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Fabricate that fear
Published 26 June 2008
Those snatched from their homes in Britain following 11 September 2001 have all but vanished into an Anglo-American gulag
The lawyer Gareth Peirce, celebrated for her defence of miscarriage of justice victims, wrote recently: "Over the years of the conflict, every lawless action on the part of the British state provoked a similar reaction: internment, 'shoot to kill', the use of torture . . . brutally obtained false confessions and fabricated evidence. This was registered by the community most affected, but the British public, in whose name these actions were taken, remained ignorant." Referring to the conflict in Northern Ireland, she was drawing a comparison with "our new suspect community", people of Muslim faith, against whom a vicious, sectarian and mostly unreported war is well under way.
As Peirce points out, "internment, discredited and abandoned in Northern Ireland", now allows, not 42 days, but the "indefinite detention without trial of foreign nationals, the 'evidence' to be heard in secret with the detainee's lawyer not permitted to see the evidence against him". Those snatched from their homes in Britain following 11 September 2001 have all but vanished into an Anglo-American gulag, which in this country joins Belmarsh Prison, where people are consigned to oblivion, with Broadmoor psychiatric prison, where they are sent as they go mad, and with Kafkaesque versions of "home" where others are interred under "control orders". One such home prisoner, wrote Peirce, "a man without arms, was left alone and terrified, unable to leave the flat or to contact anyone without committing a criminal offence, subject to a curfew and allowed no visits unless approved in advance by the Home Office". Going into the garden, arran ging a plumber, speaking to a child's teacher, all require permission. The families go mad, too.
Preferring "a quick death . . . to a slow death here", one man who took a risk and returned to Algeria has been lost in the subcontracted gulag, where his new torturers have given the British government "assurances" and are themselves reassured by the fact that BP, the ethical oil company, has sunk £6bn into getting oil out of Algeria's southern Sahara. Jordan, another subcontractor, is held economically afloat by the US so George W Bush's "renditions" and torture can proceed there. No British court has found any of these people guilty of any crime, but as Tony Blair, a genuine prima facie criminal, put it so well, "the rules of the game have changed".
As in the Irish conflict, it is again the ignorance of us, the public, upon which the state relies. All propaganda is directed at honing this ignorance and fabricating a fear. This is primarily the task of journalists. True fear is in Muslim communities. Visit them and you will find people terrified by your knock on the door, and women who now never go out. In effect, control orders have been served on thousands of British citizens.
As Peirce reminds us, the Irish had allies in the Catholic Church and the 40 million Americans of Irish descent; Muslims are alone as they watch the British state, with its "obstinate incomprehension" of their faith, do to them as it would never do to those of other faiths. You can't imagine Jews treated this way; the profanity is too great. The silence of British Jews, who have the history, is also great.
As the suppressed facts of "terrorism" show, Muslims are by far the most numerous victims - up to a million Iraqis dead, including 500,000 infants, during "sanctions" against Iraq in the 1990s; perhaps another million dead when Blair and his mentor ignited the current inferno; countless killed and maimed in Afghanistan by weapons that include the British thermobaric bomb, designed to suck the air out of human beings. And there is Palestine, an entire nation under a permanent control order.
Reviewing this monstrous record, it is no less than amazing that the world's most violent governments - Britain is now the world's leading arms merchant - have sustained only two retaliations on their home soil. With every hypocritical act, they beckon another. Moreover, wrote Gareth Peirce, "If our government continues on [this destructive] path, we will ultimately have destroyed much of the moral and legal fabric of the society that we claim to be protecting. The choice and the responsibility are entirely ours."
"Was it like this for the Irish?"
by Gareth Peirce, London Review of Books.
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This article was originally published on 26 June 2008 in the issue Thou shalt not hug
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103 comments from readers
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JC2
26 June 2008 at 11:54 Oh, and by the way, who came third in that heroes list mentioned at the top of this page? Was it me?
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Jonny Mac
26 June 2008 at 12:11 Those subject to control orders can go back to their home state if they want to, Mr Pilger. What's your alternative to them? Let them walk the streets, even though there is ample secret intelligence that they are highly dangerous? Really, I'd love to hear something constructive from Pilger in place of his paranoid rantings - which are always replete with plentiful quotes from someone he agrees with, as though the fact they somehow prove his point, and the use of inverted commas to suggest that something is just a construct. "Terrorism" indeed. How do you describe the events of 9/11 and 7/7, Mr Pilger?
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me
26 June 2008 at 12:58 The weblink for the Gareth Pierce article is broken, it should read - http://www.lrb.co.uk/v30/n07
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JC2
26 June 2008 at 13:41 Jonny Mac go away please. Don't you think that people would rather stay in their home countries if they could. The number one and overwhelming reason that people come to the U.K. is filthy lucre. That is simply a fact. And the reason the lucre is so good here is because countries like this have spent centuries pillaging the 'Third World' to enrich themselves. Is it any bloomin wonder that these 'Third World' citizens might feel at least a smidgen bitter??? STOP BLAMING THE VICTIM!!!!
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Admin
26 June 2008 at 14:49 Thanks for that 'Me'. Should be sorted now.
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zapruder
26 June 2008 at 19:54 While I wholeheartedly agree with your assessment of the erosion of civil liberties by both the USA and US.
Your are also right to be point at the inconsistencies of both countries in the promotion of democracy abroad.
However, I'm afraid that you are guilty of the same inconsistencies.
Your defense of the Cuban regime despite the concentration camps formed by Castro for homosexuals and political dissidents. Or the way mentally ill cubans were picked up off the streets of Havana and shipped off to sea in the 70s
If one purports to be a champion of universal human rights, one must be consistent regardless of the political ideologies of the perpetrators and regardless whether one is a world superpower or investigate reporter.
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Gideon Polya
26 June 2008 at 22:55 Excellent article. Below are some documented, quantitative addenda.
About 7,000 Western civilians have been murdered by Muslim-origin non-state terrorists in the last 40 years, this figure including about 2,000 Jewish Israelis in the Holy Land that they have invaded and conquered and 3,000 Americans horribly murdered on 9/11 (although it should be noted that in November 2007 the former 7-year President of Italy, law professor , senator-for-life and intelligence intimate Francesco Cossiga asserted to a top Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera that the US CIA and Israeli Mossad had done 9/11 to enhance US and Zionist interests and that major Western intelligence agencies were aware of this) (see MWC News: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/18569/26/ ).
In contrast, post-invasion violent and non-violent excess deaths (avoidable deaths) in the Occupied Palestinian, Iraqi and Afghan Territories now toal 0.3 million, 2 million and 3-7 million, respectively; under-5 infant deaths total 0.2 million, 0.6 million and 2.3 million, respectively ; and refugees (a good measure of "terror") total 7 million, 4.5 million and 4 million, respectively (e.g. see "Iraqi Genocide": http://www.brusselstribunal.org/Messages190308.htm#polya ).
This data can be used to quantitate the "annual risk of death" of Westerners from Muslim-origin non-state terrorism and of Muslims from UK, US, Australian and Israeli state terrorism (from Occupied Somalia to US-bombed Pakistan).
The actual annual risk to Western civilians of death from Muslim-origin non-state terrorists is of the same order as the annual risk of death from shark attack or lightning strike (1 in 4 million). The actual current annual risk to Jewish Israelis of death from Palestinian attack (2 in 100,000) is similar to the risk of death at the hands of a Jewish Israeli acquaintance or family member (1 in 100,000).
