The clackity claque

It says something of the political claque that the issue of the moment is Eric Pickles' performance on the BBC's "Question Time" programme yesterday – on the vexed issue of MPs' expenses in general and the second homes allowance in particular.

Not having watched the programme – not last night or ever – we can only take it on trust that last night was "something of a train wreck" but it also says something of the political classes that they do not seem to be able to "park" this issue and move on to more important things. Why they cannot go for this elegantly simple solution is beyond me.

It comes to something, however, when Tory Boy Blog is writing earnestly that, "It's vital that the Conservative Chairman and the wider Tory Party understand the level of public anger towards the political class." It is probably not a first, but to see this blog referring to a "political class" is quite significant, especially in terms of public anger.

Something of the same sentiment comes from Daniel Hannan, explaining why his speech on YouTube has gone "viral", now recording (at the time of writing) 1,167,339 views. "I think it has to do with pent-up frustration," he writes. “People feel ignored, ripped off, lied to, taken for granted…".

Hannan also suggests that the episode has served to show "how utterly and irretrievably the internet has changed politics." Repeating the point he made on his blog, he notes that in 24 hours, 380,000 people had watched a video before a word appeared on the BBC or in any newspaper. The days when political journalists got to decide what was news are over.

Actually, even with the view level of just over a million, Hannan might be overstating the case. That is about the daily level of readership for The Daily Telegraph and about a third of the readership of The Daily Mail.

It is also less than the hit rate that we achieved for our Qana reports in 2006, about which the British blogosphere was noticeably silent – and the media even more so. Thus, if the internet has changed politics "utterly and irretrievably", it did so some time ago – only Mr Hannan did not notice.

But if there is a revolution going on, it is not in the claque that regards itself as part of the British political blogosphere. It is to be found in the more focused political blogs such as Watts up with that and our own Defence of the Realm, which has far more influence than the hit rate would suggest.

What one would like to believe is that the "Hannan effect" is a reflection of the frustration shared by many people at the superficial treatment of political issues by the politicians and their fellow travellers.

For instance, while Mr Pickles' travails may have been the news of the moment for ToryDiary, the issue of the moment on the US blogs is Obama's long-awaited new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The strategy, we are told, involves not just military intervention, with more than 20,000 US military reinforcements to Afghanistan and extra training for Afghan security forces, but billions of dollars of direct aid to Pakistan, and even the creation of "opportunity zones" in border regions.

This strategy is of vital concern to the UK and there is, even in narrow domestic terms a political edge to it with the recent intervention by Liam Fox in the debate. That, though, is of no interest to the clackety claque, to whom the soap opera is far more important than real life – or death.

Having just completed the arduous process of writing the book on Iraq, with the design concept for the front cover (pictured) reaching me today, that project now seems to me a lot more real than the petty preoccupations of the claque.

Yet, on this issue, the dreary focus of the mob is still on the "legality" of the war, more of a subject for historians than politicians. The real issue, with a live war going on in Afghanistan, is what do we need to do to stop the failures of the Iraqi campaign being repeated. Such issues, as we observe, are stuff of real politics. When the politicians wake up and start dealing with these, then perhaps they will get as much attention as Mr Hannan's YouTube.

COMMENT THREAD

A question of trust

An interesting item in The Independent opens up a hornet's nest on the issue of press accountability and, more generally, on the performance of the media.

For those who hold – as we do – that an effective and well-founded media is an essential prerequisite of a functioning democracy, the report which spawned the piece, from the Media Standards Trust, is an important contribution to an ongoing debate.

The report itself can be found here, with a summary/press release here, the essence of which is retailed by The Independent report.

This tells us that financial pressure and the introduction of fast-paced new technology could combine to increase the risk of press intrusion and inaccuracy. This is backed by a survey carried out by YouGov which finds that few people (7 percent) trust newspapers to behave responsibly and three-quarters (75 percent) believe papers frequently publish stories which they know are not true.

The Media Standards Trust uses this as a platform to argue for a "more accountable press" calling for urgent reform of the industry's existing self-regulation system, the Press Complaints Commission, describing it as "insufficiently effective" and "largely unaccountable". "Without urgent reform, self-regulation of the press will become increasingly ineffective at protecting the public or promoting good journalism," the Trust concludes.

One can entirely sympathise with the Trust's views on the adequacy of the PCC, our experience with it over the Qana affair being less than happy, leading us to conclude – as with other matters – that it is a toothless and largely useless body.

However, we cannot help but feel that the Trust's emphasis on more or better regulation is somewhat misplaced, as the PCC and the other issues it focuses on are – in our view – only the smaller part of the problem.

As we pointed out in an earlier post, the bigger problem is not so much what the newspapers publish, but what they do not. Much of the distortion in the media comes from its inability – or unwillingness – to carry out its basic function of reporting the news. And no amount of regulation is going to change that.

Further, another pressing problem is the competence of many journalists, whose knowledge of their subject and their ability to carry our basic research and fact-checking is extremely suspect. We saw a classic example of that recently, where the media got hold of completely the wrong end of the stick and, as a result, gave a completely wrong account of an important story.

However, the Trust's report concludes that, "Public trust in the press has fallen below the level necessary for it to perform its proper role in a democratic society,” then adding that: "Until the system is reformed there is little chance of trust being raised.”

The response of PCC chairman Sir Christopher Meyer illustrates that we have an uphill battle. Even to the relatively mild criticism offered, he reacts by saying the report is "careless and shoddy", and then pours out defensive bureaucratese, which demonstrates that he is not even past the starting gate when it comes to understanding that there is a problem.

At this point, of course, we could offer the view that the "new media" will overcome the shortcomings of the "dead tree media", except that there is no sign of this happening. The blogs and other web-based output is as much part of the problem as the old media.

Where we go from here, therefore, is anyone's guess, but it is interesting to see that a body which we didn't even know existed is taking on a debate which needs to happen and needs to be resolved.

COMMENT THREAD

Even the "brothers" aren't buying it

The dhimmi media may be buying into Pallywood, but even the "brothers" are turning away. This is from a Bradford forum:

A sincere, active brother from Bradford has informed MPACUK (Muslim Public Affairs Committee UK) that the MP for Bradford, Gerry Sutcliffe, has had only 2 complaints about Israel! MPACUK asks - are the Muslims in Bradford asleep!? Bradford has the fourth highest proportion of Muslims in England. Over 100,000 Muslims, yet only 2 complaints against Israel! Absolutely disgraceful.

