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Blair's Lies and Linguistic Manipulations
My Dad used to call people like Blair a 'twerp'. But I fear he is a vicious little man
By great good fortune, I studied linguistics at Lancaster University. Indeed, I read the books of Noam Chomsky, many years before he became a good friend of mine; to be honest, when I read his work, I thought Chomsky was dead. What a pleasure, therefore, to discover that he shared my world - and my views on Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara.
But I have to admit a moment of regret this weekend. Lord Blair is going from us. His self-serving memoirs will, of course, remind us of his God-like view of himself (and, heaven spare me, we share the same publishers) but I doubt if Chomsky's "foregrounded elements" will save him. A "foregrounded element" was something unusual, a phrase placed in such a way that it warned us of a lie to come.
Take George Tenet, the CIA Ernest Borgnine lookalike who sat behind Colin Powell when the US Secretary of State was uttering all those lies about weapons of mass destruction in February of 2003. It now turns out that George is mightily upset with the White House. He didn't refer to evidence of WMD as a "slam dunk", he says - a basketball phrase which I don't need to explain. He was talking about the ability of the US government to persuade the American people to go to war based on these lies. In other words, he wasn't lying to the American president. He was only lying to the American people.
I was struck by all this last month when I came across one of Blair's lies in my local Beirut paper. Sandwiched beneath a headline which read "Saudi reforms lose momentum" - surely one of the more extraordinarily unnecessary stories in the Arab press - it quoted our dear Prime Minister as saying that he was very angry that a review committee had prevented him from deporting two Algerians home because their government represented a "different political system". The "foregrounded" element, of course, is the word "different". This is the word that contains the lie. For the reason why the committee declined to return these men to their country was not - as Blair well knew - because Algeria possesses a "different" political system but because the Algerian "system" allows it to torture to death its prisoners.
I have myself interviewed Algerian policemen and women who have become perverted by their witness of torture: one policewoman told me how she now loves horror films because they remind her of the repulsive torture she had to watch at the Chateauneuf police station in Algiers - where prisoners had water pumped into their anuses until they died. I still remember the spiteful and abusive letter that the Algerian ambassador to London wrote to The Independent, sneering at Saida Kheroui whose foot was broken under torture. She was a "terrorist", this man announced. This is the "different" political system that Blair was referring to. Ms Kheroui, by the way, never emerged from prison. She was murdered by her torturers.
Blair knows that the Algerian security forces rape women to death. He knows this. So how does he dare lie about the "different" political system which allows police officers to rape women? We Europeans now make a habit of lying about this. Take the Belgian government. It deported Bouasria Ben Othman to Algeria on 15 July 1996 on the grounds that he would not be in danger if he was returned to his country. He died in police custody at Moustaganem. A "different" political system indeed.
And now I have before me Blair's repulsive "goodbye" speech to the British people, uttered at Sedgefield. Putting the country first didn't mean "doing the right thing according to conventional wisdom" (Chomsky foregrounded element: conventional) or the "prevailing consensus: (Chomsky foregrounded element: prevailing). It meant "what you genuinely believe to be right" (Chomsky foregrounded element: genuinely). Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara wanted to stand "shoulder to shoulder" with Britain's oldest ally, which he assumed to be the United States. (It is actually Portugal, but no matter.) "I did so out of belief," he told us. Foregrounded element: belief.
Am I alone in being repulsed by this? "Politics may be the art of the possible (foregrounded element: may) but, at least in life, give the impossible a go." What does this mean? Is Blair adopting sainthood as a means to an end? "Hand on heart, I did what I thought was right." Excuse me? Is that Blair's message to the families of all those dead soldiers - and to the families of all those thousands of dead Iraqis? It has been an "honor" to "serve" Britain, this man tells us. What gall.
Yes, I must acknowledge Northern Ireland. If only Blair had kept to this achievement. If only he had accepted that his role was to end 800 years of the Anglo-Irish conflict. But no. He wanted to be our Saviour - and he allowed George Bush to do such things as Oliver Cromwell would find quite normal. Torture. Murder. Rape.
My Dad used to call people like Blair a "twerp" which, I think, meant a pregnant earwig. But Blair is not a twerp. I very much fear he is a vicious little man. And I can only recall Cromwell's statement to the Rump Parliament in 1653, repeated - with such wisdom - by Leo Amery to Chamberlain in 1940: "You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go."
© 2007 Independent News and Media Limited
26 Comments so far
Show All"You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go."
Works over here too...
Blair always reminded me of one of Jim Henson's puppets in the 'Thunderbirds' with his seemingly jerky and uncoordinated hand movements. Time has proved him to be just as empty a shell as any puppet and just as easily manipulated by evil men,
the White House neo-cons.
