Thanks to anon for sharing a link to this clip of US servicemen pissing themselves at the sight of an Iraqi woman walking towards a controlled explosion...
People who are pro the occupation probably won't see much wrong with this at all - the woman survived and you can plainly hear someone in the background trying to arrange for her to be warned off and to be given assistance. That laughter sounds more nervous than genuinely gleeful...
People who are anti the occupation will doubtlessly think this clip is disgraceful
Personally, after watching the clip a couple of times I was left thinking that there are going to be an awful of lot of desensitized, fucked-up and combat-trained kids returning home to America and the UK over the next few years
Hmmmm...
I wonder what they'll end up doing for a living
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Showing posts with label war. Show all posts
Showing posts with label war. Show all posts
Saturday, August 16, 2008
Tuesday, April 08, 2008
Happy Birthday War
A belated link to this cheerful ditty celebrating the fifth anniversary of the invasion and occupation of Iraq....
Notable, for me anyway, for fact that the original footage used in the video features a chunky bearded bloke prancing about and doing a Cher impression around and on that old tank off the Old Kent Road which has become something of a South London landmark
Filmed in South London
NOT filmed in South London
My favourite urban camouflage scheme of the several that have been tried out on that tank so far is this one...
If the someone would only have added a can of bastard-strength lager dangling from the turret somewhere it would have passed off as a local and blended in with the area perfectly
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Notable, for me anyway, for fact that the original footage used in the video features a chunky bearded bloke prancing about and doing a Cher impression around and on that old tank off the Old Kent Road which has become something of a South London landmark
Filmed in South London
NOT filmed in South LondonMy favourite urban camouflage scheme of the several that have been tried out on that tank so far is this one...
If the someone would only have added a can of bastard-strength lager dangling from the turret somewhere it would have passed off as a local and blended in with the area perfectly
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Saturday, March 15, 2008
Bread and Circuses, mostly circuses...
Towards the end of the afternoon, after most of today's Stop the War marchers were heading home, I was hanging around with a chum in Parliament Square, chatting with a couple of protesters, when we were approached by an African guy holding a photo album.
He wanted to show us some pictures
And very unpleasant they were too. The album was filled with page after page of photographs of victims of atrocities carried out, so our new friend claimed, in the Congo. I've been shown a few albums like that in my time and I couldn't be 100% sure that the pictures really were taken in the Congo
But it doesn't really matter. There's no-one denying that millions have been killed there. The guy with the album claimed eight million, 'official' western estimates usually never equal or exceed the magic six million figure
Once we'd finished looking at his snapshots the guy looked up at us and said in earnest, broken English
'The west takes our resources and kills our people. Please, they can keep taking our resources but stop killing our people'
That's not asking for much is it? And fucking heartbreaking to hear someone say that to you
The guy wasn't after money from us or even a few poxy signatures on a petition. He just wanted people to know what's going on in his country
And as he walked away, one of the protesters we were chatting with said something like
'Eight million people and it barely gets a mention in the papers!'
No it doesn't.
Come to think of it, our papers don't even serve the self-interest of the majority of their own domestic populations, let alone ordinary people in Central Africa.
Did the news that a major US investment bank has just died on its arse; bringing the prospect of a complete meltdown of the economic system on which we all currently rely that little bit closer, make it to the top of the news bulletins yesterday? Did it fuck. All the television channels and newspapers were full of this cobblers...
So, thanks to the anonymous commentator who left a link to this image under my previous post...
it really hit the spot, today of all days
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Tuesday, October 09, 2007
A fucked up, immoral mess...
That report I link to in my previous post about the risk of the UK becoming a Dystopian surveillance state gets especially hung-up on the fact that many of the increased powers being taken by the state are, in turn, delegated to private companies
I share the authors’ seemingly out-dated view that there are some things that money can’t buy and therefore probably best not left to profit making entities to manage
Employing soldiers is quite high up on the list
People who bear arms for money have always had a certain stigma attached to their profession. Which is why so much effort has gone into rebranding mercenaries as ‘contractors’ in recent years. It’s unlikely that many people would give a fuck about stories of mercenaries being killed by Iraqi insurgents in quite the same way as hearing that ‘contractors’ have been done away with
People who serve in armies generally don’t carry that stigma and are usually accorded respect by most people.
That respect comes from the belief that those soldiers serve for something more than financial reward and have undertaken to risk their lives to protect the rest of us whilst we sleep peacefully in our beds
And even when our soldiers are stuck into some shitty, questionable situations by our politicians we still want to believe that our soldiers will do their honourable best to deal with those shitty, questionable situations
I think most of our soldiers want to believe that too
Which gets me onto a story someone emailed me (thanks AF)…
The news that a US National Guardswoman serving in Iraq, Ciara Durkin, was found shot in the head in Bagram Airbase last month
The US military initially told Durkin’s family that she died in action but now isn’t quite so sure.