Gerry Sutcliffe is meeting the Foreign Office today. Ring him now before 2:30pm today on 01274 400 007 and ask him to condemn the Israeli invasion and attacks on Gaza. Start complaining now.

But even if you didn't do that its still not too late. Here are some of the things that the sincere, active brother from Bradford has suggested that Bradford Muslims can do. Bradford Muslims if you care about justice, please heed his words:

"There were 3000 people protesting in the Bradford March, yet how many have contacted their MP or MEPs?

This Saturday, 10th Jan, are the surgeries of Terry Rooney and Gerry Sutcliffe. The people of Bradford should go to the surgeries and express their opinions, if possible sign petitions and present them.

It is the job of MPs to represent their British constituents not the interests of Israel, many MPs are putting the views of Israel over and above the views of British people - is this democracy??

MPACUK should ask Muslims around the UK to do this in all cities, this should be happening across the country.

What is also interesting is that, unlike 2006, the UN resolution passed last night is having no political traction at all. This is possibly because the UN has abandoned all pretence at neutrality and is now so obviously partisan that even its tarnished credibility is being shot to pieces.

When it becomes the prime propagandist for the Hamas message, even though the media lap it up, the shadow of Qana looms large, with the spirit of "Green Helmet" all too evident.

But, it appears, you can play the "ghoul card" once to often. In its quest for "another Qana", Hamas tactics - even with the willing help of the UN - are all too transparent, leaving the MSM and the tranzies as the only apostles of their homicidal creed. Even leftoid readers of The Independent find "The 20 best players outside the Premier League" more interesting than the UN resolution (pictured).

As regards the UN, it would be a delicious irony if that organisation, supposedly dedicated to peace, but now joined in common cause with the murderous Hamas to destroy Israel, should itself be destroyed the cause it has taken up. Soon, we will have to insist that its own mercenaries should swap their blue helmets for green helmets. The final transition will then be complete.

COMMENT THREAD

Agents of influence and useful idiots

My colleague has already outlined in what way the propaganda news coverage of the present war in Gaza is different from that of the 2006 war against Hezbollah in Lebanon. There is much prattling in the media about the Israelis learning military lessons from the earlier engagement. Maybe so, but what the Israelis have clearly learnt is the need to bypass the so-called main stream media and to put out as fast as possible their own story for the world to see.

In other respects we can safely say plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose, not least in the selection of "experts" that the media indulges in. Our attention has been called by a number of people to the ubiquitous presence of a Norwegian doctor, Mads Gilbert and his colleague Erik Fosse.

They entered Gaza on December 31 and have, according to Dr Gilbert, been performing operations day and night on an ever larger number of casualties of whom an ever larger proportion are definitely innocent civilians. This miraculous behaviour does not appear to have prevented Dr Gilbert from appearing on every Western TV station with a frequency that makes one wonder when exactly he has time to do any operating.

Camera.org (Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America) has the story on the good doctor and his colleague. He is a long-standing member of the political Red (Rodt) party, a revolutionary socialist party in Norway and has expressed his view on numerous occasions that medicine cannot be separated from politics. He is a long-standing supporter of Hamas and, indeed, of any terrorist organization, who told the world in 2001 that the attacks on the United States were justified. This is the man the Norwegian government subsidizes and the world media listens to.

Not all is lost, however. Thanks to Power Line, which has a good posting on that UNWRA school, we also have the story of France2 (the TV station involved in the infamous Mohammed Al-Dura case) admitting that ... ahem ... they made a mistake in some photographs they displayed prominently.

It would appear that the dead civilians and Hamas operatives got to be that way because of a truck with explosives detonated in 2005 in a refugee camp and not because Israel bombed the place in 2009. I suppose, as we were told during the row over Qana, they are dead and that's what matters. How and why are luxuries.

Here is some more reading matter: a fascinating analysis of what might well be the Israeli strategy in the Jerusalem Post and another stonking article by Christopher Hitchens. The man specializes in giving no comfort to anybody. Even if one disagrees with much of his analysis, the article is well worth reading.

COMMENT THREAD

Different dogs, same trick

Unable to defeat Israel, and knowing that an all-out, unrestrained military operations would destroy them, first Hezbollah and now Hamas have been employing the same stratagem to enable them to pursue their terror campaigns yet avoid annihilation.

The stratagem was perhaps discovered by accident in April 1996 when a UN-supervised building in the centre of the village of Qana had been shelled during an Israeli operation code-named "Grapes of Wrath, aimed at clearing out Hezbollah from the region. This had resulted in over 100 civilian deaths, the resulting international pressure precipitating the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Lebanon.

On 30 July 2006, in the second Lebanon War, when the Israelis were attempting to complete the job they had started ten years before, Hezbollah was struggling against the might of Israel and desperately needed a cease-fire in order to regroup and re-build its forces and stocks of weapons. By what appeared to be convenient coincidence, in the small hours of that morning an IDF aircraft was claimed to have bombed a building in the hamlet of Khuraybah, close to Qana.

Hezbollah operatives were quickly asserting that that 60 or more people, many of them children, had been killed. With the complicity of the international media, the recovery of the bodies was stage managed, the figure of "Green Helmet" milking the event for maximum publicity value. The resultant photographs were then used to marshal the international community to press for a cease-fire, finally implemented on 14 August. Once again, Hezbollah had escaped the full consequences of its terrorism.

Now, having provoked Israel beyond endurance from its enclave in Gaza, Hamas, and under extreme pressure from Israeli military action, seems to be playing the same trick, going to the extent of engineering a "massacre" which will mobilise again the international community to push for a cease-fire.

Such is the obvious construction to be drawn from the incident yesterday when Israeli forces "bombed" – or otherwise attacked - "UN schools" being used as refugee centres, and are being accused of killing "more than 50 people," including, of course, many children.



Hamas terrorists, however, have been deliberately placing themselves in the grounds of at least one of these schools while attacking Israeli forces, in order to provoke an Israeli response. This goes beyond using women and children as "human shields". This is a deliberate attempt first to engineer their deaths and then to exploit those same deaths for strategic military gain.

That, in at least one of those same schools, many of the deaths may have resulted from secondary blast, indicates that ammunition or explosives may have been stored in the building, this maximising deaths arising from a provoked attack. One cannot even rule out the placing of explosives deliberately set be to detonated by a primary shock.

