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    'Stitching the fabric of a nation together' Archived Message

    Posted by Ian M on July 24, 2023, 6:05 pm, in reply to "George Alagiah: BBC journalist and newsreader dies aged 67"

    RIP, nasty way to go. A quick search of ML reminds that he was a hack propagandist like the rest of them, eg:





    "I've been here a week now and it's been long enough to see some of the small but real steps of progress. But it's also clear how much further there is to go. And it's not just about women's rights or more clinics and schools. It's about stitching the fabric of a nation together.

    "There seems to be a shift in the political mood though. People are talking about talks to end the conflict. And looking at what happens after the military campaign has ended.

    "Huw, back to you."

    George Alagiah, Camp Bastion, British base, Afghanistan, BBC News at Ten, Wednesday, 17 November, 2010;

    ML: 'Future historians will write learned dissertations on how gender rights in our time have been commandeered and weaponised by a fathomless cultural arrogance (the polite term) in the service of imperial violence. For these fine words were spoken in front of an Apache attack helicopter. The gunship’s 30mm, M230 chain-driven autocannon, fresh from ‘stitching the fabric of a nation together’, was clearly visible. This was the same weapon type seen blowing apart a dozen or more Iraqi civilians, including two Reuters journalists, in the 2007 WikiLeaks ‘Collateral Murder’ video.' - https://www.medialens.org/2021/that-is-actually-bollocks-20-propaganda-horrors-from-20-years-of-media-lens-part-1/

    And on the Haditha massacre in Iraq:

    'The title of the BBC news report was suitably ‘balanced’: ‘Iraqi Deaths.’ Not ‘American Massacre,’ or ‘American Massacre Of Iraqi Civilians.’

    News anchor George Alagiah introduced the piece:

    “The US military is preparing to announce charges against a group of marines accused of killing Iraqi civilians. More than 20 people, some of them children, died in Haditha a year ago. But it’s not clear whether they were killed deliberately.”

    In May, the New York Times reported that the slaughter was “methodical in nature”. (Thom Shanker, Eric Schmitt And Richard A. Oppel Jr., ‘Military Expected to Report Marines Killed Iraqi Civilians,’ New York Times, May 25, 2006)

    The Los Angeles Times reported that many of the victims were killed “execution-style,” shot in the head or in the back. A US government official accepted that the US marines had “suffered a total breakdown in morality and leadership, with tragic results”. (Tony Perry and Julian E. Barnes, ‘Photos Indicate Civilians Slain Execution-Style,’ Los Angeles Times, May 27, 2006. See Media Alert: Silence in the Service of Power)

    Iraqi prime minister Nuri al-Maliki has called the Haditha killings a “terrible crime”. (‘US Marine captain to face Haditha charges – lawyer,’ Reuters, December 19, 2006)

    But for BBC TV news “it’s not clear” whether the old men, women and children were killed deliberately by American troops.'     - https://www.medialens.org/2006/the-liberated-and-the-dead/

    I'm going to guess he didn't stress the US/UK backing for Saddam Hussein, including continuing to sell him arms during his massacre of the Kurds; that his reporting of the Rwandan genocide didn't follow up on the atrocities subsequently committed by Kagame and his forces in Rwanda and the DRC; and that he never expressed concerns about NATO using claims of ethnic cleansing in Kosovo to bomb the fmr Yugoslavia back to the stone age. Happy to be proved wrong...

    I

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