Totally and absolutely amoral.
Bravo, Mr. Fisk
The concern our government, the media and the power-oriented intellectual class have for torture and other human rights violations in various countries can be accurately computed using the following equations:
X=units of concern
Y=units of geopolitical convenience or usefulness to Washington and it's confederates
X=Y(0)
Z=units of concern
Y=units of disregard for or hostility to Washington and it's confederates
Z=Y(1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000)
Try 'em out. You'll give your math skills a good workout and learn something at the same time. It's fun for the whole family!
Blair has been a good poodle. So loyal & obedient to his masters in washington. The poor man, like those in the Bush regime (and all those who support them) must live a terribly thick fog - that prevents them from seeing reality.
The really worrisome part is that if Blair is "Labor" in England, then how far is their political spectrum likewise skewed to the right&top?
Did Blair imagine himself as co-king of a new Anglo-American Empire? If so, then why the subterfuge? England made no bones about its empirial ambitions in the 17th-19th centuries, whether it was the opium trade, slave trade, East India Company, etc. Why the lying, the linguistic footwork, with Iraq?
I guess we're left to conclude that either (a) empire is not a notion compatible with the modern world or (b) it wasn't empire that Bush-Blair were about. Perhaps extra-legal corporo-fascism -- unsuitable for straight talk even in the halls of government?
Thanks, Mr. Fisk, for pointing out (some of) "Blair's Lies and Linguistic Manipulations"
No, Mr. Fisk, you're not "alone in being repulsed by this". Far from it, I'm sure.
I, too, am disgusted and writhe with indignation over B-liar's rhetorical twists and demagogic "twerpings". This is how many people feel. Though too few translate those feelings into words and action.
All the better that you, Mr. Fisk, with John Pilger, Greg Palast, Adam Curtis and a really quite a few other alert journalists in British media keep speaking truth to the people in power.
B-liar will soon b-gone. Too bad he isn't held accountable for his low morals, lies and illegal manipulations.
Ole Ullern
"ECONOMIC MIGRANTS"
foregrounded element: economic
migration has always been economic.
true meaning: "these foreigners are after your jobs!"
"ECONOMIC MIGRANTS"
foregrounded element: economic
migration has always been economic.
we move to improve our lot.
true meaning: "these foreigners are after your jobs!"
I wish more journalists would do their job like Robert Fisk does.
Specifically, I was in Britian last week when blair stood down (I wish that my presence in the country could have been said to have been the cause but I believe it was a mere coincidence). The press were full of rubbish about how he had brought about the peace in Northern Ireland. If he did (and it had a lot more to do with Northern Irish politicians than mr blair) then it is a small acheieivement when you compare it to wrought upon the world.
If he makes such a big deal about bringing to an end the Troubles in Northern Ireland that killed over the course of 30 years a total of 3500 people, then how can he even show his face in public when in Iraq he personally created the situation where 3500 people are killed EVERY MONTH.
It is sick to read anything positive about blair but to seem him praised in the press for N.I. peace makes me wish him dead.
Once again Excellent Work by Robert Fisk!!!!!
Blair probably realizes in secret....for all the favors he has engineered on behalf of his American Satrap....This villainy was done at enormous expense to the British electorate, to Iraq and destroyed his own reputation in the process....
Concomitantly, to rub even more salt in Blair's wounds the Bu$hite thugs have reneged totally on any Climate Change Faustian bargain Bush promised for Blair's subservience and fealty.....
Blair never realized, to never a trust a true SVENGALI in the likes of Bush and Cheney the greatest pair of sophistic unctuous bastards ever to grease the halls of the White House.....
I apologize for the per-oration but I can't help it....
I also read yesterday a rumor that blair is being considered for president of the world bank. Shudder!
With respect to Cromwell's statement to Parlement and it's application to Blair, the compelling element of the statement was "for any good you have been doing". Tony Blair did achieve a great deal of good in the role he played, along with many others, in bringing peace to factionalized Ulster. George Bush must be compaired to Cromwell, not to Blair. Both Cromwell and Bush uneashed forces of dark evil against humanity to a degree of which they themselves became part of the evil. To my knowledge neither of these men inspired anything that can be called good.
It should come as no surprise ,that once he has demitted office , HM the Queen elevates Blair to the peerage .
One fully expects the Brits ( given their innate genius for Comic Opera ) to name him 'Lord Blair of Basra' .
