| It's been a week of political and media froth over the 'looming threat' from North Korea. In its main report, the BBC's Newsnight presenter Jeremy Paxman said of the country's leader: "Kim Jong-un, a man with a more than passing resemblance to a haggis, after all".From "spiritual heir to Stalin" to "crackpot regime", this and other standard jibes are what passes for balanced, impartial and informed journalism from the BBC's flagship and other news outlets. Imagine such personalised and pejorative remarks being used about Cameron, Blair, Obama, Netanyahu or any Western state. Newsnight's skewed film report from Robin Denselow, dramatically shaking the small locked gates of North Korea's London embassy, had ex-US ambassador Nicholas Burns and an array of Western-minded policy analysts warning of Pyongyang's 'imminent nuclear threat', numbering its 'international violations' and probing 'China's failure' in bringing this "unpredictable" state to heel. Paxman's package also had a placatory interview with a North Korean defector, a non-contested message from David Cameron on the case for keeping Trident at Faslane, a Tory MP using the North Korean 'threat' to defend Trident and a token, moderate counter-view from a Lib Dem MP. Elsewhere, some of that liberal questioning has been more scathing of Cameron's postures. As Simon Jenkins noted in the Guardian: "What is most frightening about the west's response to Kim Jong-un is the scale of the exaggeration. Cameron awards him the global reach of a superpower. We might almost ask which side is now impoverishing its people to pay for glamour defences, which is concocting blood-curling scenarios to justify them and which conjures up enemies to keep its people in thrall to its defence and security chiefs and their demands. Is it only North Korea that feels it must periodically flex its muscles and peddle a ridiculous view of the balance of world power? North Korea constitutes no conceivable threat to the British state, or to the US and its allies."But what's never adequately stated or explored here, for all its reasonable argument, is the massively differing treatment of demonising states like North Korea as opposed to merely criticising the West. Thus, Jenkins and others are ever ready to denounce the "megalomaniac" tendencies of Kim Jong-un in noting the expedient motives of those who benefit from his pronouncements: "The lunacies of a Korean dictator halfway round the world is music to the ears of defence lobbyists, arms manufacturers, security consultants, generals and admirals."But while these dark exploitations by the warmongering lobbies are implicitly criticised by writers like Jenkins, they are never condemned as "lunacies", a language of demonisation still specially reserved for the 'real crazies' like Kim Jong-un. And what of the lunacies of a US president and his Nato allies who have actually bombed Libya to bits, murdered thousands of innocents in drone strikes in Pakistan and continued a murderous war on Afghanistan? What of the megalomaniac lunatics before them, Bush and Blair, responsible for a million deaths and mass carnage in Iraq? Where, more specifically, in such liberal critiques do we see any more than passive, nominal comment on such media bias and imbalance, that which, like Paxman on Newsnight, can only speak of the 'concerned' West and their 'crackpot' foes? Rather than crude put-downs, here's an exercise which Paxman and other liberal-establishment presenters might more usefully put their minds to: a comparative table of the world's most dangerous states since 1945 based on an aggregation of the following: 1. Most war-waging 2. Most war-committed deaths 3. Most nuclear-threatening 4. Most regionally-destabilising 5. Most coup-promoting 6. Most propaganda-effective A strongly suggested top 3: United States Britain Israel One can argue over who might complete a top 10. But, for all its issues, 'haggis-looking' leaders and all, North Korea isn't even remotely on the page. |
Friday, 5 April 2013
Kim Jong-un - face of a 'global threat'
The benefits of rational sanity
“There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.
"That's some catch, that Catch-22," he observed. "It's the best there is," Doc Daneeka agreed.”
According to the Telegraph, a large number of potential claimants aren't re-applying for disability-based benefits, leading to claims that they're all malignant scroungers who have been fairly caught out. The voice of 'rational sanity', as ever, from the Torygraph.Yet, maybe there are other reasons for this and other such avoidance of the benefits system.
Perhaps sick and stressed people don't claim benefits for fear of making themselves even more stressed and sick. This may seem irrational, even insane. But the rational and sane decision not to apply for benefits suggests that it's the benefits system itself which is irrational and insane in keeping already stressed and sick people away. Of course, the benefits agency would likely say that the very decision of the stressed and sick not to apply for benefits indicates their rational and sane ability to judge their situation and, thus, their sane and rational ability to function and work. In considering the tortured logic of the benefits agency's irrational and insane assessment, the rational and sane person may feel even more reluctant to apply. This, of course, may leave them even more sick and stressed, if, at least, still more rational and sane than the irrational and insane benefits system that's foisted this irrational and insane choice upon them.
Comprehension of the wider system of power is largely guided by the same kind of fear, apprehension and resignation we feel about authority and how it imposes its irrational, insane rules on the rational and sane. Indeed, rational and sane people can be encouraged into accepting almost any kind of social, political or economic control. Capitalism, particularly neoliberalism, as a system is premised on outright winners and losers, with inequality, worry, degradation and misery for billions all celebrated as the hidden hand of sane market rationalism. In other words, it's irrational and insane. Yet, try telling most rational and sane people that capitalism is irrational and insane. The rational and sane mind may actually realise that capitalism is irrational and insane, but must react in denial of this, largely because to believe otherwise is to accept one's own possible irrationality, even insanity, in even considering such an idea. In effect, even if you don't rationally and sanely believe so, it's seemingly more rational and sane just to say that it's irrational and insane to say that the system is irrational and insane. However, this still bestows upon the system an undue sane rationalism, leaving the supposedly rational and sane person facing the ongoing irrational and insane-inducing dilemma of whether to keep saying the system is rational and sane or make that really rational and sane leap in actually calling it irrational and insane.
