Belmont Club has a great post about the transnational dream that seems to motivate (does anything really motivate?) John Kerry. Choice quotation:

''One World' may be a goal, but a distant goal, comfortably arrived at in stages. Nothing will be missed. Nothing essential really. It will all happen so gradually as to be imperceptible, except to bigots, who are always noticing something.'

The Freedom of the Beeb

Imagine that these words, 'Turkey EU entry as big as 'D-Day'' had been highlighted from a speech by GWB. Imagine it reported on the BBC how 'some say' W betrays his insensitivity and historical ignorance. And then compare and contrast that imaginary scenario with this real case of BBC reportage, where Joska Fischer gets his free leftist pass and goes whistling on his way as a 'forthright' contributor might be expected to.

The world keeps on turning: BBC tries to de-halofy Bob Geldof because he's being all conservative nowadays. A painful media emasculation awaits, quote, 'Bob the gob'. Meanwhile, in a happier vein, Mark Steyn applauds the little bald guy who won the Aussie elections.

Surprises

I am in general a little absent from the internet, so I was under the impression that John Kerry was storming through on the inside track of the US Presidential race. Perhaps I should spend less time reading the BBC website when I do manage to check on the affairs of states. To my surprise, I learnt that Bush was still ahead according to poll averages .

Another surprise, but not an unexpected one if you follow my drift, was that John Howard had won the elections of Oz. Talking to an Aussie soldier who was on leave from Iraq, I found him well satisfied by that outcome. In fact, I have found several Iraq soldiers who have given better reasons for their actions in Iraq than you generally hear in the media.

This article from John O'Sullivan really illuminates the significance of victory down under.

As for Iraq, undoubtedly (contra BBC) a factor in the Aussie election, Michael Barone has an analysis of the Duelfer report and how it supported the action taken by the coalition. I always return to one word, 'composite', when I reflect on the case for the Iraq war. So far as I could tell people who were anti the war had only one word, 'immoral', which spawned the one refrain, 'wrong, wrong, wrong', whereas I had a word which meant composed of many parts- which Duelfer's report and Barone's argument illustrate.

For extra analysis of one component for that argument, the UN, Con Coughlin is on hand at the DT.

Finally, what little scan of the useful media would be complete without Mark Steyn. I just love the, er, chutzpah in his address to Irish readers:

'readers of this column may have gained the impression that George W Bush will win the Presidential election on November 2nd. If he doesn’t, I shall trouble readers of this newspaper no further.'

BBC laid back about the French

I just loved the introduction to this BBC article intended to cover French corruption over oil for food. Has a voice of accusation ever been more passive? :

'Allegations that French officials were offered bribes by Saddam Hussein are unverified, France has said.'

I note that even despite this passive tone, we do not get as far as hearing that French officials may have received bribes from Saddam Hussein. Furthermore, we are stumped by the question of who is going to do the verifying. The UN perhaps, as the only international forum with the legitimacy gained by having the likes of Sudan on board?

At the risk of being a little pedantic, I should point out that the part of the purpose of a passive sentence is to avoid describing the agent who is going to perform the verb. So, on the one hand we are informed that the French were allegedly propositioned by Saddam (not that they had any relationship that might have scrubbed two backs rather than one), while on the other the agency that is to verfiy those allegations is unclear. Why unclear? Well, the assumption will be, and is, that the US is the agency that is required to verify these allegations- yet the whole thrust of BBC coverage for months, years and God knows how long is that you can't trust the yanks (in recent terms just think of the 'debate raging' about 'intelligence failures' which the BBC has happily stoked).

Ok, this is just the opening salvo of an article which does its best to relieve the French of the need to answer any serious questions. It's enough to know where the BBC stands though, which is frightening.

In this context, this article by Glenn Reynolds, and this by Mark Steyn, are both relevant. Some details here- thanks to A Tangled Web.

Getting Smarter- that seems to be the case in the US Iraq operations when you read this excellent article by Austin Bay (It's about time I posted here, and this is one of those articles that are so well-framed it'd almost be rude not to).

The media-mandarin-monster complex

Weird title, huh? Well, perhaps you've come across the phrase 'military-industrial complex', a fairly old-hat saying, but nonetheless revived by anti-war types for the purpose of bashing the Halliburton-Cheney relationship.

I have a new phrase to talk about. It is the media-mandarin-monster complex, and I will explain it with the aid of a couple of links.

Powerline has a couple of fascinating posts on US foreign policy; focussing on the President and his attitude to the Jewish people, in one, and in the other focussing on the CIA's attempts to undermine the President.

