Showing posts with label spin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label spin. Show all posts

I want to hear the people, not the media.







I want to hear the people, not the media.


I am listening to the people.

I want to hear from the media - how the survivors are being cared for, in detail, to know that they are being cared for with the best, most professional, most loving care possible.

In detail. What institutions and who are doing what....  and how it is working out.

I don't really need to hear a death toll score board being slowly updated in the public domain.

I can wait for the final death toll.

The Survivors and their families and the families of those who died do not need a public theatre, whilst the fire recovery and investigation is under way.

They will likely need to go through this in privacy, in safety, according to their own needs and wishes. Their situation must guide this above all else.

We can wait.

Meanwhile.

I do not want to hear about Inquiries governed by those who bear responsibility for the policies and the way those were implemented that led to this disaster.

I want that Government to stand down, immediately, and allow a national unity alliance to take the helm, and those other parties must put down the party split, there must be no opposition to the will of the people.

They cannot be allowed to investigate themselves, or have a hand in the investigations or access to confidential investigation materials or information or personnel.

The media must cease the drip drip theatre of horror.

Show some respect.

Show due respect.

We have social media, each other and open lines of communication across the grass roots, and we know enough to not need that theatre slammed in our faces day in, day out, as they sell advertising space.

We want facts, we want reliable information, we do not want opinion.

We want fullest expression of duty of care, we want a free hands to be the ones who carry out the investigations, 100% transparently.

That is our legal right. Our moral right.

Put it another way, the current Government, being the Government in power during which the conditions preceding this disaster were altered, cannot be allowed to Govern the investigations 'at arms length' either....

The rest of Parliament has to stand up, and with all due care and attention, do it's duty to the people, who are their paymasters, above and beyond any party political assignations, and pursue the evidence, place responsibility, and be just. Be Just and Robust in carrying out their duty to us all.

No excuses. This is an adult conversation.



Kindest regards

Corneilius

"Do what you love, it's Your Gift to Universe"

Thank you for reading this blog. All we need to do is be really honest, responsive to the evidence we find,and ready to reassess when new evidence emerges. The rest is easy.

Tony Blair: Accountabilty cannot stop with him alone.

Tony Blair's 'essay' on Iraq, Syria etc ::

http://www.tonyblairoffice.org/news/entry/iraq-syria-and-the-middle-east-an-essay-by-tony-blair/

I would like to suggest that he is not alone in accountability for the war crimes of Iraq and Afghanistan, and that meaningful accountability must include all culpable officials and other actors involved. He cannot be set up as a fall guy on his own. To do that would be a failure of equal proportions to the wars themselves.

Here's some pertinent points concerning his recent essay .... some background the mainstream media has avoided like the plague...

1. Blair claims that the underlying problem is "Islamic Fundamentalism". Some of the most extreme Islamic Fundamentalists are the Wahhabist Saudi Regime, Quatar, Bahrain etc - all 'allies' of the West. These States have are Religious Autocracies, and are extreme puritans amongst other things, and been funding attacks on progressive Islamic Social Democracy movements across the Middle East and further afield, since the 1940s, in order to protect their Power, supported by the Western Powers, who also helped to established these States as their local proxies.

2. The popular uprisings in North Africa, and Ukraine have a common thread. A progressive grass roots protest undermined by 'imported' violence from 'foreign fighters' who escalate violence.

This pattern is old, well used and well documented and we know that Power often has a hidden hand in terms of planting paid agent provocateurs within protests and activist communities. It's a standard tactic.

Once that cycle of violence starts things get out of hand quickly and the progressive grass roots movements are sidelined. Until the violence cycle ends. Which is not possible when Western 'military funding and training' is supplied to one side or the other.

This is true in Syria. A state that was/is a Militarized Government : The primary reason the State in Syria is militarized is because an official state of war exists between the Syrian State and the Israeli State.

It also happened in Venezuela, during the failed coup to oust Hugo Chavez in 2002. There were direct links to US support in these events.

The Syrian Government faced a progressive movement, was willing to make concessions (albeit slowly), then that movement was infiltrated by foreign fighters who escalated the violence, even to the extent of invading urban areas, causing locals to flee, which forced the State to defend itself.... then Western allied funding for those foreign fighters increased dramatically whilst laying ALL the blame for the violence on the Syrian State Government.

