Be skeptical ... be very skeptical

[Dover]

Fearmongering is wearing thin...must be time to up the ante.


Be skeptical ... be very skeptical
By M K Bhadrakumar

One of the significant contributions to the "war on terror" by Britain's home secretary David Blunkett before his abrupt departure from the Tony Blair cabinet last year was his statement on terrorism in the House of Commons that specifically flagged the possibility of a "dirty bomb" being planted in Britain by terrorists.

That was in November 2002, when preparations were already in an advanced stage for the march to Baghdad. We are still waiting for the dirty bomb and its lethal radiation. The dirty bomb genre, however, provoked two years later a brilliant television series on BBC2 by acclaimed documentary producer Adam Curtis, titled, The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear.

Curtis's argument was that much of the threat of international terrorism turns out to be in actuality "a fantasy that has been exaggerated and distorted by politicians ... In an age when all the grand ideas have lost credibility, fear of a phantom enemy is all the politicians have left to maintain their power."

Curtis placed al-Qaeda terrorism in a long line of dramatic panics in Britain's checkered history since the Elizabethan era, which included the arrival of Spanish raiding parties, French revolutionary agitators, anarchists, Bolsheviks, and Irish republicans.

Naturally, Curtis comes readily to mind a week after British authorities arrested some two dozen Muslims on August 10 for plotting to blow up trans-Atlantic flights from United Kingdom to the United States. Not a shred of evidence has since seen the light of day in this Mother of all Dastardly Plots.

Meanwhile, wild stories of new plots in the making are in circulation. The latest was the "breaking news" regarding the emergency landing of an aircraft in Boston on Wednesday due to the tantrums of an "unruly" woman passenger. Last weekend, Michigan police locked up three hapless Palestinian-Americans for allegedly plotting an act of terrorism. The three "terrorists" were caught red-handed purchasing 80 cell phones from a Wal-Mart store...cont'd

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/HH18Df03.html

[Dover]

1. Exploding the 'terrorist' neuron bomb

Here's some more commentary on the ill-defined word, "terrorist". Don't agree with this author about 9/11's perpetrators, but agree that from the getgo, Bushco's propaganda teams have twisted words and their definitions to justify their means.
I think the 9/11 /Al Qaeda link was their core foundational lie to launch the 'war on terror'.
All terrorist lies eminated from this source. If this foundation crumbles, so goes the whole lie pyramid.
I mean, how many Al Qaeda leaders ever saw a courtroom? Their Al Qaeda "leaders" were purportedly killed in the field. A mysterious bunch, eh? Where is the evidence? There's about as much evidence as was recently found to connect the British airline bombers to Al Qaeda. And yet the lie continues to be perpetuated in our media without investigating it's basis. Oh well, don't get me started!




Aug 17, 2006

Exploding the 'terrorist' neuron bomb
By Ian Williams

What do Nelson Mandela, Michael Collins, Archbishop Makarios, Menachim Begin, Yasser Arafat, Yitzhak Shamir, Eamon DeValera and Jomo Kenyatta have in common, apart from having being heads of state?

As everybody knows, but few remember, they were all vilified as "terrorists" by the British or American authorities.

Ronald Reagan branded Mandela's African National Congress a terrorist organization - and to be fair, it did commit some terrorist acts, while the ancestors of Likud blew up the King David Hotel, assassinated the highest British official in the Middle East during the war against the Nazis, and gunned down United Nations representative Count Folke Bernadotte for trying to negotiate a peace settlement.

I have been on several Fox and MSNBC shows recently where the hosts admitted that Israel is failing in Lebanon, and that it was a mistake to begin the invasion, not least because there is no exit strategy (maybe they don't intend to leave). But then they will round on me because I will not describe Hezbollah as "terrorist". In fact I use the same formula that British diplomats (in the better days of a more independent foreign policy) used: "A group that sometimes commits terrorist acts." Needless to say, this does not satisfy pro-Israeli anchormen - in fact, it gives them an excuse to grandstand their fury.


Their use of the concept illustrates the reason for my refusal. Words like "terrorism" and "terrorist" are no longer definitions - they are evasions, often deliberate, of vital issues, no more so than in the "war on terror".

This is not merely sloppy use of vocabulary. It is precisely targeted phrasing and intended to terrorize dissent. Especially in the binary, Manichaean mindset of the US and Likudnik Israel, once a group has been labeled "terrorist" it becomes the epitome of evil and to suggest that any of their arguments have any justice makes one a terrorist supporter. Using these words shuts down the higher cerebral functions of many of the listeners.

Of course, it is difficult to be dispassionate about blood and dismembered bodies, but in the interests of preventing more of the same, we should take a step backwards.

According to Kofi Annan, who was trying to get governments to agree on a definition at the United Nations last year, an act is terrorism "if it is intended to cause death or serious bodily harm to civilians or non-combatants with the purpose of intimidating a population or compelling a government or an international organization to do or abstain from doing any act." This was, incidentally, also the phrasing used by the first Chair of the Security Council Committee on Terrorism, UK Ambassador Sir Jeremy Greenstock...cont'd

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HH17Ak03.html

[KoKo]

2. Thanks for post, Dover. I've bookmarked to read the articles....n/t

[Straight Shooter]

3. Rove to bushbots: "Be gullible ... be very gullible." n/t

[rman]

4. ...is all the politicians have left to maintain their power...

especially in the face of the two biggest problems ever faced by contemporary mankind: the coming climate change, and the end of the age of cheap oil.

If democracies are maintained, both problems will wreak havoc on the capitalist economic model of eternal growth. In the not to distant future, aggregation of wealth by a few at the expense of the many can only be continued by means of more oppression of populations.