The fact that Durkin was working as a finance clerk, had recently told family members that she had discovered something untoward and had urged them to press for an investigation in the event of her death does raise one or two questions
As does the fact that the list of US and UK soldiers serving in Afghanistan and Iraq who have either a) been murdered, or b) so appalled by the immorality of corporate kleptowar that they’ve killed themselves, is beginning to stack up…
Colonel Ted Westhusing
A devout Catholic, father of three and a specialist in military ethics. Apparently he was so disgusted with the corruption of themercenary contractor company he was liaising with and the reluctance of his superiors to deal with it that he shot himself in the head a month before he was due to return home. His suicide note read ‘I am sullied no more’
Corporal Pat Tillman
A high profile recruit to the US armed forces who gave up a lucrative football career to serve his country. He was killed in action in Afghanistan and awarded a nice shiny posthumous medal for bravery in combat. His family later discovered that the medal citation was a pack of lies, that Tillman was shot in the face at close range with an American rifle and that evidence was deliberately destroyed immediately after his death. They’re not best pleased…
Apparently, Corporal Tillman was planning to return home and say one or two negative things about the war at the end of his tour...
Captain Ken Masters
A father of two and the British Military investigator in charge of the investigation into those two British soldiers caught driving around Basra in a car full of weapons dressed as Iraqis
Captain Masters didn’t complete the investigation and apparently decided to hang himself instead
Staff Sergeant Denise Rose
Another British Military investigator who committed suicide in Basra, after spending only a month in Iraq
The investigation into her death implied that the suicide had something to do with her being rebuked for being drunk in uniform the day before…
I’m not putting forward any cleverly insightful conclusions about these stories. However, a little Googling of these people’s names and some reading up on the circumstances surrounding their deaths paints a picture of a totally fucked up mess, in Afghanistan and Iraq. A fucked up, immoral mess that’s killing people who are trying to do their best and killing those people in more ways than the bastards behind these wars want us to think about
.
I share the authors’ seemingly out-dated view that there are some things that money can’t buy and therefore probably best not left to profit making entities to manage
Employing soldiers is quite high up on the list
People who bear arms for money have always had a certain stigma attached to their profession. Which is why so much effort has gone into rebranding mercenaries as ‘contractors’ in recent years. It’s unlikely that many people would give a fuck about stories of mercenaries being killed by Iraqi insurgents in quite the same way as hearing that ‘contractors’ have been done away with
People who serve in armies generally don’t carry that stigma and are usually accorded respect by most people.
That respect comes from the belief that those soldiers serve for something more than financial reward and have undertaken to risk their lives to protect the rest of us whilst we sleep peacefully in our beds
And even when our soldiers are stuck into some shitty, questionable situations by our politicians we still want to believe that our soldiers will do their honourable best to deal with those shitty, questionable situations
I think most of our soldiers want to believe that too
Which gets me onto a story someone emailed me (thanks AF)…
The news that a US National Guardswoman serving in Iraq, Ciara Durkin, was found shot in the head in Bagram Airbase last month
The US military initially told Durkin’s family that she died in action but now isn’t quite so sure.
The fact that Durkin was working as a finance clerk, had recently told family members that she had discovered something untoward and had urged them to press for an investigation in the event of her death does raise one or two questions
As does the fact that the list of US and UK soldiers serving in Afghanistan and Iraq who have either a) been murdered, or b) so appalled by the immorality of corporate kleptowar that they’ve killed themselves, is beginning to stack up…
Colonel Ted Westhusing
A devout Catholic, father of three and a specialist in military ethics. Apparently he was so disgusted with the corruption of the
Corporal Pat Tillman
A high profile recruit to the US armed forces who gave up a lucrative football career to serve his country. He was killed in action in Afghanistan and awarded a nice shiny posthumous medal for bravery in combat. His family later discovered that the medal citation was a pack of lies, that Tillman was shot in the face at close range with an American rifle and that evidence was deliberately destroyed immediately after his death. They’re not best pleased…
Apparently, Corporal Tillman was planning to return home and say one or two negative things about the war at the end of his tour...
Captain Ken Masters
A father of two and the British Military investigator in charge of the investigation into those two British soldiers caught driving around Basra in a car full of weapons dressed as Iraqis
Captain Masters didn’t complete the investigation and apparently decided to hang himself instead
Staff Sergeant Denise Rose
Another British Military investigator who committed suicide in Basra, after spending only a month in Iraq
The investigation into her death implied that the suicide had something to do with her being rebuked for being drunk in uniform the day before…
I’m not putting forward any cleverly insightful conclusions about these stories. However, a little Googling of these people’s names and some reading up on the circumstances surrounding their deaths paints a picture of a totally fucked up mess, in Afghanistan and Iraq. A fucked up, immoral mess that’s killing people who are trying to do their best and killing those people in more ways than the bastards behind these wars want us to think about
.
Monday, October 08, 2007
And on Channel 4 tonight... (revisited for the umpteenth time)
Per the Radio Times website…
The Cult of the Suicide Bomber
Monday 08 October
8:00pm - 9:00pm
Channel 4
The shocking delusion and warped ideology of suicide bombers are brought into sharp focus by former CIA agent Robert Baer in the third instalment of his exemplary series. He talks to two failed suicide bombers in Afghanistan (though we're not told why their plan didn't succeed). Little more than boys, these 17-year-olds are naive enough to believe that God would detonate their explosive vests, rather than the more prosaic explanation of a remotely operated device. The pair were even promised that virgins would wait at the bomb site to lead them to paradise. Baer visits Israel, where the government built a $1.5 billion wall aimed at stopping Palestinian suicide bombers, and offers his own ideas about how self-radicalising young people can be turned away from this murderous path.
