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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 Robert Fisk
05/19/07 "The
Independent" -- -- 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
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