rumsfeld discussed the alleged abuse of Iraqi detainees by American guards at Abu Ghraib prison on ABC TV's "Good Morning America." The secretary left open the door that compensation could be paid to the abuse victims.

I guess they really don't want us to get the impression that the Secretary would apologise. So noted.

I apologise for extracting the entire post, but the details are important for what follows. Cursor links to an MSNBC news story which is advertised as follows:

MSNBC reports that acccording to U.S. military officials, unreleased images from Abu Ghraib "showed U.S. soldiers severely beating an Iraqi prisoner nearly to death, having sex with a female Iraqi prisoner and 'acting inappropriately with a dead body.' The officials said there was also a videotape, apparently shot by U.S. personnel, showing Iraqi guards raping young boys."

Unfortunately, the story they link to now says something different completely. It no longer contains, for instance, the cited paragraph. Why?

Google has the answer. A search for that paragraph on Google locates the exact article to which Cursor link, with those words highlighted. However, clicking on the link only produces the altered article again. Instead, if you click on "Cached", you get this :

Rumsfeld apologizes to abused Iraqis

Defense secretary warns that worse photos, videos are yet to come

...

Rumsfeld did not describe the photos, but U.S. military officials told NBC News that the unreleased images showed U.S. soldiers severely beating an Iraqi prisoner nearly to death, having sex with a female Iraqi female prisoner and “acting inappropriately with a dead body.” The officials said there was also a videotape, apparently shot by U.S. personnel, showing Iraqi guards raping young boys.

Not only have MSNBC removed the terms of apology as requested by the DoD (instead it is the American people who must "feel apologetic to the Iraqi people who were abused and recognize that that is something that is unacceptable and certainly un-American"), but they have also scrubbed out the bulk of the worthy news...

Johann Hari in an Age of Opinion Polls.

2004-05-10T15:57:00.000Z

How will Johann Hari manage this? As perhaps the most perfect democrat in the world, Hari has constantly abided by his selection of Iraqi opinion poll results so that he now finds himself aligned with those proposing the end of the occupation of Iraq .

In fact, to digress briefly, this sits well with an emerging pattern of pro-war journos and columnists coming out against the war and the occupation (although Hari remains a fervent defender of the Saddam ouster):

Tony Parsons, one of the most forthright critics of antiwar protesters, now says:

"STOP me if I am missing something here, but if former Serb leader Slobodan Milosevic can end up on trial for war crimes committed under his leadership, then why can't Tony Blair?"

Minette Marin of the Sunday Times "had faith in America's plan for Iraq" but now confesses that she:

"was wrong ... Meanwhile, Iraqi support for the coalition appears to be dwindling. According to an opinion poll for the newspaper USA Today (published before last week’s torture photos appeared), 82% of people in Baghdad said they saw the coalition forces as occupiers rather than liberators and more than 60% of Arabs across the country, both Sunni and Shia, said the American and British troops should leave immediately. The handover sounds like a dangerous mess and there is talk of partition."

Ah yes, what of that opinion poll? It takes us to the heart of the subject. According to a comprehensive poll of 3,500 Iraqis published in USA Today , 50% say the situation is either "somewhat worse", "much worse" or "about the same" now as it was last year, while U.S.-British military action in Iraq cannot be justified "at all" or "somewhat" according to 52% of Iraqis (26% say it can sometimes, but not other times). Finally, most damningly, 57% of Iraqis say occupying forces should leave "immediately". Yet another poll showed that "a majority of Iraqis said they'd feel safer if the U.S. military withdrew immediately". This poll was taken before the torture scandal, and contains a surprise or two:

For example, while American officials insist that only fringe elements support the radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, a majority of Iraqis crossed ethnic and sectarian lines to name him the second most-respected man in Iraq, according to the coalition-funded poll.

On top of which, the most recent UK opinion poll shows that 49% of the public now oppose the war , with only 43% in favour. Similarly, according to today's Independent, 55% of the public want a full withdrawal of UK troops from Iraq by June 30th .

Now, since Johann Hari has made a career out of adjusting his view on Iraq according to the latest minutiae of polling data, what can we now expect? Shall he announce that, for example, 47% of him thinks Resistance attacks against the Americans are unjustified while the remaining 53% of him thinks either that it sometimes can, or that it always can? Will he now demand respect for Moqtada al-Sadr, the second most popular mofo in Iraq?

Harry , however, has advised Hari against his fidelity to the Iraqi majority: "My solidarity is not with ‘the Iraqis’ and it never has been. My solidarity is with Iraqi and Kurdish democrats and it is clear at the moment who their main enemy is."

US soldiers? Shurely not! Hari retorts that "If we defy the majority in the name of democracy, what kind of Iraq will the democrats eventually inherit? Won't it be even more radicalised and angry? Won't the democrats - rightly - look out of touch and be deposed swiftly?"

But, after all, Johann, there is a get-out clause which you may adopt. Turn your mind back to his debate with Media Lens :

"Perhaps you don't understand this, but mob rule and democracy are different things. If we determined our policies by who could get the biggest crowd onto the street, we would have the death penalty, deportation of asylum seekers, withdrawal from the EU and god knows what else."

So, Johann could give up tail-coating the opinion polls and make a recommendation based on his view of the actors involved and the likely consequences. It would be unlikely to result in a substantial alteration of his views (which probably reveals something in itself), but it would oblige him to cease this intellectual subterfuge of ducking behind the nearest Iraqi majority. The trouble, of course, with this argument is that he would then be obliged to forget about justifying the war on the post-hoc basis that opinion polls taken after the war showed a majority of Iraqis felt it was worth it. Still, if you want to help Johann reach a failsafe conclusion, you can e-mail him at johann@johannhari.com. As he says "I don't have a fully-formed view on this and I'm eager to hear from everyone." Muck in, chaps!

Miraculous Media Magic

2004-05-02T19:37:00.000Z

Sometimes, at moments of crisis, people will pull off the most astounding feats of spiritual, intellectual and physical might. During the build-up to the assault on Iraq, the weight of evidence against Saddam Hussein’s possessing any WMD was to the British press as the gossamer weight of a ten-ton truck to the mother who, by main strength alone, lifts it off the foot of her beloved toddler. Nowadays, the gathering tonnage of evidence against the official story on 9/11 floats featherlike, way above the heads of mainstream hacks. Several billion barrels of oil lurking beneath the Iraqi sands, and quite possibly evident even to the erstwhile oil-company chimp George W Bush, have failed almost entirely to merit media comment in connection with the US/UK assault.

Remember too that these stunning feats of intellectual discipline were already being performed while our happier brethren still thought Iraq’s military occupiers would be pelted with flowers by the grateful natives and possibly solicited for protection from the Great Iranian Nuclear Beast. Now that this pleasant scenario appears a bit less attainable, still greater miracles may soon be required. Happily, it looks as if they’re on the way.

Let’s recap the seriousness of the problem, just so you can really appreciate the wonder being performed. The original excuse for our little adventure, Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction, started off ludicrous and then just kept getting more so. Student dossiers and fake intelligence claims eventually gave way to compassionate screeches for regime change, and then finally to de facto bilateral secession from the United Nations in the name of international law, justice, humanitarianism and generally being nice. Then, having systematically bombed and starved Iraq for a decade or so, we dropped a lot more bombs and invaded the place.

Strangely, although regime change was achieved in short order, there was a decided lack of floral peltings. Possibly some of the ungratefulnatives remembered the 1980s, when Saddam Hussein was a favoured satrap of Britain and the US among others; possibly a few more Iraqis remembered 1991, after the Kuwaiti Freedom Turkey Shoot, when an uprising which might have deposed Saddam was savagely put down with the active connivance of Britain and the United States. Some of these Middle Eastern types just can’t let go of a grudge. In any case, the idea that Britain and the US might be welcomed as liberators, just like in France ’44, has now gone up fairly conclusively in the smoke belching out of Falluja. And even before Falluja, the weapons of mass destruction had been conspicuous by their absence. All in all, rather a traumatic sequence of events for your caring cruise-missile leftie. At some point in the middle of April, as the Americans pounded Falluja, Johann Hari noted that his pizza was “melancholic”.

Now to the miracles. The first hint that I’m aware of came from the Guardian’s leader writer as far back as 6 March. At the finale of a somewhat over-tactful assessment of Tony Blair’s latest sermon, the leader “Seriously in conflict” demanded rhetorically:

“who will swear that Saddam's Iraq would not have been … a threat had it been able?”

This is really quite remarkable. The ethical problems involved in illegally pre-empting non-existent weapons are gloriously swept away on a wave of subjunctives. Yes, yes, Saddam’s Iraq was no threat; but had it been able to be a threat, it almost certainly would have been one. Or do you dare to swear the contrary? Seriously, now – in the face of such arguments, what is one to do?

The trouble with attacking people on the strength of a possibility which just might take place someday, of course, is that it’s a little difficult to prove one’s case in advance, even if one is prepared to swear to it; and if one simply rules that cases don’t need to be proven in advance, all sorts of abuses can go on. Imagine what might happen if the wrong kind of foreigner got hold of the Guardian’s doctrine and twisted it to his dire and disgusting will. Nuremberg 1946, for instance:

“Who will swear, Mr Prosecutor, that the millions who died in the camps would not have been a threat to the Third Reich had they been able?”

Clearly, in order to prevent inconveniences of this kind, it would be advisable to have the truth on one’s own side as far as possible. And of course, there are only two ways to determine the truth with regard to events that haven’t happened yet. One is to wait for the events to take place, which has the dubious advantage of being perfectly legal; but of course, by the time an event has happened it is generally too late to pre-empt it, and whence then the great Bush-Blair legacy to international relations?

The other way to get at the truth of future events is to become clairvoyant; but even here there’s a catch. Suppose that, having achieved knowledge of the future, you observe Saddam Hussein preparing the mushroom cloud for London. Naturally, you rush to pre-empt him. But once he has been pre-empted, the threat no longer exists and therefore the mushroom cloud is no longer part of the future. But if the mushroom cloud is not part of the future, how can your clairvoyance warn of the threat? Clearly what is required is not clairvoyance merely, but the ability to predict – reliably, of course – events that might possibly have taken place, had other events not occurred to stop them.

Bearing in mind that media hacks are the kind of people who can’t even keep the past straight, this might seem a bit of a tall order; but there are encouraging signs. On 14 April, Johann Hari noted in the Independent:

“if the invasion had not happened, Saddam would have killed 70,000 people in the past year. Not sanctions: Saddam's tyranny alone.”

Apparently, this was according to the Human Rights Centre in Kadhimiya. How the Human Rights Centre arrived at this figure, or what evidence Johann Hari may have for its reliability, are obviously not questions we need to worry about. In the same article, Hari states that

“In Washington on Thursday, Blair will argue that inflating Sadr into an iconic monster - and arresting or killing him - will only make matters worse.”

Note the quality of that insight into Blair’s brain – direct, incisive, reassuring and, presumably, entirely independent of the wishes, thoughts and fantasies of your humble servant, Johann Hari.

David Aaronovitch has picked up the knack as well:

“Whatever the rights and wrongs of the invasion of Iraq, this much is certain: had it not been for this 'basic mistake', far worse things would be happening to Iraqis in Abu Ghraib every single day.” (Observer, 2 May)

Although to the ignorant and backsliding it may appear to deal entirely with conjectural events, this assertion is “beyond conjecture”, apparently. Well, that settles that, then.

I have great hopes for this new journalistic faculty. The discipline at work should stand as an example to all. To be able to claim, as Aaronovitch does, that events which have not happened and will not happen are “beyond conjecture”, while at the same time obliterating from memory a set of facts as obtrusive and disgusting as “Tanker Girl” Condi Rice’s Zorg-style hairdo, is surely the feat of a journalistic yogi, as astounding in its way as lying, unharmed, on a bed of nails. Such power of the will, such ability to lie, unharmed, in the face of the most brutal facts, should not be allowed to go unrecognised. I look forward to the development of Aaronovitch’s and Hari’s miraculous abilities in more and more pro-war journalists, as their crisis gets deeper, and deeper, and deeper.

Martin Kettle - "I'm not Blair's spokesman"

2004-04-17T05:43:00.000Z

There is No Alternative to Tony Blair's Iraq Policy

The title of this Guardian article by Martin Kettle pretty much describes his status as 'absolutely not Blair's spokesman. Really!'.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From David Bracewell

Dear Martin Kettle,

Based on -

- the actions of the West to quell democracy in the Arab world in the last half century,
- US actions under Bush in regard to Venezuela and Haiti, exposing a loathing for democracy,
- US-imposed radical economic restructuring and privatisation of Iraq's commons against international law,
- the deaths of vastly more than ten thousand people, mostly civilian - the list of US/UK actions showing nothing but contempt for Iraqis is so so long,
- Blair's failure to follow through on similar puffy commitments regarding Afghanistan which is sinking anonymously beneath US-backed warlordism,

can you please point me to any material - Blair's actions, US or UK policy recently or in the past, it's your choice - that would suggest that "freedom, sovereignty, tolerance, prosperity and human rights" are things we've actually put on the table?

Kindly

David Bracewell
Nelson BC
Canada

p.s. Here, for your perusal is the November 2001 statement by Blair in relation to a country he rarely mentions now -

"We have to show the same urgency in helping to create a broad based Afghan government and the same commitment to the long-term reconstruction of Afghanistan as we have done in our military strategy.

We have an obligation to the Afghan people perhaps especially to the women in Afghanistan that we should not and most not run away from but that we must fulfill."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From Martin Kettle

Hi

I'm not Blair's spokesman, and those were his words not mine. The whole point of my piece was to dissociate my views from these vapid generalisations.

But I think he would probably reply that Sierra Leone was a modestly encouraging example of his approach working quite well. The difference in SL, of course, is that Blair wasn't playing second fiddle to Bush.

MK

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From David Bracewell

Hi,

The Sierra Leone 'UN' intervention stands in the grand imperial tradition - the UK furthering its control over resources charading as mid-term humanitarianism. The key to British motivation is in Sandline's role in returning huge diamond deposits to foreign control. But there is also the lustre of the UK taking its place alongside France in West Africa - again. Let's honestly place much of the disaster there at the door of the UK's 'ethical', explosive arms policy in the 1990s and its corrupting meddling since 1961. If Blair were acting in good faith it would be by way of minimal restitution, not a humanitarian helping hand. Yet it's not in good faith. It's just good for business and chock full of prestige for the UK. You can tell him that from me.

Of course, SL is an example Blair would probably give, not yourself. I think I understand. You're not his mouthpiece here.

However, these were your words - "It is indeed vitally important that the outcome in Iraq should be freedom rather than fundamentalism". They precisely echo Blair's. In this case, you do seem to be his mouthpiece. The fundamentalism referred to is 'Islamic' fundamentalism, I'd suppose, not the fundamentalism of Western violence and corporate domination amounting to outsourced imperialism; and the freedom is surely that which is promised by Bremer, US corporate carpetbaggers and Iraqi exiles, the leader of whom is a thieving felon: the freedom to sell off your commons at bargain basement prices and host hundreds of thousands of your enemy in 14 huge military bases. A bargain difficult to refuse. By the way, on what basis would you think that a very sophisticated and secularised people are faced with Islamic fundamentalism absent our guiding hand?

Iraq surely can do better than to give the US and the UK another, yet another, a whole nuther, chance to bring it the joys of 'freedom' - as we call it now, since democracy seems a long way off. The US/UK have been the most murderous influence in the 20th C history of Iraq, the Iran-Iraq war supporting rather than negating this.

It takes enormous cultural obtuseness to think we are suddenly offering better than we've given for nigh on a century. Isn't nearly a century of murderous work by Anglo-Saxon 'fundamentalists' enough to make you think that perhaps the best solution is that we get the hell out of there and let the Iraqis sort it through with themselves and others they, the overwhelming majority, choose to trust? How can the logic of allowing a chronically violent bunch of goons any control over their longstanding victims seem appropriate to you?

Kindly

David Bracewell

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Love to Johann Hari...

2004-04-15T21:47:00.000Z

It’s all over, bar the shooting. John Simpson, the BBC’s man in Baghdad, is rarely comfortable without a flak jacket around his estimable girth and the ringing of distant bullets in his ears. He evinces such intimidating worldliness that when he and his camera crew were fired on and seriously injured by US jets during the first phase of the war on Iraq, he was able to flash his glittering eyes at the camera and announce that it was no more than a scratch. Such is his comportment on the news of late. Laconically, he explains that the situation (in Iraq) is really quite calm. There is sporadic gunfire, but nothing like a few days ago. People may be intimidated by the recent spate of kidnappings, but it’s nothing he can’t handle. The ebullient Mr Simpson is inured to war and turmoil, and one imagines blasts of shrapnel that could down a rhinoceros bouncing off his leathery hide.

"It's all pretty quiet, really."

I recall similar optimism about a year ago when Simpson appeared on Ruby Wax’s morning BBC show (in an indecent moment, the Beeb decided that daytime television could also be entertaining). He described Afghanistan’s recovery following the American ouster of the crazy Caliphs of Kabul. Would the Taliban make a resurgence, Ruby wondered, eyes agleam with fear of the bhurka-botherers. No! John laughed, with demonic mirth. They’ve gone. Like post-war Germany, no one has ever been a Talib, no one knows one, and few would deign to say they’d met one on the flight to Kashmir. He then recounted a surreal, but traumatic encounter with make-up wearing Taliban fighters who clacked toward him on high heels, pointing Kalashnikov rifles. Women wore the burlap sacks while their theocrat masters wore the eyeliner and spike heels, brandishing weapons and mascara as certain San Francisco dwellers are known to do. And suddenly, with a magical poof, they had disappeared into a thousand tanning salons and manicurists.

The Taliban, of course, are not gone. Instead, they fight pitch battles for control of the country with the old warlords, the very same who made the Taliban seem like a good idea in the first place. The lesson was clear. Words like “stability” are always relative terms, especially when uttered by someone who drifts to sleep to the gentle lullaby of conflagration. I feared a similar Panglossian streak had befallen Johann Hari until his recent confessional for The Independent. As it transpires, Hari has been tortured by doubt and worry, like a lapsed Catholic - he is nothing if not reflective. Hari reports that his decision to support a US invasion was consolidated in Kerbala in 2002, where he witnessed some of the bizarre cruelty of Saddam’s power. (I recall him telling an ITV news magazine show that he had known Iraqis who were ready to commit suicide if the war didn't come soon. I hope he knew a few who now no longer have that choice.) Having formerly believed that Bush was on the imperial road to Damascus, paved with malign intent, he now believed that liberation worked in mysterious ways. Whatever the motives, war would bring peace, and occupation would bring emancipation. Come 2004, the citizens of Kerbala are hearkening to a new redemption song. Armed and blessed, the Shi’ites of Iraq are belatedly giving Bush his devoutly wished for uprisings. Hari is aghast. The exact same square in which he had been touched by epiphany is now the scene of riot. The level of security and welfare is just south of that in Beirut during the wild heyday of Israeli expansionism.