In contrast, the “annual risk of excess death” in the Occupied Palestinian, Iraqi and Afghan Territories is 130 per 100,000 (Occupied Palestine), 890-1,190 per 100,000 (Occupied Iraq) and 2,100-4,200 per 100,000 (Occupied Afghanistan) (see "The big lie. Falsity of Zionist, Neo-con & US administration terror hysteria ": http://mwcnews.net/content/view/20850/42/ ).
The racist, lying, holocaust-ignoring, Zionist-and Bush-ite-beholden Mainstream media in the Western Murdochracies have a major responsibility for this continuing, Orwellian trashing of truth and for the horrendous, ongoing Palestinian Genocide, Iraqi Genocide and Afghan Genocide (with the term genocide being used here as defined by the UN Genocide Convention)..
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Claddach
27 June 2008 at 03:40 Here is a list of just five of the better known gulags of the Soviet Union:
* Kolyma
* Kuropaty
* Vorkuta
* Bykivnia
It's accepted by all reputable historians that the number of deaths in these five establishmnets between 1926-1937 exceeded 12 million. There were other gulags where perhaps another 1-2 million men, women and children died.
When John Pilger uses the term "Anglo-American gulag" he sinks as low as other historical revisionists such as David Irving. Richard Evans in his devastating take down of Irving's "Holocaust Revisionism" could just as easily be speaking of John Pilger's journalism.
"Reputable and professional historians (and journalists) do not suppress parts of quotations from documents that go against their own case, but take them into account and if necessary amend their own case accordingly. . . They do not wilfully invent words, phrases, quotations, incidents and events for which there is no historical evidence in order to make their arguments more plausible."
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Gideon Polya
27 June 2008 at 04:23 John Pilger's article was about CURRENT terrorism-related fears and realities and not about the Soviet Gulag atrocities that no doubt as one of the world's outstanding humanitarian journalists he would utterly deplore - and indeed EVIDENTLY deplores in this article by the very use of the term "Anglo-American Gulag" to describe a UK-US terror system associated (so far) with 5-9 million post-invasion avoidable deaths in the Occupied Iraqi and Afghan Territories. (for details and documentation see "Iraqi Genocide": http://www.brusselstribunal.org/Messages190308.htm#polya and "Afghan Genocide": http://www.countercurrents.org/polya080208.htm ).
Claddach's comments about John Pilger are uncredentialled, unsubstantiated, false, offensive ad hominem abuse and made with the courage of anonymity.
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JC2
27 June 2008 at 09:11 To dear Zapruda,
A simple question for you to answer please. Do we live in heaven or on earth?
Yours sincerely,
JC2
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JC2
27 June 2008 at 09:14 Gideon Polya you are a star. I have been watching you closely. Congratulations. You have done it. Let me and John take it from here pal. You deserve a well earned break. Hope to catch you soon everyone.
JC2
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writeon
27 June 2008 at 09:31 When Pilger uses the term 'gulag' he is obviously not comparing the mere size of the Soviet era prison camps, but rather the underlying characteristics of the old and new gulags, secret prisons where thousands of people held without charge on flimsy 'evidence' simply disappear, vanish; are subject to abuse and torture and even death, and can be held indefinitely.
I'm not even sure the difference in scale between the Soviet gulags and our own is particlarly relevant or can be used as a form of justification for our policies. Our massive abuse of human rights is hardly less of a crime because a totalitarian dictatorship indulged in a gigantic campaign of institutionalized abuse. The point is both policies are morally indefensible and wrong and shame us all. Arguing that Hitler was far worse than us, doesn't make our systematic use of torture any less reprehensible, and certainly not for the individuals involved.
On the other hand scale does matter, and instead of using it to obscure the truth one can use it to enlighten. What's extraordinary is the shocking difference in the numbers killed when we hit back in response to terror attacks directed against us. The ammount of death and destruction we've caused in Iraq and Afghanistan is staggering, and can arguably be compared to genocide. Certainly, if someone else was involved and responsible for such levels of slaughter, we in the West would define such a response and such numbers as constituting genocide, in fact we do it all the time in relation to the actions of our enemies. It's almost as if we, in the civilized West, can, per definition, not commit genocide, or warcrimes, no matter how many we kill, how much we destroy. 'Civilized' mass murder is not the same as 'barbarian' killing. And if one looks at the history of Western imperial expansion and our attitudes to the resistance of the various countries and tribes we were subjugating, one finds this double-standard in relation to the use of violence and war repeated over and over again. Once again one feels slightly embarrased having to 'explain' something so obvious.
There is no 'clash of civilizations' this is propaganda designed to justify Western neo-imperialist agression. The 'war on terror' is merely a device in this overall strategy of re-conquest. The invasion and occupation of Iraq had nothing to do with terrorism, but much to do with American strategic ambitions and its vast, untapped oil reserves.
Western double-standards, hypocracy and lies seem to know no bounds. We also seem to have an extraordinary capacity to delude ourselves and imagine that despite the towering scale of our agression directed at other countries and their people's, that somehow it's us that are the real victims, it's us that are under the constant threat of attack; even though objective reality and facts prove that this is not the case. We send huge armies half-way around the world, navies and our airforces to fight on foreign soil, yet somehow we twist things around and claim that it's us that are under constant threat.
Clearly we are attempting to fool ourselves, because we certainly aren't fooling the populations of the countries we are attacking.
Then we come to the words 'Islamism' and 'Islamo-Fascism' and 'Islamist'. Once again twisted propaganda for domestic consumption. These words conflate Islam with Fascism and Fascist quite deliberately. Not only is this intensely insulting to most Muslims, it's also close to total nonsense, but of course this doesn't matter much to propagandists preparing the ground carefully for more agressive war directed at the few remaining independent Arab or Muslim nations.
We have created and invented 'Islamism' and 'Islamist Fascism', they do not exist outside of our imaginations. Our ghastly, criminal leaders, are ready to say anything, no matter how ridiculous to justify our wars, even existing non-existant political catagories and phantom movements. Whilst one can find examples of individual Muslims who are extremists, either politically or in relation to their religion; where are the examples of vast 'Islamist' movements comparable to classic European Fascism? One cannot find them because they don't exist in the real world, only in the minds of the paranoid, the delusional, the propagandist.
Personally I believe there is far more concrete evidence that one can see all around us that it's us in the West that are moving closer towards agressive, militaristic, totalitarianism, something that in many ways is starting to remind one of Fascism, but that is another story. Maybe we look in the mirror and see something we don't like and project this terrible vision onto our enemies, how convinient!
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JC2
27 June 2008 at 10:06 writeon that was a bloody excellent post except for one thing. You stated that there is no 'clash of civilisations'. You are wrong. You yourself described many clashes between civilisations in that very post. But guess what! We've won. Christianity has been victorious. But you'll never guess what our prize is. We get to help those we defeated recover and prosper so that we can all live in peace and harmony. Nice gift, huh. Well done writeon. Well done. Now the only thing left to do is to spread the word. So go for it writeon. NOW!
JC2
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Jonny Mac
27 June 2008 at 14:24 This thread is great. Not only does it show the blinkered stupidity of the anti-imperialist, "it's all our fault that people want to kill us", Pilger-esque left, but now, also its anti-Semitism. Good stuff. Moral relativism, Jew-hate and self-hate - what a lovely trio of values! Oh George Orwell, where are you now?
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writeon
27 June 2008 at 23:23 Jonny Mac,
I don't believe that I wrote "It's all our fault that people want to kill us". This is a gross over-simplification. It also impies that we are somehow innocent victims under attack for no reason at all. This is of course the view of our rulers. We are being attacked because of our freedoms and democracy and values. The terrorists are totally irrational and lust after innocent Western blood for no apparent reason. They hate civilization and want to destroy it. They are barbarians.
