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  Sunday, September 20, 2009Those Bloody Scots!Everyone remembers 9/11, and most people agree it was the defining moment of the "Noughties." It changed everything. The hijackers of the planes flown into the twin towers of the World Trade Center were predominantly from Saudi Arabia. It's a testament to the power of propaganda, then, that the U.S. and U.K. politicians got away with using the terrorist attacks to launch their very own - not on Saudi Arabia, no, but Afghanistan and Iraq, where Operation Iraqi Liberation began (later changed to Operation Iraqi Freedom, when White House adviser Karl Rove thought O.I.L. might be a bit too blatant a giveaway as to what they were really after). The War on TerrorTM had begun. Then came mass protests, the resignation of British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and American President George W. Bush Jr. seeing his approval ratings to the lowest levels since Harry Truman. And here we are, with HopeTM and ChangeTM as the brand-new brands bought by the general public, and - hey - everything is OK! Hmm. But what 9/11 also provided was - as one British spin doctor put it - "a good day to get out anything we want to bury." Jo Moore did her job, suggesting that coverage of the 9/11 terrorist attacks would dominate airtime so much that any other revelations would barely be noticed. Unfortunately for her, she was caught doing her job by the people, when her email suggestion was leaked, and she was fired - as if that sort of thing didn't happen all the time (they even took her advice!)  Blair's chief propagandist, the infamous and odious Alastair Campbell, supported her removal - because, I suppose, it gave spin doctors, y'know, a bad name. Were we to instead believe they never manipulated facts and events to portray a politician more favourably than they deserved? That they had our interests at heart? What exactly did Jo Moore do that was so wrong? I wouldn't be surprised if her contract and job description even included "advise Transport Secretary Stephen Byers...liaise with civil servants...bury bad news." She was just doing her job! (Just like Evening Standard journalists, according to Ken Livingstone)So, what's dominated the news the last several weeks? The release of the Lockerbie Bomber! You no doubt remembered the bombing of Pan-Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, on December 21st, 1988 - and if you hadn't, you will have by now. I was just a kid at the time, and had pretty much forgotten about this horrific yet isolated incident until this summer.  Whereas Colonel Gaddafi looks like a used car salesman, the Libyan named Megrahi - or Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi, if you're not into the whole brevity thing - looked like a killer! He had the Evil Staring EyesTM that are a must for any tabloid newspaper showing a guy to be a wrong 'un. He was tried and convicted of being responsible for the bombing of the plane. There has been some doubt as to whether or not he actually did it, but aside from that, this summer, he was suffering from terminal prostate cancer (so he was going to die, basically). That saved anyone calling for a death sentence! He was done; finished; kaput. Kenny MacAskill, the Scottish Cabinet Secretary for Justice, released Megrahi on compassionate grounds for him to be returned to Libya to spend his last dying days in the desert.You'd think that would be the end of it, really; even if you were as Old Testament-badass enough to want the guy dead for what he did, he was indeed about to die, anyway. But no, that wasn't good enough! He had to stay in prison and die in Britain! I watched the news and almost expected to see people running through the streets of Scotland carrying flaming torches. They wanted him staying in his British cell, dying there, and - I'm only assuming, here - publicly gutting in front of Scottish children who were then to play with the entrails before burning them to prove their loyalty to the British Commonwealth. But seriously, every time I was in the pub for a peaceful pint of real ale, I'd glance at the television screen and see yet more coverage of the Lockerbie BomberTM! Days of it. Weeks of it! I was hoping Kanye West would interrupt the whole thing. And I couldn't help but thinking that - with a drawn-out, blown-up story like this one - the spin doctors would be busy burying the bad news that actually affects us all. Thanks, angry mobs! Thanks a bunch. One local chap even suggested this was the fault of the Scots themselves and the devolution of their parliament; "they have too much power!" He went on to suggest that with Gordon Brown as Prime Minister, and the whole line of Scottish blood through New Labour's history - from John Smith, to Tony Blair, to Alastair Campbell - the Scots were taking over Britain, and ruining it! Sabotage? You think? Oh yeah. Because, like, the Scots have really been bad, eh? Ah, the Scots. I'm from Northern England, but thanks to my Scottish neighbours up there, I'm from the heart of the country of Great Britain. The Scots gave us Robert Burns, Irvine Welsh, Billy Connelly, the Bay City Rollers, a football team called "Hamilton Academical," the Land Reform Act, and Grand Theft Auto. How could they be bad? They wear kilts!  What does a Scotsman wear under his kilt? Why, his shoes, of course! Nah, no one really hated the Scots. They were just pawns in a bigger game here. The racism wasn't directed at them. The friendly rivalry between the English and the Scots was used as an excuse to express the real racism: hatred of Asians and Muslims.I was in a seminar recently and one guy claimed the reason there weren't many jobs available for an ordinary white working class man like himself was because "the foreigners're takin' all the jobs." Mere minutes later, when prompted to take an opportunity to elaborate on his views, he said "I'm not racist," following it with that immortal word "but," before explaining "there's an Afghan guy moved in on the end of our street, and I know for a fact he's not got a job; I know for a fact he'll never ever work." I had to give it to him: he'd done his homework - he knew for a fact, after all, and was even able to see into the future. I wanted to hire him right there on the spot to work for me. So, in other words, if they do work, they take our jobs, and if they don't then they're lazy welfare recipients. Wow, and this is the thanks they give us for bombing their country into oblivion and driving them from their homes to all across the globe, eh? And this is what's funny about the case of the Lockerbie BomberTM. To keep him in prison here in Britain would have cost money. That's okay, I guess - but giving money to honest, hard-working Asians who are then free to use it to buy goods and services and boost our economy is wrong.  There is something deeply racist in the fibre of British society, and racism breeds extremism. Such racism surely has to be attributed to all the "positive" images Rupert Murdoch's Sky News and similar channels provide us of Muslims and Asians, eh? Forget the Scots - the Lockerbie BomberTM is not just a good way to bury bad news...he's the best enemy they can give us.- Jay Baker; South Yorkshire Labels: George W Bush, Gordon Brown, Rupert Murdoch, Tony Blair
posted by Jay Baker at
10:14 AM
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