Remembering Paul Foot and 'Lockerbie's dirty secret'

While Britain, America, France and other mighty nations play space invader games over the Libyan Desert, nudge-winkingly plotting the overthrow of the unloved Gaddafi, my mind keeps turning back to Private Eye's late and celebrated investigative reporter Paul Foot and his well-argued alternative view of the Lockerbie atrocity.

In 2004 he wrote in The Guardian: 'The Lockerbie bombing was carried out not by Libyans at all but by terrorists based in Syria and hired by Iran to avenge the shooting down in the summer of 1988 of an Iranian civil airliner by a US warship.'

This was the British government's view until 1989 when Mrs Thatcher received a call from President Bush (Snr). Foot continues:  'In 1989 British and US armed forces prepared for an attack on Saddam Hussein's occupying forces in Kuwait. Their coalition desperately needed troops from an Arab country. These were supplied by Syria, which promptly dropped out of the frame of Lockerbie suspects. Libya, not Syria or Iran, mysteriously became the suspect country, and in 1991 the US drew up an indictment against two Libyan suspects. The indictment was based on the "evidence" of a Libyan "defector", handsomely paid by the CIA. His story was such a fantastic farrago of lies and fantasies that it was thrown out by the Scottish judges.

'In Britain, meanwhile, Thatcher, John Major and Blair obstinately turned down the bereaved families' requests for a full public inquiry into the worst mass murder in British history.

'It follows from this explanation that Megrahi is innocent of the Lockerbie bombing and his conviction is the last in the long line of British judges' miscarriages of criminal justice.'

Now, this may all be lunatic nonsense for all I know. Or may be not. Whatever the truth, I'm more inclined to reconsider Foot's work and conclusions than to listen to the appalling and mindless propaganda currently churned out by the mainstream media in its glamorous and euphemistic coverage of the bombardment of Libya.

To read Foot's Guardian piece, click here.

Libya and the cosy language of assets-speak

While I couldn't care less about the fate of togaed Gaddafi and his open-necked colleagues, I am intrigued by the new language of the UN's war against Libya. 'Military assets', 'naval assets', 'intelligence assets': I don't recall any 'assets' during the Iraq invasion when the the lingo of the fairground for mass destruction gained common currency ('shock and awe' etc).

My assumption is that someone in PR dreamt up 'assets' for the ongoing purpose of sanitising and propagandising instruments of war. 'Asset' is a word that customarily belongs to business and investment: it connotes something of economic value. In the general sense, an asset is a valuable item. Rather than focus on the purpose of a tank, rocket, submarine, what have you, someone has decided instead to emphasise value; and to have something of value one must own it. So, all these killer assets are first and foremost property - it is this euphemistic line of thinking that our leaders would have us follow when we listen to the news. Think assets, think house, car, garden... Tomahawk Rocket? Almost cosy.

The current air attacks on Libya sound more like a gentlemanly business takeover than a lethal military campaign.

Broadcasters and journalists have of course demonstrated their usual independence and eagerly picked up on the assets-speak. It is probably the case that if a BBC News report relabelled an asset as an aircraft carrier or fighter jet it would be accused of undermining the worthy cause. It is this bovine subservience to authority which is the modern hallmark of TV and newspaper journalism: as inclined to be used as propaganda machines as Libya's state TV channel.

I have yet to hear of Gaddafi's military assets.