Johann Hari: Glum.

Hari confesses his doubts to some Iraqi friends, ex-pats working for the Iraqi Prospect Group . One of them, a “feisty” lass, admits to similar feelings but cheerfully dispenses a pat formula for Hari to put in his column. You see, supporting the invasion doesn’t necessitate support for every US concoction and confection in Iraq. It has been, says Hari’s friend, an ABC in how to breed terrorists. One may be angered, depressed, appalled by what the United States has done to Iraq since emancipation yet still support the invasive surgery that cut out the cancer. Since the Iraqi Prospect Organisation was, according to Hari, "set up to convince the world that the Iraqi people wanted and needed Saddam's regime to be overthrown, even if that meant an invasion" and to "persuade people that the anti-war movement did not speak for the Iraqis or Kurdish people" it is not difficult to sympathise with this ideological gesture.

Would that it was so simple. Unfortunately for the imperialist internationalists of the liberal press, the consequences of this invasion were predictable to all but the congenitally purblind. The uneasy separation of motive from outcome, which Hari blithely assumes in theory, is inoperable in practise. Hari is disgusted by the extremist neo-liberalism being imposed on Iraq – the same, he notes, which has decimated much of Latin America and Africa. But did not the aggressors announce this intention quite plainly (hidden in plain view, as it were)? Hari is depressed by tales of US brutality in Iraq – should he really be cheering this on? He would like to say he doesn’t have to, but I’m afraid it is a well-established hallmark of imperial occupiers that they exert brutal authority over conquered territory if the population is not sufficiently compliant. These lessons were available in Afghanistan, Kosovo and Bosnia – the crucial difference being that there hasn’t been much of a resistance of any kind to the occupiers in these countries. Hari’s favoured outcome of a peaceful, post-war Iraq depends on Iraqi servitude.

Stay In Line, Motherfuckers.

Hari then stuns us with some “facts” which he hopes will save him from absurdity. No chance. He cites a claim from the Human Rights Centre in Khadimiyah that Saddam Hussein would have killed 70,000 people in Iraq over the next year if he had remained in power. They’ve found documents, you see. And since the occupiers have not managed to kill a total of 70,000 people over the last year, lives have been saved. Apparently, Saddam sat in his palaces, surrounded by courtiers, and with evil cackling crossed out names from the census. Further, extensive records were kept on who was to be murdered this year. We're in doubting mode, and strange to relate, I doubt Hussein’s murderous state catalogued its own sins, much less recorded exact figures for intended killings over the next year. I further doubt that if this figure is a statistical projection it has anything beyond speculative validity. I'm not saying that 70,000 is above Saddam's touch. But it would seem to contradict a trend toward diminishing human rights violations noted by Human Rights Watch recently. And it would certainly be a conspicuous jump on the previous year. (I did e-mail Johann while composing this article and asked him if there was any way of reading a first-hand report, or even an explication of these figures in some depth. He repeated that the figures had been "calculated by going through the newly opened Ba'athist archives". I had similar trouble getting answers out of John Sweeney when he made outlandish claims about Iraq's dead babies - he invited me to visit Iraq, which I took to be somewhat in the spirit of the spider inviting the fly to supper.) Still, taking the statistics at face value offers no help at all. Even if it is true, and "lives have been saved" in that dilute sense, we have yet to see what awaits us. It took a day for the US forces to kill approximately 400 in Fallujah - and the scary thing is that records are made to be broken. The trouble with utilitarianism, especially in such a heavy-handed guise, is that we are never done with consequences. The reductio ad absurdum of such a stance is the vapid phrase-mongering of Chairman Mao who, asked about the outcome of the French Revolution, said "It is too soon to tell".

Hari’s extreme utilitarianism sets him up for yet another pratfall. He reminds us of opinion polls taken in Iraq in which a majority of Iraqis say that their lives have improved since the end of Saddam Hussein’s regime. He suggests that the polls cannot be blighted by public apprehension of the coalition, forcing them to attenuate their criticisms of the new imperial masters because, after all, they do say a lot of bad things about the coalition. It would be odd if conditions didn’t improve somewhat upon the release of strangling sanctions. And, it is true that colonial despotism is more liberal than Ba’athist tyranny - sometimes. These axiomatic truths, Hari says, ought to be confronted by the anti-war Left. Of the former one need only say that it is over a decade too late. Of the latter, one is inclined to wonder if Iraqis might not have been better placed to liberate themselves in more propitious circumstances had the US not blocked their insurgency in 1991, then subjected them to a genocidal sanctions regime (quite on purpose, as DIA documents reveal).

Liberation.

Hari says that only 15% of Iraqis support an immediate end to the occupation. Those who marched to End the Occupation Now, he says, are supported by only 15% of Iraqis. He got this little canard from Harry’s Place, where he occasionally romps. True, some Iraqis would prefer the troops to stay until June 30th, or until security is achieved. He does not mention that most Iraqis oppose the planned long-term military occupation, or that in their overwhelming numbers they say the best way to achieve security – the number one priority – is to hand over power to an elected, accountable Iraqi government. (Not the IGC which, an Iraqi tells me, is “rotten to the bore” with corrupt nonentities with less credibility than Saddam Hussein, as Hari’s polls also reveal). But Hari is mistaken about the objection to polling evidence. It isn’t that Iraqis are simply afraid the answer negatively. It is that the poll involves a conditional – namely, the successful invasion and occupation of Iraq. Retrospective opinion polls are not a particularly good way to judge the merits of a war. Hari’s devout fidelity to what he selects as genuine Iraqi opinion becomes quite comical as he ends his confessional-cum-triumphal.

Most Iraqis, he says, don’t want the occupation to end right away. They do want a democratic Iraqi government. They don’t want Muqtadr. But they’d sooner not see him killed either. So, Hari tailors his opinion to fit theirs – or rather, tailors theirs to fit his. He speaks for “most Iraqis”. “Most Iraqis” speak through him. The war has generated good consequences, which over-ride the bad (“accentuate the positive!”). Motives are irrelevant. The occupation should hang in there, ride out the (desert) storm, and hand over the government to a free Iraq. Unfortunately, to draw on a meteorological metaphor, the tornado engulfing Iraq is the result of two fronts colliding. One must vanquish the other. Remaining in Iraq (indefinitely, it now seems) is unlikely to mean anything other than the annihilation of US opponents with extreme force – a fact which court ideologists like Hari must perforce avoid acknowledging. If only I had “doubts” as vanquishable as Hari’s! Like the bewitched Hansel, he takes many wonderful and frightening paths through the woods only to arrive back at the same damn gingerbread house.

St Barham Salih

2004-04-10T18:56:00.000Z

The pro-war Left's favourite apostle of intervention in Iraq is Barham Salih, prime minister of the Kurdistan Regional Government in Sulaymaniyah. Nick Cohen never fails to cite him as the exemplar of international socialism and solidarity, and uses his rhetoric to condemn voices on the Left who object to the occupation of Iraq. Even the Late Christopher Hitchens exudes enthusiasm for this apparently authentic voice of resistance. I have never had much tolerance for such pretenses. The PUK, of which Barham Salih is one of the more senior spokespeople, has sold out its Kurdish comrades time and again through its filthy civil war with the KDP. Jalal Talabani, its leader, has kissed the cheek of Saddam here only to invite the Iranians in to kill his opponents there. In the mid-1990s, in fact, the Iranians were allowed to kill hundreds of their own dissident Kurds seeking refuge in northern Iraq, in return for their support in fighting the KDP.

Inconvenient facts aside, however, Salih has written an article for the Washington Post, and Harry's Place are over the moon about it.

I'll give you a flavour of some of the outlandish claims he makes (this published just yesterday, mind):

"While there is a grave and continuing terrorist threat, Iraq is not the violent disaster that naysayers depict..."

I'll let that one speak for itself.

The interim constitution "is the most liberal in the Islamic Middle East and is an achievement we can all take pride in."

Oddly enough, precisely this interim constitution has been derided as bullshit up one side and down the other by most Iraqis. It has the support of noone and the IGC will fall with its "Law of Administration" into the gutter the second US troops leave.

"More than a million Iraqi refugees have come back to their homeland, despite being told by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees that it was unsafe to do so.

The refugees have returned to a thriving economy characterized by improving services. A year into the new Iraq public health care funding is more than 25 times as much than under Hussein, and child immunization rates have risen 25 percent. The supply of drinking water has doubled..."

The figure for refugees returning to Iraq since the end of the war given by the UNHCR is 10,000 . A million is considerably above that estimate, so I'd be interested to know Salih's sources, or if he's just, well, lying his ass off in the service of the occupation with which he is colluding. The stuff about the thriving economy and health-care funding, even accounting for obvious exaggeration, would be more impressive if it weren't for the fact that sanctions have now been lifted - over a decade too late.

I won't waste your time with any more of Salih's propaganda efforts, except to quote this , also noted in Harry's Place:

"I believe that most Iraqis want the Coalition to stay. This is based on many independent polls. Regrettably, a vocal minority is able to dominate the airwaves-- it seems true that bad news sell better!"

Do you know, I was sure that the last opinion poll showed that 50.9% of Iraqis said they were opposed to the occupation of Iraq, while only 39% suported it .

So there you have it. Salih, an opportunist, a collaborator with an Iranian occupation and now a US occupation, and a propagandist of the most careless order. Right up the warniks' street, then.

Nick's comic book interpretation of Islam

2004-04-08T22:21:00.000Z

One of the biggest threats to the security of the UK and the wider western world is not of a military nature. Instead it is to do with the wilful ignorance of people who should know better. That threat is ignorance, and in particular the ignorance of Islam, and the Islamic extremists that we are apparently at war with. This ignorance will no doubt hinder our efforts in the war, as it is one of the basic strategic principles that knowledge of the enemy will give you a greater chance of success. However it isn’t my intention to discuss Islamic extremists themselves here. Instead I wish suggest that our ignorance comes from the mass media constructing comic book narratives of Islam and the War on terror that are inaccurate and exclude key elements

One such example of myth making is Nick Cohen’s recent article in the new statesmen. In it Cohen argues against the idea that our terrorist

"….enemies must at some level be reasonable, too. Surely such hatred must have been provoked by the west. Surely the solution must be for western governments to stop being provocative.”

“Provocative” isn’t rather an understatement when describing western foreign policy towards Islamic countries. We have invaded and occupied Iraq after previously killing over a million people with sanctions. All to overthrow a regime we installed in the first place. We have supplied massive quantities of arms to Saudi Arabia – an authoritarian monarchy with a terrible human rights record. We have also placed military bases in the country considered most holy to Muslims. We have given Israel military equipment and refused to condemn its human rights abuses. We have overthrown governments and installed dictatorships across the region. I think “provocative” is an understatement of western actions, and that our policies might just have a little something to do with the anger felt towards us.

Instead Cohen argues that this belief:

“… in a rational motive is an illusion. To sustain the rationalist fallacy, you must ignore vast amounts of evidence. In the Sudan, Iran, Afghanistan and Algeria, millions have died in Islamist wars and massacres that make Srebrenica and the World Trade Center appear paltry affairs. Islamist movements dedicated to persecuting Muslims who believe in the separation of church and state or the emancipation of women are not rational on any terms but their own. This seems a simple point to make. If you pay al-Qaeda and its imitators the compliment of reading what their leaders say, you find a cosmic dream of an Islamic empire dominating the world.”

So instead we in the west are facing an evil villain bent on world domnination, just like in comic books and cartoons, but never fear here is Super George and his sidekick Poodle Tony to save the day. Is it not possible that Cohen’s comic book view of the world is a tad simplistic? It’s certainly true that many across the Arab world would love to see a Pan –Arab state, its perhaps the equivalent of holding the view that a federal Europe would be a good thing. Furthermore whilst the commitment to human rights and the emancipation of women isn’t something high on the agenda of Islamic terrorists, one can hardly say the west has placed these things high on its agenda with regards to its policy towards the Middle East and central Asia. Secondly Cohen’s attempt at blaming the massacres of these wars on Islamic fascism its laughable to say the least. If he were to do even basic research he would find the causes of these wars were cold-war proxy battles, colonial liberation wars, or even the cliché of “tribal” violence.

Cohen goes on to further explain that the Islamic extremists motive is not just the pan Islamic empire, but also that “Islamo-fascism” is also motivated by an irrational belief in anti-semitic conspiracy theories, a belief in the evil powers of freemasonry (allied to the Jews) and that these groups are preventing god’s chosen people (Muslims) from achieving their religious utopia. He then quotes several historians who point out that such conspiracy theories were widely held by European Fascists. Cohen continues:

“I am not arguing that Islamism and Ba'athism are simple replicas of European thinking in the 1930s, however tightly they have embraced fascist ideas. History never repeats itself perfectly. But after what Europe has been through in the 20th century, Europeans ought to be able to diagnose the disease.”

In other words these terrorists are simply mad conspiracy theorists who are fascists, and presumably should be ignored as their motives have nothing to do with western policy. They are merely just cranks who obviously no genuine grievance. It’s certainly true of a few individuals in the movement, but can it really be the case that anyone in the Muslim world with a grievance is just being paranoid? Also notice how Cohen manages to place Ba’athism and Islamism together, still desperate to link the invasion of Iraq with the “war on terrorism” eh Nick ;-).

The linkage of Islamism and Fascism is tenuous at best. So a few individuals are paranoid conspiracy theorists. One can also add some members of the Christian right in the US, the militia movements and Richard Nixon to this group influenced by European Fascism. Perhaps Cohen is suggesting that all conspiracy theorists are influenced by fascism as well. Now I know that we on the left do tend to over-use the term Fascism to describe those holding ideas we disagree with, but Cohen takes such over-use to the absurd using this logic. Perhaps Cohen would think I’m a fascist too for once reading a book on CIA covert operations (Killing Hope by William Blum if you’re interested).

In actuality “conspiracy theorists” are to be found throughout every political Ideology They are a very diverse group of people, as anyone who spent an hour searching for “conspiracy theories” on Google would find out.

Now I’m not suggesting that all Islamic terrorism is a rational response motivated by genuine grievances, in fact I think generalisation of the movement itself is dangerous. However I’m noting that Cohen seems to be excluding the mere possibility that Islamic terrorism might have something to do with the genuine grievances Muslims have. He fails to explore the many different aspects of Islam itself, the many different groupings in the region and the many interpretations of Islam. Instead he opts for the simplistic notion that Islamic terrorists are mad fascists who we shouldn’t listen too.

If ever there was a more ignorant or stupid thing to do it would be dismiss the motives of Islamic Terrorists as irrational. The reality is that Islam is the world’s fastest growing religion, and the military balance of power has changed. Its now easier for non-state actors to engage in warfare, what we call terrorism, and the technology of war is more deadly than ever. If we are to survive the 21st century we are going to have to move beyond comic book and cartoon narratives of war.

Analysis: A Liberal Definition

2004-04-07T18:44:00.000Z

The Guardian for 6 April includes an “analysis” by Sir Timothy Garden, who is the 2004 Wells professor at Indiana University and a former assistant chief of the UK defence staff. “Coalition forces fight a losing battle to win the peace” contains a number of remarkable ideas about the situation in Iraq. The title itself seems under the impression that peace has broken out there, and in the first paragraph Professor Garden writes that the troops are “trying to bring peace”, as though the war were of anyone's making but our own.

In the second paragraph, Professor Garden writes:

“Politicians and the public expect armed forces to solve the security problem in any trouble spot.”

Professor Garden's acquaintances among politicians and the public must be rather naïve. Armed forces are generally expected to obey their orders. Whether those orders include “bringing peace” or sowing mayhem is up to the politicians who originate them. This elementary fact somewhat vitiates Professor Garden's next point:

“armies can do no more than attempt to hold the ring until there is a political settlement.”

Again, this may be news to Professor Garden, but armies do not wait passively until a political settlement descends, like summer lightning, out of the infinite blue. Armies are one of the ways in which politicians impose their will on people. “Political settlement” is politicians’ jargon for a success in this amusing hobby, and Professor Garden, having worked in the UK Ministry of Peace, surely ought to know this.

In the next paragraph, we read that

“Few seem clear on the process by which the administration will gain legitimacy”

The reasons for this lack of clarity could do with some analysis, not least in the Guardian’s own leaders, where the assault on Iraq is routinely described as “unwise” (the choice for 6 April) or with some similarly anodyne synonym. It’s been said so many times already, but apparently it bears repeating: The main reason why the process of legitimation in Iraq is unclear is that the present administration in Iraq is the result of an illegal military assault. It is always rather difficult for an illegal administration to gain legitimacy, since lack of legitimacy is the very definition of illegality. You can’t run a country legally when you haven’t a leg to stand on.

“Attacks from residual Saddam loyalists have been more sustained and effective than predicted,” mourns the professor. This seems to imply that all the attacks on the occupying forces in Iraq have been by “residual Saddam loyalists”. If that is what he meant, I wonder how he knows. If it is not what he meant, I wonder which attacks have not, in his opinion, been by “residual Saddam loyalists” and how he accounts for them. One hears a good deal these days about the villainous machinations of militant Iraqi clerics, such as Muqtada al-Sadr – hardly the kind of people who are likely to resent the coalition for removing Saddam Hussein. It seems just possible that some Iraqis may resent us for one or two other things, like starved families and depleted uranium; but Professor Garden has more important matters to discuss. The Allied forces are in a difficult position:

“They must help the ordinary Iraqis to feel safe. But they need to protect themselves, and take on the attackers.”

Well, after all, it’s hardly our fault if, having been bombed, starved, bombed again and invaded by those same Allied forces, the ordinary Iraqis are too stupid to feel safe in their presence. Of course, the Iraqis have been rescued at last from that evil tyrant whom we propped up through the 1980s; but it seems that this also is too subtle a blessing for the poor things to understand.

As so often, though, life’s little ironies can have unpleasant consequences:

“If the insurgency provokes the coalition forces, then the steady progress to a peaceful democracy in Iraq will be halted.”

That would certainly be too bad. It could have been worse still – for instance, if any steady progress to a peaceful democracy had been detectable there in the first place. It would be interesting to learn why the good Professor writes in terms of the insurgency provoking the coalition, rather than the presence of a foreign invader provoking the insurgency. The answer to that, it seems, is only a couple of paragraphs down:

“As with much of recent Iraqi history, it is easy to say how it could have been done better.”

