Chavez and left-liberal media - not so independent journalism

The media vilification of Hugo Chavez goes relentlessly on, fuelled, in significant part, by damning liberal 'eulogies' at Channel 4 News, the Guardian and the Independent. 

Jonathan Rugman's Channel 4 News piece did everything possible to paint Chavez the "socialist firebrand" and his social achievements as somehow compromised by his associations with "despots and dictators". 

Martin Kettle's Guardian article, 'Chávez will continue to inspire – but not in Europe', pursued the same pernicious line, damning him with the very faintest of 'praise':

'By the same token, it is a mistake to concentrate on Chávez's strutting and narcissistic populism to the exclusion of all the other aspects of his presidency. And it is even wrong to judge him solely as an abuser of human rights, a hoarder of power, an intimidator of opponents and a rejecter of international covenants and critics.'

 There was also Kettle's 'sage' byline:

'If I had been Venezuelan, I would have voted for this charismatic figure. But a British equivalent wouldn't get my support'

So, it's radical indulgence for the Latin American masses, but, 'very sensibly', not for us. The poverty of liberal inspiration laid bare.

But it's the Independent Editorial: 'Hugo Chavez - an era of grand political illusion comes to an end' which, perhaps, takes top prize (at the moment) for most savage indictment from a 'left-liberal' newspaper:   'Mr Chavez was no run-of-the-mill dictator. His offences were far from the excesses of a Colonel Gaddafi, say. What he was, more than anything, was an illusionist – a showman who used his prodigious powers of persuasion to present a corrupt autocracy fuelled by petrodollars as a socialist utopia in the making. The show now over, he leaves a hollowed-out country crippled by poverty, violence and crime. So much for the revolution.' It's on these occasions, as with the case for 'liberal intervention', that organs like the Independent come into their vital own.  One might think that the need to defend people like Chavez could barely be possible without also focusing on the main medium of such charges: the media itself.  It would be akin to discussing the power of the Nazi system without mentioning its propaganda arm. So, why the seeming poverty of such pieces criticising media output on Chavez? Indeed, why the apparent absence of any such major debate at large on the constraints of liberal-left journalists within the liberal media?  Owen Jones is a regular leftist contributor to the pages of the Independent, and has also published a supportive piece on Chavez at its pages, including this reminder: "And then there is the matter of some of Chavez's unpleasant foreign associations. Although his closest allies were his fellow democratically elected left-of-centre governments in Latin America – nearly all of whom passionately defended Chavez from foreign criticism – he also supported brutal dictators in Iran, Libya and Syria. It has certainly sullied his reputation. Of course, we in the West can hardly single out Chavez for unsavoury alliances. We support and arm dictatorships such as Saudi Arabia; Britain's former Prime Minister Tony Blair is paid $13 million a year to work for Kazakhstan's dictatorship. But our own hypocrisy does not absolve Chavez of criticism." While extolling Chavez, Jones seems to think himself 'fairly honest' in confronting the president's engagement of "brutal dictators". In this vein, it's reasonable to think that the Independent's own attack on Chavez would be something equally exercising Jones's open sensibilities. In a vibrant Twitter exchange (selected comments noted), Owen Jones was initially asked by Media Lens what he thought of the Independent's editorial piece on Chavez: ML: Do you have any views on this Independent editorial? How about the final paragraph? OJ: My view on Hugo Chavez is abundantly clear from the two articles I've written for the Indy. Mehdi Hasan of the New Statesman came to Jones's defence: MH: sorry in which world is it acceptable for employees to publicly attack or critique their employers? Do you guys not have bosses?? ML: No, we don't have bosses, owners, oligarchs, advertisers, or wealthy philanthropist donors. We're independent. How about you? MH: that's not fair! He didn't write it and he shouldn't have to slag off his own employers. Live in the real world pls. ML: We're pointing out that in 'the real world' 'free press' journalists are not free to criticise current or potential employers. And, amongst other contributors and exchanges, my own enquiry to Jones:

JH: Stay with question: what do you have to say about your paper publishing this editorial? 

OJ: I self-evidently disagree with its content as anyone reading my pieces would know 

JH: Any more on what's stopping you from saying so on Indy pages itself? This the key point

OJ: So as well as printing my views on Chavez I have to print attacks on Indy in the Indy?! 

