Tory Spin Merchant Caught Out Over PMQs "Edit"

It's one of those Monday's when I feel that light entertainment is the order of the day. In situations such as these, we are fortunate to have the output of the UK's number one political blogger to amuse us.

Iain Dale: Brown's Spin Merchants Caught Out Over PMQs Edit

You may remember that during PMQs on Wednesday that Harriet Harman is caught shaking her head when David Cameron says "can we ever believe a word the Prime Minister says?". Here's the BBC footage. It's a few seconds into the video. And here's the Sky footage which shows the same.

However, if you watch the version on the Number Ten website it has clearly been edited - or rather, Harriet Harman has been edited out. Click HERE and then click on October 10 WMV.

All broadcasters get the same feed. It can ONLY have been edited afterwards by the Number Ten Communications team. What a disgrace. They are public servants paid for by the taxpayer. They are not paid to save Harriet Harman's or the Prime Minister's embarrassment.

And people wonder why I refuse to promote Number Ten petitions. If this doesn't show that Brown's lot are spinning in exactly the way Blai's oppos used to, then I don't know what does.

I hope Iain has a spittle guard for his PC.

Here are two screenshots of an unrelated part of those same "edited" videos.

BBC

No 10

Can you spot the difference?

Yes, Downing Street's video is 4:3 format and the BBC's is 16:9. This is not a new innovation introduced specifically for this session. The result is that Harriet Harman can't be seen in the Downing Street version. She's is the 4:3 twilight zone.

This can ONLY be the result of a vast leftwing conspiracy, the Number Ten communications team clearly insisting on the 4:3 format when the service was launched because they knew this day would come. What a disgrace...

The comments are equally amusing. In the first, Michael P quite politely points out the undeniably fact that Iain is mistaken. Others joined in and Iain even felt the need to publish one of his famous non-retraction retractions:

UPDATE: A commenter reckons this is because on the No 10 website the videos are in 4:3 whereas the BBC & Sky use 16:9. That is entirely possible I suppose, but if you look at the Cameron wideshot it seems similar to the No 10 site, whereas when it goes to Brown the close-up is far more marked than you would expect.

How gracious. In fact, Iain has yet again refused to state that he was wrong and instead only points out that "a commenter reckons" he's talking complete nonsense. This then allows his band of barking seals to attack the credibility of the aforementioned commenter, despite the fact that he's made an entirely valid point. Like this from "bebopper":

I see the Labour trolls are back. Welcome back chaps. No doubt, you've been nursed in field hospitals during these trying times, hoping forlornly for a ticket back to Blighty.

Well, you're back on the front, so what have you got, apart from aprehension?
Has General Brown promised it will be all over by Christmas?

Textbook.

The entirely valid criticism now successfully dismissed, the thread can continue as normal. "Nice one bebopper" say the next two comments. The next, implicitly boosting the truth of Iain's claim, says "Poor Gordon, mocks and taunts ringing in his ears, no wonder he's becoming so sensitive! Maybe women we'll [sic] like him better now he's to be pitied?".

The modern classic, "The Left has never been about truth - it is about getting power." also makes an appearance in glorious ironicolour. The thread continues with various other comments in support of Iain's post.

And all of this is in a post bemoaning the disgraceful spinning of others. Now that's entertainment.

From the Pale and Downtrodden

I make no apologies for continuing to post regularly about the plight of Iraqi employees of the British government.

The other day, Nick Cohen addressed the problem in the way that only he could as part of his latest attempt to convince himself that he alone occupies the moral high ground. In the now all to familiar style, he bemoaned the fact that not enough attention was being paid to the people who are actually doing the killing in Iraq. "Many find it impossible to declare who is killing interpreters, Christians and soldiers, and why" he declared*.

What then would Nick Cohen make of David Miliband's blog post today on the subject of Iraqi employees? Miliband goes one step further and completely avoids mentioning the fact that trhis policy is needed because some of these people are being killed and many others live in fear for their lives. No mention. At all.

Comments are open on Miliband's blog if you wish to express your opinion. If you do, please take care to be scrupulously polite. I'm not joking. Hostility will not help over there. Be polite!

Doing my best to see this from "the other side", I can see that this is a tricky situation for the government. They are desperately trying to claim that the south of Iraq is a success story and that security situation has improved to the extent that British troops can withdraw. The fact that Iraqi employees of the British are in grave danger makes a mockery of this assertion and is politically embarrassing for the government. As a consequence, they're trying to publicise a policy to deal with a problem which they don't want to acknowledge even exists. The result is the half-hearted effort announced at the beginning of the week.

