A Place to Stand

I think this commenton Iain Dale's blog deserves further exposure. Iain was running an item on the faking of various pictures at Qana which has now been verified to the discomfort of a number of people commenting there. I had also commented previously on the blatant fakinery involved in Bosnia & Kosovo.

Richard Bailey said...
Iain, I didn't comment then but will now. Well done for both posts. Your instincts were always right. I saw for myself in Kosovo how people on the ground manipulate images and especially the media. Never ever trust what you see on the evening news.
I looked after the BBC team in Pristina during my time their, acting aas their military escort and PR man. Hell, even their most famous and undoubtedly brilliant premiere reporter knew EXACTLY what she intended to say on that evening's news before the day had begun, and I can assure you that odd things were done to achieve it if the day didn't quite offer up the required backdrops. We spent one afternoon looking for a burning building and racing to get there before it went out!!
The Kosovans knew exactly what they were doing when they pitched camp in Macedonia and they used Blair visits for their means far more than he used them for his!
I know, I was there, and to my eternal shame, I helped ensure that the right shots were taken and the right tents were visited.
Enough said.

My italics added. Let us not ever, under any circumstances, have anybody from the lying racists of the BBC ever claiming that they do not manufacture the news. I replied

Thank you Richard Bailey for your post.

The lying the media has been, at the very least, involved in goes back to Kosovo & Bosnia & I suspect, much further.

I am not sure how much the present exposures are due to the existence of the blogsphere being able to present views & facts the official media censor & how much to the fact that Hezbollah do not have the general level of government support the ex-Nazi Izetbegovic in Bosnia & our genocidal KLA friends had.

I suspect that something like 50% optimism is justified.

Incidentally I think this is another example of where the entire left/right dichotomy breaks down. Iain is a Tory & economically a fairly pro capitalist one. His blog is clearly run specificly to push Toryism. Nonetheless he is obviously not pushing the "trust the great & good" position which what traditionally the Tory party was about. On the other hand most opponents would call themselves comparatively left wing yet are supporting the "left wing" opposition to Israel. If supporting terrorists is left wing, & pointing out dishonesty by the state broadcasting system is right wing then I suggest left & right are now politically meaningless.

A collection of, mainly American, mainly political quotes including:

Can any of you seriously say the Bill of Rights could get through Congress today? It wouldn't even get out of committee." - F. Lee Bailey

"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self evident." - Arthur Schopenhauer

"Judges who think it is their job to produce 'fair and just' solutions to society's problems undermine the essence of law. The rule of law means having rules known in advance and applied to all. You cannot have that if judges base decisions on what they think is fair and just." - Thomas Sowell

“Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it, misdiagnosing it and then misapplying the wrong remedies.” - Groucho Marx

"If the truth of a proposition depended on the number of people who believed it, the earth would still be flat." - Richard Prebble

"Men occasionally stumble on the truth. But most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened." - Winston Churchill

"Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it." -- Ronald Reagan (1986)

"Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you." -- Pericles (430 B.C.)

"In general, the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one party of the citizens to give to the other." -Voltaire (1764)

"The nearest thing to eternal life we will ever see on this earth is a government program." - Ronald Reagan

"When people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic." - Benjamin Franklin