Spooks and feudalism: Greenwald savages Britain's secretive, archaic state

Consider these two 'home' truths:
 
The British state is a deeply secretive, anti-democratic entity, with GCHQ and its associate 'security' apparatus engaged in the most illicit forms of surveillance, manipulation and other mass violations of civil liberties. 
 
The British state is a deeply class-serving entity, underwritten by archaic institutions and selective 'traditions', all giving ideological continuity to elite privilege.
 
In a stunning indictment, independent journalist Glenn Greenwald has brought these two facets of the British state's dark actions and ideological powers together, via a comment piece on the UK court decision to uphold an 'anti-terrorist' detention order against his partner David Miranda.

 Miranda was held for nine hours at Heathrow airport in August 2013 under Section 7 of the UK’s Terrorism Act (2000).

As Greenwald brilliantly observes:

That such repressive measures come from British political culture is to be expected. The political elite of that country cling desperately to 17th century feudal traditions. Grown adults who have been elected or appointed to nothing run around with a straight face insisting that they be called “Lord” and “Baroness” and other grandiose hereditary titles of the landed gentry. They bow and curtsey to a “Queen”, who lives in a “palace”, and they call her sons “Prince”. They embrace a wide range of conceits and rituals of a long-ago collapsed empire. The wig-wearing presiding judge who issued this morning’s ruling equating journalism with terrorism is addressed as “Lord Justice Laws”, best known for previously approving the use of evidence to detain people that had been derived from torture at Guantanamo (he can be seen here).

None of this behavior bears any relationship to actual reality: it’s as though the elite political class of an entire nation somehow got stuck in an adolescent medieval fantasy game. But the political principles of monarchy, hereditary entitlement, rigid class stratification, and feudal entitlement embedded in all of this play-acting clearly shape the repressive mentality and reverence for state authority which Her Majesty’s Government produces. That journalism disliked by the state can be actually deemed not just a crime but “terrorism” seems a natural by-product of this type of warped elite mindset [...]

Ex-UK ambassador, turned dissident, Craig Murray has also condemned the "disgraceful judges of Britain’s High Court – who have gone along with torture, extraordinary rendition, every single argument for mass surveillance and hiding information from the public, and even secret courts".

For Murray, the effort to castigate Miranda as a 'terrorist suspect' illustrates perfectly the British state's deepening vindictiveness, a ''totalitarian" slide, he relates, evident in the additional intimidation of Edward Snowden's legal representative on entering the UK.  
           
While the surveillance and detention of Miranda reveals the extensive scope of UK spookdom, the holding of such people on specifically 'anti-terrorist' grounds shows the very 'British way' in which the establishment seeks to demonise as well as control.

Of course, the treatment of Chelsea Manning, and threats towards Snowden, Assange and Greenwald, confirm that similar punitive action can be expected from the US. 

But, as Greenwald argues, Britain's conduct in such matters also points to a deeper political culture of assumed hierarchy and demanded subservience.

In assisting the US purging of Snowden, Assange, Greenwald and their associates, the British state is deploying its most oppressive technologies and a feudal-style intolerance of dissent.

Greenwald's broadside against Britain's secretive state brings to mind the UK's wider record of black-ops, subterfuge and global warmongering, as documented by historian Mark Curtis, while his searing attack on the establishment network and fiction of 'noble Britishness' helps evoke Tom Nairn's landmark texts The Enchanted Glass and The Break up of Britain. 

Fittingly, Greenwald's charges on British elitism and the tyranny of Empire reflects a gathering crisis of legitimacy for 'old Britain', as variously registered in the large public rejection of UK wars, demands for Scottish independence, and a growing refusal to accept that state spying on citizens is in the 'national interest'.   

A Nobel nominee and modern hero, Snowden's popular whistleblowing has helped undermine much of the traditional deference towards propagandist notions of 'vital state security', as have Greenwald's own key journalistic efforts in revealing US/UK criminality.  

Snowden's election yesterday as Student Rector of Glasgow University is another small but encouraging indicator that the old-order demonisation of dissidents is no longer holding.

Bit by promising bit, a modernist, radical politics and confident, alternative media is helping to expose not only the dark, malignant menace of the British state, but the "adolescent medieval fantasy" upon which its authority has been resting.     

Stone Cold Justice - Australian TV reveal Israel's brutal abuse of Palestinian children

A remarkable, courageous film from Australian ABC TV's Four Corners programme has helped expose the systematic detention, traumatic interrogation, physical torture, fear of death and threats of rape inflicted upon Palestinian children. 