And that's where any attempt to see the government's point of view breaks down. Avoiding political embarrassment versus saving people's lives? There's no way I can even begin to understand anyone who chooses the former over the latter.

As it stands, the government's policy will save some lives but leave many others to their fate. Please do consider writing to your MP to lobby for a further change in policy. Dan Hardie has all the information you need.

Finally, on a positive note, I emailed my MP Robert Smith yesterday to ask him to consider signing EDM 2057. This morning, I got a reply from his office saying that he had done so. Well done that man.

* I have more I'd like to say about Cohen's latest effort but not here. Maybe in another post.

In Other News... (Updated)

The day after Cameron's "unscripted" conference speech, I concluded a post on public disaffection with party politics with these words:

Gordon Brown is hardly an innocent bystander in this. More on that in another post.

In the days since, 10 Downing Street has been redecorated in the colour of its occupant and there's an electric fan in desperate need of a clean. The post I intended to write no longer seems necessary. Brown's attempts to portray himself as above party politics while politicking like Tony Blair on heat were always going to lead to disaster and so they have. His antics even put me in the invidious position of having to agree with Michael Howard yesterday. I feel dirty...

But Howard's point (on Wednesday's Newsnight) was unarguable. No-one, and I do mean no-one, believed Brown's excuses for not calling an election. Let's not mince words. Brown was lying to the British people. No-one likes to be lied too, not least when the lie is so obvious as to suggests that the liar thinks you're a gullible fool. Labour mouthpieces might try to downplay the significance of this moment but that'll only make it worse. It was a major misjudgement.

In fact, it could have been the moment when Brown lost any chance of wining an election but for the fact that Cameron is not entirely honest either. See his "I've not got a script" claim for further details.

What's needed, clearly, is a thorough and expensive review to analyse the reasons why the public feels such large levels of disaffection and distrust towards our politicians. This review will need to come up ways to encourage people to think of politicians as contestants on Big Brother. It should also put forward a number of gimmicks which will make it easier for people to vote. Ideally, it will recommend that people should be able to vote without engaging their brain in the process in any way whatsoever...

We deserve better than this.

Update

Unity has written an interesting post which addresses another segment on Newsnight last night. This related to a documentary which asked politicians to support a bill which would make their lies a criminal offence. I should say that I hadn't seen this part of the programme when I wrote the above because we only get the first 30 minutes of Newsnight up here before cutting away to Newsnight Scotland.

(As an aside, I like Newsnight Scotland but not the fact that the two broadcasts overlap. I missed, for example, Paxman's famously amusing attempts at the weather until I read about them on the interwebs.)

I have now watched the segment and have to say that the proposal to make political lies criminal offences is very silly indeed. It would lead to all sorts of politically motivated court cases from anyone and everyone and it's hard to see how the judicial system could fail to be politicised if this were ever to become law. It's a non-starter.

My own view is that a fundamental reform of the voting system is what's required. The FPTP system creates a closed market in which choices are few and quality is low. It is small "c" conservative in nature so it is very difficult for the public to hold politicians to account in any real way or to express their desire for real change, especially when the two potential parties of government are equally unscrupulous in their politics. There is very little incentive for either party to significantly improve their standing among the general public. All they need to do to win power is to appear to be a little bit less horrid than their rivals in the eyes of a few hundred thousand people in marginal consistencies.

It is a quite perverted state of affairs. Abolishing the closed shop of the FPTP system is essential if there is to be even a chance of "A New Politics" developing in this country. The problem, of course, is that it is exclusively that same closed shop which has the power to open it up. It's going to take an extraordinary campaign to persuade a majority of MPs to vote for something which will open them up to increased competition. In fact, it'd be like persuading them to act like a herd of Ameglian Major Cows. Maybe Deep Thought could do it* but even it would be pushed.

In the meantime, in the absence of the second greatest computer of all time (fictional) designed by a race of pan-dimensional, hyper-intelligent beings disguised a mice (also fictional) and in the further absence of enough MPs who genuinely put democracy and country above career and party (all too real), nothing will really change. The long slow erosion of trust in politicians and the decline in participation and engagement in the democratic process will continue.