Melanie Phillips meanwhile delivers magnificently in this piece entitled 'The Media War against the West.' She begins by dealing with the atitude of a mandarin at the Foreign office, who in the particular instance she cites comes across as unbelievably crude and almost, well, sleazy, in his rubbishing of Bush as 'conditioned' by the Jews.

She then goes on to lambast Justin Webb of the BBC (much as I have done) for his stupid and venal caricature that Bush 'would be displaying the appeal of the cowboy down the ages and a cowboy philosophy; that what he did well was stand his ground outside the saloon bar, but he didn’t react well when the shooting started'

How to make sense of all these strands? We have the CIA, the FCO, the BBC, and a thousand and one freelancers, all talking the language of parody and mockery to make points that are simply too obvious to command anyone's attention.

We often say that people have lost faith in democracy, that they no longer care who wins elections. Why is that? Isn't it more likely that the institutions by which we live have let us down than that the figures at the top of the pyramid of power have betrayed our trust? Everyone 'knows' GWB to some extent, and he is openly judged by self-proclaimed people. Who judges Mr Mandarin, Mr Media, or come to that, the monsters outside the 'West' who have been kept at arms length by the luck and sophistry of our media-mandarin complex?

Doom, gloom and the facts of the matter

I didn't mention Iyad Allawi's speech the other day. I already knew he was a very effective speaker so the impact he made wasn't a surprise.

Paul Reynolds' response is interesting. Unlike the US media, he had something to say about Allawi:

'There have been those who predicted that out of the chaos in Iraq, a strongman would emerge. History demonstrates that as well. Edmund Burke predicted the rise of a Napoleon Bonaparte when the French Revolution descended into anarchy.

In Iraq, it is not supposed to happen.'

Yeah, so Allawi makes an inspiring speech, an optimistic speech, and the next thing you know the BBC is mentioning him in the same breath as Napoleon (not a compliment- I'm just surprised they didn't mention Hitler).

Meanwhile Mark Steyn brilliantly castigated the US media for having nothing to say to Allawi- basically a complete lack of curiousity about the man who more than any perhaps holds the future of Iraq in the success of his Ministry.

Kerry, meanwhile, merely questioned Allawi's judgement as though he were the next big thing in Iraqi blogging.

Is a theme emerging here? Lack of curiosity, absurd analyses that seem wildly generalised, and a US presidential candidate happy to lecture his ally from the great height of his liberal judgement. Sounds like the liberal establishment right enough to me.

Thinking Through Iraq

I suppose I´ve been waiting for people to think seriously through what´s going on in Iraq, and what should be done about it (I prefer that to 'muddling through'). I would have done more myself but I have neither the experiences or the training to make that natural, so it´s great to find others doing it.

Ever since it became apparent the Sunni resistance wasn´t fading away it it seemed likely that someone, somewhere, had a real strategy, and that person or those persons, or that culture, wasn´t on our side.

Healing Iraq has a great post on the strategy of the terrorist-Sunni-Baathist alliance.

Arthur Chrenkoff, meanwhile, fills in another part of the equation- the reluctance of the Iraqi populace to make the effort to cooperate sufficiently with the reconstruction process to end the foolish and dangerous resistance.

I particularly like what he has to say about the effects of totalitarianism on the people subjugated:

'Nothing, however, in our generally safe and comfortable existence would helps us understand just how pervasively difficult, destructive and dispiriting the experience of life under a totalitarian regime is. For most of us, life in Saddam's Iraq would have been no more real than the Middle Earth of the colonial New England'

Money Talking Explosively

Some great stuff on Iraq from Austin Bay, who just recently got back from there. It's about how the nice, clean US military has met Iraq's entrenched thug culture, which unfortunately drips money. I've always felt that money was a massively underrated part of the 'resistance' story- I wonder why that could be, Koffi?

It puts into perspective the fundraising activities of certain European groups- and I bet that is just scratching the surface, since I don't expect the BBC to actually investigate anything much, certainly not in areas that might assist the efforts of the coalition.

Casualty Count.

I was very sorry to learn that there were a significant number of casualties suffered by US forces in Iraq in the middle of last week. Not what I wanted to see, but not unexpected.

Wretchard has a breakdown of fatalities on his Belmont Club blog, which makes interesting if sombre reading.

I'll just give my response.

Wretchard points out that most of the fatalties are still taking place in the Sunni triangle, thus somewhat dispelling fears about civil war in Iraq. I've noticed for a long time (even on this blog) the preponderance of casualties in the Al-Anbar province.