The crucial question is, is this line of reasoning and the arguments expressed, really true? Are we being attacked because of the savages irrational hatred of us, or are there other reasons?
Now, as it's beyond question that our rulers lied us into war with Iraq and are intent on lying us into war with Iran, why on earth would anyone believe anything they say about the war on terrorism and it's causes? Surely, having been lied to, so much and so often, it's only prudent to be sceptical and cautious about the latest story and threat we're being asked to believe? Is this so hard to understand or so radical an attitude to adopt? Are we supposed to believe that the same bunch of liars that led us up the garden path, have suddenly become honest and truthful? Recent history and knowlege cannot be just swept aside, surely?
Can one really argue that Western Imperialism never happened and that it wasn't a bloody history of conquest for our benefit? Western Imperialism really happened. It wasn't an invention was it? Western Imperialism destroyed whole civilizations and led to virtual slavery for millions of people for hundreds of years. Not only did we take other people's land and wealth, we also slaughtered them in terrible wars and were directly responsible for the deaths of millions of people in a genocidal holocaust. Some Indian historians, just one example, think that tens of millions died due to the British invasion of India and the destruction of its economy leading to virtual collapse of society and returning famine.
I think there is an alternative explanation for terrorism. People want to kill us because we have killed so many of them for so long and now they've begun to fight back. The 9/11 attacks were terrible, but they didn't just come out of clear blue sky. The terrorists didn't just attack the United States on a mere whim. One can argue that the attacks were unjustified. I think the attack was unjustified and wrong. However, I think it's hard to call them irrational or without reason at all. The attackers had reasons for what they did. They killed and sacrificed themselves, not for nothing, but for reasons they believed in and felt passionate about.
This doesn't mean I support terrorism or mass murder. I do not. But this doesn't mean I refuse to examine the motives and reasons for the attacks. If we are to fight terrorism, and I believe we should fight terrorism and try to stop it, then it's clear that we need to know who we are fighting and why they want to killl us, no? Know your enemy is one of the first rules in any armed conflict.
It's foolish not to examine why people want to kill us, to just say they are doing it because they hate us, is not only inaccurate, it also makes fight in the wrong way and for the wrong reasons. It also makes it impossible to win or make peace. If our enemy is so irrational and savage then we have no alternative than a policy of extermination, killing them all. This is a very dangerous road to go down for us, especially if the whole war strategy is based on falsehood and propaganda in the service of an old-fashioned imperialist grab for strategic advantage and raw materials.
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Gideon Polya
27 June 2008 at 23:37 The core messages from the Jewish Holocaust (6 million victims, 1 in 6 dying from deprivation) and the World War 2 Holocaust in general (30 million Slav, Jewish and Roma dead) are "zero tolerance for racism" and "never again to anyone" - sacred messages grossly violated by the Bush-ite, neo-Bush-ite, and neo-con "democratic imperialists" and Zionists in their prosecution of the ongoing Palestinian Genocide, Iraqi Genocide and Afghan Genocide (post-invasion violent and non-violent excess deaths 0.3 million, 2 million and 3-7 million, respectively; post-invasion under-5 infant deaths 0.2 million, 0.6 million and 2.3 million, respectively; and refugees totalling 7 million, 4.5 million and 4 million, respectively) (see - albeit out-of-date, the carnage continues - "United State Terrorism": http://mwcnews.net/content/view/17139/42/ ).
The real perpetrators in the Anglo-Celtic Murdochracies are racist, lying Zionist- and Bush-ite beholden Mainstream media and behind them what used to be cabals of formerly racist, imperialist, anti-Jewish anti-Semitic PACMEN (Prosperous Anglo-Celtic Men) but which now are cabals of egregiously anti-Arab anti-Semitic and genocidal PACZMEN (Hungarian pronunciation "Patchmen"; Prosperous Anglo-Celtic and Zionist Men"; see: "Lies & Slies by Orwellian Mainstream media. Scheherazade, Murdochracy Paczmen & Climate Criminals ": http://mwcnews.net/content/view/23516/42/ ).
I have gallantly assumed that all Western WOMEN overwhelmingly abhor mass murder of children but thanks to lying, racist, Paczmen-dominated Mainstream media in our Western Murodhcracies they don't KNOW the extent of the ongoing genocidal carnage in the Bush War on Terror - in horrible actuality, as seen from the above figures, a cowardly, racist War on Arab, Muslim, Asian and non-European Women and Children) (however a quick trip to UNICEF will inform them: http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/index.html ) .
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JC2
28 June 2008 at 12:03 I asked you politely to go away, Jonny Mac but you didn't. And now you are making a complete and utter fool of yourself in front of the whole world. For God's sake have some dignity boy. If you had read my facebook page then you would see that I describe myself as 'independant'. And I am. Fiercely. The only thing that I give a crap about is truth.
JC2
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JC2
28 June 2008 at 12:11 Excellent work writeon. And Gideon I am glad you didn't take up my suggestion to take a holiday. Then again, who would want to miss this!!!!! People like us will have the rest of our lives to take as many bloody holidays as we like. And while we lie on the beach earning 20% Jonny Mac will be working his butt off bringing us Pina Coladas. hahaha. Justice.
JC2
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JC2
28 June 2008 at 12:15 Oh yeah. Probably better leave my Facebook address if I expect people to take a geez. So here it is if anyone is interested (That means you Jonny Mac).
www.facebook.com/people/Matthew_J_Costigan/1311877403
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Claddach
29 June 2008 at 13:13 Gideon I apologise. I didn't realise you were the author of a publication on one of the most important political topics of our time. That 9/11 was perpetrated by the Bush Administration, the Pentagon, the CIA, and the Israeli Mossad. The likelihood that Bush was responsible for the execution of the 9/11 atrocity is becoming more obvious to all clear thinking people thanks to the lucid arguments of intellectuals like yourself. Again, my apologies. I now can clearly see through the lying, racist and traitorous Zionist and Bush terrorists and mass murderers in the Western democracies. Keep up the good work.
PS I love that word "Murdochracy". Is it one of your own?
Best regards
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JC2
29 June 2008 at 15:47 You are wrong about the Vatican. The Vatican is the ONLY institution that has established conditions under which eternal justice and respect can one day be maintained. Some things are more important than oppression and murder, Guiseppe.
JC2
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Pencils
29 June 2008 at 16:37 I apologise for my previous deleted post. I guess that is what Johnny Mac referred to as 'jew-hatred'. Of course, zionism has NOTHING to do with jews.
........................................................................................................
Delete along the dotted line.
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Gideon Polya
29 June 2008 at 22:12 More false Zionist obfuscation above.
Why can't Zionists simply state what THEY think rather than making FALSE and variously pejorative or defamatory, obfuscatory assertions about what others think?
I don't know who did 9/11 and those who say they know are either credulous, lying or "in the know".
Two Swiss professors at the top European university the Zurich ETH are reported in the top circulation Swiss newspaper Blick as proposing 3 scientific (i.e. potentially falsifiable) HYPOTHESES: (1) egregiously lying Bush "men in caves" official version; (2) US passively complicit (polls indicate that most Americans believe this despite the deluge of Zionist and Bush-ite propaganda; even Al Gore says that Bush was criminally negligent)); and (3) the US was responsible (see: "US responsible for 9/11? Swiss Scientists Doubt Bush Official Version ": http://mwcnews.net/content/view/22944/26/).