JH: So rampant propaganda to be ignored? When will 'hosted journos' wake up to giant eleph[ant] 

OJ: I've combatted lies about Chavez. In the pages of the Indy. 

JH: Yes, but denouncing Indy and other media assaults on Chavez is also vital right now

There is much reasonable discussion to be had here on just how difficult it is to 'bite the hand that feeds' and the ways in which leftist writers, albeit worthy, provide 'fig-leaf' cover for the corporate/liberal media.

But there's one particular sentiment from Jones here worth noting, namely his apparent incredulity that he could even conceive of attacking the "Indy in the indy?!" Such are the well understood parameters not only of such media arrangements, but of much left radical engagement.

Taking the Independent on directly, writer and activist Joe Emersberger sent this fine letter:

RE: Editorial: Hugo Chavez - an era of grand political illusion comes
to an end

Dear Independent editors:

This editorial states

"Mr Chavez was no run-of-the-mill dictator. His offences were far from
the excesses of a Colonel Gaddafi, say. What he was, more than
anything, was an illusionist – a showman who used his prodigious powers
of persuasion to present a corrupt autocracy fuelled by petrodollars as
a socialist utopia in the making. The show now over, he leaves a
hollowed-out country crippled by poverty, violence and crime. So much
for the revolution. "

Chavez was not a dictator and Venezuela is not an autocracy. The very
editorial where this ludicrous claim is made also concedes that

"True, he retained considerable popular support, winning no fewer than
four elections, all with comfortable majorities..."

Does the Independent now have a new definition of "dictator" and
"autocracy" it is withholding from everyone else on earth?

If so please explain how your definition does not apply to Tony Blair
and the UK government whose crimes, by the way, EXCEEDED those that can
be credibly blamed on Gaddafi.

The Independent also called former Haitian president Jean Bertrand
Aristide a "dictator" the day after he was overthrown in a US led coup
on February 29, 2004.

Your newspaper has provided highly revealing lessons in how the
"liberal" media reinforces the lies and assumptions of the far right
Murdoch press.

I'm sure there are employees within the autocratic Independent who are
quite disgusted by this editorial. They will not publicly express such
a view which shows why the word "autocratic" does accurately describe
your newspaper.

Joe Emersberger  

If only many journalists, even those defending Chavez, could be as open and searching in their evaluations.

From climate destruction to interventionist warmongering, from the protection of Western war criminals to the demonisation of Western enemies, the liberal media are playing a key role in the promotion of the corporate-political consensus. Why isn't that up for serious, emergency discussion for writers like Jones? Why is that lumbering elephant in the room still being ignored?   

 

Chavez - media savaging in life and death

As in life, so in death. The sad passing of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez at 58 has been marked by another intensive wave of media distortion.

Chavez, so we've been variously told, was "divisive", "autocratic", a "demagogue" and a "tyrant", an "egotistical, bombastic and polarising" leader of Venezuela's "socialist state machine".   

One can but imagine the same kind of language being used for marking the passing of Tony Blair, George Bush and others who really did carry out mass crimes against humanity.

And where would we ever likely read in our media such overt or implied criticism of a Western country's "neoliberal state machine"?

Chavez's greatest 'transgression', it seems, was to try wresting his and associate countries away from that cruel orthodoxy, a truly heroic endeavour which corporate journalists can only, it appears, mock and savage.

Besides the standard denunciations of Chavez from right wing and corporate quarters, much more insidious comment has flowed from the 'balancing' side of the liberal media.

Channel 4 News, thus, spoke of grieving Venezuelans who "for the last 14 years, have been governed under his cult of personality."

On Twitter, Jon Snow also lamented that while Chavez had done much for the poor, he had alienated the middle classes, thus, rendering him a 'divisive' figure.

Rarely in such narratives do we hear of the legitimate task that Chavez, Venezuela's poor and the Bolivarian revolution at large has faced in countering that Western-promoted middle class, or of that section's attempts to hold the economy to ransom - as in the 2002 management strike to halt the country's oil nationalisation - or of the massive political and economic pressure brought to bear against Chavez by a hateful US and its international friends.

Repeating a more visceral disdain for Chavez the man, Guardian correspondent Rory Carroll  provides ready amplification of such seething middle class animosities in his piece, 'After Chávez's funeral, who gets Venezuela's poisoned chalice?'