And on BBC1 last week...
Panorama: ‘How I Became a Muslim Extremist’ (aka ‘Idiot joins legal organisation, does nothing, then leaves legal organisation’)
It's great to see the major television networks doing their warm up acts for Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week later on in the month
It's just as well everything is so quiet in the Middle East at the moment, otherwise paranoid cynics might start thinking people are being softened up for something
...again
And, as I’ve said a few times before, I think it’s absolutely brilliant how these shows frequently turn to the Israelis for advice on how to deal with terrorism. They’ve only been at if for about 60 years and starting to show some real progress now that they’ve hit upon a winning formula of building enormous great fucking walls all over the place, blanketing the country with checkpoints, demolishing entire neighbourhoods and engaging in perpetual low level conflict with their neighbours
Yup, we’ve got a lot to learn from those guys and the sooner we start taking a leaf or two out of their book the better
though it is a bit of a shame how these TV shows don’t actually explain that suicide bombing started as a tactic to use against militarily superior foes, rather than as an ideology
And nor do these programs get round to explaining why it is that we’re supposed to think that suicide bombs are somehow scarier or more dangerous than other kinds of bombs...
- Do suicide bombs somehow hurt more than, say, IRA bombs (the threat of which we somehow managed to live with without being encouraged by our establishment to shit our pants on a daily basis) because the guys carrying them blow up with them?
(I've actually heard a couple of senior Metropolitan Police officers explain that the difference between IRA and Islamic terror attacks is that the Islamic terror attacks are planned to cause maximum loss of life in a way that IRA bombs weren't. That would be non-lethal IRA bombs like the one that went off in Omagh...
...come to think of it, we're still not sure who was really behind the Omagh bomb so maybe those coppers have a point)
- Are suicide bombs more horrific than 2,500lbs of laser guided, high fragmentation unpleasantness dropped from a plane piloted by someone who doesn't kill himself in the process?
- Would ‘suicide’ bombs still hurt more if the guys carrying them did not know they were carrying them?
Or, more to the point…
- Why do supposedly responsible and thoughtful television companies make documentaries that claim to explain suicide bombing but restrict themselves to spouting agenda-laden bollocks instead
That’s a rhetorical question btw
.
Thursday, August 09, 2007
A spot of local and not so local history
An intriguing Kubrick-esque monolith appeared in Kennington Park (my local) a few months ago...
For the first time since its erection I spent a little time looking over it yesterday
It’s a memorial to the 100+ local residents who were killed in a bombing raid back in 1940
And the reason why it took 66 years to erect what is effectively their headstone illustrates one or two issues that, I think, are still relevant today
During the Blitz on London in 1940 decent air raid shelters were in short supply. There were very few purpose built shelters and only about one in four Londoners had gardens in which they could erect the laughably crap Anderson shelters they were issued with - handy for keeping your garden tools in, not so useful if a bomb landed anywhere near them...
Everyone else either huddled under their stairs, in cellars, in public shelters or, when they were allowed to, in tube stations.
I say when they were allowed to because, contrary to myth, the government discouraged people taking shelter in the tube system. Taking my local area for example, people were turned away from the barbed-wire festooned entrance to Oval tube station and directed to the nearby public shelter in Kennington Park instead.
The problem with the public shelters, Kennington Park being one of the very worst examples, was that they were poorly designed and hastily built with sub-standard materials. The shelters were essentially no more than WW1-style trenches covered with thin slabs of crumbly concrete. They flooded easily and were prone to collapse even if a bomb didn’t land near to them. They were, effectively, prefabricated graves
Some ordinary people were so pissed off with the poor provisions that had been made for their safety compared to the more than adequate provisions made for better off people that there were at least some demonstrations outside purpose built shelters that had strict admissions policies based on social standing. (I only know about this because a couple of old guys told me about them - for some reason this story has not made its way into populist Blitz mythology)
Anyway, one night in 1940 a small bomb landed on the Kennington Park public shelter and the trenches collapsed. At least a hundred people died, though only fifty bodies were pulled out before the authorities had the site sprinkled with quick lime and then filled in
The bodies are still there
You can just about pick out the outline of the old trench system/ mass grave from Google Earth views of the park
And that was that. The incident was barely reported and effectively excised from the establishment-endorsed History of the Blitz. Tales of chirpy cockneys being buried alive and left in unmarked mass graves were presumably considered not conducive for national morale.
I think the story has relevance to today for quite a few reasons. It’s a decent illustration of historical myth making – even with 67 years of separation from the event you’d be hard put to find any depictions of the Blitz that show fucked-off working class Londoners huddling in damp pits cursing the people charged with their safety.
It is also interesting how in one time and set of circumstances fifty blown up Londoners get buried in an unmarked hole and receive barely any press coverage because their story doesn’t fit in with a particular state-endorsed narrative. Yet, in another time and set of circumstances, another fifty murdered Londoners are elevated to the level of national martyrs because that does suit establishment objectives.
