Muslims on Trial again

orwell — Thu, 15 May 2008 19:37:00 +0100

I could have held my head in my hands and wept at last night’s BBC coverage of yet another “Muslim Terrorist” Trail in London. A group of young Islamists have been charged with planning to bomb some flights. The evidence? Well, they had some hair bleach and sugary drink mix. Get this, the BBC actually said (without irony) that it took Government Scientists simply ages to figure out how to make a bomb with bleach and sugar. They experimented and experimented and finally – BANG! It made great TV seeing that little drinks bottle blow up. Clearly all those extra security checks at the Airport were clearly worth it!

Now step back for a second. What kind of rubbish this? Does the state have such little evidence against these guys that just have to make stuff up? Can the Government now walk into any home in Britain and find any Chemicals lying around, mix them endlessly until they prove their lethality. How about all those kitchen knives I own. Does it mean I am going to stab someone? And my car? Can the Police come and take my car then drive like maniacs around the streets, swerving wildly all over the roads, until they finally kill someone? What would they do then? Jump out of my car and say “ There you go, clearly he was going to kill someone with this car – because we did!”

These defendants are innocent until proven guilty. What we are getting are carefully stage managed show trials for the media. The State is just creating evidence and pushing it out to the media because it makes good TV and implies guilt. Where is the detailed critique from the BBC? Why do they lap this crap up like a loyal lap dog? Why can’t one of these reporters just be honest and say “Well, the Crown has supplied us with a video of something blowing up but we don’t see its relevance therefore it is not in the public interest to show it.”

By showing this crap the media is playing into the hands of a totalitarian system that is pushing out propaganda as news. We must be highly critical of this. Video’s shot of young Muslims enjoying white water river rafting in Wales is not proof of anything other than a good, healthy, Holiday pursuit. Evidence constitutes a undeniable intent and ability to plant bombs on planes. Where is this evidence? Where are the bomb making instructions? Who actually said they were going to plant bombs on a plane – and MEAN it. Without hard evidence all we get is innuendo. With innuendo you can prove whatever you like without evidence. When innuendo is your justice system then it is unjust. It is guilt by implication. When that happens the State can throw anyone in jail for the thought in their head and the common household items most of us own.

It reminds me of a proud Police display (from about twenty years ago) of “weapons” they had found on a bunch of Hells Angels. The police put the weapons on display as proof of what a good job they had done in confiscating them. The weapons were shotguns, machetes, knives, pick-axe handles, bike chains and axes. It immediately occurred to me that EVERY item on display could be found in my Father’s Garden Shed. The difference between my Dad and a Hells Angel? What? Lifestyle? Leathers? Bikes? What? It was all innuendo. It proved nothing. From that day until now I waited for the Police to turn up and arrest my father for the things he owned. Being a white, Christian, middle class, elderly and a former-farm worker I guess they felt he was harmless. It just goes to show how your prejudices are so easily swayed so that you start to see “evidence” as proving whatever you want it to.

Questions they never ask Chomsky

orwell — Thu, 15 May 2008 19:34:00 +0100

Orwell was watching the movie “Manufacturing Consent” the other day. It occurred to me that Chomsky’s critics could only muster the following arguments (at least in this movie):

If things are as bad as you say how come the CIA hasn’t arrested you?
It is all a conspiracy theory.
You don’t understand how the newspaper industry works.
Chomsky is an anti-Semite holocaust denier

Maybe there are some articulate critics out there whom Mark Archbar chose not to feature in the movie, but it does strike the casual viewer just how lame the counter-arguments sound. The answers are:

Noam has never said that the US is a Police State. In fact he has said it is the free-est society on earth which is why such subtle & sophisticated forms of propaganda are used to control what people think… Not what they say.
Noam has specifically said and written on many occasions that there is no “conspiracy theory”. He has never pointed to any individuals or groups who meet to concoct the conspiracies. To him there is no more a conspiracy that then there is when General Motors decide to make a profit. It doesn’t need a conscious “conspiracy” – that is just the way things are. It is structural. The powerful dominate the weak because they can. It would take conscious effort to stop behaving in a way that is largely programmed.
“Not understanding how the newspaper industry works” is not a valid counter-argument as it doesn’t address the criticism that points to certain stories being suppressed. In fact such an argument is tacit admittance that this is reality due to murky & mysterious industry mechanisms that we mere mortals couldn’t possibly understand. In “Manufacturing Consent” Ed Herman and Noam Chomsky attempt to build a ‘model’ of what is going on in the media. They strip away the mystery as outsiders. If the media have a better model let’s hear it.
Noam Chomsky is Jewish. He once defended the freedom of speech of a Holocaust Denier on principle but he never agreed with that person’s ideas. To suggest otherwise is a smear and adds nothing intelligent to the debate.

So, what are we to conclude by the ineptness of these lines of defense? Firstly they are simplistic in a way I find quite insulting. Secondly they are amazingly poor in comparison to the strength of Chomsky’s argument. These criticisms seem to be trotted out as a way of closing down debate. They add nothing useful to our understanding. The critics might as well stand up and say “I am not taking you seriously so there is no point talking about it”. It is also enlightening that these points are obviously made by people who don’t seem to have read or listened to Chomsky since he clearly makes the OPPOSITE argument in two of the cases.

So, what should we be asking? How about getting him to explain how he thinks anarcho-syndicalism could be applied to a modern Globalised industrialised society? Without a genuine debate you just get the idea that Chomsky is so close to the truth that his critics seem genuinely rattled that they should have to defend something so core to their believe system. That is just the way it is so no further understanding is required. Just do as you are told and stop questioning it. Go and consume something – maybe you’ll feel better and shut up. They don’t have an argument because there is none.

The Orwell Blog for The-Coming-War.com

Muslims on Trial again

Questions they never ask Chomsky