Warning: disturbing images and information.

http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/stories/2014/02/10/3939266.htm

Jonathan Cook comments:

I never thought I would see it. A mainstream TV programme, this one made by Australian channel ABC, that shows the occupation in all its inhuman horror. The 45-minute investigative film concerns the Israeli army’s mistreatment of Palestinian children. Along the way, it provides absolutely devastating evidence that the children’s abuse is not some unfortunate byproduct of the occupation but the cornerstone of Israel’s system of control and its related need to destroy the fabric of Palestinian society.

This shocking film should leave viewers in absolutely no doubt about the scale and wickedness of Israel's treatment of minors as part of its deliberate and vindictive occupation policy.

It's also a vital reminder of the 'international community's' shameful failure to challenge Israel's state brutality. 

Please share widely.

Killing, abuse and denial - the West's Olympian-sized record

How eagerly our media adopt the term 'human rights record' to highlight the villainy of other countries, while safely avoiding that same term when it comes to Western state crimes.

The BBC's coverage of the Winter Olympic Games in Sochi is replete with reminders of Russia's gross authoritarianism, particularly its anti-homosexual repressions.

And critically alert they, like anyone else, should be over discriminatory attacks on any section of society.

But just try to imagine such media headlines over Britain's and America's own appalling human rights record in waging murderous, illegal wars.

It seems this sort of human rights record, the kind concerned with mass killing of others beyond our shores, doesn't really figure as measurable abuse.

For if it really did, the BBC would have to report and criticise UK/US conduct in the same, or much worse, terms as that reserved for demonised states like Russia, China and North Korea.

Highlighting the staggering scale of Britain's global crimes, as documented by historian Mark Curtis, John Pilger believes that the political and media deceit is becoming unsustainable.
 
Recalling not just the likely one million fatalities from the West's invasion of Iraq, but the half million dead from the effects of Western pre-war sanctions, Pilger says:

The truth about the criminal bloodbath in Iraq cannot be "countered" indefinitely. Neither can the truth about our support for the medievalists in Saudi Arabia, the nuclear-armed predators in Israel, the new military fascists in Egypt and the jihadist "liberators" of Syria, whose propaganda is now BBC news. There will be a reckoning – not just for the Blairs, Straws and Campbells, but for those paid to keep the record straight.

A day, indeed, to anticipate.

Yet, rather than shine a floodlight on Britain's shocking human rights record, 'smart' liberal 'journalism' continues to celebritise its greatest offenders.

Thus could the Independent's Andy McSmith muse dizzily over Tony Blair's 'pulling power' and alleged affair with Rupert Murdoch's wife, rather than even mention his arch criminality. This kind of titillation over the 'alpha personas' of our leaders contrasts starkly with the much darker denigration of enemy others, such as the 'menacingly-muscular' Putin, or the 'sex-crazed' 'Mad Dog' Gaddafi.   It's not that Gaddafi shouldn't be scrutinised. It's that you will never see our media use terms like 'Mad Dog' to label or scrutinise people like Blair, Cameron or Netanyahu. What makes a politician in a suit any less of an executive monster?  Prince 'flash' Harry can, likewise, boast of his brave killing exploits in Afghanistan, while his disturbing war-games penchant from an Apache attack helicopter are all media-filtered as the over-indulgences of a 'playboy Royal'. At least the literary Harry Flashman of Afghan and other Empire campaigns really was an entertaining villain and battle coward.   So much of the 'us and them' of public 'information', particularly over war, is distilled via this Hello-styled 'political info-tainment'. The adulation of Obama as some kind of pop star is a media industry in itself, rendering unthinkable any notion of him as a drone-directing killer.      From 'us and them' political selectivity, it's an easy step to an 'us or them' view of foreign others, as in the current media-hyped discussion on whether aid to UK flood victims should take priority over foreign aid. Why is the question of vital human aid, foreign or domestic, never considered against bailout aid to bankers, or the massive state aid given to corporate arms companies to keep prosecuting wars? Why is the cost of aid for people, internal or external, never pitched against the astronomically-draining cost of nuclear weapons? How conditioned we are by accountant politicians and a conformist commentariat to think about the 'onerous costs' to the state when it comes to helping human beings, rather than the funding used to kill and immiserate them. And what of all the selling of killer military hardware to allied regimes like Qatar and Saudi Arabia? Shouldn't that be on the human rights audit sheet?    Corporate-driven climate change has brought the planet's seven billion inhabitants to the point of real, possible extinction. Beyond close awareness of this crisis, papers like the 'greensleeved' Guardian should be screaming emergency headline messages for action from their front pages. It's not there.  A Guardian editorial talks alarmingly about a "Weather of Olympian extremes" and the need for greater climate change awareness, yet relentlessly refuses to end its own fossil-fuel advertising. Reports file in of flooded plains, unprecedented storms and weather-tossed railway lines. Yet where's the crucial framing of all this on the BBC news as intensifying climate change catastrophe?   Isn't all that a damning statement of our state-corporate media's very own dismal human rights record? Aren't they Olympian-sized contenders in the great 'triathlon' of power, hypocrisy and denial?