Corporate journalists will likely enunciate the similar view that it's irrational and possibly insane to claim that the corporate media is irrational and insane in protecting and reinforcing all the irrationality and insanity of the wider corporate-driven system. The Telegraph journalist who wrote the above story would likely call this blogger's reading of it, and the rest of this blog, utterly irrational and worryingly insane. One must, of course, leave sane and rational readers to judge whether such an assertion is sane and rational or irrational and insane. But to what extent can rational and sane journalists rationally and sanely comprehend the irrational and insane world of journalism they really inhabit? The self-defence of such journalistic rationality and sanity is nowhere better seen than in the rejection of claims that climate change, the irrational and insane destruction of the earth, is anything to do with the irrational and insane process of rampant corporate consumerism, or, more precisely, that such irrational and insane journalism is in itself feeding that irrational and insane process of eco-destruction through greenwashed reports, fossil fuel advertising, evasive editorials and other such irrational, insane copy. Speculating rationally on the very sane proposition of calling corporations, corporate media and corporate life at large not only irrational and insane but criminal and psychopathic in these regards takes us into a further whole dimension of rational and sanity-seeking thought. But that's another question which, with a rational and sane eye on space, time and rational/sane reader weariness, may be best left for the moment.
Is drawing attention to all of this irrationality and insanity in any way rational or/and sane? Perhaps not, for it can easily make one feel increasingly and uneasily, what's the words..., even if that's a seemingly imagined or even self-indulgent irrationality and insanity. On the other hand, feeling a rational obligation to highlight such insanity, sometimes with a rational and sane humour, can keep one grounded in the sure knowledge that while irrationality and insanity rages all around, the rational and sane mind can see corporate existence and the irrationally insane forces supporting it as the darkest possible form of irrationality and insanity, an insane irrationalism so insanely hidden and irrationally denied that the very irrational insanity of such deception and denial helps keep us questioning everything we understand, or rationally and sanely think we understand, as being rational and sane. A Kafkaesque inversion of irrational insanity, or what?
Tuesday, 2 April 2013
Farewell welfare - bedroom tax and the IDS mindset
It took a while, admittedly, to sink in.
Sometimes some outrages are so outrageous they don't immediately register; like some half-heard mumble of threatening intent amongst all the other dreary news of cuts, coming cuts and more 'prudent' austerity.
But then the realisation. A bedroom tax. A tax on a bedroom. An actual levy, a tariff, a charge on the poorest and most vulnerable for having a 'spare' room.
And then the wonderment, even a kind of grudging 'admiration' at their dark ingenuity: how did they even come to think of something so brutally grasping, so brazen in its thieving offensiveness?
'Let's see', some faceless policy maker in some ornate government office, in some smart multi-roomed building, must have asked, 'how might we claw back even more money from those already struggling at the lowest level of the economic chain?'
Perhaps the answer came with a rush of wicked realisation: 'Yes, of course, why hadn't we thought of it before. Let's check the size of their already meagre houses for the most basic vacant capacity and force them to pay for it, failing which, compel them to move, who knows or cares where, with all the dislocation, anxiety and upheaval involved, so we can slice their housing benefit.'
Those fearing an accompanying mansion tax needn't fret. The attack on social housing recipients will benefit those who own the mansions.
As the range of ConDem measures show, this is a landmark assault on the poorest in support of the richest. While struggling bedroom-taxed families will have to find on average £14 a week more for rent, the 1.5 per cent with incomes above £150,000 are about to have their tax reduced by 5 per cent, giving the UK's millionaires an average £100,769 a year more.
Iain Duncan Smith is, of course, the callous mind behind this and other such 'caring reforms', the department of workhouse and suspensions minister with the 'I know how to sort poverty' gleam in his eye.
Back in the Tory opposition days of 2002, during his short tenure as party leader, IDS was kindly escorted around Glasgow's multi-deprived Easterhouse by the honourable Bob Holman, a deeply people-devoted social worker who hoped he could show him a more compassionate way of tackling poverty. So much for the great 'conversion'.
In 2004 IDS founded the Centre for Social Justice, a spuriously-named right-wing think-tank which, infused with his own Christian sermonising on 'breakdown Britain' and the 'failed' Beveridge welfare state, provided ideological cover for his emergent Welfare Reform Bill.
Thus, have Duncan Smith and George Osborne now claimed, in a bad April 1 joke, that with the new range of cuts and reforms "we are just restoring the original principles of the welfare state".
Charities, churches, housing support bodies and a raft of other front line witnesses see the very opposite: deepening turmoil and destitution for a mass section of society.
Duncan Smith also tells us that he could live on £53 a week if he "had to". If only such people were compelled to try - not just for a week, but in the prolonged and life disfiguring way that so many have to cope and worry.
Yet, maybe we shouldn't be too harsh on the man now labelled "scumbag" by welfare-cut protesters. That really only applies to those who might have been realistically trusted to improve things and then betray that trust.
What else should one expect from any career politician, ConDem or Labour, particularly those with all that steely conviction about how best to 'get the poor to help themselves'?
One can speculate as to the kind of dark, twisted mindset that can tell poor people to relinquish their 'oversized' homes, live on £53 and go find work that doesn't actually exist. But would even that take us nearer understanding the structural wickedness of the system itself?
In truth, IDS is but another predictable enforcer of that much darker system and all its rationally determined cruelty. It's a system which keeps the minds of politicians not just selfishly motivated, but ruthlessly honed to market priorities and class interests, placing corporate rules before social compassion, money before people, elite security before social security, mansion-dwellers before struggling tenants.
Alas, it's also a market-survivalist mindset which inhibits wider social concern for the poor, part of the same political and media promoted prejudice against welfare claimants.
A general antagonism to the cuts and reforms may be evident. But it's still a largely mediated opposition, driven more by narrow sectoral interests than any particular empathy for those in deepest welfare land.
The castigation of those on welfare, even in the midst of such ruthless cuts, illustrates the pernicious normalisation of public sentiment to gross inequalities and the propaganda function of social division.