This is certainly true. “Don’t do it at all” is so easy to say that most of the world managed to say it, one way or another, before the invasion even started. “Get out” is just as easy to say, and doesn’t take half as long. The difficult part in both cases is in inducing the Ministry of Peace to pay attention.

Professor Garden's final paragraph is a wonderful farrago of evasion and euphemism. “With each twist of the spiral, it becomes more difficult to be optimistic for the future” – notice that lovely abstract phrasing, as though the occupation and its consequences were somehow out of human hands. “The military will do their best to keep a window open for the diplomats” – see above, under “holding the ring”. The final sentence, “[A]ny withdrawal in the middle of the year would ensure that the current guerrilla actions turn into civil war” quietly exonerates the US/UK forces from any responsibility for the violence their presence provokes, and simultaneously provides an excuse for them to stay.

And that’s what the Guardian calls “analysis”.

Christopher Hitchens' "Existential Despair".

2004-04-03T17:40:00.000Z

In a rather foolish and self-flattering article for the Wall Street Journal's Opinion Journal the Late Christopher Hitchens makes interesting meat of the Fallujah atrocities. Yes, these pictures are "Dantesque", but after all, "a broken and maimed and traumatized Iraq was in our future no matter what", because of the way that Saddam and his regime had been "playing off tribe against tribe, Arab against Kurd and Sunni against Shiite", thus preparing the way for "a Hobbesian state of affairs". (The language of Hobbes in this context is rather revealing, since that is exactly the language of neocons like Robert Kagan who like to pretend that the US is the vanguard of order in a disorderly world. Does Hitchens now believe this?)

And Hitchens plays seer:

"[W]ho knows what the death-throes of the regime would have been like? We are entitled, on past experience, to guess. There could have been deliberate conflagrations started in the oilfields. There might have been suicidal lunges into adjacent countries. The place would certainly have become a playground for every kind of nihilist and fundamentalist. The intellectual and professional classes, already gravely attenuated, would have been liquidated entirely."

Hitchens: "I'll Kick Saddam's Fucking Teeth In".

Who indeed knows, Christopher? Who besides Hitchens would have the chutzpah to bewail the conditions of an imaginary future (apparently unavoidable except through war) which already exist in the present, thanks to the war? Hitchens also has a complaint about the fact that we may no longer cite WMDs as a valid pre-war concern:

"Prescience, though, has now become almost punishable ... Given Saddam's record in both using and concealing weapons of mass destruction, and given his complicity--at least according to Mr. Clarke--with those who bombed the World Trade Center in 1993 and with those running Osama bin Laden's alleged poison factory in Sudan, any president who did not ask about a potential Baathist link to terrorism would be impeachably failing in his duty."

The point would be more impressive if all Bush had done was ask relevant questions. But the administration did not simply ask. They concocted, they confected, the colluded in a miasma of deception and exaggeration. They bluntly stated what they knew to be fiction:

"Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction."
Dick Cheney, Speech to VFW National Convention, August 26, 2002.

"Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised."
George W. Bush, Address to the Nation, March 17, 2003

"We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat."
Donald Rumsfeld, ABC Interview, March 30, 2003.

Rumsfeld: "I Asked Him, 'Is That A WMD In Your Pocket, or Are You Just Pleased to See Me?"

"I'm not surprised if we begin to uncover the weapons program of Saddam Hussein -- because he had a weapons program."
George W. Bush, Remarks to Reporters, May 6, 2003.

(All quotations owed to Billmon .

Hitchens avers:

"It's becoming more and more plain that the moral high ground is held by those who concluded, from the events of 1991, that it was a mistake to leave Saddam Hussein in power after his eviction from Kuwait."

Indeed, siezing "the moral high ground" has proven something of an obsession for Hitchens as neophytic imperialist. (Ever since the Blumenthal fiasco, in fact). But I wonder if Hitchens seriously expects educated readers (which obviously doesn't include the bulk of WSJ readers) to accept that the decision to leave Saddam in power was simply a "mistake"? Could it have been related to the fact that the US preferred an Iraq that was united under Saddam as a counter-weight to Iran to a perhaps federated Iraq with a pro-Iranian government? Isn't this the reason why the US government acted so swiftly to thwart an uprising it appeared to have triggered? Why, for example, General Schwarzkopf allowed Iraq to fly helicopter gunships in areas with no coalition forces, effectively freeing them up to crush the uprising. And General Sir Peter de la Billiere obviously understood this when he said:

"The Iraqis were responsible for establishing law and order. You could not administer the country without using the helicopters." (Ibid.)

John Major put the matter even more succinctly:

"I don't recall asking the Kurds to mount this particular insurrection. We hope very much that the military in Iraq will remove Saddam Hussein."(John Major on ITN, 4 April 1991)

Or, as General Brent Scowcroft had it:

"We clearly would have preferred a coup. There's no question about that." (Interview on ABC news 26 June 1997 quoted in Sarah Graham-Brown, Sanctioning Saddam. The Politics of Intervention in Iraq (London: I.B. Tauris,1999), p. 19.).

Hitchens is on even better form when defending the neocons, somewhat recycling the line Anne Clwyd tried some days ago:

"People like Paul Wolfowitz are even more sinister than their mocking foes believe. They were against Saddam Hussein not just in September 2001 but as far back as the 1980s."

If this is so, perhaps Hitchens would care to explain why Rumsfeld was busy shaking Saddam Hussein's hand? Why Richard Perle as Assistant Secretary of Defense for Reagan between 1981 and 1987 offered no rebuke to the flagrant support for Saddam's atrocities? Or why Paul Wolfowitz himself was busy assisting a tyrant with perhaps an even worse record than Saddam Hussein in Indonesia? If mass murder and oppression really is his concern, I mean?

Instead of pondering the transparent (if not lucid) problems of his own position, Hitchens would rather throw some questions at the antiwar movement:

"I debate with the opponents of the Iraq intervention almost every day. I always have the same questions for them, which never seem to get answered. Do you believe that a confrontation with Saddam Hussein's regime was inevitable or not? Do you believe that a confrontation with an Uday/Qusay regime would have been better? Do you know that Saddam's envoys were trying to buy a weapons production line off the shelf from North Korea (vide the Kay report) as late as last March? Why do you think Saddam offered "succor" (Mr. Clarke's word) to the man most wanted in the 1993 bombings in New York? Would you have been in favor of lifting the "no fly zones" over northern and southern Iraq; a 10-year prolongation of the original "Gulf War"? Were you content to have Kurdish and Shiite resistance fighters do all the fighting for us? Do you think that the timing of a confrontation should have been left, as it was in the past, for Baghdad to choose?"

Very well. The answer to the first question is no. The second question is therefore rendered null. The answer to the third question is that I did know this and, oddly enough, it has absolutely nothing to add to the American case. The apparent story is that Saddam wanted to build North Korea's missiles for them - but the North Koreans stiffed him. The only remaining mystery to be cleaned up is how such a production facility could have possibly avoided detection by American sattelites? The answer to the next question is that I can't possibly say, although I'm sure that neoconservatives like former CIA director James Woolsey and Laura Mylroie of the American Enterprise Insititute are in no way ideologically motivated when they attempt to attach Saddam Hussein to this attack. In answer to the question of no-fly zones, I don't see what difference it would have made. They had become all but irrelevant in southern Iraq following the US backed suppression of the Shi'a uprising, and in the North following repeated incursions by both Turkish forces and Saddam Hussein's army (invited in by Barzani's Kurdish faction). As to our contentedness with allowing Shi'ite and Kurdish forces to "do all the fighting for us", I don't know how much worse this would be to have them do all the fighting against "us". Indeed, many Shi'ites now longer have that choice because "we" have slaughtered them and their families while wrecking their country through sanctions and war. The last question presumes a positive answer to question number one, which I have already declined to give.

So, answering him thus, what might he reply?

"I hope I do not misrepresent my opponents, but their general view seems to be that Iraq was an elective target ... This ahistorical opinion makes it appear that Saddam Hussein was a new enemy, somehow chosen by shady elements within the Bush administration, instead of one of the longest-standing foes with which the United States, and indeed the international community, was faced."

And let us give Hitchens some merit here. It is, of course, not the case that Hussein suddenly became an enemy in 2001. No, that happened in 1990. But the circumstances of the choice to wage war are revealing in that respect. The Project for the New American Century, a far right think-tank for whom Hitchens may consider writing some time, was screaming for an invasion as far back as 1998. Indeed, the first thing Donald Rumsfeld, a signatory to the PNAC, did when confronted with the destruction of New York and the Pentagon was to exploit it for such political capital:

" ... best info fast. Judge whether good enough hit S.H. at the same time, not just UBL ... Go massive. Sweep it all up. Things related and not."

Irony abounds at Hitchens' expense. Hussein had indeed been a chosen target of neoconservatives for some time, and they were content to usurp the agony of 9/11 to accomplish their geo-strategic goals. It was, in other words, "an elective target".

And Hitchens finishes with the sort of depraved casuistry he is always so eager to spot in his opponents:

"Fallujah is a reminder, not just of what Saddamism looks like, or of what the future might look like if we fail, but of what the future held before the Coalition took a hand."

Hitchens could do with a drink and a reminder that this is what the present looks like under conditions of apparent success. It is a direct result of a successful war, which ended with the successful over-running of an entire country, the appropriation of its political command and its economy. This was not an inevitable future, as he alleges, but a fact of life under the occupation. "Credit belongs", Hitchens suggests, to those who "accepted ... this long-term responsibility". Indeed, those who shoulder the white man's burden do "veil the threat of terror" even when "sloth and heathen Folly/ bring all your hopes to nought". They do "reap his old reward:/ The blame of those ye better,/ The hate of those ye guard". Credit to them, indeed. Credit them with Fallujah, with Baghdad and Najaf . Credit them with ten thousand ghosts . Credit them with a cluster of atrocities here, and a rifle of killings there. Why not, indeed. Credulous where it's due.

The Unbearable Liteness of Being An Idiot.

2004-04-01T20:33:00.000Z

I Can't Believe It's Not Imperialism!

Not without justice, you might think, Michael Ignatieff dubs America an “Empire Lite” in his eponymous book on the theme of humanitarian intervention. True, it has no colonies, no Raj, no satraps and no armies breaking open markets (well, leave the last one to linger). But, it does exercise global domination of unprecedented scale through its economic and military power, strictly ordering the international division of labour in its own image. It exercises regulative rather than constitutive power, determining the destiny of nations from afar but without the burdens associated with imperial tutelage. Now, for Ignatieff, this is no rebuke. He claims he has no interest in the use of the term ‘empire’ as an epithet, but only as a descriptive term enabling a sensible discussion of American power and its limits. The key question, he avers, “is whether empire lite is enough to get the job done”. Precisely what that “job” is becomes apparent in the rest of the book. (Introduction, Page 3).

Lite Headed.

Focussing on three fronts of American power – namely Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan – Ignatieff seeks to draw out some of the ways in which a modern empire, even one in denial as America is, is compelled to dispose of its power for the general good. His style is that of reportage, getting down on the ground and talking to the people who make it all happen. So, in Kosovo he has a chat with Bernard Kouchner, the former head of Medicin Sans Frontiere, and current proconsul to the region. He acts, Ignatieff reports, as an imperial governor, quelling disputes here, banning newspapers there when they threaten a revival of ethnic tensions, trying "to create political trust where none exists; to create democracy where none has ever taken root before”. (Page 72). Kouchner’s history as a soixant-huitard and then as a Socialist Party man as discussed perfunctorily. His courtship of the media is considered as an extension of his humanitarian work, while his work for the state is treated in light of his doctrine that humanitarianism cannot be divorced from politics and government.

A heroically sympathetic treatment of Kouchner as a humanitarian functions as a displacement for actually discussing the empirical imperial reasoning behind the Kosovo intervention, and the actuality of the occupation in Kosovo, which is only discussed in apologetic terms. Yes, there are problems but, as Kouchner complains, the media are only interested in failure. (Page 75). If everything were working fine, there would be no cameras in Kosovo. Indeed, the thought that simply asking the “imperial governor” for his opinion on the matter might not provide the most balanced or insightful view of the situation hardly seems to have occurred to Ignatieff. The reason for this is not mysterious. Ignatieff was one of the most passionately exercised liberals in favour of that particular intervention, and presumably has no particular desire to depict it as having led to a dysfunctional hotbed of nationalism, ethnic cleansing, corruption, child prostitution, and racist murder. Indeed, Ignatieff simply takes the Nato case for granted. The Nato bombardment "stopped Milosevic" and put a halt to his ethnic cleansing, even if the facts say otherwise. (Page 52). It was "the use of imperial power to support a self-determination claim by a national minority". (Pages 70-1).

Never mind. Kouchner "is a doctor, an MD, and in this case, his patient is a rugged, south Balkan province the size of Connecticut that remains on life support a year after the Nato intervention". Yes, Ignatieff really does write like this. And yes, the comparison with Connecticut really is for an American audience. According to Ignatieff, Kouchner has done a creditable job under the auspices of the UN. They have provided "shelter" for returning refugees, established a national currency (the Deutschmark) and restarted the schools. (Quite whether this reflects at all well on Nato and the occupying powers is another matter. At the end of the war, the World Bank assessed the damage to Kosovo as being worth $1.2bn . The bulk of this is almost certainly urban damage to housing and schools caused by bombing.) Where the occupation has failed has been in exactly that area in which it has exerted most energy, and in which it's primary justification has lain - getting "Kosovars to live with the remaining Serbs", a "significant embarrassment". (Page 51).

Kouchner Loves Up The Media.

Bridge Over Troubled Water

Ignatieff's segment on Bosnia acknowledges what he later seems to deny - that Nato intervention in Yugoslavia has "always been an imperial project" attempting to "integrate the Balkan peninsula - eventually - into the architecture of Europe, and, in the meantime, to reduce the flow of its three major exports: crime, refugees and drugs". (Page 32). Now, this explanation may seem much more compelling than those offered by Western spokespeople at the time, but it also omits the major explanation offered by Clinton for the Kosovo venture - Nato's "credibility". In fact, what Ignatieff does instead is expend several pages relating the story of a bridge being built in Mostar. It's sort of a symbol, if you like, for the attempt to build a bridge "between Croats and Muslims, a bridge between the internationals and the locals, and a bridge between the Muslim world and Europe". (Page 38). Its rebuilding will give Bosnia the "happy ending" it needs. (Page 39). Ignatieff doesn't go into much detail on the order of Bosnian rule, merely mentioning the threat of corruption here, the intervention of a "viceroy" there. There is no sustained analysis to speak of, merely impressionistic detail woven into a narrative of tedious detail and worthless prose. Consider this passage, where Michael talks to the French architect seeking to rebuild the bridge:

"So, I say, gesturing at all the loose stone gathered on the river bank below the bridge, you were going to put these back up exactly where they were? Pequeux looks disappointed. I have clearly understood nothing at all. 'We are not going to use the old stones. It's not going to be the old bridge. It's going to be a new bridge.'
'A new old bridge', I venture." (Page 42).

Comment is superfluous.

Mostar Bridge Before Its Destruction.

In Ignatieff's prose, deadpan observations pass for wit, platitudes pass for solemn vows, impressionism passes for insight. And that, literally, is the height of his narrative on Bosnia. For the truly curious, I suggest David Chandler's book Faking Democracy After Dayton.

Afghanistan: "Be Allah you can be".

The warlords may run huge swathes of Afghanistan as their own private fiefdom, and commit multiple acts of brutality but they "don't threaten the cohesion of Afghanistan as a nation. They don't threaten its existence as a state". (Page 83). But, according to Weber's definition, a state exerts hegemony over a specified territory by virtue of its monopoly of violence. "By that rule of thumb, there hasn't been a state in Afghanistan since the Soviet Union invaded in 1979 and the war of resistance began", and therefore the answer is to get "the guns out of the warlords' hands" and open up "space for political competition free of violence". (Pages 83-4). This won't happen as long as America is shoving money into the warlords' hands, but that doesn't detain Ignatieff. The trouble, as far as he is concerned, is that there aren't enough US troops in Afghanistan. "Imperial presence is the glue that holds Afghan deals together, but there is precious little of it to go around. Bosnia, which would easily fit into a couple of Afghanistan's thirty provinces, has 18,000 peacekeepers" while Afghanistan has none outside of Kabul. (Page 88).

The natives are insufficiently terrified, Ignatieff notes. "Nation-building lite looks too lite in Mazar to be credible for long. Authority relies on awe as much as one force, and where awe is missing, as it was in Mogadishu, Somalia, in 1993, Americans die." What a lament! "The British imperialists understood the power of awe", he complains. The only thing that "keeps the peace" in Afghanistan now is "the timeliness and destructiveness of American airpower". (Page 89). Aside from the ugly racism of the remark about Mogadishu (thousands of Somali deaths merit no comment), the ideological service this provides is unmistakeable. The trouble isn't too much bombing, but not enough bombing! The problem is that America will not provide "the illusion of permanence" so central to the survival of an empire. (Page 90).

Washington ought to "help Karzai, and the only help that counts in Afghanistan is troops", Ignatieff says. (Page 92). Interestingly enough, Karzai has had a few words himself to say on what "help" would count in Afghanistan. $27.5 billion would help , especially as "the country [is] still largely in ruins and plagued by a stubborn Taliban-led insurgency and militias run by regional warlords responsible for a worsening opium cultivation problem." Naturally, little help of the kind requested has been forthcoming. Plenty of American money is going to Afghan warlords , the kind Ignatieff thinks America is insufficiently terrorising.

Naturally enough, there is little analysis of worth in Ignatieff's discussion. Once again, it's all about chats he has had with this or that diplomat, things he has seen, a few significant details from aid organisations. But the fundamental assumptions of the book come out in the course of discussion. For example:

"Imperialism used to be the white man's burden. This gave it a bad reputation. But imperialism doesn't stop being necessary just because it becomes politically incorrect ... Nation-building is the kind of imperialism you get in the human rights era, a time when great powers believe simultaneously in the right of small nations to govern themselves and in their right to rule the world." (Page 106).

Perhaps there were other grounds for objecting to imperialism other than the racist modes of legitimation that went with it? And, Ignatieff's condescdending attitudes to the locals suggests that racism is not entirely gone from our lexicon:

"It would be too much to say that the brickmaker wants us infidels here, exactly, but I would venture that he knows he needs us..." (Page 108).

Who "us" is merits some thought. Ignatieff, posing as something of an intellectual, a daring liberal willing to stand apart from the government and challenge its insufficient dedication to the causes it espouses, in fact identifies with that state to the core. His vulgar apologetics for imperial hypocrisy crystallises the point somewhat:

"The fact that empires cannot always practise what they preach does not mean they do not believe what they preach ... Those who regard imperial attachment to human rights as entirely cynical might ask themselves what price consistency?" (Page 111).