 

The admirable George Galloway, mistaken, alas, on independence

I once recall a kindly acquaintance telling me during the course of a discussion, "you're not wrong, just mistaken."

It wasn't intended as a patronising rebuke, just an encouragement to think more closely, or perhaps honestly, about how faulty claims can make for unsupportable arguments.

Sometimes it's not the case for something that can seem wrong, but the mistaken notions used to advance it.

Semantics? Perhaps, but still a useful thought process. 

Whatever the possible distinction, this little adage has been occurring to me, lately, in reading George Galloway's case for rejecting Scottish independence - or as the vernacularly-gifted George more directly urges: Just Say Naw.

Of course, the default tendency of our service politicians and media is to malign Galloway whatever he says. Few other prominent leftists have been so readily smeared and vilified.

How routinely we hear those standard barbs - 'controversial' and 'firebrand' - see him 'ambushed' by coy presenters, and trivialised by smug journalists - usually to their own detriment.

So, a small, appreciative caveat: George Galloway is not just a talisman for the left, he's a political treasure, a person whose moral defence of human beings has been as relentless as the imperialist wars and warmongers he's opposed. 

Being part of the same movements, I've supported him consistently, in discussion and blog, from his inspiring anti-war positions to his heroic defence of Palestinians.

I also uphold his complete and unobstructed right to campaign for a No vote in the referendum - wherever he's politically domiciled, wherever he wants to stage it and however he wants to state it.

But I'd also like to suggest, with all-due respect, that George is basically mistaken in three key ways over the formulation of that case.

The first concerns his depiction of Scottish independence as essentially 'nationalist' in motive, character and aspiration.

This may seem an odd qualifier. Isn't the desire for independence simply nationalism by any normal definition? 

Well, not if the aim of independence is based on factors which put progressive social advancement before territorial or national identity. And it's socio-economic concerns which appear to be the basic determinant of how most within the Yes camp will vote.  

Even where people might assert their 'Scottishness', who, even amongst most declared Yes supporters, view themselves as 'pure nationalists' or 'separatists', as in the possibility of 'full independence' from higher political and corporate forces?

If this is 'nationalism', it's of a very abbreviated kind, based on a common understanding that we're all, willingly or unwillingly, tied into much bigger political-economic networks, most of it oppressive.    

What's reassuring here is the strong relative absence of crude nationalism - flag-waving and jingoistic proclamations of 'freedom'. For many in Scotland, this is matched by a basic ambivalence towards the Union itself.  Indeed, it's a deep paradox that, while abhorring the sins of Unionism, George is arguing to maintain that very political entity - a Union that's committed so many imperialist crimes in the name of Britain and Empire.

George has also, I believe mistakenly, followed the mainstream's false presentation of independence as support or otherwise for the SNP. Hence, his concentrated attack on Alex Salmond, rather than an urge to depersonalise the issue and engage more particularly on what more socialistic opportunities may or may not lie with a Yes outcome.

Galloway is on firmer ground in citing the compromised version of independence pitched by the SNP leadership - retention of currency links, Nato membership and monarchy.  

Yet, none of this legitimate criticism invalidates the core case for independence. This is a referendum on creating a new political system, one that's open to ongoing pressure and radical change, not a vote for any party, policy or leader.

Nor should we be persuaded by George's dark warnings that removing a vital share of Labour MPs at Westminster will ensure continued Tory rule. Should voters, either in Scotland or the rest of the UK, be held forever hostage to Labour's own gross failures, and the stranglehold of this neoliberal party cabal?  

I also suspect that much of George's animus towards the SNP at large, even its mainly leftist core, is symptomatic of an emotional link to Old Labour.

But even this can't explain his negation of a growing Labour for Independence movement, and the expanding argument within those ranks that Labour Scotland could be a newly-invigorated left force within an independent parliament. Why is George so seemingy estranged even from that position?

It should be noted here that some Yes voices have themselves mistakenly charged Galloway with 'double standards' in supporting liberation for Palestine, but not independence for Scotland.

It should hardly need saying that there's no comparable case: one concerns a brutal occupation, and its difficult overcoming, the other an issue of how to pursue major political-economic improvement.

What does qualify for similar consideration, though, is people's universal right to remove elite-constructed institutions and barriers to the better society - in this case, a Westminster system historically underwritten by elite financial and City interests - English and Scottish - and a Unionist ideology which holds all those hegemonic fictions of a British 'national interest' together.