25 expert US military officials are challenging the "official" Bush version from the lying Bush Administration (see "US Military Officers Challenge “official Bush version” " : http://mwcnews.net/content/view/23294/42/ ) .
Former 7-year president of italy, law professor, senator for life, "Gladio" terrorist organization-linked and military intelligence intimate Francesco Cossiga in an interview with leading Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera in 2007 asserted that the US CIA and Israeli Mossad did 9/11 to assist US and Zionist hegemony and that Western intelligence agencies are well aware of this (see: "US and Israel responsible for 9/11?": http://mwcnews.net/content/view/18569/26/ ).
I do NOT know who did 9/11 - and assertions to the contrary (see above) are FALSE.
However my MONEY is on the Swiss Professors' hypothesis #3 i.e. that the US was responsible for 9/11 and, more specifically, that "intelligence insider" and former Italian president Professor Cossiga is correct that 9/11 was carried out by US-Israeli state terrorists.
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alzwick13
30 June 2008 at 02:01 What a shocker! Pilger, even when writing about British policies towards Arabs still finds a way to blame the Jews.
Mr. Pilger, is there anything bad that is not the fault of the Jews?
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alzwick13
30 June 2008 at 02:02 My mistake should say Muslims instead of Arabs.
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Jonny Mac
30 June 2008 at 09:45 writeon - thanks for a long and interesting response. I didn't mean to suggest that you wrote "It's all our fault that people want to kill us", though I would argue that is the core of Pilger's position. In my view, after seeing various of your posts, you're a significantly more subtle thinker than Pilger. It may also surprise you to learn that I agree with much of what you say - I would describe myself as left wing, just on the Nick Cohen rather than Pilger/Galloway end of the axis, and i genuinely think that the left, as represented in NS, has lost its moral compass when it comes to Islamic terrorism. I would just say a couple of things in response.
1. It is dangerous for several reasons to say anything close to the position of "they hate us and want to kill us because of our foreign policy, therefore we should change our foreign policy". You and other posters refuse to recognise the religious motivation of those who kill themselves to attack us. They do so expressly in the name of Islam. And of of course we cannot be blackmailed by terror.
2. It is obscene to suggest that there could ever be an argument that 9/11 was "justified". The killing of innocent people is always wrong and can never justified. Therefore 9/11 was not "our fault" - it was the fault of the moral cretins who flew aeroplanes into skyscrapers with the express aim of killing as many office workers as possible, and of going to heaven.
Best wishes,
JM
JC2 - thanks a lot, you're doing a much better job than I ever could of proving my previous points.
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Cybertiger
30 June 2008 at 13:31 @Jonny Mac
"It is obscene to suggest that there could ever be an argument that 9/11 was "justified". The killing of innocent people is always wrong and can never justified."
Agreed.
But wouldn't it be useful to have a reliable "explanation" for why 9/11 happened. And I doubt it was all to do with Islam and going to heaven. If we really understood why it happened, then we could more reliably prevent it from happening again.
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Jonny Mac
30 June 2008 at 13:55 Oh for goodness' sake, why delete the reference to the belief in 72 virgins waiting in heaven from my last post? Anti-semitism's ok, but reference to the stated belief of some Muslims of what waits for a matyr in heaven isn't? Jeez. Grow up, please, and don't censor where it's not necessary.
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JC2
30 June 2008 at 14:45 Jonny Mac describes himself as 'left-wing'. I don't trust the views of anyone who describes themselves as anything other than 'independant'. Anyone who comes to an issue with man-made intellectual baggage will inevitably fail because humans are fundamentally flawed and so are their ideologies.
JC2
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Jane Greene
30 June 2008 at 16:24 Funny coming from someone can't spell independent - which, incidentally, no-one is because we're all victims of our environment. It's called conditioning...
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harp
30 June 2008 at 17:45 Johnny Mac, you should read the article by Hersh. It seems that the United States is trying to get a nation to "fight back". (Clandestine activities..etc.) It seems the evidence supports writeon and Pilger. The American Governments' crimes and aggression worries the world, and is a paragon for a fearful regime, not a couple of armed guys who want 72 virgins.
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harp
30 June 2008 at 17:51 Also, your begging the question about 9/11. We hold can hold the US government responsible because, they armed jihadi groups in the 80's and told them to fight for god. They're responsible b/c they used sunni extremist as a proxy to dissemble nations, who we thought were to nationalistic. You can't justify atrocities, by the way, but responsibility can be shared for any bad and destructive action.
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writeon
30 June 2008 at 18:03 Jonny Mac,
I don't really consider myeself to be on the left anymore. I've become more of a "conservative" by default as society moves towards the "right" and a new form of totalitarianism.
I'm not a pacifist either. I'm perfectly willing to take up arms and fight people attacking me, members of my family have been involved in this kind of thing for a long time and all over the place. Yet I disagree fundamentally with the strategy we've employed in the battle or war against terrorism. I think it's wrong-headed, wasteful, expensive, too bloody, doomed to failure and counter-productive.
I know people in the armed-forces who privately agree, with me, in fact most of opposition to the war on terror has developed after talking to them about Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet it's really difficult, or rather impossible , for them to talk about their misgivings in public. Those I've chatted with are angry, frustrated and contemptuous of the political class and the British media in general and the way these wars are covered.
It's no secret that there is a great deal of scepticism in the armed forces about the war on terror and what's going on. It's not just confined to this side of the Atlantic. Apparently the new head of the CIA, Richard Gates has also expressed concerns when talking to members of Congress about the wisdom of attacking Iran. Which he thought might prove less than effectual and only create generations of highly motivated martyrs ready to atttack Western interests. Once again it could prove counter-productive and undermine our security in the longterm.
I'm also concerned that our own actions are not winning over Arab or Muslim hearts and minds, but the exact opposite, and is this sensible? The reason is the collosal destructiveness and massive human cost of our interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq. It's difficult to ague that it's the West that is under sustained attack and threatened, when we have enormous armies fighting in the Middle East, and yet the number of successful terrorist attacks in the West is so small and so puny. Don't we have to keep some sense of proportion about these things, or don't we care how incredibly agressive we appear to be? Why pursue a strategy which is creating more and more enemies and more and more people willing to take up arms against us? The idea, surely, is to isolate the terrorists, not integrate them deeper and deeper into their respective societies?
Finally, I just don't believe the war on terror is being fought for the reasons we've been given. I think the reasons are a con and wartime spin or propaganda, designed to justify an American neoconservative, neo-imperialist agenda directed at securing strategic advantage and access and control of vital raw materials, oil, which are the basis of our way of life.
If I believed in some of the conspiracy theories I would almost think that the Americans were behind the 9/11 attacks themselves, as without them it's impossible to believe that American armies would be in the Middle East on top of all that oil and ready to attack Iran. The 9/11 tragedy has been a godsend to the militeristic war party in the United States and they know it. Without it their crazed dream of creating a New Rome would have been so much harder to sell to the American people.
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JC2
30 June 2008 at 18:13 Congratulations Jane Green you completely obliterated my stance by pointing out that I got one symbol wrong. Not. You cannot be serious posting crap like that on here. You are a truly stupid woman if that is among your best two arguments. And as for your point about conditioning, well, that has some validity. It doesn't apply to me, though. I am truly unique. Like I said at 28 June 2008 at 12:03, the only thing I give a crap about is TRUTH. And I do not automatically trust someone if they say they are independEnt. Far from it actually. I just like the implication that they are not beholden to any particular ideology. ie Open Minded. And we are NOT all victims of our environment. You obviously feel that you are a victim (just to remind you, you wrote 'we're all victims'). Sorry about that. Can I advise you to get off your bum and DO something about your victimhood other than being my bloody spellchecker.