Anyone with half an education could, with time and effort, compose an encyclopedia of examples in which it would be devastatingly simple for the US government (or other imperial forces) to honour stated commitments to human rights. Namely by not colluding with the terror. Say, if the US withdrew its present support for Colombian right-wing militias, or if it had not colluded with the Turkish regime as it bludgeoned the Kurds in the South. Or perhaps if Britain had not provided Suharto with a great list of names to start his killing machine. Just off the top of my head. But this does not matter. Those examples would surely, in the mind of an Ignatieff, be constructed as "liberal good intentions", as in the case of the Vietnam war:

"What defeated the Americans in Vietnam, among many other things, was a failure to understand that liberal good intentions, even when equipped with helicopter gunships, are no match for the aroused power of modern nationalism ... Vietnam was a titanic clash between two nation-building strategies, the Americans in support of the South Vietnamese versus the Communists in the north." (Page 117).

"Liberal Good Intentions".

Delay for a second your automatic internal dialogue. The cognitive dissonance between your knowledge of basic fact and this offensive bit of fiction is understandable, but stay it for a while. Think of fluffy clouds, and deer skipping over a brook. Think of sea gulls larking about over the rocks and cliffs. Think bunny rabbits, chocolates and Valentine Cards. Calmer now? I want you to take Michael Ignatieff for his word. I want you to learn this lesson once and for all, and don't you ever forget it:

"Liberal good intentions" means mass murder.

It's official now. Ignatieff may have failed to write an single intelligent sentence in this book. He may have made unconscious mockery of his own case. And he may have been disgustingly racist in the process. But he has unwittingly made plain what only a few radicals and Marxists have hitherto suspected. For this, at least, I shall forever cherish his tawdry little polemic. Dog-eared, rambling, depositing nuggets of shit everywhere, it truly is man's best friend.

The Vicar of Cynon Valley

2004-03-30T18:10:00.000Z

If the Vicar of Dibley is the nation’s third favourite comedy (appropriate enough, as it’s a third rate show), Ann Clwyd’s sermons ought to studied more carefully by scriptwriters and cast members alike. Comedy abounds in her latest Guardian elegy to Iraqi "freedom" , a dazzling commixture of imprecation and implication, hosannah and high praise, invocation and intimation. Clwyd, in a curious way, makes the war on Iraq seem the result of desperate appeals by Indict, the commission she headed to try and get Saddam Hussein and his band of thugs nailed in an international court of human rights, in absentia. Those attempts, she explained, were blocked by Russia, China and France – and further adds (perhaps with a Welsh cackle?) that Hussein is now to appear in court, defended by a French lawyer. French and a lawyer! Where will the perfidy end? Well, even the devil must have an advocate you know.

Clwyd leaves a lot to implication but if we leave that aside, the structure of her argument is obvious enough. She suggests that the 270 mass graves USAID claims to have discovered in Iraq provide vindication enough for the invasion of that country. USAID is not a non-governmental organisation, but a body of the US government, so perhaps we might treat those claims with some scepticism. Nevertheless, the suggestion merits consideration on its own terms - because it is, in fact, a perfect non sequitur. Presumably Clwyd would allow that there are important questions of agency, of motive, of means and method, and of the alternatives. These have all been outlined in ample detail by critics of the war, and I won’t repeat this beyond suggesting that one way to stop the suffering of Iraqis would have been to stop contributing to it. An end to the sanctions may well have given the Iraqis enough medication, food and comfort to develop and nurture their own civil society opposition to the regime. Human Rights Watch has suggested that there was a steady and marked decline in the level of internal repression in Iraq through the Nineties which disqualified, in their view, any contention that the bombing of Iraq was a humanitarian war. And, why not, the withdrawal of sanctions and the release of aid could have been tied to democratic reforms, just as human rights improvements are tied to EU entry for Turkey. No. Of course not. We can never negotiate with dictators (except when we do) and anyone who says otherwise is an appeaser. One might also note in passing the curious logic that says the discovery of crimes committed in the past with ample support from the West may retroactively legitimise an invasion by the West.

"Most Iraqis now see the moral and political imperative for the war as overwhelming", Clwyd avers. This is an interesting fabrication, since it suggests that even if Iraqis were never consulted, their concerns never actually discussed in the Pentagon and the War Room, the idea that they "now see" the justice of it validates imperialist aggression. Perhaps Clwyd will also make similarly imaginative use of those same polls to suggest that “most Iraqis now see that the Zionist Crusader alliance is a corrupt alien occuper whose main candidate for President has less credibility than Saddam Hussein”. Of course, “most Iraqis” have never communicated anything of the sort that Clwyd suggests. The much-touted poll for the BBC showed the Iraqi public evenly split on whether the invasion had been a humiliation or a liberation. And of the 48% who said that overall the invasion had been worth it, half said the invasion was "somewhat right" and the other half said it had been "completely right". Not exactly "overwhelming", then.

Clwyd is most entertaining when playing ventriloquist. "The Kurds remind us" that WMDs were a conventional tool of repression for Saddam, which he had used more than 200 times and they had "every expectation" that they would be used again. I wonder if these expectations developed before or after Jalal Talabani kissed Saddam Hussein on the cheek? Before or after Massoud Barzani invited Saddam into his turf to kill his opponents in the PUK? And where are these WMDs now that we’re on the subject? Whatever happened to that "human shredder" , Ann? (Interestingly, Ann checked that latter story with Paul Wolfowitz and was told it was a "spot-on piece". She was even invited to go talk to him about it, which she did).

The crimes of Saddam are energetically built up, constructed into a vast apparatus of demonology so that no doubt may remain as to what the absence of war has meant. "The regime cost the lives of at least two million people through its wars and its internal oppression", Clwyd tells us. Well, let her hang by her own rope, because the logical corrollary of this is that other regimes, responsible for far worse loss of life through war and repression, ought to be toppled from without. A UN force, for example, could overthrow the US government, with the territory secured by mercenary bands working with foreign armies. Resistance could be attributed to loyalty to the old regime, or "fascism" – accurately enough, since there would unquestionably be those elements powerfully at work in any resistance to the occupation. No. Don’t be silly. We don’t apply the same standards to them as we do to ourselves.

Most importantly of all, Iraq is now "free". In less than a hundred days, Iraq will be in the hands of Iraqis. By which we ought to mean, Iraq will be in the hands of a puppet government, a government of quislings and collaborators, a government of pullovers and pushovers. The Kurds, she says, are no longer to be driven from Mosul and Kirkuk – I’m happy to defer to the future on that one. For, just as much as the pro-war liberals enthuse about "liberated" Iraq, the soldiers on the ground can report a daily, non-stop wave of rocket/shell/bomb attacks. Most of these go unreported. Only when a few soldiers are killed or perhaps a massacre goes down in the city centre are we entitled to know about it. The IGC discusses the implementation of Shari’a law, of federalisation, of Clause 24, and Iraqis are left to puzzle over how much they will have left to vote on if and when elections come.

Clwyd's touching faith in US power would merit an essay of itself, but as I mentioned Wolfowitz before, allow me just to sample one conversation of hers with The Guardian on a conversation between herself and the Vulcan:

"What came out during that discussion is that Mr Wolfowitz himself had been a campaigner on Iraq since the end of the 1970s and that human rights in Iraq was a major concern of his - which I'd never realised before, obviously. I had a very interesting hour and a quarter of conversation with him, on Afghanistan, and also on Israel-Palestine."

This would certainly come as a bit of a shock to his employers in Washinton. From 1977 to 1980, he was Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Regional Programs, where he helped create the force that later became the United States Central Command. He then spent years as head of the State Department's Policy Planning Staff (1981-82), before becoming Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs (1982-86) and finally Ambassador to Indonesia (1986-89). In the latter post, he oversaw US support for human rights atrocities being carried out by the Suharto junta - a regime every bit as bloody as Saddam's. But Clwyd is not, at any rate, very choosy about where she garners political support from. Cynical politicians, drenched in blood, flash her a smile and a cheque and she's happy. In 1997, her organisation pocketed $3m from the US Congress to pursue its cause - on account of an Iraqi Liberation Act pushed by some of the same people who had rained misery on the Iraqis for years. Clwyd also found that Donald Rumsfeld had "a great line in self-deprecation" - which I suppose you'd have to have if you happen to have shook hands with a dictator whose abuses you're now pretending to be worked up about.

Naturally, no canard is eschewed in the service of Clwyd’s war, and the Rwandan genocide makes an appearance to warn against the evils of non-intervention. (Curiously, she never mentions the Congo). Noone, surely, doubts that this cruel negligence should never be repeated? I have my doubts about the ability of a Western force to adequately handle a civil war of any kind – the record in Somalia, Haiti and Kosovo is not encouraging. But, fortunately, I don’t have to tender such a tough judgment since no such similarity exists. Genocide involves the attempted extermination of a race, ethnicity or nationality through premeditated slaughter. This accusation may have been levelled at the Ba'athist regime in 1988 when many human rights groups did refer to the massacre of Kurds as genocide, but not in 2003. No matter, for Rwanda, and cases like it, bespeak the need to end the over-riding status of national sovereignty in international law. A new UN, Clwyd says, is needed that can act in the face of atrocity, and curtail human rights abuses where they emerge.

Would that we had come so far. Would that the UN was ever likely to become a reliable agency for freedom, human rights and all of the other lovely epithets Clwyd invokes in the service of Bush Almighty. But perhaps what she means is a UN that will not attempt to thwart the benign ventures of her boss and mentor, the Prime Minister. For what Clwyd’s article boils down to is an off-key hymn ripped out of the PM’s book of praise. The devil is identified, as are his minions and his appeasers (France, Russia, the tolerance of "liberal opinion"), while God is only known through those acting on his behalf in the Whitehouse and Downing Street. And, what’s more, for all the talk of Honest Ann being manipulated by people unworthy of her good name, the way she argues displays a cynicism and a dishonesty characteristic of the Hitchens-led wing of neophytic imperialists. Clwyd has forfeited her right to claim she argues in good faith by her wilful distortion of facts, her amplification of untested claims and her omission of central facts. Pretending to speak for Iraqis, she speaks only for Bush and Blair. Making great fist out of her reputation for compassion and dissent, she makes the case for cold-hearted disregard for the victims of our crimes, and absolute conformity with it. Pack her off to Dibley, I say. Let her placate the locals with her soothing hymns and platitudes.

News from Planet Zog

2004-03-29T19:41:00.000Z

Peter Preston’s latest thriller opens with “two things”, apathy and a decision as yet unmade, coming together on the brink of a canyon, then joining hands and jumping off. This is by far the best part.

The article, “Stop your whining and start voting” (Guardian, 29 March) is another of Preston’s diatribes against the lethargy and spinelessness of the common ruck. He uses the word “we” once or twice out of politeness: “We can blame away to our heart's content. It's Tony's fault, or Michael's. But why should we, Joe Citizenry, give ourselves a free pass?” I don’t think even David Blunkett is quite ready yet to hand out free passes for blamelessness, but never mind. When it comes to apportioning blame and laying down the law, Preston’s pronouns jump straight back into line. “They” have the apathy. “We” have the problem. “You” had better do something about it.

The dreadful They, naturally, are the great British public:

“Only 51% of the great British public thought themselves certain to vote at the next general election. Only 18% say the same about this summer's Strasbourg parliament ballot. … 58% didn't know who their MP was; 62% couldn't remember discussing politics with anyone at any time in the past two years. The simplest questions about personalities or procedures went blankly unanswered: 5% knew nothing, absolutely nothing, about the democracy they inhabit. They might as well have lived on Planet Zog.”

Notice Preston’s (and, for all I know, the pollsters’) idea of the heart of the problem: simple questions about personalities or procedures. No issues, no grievances, no worries. No wars, no privatisations, no top-up fees, no encroaching police state. None of these things can claw their way above Peter Preston’s mental horizon, so their blackened, broken fingernails won’t so much as scrabble at anyone else’s.

Notice also the excuses Preston anticipates for our disgusting apathy:

“Are Belgium's politicians more vibrant? Is Germany - turnout still running close to 80% - the home of charismatic leaders and exciting parties?”

This is “politics” in the best Mead Jar sense of the word – who’s the git in the grey suit, and what oafishness will he next perform in order to gain the attention of the Press? Are our leaders fun? Are they cool? Do they wear interesting ties? If this is the kind of “politics” most of us prefer not to discuss, I can only conclude that things are looking up a bit.

Anyway, it appears that, despite the fact that we don’t seem to care about anything, our whining is getting on Preston’s nerves. We have been bending his ear about the draft European constitution, and he’s just about had enough. He is kind enough to lay out the alternatives for us:

“You may sup from the Daily Mail's resumés, in which case the end of the universe is nigh; or you may conclude, with the FT, that "it presents ... a hybrid structure with some federal traits, but anchored in the nation state - and not the superstate of national myth". Or you may forage for your own opinion through the thickets of legal prose.
But that most diligent route, naturally, has nothing to do with the Mori-bund electorate previously described.”

No doubt Peter Preston has read the 150-page legal document in full, and would give us the benefit of his learned opinion if only we could do more to deserve it. Certainly we should be grateful that he uses his column to reproach us for our ignorance rather than doing anything to mitigate it. The mere supplying of information would go against all the dominant Mead Jar trends of the last twenty years or so, and where would we be then?

Mark Steyn and Stupidity

2004-03-24T04:14:00.000Z

The whole outing thing may have left many people with a bad taste in their mouths. After all it’s got nothing to do with me if Tom cruise is gay or not but I don’t think outing should be totally discredited. Disheartened by the low turnout at the marches against the war at the weekend and increasingly pessimistic while viewing the coverage of the Yassin murder I feel that it is necessary to create a public blacklist of those piss-poor apologists for mass murder and devastation.

The first name I would like to etch on the town hall door would be that of Mark Steyn. I would like to see him refused service in shops restaurants and bars, then electronically tagged and banned from coming within earshot of another human being. He needs to be named and shamed.

Those unfortunate enough to read The Telegraph on this day of our lord march 23rd, 2004, will know just what I mean. If worms could write it might read something like the article that carries the title, We tried appeasement once…

Well, some young child who lives on Mark’s road was given a shield as a gift, his mum took the sword away, and the boy spent some time in his front garden deflecting the blows of imagined enemies. From this Steyn figures that the attack on Iraq was just and subsequent terrorist attacks a consequence of the west not being hard enough. Clever boy.

He begins with a devastating criticism of two Greenpeace activists who scaled the heady heights of Big Ben in protest at the attack on Iraq and begs the question “ Don’t ask me why Greenpeace is opposed to the liberation of Iraq. It’s been marvelous for the eco-system: The marshlands of Iraq are now being restored after decades of Saddamite devastation”. Mark, as is his wont as a writer published in a major daily paper, does not choose to inform us about whether the two in question were holding a banner requesting the Saddam be returned to power, that would be too incisive for a quack like this. He also chooses to indirectly suggest that no environmental damage has been done with the DU coated bombs and likely considers that this oversight is not important. All this without even getting to the third paragraph.

Mark then suggests that we should pay attention to the Osama impersonator who found his way into the palace and cites this as evidence that the state is unable to secure even prime targets. This is in the third paragraph, close to making a point there. The coup de grace though, is the last line which tells us that this should serve as a reminder and that “Tony Blair understands this, few other European leaders do” How can I begin to analyze the mind that conjures up statements like this? Are there two Tony Blairs? Or are we participating in the process of laughter and forgetting? The Blair who understands that provoking terrorism will cause terrorism and the other poor sods who just happen, by accident, to be called Tony Blair?

Mark then decides to pull out his joker, The Holocaust. Which one? The one in Chechnya? Iraq? No! Timor then? Wrong! Cambodia? No, the real one, the one in the history books, the one where a megalomaniac German killed millions of people. The one that has never been repeated. Mark claims that all those who bow their heads and nod thoughtfully in front of the shrines engraved “ Never again” are kidding themselves. Why? Because holocausts are happening all the time, in fact the Jews are up to their necks trying to perpetrate one themselves in Palestine. Of course not, it’s because our inaction, personified by the democratic raising of the voice by the Spanish is going to cause a holocaust visited upon us if we don’t stop waving the shield in front of our heads and take up the Sword of Damocles. Apparently the urge to avoid a repeat of The Holocaust “ has come to trump whatever revulsion post-Auschwitz Europe might feel about mass murder.” Apparently we have stood idly by while people were killed in Bosnia and Croatia because we chickened out of wiping the Serbs off the face of the earth. What a charming fellow! “Neville again” he tells us should be our slogan.

The gospel according to Mark Steyn then plumbs further depths. That evildoer we all know so well Rev. Mark Beach, I don’t know about all of you but I stay awake nights wondering just what I would do to Rev. Beach if I was sharing a room without windows with him. He had the sheer neck to state “The people of Madrid are reaping the fruits of our intolerance of those of different races and religions. The war in Iraq was never going to solve the problems of that region but instead inflamed Arab people all over the world to new heights of anger towards the west!” Mark reckons this is cowardly shield waving. He even follows with the words “God Almighty” in his frustration at the stupidity in Beach’s words. We Europeans and Americans are so nice that Muslims can actually travel on our buses and not call too much attention, he bemoans the fact that an blue eyed European could no do this in Damascus. He goes on to claim that the war in Iraq has not inflamed all arabs and has actually solved quite a few problems. He doesn’t care to mention which, I suspect he means the possibility of Saddam being overthrown by a democratic force which was one fear laid to rest by the invasion.

Last ball of the over now. Mark hits reason over long off for six. He quotes from the novel The Riddle of the Sands. The foreign office wallah is being persuaded to take seriously the possibility of a German invasion in the Frisian Islands. “Follow the parallel of war on land. People your mountains with a daring and resourceful race who posses and intimate knowledge of every track and bridle path, who operate in small bands, travel light and move rapidly. See what immense advantages such guerrillas possess over an enemy which clings to beaten tracks, moves in large bodies, slowly and does not know the country” Those are terrorists by the way. Hiding in the nook and crannies of tolerant Europe, waiting to ambush us as we stand behind our little toy shields.
Is mark giving us a call to arms? Or are these the warblings of a mental defective?

The Grinning Christian Ad Exec as Tragic Hero

2004-03-20T17:26:00.000Z

Andrew Rawnsley’s article "Blair is doomed to be ignored" (Observer, 14 March) compares Tony Blair to Cassandra. I fear Rawnsley’s erudition is a little shaky: Cassandra was a prisoner of war who always told the truth. Then again, Rawnsley's own dedication to the truth is nearly as impressive as his grasp of Greek myth.

