yet another blog

Will they publish, won’t they publish?

April 09, 2007 By: fotdmike Category: Human Rights, Press Bias

All this fuss about whether or not the MoD will allow the captured Services personnel to publish their stories¹ could be seen as a response by the government to public opinion. Well, that’s a good thing, and practically unprecedented for this particular government.

However, there could be a rather more Machiavellian plot at work here. For what all the hullaballoo’s also doing is keeping the issue in the forefront of public awareness. And with the added bonus (for the government and its anti-Iranian agenda) of helping to obfuscate the fact that’s there’s actually very little real meat to this story at all – very little real meat to feed the anti-Iranian propaganda machine that is.

Let’s just remind ourselves of what the story’s all about: a handful of British service personnel were “captured” (why not “detained” or “arrested” I wonder?) by the Iranians in disputed territorial waters, held by the Iranian government for about two weeks, and then released. Whilst in captivity they were subjected to treatment which, when compared to the treatment handed out by certain allies of the UK to arguably illegally detained “suspects”, seems quite reasonable and understandable given the circumstances. One could even argue that the experience these individuals went through should actually be regarded as no more than an occupational hazard, given where they were. So what’s the big deal?

And frankly, I’ve very little interest in hearing, as Faye Turney put it: “I want everyone out there to know my story from my side, see what I went through.”²

Had she been subjected to brutal physical torture, rape, etc I might feel differently, but compare her experience to the experiences of those incarcerated at Guantanamo Bay – not for thirteen days, but for five years plus!

And where’s the ongoing huge press coverage of that, I ask myself?

So they played a few mind games with you Ms Turney? Well, how would you like to spend five years as an incarceree in Guantanamo – or an even more secret CIA prison? And perhaps you should think yourself lucky the Iranians didn’t ship you off to some less civilised State for interrogation; “rendition”, is it called?

For as long as there’s no huge public outcry in the media, and from the government, about the human rights abuses that are daily committed by the “allies” Blair has tied us to we’re hardly in any position to criticise the Iranians for the relatively well-mannered treatment of their detainees.

[Addendum 10.04.07: Read this...

"...we must now look at the behavior of counties [sic] like Iran through the lens of “black sites,” CIA renditions, torture memos, Abu Ghraib, water boarding, habeas-stripping statutes, military commissions, and indefinite detentions. Iranâ€™s 15-day detention of British sailors and marines and the subsequent ham-fisted propaganda stunts by the Iranian government look pretty tame by comparison.”

From the JURIST Legal News and Research]

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Tags: Faye Turney, Guantanamo, Iran, Ministry of Defence, MoD, Spin

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More on the captured Brits

April 08, 2007 By: fotdmike Category: Press Bias

So the MoD is going to let the British sailors and marines captured by the Iranians sell their stories to the press is it?¹
Well, it strikes me that this unprecedented and seedy move is probably prompted more by a desire to spin the story out a bit and puff it up into something more than it actually was, just to stir up even more anti-Iranian sentiment.
(And how much of that largesse is prompted by behind-the-scenes influence from 10 Downing Street I wonder?)

For let’s face it, the “ordeal” they supposedly endured was pretty trivial in the grand scheme of things, wasn’t it?
(And just to put this in context… I too have been held at gunpoint and fully expected my time to be ended at that moment. Sure, it was a scary experience, but come next day it’d passed and I’d gotten over it – and I didn’t even have the benefit of a military training!)

Compare it for example to this account…

“…subjecting them to psychological torture day and night. Lights were kept on in their cell around the clock. They endured solitary confinement. They had only thin plastic mattresses on concrete for sleeping. Meals were of powdered milk and bread or rice and chicken, but interrupted by selective deprivation of food and water. Ceaseless heavy metal and country music screamed in their ears for hours on end… They lived through ‘conditions of confinement and interrogation tantamount to torture… Their interrogators utilised the types of physically and mentally coercive tactics that are supposedly reserved for terrorists and so-called enemy combatants.”²

- no, not more Iranian misdeeds, but the hospitality extended by the US military.

Nor let’s forget the treatment handed out by British soldiers to their captives in Northern Ireland until fairly recent times.

I really am getting a bit bored with all the hypocrisy and double standards that both the US and our own government so blatantly indulge.

And before anyone argues that the examples aren’t comparable, just bear this in mind…

From the Iranians viewpoint we could legitimately be described as foreign insurgents fomenting discord and bloodshed in a neighbouring country.

And incidentally, whatever happened to that law Blair’s government recently introduced about “glorifying terrorism”?
From any rational point of view our military aggression toward a nation that represented no threat to us whatsoever surely places the mantle of terrorism upon our own shoulders, a notion reinforced by our overthrowing of the elected government of that sovereign nation by force of arms (an act expressly forbidden by the UN Charter I believe).
Had we not committed such an act of international terrorism those captured Brits wouldn’t have been where they were in the first place. So surely, by endeavouring to cast their experience in a sympathetic light we are in fact glorifying an act of terrorism.

Now I’m no scholar, no academic able to elucidate the finer points of an argument, or persuasively score telling debating points, but I do believe I’m able to distinguish between what is morally right and wrong, and its perfectly clear to me that our entire handling of Middle East situations is somewhat more than tainted with the promotion of self-interest over humanitarian concern and respect for the Rule of Law.
And it seems to me that if we continue on this path the only possible outcome is yet more bloodshed and suffering.

Try, for just a brief moment, to imagine that suffering and bloodshed visited upon your loved ones. The loss of a dearly-loved spouse. Or the body of a cherished son or daughter maimed, disfigured, forever. How would you feel?
So how the hell can we countenance our government visiting this fate upon others, simply because they live on the other side of the world?

We (and by that I mean the government and the media) made such a big fuss about the 7/7 bombings in London yet, thanks to the rogue Bush regime in America and our Prime Minister’s support of them, that sort of experience is a daily occurrence in Iraq nowadays. And we’re responsible. Why? Because we haven’t yet ousted Blair and his kind.
Because we haven’t spoken loudly enough; because we haven’t acted radically enough. Because we’re too wrapped up in our own petty concerns and basically don’t give a toss about anyone else.
So the next time it happens to us, how the hell can there be a great wailing about the suffering of “innocent victims”, for we’re all bloody guilty!
The very least we can do, now that Iran is top of the hit list, is to resist this with every means at our disposal, else we deserve all that’ll be visited upon us!

So disregard all anti-Iranian propaganda you encounter. Complain to the media about the bias and spin. Write to your MP. If need be even become an activist! But do something!

And if the military doesn’t want history to cast them in the same mold as Hitler’s SS, then its about time they conjured up the courage to refuse to obey orders that disregard both International Law and common morality.
Remember the Nazis’ standard excuse? “But I was only obeying orders.” Where the f*** is these soldiers’ and sailors’ humanity?

I often speculate what it would take to put our country back on the right track… why does the film “V for Vendetta” spring to mind I wonder?