LGF pick up on a
UK teachers forum where a poster equates the 'tickling of feet' at Abu Ghraib with the mutilation of corpses.
I'm more interested in the posts of one of the system administrators, far-left historian
John Simkin. Simkin dismisses the central theme of Fahrenheit 911 in an impressive
post (post #15 in the thread).
"In his let's-join-up-all-the-dots way, this Emile Zola from Flint, Michigan, accuses Bush of a corrupt relationship with the Saudis. He says - or hints heavily - that Bush had business links with the Bin Laden family, which induced him to allow the lot of them to escape from the US on chartered planes in the aftermath of 9/11, and, secondly, to allow Osama himself to get away later, while Bush hastily diverted the public's attention to irrelevant Iraq.
There is only one source given for this material - a New York writer called Craig Unger who is interviewed on screen by Moore about it. Unger has written a book called House of Bush, House of Saud. Few Britons have yet had a chance to read it, because its first UK publishers, Random House, took fright at the prospect of being sued by rich Saudis. A smaller firm, Gibson Square, proved braver and Unger's book is due out this month.
Unger is not in the big league of historians. To quote his book jacket: "He has written about the two George Bushes for the New Yorker, Esquire and Vanity Fair". And his subtitle is downright false: The Secret Relationship Between the World's Two Most Powerful Dynasties. The relationship has not been a secret.
The text is solidly enough researched. It does indeed demonstrate convincingly that Bush had a business buddy called Jim Bath back in Houston, Texas, in the 1970s, who in turn acted as fixer and frontman for a pair of rich young Saudis. One of them was a brother of Osama bin Laden, and the other, years later, donated to Osama's Afghan guerrilla war against Soviet Russia.
The book does go on to show too that some Saudi money went into a struggling oil firm, Harken, in which the young Bush was involved. And it does show that the Bin Ladens and all the other rich Saudis holidaying in the US at the time of 9/11, were hustled home in an astonishingly privileged way, probably thanks to the cigar-chomping Prince Bandar, Saudi ambassador to Washington.
The book also documents two important general points. One is that the undeservedly wealthy Saudis have invested an estimated $860bn in US companies and purchased US arms worth several hundred billions of dollars.
The other key fact demonstrated is that the Saudi royals have helped preserve their close link with the US by aiding successive administrations in unsavoury plots and plans. These included arming the Nicaraguan contras, covertly arming Saddam in Iraq (in the days when it suited the US to encourage him), and using Saudi conduits to funnel money to the crazed Osama bin Laden himself (ditto).
Unlike Moore's film, the underlying Unger book is perfectly fastidious with the facts. But Unger's dots don't join up to make a conspiracy either.
For a start, they do not show that a Bin Laden directly funded Bush. For another thing, the Bin Ladens are a huge clan, and knowing a single one of them does not automatically tar you with the Osama bin Laden brush.
Most important of all, there is a fundamental misreading of the nature of the relationships at work here. Many western politicians in the 70s, 80s and 90s sought to shake down the Saudis and relieve them of their oil money, either to prop up their local economies or to line their personal pockets. Britain's own Tory cabinet minister Jonathan Aitken was a case in point, and ended up going to jail as a result.
Naturally, this required the turning of a blind eye to the alarming characteristics of Saudi society - for example, its brutality, corruption, despotism, misogyny, fanaticism, hypocrisy, dishonesty and greed. And equally naturally, it is very embarrassing for the likes of George Bush when the consequences of that sort of behaviour blow back in your face. Who would want to advertise it?
But this does not make a conspiracy. There is no real evidence in Unger's book that Bush wanted Osama bin Laden to escape, or that he invaded Iraq as a deliberate distraction.
In fact, the 9/11 commission last week blamed the defence department arch-hawk Paul Wolfowitz for the Iraq obsession, quoting the president telling Tony Blair that Iraq was not the immediate problem, whatever Wolfowitz said. And indeed, Moore's parochially-minded J'Accuse makes no mention of our own PM's equally loopy wish to march on Baghdad.
Moore's defenders say that, if not factually correct, then his film is in some way "essentially" true. Iraqi babies and US blue-collar soldiers are indeed being blown to bits for no good reason. The west's unholy relationship with Saudi Arabia and the Saudi royal family's unholy relationship in turn with its barbaric Islamists, did, in a general sense, lead to 9/11. And western politicians do seem to want to distract us from those nasty facts.
But this makes Fahrenheit 9/11, in documentary terms at least, a fraud. The film is not journalism. It is an extended piece of stand-up - a satiric riff by one deeply hostile individual. This shouldn't discourage people from going to this exhilarating movie. But it means that if you have a respect for accuracy, watching will be a guilty pleasure."
Good stuff given the author's politics. Unfortunately there's post #14, also by John Simkin.
"It was recently revealed (Robin Ramsay’s The Rise of New Labour) that when Blair became a candidate for the leadership of the Labour Party in 1994, Gideon Meir, a senior official at the Israeli Embassy in London, introduced him to Michael Levy (an extremely wealthy Jewish businessmen). Levy agreed to help Blair to become leader of the party. Levy, with the help of four other Jewish businessmen (Sir Emmanuel Kaye, Sir Trevor Chinn, Maurice Hatter, and David Goldman) provided Blair with £7m. This paid for his campaign plus the running of his private office. This money allowed Blair to become independent of Labour Party funding. Could it be this money, rather than the charm of George Bush, that persuaded Blair to give his support to the American (Israeli) policy in the Middle East. "
Those pesky Jews. I told you it was all about Israoil.
Simkin is the founder of
spartacus, a left-wing history resource for schools that doesn't advertise itself as such.
The
Education Forum which Mr Simkin administers is part of the
National Grid For Learning - in other words it's funded by the UK taxpayer. It has a link at the top of every page to
spartacus - but the only health warning is about advertising. How is spartacus funded, I wonder ?
I feel a conspiracy theory coming on, and it deepens when I see that George Monbiot also posts in the thread. Another
thread is graced with contributions from the Guardian's Martin Jacques and Jackie Ashley (admittedly pastes of their Guardian work) as well as Mr Simkin and Labour MP Peter Kilfoyle.
I've got no objection to a left wing bulletin board -
urban75 is one of my favourites.
But does it have to be funded by my taxes ? Do I have to cough up for a site administered by someone who thinks UK foreign policy was bought with Jewish gold ?
Hat-tip -
Dumb Jon.