I expected an upsurge to occur because July/August was relatively quiet there, while al-Sadr danced his merry destructive dance in Najaf. I took it that the forces of the Sunni fighters further North and West were preparing for another push against US forces in the run-up to the US election.

One interesting thing of recent times is the occurrence of violence in Mosul. Last year this was one of the quietest parts of Iraq- and featured by BBC journalist Jonny Diamond as a success for softly-softly tactics. Soon after that hell broke loose, and violence has been on a gradual upcurve ever since that outbreak (to my eye).

As Diamond points out, there is an ethnic divide between Arab and Kurd in that area. In fact, what's regularly underplayed is that Saddam relocated a lot of Arabs into towns like Mosul and Kirkuk in order to keep his thumb firmly on the Kurdish population there. Naturally they will resent the loss of their god (or Saddam)-given superiority, and fear reprisals (both short and long-term) too- some of which have already happened.

What this demonstrates for me is that among the most miguided of mentalities is that of the softly-softly approach. Pretending a volcano isn´t there doesn´t stop, in BBC language, ´violence erupting´

I think again that you have to be wary when things are too quiet. The calm in Mosul was more about regrouping to see how they could reassert Arab dominance than to see what democratic role they could find. The first instinct of people in plot-ridden Iraq is obviously to plot rather than politick, especially so for those who gained most from previous plotting.

But I also think it unlikely that Mosul will be all that terrible a place for the coalition. It could play its part if some of the other regions get their sunni-Arab act together the way Fallujah did, but not otherwise. The reason for this is that being ethnically mixed there will always be allies of the coalition who will weaken the Arab-Sunni resistance.

Mark Steyn in the Telegraph has one of his customary punchy articles about the state of Iraq. As usual he sees the big picture, and the good sense in converting our most diehard enemy state into a less bad place. You can´t draw the poison out of places like Mosul all that easily, but it might drain away over time if the right assertive local policies are pursued.

Spilling the water

The water carriers for Kerry assaulting Bush seem to have dropped their containers. Looking through the opinion articles there are still some trying to pretend there´s something in the CBS story, but they´re relying heavily on the so-called big picture. In other words they already know the story, they´re just looking for some detail to fill it in.

What frustrates me is that the BBC are almost the archetype of that attitude. Their story remains largely unaltered, with the admission that some have found the memos suspicious. If there was ever a time that a British news organisation could show up the US media, this might be it- but it's not in the BBC's script to do that kind of exposé.

The entire article is almost as misleading as ever- by which I mean that the CBS story is embedded within a context of a history of Bush's military documents, many of which released by the Whitehouse. It's a case of trying to spot the odd one out- Rather's photocopies don't exactly compare, but they do happen to signifcantly develop a dormant story. The only consolation might be that few will ever read it since it´s now buried.

Does it do any good to go on emphasising the idiocy of Rather's position? I think it's not going to harm Bush to have a meme up and running about the lying Liberal media. The US election will be about who the public in their hearts associate with the title of Al Franken's book. There's no doubt in my mind who better fits that description- but proof is always good.

Meanwhile the BBC go back to their favourite topic- how the Iraq war was wrong. This must be true, because even Koffi says so. Faced with Koffi and the BBC in tandem once more, I'd rather hear it from this man. The BBC though manage to make their main headline block comprise how Iraq war was wrong, how Iraq is terrible now, and how it will be worse in the future. Almost beyond parody, but not quite.

Update: the Coalition partners respond to Koffi and the BBC's manufactured moment (like a high proportion of the news the 'Koffi calls war illegal' story is a story that people -ie. the BBC and Koffi- decided was going to happen). Basic thesis from the Coalition: Koffi's got a cheek. I couldn't agree more.

The Next Big Thing in English or Welsh rural sports?

Mark Steyn's investigation suggests to me that woodland walks spotting and snipping cables could be the next big thing.

By the way, rest assured this isn't an Oates to Scott of the Antarctic moment but I have a great deal to do at the moment and I, er, may be some time away from posting. I'll try to nip in with a post when time and opportunity allows.

Rather simplified, slightly tongue-in-cheek.

Picking the spin

I don't know where the media term 'spin' originated, but I like to think it comes from cricket and the wiles of a spin bowler, where there are numerous recognised deliveries and many more variations that can produce unique 'spin' to outwit a batsman.

One of my favourite features of Channel Four's excellent cricket coverage is known as 'jargon-buster', where a kind of cricket boffin (Simon Hughes) takes you through the origin of obscure terms.

What we need is a jargon-buster for the media- or maybe just some old-fashioned straightforwardness.