-
But, hey, what are fifty or a hundred people in the scheme of things. Three hundred times that number of people died on a bad night of RAF fire-storming over Hamburg.
And I’ve just realised what today's date is. A lot of time and effort has been expended over the years anguishing over the whys and wherefores of dropping an atom bomb on Hiroshima. So much so that the follow-up attack on Nagasaki three days later is treated almost as an afterthought. Which is unfortunate, not least because the people of Nagasaki were equally dead but also because nowhere near enough airtime has been devoted to the question ‘Why the fuck did the Americans bomb Nagasaki anyway? What exactly did obliterating a second city so shortly after the first achieve?’
There are several possible answers to that question. None of them very nice
When I was younger and there were more survivors of the London Blitz still around, I’d sometimes get into some fairly heated discussions about the question of bombing cities and civilian populations. The usual response to my concerns was that I was young, wasn’t there and could not understand what it was like to live through it. It was war and the British and the Americans struck back in any way that they could. And besides... wait for it ... the Germans started it
The problem is that we didn’t strike back any way we could. Particularly in the latter stages of the war, Allied numerical and technical superiority in the air was such that we could bomb pretty much anything we liked. Yet, curiously, German industrial production peaked in 1944 and only tailed off because of shortages of raw materials and disruption of its transport network. We left many of their factories untouched yet continued to bomb the shit out of population centres and slaughter tens of thousands of non-combatants right up to the last few weeks of the war
Not so good for German civilians, considerably better for the owners of the factories and also those interests that set about dismantling, crating and sending some of those factories home immediately after the war ended
What the fuck was that all about?
And if all that seems too far back in history, what about Iraq?
Where’s the military sense in reducing a country’s essential infrastructure; its water, its sewerage, its electricity, in the run up to military campaigns that are only planned to last for days or weeks? How does sentencing an entire nation to drink polluted water for a decade or more (whilst, of course, leaving its oil production facilities in pristine condition) help your tanks roll into Baghdad?
.
For the first time since its erection I spent a little time looking over it yesterday
It’s a memorial to the 100+ local residents who were killed in a bombing raid back in 1940
And the reason why it took 66 years to erect what is effectively their headstone illustrates one or two issues that, I think, are still relevant today
During the Blitz on London in 1940 decent air raid shelters were in short supply. There were very few purpose built shelters and only about one in four Londoners had gardens in which they could erect the laughably crap Anderson shelters they were issued with - handy for keeping your garden tools in, not so useful if a bomb landed anywhere near them...
Everyone else either huddled under their stairs, in cellars, in public shelters or, when they were allowed to, in tube stations.
I say when they were allowed to because, contrary to myth, the government discouraged people taking shelter in the tube system. Taking my local area for example, people were turned away from the barbed-wire festooned entrance to Oval tube station and directed to the nearby public shelter in Kennington Park instead.
The problem with the public shelters, Kennington Park being one of the very worst examples, was that they were poorly designed and hastily built with sub-standard materials. The shelters were essentially no more than WW1-style trenches covered with thin slabs of crumbly concrete. They flooded easily and were prone to collapse even if a bomb didn’t land near to them. They were, effectively, prefabricated graves
Some ordinary people were so pissed off with the poor provisions that had been made for their safety compared to the more than adequate provisions made for better off people that there were at least some demonstrations outside purpose built shelters that had strict admissions policies based on social standing. (I only know about this because a couple of old guys told me about them - for some reason this story has not made its way into populist Blitz mythology)
Anyway, one night in 1940 a small bomb landed on the Kennington Park public shelter and the trenches collapsed. At least a hundred people died, though only fifty bodies were pulled out before the authorities had the site sprinkled with quick lime and then filled in
The bodies are still there
You can just about pick out the outline of the old trench system/ mass grave from Google Earth views of the park
And that was that. The incident was barely reported and effectively excised from the establishment-endorsed History of the Blitz. Tales of chirpy cockneys being buried alive and left in unmarked mass graves were presumably considered not conducive for national morale.
I think the story has relevance to today for quite a few reasons. It’s a decent illustration of historical myth making – even with 67 years of separation from the event you’d be hard put to find any depictions of the Blitz that show fucked-off working class Londoners huddling in damp pits cursing the people charged with their safety.
It is also interesting how in one time and set of circumstances fifty blown up Londoners get buried in an unmarked hole and receive barely any press coverage because their story doesn’t fit in with a particular state-endorsed narrative. Yet, in another time and set of circumstances, another fifty murdered Londoners are elevated to the level of national martyrs because that does suit establishment objectives.
-
But, hey, what are fifty or a hundred people in the scheme of things. Three hundred times that number of people died on a bad night of RAF fire-storming over Hamburg.
And I’ve just realised what today's date is. A lot of time and effort has been expended over the years anguishing over the whys and wherefores of dropping an atom bomb on Hiroshima. So much so that the follow-up attack on Nagasaki three days later is treated almost as an afterthought. Which is unfortunate, not least because the people of Nagasaki were equally dead but also because nowhere near enough airtime has been devoted to the question ‘Why the fuck did the Americans bomb Nagasaki anyway? What exactly did obliterating a second city so shortly after the first achieve?’