This ties-in, secondly, to George's questionable claim that independence is an abrogation of class politics and solidarity. 

In reality, class factors are driving the question of independence.

The latest polls and qualitative information show that the greatest rise in support for independence is amongst the low-paid, poorest and most marginalised of society, reflecting a growing mood for more leftist, independent control:

It seems that independence is a movement of Scotland's societal left, the part that used to profess undying fealty to Labour. It's not a socialist programme, but it reflects revulsion at Westminster's equation of "realism" with free markets.

Thus, a growing class body is realising that's there's nothing to be gained from traditional, sellout Labourism, or the neoliberal/austerity politics both Labour and the ConDems rigidly uphold.

Against this, John Wight, a close associate of Galloway, makes the worthy class-based case for a No vote. But, like Galloway, his argument is still based on the mistaken view of Scottish workers 'abandoning' their UK counterparts.

Why stay with a political system that locks all into neoliberal servitude? Why would a shift of direction negate solidarity with others - English, Welsh or anyone else - beyond any new border? Wouldn't the effort to forge a new left economic model inspire greater class politics, encouraging others to follow real alternatives? And isn't that set of radical prospects precisely why an alarmed establishment, corporate elite and media-serving network is trying so hard to kill the independence case?

Galloway and Wight certainly aren't wrong in questioning what class gains may derive from a Yes vote - it's by far their strongest line of argument - but they are, I believe, deeply mistaken in believing that independence will actually undermine class politics and the drive for socialist alternatives.      

Honourable socialists such as Ken Loach support a class-rooted argument for independence, just as John Maclean once did in considering the revolutionary case for breaking the Union.

Almost every leftist grouping in Scotland, including the Greens, supports independence, believing it can strategically advance radical change - including vital climate engagement and the best-ever chance of removing Trident. Mistakenly, it appears, that's the kind of leftist, humanitarian company George has decided to shun.

The third, and perhaps most, mistaken strand of Just Say Naw is its supposed concerns over 'sectarian instability'.  

Here, alas, George has indulged in his own disappointing variant of Project Fear, allowing irrational alarm to cloud rational engagement of a still relatively marginal issue.

In a recent Twitter exchange over an alleged 'sectarian' attack on Celtic manager Neil Lennon, George claimed this was further proof of Protestant-establishment power, and that the problem would only multiply with a Yes vote:

"but this element will be 12x more significant in Indy Scotland. Media and pol class scared of them"

If this really is the case, wouldn't Scotland benefit from independence, and a purge of those very forces most identified with virulent Unionism? Not, it seems, for Galloway.

George seems to be saying that the Union offers 'protection' from this lurking 'threat'; some guarantee of 'political security'.

But against what, precisely? Is it really credible that an independent state would start enacting anti-Catholic legislation? Would standard legal and civil protections no longer apply to Catholics?

Even with such sectarianism, would a 'Catholic community' really be threatened in an independent Scotland? Would they suffer political discrimination? Would we see a curtailment of, or end to, Catholic schools? Is there any serious evidence of such 'threats' just now? Why would that change?

While under no illusions about the spectre of sectarianism, the very notion of any post-independence threat to Catholics is not just mistaken, it's plain wrong.

I say this as someone raised in a Glasgow east-end Catholic-Marxist household, who knows all about the past oppression of my Irish family ancestry, who has witnessed all the ugly nuances of religious politics in the West of Scotland, but who also recognises the much greater extent of social integration, political-cultural complexity and, indeed, 'class ascendancy' of Catholics across many institutions.

Nasty, sectarian strands are still evident, for sure. Much of the media has been disgracefully mute on the issue. But the very idea that Scotland is anywhere near that kind of dark ethnic-religious fault line is simply untenable. The questions that absorb people here, Catholic, or otherwise, are basic day-to-day issues of economic existence.

Reactionary Protestant-rooted Unionism is still apparent, and no one can say that independence would eradicate it - all societies harbour such ugliness.  But, as a modern polity, independence would almost certainly be a healthier option than the status quo in helping to expunge it.

And even if the issue of sectarianism is as crucial as George suggests, should a society be hostage to an archaic Union through fear of atavistic prejudice and a bigoted minority?

In short, there is no decisive religious politics to speak of here. Beyond such peripheral 'religious identity', people of all religions and none generally think, act and vote on broad economic lines, many, across all social and religious backgrounds, now deserting a Labour establishment for the better, practical possibilities of smaller, independent governance. 

Whatever his campaigning approach, whatever the referendum outcome, my regard and support for George Galloway endures. Yet, Yes or No, George will likely be judged by many fellow leftists and progressives to have been on the wrong, or at least mistaken, side of history. 