This would be entirely in keeping with 'noble' precedents : Monty ( Earl Montgomery of El Alamein ) and Roberts ( Lord Roberts of Kandahar).
take a look a the cognitive scientist george lakoff and his books for a good take on how blair and bush and others can say these lies with straight face. they believe what they are saying!!!!!!!
andrewr: go to Washington D.C.... Just in case you're magical or something. ;-)
Long ago, the Church Committee began to publicize info about MK-Ultra CIA mind-control projects inherited from the Gestapo officers to trained early CIA agents. We really need to dig up more information on this and study it thoroughly. It is not an empty 'conspiracy theory' but a reality.
Tony Blair has certainly looked, acted, and apparently thought like a brainwashed puppet, just as other starry-eyed stare-into-space politicos around Bush and Cheney... C.Rice being one of the more conspicuous. Remember Ollie North the coverup guy for Iran-Contra? There are so many bizarre occurrences in connection with the Bush Junta that would be readily explained by the techniques developed under the MK-Ultra project and its predecessors and successors. Its what led many of us to tune in turn on and drop out so that we have the mess we have in Washington now.
Read KGB/CIA by Jonathan Bloch and Celina Bledowska.
Read Control of Information in the United States by James R Bennett.
These are referenced and scholarly texts, not speculate crap by crackpots.
They certainly give plausible explanations for a large part of how the Bush Junta is staying in control, as well as the Poodle's Happy Pom Pom.
Not to forget another obvious programmed robot: John Bolton. He and Condo are Bush's Real Pit-Bulls, Blair the Poodle, and Gonzales the beaten rescue pup. I wish this were funny, but it's not. Mind control, drugs, psychological coercion, subtle manipulation, and finally passive compliance.... remember that Prescott Bush's friends the Nazis did it, so why is such an explanation so outrageously implausible now?
"C.Rice being one of the more conspicuous"
As one of my friend's husbands once said of Condi: "She seems like something they built in the basement."
Blair's statement, "Hand on heart, I did what I thought was right," is a shudderingly evil and frightening axiom. He has distilled in one sentence the very essence of what it means to be a western dictator, something that he and Bush - when you come down to it - are in practice.
It is frightening on so many levels. It justifies anything that a political leader does or we could possibly imagine them doing in the future by, fundamentally issuing the slightly better worded version of that flippant, sassy street rebuttal: "My bad."
It basically allows a politician to do anything - even illegally invade a country, instigate the deaths of half a million people, and glory in the death of a dictator who their country used to support - and then put their finger on their lips and say, "Oops!" as if they had just knocked grandma's favorite vase off the mantle and broken it.
Yet again, Blair has set a perfect example to the children of Britain. If our leaders are supposed to set an example of moral leadership (not that in Britain or the US they ever do) then he is saying, "Do whatever the hell you like and then just say your intentions were good - that absolves everything." Along with the notion that to steal somebody else's work and plagarise it, as with the February Dossier on WMD that Blair deliberately lied about, it shows children that the most natural and normal thing to do is to lie and cheat and do whatever you like. It is the very epitome of the kind of political economy Blair lusts over.
In Britain there is a comedian who has a school girl character whose stock catchphrase is "Yeah, but am I bovvered?" (Trans: "Am I bothered? Do I care what you're saying to me?"), delivered from a gum chewing, lazy cockney mouth. Blair even managed to subvert this character's popularity by appearing in a sketch for 'charity' with her, turning the tables on her by repeating back to her every time she said anything: "Am I bovvered? Am I bovvered? Am I bovvered?" It was embarassing to see (they re-ran it on the news last week when I was over there) but it is a perfect summation of his premiership: "Am I bovvered that British people didn't want this war, that I deliberately made them much more likely to face terrorist attacks, and that I helped killed 500,000 people? Am I bovvered??"
Paul Bramscer has already pointed out the "right wing" slant of the Blair government. This was one of the overwhelming reasons why I (as a lifelong Labour voter), did not vote for them in the last election. We already knew that Blair admired Thatcher, but he has aligned himself with the most right wing leadership in US history, and more recently has described Nicolas Sarkozy as a friend. New Labour has cheated the electorate, and has been responsible for dragging us into an illegal and immoral war, where hundreds of thousands of poor people have been killed in the name of "freedom and democracy". We urgently need a new party, who embody the ideals of Social Democracy, a party who will put themselves beyond personal power and greed, and who will forget about personal image and legacy.
As always, thank you Robert Fisk, and thank you Noam Chomsky. The self-righteous sneakiness of Blair's lies have always infuriated me; his constant, casual mischaracterizations of his opponents, done almost every time he opened his mouth, has had me at times yelling at the TV or radio. I had many words for what he was doing, some of them unprintable on this forum, but none were as elegant as the "foregrounded element" signaling the lie to follow.
Condi has a brain and a conscience, like Blair and Bush.