Rawnsley, utilising the telepathic ability common to op-ed writers, notes that the Prime Minister does not think the country has yet “got it” about the gravity of the menace posed by international terrorism. Mr Blair, poor Mr Blair “issues his warnings to the people about the threat. He is fated to be right. And doomed to be ignored.” Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction and, more recently, Saddam’s shadowy links to 9/11 are presumably the exceptions that prove the rule.

As usual, it is we, the public, who are at fault. The Prime Minister’s obsession about the terrorist threat “has created a quite severe dislocation between him and a large section of his public.” Not because the Prime Minister helped to create the threat by dragging us into George Bush’s war, no indeed. Rawnsley is not talking about those conspiracy theorists who think that, just because we’ve bombed a few thousand Muslims into oblivion with no very discernible compensation, a few more Muslims might be feeling hostile towards us and – much more dangerously – starting to believe that they have nothing left to lose.

No, the conspiracy theorists are not Tony’s public. Rawnsley is referring to real people: “what one senior government adviser calls 'focus group Britain'. These people have been telling Mr Blair's focus groups that they want him to concentrate less on international affairs and get back to the economy, education, health and crime, the bread-and-butter issues that impact on their daily lives.” By golly, that is just what Mr Blair wants to do. But the fact that we have not yet “got it” about the terrorist threat prevents him. He just has to keep banging on about it until it penetrates our thick heads. Regrettably, this too can have undesirable consequences:

“Just over a year ago, light tanks were rushed to Heathrow following a warning that terrorists might use Sam missiles to bring down jets … When the tanks left without apparent incident, there was considerable ridicule of the Government, accompanied by conspiracy theories that this was a stunt designed to crank up support for the invasion of Iraq.”

Speaking personally, I was ridiculing the Government and spouting those conspiracy theories long before the tanks left; but Rawnsley is more sensitive:

“I rather sympathise with the politician's dilemma, plaintively expressed by Mr Blair like this: 'Would you prefer us to act, even if it turns out to be wrong? Or not to act and hope it's OK? Suppose we don't act and intelligence turns out to be right? How forgiving will people be?'”

Rawnsley has not yet managed to assimilate the fact that, more than a year ago, the intelligence services told Blair that (a) there were no WMD in Iraq, (b) there was no connection between Iraq and the 9/11 terrorists, and (c) the planned assault on Iraq would very likely turn the Middle East into a very large al-Qaida recruiting station. Since Blair went to war in the teeth of such evidence, not to mention considerable protest by our despicably apathetic selves (“The Twin Towers may well have been a 'wake-up call' to the Prime Minister. For much of his country, it was not long before people punched the snooze button, snuggled back under the duvet of prosperity and went back to sleep”), I am not sure forgiveness is in order until he at least admits the error of his ways.

Rawnsley concludes with a fine rhetorical and punctuationally dubious flourish, throwing in a tantalising insight into the Prime Minister’s nocturnal activities:

“Will Madrid finally shake people into paying attention? Or will it take what keeps Mr Blair awake at night - a British 9/11.”

The Twin Towers keep on coming up. The attacks of 11 September 2001, as we all know by now, divided human history into two parts. They changed the face of America and thus that of the world. They blighted the twenty-first century when the century had barely begun. More importantly, they have been the underlying reason, justification, pretext and excuse for every attack on innocents abroad and civil liberties at home that Blair and Bush have perpetrated since.

Weirdly enough, in light of their obvious significance, the 9/11 attacks have not come in for a great deal of scrutiny in the mainstream media. We hear about them all the time, but always in the context mentioned above: “if you don’t let us bomb these people, THIS could happen to YOU!” The question of how THAT happened in the first place has gone by the board somewhat, and this in spite of 9/11’s obvious status as Dubya’s Reichstag Fire. Nobody in the mainstream seems to be interested in how easy or difficult it might be to fly an airliner into an office block, for example. I haven’t seen much about the refusal of Dubya and Condoleezza “Tanker Girl” Rice to participate in the inquiry about America’s own “intelligence failures” on that horrible day. Nor am I aware that anyone in the mainstream is asking any questions about the Bush Administration’s claim that a Boeing 757 flew into the Pentagon, and how far this claim is borne out by the evidence.

Despite his forthright condemnations of our loathsome moral and intellectual lethargy, Andrew Rawnsley certainly isn’t asking. He’s too worried about poor Tony’s state of mind to think of three thousand massacred Americans as anything more than a call to do precisely what George and Tony tell us. As we wait for that British 9/11 which the Iraq adventure has so brilliantly facilitated, the heights of journalistic integrity appear just as vertiginous as ever.

The First Casualties...

2004-03-19T13:34:00.000Z

As I predicted, the media are busily larging up the entry of 750 troops into Kosovo, while resorting to the same empty banalities that have always helped to avoid explanation and blame when it suits them.

For Channel Five news today, "the troops cannot come soon enough".

For The Guardian , the most vigorously pro-war newspaper during the last Balkans war (so much so that even The Sun had to tell them to calm down), it is all because of "the deep and intense hatred between 2 million ethnic Albanians and fewer than 100,000 Serbs." They bemoan the absence of dialogue, intermarriage, and near-apartheid, South African-style. They do not mention that this is a direct legacy of the Nato intervention, which as a matter of historical record escalated a low-level civil war into ethnic cleansing and has now institutionalised nationalist sectarianism in Kosovo.

For The Independent , "Kosovo has been a model of nation-building", which we cannot allow to disintegrate. Astonishingly enough, it also outlines all of the ways in which that "model" has been an absolute catastrophic failure - there's a genius at work there.

Meanwhile, the truth emerges about the genesis of the riots. We were told that it was an inflamed response to the drowning of two Albanian boys. It now seems it was planned :

"What might have started off as an isolated burst of anger in Mitrovica over the still unexplained drowning of two Albanian children now appears to be something more planned. "We have had similar attacks to these in Kosovo before," said a UN spokesman, Derek Chappell. "But the fact that these attacks took place at the same time all over Kosovo does make me think they were orchestrated by the same extreme groups."

Lt-Colonel James Moran, a K-For spokesman, was more explicit. "There was a lot more organisation today than we saw yesterday," he said. "People had organised buses to take protesters to different areas. We turned several around." Whoever was behind that agenda has certainly succeeded in nullifying the UN's attempts to build bridges between Serbs and Albanians over the past four years."

Who would want to do a thing like that? Be upstanding, Kosovo Provisional Authority...

"Ethnic Tensions" in Kosovo...

2004-03-18T20:31:00.000Z

The Latest Crisis

Following the announcement that the UN will allow further elections to take place in Kosovo, which will be overseen by OSCE monitors, renewed “ethnic tensions” explode onto the streets of Kosovo . The partitioned town of Kovoska Mitrovica has witnessed pitched battles between Serb and Albanian “communities” resulting in 14 deaths. This followed the drowning of two Albanian children who allegedly leaped into a river after being chased by Serbians with a dog. It now seems that, whatever the rumours, no Serbs were involved. The violence has since spread across the country, with Albanians burning Orthodox Churches (90% of which are already ablaze according to Radio Five), and Serbs destroying Mosques . Britain is now to send 750 troops to Kosovo to put the natives back in their place.

Who Did What, Where and Why...

As per usual, it would repay significantly to step back from the immediate horror and ask what happens when nothing happens? In other words, what is in this place that is leading to a renewal of the old “divisions” which Nato thought they had pounded to dust when they wrecked the Serb civilian infrastructure, killed a few thousand and dented some tanks.
First of all, the terms that I have enclosed in “scare quotes” are precisely useless for talking about this. The only reason I use them is because they are automatically recognised by everyone when discussing a topic like this. “Bitter hatreds”, “barbaric enmity”, “divided communities” … the lexicon of the liberal humanist (for such it is) is thus disfigured with politically vacant terms. I remember them well from growing up in Northern Ireland when the alleged apolitical liberals of the press pack would constantly bemoan the “sectarian rivalries” which were tearing Northern Ireland apart. The only problem was “hard-liners” and “the tiny majority that spoils it for the everyone else”. Please! It wasn’t no “tiny minority”. And, at any rate, this whole gesture reduces an intensely political conflict with a transparent inequity of power and blame to a simple ethnic conflict, a failure of two cultures to understand one another properly.
Imperialists, naturally enough, seem to use the same tactics to divide people wherever they find it useful. So why should it surprise us that Nato and the UN thought the best thing for Kosovo would be first to partition Serbia and Kosovo, second to partition the towns within Kosovo? From Belfast to Kashmir, the same dynamics replicate themselves in alarming fashion. (Or perhaps these are best understood as yer Wittgensteinian “family resemblances”) It isn’t that they create the division in each case – rather, they take it as read, perhaps as something natural in the species they’re dealing with, and institutionalise it. Predictably, it also contributes enormously to diverting the resources of the subjugated into internal conflict.
So, what has been germinating, breeding, in this cleaved community?

Neither Belgrade, nor Washington...

The starting point has to be international interference in the former Yugoslavia, specifically the bombing of Serbia and Kosovo which began on March 24th, 1999. The bombing's alleged motivation was the oppression of Kosovo Albanians by the Serb authorities. Either the scale of Serb repression in Kosovo had escalated (one version) or it was going to escalate (complementary version) under the aegis of Operation Horseshoe. I bow to noone in my cynicism toward corrupt old Stalinoid regimes like that in Milosevic-era Serbia. But my equal cynicism toward America necessitates that I cast a somewhat wider net of critique than the narrow concerns of the mainstream (especially liberal) media.

It would be nice to believe that Nato had transmuted itself, in the post-Cold War world, from a defensive-aggressive military pact into the armed wing of Amnesty International (as Nick Cohen might have had it in one of his many comforting soujourns off the planet). But the record of that war suggest a different story to the one relayed to us by Nato and the ideologues who supported the war. Specifically, the UK government cannot have been overwhelmingly concerned about the oppression of Kosovo Albanians because George Robertson claimed, speaking before the House of Commons on the day the bombing started, that until mid-January 1999, "the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) was responsible for more deaths in Kosovo than the Serbian authorities had been".

He later claimed:

"We were faced with a situation where there was this killing going on, this cleansing going on - the kind of ethnic cleansing we thought had disappeared after the Second World War. You were seeing people there coming in trains, the cattle trains, with refugees once again." (Jonathan Dimbleby, ITV, June 11, 2000)

William Cohen, the US Defense Secretary claimed:

"We've now seen about 100,000 military-aged men missing... They may have been murdered." (Quoted, Degraded Capability, The Media and the Kosovo Crisis, edited by Philip Hammond and Edward S. Herman, Pluto Press, 2000, p.139)

This sort of claim was typical during the war, and was often used to legitemise the war itself. The salient fact that the bulk of the repression being described (and considerably exaggerated) began after the war started was rarely reported. Prior to the bombing, and for the following two days, the United Nations Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reported no data on refugees. On March 27, three days into the bombing, UNHCR reported that 4,000 had fled Kosovo to the neighbouring countries of Albania and Macedonia. By April 5, the New York Times reported "more than 350,000 have left Kosovo since March 24". It is also worth noting, regarding Robertson's March 24th testimony before the Commons, that the mid-January point he refers to is January 15th, when the Racak massacre took place, killing forty-five people. Subsequent to that atrocity, there was no discernable shift in the distribution of violence - therefore, if the observations of both Robertson and Robin Cook were correct until Racak, they were correct afterward. (I don't know if they were, but since they are the ones who nominally led us to war on that occasion, they are entitled to be judged on their own words). According to those who waged the war, it cannot have been fought on the basis of an escalation of violence, approaching "genocide" (a term frequently bandied about during that war).

Nevertheless, The Guardian beamed :

"It's hard to resist pride that a Brit has been deemed worthy of presiding at a top table... Even if George Robertson were a shining star of the administration rather than a competent performer whom events have tested and found to have the right stuff, his loss would be a small price to pay for remaking Nato." ('A Brit for Nato? Robertson has a lot of the right stuff', Leader, the Guardian, August 2, 1999)

It is true that violence dramatically escalated after the war. The OSCE reports:

"Once the OSCE-KVM [monitors] left on 20 March 1999 and in particular after the start of the NATO bombing of the FRY on 24 March, Serbian police and/or VJ [army], often accompanied by paramilitaries, went from village to village and, in the towns, from area to area threatening and expelling the Kosovo Albanian population."

But that was "entirely predictable" according to Gen. Wesley Clark. In fact, "the military authorities fully anticipated the vicious approach that Milosevic would adopt, as well as the terrible efficiency with which he would carry it out." But that missed the point. The Nato war "was not designed as a means of blocking Serb ethnic cleansing. It was not designed as a means of waging war against the Serb and MUP [internal police] forces in Kosovo. Not in any way. There was never any intent to do that. That was not the idea."

After the Catastrophe

Nevertheless, it is not surprising that the crimes that took place as a result of the bombing were invoked to justify that bombing. Nor is it surprising that the bulk of the news media which had been so excited by Milosevic's crimes against the Albanians proferred little or no reportage of, or reaction to, the ethnic cleansing of Serbs from Kosovo which followed the end of the war. Jiri Dienstbier, the UN representative on human rights, declared in late 1999:

"The spring ethnic cleansing of ethnic Albanians, accompanied by murders, torture, looting, and burning of houses, has been replaced by the autumn ethnic cleansing of Serbs, Romas [gypsies], Bosniaks, and other non-Albanians accompanied by the same atrocities."

A November 1999 report by the International Crisis Group concluded that "there are as many killings right now in Kosovo as there were before NATO intervened."

Now, this is entirely predictable - not because the Kosovars were harbouring some secret agenda of destroying Serbia (as some Serbian nationalists pretend), but because it is precisely in the logic of trying to create a seperate state on the basis of ethnicity. (If anyone, by the way, will have the chutzpah to argue that this was a reaction to Serb crimes, will they at least be consistent and claim that the crimes of the Serb military were a reaction to Kosovan terrorism? That way I can disagree with them twice.) Indeed, these crimes did not merely let up after a while - which you might think if you allowed yourself to be guided by the quality and quantity of the news coverage. In 2001, 24 Albanians were shot, 13 of them children. They were members of the Krasniqi clan, of whom four men were considered "loyalists to the Serbian regime" because they worked in Serbian companies. For this, their whole family was exterminated:

"'Everyone in Kosovo knows but none dares to speak about it,' says the former prime minister of the exiled Kosovars and current chairman of the New Party for Kosovo, Bujar Bukoshi. 'After the war the cruelest cleansings took place among the Albanians. Under the pretext that they were 'Serbian collaborators', the leaders of the KLA liquidated their political opponents; old blood feuds were settled, and Albanian civilians were executed by the Albanians themselves.' ... The number of the victims is estimated to be more than a thousand. The perpetrators or instigators were usually former senior KLA leaders; after the war they were integrated nearly without exception into the KLA successor organization, the civilian Kosovo Protection Corps." (Der Spiegel, "The Cruelest Cleansings" September 21st, 2001).

Nor have the occupation forces acquitted themselves with any particular grace. Their corruption, the lack of democracy, the involvement of their security company, Dyncorp, in prostitution and sex with underage kids , perpetual unemployment and poverty have all led to rising anti-UN sentiment and protest in Kosovo. Radical Islamists have been able to capitalise on the poverty of Kosovans under the occupation, effectively monopolising the distribution of food, clothing and shelter in some areas, creating a "Taliban phenomenon" in which occupation policies in Kosovo may lead to "the production of Europe's own Taliban". (Isa Blumi, Current History, March 2003).

The Serbs have also attempted to reclaim some lost ground. And this is where Mitrovica comes in. In 2002, the International Crisis Group noted that the Serbian government was funding a security force in the northern half of the town, known as the "bridgewatchers" (which is about the height of creativity in the new Serbian regime), who see themselves a defending their part of the town against Albanians south of the river Ibar. Indeed, as far back as 2000, when Milosevic was overthrown, Kostunica suggested that Serb troops should be allowed to return to Kosovo. Naturally, the UN occupiers have done their very best to make the Serbs living in the north of Mitrovica even more resentful of the occupation than they had already been, by attempting to sieze control of a Serb factory in the town.

The Kosovo Provisional Authority has also been stirring the pot . In 2002, it passed a declaration challenging the Border Delineation Agreement of February 2001 which had established an internationally recognised border between Serbia and Macedonia. Prime Minister Bajram Rexhepi, a member of the Democratic Party of Kosovo (PDK), presented the motion. The PDK is the main political successor to the KLA, headed by former commander Hashim Thaci. Albanian seperatists had never been particularly hot about an independent Macedonia, and two off-shoots of the KLA (the National Liberation Army and the ANA) began to mount attacks on the Macedonian army and police. One assumes the KPA declaration was intended to heighten that feeling and further the Greater Kosovo ends of certain a certain kind of Albanian nationalist. Dutch military intelligence analysts, at The Clingendael Institute , claim that the US has been supporting the NLA in its campaign against Macedonia .

So, with Serbian nationalists seeking to reassert their authority in Kosovo, Albanian nationalists seeking to expand Kosovo beyond its present borders, and geopolitical schemers in the Whitehouse playing the situation for all it's worth, who will be the first to fulfil my prophesy of liberal adulation for the escalation of the military presence which has so far proven a cataclysmic failure? Watch this space...

Semaphore to Timothy Garton Ash - Welcome to the Titanic

2004-03-18T05:28:00.001Z

Welcome to the Titanic

Ahoy Timothy, I've a long one for you, but you'll love it because I've given it a nautical flavour - like your article ;)

"How can we make Muslims feel more at home in Europe, thus draining the swamp in which terrorist mosquitoes breed?" you ask.

You give the answer, but fail to recognise it. Zapatero's "vehement... criticism of Anglo-American policy in Iraq, talking of a war based on 'lies' and calling for 'self-criticism' by Blair and Bush" is a good start. His following up with "You can't just go and bomb people [in Iraq]" also helps.

You cannot square the circle of being 'statesmanlike' - that is, of not pointing out the ethical degeneracy of what the US and UK have done - and of getting Muslim trust. Muslims in the West need to see their Western leaders emphatically reject militarism and horrendous western violence. Rejection of the Western invasion and occupation is a good starting point. Zapatero has been very courageous. If you can put yourself in the position of Muslims, you will see that 'statesmanlike' behaviour toward two rogue nations who led illegitimate invasions is only likely to engender greater mistrust. He has started to build the right bridges - at least if we take the notion of democracy seriously.