The policies of Duncan Smith and Osborne are widely reviled, but millions still harbour a crude and uninformed animosity towards the 'feckless poor' and 'benefit scroungers'.
And it's this base mythology of the 'suffering taxpayer', 'those who pay to keep those who take', that Duncan Smith and Osborne seek most to cultivate.
Maybe IDS and his Centre for Social Justice are working on that very idea right now: a 'compassion tax' on anyone with spare regard for the poor.
* A gathering petition asking IDS to try living on £53 a week. Please sign.
Sometimes some outrages are so outrageous they don't immediately register; like some half-heard mumble of threatening intent amongst all the other dreary news of cuts, coming cuts and more 'prudent' austerity.
But then the realisation. A bedroom tax. A tax on a bedroom. An actual levy, a tariff, a charge on the poorest and most vulnerable for having a 'spare' room.
And then the wonderment, even a kind of grudging 'admiration' at their dark ingenuity: how did they even come to think of something so brutally grasping, so brazen in its thieving offensiveness?
'Let's see', some faceless policy maker in some ornate government office, in some smart multi-roomed building, must have asked, 'how might we claw back even more money from those already struggling at the lowest level of the economic chain?'
Perhaps the answer came with a rush of wicked realisation: 'Yes, of course, why hadn't we thought of it before. Let's check the size of their already meagre houses for the most basic vacant capacity and force them to pay for it, failing which, compel them to move, who knows or cares where, with all the dislocation, anxiety and upheaval involved, so we can slice their housing benefit.'
Those fearing an accompanying mansion tax needn't fret. The attack on social housing recipients will benefit those who own the mansions.
As the range of ConDem measures show, this is a landmark assault on the poorest in support of the richest. While struggling bedroom-taxed families will have to find on average £14 a week more for rent, the 1.5 per cent with incomes above £150,000 are about to have their tax reduced by 5 per cent, giving the UK's millionaires an average £100,769 a year more.
Iain Duncan Smith is, of course, the callous mind behind this and other such 'caring reforms', the department of workhouse and suspensions minister with the 'I know how to sort poverty' gleam in his eye.
Back in the Tory opposition days of 2002, during his short tenure as party leader, IDS was kindly escorted around Glasgow's multi-deprived Easterhouse by the honourable Bob Holman, a deeply people-devoted social worker who hoped he could show him a more compassionate way of tackling poverty. So much for the great 'conversion'.
In 2004 IDS founded the Centre for Social Justice, a spuriously-named right-wing think-tank which, infused with his own Christian sermonising on 'breakdown Britain' and the 'failed' Beveridge welfare state, provided ideological cover for his emergent Welfare Reform Bill.
Thus, have Duncan Smith and George Osborne now claimed, in a bad April 1 joke, that with the new range of cuts and reforms "we are just restoring the original principles of the welfare state".
Charities, churches, housing support bodies and a raft of other front line witnesses see the very opposite: deepening turmoil and destitution for a mass section of society.
Duncan Smith also tells us that he could live on £53 a week if he "had to". If only such people were compelled to try - not just for a week, but in the prolonged and life disfiguring way that so many have to cope and worry.
Yet, maybe we shouldn't be too harsh on the man now labelled "scumbag" by welfare-cut protesters. That really only applies to those who might have been realistically trusted to improve things and then betray that trust.
What else should one expect from any career politician, ConDem or Labour, particularly those with all that steely conviction about how best to 'get the poor to help themselves'?
One can speculate as to the kind of dark, twisted mindset that can tell poor people to relinquish their 'oversized' homes, live on £53 and go find work that doesn't actually exist. But would even that take us nearer understanding the structural wickedness of the system itself?
In truth, IDS is but another predictable enforcer of that much darker system and all its rationally determined cruelty. It's a system which keeps the minds of politicians not just selfishly motivated, but ruthlessly honed to market priorities and class interests, placing corporate rules before social compassion, money before people, elite security before social security, mansion-dwellers before struggling tenants.
Alas, it's also a market-survivalist mindset which inhibits wider social concern for the poor, part of the same political and media promoted prejudice against welfare claimants.
A general antagonism to the cuts and reforms may be evident. But it's still a largely mediated opposition, driven more by narrow sectoral interests than any particular empathy for those in deepest welfare land.
The castigation of those on welfare, even in the midst of such ruthless cuts, illustrates the pernicious normalisation of public sentiment to gross inequalities and the propaganda function of social division.
The policies of Duncan Smith and Osborne are widely reviled, but millions still harbour a crude and uninformed animosity towards the 'feckless poor' and 'benefit scroungers'.
And it's this base mythology of the 'suffering taxpayer', 'those who pay to keep those who take', that Duncan Smith and Osborne seek most to cultivate.
Maybe IDS and his Centre for Social Justice are working on that very idea right now: a 'compassion tax' on anyone with spare regard for the poor.
* A gathering petition asking IDS to try living on £53 a week. Please sign.
Saturday, 30 March 2013
Iraq death figures - exchange with Jon Snow
To Channel 4 News and the BBC asking them to explain and amend their use of Iraq Body Count death figures in reports and presentations.
To Channel 4 News
presenters Jon Snow and Krishnan Guru-Murthy:
Dear Jon and Krishnan,
I wonder if Channel 4 News would care to review what appears to be its selective use of Iraq Body Count (IBC) figures for civilian war deaths in Iraq.
The problem is discussed here, with reference to a particular Channel 4 News report on Iraq:
As noted, the following suggests a simplified alternative which, rather than IBC's limited and misleading count, offers a more informed and balanced range of figures:
Civilian war deaths in Iraq
(range):
Iraq Body Count (IBC)
(till Dec 2012)
110,937 - 121,227
Lancet/Johns Hopkins survey
(March 2003 - end of June 2006)
654,965
Opinion Research Business (ORB) survey
(August 12–19, 2007)
1,033,000
Source: Wikipedia
I'd be most grateful for your thoughts on replacing sole reference to IBC with this fairer and more viewer-serving graphic.