JC2
ps. Obliterate that someone.
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writeon
30 June 2008 at 18:30 Mistake, sorry,
Robert Gates, Secretary of Defense.
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harp
30 June 2008 at 18:44 this is for all the right wingers go to this site and try to contest your ideas,
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/news/vforum/03/global_consequence...
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harp
30 June 2008 at 18:45 the lectures are an eye-open-er.
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Serosch
30 June 2008 at 19:33 JC2 - 'But guess what! We've won. Christianity has been victorious'
It is true that Christianity/West have been dominant for the last 200 hundred years, but prior to that it was the East that wast dominant for much longer. Just the Ottoman Empire lasted for 600 years, in fact the Ottoman Empire was in decline for longer than the West has been dominant.
In your post you assume that the West will remain dominant, well just look at the economics and you'll see that your position is simply not secure.
200 years economic and military power left the East, itis now flowing back.
Your comment that we have won, is akin to Bush's ' 'Mission accompolished'.
The East is rising and we will have to adapt to that, along the way we may also have to pay for the crimes we committed in the last 200 years.
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Afrasiab
30 June 2008 at 19:39 Mr Pilger, Sir you are a legend.
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JC2
30 June 2008 at 20:40 Serosch please do not ever compare me to that criminally gullible 'president' again. What an insult. As for my statement that you reproduced all I can say is that I know a hell of a lot more than you do. If you could have been bothered to follow the link to my Facebook page given above perhaps you might understand why that is so.
JC2
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JC2
30 June 2008 at 20:42 Oh, and Jonny Mac how are your Pina Colodas. I like mine with a double shot and a little pink umbrella sticking out the top that I can throw on the ground so you have run around and pick it up. haha. Cheers Team.
JC2
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knave
30 June 2008 at 21:29 " I would describe myself as left wing, just on the Nick Cohen rather than Pilger/Galloway end of the axis, and i genuinely think that the left, as represented in NS, has lost its moral compass when it comes to Islamic terrorism. "
A number of points. As a "leftie" Jonny mactory, how do differentiate yourself say from Michael Gove. Also Cohen is now a self confessed Tory.
Also there is wide range of opinion between Tory Nick Cohen and Galloway. Also I agree with writeon when he says Pilger is more like an old fashioned social democrat.
Also I do get a little tired when right wingers like yourself who accuse anybody who disagrees with the invasion of Iraq or the actions of Isreali hawks as fully paid up members of the jihad. I will remind you it was your heroes Reagan/Thatcher who trained and armed the mullahs and sold them arms
"1. It is dangerous for several reasons to say anything close to the position of "they hate us and want to kill us because of our foreign policy, therefore we should change our foreign policy". You and other posters refuse to recognise the religious motivation of those who kill themselves to attack us. They do so expressly in the name of Islam. And of of course we cannot be blackmailed by terror. "
Far more muslims have killed by your modern christian crusaders than the other way round.
2. It is obscene to suggest that there could ever be an argument that 9/11 was "justified". The killing of innocent people is always wrong and can never justified. Therefore 9/11 was not "our fault" - it was the fault of the moral cretins who flew aeroplanes into skyscrapers with the express aim of killing as many office workers as possible, and of going to heaven.
I do agree with you on that point. Also bombing a wedding in Afghan village or innocent Iraqis in hospitals with cluster or phosphorus bombs is unacceptable.
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Jonny Mac
01 July 2008 at 09:31 knave - I agree that far more muslims have been killed by US/UK forces than the other way round. I also agree that it is unacceptable to bomb an Afghan wedding party/innocent Iraqis in hospital. But how does pointing out the sins of the West help your argument? Neither of those facts makes Islamist terror excusable, or morally acceptable, or "our fault", nor means we should not take terrorists at their word when they claim to act from religious conviction.
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JC2
01 July 2008 at 10:46 The sins of the west need to be pointed out by people such as Pilger, Polya, knave etc because our friggin politicians and 'journalists' won't. Wake up Jonny Mac. You seem to be one of those worst kind of patriots. A delusional one.
JC2
ps. And where's my Pina Colada?
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davef
01 July 2008 at 11:19 JC2 - there is only one 'good' type of patriot. One who takes up his or her AK47 against the overwhelming odds of an imperialist aggressor who has invaded their country on the basis of a crude lie.
Sound familiar?
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Jonny Mac
01 July 2008 at 11:39 I agree that the sins of the West should be pointed out. The difficulty is that Pilger doesn't just point them out, does he. He suggests they form a an excuse for Islamic terrorism. That is a moral obscenity. The left will not unequivocally condemn Islamic terrorism. That is its tragedy and why it is becoming increasingly irrelevant. If Pilger had been alive in the thirties, they would have condemned those brave souls who went to fight Franco on the basis that "our empire makes us just as bad if not worse so who are we to condemn, did you hear that some innocent children were killed in a fire fight by British soldiers there, anyway it's all a plot by the Jews", etc etc.
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JC2
01 July 2008 at 12:45 To davef:
I am a good patriot but I have never held an AK47 in my life.
To jonnymac:
Can you please show us the quote where John 'suggests they form ... an excuse for Islamic terrorism'. Where is it? It most certainly is not in the above article. The closest he comes is when he says that it is amazing that there has not been more attacks. I agree. It is. When you consider how capriciously Britain and the U.S. attack other countries I would go as far as to say that the Muslim community has been remarkably well restrained.
And I don't like the way that you put John on 'the left'. (Especially as you consider yourself to be on 'the left')Can you please show me a quote from John's work where he describes himself as left-wing. I have never seen one and I doubt one exists. Please try and prove me wrong Jonny Mac. I see John as a seeker of truth. And he doesn't do a bad job of it. Not bad at all. Better than most journos that's for sure. Truth does not change Jonny Mac. Ever. If those who speak the truth appear to be on the left then it is society that has a problem. It is society that has changed. Not the truth teller. Don't ever bloody forget that.
JC2
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harp
01 July 2008 at 19:21 This is for Johnny Mac,http://www.columbia.edu/cu/news/vforum/03/global_consequence...Johnny Mac, you should read the article by Hersh. It seems that the United States is trying to get a nation to "fight back". (Clandestine activities..etc.) It seems the evidence supports writeon and Pilger. The American Governments' crimes and aggression worries the world, and is a paragon for a fearful regime, not a couple of armed guys who want 72 virgins.
Also, your begging the question about 9/11. We hold can hold the US government responsible because, they armed jihadi groups in the 80's and told them to fight for god. They're responsible b/c they used sunni extremist as a proxy to dissemble nations, who we thought were to nationalistic. You can't justify atrocities, by the way, but responsibility can be shared for any bad and destructive action.
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harp
01 July 2008 at 19:28 See now one is excusing or implying excuse, about terroristic activities, except you. That premise of your quote by franco is exactly right, you can't condemn something which you yourself participate in. Cheers to Pilger, Cockburn, Hersh, Porter, any the many great journalists, who know this and try to expose the great emperor, the american government.
P.S. Johnny Its easy for you to state america has sins , but they can't be morally obscene just some dismissive sins, yet them you call the 72 virgin people morally obscene. You have the double standard! Call the sins of the west morally obscene and this debate is over.
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harp
01 July 2008 at 19:37 http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/01/opinion/01herbert.html?hp
Interesting Editorial in the paper of record. Johnny Boy, and all others take a look.