Typically, from other liberal observers, we read that the Bolivarian revolution has 'failed', that, though massively diminished, poverty is still prevalent, that crime is still rampantly high and so on. Much of that may be true, for a variety of deep economic and social reasons. Yet, what really underlies this animus towards the revolution is not just a checklist on Chavez's alleged underachievements, but a deeper liberal unease over any kind of programme that deviates from basic capitalist rules, 'spooks' markets or upsets the Washington/Wall Street consensus.

This liberal power-serving view is classically evident in Simon Tisdall's Guardian piece, 'Death of Hugo Chávez brings chance of fresh start for US and Latin America', with its deceitful efforts to both caricature Chavez and sanitise Washington.

From the title, the reader is to presume that Latin America has languished in the political-economic doldrums because of 'awkward radicals' like Chavez. Tisdall, thus, speaks of:

"Latin American states whose relations with Washington were adversely affected by Chávez's politics of polarisation".

Tisdall also writes regretfully of:

 "...Obama, whose first term, after a promising start, ended up perpetuating Washington's historical neglect of Latin America..."

As Media Lens note (via Facebook):

"What a truly repugnant whitewash of decades - centuries - of invasion, exploitation, installing and propping up brutal rulers and dictators, complicity in mass human rights abuses. It almost beggars belief that a supposedly knowledgeable journalist would encapsulate all that with the odious phrase, 'historical neglect'. I'm pretty sure this is not the first time he's done that."

And so, for Tisdall, Venezuela and other Latin American states now have the chance to renounce this 'wayward' socialist experiment and come back into the safe protection of Obama and prevailing market rules.

Thus, the political and media attack on Chavez is not just poisonous headlining 'journalism', but part of a rearguard check on anything seen as economically radical or socially redistributive; in sum, anything that challenges neoliberal nostrums and corporate hegemony.

Beyond liberal and corporate media accounts, reliable, independent alternative sites are documenting Chavez's real achievements and the context of hostile forces aligned against the revolution. We're unlikely to hear in the mainstream media, for example, that Chavez helped turn Venezuela into the most equal country in Latin America.

We need not deify Hugo Chavez to recognise his key contributions to the onward making of such radical alternatives.  In the end, Chavez can be judged for the many things he did relentlessly stand up for: the poorest in the Venezuelan barrios, for a Latin American bulwark to crude neoliberalism, for occupied Palestinians and for the millions more threatened by Western 'interventions' and wars of aggression. 

RIP

Hugo

Chavez

Wheels of apartheid: Israel's segregated buses

The formal introduction of segregated buses in Israel brings increasing world attention to the daily reality of the state's apartheid practises.

West Bank Palestinians, notably commuting workers, are now being forced to use separate bus lines following settler complaints that they pose a "security threat".

This comes on top of other daily intimidations faced by Palestinians travelling on public transport, with buses routinely stopped and Palestinians forced to endure long delays while humiliating ID inspections are carried out.

Of course, settler-only roads are already the norm across the West Bank.

Yet, as this fine account from Israeli writer Mya Guarnieri shows, buses on routes between Jerusalem and the West Bank are already, effectively, segregated.

In contrast to clean, efficient bus stations and services to and from the settlements, Palestinians have to deal with basic, cramped and delayed ones to anywhere else in the West Bank, the dual system all ridden with pernicious ways of keeping people apart.

Guarnieri recounts one such journey returning from the West Bank:

Coming back in, segregation hits home again. As settlers and Egged buses fly through the checkpoint, an Israeli child-soldier uses his gun to wave the Palestinian bus over to the side. The passengers, myself included, get down and file into a cage reminiscent of something sheep would be herded into as they were lined up for slaughter. Israeli border police check the empty bus, and then check IDs of the tax-paying East Jerusalemites as they board.

I remembered that segregation is the norm recently when, as I flashed my teudat zehut, a soldier-girl realized that I was a Jewish Israeli. “What are you doing here?” she whispered to me, in Hebrew. I guessed that she worried that the Palestinians might hurt me if they knew my status. 

I shrugged, “I work in Area B.” She hesitated, staring at my ID. She couldn’t seem to wrap her head around the idea that there would be a Jewish Israeli on the Palestinian bus. “I teach at the university,” I continued. “I go through this checkpoint every day.” She glanced at the girls in hijab behind me and leaned close to me. “Take care of yourself,” she whispered.

The imagery of separated commuting is deeply reminiscent of apartheid South Africa and the 1960s bus segregations in America's Deep South.