The choice of a UN supervised building – as in Qana 1996 - seems too much of a coincidence, thereby ensuring the active engagement of UN officials who have been quick to condemn this "rule of the gun."

Sensibly, however, the Israelis have excluded the international media from Gaza, an exclusion which has had Robert Fisk wailing and gnashing his teeth. The Israelis have also been quicker with their rebuttals, this time providing video evidence of Hamas using school buildings for mortar attacks.

Nevertheless, with Pallywood Productions Inc in high gear, carefully posed photographs (see above, top) are flooding out of Gaza, redolent of the Qana scenes - see right. But, even though the left-wing media is in full cry, the events do not seem to have gained the same political traction as the earlier episodes. Needless to say, the Tranzies are pushing hard for a cease-fire, playing into the hands of Hamas, determined to perpetuate the agony of the people of Gaza, but again there is not the same head of steam that we saw in 2006.

Still, the line is holding – that only a complete cessation of violence by Hamas will call off the IDF. Olmert is now "indicating" that he is open to international efforts to end hostilities if Israel can be sure that supplies of weapons to Hamas will be severed by international monitoring of Gaza's border with Egypt.

This requires the Tranzies to step up to the plate, and then rather neatly transfers to them any responsibility to ensure that violence does not recommence. Hamas must be hoping that pressure mounts for a cease-fire to fend off an outcome that would most definitely restrict their homicidal campaign.

However, with the "Green Helmet" manipulation of the second Qana still fresh in people's memories, the same trick by different dogs does not seem, so far, to be having the required effect.

COMMENT THREAD

Marshmellow power

Having learnt absolutely nothing from its experience of the Lebanon war of 2006 – where it pushed for a premature cease-fire thus letting Hezbollah off the hook after it murderous rampage – the EU is repeating exactly the same mistakes.

Wedded to its idea of soft (as marshmellow) power, again its is leading the ranks of appeasers, calling for Israeli "restraint" and putting its efforts into brokering a rapid cease-fire. However, as did Hezbolla manipulate world opinion over its staging of the Qana "rescue", Hamas is proving adept at the same tricks, no doubt paving the way for a cease-fire at a time of its own choice, aided and abetted by the gullible "international community", with the EU in the forefront.

To that effect, the "colleagues" have rushed to arrange a meeting for today of the foreign ministers of the European Union, where they will plan how to maximise pressure on Israel to ease the pressure on Hamas and let it off the hook.

As always, the colleagues cloak their mad statements in the language of reason, declaring that, "The ministers will look into how the European Union can help ease the current crisis, along with the efforts of the international community, especially the secretary general of the United Nations." Tranzie shall speak unto tranzie, and the UN is right up there with the EU.

The meeting is set to take place at 5.30 pm, and will be chaired by French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner, with the "usual suspect" Javier Solana in attendance. Although, ostensibly, it is none of their business, other members of the EU commission are also expected to attend.

And, instead of letting Hamas rot, the colleagues are planning to "increase humanitarian aid to Gaza," heedless of the fact that, had this murderous organisation not bombarded Israel with rockets and mortars, and instead expended its energies on running Gaza, it would not need such aid.

As an example of how utterly warped "European" thinking on this issue is, though, we must go to Deutsche Welle which offers house room to Jochen Hippler, a German "expert" on the Middle East, based at the University of Duisburg-Essen's Institute for Development and Peace (INEF).

He offers a thesis that the European Union "bears some of the blame" for the situation in Gaza - what could be a welcome refrain. He spoils it though by telling us that the EU has not wielded the political clout of the United States but now needs to step up to the plate when it comes to "negotiating a workable initiative for peace."

"Europe (he means the EU) has made a couple of mistakes in the last couple of years," he says. "Instead of respecting the elections (that brought Hamas to power) and dealing with someone they don't like, they've helped to trigger a kind of civil war among Palestinians. And you can't have peace with an opponent that is at war with itself." Really?

The EU, he adds, could resolve help to reduce tensions by bringing Hamas to the table. "We have seen examples where negotiating with Hamas has been successful. But to achieve a ceasefire, the only way is to agree to a mutual ceasefire."

Thus we have the EU in a nutshell. Churchill once said, "jaw-jaw is better than war-war", but then he had just finished a war against Nazi Germany and crushed it into the ground. There is, he would have readily conceded, a time for jaw, and a time for war.

For the EU, however, there is only one solution to everything – jaw, more jaw and even more jaw. Thus, in truth, there is only one mistake the EU has ever made – it exists. The world would be a safer place without it. Perhaps, when the Israelis have finished with Gaza, they can roll their tanks into Brussels. Toasted marshmellow sounds quite a nice idea.

COMMENT THREAD

A plea for help

Regular readers will have noticed that the volume of posts on this blog has declined somewhat over the past few weeks. The explanation is simple – with Booker, I am currently engaged in writing another book on "global warming" adding, this time, a detailed analysis of the coming energy crisis.

As if this was not enough, I am also writing solo a book on the Snatch Land Rover and its role in the Iraq and Afghani campaigns. This is more than just a book about a vehicle though. The Snatch, in its own way, was an icon which symbolised the lack of preparedness for a messy and dangerous series of counter-insurgency operations.

Thus, the book is turning out to be a comprehensive account of the Iraqi insurgency in the British sector, whence I will move on – perhaps – to Afghanistan. It is possible though that the experiences in Iraq alone will take up the whole of this account.

Inevitably, this self-imposed burden means that I have less time to devote to the blog, which had developed almost to the extent that it had become a full-time job in its own right. This is more the case as, when researching for a book, I obey the classical precepts of letting the facts tell the story.

Thus, unlike much of contemporary so-called science, where the researcher decides on the outcome in advance and then selects the facts to prove the a priori hypothesis, I am trawling through contemporary sources and assembling a narrative, from which I will then draw my conclusions.

As such, the writing is a journey of discovery (the outcome of which I cannot as yet predict – although the shape becomes clearer as I progress) the detail of which is already staggering. I am ashamed of my own ignorance.

In making this journey, I am applying the same techniques which I learned when at the age of 40 I undertook the arduous process of studying for my PhD. Initially, I recall, my view was that writing a thesis was simplicity itself. I was already a published author and long pieces of writing were no sweat – or so I thought.

