An Exclusive Mathaba Analysis

by Dr Sahib M Bleher

"A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes”, said Mark Twain. Modern communications help the lie travel even further, although Velcro having replaced lace-ups, the truth is not all that slow anymore in getting ready – mainly thanks to the internet.

After 9/11 it took months before any meaningful discussion got under way to piece together what really happened. After 7/7 in London this discussion is already in full swing. Many lies have travelled the world in the run-up to the “War on Terror”, itself a grand smokescreen for land grabs, geopolitical advances and social control. It should not be a surprise to our security services to find people sceptical of their integrity after they sold us the imminent threat of weapons of mass destruction, then told us to be constantly on guard because an attack was inevitable and now tell us how shocked they were when it actually happened. Nor should it surprise them that any serious investigator would include them amongst the suspects. London has a tradition of being resilient and savvy. People put up with a lot, but they don’t trust officialdom. They didn’t believe the authorised version of Princess Diana’s death either. “Whenever you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth”, observed Sherlock Holmes.

Propaganda and Fascism

Across the Atlantic, Thomas Jefferson knew the potential of government to obfuscate: "It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.” he stated.

Governments take a natural liking to propaganda. Nazi Germany’s propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels taught them: “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State." And George Orwell, the great predictor of the times of double-speak and thought-control we now live in, agreed: “During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act."

Now you would think that this applies to fascist and other dictatorships, not a democracy. But what is fascism, if not the unholy trinity of government, corporate, and media power? The Project for the American Century contains a useful list of tell-tale signs of fascism. For a more intellectual analysis see Thomas J. DiLorenzo’s essay on economic fascism. Time to hold up the mirror! The reasoning of blogger Troy is quite sound: “I would argue that the ever greater convergence of the government, the corporate elite and the media (a vital piece of the puzzle) mean the U.S. is moving more toward fascism. Decision-making power is more and more concentrated among a tiny group, opposition is silenced both with force, and wilful ignorance, the views of the elite are sold as objective truths.” Are Oasis popular with their new album “Don’t believe the truth” because youngsters have caught on that they are constantly being lied to? Our youth, after all, are a product of our society, and that, too goes for young, angry, disgruntled and disenfranchised Pakistanis. No point, blaming the undemocratic practices and fanatical schooling in Arab and Islamic countries for their mindset as Tony Blair recently tried to do – these youngsters are the product of the British education system and society; it is our British values, or lack of them, that made them what they are.

Qui Bono?

One way of getting to the truth is to ask: Qui bono? Who benefits? To any impartial observer it must be evident that Muslims, whether in the West or the East, have not been net beneficiaries of recent events. Western governments and companies, particularly arms manufacturers and security service providers, on the other hand, have, as have the oil cartels and their bankers who were also the first to cash in on the tragedy.

Besides unilateral military action, 9/11 brought us the various stages of the Patriot Act, Guantanamo Bay and other cancellations of democratic rights and due process. But it did not, ultimately, stifle debate nor were people willing to fully surrender their freedom of speech. There have been endless attempts to control the internet and reduce all people living in the West to a diet of CNN infotainment, just as there have been attempts to ban the satellite broadcast of information not fit to be served to the American public by the likes of Al-Jazeera, but to date they have not overcome a still strong and determined civil rights movement. Hopes are high that London 7/7 will change this. The interception of email is high on the priority list of Tony Blair’s counter-terror measures, for example, and it is also on the agenda of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

Hitherto the British government had thought that scaring people of an inevitable terrorist attack was good enough, but received ridicule and accusations of fear-mongering in return. A television series, The Power of Nightmares, questioned whether these security warnings were politically motivated. During the recent British general election the anti-war movement seriously dented the government’s majority and scored an extra-ordinary victory with the election of anti-war candidate George Galloway who, not one ever to mince his words, even flew to the USA and took on the American Senate’s committee.