Kind regards
John Hilley
Reply from Jon Snow:
Thanks John..it is eternally controversial..from my own experience reporting in Iraq the IBC count has always seemed very low..I try not to use it....The Lancet figure may be more truthful...I doubt we can be more accurate in reality than say that credible sources believe more than half a million died and at least four million were displaced.
Thanks for your help..best wishes,
Jon
Hi Jon
To BBC (via online complaints form):
I'd like to request that the BBC end its selective use of Iraq Body Count (IBC) when denoting civilian war deaths in Iraq.
The issue of BBC bias towards IBC and the false impressions it serves is discussed here.
As noted, the following suggests a simplified alternative which, rather than IBC's limited and misleading count, offers a more informed and balanced range of figures:
Civilian war deaths in Iraq
(range):
Iraq Body Count (IBC)
(till Dec 2012)
110,937 - 121,227
Lancet/Johns Hopkins survey
(March 2003 - end of June 2006)
654,965
Opinion Research Business (ORB) survey
(August 12–19, 2007)
1,033,000
Source: Wikipedia
Please consider replacing sole reference to IBC with this fairer and more viewer-serving graphic.
The use of IBC as an 'authoritative' and singularly-mentioned figure is widespread across the BBC, which suggests that a specific executive/editorial decision has been taken in this regard.
I'd like to see any copy or/and details of that decision-making process.
As the BBC's own charter/editorial guidelines specify a requirement to be neutral and impartial, I look forward to a fairer presentation of this key information. If such an alteration is not undertaken, I intend to seek a ruling on this matter from the BBC Trust.
For the purposes of this complaint, I cite the following online report and its singular, biased use of IBC figures:
Iraq 10 years on: In numbers
I look forward to your reply.
Regards
John Hilley
--------------
It's also worth recalling here that in 2007 the BBC's own World Service obtained restricted government information denoting advice from a senior MoD adviser that the Lancet study was "robust":
Getting the BBC to concede any of these points is, of course, interminably difficult. As many who have used the BBC's labyrinthine complaints system may attest, the prospects of receiving any official acknowledgement of bias, imbalance or breach of guidelines is unlikely. But, as ever, one useful purpose of the exercise is to further highlight that very process of evasion and denial.
To Channel 4 News
presenters Jon Snow and Krishnan Guru-Murthy:
Dear Jon and Krishnan,
I wonder if Channel 4 News would care to review what appears to be its selective use of Iraq Body Count (IBC) figures for civilian war deaths in Iraq.
The problem is discussed here, with reference to a particular Channel 4 News report on Iraq:
As noted, the following suggests a simplified alternative which, rather than IBC's limited and misleading count, offers a more informed and balanced range of figures:
Civilian war deaths in Iraq
(range):
Iraq Body Count (IBC)
(till Dec 2012)
110,937 - 121,227
Lancet/Johns Hopkins survey
(March 2003 - end of June 2006)
654,965
Opinion Research Business (ORB) survey
(August 12–19, 2007)
1,033,000
Source: Wikipedia
I'd be most grateful for your thoughts on replacing sole reference to IBC with this fairer and more viewer-serving graphic.
Kind regards
John Hilley
Reply from Jon Snow:
Thanks John..it is eternally controversial..from my own experience reporting in Iraq the IBC count has always seemed very low..I try not to use it....The Lancet figure may be more truthful...I doubt we can be more accurate in reality than say that credible sources believe more than half a million died and at least four million were displaced.
Thanks for your help..best wishes,
Jon
Hi Jon
Many thanks for replying. It's very much appreciated.
I also appreciate your open acknowledgement that the IBC count "[seems] very low", your reticence about using it and that the Lancet figure "may be more truthful".
Alas, the report referred to specifically didn't offer viewers any information on those more "credible sources" indicating, at least, over half a million dead.
Which returns us to the original question of what specific undertaking Ch 4 News might give in replacing the IBC count with a more informative set of figures. Any further thoughts?
Kind regards
John
Also sent:
Hi Jon,
"Perhaps it should also be pointed out that The Lancet and others are cited without reservation on other issues (I think mass-killings in Congo is an example). Hence, for the sake of not just balance but consistency too, news broadcasters should necessarily be citing other estimates (e.g. Lancet) too."
Kind regards
John
No further response, as yet, received.
---------------------------------------------
To BBC (via online complaints form):
I'd like to request that the BBC end its selective use of Iraq Body Count (IBC) when denoting civilian war deaths in Iraq.
The issue of BBC bias towards IBC and the false impressions it serves is discussed here.
As noted, the following suggests a simplified alternative which, rather than IBC's limited and misleading count, offers a more informed and balanced range of figures:
Civilian war deaths in Iraq
(range):
Iraq Body Count (IBC)
(till Dec 2012)
110,937 - 121,227
Lancet/Johns Hopkins survey
(March 2003 - end of June 2006)
654,965
Opinion Research Business (ORB) survey
(August 12–19, 2007)
1,033,000
Source: Wikipedia
Please consider replacing sole reference to IBC with this fairer and more viewer-serving graphic.
The use of IBC as an 'authoritative' and singularly-mentioned figure is widespread across the BBC, which suggests that a specific executive/editorial decision has been taken in this regard.
I'd like to see any copy or/and details of that decision-making process.
As the BBC's own charter/editorial guidelines specify a requirement to be neutral and impartial, I look forward to a fairer presentation of this key information. If such an alteration is not undertaken, I intend to seek a ruling on this matter from the BBC Trust.
For the purposes of this complaint, I cite the following online report and its singular, biased use of IBC figures:
Iraq 10 years on: In numbers
I look forward to your reply.