In a matter of a few months – of what was supposed to be a five-year (part-time) course - I dashed off some 40,000 words and proudly presented the document to my supervisor. His response was to rip it to shreds, clinically dissecting its failings in such a masterful fashion that, defensive though I was, I could not help but agree. I tore up my work and started to learn.

I have to admit that completing the thesis, which eventually ran to 80,000 words, nearly broke me. After four years and some more, despite the investment, the sheer labour and the rigorous discipline had me prepared to walk away from the whole thing, with only the conclusion section to complete. I have since spoken to other PhD students and many went though the same trauma.

Complete it I did, however, and I applied the hard-won skills to the research I conducted for The Great Deception, written by Booker on the basis of the briefs I provided him. After the two years that that took, I vowed to myself "never again", such was the labour and the gruelling intellectual effort. Yet, here I am, doing exactly the same thing, albeit on a completely different subject.

This, though, is a book that must be written, and so far in the long journey I have got up to December 2004, starting from May 2003, having written 25,000 words.

It occurred to me however, as with the exploration of the Qana incident in July 2006, that I could enlist the power of the blogosphere and make this a co-operative effort, as we did the final report.

For those that are interested and prepared to help, what I am after is media, agency and other reports of events – factual accounts, not opinion – from as wide a range a sources as possible, in the British occupied sector of Iraq, currently for the first six months of the year 2005, with special reference to al Amarah and Basra.

As our forum so often illustrates, many of our readers have quite remarkable internet search skills and, if anyone is prepared so to do, I would appreciate them posting links to stories for the relevant period on the thread I have opened up.

In the meantime, for the time it is going to take me to complete the work, I will keep the blog going as best I can, and plough on with the writing. My thanks to you all for visiting the site and bearing with me.

I have cross-posted this on Defence of the Realm, a blog which I am – much to my own frustration – sadly neglecting. However, I will shortly post there, the next chapter of the work in progress.

COMMENT THREAD

Maybe they should stop complaining

A small news item in today's Wall Street Journal Europe informs us that:

The Red Cross accused Colombia of breaking the Geneva Convention by using its emblem in a disguised military operation to rescue hostages from guerrillas.

Others, such as Radio Free Europe, devote more space to the story. The Red Cross spokesman pointed out that such misuse would endanger other operatives in the field. The Colombian government has apologized though clearly they do not think that there was something wrong with carrying out the operation.

Some years ago we, on this blog, would have shared that indignation. The symbol of the Red Cross organization was so highly regarded because of its work and achievements that using it for any other purpose would have appeared to be completely immoral apart from being dangerous for the operatives.

Is that still true, one asks oneself. There was, after all, the story of wanted terrorists being carried through American check points by the Italian Red Cross in Iraq, allegedly, in return for the release of kidnapped aid workers. I do not recall allowances for this sort of behaviour in the Geneva Convention.

What of the Red Cross's rather ambiguous involvement in Qanagate, described by my colleague here and here and other postings. As I recall, at one point Green Helmet Guy (remember him?) appeared as a bona fide Red Cross operator, proudly wearing the emblem. Again, I find it hard to imagine how that fits in with the Geneva Convention. Come to think of it, there was that rather curious story of the Red Cross ambulance and the hole in the middle of the symbol that was just a little suspect. Should the International Committee not have made a statement about that?

There were the appearance of Red Cross workers and vehicles in the Pallywood and Hezbollywood productions with no statements from the hierarchy about breaking the Geneva Convention. Again, I have searched in vain for words in that Convention that allow and approve behaviour of that kind.

At the very least, one would expect the International Committee of the Red Cross organization to repudiate those of its people on the ground who misuse the symbol to this extent. Should they not worry about endangering their other workers by some being so obviously involved in political activity?

There is a more important aspect that the said International Committee should address. Why is it that the Colombian army assumed – and, as it turned out, assumed correctly – that the appearance of their soldiers dressed in Che Guevara t-shirts, under various NGO banners, such as the Red Cross would fill the FARC terrorists with calm anticipation of friendly activity?

As far as we can tell (and it was analyzed carefully by Mary Anastasia O’Grady in the Wall Street Journal) the assumption was that those guys in their Che t-shirts under the Red Cross and other similar insignia were expected to help FARC by transporting the hostages.

How does this accord with the Geneva Convention, ladies and gentlemen of the Red Cross?

UPDATE: One of our readers sent us a link to an interesting story in which the Red Cross symbol was used to smuggle drugs from Venezuela to Sierra Leone from where it was presumably destined to European countries. There is no evidence, as far as we can see, of any involvement by any Red Cross worker. Nevertheless, this can be described as breaking the Geneva Convention and endangering Red Cross workers. I have no recollections of any statements or protests.

Funny that!

With commendable speed, Little Green Footballs is on the case, pointing out that at least one of the missile photographs released by the Iranians has been photoshopped – with liberal use of the "clone" tool.

Funny enough, that is precisely the photograph that The Daily Telegraph - one of the many newspapers which walked into Qanagate, eyes wide shut - has used in its print edition, to illustrate its story. However, the text by Caroline Wheeler is very guarded: "Nine missiles were reported fired …" and, "The launch included a reportedly improved Shahab-3 missile …".

I am minded of the epic 60's TV series, the "Telegoons". There was one famous episode when Neddy wanted to rob a bank but did not have a gun. In a hilarious sequence, he took along a colour photograph of a gun … and the bank gave him a colour photograph of some money!

One suspects that the Israelis might have something more in mind than colour photographs of some F-15s, and will not be photoshopping them to multiply their effect. And nor will they be content with colour photographs of bomb craters.

COMMENT THREAD

Fauxtography revisited

From the academic who wrote this book, an exploration of the fauxtography phenomenon and the "blogstorms" that exposed it.

The paper includes an analysis of the role of EU Referendum in the lifting the lid off Qanaqate.

It is longish (22 pages) but well worth reading as a clinical analysis of an important series of events, where the blogosphere took on the MSM and challenged its partisan and mendacious reporting of the Lebanese War in the summer of 2006.

It is interesting that, of the blogs mentioned, most were American. This was the only significant British blog that took up the issue, which was largely (with some honourable exceptions) ignored by other UK-based political blogs. If that is a reflection of something, I am not sure quite what. Perhaps, others can explain the narrowness of vision that seems to pervade our blogosphere.