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harp
01 July 2008 at 19:38 It seems the war was about oil, not terror
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/30/world/middleeast/30contrac...
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JC2
01 July 2008 at 20:56 I was reading an Islamic book the other day about 'Judgement Day' and it spoke of a man called al-Mahdi whose appearance would be a sign that Judgement Day is near. Well, Muqtada al-Sadr army is called the Mahdi army is it not? Interesting, don't you think?
JC2
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writeon
01 July 2008 at 21:36 We are not involved in a "war on terror". There is no "terror network". There are no "terror masterminds" pulling invisible strings, and directing attacks against us. There is no real "threat" to our way of life from militarily insignificant gangs using terror against us. It is important to remember that terror is the tactic used by the weak against the strong, and we are overwhelmingly, staggeringly strong. Compare the evidence of your own eyes. Look objectively at the rain of destruction we've directed at Afghanistan and Iraq and the hundreds of thousands who've died, been wounded and seen their homes and lives destroyed.
When we are attacked directly, it's a shock. Suddenly the earth stops moving, time stands still, and afterwards the world has changed for ever. Why is this? Are we really so special? On the scales, are our lives really worth so much more than the lives of other people in the countries we destroy?
If this is true, that we are exceptional in the West and any attack aimed at us requires a massive and disproportional response, what does this tell one about how we regard the rest of the world and the value we place on the lives of non-Westerners?
If we lived in a democracy, in anything other than name, we'd hound our current leaders from office and put them on trial for crimes against humanity and the crime of aggression in war. Yet we haven't done that, because not only don't the dead in Iraq and Afghanistan have next to no value for us, the views of the people in our own countries don't mean much either. Every day we spend on this crazed imperial project about who is going to control and rule the world, is another nail in the coffin of the little democracy we've got left in this country. And there's an irony here isn't there? That we're supposedly fighting to defend our freedoms at the same time as we're seeing them eroded and destroyed before our very eyes.
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EM
02 July 2008 at 01:52 Yes, you had me close to tears there. I am so ashamed of what we have done, of what we are doing, and so sorry for everyone caught up in this vast deceit.
The only honourable thing is to stop working hand in glove with the monstrous machine of human destruction that is the leading player in our culture and take the time to look and listen and understand the truth.
"January 2008 - Update on Iraqi Casualty Data
Further survey work undertaken by ORB, in association with its research partner IIACSS, confirms our earlier estimate that over 1,000,000 Iraqi citizens have died as a result of the conflict which started in 2003."
http://www.opinion.co.uk/Newsroom_details.aspx?NewsId=88
I'm one of those distressed conspiracy theorists, have been for 2 years, since watching film of building 7 floating to the ground in a cloud of dust.
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Serosch
02 July 2008 at 09:07 JC2 - As for my statement that you reproduced all I can say is that I know a hell of a lot more than you do -
Yes it shows.
I maintain that all Empires fall, everyone has their time, and round and round we go.
200 years of dominance is a mere blink of the eye.
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JC2
02 July 2008 at 09:13 Serosch you are an ignoramous. My empire won't fall. Ever.
JC2
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Jenny Webb
02 July 2008 at 11:19 @JC2: I was reading an Islamic book the other day about 'Judgement Day' and it spoke of a man called al-Mahdi whose appearance would be a sign that Judgement Day is near. Well, Muqtada al-Sadr army is called the Mahdi army is it not? Interesting, don't you think? ...
Perhaps he'd read the same book at you...
JC2
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JC2
02 July 2008 at 11:25 I am quite sure that he has read the same book as me. Islam is a doctrine. There is no room for questions to be asked. As a Muslim, I am quite sure that al-Sadr is aware of the appearance of al-Mahdi. Which begs the question - Why did he name his army after one of the characters whose appearance signals the countdown to Judgement Day? Any thoughts, Jenny Webb?
JC2
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Jonny Mac
02 July 2008 at 14:04 "When you consider how capriciously Britain and the U.S. attack other countries I would go as far as to say that the Muslim community has been remarkably well restrained."
Gosh yes JC2. Only 40 or so innocent citizens killed in terrorist attacks so far on and underneath the streets of London (though admittedly other attacks have failed, and we know that more are being planned)! I'm impressed! What a restrained way to show disapproval of foreign policy! Not quite as restrained as, say, writing letters or going on marches, the way other aggrieved "communities" do, but even so, great stuff.
God alive.
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Cybertiger
02 July 2008 at 14:42 @Jonny Mac
"Not quite as restrained as, say, writing letters or going on marches, the way other aggrieved "communities" do, but even so, great stuff. "
Do you think 'the elite', Jewish or otherwise, actually listen to restrained, non violent protest?
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Jonny Mac
02 July 2008 at 14:50 Cybertiger - mostly no, occasionally yes. Now let me ask you a question. Are you suggesting terrorism in a democracy, along the lines of 7/7, is ever justified?
PS don't know what you're getting at with your reference to a Jewish elite. Sure you're not confusing me with Carl Jones??
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harp
02 July 2008 at 14:51 Johnny is obviously not looking for any conversation. Just adding in some retorts.
hey johnny it is much more civilized then how the USA reacts, by destroying two nations, and threatening do so again.
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JC2
02 July 2008 at 14:58 Correct, harp. Correct.
JC2
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Jonny Mac
02 July 2008 at 15:24 No, harp & JC2, on the contrary, you can't have a conversation because your moral relativism won't let you.
I say: Islamist terrorism is wrong, it is not and cannot be justified, it should be unequivocally condemned.
You say: But the West has done lots of awful things!
I say: I agree. That doesn't affect the fact that Islamist terrorism is wrong and should be unequivocally condemned.
You say: But the West has done lots of awful things!
Etc.
Once more: I don't deny the West has done lots of awful things. Ok? Take that as a given. Now. Can you agree that those awful things don't justify killing people on the streets of Britain; that Islamist terrorism should be unequivocally condemned; and that those who carry it out are moral agents who bear responsibility for it? Yes or no?
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JC2
02 July 2008 at 15:28 Some sins are greater than others Jonny Mac.
JC2
ps. What the hell does moral relativism mean?
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knave
02 July 2008 at 16:05 "But how does pointing out the sins of the West help your argument?"
Because the arguments about the mullahs are used by the hawks to bomb innocent muslims. Which is not the correct action.
Neither of those facts makes Islamist terror excusable, or morally acceptable, or "our fault", nor means we should not take terrorists at their word when they claim to act from religious conviction.
You have a point, and of course it not all the west's complete fault and I have made the point in other threads that I would rather be a secular muslim in Isreal or the West than in Arab country but to say we are innocent party in the mess of the middle east is been niave or worse. I do feel because of the actions of the west in the eighties, when we developed these ideologies to fight the ruskies, it is now a case "of biting the hand that feed them"
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harp
02 July 2008 at 19:52 For Jonny Mac Here's some previous quotes
"See no one is excusing or implying excuse, about terroristic activities, except you. That premise of your quote by franco is exactly right, you can't condemn something which you yourself participate in."
AND as to your moral relativism, well its not relevant,
here...
"Also, your begging the question about 9/11. We hold can hold the US government responsible because, they armed jihadi groups in the 80's and told them to fight for god. They're responsible b/c they used sunni extremist as a proxy to dissemble nations, who we thought were to nationalistic. You can't justify atrocities, by the way, but responsibility can be shared for any bad and destructive action."
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harp
02 July 2008 at 19:53 oh just in case you skimmed the reading here's the answer to your question
You can't justify atrocities, but responsibility can be shared for any bad and destructive action.
