Back Towards The Locus

“Today,” Frank Furedi wrote in 2007, “Politicians are…likely to advise the public to fear everything, including fear itself.” It’s ironic, then, that in his critique of the “suspicion and mistrust” of “conspiratorial thinking“, he comes across as a bit, well, overanxious about the whole thing.

Advocacy organisations, political activists and the media are attracted to the idea that behind every headline there lays a hidden agenda. The idea of hidden agendas has influenced discussions on the war in Iraq, the destruction of the World Trade Center, the catastrophe of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, and the outbreak of swine flu.

I’ll wait for the clatter of jaws to subside…

…thank you. Is Furedi saying that there weren’t hidden agendas behind Iraq? The whole thing was just one great, big, farcical, innocent mistake? Perhaps. On the other hand, he could – in a rather clumsy way – be suggesting that people were much too quick to probe for Saddam’s “hidden agendas“.

This, too, would be a mistake: he probably did have agendas, but supporters of the war were far too willing to accept their governor’s depictions of them. This doesn’t suggest that people are too suspicious, it suggests that they’ve not been suspicious enough: retaining a selective, unjustified trust.

The media fuel this attitude by frequently arguing that what is important is not what public figures say but what their real agenda is. The media incite the public to look for hidden motives; that normalisation of suspicion and mistrust is the key accomplishment of today’s conspiratorial culture.

It seems dreadfully banal to point this out – and it would be tragic if presented as an original observation – but Furedi demands it, so here goes: disgustingly often, public figures lie.

In The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat, Oliver Sacks recounts an occasion where some of his patients, aphasiacs, and acutely aware of the nuances of speech, were reduced to hysterical laughter by an address from Ronald Reagan: amused by “the grimaces, the histrionisms, the false gestures and, above all, the false tones and cadences of the voice, which rang false for these wordless but immensely sensitive patients“. To recognise the disingenuity of our governors, attentive citizens have needed no such conditions.

There was Tony Blair, of course, who waxed lyrical about “freedom, democracy, human rights [and] the rule of law” but consistently, and with great dishonesty, defied these values. Indeed, it’s been true for just about all prominent statespeople, whose supposedly passionate rhetoric has been founded on lies, and contradicted by actions.

Furedi is also mistaken in castigating the media for “incit[ing] the public to look for hidden motives” – they, too, aren’t suspicious enough. Oh, sure, they can sneer when it’s Russia or Iran, but when our politicians ooze into view they become rather more accommodating. For example, in March, a BBC reporter asserted that Tony Blair “passionately believed” that Iraq had WMDs. When challenged by a reader, she replied: “I said Mr Blair passionately believed Iraq had wmd because he has consistently said so.” I’m not sure what’s more surreal: the idea that Blair would come out and say “I’m sorry, guys, I had my fingers crossed behind my back”, or the idea that anyone could imagine that he would — either way, it befits the nightmares of a junkie, not the the evening news.

On every major issue of the day, the mainstream media has sunk to dumb regurgitation: G8, Iraq, Afghanistan – you name it. We’ve also seen the superlative optimism that’s been displayed towards the new President, despite the fact that a) his actions contradict his rhetoric, and b) as beautifully demonstrated here, his words aren’t really dissimilar to those of his predecessor.

The rise of conspiratorial thinking expresses the loss of causality and meaning in the contemporary world. History demonstrates that nothing is more frightening than when a community lacks a system of meaning through which it can understand the problems it confronts. In such circumstances, people feel powerless and confused and are sometimes drawn towards a simplistic version of events where everything is black and white or good and evil.

People do “lack a system of meaning through which [they] can understand the problems [they] confront“, and they are, indeed, “powerless“. Thus, all to often, they become “confused“. Some, it’s true, may be “drawn towards a simplistic version of events where everything is black and white or good and evil“.

According to Furedi, though, there are no agendas behind this powerlessness, and those who accuse the powerful of holding devious motives are merely expressing “mainstream prejudices“. Well, let’s recount some things that a) I’ve shown, or b) I think we agree on…

• Those in power are greatly deceitful.

• There are obviously great incentives to being deceitful.

• Those in the media often fail to draw attention to this.

• The effect of the deceits, and the bland acceptance of them, has been disastrous.

• The people themselves don’t have the power to hold their governors to account.

Considering this, it’s not only understandable that people embrace “the idea of hidden agendas“, it’s entirely sensible as well. More, please.

Market dogma is exposed as myth. Where is the new vision to unite us?

We need a grand, new, uniting vision like, er — umm — oh, what the fuck, I’ll just insinuate that communism hasn’t been destructive; that’ll keep the buggers talking.

Obama administration officials, fearing a battle with Congress that could stall plans to close the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, are crafting language for an executive order that would reassert presidential authority to incarcerate terrorism suspects indefinitely, according to three senior government officials with knowledge of White House deliberations.

In other words: Obama administration officials, fearing that the law might not be on their side, are planning to bypass it. Again.