Thus the  indigenous movement for a Social Democracy is thwarted.

Indigenous Arab Social Democracy is seen as a threat, because it would necessarily involve projects such as Nationalising Resources, stepping away from Western/Eastern power alliances, etc, etc.... this happened also in Ireland in 1916, 1922 and in Northern Ireland in the 60s.

The escalation of violence is a deliberate tactic, and has been deployed many, many times. It's a pattern, and it's intentional.

3. The history of these areas cannot be avoided : the issue goes back to Colonial state line drawing which split communities and installed 'Power' that would work with 'Western Interests' (Corporations, Resource 'Management' etc.) and undermined any local grass roots Social Democracy which sought to develop 'resources' for the grass roots benefits.

4. History is also about patterns.

Look to what has happened in South America and understand that the Western Powers knew what would happen in Iraq because they had practiced it in South America - wars cannot be sustained for much longer than a decade, chaos will follow all wars, a traumatised people will take two or three generations to get back on an even keel, if they have a chance.

In South America the exposure of the US Governments and Corporations direct involvement in horrific practices known as 'counter-insurgency' in the 70s and 80s led to a partial withdrawal from such direct intervention, (the War On Drugs was a cover story to allow the continuation of this direct intervention) which allowed grass roots movements to gain traction and slowly alter the power dynamic. Bolivia, Agrentina, Brazil, Venezuela, Honduras, Equador, Nicaragua, Panama etc etc...

The internet in the late 90s and early 2000s helped the grass roots movements gain support across the world as information became widely more available, and the action of Western Power was exposed.

5. The proliferation of violence in the Middle East and Persia is a direct result of Western support for one side over another...

The Militia that emerged post invasion in Iraq were two fold : The US funded Militarised Police and local shia and sunni, kurdish and secular resistance to them. In other words the US created the civil war. All these groups lived side by side at the grass roots without tension (as they had done for many centuries) and in Saddam's Government were members of each grouping who participated in Power - the divide in Iraq was always along power lines rather than sectarian lines. The US support for one sect and the violence that followed created the sectarianism the now dominates the situation.

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The details of all these patterns are laid out in some detail, very well referenced and evidenced in Naomi Klein's opus: Shock Doctrine. And in that book she warned that the Economic Policies we are subject to in the UK today were on their way. She was correct because she has studied the matter in some depth, and sought out the evidence.

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Blair knows EXACTLY what he is doing - he is lying through his teeth, protecting himself and his allies. His words make sense only if you ignore the wider historical realities and his personal responsibility in causing so much trauma.

Lastly two quotes to illustrate the central problem of Power and the dynamic of integenerational trauma..

Reaching back in time, a quote from Keith Joseph, Conservative Education Minister under Thatcher...1984

"We are in a period of considerable social change. There may be social unrest, but we can cope with the Toxteths. But if we have a highly educated and idle population we may possibly anticipate more serious social conflict. People must be educated to know their place."

This reveals a preoccupation with conditioning the children of each generation to accept the status quo of Power as 'right' and 'normal', even if it causes harm, or trauma to a large part of the population, and even if parts of that population are so hurt, so enraged by their mistreatment that the are reduced to rioting in order to be heard or felt. It shows that Power is happy to accept low level rioting as it is something they can handle, or 'manage' or even utilise.

and

“Like traumatized individuals, traumatized countries need to remember, grieve and atone for their wrongs in order to avoid reliving them.” Judith Herman

I would say the the the UK or 'Great Britain' has not yet gone through the process of honest remembrance, grief or atonement.... and THAT is a big part of this problem.

Certainly Blair has not done this, he as studiously avoided it as have the UK Government. Bear in mind that Blair is calling for more violence, not less violence.

Blair cannot be held meaningfully accountable without exposing the thousands of other officials and other actors who were directly involved in pushing for and prosecuting the illegal and amoral wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to the same degree of accountability.



Kindest regards

Corneilius

Do what you love, it's Your Gift to Universe

Troop Morale, Overstretch and Spin.... truth is truth!