Ever the shining politico, George says he might like to be prime minister in an independent Scotland.  A fascinating scenario, indeed - I might even support that. But, in contemplation of such office, real or imaginary, it would be great to see him acknowledge, at least, the case for independence as the legitimate pursuit of a real compassionate, socialist society.

False foundation of Blair's 'religious' convictions

And so, 'Vicar Blair' has delivered another homily from his 'pulpit' at the Guardian/Observer, beseeching us to see the true, dark forces driving war, conflict and terror in the Middle East and wider world:      

The fact is that, though of course there are individual grievances or reasons for the violence in each country, there is one thing self-evidently in common: the acts of terrorism are perpetrated by people motivated by an abuse of religion. It is a perversion of faith.

No intimation here, of course, that, by far, the greatest levels of terror and violence originate in the abuse of power and perversion of office, rather than religion and faith - all helping to evade the actual truth that the worst acts of terrorism, in terms of scale, impact and inhumanity, have been perpetrated by war-seeking states and 'religiously'-driven evangelists like Blair himself.

With standard deceit, Blair also uses his Observer sermon to lament the conflict in Syria as a core problem of internal religious imbalances between Shia and Sunni, faithfully omitting the religious-sectarian agenda of his Saudi Arabian and Qatari friends, and the West's/Israel's own malevolent part in fomenting this catastrophic civil war.

Behind the sham ecumenical lines, the key target of Blair's facile piece is Islam and its 'particular' cultivation of 'terrrorist tendencies'.  Predictably, the key link between Western invasions and political radicalisation of Muslims is completely ignored. It's all just attributed to wayward religious fanaticism.

Akin to his posturings as Middle East Peace Envoy, he does include a token nod to other religious violence:

But this issue of extremism is not limited to Islam. There are also many examples the world over where Muslims are the victims of religiously motivated violence from those of other religious faiths.

What 'revelation'. Should we be astounded by this great 'admission' - or just by the kind of money he gets paid for such 'insight'?  

If in need of greater elaboration, Blair's Guardian angels, ever-welcome with their platform, provide devotional interpretation of his meaning and message.

Blair's invocation of 'good religion' rallying to combat 'bad religion' isn't just cringing rhetoric. It's a seeming intensification of his own religiously-pitched psychosis in rationalising more violence. 

Even after his zealous part in the brutal destruction of Iraq and Afghanistan, the sermonising crusader goes relentlessly on:

Such religious tolerance has to be taught and argued for. Those who oppose it have to be taken on and defeated not only by arms but by ideas.

Thus, the still-resolved missionary handing down his lofty injunction: you will be educated for your own good, whether by our righteous bombs or our ennobled words.

Given the alarming mindset of someone who, with Bush, invoked 'Christian guidance' over the 'deliverance' of Saddam, Blair's latest 'appeal' to religious tolerance and compassion suggests either a deepening descent into even starker delusion, more calculating efforts - in lieu of Chilcot's report - to whitewash his actions, or some disturbed mixture of both.

Whatever the underlying psychiatry, the Guardian has acted as a complicit, discipled liberal in hosting Blair's vacuous gospel and the crux of this shabby article, a brazen advert for Blair's 'religious' foundation.

Thus, does unctuous litany slip seamlessly into shameless self-promotion:

The answer is to promote views that are open-minded and tolerant towards those who are different, and to fight the formal, informal and internet propagation of closed-minded intolerance. In the 21st century, education is a security issue. For that reason, when I left office, and in part based on my experience post-9/11 of how countries whose people were freed from dictatorship have then had democratic aspirations thwarted by religious extremism, I established a foundation whose aim is to promote greater knowledge and understanding between people of different faiths....The foundation is now active in more than 20 countries, including some of those most affected by sectarianism, with a multimillion-pound budget, full-time and part-time staff, and expanding rapidly. 

A nice 'moral' earner to sanctify his multiple other mammonic urges, corporate dealings and shady payola.

Suffice to say, any associating body - faith-based, academic or otherwise - participating in or accepting funding from this spurious front organisation is, in effect, a 'holy' accomplice to Blair's murderous criminality.

Meanwhile, highest praise to the real humanitarian impulses of one Twiggy Garcia for endeavouring a citizen's arrest of Blair.

Hopefully, one day soon, we may be giving thanks over Blair's criminal conviction rather than cravenly indulging his 'religious' ones.

The Gatekeepers - a 'confessional' film still evading the truth

The Gatekeepers, a film by Israeli director Dror Moreh, provides some fascinating insights into the dark working of Israel's internal intelligence agency, the Shin Bet.

It's also a disturbingly deluded exercise in rationalising Israel's military prowess and the brutal occupation of an always subserviently-portrayed Palestinian people.  