This will (and already does) have real world consequences. "Respect Agendas" launched by those who have themselves squandered any respect them might once have commanded are doomed to failure. Laws passed by people whose moral authority is considered highly suspect will become more and more difficult to enforce. And the government's initial inability to halt the Northern Rock crisis was a sign of things to come. Falling turnouts and growing distrust and disillusionment with our politicians is of more than academic interest.

Almost every political speech these days contains at least five gadzillion uses of the word "change". Let's have it then.

* The Omnicognate Neutron Wrangler could argue all four legs off an Arcturan Megadonkey, but only Deep Thought could persuade it to go for a walk afterwards. I'm a bit of a fan of Douglas Adams. I thought I'd mention it because it might not be obvious...

The Nasty Government

Here's the written statement on Iraqi employees.

There are so many conditions and get out clauses as to make Brown's statement yesterday close to worthless. Tim Worstall highlights the disingenuous nature of this supposed change in policy.

And this:

In addition, interpreters/translators and other Iraqi staff serving in similarly skilled or professional roles necessitating the regular use of written or spoken English, who formerly worked for HMG in Iraq, will be able to apply for assistance for themselves and their dependants provided that they satisfactorily completed a minimum of 12 months’ service, and they were in our employ on or after 1 January 2005.

So if your life is in danger because of your association with HMG but you are unskilled or semi-skilled and don't speak English, the Brown government doesn't care if you die.

Or perhaps they think this is what's happening in Iraq:

Madhi Army militiaman: You are known to have worked with the occupiers. I've got my power drill ready. I just need to check a few details before I drill a hole in your skull.
Former employee of HGM: Please don't kill me. Please don't kill me...
Militiaman: Shut up, traitor. We know that you worked for the occupiers for more than twelve months. Do you deny this?
Former employee: No, but...
Militiaman: And we have heard you speaking English to the occupiers.
Former employee: Yes, but...
Militiaman: And we believe you worked for them in a skilled or professional role.
Former employee: No, that's not true. I worked in the laundry.
Militiaman: Oh, that changes everything. Sorry to have troubled you. Mind how you go ma'am...

What is required is not difficult to understand. The government should offer asylum or a resettlement package to all Iraqis whose lives are at particular risk because they worked for HMG. The families of those at risk should likewise be protected. This needs to happen now. People are dying now.

Brown's pathetic attempt to present the façade that he's doing something while the government pulls out all the stops to do as little as possible makes me feel physically sick. Any faint hope I might have had that Brown would be an improvement over Blair is rapidly fading.

Dan Hardie: Iraqi Employees: Maintain the Pressure

Go read. This weekend's Times article looks increasingly like part of a spoiling tactic to take the wind out of the sails of the campaign meeting on Tuesday.

Gordon will be making an announcement on Iraq at about 3.30pm.

Update

Brown's announcement:

And I am pleased therefore to announce today a new policy which more fully recognises the contribution made by our local Iraqi staff who work for our armed forces and civilian missions in uniquely difficult circumstances.

Existing staff who have been employed by us for more than twelve months and have completed their work will be able to apply for a package of financial payments to aid resettlement in Iraq or elsewhere in the region, or - in agreed circumstances - for admission to the UK. And professional staff --- including interpreters and translators --- with a similar length of service who have left our employ since the beginning of 2005 will also be able to apply for assistance.

We will make a further written statement on the detail of this scheme this week.

Dan's reaction:

The Government are saving some Iraqis threatened with death if they’ve worked for us for 12 months, and abandoning others, equally threatened with death but who’ve worked for less than 12 months. They’re playing a numbers game with people’s lives.

Seconded.

Also, Brown's use of the words "professional staff" suggests that many people who do meet the completely arbitrary 12 month condition will still be left to their fate.

This simply is not good enough.

By the way, Des Browne, in an C4 News interview discussing this and other matters relating to Iraq, just said:

What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

He was talking about Brown's bad week in politics, not about the abandonment of Iraqis in genuine danger of losing their lives. Humanity is an alien concept to this man. The fucking insensitive bastard.

If I were honest with all of you...

If only.

Democracy in Action

The spin and hype surrounding David Cameron's "unscripted" speech still makes me laugh. Does it comfort you to know that he spent all that time memorising his lines so that he'd come across as talking from the heart? Would he continue to do that if he won the election?

Civil servant: Prime Minister, we have an urgent matter of national security which needs your immediate attention.
Dave the boy wonder: No can do. I'm in the middle of memorising my off the cuff remarks for next week's press conference. Come back in a few hours...

