AE on Telly News (NEW CONCEPTS)

[Mick Harper]

An amusing variant on a familiar theme turned up in the third and last part of the Olof Palme doc

[Mick Harper]

A minor mystery. Sky have been trailing a four-part series Juan Carlos, the Downfall of a King all year and announced it was to be broadcast on the Sky Documentary Channel starting 21st May. Nothing. The Guardian announced it was coming out yesterday 4th June. Nothing. Can't find anything about it anywhere. I've decided this is a major mystery and intend to launch a conspiracy theory to smoke them out. Unless they're reading this...

[Mick Harper]

At the end of the Palme trilogy, when the presenter had finished fingering the various bods (South African security organs using local right wing Palme-harmers) he reached what he considered the climax, the announcement of the latest all-singing, no-expense spared, official re-investigation of the case. "A lone nutter dunnit," they announced, naming a dim and unlikely candidate, eliminated in the first episode (and who had conveniently died in the meantime).

I was faced with a dilemma. I try very hard to favour lone nutter solutions in my battles with conspiracy-theorists but I liked the South African/Swedish conspiracy theory on this occasion. But please note, the documentary-maker is not in line for our prize, to be the first person who identifies a conspiracy-theory that turned out to be true since, as we are at constant pains to point out, uncovering a real conspiracy is not the same thing at all.

[Mick Harper]

I admit though that the distinction is a fine one. If the Swedish government had come up with the lone nutter thesis at the beginning and declared the matter closed, and the world had taken this at face value, then the field would be thrown open for conspiracy-theorists. If they had come up with an alternative and been proved right, then the prize would be awarded.

However, neither of these qualifying conditions have been achieved. The Swedish government did not name anyone, they declared themselves foxed. [cf "A Mr Lee Harvey Oswald has been interviewed but has been released pending further enquiries."] All possibilities were energetically pursued including the South African one. And, of course, it is nowhere near the status of 'turned out to be true'.

A similar sequence of events happened in the case of 'the origin of Covid'. Officialdom came up with, and from time to time accepted, various solutions, none of which fingered the Chinese directly. Conspiracy-theory types (eg Ishmael, Grant) energetically put forward "the Chinese dunnit" theses, one of which is now the official explanation. "It probably escaped via lax procedures from a Wuhan lab," saith the FBI. It never amounted to a conspiracy-theory, merely an alternative explanation to ones favoured but not fixed on by offiicialdom. And it is nowhere near to being proved true.

[Grant]

The CIA originally said the Chinese lab theory was a conspiracy theory being promoted by loons. Now they say it's the most likely explanation.

This is the first ever conspiracy theory to be officially proved.

[Mick Harper]

Hey, that's not at all bad. Though your last word should be 'approved'. If it is proved we shall have to empanel a court of enquiry to decide whether it was a conspiracy-theory within the meaning of the act. We'll probably find it was a CIA stunt all along. And you fell for it!

[Mick Harper]

[Mick Harper]

Forensics: The Real CSI

Now it's the West Midlands police. They have to arrest a 28-year-old man. They have his name, address, car number, phone details etc etc. Although he's being arrested for a serious offence (rape of a 12-year-old) there is no indication he is anything but an ordinary 28-year-old man. So to speak.

So they mount a dawn raid, with half a dozen fully kitted out (visors even!) snatch quad gendarmes, batter down the door, pull the man out of bed, create alarm and despondency for the rest of the family, not to mention all the other families living in a perfectly ordinary Birmingham cul-de-sac. There doesn't appear to be any operational justification. Is it to get on the telly? I hope so. I wouldn't like to think the West Midlands do this kind of thing as a matter of routine.

PS Do you think the geezer is going to get equable treatment after such a hi-vis fuzzabaloo? 'Course he will. The West Midland police are famous for it. I've got a list of their previous somewhere.

[Mick Harper]

101 East: China's Secret Overseas Stations Al-Jazeera

After Tibet, Macao, Sinkiang, Hong Kong (and soon maybe Taiwan) there are no Chinese not under Xi's thumb save the diaspora. China doesn't recognise dual-citizens or even foreign-born Chinese so they have all got to answer to Beijing. He has set up these 'secret overseas stations' to do the job. They are not secret in the sense of secret service secret, they are not secret in the 'let's do it on the QT' sense, they are just there, under a minimum of camouflage, harassing any Chinese that may have stepped out of line. "We'll imprison your parents if you don't come back to China 'for discussions'," is the opening gambit but it moves on to making life impossible if this doesn't work.

Naturally host governments take a dim view of all this but ... and here's the point ... Xi just doesn't care. He has given up on all the old Chinese virtues of subtlety and patience and just bludgeons ahead regardless. One hopes he will come to a sticky end but the policy is working a treat.

[Mick Harper]

The Media Show BBC R4

David Aaronovitch popped up in a piece about American news channels (he used to work for Murdoch). Asked what he was doing now (aside from presenting On the Record every week on R4) he said he was writing for Substack. I checked it out and it looked quite promising. Anyone know anything about it?

[Mick Harper]

Oh good-oh, Mark Urban is presenting Newsnight, we'll get the lowdown on the dam and the Ukrainian offensive from this master military tactician/strategist. Oh no! He spends the whole time discussing

* reparations with an ex-National Security adviser (what does he know about reparations)
* waterlogged houses with a Kherson housewife (what does she know about dams and offensives)
* long-term prospects with an ex-Sec-Gen of NATO (what does he know about peace?)

This is all part of a long-term media trend in war reporting

* a mania for refugee stories. Just because it's easy and affecting footage doesn't mean it has anything much to do with the way the war is going.
* a concentration on bomb damage. Just because it's easy and affecting footage doesn't mean it has anything much to do with the way the war is going.
* selecting talking heads on the basis of anything from being a blonde housewife with a reasonable command of English to a NATO bigwig who happens to be in town, but can contribute nothing about the way the war is going.

Maybe I'm the only member of their target audience who is interested in this aspect. But I did think Mark Urban would be too.

[Mick Harper]

Ukraine: the Men who Don't Want to Fight BBC R4

Ukraine does not allow any males between the ages of 18 and 60 to leave Ukraine. They are all, as of 2023, liable to conscription into the armed forces. The BBC, as does all the western media, concentrates entirely on Ukrainian Ukrainians, as this programme did. They ignore the millions of Russian-Ukrainians who don't just not want to fight for Ukraine, they want Ukraine to lose.

This is not exactly a unique situation. Britain did not extend conscription to Ireland in the first world world war, nor to Northern Ireland in the second. Why not? Because the Catholics didn't want to fight and there were enough of them to make it not worth the candle making them. What's the situation in Ukraine? Dunno, I only wish somebody in the western media would tell me.

[Grant]

Some journalists who have been "cancelled" by the main stream media publish their articles on Substack. Those with a big following like Glenn Greenwald are earning millions.

I'm too mean to subscribe to stuff online

[Mick Harper]

My aim is not to make money but to get exposure. Something I am spectacularly failing to do on medium.com. I suspect it would be the same on Substack. To believe the publicity everybody on these 'instant blog platforms' is making millions except me.

PS I will tell Aaronovitch he has been bracketed with Glenn Greenwald so expect a visit in the near future.

[Mick Harper]

Steeltown Murders (BBC1)

One gets used to police incompetence but for South Wales police not to link one teenager and, a month later, two teenagers, all hitchhiking late at night within a three mile radius in a low crime mainly rural area, all bludgeoned around the head, all strangled, all raped is quite startling.