The misinformation war rages on

Frightening. That was the response of a non-bigoted friend a couple of weeks back to news footage of a huge crowd gathered in Beirut to hear the leader of Hezbollah claim victory over the Israelis in the recent conflict.

This was Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah’s first public pronouncement since the ceasefire. My friend had, reasonably, taken the turn-out as a measure of how Hezbollah’s popularity has swollen as a result of its resistance to the invasion. Given the projection of Hezbollah as fundamentalist Islamic organisation intent on imposing Sharia law on the world, small wonder he’d experienced a tremor of unease.
But what, I asked, had Nasrallah said to the Beirut multitude? He didn’t know. And I didn’t know either. Because nowhere had either of us encountered a report of the bearded one’s actual remarks.
So, I turned to the English-language Beirut newspaper, the Daily Star. Its editorial on the day after the speech had declared that Nasrallah had thrown down a challenge to Lebanon’s political class, one that all Lebanese should embrace with enthusiasm.
It might be imagined on this basis that the Star is a Hezbollah newspaper. After all, George Bush has denounced Hezbollah as terrorist. In his key speech in Los Angeles on August 1, Tony Blair included the movement in an “arc of extremism” which threatened the whole world and which “we” would have to confront and defeat. The Israeli invasion was backed by the US and Britain on the ground that destroying Hezbollah was an essential element of the War in Terrorism.
So Bush and Blair presumably believe that in calling on “all Lebanese” to endorse Hezbollah, the Star was giving editorial support to Terrorism...
This would be a strange turn of events. In a desperately difficult situation over the last 30 years, the Star has won respect throughout journalism as a serious, independent-minded, secular publication. It is one of a number of affiliates of the US-owned, Paris-based International Herald Tribune. The others include Haaretz (Israel), El Pais (Spain) and Asahi Shimbun (Japan).
Had the Star suddenly lost all sense of perspective, then? Been intimidated? Taken over by extremists?
No – as was obvious from reading through the speech which the editorial had endorsed. It wasn’t a blood-thirsty rant. It didn’t call for religious war. It was conciliatory, even conservative.
But few in the West will have gained this impression. A more extensive trawl through the web suggested that no media outlet in these islands or in the US had published a transcript of the speech, or quoted extensively from it. The brief references I was able to find focussed on Nasrallah¹s claim of victory over the Israelis and his boast that Hezbollah had re-armed and now possessed an unlikely arsenal of 40,000 Katushya rockets. There was little, if any, mention of his explicit offer of decommissioning – that Hezbollah would lay down their arms as soon as Lebanon had “a clean, solid government and a strong military.”
The Star commented: “Far from being objectionable, these two goals should be top priorities for anyone who believes in the people’s right to good governance and in the country’s duty to defend itself against foreign aggression.”
Nasrallah also called for “an open and honest dialogue” with other Lebanese parties. He made a point of welcoming the increasingly non-sectarian outlook of many Lebanese people and looked forward to a government based not on religious but on political affiliation. He insisted that victory over Israel had been achieved by all communities in the country and shouldn’t be claimed by any one group, and that this should be a model for future political action.
The Star editorial concluded: “If any lesson is to be drawn from the recent war with Israel, it is that properly prepared individuals who believe in a just cause are a formidable resource for a developing country to have at its disposal. Since the goals enunciated by Nasrallah are entirely in keeping with the national interest, all that remains to be done is to inspire sufficient numbers of people and give them the training and equipment required of their noble task.”
My point is not so much that the Star is right and the Western media wrong, but that people in the West have not been provided with the information they need to make this judgment. We are kept in ignorance of what individuals like Nasrallah believe and say and of how the wider public in their countries respond to the things they believe and say. At some level, this must be deliberate.
At the British Labour Party conference in Manchester last month, Blair was explicit that Hezbollah was part of an “arc of extremism,” the aim of which was “to destroy our way of life.”
Blair was whipping people up for war against a demonic enemy – doing exactly what we are urged to believe Nasrallah is up to.
(Similarly, Iranian President Ahmadinejad is regularly quoted as having demanded the “obliteration” of Israel. He has said no such thing. He has called for the dismantling of the Israeli State – a perfectly defensible ambition, which I share.)
The “way of life” which is said to be under threat presumably includes the right of a well-informed people to join in political debate.... This right may indeed be under threat, but not, in the first instance, from Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but from opponents of democracy much closer to home.

Somebody on one of those programmes presented by Dara O’Briain says that poor old Ming Campbell is “a political dodo”, his prospects exterminated by uncool ignorance of the Arctic Monkeys.
It seems that the Lib Dem chief had been told by the spin-doctors that he needed to get deep down and dirty with the kids in order to show to the electorate that he isn’t a doddering old chap who drools over Rosemary Clooney. Brit voters won’t go for a man they are reminded is almost as aged as Charlie Watts.
So, when a planted question came up at a Questions And Answers session last week, the venerable ex-Olympian remarked, all casual like, that he was aware that the Monkeys “have sold more albums than the Beatles.”
Thus, he committed the enormous faux pas of letting his ignorance be known not only of the Arctic Monkeys but, horror!, Of the Beatles as well.
Ming the Mature had a point, although he didn’t know what point it was. Some callow Lib Dem image consultant had obviously told him that one interesting thing he might say about the Arctic Monkeys is that they have sold more copies of their debut album than the Beatles managed to shift of Please, Please Me back in 1963. Ming had merely managed to mangle the information in his mind.
Just goes to show, too, that the shivering simians are getting in everywhere. I picked up the Guardian’s Monday sports supplement recently to read that Liverpool having been thumped the previous day had been “all the more unexpected” for happening “on the weekend after the Arctic Monkeys lifted the Mercury Award....”
Apparently, this was the first time in the 14-year history of the Mercury awards that Liverpool had lost on the following weekend.
I bet you’re glad you know that.