That'll work.

It was impressive that he managed to remember so much, I grant you, but then, Christopher Biggins can also memorise lines (for panto, you know) and I wouldn't want him running the country.

Anyway, his "unscripted" speech was a veritable smorgasbord of crowd pleasing measures adrift in a sea of wishful thinking. Here's one example. He said that "we need to scrap that early release scheme in prisons". I'm afraid I don't have the time to look up the figures but given that most prisoners serve approximately half of their sentence, we're talking here about nearly doubling the number of prison places and the amount of "tax payers money" (copyright of the Conservative Party) spent on the prison budget. Can anyone tell me if this Daily Mail wet dream has been fully costed?

(By the way, I love the way that some on the right criticise the BBC for allegedly adopting a "government should spend more money" approach to every problem. Because the right wing press and the Conservatives never do this... )

There was lots of that sort of thing: national citizen service, increased spending on the armed forces, ending the couple's penalty in the benefit system, a pension "lifeboat" fund and talk of tax cuts too. Just how quickly will the economy have to grow to fund all this stuff? Fantastically quickly, it would seem.

The speech was filled with just the sort of vacuous promise filled guff which brought Blair to power way back in 1997. Blair's broken promises damaged trust in the democratic process in the UK enormously and led to the historically low turnouts of 2001 and 2005. Cameron's decision to adopt a similar approach may well lead to even lower turnouts somewhere down the line. At the risk of sounding over dramatic, I genuinely believe that British democracy could be in a real spot of bother before too long. That will be of no concern to Cameron of course, as long as he wins the next election.

(I should add that Gordon Brown is hardly an innocent bystander in this. More on that in another post.)

Sometimes, it's the details the MSM don't tell you which tell you the most.

So why did these journalists fail to mention the splendid jollies thrown their way by Mr Usmanov? Most of their readers have only ever travelled on scheduled or, shudder, charter flights so maybe they didn't think their readers would be able to understand the concept of luxury private jets. Likewise with the hotel. What would be the point of explaining five star hotels to people whose idea of luxury is discovering that they can keep the half roll of toilet paper left behind by the previous occupants of the self-catering apartment in Benidorm? That'll be it, no doubt...

Anyway, I'm sure the journalists and their editors were extremely grateful to Mr Usmanov for footing the undoubtedly very large bill for this trip. Anything else would be just rude!

While we're on the subject of football (sort of but any excuse), Aberdeen have qualified for the group stages of the UEFA Cup. No really, they have.

*dances around*

Apologies for the temporary lack of posting. I seem to have some sort of infection and it feels like my brain has been replaced with twice as much cotton wool as will comfortably fit inside my skull.

I still managed to raise a smile when I heard that Dave the boy wonder, who is about to start his speech as I write this, will be speaking "from the heart" today. Apparently, rehearsing and memorising a heavily scripted speech will give his words a thin veneer of added credibility and sincerity.

Isn't it great to see our politicians putting aside their obsession with spin and presentation and tackling the big issues head on?

Who's Side Are You On?

The actions of this terrorist have turned the spotlight on liberals, libertarians and all those others opposed to the ever expanding power of the state. It is time for them to make a choice.

Will they renounce their dangerous opposition to ID Cards and the National Database? Will they publicly support the rapid expansion of the government's entirely secure DNA database? Will they wholeheartedly and sincerely endorse the government's national children's database? (And will they also support the perfectly sensible exclusion for the children of the people who made it compulsory for everyone else's children to be included?)

Will they renounce the ridiculous idea that there could be any legitimate reason to oppose the government's expansion of its ability to monitor its subjects in ever greater detail? And will they acknowledge that there are absolutely no legitimate grievances against the actions of the government.

At this crucial moment, it is to be hoped that these liberals will finally accept what all civilised people have always known; the government always knows best.

But I fear that many will not. A large number will continue to actively justify and support the actions of despicable terrorists. They will embrace violence rather than rejecting it. Many, brainwashed by the extremist philosophies of John Stuart Mill, will refuse to accept that their so called grievances are based on a dangerous, discredited and out-dated belief system. They will refuse to acknowledge the utter lack of credibility of their "arguments", despite the fact that their facile nature has been proved beyond doubt by these vicious letter bomb attacks. It is impossible to see how refusal to accept this can be anything other than a wilful denial of reality fuelled by an unthinking hatred of the government.