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Cybertiger
02 July 2008 at 22:42 Cybertiger asked,
"Do you think 'the elite', Jewish or otherwise, actually listen to restrained, non violent protest?"
Jonny Mac replied,
"mostly no, occasionally yes"
If democracies don't listen to peaceful protest, then is it surprising that some protesters will turn to violence? What will Palestinians ever gain by peaceful resistance? Zilch. Israel only understands revenge, violence and violent revenge - and if those are absent, then the Holy democracy is free to provoke them. Americans too, enjoy their freedom to exact violent retribution. Non-violence is un-American.
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writeon
03 July 2008 at 07:40 Surely we can all agree that attempting to "explain" why the enemy, the terrorists, are fighting us; is not the same thing as "justifying" their methods or motives? Explaining and justifying or excusing are not the same thing.
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JC2
03 July 2008 at 09:21 Well said writeon. Well said.
JC2
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JC2
03 July 2008 at 09:30 Uribe! Uribe! Uribe! Si! Si! Si!
JC2
www.theage.com.au/world/betancourt-says-colombian-rescue-impeccable-20080703-30v6.html
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Jonny Mac
03 July 2008 at 09:32 writeon - I fully agree. My problem with Pilger is that his style deliberately and disingenuously blurs the boundary between explanation and justification. See this opening sentence from an article last July (in Pilger's archive on this site):
"Just as the London bombs in the summer of 2005 were Blair's bombs, the inevitable consequence of his government's lawless attack on Iraq, so the potential bombs in the summer of 2007 are Brown's bombs."
That sentence does not treat the July 2005 bombers as moral agents who were responsible for their actions. The bombing was "inevitable" and, the bombs being "Blair's", we can only assume that he means not only that Blair's foreign policy was not only the explanation of the bombs, but that the responsibility for them was his too. That's shameful, and it is shameful that the NS published that tawdry little piece and continues to publish him.
Cybertiger - perhaps it's not surprising, but that doesn't make it right, does it?
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JC2
03 July 2008 at 10:02 I don't think it is 'shameful' at all Jonny Mac. I think your way of thinking is shameful. And dangerous. It is because of people with attitudes like yours that the Blairs and Bushes and Howards of this world have been able to get away with what they have for so long. NOWHERE does Pilger condone the actions of the London bombers. NO BLOODY WHERE.
Still, it is nice to know that you are capable of doing some research into John's work. Perhaps you might now like to answer the question that I posed to you at exactly '01 July 2008 at 12:45'. That question was this.
Can you please show me a quote from John's work where he describes himself as left-wing?
Please answer my question Jonny Mac. Now that you have shown yourself capable of finding archived material. Or do you only do that when you think you have found something that supports your warped way of thinking (even though the bit you found in your last post didn't. Not one little bit.)
Now hop to Jonny Mac. And while you're at it, do some research into making the finest Pina Colada I have ever tasted. Because that is what you are going to be doing for me one day, pal.
JC2
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harp
03 July 2008 at 16:01 responsibility can be shared...MAC! I think I said this about hundred times. Read me comments above.
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JC2
03 July 2008 at 19:26 Hmmm. Jonny Mac seems to have fallen unusually silent. How nice.
JC2
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fairplay
06 July 2008 at 07:43 is there any possibility that 7/7 was a conspiracy? maybe
however, questioning the so called muslim terror campaign and bringing up the idea of peaceful protests etc are so naive. we all know who dominates the media not only in the uk but most of the world. the same people who have been forcing governments to bring out these unjust, facist hate laws are stonily silent when it comes to persecution of muslims around the world. talk about one way traffic in the media. its that biased its laughable.
thank god for the likes of pilger who dare speak out.
did anyone see or hear about the massive anti apartheid rally aimed at israel last week in london? did it get a mention in the MSM? i think not.
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JC2
06 July 2008 at 10:09 fairplay you are a man after my own heart. You probably already know about these guys if you are a regular Pilger reader but if you don't check out this website.
medialens.org
JC2
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fairplay
06 July 2008 at 11:36 JC2
first time ive seen it. nice to know there are honest journos out there. i remember respected journalist john simpson saying on a radio interview how much pressure they were under from the blair government to sell the invasion of iraq via the newspapers. doesnt that go against what being a journalist is all about?
but then again, you cannot run a newspaper without the advertisisng content and the money that goes with it.
follow the trail
how sad that the majority of the general public would rather read about beckhams new hairstyle and jordans latest tit size on the front pages than the civil liberties that are being taken away from us written in small print somewhere below some other nondescript story.
sheep
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JC2
06 July 2008 at 12:58 Yeah good call fairplay. I'm glad that I was able to point you in the right direction. We can change the world, pal. You just have to believe it. (and sign up to medialens).
JC2
ps. oh, and if you are on facebook I'd love to have you as a cyber friend. www.facebook.com/people/Matthew_J_Costigan/1311877403
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fairplay
06 July 2008 at 16:23 i am just an ordinary bloke who has been in sales and procurement all his life. what they are selling i aint buying just the same as if they were one of my customers or suppliers. you can see through their lies a mile off.
its not rocket science is it?
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JC2
06 July 2008 at 19:01 No it isn't fairplay, that's for sure. But humans are pretty bloody stupid and easily confused and scared which makes them easily led. LIke you said earlier 'sheep'. If only we could get a decent leader then the sheep would follow. Some sort of benevolent world dictator would do the trick don't you think? Might see what I can do about that......
JC2
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fairplay
07 July 2008 at 09:45 ron paul for me all the way
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JC2
07 July 2008 at 13:25 Huh? Who? Obama for mine.
JC2
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fairplay
07 July 2008 at 14:17 you dont know who ron paul is? JC2 you surprise me. arent you the one who reads beyond the MSM? if you did surely you would know which side obama bats for
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whatthe
07 July 2008 at 15:00 Does any one else get bugged by pilger style of writing the way he never sticks to and fully explains his point.
A proper journalist would give a moral and practical argument justifying his position pilger on the other hand jumps around from one subject to another never really arguing anything fully.
This article is better then most of his, usually he can't even stick to the one decade, but a bit about gaza a bit about northern ireland some very exagerated comparison to serious human rights abuse like people being disappeared and soviet gulag doesn't constitute a real refution of the "need" for the government to be able to hold or restrict the freedom suspected terrorist threat without a trial that argument may exist but like really all his article these day he lazyly doesn't make it. I actually feel insulted that the author thinks i will be convinced with out such argument and i am surprised so many of you aren't also.
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JC2
07 July 2008 at 15:09 hahaha. Yeah of course I know who Ron bloody Paul is fairplay. I was just winding you up. Gotcha! But I am still on Obama.
JC2
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JC2
07 July 2008 at 17:39 I am sorry you feel insulted g but, quite frankly, I think that says more about you than it does about the rest of us.
JC2
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gnuneo
07 July 2008 at 17:51 personally, i prefer his "preacher" over obama himself, but thats another story.
john - i note with delight the discussions on your articles have improved, all here agree that the killing of innocents must be stopped (there are no mossad agents claiming that "an innocent palestinian" is an oxymoron, for instance!).
please don't ever stop writing, new journalists must know what true journalism is like, must have a role-model better than the pseudo-journalism of the "Murdochracies" (great phrase btw gideon ;) ).
now we can see why the german Nazis were so heavily demonised as personalities in 'normal' schooling - so the People are not alert to the same policies and lies being sold to them just a few decades later.
The Empire Never Died!
('seeing like a state': james c scott, 'barbarians': terry jones, 'the man in the high castle', philip k dick).