It's yet another display of settler superiority and overtly racist discrimination against Palestinians, all overseen by the state and enforced by the Israeli police.

The same message is captured in this menacing picture of colluding IDF Border Police following vigilante settler attacks on Palestinian shepherds herding cattle on their own land.

From the protection of settler colonists to the prioritised busing of settler passengers, every aspect of daily life for Palestinians is conditioned by state-assisted violence and discrimination.

Besides the prison camp that is Gaza, this debased existence for Palestinians in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and inside Israel is now drawing a more globalised gaze and prompting significant criticisms even from noted Israelis, as in this warning from former Israeli ambassador to South Africa Alon Liel:

 “In the situation that exists today, until a Palestinian state is created, we are actually one state. This joint state — in the hope that the status quo is temporary — is an apartheid state ...”

Liel has also cautioned Obama not to visit the region unless he comes with some constructive intention of facing down Israel's apartheid system:

“If you, President Obama, intend to come here for a courtesy visit — don’t come. Don’t come! We don’t need you here for a courtesy visit,” Liel said. “You cannot come to an area that exhibits signs of apartheid and ignore them. That would simply be an unethical visit. You yourself know full well that Israel is standing at the apartheid cliff. If you don’t deal with this topic during your visit, the responsibility will at the end of the process also lie with you.”   

As in the once darkest Deep Souths, of America and Africa, there will, one hopes, come a day when people across the world will look back in bewilderment that such blatant segregationist, racist and apartheid policies could ever have been enacted or allowed to persist.

Latest ML Cogitation - ego-watching the ego

The latest Cogitation piece from Media Lens Editor David Edwards provides yet another challenging meditation on the demands and indulgence of the ego. Part 1, here.

In 'The Special One' - Part 2: Looking Under The Lamppost , Edwards asserts:

"There is an emptiness at the core of our being. The ego's great task is to fill that emptiness with evidence that we are 'someone' rather than 'nobody', that we are 'special'. But no matter how hard we try, our achievements continue to fall and vanish into the void."

Nothing, no level of gratification, no moment of success, is ever seemingly enough. The perpetual quest for recognition, approval, status enhancement and other momentary indulgence takes us on an endless road to a never-reached destination, an ever-distant horizon of non-fulfilment.

And with all that ego-bingeing comes a lifetime of angst and self-disappointment, whether it be our physical appearance, our business acumen, our intellectual capabilities, our capacity to find love and so on.

At what point does even our happiest pride or pleasure in creating something good, something self-valued, lapse into a more conceited desire to have it noticed, celebrated, popularised, remembered, idolised or otherwise loved?

Despite the apparently bleak prognosis for human happiness posed here, there's a special life-affirming value in reading this kind of cogitation, drawing the mind up in true reflective questioning, and perhaps happier realisation, of one's inner motives, impulses and self-evaluating honesty.

How well do we trust our ego to interrogate our ego? 

For this plodding blogger (was that an ego-inverted affectation?) it's also a welcome respite, an antidote, to the often sharp, barbed and adversarial exchanges that seem to come with the terrain, a mode of engagement that can drain and demoralise. 

From this, we might endeavour not to feel or project in such comment any particular animosity towards the person whose views or actions we're criticising. It's a laudable and benign thought. But, of course, it begs the further ego-hovering question: is this 'altruistic' separation of individual and the object of such criticism any less ego-pleasing than the rush we might get from actually scoring personal points over our 'adversary'?

Again, how ego-enhancing is it to feel good about 'unenhancing' the ego?

And so, such questions, convolutions and circularities seem to go on.

Yet, in Edwards's writing we find encouraging shards of light drawing us towards, if not pure illumination, then the possibility of how to comprehend and approach the problem of reconciling the ego in all these multifaceted forms.

In what sometimes feels an all-too-prevailing darkness of spirit, a fog of emotional and intellectual confusion, the more 'realisable' task, it seems, is to seek more assisted lamplight with which to shed some sense of contentment and reassurance in coping with the burden of our ego-demanding thoughts and actions, even if we might never succeed in eliminating them.

There's a comforting thought here in not hoping to conquer or suppress our ego-driving emotions, but in just simply watching and observing them, staying aware of their capacities to deceive, disappoint and perplex.