Six former Shin Bet heads - Avraham Shalom, Yaakov Peri, Carmi Gillon, Ami Ayalon, Avi Dichter and Yuval Diskin - speak for the first time about their experiences, expressing cold self-recognition of their considerable powers and where they believe the state of Israel has 'gone wrong'.

The seeming concern is to help expedite an end to the Occupation, but the base motive behind all these reflections and revelations is more specifically to save Israel, rather than liberate Palestine. 

Despite the inclusion of some fine archival footage, the film's historical sequences provide little honest, searching explanation of Palestinian displacement and suffering, focusing, rather, on the ex-leaders' comprehensions of the 'Palestinian problem'. 

Thus, Diskin describes his formative fears and motivations after reading a Zionist-prescribed book, and his dreaded possibility of Israel being 'taken over' by Arabs. 

Peri also relates how he and other dedicated Shin Bet agents made it their early business to understand common Arabic language and text, in order, as they saw it, to be 'inside' the Palestinian mindset.

One can see here some genuine sense these figures may have had in witnessing and 'being part' of that 'integral' landscape, even as occupying soldiers.

But the predominant motivation was always to serve the Israeli state, and, in that endeavour, to fight 'terrorism', a term and task which resonates throughout the entire film. 

Never is there any serious acknowledgement that this is, primarily, a process of legitimate resistance, a basic struggle for human liberation and justice.

The gatekeepers' defining context, and that of the film, deals in the symptoms of the 'conflict' - from suicide bombings to Palestinians' incarceration - rather than the principal causes, namely the illegality of the Occupation and an all-consuming state-militarism that's been developed to enforce it.

At no point is there any authentic discussion of Palestinians as, first and foremost, a people, a population, a set of equal human beings.

We hear candid recollections from Gillon and others on the brutal arrests, systematic torture, enforced collaborations and other coercive techniques, all, in itself, considerable testament to understanding the deviant extent of state actions and dark psychology of these directors.

Some also reflect openly on the 'grey area' between seeking high political approval for extra-judicial killing of Arabs and the 'strategic' process of making that decision on their own. 

When Shalom is questioned on the morality of such unlawful killing he replies: "With terrorism there is no morals."

Having 'done their dirty work', there's also a sense of discontent within the Shin Bet at being 'abandoned' at certain points by expedient politicians - part of the repeated sentiment about the organisation's 'duty', 'integrity' and 'esprit de corps'.

Charting the 'peace process', we hear of a certain faith and hope in the Rabin leadership, the seeming inevitability of his execution amid the heightened Oslo dealings, and the 'lowest depths' within the Shin Bet over its 'failure' to prevent suicide bombings and Rabin's assassination.

The aftermath of bus bombings in Israel features consistently, with the directors recalling their resolve for harsh 'responses'. Yet, nowhere are Palestinian voices permitted proper contextual comment over the attacks. Repeated, menacing footage of armed and masked Hamas fighters reinforces the central concern of the film: how to confront the 'perennial threat to Israel's security'.       

An account of Shin Bet intelligence leading to the apprehension of Zionist bomb plotters is offered as additional 'evidence' of the organisation's 'noble' bona fides in maintaining public security.

We hear revelations that such zealots were preparing a crazed attack on Temple Mount, that the plotters had key access to top figures in the Israeli establishment, and that most were granted paltry sentences and gracious rewards after being caught and convicted.

We're also told how the Shin Bet intervened to temper zealot settlers and rabbis as the political temperature rose in lieu of the attack on Rabin. The incendiary roles of Sharon and Netanyahu in promoting this and other key violence is critically intimated.    

Yet, such 'worried vigilance' and the deep loss some of these intelligence heads felt over Rabin's killing merely confirms their view of Israel itself as a 'benign' state, and how that 'legitimate' entity has now been 'infested' by rightist forces.

Rabin's assassin, in this view, is castigated as a "punk" who has wrecked the peace process, while the state, the Zionist project itself, is somehow beyond any such critical examination or fundamental blame.

In essence, it's an inward-looking narrative on 'what we have become', rather than what illicit monster 'we actually created' in stealing another people's land.

More accounts follow of the proud intel crafted to murder revered Palestinian leaders - again, always posed as a virulent threat. Asked about the overall effects of such acts, there's admission that Israeli state violence may only induce greater hatred and violent resistance, but the imperative of maintaining a higher capacity for violent control must still prevail.

Dichter, thus, talks in proud, smirking terms about the 'logistics' of dropping an enormous bomb on the populous middle of Gaza in order to decimate the Hamas leadership, and the 'collateral damage' resulting, as though it were primarily a technical task rather than a murderous annihilation.