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whatthe
07 July 2008 at 20:14 I expected that would be the responce to my comment by a fan of this article latching onto the one personal comment instead of countering my argument against pilger evasive style of writing. That what some one confident in his idea and the reasoning behind it would say.
Also jc2 why where talking the reasent terrorist threat facing uk is not caused by britian lucre as you pretensly call it but by it liberal policy of human rights and immigration.
The pakistan community came to the uk fleeing persuction and outright expulsion from several afican dictorship the uk choose to let them resettle in there. While the radical cleric as well as most of the people who have been detained with out trial immigrated from various middleeastern country and were granted assylum as many faced rigged trial and likely torture for organizing revolution and terrorist attacks in there own country . As you would expect from people who consider attacking civilian a ligit means of gaing political concession they had no compuction about doing the same in uk when it suited them which is why the uk is in the mess it is today.
Also britian did not become rich because it had a empire britian had a empire because it was rich even at its hight britian empire never represented more the a quarter of its trade earning and unlike all other empire in history britian gained its money from its empire through trade rather then tax.
Britian became rich by the injunity of its scientist the ambition of its entrepaneur willingness of its population to endure the hardship of the world first industrial revolution and the social dislocaton and horrific working condition that entailed.
The islamic world didn't because at its height people just like the one trying to murder there way into power attacked science and philiospy as merely the path to athesim burned there libriaries executed the men who taught such theing and end progress in the middle east just as the are today.
In other word don't blame britian for you own mistake.
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harp
07 July 2008 at 22:06 Funny I thought the Islamic World at its peak, whatever it means, was the "mecca" of science and philosophy. Oh and Britian became rich by colonizing a whole chunk of the globe and then stealing the resources of foreign countries.
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harp
07 July 2008 at 22:07 Sorry I meant countries
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JC2
07 July 2008 at 22:33 Thanks for reposting that g but perhaps you want to recheck your spelling yet again. I didn't respond directly to your accusations of Pilger's 'evasive' writing style because it would have been pointless.
As for your claim that people immigrate here because of its 'liberal policies' you cannot be serious. You can have the most open bloody borders of any nation on the planet and no-one will bother coming if they can't earn better money than what they do at home.
Were not people persecuted in the sub-continent and Africa in large part because of the mess that the imperial forces left when they so graciously decided to give back what they had stolen?
When you talk of people attacking civilians I assume you are including the U.S.A., Britain and Israel in that group of terrorists.
So Britain got it's money through trade and not tax hey? Oh, well that makes it alright then doesn't it. Because trade is always equal and not at all discriminatory and not the slightest bit racist (that is called sarcasm g).
Your next paragraph seems to me to suggest that Brits are a more intelligent race. That isn't what you are suggesting is it g? And its a bit rich of you to state that the British population WILLINGLY endured the hardship of the industrial revolution. Are you suggesting they actually had a bloody choice?
As for the accusations of Islam attacking science and philosophy, well, I need a bit more evidence before I grant you that point. I don't think the rest of your article is correct so I am pretty sure you are wrong about that bit too.
And what the hell does this line mean:
In other word don't blame britian for you own mistake
I don't make mistakes, pal. So how on earth could I be blaming someone for them?
JC2
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gnuneo
08 July 2008 at 06:39 JC2: you're wierd, but kewl :)
gnu. ;)
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JC2
08 July 2008 at 09:53 I actually prefer 'churlish rogue', gruneo. But thanks for calling me kewl (that means 'cool' right?).
JC2
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g1
09 July 2008 at 14:44 This is g changed my name to g 1 because i couldnt remember my pass word
Sorry it took me so long to respond jc2 been asleep for 12 hours
First of course people would probably stay in there own country if the could maintain the same standard of living but it was still britian liberal policies that let them. Im also sure at least some of those pakistan choose to come to a liberal democracy rather then the military dictorship pakistan had become.
We know for a fact that those islamic radical made a straight beeline for britian ignoring other possible destination because of its liberal political assylum laws which is why london became a kind of radical islamist mecca by 9/11.
Britian is responsible for a lot of very bad thing in africa but the post independence collapse of economy and democracy are as much to blame with african leader and those who supported rapid de-colonisation. When it was decided around the begining of the 50 that african nation where going to become independent its was estimated that it would take nearly 30 years to prepare the country to be function democracy "that about how long it took india between the beginning of the indianisation process and independence". Instead anti-colonial belief in the uk and outside, and the forcefully insistance that all that mattered was immediated independence by african political leader meant it took about ten. The predicatble failure of economy and democractic government that followed cause much of the hardship in modern day africa where thing are little better and in many case worse then they were 50 years ago.
In regard to civilian deaths I don't include usa uk on my list "isreal im not sure" because i was refering to terrorism. Terrorist kill civilian people in order to spread terror as there name would suggest in order to make people do what they want. So for example i want people to stop testing drugs on animal i go outake and shoot a lab work doing this in the hope that other people will stop out of fear that they will get shot. Since the war on terrorism started only guide missle aimed at were believed military or terrorist target have been used some have killed civilian maybe they even new they were going to kill civilian but civilian where never the target because america and the uk aren't terrorist.
If they were terrorist they could have end the war on terrorism years ago the would just have said if you engage in terrorism we will kill youre families or hit us again and we will nuke mecca that terrorist thinking that why the bombed the london underground to terrify the british people.
In regard to trade rather then tax, trade is not necassarly better in fact personally i think if uk had tax rather then trader with its empire the country may have been better of because it would have motivated the uk to develop there economy more so uk would get more tax. I wrote it because a lot of people don't know uk got it money through trade and you might think i was meantion trade while ignoring the tax.
I didn't not mean the british were more intelligent when the muslim scientist where contemplating the concept of nuclear fusion the british were still coming out of the dark age but in the late 18th and 19th century the british did have the best inventore in the world. in regard to choice of course they had a choice it maybe was a perfect choice but it took nearly 80 years before the industrial revolution realy took of outside of the uk in large fashion and during that time there was no revolution in the uk. That shows that there was some thing about the british charactor temperant and political system that was avantages to the industrial revolution.
In regard to hawk post there was nothing funny about it that was exactly my point around the 12 and 13 century the islamic world was the most advanced society on earth one of my favourite thinker come from around this period. But increasing religous intolernence lead them to throw it away.
The facts show that the uk did not make it wealth from the empire but industrial production and its very most the empire only account for 25 percent of britian wealth. The east inda company ran defient more then half the time most of africa had to be subsidy. Most of britian fortune came from trading with country outside the empire and investing in country outside the empire and in side the empire no one forced people to by cheaper british good any more then youre forcec to buy cheaper chinese cloths rather then buying domestic
In Youre say that you didn't answer my point jc2 because of pilger "evasive writing" sound like a cop out either you have a argument or you don't knowing in youre heart doesn't count
Oh and i meant there problem not youre sorry
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JC2
09 July 2008 at 16:22 To g or g1 or whatever your name is.
Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.
Best wishes,
JC2
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harp
09 July 2008 at 16:37 "Terrorist kill civilian people in order to spread terror as there name would suggest in order to make people do what they want."
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA...oh man you are freaking hilarious.
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whatthe
13 July 2008 at 09:38 losser
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JC2
13 July 2008 at 16:24 To g: Please can you inform the world what the definition of losser is. Thank you.
JC2
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Viscount Firm
22 July 2008 at 16:27 Surely that would be loozer?
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JC2
25 July 2008 at 15:11 Oh yeah. Silly me.
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gnuneo
02 August 2008 at 05:11 a blend of looser and tosser mayhap?
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