| Monday, October 17, 2005 |
| BEING UNREASONABLE |
REASON - A statement of some fact (real or alleged) employed as an argument to justify or condemn some act, prove or disprove some assertion, idea, or belief.
JUSTIFICATION - The action of justifying or showing something to be just, right, or proper; vindication of oneself or another; exculpation; verification, proof (obs.). b. That which justifies; a justifying circumstance; an apology, a defence.[i]
Not the same thing are they? There is a gulf between the meanings of these two words that Blair and the New Labour machine have been attempting to occupy since the London bombings. In doing so they are using the full repertoire of lies, PR techniques and half-truths that we have come to expect from them.
It has now become almost a mantra "there can be no justification for this kind of attack". The majority of people (including me) know and believe that already. They aren't looking for justifications of terrorist attacks - they are looking at reasons. In deflecting the arguments on to whether or not it was justified Blair is shifting the ground in such a way that it allows the media to frame the debate in terms of murderous fanatics and 'dangerous religious ideologies' or 'preachers of hate' or whatever this weeks sound bite happens to be. Doing this has allowed Blair and his government to dismiss all talk of reasons. It is an old and frequently employed PR tactic: If the terms of the debate are uncomfortable for you then change them. The direct link between these acts and the occupation of Iraq, Afghanistan and at the root, Palestine, is particularly uncomfortable ground for New Labour to fight on.
The level of duplicity in some of Blair's recent statements is almost staggering. Blair does not come from a position of religious innocence. He knows better than any of us some of the atrocities being perpetrated around the world - he has entire government departments paid to find them out and tell him about them. Therefore the selection of which atrocities he chooses to highlight and which he ignores says much about him and his policies.
The narrative New Labour has been providing the press with for a long time and that everyone is now familiar with runs thusly... There is a group of murderous fanatics hell bent on destruction who are fuelled by a virulent religious ideology and their attack is intended not to change any particular policies of the government but is meant to be an attack on our (sic) 'way of life.'
Charles Clarke speaking on 8th July...
"The fact is that the people who make these kind of attacks are about destroying the very essence of our society: our democracy, our media, our multicultural society and so on. That's not about Iraq or any other particular foreign policy issue, it's about a fundamentalist attack on the way we live our lives." [ii]
Politicians are essentially a cowardly bunch and the point of this narrative is not necessarily a vilification of certain sectors of the community. It is that it skilfully excludes the possibility that the activities of the UK government are in any way responsible for increasing the likelihood of attack. It also provides the press with sensationalist headlines and easy targets and therefore keeps them off the back of the government.
Don't fall for it.
[i] From http://www.oed.com/
[ii] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4663313.stm |
posted by michael the tubthumper @ 8:34 pm  |
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| 5 Comments: |
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Blair's ilk has the nasty habit of accusing anyone who points out the reasons for terror attacks of justifying those attacks.
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they do indeed. i love the cartoon. had it for years but been waiting to use it. "the semantic mangle" is an invention politicians have been using for years.
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Great post, Michael.
Again and again we are told that suicide bombers blow themselves up because "they hate our way of life," but in reality they just want us (place Western "democracy" here) out of their homeland:
http://wdthu.blogspot.com/2005/07/professor-robert-pape-explains-suicide.html
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by the way...great name for a blog!
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wasn't sure if the word was in common usage elsewhere.
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Name: michael the tubthumper
Home: Glasgow, Scotland
About Me: Tub-Thumper - 1. A speaker or preacher who for emphasis thumps the pulpit; a violent or declamatory preacher or orator; a ranter. This blog will be a combination of reasoned posting somedays and an occasional rant.
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I have made a few short movies. Here are links to free downloads for them all in the order that I made them (as far as I can remember). Please feel free to use, distribute, disagree with, shout at etc etc
Praise The Lord and Pass The Ammunition
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Blair's ilk has the nasty habit of accusing anyone who points out the reasons for terror attacks of justifying those attacks.