In the US, blogs have continued to challenge the establishment and the media, creating a powerful political constituency of their own. In contrast, the UK scene is progressively being taken over by media blogs (the so-called "clogs"), which are seeking to dominate (and dictate) what should be an independent and vibrant new medium.

One day – if they have not already – someone will write a thesis on this, in a nation that claims to be the home of free men and women, where we are in fact hopelessly conformist. Why that should be, I do not understand – and perhaps never will.

COMMENT THREAD

Mr Bolton agrees with EUReferendum

We are not altogether surprised to find that John Bolton, former US Ambassador to the UN, agrees with this blog. He does not say it in so many words but that does not matter.

According to Ha'aretz, John Bolton has publicly disagreed with Prime Minister Olmert's account of what motivated UN Security Council Resolution 1701 and the international pressure put on Israel to stop before it could destroy Hezbollah (who has since shown its gratitude by destroying Lebanon's political structure).

It was not Israel's ground offensive but the shock caused by the Qana episode or, to be precise, the way the Qana episode, about which we still do not know the truth, was presented by Hezbollywood and its willing agents, most of the Western MSM.

However, the former ambassador said, the main reason for America's retreat from its initial position was U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who "changed her mind fundamentally" after an Israeli aerial assault killed 28 civilians in Kana on July 30. "Rice exerted enormous pressure on me to reach an agreement already," he said. "Until Kana, the U.S. wasn't interested in another typical Middle Eastern cease-fire. We thought we would exploit the fighting to fundamentally change the situation, especially in Lebanon and Syria. But under the influence of her shock over Kana, the secretary of state changed her mind and only wanted an immediate end to the fire. That was the policy Rice dictated."

This blog was convinced at the time that the Qana episode was crucial in the propaganda war, which is an intrinsic part of the war against terror we are all fighting and which Israel had to fight in the summer of 2006 against Hezbollah.

Do they know they are lying?

One way or another we have written a great deal about the misleading nature of the MSM, whether it be my co-editor’s extraordinary unravelling of the Qana story or my own slightly more historic discussion of the small lies that triumphed over the big lie. It is for that reason that we, too, have followed the Mohammed Al-Dura story ...

Helen writes on Umbrella Blog 3.

Faking it!

The Beatroot writes on his blog how The Daily Mail, in its zeal to prove how ruinous has been recent immigration by new EU members like Poles, will go to any lengths – including giving people money to break the law - and staging evidence of lawbreaking for its "investigation".

This came to light when Daily Mail journalist Sue Reid contacted Beatroot, who lives in Warsaw, and offered him a cash payment of £800 plus his expenses, to bring his girlfriend's foreign-registered car over to England to be photographed breaking British traffic regulations.

Since then, we have obtained a copy of the e-mail from Sue Reid, setting out the offer and, revealing that she wanted to "prove" how foreign drivers in Britain were "evading fines for parking, speeding and congestion charge". We have published the full text above (click to enlarge) as it came to us.

Mail journalist Sue Reid has been active for her newspaper, writing motoring stories and also filing a number of "shock-horror" exposés about Polish immigrants, following in the footsteps of her paper which has, since last year, been enthusiastically seeking out "the truth" about the effects of Polish immigration.

She, herself, is no stranger to "sting" operations, having last year bought three forged passports (pictured) to "demonstrate" the "staggering scale" of a fake passport scandal which has allowed immigrants to seek entry to Britain. But now, in an attempt to prove her point once again, she has been actively soliciting foreigners to break the law so that she can write her story.

The fact, as she claims, that foreign drivers are evading British traffic regulations may be true but, as Neil Herron writes, it is also true of British drivers in ever-increasing numbers (an estimated 2.1 million cars are untaxed – compared with 1.2 million in 2004).

In seeking to fabricate evidence in support of her narrow – and inflamatory – thesis, Sue Reid has stepped over the line. Her journalistic practices are no different in principle to the media condoning the staging of photographs in the Qanagate affair, on which we reported last year.

In fact, Reid has gone that bit further for, while at Qana, scenes were staged by third parties for compliant journalists to photograph, here she is actually setting up the scenes so that Mail photographers can capture the "evidence" for her paper.

Such malpractice, in furtherance of stories about a highly sensitive issue like immigration, goes beyond the pale. There are serious issues to do with our EU membership, enlargement and the mass-migration of central and eastern European workers to this country – but this sort of crass manipulation simply poisons the well of debate and makes rational discussion that much more difficult.

And once again this demonstrates how essentially dishonest are certain sections of the MSM, which have no regard for honesty and decency in the pursuit of a story. And on these, we rely for our information?

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It ain't over till it's over

One of the stories that has been poorly covered by the MSM (or should that be one of the many stories?) has been the saga of Mohammed Al-Dura and France2. Yet, this is enormously important in our understanding of the way the media functions and, in particular, the way the Western media reports news from the Middle East.

Mohammed Al-Dura was the little boy whose picture as he was cowering behind his father trying to escape from the bullets of the wicked Israelis back in 2000 was brodcast to all. The report, by France2 informed the world, whose conscience, naturally, was shocked, that the boy was shot dead.

Almost from the very beginning the story was doubted and a court case resulted when France2 and Charles Enderly, its correspondent in Israel, sued Philippe Karsenty of Media Watch that had challenged the story and, above all, the film, for libel.

We wrote about the case here and here. Karsenty lost the case and France2 were not forced to make the uncut rushes public, though the two senior journalists who have seen it, say that there was no footage of the boy’s death. Worse, nobody has ever been able to locate the boy, dead or alive, certainly not under the name of Mohammed Al-Dura.

The case is back in the public eye (though not its conscience) as Karsenty’s appeal against the verdict, whose rightness was disputed by everyone who followed the case in the court, is coming up and a petition is being circulated that urges France II to release those crucial tapes as well as any films they might have of pigs flying.

Richard Landes who has ensured that the case is treated with the seriousness it deserves, gives the text of the petition in French and English on his excellent blog, Augean Stables. Here is another discussion of the story and its significance. For anyone who wants to go through the chronology of the case, Richard Landes helpfully provides one.

If ever a picture was worth many thousands of words (though, to be fair, it also generated many thousands of words) it was that. Little Mohammed became the symbol of the Palestinian martyrdom and the evil that was Israel. Since the pictures of children blown up by suicide/homicide bombers inside Israel were too horrific to be shown, the world had to make do with Mohammed the Martyr.