There are several possible answers to that question. None of them very nice
When I was younger and there were more survivors of the London Blitz still around, I’d sometimes get into some fairly heated discussions about the question of bombing cities and civilian populations. The usual response to my concerns was that I was young, wasn’t there and could not understand what it was like to live through it. It was war and the British and the Americans struck back in any way that they could. And besides... wait for it ... the Germans started it
The problem is that we didn’t strike back any way we could. Particularly in the latter stages of the war, Allied numerical and technical superiority in the air was such that we could bomb pretty much anything we liked. Yet, curiously, German industrial production peaked in 1944 and only tailed off because of shortages of raw materials and disruption of its transport network. We left many of their factories untouched yet continued to bomb the shit out of population centres and slaughter tens of thousands of non-combatants right up to the last few weeks of the war
Not so good for German civilians, considerably better for the owners of the factories and also those interests that set about dismantling, crating and sending some of those factories home immediately after the war ended
What the fuck was that all about?
And if all that seems too far back in history, what about Iraq?
Where’s the military sense in reducing a country’s essential infrastructure; its water, its sewerage, its electricity, in the run up to military campaigns that are only planned to last for days or weeks? How does sentencing an entire nation to drink polluted water for a decade or more (whilst, of course, leaving its oil production facilities in pristine condition) help your tanks roll into Baghdad?
.
Monday, August 06, 2007
It's all in the contract…
Catch-22 is my favourite book
Hardly original I know, but there you go
A lot of people who say that Catch-22 is one of their favourite books go on to describe it as being all about the lunacy of war
Which is a bit sad...
...saying something is your favourite book and then demonstrating that you probably really don’t really get it at all
Catch-22 is about being trapped living life by the rules of others and just how wicked and insane those others often are
To think the themes of the book are only applicable to wartime is, I think, to miss the point entirely
The scary thing is that when I first read Catch-22 as a teenager I assumed that most of the characters and scenarios in the book were exaggerated parodies crafted to drive the themes, and the humour, of the book home
Silly me
I’ve now spent the subsequent 25 years or so meeting people and encountering situations that could have been taken straight out of the book and realising that Heller didn't have to employ very much imagination at all
Probably one of the most over the top moments in the book occurs when the Americans make a deal with the Germans to bomb their own airfield to make good losses they incurred trading commodities futures…
Yossarian: You made a deal to bomb our own base?!!
Cathcart: A contract is a contract. That's what we're fighting for
Milo: Will you clear the field, please? We will soon begin to strafe.
Yossarian: Strafe?!!
Cathcart: It's all in the contract…
"Strafe?!!"The passage concludes with the line…
"This time Milo had gone too far. Bombing his own men and planes was more than even the most phlegmatic observer could stomach, and it looked like the end for him...Milo was all washed up until he opened his books to the public and disclosed the tremendous profit he had made."
Obviously, the idea of the US supporting its enemies in wartime to suit some twisted corporate agenda is totally over the top and nothing like anything that could happen outside of a satirical novel
But then I read stories like this…
190,000 weapons 'missing in Iraq'
The US military cannot account for 190,000 AK-47 assault rifles and pistols given to the Iraqi security forces, an official US report says…
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) says the Pentagon cannot track about 30% of the weapons distributed in Iraq over the past three years.
The Pentagon did not dispute the figures, but said it was reviewing arms deliveries procedures.
About $19.2bn has been spent by the US since 2003 on Iraqi security forces.
GAO, the investigative arm of the US Congress, said at least $2.8bn of this money was used to buy and deliver weapons and other equipment.
Correspondents say it is now feared many of the weapons are being used against US forces on the ground in Iraq.
And I start to wonder…
.
Freedom Next Time
Found via LWTC247's blog (ta)...
Nothing new for veteran Conspiraloons™ here but we all enjoy listening to eloquent people saying things we already know about and agree with don't we
And, in time honoured fashion, Pilger follows the well-trodden Chomskyesque path of talking about corporate propaganda and the corruption of professional journalism but shies away from getting stuck into the nitty gritty of who's driving it all ('it's not about individuals, it's a system!') and what we can realistically do about it.
On the plus side, at least Pilger doesn't write off everyone on the Internet as a bunch of insane c*nts - which puts him miles ahead of most of his ilk
.
John Pilger - Freedom Next Time
Nothing new for veteran Conspiraloons™ here but we all enjoy listening to eloquent people saying things we already know about and agree with don't we
And, in time honoured fashion, Pilger follows the well-trodden Chomskyesque path of talking about corporate propaganda and the corruption of professional journalism but shies away from getting stuck into the nitty gritty of who's driving it all ('it's not about individuals, it's a system!') and what we can realistically do about it.
On the plus side, at least Pilger doesn't write off everyone on the Internet as a bunch of insane c*nts - which puts him miles ahead of most of his ilk
.
Monday, July 30, 2007
What do Prescott Bush and Pigeons have in common?
"Coup, Coup..."If you type the word ‘Conspiraloon’ into Google the first result takes you to a page entitled…
‘Ten Characteristics of Conspiracy Theorists’
The page is written with absolutely no sense of irony whatsover. Which is unfortunate as all ten ‘characteristics’ display the peculiar quality of being equally as applicable to the kind of people who write pages called ‘Ten Characteristics of Conspiracy Theorists’ as to conspiracy theorists.