London needed a real terror attack in order to numb people sufficiently for the government to push through legislation that they had not been able to push through even before their electoral fiasco. Immediately following the attack there were raids and city centre evacuations, and France and Italy likewise moved quickly to round up alleged suspects. The farce of democracy could be suspended and government and opposition could pull together. Policymakers in the US, too, are hoping that these events will stop that European trend of permitting opposition and unite them in support for the American Enterprise. Sacrificing a few of their own people is not too high a price ; former US secretary of state Madeleine Albright thought even the death of half a million Iraqi children a price worth paying.

Unfortunately for US and UK policymakers, critical voices were not as easily silenced this time as after 9/11. Some even squarely laid the blame at the government’s door and their illegal foreign exploits. Just as after the Madrid bombing the electorate did not swing behind the government but behind the opposition who called for a pull-out of Spanish troops from Iraq, the majority of Brits have no inclination to throw their support behind the government’s favoured identity card scheme.

Bloggers for Truth

The great German philosopher Fichte noted that there was a great consolation for every friend of truth and humanity that the truth would always overcome falsehood just as a slightest shimmer of light would eliminate the darkness surrounding it. One of the tools of illuminating the light of truth is by asking questions. And many questions about the 7/7 bombing in London are already being asked and the official version being questioned. These days, it is the Bloggers who are first in voicing their concerns.

Here are some interesting leads for any budding Sherlock Holmes:

Peter Powers, an ex-Scotland Yard anti-terrorist officer, admitted on BBC Radio 5 and ITN News that his PR firm were running a terror attack simulation exercise on the morning of the explosions at precisely the same locations where the bombs went off. Coincidence? Impossible. Collusion? Improbable. Well done, Watson, collusion it must be then, which would also explain why the evidence was removed. I am referring to the broken cameras on the no. 30 bus.

One of the problems of modern propaganda is the fast-moving flow of information. Little time to sort things out, leading to inevitable contradictions. For example, al-Qaidah was, of course, going to be responsible, but al-Qaidah would have targeted us because of our involvement in Iraq, yet, we are told by our politicians that this attack had nothing at all to do with Iraq but was an attempt to interfere with our values and way of life. Not al-Qaidah then, home-grown bombers. As the above cited blogger observes cynically, however: watch for the 'mastermind' to eventually be connected to the governments of Syria or Iran. But at least for now the alleged bombers are dead and not likely to put up a defence. If the new anti-terrorism laws were extended to British citizens, things would be easier, of course: they could be arrested and wouldn’t have to stand trial either.

Then there is the timing and method of the blasts. First the various explosions were spread out over more than an hour, until people began to ask why, seeing that the Israeli intelligence service Mossad had been able to warn Netanyahu (who was conveniently on location) not to leave his hotel, why couldn’t the British public be warned after the first bomb had gone off instead of being told lies about a perceived power failure? To fix this nagging problem it was then announced that the bombs were set off simultaneously using timers. A day later, however, we are told that Yorkshire-based suicide bombers (fanatical Muslims, like the one of them who was married to a Hindu lady) and now also a Jamaican were responsible for the carnage. Now have you ever heard of a suicide bomber using a timer on his charge of explosives and then waiting around for it to go off? Stupid and impossible. So there were no timers? But the police can’t just have made it all up, can they? Improbable. The truth is: someone is lying to us somewhere.

The Truth

What is more, in a multi-million people city like London there are inevitably people who see things they were not meant to see, like station closures before the event, for example, or the shooting of alleged perpetrators by police in Canary Wharf which was hushed up very quickly. As the saying goes: you can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you can never fool all of the people all of the time.

The aftermath of 7/7 is filled with moving speeches by politicians who make us believe that the suffering of the London public is unique in the world and in history. Within a few days of the bombs going off in London the casualty figure was matched by the death of innocent civilians in Baghdad, where bombs are a daily occurrence, not to mention the rest of Iraq. A train collision in Pakistan brought three times the death toll of the London bombings. But lives are cheap elsewhere. Yet, no amount of fancy talking is going to stop the truth from slowly emerging and the finger being pointed at the real perpetrators sitting in high office. "Why tell me that a man is a fine speaker, if it is not the truth that he is speaking?” mused Thomas Carlyle. The government better hurry. If they haven’t managed to put in place their totalitarian police state by then, they are likely to pay a hefty price for their perfidy.

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