The idea that the whole episode was staged; that Mohammed was not really Mohammed Al-Dura, was not cowering from Israeli bullets and was not shot naturally discombobulates too many people. Nor does the media particularly want the world and its conscience pay too much attention to the many other cases in which it followed the scenario as set out by Hezobollah. (This may be a good opportunity to remind our readers of the sterling work done by my colleague and a number of his assistants on our forum in uncovering some of the murky doings in Qana last year.)

Should anyone have doubts about the lopsidedness of reporting from the Middle East, let me remind them about the curious lack of interest in the four-month long siege of Nahr al-Bared, a Palestinian refugee camp by the Lebanese army.

Naturally enough, we covered the story here, here, here and mentioned it in other pieces on the situation in Lebanon. (Yes, yes, I promise to do a round-up soon. If nothing else, we need to know if UNIFIL is still alive.)

The siege of the camp is now over. David Pryce-Jones sums up:

After a pretty dismal performance dragged out over these four months, the Lebanese army has finally routed Fatah al-Islam, killed Shakir al-Absi and his deputy, and identified some of the dead terrorists as Saudis and others as men who have fought in Iraq. Between two and three hundred have been killed, about half of them Lebanese soldiers. And meanwhile 40,000 Palestinians have fled from their homes, most probably never to return. Lebanese artillery has turned Nahr al-Bared into the sort of ruin the Russians have made of Grozny in Chechnya.

He may be a little too harsh on the Lebanese army. It is not easy to fight in those circumstances. Even the Russians have not been able to impose total control on the wreck that used to be Grozny and they have been at it for considerably longer than four months.

Mr Pryce-Jones does make the point we have made over and over again, notably in the first part of this posting:

The media is no help, of course, hardly reporting the Nahr al-Bared crisis unless in a paragraph on some inside page. In contrast, just cast your mind back to 2002 when the Israeli army cleared Fatah terrorists from the refugee camp of Jenin on the West Bank. No artillery, no indiscriminate destruction, no 40,000 fleeing for their lives, less than a hundred dead all told, but pretty well every front page and every news bulletin accused Israel of war crimes and atrocities. I particularly remember one Professor Derrick Pounder on behalf of Amnesty speaking of massacre, and proclaiming that the dead under the rubble were too numerous to be counted. The absence of such media professors and human-rights groups from Nahr al-Bared now certifies the whole lot of them as foremost specialists in the double standards underpinning the usual Western representations of the Middle East.

Nobody is going to compare Nahr al-Bared to Stalingrad or any other important battle.

The Palestinians may be perennial victims but some victims are more equal than others. If you want the West to pay attention to what is happening to you, try to ensure that you get under the Israelis' feet. Then it really does not matter that you are treated far better than your brethren in Lebanon or Gaza – the world will know with many advantages of your plight.

Getting it right

Without doubt, the domestic story of the day is David Cameron's initiative on hospital closures or, to be more specific, how he got it wrong.

To the dismay of Tory Diary, instead of taking the initiative, Cameron was on the back foot all yesterday, defending – according to Reuters - his claim that 29 hospitals face closure or cutbacks after the government accused him of "scaremongering" and getting his facts wrong.

Even the Tory-supporting Telegraph has made this its story, reporting that Cameron, "has been pitched into a bitter row with Labour over his claim that ministers plan to downgrade dozens of local NHS hospitals across England," also noting that Labour were revelling in the claim that the Tories "had not done their homework".

As you might expect, The Guardian was thoroughly enjoying itself, leading its story with the legend that, "David Cameron's leadership came under renewed pressure today as his campaign against hospital closures descended into farce," retailing with some delight that, "A day of spectacular own goals began when a Tory MP was forced to apologise for one blunder."

All this we note, however, not to score points against the Boy – plenty of others are doing that – but to sound a cautionary note about our own concern, the EU referendum campaign.

What we are seeing with the Boy is the classic political ploy, one which is of special value when your own case it weak. Instead of dealing with the substantive points, you trawl your opposition's statements for errors, focus on those and try to make that the story. In this case, the ploy has had some considerable success, and it was used widely against us in the Qanagate affair.

So it is and will be with our campaign. Already we have seen something of this, with the FCO trawling Eurosceptic literature and statements to produce its 10 Myths on the EU constitution treaty.

In general, Europhiles are past masters at this technique and we have seen it employed many times. You will see it put to use with the Booker column where, the week following a contentious (and damaging) story, you will often see one or more letters of a genre we have come to call, "Booker is wrong". Invariably, the correspondents will never address the issues, but pick on some error – real or imagined. The pitch is that, if this is wrong, the rest of the material cannot be trusted.

The antidote, of course, is to strive for that elusive property – meticulous accuracy. With one politician with whom I work, we have a standing joke when preparing reports: the "final" draft is only the first stage of a round of checking, with the document metamorphosing into the "final, final", the "final, final, final" and even the "final, final, final, final…". Such attention to detail can be hugely frustrating but the process has saved us from some potentially embarrassing situations.

When errors are made, as they always will be, the trick is to be your own worst critic – to look for them, to admit to them, and then to correct them, pre-empting your enemies and disarming them with your candour. By contrast, to ignore them, to repeat them, to stick to them in the face of evidence of error or (worst of all) to attempt to cover them up, is political suicide. For sure, the hardest words in politics – as in life – are "I was wrong", but they are also a key part of a successful campaigner's armoury.

That is, in fact, why we are so critical of our own side and why we have started our own mythbuster series, which we will continue, exposing the weaknesses in our own arguments as well as those of our enemies.

As to the Boy's current difficulties, for once it looks as though he has done us a favour. In getting it so spectacularly wrong, he has shown us all how important it is to get it right.

COMMENT THREAD

The big three

Like everyone else, we have a fascination with round numbers, hence the enduring attraction of round number anniversaries, and achievements that can be measured in like terms.

So it is today that we reach a milestone of our own, clocking up the "big three" - three million hits on what we chose to use as our "official" counter, since we started our journey into the unknown on 22 April 2004. At over three years old, this blog must count as an aged veteran and, from the scars, it certainly feels like it.

To have got this far is an achievement, but a small one. In strictly numerical terms – by comparison with the MSM, which we so love to deride – the circulation is pathetic. Even now, when we maintain a mere 3,000 hits on a weekday – dropping somewhat over the weekend – it is well evident that we are never going to mount a serious challenge to the hegemony of the established media.