The idea that the West is falling apart is hysteria. It is the sort of thinking that got

- NATO into setting off the ethnic purges in Kosovo (the HMS Hood of NATO credibility),
- Blair into Iraq (the Marie Celeste of Saddam's WMDs against the West)
- America into Vietnam (the USS Maddox of dominoes falling to communism)
- the Contras into Nicaragua (the HMS Repulse of communist attack from the south - 2 days from Texas after all).
- the French, Israelis and British into Suez (the Bismarck of Pan-Arabism)

All these things seemed at the time overwhelming motives which encouraged violent attack upon third world nations. Thus we have this body of experience which tells us that much of the history of Western violence and colonialism has been launched from the slips of hysteria. And by leaders whose real motives are founded in greed or power or expediency.

In effect, "statesmanship", based on our "fear" of Western failure, means we must all hang together in a strategic block and effectively ignore our populations, including the Muslims whom you so desperately want to be able to feel welcome . Right now, we cannot have both - statesmanship and democracy - because Bush and his sidekick Blair have given us a Manichean choice. In such an environment, it is imperative that Europe break ranks with them and set out to find its own solutions, because the US demands nothing less than full subservience in an environment of its own lying, deceit and yes greed. Because Iraq was not, from the Administration's point of view, an exercise in defeating terrorism. It was about using terrorism to pursue its broader strategic interests. You don't pander to this, this generator of terrorism and terror, any more than you pander to terrorism itself. And if you do, forget the Muslim population here - it will never trust you.

Three tiny words tinkling like a ship's bell in the ears of journalists may have prevented much of the cataclysm that Blair and Bush have brought upon us.

"Get a grip".

If we had taken the hysteria out of the "War on Horror" at the front end, we would now not be engaged in Iraq, saddled with thousands of more extremists and perhaps hundreds of thousands (millions?) of terrorist-sympathetic Muslims. We could have had a real debate about the causes of terror and taken concrete steps to remove the grievances that Muslims, indeed the people of the sorely-used third world, rightly have with us. All of this has already been shipwrecked in a wave of hysteria which was ably supported by mainstream journalists.

There was a duty to flash the aldis of discontent and disbelief at the time, to stand out with a vigorous, independent mind, since the pretext for war was so obviously concocted, the reasons so venal. And this, unfortunately, 95% of mainstream journalists failed to do. The biggest opportunity of a lifetime to get it right, and now the tipping point is past. Too late for you, too late for our societies and too late for unity against terrorism. But that doesn't mean the West is headed for the rocks. It just means that journalists, by amplifying the fear concocted by their governments to engender public support instead of doing their job by critiquing them, have largely helped to bring about the Western disunity. Don't perpetuate it by calling on our 'fear' again. Try for something higher.

Well, it be near 2 bells, I'm off to splice the mainbrace.

David Bracewell
Nelson BC
Canada

Public stupidity and the liberal hack

2004-03-17T19:48:00.000Z

Every now and then a writer in the liberal press will become fed up with pandering to the public whim and give their readers a stern re-introduction to the harsh home truths. In connection with the Madrid bombings, Peter Preston (“Admit it, we’re all in the dark”, Guardian 15 March) notes tactfully that

“Joe Public UK (or US) likes to "move on" even before being so instructed by his friendly spin doctors. Give him a quick rat-a-tat fix - Oh yes, it's ETA!; Oh no it's not! - and he can just about cope. Give him uncertainty and inquiry and debate, and the attention span shortens dramatically. Real Madrid, not real Madrid.”

I hope you recognise yourself. The thrust of the article seems to be that, since everyone is as ignorant as Peter Preston about the origin of the massacre, we’d all be better off not talking about it. If there’s one thing the forces of democracy need to win the battle against terrorism, it’s an end to all this chatter about who the terrorists actually are.

Preston’s irritation at our shallow and superficial ways was also in evidence a few weeks ago. On 26 January, he told us why so many people thought Blair had to go. Oh, “Baghdad” was a factor, certainly; but the real reason, the underlying cause, was simply this:

“We're bored ... Eleven years of Frasier, nine years of Friends, five years of the Sopranos, seven years of Blair ... We don't care what a twinkling bloke he is any longer. We've had it up to here with mission visions and rictoid grins. Now please, can we switch channels?” (“When it’s time to call time”, Guardian 26 January)

Sadly, the Guardian is by no means the only victim of its readers’ stupidity. Answering a query about his total silence concerning America’s horrendous relationship with Haiti in a purportedly historical analysis of the latter country, Paul Reynolds of BBC Online was in no doubt as to where the responsibility lay:

“One has to select, edit and choose in the process of trying to keep it tight enough so that people in general will actually read it. Believe me, it is a hard enough ask to get them to do that!” (Email to Philip Challinor, 6 March)

Polly Toynbee, like Peter Preston, is occasionally subject to righteous schoolmissy-fits. On 30 January (“Now Labour must show magnanimity in victory”), she defended the Hutton report against the rowdy barbarity of the sceptics:

“Hutton was right to exonerate a prime minister who had been monstrously traduced, in a casual, flippant way.”

The idea that anyone might have factual evidence to back up their traducings was naturally so contemptible as to be unworthy of mention.

But worse was to come. Those casual, flippant traducers just wouldn’t go away. A week later, Toynbee was forced to point out that the happy cameraderie of Guardian news meetings was being tainted by uncertainty as to

“whether the intricate daily arguments about the war – who knew what, when – have become so arcane that they are leaving even our readers behind” (“Revenge or victory”, Guardian 6 February)

Today Toynbee has returned to this theme of revenge or victory – that “the left” must beware of seeking vengeance on Blair at the expense of the next general election. As in her earlier piece, she waves Michael Howard at us in order to make clear what is at stake:

“Michael Howard and Maurice Saatchi are formidable foes - and formidably nasty.” (“Don’t collaborate with our enemies to tear Blair down”, Guardian 17 March)

The idea that Blair and his cronies are a significant improvement is of course so obvious as to be unworthy of discussion. The goodness of the incumbents is not open to doubt. If Labour is to blame for anything at all, it is the under-publicising of its own good works. Labour has failed to realise that the voters are too myopic and dim-witted to understand the golden blessings that have showered down upon them, so now there is a risk that – for the sake of a few thousand bodies littering the Middle East – we’ll piss it all away.

Horror! Give up our Labour government, which imprisons without trial and charges rent for unearned prison sentences; which has accelerated the privatisation of the NHS and which is headed by a war criminal and a pander to war criminals – give all this up for Michael Howard, who would do it all slightly differently? Perish the thought. Before you go charging out to protest on Saturday, reflect upon the wise words of Toynbee:

“There's much the government could do better. Its messages this second term have been a disaster, even if rolling out the delivery has continued apace. But those who want a Labour government - even if they want a different/better one - need to start appreciating the one they've got instead of collaborating with the enemy to tear it down.” (“Don’t collaborate with our enemies to tear Blair down”, Guardian 17 March)

Is that clear enough? You want a change because you’re bored. You’re bored because you don’t understand. You don’t understand because you’re thick. If you want a change, you’ve got to learn to appreciate the same old thing. If you want an improvement, you’d better be satisfied with what you’ve got. And if you want democracy, do as you’re told.

mediauntoldtruths

2004-03-17T11:40:00.000Z

The BBC is all in a spin this week and those of us who watched BBC world yesterday had the wonderful news that the Iraqi people are happier now than they were one year ago repeated to us a minimum of three times per hour.

See if you think this is logical. I imagine I am Iraqi. You, a british researcher, come to my door and ask me a load of questions. You ask me if I am happier now than I was a year ago. I think to myself, a year ago an attack which would eventually result in the deaths of thousands of civilians was just beginning. Shock and awe it was called, deliberate mental torture along with the actual gore of people being blown apart by bombs. Am I happier now that its over, kind of a stupid question really. Oh, yes, I almost forgot. Before that attack we had been living with sanctions for 13 years so we didn't really have medicine, or services or proper food so the little we have now is certainly better hence the affirmative answer to the cleverly constructed question.

The powers that be put this in a blender and end up with a soup of happiness in Iraq, almost a primeval one in which Iraqis are milling about comsuming goods and optimistic about their future. Replicating democracy, truth, justice. Thank you America and Britain!

So apart from the carefully chosen information taken from the survey what else might we find out if we actually read it.

One question was
Who should be in control of public security?
5.3% said Coalition Forces and
7.3% United States
Why were they presented as separate options in this question since they are one entity in terms of purpose and also if the US was not there the others would not be there and if the US left then the others would follow suit.

Who should control the oil?
42.9% said Iraqi Government
11.6 Iraqi People
This makes 54.5%. So the survey indicates that the occupation forces should stop meddling in the oil industry in Iraq? To the same question 7.8% wanted US control of the oil with the coalition forces at 5.1% Once again I would question the wisdom of giving these two options rather than just one.

Who should control the process of reviving the economy?
Iraqi Govt 46.3%
Iraqi people 11.8% a total of 58%. Allied to the 21% don't know it would appear that any meddling in the economy from outside is against the express wishes of the Iraqi people, wouldn't it?

The report also made it quite clear that there is no leading figure around whom Iraqis are willing to stand. This suggests to me that excellent election conditions exist because there has not yet been a campaign based polarisation of opinion and the result would reflect regional concerns and the wideranging results would make for a government which may operate under pressure from regional forces which should be a good thing. It would mean loads of different groups could be represented.

Rebuilding Iraq. Who should do it.
25.2% say the Govt
26.2 say the people
Again a hands off message that the US/UK should not makes orders re reconstruction

Similar stats may be observed on the education system.

In terms of contact with the troops, 77.5% say they have had no contact with occupation troops and this fact is, I think, unsurprising since in many types of crisis a large number of any population suffer indirect rather than direct effects. Interesting to note that those who had contact said that it was very positive or just positive in a total of 9.3% of cases whereas negative or very negative contact was 8.4%. I does not seem that the troops know how to treat almost half of the population. Whe they said the treatment was negative or very negative what did they mean? Where family members of civilians killed in the war or its aftermath interviewed. That, I think, would be interesting to know.

VERY IMPORTANT
I think this survey must be read with a great deal of scepticism even though it appears to have been carried out in good faith (albeit by people who are very well indoctrinated, certainly to the extent that they believe that people from the occupying country are qualified to judge, why not have people who understand the region carry out the survey?)
The following must be factored in when interpreting the results.
During and after the invasion dissenting voices in the media have been loud or silenced? I suspect the latter. The US did wage a 'hearts and minds' campaign which clearly creates bias since those opposed to the war and desperate to spread the full story of the war had no such counter opportunity.
The people who were interviewed, are they aware of civilian death stats? Depleted Uranium? American selling off of resources? Future plans to retain US military bases in Iraq? Employment of Saddams henchmen in the security forces? What sort of information about the conflict do they possess? It is clear that how much you know about these things influences how you percieve the war.

It is very clear from the survey that the Iraqi people want control of their own destiny. We still are left staring at the possibility that they will have only an illusion of this control. The BBC News did not state....
"Headlines today from the BBC, The Iraqi people have sent a clear message to the invasion forces that they want to take total control of their industries and resources" Does it count as a lie to leave a truth untold? Maybe we should have a new blog, mediatruthsuntold, its a special category.

I have used the survey to make a point of two here but I really do think that this is no way to try to gauge the current situation because the real issue is the power the people will have to influence the country in making its choices, that power is bound to be less than they imagine while responding a survey.

If I ask you who do you think should be the Minister for Defence of Great Britain or the US you might respond Michael Portillo and Karl Rove, you might respond George Galloway and Ralph Nader. The point is thet your answer, while a reflection of your opinion, should not be used to read too much into you as a person or your needs. We are all very aware that a democracy will not be built via an opinion poll and also that there will be no real way to transfer these opinions from paper to politics because we have no way of guaranteeing that the elections when held will be both free and fair. As usual the media are totally ignoring the real fight.

Iraq Opinion Poll

2004-03-16T21:00:00.000Z

Like shit to a blanket, the BBC are clinging to government propaganda for dear life - presumably to save it from the chop. Their coverage of the latest opinion poll from Iraq produced the most unbalanced, sanitised, Orwellian piece of reporting it has been my displeasure to wake up to on a Tuesday morning. Granted, I'm always pissed off on a Tuesday morning - but the BBC have a duty to soothe early-week hangovers, not aggravate them.

The latest opinion poll from Iraq has been given such a glib, puerile, that's-alright-then spin over at Auntie's Place that I feel duty-bound to point out where their analysis might have been a bit slack:

1) The lead story noted that most people in Iraq felt that life had got better. This was its opener:

"An opinion poll suggests most Iraqis feel their lives have improved since the war in Iraq began about a year ago.
The survey, carried out for the BBC and other broadcasters, also suggests many are optimistic about the next 12 months and opposed to violence."

Quite impressive. But what start with these findings? Other findings are equally interesting, surely? Such as the fact that 50.9% of Iraqis said they were opposed to the occupation of Iraq, while only 39% suported it . Or that "Opinion was evenly split on whether the invasion of Iraq had humiliated (41 per cent) or liberated (42 per cent) the country."

2) That's it, really. Er...

I've written all I want to say about allowing opinion polls of the public in a defeated nation determine our stance toward imperial aggression here . The main point, for those too flipping lazy to click on the link is, quite simply that "[US power] must be opposed for what it is, not for what opinion polls say about it."

A couple of folks from the MediaLens website have been working out their views on this, especially the spectacular ways in which the Beeb chose to spin the evidence.

The case against “Spanish appeasement” and overt lying by our Champagne bombers

2004-03-16T20:27:00.000Z

Britain's pro-war left-leaning opinion writers should click to something creepy in their behaviour which they now share with right wing journalists - those at the Telegraph, the Daily Mail, the Times of London. They should click to their loathing for democracy and then clarify this for their readership.

They loathed democracy when it got out on the street before the Iraqi invasion, when Spanish, Britons and Australians marched against the possibility of war in Iraq, they loathed it when poll after poll showed outright rejection of aggression in the UK up until the false prospectus they championed changed the dynamic and they loathed it when the Spanish voted out a government of bums who took them to war against their will.

The only times they embraced it were when UK citizens came in behind a false prospectus that they amplified across the national consciousness and when the Spanish 'seemed' to be 100% behind the Aznar's War on Horror government the day after the terrorist attacks.

Their miserable notion of democracy holds that people should align with their government, show solidarity with a government who acted against their will on the gravest issue and with a false prospectus - a peculiarly authoritarian and rigid notion of democracy. Their idea of war is that it is not a matter for the population but for a small ruling elite of which they conceive themselves an influential part. Could the Japanese leaders of World War 2 have asked for more than this slavish endorsement of aggressive policy? If we write of appeasement, let that enacted by our Champagne bombers in the Western press be the paragraph and the punctuation.

Their idea of a brave nation is one where people blindly get driven by government- and journalist-inspired fear and where the definition of 'stoic' excludes from its ambit the individual's responsibility to doubt, to judge on the basis of universal principle, to have one's own mind and to insist that government represent you.

Spain is socialist now, but not because of AQ. Spain is socialist because Aznar fractured his society and the nibbley bit, the 20% on one side of the fracture, had the privilege of taking an unwilling population to war. If the Spanish had shown informed support for the war in the first place, then Spain most probably would still be under the Popular Party, regardless of Al Qaeda's action.

The Spanish did not appease Al Qaeda or cop out of the War on Horror in Iraq, because apart from the nibbley bit, they were never for it.

This is a logic built on a set of facts that all parts of the political spectrum share. You can barely attribute appeasement or cowardice to the Spanish state of mind for democratically aligning their government to the long-term wishes of the majority. Well, you can, of course, but not on the facts coupled with the underlying principles of democracy that all mainstream journalists pay lip service to. This is why it is important for these journalists to clarify to their readership their loathing for democracy. Only in the context of a loathing for democracy does the logic of the Champagne bombers find a solid foundation.

Did Al Qaeda influence the vote? Yes it did - in a way that brought home to the Spanish the consequences of their government's unsupported complicity in Western aggression. So yes, we have to say that Al Qaeda influenced the election, much as any disaster deriving from foolish non-democratic government policy can. The atrocity inflicted by Al Qaeda helped put foreign policy, rather than the economy or internal strife with ETA at the top of the agenda.

The lesson? If the government doesn't want to be treated like bums it should tell the truth at the front of the process and then respect its own people's judgment. Don’t lie and co-opt citizens into aggression! Only then can it expect support when something like this happens. It's a simple lesson in democracy that is utterly lost on the Champagne bombers at the Guardian and Observer.

Funny that it's not lost on the Spanish Popular Party, who had strong electoral support for its rigorous stand against ETA and in the days following the atrocity went all out to prove the hypothesis that where it had garnered support it could expect solidarity against terrorism. If the Spanish population wasn’t up for the fight against terror, what was the object of putting ETA in the headlights? Could it be? Surely not! They knew the Spanish population would stand alongside them on the issue of ETA terrorism?

The undemocratic nibbley bit thus confirmed in its own behaviour that the appeasement argument was rubbish. So did the Spanish press, the US and UK governments and their press and, quelle surprise, the UN Security Council. The entire ‘coalition’ dancing troupe attempted, through lies (the one domain in which it excels), to co-opt the Spanish populace in the only arena where the rejection of ‘appeasement’ had any meaning for it - ETA. Funny that! And so when these same people talk of Spanish appeasement, remind yourself that they don’t believe their own words. ;)

Now a happy thought. The leaders of the 'coalition' have been screeching at us that the War on Horror and particularly the initially unrelated war in Iraq must become the number one issue in our new world view. Finally they have their wish! Spain was the first to place it top of the agenda. Be careful what you wish for, because you may get it, eh Senor Aznar? If I were Blair, Howard or Bush, perhaps I'd soft-pedal this line, since it may leave these hapless leaders watching from the sidelines after the next elections as the 'coalition' is reduced to Poland.

And so onto the inevitable irony. The preposterous insult that the Spanish have been frightened by Al Qaeda out of voting for the Popular Party, rather than enraged by Aznar's folly, is asserted by the same obsequious journalists who leap to Tony Blair's beck and call to frighten citizens into acquiescing to State violence for reasons that are then kept from them.

Our Western journalists pile in and help out when our governments try to scare and lie us into support for illegal aggression. It is when governments are held to account, when people are showing the opposite to cowardice, fear and their peculiarly neutered notion of 'stoicism', that these journalists show their loathing for the population and characterise courage as cowardice.

I wonder what its like for these mainstream, left-leaning journalists: to start out with notions of an independent-minded journalistic future only to see themselves slump into slavishly playing the commissar day in, day out?