These apologists should know this; you're either with us or against us in the fight against terror! Anyone who refuses to actively combat this dangerous ideology will be held accountable for their inactivity.

Well liberals, what's it to be?

And remember, the government will know which side you choose to take. They always know...

The "P" Word

I sometimes wonder whether it's a good idea to use the word "propaganda" as often as I do. The worry is that it can sound too strident and that that can have the effect of damaging the credibility of my arguments. The "establishment" (for want of a better word) has long been keen to frame critics as barking extremists as a handy way of avoiding having to directly argue their case. The way that opposition to the replacement of the UK's nuclear weapons delivery system was portrayed is a perfect example of this. Accusing dissenters of "playing fast and loose with the defence of the nation" is apparently enough to discredit any and all of their arguments.

So I worry that the use of the word "propaganda" by myself and by others with similar views helps those who want the barking mentalist tag to stick. But then I watch Fox News, that marvel of the free market media, and these worries tend to disappear. Here's an example of their attitude towards Iran (via). One of the two interviewers is apparently a Democrat strategist. See if you can spot which one it is.



Not easy, is it? The answer, if you're interested, is Kirsten Powers.

To move on to the content of the piece, I could pick it apart bit by bit but there was one stand out moment which I'll focus on. This gem on the alleged Iranian nuclear weapons programme came from Michael Ledeen:

And remember, they've sworn to use it against Israel as soon as they get it.

He really did say that. Watch it if you don't believe me.

Given that the Iranians consistently deny that they are even developing nuclear weapons, it seems a bit odd that they would have sworn to use weapons they don't have and claim not to have any interest in acquiring. Whatever you might think of the meaning of Ahmadinejad's infamous statement*, the suggestion that the Iranian regime has sworn to use nuclear weapons against Israel at the first opportunity is simply ridiculous.

And how did fearless truth seeking Mr Hannity respond to Ledeen's nonsensical claim?

Yeah.

Paxman, he is not.

Now, I'm all for free speech. Free speech is great. But there's a word for the dissemination of misleading or simply untrue information in order to further a political agenda. What is it again? Starts with a P...

* Here is the context of the infamous speech via MEMRI, an organisation not known for its sympathetic coverage of Muslims:

"'When the dear Imam [Khomeini] said that [the Shah's] regime must go, and that we demand a world without dependent governments, many people who claimed to have political and other knowledge [asked], 'Is it possible [that the Shah’s regime can be toppled]?'

"'That day, when Imam [Khomeini] began his movement, all the powers supported [the Shah's] corrupt regime… and said it was not possible. However, our nation stood firm, and by now we have, for 27 years, been living without a government dependent on America. Imam [Khomeni] said: 'The rule of the East [U.S.S.R.] and of the West [U.S.] should be ended.' But the weak people who saw only the tiny world near them did not believe it.

"'Nobody believed that we would one day witness the collapse of the Eastern Imperialism [i.e. the U.S.S.R], and said it was an iron regime. But in our short lifetime we have witnessed how this regime collapsed in such a way that we must look for it in libraries, and we can find no literature about it.

"'Imam [Khomeini] said that Saddam [Hussein] must go, and that he would be humiliated in a way that was unprecedented. And what do you see today? A man who, 10 years ago, spoke as proudly as if he would live for eternity is today chained by the feet, and is now being tried in his own country...

"'Imam [Khomeini] said: 'This regime that is occupying Qods [Jerusalem] must be eliminated from the pages of history.' This sentence is very wise. The issue of Palestine is not an issue on which we can compromise.

Ahmadinejad is undoubtedly vehemently opposed to the existence of the state of Israel in its current form. The often overlooked point is that he was talking about bringing about the end of the "regime", not about physically wiping a country of the map.

The King of Spin

Sometimes Iain Dale almost writes these posts himself.

Yesterday, he attacked an article by Sunny Hundal on Comment is Free. In the article, Sunny argues that then BBC is increasingly bending to the will of the vocal rightwing internet lobby which seeks to undermine its credibility.

Rather than tackling the wider point, I want to focus on one part of Iain's post. It is this:

But now we come to the most idiotic part of Sunny's article, for in this next paragraph he actually admits that there IS a liberal bias within the BBC, which surely undermines everything which precedes it.

Now, to my main point. For many of us on the liberal left, the BBC is a useful if somewhat increasingly dumbed-down antidote to the hard-right propaganda of most of the press. It keeps us vaguely sane, so we support it.