Furthermore, while it would be nice to say that circulation was increasing, it is not. Unlike some blogs, our hit counter is visible and our stats are available to anyone who wants to see them. They tell their own story. At best, our readership levels are static.

In part, that is our own fault. We don't do trivia, or the lightweight tat that passes for political gossip, which attracts the hits from our sector of the market, and neither will we stoop to running narratives about celebs.

Moreover, our choice of core subject is hardly one to attract a mass audience. Even we will concede that chronicling the machinations of the European Union is often an exercise in applied tedium which borders on masochism. And if it has that effect on us, we can hardly blame readers for preferring the comfort zone of mindless tat.

For sure, we did open up the range of issues after the triumph (we like to think) of the negative verdicts on the EU delivered by the Dutch and the French, but that was probably more in the interests of self-preservation than anything else. However, we have tried to maintain a certain coherence, setting out our ideals in our manifesto.

What really brought in the hits, though, was the Qanagate affair, which has probably added a half a million overall to the count, somewhat distorting the statistical profile of the blog, but it was never going to be the case that we could sustain that level of hits.

The central issue, there, however, was not so much the event itself but the way the media treated it. Memories of that brought a wry smile on reading the self-serving protestations of The Daily Telegraph, and its claim to produce "objective" reporting. We know only too well how it squirmed at the time, as it – along with the rest of the media - tried to justify acting as a propaganda tool for Hezbollah.

Alongside our Middle East coverage, we have, of course, acquired something of a reputation for our reporting on defence issues and if, as I fondly believe, we were instrumental in speeding up the delivery of better armoured vehicles to our troops in Iraq – with the promise of saving lives – then that alone will have made the labour of this blog worthwhile.

And, while this half of the EU Referendum team will admit to an abiding interest in "toys", the coverage on this blog again is to make broader points, not least the abysmal coverage of the media on what we believe to be vitally important issues.

That much I have tried to convey in my coverage of the FRES project, which will define, to a great extent what our Army will be capable of in the future and will, therefore, either define or circumscribe some of our foreign policy options, more so, I suspect, than whether an EU foreign minister is created by the next treaty.

The total lack of media interest in this issue, therefore, speaks volumes, but the lack of interest in the blogosphere at large also tells its own story. Few writers, it seems, are able to see beyond the "toys" to the broader, more important aspects of this saga – a myopia shared by much of the political fraternity.

Yet, says Tony Blair, "there is a market in providing serious balanced news. There is a desire for impartiality. The way that people get their news may be changing, but the thirst for news being real news is not."

Market there may well be, but in our experience, it is extremely limited. If the MSM concentrates on tat and trivia – and so many blogs follow in their wake – it is because that, in the main, is what their public wants. You only have to see which stories get the most hits to realise where the popular interest lies. In pursuit of circulation, the MSM will go where the interest is.

Thus, we are able to define our own role. Neither of us get paid for our work – and the minimal advertising revenue is neither here nor there. We thus, effectively, get the same whether we have 10 or 10,000 readers. Neither have we anything to prove, and we have no political ambitions nor any desire to be part of the MSM. We do not need to win any popularity contests or keep sponsors or paymasters happy.

We can, therefore, please ourselves what and when we write, and the manner in which we write. Largely, we do so to please ourselves and, if it pleases others that is a bonus, but not a necessary precondition.

That said, a few readers were "pleased" (or appalled) enough to keep coming back -three million times in all, so we must be doing something right. We ourselves are pleased you did that, and look forward to a few more hits before we finally decide that pulling wings off flies might be more entertaining than blogging – and vacate the field.

COMMENT THREAD

Good to know he is on the job

Shane Richmond is not this blog’s favourite journalist. My colleague had a number of run-ins with him back in the days of Qanagate. He has just cropped up again (well, I expect he has been around but not writing anything worth quoting).

In today’s Daily Telegraph, Mr Richmond is reporting on a row that has been going on in the blogosphere and providing a rather vacuous opinion column on the subject. The row has bubbled up after a certain, supposedly non-political, which usually means vaguely left blogger, called Kathy Sierra became so upset by the various vicious attacks on her by e-mail that she pulled out of a conference and repaired to the withdrawing room with her smelling salts in her hand.

As I pointed out yesterday, there has been a good deal of viciousness in the way right-wing bloggers are attacked, particularly if they happen to be female and/or of ethnic minority, who are never, never allowed to stray off massa liberal’s plantation.

There have been plenty of attacks on the left-wing blogs on right-wing black achievers, like Condi Rice (described as Brown Sugar and worse), Colin Powell and Justice Clarence Thomas (best not to read what was said about him or wished on him).

Michelle Malkin has had to put up with abuse of the first order. Other right-wing bloggers have been abused in no uncertain terms. Jeff Goldstein of ProteinWisdom was stalked by a demented left-wing academic for quite a long time before he finally managed to deal with the situation. (I have read some of the stuff the woman posted and it is indescribably disgusting.)

None of this bothered the great and the good and it still does not bother Shane Richmond, who merely reports that in the wake of the Sierra incident, as if it were the beginning of it all, doomed attempts are being made, not least by the BlogHer women bloggers’ network, who has been remarkably quiet about Malkin or LaShawn Barber, to control the blogosphere and its commenters.

Anyone who wants to see an entertaining discussion on the subject might like to watch this tape of Mary Katharine Ham of Townhall.com taking on Arianna Huffington of HuffingtonPost. (And to think that I can remember Ms Huffington when she was right-wing and Republican.)

Tim O'Reilly, an American publisher, has asked readers of his blog to help him create a set of rules for online debates. But leading bloggers have dismissed the initiative as well-meaning but misguided. They argue that such a code would be unenforceable and restrict free speech.

The story is not new and Mr O’Reilly has had numerous replies, some more polite than others to his suggestion. If Mr O’Reilly wants to create rules on his blog, he is welcome to it but his rules will not be the same as anybody else’s. What he and his cohorts would like to see, I suspect, though Mr Richmond makes no mention of it, is legislation to control the way the blogosphere develops.

As it happens, there are plenty of examples that could be followed and if Mr Richmond is really looking for news on the subject of cyberspace he might like to think about what is happening in Russia.