David Bracewell
Nelson BC
Canada

A victory against terrorism

2004-03-15T23:30:00.000Z

“I don’t see why we should stand back and let a country go communist because of the irresponsibility of its own people” Henry Kissinger

I don’t know about everybody else but the above quote comes to mind to when watching what passes for coverage of the Spanish election results on the BBC (I don’t watch ITV so someone else will have to insult them). What should be celebrated as a massively important victory in the “war against terrorism” is instead being treated as a victory for Al Qaida. Firstly the people of Spain turned out to protest against terrorism after the Madrid bombings, a move welcomed and celebrated in the mainstream media and by pro-war politicians (because it could use the protests to support their own agenda). Secondly the people of Spain followed through this principle and removed its government because of its support for the terrorism of Bush, a move that has been wholeheartedly condemned in the media and by pro-war politicians. I’m attempting to think if there has ever been another example of such a fast turnaround in another nations popularity, and failing.

Instead of the drawing the obvious conclusion, that Spain decided to get rid of a leader that took them into a disastrous and unpopular war, the mainstream media is now intent upon reporting the election as a grim sober moment, a moment when terrorists intimidated the population into voting out a brave and virtuous government that it would have otherwise voted back in. Once again the media and western elites reveal their utmost contempt for the public, particularly the public of other countries. The notion that the Spanish electorate punished Anzar for his unpopular policies over Iraq, or that they were expressing rage over his unethical foreign policy seems to be beyond the media. Instead it has interpreted the results as solely the result of the bombings, and an illustration of the “weakness of democracy”. Perhaps there are those in the media and government who wish that we demonstrate our “commitment to democracy” and our “civilised values” by discounting the results of yesterday’s election and prepare another military coup. They don’t see why they should stand back and let a country withdraw its support for military aggression because of the irresponsibility of its own people.

However we shouldn’t let the media get away with this. The result should be celebrated as a major victory for democracy, a clear sign that we won’t tolerate imperialism. As for me, it was one of the best Sunday’s I’ve had in a while, not only did Man Utd lose, but Spain gave us a result that must make Blair really **** his pants. It was well worth enduring my hangover for.

Shredding the truth?

2004-03-14T22:11:00.000Z

Before the invasion of Iraq we heard much regarding Saddam's crimes. Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator, but amongst today's convenient truths - Saddam's crimes were inconvenient truths when he was a US ally - there are some stories that are questionable. One of those stories was that of the infamous "people shredder", news of which emerged in the build up to the invasion. This horror was supposed to have shredded the victim feet first, like a paper shredder. It was first brought to the public's attention by Indict, an organisation chaired by Ann Clwyd, the Labour MP for Cynon Valley, and now the special envoy on human rights in Iraq. Indict campaigns to bring the Ba'athists before an international criminal tribunal. The shredder story became quite prominent in the media, and it surfaced in various forms in different outlets. It became 'common currency'.

Melanie Phillips of the Daily Mail said "bodies got chewed up from foot to head", and added "this is the evil that the Pope, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Anglican bishops refuse to fight."

William Shawcross, who "stands as the foremost journalist of his generation" according to the Irish Times, said the Iraqi regime "fed people into huge shredders, feet first to prolong the agony".

Trevor Kavanagh, of the Sun, said: "Public opinion swung behind Tony Blair as voters learned how Saddam fed dissidents feet first into industrial shredders"

But in this article Brendan O'Neill raises serious questions about the validity of the story, such as it being from a single uncorroborated source.

The shredder was allegedly at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. But if it was there, and if it did indeed shred 30 people (according to Clywd's single anonymous source) we should be asking the following questions:

Why did Amnesty International, with its huge network of global contacts and sources draw a complete "blank" on the issue of the shredder? Why did Human Rights Watch say "we have not heard of that particular form of execution or torture"?

Why has a doctor at the hospital attached to Abu Ghraib prison denied the existence of the shredder, despite calling the prison "horrific", and having frequent access to the prison? He saw no evidence to support the existence of the shredder, and nor, he said, did any other doctor.

Why is there just one single uncorroborated source to back the claim?

Where is the shredder? Was it destroyed? Is there any evidence of its prior existence at the prison? Are there any documents suggesting that it existed or it was used?

How and why did the story gain such credence and wide circulation in the media?

Ann Clwyd, in her reply does not deny O'Neil's central point - that her evidence is uncorroborated. The original claim was based on one person's testimony - this remains the case. She does state that its Indict's general policy to get corrobarated evidence, and that Indict works to the "high standards of admission of evidence of the English and Welsh courts, under the guidance of Queen's counsel." Which therefore raises new questions. Clearly the shredder story was not based on corroborated evidence. Why not? And why did Clwyd choose to circulate the claims so widely if they had such an uncorroborated single source grounding? And why does James Mahon (who was Indict's head of research but has now left the organisation) refuse to speak to journalists about his work at Indict?

A discussion of the shredder claim at the pro-war 'centre-left' blog Harry's Place drew this response from a reader:

"Bush and Blair have just shut down the torture chambers across Iraq, which all came with the stardard electric wires and hooks in the ceiling, and your quibbling over a bloody shredding machine?
Can the anti war movement sink to lower depths?"

This is a familiar argument, and the use of language is revealing. That the media tells untruths and the public is misled does not matter, apparently. The fact the UK went to war on the declared and explicit basis of the "threat" from Iraq's non existent WMD does not matter either.

But the truth does matter. And the fact that the public are misled does matter.

Will the Madrid Massacre Become Europe's 9/11?

2004-03-13T16:28:00.000Z

No, of COURSE it won't!

Timothy Garton Ash, our beloved "tortured liberal" at The Guardian, is expert at plucking the latest liberal abortiveness from the zeitgeist and turning it into another reason why We Must Unite Europe! It seems this guy won't stop with his EU-fetishism. Blair goes to war, we need more European integration. US President a moron, we need a European Defence Force. Terrorist attack in Madrid, we need Franco-Spanish unity. But check this out from his latest :

"If it was al-Qaida, then few will doubt that this is Europe's 9/11. Those commuters will have been murdered as punishment for the sins of the west. (No matter that the innocent victims included Muslims from north Africa now living in the suburbs of Madrid. Don't bother Islamist terrorists with such details.) To prevent future attacks will require even closer cooperation between European police and intelligence services, and Europe-wide immigration and asylum procedures. We will finally wake up to the fact that Islamist terrorism is a threat geographically closer to us than to America. It will be clear what Europe has to do, although no easier to do it.

There will also be a deeper case for European solidarity. If Aznar's government is being singled out for joining what al-Qaida calls the "Crusader-Zionist alliance" in the Iraq war, the lesson to be learned in this moment is not that no European government should ever participate in any action in the Muslim world for fear of reprisals. It's that Europeans should stick closer together, one way or the other."

A distinctly global problem (Indonesia, Turkey, Kenya, Saudi Arabia etc) thus becomes a specifically European problem. If Ash wants "European-wide immigration and asylum procedures", of course, he need only await the completion of Fortress Europe. The measures being undertaken by EU governments include the effective militarisation of the EU's external frontiers, both on land and at sea; policies of destitution, detention and deportation; punitive sanctions for airlines, shipping companies and road hauliers who fail to police their passengers by applying rigid documentation standards that ignore the often desperate need of refugees for clandestine travel; and the setting of ever higher refugee recognition hurdles on an asylum track of shrinking legal protections. None of this augurs particularly well for human rights, but after all, since we know that your average asylum seeker is probably a terrorist incognito it would be churlish not to acknowledge "what Europe has to do" even if it will be "no easier to do it". (Notice that this truly is tortured liberalism - a humane conscience tormented, torn out of figure, by the knowledge of the brutal measures it must undertake).

Aside from anything else, it is transparently the case that the Madrid Massacre will not become Europe's 9/11. It will not do so for two simple reasons: 1) It wasn't on television, and 2) Spain doesn't have the werewithal to launch a series of aggressive wars, even supposing a specific country could be saddled with the blame for this atrocity. What took place on 9/11 was shown on television screens as it happened around the world. I watched it, (awaiting, in vain, Tony Blair's drubbing at the TUC), and watched it, and watched it. No amount of repetitions of that same, bleak image could tear my eyes from that screen. It was shocking both because Americans were the victims (a matter of some schadenfreude among certain European cynics), and also because it actualised the horror moment from every US disaster film of the 1990s. And finally, it carried with it a horrendous sense of doom since noone could predict how the United States government would react to that horror. I knew people who seriously anticipated a nuclear strike on Iraq, or Sudan, or North Korea.

The Spanish tragedy will remain that, most likely, just as the tragedy of Afghanistan, Iraq, Sudan, the Congo, and every other country which has suffered horrendous barbarity will remain its own. If some Al Qaeda affiliated group turns out to be responsible for this it may resonate more broadly, but it will not have the phantasmatic impact that planes destroying two vast towers in one of the world's richest, most populous and most vibrant cities did.

Is it Al Qaeda? Well, Al Qaeda cells have been discovered in Spain. In November 2001, Spanish authorities arrested eight men suspected of being Al Qaeda operatives involved in the September 11 attacks. In September 2003, Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon said the September 11 attacks were partially planned in Spain. There were some spurious attempts at connecting Al Qaeda with ETA - because one of the alleged Al Qaeda members was also said to have had some past links with Bantusana, the 'political wing of ETA' - but experts note that ETA's secular-nationalist agenda (expressed in the idiom of mutilated Marxism) is a world away from Islamic fundamentalism. (By the way, don't you just love the abuse of language involved here? Sinn Fein are similarly "the political wing of the IRA". And what, may we ask, is not political about what the IRA and ETA say and do? What is meant, of course, is that Bantusana and Sinn Fein pursue parliamentary success, which is the only genuine application of the term 'politics' in the bourgeois lexicon.) So, it shouldn't be altogether surprising to find Al Qaeda trying to launch an attack on Spain, and we shouldn't need to refer to the Crusades to figure it out. The attack would be their first on the European main-land (the GIA attacks in France belong to a different category), and is directed at a significant European partner in the 'war on terror'.

But let's all amen the PM: "This terrorism is terrorism waged without limit, without any care for the grief of the innocent... but like previous battles vital to the progress of humankind, this one too will be won." Yeah, Tony, someone's going to win it. But since you implicitly acknowledge now that there are different levels of terrorism - that with limits and that without - where do we rank your terror attacks on Iraq? We all acknowledge how appalling ETA's attacks on government buildings in Spain are, just as we cursed the IRA for its explosions in Belfast, London and Manchester. But at least they gave warnings, PM, at least they gave police the opportunity to clear the area and protect innocents. Who warned the Iraqis in that market place when you decided to take them out? And are your 'limits' reached at the minimum of 8437 civilians killed in Iraq? Or do we aim for the stars?

WTF?

2004-03-12T21:17:00.000Z

Diane Abbot explaining why Al Qaeda might have attacked Spain:

"Plus, you know, terrorists are big on history and, you know, Spain was important in the Crusades..."

(Diane Abbot, The Politics Show, 11th March 2004).

Left Wing Imperialism: An Infantile Disorder.

2004-03-11T17:58:00.000Z

Nick Cohen in the New Statesman

The antiwar movement just won’t stop it with the Bush-bashing. According to Nick Cohen, in a comedy piece for this week’s New Statesman, Iraqis are struggling for democracy, and freedom, and human rights – and the antiwar movement is still banging on about the war, and how dangerous that man in the Whitehouse is! Why, he wonders, can’t they get over it already and just support Iraqi democrats? Why is the far left supporting “fascist uprisings”? How were 150,000 people persuaded to march against Bush carrying banners demanding the withdrawal of occupation forces, when even the Iraqi Communist Party has learned by “chastening experience” that “capitalism is preferable to fascism”?

Leaving aside the problematic opposition between fascism and capitalism (surely by capitalism he means ‘liberal democracy’, unless somehow Iraq had not been awash with money and profiteers for some forty years), the ICP has learned many lessons through “chastening experience”. They once learned, for instance, that Ba’athism was preferable to resistance. So did Jalal Talabani, the leader of Cohen’s beloved PUK, when he kissed Saddam’s cheek during the first Gulf War, then went on to collaborate with Iranian theocracy. Massoud Barzani, of the KDP, was not averse to inviting Saddam in to wipe out his PUK opponents either. Unsurprisingly, those forces most willing to collaborate with the occupation have been the most opportunistic backers of Saddam in the past.

So when Cohen complains that the antiwar movement is still banging on about Bush and the war when Iraq is in such a terrible mess, he could consider that the two might just be connected. Not just in terms of the war itself, but in terms of the total prior engagement of the West with Iraq. Suppose the present imbroglio has something to do with that. Most people would notice a correlation like that, just in terms of cause, effect, the apparent proximity of events, etc., but not our eagle-eyed extirpator of heresy.

“There were half a dozen good reasons for being against the war,” Nick Cohen admits a year too late, only to add, “there wasn’t one for the left turning its back on its comrades in the war’s aftermath.” The reasoning is approximately as follows: the resistance to the occupation is composed of the political supporters of Osama bin Laden, and the Ba’athists. They are ultra-rightists, homophobes and bigots seeking to crush the left. The reaction of the international left was that “they shrugged” rather than rally in defense of their comrades. This gesture is “so shocking” that “a year later they cannot admit to themselves what they have done”. Imagine – just say – that the United States government does not really intend democracy for Iraq. Suppose that Shi’ites demanding elections are right to be hostile to the occupation and cynical about its goals. And suppose that among the anti-occupation forces were democrats, civil society forces, opponents of Saddam? Would it then be enough to convince the war-liberals that not everyone who called for the occupation to end was somehow covering up for Saddam Hussein, Al Qaeda or other past allies of US capitalism?

Examples? How about the man whose premature death is recorded in the same issue of the New Statesman , Professor Abdullatif Ali Al-Mayah, a “prominent human rights campaigner” and also a dedicated opponent of the British-American occupation of Iraq? How about the Mahdi Army, a Shi’ite force with no particular reverence for the Ba’ath ‘fascist’ machine? How about the Iraqi Democrats Against the Occupation, an exile group whose opposition to US imperialism is in no way mitigated by their opposition to the Hussein regime that they had to flee.

At any rate, Nick Cohen is wrong to suggest that the left has simply ‘shrugged’ when faced with the atrocious actions of bigots in Iraq. Since he mentions Tariq Ali, I’ll just mention that I attended a packed public meeting in which Tariq Ali denounced the mysognistic violence of Muqtadr’s boys and supported Iraqi comrades in the audience who called for them to be defeated. He has repeated the same things in speeches in Lahore and Los Angeles. That is also the position of Iraqi Democrats Against the Occupation, whom Cohen has never to my knowledge even mentioned in any of his articles. It is not that the left has neglected this terrain – it has just stubbornly insisted on appending to this opposition the demand to resist what the US is doing in Iraq. Far from abandoning Iraq, the Left has simply persisted in casting the net of critique somewhat wider than the myopic neo-imperialists of the liberal press.

Cohen’s prose is impressionistic, a layering of details rather than a structured argument. Crucial facts are elided, fictitious positions are imputed to his opponents, and once again Barham Salih is evoked as the symbolic figure of resistance. Not having met Salih, I find it difficult to evaluate his own political integrity, although he is quite willing to impugn that of leftists who disagreed with the US invasion. But I do know that he is a member of the PUK, and that this organisation has been opportunistic, mercenary, utterly unprincipled in its attitude to dealing with Saddam and with Iranian theocrats. They would rather have allowed the Iranian government to enter their territory, murdering Kurdish dissidents who were hiding out from the Mullahs, than lose their pathetic feud with the KDP. Cohen is happy to accuse the left of covering up crimes, but oddly omits to mention this salient bit of history. He rarely has a bad word to say about the occupation, although it has so far generated more corpses than the so-called “fascist uprisings”. He has spent more time discussing the alleged crimes of the Stop the War Coalition than the actual crimes of troops in Iraq, and would rather be having his debate with Saddam Hussein than the left (hence the constant need to imply guilt by association).

But since Cohen stupidly claims that Tariq Ali’s support for the Iraqi resistance to the occupation represents a nuanced version of the standard shift from 1968 radicalism to the right, (because anyone who resists the foreign occupation of their country is, let us never forget, a fascist) let me play his game. If he is willing to condemn antiwar activists for working with the Muslim Association of Britain because they are a branch of the Muslim Brothers, he is obliged to condemn in even more vigorous terms the US occupiers for appointing a member of the Muslim Brothers to the Iraq, who has been responsible for trying to equip the new Iraqi regime with the accoutrements of theocratic power. He might also have a word or two to say about whether the Iraqi Governing Council is murdering its opponents. Particularly the aforementioned Al-Mayah of the Baghdad Centre for Human Rights, who was gaining in popularity as he excoriated the corruption of the IGC, and “making some of the politicians here quite jealous”. Al-Mayah is just one of seven university professors to be assassinated recently, as liberal forces opposing both the occupation and the “Ba’athist remnants”. Where is all this liberal crap about solidarity when the US or its quislings may be the villains? And it is hard to believe Nick Cohen is ignorant of the intentions of the US government. Anyone with their ears and eyes open will have caught a glimpse of what Rumsfeld and company have in store for the world – US domination through both military and market forces. So, shall we rejoice while they slaughter thousands in pursuit of this goal?

Cohen complains that the Left only opposes murderous regimes that are backed by the West – but that argument, aside from being untrue, cuts both ways. Liberal imperialists rarely have anything to say about the crimes of their own states, and never judge these by the same standards they would apply to any other government. He complains that the Left elevates Israel into a matchless demon, which blots out all the abhorrent Muslim forces in the Middle East. Aside from the obvious disparity in privilege and power, this again is untrue. The left has consistently argued that the corrupt regimes in the Arab world are Israel’s greatest asset. They have crushed their own left, and crippled pan-Arab solidarity. Egypt has taken America’s money, used the radical Islamists to crush its Nasserists and Leftists, and provided Israel with a crucial comfort zone while it decimates the Palestinians.

There is, finally, the standard dig at political-correctness. Cohen cites Paul Berman of Dissent magazine (a witless misnomer if ever one was coined), who pretends that the antiwar Left was convinced, out of its own liberal multiculturalism, that Arabs somehow choose to live under grotesque dictatorships, and should be free to enjoy their squalour. This smokescreen is doubly ironic, since it is precisely our warmongering Prime Minister Tony Blair who loves to invoke cultural relativism where it suits him. (In an otherwise inert interview for Newsnight, Jeremy Paxman asked the PM why Britain continued to sell arms to the disgusting Saudi oligarchy if it was so enamoured of democracy and human rights all of a sudden. Blair’s response, reflexively, was “well… they have their culture…”!) Of course Arabs do not choose to live under tyranny – they have been forced to do so, courtesy of the West. That being the case, who but the most naïve liberals would trust the US government with dispensation of the vital task of liberating the oppressed of that region?