“I do not condone any form of abuse or torture,” the Henry Jackson Society’s Jonathan Rider is quick to assure us, “That said, I am tired of reading about alleged prisoner abuse at the hands of child-eating, sado-masochistic soldiers“. Poor lamb. The new abuse revelations concern Bagram airbase, where “former detainees have alleged they were beaten, deprived of sleep and threatened with dogs“. This “obviously warrant[s] investigation“, Rider grants, but is “scraping the barrel“: “if you ask enough people if they enjoyed their stay, a small number are bound to complain“. This gaggle of discontents, of course, includes many who’ve been beaten or psychologically tortured, while others, sadly, are too dead to complain.

However, Rider has an ingenious – well, audacious – comparison: “what was school if not one long exercise of sleep deprivation, stressful positions, physical abuse and loud noise?“. If his education involved being shackled awake for days on end, twisted into agonising contortions, hung from the ceiling, threatened with dogs etc. then I sympathise, but – whatever his headmaster said – that wasn’t normal. If it didn’t then perhaps he needs to think before he writes.

© 2007 Christophe Quirion

A new report from Human Rights Watch details the awful conditions endured by the Roma in Mitrovica, who were driven north by racist thugs in 1999. Housed in makeshift camps by the UNCHR, they became exposed to high levels of lead, which caused “cases of children with black gums, and with lead-related symptoms such as anxiety, concentration and learning difficulties, headaches, disorientation, convulsions, and high blood pressure“. In June 2009, “displaced Roma will have spent a decade in lead-contaminated camps“.

Former Kosovo prime minister Agim Ceku, who is wanted in Serbia on war crimes charges, was arrested Tuesday in Bulgaria, the interior ministry said.

“Agim Ceku was arrested Tuesday at Geshevo when he entered Bulgaria following an Interpol red notice,” or an international arrest warrant, spokeswoman Diana Yankulova told AFP.

Ceku had been wanted by Interpol before, but was dropped when he became prime minister: “in line with international jurisprudence that international arrest warrants against persons enjoying immunity under international law* – such as Foreign Affairs Ministers and Heads of State and Heads of Government – should not be issued“. If Kosovo thinks that the charges will stick, then, they’ll give him immediate promotion.

[*] I don’t know much about international policing, but that prose is terrible.

David Aaronovitch’s substantial point – even if the inquiry was held publicly, many would hold its scope to be insufficient – is correct. The next step, in my opinion, should be to evaluate the validity of that position; for Aaronovitch, however, it’s to throw out a lot of nonsensical gas…

For six years now – and, of course, it can be understood – the war’s critics, unconfronted with the alternative reality that their preferences would have bestowed upon the world, have had it all to themselves.

Or, to put it less artfully, the war’s been hell.

The war was “immoral”, “illegal” (so why no prosecutions in all that time?) and fought under a “false prospectus”.

He’s got a non sequitur for every occasion, hasn’t he. An illegal act is one that breaks the law, not one that leads to prosecutions.

Claims of up to two million dead in Iraq have been bandied about and believed.

So? I can’t find any prominent group or commentator that’s advanced this number, and if some do then, well — so? Some people are wrong; the Bear’s a Catholic; Popes shit in woods etc.

Any of the inquiries into events leading up to the war have been dismissed as whitewashes, essentially for failing to give the answer that critics want; that answer being that there was a deliberate and wicked attempt to fool the peoples of America, Britain and the world into war.

Replace the highlighted words with “criticised” – because, of course, there’ve been critiques, not dismissals – and “think is true” – because it’s bad faith to assume that all critics have an emotional attachment to their claims – and this sentence would be relatively accurate. It is, of course, entirely valid to criticise things that contradict your perception of reality – as long as you’ve good reasons to do so, anyway.

The Hutton inquiry, of course, wasn’t about that. But critics wanted it to be and when – as had seemed to me fairly inevitable – Lord Hutton (all of whose evidence was heard in public) criticised the BBC for running a wrong story and refusing to correct it, he was excoriated. Often by people who had never (and still have never) read his report.

Who cares? The behaviour of some of Hutton’s accusers isn’t an arbiter of his correctness.

Then came Lord Butler of Brockwell, who looked at intelligence failures in the run-up to the war. He did criticise the Government, and how its “informality” had “reduced the scope for informed collective decision making”. But this is what Lord Butler’s committee said about the evidence: “We have reached the conclusion that prior to the war the Iraqi regime… had the strategic intention of resuming the pursuit of prohibited weapons progammes, including, if possible, its nuclear weapons programme… In support of that goal [it] was carrying out illicit research and development and procurement, activities… [and it] was developing ballistic missiles.” Not whitewash maybe, but “mandarin understatement” said the more intelligent critics.

Indeed, and it was criticised – note: not dismissed, crit-i-cised – for inaccuracies in assessing the dossiers and “artful rendering[s] of the truth” in evaluating pre-war intelligence.