It’s difficult to pick a personal favourite Characteristic but, if pushed, I’d probably go for Number 9…
9. Using previous conspiracies as evidence to support their claims. This argument invokes scandals like the Birmingham Six, the Bologna station bombings, the Zinoviev letter and so on in order to try and demonstrate that their conspiracy theory should be accorded some weight (because it's “happened before”.) They do not pause to reflect that the conspiracies they are touting are almost always far more unlikely and complicated than the real-life conspiracies with which they make comparison, or that the fact that something might potentially happen does not, in and of itself, make it anything other than extremely unlikely.
The logic behind this is really quite special and seems to be saying ‘Just because something happened before that has no bearing whatsoever on the possibility of it ever happening again’
Hmmm, interesting
Total bollocks admittedly but nevertheless still interesting because it is a nice example of the kind of mental gymnastics people are willing to go through to sustain their personal world view.
Aside from the somewhat cavalier attitude to the significance of historical precedent I’m also not entirely convinced that the Bologna Bombing, Operation Gladio, Iran-Contra, Lockerbie or, more recently, the Litvinenko poisoning can really be described as being more probable and conceptually less complex than suspecting state complicity in, say, the Al Qaeda myth or the Afghan drugs business.
Journalist Gary Webb - author of Dark Alliance, a series of articles linking the CIA with the international drugs trade. The man was clearly a Conspiraloon™ and insane, as evidenced by the fact that he ended up committing suicide by shooting himself in the face, twice.It has been said many times before but the kind of people who write pieces like ‘Ten Characteristics of Conspiracy Theorists’ are really talking about Unofficial Conspiracy Theories. Official conspiracy theories such as the Al Qaeda Myth or that the Russian Government has taken to bumping off dissidents by sprinkling radio-active isotopes all over London; endorsed, as they are, by our government and the media, are just peachy. And, provided those official conspiracy theories are endorsed by the establishment, they can be as insane and as improbable as you like.
But woe betide anyone who entertains any line of speculation, however rational, that is not pre-approved by the establishment
Anyway…
Whilst mindful of the ‘fact’ that past events carry no weight in demonstrating the predisposition of certain groups to engage in conspiratorial behaviour, here’s a link to a BBC Radio program on the subject of the 1933 Business Plot to overthrow Roosevelt’s administration by way of a coup…
The proposed coup never got past the preliminary planning stage for several reasons, not least because the general who was supposed to lead the military side of things wasn’t having anything to do with it and blabbed to Congress
The general in question, Smedley Butler aka The Fighting Quaker aka Old Gimlet Eye aka Snookywookylumps (to Mrs Butler) also wrote a small pamphlet entitled ‘War is a Racket’ (well worth a browse) and described his illustrious 33 year career in the United States Marine Corps as having involved being ‘a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers’.
Whatever happened to the name Smedley?It’s worth remembering that the alleged target of the Business Plot, Franklin Roosevelt, went on to do a outstanding job of lying and tricking his country into World War 2, in spite of strict promises to the contrary, which enriched the interests who allegedly plotted against him eight years previously immensely
What a funny old world it is
Fortunately, we live in enlightened times and, empowered by the sage wisdom contained in ‘Ten Characteristics of Conspiracy Theories’ Number 9, we know that the past is a different place that has no connection whatsoever with the here and now.
Because there’s every reason to believe that the kind of people behind the corporate sponsored coups of the past, successful and unsuccessful, don’t exist any more and even if they did they wouldn’t be foolish enough to plot any conspiracies because our newspapers would find out and report them.
Yes siree, yes they would.
.
Monday, June 11, 2007
Whimpering kids - Then and Now
There's a thought provoking little post over at the State of the Art photoblog.
Exactly 35 years to the day after he captured this iconic image...
...AP photographer Nick Ut grabbed another front page scoop with a photograph of another whimpering child - though this one hadn't been splashed with napalm...
This did strike me as being a slight waste of his skills and experience
I've been prattling about how disgraceful our media is over the last few posts. The irony of these two very different pictures of sobbing kids, separated by 35 years of conditioning of what to expect from our newspapers, captures one aspect of what's so very wrong with our media today. When they're not recycling lies they're distracting us with irrelevant bullshit.
And we lap it up
-
And whilst on the subject of Vietnam in 1972, it's worth remembering that even though the US realised that it was fighting an unwinnable war by '67 or '68, direct US involvement continued for another four years and indirect involvement for another three after that. Some of the worst horrors and most gratuitous slaughter of civilians of the entire war took place long after everyone knew what the result was going to be.
So, next time you hear anyone, the entire leadership of the Labour Party for example, saying that whatever the circumstances of our entry into Iraq, that's all water under the bridge (yeah, right) and we are now honour bound to stay until the situation is somehow magically 'fixed', it's worth asking them, if you can get an opportunity, what the fuck they're on about.
Just because you can break something that's no reason to kid yourself that you can put it back together.
(Of course, we Conspiraloons™ believe that US and UK forces were always going to be kept in the region, however the occupation worked out, but we're mad and our opinions can be safely ignored)
.