One can but imagine any similar film commentary from Hamas figures on planning such attacks on the Israeli leadership.

Some other Shin Bet leaders deliberate, finally, on Hannah Arendt's concept "the banality of evil", and the perceived irrationality of Israel killing so many civilians in pursuit of 'selected terrorists'.

Yet, even this criticism helps cement the false discourse of 'mistaken tactics'. For, as seen during the mass bombing of Gaza in 2008/9, Israel's modus operandi has been to kill as many civilians as possible in deliberate shows of terror and strength. 

Ultimately, there's broad consensus amongst the film's participants that Israel must end the Occupation and talk to the Palestinians, even engage its deepest foes.

There's even firm agreement from one director that, as forecast long ago by Professor Liebowitz, an esteemed opponent of the Occupation, Israel has, in fact, become a "Shin Bet state" due to its cruel oppressions.

Showing images of Israeli forces raiding a Palestinian home in the middle of the night, there's further admission of the brutality and fear: "It's not easy. You see the family suffering", Ayalon says, adding, "and when you retire, you become a bit of a leftist".

Gillon admits that "we" are making the lives of millions of Palestinians "unbearable" - "It kills me".
 
Comparing, in certain ways, the treatment of Palestinians to that suffered by various European states at the hands of the Nazis, Shalom more boldly concludes: "We've become cruel...mainly to the occupied population."

It all seems like a collective admission of failure and guilt, the 'great Zionist goal' deeply compromised.

Yet, what's never truly addressed by any of these men is the primary crime of Palestinian expulsion and persecution - not just from 1967 or 1973, but from 1948.

The Nakba is never actually mentioned, nor the crucial words 'ethnic cleansing'. The systematic imprisonment of Gaza and colonisation of the West Bank are treated, rather, as a 'problem of containment', a 'game-theory' discussion on the case for or against violent supremacy. 

Ultimately, while shedding considerable insight, this movie leaves one feeling a sense of bleak despair over the 'regretful' yet still calculating mindset of such figures. Their apparently open admissions still negate any deeper search for catharsis or redemption.

The Gatekeepers remains a fascinating, clinical and chilling portrayal of what people in positions of military and political power can do to the powerless.

But, as with much other Zionist 'docu-self-examination', it's an inward-gazing exercise in self-denial, serving the convenient establishment image of Israel as an 'open, soul-searching and accountable society'.

Indeed, for some Israeli diplomats, Moreh's production is "proof of the highest order of Israeli democracy", and "a powerful film that brings viewers into confrontation with the political-security dilemmas Israel faces". [My emphasis.]

That's the deeply-loaded context and ersatz discussion this film is most likely to elicit. 

As with the sham politics that's continually pitched as a 'peace process', so much of this 'brave engagement' and 'tortured dilemma' permits just another system-serving layer of diversion, evasion and normalization.

PJ Harvey's Today edit - what's in it for the BBC?

PJ Harvey's guest editorship of the BBC Radio 4 Today programme on 2 January provided a energising New Year antidote to what relentlessly passes for BBC news and commentary.

Alongside fine input from John Rees, Phil Shiner and Ian Cobain, Harvey included particularly brilliant contributions from John Pilger on the state-corporate media's servicing of Western warmongering, and damning historical detail from Mark Curtis on Britain's imperialist crimes.

Harvey's invitation and selected features brought predictable right-wing reaction, including a savaging from the Telegraph and Daily Mail, with the latter's Stephen Glover asserting over Julian Assange's inclusion:

For the BBC to give airtime to such a grubby man is both cringe making and unpatriotic.

There was also much derisory flak from establishment liberals like David Aaronovitch, who tweeted:

I think that the editors of @BBCr4today must know how dreadful that programme was. What next? Freddie Forsyth?

In contrast, much of the wider liberal media applauded both Today and Harvey's 'fresh approach'. Seemingly incredulous, former-Newsnight editor Paul Mason even tweeted:

 Brilliant @PJHarveyUK edition of @BBCr4today demonstrating difference between "truth" and "editorial policy" - amazing how weird it feels

Miranda Sawyer at the Guardian also lauded Harvey's "exhilirating" editorship, yet, in typical Guardian garb, balked at certain voices and tones:

"[It]could have done without WikiLeaks' Julian Assange preaching about openness of information. John Pilger, whose documentaries I admire, was a bit ranty."

What Sawyer called "solo pontification slots" seemed nothing of the kind to this listener. Yet, such is the limitation of what even supportive liberal commentators can stomach when it comes to those more darkly-maligned announcers of vital truths.