Meanwhile, I'm looking forward to another instalment of this fine lamplighting in Part 3. And, at the risk of more ego-attributing, I hope David Edwards enjoys his momentary pleasure in having crafted such a fascinating and humanitarian piece.

David Ward now on probation - 'We'll teach him'

An update on the situation of Liberal Democrat MP David Ward after his particular use of words in criticising Israel and its treatment of Palestinians.

Following a meeting with leader Nick Clegg and the party's Chief Whip, Alistair Carmichael, the case was adjourned, with Ward, effectively, cautioned and compelled to have any further comments pre-checked by pro-Israel monitors. As reported by the BBC:

"In the meeting, Mr Ward agreed to work with the Liberal Democrat Friends of Israel to identify "proportionate language" he could use in the future to express his views."

In more loaded tones, Jennifer Lipman at the JC wrote:

"More than a month after his outburst about Israel, the Jews and Auschwitz, David Ward has been ordered to "work along with Liberal Democrat Friends of Israel and Simon Hughes MP to identify and agree language that will be proportionate and precise in your future interventions in this debate"."

A further piece by Lipman reported that leading Jewish groups were unhappy about the party's "fig-leaf" actions against Ward, further noting that:

"The party's disciplinary process with the MP will be reviewed after Mr Ward meets LDFI members. 

Gavin Stollar, LDFI chairman, said that if the group "doubted Mr Ward's sincerity in engaging in this process, or his willingness to take on board what's coming, then there's no question about our intention to feed that back.

"LDFI has essentially been appointed as probation officers for David Ward," said Mr Stollar. "If we are not convinced that he is salvageable then we'll be in the position to report back to the leader and the chief whip and express our views.

"Rather than making him a martyr, LDFI welcomes the opportunity to educate one of our MPs."" (Emphasis added.)

Contrary to claims of token censuring, this is truly Orwellian action and terminology, particularly coming from those who have denounced and hounded Ward for his own misuse of language.

The instructions and words of Clegg, Carmichael and Stollar are highly revealing of how the party machine works to keep Israel's critics in check, illustrating, in this case, the dutiful role of LDFI in the surveillance and "probation" of David Ward.

It remains to be seen from Ward's next 'report card' whether he is "salvageable" or, if not, to be 'discarded' on the advice of LDFI. 

Judging from these dark comments, one has a fair idea of the 'teaching' approaches Mr Stollar and his Friends have in mind for helping to "educate" Ward rather than see him become a "martyr" to such a 'spurious' cause as justice for Palestinians. A more censorious kind of 'lesson', no doubt, awaits: 'we'll teach him'.

Meanwhile, here's independent journalist Jonathan Cook (via Facebook) registering some more welcome support for David Ward:

"I've been following the case of David Ward, the British MP accused of anti-semitism, with some interest. As in most of these cases, it's clear he is not actually anti-semitic (or more importantly, racist) but, of course, that's not the purpose of the "controversy" the UK Zionist lobbies have generated in the media. As we know, it's all about silencing criticism of Israel.

Here's the problem quote:

"Having visited Auschwitz twice – once with my family and once with local schools – I am saddened that the Jews, who suffered unbelievable levels of persecution during the Holocaust, could within a few years of liberation from the death camps be inflicting atrocities on Palestinians in the new State of Israel and continue to do so on a daily basis in the West Bank and Gaza."

It's good to see Larry Derfner, a Zionist Israeli, come to Ward's defence, calling out his political hounding for what it is. The statement that got Ward into trouble is certainly clumsy: he tried to elide two ideas - that Jews were the victims of persecution, and now Israelis are the perpetrators of persecution - and in doing so he can be interpreted as conflating Jews and Israelis.  

Outside the hardcore Israel lobby and our craven media, that should be [a] fairly minor matter, needing only clarification, which he has since provided. Instead, both the lobby and the media are making hay in wilfully misinterpreting his words and fuelling the illusion that anti-semitism is the potent force among the political class it was a few generations ago." 

(Cook's link to Derfner's piece follows.) Larry Derfner
The Israel lobby at its intimidating worst – in Britain

Predictably, these wilful intimidations by the lobby are receiving little or no media attention as both continue to misrepresent Ward and his primary message.

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

Update, 4 March 2013.

David Ward has cast serious doubt on both party and media interpretations of his meeting with leader Nick Clegg and Chief Whip Alistair Carmichael, rejecting, in particular, claims that he will attend any kind of "language classes".