Exactly 35 years to the day after he captured this iconic image...
...AP photographer Nick Ut grabbed another front page scoop with a photograph of another whimpering child - though this one hadn't been splashed with napalm...
This did strike me as being a slight waste of his skills and experience
I've been prattling about how disgraceful our media is over the last few posts. The irony of these two very different pictures of sobbing kids, separated by 35 years of conditioning of what to expect from our newspapers, captures one aspect of what's so very wrong with our media today. When they're not recycling lies they're distracting us with irrelevant bullshit.
And we lap it up
-
And whilst on the subject of Vietnam in 1972, it's worth remembering that even though the US realised that it was fighting an unwinnable war by '67 or '68, direct US involvement continued for another four years and indirect involvement for another three after that. Some of the worst horrors and most gratuitous slaughter of civilians of the entire war took place long after everyone knew what the result was going to be.
So, next time you hear anyone, the entire leadership of the Labour Party for example, saying that whatever the circumstances of our entry into Iraq, that's all water under the bridge (yeah, right) and we are now honour bound to stay until the situation is somehow magically 'fixed', it's worth asking them, if you can get an opportunity, what the fuck they're on about.
Just because you can break something that's no reason to kid yourself that you can put it back together.
(Of course, we Conspiraloons™ believe that US and UK forces were always going to be kept in the region, however the occupation worked out, but we're mad and our opinions can be safely ignored)
.
Tuesday, June 05, 2007
The Cult of the Whore
Today’s subscription email from BBC’s Newsnight had me almost choking on my coffee…
==========================================
NEWSNIGHT - TALKING POINT ==========================================
------------------------------------------------------------
The Cult of the Amateur
------------------------------------------------------------
"If we are all amateurs, there are no experts."
Andrew Keen's new book, The Cult of the Amateur is the latest addition to the Newsnight book club. In it, the author expresses his concern for the profligacy of online amateurism, spawned by the digital revolution. This, he feels, has had a destructive impact on our culture, economy and values.
He says, "[They] can use their networked computers to publish everything from uninformed political commentary, to unseemly home videos, to embarrassingly amateurish music, to unreadable poems, reviews, essays, and novels".
He complains that blogs are "collectively corrupting and confusing popular opinion about everything from politics, to commerce, to arts and culture".
He claims that Wikipedia perpetuates a cycle of misinformation and ignorance, and labels YouTube inane and absurd, "showing poor fools dancing, singing, eating, washing, shopping, driving, cleaning, sleeping, or just staring at their computers."
He warns that old media is facing extinction - "say goodbye to experts and cultural gatekeepers - our reporters, news anchors, editors, music companies, and Hollywood movie studios."
What do you think? We've published two extracts from Andrew Keen's book on the Newsnight website. Have a read and share your thoughts - is he being alarmist about the effects of the Web 2.0 revolution, or raising genuine concerns? Are we at the mercy of the amateur? Can kids tell the difference between credible news sources and the amateur's blog? What, in any case, can be done?
Presumably the Newsnight production team are talking about the kind of credible news sources which...
Yes, I suppose the Newsnight team must be referring to those kind of credible news sources.
I’m still waiting for Newsnight’s credible take on Andrei Lugovoi's claim last week that MI6 was involved in some way in the Litvinenko poisoning
The press conference was on Thursday morning
per Newsnight’s Thursday email, the stories covered by the program that night were
- TORY U-TURN?
- BUSH AND CLIMATE CHANGE
- AFGHANISTAN
- MADELEINE McCANN
Then on Friday…
- ALAN JOHNSTON
- CHILD PORNOGRAPHY
- BLAIR IN SOUTH AFRICA
- ENGLAND FOOTBALL FRIENDLY
Now you could argue that those other stories were more important than the Lugavoi press conference. I would counter by saying that if Muslims had been involved in smearing radioactive crap all over London, Newsnight would have run a hour long special on Lugavoi’s claims. Still, I’m sure the Newsnight team will get round to covering the story as soon as Alex Goldfarb faxes them with the details of what to say. That's how they've handled the Litvinenko story so far
What really baffles me is where are all these British based blogs that represent such a dangerously-flawed alternative to the established media?
I’m buggered if I can find them
If you do a Google search on the name ‘Mark Urban’; that purveyor by Royal Appointment of the finest spooky disinformation about the 7/7 bombings, Islamic Terrorism and the Occupation of Iraq, this blog, this poxy personal blog, comes in at number one
If I have achieved nothing else tapping away at this keyboard for last couple of years that achievement alone has made it all worthwhile. However, patting myself on the back aside, the fact is that the number of blogs out there that are really getting stuck into 'professionals' like Mark is tiny. If the Internet really was such a hotbed of media subversion, I shouldn’t come out on top (there’s a cracking piece on Urban Myths here BTW)
Someone recently included a link to this blog in a viral exercise to name and link to five blogs that each person in the chain approved of. My particular branch stopped with me as I couldn’t think of three, let alone five, regularly updated British blogs that I thought were worth reading that were not tainted in some way.
What there is a lot of out there is a mass of really fucked off people who, even though they don’t have the time or inclination to maintain their own platform, do make their feelings clear on other people's sites, including the Internet arms of mainstream news organisations.