Chrenkoff's latest 'Good News from Iraq' is up, and I notice a couple of interesting things tucked in amongst all the other generally good stuff:

'"Now that the security conditions have improved, it is easier to provide… aid," said EU Foreign Minister Ben Bot during his recent visit to Baghdad' (link)

and

'the government of Georgia will double its contingent in Iraq by October, from 157 to 300 troops' (link)

I think these two snippets, while naturally only part of the context in Iraq, are interesting in the light of the language the media, and notably the BBC, are using.

This report talks of fighting 'across' Iraq, and was introduced under link-headlines that talked of 'widespread' fighting.

This kind of language is commonly used and enough to keep the anti-war faithful's blood pressure nice and high in between explosions, but makes little sense when put in the context of the kind of good news Chrenkoff reports.

I included the snippet about the Georgian commitment because it shows what those who have real professional concerns think about Iraq and the direction in which it’s going. It's also interesting for the obscurity of the source: can it be that no mainstream media picked up this news? They certainly have no problem talking about troop withdrawals from Iraq, however insignificant numerically- or countries warning citizens not to travel to Iraq. It must just be that the Georgians are bribed and/or coerced, eh, Mr Kerry?

Maybe indeed the Georgian government has ulterior motives- they admit as much in very gracious terms. What government doesn't? The important point is that the US, despite its so-called false Iraq war, is a sought-after ally. GWB's strength as a steadfast war leader and faith in his armed forces has drawn many to seek advantage from cultivating his friendship. That's generally been known, where I come from, as statesmanship.

To return to the 'spin', I think that terms like 'widespread' and 'across' ought to be knocked for six by any solid middle-order journalist. What they conceal is that violence is highly localised, if vicious, and widely rejected by Iraqis. The purchase they have had on the public perception of Iraq is the kind of spin that Shane Warne and co. can only dream about.

Update: On the other hand... I noticed this- kind of an anti-Chrenkoff approach it's only fair to mention.

A Good Chuckle

It made me laugh a couple of months back when I read that John F. Kerry had been given this ringing endorsement by Texan liberal (some call him 'populist', others, 'humourist') Jim Hightower:

'"I don't care if he's a sack of cement, we're going to carry him to victory"'

Well, Kerry's not only heavy as a sack of cement- he's been doused in ridicule, and we all know how much heavier cement gets when it's wet. Then of course you just have to wait for the cement to harden... .

Rathergate:

Belmont Club has a definitive update.

Kevin Myers on the BBC:

'We really shouldn't be too surprised by anything the BBC does these days: the Dyke legacy has taken a terrible toll, and so there is no point in being angered by what we see on our screens. After all, it's only television, isn't it? Except it's not.'

Kevin Myers on the BBC and Ireland:

'One of the central and abiding problems of Northern Ireland is the role of perception in influencing politics. For the BBC to be subsidising a Sinn Fein version of the history of the Troubles isn't merely wrong in itself, but is profoundly irresponsible, a kind of down payment on further conflict in the future.'

The first paragraph explains almost precisely my views on the BBC (although I think Dyke was really the cherry on top of a problem deeply entrenched in the BBC's history). The second is so interesting because you could substitute 'Northern Ireland' in this analysis with any unstable region in the world and 'Sinn Fein' with any radical protagonist in these areas and get the same effect. It's time British people and those interested in fighting terrorism started caring enough about Northern Ireland to reject the BBC's fascination with Sinn Feinian fantasies.

See also this from A Tangled Web

Powerful Lines

I'm linking to Power Line's analysis of the meaning of Rathergate- which traces out thoughts similar to those I expressed yesterday (but puts them better)- before I go out. Hindrocket's conclusions? :

'Those of us who still value truth must look at the mainstream media in a new, more skeptical and critical way, taking nothing for granted... the mainstream news organs will go farther to achieve their political goals than we ever imagined.'

I'm sure he's fundamentally right about that.

Complacency

The Telegraph has some noteworthy things to say today.

I often think the Telegraph itself is complacent and inconsequential, but today they made two contributions that belied that judgement.

Charles Moore makes the case against fatalism and overconfidence regarding the terrorist threat. Essentially, our actions matter and 'they' can beat us.
-just look at Spain (which, of course, is just a step along the Jihadist road).

Meanwhile, on Europe they say what I've been thinking (they must be right)- Gordon Brown is playing rhetorical games while adjusting our economy to fit in with the Continent. I find his oleaginous duplicity (ok, a ridiculously long phrase to describe a greasy liar- but he's not quite as slippery or as deceitful as to be obvious about it, like, say, Mandelson has been.) sickening, and I just wish I thought he wasn't getting away with it.