Lord Butler’s was the consensus in 2001-03, or as Sir Menzies Campbell put it on publication of the September 2002 dossier: “We can also agree that Saddam most certainly has chemical and biological weapons and is working towards a nuclear capability.” Or Robin Cook, writing in February 2001: “We must not be deceived. Saddam still threatens his neighbours. Unchecked, Iraq could develop offensive chemical and biological capabilities, and develop a crude nuclear device in about five years.”

So the “lies” weren’t lies at all…

The truth of the dossiers – and the intentions of those behind them – aren’t even slightly dependent upon the opinions of people. Factual analysis, however, shows that they – and the promotion that followed them – were palpably deceptive, and that their composition was very deliberately dishonest.

I’m not entirely sure what Cook’s assertion is doing there: it’s just kind of — hanging around, looking eccentric.

…leaving just one extant charge of culpable dishonesty – that Mr Blair and Mr Bush secretly decided on war in 2002, come what may. I went into this at length with those I interviewed for a series on the Blair premiership in late 2007. Sir David Manning, his foreign affairs adviser and later Ambassador to the US told me that Mr Bush had agreed with Mr Blair that, were Saddam to comply fully with international obligations, there would be no need for invasion because they would have effectively “crated the guy”. There was no prior hidden compact.

Shorter David Aaronovitch: Of course they weren’t lying – this guy says so!

The irony of the discussion on an open inquiry, is that I think Mr Blair would probably be the star turn, pointing out some of the above and that, as a consequence, critics would declare another whitewash.

It is the kind of disingenuous nonsense he’d be likely to spout, isn’t it.

After writing this column, Aaronovitch went away to talk about how important the commentariat remains.

There’s a vague hysteria growing among those who’d intervene in Iran. Over at the Corner, Kathryn Jean Lopez posted this, well — I think I’ll have to put up a screen grab or you’ll think I’ve made it up…

That’s right: because an American – living in America – asserts that “they want us“, they bloody well want us! Is this guy a ventriloquist’s dummy or just bizarrely self-assured?

Andy “the Iraqis remain ingrates” McCarthy has also chipped in to say that…

The fact is that, as a man of the hard Left, Obama is more comfortable with a totalitarian Islamic regime than he would be with a free Iranian society.

Charmingly, he’d started the column with an invitation to “call [him] thick“. Well, why the hell not…

I have a – pretty mild – fear of enclosed spaces. It’s not really a problem, because the few things its puts me off entirely – caving, say, or flying – have never been necessary. It does, however, make me a feel a bit uneasy about the underground. As the train zips through the tunnels, and the walls swallow it, far behind, it’s sometimes irresistible to picture that gaping crack that’s tearing through the roof, just waiting to send a hefty slab crunching through the train.

It’s occurred to me, though, that this is a pretty selective fear. After all, I spend most of my life indoors and, at any time, the ceiling could cave in and crush me instantly.

This notion is unfortunate, of course, because a) it won’t make me feel any more easy about the tube and b) I’ve realised that the house is not my friend.

Mainstream commentators – those who frequent opinion pages, and talk shows on the TV and radio – are doing nothing of worth, and can only harm the Iranian demonstrators.

Nobody Can Be Sure What The Demonstrators Want

“Did you notice how many times [Obama] invoked the word “justice” in his message“, Andrew Sullivan asks, “That’s the word that will resonate most deeply with the Iranian resistance“. Really? How can he be sure? And what was I doing when God was doling out the power of telepathy? Elsewhere, Charles Krauthammer asserts that the protestors “await just a word that America is on their side“. This is, of course, indicative of nothing but his strange, quasi-Ptolemaic view of the world, where the USA is stuck dead centre and the other nations circle, reverently. According to Victor David Hanson, meanwhile, “much of Iran wants what they see going on in Iraq” (I suppose he’s talking about democracy, but, really, who can be sure). Ultimately, though, no one really knows what the protestors want: many, doubtless, want civil freedom, some may want economic freedom, some may just support Mousavi, some may want complete reform. Many, I suspect, took to the streets after seeing the brutality of the repression. It’s plausible, sadly, that there’s some covert involvement. Basically, it’s a mix (a stew, a melting pot), and all the resultant commentators have just slotted it inside ideological drawers; conveniently suiting the chests of their worldviews.

A Statement From Barack Obama Would Be Profoundly Uninteresting

Those demanding forceful statements from Obama argue that it’s futile to worry that they might reflect poorly on Iranian demonstrators because the connection would be drawn anyway. This, however, is beside the point: very few Iranians have a positive view of the United States, so even if the negative effect was minimal it wouldn’t do any particular good. Some have proposed that there’s a moral duty to give overt support, but even if that’s true it’s a duty that the US rejected long ago: we’ve yet to see support for dissidents in, say, Saudi Arabia or Uzbekistan.

The Problem, And The Solution

They’re creating too much noise; distorting the issues and in lieu of – y’know – knowledge are smothering the concerns of others under the tidal wave of their egos. I know that’s their job n’ all, but it’s terribly irritating. They should all take off into the countryside. Y’know, just get away from it all – have a big ol’ picnic.