Quite a revealing admission, wouldn't you say?

This is quite revealing but not in the way Iain imagines.

If you read the entirety of Sunny's article, it is obvious what he actually means. As I explained in the comments to Iain's post, what was meant was that the BBC has been an impartial and credible antidote to the rightwing output of much of the media (septicisle also makes the same point but better). Sunny fears that this impartiality and credibility will be lost if something is not done to counter the pressure applied on the BBC by the rightwing press and the internet lobby. Iain has, either deliberately or unintentionally, misrepresented what Sunny wrote. He certainly didn't contradict the entire thrust of his article by admitting that the BBC has the sort of bias Iain claims it has.

No-one else took up the challenge but Iain himself decided to defend his position.

I have not deliberately misrepresented him at all. I can only go on what he wrote and interpret it. You and I may have different ways of interpreting what he wrote, but that does not mean I am deliberately misrepresenting him. I know Sunny and like Sunny, but I was suprised at the weak arguments he put forward in this rather ranting article.

I say defend...

Iain's "defence" is that there are different interpretations of what Sunny wrote and his is as valid as mine. Apparently, Iain does not accept that there is actually a true and accurate understanding of Sunny's meaning, merely interpretations of what he wrote. That explains why he has no interest in trying to get to the truth of the matter.

In an age when those on the right continually attack the supposed relativism of the left, I find this quite amusing. There is no spoon.

Update

I see that the links to individual comments on Iain's blog are not working again. You'll have to scroll if you want to see them.

Update 2

Thanks to Tim for pointing out that it is possible to link to individual comments on Iain'a blog. Links adapted accordingly.

There is no Spoon

The immediate reaction of Muslims around the world to the attacks of September 11th 2001 has been through the revisionist grinder in fairly major way. There's a growing perception that there were mass celebrations on the streets of the Muslim world in response to these attacks.

I thought take the time to highlight the fact that this is complete nonsense with the help of this handy link from the American Academy of Religion. I'd recommend that you take a moment to read the linked page.

Some of the 1 million Palestinian students who participated in a five minute silence in remembrance of the victims of the terrorist attacks.

Some facts

• Every Palestinian organisation condemned the attacks.
• The US Consul General in Jerusalem received a huge stack of faxes from Palestinians and Palestinian organizations expressing condolences, grief and solidarity and was pained to see that the media chose to focus on the sensational images of a few Palestinians rejoicing.
• Students and professors in East Jerusalem donated blood for the American victims who need it.
• In Iran, Tehran's main soccer stadium observed an unprecedented minute's silence in sympathy with the victims.

These facts do not fit the narrative of the "clash of civilisations" and are slowly disappearing down the memory hole. The US and UK governments have a particular vested interest in having their populations forget how much goodwill their "war" on terror policies have squandered.

Personally, I'd prefer it if our governments had to formulate, debate and assess the effectiveness of their policies based on the facts rather than on fictional Hollywood style narratives.

They Hate Our Freedoms

See here for details.

There's an obvious parallel here. In the United States, there is a large section of the political right which has managed to detach itself completely from reality. Michael Ledeen is a case in point. This group employs a number of techniques to spread their fatuous propaganda and have had considerable success. Deliberate attempts to muddy the waters of accepted facts are not uncommon.

Most notably, they ferociously attack the "liberal media" whenever it dares to challenge their "facts" or any part of their fantastic belief systems. Blogging has become one of the key tools used to mobilise their credulous base to apply pressure when necessary. This is blogging not as an enabler of two-way communication but as a platform for propaganda. Any attempts to challenge or even discuss the "holy orthodoxies" in the comment sections of these blogs will either be ignored or met with a horde of mockery and abuse. In this way, they are generally able to avoid having to acknowledge or correct factual errors and evade participating in any serious discussion about their beliefs.

By using these techniques, this group have moved the goalposts to such an extent that much of the media in the US now feels in must provide "balance" by reporting their bizarre beliefs as if they were credible.

In the UK, Dale, Staines and Biased BBC are attempting to adopt a similar model and the BBC is their primary target. Unity explains why here:

The reason that the political right have such an issue with the BBC is not that the BBC is markedly biased against them so much as, in defining the middle ground in news journalism - not what is neutral but what is reasonable - it provides a clear benchmark against which the biases of other news outlets can be readily assessed and evaluated by the general public.

The existence of the BBC as a respected news source means that people like Michael Ledeen have no credibility in this country when they claim that Iraqn was responsible for the September 11th terrorist attacks.