Regards
John Hilley
--------------
It's also worth recalling here that in 2007 the BBC's own World Service obtained restricted government information denoting advice from a senior MoD adviser that the Lancet study was "robust":
"Asked by officials to comment on the survey, the chief scientific adviser to the Ministry of Defence, Sir Roy Anderson, concluded: "The study design is robust and employs methods that are regarded as close to 'best practice'." He recommended "caution in publicly criticising the study"."This confirmation of authenticity further undermines the BBC's ongoing omission of the Lancet study and the use of IBC as its sole or principal source.
Getting the BBC to concede any of these points is, of course, interminably difficult. As many who have used the BBC's labyrinthine complaints system may attest, the prospects of receiving any official acknowledgement of bias, imbalance or breach of guidelines is unlikely. But, as ever, one useful purpose of the exercise is to further highlight that very process of evasion and denial.
Thursday, 28 March 2013
Iraq death figures - simple and balanced
How often are we still seeing media outlets use a specious, low-ended figure for civilian war deaths in Iraq?
For example, last week's Channel 4 News '10 years after' report on Iraq (featuring stories of UK military victims) showed a graphic from Iraq Body Count (IBC) with its figure of 111,827 civilian deaths.
The standard presentation of IBC figures by the BBC, Guardian, Independent, Channel 4 News and almost every other 'authoritative' news outlet allows for a gross understatement of fatalities.
How hard would it be for the BBC, Channel 4 or any other media organisation to source, write and put out something as simple and informative as this:
While varying issues of methodology and application remain to be understood (as in the distinction between IBC's limited count procedure and the Lancet/ORB epidemiologist-based estimations of all war-related mortality) this kind of graphic, at least, permits the simple, straight message of a credible body of research pointing to much higher figures than that suggested by IBC.
And why, after all, should IBC's figure be deemed more credible than the peer-reviewed Lancet studies, (generally viewed as a 'highly prestigious' place to be published) or that of ORB, a much-used polling/research-based organisation?
Given their own proclaimed codes of 'balance' and 'impartiality', the BBC have a particular obligation to reflect such differentiation in their reports, graphics and other presentations.
Some may say that, whether 100,000, 650,000 or 1,000,000, a terrible crime has been committed, all such losses are appalling and that we needn't dwell on the actual numbers.
Yet, how easily that denies the rights of those mass victims, their families and humanity at large, while allowing the convenient impression, for the perpetrators, that a 'minimal war' has been waged with 'limited' casualties. As in any conflict, there's an ethical duty to establish the actual extent of the killing in Iraq, as well as the mass refugee crisis, social breakdown and wider suffering that's gone with it.
Ongoing efforts to expose the political and media disguising of Iraq's fatality figures are also important in serving to limit the potential for further murderous 'interventions' and pretence death counts.
---------
* Please see/support this "campaign to raise funds for a poll of the UK public to discover estimates of Iraqi deaths since 2003".
For example, last week's Channel 4 News '10 years after' report on Iraq (featuring stories of UK military victims) showed a graphic from Iraq Body Count (IBC) with its figure of 111,827 civilian deaths.
The standard presentation of IBC figures by the BBC, Guardian, Independent, Channel 4 News and almost every other 'authoritative' news outlet allows for a gross understatement of fatalities.
And it's that simple viewer/reader familiarity with IBC which represents such stark and effective propaganda. Given the 'moderate number of deaths' message conveyed by IBC's figure, and the obvious interests that serves, it's unlikely that this selective source will be replaced by media like the BBC. So, perhaps there's a need to press for an equally simplified set of words stating the actual range of figures. |
How hard would it be for the BBC, Channel 4 or any other media organisation to source, write and put out something as simple and informative as this:
This doesn't tell the viewer everything, of course. But it does offer a fair summary of the available information.Civilian war deaths in Iraq
(range):
Iraq Body Count (IBC)
(till Dec 2012)
110,937 - 121,227
Lancet/Johns Hopkins survey
(March 2003 - end of June 2006)
654,965
Opinion Research Business (ORB) survey
(August 12–19, 2007)
1,033,000
Source: Wikipedia
While varying issues of methodology and application remain to be understood (as in the distinction between IBC's limited count procedure and the Lancet/ORB epidemiologist-based estimations of all war-related mortality) this kind of graphic, at least, permits the simple, straight message of a credible body of research pointing to much higher figures than that suggested by IBC.
And why, after all, should IBC's figure be deemed more credible than the peer-reviewed Lancet studies, (generally viewed as a 'highly prestigious' place to be published) or that of ORB, a much-used polling/research-based organisation?
Given their own proclaimed codes of 'balance' and 'impartiality', the BBC have a particular obligation to reflect such differentiation in their reports, graphics and other presentations.
Some may say that, whether 100,000, 650,000 or 1,000,000, a terrible crime has been committed, all such losses are appalling and that we needn't dwell on the actual numbers.
Yet, how easily that denies the rights of those mass victims, their families and humanity at large, while allowing the convenient impression, for the perpetrators, that a 'minimal war' has been waged with 'limited' casualties. As in any conflict, there's an ethical duty to establish the actual extent of the killing in Iraq, as well as the mass refugee crisis, social breakdown and wider suffering that's gone with it.
Ongoing efforts to expose the political and media disguising of Iraq's fatality figures are also important in serving to limit the potential for further murderous 'interventions' and pretence death counts.
---------
* Please see/support this "campaign to raise funds for a poll of the UK public to discover estimates of Iraqi deaths since 2003".
Sunday, 24 March 2013
Greenwald challenges Guardian over Chomsky smears
In an honourable article, Guardian columnist Glenn Greenwald has challenged another key Guardian piece over its smearing of Noam Chomsky.
In denouncing the 'interview'-based report by Aida Edemariam, Greenwald has, effectively, rebuked the Guardian itself over such crude and shallow output.