Recent media reports state that at least half of all enlisted personnel in the UK Military are considering leaving.

http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/news/article-1033922/Half-troops-want-quit-armed-forces-fighting-fronts-takes-toll.html

According to the reports this is due to ‘overstretch’.

The UK has around 4000 troops in Iraq, and 8000 in Afghanistan.

The total UK Military is around 150,000. Which means that at any one time there close to 10% of the UK Military is on active combat duty. With three shifts, we might extrapolate that 30% of the Military is on rotation. We know that nearly 90% of all military and reserves have served in Iraq or Afghanistan at one time or another. (my figures are approximate!)

During world war II that percentage was way higher, as were the overall numbers of military personnel. And of course the numbers of dead, wounded and traumatised were also higher. Yet very few ever thought to quitting. Morale was never so low.

Which begs the question : Are these reports correct in their assumption that ‘overstretch’ is the core issue?

Anecdotal evidence suggests that assumption is incorrect, and amounts to yet another ‘sexing up’, a spin on the situation designed to deflect attention from the core problem faced by UK troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.

These wars are illegal. They are also morally wrong.

The brutality that troops almost inevitably bring to their ‘work’ in Iraq and Afghanistan is mostly situational - troops have no clearly defined, uniformed enemy, and must follow orders, even if those orders are illegal, in order to protect themselves and each other. (mutiny on the battlefield is fatal to all concerned as it leads towards vulnerability and chaos)

Once that brutality line is crossed, it is exceedingly difficult to work back towards the original premise - that these wars were about bringing peace and democracy, that there is a clearly defined enemy or an end in sight.

Add to that the blatant profiteering of those who initiated these wars, which is now next to near common knowledge (if not in detail, then in essence), and one begins to see that it is impossible for troops to continue. Better ‘equipment’, better pay will not make the difference. The Emperors nakedness is exposed and no amount of veiling will hide the fact.

What to do?

As a civilian who has great respect for those who do place their lives on the line, who undertake this most dangerous of ‘work’ out of a sense of honour, a sense of patriotism, a sense of wanting to give to the greater whole of society, I suggest the following :

Read the information placed on the www.makewarshistory.org.uk website regarding the Laws Prohibiting War.

http://www.makewarshistory.org.uk/mwh/2008/06/laws-prohibitin.html

Understand these laws, for they easy to understand, they are simple, they are clear.

Then, report the war crimes to your local police station, and demand that those who initiated these wars are held to account, demand that our troops be returned home immediately and give warm support all those troops who wish to no longer follow illegal (and immoral) orders.

Read the letter concerning the payment of taxes to the UK Central Government, and withold your taxes until the above is done.

http://www.makewarshistory.org.uk/mwh/2008/06/paye-letter.html


Do this to protect and honour our troops, and to protect the citizens of Iraq and Afghanistan, to enable them to decide their own future without interference from outsiders whose agenda is fundamentally one of greed - pipelines and the oil that flows through them. Privatised Downsized State Functions and the profits that accrue.

http://www.naomiklein.org/shock-doctrine/resources/part5/chapter14

Do this to honour all those who have died or have been injured or have been traumatised, do this to start the process of healing.

Do this because YOU are a promoter of peace, even if your Government is not.

Further action appropriate would be to strip all those who have profited from these wars of all their financial assets, and hand that cash back to those who really, truly need it.

Demand that Halliburton and Bechtel, Lockheed Martin and Northrupp Grumann, JP Morgan and BP/Amoco et al return to Iraq and Afghanistan to repair the damage they have caused (much in the manner we request young offenders to do community work for petty crimes) and that they return their ill gained profits to those they have so horribly ripped off…. at their own expense, and by employing Afghan and Iraq workers at reasonable wages, in the process of the reconstruction of their villages, towns cities and infrastructure.

I would dearly like to see Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, Dick Cheny, Donald Rumsfeld and George Bush labouring repairing broken sewers in Baghdad as part of their penance.

And when all of this is done, then let us then say with some authority that “we stand for peace, for democracy, for peoples freedom, everywhere”.

Anything less than that is merely insult added to injury, death and trauma..

Try my songs on reverbnation (see the player on the top right of this page.) play them while doing all of the above!


Kindest regards

Corneilius

Do what you love, it's your gift to universe



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