For most people, that can only be a good thing.

Update

Bush Announces American Withdrawal From Reality. Heh!

The Wibble-Based Community

Michael Ledeen, resident scholar at Bush administration's favourite think tank, the American Enterprise Institute, has just released a book. It's called "The Iranian Time Bomb".

I've not read it and have no intention of lining the man's pockets by buying a copy but I have read this review in the NYT (via a post well worth reading in full by Barnet Rubin). Here's the paragraph which particularly caught my eye:

“The Iranian Time Bomb” has its strengths. On the topic of Iran’s repression of women and ethnic minorities, for instance, it is genuinely moving. But Ledeen’s effort to lay virtually every attack by Muslims against Americans at Tehran’s feet takes him into rather bizarre territory. He says the 1998 bombings of the United States Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania “were in large part Iranian operations,” which would come as news to the 9/11 Commission, which attributed them solely to Al Qaeda. He says Shiite Iran was largely behind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a man famous for his genocidal hatred of Shiites. He claims that “most” Iraqi insurgents are “under Iranian guidance and/or control,” not just Shiite warlords like Moktada al-Sadr, but Sunni militants as well — the very people who say they are fighting to prevent Iranian domination. In Ledeen’s view, in fact, Sunni-Shiite conflict — the very thing that most observers think is tearing Iraq apart — is largely a mirage, because Iran controls both sides. And Al Qaeda is a mirage too, a mere front for the regime in Tehran. “When you hear ‘Al Qaeda,’ ” Ledeen writes, “it’s probably wise to think ‘Iran.’ ” Not surprisingly, he thinks the mullahs were probably behind 9/11.

Just in case there's any doubt, Ledeen is not a member of the reality-based community.

But he's also not just some guy. He is, as I said, a resident scholar at the Bush administration's favourite think tank. The "think" in think tank is apparently a euphemism for "We are tremendously sexually stimulated by the enormous gun on the front of a lovely big" in this case.

(Perhaps unsurprisingly, Ledeen is also a member of Benador Associates, the agency which brought us Amir Taheri of yellow badges for Jews in Iran fame.)

Ledeen's desperate attempts to tie Iran to the attacks of September 11th might be more than just propaganda. Similarly, the Bush administration's plan to designate the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organisation may have a deeper significance.

In the immediate aftermath of the September 11th attacks, Congress passed a joint resolution on the Authorisation for Use of Military Force. It is obvious to anyone with the slightest attachment to reality that this resolution absolutely does not authorise the President to use military force against Iran without Congressional approval. For the Bush administration on the other hand, well, you wouldn't be surprised, would you?

The Credulous Conservative

Yesterday, Tim Mongomerie of ConservativeHome fame gave his opinion on "the surge" in a post on Comment is Free. It is an astonishing piece in many ways.

Here is just one point which was picked up by myself and several other CiFers. Mongomerie, referring to General Patraeus's testimony, wrote this:

He presented independently verified data that showed a significant reduction in fatalities - particularly in Baghdad.

Independently verified data? Really? I must have missed that.

What link does Tim use to substantiate this claim? A link to an NGO perhaps? No, it's a link to the slides produced by the Pentagon to accompany the general's statement. Not hugely independent then.

Perhaps this independent verification refers to something Patraeus said in his testimony which I missed. I checked. What Patraeus actually said (pdf) was this:

Two US intelligence agencies recently reviewed our methodology, and they concluded that the data we produce is the most accurate and authoritative in Iraq.

It is well known that there are significant rivalries between the various sections of the US national security apparatus but they do all ultimately work for the same government. To suggest that three arms of that apparatus backing each others claims has anything to do with independent verification would clearly be absurd.

Furthermore, these intelligence agencies stand accused of fixing the intelligence and facts around a predetermined policy to enable this war in the first place. This was made clear to the British government way back in July 2002. Forgive me if I don't automatically assume that the statements of these agencies are god given gospel. (This may be a cliché but it is a cliché because it is true.)

After years of fatuous US government pronouncements on the situation in Iraq, pronouncement which have proved to be facile time and time again, only the most credulous individual would continue to take these claims at face value. When it comes to Iraq, healthy scepticism of the US government's proclamations is not an optional extra but an essential component of any attempt to get to the truth of the matter.