Greenwald states:
In this regard, the Guardian does have some core responsibility for Edemariam's piece, giving Greenwald's denunciation of it more serious weight.
With the same presumed approval, Edemariam has authored other such character-assaulting pieces, perhaps most notably on the Liberal Democrat MP David Ward after his alleged 'anti-semitic' comments on Palestine-Israel and Jews.
Admirably, following Edemariam's article, Chomsky himself defended Ward, completely rejecting such charges.
The cultivation of Greenwald's own particular autonomy at the Guardian, meanwhile, is now quite fascinating to observe. Again, some might argue that, just like Edemariam's 'freedom to comment', so do we have Greenwald's 'freedom to disagree' - all serving to enhance the Guardian's proclaimed 'openness'.
Yet, this has to be seen in the context of Greenwald as a 'prize catch' for the Guardian, with its specific eye on generating a US online readership, a corporate-driven strategy which involved the Guardian agreeing to give Greenwald complete editorial control over his own output at the paper. It also serves to shore-up the Guardian's claim to being a seriously 'radical-reforming' organ.
In practice, the Guardian has a news reportage dominated by dutiful lobby correspondents like Michael White and Ewen MacAskill, an editorial output infused with Alan Rusbridger's Oxbridge sensibilities and a comments section crowded with liberal favourites like Jonathan Freedland, Polly Toynbee, Simon Tisdall, Rory Carroll, Marina Hyde and Aida Edemariam, all running character pieces praising or excusing 'our' elite while attacking and smearing people like Assange and Chavez - a treatment which, as Greenwald suggests, is "applied with particular aggression to those who engage in any meaningful dissent".
Notable as they are, the only two regular counter figures at the Guardian, Greenwald and Seumas Milne, still plough limited, if encouraging, furrows against that dominant, power-serving output.
Which makes Greenwald's noble defence of Chomsky against such standard Guardian abuse all the more welcome.
In denouncing the 'interview'-based report by Aida Edemariam, Greenwald has, effectively, rebuked the Guardian itself over such crude and shallow output.
Greenwald states:
"One very common tactic for enforcing political orthodoxies is to malign the character, "style" and even mental health of those who challenge them.He goes on:
"This method is applied with particular aggression to those who engage in any meaningful dissent against the society's most powerful factions and their institutions.And, as Greenwald reminds us:
"Nobody has been subjected to these vapid discrediting techniques more than Noam Chomsky."Greenwald summarises Edemariam's charges against Chomsky:
"Chomsky is a sarcastic, angry, soporific, scowling, sneering self-hating Jew, devoid of hope and speaking from hell, whose alpha-male brutality drives him to win at all costs, and who imposes on the world disappointingly crude and simplistic arguments to the point where he is so inconsequential that one wonders whether he has ever changed even a single thing in his 60 years of political work."And, while acknowledging Edemariam's more complimentary references to Chomsky's life and work, Greenwald concludes that:
"the entire piece is infused with these standard personality caricatures that offer the reader an easy means of mocking, deriding and scorning Chomsky without having to confront a single fact he presents."Edemariam is, of course, still only one other Guardian writer, so Greenwald's criticisms, one might argue, doesn't mean the Guardian itself is culpable in smearing Chomsky. Yet, it's notable that Edemariam seems sufficiently confident of editorial approval to be writing such pieces, particularly after the Guardian's last disgraceful savaging of Chomsky in the paper's infamous Emma Brockes article.
In this regard, the Guardian does have some core responsibility for Edemariam's piece, giving Greenwald's denunciation of it more serious weight.
With the same presumed approval, Edemariam has authored other such character-assaulting pieces, perhaps most notably on the Liberal Democrat MP David Ward after his alleged 'anti-semitic' comments on Palestine-Israel and Jews.
Admirably, following Edemariam's article, Chomsky himself defended Ward, completely rejecting such charges.
The cultivation of Greenwald's own particular autonomy at the Guardian, meanwhile, is now quite fascinating to observe. Again, some might argue that, just like Edemariam's 'freedom to comment', so do we have Greenwald's 'freedom to disagree' - all serving to enhance the Guardian's proclaimed 'openness'.
Yet, this has to be seen in the context of Greenwald as a 'prize catch' for the Guardian, with its specific eye on generating a US online readership, a corporate-driven strategy which involved the Guardian agreeing to give Greenwald complete editorial control over his own output at the paper. It also serves to shore-up the Guardian's claim to being a seriously 'radical-reforming' organ.
In practice, the Guardian has a news reportage dominated by dutiful lobby correspondents like Michael White and Ewen MacAskill, an editorial output infused with Alan Rusbridger's Oxbridge sensibilities and a comments section crowded with liberal favourites like Jonathan Freedland, Polly Toynbee, Simon Tisdall, Rory Carroll, Marina Hyde and Aida Edemariam, all running character pieces praising or excusing 'our' elite while attacking and smearing people like Assange and Chavez - a treatment which, as Greenwald suggests, is "applied with particular aggression to those who engage in any meaningful dissent".
Notable as they are, the only two regular counter figures at the Guardian, Greenwald and Seumas Milne, still plough limited, if encouraging, furrows against that dominant, power-serving output.
Which makes Greenwald's noble defence of Chomsky against such standard Guardian abuse all the more welcome.
Friday, 22 March 2013
Panorama, Peter Taylor and other journalist 'fools'
Panorama's special edition The Spies Who Fooled the World is a typically contrived BBC pitch that, while claiming to show a tangled web of deceit over the war in Iraq, still absolves both the intelligence establishment and political leaders of outright blame.
Presenter Peter Taylor's report is part of a wider, well-crafted BBC narrative on 'regrettable' actions: the 'mistaken' rush to war, the intelligence 'oversights' and political 'errors' that allowed it, and, once commenced, the tactical 'miscalculations' made in its prosecution.