Bloomberg News reports that last month’s Russian presidential decree, which set up a new agency to supervise the media and the internet is beginning to bite. The internet and the burgeoning blogosphere (seriously behind such countries as China or Iran) remained the only part of the Russian information industry that was not under government control. No longer.

In December, a court in the Siberian region of Khakassia shut down the Internet news site Novy Fokus for not registering as a media outlet. The site, known for its critical reporting, reopened in late March after it agreed to register and accept stricter supervision.

Antikompromat.ru, which wrote about Putin's pre-presidential business interests, had to find a U.S. Web server after a Russian service provider pulled the plug March 28, saying it had been warned by officials to stop hosting the site.

Last year, the authorities shut down a Web site called Kursiv in the city of Ivanovo, northeast of Moscow, that lampooned Putin as a "phallic symbol of Russia" for his drive to increase the birthrate.

Looks like the presidential campaign in Russia is gearing up as early as that in America though developments are slightly different. President Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, has denied that any of it has anything to do with trying to control the internet, goodness me, how could anybody even think of that.

Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said that Russia was not restricting media freedom and that the new agency was not aimed at policing the Web.

"If you watch TV, even federal TV channels, you'll hear lots of criticism of the government," Peskov said in an interview. "This new agency will be in charge of licensing. It's not about controlling the Internet."

Hmm. I wonder what Mr Richmond will say about it, if anything, maybe on his excruciatingly dull blog.

Meanwhile Der Spiegel has an interesting article about bloggers in the Muslim world who are trying to speak on such subjects as civil society and women’s rights. The last of these means, in the first place, not being murdered by their families when they had been raped, possibly by another relative. (Western left-wing feminists, are you listening?)

Read the whole piece about these extremely brave people, men and women, bloggers and journalists, who dare to speak out against a powerful and oppressive system. Maybe Mr Shane Richmond and the people he finds so fascinating will take up the cause.

COMMENT THREAD

Not a pretty sight

Another, hitherto unseen photograph of last year's Qana tragedy has emerged, courtesy of Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs, attracting from him the label "media swarm".

The photograph is taken by Jeroen Oerlemans, The Netherlands, Panos Pictures, and the caption reads: "Paramedics show the dead body of a baby to the press after Israeli bombing of Qana, Lebanon, 30 July."

At first sight, it appears to be the reverse view of the now infamous dead baby shots (see below right), where the eponymous "Green Helmet" lifts the baby for the world to see, immortalised by Associated Press's Cathy Gannon, who described the scene:

After hours of digging in the blistering heat, Salam Daher emerged from the wreckage with the body of a 9-month-old baby, a blue pacifier still pinned to its nightshirt. He held the infant up and, click, an Associated Press photographer snapped another picture of Daher, in his trademark green helmet, displaying a civilian victim of Israeli bombs for the world to see.

However, on close scrutiny, this cannot be the original "dead baby" staging. That was set up immediately outside the basement. There is only a narrow strip of ground there, before the land falls away in a precipitous cliff. Yet the background in this new photograph is flat – you can see two figures in the distance.

The real giveaway is the cast of characters. The baby is being held by a man we call the "senior Red Cross worker". We see him many times in the Qana shots, but he is not in the original "dead baby" scenes, where the baby is held aloft for the cameras.

We do have "senior Red Cross worker" in another scene though. But this is round the corner from the basement opening, to the front of the house, where "Green Helmet" and sundry others pose with the baby, before its body is put on a stretcher for another pose and camera shot.

From the look of it, therefore, this shot, where the baby is held aloft, is an entirely new sequence which we have not seen before. That none of the shots seem to have been used seems unsurprising. The photographers are crowded in so tightly, they are spoiling the shot.

Charles Johnson offers an explanation as to why they could not be used. "Because," he says, "it really wrecks the suspension of disbelief that actors need to convince the audience. It's like seeing the scaffolds and lights and fake landscapes behind the scenes at a theater, in the middle of a performance."

With these, there must be hundreds if not thousands of unused shots, the sum of which would readily confirm that which we have long argued, with the limited, poor quality material available to us. But it is highly significant that, through the height of the controversy and subsequently, not one of the photographers who had been at Qana on 30 July – or any of their editors – broke ranks.

Bearing in mind that more material could only have strengthened our thesis - so strong is the evidence already gathered - the silence tells its own story. This is the omerta of the media mafia. As Charles wrote:

The Qana photographs are some of the most gut-wrenching, heart-breaking images you could ever imagine. And that's why it's important to recognize that there are people with souls so dead and intentions so evil that they will cynically use these photographs to manipulate your feelings.

And the oh sooooo responsible media not only went along with it but denied it had happened, and their role in it. The photograph we show today provides a tiny window into their dark world, and it is not a pretty sight.

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A bunch of festering amateurs

We went to great lengths to dissect the Qana pictures, alleging that the news agencies – and Associated Press in particular – were working to their own agendas.

But, in the above picture issued by AP, datelined 28 December, we have evidence of a darker, more disturbing secret, borne out by the caption which reads: "Old Bradley fighting vehicles line the grounds around the BAE systems plant in Lemont Furnace, Pa."

This and the picture here refer to a Sharewatch story, the lead paragraph opening:

The Bradley Fighting Vehicles, stripped of their treads, scarred and simply worn down from being driven long miles in harsh desert conditions, are the latest of hundreds refurbished or upgraded annually by their maker, BAE Systems -- one of many defense contractors whose business has grown throughout five years of fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq.

For reference, this is a picture of a Bradley, and here are details of something else.

What the pictures demonstrate is that, in AP, we have a bunch of festering amateurs. And, if they can't get simple, glaringly obvious details right, how on earth can we trust them with more politically sensitive information where the interpretation of a picture might rest entirely on the text of a caption?

The answer is given partly by Michelle Malkin, who is also having some fun with some photographs, partly by Little Green Footballs, and by others. And, if you need it spelling out, the answer is dead simple - you cannot trust anything the agencies produce unless the veracity is self evident from what is offered, or the detail can be independently verified.

SILENT EDIT ALERT

The pictures are still up but there have been "silent edits". One caption now reads: "Piles of treads (tracks, shurely? - ed) are stacked on pallets around old military equipment that line the grounds around the BAE Systems plant in Lemont Furnace, Pa." The other is below:

Click on each picture, to show the "before" and "after".

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It was bound to happen

See here. Despite this this, why do I think we aren't even laying a glove on them?

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