Robert Fisk: Here We Go Again

from the Independent UK, via Truthdig:


Here We Go Again


Posted on Oct 8, 2007


By Robert Fisk

Originally printed in The Independent as “My Cold War nights, twiddling the dial.”

In a country of political assassinations, Palestinian battles and constant political crisis, it seemed a romantic idea to send a sprig of lavender-coloured bougainvillea from my Beirut balcony to a friend abroad. The bush was covered in purple, so I snipped off a small bloom and swept it off to DHL for shipment. Nothing so simple, you may say. But that reckons without The State.

Hours later, I was summoned to the shipper’s office to be solemnly informed that there was a problem. If I took the individual petals off the bloom, I could stuff them into an envelope and off they would go. But if I left them on the stem, complete with twigs, I would need an export permit from the Lebanese Ministry of Agriculture. Aaarrgghhh!

The rationale was simple, of course. However disastrous or fanciful the reality, the machinery of power must continue to exert its baleful influence over our lives, the preservation of authority infinitely more important than us, its integrity supported by massive amounts of money and labour - even though provably worthless.

I am reminded of this by a hobby in which we Kentish schoolboys once indulged: the sending of reception reports - “double-Rs”, we inevitably called them - to Eastern European radio stations during the Cold War. It didn’t matter to us that we were helping the communist serpent spread its venom into the living rooms of England.

We would listen with rapt attention to the English language service of Radio Moscow or Radio Prague or Radio Warsaw or Radio Sofia - occasionally, incredibly, even to Radio Tirana - and then send off a postcard to the Communist Beast to report on the audibility of some tedious programme about Bulgarian steelworking, Polish agronomy or Soviet collective farm production. Was there too much static? A little distortion perhaps? Or was this nonsense crossing the Iron Curtain with pristine clarity on Thursday night? ............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20071008_here_we_go_again/

(emphasis added) ...


http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20071008_here_we_go_again

The people who so steadfastly promote war should have their motives heavily scrutinized.

does anyone else feel like they live among a form of overactive vegetables? 7 billion of them chomping away at their nutrients, looking dumbly up at the stars, cheering on the team or weeping over lil nemo? Voices crying in the wilderness disturbs them, annoys them, but that's all. The 'man' plots against them... it's the carrots versus the cabbages today; next week the leeks versus the onions (ok ok...) The thing is, it seems very few of the people i see believe all the nudgewink- it's too obvious that the only one getting fat isn't mama cass. But yet they go along with it, the big lie, as if it's too much bother to resist. The bush extravanganza sure made the greedy racist rightwing hog class full of glee for last ten years, but all good things must end, and satiated like bloated leeches they ...know a mess when they see it, and the really guilty ones see past the mass media propaganda to the catastrophic truth hidden just on the other side. Ultimately, the bush extravaganza will play out w/out anyone controlling the message because it'll be experienced as life and the media will focus as much att'n on the present details as it can (in order to escape being held accountable for their complicity in the cause of it)...maybe all the big events our history books are full of that explain why were are where we are were lies, made up disasters and nudgewink propaganda that everyone took serious....now the entire sham is exposed- the ruling class, the uber rich, the bigmouths on radio/tv, the priests, the best sellers, were criminals or their agents since cain and abel's time, and shoulda been put in jail right from the beginning.