Cohen even complains when BBC journalists like John Humphreys do their job by pointing out to lachrymose, insinuating politicians that ‘liberation’ is not the reason we went to war (it isn’t, is it?). Fortunately, the international Left has been proven right in almost every essential. It has allies in Iraq, (and not the ones Cohen thinks it has), who should be encouraged to continue their resistance against both the corrupt occupation and the vile merchants of bigotry exploiting discontent with the occupation. Cohen’s infantile lashing out reflects his failure to win the argument on the Left and his desire to cover up and compensate for his immense loyalty and service to power.

English Socialism – Alive and Well

2004-03-10T18:56:00.000Z

“We should stop apologising for using the word [socialism]”
Tony Blair, 1994

“The mutability of the past is the central tenet of Ingsoc.”
George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four

Ingsoc, as readers of Orwell’s great satire will recall, is Newspeak for “English Socialism”, the only permitted ideology in the West in the year 1984. Fifty-five years after the book’s publication, and twenty years after the date at which it is set, our friends at the Ministry of Truth are still faithful to the cause.

On 28 January 2003, George W Bush’s State of the Union speech went into a dozen paragraphs of detail about Saddam Hussein’s alleged weapons of mass destruction and attempts to block inspections. Bush gave a single paragraph to human rights violations (presumably of the kind that also went on when Saddam was a US ally), and added the obligatory assurance to the people of Iraq that, in case they didn’t know it, “the day he and his regime are removed from power will be the day of your liberation”. Nevertheless, Bush was quite explicit about his priorities: “Let there be no misunderstanding: If Saddam Hussein does not fully disarm, for the safety of our people and for the peace of the world, we will lead a coalition to disarm him.” Not “to liberate the Iraqi people and disarm him”; much less “to disarm him, remove him and put Paul Bremer in charge” – the main thing was to disarm him, for the safety of the US and everyone else.

However, the mutability of the past is a central tenet at the Guardian. When Iraq’s WMD became positively obtrusive by their absence, the Guardian stated flatly (under the byline of Nicholas Watt, Richard Norton-Taylor and David Teather) that “Mr Bush … never used the banned weapons as the main reason for going to war”. (“Blair alone after Bush WMD move”, Guardian, 2 February 2004)

A couple of days earlier, Polly Toynbee claimed that the Hutton report was right to exonerate Tony Blair from all wrongdoing

“because the government genuinely thought Iraq had weapons of mass destruction: everyone did, French and German intelligence as well as the US. Hans Blix and David Kelly thought so, as did Dr David Kay.” (“Now Labour must show magnanimity in victory”, Guardian 30 Janary 2004)

Strangely enough, on 1 June 2003 the Sunday Herald (Scotland) had reported a British intelligence source as saying “French intelligence was telling us that there was effectively no real evidence of a WMD programme … The French, the Germans and the Russians all knew there were no weapons there – and so did Blair and Bush as that’s what the French told them directly.”

Equally strangely, despite his genuine conviction that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, Hans Blix does not appear to have gone out of his way to warn the Security Council of this dire emergency. On 27 January he said that Iraq was co-operating “rather well”; his interim report on 28 February “remained critical of the extent of Iraqi cooperation but noted that significant progress had been been made” (“Report gives small comfort to hawks and doves”, Guardian 1 March 2003). Meanwhile, former weapons inspector Scott Ritter had been claiming for months that Iraq had been at least 90% disarmed by 1998, and that any capability for chemical warfare Iraq might have possessed would by now be harmless sludge. It is unclear how Toynbee reconciles Ritter’s claims, now proven correct beyond all shadow of a doubt, with her own claim that “everyone” genuinely thought Iraq had WMD.

On 6 February, Toynbee gave another demonstration of her loyalty to Ingsoc when she observed that Bush and Blair’s “legal case for war was to pre-empt the use of WMD” (“Revenge or victory”, Guardian 6 February 2004). This was a wonderful piece of alternate reality, not least in its bland assumption that pre-emption can possibly constitute a “legal case”. Except perhaps in the mind of Blair’s attorney general and chum Lord Goldsmith, it cannot. Neither the UN Charter nor Resolution 1441 gives any mandate for pre-empting the use of WMD. It would be hard for them to do so, since the UN inspectors had been withdrawn, by Britain and the US, without finding any WMD to pre-empt. According to Toynbee, therefore, Bush and Blair’s legal case is that one can lawfully circumvent the law in order to prevent the use of what does not exist.

I emailed Polly Toynbee about both of the statements I’ve quoted. She replied only to my query about what “everyone genuinely thought”. My email ran, in part:

“If everyone genuinely thought Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, what was all the fuss about? Why did the US and Britain try to bribe the Security Council of the UN into giving them a second resolution? Why did Tony Blair have to rely on a sexed-up, outdated student's report to make what passed for his case? Why did W Scott Ritter keep saying, months before the assault on Iraq, that any WMDs Iraq might have possessed were harmless sludge? Why did France and Germany opt out of the glorious crusade to topple Saddam Hussein if their intelligence services thought he was a threat?” (Email to Polly Toynbee, 30 January 2004)

Her reply, in toto, was:

“A lot of anti war people, like me, thought Saddam would only use his WMD if attacked - a good reason for not attacking.” (Email to Philip Challinor, 30 January 2004)

“Crimestop means the faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought. It includes the power of not grasping analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest arguments if they are inimical to Ingsoc, and of being bored or repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction.”
George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four

The examples I’ve mentioned are not isolated. These brilliant faculties are on display virtually everywhere in our proudly independent media, and glowing examples are not hard to come by. Johann Hari recently argued in the Independent that, whatever the motives may have been for our assaults on Iraq and Afghanistan, we should be happy for our victims because of the democracy we are about to impose on them (“We should build on our successes”, Independent 20 February 2004). When I asked him why he thought the results would be any purer than the motives, he answered:

“You are totally right: arguing that we should ride the beast of US power in the hope that greater human rights will emerge is dangerous. But the alternative - leaving Saddam and the Taliban in power - created an absolute certainty of no democracy and vast human rights abuses. At least this way there's a chance.” (Email to Philip Challinor, 20 February 2004)

The dangerous thought that Saddam and the Taliban were largely the creatures of US power in the first place clearly has no place here. Nor has any grasp of the contradiction inherent in the idea “the best chance for democracy is to trust the powerful”.

It is, of course, quite unfair to compare Toynbee, Hari and their colleagues with the likes of Winston Smith at the Ministry of Truth. Smith and his fellow denizens of Orwell’s 1984 live in an all-encompassing police state, under a total surveillance of which David Blunkett and his fans can only dream, at least for the moment. Smith lives under the constant threat of denunciation, torture and death. By comparison, the penalties for exposing the lies of Tony Blair and his crew are negligible; but it appears they are easily formidable enough to keep the mainstream media from asking the wrong questions.

Furthermore, Orwell’s Party of Ingsoc has sufficient respect for the intelligence of its citizens to falsify the past as completely and scrupulously as possible – newspapers, books, films, all conceivable sources of information are continually “updated” and “corrected” to conform with the latest lie. Tony Blair’s English Socialist party has no such scruples. Blair’s lies can be refuted by anyone with a memory and an hour or two to spare on the Internet. As Arundhati Roy has somewhere observed, the pathetic transparency of Blair’s lies is even more depressing than the fact of his telling them. Nevertheless, as far as the mainstream media are concerned, the purity of Blair’s motives remains unimpeachable.

Bear in mind that I’ve been discussing the Guardian and Independent – the bastions of the British left-of-centre press, which pride themselves on “balance” and “impartiality”. The degree of intellectual rigour and moral courage here on display is a testament to the devotion of our Ministry of Truth.

Childs Play

2004-03-10T11:24:00.000Z

In response to an e-mail claiming that the removal of Aristide from office in Haiti, Andrew Gumbel of The Independent told me the following.
"Haiti's very complicated, as you would know if you had any first-hand experience of the place, or if you talked to anyone with any modicum of knowledge, or indeed if you just spent more time learning from the reporting being done on the ground rather than resorting to tiresome knee-jerk criticisms and parsing our work for tiny inconsistencies with your narrow ideological conception of "the truth"."

Andrew Gumbel

I liked that. My narrow ideological conception of the truth was a claim that since the forced removal of their democratically elected president, Haitians had seen an increase in violence, that it was unjustifiable to remove a leader who had been elected twice in the same year in electoral processes described as 'fair and peaceful'. In fact Peter Hallward of King's College in London claimed that "An exhaustive and convincing report by The International Coalition of Independent Observers concluded that by the standard of the presidential elections held in the USA that same year the Haitian elections were positively exemplary"

Mr Gumbels response to being urged to include truthful information in his report was roughly the equivalent to putting his hands over his ears and violently shaking his head while screaming 'can't hear you!!!!' I got the message.

That last time I witnessed this kind on infantile reaction to polite requests for honesty came from David Aaronovitch. Amidst the gathering storm of criticism of US policy in Iraq and erosion of civil rights David A sought refuge in the wreckage of the city of Bam in Iran, right after it had been devastated by an earthquake. I am sure he might have made a worse choice although nothing springs to mind as I write. David A claimed that the Iranian government had done nothing to protect the unfortunate citizens of the city. He claimed that for all its faults the US did at least protect its own people against such disaster.

"Some will see this as simply a natural disaster of the kind to which Iran, according to Khatami, is "prone". Four days earlier, however, there had been another earthquake of about the same intensity, this time in California. In which about 0.000001% of the buildings suffered serious structural damage and two people were killed when an old clocktower collapsed. So why the polar disparity between Bam and Paso Robles?

and

This is not a silly question. True, the Californians are much richer than the Iranians. But if you believed everything you read in the works of M Moore and others, you would anticipate a culture of corporate greed in which safety and regulation came way behind the desire to turn the quick buck. Instead you discover a society in which the protection of citizens from falling masonry seems to be regarded as enormously important.

and

The reformist Iran News asked on its website, "How many times have we reminded the ruling establishment that the first structures to fall during a major earthquake would be those dealing with emergency management and relief, such as hospitals, police and fire stations? The officials in charge are either deaf or simply don't care."

and

Iran had the money to do much of what was needed. After the Kobe earthquake of January 1995 a report concluded that most deaths had been caused by the collapse of housing built in the traditional Japanese manner. This style was based on a post-and-beam system, with tiles or thick mud laid on top. The roofs came down easily, and when they did, they crushed everything beneath. And exactly the same thing seems to have happened in Bam, as much to new as to old buildings

and finally

What, I wonder, has Arundhati Roy to say now about the superiority of traditional building methods over globalised ones? Some Iranians might think that it's a shame there wasn't a McDonald's in Bam. It would have been the safest place in town."

Well well! Upon reading this I felt obliged to inform Mr Aaronovitch of some simple and oft proven facts. I even made it easy by providing an example. In the USA's back garden Luis Ignacio 'Lula' Da Silva ran election campaigns in 1998 and 1994. In each campaign he fought the encumbent establishment choice and Globo, the fourth biggest media conglomerate in the world and both times lost narrowly. He lost because he has promised to default on Brazil's debt and use the money to fund food, education, health and other social programmes. "He doesn't understand economics" came the cry, "he will sell the poor out in the end", "he can't speak English, he will look like a fool at international meetings"", "He was poor when he was a child, he won't understand how power functions" and so on and so forth. The fact that Lula had massive leads in the polls and was therefore clearly the people's choice was deemed irrelevant and an organisation of Brazilian politicians, the media, the IMF, World Bank forced blanket condemnation of the man and destroyed his chances. Only after he had lightened up and agreed to tow the line in 2002 did he win the election.

I commented to My A that this story was not at all odd and requested that he imagine an Iranian Government that was willing to spend massively on social programmes and provide excellent earthquake proof housing, free quality schooling, free quality hospitals etc. I asked him if he seriously thought that the international community would tolerate a free and prosperous Iranian state? In the light of the west's tacit support of the regimes of Saudi, Uzbekistan, Kuwait, Isreal, Colombia and many others around the world I suggested that an attempt by Iran to provide these things would be short lived and would result in a taking over of power by a corrupt oligarchy within Iran who were prepared to maintain the status quo in order to appease the USA and it's allies.

Mr A replied with a devastating one liner, how he typed it since his hands were clasped over his ears and he was screaming NO No No!!! I will never figure out. He told me that Iran was a democracy and therefore my points were irrelevant. Did I laugh?.....

We are in the unfortunate position of having journalists who are unwilling and maybe unable to enter into debate and respond with indignation when we question their willfil towing of the imperialist line. Some of these claim to be lefties. I suppose they might be on the left of the right wing, where is that? Oh yes, the armpit...makes sense!

Why Bother?

2004-03-08T13:10:00.000Z

Harry's Compulsive anti-Stopperism Loses Readers' Interest

Harry the Hatchet has apparently been under attack from readers over the particularly strident attacks on the antiwar Left. On the one hand, some who do not share the political outlook of John Pilger and George Galloway feel resentful about being tarred with any brush applied to them. On the other, many are just bored by the spacky hands whacking out the same old tunes on the old salmon-background sic 'em site. I feel the former are probably missing the point - it isn't that they are being tarred with some rather grubby brushes, but precisely that the warniks want desperately to split the enormous coalition against the war, to turn it in on itself and force a split. The latter are closer to where I'm at.

But wait! Harry has some answers for those who think strident tones should be the preserve of our increasingly whacky Prime Minister and his spooked family. He cites Norman Geras, (whom I took to task just the other day at Lenin's Tomb ) in his answer:

"This is why bother. John Pilger, just to start with him, is not in fact some lonely nut-case, even if there are signs that his judgement is now rather disturbed. He is a journalist of world renown, who has a reputation for good work in the past, and also access to prominent media outlets. In these respects he is far from alone."

On what grounds Pilger is supposed to be disturbed we are not allowed to know. John Sweeney has attempted a sad little smear against his foe which rebounded in terrible fashion on him. But the point is that we don't need to be told. It's obvious enough, isn't it? Someone who condemns US power and lauds the anti-occupation forces working inside Iraq must be disturbed. Isn't this the reason why they say what they say, and argue how they argue? Isn't it irrationalism, fundamentalism, Stalinism, Trotskyism, fascism?

Norm continues:

"It needs to be answered. It needs to be characterized for what it is: at worst pro-tyrant, at best deluded, leftism. For the rest, it doesn't implicate anyone on the anti-war left who doesn't want to be implicated. They are capable of stating their own viewpoints, and - within that - their better positions on these issues."

Noone on the Left is pro-tyrant. Any fool who runs around telling you that the antiwar movement was teeming with people desperate to be placed under the tutelage of a mass murderer and merchant of torture is a pure sap, or worse. Similarly, not every single person in Iraq who has a negative word to say about the occupation is necessarily a crypto-fascist, or nostalgic for the hey-day of Ba'athism. I have yet to see a single word from Nick Cohen, Christopher Hitchens, Norman Geras, David Aaronovitch, or indeed Harry Hatchet to demonstrate their vacant thesis - the perfectly excellent reason for this is that they cannot begin to justify it.

Harry ponders the Stop the War Coalition's success:

"Although led by a sectarian grouping, the Socialist Workers Party, it has successfully attracted support from all shades of opinion from Liberal Democrats, Labour Party members, Greens, pacifists and communists and leftists of varying outlooks. And of course it has won the backing of a number of religious groupings."

Harry has no business suggesting that the STWC is led by the SWP, but if it was it would be a perfectly excellent example of just how non-sectarian a "grouping" they are that they alone are capable of uniting such a splendid array of forces:

"Yet what is also unprecedented is the easy ride that Stop the War has had from the media ... apart from a few exceptions, Stop the War has not been put under scrutiny by the media. There has been very little focus in the press on the real politics of STWC or of the groups and individuals that make up its leadership. They have simply been described as 'peace activists' - a phrase that, as we have discussed, is itself open to some discussion.

On the few occassions when a journalist did point out that, for example, STWC Chairman Andrew Murray was a member of the Communist Party of Britain, there were howls of 'witchunt' from the STWC and from those strange relics of British communism who objected viruently to one of their members being described as a communist."

Noone has criticised the STWC?:

STWC marchers are either the "blithering ex-flower child or ranting neo-Stalinist" who ""do not think that Saddam Hussein is a bad guy at all". (Christopher Hitchens)

The "the shameless Stop the War coalition". (Nick Cohen)

Well, let's not dwell on the details. The point about Andrew Murray having been a Communist is presumably irrelevant unless one wants to imply guilt by association - a remarkably McCarthyite, nay, Stalinist debating strategy. Ditto the following:

"Whenever the highly relevant links between the Muslim Association of Britain and the SWP came under discussion, again the reaction was close to hysterical..."

So, presumably, when Nick Cohen complains that the Muslim Association of Britain "thinks Israel should be abolished" (fair enough, I do too), this has something do with condemning the position of the antiwar movement? Evidently not. If the MAB were nowhere in the antiwar movement, Nick Cohen would still be denouncing it as a collective sigh of support for tyranny.

Harry and Norman claim they have nothing against what Geras patronisingly refers to as the "sane" antiwar Left, that which is "antiwar and anti-Saddam", the sort Harry claims is represented by The Guardian and The Independent. If only the Pilgerites, Trots and Chomskyists could be this sane! Well, he could do a bit more reading up:

"Saddam Hussein is obviously an evil man." (Socialist Worker)

Saddam is "a vicious dictator who brutalised, tortured and murdered tens of thousands of Iraqis." (Socialist Party website).

"Marxists have no sympathy with the man who ruled Iraq with a mailed fist, who murdered Communists and trade unionists, who gassed Iranians and Kurds, who massacred Shias and killed political prisoners with excruciating torture." (Socialist Appeal)

Saddam Hussein is a "ruthless megalomaniac" (Tariq Ali on Counterpunch)

"I felt no pity for Saddam. He had killed some dear comrades of mine and imprisoned too many others" (Tariq Ali again)

Saddam Hussein is "murderous", a "fiendish tyrant" (John Pilger)

"All people who have any concern for human rights, justice and integrity should be overjoyed by the capture of Saddam Hussein ... An indictment of Saddam's atrocities would include not only his slaughter and gassing of Kurds in 1988 but also, rather crucially, his massacre of the Shiite rebels who might have overthrown him in 1991." (Noam Chomsky)

Naturally, Harry and Norman are perfectly well aware that the antiwar Left is not the mythical Saddamite beast they make it out to be. The truth is, they would rather have a debate with Saddam Hussein than with the antiwar movement. They would rather talk as if being pro-war was objectively anti-fascist, and no concerns about geopolitics, about the dismissal of viable alternatives, about the suitability of the agent of 'liberation', about the parlous state Iraq is in because of the occupation - in fact, no discussion of the issues central to the antiwar case need ever come under discussion, so long as the antiwar movement is "at worst pro-tyrant, at best deluded leftist".