Taylor reports how Western intelligence followed spurious informants, doubting their information, yet came to use it as the basis for war in Iraq. In essence, we were 'hoodwinked' through a chain of 'calamitous' intelligence calls and political 'misjudgements'.
Yet, contrary to Taylor's line, most of the world was never fooled by these 'sources', the intelligence chiefs who cultivated them or the politicians who sought to trick us all with their deceitful spin.
Nor, as evidenced by the mass anti-war protests, was the world entirely taken-in by all the slavish media outpourings pressing us into war.
So, it comes as a notable 'admission' that Taylor was himself 'fooled' by Blair.
Replying to messages from a contributor at the Media Lens message board, Taylor states:
One suspects that there are, indeed, many journalists like Taylor still using this shallow excuse of believing Blair's claims in the 'absence' of alternative information. We know, for example, that flagship Newsnight presenter Jeremy Paxman also accepted without question Colin Powell's spurious war pitch to the UN.
And yet, in the approach to war there was a wealth of credible information casting massive doubt on the West's charges of Iraqi WMD, notably from key on-the-ground weapons inspectors and monitors like Hans Blix and Scott Ritter. Why was so much of their assessment ignored or marginalised?
Besides the automatic 'instincts' that, instead, draw journalists like Taylor to official 'sources', what might we say, then, about their own 'limited intelligence' in supposedly 'falling' for Blair's crass distortions?
Consider, after all, that Taylor, veteran of many reports into black operations in Northern Ireland, is hailed as, perhaps, the BBC's most 'intelligence-savvy' investigator. Could someone of his 'deep understanding', in all seriousness, have bought such facile claims?
A more intelligent reading of Taylor's apologia is that such journalists are not 'duped' but constrained from following any reading that might lead dangerously beyond the official script. Thus, they reflexively place their trust in 'our' leaders, 'our' system of governance and 'our' media's capacity to hold it all to account.
They may still endeavour to 'expose' certain elite manipulations, deceits, even outright lies, but the default response is to believe in the ultimate decency and enlightened intentions of 'ours'. And when working for the BBC, that means a particular respect for safe establishment boundaries.
When further asked about taking Blair's claims at face-value, Taylor responded:
Even the military-siding Max Hastings, writing in the Daily Mail, now claims to have little doubt about this question, having also admitted to being 'duped' by Blair and British intelligence:
And yet, again, what can we say of this apparent 'loss' and sudden 'recovery' of journalistic alertness? Tragically for Iraq and its decimated people, belated 'honesty' can't quite make up for a servile unwillingness to question power when it really matters.
It seems reasonable to assume that many journalists have no particular or special ability to read such situations. But the more basic point is their ready conformity to standard reporting of them. And this includes the current 'confessions' of 'once-fooled' journalists, a now safe, self-indulgent, 'from-a-distance' retrospective which can speak of 'errors' past but rarely of the system itself that keeps many of them still 'believing' that the war was all just a ghastly set of 'mistakes'.
This circumvention of blame involves a prudent silence on two other awkward issues: the extent of Iraqi deaths, including the pre-war sanctions that were already ravaging the population; and the complicit role of the media itself, notably its liberal arm, in ignoring such suffering, rationalising the case for war and continuing to protect Blair thereafter.
Thus, Hastings is conveniently less expressive on these core questions, animated mainly about 'our' country's losses. Again, such reticence to engage these issues suggests the base truth that most journalists instinctively understand the career 'foolishness', the real mistake, for them, in 'deviating' from a safe, moderated reportage.
Notably absent in either Taylor's Panorama package or the angry lament from Hastings is any reference to the million Iraqi deaths denoted in the Lancet studies or the media's selective repetition of 'presentable' figures like Iraq Body Count's 100,000 or under.
All the rational evidence before the invasion showed that Blair was scheming with Bush to oust Saddam in pursuit of Iraq's oil, a brazen imperialist enterprise which, with a million UN-estimated deaths already from sanctions alongside the million more from war, represents the greatest mass killing of modern times.
So, what faith should the public now place in 'fooled' reporters like Taylor who, having 'trusted' Blair, are still engaged in trying to fathom his 'mistakes' rather than his crimes?
Despite the wealth of information that was always available to journalists, both before and during the invasion, it's telling that so many 'duped' ones like Taylor are still prominently here now, ten years on, 'informing' us of all the 'lamentable errors' that were made.
Spinning this line, the politicians and intelligence heads that led us to war can be presented as 'foolish', even 'duplicitous', but never truly calculating, and certainly never criminal.
Yet, alert to so much past distortion, many won't be fooled again by such media subterfuge.
Like Blair and the intelligence chiefs, Taylor is, ultimately, no fool. Nor can we assume that, as said of Blair, he was misled or that he misled himself.
Rather, like so many other journalists who now find themselves on the provenly 'wrong side of history', Taylor's Panorama film is a not-so-foolish exercise in damage limitation, a sly revisionism that seeks to mitigate and excuse the judgements of Blair and his cabinet, the intelligence elite, the BBC and, not least, power-serving journalists like Taylor himself.
Presenter Peter Taylor's report is part of a wider, well-crafted BBC narrative on 'regrettable' actions: the 'mistaken' rush to war, the intelligence 'oversights' and political 'errors' that allowed it, and, once commenced, the tactical 'miscalculations' made in its prosecution.
Taylor reports how Western intelligence followed spurious informants, doubting their information, yet came to use it as the basis for war in Iraq. In essence, we were 'hoodwinked' through a chain of 'calamitous' intelligence calls and political 'misjudgements'.
Yet, contrary to Taylor's line, most of the world was never fooled by these 'sources', the intelligence chiefs who cultivated them or the politicians who sought to trick us all with their deceitful spin.
Nor, as evidenced by the mass anti-war protests, was the world entirely taken-in by all the slavish media outpourings pressing us into war.
So, it comes as a notable 'admission' that Taylor was himself 'fooled' by Blair.