Claims that Mr Ward has agreed to partake in any compulsory meeting with Gavin Stollar and LDFI also seems highly questionable.

As stated in this piece from the Telegraph and Argus (and reproduced here), Mr Ward fiercely contests the version of events released to the media by Carmichael:

"The MP told the T&A: “I’m very disappointed and angry about this, because what has been said does not reflect what I believe was decided.

“And, as someone who has run race awareness classes, I find the idea that I have been sent on some sort of correctionary course to be patronising and quite offensive.”"

According to the article, Mr Ward intends seeking clarification of Nick Clegg's own "recollections" of the meeting.

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

Jonathan Cook has commented further (via Facebook) on David Ward's case:

"Many thanks to John Hilley for keeping us up to date with the David Ward saga. Ward is the British MP accused by the UK Jewish establishment of anti-semitism for making the patently obvious point that most Israelis appear to have ignored the universal lesson of the Holocaust and instead gone from being members of a persecuted people to being a nation of persecutors (of Palestinians).

Ward belongs to the Liberal Democrats, a liberal party currently in coalition with the Conservative government and one that has a dismal track record on allowing dissent about Israel within its ranks.

Like the other two main (and bigger) parties, it has one of these strange "Friends of Israel" groups within the parliamentary caucus. These groups have been growing and becoming much more powerful within the three parties over the past decade - just as the rank and file members (like the British people) have, according to polls, become much more sceptical about Israel and its policies.

Ward has effectively been disciplined by the party leadership and has now been sent to a re-education camp run by - yes, that's right - the Liberal Democratic Friends of Israel (LDFI), chaired by Gavin Stollar.

"'LDFI has essentially been appointed as probation officers for David Ward,' said Mr Stollar. 'If we are not convinced that he is salvageable then we'll be in the position to report back to the leader and the chief whip and express our views.

'Rather than making him a martyr, LDFI welcomes the opportunity to educate one of our MPs.'"

This is great news for the UK's Jewish establishment. Now they don't need to dirty their hands terrifying the country's elected representatives into silence on Israel's crimes. They have outsourced it to the party machines instead."

ZDT and 5 Broken Cameras - award avoidance

And the award for best averted picture goes to...

Glenn Greenwald has written approvingly of the Oscar night disaster for Zero Dark Thirty and all those CIA figures who helped director Kathryn Bigelow and writer Mark Boal produce this pernicious propaganda.

It seems that the film's claims over the tracking of Osama bin Laden and its rationalisation of torture to find and murder him was too hot to handle for Hollywood's elite panel.

Conversely, the success of Argo as best picture reflects the more benign image of US interventionism. What, after all, could be liberally safer than a quirky tale of 'American ingenuity' in serving to deal with the Iranian hostage crisis? 

If ZDT works on the level of 'propaganda wash', Argo, in its multiple evasions and embellishments, functions as "propaganda fable" .

In his acceptance speech, the film's director Ben Affleck also took time to mention the current situation in Iran: "I want to thank our friends in Iran living in terrible circumstances right now."

What does he mean, precisely: that life for Iranians is intolerable under their government; or that Iranians are facing the terrible circumstances of Western sanctions and being threatened and intimidated by Israel and the US? I think we can safely nominate something akin to the former view.

One wonders, though, whether that same liberal queasiness over ZDT was also responsible for Hollywood passing over 5 Broken Cameras and The Gatekeepers.

Whatever the reason, it averted any embarrassing award and potentially awkward acceptance speech.

Still, while Israel will be quietly relieved about the non-award, both films have attained serious international attention, encouraging more such exposures of its daily brutality and state subterfuge.

Here's what 5 Broken Cameras director Emad Burnat would have said, had he won:

 

Michael Moore has further defended Emad Burnat over his account of being security-detained at Los Angeles airport.

Blair's smooth talk, Wark's lame talk

It's hard to watch BBC presenter Kirsty Wark's interview with Tony Blair without feeling both staggered by Blair's smooth, ongoing deceit and appalled by Wark's tepid efforts to interrogate his lies.

Blair's "how many times have we been over this argument" denials, dismissals and evasions should be perfectly familiar to Wark, as they are to the millions who have rejected the claims for invading Iraq and 'liberal intervention' in other countries.

Yet, she allows Blair to dismiss the entire anti-war movement as some kind of tiresome, misinformed mass.