Apparently most of you have substandard upbringing,
unsurprisingly void of ethics and common sense.
This seems to be a lazy, boyish tendancy both English and American liberals think they can afford because they are safe, warm and well-fed. "Backbone" is a word that probably makes you quite uncomfortable; "bravery" is only when you're shoe-less fetching the paper; "sacrifice" is only when you stay longer on your computer to tell other people how smart you are. I would not even waste bug spray on most of you.
I tend to agree with Ole Ullem and I like his disection of the true meaning of that name B-lair. Mr. "And we believe that he could deliver a weapon to England in 45 minuites" Not an A liar, a B. All the clever banter and charming asides aside, this man Tonie blare (my spelling) just wandered out of his deapth and was seduced by the neo-cons. Can their be any other explaination........... Sometimes I remember the bit about Mrs. Blare sort of caught shopping for a flat with (as I remember) a topless dancer or some sort of morally compromised female person at a time when the blares assets were sipposed to be in a blind trust. Did they (he & the Mrs.) get caught in some type of sting, the real estate equilavent to the honey pot?? Or did the bushneothugs simply give him a billion or two of the taxpayers $$$. Like Mousalini, Blare's legacy is intwined with and subserviant to the more powerful and visionary of the two. The bush lies of freedom and democracy to obfuscate the reality of occupation and plunder will be the enduring stains on the tatered Blare legacy. Had the bb duo lead lesser military states, Outside forces would come and draged them off in chains. Blares legacy is bushe's legacy only in Blares case as no. 2. Long live bush/Blare in the annals of treasonous infamy!! Thank you Mr. Fisk for your constantness and integrity. tgw
Frankly need pepto-bismal after that last one.
I'm rather new to blogs. Apparently it's well-suited to where the vapid worship themselves, and occasionally other people slide in an opinion or two. Departing for the real world...
shilalee May 22nd, 2007:
"Condi has a brain..."
If I were a betting man, I'd say your right on this one.
"...and a conscience"
Now, now, let's not get carried away.
"like Blair and Bush."
So much for my admonition about not getting carried away.
"Apparently most of you have substandard upbringing"
Well, if you call being raised by a gang of drunken, thieving Keebler Elves substandard. I myself do not.
"unsurprisingly void of ethics and common sense"
Okay, now you're just being hurtful.
"This seems to be a lazy, boyish tendancy both English and American liberals think they can afford because they are safe, warm and well-fed"
Well, we can't all take on Bondian supervillains, crazed terrorists, and criminal gangs all the while shivering from cold, battling hunger and laughing in the face of constant danger like you undoubtedly do.
""Backbone" is a word that probably makes you quite uncomfortable"
Let's see, let me check my list of words that make me uncomfortable...Nope, it's not on there. Are you sure you meant "Backbone"? because I do have "Backboard" on my list, and as a lousy basketball player that word not only makes me uncomfortable, it scares the living crap out of me. So I'm sure you must have meant "Backboard"
""bravery" is only when you're shoe-less fetching the paper"
Shoe-less, yes. But when I'm wearing slippers it's Katy bar the door time for any force of darkness that tries to mess with me. Just ask the members of a certain motorcycle gang who are recuperating at St. Mary's Hospital (especially the one who had to have my newspaper uh, "extracted" from a certain location).
""sacrifice" is only when you stay longer on your computer to tell other people how smart you are"
First at bat in the World Series of Irony and you manage to hit one right out of the park. Good on you!
(oh, and by the way, I only stay long on the computer to view lot's and lot's of porn. Lot's and lot's of it. Boom shaka laka laka boom, shaka laka laka boom!)
"I would not even waste bug spray on most of you."
Whew, dodged a bullet there.
"Frankly need pepto-bismal after that last one"
Hey, alright, you're back! I was beginning to think you might have fallen in. No, my charming little shilalee, pepto-bismal won't help with the anger and insecurity masquerading as righteous indignation. Perhaps it would be best if you ask your doctor about Levitra or Cialis. He or she will help you get all squared away.
"I'm rather new to blogs"
Well, then, welcome! There's coffee and cookies on the table over there. Help yourself.
"Apparently it's well-suited to where the vapid worship themselves, and occasionally other people slide in an opinion or two"
Sweet mother of Wilford Brimley! Your second at bat in the World Series of Irony and you hit a grand slam! Hot damn, if you're not "The Natural" I don't know who the heck is.
"Departing for the real world…"
No! Not after everything we've gone through together. Oh well, all good things must end. I should remind you that Mars ain't the kind of place to raise your kids. In fact it's cold as hell! And I also have it on good authority that there's no one there to raise them if, you know, you had an inclination to do so. Perhaps another star system would suit your needs.