Replying to messages from a contributor at the Media Lens message board, Taylor states:
"For your information, at the time I believed what the Prime Minister said, not having the knowledge that I have now. I suspect there are many like me." (20 March 2013)It's a revealing, yet not entirely surprising, claim of 'veiled ignorance'.
One suspects that there are, indeed, many journalists like Taylor still using this shallow excuse of believing Blair's claims in the 'absence' of alternative information. We know, for example, that flagship Newsnight presenter Jeremy Paxman also accepted without question Colin Powell's spurious war pitch to the UN.
And yet, in the approach to war there was a wealth of credible information casting massive doubt on the West's charges of Iraqi WMD, notably from key on-the-ground weapons inspectors and monitors like Hans Blix and Scott Ritter. Why was so much of their assessment ignored or marginalised?
Besides the automatic 'instincts' that, instead, draw journalists like Taylor to official 'sources', what might we say, then, about their own 'limited intelligence' in supposedly 'falling' for Blair's crass distortions?
Consider, after all, that Taylor, veteran of many reports into black operations in Northern Ireland, is hailed as, perhaps, the BBC's most 'intelligence-savvy' investigator. Could someone of his 'deep understanding', in all seriousness, have bought such facile claims?
A more intelligent reading of Taylor's apologia is that such journalists are not 'duped' but constrained from following any reading that might lead dangerously beyond the official script. Thus, they reflexively place their trust in 'our' leaders, 'our' system of governance and 'our' media's capacity to hold it all to account.
They may still endeavour to 'expose' certain elite manipulations, deceits, even outright lies, but the default response is to believe in the ultimate decency and enlightened intentions of 'ours'. And when working for the BBC, that means a particular respect for safe establishment boundaries.
When further asked about taking Blair's claims at face-value, Taylor responded:
"To end this conversation. I believed him at the time – September 2002 – but now know, as do we all, that he was wrong. I do not believe he deliberately lied. I agree with what Lord Butler said in the programme, that he misled himself."Precisely how, one wonders, might Blair have "misled himself"? On what basis can Taylor assert such inner understanding of Blair's thinking? Isn't it so very trusting of Taylor to endorse Lord Butler's protective claim and conclude that Blair didn't actually lie?
Even the military-siding Max Hastings, writing in the Daily Mail, now claims to have little doubt about this question, having also admitted to being 'duped' by Blair and British intelligence:
"Before 2003 I wrote many times in these pages that Britain should have nothing to do with a recklessly irresponsible American Republican adventure in Iraq. But then I read the government’s report on Saddam’s weapons. I felt that this had to be believed, and an invasion reluctantly supported. My wife Penny, who never swallowed Blair and Campbell’s claims, argued bitterly with me. I said pompously: ‘It’s impossible that the Government and the Secret Intelligence Service would lie to us about something this big.’ I was as wrong as I could be. Blair, Campbell and Scarlett made fools of many of us. What seems to make it all much worse is that they got away with it."Denouncing the celebrity reception now enjoyed by Blair and key accomplices like Campbell, Hastings now wants to say it clearly to Blair: "You lied, you lied, you lied."
And yet, again, what can we say of this apparent 'loss' and sudden 'recovery' of journalistic alertness? Tragically for Iraq and its decimated people, belated 'honesty' can't quite make up for a servile unwillingness to question power when it really matters.
It seems reasonable to assume that many journalists have no particular or special ability to read such situations. But the more basic point is their ready conformity to standard reporting of them. And this includes the current 'confessions' of 'once-fooled' journalists, a now safe, self-indulgent, 'from-a-distance' retrospective which can speak of 'errors' past but rarely of the system itself that keeps many of them still 'believing' that the war was all just a ghastly set of 'mistakes'.
This circumvention of blame involves a prudent silence on two other awkward issues: the extent of Iraqi deaths, including the pre-war sanctions that were already ravaging the population; and the complicit role of the media itself, notably its liberal arm, in ignoring such suffering, rationalising the case for war and continuing to protect Blair thereafter.
Thus, Hastings is conveniently less expressive on these core questions, animated mainly about 'our' country's losses. Again, such reticence to engage these issues suggests the base truth that most journalists instinctively understand the career 'foolishness', the real mistake, for them, in 'deviating' from a safe, moderated reportage.
Notably absent in either Taylor's Panorama package or the angry lament from Hastings is any reference to the million Iraqi deaths denoted in the Lancet studies or the media's selective repetition of 'presentable' figures like Iraq Body Count's 100,000 or under.
All the rational evidence before the invasion showed that Blair was scheming with Bush to oust Saddam in pursuit of Iraq's oil, a brazen imperialist enterprise which, with a million UN-estimated deaths already from sanctions alongside the million more from war, represents the greatest mass killing of modern times.
So, what faith should the public now place in 'fooled' reporters like Taylor who, having 'trusted' Blair, are still engaged in trying to fathom his 'mistakes' rather than his crimes?
Despite the wealth of information that was always available to journalists, both before and during the invasion, it's telling that so many 'duped' ones like Taylor are still prominently here now, ten years on, 'informing' us of all the 'lamentable errors' that were made.
Spinning this line, the politicians and intelligence heads that led us to war can be presented as 'foolish', even 'duplicitous', but never truly calculating, and certainly never criminal.
Yet, alert to so much past distortion, many won't be fooled again by such media subterfuge.
Like Blair and the intelligence chiefs, Taylor is, ultimately, no fool. Nor can we assume that, as said of Blair, he was misled or that he misled himself.
Rather, like so many other journalists who now find themselves on the provenly 'wrong side of history', Taylor's Panorama film is a not-so-foolish exercise in damage limitation, a sly revisionism that seeks to mitigate and excuse the judgements of Blair and his cabinet, the intelligence elite, the BBC and, not least, power-serving journalists like Taylor himself.
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