Soaring high above all this flak and qualified commendation, it was, thus, a delight to read Joyce McMillan's more acute observations, not only concerning the content of Harvey's edit, but the implications of the rumpus:

The row over Harvey’s edition of Today is likely, of course, to be little more than a brief storm in a media teacup. Yet it comes as a sharp reminder that what was once a normal left-of-centre agenda in Britain has now become so exotic that people react to its presence on Radio 4 with various degrees of shock. Most of the points made by Harvey’s contributors may have been accurate, truthful and based on fact. But, in terms of contemporary British political debate, they nonetheless remain marginal, because they are not part of the dominant grand narrative of our time, which requires constant deference to the priorities of rich so-called “wealth creators”, and a rapid refocusing of any popular anger towards other vulnerable groups, such as this New Year’s imaginary tidal wave of new migrants from Romania and Bulgaria.

McMillan continued:

The great political question of our time, in other words – in the UK and across the West – is whether any political force will emerge, in the 21st century, that seriously challenges this dominant narrative; or whether we are now trapped by an account of reality so far adrift of the truth, and so rarely challenged, that a long age of social, moral and intellectual decline seems almost inevitable.

And, with timely reference to the coming independence poll in Scotland:  

It is a damning indictment of the current state of British politics – and particularly of the recent history of the Labour Party – that it takes a rock star to create a Today programme that seriously challenges and shifts the conventional news agenda.

Nor is it surprising that many centre-Left voters in Scotland are looking to [this] year’s independence referendum as a unique and vital opportunity to escape from this stale and ugly politics of reaction, and to start reinventing a more just and creative form of national community for the 21st century.

But what of the BBC's own apparent motives in all of this? While the 'PJ show' had the twittersphere and wider social media buzzing with approval and disapproval, the question never seriously asked was what point may be been served here for the BBC in allowing such output?

The effective absence of this question in itself says much about the passive ways in which the issue of alternative media comment is contextualised and treated by right-wing and liberal observers alike. Thus, the guest editor and her content may all be subject to lively scrutiny, while the legitimising factors underlying the BBC's hosting of it is never coherently addressed.
 
So, beyond indignant Daily Mailers spluttering into their morning cornflakes, and assorted liberals approving the BBC's 'editorial daring', what's in it for the BBC?               

Most immediately, this kind of 'deviation' gives such programmes a certain 'edgy topicality'. As with Newsnight's recent dalliance with Russell Brand, and Question Time's occasional invite to the likes of George Galloway, even the 'ever-reliable' and sober Today slot has to angle for viewer interest and ratings in a now highly competitive and picky media market.

More crucially, such invitation allows the vital fig-leaf function of saying: 'look, we carry a wide plurality of views, even radical ones like this.'
 
Of course, as the Today guest list indicates, the dominant presence of those like Eliza Manningham-Buller, former head of MI5, and Antony Jenkins, head of Barclays, means the weight of those views is always safely managed.
 
But what of the elasticity of such critical comment?  Could it ever stretch to allow any specific suggestion, discussion or critique on the Today slot about that very programme's fig-leaf inclusion of people like PJ Harvey?

Pilger's piece on media bias certainly included a direct hit by name on the BBC. Yet, as with so much 'risky' guest appearance, Today and other such outlets would likely avoid any deeper scrutiny of its own in-house motives.    

This rare BBC 'concession' over content also helps amplify the notion that, while such output can be aired, it should always be regarded as alternatively marginal.

This was consistently inferred throughout the programme, with reminders from lead presenter Sarah Montague of Harvey's guest status and desire to 'bring something different'.  

Thus, even this 'mature editorial permission' helps reinforce the 'higher' ideal of 'BBC continuity', while 'acknowledging' the viewer-friendly need for 'experiment and variety'.

Even though so many have expressed their appreciation of Harvey's vigorous edit and comment pieces, normal BBC service has been safely resumed.

Indeed, in the name of BBC 'balance', it was notable that Today deemed it necessary to carry numerous 'fair responses' to the claims made by Rees, Shiner, Cobain, Pilger and Curtis over Iraq war deaths, arms supplies and British torture. This included replies from BAE, Toby Dodge of the London School of Economics, and former Iraqi national security adviser Mowaffak Al Rubaie, the man who led Saddam to the gallows. 
 
With a public so already bombarded by establishment-sided news, such 'balancing opinion' was akin to calling (as the BBC dutifully does) the relentless Israeli bombing of Gaza 'retaliatory responses'.
 
As with the wide and subversive discussion of liberal parliamentary democracy that followed Russell Brand's Newsnight appearance, PJ Harvey's editorship of Today has elicited a welcome, deeper questioning of both elite-fed and media-supported 'truth'. 
 
Let's hope that wherever else such invitations occur, the critical focus is not only on the loaded establishment message but the particular, crafted posturing of the BBC as 'impartial' host and 'open' messenger.