And the reason why those people are annoyed is that they know full well they are being systematically lied to by those mainstream outlets.
This is not some abstract game and people have good cause to feel hatred towards the whores who peddle this muck. Their lies pave the way for exploitation, war and death.
So, my suggested answer to Newsnight's question 'What, in any case, can be done?' is 'At least try telling the fucking truth for a change' and then people might stop switching off
.
==========================================
NEWSNIGHT - TALKING POINT ==========================================
------------------------------------------------------------
The Cult of the Amateur
------------------------------------------------------------
"If we are all amateurs, there are no experts."
Andrew Keen's new book, The Cult of the Amateur is the latest addition to the Newsnight book club. In it, the author expresses his concern for the profligacy of online amateurism, spawned by the digital revolution. This, he feels, has had a destructive impact on our culture, economy and values.
He says, "[They] can use their networked computers to publish everything from uninformed political commentary, to unseemly home videos, to embarrassingly amateurish music, to unreadable poems, reviews, essays, and novels".
He complains that blogs are "collectively corrupting and confusing popular opinion about everything from politics, to commerce, to arts and culture".
He claims that Wikipedia perpetuates a cycle of misinformation and ignorance, and labels YouTube inane and absurd, "showing poor fools dancing, singing, eating, washing, shopping, driving, cleaning, sleeping, or just staring at their computers."
He warns that old media is facing extinction - "say goodbye to experts and cultural gatekeepers - our reporters, news anchors, editors, music companies, and Hollywood movie studios."
What do you think? We've published two extracts from Andrew Keen's book on the Newsnight website. Have a read and share your thoughts - is he being alarmist about the effects of the Web 2.0 revolution, or raising genuine concerns? Are we at the mercy of the amateur? Can kids tell the difference between credible news sources and the amateur's blog? What, in any case, can be done?
Presumably the Newsnight production team are talking about the kind of credible news sources which...
- Label anyone who doubts proven liars in our government and security forces as being mentally unbalanced
- When the number of people with doubts gets so large that the insanity claim doesn’t stick they try and sow a little racial division instead
- Act as an unofficial marketing arm of the pharmaceutical business
- Repeat any old propaganda passed onto them by greasy Russian PR gurus working for organized criminals (more of that anon)
- Demonstrate amazing psychic powers and report buildings as having collapsed half an hour before they do
- Slavishly report each high-profile terrorist arrest and terrorist scare without application of even the slightest trace of common sense or reason
- Unashamedly try to stoke up enthusiasm for a couple of wars of aggression, even whilst the last couple of wars they helped lie us into are still raging
Yes, I suppose the Newsnight team must be referring to those kind of credible news sources.
I’m still waiting for Newsnight’s credible take on Andrei Lugovoi's claim last week that MI6 was involved in some way in the Litvinenko poisoning
The press conference was on Thursday morning
per Newsnight’s Thursday email, the stories covered by the program that night were
- TORY U-TURN?
- BUSH AND CLIMATE CHANGE
- AFGHANISTAN
- MADELEINE McCANN
Then on Friday…
- ALAN JOHNSTON
- CHILD PORNOGRAPHY
- BLAIR IN SOUTH AFRICA
- ENGLAND FOOTBALL FRIENDLY
Now you could argue that those other stories were more important than the Lugavoi press conference. I would counter by saying that if Muslims had been involved in smearing radioactive crap all over London, Newsnight would have run a hour long special on Lugavoi’s claims. Still, I’m sure the Newsnight team will get round to covering the story as soon as Alex Goldfarb faxes them with the details of what to say. That's how they've handled the Litvinenko story so far
What really baffles me is where are all these British based blogs that represent such a dangerously-flawed alternative to the established media?
I’m buggered if I can find them
If you do a Google search on the name ‘Mark Urban’; that purveyor by Royal Appointment of the finest spooky disinformation about the 7/7 bombings, Islamic Terrorism and the Occupation of Iraq, this blog, this poxy personal blog, comes in at number one
If I have achieved nothing else tapping away at this keyboard for last couple of years that achievement alone has made it all worthwhile. However, patting myself on the back aside, the fact is that the number of blogs out there that are really getting stuck into 'professionals' like Mark is tiny. If the Internet really was such a hotbed of media subversion, I shouldn’t come out on top (there’s a cracking piece on Urban Myths here BTW)
Someone recently included a link to this blog in a viral exercise to name and link to five blogs that each person in the chain approved of. My particular branch stopped with me as I couldn’t think of three, let alone five, regularly updated British blogs that I thought were worth reading that were not tainted in some way.
What there is a lot of out there is a mass of really fucked off people who, even though they don’t have the time or inclination to maintain their own platform, do make their feelings clear on other people's sites, including the Internet arms of mainstream news organisations.
And the reason why those people are annoyed is that they know full well they are being systematically lied to by those mainstream outlets.
This is not some abstract game and people have good cause to feel hatred towards the whores who peddle this muck. Their lies pave the way for exploitation, war and death.
So, my suggested answer to Newsnight's question 'What, in any case, can be done?' is 'At least try telling the fucking truth for a change' and then people might stop switching off
.
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