But not, apparently, for Mr Montgomerie. He's clearly not an idiot and I'm pretty sure he's not writing satire so what is he doing? The only answer I can come up with is that he's propagating and propagandising statements which he himself knows not to be true. For the greater good, you understand...

We'll Say Anything, We Will

There seems to be something in the air this week. On Monday, Tory poster boy Iain stuck it too the big supermarkets for being beastly to traditional Conservative voters. Maybe he believes that putting political expediency before principle is a good way to rebuild public confidence in the integrity of the political system.

Yesterday, the Tories launched "It's Time to Fight Back" (pdf) proving first of all that they really didn't think very hard about the title of their document on ways to decrease violence in the UK.

The report contains this:

Parents need the support of wider society. Too often, the positive lessons learnt by children at home are undermined by negative lessons taught by popular culture... [T]he music industry, and in particular the lyrics and videos of rap, hip-hop and R&B... often explicitly popularise gangs, guns, a culture of unconstrained acquisition, and...

Hold on a minute there. Promoting "a culture of unconstrained acquisition" is a negative lesson? For the Tories?

Now you really are 'avin a giraffe.

Oh dear. It looks like Iain's dog whistle is malfunctioning. That post was only supposed to be noticed by farmers and other country folk, not people with awkward questions about his apparent abandonment of conservative free market principles (see the comments for details). Iain almost sounds like one of those supermarket hating lefties who want us all to eat only beetroot grown on our communal grounds or something...

Ah, the hazards of politics.

Brainwashing the Right

Here's a little riddle.

I believe that Rupert Murdoch, an Australian with US citizenship, has far too much influence over politics in this country and that he uses his media outlets to push his political agenda at every opportunity.

It is accepted by all but the most confused individuals that the output of News Corp is habitually politically biased. It is also undeniable that British politicians feel they must court him in order to ensure that he doesn't set his attack dogs on them and that he has had considerable influence over the policies of New Labour. Lance Price famously described him as the 24th member of Blair's cabinet and he has access to the Prime Minister the likes of which ordinary members of the public could only dream of.

This is not good.

Whenever I try to draw attention to this, there will always be someone who broadly shares Murdoch's political views ready to tell me I'm a patronising git. "That's so typical of a condescending bruschetta munching Guardianista. You assume that the great unwashed are stupid mindless drones being helplessly brainwashed by this bias. People are smarter that that, you know. You leftists just can't come to terms with the fact that people can think for themselves..."

That sort of thing.

Here's the riddle.

Murdoch's newspapers, and others who would benefit from the removal of a reasonably neutral news service, constantly harp on about the damaging affects of the alleged bias of the BBC.

So, can the media shape public opinion or not?

And can I have my cake and eat it a the same time?

(I've left all the rest of the stuff about alleged BBC bias out because I really just want to focus on this one question. You probably won't be surprised to learn that I do already know that the license fee is compulsory for anyone who receives or records television programmes in this country.)

Since the Grant Shapps "1234 incident", I've noticed that Iain Dale has written a few posts on the subject of Labour and the interwebs. Today, taking the lead from Dizzy, he suggests that the Labour Party has been up to no good filming interviews in parliament without permission from the Serjeant at Arms and loading them up onto Google video.

In this case, you can almost hear the straws crackling under his grasp. 15 Labour MPs have filmed interviews in the same spot in Westminster Hall. Given that the filming of interviews is specifically allowed without need for permission in one part of Westminster Hall and given that one of the MPs filmed was the one who gave the answer linked above, I think it's safe to assume that permission wasn't require in this instance.

Scandalous, I'm sure you'll agree.

Still, to give him his due, he did update the post with a sort of acceptance that the videos probably weren't against the rules. What class.

PS: the reason why it was Iain's blog I commented on rather than Dizzy's was because of Iain's post title. Iain has something of a record when it comes to putting forward dodgy propositions in the shape of questions.

Update

I had mistakenly attributed a shred of decency to Iain when I suggested that he'd accepted that the videos were not against the rules. In the comments yesterday evening, he told me he'd done no such thing and that Dizzy was checking with the Serjeant at Arms. I have to admit that I wasn't sure whether Iain and Dizzy would be hugely forthcoming with the answer if it wasn't the one they wanted so I sent an email to the parliamentary authorities asking them to clarify the position regarding those videos.

This morning, I received an reply.

Dear Mr. Hamster,

Filming within Westminster Hall is permitted by the House authorities and was cleared by our office.

I wonder if that'll be enough for Iain?