By their omissions …

Tuesday, March 03, 2009

By their omissions …

There seems to be some interest in the news that a prime minister of a minor country today visited the president of the United States.

But the biggest news by far in Washington comprises two stories – firstly that Washington was to be the venue of "the largest mass civil disobedience for the climate in US history" and the second, that "global warming" (pictured) dumped over six inches of snow on the city, paralysing movement and reducing the demonstration to a rump of about 200 cold and disheartened warmists.

The hilarity of the situation was captured by Fox News, having been flagged up, well in advance by Watts up with that. It was the butt of satire from one site, and sombrely noted by National Review.

In the UK, therefore, it is of more than passing interest to note that the warmist Daily Telegraph was quick to report, "Snow storm carpets US east coast," telling us that, "A snow storm has carpeted the eastern United States, forcing the cancellation of thousands of flights."

But did it tells us that the event billed as "the largest mass civil disobedience for the climate in US history" was effectively cancelled by an unseasonable snowfall in what has been the coldest winter for at least a decade? Of course not. Despite the obvious news value of the juxtaposition, the Telegraph judged that this is something that its readers should not know. And if anyone really thinks the omission is anything other than deliberate, then they are in the land of the fairies. 

This brings me to the substantive point of this post, which is to remind readers – if they needed it – of quite how much the news agenda is skewed by the MSM. The Telegraph should not be singled out in this respect. The BBC also failed to mention the cancelled demo, although you can guarantee that, had the attendance been as billed, it would have been all over the news and the website.

This rather reinforces the point we made earlier - that the control of the agenda is exercised as much by what they don't tell you as what they do. The former is, of course, much more insidious as it is far more difficult to be aware of what you are not being told.

But there is another equally insidious form of indoctrination which we highlight in the current post on Defence of the Realm. This is where an apparently plausible case is presented but which is based on little more than ignorance and dogma, which completely misrepresents the issues.

This is a common occurrence in defence issues and, while I write frequently on defence, I am very bad at drawing the wider conclusions about how the poor quality of reporting is merely an illustration of the widespread malaise.

Another issue – not commonly rehearsed – is how the media insults our intelligence. We are not more stupid (or intelligent) than we were in the 1920s and 30s, or any less interested in issues that affect us. Yet it was in that period that The Telegraph and then The Times appointed Basil Lidell-Hart as their defence correspondent. 

In that capacity, Lidell-Hart wrote long and detailed appraisals of military issues, to a general audience, which was not only able to absorb the points he was making but was highly appreciative of them. He attracted a huge and knowledgeable correspondence, much of which was also published.

The way we are treated with contempt by our media is, therefore, of some concern. There are serious issues to hand, across a wide range of subjects, which need public debate. But we are being treated as if we were children, spoon-fed that which editors and journalist consider we should be told, without any attempt at informing us or promoting intelligent debate.

One can only say this so often before the message gets tedious, even to those who agree with it, but the repetition does not make it any less true. The act of lying encompasses act, default or omission. By their omissions, and by their default – in misrepresenting complex issues – does our media lie to us all.

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Monday, March 02, 2009

Last Post or Reveille?

My intention was to start this week by putting up my last post on EUReferendumbut, for the time being, I have been dissuaded, there being better things to do with one's time or so I am told. There are various reasons why I have been having problems with the blog and the forum. No need to rehearse them here.

However, recently I felt that there was a particular direction in which the blog and, much more so, the forum were moving – towards ideas of a closed in society with the state controlling (as who else would have the power) who should be employed or allowed to live in this country, the basis of it being those old friends of ours, blood and soil.

It's not I don't like that trend or that I think it is a remarkably stupid one or, even that it is contrary to British tradition; it's more that I thought that the blog and, of course, the forum should lead on this one. If we want a country where we say "keep out" to all who are not "indigenous" (it's in quotation marks because, given England's history, it is a term that is very hard to define) then the blog should be in the vanguard.

Clear it of rootless cosmopolitanism, said I. We cannot have a co-editor who is not part of the "indigenous" population but would prefer to see those Anglospheric ideas triumphing over the blood and soil ones; we cannot have a co-editor whose family sought and gratefully received asylum in this country. Lead from the front, said I.

The boss told me (more or less) not to be stupid and stop reading the forum if it upsets me. Well, that's easily achieved. I have not been reading most of it for some time and have now deleted it from my list of must check blogs. That's a bit like not listening to Radio 4. Amazing how well one can survive without it.

What next? Well, I turned to our manifesto and found to my surprise that it was posted almost exactly four years ago. Have we really wasted this much time? Not completely. The boss's writings on defence have been superb and, with some luck, even had some influence where it matters.

Between us we have managed to get some of the truth about the EU and the tranzis out into the big bad world but not nearly enough of it and not nearly wide enough. When it comes to the positive ideas, yes, we have failed, perhaps because we have not worked them out well enough ourselves or because we have not been able to reach the right audience (it's a poor writer who blames the audience so the fault is in us) or perhaps we have not concentrated enough.

The way forward is to build on the manifesto. We have no intention of creating a new party or a mass movement or any of those silly things that tend to be complete losers, particularly on our side of the fence.

But we do intend to work harder and develop ideas – a research programme and a sequence of policy ideas that will give some politicians and opinion makers notions on how to rebuild a liberal nation state that would take its proud place in the only group that matters in the world – the Anglosphere. Blood and soil will not come into it. We have been there in the twentieth century and have no desire to go again in the twenty-first.