Having failed to pin Blair down on the WMD deceit and the whitewash of all the Iraq 'inquiries', Wark continues:

"But isn't it terrible, in a way, now that in this country we cannot go to war on the basis of intelligence again, can we?"

The premise and intimation of this question tells us everything we need to know about the BBC's power-serving mindset.

It's seemingly "terrible" that "we" find ourselves doubting the provenance of 'our' "intelligence" and what 'our' leaders do with it. Not "terrible" that we actually go to war, not "terrible" that a million people died in the process of that war, only "terrible" that we now find it so awkward to wage further wars.

Aside from the brutal Orwellian language used here, where is that most basic acknowledgement of the mass suffering caused by the 'intelligence' and those who used it?

Blair replies to Wark's question:

"Well, I think, you know, I don't know when we go to war on the basis of intelligence or not is really the issue. I think what is the issue, frankly, after Iraq and Afghanistan is whether we disregard the price of any such intervention as too high."

Wark completely ignores this deceitful inversion that the "intelligence [is not] really the issue", after all, moving on to ask whether there's now any moral right for invading/bombing Syria and Iran.

Some feeble objections are offered by Wark about the lack of UN mandates for any such 'intervention'. But, Blair is permitted to carry on enunciating the case.

However, Wark suddenly seems animated and on 'serious implication' ground:

"The problem is now, is that [sic] we're pretty sure Iran has [WMD...] or certainly on its way to getting them", thus, after Iraq, making Iran now "an absolute powerhouse in the region", the "number one enemy of the West" and "as a result of the problems in Iraq, Iran is gaining power, and another foothold in Iraq."

Wark's irately-delivered point is not about the actual problems for war-drained Iraqis, but a fearmongering worry about an 'advancing Iran'. Again, as with the media-hyped menace of Saddam, we hear the same alarmist warnings about Ahmadinejad.

Blair repeats his mantra about needing to tackle both Iraq and Iran, rejecting Wark's implicit line that because of the 'mistakes' in Iraq, 'we' now have the problem of dealing with Iran.

 Wark proceeds to remind Blair that there's no real public appetite for further wars, also asking him if he's seen Obama's recent address: "He's not going on any foreign adventure either."

Somehow, Obama's immediate commitment of 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan, his murderous drone strikes on the Pakistan border and the extrajudicial killing of US foes doesn't appear to register with Wark as "foreign adventures".

Blair waxes on about the volatility of the Middle East and the need to keep a firm check on Syria and all these insecure regimes, carefully, of course, omitting Saudi Arabia.

Noting Britain's prior support for Mubarak, Wark offers another lame interjection: "You do agree with the [Arab Spring] revolutions?"

Pledging that he does, Blair trots out more standard lines about the "long hard struggle", of keeping the world "safer" from dictators and the need for 'encouraged assistance' to these countries, but Wark has nothing to say, in response, about Britain's and the West's dark posturing over Libya and other such states.

Continuing to play the 'voice of the people' role, Wark suggests that the public won't support any more such interventions because "you squandered it in Iraq."

Again, it's the 'bad mistakes we made in Iraq' line; the opportunity was "squandered". Nothing about the deliberate and calculated aggression in pursuit of oil and geopolitical control. 

The final perversion from Wark comes in this question:

"In your memoirs you write about redeeming something from the tragedies of the deaths in Iraq. In a way, is your role as a Middle East envoy some kind of attempt to atone?"

Blair, now in his best solemn-toned voice, reflects that it's not about his personal redemption but about helping others to find peaceful resolutions, notably his desire to bridge the Israel-Palestine "dispute".

Wark could, of course, have asked many more simple and pointed questions here, such as:

'Are you attempting to disguise your crimes in Iraq by hiding behind this envoy role?'

'How could someone with such accusations of mass war crimes hanging over them ever consider themselves suitable for such a peace-promoting role?'

'Given your own and Britain's long-standing support for Israel, isn't it vastly hypocritical to be seen promoting yourself to occupied and besieged Palestinians?'

In a last question, inviting more of Blair's affectations, Wark quietly asks: "But do you think you will be redeemed?"

She could more usefully have enquired: 'Do you think you will ever be brought to justice?'

But that would not be in the spirit of BBC questioning of 'our' leaders, past or present.

As Wark thanks Blair for speaking to her, we see the completion of yet another model exercise in liberal media protectionism.