Watch this space. This is not the Last Post (not yet) but Reveille.

Little José day

José is having a busy day. From Prague he is telling us that the economic crisis is the biggest in living memory. "There is no doubt that we are living through the greatest financial and economic crisis in living memory," he says.

We'd never have known.

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We are one Union!

Bloomberg is telling us that Eastern (and Central) European stocks have dropped to the lowest in 5½ years. Hungary's forint fell the most in a month. Bank shares are nose-diving as investors flee, amid "concern that companies and consumers will be unable to repay foreign-currency debt as plunging exchange rates increase borrowing costs."

And all because the EU leaders said no to a €190 billion handout!

Hilariously – from the school of, you have to laugh or you'll cry – little José is saying that eastern Europe doesn’t need special treatment (i.e., a €190 billion loan) as it can draw on €15.4 billion in the EU's balance-of-payments assistance fund. The countries are also eligible for €7 billion of accelerated infrastructure subsidies, he said. "We are one union, not two unions or three unions," bleats Barroso.

Now, let's get this straight. The eastern/central countries want €190 billion (they would actually prefer €300 billion) to stave off a fate worse than Ambrose. Little José is saying they can dip into a fund of €15.4 billion shared between all member states, with a top-up of €7 billion. And that solves the problem?

Good thing it's only one Union, isn't it. I don't think we could take any more.

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We will send you our ravening hordes

"Give us your money, or we will send over our unemployed millions," is the message from Ferenc Gyurcsany, the Hungarian prime minister. And, goes the subtext, there is absolutely nothing you can do to stop us. This is what Gawain Towler over at England Expects is reporting, with the benefit of having seen a letter from Gyurcsany, which he publishes in full.

That theme is picked up by Bruno Waterfield in The Telegraph, who retails Gyurcsany's warning. Issued on behalf of the Central and Eastern European members of the EU, it states that the economic crisis threatens to split Europe, with the economic equivalent of an "Iron Curtain" – the rich countries on one side and the poor on the other.

Gyurcsany then goes on to say that unless €190 billion is thrown across the line, to prevent the curtain falling, there would be, "A significant economic crisis in Eastern Europe". This, he writes, "would trigger political tensions and immigration pressures." 

Then comes the punch-line: "With a Central and East European population of around 350 million of which 100 million are in the EU, a 10 percent increase would lead to at least five million additional unemployed within the EU." The result would be "a flood of unemployed immigrants travelling to Western Europe in search of jobs."

The message was apparently adopted by nine Central and Eastern European countries – Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Bulgaria and Romania. They held an "unprecedented breakaway summit" before the meeting of all 27 EU member states in Brussels yesterday, and presented the rest with what amounted to an ultimatum.

The reporting from the likes of The Guardian, however, presents a different picture. Its hacks together with most of the others (pictured above), dutifully followed the EU commission script, telling us that "European leaders" had sought to banish the spectre of protectionism stalking the EU, responding to the financial crisis by underlining the "sanctity" of Europe's single market.

The use of "sanctity" is a very interesting choice of word for something that is supposed to be part of a political system. Perhaps "integrity" would have been a better choice, but the term actually used betrays the mindset … this is a quasi-religious institution, not a political movement.

Another word with quasi-religious overtones, very much in evidence was "unity". This was, we are told, the Holy Grail for which the "colleagues" were struggling – and in vain, so it seems. The heads of government from the member states "remained deeply divided".

That much was echoed by The Times, which followed Bruno with the "apocalyptic warning". It too retails the threat that if the Central and Eastern European countries do not get their money, we will be submerged by the "Eastern hordes" of unemployed workers heading west to steal the jobs from under the very noses of our suckling babes.

The response of the "colleagues" to this is rather interesting. With Merkel in the vanguard, the call for an "Eastern Europe aid fund" was summarily dismissed. Merkel went so far as to say: "I see a very different situation among eastern countries, I do not advise going into the debate with massive figures."

We then got the ritual incantations. Up went the cry that the only thing standing between us and the ravening hordes was the benign intervention of our masters in Brussels. Thus do we get the call for holy "unity" which will bind us all together and ensure that the misery is equally spread – except in the restaurants of Brussels of course.

Somewhere in all that lot is Gordon Brown. He seems to want shed-loads of (other peoples') money thrown at the problem, and is calling for the International Monetary Fund to intervene, although he has been somewhat vague about where he thinks the IMF will get the money.

What is worrying the shit out of the "colleagues" is indeed the prospect of a significant crisis in Eastern Europe and the reality of "political tensions". That is a cosy euphemism for the great unwashed taking to the streets and ripping the throats out of their benign leaders. It is a fear that rather explains their resort to quasi-religious slogans – in much the same way that Stalin reverted to calls to save "Mother Russia" when the ravening Nazi hordes were at the gates of Moscow.

Basically, though, they do not have the shed-loads of money, being rather too busy bailing out their own collapsing economic systems. The only thing the "colleagues" were able to manage, therefore, was a rather lame statement fromn José Manuel Barroso declaring: "There was consensus on the need to avoid any unilateral protectionist measures."

Little José is beginning to sound a bit like Marie Antoinette - "let them eat consensus", he is saying. Mr Gyurcsany seems to have other ideas.

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